Yes, the experiments were ordered by the Luftwaffe and executed exclusively by Luftwaffe doctors. Did Rascher have anything to do with them? Yes, indeed. He assisted Holzloehner and Finke in torturing to death many more concentration camp victims. Did Ruff and Romberg know anything about all this continued criminal activity? Yes, Romberg was awarded a medal on Rascher's recommendation in September and in October 1942 both Ruff and Romberg were here in Nurnberg listening to the very edifying reports on the freezing experiments by Holzloehner and Rascher. Thus, to appreciate the full guilt of the defendants Ruff and Romberg in connection with the high altitude experiments it is necessary to look to the freezing experiments to see that Rascher, far from being court martialed by the Luftwaffe, after obtaining full knowledge of exactly what had happened, retained his rank and continued his murderous work in cooperation with other Luftwaffe doctors.
It will be seen from this review of the Indictment and from the evidence submitted by the Prosecution that these defendants are, for the most part, on trial for the crime of murder. As in all criminal cases, two simple issues are presented: Were crimes committed and, if so, were these defendants connected with their commission in any of the ways specified by Law No. 10? It is only the fact that those crimes were committed in part as a result of medical experiments on human beings that makes this case somewhat unique. And while considerable evidence of a technical nature has been submitted, one should not lose sight of the true simplicity of this case. The defendant Rose, who was permitted to cross-examine the Prosecution's witness Dr. A.C. Ivy of the Medical School of the University of Illinois, became quite exasperated at his reiteration of the basic principle that human experimental subjects must be volunteers. That, of course, is the cornerstone of this case. There are, indeed, other prerequisites to a permissible medical experiment on human beings.
The experiment must be bases on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease under study and designed in such a way that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment. This is to say that the experiment must be such as to yield results for the good of society unprocurable by other methods of study and must not be random and unnecessary in nature. Moreover, the experiment must be conducted by scientifically qualified persons in sucy manner as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury. If there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury might occur, the experimenters must serve as subjects themselves along with the non-scientific personnel.
These are all important principles and they were consistently violated by these defendants and their collaborators. For example, we have yet to find one defendant who subjected himself to the experiments which killed and tortured their victims in concentration camps. But important as these other considerations are, it is the most fundamental tenet of medical ethics and human decency that the subjects volunteer for the experiment after being informed of its nature and hazards. This is the clear dividing line between the criminal and what may be non-criminal. If the experimental subjects cannot be said to have volunteered, then the inquiry need proceed no further. Such is the simplicity of this case.
What then is a volunteer? If one has a fertile imagination, suppositious cases might be put which would require a somewhat refined judgment. No such problem faces this Tribunal. The proof is overwhelming that there was never the slightest pretext of using volunteers. It was for the very reason that volunteers could not be expected to undergo the murderous experiments which are the subject of this trial that these defendants turned to the inexhaustible pool of miserable and oppressed prisoners in the concentration camps. Can anyone seriously believe that Poles, Jews, and Russians or even Germans, voluntarily submitted themselves to the tortures of the decompression chamber and freezing basin in Dachau, the poison gas chamber in Natzweiler, or the sterilization X-ray machines of Auschwitz? Is it to be held that the Polish girls in Ravensbruck gave their unfettered consent to be mutilated and killed for the glory of the Third Reich? Was the miserable Gypsy who assaulted the defendant Beiglboeck in this very court room a voluntary participant in the sea water experiments? Did the hundreds of victims of the murderous typhus stations in Buchenwald and Natzweiler, by any stretch of the imagination, consent to those experiments? The preponderance of the proof leaves no doubt whatever as to the answer to these questions.
The testimony of experimental subjects, eye-witnesses, and the documents of the defendants own making establish beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these experimental subjects were non-volunteers in every sense of the word.
