. NMT02-T0213
Volume II · Page 213
With all this knowledge, or means of knowledge, before him as commanding officer, he blindly approved a continuation of typhus research by Haagen, supported the program, and was furnished reports of its progress, without so much as taking one step to determine the circumstances under which the research had been or was being carried on, to lay down rules for the conduct of present or future research by his subordinates, or to prescribe the conditions under which the concentration camp inmates could be used as experimental subjects.
As was the case with reference to the freezing experiments at Dachau, non-German nationals were used as experimental subjects, none gave their consent, and many suffered injury and death as a result of the experiments.
GAS EXPERIMENTS
Experiments with various types of poison gas were performed by Luftwaffe Officer Haagen and a Professor Dr. Hirt in the Natzweiler concentration camp. They began in November 1942 and were conducted through the summer of 1944. During this period a great many concentration camp inmates of Russian, Polish, and Czech nationality were experimented on with gas, at least 50 of whom died. A certain Oberarzt Wimmer, a staff physician of the Luftwaffe worked with Hirt on the gas experiments throughout the period.
We discussed the duty which rests upon a commanding officer to take appropriate measures to control his subordinates, in dealing with the case of Handloser. We shall not repeat what we said there. Had Schroeder adopted the measures which the law of war imposes upon one in position of command to prevent the actions of his subordinates amounting to violations of the law of war, the deaths of the non-German nationals involved in the gas experiments might well have been prevented.
SEA-WATER EXPERIMENTS
Sea-water experiments were conducted on inmates of Dachau concentration camp during the late spring and summer of 1944. The defendant Schroeder openly admits that these experiments were conducted by his authority. When on the witness stand he related the circumstances under which these experiments were initiated and carried through to completion. As related by Schroeder the experiment on making sea water drinkable was a problem of great importance. Two methods were available in Germany, each of which to some extent had been previously tried, both on animal and on human subjects. These
