I doubt it but I haven't seen any and I haven't received any.
THE PRESIDENT: If the prosecution desires access to these volumes at this time as a means of informing themselves in connection with the matters therein presented in the case as presented by this defendant who is now to be called, I am certain that the members of the Tribunal will take no exception if you seek the use of them at any time that you may desire.
MR. RAPP: Very well, Your Honor. I accept this courtesy and know that I can have them then if I need them.
THE PRESIDENT: I take it that you have no objections, however, to the Tribunal receiving them for their information.
MR. RAPP: I have no objection to that, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: May I make inquiry of defense counsel -- are these to be received as exhibits?
DR. FRITSCH: No, Your Honor. I received this copy from United Nations in New York but at a time when, unfortunately, I was not able to study the English copy properly and therefore I cannot use it as evidentiary material but can only offer it for information.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, and the same statement that I made as to the use of this document by the prosecution will equally apply to the defense. If you wish them, why, you will call at our office and we will be glad to let you make such use of them as you desire.
DR. FRITSCH: Thank you very much. With the permission of the Tribunal, I would ask the Court Marshal to call the defendant Rendulic into the witness stand.
LOTHAR RENDULIC, a defendant, took the stand and testified as follows:
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q Will you kindly raise your right hand, please? I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(The defendant repeated the oath.)
You may be seated.
Dr. Fritsch, I wish to state to you and to the defendant that at such time as he may wish to be excused he should indicate his desire and the Tribunal will take no exception to his temporary leaving the room.
DR. FRITSCH: Thank you, Your Honor.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. FRITSCH:
Q Witness, please state your full name.
A Lothar Rendulic.
Q When and where were you born?
A In Wiener Neustadt, lower Austria, in October 1887.
Q And what is your nationality, witness?
A I am an Austrian national.
Q And what is your religion?
A I am a Roman Catholic.
Q General, I would ask you to describe briefly to the Tribunal your career.
AAfter attending the elementary school, I attended the classical gymnasium in Wiener Neustadt. Then I studded law for two terms and then I entered the Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. In 1910, I received my commission as an officer, and I served, during World War I as an officer.
Q And what was your military rank during the First World War?
AAt the end of the World War, I was a captain. During the war, I was a company commander and then later on a general staff officer.
Q And then after the end of the war, did you still continue as an active soldier, or did you take up a civilian profession?
A No, I remained an active soldier. Only, at the end of the war, it was very unclear as to whether an army was to be set up in Austria and therefore I continued with my legal studies.
I received my doctor of law on the 24th of December, 1920, at Vienna University.
Q Then during your study you did not leave the army?
A No. Until the establishment of the new army, a number or officers were on leave and others were used in other government position, I was used in the Finance Ministry.
Q And then what did you do after the conclusion of your studies?
A In the meantime, they had started setting up the new army. I was taken over into the officers corps of the new army and served with the troops and later on in the Ministry for national defense. In 1923 until 1925, I passed a two-years course in order to finish my general staff training which had commenced at the end of the war. After that, I was taken over into the general staff and served mostly in the Ministry for National Defense.
Q And what was your rank in 1925?
AAt that time I was a major and soon after that I was a lieutenant colonel in the General Staff.
Q And according to my knowledge you also were employed in foreign service?
A Yes, I was military attach for France and England from 1933 until the beginning of 1935.
Q And where was your official residence?
A My office at that time resided in Paris.
Q General, we will carry on later with your military career; I now come to another matter; were you a member of the National Socialist party in Austria?
A Yes, in May 1932 I joined the Party, but my membership only lasted for 13 months i.e. until the Party was dissolved in June 1933.
Q And what were the reasons at that time for you to join the Party?
A They were purely ideological reasons. First there was doubt at that time in very large circles regarding the possibility of living of Austria and then the conditions in Austria had become almost insufferable through Dollfus's tolitarian Government. This Government showed aspects similar to those which later on were seen during the Hitler Regime.
Q Can you give a more detailed explanation about this?
