Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-20/tgmwc-20-194.02
Last-Modified: 2000/11/07

Q. And only a certain allowance extra for the expenses you
had in the SS service?

A. Yes.

Q. What were the reasons for your joining the SS?

A. At the time, in 1928-1929, I was asked to join the SS
because I had already been in the Party for some years, and
they considered my services valuable because I had been an
officer. I joined the SS very willingly.

                                                  [Page 246]

Q. Were you in the World War?

A. Yes, I took part in the World War as an officer.

Q. What rank did you hold in the SS in 1930

A. In 1930 I was Sturmfuehrer and Standarten-Adjutant.

Q. What rank did you hold in 1933?

A. In 1933 I was SS Gruppenfuehrer.

Q. Through your activities, did you acquire a good insight
into the aims and activities of the SS before and after
1933?

A. Yes.

Q. You are a member of the German nobility, witness?

A. Yes.
Q. Even in democratic countries, it is generally assumed
that the nobility belongs to the respectable classes of the
population. How does it happen that you became a member of
an organization which, according to the allegation of the
prosecution, is considered to have been criminal?

A. I was at all times active on behalf of Germany, in
keeping with the tradition of my family; and so when I
became a member of the Party and of the SS, I felt that I
was fulfilling a patriotic duty. Moreover, before 1933 a
great number of aristocrats and members of German princely
houses joined the SS, such as, for example, the Prince von
Waldeck the Prince von Mecklenburg, etc.

Q. After 1933, was this movement even stronger?

A. Yes, after 1933 the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
became a member, as well as the Archbishop of Brunswick,
Prince Lippe-Biesterfeld, General Graf von Schulenburg and
many others.

Q. Do you know that Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg became a
sponsoring member of the SS?

A. Yes, I know that.

DR. PELCKMANN: I refer the Tribunal to Document 5, which I
shall hand in later.

Q. Do you believe on the basis of your experience at that
time that the membership of such prominent personages made
an impression on members of all classes in Germany?

A. On the bourgeois classes of our population, most
certainly.

Q. I mean, made an impression in the sense that people said,
"If such good human material belongs to the SS and works for
its aims, then the aims governing the organization must be
really good and legal." Do you mean that in this sense?

A. Yes. In any case I am of the opinion, and it was also the
opinion of my comrades, that at no particular time could we
assume that the organization was following criminal aims.

Q. But did not the SS commit many acts of violence just
before 1933, and were not these among its aims?

A. No. As its very name says, "Protection Detachment"
("Schutzstaffel"), this branch of the Party was set up in
order to protect the leading personalities. Moreover, I
might point out that as early as 1930 Hitler, in the trial
of the Reichswehr officers, swore that his revolution would
be an intellectual one, and he planned to win supreme power
in Germany by legal means. And, indeed, that came about
through the elections, and so he became Chancellor of the
German Reich.

Q. Please describe the activities of the SS, for instance in
the year 1930, when you were in Thuringia; their numbers,
the increase in membership and other such details.

A. As I have already said, the SS was set up in 1928 and
1929 in Thuringia. Up to about the time of the Reich Party
Rally in 1929, we had in all Thuringia approximately forty-
five or fifty SS men. At the Reichsparteitag there were SS
men from all Germany, approximately seven hundred men. In
1930 there were election fights in Thuringia, which
necessitated a commitment of a larger number of SS men in
order to protect the speakers. There can be no question of
any other

                                                  [Page 247]

service besides that of protecting the speakers. There were
some roll-calls at which they announced which speakers each
SS man had to accompany. This protection was made necessary
by the extraordinarily bitter political battle, and one was
glad if only the men returned to their quarters in the
evening without having been wounded.

Q. How large was the SS in comparison with the other Party
organizations at that time? Please speak more slowly. I
notice that the interpreters are having trouble in keeping
up with you.

A. I beg your pardon. The SS was by far the smallest
formation of the Party. According to an order of the Supreme
SA Leadership, it could never have more than ten per cent of
the numerical strength of the SA.