This fact is not seriously denied by the defendants. Most of them who performed the experiments themselves have admitted that they never so much as asked the subjects whether they were volunteering for the experiments. As to the legal and moral necessity for consent, the defendants pay theoretical lip service while at the same time leaving the back door ajar for a hasty retreat. Thus, it is said that the totalitarian "State" assumed the responsibility for the designation of the experimental subjects and under such circumstances the men who planned, ordered, performed, or otherwise participated in the experiment cannot be held criminally responsible even though nonvolunteers were tortured and killed as a result. This was perhaps brought out most clearly as a result of questions put to the defendant Karl Brandt by the Tribunal. When asked his view of an experiment which was assumed to have been of highest military necessity, and of involuntary character with resultant deaths, Brandt replied:
"In this case I am of the opinion that, when considering the circumstances of the situation of the war, this state institution which has laid down the importance in the interest of the state at the same time takes the responsibility away from the physician if such an experiment ends fatally and such a responsibility has to be taken by the state."
Further questioning elicited the opinion that the only man possibly responsible in this suppositious Case was Himmler, who had the power of life and death over concentration camp inmates, even though the experiment may have been ordered, for example, by the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe and executed by doctors subordinated 1. Transcript, p. 2567 to him.
Most of the other defendants took a similar position, that they had no responsibility in the selection of the experimental subjects.
This defense is, in the view of the Prosecution, completely spurious. The use of involuntary subjects in a medical experiment is a crime, and, if it results in death, it is the crime of murder. Any party to the experiment is guilty of murder and that guilt cannot be escaped by having a third person supply the victims. The person planning, ordering, supporting, or executing the experiment is under a duty, both moral and legal, to see to it that the experiment is properly performed. This duty cannot be delegated. It is surely incumbent on the doctor performing the experiment to satisfy himself that the subjects volunteered after having been informed of the nature and hazards of the experiment. If they are not volunteers, it is his duty to report to his superiors and discontinue the experiment. These defendants have competed with each other in feigning complete ignorance about the consent of the experimental victims. They knew, as the evidence proves, that the miserable inmates did not volunteer to be tortured and killed. But even assuming the impossible, that they did not know, it is their damnation not their exoneration. Knowledge could have been obtained by the simple expedient of asking the subjects. The duty of inquiry could not be clearer and cannot be avoided by such lame excuses as "I understood they were volunteers" or "Himmler assured me they were volunteers".
In this connection, it should never be lost sight of that these experiments were performed in concentration camps on concentration camp inmates. However little some of these defendants say they knew of the lawless jungles which were concentration camps, where violent death, torture and starvation made up the daily life of the inmates, they are least knew that t hey were places of terror where all persons opposed to the Nazi government were imprisoned without trial, where Jews and Poles and other so-called "racial inferiors" for no crime whatever, unless their race or religion be a crime, were incarcerated.
These simple facts were known during the war to people all over the world. How much greater then was the duty of these defendants to determine very carefully the voluntary character of these experimental subjects who were so conveniently available. True it is that these defendants are not charged with responsibility for the manifold complex of crimes which made up the concentration camp system. But it cannot be held that they could enter the gates of the Inferno and say in effect: "Bring forward the subjects. I see no evil; I hear no evil; I speak no evil." They asked no questions. They didn't inquire of the inmates as to such details as consent, nationality, whether a trial had been held, what crime had been committed, and the like. They did not because they knew that the wretched inmates did not volunteer for their experiments and were not expected to volunteer. They embraced the Nazi doctrines and the Nazi way of life. The things these defendants did were the result of the noxious merger of German militarism and Nazi racial objectives. Then, in the face of a critical shortage of typhus vaccines to protect the Wehrmacht in its Eastern invasions, Handloser and his cohorts decided that animal experimentation was too slow, the inmates of Buchenwald were sacrificed by the hundreds to test new vaccines. When Schroeder wanted to determine the limit of human tolerance of sea water, he tread the path well-worn by the Luftwaffe to Dachau and got forty gypsies. These defendants with their own eyes open used the oppressed and persecuted victims of the Nazi regime to wring from their wretched and unwilling bodies a drop of scientific information at a cost of death, torture, mutilation, and permanent disability. For these palpable crimes justice demands stern retribution.
MR. HARDY: Mr. Hardy will continue with the closing statement.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, in order not to break into your argument when you have started it, the Court will now be in recess for a few moments.
(Thereupon a recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: The prosecution may proceed.
