Q. I should like to ask you now, witness - you just told us of Office II, Construction - did that office have a chief at the time?
A. No, Office II, Construction, did not have an office chief.
Q. Who was the first office chief?
A. The first office chief for the Office Construction arrived at the beginning of 1940 to the Main Office Budget and Construction. This was Sturmbannfuehrer Heidelberg.
Q. At the same time did the construction tasks for the concentration camps come under that unit and also for the Death Head units?
A. In this trial mention has been made of the fact that Gruppenfuehrer Eicke was the Inspector of concentration camps and that he was called up at the beginning of 1940 and went to the front with the Death Head units. From that moment onwards, Eicke handed over his agency in Oranienburg, and as far as I know in the spring of 1940 it was incorporated into the Office Construction. The previous man in charge of the construction department with the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, Hauptsturmfuehrer Riedl, came together with his department into Office II, Construction, and as a main department he continued with the tasks and duties.
Q. In this connection I want to put to you, witness, an affidavit by witness Wolfgang Grosch, who will be cross-examined here tomorrow. This is in Document Book XXI, Document NO-2322, Exhibit 513. I should like you to give us your comments on this affidavit, particularly with regard to the statements about your work until 1940.
In his affidavit Grosch makes statements about when he met you first. He described your position at the time and compared it with the later position held by Kammler. He also stated that the administration of the construction funds for the Special Task units, Death Head units, and the General SS were the duties of new administration. He also makes statements about your transfer to Berlin. Please comment about these things.
A. In his affidavit Grosch says that by the middle of 1939 he heard of me for the first time.
Q. Let me interrupt you here, witness. Grosch has also given another affidavit, which is in Volume III of the docunent books. This is Document NO-2154, Exhibit 52. In this affidavit Grosch states that in 1929 he was working under you. I should again like you to give us your comments on both affidavits of Grosch.
A. As I can remember it, I heard of Grosch for the first time in 1940. Before that I did not know him at all. Of course, it is possible that he knew about me without my knowing about him. My name made me well known all over the place, and it is the sort of name which you remember. Grosch's statements made in his affidavit of 5 March 1947 are incorrect. I have already explained how construction funds for the Special Task units and Death Head units were spent. The money for the construction for the General SS was not made free by me, but the money came from the Reich treasury. That money was spent in accordance with orders by the men in charge of the construction concerned with the Main Treasury SS in Munich or else direct from the Reich Treasurer.
I was not in a position to give permission for construction money for the Death Head units. I explained before how that money was being spent. Grosch also says that in the Administrative Office SS I had been in charge of the whole of the construction. That statement is incorrect. I was the expert for the field of the SS Special Task units but not for concentration camps and TV and only in isolated cases for matters connected with the General SS.
Then he states that I had remained in that position until 1940 when I went to Berlin to the Main Department Budget and Construction, but, as I said before, my transfer to Berlin happened as early as October 1938. In the other docunent of 20 February 1947 Grosch alleges that in February 1939 he had been ordered to go to Munich and there I had been his superior officer. I wish to state that Grosch was not under me for one hour. As far as his other statements are concerned, I wish to say something about then later on.
Q. At the end of 1939 or the beginning of 1940 you joined the administrative agency in the Administrative Office of the Waffen SS. What department did you take over there?
A. At that period of the end of 1939 or the beginning of 1940 I asked the Main Office chief to be transferred to the then administrative office of the Waffen SS. That later on became the Administrative Office of the Waffen SS. I was granted that transfer and I took over the Main Department V-5.
Q. Did you bring your own personnel for your new field of tasks, and what was the strength of your staff?
A. I did not bring any personnel with me. In 1940-1941 I was on my own, and towards the end of 1941 I was given two or three technical colleagues.
Q. When did you take over the construction tasks of the concentration camps and the Death Head units from the Main Office Budget and Construction?
A. I have described that before.
Q. What were the tasks you had in Department V-5?
A. There I was in charge of maintenance work for all construction projects of the Waffen SS, that is to say, the actual SS troops. I wish to point out that it did not comprise the concentration camp side.
