The sense that Germany was losing the medical war meant pressure for systematic experiments. In May 1941 Rascher attended a meeting on aviation medicine for the Luftgaukommando VII in Munich. On 15 May 1941 Rascher requested permission for experiments on rapid descent, warning ominously that these experiments will involve fatalities. At this time the SS had no autonomous structures in place for experiments. Himmler contacted the Luftwaffe medical researchers for approval for the pressure experiments in Dachau.
The military and airforce had large- scale research installations, and affi liated academics. Rascher was under Luftwaffe command, despite personal backing from within the SS. Military scientists critically evaluated the concentration camp experiments from the standpoint of their scientifi c quality. The German airforce became drawn into experimental research at Dachau. The extent to which Rascher’s results were circulated through the Luftwaffe hierarchy and its medical advisers and experts (notably to the physiologist Hubertus Strughold) remains controversial. The atmosphere in the Luftwaffe medical services was much more open to innovation and research, than the more rigid and traditional medical services of the German army. 1
At Tempelhof Airport, the Reich Air Ministry took over the land on which the Columbia-Haus concentration camp had stood, and turned this into the centre for manufacturing Stukas by the Weserfl ug company. Lufthansa had its Lilienthal forced labour barracks here. 2 It is alleged that experiments were
conducted at the new military airfi eld at Tempelhof, where there was also a military prison conducting torture, a forced labour camp and a research centre. Rascher obtained the support of the German Aviation Experimental Station at Berlin Adlershof. He was offi cially seconded to the newly established ‘Luftwaffe Institute for Air Experiments – Dachau Station’. Himmler then pressed the Luftwaffe to support and make use of the
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experimental results. These manoeuvers show how Himmler extended the SS tentacles into research oriented but otherwise somewhat resistant Luftwaffe. 3
Rascher was an ambitious experimentalist keen to become an academic high- fl ier. The Offi ce of Sanitary Inspector in the air force authorized and resourced the experiments. Within the air force Rascher’s experiments were controversial. Erich Hippke, as Sanitary Inspector, insisted on self- experimentation as a prerequisite. Himmler associated Hippke with opposition to Rascher, and efforts to transfer Rascher to the eastern front. On 19 February 1943 Hippke tried to conclude the experiments on survival in freezing temperatures by thanking the SS for their help and cooperation. Still, Rascher was not released from the Luftwaffe. 4
Rascher conducted low pressure experiments at Block 5 room 3 in Dachau from 22 February to 23 May 1942. He informed Himmler about the progress of the deadly research and other life- threatening experiments on low pressure, as Himmler had ambitions for the SS to advance into hitherto taboo scientifi c territory. The research required experiments up to 68,900 feet, and then freefall with and without oxygen supply. The rate of fall was correlated with consciousness. The limit for a safe jump with a parachute was fi xed at 42,700 feet, while 59,100 feet was deemed possible. 5
On 2 May 1942 Himmler addressed ten experimental subjects, promising that they could act as Kapos. Rascher recognized the resulting damage to the heart; he appears to have secured release for one prisoner, and three (Sostka, Rockinger and Dobovicek) were transferred to act as Kapos at the newly established camp of Majdanek. 6
The low pressure experiments at Dachau involved the air force medical services, civilian aviation medical researchers who were sponsored by the airforce (effectively two air force command hierarchies were involved), university academics, and fi nally the SS through the Ahnenerbe. To carry out the experiments, Rascher required authorizations, resources and support from all of these as a serving Luftwaffe medical offi cer and SS offi cer. Rascher worked as part of research teams, although these were riven by personal rivalries, and were shocked at his ruthless conduct. For the pressure experiments, his collaborators included Wolfgang Romberg from the German Experimental Institute for Aviation (DVL) Berlin, and Georg Weltz of the Munich Institute for Aviation Medicine. The questions arise whether these researchers and the involved authorities supported, restricted, or resisted the experiments, or whether Rascher had sole responsibility?
