1947-07-14, #4: Doctors' Trial (early afternoon)

Mr. Hochwald and Mr. McHaney conclude the Prosecution's closing argument

AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 14 July 1947)

DR. HOCHWALD: May it please the Tribunal, even the most eminent scientist in the dock, the defendant Rose, tried to shield his guilt by a tissue of lies. The entries in the Ding Diary for 19 August 1942 and 8 March 1944 prove that typhus experiments were carried out in Buchenwald by Ding at the suggestion of Rose. Ten inmates were killed during the course of these experiments. Rose expressly denied the accuracy of these entries in the Ding Diary. He denied ever having sent vaccine to Mrugowsky or Ding to have tested in Buchenwald. He denied that Mrugowsky ever asked him for vaccines to be used in typhus experiments or that he ever negotiated with Mrugowsky in that regard. Mrugowsky has cheerfully testified that he, also had nothing whatever to do with Ding's experiments in Buchenwald. He stated that:

If he had come to me I would have sent him on to someone else. I would have said, 'My dear man, that does not have anything to do with me'.

The perjurious testimony of these two defendants was clearly revealed by the subsequent introduction of the correspondence between them on the very experiments with which they denied any connection. On 16 May 1942 Mrugowsky wrote to Rose as follows:

The Reich Physician SS and Police has consented to the execution of experiments to test typhus vaccines. May I therefore ask you to let me have the vaccines.

The other question which you raised, as to whether the louse can be infected by a vaccinated typhus patient, will also be dealt with. In principle, this also has been approved. There are, however, still some difficulties at the moment about the practical execution, since we have at present no facilities for breeding lice.

Your suggestion to use Clzscha had been passed on to the Personnel Department of the SS Medical Office. It will be given consideration in due course.

This letter forms the basis for the experiments carried out by Ding in Buchenwald on 19 August 1942 as reported in the Ding Diary.

These defendants were again thoroughly impeached by the letter of Rose to Mrugowsky of 2 December 1945 which reads, in part, as follows:

At present I have at my disposal a number of samples of a new murine virus typhus vaccine which was prepared from mice livers and proved in animal experiments to be quantitatively a 1000 times more effective than the vaccine prepared from mice lungs. To decide whether this first rate murine vaccine should be used for protective vaccination of human beings against lice typhus it would be desirable to know if this vaccine showed in your and Ding's experimental arrangement at Buchenwald an effect similar to that of the classic virus vaccines.

Would you be able to have such an experimental series carried out? Unfortunately I could not reach you over the phone. Considering the slowness of postal communications I would be grateful for an answer by telephone.

This letter in turn substantiates the entry in the Ding Diary for 8 March 1944.

These defendants, without exception, showed a very remarkable practice of economizing in the use of truth. The record is full of their outright false statements, double talk, fantastic explanations, absurd professions, dissimulations, and evasions. We have not even been spared the experience of at least one instance of deceitful and contemptuous alteration of original documents in a vain attempt to mask the truth. These things typify the philosophy of the National Socialists. As Justice Jackson said:

When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue the habits of a lifetime in this desk? Credibility is one of the main issues of this trial. Only those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of the generous opponents would not hesitate to do the s same, now.

One of the common defenses which has been utilized rather extensively in this case is a variation of the old "shell game" — now you see it, now you don't. This comes into most active play when we have a criminal who had two or more titles.

