A wide span of possibilities of reacting had to be taken into consideration thereby. In spite of the situation as a whole it was certainly unnecessary sometimes to order reprisal measures at all, as the result intended could be achieved by other means. According to the war diary No. 3 of the LXVIII Army KORPS, for the second half of the year 1943 reprisal measures were only taken at this time in 2/3 of the cases of raids by bands and acts of sabotage. General Felmy further, emphasized that only persons connected in some way with bands and horrors committed by them should be subject to reprisal measures. It has been corroborated by Scheure's diary that he, as a matter of principle, refused to request airplanes from higher authorities to be used against partisan villages, as innocent persons might have had to suffer thereby. In view of the practice of the enemy, also in Greece, as nonsensically as this may sound, General Felmy would in all probability not be sitting in this dock at all, if he had taken these far more radical measures. The reprisal prisoners, however, were not victimized indiscriminately as it would have been the case in air attacks, but, as already pointed out, selected carefully. On the Peloponnesus this was done by the staff of Colonel Papadongonas, whose volunteers came from the Peloponnesus themselves and thus offered a guarantee that only guilty persons would be called to account. The reprisal quota of 1: 100 established by the OKW order in force for a long time was, in no case, even remotely filled by troops subordinate to General Felmy. Mostly the quota, actually applied, was far below. This was known to General Felmy and in his verbal directives he has never given orders for the taking of stricter measures, but, in the contrary, always advised moderation and clemency, as is shown by a number of affidavits submitted by me.
General Felmy has never ordered reprisals on his own initiative.
In conclusion I want to say with regard to the reprisals that they actually achieved the result expected from them. General Felmy was firmly convinced of this too. In connection with discussing the raid made by bands South of Tripolis on 11 March 1944, I shall illuminate this fact again especially.
William Hardy McNaill, assistant of the American Military Attached in Athens from 1944 to 1946 has in his book "The Greek Delemma" published in 1947 expressly corroberated the fact that the reprisals taken at that time had been effective.
This concludes my general statements concerning the bandits and reprisals.
Within the scope of these arguments I cannot discuss once more all the separate incidents with the ensuing reprisals, which appeared in the reports. General Felmy is unable to testify concerning several incidents, partly because he cannot remember any longer the details of the events, or because he was never informed of them. The remarks I have just made apply to them all. In the following I shall concern myself merely with some of the more important cases which were the subject of charges against General Felmy, particularly those in which the defendant took a personal part and which the indictment has specially mentioned. I shall again discuss them according to their chronological occurrence.
I shall now turn to the case "K a l a w r i t a".
The town of Kalawrita and vicinity were for a long time a center of bandits in the Peleponnesus. The 117th Jaeger Division undertook already in August 1943 a cleaning-up operation which, however, had to be stopped short, because at that time one could not lay hands on the bandits. That it was necessary to clean up this area of bandits, in order to be able to supply troop units deployed there from the East in the event of an Allied landing on the West coast of the Peleponnesus, is illustrated by an affidavit of the former General Winter who was then Chief of Staff of Army Group E. In the second half of October 1943, while again on a reconnaissance mission in the area of Kalawrita, a company of the 117th Jaeger Division was captured. Negotiations carried on by the regiment through intermediaries with the bandits for the exchange of prisoners were unsuccessful. At the beginning of December an attempt was made to liberate the prisoners by means of a commando operation. At the same time it became known from two wounded soldiers, who had escaped, that the largest part of their company which comprised 78 men, had been murdered in a bestial manner.
Concerning the details I refer to the affidavit of one Bernhard Gruber, who himself was an eye-witness; and to the affidavit of one von Scheure, a former court martial judge of the 117th Jaeger Division. Thus may be explained that there followed immediately after the tactical commando operation, upon orders from the Division, the punitive expedition - which is now the subject of the indictment.
