When in the summer of 1941 he (Hitler) gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.

Not justified - but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.

There is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder.

We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, when it was woven into special fittings f…

My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty...

Obeying an order was the most important thing to me. It could be that is in the nature of the German.

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.