dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. MERKEL: Why then did these officials continue in the police service under National Socialist rule?
BEST: For a German official it was a matter of course to keep on serving the State, even though the government changed-as long as he was in a position to do so.
DR. MERKEL: Were these officials removed and later on replaced by National Socialists?
BEST: No, these gentlemen had mostly a very successful career and obtained good posts.
DR. MERKEL: How did the additional recruiting of personnel for the political police take place in the years that followed?
BEST: Officials from the German police agencies were transferred to the offices of the political police. In the course of time new candidates were also enlisted and were trained to become officials according to the general rules which were applicable for the appointment and the training of officials.
DR. MERKEL: Were people taken on from the Party, from the SS, and the SA?
BEST: Only relatively few, as service in these police agencies was not highly paid and therefore was not very much sought after.
DR. MERKEL: Did the officials volunteer to enter the political police?
BEST: The officials were transferred from one office to another.
DR. MERKEL: Did the officials have to comply with these transfers?
BEST: Yes, according to civil service laws they were bound to do so.
DR.MERKEL: What would have been the consequence of a refusal?
BEST: Disciplinary action, with the result that they would have been dismissed from office, with the loss of their acquired rights, for instance, their right to a pension.
DR. MERKEL: Do you know of any such refusal?
BEST: No, I have not heard of any.
DR. MERKEL: Was the political police completely separated from the general administrative set-up of the state?
BEST: No, on all levels there was a close connection with the general interior administration. The chiefs of the state police agencies were at the same time the political experts of the district presidents. The inspectors of the Security Police were personally responsible to the district presidents or to the ministers of the interior of the states and had to comply with their instructions.
DR. MERKEL: Besides the Gestapo authorities were there still other authorities also carrying out political police duties?
BEST: Yes, the district and local police authorities also carried out political police duties.
DR. MERKEL: In what way?
BEST: The district and local police authorities, that is, the Landräte (the chief magistrates of the district), the gendarmerie, and the municipal police administration carried out these duties, either on the basis of information which they received, or they carried out the orders of the competent political police, that is to say the state police authorities.
DR. MERKEL: What part of the entire political police work did the district and local police agencies carry out?
BEST: As far as the volume is concerned, the district and local police authorities handled the major part of the individual state police cases as the state police offices only sent out their officials for their own information in special cases, above all, in cases of treason and high treason.
DR. MERKEL: Did the district and local police agencies also receive the general decrees issued by the Secret State Police?
BEST: Yes, they received these decrees unless they were excluded in some cases by special request.
DR. MERKEL: From what point of view did the officials of the political police take up certain cases?
BEST: Almost without exception on the basis of reports which were sent in from private persons or other agencies outside the Police.
DR. MERKEL: And to which spheres did this apply?
BEST: These charges applied to all spheres which might have interested the political police. The Police, therefore, were not in a position to investigate these cases and to check whether they actually existed. A special information service was only created where organized groups were suspected of carrying out their activities, such as the illegal Communist Party or in the case of espionage of enemy intelligence. In these cases they tried to track down these groups and to expose them through agents or by similar means.
DR. MERKEL: If the Gestapo did not have its own information services. how did arrests and other measures come about against people who had made subversive political statements or the like?
BEST: It is not true, as it often has been and still is being asserted, that the Gestapo had a net of spies and information agencies which kept track of the entire people. With the few officials who were always busy, anything like that could not be carried out. Such individual charges about inopportune political remarks came to the Police from outside, and were not sought for, for 90 percent of these cases were not worth dealing with.
DR.NERKEL: Please speak a little slower. Was there a special class of Gestapo officials which was completely different from the other classes of officials?
BEST: No. The officials of the Gestapo belonged to the same categories as the corresponding officials of other police authorities.
DR. MERKEL: What categories of officials were there in the Gestapo?
BEST: First of all, a clear distinction must be made between administrative officials and executive officials.
DR. MERKEL: How did these categories differ?
BEST: They differed in their tasks, in their legal status, and in their training.
DR. MERKEL: To what extent did their legal status differ?
BEST: The administrative officials were subordinate to the Reich civil service laws and to the general civil service law. But for executive officials there was a special law created within the framework of the police civil service law.
DR. MERKEL: How did they differ in training?
BEST: The administrative officials were trained according to their career, as higher, or lower, or medium administrative officials, in keeping with the rules prevailing in the general and internal administrative agencies and in the police administrative agencies, headquarters, directorates, and so forth. The executive officials, on the other hand, were trained only in the so-called Fuehrerschulen of the Security Police and in the agencies of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police.
DR. MERKEL: What tasks did the administrative officials in the Gestapo have?
