H. Epidemic Jaundice The epidemic jaundice experiments, which took place at Sachesenhausen and Natzweiler concentration camps, were instigated by the defendant Karl Brandt.
A letter written in 1943 by Grawitz stresses the enermour military importance of developing an inoculation against epidemic jaundice, which had spread, extensively in the Waffen SS and the German Army, particularly in Southern Russia. In some companies, up to 60% casualties from epidemic jaundice had occurred. Grawitz further informed Himmler that, and I quote:
"The General Kommissar of the Fuehrer, SS Brigadefuehrer Prof Dr. BRANDT has approached me with the request to help him obtain prisoners to be used in connection with his research on the causes of Epidemic Jaundice which has been furthered to a large degree by his efforts. *** In order to enlarge our knowledge, so far based only on inoculation of animals with germs taken from human beings, it would not be necessary to recorse the procedure and inoculate human beings with germs cultivated in animals. Casualties (Todesfalle) must be anticipated."
Grawitz also had been doing research on this problem with the assistance of a Dr. Dohmen, a medical officer attached to the Army Medical Inspectorate. Himmler made the following reply to the Grawitz letter:
"Approve the 8 criminals condemned in Auschwitz (8 Jews of the Polish resistance movement condemned to death) should be used for these experiments."
Other evidence will indicate that the scope of these experiments was subsequently enlarged and that murder, torture, and death resulted from them.
I. Sterilization Experiments In the sterilization experiments conducted by the defendants at Auschwitz Ravensbruck, and other concentration camps, the destructive nature of the Nazi medical program comes out most forcibly.
The Nazis were searching for methods of extermination, both by murder and sterilization, of large population groups by the most scientific and least conspicuous means. They were developing a new branch of medical science which would give them the scientific tools for the planning and practice of genocide. The primary purpose was to discover an inexpensive unobtrusive, and rapid method of sterilization which could be used to wipe out Russians, Poles, Jews and other people. Surgical sterilization was thought to be too slow and expensive to be used on a mass scale.
A method to bring about an unnoticed sterilization was thought desirable.
Medicinal sterilizations were therefore carried out. A Dr. Nadaus had stated that caladium seguinum, a drug obtained from a North American plant, if taken orally or by injection, would bring about sterilization. In 1941, the defendant Pokerny called this to Himmler's attention, and suggested that it should be developed and used against Russian prisoners of war. I quote one paragraph from Pokorny's letter written at that time:
"If, on the basis of this research, it were possible to produce a drug which after a relatively short time, effects an imperceptible sterilization on human beings, then we would have a powerful new weapon at our disposal. The thought alone that the 3 million Belsheviks, who are at present German prisoners, could be sterilized so that they could be used as laborers but prevented from reproduction, opens the most far-reaching perspectives."
As a result of Pokorny's suggestion, experiments were conducted on concentration camp inmates to test the effectiveness of the drug. At the same time efforts were made to grow the plant on a large scale in hothouses.
At the Auschwitz concentration camp sterilization experiments were also conducted on a large scale by a Dr. Karl Clauberg, who had developed a method of sterilizing women, based on the injection of an irritating solution. Several thousand Jewesses and Gypsies were sterilized at Auschwitz by this method.
Conversely, surgical operations were performed on sexually abnormal inmates at Buchenwald in order to determine whether their virility could be increased by the transplantation of glands. Out of fourteen subjects of these experiments, at least two died.
The defendant Gebhardt also personally conducted sterilizations at Ravensbruck by surgical operation. The defendant Viktor Brack in March, 1941, submitted to Himmler a report on the progress and state of X-ray sterilization experiments. Brack explained that it had been determined that sterilization with powerful X-rays could be accomplished and that castration would then result. The danger of this X-ray method lay in the fact that other part of the body, if the were not protected with lead, were also seriously affected. In order to prevent the victims from realizing that they were being castrated, Brack made the following fantastic suggestion in his letter written in 1941 to Himmler from which I quote:
"One way to carry out these experiments in practice would be to have those people who are to be treated line up before a counter. There they would be questioned and a form would be given them to be filled out, the whole process taking two or three minutes. The official attendant who sits behind the counter can operate the apparatus in such a manner than he works a switch will start both tubes together (as the rays have to come from both sides). With one such installation with two tubes about 150 to 200 persons could be sterilized daily, while 20 installations would take care of 3,000 to 4,000 persons daily. In my opinion the number of daily deportations will not exceed this figure."
