dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
BOCK: An order was in existence that the SA man, when on trial, was to be punished especially severely, and that special standards were to be applied in determining his punishment if he 'had committed any offense.
HERR BOEHM: Another quotation from the service regulations of 12 December 1933 was read to you yesterday, stating that all violations of discipline were to be punished. Does that not mean that violations, that is, discipline infringements, were punished by the Supreme SA Leadership and that orderliness was a ruling principle in the SA?
BOCK: The leaders particularly made especially strenuous efforts to see to it that every SA man kept within the limits of the law. In addition, we had strict orders that the SA man, if he had committed any offense anywhere in civil life, had to be reported, that a report was also made to us by the judicial authorities and that the person in question was then given disciplinary punishment.
HERR BOEHM: The document which was shown to you yesterday, of 12 December 1933, on Page 33, Number 6, says, "Right is what is advantageous to the Movement; wrong is what harms it." Did this phrase mean anything more than the English proverb "Right or wrong, my country"?
BOCK: According to any conception and interpretation, it means that the man has rights within the framework of his duties and that, on the other hand, if he does wrong, and oversteps the limits of the law, he also thereby harms his fatherland.
HERR BOEHM: The training directives were also shown to you, and Pages 7 and 9 of them were pointed out to you. There is talk here of policing duties, of drill, shooting practice, exercises in open country, and sports. Did not the pentathlon in the Olympic Games consist of just that? Did not the athletes taking part march into the stadium in good order and in a way made possible only by previous exercise? Did they not also shoot and drill; did they not also engage in sports, all the forms of sports which are listed here?
TBE PRESIDENT: Don't you think this is really more a matter of argument than examination? We have had this argument as to whether or not it was for sport or whether or not for military purposes over and over again. We have got to make up our minds about it. It doesn't help very much to have it put in again. in reexamination.
HERR BOEHM: Yes, Mr. President. I would not have asked this question if the witness had not been referred to the fact that sports were the last-mentioned of the exercises in these training directives. I should like to point out that the other exercises which are listed here were also carried out in the pentathlon of the Olympic Games, and I hardly think that they involve a military or militaristic attitude. May I now ask the witness one more question. [Turning to the witness.] Incidentally, you did not answer my previous question: Were not the same or very similar exercises carried out in the pentathlon of the Olympic Games?
BOCK: I was interrupted by the President. I was present at the Olympic Games and I know the various forms of sport well. We carried out all the drill so that we could appear in public in a disciplined fashion like all sport organizations, and make a good impression. Because we were later to organize these large-scale games, we chose in general the exercises of the Olympic Games, and these were taught and practiced by us. We shot, we held obstacle races, and we used all these exercises in our training.
HERR BOEHM: On Page 8 of the training directives which were submitted to you yesterday it says that in drill-fl-As would be the only exercise resembling military training-"the training should be put into effect energetically. After exercise in the basic movements, applied drill tests should be tackled, as they occur in drill movements necessary in political assignments." In connection with the wording of these instructions, did you think of military training or militaristic training when it was a question of drill within the SA?
BOCK: To us, the drill and the training of the men as individuals as well as in closed formations were always done for the purpose of presenting a unified picture in public appearances.
HERR BOEHM: I have no more questions to put to the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire.
HERR BOEHM: Mr. President, I should now like to call the next witness, SCHAEFER. [The witness SCHAEFER took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name, please.
WERNER AUGUST MAX SCHAEFER (Witness): SCHAEFER.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that your full name?
SCHAEFER: Werner August Max SCHAEFER.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swearby God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the puretruth-and will withhold and add nothing. [The witness repeated the oath.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
HERR BOEHM: Witness, -what are you by profession?
SCHAEFER: I am a Government Director in the Penal Execution Administration.
HERR BOEHM: Were you a member of the NSDAP or any of its branches?
SCHAEFER: I have been a member of the Party since 1928.
HERR BOEHM: Were you a member of the SA?
