1947-03-04, #3: Doctors' Trial (early afternoon)

AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 4 March 1947.)

THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats.

The Tribunal is again in session.

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.

KARL GEBHARDT — Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued)

BY DR. SEIDL:

Q: Witness, I was told that some of what you have said did not come through. I therefore ask you to make shorter sentences and in order to clarify some of the misunderstandings I ask you once more: When you were appointed as Chief Physician in 1933 to Hohenlychen, did you have any relationship to Himmler or did he exercise any influence on that appointment?

A: I think I have said before that I was assigned to this position and that there was no political background connected with it whatsoever. I came over through purely academic channels. I was the consulting physician with the Reich Sport Leadership which was a central medical position. Secondly, I was professor for the Reich Academy for Sport Activities and I was there the leader of the medical department. Thirdly, I was the Chief Physician of the Institute at Hohenlychen. At that time I had no connections at all to the SS or Himmler.

Q: The word "Institute" Hohenlychen was sometimes connected with the word "camp". Was the clinic organized in the form of a camp or how was it really organized?

A: It was a modernly built large clinic with over a thousand beds, 15 to 20 buildings. There were departments for children, for tuberculosis, for sport, for various lung diseases. The buildings were separated according to the various fields.

Q: This morning you spoke about the thought which you had when, in 1933, you took over the position as Chief Physician. Did you succeed in realizing these thoughts during the course of the years?

A: I may point out very shortly that 3 men decisively influenced this work and represented these thoughts together with me. Those were my immediate superiors an my friends. One of them was a sport leader who represented the entire sector of German sport. Then there was Dr. Todt, who represented the entire labor system, who worked on the Autobahn, and who was greatly concerned with these who were injured through work; I think in the year 1937 I received a position with Dr. Todt in a similar capacity as the one which I held in sport activities, that is, consultant. My scientific and spiritual leader was Dr. Guendt of the Reich Ministry of Education, who not only was an old sportsman and a German champion but also was an anthropologist and had the entire scientific supervision ever sport activities as well as the Institute at Hohenlychen.

At the same time I may mention that Hohenlychen was a private institution and it was intended for welfare. Before it had been purely at the disposal of tuberculosis patients. From 1933 this institution was newly founded and extended. I have already mentioned the 3 decisive men; they were Tschammer, Todt, and Kruemmel. In addition, Generaleberstabsarzt Waldmann became a member of the so-called Curatorium. He knew my family and I knew him from Munich; he saw to it that any sport-injured members of the Wehrmacht who expressed the wish to go to Hohenlychen could be accepted there without any difficulties.

Hohenlychen was under the supervision of the state as a private institution, as was the case in every German welfare institution.

The state supervision was at one time exercised by Dr. Conti as Ministerialrat in the Prussian Ministry and as I said before, supervision was exercised by the Reich Ministry of Education, by Director Dr. Kruemmel. The development of Hohenlychen itself was concerned with sport, people who were injured by work or injured through any other means.

In 1937 and 1938 we concerned ourselves only with the surgical treatment of children with infantile paralysis. It was a matter of course that we extended ourselves and received support. We did not have the same number of patients as other hospitals, that is, patients who went to the closest physician when they experienced any injury. My experience was always devoted to the final stages of a disease, that is to say, to help those who were most severely injured. After these people who were severely injured from sport, after they were rehabilitated by us they again, for instance, played on their international teams; we were also concerned with wounds from the last war which had not yet healed and in addition we were concerned with infantile paralysis, something which were taken from their entire surroundings and the concern of their parents It was quite natural that we received a large number of patients who had a certain special position in Germany and this was something which was supported by German physicians.

We had two opportunities for help in that connection. There was an Olympiads in Germany, of which I was leading physician, for the Olympic Games. I had 20 assistants with me in that capacity and during peacetime about ten guest assistants coming from abroad. It had become customary to distribute our educational films and many German sportsmen and even sportsmen who were injured abroad came to us.

Another momentum may perhaps have been of more decisive importance, namely that my surgical experiments with infantile paralysis had to have a certain prerequisite. Choosing from about 800 infantile paralysis cases, I selected those where the patient was perfectly healthy with the exception of one limb or one leg. Extending an idea which came from another side we tried to draw the strength of the healthy side of the patient towards that sick leg, in other words, to see whether with the right shoulder and the right limbs, the left leg could be moved.

