dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SAUTER: And you took note of the deliberations and resolutions of the Reich Cabinet...
FUNK: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: That was the reason of your presence there; but your sole duty-and please tell me if I am correct-was to inform the press, after the cabinet sessions, of the decisions made? Is that correct? '
FUNK: Yes, that is correct.
DR.SAUTER: So you had no influence on the drafting or on the contents of the laws, nor on the voting? Is that right?
FUNK: Yes, that is right. I had neither a seat nor a vote in the Cabinet.
DR. SAUTER: Were you responsible for the press policy of the Reich Government-and I stress: the Reich Government and not the Party?
FUNK: I have already said that I received my instructions for the press from the Fuehrer; that went on for 6 weeks. Then Dr. Goebbels took charge of press policy. ..
DR. SAUTER: You have already said that the press reports to Reich President Von Hindenburg ended with his death in August 1934?
FUNK: Yes.
DR. SAUTER: And also, from the same date, your press reports to Hitler, who was then Reich Chancellor, is it not so?
FUNK: Yes, that is correct. Reich President Hindenburg had died in the meantime.
DR. SAUTER: And afterwards the Reich press chief, that is the Party official, Dr. Dietrich, tended more and more to occupy your place?
FUNK: Yes, Dr. Dietrich was one of the Fuehrer's closest collaborators; and through him the Fuehrer gave his instructions to the press.
DR. SAUTER: Dr. Funk, the book by Dr. Oestreich, 3505-PS, Exhibit USA-653, which we have already dealt with, contains the following quotation on your press policy; and I quote: "Many of the journalists who worked in Berlin and the provinces are grateful to Funk for the way in which he attended to their wishes and their complaints, especially during the transition period. "Funk is responsible for the much-quoted saying that the press must not be a 'barrel-organ,' with which he protested against the uniformity"-to use a German word, the onesided modeling and leveling-"of the press and demanded individuality for it. But he also protected the press from efforts made by various offices to 'grind their own ax....' " Is that correct?
FUNK: Yes; I probably did write that; and that was my opinion. So far as it lay within my power, I tried to protect the press from standardization and arbitrary treatment, especially at the hands of the government offices.
DR.SAUTER: You have already said, I believe, that you took no part in the political direction of the Propaganda Ministry-I stress, the political direction of the Propaganda Ministry-or in the actual work of propaganda. Is that correct?
FUNK: Yes, that is correct.
DR.SAUTER: Mr. President, I turn now to a new complex. Do you wish to have the recess now, Your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: I think we will go straight on. We are going to adjourn at 12 o'clock.
DR.SAUTER: Witness, I come now to your attitude on the question of anti-Semitism. I do so because you are held more or less responsible, along with others, for the excesses committed against the Jews. Will you tell us on what principles your attitude was based?
FUNK: I was never anti-Semitic on the basis of racial principles. At first I thought that the anti-Semitic demands of the Party program were a matter of propaganda. At that time the Jews in many respects held a dominant position in widely different and important fields of German life; and I myself knew many very wise Jews who did not think that it was in the interest of the Jews that they should dominate cultural life, the legal profession, science, and commerce to the extent that they did at the time . . . The people showed a tendency toward anti-Semitism at that time. The Jews had a particularly strong influence on cultural life and their influence seemed to me particularly dangerous in this sphere because tendencies which I felt to be definitely un-German and inartistic appeared as a result of Jewish influence, especially in the domain of painting and music. The law concerning the Reich Chamber of Culture was created, radically excluding the Jews from German cultural life but with the possibility of making exceptions. I applied these exceptions whenever I was in a position to do so. The law, as I have stated, was decreed by the Reich Cabinet, which bears the responsibility for it. I was at that time not a member of the Cabinet. During the period of my activities in the Propaganda Ministry, I did what I could to help the Jews and other outsiders in cultural life. Everyone who knows me from my activities during that period can and must testify to that.
DR. SAUTER: I have submitted two affidavits in my document book, Documents Number Funk-1 and 2. The first was made by the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Albert Oeser; and the second by a lawyer, Dr. Roesen. I ask you to take judicial notice of both these documents. The first affidavit proves that the Defendant Funk took a great deal of trouble to protect the interests of the above-mentioned Albert Oeser, the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and those of a number of the staff of this newspaper, although by doing so he was endangering his own position. In particular, he persisted in retaining members of the staff who were not of Aryan descent and who, therefore, in accordance with the intentions of the Party, should no longer have been employed.
FUNK: It was not in accordance with the intentions of the Party, but in accordance with the law passed for the Chamber of Culture that they were no longer to be employed.
