It is immaterial for the experiment when this is done with or against the will of the person concerned. For the individual the event remains contradictory, just as contradictory as my actions as a doctor seem to be if you decide to isolate it. The sense is much deeper than that. Can I, as an individual, remove myself from the community? Can I be outside and without it? Could I, as a part of this community, evade it by saying I want to thrive in this community, but I don't want to bring any sacrifices for it, not bodily and not with my soul. I want to keep my conscience clear. Let them try how they can got along. And yet we, that community, are somehow identical.
Thus I must suffer of these controversies, bear the consequences, even if they remain incomprehensible. I must boar them as the fate of my life which allocates to me its tasks. The sense is the motive, devoted to the community. If for their sake I am guilty, then for their sake I will justify myself.
There was war. In war one's actions are all alike. Sacrifices of war affect us all and I stand by them. But are those sacrifices my crime? Did I kick the requirements of humanity and despise them? Did I step across human beings and their lives as if they were nothing? Yes, they will point at me and cry "Euthanasia" -- and wrongly; useless, incapable, without value. But what did happen? Did not Pastor Bodelschwingh in the middle of his work at Bethel last year say that I was an Idealist and not a criminal. How could he do such a thing? Here I am, subject of the most frightful charges. What if I had not only been a doctor but a man too without a heart and without a conscience. Would you believe that it was a pleasure to me when I received the order to start Euthanasia For 15 years I had labored at the sick-bed and every patient was to me like a brother, every sick child I worried about as if it had been my own.
And then that hard fate hit me. Is that guilt?
Was it not my first thought to limit the scope of Euthanasia? Did I not, the moment I was included, try to find a limit and find a cure for the incurable? Were not the professors of the Universities there? Who could there be who was more qualified? But I do not want to speak of those questions and of their executions. I defend myself against the charge of inhuman conduct and base philosophy. In the face of those charges I fight for my right to humane treatment. I know how complicated this problem is. With the deepest devotion I have tortured myself again and again, but no philosophy and no other wisdom helped here.
There was the decree and on it there was my name. I do not say that I could have feigned sickness. I do not live this life of mine in order to evade fate if I meet it. And thus I affirmed Euthanasia. I realize the problem is as old as man, but it is not a crime against men nor against humanity. Here I cannot believe like a clergyman or think as a jurist. I am a doctor and I see the law of nature as being the law of reason. From that grew in my heart the love of men and it stands before my conscience. When I talked to Pastor Bodelschwingh, the only serious warning voice I ever met personally, it seemed at first as if our thoughts were far apart, but the longer we talked and the more we came into the open, the closer and the greater became our mutual understanding. At that time we weren't concerned with words. It was a struggle and a search far beyond the human scope and sphere.
When the old Pastor Bodelschwingh after many hours left me and we shook hands, he said as his last word, "that was the hardest struggle of my life." To him as well as to me that struggle remained, and it remained a problem too.
If I were to say to-day that I wished that this problem had never hit me in its tremendous dramatic force, then this could be nothing but superficiality in order to make it more comfortable for myself. But I live in my time and I experience that it is full of controversies everywhere. Somewhere we all must make a stand.
I am deeply conscious before myself that when I said "Yes" to Euthanasia I did that in my deepest conviction, just as it is my conviction today, that it was right. Death can mean relief. Death is life - just as much as birth. Never was it meant to be murder. I bear this burden but it is not the burden of crime. I bear this burden of mine, though, with a heavy heart as my responsibility. Before it, I survive and pass, and before my conscience, as a man and as a doctor.
THE PRESIDENT: I now call upon the Defendant Handloser.
DEFENDANT HANDLOSER: During my first interrogations here in Nuernberg in August, 1946, the interrogator explained to me:
First, you have been the Chief of the Army Medical Service. Whether or not you knew of improper experiments does not matter here. As the Chief, you are responsible for everything.
Second, do not try to come with the excuse that among other nations similar things, or the same, have happened. We are not concerned with that here. The Germans are under indictment, not the others.