In this same report the defendant Brack related that, and I quote "..... the latest X-ray technique and research make it easily possible to carry out mass sterilization by means of X-rays.
However, it appears to be impossible to take these measures without having these who were so treated finding out sooner or later that they definitely had been either sterilized or had been castrated by X-rays."
Another letter from Brack to Himmler in June, 1942, laid the basis for X-ray experiments which were subsequently carried out at Auschwitz. The second paragraph of this letter forms a fitting conclusion to this account of Nazi depravity, and I quote:
"Among ten millions of Jews, in Europe there are, I figure, at least two to three million of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labor problem presents us with, I held the view that these two to three millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can, however, only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate. About a year ago I reported to you that agents of mine have completed the experiments necessary for this purposes. I would like to recall those facts once more. Sterilization, as normally performed on persons with hereditary diseases, is here out of the question because it takes too long and is too expensive. Castration by X-rays, however, is not only relatively cheap but can also be performed on many thousands in the shortest time. I think that at this time it is already irrelevant whether the people in question become aware of having been castrated after some weeks or months once they feel the effects."
J. Typhus (Fleckfieber) and Related Experiments.
From December, 1941, until near the end of the war, a large program of medical experimentation was carried out upon concentration camps inmates at Buchenwald and Natzweiler to investigate the value of various vaccines. This research involved a variety of diseases -- typhus, yellow fever, smallpox, paratyphoid A and B, cholera, and diptheria. A dozen or more of the defendants were involved in these experiments, which were characterized by the most cynical disregard of human life. Hundreds of persons died. The experiments concerning typhus, known in Germany as Fleckfieber or spot fever, but is not to be confused with American spotted fever, were particularly appalling.
The typhus experiments at Natzweiler were conducted by Dr. Eugen Haagen, an officer in the Air Force medical service and a professor at the University of Strasbourg. In the fall of 1943, through the defendant Sievers, Haagen obtained 100 concentration camp prisoners for experiments with typhus vaccines. Two hundred more prisoners were furnished in the summer of 1944. These experiments caused many fatalities among the prisoners.
The general pattern of these typhus experiments was as follows. A group of concentration camp inmates, selected from the healthier ones who had some resistance to disease, were objected with an anti-typhus vaccine, the efficacy of which was to be tested. Thereafter, all the persons in the group would be infected with typhus. At the same time, other inmates who had not been vaccinated were also infected for purposes of comparison -- these unvaccinated victims were called the "control" group. But perhaps the most wicked and murderous circumstance in this whole case is that still other inmates were deliberately infected with typhus with the sole purpose of keeping the typhus virus alive and generally available in the blood-stream of the inmates.
The typhus murders at Buchenwald were carried out in 1942 and 1943 under the direction of the defendants Genzken and Mrugowsky. Requests for the human guinea pigs were turned ever to and filled by the defendant Hoven. The bulk of the actual work was done by an infamous physician know as Dr. Ding, who committed suicide after the war. But Dr. Ding's professional diary has survived.
The first entry in Ding's diary, for December 29, 1941, reveals that here again the impetus for these murderous researches came from the Wehrmacht. This entry describes a conference sponsored by the defendant Handloser and Dr. Conti, respective heads of the military and civilian medical services of the Reich, which was also attended by the defendant Mrugowsky. Typhus had been making serious inroads on the German troops fighting in Russia. The account of this conference relates that, and I quote:
"Since tests on animals are not of sufficient value, tests on human beings must be carried out."
Other entries in the Ding diary quoted below are typical of those made over a period of three years, and give some idea of the mortality among the victims.
"10 Jan. 42: Preliminary test B: Preliminary test to establish a sure means of infection: Much as in smallpox vaccination, 5 persons were infected with virus through 2 superficial and 2 deeper cuts in the upper arm. All of the humans used for this test fell ill with true typhus. Incubation period up to 6 days.
20 Feb. 42. Chart of the case history of the preliminary tests to to establish a sure means of infection were sent to Berlin. 1 death out of 5 sick.
