Dr. Alexander had a SHAEF dossier on Weltz that revealed Weltz had joined the Nazi Party in 1937, after which he had moved quickly up the Reich’s medical chain of command. By 1941 he reported directly to the air marshal of the Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch, who reported to Reichsmarschall Hermann G?ring. By war’s end, there were only a few men with more medical authority on Luftwaffe issues than Georg August Weltz—one of them being Dr. Hubertus Strughold.
In their first interview, Weltz told Dr. Alexander that it had been his job to conduct a variety of research on methods of saving Luftwaffe pilots’ lives. Weltz cited what happened to Luftwaffe pilots in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. Many had been shot down over the English Channel by the British Royal Air Force and had bailed out of their crashing airplanes and initially survived. The fatalities, Weltz explained, often occurred hours later, usually from hypothermia. The bodies of many Luftwaffe pilots had been rescued from the icy waters of the channel just minutes after they had frozen to death. The Luftwaffe wanted to know if, through medical research, doctors could learn how to “unfreeze a man,” to bring him back to life. Dr. Weltz told Dr. Alexander that he and his team of researchers had performed groundbreaking research in this area. Weltz declared that they had in fact made a “startling and useful discovery.” The results, said Weltz, were simply “astounding.”
Dr. Alexander asked, “What kind of results?”
Weltz hesitated to provide details but promised that the U.S. Army would be very interested in the knowledge he possessed. Weltz asked Dr. Alexander if a deal could be made. Weltz said that he was interested in securing a grant with the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Alexander explained that he had no authority with any private-sector foundation and that, before anything else, he needed Weltz to tell him about this so-called “astounding” discovery.
Weltz said he and his team had solved an age-old riddle: Can a man who has frozen to death be brought back to life? The answer, Weltz confided, was yes. He had proof. He and his team had solved this medical conundrum through a radical rewarming technique they’d invented. Alexander asked Weltz to be more specific. Weltz said success was dependent upon precise body temperature and duration of rewarming in direct proportion to a man’s weight. He was not at liberty to provide data just yet, but the method his team had developed was so effective that the Luftwaffe air-sea rescue service had employed this very technique during the war. The experiments, said Weltz, had been conducted on large animals. Cows, horses, and “adult pigs.”
Dr. Alexander was in Germany to investigate Nazi medical war crimes. He got straight to the point and asked Weltz whether human beings had ever been used in these Luftwaffe experiments.
“Weltz explicitly stated that no such [human experiments] had been done by him and that he did not know of any such work having been done,” Dr. Alexander wrote in his classified report. But the way in which Weltz responded made Dr. Alexander deeply suspicious of him.
Dr. Alexander was in a conundrum. Should he have Weltz arrested? Or was it best to try to learn more? “I still felt it wiser for the purposes of this investigation not to resort to coercive measures such as an arrest,” Alexander explained. He asked Weltz to take him to the laboratory where these experiments on large animals were performed.
Weltz claimed that because of heavy bomb damage in Munich the Luftwaffe’s test facility for its rewarming techniques had been moved out to a dairy farm in the rural village of Weihenstephan. Alexander and Weltz drove there together in an army jeep. An inspection of the farm revealed a state-of-the-art low-pressure chamber concealed in a barn. This, Weltz explained, was where Luftwaffe pilots learned performance limits under medical supervision. Also called a high-altitude chamber, the apparatus allowed aviation doctors to simulate the effects of high altitude on the body. But the rewarming facilities were nowhere to be seen. Where were they? Dr. Alexander asked.
Weltz hesitated and then explained. They’d been moved, Weltz said—this time to an estate near Freising, at a government-owned experimental agricultural station. Dr. Alexander insisted on seeing the Freising facility, and the two men got back into the army jeep and drove on. In Freising, Alexander was shown yet another impressive medical research facility, also hidden in a barn, complete with a library and X-ray facilities, all meticulously preserved. But the laboratory was clearly designed to handle experiments on small animals, mice and guinea pigs, not larger animals like cows, horses, and adult pigs. There were records, drawings, and charts of the freezing experiments—all carefully preserved. But, again, they chronicled experiments on small animals, mostly mice. Where had the large animal experiments taken place? Weltz took Alexander to the rear of the barn, behind a stable and into a separate shed located far in the back of the property. There Weltz pointed to two dirty wooden tubs, both cracked.