SCHAEFER: I have been a member of the SA since 1932.  I became an SA Oberfuehrer in 1938. HERR BÖM: The witness Raymond Geist said in an affidavit that one thousand local assembly places of the SA were used to keep people under arrest. Do you know anything about that and is this allegation true?
SCHAEFER: I have no knowledge of the figure of one thousand local assembly places used to keep people under arrest.
HERR BOEHM: Would you have known anything about such places, if they had existed in that number?
SCHAEFER: If they had existed in that number, I should certainly have known of them; actually, a few of these places did exist, but quite shortly after conditions had become settled they were dissolved or taken over and administered by the Gestapo.
HERR BOEHM: Is it correct to say that these arrest places were an emergency measure in the period around 1-933?
SCHAEFER: Yes, it was definitely an emergency measure. At that time, at the time of the assumption of power, we were in a state of latent civil war in Germany. It was therefore necessary to arrest active opponents in order to put into effect what the Fuehrer had decreed in connection with the assumption of power, namely, that the revolution was to be carried out without bloodshed.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true that extensive discovery of weapons caused the arrests in 1933, and that these arrests were carried out to avoid chaotic conditions, which would have resulted if these weapons had not been confiscated?
SCHAEFER: Yes. A large number of such weapons were found and it did not remain unknown to us that a large number of our active opponents were willing to use these weapons to bring about such chaotic conditions.
HERR BOEHM: Can one say that the SA, in confiscating the weapons at that time, was carrying out an assignment of the State?
SCHAEFER: Yes.  It was a state assignment by the Prussian Minister of the Interior and Minister President, Goering, who used the SA as an auxiliary police force on that occasion.
HERR BOEHM: Dr. Diels says in an affidavit that it was his task to curb the tendencies of the central political police toward the SA and its ideology, and to follow up the innumerable complaints about illegal actions by the SA due to the fact that some radical SA Fuehrer, appointed Police Presidents, had allowed lawless conditions to arise between July and November 1933. Since you were in that district, what can you say about Dr. Diels' statement?
SCHAEFER: As far as I recall -- and I can remember it very well -- Diels maintained very friendly relations with the then SA Chief of Staff R6hm, and also with the local chief of the Berlin Brandenburg Group, Ernst. Therefore I cannot understand why he should have considered and termed it his main task as chief of the Gestapo to follow up any complaints which were received about the SA.  I should like to point out the fact that such undisciplined elements, which might have damaged the Movement and the SA, were restrained by the Movement and by an SA liaison staff at Gestapo headquarters. I know for a fact it was Gruppenfuehrer Ernst who at that time arrested such undisciplined elements on his own initiative and kept them in a separate sector of the Oranienburg Concentration Camp. It was, therefore, not the task of the head of the Gestapo to take action against undisciplined elements of the SA or the Movement; his tasks were quite clearly on another level.
HERR BOEHM: Diels has now restricted his originally far-reaching affidavit to refer mainly to Berlin. What was the attitude of Count Helldorf, who was liquidated by Hitler on 20 July 1944, in this respect?
SCHAEFER: I know Count Helldorf from my activity as SA Fuehrer in Berlin. Shortly after the seizure of power he was, as far as I know, for a short time in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and was then Police President in Potsdam. In this capacity Count Helldorf, I can only say, did everything required and necessary to maintain an orderly police institution. For this purpose he employed old and reliable police officials. As Police President he was also my superior with regard to the concentration camp at Oranienburg. I must mention that he paid frequent surprise visits to Oranienburg and inspected with great thoroughness the measures which had been ordered. He was known to me as a man who advocated the absolute maintenance of correctness and discipline.
HERR BOEHM: I further draw your attention to Diels' statement that the SA formations forcibly entered prisons, abducted prisoners, removed files, and established themselves in the offices of the Police. Is that true? Did such conditions ever exist?
