Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-16/tgmwc-16-150.05
Last-Modified: 2000/05/16

Q. Professor Schramm, might I ask you to speak just a little
more slowly?

This order - the contents of which you have just described
to us, and by means of which you have established the date
of the final and most stringent formulation - did this order
apply to a man like General Jodl?

A. If it applied to the Army Commanders, it naturally
applied all the more to General Jodl.

Q. I now turn to another question.

General Jodl has been described as a political general. You
are a civilian, and, what is more, a professor; I assume,
therefore, that you are qualified to express your views on
that point and to supply the Tribunal with facts which will
permit it to form its decision. Can you give us facts which
would of necessity form a basis for judgement for or
against?

A. If the question aims at establishing whether or not the
General was a Party general, then I say most emphatically
"No". It was utterly immaterial to the General whether the
members of his staff were Party members or not. Although I
was on that staff for two years, I personally could not tell
you which of the officers were Party members. That was
completely unimportant. As to whether the General exercised
political influence, I must again draw your attention to the
tremendous amount of work for which he was responsible. He
would not have had time for political affairs, and, with
regard to my documents, I can only tell you that I do not
remember any papers from which such a conclusion might be
drawn. What the General committed to paper - and these
papers, as I have seen myself, run into thousands - was
always strictly confined to military matters and in no way
encroached upon the sphere of politics. To be more exact, I
do not remember in the course of those two years ever seeing
in my files any document of a political nature inspired by
the Chief of the Armed Forces Operations Staff or written by
himself.

Q. Yes; but perhaps he was fond of the limelight and had
great ambitions; and perhaps outside the files -

A. I can answer that question with a definite "No", because
I know from his associates, and from conversations with him,
that all the diplomatic procedure was repugnant to him, and
that he disliked it because it had nothing to do with
soldiers. I did not notice any ambition, for if the General
had been ambitious, he certainly had chosen the least
suitable position for realising his ambitions - a position
in which he was exposed to criticism from those under him,
from people who did not know the underlying reasons. From
that time on he was criticized a good deal; and he did not
receive from higher quarters the recognition he deserved. I
always thought it peculiar and even grotesque, that the
General, at the time of Adolf Hitler's death, had scarcely
more German war decorations than I had myself, a mere major
in the reserve. I did not see whether he had foreign
decorations. I never saw him wearing a foreign order. At any
rate, there were no indications of ambition or of political
aspirations.

                                                   [Page 58]

Q. During this trial there has been frequent mention of a
speech made by the General during the winter of 1943-1944,
which was addressed to the Gauleiter. I do not know whether
you know anything about that speech.

A. Yes, I remember it exactly.

Q. What do you remember exactly?

A. First of all, let me tell you that the reason why I
remember it exactly is because I received the material on
which the speech had been based; after it was no longer
needed, it was given to me for my war diary.

It was a speech for which material was collected in the
various departments. For this purpose, an enormous map was
needed, which was difficult to prepare because it was larger
than the offices in which we were working. The speech was
made at this annual meeting in Munich on 8th or 9th
November.

The particular reason for the General to make a speech
outside the usual military circle was the following:

Italy's dropping out of the war in September 1943 had led to
a break in the Southern front extending from Marseilles to
Athens - a distance of 4,000 km. We had succeeded in filling
the gap again, but a good deal of uneasiness was felt by all
those who understood the situation.

MR. ROBERTS: My Lord, I object to long reasons being given
for the speech being made. The speech is in evidence, and,
in my submission, the reasons for the speech are entirely
immaterial.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal upholds the objection.

BY DR. JAHRREISS:

Q. Witness, please go on telling us about the attack.

A. This was the one reason -

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, I said that the Tribunal upheld Mr.
Roberts' objection as to what the witness must say. That's a
mistranslation.

DR. JAHRREISS: It was a misunderstanding. I am so sorry. It
was wrongly translated.

BY DR. JAHRREISS:

Q. Witness, I want to show you a document which was
submitted to the Tribunal by the prosecution two days ago,
PS-1808.

Perhaps you will just look through the whole of the document
first.

(The witness is handed the document.)

THE PRESIDENT: Is it among the Jodl documents?

DR. JAHRREISS: No; it is a document which the prosecution
submitted in the course of the cross-examination two days
ago.

MR. ROBERTS: My Lord, that document was handed up separately
by me during the cross-examination, and I am afraid it is
not in the book. It is one of those documents which received
a new GB number, and was handed up loose towards the end of
the cross-examination, 1808-PS.

DR. JAHRREISS: Thank you. May I go on?

THE PRESIDENT: Go on, Dr. Jahrreiss.

BY DR. JAHRREISS

O. Witness, does your signature appear at the foot of the
second last page, on the right?

A. Yes. This is a file which I started after the attempt of
20th July, 1944, in order to have a permanent record of what
was being done in the Operations Staff. I want to add in
this connection that the Operations Staff was in no way
involved in that conspiracy. This copy presumably comes from
the war archives. The signature and the corrections are
partly mine, and partly those of my clerk.

Q. I want to draw your attention to number five in this file
of documents.

A. Yes.

                                                   [Page 59]

Q. It is dated 25th July. Have you got it?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you draw it up?

A. Yes, I drew it up myself.

Q. Please, will you tell us what the basis for this work of
yours was?

A. The officers of the staff were called to our mess hall at
short notice. We were told that the General wanted to
address his staff. As not all the officers were able to
attend, I was ordered to take notes, so that the other
officers could be informed of what the General had said. I
remember clearly that I noted down a few heads, still
standing; so this is not a shorthand record; I cannot write
shorthand. There was no time to find a stenographer.

