He is not interested in hearing that an order miscarried because of the obstinacy or stupidity of a divisional commander. If a corps commander attempted to render such an explanation he would be told nine times out of ten that it was his job to have discovered the divisional commander's inadequacy long before and to have sacked him and replaced him with some more capable person.
This is not only the practical way in which an army operates but it is the only logical way. All armies are pyramidal in their organization. There is not time for an army commander or an army group commander to call a convention of all his divisional and regimental leaders every time he issues an order. The function of the corps is to make this unnecessary. The corps commanders are told what they are supposed to do and there, so far as their superior is concerned, the matter ends. If this were not so, the phrase "chain-of-command" would have no meaning. Aside from the fact that it is more than a trifle cowardly for these men to try to shift the responsibility to their subordinates for having executed orders which these men passed on after they were received from higher headquarters, the whole concept is grotesque.
Then take the case in which they have blamed their superiors. The Prosecution has already pointed out in its brief that the plea of superior orders is no defense at all. We shall not repeat here the abundance of authorities which we have already cited in support of our position on this legal issue. But a few remarks should be made with reference to some of the testimony on the subject.
The defendants themselves have not been consistent in the stand which they have taken on the issue of obedience to superior orders. Several of then are charged with having carried out the notorious Commissar Order. Every one of those has steadfastly denied that troops under his command summarily murdered political commissars in compliance with that unquestionably criminal mandate.
All have admitted having received the order or at least having been apprised of its contents. Now it should be remembered that the Commissar Order was Fuehrerbefehl, which is to say that it was issued by the highest possible authority. Yet the defendants say that they deliberately neglected or refused to obey it because they felt it was illegal, unsoldierly, and inhumane or because they believed it would have the precise opposite effect from that which was intended. In that matter they insisted upon substituting their own judgment for that of Adolf Hitler and Field marshal von Brauchitsch. Yet the very defendants who have testified in that vein about the Commissar Order have said that they had no right to forbid or discourage the shooting of hostages because hostage executions had been ordered by the OKW.
Another general observation might be made about the testimony which has been offered on the superior order defense. Except for Brigadier General von Geitner, the lowest-ranking defendants in this deck were Lieutenant Generals who commanded between 50,000 and 100,000 troops. Career officers who spent their lives learning their profession, they obtained their rank because in the opinion of their superiors they possessed the intelligence and judgment which the responsibility of such a position demanded. Within the framework of the broad directives given to those men, they were allowed and expected to exercise a wide discretion in carrying out their duties. We could hear testimony until doomsday that a Lieutenant General or a Colonel General or a Field marshal was only a loud speaker through which the commands of his superiors were amplified or echoed and it would still not be convincing.
If these men had disagreed with the policies which were being executed within their respective spheres of command, whether such policies affected the treatment of the civilian population, the discipline of the German troops, or the political and racial programs behind the directives handed down from higher echelons, that disapproval would have manifested itself immediately in a hundred different ways.
If they were the tools through which the murderous theories of Streicher, Himmler and Hitler were implemented, it was because their compliance was completely voluntary. The criminal liability for what they did cannot be shunted up the line.
A corollary of the superior order defense is the one predicated upon the assumption of the legality of orders emanating from Hitler and the OKW. Every defendant, without exception, has said that when such orders reached him, it never occurred to him to question their legality no matter what the subject matter or how severe the measures prescribe. They argue that there was a multitude of legal exports at OKW headquarters in Berlin and that they could not be expected to doubt that every OKW order had been subjected to the scrutiny of these jurists before it was sent out.
One would have to be credulous indeed to believe that professional soldiers with decades of active service and the experiences of a previous world war behind then were so ignorant as not to know that orders which denied the belligerent status to their enemies, which forbade the taking and indeed commended the execution of prisoners of war, and which established arbitrary hostage execution ratios of 50 and 100-to-1, were in patent violation of every recognized standard over set by civilized nations for the conduct of warfare. This plea would have no validity as a legal defense even if we believed them. The maxim ignorantia juris non excusat is as well recognized by the criminal codes of the continent as it is by Anglo-American law.