17 Mar. 42: Visit of Prof. GILDEMEISTER and Prof. ROSE (Department head for tropical medicine of the Robert Koch Institute) at the experimental station. All persons experimented on fell sick with typhus, except two, who, the fact was established later, already had been sick with typhus during an epidemic at the police prison in Berlin.
9 Jan. 43: By order of the surgeon general of the Waffen SS, SS-Gruppenfuehrer and Maj.Gen. of the Waffen SS, Dr. GENKEN, the hitherto existing typhus research station at the concentration camp Buchenwald becomes the 'Department for typhus and virus research'. The head of the department will be SS Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. DING. During his absence, the station medical officer of the Waffen SS, WEIMAR, SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer HOVEN will supervise the production of vaccines.
13 and 14 April 43: Unit of SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Ding ordered to I G Farbenindustrie A.G., Hoechst. Conference with Prof LAUTENSCHLAEGER, Dr. WEBER and Dr. FUSSGAENGER about the experimental series 'Akridin Granulat and Rutenol' in the concentration camp Buchenwald. Visit to Geheimrat Otto and Prof PRIGGE in the institute for experimental therapeutics in Frahkfurt-on-Main.
24 April 1943: Therapeutic experiments Akridin-Granulat (A-GR2) and Rutonol (R-2) To carry out the therapeutic experiments Akridin-Granulat and Rutenol, 30 persons (15 each) and 9 persons for control were infected by intravenous injection of 2 cc each of fresh blood of a typhus sick person. All experimental persons got very serious typhus.
1 June 1943: Charts of case history completed. The experimental series was concluded with 21 deaths; of these, 8 were in Buchenwald, 8 at Rutene 1 and 5 control.
7 September 1943: Chart and case history completed. The experimental series was concluded with 53 deaths.
18 March 1944: It is suggested by Colonel of the air-corps, Prof ROSE, the vaccine 'Kopenhagen' produced from mouse liver by the national serum institute in Kopenhagen, be tested for its compatibility on humans. 20 persons were vaccinated for immunization by intramuscular injection. 10 persons were contemplated for control and comparison.
16 April 1944: The remaining experimental persons were infected on 16 April by subcutaneous injection of 1/20 cc typhus sick fresh blood. The following feel sick: 17 persons immunized: 9 medium, 8 seriously. 9 persons from the control: 2 medium, 7 seriously.
13 June 1944: Chart and case history completed and sent to Berlin. 6 deaths (3 'Kopenhagen') (3 control) 4 November 1944:
Chart and case history completed. 24 deaths.
Copies of each of Dr. Ding's official reports went to the defendants Mrugowsky and Poppendick as well as to the I.G. Farben laboratories at Hoechst. Nowhere will the evidence in this case reveal a more wicked and murderous course of conduct by men who claimed to practice the healing art than in the entries of Dr. Ding's diary relating to the typhus experiments.
K. Poison Experiments Here again the defendants were studying how to kill, and the scene is Buchenwald.
Poisons were administered to Russian prisoners-of-war in their food and German doctors stood behind a curtain to watch the reactions of the prisoner Some of the Russians died immediately, and the survivors were killed in order to permit autopsies.
The defendant Mrugowsky, in a letter written in September 1944, has provide us with a record of another experiment in which the victims were shot with p***** poisoned bullets, and I quote:
"In the presence of SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. DING, Dr. WIDMANN and the undersigned, experiments with Aconitin nitrate projectiles were conducted on 11 September 1944 on 5 persons who had been condemned to death. The projectiles in question were of a 7.65 mm caliber, filled with crystallized poison. The experimental subjects, in a lying position, were each shot in the upper part of the left thigh. The thighs of two of them were cleanly shot through. Afterwards, no effect of the poison was to be observed. These two experimental subjects were therefore exempted.
"During the first hour of the experiment the pupils did not show any changes. After 78 minutes the pupils of all three showed a medium dilation, together with a retarded light reaction. Simultaneously, maximum respiration with heavy breathing inhalations set in. This subsided after a few minutes. The pupils contracted again and their reaction improved. After 65 minutes the patellar and achilles tendon reflexes of the poisoned subjects were negative. The abdominal reflexes of two of them were also negative. After approximately 90 minutes, one of the subjects again started breathing heavily; this was accompanied by an increasing motor unrest. Then the heavy breathing changed into a flat, accelerated respiration, accompanied by extreme nausea. One of the poisoned persons tried in vain to vomit. To do so he introduced four fingers of his hand up to the knuckles into his throat, but nevertheless could not vomit. His face was flushed.
