A. The Commando order was issued in the autumn of 1942. At that time I was in Russia and I stayed there for almost another year. The Commando Order did not apply to Russia. That is evident from the order itself. Therefore, I did not receive the Order and therefore could not pass it on. When in August 1943 I came to the Balkans that order was in force for the Balkans, but the troops had had it for almost a year when I arrived. That order, as far as I know, was never applied in my area. We had many a fight with British Commandos along the Coast, however, I do not know of a single case where that order was applied. One British Commando operation took place in the spring of 1944 against an island base defended by one company. That was on the island of Solta. The British were supported by considerable partisan forces. The whole German company was wiped out and taken prisoner. On a second occasion a Battalion base on the large Island of Brac off the Dalmation Coast was attacked by strong partisan forces, who had the support of a whole British Commando Force. There was very heavy fighting. The British had entered the strong point. However, at the end of the fighting the British and the Partisans were thrown back. The German Battalion had in its hands the British Battalion Commander and quite a number of British soldiers. The British Commander was Lt. Col Jack Churchill, a relative of the British statesman. When that officer left the island and was sent further on, he wrote a letter to the German Battalion Commander who had taken him prisoner. In that letter Jack Churchill thanked the German officer for the fair treatment accorded himself and his men. He invited him to visit him in him home in Scotland after the War. -- These are the two Commando operations which I remember. From a small entry in the diary here I discovered something about a small Commando operation by the 15th Corp, which that corps describes as the first Commando Operation. One noncommissioned officer and 7 British soldiers carried out that operation. The diary says that the officer was taken prisoner, seriously wounded. That is to say, there is no evidence anywhere in my memory or any document that the Commando Orders was applied, and I cannot imagine that it would have been applied anywhere, in view of the spirit of the troops.
DR. FRITSCH: Your Honor, may I make a suggestion? Could we have the recess now, as I am just going on to another problem.
JUDGE CARTER: Yes. We will take our afternoon recess.
(Thereupon a 15 minute recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed.
BY DR. FRITSCH:
Q General, we just discussed the Commando order, I shall now discuss a different order, the order concerning commissars, which is contained in document book 1 as exhibit 13, NOKW 484 on page 33-a of the German and page 48-a of the English version; when did you get to know this order?
A In order to answer your question, I should like to say this, first, I led the 52nd Infantry division in France and remained with that division until the 15th or 16th of June in France. Around that period of time the first elements of the division were being transferred to the east. On the 22nd, when the attack on Russia was opened, my division was mostly en route. On the 22nd or 3rd of June, I spent the night in Lodz in Poland. I had gone ahead in a car and the deployment of the division along the Russo-Polish frontier was concluded on the 25th and we began our advance into Russia on the 26th i.e. after the German troops had already advanced deeply into Russia, and after about a week, the division went into combat and remained in combat almost continuously until the pause which prevailed in the autumn. During that fighting, and this must have happened around the middle of July, I returned from a regiment which was in combat and in the evening the Ic reported to me that the corps had issued the following order orally: "Fuehrer order, all commissars who have been taken prisoner must be shot. Orders are to be passed on to the troops orally at once." The passing on was done. That was the way and the extent of my knowledge concerning the order regarding commissars.
Q Was that order carried out in the area under your jurisdiction?
A Noo I know of no case where this order was carried out. We were fighting all the time, after all and I was always with the troops. This affair was discussed of course extensively. The troops asked me why this order had been issued and for what purpose and I had to tell them, "I don't know."
Conversationally it was made quite clear that you could not do a thing like that and people looked at me in a asking manner. I hinted to them, I don't care, particularly you don't need to be afraid of me. After all I had led the men for about a year and I was on intimate standing with them, with my commanders. In other words the order was not carried out. I thought much about the order and asked questions of the corps. "What about the order we received?" They said, "We received it orally ourselves and don't know any details." At the end I conceived the idea that this order probably amounted to a reprisal remeasure, the purpose of which was unknown to use. As I look back I must say that it was the first order that was issued which violated those principles at issue here. Before that we never received a single order which could he objected here. Later we experienced that Hitler issued the Commando order and an order extending the Commando order to military missions and here he gave long explanations. That was not so in the case of the commissar order, all we knew was that commissars were to be shot. Nor were we struck by the fact that the order was not explained or commented on, as it says particularly in the chapter on "How to Give Orders" in the manual "How to load troops", that you must not give an explanation in your order and this was the first order, which gave us cause to ponder about and as no explanation was attached we could not arrive at any judgment about it.
