A.) It was in the end of October 1943, when General von Leyser como to Croatia for the first time; he then was the commanding general of the XV. Mountain A.K. Of this, the prosecution itself has produced evidence in the form of the war diary of the XV. Corps. By this fact, all documents covering the period prior to this date are automatically eliminated. The prosecution has used a considerable number of documents without regard for this delimitation of the period of issue. I shall deal with this in more detail when discussing the individual counts.
B.) In addition to this delimitation of the period in issue, it is important to determine the scope of the command authority wielded by my client in his capacity as commanding general of the XV. and XXI. corps. In this respect, it seems necessary to deal once more with the operational area of his corps and with the military, political and economic conditions prevailing therein. As explained by General v. Leyser on the stand and as shown by the prosecution exhibits, General v. Leyser was the commanding general of two army corps committed in Croatia and Albania. Thus, General v. Leyser was, in both commands, the commander of a unit engaged in tactical operations within the territories of independent states.
Accordingly, his tasks were military and tactical tasks only. The main operational mission of his corps was to protect tho coast from the allied landings which were expected and, in addition to keep the supply roads leading to the coast clear of interference. In his capacity as commanding general of an army corps, the administration of the country did not come under the jurisdiction of General v. Leyser, nor was it his task to care for the welfare of the civilian population. He was not concerned with the issue of administrative orders, with legislation or with court procedure.
He neither was the superior authority vis-a-vis the territorial authorities such as Feldkommandanturan and Kreiskommandanturas, nor was he entitled or in a position to issue directives to German or indigenous authorities. His own German combat divisions only were subordinated to him.
The term "executive power and the term territorial authority" have been explained and clarified during this trial so frequently, that I can refrain from explaining them once more. I may must state that General v. Leyser was not invested with the executive power and that he was no territorial commander either. All this was outside of the scope of his tasks as a tactical commander of German troops. He was only entrusted with operational task of a purely military character similar to the tasks incumbent on any troop commander in any country.
It appears that the prosecution does not intend to recognize this legal position. This is the only explanation for the fact that the prosecution, when cross-examining General v. Leyser confronted him with the document NOKW 971, trying to prove by this document that he was invested with the executive power and, therefore, authorized to give directives to the Croat military units and to the Croat civil authorities. This document has not been introduced in the case of General v. Leyser, which by itself disqualifies it as a basis of a charge against him. Furthermore, the analysis of the document shows that the considerations resulting from it do not apply to the period in which General v. Leyser was in command nor to the scope of his task.
The document in question is a decree dated 7 January 1943 and issued by General Lueters, the Military Commander (Militaerbefehlshaber) of the German troops in Croatia.
In his capacity as commander of the German troops in Croatia, General Lueters was invested with the executive power, but only in the limited extent pertaining to a German commander within the structure of the independent state of Croatia. When this command authority (the commander of the German troops in Croatia) was merged in the Headquarters of the XV.
Mountain Corps in the course of reorganization- which was done during the period when General v. Leyser was in command of the corps these executive powers were abolished altogether. This has been proved by the deposition of General v. Leyser and in addition by the statements made by the witness Werner Pfafferott, late chief of staff of Generals Lueters and v. Leyser.
Moreover, the fact that General v. Leyser did not wield any executive power in his capacity as commanding general of the XV. A.K., also follows from prosecution exhibit 561.
Therein, it is stated that on 23 October 1943 General v. Leyser had a conference with the German minister and the Croat minister of the interior, when he demanded that the executive power should be transferred to him in case the situation deteriorated further; this was conceded by the Croat minister. This shows unambiguously that the commander of the XV. A.K. was as such not invested with the executive power, but that it could be transferred to him only by special measure provided that the military situation was seriously endangered.
And now here is a supplement paragraph not translated.