MR. HARDY: May it please the Tribunal, before I proceed I request that the footnotes contained in the English copy of the prosecution's closing argument be included in the transcript of the trial -- that is, the court interpreters include the footnotes which we have in the English copy of the closing argument which are not being read here in open court.
THE PRESIDENT: The arguments of counsel will be included in the in the proceedings of the record of the court as contained in the transcript.
MR. HARDY: I will continue, your Honors.
It must not be overlooked that the experiments proved in this case were not haphazard and unrelated crimes. On the contrary, they consistuted a well integrated criminal program, in which the defendants planned and collaborated among themselves and with other persons. One thing should be made clear at the outset. Each experiment consitituted a criminal conspiracy in and of itself. None of the experiments were formulated and executed by one man. Each required the efforts of a number of men and the cooperation of several agencies. Thus, in the typhus experiments in Buchenwald, the medical services of the Army, Luftwaffe, and SS all played an important role. The measure of the guilt of such defendants as Handloser, Schroeder, Rose, Genzken, Mrugowsky, Poppendick and Hoven is the total of the crimes committed there. These experiments were, indeed, one continuous crime in which all played a substantial part. For example, the defendant Rose personally initiated experiments in Buchenwald in August 1942 and March 1944 which resulted in the death of ten persons. But he is equally guilty of the several hundred other murders since he joined in and furthered the joint venture.
Thus, it is incontrovertible that each experiment constituted per se a small conspiracy and every participant in it must be found reponsible for the sum total of crimes committed in its execution. But it is also clear that these criminal conspiracies overlapped and blended together to form a broad common design. These crimes were systematic and were committed pursuant to a policy, formulated by the leaders of the German medical services, approving of, and ordering, the execution of highly dangerous experiments on human subjects without their consent. The inter-relation and common basis of these crimes in brought into sharp focus by a simple chronological review. The program had its early beginning in May 1941, when Luftwaffe Captain Rascher, aided and abetted by the defendant Weltz and an assistant named Kottenhof, made overtures to Himmler for prisoners to be used in high altitude experiments, which, he stated, were so dangerous that "nobody was volunteering". In december 1941, when typhus vaccines were needed for the Wehrmacht's invasion of the East, the defendant Handloser, as Army Medical Inspector, met with Conti, Secretary of State for Health, and Mrugowsky, subordinate of the defendant Genzken and Chief of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS, and made the basic decision to test typhus vaccines by experiments on human beings. As a result, by the turn of the year, the criminal typhus experiments, which were to cost the lives of several hundred human beings, were underway in Buchenwald. Dr. Schilling was provided with "human material" for malaria experiments at Dachau in February 1942, through the good offices of Conti, and in the same month at the same place, the defendants Ruff and Romberg joined partners in the dance of death with Rascher and Waltz. In May 1942 at the meeting of the Consulting Physicians of the Wehrmacht, the defendant Rostock lecutred on the chemio-therapeutical treatment of wound infections, especially with sulfanilamide. Forty-five days later, the defendant Gebhardt, spurred on by his loss of "Hangman" Heydrich, began his sulfanilamide experiments in Ravensbruck with the assistance of the defendants Fischer and Oberhauser and the gangrenous cultures furnished by Genzken and Mrugowsky.
Under the direction of Grawitz, companion experiments to test the bio-chemical treatment of sepsis, induced by injections of pus, were run simultaneously in Dachau. In August 1942, when the blood of inmates autopsied in the decompression chamber had scarcely dried, the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe ordered Holzloehner, Finke, and Rascher to perform freezing experiments to establish the most effective means of treating prolonged exposure to cold. In November 1942, August Hirt, under the aegis of the recently created Institute of Military Scientific Research of the Ahnenerbe directed by the depraved Sievers, began his murderous gas experiments aided and abetted by Wimmer, medical officer of the Luftwaffe. In connection with these same experiments, the defendant Sievers, who was at the same time seeing to it that things ran smoothly with the malaria and freezing crimes, wrote to Rudolf Brandt of his outrage at the suggestion that the wretched victims be paid for. Like the helpful man that he was, Brandt immediately put things straight with Ober gruppenfuehrer Pohl, administrative Chief of the concentration camps.
