c. Evidence
_Defense Documents_
Doc. No. Def. Ex. No. Description of Document Page Becker-Freyseng Becker-Freyseng Extracts from Harper’s 65 31 Ex. 18 Magazine entitled “Secrets by the Thousand” by C. Lester Walker.
_Testimony_
Extract from the testimony of defendant Mrugowsky 66 Extracts from the testimony of defendant Rose 69
BECKER-FREYSENG DOCUMENT 31 BECKER-FREYSENG DEFENSE EXHIBIT 18
EXTRACTS FROM HARPER’S MAGAZINE ENTITLED “SECRETS BY THE THOUSAND” BY C. LESTER WALKER
Someone wrote to Wright Field recently saying he understood this country had got together quite a collection of enemy war secrets, that many were now on public sale, and could he, please, be sent everything on German jet engines. The Air Documents Division of the Army Air Force answered: “Sorry—but that would be fifty tons.”
Moreover, that fifty tons was just a small portion of what is today undoubtedly the biggest collection of captured enemy war secrets ever assembled. If you always thought of war secrets—as who hasn’t—as coming in sixes and sevens, as a few items of information readily handed on to the properly interested authorities, it may interest you to learn that the war secrets in this collection run into the thousands, that the mass of documents is mountainous, and that there has never before been anything quite comparable to it.
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One Washington official has called it “the greatest single source of this type of material in the world—the first orderly exploitation of an entire country’s brainpower”.
How the collection came to be goes back, for beginnings, to one day in 1944 when the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff set in motion a colossal search for war secrets in occupied German territory. They created a group of military-civilian teams, termed the Joint Intelligence Objectives Committee, which was to follow the invading armies into Germany and uncover all her military, scientific, and industrial secrets for early use against Japan. These teams worked against time to get the most vital information before it was destroyed, and in getting it performed prodigies of ingenuity and tenacity.
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III
In matters of food, medicine, and branches of the military art, the finds of the search teams were no less impressive. And in aeronautics and guided missiles they proved to be downright alarming.
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“As for medical secrets in this collection”, one Army surgeon has remarked, “some of them will save American medicine years of research; some of them are revolutionary—like, for instance, the German technique of treatment after prolonged and usually fatal exposure to cold.”
This discovery—revealed to us by Major Alexander’s search already mentioned—reversed everything medical science thought about the subject. In every one of the dread experiments the subjects were most successfully revived, both temporarily and permanently, by immediate immersion in hot water. In two cases of complete standstill of heart and cessation of respiration, a hot bath at 122° brought both subjects back to life. Before our war with Japan ended, this method was adopted as the treatment for use by all American Air-Sea Rescue Services, and it is generally accepted by medicine today.
EXTRACT FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT MRUGOWSKY[18]
_DIRECT EXAMINATION_
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DR. FLEMMING: I further submit an excerpt from the testimony of Generalarzt Dr. Schreiber which he made on 26 August 1946 before the International Military Tribunal. This can be found in the transcript of the International Military Tribunal for that date. This is Mrugowsky Document 27. I offer it as Mrugowsky Exhibit 45. Answering the question, “What scientific value did the experiments [typhus experiments in Buchenwald] of the specialist Ding have”? Generalarzt Dr. Schreiber answered, “In my opinion they had no scientific value at all because during the war we had already gained much experience and collected a great deal of data in this field. We were thoroughly acquainted with the composition and qualities of our vaccine and no such tests were required any longer. Many of the vaccines examined by Ding were not used any more at all and were rejected.”
Would you define your position to that statement?
DEFENDANT MRUGOWSKY: I do not know how Schreiber could have expressed that opinion, nor do I know whether he is in possession of full knowledge of the results of this work. I never discussed this question with him and I therefore cannot examine it. This much is clear, however, that Schreiber is speaking of a later period of time, for the vaccines that were no longer produced were not produced because the experiments of Ding had proved their inferiority. The epidemiological examination of the various vaccines during the war only originates from a later period, in particular the years 1943 and 1944. The exploitation of these experiences only originates from the last years of the war and it is, therefore, my opinion that this testimony of Schreiber is incorrect.