Thus, for example, Haagen was simultaneously Consulting Hygienist to Air Fleet Reich with the rank of Stabsarzt [Staff Surgeon] and the Director of the Hygiene Institute of the University of Strasbourg. Also, Generalarzt [General Physician] Schreiber, one of the principal subordinates of Handloser as Army Medical Inspector, was Commander of the Scientific Group of the Military Medical Academy and at the same time Plenipotentiary for the Combatting of Epidemics in the Reich Research Council. In the face of proof that both of these men engaged in a variety of crimes, the incriminated defendants have made the effort to hide the pea which is the crime under the shell for which they deny responsibility, while at the same time hopefully ignoring the obvious fact that the pea is under both shells. Thus, Schroeder, Rose and Becker-Freyseng would have the Tribunal make the fantastic finding that the Rector of the University of Strasbourg was exclusively Haagen's boss and, if he did anything wrong, it was the Rector's responsibility. Handloser takes a similar line with the very unpopular Schreiber, and by some wondrous working of fate, every time Schreiber was sponsoring a criminal experiment he was acting in his capacity as a member of the Reich Research Council. Blome, according to his story, was only deputy to the "good" Conti while the "bad" Conti went his criminal way without the assistance of his chief collaborator. Poppendick and Grawitz had the same unique relationship. Cenzken and Mrugowsky perform a similar bi-section of Ding; while his right hand was in the vaccine production plant at Buchenwald under their command, his left hand performed the criminal typhus experiments at the direction of Grawitz, and never the twain did meet. I will not consume the time and patience of this Tribunal by pointing up the wealth of evidence which proves that Haagen, as he indeed admitted, and Schreiber and Ding were performing their criminal research with the knowledge and active support of these defendants who are now so anxious to disown them. The Prosecution does not dissent from the consensus that other persons are also guilty of these crimes, including most certainly the Rector of the University of Strasbourg and the members of the Reich Research Council. After all, we have in Karl Brandt and Blome, two of the six doctors who were members of the Reich Research Council, but the fact that other persons are equally guilty in no way serves to exculpate these defendants.

The fact that these criminal experiments were performed with the knowledge and assistance and for the benefit of several different agencies only goes to prove that they were executed pursuant to a common design. Thus, the report on the first typhus experiment in Buchenwald, which cost the lives of five inmates, was sent by Mrugowsky to Conti as Reich Health Leader, in which capacity Blome was his deputy, Grawitz, Genzken, Eyer of the Typhus and Virus Institute subordinated to Handloser, and Dr. Demnitz of the Behring Works. The "shell game" is no defense. Guilt was indeed widespread, but that is neither exculpation nor mitigation for these defendants.

Mr. MacHaney will proceed with the closing statement.

MR. McHANEY: Another of the rather common defenses urged by the defendants is that the experimental subjects were criminals condemned to death who, provided they survived the experiment, were rewarded by commutation of their sentence to life imprisonment in a concentration camp. For one who has even the slightest knowledge of the conditions in concentration camps and the life expectancy of an average inmate, this alleged defense assumes the aspect of a ghastly joke. We need only recall the remark made by one of the women used by Rascher to rewarm his frozen victims in Dachau, who when asked by him why she had volunteered for the camp brothel, replied:

rather half a year in a brothel than half a year in a concentration camp.

But the defects is this spurious defense run much deeper. Concentration camps were not ordinary penal institutions, such as are known in other countries, for the commitment of persons convicted of crimes by courts. The very purpose of concentration camps was the oppression and persecution of persons who were considered undesirable by the Nazi regime on racial, political, and religious grounds. Hundreds of thousands of victims were confined to concentration camps because they were simply Jews, Slavs, or Gypsies, Free Masons, Social Democrats, or Communists.

They were not tried for any offense and sentenced by a court, not even a Nazi court. They were imprisoned on the basis of "protective custody orders" issued by the RSHA. Tens of thousands were condemned to death on the single order of Himmler, who, as Gebhardt put it so well,

had the power to execute thousands of people by a stroke of his pen.

There were, indeed, a relatively small group of inmates who might be classed as ordinary criminals. These were men who had served out their sentences in an ordinary prison and then were committed to concentration camps for still further detention. A memorandum of 18 September 1942 by Minister of Justice Theirack concerning a conversation with Himmler tells us the fate of those unfortunates:

The delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reichsfuehrer 38 to be worked to death. Persons under protective arrest, Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles with more than 3 year sentences, Czechs and Germans with 8 year sentences, according to the decision of the Reich Minister for Justice.

The proof in this case has demonstrated beyond all doubt that so-called criminals sentenced to death were very rarely used in any of the experiments.

True it is that Himmler said prisoners condemned to death should be used in those high altitude experiments where the long-continued activity of the heart after death was observed by the experimenters. He was generous enough to say that if such persons could be brought back to life, then they were to be "pardoned" to concentration camp for life. But even this unique amnesty had no application to Russians and Poles, who were used exclusively in those experiments.

