1947-07-19, #3: Doctors' Trial (Siegfried Handloser's personal statement)

THE PRESIDENT: I now call upon the Defendant Handloser.

DEFENDANT HANDLOSER: During my first interrogations here in Nuernberg in August, 1946, the interrogator explained to me:

First, you have been the Chief of the Army Medical Service. Whether or not you knew of improper experiments does not matter here. As the Chief, you are responsible for everything.

Second, do not try to come with the excuse that among other nations similar things, or the same, have happened. We are not concerned with that here. The Germans are under indictment, not the others.

Third, do not rely upon your witnesses. They, of course, will testify in your favor. We have our witnesses, and we rely upon them.

Those were the guiding principles of the Prosecution until the last day of these proceedings. They remained incomprehensible to me, because I always believed that a criminal had to be a man who did wrong, and because I was of the opinion that even the Prosecution had the desire to be objective, at least until after the end of the presentation of evidence. The final plea by the Prosecution, however, told me that I made a mistake. The speech by the Prosecution did not take into account the material submitted in evidence, but it was a summary and a repetition of one-sided statements of the Prosecution without taking into account that which was submitted in the course of the presentation of evidence in my case.

I have full confidence that the High Tribunal has gained a true impression of my activity and of my attitude. Just as I have tried throughout my entire life to fulfill the tasks which were put to me by fate, according to the best of my capacity and in the full knowledge of my responsibility, I also tried to pass this most serious examination before this court with the aid of this strongest weapon which I possessed. That is the truth.

If there was anything which could reconcile me with the mental suffering of the last months, then it was to be conscious, to know, that before this court, before the German people, and before the people of the world, it would become clear that the serious general charges of the Prosecution against the Medical Corps of the German Armed Forces have been proved to be without any foundation.

It can be seen how unjust these charges were by the fact that, according to my knowledge, not against a single leading doctor of the German Armed Forces in combat or at home, including my two chiefs of staff, were any charges raised or any proceedings initiated. As the last Medical Inspector of the Army, and as Chief of the Medical Service of the Armed Forces of Germany, I think with pride of all the medical officers to whose untiring devotion hundreds of wounded and sick patients of this dreadful war owe their lives and cure and their possibilities for existence. Never and nowhere were the losses of an Army Medical Corns, more than those among the Army in the Officers of the German Armed Forces in carrying out their duties.

More than 150 years ago, the guiding principle was created for German military doctors and their young successors, "Scientia, Humanitati, Patriae", "For Science, for Humanity, and for the Fatherland." Just as the medical officers in their entirety also remained true. That guiding principle is in my thoughts and in my actions. May the joint endeavors of all the nations succeed in recognizing the meaning of peace, and to avoid in future the immeasurable misfortune of war, the dreadful phase of which, nobody knows better than the military physician.