Walter Schreiber

Dr. Walter Paul Emil Schreiber (21 March 1893 – 5 September 1970) was a German medical military officer in World War I, a brigadier-general (Generalarzt) of the Medical Service of the Wehrmacht and a key witness against Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials.

Walter Schreiber was born in Berlin to Paul Schreiber (a postal inspector) and his wife Gertrud Kettlitz. After completing gymnasium in Berlin, he studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, and Greifswald. In 1914, he enlisted voluntarily for military service and served with the 42nd Infantry Regiment in France. He was injured at the First Battle of the Marne. After his recovery, he continued with his studies and served as a provisional doctor on the Western Front until the end of the war in 1918, at which time he was decorated for valor and humanitarian service by three different countries, Finland, Switzerland and Germany. In 1920, he graduated Dr. med. from the University of Greifswald and began his field studies in epidemiology in Africa.

After World War I, the United States sought to assess the feasibility of using biological warfare agents in future military conflicts. As a professor of Bacteriology and Hygiene at the University of Berlin and one of the foremost experts in epidemiology, Dr. Schreiber was invited to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, then known as Walter Reed General Hospital, in a scientific exchange between Germany and the United States. During this time, he learned of U.S. past and proposed plans for both defensive and offensive biological warfare research and the possibility of an official US biological warfare program. As a member of the medical branch of the Heer, and a representative of the Army Medical Inspectorate, he was charged with preventing the spread of infectious disease and developing vaccines, in particular to guard against potential biological warfare agents. In 1942 he wrote a memorandum expressing his objections to the Third Reich's own development of such weapons, stating during his witness testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, " I personally made a report to Generaloberstabsarzt Handloser... It was an extremely serious matter for us physicians, for if there really should be a plague epidemic it was clear that it would not stop at the fronts, but would come over to us too. We had to bear a very grave responsibility." In October 1942, Schreiber attended the conference where the results of human experiments at Dachau were presented. In May 1943, he headed the third session of the advisory specialists of the Armed Forces. This led to a confrontation in which Dr. Schreiber spoke out against human experimentation in general, but especially with biological agents such as plague and typhus, testifying later that he "pointed out that bacteria were an unreliable and dangerous weapon" but that he was "confronted with a fait accompli", the decision had already been made, "the Fuhrer had given the Reichsmarschall (Hermann Goering) full powers, and so forth, for carrying out all the preparations." In September 1943, Schreiber accepted the position of the commander of the Training Division C of the Military Medical Academy under which authority he denied permission for Kurt Blome, the head of the Posen research institute, to conduct his plague research in Sachsenburg. This was later overruled by Himmler. In 1944, Dr Schreiber, who had grown increasingly aware of Hermann Goering's antagonism toward him, conferred with Dr. Karl Brandt, the attorney for health care, scientific advisory board. In 1944, from May 16 to 18, Dr. Schreiber learned of research into gas gangrene experiments conducted by Dr. Karl Gebhardt at Hohenlychen Sanatorium. (Nuremberg document 619)

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