Rascher required a mobile aviation pressure chamber to be brought into the Dachau concentration camp. 7 He convinced Himmler to support the
experiments, and the SS pressurize the Luftwaffe to resource these. Sievers of the SS Ahnenerbe was a key intermediary, and witnessed three experimental ‘rides’. 8 Sievers secured Rascher’s promotion in the SS to the rank of
Hauptsturmführer (equivalent to a captain), and in December 1942 initiated a drawn- out process to transfer Rascher to the Waffen-SS to facilitate his experiments, but which would lead to his arrest. 9
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At fi rst, the experiments were harmless; in mid-March Rascher killed sixteen Russian research subjects; then the SS medical offi cer Anton Endress brought a political prisoner on the next day, when two further persons were killed. Rascher carried out a fatal experiment on a young Belgian, whom he then dissected. Even on the day the chamber was removed, Rascher had a fi nal stab at experiments and killed fi ve persons. Prisoners were taken to point of low pressure, when Rascher deprived them of air. At his trial, the commandant Martin Weiss said between thirty and forty deaths occurred, but the Nuremberg Medical Trial cited evidence of the prisoner assistant Walter Neff that there were seventy deaths. 10
It can be reconstructed that 540 prisoners endured these low pressure experiments, and that of these between 30 and 80 died. Neff and Stanislav Záme cˇ ník state 200–300 prisoners overall; the Nuremberg Document NO- 402 on low pressure experiments stated that 180–200 prisoners were used and that 70–80 prisoners died. 11 Camp documents and compensation
records indicate that 61 Poles were subjected to experiments, and just one respectively who were Belgian, Czechoslovak, German, Soviet and Jewish victims by name, making a total of 73 persons. Poles were a large group in the camp at the time, and priests were deemed to be suited for such research. No priest died. Their accounts tell of enduring painful cramps, bleeding, and hallucinations. Survivors were weak and enfeebled. The German political prisoner, Fritz Fruehwald was a revier nurse but was forced by Rascher to be an experimental victim; he was taken to 17,600 metres; he then became a patient for several weeks. 12
Rascher radicalized the experiments on ‘VP’s ( Versuchsperson , or
experimental person) during the absence of the aviation medicine specialist Wolfgang Romberg by undertaking ‘terminal’ experiments. He gloated on the chance to undertake ‘live’ dissections in the chamber, and on newly deceased prisoners. 13 Rascher reported to Himmler on 5 April 1942 on these
more extreme experiments. He proudly told of a Jewish victim aged thirty- seven held for over an hour at 12,000 metres. The heart was still beating while Rascher removed the brain and spinal cord. 14
Rascher took a person to 7,000 metres, and then rapidly up to 20,000 metres. Experimental subjects hit the back of their heads from this, and became unconscious and died. A Polish experimental subject, Ignacy Haremza, was two weeks in the experimental station in 1942 and underwent initial X-ray, and blood tests. In the pressure chamber, he felt that he had no more air to breathe and began to choke on his blood, fell unconscious and collapsed. 15
Hans Hornung described how he was forced to undergo three pressure experiments. Each was more extreme than the previous one. For the third experiment on 17 September 1942, when blood was taken by the imprisoned chemist Rudolf Punzengruber, he passed out: ‘he was later told he had just escaped death and an experiment with brain liquid and spine puncture had been performed on him.’ 16 After the experiment he felt that he was
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Rascher cultivated an academic network for analysing results. He sent electrocardiogram data to Fahrenkamp. Brains were sent for dissection to various institutions, not least those of the brain researcher Otto Spatz at his brain research station for aviation casualties. 17
Rascher submitted the fi nal report to Himmler, Sievers and his superiors at the Gausanitätsamt 7 on 28 July 1942. 18 Once the air force took back the
pressure chamber in July 1942, the air force chief medical offi cer Erich Hippke declined to return it to Dachau for further use. 19