This extension of the muscles comparable to something that follows the principle of the branch of a tree which extends towards each side. This principle was only possible if the patient stayed with us for a long period of time and could survive the transition period without any burden or particular effort.

Hohenlychen is situated near lake, and I had boats, which enabled the children inflicted with infantile paralysis to stay on the water for an entire day. During the winter we introduced salt into the water and therefore improved our bathing facilities. The real solution, however, was something that we copied from 'Warm Springs' from where we thought the therapy was on how infantile paralysis was to be cured and treated.

Q: Witness, have you finished that? Now, will you please shortly describe to the Tribunal the development of your clinics during the War?

A: During the War Hohenlychen was divided into three departments. One was the old civilian department, where there were children and women, which included about 300 beds. They added another 400 beds for the Wehrmacht and 300 beds for the Army — that is 300 beds for the SS. Excuse me. I was the Chief of all of these departments, but because of being committed to the front I mostly had a deputy there, and from the year 1943 on the Department of the SS and the Wehrmacht were merged, and a number of my people and assistants who were with the Army were returned, so that Hohenlychen was again being lead as was the case in peace time. We had a very certain and out-spoken game and we found great understanding for that from all sides.

It may be characteristic to cite an experience from my time as a young physician when I talked about the differences between medical education and the social need of our surroundings. One bitter experience had become clear to me, — in the case of all extreme political disputes the most incurable are the people who had suffered heavy injury and who had lost their compensation since the last War, and they are the one which it is the most difficult to convince. Our own political parties in Germany that time, and probably now, to the crippled poor man became the problem who could not manage without the help of the State.

I made it clear that Hohenlychen after this War should become the central station for all injured people, and above all should accept those injured people, where not the amputation as such is put into the foreground but the very peculiar psyche logical distortion which is so often the case in the crippled patient. We had gardens, bathing facilities, schools. We would accept remnants of the activities, and for that purpose I trained a staff of physicians and sport teachers ever since 1943, and in the year 1943 I gave Germany the outlines for the purpose of caring for the injured, and those that were injured by sport; and it is for this hyper-imposed thought that Hohenlychen served through the entire war.

Q: Know come back to your further scientific career; when did you become the extraordinary professor for surgery?

A: As a lecturer of surgery I came to Berlin from Munich in 1935. I became extraordinary, and in 1937 I became ordinary professor. At that time we had a very loose connection with the faculty of the University. My main emphasis was to the Reich Academy of sport.

Q: You have heard the testimony of the witness, Professor Dr. Leibrandt, with reference to the Oath of Hippocrates. What is your position now and what was it before, with regard to the contents of that oath?

A: May I be permitted, even as a defendant, to express my surprise that in the case of the testimony of Dr. Leibrandt, and in the case of our examination, one very comfortable sentence is used, "Don't you know the Oath of Hippocrates?" These are very clear moral principles against which no doctor can act. Dr. Leibrandt called it the longest established Code of Honor of physicians, and I had the impression that one was just using this sentence in a legal manner.

I can refer to a paper by me from the year of 1940, and I know that it is not my job to give my opinion, but my concerns and the feeling of insecurity which prevailed with every honest decent surgeon when he wanted to define his action towards one moral principle, that is something I do want to described.

The so-called Oath of Hippocrates, which in reality is the old Asccpiato Oath, and certainly has nothing to do with the person of Hippocrates, and is really much older, is now being presented in a manner as if there is a medical ethics which is unchangeable. I believe, using all reticence, I can well say that every ethic is part of a philosophical principle. Each philosophical principle is depending upon its time, upon the situation, and upon the scale of value into which you include it. At that time I wrote, "The Ascepiate Oath in its introductory sentence must be understood in a way that the oath with the God means a determination, namely the question arises what is the supreme principle, of the physician from which he can derive the moral activity." Certainly not Apollo is being spoken to in that connection. There are a number of physicians where the metaphysical super-imposed concept of the supreme order is outside any natural events. That has much to do with the physicians of the renaissance, and in modern times has nothing at all to do with them. This physician, in most cases, is an Atheist, an unbeliever, or perhaps better expressed to take the man, the individual himself as a measure of all things. He doesn't speak about what is fate and what is changeable. This work for the individual as the only thing is now being passed to us as the best. I committed myself to point out what the most important part of our discussions in previous time was. It is the fourth sentence of the Oath of Hypocrates, "I want to help without any consideration for award." I always have had this concern about this exaggerated activity of the physician. One concern is that it is only concentrated, and is depending on the human being and the nature, just considering the natural development without considering any supreme powers; and secondly, I have known so many individual physicians, who certainly were ready to help, but as a specialist always asked "What can the man pay?"