SCHAEFER: I cannot recall such conditions. They would surely have been known to me if they had existed, for I was frequently in Berlin; but I must say that I did not hear of such occurrences. Later too I should have heard something about them when I became an official in the Penal Execution Administration of the Reich. In my opinion the Berlin colleagues would certainly have reported such events to me even afterward, but that was not done.
HERR BOEHM: You were at that time commandant of Oranienburg and associated in Berlin with the men of the Police or of the Gestapo almost every day?
SCHAEFER: I was not in Berlin every day, but still quite frequently, so that such things certainly would not have escaped my notice.
HERR BOEHM: Considering the statement made in his affidavit for the SA that altogether 50 people were the victims of the revolution in Berlin, do you think that Diels' assertion that it was his task to try and transfer the SA camps into the hands of the Government in order to avoid mass murder is true?
SCHAEFER: This statement of Diels' is undoubtedly incorrect. I can say that it in no way corresponded to the ideology of the SA to remove political opponents by committing mass murder. Diels himself in his affidavit gives the figure of 50 victims in Berlin, as you have just read, and that proves what I say. One must not forget that a large part of the political opponents of yesterday were now marching with the SA and that therefore there still existed many personal ties with the camp of the political opponents. If this intention to remove political opponents by mass murder had existed at all, its execution would have met with the greatest resistance within the SA itself; and I may say frankly here that what Diels asserts is in no way true.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true that Diels' position became untenable as a result of constant conflict with the SA? He says so in his affidavit for the Gestapo; but he says that he must also admit that he was Regierungspräsident both in Hanover and Cologne.
SCHAEFER: I know nothing about this alleged deterioration of relations between Diels and the Supreme SA Leadership. I do not think that what he says is correct, because a few yea rs later I found him to be on very close terms with the then Chief of Staff Lutze; that was in connection with a tour in the Ems district. He was then obviously on very friendly terms with the Chief of Staff, Lutze, and the fact that he was Regierungspräsident in Cologne and especially the fact that he was later Regierungspräsident in Hanover under Chief of Staff Lutze, who was the Oberpräsident there, really contradict this assertion that he had disputes with the SA.
HERR BOEHM: Did, as Diels says, the SA widely confiscate property of peaceful citizens, although in his affidavit for the SA he states that really only the staff of Ernst and the signals section set up by h im participated in revolutionary activity?
SCHAEFER: Of the looting of so-called peaceful citizens by the SA I know nothing. If some such case did occur, which probably cannot be denied, I should like to say that the generalization of such isolated instances is at considerable variance with the truth. It is quite unjustifiable to generalize these individual cases which undoubtedly occurred, and which, one must not forget, were absolutely possible. I may point out that for example the brown shirt, which the SA man had to buy for himself, could be purchased in all the appropriate stores in Berlin and in the whole Reich. I learned personally of a number of cases in which obscure elements which did not belong to the SA or to the Movement -- and that fact was established later in court proceedings -- welcomed the opportunity of committing illegal actions under cover of the Party uniform. For that reason the Party uniform was finally put under legal protection.
HERR BOEHM: You know that Diels was Gestapo chief in 1933 and 1934; and if one reads his statement that the SA took property away from peaceful citizens, the obvious question arises whether he is not trying to attribute Gestapo customs to the SA.
SCHAEFER: I must say that this assertion of Diels surprises me greatly, because, as I have said, he was at that time on very friendly terms with the leaders of the SA. I cannot quite see how he arrives. at this assertion against, it seems to me, his better knowledge.
HERR BOEHM: He then speaks about 40,000 prisoners in concentration camps, in about 40 illegal camps. Can you say how many concentration camps actually existed at that time?
