dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for Defendant SeyssInquart): He is submitting an affidavit dealing with the attitude and conduct of the defendant with respect to the evacuation of the coastal area. Because of the short time at my disposal, I have not yet been able to hand this document and the following one to the Prosecution, but I have already informed the Prosecution that these two documents exist. The second document is also...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Steinbauer, these documents, I apprehend, have not been shown to the Prosecution?
DR. STEINBAUER: No.
THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute; they have not been approved by the Tribunal and one question that arises is: Are they very long? Because I find that the Translation Division is being overloaded with very long documents.
DR. STEINBAUER: No, it is a short document, but it appears to me to be important, because it shows how the defendant acted during that difficult situation and how he took care of the Dutch population.
THE PRESIDENT: If it is short and if you will submit it to the Prosecution, then it can be translated and admitted subject to any objection.
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes, Sir. The same applies to the following document which I also received today. It is an affidavit of Adalbert Joppich. He was President of the German Supreme Court in the Netherlands, and he makes a very brief statement about the position and the attitude of the defendant with regard to legal questions affecting the Dutch civilian population. I beg that this document should also be admitted in evidence and that I may use the same procedure of submitting a copy of the translation to the Prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: What number did you give?
DR. STEINBAUER: The Tschoppe document will be Document Number Seyss-Inquart-112 and the Adalbert Joppich document will be Document Number Seyss-Inquart-113. Documents allowed by the Tribunal and still outstanding are affidavits by Bolle, Dr. Reuter, Volkers, and Lindhorst-Homan. The General Secretariat and I are trying to obtain these affidavits. So far it has only been possible to ascertain Bolle's address. Finally, I request that two applications which I have made in writing should be granted; one concerns the obtaining of the defendant's NSDAP membership card which was impounded when he was arrested, and which must be among his personal documents in the custody of the Tribunal. A few months ago I made a request to that effect, but both sides apparently lost sight of the matter.
THE PRESIDENT: Of course, you do not mean that it is in the custody of the Tribunal; you may mean that it is in the custody of the military authorities.
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes. I meant the prison administration.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, no doubt, they can reproduce it. What was the other document?
DR. STEINBAUER: Well, Mr. President, then in the cross-examination . . .
COL. PHILLIMORE: My Lord, I do not want to take up Your Lordship's time, but that membership card, that could have been applied for months ago. It is on the same footing as these documents which counsel has been putting in. We have not seen them. I do not know what this card is going to prove, but it is going tube a great deal of trouble to get it here, just as these documents are giving a great deal of work to the Translation Division.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the importance of the membership card? Presumably he knows when he became a member. What relevance does the card have to this?
DR. STEINBAUER: It is of importance because according to the war crime law which has now been published in Austria, all members having a membership number above 6,500,000 will not be regarded as so-called "old fighters" or illegals. Seyss-Inquart has stated in the witness box...
THE PRESIDENT: That has nothing to do with the Tribunal. It may be relevant in some other proceeding and before some other court but not before this Court.
DR. STEINBAUER: Only insofar as the Prosecution had alleged that he had been a member of the NSDAP since 1931. But, of course, I am not trying to make difficulties. I only thought that the membership card might be among the belongings which were taken away from the prisoner and that one could have a look at it.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. But did he deny that he was a member since 1931?
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes, oh, yes. He states that he did not become a member until 13 March 1938-formally.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, formally; I remember, yes. But he had been a member of the Austrian Nazi Party very much longer, if I remember rightly.
MR. DODD: We will agree here and now, Mr. President, that that card would show that he became a member, as far as the card is concerned, on that date. I am sure that is what it will show and if it will help the doctor, we will be glad to agree to that.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. STEINBAUER: The last document for which I am applying is the following: During cross-examination a document was submitted in which an 18 year-old female police clerk named Hildegard Kunze confirms that my client caused Dutch Jews to be sterilized. Seyss-Inquart maintains that he has never written to the Police directly, but that in three personal letters addressed directly to Himmler, he did object to the treatment of Jews, and that in one of his letters he mentioned sterilization. This, presumably, was the reason why the witness mentioned it and probably she gained knowledge of these facts because Himmler sent the original or copy of the letters to the Main Security Office. In connection with this important matter my client has requested me to make an attempt to have these letters which he wrote to Himmler produced in order to disprove the incriminating statement made by the witness Hildegard Kunze. I do not conceal the fact that it will probably be difficult to find these letters among the very many documents of the Main Security Office.
THE PRESIDENT: Have you made your application in writing about this?
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes, I have made a written application.
THE PRESIDENT: Giving the dates when the letters were written?
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes, everything I could ascertain regarding the dates and the addresses is contained in my application.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal will consider that, but you understand that the work involved in this sort of thing is very great indeed.
