Individual researchers, who out of ambition or a passion for research did not value a human being’s life more than that of a rabbit, should not be considered representative of the German physicians’ profession, nor should those physicians of the concentration camps, who for lack of a conscience or for some other wicked reason gave fatal injections to prisoners or tortured them to death, be regarded as representative of the German medical profession. No. Representative of a model German physician during Hitler’s time, too, is the non-political, practicing physician, who, even if he did perhaps formally belong to the Party, strongly opposed from the bottom of his heart all kinds of violence and intolerance, who is closely bound to his nation and its needs, the practicing physician who cared for his patients in the most devoted manner day after day and night after night during the time of total war and fearful bombardments, which is especially hard for a physician; or who as military physician served at the front far from home, from his practice, from his family, fairly sharing all the hardships, dangers, and privations with his soldiers. And the surgeon who, as director of his clinic, operated and cured and helped from morning till night wherever he could help without having time to breathe, let alone to take part in political activity, he also is representative of the model German physician during Hitler’s time too. I do not know what verdict you will arrive at respecting one or the other of these defendants; but, as defense counsel of the former Deputy Reich Physicians’ Leader, I beg you to make it clear by your verdict that in judging the defendant, if you must condemn him, you do not condemn and defame the entire German medical profession, but that the abuses which were committed were individual acts such as, perhaps, happened in all professions during Hitler’s time without necessitating a condemnation of the entire profession. These were individual acts arising perhaps partly from personal criminal tendencies of individual fanatics, partly from being connected with the excesses of a total war in a dictatorship of unscrupulous violence. If beside the 23 defendants there is a 24th sitting in the dock, invisible to our eye, he is not of the German medical profession but the SS spirit of Himmler and of a dozen other murderers of millions of people. This spirit might have led a fanatic to forget his professional ethics and to commit crimes. But the entire medical profession remained sound and conscious of its duty. May your verdict not completely rob the German people of their confidence in their physicians but restore it to them, and I have no doubt that after the present crisis has been overcome and in more normal circumstances, the German medical profession will prove to its people that as a body it never forgot nor will ever forget the professional ethical commandments of the Hippocratic oath.