A. At the time that I took over that office, there was a change in the order of subordination. For one or two months, I cannot say precisely, the old relationships exist ed. That is to say, I was subordinate to Foerster direct. Then, however, the change took place that I mentioned and I was subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff. So, in general, during my turn of office I was immediately subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff.
Q. General Foerster, was, at that time, subordinated to Milch?
A. Yes.
Q. When you were subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff, wore you not indirectly subordinated to Milch?
A. No.
Q. Is it true that the Chief of the General Staff was immediately subordinated to Goering?
A. Yes.
Q. Witness, at the time when you were still subordinated to General Foerster, did you, at that time, also report to Milch about any experiments that were under way?
A. No.
Q. No?
A. No. the time was so short, I did not even have opportunity during this first period to report even to Fieldmarshall Milch. I did not see him at all during that time.
Q. In the time from February 1, 1940 until December 31, 1943, what position did you have?
A. I was the physician for the Luftfleet 2.
Q. In this position, did you have anything to do with Hippke?
A. Yes. He was my superior in Medical Inspection, while I was physician.
Q. Where did you have your office as Air Fleet Physician?
A. This Fleet was lead by Kesselring in the first year, that is from the beginning of the French campaign to the beginning of the Russian Campaign we were in the West. Then for a few months we were in the East. And from December, 1941, until I resigned from that Fleet, we were in the Mediterranian Area, Italy, Sicily and Africa.
Q. In other words, in the first period, during which the Dachau high-altitude experiments were being carried out, in 1942, and the freezing experiments from June until October, 1942, you were not really present in Berlin?
A. No. In 1942 we were in Sicily, Africa respectively.
Q. Did you hear anything about these experiments at all during this time?
A. No.
Q. Witness, I come now to your affidavit, which you submitted.
Your Honors, this affidavit, according to my notes, was not offered. I have no note of it. If the Tribunal does not have it, then I ask your pardon. And I am all through with this witness. It was in my document book; since it was, I assumed it was in yours. I ask your pardon. I could not know that the court did not have it. I have no English copy of it. Unfortunately I can dispense with the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean the witness has nothing to explain now?
PRESIDENT: You mean the witness has nothing to explain now?
DR. BERGOLD: I wanted to cross-examine him on this affidavit, tut if it has not been submitted in evidence, I need not to do so. I again ask the Court's pardon for having caused this trouble.
THE PRESIDENT: The marshal will remove this witness.
DR. BERGOLD: I ask permission to call the witness, Becker-Freyseng.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will bring the witness. Hermann Becker-Freyseng to the court room.
HERMANN BECKER-FREYSENG: a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:
BY JUDGE PHILLIPS:
Q You will raise your right hand. Repeat 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.)
JUDGE PHILLIPS: You will have a seat.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, I ask you to speak slowly, I ask you further to pause after every question I ask before you answer so that the translation of my question can be concluded.
Witness, please state your first and last names.
A Hermann Becker-Freyseng.
Q When were you born?
A On the 18th of July 1910.
Q What was your last position in the German Army?
A In the end I was the Expert for Luftwaffe Medicine with the Chief of the Medical Inspectorate of the Luft waffe.
Q Do you know Milch personally?
A No, but I know now who he is; but then I did not know him.
Q Witness, I come now to your affidavit that you submitted. Your Honors it is the affidavit, Exhibit 121, Document No. 448 of the 24th of October 1946.
1062 a MR. DENNEY: That is page 185, Document Book 5, please.BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, you state here: "Dr. Kalk told me that he had seen Rascher in Milch's office at the RLM, and we were both very surprised at this." Would you please tell me exactly what statement Kalk made? "Dr. Kalk told me that he had seen Rascher in Milch's office at the RLM, and we were both very surprised at this."
A I have no precise recollection of this telephone conversation any longer because first of all it was almost five years ago; secondly, it was an event that I attached no importance to at that time. For that reason, I do not remember it - remember the precise wording. I do know that in connection with a planned or actual address of Rascher's in the RLM, I was called by phone and that is I was called as a representative of the expert that time, Dr. Anthony; and was asked whether regarding this - whether this address and the events connected with it were known to me. I was told that a Dr. Rascher was at the RLM, or that he had been there, who was to make an address or had made one, I do not know precisely whether this was before or after the address, and I denied there upon that I had known anything of this event.
