_CROSS-EXAMINATION_
MR. MCHANEY: Let us pass on, General. Your attorney asked you whether or
not you ever gained any information concerning the freezing experiments
carried out by Rascher, Holzloehner, and Finke. Do you deny that you
ever received knowledge on that matter?
DEFENDANT HANDLOSER: I said, no.
Q. As a result of the Eastern campaign weren’t you very much interested
in “Cold” problems?
A. Yes.
Q. Isn’t that why you sent army officers to the Luftwaffe conference in
October 1942?
A. Of course the interest in cold problems was of an important nature. I
do not know who assigned them. From May until the end of October I was
with headquarters in the Ukraine and I believe that the chief probably
telephoned me as to whether or how many people we should send, and he
may have made some proposal, and I think I would have told him on that
occasion “Yes, I am in full agreement. Send somebody there.” It is quite
a matter of course that we took people who knew something about cold
because they were the people who would be interested in it.
Q. Well, having sent them, you then immediately lost interest in the
problem, I suppose?
A. No, I did not lose interest. At some period of time somebody probably
reported to me whether something particular had happened or whether
there were any particular results or not, and what could be exploited by
us. But, at that time there was no mention of anything in particular
having occurred, nor was it said that any particular revolutionary
results were achieved. At any rate, I cannot recollect that anything
like that happened. I should merely like to point out that my interest
in cold problems was in our particular sphere of these problems, that is
the so-called earth-bound cold, at normal height or at the most in the
mountains where it concerned soldiers in mountain troops. That was
something which we discussed during various meetings, at first in 1942;
it was discussed to a great extent, and very exact directives were
contained in the reports of these meetings. You will find them in 1942
and you will find them in 1943. Naturally we were interested in cold
problems, and it is quite a matter of course that whenever we were
invited by the Luftwaffe to send our experts we did. The same thing is
done everywhere, not only in the army and in the field of medicine, but
in technical fields as well.
Q. Well, I thought that was probably correct, General; now I want to put
it to you that Holzloehner had made a very remarkable discovery and one
which I am sure came to your attention. Holzloehner and Rascher had
found out that this massive warm bath was an extremely effective way of
reviving persons from shock due to long exposure to cold, a treatment
which had been first discovered by a Russian in the 19th century but had
been forgotten somehow. Wasn’t this a matter remarkable enough so that
Schreiber, who was at this meeting, or one of the many other army
doctors who were down there, would perhaps call it to your attention,
after the extreme cold you had suffered in Russia the previous winter?
A. I said already before that we were always interested in cold problems
and as you say, very correctly, mainly because of this terrible winter
of 1941-42. I knew before that our regulations which were valid up to
the war and perhaps during the first year of the war, stated that people
who were frozen had to be rewarmed very slowly. The entire population
was informed that a frozen person should not be rewarmed too quickly.
Even before that we included in our regulations that one should
concentrate on rewarming, and certain forms of rewarming were described.
If we army people who knew the Russian front were not as impressed by
this warm bath, as you may think we were, it was probably because there
were no warm baths available along the entire Eastern front, and this
plays quite a large part in the impression any new invention may have
made on us.
Q. Well, now, General, let me put it to you this way. Did you make any
changes in the basic directives concerning the rewarming after shock
from exposure to cold after this Luftwaffe conference or after the
conference in December 1942?
A. If you look through the reports of the meetings and the directives it
is quite possible that somewhere, I can’t tell you exactly where
although I have it, something is said about warm or hot baths in regard
to freezing. You yourself brought to our knowledge again, through a
document, that in December 1942, that is, after Nuernberg, Holzloehner
spoke about his rewarming questions during a conference in the Academy.
That was reported to 300 or 400 men who transferred that information to
the front and I am sure that later on new directives contained
information about the warm bath, too.
Q. I am sure it did, too, General. That is the reason I asked you
because I think that there is no doubt that great importance was
attached to the results of this experiment in Dachau by Rascher,
Holzloehner, and Finke. I now want to ask you if you didn’t actually
hear Holzloehner speak in December 1942 at the meeting of consulting
physicians at the Military Medical Academy?
A. I cannot recollect that, and I must say once more that that is
something which was done within the various expert branches. I am sure
you will see that these expert branches dealt with these suggestions
themselves. However much one so desires, it is not possible to
participate in several expert branches simultaneously.