Q. What did you understand by maintenance work?
A. By that I mean all small repair work at estates and buildings, which turn up regularly and repeatedly. Moreover, that sort of repair work can be carried out without any expert knowledge by the technical agencies concerned. It includes all repair work of windows, doors, roofs, streets, and things like that. For that type of work a sum of money was annually decided on the ministerial level and this was put at the disposal of the administrative agency. The agency then carried out all repair work in the course of that year under its own competence.
Q. Please describe how the administrative side was handled and how it was done in peacetime as well as in wartime.
A. In the peacetime budget new construction funds were separated from the current maintenance material and expenses. The reason for this is that new constructions usually took a longer time or they took in some cases three, four, or five years. Funds for these new constructions could always be transferred therefore. That is to say, funds which had not been used up during one year could be transferred to the budget of next year. The actual money was really tied to the budget and once the year was up it would be lost unless the money had been spent. The funds were transmitted by the building management concerned and were paid by the treasury concerned with the building agency. Money for maintenance was paid by the garrison administration concerned, and they were accounted for and audited in the auditing field for general administrative expenses.
Q. Were there annual reports about the requirements of the troops throughout the year, and what could you see from those reports?
A. The procedure described by me just now concerned peacetime conditions. In wartime there was an open budget, and therefore the administrative agencies had at their disposal all necessary money for the maintenance also. Individual building agencies sometimes did keep up a peacetime routine in wartime in order to have a certain amount of guarantee about the way they spent their money. Other administrative officials, however, who worked relatively independently, did this without putting in their reports first, and carried out all measures as they thought fit and on their own responsibility.
Q. Then on the 1st of February 1942 you joined the WVHA?
A. Yes, on the 1st of February 1942, when the administration in the SS Main Operational Office was dissolved, I was transferred to the WVHA together with my colleagues.
Q. How many colleagues did you have?
A. Three or four perhaps.
Q. Did that transfer agree with you?
A. No, it did not. The then chief of Office II, Construction, Kammler, had approached me as early as November or December of 1941, asking me to join his office voluntarily.
I turned down that proposition because I had no intention of working under Kammler. I had come across him before. Thereupon I talked to my chief, at the time Gruppenfuehrer Frank, and asked him to prevent at all costs my transfer to the WVHA. I wanted to be transferred to the troop administration. Gruppenfuehrer Frank himself said on the witness stand why that request was not granted.
Q Then according to the organizational chart you were in the WVHA Kammler's deputy. Tell us how that appointment came about?
A I have no idea what the reason was. Kammler did not talk to me about that; and I only saw on the 1st of January 1943 that I had become his deputy, when the organizational chart, which is a document in this trial, reached me for the first time.
Q Did Kammler give you any orders about the way you were to deputize for him or any other instructions as to what you had to do as his deputy?
A No, Kammler gave me no orders at all.
Q Who had been Kammler's previous deputy?
A That had been Sturmbannfuehrer Busching, who has been mentioned before.
Q Did you deputize in any sense of the word for him? By that I mean deputize for him in even a very small way, by signing letters, for instance, leave orders, or things of that sort?
A No, I cannot recall having done that at all. I did not sign any mail. I did not sign any leave orders. Leave orders were signed by the office chiefs themselves.
Q At that time the WVHA received a direct hit in an air-raid. When was that and what was the special effect of that direct hit on the work done by Office Group C?
A The bomb damage has been described in detail by witness Kiefer. I can only confirm what he told us. My colleagues worked for about six or eight weeks on salvage work, and our official activities were completely nil.
Q Then in May 1943 you went to the hospital. How long were you in the hospital?
A From May 1943 to January 1944 I was in the hospitals of Dachau, Bayrisch/Zell, and Gastein.
Q When in May 1943 you were on sick leave, who was then appointed Kammler's deputy?
A I do not know that anyone was officially appointed; but I do assume that nothing was done until the time when Kiefer was appointed a deputy. That deputizing of Kiefer's I knew nothing about. It was only here in the documents that I saw anything about it.