Third, do not rely upon your witnesses. They, of course, will testify in your favor. We have our witnesses, and we rely upon them.
Those were the guiding principles of the Prosecution until the last day of these proceedings. They remained incomprehensible to me, because I always believed that a criminal had to be a man who did wrong, and because I was of the opinion that even the Prosecution had the desire to be objective, at least until after the end of the presentation of evidence. The final plea by the Prosecution, however, told me that I made a mistake. The speech by the Prosecution did not take into account the material submitted in evidence, but it was a summary and a repetition of one-sided statements of the Prosecution without taking into account that which was submitted in the course of the presentation of evidence in my case.
I have full confidence that the High Tribunal has gained a true impression of my activity and of my attitude. Just as I have tried throughout my entire life to fulfill the tasks which were put to me by fate, according to the best of my capacity and in the full knowledge of my responsibility, I also tried to pass this most serious examination before this court with the aid of this strongest weapon which I possessed. That is the truth.
If there was anything which could reconcile me with the mental suffering of the last months, then it was to be conscious, to know, that before this court, before the German people, and before the people of the world, it would become clear that the serious general charges of the Pros ecution against the Medical Corps of the German Armed Forces have been proved to be without any foundation.
It can be seen how unjust these charges were by the fact that, according to my knowledge, not against a single leading doctor of the German Armed Forces in combat or at home, including my two chiefs of staff, were any charges raised or any proceedings initiated. As the last Medical Inspector of the Army, and as Chief of the Medical Service of the Armed Forces of Germany, I think with pride of all the medical officers to whose untiring devotion hundreds of wounded and sick patients of this dreadful war owe their lives and cure and their possibilities for existence. Never and nowhere were the losses of an Army Medical Corns, more than those among the Army in the Officers of the German Armed Forces in carrying out their duties.
More than 150 years ago, the guiding principle was created for German military doctors and their young successors, "Scientia, Humanitati, Patriae", "For Science, for Humanity, and for the Fatherland." Just as the medical officers in their entirety also remained true. That guiding principle is in my thoughts and in my actions. May the joint endeavors of all the nations succeed in recognizing the meaning of peace, and to avoid in future the immeasurable misfortune of war, the dreadful phase of which, nobody knows better than the military physician.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Paul Rostock.
DEFENDANT ROSTOCK: I have nothing to add to the pertinent statements by my defense counsel, Dr. Pribilla, regarding the individual points of the indictment in this trial, but with regard to the general position of German Medical Science during this war, there are a few words, which I would like to speak from this dock.
Within my direct examination, I have already stated why I, as the Chief of the so-called Department "Science and Research," I undertook it to begin to work for medical science as late as 1943 and 1944. At that time the problem was to avoid the considerable and acute danger, or, at least to reduce that, that teaching and research, and with Germany's universities, should be completely destroyed. When this had been prevented at the very last moment, there arose from it the task and the duty to improve the means and the possibilities of the basic research which had been more and more restricted in the process of the war and through their dwindling resources; research in Germany would have been completely destroyed.
Due to the chaotic development of the last year of the war, success was comparatively limited, but there was success and there were a few things which were saved beyond the end of the war.
Today on the strength of the evidence in this trial, I know the reasons which paralyzed the work at the time. It was the striving for power on the part of certain organizations which used the effective support of certain executive departments who held the unrestricted power of the Third Reich. It was the claim for a totalitarian conduct which was put forward by its organizations in the case of what they called the science of universities, but it was there where we founded the tradition of German science recognized the world over. With regard to that they pursued the aim as shown in some of the testimonies given in this trial and some of the documents submitted for a politically directed science of their own, which they wished to start. That was the reason why in this trial, the evidence given to you in this trial, the aims which I have referred to had to be without a complete success. Today at the end of this trial I know how the situation was. At that time, in the year 1944, we did not know of this masterly camouflaged and, therefore, so very dangerous opponent of that part of science which I myself had come up against. Throughout my life I have never by any means worked for one form of a state or another or for any political party in Germany, but, solely and alone, for my patients and for medical science.
