“I asked him,” speaking of Rascher, “how he would be able to obtain such persons for experimentation, and he justified himself by saying that he had connections with the SS who had charge of such penal prisoners. There were such penal prisoners in Dachau and he would be in a position to obtain them for these purposes. I myself, because of my inner personal feelings on the matter, was very much against these experiments and could not make up my mind whether I should approve such experimentation.”
From the very beginning of the plan to conduct these experiments, Dr. Hippke had strong mental reservations concerning the moral principles involved in the task which the Luftwaffe doctors were about to undertake. During the coming year Hippke weighed the problem, and it was with some misgiving that he finally allowed his doctors to begin the experiments, saying to them: “Please, children, go carefully.”
But, tragically enough, his “children” did not go carefully. Instead, they ran amuck with their scientific apparatus and tests. The pressure experiments which were supposed to have been helpful to fliers of the Luftwaffe degenerated into so-called “X-experiments”, which meant “execution” experiments.
Seventy to eighty persons were murdered during the spring and summer of 1942 when the pressure experiments were carried on at Dachau.
During the subsequent freezing experiments a comparable number of concentration camp inmates forfeited their lives to the sadistic Dr. Rascher and his Luftwaffe associates.
Dr. Romberg himself admits having seen three persons die in the low-pressure chamber and concedes that at least nine other deaths may well have occurred when he was absent from his post at Dachau.
Wolfram Sievers,[[145]] the manager of the Ahnenerbe, the SS Research Institute, witnessed the death of an experimental subject in the freezing tank.
There is adequate evidence that the low-pressure and freezing experiments were carried out by Luftwaffe physicians for the benefit of the Luftwaffe. There has been no valid denial of the fact that the defendant was the Luftwaffe official responsible for the deaths and cruelties suffered in these twin torture chambers, the pressure chamber and the freezing tank.
Now, let us examine in more detail the second basic charge of the prosecution, namely, that the defendant was officially connected with these experiments which violated the laws of war and humanity.
We have the “Wolffy” letter of 20 May 1942 in which the defendant tells Obergruppenfuehrer Wolff of the SS that “the altitude experiments carried out by the SS and the Luftwaffe at Dachau have been finished.” In this same letter Milch announces that experiments in connection with perils on the high seas would be important; that the necessary arrangements have been made and, since the low-pressure chamber is no longer needed, it must be moved from Dachau. Thus the defendant has entered the picture and established his official connection with the high-altitude experiments and the low-temperature experiments, which proved to be considerably more than mere harmless chilling tests.