Yet without exception each of these cases deals in large measure with crimes to which the SS was a party. In all but one of these cases, the SS is represented among the defendants. Indeed, in the trial before the International Military Tribunal no less than eleven of the defendants were members of the SS.
This points up the tremendous power and influence wielded by the SS in the Third Reich. Even now, nearly two years after the termination of hostilities, the SS if too often regarded as a more collection of racial fanatics, well-drilled fighting men, or concentration camp thugs. Let there be no mistake about that -- Himmler was eminently successful in making the SS an all-powerful elite. Its members were represented in the personal entourage of Hitler in the Reich Ministries, in the Wehrmacht, in the provincial and municipal governments, in industry and finance, in the press, in occupied territories, and in the spheres of education and culture. It has been said with considerable truth that the SS was a State within a State.
It is therefore a matter of importance to investigate the workings of this SS State and to fix the responsibility for its manifold crimes on those men in high positions who kept the constrous machinery running. Justice could not tolerate the trial of sadistic concentration camp commanders and guards, or even industrialists who ran their factories with slave labor, without bringing to account those men of the SS who made such things possible. In this dock sit the principal surviving leaders of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt), commonly called the WVHA. It was they who procured the material, money, and slaves to support the SS State.
It was they who supervised the lawless jungles which were concentration camps. It was they who were the greatest users of slave labors as Eugen Kogon has said, "No superJew of Streicher's ever accomplished what SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl succeeded in doing: the rationalization of turning corpses into money on a mass-basis."
The crimes which are the subject of this trial run the gamut of "man's inhumanity to man" - the systematic commission of atrocities in concentration camps, the utilization of slave labor under brutal and inhumane conditions, the extermination of the Jews and so-called "useless eaters", criminal medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the confiscation of property on a gigantic scale. The defendant Pohl and his collaborators in the WVHA were parties to all of these crimes and many more.
Since this case is concerned with the criminal activities of one of the Main Offices of the SS, it is necessary to understand something of the history and organization of the SS in general and the WVHA in particular. To assist the Tribunal in this regard, the prosecution has prepared and delivered to the Tribunal a brief containing basic information on the SS and the WVHA. This has also been made available to defense counsel in both German and English. It includes a glossary of German words and expressions which will be used frequently in the course of the trial, a table of equivalent ranks between the American Army and the German Wehrmacht and the SS, and two charts showing the organization of the SS and the WVHA.
The Schutzstaffeln or SS was the protective Guard of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP). It was formed in 1925 to protect leaders and speakers at Party meetings and above all to protect the person of the Fuehrer.
As the "Fuehrer" or leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler was the "Oberste Fuehrer" or supreme leader of the SS.
In January, 1929, Heinrich Himmler was appointed Reichsfuehrer-SS. As such, he was the commander of the SS and subordinated directly to Hitler as head of the Nazi Party. At that time, the SS numbered only about 280 men and was much less important than the Sturmabteilung or SA, which was a Nazi pari-military unit under the ambitious Captain Ernst Roehm. Patiently and unobtrusively, Himmler set about creating out of the SS an aristocracy within the Nazi Party. He called this aristocracy the German Order of Men (Deutsche Maennerorden). Selection for membership in the SS was based on the doctrine of "Race and Blood." Himmler once said:
"I am convinced supporter of the idea that what matters in the world ultimately is only good blood.... I have approached my task from this angle. It means that actually the only good blood, according to our reading of history, is the leading creative element in every state, and in particular, the blood engaged in military activity and, above all, Nordic blood," At the time of the seizure of power by the Nazi Party in January, 1933, this self-proclaimed "racial elite" was 52,000 strong.
Not, however, until the Roehm purge of 30 June 1934 did the SS become the ruling caste within the Party. On that bloody "Night of the Long Knives", it was the brutalized and ever obedient SS which murdered Roehm and his important collaborators in the SA who were said to be dissident elements in the Party. Thenceforth, the SS assumed the duty of ensuring the continued power of the Nazi regime or, as it was officially state, of "protecting the internal security of the Reich."
The subsequent development of the SS was based primarily upon the tremendous increase in power of Himmler. Wherever Himmler went, the SS went with him. In June, 1936, he was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Ministry of Interior with authority over the regular uniformed police as well as the Security Police, which was defined to include both the Criminal Police and the notorious Gestapo or State Secret Police. In this connection, mention should also be made of the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer-SS or SD which worked closely with the Gestapo. The SD was the espionage agency, first of the SS, and, after June 1934, of the whole Nazi Party. Reinhardt, or as he was known abroad, "Hangman" Heydrich, was the Chief of the SD. Himmler, in his capacity as Reichsfuehrer - SS and Chief of the German Police, appointed Heydrich as Chief of the Security Police on 26 June 1936. This amalgamated the Security Police, a State organization, with the SD, a Party organization.
By a decree of 27 September 1939, the various State and Party Offices under Heydrich as Chief of the Security Police and SD were united into one administrative unit, the Reich Main Security Office or RSHA which was at the same time both one of the Main Offices of the SS Supreme Command under Himmler as Reichsfuehrer-SS and an office in the Ministry of Interior under Himmler as Chief of the German Police.
On a regional level, Himmler appointed a Higher SS and Police Leader for each Wehrkreis who coordinated the activities of the Security Police and SD, Order Police, and Allgemeine SS within their jurisdictions. In 1939 the SS and police systems were amalgamated by taking into the SS all police officials at equivalent ranks.
This unification of the SS and police greatly enhanced the power of the SS. Its power and influence was further increased by the appointment of Himmler in August 1943 as Reich Minister of the Interior, a position which controlled the greater part of the vast German bureaucracy. Finally in July 1944 he succeeded General Fromm as Commander in Chief of the Replacement Army and Chief of Military Armament. He then controlled all forces on the home front.
Parallel with this development of the SS its influence was increased by the practice of appointing important State officials and other public figures to high rank in the SS. Industrialists, bankers, and business men were prevailed upon to contribute substantial sums of money to the SS in order to stand in well with the Party aristocracy. Through infiltration the SS gained influence in every branch of German life.
By 1939, the Allgemeine SS, the original formation of the SS, numbered approximately 240,000 men. In addition, there were two other SS formation - the Special Service Troops and the Death's Head Formations which together had a strength of about 40,000 men. The Special Service Troops ** stitute a force of SS men who volunteered for four years' military service in lieu of compulsory service with the Army. It was organized as an armed unit to be employed with the Army in the event of mobilization.
The Death's Head Formations were selected from SS volunteers and were used to guard concentration camps.
After the outbreak of war, units from both the Special Service Troops and the Death's Head Formations were used in the Polish campaign These troops came to be known as the Waffen or Armed SS. By 1940 the Waffen SS contained 100,000, men, 56,000 coming from the Special Service Troops and the rest from the Allgemeine SS and the Death's Head Troops. Concentration camp guard duties came to be performed primarily by members of the Allgemeine SS. The Waffen SS fought in every campaign with the exception of those in Norway and Africa. By the end of the war it is estimated to have comprised about 580,000 men. Thus, it was numerically by far the larger branch of the SS, the Allgemeine SS having declined in strength to less than 40,000.
The Waffen SS, including the Death's Head Formations, was in effect a part of the Wehrmacht and its expenses were a charge on the State. The Allgemeine SS, on the other hand, was an independent branch of the Party and its finances were ultimately controlled by the Party Treasurer.
Subject to the controlling authority of the Reichsfuehrer SS the work of directing, organizing, and administering the whole body of the SS was carried out by what may be loosely called the Supreme Command of the SS. This Supreme Command consisted of twelve Main Offices. The most important of the Main Offices were the Reich Main Security Office or, RSHA, the Operational Headquarters, and the Economic and Administrative Main Office, the WVHA.
I have already described the amalgamation of the SD and the Gestapo and Criminal Police under Heydrich as Chief of the RSHA. After the assassination of Heydrich in 1942, Kaltenbrunner was made Chief of the RSHA. For his criminal activities in that position, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal. The Gestapo, among other things, was responsible for the commitment of political prisoners to concentration camps.