You can apply yet another measure of medical activity. You can say that we don't primarily think of the individual, but we think in the entirety, help of the poor and of the number of poor. I would describe that as the social altruism which says that we can only help to a limited extent, if as physicians our time is limited, if it moans our welfare, the means of giving are limited, theme don't have the right and we must not have the interest to primarily help the person who can surround himself with a number of specialists because he can pay for them. We must found collective communities of need and I was always answered, "Well, we have these things, we have welfare institutions, etc." We know that they are very doubtful limits to these institutions, but it is important to point out that whenever the aid of a physician changes to a collective community of need, that naturally the obligation of secrecy of a physician must of necessity stop. It is much more decisive than the indications of Hitler that some few people, who were in leading positions, had to break this duty of secrecy.

In the time of Bismarck social insurance was introduced, pensions were introduced, trade unions were introduced and there was hardly any or a very limited secrecy in the case of the physicians. That led to a situation that the poor man, who was a member of the insurance company, could no longer choose the physician and that between the physician and the patient there was a bureaucratic state order, some bureaucratic welfare institutions and that a number of secretaries and clerks were getting acquainted with the need, the suffering and the concerns of the patient.

And now as a third consideration, the medical situation has changed completely. Not because of the physician, but because he is ordered to do it whenever a totalitarian state wants to take over the medical welfare institutions. When I heard about the first totalitarian state experiments on human welfare, I found that this was the German state. I said that this was a mass experiment on a state level and that the sentence that must cause most concern is the sentence, "What is necessary must be right". We don't know who defines what is necessary, but it is important to establish that the physician who really works in the totalitarian state and is convinced of his work not only stands by his own individual patient, not only has a possibility to work in this community of need, which he himself should choose, but over him are concepts like necessity of the state, statistics of the state, the needs of the state, if the state, in its medical orders, decides what question it wants to solve.

You know that these state orders were always mentioned in Russia during the very first five year plan and that applied to the medical field too. At that time I wrote that it was an extraordinary important decision to decide whether a physician stands alone in the liberal country and is alone in contact with any patient concerned. All of us will envy the physician like that, but one cannot tell me that this is ethically the best physician for the ethical and clinical welfare.

I, naturally, am today very grateful and have great respect for many physicians who live according to this individual Democratic life, but I know quite a number of business men who also belong to that life too. I was in the position of the so-called social altruisim, I also had the concept that the state should steer, the state should govern, the state should interfere in private welfare, which would comprise large communities of need and most emphasis had to be given to the poor and to the youth.

I saw many drafts of the Reveridge Plan and I think that this is the ideal solution. I was always an opponent of the German social insurance. That was before 1933 and after 1933 for this is too bureaucratic and it forces the physician to become an official. During the war, development of these totalitarian state principles were increasingly intensified. Perhaps I should place Hippocrates where he really belonged. In history Hippocrates comes from the old excelate school, he is a priest physician. From the very early days he personally believed in a heavenly connection. In the case of mentally ill patients, he assumed that it was the Gods who had distorted their brain. He opened the brain, he finds naturally in a few cases that there is some swelling and in a few cases he can cure. I am sure that he must have killed a number of people where there was infirmity, because he believed in the fact that it was something brought about by God.

He is inventor of ideaplastic, that is to say he believed that when he could create on his island a big maternity ward and then show these people classical pictures of beauty, pictures of external beauty, then these women if only concerned with the classical beauty in their thoughts, would eventually also produce beautiful children. That is the point of my statement.

There is no book to which Himmler more often referred than to the book of Hippocrates. Ever since 1940 it was on his desk and this damned ideaplastic ideal which bases judgment of a human being according to external points of view, he thought had a classical basis. He produced something further. In the old publication of Hippocrates, it says that he had a friend called Dragilos, who was a great banker of Athens, who was the invented of the first narcosis of a certain sleep by the use of a root. Himmler had used a second proof which he took from Hippocrates, he said that according to his opinion only after collaboration with a layman, the first narcosis had been invented. I want to express with that that Hippocrates bowing and respecting this big medical figure, who was depending on a fate, who was depending on a scientific research, he was depending on the political situation and surprisingly even depending on certain classical imagination, which were respected in our majority.

