During these years from 1933 to 1935, when I was Thierack's personal referent, I only got to know Thierack as a man who represented altogether the constitutional state. At the very beginning, in March, he sent Jewish or Marxist officials of the judiciary on leave at their full pay, only in order to avoid transgressions on the part of the SA or the SS at the office of the Ministry of Justice, should anything happen. Final measures he took only when there was a legal basis. Party members who were no good at their job, and who evidently only were hunting for a job, received no support whatsoever from him.
THE PRESIDENT: May I ask you a question. Are you referring now to your relations with Thierack during the Saxony period alone or also after he became Minister of Justice.
A Thierack from 1933 to 1935 was Minister of Justice for Saxony, and I am only speaking of that period at the moment. That was when I got to know Thierack better.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
There were attorneys at law, old party members, who were inefficient and, therefore, did not have a good practice. Therefore, they tried to get a position as civil servant. Thierack did not let one of these people enter the Administration of Justice for Saxony. He did not allow the very cumbersome Gauleiter Mutschmann to interfere with the Administration of Justice in the slightest degree. I saw it happen that Thierack simply replaced the receiver when telephoning, and simply left the Gauleileiter standing there by the telephone.
Like myself he took the view that a party member or an SA man who had committed a criminal offense had to be proceeded against with particular severity because he had injured the reputation of National Socialism by giving a bad example. On 31 March 1935, the Ministry of Justice of Saxon was dissolved. Until that time Thierack had still been the delegate of the Reich Minister of Justice for the so-called intermediate group, Mittelgruppe. Theirack went as vice president of the Supreme Reich Court to Leipzig, and as I have said here before, I went to the Ministry of Justice in Berlin. In 1936 Thierack went to the People's Court in Berlin. During the years from 1935, beginning with April until Thierack's appointment to be Reich Minister of Justice, in august 1942, that is to say barely seven years and six months, I saw Thierack perhaps ten or twelve times, usually it was at a meeting of a public occasion, not at the office. What I heard about or from Thierack in these seven and a half years did in no way change the picture that I had of him during the time I worked with him in Dresden. In this connection I would refer to a speech by Thierack which was published in "Deutsche Justiz" in 1936, page 908, it is printed there in part; Thierack said the task of the People's Court is to protect the people, based solely on law, and that the judges should do their work with the fact of inner freedom, clarity and responsibility. In these rare cases when I met Thierack, he repeatedly complained bitterly to me, in particular about Freisler, saying that he did not take up the cause of the judiciary with sufficient energy. He only spoke of Frank contemptuously, he said that he did not do any work. The documents, too gives some pointers here, I mean the documents which were submitted by the Prosecution. I am referring to exhibit 62, the program of administration of justice which Thierack sent to Lammers. There, again, he said that a judge could not take orders.
I would also refer to exhibit 283, in which the lawyer Grunwald said that Thierack had been an objective presiding judge, at the People's Court. When, after his appointment to be Minister of Justice, I met Thierack for the first tine and congratulated him, he said to me literally, "be careful with your congratulations, I have already had my ears boxed for the first time." Freisler had become presiding judge of the People's Court in spite of ay objections. All of these circumstances such as I have described then here in brief, confirm to me the impression that Thierack, as in Saxony, took the view of the constitutional state, and that he was willing to re-establish an independent and strong judiciary. And, that is how I looked at the special power of attorney, which at that time, was given to Thierack. At that time Thierack asked me in all matters concerning the justice group of the Party Chancellery to come to him and that is to him personally, immediately, and not to discuss them with the various Referents at the Ministry. As a reason he gave this: the work of the Ministry on the department level was not known to him so very well, nor that of the working method of the Party Chancellery, and as I had worked in both fields, the best thing for him to get acquainted with the natter would be if I reported to him in person. Relations between Thierack and myself remained the some during that period as they had been in Dresden. Matters of high policy in the administration of justice, were not discussed at all or only in bits. He mentioned one or two natters to me but only quite by the way, as remarks, for example, he told me Himmler had asked him to transfer the prosecution to him, had, in fact, asked him to have the prosecution incorporated into the police organization, and he had refused flatly. But all these were merely remarks quite by the way. To ask Thierack about such matters was useless, anything he did not wish to say he simply did not discuss at all. I did try to place our relationship on a somewhat higher level in that respect, and I told him that he would have to be careful concerning two people now that he entered the big game of politics.
