dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
THE PRESIDENT: You are reading 16, are you? Which page?
DR. MERKEL: The paragraph from which I was reading is on Page 1. It begins with "In 1935" and the fourth sentence is: "On the basis of my activity ...
THE PRESIDENT: "In 1935, without being consulted, I was ordered and transferred..."
DR. MERKEL: Yes, quite, Mr. President, that is the paragraph. And in this paragraph the fourth sentence reads: "On the basis of my activity with the Gestapo Office in Berlin..." Then I shall read the following paragraph: "As in the Gestapo Office in Berlin, so the great majority of the police personnel of the State Police offices throughout the Reich consisted of old professional police officials who, had been transferred from the old I-A section of the Criminal Police and the other branches of the Police to the State Police, or had been assigned there without their personal wish being taken into consideration." Then I shall skip a paragraph: "Transfers back were entirely out of the question, because there existed an order which absolutely prohibited this. If, in spite of this, requests were handed in for transfer back or transfer from the Gestapo to another branch of the Police, such requests were usually answered with disciplinary transfer. Such requests were not made because the Gestapo was considered a criminal organization, but mostly for purely personal reasons." From Affidavit Number 18 1 should like to read the following, on Page 3 of the German original: "1 Officers: There were 50 or 60 officers' positions in the whole Security Police Force. "2. Administrative Officials: The administrative officials were engaged exclusively in office work for the entire police administration. They were strictly separated from the executive officials by different regulations concerning their career, by different titles, and different duty passes. Above all they had nothing to do with executive work. A change in their position and activity never took place. "3. Executive Officials: They executed the real tasks of the Gestapo as laid down by law. In this connection it should be noted, however, that a number of these officials also were engaged in pure office work, as is the case in every office. "4. Civilian Employees: The civilian employees were mainly typists and other office personnel and personnel for subordinate work. "5.
DR. MERKEL: Emergency Draftees." Here I shall read only the end of this paragraph: "No right whatsoever to complain existed if an emergency draftee was assigned to the Gestapo instead of some other governmental office or some private enterprise." I shall omit two paragraphs and shall read the third one which follows: "I estimate that the Gestapo had about 10,000 emergency draftees by the end of 1944. "6. Men detailed from the Waffen-SS: In order to meet the personnel requirements of the Gestapo, members of the Waf-fen-SS who, due to wounds and other physical handicaps, could not be utilized at the front any more, were detailed to the Gestapo in increasing numbers during the war."
THE PRESIDENT: I think we had better break off now. [A recess was taken.]
DR. MERKEL: From Affidavit Number 18, 1 should like to read Section 7, relative to the members of the former Secret Field Police. "With the transfer of the tasks of the Secret Field Police to the Security Police, at first in the occupied territories in the West, the members of the Secret Field Police were also taken over into the SIPO, or into the Gestapo. This transfer was done by order, so that none of the transferred men could have done anything against it." And then the final sentence of that: "Altogether approximately 5,500 men were taken over." And the first sentence of the following paragraph: "Particular importance was attached to secrecy in the Gestapo." I skip the following sentence, and continue: "Particularly by means of the Fuehrer order of 1940, which was extended immediately by the Reichsfuehrer SS to include the Security Police, the keeping of secrecy was pronounced the supreme duty of all members of the Security Police, and thus of the Gestapo. All members of the individual offices were now and then reminded of this secrecy pledge which they had signed.
DR. MERKEL: In that connection it was pointed out time and again that any offenses against the secrecy regulations would be severely dealt with and, in important cases, even be punishable by death." From Affidavit Number 20, the second paragraph: I beg permission to read from Page 1, "The members of the administrative service in the lower, middle, and higher grades were, at the request of the Gestapo, and after 19P7 of the Main Office of the Security Police, selected from the civil service staff of all offices, especially the police administration, and were transferred to the Security Police or the Gestapo." From Number 30 1 shall read the following, on the first page under the heading "Organization and Composition of the Gestapo in Bielefeld," the second sentence: "When this Gestapo office was founded in 1934, about eight criminal investigation officials and two police administration officials of the Bielefeld State Police, and about 5 criminal investigation officials from branch offices were transferred to the Bielefeld Gestapo. The transfer was made without previously obtaining the consent of the officials." Then, from Page 3 of the same affidavit, I beg to be allowed to quote one example of the composition of a fairly large Gestapo office. "Organization and composition of the Gestapo in Brno. In the spring of 1944, the personnel comprised about 800 persons, distributed approximately as follows: administrative officials, about 35; executive officials, about 280; drivers and employees, about 110; frontier police officials, about 65; criminal investigation employees, for instance interpreters, about 90; prison supervision personnel, about 80; female office personnel, about 90; other auxiliaries, about 50." And then the second paragraph after that: "When the Gestapb office in Brno was created, about 400 officials were transferred from offices in the Reich proper, without their consent, to Brno or to the branch offices connected with Brno.