But, assuming for the moment, that this alleged defense might have a mitigating effect under some circumstances, it certainly has no application to this case. Be it noted that this is an affirmative defense by way of avoidance or mitigation. There has been no proof whatever that criminals sentenced to death by an ordinary court could possibly be executed in a concentration camp. Such matters were within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, not Himmler and the SS. The experimental subjects we are dealing with here are those that Himmler could condemn by "a stroke of his pen". If the inmate used in the experiments was condemned for merely being a Jew, Pole, or Russian, or, for example, having had sexual intercourse with a Jew, it does not answer the criminal charge to say that the victim was doomed to die. Experimentation on such a person is to compound the crime of his initial unlawful detention as well as to commit the additional crime of murder or torture.

As has been said by another Tribunal:

Exculpation from the charge of criminal homicide can only can only possibly be based upon bona fide proof that the subject had committed murder or any other recognized capital offense; and, not even then, unless the sentencing Tribunal with authority granted by the State in the constitution of the court, declared that the execution would be accomplished by means of a low-pressure chamber.

In this connection, it might be noted that German law recognized only three methods of execution, namely, by decapitation, hanging, and shooting.

Moreover, there is no proof that any of the experimental subjects had their death sentences commuted to any lesser degree of punishment. Indeed, in the sulfanilamide crimes it was the experiment plus later execution for at least six of the subjects.

Since the defendants Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser have put particular stress on this alleged defense, I should like to make a few remarks in that connection, but it should be remembered that they apply with equal force to most of the other defendants. Gebhardt, speaking for his co-defendants Fischer and Oberheuser, took the position that the Polish women who had been used in the sulfanilamide experiments had been condemned to death for participation in a resistance movement and that by undergoing the experiments, voluntarily or otherwise, they were to have their death sentence commuted to some lesser degree of punishment, provided they survived the experiments. This was no bargain reached with the experimental subjects; their wishes were not consulted in the matter. It was, according to Gebhardt, left to the good faith of some one unnamed to see to it that the death sentences were not carried out on the survivors of the experiments.

Certainly Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser assumed no responsibility or even interest in that regard.

It should be pointed out that the proof shows that the experimental subjects who testified before this Tribunal were never so much as afforded a trial; they had no opportunity to defend them selves against whatever crimes they were said to have committed. They were simply arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo in Poland and sent to the concentration camp. They had never so much as been informed that they had been marked for, not sentenced to, death. Article 30 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; annexed to the Hague Convention; specifically provides that even a spy "shall not be punished without a previous trial".

Gebhardt would have the Tribunal believe that but for the experiments all these Polish girls would be dead; that he preserved the evidence which was used against him. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no proof in the record that these women would have been executed if they had not undergone the experiments. The witness Magzka is living proof of the contrary. She was arrested for resistance activities on 11 September 1941 and shipped to Ravensbruck on 13 September. She was not an experimental subject yet she lives today. Substantially all of the Polish experimental subjects arrived in Ravensbruck in September 1941. These girls had not been executed by August 1942 when the experiments began. There were 700 Polish girls in that transport. There is no evidence that a substantial number were ever executed even though most of them were not experimented on.

The proof submitted by the Prosecution has shown beyond controversy that these Polish women could not have been legally executed. The right to grant pardons in cases of death sentences was exclusively vested in Hitler by a decree of 1 February 1935. On 2 May 1935 On 2 May 1935, Hitler delegated the right to make negative decisions on pardon applications to the Reich Minister of Justice.

On 30 January 1940 Hitler delegated to the General Governor for the occupied Polish territories the authority to grant and deny pardons for the occupied Polish territories. By edict dated 8 March 1940; the General Governor of occupied Poland ordered that:

The execution of a death sentence promulgated by a regular court, a special court, or a Police court martial, shall take place only when my decision has been issued not to make use of my right to pardon.

