dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
WIMMER: As far as the appointment of mayors is concerned, in principle the same thing holds true as for all other officials in the Netherlands. The mayors in the Netherlands, contrary to the rule in many other nations, are not elected to office, but are civil servants in the true sense of the word. They were appointed by the Queen, even the mayors of the small communities. Since the head of the State was not present in the Netherlands, the Reich Commissioner was confronted with the necessity of regulating the appointment and dismissal of mayors and he made the regulations in such a way that insofar as the most important positions of the State were concerned, he reserved for himself the right to make appointments, whereas he placed the appointments and dismissals of lesser importance in the hands of the Dutch Secretary General.
DR. STEINBAUER: So if you look back today and examine the question of how conditions were between 1940 and 1945 regarding the offices and civil servants in the Netherlands, what can you state in that respect?
WIMMER: I believe I may say that at the end of the period of German occupation the majority of the civil servants who had been in office when the German occupation force came into the Netherlands were still in office.
DR. STEINBAUER: Seyss-Inquart has been accused of dissolving the political parties. When and why did that take place?
WIMMER: The dissolution of the political parties was necessitated by the fact that some political parties displayed an attitude which, especially in critical times, the occupying power could not tolerate, apart from the fact that in an occupied territory it is generally difficult, if not impossible, to deal with political parties. Report after report came from our intelligence services about conspiracies of the most various kinds, and so the Reich Commissioner felt himself called upon to dissolve the parties. Nevertheless, he did not constitutionally remove the parties as such; the institution of parties, as such, still remained.
DR. STEINBAUER: It was suggested on the part of the Reich that the administration be reorganized and that the Netherlands be divided into five administrative districts instead of the traditional provinces. Did Seyss-Inquart do that?
WIMMER: The Reich Commissioner refused such suggestions or demands every time, and indeed he could do that all the more easily because the Dutch administration was on a high level and primarily because the Reich Commissioner expected, and on the basis of all kinds of assurances was able to expect, that the Dutch administration would co-operate with the occupying power.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now we also have a party which was very close to the National Socialists, the NSB, led by Mussert. Did this NSB party gain a leading influence in the administration or not?
WIMMER: The NSB, as a party, gained no influence at all in the administration. It was only that the occupying power, as was very natural, applied to the NSB and consulted it in certain cases, for no occupying power, in history, I believe, as well as in our day, is going to approach those parties or groups which assume a hostile attitude towards it.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did the leader of the NSB, Mussert, try to create a similar situation as existed in Norway under Quisling; that is, for him to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands?
WIMMER: Mussert did have that aim. He expressed it persistently, again and again, and I can say that by doing so he put the Reich Commissioner into disagreeable situations.
DR. STEINBAUER: Well, briefly, the Reich Commissioner . . .
WIMMER: The Reich Commissioner rejected this every time.
DR. STEINBAUER: Another question. Did Seyss-Inquart in any way exert pressure in religious matters on the population of the occupied territory?
WIMMER: No.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did he, in the field of education, issue decrees which reduced the rights of the Netherlands?
WIMMER: No.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did he not encourage the Dutch Red Cross, although there were cells of the illegal resistance movement in it?
WIMMER: He not only permitted the Red Cross to carry out its functions without hindrance, but, as you say, he even encouraged it. As far as the political attitude was concerned, he would have had plenty of reasons to interfere because broadcasting stations, illegal broadcasting stations, had been found under Red Cross control.
DR. STEINBAUER: They were resistance centers?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Furthermore, he has been accused of interfering with the existing legislation by issuing laws concerned with citizenship and also with marriage. You were in charge of the Justice Department. What can you say about that, quite briefly?
WIMMER: Acts of interference of that kind did occur. However, they occurred because they were necessary from the point of view of the conduct of the war and for the Armed Forces in particular for, to mention the question of citizenship, those Dutchmen who had entered the German Army wanted to have the assurance of also obtaining German citizenship. The Reich Commissioner, however, who was of the opinion that by acquiring German citizenship they should not incur any disadvantage in Holland, decreed-and this can be found in the corresponding decree-that these Dutchmen who acquired German citizenship should retain their Dutch citizenship, so that by so doing they would not be alienated from their people and their nation. So far as marriage laws are concerned, the necessity arose that if soldiers, in particular, wanted to marry Dutch girls, the parents' approval of the marriage was not asked, and not for political reasons. This approval was of some importance in that connection because the parents, contrary to the rule in many other nations, retained this right of approval until, I believe, the thirtieth year of the daughter concerned.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now I come to another chapter. That is the question of the so-called summary courts-martial (Standgericht). Will you tell us how these courts-martial were organized and how long and when they were in session?