Our proof in this case will show the close cooperation between the Security Police and SD and the WVHA not only in matters concerning concentration camps, but also in the extermination of the Jews, the spoliation of property on a gigantic scale, and the utilization of slave labor under inhumane conditions.
The SS Operational Headquarters was the main office of the SS which was responsible for the training, organization and, to a certain extent, the operational employment of the Waffen SS and the Allgemeine SS.
Other important Main Offices were the SS Central Office which handled recruiting for the Waffen SS, propaganda, education, physical training, and so-called Germanic affairs; the SS Race and Settlement Office which was concerned with matters of "race", geneology, and marriage permits within the SS, and the settlement of SS men in occupied territory boundings on the Reich; and the Personal Staff of the Reichfuehrer SS which was an advisory and coordinating body responsible for all matters not within the province of the other Main Offices and for liaison with Government and Party officials.
THE WVHA.
I turn now to a description of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office and to the position of these defendants in that organization.
Prior to the end of the war, little was known of the activities of the WVHA. In order to appreciate the organization and influence of this office, it is necessary to consider the three original offices which were later united to form the WVHA. These were the Administrative Department (Verwaltungsamt) in the SS Central Office, the Department of Budget and Building and the office of the Inspector of Concentration Camps.
The Administrative Department was for many years located in Munich. The defendant Pohl became Chief of that department in February, 1934.
He was, at the same time, Plenipotentiary of the Treasurer of the Nazi Party. The Administrative Department handled the financial and administrative matters of the Special Service Troops, the Death's Head Units, the concentration camps, and the Allgemeine SS. The defendants Frank, George and Hans Loerner, Vogt, Tschantscher, Eirenschmalz, and Baier were early collaborators of Pohl in various phases of this work.
In addition to administrative tasks, the Administrative Department soon concerned itself with business and industrial undertakings on behalf of the SS and Party. Prominent among these economic enterprises was the German Earth and Stone Works with granite quarries in the concentration camps of Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen, and Natzweiler In 1940 the German Business Enterprises was formed by Pohl and George Loerner as a holding company. It was commonly known as the DWB combine and it controlled many of the business enterprises run by the Administrative Department, or as it was then known, the Administrative and Economic Main Office. It had a capitalization in excess of 46 million Reichsmarks. The defendants Hohberg, Volk, Mummenthy, Bobermin, and Klein were active in developing and managing these economic enterprises. Concentration camp inmates were used as laborers on a vast scale.
By an order of 20 April 1939, Himmler raised the Administrative Office of Pohl to the rank of a Main Office of the SS. It was called the Administrative and Economic Main Office and abbreviated "WVHA". At the same time Pohl was appointed Chief of the newly created Budget and Buildings Main Office. Thus, after this reorganization, there were three departments under Pohl's jurisdiction - Amt I-Budget, Amt IIBuildings, and Amt III-Economic Enterprises. Amt I and II were said to be identical with the Department for Budget and Building in the Ministry of Interior, of which Pohl was a Ministerialdirektor.
All three of these departments had a very substantial relationship to the concentration camps. Amt I (Budget) was in charge of the allocation and control of prison labor; Amt II (Buildings) was in charge of actual building and construction work; and Amt III (Economic Enterprises) controlled various plants using prisoners.
All of these Aemter had representatives in every concentration camps.
The third precursor of the WVHA which I have mentioned was the Office of the Inspector of Concentration Camps, first under Eicke and then Gluecks. This office was responsible for the control of the SS Death's Head guards and the entire internal administration of the camps. I have already briefly indicated the strong interest of Pohl's organization in the concentration camps. In December 1939, Himmler said that: "The supervision of the economic matters of these institutions (concentration camps) and their application to work is the responsibility of SS Gruppenfuehrer Pohl". This problem of divided authority was finally resolved in March 1942 and the Office of the Inspector of Concentration Camps was subordinated to Pohl. At about the same time, a final reorganization took place which created the WVHA with the defendant Pohl as its Chief. The WVHA was divided into five branches, Amtsgruppen, A, B, C, D, and W.