A The Regime is principally determined by the people who carry out the orders and instructions. In Austria at that time when the Government was fighting for its existence without taking into any account the fact of whether the people concerned were suitable for their jobs or not mostly quite unsuitable people were appointed to the individual important places and they were there for party reasons. In consequence the standards of public life in Austria, which had been rather high, were reduced. This system also didn't stop at the Army, and therefore a large number of officers regarded their position as completely unbearable.
Q General, and this was your idea of the Bollfuss System; now, at that time did you have any reason to believe that the same was the case with regard to the Hitler System?
A No, at that time an idea of this kind would have been impossible. On the contrary we had expected quite the opposite from the National Socialist Party. The party had promised a lot with great eloquence.
Q And were you in agreement with all the points of the Party program?
A Of course I was not in agreement with all the points. I had to say to myself that there is no party with the program of which one could be completely in agreement, but also there existed no party which is in a position or willing to carr out its program. For me the main point of the program was sufficient and therein the Party is founded on the soil of positive Christianity. When there prevailed such a basic principle then of course one could assume that the whole affair was in order. There were also numerous priests, protestant priests and also some Catholic priests who joined the party at that time. In 1932 it was quite impossible to envisage in any way the later development of the Party.
Q Witness, then in June 1933 you left the party and then did you join again later on. Later on it was after all desired that officers were to become members of the Party?
A I did not join the party again later on even when it was allowed.
Q And did you have any particular reasons for this?
A The reasons lay in the unexpected development of the Party. A special reason was for me the way in which the Party acted in Austria as well as what they did to Austria. In observing the various bad conditions - I don't mean the particular bad conditions which were uncovered in Nurnberg, but I mean the small trifling offenses incompetency, etc.
- thinking about the reasons I came to the conclusion that the misfortune of the party was its officials, the higher officials as well as the lower officials, their overbearing attitudes, their incompetence in work, and the growth of the system of the party bosses, which came more and more and more to the front - all this awakened me to the position that the party officials were the ones who had mainly to be fought, and I resolved -- unfortunately, I was only for the first time in 1943 to meet higher party officials to oppose them and their excesses. This I did in all the countries, where I served, with the greatest energy.
Q I would ask you to give us details about this, if yon could?
A The first time I met a high party official was in 1943 in Croatia. This was SA Gruppenfuehrer Kasche. He was German envoy in Zagreb. He covered the ethnic struggle which the Poglavnik had set in scene - and I shall have much to say about this, - and I strongly oppossed to this. I got at loggerheads with Kasche and with the Poglavnik, and only in order to stop the thnic struggle against the Serbs minority and this struggle took on such forms that it ceased to be objective. I counted on my being recalled at any moment, but this did not take place. In one of the pre-interrogatives one interrogator said to me, "The way you stood up to Kasche, nobody else would have dared." The information which the interrogator had didn't come from me. The next man I met was the Reich Commissar for Norway, Gauleiter Terboven, this man had set up a Government of force in Norway, and wanted to intervene in the military sphere, and I at once came into sharp dispute with this man. I knew that this man was a close friend of Hitler's, that he was on intimate terms with Bormann and Goebbels. I was warned by my friends, but nevertheless, I carried on with this struggle until I had got everything I wanted and until I succeeded in shaking Terboven's position in public opinion, and of course this struggle did not remain hidden.
