dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
HERR PELCKMANN: Do the activities described by Globocznik in this document implicate the, General SS? That is to say, did Globocznik carry out the activities which he is describing in the capacity of leader of the General SS?
REINECKE: It is obvious from the document that Globocznik was acting in his capacity as SS and Police Leader, charged with a secret special task, the so-called "Aktion Reinhard." He is acting solely as police executive. An~ connection between this activity and the organization of the General SS or any of its members does not exist in any way.
HERR PELCKMANN: Are you drawing your conclusion that this was a special order directly from Himmler from the fact that the report is addressed to Himmler directly and not, as it should have been, to the Higher SS and Police Leader at Kraków, Krueger?
REINECKE: That is quite true, but it is also apparent from other passages in this correspondence. The expression "special task" is dearly used in the correspondence; furthermore, the correspondence is headed "secret" and it also mentions that only four copies of this in secret" matter are in existence and that the document sent by Globocznik to Himmler is the original.
HERR PELCKMANN: You are still reading from Document 4024-PS?
REINECKE: Yes, that is the document I am reading.
HERR PELCKMANN: Would you look to the top of Page 3? I think that indicates quite clearly who was dealing with those matters, and on whose authority Globocznik was acting.
REINECKE: Page 3 of this document shows that the Aktion Reinhard was divided into four parts: (a) resettlement, (b) use of labor, (c) use of materials, (d) seizure of hidden values and real estate. It also shows that Globocznik was communicating with Oswald Pohl personally, as well as with Himmler, on this matter. Pohl was chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, which...
THE PRESIDENT: What is the point of all this evidence? We have the documents before us.
HERR PELCKMANN: This document was shown yesterday to the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Reich, Von Eberstein, in order to prove through Globocznik's action-and Globoczniles letterhead also reads "Higher SS and Police Leader," though he was active abroad-that the Higher SS and Police Leaders committed crimes, and further to prove that the General SS was also implicated in these crimes, because, according to the view of the Prosecution, which I am trying to prove wrong, the Higher SS and Police Leaders were simultaneously acting on behalf of the General SS. This witness Reinecke, since he was a high judge and thus able to have knowledge of the entire organization of the SS, is in a position to state whether this view, this assertion, of the Prosecution is correct ...
THE PRESIDENT: Surely he can say so then without going all this time on this document. If he wanted to say whether Globocznik was acting on behalf of the SS or was not, why does he not say so and get done with it?
HERR PELCKMANN: After seeing the document and judging it on the basis of your knowledge of the organization of the SS, would you say that Globocznik was acting on behalf of the Waffen-SS or on its order, or on behalf of the General SS or on its order?
REINECKE: The contents of the document show clearly that Globocznik was neither acting on behalf of the General SS or on its order nor on behalf of the Waffen-SS. The document shows clearly that it was a special task given to Globocznik by Himmler personally, a task which had nothing to do with either of these two organizations.
HERR PELCKMANN: Of the various groups which you men-tioned earlier, groups which are regarded by the Prosecution as a single organization, we have not yet dealt with the system of the concentration camps. How did the concentration camp system fit into the SS, and was there an organic tie between the concentration camp system and the SS?
REINECKE: An organic tie did not exist. The concentration camp system had a police character corresponding to its purpose. The organization of the concentration camp system was therefore a task of the Reich, and Himmler was entrusted with this task in 1933 or 1934. At that time he created a special organization for guarding the concentration camps, and this organization was known as the Totenkopfverbände (Death's-Head Units). This organization did not grow out of the General SS and never had any organic connection with it later. The first guards of the concentration camps were only to a very limited extent former members of the General SS. They also included members of the SA and of the other Party organizations, members of the Party, and people who belonged to no party, but who, due to the conditions of that time, were un-employed and looking for work and food and a new sphere of activity. From these initial stages the Totenkopfverbände developed independently, and its members were given training similar to that of the Police. In 1939 they joined the Waffen-SS organization, which was at that time being formed. The task of guarding concentration camps was then turned over ' mainly to men unfit for service at the front. A small number of members of the General SS who were unable to serve at the front, members of the SA, too, members of the Kyffhäuserbund, and finally thousands of members of the Armed Forces were then assigned to guard duty at the concentration camps.
HERR PELCKMANN: You said that in 1939 the Totenkopf-verbände joined the Waffen-SS. I shall have to ask you about this specially, because during the examination of the last witness, Toten-kopf "units" and Totenkopf "divisions" had obviously been confused. Will you please give the exact definition of these two categories. What is meant by them?
REINECKE: The Totenkopfverb5nde were the guard units in the concentration camps until the beginning of the war. At that time they were transferred to various parts of the Waffen-SS. The Totenkopf Division had nothing whatever to do with the Totenkopf-verbuende. The Totenkopf Division was a division of the Waffen-SS which was formed in the first years of the war and was used at the front as a complete division.
