dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
ROSENBERG: The letter is dated 28 February 1942. That is to say, it was in the winter, in that dreadful cold period. On Page 6 it states literally: "The main demand will have to be that the treatment of prisoners of war be carried out in accordance with the laws of humanity and as befits the dignity of Germany. . . "It is understandable that the numerous cases of inhuman treatment of German, prisoners-of -war by members of the Red Army which have been recorded have so embittered the German troops that they wish to pay them back in their own coin. "Such reprisal measures, however, in no way improve the situation of German prisoners of war but must ultimately result in both sides no longer taking any prisoners." I merely wanted to quote this letter because I have no other documents at my disposal on the activity of my political department, and this is only an example of the work, which I think touches on these problems.
DR. THOMA: Mr. President, I wanted to bring to an end questions relating to the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories by submitting an affidavit from Professor Dr. Dencker on the employment of agricultural machinery in the Ukraine. Document 51I Rosenberg-35 has already been granted me by the Tribunal. This affidavit concerns the following...
THE PRESIDENT: . Have you finished your examination now?
DR. THOMA: I have finished the questions relating to the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. I have only a few more brief questions.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has seen this affidavit recently so there is no need to read it. Now, if you will, give us the exhibit number.
DR. THOMA: Rosenberg-35. This deals with machinery which had a value of 180 millions and was delivered to the Ukraine-agricultural machinery. Witness, were you a member of the SA or the SS?
ROSENBERG: No, I belonged neither to the SA nor the SS.
DR. THOMA: So you have never worn an SS uniform?
ROSENBERG: No.
DR. THOMA: Do you know anything about concentration camps?
ROSENBERG: Yes. This question, of course, has been put to everybody and the fact that concentration camps existed became known to me in 1933. But although this may appear a repetition, I must nevertheless state that I knew by name only two concentration camps, Oranienburg and Dachau. When these institutions were explained to me I was informed, among other things, that in one concentration camp there were 800 communist functionaries whose previous sentences averaged 4 year prison terms or partly also penitentiary terms. In view of the fact that this involved a complete revolution and even though it had legal basis it was still something revolutionary, I considered it comprehensible that protective custody should be for some time decreed by this new State for these hostile persons. But at the same time I saw and heard how our toughest opponents, against whom otherwise no charges of a criminal nature were made, were treated so generously that, for example, our strongest opponent, the Prussian Minister Severing was retired with full ministerial pension, and I considered this very attitude as National Socialistic. Thus I had to assume that these arrangements were politically and nationally necessary, and I was thoroughly convinced of this.
DR. THOMA: Did you participate in the evacuation of the Jews from Germany?
ROSENBERG: I should perhaps add one thing: I visited no real concentration camp, neither Dachau nor any other one. Once it was in 1938-I questioned Himmler on how things really were in the concentration camps and told him that one heard from the foreign press all sorts of derogatory atrocity reports. Himmler said to me, "Why don't you come to Dachau and take a look at things for yourself? We have a swimming pool there, we have sanitary installations-irreproachable; no objections can be raised." I did not visit this camp because if something actually improper had been going on, then Himmler, upon being questioned about it, would probably not have shown it to me. On the other hand I desisted from going for reasons of good taste; I simply did not want to look at people who had been deprived of their liberty. But I thought that such a talk with Himmler made him aware that such rumors were spreading. A second time, later on-I cannot say, however, whether it was before or after the outbreak of the war-Himmler himself spoke to me about the matter of the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses, that is, about a matter which, has also been submitted by the Prosecution as a religious persecution. Himmler told me only that it was certainly impossible to put up with conscientious objections, considering the situation the Reich was in, that it would have incalculable consequences; and he went on to say that he had often talked personally to these internees in order to understand them and eventually convince them. That, he said, has been impossible, however, because they replied to all questions with quotations-quotations from the Bible which they had learned by heart, so that nothing was to be done with them. From that statement by Himmler I gathered that since he was telling me such a story he could not possibly want to plan or carry out executions of these Jehovah's witnesses. An American chaplain has very kindly given me in my cell a church paper from Columbus.
ROSENBERG: I gather from that that the United States, too, arrested Jehovah's Witnesses during the war and that until December 1945, 11,000 of them were still detained in camps. I presume that under such conditions, every state would answer in some way such a refusal of war service; and that was my attitude too. I could not consider Himmler wrong on this point.
DR. THOMA: Could you intervene in the case of Pastor Niemoller?