These crimes were not committed as a simple academic pursuit as were some of the more "garden variety" concentration camp atrocities. In October 1942 a great Cold Congress in Nurnberg was attended by the defendants Becker-Freyseng, Ruff, Romberg, Rose, Schaefer, and Waltz, together with nearly 100 representatives of all the medical services in Germany. The meeting was arranged by Anthony and the defendant BeckerFreyseng on behalf of the Luftwaffe. Schreiber, one of the principal subordinates of Handloser, was there. Holzloehner and Rascher gave a report on their freezing experiments and it was made clear to all who cared to listen that concentration camp inmates were used as subjects and that deaths had occurred. Schreiber apparently gave his chief Handloser such a glowing report that Holzloehner was invited to a repeat performance at the Second Meeting East of the Consulting Physicians of the Wehrmacht in December 1942. Handloser personally hoard the lecture this time.
It was at the same meeting that Ding was ordered by his superior Mrugowsky, at the instigation of Handloser's henchmen Schreiber and Killian, to give several of the inmates in Buchenwald an intravenous dose of phenol and report back on the clinical details of the ensuing deaths. These gentlemen were troubled by the observation that some of their soldiers were dying after receiving gas oedema serum and they wanted to ascertain whether it was caused by the phenol content.
At the Third Meeting of Consulting Physicians in May 1943, Gebhardt told of his experiments to the section on surgery. Rostock arranged the program and presided, while Karl Brandt and Handloser were in the seats of honor. What they heard came as no surprise. Gebhardt and Fischer gave a full report on the sulfanilamide experiments down to the last death. Gebhardt was so anxious to spread his guilt somewhat thinner that he emphasized to the Tribunal the complete nature of their report. This proved a little embarrassing to his predecessors in the witness box who were quite sure that nothing had been said about artificial infection or deaths. Karl Brandt had no more than left this meeting when had made arrangements with Crawitz to get inmates at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp for the epidemic jaundice experiments by Dohmen, a medical officer of the Army under Handloser. This disease was causing casualities up to 60% in the Wehrmacht units in the East.
At the very same meeting, Ding lectured to the hygiene section of his murderous typhus experiments at Buchenwald. Schreiber presided and the defendants Rose and Mrugowsky were in attendance as well as the Luftwaffe typhus expert Haagen, who, to say the least of it, was exceedingly parsimonious with the truth when he testified before this Tribunal. There is no question that Rose took strong exception to this report. Although his prior and subsequent conduct leave little doubt that it was on scientific rather than moral grounds In any event, what was good enough for Ding was good enough for Haagen. That very same month he began, his own typhus vaccine tests in the Schirmeck Concentration Camp, aided and abetted by Rose and the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe. In a matter of thirty days, two inmates had died as a result. In the fall of 1943, Haagen shifted his activities to the larger camp of Hatzweiler where he continued his criminal work until the late summer of 1944, under the auspices of the defendant Schroeder.
In the fall of 1943, Karl Brandt, as General Commissioner of the Medical and Health Services, undertook personal sponsorship of the phosgene gas experiments of Bickenbach, who had previously worked with Hirt on inmates at Natzweiler. The Wehrmacht was also interested in these experiments. Brandt received broad powers in the field of chemical warfare in a Fuehrer decree of 1 March 1944. Shortly thereafter he conferred with the defendant Sievers and Hirt on the experiments in Natzweiler. He personally supplied Bickenbach with labo ratory facilities, who, by September 1944, had murdered four Russian prisoners of war.
In June 1944, the defendant Schroeder personally initiated plans for the sea water experiments, with the assistance of his subordinates Becker-Freyseng and Schaefer. In a letter to Himmler, through Grawitz, asking for "40 healthy test subjects" for experiments he knew would probably end in deaths, he said that "Earlier already you made it possible for the Luftwaffe to settle urgent medical matters through experiments on human beings".1 He concluded by saying:
"As it is known from previous experiments, that necessary laboratories exist in the concentration camp Dachau, this camp would be very suitable". The defendant Beiglboeck joined in the conspiracy and executed the experiments.
