Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IVarious
Philosophy
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume I
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
A. No. It was more to get to know the subjects personally. The situation
was this: in the discussion with the camp commandant on the basis of the
agreement with Rascher and his authorization from Himmler, a very
definite agreement had been reached to the effect that these people were
to be selected from the volunteers. Therefore, a clear agreement had
been reached on the conditions, about which there could be no doubts
basically. When I met the subjects for the first time personally and
talked to them about the principle of the experiments and their duties,
and so forth, of course I also inquired why they had volunteered—not
because of any distrust of the camp commandant, but just for that
reason.
Q. You thought, accordingly, that they were volunteers?
A. I didn’t only think they were. They told me so themselves.
Q. How do you know that so definitely for each case?
A. In the course of time—not on the first day but in the course of
time—I talked to all of them frequently in some detail, and gradually
they told me about their previous convictions and what other prisons and
penitentiaries they had been in before they came to the camp, and they
also told me the reasons why they had volunteered.
Q. Do you mean to say that all the experimental subjects used for the
high-altitude experiments were volunteers?
A. Yes.
Q. Now before these subjects entered the chamber did you prepare them
for what they had to do and tell them the significance of the whole
thing?
A. Yes, of course. First I explained the whole question to them in broad
outline, so that they would know what it was about and what the purpose
of the experiment was. In detail I told them specifically what they had
to do in the experiments. There was the writing test during which they
had to write numbers from 1,000 backwards; then the cardinal point was
that after the altitude sickness during the experiments, as soon as they
came to, they had to pull the rip cord. We had a handle in the chamber
connected to a bell. This was to represent pulling the rip cord of the
parachute. This had to be explained to them carefully, otherwise they
wouldn’t have understood it and wouldn’t have reacted correctly.
Q. Now, before the experiments began, did you have an electrocardiogram
of each separate subject?
A. Yes and again later on.
Q. Please explain that.
A. Rascher had first examined the people to see if they were suitable
for the experiments, so there would be no heart defects or anything like
that. Then in order to get an exact control, before the beginning of the
experiments we took an electrocardiogram of all the subjects. In almost
all the experiments the electrocardiograms were registered and at the
end, when the experiments were finished, we took another
electrocardiogram of all the subjects in order to have material because
perhaps even if there was no visible injury, there might still be some
effects which could only be determined by such tests.
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