Prosecution in their concluding statements has described the leading position in such a way as though it stood at the discretion of General v. Leyser to assume his active powers at any time simply on the basis of this agreement. This interpretation, however, in no way corresponds to the actual wording of the agreement which was written down in the document. General v. Leyser, beyond that has stated that the prerequisite for application of this agreement was the following: That he was not able to contact the Croat Government, only if the military position was such a dangerous one that immediate assignment of all forces available without consideration of the formality of subordination seemed necessary, and that there was no possibility of including the Croat Government. Only then was General v. Leyser able to assume his executive powers on his own initiative.
Only in extreme cases of emergency, as in the case of attack on Banjaluka on the night of New Year's, 1943-1944, he was able to make use of this occasion. In all other cases executive power was a matter to be decided by the Croat Government.
It has, therefore, been established that General v. Leyser was not invested with the executive power. The executive power is the very core of those powers and authorities which constitute, in German opinion, the status of the Military Commander in an occupied territory, corresponding to the status of the Military Governor in a territory occupied by American troops. All matters relating to administration and to political and police tasks where, therefore, outside of the responsibility of my client.
I have clarified the scope of General v. Leyser's tasks both in the affirmative and in the negative sense.
In this connection, I have deliberately refrained from discussing the question how the scope of General v. Leyser's task was influenced by the fact that his troops were committed within the territory of the independent state of Croatia. As far as his tasks were concerned, it did practically not matter where his corps was committed. His responsibility would be the same, if he had been committed in a territory administered by the German armed forces in the frame-work of military occupation in the meaning of the Hague Rules for Land Warfare. Whereas in Croatia the exercise of the sovereign rights, in other words the executive and the legislative powers, was vested in the Croat authorities and under their own jurisdiction, they would in an occupied territory have been vested in the military administration; in neither case would they have been vested in my client. By way of argument, the following may be added: In Croatia, both the Croat armed forces and the Croat administrative authorities were under the direction of their own government. In an occupied territory, they would have been auxiliary agencies of the occupying power and subordinate to the authorities of the military administration.
In other words: Whereas in Croatia the Croat government only was responsible for the actions of its troops and agencies, this responsibility would, in occupied territory, have been incumbent on the departments of the military administration.
A responsibility of General v. Leyser in his capacity as a tactical troop commander, can, therefore, not be established at all.
C. Although the scope of the command authority of my client has thus been established, it is necessary to discuss briefly the status of Croatia in Public International Law. Croatia was an independent state, as explicitly shown by the evidence produced by the defense. Shortly after the capitulation of the Croat armed forces, viz. in April 1941, it was created by the own initiative of the Croat people, who hailed the German troops as their liberators from the intolerable oppression by the Yugoslav state and its rule by force.
During the period of General v. Leyser's command, the Croat state was a fully developed political structure. The supreme authority was vested in the sovereign Croat Government exclusively. In order to fulfill its task, this government used its own armed forces and its own authorities. Both the population and the territory which are necessary criterions of a state, did exist. By the standards of Public International Law, Croatia was a state and at the same time an ally of Germany in the fight against the Allied Powers.
The legal arguments pertaining to this point have been set out exhaustively in the legal statement of the defense counsel of General Dehner. I may, therefore, be allowed to refer to them; for my part, I shall only describe the actual situation as it was in October 1943 when General v. Leyser came to Croatia. In this case, the facts are self explanatory.
If these facts are disregarded by the prosecution throughout, and if the prosecution insists on mentioning the Yugoslav state only, this kind of argumentation cannot do away with the facts. In Public International Law, facts are the strongest argument of all. If this Court, too, were to disregard the facts forcibly militating for General v. Leyser, I should be obliged to consider this in contradiction with the very idea of justice. As a subordinate commander of a tactical unit, as one of the large number of German generals commanding the various army corps of the German armed forces, my client was neither entitled to check the legality of the existence of the Croat state nor had he any possibility to do so.