HERR PELCKMANN: You just said that the Totenkopfverbände were transferred to the Waffen-SS in 1939. Did they, after they were transferred to the Waffen-SS, still have something to do with the guarding of concentration camps? REINECKI~: After their transfer to the Waffen-SS they had no longer anything to do with-the guarding of concentration camps; they were assigned to the various divisions of the Waffen-SS soldiers.
HERR PELCKMANN: It has been alleged by the Prosecutor that the unification of the SS as an organization was guaranteed by the establishment of a common command, and in that connection the Prosecution referred to the 12 head offices of the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police, depicted on the organizational chart which the Prosecution submitted. Were these 12 head offices leading organs of the SS?
REINECKE: No, they were not leading organs of the SS.
HERR PELCKMANN: In order to shorten the proceedings, I shall ask you now about the head offices and their connection with the SS. Were the -head offices of the Order Police and the Reich Security Main Office also the command post for the General SS or the Waffen-SS?
REINECKE: No. The head office "Order Police" was the head-quarters of the German Police, and the head office "Security Police" was the headquarters of the Security Police. Both were services of domestic administration, and were organically departments of the Ministry of the Interior. At no time did they have the authority to issue orders to the General SS or to the Waffen-SS.
HERR PELCKMANN: Was the head office of the Reich Commis-sioner for the Preservation of German Nationality and the so-called Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle an authority for the General SS or Waffen-SS?
REINECKE: No. Both of these head offices were authorities of the Reich and discharged only tasks of the Reich. Their members were civil servants and certainly not soldiers of the Waffen-SS or officials of any part of the General SS. Neither of these head offices had the authority to issue orders to the General SS or the Waffen-SS.
HERR PELCKMANN: In brief, were the remaining eight head offices command posts of the General SS or Waffen-SS?
REINECKE: Of the remaining eight head offices one must exclude two, namely the head office "Heissmeyer" and the head office "Personal Staff." The head office "Heissmeyer" had nothing at all to do with the SS, but was an office headed by Heissineyer and belonging to the Reich Ministry of Education. The head office "Personal Staff" was also not an authoritative office but the office of Himmler's adjutant, the collecting point of the various sections which were subordinate to Hinimler personally or which were carry-ing out his personal orders, but which had nothing to do with the organizations of the General SS and the Waffen-SS as such. These sections included, for example, the so-called "Lebensborn" society and the so-called "Ahnenerbe." The Reich medical officer Grawitz was also connected with this head office and carried out biological experiments, acting on Himmler's personal orders and without the co-operation of the organizations.
HERR PELCKMANN: Further details are, I think, unnecessary. I have one last question with regard to the organizations. Did the remaining six head offices represent a unified high command of the SS?
REINECKE: No, these six head offices were not a unified SS high command either. They were six departments working side by side with equal rights, and dealing with particular subjects; they were in a position to give orders but were not unified in the hands of a single person.
HERR PELCKMANN: Did not Himmler and his immediate staff represent a unified high command which as the central authority issuing orders would guarantee unified control and direction of the activities in the various fields of the head offices?
REINECKE: No, Himmler did not have such a staff. He himself interfered in the general direction of the whole SS only very rarely, and never in favor of unifying its command.
HERR PELCKMANN: Are not your statements here in con-tradiction to the writings and speeches of Himmler himself, for instance, in contradiction to his speech at Posen, in which he empha-sized the uniformity of the organization under his command?
REINECKE: No, these speeches do not contradict the testimony I have given. Himmler was undoubtedly speaking of unity in this speech, and he was certainly planning for such unity, but that unity was in no way a reality. Himmler's speeches are therefore to be regarded as containing only plans for the future. Instead of working more closely together, as Himmler had intended, these organizations, due to their varied tasks, steadily drifted away from each other. Himmler was aware of this fact as his speeches clearly show, and it was for that very reason that he took advantage of the occasion to explain to his chiefs and leaders his own views on the uniformity of the organization. Real organizational unity did not, in fact, exist at any time.
HERR PELCKMANN: Did this lack of unity also affect the juris-diction of the SS?
