Witness Hartleben, too, took the same point of view during cross-examination. (Tr. p. 3217.) To the question of the prosecutor:
“Would it not have been the task of the Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Service to coordinate the separate research activities in the same field in order to make the most advantageous use of available personnel and material”?
he replied:
“In my opinion the Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Services must in such a case make an investigation; because it is after all the case in science and research that very often it becomes necessary to pursue many different ways in order to arrive at some aspired goal, and the case may occur—and I can imagine it very well—where it is desirable to have several scientists engaged on the same problem * * *.”
Therewith Rostock confirms the defense argument of Handloser on this count. Summing up: The end aspired to by coordination—saving of personnel and material—is incompatible with the very nature of successful research. The order for the coordinating of personnel and material can, therefore, never be applied to the field of research.
Quite another thing is the creation of working groups within the same field of research. The purpose of the creation of such a working group was not to be a saving of personnel and material but mutual information and discussion in order to check how far the individual researchers had advanced by different routes.
Such a measure proposes to counteract the exaggerated secrecy and egotistical withholding of information often noticed in the field of research. Inventors and scholars regard their discoveries as revolutionary. As prototypes of individualism they are intent on keeping the details of their research secret even, or precisely, from other scholars who work in the same field. This fact is aptly characterized in the document submitted by the prosecution. (NO-262, Pros. Ex. 108.) I quote from this letter of the former Chief of the Air Force Medical Service, Dr. Hippke:
“The difficulties exist in quite another field. They are questions involving the vanity of the individual scientists, each and every one of whom wants to obtain all the results of the research individually, and who often can only be brought to altruistic cooperative work with the greatest difficulties.”
The Court will see from this that the creation of working groups in the field of hepatitis research in accordance with the suggestion of Dr. Schreiber at the Breslau Hepatitis Conference in June 1944 had nothing to do with coordination, but that it left the number and the activity of the different scholars engaged in hepatitis research untouched. The Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Service also had in his very limited office staff no department for research. (Tr. pp. 3218, 3224.) Only in the service regulations which became effective on 1 September 1944 (NO-227, Pros. Ex. 11), which however practically never went into effect. (Tr. p. 3140; Handloser 29, Handloser Ex. 4.) Under 14a one of the tasks of the Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Services was mentioned as being the taking of uniform measures in the field of medical science, including the field of research and the fight against disease. However, here, too, it was not a matter of the subordination of the research institutions of the branches of the armed forces but of examining a “problem” whether cooperative work in certain fields of research was feasible. Actually, due to developments since September 1944, coordination in the field of research never took place. The research activities of the different branches of the armed forces as well as of the Waffen SS were and remained independent. What is important in this trial in regard to Handloser’s responsibility is the question whether he as Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Services had any functions in the field of research and if so what they were. He himself has stated and Generalarzt Dr. Hartleben, who had an authoritative part in the drafting of the decree of 1942 (NO-080, Pros. Ex. 5) and of its supplementary service regulations, has declared that the research activities of the branches of the armed forces and of the Waffen SS did not belong to the official department of the Chief of the Armed Forces Medical Services. For the department of research of the Air Force Medical Inspection Service the aforementioned Air Force Medical Inspector Hippke has furnished convincing proof. The prosecution submitted a letter from Hippke of 6 March 1943 to SS Obergruppenfuehrer Wolff (NO-262, Pros. Ex. 108) from which I quote—
“Your opinion that I as responsible head of all research activities in medical science had objected to freezing experiments on human beings and had thereby obstructed the development is erroneous.”