A.- One might well assume so.
Q.- Do you know whether or not Dr. Hoven had relationships with the wife of the Camp Commandant Koch?
A.- Quite decidedly no.
Q.- You don't know that?
A.- This would not have remained unknown in the camp.
Q.- Are you married, witness?
A.- Who, me?
Q.- Yes.
A.- Yes.
Q.- How long have you been married?
A.- Since the 10 of August last year.
Q.- How friendly were you with Hoven while you were in the Buchenwald concentration camp?
A.- I must say that I had a large number of advantages through Hoven but there was never a relationship which you could call friendship between Hoven and myself. I have never talked with Hoven off duty.
Q.- Did you wear a violet triangle?
A.- No.
Q.- Witness, when you were testifying here on direct examination, I noted that you were using notes to refresh your recollection, do you still have those notes before you?
A.- No.
Q.- Where are those notes?
A.- I only have before me here the names which Mr. Prosecutor read out to me, Dietzsch and Collinet and others.
Q.- What did you do with the notes you were using to testify why?
A.- I am not sure but I think they are lying on the table in my apartment.
Q.- Were those typewritten notes, some of them?
A.- That I don't know.
Q.- Well, who prepared the notes?
A.- Pardon.
Q.- Who prepared the notes?
A.- Nobody has prepared anything for me.
Q.- Well, you had typewritten notes before you when you were testifying yesterday; who typed those notes for you?
A.- As soon as I knew I was coming to Nurnberg, of course, I prepared myself with reference to the trial, for I was able to tell approximately the questions which would be put to me.
Q.- Did Dr. Gawlik give you any typewritten notes?
A.- I talked with Dr. Gawlik a few days before appearing here.
Q.- Did he give you any typewritten notes?
A.- No, I filled a typewritten sheet before me which had 14 Questions on it, and I sent it to the Tribunal.
Q.- Did you have any other typewritten notes before you?
A.- No, only what I wrote with my own hand.
MR. HARDY: I have no further question.
THE PRESIDENT: Defense counsel may examine the witness, if he desires.
DR. GAWLIK: I don't have any further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: There being no further questions to be propounded to the witness, the witness will be excused from the stand.
The Tribunal will proceed with the case against Beiglboeck.
DR. STEINBAUER: (For defendant, Professor Dr. Wilhelm Beiglboeck, from Vienna.)
Mr. President, Your Honors, I shall begin the case on behalf of my client, Dr. Beiglboeck, by reminding you with one sentence of my opening speech. First of all, I want to picture to you the personality of this defendant and then I shall show that ho carried out sea water experiments against his own will under explicit military orders, and, thirdly, he carried them out in such a way that you cannot conclude crimes against humanity or war crimes from the way they were carried out.
In order to draw you a good picture I should like to remind you of an air railway, when I speak of my representation as an air railway, as a new rope, and that is represented by the defendant on the witness stand and the few documents, and on the contrary if that rope were to break than I have the safety rope. The scientific pillar, namely, the evidence that bears on internal medicine it is out of the question, that these experiments can be called criminal. - I am not pleading Mr. Hardy, I am merely explaining. I am awfully sorry Professor Alexander has had so much work to do but I should like to save work for the Tribunal and myself and the scientific description lists, I think the chart has 132 pages, and I would like to save my honored colleague, Mr. Hardy and myself the trouble since we are no experts and also I would like to put all of these scientific questions back. I would like to ask you, Mr. President, that my client, Dr. Beiglboeck, take the witness stand as a witness now.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Beiglboeck will take the witness stands.
The defendant Beiglboeck took the witness stand and testified as follows:
BY JUDGE SEBRING:
Q. Please raise your right hand and be sworn: repeating after me:
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath)
You may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY.
DR. STEINBAUER:
Q.- Your name is Dr. Wilhelm Beiglboeck, isn't it, and you were born on the 10 of October 1905 at Hochneukirchen in Lower Austria, as the son of a country doctor. You attended the secondary school at the Benedictine Monk' College in Melk and you studied medicine at the University of Vienna and there got your degree, didn't you?