REINECKE: This was quite evident from the arrangements regarding jurisdiction. The jurisdiction of the SS did not apply at all to the General SS, but was created mainly for the Waffen-SS, and it also applied to the Police, because Himmler had declared the Police to be an active service -for the duration of the war. At the beginning of the war there were only a few Police units fighting at the front as military units, but as the war, particularly the air war, continued, the entire German Police was declared to be a special task force and therefore came under the jurisdiction of the SS. The same applied to the Security Police. In their case Himmler also issued a decree, in 1940, stating that the entire Security Police were being considered as a special task force for the duration of the war. Consequently, the Security Police also came under the juris-diction of the SS legal department. But that the Reich Security Main Office and all its departments remained, organizationally, completely independent and without any connection at all to the General SS or Waffen-SS, is apparent from the fact that Himmler at the same time took the whole conduct of pretrial investigations, where members of the Reich Security Main Office were involved, out of the hands of the SS jurisdiction and transferred it to a special pretrial investigation department which was part of the Reich Security Main Office. The outcome of this was that although legal proceedings against members of the Reich Security Main Office could still be carried out and sentences could be passed, even the SS jurisdiction was denied any insight into the matters of the Reich Security Main Office and thereby any control was impossible, The members of the guard units of concentration camps came under the jurisdiction of the SS legal department, because at the beginning of the war they had nominally become members of the Waffen-SS, that is, for reasons of economy and supply and also for reasons of unifor m control they were nominally attached to the Waffen-SS.
HERR PELCKMANN: Now you say, Witness, that the General SS did not at all come under the SS and Police jurisdiction. Then under whose jurisdiction were the members of the General SS?
REINECKE: The jurisdiction of the SS came into force in Octo-ber 1939, at a time when the General SS was already beginning to dissolve. Before that time the General SS came under, the jurisdic-tion of the German courts. Members of the General SS were, there-fore, prosecuted and sentenced by ordinary German criminal courts, and insofar as any members of the General -SS stayed at home, they continued to come under the jurisdiction of the German courts during the war, although the jurisdiction of the SS was already in existence.
HERR PELCKMANN: Then to make it quite clear, Witness, the General SS was in times of peace and of war under the jurisdiction of the ordinary German civil courts. Is that correct?
REINECKE: Yes.
HERR PELCKMANN: The Prosecution has alleged that from the very beginning the SS was designed for illegal purposes, that from the very beginning it, acted illegally, and that no differences can be made between the various periods with which we are concerned. Does the development of the jurisdiction of the SS confirm this allegation in any way?
REINECKE: If an organization has criminal aims and pursues criminal activities, then logically the jurisdiction of such an organi-zation must, through its organization, its laws, and its activities, indicate that it covers such criminal aims and criminal activities. Precisely the reverse is the case. The SS, from the beginning of its formation, fought against crime on principle and at all costs, and it had a perfectly orderly administration of justice.
HERR PELCKMANN: How was the orderly administration of justice in the SS guaranteed?
REINECKE: By the so-called disciplinary law.
HERR PELCKMANN: Do. I understand correctly that members of the General SS came in the first place under the jurisdiction of the regular German civil courts?
REINECKE: Yes, I said so before.
HERR PELCKMANN: Then in spite of that, there was a dis-ciplinary procedure, that is to say, a certain type of jurisdiction applicable to the members of the General SS. Is that correct?
REINECKE: That is what I was just going to explain. This specific disciplinary law consisted in the right of exclusion which every civil society has. The law provided, on the principle of selection, that people who had been previously convicted could not enter the SS at all and that people who committed punishable acts while members of the SS had to leave the SS. This principle was the best method of selection, because it automatically prevented the perpetration of crime. The legal training in the field of this disciplinary law and the application of the disciplinary law itself, in addition to the admin-istration of German law by the regular German courts, guaranteed that the SS would remain free of dubious elements. An agreement had been reached between the Reich Ministry of Justice and the Reich leadership of the SS that, on the one hand, the regular Ger-man courts would notify the SS if they had uncovered punishable acts of a member of the SS and on the other hand, the SS would notify the Reich Ministry of Justice if the SS had found one of its members guilty of a crime. This agreement was strictly followed. A special liaison officer to the Ministry of Justice was appointed, and the result was that in the first place, criminal elements were, in fact, eliminated from the SS, and that secondly, crimes punishable under German penal legis-lation were, in fact, tried by the ordinary German legal authorities.
HERR PELCKMANN: Witness, would you please make your sentences a little shorter? It would help the interpreter. Why was a special jurisdiction introduced for the Waffen-SS at the beginning of the war? Was this done perhaps ... THE PRESIDENT' The Tribunal thinks you are going into this far too much in detail, Dr. Pelckmann.
HERR PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, this subject has not yet been dealt with before the Commission, and I believe that in accord-ance with the decision of the Tribunal I can introduce new subjects which are important. But I shall attempt, Mr. President, to be brief. [Turning to the witness.] Did you understand my last question, Witness?
REINECKE: Yes.
HERR PELCICAANN: Why was a special jurisdiction introduced for the Waffen-SS at the beginning of the war? Was its purpose to cover up crimes?