But how can one possibly accept this argument as sincere? Highranking military judges were readily available at Army and Division, and in Lanz's case even at Corps, headquarters if legal advice had been desired, which it clearly was not. Moreover, none of these very defendants, as they were eager to point out, assumed that the Commissar and Commando and Military Mission orders were valid, even though they, too, stemmed from the evil triumviato in Berlin.
Nor, on other occasions, when they were anxious to demonstrate their basic humaneness, did they hesitate to describe their misgivings about those same hostage, reprisal and band warfare regulations whose legality they insist had to be presumed. Consistency is a word which apparently is not found in their dictionary.
Along with superior orders, military necessity is the most basic of the defenses herein advanced. This defense is almost always yoked together with a long description of what the defendants call "Balkan mentality". Me have been told that this peculiar "Balkan mentality" is incomprehensible to the western European mind; that all of southeastern Europe is populated by uncivilized savages who are and were incapable of appreciating the finer things of life such as the presence of 20 or 30 divisions of German troops whose only purpose was to act as missionaries of culture and to protect these helpless people against an invasion by the American, British or Russian "enemy". We have been told that the disappointing response of the Balkan peoples to all the advantages of a German occupation was proof in itself that that occupation was a positive been to the region. The Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Albanians and Greeks have been depicted as having had only one desire -- to murder as many Germans and as many of each other as possible. We have been informed that the racial and religious hatreds which exist between the various groups in the Balkans are so deepseated and bitter that had it not been for the Germans they would leave annihilated each other wholesale. This is the picture of "Balkan mentality" as the defendants have painted it.
From this they go on to say that in dealing with such a situation ordinary measures were insufficient. To a man all of these defendants have testified that in their opinion it was impossible to govern in Yugoslavia and Greece without the use of reprisal measures.
The execution of hostages, the burning of villages and the shooting of captured partisans was, therefore, a case of military necessity.
The argument of the defense of military necessity is unconvincing here for several reasons. In the first place, it is the prosecution's contention that the plea of military necessity can never be used as a defense for the taking of an unarmed civilians life, if he is innocent of any hostile conduct against the occupying power. Section 24 of the American Army Field Manual correctly states the accepted definition of that term in international law. It reads:
"Military necessity admits of --
a. All direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of war."
The emphasis of the word "armed" in the test necessarily excludes from the class of persons whose killing may be justified on the grounds of military necessity persons such as those who were used by the German troops as hostages.
In the second place, it is inconsistent to attempt to defend the same action by the plea of superior orders and also by that of military necessity because the two are mutually exclusive. If an act was committed solely because of superior orders, then presumably there was no military necessity for doing it; whereas if it was done because of military necessity, it would have been done anyhow regardless of the existence or non-existence of superior orders.
In the third place, the defense of military necessity flies into the teeth of all the available evidence here. In addition to the oral testimony of such witnesses as General von Greiffenberg, Bach-Zelewski, and even General Winter, there are among the documents many complaints made by responsible German officers, who pointed out that the technique of reprisal measures had proved to be a boomerang in that it resulted in a stiffening of partisan resistance in the areas where these measures were carried out.
We need not here go into a long refutation of what the defendants have said about "Balkan mentality". They were not in a position while in the Balkans to get a very clear or detached view of it, any more than the Balkan peoples were able to view from a favorable vantage point what could be conceivably argued to be a unique German mentality. The mentality of the Serbs, the Croats and the Greeks was undoubtedly a source of frustration and bafflement to the defendants, just as perhaps the British mentality was. Whatever the present or future relations between the United States and the Governments of Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece may be, the tenacious and inextinguishable spirit with which these people resisted the German occupation, sustained for two long and bitter years only by their own determination, will always be remembered as one of the greatest demonstrations of courage displayed during this or any other war. Resistance against enslavement has absorbed a good deal of these people's time during the past 100 years. It has been less than a century since the Serbs and Greeks threw off the Turkish yoke, and scarcely more than two decades have passed since those same heroic Serbs battled unaided for almost four years against the armies of the Triple Alliance. The Germans knew this, of course, when they invaded Yugoslavia, but these defendants and their brother officers thought that by applying von Clausewitz's theory of unrestricted warfare with sufficient ruthlessness they could break the spirit of these long-suffering people as even the Turks had failed to do before them. The long record of crimes which have been described at the bar of this Tribunal are the natural result of the practical application of this method of restoring quiet to the Balkans.