He was subject to the authority inherent in the facts, and these facts had been brought about by decisions of the highest political and military authorities, made a long time before his appointment. For him, these facts were irrevocable and binding. He had to conform with the actual situation both militarily and politically.
If the prosecution tries to refute this by styling the Croat government a puppet government, I would again like to refer to the arguments of the defense counsel of General Dehner, and add that the agencies of the Croat state were by no means tools on the hand of the German armed forces, devoid of any initiative of their own. They rather upheld the interests of their state with full independence both in the military and in the political field.
The very fact that all sovereign rights in the Croat territory were vested in the Croat government, proves that neither General v. Leyser nor any of the other military commanders were in a position to give orders to the Croat government, its armed forces and the civilian population. The Croat civil authorities were subordinate to the Croat ministry of the interior only, the civilian Ustascha-units were subordinate to the Ustascha-Leaders only, and the Croat armed forces including the armed Ustascha were subordinate to the ministry for the armed forces only.
In the next supplement if the Prosecution, in order to prove the power and authority of General v. Leyser, states that he deposed the Gauleiter of Banjaluka, it must be pointed out in reply that General v. Leyser was not able to give orders on his own initiative but that via the Croatian plenipotentiary at the core, Minister Benak of the Croatian government, he had with the Croatian government to request the release and replacement of the Gauleiter. And I must point out that there were lengthy negotiations before this request was granted.
Here also it is shown that there was no direct influence exerted by him nor was he able to issue orders.
Neither the German division commanders nor General v. Leyser in his capacity as commanding general nor the 2nd Panzer army were in a position of issuing on their own authority direct orders to Croats. The subordinate command authorities such as divisions and army corps were only in a position to report incidents among the Croats to the 2nd Panzer Army to which they were subordinate, and this army could then -- through the German Plenipotentiary General -- ask the Croat Government agencies to redress the matter. Thus, no responsibility at all can be ascribed to the German armed forces and to General v. Leyser for any acts committed by units of the Croat armed forces or -- for that matter -- by Croat inhabitants.
The two preliminary points discussed above -- the fact that General v. Leyser had only tactical tasks, on the one hand, and the independence of the Croat state on the other hand -- had to be dealt with prior to the discussion of the individual charges raised against my client. The real probative value of the individual prosecution exhibits can only be understood if these two facts arc taken into consideration.
D. However, I would like to say one word or two concerning the nature of the material introduced as evidence by the prosecution. As established fully during the evidence proceedings, reports were submitted twice and even three of four times in a large number of instances. This very fact resulted a priori in obscuring the material produced by the prosecution; we feel that this could have been avoided.
The major part of this material consists of daily reports of the divisions and the corps, transmitted by radio or teletype. This way of transmission called for extreme brevity, so that the reports had to be restricted to the bare essentials. This point has been fully developed by the defense during the evidence proceedings. However, another result of this telegram style is that the reports can often not be understood properly when taken at their surface value.
They become clear only if the general conditions prevailing at that time, which were known to both the senders and the recipients of the reports, are taken into consideration.
Thus, the necessity for brevity brought it about that facts considered to be matters of course were not included in the reports and that non-essential points were omitted. Thus, it was not included in a report that the incident in question complied with the ruling given by a basic order. Special mention was only called for if it had been necessary to deviate from the general ruling in an individual case.
This may be made clear by an example. In Croatia and Albania, a standing order provided that reprisal measures were initiated by the representatives of the indigenous government. If, therefore, a unit reported on the carrying out of a reprisal measure, the recipient of the report knew as a matter of course that the measure had been initiated by the indigenous authorities. This was understood an self-evident and not mentioned in the report.
There is another consideration which must be pointed out with regard to the reports. As submitted by the defense in the evidence proceedings, the troops were instructed to report as "special incidents" everything which had been brought to their notice, provided that it could be of interest for the higher command authorities for any reasons whatsoever. Accordingly, not only those incidents were reported which involved the troops as such, but in addition everything that happened in the area, even if the troops were not responsible. Let me again give an example. The divisions reported incidents among the Croats happening within the divisional areas, although they were by no means responsible for them.
