dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. MERKEL: The testimony of the witnesses Warlimont (2884-PS) and Lahousen shows clearly that these measures were planned by the High Command of the Army on Hitler's orders, without participation of the Security Police. I refer to the instructions of the OKH dated 12 May 1941 regarding the treatment of Soviet Russian political dignitaries, which was based on an order of 31 March 1941 (RF-351). Opposition to this order, as the statement of the witness Lahousen shows, was useless even for the highest military authorities. In consideration of the explanations included in the order and particularly in the directives for the selection of Soviet Russian prisoners of war (USSR-14), the individual Gestapo agent was entitled to assume the legality of the orders. The further charge is made against the Gestapo that together with the SD it sent prisoners of war who had escaped and had been recaptured to concentration camps. It is a question here of the notorious "Kugel-Erlass," according to which all recaptured escaped prisoners-officers and nonworking noncommissioned officers, with the exception of British and American prisoners of war-were to be turned over to the Chief of the Sipo and the SD with the code word "Grade 111" (Stufe III). The Kripo was in charge of searching for escaped prisoners and bringing back recaptured prisoners. The central office was the group "War Search" (Kriegsfahndung) in the Reich Criminal Police Office. According to Document USA-246, RF-1449, the monstrous order mentioned was proclaimed in an order of the OKW. In which cases the Gestapo was used for such tasks, particularly for the execution of the recaptured prisoners, cannot be ascertained. The witness Straub and Affidavit Number 75 proved that Muller stated at a conference that the term "Kugel-Erlass" had nothing to do with shooting. Rather, in order to prevent further attempts at escape, the prisoners were to have an iron ball fastened to one foot.
DR. MERKEL: Even if this description of Muller's is not true, it must nevertheless be held to the credit of the agents who had no reason for not believing their superior. One serious case must be mentioned in this connection: the shooting of the Royal Air Force officers who escaped from Sagan Camp in March 1944. This event can be traced back to a special order of Hitler and must no doubt be considered a special case. An agency of the Gestapo was misused to execute this order. Gestapo agents of the Breslau Stapo office were to take the recaptured officers from Sagan to the camp where they were shot. Whether this was done by the Stapo agents is not clear, however, nor is it clear whether they knew at all that the officers were to be shot. This special order and the ,Kugel-Erlass" which I have mentioned are among the most regrettable and dishonorable things that happened during the war in Nazi Germany, and they will make every decent German, and particularly every former front-line soldier, blush with shame. As counsel for the Gestapo I nevertheless feel it to be my duty, in spite of my personal horror of such occurrences, to point out that only a few Gestapo men were connected with such misdeeds; that they acted on orders, the reasons and legality of which they could not investigate; that the order, and its execution were kept strictly secret; and that for these reasons the crimes which occurred here cannot be ascribed to the Gestapo as a whole as a typical expression of criminal activities. I continue on Page 38 of the original. I shall now deal with the concentration camps.
DR. MERKEL: The American Prosecution says that the Gestapo and the SD bear the responsibility for establishing and setting up concentration camps and for the assignment of racially and politically undesirable persons to concentration and extermination camps for forced labor and mass murder; that the Gestapo was legally entrusted with the responsibility of administering the concentration camps; that it alone had the power to take persons into protective custody and to execute the protective custody orders in the State concentration camps, and that the Gestapo issued the orders to establish concentration camps, to convert prisoner-of-war camps to concentration camps, and to establish corrective labor camps. In the treatment of this point of the Indictment the widespread error must be corrected that the concentration camps were an institution of the Gestapo. In reality the concentration camps were at no time established and administered by the Gestapo. It is true that Paragraph 2 of the order for the execution of the law concerning the Secret State Police of 10 February 1936, Document Number Gestapo-8, says that the Secret State Police Office will administer the State concentration camps, but this regulation only existed on paper and was never carried out in practice. Rather was it the Reichsfuehrung SS which was responsible for the concentration camps, and they appointed an Inspector of Concentration Camps whose duties were later transferred to Amtsgruppe D of the VFJHA of the SS. This is clearly confirmed, among other facts, by the witnesses Ohlendorf and Best and a large number of documents (compare among other material Documents Number Gestapo-40 to 45). After Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 the SA and SS had independently established numerous camps for political prisoners. The Gestapo on its own initiative took steps against these unauthorized concentration camps, eliminated them, and released the inmates. The Gestapo Chief, Dr.