Those two people were Himmler and Bormann. Everything Himmler had was lost to the judiciary forever, that is what I said; and, Bormann, was as cold as ice at the game. He merely exploited people for his own end and for his own interest, and did not mind dropping a man from one day to the next. Concerning those remarks of mine, Thierack ostentatiously ignored them by changing over to an entirely different subject. But at that time, Thierack gave me a great deal of evidence to show that he thought on the basis of a constitutional state. In this connection, too, I would refer to an article by Thierack in "Deutsche Justiz", 1942, page 661, where again he emphasizes that judges must remain unbound by instructions. The judges letters were sent to me, and there, too, again and again, he emphasized the independence of judges. And in his speech at Breslau, that is EG 275, before thousands of people, he made the same statement, and along the same lines is the letter to Freisler, dated 4 September 1942, that is NG 159, exhibit 68, where with great urgency he says that judges must be independent and that no instructions must be given them, but that they are merely to be persuaded.
THE PRESIDENT: What was the exhibit number?
MR. KLEMM (Witness): 68, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: If you will wait a moment until I finish my question. What was the exhibit number of NG 275, which was not given.
MR. KLEMM (Witness) Exhibit 25, Your Honor.
On the other hand, today I know that Thierack, after he had become Minister, and later on when I was Under-Secretary, did not discuss with me the most important matters concerning the administration of justice.
What I have in mind mainly is the transfer of prisoners to the police. That is Exhibit 39, -- 654-PS. And his letter to Bormann. That is Exhibit 143,--NG-558, letter dated 13 October 1942. The explanation is that matters were involved here concerning the very men of whom I had warned him at the time. When in 1944 I entered the Ministry of Justice as Under Secretary, I became convinced during the first few days that Thierack was not willing to take my advice, or to allow me independence such as is usually permitted to an Under Secretary. There were a few exceptions. I was independent in matters concerning personnel policy up to the rank of an Oberrat. That is to say, a senior prosecutor or director of a District Court-Landgerichtsdirector. And I did have a great deal of independence in the management of Department II. That was the Department dealing with examinations and with the new generation. But that was only possible because that Department had no head of Department and I had declared myself willing to take charge of that Department myself. When I went to Berlin I lived in Thierack's house after I had become Under Secretary. That was not done because of personal contacts but for very sober and realistic reasons.
THE PRESIDENT: We will now take a fifteen minute recess.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. SCHILF:
Q. Witness, you mentioned your relation to Thierack during the time when you were under-secretary. Would you please continue?
A. I had explained last that the fact that I lived in the house of Thierack was for very sober and realistic reasons. My family lived in Munich. To take my family to Berlin that did not succeed because there was a lack of housing as a consequence of the destruction by aerial warfare. Also just at that time women and children were being evacuated from Berlin. It was impossible to find an apartment. In boarding houses and hotels one could not remain as a permanent tenant, because there was also a tremendous scarcity of such places in Berlin. The Reich Ministry of Justice, as a civilian authority, had an allotment for an entire month of 25 liters of fuel and with that the entire personnel of the Ministry of Justice had to get along. The ministers and under-secretaries, therefore, altogether had only one car at their disposal. At the same time Thierack had been requested to take additional people into his house on account of the destruction by aerial warfare and since furthermore Thierack considered it important to take people into his house who could take an active part in case of a danger to the house by incendiary bombs. At that time, therefore, a justice sergeant and myself moved into the house with him and every day the three of us had to travel in one and the same car. The greatest impediment, however, against getting into a more intimate relationship with Thierack was his reticence which in the course of the time during which I lived in his house increased more and more. Today I know that Thierack was extremely reticent with me and a different man than he appeared to me. The greatest obstacle for my independent and adequate activity as an under-secretary was that I had previously been an adjutant and personal Referent of Thierack. This condition remained almost unchanged in the course of time. My only support was the official relationship in the Ministry between superior and subordinate and in the course of time I gained the confidence of individual officials in the Ministry who came to me with their worries.