Without comparing myself to that, may I please define my own position in this division. The name for Bier contained the following sentence, which was written on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, "The biggest error is to believe that an individual effect or external signs are decisive for judging the value of a human being. The amount of the effort is the effective factor." This depends on the biological and moral reserve stocks of the human being. In 1940, I tried to teach Himmler this correction of his conception of Hippocrates, but he as a layman just read from it as a layman what he considered to be useful. I think that the physician who has an inner feeling of decency is the man who most probably will always believe in God. This man would be the most decent doctor who would help the poor.

I hope that no young physician, who grows up, will become a physician in a totalitarian system.

Q: You know that in the year of 1934 the Reich government issued a law in order to prevent sick and bad heritage. What is your attitude towards this law?

A: I came into close connection with this law on the basis of my activity at Hohenlychen. On the one side I had influential foreign patients in Hohenlychen, and by accident also a Jewish group. I just mention this without quoting any names because I am of the opinion that all patients came to me moved by confidence and not in order to appear in evidence on my behalf at a later late.

On the other hand I would like to show that at that time which Hitler visited Hess who was in my institute and could, make it clear, using Hohenlychen as an example, that I must either continue to lead Hohenlychen in the tolerant manner in which I did so far, or that I must close. Hitler, who at that time was still very accessible, gave me two approvals which applied to Hohenlychen for the entire period.

I had the right to accept Jews, to currently accept Jews and my operations could be continued in the case of heritage diseases. I don't mention that because I consider it to be something of importance. I know from the Sauerbruch Clinic, from Rostock, et cetera, that certainly Jewish patients were accepted whenever they approached the clinic. Whether they approached the clinic was a question of political difficulties which had nothing to do with the physicians.

I only mention this matter, of course, because it is being presented here as a miracle if somebody, by exception, had accepted a Jewish patient. Much more difficult was the dispute about the congenitally ill people, because here it is really a question of a limit. Mr. Brandt put it very clearly that he considered it difficult to expertise this child in the case of his euthanasia. When the surgeons had children who had only one congenital injury, just one leg that was crippled or one foot that was paralyzed, the sterilization laws at first in Germany in that connection were very strict. I think that we have to thank Dr. Kreuz and myself that we were able to alleviate that situation essentially.

Q: I think that you describe the outlines and the spirit which moved you and according to which you intended to lead Hohenlychen, and I now go ever to your activity within the National Socialist Party. When did you enter the NSDAP and what was your position toward the so called Party ideology?

A: Somehow in May or June 1933, after my appointment, at the time when every official and professor had to be a mender of the Party, I became also a member of the Party; that is, I didn't experience the fighting times of the Party and all the initial period that was connected with it because of my neutral social position, but I want to define my position very clearly in connection with this point and want to show what the thoughts were of a certain class of people at that time.

I don't want you to interpret from that that I in any way wanted to incriminate other people, but on the other hand there was not any level of criminals there anywhere that amounted to a thousand or ten thousand men. And Germany really did net see very much about the Third Reich. Two many people had lost their lives. The conflict was too great, and it was our wish to help.

The word, non-political physician, I recognize only when it means that he is not active and is not working politically with any Party. Neither I nor any assistant examine had any political education or anything of a similar nature. On the hand that does not mean that I was completely indifferent in my experiences in the Third Reich, or that I wanted to get an alibi for myself for any later period of time. Even today I am convinced that Germany was in its greatest catastrophe during these two wars, and that it was the duty of every decent German to concern himself actively with the concern and troubles of that time.

Now, there were a number of people, to whom I never belonged, who from the start, recognized the bad way to which the Third Reich was leading because of their insight. This number, I think, was not as large as it appears to be now, and I believe that in order to be just one has to somewhat this was most of all the worker, the man who was on the left, and who understood this opposition in time.

On the other hand there was a certain German spiritual elite, let us say; from Thomas Mann up to Tuchelsky, who, moved by virtue or their own spiritual conviction, went away from the coercion which was exercised by the Third Reich.

I was the physician of Thomas Mann and Tuchelsky and I know all these people. They impressed me deeply as spiritual individuals, but they had no support at the German people in their need and in their concerns. They had no instrument of power in order to restore order.

