The order for my participation in the experiments originated from my highest medical and military superior and was passed on to me, as the assistant and first lieutenant, through Professor Gebhardt. Professor Gebhardt was the famous surgeon and much honored creator of Hohenlychen. He was a scientific authority whom I looked up to with reverence and confidence. As a general of the Waffen SS he was my unconditional military superior. I believed him, that I had been earmarked by him to assist in the solution of an urgent medical problem which was to bring help and salvation to hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers, and which was to be a cure for them; and I believed that this problem would mean a question of life and death to my people who were fighting for their existence. I believed unconditionally that this order had come to me from the head of the state, and that its execution was a necessity for the state. I considered myself first as bound by this order, as were the thousands of soldiers whom I had seen walk to their deaths during my years at the front, following an order by the state. This moving impression from the front bound me doubly, particularly since I had had the privilege during that time of working in a hospital at home. I considered myself, particularly at home, doubly bound like every soldier at the front to obey the order of my Fatherland unconditionally. What this order demanded from me had been introduced as a method of modern medicine in all civilized countries. I was only concerned in the clinical part of it, and that was taking place just as a course of treatment in the institute of Hohenlychen, or any other clinic. What I did was what was ordered, and I did nothing beyond that order. I believed that I, as a simple citizen, did not have the right to criticize the measures of the state, particularly not at a time in which my country was engaged in a struggle for life and death. I hope that through my unconditional service at the front and through my two wounds, I have shown that I did not only expect others to make sacrifices at this time, but that I was prepared at any time to sacrifice myself with my life and my health. Within the scope of the order given to me I did what I could, in my limited position as an assistant doctor, for the life of the experimental subjects and for an exact and proper clinical development of the experiment. I never could expect and foresee that deaths would occur. When such fatalities did occur, contrary to all expectation, I was as shaken by that event as I was by the death of a patient in our clinic. After that, the experiments were immediately discontinued, and I went back to the front.