As I stated before, I thought that perhaps it was a reprisal measure, from later time I recall a reprisal measure of that type. An order reached us that British prisoners must not be given any water, but that order had been motivated. The motive given was this, in Africa an order was found issued by a Brigade commander who ruled that German prisoners while being interrogated must not be given any water. As a reprisal to that, Hitler declared that British prisoners must not be given any water and this reprisal had an immediate effect. The British War Ministry announced over the radio that the order issued by the Brigade commander in Africa was illegal and had been rescinded. There upon Hitler also rescinded the order of not giving British prisoners any water.
Who was to tell me that "all captured commissars were to be shot" did rot amount to a reprisal measure? I can say I did not know about the reasons behind it. I heard about the reasons behind it either here or on occasions of talks I had in Prisoner of War camps after the war.
Q You state therefore, General, that in your area the order was not carried out?
A In my area the order was not carried out, in Russia.
Q May I ask you did the order also apply to the Southeast?
A It did not apply to the Southeast.
Q Did it apply to Norway?
A In 1941 the Army Headquarters in Norway received this order as one can see from the original. When I arrived in Norway the Commissar order had long since been rescind d and it was of course never used by the 20th Mountain Army which I led up there.
Q I shall leave this chapter now and let us turn to discussing a few documents and to simplify matters I shall use them in a chronological sequence.
Please take a look at volume 14, on page 5 of the German and page 6 of the English text. This is NOKW 076, exhibit 333-A. It is a document which was accepted subsequently. How was it that you, General, received this communication concerning the Croatian armed forces?
A. Well, in this document deliberations are contained concerning measures against the symptoms of decay, in the Croatian Wehrmacht. The army itself could not take any such measures, this was a purely Croatian matter and these deliberations were communicated to the German plenipotentiary General in Zagreb in order to pass them on to the Croatian government. I would like to point out in this connection that the date on the document is 17 September, day when I was not in that area. I was absent from the 16th/17th to the 19th. If I obtained any knowledge at all of this document, it was after the event.
Q. Did the Croatian government do anything in this field?
A. Well, I don't know anything about that. It is my belief, as far as I knew that Government, they possibly did not do anything. The reasons why these deliberations were made at all can be seen from the 2nd page of the document from where it becomes clear that in Zagreb a battalion commander led the troops into an ambush to get them into the hands of the partisans.
Q. General, I would like to come back to the fact that you said that in those days you had been at the Fuehrer headquarters, i.e., at the time when this teletype letter was dispatched; do you have any documentary proof for your statement that you were not personally in the area at that time?
A. Yes, from further documents here it becomes clear, reference is made to a conference with Hitler on the 16th and on the 17th I received the Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross for the battle of Oral in Russia. I received that personally. This is of course quite definite proof and the document I got together with the decoration is also dated the 17th.
Q. Now, please, look at page 52 of the German text, it is still in document book 14, it is page 73 in the English book, this document is NOKW 143 and the exhibit number is 346. This concerns the arrest of a woman teacher because her husband, a captain, deserted to the partisans and wished to influence his company to the same action; was this report to you at the time?
A. Well, it is quite impossible for me to say that, all I can say is that if an excess was committed here or if even the suspicion of such a thing had existed, I was convinced that the commanding general of the 69 Corps General Dehner, whom I know as a highly scrupulous man who would have gotten after anyone who had misbehaved, would have taken appropriate steps. This report would not have been passed on by the 69th Corps if it had not been fully justified.
As a rule women were somehow in league with deserters or people who made attempts, etc. Had I read the report, I would have thought the things which I have just expressed, that would have been all that I could have done.
Q. Now, please, turn to page 8 of the German and the top of page 10 of the English text. This is part of exhibit 339, document NOKW 880. This document deals with the activities of the 1st Mountain Division and you have been charged, concerning these matters, by the prosecution in all counts. Under whom was the 1st Mountain Division?