A.- All of that is correct.
Q.- What is the medical training you had?
A.- I first of all began working chemically, pathology and atomology. I turned to internal medicine and after I was promoted I joined the third medical clinic in Vienna, the chief of which was Prof. Dr. Chwostek.
Q.- Who was Professor, Dr. Chwostek?
A.- Chwostek was the son of an also very well known and famous internal medical man, a student of Meinert and Neussert, and also acting as an internist and neurologist, and was particularly famous for his diagnosis and was highly esteemed in this field and sought after in the whole of Europe as being a representative of the typical old Vienna school.
Q.- How long did you remain with Professor Chwostek?
A.- I stayed with him as long as he was the head of that clinic, in other words, about two years, and then Chwostek was pensioned off and his clinic was dissolved, and I went to the first medical clinic, the chief of which became at that time Professor Eppinger.
Q.- Eppinger, he has been mentioned here quite often - who was Eppinger?
A.- It is difficult to say, in which field of internal medicine Pro fessor Eppinger did not contribute highly important work. Even when he was young he became famous because of his work about internal secretions, particularly activities of the thyroid gland, and he carried out research into the vegetative nervous system and created with Wess the conception of Vago Unsimpaticonus.
Q.- You have to speak more slowly and make short sentences.
A.- Those two conceptions have become general knowledge in medicine todya. Eppinger then worked on kidney diseases, dropsy and later as Benkebach's scholar he worked on shock and collapse treatment and he became the man who cleared up the causes of collapse to a considerable extent and modified and cleared it up in a basis manner.
A. (continued) Later on he worked on metabolism of heart dieseases and he created a basis for the functional disease of the heart science. His first work was on pathology of the liver and his research in this field created complete novelty. It was due to this that his reputation became international, and it was inter on that he devoted his entire research to this field apart from hundreds of smaller works in this metabolism field. The name Eppinger was known the world over and I do know, as his chief deputy, that his scientific correspondence extended to all countries of the world. The external symptoms of this international reputation as a physician and scientist was that doctors from every country of the world -- Europe, America, Asia -- worked in his clinic all the time and that Eppinger himself was called abroad a great deal, also, as a doctor, of course. I only want to say that he treated Kemal Pascha, that the Queen of Roumania called him, and the King of Bulgaria and that he also treated Marhsal Stalin.
Q. I think that is enough in order to elucidate the international importance of Professor Eppinger.
A. I would say that it was this international reputation which was the reason he received a professorship in Vienna. It was known quite well why Eppinger became a University Professor. The conception that he was an ass is certainly net held by me.
Q. Professor, how long did you remain in Eppinger's clinic?
A. It was in 1936 that I became Eppinger's assistant following Austrian regulations.In 1939 I became his chief assistant doctor and in 1940 I was given the title of chief medical officer. I remained with him until the end of the War at which time I was released. I had been called up to the Army since 1941 and remained there on the strength of the clinic only nominally.
Q. When were you habilitated?
A. My habilitation occurred in 1939 and in the beginning of 1940 I was given the title of Dozent (lecturer).
Q. That is a very long period. How do you explain that?
A. Contrary to the custom in Germany the Austrian habilitation regulations prescribed it that first of all you had to spend eight years in a clinic before qualifying for habilitation.
Q. Well, now it might be said that you are a Nazi professor. If we, the Austrians, had not been occupied would you still have become a professor?
A. As early as the beginning of 1938, before the Anschluss Eppinger had given me instructions to prepare my habilitation and he had already taken the first steps in the Collegium of Professors in Vienna.
