Discipline was constantly tightened. Hoess was still at Sachsenhausen when Himmler paid a visit unannounced during January 1940. He complained bitterly that a working party of prisoners and their guards had failed either to recognize him or salute when he had passed them in his car, and as a result of this incident the Commandant was dismissed. Six months later, in June 1940, Hoess was to be promoted Commandant of Himmler’s new camp at Auschwitz.
The fact that a million men and women existed in the camps at Himmler’s mercy led in the first place to the organized medical experiments which, though practised on a relatively limited scale, seem more horrifying than the act of extermination itself. That some 350 qualified doctors (one doctor in every 300 then practising in Germany) should have been prepared to take active part in this fearful misuse of the bodies of helpless men and women seems a greater degradation of humanity than the spectacle of Hoess, the ex-criminal Commandant of Auschwitz, faithfully obeying his orders beside the gas-chambers.
At a trial known as the Doctors’ Case and held before a Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from December 1946 to July 1947, twenty-three of these doctors were permitted to defend themselves before the court. The majority of the experiments undertaken by the doctors at the direct instigation of Himmler were in fact calculated murder under the guise of collecting medical data, and most of them meant the infliction of indescribable agonies on the patients. At their trial, the representative doctors who were accused of having done these things mustered their great excuse — the doctrine of obedience: ‘At that time I was Rascher’s subordinate. He was a staff surgeon of the Luftwaffe’ — and the doctrine of war, ‘the absolute necessity of victory in order to eliminate evil elements’. A professor who worked on the typhus vaccine experiments at Natzweiler defended his actions through which ninety-seven prisoners died by citing a single loss of life that had occurred among a group of men under sentence of death who had volunteered in America to assist in experiments to trace the cause of beri-beri fever.
Himmler’s direct participation in this most cruel work is proved by surviving letters and memoranda.17 The principal experiments occurred during the period 1941—4. They began, as we have seen, with Himmler giving his consent as early as 1939 for the use of prisoners to test mustard gas and phosgene, tests which were later to be conducted by a Professor of Anatomy who held an officer’s rank in the S.S. These experiments were directly associated with Himmler’s Institute for Research and Study of Heredity, the Ahnenerbe, which was directed by Wolfram Sievers, a former bookseller, who on Himmler’s orders in July 1942 set up an Institute for Practical Research in Military Science as a department of Ahnenerbe. Sievers wrote to Hirt: ‘The Reichsführer S.S. would like to hear more details from you at an early date about your mustard-gas experiments … Could you not some day write a brief, secret report?’ These tests involved the infliction of burns on the victim’s body which spread from day to day and often led to blindness and death. Post-mortem examination revealed that the intestines and lungs were eaten away.
Dr Sigmund Rascher, a former staff surgeon of the Luftwaffe and an officer in the S.S., had no difficulty in May 1941 in obtaining from Himmler, who had sent him flowers on the birth of his second son, the favour of having certain prisoners put at his disposal for his low-pressure, high-altitude experiments which, as he warned the Reichsführer S.S., would involve the risk of death. ‘I can inform you that prisoners will, of course, be gladly made available for the highflight researches’, wrote Rudolf Brandt, Himmler’s secretary. There were additional reasons for Himmler’s interest in the doctor. Rascher’s mistress, who was fifteen years older than her lover, claimed she had given birth to three children after her forty-eighth year; she was also a personal friend of Marga Himmler. There were, it is true, certain racial difficulties in her ancestry which had prevented her marriage until Himmler intervened to clear the way for her, and he willingly became the godfather of Rascher’s remarkable offspring.
Rascher’s experiments, nominally undertaken on behalf of the Luftwaffe, took place mainly during 1942 at Dachau, and Rascher sent reports on their outcome to Himmler; the reactions of the men placed in the Luftwaffe’s low-pressure chambers loaned to Dachau were filmed. In all, nearly 200 men were submitted to these experiments, and over seventy died as a result. Both the reports and photographs survive and were used in evidence during the various trials at Nuremberg. Himmler’s direct personal interest in the experiments is proved by his notorious letter to Rascher dated 13 April 1942:
‘The latest discoveries made in your experiments have specially interested me… Experiments are to be repeated on other men condemned to death… Considering the long-continued action of the heart, the experiments should be specifically developed so as to determine whether these men can be revived. Should such an experiment succeed, then the person condemned to death shall of course be pardoned and sent to a concentration camp for life.’
Himmler’s enthusiasm proved in the end, like Rascher’s, to be that of an amateur. The experiments were considered useless in the eyes of doctors more expert than Rascher, including Himmler’s own medical adviser, Professor Gebhardt, who considered the reports ‘completely unscientific’. The low-pressure chamber was eventually withdrawn from Dachau in March 1942 in spite of Rascher’s strenuous opposition. During the Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg, a doctor who was accused of assisting Rascher in his experiments but found not guilty, was asked whether he had any scruples about them. He replied: ‘I had no scruples on legal grounds. For I knew that the man who had officially authorized these experiments was Himmler… Consequently, I had no scruples of any kind in that direction. In the sphere of what one may call medical ethics it was rather different. It was a wholly new experience for us all to be offered persons to experiment on… I had to get used to the idea.’ He satisfied himself that experiments of this kind had happened abroad, and that sufficed. Rascher, on the other hand, wrote to Himmler: ‘Your active interest in these experiments has a tremendous influence on one’s working capacity and initiative.’
In August Rascher, under the supervision of a medical specialist began a second series of tests; these concerned the effects of freezing on the human body and they were considered useful because German pilots were often precipitated into the sea. The experiments were supposed to determine how men subjected to extreme cold could be revived. At the Doctors’ Trial, another of the accused who was found not guilty, gave evidence of a conversation he had had with Himmler:
DEFENCE COUNSEL: Did Himmler say anything more about supercooling experiments at this meeting?
DEFENDANT: Yes. He began by saying that the experiments were of the greatest importance to the Army, Air Force and Fleet. He talked at great length about such tests and how they should be conducted… He added that country people often knew excellent remedies which had long proved their worth, such as teas brewed from medicinal herbs… Such popular remedies should by no means be overlooked. He said he could also well imagine that a fisherman’s wife might take her half-frozen husband to bed with her after he had been rescued and warm him up that way… He told Rascher he must certainly experiment in that direction as well…