DR. MERKEL: More than half of the personnel consisted of emergency o7 labor draftees." From Affidavit Number 31, 1 shall read on Page 2, at the beginning: "At the end of 1944 the Gestapo consisted of approximately the following: administrative officials, 3,000; executive officials, 15,500; employees and workmen, including 9,000 emergency draftees, 13,500. Grand total, 32,000. These members of the Gestapo may be considered to be the permanent ones inasmuch as they made up the normal staff. In addition to these persons, there were the following groups: detailed from the Waffen-SS, 3,500; taken over from the Secret Meld Police, 5,500; taken over from the military counter-intelligence of the OKW, 5,000; personnel of the former military mail censorship, 7,500; members of the customs frontier guard, 45,000." Then I come to Affidavit 34, where I shall read from the first page, under the heading "Professional career," the last quotation. "I April 1933; transfer, that is, assignment to the Gestapo Department of Berlin. I received at that time a letter which ran as follows: 44 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Reich Minister of the Interior, you are hereby as of ... transferred to the Gestapo Office.' "I had nothing to say in the matter of this transfer. The endeavor of my superior in the Police Presidency to save me from this transfer, failed." I now beg to be permitted in connection with the relationship of the Gestapo to the Frontier Police, to read the following from Affidavit Number 22; this is on Page 2 of the German original: "The members of the Frontier Police were taken over from the Frontier Police, which existed in Bavaria already before 1933, into the Frontier Police of the Gestapo. Later on, after the annexation of Austria, the Austrian Frontier Police were added as well. The incorporation of the Frontier Police officials in the Gestapo was not voluntary either ;in Bavaria or in Austria.
DR. MERKEL: On the contrary, the officials were transferred as a group when control of the Gestapo was transferred to the Reich or when the annexation of Austria took place." I skip the following sentence. "The officials could not object against their transfer to the Gestapo on the grounds of legal regulations concerning civil servants. They had to obey this transfer." Then the second paragraph further on: "The tasks of the Frontier Police consisted mainly in the supervision of the traffic of persons across the frontier, the carrying out of police instructions with regard to passports, and in the supervision of the traffic of goods in connection with the customs authorities. Political tasks, such as those of the Gestapo in a stricter sense, were not the business of the, Frontier Police." I skip the next sentence and go on to quote: "I know from my own experience that the tasks of the Frontier Police and its activity did not change after 1933." Then the last paragraph: "I must also draw attention to the fact that the same tasks as those of the Frontier Police were 'performed at many small frontier passages by members of the Reich Finance Administration and the Customs Administration. In this the customs officials were bound by exactly the same instructions as members of the Frontier Police." Numbers 23, 24, 35, and 39 deal with the question of secrecy. "No department within the State Police knew anything about orders issued by any other department. Even private conversation was forbidden.
DR. MERKEL: In view of the strict secrecy only the few persons of the Reich Security Main Office immediately concerned knew the individual measures taken." From Number 35 1 read the following; and this is on Page 8 of the original, the second paragraph: "Discussion of the subject matter was centered in personal conferences between the department chief and group chief or their deputies on the one hand, and as hitherto between the department chief and his department heads on the other." Then the beginning of the following paragraph: "In view of this form of personal co-operation it follows that only the persons actually and directly taking part in a matter were informed about it, the more so as, due to the directives which had been issued, the principles of secrecy were strictly observed in Department IV." Then the beginning of the next paragraph: "Still another decisive fact must be given consideration in this connection. During the course of the war up to September 1944-and particularly in the course of aerial warfare-Department IV in Berlin was decentralized in an increasing measure to various quarters of the city." Then also on Page 12 of the affidavit, the second paragraph in the German text: "In view of the practice of absolute secrecy and isolation of information prevailing in all fields, it should be clear of itself that a problem which had as little to do with general tasks and activities as the physical extermination of Jews was, if that is possible, kept even more strictly secret. All plans and measures in connection therewith could of necessity have been discussed only within the closest circle of persons directly involved, for all other members of Department IV never received knowledge of it." And then the beginning of the next paragraph: "The same must have been true with regard to knowledge about the reports concerning mass shootings in the East, as quoted by the Prosecution. It is not known in detail who could have had knowledge of such reports besides the Reichsfuehrer SS and some individual department chiefs.