Q. Where were you in 1933?

A. In 1933 I was in Weimar, Thuringia.

Q. And in what position?

A. As leader of SS Oberabschnitt Mitte, the biggest
Oberabschnitt of the SS.

Q. How many SS men were under you at the time?

A. After the seizure of power there were ten or fifteen
thousand.

Q. What area did this number cover?

A. The Free State of Saxony, the Free State of Thuringia and
the Prussian province of Saxony.

Q. How is the growth of the SS at this time to be explained?

A. The increase can be explained, first, by the fact that
the National Socialist Government had come to power; and a
large number of people wanted to show their loyalty to the
new State. Secondly, after the Party in May, 1933, ordered
that no more members would be taken, many wanted to become
members of the semi-military formations (Gliederungen), such
as the SS and SA, and through them to become members of the
Party later. But then again there were also others who
sought the pleasures of sport and the comradeship of young
men and were less politically interested. The reasons were
very diverse.

Q. But after this period of sudden growth, were the members
carefully investigated, and were the old entrance
requirements, namely, completely irreproachable conduct,
clean way of life, high professional efficiency, made even
stricter?

A. Yes, indeed. From about February or March, 1934, Himmler
ordered an investigation of all those SS members who had
joined in 1933, a thorough reinvestigation which lasted
until 1935, and at that time about fifty to sixty thousand
members throughout the entire Reich were released from the
SS.

Q. Was it necessary to be a Party member in order to be
admitted to the general SS?

A. No. Not at all. I already mentioned that before.

Q. But if Party membership was not necessary, can it then be
correct that the SS, as the prosecution maintains, was the
heart of the Nazi regime, an ideologically conspiratorial
group, so that one can conclude from this that the strictest
Nazi conditions, Nazi standards, were imposed upon
admittance?

A. The heart of the regime, was the political party as such,
and this, indeed, lay in the hands of the Hoheitstrager. The
leadership of the people was conferred upon the
Hoheitstrager by Hitler as a privilege which they had and
which they maintained until the end. That was the heart of
the regime, In the SS, to be sure, certain standards of
selection were adhered to.

Q. But what did this selection refer to?

A. The selection standards required a certificate of good
conduct from the police. It was required that people be able
to prove that they led a decent life and performed their
duty in their profession. No unemployed persons or people
who were unwilling to work were accepted. In this respect, a
careful selection was always required.

                                                  [Page 248]

Q. But were not these principles of selection also extended
to so-called racial conditions: height, health, origin?

A. That was also prescribed, yes.

O. And so, witness, to sum it all up, the selection was not
only according to political, but also other circumstances,
such as you have described?

A. Yes.

Q. In 1933 and 1934, as an SS Obergruppenfuehrer and leader
of the largest Oberabschnitt of the general SS, did you know
of any excesses against Jews?

A. No.

Q. During the testimony on another organization here we
heard of the so-called boycott of Jews in 1933 and 1934. Did
you not, together with your men, participate in this at that
time?

A. The SS did not participate in this boycott - I might say
these excesses. In Dresden, when I heard about these
matters, I held a muster and strictly forbade my men to take
part in them.

Q. Did you believe that you were committing a crime against
humanity through your efforts to lower the influence of the
Jewish people in public life and the economy to the
percentage they represented in the total population?

A. No.

Q. Did you want to attain this goal, which according to your
ideology was probably in your mind, by the use of violence?

A. No, under no circumstances. Indeed the SS had no
influence at all on these matters.

Q. Was not the SS even particularly strict about its idea
that points on the Party programme should not be developed
by individual actions?

A. Even before 1933 there were extraordinarily strict
regulations. These regulations prohibited any individual
action. For example, we had a very strict regulation against
carrying any weapons, because it would have endangered the
political activity of the Party, if the police had found
weapons on us at that time. Even later on, Himmler
repeatedly issued strict orders not to undertake any kind of
action.

Q. Did you believe that by the repression of Jewish
influence, which according to the National Socialist
principles was constantly in your minds as an ideology, did
you believe that thereby you were already making
preparations for a new war, and indeed, that by this planned
new war the influence of any opposition within Germany would
be made impossible?