Thus, even though we assume arguendo, that the experimental subjects had all committed substantial crimes, that they were all properly tried by a duly constituted court of law, and that they were legally sentenced to death, it is still clear from these decrees that these women could not have been legally executed until such time as the Governor General of occupied Poland had decided in each case not to make use of his pardon right. There has been no proof that the Governor General ever acted with respect to pardoning the Polish women used in the experiments, or, for that matter, any substantial number of those not used in the experiments. The only reason these 700 Polish women were transported from Warsaw and Lublin to Ravensbruck, in the first place, was because the Governor General had not approved their execution. Otherwise they would have been immediately executed in Poland. At the very least, these women were entitled to remain unmolested so long as the Governor General took no action. He may never have acted or, when he did, he may have acted favorably on the pardon. Who is to say that the majority of these 700 women did not live through the war even though they did not undergo the experiments? Certainly it was incumbent on the defense to prove the contrary by a preponderance of the evidence. This it did not do by any evidence.

The defendants Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser certainly cannot claim that they believed in good faith that the Polish women could have been legally executed. Even the camp doctor, Schiedlausky, knew that the Governor General had to approve each execution. Moreover, the large number of 700 women being sentenced to death at this early stage of the war was enough to put any reasonable person on notice that something was wrong.

Additionally, the uncontroverted evidence proves that survival of the experiments was no guarantee whatever of avoiding execution in any event. At least six of the experimental subjects were proved to have been executed after having survived the experiments. It was not a question of the experiment or execution, but rather the experiment and execution. Indeed, in February 1945, an effort was made to execute all of the experimental subjects, but because of confusion in the camp due to the war situation, the experimental subjects were able to obtain different identification numbers and so avoid detection.

But even if one takes the case of the defense at its face value, the Tribunal is in effect asked to rule that it is legal for military doctors of a nation at war to experiment on political prisoners of an occupied country who are condemned to death, to experiment on them in such a way that they may suffer death, excruciating pain, mutilation, and permanent disability, all this without their consent and in direct aid of the military potential of their enemy. There would, of course, be no valid reason for limiting such a decision to civilian prisoners; the experiments would certainly have been no worse had they been performed on Polish or American prisoners of war.

It is impossible to consider seriously this ghoulish ruling being sought for by the defense.

I should now like to turn briefly to the specific defenses of some of the defendants. It is a temptation to take up each defendant in his turn, but since my appropriate time does not permit, I can only hope that we will not be accused of partiality in selecting only a few for comment.

The defense of Handloser is a general denial. He says in effect that: I was a soldier. I was in charge of the medical administration of the Wehrmacht; but had no power and no right to issue orders and that whatever may have happened; I am not responsible for it. It is interesting to note that this defense is very similar to that put forward by Field Marshal Keitel in this same court room approximately a year ago. He was represented by the same defense counsel. Keitel also said that he could not issue orders. We have already discussed in some detail the position of Handloser, and it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the supreme authority in the military medical services. We need not stop to consider the practical difference between an order and a directive.

We have pointed out that the opportunity and power to control the participation of the military medical services in these crimes was his. The evidence shows that Handloser was connected with a number of criminal medical experiments including the typhus and other vaccine experiments both in Buchenwald and Natzweiler, and the freezing, sulfanilamide, jaundice, gas and the gas oedema experiments, among others. But it was his participation in the Buchenwald typhus experiments which now causes Handloser the most distress. The first entry in the Ding Diary proves that Handloser participated in the conference which decided that those experiments should be performed. This has brought forth a concerted attack on the authenticity of this document by Handloser as well as Mrugowsky. But after months of torturing and twisting, the diary has not been disproved in a single respect. To the contrary, it has been substantiated time and again by the introduction of independent documents which are too numerous to here detail. There is scarcely a line in the whole diary which has not been corroborated either by documents or by testimony. The defense itself proved that the diary was all typed on the same machine. The genuineness of the signatures of Dr. Ding, which appear on substantially every page, has been proved beyond controversy. The diary must be accepted as accurate in its entirety. There is no basis for accepting some entires and rejecting others. The defense has presented no creditable evidence of any inaccuracies. The living record of the deceased Ding is the best evidence of what actually happened.

But one could disregard the Ding Diary and the proof would still require a judgment of guilty with respect to Handloser. The Buchenwald typhus experiments were also discussed at a preliminary conference on 29 December 1941 attended by a subordinate of Handloser. His office received a copy of the conference report. Medical officers under the direct command of Handloser were informed of the details of these experiments — Eyer, Schmidt, and Schreiber.