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. President, far be it from me to underestimate the difficulties which are connected with my application. Apart from this, I have no further application to make.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now. [The Tribunal recessed until 1400  hours.] Afternoon Session
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will not sit in open session Saturday next, nor will it sit in open session on any Saturday in the future unless it gives notice that it is going to do so. Yes, Dr. Thoma?
DR. THOMA: Mr. President, yesterday I mentioned an affidavit of Dr. Heinz Oeppert, Reichshauptstellenleiter. I have now received this affidavit, and I have also already conferred with Mr. Dodd about it. I now beg the permission of the High Tribunal to submit this affidavit. Mr. Dodd has no objections to the submission of this affidavit. May I read a very brief passage from this affidavit, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Can you tell us what the affidavit is about?
DR. THOMA: Yes, Mr. President. This Dr. Oeppert had the Office of Ideological Enlightenment in the of lice of the Fuehrer's deputy for the supervision of the entire ideological and intellectual framing of the Party. Concerning this activity and this office he testified that it involved almost exclusively a reporting and registration of events in this sphere. Any active interference in the church policy of the State or the Party would not have been possible even if they had wished it, for this office had no executive facilities of any kind. There were constantly very intense differences with the State and Party organizations which participated in this sphere of activity, that is, between the Propaganda Ministry and the Church and the SD and Party Chancellery. The suppression of certain ideological groups and sects as well as the measures taken against individual clergymen, as far as I know, were taken by the SD or the Gestapo without the knowledge or authority of this office. I am asking the High Tribunal to take judicial notice of this document.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. THOMA: Exhibit Number Rosenberg-51.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Fritz. On behalf of Fritzsche-is anyone representing Dr. Fritz?
DR. ALFRED SCHILF (Counsel for Defendant Fritzsche): Dr. Schilf for Dr. Fritz, who is absent, representing the Defendant Fritzsche. Mr. President, Dr. Fritz applied in writing last Monday concerning two affidavits which are still outstanding, one an affidavit by the journalist-the English journalist, Clifton Delilah-and the other an affidavit by His Excellency Feldscher, then Minister of the protective power in Berlin, now in Berne. Neither of these affidavits has arrived yet, and we are asking the High Tribunal if we may submit and be allowed these documents later. I have no further comments. No other applications have been made.
THE PRESIDENT: Have you-I did not hear the name of the second one. Was it Feldscher?
DR. SCHILF: Excellency Feldscher, Minister of the protective power. He is now at Berne in Switzerland.
THE PRESIDENT: Have these affidavits been placed before the Prosecution?
DR. SCHILF: No, Mr. President, they are not yet available. They have not arrived yet.
THE PRESIDENT: I see. Are they affidavits or interrogatories?
DR. SCHILF: They are two interrogatories, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Interrogatories, I see. Well then, when the interrogatories come back answered, they can be shown to the Prosecution if they want to put in cross-interrogatories; and then they can be translated and submitted to the.- Tribunal. Dr. Schilf, there was an application-I am not sure whether it was in writing or whether it was only oral-with reference to Schorner and Voss, and one other man, whose statements were used in cross-examination by the Prosecution. I think they were affidavits, I am not sure; and there was an oral application, I think, to cross-examine those persons. Do you want that to be done, or have you withdrawn that?
DR. SCHILF: Mr. President, that application has not been withdrawn, but it was put in only as an auxiliary application, to have effect only if the interrogation notes submitted by the Russian Prosecution-it seems to me that these interrogation notes cannot be considered as affidavits, but only interrogation records of a police character. And Dr. Fritz made application to the effect that if these three documents were to be used as documents of evidence, we cannot waive the cross-examination. These three documents were used in the examination of the Defendant Fritzsche only in part, and' only short passages were submitted to the defendant in his examination. Every detail there he has . . .
THE PRESIDENT: What you were saying is that in case the Prosecution do not want to use the whole of these documents, but only the parts which were put to the Defendant Fritzsche in the course of cross-examination, then you do not need to have those persons, Voss and Schorner, called for cross-examination; but if the Prosecution wish to put in the whole document, then you want to cross-examine them. Is that right?
DR. SCHILF: Mr. President, that is correct.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you meaning that you are asking the Tribunal to strike out the passages in the Defendant Fritzsche's evidence which deal with these statements or are you merely meaning that if the Prosecution wish to use, not only the parts which they have put to the defendant in cross-examination but other parts of the document, that in that event you would like to crossexamine the deponents Voss and Schorner?
DR. SCHILF: Mr. President, we only want the cross-examination to take place in case the Court should regard the three interrogation records, as a whole, as documentary evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, then you do mean what I first of all put to you. Well, perhaps the Prosecution, General Rudenko, would tell us whether he is wanting to put in the whole document or whether he has put enough of it in.