A. I would like to state here that the 1st Mountain Division in the time with which we are concerned here was without any doubt subordinated to Army Group E, with which I had nothing to do. This is the reason why this exhibit has nothing to do with me.
Q. If the Tribunal please, the fact that the 1st Mountain Division was subordinate to Army Group E is clear from exhibit 451, which is contained in volume 19 on page 83 of the English text.
General, let us proceed to the Cossacks, volume 14 page 16 of the German, page 32 of the English text. There starts a report by the Reserve Grenadier Regiment 45, which on its second page, describes the Cossacks as a nuisance for the population and speaks of its Russian peculiarities.
On page 20 of the German and 36 of the English text there it is reported that the Cossacks behave themselves like the Nuns; will you please tell me whether the army was informed about these things?
A. Of course I knew that. A Cossack division joined us I believe in October of 1943. We welcomed them because they were strong, they consisted of about 22,000 men. Concerning their disciplinary behavior nothing was known at the time and it only became known by and by. We took extremely strong steps when they committed excesses, death sentences were imposed by Court Martials because of rape and looting.
Q. On this point I would like you to look at page 38 in the English version, page 23 in the German. I believe here we have a small survey on excesses of this sort and the measures taken against them; will you please give us your comments about that?
A. This is a small extract concerning the excesses committed by the Cossacks and the measures taken against them. From the fourth column in the middle it becomes clear that between the 25th and 28th of October, eight Cossacks were sentenced and shot to death. On the next page one bracket is omitted, which would have included all the cases mentioned in the first column from 8 to 16, all this should be within the same bracket, namely the Second Croatian General Command. But seeing what the Cossacks were, it seemed more or less hopeless to change these people even with the most drastic measures. The Cossacks and their behavior had a bad influence on the attitude of the population and I caused the army to request that the Cossack division should be transferred from the area. The 69th Corps which suffered most under the Cossacks made a request of that sort on several occasions to the army. It was never approved as long as I was down there as I heard they remained there until the end of the war. Their discipline later on improved a little.
Q. Now, please, look at page 27 of the German and 46 of the English text, it is still part of the same exhibit. Here we have the following case, a Ustascha district leader complains about compulsory drafted labors did that matter concern the 2nd Panzer Army?
A. No, the document makes it clear because before the document begins it says here in handwriting "answered by 1-A on the 4th Dec., matter has been submitted to the army so that relief can be obtained by the German Plenipotentiary general in Zagreb.
A The corps was not authorized to contact the German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb directly which is the reason why this letter was sent via the Army. The corps say itself that with the German General in Zagreb help might be expected. If, therefore, the unit which committed this piece of misconduct would have been subordinated to the Army the way via the German General in Zagreb would not have been necessary. We then could have handled this ourself, of course. But by all appearances, as can be seen from the last sentence, it was some department or other under the Todt Organization which probably in that area had to carry out some work which was not connected with the Army.
Q To make one point clear, General, what is "O.T."?
A O.T. is the Todt Organization. Todt, I believe, was the first Minister of Labor. I don't know. In any case, it was a State organization which had to carry out large scale work.
Q Excuse me. What I am interested in is: did the Todt Organization belong to the Army?
A No, the Army had nothing to do with them.
Q Now, please look at page 28 which is page 30 in the English. This is the same exhibit still and it is an Army order directed here to the 69th Reserve Corps. What was the purpose of that order?
A The purpose was to have better measures for the security and protection of the railways. The villages were not to be evacuated but the population was to take a hand in the protection of villages. Perhaps, it might be of interest to point out here that in paragraph 3 it says that "in the event that the population fails us a number of reprisal measures are enumerated" which, however, do not include shooting.
Then in the last paragraph it is decreed that bandit nests near the railroad are to be evacuated and destroyed entirely. I should like to say about that that one must not think that these villages were large rich villages, which also existed, but troops were usually stationed there. These were villages mostly consisting of huts, timber buildings with straw roofs, and from those villages it was that time and again attacks were made on the railroads.
There was no way out except to burn down that village and settle the population elsewhere in order to eliminate that danger from the Railways.
Q Now, General, will you please take up Volume IV and on page 24 of the German and page 25 of the English there is prosecution exhibit 367. It is document NOKW-1331 and I think of particular importance are the subjects of discussion which have been used as incriminating evidence against you. In particular we are interested in point 6. Will you give us your comments about that, please?
