Karl Gebhardt

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Karl Gebhardt in Hohenlychen (1935)

Karl Franz Gebhardt (born November 23, 1897 in Haag in Upper Bavaria , † June 2, 1948 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German surgeon and sports medicine specialist . He became one of the leading doctors within the Schutzstaffel (SS) and personal doctor of his childhood friend, the NSDAP politician Heinrich Himmler . Gebhardt carried out medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, especially in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and in his Hohenlychen Clinic, twelve kilometers away, as well as in theAuschwitz concentration camp . He was indicted in the Nuremberg Trials , sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity , and executed.

Origin and youth

Gebhardt and Himmler met as students in Landshut. Himmler's older brother Gebhard Ludwig Himmler went to the same class, and the father was the principal of the grammar school . Gebhardt began studying medicine in Munich in 1919 . In 1919 he became a member of the Corps Bavaria Munich . Like Heinrich Himmler and Sepp Dietrich, he was a member of the Oberland Freikorps . Gebhardt was also involved in the so-called Hitler putsch of November 9, 1923. In 1923 he received his license to practice medicine and in 1924 he received his doctorate .

Rise in National Socialism

Karl Gebhardt, Major General of the Waffen SS (Photo: Kurt Alber , 1944)

On May 1, 1933 , he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.723.317), two years later also the SS (SS number 265.894), where he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer on April 20, 1935 .

He completed his habilitation in 1935 and was professor of sports medicine at the University of Berlin from 1937 . On November 1, 1933, he took over the management of the tuberculosis sanatorium in Hohenlychen , which he first transformed into an orthopedic clinic and then, during the Second World War, into a hospital for the Waffen SS . He was the head of the medical institute of the Reichsakademie für physical exercises in Berlin and a consultant surgeon of the SS. From 1940 he was a consultant clinician for the Todt Organization and set up a recreation center for Westwall workers at the Reichsschulungsburg der Deutschen Technik .

Roll after the assassination attempt on Heydrich

Himmler sent his personal physician to Prague on May 27, 1942, to have him perform the operation on the injured man after the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich . Czech doctors had examined Heydrich : he had a broken fragment in his spleen and a ruptured diaphragm , while his kidney was uninjured. Since Gebhardt's plane landed late, the German doctors Josef Hohlbaum and Walther Dick had already carried out the operation. Immediate help was also offered by the renowned doctors Morell (Hitler's personal physician) and Ferdinand Sauerbruch . Gebhardt - former student of Sauerbruch, who is said to have been warned by Gebhardt not to travel to Switzerland after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , as this could make him suspicious of complicity (Gebhardt is also said to have convinced Hitler of Sauerbruch's innocence) - however, refused and supervised Heydrich's recovery alone. In his view, the intervention of multiple doctors could have created harmful nervousness. Heydrich's injuries did not necessarily have to lead to death, but parts of the torn car seat were in the wounds. Heydrich's condition improved after the operation. On June 3, he was able to take his lunch while sitting. On the same day , however , he collapsed and died on June 4, 1942. Heydrich's death was a debacle for Gebhardt, mainly because of the refused help from famous doctors. In addition, Gebhardt got into a dangerous situation when Morell remarked that the use of his new sulfonamide Ultraseptyl could have brought about a different outcome.

Sulfonamide experiments

Sulfonamides (antibiotics) were discovered even before penicillin . Domagk had received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for this in 1939, which he was not allowed to accept on Hitler's orders. Many German doctors did not trust the new medicine. At that time, more soldiers died of sepsis (blood poisoning) in the hospitals of the German Reich than were killed at the front. The Reichsführer SS Himmler decided that the applicability and effectiveness of the sulfonamides should be tested on concentration camp inmates. The medical experiments were under the direction of Reichsarzt SS Grawitz . Gebhardt's rehabilitation now also depended on the outcome of the sulfonamide experiments.

On July 20, 1942, the first of the sulfonamide experiments on 57 inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp began . Gebhardt had managed to lead and judge the experiments himself. He tried to simulate war injuries by, for example, cutting open a calf of the victims, squeezing muscles and sewing cloth or wood splinters and similar materials into the wound. He tested various sulfonamides according to criteria that he set. On the fourth day of the experiment, he had the festering wounds opened; H. treat surgically. The series of tests resulted in numerous deaths, including artificially induced blood poisoning in which prisoners were injected with pus into the veins. Grawitz submitted two interim reports on the results to Himmler on August 29th: According to Gebhardt, sulfonamides are not able to prevent infection; only a surgical procedure can save the patient. However, the drug Katoxyn , which Heydrich had apparently been administered, is able to accelerate the healing process. Gebhardt pointed out that he had not succeeded in causing gas fires in prisoners who were seriously ill.

