Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-208.01
Last-Modified: 2000/12/18

                                                  [Page 312]

TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTH DAY

WEDNESDAY, 21st AUGUST, 1946

THE PRESIDENT: One moment, Dr. Pelckmann, perhaps you can
help me.

In view of a letter which has been addressed to the Tribunal
signed by most of counsel for the organizations but not, I
think, by Dr. Servatius, dated a 5th August, 1946, the
Tribunal would be glad to know from a counsel for the
organizations how long they anticipate those who remain to
present their documents and affidavits think they will take
in doing so, and in what order they propose to make their
speeches; also whether they are ready or will be ready when
the time comes to make these speeches, because the Tribunal
is very anxious not to have to postpone the presentation of
these speeches.

Therefore, the Tribunal thinks it is proper at this time to
ascertain, as far as possible, whether the speeches will be
ready in due time.

I see that Dr. Kubuschok is not here. Dr. Pelckmann is here
and perhaps he can tell us as far as he is concerned and Dr.
Servatius.

DR. PELCKMANN: Perhaps I will need two more hours today. I
believe my colleague, Dr. Laternser, will need one day for
his speech, as he has already said. How long the SA will
take I do not know. As to how long we shall take with the
pleas, I can only repeat what was said in the letter because
we were, of course, very busy with the taking of testimony,
the interrogation of witnesses, and with the presentation of
documents and affidavits until just a few days ago. But I
believe that on Monday we could all begin with our pleas. As
far as I know, my colleague Dr. Servatius - I do not know
whether he is here - is ready to begin his plea now.

We announced in the letter that We could hand in our pleas
at the and of the week as desired; if we count three days
for the translation and mimeographing, possibly one or the
other of us could hand in the manuscript on Friday, and we
could begin on Monday or Dr. Servatius might even begin at
the end of the week. I, personally, if I may say so, would
not be ready before Monday.

THE PRESIDENT: You will be ready by Monday?

DR. PELCKMANN: Not before Monday.

THE PRESIDENT: I think I ought to point out to counsel for
the organizations that the letter was addressed to the
Tribunal on 15th August, which is six days ago, so that they
have had six days since then in which to get their speeches
ready. I have also pointed out to each of the counsel for
the organizations that it is quite unnecessary, and it is
wasting the time of the Tribunal, to take so much time in
commenting upon their affidavits and other documents; and
the time would have been very much better spent in preparing
their speeches. But I gather from what you say - and perhaps
Dr. Servatius will be able to tell the Tribunal whether he
agrees with it, and Dr. Laternser, too - that counsel for
the organizations will in all probability be ready to go on
with their speeches on Monday and not request any delay
after that. Dr. Servatius, I understand, is ready to go on
at once.

DR. PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, perhaps I may say one more
thing. That the documents and affidavits are being commented
on at somewhat greater length than seems necessary to the
Tribunal is due - if I recall correctly - to the following

                                                  [Page 313]

specification of the Tribunal. When the time of the speeches
was set at three hours, it was said at the same time that
counsel would have an opportunity to make comments during
their presentation of affidavits and the documents, so that
they would have the full time of three hours for their
speeches, etc., at their disposal. We concluded from that
that we would have an opportunity to comment on the evidence
now, during the presentation of documents and affidavits.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but counsel for the organizations must
realize that all these affidavits are summarised in writing
before us; and therefore simply to repeat the summary which
we have in writing, of course, does not really help us at
all.

You have mentioned in the absence of Dr. Laternser, who I
see is now present, that Dr. Laternser, you think, would be
likely to take one day on these documents.

DR. PELCKMANN: Yes, he told me last night that he would
probably need a day.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me hear what he is going to say. Dr.
Laternser, in your absence, what I was saying was that the
Tribunal had had this letter of 15th August, which was
written six days ago, and that the Tribunal would like to
know how long counsel for the organizations anticipate they
will take over their documents, and whether they would be
ready to go on with their speeches immediately thereafter.
In answer to that, Dr. Pelckmann told me that he would take
two more hours and that he heard from you that you would be
likely to take one day.

I think the Tribunal would be very disinclined, very much
disinclined, to listen for one whole day upon the documents.

DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, I believe that I will
certainly need a day. Please consider the following: The
American prosecution used two days to present their
evidence. The Russian prosecution used many days for their
evidence against the General Staff. Now, having faced
considerable difficulties in procuring evidence within the
framework assigned to me, I do not believe I am asking for
too much when I say I need a day, which is a fraction of the
time which the prosecution used to present the evidence
against the General Staff.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser, you are altogether leaving out
consideration of the fact that we have set up these
Commissions and the fact that you have been before these
Commissions not only for one day but for many days.

DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, I presented the affidavits to
the Commission, but this was more a matter of form. The
purpose of my presentation of evidence is to bring a certain
order to it so that the Tribunal may see to what points of
the Indictment the individual affidavits are to apply.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, I would like to point out to the
Tribunal that Dr Laternser spent between nine and ten days
before the Commission on the General Staff; and, of course,
he called witnesses here in the courtroom as well, two, I
believe, or three - I have forgotten the number.

DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, that was not quite correct. I
used several days to examine witnesses but not to present
documents; and I must be in a position to present this
written evidence to the Tribunal in a certain order.
Otherwise it cannot be effective.

THE PRESIDENT: You say you must be in a position to present
it in a certain order. Well, nobody wishes you to present
the affidavits in the order in which they are numbered on
the document; but you can group them, presumably, unless
they all deal with different subjects. I rather gather that
you have a very great number of affidavits; and I feel quite
certain that a great many of them deal with the same topic;
and, therefore, in a very short time-probably in the course
of an hour - anybody could go through that list of
affidavits and could see which affidavits relate to the same
subject and could, therefore, group them. It is perfectly
simple; and the Tribunal will not under any circumstances be
prepared to

                                                  [Page 314]

have their time taken up four longer than half a day in the
presentation of documents by your organization or by any
other organization.

DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, may I say something else on
this point?

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser.

DR. LATERNSER: I ask the Tribunal to consider that the
Russian prosecution used several days to bring the most
serious charges against the military leadership; and I ask
that I may have approximately the same opportunity to answer
these charges -

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser, Mr. Dodd has just pointed out
that you have been before the Commission for nine or ten
days; and you have already spent two days here. We have the
very able and laborious work which has been performed by
these Commissioners all before us in writing. I have before
me at this moment a document. I do not know whether it is in
consecutive numbers - or nearly consecutive numbers - but
any rate it goes up to the number of 3,172 affidavits which
have been summarised. If not consecutive numbers it is at
any rate a bundle this thick of affidavits, which have been
summarised in writing by these Commissioners.

You, counsel for the organizations, have had the opportunity
of reading the report which has been made by the principal
Commissioner on these affidavits and have, as I understand,
not commented adversely upon any remark in that report. All
these matters are before the Tribunal; and in my opinion the
Tribunal have granted to the organizations the fullest
possible and most adequate opportunity of being heard before
the Tribunal; and the Tribunal think that they have heard
enough on this subject; and they adhere to the decision
which I have announced.

All right, Dr. Pelckmann.

DR. PELCKMANN: High Tribunal, I shall now give a short
presentation of the last group of individual affidavits.

First, I present Affidavit number 108.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, I am sorry to interrupt, but we are
a little bit confused. Sir David and I both feel that there
may be some misunderstanding about the position of Dr.
Pelckmann. We are rather of the opinion, from listening to
him, that he means that he will be ready only to submit his
speech for translation on Monday, and we wondered if the
Tribunal did not understand him to say that he would be
ready to make his speech on Monday, and thus avoid a delay
of three days.

THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, the way I understood you, Dr.
Pelckmann, was that you would be prepared to make your
speech on Monday; not that it would necessarily come on
Monday because, of course, Dr. Servatius's speech will come
before yours. Presumably, unless you make other arrangements
amongst yourselves, the speeches will be made in the order
in which the documents and the witnesses have been
presented. Doubtless you can make arrangements among
yourselves - which the Tribunal will be only too glad to
assent to - if one is ready and the other is not, but they
will expect that there will be no delay.

DR. PELCKMANN: I believe, your Lordship, that that will be
all right. As stated in the letter, we will present the
manuscripts for translation and mimeographing by the end of
the week. If, for example, I hand them in on Friday
afternoon, I believe I can speak on Monday afternoon or
Tuesday morning.

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute. That is all very well, but the
Translating Division are human, and I do not see any reason
why they should work on Sundays. I may be wrong, but I think
I remember that you have assistants who are helping you and
who, presumably, have been helping you ever since the 15th
August, on which day this document was presented. As I have
pointed out already, that is

                                                  [Page 315]

six days ago. Some parts of the speech ought to be ready now
and ought to be in the hands of the Translating Division.

I see by the list, that has just been handed to me, that you
have four assistants or that Dr. Babel has four assistants
and four secretaries, and that you have one associate
counsel and a secretary. I do not understand why the speech,
or some parts of it, should not have been handed to the
Translating Division already, and the same with the other
counsel appearing on behalf of the organizations.