It not only failed but it stirred up such a hornet's nest of resistance that tens of thousands of soldiers desperately needed elsewhere were immobilized to do nothing but garrison and police duty -- all because of this obstinate "Balkan mentality".
The contention predicated and the allegedly binding effect of the surrender of the Greek and Yugoslav armies is just as infirm as the other so-called defenses. General Tsolocoglu who signed the capitulation agreement on the part of the Greek Epirus Army was not the commander-in-chief of that Army but only its deputy commander-in-chrief. Further, there is no evidence whatever that Tsolocoglu was authorized either by the Greek Government, headed by King George II, or by the actual commander-in-chief of the Epirus Army to sign that capitulation agreement. The defense had not even attempted to prove who signed the capitulation agreement on behalf of the Greek Thracian Army or that capitulation too was authorized by the Greek Government.
The situation is even clearer in the case of the capitulation of the Yugoslav Army. The surrender agreement there was signed by the former, and deposed, Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia, Cincar Markovic. The commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav forces, General Simovic, who was simultaneously Prime Minister of King Peter's government, not only did not sign the agreement of surrender of the Yugoslav armed forces but had previously fled the country along with the rest of his cabinet for exile in England. In this case not even the deputy commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav armed forces, General Kalafotovic, signed the agreement of surrender to the Germans. So much for the facts regarding the defense based upon the capitulation of Greece and Yugoslavia.
The legal theory of the defense on this point seems to be this -- when an officer signs an agreement of surrender, even though he is not only not authorized but specifically forbidden from doing so, then it is unlawful thereafter for any of that officer's countrymen under any circumstances to take up arms against the conquering power. If this reasoning is valid, then all of the American forces in the Pacific after April 1942 could have been treated as francs-tireurs simply because General Wainwright, their fellow American, had surrendered on Corregidor. Before the defendants can justify themselves for having refused to accord belligerent status to a particular partisan on this ground, it must first be shown that the partisan in question had formerly been a member of the Yugoslav Army and was, therefore, constructively bound by the surrender agreement. One need not labor the obvious by remarking that no such proof has been offered.
The defense with respect to these capitulation agreements has still a further flaw. It was said that following the collapse of Greek resistance in April 1941, the Greek prisoners were allowed to return to their homes with the understanding that they would not in the future take up arms against the conqueror. Prisoners of war, who are set at liberty on parole, are bound, on their personal honor, scrupulously to fulfill the engagements they have contracted. Presumably one of those engagements which the surrendered Greek soldiers contracted to fulfill, though the evidence is flimsy to say the least, was to never again take up arms against Germany. But even if any evidence of such a parole agreement at the time of the surrender of the Greek forces had been made out by the defense, it would not be binding here for several reasons.
First, prisoners of war may be set at liberty on parole only if the laws of their country allow and there has, of course, been no proof of what Greek law is on this matter.
Furthermore, there can be no paroling on the battle field, no paroling of entire bodies of troops after battle, and no dismissal of large numbers of prisoners by a general declaration. Even if one accepts the scant proof offered by the defense on this point, it can scarcely be doubted that this forbidden type of parole was exactly the kind that the German Army there adopted at the time of the Greek surrender.
In addition, a prisoner of war cannot be compelled to accept his liberty on parole nor is the hostile government obliged to accede to the request of a prisoner to be set at liberty on parole. There has been no proof that the Greek government-in-exile ever consented to or ratified the discharge of captured members of the Greek Army on parole -- even if there was any such discharge on the part of the German Army at that time. The only evidence adduced by the defense would indicate that the Greek prisoners of war were merely disarmed and sent home without further ado to save the German Army the trouble of feeding them.
Further, the conqueror has certain duties and obligations to perform to the conquered even in a case of an unconditional surrender. The making of an unconditional surrender does not free the victor from his obligation to observe international law; and when the Germans commenced their campaign of indiscriminate shootings and hangings of the civilian population, even former members of the Greek and Yugoslav Armies, who had given their individual paroles - if such there were - were perfectly justified in using whatever means they could to rid their country of this plague.
The last of the common defenses is to the effect that since the partisans were not entitled to the status of lawful belligerents, the German Army was not bound to follow the rules and customs of war in combatting them. The defendants themselves have skirted the fringes of some of the subsidiary arguments involved here rather cautiously. For example, none of them has been willing to rest his contention that the partisans were unlawful upon any one ground.