Q. Well, then, to put it to you, General, this speech by Holzloehner is
reported in our Document NO-922, Prosecution Exhibit 435, and it goes
on—you have a very short synopsis here of his report but he does give
clinical observations in cases of deaths resulting from cold, and I find
that you made some comments at this cold session on page 51 of the
original report. It reads:
“Handloser stresses the extraordinary importance of education
also in combating cold effects and appeals to all medical
officers, in their capacity as leaders of the health service, to
see to it that through frequently repeated explanations each
individual is taught to observe the necessary precautionary
measures.”
A. May I ask you where it is? Is it with reference to the lecture by
Holzloehner? At any rate, it seems to be within the framework of the
cold problem.
Q. General, I will put the German to you so that you can see for
yourself. General, let us read the little summary of the speech by
Holzloehner because the Tribunal does not have this document before it.
It reads:
“Stabsarzt Professor Holzloehner:
“Prevention and Treatment of Freezing
“In case of freezing in water of a temperature below 15°
biological counter-measures are practically ineffective, whether
in the case of human beings or animals. Human beings succumb to
reflectory rigidity, increase of blood sugar, and acidosis, at
an earlier stage and to a greater extent than animals. At a
rectal temperature of below 30° under such conditions of
distress at sea auricular flutter regularly sets in; at under
28° heart failure frequently occurs in human beings.
(Over-exertion due to unequal distribution of blood, increased
resistance, and increased viscosity.) Treatment with drugs is
senseless and has no effect. In the case of human beings, best
results are also achieved with hot baths. The foam-suit was
developed as a prophylaxis against freezing in water below 15°.”
Now, General, after that little summary of the talk by Holzloehner there
were several other lecturers on freezing problems and then at the end we
have the gentlemen who made some comments on these lectures; we find
among them Bremer, Dr. Hippke, the man who commissioned these
experiments, and Jarisch and Buechner. Now I want to ask you if this
document refreshes your recollection so that you can tell us whether or
not you heard this report by Holzloehner.
A. Yes, after reading what I have in my hand now, it is quite possible
that I listened to this lecture. At the same time, it is a proof that I
have not as good a memory as you assumed, because I already had this
document in my hands once before here in Nuernberg; you once gave it to
me and I forgot about it.
Q. Now, did Holzloehner describe clinical observations about human
deaths resulting from cold in this lecture which you heard?
A. I cannot tell you that.
Q. Does it not say so in your own report here?
A. It says here that Holzloehner belonged to the Luftwaffe and as far as
I was informed later, Holzloehner had gained a large amount of
experience from his service on the Atlantic Coast. I am sure that was
something which was mentioned during his lecture. He had an emergency
sea station near the Atlantic coast and near that there was a hospital
where he treated these frozen people who had been rescued from the sea.
There was no cause to suspect anything special behind this.
Q. Was it apparent to you that he carried out experiments on human
beings?
A. No.
Q. Well, General, we have heard some testimony here about the talk
Holzloehner gave in Nuernberg 2 months before this and, as I recall,
there was some indignation in this meeting in October 1942, because all
these gentlemen realized what had happened; are you telling me that no
rumor of this seeped up from Nuernberg to Berlin in 2 months, so when
the same man gave the same talk, you gentlemen were in complete
ignorance about the fact that these experiments had been carried out on
living human beings in a concentration camp?
A. I cannot say how far any discussions or any indignations were noted
in Nuernberg. At any rate, I never heard anything about any rejection or
any indignation. I could well imagine that if I were to hold a lecture
somewhere and I afterwards gained the impression that there was some
kind of obscurity, or some particular sensation, and if 2 months later,
I gave the same lecture at another place, I would naturally change my
lecture and would draw my conclusions from what I had learned
previously. I am sure that this might well have been the case here. At
any rate after reading this excerpt, if a few pages are missing here and
if one doesn’t look at the pages exactly, one must assume that the man
noted down here as Handloser spoke immediately after the lecture of
Holzloehner. I believe that the report of the meeting itself will show
you that a few other lectures took place between the lecture of
Holzloehner and the discussion. You will also have to admit that
considering the fact that we were approaching winter again (this meeting
took place in December 1942) my remarks did not refer so much to
Professor Holzloehner’s lecture, but were merely a reminder that we
wanted to do everything and in that way wanted to concentrate our entire
interest on the front where freezing took place in order to help our
soldiers. That is all this discussion was.
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