A This is what I want to say about that. This document is dated 5 of November 1943. On the 1st of November the Commanding General of the 15th Army Corps arrived in the area and reported to Army Headquarters. I held a conference with him there and informed him about the most important points. This conference was as usual taken down by an A.D.C. The original is about two and a half pages long and from the conference minutes this point 6 has been extracted, and to that point 6 or paragraph 6, there are the following things which I wish to comment about.
It is out of the question that I made the remark in the way it is put down here because it says here "the Commander in Chief made a proposal." It is quite impossible for a superior officer to propose a matter to a subordinate, which he thinks is right. In such a case he orders it. To make a proposal would only mean a shifting of responsibility to the subordinate and that nobody can charge me with. On the contrary, I always assumed more responsibility than I had to take.
Q Did you have any other reasons?
A Yes, there is another reason why it is impossible for this entry to be correct. The headquarters of the 15th Corps at that time was in Banja-Luka. When we occupied the Coast after the disarming of the Italinas, the focal point of the corps had shifted towards the Coast and this made it seem a natural thing to have the headquarters of the corps nearer to the Coast.
When on 16 September I was in the Fuehrer's headquarters this matter was also brought up for discussion and Hitler emphasized particularly that if the corps should be transferred from Banja-Luka, Banja-Luka must not be allowed to fall into Tito's hands because Banja-Luka was the old historic capital of the Kingdom of Croatia?
It is highly probably that I told the Commanding General about this conference and that I stressed the importance of holding Banja-Luka even after the corps had left. Perhaps, I might even have used somewhat strong words in this connection but it is out of the question that a remark of this sort was made because it was by no means certain when the corps was to leave Banja-Luka. In actual fact, it only left it by the end of February 1944, and how could, following the wording of this entry, the certain possession of Banja-Luka be guaranteed after the Corps Staff had left, if, as it also says here, on the 5th of November, a thousand hostages were shot, I am unable to follow that logic and this connection between the shooting of a fictitious number of hostages and the holding of Banja-Luka. It is a highly confuses affair, it seems to me, and shows undoubtedly that the man who took down this conference completely misunderstood the meaning and simply noted something for the diary.
Q General, let us discuss Volume XVI now. I want to discuss Document NOKW-658 which is Exhibit 375, on page 11 of the German, page 5 of the English. May I point out to the Tribunal first that this exhibit contains about 80 pages in the German version and in the English only 32. For that reason I have included this exhibit as a defense document and will submit it as such as, in my opinion, full knowledge of all daily reports contained in this document is unnecessary. These are daily reports by the 69th Reserve Corps which, needless to say, concerning the actual ratio of reprisals are of considerable importance.
Q General, may I first ask you: did you read all those reports at the time?
A No that is certainly not the case. The important details of the reports were reported to me orally during the situation conferences and of course, that was as far as my knowledge went.
Q Far be it from me, General, to add up figures here but may I ask you General, to give us your comments about this document and the ratios it mentions?
Court No. V, Case No. VII.
A This document comprises 95 days, from the 23rd of September until the 16th of December. For those 95 days there are, in this document, 32 Daily Reports. In other words, 63 Daily Reports are missing. In order to show how reprisal measures were carried out I would like to read some of these Daily Reports.
Here is the Daily Report of the 20th of September, and it says that on 18 September in the morning a passenger train on such and such a line was attacked and set on fire. Much of Croatian Panzer Regiment 202 has been attacked on this road. Two machine guns were stolen; one Croatian soldier was killed, and one was wounded; 5 houses were burned down in reprisal. On the same day street bridge across the Cesma River has been destroyed; 30 hostages have been arrested.
Then, on the 21st of September there is a belated report concerning the 19th of September -- an attack on the main railroad line, several explosions, and 40 telegraph poles have been blown up. A Croatian patrol was attacked. I wanted only to draw attention to the fact that the term "attack" is not a good translation for "Ueberfall." We always used the term "surprise attack" to render the German term "Ueberfall". Five dead, 11 wounded, and 10 missing.
Then, under the 24th of September the blowing up of a railway is reported. A surprise attack on an estate; German and two Hungarian employees shot; 93 German policemen ambushed; 3 dead, 1 wounded, and not a single retaliation measure.