THE PRESIDENT: I now call upon the Defendant Schroeder.
DEFENDANT SCHROEDER: It is very difficult for a defendant to find the right last word here. In methodical, detailed work throughout the last months, the defense has tried to rebut the charges of the Prosecution.
If the Prosecution states now in its final plea that details do not matter so much but that the entire complex of questions has to be considered as a whole, one has to look at matters as at a bundle of sticks, not as individual branches and twigs of the bundle. If, furthermore, the Prosecution refers to a sentence pronounced in the Far East by an American Military Court, by which a Japanese General and military commander was sentenced only because, as a commander, he had the responsibility for all the acts of his troops, regardless of whether he ordered them, knew of them, approved of them, or did not even know of them--if, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, these principles are decisive for proceedings, then I have to ask, why bother at all to start proceedings of that kind, to prepare them, and to carry them out? Those decisions could be made much more quickly.
What can I, as a defendant, say against these arguments? That is easily seen by my work, my actions as a doctor and soldier in 35 years of service. Not ambition for glory and honor was the content of my life's work, but the firm intention to put my entire capacity, my full knowledge, into the service of my beloved Fatherland, to help the soldier, as a physician, to heal the wounded, which war-time and peace-time service has created, as a practical physician for the individual, as well as the medical officer for the mass of troops which were in my care.
That was the path and the goal of my work. I do not believe that I have deviated from that path. My eyes were always fixed in the direction of the final goal, to help and to heal.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Genzken.
DEFENDANT GENZKEN: During my testimony I stated before the Tribunal that I took no part in the types of experiments of which I was accused. I have nothing to add to what my defense counsel Dr. Merkel has said. For the duration of a human life I have striven to live decently, as a doctor and as a soldier.
If my fatherly concern for my 2,500 doctor and 30,000 medical men was attacked here in this courtroom, then it is nevertheless my duty to speak from this place on behalf of those men who, in the majority, were decent and brave doctors and medical men.
THE PRESIDENT: Please speak a little slower, the interpreters have difficulty in translating.
DEFENDANT GENZKEN: I am proud to have been their leader, a leader of those who sacrificed their lives and blood with unceasing effort to help me in building up the organization of the Medical Section of the Waffen SS, and who suffered tremendous losses from the ranks of our comrades at the fronts.
The soldiers of the Waffen SS have proven historically, in the focal points of uncounted battles during an uneven struggle, that they were able to meet the best equipped troops on this earth as far as training, efficiency, readiness of sacrifice, soldierly valor, and contempt of death were concerned. Actions of modern warfare presented a picture, partly, of murder and horror, and, I say, on either side. Who wants to raise his head before God and gainsay it?
We, the men of the Waffen SS, went into captivity out of anguish, out of unheard physical and mental war distress. That captivity was not free of bloodshed, ill treatment and dishonor of various kinds. To the men of the Waffen SS there was added to the weight of such captivity the frightful realization of the fact that their supreme commander, Himmler, had misused their cloak of honor and deceived them, that they had been cheated and then deserted by him. These decent men of the Waffen SS certainly did not deserve that fate, the fate of being branded members of a criminal organization.
My request and my wish is that our former opponents should realize the true idealism of these victims, do justice to it, and give them back the true belief in justice.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Gebhardt.
DEFENDANT GEBHARDT: I wish to thank the High Tribunal for having granted me an opportunity, in the witness box, to describe my personal position in 1942 in that much detail.
The historical situation at that time placed me in a totalitarian state which, in turn, placed itself between the individual and the universe. The virtues in the service of the state were virtues as such. Beyond that, I did not know whether, in the world neurosis of this total war, there was a country at all where the spirit was not used as a tool for war. Everywhere, in some way, values and solutions were put in the service of the war. And here again, in the spiritual field, the first step is the decisive one.