I don't want to say very much about the bourgeois side, but I think that as a physician with a number of thousand beds where every patient lies there with his members of his family; with his worries, with his letters, with his concerns, that I could perhaps fill in a certain gap. There was not a political philosophical minimum in the bourgeois side which acted in a a convincing manner and employed and won over the generation on his side. The German was very suspicious and almost in a dream walked into the Third Reich without completely realizing it.

On the other hand one has to say very honestly that I was not a member of the Party until May and June because the political pressure exercised on professors was not as react. I do not want to incriminate this level of population but I do want to say that we all hoped that order and ordinary working program and a certain appeasement would somehow again come about in the country. That was my own idea of the Third Reich, or rather, my idea was given a chance by the Third Reich. I took advantage of this chance and I decently worked for the Third Reich, and when then the need and the war and worry came, I paid for this chance as it was paid by every decent human being. I am not of the opinion that it is possible to be paid by a state and then wait for an opportunity to get out.

Apart from a painter or a secluded research worker, one cannot say that we did not realize and experience the tensions of our period. On the other hand it is wrong, to say that we are guilty of the developments when we tried to bring about pure work and exercise our efforts in the Third Reich.

When the Fatherland is in need there can only be three possibilities. Either you recognize in time that the leadership is wrong in that case you have to fight it from the very first moment. You don't let yourself be paid, you don't take a chance — you fight it. I neither realized that, and therefore didn't fight it.

But, there is another possibility; there is the possibility that one believes that a power has come in the Government legally and will survive, even in spite of all the failings of the officers, individuals and all eventually will be steered properly when people who are in the Government who are in the country will advance their criticism, and will then steer the country to the proper goal. May I take the historical example of the French revolution; there it was also the case that the democratic idea of Franklin in France where Lafayette sprang, could only exercise its influence in France when there were people activity opposing it, I don't think that there is a third possibility, that outside any opposition or outside any cooperation, one appeared at the end of a catastrophe with an empty questionnaire without any documents, but having been member of the party. The youth in Germany, our assistant pupils, were only obedient because we were standing in front of them as generals and professors. Now, I may say in my statement I was an outspoken civilian; that I never received any money from the State or Wehrmacht, which I think I can prove, that I did everything within my sphere of influence, acting sensibly and socially, so I do not want to get away from the responsibility which I took over as a general and as a professor. I had no position in the party, no special position; there was a possibility to dispute about this matter with higher or lower echelons. I took this opportunity that I can say whether my way was right or wrong. I sacrificed just as much as any one else with reference to family and other sacrifices, and I didn't try to get away from any danger.

Q: Since when had you known the late Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, and what kind of relationship did you have with him?

A: I know that Himmler's shadow oppresses everybody, and if it was not the case of Dr. Fischer, it would be very easy for me to ask the Prosecution to give their basis of the Indictment in that direction. I can tell you, perhaps, how Himmler approximately affected me, and I think it is important to state that even if there may be a danger to speak about any of my enormous powers and high influence; whoever, dared say that knows nothing about the Third Reich.

I am completely convinced of that. Himmler was neither an important man nor was he a pathological peculiar man. Himmler was never a two faced man. Himmler was never interesting. Himmler on the other hand, if you permit me to leave out these unspeakable cruelties from the room, for just a minute, he was a man very simple, a very industrious man, who had a working program which changed as in the case of every simple man from good to bad. Himmler originates from the same city as I do, that is, from Landshut and these very notorious relationships of confidence which are being repeated, only existed in so far as my father was Himmler's house physician, and Himmler on the other hand, Himmler's father was my rector at my school; that is, we spent our childhood from 1912 to 1916, together. And, if my patents house was very liberal as to the Himmler house, the Himmler house was that of a strict orthodox schoolmaster that handled their son strictly. My notorious relationship as I find does not always refer to Heinrich Himmler but to his brother who went to school with me. And, now the terrible thing is added to it, that the first name of this brother was also Gebhardt, and therefore, I was called Karl because if the teacher in school would say Gebhardt, Himmler's son and I would simultaneously answer to Gebhardt. So, from 1916 there is a certain letter from Heinrich Himmler to Karl Gebhardt which starts, "Dear Karl." Then the war came about and every decent German went to the service of his country so that my personal contact with Himmler stopped from 1917 to 1937. Naturally we met one another again in certain historical situations, and our attitude changed. I experienced the entire necessity of the first war. I was wounded and I was imprisoned. I know what it means to be a soldier in two wars. Himmler was never a soldier. He was just a soldier without going to the front, but that was all. While my father could force me into a certain bourgeois career, Himmler's father did not succeed. Perhaps one could explain it retrospectively. Himmler's father told his son that he had to go to a farm where he had to be kept extremely strictly in order, to get away from any political influence. Unfortunately near that farm there was a number of officers of the National Socialist Party and that is how his father's intention of necessity failed.

