Q The prosecutor quoted to you a statement of yours from an interrogation; I shall ask you now did you make the statement in the interrogation that Milch was responsible for air armament to sort out workers individually?
A I don't know how I should understand word 'sort out'; if you mean that he went to the foreign countries and searched for them personally, then of course as I stated in the interrogation, that is wrong. I did state in that interrogation that during my activity in the Fighter Staff on March 1944 no individual actions in foreign countries were carried out by Milch or the Fighter Staff. The manpower was provided by Sauckel exclusively, or to the extent that they were prisoners by the SS, or prisoners of war were provided by the Wehrmacht.
Q And then they were transferred, as you said yesterday, to other sectors?
A Yes.
Q You also said then in this interrogation that in most of the meetings Milch was present.
AAt the beginning, I said.
DR. BERGOLD: I have no further questions.
MR. DENNEY: I have no questions.
BY THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal may remove this witness.
DR. BERGOLD: Permit me to call immediately the witness ERIC HIPPKE, Dr. Hippke.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will bring into the Court room Eric Hippke.
(Witness Erick Hippke brought into Court room)
Will you raise your right hand please, and repeat after me:
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
The witness may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, will you please tell the Tribunal your Christian and surname?
A My name is Hippke; my first name Eric.
Q When were you born?
A On the 17th of March 1888.
Q What was your last position in the German State?
A I was Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe until 31 December 1943.
Q Witness, do you know the defendant, Milch?
A Yes, I know the defendant Milch.
Q Can you identify him here in the court room? Point him out?
A He is over there.
DR. BERGOLD: I ask that the minutes show that the witness has identified the defendant.
THE PRESIDENT: The record will indicate that the witness has identified the defendant.
Q Witness, how long have you known Milch?
A Since my entrance into the Luftwaffe on 1 April 1935.
Q In what capacity did you have business or dealings with Milch there?
A He was the States Secretary for Aviation, and as that the chief in the aviation ministry to which I belonged.
Q When did you become Inspector General of the Medical Inspection?
A I was not Inspector General. I was simply inspector. This designation of office was introduced later, approximately '36 or 1937. From that time on I was the Inspector of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe until I left.
Q Were you immediately subordinated to Milch in this capacity?
A I was subordinated directly to him at the beginning, later I was subordinated to him via the Chiefs of the Luftwehr.
Q. In other words, you were separated in a certain degree from Milch.
A. Yes. My immediate superior in this later period was, as a basic principle, Chief of the Anti-aircraft.
Q. When did that occur, approximately?
A. 1940 or 1941. I cannot precisely recall.
Q. Who at that time was Chief of the Air Defense?
A. At first General Ruedel; later General Foerster, and he was chief until I resigned from office.
Q. Do you know from approximately what date Foerster was Chief of Air Defence(of the Luftwehr?)
A. I believe since the year 1942, but I do not know, precisely.
Q. Witness, what office or agency of the army was under your command?
A. You mean of the Luftwaffe?
Q. Right?
A. If I may limit my answer here to the experimental activities of the Luftwaffe because that is apparently the only matter that we are concerned with here.
Q. First of all I want to lay down the general picture.
A. I went to the Luftwaffe as inspector to take care of medical activities in the Luftwaffe, to see that they were carried out in an orderly fashion according to orders given by me; that was my task, particularly on the front and to keep things orderly and supervise these matters.
Q. Was the medical personnel subordinated to you in personnel matters?
A. Only technically.
Q. Who was in charge of medical inspectors in personnel matters?
A. The respective military branches; the Luftwaffe, the medical personnel in a gau were subordinated to the Luftgau. I myself was in charge directly of only one single organization, that was the medical academy of the Luftwaffe, which was purely a training school.
761a which trained medical cadets of the Luftwaffe.
Q. Is it correct to say that the chief of the Luftwaffe had the medical personnel under him?
A. I shall repeat my answer. He had charge of them insofar as all changes all orders--
Q. You have to speak slower witness. As the interpreters can not follow otherwise.
A. The director of personnel-the direction of personnel was taken care of by a section of the personnel office, not by me. There was a special department for air decorations, promotions and transfers of all personnel, for all medical officers. I simply took care of these things in an auxiliary capacity. I was head officially, occasionally was called upon to give an opinion so that personnel in my office were exempted from this general order. To this personnel office I was occasionally called to assist and there was in audition a medical officer from the personnel office who was subordinated to the personnel office, but not subordinated to me.