In the face of the German intelligence reports concerning the organization, strength, armament, and location of the partisan units, the names of their officers, the elaborate courier, postal, judicial and governmental administrative systems in force in the large areas under their control, it is hardly arguable that the partisans were not a regular and highly effective military-political-economic organization, which is the basic test for determining whether an enemy group is entitled to the status of a belligerent.
The defendants have realized how feeble it is to maintain that the partisans were not military organized and have fallen back on the completely irrelevant complaint that the designations which the partisans gave to their units, such as battalions, regiments and brigades, did not correspond to the German nomenclature. It is perfectly apparent that in Yugoslavia, for instance, the partisans had a perfectly well-defined chain-of-command which went from Tito down to every company and platoon. If from time to time a small unit of partisans was cut off from the main body of troops to which it belonged and was unable to communicate with them, they were no more disorganized for that reason than were segments of the German Army which were frequently in the same situation.
It is unnecessary for us to take up here the other subsidiary contentions which have been made - those to the effect that the partisans were not in uniform, did not carry their arms openly, and systematically violated the laws and customs of war. It is enough to say that the evidence which has been produced to support such arguments smells very strongly of ex post facto justification. Time after time the documents mention that the partisans wore uniforms or readily identifiable insignia. The defendants say that this may have been true, but that the uniforms were not standard; that the distinguishing insignia of the Tito and Mihailovitch partisans in Yugoslavia and the Edes and Elas Andartes in Greece were not identical; that some of them wore parts of German, Italian, British and American uniforms. But what possible factual difference could that have made then, or what legal difference now. The Hague Rules prescribe no standards of sartorial elegance. The object of the rule requiring the use of a uniform is to enable a combatant to recognize his enemy. And in Yugoslavia or Greece it was distinctly understood that any one who wandered around in a uniform had invited himself to become a target, regardless of its cut or color.
The fact of the matter is, of course, that no matter how elegantly the partisans had dressed, they would have been shot upon capture in any event. List made that incontestably clear when he admitted that un-uniformed Kosta Pecanac Chetniks were permitted to collaborate with German troops against the Tito and Mihailovitch partisans and Foertsch was even more forthright when he testified that the German Southeast Command concerned itself only with considerations of military expediency and not the Hague Rules in dealing with the partisan problem.
One word as to the testimony about partisan tactics. One examines the official reports and records of the German Army in vain if his object is to find descriptions of mutilations inflicted by the partisans. Yet the defendants have produced several pounds of affidavits describing these things in detail. We have tried to reconcile the strange silence in the official reports with this endless recital in the affidavits. The simplest and most likely explanation is that the events described in them also have as their factual basis some paper that was lying on General Dehner's or General Kuntze's or General Geitner's desk that the affiant did not read.
This interpretation is bolstered by the disparity between fact and testimony which occurred in the case of the Instruction of the Communist Party in Serbia for the conduct of band warfare. List, Kuntze and Foertsch testified at length that they had read captured copies of these instructions and that the gist of them was to encourage and incite the partisans to mutilate German prisoners and kill German wounded. Then the defense, peculiarly enough, produced these very instructions from the mass of documents which were sent from Washington. There was not a single word in their entire tenodd pages which by any stretch of the imagination could have been construed to mean what the defendants testified they themselves had read in them.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: Just one more paragraph, Your Honors.
So much for the common defenses and explanations, which like a loud yet dissonant chorus, the defendants all chanted together. We turn now to a necessarily incomplete and undetailed review of the main evidence for and against the individual defendants.
THE PRESIDENT: We shall take our morning recess for 10 minutes.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
MR. RAPP: On 6 April 1941, from Bulgaria, Field Marshal Wilhelm List, Commander in Chief of the Twelfth Army launched the German invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. The campaign was short-lived. Within a fortnight Greece was prostrate and the Yugoslav Army had been defeated. By the end of May, 1941, the strategic island of Crete had also fallen before Germany's armed might.