Amtsgruppe A was the supreme authority for the finance and administration of the whole of the SS. This department negotiated with the Reich Ministry of Finance for funds to support the Waffen SS and other SS activities carried out for the States. It handled the budgets, payments, and audits for all the SS, including the concentration camps. It was responsible for the general supervision and coordination of all SS administration, and for the training and appointment of administrative personnel. The defendant Frank was Chief of Amtsgruppe A and Deputy Chief of the WVHA until September 1943. He was succeeded as Chief of Amtsgruppe A by the defendant Fanslau who had previously been in charge of the Personnel Office. The defendant Hans Loerner was in charge of the office for budgets while the defendant Vogt was head of the auditing office.
Amstgruppe B controlled food supply, uniforms, billeting, raw materials, and equipment for the SS. As for as the Waffen SS was concerned, responsibility for supply was divided between the SS Operational Headquarters and the WVHA. Broadly speaking, the Operational Headquarters supplied arms, ammunition, and other technical equipment, While the WVHA was responsible for rations, clothing, fuel, and personal items of equipment. Among other things, Amtsgruppe I was responsible for the supply of food and clothing to concentration camps. The defendant George Loerner was Chief of Amtsgruppe B and after 1 September 1943, was Deputy Chief of the WVHA. The defendant Tschentscher was deputy to Loerner and head of the office for food supplies. The defendant Scheide was in charge of the office for supply of transport, machinery, and weapons.
Amtsgruppe C was charged with construction tasks of the SS and Police. This included the building and maintenance of barracks, camps and training grounds, field works, and fortifications, and readmaking. All construction work in connection with concentration camps, such as gas chambers and crematoriums, was handled by this department. Amtsgruppe C was the greatest user of concentration camp labor in all of Germany, for outstripeing such industries as I.G. Farben and the Hermann Goering Works. For the year 1942 alone, over forty-four thousand concentration camp inmates were requested for a total of sixty-one building projects.
Two such projects were the installation and extension of crematoriums in the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. Later in the war, Amtsgruppe C undertook such large scale construction as the erection of V-2 plants and the movement of the aircraft and other war industries underground. This work was carried out under such atrocious conditions that literally tens of thousands of human beings were sacrificed. Chief of this department was the fabulous SS Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler, rumored as the successor to Speer. His chief deputy was the defendant Eirenschmalz and the office for special construction tasks was under the defendant Kiefer.
Amtsgruppe D was in direct charge of the administration of concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp. Apart from the actual imprisonment of prisoners, which was a function of the Reich Main Security Office, the WVHA and Amtsgruppe D were entirely responsible for this branch of SS activity. There are only two defendants in this dock who were members of Amtsgruppe D, Sommer and Pook. The defendant Sommer was deputy chief of Amt D II which handled the commitment of inmates for labor. The defendant Pook was Chief Dentist in Amt D III and had supervisory control over all dentists in concentration camps. It was their task, among others, to remove gold teeth from deceased inmates. However, substantially all of Amtsgruppe D has been accounted for. Gluecks, Chief of the department, is dead as is Dr. Lolling, Chief of the medical office. Liebenhenschel, Hoess, and Kaindl were surrendered by the United States for trial by other countries. The notorious Hoess was camp commander of Auschwitz until December 1943. He confessed to having supervised the extermination in Auschwitz of two and one half million persons, while at least an additional half million succumbed to starvation and disease. Pohl was so impressed with his ability that he was recalled to become Chief of Amt D I. Gerhard Maurer, Chief of Amt D II and the immediate superior of the defendant Sommer, is now in custody but his apprehension came after the indictment in this case had been filed.
The same is true of Wilhelm Burger who was Chief of Amt D IV.
Amtsgruppe W managed the economic enterprises run by the WVHA. At the top was the DWB Combine, a holding company through which the various industries were controlled. The defendants Pohl and George Loerner were the managing directors of the DWB, assisted by the defendants Baier, Volk, and Hohberg, who were members of the so-called Staff W. The offices or Aemter of Amtsgruppe W managed the industries controlled by the DWB. Amt W I under the defendant Mummenthy supervised primarily the German Earth and Stone Wreks, Ltd. which was abbreviated DEST. It controlled granite queries at Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, and Natzweiler; brick factories at Neuengamme, Stutthof, and Buchenwald; and two porcelain manufacturing plants. The commander Franz Ziereiss of Mauthausen has related how 1,000 Dutch Jews were worked and tortured into committing suicide in the quarry there.
