On the subject of French prisoners of war, the defendant said—
“Don’t forget that not even 1,000,000 Frenchmen are here as PW’s while we have 7 to 8 million soldiers. Therefore, the French are still in a very favorable position. But they must realize that they will be brought to Germany all together if they don’t work hard enough at home.” (T-2198.)
As Vichy was working hand in glove with Berlin at the time, the defendant contends that coercion was not involved since it was the French Government who had issued the orders for this movement.
Addressing himself on another occasion to the subject of French workers, the defendant stated, “There is no good will in France, and you can really not expect it from these fellows. But we will force them to work by not feeding them.” Goering then said, “I can do this here much better.” And Milch replied, “That will get us nowhere. We shall then have to shut down the plants in France.” (NOKW-245.)
At the GL meeting of 27 May 1942, von Gablenz reported, “Yesterday, the first[[164]] has exploded in France, at the Arado plant, an explosive, a float, but no damage has been done.” Milch commented, “What measures have been taken in consequence? I want to have a report on what has been done—How many people have been shot and how many hanged. If that guy cannot be found today, fifty men should be selected and if I were you I would hang three or four of them whether they are guilty or not. It is the only way!” (NOKW-407.)
IV. MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
(a) High-Altitude Tests
On 15 May 1941, Dr. Rascher, medical officer in the Luftwaffe and member of the SS stationed at Munich, wrote Heinrich Himmler asking that Himmler furnish to him two or three professional criminals to be used as subjects in high-altitude experiments. He stated that tests had been made with monkeys, but since their reactions differed from those of human beings, he preferred to work with live men, it being understood that these individuals could, of course, die in the experiment. Himmler replied through his adjutant, Rudolf Brandt, that he would gladly make prisoners available for such high-altitude research, and authorized that the experiments be carried out by Dr. Rascher, a Dr. Kottenhoff, and Dr. G. A. Weltz, who was Chief of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Munich.
In March 1942, with a low-pressure chamber furnished by the Luftwaffe, the experiments began at Dachau. The apparatus used for these tests was simply a wood and metal cabinet in which air pressure could be increased and decreased, the purpose of the tests being to ascertain the subject’s capacity and ability to take large amounts of pure oxygen, and to observe his reaction to a gradual decrease of oxygen approaching infinity. In this manner high-altitude atmospheric pressure would be simulated, and from the results the experimenters were to be able to determine methods and means of maintaining and saving lives among aviators compelled to rise to extreme altitudes, and at times because of war hazards obliged to parachute to the earth. The subjects for these experiments were to be individuals already sentenced to death.
Stated in strictly academic fashion, one could without too much difficulty be persuaded that these experiments were not entirely irrational or inhuman. The subjects were to die anyway, and if in dying they could furnish scientific data not obtainable otherwise, data which would save the lives of others, the project would not seem as criminally homicidal as it might appear when stated bluntly that experimenters would kill experimentees.