Our student career may have been similar, I think. In 1923 there was the so-called Nazi putsch. Himmler participated actively in some political group there. I participated as a physician and took care of the wounded people and the dead people at the Feldherrnhalle belonging to be the parties, that together with Geheimrat Sauerbruch. Himmler continued to serve very much in the party, and in 1923 founded his SS together with others. He turned to the circle which we both knew from school. I consciously did not become a member. I do not want to awaken the opinion here that I did net do that because of any certain political insight, but because of the concept which was valid in all schools; namely, that the older never subordinated himself to the younger. Up to the moment the war started, up to that moment, I had my independence toward Himmler. After that moment, however, I became a soldier and I was obedient without question. However, the personality of Himmler came into my different light. Himmler in 1925 founded his SS and, I believe, not because I think my own memory is important, but in order to help keep things straight with facts, I think it is necessary to say a few words about the SS here. Just because I kept away from that up to the year of 1936, the year of the Olympic games, Himmler is not original but enormously industrious, the SS in its principle, irrespective of whether the channel and personality was correct, had a call, which as an instrument of power could be used, misused either for the best or worst. This call, of course, does not originate from Himmler, but is a symptom of all foundations of orders prevailing at all times.

It shouldn't be interpreted as a blasphemy if I indicate that Himmler simply stated that in this collective mass I must reproduce once more a form of aristocracy. I am obliged to say that because only in that way can you understand that, you can either find the very best of the German generation with the SS or the very worst. It is very correct that the Prosecution points to the SS oath particularly, but they were not in a position to interpret it correctly and read it correctly if I may criticize. The oath speaks of absolute obedience. I tried to show the German Reich was we experienced it, and if there is one thing which I realized in spite of my position to the Third Reich it was that once more there was a clear conception of obedience and authority, something which, of course, was later mis-used. We had all grown up during a time when there was no oath. I can just remember, just about remember that there was a Kaiser and a King, and that was why after the collapse of 1918, they had become very ridiculous in their authority and the epaulettes of officers were torn from their shoulders and officers were not selected because of their ability but because of their political affiliations. Every little group of people had their own imagination as to how Germany was to be saved. The Oaths were impossible but they were secret and were never kept and where there was a foundation of an order which can clearly be conceived. It was grand if it was an order which is tied to absolute morality. It was danger if it is severely imitated. The oath says: to be absolutely obedient, come what may, that one looks into the future and gives absolute obedience in order to finally help Germany.

It was said in 1917 we had almost won the war if we had just been a little more faithful. We have seen how no government can maintain itself because of gross deceit and black market and so on, and every conception of authority was injured, and now a new thought came about, just be obedient, don't ask, no questions, and in this generation to do everything to see to it that Germany is better off in the future.

That is something you can well believe and have faith in when you are twenty and thirty years old and if you don't try to got away from this responsibility you don't have to be condemned. Such an oath is a terrible burden because I didn't feel that and I didn't go to the SS in a dramatic way. I wanted to be understood in a way where I am just describing in what manner the generation was growing up. That is not for my own concern. I had so much to do with my scientific carrer in Hohenlychen that I had no relationship to the SS or any political activities.

I was sent to Himmler in order to prepare the Olympic games and these were the circles who were reasonable. These were the bourgeois circles. They were the ones who sent me and the reason was that the German teams were not to include Jews and the appearance of foreign Jews even was not appreciated politically. The Reich Sports Leader who was absolutely fair, was against the conception with all means at his disposal. It was very difficult for him because the Chief of the German Fencing Teams was Heydrich and he naturally exercised this counter pressure against German intolerance in sport activities and I went to Himmler because of Tschammer's wish in 1935 and convinced him how impossible it was not to be tolerant in medical and sport activities. At that time we thought that it would suffice if we could get through with our fair neutrality in this field and to oppose political grounds of a different nature.