GEN. RUDENKO: Mr. President, as I have already stated to the Tribunal, when these written statements were submitted, the records of the interrogations were written down in agreement with the rules of procedure which is in existence in the Soviet Union. The Prosecution will only use those parts which were read here before the Tribunal and on which the Defendant Fritzsche was crossexamined.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then it is not necessary to have those witnesses brought here for cross-examination. Very well.
DR. SCHILF: Yes, indeed, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Then that brings the Tribunal to the end of the evidence for the Defense, with the exception of two witnesses who are to be-who are here and to be called on behalf of the Defendant Bormann.
DR.FLACHSNER: Mr. President, on behalf of the Defendant Speer may I submit in addition a document which has already been translated and is known to the Prosecution. This is the Fuehrer protocol of 3 January 1943. This shall have the Document Number Speer-35. I had already listed it as Exhibit Number 35 in the index of the documents submitted by me which I gave the Court. Only at that time it had not yet been translated. I should like to submit it now.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly. What I wanted to say was that that concludes the whole of the evidence on behalf of the defendants with the exception of interrogatories which have already been granted, the answers to which have not yet been received. Of course, those interrogatories, subject to their being admissible, will be admitted when the answers are received and that applies also to anything in the shape of an affidavit which has been allowed by the Tribunal; but otherwise the evidence for the defendants is now closed with the exception of Dr. Bergold.
DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, I have another question regarding the appearance for testimony of the witness Walkenhorst. In case he is not called as a witness, I have an affidavit at my disposal, which I have received; and I assume that I may submit this in case this witness is not examined here before the Court. It deals with a very brief question, namely, the telephone conversation which Sauckel had regarding the evacuation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Walkenhorst happened to be the man at the other end of the wire. I have an affidavit on this one question. Of course, if the witness is being questioned here in Court I shall ask him; but in case he is not examined I request that this be held open.
THE PRESIDENT: You are speaking of Walkenhorst?
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, the witness Walkenhorst.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, he is just going to be examined now.
DR. SERVATIUS: I hope so, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT; But-I believe he is here. I have before me a list of supplementary applications but I think that they have all been dealt with in the discussion which we have had during the last 2 days. And if there is any other matter which the defendants' counsel wish to raise they should raise it now. Well then, I take it then, that as I said, the evidence for the Defense is now concluded, subject to the reception of documents which I may describe as outstanding, either interrogatories or affidavits.
DR. MARX: Mr. President, may I be permitted, please, to introduce three more documents with the permission of the Tribunal. They concern the following questions: When considering what influence the paper published by Streicher exercised on the German population, it is of decisive importance to know how the circulation of this paper developed and to what circumstances the fact is to be attributed that, within a certain period of time, there was a marked increase in its circulation. I set myself the task of determining from the mastheads of the weekly paper, Der Sturmer ) how its circulation developed.
THE PRESIDENT: But-we have already dealt with this application. We have had the application before us and we have considered it and we have refused it.
DR. MARX: Yes, I beg your pardon, Mr. President; it concerns the following: Quite by accident, when looking at various issues of this news paper, I ascertained that in the year 1935 a marked jump in circulation took place and the Defense would like to prove that this increase is not to be traced to an increased demand by the German people but rather to the fact that high Party offices exercised their influence and, together with a new publishing management, brought about a threefold increase. Naturally, it is of essential significance whether a threefold increase results from a demand' by the people or whether, as in this case, the German Labor Front intervened in the person of Dr. Ley, and a special publicity number was published, which was then circulated by Dr. Ley's efforts and by using the huge machinery of the German Labor Front. That is something I want to prove and I am of the opinion that it is of importance to the Defense. I have three documents along these lines, Mr. President; and with the permission of the Tribunal I shall read a directive, and I ask that I be allowed to introduce it as evidence. From this it appears that Dr. Ley as the leader of the German Labor Front, gave the order to all the offices of the German Labor Front to circulate this special edition and to see to it that it was widely circulated in the factories, and so forth. For, indeed, it is one of the essential points of the Indictment that the German people were influenced against the Jews by Der Sturmer and by the Defendant Streicher, and thereby later made ripe to support the measures in the East, even to the extent of mass extermination. Therefore, I ask that this evidence be admitted and that it be declared relevant.
THE PRESIDENT: You said you have got three documents. The first one is a directive from Ley?
DR. MARX: Yes, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. What are the other two?