DR. MERKEL: Diels, even brought upon himself the accusation that he was supporting the Communists and sabotaging the Revolution (Affidavit Number 41, testimony of the witnesses Vitzdamm and Grauert). Thus the concentration camps were never under the Gestapo The Inspectorate, of Concentration Camps and the Economic and Administrative Department of the VF111A remained independent agencies and their chiefs were directly subordinate to Himmler The order contained in Document USA-492 does not affect the administration of concentration camps, but regulates the assignment of prisoners to the various camps, so that political prisoners would not be sent to camps which, according to their structure and their form of work, were meant for hardened criminals. Of the large number of documents which prove the nonparticipation of the Gestapo in the administration of the concentration camps, I should like to mention only one more: Document Number Gestapo-38. This shows that persons not mentioned therein-thus all Gestapo officials regardless of their rank or position-would require written permission by the Inspector of Concentration Camps to enter any camp. If the concentration camps had been subordinate to the Gestapo, there would have been no need to obtain this written permission to enter. In each concentration camp there existed a so-called political department, whose position and connection with the Gestapo is a matter of conflicting views. In this political department were employed one to three criminal officials of the Gestapo or of the Kripo. These officials did not form an office of the Gestapo or of the Kripo; rather were they attached to the commandant of the camp as political experts to fill police tasks in regard to individual prisoners. Above all, they had to conduct the interrogations of those prisoners against whom a case before an ordinary court was pending. This was done upon the request of the ordinary courts, the Gestapo, or the Criminal Police.
DR. MERKEL: With regard to the power to issue orders they were exclusively subordinate to the commandant of the concentration camp. They had no influence whatsoever on the administration and conduct of the camp or on the transfer, discharge, punishment, or execution of the prisoners. Thus the concentration camps were not an independent institution of the Gestapo, but rather institutions which served their purpose in the discharge of their police duties. For the Gestapo they were what the regular prisons were for the courts or for the public prosecutor, namely, executive institutions to carry out the protective custody ordered by the Gestapo. Likewise in my plea I shall not deal with the matter of protective custody and beg the Tribunal to take judicial notice of it. The opinion prevails that a member of the Gestapo was in a position to send people to concentration camps just as he pleased. This is incorrect. A person could be put into a concentration camp only following proper protective custody proceedings. The legal basis of protective custody was given in the decree of the Reich President of 28 February 1933. It formed the basis for the orders published concerning protective custody as issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior, which contained minute directives for taking people into custody, its duration, and the formal proceedings. In that order which has been submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number Gestapo-36, as to whether protective custody is permissible, Article 1 says: "Protective custody can be ordered as a compulsory measure by the Gestapo in defense against all acts hostile to the people or the State; protective custody may not be ordered for purposes of penalizing or as a substitute for penal arrests." -Article 2 says: "The ordering of protective custody is exclusively, the right of the Secret State Police. Applications for such orders are to be directed through the offices of the State Police to the Gestapo.
DR. MERKEL: Detailed reasons must be given with each application." Finally, Article 5 expressly determines that the order for protective custody must be issued in writing by the Gestapo. In accordance with the decree, protective custody was ordered by the RSHA, Amt IV, in Berlin. The individual member of the Gestapo was concerned only with the investigation. After the completion of the investigation, it was determined whether the files were to be submitted to the public prosecutor, or whether an application should be made for an order for protective custody. As proved by various witnesses-such as the witness Albath-there existed hardly any State office which instructed its officials so thoroughly at regular intervals upon the duty of an objective investigation as the Gestapo. In the case of serious guilt which could not be taken care of by mere instruction, warning, or security payment, the investigating official never knew whether the Gestapo Main Office would order the transfer of the files to the authorities of justice, or rather inflict protective custody. The mere necessity of referring the files to the Gestapo Main Office necessitated most careful investigations; for no official desired to be called to account for an inadequate study of the case or for an incorrect treatment of the indicted person. At the same time the protective custody proceedings legally required reexamination of custody as such. At certain short intervals, an official study had to be made as to whether the prerequisites for protective custody still applied. The final decision for this also had to be made by the Gestapo Main Office. Only towards the end of the war were the offices of the Gestapo authorized to take persons into protective custody without such orders by the Gestapo Main Office. This action, which was to last a maximum of 21, later 56, days, was also legally regulated in many details. The subsequent mass transfers of arrestees to concentration camps was ordered, not by the Chief of Amt W, Muller, but directly by Himmler.