In 1943, it was decided to employ more prison labor in armament work by the German Equipment Works Ltd. which was under the supervision of Amt W IV. However, since Amt W IV was not represented in all camps, Amt W I took over payment and accounts and put large underground stone quarries at the disposal of armament factories where the prisoners could carry out work without danger from air attacks. In this way, Amt W IV, using the facilities of Amt W I, worked as sub-contractors to the armament factories. For example, aircraft assembly of the Messerschmidt 109 and Messerschmidt 262 for Messerschmidt was carried out at Mauthausen.
After the defeat of Poland in 1939, spoliation of property, especially that of Jews, occurred on a large scale. Under the direction of Staff W and particularly of the defendants Pohl, George Loerner, Daier, Hohberg, and Volk a company called Eastern Industry Ltd, or. Osti was used to exploit Jewish property and manpower in Poland. A report states that this concern had to be liquidated because in November 1943 it was "deprived" of the Jewish workers.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that these Jews were exterminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz or Treblinka. In addition to the Osti action, Pohl took over in 1940 some 292 brick and tile factories which were managed by the East German Building Materials Works Ltd. under the defendant Bobermin in Amt W II. Bobermin also controlled a cement factory using inmates from Auschwitz.
The defendant Klein was Chief of Amt W VIII, an office with the anomolous title "Special Tasks". There were several sections in Amt W VIII, one of which was called "Society for the Improvement and Upkeep of German Monuments". But even this high sounding society involved itself in concentration camp crimes with the assistance of Klein. He supervised the financing and construction of an SS school at Wewelsburg near the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Approximately 500 prisoners were detained in a small sub-camp at Wewelsburg to assist in the construction of the school. A number of these prisoners died due to undernourishment and overwork.
The WVHA controlled many other economic enterprises which used concentration camp labor as well as supplied slave labor to such private industries as I.G. Farben and the Hermann Goering Works. These matters will be dealt with somewhat more fully at a later point.
MR. McHANEY: Mr. Hart will continue with the opening statement.
MR. HART: On the Concentration camps.
Substantially all of the crimes charged in the indictment against these defendants were committed in concentration camps upon inmates foreibly detained there. Therefore, it will perhaps be helpful to consider this institution of terror, mass crime, and human degradation.
According to German law, a concentration camp provide protective custody for persons who were not legally sentenced to imprisonment by a court of law, and those who, having served a term of imprisonment, were then committed for further detention by the Security Police and SD. Protective custody orders were issued by the Reich main Security Office.
There were two general categories of protective custody, namely Political Custody and police Custody. Persons placed in political custody were those considered to be enemies of the Nazi State or otherwise undesirable, but who could not be convicted of any crime. This type of custody was theoretically not enforced as a punitive measure. Included among political custody prisoners were members of parties opposed to National Socialism as well as non-party individuals of the same mind; Nazis guilty of some party crime; persons who listened to foreign broadcasts or expressed a "defeatist attitude"; and those whose general outlook on life was considered undesirable, such as church opponents of the regime and Jehovah's witnesses.
Habitual criminals who had served their term of imprisonment could be placed in preventive custody as well as less serious offenders such as drunkards, bagrants, and persons who changed positions without consent of the Labor Office - all of whom were regarded as "asociais".
Another large group of inmates were the Nazi described "racial inferiors", which included Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies. The extermination policies of the SS were particularly directed against this group. Prisoners of war were also committed to concentration camps in great numbers, especially the Russians.
A special category of prisoners were Nacht und Nebel or Night and Fog inmates. These were persons alleged to have committed offenses against the Reich or the German forces in occupied countries. The offenders were punished in the occupied territory only if the death penalty could be executed without delay. If this could not be done within one week of apprehension, the accused were taken secretly to Germany and handed over to the Security Police and SD for punishment. No words of the prisoners was permitted to reach their relatives or the country from which they came.
In 1941, concentration camps were graded according to the type of prisoners to be committed there.