Thierack was an autocrat and absolutely convinced of the accuracy of his opinions. He would listen to the opinions of others, especially in cases where he himself was not quite clear about it, but he very frequently rejected the opinions of others, very frequently by ironical and rather tactless remarks without consideration as to whether that occurred not only in their presence or in the presence of others and without considering whether that person in question was an undersecretary or any junior assistant. That he might have still considered me his junior assistant as before may be illustrated by something which we find in the documents. I refer to Exhibit 41, NG-607. At that time I had been in office as under-secretary for five weeks. Thierack gave me the form with the notation or the entire personal file of Franke with the remark that I should take the necessary steps for the promotion of Franke. This is how the notation came about to the Chief of Division I, the Minister wants to initiate the promotion of Franke to the position of Ministerialrat. That is typical of the activity of an adjutant which I had to carry out in this case. Above all, however, I refer to Exhibit 45, NG-195. It is the conference of the chiefs of divisions of the 6th of January 1944, three days after I assumed office. It says, and I quote:
"By the re-appointment for the position of under-secretary no change in the policy of the administration is brought about."
End of Quotation.
That did not mean that that was the result of a conference between the Minister and myself, but these words were an independent statement on the part of Thierack and at the same time a directive to the chiefs of the departments and to myself. According to the same records Divisions III, IV, and V, and were also again subordinated to me. That meant the following: Each department chief handles independently all general matters but matters of particular importance are to be Submitted to the Minister; to the Under-Secretary only those matters arc to be submitted which are not quite important enough to warrant their being submitted to the Minister but important enough that the department chief can not assume responsibility for them himself. That supervision of departments in practice was only on paper as a result of the measures taken by Thierack. In fact the same condition as before prevailed. All incoming mail went first to the Minister and was then channeled to the Under-Secretary. Thus it occurred that the Minister by ordering reports or by reserving the right of final signature himself, or oven by jotting down his opinion or decision in telegram style on it, reserved the final decision for himself. Mail that had thus been handled by the Minister came next to the Under-Secretary. In peace time that alone meant that automatically the Under-Secretary was informed because one had to report to the Minister only after on had reported to the Under-Secretary. During my time in office it was 95 per cent different. In consequence of conditions caused by the war there was not sufficient time to report to two different places. The people who made tho reports came from outside, from the various emergency establishments. In addition to these reports they had a lot of things to accomplish while they were there. They were glad if they could take care of everything in one day and return the same night. In this manner it happened quite frequently that if I would listen to the reports with the Minister at the same time that was actually arranged. This form of subordination looked quite different in practice because the Minister restricted the departments very much in their freedom of decision, and the subordination of the departments to the Under-Secretary, on account of the many instructions to report directly, were made illusory by the Minister himself.
