Having previously cajoled and rewarded scientists to research in concentration camps, Himmler authorized most (but not all) concentration camp experiments from 1942. Proposals were fi ltered up to Himmler by Karl Brandt (for hepatitis), Gebhardt (for TB), Grawitz and Pohl (for the SS nutritionist, Schenck). In September 1942 Pohl wrote a manifesto on the need to have massive experiments in concentration camps on poisonous elements in diet, in part to improve soldiers’ diet and in part in preparation for when rationing would end after the war, to ensure that Germans ate healthily. 22 Yet
Pohl became critical of the fi ndings: although they established what was physiologically necessary for survival, the prisoners’ state of nutrition was so different from the frontline German soldiers, and they lacked the morale evident (Pohl thought) among the German active combatants. 23
Pohl, the SS’s chief economic manager through the WVHA, held from March 1942 power over fi nancial resources, buildings, and manpower, including the organization of forced labour. Concentration camp experiments generally (but not always) required his authorization. 24 Working under
Pohl’s WVHA, the physician Enno Lolling had responsibility for medical provision in the concentration camps, as well as for pharmaceutical and sanitary supplies. The priority was the health of camp staff, but there was responsibility for those experiments authorized by Himmler. Lolling’s medical command was under Pohl’s economic offi ce, giving Pohl authority over experiments in terms of access to prisoners and resources. 25
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By November 1942 an internal dispute fl ared in the SS between Grawitz and Sievers over control of the experiments. Grawitz objected to Sievers as a non- physician, whereas Sievers of the SS Ancestral Research Organisation felt that he should have the authority. Originally under the SS Race and Settlement Offi ce, the Ahnenerbe became an independent entity from April 1942. In December 1942 Himmler came out on the side of Grawitz over Sievers. 26 The feuding factionalism intensifi ed within the SS, as the Ahnenerbe
organized an institute for military research; the Waffen-SS had its research tentacles, and the concentration camps under Pohl had a powerful administrative hierarchy controlling resources. Pohl conceded that Himmler would bypass his offi ce and communicate direct with camp commandants. 27
At the same time, researchers had contacts with outside providers of research resources as Ding with IG Farben, and Mengele to Verschuer and other scientists at the KWG. Mengele was fi nanced by the DFG and supported by Verschuer, who reported to the DFG in March 1944, that Mengele supplied ‘scientifi c materials’ from Auschwitz:
My assistant, Dr. Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) has joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer and camp physician in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Anthropological investigations on the most diverse racial groups of this concentration camp are being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]; the blood samples are being sent to my laboratory for analysis. 28
The euthanasia doctor, Schumann worked under the auspices of Viktor Brack of the Chancellery of the Führer to devise an X-ray sterilization procedure. He carried out the assignment, despite his limited understanding of radiology and reproductive medicine. Brack’s status meant that Himmler handled the correspondence concerning the X-ray sterilizations personally, and that accordingly Reichsarzt-SS Grawitz was only marginally involved. 29
Although Karl Brandt as Hitler’s protégé and a rising star in the administration of sanitary matters and in the co- ordination of research held rank within the SS, this mattered far less than other allegiances. As professor on the Berlin medical faculty, he had a network of academic advisers as Gutzeit and the fellow surgeon Paul Rostock, who was dean of the faculty. Karl Brandt’s hazy powers from 28 July 1942 as the Führer’s General Commissioner over Health and Sanitation – with the aim of co- ordinating civilian and military health – were greater in theory than reality. Brandt, at loggerheads with Conti, tended to collaborate with Grawitz – as when Himmler approved the hepatitis experiments. Followed by Grawitz’s request to Himmler on 1 June 1943, Himmler approved experiments on eight criminals specifi ed as Jews under death sentence for involvement in the Polish resistance. Dohmen though selected twelve (eventually eleven) Jewish
EXPERIMENTS AND EXTERMINATION 75
adolescents for transfer to Sachsenhausen. 30 Beger similarly transformed the
directions to select Bolshevik commissars for the Jewish skeleton collection. At Buchenwald the researchers Hoven and Ding manipulated the selection process to target criminals rather than political prisoners. Elsewhere the camp commandant rather than the researchers selected as at Dachau and Ravensbrück.