BEST: The same tasks as may be found in all other administrative agencies, especially police agencies. That is, dealing with personnel records, with internal economic matters concerning the budget, supplies and on the other hand, the handling of legal problems, such as in my department, for instance, German passport laws or the police laws concerning foreigners.
DR. MERKEL: Could the administrative officials look into and control the activities of the executive officials?
BEST: No, only if there was an administrative official appointed to keep a card index of an executive agency. For the rest they were neither concerned with the handling of records nor with any executive measures.
DR. MERKEL: Could they receive knowledge about the executive tasks in any other way?
BEST: No. That was almost impossible, for each official was bound to keep the matters which he dealt with secret, which by the way was a traditional practice of the police. Individual cases being dealt with were not discussed.
DR. MERKEL: Did the administrative officials join the Gestapo voluntarily?
BEST: NG. Administrative officials were transferred from other internal administrative agencies or from other police agencies to the Secret State Police.
DR. MERKEL: Did all executive officials of the Gestapo carry out the same activities?
BEST: No. Each one carried out the tasks dealt with by the department to which he had been assigned.
DR. MERKEL: What departments were there?
BEST: Besides the Political Police, strictly speaking, there were the Defense Police and the Border Police; later the defensive part of the military Counterintelligence (Abwehr) and the Customs Frontier Service were incorporated into the Gestapo so that they also became an integral part of it.
DR. MERKEL: Were the special tasks of these various departments assigned to the Gestapo after 1933 for the first time?
BEST: No. Even before 1933 they existed. They were mainly dealt with by the same officials who were later on transferred to the Gestapo, and who previously had been employed by the so-called central police agencies and the offices of the Border Police.
DR. MERKEL: You mentioned the Abwehr Police as a part of the Gestapo. What were the tasks of the Abwehr Police?
BEST: The criminal investigation of treason cases, and all of these cases, without exception, were handed over to the courts for judgment.
DR. MERKEL: And you mentioned also the-Border Police. What were their tasks?
BEST: The Border Police were active at the border, checking passports. They controlled the so-called small border traffic. They lent legal assistance to the neighboring foreign police by receiving expelled people, they repressed international traffic of narcotics and carried out searches for criminals and goods at the border.
DR. MERKEL: What were the tasks of the so-called military Abwehr, which was also a part of the Gestapo?
BEST: As I have already said, the defensive part of the military Abwehr, which was assigned to the Gestapo during the war, had the task of gaining information about the enemy intelligence service which was directed against the German Armed Forces and of rendering it harmless through their reconnaissance.
DR. MERKEL: A further part of the Gestapo was the so-called Customs Frontier Service. What were its tasks?
BEST: The Customs Frontier Service, before and after it was assigned to and incorporated into the Gestapo, had the task of patrolling the so-called "green border," that is, all the borders and the crossing points; at the border points where no Border Police was stationed it took over the tasks of the Border Police,
DR. MERKEL: Beyond the executive and the administrative officials, were there other categories of Gestapo members?
BEST: Yes; there were technical officials, and beyond that there was a large number of people, employees who worked in the offices and on the technical staffs.
DR. MERKEL: What percentage of the entire personnel was made up of these employees?
BEST: Depending on the particular year, this percentage varied from 35 to 45 percent.
DR. MERKEL: Did the employees know what tasks were carried out by the executive members?
BEST: As far as the employees, for instance typists, drivers and such, were needed in the course of an executive action, they learned only of this individual action without being told the facts and reasons.
DR. MERKEL: Did the Gestapo pay especially high salaries to its employees?
BEST: No; the salaries were in accordance with the various civil service wage laws and tariffs, and they were so low that it was hard to replace officials and employees.
DR. MERKEL: And where did you get the replacements for the Gestapo?
BEST: According to the law, 90 percent of the candidates for the executive and administrative services had to be taken from regular police candidates who wanted to make police work their life work. Only perhaps 10 percent of the new officials, according to the law, could be taken from other sources, professions, et cetera.
DR. MERKEL: Did the candidates from the regular police choose to work for the Gestapo of their own will or not?
BEST: The members of the regular police had their names put down on a list at Potsdam, and without their being asked, they were assigned either to the Secret State Police or to the Criminal Police.
DR. MERKEL: How were the candidates for the executive positions trained?
BEST: These candidates were trained in the so-called Fuehrerschule, which was a school for experts of the Security Police. The training courses, to a large extent, were the same for the Criminal Police and the Gestapo, and they received practical training in the various offices and agencies as well.
DR. MERKEL: Were the officials who were in office indoctrinated and influenced politically?