It has also been submitted explicitly that the reports did not always correspond to the facts, but that they were deviating from the real facts for a variety of reasons.
II. The character of the enemy forces in the Croat and Albanian areas Your Honors, I shall now proceed to the discussion of the individual counts of the indictment.
A preliminary remark seems, however, indicated: The prosecution has subdivided the charges by four counts. In count III of the indictment, all the defendants including General v. Leyser are charged with the offense that they refused to recognize the irregular forces as belligerents and that they issued the order to treat members of allegedly regular armies as partisans. In count I, the prosecution has submitted that the defendants initiated and carried out reprisal measures as a sanction against legal military operations of such troops.
This issue is, in my opinion, the core of the entire trial. It is this very charge on which the others are based. It is, therefore, necessary to clarify this point at the outset, because the orders given by the defendants, the combat methods and the behavior of the troops can only be understood, if the enemies fighting the German armed forces in Croatia are properly determined and classified according to their real character, viz. as irregular partisans. All kind of reprisals, and the taking and the execution of hostages in particular, can only be judged upon properly, if it has been clarified against whom the German armed forces in Croatia and Albania were defending themselves, which combat methods the enemies of the German armed forces were using in that area, and which was the legal position resulting from these conditions. For this reason, I feel that it is expedient and in the interest of brevity to discuss count III of the indictment first, in as much as it pertains to this issue.
As mentioned above, the prosecution charges General v. Leyser with the illegal treatment of regular troops as bandits. He is furthermore charged with the offense that his troops carried out reprisals against the civilian population as sanctions against legal military operations of such troops. The question to be clarified is, therefore, to determine who committed the acts which were answered by reprisal measures, and which was the nature of those acts.
It must be stated preliminarily that the recognition of an enemy as a belligerent power is a political decision quite outside of the scope of authority of a commanding general. The German military and political leadership had established unequivocally that the enemies of the German armed forces in the Balkans and likewise in Croatia were bandits. To whoever was conversant with the conditions prevailing, it was clear that this decision was warranted by the facts.
When analyzing the charge that regular troops were refused recognition as belligerents and that this treatment caused the death of tens of thousands of prisoners of war, the following must be pointed out in the first instance, as far as General v. Leyser is concerned: Although the Tito-partisans (the only enemy involved in Croatia) did in 1943 and 1944 in no way fulfill the four well known criteria of the Hague Rules of Land Warfare -- this will be developed more fully in due course -- General v. Leyser's troops treated captured partisans absolutely according to the rules of the Geneva Convention concerning Prisoners of War. When submitting their charges against General v. Leyser, the prosecution overlooked the fact that all orders to the effect that captured partisans should be executed, had become obsolete long before November 1943. On the contrary, according to the general ruling in the OKW-decree dated 18 August 1943, produced by the prosecution, all band members were from that date to be treated as prisoners of war. This order was strictly adhered to in the area of the XV. A.K. and in the entire area of the 2nd Panzer Army. This follows from numerous prosecution exhibits dealing with captured bandits. It also follows from the depositions of witnesses and from a number of defense exhibits.
Hence, all conclusions drawn by the prosecution from previous orders are automatical. Not a single member of the Tito-partisans was shot by the troops of General v. Leyser only because he belonged to the partisan movement.
I shall take up this point again when discussing the individual prosecution documents.
I shall omit the next pages from the reading and I will continue with page 18 at the top. The pages which are omitted contain various statements concerning the legal position of the Tito bandits and I don't believe it is necessary to read them here. I am continuing with Page 18 at the top:
One other point of view which is decisive for Croatia has been completely disregarded by the Prosecution. It is the fact that the bandits were rebels against their own legal government and that for this reason alone their combat had no legal basis, on the grounds of which it could have been acknowledged by international law.