Grade I was for persons who had committed minor offenses. Grade II for persons who had committed major offenses but were thought subject to correction, while those beyond the pale were sent to Grade III camps, the "bone-mills" which one rarely left alive. This classification was, of course, a relative concept; a former inmate of Dachau would regard it a gruesome joke to be told he had resided in a Grade I concentration camp. The best that can be said is that his catastrophe might have been worse in Mauthausen, which was for Grade III prisoners. In any event, later developments apparently necessitated deviations from the classification plan. Inmates were transferred from one camp to another solely according to their working capabilities and the needs of the economic enterprises run by the WVHA.
As to the number of concentration camps and inmates during the war period, it is only possible to give approximate figures. In April 1944 the defendant Pohl informed Himmler that there were 20 concentration camps and 165 labor camps in the Reich and German occupied territory. A post-cript to this letter in Pohl's handwriting boastfully states that: "In Eicke's time there were altogether six camps. Now: 185!"
But even those figures are apt to be misleading as there were dozens of outside camps surrounding the so-called "mother camp". In the case of Mauthausen, for example, Camp Commander Ziereis estimated that there were 45 outside camps. Among the large camps centrally administered by the WVHA were Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Lublin, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Ravensbrueck, and Stutthof. It is interesting to note that war crimes trials have been hold with respect to most of those camps.
Figures on the number of concentration camp inmates are even more difficult. Here one must distinguish between the total number of prisoners present in the camps at a given date and the total number delivered to the camps during the Nzi regime.
It is know that in August 1944 there were approximately 524,000 inmates of whom 145,000 were woman. But the same document shows that an additional 610,000 persons were on their way to concentration camps. Some 4000,000 of these were Poles from warsaw, which shortly before had risen in arms against the german occupation force. Another 150,000 were Jews from Hungary and the Litzmannstadt Ghettp , and 15000 Poles from the General Government 10,000 " convicts" from the eastern territories 17,000 Polish officers, and 20,000 Frenchmen.
As to the total number of prisoners delivered to the camps, tonly a reasonable estimate can be made. If the number of dead at Auschwitz alone is considered, amounting to at least 3. 5 million, it is safe to assume one time or another incarcerated in a concentration camp.
Much could be said about the horrible living conditions of concentration camps and the proof of the Prosecution will leave no doubt that the prisoners were subjected to systematic cruelty. One former inmate has stated that there stood invisible over the camp gate, the Inscription from Dante's Inferno:
" Through me you enter the City of those elected for grief, Through me you enter the eternal pain, Through me you enter the people of the lost. ......................................... All hope abandon you who enter here."
The cols statistics of death rates in concentration camps shows an utter lack of hygienic conditions. In September 1943 the defendant Pohl reported to Himmler that the natural death rate for the last six months of 1942 averages 989% per month. Such figures, of course, in no way reflect the agonies of slow death through starvation and over-work.
In April 1945, a Committee of the Congress of the United States made an official investigation of the conditions in concentrations camps of Buchenwald, Nordhause, and Dachau shortly after they had been over run by the American Armies.
The report submitted by the Committee contained the following conclusions:
" While the above three camps which were visited by the joint committee differed in some details, they were all of the same general pattern and design and administered for the same purpose.
" Although different in size, they all carried into effect the same pattern of death by hard labor, starvation, hanging strangulation, disease, brutality, gaz chambers, gallows, and filthy and unsanitary conditions, which meant inevitable death eventually to every imprisoned person.
" We found that this entire program constitute a systematic form of torture and death administered to intellectuals political leaders and others who would not embrace and support the Nazi Philosophy and program. We found the extent, devices, methods and conditions of torture almost beyond the power of words to describe.
" The treatment accorded to these prisoners in the concentration camps was generally as follows. They were herded together in some wooden barracks not large enough for one-tenth of their number. They were forced to sleep on wooden frames covered with wooden boards in tiers of two, three and even four, sometimes with no covering, sometimes with a bundle of dirty rags serving both as pallet and coverlet.
" Their food consisted generally of about one-half a pound of black bread per day and a bohl of watery soup for noon and night, and not always that, owing to the great numbers crowded into a small space and to the lack of adequate sustenance, lice and vermin multiplied, disease became rampant and those who did not soon die of disease or torture began the slow process ofstarvation.
