Test test captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 young men and old men defending the frontlines, the home front, and others had fled because they knew they were in trouble with allied authorities that could arrest them. The chief physician and the head female nurse who were going to meet in a moment they decided they would stay with the patients and they were immediately arrested. Investigating officers we know they uncovered and here you see a photograph of that, 581 mass graveses in the Institution Cemetery and found the death register showing 15,000 patients dying, which is not what you would expect in an ordinary institution where mortality is 2 to 5 of the population. Just given that some people are older, elderly and might pass away in such an institution. They contact the United States work crimes branch, which is now located, because its so early the war is still going on, its in paris, to investigate this scenario. Now its just seeing those images is so startling and often overlooked that americans, we think about the americans liberating, but they obviously liberated the killing centers and facilities with where the program operated as well at the same time and as you point out, patricia, the americans put on one of the first trials preceding the nuremburg trial, the hadamar trial of 1945, which you describe, im quoting you here, as the first mass atrocity trial to be conducted in the american zone and among the first proceedings there to be tried by an American Military tribunal. Could you take us through this trial a bit . Right. So this is a very early trial, its one of the earliest trials in the uso. There were four occupation zones in germany and each of the four allies, u. S. , great britain, france and the soviet union were trying, they were carrying out trials in their zone of occupation. This hadamar trial actually comes everybody thinks of the nuremburg trial happening earlier, the International Military tribunal which tries major war criminals. The hadamar trial takes place in october just as the indictment for nuremburg is handed down. Were pretty early. Before this particular trial, u. S. Forces had been trying what you might view as classical violations of war, war crimes, like the murder of downed service personnel. That was pretty common. There had been an order at the end of the war to murder any pilots found in the local population because parts of germany were very heavily bombed and were very glad to follow these instructions. In a lot of cases you have downed allied flyers and the local populations shot them or beat them to death before they could be taken to a prisoner of war camp. These were typical trials that were theyre classical war crimes trials because they are involving u. S. Servicemen or servicemen of our allies. This goes outside of that scope and addresses crimes carried out because of nazi racial policy. This is not your classical war crimes trial. I think you wanted to also hear about one of the heros of the trial and that is the trial judge advocate, the prosecutor in this case. He was a rather obscure corporate lawyer from houston, texas, and his name was leon jaworski. Those of you who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and remembers the watergate proceedings, he goes on to gain fame during the nixon administrations watergate chief prosecutor. You see him here on the cover of Time Magazine at that time, but at the time he was no stranger to war crimes prosecution and he had been trying a lot of these earlier trials. He tried germany civilians for murdering u. S. Servicemen. Two final things, watching our time here. Yes. You can kind of maybe fit in briefly together is that you go into some detail about the role these forced laborers play and then could you Say Something to our audience about the final verdict, what actually happens at the outcome of this early trial. Yeah. So very interesting. I talked about earlier, are going to form the basis for the proceedings that occur. Originally jaworeski was eager to try the individuals whom they had in custody who murdered 15,000 mental patients and physically disabled patients at the facility but because there was no precedent at the time in International Law that allowed nationals, foreign nationality like the United States, the u. S. Army, to try germans for killing their own kind this was a germany german on german crime. Nationals killed their own citizens. There was no precedent in International Crimes before the crimes against humanity statute that comes out in the nuremburg trial in the International Military tribunal to kind of ease the wheels of justice and the jag, the judge advocate General Office tells him, you can take the slide down from him, but there he is, he abruptly tells jaworski you cant try these people, you have no injuredi jurisdiction in thi marri matter. He came up with some of these they had in custody had murdered civilian forced laborers who happened to be our allies and that is the basis for this actual trial. Just to kind of talk about who finally gets in the trial, jaworski tries the hadamar seven and i think we see a photograph there, at least there are some photographs, the woman in the center is hooper, the head nurse, and there is klein, the director of the facility. Jaworski has, as you alluded to in the beginning, legion jaworski, as you alluded in the beginning, the trial is actually described in the papers as the hadamar murder factory trial because legion jaworski has a strategy he uses in almost every trial you see him performing in as a chief prosecute ir. He stresses the Assembly Line nature of the killings. He says okay, theres the head physician, hes the one who orders the deaths of these patients and checks to see if theyre dead. Theres klein, who you see in the picture, who orders his staff to kill these patients as they arrive. There are the male nurses, roof and billick, who are actually carry out the murders. They admit to the murders. This hooper, the woman in the picture, the only woman in the doc and shes responsible for giving the medicine, shes handing out the morphine solution from her pharmacy, thats under her control, so shes putting in the pharmaceuticals that kill these patients. Then they also charge adolf mercliff for forging the death records and a man named philip bloom who buried these individuals. Hes stressing the Assembly Line nature of the killing process saying it is, quote, in some words a production line of death. His strategy, as usual, results in a completely set doc where everyone in the doc is convicted of their crimes. Alfonso klein and the two male nurses are actually hanged. Theyre sentenced to death and hangd. Adolf ballman, the chief physician, he is in Poor Physical Health and advanced age and gets a life sentence. Adolf mercliff and philip bloom, people who have kind of only tangental connections to the murder because they forged the death certificates and buried the bodies, they get 35 and 30 years respectively. Imguard hooper who hands over the Pharmaceuticals Gets 25 years. Those are pretty stiff sentences and that is what happens in the trial. Thank you. That gave us a lot of insight about, from the beginning of the program in 1939, all the way through the end of the war and the attempt to try these individuals. I think probably in the q a well be able to say more about the trial, but i thought we would open it up to some questions, weve already gotten a few in, the first question is from john in new orleans and his question is, did the germans keep the records of where their victims were prior to entering the system of their demise and he has a followup was there any form