Eyer received a report on the first series of experiments and later, accompanied by Schmidt, visited the experimental station Typhus infected lice as well as vaccines were furnished to Ding by the Typhus and Virus Institute of the OKH under Handloser. Ding reported on the typhus experiments at a meeting of the Consulting Physicians called by Handloser and presided over by Schreiber. Additionally, the Buchenwald. experimental station was used by Handloser to have yellow fever vaccines tested on inmates, the results of which were sent to his hygienist Dr. Schmidt. Combined vaccine experiments were conducted at Buchenwald on the suggestion of Handloser. Old blood plasma was tested on inmates of the "Little Camp" at Buchenwald for the Military Medical Academy under Handloser. The proof is quite clear that Handloser had knowledge of and participated in the criminal typhus experiments in Buchenwald, as well as other medical crimes.

Rudolf Brandt reached the pinnacle in the contest of self-abasement among the defendants. His testimony before the Tribunal can be summed up in one sentence: "I remember nothing." Aside from a description of Himmler as something in the nature of a Jekyl and Hyde, he contented himself with giving answers to leading questions put by his attorney which were calculated to reveal him as a disembodied stenographic automaton or a mechanically proficient half-wit. He complains that the Prosecution only submitted 113 letters written or received by him to establish his complicity in these crimes which he, indeed, admits. He wants the Tribunal to say he is really not very guilty since he was concerned with over 160,000 letters in a life-time at Himmler's side. Of course, this mechanical measure of proof submitted by the Defense works both ways. It can be urged with equal validity that he is twice the murderer that Sievers has been proved to be on, shall we say, 50 documents. I need hardly mention that a great number of these many other letters mentioned by Brandt concerned such matters as the kidnapping of Czechoslovakian children, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, extermination of Jews, and the notorious Flier Order, which encouraged the lunching of Allied fliers who bailed out over Germany.

The Prosecution does not contend that Rudolf Brandt was as important as Himmler. But he was an important administrative assistant to Himmler. While the basic decisions were made by Himmler, Brandt saw to it that they were carried out. If the principle of relative guilt has any place in the trial of men directly connected with the murder of thousands of persons, which the Prosecution submits it has not, then the significance of Brandt's position and his criminal activities comes into clear relief by comparison with that of the camp commander of Dachau and many of his subordinates, who have long since been sentenced to death for their participation in some of the same crimes charged in this Indictment.

Rudolf Brandt also pleads superior orders in mitigation. There is no evidence that Himmler ordered Brandt to participate in any crime. Brandt did so willfully. There is no evidence that Brandt retained his position out of fear. He flourished in it. Nothing would have been easier for him than to be replaced out of request or feigned inefficiency. Brandt was not a soldier on the field of battle. His activities were far removed from the confusion of the front lines. He did not act in the spontaneous heat of passion; he had full time to consider and reflect upon his course of action. He continued in his position from 1933 until his arrest by the Allies in 1945, no less than 12 years. This fact alone removes any basis for mitigation. Moreover, assuming that Brandt was ordered to commit the criminal acts which are the subject of this trial, when there is no fear of reprisal for disobedience, obedience represents a voluntary participation in the crime. Such is the case with Rudolf Brandt. Finally the doctrine of superior orders can not be considered in mitigation where such malignant and numerous crimes have been continuously and ruthlessly committed over a period of many years.

What has been said with respect to Brandt applies equally to the defendant Fischer who also pleads superior orders. He knew at the time he performed these experiments that he was committing a crime.

He knew the pain, disfigurement, disability, and risk of death to which his experimental victims would be subjected. He could have refused to participate In the experiments without any fear of consequences. This he admitted in saying:

It was not fear of a death sentence or anything like that, but the alternative was to either be obedient or disobedient during war, and thereby set an example, an example of disobedience.

Such an admission removes any basis for mitigation. A soldier is always faced with the alternative of obeying or disobeying an order. If he knows the order is criminal, it is surely a hollow excuse to say it must be obeyed for the sake of obedience alone.

