dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DA. LATERNSER: But these orders regarding the destruction were carried out in various ways?
VON MANSTEIN: Certainly. Probably every army leader tried to keep this destruction within as small a compass as possible, particularly in the Ukraine where we soldiers were on excellent terms with the population. That, after all, is the problem of the individual leader, whether or not he decides that his operational goal can be achieved with a minimum of destruction. It was different, for instance, when it came to the destruction of billets. In the East in, winter fighting depended to a very considerable extent on whether the troops could find some kind of shelter for the night, In the winter the destruction of billets could be absolutely decisive. In the summer, of course, it was not important.
DR.LATERNSER: What do you know about the destruction of churches and cultural monuments?
VON MANSTEIN: I can only say that in my areas cultural monuments were spared. A large number of these-in the Crimea, on the southern coast, for instance-were already destroyed when we arrived, but we carefully preserved the Livardia palace, for example, and then the Tartar castle in Baktshisarai. I was once before Leningrad with my army command preparing an attack, which, however, was not carried out. There I saw several Czarist palaces, Oranienbaum and others. They were destroyed, but they were within the range of Russian artillery, and I myself was under artillery fire while making this visit. The palaces were burned out, and they were certainly not burned by our troops according to plan. DR. LATERNSER; Now, a few questions with reference to the partisan warfare. Did you get to know that the aim of partisan warfare was to exterminate the Jews and Slavs?
VON MANSTEIN: No.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you give or receive any orders to the effect that no prisoners were to be taken during partisan fighting?
VON MANSTEIN: No.
DR. LATERNSER: At that time what did you imagine would happen when a person was handed over to the SD?
VON MANSTEIN: It was our impression that first of all the SD would interrogate such a person and then probably send him to some camp. We also had to turn over to the SD German soldiers who were sentenced for desertion, because during the war there was a regulation that long terms of imprisonment were not to be served, but that-in order to utilize their working capacity and prevent them from evading the war behind prison walls-these prisoners, and others who had been sentenced, should be sent to concentration camps for the duration of the war. Therefore, to say that the turning over of any person to the SD was equivalent to death was, as we saw it, quite wrong.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you at that time know anything about conditions in the concentration camps?
VON MANSTEIN: No. I heard as little about that as the German people, or possibly even less, because when one was fighting 1,000 kilometers away from Germany, I one naturally did not hear about such things. I knew from prewar days that there were two concentration camps, Oranienburg and Dachau, and an officer who at the invitation of the SS had visited such a camp told me that it was simply a typical collection of criminals, besides some political prisoners who, according to what he had seen, were being treated severely but correctly.
DR. LATERNSER: As a soldier of the old tradition, how do you explain the shootings with which the Prosecution has charged the German war leaders as a crime against humanity?
VON MANSTEIN: Beginning in 1941 with the Soviet campaign, this last war was, one might say, fought from two points of view. The first was the military conduct of the war which we, the soldiers, were carrying through,, and the other was-incidentally, on both sides-the ideological conduct of the war which we soldiers were not carrying out, but which was determined by other factors.
DR. LATERNSER: You said 1941?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, it is my view that the Polish war and the war in the West and the campaigns in Norway and in the Balkans were still carried out in a purely military manner as long as the fighting was going on. The other side, that is, the ideological side of the war, started, in my opinion, with the campaign against the Soviet Union, and it was then extended to the other occupied territories by those who conducted this type of war.
DR. LATERNSER: But then, who was conducting the ideological fight on the part of Germany?
VON MANSTEIN: We soldiers did not wage this ideological war. In my opinion it was waged by Hitler together with some of his closest collaborators, and a limited number of accomplices.
DR. LATERNSER: In what way was this war not conducted by soldiers?
VON MANSTEIN: As I have said, Hitler knew perfectly well that we, with our traditional gallant conception of warfare, would not do things like that. He defined this view very clearly in the speech he made before the Western campaign, that is, after the Polish campaign, and on the basis of this point of view, in my opinion, he knowingly kept the Armed Forces out of the ideological war, and knowingly removed everything that was done from our influence or even from our knowledge.
DR. LATERNSER: By what means did Hitler remove this angle of the war from military influence?
VON MANSTEIN: He took it away from us first of all geographically, inasmuch as most of the occupied territories were removed from the influence of the commanders-in-chief; that is, he set up Reich Commissariats in the East and in the remaining countries, the spheres of the military commanders or rather national governments which were not under us commanders-in-chief. Apart from that he also took away from us the terrain in which this struggle was being fought. Geographically we were limited to the narrow operational areas, and administratively we also had very little to say with regard to them. All Police measures were taken by Himmler on his own responsibility, as set out in the well-known "Barbarossa Order." The economic exploitation was G6ring's province. Sauckel was responsible for the recruitment of labor. The examination and registration of art treasures were handled by the special staff of Rosenberg. Jurisdiction over civilians had been expressly withdrawn from our military courts. In other words, all that was left to us was the directing of the fighting at the front, the security of the operational sector, the creation of a local administration, and the setting in motion of agriculture and industry.
DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, I have had prepared a sketch regarding the division of powers, and I should like to submit it to the Tribunal when I put in my documents. It is Sketch General Staff and OKW Number 3. 1 should. merely like to show this sketch to the witness and ask him whether the sketch is accurate, and later on I shall submit the sketch to the Tribunal with an explanation.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly.
DR. LATERNSER: Meld Marshal, I am going to have Sketch General Staff and OKW Number 3 handed to you and I will ask you whether that sketch is accurate.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser, you are showing It to the Prosecution, no doubt?
DR. LATERNSER: Yes, Sir.
VON MANSTEIN: In my opinion, this sketch is correct. Naturally, details regarding the organization in the occupied territories, for instance, which came under military commanders and which changed in the course of the war, are not all indicated.
DR. LATERNSER: But these spheres do not concern the persons accused?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, that is right.
DR. LATERNSER: In which spheres was the ideological warfare waged by the others?
VON MANSTEIN: There you have to differentiate between two things: Apart from the military conduct of the war carried on by us, the soldiers, war was also waged economically; that is to say, for the economic exploitation of occupied territories for our warfare in the sense of the slogan "total war." That, in my opinion, was an innovation in international law, but it was not a crime. The second is the ideological field; that is, the special methods introduced against the population and carried out by other forces, which had nothing to do with the economic exploitation as such.
DR. LATERNSER: What do you mean by special methods?
VON MANSTEIN: By that I mean the methods of the so-called Einsatzgruppen and all the methods applied under the aegis of Himmler.
DR. LATERNSER: Were not the Commissar and Commando Orders part of that ideological fight in the military sector?
VON MANSTEIN: In my opinion the Commissar Order does come under that heading; that is the reason why we did not carry it out. But in my view, the Commando Order did not. The Commando Order was a reprisal, possibly open to argument, against a method of warfare which was new.
DR. LATERNSER: Now, let us come to the Einsatzgruppen. What did you know about the tasks given to these groups?
VON MANSTEIN: All I knew about the tasks of these Einsatzgruppen was that they were organized to prepare for the political administration; that is to say, to carry out the political screening of the population in the occupied territories of the East, and they were acting on special instructions under Himmler's responsibility.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you ever hear of the intention and the order to exterminate Jews and other sections of the population?
VON MANSTEIN: No, I never heard of that; in fact, as the witness Ohlendorf said, this order was given orally by Himmler directly to the Einsatzgruppen.
DR. LATERNSER: When you took over the command of the 11th Army, were you informed of the existence of the Einsatzgruppen?
VON MANSTEIN: When I took over the army at Nikolaiev in September 1941, 1 was at the army headquarters for 2 or 3 days only, and I then occupied an advance battle headquarters near the front with a small part of my staff. During these 2 or 3 days I spent at Nikolaiev, the various department chiefs of the High Command reported to me on their tasks. I assume that on that occasion it was also reported to me that sections of the SD with special tasks from Himmler were in the operational zone, but at that time I had no idea of the organization and tasks of the Einsatzgruppen, as I know them today.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you personally have dealings with Ohlendorf?
VON MANSTEIN: It may be that Ohlendorf reported to me once, and as such reports were usually made towards noon, it is quite possible that I invited him to lunch. If he did visit me, then it was certainly only in the presence of my chief of staff, because anyone who did not belong to my army was only received by me in the presence of my chief of staff. I should like to add that I had already spent several weeks in prison here when one day General Westphal told me: "There is an SD Fuehrer Ohlendorf here, who maintains that he was in the Crimea." I asked Westphal to point him out to me, and I said: "I may have seen him once, but I do not know, or do not remember him." That is the only kind of contact I might have had with him.
DR. LATERNSER: The witness Ohlendorf has said that during the march he had talked with you and your chief of staff.
VON MANSTEIN: He could not have spoken to me during the march because a commander-in-chief does not march with his troops. When I changed my battle headquarters, I either went by plane or traveled by car with an orderly officer, and in that case I was not accompanied by my chief of staff, because in the event of such a change the chief of staff always remains in the old battle headquarters until the commander-in-.6hief has reached the new one, so that the directing of the army is not interrupted. Therefore it is quite out of the question that Ohlendorf could have spoken to me during the march.