DR. MERKEL: Document USA-248 states that "upon order of the RFSS and the Chief of German Police," all people transferred to a concentration camp during wartime were transferred to a special penal department. Equally the transfer of 35,000 employable Jews, as ordered by Document USA-219, to concentration camps was ordered by the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police, not by Amt IV of the RSHA. Equally incorrect is the claim of the Prosecution that the transfer of Poles and Jews, who were dismissed from penal institutions of the justice administration, to concentration camps for life had been ordered by Document USA-497. This is a letter of the Reich Minister of Justice of 21 April 1943. In it he refers to an order of the RSHA of 11 March 1943. This order did not originate with Amt IV either, but as its file number "IX A 2 Nr. 100/43" shows, with Amt II of the RSHA. Finally, one should take into consideration that at least half of the protective custody sentences were pronounced, not for political crimes, nor on the basis of race politics, but concerned professional and habitual criminals. Such persons however were referred to the concentration camps by the Reich Criminal Police Amt (compare Affidavits 49, 50, and 86). It is possible to blame the Gestapo for assignment to concentration camps only if the Gestapo looked upon the institution of protective custody and of the concentration camps as unlawful and as violating international law, and if it knew of maltreatment, tortures, and killings in the concentration camps. Certainly protective custody was attended by shortcomings. Above all it could not be examined by the regular courts. Nevertheless, the many orders issued in this field by the RSHA demonstrate that there was an endeavor to establish a well-ordered and legally-fixed Procedure for cases of protective custody and that arbitrary acts were to be excluded. The strict enforcement of the protective custody procedure certainly could not create the impression on the Gestapo officers that they were confronted with illegal measures of an arbitrary nature.
DR. MERKEL: Besides, the application of the protective custody procedure was a relatively infrequent one. If one takes the trouble to examine the question of the proportion of cases where from among the various measures available to the Gestapo such as instructions, warning, security payment, and protective custody, the latter was actually chosen, one will find that assignment to a concentration camp was the least resorted to measure. At the beginning of the war approximately 20,000 people were held in protective custody in the concentration camps; half of them approximately were professional criminals, the other half political prisoners. At the same time about 300,000 prisoners were kept in the regular prisons, of whom approximately one-tenth had been sentenced for political crimes.
THE PRESIDENT: What evidence is there of those figures or the proportions?
DR.MERKEL: Dr. Best made this statement before the Commission on 6 July 1946. Wider use of the concentration camps was made by transferring to them the professional criminals and the antisocial elements, particularly those who had been sentenced by the courts to protective custody, a measure which was not ordered and executed by the Gestapo (compare the witness Hoffmann). On the basis of Gestapo Affidavit Number 86 the maximum numbers of prisoners sent to the concentration camps by the Gestapo by the beginning of 1945 were about 30,000 Germans, 60,000 Poles, and 50,000 subjects of other states. All other prisoners-on 19 December 1945 the Prosecution claimed that there~ were in the concentration camps on I August 1944, 524,277 prisoners-had been sent there not by the Gestapo but by the Criminal Police, the courts, and various authorities in the occupied territories. The following parts of my brief, which deal in detail with the question of concentration camps,- I shall omit; and I again beg the Tribunal to take judicial notice of them. The existence of concentration camps could not be considered by the Gestapo as illegal, nor as being in conflict with international law. The concentration camp is not a National Socialist invention, but has been known before 1933. For instance, Austria introduced in 1933 protective custody as so-called "Anhaltehaft" and used it widely against Communists, National Socialists,. and Social Democrats (compare the evidence of Kaltenbrunner). In Germany, too, protective custody existed prior to 1933. At that time both Communists and National Socialists were arrested by the Police. In the Third Reich the concentration camps were established on the basis of a legal decree which was in accordance with the constitution. Under these circumstances, the officials of the Gestapo could not consider the concentration camps illegal or as being in contradiction with international law.
DR.MERKEL: As far as detainees were ill-treated or executed in concentration camps, the Gestapo can only be held responsible if they had knowledge of such regrettable conditions and crimes. But, as will be seen from Document Number Gestapo-39, the Gestapo officials were not even allowed to enter a concentration camp. Moreover, it is not incredible that Gestapo officials had no knowledge of the happenings within the concentration camps. In this connection, I would draw attention to the fundamental Hitler Order (Document Number Gestapo-26), according to which no office should know of any secret matter more than was strictly necessary for the discharge of its duty. Gestapo offices had nothing to do with the administration of the concentration camps, so that they were not informed about the happenings inside concentration camps. The detainees, moreover, were bound to the strictest silence, and, in fact, released detainees seem never to have told anything about happenings inside the concentration camps, least of all to the Gestapo. The revelations about the concentration camps which were made after the collapse of Germany, and especially in the course of this Trial, constituted an enormous surprise for most Germans. It was stated before the Tribunal: "We did not know anything about it. I got to know that only after the collapse." It is thus not at all incredible, but may even be considered as proved by the affidavits presented and by witnesses' testimonies that the individual Gestapo officials, especially the bulk of the executive officials, had really no knowledge of the happenings in the concentration camps. On the contrary, the Gestapo had been against inhuman treatment in the concentration camps during the years 1933 and 1934. This is proved by the above-mentioned actions against the "unofficial concentration camps," which were closed by force.
