A. If the Tribunal was good enough to follow me in the description of my life, then it will easily recognize what my work at that time meant to a man whose life was devoted to the law. At times, today, it is hard even for me to transfer myself back again into those days and to bring those days back. In a system which was worked out to the very last detail of expediency and power, there was a lonely island amidst the continuous storm in those days--that was the administration of justice. I had to experience how the storm hit again and again, and how certain sacrifices had to be made to this storm of power in order to prevent it from triumphing completely. For me, in that situation, there was only one consideration--can a measure be made compatible with the uncompromising principles of law such as I had considered them so far as a matter of course? Was not everything now only a question of power? How could I avoid that lust for power and prevent the accomplishment of these designs? What will go through regardless of my cooperation and what can I prevent without cooperation? And that deliberation led me to find that extreme limit which I have mentioned before. It was for me the final abolition of the independence of the courts. I had to try to maintain this independence at all costs. In spite of and in the face of the devilish propaganda on the part of Goebbels, I was of the firm conviction that the German courts and German judges were still in good shape. Although, now, from the large number of the many sentences, particularly of the more recent period, the prosecution may select a few in order to prove that legal principles were abandoned in the sentences. To deal with individual cases is not my task in these proceedings. A full examination of the entire field of the administration of justice would show that this conviction of mine was very well founded, and that the maintenance of the integrity of the German courts was a goal which was well worth my work and my trouble; because I was, and still am, of the opinion that the work of the courts is the most secure guaranty for the law. Therefore, I tried again and again to draw various fields within the scope of work of the courts. For instance, in the economic field, the problem of getting agriculture [farms] out of debt [Landwirtschaftliche Entschuldung], the question of hereditary and marriage health, but the basic prerequisite was that the courts had to remain independent. When, in 1937, in the German Civil Service Law, Hitler was given the right to retire any civil servant if this civil servant could not be expected at any time to fight for the National Socialist State, in my capacity as chief of the Department for Public Law at the Ministry, I had a security clause inserted for the judges; this clause provided that measures regarding the judicial civil servant could not be based on the objective contents of a judge’s decision. Once the independence of the courts was lost,