dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
HAUSER: No. The Prosecution chains the Waffen-SS to the fate of Heinrich Himmler and a small circle of criminals around him. The Waffen-SS is taking this quite bitterly for it believes that in its majority it fought decently and fairly. It is far removed from these crimes and from the man who is responsible for them. I should like to ask the High Tribunal to please listen to the accounts and the judgments of the front soldiers on your side. I believe that they will not fail to show us respect. Wherever specific incidents occurred they were exceptions. The Waffen-SS considers it quite unjust that it is being treated differently from the mass of the German Armed Forces and it does not deserve to be outlawed as a criminal organization.
HERR PELCKMANN: Mr. President, I have no further ques-tions to this witness.
MAJOR JONES: Witness, you heard Himmler's Kharkov speech in April 1943 to the commanding officers of the three SS divisions in the East, did you not?
HAUSER: Yes, I heard that speech.
MAJOR JONES: And you remember that he ended his speech by saying: "We will never let that excellent weapon fade, the dread and terrible reputation which preceded us in the battle for Kharkov, but will constantly add new meaning to it." Do you remember his saying that?
HAUSER: Yes, indeed.
MAJOR JONES: And your units of the Waffen-SS constantly added new meaning to your reputation for terror, did you not?
HAUSER: No. I have already expressed quite the contrary yesterday and today. I considered it as an insult to say that our successes were dependent on terror. Quite the contrary, I said that our successes resulted from the brave fighting of officers and men.
MAJOR JONES: Yesterday you told the Tribunal that the relations of the Waffen-SS with the local population were good, and that your Waffen-SS troops did not take hostages or destroy villages as punishments, or commit War Crimes. That was your evidence, was it not?
HAUSER: I said that the relations were unobjectionable and good, that we did not displace any part of the population to work in Germany.
MAJOR JONES: I want you to listen now to some documents I am going to put in with regard to the SS generally and with regard to the Waffen-SS in particular; first, two documents from your own sources. The first, My Lord, is Document D-419, to be Exhibit GB-552. I am not proposing to cross-examine the witness as to these numerous documents, My Lord. It appears to be the, desire of the Tribunal that they should be put in as speedily as possible.
THE PRESIDENT: If they are new documents, you can cross-examine him upon them.
MAJOR JONES: If Your Lordship pleases. The first Document, D-419, is a report by a general of artillery named Petzel, dated 23 November 1939, with regard to the internal situation in the Warthegau, western Poland, incorporated into the Reich, as the document describes it. I need not trouble you with the first page of the document, the report of 2 December and the letter of 30 November, but if you read the letter of General Petzel dated 23 November 1939, the second paragraph reads: "The great work of construction in all spheres is not furthered by the intervention of SS formations, which are assigned for special racial political tasks and which are not subordinate in this respect to the Reichsstatthalter. There is a tendency to interfere, beyond the limits of these tasks, in all fields of administration and of forming a 'state within the state.' "This phenomenon does not fail to have its effect on the troops, who are indignant about the way the tasks are car-ried out and thereby generally get into opposition to the administration and the Party. I shall exclude the danger of serious differences by strict orders. The fact that this makes a serious demand on the discipline of the troops cannot be dismissed without further ado." Then, the next paragraph: "In almost all large towns, public shootings have been car-ried out by the aforementioned organizations; the selections varied enormously and were often incomprehensible, the ex-ecutions frequently brutal. "In some districts all the Polish estate owners were arrested and interned with their families. Arrests were almost always accompanied by looting. "In the towns, evacuations were carried out, during which blocks of houses were cleared at random, the inhabitants loaded on- to lorries at night and then taken to concentra-tion camps. Here also looting was a constant accompanying phenomenon. The quartering and feeding in the camps was such that the medical officer of the corps feared the outbreak of epidemics which would be a danger to the troops....