Q. Was it Kalk who called you up?
A I think I can definitely remember that is was Kalk, but there is the possibility that it was Mr. Ruehl who called up on behalf of Kalk, anyhow, I associate the name Kalk with this telephone conversation now in my recollection.
Q Did the person speak only of the fact that Rascher was in the RLM or did he also say that he was in Milch's office?
A I can say the following to that: when this affidavit was submitted to me to sign, I pointed out that I could not state under oath that Rascher had been in Milch's office. It was then pointed out to me that the English expression "Milch's office" does not mean that it was the question of Milch's personal office, that is to say, as we would interpret it inside the office of Milch; but that the word "office" simply meant the whole office building in general, and that that was what was meant in this case - that the RIM was the office in which the Field Marshal Milch was active at that time. On this basis, I then had no misgivings about signing the 1063 a affidavit.
Q But in the affidavit, the words are "In Milch's office in the RLM", and as you are stating now you only know that he was somewhere in the RLM.
A That is right. I still don't know what room Rascher visited or went to.
Q Your Honor, that is all I have to ask the witness because I have now clarified that affidavit to my satisfaction CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. DENNEY:
Q Witness, you have told Dr. Bergold that the words "In Milch's office at tho RLM" were explained to you as meaning some place in the building.
A Not somewhere in the building, but generally it just meant the office; not somewhere in the building, but just in general the division, the Amt.
Q Somewhere in the division; well, is a division bigger than a building or is a building bigger than a division?
A I think these are two concepts that have nothing to do with each other. A division can take up several buildings or on the other hand many divisions can be in one building.
Q Well, what was the case?
A I didn't mean when I said "Milch's office" his actual room, but I simply meant that this event had taken place in connection with the official business of Milch at that time. I had no idea where Rascher went to or in what rooms Milch stayed at that time.
Q The office building in which Milch's office was in, you know where that was?
A. That 1064
A That was the Reich Air Ministry, yes.
Q How many divisions were there in the Reich Air Ministry?
A How many divisions?
Q Well, you used the term "divisions"; I didn't. I don't know what it means.
A Yes, I do know. I know the Technical Office, the Personnel Office, the administrative Office. I can't remember any more at the moment.
1064 a
Q Well, anyway, there were several divisions in the building, in the Reichs Air Ministry in Berlin, right?
A The situation was this: a great many of these divisions had offices outside the actual office building of the Reichs Air Ministry.
THE PRESIDENT: Shouldn't this inquiry be directed to Kalk or at least to what he said?
MR. DENNEY: Well, if Your Honor please, I am getting to that.
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q Now, what did Kalk tell you?
A. I stated before that neither can I recall the precise wording that he spoke nor precisely what he said -- the meaning. I still remember the following: Xalk called up the division for Luftwaffe Medicine and told them that either a Stabsarzt Rascher was going to, or had, delivered a speech about some Luftwaffe medical field and asked me whether he knew anything about this speech or anything about it. I denied knowing anything and that was all there was to it.
Q. And then you put in your affidavit "we were both very surprised at this". What were you surprised at, the fact that Rascher, an officer in the Luftwaffe was seen in the building occupied by the Air Ministry?
A. No, that wasn't surprising, but it was surprising that a Luftwaffe medical speech should be delivered of which an expert for such things didn't know anything at all.
Q And who was the expert on these matters?
A. That was in the first line the person dealing with that subject at that time, Stabsarzt Professor Anthony and in the second line it was I; I was at that time his assistant expert.
Q. Were you Anthony's assistant?
A. Yes I was his assistant in that department. The expression assistant was not used at that time.
Q. What did you know about these experiments at Dachau?
A. Of the high altitude experiments I knew nothing.
Q. How about the freezing experiments?
A. Of those experiments I heard generally about this for the first time in June 1942 in the presence of the Medical Inspector at that time. I had no more to do with it. At the conference in Nurnberg I read about it again.
Q. But you didn't know anything about the low pressure experiments at Dachau that were conducted by Ruff and Romberg?
A. Of those experiments I heard about after they had been brought to complete conclusion, namely, in connection with the speech that Rascher delivered.
Q. I have no further questions.
RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, to clear this once and for all; did you have any reason or basis to assume that Rascher know Milch personally?
A. I do not assume so, nor have I ever stated that.
Q. Witness, is it correct that Kalk was the medical advisor of Milch. Do you know that, or don't you?
A. I didn't know that he was medical adviser. I only knew that it was, so to say, generally known that he was the main physician. In how far this went as to adviser, I do not know.