WIMMER: The creation of courts-martial was seen as a necessity after a general strike had broken out in Amsterdam and we wanted to have a legal basis for future cases so as to prevent future strikes as far as possible, that is, to be able to combat them effectively after they had broken out on the basis of the proper law. How these courts-martial were organized and when they had to function is exactly set down in the corresponding decree of the Reich Commissioner. However, if I am to answer your specific question here about the composition of these summary courtsmartial, I can in any case only say from memory that the president of these courts was a judge, and moreover a judge who fulfilled all the requirements which a judge in the German Reich had to fulfill.
DR. STEINBAUER: Well, that is the essential point, and if I understand you correctly, before these courts became police courts a judicial functionary was president of these courts-martial. Is that correct?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it known to you whether Seyss-Inquart had so-called collective fines imposed on certain cities and communities?
WIMMER: The Reich Commissioner actually imposed such collective fines. The largest which was imposed, I believe, was the one which was imposed once on Amsterdam on the occasion of the general strike which I have already mentioned. The fines were decreed in accordance with established procedure on the basis of existing decrees, and they were proclaimed in an official decree by the police.
DR. STEINBAUER: If I understand you correctly, therefore, these collective fines-you mentioned the words "general strike"- were imposed when actions of a large community were involved, and not actions by individuals.
WIMMER: The collective fines were imposed in cases of violations which were charged to a fairly large portion of the community in question.
DR. STEINBAUER: I believe we can conclude that chapter However, you did not tell me how long these so-called police courts-martial were in session.
WIMMER: The police courts-martial were in session as long as police martial law was in force. That was 2 weeks. Moreover that was the only time that martial law had been imposed in Holland by the Reich Commissioner, that is, if you do not count the state of emergency that was declared after the invasion as such
DR. STEINBAUER: Now I come to one of "the most severs accusations brought against my client. That is the accusation that he had hostages shot illegally and contrary to international law, or participated in their execution. With the permission of the Tribunal I submit two statements to you which were put to my client yesterday by the Prosecution. one is a statement by General of the Air Force Christiansen, as a defendant, dated 20 February 1946, and the other one is also an interrogation of a defendant, a higher police official, Dr. Schongarth. It is F-886. Will you please look at it and tell me what you know about these questions. Take your timpani remind you of your oath-and answer these questions as far as you can do it in good faith. Have you read it?
WIMMER: No, not yet.
DR. STEINBAUER: Witness, I will help you. Are you through?
WIMMER: No, I am not through yet, but please go ahead.
DR. STEINBAUER: Do you know that hostages were shot in August 1942, on the occasion of an act of sabotage in Rotterdam?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Why were these hostages shot? On whose orders?
WIMMER: It is well known what the Rotterdam incident was all about. It was an attempt to blow up an Armed Forces leave train. In this affair, the Armed Forces applied to the Reich Commissioner and therefore...
THE PRESIDENT: That is not an answer to the question. The question was: Who gave the order?
WIMMER: The order for what?
DR. STEINBAUER: For shooting the hostages.
WIMMER: The order for the execution was, I believe, given by the Police.
DR. STEINBAUER: What did the Reich Commissioner have to do with it? You have read here how Christiansen accuses him in that connection.
WIMMER: The Armed Forces applied to the Reich Commissioner, because it was customary in fairly important matters for the two offices, that is, the commander of the Armed Forces and the Reich Commissioner, to get together and discuss these things. I recall that the commander of the Armed Forces appeared in a very determined manner and demanded that an example should be made so that such cases might be prevented in the future as far as possible. It was stated on the part of the Armed Forces that they considered hardly any other means possible than the shooting of a considerable number of hostages. I no longer recall the figure very exactly today, but as far as I do remember it was about 50. I also recall that it was stated on the part of the Armed Forces that they could dispense with such a selection of hostages if the assurance could be given by the Police that on the basis of some sort of material which the Police had in their possession there was a chance that the perpetrators might be found and brought to punishment by a German court, that is to say, by the court of the Armed Forces. On the part of the Armed Forces it was also pointed out that at the time resistance in the Netherlands was beginning to develop in increasing measure, and that this was finding expression in an increase in sabotage and other acts hostile to the occupation forces. I also recall that it was pointed out that if the Armed Forces and the Police had been present in larger numbers than was actually the case, it would perhaps not have been necessary to take a severe step of that kind. The forces at that time at the Army's disposal in the Netherlands were extremely small and in case of an increase in the resistance movement the position of the Armed Forces in the Netherlands might have been seriously endangered.
DR. STEINBAUER: Witness, I shall ask you several questions so that we can go ahead. You have stated that the commander of the Armed Forces came and reported that in view of this outrage he would have to shoot some hostages.
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it known to you that there was a Reich decree stating that saboteurs in the occupied western territory should not be tried by the courts but turned over to the Police? Can you remember that?