BEST: No. It may well have been a plan of Himmler in 1939 or so for the Main Office for Race and Settlement of the SS to undertake a unified political training program for all the agencies and departments subordinate to Himmler. As long as I was in office, that is, until 1940, this was not done however.
DR.MERKEL: Were not the officials of the Gestapo to carry through their tasks along political lines?
BEST: No; it would have been most undesirable if a minor executive official, such as a Criminal Police assistant, used political judgment in the course of his duty and took his own political decisions. The executive official was to act only according to the general official directives and the orders of the superiors without interfering in politics himself in any way.
DR.MERKEL: And what is meant by the co-ordination of the Gestapo officials with the SS?
BEST: That meant ... THE,PRESIDENT: Dr. Merkel, are you summarizing the evidence that has been given before the Commission? I ask that because, you see, we do not want to have it all over again. We have ourselves a written summary. We have the evidence taken before the Commission, and all we want you to do is to bring out the really important points and to call the witnesses before us so that we may see them and form our opinion of their credit and hear them cross-examined insofar as it is necessary. We do not want to go through all the evidence over again that has been given before the Commission.
DR.MERKEL: Yes, indeed, Mr. President; and for that very reason I asked at the outset for only two witnesses. I directed the examination of this witness in such a way that now an essential summary will be given by the witness of those points on which he has already been questioned.
MR. THOMAS J. DODD (Executive Trial Counsel for the United States): Mr. President, I think we have gone into much more detail than we went into before the Commission, into matters that have been inquired about here before the Tribunal. I think counsel may be under some kind of a misunderstanding, because before he started his examination, I asked him about how long he thought he would be. I thought he was being whimsical when he told me between 4 1/2 and 5 hours and he took only 2 hours or so before the Commission. I fear that if he has in mind a 4 1/2 or 5 hour examination when he took only 2 or 2 1/2 hours before the Commission, then he must be under a misunderstanding as to what is in the minds of the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: I hope, Dr. Merkel, I have made it quite clear what we want. You have only got two witnesses. We shall no doubt read the evidence before the Commission of these two witnesses. We want to see the witnesses in order to see what credit is to be attached to their evidence, and we want to give you the opportunity of bringing out any particularly important points. We do not want you to go through the whole thing over again.
DR. MERKEL: Yes, indeed, Mr. President. [Turning to the witness.] What is meant by the co-ordination of the Gestapo officials with the SS?
BEST: That meant that the official, because he was an official of the Gestapo, was taken over into the SS and received SS rank commensurate with his position.
DR. MERKEL: Was only the Gestapo to be co-ordinated?
BEST: No, the officials of the Criminal Police were to be co-ordinated as well.
DR.MERKEL: When and how did the Reich Security Main Office originate?
BEST: The Reich Security Main Office was first created in September 1939, when the then Chief of the Security Police, Heydrich, in exploiting the situation caused by the war, merged these various departments into one. Up to that time, the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the SS, too, had opposed this unifying move.
DR. MERKEL: Did the concentration camps fall under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo?
BEST: No.
DR. MERKEL: Were there no legal directions in this regard?
BEST: In a Prussian decree dealing with the application of the Police decree of 1936 concerning the Prussian Gestapo there was a sentence to the effect that the Secret State Police office was to administer the concentration camps. That was one of the aims of the then chief of the Gestapo office, Heydrich.  Himmler, however, never carried out this decree, for he wanted the same situation to prevail as before, that is, that the inspector of the concentration camps remained directly subordinate to him.
DR.MERKEL: Did the officials of the Gestapo have to assume that in the concentration camps the health and life of the inmates was being endangered?
BEST: I can speak only for the time up to the war, and I remember that during that time, the officials of the Secret State Police did not think that the life and health of the inmates were being endangered in the concentration camps. The officials were constantly occupied both with the inmates' families, who were looked after by the Secret State Police, and with released internees for whom work was procured, so that they were in a position to obtain an over-all picture of the experiences and life of the internees in the concentration camps.
DR. MERKEL: Did the officials of the Gestapo have to assume that a criminal purpose was aimed at in the concentration camps?
BEST: No; for the Gestapo had no final aim whatever to achieve. They only carried out and fulfilled the orders or regulations and the tasks which were assigned to them from day to day.
DR. MERKEL: Now, did not the Gestapo also carry out actions which were not demanded of it through the general police directives?
BEST: As far as the Gestapo had to carry out actions which were not provided for in their general instructions, they were an instrument for the carrying out of matters which were alien to the Police sphere. I might say they were misused and abused along these lines. As the first case of this type, I remember the arrest of about 20,000 Jews in November 1938. This was a measure which was not necessary from the police point of view, and would never have been carried out by the Secret State Police on their own initiative, but they had received this order from the Government for political reasons.