I may be permitted to recall that in the war of nerves, propaganda with and for medical preparations caused the first step, the order to examine the problem of sulfanilamides.
In my final statement today I want to describe my entire attitude as a whole. In doing so, may I utilize the most important of the four American freedoms, that is to say, the freedom of speech, until the very end, in a manner wherein I will refrain from any denunciation or from incriminating others. Without exaggerating the importance of my own person.
However, any physician can only be measured according to his idea of medical science. Basically, I was neither a cold technical specialist nor a pure scientist. I believe that I have always tried, for example, when carrying out surgical experiments, to see every disease as a purely human condition of suffering. However, I did not see my task as something to serve my own advantage, nor in cheap gestures of theoretical pit, but, in my personal active service, to support the wavering existence of the suffering patient. That is how I saw my task. My goal as a physician was not so much purely technical therapy for the individual patient, but therapeutical care for the particularly underprivileged group of the poor, the children, the cripples, the neurotics.
I am mainly interested in succeeding in being believed that it was not for moral baseness nor for selfish arrogance of the scientist that I came into contact with experiments on human beings. On the contrary, during the entire period in question I had animal experiments carried out in my field of research.
However, since I was the competent, responsible surgical expert, I was informed about the imminent experiments on human beings in my surgical fields ordered by the National authorities. After the order was given, it was no longer a question of stopping these experiments, but the problem was the method of their being carried out.
As an expert, my conflicts consisted of the following: For one, the experiments that had been ordered had to be of practical scientific value, and with the aim that a preventive should be found to protect thousands of injured and sick. On the other hand, I considered humane safety measures for the experimental subjects most important. The focal point for me, indeed, was never the purpose and the goal of the experiments, but the manner in which they were carried out. To do that in a humane way, I did not remain aloof in the special surgical field; I did not restrict myself to theoretical instruction, but I took part with my clinic and with all its safety measures.
DR. GEBHARDT (Continued): I hope that this bears out the fact that in carrying out experiments I tried with the best of intentions to act primarily in the interest of the experimental subjects. We did not take advantage of the opportunity which was given us by Himmler without limitation. That is to say, surgical experiments were not followed by others. I believe that as far as that was possible at that period that I have fulfilled my duty as an expert purely because these experiments did not increase in the surgical field in spite of the crescendo of policy at that time. My desire was to help and not to give a bad example. In choosing this way of justification, of course, I have made a decision for myself. I hope that up to now I always stood up under criticism from the very beginning in foreign countries without any secrecy but also without the feeling of guilt for my activity as an expert.
That activity of experiments as a military physician, not on my initiative, brought me in contact with a concentration camps I can understand. How heavy that deadly shadow must weight upon anyone who was ever active there. The ghostly phenomenon of that sphere, which a.t that time was unknown to me as well, can be recognized now in retrospect in full. We realize the terror in the secretly negative ideology of extermination combined there with the negative selection of the guards. Only from the files of the International Trial could we see that in the end of the 35,000 guard troops there were only 6,000 SS men unfit for combat. On the rest were scums, draftees, foreigners, etc., who to the greatest injustice and the greatest shame were given the same uniform that we wore in combat.
As chief of a well know clinic and supported by its known measures of safety devices, in the interest of the experimental subjects I got in touch, within the framework of my duty as an expert, with concentration camp doctors. As far as it was at all possible I tried to exclude that atmosphere in my field. But, I believe it can be realized that my counter-actions vent beyond purely clinical safety measures in the interest of the experimental subjects because of the several thousand foreign inmates of this concentration camp, among whom as we were told here there were at least seven hundred Polish women (only two hundred), but of these two hundred sixty of my experimental subjects, as was proved, at the end of the war were turned over to the Red Cross.
As much as I might try to clarify my actions as a doctor and to explain my good intentions and position there, here in the same manner my final thought should be devoted to self-criticism and to concentrate on my moral obligation.
