[PART 52]
By Harry V. Martin and David Caul
Twelfth in a Series
Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1991
Tuesday, November 19, 1991
At the conclusion of World War Two, American investigators learned that Nazi doctors at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany had been conducting mind control experiments on inmates. They experi- mented with hypnosis and with the drug mescaline.
Mescaline is a quasi-synthetic extract of the peyote cactus, and is very similar to LSD in the hallucinations which it produces. Though they did not achieve the degree of success they had desired, the SS interrogators in conjunction with the Dachau doctors were able to extract the most intimate secrets from the prisoners when the inmates were given very high doses of mescaline.
There were fatal mind control experiments conducted at Auschwitz. The experiments there were described by one informant as "brainwashing with chemicals". The informant said the Gestapo wasn't satisfied with extracting information by torture. "So the next question was, why don't we do it like the Russians, who have been able to get confessions of guilt at their show trials?" They tried various barbiturates and morphine derivatives. After prisoners were fed a coffee-like substance, two of them died in the night and others died later.
The Dachau mescaline experiments were written up in a lengthy report issued by the U.S. Naval Technical Mission, whose job it was at the conclusion of the war to scour all of Europe for every shred of industrial and scientific material that had been produced by the Third Reich. It was as a result of this report that the U.S. Navy became interested in mescaline as an interrogation tool. The Navy initiated Project Chatter in 1947, the same year the Central Intelligence Agency was formed. The Chatter format included developing methods for acquiring information from people against their will, but without inflicting harm or pain.
At the conclusion of the war, the OSS was designated as the investigative unit for the International Military Tribunal, which was to become known as the Nuremberg Trials. The purpose of Nuremberg was to try the principal Nazi leaders. Some Nazis were on trial for their experiments, and the U.S. was using its own "truth drugs" on these principal Nazi prisoners, namely Goring, Ribbentrop, Speer and eight others. The Justice in charge of the tribunal had given the OSS permission to use the drugs.
The Dachau doctors who performed the mescaline experiments also were involved in aviation medicine. The aviation experiments at Dachau fasci- nated Heinrich Himmler. Himmler followed the progress of the tests, studied their findings and often suggested improvements. The Germans had a keen interest in several medical problems in the field of flying, they were interested in preventing pilots from slowly becoming unconscious as a result of breathing the thin air of the high altitudes and there was interest in enhancing night vision.
The main research in this area was at the Institute of Aviation in Munich, which had excellent laboratories. The experiments in relationship to the Institute were conducted at Dachau. Inmates had been immersed in tubs of ice water with instruments placed in their orifices in order to monitor their painful deaths. Dr. Hubertus Strughold, who ran the German aviation medicine team, confirmed that he had heard humans were used for the Dachau experiments. Hidden in a cave in Hallein were files recording the Dachau experiments.
On May 15, 1941, Dr. Sigmund Rascher wrote a letter to Himmler requesting permission to use the Dachau inmates for experiments on the physiology of high altitudes. Rascher lamented the fact that no such experiments have been done using human subjects. "The experiments are very dangerous and we cannot attract volunteers," he told Himmler. His request was approved.
Dachau was filled with Communists and Social Democrats, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, [Protestant] clergymen, homosexuals, and people critical of the Nazi government. Upon entering Dachau, prisoners lost all legal status, their hair was shaved off, all their possessions confis- cated, they were poorly fed, and they were used as slaves for both the corporations and the government. The SS guards were brutal and sadistic. The idea to test subjects at Dachau was really the brain child of Erich Hippke, chief surgeon of the Luftwaffe.