"The other two experimental subjects had already early shown a pale face. The other symptoms were the same. The motor unrest increased so much that the persons flung themselves up and then down, rolled their eyes and made meaningless motions with their hands and arms. Finally the agitation subsided, the pupils dilated to the maximum, and the condemned lay motionless. *** Death occurred 121, 123, and 129 minutes after entry of the projectile."
I now turn to the charges in paragraphs 7 and 11 of the indictment.
L. Incendiary Bomb Experiments
THE PRESIDENT: At this time we'll take our noon recess and reconvene at 1:30 o'clock, p.m.
AFTERNOON SESSION
GENERAL TAYLOR: I come now to charges stated in Paragraphs 7 and 11 of the Indictment. These are perhaps the most utterly repulsive charges in the entire Indictment. They concern the defendants Rudolf Brandt and Sievers. Sievers and his associates in the Ahnenerbe Society were completely obsessed by all the vicious and malignant Nazi racial theories. They conceived the notion of applying these nauseous theories in the field of anthropology. What ensued was murderous folly.
In February 1942, Sievers submitted to Himmler, through Rudolf Brandt, a report from which the following is an extract:
"We have a nearly complete collection of skulls of all races and peoples at our disposal. Of the Jewish race, however, only very few specimens of skulls are available with the result that it is impossible to arrive at precise conclusions from examining them. The war in the East now presents us with the opportunity to overcome this deficiency. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive, but characteristic subhuman, we have the chance now to obtain a palpable, scientific document.
"The best, practical method for obtaining and collecting this skull material could be handled by directing the Wehrmacht to turn over alive all captured Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars to the Field Police. They in turn are to be given special directives to inform a certain office at regular intervals of the number and place of detention of these captured Jews and to give them special close attention and care until a special delegate arrives. This special delegate, who will be in charge of securing the 'material' has the job of taking a series of previously established photographs, 9-12-46 - A - 10-2 - LJG - Lesser anthropological measurements, and in addition has to determine, as far as possible, the background, date of birth, and other personal data of the prisoner.
Following the subsequently induced death of the Jew, whose head should not be damaged, the delegate will separate the head from the body and will forward it to its proper point of destination in a hermetically sealed tin can, especially produced for this purpose and filled with a conserving gluid.
"Having arrived at the laboratory, the comparison tests and anatomical research on the skull, as well as determination of the race membership of pathological features of the skull form, the form and size of the brain, etc., can proceed. The basis of these studies will be the photos, measurements, and other data supplied on the head and finally the tests of tho skull itself."
After extensive correspondence between Himmler and the defendants Sievers and Rudolf Brandt, it was decided to procure the skulls from inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp instead of at the front. The hideous program was actually carried out, as is shown by a letter from Sievers written in June 1943, which states in parts:
" I wish to inform you that our associate, Dr. Boger, who was in change of the above special project, has interrupted his experiments in the Concentration Camp Auschwitz because of the existing danger of epidemics Altogether 115 persons were worked on. 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under quarantine in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz."
After the death of these wretched Jews had been "induced," their corpses were sent to Strasbourg. A year elapsed, and 9-12-46 - A - 10-3 - LJG-Lesser the Allied armies were racing across France and were nearing Strasbourg where this monstrous exhibit of the culture of tho master race reposed.
Alarmed, Sievers sent a telegram to Rudolf Brandt in September 1944, from which I quote:
"According to the proposal of February 9, 1942, and your approval of February 23, 1942, Professor Dr. Hirt has assembled a skeleton collection which has never been in existence before. Because of the vast amount of scientific research that is connected with this project, the job of reducing the corpses to skeletons has not yet been completed. Since it might require some time to process 80 corpses, Hirt requested a decision pertaining to the treatment of the collection stored in the morgue of the Anatomie, in case Strasbourg should be endangered. The collection can be de-fleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing -- at least in part-- and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards. The skeleton collection, as such, is inconspicuous. The flesh parts could be declared as having been left by the French at the time we took over the Anatomie and would be turned over for cremating. Please advise me which of the following three proposals is to be carried out:
1) The collection as a whole is to be preserved.