In June 1944, a conference was called at Breslau by the defendant Handloser for the purpose of coordinating jaundice research. Jaundice experts from all branches of the Wehrmacht were present, including Haagen, and Handloser's subordinate Schreiber presided. Experiments on human beings were discussed and a few weeks later Haagen and three other officers of the Luftwaffe began laying plans for experiments on human beings in "Strassbourg or its vicinity", an obvious reference to Natzweiler. That criminal experiments on concentration camp inmates were discussed at the Breslau meeting is clear from the fact that Schreiber personally requested Mrugowsky somewhat later to make available inmates in Buchenwald for jaundice experiments by Dr. Dresel.
The foregoing chronological analysis of some of the experiments, while not complete, is sufficient to show that there was a systematic and well integrated program involving medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates without their consent. The demands upon the SS for human guinea pigs had become so extensive that by May, 1944 a centra clearing committee had been set up by Himmler. The defendant Gebhardt passed on the medical necessity of the proposed experiment, while Gluecks and Nebe acted as the Valkyries in selecting the sacrificial victims. As early as August 1942, the Institute of Military Scientific Research of the Aheneerbe under Sievers was created to finance and to funish equipment, prisoners, and administrative assistance for experiments in which Himmler was especially interested. This criminal program was motivated from two principal sources. Himmler, as head of the SS, provided uncounted victims for the experiments and 1 No-185, Pros.
Ex. 134, R. 483.
thereby gained new prestige and power for his criminal organization. The leaders of the German military and civilian medical services. as the other driving force, ruthlessly seized the opportunity with which they were presented and submitted their scientific problems for solution in the concentration camps. The scientific inpetus came from Karl Brandt, Handloser, Schreiber, Hippke, Schroeder, Conti, and their subordinates, among others. Rudolf Brandt and Sievers gave effect to Himmler's approval to furnish the victims and the administrative machinery was handled by them. The SS medical leaders - Grawitz, Genzken, Gebhardt, Mrugowsky, and Poppendick - gave directions to their underlings such as Ding, Hoven, and Fischer, and assisted in the execution of the crimes. Brandt, Blome, and Schreiber extended financial support through the Reich Research Council, which approved an allocation of government funds to enlarge the SS medical service on the ground it had human "experimental material" available. Rostock, as Chief of the Office for Science and Research, classfied as "urgent" the criminal research of Hirt, Haagen, and Bickenbach. The Wehrmacht provided supervision and techmical assistance for those experiments in which it was most interested. A low pressure chamber was furnished for the high altitude experiments, the services of Weltz, Ruff, Romberg, Rascher, Rolzloehner, and Finke for the high altitude and freezing atrocities and those of Becker-Freyseng, Schaefer, and Beiglboeck for sea water. Rose was in and out of the Buchenwald typhus station for the Luftwaffe and checked the work of Haagen at Schirmeck and Natzweiler. Handloser kept an eye on Ding's experiments through Schreiber, Eyer, and Schmidt and furnished him with vaccines and typhus infected lice. He saw to it that the useful results of the crimes were reported to his Consulting Physicians and passed on to the Wehrmacht.
This was the unholy trinity; this was the common design. It was like a gigantic wagon wheel, the spokes of which were the experiments leading into the common hub of the SS which furnished the victims, and all bound together by the policies and orders of the leaders of the German medical services which formed the outer rim.
While the defendant deny that there was a common design or that they participated in it, all seek at the same time the contradictory "protection" of State approval of the experiments. The defendant Rose, broken by proof from his own hand that he participated in the typhus crimes or Buchenwald, gave something of a valedictory when he said:
"This institute had been set up in Germany and was approved by the State and covered by the State. At that moment I was in a position which perhaps corresponds to a lawyer who is, perhaps, a basic opponent of execution, or death sentence. On occasion when he is dealing with leading members of the government, or with lawyers during public Congresses or meetings, he will do everything in his power to maintain his opinion on the subject and have it put into effect. If, however, he does not succeed, he stays in his profession, and in his environment in spite of this. Under circumstances he may perhaps even be forced to pronounce such a death sentence himself, although he is basically an opponent of that set up."1 Gebhardt testified that Hitler approved the policy of experimentation on concentration camp inmates.