Q When you returned from your sick leave, did you then deputize for Kammler at all, or were you told that your period of deputizing was over, or was the deputizing not mentioned at all?
A During my absence my office had been evacuated to Oranienburg. When in January 1944 I returned, Prof. Schleif had become Kammler's deputy. That was the end of my deputizing.
Q Officially you never were told that the period of your deputizing was over? I mean by that you received no official information as "From such and such a date you are no longer Kammler's deputy"? Were you ever written such a letter?
A No, nothing of the sort happened.
Q Now, let us talk about the work which you actually did with the WVHA. In the WVHA you were in charge of Office C VI. Please tell us about your office. Explain the sub-departments to us. Look first at the organizational chart on the wall which shows it.
A On that chart the activity of my office is stated incorrectly. It only speaks of maintenance work up to 1943. My office consisted of three main offices, Main Office I, Building Materials; Main Department II, and Main Department III, Auditing and Price Control. The main task was auditing and price control. Compared to these activities, the other two departments were completely insignificant.
THE TRIBUNAL (Judge Phillips): I didn't get what Number II was. Number I was Building Materials; III was Auditing and Price Control. I didn't get what II was.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: II is Auditing; III is Price Control.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: What was II?
A Department II was Planned Economy, looking after water, gas, current, and heating.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Do I understand that auditing and price control were one office?
A Yes, quite; but there was a change later on.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: I misunderstood you.
BY DR. STEIN:
Q In March of 1942 the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps was transferred to the WVHA. What was the effect which that transfer had on your field of tasks, Main Department C VI/1, Maintenance of Buildings?
A That incorporation of the concentration camps and or of Office Group D into the WVHA entailed an extension of my tasks for that field. What happened was that I released funds for certain purposes. That was as far as my activity went. These funds just as in the sector of the Waffen SS were allocated to concentration camps once a year after the local construction management had ascertained the funds needed for the current maintenance, and after this had been up, what was actually transmitted was one sum to the administration concerned if any such requests ever reached us at all. I said before that as we had an open budget in wartime, only the more timid administrative officials would come in to obtain permission, whereas all the others acted on their own initiative.
Q. Who carried out the repair work?
A. The repair work was carried out exclusively by the adminis-tration, and so on. It was in some cases dependent on how big the work of the local building agencies was.
Q. Who supplied the material to the local agencies?
A. I'll have to make a distinction here as far as the maintenance buildings where troops were housed were concerned. There the Administration Agencies used mainly civilian firms. Those firms supplied both the labor and the material, and sent their bills in the normal way. In the concentration camps the administration officials would make purchase of this necessary material from private firms or depots, or they got it in some other way, and then with their own repair detachments they carried out the work.
Q. Were you in a position to send such material to concentration camps?
A. You mean myself?
Q. Ye, or your office, or your agency?
A. My office had no allocation of material, that is to any extent. All I had was a small contingent for machines, iron, which could be used only for certain purposes.
Q. Where did the raw material allocations come from?
A. In 1942 the supply of raw material in the building market became more and more acute. The Speer Ministry set up offices of its own to regulate construction problems in the Reich, and they were stationed with every Army District. All construction measures had to be approved by that Regional Commissioner, and it was his agency which supplied the quota for the material.
Q. Who requested the contingent of raw material with the Commissioner?
A. From the new agency Speer new construction material was requested in the normal way. For the maintenance work the building ad ministrative Offices had to apply to the official concerned because for the purpose of maintenance the Speer Agencies did not commit any collective contingent.
That feature did not apply not only in the Waffen-SS, but also in the Army and the Luftwaffe, and the other problem departments. In 1942 all repair work, above, two-thousand marks, had to be approved first in this way.
THE PRESIDENT: We are trying to find out whether--wel, we still know nothing about who supplied the material for maintenance work and repair work. The most we got out was "from the agency concerned." I don't know what it means. In fact, none of us know what it means. Answer that again. Who supplied the material, that is, lumber, hardware, paint and so on, for maintenance work?