The defendant Beiglboeck attempts to run in all directions at once. The gypsies which he used in his experiments he tells us were volunteers, although he carried a pistol on his hip; they took the seawater willingly, although he found it necessary to tie one to his bed and seal his mouth with adhesive plaster to prevent him from obtaining fresh water; none of the experimental subjects suffered any harmful effects, although he contemptuously erased and altered the wording of a clinical record of one of the subjects in a vain effort to conceal from the Tribunal his desperate condition. This reluctant admission of fraud and deceit on his part came only after the proof left him no alternative, but he solemnly assured the Tribunal that he made no further changes in the documents. A further examination, however, shows that he did exactly the same thing with respect to another report of a subject's condition.

But Beiglboeck's primary defense seems to be based on the proposition that it is not a crime against humanity to experiment on gypsies, since they are, at least according to Nazi doctrines, necessarily "asocial" persons. Beiglboeck apparently considers himself something of an expert on this subject. He testified that it was his understanding that a whole family could be classified asocial, although this

does not exclude the possibility that, in this family, there can be a large number of persons who did not commit any crime.

This motion that all gypsies are socials is also apparently shared by his defense counsel who when cross-examining the witness Hoellenreiner said:

Listen, Dr. Hoellenreiner, don't evade my question after the fashion of gypsies.

It was also felt necessary to submit an extract from a work known as the "Gypsy Book", which reads in part as follows:

The 'gypsy plague' from which we suffer is caused by large numbers of gypsy bands and individual gypsies roaming about the country between the Austrian, Swiss and French borders under the cloak of trading — thereby seriously endangering public security by their vagrancy, Besides begging, trespassing on fields, forest land and meadows, spreading the risk of epidemics and fires, trickery, these people are inclined to thievery.

While this book was published in 1905, it could not have been better written by Julius Streicher. Such Nazi doctrines of inferior races and peoples simply serve to explain how these crimes of man's inhumanity to man could have occurred.

In Siever's we have an unresisting member of a so-called resistance movement. He asks the Tribunal to free him from guilt for his bloody crimes on the ground that he was really working as an anti-Nazi resistance agent. Nor was he a late-comer to the resistance movement; according to him, he has been resisting since 1933. Yet in those 14 years, yes to this very day, he has not performed one overt act against the men who ran the system he now professes to have always detested. He joined the Nazi party as early as 1929 and the SS in 1935. He stayed with Himmler's gang until the last days of the collapse. He came to Nurnberg in 1946, not to give evidence of the horrible crimes of which he had firsthand knowledge, but to testify in defense of the SS. During his testimony before the International Military Tribunal, he consistently denied any knowledge of or connection with crimes committed by the Ahnenerbe of the SS. It was left to the cross-examination of Mr. Elwyn Jones to prove him the murderer and perjurer that he is. Nor did he show any signs of resistance in this trial except to the manifold crimes with which he is charged. Not one new fact did he reveal to this Tribunal, although specifically asked to tell all he knew. If asked today, he will assure one and all that there is not a, guilty man in the dock, and least of all himself. But, for purposes of argument, let us concede the truth of his many lies. It does not harm our case. It is not the law that a resistance worker can commit no crime and, least of all, against the people he is supposed to be protecting.

It is not the law that an undercover agent, even an F.B.I. agent, can join a gang of murderers, lay the plans with them, execute the killings, share the loot, and go his merry way. Many are the policemen who have been convicted for taking part in crimes they were entrusted to prevent. No, the said thing is that this collector of living Jews for transformation into skeletons has only one life with which to pay for his many crimes.

In view of the clear and unequivocal proof of the defendant Rose's participation in the typhus murders of Buchenwald he can only plead that he didn't enjoy doing what he did, that he objected to the experiments at the Third Meeting of the Consulting Physicians of the Wehrmacht in May 1943. But this is his condemnation, not his salvation. In March 1942 he was in Buchenwald and saw what was being done. In May of the same year he asked Mrugowsky to test a vaccine for him in those experiments, four inmates were killed as a result. In May 1943, he objected to the experiments in what he describes as strong terms. But in December, he was again instigating still another experiment which resulted in the murder of six men. He is a living example of a man who could have abstained from participating in these crimes without threat of harm to his person or position by any agency of the Nazi Government. He was not arrested and tried by the SS because of his objection. He was not committed to a concentration camp. In spite of that, he voluntarily participated in these same crimes to which he said he objected, with his knowledge, prestige, and position, he is even more culpable than the miserable and inexperienced Ding who actually performed the experiments in the murder wards of Buchenwald.

