To Himmler, Rudolf Brandt was first of all an important and trusted clerical assistant. The record shows him to have been an unusually proficient stenographer. That is the road by which he finally arrived at a position of considerable power and authority as personal Referent on Himmler’s Personal Staff, Ministerial Counsellor in the Ministry of the Interior, and a member of the Ahnenerbe. Acting for Himmler during his absences, Rudolf Brandt, in these positions, had a tremendous opportunity to and did exercise personal judgment and discretion in many serious and important matters. HIGH-ALTITUDE EXPERIMENTS These experiments extended from March to August 1942. Their details are dealt with elsewhere in this judgment. A portion of the evidence in this specification consists of correspondence between the defendant Rudolf Brandt and various others in the German military service who were personally engaged in, or were closely connected with, the physical details of the experiments performed. The correspondence just previously mentioned was admitted in evidence, is well authenticated, and even standing alone, without additional oral testimony—of which there was also plenty—is deemed amply sufficient to disclose beyond reasonable doubt that except for the sanction and diligent cooperation of the defendant Rudolf Brandt, or someone occupying his position, the high-altitude experiments mentioned in the indictment could not have been conducted. Taken altogether, the evidence on this item discloses that during the period between March and August 1942, certain medical experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany for the benefit of the German Air Force, to determine the limits of human endurance and existence at extremely high altitudes. Various human beings, unwillingly, and entirely without their consent, were required and compelled to, and did participate in the aforesaid experiments as subjects thereof. The said nonconsenting subjects were prisoners of war, German civilians and civilians from German occupied territory, whose exact citizenship, in many cases, could not be ascertained. Among the experimental subjects there were numerous deaths, estimated by witnesses at 70 or 80, resulting directly from compulsory participation in the experiments. Exact data on the total fatalities cannot be stated, but there is convincing evidence that during the last day’s operation of the high-altitude experiments, five participating and nonconsenting subjects died as the result thereof. The greater number of the experimental subjects suffered grave injury, torture and ill-treatment. FREEZING EXPERIMENTS