DR. LATERNSER: Field Marshal, how do you explain the fact that the murder of 90,000 Jews could have escaped your attention?
VON MANSTEIN: These 90,000 Jews who were mentioned were not ' murdered in my zone of command. As Ohlendorf has stated, his zone reached from Cernauti, that is, from the Carpathians, to Rostov; that is approximately 1,200 kilometers long and probably from 300 to 400 kilometers broad. In this huge zone not only the 11th Army was operating, but a1sG the 1st Armored Army, and the 3d and 4th Romanian Armies, that is to say, four armies; and these 90,000 persons who are supposed to have been murdered in the course of a year are therefore distributed over a large area, of which only a small portion was occupied by the 11th Army in the Crimea.
DR. LATERNSER: But could you have helped hearing about it if in the Crimea, for instance, several hundred Jews were murdered?
VON MANSTEIN: No, not necessarily. In that year I occupied, I think, 12 or 13 different battle headquarters, always in the fighting zone. When I was at my headquarters at Sarabus-it was a small village about 20 kilometers from the capital-only tactical reports reached me and not more than once or twice a week-or it may have been three or four times-the chief quartermaster and the army surgeon and other people like that came to see me in order to report to me on essential matters. One must also bear in mind that in our situation a commander-in-chief was completely occupied by the worries of the battle and that, quite rightly, only the essential points of other matters were reported to him. Point two is that our troops, almost down to the last man, in the Crimea particularly, were being used in the battle at the front, and even our clerks sometimes had to be sent into battle. The entire rear area was more or less devoid of troops and only the most important supply points were manned; everything that happened outside these few points never reached the ears of the military agencies.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you never receive a report on the shooting of Jews?
VON MANSTEIN: I did not receive a report on the shooting of Jews. I once heard of a rumor.
DR. LATERNSER: And what was it about?
VON MANSTEIN: When I took over the army, which, as I said, was on the day I left Nikolaiev for my battle headquarters, it was said, without details being given, that earlier, before my time, the SS had allegedly shot and killed a few Jews, I believe it was in Bessarabia. That was a rumor about one individual case. As I was, leaving the following morning, I gave orders to my orderly officer that the leader of the SS was to be told that in the area where I was commander-in-chief I would not tolerate any such bestiality. Since it was only a rumor, and as an order of mine to investigate the truth of the matter did not produce any witnesses who had seen it, the question was therewith settled. I immediately entered into the heaviest fighting and since then I received no further reports about the shooting of Jews.
DR. LATERNSER: But the witness Ohlendorf talked about the shooting of Jews in which members of the Armed Forces were supposed to have participated. Your headquarters was at Simferopol, was it not?
VON MANSTEIN: No. Only the chief quartermaster department was in Simferopol. I myself was with the command department about 20 kilometers away from Simferopol. That units of my army could have participated in the shooting of Jews, I consider quite out of the question. Ohlendorf moreover also spoke of army auxiliaries, that is, Police or OT (Todt Organization), or whatever it may have been. If a unit or officer of my army had participated in anything like that, it would have meant his end.
DR. LATERNSER: The army was supposed to have received watches from the SD, which were taken from Jews who had been murdered?
VON MANSTEIN: That I do not know. The army quartermaster visited me once and reported that he had obtained a large number of watches for the army from Germany. He also showed me a watch which was fresh from the factory, a German watch.
DR. LATERNSER: What was the chain of command for Einsatzgruppen?
VON MANSTEIN: In the chain of command, particularly the military one, one must differentiate between the practical subordination, which is the chain of command for the fighting at the front, and the economic subordination, that is the chain of command for the purpose of supplies, food, motor fuel, and billets. Thirdly, subordination for military service, that is from the point of view of training, equipment, questions of personnel, and of disciplinary and legal nature. In no case was the last-mentioned military service subordination ever granted to us, not even for the units of the Waffen-SS. Economically and tactically, that is for the actual fighting, such subordination was possible. Economically, that is, on the march and with regard to accommodation and supplies, the SD was subordinate to us. The factual subordination, of which the witness Schellenberg once spoke, did not exist at all. It only existed in the case of medical officers; for instance, where a doctor of a lower rank ranged professionally under the division doctor. But we had no special Police functions and there was no question of the SD being subordinate to us in its Police tasks. As far as the chain of command for troops on the march and supplies was concerned, they were matters which the chief quartermaster dealt with. A commander-in-chief is never bothered with very small units on the march.
DR. LATERNSER: Ohlendorf has mentioned an order from the High Command of the Army according to which the shooting of Jews was to take place only at two and a half, or according to his other testimony, 200 kilometers from the army headquarters. Is that correct?