General Felmy ordered neither the tactical nor the reprisal operation. It is impossible to find where the Prosecution in its plea finds reason to conclude that General Felmy had given the orders to LeSuire to carry out the reprisal measures. Moreover, during this time he was absent from the Corps Staff, representing the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E in Salonika, where, however, he did not actually stay during the days in question since he was on an official trip of several days duration. The actual time at which General Felmy received knowledge of the punitive expedition cannot be precisely ascertained now because he very soon left for a Xmas furlough at home after he had deputized for the Commander-inChief. In any case it is manifest that the Division Commander, General von Le Suire, only reported to him orally after the operation had been carried out. General Felmy declared himself not in agreement with the reprisals taken by the Division, but considered them for several reasons as obviously excessive. That reprisals had to be undertaken at all is shown clearly by the underlying facts of the case and the events leading up to them. In view of the bestiality of the crimes committed by the bands, a general and understandable excitement got hold of the troops, especially in this case which followed very soon upon the formerly discussed raid near Inci, which still remained unpunished, and surely none of the men could have been kept in check from wreaking reprisals on his own account. Furthermore, the troops would have lost confidence in their superiors if they had done nothing. For this reason alone some form of counter-action was imperative. In addition, there was here a clear case of military necessity to deter the bandits in the future.
Of course, the reprisals should have been carried out according to the spirit of General Felmy's intentions, and his formerly discussed principles, in order to result in the success desired.
General von Le Suire was commonly recognized as an excellent soldier. However, he obviously lacked the vision for other, particularly political matters which went beyond the purely military sphere. Until the "Operation Kalawrita" nothing similar had occurred which could have caused the displeasure of General-Felmy. What should he have done now after this happening? At his interrogation he unequivocally and creditably set forth that it would have been unwise to summon General Le Suire before the Supreme Military Court or to request his relieve. General Felmy knew sufficiently well the attitude of Hitler and the OKW concerning reprisals. Its nature was made amply explicit by the reprisal-quota-order. The result would have been General Felmy's immediate relieve, and most probably his dismissal from active service. This the more so, as by reason of the events which led in 1940 to his dismissal, he was everything but in the good graces of the Leadership. On the other hand, Le Suire had very good connections higher up, as is shown, amongst other matters, in an affidavit by Dyckhoff, which mentions his visit to the Fuehrer Headquarters. General Felmy surely was not glued to his position for which he never could get enthusiastic. When deciding not to take any steps against Le Suire he thought not of himself but only of the cause. He wanted to prevent his replacement by a man - and that would have been the only possible result - who would have new acted according to the spirit of the highest Leadership. This way, however, he could himself act in a moderating and smoothing manner, and thus could the reprisal-quota-order be softened down in its effects to the very limits of military necessity. General Felmy, therefore, ordered that Le Suire would have to get permission from the Corps for all larger reprisal measures intended by him in the future. In this way he was surely able to still obtain the possible best from the situation conjured up at "Kalawrita".
Consequently, there is not much more to say concerning the document (Exh. 628) which the prosecution showed to General Felmy during his cross-examination, and which contains two of the defendant's reports on General von Le Suire. If in the second report of 16 July 1944, mention is made of "Leader of a "Mountain Corps" then this does not mean a proposal for promotion, but merely the expression of the opinion that General von Le Suire was militarily suitable to lead a Mountain Corps. Of this the defendant was certainly convinced. For the sake of completeness let it be noted that Le Suire was, without any action on the part of General Felmy, already transferred to the Fuehrer-Reserve at the time this report was made, and any person familiar with military procedure therefore knew that he would soon be assigned to command a corps. The two letters "NS", which mean "National Socialist" appear to the Prosecution to be of special characteristic significance concerning General Felmy's political views. They are, however, entirely harmless to anyone who is familiar with conditions in Hitler-Germany, since they were a required component of all reports on both civilian and military functionaries. They were merely designed to have it made known that the person reported on hold positive political views, a fact which he had in any event affirmed already by his oath. That it was prescribed for the immediate superiors to include in their reports - it was net required from the next higher ones - statements concerning political views - has been proved by the Prosecution itself through presenting in rebuttal a report by Army Group E on General Felmy; consequently, according to the questionnaire, the "short report " was to give an opinion also, amongst other matters, about the "National Socialistic attitude". If, according to orders, the report about General Felmy happens to state: "National Socialistic Leadership Personality" then a meaningless adjective was merely added to a military noun. This remark in the report is therefore in no ways connected with the fact that General Felmy, after his dismissal in 1940, was for a few months a member of the National Socialistic German Labor Party. Some persons might find it difficult not to see from this a connection with his work in private economy which followed his dismissal.
However, it was not General Felmy's intention to gain, by joining the party, any kind of professional advantages in his new position, nor did he wish to obtain thereby his reinstatement into the Wehrmacht as some future date.
By this gesture he merely wanted to make it known at that time that, in spite of the unjust treatment accorded to him by the highest office, he would place himself during the war, without considering personal feelings, as a member of the community behind the state leadership.
I take it for granted that, on the basis of my arguments, it has been made sufficiently clear that General Felmy did not wish to cover up General von Le Suire - in spite of "Kalawrita" - because he perhaps thought him a specially zealous National Socialist, for this would have presumed that he was one himself.
With this I conclude my arguments concerning the "Operation Kalawrita."
As already mentioned by me before, General Felmy never took any reprisal measures on his own initiative. What he did do, merely was that he once gave his consent for the execution of major reprisals, in connection with the order to the 117th Jaeger Division, issued after the Kalawrita incident, which provided that proposals for major reprisals should be submitted for prior decision by the Corps. These facts are shown from the Prosecution document NOKW-670 (Exh. 437) in Doc. Book XVIII, in particular from the Ic morning report of 15 March 1944, on page 50 in the German, and page 44 of the English, as well as from a number of other documents mentioned in the direct interrogation of the defendant. Concerned is a surprise attack on a truck convoy south of Tripolis on 11 March 1944, when 21 German soldiers were killed and 42 wounded. For revenge, it was ordered to shoot 200 reprisal-hostages and the burning down of ten towns. The hostages, being co-responsible according to the order, were to be taken from the vicinity of where the attack occurred. As in all the other cases, which not like in the "Operation Kalawrita." did also for this reason involve an excess, the reprisal prisoners were selected from the staff of Colonal Papadongonas. Of the 200 reprisal prisoners selected at first, 59 were sifted out again and released at this examination because they were in no manner connected with the bands. The reprisal ratio, therefore, amounted to prac tically only a little more than one or two.
Following action by General Felmy, the towns which the Division had proposed for destruction were also examined by the same staff, whether they qualified as nests of bandits, and only after they were established as such beyond any reasonable doubtand after the population had evacuated them for a long time - were they approved for destruction. General Felmy went right down to the very limits of his military responsibility; after he had recognized that in this case one could not get along without reprisal measures. Otherwise he would have endangered the lives of many German soldiers, inasmuch as this road was frequently travelled on by German, troops, and since already before this attack three others had taken place, to wit, those on 23 and 25 November, and 20 December 1943. After all the previous surprise attacks no reprisals were taken. If reprisals had been taken sconer, then the attack on the 11th of March 1944 would perhaps not have happened; for it is remarkable that after the reprisals approved by General Felmy had been carried out, especially after the elimination of the hide outs of the bands, no further attacks at all occurred on that road. This is the best proof that measures of reprisal actually do bring results and hence were a military necessity in order to maintain some degree of order.
- The Prosecution has claimed in its plea that the 141 reprisal hostages had been shot by Greek volunteers under German supervision, and has drawn a general conclusion accordingly. From the entry into the War Diary of the 68th Army Corps, Document Felmy 4, of 11 March 1944, is however merely a proposal by the divisional commander. As General Felmy has testified the 141 hostages were not shot by Greek volunteers at all but, by the 117th Infantry Division.
JUDGE BURKE: A few moments ago the statement was made: Operation Kalawrita did also for this reason involve an excess, the reprisal prisoners were selected from the staff of Colonel Papadongonas. Page 46: The reprisal prisoners were selected from the staff of Colonel Papadongonas. The ninth line on the page.
DR. MUELLER-TORGOW: Yes, I have got it, Your Honor. It is correct. This is not a contradiction; they were selected by Greek volunteers, but they were not shot by the Greek volunteers under German supervision, but the Greek volunteer units under colonel Papadongonas were completely indepedent in the ordering and execution of reprisal measures on the one hand; on the other hand, they selected for the German agencies the reprisal hostages in order to have the guarantee that only those people were shot who actually collaborated with the bandits.
JUDGE BURKE: I don't think you understand my question. The language of this statement would appear that the prisoners themselves were members of the staff of Colonel Papadongonas. Did you wish to be understood that way?
DR. MUELLER-TORGOW: I said the reprisal prisoners were selected by the staff of Colonel Papadongonas -
JUDGE BURKE: You repeated the same error.
DR. MUELLER-TORGOW: Selected by the staff of Colonel Papadongonas.
JUDGE BURKE: It makes some difference.
Although the Prosecution has brought no charges against General Felmy in this matter, I want to speak briefly about the surprise attack upon General Krech. It took place on 27 April 1944, on the Molai-Monomwassia road in the southeastern Peloponnes. The commander of the 41 Fortress Division, General Krech and 3 accompanying men were killed, 5 seriously wounded. At that time General Felmy was relieving Generaloberst Loehr in Soloniki and hence already for this reason could not give orders for reprisals. However the leader of the Greek volunteer-units, Colonel Papadongonas of his own accord had 100 hostages shot. He was in no way subordinate to General Felmy - that is the reason for my speaking of the case - especially not with regard to the carrying out of reprisals. He was absolutely independent as far as this is concerned and had ordered these executions of his own accord, without consulting any German authority and had the execution car ried out on 30 April 1944.
That the 200 Greeks in Athens also could not have been shot by members of the LXVIII Armee-Corps I mention only for completeness sake.
In the indictment already the Prosecution held General Felmy responsible for the so-called "massacre of Klissura". This had taken place at the beginning of April 1944, as may be seen from several documents. General Felmy had nothing to do with this matter. Klissura was not in the district of the LXVIII. Corps, it was in Northern Greece in the Salonika area. The SS Armored Infantry Regiment 7 which was involved in the respective occurrences, belonged to the 4th SS-Armored Police Infantry Division and this again was not subordinate to General Felmy but came under the Corps Group Saloniki as is shown in its report of 12 June 1944 to the Army Group E, which tells of the investigations that were made. General Felmy was relieving Generaloberst Loehr during the time in question, but he did not learn of the actual incidents in Klissura at the time because contrary to the real facts of the case, in the regimental reports this had been described merely as an operation. Not until after the period for relieving was over were the true circumstances brought to light-evidently through the office of the Special Commissioner Southeast. Only here in Nuernberg did General Felmy learn of the excess from the records. He therefore can in no wise be held responsible for it.
Likewise General Felmy was not in any way connected with the later incidents in Distomen where the same Regiment was involved. The regiment was tactically subordinated to him for about 8 weeks - it was in June and July 1944 - when the Police-Regiment 18 which was under the authority of the Higher SS - and Police Leader, but was stationed in the district of the LXVIII.Corps without being subordinate to it, was temporarily transferred to the Peloponnes to fight Guerrilla-bands. At that time General Felmy - as has already been stated - had not yet learned of the incidents in Klissura and during the short time that the regiment was subordinate to him, he had no close contact with it. Of the Distomon incidents, which had happened at the beginning of the subordination, he learned only afterwards.
The regiment at first reported the incident merely as an operation. It was the Greek propaganda which took up the matter, that startled General Felmy. The report of Sergent Koch of the Secret Police gave him the rest of the information. General Felmy reported the incident at once to the Army-Group E because the false description of it as a tactic operation of the 10 June 1944, given by the corps could not be maintained. The Army Group then ordered General Felmy to investigate the case. The investigation was carried out and finally the true facts of the case were brought out. General Felmy always definitely condemned the Distomon operation as an excess. This is very clearly revealed by the Giosecke affidavit. Dr. Giesecke was at the time military judge of the Corps Staff and therefore is the best of all to judge the attitude of the defendant with regard to the incidents in Distomon, especially since he personally conducted the interrogations of Sergeant Koch. If General Felmy stated that he agreed with the disciplinary settlement of the affair - which he was not at all entitled to do because the regiment was only tactically subordinate to him - then there is no doubt, that he merely did not want to understake anything upon the false report of the regiment. But he never thought of it to approve the Distomon operation as such. The SS had its own jurisdiction upon which Felmy had no influence whatsoever. If General Felmy had wanted to cover the excesses of the SS-Regiment in Distomon, as the Prosecution apparently warts to assert, then he certainly would not, of his own accord, have passed the matter on to the Army Group. I refer in this connection also to the affidavit of Hammer who at the time was serving on the staff of the Army Group E.
It appears somewhat strange also that in the two documents submitted by the Prosecution in the Distomon case exactly the reports of the LXVIII Army Corps to the Army Group E about the true incidents in Distomon are missing.
And there will be an interpolation here. If the Prosecution's brief says that Minister Neubacher turned to Weichs after the operation Distomon and not to Himmler, then his statement is already to be found in Prosecution Exhibit 484, in Document Book 21. According to this, General Felmy page 14 of the English, 29 of the German text, had reported to Army Group E that Neubacher had asked the office for submission of a report and that it replied to him that the report had already been submitted to Army Group E.
For completeness sake I would like to discuss briefly the deportation of manpower and the orders issued in consequence of the Italian capitulation.
With regard to the deportation I refer to the interrogation of the defendant. As may be seen from the affidavits of Heiden and Bohtz such transcripts were never ordered nor carried out by the LXVIII Army Corps. For the transport of workers, the utilization of which was exclusively in the hands of the Plenipotentiary General for the Utilization of Labor, hence a civilian office, the Corps was not at all the competent authority, However, the deportation of Partisan-suspects and hostages, which was ordered by the High Command of the Armed Forces and in my opinion is an absolutely permissable measure according to International Law, is an entirely different case. General Felmy, too, considered it thus, In the situation report of the military commander of Greece of 13 June 1944 it speaks of an order of the LXVIII Amy Corps, to have persons of the type just mentioned ready to be deported to Germany. Whether this transport, ordered by a higher authority, was actually carried out is not revealed in the document, nor does General Felmy know because he did not occupy himself with the matter personally. The same considerations held true for the case cited in the Estimate of the Situation of the 117 Light Infantry Division of 30 October 1943. Finally the war diary of the Army Group E for the time from 1 July to 31 August 1944 is to be mentioned yet. According to the entry of 27 August, among other things an order had been issued to the LXVII Army Corps to intensify the alert of the units assigned to protect the stretch for the time when a transport of Partisan-suspects to the Reich was to be carried out.
In this case the LXVIII Army Corps had nothing whatsoever to do with the desertation of the Parisan-suspects in itself, it merely ordered the subordinate regiment for railway-security to keep a closer watch on the stretch. It is to be doubted whether the order of the Army-Group E here under consideration has ever come to the knowledge of General Felmy as he can not recall the order. In view of the secondary importance of the matter it is most likely that only the respective Referent of the Corps-Staff dealt with it.
Finally in connection with the capitulation of the Italian Occupation Forces I would like to refer to the Prosecution's Exhibits 317 and 323 in Volume XIII and likewise 445 An Volume XIX and to the interrogation of the defendant and lastly to the affidavits of G yldenfeldt and of Scheure.
The order issued by the High Command of the Armed Forces concerning the treatment of the capitulating Italian soldiers was considerably extenuated in its primary conditions, as may be seen from the teletype message of the LXVIII Armee-Corps to the 1st Armored Division for the turning over of arms by Italian officers to the Partisans (Banden), which according to the order of the High Command of the Armed Forces was to be followed by execution, had moreover to be accompanied according to the teletype message of the Corps - by the fact that the officers had made common cause with the rebels. In such cases however the Italians placed themselves unquestionably as guerrillas on the side of the Partisans. Therefore at least the extenuated order cannot be considered as contrary to International Law.
Decisive for the judging of the situation is the fact however, that the capitulation of Italy in the district of the Army Group Southern Greece which was then under the command of General Felmy, was carried out pretty smoothly. That was possible on the one hand because the good cooperation of his office with the High Command 11 of the Italian Army, whose German Chief of General Staff, General von Gyldenfeldt, had been transferred in the same capacity to the Army Group Southern Greece, and on the other hand due to the fact that the Italian units absolutely obeyed the orders issued by the 11th Italian Army.
For this reason the order in question was not applied within the district of the Army Group Southern Greece.
Your Honors, I have now finished the discussion about the events which are shown in the documents, introduced by the Prosecution against General Felmy.
I have now only to repudiate the reproach of the Prosecution that my client made false statements in his testimony concerning different points. The Prosecution has in order to prove it, examined the witness Willi Finger in the rebuttal precedings in the afternoon of the 20th and the morning of the 21th January. From the technical point of view I have to state beforehand that at this moment in which this transcript is made, I am not yet in the possession of the German records concerning Finger's and Felmy's interrogations on 20 to 22 January, but that with great difficulties I have received only a draft. Therefore I am not in a position to quote the pages of the record.
Regarding the matter itself I want to point out the following:
The witness spoke at first about four proclamations which he allegedly had read in the Peloponnesus at this time. He has however only described three. The first from the beginning of January 1944, is supposed to have discussed the murder of a "higher German Officer" and the threat of severe reprisals in case the perpetrator did not report himself without delay, and they were - the same as the two later proclamations - allegedly signed by the "Befehlshaber Commander Air Force General Felmy". The second proclamation which according to the testimony of the witness was issued not more than 8 days later, reports the hanging of 100 Greek hostages as reprisal for the attack at the end of January and the beginning of February. Finally a third proclamation threatened the Greek population with the well known reprisal quote of 1 : 100, res. 1 : 50.