DR. MERKEL: If such knowledge should, at the most, have extended even to the competent group chiefs and specialists, it is still far from being the case, as asserted by the Prosecution, that the bulk of the personnel in Department IV, or even in the Reich Security Main Office or in the Offices throughout the Reich, were informed." From Affidavit Number 39 1 beg to be permitted to read the following from Page 3 of the original: "Upon my assuming office in the Reich Security Main Office in August 1941, Mueller declared to me that in his sphere of activity he placed great value upon observing the stipulations for secrecy and that he would proceed without clemency and with the severest measures against violations thereof." And then the last sentence of the same paragraph...
THE PRESIDENT: We have heard about this secrecy over and over again, not only in your affidavits, but throughout the Trial. Surely it isn't necessary to read the paragraphs of these affidavits about secrecy. We quite understand that everybody alleges that.
DR. MERKEL: Affidavit Number 25 contains an opinion about Exhibit Number USA-219. It deals with the transfer of 35,000 prisoners capable of work to armament plants attached to concentration camps. The affidavit originates from a local office chief of the Gestapo and I shall quote from the third sentence of the third paragraph: "As another case, the order by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD of 17 December 1942, according to which at least 35,000 persons capable of working were to be transported to concentration camps to work in the armament plants there, was not carried out by many Gestapo offices. These persons were to be recruited from, the prisoners in the corrective labor camps of the Gestapo offices. This was at variance with the practice applied until then, and by many office chiefs known to me was interpreted as an arbitrary measure. At conferences in the Reich Security Main Office, I learned that the office was unable to comply with the request of the Reichsfuehrer SS to provide prisoners, because the Gestapo refused to provide prisoners from their corrective labor camps and hid behind pretexts." The summary of Affidavit Number 36 states that in the spring of 1944 the bulk of the members of the Department of Foreign Intelligence (Amt Ausland Abwehr) in the OKW were forcibly transferred into the Security Police. Affidavit Number 40 states that the order for the evacuation of Jews from Hesse in 1942 came 'directly from the Chief of the Security Police, not from Department IV of the Reich Security Main Office. Commitment for work in the East was given as the reason for the evacuation. Affidavit Number 42, and to some extent 91, deals with the decree that the crucifixes should be removed from schools.
DR. MERKEL: From Affidavit Number 42 1 shall read the second sentence on the first page: "Approximately in 1942, as I remember, Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, in his capacity of Bavarian Minister of Culture, gave the order to have the crucifixes removed from all Bavarian schools." I skip the following sentence: "Enforcement (of this ruling) met with the greatest difficulties due to the attitude of the population, so that the departments of the Party which were dealing with the execution of that order called upon the Landräte and the district police offices for assistance. Since the affair had a political character, the Landräte approached the State Police department in Nuremberg with a request for advice or assistance. As an expert for Church matters, I stated to the first Landrät approaching me that the Gestapo in Nuremberg would not help with this decree unless directly forced to do so, and that he would not receive any assistance from the State Police in the execution of the order. Even in the case of unfortunate complications for Political Leaders, the State Police would not introduce any police measures." I shall skip the following sentence. "I then reported the matter to the Chief of Police who without any reservation shared my point of view. In agreement with him, I then informed the other Landräte concerned by telephone to the effect that they should act accordingly in this matter." Affidavit Number 43 says that, upon objections raised by the competent commander of the Security Police, the intention of the Landräte to turn the Protestant church in Welun into a cinema was thwarted.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Merkel, you heard what I said to Dr. Servatius, did you not?
DR. MERKEL: Yes, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Isn't the state of affairs exactly the same in your case, that all these affidavits have been summarized in the transcript before the Commission, which we have got before us in writing, and therefore what you are doing is simply cumulative?
DR. MERKEL: I had merely thought that in order to support these summaries in the record, short extracts from these affidavits ...
THE PRESIDENT: It is no use telling me what you merely thought. You heard what I said to Dr. Servatius, that the Tribunal did not want to hear the same thing over again that appears in the transcript of the proceedings before the Commissioners. It was all gone into perfectly clearly with Dr. Servatius, and it was explained to , him in your hearing that we cannot carry all these things in our minds and that it is useless to go over them twice unless there is some matter of very great importance which you want to draw our attention to before you make your final speech; and I said that before and I don't want to have to say it again.