Between March and August of 1942 extensive experiments were conducted at Dachau regarding the limits of human endurance at high altitudes. These experiments were conducted for the benefit of the German Air Force. The experiments took place in a low-pressure chamber in which altitudes of up to 68,000 feet could be simulated. The subjects were placed in the chamber and the altitude was raised, many inmates died as a result. The survivors often suffered serious injury. One witness at the Nuremberg trails, Anton Pacholegg, who was sent to Dachau in 1942, gave an eye- witness account of the typical pressure test:
"The Luftwaffe delivered a cabinet constructed of wood and metal. It was possible in the cabinet to either decrease or increase the air pressure. You could observe through a little window the reaction of the subject inside the chamber. The purpose of these experiments was to test human energy and the subject's capacity...to take large amounts of pure oxygen, and then to test his reaction to a gradual decrease in oxygen. I have personally seen through the observation window of the chamber when a prisoner inside would stand a vacuum until his lungs ruptured. Some experiments gave men such pressure in their heads that they would go mad and pull out their hair in an effort to relieve the pressure. They would tear their heads and face with their fingers and nails in an attempt to maim themselves in their madness. They would beat the walls with their hands and head and scream in an effort to relieve pressure in their eardrums. These cases of extreme vacuums generally ended in the death of the subjects." The former prisoner also testified, "An extreme experiment was so certain to result in death that in many instances the chamber was used for routine execution purposes rather than an experi- ment." A minimum 200 prisoners were known to have died in these experiments.
The doctors directly involved with the research held very high positions: Karl Brandt was Hitler's personal doctor; Oskar Schroeder was the Chief of the Medical Services of the Luftwaffe; Karl Gebhardt was Chief Surgeon on the Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police and German Red Cross President; Joachim Mrugowsky was Chief of the Hygienic Institute of the Waffen SS; Helmut Poppendick was a senior colonel in the SS and Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physicians SS and Police; Siegfried Ruff was Director of the Department of Aviation Medicine.
The first human guinea pig was a 37 year old Jew in good health. Him- mler invited 40 top Luftwaffe officers to view a movie of an inmate dying in the pressure chamber. After the pressure chamber tests, the cold treatment experi- ments began. The experiments consisted of immersing inmates in freezing water while their vital signs were monitored. The goal was to discover the cause of death. Heart failure was the answer. An inmate described the procedures:
"The basins were filled with water and ice was added until the water measured 37.4 F and the experimental subjects were either dressed in a flying suit or were placed in the water naked. The temperature was measured rectally and through the stomach. The lowering of the body temperature to 32 degrees was terrible for experimental subjects. At 32 degrees the subject lost conscious- ness. They were frozen to 25 degrees. The worst experiment was performed on two Russian officer POWs. They were placed in the basin naked. Hour after hour passed, and while usually after a short time, 60 minutes, freezing had set in, these two Russians were still conscious after two hours. After the third hour one Russian told the other, 'Comrade, tell that officer to shoot us.' The other replied, 'Don't expect any mercy from this Fascist dog.' Then they shook hands and said goodbye. The experiment lasted at least five hours until death occurred.
Dry freezing experiments were also carried out a Dachau. One subject was put outdoors on a stretcher at night when it was extremely cold. While covered with a linen sheet, a bucket of cold water was poured over him every hour. He was kept outdoors undersub-freezing conditions. In subsequent experiments, subjects were simply left outside naked in a court under freez- ing conditions for hours. Himmler gave permission to move the experiments to Auschwitz, because it was more private and because the subjects of the experiment would howl all night as they froze. The physical pain of freezing was terrible. The subjects died by inches, heartbeat became totally irregular, breathing difficulties and lung endema resulted, hands and feet became frozen white."
As the Germans began to lose the war, the aviation doctors began too keep their names from appearing in Himmler's files for fear of future recriminations.
(To be concluded Friday.)
America made it to the moon with Dachau research
By Harry V. Martin and David Caul
Last of a Thirteen Part Series
Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1991
Friday, November 22, 1991
The Nazi doctors who experimented on the inmates of prison camps during World War Two were tried for murder at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The accused were educated, trained physicians, they did not kill in anger or in malice, they were creating a science of death.
