be moved at wilclass="underline" Sauerbruch had experimented with this artificial hand notably on Italian officers and soldiers during the invasion of Abyssinia after October 1935 (when Ethiopians took prisoners, it was not unusual for them to cut off right hands). Source: Pierre Kehr, surgeon in Strasbourg, former assistant of Adolphe Jung.
self-importance or even vanity: Sauerbruch bore the illustrious title of “court privy councilor” (Geheimer Hofrat or Geheimrat, a distinction presented to him at the royal court of Bavaria before World War I), and that of “Prussian councilor of state,” presented by Göring in 1934. At the annual NSDAP congress in Munich in 1937, he had received the highest political-scientific distinction of the Nazi regime, the “National Prize,” conceived by Hitler as an alternative to the Nobel Prize (which the Nazis hated since it had been attributed in 1936 to the dissident journalist Carl von Ossietzky). During the Second World War, Sauerbruch was appointed “doctor general of the armies” (beginning in 1942).
unions—his hemorrhoids: Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Mes souvenirs de chirurgien, French translation (Paris, 1952).
in the Reich chancellery: “At the time of Hitler’s first battles in Munich, Sauerbruch had endeavored, without paying attention to Hitler’s political aims, to do only his duty to him as a doctor, without becoming involved in the struggles of the new regime, which he did not approve in any way. Hitler is supposed to have said to him at the time: ‘As long as I live, nothing will happen to you.’” Adolphe Jung, unpublished notebooks written in Berlin during the war (Frank and Marie-Christine Jung collection, Strasbourg).
in the concentration camps: Sauerbruch was head of the prestigious Surgery Society of Berlin and of the departments of medicine of the highest scientific research bodies in the Reich. At an interrogation in a de-Nazification proceeding in April 1949, he indicated that he knew nothing of medical experiments in the concentration camps. “I only did my duty as a doctor and a soldier,” he said. But it now seems that Sauerbruch allowed the performance, without opposing them, of some of the worst medical experiments of the century. Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Mythos Sauerbruch,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2000. See also Notker Hammerstein, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1999).
of speech and action: “A great doctor like him is one of the few persons to remain entirely free. He can permit himself many things impossible for others.” Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, reprinted 1997.
the biologist Eugen Fischer: Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) was head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of “anthropology, studies of heredity, and eugenics.” He was one of the most important theoreticians of the racial doctrines from which the Nazis drew their inspiration.
General Ludwig Beck: Ludwig Beck (1880–1944) was at the center of all the circles opposed to the regime. He was to be closely associated with the preparation of the attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944. Proposed as head of state in the event the putsch succeeded, he committed suicide when he learned of its failure.
invasion of Czechoslovakia: The meetings of the Wednesday Club took place on one or two Wednesdays each month. Each of the members played host in turn. The purpose of the association, according to by-laws dating from 1863, was to foster “scientific discussion” among a few figures of the first rank of all disciplines. The sixteen members of the club were exclusively male, chosen on the basis of cooptation, “independently of their personal orientations.” See Klaus Scholder, Die Mittwochsgesellschaft (Berlin, 1982).
Chapter 4
Prussia, September 18, 1941 : Fritz Kolbe was sent on a mission to Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia (Wolfsschanze, the “wolf’s lair”) from September 18 to 29, 1941. Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.
Ambassador Karl Ritter: Fritz Kolbe was appointed private secretary (Vorzimmermann) to this high ministry official in 1940. Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Karl Ritter (1883–1968) had been an official at the Foreign Ministry since 1924. He had been in charge of the department of economic affairs (Wirtschaftsabteilung). In July 1937, he had been appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.
Ministry since the 1930s: In the Almanach de Gotha of 1935, we find that Karl Ritter is in charge of “the national economy and reparations policy” in the “Foreign Office of the Reich.”
“ambassador on speical mission,”: In German: Botschafter z. b. V. (zur besonderen Verwendung). After the war, Ritter claimed that he had agreed to work for Ribbentrop in 1939 on condition of not being involved in the “routine” of the ministry. He said that he had been a “free electron.” Source: interrogation of Karl Ritter for the Nuremberg tribunal, July 24, 1947 (U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Hans Jürgen Döscher collection, Osnabrück) Karl Ritter and Friedrich-Wilhelm Gaus (the ministry’s chief lawyer), were, according to Fritz Kolbe, the only two diplomats in the ministry to “have permanent and unlimited access to Joachim von Ribbentrop.” Source: conversations of Fritz Kolbe with the De Witt C. Poole commission (September 26, 1945), National Archives.
away from the ministry: Karl Ritter was always with the foreign minister, whether at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia or at Fuschl castle near Salzburg. Boston document no. 469, National Archives.
dangerous pro-Nazi agitator: This expulsion took place after a failed putsch by the “Integralists,” a Brazilian fascist movement drawn to the Third Reich and very strongly supported by a Nazi Party cell based in the German embassy with the full agreement of Karl Ritter.
return from South Africa: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.
“highest circles of power!”: Ibid.
its content for Ritter: Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.
wrote a few years later: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.
went to the opera: Karl Ritter was present at major German social events. He was on board the first transatlantic flight of the Hindenburg in May 1936, the famous zeppelin that crashed tragically a year later not far from New York. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.
didn’t like him either: Karl Ritter was considered a little too lukewarm an anti-Semite. During the Weimar Republic he had wanted to marry a young woman from the Jewish Ullstein family, one of the largest newspaper publishers in Berlin. In addition, he was never a member of the SS, unlike many high officials in the ministry.