DR. SAUTER: In accordance with the law passed for the Chamber of Culture, also. Then Document Number 2 of the document book, an affidavit made by Dr. Roesen, who confirms that the Defendant Funk also intervened, for instance, on behalf of the family of the composer, Dr. Richard Strauss, and his non-Aryan grandchildren and by so doing incurred certain personal danger. These are just a few examples; but the defendant can probably tell you of other cases in which he looked after people's interests.
THE PRESIDENT: What exhibit number are you offering those as?
DR. SAUTER: Numbers Funk-1 and 2 in the document book. I have submitted the originals.
THE PRESIDENT: 1 and 2?
DR.SAUTER: 1 and 2. [Turning to the defendant.] Dr. Funk, I have just said that perhaps you could-quite briefly-give us some more examples of cases where you used your official position to protect intellectuals and artists, whose views had got them into difficulties.
FUNK: Richard Strauss is a special case. That most remarkable living composer found himself in great difficulties on account of a libretto written by the Jew, Stefan Zweig. I succeeded in having Richard Strauss again received by the Fuehrer, and the whole affair was dismissed. Dr. Wilhelm Furtwangler found himself in similar difficulties because he wrote an article praising the composer Hindemith; and composers with Jewish wives, such as Lehar, Kunnecke, and others who were always in difficulties because of their efforts to evade the ban placed on the performance of their works. I always succeeded in getting permission for these composers to have their works performed.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant can say that he helped hundreds of Jews, but that does not really destroy the fact that he may have acted hostilely by signing decrees against the Jewish race his helping a few Jewish friends. Anyhow, I do not think that it need be gone into any detail
DR. SAUTER: We are of the opinion, Mr. President, that in order to judge the character and personality of the defendant, it may be important to know whether he signed decrees which were in any way anti-Semitic because as an official he considered himself bound by his oath to carry out the law of the land, or whether he signed them because he himself was an anti-Semite who wished to persecute Jewish citizens and to deprive them of their rights, and for this reason only...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Sauter, the Tribunal thinks that you have made the point quite clearly that he helped Jewish friends, but it isn't a question which need be gone into in detail.
DR. SAUTER: I come now, in any case, Mr. President, to another point. I want to ask the defendant how his activities in the Propaganda Ministry developed in later years.
FUNK: In exactly the same direction that I have described here. By degrees I came to be in charge of a large cultural economic concern-film companies, broadcasting corporations, theaters. I was director and chairman of the supervisory board of the Philharmonic Orchestra and on the Council of German Economy, which dealt collectively with the economic activities in the entire economic field at home and abroad with the active participation of the economy itself. Those were the main parts of my work.
DR. SAUTER: Witness, the Prosecution has submitted under Document Number 3501-PS an affidavit by the former Reich chief of the press-I believe-Max Amann, in regard to your activities in the Propaganda Ministry. I want to refer to this now. In that affidavit, we find the statement that Dr. Funk-and I quote literally: ". . . was to all intents and purposes Minister in the Propaganda Ministry..."-And it says further on-and I quote again-"Funk exercised complete control over all means of expression in Germany: press, theater, radio, and music." Now, I ask you to comment on that; but you can do so quite briefly because I have already submitted an affidavit by Max Amann to the contrary to which I will refer later.
FUNK: Amann knew the Ministry only from the outside; and, therefore, he had no exact knowledge of its internal affairs. My work was done in the manner I have described. It is completely absurd to assert that under a Minister such as Dr. Goebbels the Ministry could have been led by someone else who was not the Minister. Dr. Goebbels assumed such exclusive and all-embracing functions in the field, of propaganda that he dwarfed everyone else.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I have submitted an affidavit by that same former Reichsleiter Amann, dealing with the same subject, in the appendix to the Funk Document Book, under Document Number Funk-l that will be Exhibit Number 3-and I ask you to take judicial notice of this affidavit. I do not think I have to read it. I administered that affidavit in the presence of and with the co-operation of a member of the Prosecution. The essential part of this affidavit of 17 April 1946 is that Reichsleiter Max Amann also admits that Funk had nothing to do with propaganda as such. That is to say, he did no broadcasting and indulged in no propaganda speeches but was mainly concerned with the organization and administration of the Ministry. Now, Mr. President, I come to the defendant's position as Reich Minister of Economics. [Turning to the defendant.] Dr. Funk, you were State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry until 1937. At the end of November 1937 you became Reich Minister of Economics, after your predecessor, Dr. Schacht, had left that post. Can you tell us with the necessary brevity-of course-how that change took place and why you were called to that post?