In a parody on a statement by Heinrich Heine we may see today "It is fate in itself to have been an SS man regardless in what position". Though I believe and hope that I did my duty in this confusion which has been recognized later as being a most dreadful one - the confusion between the decent Waffen-SS and the executive organization, that I have done my duty as an officer, a doctor, and a human being - I still feel highly responsible and I have my own restitution from this confusion - my possibilities to do that of course were limited.
Without looking for sensation I offered to undergo a self-experiment as proof, and that without any surgical safety measures, as soon as the first opportunity existed. My responsibility to all those who were my subordinates I have emphasized. I further have a responsibility, which I state not only now in the dim light of my own defense but already stated in May 1945 on that day when Himmler released us from our oath and from our orders and he himself left his post without any ethical reserve or ideological foundation. It. was my endeavor to prevent any illegal continuation of the ideas of the SS, to take the burden off the shoulders of our faithful youth by burning over the SS Generals.
Today as one individual I can only repeat to my colleagues that readiness. Here, in spite of my serious endeavor, the charges seem to give a different impression. May the consequences effect me in such a way that I may ease the problem to the younger ones who, believing in me, also joined the SS as surgeons. I believe that this pile of rubble of Germany can not afford to let these good young doctors perish in camps or in inactivity. Likewise I understand I have measures which should make the work easier for the old German universities and their admired teachers.
If you permit me a last sentence without referring to my own person, in order to summarize what I have found out in order to avoid possible mistakes, I would like to say, that from basic social conditions the only pathological escape at that time, as well as today, would be here as well as everywhere, to confuse and combine the spiritual with the economic and political concepts. It is a disastrous error to confuse the organized unanimity of voices with harmony. Destructive criticism educates people only to be capable of cooperation. The private as well as the public conscience can not be subjugated to any official virtue nor to any temporal moral principles. That can only find its place within a God-given order. Thus, in the sense of a. constructive pessimism, as I have set forth before, this war, in this sense we alone find consideration for the reality, full of suffering, of this social catastrophy.
My last statement of gratitude is to go to Dr. Seidl who in this time which lacks of civil courage, has been our assistant as well as for my colleagues as well as for myself.
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant Blome.
DEFENDANT BLOME: I have testified quite openly before this high tribunal that, particularly up to the outbreak of war, I was a confirmed National Socialist and follower. I have also stated why I became a party member in 1931, because political conditions in Germany at the time were moving with giant strides towards a final conflict between Communism and National Socialism, as a result of the economic chaos and the impotence of the German governments after 1919. I have said that I joined the National Socialist Party because I rejected the dictatorial form of the Communist system. In my book "The Doctor in the Struggle", which was put to me by the Prosecution here in cross-examination, I also explained why I went over to National Socialism. This book, however, which was published in 1941, at the time of Germany's greatest victories, clearly shows my repudiation of the Second World War, to which I do not refer with a single word, not even a hint, although my experience in the First World War take up considerable space in that book.
After the First World War Germany was in great difficulties. The situation became progressively worse and more unbearable, when at the turn of the thirties the economic crisis spread throughout the world and even seized hold of the United States. At that time I realized that in such hard times a nation which is drifting toward despair seeks a leader and follows him in blind confidence as soon as he can show big successes.
That is the case of Hitler these were only sham successes or temporary successes the German people realized only gradually, only step by step, and only at a time when it was too late to shake off the dictatorship again by their own strength. For years the German people were deceived by the leaders as to the true situation. In deliberately lying propaganda Hitler's governmental system until the last moment kept proclaiming final victory to the German people, even in the winter of 1944, and even in the spring of 1945, when the Reich cabinet and the Party Leaders long knew what a terrible collapse was imminent.
This governmental system thus irresponsibly imposed on the exhausted body of the German nation still further useless losses of life and property.
Since the collapse, particularly since the International War Crimes Trial at Nurnberg, we see clearly that this frivolous method of betrayal of their own people was an appropriate part of the systematical murder of foreign peoples and races by the millions.
I believe that there is no example in history of the boundless confidence of a people in their leader being so boundlessly misused and disappointed.