or method of selection as to when one was finally sent to hadamar . He was curious here, too, about forced labor imposed on people with disabilities. Youve talked about people brought in as forced labors, were people with disabilities were they ever required to do anything in terms of labor expectations, to do some kind of labor for the facility . Right. So ill answer the first question first, take it in Chronological Order here. The t4 euthanasia apparatus kept very, very complicated statistics on this and thats how we know exactly how many people died. We know 70, 273 people were gassed. We know every single individual. Usually the patient came with their patient records, so and their names were entered in the death register. So we do have records of each of those individuals and each of the families gets a condolence letter along with the death certificates and also and the ashes, but also their personal effects. Theres this very complicated bureaucratic machine operating behind this able to send to every victim the personal affects, their death certificates and so forth as if it were a natural thing. How these patients were selected, theyre selected on the basis of questionnaires that are sent to the medical directors of facilities throughout germany and austria. Lets just say for brevity sake. The directors of these facilities in general, they have to fill out the questionnaires and they have to flag people with serious disabilities, they have to flag people who are in that institution because they e committed a crime under diminished capacity, think of someone like John Hinckley who serves in a Mental Institution rather than in prison for shooting reagan, the nongerman victims, 5,000 jews were murdered as part of the euthanasia facility before the general deportation of jews begins. It flags people who have been in a longterm setting for one of these facilities for more than five years, theyre looking for incurable cases. On the forced labor thing, they are foreign forced laborers and there to offset the missing labor of individuals who have been sent to the front, ordinary germans fighting at the front. There is a kind of its not i wouldnt exactly say its forced labor, but from the 1920s onwards it was very common in german facilities and by the way in a lot of european facilities, because it was seen as therapy, whats called work therapy, and that meant that patients worked at these facilities which were kind of selffunctioning. They had shoe factory, they had basket weaving, they had a farm, so that they were, you know, basically selfsustaining, many of these institutions. The patients worked at these facilities and the idea was to fight the symptoms of institutionalization, to keep them busy, to give them skills, but the little the dirty little secret is, of course, when there was a financial crisis in the 20s and 30s these patients are instrumental to help the facilities run because theyre cooking and cleaning and doing things like this. Thats not really forced labor but the patients are working. There is, indeed, on that questionnaire, its asks specifically if the patient is able to work, which you see connected with selection later, you know, who is able to be forced labor in the meantime. Theyre not the kind of forced labor we associate with the a camp but they are working and expected to work. So thats an interesting question. Thank you. I thought we would work in two more, patricia. Im going to give these to you and squeeze these in. The first is from arthur in melbourne, australia, who joined us today, and he was curious about hitlers role in this. How much is he directly involved or not. The other is from my friend gretchen who joined us from the twin cities and she was curious about whether medical experiments are conducted on these victims before theyre murdered. Right. So first to arthur, hello in melbourne, i dont know what time it is there but it must be quite late or early, so thank you for joining us. Hitlers role. This is not a big consideration of his. We do know that hitler signed on his own private stationary, this is the only time we have hitlers signature on what might be seen as an order for a killing operation. Thats a talk for another time. But hitler is this this is not his thing. Hes interested in jews. The real impetus for the Euthanasia Program comes i could talk for hours on this and i wish we could comes from the medical community and a lot of vidindividuals around hitler interested in things like eugenics and in the idea of getting rid of populations like these that might cause a genetic stain as well as a Financial One in, you know, making really the by getting rid of hereditary conditions and thats the impetus for that. Its not really hitlers thing. The other question from gretchen in the twin cities has to do with medical experimentation. Nazi doctors, this is a program carried out mainly by our medical the german medical community. The u. S. Doesnt have a role in this. Theyve devised and implemented this program, the medical professionals, so you know, and in the concentration camp system thats where you see the bulk of experimentation. That being said, there is experimentation on some of these, but whats kind of terrifying that was very common even before the nazis. Here at hadamar, we talked about adolf ballman, the chief physician, he was interested in he was interested, im looking at the time to make sure we have enough time to sign off, he was interested in an anticonvulsive drug. At the time it was thought Shock Therapy wasnt electroShock Therapy, it was done on medicine that made you convulse. The idea was that epileptics who had comvullions didnt have schizophrenia. Shock therapy was supposed to shock the patient make the patient convulse and balmer was interested this was the chief physician experimenting on patients using these convulsive drugs. Devastating results because the patients can break their jaws, they can break their backs, their spines, in these uncontrolled convulsions. Hes working on this drug and he thinks its great because hes trying to make therapeutic advances in medicine. Whats terrible, of course, is these kinds of things werent tried in the postwar and they went on in the postwar. They went on before the nazis come to power and if you talk to people in psychiatric communities here in the United States and elsewhere, they were clearly patients, mental patients, people with disabilities were experimented on for years without the kind of attention that the concentration camp so very sad story there. Extremely sad. Patricia, that said, i want to thank you so much for joining us today. Youve given us a lot to think about, especially how to integrate all of this material youve provided into the way we under the third reich. That regime was waging a different war against its own citizens, against jews, against slavs and the conventional kind of war that i think is more familiar to the national audience. Youve given us a lot to consider and we really appreciate that. Thanks to all our viewers for joining us this morning from wherever you are and we hope you will join us again for our webinars very soon. Thank you very much. Week nights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight, a look back at the 1969 Supreme Court case tinker versus des moines, which decided that students do not lose their First Amendment rights on school grounds. The court ruled in favor of three des moines, iowa, students, suspended for wearing black arm bands to school to protest the vietnam war, violating local school policies. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. 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