Q. When did you first become a University Professor?
A. It was in 1943 that Eppinger submitted my name for this nomination and in June 1944 I was nominated.
Q. Were you a member of medical unions academies?
A. I was a member of several medical unions, particularly in Vienna- the Order of Doctors of Vienna, Society of Internal Medicine in Vienna, Society of Micro-Biology in Vienna, and Biological Society in Vienna. I was also a member of the German Society for Internal Medicine and German Society for Circulation Research.
Q. Did you also write scientific works yourself?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Mr. President may I submit a few documents with reference to what has been said so far and I shall be as brief as possible. Beiglboeck Exhibit I I offer the affidavit "Testimony of the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna" and I present this to the Tribunal. I shall read from page 2 of the Document Book.
MR. HARDY: May I ask defense counsel if he proports that the Dean of the University is acting as notary here?
DR. STEINBAUER: I can show Mr. Prosecutor the original but since this is a vital document to my client who will need it later on I have had it photostated and I am certifying that it is a true copy. Please would you give the original to the Prosecutor.
MR. HARDY: No objection, your Honor.
BY DR. STEINBAUER:
Q. I shall read from this document, from the middle of the second paragraph: "Especially apt for the quick orientation at the sick bed, Dr. Beiglboeck showed splendid diagnostic ability. He is fully conversant with all modern methods of examination and treatment."
And then the final paragraph: "His engaging manner, his diligence, his gr eat skill and, last but not least, his humane behavior towards the patients entrusted to his care, have always brought him the fullest recognition from his superiors."
I also submit to the Tribunal Exhibit Beigleboeck No. 2. It is a certificate from the First Medical Clinic of the University, dated 11 January 1935. Again it is submitted as a photostatic copy. I shall read paragraph 2 of that certificate: "He shows a special interest That's Beiglboeck. "He shows a special interest in the execution of scientific research, which has enabled him to write, at my clinic, a series of excellent works, in connection with which special attention must be drawn to his great thoroughness and exactitude."
Exhibit No. 3 which I now submit is the testimony from the First Medical University Clinic Prof. Dr. Hans Eppinger, dated 18 December 1943. I shall read only one sentence, the last sentence of that document. I quote: "I look upon the said person, in whose appointment as a lecturer in 1940 I was instrumental and whose appointment as a Professor extraordinary I proposed, as the ablest of my pupils."
Exhibit No. 4 which I now submit to the Tribunal is an index of the scientific works written by Prof. Dr. Beiglboeck. It lists 53 works written by him and 11 demonstrations -- a selection of them.
Witness, I shall have to ask you with reference to that document, did you yourself write the works listed in that index and publish them?
A. I published the bulk of them and wrote them all. Some of these works, two or three of them, I am nor sure, weren't printed as far as I know. I composed this index on the basis of a list which I still held and I composed it to the best of my knowledge.
Q Thank you. The next document is a letter from a nurse of Eppinger's Clinic. It is Exhibit 5.
MR. HARDY: May it please the Tribunal, exhibit p is merely a letter written to Steinbauer. It contains no jurate as to the signature of the writer of the letter. Hence it is not admissible by the Tribunal.
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. Hardy is perfectly correct. Because I knew you were going to come out with that objection I sent the letter back to Mrs. Brever and asked her to have her signature notarized. Therefore I submit to the Tribunal a document which is properly certified by notary although my signature would do it just the same.
MR. HARDY: Your Honor, I submit that document is not admissible. I object to its admission.
THE PRESIDENT: Does the Tribunal understand from counsel that the document is now properly certified? It will be submitted as such.
MR. HARDY: It is not properly certified. The certificate put on by Dr. Steinbauer was put on after the date of the signature.
DR. STEINBAUER: The Prosecution hasn't understood what I said. I received this letter of Mrs. Brever and since she gave it to me personally I certified its authenticity but in the meantime the Tribunal has fuled in spite of the fact as of 11 March 1947 all signatures were to be notarized by a Notary. Consequently I returned this to Mrs. Brever and asked her to have it certified by a notary.
MR. HARDY: Just a moment. I will have Dr. Alexander look at it. The English document doesn't indicate this and I can't read the German.