Q. Do you know whether this personnel office was subordinated to Milch in his capacity as Inspector?
A. No, so far as I am informed of the organization, that was not subordinated to him. In the same way the general staff was not subordinated to him but was excluded from his sphere of confidence.
Q. I come now to the research institutes. What reasearch institutes were subordinated to you?
A. Immediately subordinated to me were the Luftwaffe Medical Institute of the Reich Air Ministry; that was its official name. This was a central institute for Aviation Medical Research; without actually having the leadership, I was the head of that. It was the center of the Aviation Research. 762 Professor Strughold was the leader of it and it was located in Berlin.
May I conclude?
Then, scattered throughout Germany there were a number of other smaller research places of which I would like to name the following: In Hamburg an institute under Schwarz; and in Munich there was an institute under Professor Weltz and an institute in Gueterborg under Doctor v. Dehringshofen and later under professor Knote; and at Freiburg under Professor Buechner. The last named was concerned with avaiation pathology exclusively. In other words it was not quite like the other institutes. These were subordinated to their individual Luftgau but they were indirectly subordinate also to me, so that the scientific leadership of the institutes, which belonged to the Luftwaffe, was united in my hands, and I also was responsible for them. Aside from these institutes which I have named, there were a number of other institutes that did not belong within my immediate sphere of command; amongst these was one research institute that fell within the realm of those that belonged especially to the Luftwaffe; namely, a research institute in the testing groung Rechlin which belonged to the Luftwaffe. The leader of the medical department there was one Dr. Benzinger, a in other words a ministerial official. I was subordinated to the leader of his institute and he in turn was subordinate to the office of technical Research of the Luftwaffe. He was not subordinate to me. In my whole period of activity I was never actually in Rechlin.
Another institute of research was the Luftwaffe Experimental station in the German Technical Institute for Avaition in Berlin Adlerhof, under the leadership of Dr. Ruff, who was also independent apart from his subordination to the institute for aviation.
I can not testify about these since they were outside my sphere of activities. It was Dr. Ruff, the leader of this Luftwaffe Research Station, who was in charge, at the head of it, and I was responsible to him.
In the course of my period of office I visited the institute a few times on the request of Dr. Ruff, but always I previously went to the leader of the DVL and asked for permission to visit the institute, which was within his sphere of command, as I did not even have the right to inspect the institute.
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Q. Who was the leader of the DVL at the time?
A. Mr. Boeck at that time, but I would not like to say that for sure.
Q. I come now to the experimental station at Rechlin, the testing ground. Did it extend under the so-called leadership of research or - who was it subordinate to this institute?
A. Dr. Benzinger told me again and again that he was subordinate to General Udet, that General Udet had created a ministry in that particular office for him so that he could carry out management there.
Q. In what way were the institutes under the Luftwaffe subordinate to you, so that they were directly subordinate to you?
A. They were subordinate to me insofar as the Luftwaffe Gau doctor was subordinate to me. In addition, there were the air field forces which were interpolated but in this experimental work they did not belong to me because they did not appear so often in this work. I was in the Air Ministry, but I had experts on Medical questions in a separate department.
The leader of this department was Prof. Anthony at that time. He had an assistant later; and this assistant was Dr. Becker-Fryseng, and he was particularly recommended to me as an expert and a desirable person by the Aviation Medical Institute I. E. Prof. Struckhold.
A. He was an assistant and thereafter subordinate to Professor Anthony. Professor Anthony in turn was subordinate to his department and he in turn was subordinate to me. This was during the time, I believe, of General Martius but he very often had the opportunity to report directly to me on the research questions.
Q. What was your official connection with General Oberstandartzt Handloser of the Medical Department of the Wehrmacht?
A. When the Medical Department of the Wehrmacht was created, it was indevered to combine all questions that concerned any of the three branches of the Army and he was my superior as Medical General, Handloser who previously had been on an equal basis with me as medical inspector for the Army when he also took on this new task now became my superior.