The Swedish Press, who of course criticized Terboven sharply, brought new that the new Commander in Chief of Norway wanted nobody on his level, Terboven's days are numbered, and of course one could imagine how these things acted on a man who was extremely ambitious for power. In the Struggle I was the weaker of the two, and of course I knew this. And still Hitler didn't do anything. Terboven got me away. I received the Command of an Army group in East Prussia, which at that time was in a catastrophically critical situation, and I was unlucky again in East Prussia to meet again a notorious party boss. This was Gauleiter Koch, the Reich Commissar of the Ukraine at that time. My predecessor told me, when I took over, how this man made things terribly difficult, and that one couldn't work with him, so I took him aside and in two hours discussion I completely finished him. He told me, "General, nobody has spoken to me like this before," whereupon I said, to him, "I hope you understand, that you needed this," and this man when he called me up on the telephone said to me, "General, what are you ordering today!" Although he had a very strong footing in the party and with Hitler, he did not draw the conclusion which Terboven had drawn. I came away from East Prussia for other reasons, because in Kurland there was a new battle and I was called there. First of all I was in command of Army Group South in the Army Group Eastern Frontier between Czechslovakia and Yugoslavia. Here I had to deal with two gauleiters, Eigruber in upper Austria and Verberreiter in Steiermark. The others didn't count. Eigruber was also finished in the shortest possible time. Veberreiter was quite a decent man, but his weakness was that he intervened in military matters and he made the commander in chief of my 6th Army, which was in Steiermark, a lot of difficulty and I spoke to him very clearly, perhaps it was a little too roughly, because these men weren't used to this, and he complained about me to Hitler in a telegram. He said I spoke to him as if I were speaking to a corporal. Hitler again didn't do anything against me. All these people when they saw my strong way of acting tried to find out "what has this man behind him." My adjutants, my aides de camp, all came to me and told me that such things were told to them and I let them tell all people that I didn't have anything behind me except what I could do, and my bags which were always packed.
The result of this was that the people became even more suspicious and in the later conversations which I had with them I found an absolute growing mistrust against what I might possibly have behind me, and when I was asked about similar questions during my interrogations I recalled these suspicious glances, because the interrogator had exactly the same suspicious look. I can only say that one who was in the favor of the party or who tried to get in the favor of the party, certainly did not act in this way against the most prominent representatives of the party.
Q General, we will come back again to this question briefly later on; first of all I would like to close another question which I have already mentioned; you were talking about your legal studies, did you have any special private intellectual interests?
A Yes, I continued my military studies, because that is a sphere which is continuously changing, and which one can never completely grasp.
Q And did you also carry on any kind of writing activity?
A Yes, I wrote numerous tactical distertations in military journals, some of which were even translated into five or six languages.
Q And did you publish any other books?
A Yes, in 1924 I published a manual of tactics in which I sat down my experiences of the World War, and in 1925 I published a book entitled "Military Psychological Studies." I was interested with regard to the military profession to the military leadership and combat especially the psychological side interested me. This was neither properly set down in the regulations or in military literature. It was kind of a stop-child.
Q And did you legal studies have any importance at all for your military career?
A They had no practical importance for my career. Later on I neglected them and only occupied myself with occasional studies of international law which concerned my sphere, principally owing to the failure of the First League of Nations, and of the Disarmament Conferences regarding the limitation of the danger that the War should still remain a means of politics. My actual intellectual interests lay, even though it may sound rather strange for a soldier, in the field of abstract philosophy.
Q General, when were you taken over into the German army and with which rank?
A On the 1st of April, 1938 with almost all the other officers of the Austrian Army I was taken over into the German army with the rank I had at that time. I was a Colonel in the General Staff. Yes, at that time I was a colonel in the general staff.
Q And what job did you receive in the German Army?
A I became chief of the General Staff of the 17th Army Corps in Vienna.
Q And then as chief of this staff in 1939, you took part in the 2nd World was; is that correct?
A Yes.
Q And then what about your future promotions?
A On the 1st of December, 1939 I became a Brigadier General after I had been a Colonel for six and one half years.
Q And on which fronts did you serve?
A First, I was in the Polish campaign and then I contracted a rheumatic disease towards the end of it which made me unfit for service until June 1940. In June of 1940 I became commander of the 14th Infantry Division in France.
Q And when did you give up this division.
AAfter about three months and then I took over the command of the 52nd division. With this division I served in the Russian campaign until October of 1942.
Q General, could you make rather a longer pause between questions and answers?
A Yes.
Q And then in the meantime were you promoted at all?
A On the 1st of December 1941 I became a Major General after having waited for just two years.
Q And then as a major general, did you remain commander of a division?
A Yes, for almost one year. In October of 1942 I took command of the 35th Army Corps on the Russian front and then on the 1st of December of 1942 I was promoted to general of the Infantry.
Q General, you know that the prosecution talks about a phenominal promotion in your case; were you actually promoted so extremely quickly?
