Archive/File: imt/nca/supp-b/nca-sb-02-kaltenbrunner.05
Last-Modified: 1997/11/22

         Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Supplement B
        Kaltenbrunner's Stand on Concentration Camps

                                                 [Page 1300]
                        
Excerpts from Testimony of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, taken at Nurnberg,
Germany, 5 October 1945, 1030-1210, by Lt. Col. Smith W. Brookhart, 
IGD. Also present: Capt. Jesse F. Landrum, Reporter; T/5 Gunter 
Kosse, Interpreter.

Q. You had information at your finger tips from all over the
Reich; you made reports on conditions and must have included
matters of new inmates for concentration camps and new
forced labor groups?

A. No, I had nothing to do with shipments to the
concentration camps; I naturally knew that there were
concentration camps but that's all I knew about that.

Q. Well, according to the sworn statement of Colonel Mildner
[See document L-35, Vol. VII, p. 780], orders for
deportation of Jews, in the Reich and in countries occupied
by German troops, to labor and concentration camps were
issued by Himmler. Orders had his signature and were
classified TOP SECRET. They passed through you, and before
you, Heydrich to Mueller.

A. No.

Q. Orders also went directly from Himmler to local
headquarters, but you were always informed.

A. No, that's not true, either.

Q. Orders of Himmler concerning type of labor employment of
prisoners and for the extermination of Jews went directly
through Pohl and from him to Gluecks, either written as TOP
SECRET or sometimes orally, and always as adviser to Himmler
was Kaltenbrunner on all Jewish questions, on all
deportations to camps.

A. Never. He must mix that with Heydrich's time.

Q. We are only concerned at this point with Kaltenbrunner's
time.

A. But I am the one who is accused here and, therefore, I
have to take some kind of a stand.

Q. That's your right. The basis for Colonel Mildner's
statements as to channels through which orders were issued
were his conversations with Mueller and other people in the
SIPO [Security Police].

A. He must have talked with Mueller about that, then.

Q. That's what he swears.

A. That might be possible, that Mueller tried to push the
fault on somebody else; I don't doubt that at all, but I can
only say

                                                 [Page 1301]
                                                            
again that Mueller was only the tool of Himmler. I must say
again that I never got any plenipotentiary for the Gestapo.
I said many times before that I took a stand against many
things but there was nothing I could do.

Q. There is nothing in what I have brought to your attention
that shows any disposition for Mueller to dodge his
responsibility; it's merely the inclusion of the channels
which included yourself through which these orders passed.

A. Like I said, that a basis for this Mildner got through
conversations with Mueller and therefore I say that Mueller
is trying to push the fault on somebody else. Mildner
himself gets all mixed up because in one paragraph he says
that a report went from Himmler to Mueller and then he said
it went from Himmler through me to Mueller.

Q That's correct. On different occasions the channels
differed, as you have said, but he adds what you failed to
add, that you were always informed.

A. Everybody in Germany knew that those were affairs of the
Gestapo and the deportation of Jews was done by the Gestapo
on orders from Himmler.

Q. After being arrested and sent to concentration camps, in
whose charge was the treatment, health, and assignment of
work for the internees?

A. Pohl.

Q. What reports were received by Kaltenbrunner from
concentration camps?

A. Not one.

Q. What was the basis for your classifying camps into
classes one, two, or three?

A. I never classified them myself but that was all over.

Q. What office did it come out of?

A That could only have come from Pohl or from Himmler.

Q. What was the purpose of such classification?

A. Probably the difference of work production.

Q. Was there any distinction made as to the character of the
inmates, whether they were there because of alleged racial
inferiority -- as the Jews -- or because of their political
beliefs?

A. I don't know that but I am sure to know that was not the
reason. I think it was more the kind of work, like
agriculture or industry.

Q. Who picked the location of the concentration camps?

A. Maybe Himmler.

                                                 [Page 1302]
                                                            
Q. Why do you say that?

A. Because that was his work and he was supposed to build
them up.

Q. Who caused the building of the gas chambers that were
designed as shower rooms?

A. I don't know that.

Q. You don't like to have questions asked about gas
chambers, do you?

A. Why shouldn't I like such a question? I can only say
again that already in Bamberg a paper was showed to me where
I was accused of being a specialist and adviser to Hitler
concerning these gas chambers and that naturally could not
be very pleasant and right to me.

Q. When did you first have any knowledge of the use or the
planned use or the result of the use of gas through
chambers, mobile vans, or other means of exterminating these
unwanted people?

A. I don't know the time, but as soon as I got foreign
reports about that I showed them to Hitler and Himmler --
not to Himmler but to Hitler -- and Goebbels.

Q. What did they say?

A. I didn't show it to them personally, but I sent it to
them by mail, and a few days later I got word that both of
them are going to talk this over with Himmler.

Q. And after that, the use increased, didn't it?

A. I don't know that.

Q. And Kaltenbrunner was sending in advice all the while?

A. That's a statement which I cannot verify at all.

Q. That's a statement that many, many other representatives
of the Nazi government continue to make.

A. That's a lie if anybody makes such a statement. I want
you to consider that between 1933 and 1943 ten years  passed
in which I did not have anything to do with that office. How
can you make such a statement, because at that time, as it
was reported from foreign countries, things like that were
done by Himmler.

Q. Because they continued to be done through 1943, 1944, and
until the allied armies overran the concentration camps in
1945, and through those years Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the
RSHA which had them in charge.

A. No, I was never in charge of any such, but orders were
done, as I said in my statement in London, by Himmler or
Pohl. No commander of any concentration camp in any part of
Germany can say that he ever got the slightest order from
me.

                                                 [Page 1303]
                                                            
Q. Would it surprise you to know that that is substantially
the same answer that everyone else is giving that has had
anything to do with these matters?

A. I can't know but I cannot explain that nothing else
otherwise can be proved through evidence.

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