Q. I am interrupting you and I shall have Handloser Exhibit 14 shown to you. We are here concerned with an excerpt of a scientific thesis by Geheimrat Otto. Do you know Geheimrat Otto?
A. Yes, I know Geheimrat Otto. He is probably the best typhus expert not only in Germany but in Europe, who has dealt with typhus all his life.
Q. From this excerpt you will see that Geheimrat Otto says, still in 1943:
“While the efficacy of lice vaccines has already been tested on a large scale in Poland, Ethiopia, and China, and the vaccine has proved its value, it is still necessary to gather large-scale practical experiences with lung and vitelline membrane vaccines. In animal experiments they have proved of equal value with the former.”
Would you say something on that?
A. Professor Otto says here that even in the year 1943 the vitelline membrane vaccine and the vaccines from lungs of animals were not sufficiently known. That confirms what I have just testified and that is in answer to Dr. Schreiber’s statement.
Q. The witness Bernhard Schmidt, who was interrogated here, stated that human experiments were superfluous for the purpose of testing vaccines and that the value of the individual typhus vaccines could have been ascertained in an epidemiological way. What is your opinion in that connection?
A. This is my opinion also. It is my opinion that these tests could have been carried out in an epidemiological manner. I represented that point of view before Grawitz and Himmler from the very beginning.
Q. You stated yesterday that to test this matter in an epidemiological way, a large number of persons would have had to be vaccinated and compared with a large number of persons who were not vaccinated. Would such a long experiment have been possible considering the circumstances prevailing during the war?
A. Such a test would have been possible. It was actually introduced by me within the framework of the ministry. It is a matter of course, however, that the results can only be collected at a very late date and can only be exploited at a much later date. In the case of the entire experiment we were concerned with bridging over this space of time.
Q. In carrying out this examination one could have found that one vaccine has only a very small effectiveness, as was actually found out in the case of the Behring vaccine. In that case would you say that the mortality of persons vaccinated with the inferior vaccine would have been much greater than the entire amount of fatalities as they occurred in Buchenwald? You know that the statement regarding the fatality figures fluctuated between 100 and 120.
A. That could be assumed to be the case with certainty. A comparison is the manner in which all tests are carried out in this field. I shall give you a few examples for that. When Emil von Behring in the year 1890 discovered the diphtheria serum, it was at first used by a physician of the Berlin Charité in the case of diphtheria-infected children. He treated about 1,200 children suffering from diphtheria with that serum. He registered a mortality rate in the case of these children, in spite of the treatment, of approximately 22 percent. Just as many children did not receive the serum but were treated in a different manner. In this group the mortality rate was double, approximately 44 percent. These 240 or 250 children who died, and who were in that control group could certainly have been saved if they had been given the blessing of that diphtheria serum. But that was in reality the purpose of that test and one had to take into account that a larger ratio of fatalities would result in the group to be compared and that then the value of the serum would be recognized.
Q. I think that this example will suffice. In that case you are really admitting that an objection against experiments in Buchenwald could not be justified?
A. During the war I did not work on any disease as ardently as on typhus. I treated thousands of patients who fell ill with typhus and examined them. I believe that in the case of such an experience one gains some knowledge of the disease. I often considered that question and I hold the opinion that my objection at the time was perhaps not justified by events. On the other hand, it is my opinion that in the case of every task one has to keep the question in mind whether one is in a position to execute that task. I must admit even today that in spite of the success of the experiments, which cannot be denied, I would act similarly in yet another position and would assume the same attitude as I assumed at that time. Even today I would not be prepared to carry out any such experiments personally or have them carried out upon my responsibility, although success undoubtedly would come about.
EXTRACTS FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT ROSE[19]
_DIRECT EXAMINATION_
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DR. FRITZ: What do you know about the reasons for this protest (against experiments) being ignored and the typhus experiments being carried out in spite of it?