DR. MERKEL: In that case, if I may, I shall refer to the summaries of the transcripts of the Commission with reference to the numbers following up to 91, and shall assume that the Tribunal will take notice of the contents of these summaries. I shall then have only one collective affidavit left. If the Tribunal wishes me to do so, I can read the summary contained in that affidavit; as far as I know, that has not been translated. There are six pages of this summary of 1,276 individual affidavits which do not appear in the Commission report.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, go on.
DR. MERKEL: Regarding the question of compulsory membership, 665 affidavits are available. They state that when the Gestapo was created, the requirements for personnel were for the most part met out of the existing Political Police. Regarding forced membership of emergency draftees, there are 127 affidavits which deal with the same subject. 785 affidavits state that they had no knowledge of the crimes of which the Gestapo is being accused. 39 affidavits deal with the difference in organization between the Gestapo in the Reich and the Security Police in occupied territories. 195 affidavits state that the writers had no knowledge of inhuman treatment and atrocities in the concentration camps. A few ,officials who had entered concentration camps on conducted visits failed to notice any irregularities there; nor did released detainees speak about concentration camps in a derogatory manner. 133 affidavits state that no p9rticipation or supervision of the excesses of 9 and 10 November had taken place. 67 affidavits state that the looting of private or state property was expressly forbidden to members of the Gestapo. 135 affidavits state that a large number of Gestapo members knew nothing about the existence of the Einsatzgruppen or of atrocities committed by them. 218 affidavits state that the "Bullet Decree" was unknown to the majority of the Gestapo officials, and that recaptured prisoners of war were turned over to Wehrmacht offices. 168 affidavits state that enemy parachutists were turned over to the Air Force by the Gestapo, and 23 affidavits state that the Reich Security Main Office was responsible for the imposition of protective custody. 181 affidavits speak of punishment of members of the Gestapo by SS and Police Courts for misconduct during, and off duty. , With that, Mr. President, I have come to the end of my submission of documents and affidavits.
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER WHITNEY R. HARRIS (Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, I have just two short comments to make concerning documents which were presented here on matters regarding which I think he was in error, and I respectfully request the Tribunal to turn to his Number Gestapo-33.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COMMANDER HARRIS: Dr. Merkel has cited this document as evidence that the executions in concentration camps were ordered by the VFVHA, but I would respectfully invite the attention of the Tribunal to the sentence in the center on the first page, and I quote: "For this measure permission of the Chief of the Security Police must be obtained."
THE PRESIDENT: Commander Harris, the Tribunal thinks that this is a matter which can be dealt with in argument and not at this stage.
LT. COMMANDER HARRIS: Very well.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, the Tribunal will hear the case of the SD. Is counsel for the SD not present?
DR. STAHMER: He is being called and will be here any moment.
THE PRESIDENT: Marshal, have you made any effort to get-to obtain the presence of this counsel? Have you communicated with him?
THE MARSHAL: We got in touch with his office, and we are looking for the defense counsel right now.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. [The Tribunal adjourned until 20 August 1946 at 1000 hours.]
THE MARSHAL: May it please the Tribunal: the Defendant Hess is absent.
DR. RUDOLF DIX (Counsel for the Defendant Schacht): May I be permitted quite briefly to submit to the Tribunal a possible precautionary application regarding evidence. I repeat: it is a possible precautionary application which will only be operative under certain conditions which I am about to explain. I beg the Tribunal to remember that I wanted to call Frau Struenk and Generaloberst Halder as witnesses for the same subject on which the witness Gisevius testified as a Defense witness for Dr. Schacht. The application to hear Generaloberst Halder I withdrew at an early stage, whereas the examination of Frau Struenk as a witness was granted by the Tribunal. However, after hearing the witness Gisevius and the witness Focke, I decided in the interest of time to withdraw my application for these witnesses as I considered that their testimony would be cumulative. Now these two witnesses, Frau Struenk and Generaloberst Halder, will no longer be cumulative if the Tribunal should adopt the view, which I do not hold, that the testimony of the witness Gisevius insofar as it was in favor of Dr. Schacht was weakened in any way by the statements of the witness Von Brauchitsch. It is not my task to represent the material or ideal interests of the witness Gisevius; nor is it my task to strengthen the credibility of the witness Gisevius insofar as he has incriminated other defendants or other persons. It is merely my duty to furnish evidence in defense of my client, Dr. Schacht. It is my own personal opinion and that speaks against my own application-that the testimony of Gisevius with reference to Dr. Schacht, that is, his testimony regarding the purpose of armament as Schacht intended it to be, Schacht's real attitude towards the regime, and especially Schacht's active part in the resistance movement-that this testimony has in no way been shaken by the testimony of the witness Brauchitsch, to the effect that he did not know the witness Gisevius at all.