No objection, your Honor.
BR. STEINBAUER: In that case, subject to the Tribunal's permission I would like to read the letter, I quote:
"From 1937 Professor Dr. Wilhelm Biegelboeck was my superior at the clinic of Prof. Eppinger, ward C 2. In March 1938 I was to be dismissed from the clinic for my outspoken antagonism towards national socialism. Professor Biegelboeck stood up for me in the most helpful manner, and succeeded insofar that I was left in my position. In the course of the following years I was often attached, because I tried continually to fight against the Nazi Regime, and it was always Prof. Biegelboeck who helped me. After the days of the Jewish Pogrom I heard. Dr. Biegelboeck say to a colleague whom he knew well: "I will not take part in this, this is too much for me, we do not want this."
"I write these lines freely and without constraint, in gratitude for the assistance which Biegelboeck gave me from 1938 until the time of his Military Service (1941)."
The next document I submit is a. certificate from the Medical University Clinic, Professor Dr. Heilmeyer, which is page 96 of Document Book 1.
THE PRESIDENT: What document number is this?
DR. STEINBAUER: Exhibit 6.
THE PRESIDENT: What document number does it bear?
DR. STEINBAUER: Number 24. I beg your pardon.
MR. HARDY: May I ask counsel if it contains a jurat?
DR. STAINBAUER: Mr. Hardy, this is a certificate of the University Medical Clinic. In order to meet a possible objection by the Prosecutor I have returned this testimony to the Professor with an order to return it to me properly certified immediately. Unfortunately this letter has not yet come back since the mail takes about a fortnight, but I would like to ask that it be admitted provisionally until the sworn certificate is returned to me. Actually it is only a University Clinic headed by Professor Heilmeyer, and perhaps you will be good enough to show this to the President.
MR. HARDY: The document has no jurat.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will admit the document provisionally subject to the correct certificate being added later.
DR. STEINBAUER: I don't even want to read the whole document, only the first paragraph:
"I made the personal acquaintance of Univ. Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Beiglboeck of Vienna, at lectures given at scientific meetings. I have known his scientific works however, for a long time. He drew particular attention to himself through his excellent work as a pupil of the most prominent German internist, Prof, Eppinger. In particular, his research into the effects of various vitamins and into the pathology of the liver and epidemic Hepatitis has made a great impression. Prof. Beiglboeck is doubtless among the most promising research workers in the field of internal medicine. I know also, that Prof, Eppinger always spoke of him in terms of the highest regard."
Q Now, let's carry on; witness, what about your military service, how did that progress?
A In May of 1941 I was called up into the German Air Force as a Medical Soldier, and my basic training I passed in Baden near Vienna. In August of 1941 I became a non-commissioned officer, and I was sent to the air force hospital at Welz, Austria, and I was promoted, to noncommissioned officer corresponding to the rank of sergeant, and after serving in the air force hospital of Vienna for a short time I went to the war college at Eger in 1942 and then in August of the same year I left for a motorized company in Russia. I remained there until the end of 1943.
Q What duties did you have in Russia?
A I headed the internal ward of a field hospital.
Q Did you hold the position of a section doctor?
A From point of discipline, no, I was kept on the list as assistant to the surgeon.
Q And where did you go from Russia?
A. Subsequently I was transferred as an assistant to the internal department of the air force hospital at Brunswick, and from there in March of 1944 went to the war hospital at Taraviso, Italy.
Q So even in Brunswick you didn't become department medical officer?
A No.
Q And you didn't receive that title in spite of three years of service and although you were a university professor and already had been admitted for professorship?
A It was only in March 1944 I became an independent section medical officer fop the first time.
Q In the indictment you are described as an consultant medical officer of the air force though?
A I was never the consultant to the air force. Admittedly at the beginning cf 1944 I had been earmarked for that position in the Parachutist Army, but for reasons which Professor Dr. Sievers has described here a younger colleague of mine was preferred.