ROSENBERG: Yes. When the case of Pastor Niemoller was being tried in Germany I sent one of my staff to the trial because I was interested in it both from an official and humane point of view. This official-his name was Dr. Ziegler-made a report to me from which I concluded that this arraignment was based partly on misunderstandings on the part of the authorities, and furthermore that he was not as seriously incriminated as I had assumed. I then submitted that report to the Deputy of the Fuehrer, Rudolf Hess, and I asked him whether he could not give this case consideration also, and after some time, when I was with the Fuehrer once) I brought the conversation around to this subject, and stated that I thought this whole trial and the subsequent handling most unfortunate. The Fuehrer told me: "I have asked only one binding statement from Niemoller- that he, as a clergyman, will not challenge the State. He has refused to give that and hence I cannot set him free. Apart from that, I ordered that he receive the most decent treatment possible, that he, being a heavy smoker, receive the best cigars, and that he have the means for carrying on all learned studies, if he wants to do this." I do not know on what reports the Fuehrer based this statement, but as far as I was concerned it was clear that I was not in a position to intervene any further in this matter.
DR. THOMA: We come now to the last question but one: Is it true that after the seizure of power, you made a certain examination of your attitude towards the Jews, and that the whole treatment of Jews immediately after the seizure of power underwent a certain modification? Further, that originally it had been intended to settle the Jewish question in quite another way?
ROSENBERG: I will not deny that during that time of struggle up to 1933, I too had used strong polemic arguments in my writings, and that many hard words and suggestions appeared in that connection. After seizure of power I thought-and I had good reason to think that the Fuehrer thought so too-that now one could renounce this method, and that a certain parity and a chivalrous treatment of this question should be observed. Under "parity" I understood the following-and I stated it in a public address on 28 July 1933 and also at the Party rally in September 1933 publicly over all the broadcasting systems-that it was not possible, for example, that the communal hospitals in Berlin should have 80 percent Jewish doctors when 30 percent was their ratio. I stated further at the Party rally that we had heard of conditions that the Reich government, in connection with all these parity measures and beyond that, were making exceptions for all those members of the Jewish people who had lost a relative, father or son, during the war; and I used the expression that we would now have to make efforts to solve this problem in a chivalrous way. That it turned out otherwise is a tragic destiny, and I must state that the activities following in connection with the emigration and the support of this emigration in many countries abroad had as a result the aggravation of the situation; then things occurred which were regrettable and I must say robbed me of the inner strength to continue petitioning the Fuehrer for the method I favored. As I said, what was stated here recently in the veiled phraseology of the police and made known here, and what has been testified to here the other day, I considered simply impossible and I would not have believed it even if Heinrich Himmler himself had related it to me. There are things which, even to me, appear beyond the humanly possible, and this is one of them.
DR. THOMA: I have one last question. In connection with this question I should like to submit Exhibit Rosenberg-15, Document 3761-PS. This is contained in the document book but it has not yet been submitted to the Tribunal as an Exhibit. It contains a letter from Rosenberg to Hitler, written in 1924, containing the request that he should not be nominated as a candidate for the Reichstag. Witness, you have taken part in all phases of the development of National Socialism from its beginning to its dreadful end. You have participated in its meteoric rise and its dreadful descent, and you know well that everything centered in this one person. Will you inform the Tribunal what you did yourself, and how much you were able to accomplish to avert having all the power centered in this one single person, and what you did to have the effect in every way alleviated? I am showing you first this document given to you, and then Document 047-PS, which has also already been submitted to the Tribunal under the Exhibit Number USA-725. [The documents were submitted to the defendant.]
ROSENBERG: I did actually serve this National Socialist movement from its very first days on and I was completely loyal to a man whom I admired during these long years of struggle because I saw with what personal devotion and passion this former German soldier worked for his people. As far as I personally am concerned, this letter refers to an epoch...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Thoma, exactly what is your question to the witness? We don't want him to make a speech. We only want to know what question you are putting to him.
DR. THOMA: What suggestions did you make, and did you publicly advocate suggestions to restrict the authority of the Fuehrer?
ROSENBERG: I must say that at that time I advocated-and this in full agreement with Adolf Hitler-and I advocated in my book, Myth of the 20th Century, the view that the Leadership Principle did not consist of one head but that both the Fuehrer and his collaborators are to be bound by common duties. Further, that this Leadership Principle concept should be understood to mean the establishment of a senate or, as I described it, Ordensrat, which would have a correcting and advisory function. That point of view was emphasized by the Fuehrer himself when he had a senate hall with 61 seats built in the Brown House in Munich, because he himself considered it necessary. Then I again advocated this policy in a speech in 1934, but...