MAJOR JONES: "In several towns actions against the Jews were carried out which turned into the most serious excesses. In Turek three SS cars under the leadership of a Higher SS Leader drove through the streets on -30 October 1939 while the people in the streets were hit on the heads at random with oxen reins and long horsewhips. Among the victims were also people of German blood. Finally a number of Jews were driven into the synagogue; there they had to crawl in between the benches while singing, during which time they were continuously whipped by the SS men. They were then forced to take down their trousers in order to be hit on the bare behind. "A Jew who out of fright had dirtied his trousers was forced to smear the excrement into the faces of the other Jews. "In Lodz it has become known confidentially that SS Ober-fuehrer Melhorn has issued the following orders: "1) From November no unemployment relief may any longer be paid to Poles and Jews, only forced labor is paid for. (This measure has already been confirmed.) "2) From 9 November, Jews and Poles will be excluded from the distribution of rationed foodstuffs and coal. "3) Unrest and incidents are to be created by provocation in order to facilitate the carrying out of the racial political work." The rest of the document I need not trouble you with. That is an insight into the activities of the SS in Poland in November 1939. The next German document is the Document D-578. My Lord, my attention has been drawn to another sentence in the Document D-419, which I should like to draw the Tribunal's attention to, the last paragraph but one: "As the military commander of Posen has already reported to the High Command of the Army, the men feel very strongly about the disproportion between their pay and the daily rate of pay of other formations which is many times higher than theirs." The Document D-578 is a report by a German Brigade Com-mander of the 1st Mountain Brigade, Colonel Pericic. It is dated 26 September 1943. This document, My Lord, will be Exhibit GB-553.
MAJOR JONES: It is a report on the activities of the SS units in the area of Popovaca in Bosnia. I only want to trouble you with the first two paragraphs: "On 16 September 1943 an SS unit of 80 men marched from Popovaca to Osekovo for the compulsory purchase of cattle. I was not notified by anybody about the arrival of this unit in the technical operational area of the 1st Mountain Brigade and about the activity of this unit in the area for which I alone am responsible. "A short time after their arrival in Osekovo this unit was attacked by partisans. Under the pressure of the numerically superior partisans, this unit had to retreat in the direction of the railway station, which they succeeded in doing, but they had four men seriously and several lightly wounded, among them the unit commander. One man was missing, and they also lost an armored car. The unit commander then reported from Popovaca by telephone that when he had to retreat, he had killed all persons who were in the open because he had no chance to distinguish between the loyal population and the partisans. He himself said that he killed about 100 persons in this incident." Now I want to put in some documents from the victims of some of these atrocities, first from the Yugoslav Delegation, the Document D-945. Witness, you appreciate that the Prinz Eugen Division was a division of the Waffen-SS, do you not? [There was no response.]
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, did you hear that question?
MAJOR JONES: Witness, I asked you.
HAUSER: Yes, this division belonged to the Waffen-SS.
MAJOR JONES: The Document D-945, My Lord, will be Ex-hibit GB-554. It is an extract from a report to the Yugoslav State Commission for ascertaining the crimes of the occupiers and their accomplices. I want to read the second and third paragraphs: "In accordance with the order of the commander of the 118th German Division, an SS battalion of the Prinz Eugen Division and a battalion of the Teufel Division under the command of the German Lieutenant Colonel Dietsche, carried out on 27 March 1944 and on the following days a 'purge action' from Sinj in the direction of..."various villages whose names are set out. "On 28 March this SS battalion overran the villages of Otok Cornji, Ruda, and Dolac Dolnji one after the other and car-ried out horrible massacres, destructions by fire and looting. Those beasts murdered on a single day in the three above-named Dalmatian villages 834 people-besides grown-up men, also women and children-set on fire 500 houses and looted everything there was to be looted. They removed rings, watches, and other valuables from dead bodies. The mass slaughter was carried out in all the villages in the same horrible manner. The German soldiers gathered women, children, and men in one place and then opened fire on the crowd with machine guns, threw bombs at them, looted their property, and burned the bodies. In the House Milano-vic-Trapo 45 burned bodies were found. In another house in the same village of Otok 22 unburned corpses were found in a pile. In the village of Ruda they collected all the people in one place and killed all of them. Those who hap-pened not to be collected were killed when they were found. Not even the smallest babies at their mothers' breasts were spared. In some places the victims were soaked in petrol and set on fire. They also killed those who offered them hos-pitality out of fear. They also killed those people who were forced to follow them to carry their ammunition and other things.