A. Yes, Mr. President, in order to obtain the material you had to have first of all contingent vouchers by the Regional Commissioner; that voucher would enable you to purchase the necessary materiel from private firms contingent, for instance, and then they would pay the bills from their own funds.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let's get to the material and not pay the bills for a moment. Where did you get the contingent vouchers?
A. The administration was given these vouchers by the Regional Commissioner who was in charge of building matters.
BY DR. STEIN:
Q. And he requested these vouchers, the administration itself requested the vouchers. Now did you obtain any knowledge, or request, or did you have to have special permission?
A. No, I did not hear anything about that side of the procedure.
THE PRESIDENT: I am still trying to find out who issued the vouchers for the material for maintenance. Now you want to put a roof on a shed and you got to have some lumber and some nails, where did you go to get the voucher which you could present to the lumber yard for that material?
A. Mr. President, those vouchers were given to the Administration by the District Commissioner for Coordination and Construction matters.
THE PRESIDENT: Now wait a minute, that is what we are trying to get, the District what?
A. The District Commissioner for the Coordination of Construction matters, that was the Regional Office of the Speer Ministry.
DR. STEIN: Now, once the-
THE PRESIDENT: Just a second. Were those the same Regional Offices that the witness Kiefer was talking about yesterday; one in Berlin, one in Munich, one in Westbaden, and so on?
A. Yes, Your Honor, these are the same Commissioners.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
BY DR. STEIN:
Q. Once the vouchers had been requested, the raw material was supplied by whom?
A. By the administration concerned which had purchased the stuff.
Q. What agency was it which paid for these things?
A. The payment was done by the administrative office concerned.
Q. What office audited the bills?
A. The bills were audited by the administrative officer himself. These were simple bills for material for which you did not have any expert knowledge.
Q. Did these bills ever be checked again by your office?
A. No.
Q. Who financed the Garrison Building Administration?
A. I believe we already heard about that from the former witness who stated how these Garrison offices received their money, according to the war budget.
Q. They had nothing to do with your office?
A. No.
Q. What was the activity carried out by you and C-6 in connection with the maintenance work?
A. AS I said before, very timid officials who wanted material wanted to have some backing, and, therefore, wanted to have formal permission for their annual expenditure; a large part however did not bother about this permission.
Q. How strong in personnel matter was this department in the course of a year?
A. That Main Department in 1942 had two technical assistants. In 1943 I believe only one, and in '44 it had been dissolved. The tasks were joined up in 1944 to the Building Inspectorates, because the Building Inspector had the right to dispose up 100,000 marks, The maintenance sums concerned were usually in a garrison of medium size to about forty to fifty-thousand marks, per year. In most cases they were even under the limit about which the Inspectorate could decide.
Q. The time as you have mentioned when this Main Department existed, the maintenance was transferred to the local agency. Before then did you yourself, or later your colleagues supervise these activities in any way?
A. No, I don't remember any such case. It would be extremely difficult in the case of about four-hundred or four-hundred and fifty building sites in the Reich to carry out any supervision throughout the Reich with two men.
Q. Did you ever see a report about maintenance work which was given to you by any local agency there?
A. No, nothing was presented to me about that.
Q. Were you able to in any way by chance obtain any knowledge of these things? That is, through written report, or otherwise?
A. That might have happened once. However, I don't recall any such account.
Q. In that connection--
THE PRESIDENT: In that connection we will take a recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1:45.
(Recess taken until 1345 hours, 26 June 1947).
AFTERNOON SESSION
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DEFENDANT EIRENSCHMALZ -- Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION -- Continued BY DR. STEIN:
Q We were talking about the expenses for the maintenance of buildings when we stopped. In order to clarify a misunderstanding, I would like to ask you once more who allotted the building material for the maintenance of the buildings.
A I believe that my answer has been misunderstood in the course of this morning's session. I pointed out that the allotment for the maintenance work was done by the district commissioners for the coordination of construction matters, and that was not an agency of Amtsgruppe C; that was an agency of the Speer Ministry. The Construction Inspectorate, that is to say, the agencies on the medium level of Amtsgruppe C on matters of new construction of buildings, also had to turn to the agency of the district commissioners for the co-ordination of the construction economy. These allotments in their entirety were negotiated by the Speer Ministry in Berlin. Just how these negotiations were carried out in detail I do not know.