I shall refer to that in greater detail in connection with Document Book III-L. What the Minister actually left to me to deal I with independently I have described already, before; it was the activity in personnel matters and in Division II. I have also described already that the Minister was not accessible to a different opinion, yet from time to time I succeeded in changing his opinion. The individual cases I shall mention later. Otherwise, too, there was much which followed the previous pattern such as I had known it from Thierack before. For instance, he actually was hostile to Goebbels for reasons of the Administration of Justice, and toward me Theirack also displayed the point of view that his hardest struggle was yet to come after peace had been made because then there would be the great dispute with police for the independence of the Administration of Justice, and that struggle he would fight out to the end. That is the impression he intended to make upon me; that, in fact, it looked different I have seen from the documents which were submitted here. At that time it was achieved to change Hitler's mind about interfering in sentences of the Administration of Justice on the basis of newspaper notices which he had read. Toward the end of 1944 that stopped entirely. Not even inquiries were made. Personally, I did not have an easy job when I became an Under-Secretary; already because I had to start my work only very carefully and with a great deal of tact, because many of those who from that time on had to report to me had several years before, when I was still in the Ministry of Justice, been my superiors. I was also forced to try frequently to make up for tho rudeness and tactlessness of Thierack. On the other hand, it was my intention to avoid showing openly that differences of opinion existed between Theirack and myself, because I, myself, between the period of 1935 and 1939 learned how seriously differences of opinion between Under-Secretaries and Ministers could influence the work of the department. At that time we experienced that very frequently between Guertner and Friesler.
Q That explains exhaustively your relationship to Theirack. How we come to the technical field of your activity as Under-Secretary.
First we want to discuss Exhibit 252 which has already been mentioned which is NG 4l4; Document Book III L. The Prosecution has submitted that document book, in the table of contents of document book L, it is designated as Lists containing death sentences which had allegedly been approved by your. This document is very extensive and to illustrate it to the Tribunal in its true nature I should like you to explain briefly how those reports to the Minister were made, whether you were present what part you played in it?
A Reports to the Minister of Under Secretary were made first upon their orders or on the initiative of the Divisions in putting these reports on the schedule; moreover, there was a directive that all death sentences always had to be reported to the Minister. That has been proven by documents; in Exhibit 45, during the conference of the Division Chiefs, the Minister again emphasized specifically that this should be done as can be seen from the minutes of that session. There are three types of these schedules or lists, such as are shown on the 142 pages of that document. They are either schedules which list only individual penal cases, or lists containing only death sentences, or lists containing individual penal cases and death sentences. Again I am grateful to the Prosecution that this extensive amount of material is available because on the basis of these documents an extraordinary amount of things can be clarified. The only thing which really is wrong with the document as submitted, is a statement in the index that it deals with death sentences which I had approved. Later I shall explain in detail that only the following lists refer to me. The lists on sheet 23, that is 2 in the English text, 79, or 91 in the English text, and 92, 93 in the German; that is 104 to 106 in the English text. Those are lists containing death sentences. According to sheet 79 a part of the death sentences listed there never were reported because the files, on account of an air attack, had been destroyed. Furthermore, among my lists of reports are the lists concerning individual penal eases, sheet 6; that is English Book, sheets 5 and 6, sheet 77 which is 87 and 88 in the English Book; 91, that is 103 and 104 in the English book, and 135 in the German, that is, 154 and 155 in the English text.
These are the only lists dealing with reports of Divisions III and IV with which I had anything to do. Moreover, the list on Sheet 71; concerns me that is, however, a program for reports of Divisions I Personnel matter; II, examinations and inquiries, and VIII the Budget Division.
Q I should like to interrupt you, would you please give to the Tribunal the English page number of sheet 71 in the German Book?
A That is 81 in the English book. These lists of reports and the way how they belong together can be seen mostly from the fact that they bear the same date. The list about individual penal cases as well as the list about sentences. However, I have to point out some deviations from that. The witness Schaefer testified here that these lists were arranged according to the dates with the exception of the first list on sheets 2 and 3. That is in the English, text, sheet 2 only. That list had been taken before. That statement made by the witness Schaefer is not complete, however. Another error is to be found on sheets 6 and 7 of the German text, that is 5 to 8 of the English text. There, as can easily be seen from the documents, there is a schedule of reports to be made to the Under Secretary of the 17th of January 1945 was combined with the list of death sentences to be reported to the Ministry of the 17th of January 1945. That can be seen quite clearly from the documents. Later I shall discuss the fact that I only decided only so-called clear cases, never dubious cases. In this connection I want to refer to sheet 14, that is in the English text sheet 16. That is a list of reports to be made which contains only so-called clear cases. In spite of that it is at the same time a list of reports to be made to the Minister. That there were only so few cases and only clear cases which were reported has its reason in the fact that between Christmas and New Years in the Ministry there was only an emergency crew and very few cases were to be dealt with. On the other hand, the combination of pages 37 and 38 that is in the English book 156 and 157 could create an erroneous impression. These lists of death sentences to be sure both bear the date of the 27th of January 1944. The list of individual penal cases, however, is a list of reports to be made to me; whereas, the list of death sentences to be reported is a list for reports to the Minister. I remember very clearly that Division IV on that day reported to the Minister as well as to me, apart from the fact that on the list for the Minister there are also doubtful cases of death sentences listed.
