Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-207.08
Last-Modified: 2000/12/04

DR. KUBUSCHOK CONTINUES:

Finally under No. 4. I submit an affidavit from the former
ministerial director in the Ministry of Food, Rudolf
Harmeninck. Harmeninck describes the instruction given by
Hitler to State Secretary Backe regarding preparations for
war with Russia. These contained explicit instructions from
Hitler that the minister himself, Darre, was to be kept in
the dark regarding these preparations. And concerning that I
quote:

  "A few months before the outbreak of the war with Russia,
  measures were taken in the Reich Ministry of Food, such
  as, for instance, the getting ready of agricultural
  machinery and agricultural workers for a special purpose
  What this purpose was became apparent after the beginning
  of the Russian campaign - these things were intended for
  use in Russia. State Secretary Backe received the order
  for this directly from Hitler or Goring, over the head of
  the Reich Food Minister Darre. In fact, according to the
  instructions, it had to be kept strictly secret from the
  Minister."

Those are the affidavits which I have to submit.

Then I have submitted a document book with altogether 68
documents. I refer to this document book. In the main, the
documents submitted set forth the official reasons and
official points of view with reference to the draft laws of
that particular period. These official reasons were attached
to the draft laws and circulated amongst the various
ministers. These documents, therefore, represent the
arguments presented to the individual ministers in
justification of the proposed laws. Among the remaining
documents which I have submitted I wish to draw your
attention in particular to Document 3: the Manifesto by the
Reich Government to the German people, in 1933, containing
the directives for the policy of the Cabinet; Document 9: in
which the leaders of the dissolving parties stated their
belief in, and urged their, followers to support, the new
Government; and Document 63: an article by Reich Minister
von Blomberg on the subject of compulsory military service.

As to the remaining questions, particularly the work of the
organization, witnesses Lammers, Weiszacker, Goering and von
Neurath have been heard at great length.

With that, Mr. President, I conclude.

                                                  [Page 304]

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn.

(A recess was taken.)

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann.

DR. PELCKMANN (associate counsel for the SS): Your Lordship,
I refer first to the transcript on the examination of
witnesses before the Commission, which, no doubt, the
Tribunal has. There were 29 witnesses. I begin with the
presentation of documents. I have divided these into groups
so as to be able to finish the presentation very quickly.
First, Documents Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, and 84 in one group. The
first three documents deal with the so-called ideals" of the
SS: it states the ideals of the confraternity. Something is
said about kinship (Sippengemeinschaft) and such-like and
proof is given that this was the basis of the training.

Document 5 says that the members of the General SS carried
out their normal civil occupations and the SS service was
only supplementary.

Document 84 makes it clear once more that the SS was a
branch of the Party and in contrast to the other SS
formations, which I shall present later, was represented by
the NSDAP in case of complaints.

In Document 6 (Exhibit USA 441), which I submit once more,
the principles of the SS are again referred to, and for the
individual man these were quite decent requirements:
sanctity of property, the precept of thrift, etc. I must
present that briefly because it is important for my final
plea.

Documents 4 and 103 belong together. Document 4 shows that
the SS men swore an oath which did not differ from that of
the old civil servants, but did differ from that of a
soldier, for, strangely enough, the soldier swears absolute
obedience but the SS man does not.

Document 103 deals with the fact that this oath was made in
God's name, and Himmler says in reference to that: "I
consider a person who does not believe in God presumptuous,
to be suffering from megalomania, and stupid. Such a person
is not suitable for us."

Document 84, which I just quoted, shows once more that the
SS Verfugungstruppe (Emergency troops) and the SS
Totenkopfverbande (Death Head's Units) did not belong to the
General SS. They did not have any civil occupation; they
were State employees, and in case of complaints against
these members or these formations, that is, the SS
Verfugungstruppe or the Totenkopfverbande, the complaint had
to be made against the Ministry of the Interior; this is
very important for the concentration camp question.

Then there follow Documents 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The Waffen
SS was created during the war. Its members were instructed
to fight decently and chivalrously and not make themselves
guilty of punishable actions against the civilian population
in enemy countries, and to respect the prisoners of war and
the fallen.

For the members of the Waffen SS - this is shown especially
by Document 12 - the basic rules of the SS apply only when
the individual Waffen SS men were at the same time members
of the General SS. For example, that is true even for the so-
called marriage order. This ideology is not applicable to
the Waffen SS men, so that even the voluntary Waffen SS men
were not subject to the special laws of the SS.

