“The fact that several of my acquaintances were suddenly inducted; the fact that other acquaintances were not discharged after the usual period of service, but remained with their units, putting into operation the mobilization plans of the individual plants, especially, as already mentioned before, of Ludwigshafen, the commencement of operation of the stabilizer plant in Wolfen at the end of 1938/beginning of 1939; increase in the production of diglycol which was being used for explosives, the interest which was being shown by the Wehrmacht in direct mustard gas (Direkt-Lost), to be produced in Gendorf.

“Judging by the over-all political situation, I could not assume that war would be declared on us by other countries in the year 1939. I received that impression through occasional discussions with officers, and officials of the German Wehrmacht on the subject of patent and license questions; I was given various intimations on the armaments situation in non-German countries. This always occurred when we had an opportunity of discussing the possibility of German patents being released for publication. One could conclude from this that no special preparations for war were being made in foreign countries.

“Furthermore, in the Vermittlungsstelle W, I was able to read foreign newspapers which were banned in Germany, and which were made available to the Counterintelligence Officer of the Vermittlungsstelle W, Dr. Diekmann, by the Gestapo and the Security Service of the SS, and which had to be returned to them. From these newspapers I gathered that foreign countries did not consider waging war at that time.

“Through my acquaintanceship with various officers of the Wehrmacht, which was not based on personal friendship, but rather on purely professional collaboration, I learned about troop movements to the East and the West before the outbreak of war. I also considered this an indication for aggressive war, as well as the experiments and development work of the 1G with the Wehrmacht.” [NI-8925, Pros. Ex. 247.] 

“I would like to give you some more detailed information as to what led me to this assumption. Because of my activities in the Vermittlungsstelle W in the field of development work, which was carried on by the Wehrmacht in collaboration with the IG, and also in connection with my work on patent questions, I had repeated occasion to discuss matters with officials and officers of time Wehr- [...macht]