To obtain a clear impression as to whether reports were to be made to me or to the Minister was not possible with the exception of death sentences where the directive existed that all death sentences should be submitted to the Minister that I could only deputize for the Minister in his absence and also only in clear cases, never in doubtful cases to like the reports were being made to the Minister I was usually present. I, myself, in order to save time, and particularly for reasons of lack of personnel, was very careful in ordering reports to be made, but one reason for that was also that the Minister reserved the right for very many orders for reports for himself. That took the matter somewhat out of my field. Thus we see, in order to quote one example, that of individual penal cases in these thirteen months covered by these lists, 543 individual penal cases were reported to the Minister; to me, however, only 83. In conclusion I want to say the following in general: These lists of January 1944 until and including January 1945, appear to me to be almost complete. Only very few lists may be missing and I recall in particular that in August and September I was several times not present during reports because I was out of town. That explains that for the time between the 17th of August and 22nd of September no lists are available.
Q Will you please tell the Tribunal also that on account of two missing lists which apparently were not taken into this document because your name is not there, that figure 543 of individual cases for the Minister might still be increased in proportion to the 83 cases which were reported to you? That last figure, that is absolutely certain, isn't it?
A. The figure which I have mentioned about individual penal cases refers only to what can be seen from these lists and copies of these lists. As to those days during which I was not present because I was out of town or had conferences, if that deduction were not made and if these reports were added, of course that figure would increases.
Q. The prosecution has submitted that list, and the witness Schaefer has testified that it must be a schedule of reports to be made, which contains notations and remarks written in your handwriting. Would you please explain to the Tribunal what the nature of this list is from the purely external point of view?
A. It is true that these notations were probably made by me. These schedules were made up in the following manner. As soon as a Referent had come to a point where he could report a case to the Minister or to the under-secretary, the Referent reported that fact in the anteroom of the department chief, and the secretary then compiled that schedule. The compilation was made in triplicate, one copy for the Minister, one for the under-secretary, and one for the department chief. That compilation was signed by the department chief or by one of his deputies, and we received these lists either at the beginning of the report or on the day prior to the reports being made.
Reports were not made every week. If reports had to be made to the Minister, I sat next to the person who reported, that is, the Referent or department chief. As far as possible, I marked down on my copy of the lists every decision made by the Minister, with some word or letter; that is to say, I used abbreviations. I proceeded in the same manner when reports were made to me. The reason for that was the following.
It frequently occurred that I had to sign letters or documents which were necessary on the basis of decisions made by the Minister, or, if I had to make a decision on a report myself, and a few days later I received a letter which contained the result of the report and the decision. Then, in looking at my remarks on the lists of reports.
I had a possibility of checking it and could be certain whether that which was contained in the letter which was submitted to me for signature was in accordance with what the Minister had decided or with what I had decided myself when reports were made to me.
Q. Now, only one technical question, for the purpose of complete clarification. I ask you to look at some page of the lists - let us say English pages 5 to 8. There is usually a letter before any individual case, and that letter or figure was crossed out later. Did you cross them out? If so, what was the meaning of it?
A. That meant only a sign. That is to say, if the letter or figure were crossed out, it meant that that case had been reported. I almost always put the result of the report after it, in one word or symbol.