Q. Well, could he give you orders? What do you mean by the word superior?
A. Yes, he could he give me orders and establish policies.
Q. When was this roughly?
A. That was in 1942, I believe. At the latest in 1945. The reorganization already existed when I came in.
Q. Then there were other experts; there were so-called advisory expert physicians, and what was their relationship to the whole?
A. There wore a number of advisory physicians, that I, following the example of the Army had already appointed for the Luftwaffe; they were subordinate to me immediately when I was there, in other words, they were not responsible to other departments or intermediate offices 765a In this field of airforce medicine I had no special consultant but used the chiefs of the Luftwaffe Medical Research Institute Berlin professor Strughold also for these purposes of professional orientation.
Among the men to be mentioned here was Prof. Buechner, who was the leader of the Pathological Institute in Freiburg and I had put up the Research Station with him for Luftwaffe pathology. I think I also should mention Prof. Rein in Goettingen, who was advisor in Physiology to me and in whose institute work on many aviation medical questions was done. This institute was as a matter of form attached to the Strughold Institute in Berlin. Personally Rein was immediately subordinated to me as advisor in Physiology.
Q. Witness, do you know that at the time of Udet the "C" office of Udet within the framework of the Generalluftzeugmeister, head charge of Rechlin via Mr. Baeunke.
A. Yes, that I knew at the time, much of the organization was changed later, so that I am not informed and I can no longer remember what the latest relations were. Many changes did not come to our official attention. I know the the development at this time were confused and that re-organizations were very frequent.
Q. But you know that Baeumker was in the "C" office of the Air Ministry at the time of Udet?
A. Yes, he was in the Ministry and also encountered difficulties because Baeumker also wanted to combine the Luftwaffe Medical Research with his other technical research, while I endeavered to keep the medical question under my control, no definite clarification of this matter ever took place during my time, because despite all my efforts it couldn't be carried out that all medical questions went through me. Instead the tendencies of the individual groups to independent were strong enough that this desire of mine could not be realized in practice.
Q. Mr. Witness, do you know that this "C" office was then reorganized when Milch took over the Office of General Luftzaugmeister?
A. I do know that there was a reorganization at that time. What sort of reorganization there was, I cannot say in detail.
Q. Do you know that Baeamker resigned from this "C" Office and took another Office?
A. I know that he later resigned and went to Munich.
Q. What did he do in Munich? Did he have his own institute there or construct one, or what did he do?
A. I had the impression that in Munich he wanted to create a new research organization. I never heard that he was chief of an institute.
Q. Here is a plan that Prof. Dr. Oskar Schroeder drew up, and on the wall you see a summary of it. We have just talked in retail about matters of organization, can you ascertain that these two charts, of which you have the original in your hand and of which there is a short version on the wall, are correct?
A. This chart that I have, I can only see the chart in my hand because I am short sighted and I cannot see the one on the wall at all without my glasses which have been taken from me. In this chart there are a number of small errors. They concern, for example, the subordination of the advisory physicians who, according to the chart, seem to be subordinated to each other, whereas actually they were immediately subordinate to me.
Q. Are the institutes shown in the right order of authority?
A. The institutes of the Luftwaffe are also not arranged here correctly, because as I have already mentioned the subordination concerned only the Stuckhold Research Institute.
Q. Is Rechlin correctly placed on the chart?
A. It says here only technical subordination. That is already saying too much, because the subordination of the institute was not under me in a technical respect either.
Q. The DVL, is that placed correctly?
A. To the extent that according to the lines on this chart there was a technical subordination, to that extent which is wrong. But this concept of technical subordination is not entirely correct. The situation was this, the 767a Luftwaffe institutions, with the exception of the Buechner Institute, which was headed by Benzinger, were under my complete technical charge.
On the other hand, the other institutes, Rechlin and the medical department in Adlershof, only received directives or policies from me, and then if they received them, of course, had to carry them out. But they were in no other respect subordinate to me above all not under my authority for inspection, which I would imply by technical subordination.
Q. You could not check and examine if I understood you correctly, and only gave orders for various research?
A. Not only orders for research. I could also establish individual policies. If I knew that there was a particular pressing question concerning centrifugal force that had to be solved, or questions of cold or high altitude or so, I had the right if I knew that this was a pressing question, to tell them to make this the center of research, and they, in turn, had to do this. As far as I gave them orders to carry out research which did not happen with the institutes, in view of the enormous amount of other work in that field, then as I say I gave orders and they were obliged to work on this research that I had ordered, and to send the report to my office telling the results of their experiment so that I could then fulfill my real task, namely to examine the results of this research and to find out what could be used for the fliers in actual practice.