SCHAEFER: I have no statistics on this point, but I should like to scrutinize this figure of 40,000 internees, and particularly the number of 40 camps which Diels mentions. During 1933 Oranienburg soon became the only camp for political opponents from Berlin and the whole province of Brandenburg. A few transit camps which had existed up till then were dissolved. There could not have been many prisoners in them, because they were transferred to me at Oranienburg; it was a very small number of prisoners. If one considers that at the time when his figure of 40,000 applies, Oranienburg did not even number one thousand internees, and also, considers that this camp was instituted for a district totalling over 6 million people; if one considers, thirdly, that Berlin was the center of the political opponents of the NSDA-P and therefore had an extraordinarily large proportion of active political opponents, then I can hardly imagine his number of 40,000 internees to be correct. I must say that the figure of 40,000 is absolutely new to me, and I never heard anything about it, not even from Dr. Diels, with whom I was personally on quite friendly terms; I should have known of this figure if it had ever been mentioned.
HERR BOEHM: Diels speaks of approximately 40,000 prisoners. Could you give an approximate figure which might be more correct?
SCHAEFER: That is extremely difficult to say, but the Christmas amnesty ordered by Minister President Goering at that time-and I should like to emphasize particularly that this amnesty was carried out on a very generous scale-allows of some conclusion. 5,000 internees-I well recall this figure-were released from the camps at that time, and Oranienburg for instance, which was I said was the only recognized and state-controlled camp for Berlin and Brandenburg, reduced the number of its inmates to just over 100; over two-thirds of the camp inmates were released at that time.
HERR BOEHM: You were commandant in Oranienburg?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: From when to when?
SCHAEFER: From March 1933 to March 1934.
HERR BOEHM: This camp was guarded by SA men?
SCHAEFER: Yes.
HERR BOEHM: From when to when?
SCHAEFER: From March 1933 to June or July 1934, 1 believe.
HERR BOEHM: And under whose orders were these men?
SCHAEFER: These SA men were members of the auxiliary police. As such they were under my direct orders as commandant.
HERR BOEHM: And to whom were you subordinate as camp commandant?
SCHAEFER: As camp commandant I was subordinate to the Regierungspr5sident in Potsdam, who was competent for Oranienburg, to his Police President, Count Helldorf, and, of course, ultimately to the Prussian Minister of the Interior.
HERR BOEHM: And what influence did the then Ffihrer of the Gruppe Berlin-Brandenburg have on the Concentration Camp Oranienburg?
SCHAEFER: The Fi1hrer of the Gruppe Berlin-Brandenburg had no influence on the camp itself. He had no influence on the conduct or the general administration of the concentration camp.
HERR BOEHM: Could one assume that individual actions carried out by him meant terror measures of the SA?
SCHAEFER: I did not hear of any.
HERR BOEHM: Do you know the number of persons interned in the unauthorized transit camps who were released before Christmas 1933?
SCHAEFER: No, I do not know the number, but I may say that there existed only a small number of such camps and a small number of internees in them. I have already explained that only a few internees were transferred to me at Oranienburg as the only camp in existence then. A large part had already been released at that time.
HERR BOEHM: Is there any reason for believing that at that time there were 50,000 internees in the rest of Germany?
SCHAEFER: No, there is no reason for believing that, and I must say that in proportion to the figure of internees in Prussia, which I gave before, the number of 50,000 is absolutely incredible. Prussia was geographically the largest part of Germany, and if there were comparatively few internees in Prussia I cannot imagine that there could have been 50,000 in the rest of the Reich. This figure is new to me.
HERR BOEHM: What do you know about co-operation with the Gestapo in its early stages?
SCHAEFER: In its early stages the Gestapo had only loose connection with Oranienburg. It had only official connections arising from the relation of the political police with the auxiliary police, the SA. In the course of the year, the Gestapo sent persons whom it had arrested to the camp and released them again, at the direction of the Prussian Minister President, when their cases had been examined.
HERR BOEHM: Were there difficulties between the Concentration Camp Oranienburg and the Gestapo in Berlin?