You know that we succeeded and I can claim the credit that I was the man who could prevent this influence. Now you cannot say on the basis of that that I should have prevented everything that Himmler did throughout my entire life, but I can well differentiate. I could limit Himmler where it was within my sphere of power. On the other hand I couldn't gain any influence where I don't know what was going on and where I had no knowledge of the details. I then was included in a German committee for the Olympic games and an international committee for Olympic games, and as a reward and because of my connections to the Reich Sport Leader I became something like an honorary [illegible] of the SS.

During the time and the subsequent period when Himmler visited Hehenlychen, whether during the Olympic games or after the Olympic games I don't remember, he brought some member of his family with him who was injured and I accepted her.

During my interrogation was tortured and I was asked how can you, a man with your knowledge and your connections abroad, how could you have been in sympathy with Himmler. Himmler very modestly and quite alone came to Hohenlychen. I was the master at Hohenlychen and not Himmler. Himmler only meant as much to me as any other King or Duke I treated. I never rejected any one personally who came to me in my capacity as a physician because of any disease. I accepted his reference to our old family relationship and I started a certain relationship of confidence but with a strictly limited sphere of tasks. I didn't again anything because of Himmler. I remained of the rank of Gruppenfuehrer. These loose connections suddenly crystallized into a certain medical form when in 1938 Himmler flew to Austria. By same accident he arrived there before the troops had arrived. The political tension was great and a number of officers had to be flown, among them an ill Gruppenfuehrer, without knowing any of the events in Austria I was suddenly telephoned to fly there in order to protect this group which was around. Himmler, located in Vienna, and that is how the conception of escort physician arose. That is, whenever Himmler went into danger or what he thought was danger he asked me or an assistant of mine, after 1941 Dr. Stumpfegger attended, in order to have a surgeon around him. This position became so personal that it had really nothing to do with any political event. In 1939 I was taken along for the purpose of joining him in his journey to the Sudetenland. At that time we were all very ardent in our journey, and who won't admit it must have a bad memory. As his physician there I was at Munich, I saw the negotiations before the Sudetenland and I saw Chamberlain at Munich and we all thought everything was going well.

A: (continued) During this journey Himmler told no about a very personal conflict in his life, and because of the tradition of my father asked one to help him in that task. I wouldn't want to give any hints about that event if I hadn't read so many untruths and bad things in newspaper reports. On the other hand this conflict is characteristic for Himmler personally. On the other hand he was a person who had really no university education. He was areal stable man who just wasn't a student and who didn't know very much and who was in no way supreme. His entire imagination about family and children and everybody having to have children was based on that kind of personality. And, fate played a different game with him. He could have no children and never quite survived this conflict. At any rate, his son and his second daughter were born at Hohenlychen, were under my protection until April 1945, and that is why Himmler under disguise of hospital inspection came to us. And I had the duty to accept the oath of Hippocrates where the words can be applied on all sides — the duty of secrecy which does not only concern the relationship to the patient but also refers to everything which one may see around oneself. If it doesn't belong to one's sphere of duty one has to overlook it, at least one has to keep quiet about it and not take up any official position. I know exactly how difficult it is to see just where the limits are, but I may be permitted to describe the relationship to Himmler, that just because of our close youth relationship — over since our youth up to the time I became a professor I didn't need his protection and I didn't approved of his foundling the SS. Furthermore. I may say that the SS Himmler and the Sport had to come to me and had to ask me to negotiate for them in my sphere of activity. That, contrary to so many who throw themself around Himmler, I kept far from that. The core of our relationship was that I was not his physician, I was not with him, during the days that he was healthy except during his short journey to Poland.

But, on the other hand I had to accompany him during one of the other dramatic incidents and that I took care of especially personal affairs of his, which have nothing to do with any political state of dependency out made it very difficult for no to answer the question how I know him, why I know him, and who told me. Nobody at that tine in 1939 know what the future will bring, how difficult the future will be. And, I therefore made this very clear agreement with Himmler as we thought it was. One thing absolutely, the duty of secrecy as it is proscribed by the order. I only concern myself with medical affairs and not with use the hours where he went to his wife and children to exercise any influence with him. On the other hand he attached a great value to appear to me to be a bourgeois, knowing my connections abroad. And since he attached great value to the fact that the nether of his children would see him in that light.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess.

(A recess was taken)