FUNK: That took me completely by surprise, too. During a performance at the opera, the Fuehrer, who was present, took me aside in the vestibule during an interval and told me that the differences between Schacht and Goering could no longer be bridged and that he was therefore compelled to dismiss Schacht from his office as Minister of Economics and was asking me to take over the post of Minister of Economics, as he was very well acquainted with my knowledge and experience in the field of economics. He also asked me to contact Reich Marshal Goering who would explain everything else. That was the only conversation which I had with the Fuehrer on the subject.
DR. SAUTER: And then you spoke to Goering himself? Will you tell us about that?
FUNK: -Then I went to the Reich Marshal who told me that he had really only intended to put a state secretary in charge of the Reich Ministry of Economics but that later he decided that the extensive machinery of the Four Year Plan should be merged with the machinery of the Ministry of Economics. However, the minister would have to work in accordance with his directives and in particular the plenipotentiaries for the individual decisive branches of economy would be maintained and would receive their directives directly from the Delegate for the Four Year Plan. In order to proceed with the necessary reorganization, the Reich Marshal himself took over the direction of the Reich Economic Ministry; and in February 1938 he transferred it to me.
DR. SAUTER: So Goering himself was to all intents and purposes the head of the Reich Ministry for Economics for a period of about 3 months.
FUNK: The reorganization was effected under his control. The control of economic policy was in his hands then as well as later. The main control offices under the Four Year Plan were maintained; for instance, the Foreign Currency Control Office, which gave directives to the Reichsbank; there was the Food Control Office, which gave directives to the Food end agriculture Ministry; the Allocation of Labor Control Office, which gave directives to the Labor Ministry; and also the plenipotentiaries for the separate branches of economics: coal, iron, chemicals, et cetera, which were under the direct control of the Delegate for the Four Year Plan. Some offices were also transferred in this way to the Ministry of Economics from the Four Year Plan, which continued to function quite independently. They included the Reich Office for Economic Development and Research, which was under the direction of Professor Strauch, and the Reich Office for Soil Research, directed by State Secretary Kempner, mentioned here in connection with Slovakia and Austria. I tried to restore the independence of these offices. I am still in ignorance of what these offices did. In any case, they thought themselves responsible to the Four Year Plan rather than to the Minister of Economy.
DR.SAUTER: Dr. Funk, the essential point of what you have just said seems to me to be that you received the title of minister but that in reality you were not a minister, but might have had the position of a state secretary and that your so-called Ministry of Economics was completely subordinated to the directives of the Four Year Plan-your Codefendant Goering in other words-and was compelled to follow these directives. Did I understand it correctly?
FUNK: The latter point is correct. The Reich Marshal has clearly expressed and confirmed that here. But the first statement is not correct because formally, at least, I held the position of minister, which involved a gigantic administrative domain to which the Reich Marshal, of course, could not pay attention. The very purpose of the reorganization was that the Reich Marshal reserved for himself the direction and control of economic policy in the most important and decisive matters and gave me corresponding directives, but the execution of these was naturally in the hands of the Ministry and its organizations. But it is true that the position of minister, in the usual meaning of the term, did not exist. There was, so to speak, a higher ministry. But that has happened to me all my life. I arrived at the threshold, so to speak; but I was never permitted to cross it.
DR. SAUTER: That is not the case as far as this Trial is concerned. Dr. Funk, the Prosecution asserts that, although you were not really a minister with the usual responsibility and independence of a minister, you, as Dr. Funk, Reich Economic Minister, still exercised supervision over those parts of the German economy which were grouped under war and armaments industry, that is, in particular, raw materials and manufactured materials as well as mining, the iron industry, power stations, handicrafts, finance and credit, foreign trade and foreign currency. I refer you, Dr. Funk, to the statements on Page 22 of the German translation of the trial brief, which I discussed with you several days ago.
FUNK: That is formally correct. But I have already explained how matters really were. I had nothing to do with the armament industry. The armament industry was at first under the High Command of the Armed Forces, under the Chief of the Armament Office, General Thomas, who was a member of Schacht's conspiracy, of which we have heard here. The Armament Minister Tort, who was appointed in 1940, at once took over from me the entire power economy; and later on I turned over all the civilian production to Armament Minister Speer.
DR. SAUTER: What do you mean by civilian production?
FUNK: Coal, chemicals, consumer, and other goods. The main production branches in that field already mentioned here were, as I said before, under the Delegate for the Four Year Plan. Thus it came about that the Ministry of Economics gradually became a new Ministry of Commerce, which dealt only with the distribution of consumer goods.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, perhaps we might let him go on for a few seconds longer; because I would then come in a second to the subject of the Reichsbank President.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.
DR. SAUTER: Will you please continue briefly? You stopped. I believe you wanted to say more about manpower, gold, and foreign currency-about the competent authorities there.