SCHAEFER: Originally no, but later through an incident difficulties arose which I would not like to conceal at this point. On one occasion the Gestapo in Berlin sent two internees to the camp in a severely maltreated condition. Next day I went to see Standartenf-uehrer Schutzwechsler who. was my superior, and asked him to protest, together with me, to the Gestapo in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, and to demand an explanation which I intended to make the subject of a report to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. I was promised that this explanation would be forthcoming, but on the next day I was called up on the telephone by Standartenfuehrer Schutzwechsler, who told me that he had just learned that the Concentration Camp Oranienburg was to be dissolved immediately. He asked me to come to Berlin at once, as he wanted to go with me to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior to investigate why the dissolution of the camp had been ordered so suddenly. We went to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior together and learned to our great astonishment that after our protest on the previous day at the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior had been called up and informed that cases of maltreatment had occurred, and that it had become necessary to dissolve Oranienburg. The suggestion of the Prinz Albrecht Strasse was that all the prisoners in Oranienburg were to be transferred, to the new camps built by the SS in the Ems district. A train was already on the way and had in fact already arrived at Oranienburg. When I told State Secretary Grauert of the circumstances and explained to him what had induced me to protest at the Prinz Albrecht Strasse on the previous day, he promised me at once to have these circumstances investigated thoroughly, and he did so immediately. In my presence he told Ministerialdirigent Fischer to conduct an investigation of the affair. Fischer was known as a thoroughly correct and reliable old official, and Fischer then actually found the circumstances to be as I had described them to Grauert.
SCHAEFER: It was established clearly that these cases of maltreatment, with which Oranienburg had been charged, had occurred in the Gestapo in Berlin. Thereupon it was decided not to dissolve the camp.
HERR BOEHM: Do you know of cases in which the Gestapo had to penetrate by force into SA camps to liberate prisoners?
SCHAEFER: No. I never heard of such cases.
HERR BOEHM: You did not have such cases in Oranienburg? SHÄFER: No, no.
HERR BOEHM: Did the Gestapo have decisive influence on the release of internees, or who, in your opinion, was responsible for the releases which took place in the course of time?
SCHAEFER: Various authorities were responsible for the release of prisoners: first, the competent Regierungspräsident and Landrdte who as a result of incessant protests on the part of the relatives of internees were well acquainted with their circumstances. Then the camp itself, and I as commandant of the camp, had an important part in the release of internees. After investigation in some of the cases I made suggestions for the immediate release of the prisoners, but I must say that, above all, it was Minister President Goering himself who at the time showed the greatest concern that the Oranienburg Camp should not be stuffed with prisoners but that as many as possible should be released. I must emphasize that at this point. I recall a Christmas speech of Diels, which he made to the prisoners on the occasion of their release, and in which he said that Minister President Goering had urged that at Christmas very extensive releases of prisoners should take place.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. BOEHM, the Tribunal is not trying this witness.  It is trying the criminality of the SA. This is far too detailed about the release of prisoners. He seems not to have got further than 1933 up to the present.
HERR BOEHM: I should like to ask only one more question in this connection: How many people still remained in the camp after the releases at Christmas 1933?
SCHAEFER: Just over 100.
HERR BOEHM: Did you ever have any personal differences with Dr. Diels?
SCHAEFER: No, none at all. On the contrary, when in 1934 1 wrote a book about Oranienburg, he immediately on his own initiative offered to write an introduction for it, and I know that he always praised the camp.
HERR BOEHM: Are you familiar with the testimony of Ministerialdirektor Hans Fritzsche?
SCHAEFER: In part, yes.
HERR BOEHM: Is it true, as he says, that the first commandant of Oranienburg, who was there from March 1933 to 1934, was executed? You were the first commandant, were you not?
SCHAEFER: Yes. His statement is best refuted by the fact that I am now sitting here. Of course the statement is not true.
HERR BOEHM: The journalist Stolzenberg who was allegedly interned in Oranienburg reports that an official investigation took place in Oranienburg. Is that correct?
SCHAEFER: I recall only two such official investigations-the case of the Gestapo, which I mentioned before, and the Seger casein which an official investigation was held.
HERR BOEHM: What were the results of the investigations?