Q So you didn't participate in any meeting, particularly none of the meeting mentioned here in this trial, is that right?
A You mean the meetings, the congress of the assisting consultants?
Q Yes.
A You are right. I didn't participate in any one of these meetings.
Q Did you have any contact with your fellow defendants before this trial.
A I only knew Professor Handloser who during the years of 1938 and 1939 worked in Vienna where he was the military district medical officer, and I also knew him listening to lectures of his occasionally, but I do not believe he knew me, because he probably impressed me more as a general than I impressed him as a civilian. Of course I knew Professor Schroeder, Chief medical officer, by name.
He was my highest superior. The first time I saw him personally was when I was ordered to work on experiments and reported to the medical inspectorate. It was done by means of the common brief military report for duty. It was on that occasion I met Dr. Becker-Freyseng end later in October 1944, Dr. Schaefer. As the evidence has already shown I had a brief conference with Mr. Sievers in Dachau and I didn't know any other of my fellow defendants before.
Q Well, I think I can conclude the chapter regarding your character and personality, and in order to save trouble to the interpreters a number of testimonies and certificates have not yet been submitted by me. Now, let's pass on to the question of the order, when did you receive the order to carry out seawater experiments?
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, before proceeding with that matter the Tribunal will be in recess.
(Thereupon a short recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.
BY DR. STEINBAUER (Counsel for defendant Beiglboeck):
Q. Witness, we shall turn now to the second chapter, to the question of military orders. When did you receive the order to carry out sea water experiments?
A. Today I cannot give you the exact date when that order reached me. It must have been the middle or end of June, probably the end of June.
Q. At that time were you already told the purpose of this order?
A. No, the order came to my chief physician at Tarvisio, a teletype; this teletype told me to report immediately to the Medical Inspectorate in Berlin, There was no reason for this order in the teletype. I was sick at the time the telegram arrived. I thought at first that I would be called to get the position of a consulting internist, which had been promised me; however, since the rebuilding of my department in the Tarvisio hospital had just begun, I asked my chief physician to telephone to Berlin and if possible get permission for me to stay in the hospital in Tarvisio. Dr. Yaeger, my chief physician, then called Berlin. He was informed that I was not being transferred for the reasons I had thought but that I was to carry out scientific experiments for the commission from the Medical Inspectorate. I was to get precise details about this in Berlin. At any rate, I was to get under way immediately to get to Berlin and a few days later I went from Italy to Berlin and reported to the Medical Inspectorate, as I had been ordered, and there I was directed to see Dr. Becker-Freyseng.
Q. Whom you had not known theretofore?
A. Whom I had not known theretofore, neither personally nor by name.
Q. What did Dr. Becker-Freyseng tell you?
A. He told me briefly first of all what was afoot and then took me to Oberstarzt Dr. Merz from whom I received the formal order to take over the carrying out of these experiments.
Q. Did you accept this order without any opposition on your part immediately?
A. After I had been informed exactly what was going on there, I immediately asked permission to carry out the experiments in my department in Tarvisio. I wanted to carry them out on soldiers who would volunteer for them. I also said that I did not want to carry out experiments in a concentration camp and gave as my reasons for this, among other things, the fact that it seemed to me more practical to carry them out in an institute where the necessary laboratory facilities were available. Of course, I could not express very explicitly my personal opinions regarding concentration camps because in 1944 in Germany that was not something that one just did. I was told that the Medical Inspectorate had originally intended a hospital to be used for these experiments and I remember very exactly there was talk of Brunswick; I remember this for a personal reason. Not so long ago I had been working in Brunswick in the hospital and it would have pleased me greatly if in this way I should have had an opportunity to see my friends there again and consequently I much regretted that this plan was not carried out.