Q Witness, in this morning's session you made some statements about the maintenance of the buildings, and you stated that the maintenance of the construction was carried out by the local agencies. You further stated that the material was not ordered by your office and was not allotted by your office, and you have come to the result that your office did not participate at all and did not play any part in the maintenance of construction work. However, the affidavit of Krone in Volume III does not agree with that statement. I now submit Document NO 2197. It is contained in Document Book III, and it is Exhibit 53. In this affidavit on Page 3, Krone has stated and I quote:
"The maintenance of all constructions and buildings and their repair, particularly with regard to the concentration camps, was subordinated to Standartenfuehrer Eirenschmalz. Whenever repairs had to be carried out in a concentration camp, the SS garrison administration had to contact Eirenschmalz, and he then would give the order to carry out this repair work.
All the repair work in all the concentration camps had to be reported to Eirenschmalz by the SS garrison administration. He also had to be informed when gas chambers or crematoria were not functioning and when they had to be repaired. Then it was his task to see that these repairs were carried out, and he had to take the necessary measures."
This witness, Krone, had been approved for me by the Tribunal as a witness, and I wanted to call him for cross examination. The witness was in Nurnberg, as I stated earlier this morning, and, in agreement with the Prosecution, I have examined the witness once more in the presence of a member of the Prosecution.
In the course of this new examination Krone has repudiated his previous statement. I shall present this affidavit as Eirenschmalz Exhibit No. 1 However, even at this time I want to tell the Tribunal about the contents of this affidavit. I want to read part of it, so that the Tribunal will be able to gain an insight into the testimony of Eirenschmalz, as to his veracity.
Krone has stated in his affidavit of 13 June 1947, amongst other things:
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
"I can only make the following statement about the construction maintenance:
"1. From my own experience I do not have any knowledge about it, and I do not know whether repairs on gas chambers or crematoria were carried out.
"2. I did not obtain any knowledge on that through hearsay.
"3. About the procedure and the progress of repair work in the concentration camps I can only say that the local construction enterprise agencies or the accommodation administrations carried out small repair work whenever it was required, and they did not have to obtain any further approval. They were able to carry out this repair work directly on the spot. The local construction agencies or the accommodation administrations also had workshops at their disposal which had material at their disposal.
"If I am charged that in my affidavit of the 25th of February, 1947, Document NO-2197, Exhibit 53, I had stated there that reports by the garrison administratives had to be submitted to Eirenschmalz about all the repair work, and in particular that he had to be informed when gas chambers or crematoria were out of order, and they had to be repaired, and that Eirenschmalz then had to take the necessary steps, then my statement is not correct in that sense. I only wanted to say that the local construction agencies were informed about all repair work which had to be done, and they had this repair work actually carried out."
Although Krone has made some further correction, however, since here we are not dealing with the minor matters in the indictment against the defendant, and no evidence has been presented on this one point by the prosecution, I only included them in the affidavit, and I shall submit this affidavit to the Tribunal.
Witness, I ask you now to make a statement with regard to the two affidavits by Krone.
A This I have already said with regard to the field of con Court No. II, Case No. 4.struction maintenance.
The Office C-VI/1 only had ministerial functions, and in individual cases it issued the allotment of material. About the extent of the medium size allocation of material, I cannot make any statements. The statements of Krone that I or my agency had to be informed about the repair work which was carried out on gas chambers and crematoria is not correct. In any case, I have never received a report of that kind. Krone further states in his new affidavit that the construction agencies were responsible for the execution of such repair work, and that these agencies were exactly informed, and then he continues to say that these construction agencies were part of the Amt C-VI. In this connection I want to point out that early in 1942 Kammler ordered me to establish such concentration agencies at all the bigger garrisons. This establishment, however, was not carried out with the exception of two such construction agencies, because we did not have the personnel at our disposal to do that. Construction agencies were only established, as far as I can recall today, at the troop training center at Debitscha in the General Government in Poland, and the construction agency in the Banat where the Witness Krone himself was stationed from '43 to '44. For all the remaining garrisons all the repair work was carried out by the garrison administration.