The German people were blinded in their faith in their Fuehrer, in a leader who constantly pretended to them and the world a love of peace, a humane character, a selfless care for the people. Thus the German people became the victim of a political gambler. His unrestrained supreme power apparently knew only the choice between ruling and destroying. Hitler's ambition, as I know and judge it today, had only one aim: At any price to go down in history as a great man. Hitler achieved this goal 100 percent: He went down in history as one of the greatest tyrants of all time, tremendous in his mania for ruling, tremendous in his brutality in the achievement of his ends, not hesitating even at the murder of his best friends, his oldest followers, if they were in his way.
Relying upon the blind confidence of his deceived people, Hitler created a system in which all individualism, all sentiment of freedom, all personal opinion of the citizens was nipped in the bud and turned into slavery.
He succeeded in this with the aid of a very small circle of closest associates, who had fallen under his hypnotic influence, in part perhaps deceived themselves by this man, but who became willing tools in his hand for the enslavement of the German people and the decimation of whole nations.
Under the fatal influence of a clever, deliberately lying propaganda, against which even other countries were as good as powerless, the German people and the German doctor, too, believed that they were following an honorable leader and serving a good cause; they all considered it the highest moral duty not to desert the Fatherland in times of emergency and particularly in wartime, especially since this was their duty to the very extreme, since in this war the life or death of the nation was at issue.
During the times of total warfare, the times of air raids, hunger, and the danger of epidemics, working conditions for the German doctor were terribly hard; so difficult that today one can hardly imagine now what German doctors accomplished in those days for friend and foe alike. Whether we twenty doctors here in this dock are accused justly or unjustly, it is a great injustice in any case to defame German doctors in general in public, as is constantly being done. As former Deputy Reich Physicians' Leader I know conditions in the German medical profession during the Hitler period, and I must say even today: In its totality the German medical profession was efficient, decent, industrious, and humane. Their willingness to work under the most difficult conditions that one can imagine, their unselfishness to the utmost, their courage and their helpfulness were exemplary. Beyond all praise were in particular the numerous old doctors who were already living in retirement and who, in spite of their great age, returned to the service of the sick, and those innumerable women doctors who, married and often the mothers of many children, exchanged their household duties for the difficult work of medical practice during wartime.
The whole German people know this, in whose midst and under whose eyes the German medical professions spent the years of distress and fright, and who, therefore, will continue to place unlimited confidence in German doctors.
Of myself I can say: I have always, particularly during the Hitler period, devoted all my efforts to keeping the medical profession at a high scientific and ethical level and to developing it.
And I found in this effort the full support of all German doctors, including the most famous scientists and chief physicians of medical institutions. Wellknown scholars throughout the world supported this work, which was above parties and enjoyed an international reputation.
But in the course of this trial it has become clearer to me day by day just how criminal the Hitler system was, to which I sacrificed in good faith many years of my life, and I am deeply moved inside me that I must confess to myself: For years I held a responsible position in a system which to ay I must curse just as much as curse all those who forced upon the German people such a tyranny of crime and debasement of man.
It was my mistake that I stayed in the post where fate had placed me and in which I had hoped to be able to do good for our people and my profession. It would often have been simpler to give up this post, when I began to realize, step by step, the depravity of the Third Reich. If I did not do so, but stayed at my post until the bitter end, I did this because I considered it my duty, especially in the hard times of total war, and because again and again I succeeded either in protecting the medical profession from harm or in preventing crimes against humanity. Even today I would have to consider it cowardice if I had left my post in 1941 or '42 only to put myself in safety or to evade threatened responsibility.
I feel myself free of the guilt of ever having committed or furthered crimes against humanity.
THE PRESIDENT: The Defendant Mrugowsky.
DEFENDANT MRUGOWSKY: My attorney and I have made every effort during my examination on the witness stand and by means of the considerable evidence which we have submitted to restrict the charges which have been raised against me, just as much as we tried to assist in ascertain ing the truth.