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal does not think this is in answer to the question as to what he did to limit the Fuehrer's power. We want to know what he did, if anything, to limit the Fuehrer's power.
DR. THOMA: In a public meeting he pointed out that-I draw your attention to Document Book 1, Volume II, on Page 118...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Thoma, I didn't want you to point it out to me, I wanted the witness to point that out to the Tribunal.
DR. THOMA: In that case, will you concentrate on those two speeches which you made at that time.
ROSENBERG: I can quote the speeches, but they are not a direct answer to the question either. They signify that I stated that the National Socialist State may not be a caste which reigns over the German nation and that the Fuehrer of a nation must not be a tyrant. However, I did not see in Adolf Hitler a tyrant, but like many millions of National Socialists I trusted him personally on the strength of the experience of a 14 yearlong struggle. I did not want to limit his own full power, conscious though I was that this meant a personal exception for Adolf Hitler, not in keeping with the National Socialist concept of the State. Nor was this the Leadership Principle as we understood it or a new order for the Reich. I served Adolf Hitler loyally, and what the Party may have done during those years, that was supported by me too. And the ill effects, due to the wrong masters, were branded by me, in the middle of the war, in speeches before political leaders, when I stated that this concentration of power as it existed at that moment, during the war, could only be a phenomenon of the war and could not be regarded as the National Socialist conception of a State. It may be opportune for many, it may be opportune for 200,000 people, but to adhere to it later on would mean the death of the individuality of 70 million. I said that in the presence of the Higher SS leaders and other organization leaders or Gauleiter. I got in touch with the heads of the Hitler Youth, together with my staff, fully conscious that after the war a reform would have to be carried out here in the Party, so that the old demands of our Movement, for which I too had fought, would find respect. However, that has not been possible any more; fate has finished the Movement and has taken a different course.
DR. THOMA: Witness, can you state a concrete fact from which it arises that the Party, from the beginning, did not have the idea of coming to power alone but also by collaborating with other parties?
ROSENBERG: That, of course, is a historical development of 14 years, and if I can evaluate that letter here, then I would like to say that at the end of 1923, after the collapse of the so-called "Hitler Putsch," when the then representatives of the Party either were arrested or had emigrated to Austria, and when I remained in Munich with a few others, I advocated that a new development must take place and that the Party should prove itself in a parliamentary contest. The Fuehrer, who was then in prison at Landsberg, turned that suggestion down. My collaborators and I continued to try to influence him, however, whereupon the Fuehrer wrote me a long, handwritten letter, which is also in the files, in which he once more developed his reasons for not wanting to comply with my suggestion. Later on, nevertheless, he agreed. And here in this letter I asked him-he later agreed-not to nominate me as Reichstag candidate, because I felt not entitled to the privileges of a Reichstag deputy by favoring a Reichstag election, and secondly, because I felt myself too new in Germany for exposing myself in such a way after only a few years of activity.
DR. THOMA: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendant's counsel want to ask any questions?
DR. SERVATIUS: Witness, in September and October 1942 you received various reports regarding unbearable conditions in connection with the recruiting of workers in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Did you investigate to find out whether the statements contained in these reports were true?
ROSENBERG: These allegations, which were received by the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, have been constantly checked by Main Department of Labor and Social Policy during all these years and I asked the Tribunal to hear as a witness here the official who always had charge of this question, Dr. Beil. This request has been granted by the Tribunal, but I now hear that Dr. Beil is ill and that he can give a report of his experiences only by a written statement. From my knowledge I can say the following: These matters were reported to me frequently by Dr. Beil and the so-called Central Department for People of Eastern Nationalities. In a letter which has already been mentioned I transmitted them to Sauckel. Then they were always sent to the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine or some other administrative officials for investigation and comments. A part of these proved to be correct, a part proved to be untrue and exaggerated; and as far as I know, the Plenipotentiary General for Allocation of Labor, Sauckel, even made the complaints received from me an occasion for his own intervention, as did the German Labor Front, which was responsible for the welfare of all foreign workers in Germany. There was constant negotiation with the head of this Labor Front, and the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories made requests here continuously, until eventually, at the end of 1944, Dr. Ley, as the chief of this welfare department, thought that he could inform me that now after considerable difficulties, really lasting and good conditions had been achieved. I replied to him even then that I could express my pleasure about it, but that I still received reports that here and there things were going wrong. In practice the members of my ministry, together with inspectors of the German Labor Front, went to inspect a number of labor camps in order to investigate the complaints and then have them adjusted by the Labor Front.