A This statement is rather puzzling to me. There is certainly no General in the German Army who became, a generaloberst and who had such a poor line of promotions as I had. I had to wait as a colonel for six and one half years and was more than 42 years old when I became a Brigadier General. I remained a Brigadier General for two years, even though I know a lot of Generals who were Birgadier Generals for one year and many who were only Brigadier Generals for six months. For a whole year I remained a Major General, even though there were very many Generals who were Major Generals only for six months and sometimes there were some who only waited for two months while I had to wait a whole year. When in August of 1943 I was appointed commander in chief of the 2nd Panzer Army, I had to wait eight months for my promotion to General, even though in general principles one was promoted within at the most two months to that service rank, which corresponded to the position held. I had to wait eight months and the assertion of the prosecution is very puzzling to me, especially since I have explained these circumstances in detail and since the possibilities to compare can be found in the prosecution documents, themselves.
Q General, how long did you remain in Russia?
A I remained until 6 August, 1943 in Russia and then after the battle of Orel I was called to the Fuehrer's headquarters.
Q When were you given the command of the 2nd Panzer Army?
AAs I said, on 6 August 1943 I had to report to the Fuehrer's headquarters and there I learned either from Jodl or Warlimont that I was to receive the supreme command if an army, an army in the Balkans and nothing further was known about this at the time.
All that was known was that the troops of this army were to be stationed at first in parts of Croatia not occupied by the Italians and that the failling out of Italy was counted on and that if Italy fell out, the whole of Croatia, Montenegro and Albania would belong to the arny's sphere.
Q Well then was the commission which you received and who gave you this commission?
A The commission was given by Hitler personally and the commission was: pacify Croatia, use all the Croatian military forces, smash Tito, disarm if necessary the Italians, take them prisoners; occupy Dalmatia, Herzegowina, Montenegro and Albania and defend the coast.
At that time I spoke to Hitler for the first time in my life. I must say that the way in which this commission was given to me, the matter-of-factness in view of the forces available in which a commission which was almost impossible to take and this whole scene gave me the impression that one certainly could not arrive at the conclusion that this thing could possibly not be carried out or possibly could be carried out. To anything of that kind, one said "yes" and went away.
Then later I was told, first of all to wait in Vienna for the reorganization of the forces in the Balkans and to use the time acquaint myself with the conditions in the Balkans.
Q And did you do that?
A Yes, from Vienna I made many flights to Salonika to Army Group E, which at that time was in charge of the whole Balkan area. Afterwards I went to Belgrade to the commander of the German troops in Serbia and last of all I went to Zagreb to the Poglavnik, the head of the Croatian state, to the German ambassador in Zagreb to the Chief of the German Army in Croatia and to other German Offices there.
Q We were just talking about the fact that you also went to Pavelich and later on had to work with him in some way or other; what was your impression of him in this connection?
A Pavelich made a rather dignified impression, one saw in his appearances two great models, Hitler and Mussolini had left their mark on him and I was able to find out then it was much easier for him to imitate Mussolini then it was to imitate Hitler. This was my first and last meeting with Poglavnik in my ten months of service in the Balkans. Later on I got at boggerheads with all these circles so that a personal relationship would have been entirely undesirable on my part.
THE PRESIDENT: We will take our morning recess at this time.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1:30 o'clock.
(A recess was taken.)
AFTERNOON SESSION
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, Your Honors, may I have permission to have the defendant General Lanz excused from tomorrow's session and the next day's session in order to prepare his defense?
THE PRESIDENT: That will be agreeable to the Tribunal.
DR. SAUTER: Thank you
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed.
DR. FRITSCH:
Q. General, just before the recess we had discussed the commission which you had received from Hitler personally and you told us about your visit in Salonika, in Belgrade and in Zagreb. Among other things you told us about a discussion you had with the Poglavnik. I would like now to continue and I would like to ask you what was the picture you formed concerning the situation in the Balkans generally speaking on the occasion of these visits and what impressions did you gain?
A. Above all I was naturally interested in the forces which were to be at my disposal. I could ascertain at that time I would have at my disposal seven infantry divisions, among them two reserve divisions, apart from that I would have one Croatian corps and 8 Brigades, altogether about six to seven thousand men. These forces were subordinate to the commander of the German troops in Croatia. Besides there were in Croatia the so-called Ustascha. These were units consisting of fanatical followers of the Poglavnik, the so-called body guard division. In Zagreb and surroundings there were about 10,000 men, then there were a number of battalions dispersed over all the country. The Ustascha units, which I mentioned, were not subordinate to the commander of the German troops in Croatia.
Q. Did your own troops seem sufficient to you?
A. For the tasks, which were restricted, according to the situation, to Croatia alone, these troops seemed completely sufficient to me.
Q. You talked about the various possibilities which could be seen in this situation. If for instance in the event of an Italian crisis were you promised any further forces?
A. Yes, that also happened on 6 August when I took over my command, in the headquarters. At that time I was promised forces in the case that Italy would fall out, however, it was not mentioned at the time how strong these forces were to be. Possibly the O.K.W. did not know it itself, they did not know what they might have at their disposal at the proper time.
Q. I would like you to anticipate the answer to the following: How many forces did you actually get after Italy fell out?
A. At that time I got two further Infantry division, then I had altogether nine divisions.
Q. Were these forces then sufficient?
A. These forces were small in view of the fact that in the event of Italy's treason the army area had to be doubled. They were almost ridiculously small in view of the crisis which had to arise through Italian treason. But I have never in my many assignments had the feeling that I really had sufficient forces at my disposal. In spite of this fact all tasks were always solved.
Q. When the Italian crisis was concluded were the available forces sufficient?
A. Immediately after the conclusion of the Italian crisis, I got two further divisions and then I had altogether eleven divisions and these forces under all circumstances had to suffice in the fight against the bands. They were inadequate for the defense of the coast.
Q. What was at that time the situation in Croatia compared with Germany, I mean in a general direction and as a state?
A. Croatia was an independent state, which had a friendly pact with Germany.
Q. Was the opinion known to you that the Croatian government was allegedly a puppet government?
A. I have heard that opinion voiced at times, but undoubtedly it is not a correct opinion. The Croatian government was a puppet government, but only as far as Hitler and his personal wishes and requests were concerned. These wishes and demands of Hitler had to be always complied with by the Croatian government and in this sense it might be called a puppet government. Where all other German agencies were concerned, the Croatians were jealously concerned with their independance and sovereignty, which was possibly caused by an inferiority complex with regard to the stronger ally. These endeavors on the part of the Croatians were especially supported and sponsored by the Reich Foreign Minister and by the German envoy in Zagreb, Mr. Kasche. If the Croatian government had been a puppet government in every respect, then I would not have seen myself forced to wage such a strong and slightly dangerous battle against the Poglavnik and his circles and against the German envoy.
Q. General, we will discuss this question in more detail at a later point. At the moment, I would be interested to hear from you what you can tell us concerning one of your main problems, that is the question of the partisans; what was it that you established concerning this problem on the occasion of your visits in the Balkans?
A. The focal point of the problems, which were discussed in Zagreb, was the fight against Tito's partisans. I was above all interested in the slightly mysterious personality of the partisan leader, because I believed I would find a few basic facts here about the spirit and the meaning of this movement. I learned in Zagreb that allegedly Tito was really called Jos ip Broz, and that he was a non-commissioned officer in a royal and imperial infantry regiment in the 1st World War, that he was captured in Russia and that very soon he became a follower of the Bolsheviks, that for several years he was trained and studied at an academy in Moscow. Then I learned that in 1941, soon after the occupation of Yugoslavika by the German troops, he was sent from Moscow to the Balkans in order to make difficulties there for the German occupation forces by fights and combat actions in a partisan manner.
Since the summer of 1943 he was organizing his forces in units, maybe he started doing that already as early as the spring of 1943. It was important to me to establish here and also later that the main difficulties in the future organization of his units consisted in the lack of munitions and arms.
Q. General, you were talking about units and about organizations, were these regular military units?
A. I learned then and established later from my own experiences that not all these units were all the time kept together but only those which he concentrated in those areas where there were no German units. In those areas Tito had his supply depots and he had units under arms there which had the assignment to defend that area. However, the other units were dismissed to their home villages and home towns and they were only called up and gathered together for special tasks.