If, on the other hand, the prosecution has thus not proved that Tito's partisans fulfilled even one condition of the Hague Rules for Land Warfare, the evidence of the defense on the other hand has shown that neither was there a responsible leader in command of all these units, nor did they wear a suitable badge, nor did they carry their arms openly. In my opinion, however, the evidence of the defense was particularly impressive with regard to the fact that partisans in no way observed the rules and customs of warfare. The cruelties of the partisans, which have been proved by the testimonies of witnesses, would alone suffice to fill the time at my disposal. I must therefore only refer to the testimonies of the witness Kobe, the witness Persch, the witness Heidenreich, as also to affidavits submitted to me. People who are guilty of such cruelties, not in exceptional cases but constantly, cannot be regarded as as regular combat forces.
I am of the opinion that the defense has fully proved that they were no regular combat forces in the sense laid down by the Hague Rules of Land Warfare, not even those partisans who had been formed into more or less loose units. But this only describes one part of the opponents of the German Wehrmacht in Croatia. With regard to the reprisal measures, theother part has by far greater importance.
The Prosecution tried to give the impression that the opponents of the German Wehrmacht in Croatia only consisted of regular, magnificently led units who wore the best of uniforms and observed the law of warfare in every way.
The Prosecution only mentioned the Tito units. All their statements referred to them. I do not think I exaggerate if I say that nobody would have been happier than the German troops entrusted with the combatting of the partisans, if this assertion of the Prosecution were founded on fact. Unfortunately, the contrary is ture. The majority of all those incidents which led to the combating of the partisans could not be laid at the door of the partisans fighting in units. The counter measures of the German troops were not directed against the large bands, but against the so-called small bands, the house partisans.
I shall now omit nine lines and will continue about the middle of this paragraph.
They stayed at home on their farms, wore their civilian clothes, and did their work. Occasionally they formed small temporary bands in order to carry out individual projects. Thus, or even singly and in twos or threes, they assault small German units, single vehicles or medical aide columns; they blew up railway tracks and mined the roads. It was against these activities which were carried out from ambushes and the perpetrators of which were usually not to be caught, that the German troops and the Croatian authorities had to defend themselves. The German troops did this for their own protection the Croatian authorities in order to carry out their task of maintaining order and peace in the country.
This was the real band fight, and it was fought by Communist parts of the population, that is to say, by civilians. It was against this form of combat alone that the reprisal and retaliation measures were directed. These assaults did not constitute defense measures of the population against an alleged German and Ustascha terror. The contrary was the case. The reprisal measures were carried out in order to counter and to prevent such completely illegal activities of rebellious parts of the population within an independent State.
Once more it must be made clear that these house partisans had no claim whatsoever to be treated according to the rules of warfare.
By their manner of combat they had placed themselves outside of any law. Robbery and looting were among their daily activities.
I shall omit the rest of this paragraph and I shall continue with the last paragraph on this page, that is, after the quoted portion.
As the witness Annus, to quote one of many examples, has shown, reprisal measures were only envisaged for such cases where assaults, railroad sabotage etc., occurred within the territory directly occupied by the German troops; that is to say, when the perpetrators were most probably to be found among the ranks of the civilian population, living among the German troops. It was only in the case of such incidents, therefore, that reprisal measures were ordered and carried out at all, that is to say, not in the case of combat operations carried out by regular troops, which did not exist in Croatia anyway, and equally not in the case of combat operations carried out by the large bands, and I quote:
"The reprisal measures do not depend on the existing number of troops, but on the behavior of the civilian population."
The Prosecution themselves, by the way, offered evidence for this picture of the conditions by the testimony of their witness Bach-Zelewsky.
I feel I should mention these points in advance before turning to count I.