FUNK: The Foreign Currency Control Office under the Four Year Plan was the competent authority for that; and the Reichsbank had to act in accordance with its directives-in my time, at least.
DR.SAUTER: And the direction of foreign trade?
FUNK: That was in the hands of the Foreign Office. The Minister for Foreign Affairs obstinately laid claim to that.
DR. SAUTER: And what did the Ministry of Economics do?
FUNK: The Ministry of Economics and the Reichsbank attended to the technical execution in this sphere, that is, the technical execution of clearing agreements, balances, et cetera.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I come now to a separate theme. I should like now to discuss his position as President of the Reich bank. I believe it might be a good moment to adjourn.
THE PRESIDENT: The Court will adjourn. The Tribunal adjourned until 6 May 1946 at 1000 hours.7
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I will continue my questioning of the Defendant Dr. Funk. On Saturday we were discussing the appointment of Dr. Funk as Reich Minister of Economics and now I turn to his appointment as President of the Reichsbank. Witness, I believe it was in January 1939 when you also became President of the Reichsbank as successor to Dr. Schacht. How did that appointment come about?
FUNK: I had just returned from a journey about the middle of January 1939. I was called to the Fuehrer and found him in a state of great agitation. He told me that the Reich Minister of Finance had informed him that Schacht had refused the necessary financial credits and that consequently the Reich was in financial straits. The Fuehrer told me, in great excitement, that Schacht was sabotaging his policies, that he would not tolerate the Reichsbank's interference with his policies any longer and the gentlemen in the Reichsbank Directorate were utter fools if they believed that he would tolerate it. No government and no chief of state in the world could possibly make policy dependent on co-operation or non-co-operation of the issuing bank. The Fuehrer further declared that from now on he himself, on the suggestions and demands of the Reich Minister of Finance, would fix all credits to be given by the Reichsbank to the Reich. He had given Lammers instructions to formulate a decree, together with the Reich Minister of Finance, by which the status of the Reichsbank, as established by the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, would be changed, and whereby the terms for the granting of credits to the Reich would be determined by himself alone in the future. The Fuehrer further said that he was asking me to take over the direction of the Reichsbank, whereupon I replied that I would be glad to comply with his wish, but that first of all I had to have confirmation from him that the conditions for stabilization of currency would be maintained. The opinion, which was voiced here by a witness, that inflation would be brought about through a further grant of credits at that time is wrong and totally untenable.
FUNK: Although 12,000 millions of credit can have an inflationary effect, 20,000 millions of credit will not necessarily tend toward inflation if the state has the necessary authority to stabilize prices and wages and to carry out the regulation and administration of prices, and if the people maintain the proper discipline in this respect, and if, finally, the money which as a result of increased credits represents excess purchasing power is diverted through taxes or taken up through loans; then, as far as the currency is concerned, there is absolutely no danger. It is a fact that the Reichsmark, up to the final collapse, was kept on a stable basis. As far as the essentials of life are concerned, the purchasing power of money in Germany was secure. Of course, its value was limited insofar as consumers' goods were produced only on a very limited scale, for almost all production was turned over to armaments.
DR. SAUTER: Dr. Funk, have you concluded?
FUNK: Just one moment, please. I believe this is a very important question. In other countries as well, large credits were issued during the war which did not in any way cause an inflation. The national debt in the United States as well as in England was relatively, and in part even absolutely, higher than that in Germany. And in these countries, too, a correct financial policy overthrew the old thesis that a war would, of necessity, bring about the destruction of the monetary value. The German people, up to the very end, until the terrible collapse, maintained admirable discipline. Money as a function of the state will have its value and currency will function so long as the state has authority to maintain it on a stable basis, to keep the economy under control, and as long as the people themselves maintain the necessary discipline. Thus I took over this office not with the knowledge that Germany was now entering an inflation period but, on the contrary, I knew well that through maintenance of a suitable governmental policy the currency could be protected, and it was protected. However, the basic difference between Schacht's position and my position lay in the fact that during Schacht's time the Reichsbank could determine the granting of credits to the Reich, whereas this authority was taken from me, and the responsibility for domestic finances, therefore, was turned over to the Minster of Finance or of course to the Fuehrer himself.
DR. SAUTER: Dr. Funk, I have another question. Perhaps, despite your poor state of health today, you might be able to speak a little more loudly so that the stenographers might understand you more easily. Please try, and we will make this as brief as possible. Witness, then in addition to these offices of yours which we have discussed up to now, you finally had a further office as successor of Dr. Schacht, namely, that of Plenipotentiary General for Economy. Can you give us some details of your view in this connection in order to clarify your situation, your activity, and your achievements?