Q. For that reason was your proposal that the experiments be carried out in Tarvisio turned down?
A. The reason that Oberstarzt Dr. Merz gave me, that is the reason he expressed to me, was that the very aggravated situation on all fronts did not permit keeping soldiers in hospitals longer than was absolutely necessary for their convalescence. This was shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-American invasion. Be pointed out this fact to me specifically and mentioned also the Fuehrer order about which I had heard already, that very strict measures were to be applied in judging who was to stay in hospitals. For instance, we had to release from the hospital persons sick with gastric disorders even before they were healed.
We had people with gastric ulcers who were absolutely in need of hospital care. We had to take these people from the hospital and sent them to the so-called "stomach batallions." These were companies composed solely of persons with gastric ulcers who received a special diet but nevertheless did full active service.
For example, there was such a stomach company stationed near Tarvisio which in full active service combatting partisans and I remember very well that from this stomach company we frequently at the hospital received cases of gastric hemorrhage in the surgical department; wounded soldiers before they wore completely healed were put into the socalled convalescent companies.
We had difficulties again and again when we had hepatitis cases who kept relapsing when we released them because the liver again relapsed.
That, in general, was the situation. We did not act according to purely medical or scientific principles but acted simply on orders that were dictated by necessity. That was the actual situation in 1944 at the time I was given this order and for this reason I regarded this reason given to me by Oberstarzt Merz as a justified one.
Q.- Now, witness, did you say something else to escape from this assignment?
A.- When I realized that the location of the experiments could not be changed and since I did not want to go to that chosen location, I asked Becker-Freyseng to send me back to Tarvisio and to Commission my deputy in Tarvisio who was also an internist with the carrying out of these experiments. Becker-Freyseng answered that it was too late now to change anything. Professor Eppinger had recommended me as a suitable expert. Becker-Freyseng said that he had supposed this had been done with my permission. That, however, was not actually the case. Becker Freyseng said that he himself was not pleased that a concentration camp had been chosen as the location for the experiments. However, he was convinced that this problem of sea distress had to be solved because the many reports that he had received in the last time made it imperative to solve these problems.
He told me that I had been ordered to carry out the experiments. This was an order from higher up. It was just as binding on him as it was on me; and moreover, I had already been nominated to Himmler as the person who would conduct the experiments. Consequently, it would be impossible for me now to withdraw.
I then asked him whether I was to understand this as a strict military order and he answered "yes."
Now, in the year 1947 it is perhaps not quite so easy to understand that in the year 1944 it was absolutely necessary to regard a military order as binding, that one did so.
Q.- Then it was Professor Dr. Eppinger that proposed you?
A.- Yes, it was he.
Q.- Had you previously spoken about this matter with Eppinger?
A.- No. Regarding everything that happened before I arrived in Berlin I knew nothing whatsoever. Eppinger, as he told me later, had entered this whole affair or had attended this conference with the intention of carrying out the experiments at his clinic and for that reason he wanted one of his assistants to make the experiments. Since it was a military assignment and since I, as the only one of his older assistants, was a member of the Luftwaffe, he proposed me as the person to make the experiment.
Q.- Did. you, however, perhaps, later speak with Eppinger about this assignment?
A.- Between the time of my arrival in Berlin and the actual beginning of the experiments, I was once in Vienna and, of course, spoke with Eppinger regarding this question. I did nothing to conceal the fact that I was very unhappy to have received this assignment. My teacher told me that for the above mentioned reasons he had proposed me and, moreover, he said that he expected me to carry out these experiments out in a perfectly impeccable manner.
Moreover, he said it was neither his responsibility nor had it been his intention that I should be assigned to Dachau. He had neither proposed that nor had he been asked his opinion in that matter and, as a matter of fact, Dr. Eppinger had absolutely n thing to do with the choice of Dachau as the location of the experiments of of prisoners as the experimental subject.
Q.- What then had his intentions been?
A.- I have already said that Eppinger wanted to carry out the experiments at his clinic and had already agreed on that with Sirany and Berka before I went to Berlin.
