Apart from that, the whole extensive medical organization during the war had to be built up by Dr. Genzken from nothing and under the particularly difficult circumstances caused by war which are sufficiently well known to the high Tribunal. The medical inspectorates of the three Wehrmacht branches could refer back to long years of experience, in the case of army and navy even tens of years. This was not the case in the young arm of the Waffen SS.
For this reason alone it is obvious that the scientific research and planning was not included in Dr. Genzken’s sphere of work, as he repeatedly emphasized during his presentation of evidence and as he underlined by the presentation of affidavits. (Genzken 3, Genzken Ex. 12; Genzken 5, Genzken Ex. 13; Genzken 6, Genzken Ex. 10; Genzken 8, Genzken Ex. 11; Genzken 9, Genzken Ex. 9; Genzken 15, Genzken Ex. 16.)
But Dr. Genzken did not even have the time to concern himself seriously with scientific matters. That was only natural. His most pressing worries were to organize newly the medical services of the Waffen SS as regards personnel and material and to look after it continuously. His position brought with it a considerable responsibility in the whole province of medical services of the Waffen SS by establishing new medical units, equipping of new hospitals so that he had no time left for any other work. It has become absolutely clear during this trial that scientific research and planning was the task of the Reich Physician SS. May I point out in this connection that all the experiments which were discussed in this trial can be traced back almost without exception to Himmler’s and Grawitz’ own initiative. Whether they were high altitude and cooling experiments or typhus and sulfanilamide experiments, all of them were started by one of Himmler’s or Grawitz’ orders. This fact is still more underlined by Document 002-PS, Prosecution Exhibit 39. It is, as it says there literally, concerned with the taking over of research work by the Reich Physician SS, Grawitz. The latter had asked at the end of 1942 that 53 officers be allotted to him for scientific research work. In the whole document, which consists of several reports of the Reich Ministry of Finance and the Reich Physician, the scientific research work in the whole of the medical sphere is mentioned again and again as directed and ordered by the Reich Physician. Even though the application was rejected, later on the lack of typhus vaccine gave, for example, Dr. Grawitz the opportunity to establish, with Himmler’s authorization, an experimental station for typhus research in the Buchenwald concentration camp as his first own scientific institute.
Grawitz has also frequently emphasized to the defendant Mrugowsky that he alone was competent for the research and planning tasks in the medical branch within the SS, and that Dr. Genzken had nothing to do with it. (Genzken 1, Genzken Ex. 3.)
That Dr. Genzken was never interested in the activity and the sphere of work of the Reich Physician, nor even tried to be given these tasks, follows from the fact that in 1941 Himmler chose Dr. Genzken to became Grawitz’ successor. When Genzken’s superior officer, the Chief of the SS Operational Main Office [Fuehrungshauptamt] Juettner, informed him about this request, he at once rejected it energetically, as he preferred to remain in the medical service of the troops and as he thought himself not suitable for scientific research. (Genzken 15, Genzken Ex. 16.)
Dr. Genzken during his interrogation gave the Court a detailed description of the entire staff available to him for the completion of his duties. He expressly pointed out that in the entire organization of his medical office, no office for scientific research and planning was scheduled, and that therefore, in fact no such office actually existed. (Tr. p. 3796.) This fact is also emphasized by the fact that in the Medical Office of the Waffen SS no group of “consulting physicians” existed as specialists for the various specialized branches of medical science. (Genzken 18, Genzken Ex. 17.)
Further, at the end of August 1943, important changes in the form of the organization were effected by order of Himmler, so that by way of a clinical and organizational concentration of the entire medical services of the SS, Dr. Genzken had to turn over his entire pharmaceutical equipment and hygiene institutes, as well as four office chiefs to the office of the Reich Physician SS and Police. Thereby these institutes were under the sole supervision and responsibility of the Reich Physician from this time onwards.
It must be emphasized that Dr. Genzken himself never was in the foreground as a scientist.
During the First World War he was in the navy and concerned with the organization of the medical services for submarines, then he was for 15 years a general practitioner in a small town, was then occupied with organizational duties in the Reichswehr Ministry, and then with similar duties in the Waffen SS; he never held a chair or a professorship and did not have the honorary title of “Professor”.
As in the course of the trial the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS was often connected with the experiments, may I be allowed to point out the following: