Q. In the Ten day report of the 30th of October it is reported that 72 Britishers have been sent off as prisoners of war. Was any difference made in the treatment of these persons and members of gangs?
A. Yes, members of the regular enemy armies were treated as prisoners of war.
Q. Even if there soldiers of the Allied Army were captured with the partisans?
A. If it was easy to identify them clearly and unequivocally then yes.
Q. And if you could not identify them as Allied soldiers?
A. Then they were simply members of bands and treated as such.
Q. Witness, in Document Book V, I believe you know all the documents in that volume did you?
A. At any rate I have become acquainted with parts of the document. I did not know all the documents but some of it I did, so that I could not say that I did not know the documents.
Q. I shall begin with Exhibit 125 which is on page 1 of both the English and German Book. On the first 7 pages there is a memorandum of Commissioner of State Dr. Thurner. Who was Thurner?
A. Thurner was the Chief cf the Administrative Staff with the Commanding Officer in Serbia.
Q. Did that letter come to your knowledge at the time?
A. No.
Q. Did you know Thurner personally?
A. Yes, I met Thurner once or twice at a conference.
Q. What was your opinion of him?
A. I personally did not have a very high opinion of him. He was on some occasions somewhat autocratic.
Q. What sort of ideas would he express?
A. As I see it he represented SS ideas. Then as a Prussians Civil Servant, a state councillor he of course was up to a point dependent on Goering.
Q. You said, or at least hinted, that Thurner would not subordinate himself. Do you wish to say thereby that he would take steps beyond his position?
A. Yes, he was inclined to do so.
Q. How do you mean?
A. Because he believed that he, politically speaking, was well backed. For instance, the formation of the Nedic government, without the knowledge of the Wehrmacht, the Armed Forces Commander Southeast, is entirely due to Thurner in my opinion.
Q. Was anything done to eliminate Thurner's influence?
A. Yes, on repeated occasions. I suggested that he should be used somewhere else.
Q. Who by?
A. By my Commander in Chief.
Q. With what success?
A. At first we were unsuccessful but later on, unless I am mistaken, at the beginning of 1943 he left, was used somewhere else.
Q. Was the OKW in agreement with this transfer?
A. OKW as I see it prevented Thurner's transfer.
Q. Why.
A. Because in the OKW, that is, in the case of Keitel, one did not wish to commit oneself to a Party fuss.
Q. How did you know that?
A. I know that from conversations with officers.
Q. Witness, in this Exhibit 125 there is also an order by the Plenipotentiary Commander in Serbia concerning mopping up operations. This is on page 8 to 10 of the document and on the later pages there are order concerning mopping up operations and the evacuation of Sabac. Did you know those orders by Boehme?
A. Perhaps I know the order about the evacuation of Sabac after the event after I came back from the East, but as I said I knew it was intended to evacuate the Sabac area.
Q. On page 13 of this document there is an order by the Commanding General Plenipotentiary in Serbia addressed to korwettenkapitam Sekel officer with the Hungarian Danube flotillo. It says the localities of Novo, Selo, Debrec, which are to be destroyed by fire. Did you know that order?
A. No, I did not. First of all I assume that this is an order concerning tactics of a certain military action but I am not sure.
Q. Exhibit 126 which is on page 21 of the German Document Back and page 18 of the English Document Book, we have reports to the Armed Forces Commander Southeast. Did you know those reports? They are all reports about raids and attacks and they also concern losses suffered by the enemy.
A. I think probably I knew them but essentially these are reports which have been dealt with already, repeats I mean.
Q. Does the same apply to Exhibit 127?
A. Yes, quite.
Q. Now, let us turn to Exhibit 128 on page 70 of the German and page 102 of the English Document Book. Again they are daily reports. Let me ask you one question, who drew up this report?
A. There reports came from the Armed Forces Commander Southeast to the OKW and also for the information of OKH.
Q. Who drew them up?
A. The reports were drawn up from the reports by the commanders and compiled by I-C, later on by I-A. Then they were checked up on by me.
Q. Did you see whether or not the facts reported therein were correct?
A. I wouldn't have had the time for that.
Q. And in how far were you responsible for these reports?
A. I was responsible for the fact that the reports contained everything important. One of the things which had been reported to us and they were formally speaking correct.
Q. To whom were you responsible to this?
A. To my commanding officer.
Q. When these reports contained also measures of retaliations, for instance, if you report a certain number of Jews and Communists and National Serbs have shot, were you also responsible for the matters as such?
A. It was not I who had ordered these measures. I would not have been in a position to do so. I did not have the authority. My responsibility was for the fact that these things were contained in the report in the same manner as they had been reported to us.
Q. Were these reports shown to the Commander in Chief before they left your office?
A. If and when he was present, yes, they were submitted to him pending their importance of course.
Q. They were not shown to him verbatim. He was informed about it, wasn't he?
A. That depended, for instance, General Loehr would read these reports in great detail.
Q. Who deputized for you when you were away?
A. As a rule the most senior office on the general staff. In case of the leave we mentioned before it was I-A
Q. In the Exhibit 129 on page 143 of the English Document Book and page 92 of the German we have reports of the 164th Division. Did you obtain knowledge of these reports?
A. Yes.
Q. It also says in these documents, initialed by Foertsch. Are these your initials?
A. Yes.
Q. In Exhibit 130 which is an appendix document Book IV there is a report on the first page, special detail Rosenberg directs action against Jews, reported by the local commander in Salonika.
What action was that?
A. I am unable to tell you that because I don't know.
Q Should one not start from the fact that in the case of this action we had an action concerned with deportation of Jews?
A No. As from November 1941 until the end of August 1943 I lived in the immediate vicinity of Salonika, and at least once a week at some or another point went through the town, and I know very well that until the spring of 1943 roughly -- I cannot commit myself to the exact date -the Jews in Salonika were entirely left at peace.
Q And later on?
AAs I said before, in the spring of 1943, at least this is how I remember it, the Jews all of a sudden were given either a yellow start or yellow armlet, and were gathered together in a part of the town of Salonika.
Q Who ordered that?
A I don't know. The order did not come from a Military agency. I assumed at the time it came from an SS agency of the Reich.
Q Were military agencies taking a part in this gathering together of Jews?
A No, not according to my observations.
Q Not your staff either?
A No, on the contrary I know very well that somebody, some agency or another approached me telling me that the field police, which was attacked to myself, should help in this and at that time I expressly forbade that such help would be given. Namely, the men who were attached to my staff I told not to take any part in it.
Q Who carried out the measure in the end?
AAs I said before either they were SD agencies or SS, I am not sure.
Q Would you have been able to prevent that gathering together?
A I? Certainly not.
Q Not even your commanding officer?
A No.
Q But surely the Commander in Chief had full executive power?
A Yes, but executive powers find their their limits as it was laid down at the time in the will of the Fuehrer, and against orders coming from Central Reich Agencies a man who held executive power was completely helpless.
Q What was done to these Jews?
AAll I know is that one day they were deported.
Q Where to?
A I don't know.
Q Did you not have any influence on that either?
A No.
Q Did you hear later on where these jews were taken to?
A I heard rumors to the effect that they were taken to a special area reserved for jews in Poland, as it was called at the time, the area of Lublin was mentioned, and it was said that it was intended there to establish a sort of Jewish state where they could have self-administration up to a point in this special area.
Q Did you know anything at that time about concentration camps, Auschwitz for instance?
A Until the end of the war I heard only two names of concentration camps, Dachau and Oranienburg. Auschwitz I never heard mentioned.
Q Just a moment, please, the witness has also said I knew these places as names; would you please repeat the answer?
AAs far as the concentration camps were concerned I only knew the names of the camps at Dachau and Oranienburg. I emphasize "name," because I didn't know the camps.
Q Did you know the names of any other concentration camps?
A No. No other name became known to me during the war.
Q Before you went to the Southeast did you hear anything about the camps in Sabac and Semlin?
A No, that was something entirely different. These were collecting camps, transient camps, or camps for hostages or people captured as a retaliatory measure. They wore called concentration camps. Incidentally it has occurred to me that even an SD report among these documents does not speak of concentration camps, but of a collecting camp and those camps had nothing to do with the term K.Z. concentration camp, such as we are using it these days.
These were concentration camps in the sense of the Boer War. I believe the term concentration camp originates from the Boer War.
Q You mean that people were being concentrated from evacuated areas, for example as hostages?
A Yes, or such members of the population who were locked up there for the reason of security of the occupied power and could not be left at large, such as is being done today again.
Q Witness, were you yourself in an internment camp recently?
A Yes, unfortunately I was in an internment camp, yes, in a civilian internment camp near Deggendorf, for 8 months.
Q Was that a prisoners of war camp?
A No.
Q But you were a general?
A No, this was a civilian internment camp, and when I asked why as a general, who was commanding an army was sent there I was not given any answer. And when then I on behalf of 24 generals who were there, and were later reduced to 16, on account of deceases when I attempted time and again to find out why were were there I was not given any answer.
Q Are you informed about the rights to which you are reserved as a prisoner of war, particularly as a general according to the Laws of War?
A Yes, whether I am completely informed about this I do not know, but I know that as a prisoner of war I should have been treated as a prisoner of war.
Q Was that not the case in this internment camp?
A No, it was not the case. To give you an example, I was not forced to work, but I had to work, which I liked actually, because otherwise I wouldn't have been given any lunch. For four months I worked at a timber sight, which didn't do me any harm, of course, and for another four months I worked in the gravel pit, in order to get a very inadequate lunch.
Q You mean in a proper P.W. camp this is not usual?
A No, before that I was in a prisoners of war camp and after the eight month I was sent back to a prisoner of war camp, and there was treated entirely correctly.
Q While you were in the internment camp were you told why you were there and why you were deprived of your rights as a Prisoner of War?
A No, when I was committed to this camp, and was physically examined, I had to sign a piece of paper concerning valuables which I was not allowed to retain, a watch for instance. I did not have a watch in this camp.
Q Did you have to give it up to the camp?
A Yes, it said underneath the paper, "Civilian internee", and I refused to sign this because I said I was not a civilian internee. Thereupon, it was pointed out to me I had to sign it otherwise -- and then there were a few dots and dashes, and leaving me to draw my own conclusions, and so I signed.
Q Did you hand over your watch?
A Yes.
Q Was it given back to you?
A The watch was given back to me, but 900 marks I did not get back.
Q Witness, to get back to the Balkans, did you ever hear anything about how the Jews were treated generally at that time?
A No, apart from the brief official trips when I was on leave I was always working hard down in the Southeast, and the question did not play any part at all in our vicinity, apart from such events as I described when one noted that the Jews were being gathered together in a certain area.
Q You said just now that you heard at the time that the Jews were to be sent to Poland to a certain type of Jewish state; did you believe that?
A Yes.
Q Did you yourself among your acquaintances include any Jews?
A I don't think this is very important, but just to give you an example I had a personal young administrative officer who had a Jewish grandmother.
Q As a German officer did that not get you into trouble?
A I personally made every effort to remain independent. I did not hesitate to shop in a Jewish shop as long as I was there.
Q Did you or your staff have any contacts with Jews in Salonika?
A Yes, my supply officer with my approval, which he expressly asked for, bought things from Jews quite deliberately. Officers were billeted in Jewish houses. The officers did not seem to mind.
Q Witness in the next exhibit 130, which we have mentioned just now, it says on the 3rd page on page 38 of the original, "Daily Report for the period of 2 to 3 October," there is a report that British prisoners of war had escaped, 27 of them, 2 of whom were shot to death; do you remember this incident?
A Yes, I do. This happened in the Salonika area, it was a railway transport. These men attempted to escape therefrom and as they possibly did not stop when called to on escape they were then shot.
Q Now look at exhibit 131, which is the last one in this document book, are these different reports; different from exhibit 130 I mean?
A No, essentially it is the same as far as its contents are concerned.
Q Now let us turn to document book 6 of the prosecution. Please take up these figures again which you have become acquainted with only in this trial here, but nevertheless the prosecution has used as incriminating pieces of evidence. These are exhibits 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157 and 159. How is it that in this document book there are so many documents which did not come to your knowledge earlier?
A Possibly these are all documents which never reached my staff.
Q First of all let us look at exhibit 139, which is on page 16 of the German document book and page 21 of the English document book. It says, the Situation Report by the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast of 2 November 1941. We discussed the term Situation report on Friday and you told us about this; first of all I wish to ask you, is a report of this sort an order?
A No, it is not an order, it is a report of the situation, that is a compilation concerning events which have taken place for the information of a certain circle.
Q The document is signed in the document book "for the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast, the Chief of the General staff, signed Foertsch"; was it signed by you?
A Yes.
Q This document amounts to little more than two pages in the document book, but from the photostatic copy one can see and also from the document book one can see it from the remark above the actual signature, "page 19 of the original" - that the original contains 19 pages.
Before analyzing the contents, let me ask you a few questions about the form in which the document is drawn up. The heading says Wehrmacht Commander Southeast and it is ended with the signature as I have quoted just now; how is it that this document bears your signature and not that of the Wehrmacht Commander?
AAs I said before it is not an order, and above all it is not a fundamental order nor is it a report to a superior agency. It is a situation report addressed to a circle of subordinate agencies. If everything which went out under the heading of the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast had been signed by the Commander in Chief, we would have needed two Commanders in Chief because one of them would have not been able to fill in all the signatures.
Q At the end of the document there is the remark, "Situation Report Distribution list;" was the distribution list uniform once and for all in these cases?
A Yes, at least for a certain period of time.
Q And why was it uniform?
A Because these reports went out frequently.
Q Were they sent out at certain periods?
A That depended.
Q The document also contains the remark, "Secret" above the heading and then another preliminary remark; were any publication or passing on in writing was forbidden; why was this preliminary remark made?
A You can only understand it if you know the whole document.
Q Just a moment, let me give you the photostatic copy of the entire document.
(The document is handed to the witness.)
A The idea was to prevent that an extremely outspoken and frank description of conditions in the Southeast was to reach the wrong address, I mean such people who either by habit or by order would spy on the staff of the Wehrmacht Commander. This whole situation report had bee drawn up in order to show the subordinate agencies and officers of those agencies as objectively as possible the picture of the situation as far as the political, national and economic basis of the various areas in the Southeast were concerned. For that reason things are being dealt with in here which, let us say, would not be written about in tho "Voelkischer Boobachter" or any other daily paper and the whole purpose was to achieve the purpose of giving the officers working and fighting in the area a concise and yet extensive picture of the situation in this area in order to heighten their understanding for these facts.
For instance, if I may just add this one sentence, this becomes clear from the subdivisions, Serbia first 1) for political area, 2) government, 3) administration 4) economy, 5) armed forces, and police - were interesting enough. The first sentence roads: "Serbia, since the Armistice does not have an army." Then under "Serbia" there is a paragraph called the "Insurgents and how to fight them". Food situation and Moral." Same applies to Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece. That is, shall we say in other words, a sort of brief military "Baedeker" or brief military manual guide book, that would be a manual for anyone who is a complete stranger in this area so he can from an impression of what is Serbia, what it looks like and who lives there.
Q Witness, you mentioned before that this report was drawn up in ruthless frankness, which perhaps would not always coincide with views held by the O.K.W. and the Government; can one observe this fact from that part which is contained in the document book?
A No, the extract in the document book deals only with the paragraph "Insurgent Movements" and how to fight them in Serbia and any layman must form the impression that here once again something had been ordered, but actually these extracts are only one tenth of the whole report and deal not with any new orders, but describe briefly and concisely what quite generally has been ordered and had occurred in this area concerning the insurgent movement. For instance, it says here such and such persons will be hanged or shot, if that were an order it would say "are to be shot" or "are to be hanged", but actually here it is only mentioned what has happened and the state of affairs that existed at the time when the report was issued.
THE PRESIDENT: We will recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal recessed until 9:30 Hours, 14 October 1947.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the Unites States of America against Wilhelm List et al, defendants sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 14 October 1947, 0930, Chief Justice Wennerstrum, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the Courtroom will please find their seats.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal V.
Military Tribunal V is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Marshal, will you ascertain if all the defendants are present in the Courtroom?
THE MARSHAL: May it please your Honors, all defendants are present in the Courtroom except the defendant von Weichs, who is still in the hospital.
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed with the examination.
DEFENDANT HERMANN FOERTSCH DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. RAUSCHENBACH:
Q Witness, yesterday at the recess we had just discussed Exhibit 139, on page 21, Document Book VI. I have shown you the photostat copy of the entire original of this exhibit. It is a so-called Situation Report in the Balkans, and you signed it. You have already told us that this was a report and not an order. Now, I want to ask you this, in paragraph Roman VI, "Insurgent Movement", some of which is also contained in the document Book II, there are certain passages which might give the impression as though you wanted to get troops to act as vigorously as possible; would that be the correct impression?
A No, on the contrary, as I said before, this report was to give the recipients and objective and sober picture of the factual circumstances so that they would become acquainted with the over-all situation, and so that the population and conditions of the country should be judged by them correctly.
Q Did you by your description want to show the situation in the same manner which would correspond to the orders issued at the time?
A That is correct. If you wanted to describe the conditions in the area, then you could not overlook the fact that there were rebellions, and the way they were being fought.
Q Would it be possible that the formulation of this particular paragraph could be interpreted as an order by those who received the situation report?
A In my opinion this is out of the question, because the formulation shows unequivocally that here we have a description of facts and conditions, and not an order, because it says everywhere it is so, it will be or it shall. It never says it must or it has to.
Q In paragraph VI, the Insurgent Movement, it says under Arabic 4, "Refugees Expelled from Serbia;" who had expelled them?
A Hungary, Croatia and Bulgaria, all those countries which were a part of the old Yugoslav State.
Q Did the armed forces Commander Southeast have any influence on this?
A No. This was a political decision reached immediately after the campaign, and any military agency could not exercise any influence upon it, nor did it have the possibility to do so.
Q Did this refugee movement have any influence on military events?
A Certainly it did, because the contrasts, the ethnical contrasts which we have described before was accentuated by this in a certain way.
Q Under B-3 in Paragraph Roman VI, "Resurrectionist Movement", the Cetniks are referred to. It says that the Cetniks are a free group organized in a military way which have been in existence since the war of liberation against Turkey, and after the first World War received its legal foundation for existence from the Cetnik organization; what does this legal basis of the Cetniks mean?
A One could understand it in the following manner. We ourselves referred to a registered association, an association of Riflemen or a sports group. It would be wrong in any case to conclude from that fact that the bands which now were formed on the basis of this organization would become legal thereby.
Q You stated that when you drew up this situation report you were endeavoring to reach an objective judgment and thereby influence others in the same manner; did you also endeavor to counteract the influence of the propaganda at that time?
A That idea was an obvious one, and perhaps by my former activities in the field of the press and propaganda it was particularly natural to me.
Q Did you yourself attempt in the way you have just indicated to exercise influence on the propaganda in the Southeast?
A Yes.
Q In what way?
A In this field I had been given every latitude as a rule by my commanders. Having once given them the basic ideas and received their agreement for their application, it was perhaps a particularly familiar field for me, because of my former activities. I attempted to counteract the propaganda such as spread by the propaganda ministry in Berlin in a twofold manner. This propaganda was directed into two channels, one to our own troops, and secondly to the population. And at that time the most important thing was to have our own troops familiarized with the basis of decent soldiery, and on the other hand, to occupy their minds in their spare time, not in the sense that they must be tendentiously fed with national socialist ideas of leadership, but rather to occupy their minds with the questions of the geographical area in which they were serving, or rather than talk to them about important subjects, to show them pictures from home and give them a nice girl. And as far as the population was concerned it seems to me more valuable to stress the effects of daily life; and shall we say as an example, rather than give them a treatise on some ideas of the thousand years Reich, to give them an idea of the consequences for their property and life and daily life, the participation in the insurgent movement or spreading of the activities of the bands would have, and that it was in the interest of the Serbian farmers to keep calm and quiet.
That the industrial worker cannot gain anything by having his site of production destroyed. In other words, propaganda directed toward the population should also be part of the plan of appeasement on the grounds it should be typical of that area, and not for a general propaganda into the blue, such as Berlin aimed at
Q What were the effects on the military events which you promised yourself from that propaganda, and particularly in times of dictatorship?
A I believe that propaganda, particularly as it was handled in the past years in Germany was most decisive basis for the failure of dictatorship, because it eliminated any independent thinking and any critical faculties, and because those two points, independent thinking and criticism of facts form a decisive basis if one thinks at all of transforming these dictatorial conditions.
Q Were you of the opinion that this one-sided nature of the Third Reich Propaganda should have been counteracted?
A Yes, of course.
Q Did you show this attitude towards your own colleagues on your staff?
A I did this deliberately, and I believe I was not unsuccessful.
Q What were your relationships with your colleagues, how did you get on with them on the staff?
A It was my individual wish to have my assistants under me not only as a superior officer, but as a comrade, and I also endeavored to awaken in them independent thinking, preserve it, and thereby make them work really productively.
Q Now, if you took up this attitude against the tendencies of National Socialism, why did you not do more to fight the fruits of this system?
A I believe that the individual, particularly if he has a limited scope of tasks, and does not hold a decisive position, could not do much more than speak the truth, describe the things as they really are, to warn, and within his own sphere of power to fight such excesses which he comes across. But that I feel is what the individual can do. Over and above that the effect, the conditions under which we live, is an extremely difficult one. The activity of the individual, such as I try to describe it, might contribute to undermine the pillars on which such a dictatorship rests, but in the final analysis a system of this sort must reach its own inevitable end, or it must, as it happened be eliminated and smashed by force from outside. What the individual can do is and will always be extremely limited.
Q Witness, now let us talk about Exhibit 153, which is on page 55 of the German, and page 70 of the English; Exhibit 153, this is an activity report by the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast, dated 30 November 1941, Activity Report for the period of November 1 until November 30. A new basic order is referred to in this exhibit. Did this order make any essential changes in the regulations of command such as they existed up to that time?
A What this document contained is not the actual order itself, but it is a reproduction of the order in the form of a war diary. As far as I can see from this in complete copy in front of me, in that period of time in November 1941, no basic change was affected, nor do I recollect anything about it.