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. president, in this connection I should like to put in Document 12, page 26. This will be Exhibit No. 7. This is a letter from a then female doctor at the 1st Medical Clinic -- namely, Dr. Spiess. I shall read the second paragraph from this:
"As assistant of the 1st Medical University Clinic in Vienna, I had the opportunity of attending to a part of the report of Dr. Beiglboeck on his work at Dachau submitted to Prof. Dr. Eppinger. On the occasion of this conversation. Professor Dr. Beiglboeck generally condemned the principle of the performance of scientific experiments in concentration camps most strongly and at the same time reproached his chief, Prof. Dr. Eppinger, for selecting him for his work. Thereupon Prof. Dr. Eppinger assorted that he had not nominated him.
"Some months later, long after the termination of the experiments at Dachau, he frequently talked in my presence about the experiments at Dachau to German and foreign physicians and nurses. Upon my remark that these experiments surely were Wehrmacht experiments and therefore "secret," they were not intended for everyone's ears, Prof. Dr. Eppinger replied one could frankly speak about them as no case of death has occurred with the seawater experiments and also that no experimental person had suffered any serious consequences through the experiment so that there was no reason to make a secret of it."
BY DR. STEINBAUER:
Q.- witness, it seems to me I detect a slight contradiction here. The doctor who wrote this letter states that Eppinger had not nominated you but you just said that he did.
A.- I think there is a misunderstanding here. When I objected to receiving this assignment, Eppinger said to me literally, "It is not my fault that you have been assigned to Dachau." Now, apparently, Dr. Spiess' emphasis should fall on the word "you." However, the emphasis of whar Dr. Eppinger said should lie on the word "Dachau."
Q.- Now, did you accept this assignment without making further efforts or did you make other efforts to escape from it?
A.- As a last attempt I mobilized my chief physician in Tarvisio and asked him to request my return. I hoped that such a request through army channels would lead to my return to Tarvisio. As Dr. Jaeger has testified here, he did so. However, he had no success.
Q.- Now, in the cross examination Mr. Hardy will certainly say to you;
"Sure, you didn't want to go to Dachau because you considered the experiments unnecessary at all." Is that the motive for your attitude.
A.- As I gradually became more and more experienced in the question of sea water experimentation, I came to think that the experiments were not unnecessary.
Dr. Becker-Freyseng, on the basis of various observations and experience on the part of the German air force and navy, informed me of the urgency of the sea water problem and pointed out the unfortunate fact to me that precisely in the problem of allaying thirst we had Schaeffer's preparation but the introduction of this preparation was apparently going to run into insurmountable difficulties, Therefore, if we didn't succeed in introducing this preparation, we had to know what sort of advice we would give a person who found himself in a state of sea emergency and under these circumstances I considered it my duty to work on these experiments, if I were ordered to do so; I not only considered it a military duty which I had to fulfill anyway but it was also the kind of a question which concerned me as a physician. At that time I had not been informed about the foregoing events of this affair, or at any rate was informed of it only very superficially and I knew nothing about the intrigues of the technical office as they have been described here. I knew nothing at that time and from my point of view I saw the matter as follows: Both Becker-Freyseng and particularly Professor Eppinger told me that we could assume that the Schaeffer method would not be introduced under any circumstances because the technical office declared it was impossible for reasons of lack of raw material. However, if the Schaeffer method could not be introduced, then the question still remained open: is it better for a person in sea distress to drink nothing at all or should he drink sea water and if he drinks sea water is it expedient to give him the Berka prepara tion? Regarding the question of the effects of sea water there had been up to that time no systematic scientific investigations carried out. In the meantime such investigations have been carried out and the results became known, but, of course, a problem that is solved in 1947 cannot be viewed as of the year 1944, in the same way that you might reproach Hippocrates with not being familiar with modern brain surgery, and it is quite understandable why from the medical point of view this problem had been greatly neglected, because in times of peace there really was no problem of sea distress anymore.