In April 1943 Himmler contemplated having an organizer for the various series of experiments to provide greater uniformity and control of the experiments. He considered appointing Hans Deuschl, a Nazi medical activist in the National Socialist German Doctors League and former Director of the Leadership School of German Physicians at Alt-Rehse in rural Mecklenburg, to oversee all experiments. 31
Pohl had doubts about Deuschl’s suitability as experiments co- ordinator. This was the nearest that the experiments came to becoming systematically organized by a medically qualifi ed SS functionary. Himmler’s dedicated but colourless secretary SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Brandt contacted both Grawitz and Pohl on 28 April 1943 – as both shared the major organizational responsibility for experiments – as to Deuschl’s suitability.
Himmler’s idea was to base Deuschl in Dachau. There he could oversee and organize the experiments approved by Himmler in this and other camps. Another role was for Deuschl to oversee the convalescence and rehabilitation homes for the SS. Deuschl was an academic outsider and (a great positive for Himmler) had already shown a murderous streak – he advocated killing Soviet prisoners to save food rations. He had holistic ideas about medicine compatible wth those of Himmler. 32
Pohl, at the time (around June 1943), thought there were between eight and ten separate sets of experiments, running at the same time. He recommended discussions with Lolling, as medical offi cer in chief of all camps (his offi ce was Amt D III). 33 Deuschl in fact visited Dachau with Pohl on
23 June 1943. But then Pohl withdrew support from Deuschl. By July 1943 Pohl claimed there were only three to fi ve sets of experiments running, too few to warrant a special administrator. 34 In the event nothing came of the proposal,
leaving Deuschl without a signifi cant role in Nazi medicine. 35 It was just at
this time that Himmler had to accept that experimental results in homoeopathic wound treatment showed the lack of effectiveness of holistic alternatives. Pohl especially may have been wary about potential demands as regards the resourcing of experiments. New initiatives were more conventionally scientifi c. The experiments mostly required Himmler’s authorization, even when the Reichsführer SS had other urgent priorities. There continued to be no standard procedure as regards authorizing experiments; eventually, on 15 May 1944, Himmler ordered that all experiments required an application to the Reichsarzt SS. Grawitz was required in turn to obtain the opinions of Gebhardt, Nebe and Glücks, and to present a dossier to Himmler for fi nal authorization. 36
In the case of the seawater drinking experiments, the procedure was followed, but for other experiments the centralized procedures appear not to have been
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ever adhered to. Major sets of experiments as by Clauberg, Mengele and Schumann ran on organizational lines that were very different, despite all being located in Auschwitz.
Nutrition
Diet was central to the SS concept of health. Himmler was counselled by the SS cardiologist Fahrenkamp as regards natural foods and reduction of stress. 37 While SS men were to be encouraged to improve their eating, the
dark underside was the ‘useless eaters’ of camps and prisons were to have their diets rationalized and reduced. Vetter took photographs of starving prisoners; the prisoner doctor Fejkiel observed how, Vetter then killed by phenol injection into their hearts and had the cadavers dissected to examine their internal organs. 38 Wirths in Auschwitz experimented with a mixture of
yeast and nettles to remedy the severe starvation in the camp.
The SS Nutrition Inspector Schenck conducted experiments at Mauthausen. The historian Kopke raises the question whether Schenck or prisoners wrote the report of 10 December 1944 (as they did for the dissertations of Hoven and Erich Wagner, mainly prepared by the prisoner Paul Grünewald), and for Hans Delmotte assisted by a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz. Schenck devised large- scale nutrition experiments in summer 1943 on 450 prisoners working in the quarry, and from 1 December 1943 to June 1944 on 370 victims in three groups. These groups were subjected to three diets – normal camp diet, normal diet with yeast added, and the third group with mashed cereal instead of meat and bread. Schenck tried to minimize the fatal effects of his experimental feeding by alleging a higher nutritional value. For Schenck’s experiments there is a record of numbers who died as a result of starvation. At least forty- seven survivors of the experiment were sent to Schloss Hartheim to be gassed. 39