Then, it goes on under the 25th of September where an attack by mines on the main line is reported; patrols near the railways were shot at; one railway security train drove across a mine; 4 officers of the Ustasha Brigade, two railway officials, and the whole crew dead; one Ustasha officer badly wounded; the train was set on fire by the bandits; near Birovitica shots were fired from private houses; 100 hostages were apprehended; one policeman wounded.
According to the report of the 26th of September a battery of the Croatian Regiment 96 was ambushed in a wood; 3 dead; 7 wounded;
Court No. V, Case No. VII.
and as a reprisal for a surprise attack of an earlier date one village is being burned down; then it says attempt to blow up the main line on the same day; and a private care was fired at from the wood; one German soldier was wounded on the spot.
On the night of 24-25 September a railway junction was attacked; two German soldiers were killed.
Then, on the first of October, after this long period of time, there is a reprisal measure for the attempt on the Wehrmacht transport train reported in the Daily Report of the 28th of September, where one man of the escort personnel was killed; the police, not the Wehrmacht, executed 15 hostages on the spot.
Since the last retaliation measures, if one adds up all the losses from these surprise attacks and ambushed on the part of the Germans and Croatians, there were 20 dead, 26 wounded, and 3 cases of blowings up. And these were losses not suffered in combat. These losses resulted only from surprise attacks or mines. If you count surprise attacks by bands on the goods train, there were 3 killed and 4 wounded, another surprise attack on a goods train, a railway station was attacked and set on fire, one German and one Croatian soldier killed, one German and one Croatian soldier missing.
Then, on the 4th of October a reprisal measure is mentioned for the surprise attacks on railways committed in the last days, as it says here, and this report has reference to a Daily Report of 3 October which is not included among the documents and one does not know whether losses had been suffered. Forty hostages were shot. Since the last reprisal measures there had been on the German side 5 killed and 6 wounded; two surprise attacks and, moreover, there must be counted the losses contained in the Daily Report of the 3rd of October but these do not appear in these documents. I did not wish to continue with this, but I merely wish to state the following: If in the same manner as before one counts only the attempts and surprise attacks and the losses suffered on those occasions and adds them up, one finds Court No. V, Case No. VII.
33 surprise attacks, 66 cases of blowing up, 59 people killed, and 159 wounded. On the other hand, there is the shooting of 253 hostages. Bloody German losses amounted to 218, and if you take only one hostage for one case of blowing up or one surprise attack, you will arrive at a ratio of less than one to one. But that picture is not correct. As for the time under review only 32 reports are available for the 95 days, and the 63 reports, I am sure, do not contain a reprisal measure, but they do contain reports on losses and attempts made. If we in that sense still include the 63 Daily Reports we arrive at a ratio of one to 0.3. I believe that I, at least have endeavored to give a picture of how the reprisal measures in Croatia were handled, that is, in the area where the largest number of attacks took place, and there consequently the largest number of reprisal measures were taken.
Q You want to say, General, in other words, that this document, even in its complete form in which it was submitted here, does not give a true picture?
A No. If we count with probable figures as we have to seeing the fact that a large number of reports is missing, the figure of the German losses should be treble compared to the figures expressed in the document. And only if we had all the Daily Reports at our disposal would it be possible to arrive at a true judgment about the reprisal measures. But this document as it is shows already that the reprisal measures were taken on an extremely limited scale and that I, taking the Army's point of view, never had any doubt regarding the military necessity of these measures and I never conceived the idea that here we committed a violation or an excess.
Q I shall leave this point now and shall ask you to look at Page 104 of the German text, in the same volume 16, which is page 55 of the English text. This is Document No. NOKW-674, it is Exhibit 381. It is an order by the Second Panzer Army concerning the evacuation of the islands and the preparations for the evacuation of the coast. We have touched upon this question before. Let me ask you here, did you sign that order?
Court No. V, Case No. VII.
A I did not.
Q Did you gain any knowledge of the order?
A I certainly knew its essential contents because that order could not be issued without my being informed first of the more important points and my approval being obtained. This order concerned the defense of the coast. Of course, not every detail mentioned there has been reported to me.
Q What were the reasons for this evacuation?