Documents 13, 14, 15: The SS is accused of the legal
plundering of the occupied eastern territories. These
documents show that the laws in this respect were issued by
the Trustee for the Four-Year Plan, Goering, or the Minister
of the Interior, Frick. The Reich Commissioner for the
Consolidation of German Nationhood and the Office for Racial
Germans (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle) were entrusted with the
resettlement and bringing back of Germans. This is shown by
Documents 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 and 23. Documents 25,
26, 30, 33, 34, 40, and Exhibit USA 674 I submit as evidence
that the Civil Service law, the

                                                  [Page 305]

emergency labour regulation, the constitution for German
students, the agreements between the Reichsfuehrer SS and
the Reich Youth Leader, the Reich Labour Leader and the
Reich Finance Minister were coercive measures which made it
possible for Germans to be allocated to the General SS, the
Waffen SS, Verfugungstruppe SS and the SS Totenkopf units.
Even the woman Police Staff assistants were forcibly placed
in the SS Women's Auxiliary Corps.

Documents 28, 30, 31, and 32 can be taken together. They
give a number of examples of the kind of compulsory service
just mentioned or of men being drafted into the General SS,
the Waffen SS, and the SS Verfugungstruppe.

Documents 29, 36, 38, and 39 show that citizens of foreign n
States, in so far as they were of German descent, were not
forcibly drafted into the Armies of their respective
countries, but into the Waffen SS. This was on the strength
of State agreements.

The documents show further how whole groups comprising many
or few people were forcibly placed under SS jurisdiction
without being SS members. They continued under the name of
their old occupation but with the addition of "SS."

Document 4 treats with the question of the so-called patron
members, which has still not been settled by the
prosecution. These patron members were only linked with the
SS from the financial standpoint. Their subscriptions flowed
into the coffers of the General SS membership as a so-called
patron member in no case meant that a person belonged to the
active SS.

Documents 48, 53, 54, 57, 59 and 60 deal with the more or
less great pressure exerted on police officials to join the
SS. The request to join was worded: "I therefore expect that
the person whom this concerns will join ..."

There were continuous inquiries demanding to know whether
the person had joined. Even members of the regular police,
the Ordnungspolizei, were also more or less forced to join.
Court officials, doctors, young officers, and policemen were
also pressed to join the SS. On the other hand, Documents 52
to 55, and 56, show that the members of the police who
joined the SS in this way did not perform any SS service.
They were not obliged to take SS training either. The only
sign that they were members of the SS was that when they
were promoted they were also promoted in the SS.

Finally, in Documents 65, 66, 67, and 68, I have to deal
with purely external SS designations in police units. The
battalions and regiments, as well as fire-fighting police
units, that is, units of the fire service, all received the
designation SS as an external sign of recognition, as it
says in the decrees. As an example, I refer in this document
to the Second Gendarmerie Battalion which became the Second
SS Gendarmerie Battalion; or the police regiment "Alpenland"
which became the SS police regiment, and so forth.

The documents show further that in spite of all this, these
SS police regiments remained with the Ordnungspolizei, that
they received their equipment from the Ordnungspolizei, and
everything else was attended to by the Ordnungspolizei. The
individual policeman of these regiments did not become a
member of the General SS nor a member of the Waffen SS
because his unit had this SS designation.

Finally, the following documents deal with the question: to
what extent did the members of the SS know of and will the
crimes with which the prosecution charges them?

Documents 70, 71, 73, 75, 76 and 79 are taken together.
Hitler was constantly making speeches in which he simulated
his unchangeable will for peace. The Reich Cabinet also
stated that it wanted to preserve peace at all costs. The
paper Dos Schwarz; Korps, believing these statements, wrote
that the SS did not like war a statement made in January,
1937, and it goes on to explain this antipathy to war.

Documents 77 and 78 show that in this connection even
outsiders like the Austrian bishops and the English
Government were also deceived in 1938. The German

                                                  [Page 306]
                                                            
English Peace Declaration of 30th September, 1938, is well
known. It expresses the will of both peoples never again to
wage war against each other.

In Document 80, containing some official statements on the
nature and character of the SA and the SS, it is shown that
neither the SA nor the SS was armed, neither were they given
any training with arms or trained otherwise for military
purposes. I am asserting this only for the case of the SS.

The supplement to Document 81 says that on the 16th April,
1934, the German Government offered to prove to the English
Government that the SS and the SA had no arms and were not
trained for any military purposes. This was true not only
outwardly but it was also the case within the SS. This is
shown by SS Document 82. It is the secret Fuehrer Decree of
17th August, 1938, which stated that the SS as a political
organization of the NSDAP is not a military organization, it
needs no training and it is unarmed. It states further in
this decree that the members of the General SS as unarmed SS
men are at the disposal of the Wehrmacht in case of war, in
accordance with the provisions of the National Defence Law,
and not of the Waffen SS.