WIMMER: I do not think that was the case at this particular time, especially if you refer to the so-called "Night and Fog Decree" which, to my recollection,- is of a later date. I remember very clearly that an order was mentioned at that time, but I believe this order was one which applied exclusively to the military sector, so I do not know the wording of that order.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it known to you that the Reich Commissioner used his influence to see that instead of the 50 you mentioned-in reality, it was only 25 hostages-the number was reduced to 5?
WIMMER: That is known to me.
DR. STEINBAUER: And that he also succeeded in having this done?
WIMMER: And that he succeeded.
DR. STEINBAUER: And that he particularly succeeded in having fathers of families excluded?
WIMMER: Yes, indeed.
DR. STEINBAUER: That concluded one case. There is another case which has been presented to you. That is the case of the attempt made on the life of the Higher SS and Police Leader Rauter when, in fact, more than 150 persons were shot as hostages. Have you finished reading that?
WIMMER: Partly.
DR. STEINBAUER: Please read it all then.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Steinbauer, why is it necessary for the witness to read the whole document? You can put the facts to him.
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes. Witness, at that time it was demanded that as a reprisal for the attempt on the Police and SS Leader hostages should be shot?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Who ordered that and who carried it out?
WIMMER: I know of the case because-that is, I know of it from the report of Brigadefuehrer Schongarth, who was at that time the Chief of the Security Police. He had applied to me to find out what his proper title was, after Rauter had become incapacitated for duty and he had to sign a proclamation and in so doing add his official title. On that occasion he told me this story and he also told me that he had gotten in touch with Berlin, to find out what they would consider necessary as reprisals for the attempt on Rauter. Berlin wanted a considerable number of hostages shot. He mentioned a figure to me which was something like 500, at any rate, not less than 500, but rather more than 500. Then he also told me that he had talked to the Reich Commissioner and told him about this wish on the part of Berlin.
DR. STEINBAUER: Would you be more specific please; Berlin is large and had various Reich offices.
WIMMER: That was the Reichsfuehrer SS, of course; it was quite clear that where one of the highest functionaries in the sphere of the Police and SS was concerned one had to approach the Reichsfuehrer SS personally, and not only his office. He also told me he reported it to the Reich Commissioner, and that the Reich Commissioner, who as such was not authorized to deal with that matter, had asked him to tell the Reichsfuehrer SS that he asked and advised him to refrain from carrying out such a large number of executions. Thereupon-naturally everything was done only by telephone-the Reichsfuehrer agreed to reduce the number and I believe that in the end, on the basis of several telephone conversations back and forth, a number of about 200 or 150-I no longer know it exactly today-was decided upon. I am convinced that if this advice and this request and these representations had not been offered by the Reich Commissioner through Schongarth, the number originally demanded by Berlin would have lost their lives, so that one can say with full right that in this case the Reich Commissioner saved the lives of several hundred Netherlanders.
DR. STEINBAUER: Were the people who were actually shot collected at random in the streets or were they people who had already been officially condemned?
WIMMER: Of course, on this point, I can only report what Brigadefuehrer Schongarth told me at that time during the conference. Indeed I have no reason to assume that he did not tell me the truth. He informed me that only such persons were considered who had already been condemned, so that it was only a question of advancing the time of the execution, and if the number should not suffice, then possibly others might be selected who in any case were already in prison and would certainly be sentenced to death.
DR. STEINBAUER: I believe I can conclude this chapter by asking you what happened to the hostages who were sent as such to Buchenwald by way of a so-called Dutch East Indian reprisal.
WIMMER: After some time, I no longer remember just how long, when complaints were received about their treatment, a large number of these hostages, or perhaps all of them, were brought back into the Netherlands and a very large number of them were released; not all together and at once, as I remember, but a few at a time.
DR. STEINBAUER: A small town, Putten, was destroyed because of serious acts of sabotage; was this ordered by the Reich Commissioner or someone else?
WIMMER: Since it was a purely military affair, just like the Rotterdam incident, where a plot was directed against the Armed Forces the incident was handled by the Armed Forces. The order was given by the commander of the Armed Forces and if I remember correctly, the Reich Commissioner-in any case, I-only learned about the incident after the execution had taken place.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now I pass over to the next chapter, and that is the combating of so-called enemies of the State. Yesterday it was mentioned that the property of the Freemasons and Jehovah's Witnesses was confiscated. I should like to ask you, so that there may be no mistake, whether it was only the property of the organizations which was claimed, or was it also the property of the individual members? And so, taking the Freemasons as an example, was the property of the individual Freemason claimed as well as the property of the lodges?
WIMMER: In all these cases property that belonged to organizations was demanded, never that belonging to individuals. If there were individual cases where this happened, then these were abuses by individuals, but I cannot recall any such abuses.