Q. These lists, therefore, give a complete picture of your activities as under-secretary as far as reports by department chiefs, Referents, and other assistants are concerned?
A. As far as the dates and the schedules of reports are concerned, yes. However, the picture is not quite complete as far as the Minister is concerned, as I explained before.
Q. In order to provide a clear comparison of your activities as under-secretary with those of Thierack as Minister - and apparently you have studied the document very carefully - would you please tell us briefly on how many days reports were made to you and on how many days reports were made to Thierack?
A. From these lists I found out that reports were made to Thierack on 35 days, concerning individual penal cases and death sentences, and, furthermore, on three days only concerning death sentences. Reports were made to me on two days on individual penal cases, and on one day about death sentences only, and on two other days, death sentences and individual penal cases.
Q. Could you also tell us, from the document, how many cases occurred - that is, death sentence cases, where a death sentence was reported, in order to obtain a decision on the clemency plea - how many of these cases are there altogether?
A. As can be seen from the lists, 2,620 death sentences were brought to a decision, that is, a decision as to whether the right for pardon would be applied.
Q. And can you also tell us in how many cases that right for pardon was applied in a positive sense?
A. Pardon - that is to say, commutation - was the case in 230 cases. That is almost ten percent.
Q. Of these 2,390 cases - I combine the two figures by deducting the figure of 230, which leaves 2,390 executions - how many of these cases did you decide?
A. I decided 85 cases; that is 3.5 percent.
Q. In order to render a complete picture of the executions which you ordered, will you please mention the types of offenses? You know, of course, that the prosecution charges you with having applied rather severe standards in handling clemency matters.
A. The executions, as far as they can be seen from the lists, I put into types according to the individual offenses, and it can be seen from the lists that refusal for issued pardon occurred as follows:
Cases of high treason, 385 individual cases. Of these, I decided 4.
Treason, 134 cases. Of these, I made the decision in three cases.
Undermining of military strength, 341 cases. Of these, I made the decision in 3 cases.
NN cases, 131. Of these, 8 were decided by me.
Non-political penal matters, 1,391. Of these, I made the decision in 67 cases.
Juveniles, 8 cases. Of these, not one was decided by me.
The non-political penal cases amount to 58.2 percent of all death sentences where the clemency plea had been rejected.
Q. Will you give us an example, briefly, of what you meant at that time by "non-political penal cases"?
A. Non-political penal cases comprise murder, plunder, habitual criminals, violent criminals -- all those which would not fit under the other headings such as high treason, treason, undermining of military strength, NN, and juveniles.
Q. This affords, therefore, an opportunity to examine your practice in handling clemency matters in each individual case?
A. Yes.
Q. I should like to ask you now: Were there any directives according to which death sentences were reported to Thierack or to you by the Referents?
A. I mentioned that briefly already. There was, as can be seen from Exhibit 45, a directive that death sentences had to be reported to the Minister. I could deputize for him if he was absent, but even in his absence I could not deputize any so-called doubtful cases; in his absence I could only make a decision about so-called clear cases. In order to make that clear, that does not exclude the following. It is absolutely possible that a refusal on a clemency plea in a doubtful case may have been signed by me. There were the following reasons for that:
On the days of reporting to the Minister, the Referents and chiefs of departments, in clear cases, submitted the text of the decision already prepared. It was quite an extensive document, because it consisted of the original, a carbon copy, and another copy which was subsequently sent to the execution agency, and the covering letter, which had to be signed by the department chief.
In. doubtful cases all these documents were not prepared, because just for the reason that these were doubtful cases one could not tell whether the clemency plea would be rejected or whether it would be confirmed. And that is why it frequently happened that these documents were only prepared on the next day. That is to say, the day after the Minister had made a decision. And then frequently the matter was submitted to me for signature because it had been decided and one did not want to bother the Minister again.
Q. The difference between clear and doubtful cases, I think, has been clarified. I should only like to ask you what difference it made in the case of the report.