He admitted that these experiments would not have been performed without approval from the top; even Himmler himself sought cover from Hitler. The Prosecution claims no more. This policy of systematic experimentation on involuntary subjects was formulated and executed by these defendants and their accomplices.
This, then, was the medical service of the Third Reich at work. There can be no doubt that these were not a heterogeneous and unrelated group of crimes. They mesh together to form a clear conspiracy. Each experiment in turn ratified its prodecessors and gave impetus to its successors. Whatever may be the judgment of this Tribunal on the question of jurisdiction, there was a conspiracy in fact. Since a conspiracy was charged in Count I of the Indictment, it is important to know what a conspiracy comprehends and punishes. Justice Jackson stated in his closing address to the International Military Tribunal that:
1 Transcript, p. 5467.
"In the conspiracy we do not punish one man for another man's crime. We seek to punish each for his own crime of joining a common plan in which others also participated. The measure of the criminality of the plan and therefore of the guilt of each participant is, of course, the sum total of crimes committed by all in executing the plan. But the gist of the offense is participation in the formulation or execution of the plan. These are rules which every society has found necessary in order to reach men.....who never got blood on their own hands but who lay plans that result in the shedding of blood. All over Germany today, in every zone of occupation, little men who carried out these criminal policies under orders are being convicted and punished. It would present a vast and unforgiveable caricature of justice if the men who planned these policies and directed these little men should escape all penalty."1 The essence of the crime of conspiracy is two or more persons combining and confederating with the intent and purpose of committing an offense by doing an unlawful act or doing a lawful act in an unlawful manner.
It can be established by direct testimony but it may also be inferred from things actually done. It is enough if the minds of the parties meet and unite in an understanding way with the design to accomplish a common purpose which may be established by substantial evidence or by deduction from facts, from which a natural inference arised that the overt acts were in furtherance of a common design, intent, and purpose. The common design is the essence of the crime and this may be made to appear when the parties continuously pursue the same object, whether acting separately or together by common or different means, but ever leading to the same unlawful result. When one or more of the conspirators makes an open declaration and the others thereafter adhere by words or acts, their responsibility is complete and their guilt thereby established for they have become agents ad hoe in the crimes. The conspirators may not know each other or such others' part in the plan, nor, indeed, all the details of the plan itself. He may know only his own part. That is enough if there is an intentional conteibution to the whole. It is enough if one had knowledge of the general purpose and joins himself. Each is responsible for all acts done in furtherance of the objects of 1 I.M.T. transcript, p. 14370 the conspiracy and during its life.
Once a person joins a conspiracy, he ratifies all that he been done before by oath of the others.1 What has been said with respect to the common design or conspiracy is, of course, quite pertinent even though the Tribunal decides that it has no jurisdiction over conspiracies to commit War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.
Paragraph 2 of Article II of Law No, 10 reads, in part, as follows:
"Any person without regard to nationality or the capacity in which he acted, is deemed to have committed a crime as defined in paragraph 1 of this Article, if he was (a) a principal or (b) was an accessory to the commission of any such crime or ordered or abetted the same or (c) took a consenting part therein or (d) was connected with plans and enterprises involving its commission or (e) was a member of any organization or group connected with the commission of any such crime......"
This paragraph, although it does not employ the word "conspiracy" or the phrase "common plan", recognizes the criminal 1 U.S. v. Borden, 138 F. (2d), D.D.A.7, certiorari denied.
liability of those who were substantially connected with the commission of a crime, even though the final criminal act is committed by someone else. Those who are found to have been connected with crimes in the way specified by the quoted paragraph must be found guilty of the substantive crime itself, which in this case is predominantly the crime of murder. Quite clearly the status of criminal responsibility of a person who "took a consenting part" in or "was connected with plans or enterprises involving" or "was a member of any organization or group connected with" the commission of a crime more than comprehends the criminal liabilities which are held to attach to those who enter into a crime conspiracy. Thus, whether the criminal experimentation program be called a "common design", "conspiracy", or simply "plans and enterprises", these defendants who jointly participated in its execution must be found guilty of the sum total of crimes committed.