III. Count I.
Under this count the Prosecution has submitted that all defendants participated in and were responsible for a plan to terrorize the civilian population. They say that the measures carried out for this purpose could not be justified by military necessities, but that the purpose of this plan had been to designate the population of this territory for the benefit of future generations. Furthermore, the Prosecution stated in this connection that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been murdered by the defendants, that the defendants had chased inhabitants of the occupied territories from their homes and places of work and had wantonly hanged and shot them as hostages without trial. A great part of this count is taken up by the statement that inhabitants of the country were executed in a proportion of 50 or 100 for each German soldier killed.
If the Chief Prosecutor in his opening statement expressed the opinion that the evidence in this trial was unequivocal, then it must be said here that the charge which the Prosecution have brought against General v. Leyser in this respect have actually remained an assertion only. The Prosecution have not been able to offer a shadow of evidence for the fact that such a plan for terrorization and extermination ever existed at all. The fact that General v. Leyser participated in such a plan, however, they have not even attempted to prove.
I cannot within the framework of these final deductions discuss once again all the documents which the Prosecution have submitted against my client. All documents have been discussed in the course of the taking of evidence by the defense, and they have been reduced to their real probated value. The interpretation of the Prosecution documents which was submitted by the defense and which is supported by the statements of General v. Leyser and the testimonies of witnesses who were partly examined in person, or gave affidavits, was not shaken by the Prosecutions crossexamination. That, however, means, in my opinion, that the submissions of the defense must be regarded as correct in this respect.
A. To go into detail, it must be stated that the Prosecution have not submitted one single order of General v. Leyser which referred to the arrest of civilians as hostages and, still less, to the execution of hostages in general or in any individual case. They have also not proved that he passed an order issued by a superior authority.
The only order issued during the time of General v. Leyser which concerns reprisal measures and deals with the arrest of hostages in the wellknown order of Army Group F, dated 22 December 1943. However, the principles contained in this order are not, in my opinion, in contradiction to the rules and customs of warfare in any way.
Furthermore, the Prosecution have not been able to submit under this count one single order issued during the time of General v. Leyser, either given or passed on by him, which refers to reprisal quotas.
Beyond this they have not proved in any way that within the area covered by his corps any reprisal quotas were applied. The contrary has been proved by the evidence submitted by the defense. Therefore I need no longer deal with these points during the further course of the trial.
B. Before discussing the individual documents referring to this count I would like to state the following: I have already explained that Croatia was an independent State. I have further explained that the Croatian authorities exclusively were entitled to exercise the rights of sovereignty. The same thing applies to Albania during the period when General v. Leyser commanded the XXI Corps. Therefore, from the very start and as a matter of principle, the ordering of reprisal measures did not come within the sphere of his activities, nor within that of his divisional commanders. This had been clearly laid down by the order of Army Group F, dated 22 December 1943. Under the heading: "Who May Carry Out Reprisal Measures" it says here under No. C:
"In Croatia the representatives of the Government attached to the German commands will be empowered to deal with decisions concerning reprisal measures. The same principles, as in Croatia, are applicable in Albania mutatis mutandis."
This proves that within the area of the XV A.K. in Croatia as well as within the area of the XXI A.K. in Albania, the ordering of reprisal measures was the exclusive right and the task of the Croatian or Albanian Government representatives attached to the German commands. Therefore, within the area under General v. Leyser's command the divisional commanders who in other territories were empowered to make decisions, did not constitute the decisive authority responsible for these measures, but solely the representatives of the governments in question. For this reason alone, no divisional commander, and still less General v. Leyser in his capacity as superior of such a divisional commander, can be made responsible for the carrying out of a reprisal measure, from the moment that this order was issued. Apart from this, a similar rule had existed even before in the Croatian area, it was really self evident in view of the constitutional situation in this territory.
This is proved with absolute certainty by the prosecution Exhibit 373.
I am now omitting the rest of this page and the first paragraph on the next page and I continue with the second paragraph on Page 26.