Q. With this latter remark you mean the so-called house partisans?
A. No, I don't. The house partisans were yet another group of partisans. They were those who did not belong to any units at all. They remained unrecognized in the villages as residents. They followed Tito for the most part and they were the ones that carried out the majority of the attacks against isolated soldiers, isolated vehicles, also railroad lines, et cetera. They also carried out sabotage acts on depots, trucks, et cetera. The units which had been dismissed to their homes also lived unrecognized in the villages. They continued with their daily work and thus it happened that a German military unit without knowing it could find itself right in the middle of a Tito Division, as they were called, and this unit would only gain knowledge of this fact when the Tito Division was called together by some secret order and attacked the military unit concerned.
Q. You are talking about divisions here, General, and we have also heard the expression "brigade" mentioned here. Does not that conclude that these were regular military units?
A. No, from the name and the designation alone that cannot follow that fact conclusively. The OKW were actually forbade to use that designation because it would lead to error. It would be misleading because these Tito units were, after all, not regular military units.
Q. And how were they officially designated?
A. They had to be called "large bands", "medium sized bands" and "small bands". I want to say right away we did not approve of this designation. In inter-office communications we always called them "brigades", "divisions", et cetera because we could thus make the difference clearer; but we did realize that by calling them this inter-office communications we only wanted to make the distinction clearer; this designation was never intended to recognize these units as regular military units.
Q. If you are talking about an interoffice designation of these units do you mean just a German circle?
A. What I mean is, if my officers reported the situation to me on the occasion of situation reports then they would not talk about a "Large Band 22", but they would call it the "Tito Division 22".
Q. And what seemed to you the reason, General, not to recognize Tito's band as regular units?
A. One reason was that the basis of Tito's fight was undoubtedly illegal because after the capitulation of the Jugoslav Army had been concluded and after the country had been occupied nobody was justified to raise arms against the occupation forces. Further, we could ascertain that the leadership of the partisans was not a unified one. There cannot be any question at all about uniformity if I consider the partisans in my entire area because there were several groups even apart from Tito about, which I shall talk later, which were not only not led uniformly but even fought each other at swords' point and waged a struggle of extermination against each other; but even these partisans which we designated as Communists because they fought under Tito's badge, even those partisans were not led in a uniform manner. For one, the so-called house partisans, only followed Tito to a certain extent. There were certain small groups which developed into robber bands. At one time they did not follow Tito and at other times they did. But even the larger units did not always follow every operation of Tito's. We intercepted all of Tito's radio communications.
We knew all his reports day by day. We knew the reports and messages which he received. We were even in a position to ascertain that one or the other division would refuse to participate in one or the other operations, with the reason which the leader gave that he was not in a position to get all his people to attend.
The next reason which prevented us from calling the partisans regular military units was that they wore no uniform. They would wear German or Italian or Croatian pieces of uniforms and later even pieces of a British uniform. There were many pieces of German uniforms amongst them and also many pieces of the very similar Croatian uniform. That went so far that even during the first weeks of my stay in the Balkans some troops demanded to give the German and the Croatian units, in addition to their uniform, some recognizable insignia so that they could be distinguished from the partisans. This type of uniform which was used amongst the partisans sometimes made them recognizable as enemies only when the battle had already started. This type of uniform caused us many losses.
Q. Witness, now we'll deal with the house partisans. Did they wear uniforms?
A. No. the house partisans couldn't wear any uniform because they lived amongst the population unrecognized but even the units which had been dismissed to their homes, even those did not wear any uniform when they lived in their villages, sometimes right in the middle of our own units.
Q. The prosecution has asserted here that the partisans frequently wore Soviet Stars on their headgear and that their leaders had corresponding insignia on their sleeves. Is that correct?
A. There are some orders of Tito's which we captured and which order to wear Soviet Stars as described. But not all actually wore them. Then we have to consider the fact that in accordance with Tito's order the Soviet Stars were to have the diameter of two inches, that is exactly as long as a match. These very small stars can by no means be recognized from any distance and certainly not from a distance as can be demanded from such insignia.