From that point on, Yugoslavia meanwhile having been carved up and sections parceled out to Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and the fictitious State of Croatia, it was List's job to manage the German occupation of Serbia and Greece. He was charged with primary responsibility for its success and to that end was given almost unlimited power over the lives of the civilian population. By virtue of Fuehrer Order #31 he was given the famous executive power which meant that under the guise of maintaining "peace, order and security" he could snuff out the existence of the native citizenry at will. He had full authority over all matters affecting the military administration of the entire German-occupied areas of southeastern Europe. Within an area larger than Germany itself his reign was as absolute as Hitler's and the only person in all of Europe to whom he was subordinate was the Fuehrer himself.
List was a potentate who was jealous of any attempt to infringe upon his dominion. He kept the activities of Dr. Gunther Altenburg, who had been sent to Greece by Ribbentrop's Foreign Office to organize the Greek government, under careful observation and incidentally challenged every move the latter made that tended to reduce his own power. It is positively laughable for List now to assert that his authority as Armed Forces Commander Southeast was restricted or crossed by any German agency.
When on 9 June 1941 List was named Armed Forces Commander Southeast, Greece was relatively quiet. There were, however, vague rumblings of disturbances in Serbia though nothing really alarming as yet. No trouble was anticipated as a result of the withdrawals of the combat troops who were needed for the invasion of Russia, the match which set off the Balkan powderkeg.
The Germans, however, had alreadymade up their minds how to answer individual unrest or local rebellion. Field Marshal von Weichs, who has since disaccepted our invitation to this Balkan reunion, had already given the cue. In April, 1941, von Weichs had issued an order to kill 100 civilians in retaliation for the death of each German soldier and had published posters which proclaimed that it had been carried out. List was not afflicted by originality. He was not too proud to recognize and adopt a good idea when he saw one.
The insurrection in Yugoslavia took shape during July and August, 1941 - by the end of which time, as can be seen from Cartillieri's accurate and detailed account, the Germans had already shot approximately 1,000 Jews and "Communists" in reprisal. List has reiterated that he was home on leave during part of this time. But before he left, he had already received numerous reports of the execution of severe reprisal measures by his troops. Just two days before he left Athens, the death of the German General Lontschar was reported to XII Army headquarters by the Commanding General in Serbia who had ordered 52 "Communists and Jews" to be killed in retaliation. Although List conferred with General Bader just one day after that massacre took place, he now cannot remember having discussed it. The event was evidently considered too trifling to be worth mentioning. List's memory faded out again when he was asked whether at a conference with General Stahl the shooting of captured prisoners by Stahl's Division the day before was on the agenda.
List's troops were overaged, poorly trained and inadequately equipped to do battle with the partisan units which were everywhere harrassing under-manned German garrisons and outposts. He repeatedly asked for reinforcements. When they did not come, he tried to make up with terror what he lacked in military efficiency. On the 1st of September he sent his Chief of Staff, General Foertsch, to Serbia with combat directives for his subordinate commanders. Accurately foreshadowing the tenor of things to come, List ordered "few prisoners to be brought in". (Cartillieri report, p. 24).
Three days later, on September 4, 1941, he issued another of the criminal orders with which he is charged here. The troops were instructed to practice the "use of arms without consideration". The author explains that the term "severest measures" meant that the soldiers should "use those weapons they had at their disposal" and that by "reckless use of weapons" he meant "the employment of all those weapons which were available." This is another example of the re-definition technique which have been already analyzed elsewhere.
Apparently, however, List was not satisfied that the language used in this order was clear enough. So he supplemented it by another order the next day, the famous order of 5 September 1941, which, more than perhaps any other single order, List now wishes he had never issued. In that order he announced that attacks on German troops and installations were being carried out by strong, wellarmed, well-organized and well-led partisan bands. To counterattack their power List demanded "ruthless and immediate measures against the insurgents, against their accomplices and against their families. (Hangings, burning down of villages involved, seizure of more hostages, deportation of relatives, etc. into concentration camps)."
The explanations which he gave on the witness stand for the publication of this contribution to German culture are somewhat muddled and self-contradictory, but they have one characteristic in common: they are all uniformly unbelievable.
Once he admitted that he knew the order was violative of international law. Later he changed his mind and took the position that the order could be justified on the ground of military necessity. This, of course, is inconsistent with his assertion that he never would have issued such an order if it had not been for the very heavy pressure which was being put on him by the OKW.