The outcome of the trial and the evidence against me is in the hands of the Tribunal and its closing brief, and in the reply the brief of the Prosecution. I am firmly confident on the basis of this trial that this high Tribunal will examine the evidence objectively and carefully. Thus in my final speech I merely would like to draw your attention to the fact that my life in its entirety was solely devoted to my profession and my science. It was my aim, not by any means to represent some political ideology, but to go to the university and to reach the position of a free and independent doctor and scientist.
The Prosecution has charged us, the defendants, with destructive tendencies which were supposed to have been the causes of our actions. I declare myself and know that I am free of such tendencies. They never occurred to my collaborators and myself at any time. In the WaffenSS too, the troops of which were among the bravest divisions of the German armed forces, such tendencies never played a part.
As far as my own concepts of the ethical duties of the doctor are concerned, they are contained in a book regarding medical ethics, and I believe always to have acted according to the principles of that book and lived according to them. My life, my actions and my aims were clean. That is why now that a.t the end of this trial I can declare myself free of personal guilt.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now be in recess.
( A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats.
The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Rudolf Brandt.
DEFENDANT RUDOLF BRANDT: Now, after this trial has reached its final stage, my conscience is confronted with the question of whether I consider myself guilty or innocent. My responsibility, in my opinion, is to be tested by a three-fold question.
First, did I participate in the experiments directly and actively?
Second, did I at least have any knowledge of the criminal character of the experiments on human beings?
Third, what, if I had known, should have been my attitude towards Himmler?
What my basic opinion is of crimes against humanity I did not only declare myself on the witness stand but this has also been testified to by a very competent foreign witness, a Swedish medical counsellor, Felix Koersten.
Before this Tribunal and in the full knowledge of what I say I confess that I abhore - and did abhore - any crime against humanity in the years past and during my activity as a so-called personal referent of Himmler. But I also frankly declare that perhaps during the course of these last years my way of thinking was not always as present in my conscious mind as it is today. But I never participated in a crime against humanity knowingly, intentionally, or with premeditation.
When passing on the letters, orders, etc. which Himmler issued to third persons, and the result of which was the commission of cruelties on human beings, I am confident that from the evidence and from the content of the various defense affidavits the Tribunal will be convinced that that also corresponds to the truth, that my real sphere of power did in no way correspond to the face value of my official position. My real sphere of power was extremely small. It did not exceed that of a well-paid stenographer in the office of an influential man in Germany. If the Tribunal were to start from this fact, it would approach reality much closer than the prosecution did in its indictment.
I got into contact with Himmler when I was a young, immature man who came from a family in modest circumstances. Nothing else but my ability as a stenographer, which I had obtained through my industry, was the reason for that, and this was my position until the last days of the German collapse, in spite of promotions in rank. At that time I was only too glad to get that job because it enabled me to support my parents with money.
When I started work with Himmler, I got, without intermediate stages, into an agency, the chief of which was to combine, among other functions, the highest executive powers in his hands a short time afterwards.
I am convinced that I would not sit here under a grave indictment if I had had the opportunity to continue my education, if I had made a start in a subordinate agency, and had risen little by little into a higher position. Unfortunately, I have always been a lone wolf as long as I lived, and I never was fortunate enough to have an older friend who could have corrected my political inexperience and my gullibility.
If, however, through all those years, I represented Himmler's ideology, I did so only because I did not know the criminal part of Himmler's character. Since I lived, so to speak, divorced from the world around me and was only devoted to my more than plentiful work, I only learned after the collapse what stupendous crimes are to be booked on Himmler's account.
The evidence has shown that I neither knew a concentration camp nor had anything to do with concentration camps in my official capacity; nor had any influence on the system of the concentration camps, their administration and management, nor on the treatment of prisoners. For this reason I didn't know the measure of the tragedies which were enacted there.
Those matters, into which I had sufficient insight during my restless daily activities to permit me to distinguish between good and evil, were on a plane where they need not shun the light of sun.