Q. Well, did you base this on your notes?

A. Yes. Afterwards, probably on the following day, I
reconstructed the General's speech as far as possible from
my notes. I am not certain, of course, if all the details
are quite accurate, because the notes which I had taken
standing up were much too sketchy for that, and, of course,
I am particularly doubtful about the accuracy of the actual
words spoken. I now see that there are four and a half
pages. The speech was, of course, very much longer than
that. It is therefore a condensed account.

Q. A condensed account?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, I should like to know more about the circumstances
in which the General made that speech; the actual words of
which we do not possess. That was -

MR. ROBERTS: My Lord, it is my respectful submission, again
in the interests of saving time, to mention that these
matters are all very irrelevant. We know that an attempt was
made on Hitler's life, and that Jodl addressed his staff. It
is my submission that the circumstances are not relevant at
all.

DR. JAHRREISS: Mr. President -

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal hopes you'll do it briefly.

DR. JAHRREISS: Yes; thank you.

BY DR. JAHRREISS:

Q. Witness, please will you be very brief and quote the
personal circumstances?

A. The general appeared on the scene with white bandages
round his head. We were all most surprised that he should
have recovered so quickly from the attempt considering that
he had been standing right next to the explosion: I must say
that at that time we were deeply impressed by the
concentrated energy with which he reappeared before his
staff and by his moral attitude to such an attempt.

DR. JAHRREISS: Thank you, Mr. President. I have no further
questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Do other defendants' counsel want to ask any
questions? (No response.)

THE PRESIDENT: Does the prosecution want to?

MR. ROBERTS: My Lord, I have no questions.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire.

DR. JAHRREISS: I have no further questions. May I now call
the next witness, General Winter?

GENERAL AUGUST WINTER, a witness, took the stand and
testified as follows:

BY THE PRESIDENT:

Q. Will you state your full name, please?

A. August Winter.

                                                   [Page 60]

Q. Will you repeat this oath after me:

I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will
speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

THE PRESIDENT: Will you sit down.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY DR. JAHRREISS:

Q. Witness, did you take part in the beginning of the
Russian campaign?

A. Yes, I took part as the first general staff officer of
Field Marshal von Rundstedt's army group.

Q. Witness, may I point out to you that I want you to allow
a slight pause after my question and to speak in general
more slowly than you have just been doing.

A. Yes.

Q. Can you tell me, since you had a very responsible
position, what was Hitler's official reason for the German
attack on the Soviet Union?

A. The official reason given to me at the time by my
Commander-in-Chief was that an attack from Soviet Russia was
to be expected shortly and that this was therefore a
preventive measure.

Q. And then you were present at the first battles on the
frontier, were you not?

A. Yes, as a staff officer.

Q. That was in the south?

A. It was in the Ukraine, Army Group South.

Q. Even after those first battles, you had gained some
experiences and formed certain impressions of the enemy, had
you not?

A. Yes.

Q. Were they, General, such impressions as to confirm the
official reason given, that of a preventive war?

A. It was the universal impression of the Supreme Command of
the Army Group, including the Supreme Commander, the
Commander-in-Chief, and the operational division under my
command, that the reason given for the campaign was the true
one. Our own impression at the time was that we had hit on
active preparations for an offensive campaign.

Q. But had you any facts on which to base this impression?

A. We had a number of facts which, we thought, confirmed
that impression. I will state them briefly. First of all,
there was the strength of the troops we were fighting,
which, although I cannot give you figures now, was greater
than the figures mentioned in our marching orders. Then
there was the forced deployment of troops so near the
frontier, which was striking; the unusually large proportion
of armoured troops, far exceeding anything we had expected;
and the deployment of a comparatively strong group opposite
the Hungarian border, which we could not explain to
ourselves as a defensive force. One point is particularly
significant; the fact that during the first week we found
that captured enemy staffs were equipped with maps which
covered a large area of German or ex-Austrian territory
which, again, did not seem to accord with purely defensive
considerations. In addition we observed a number of smaller
things, not very important in themselves.

Q. Witness, just now you spoke of a thing which, in your
opinion, was particularly significant, namely, the finding
of these maps which you described a few minutes ago. Why is
that particularly significant - more significant than the
other things you have mentioned?

A. It is particularly noticeable that the units on the
Russian front were equipped with maps covering much more
than the area which would normally be included in a
defensive reconnaissance area, even allowing for the fact
that at the beginning of a campaign such reconnaissance
might go beyond the enemy's frontier.

                                                   [Page 61]

Q. There has been mentioned in this courtroom the fact that
after marching into the Ukraine our troops found themselves
faced with exceptional circumstances and difficulties in
certain Ukrainian cities. Have you any idea of what I mean?

A. Yes, that is obvious. We encountered an enormous number
of these difficulties when we approached the Dnieper. I
imagine that you are referring to the matter of
remote-controlled explosions or delayed-action explosions
which were carried out, as it seemed, on a very large scale
in our fighting zone in the Kiev-Karkov-Poltava area. They
caused us a great deal of trouble and they forced us to
adopt extensive counter-measures at the time.

Q. Do you know whether that applies to Odessa?

A. I heard that things were blown up in Odessa but I cannot
give you details.

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