Essentially, Professor von Verscher played a vital role in Mengele's life as a mentor and father figure. It created Mengele's obsession with twins and showed him their value as research subjects. Likewise, Mengele's time as a field doctor influenced how he made his "selections" and how he conducted his experiments. Due to his previous occupation, he had great efficiency when it came to making life-or-death decisions on the Auschwitz ramp. In the laboratory, he tried to recreate the conditions he once experienced at the front, avoiding using anesthetics on his victims during gruesome surgeries. Furthermore, Hitler's views of a superior Aryan race influenced many of Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz; where he was trying to unlock the genetic secrets behind "blond hair and blue eyes". Ultimately, Mengele was a mad man responsible for the deaths of approximately four hundred thousand defenseless people. In the end, we will never understand how a cultured doctor from a wealthy family turned into a monster capable of committing the most terrible atrocities imaginable against his own kind..