REINECKE: This special jurisdiction was created because SS units were used as troop units and therefore, for these units, courts-martial had to exist. This jurisdiction was created by law and not by some order of Himmler, and it introduced for the Waffen-SS the same laws and the same legal organization which already existed for the Wehrmacht. It cannot by any means be said, therefore, that this legal system was introduced to cover up criminal acts. In fact, the exact reverse is true.
HERR PELCMIANN: But the Prosecution alleges specifically that the SS was trained for terror, atrocities, and crimes. That is contradicted, is it not, by your assertion that crime was fought against in the SS at all costs? Does it not give this impression?
RE INECKE: Training in the SS was systematically directed to decency, justice, and morality. Institutions existed which guaranteed that this training was carried out in full. Not only was the law, including international law, taught in the Junker schools of the SS but legal proceedings were held openly before the entire units. The head office "SS Courts," as the central department of the legal system, issued its own literature to insure that these principles of decency and justice became firmly established among all members of the SS. The legal training as it was handled in the SS was the exact opposite of the Prosecution's assertion.
HERR PELCKMANN: The Prosecution might reply that this strict legal training, this fight against crime before and during the war just proves how necessary it was, since the- SS was full of criminals. Would the Prosecution be right in saying so?
REINECKE: No, it would not be right. Special principles of selection prevailed in the SS. The SS was bound by so-called fundamental laws to observe a particularly moral conduct. Offenders in the SS who infringed on a law incurred heavier guilt and there-fore deserved severer punishment. And that explains the more severe punishment of SS members in comparison with members of the Armed Forces or German civilians.
MRR PELCKMANN: Himmler was the highest legal authority. What were his powers? Could he, for instance, direct a court to pass a certain judgment?
REINECKE: No, Himmler could not do that. On the whole he observed the legal rules. As the highest legal authority he had, of course, the right, bestowed on him by Hitler, to quash any sentence, but he made use of this right only in very rare cases. The judge was independent, bound only by the law. His independence was guaranteed by law. The findings and sentences of the SS courts were reached by a majority vote. Any interference by the highest legal authority, Himmler, was not possible~ He had, however, the right to order a retrial of the case, or he could quash the sentence. He could, therefore, have a case retried several times if he did not agree with the verdict. But even in this case the decisions of the courts of the SS reached on the basis of the existing laws were always finally upheld. Sentences passed by the SS courts were sometimes canceled by the highest legal authority, Himmler, up to, three or four times because he considered the penalty too high or to(> low. The judges always arrived at the same sentence on the basis of the law, and eventually their decision was upheld.
HERR PELCKMANN: Your description of the legal procedure and the correct administration of justice contradicts the assertion of the Prosecution that the SS had been designed for matters for which neither the Party nor the State wished to, assume respon-sibility.
REINECKE: What I have said here about the legal training of the SS corresponds both to the historical development of the SS and to the facts. The apparently unbridgeable gap between the asser-tion of the Prosecution and my testimony is explained by the fact that the Prosecution simply considers the SS as an organizational unit, which it has never been. The Prosecution contends that wherever Himmler acted, the SS acted, and also that wherever the State executive acted, the SS acted. But these organizational connections did not exist, and for that reason the allegations of the Prosecution in that respect are not correct.
HERR PELCKMANN: Since numerous documents dealing with crimes committed allegedly by members of the Waffen-SS were submitted to the last witness, I have to ask you: Did the Waffen-SS commit crimes against the civilian population in the occupied territories and at the front, and were these crimes committed systematically and in violation of international agreements, in violation of the penal law existing in the countries concerned, and in violation of the general principles of penal law of all civilized nations?
REINECKE: No, there can be no question of that. It is clear that on the part of the Waffen-SS violations of international law occurred in individual cases, just as they took place on the other side also. But all these were isolated occurrences and not systematic. All these individual acts were prosecuted under the jurisdiction of the SS and the Police in the most severe manner. In the head office "SS Courts" there existed a department which guaranteed and carried out an over-all control of the entire legal system. From this viewpoint I can testify in this courtroom that in such individual cases the courts in every theater of war and during the entire duration of the war passed sentences for murder, looting, man-slaughter, assault, rape, ill-treatment, and also for killing prisoners of war; and in trying such cases the race or nationality of the person concerned had no influence whatever. All these were individual and not systematic acts, and this is confirmed by the criminal statistics of the head office "SS Courts." The absolutely strict admin-istration of the law kept criminality 'below the normal level. It varied between 0.8 percent at the beginning and 3 percent at the end of the war.
HERR PELCKMANN: But by order of Hitler dated 13 May 1941, a document which was submitted here, the prosecution of such crimes was prohibited, was it not? Is that not a contradiction of your testimony regarding the prosecution of such cases?