DR. PELCKMANN: But we are still in the presentation of
evidence, Mr. President. So far it has not been possible for
me to prepare a complete plea before the end of the
presentation of evidence even after all my practical
experience. But may I make a suggestion, Mr. President? I
can hand in the manuscript of my plea for the Translating
Section on Friday afternoon, and I can probably hand in a
considerable part of it before that time.

THE PRESIDENT: All I am prepared to say is this, that I will
not, on behalf of the Tribunal, order the Translating
Division to work any more than the officer in command of
that Division thinks proper; and the Tribunal expects that
the speeches will go on without any delay. Is that clear?

DR. PELCKMANN: I was just dealing with SS Affidavit 108.
From this it can be seen that the SS had nothing to do with
the drive for the seizure of manpower.

Affidavits 102 and 103 prove that the so-called "Voluntary
Self-Protection," abbreviated FS - which the prosecution
considers a Fifth Column - had no connection with the SS and
was never armed in Slovakia and the Sudetenland.

Affidavits 106 and 111 deal with the nature of the
organisational book of the NSDAP and with that of the NS
Year-Book. The prosecution quotes from these books to prove
official opinions of the Party. These affidavits, however,
state that the organisational book and the NS Year-Book were
not official publications and that they are therefore no
proof for organisational questions.

SS Affidavit 109 deals with the charge of the prosecution
that SS men were protected by the regime when they committed
crimes. It proves that when SS members committed punishable
actions, before the establishment of the SS Courts in 1939,
the SS officers saw to it that no difficulties were put in
the way of the regular course of justice when such actions
were brought to their attention.

Finally, there is a last group, Affidavits 90, 30, 91, and
92.

Affidavit 30 is available only in the French translation. It
is an answer to the assertion of the prosecution that the
whole SS organization and its members knew that the SS was a
criminal organization.

The affidavits state, to mention an example, that there were
particularly good relations between the foreign Diplomatic
Corps and the SS, so that the SS members could not assume
that this organization was criminal.

Now I wish to deal briefly with the affidavits which I
mentioned at the beginning, and of which no digest is
available.

THE PRESIDENT: What did you mean by saying that there was a
group, which I took down as being 90, 31 or 30, or possibly
both of them, and 92? By the document which is before me,
Affidavits numbers 90, 91, and 92 have been withdrawn. Is
that a mistake?

DR. PELCKMANN: I had made application in the Commission to
have them admitted, and the prosecution did not want to have
them admitted. As far as I can recall, no decision was
reached by the Commission and it was postponed. But I heard
two days ago that Colonel Neave, who was presiding in the
Commission at that time, said that they had definitely not
been admitted. That is new to me. If this should be the
case, then I would ask for a decision of the Tribunal
whether these affidavits can be admitted. This decision need
not be given at once.

                                                  [Page 316]

THE PRESIDENT: You just cited them as a group. Have they got
any relation to number 30? Number 30, you say, refers to the
relationship between the SS and the foreign Diplomatic
Corps. Do 90 and 92 refer to that?

DR. PELCKMANN: Yes, 30 was approved and is available in the
French translation. The English translation -

THE PRESIDENT: We can take it then, and we will consider the
application. We can take it that 90 and 92 deal with the
same subject, is that right?

DR. PELCKMANN: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: That is quite sufficient. I do not want any
more.

DR. PELCKMANN: Now I shall deal again with Affidavits 68,
64, and 69. I must refute the assertion of the prosecution
that ill-treatment, individual killings, and mass
exterminations in the concentration camps can be charged
against the SS as a whole because, as the prosecution
asserts, they were known to most of the SS men. The very
important and elucidating records of the trials of the
Allied Military Courts against members of the concentration
camp Kommandanturen, and against guards - for example, the
trials at Belsen, Mauthausen, Dachau, Neuengamme, Celle, and
Rasstadt - I was not able to obtain. A systematic
examination of the witnesses and a part of the affidavits
from the camps made it possible for me  to ascertain facts
sufficient to refute the assertion of the prosecution.

On 29th January, the President said that witnesses and
evidence from the defense were especially wanted on the
point concerning concentration camps. The President said on
the same day, in answer to the question of the French
Prosecutor Dubost, whether the Tribunal was convinced that
the same terrible conditions prevailed in all camps which
two witnesses had testified to: "If you want prove that, M.
Dubost, it is necessary to call a witness from each of the
hundreds of camps." I refer to the transcript. And,
therefore, for purposes of defence, I have a number of
affidavits from guards, members of the Kommandanturen and
inmates of camps, and also from visitors to the
concentration camps. I have submitted them as contra-
evidence. Now, I refer only to an affidavit which see very
important to me, number 68.

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