A. An artificial interpretation, in my opinion. I do not
understand it. We were completely surprised by the
announcement of the Nuremberg laws in 1935, and as far as
the SS was concerned, we thought the. Jewish problem had
been solved by the State. I remember, too, that at that time
Hitler had warned us very strongly against going beyond
these laws, and pointed out the tremendous responsibility
which was placed in the hands of the German people by them.

Q. Did you perhaps believe that you could do something to
prepare a war of aggression if you, or if the Party, or the
State, excluded Communists or Socialists from public life?

A. No.

Q. Well, did you ever consider anything like this at all?

A. No. This question appears to me confused, for the
circumstances were such that these matters never entered our
mind.

Q. What preparations did you notice in the SS for a war of
aggression?

A. No preparations.

Q. Was the general SS given military training?

A. No, it was not trained militarily, for sport and small
calibre rifle shooting and drill exercises cannot be
considered military training. May I also point out that
Himmler forbade me and other SS leaders to participate in
troop manoeuvres as reserve officers of the Wehrmacht after
1934-1935 From this alone it is

                                                  [Page 249]

perfectly obvious that no military training was given to the
SS men or even planned. Moreover, every SS member, like any
other German citizen, had to perform his military service
within the Wehrmacht and not in the Waffen SS.

Q. I quote from SS Document 5, which will be submitted
later.

  "The general SS is entirely an organization of
  professional men."

This is a quotation from a publication: "National Political
Course for the Armed Forces. Organization and Duties of the
SS and the German Police."

  "The greatest duties are imposed upon the man between the
  ages of 21 and 35, especially up to the age of 25. In
  these first four years it means marching, competitive
  games and sports of every kind. Every SS man up to the
  age of 50 will have to pass some kind of efficiency test
  annually. Why is this? Men are not very active in their
  professions; perhaps one-half to three-fifths of those in
  the SS are city dwellers. The city worker very often has
  a standing, or in the case of the intellectual worker, a
  sedentary occupation; in addition to that, there are the
  bad social conditions in the great cities, and in my
  opinion this is a grave problem from the military point
  of view. Men of the twentieth century no longer walk, but
  travel subway, and so forth."

I quote further:

  "If we are to remain young we must participate in sport.
  But all this remains only theoretical if the men are not
  tested every year and a certain degree of ambition is not
  kindled among them, so that they really participate in
  sport."

Witness, does this quotation describe the attitude that was
typical of the activity of the SS, especially after 1933?

A. Yes.

Q. Can you remember statements made by Hitler and other
Party leaders at gatherings, and also at the Reichstag or in
newspapers, which contained protestations of lasting peace
and praise of it, yes, even horror and fear of the
ghastliness of war?

A. Yes.

Were further tasks, for example, being in attendance and
maintaining order on Reich Party Days? Please describe this.

A. Yes, the SS always had to maintain order at the great
mass reviews of the Party. In addition to preserving order,
they had to accompany honorary guests and also take care of
them. Those were always difficult and tiring days for the
men, who also had to participate in the parade.

There is nothing else I can say about this.

Q. Did you have to take care of the honorary guests?

A. Yes, I just mentioned that. On Party Days I myself, as
well as other high SS leaders, had the task of showing high-
ranking guests around. At one of the last Party Days I
personally conducted the British Ambassador.

Q. Where were you, witness, on the 30th June, 1934?

A. In Dresden.

Q. Had you already heard before this date that Roehm was
plotting a so-called putsch?

A. Yes, about eight days before 30th June, 1934, I was
ordered to Berlin by Himmler, where the latter officially
informed me that Roehm was planning a coup d'etat and gave
me orders to hold my SS men in a state of quiet readiness
for an emergency, and to bring them together in barracks
when the. alarm was sounded. For this purpose he also
referred me to the Defence Area Commanders. And so in this
way I received this information in advance.

Q. Did the general SS take part in any killings on 30th
June, 1934? What do you know about this from your activities
at the time?

A. The general SS did not carry out any killings in my
territory. Indeed, it remained in barracks on all the
decisive days.

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