General Felmy testified to this matter that he neither had ordered the issuing of these proclamations, mentioned by Finger, nor even had any knowledge of them. This appears quite credible, if one bears in mind that General Felmy, as he had testified himself in the witness stand and as it is evident from the entries which he made at this time in his diary, had been in Greece only for a short while during the period in question.
He only returned from his leave on the afternoon of 13 January 1944 and he left again for his flight back to Posen on the morning of 22 January.
He did not land again on the aerodome of Athens until the afternoon of 3 February.
With regard to his alleged signing of the proclamations, it can not be assumed that the defendant signed with his rank, with his grade and finally also with his name. Official proclamations of the Wehrmacht were usually not signed in this way. Apart from that, it would not have only said "Commander" but it would have stated what he commanded, for instance "Commander of Southern Greece", finally General Felmy did not bear this title at this time. If he had issued these proclamations, he would have issued them under his true title "Commanding General". It also has to be added with regard to this point that General Felmy had no reason to have these placards posted, because that would have been the duty of the combat commander of the Peloponnesus who was responsible for the reprisals in this district. With regard to the contents of the placards mentioned by the witness Finger the following is to be said:
In the beginning of January 1944 neither a "higher German officer" nor a General was murdered in the Peloponnesus. This would certainly have come to the knowledge of General Felmy. This fact is not mentioned in the documents and especially not in the Felmy Document Book IV submitted by me as the complete War Diary of the LXVIII Corps for the first half of the year 1944 which represents a supplement of the Prosecution documents. According to it nothing extraordinary had happenen within the district of this corps during the whole month of January, nothing which could have remained in General Felmy's memory. With regard to the contents of the third proclamation of the end of January and the beginning of February, it seems impossible that at this date the order regarding the reprisal quota, was published, since, it was abrogated as it is generally known through the Loeh R order of 23 December 1943 which had been mentioned several times and which repealed the fixed reprisal quotas.
In this connection it should also be mentioned that there need not be any connection between hostages in whose transportation he participated and the people allegedly executed according to the proclamation and that it obviously was unknown to the witness that the hostages who were taken from the houses, had been examined beforehand, concerning their connection with the partisans. The Prosecution is evidently very much interested to bring the murder of the "higher German Officer" which was reported by the witness into connection with the case of Krech in order to represent General Felmy as untrustworthy on the basis of his testimony in this matter and with regard to the use of reprisal quotas in general. This construction, however, is incompatible with the facts. Amongst other things it has been established on the basis of the documents, that General Krech was only murdered on 27 April 1944, at a time, by the way when General Felmy was not present in Athens.
The order to set up the 41st "Fortress Division" was only transmitted from the Army Group E to the LXVIII Corps in the beginning of February. General Krech who was appointed its commander and who had not been on duty in Greece up to this date, could not have arrived on the Peloponnesus before the month of February at the earliest. The attack on him and the command accompanying him, took place in the Southeastern Peloponnesus near Molai at the end of April. Therefore there was no reason to post placards in the Northwestern Peloponnesus in which the perpetrator is asked to report, and to hang the hostages in Patras. According to the dispatches, the 100 hostages were shot on 30 April 1944 on the independent order of Colonel Papadongonas.
It is strange that the witness himself neither mentioned a general who allegedly had been murdered - only the Prosecutor mentioned this fact during the examination - nor that the name of General Krech was mentioned during the examination. The statement which the prosecutor made on the occasion of General Felmy's interrogation in Rebuttal, namely that the witness Finger wanted to repudiate "the testimony of the defendant concerning the execution of 100 hostages as a reprisal for the death of General Krech.
..." does therefore not agree with the testimony of the witness Finger.