Q. Did you get from this conversation with Kalk the impression that he did not know either how this speech had come about?
A. I did get that impression for if Kalk had known about this there was no necessity for him to ring me up.
Q. Thank you. I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal may lead the witness away.
DR. BERGOLD: May I ask to be permitted to call the witness Weltz. I don't know whether he is available yet. We have proceeded so rapidly and because Brandt was left out my chronological plan has been upset, since practically Schroeder was also left out.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the name of the witness?
DR. BERGOLD: George August Weltz.
GEORGE AUGUST WELTZ, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:
THE PRESIDENT: Will the witness raise his right hand and repeat 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.)
THE PRESIDENT: You may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, I ask you to speak slowly. I ask you furthermore to pause after each question of mine before you answer so that the translation of the given question can be concluded.
Please tell me what is your first and last name?
A. George August Weltz.
Q. When were you born?
A. 16 March 1898.
Q. What was your last position in Germany?
A. During the war I was leader of the Institute for Luftwaffe Medicine in Munich.
Q. Do you know Milch personally?
A. Only after the war I saw him briefly.
Q. In April 1945 you didn't know him.
A. No, I never saw him prior to April 1945.
Q. Witness, however, you do know Professor Dr. Hippke.
A. Yes.
Q. You talked with him once about the conditions under which the so-called foreign experiments should apply?
A. Yes.
Q. What conditions were laid down at that time at the conclusion of the discussion?
A. It was our pre-assumption that the experiments should take place, first on volunteers; secondly, that these volunteers should have been criminals orderly sentenced by German courts; and the third condition was that the experimental subjects or theme must be particularly important and a problem that could not be solved by animal experiments.
Q. Were the conditions also made that such experiments were to be carried out with every precaution?
A. That was a matter of course.
Q. Was there also a condition that, in so far as possible, it should avoid pain?
A. That of course was understood.
Q. Then, did you supervise these high altitude experiments in Dachau or who did that?
A. Do you want to know that in detail or just briefly?
Q. Just briefly.
A. Briefly then, I withdrew before the experiments began in Dachau and along with Ruff who had tried out the experiments I wanted to take over supervision of Dachau. But this was made impossible for me through a telegram of Himmler's. Therefore, before the experiments began I withdrew, and can there state nothing regarding the actual experiments at Dachau.
Q. Before you withdrew did you have any suspicion against Rascher which you communicated to Hippke?
A. At that time I had no reason at all to consider Rascher a criminal.
Q. Then during the course of the experiments did you hear of death cases?
A. No.
Q. Nor did you send any report on same to Hippke?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever inquire about these experiments?
A. From the above mentioned telegram from Himmler it was evident that the experiments in Dachau were to be kept secret. For that reason from the time on I withdrew, I did not ask about the experiments because I know people carrying out the experiments wore sworn to secrecy.
Q. Witness, I come now to your interrogation. Your Honors, it is exhibit 122, document NOKW - 419. In this interrogation, witness, you say that you became suspicious of Rascher. Of what sort was the suspicion - you just said you did not consider him a criminal?
A. Could I ask, please, what suspicion is there - at what time?
Q. The question is here of the telegram which you considered a forgery. According to that you say in this interrogation.
A. As regards the forgery of the telegram, it turned out later that my suspicion was wrong. From the correspondence shown to me now is to be soon that this telegram was a real one. The suspicion does refer to something different. I had heard that Rascher put his father in a concentration camp and that led to a personal tension between Rascher and myself and I took lot's say strict official forms against Rascher for that reason -- but that had nothing to do with that I had a suspicion Rascher was a criminal. From my point of view at that time he appeared to me as an unsympathetic matter, not a nice characteristic -- nothing you could consider criminal.
Q. Apparently this matter of putting his father in a concentration camp -- that was based on the fact that his father was opposed to National Socialism?
A. I found out nothing about that.
Q. You regarded Rascher as an exaggerated Nazi?
A. Yes.
Q. 125% Nazi.
A. Yes.
Q. But you had no suspicion of crime?
A. At that time, so far as I know, Rascher had nothing on his score yet.
Q. Your Honors, I wanted to clarify that question. I have no further questions to put to the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Does the Prosecution wish to cross examine?
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Witness, were you a member of the National Socialist Party?