DR. MARX: One is an excerpt from the newspaper Der Sturmer in May 1935, Number 18, which reads as follows: "Bernhard", who fled from Berlin to France, writes in the Pariser Tageblatt (Paris, 29 March 1935) under the heading, ' Sturmer Circulation Increases Threefold,' as follows: "'The support which the pornographer Streicher received from the highest of flees of the Reich in circulating his Sturmer helped him to triple his circulation within less than a year . . ."'
THE PRESIDENT: Wait. You have already told us that the circulation of the Sturmer went up threefold. It is not necessary to repeat it all again. We only want to know what the documents are. The first one is a directive of Ley. The second one is an issue of Der Sturmer . What is the third one?
DR. MARX: And the third-the third is a summary of the circulation from January 1935 until the middle of October 1935; and from this it appears that, within the period of 1 year, the circulation increased from 113,800 to 486,000. Anybody will probably. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that is quite sufficient. We do not want to know any snore about it. '
DR. MARX: Very well, Mr. President. Then, may I be permitted . . .
COL. PHILLIMORE: My Lord, I-it is entirely in the hands of the Tribunal, but we should see no objection from the Prosecution's point of view to admitting these documents. The first would appear to directly link the Defendant Streicher with another of the conspirators. It would be a most important document.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, Dr. Marx. Then the three documents will be admitted. ~
DR. MARX: I should like to submit the documents under Exhibit Numbers 19, 20, and 21.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. MARX: I beg your pardon, Mr. President. May I make one more remark? Why the matter came about now and was so delayed is that I personally did not know anything about it before. It was only by accident that I learned this from Der Sturmer's masthead. It was previously unknown to me, and I considered it-considered it from my point of view as pertinent evidence. I ask to be excused for not submitting it before now.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I naturally do not wish to submit any further evidence; but I should like to ask you to clarify a question, a question of law. At this time interrogations are going on constantly in the commissions in order to gather evidence with regard to the organizations. Witnesses are being interrogated there whom we here do not know, and documents are being submitted which we have not yet seen. It will be several weeks before we know the results of this evidence about the organizations. Now we defense attorneys, who are working here, are thinking of the following It could happen, for instance, that one of these defendants could be incriminated by some new testimony about the organizations, or that documents might be submitted which we, as Defense Counsel for these defendants, would absolutely have to take into consideration in our pleas, or to which we would have to offer evidence in rebuttal. Now we are agreed that the evidence here should be concluded, but we would naturally like to reserve the right in such cases to learn the results of the hearings for the organizations.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you will find, when you look carefully at the order which the Tribunal made, that this matter was provided for and that, if there is any matter in the course of the hearing of the case against the organizations which in any way materially or directly affects any of the individual defendants, the Tribunal, of course, has discretion to hear counsel for that defendant upon the matter; and I think that is specifically dealt with in the order that we have made.
DR. SAUTER: This order is known to us, of course, Mr. President; but we just wanted to be clear on this point, that this order will still remain in force, even if the presentation of evidence here is concluded.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly. Do the Prosecution wish to make any application to the Tribunal?
COL. PHILLIMORE: I have eight documents to put in. My Lord, they are documents which it is intended to refer to in the final speech; and accordingly I would not propose to do more than just to indicate their nature to the Tribunal and put them in very quickly. I have a list of them which I will hand up first.
THE PRESIDENT: Are they documents which have not yet been offered in evidence? It may be convenient to see their nature.
COL. PHILLIMORE: Yes, My Lord; I, am offering them in rebuttal.
THE PRESIDENT: You have a list here?
COL. PHILLIMORE: Yes, My Lord, the first document is . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Have they been communicated to the defendants' counsel?
COL. PHILLIMORE: No, My Lord; I have copies here. The first document, 1519-PS, contains orders for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. My Lord, that is not strictly offered in rebuttal; but the Tribunal has had before it a document, EC-338, which was put in as Exhibit USSR-356. That document consisted of a commentary by Admiral Canaris on these orders, and Your Lordship may remember the document. Defendant Keitel had made certain notes on it on which he was cross-examined, the reference in the shorthand notes being Pages 7219 to 7223 (Volume X, Pages 622-625). My Lord, it seems appropriate that the actual orders should be before the Court and not merely the commentary. My Lord, that will be GB-525, and the Tribunal will see it consists of a covering letter from the Defendant Bormann to Gauleiter and Kreisleiter covering the OKW letter signed by General Reinecke, the head of the Prisoners of War Organization; and then there follow the actual regulations.
THE PRESIDENT: Has not this been in before?
COL. PHILLIMORE: My Lord, I am told not. What was put in was the commentary on this document, which was by Admiral Canaris. It was included-this document was included in the Keitel document book, but it was not formally put in.
THE PRESIDENT: I see. You mean it will be GB...
COL. PHILLIMORE: 525, My Lord.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.