A The evacuation of the islands is explained in the order itself. It says there, "In the event of an enemy landing, the large number of men of military age constitute a menace to the defense, and in the event of an attack would impede defensive measures." Such a motivation of an order is without doubt a highly exceptional thing to do, but it was given here so that the men, the troops, saw the point of these measures which affected the civilian population and because undubitably in view of the contact between the troops and civilian population several questions would be put by the population to the troops, so that they would be in a position to answer and give their explanation. Otherwise we would not have included this explanation in our order.
Q Do you know whether in other theaters of war by other powers the population was evacuated from battle areas?
A To evacuate the population from battle areas was done very frequently in many cases; in our own country, in Germany, the population in the area of the Western wall was completely evacuated; in France in the area of the Atlantic Wall; in Central Russia, the Russians evacuated a 50 kilometers broad zone. We did not understand why and thought perhaps that this was a preparation for a gas attack. In Italy, the Allies and the Germans evacuated all of the population from the fighting zone.
This, no doubt, is a military necessity; and if the army here confines itself temporarily to the evacuation of the islands alone, that is to say the most exposed parts, and the preparation of the evacuation of the other part of the population is laid down for the time being only Court No. V, Case No. VII.
on paper, this is a limitation which might just be bearable.
Q What was your idea as to how the evacuation should be carried out?
A The OKW wanted to evacuate the entire population of the islands and the coastal area. This would have been, no doubt, the most intelligent thing to do from the point of view of defending the Coast but it would have meant that hundreds of thousands would have been on the move. That practically speaking was not feasible. We could not have accommodated or supplied these people anywhere else, and then of course we had to realize that from among those people Tito's bands would swell. That is the reason why the army decided on that limitation and kept it up until the end.
Q What was to be done with the people who had been evacuated from the islands?
A Paragraph I, numeral I, shows that the younger classes were to join the Croatian Armed Forces. Others were to work on the fortifications of the Coastal Area.
Q Was that admissible?
A Well, I explained once before that from the point of view of work done for military purposes, the population can be called in quite legally. Drafting into the Armed Forces was regulated by a Croatian Military Service Law. Conscription prevailed in Croatia at the time. Needless to say, those elements who had to do work of military importance were free workers who were paid accordingly and their families looked after.
Q General, will you please look at Exhibit 383 which is also in Document Book 16, on page 110, and page 63 of the English? It is Document NOKW-673, a letter by the Plenipotentiary General in Croatia addressed to the Croatian Minister for Armed Forces and the Minister of the Interior. What was the purpose of that letter?
A It was to obtain the approval by the Croatian government for the evacuation measures along the coast, and secure their cooperation Court No. V, Case No. VII.
because in that field we depended on the Croatian government.
Q Will you please look at page 63 in the English book now? It is 113 in German. It is Document NOKW-1112, Exhibit 385. On page 63 in the English book. Will you forgive me one moment? I shall hold this back a little in order to make some inquiries. General, in Volume 16 there is on page 117, page 73, 74 of the English text, Document NOKW-1352, it is Exhibit 386, it is an extract from an order given by the Second Panzer Army. Why was that order issued?
A The purpose of the order was to take measures for a better protection of the most vital railway lines.
Q In this order, reference is made to the plenipotentiary the Reichsfuehrer SS. Can you tell us anything about that?
A We were looking for any forces which could be raised and hoped to put them into a service of protection of railways and this representative of the Reichsfuehrer SS was in charge of all police forces in Croatia, and as far as I can remember, he probably had ten or 12 thousand men, police, under him. He was requested here to use his forces as well to protect the railways.
Q How was he subordinate to you?
A Well, this representative of the Reichsfuehrer was not subordinate to me. He was only for a time subordinate to me for tactical purposes and this is contained on the next page of his order as I have just seen. This is Exhibit 387 on page 75 of the English book.
Q The Document Number is NOKW-1353. General, what do you mean by subordination for tactical purposes?
A By that subordination, one understands usually subordination only concerning military employment. All other fields of activity concerning subordination in disciplinary measures, judicially, in personal matters, are not included when someone is under you for tactical purposes. Only military orders can be given to such a subordinate.
PRESIDING JUDGE CARTER: The Tribunal will recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