Q Therefore you maintain with regard to these two affidavits that the statements which you have made this morning with regard to the maintenance of construction and buildings in the concentration camps were correct as you have described them?
A Yes.
Q About the further counts of the indictment with regard to gas chambers and crematoria I shall refer later on in today's examination. I am now referring again to Office VI, and I want to ask you whether this office also had branch agencies?
A Office C-VI, from 1941 or before, until 1942, and perhaps until three-quarters of 1942, it had a branch office, and that branch Court No. II, Case No. 4.office was located with the garrison administration at Dachau.
This branch office, however, was not competent for construction maintenance, but it had to supervise the supply depots there. It had to supervise the water supply, and the heating facilities, etc. Such a department was an experiment. In 1942 this branch office was incorporated into the garrison administration at Dachau.
Q You have already mentioned one branch office here, namely, Dachau. Were there any other branch offices at places where a concentration camp was located?
A No.
Q In your office, C-VI/1 there was also a department for expert opinions of properties. Will you please describe its tasks to us?
A This department for the judging of properties consisted of one collaborator. Since the Waffen-SS needed a large number of accommodations, and other building sites, as a result of the Reich Compensation Law many buildings had to be rented. In these cases an expert opinion first had to be given with the technical aspects. This opinion was mainly carried out in order to determine the compensation for rent. In individual cases an opinion was given sometimes of properties, which as Reich properties were then rented to the enterprises.
Q Did you or your office also give an expert opinion of Jewish properties?
A No, such a case did not occur.
Q Whenever you purchased properties for concentration camps, did you also have to give an opinion on that?
A No.
Q I am now coming to your Main Department 2. That is your plant economy. What task did this department have?
A This also was a very small department. It mainly worked on directives with regard to the operation of the public utilities Court No. II, Case No. 4.with the garrison administrations.
It issued and compiled directives and instructions just how big heating plants should be operated and how the electric supply was to be taken care of, and how water supply was to be installed, and things of that nature. They also dealt with sewer facilities. These directives were then passed on to the administrative agencies, and they described just how these very complicated facilities were to be operated. In individual cases the technical officials of my department also supervised certain very large facilities on the spot. This was done, for example, at the extended barracks at Munich, at the Junker School at Bad Toelz, and various other large barracks which had special technical facilities.
Q Did this main department have anything to do with the concentration camps?
A No, this department could not interfere with matters which pertained to concentration camps because members of that office were not allowed to enter the concentration camps for that purpose.
Q How much personnel did this office have? I am referring to the Main Department.
A In 1942 it was the Main Department had two collaborators, and in 1943 it had five or six collaborators, on a temporary basis. Then again the number decreased to two or three collaborators. At the end of 1944 this department was completely discontinued.
In 1943 and 1944 the two technical collaborators were mainly used as economizing engineers.
Q How were the expenditures of these public utilities carried out from the local garrison administration? The maintenance of the facilities?
A The maintenance of the facilities there took place exactly as the maintenance of construction.
Q In your opinion, who in the concentration camps had to constantly supervise the facilities? Let us say laundry facilities, sewers and so on; the supply of water and disinfection facilities? Who had to deal with it?
A In hygienic respect the troop physician had to take care of that, or the concentration camp medical officer. The commander was also responsible in these matters. The man in charge of the Administration had to see that repairs were carried out.
Q What, in your opinion, caused the sanitary facilities to be utterly insufficient in the concentration camps, as we have already heard by the witness Kogon in his examination?
A These bad conditions resulted solely from the over-crowding in the camps.
Q Did your office have the task to regularly inspect the building sites with regard to their hygienic condition, and so on?
A No, that was not the task of the ministerial level. I would not have been able to do that with my two or three colleagues. I have already pointed out that approximately 400 or 450 building sites had to be taken care of.