DR. STEINBAUER: The Dutch Jews were also counted among the so-called enemies of the State. Who was responsible for handling the Jewish question in the Netherlands-you have really already told me that.
WIMMER: From the very beginning, the Police laid claim to the handling of the Jews, to jurisdiction over the treatment of the Jews, as a matter of fundamental principle.
DR. STEINBAUER: Now, we have an entire list of decrees here which bear the name of Seyss-Inquart and which indicate encroachments on the right of the Jews. Can you remember when the legislation against the Jews was introduced and in what form?
WIMMER: The development was briefly more or less as follows: Seyss-Inquart was opposed to the entire idea of taking up the Jewish question at all in the Netherlands, and in one of the Reich Commissioner's first conferences it was ordered that this question was not to be dealt with. After a certain time-it may have been a few months-the Reich Commissioner informed us that he had received an order from Berlin to take up the Jewish problem because Jews had participated in a relatively large number in various movements and actions in the Netherlands which at that time, indeed, could only be characterized essentially as conspiracies. Apart from that, one had to expect that if the war should last a fairly long time, the Jews who naturally because of the treatment they had undergone were not, and could not be, friends of the Germans, might become dangerous, and, therefore, that they should be considered as enemies-if not in the formal sense of the word, at least, practically so. The Reich Commissioner began to carry out this order with much hesitation, although in the official conference he pointed out that he could not help doing so because he could not assume such a responsibility. So far as I remember, this can be ascertained immediately from the Reich Commissioner's ordinance bulletin. At first, steps were taken to register the property of the Jews, then to prevent German maidservants from being in Jewish households; the Police requested that especially, because naturally all kind of information could be carried back and forth in this way. Then, when Berlin became more insistent in that question, the Reich Commissioner finally decided to decree and regulate a registration of all Jews by ordinance. It was pointed out particularly that we would at least have to know where the Jews were, because only in this way could the proper Security Police control and supervision be made possible. In themselves those were measures which were far behind those which were already being carried out in the Reich at that time.
WIMMER: Then more pressure was exerted; I do not know whether it was perhaps Heydrich who did this at that time, whether he was already in the Netherlands at that time-I never saw him. I know only that he visited the Reich Commissioner in the Netherlands at least twice. At any rate, in the course of the year 1941 and particularly in 1942, a comprehensive treatment of the question was urged. At first the Reich Commissioner still believed that he could meet these demands by bringing the Jews in the Netherlands together in one place where they could be more easily supervised, and therefore the idea arose that in Amsterdam one, two, or three districts of the city might be used to house the Jews there, which was also connected with the necessity of resettling a part or a considerable number of non-Jewish Netherlanders because there was not yet a completely separate Jewish quarter at that time. The non-Jewish Dutch did not live completely apart from them.
THE PRESIDENT: All this evidence that the witness is giving is all in the decree and has already been given by the defendant, has it not? What is the difference?
DR. STEINBAUER: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the point of it?
DR. STEINBAUER: Mr. President, I wanted to say only one thing, and that is that on such an important question I wanted to have confirmation briefly by the witness.
WIMMER: I have not much more to say.
DR. STEINBAUER: All right, I shall now summarize. Is it true that one wanted to put the Jews together in a ghetto in Amsterdam?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it true that Heydrich demanded the evacuation of the Jews?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: Is it true that the Reich Commissioner tried, insofar as was possible under existing conditions, to use more humane methods in this deportation of the Jews?
WIMMER: Yes.
DR. STEINBAUER: I believe that I have now finished that chapter, too. There were also concentration camps in the Netherlands. Is it known to you that Seyss-Inquart had these camps inspected by judicial commissions and corrected abuses found there?
WIMMER: Yes. Not only in concentration camps, but in camps of this kind in general.
DR. STEINBAUER: At the end of 1944 and early in 1945 there was a large-scale operation to deport all the men in Holland able to bear arms. Was that operation directed by the Reich Commissioner or by a different officer
WIMMER: That was an operation by the Reich, primarily an operation by the Armed Forces.
DR. STEINBAUER: Why did that operation take place?
WIMMER: It took place because during those critical times there were objections to the fact that men who were able to bear arms remained in Holland. First, because a large number of former prisoners of war who were released by order of the Fuehrer in 1940 were later on mostly brought back to the Netherlands and a part of them remained there. Secondly, the resistance movements increased greatly during that time, and so it was stated that, from the military point of view, the responsibility of leaving those people able to bear arms in the Netherlands could not be assumed.
DR. STEINBAUER: Did the Reich Commissioner, in order to moderate that operation, issue so-called "release certificates" (Freistellungsscheine)?
WIMMER: Yes.