Ironically, in 1933, the Nazi's passed a law for the protection of animals. The law cited the prevention of cruelty and indifference to animals as one of the highest moral values of a people, animal experimentation was unthinkable, but human experimentations were acceptable. The victims of the crime of these doctors numbered into the thousands.
In 1953, while the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY was still con- ducting mind control and behavior modification on unwitting humans in this country, the United States signed the Nuremberg Code, a code born out of the ashes of war and human suffering. The document was a solemn promise never to tolerate such human atrocities again. The Code maintains three fundamental principles:
(In regards to the Nazi-based CIA experiments, MK-ULTRA and the mind-control projects which followed, the CIA has failed in all three of these areas. - Wol.)
Despite our lessons from Nuremberg and the death camps, the CIA, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Chemical Corps targeted specific groups of people for experimentation who were not able to resist, prisoners, mental patients, foreigners, ethnic minorities, sex deviants, the terminally ill, children and U.S. military personnel and prisoners of war. They VIOLATED the Nurem- berg Code for conducting and subsidizing experiments on unwitting citizens. The CIA began its mind control projects in 1953, the very year that the U.S. signed the Nuremberg Code and pledged with the international community of nations to respect basic human rights and to prohibit experimentation on captive populations without full and free consent.
Dr. Cameron, a CIA operative, was one of the worst offenders against the Code, yet he was a member of the Nuremberg Tribunal, with full knowledge of its testimony. In 1973, a three judge court in Michigan ruled, "...experimental psychosurgery, which is irreversible and intrusive, often leads to the blunting of emotions, the deadening of memory, the reduction of affect, and limits the ability to generate new ideas. Its potential for injury to the creativity of the individual is great and can infringe on the right of the individual to be free from interference with his mental process.
"The state's interest in performing psychosurgery and the legal ability of the involuntarily detained mental patient to give consent, must bow to the First Amendment, which protects the generation and free flow of ideas from unwarranted interference with one's mental processes." Citing the Nuremberg Code, the court found that "the very nature of the subject's incarceration dimini- shes the capacity to consent to psychosurgery." In 1973, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted regulations which would require informed written consent from voluntary patients before electroshock treatment could be per- formed.
Senator Sam Ervin's Committee lashed out bitterly at the mind control and behavior modification experiments and ordered them discontinued, they WERE NOT. But the New England Journal of Medicine states, that the consent provisions are "no more than an elaborate ritual." They called it "a device that when the subject is uneducated and uncomprehending, confers no more than a semblance of propriety on human experimentation."
The Nuremberg Tribunal brought to light that some of the most respected figures in the medical profession were involved in the vast crime network of the SS. ONLY 23 persons were charged with criminal activity in this area, despite the fact that hundreds of medical personnel were involved. The defendants were charged with crimes against humanity. They were found guilty of planning and executing experiments on humans without their consent, in a cruel and brutal manner which involved severe torture, deliberate murder and with the full knowledge of the gravity of their deeds. ONLY seven of the defendants were sentenced to death and hanged, others received life sen- tences. Five who were involved in the experiments were not tried. Ernest Grawitz committed suicide, Carl Clauberg was tried in the Soviet Union, Josef Mengele escaped to South America and was later captured by Israeli agents, Horst Schumann disappeared and Siegmund Rascher was executed by Himmler.
There were 200 German medical doctors conducting these medical experiments. Most of these doctors were friends of the United States [medical establishment] before the war, and despite their inhuman experiments, the U.S. attempted to rebuild a relationship with them after the war. The know- ledge the Germans had accumulated at the expense of human life and suffering, was considered a "booty of war", by the Americans and the Russians.The 'Americans' tracked down Dr. Strughold, the aviation doctor who was in charge of the Dachau experiments. With full knowledge that the experiments were conducted on captive humans, the U.S. recruited the doctors to work for them. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (whose presidency was sponsored and financially backed by the Rockefellers. - Wol.) gave his personal approval to exploit the work and research of the Nazi's in the death camps.