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DEFENDANT ROSE: The Buchenwald experiments (with typhus vaccine) had four main results. First of all, they showed that belief in the protective effect of Weigl vaccine was a mistake, although this belief seemed to be based on long observation. Secondly, they showed that the useful vaccines did not protect against infection, but almost certainly prevented death, under the conditions of the Buchenwald experiments. Thirdly, they showed that the objections of the biological experts to the vitelline membrane vaccines and to the lice vaccines were unjustified, and that vitelline membrane, rabbit lungs, and lice intestines were of equal value. We learned this only through the Buchenwald experiments. This left the way open to mass production of typhus vaccines.
The Buchenwald experiments showed in time that several vaccines were useless. First, the process according to Otto and Wohlrab, the process according to Cox, the process of Rickettsia Prowazeki and Rickettsia murina, that is, vaccine from egg cultures; secondly, the vaccines of the Behring works which were produced according to the Otto process, but with other concentrations; finally the Ipsen vaccines from mouse liver. The vaccines of the Behring works were in actual use at that time in thousands of doses. They always represented a danger to health. Without these experiments the vaccines, which were recognized as useless, would have been produced in large quantities because they all had one thing in common: their technical production was much simpler and cheaper than that of the useful vaccines. In any case, one thing is certain, that the victims of this Buchenwald typhus test did not suffer in vain and did not die in vain. There was only one choice, the sacrifice of human lives, of persons determined for that purpose, or to let things run their course, to endanger the lives of innumerable human beings who would be selected not by the Reich Criminal Police Office but by blind fate.
How many people were sacrificed we cannot figure out today; how many people were saved by these experiments we, of course, cannot prove. The individual who owes his life to these experiments does not know it, and he perhaps is one of the accusers of the doctors who assumed this difficult task.
I. Medical Ethics
1. GENERAL PRINCIPLES
a. Introduction
In a case involving the charge that human beings were subjected to medical experiments of many kinds under varying circumstances, it was inevitable that questions of medical ethics became a part of the proof and the argumentation.
The prosecution’s rejoinder to the statement of the defendant Rose appears on page 71. As illustrations of the defense position on medical ethics, extracts have been taken from the final pleas for the defendants Gebhardt and Beiglboeck. These appear on pages 71 to 77. Considerable testimony was given on this question by defendants and by expert witnesses, and appears on pages 77 to 86. Selections from this testimony have been taken from the direct examination of the defendant Rose, the cross-examination of the prosecution witness Professor Werner Leibbrandt, and from the direct examination of the prosecution witness Dr. Andrew C. Ivy.
The judgment of the Tribunal deals at some length with the medical ethics applicable to experimentation on human beings (p. 181 ff.).
b. Selection from the Argumentation of the Prosecution
_EXTRACT FROM THE CLOSING STATEMENT OF THE PROSECUTION_[20]
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In view of the clear and unequivocal proof of the defendant Rose’s participation in the typhus murders of Buchenwald he can only plead that he didn’t enjoy doing what he did, that he objected to the experiments at the Third Meeting of the Consulting Physicians of the Wehrmacht in May 1943. But this is his condemnation, not his salvation. In March 1942 he was in Buchenwald and saw what was being done. In May of the same year he asked Mrugowsky to test a vaccine for him in those experiments. Four inmates were killed as a result. In May 1943, he objected to the experiments in what he describes as strong terms. But in December, he was again instigating still another experiment which resulted in the murder of six men. He is a living example of a man who could have abstained from participating in these crimes without threat of harm to his person or position by any agency of the Nazi Government. He was not arrested and tried by the SS because of his objection. He was not committed to a concentration camp. In spite of that, he voluntarily participated in these same crimes to which he said he objected. With his knowledge, prestige, and position, he is even more culpable than the miserable and inexperienced Ding who actually performed the experiments in the murder wards of Buchenwald.
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