THE RESPONSIBLE LEADERS OF THE MEDICAL SERVICES
In view of the clear and overwhelming proof, it can only be concluded that the practice of experimentation on concentration camp inmates without their consent was an organized and systematic program. It is therefore appropriate to consider whether we have in this dock the leaders of the German medical services without whom these crimes would not have been possible. It would be an unforgivable miscarriage of justice to punish the doctors who worked on the victims in the concentration camps while their superiors, the leaders, organizers, and instigators, go free. It has been established beyond controversy that these things could not have happened without cover from the top. Who, then, were these men on the top? Their survivors, with one exception, are all in this dock.
In the number one seat we have the defendant Karl Brandt. He held supreme authority over all the medical services in Germany, both military and civilian. He joined the Nazi Party in January 1932 and the SS in 1934, in which he rose to the rank of Gruppenfuehrer. In the latter year, at the age of 30, he became the attending physician to Adolf Hitler and retained this position until 1945.
His close personal relationship to the Fuehrer explains his rapid rise to power. On the day Poland was invaded in 1939, Hitler ordered Brandt and Philipp Bouhler, the Chief of the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, to carry out the so-called euthanasia program.
Aside from his personal influence and intimate connection with Hitler, Brandt's greatest power in the medical services came from his position as General Commissioner and later Reich Commissioner of the Health and Medical Services. As a result of the disastrous winter campaign in the East in 1941, Hitler established for the first time a medical and health official under his direct control by decree of 28 July 1942. This decree made Brandt the supreme authority over all medical services in Germany. It stated in part as follows:
"3. I empower Prof. Dr. Karl Brandt, subordinate only to me personally and receiving his instructions directly from me, to carry out special tasks and negotiations, to readjust the requirements for doctors, hospitals, medical supplies, etc., between the military and the civilian sectors of the Health and Medical Services.
"My plenipotentiary for Health and Medical Services is to be kept informed about the fundamental events in the Medical Service of the Wehrmacht and in the Civilian Health Service. He is authorized to intervene in a responsible manner."1 By the same decree chiefs were also commissioned for the medical services of the Wehrmacht and the civilian health sector.
The defendant Handloser became Chief of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht, while Dr. Leonardo Conti, Secretary of State for Health and the Reich Health Leader, was made Chief of the Civilian Health Services. Brandt was the superior of both Handloser and Conti, and through them had extensive powers over the Army, Navy, Luftwaffe, Waffen SS, and civilian medical services. Brandt stood at the apex of power. He was subordinated to no one save the Fuehrer. He was the man to act for the Fuehrer in medical matters. The decree authorized Grandt "to intervene in a responsible 1. NO-080, Pros.
Ex. 5, R. 93.
manner" and directed that he be kept informed of "fundamental events". Certainly nothing could be more fundamental than a policy of performing medical experiments involving the torture and death of involuntary human subjects.
On 5 September 1943 Hitler issued a second decree empowering Brandt "with centrally coordinating and directing the problems and activities of the entire medical and health services....."1 The order expressly stated that Brandt's authority covered the field of medical science and research. Shortly following the issuance of this decree, the defendant Rostock was appointed by Brandt as Chief of the Office for Science and Research, with plenary powers in the field.
Finally, on 25 August 1944, the Fuehrer elevated Brandt to Reich Commissioner for the Health and Medical Services and stated that in this capacity "his office ranks as highest Reich authority". Brandt's position was thus equivalent to that of a Reich Minister. He was authorized "to issue instructions to the offices and organizations of the State, Party, and Wehrmacht, which are concerned with the problems of the medical and health services".2 It is clear that this decree was issued to resolve a struggle for power between Brandt and Conti. Certainly the decree does no more than give Brandt a more august title and restate his powers, powers which he had already received as early as July 1942. Brandt testified that it merely "strengthened" his position. A Service Regulation issued by Keitel for Handloser, as Chief of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht, at a time when Brandt was still General Commissioner, provided that Handloser was subject to the "general rules of the Fuehrer's Commissioner General for the Medical and Health Services" and that Brandt had to be informed of the "basic events" in the field of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht.
In a pre-trial affidavit the defendant Handloser stated that after he became Chief of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht on 28 July 1942 1. NO-081, Pros.
Ex. 6, R. 94.
2. NO-082, Pros. Ex. 7, R. 95.