The evidence proved furthermore that the experiments to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide were necessary to clarify a question which was not only of decisive importance for the individual soldier and the troops at the front but above and beyond this care for the individual, it was of vital importance for the fighting power of the army, and thus for the whole fighting nation. All efforts to clarify this question by studying the effect of casual wounds failed. Although drugs of the sulfanilamide series—the number of which amounts to approximately 3,000—had been tested for more than 10 years, it was impossible to form an even approximately correct idea of the most valuable remedies. It was impossible to clarify this question in peacetime by the observation of many thousands of people with casual wounds and by circularized inquiries. Nor could a clear answer be found to this question of vital importance to many hundreds of thousands of soldiers by observation of the wounded in field hospitals during the war. In this argumentation it is impossible and also unnecessary to examine details of the problem of wound infection and its control in modern warfare. I may assume that the importance of this question is known to the Tribunal and needs no further proof since this question not only played a part in the German Army but was a matter of special research and measures in the armies all over the world. In 1942 the conditions in the German Army and in the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht became intensified only insofar as with the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union new difficulties presented themselves in this sphere, too. In the campaigns against Poland and France it had been possible to master the wound infections by the usual surgical means, but the difficulties in the war against the USSR increased beyond all measures. It is unnecessary to examine the reasons for this more closely here. It is clear that they resulted from the great distances and poor traffic conditions, but they were also caused by climatic conditions prevailing there. The fighting power of the German Army was so affected by the heavy casualties that it was impossible to allocate a correspondingly large number of experienced surgeons to the main dressing stations in order to control bacterial wound infection with surgical measures. During the presentation of evidence the difficult situation in which the German armies found themselves in the winter of 1941-42 on the Moscow front and in the south around Rostov was repeatedly stressed. Here it was demonstrated clearly that the German Wehrmacht, and with it the German people, were involved in a life and death struggle.