Within weeks of Eisenhower's order, many of these notorious doctors were working for the U.S. Army at Heidelberg. Army teams scoured Europe for scientific experimental apparatus such as pressure chambers, compressors, G-force machines, giant centrifuges, and electron microscopes. These doctors were wined and dined by the U.S. Army while most of Germany's post-war citizens virtually starved.
The German doctors were brought to the U.S. and went to work for Project Paperclip. ALL these doctors had been insulated against war crime charges. The Nuremberg prosecutors were SHOCKED that 'U.S. authorities' were using the German doctors despite their criminal past.
Under the leadership of Strughold, 34 scientists accepted contracts from Project Paperclip, and were moved to Randolph Air Force Base at San Antonio, Texas. The authorization to hire these Nazi scientists came directly for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The top military brass stated that they wished to exploit these rare minds. Project Paperclip, ironically, would use Nazi doctors to develop methods of interrogating German prisoners of war.
As hostilities began to build after the war between the Americans and the Russians, the U.S. imported as many as 1000 former Nazi scientists.
(In their over-confidence, the 'government' officials assumed that these 'scientists' would immediately give up their Nazi belief system and convert to the Constitu- tional ideology. Those government officials involved -- excepting for the Project Paperclip personnel, Nazi fifth columnists and double agents working within the American government with the Rockefellers and other American Nazis -- must have assumed that with the Neuremberg trials and de-Nazification operations of Europe, the entire Nazi network had been extinguished, and therefore there was no danger of these 1000 plus Nazi scientists collaborating with a secret Nazi underground which intended to carry through on Adolph Hitler's plans in spite of their apparent 'defeat' in Europe. - Wol.) In 1969, Americans landed on the moon, and two groups of scientist in the control center shared the credit, the rocket team from Peenemunde, Germany, under the leadership of Werner von Braun, these men had perfected the V-2s which were built in the Nordhausen caves where 20,000 slave laborers from prison camp Dora had been worked to death. The second group were the space doctors, lead by 71-year-old Dr. Hubertus Strughold, whose work was pioneered in Experimental Block No. 5 of the Dachau concentration camp and the torture and death of hundreds of inmates. The torture chambers that was used to slowly kill the prisoners of the Nazi's were the test beds for the apparatus that protected Neil Armstrong from harm, from lack of oxygen, and pressure, when he walked on the moon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Napa Sentinel would like to acknowledge the exceptional contribution of radio commentator David Emory and his extensive archives. Other source material included:
From the Belly of the Beast, Jack Henry Abbott
Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118, Feb. 24, 1974, testimony of Jose Delgado
The Glass House Tapes, by Louis Tackwood
The Great Heroin Coup, by Henrik Kruger
Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, 1974. Sam Ervin Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional 'Rights
The Last Hero, Wild Bill Donovan, by Anthony Cave Brown
Mind Control, by Peter Schrag
The Mind Stealers, by Samuel Chavkin
Matador with a radio stops wild bull, New York Times, May 17, 1965
Operation Mind Control, Water Bowart
The Phoenix Program, Douglas Valentine
The Physical Control of the Mind, Jose M. R. Delgado, MD
The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred McCoy
Role of Brain Disease in Riots and urban Violence, by Vernon H. Mark, Frank R. Ervin, and William H. Sweet. Journal of the American Medical Association, September 11, 1967.
San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 28, 1991
Convict Talks of 1984 Arms Talks With Iran, San Francisco Chronicle, December 29, 1986
San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 1973
Guy Wright Column, San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 1987
Sunday Times, July 1975.
Violence and the Brain, by Vernon H. Mark and Frank R. Ervin
War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology, by Peter Watson
Were We Controlled? - by Lincoln Lawrence
Why Was Patricia Hearst Kidnapped? - by Mae Brussell, The Realist.
and other select readings.