Quite apart from the construction of the prosecution, this does not agree in any respect with the facts, as I believe I have already pointed out sufficiently. In view of the special character of the Rebuttal-procedings and of the fact that because of the shortage of time, I had no possibility to make any investigations after the completion of this precedings, I want to leave it undecided, whether Finger has deliberately told an untruth or whether he only made several mistakes in his statements. There is a strong probability to assume the former. No spectator or listener to the interrogation of the witness Finger could doubt that he is the type of political fanatic, for whom the soldiers uniform means the same as the red cloth for the bull. His hatred for everything military which he identifies with the idea of Fascism has obviously been increased by several sentences which he received. It is remarkable that the penitentiary term of 15 years was not mentioned during his direct examination by the Prosecution. It is also strange that since the Presiding Judge of the Court martial which sentenced him then, was the Judge of the Army Corps LXVIII by the name of Buschenhagen, General Felmy had signed the indictment and had forwarded the verdict to the Army Group for confirmation together with a recommendation. It would not be difficult to assume that Finger deliberately transferred the signature of General Felmy from the incriminating indictment to the alleged placards in order to take his revenge. Anyway he put himself at the disposal of the Prosecution which to start with obviously was not too much interested in his testimony.
At least memory failed the witness Finger badly, so that on the basis of the fact that he read the name of the defendant Felmy in the paper this certain combination of thoughts was released. This can already be assumed from the improbably alleged signature under the proclamation, described by him, particularly as the events which he described occured several years ago. The witness does not seem to have the ability, owing to his easily recognizable disposition to probe matters thoroughly with his memory or his intelligence.
He spoke for instance of the district round Patras as the South-western Peloponnesus, designated the fortress battalion to which he belonged only with the number "999", although there was a Roman figure before the Arabic one. The court which sentenced him to a penitentiary term of 15 years, he called in short intervals Court Martial, Higher Field Court and Field Court. By the way all three designations are incorrect. Finally he contended that he then had written to the Court, resp. to the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg and that he had categorically repudiated the objection that he probably had chosen a different address, with the words "No, never!" As it turned out later on, he really had addressed this letter to the Evidence Division.
I believe that with these arguments I have characterized sufficiently the interrogation of the witness Finger.
This witness could not shake in the least in any respect or on any point the testimony which General Felmy gave before in the witness stand.
May it please the tribunal, I am about to finish my plea.
The material submitted as a basis for your decision is very extensive. The defense is interested in its evaluation in toto. The arguments of the prosecution, in line with their one sided position of attack, have to be placed into the connections out of which alone they can be understood. The numerous individual incidents contained in the documents of the prosecution were the result of adequate causes in every case. And beyond the particularities of the individual causes the situation in toto is to he considered which, as I tried to show, can only be understood from a historical point of view. Those are the objective, supplementary facts. The defendant Felmy was placed into this special situation in Southern Greece. As Aeschylos said "Fate plays a part in everything". General Felmy was ordered to Greece in 1941 for the first time in order to serve in a capacity, subordinate in comparison with his military past, due to qualities of his character, the lack of which all defendants are reproached for today.
General Felmy would certainly have preferred to be used at a genuine front somewhere as a flier than to be charged with tasks in Southern Greece only loosely connected with military service. He had to take a stand towards the occurrences appearing on his horizon to an ever increasing degrees He had to take a stand towards them somehow and to give an opportunity to the spiritual functions of his mind, feeling, and will to react towards the incidents around him. And he had to ask his conscience which stand he should take. Previously, in an other connection, I believe to have shown clearly enough in which way his connection was established with happenings in Southern Greece. From the picture of his character alone it may be concluded with compelling reasoning that he endeavoured to do justice to things-as far he was connected with them - as well as was humanely possible, beyond mere military thinking and national boundaries of a spiritual kind. I do not want to discuss again in detail the large number of affidavits, covering nearly the whole period of his life, made by people in various walks of life. There judgement of General Felmy expressed therein is unanimous. And the psychological question presents itself: Is a man whose character has been judged generally and clearly in such a positive way, capable at all of acting in a criminal way?
With regard to his state of mind the prosecution fails to take a definite stand. When, in passing, a reference is being made as is done in the opening statement, it is done only superficially.
The indictment cancels itself eo ipso by failing to prove in any way the assertion which was also submitted in the case of General Felmy, i.e. of the systematic extermination and destruction of the Greek population based on a alleged low opinion of foreign people which assumption alone, would he a prerequisite for the prosecution of the defendants.
We wonder whether the prosecutor in cross-examining General Felmy had the same impression when he stated: "We will accept your opinion that in your Corps area you believed that reprisal measures were properly applied"?"Serious is the picture of necessity" says Friedrich Schiller in the Wallenstein monologue.