CONCLUSION

I have already mentioned briefly the principle of relative guilt, but before concluding I should like to say a few more words in that connection.

Over the past half-year or more, we have all because acquainted with ghastly evidence of mass murders both from the record of this proceeding and the trials which have preceded it.

It would not be surprising, therefore, that we might tend to regard a man who killed only three or five persons as a pretty nice fellow by comparison. For example, it might be said that Gebhardt, who admitted that three women died in his sulfanilamide experiments, is entitled to a somewhat different punishment than Karl Brandt, who conceded that 60,000 persons were executed under his euthanasia program. In response to a question put by a defense counsel, Dr. Ivy emphatically stated that:

there is no justification in killing five people in order to save the lives of 300.

The idea that such thinking may be justified, with its inherent usurpation of the Lord's prerogative, is typical of Nazi thought. This whole system of Nazi mathematics is untenable in civilized society. This corruption of thought is found even in a mathematics problem book, published in 1933, for use by German school children. Under the guise of mathematics, the revulsion of normal children against the spreading of death by poison gas is insidiously broken down. Let us look at Problem 200 in this text book on mathematics and see what it says:

According to statements of the Draeger works in Luebeck, in the gassing of a city only 50% of the evaporated poison gas is effective. The atmosphere must be poisoned up to a height of 20 meters in a concentration of 45 mg/m3. How much phosgene is needed to poison a city of 30,000 inhabitants, who live in an area of 3 square kilometers? How much phosgene would the population inhale with the air they breathe in 10 minutes without protection against gas, if one person uses 30 liters of breathing air per minute? Compare this quantity with the quantity of the poison gas used.

The same perversion of thinking in terms of Nazi mathematics also explains the mass extermination of what several defendants have called "lives unworthy of living", the aged, the crippled, and the insane.

Any German high school student who had studied this book on mathematics could have told us that. Problems 95 and 97 tell the story more eloquently than we could possibly state it.

Problem 95. The construction of an insane asylum required 6 million R.M. How many settlement housed at 13000 R.M. each could have been built for this sum?

Problem 97. An insane person costs about 4 R.M. daily, a cripple 5½ R.M., a criminal 3½ R.M. In many cases a civil servant only has about 4 R.M., an office employee barely 3½ R.H., an unskilled laborer not even 2 R.M. per head of his family.

(a) Illustrate these figures graphically. According to cautious estimates there are in Germany 300,000 insane persons, epileptics, etc. under institutional care.

(b) What is their total annual cost at a figure of 4 R.M.?

(c) How many marriage allowance loans at 1000 R.M. each — subject to renunciation of repayment of the money later — could be paid out from this money yearly?

This Tribunal must solemnly reaffirm an entirely different type of mathematics; mathematics in the light of religious and humane education which teaches that the value of even one human life is infinite, which means, again mathematically expressed, that one times infinity is just as infinite as 300 times infinity.

A distinguished American scientist said in this court room:

There is no state or politician under the sun who could force me to perform a medical experiment which I thought was morally unjustified.

This was more than the view point of an individual or of an American.

Dr. Ivy expressed the opinion of all medical men and decent people of the civilized world. These defendants held a very different view in their day of pomp and power, and so these crimes resulted.

A prominent present day German leader has expressed the opinion that we are partly responsible for the snow-balling consequences of rearmament in violation of treaties in 1936, because we did not then strongly enough express our disapproval. There is some logic in this statement, although it illuminates the tragic failure of being too dependent on guidance from outside rather than on the dictates of one's own conscience. Therefore, let there be no doubt about the degrees of your condemnation of the acts of these defendants.

THE PRESIDENT: Before the arguments on behalf of defense counsel the Tribunal will take a short recess.