Richard Gordon: THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

These missing links were a year later to stimulate the curiosity of the _New York Times._

Domagk's name came up for the first time. Dr Nelte was arguing that new drugs were never allowed to leave the Elberfelt works until exhaustively tested by the latest scientific methods. From my knowledge of Domagk's character and talents this was transparently true. But his reason for labouring the point soon became clear.

'Professor Hцrlein had no influence in, and therefore no responsibility for, the selection of doctors to whom the Elberfeld drugs were given for clinical testing. There was no correspondence or direct association between Professor Hцrlein and Dr Vetter, who at one time worked in Dachau, where the prosecution accused him of experimenting with various preparations. Concerning allegations of experiments in the Buchenwald concentration camp, the prosecution has linked Professor Hцrlein with the therapeutic experiments with methylene blue, supposed to have been carried out by Dr Ding there in January 1943.' I knew this to be another dye, used as a urinary antiseptic. 'The prosecution state that in September 1942 the defendant Hцrlein urged the testing of methylene blue on typhus. But no evidence has been produced.'

Dr Nelte ended by stressing Hцrlein's good character. 'I shall submit numerous affidavits from German, Jews and persons of foreign nationality,' he promised. 'The result will be a picture of a man who, during the bad years after 1933, preserved a courageous and noble heart. A man to whom great injustice is done if one calls him, as did the chief prosecutor, a "sickly spirit" and an "architect of the catastrophe".'

He ended with a curious irony which had already occurred to me. 'In the _Neue Zeitung_ I read yesterday of the ceremonial award of the Nobel Prize in Stockholm. Dr Gerhard Domagk, director of the pathological laboratory of the Elberfeld works, appeared for the presentation of the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 1939 for the discovery of the medical effects of sulphonamide. Professor Domagk worked with and under Professor Hцrlein in the Elberfeld I G Farben plant. Whereas the world pays tribute to Professor Domagk and thus also to the Elberfeld plant by presentation of the highest scientific award, Professor Hцrlein, who was given honourable mention together with Professor Domagk by North American newspapers for work on the sulpha products, stands at the same time before this Tribunal as a defendant.'

The story on which Hцrlein's life depended took more than a day in the telling. I was billeted on the Americans, spending my spare time in Munich watching the mending of its fragmented university. When it came Hцrlein's turn to testify in his own defence, he spoke with dignity, with respect and with effectiveness.

'Mr President, Your Honours. As a layman in legal matters, I believed that the prosecution would give facts which-at least, in their own opinion-gave them the right to claim individual guilt. Instead, they merely mentioned my name in connexion with the general charge of criminal medical experiments. It is so simple to make charges, but it seems to be very difficult to acknowledge errors.'

He talked about a life spent solving health problems of the whole world. 'I worked for humanity, for the honour of German science, for the benefit of the German economy, for my firm and for my family. There was no conflict of interest, and no conflict of conscience, in all these goals.'

Hцrlein claimed that he would never have changed his job of running the comparatively small Elberfeld works. He had once refused a bigger one in I G Farben, because his task at Elberfeld was directed to humanity's greatest benefit-health. 'Hundreds of thousands of soldiers _of all nations,'_ he emphasized, 'in this war have had their lives and health preserved by atabrine.' That was the drug discovered under his influence at Elberfeld as an improvement on quinine 'Millions of people may in the future be saved from death by malaria, a disease from which a third of mankind is suffering, by this invention of the Elberfeld laboratories which can be produced in any quantity desired.'

He ended, 'I am proud that before this Court many scientists of international reputation have paid tribute to my work.' That was all in Dr Nelte's affidavits. 'The prosecution, however, in their opening statement called me and others of my colleagues a "damaged soul". They accused me of crimes against humanity, and tried to prove this monstrous statement. I hope that the Tribunal has been convinced by the presentation of evidence by my counsel that these charges are unfounded. I am, therefore, awaiting your decision with calm and confidence.'

The decision was long coming. The judgements were not given until the last days of July 1948. By then, the Berlin airlift had been flying a month, the German currency reform had laid the foundation stone of a palace of prosperity, I was married and Elizabeth was pregnant.

Life in postwar Britain was still threadbare. But it was enlivened for me by the delightful Gilbert and Sullivan situation which had developed between Fleming and Florey. They seemed to know as vaguely as the Karolinska Institute, or anyone else, who deserved the credit for penicillin. Sir Howard Florey took the Heath Robinson apparatus in the Oxford Dunn labs as a ladder which raised him to become Provost of Queen's College in Oxford and Chancellor of the National University in Australia, to a peerage and the Order of Merit. Sir Alexander Fleming used his interpretation of the penicillin mould in St Mary's to savour the adulation of a film star.

The inaudible, diminutive, shy deadpan Scot was taken equally to the warm heart of American lecture audiences and the icy one of the American Press. From the whole world he gathered academic medals and academic gowns. He was particularly fond of the Spanish one, so gorgeous that he was said to be mistaken in Madrid for the new cardinal. Madrid named a street after him, where appropriately parade the putas-he suspected that he would be remembered as the man who made vice safe for the masses. He would distribute small medallions of the famous mould to his eminent new acquaintances, such as the Pope. 'God wanted penicillin, so he invented Alexander Fleming,' he was supposed to have told an American lady. But it was an impossible utterance from a man like Fleming. He never used a sentence of more than half a dozen words in his life.

I was too busy at Arundel College to revisit Nьrnberg that summer. I only read a transcript of the Military Tribunal's verdicts. (From Archie again.) The Presiding Judge, G. C Shake, had declared, 'The defendants now before us were neither high public officials in the civil government nor high military officers. Their participation was that of followers and not leaders. If we lower the standard of participation to include them, it is difficult to find a logical place to draw the line between the guilty and the innocent among the great mass of German people. We find none of the defendants guilty of the crimes covered by counts one and five, of preparing and waging war.'

I skipped through the typewritten pages until I found Hцrlein's name. 'We cannot impute criminal guilt to the defendant Hцrlein from his membership of the I G Farben board of directors. He is acquitted of all the charges under count two of the indictment.' That covered plunder and spoilation. The Judge continued with count three, slavery and mass murder.

'The evidence does not warrant the conclusion that Hцrlein had any persuasive influence on the management policies of Degesch, the organization proved to have supplied Zyklon-B gas to concentration camps, or any significant knowledge of the uses to which its production was being put. We are of the opinion that the evidence falls short of establishing his guilt on this aspect of count three. Concerning the evidence of inhumane experiments, we may say without going into detail that the evidence falls short of establishing guilt on this issue beyond a reasonable doubt. Applying the rule that, where two reasonable inferences may be drawn from credible evidence, one of guilt and the other of innocence, the latter must prevail, we must conclude that the prosecution has failed to establish that part of the charge.'