MAJOR JONES: According to the evidence of reliable witnesses, the massacres were prepared beforehand, and this all the more so as the above-mentioned villages gave no reason whatsoever previous to the 'purge action' for any kind of reprisals..." That report is signed by the President of the State Commission, Dr. Dusan Nedeljkovic, university professor. Then the Document D-940, which will be Exhibit GB-555, which is another extract from the Yugoslav State Commission report signed by the same President of the State Commission, Dr. Dusan Nedeljkovic, on the crimes of the 7th SS Division, Prinz Eugen, in reads: "The various German divisions operating in the area of occupied Yugoslavia marked their path by traces of devasta-.9 tion and annihilation of the peaceful population-traces which will testify to the criminal character of the German conduct of the war for many years to come. The operations of the German divisions were in reality punitive expeditions. They destroyed and burned down whole villages and ex-terminated the civil population in a barbarous manner, without any military necessity whatsoever. "The 7th SS Division, Prinz, Eugen, is famed for its cruelty." Then I go on to the next paragraph: "Wherever it passed-through Serbia, through Bosnia and Herzegovina, through Lika and Banija or through Dalmatia -everywhere it left behind scenes of conflagration and dev-astation and the bodies of innocent men, women, and children who had been burned in the houses. "At the end of May 1943 the Prinz Eugen Division came to Montenegro to the area of Niksic in order to take part in the fifth enemy offensive in conjunction with the Italian troops. This offensive was called 'Action Black' by the German occupying forces. Proceeding from Herzegovina, parts of the division fell upon the peaceful villages of the Niksic district. "Immediately after its invasion, this formation, opening fire with all its arms, commenced to commit outrageous crimes on the peaceful villages for no reason at all. Everything they came across they burned down, murdered, and pillaged.
MAJOR JONES: The officers and men of the SS Division Prinz Eugen committed crimes of an outrageous cruelty on this occasion. The vic-tims were shot, slaughtered, and tortured, or burned to death in burning houses. Where a victim was found not in his house but on the road or in the fields some distance away, he was murdered and burned there. Infants with their mothers, pregnant women, and frail old people were also murdered. In short, every civilian met with by these troops in these villages was murdered. In many cases whole families who, not expecting such treatment or lacking the time for escape, had remained quietly in their homes, were anni-hilated and murdered. Mole families were thrown into burning houses in many cases and thus burned. "It has been established from the investigations entered upon that 121 persons, mostly women, and including 30 persons aged 60-92 years and 29 children of ages ranging from 6 months to 14 years, were executed on this occasion in the horrible manner narrated above. "The villages.. ."and then follows the list of the villages- "were burned down and razed to the ground." Then it accounts for the destruction of furniture. Besides this the German soldiers drove all the cattle away from the villages and plundered jewels and money before burning these villages. Then over on the next page: "For all of these most serious War Crimes those responsible besides the actual culprits-the members of the SS Division Prinz Eugen-are all superior and all subordinate com-manders as the persons issuing and transmitting the orders for murder and devastation. "Among others the following war criminals are known: SS Gruppenfuehrer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS Phleps; Divisional Commander, Major General of the Waffen-SS Von Oberkamp; Commander of the 13th Regiment, later Divisional Commander, Major General Schmidthuber; Com-mander of the 14th Regiment, later Divisional Commander, SS Standartenfuehrer Bachmann; SS Sturmbannfuehrer Dietsche; the Commander of the Italian 16th Regiment.
MAJOR JONES: .."-and then there follow the names of about another 10 high-ranking Ger-man SS regimental and other commanders.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, shouldn't you ask whether they are Waffen-SS?
MAJOR JONES: Those men, Witness, were members of the Waffen-SS, were they not? Just look at the names.
