Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-22/tgmwc-22-209.05
Last-Modified: 2001/01/10

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: At least half of them were
executed before Mr. Marreco, counsel, whom you know. Others,
from the north of Germany, were  - there I agree - some of
them, executed before local notaries. My Lord, some were
executed before Mr. Marreco, of course, who is an Allied
officer, and others appear to be sworn before notaries. And
as I say, the two that Dr. Boehm had hoped to put in were
not signed before anyone.

THE PRESIDENT: I think we should see the documents before we
consider the objection.

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: Might I hand up first D-929,
which becomes Exhibit GB 620. My Lord, it is an affidavit by
Dr. Anton Pfeiffer. Bavarian Minister of State, in the State
Ministry for Special Tasks.

THE PRESIDENT: When was he minister?

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: He is now - he says that: "At
the time of the seizure of power, in the year 1933, I was
Secretary General of the Bavarian People's Party."

DR. BOEHM: Mr. President, it was precisely in order to
prevent the type of proceedings which are developing now
that, during the hearing of the witness Guettner, I -

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Boehm, the type of proceedings which are
now going on are the type of proceedings which the Tribunal
has just ordered. The Tribunal wishes to see the documents
in order to decide upon them. Go on, Colonel Griffith-Jones.

                                                   [Page 19]

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, in that affidavit he
says that pressure was brought to bear on certain officials
to make them join the Party, that is civil servants. And
then he goes on in the latter half to say how he and other
people heard of and knew about the atrocities that happened
in the East and the annihilation of the Jews. He says in the
middle paragraph, "I am not aware that officials who were
Party members were threatened with dismissal from the
service if they refused to accept a political Party job,
like Blockleiter or Zellenleiter. At any rate," he says, "I
never heard of such a case." My Lord, I do not think it is
necessary for me to read any other passages of that
affidavit, No. D-929.

My Lord, the next affidavit to which I shall refer is D-949,
which becomes Exhibit GB 621, from the Lord Mayor of
Brunswick. He describes himself, he gives his own personal
data. He then goes on to describe the activities of the SA
from 1921 to 1923, in the first paragraph of No. 1, that is;
he then goes on to describe their activities in 1933, how
he, himself, was removed from his office by the SA. On the
next page, he describes how he was led out of the town hall
and put into prison, by the SA again. In the next paragraph
he states that membership in the SA was absolutely voluntary
until 1937. "Whilst until 1933 one could assume that many SA
members acted in good faith, believing that the SA had a
just task for combating Communism, after the events of
March, 1933 there was, in my opinion, no longer any doubt
that the SA acted contrary to law by their participation in
the seizure of power by Hitler." Then he goes on to say how
they distinguished themselves later in an illegal manner.

He deals then with the SS. He says that they were voluntary
except for those SS that were compelled to join during the
course of the war, or were drafted to the SS during the
course of the war.

He then goes on in the last paragraph of that page to
describe his own illegal arrest by the SS and the appalling
torture to which he was subjected by members of that
organisation. He says, some twelve lines down the next page:
"Before I was ill-treated, I pointed out that I was a war
cripple, to which Sturmfuehrer Meyer replied that in that
case the arm would be spared." And he was then beaten with
hippopotamus-hide whips until he was unconscious; when he
was knocked out, he was revived with cold water and beaten
to unconsciousness again.

The second small paragraph on Page 3: "The organisation and
the ideology of the SS were aimed so exactly and so
pitilessly at eliminating political opponents and so-called
racially inferior persons that everyone who joined it was
bound to realise its criminal nature."

My Lord, I pass on to the next one that I offer to the
Tribunal, D-938, which becomes Exhibit GB 622. That is an
affidavit from Dr. Viktor Fenyes, President of the Central
Committee of Former Political Prisoners of the Province of
Hanover. It first of all deals with the Leadership Corps, in
particular the Block- and Zellenleiter.

THE PRESIDENT: Would you tell us, as you introduce each one
of these, how they were taken and before whom?

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, I am very much obliged,
of course. That one was taken ... if the Tribunal would look
at the next page of it, it was taken on oath before a notary
in Hanover. The previous one - my Lord, the previous one
states that it was taken on oath, but I am afraid it is not
witnessed.

My Lord, dealing with D-938 as I said, he deals with the
Block- and Zellenleiter and he states that there was
definite pressure brought on people to join the Party,
pressure by way of threats; that they assisted in the
persecution of the Jews and the Block- and Zellenleiter
participated, almost without exception, in the setting on
fire of the synagogues in 1938. It then deals with the SA,
"membership was voluntary." In the last three lines he
states that former members of the SA

                                                   [Page 20]

protest today they entered the organisation under pressure.
This is not true, for actually not everyone was admitted
into the SA. My Lord, he then goes on to deal with the SS,
and I think it is only cumulative to read any of it again.