DR.MERKEL: How could Gestapo officials know what was going on behind the barbed wire of the concentration camps, how could they know of the executions, asphyxiations, and ill-treatment of detainees since no official had access to a concentration camp, and the Gestapo had nothing to do with the administration of the concentration camps. But if the Gestapo had no knowledge of the actual deficiencies of the concentration camps, then they cannot be held responsible for all cruelties committed there. The Gestapo sent the detainees to the concentration camps under legal provisions, and were under the impression that it was merely a justified and temporary deprivation of freedom within the framework of the law. The following might be said concerning the deportation of citizens of occupied territories for slave labor and the supervision of slave laborers: the Prosecution itself makes a distinction between the deportation of foreign workers from their countries and the supervision of the workers inside the German Reich territory. Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor by the Fuehrer Decree of 30 September 1942 (Document Number Gestapo-51). This decree gave him sole responsibility to take steps in all matters of Arbeitseinsatz inside the Reich as well as in the countries occupied by Germany. Thus in the course of time a number of offices were created in occupied countries which were all dependent upon the Plenipotentiary General or the German military administration. These offices had nothing to do with the organization of the Gestapo, since the hiring and transport of workers was not a police routine matter. The Arbeltseinsatz offices also had to organize the transports of laborers to the station from which they went to the Reich. The Security Police had merely to screen the workers who had already.
DR.MERKEL: been gathered, that is, the offices of the Security Police had to check the lists submitted to them by the labor offices to see that among the workers gathered there were none whose transfer to the Reich was not considered suitable for security reasons. The staffs of the Gestapo were so small in the occupied countries that they did not even suffice for the carrying out of routine police jobs. With a weak organization like that which was already overburdened because of its own tasks, it would have been impossible to carry out the hiring of foreign labor. Kaltenbrunner went on record to this effect at a conference of chiefs on 11 July 1944, and Sauckel did the same in a letter to Hitler of 17 March 1944 (Document Number Gestapo-53). The witness Dr. Knochen, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Sipo and of the SD in France, has fully verified this for France. If on occasion members of the Schutzpolizel, that is, not members of the Gestapo, accompanied the transports of foreign workers simply to maintain order, this does not affect the fact that the responsibility for the entire action did not rest with the German Police, least of all with the Gestapo. There is not a single case known in which members of the Gestapo accompanied these transports. If in his letter to the presidents of the regional labor offices of 26 November, 1942 (USA-177) Sauckel says that the evacuation of Jews from the Reich and their replacement by Poles from the Government General had taken place "in agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and the SD," this does not in any way establish a participation by the organization of the Gestapo. The approval of the Chief of the SIPO and the SD was necessary for reasons of security only (compare Affidavit Number Gestapo-83). To this subject witness Dr.
DR.MERKEL: Ehlich before the Commission, and witness Fromm in Affidavit Number SD-56, have stated that the responsibility for -these measures rested exclusively with the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Government General, and that the Security Police and the SD in the Government General in no way collaborated. For the employment of labor at home, the Gestapo offices equally had no competence; this was up to the Gauleiter as plenipotentiaries I for manpower. However, the Police had a right to supervision and control in defense against espionage, and also to keep secret the establishments (compare evidence Sauckel). This means that the only task of the Police in connection with manpower imported into the Reich consisted of security measures. As Sauckel has explained, the original task of the Gestapo in the field of the employment of foreign labor in the Reich was to counteract acts of sabotage by the foreign laborers. The offices of the Gestapo very soon could establish that acts of sabotage during work and in the plants were definitely only exceptions, in spite of the huge employment of foreign labor. These cases of sabotage which were submitted for action to the Gestapo as a rule were of a nonpolitical character. The local offices of the Gestapo, in addition to the executive treatment of the foreign laborers, could limit themselves to preventive measures. For the same purpose they were used to look after them, in which case they co-operated with the labor offices and the German Labor Front. The offices of the Gestapo cared for the accommodation of the foreign, laborers, which was regulated by certain stipulations. They controlled the adequate provision of lodging in the plants. This control extended to the feeding, treatment in the plants, etcetera. Upon request by the Gestapo offices, the plants were enabled to acquire additional foodstuffs for the foreign laborers.