HAUSER: I know part of these names. They were leaders in the Waffen-SS.
MAJOR JONES: Let us take them in turn-Phleps, divisional commander?
HAUSER: Yes.
MAJOR JON-ES: He was a lieutenant general like yourself; wasn't he one of your colleagues in the Waffen-SS?
HAUSER: Yes.
MAJOR JONES: And, SS Major General of the Waffen-SS Karl Ritter von Oberkamp. He was an SS, was he not?
HAUSER: I know the next few names: Oberkamp, Schmidthuber, and Dietsche; the rest of the names I do not know.
MAJOR JONES: But you do not deny that they were officers -from the description of them, that they were officers in the Waffen-SS?
HAUSER: I would assume so, even though I do not know the origin of this report. These are most likely reports which were gained by hearsay and were put together somehow.
MAJOR JONES: I won't trouble you with the value of the reports as documents, Witness. That is a matter for the Tribunal. Now I want you to listen to documents which I am putting in on behalf of the Polish Delegation, again relating to the SS. The first series of documents relates to the shooting of hostages on the command of SS functionaries and by SS men. The first is Docu-ment 4041-PS, which will be Exhibit GB-556, which consists of 31 posters for the years 1943 to 1944, signed by the Chief of the SS and Police in Warsaw, or in some cases by the Commander of the Security Police and of the SD for Warsaw, announcing the killing of hostages. The Tribunal will see that in those grim records of murder there are listed varying numbers of the victims of the Nazi occupa-tion. In Poster Number 25, for instance, on Page 16, there is a list of 270 hostages shot; Poster 29, Page 20, there are 200 hostages shot; Poster 31, Page 26, there are 100 hostages. These SS shoot-ings were certainly not an original SS conception. I hand in the two documents, 4038-PS and 4039-PS which are ...
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Elwyn Jones, I think you should ask the witness whether---or put it to him, whether there is any connection between the Waffen-SS and this document.
MAJOR JONES: If Your Lordship please.
HAUSER: Unfortunately I have an English copy before me. I am not completely conversant with the English language and could not follow the question, but I gather that these are all measures which were taken in Warsaw. Just as in the case of the first document which dealt with the Warthegau, the Waffen-SS had nothing to do with Warsaw. These were definitely things ...
THE PRESIDENT: Wait until you are given the proper copy.
MAJOR JONES: I am not suggesting, naturally, My Lord, that all the documents I am putting in relate only to the Waffen-SS branch of the SS organization. The whole Prosecution's case on the SS is that there was a unity between the various sections of the SS.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but you should give him the opportunity of making his point if he 'wishes to.
MAJOR JONES: Yes, Your Lordship. [Turning to the witness.] Have you had an opportunity of look-ing at those posters now, Witness?
HAUSER: I have seen that the signatures are only those of SS and Police Leaders, who had nothing to do with the Waffen-SS, as I have already stated earlier today. The same applies to the incidents in the Warthegau where, in November of 1939, there were no units of the Waffen-SS. Docu-ments 3 and 4 are the only ones that apply to the Waffen-SS where they mention the Prinz Eugen SS Division. I cannot check the date on that since I have never been to the, Balkans.
THE PRESIDENT: Was the Teufel Division also Waffen-SS? Was it Keitel's division?
HAUSER: No. There never was a Teufel Division.
MAJOR JONES: You say there never was a Teufel Diirision in Yugoslavia?
HAUSER: Not in the Waffen-SS, no.
MAJOR JONES: I shall call some subsequent testimony with regard to that, My Lord, if the Tribunal would allow me, at a later stage, to cross-examine on the whole question of the unity of the SS. It would involve putting in old documents and I understand that there was a certain reluctance on the part of the Tribunal to permit me to do that; but I should be quite content to draw the Tribunal's attention ...
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Elwyn Jones, the Tribunal doesn't desire you not to cross-examine but only not to read out and put to the witness documents which have already been put in; you can put the facts which are in the document to the witness for the purpose of cross-examination.