Notwithstanding the deliberate starvation program inflicted upon these prisoners by lack of adequate food, we found no evidence that the people of germany as a whole were suffering from any lach of sufficient food or clothing. The contrast was so striking that the only conclusion which we could reach was that the starvation of the inmates of these camps was deliberate.
" Upon entrance into these camps, newcomers were forced to work either at an adjoining war factory or were placed "in commando" on various jobs in the vicinity, being returned each night to their stall in the barracks ..... A refusal to work or an infraction of the rules usually meant flogging and other types of torture, such as having their fingernails pulled out and in each case usually ended in death after extensive suffering. The policies herein described constituted a calculated and diabolical program of planned torture and extermination on the part of those who were in control of the German Government. These camps on the whole, were conducted and controlled by the SS troops and the Gostap , who acted under orders from their superiors or who given wide discretion in the methods which they were to adopt in perpetrating these hideous and inhuman sufferings.
" It is the opinion of your Committee that these practices constituted no less than organized crime against civilization and humanity and that those who were responsible for them should have meted out to them swift, certain and adequate punishment."
The international Military Tribunal in Case No 1, made the following findings of fact in its judgment on pages 16896-7 of the English transcript:
" In the administration of the occupied territories the concentration camps were used to destroy all oppositions groups. The persons arrested by the Gestapo were as a rule sent to concentration camps, They were conveyed to the camps in many cases without any care whatever being taken for them, and great numbers died on the way. These who arrived at the camp were subject to systematic cruelty. They were given hard physical labor, inadequate food, clothes and shelter, and were subject at all times to the rigors of a soul-less regime, and the private whims of individuals guards .....
" A certain number cf the concentration camps were equipped with gas chambers for the wholesale destruction of the inmates, and with furnaces for the burning of the bofies. Some of them were in fact used for the extermination of Jews as part of the " final solution" of the Jewish peoples. Most of the non- Jewish inmates were used for labor, although the conditions under which they worked made labor and death almost synonymous terms. Those inmates who became ill and were unable to work were either destroyed in the gas chambers or sent to special infirmaries, where they were given entirely inadequate medical treatment, worse feed if possible than the working inmates, and left to die."
I come new to a very special group of crimes committed in concentration camps under the guise of medical science. Throughout the whole period of the war, medical experiments were performed on thousands of inmates with a wanton disregard for human life. It is an impossible rask for the Prosecution adequately to portray the tortures to which those helpless human beings were subjected.
In these crimes, the WVHA was an essential party to the conspiracy - a conspiracy which embraced leaders of the Military and civilian medical services of the German Riech. It was only through the SS, the WVHA with its control ever concentration camps, that the human experimental material could be obtained. A number of the doctors who performed these criminal experiments are now on trial before Military Tribunal 1, but in this dock sit the man and his confederates who made the human guinea-pigs available to be kept naked for 14 hours in freezing weather, infected with typhus, and the like.
It is unnecessary in this trial to explore the details of the experiments. We will content ourselves with showing that experiments were performed in concentration camps on non-volunteers, that hundred of the subjects died or were severely injured as a result, and that the WVHA had a substantial connection with the commission of such crimes.
As to the involuntary character of the experimental persons, I think there were be little dispute. The defendant Pohl puts it very well in his affidavit of 16 October 1946:
" The WVHA did not set up any basis for the selection of inmates. They were simply picked out and assigned for the experiments. Sometimes Himmler specified that inmates condemned to death, should be used, but this was not always the case and all experimental subjects had not been condemned to death. There was no requirement that the experimental subjects volunteer. We conducted no campaigns in the camps for volunteers, if these doctors were experimenting on volunteers, they need not to have gone to Himmler and the concentration camps. It was for the very reason they could not get volunteer subjects or did not want to take the time and trouble, that they went to Himmler to get him to consent to consent to experiments on concentration camp inmates."
On 4 December 1942, Maurer, Chief of Amt D II of the WVHA directed that prisoners assigned for experimental porposes should be listed as such on the daily roster and that directors of employment should be informed accordingly.