Another thing that List has never explained is why this order was never rescinded. He knew that his headquarters had placed more than an academic interpretation upon it. It is evident from the reports which he received that excessively severe reprisal executions were taking place even before the much-blamed Keitel directive saw the light of day.
On July 25, 1941, a 16-year-old girl was arrested in Belgrade for throwing a bottle of gasoline at a German vehicle. A hundred Jews were shot to death in reprisal four days later. On August 15, 1941, an Armed Forced Commander Southeast report stated that in retaliation for an attack upon a German police car, the town of Skela was burned down and "two Communists" hanged. On 2 September 1941, twenty "Communists" were shot in retaliation for the three German soldiers killed in an attack on a mine at Rtanj, Serbia, and the following day, 3 September, 50 Serbs were shot in reprisal for the soldiers of the 724th Guard Regiment shot by "Communists". A few days later, on 9 September, 50 more so-called "Communists" were shot in reprisal for the death of a single German soldier.
During the month of September 1941, the growth of the insurrection had become so alarming that it received the personal attention of Hitler and of the OKW. To solve the problem List proposed the sending of one of his corps commanders, General Boehme, to Serbia as Plenipotentiary Commanding General with full power and authority over all German military units, as well as civilian offices stationed there Hitler agreed and sent an order directly to list charging him with the task of quelling the insurgent movement in the Southeast.
Hitler did not give specific directions, but merely counseled in general terms the "application of the most severe means". On the same day, 16 September 1941, Keitel issued his basic directive, the muchdiscussed Prosecution Exhibit 53, which described the revolts in the occupied areas as part of a movement centrally directed from Moscow and suggested that "in general" 50 to 100 Communists should be killed in retaliation for every German soldier who lost his life.
As we have already seen, the notion of reprisal ratios reaching as high as 50:1 was nothing new in List's area of command. His troops had been carrying out such measures for over two months prior to the time the Keitel directive was written.
List had no duty to pass on to his subordinates such a general recommendation unless he wanted to. In view of the immense discretion with which he had been invested by Hitler himself he could have simply filed away this "directive" and kept it in the oblivion it deserved without subjecting himself to criticism from anyone. Nevertheless, he chose to pass this flexible "50 to 100" to 1 proposal of Keitel's on to his subordinates without any qualifications or comments of his own. He could only have expected his subordinates to interpret this act as an expression of approval of the suggestions contained in the Keitel directive and as a command by List that the proposed figures be applied at once.
List now says that he disapproved of Keitel's order "for purely humane reasons". The difficulty is that Field Marshal List's humanity is almost six years too late in finding expression. He told his operations officer, Kuebler, to express his protests to the OKW, Kuebler is dead so there is only List's unilateral version of this private conversation. Nor is there any note or record that Kuebler ever passed on such a protest.
List followed the same procedure when he received the OKW's next brain-child on 28 September suggesting that military commanders keep at their disposal a number of hostages of different political persuasions - nationalist democrats and communists - so that the executions *** could be more selective.
This directive List also passed on to the units under his command.
Meanwhile General Boehme had taken over his new post as Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia. On 4 October List decided to unburden himself of his own thoughts on the subject of reprisal measures. This took the form of an order directed to Boehme in which he directed that all men in the insurgent areas, whether they had taken part in combat or not, were to be seized as hostages in the event of the appearance of bandits or of attacks against the Wehrmacht. Most severe measures of punishment "without further investigation" were prescribed for localities in which or near which such occurrence happened, and particularly against the male population of such villages.
In weighing the credibility of List's protestations here, the Tribunal might put itself in the position of one of his subordinates in the month of October 1941. Such a man would have had received three orders signed by List since the beginning of September which directed that ruthless measures be taken against the civilian population in the event of attacks or sabotage by the partisans. These had been followed by the Keitel 50 to 100 to 1 directive which had been passed on with no limitations whatever by List, and by the OKW order of 28 September. Then on 4 October List issued the pronouncement which has just been described.
What was one of his subordinates to conclude from all this? Is it likely that he was under the impression that List had moral reservations concerning the justice or humanity of executing hostages? We have seen a rather large assortment of German generals in this courtroom and we have heard them say some fairly incredible things but none of them has claimed that it was necessary for him to be psychic in order to interpret the orders of a Field Marshal.