1947-07-19, #24: Doctors' Trial (Fritz Fischer's personal statement)
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Fischer.
DEFENDANT FISCHER: Your Honors, when this war began I was just a young doctor, 27 years of age. My attitude towards my people and my Fatherland took me to the front line as a troop doctor. I there joined an armored division, where I remained until I was incapacitated for further service. For only a very brief period, during these years of war, I worked as a medical officer in a hospital back home, and there too my conception of my duties was directed by the wish to serve my country. During this time of my work at home, I received the order which made me a subject of the Indictment of this trial.
The order for my participation in these experiments originated from my highest medical and military superior and was passed on to me, as the assistant and first lieutenant, through Professor Gebhardt. Professor Gebhardt was the famous surgeon and much honored creator of Hohenlychen.
He was a scientific authority whom I looked up to with reverence and confidence. As a general of the Waffen SS he was my unconditional military superior. I believed him, that I had been earmarked by him to assist in the solution of a medical problem which was to bring help and salvation to hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers, and which was to be a cure for them; and I believed that this problem would mean a question of life and death to my people. I believed unconditionally that this order had come to me from the head of the State, and that its execution was a necessity for the State. I considered myself bound by this order, as were thousands of soldiers whom I had seen walk to their deaths during my years at the front, also following an order by the State. Particularly since I had had the privilege during that time of working in a hospital at home, I considered myself doubly and particularly subject to that discipline, and felt myself in duty bound.
What this order demanded from me had been introduced as a method of modem medicine in all civilized countries. I was only to participate in the clinical part of it, and that was taking place just as a course of treatment in the institute of Hohenlychen, or any other clinic. What I did was what was ordered, and I did nothing beyond that order. I believed that I, as a simple citizen, did not have the right to criticize the measures of the State, particularly not at a time in which our country, our State, was engaged in a struggle for life and death.
I hope that through my unconditional devotion at the front and to my two injuries, I have shown that I not only asked others to make sacrifices, but that I was prepared at any time to sacrifice myself with my life and my health. Within the scope of the order given to me I did what I could, in my limited position as an assistant doctor, for the life of the experimental subjects and for an exact and proper clinical development of the experiment. I never found myself in a position where I had to expect that deaths would occur. When such fatalities did occur, I was as shaken by that event as I was by the death of a patient of our clinic.
After that, the experiments were immediately discontinued, and I went back to the division at the front.
Together with Professor Gebhardt, I reported about these experiments to the German public. Like many other Germans, there are many things which, in retrospect, I see more clearly today and in a new light. In my young life I have tried to be a faithful son of my people, and that brought me into this present miserable position. I only wanted what was good. In my life I have never followed egotistical aims, and I was never motivated by base instincts. For that reason, I feel free of any guilt inside me. I have acted as a soldier, and as a soldier I am ready to bear the consequences. However, that I was born a German, that is something about which I do not want to complain.