DR. SERVATIUS: You are talking here mainly about conditions in Germany, which did not come under your jurisdiction. What did you do regarding Koch? ~ the memorandum of 16 March 1943, which has already been mentioned here, a reply to these complaints? In that memorandum you write Koch that he must use legal means only and that he must call the guilty to account. Was this an answer to these reports?
ROSENBERG: Yes, it was an answer because by December 1942 there had been quite a number of complaints already.
DR. SERVATIUS: And what did Koch reply?
ROSENBERG: Koch replied to me that he, for his part, also wanted and would employ legal means, but in the document read today, in his report dated 16 March 1943, he complained several times that I did not always believe these assurances, but that in every case the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories not only intervened, but even demanded of him a report on the carrying out of these instructions.
DR. SERVATIUS: Thus he denied considerable abuses?
ROSENBERG: Yes, he denied considerable abuses. He referred in the document to one particularly serious case, namely, that individual houses had been burned down in Volhynia because those who had been called upon to work had resisted the recruiting by means of force, as he explained, and he said that he had no other way of doing it. He added that this case in particular had caused new complaints on the part of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
DR. SERVATIUS: Was he entitled to such measures, in your opinion? ~
ROSENBERG: Reich Commissioner Koch had jurisdiction over the execution of all orders coming from the highest Reich authorities. He was responsible for the execution of all measures within the bounds of the instructions. He had, I now believe, often overstepped the bounds of these instructions and acted on his own initiative in taking, as he thought, exclusively war economic measures. Sometimes I heard of these measures, and often I did not, as appears from the document.
THE PRESIDENT: The question you were asked was whether in your opinion he was entitled to burn houses because people refused to work, and you have given a long answer which seems to me to be no answer to the question.
ROSENBERG: In my opinion he did not have the right to burn down houses and therefore I intervened, and he tried to justify himself.
DR. SERVATIUS: In order to carry out the labor recruiting, there were to be recruiting measures which, it is true, had to be applied with a certain amount of administrative coercion. How far was coercion permissible, is there legal and illegal coercion, and how do you judge the measures that were carried out in practice?
ROSENBERG: I myself insisted up until 1943 on a voluntary recruitment. But in the face of the urgent demands from the Fuehrer I could not maintain this stand any longer and I agreed therefore- in order to have a legal form at least-that certain age groups should be called up. From these age groups all those working who were needed in the Occupied Eastern Territories were to be excluded. But the others were to be brought from all sides with the help of their own administrations in the regional commissariat, that is, the little burgomasters in the Occupied Eastern Territories, and there is no doubt, of course, that to give force to these demands the police stood at the disposal of the administration in the execution of this program.
DR. SERVATIUS: If there were abuses, could Koch stop them? Did you have no influence in the matter?
ROSENBERG: It was the duty of the Reich commissioner to whom the regional government of the Ukraine was subordinated to investigate and to take action, in accordance with the instructions which he had received from me.
DR. SERVATIUS: But why did you go to Sauckel as well? Was it Sauckel's duty also to stop this?
ROSENBERG: Sauckel, as the deputy of the Delegate for the Four Year Plan, had the right to give instructions to me, as Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and over and above that, he had the right to bypass me and give instructions to the Reich commissioners, a right which he used a few times in giving lectures in the general districts of the Ukraine and of the Eastern territories.
DR. SERVATIUS: Was he-was Sauckel responsible for the conditions in the Ukraine?
ROSENBERG: Sauckel was not responsible for the execution of these demands, but of course on the basis of the authority given him by the Fuehrer he made the demands so harsh and exact that the responsible regional governments of the commissioner general felt themselves bound by conviction and appearance to back up the recruiting of labor by force as appears, for example, from the report, Document 265-PS, from the Commissioner General in Zhitomir. I think this can also be seen from the report of the District Commissioner in Kovno, of which I cannot give the exact number.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did Sauckel have an organization of his own?
ROSENBERG: Yes, he had a staff, but I cannot make a statement on the size of it. He took care only that the civil administration had labor offices attached to it, and his requirements as to the civil administration in the East for the direction of these labor offices were forwarded to the administrative offices. To my knowledge he did not have a large organization.
DR. SERVATIUS: Before Sauckel came into your ministry was there not already a department of "Labor," which had its corresponding subordinate departments on the middle and lower levels?
ROSENBERG: I cannot give you a precise answer to that. At any rate, I think a department "Labor and Social Policy" was set up almost at the beginning of the ministry, but at the moment I am not able to tell you the exact date. Perhaps Dr. Beil's statement will contain some details.