Document 92 is a small example of how the masses were
deceived about peace aims. According to this - it is a law
of the Reich Cabinet - any participation in the Spanish
Civil War in any form whatever is subject to punishment by
imprisonment, although at the time thousands were fighting
in Spain on Hitler's orders.

Documents 87, 88, 90 and 99 show the following:

Through the law against slander, the law against defeatism,
and the prohibition of listening to the foreign radio, any
spreading of the truth - and I take as a single example the
spreading of rumours on concentration camps - became in fact
impossible. This policy was rigorously applied during the
war. That is proved by Document SS-98. It is the well-known
speech of Himmler in Posen in 1943 Document PS-1919. I refer
only to one sentence of Himmler which says that whoever is
disloyal, be it even in thought, will be dismissed from the
SS; also that care will be taken that he will disappear from
among the living.

On the Jewish question, there are Documents 93 and 95. In
February, 1934 the Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr.
Frick, declared before the Diplomatic Corps that the only
intention was to reduce the activity of the Germans of
Jewish faith in proportion to other Germans. It was
expressly denied that these citizens would be forced to
emigrate.

The other document, No. 95, proves that even in the year
1942, when the mass destruction of Jews was under way, a law
provided for the creation of a settlement in Theresienstadt
for Jewish citizens. This, consciously or unconsciously,
served to deceive the public about this extermination, and
it deceived the SS members too.

The events of the 30th June, 1934, are dealt with in
Documents 83, 100, 74, 105 and 106. The public did not learn
the truth. Hitler was thanked for dealing with the situation
in telegrams sent by the Reich President von Hindenburg to
Hitler and Goering. These telegrams were published in all
papers. In his speech of 13th July, 1934, Hitler described
in great detail the preparations Roehm had made to overthrow
the Government, how he had been in contact with foreign
countries, and how an SS Fuehrer, who was mentioned by name,
had prepared an attack on his life. The situation was
presented as so urgent- that only immediate action, without
judicial proceedings, could do any good. Moreover, this
speech gave assurance that illegal excesses committed during
this action would be punished by law.

Document 104 gives only a sketch to supplement the testimony
of the witness von Eberstein. It clarifies the actual
position of the Higher SS and Police Fuehrer.

Then I have Document SS 107, which unfortunately I was able
to give to the prosecution only this morning, as I have just
found it in the collection of decrees. I ask that it be
accepted. It is a decree of the Reichsfuehrer SS of 27th
August,

                                                  [Page 307]

1942. This decree expressly states that the main office of
the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German
Nationhood (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle) is not an SS main
office but a State organization. This question is important
for the responsibility of the SS in the so-called
Germanisation programme. This document has not yet been
translated. I shall attempt to have translations made as
quickly as possible.

That is my presentation of documents, your Lordship.

Now I come to the affidavits. For the examination before the
Commission and especially for the examination of the five
witnesses before the Tribunal, I was able to bring only
witnesses, who, because of their high positions, could give
the Tribunal a comprehensive survey of specific questions.
With the affidavits the defence had to attempt to present as
large a number as possible of statements on the whole
evidence of the Indictment, in order to give the Tribunal an
idea of how much the broad masses of the small people knew
and how they behaved. I have attempted to do so by means of
separate affidavits on certain points and by summarising a
large number of statements on certain groups of questions
and subjects.

I submit first 114 single affidavits. They are SS Affidavits
1 to 60, 63, 64, 68 and 69 and 71 to 118. Affidavit number
70, given by two SS members, contains all the contents of
the affidavits of the internees of one camp, Camp 73. It
refers, to almost all of the points of the Indictment
against the SS.

Then I submit the digest of 136, 213 individual affidavits
and collective affidavits. To these I have given the numbers
119 to 122.

Finally, the digest of a questionnaire which was sent to all
camps, that is, a statistical report under Number 123.

I regret that I cannot give the Tribunal today the texts of
these affidavits, especially of the individual affidavits,
in English. As far as I know, translations into French are
available for all affidavits, and I shall attempt to submit
the English translations as soon as possible. I am now
submitting the French translations.

I then submit SS affidavits of Dr. Morgen, 65 to 67.

I personally consider SS Affidavits 64, 68, 69 and 70
extremely important. I have -

THE PRESIDENT: Which are the ones you said were very
important?

DR. PELCKMANN: 64, 68, 69 and 70.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Go on.

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