My Lord, the next document is D-931, which becomes Exhibit
GB 623. It was signed before Mr. Marreco, by the Secretary
General of the Bavarian, Peasants' Union in Munich, Dr.
Schloegel, who was a delegate of the Bavarian Diet at the
time of the seizure of power by the Nazis, and was the
victim of an assault. And the decision of the Court against
the SA men who perpetrated that assault, is already before
the Tribunal. It was D-936, Exhibit GB 616; and the Tribunal
will remember that, because the decision stated that the
deeds and intentions of the SA men were only aimed at the
well-being of the National Socialist movement, political
reason and the purity of the intentions was thus beyond
doubt. Dr. Schloegel, in his affidavit, described the ill-
treatment he received. And then he says in the third
paragraph, "Following my complaint, the perpetrators were
not punished but pardoned, the ringleader Bernhard was
promoted as a reward and, as I have been told now, rose to
the rank of Brigadefuehrer."

He goes on to say that in his opinion the criminal nature of
the SS and SA were common knowledge and that everybody who
joined them must have known to what use they were to be put
by the Party. And then he - in the last paragraph he -

THE PRESIDENT: Well, perhaps you could just hand them up and
not read them into the record, because the Tribunal reserves
the right to reject them.

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes, my Lord. I submit D-934,
which is an affidavit - D 934, becomes Exhibit GB 624, which
is an affidavit sworn before Mr. Marreco, an affidavit by
Albert Rosshaupter, Bavarian Minister of Labour in Munich.

D-932, which becomes Exhibit GB 625, is an affidavit also
sworn before Mr. Marreco.

D-933, which becomes Exhibit GB 626, by a Joseph Ackerman, a
director, of Munich, also sworn before Mr. Marreco.

And Affidavit D-950, which becomes Exhibit GB 627, of a Mr.
Adolf Fahlbusch,  which was sworn before a notary in
Hanover.

Perhaps I ought to say that all the affidavits which were
not taken by Mr. Marreco were taken by the Legal Division of
the Control Commission for Germany, or were taken under
their auspices. This Legal Division of the Control
Commission for Germany were asked to obtain these
affidavits, and that is how it comes about that they were
perhaps not sworn in accordance with the regulations laid
down by the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that all?

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, I have one further
affidavit of a somewhat different nature, which shows the
credit of, or the value the Tribunal should place on, the
affidavits which have been submitted by the defence. It is
an affidavit of an SS man who was in one of the internment
camps in the British Zone when the questionnaire was filled
out at the camp, the questionnaire which I understand the
Tribunal allowed the defence counsel to submit in these
camps. My Lord, I have this affidavit, which I shall hand up
to the Tribunal, it is D-973 and becomes Exhibit GB 628, an
affidavit by Mr. Kurt Ehrhardt.

My Lord, he was an SS man who joined the SS in 1933, he
never took any part in their activities and was dismissed
from the SS in 1937 because he had a Jewish partner and a
Jewish brother-in-law. He was -

THE PRESIDENT: I can get all this from the affidavit, I
suppose.

LT.-COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, that affidavit does not
show on the copy that it was signed on oath and before whom.
My Lord, the original

                                                   [Page 21]

shows that it was sworn before Major Hill of the British
Delegation. My Lord, that -

THE PRESIDENT: Could you tell me when it was that Sir David
Maxwell Fyfe offered to introduce these affidavits, or
intimated he was proposing to do so?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, I shall check it during the
adjournment; I think it was the Friday before last, because
it was before, my Lord, it was certainly before I cross-
examined the SA witnesses. As your Lordship may remember, I
offered either to put the affidavits to the SA witnesses or
to put them in after the documents of the defence counsel
were presented.

THE PRESIDENT: That is what I wanted to know. That will be
in the transcript, I suppose, that you said - if you could
let us know.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: Yes, my Lord, I understand it was
accepted, and your Lordship asked if there were any
objections and, my Lord, there were no objections from the
other side.

DR. BOEHM: Mr. President, I recall this matter very clearly.
I brought up the subject of these affidavits during the
examination of the witness Guettner, and in view of my
objection, the Tribunal stated at the time that, if these
affidavits were to be presented, they had to be presented
then. My objection was that I would no longer be in a
position to refute the affidavits once my last witness had
been heard, because I would then have no other means of
introducing new evidence. I took the decision of the
Tribunal to mean that the Tribunal agreed with me that
affidavits should not be submitted by the prosecution once I
was no longer able to reply to them as part of my own
evidence, and that these affidavits should be submitted
while the evidence was being taken, or before that -

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Boehm, we will refer to the transcript to
see exactly what happened.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: My Lord, they had already been
mentioned before the incident arose. That was an incident
that arose with regard to Dr. Hoegner's affidavit during the
evidence of Guettner. All the affidavits were mentioned at
an earlier date which I will discover for your Lordship
during the adjournment.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then the Tribunal will adjourn now
and will sit again at 2.30.