A. When a death sentence was reported to the Minister, in general there were at least seven opinions available concerning the death sentence. In order to make a decision on the clemency plea it had to be an opinion by the court that pronounced the sentence, the presiding judge of that court, the prosecution, and probably also the general prosecutor. In addition, in the Ministry the assistant referent, the referent, and the chief of the department. The decision on the part of the Minister, therefore was only stipulated after seven opinions had been recorded. In some cases, however, there were even more opinions available. A case was considered a clear case if, firstly, from the legal point of view, that is, from the point of view of substantive law and procedure it was all right. As to the extent of the crime, it had to be punishable by death. That was particularly important in such cases where the law provided only the death sentence for such crimes and the judge could not avoid that sentence, if the reasons in the clemency plea were not convincing, if the personality and the character of the culprit did not present sufficient reasons for any commutation of the sentence, and above all it was necessary that all the different authorities that had to render an opinion were not in favor of a commutation of sentence. These so-called clear cases were confronted by the so-called doubtful cases on the other side.
Among these are all cases where only one of the requirements which I have just mentioned for so-called clear cases was not met. But there were also clear cases where all prerequisites as I have described them were met, but a specific circumstance was added which was in favor of not executing the sentence. If I may cite an example, it was the witness Havemann who appeared here. Havemann was an inventor and a scientist of importance to the war effort, and was supposed to continue his work. That meant, in effect, in all cases a commutation of the death sentence. Another example, the Foreign Office intervened in the case of a foreigner because his native state had intervened with the Foreign Office. Or, for example, in NN cases, women were not executed on Hitler's orders. Legal deficiencies of a sentence were, of course, always a reason to designate a sentence as doubtful and to report it in that column.
Q. You have now explained to the Tribunal that the decision on pardons and clemency pleas, must have been a very complicated procedure. However, during the course of this trial and from documents we have seen that there were so-called lightning executions, "Blitz" executions. Will you tell the Tribunal what, during the time of your activities as Undersecretary, these "Blitz" executions meant?
A. There were circumstances which made it imperative that a death sentence to be effective as a deterrent should be executed as quickly as possible. For instance, if in a city after an air attack the looting assumed a large extent, in such cases, that large and extensive machinery as I have described it now, was eliminated to the extent that these opinions, particularly on the part of the Court and the prosecution, were rendered only orally and instead of being made in an exhaustive report and by mail, they were made by telephone from the place in question to the Ministry. And on the basis of these oral reports or telephone reports, the decision was made whether the death sentence should be commuted or executed.
Q. In the case of these "Blitz" executions was the referent in the Ministry who had to work on the opinion included in the procedure or was he eliminated from it?
A. I do not know of any single case where a referent was not included in the procedure. In the few cases of Blitz executions of which I know, the referent was always included in the procedure. I personally, for instance, never received a telephone report in the matter of a "Blitz" from any court. Frequently a telephone report of that nature was received by the referent of Department 4, but also by the so-called emergency service. I do not recall any case where the Minister himself received any such report from the outside, personally. It could only have been a referent of Department 4 who would come, and who reported about such matters. I, on my part, had to decide, I believe, about three times about Blitz executions. From the referents I received reports quite frequently. I may refer to the affidavit of the Witness Franke who said that I would make telephone calls to the Minister's apartment and that I would either call the Minister to the telephone in such cases of Blitz executions or that I had promised him, Franke, to report the case to the Minister. In that case I was only passing it on from Franke, who was the referent. The statements made by Altmeyer in the affidavit, which is Exhibit 44, is not correct as far as that is concerned. I even refused a Blitz execution to the witness Altmeyer. It can be seen from Exhibit 252, the lists of reports on death sentences on Page 92 in the German text, that is 104 and 105 in the English text. There under No. 24 a man by the name of Mattei is lifted. This is a matter of a death sentence, a clear case, and I made the notation to it, report first, no Blitz execution.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will recess until 1:30 this afternoon.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)