A. I became a member in 1937.
Q. When did you discover that Rascher had put his father in a concentration camp?
A. I was told this approximately in February 1942.
Q. '32?
A. '42. 1942.
Q. Was this before the experiments at Dachau were started?
A. Simultaneously with the beginning of those experiments at Dachau. My agreements with Ruff were before that time.
Q. And the experiments started in Dachau when in '42?
A. At the beginning of March 1942, as far as I know.
Q. Were you ever out there during the experiments?
A. Yes. Once with Ruff, Romberg and Rascher, I went to visit the camp to find out what the general state of affairs was at the camp and particularly to ascertain whether political and criminal prisoners were segregated clearly.
Q. And, given the conditions that you spoke to Dr. Hippke about, you said that they must be people who had been condemned by German courts. What did you mean by that?
A. We said in our conversation that under no circumstances did we want to have political prisoners to get experimented upon.
Q. Well, what must they have been condemned to by a German court, excluding the political prisoners?
A. May I say, this conversation with Hippke was conditioned by what Rascher had told us previously. Rascher had previously told us that habitual criminals who had been condemned to death were to be used. And under this condition, Kottenhof asked Hippke what his opinion on his matter was.
The above mentioned, conversation was not an official conversation but simply a discussion on one evening to which Hippke had invited us, and at the end of the conversation -I didn't take part in it -- I said that these concepts were defined according to international usage, and in the 1071 a course of this conversation these conditions were developed.
This was not official but more a theoretical discussion of the conditions under which these experiments would be permissible. As I have already mentioned, this conversation was inspired by Rascher's statement that the experiments should take place in Dachau on people who had been orderly sentenced to death by a German court. Thus, they could take place only on most serious criminals.
Q. As far as you know, all the experiments that were carried out were on people who had been condemned to death by German courts and who were not political prisoners?
A. I have found out now because of the evidence submitted in Court that Rascher apparently used other persons for those experiments, as well but the conditions that I laid down with Ruff were the same that Rascher had told us, namely, that these were to be people condemned orderly to death in German courts.
Q. And did you ever do anything to find out whether or not the conditions which had been established were, in fact, being carried out?
A. I wont to Dachau with Ruff and Romberg in order to talk this over with the camp commander, and we did agree on this specifically with the camp commander. The camp commander heard what we had to say and thought over the question of who should be used for these experiments and told us that he would take care of this matter; that they should got special food, they should be separated from the rest, and these conditions we discussed specifically and explicitly with the camp commander.
MR. DENNY: No further questions.
RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, I have one more question. You said that you were familiar with the right to use such persons who were sentenced to death from international literature.
A. Yes.
Q. Is that stated generally in scientific books?
A. At that time I was under the influence of a book that is very widely known, namely De Kruif's "Hunger Fighters". It was published in America, 1072 - a translated into German, and in it is described in detail how Goldberger, an official in Washington in the Department of Health, carried out experiments on twelve prisoners in Kansas under very specific conditions, and since Dr. De Kruif had published this in a book which was thought of as propaganda, it was clear that ho was not thinking of any crime or wished to describe a crime but that he was thinking of it as something which was entirely, permissible and the conditions under which those experiments were carried out in Kansas wore completely in agreement with many other investigations which are known to me from international literature.
I believe , therefore, that one can speak of an international standard which makes such experiments permissible, and only shortly previous to that I remembered this bock of Do Kruif's.
MR. DENNEY: If Your Honor please, I don't know what purpose we are serving by going in and comparing what happened in Dachau and what happened in a book he read of what happened in the United States. I think the Court is aware of the testimony of the first witness that there is certainly no comparison between the experiments, and this apparently is the beginning of a long parade of witnesses who arc going to testify that experiments are conducted on human beings in other places. We do not deny that, but we certainly do deny that they were conducted the way these were conducted.
THE PRESIDENT: I can not anticipate what the next witness will testify to. At the moment, this witness is merely stating that this is the reason that he set up certain standards in his talk with Hippke. To that limited extent, it seems to be proper.
DR. BERGOLD: No further questions/
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal may remove this witness.
(Witness excused.)
THE PRESIDENT: What is your program now, Dr. Bergold? Have you other witnesses who have been called for today?
DR. BERGOLD: I had intended certain things for Monday, but there is still the witness Ruff, and I had asked for Dr. Alexander of the American Division as a witness for Monday. That was my Monday program, but perhaps we can do it today. If however, Dr. Alexander is not accessible, I could read the rest of my 1073 a documents before hearing Dr. Ruff.