MAJOR JONES: If Your Lordship please. Then at a later stage in my cross-examination I will return to that subject if the Tri-bunal permits me to do so. I should like to put these documents in first, if I may.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Elwyn Jones, I think what the Tribunal meant was that it did not want you to put long passages or short passages from documents which the witness has never seen and which ' are already in evidence but you may cross-examine the witness upon any document apart from that.
MAJOR JONES: If Your Lordship please. Then I shall return to cross-examination on this general issue after I have put these documents in, if I may, My Lord. I put in Documents 4038-PS'and 4039-PS, to be Exhibits GB-557 and 558, which show that the SS shootings in Warsaw were a con-tinuation of the practice of the civil power of the Government General from the period before March 1941. I need not trouble the witness with these documents. Then the Document D-956, to be Exhibit GB-559, which is an official Polish report on German crimes in Poland. I only desire to draw the Tribunal's attention to an entry on Page 184 of that report relating to the shooting of hostages, which says that the approximate number of Poles killed in Warsaw from the beginning of the public executions until the insurrection, from 5 -October 1943 until 1 August 1944, was about 8,000, most of whom had been caught in manhunts in the Warsaw streets.
HERR PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, may I be permitted to make a reference to the method of procedure? Mr. Jones said that he does not wish to submit to the witness the document which he is now submitting to the High Tribunal. I am of the opinion that a submission of documents is possible at this stage only in connection with the cross-examination; that is, for ascertaining whether the statements of the witness are credible or not. Otherwise, the Prosecution could introduce new incriminat-ing material without any connection. I should like to ask in that case to give the witness an opportunity to comment.
I MAJOR JONES: I have no objection at all, of course, to the witness seeing all the documents. I was only, in the interest of time, referring to one sentence in this document which the witness heard interpreted, and I should have thought that was sufficient; but by all means I should let the witness see all the documents.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann, the Tribunal has already ruled that these documents can be put in in this way, and Mr. Elwyn Jones is referring to specific passages in the documents and you have the opportunity of re-examination and you have a copy of the document, and you can put any question you like upon the docu-ment when you come to re-examine.
MAJOR JONES: I next present some documents relating to atrocities committed by the SS in connection with the destruction of Warsaw. First. is the Document 4042-PS, which will be Exhibit GB-560, which consists of three affidavits from another official Polish report entitled The German Crime in Warsaw in 1944. 1 The first affidavit is by the witness Alexandra Kreczkiewicz, who states that: "In August, I lived at.... The SS men ordered me to move into a house across the" road. Our house as well as the house next door was set on fire. In August we were informed that we would fare badly and would be shot . Several hundred persons were assembled in our house; on 4 August at 11 o'clock, the Germans sur-rounded the house and gave us the order to evacuate the apartments. We heard some shots at the entrance, which started an awful crying of children and women. Several persons were killed and wounded. The Germans drove us into a potato field and ordered us to lie down; there could be no question of escape as we were closely guarded. A few minutes later we were ordered to get up and we were driven under a bridge which was nearby. To the question of one of the women as to where we were being taken to, we got the answer: German women and children are perishing by your fault; therefore, all of you must perish.' We were lined up and a group of 70 people was separated from us and ordered to go behind the bridge on the hill; the rest, including myself, were assembled' near a wall behind a barbed wire fence. From different points nearby we heard shots; the victims of the Germans were dying. We were huddled together and I was on the outer edge of the crowd. At a distance of 5 meters, one of the executioners very quietly loaded his machine gun; another one was preparing his camera to take pictures of the executions. Several Germans were guarding us; we -heard several shots, noises, groans. I fell down wounded and lost consciousness. After a while I came back to my senses and I heard how they were finishing off the wounded.
MAJOR JONES: I did not move and I simulated death; they left one of the Germans on guard and the rest of them went away. The executioners set fire to the huts and the houses in the neighborhood. I was scorched by the heat and almost suffocated by the smoke and my dress was smouldering. The German was still on guard, so quietly I tried to smother the flames on me." Then she describes how she ran to a cellar and she says ...
THE PRESIDENT: This is a woman, is it?