VON MANSTEIN: No, and such an order would be sheer nonsense. What would be the sense of a distance of two and a half kilometers from army headquarters? And 200 kilometers would have been already beyond the operational zone. At such a distance we had no right to give orders. Such an order was certainly not given by my office-at least, I never gave it.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you co-operate with the Einsatzgruppen when you were with the Armored Group. Hoeppner?
VON MANSTEIN: I was Commanding General of the First Armored Corps of the Armored Group Hoeppner. I do not remember ever having seen the SD there. During the first months of the Russian campaign I was sometimes 100 kilometers in advance of the front with the armored corps. Between myself and the German infantry armies which followed there were the retreating Russian armies. In a case like that where the Russians were following us so closely, it is completely out of the question that the SD would undertake the shooting of Jews in my sector. They would never have risked doing that. And as I have said, when I came to the front I saw no SD people.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you know Generaloberst Hoeppner?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes, of course.
DR. LATERNSER: What was his attitude in regard to such deeds of violence?
VON MANSTEIN: Hoeppner was a decent, straightforward, and honest soldier. I consider it absolutely out of the question that he could have co-operated in such matters. Apart from that, his death following the 20th of July shows he was not on the side of these people.
DR.LATERNSER: Was there any tactical collaboration with the Einsatzgruppen on the part of the 11th Army?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes. From the SS, SD, or the Police, as far as I remember, we got a number of auxiliaries for combating the partisans. In the Jaila mountains of the Crimea there were at that time small inaccessible parts of the mountains where there were partisans. We could not get at them because we had no mountain troops. All We could do was to try to starve out these bands by preventing them from raiding Tartar villages and thereby maintaining their food supplies. For that reason we armed the Tartars and in order to make sure that these villages were reliable in our sense, the SD assisted us. I
THE PRESIDENT: This is going into the matter in great detail. Has it not been gone into in his evidence before the Commission? Can't you shorten it?
DR. LATERNSER: Yes, Mr. President. This brings me to my last question and, as far as I can recollect, that question was not put when the witness was before the Commission.
VON MANSTEIN: They also worked with us to discover the food depots of the partisans. We had to do this because German forces were not available and only Romanian mountain troops were occupied with these tasks.
DR. LATERNSER: Did it ever happen that sections of the SS, SD, or Einsatzgruppen, participated in this partisan fighting and then were decorated for these deeds?
VON MANSTEIN: That is quite possible, but then they were decorated for action in battle, not for the killing of Jews.
DR. LATERNSER: Now, let us come to another point. The Armed Forces have also been accused of looting in the occupied territories.
VON MANSTEIN: We had the strictest orders in the Army against looting, and rigorous action was taken against looters. The individual soldier was not allowed to requisition, but only troop units, and then only what the unit needed for the feeding of the troops within the ration allotments. On the other hand in 1943 we co-operated in bringing back goods which were especially needed by us for carrying on the war. But by an express order of mine that was limited in the Ukraine to grain, oilseeds, some small quantity of metal, and a small number of cattle which could be driven along with us. However, all this was not looting private property; it was a State requisitioning of State property.
DR. LATERNSER: Were factories dismantled by the Armed Forces?
VON MANSTEIN: The dismantling of factories, if it took place, was done on orders from the Economic Staff East, because the exploitation of industry in the occupied territories, even in the operational area, did not come under the command of the armies, but under the Economic Staff East.
DR. LATERNSER: To what extent were the military leaders concerned with the deportation of workers?
VON MANSTEIN: We merely had instructions td support the requisitioning of labor by the Reich Plenipotentiary. In general we resisted having to give up labor because we needed it ourselves for agriculture in the occupied territories. When, during conversations with Sauckel, I told him that methods of coercion would make the population hostile, he said that he himself was against the use of force. I received a report that people had allegedly been rounded up by force in the Reich Commissariat When I made inquiries, Reich Commissioner Koch told me that it was not true, that he had heard these rumors himself and had looked into the matter and found that it was all lies. I had no evidence to counter this. At any rate we limited ourselves to recruiting, and moreover, the Reich Plenipotentiary presented a regulation to me according to which foreign workers in Germany were to be treated and fid in the same way as German workers.
DR. LATERNSER: You mentioned Sauckel and Koch in this connection. Were these separate conversations, or were they both held together?
VON MANSTEIN: No, in my opinion they were different conferences. Koch once visited me with Rosenberg, and on that occasion I mentioned that I had heard of these methods of force He denied it; but Sauckel was not present.
DR.IATERNSER: And then on another occasion Sauckel visited you alone?
VON MANSTEIN: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: The conversation that occurred with Rosenberg, when did it occur?
VON MANSTEIN: That I cannot remember exactly.
THE PRESIDENT: Not the exact date; approximately?