A recess was taken until 14.30 hours.

THE PRESIDENT: With reference to the first group of
documents which were objected to by the Soviet Prosecutor,
the Tribunal thinks that, as those documents had been
included in the document book for the SA after the agreement
and the Affidavit 82 had been allowed by the Commission, in
spite of the fact that those documents relate to a remote
period, they ought to be allowed. They are, therefore,
admitted. They are Documents 285, 286, 287, 132 and 82.

With reference to the eleven affidavits - perhaps I should
say to the ten affidavits which the British prosecution
offered in evidence, the Tribunal has reconsidered the
shorthand note which shows what Sir David Maxwell Fyfe said
on the 9th of August and what was said on the 14th of August
and on the 15th of August, and although there was at that
time no doubt a suggestion that these documents might be put
in, the Tribunal thinks that the question still has to be
considered whether the documents ought to be admitted as
rebuttal. In view of the nature of the documents the
Tribunal thinks that the documents are not proper evidence
in rebuttal on the whole and that therefore they ought to be
excluded. That includes all the affidavits with the
exception of the affidavit of Kurt Erhardt, which stands in
a different position. In view of the nature of the evidence
contained m that affidavit, it will be admitted.

That is all.

                                                   [Page 22]

DR. BOEHM: Mr. President, I should like to ask you to hear
me a moment longer. In my presentation of documents, I
avoided quoting from my document books. As, however, this
morning the prosecution put SA Document 156, which is a
directive of the schools for higher learning in Munich, in
juxtaposition to the same directive given out by the
Hochschulamt in Cologne, I should like to point out that in
(3) of both of these directives, the same directive of the
7th of February, 1934, is mentioned and that when these two
documents are put in. juxtaposition, it says in each case
"For all members of the German student body service in the
SA has been made obligatory." In order to make it
understandable that the prosecution believed they had found
a contradiction, I should like to read the last sentence in
connection with the directives issued by the board of higher
education in Cologne.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will consider the true
interpretation. We quite understand that on the one hand you
are contending that the service in the SA was compulsory and
the prosecution are contending the opposite and they are
putting in this other document which they say supports their
view. It is not necessary to have an argument about it at
this stage.

DR. BOEHM: I merely wanted to add four more words, four
words to the last sentence under (3), " .... or not to
study." Then the Russian Prosecutor stated today that
Document 91 -

THE PRESIDENT: Are you saying that there is some misprint in
the document or what?

DR. BOEHM: No, Mr. President. I wanted to -

THE PRESIDENT: Then you are simply arguing on the
interpretation of the words, and I have told you that the
Tribunal will consider the interpretation and decide the
interpretation for itself.

DR. BOEHM: Very well, Mr. President, but may I put in the
next document, which the prosecution asserts I submitted
only because of the last paragraph. That is not correct. The
next document, General SA 91, was not submitted by me
because of the last paragraph but rather because of the
first paragraph. That refers to the attitude of the Attorney
General towards the Oberlandesgericht in Braunschweig.

THE PRESIDENT: All right. We understand that you rely on the
first paragraph and not on the last paragraph.

DR. BOEHM: Yes, Mr. President. Thank you very much.

DR. PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, may it please the Tribunal.
Yesterday, on behalf of the SS which I represent, I
submitted a summarisation of 136,213 affidavits. I ask you
not to confuse this summarisation with some statistics,
concerning which I merely said at the conclusion of
yesterday's session that I would submit them without
comment. Everything that I said yesterday about the
testimony and points of view of SA men refers only to the
one hundred and thirty-six thousand affidavits which contain
a complete text and which are independent affidavits. The
statistics, which I mentioned toward the end of yesterday's
session, are based on a questionnaire and are not to be
confused with those 136,000 affidavits which I used. This
questionnaire, however, was not asked for by me. I did not
attach any value to it and the replies made to it, and I
merely handed it in - merely handed in these statistics - in
order to get rid of all the material which I had ever
received. I did not ask for this questionnaire, and I was
not the attorney or defence counsel for the SS mentioned by
Herr Kurt Erhardt in his affidavit. It is well known to the
High Tribunal that the defence has changed counsel in the
meantime.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we quite understand that it was not
quite asked for by you. We accept that.

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