Archive/File: imt/nca/supp-b/nca-sb-02-frank.10-00 Last-Modified: 1997/11/26 Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Supplement B Administration and Exploitation of Poland Excerpts from Testimony of Hans Frank, taken at Nurnberg, Germany, 10 September 1945, 1440-1720, by Lt. Col. Thomas S. Hinkel, IGD. Also present: Capt. Jesse F. Landrum, Reporter; Bernard Reymon, Interpreter. Q. My question is, what was your principal duty? A. My principle duty was in a country completely liquidate by war to establish an administration. The administration placed under my authority was in charge of the following departments: in the administration firstly, the division was the following-- under the Governor General were governors and under each governor of the district there was a Kreishauptmann a title coined by me, and under the authority of the Kreishauptmann was the Polish voit (a Polish word) and each Polish voit had 10 to 20 communities under his administration. That was according to the number of the population, and all the Polish voits of one district formed, so to speak, the staff of the Kreishauptmann. The task of the Polish voits was to apply beneath them the orders coming from above and to transmit the claims from below to authorities above. That was the inner administration. For the cities, there was instead of a Kreishauptmann a Stadthauptmann and under the Stadthauptmann there was a Polish Beurgermeister. Also, I had the seat of my General Government in Cracow, and each governor in his turn had his own admins- [Page 1380] tration. That is what I call the backbone of the administration; and then come the Departments of Education, of Finance, Agriculture, Health. There were about 12 or 13 departments in all. And besides this administration, as outlined by me, there were in the country the following administrations which were entirely independent of and from me: the most important there were the Police and the SS. It had been said officially that the Chief of the Police was under my authority; but that was simply a personal way of emphasizing his rank was not above mine; and subsequently, by an order of the Fuehrer (which was published in a general order), the Police was entirely removed from my jurisdiction to such an extent that it had its own State Secretary, which State Secretary received his orders directly from Himmler. To mark the complete separation and distinction of the Police and the SS from my administration, no member of the Police force or SS was a member of my administration; whereas, all the officials of all departments under the order of the Governor General were being paid out of my treasury, while the personnel of the police and SS were being paid directly from and by the cash of Himmler and Berlin. So that I had not even any disciplinary authority over the Police as any chief is supposed to have. Any attempt to manage the Police had to go in the shape of a request, not in the form of an order. On the top of all this, the Chief of Police was not only a direct representative of Himmler as Chief Commissar of the General Police, but also "fuer die Festigung des Volkstums," and besides, in the question of the Jews, this system was quite impossible and I had continually to envisage my resignation as I was in continual conflict. I wish only to say that my fight with or against the Police and the SS was known throughout the whole country. It was only the Polish Emigre- government in London which did not see the picture as it was; whereas, the native Poles at home, with whom I collaborated, they saw the things as they were. It is only after three years of struggle that the head of the police, Krueger, was finally recalled. This recall of Krueger was, to a certain extent, a triumph for me as it was a symbolical proof that my policy had got the upper hand; so that the successor to Krueger, Koppe, was a rather decent person. It is evident that the reports sent by Krueger to Himmler at Berlin and Himmler being my enemy, are for me today the most glamorous justification because in those reports I was depicted as a regular formalist, as a weakling, as a man who was not in good standing with the Poles and who did not carry out the very policy for which Himmler stood. [Page 1381] Q. How do you know that? A. In my continual visits to Berlin this was told me by Minister Lammers and in one of the few interviews I had personally with Hitler -- it was in 1943 in the presence of Bormann -- Hitler himself made reference to those reports by and from Himmler. This conference probably took place sometime in May 1943. I again offered to resign, saying that I could not keep on in that manner. Buehler is well aware of these facts and I wish you could give him a hearing. The economic life in Poland was in three directions: in the first place, all matters of agriculture were taken care of by the agricultural representative of my government; secondly, departments non-agricultural and non-important from the war point of view were attended to by the heads of the departments, also within my government. But while the most important part of the economy was continued by the Chief of the 4-Year-Plan, Hermann Goering, or by and from the Minister for Armaments, Goering even had the right to issue orders, which had legal force in the General Government, without consulting me. Q. Did he ever do that? A. This is printed in the legal publications. Q. Did he ever issue any such orders? A. Unfortunately, more than once. The worst of it was regarding the furnishing of foodstuff in the first two years of the war. Thus, once he asked for 500,000 tons of cereal (corn) from the General Government. Q. Did you furnish it? A. I did not furnish it. I had a very grave conflict with him. Goering said he didn't care whether anybody starves in Europe, but the German people ought not to starve. I furnished only a part which went to the Wehrmacht. From that time on, Goering called me "King Stanislas." Q. Do you recall receiving an order from Goering regarding the exploitation of Polish natural resources? A. This order was some time around December 1939, and thereupon, I went to see Adolf Hitler and I told him it can't go on. Goering wanted, at that time, that we break off every second track of the double railway lines. Q. What did you do, in response to this order that was received from Goering, besides complain to the Fuehrer? A. We didn't carry it out. Q. You didn't? You didn't do anything at all? A. We didn't do anything and what he did do, he did it with his own personnel. [Page 1382] Q. What did the Fuehrer tell you when you complained to him about this order? A. Hitler sided absolutely with me. He said it was madness. Q. Was the order ever withdrawn? A. I don't know whether it was formally withdrawn. Q. Isn't it a fact that Poland was exploited? A. I should remind you that I came into the country in November 1939. At that time, there was a delegate of the OKW, Buehrmann, and he was especially in charge of transportation of the most precious machinery to Germany; and as soon as I took up my duties as Governor-General, I received from all the governors a complaint to the effect that the situation was getting impossible. Things reached a climax where we in the General Government had not a single ton of copper because all the copper had been taken away. The machinery from Polish factories had been, long before my arrival, carried off by Buermann.
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