Q. I understand you to say ---
A. Let me supplement my remarks. Besides the institutions on this chart here, there were also a number of smaller research --- civilian researchers. There were a lot of low pressure chambers mass produced . These were used in the individual universities, mostly for research on pilots and their endurance.
This was an important chapter. In addition, these men as physicians and researchers often carried on independent research. For example, in the Charite in Berlin there was such a low pressure chamber. I remember also that at Bonn there was a rather large chamber always at work. Within the framework of the university, and these problems were worked on there. I gave research orders, and the exports there were obliged to send a report to my office LIM 14. The Inspections were numbered. Mine was number 14. They had to report to me as I said. My work was ascertaining 768a what could be used from the results of this research for the protection of fliers.
Q. Thank you. that suffices. Then if I understand you correctly you said that you merely gave general directives and policies to the DVL?
A. This is true, yes.
Q. Did you determine then what sort of work the DVL was to do, or was it in that regard independent?
A. It was independent because there was in the DVL, for instance, a department within the actual framework of the DVL which was a technical institute, and it gave its technical problems to its own physicians. And I know, for instance that on the question of shock, Dr. Ruff did a lot of work since this question was of great importance in the development in airplane construction, particularly altitude questions. On the part of the Avaiation Ministry there was a low pressure chamber, a mobile chamber given in charge of Dr. Ruff. He, in fact, developed it technically
Q. Witness, I come now to the actual events. When did you first find out that Rascher wanted to carry out high altitude experiments?
A. Let me go into this some lengths if I have the. time.
Q. Please do so.
A. At that time, high altitude experiments, that is the question to what height man could climb and still function, were particularly important and particularly pressing for us for the development of airplanes and the development of air combat indicated or brought it about that it was practically of ever increasing importance to be able to climb higher and higher. Consequently in this whole period of development, 1940 to 1941 the problem of altitude was always in the foreground whereas previously we had concerned ourselves with many other questions.
We knew now not only that at an altitude of 7,000 to 8,000 meters and oxygen breathing set had to be carrier. We also knew now that an altitude of 12,000 meters oxygen was not sufficient, which of coarse, will be strange to any lay observer. However, the air pressure, and I emphasize air pressure, was so slight at this height that the oxygen apparatus is no longer effective. The oxygen was dispersed too rapidly.
769a also because all the mixture of water vapor in the lung and of oxygen contents----
Q. These are very technical matters, and you must speak slowly?
A. The relation between water vapor in the lung and oxygen became quite different at these altitudes. It became clear that from 12,000 meters on the air pressure had to be increased so that the oxygen apparatus could still work. This seemed to set a limit at which the pilots and crews could breath. The one way would have been to give them an air-tight suit, but that didn't interest us very greatly. The main question was, the aircraft body itself would have to be made airtight and that was the so-called cabin plane that had to be used, in which the crew was in a position to create the necessary air pressure which was necessary or was sufficient for breathing perhaps with the assistance with the oxygen apparatus. Then there was the further question of what might happen at these deadly altitudes if it should be punctured, either by enemy action or because of the enormous cold up there. Could the crew stand the sudden difference in pressure from a reasonable air pressure, to this sudden lethal reduction in pressure, or would the crew die of this immediately? We as physicians embraced the point of view that unless we knew the answer to this, we were not morally able to send crews to these heights. We wanted some assurance to anticipate the probable future of the cabin plane. The first question was, can the human being stand such a sudden reduction of pressure at all, or does he die of it? The second question was, how much time is there in which he can be saved? In bailing out at this level what happens when he gets into a zone lower down where his oxygen apparatus, which is taken with him, begins to work, that is to say; an altitude of 12,000 meters, or where he reaches an altitude of which he can live without oxygen apparatus, in other words, the height of about 7,000 to 8,000 meters.
It was in this direction and precisely by Dr. Ruff in Adlershof, in order to clarify such question that specially constructed low pressure chambers were set up, although only a few experiments, I should say "spot tests" were carried out from which it could be seen that human beings actually could withstand such enormous and sudden drops in pressure.
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