DR. MERKEL: Did the leadership of the Gestapo participate in the decision to arrest 20,000 Jews?
BEST: No. From my own experience I know that Heydrich, who was then the Chief of the Security Police, was completely surprised by these measures for I was with him when, but a few meters from the hotel where we were staying, a synagogue went up in flames. We did not know anything about it. Thereupon, Heydrich rushed to Himmler, and received orders there which he transmitted to the agency of the State Police.
DR. MERKEL: And how did the so-called third-degree interrogations take place?
BEST: Concerning the third-degree interrogation methods, Heydrich issued a decree in 1937, which I saw only after it had already been issued, for I was not called in on such matters, being an administrative official. Thereupon I questioned him about it.
DR.MERKEL: What reason did Heydrich give for this decree?
BEST: At that time Heydrich gave me the reason that he had received permission from higher authority to issue this decree. This measure was thought to be necessary to prevent conspiracy activity on the part of organizations hostile to the State and thus prevent actions dangerous to the State; but confessions were in no way to be extorted. He called attention to the fact that foreign police agencies widely applied such methods. He emphasized, however, that he had reserved for himself the right of approval on every individual case in the German Reich; thus he considered any abuse quite out of the question.
DR.MERKEL: From 1933 until 1939 did the Gestapo participate in a conspiracy to plan, prepare, and unleash a war of aggression?
BEST: No. I believe I can say that, for if I, as head of a department in the central office, did not know anything about it, then the minor officials could not have known it either.
DR. MERKEL: Was the Gestapo prepared for the eventuality of a war?
BEST: No. On the one hand they were not prepared with regard to material. They especially lacked arms, vehicles, and signal material, et cetera, for use in occupied territories. There was, on the other hand, no possibility of calling in police reserves, a possibility which the regular police had. The whole work of organizing the Gestapo was still in its initial state, directives for careers were formulated, office buildings were built and it can, therefore, not be said that the Secret Police or the Security Police were ready for a trial of such dimensions.
DR. MERKEL: For what purpose were the Einsatzkommandos set up?
BEST: The Einsatzkommandos were set up on the basis of an agreement with the High Command of the Armed Forces so that in occupied foreign countries the fighting units would be protected and also so that in the occupied countries the most elementary security measures could be taken.
DR. MERKEL: And to whom were they subordinate?
BEST: During the military operations the Einsatzkommandos were subordinate to the military commanders with whose units they marched. After the operations were concluded, their subordination varied according to the administrative system in operation in the area. That meant, depending upon whether the office of a Mlitary Commander or of a Reich Commissioner were set up, the Higher SS and Police Leader was subordinate to this administrative chief, and the Einsatzkommandos were subordinate to the Higher SS and Police Leaders.
DR. MERKEL: And how were these task force commands composed?
BEST: When operation began the task force commands were made up of members of the Gestapo, the Security Service, and of the Criminal Police. During the war, however, the personnel had to be supplemented in great numbers partly by members of the regular police, partly by emergency drafting, by members of the Waffen-SS, and by employees from the areas concerned, so that finally the officials of the Secret Police made up at -most only 10 percent of the entire force.
DR. MERKEL: Were the Einsatzkommandos constituent parts of the Gestapo?
BEST: No, they belonged neither to the central office nor to the Gestapo offices, but they were Security Police units of a special kind.
DR. MERKEL: From your own experience, do you know about the activities of the Einsatzkommandos?
BEST: Yes, especially in Denmark, I had the opportunity to watch the activities of one of these Einsatzkommandos and through friendly relations I was also informed about conditions in Norway as well.
DR. MERKEL: What do you know of the activities of these Einsatzkommandos in Denmark and Norway, for instance?
BEST: I should especially like to emphasize that the forces which were employed there very frequently objected to the measures they were ordered to carry out by the central agencies, measures which would have led to a severe treatment of the local population. For instance, they were against the application of the "Night and Fog Decree," against the application of the "Bullet Decree," and against the Commando Decree, and they rejected and fought against other measures as well. For instance, the Security Police and I severely protested against the deportation of Danish Jews. In Norway the commander of the Security Police, as he and the Reich Commissioner, Terboven, both told me, fought against the severe measures which Reich Commissioner Terboven ordered time and again, and sometimes with the help of the central office in Berlin even prevented some of these measures. This finally caused a break between Terboven and the commander of the Security Police.
DR. MERKEL: Did you yourself suggest the deportation of Jews from Denmark as has been mentioned here occasionally?