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
And so the infernal drama was played just as it had been conceived in
the minds of the authors. Special problems which confronted the German
military or civilian authorities were, on the orders of the medical
leaders, submitted for solution in the concentration camps. Thus we find
Karl Brandt stimulating the epidemic jaundice experiments, Schroeder
demanding “40 healthy experimental subjects” for the sea-water
experiments, Handloser providing the impetus for Ding’s fearful typhus
researches, and Milch and Hippke at the root of the freezing
experiments. Under Himmler’s authority, the medical leaders of the
SS—Grawitz, Genzken, Gebhardt, and others—set the wheels in motion.
They arranged for the procurement of victims through other branches of
the SS, and gave directions to their underlings in the SS medical
service such as Hoven and Fischer. Himmler’s administrative assistants,
Sievers and Rudolf Brandt, passed on the Himmler orders, gave a push
here and a shove there, and kept the machinery oiled. Blome and Brack
assisted from the side of the civilian and party authorities.
The Wehrmacht provided supervision and technical assistance for those
experiments in which it was most interested. A low-pressure chamber was
furnished for the high-altitude tests, the services of Weltz, Ruff,
Romberg, and Rascher for the high-altitude and freezing experiments, and
those of Becker-Freyseng, Schaefer, and Beiglboeck for sea-water. In the
important but sinister typhus researches, the eminent Dr. Rose appeared
for the Luftwaffe to give expert guidance to Ding.
The proper steps were taken to insure that the results were made
available to those who needed to know. Annual meetings of the consulting
physicians of the Wehrmacht held under Handloser’s direction were
favored with lectures on some of the experiments. The report on the
high-altitude experiment was sent to Field Marshal Milch, and a moving
picture about them was shown at the Air Ministry in Berlin. Weltz spoke
on the effects of freezing at a medical conference in Nuernberg, the
same symposium at which Rascher and others passed on their devilish
knowledge.
There could, we submit, be no clearer proof of conspiracy. This was the
medical service of the Third Reich at work. Among the defendants in the
box sit the surviving leaders of that service. We will ask the Tribunal
to determine that neither scientific eminence nor superficial
respectability shall shield them against the fearful consequences of the
orders they gave.
I intend to pass very briefly over matters of medical ethics, such as
the conditions under which a physician may lawfully perform a medical
experiment upon a person who has voluntarily subjected himself to it, or
whether experiments may lawfully be performed upon criminals who have
been condemned to death. This case does not present such problems. No
refined questions confront us here.
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