2) The collection is to be dissolved in part.
3) The collection is to be completely dissolved."
The final chapter of this barbaric enterprise is found in a note in Himmler's files addressed to Rudolf Brandt stating that:
"During his visit at the Operational Headquarters on 21 November 1944, Sievers told me that tho collection in Strasbourg had been completely dissolved in conformance with the directive given him at the time.
He is of the opinion that this arrangement is for the best in view of the whole situation."
Those men, however, reckoned without tho hand of fate. The bodies of these unfortunate people were not completely disposed of, and this Tribunal will hear the testimony of witnesses and see pictorial exhibits depicting tho charnal house which was the Anatomy Institute of tho Reich University of Strasbourg.
I have now completed the sketch of some of the foul crimes which these defendants committed in the name of research. The horrible record of their degradation needs no underlining. Cut German medical science was, in past years, honored throughout the world, and many of the most illustrious names in medical research are German. How did these things come to pass? I will outline briefly the historical evidence which we will offer and which, I believe, will show that these crimes were the logical and inevitable outcome of the prostitution of German medicine under the Nazis.
German Medical Organization Before 1933.
Two years after the reconstitution of the German Reich, in 1871, the German Medical Association (Deutscher Aerztovereinsbund) was created, which tied together the older local medical associations. This Society existed until it was abolished by the Nazi Government. Its structure was democratic, and its interests included problems of hygiene and public health, and to an increasing extent, socio-medical problems especially in the field of sickness and disability insurance.
Bismarck's legislation of 1881 established compulsory sickness insurance for workmen. In the course of the ensuing years, the vast bulk of the workmen were insured, and consequently most of the ordinary physician's patients came to be insured patients. There were lists of physicians authorized to treat insured patients, and it was a matter of vital moment to every practicing physician to be listed.
To protect their interests with respect to listing, fees and other such problems, the German doctors founded a voluntary association for the defense of their economic interests known as the Hartmann Bund.
Questions of professional ethics, medical malpractice, etc. were handled in Germany in two distinct sets of medical boards or "Courts." An entirely unofficial and voluntary system was established by the German Medical Association. The other, which was endowed with semi-official status, was called the Reich Chamber of Physicians. These chambers were elected by vote of the members and were supported by an assessment.
In addition to these organizations, there existed in Germany purely professional societies of doctors, where papers concerning scientific and practical problems were read and discussed, and which established connections with similar societies abroad.
The German Government agencies which supervised the certification and licensing of physicians as well as their professional activities were the Ministry of Education and the Reich Health Office (Reicbsgesundheitsamt) in the Ministry of the Interior. The latter supervised medical practice and licensing through the channels of the Ministries of the Interior of the various German states, although licensing was a federal function rather than a state function.
Medical education and training was rather standardized but good. The students spent five or six years at one or several of the medical universities, they took a final examination covering their clinical studies and then spent a year at an authorized hospital under supervision. Thereafter the internes were licensed, and permitted to establish a practice. After two more years they became eligible to treat insurance patients, and, after submitting a thesis, could obtain the degree of doctor from a university.
The Immediate Impact of Nazism on German Medicine In the years immediately preceding the Third Reich, physicians' organizations devoted to party politics sprang up.
One of these was the Nationalist Socialist Physicians' Society, founded in 1929, in which Conti played a leading role. There was a rival Association of Social Democratic Physicians and a Socialist Society of Physicians. These societies proposed candidates for election to the Physicians' Chambers, and thus the National Socialist Physicians' Society and the Socialist associations came to compete with each other.
April, 1, 1933, the notorious "boycott day" in Berlin, was a day of disgrace for German medicine. Members of the National Socialist Physicians' Society, who knew the membership lists of the socialist societies and the lists of Jewish physicians, broke into the apartments of their socialist and Jewish colleagues in the early morning hours, pulled them out of their beds, beat them and brought them to the exhibition area near the Berlin Lehrter Station. There, all of them, including men up to 70 years old, were forced to run around the garden, as in a hippodrome, and they were shot at with pistols or beaten with sticks. There they had to stay for several days without sufficient food, and then were handed over to the SA, which carried part of them to the cellars at the Hedemannstrasse jail for further tortures.