On September 3, Grawitz inspected the Ravensbrück concentration camp. He ordered gunshot wounds to be inflicted on the women and called the wounds inflicted so far as "mosquito bites". Then Gebhardt began a new series of experiments on 24 Polish women. He did not inflict gunshot wounds on the women, but inoculated them with pus from people suffering from gas burns and tested the effects of sulfonamides. Indeed, it was able to produce a severe infection with gas fire, and three women died.

On September 9, 1942, Himmler rehabilitated his childhood friend Gebhardt and the two doctors in Prague, Hollbaum and Dick, in a letter of thanks that everything had been done during Heydrich's treatment to preserve that “valuable and expensive blood” . He had the sulfonamide test series transferred to Heinrich Schütz , the head of the "Biochemical Experimental Station" in the sick bay of the Dachau concentration camp .

Orthopedic experiments

Gebhardt was now able to concentrate on the field of orthopedics again. For example, he had some Polish women smash bones with a hammer in order to research possible war wounds and suitable healing methods. In the Nuremberg doctors' trial it was possible to prove that he had a prisoner murdered in order to be able to implant a new shoulder blade in his patient Franz Ladisch.

Polygal experiments

In 1943 some SS doctors, especially Gebhardt, were skeptical about the hemostatic agent Polygal . The concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher then had to prove the effectiveness of Polygal and gave tablets to concentration camp inmates.

Sea water experiments

In June 1944 Gebhardt endorsed the series of experiments on concentration camp prisoners requested by the Air Force in order to be able to assess the harmful effects of seawater.

Promotions

End of war

After the end of the war , Gebhardt accompanied Himmler on his escape, which initially led via the so-called Rattenlinie Nord to Flensburg . When Himmler was not involved in the last government there , he and his entourage went south again. Gebhardt was caught with Himmler and his entourage on May 21 or 22, 1945 in Bremervörde .

Trial, Condemnation and Death

Gebhardt as a defendant in the Nuremberg medical trial, 1946/47

On December 9, 1946, the Nuremberg medical trial began , in which Gebhardt was charged with fatal sulfonamide experiments on female concentration camp inmates and criminal surgical interventions. Gebhardt named himself in an affidavit as President of the DRK. He stated that he had become President of the German Red Cross (DRK) on April 23, 1945 . Telford Taylor's Prosecution included this information in the indictment. These allegations were also included in the opening speech and the judgment against Gebhardt. However, it was a protective claim, even if it continues to be made occasionally. Gebhardt was sentenced to death for war crimes , crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations on August 20, 1947 and hanged on June 2, 1948 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl Gebhardt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 104 , 1451
  2. ^ SS Personnel Office: SS seniority list of December 1, 1938, serial no.292
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff: That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; used: Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, p. 421.
  4. ^ Statement by Prof. Gebhardt. NOR 1, Prot. P. 4050–4051 G. - Note: The Czech historian Stanislav Zámečník and former inmate of the Dachau concentration camp suspects that Gebhardt did not want to share the expected success of the operation with anyone. See Zámečník: That was Dachau . Luxemburg, 2002, p. 285 ff.
  5. ↑ Zámečník, p. 286.
  6. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Dissertation TU Berlin 2002, urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 .
  7. ↑ Gebhardt's interim report (PDF; 476 kB) In: Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. Diploma thesis, University of Oldenburg, 1999. BIS Verlag, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 .
  8. ↑ Zámečník, p. 287.
  9. ↑ Reichsführer! Letters, p. 175 f.
  10. ↑ see also http://www.oekostadt-online.de/oen/walt2.htm ( Memento from September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ See Brandt's letter of November 29, 1943 to Sievers , Doc. NO-612, cited in NOR 1 pp. 1006-1007 G.
  12. ↑ Document VEJ 11/146 in: Lisa Hauff (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources), Volume 11: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia April 1943–1945 . Berlin / Boston 2020, ISBN 978-3-11-036499-6 , pp. 427-428.
  13. ↑ Stephan Link: "Rattenlinie Nord". War criminals in Flensburg and the surrounding area in May 1945. In: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Hrsg.): Mai '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 21.
  14. ↑ see Gebhardt's affidavit of November 12, 1946: [1]
  15. ↑ Birgit Morgenbrod, Stephanie Merkenich: The German Red Cross under Nazi dictatorship 1933-1945 , Paderborn 2008, page 419 ff
  16. ^ Medical history: The Nuremberg Medical Trial by Wolfgang U. Eckart . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt from August 21, 2017, PDF (376 kB) [2]
personal data
SURNAME Gebhardt, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gebhardt, Karl Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and personal physician Heinrich Himmler
BIRTH DATE November 23, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hague in Upper Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1948
PLACE OF DEATH Landsberg am Lech