This point had to be mentioned in advance before reprisal measures could be discussed at all. Because all the things which I will have to say about reprisal measures, in principle and in detail, will only be submitted by way of argument, according to the points of view just explained. I do not think that I will have to say much more about the question of legal admissibility of reprisal measures, or about the admissibility of executions of arrested hostages. I may refer in this respect to the legal brief of the defense counsel for General Rendulic which deals with the question of admissibility of reprisal measures in principle, and, in particular, with the carrying out of reprisal measures within the area covered by the II Pz. Army. During the period covered by the brief, General v. Leyser was directly subordinated to General Rendulic, with the exception of a few months which do not concern us here, when he commanded the XXI Mountain Corps. Therefore, both with regard to time and place, conditions are a hundred percent the same, so that I can take over this presentation in its entirety. Only as a matter of principle I would like to add the following: The Prosecution have said in their brief that the legal position is completely clear and unequivocal. They state for instance that the defense was unjustified in their attempt to mix up the execution of hostages with reprisal measures as such. The Prosecution says:
"The institution of hostages has always been different and separate from reprisal measures."
This same Prosecution said in their opening statement:
"The whole question of hostages is bound up with the question of reprisals."
That means that the same Prosecution express two different legal opinions within the same trial.
There could be no better proof of the difficulty and the legal uncertainty of this legal problem. If the Prosecution is even not sure of the legal position during this trial, as the comparison between those two quotations shows, how will they then be able to assert and prove that the defendants, consciously and intentionally, disregarded principles of international law which were generally recognized? Because they only refer to intentional actions. In this connection, too, I should like to quote the Chief Prosecutor. He says:
"We would not have arrested these defendants, we would not have requested that this court be constituted, and we would not have brought charges against these men, if they were to be accused of mere carelessness or responsibility for occasional or sporadic crimes committed by their troops."
The presentation of the Prosecution in their opening statement and in their legal brief, and the presentation in the legal brief of Dr. Fritsch, show how much the legal opinions of experts differ, and how unclear the Prosecution themselves are on the subject. But nobody could expect military leaders who are no lawyers to have been better legal experts in 1941/44 than the legal scholars of the Prosecution, who have now been working on these legal matters for years.
I am omitting the next two paragraphs and I now turn to Capital "D".
D.1) After this point has been cleared up in principle I can now turn to the documents offered by the prosecution in evidence of the fact that my client was responsible for the execution of hostages within the area covered by the XV and XXI A.K. As regards facts, the evidence is simple. The mass of prosecution documents contain only one solitary case in which troops of the XV A.K. report the execution of hostages during the time of General v. Leyser.
General v. Leyser did not order this execution of hostages. He did not even approve of it before it was carried out; he only heard about it through the report of the Division.
I am now omitting again the rest of this page and the whole of the next page, 29, and I will now continue with Paragraph 2 on Page 30. These pages omitted contain details on the matter of reprisals and I do not believe they are necessary here.
In connection with these incidents I may further refer to the v. Leyser Exhibit 58, submitted by the defense. This provides evidence to show that just within the area covered by the I Cossack Division reprisal measures were only carried out after such measures had been previously announced.
But in accordance with the order of 22 December 1943, the instructions for this reprisal measure of 27 Jan. 1944 were not given by the divisional commander subordinated to General v. Leyser, but by the Croatian representative attached to the division, who was not in any way subordinated to General v. Leyser. For purposes of clarification this must be once more explicitly stated.
The fact that this order, according to which the Croatian Government representative, and not the German troop commander, had to give the instructions for the reprisal measure, was actually obeyed, has been proved in detail by the testimony of the witness Kobe. This witness explained at the hand of another reprisal case that it was the Croatian representative attached to his division who had ordered the reprisal measure carried out there. Furthermore, the witness Annus, the witness Pfafforott, and the witness Linbeck, have testified concerning the activities of the Croatian representatives attached to the corps and the divisions.