Thereafter, the members of the Socialist Society of Physicians were barred from all insurance practice because of "Communist and subversive activities." In the subsequent listings of physicians issued by the insurance companies, the Jewish physicians were included in a separate list headed "Enemies of the State or Jews." Soon, the insurance companies, even private ones, were no longer permitted to pay fees to the Jewish physicians. Immediately thereafter, Jewish physicians were excluded from all professional and scientific societies. At first, those who were war veterans were nominally allowed to carry on their insurance practice, but patients who kept going to them were threatened and exposed to all kinds of unpleasantness on the part of the insurance officials.
After the war began, certification and lincensing was withdrawn from all Jewish physicians and they were degraded to the status of lay therapists. These physicians were forced to wear a blue shield with the Star of David and had to add a middle name such as "Sarah" or "Israel." Their prescriptions likewise had to bear the Star of David, which exposed their patients to all kinds of unpleasantness when filling them at pharmacies, most of which had signs in their windows reading "Jews not wanted."
At first, the Aryan physicians were allowed to treat Jewish patients, but finally they were prohibited from doing so. Hospitals refused admission to Jewish patients, apart from a few courageous ones who admitted them in defiance of the law. Jews were admitted to mental institutions in separate wards, but usually were quickly transported elsewhere for extermination.
In the early summer of 1943, Conti instigated and directed a wholesale persecution of doctors who were either foreigners or persons of so-called mixed blood and these related by marriage to Jews. At first, they were removed from their practice and sent off to posts under inferior party doctors. In 1946, Conti went a step further and forbade these physicians to practice. They were drafted, into the Speer organization, in which they were employed solely at manual labor, their living conditions being little better than those of concentration camp inmates.
The Prostitution of German Medicine under National Socialism The totalitarian structure of the Nazi State demanded fundamental subordination of all principles of medicine to national-socialist population policy and racial concepts.
The most emphatic and repelling expression of those new aims and goals came from the Nazi Director of Public Health in the Ministry of the Interior. Dr. Arthur Guett, who took office in 1933. In a book published in 1935, entitled, "The Structure of Public Health in the Third Reich", Gütt announced that "the ill-conceited 'love of thy neighbor' has to disappear, especially in relation to inferior or a social creatures. It is the supreme duty of a national state to grant life and livelihood only to the healthy and hereditarily sound portion of the people in order to secure the maintenance of a hereditarily sound and racially pure folk for all eternity. The life of an individual has meaning only in the light of that ultimate aim; that as, in the light of his meaning to his family and to his national state."
The entire public health policy of the Third Reich was put in line with this pronouncement of principles. The Minister of the Interior, Frick, reorganized the Health Department in his Ministry in such a way that police, public health, welfare administration and social services were all coordinated in pursuit of these goals. The beginnings of this reorganization started already in the summer of 1933, and were substantially completed by 1936. All these activities were concentrated under Dr. Gütt, who was thus enabled to coordinate the practical application of his policy with his theoretical principles. Even psychiatric social service agencies, which did thorough and well-organized work prior to 1933, were reduced to mere screening stations for hereditary and racial selection.
All government-employed physicians had to take a special new course lasting 18 months and had to be party members. The German Red Cross was likewise drawn into the orbit of the Nazi party and the SS, in view of Dr. Grawitz' appointment as President of the Red Cross. In 1945, after Grawitz' suicide, the defendant Gebhardt succeeded him.
The Third Reich also completely reorganized the professional medical societies. The German Medical Association and the Hartmann Bund were abolished. All German physicians were reorganized through an organization derived from the Reich Physician's Chamber. This National Physicians' Chamber was placed directly under a medical "fuehrer" with the title of Reichsaerztefuehrer.
This position was also hold by Conti. All doctors except those on active military duty were subordinate to him. His regional deputies were selected from the ranks of active national socialists who terrorized the district branch societies. These deputies, who usually strutted about in SA or SS uniforms, were recruited mainly from the early members of the National Socialist Medical Association. It was their job to bring pressure on physicians to join and take part in various party organizations, such as the SA and SS.
A command performance, especially for younger physicians, was attendance at the so-called Fuehrer-School of German Physicians at Altrhose in Mecklenburg, which had been organized by the defenda Blome. There physicians were indoctrinated in the national socialis point of view and way of life. The so-called comradely association and sports activity were merely window dressing for political apying. These courses finally became compulsory and had to be attended for several months annually.
The general respect in which doctors were held sunk in view of the decreasing level of general education and ability of the doctors. This was partly duo to the constant occupation of the physicians' time with party functions, especially the time-consuming party formations and marches which made it impossible for young physicians to develop scientific interests, so that recent graduates increasingly lost understanding and inclination for serious scientific study and long-range research.
Medical School and Medical Training under the Nazis On paper, medical training under the Nazis differed little from that of the pre-Nazi era.
However, its fundamental spirit was ruinously distorted and medical standards suffered a dismal decline.
Medical students had to be "Aryan", and were required to belong to the National Socialist Students'League. The student's entire course of studies was constantly interrupted by the demands of the various party organizations to which they were forced to belong.
A student whose knowledge of the racial theories and Nurnberg laws was not sufficient would fail his medical examinations.
Chaiers in the universities were filled in many cases by Nazi so-called "professors" who might or might not have a scienttific background. The true scientific societies under the Nazi Regime became less and less active, and the Nazi professors in the universities devoted more time and interest to their SA or SS organizations than to the teaching of medicine. These Naze professors would on their brown SA or black SS uniforms on all possible occasions, exchanging them proudly for their academic gowns at all academic celebrations and meetings.
The worst Nazi politicians, like Streicher, were given the free run of university clinics, such as at Erlangen. This submissiveness to lay politicians led to a general decline of respect for German academic medicine not only on the part of their own public and abroad, but even on the part of the very same politicians before whom they kowtowed. This went so far that Streicher, when addressing a full faculty meeting at the University of Erlangen in 1936, called the assembled professors "complete idiots" to their faces. This was by no means an isolated occurance.
Particularly deplorable was the degradation of psychiatry. Psychiatric university teaching declined to the level of a more rehearing of the Nurnberg and sterilization laws. The modern techniques of psychotherapy had been abandoned, and treatment deteriorated to pep talks full of Nazi indoctrination admonitions and threats.
No wonder that these methods backfired against the best interest of the German war effort which they were foolishly intended to serve. The lack of proper understanding and treatment of German soldiers who developed combat fatigue or neurosis, on the part of their own medical personnel, drove many of them to surrender to the enemy; efforts to rehabilitate then and restore them to duty were frustrated by the ruin us infusion of Nazi doctrine.
Summary The general decline of German medical conduct and the poisoning of German medical ethics which the Nazis brought about, laid the basis for the atrocious experiments of which the defendants are accused.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you kindly slow down you reading?
GENERAL TAYLOR: Many of these were experiments in name only; we will show them to have been senseless and clumsy and of no real value to medicine as a healing art. The Nazi medical worlds was flooded with preposterous and wicked notions about superior and inferior races and developed a perveryed moral outlook in which cruelty to subjugated races and peoples was praiseworthy. Training in SA and SS formation was hardly calculated to develop physicians who could comprehend even the bare elements of the doctor-patient relationship. In this noxious garden of lies, the seeds of the experiments were planted. In the climate of Nazi Germany, they grow with horrible rapidity.
CRIMES OF MASS EXTERMINATION: "EUTHANASIA" AND THE MURDER OF FOLISH NATIONALS From the preaching of Gutt and others sprang the nations which underly the crimes to which we will now turn.
Here we leave behind all semblance, however, ficititious, of science and research.
Under these teachings, life and livelihood became the birthright of no one. The weak and the physically handicapped are in the way and must be pushed aside. Inferior peoples are born to be exterminated by the Herrenvolk.
The charges in paragraphs 8 and 13 of the Indictment concern the defendants Blome and Rudolf Brandt. The original impetus for this terrible mass murder came from a fiend named Greiser, who was the German Governor of the northwest portions of Poland, which had been absorved into the Reich under the name "Wartheland." Early in 1942, Greiser was in the process of exterminating thousands of Jews in his territory, and he decidet to turn his attention next to Poles infected with tuberculosis. I call the Tribunal's special attention to the German word "Sonderbehandlun". In the next Document, as will be shown, it occurs frequently in Nazi correspondence and was used by them to mean extermination. In May 1944, Greiser wrote to Himmler as follows: