A. Moser, whom I met in the Fall of 1944 was only Chief of Office for a very short time. Our relationship was correct, and we did not have any personal contact with each other.
Q. How about your relationship with your collaborators?
A. The relationship between myself and my collaborators, and members of other offices, was only of an official nature, because until August of 1942 I lived in Berlin, and I only stayed very briefly at Oranienburg. This did not change later on when I moved to Oranienburg, and when my parents lived with me there, since they had been bombed out at Cologne.
Q. What was your relationship with the concentration camp commanders whom you knew?
A. The concentration camp commanders, who had a higher rank than I had to some extent a considerable higher rank, I saw them very seldom. I saw them frequently later on when I talked to them, that is, when they came to Oranienburg, otherwise, we did not have very close contacts. I knew the labor allocation officers from the three labor allocation conferences, which had taken place for a year, that is to say, I knew part of them in person, and I knew part of the other camp personnel by name and in part I did not know them at all.
Q. Did you make any observations to the effect that you had a bad reputation with the individual camp commanders, and if so, why?
A . As a matter of fact, it had become known to camp commanders that I had furnished material which brought about the dismissal of camp commander Loritz for which I was called or was given the name and they called me, the commander of Mauthausen called me a first class "Political Indoctrinator, and the other commanders at the time also had that against me after that incident. The Mauthausen commandant's name was Thiereisen.
Q. Did you have any other contacts with circles of the SS?
A. No.
Q. In that time between your entry in the DEST in the year of 1941, and the end of the war, just how much leave did you have?
A. I went on a furlough on one occasion after I had suffered a nervous collapse.
Q. Did you spend part of that furlough in the SS reconvelescent camp at Sudelfeld?
A. Yes.
Q . What experiences did you gain there with regard to the treatment which was given to generals who stayed there, and you as a 1st Lieutenant?
A. The treatment in this reconvelescent camp was given according to rank. The persons of the lowest rank would not get very good food, otherwise, he was always treated very unfriendly. After I returned to Oranienburg I complained about that to General Gluecks. Gluecks told me that he would tell Pohl about it, and later on he said that he had actually found Pohl, and he told me that Pohl would have the man in charge of this reconvelescent home apologize to me. However, I never received it, he never did actually apologize to me.
Q. Witness, in the year 1934 you joined the General SS voluntarily?
A. Yes.
Q. What reasons caused you to enter the SS?
A. At the time I was 18 years old, and when I saw that everybody was rushing into the Party and the Party organizations, I considered it my duty also to enter some organization or other. Through a colleague I was taken along to a meeting of the SS in the summer of 1933, and in this way I became a candidate---I made an application---to enter the SS, and I actually joined in 1934.
Q. What was your rank when you were conscripted into the Reich Labor Service on 1 April 1936?
A. I was a Rottenfuehrer in the SS---a non-commissioned officer.
Q. What military rank could this grade be compared to, if any comparison can be made?
A. Well, if it can be compared at all, I was a private first class or a corporal.
Q. During your membership in the General SS, that is to say, after 1 April 1936, did you have the impression that you were a member of an organization which had been established to commit crimes or which was misused in order to commit crimes?
A. No, I never had that impression.
THE PRESIDENT: We hardly expected any other answer to that question, but we will recess anyway.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will be in recess for 15 minutes.
( A recess was taken).
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. BELZER (Counsel for defendant Sommer):
Q. Were you used at all when the so-called Roehm Putsch was foiled in 1934?
A. No.
Q. Where were you in November 1938, in those critical days?
A. I was a soldier in Brandenburg and was in my barracks.
Q. Did you at the time obtain any knowledge of the fact that the SS had participated in the excesses against the Jews in a prominent manner?
A. No. Quite generally it was regarded as a spontaneous demonstration and I did not observe the SS taking part in any particular way.
Q. When, in 1941, in order to adjust your rank to the Wehrmacht rank you were promoted to SS-Untersturmfuehrer, did you have any knowledge of crimes committed by the SS?
A. No.
Q. While you belonged to the Waffen-SS and while you worked in Office D-2, apart from what Gluecks told you about the extermination of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz, could you even consider it possible that the SS as an organization was used in a systematic way to commit crimes?
A. No.
Q. After Gluecks had imparted this piece of information to you in June 1944, did you have any possibility to resign from the SS?
A. After I had tried to do that for economic reasons and after my request had been turned down, I, as a man who shared this awful secret, could not possibly do so.
Q. What attitude do you take today, as a member of the SS, as regards the things which became known to you within the last two years, the crimes, that is, for which the SS, as an organization, has been made responsible?
A. Unfortunately there cannot be any doubt that orders were issued to exterminate human lives on the biggest scale. These orders which came from higher up, and the fact that the originators of these orders have withdrawn from responsibility by committing suicide.
I regard as the most pusillanimous acts committed, and this also is a betrayal of all the principles which the SS leaders preached themselves.
DR. BELZER: This brings me to the end of my direct examination.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Well, then, as distinguished from some other witnesses, you are convinced that the orders for extermination did come from the higher-up SS heads?
A. Yes.
Q. You are not fooled by the idea that this was just the work of a few unimportant underlings a few scoundrels in the concentration camps who acted on their own responsibility?
A. Mr. President, I said yesterday that it was my belief that in these things a distinction must be made. There cannot be any doubt that the mass extermination of human beings was ordered from above; whereas the things which I heard by witnesses here, all the atrocities described in books, I believe that they were not ordered from above but were tolerated quietly, so to speak.
Q. I think that is a very sensible conclusion. Did you ever hear of "cyclone"?
A. Here in Nuernberg for the first time.
Q. That's the first you ever heard of it?
A. After the beginning of this trial.
Q. Going back briefly to your statement yesterday in justification of forcing the Poles to labor because they were a captured people - do you think the same applies to Hungarian Jews?
A. I have thought about that point very frequently, Your Honor. I said this morning that at that time we were told that they were members of the construction brigades who had been sent to the concentration camps for security reasons. I believe today that it was planned to bring all Jews into the concentration camps and to exterminate them there.
Q. Then you don't justify that as you did the forced labor of the Poles as a conquered people?
A. That is when people are sent to the concentration camps in order to work. If you bring them to the concentration camps to exterminate them, I regard that as a crime.
Q. Well, you said it was all right to bring the civilians from Poland to Germany to work in war industries, because they were a captured people and that was one of the privileges of the victors. You remember saying that?
A. What I said was that I believed that one can expect a vanquished nation to work for you, yes.
Q. Do you feel the same way about the Danes?
A. Your Honor, we were never at war with Denmark.
Q. Do you know that there were many thousands of Danish workers in concentration camps?
A. No.
Q. It's true. How do you feel about the Dutchmen, the Hollanders? Are they the same as the Poles?
A. I believe, Your Honor, that there one should go into figures in order to be able to answer that question truthfully.
Q. No, let's just take one Dutchman, just one. Do you think he should have been compelled to work in a concentration camp because he was captured?
A. Not because he was captured, Your Honor, but because he was in a concentration camp because he had offended against some law and therefore I believe it was possible to use him for work.
Q. Well, the law that he offended against was that he didn't voluntarily work for Germany, the country which had overrun Holland and destroyed it. Do you think for that reason he should be put in a concentration camp?
A. No, Your Honor, nor do I believe it was only for that reason he was taken to a concentration camp.
Q. Well, I think that could be demonstrated to you. What I'm trying to do is to test your theory which you announced yesterday that when a conquering nation succeeds in subduing another that the civilians of the victim can properly and lawfully be compelled to work for the victor. Now that was your proposition, and I want to see how far you will go with it.
A. The usual thing was, Your Honor - at least I never saw anything else or heard about anything else - one did not speak of Germany alone, but of a greater Europe under German leadership in order to form a front against Bolshevism; that was the cover that was given to all these things.
Q. Well, that hasn't much to do with sending a good many thousands of Danes into forced labor in concentration camps, has it?
A. No, if you force them to work, it is a crime.
Q. After seeing the film which you saw and having read the documents with which you're very familiar, and having listened to the witnesses, are you now of the opinion that the inmates of concentration camps were well treated?
A. Your Honor, here an the witness stand a witness testified against me stating that I had committed two murders. He said that he had been an eye witness to them.
I did not commit those murders. I was not in a position to commit them because I was not at the place where they are alleged to have taken place. These witnesses have made their testimony without giving any date. I said yesterday that I believed that these atrocities described by these witnesses were committed under that unfortunate Eicke period previous to 1942. There is no doubt that they actually happened.
Q. That's all I asked you. There is no doubt in your mind that they actually happened?
A. No, only the extent is what I am not clear about.
Q. That's all right. That's consistent. You would have a right to consider that the extent of them has maybe been exaggerated. Did you ever see any children in concentration camps?
A. No, I never saw any children in concentration camps. The youngest inmate I ever saw in a workshop as a carpenter's apprentice was 16 or 17 years of age.
Q. Of course, you remember in the film which you saw, the parade of young boys and girls who were liberated. I think it was from Auschwitz, but from one camp. You remember that?
A. Yes, indeed, I do.
Q. You remember seeing bodies of children, don't you, who had died in concentration camps?
A. Yes, indeed, sir.
Q. How do you suppose those children got there?
A. I am quite unable to explain that.
Q. They weren't criminals, were they?
A. One certainly could not say that.
Q. They weren't there because they refused to work in the factories?
A. Certainly not, Your Honor.
Q. You can't think of any good reason why young children should have been imprisoned in concentration camps, can you?
A. No.
Q. But you know it was done?
A. I saw in the pictures in the film that children were in the concentration camps.
Q. You believe the pictures were true?
A. Yes.
Q. That wasn't enemy propaganda, was it?
A. I don't believe so, Your Honor.
BY JUDGE PHILLIPS:
Q. Witness, you seem to have such definite information about the operation of the concentration camps that I want to ask you this question. What agency in the WVHA would be responsible for furnishing "cyclone" to camps for extermination purposes?
A. When I was working with the WVHA, Your Honor, I never heard anything about "cyclone" gas. Having studied the documents submitted by the prosecution it seems to me as though that gas had been supplied by the SS Operational Main Office and supplied to Auschwitz.
Q. Didn't it have to be handled by some agency of the WVHA?
A It seems to me that the poison gas was sent only to an agency which could handle things like that, and that was the agency in the SS Operational Main Office.
Q Well the SS Operational Main Office didn't have any channels through which they would send things direct to the concentration camps, did they?
A I know nothing about their channels, your Honor.
Q That's what I am talking about; the channels through which concentration camps were supplied were the different agencies of the WVHA. Now, if one of these agencies had to furnish this material, which one would it be more likely to be?
A It would have been an agency within Office Group D. It could be only the physician there in office D III.
Q Under Lolling's department?
A Yes, your Honor.
BY DR. BELKER:
Q Witness, following the questions put to you by the Presiding Judge, I would like to ask you one question. The President has asked you whether you saw the films where the bodies of concentration camp inmates were shown and where you saw children in concentration camps. My question to you is; "Is it conceivable that these films and pictures which you saw are concerned with a different period of time from the very last days of the concentration camps.
A In my opinion only the very last days of the concentration camps because I never heard anything about the fact that a film about concentration camps had ever been produced.
THE PRESIDENT: Of course, these films were taken in the spring of 1945 after the capitulation. They had to be.
Q I only wanted to ask the witness what the connections were at that time between Office Group D, Office D II and the concentration camps on on the whole.
AA connection between Office Group D and the concentration camps hardly existed.
Pursuant to Himmler's order, the SS and police Leaders, when the enemy approached had to take over the authority over a concentration camp and decide what was to be done with the concentration camp. Office Group D, therefore, was more or less eliminated at that time.
THE PRESIDENT: Cross examination by other defense counsel?
CROSS EXAMINATION BY DR. MUELLER-THORGOW (for the defendant Georg Loerner):
Q Witness, if I remember correctly, you were from March 1941 onwards with the Dest and there you were concerned with labor allocation from the beginning. Isn't that correct?
A Yes.
Q The defendant Georg Loerne at that time was chief of Office I in the Main Office Budget and Construction. Under him was the Main Department 1/5, which apart from rabbit breeding and things like that also dealt with labor allocaion of inmates. Georg Loerner has stated on the witness stand on cross examination when he replied to a question put to him by the prosecution that at that time no program of labor allocation was as yet in existence. Inmates were mostly employed by the SS economic enterprises in order to carry out the extensive building program. No large-scale program existed at that time. The program of labor allocation originated only in 1942.
Now, Witness, it would be interesting to hear something from you in order to complete the picture. I believe you gave us a hint yesterday about how you as the collaborator of an economic enterprise regarded these things at the time quite generally. Are you of the opinion that Georg Loerner has described the situation correctly, or has he made a mistake in your opinion?
A No, as I see it, he has described the situation quite correctly. I said yesterday that when I had my first conference with Maurer not one word was mentioned with regard to the fact that inmates were to be employed in armament industries or that concentration camps would release inmates for work of that mature. The work was exclusively concerned with the labor allocation of inmates with the SS industries; I believe I can member that at that time only two detachments existed in all the concentration camps which could be regarded as armament details. One was a detachment in the Buna Works at Auschwitz and the other was with the Weinkel Works in Oranienburg to build an airfield. That, in my opinion and the the best of my recollection was all that was done for the armament industry.
Q Witness, yesterday you said that whenever there were any difficulties regarding labor allocation questions in the Dest you would turn to the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps and not to Georg Loerner or to Pohl. May I ask you first of all to repeat briefly why you did that?
AAs I said yesterday, I put that question to myself when I studied the documents, when on the basis of the organization chart of the Office Budget and Construction I saw that the Department 1/5 was under Loerner at the time. I do not know why we did not turn to Loerner at the time. I did not realize at the time that the possibility existed for us to turn to Loerner with our worries. We turned exclusively to Burboeck or to Gluecks.
Q Was it your impression at the time that Burboeck for old practical purposes mas under Loerner or under the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps?
A I had no impression at all because I knew nothing about these connections between Burboeck and Loerner.
Q Georg Loerner said on the witness stand that in the spring of 1941, probably in March or April, he and Gluecks made an oral arrangement to the effect that labor allocation questions should be dealt with by the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps from that moment. It is difficult to find anything about the oral arrangement apart from what Loerner said. There is no evidence. Gluecks himself is dead, and we did not succeed in locating Burboeck. Therefore, I might say, Witness, that when you were with the Dest you at that time knew nothing of this oral arrangement. Is that correct?
A That is correct. I knew nothing of this arrangement.
Q My question is, do you think that this sort of an arrangement is a possibility on the basis of your knowledge, or that it is even a possibility?
AAll I can say is that when I was there I did not see any connection between Burboeck and Loerner because otherwise it would have been much easier for us to go to Loerner or to Pohl because they would have seen to it that brings would have been arranged in our way.
Q If you forget all about this arrangement which Loerner alleges had taken place, I would like to ask you, was the situation at that time the same which would have resulted from an arrangement of that sort quite logically?
A I can answer that question in the affirmative.
Q A final question, Witness. You said before the recess. "As far as Georg Loerner was concerned, I never had any official contacts with him." What was the reason for this? Was it that Georg Loerner was Chief of the Office Group and you were only in charge of a Main Department; that Georg Loerner was a Lt. General and you were only a 1st Lieutenant; or was the reason rather in the difference between Office Group B and D? At least where D II was concerned were there any official contacts at all?
AAs far as I was concerned, the reason was that my field tied me to my desk in Oranienburg. It never became known to me that Office Chief Maurer had any official contacts with Loerner. I know of no correspondence.
DA. MUELLER-THORGOW: I have no further questions.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
BY DR. KLINERT (Attorney for Defendant Volk):
Q Witness, you said on direct examination that you met Volk while you worked at the DEST. I would like to ask you whether Volk was employed by the DEST?
A No, Volk was not a member of the DEST. He merely happened to be in the same building where the DEST was located, the Geisbergstrasse in Berlin and that is how I know him.
Q Thank you, no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: If there are no more questions by defense counsel, the Prosecution may cross-examine.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. RUDOLPH:
Q Defense counsel has just asked you to describe all the contacts you had with the other defendants. Have you described all such contacts?
A Yes, as far as I remember.
Q Is this with reference to conversations, meetings and correspondence?
A It concerns the personal contact as I remember it.
Q It wouldn't have included the contacts you had on official correspondence with these individuals, would it?
A If you mean the correspondence of my agency, that was not included.
Q Well, will you enumerate for us your official contacts with the various defendants starting with Oswald Pohl?
0
A I only had those contacts I described with Pohl. My office chief used to see Pohl once a week and have a conference with him. He would take everything that had accumulated along in a brief-case and Pohl issued his orders for labor allocation to Office Group D-II. Anything which was important was taken by Maurer to Pohl. As I remember it, I only drew up the application lists for the selection of inmates. They were submitted to Pohl and Pohl made the decisions as Court No. II, Case No. 4.to whether these lists should be acted upon.
Q What about the defendant Georg Loerner?
AAs I said before, I did not know that my office has any official contacts with Loerner. I cannot recall any correspondence with Georg Loerner at all.
Q Then you always by-passed Loerner and went directly to Pohl if the occasion arose for that?
A I myself never went to see Pohl. Where Maurer went to I do not know because it was not his duty to report to me or explain to me where he had been.
Q But you were in fact the deputy of Maurer, were you not?
A I was Maurer's deputy in order to give information about labor allocation matters.
Q Is there any person in Amtsgruppe D who was appointed Maurer's deputy for any other purpose?
A No.
Q Then you were the only person who could be regarded as the deputy of Maurer in D-II? Is that not correct?
A Yes, I could be considered that within the limited sphere of tasks which I have already described.
Q Could anyone else be regarded as the deputy of Maurer?
A No.
Q You couldn't be regarded as the deputy of anyone else but Maurer, could you?
A I was only deputized for Maurer, that is to say, if somebody rang up or wanted some information he was taken to Maurer's deputy which was Sommer. I listened to what they wanted and reported to Maurer. That was as far as my deputizing for Maurer went.
Q Well, as deputy for Maurer, you would know whether he went to Maurer or Pohl? One of the reasons you were appointed deputy was because you knew what Maurer did?
A When Maurer went to the Main Office in Berlin, he usually Court No. II, Case No. 4.went together with Gluecks.
I only knew that he was going to see Pohl in the WVHA at Berlin. Apart from that, I am unable to tell you whether he went to Loerner or another Office Group Chief.
Q Did you ever contact the defendant Hans Loerner?
AAs I said before I personally met Hans Loerner at the Sudelfeld in the fall of 1943. Otherwise no official contact with Hans Loerner is known to me.
Q You at no time assigned any inmates to Hans Loerner? Is that correct?
A No.
Q Or at his request?
A I don't remember anything, no.
Q What about Frank?
A I described how I met Frank personally. Whether Maurer went to see him or reported to him, I do not know.
Q Have you ever had any contact with him in the course of official business of Office D-II?
A I know of no such contacts.
Q And how about Vogt?
A Through the organizational chart I knew Vogt. I have never seen one document in my office which was addressed to Vogt.
Q What about Fanslau?
A I did not know Fanslau either. Our personnel matters within D-II were passed on to Harbaum or Gluecks. What happened after that I don't know.
Q Coming down to Office B-I, what about Tschentscher.
A I never knew Tschentscher before I came to Nurnberg nor did I see any correspondence which was addressed to Tschentscher.
Q Did his office ever request inmates for any labor to be assigned to him for their use?
A I know that the main depots had inmates, but I do not believe that they were requested by Tschentscher but according to channels Court No. II, Case No. 4.they had to be requested by the main depot itself.
Q That was Tschentscher's responsibility though, was it not?
A Responsibility for what?
Q For food supplies.
A Food supplies for the inmates were supplied by the Regional food offices and purchased from private firms by the administrative officers of the concentration camps. I thought earlier that Tschentscher in some form or other participated in negotiations about the accounts but that is purely an assumption. I have no documentary evidence for that.
Q Do you recall that your office did have some contact with Tschentscher?
A I personally have seen Tschentscher here for the first time and I don't know whether there was any correspondence.
Q Your memory is extremely good on things you want to remember. Try to remember whether you met Tschentscher or not. Do you remember if you have had any official contact with him.
A No, I don't recall any such occasion.
Q What about Scheide?
AAs I said before I went to see him once when I needed a railway wagon but apart from that I didn't see him or have any contact with him nor was there any contact between D-II or Scheide.
Q No inmates were furnished to Scheide at any time?
A The WVHA had inmates working in its garage in Berlin; whether they were requested by Scheide or by somebody else I don't know; I hardly think so; it may have been that they were requested by Scheide because as I see it they were there from the beginning.
Q Skipping down to Office C-I, were any inmates assigned to Office C-I?
A Requests for inmates, where building matters were concerned usually came from the construction managements or the central construction managements; information came to us from C-5 as I remember, as far Court No. II, Case No. 4.as Office Group C was concerned.
The other offices as I remember, did not appear in this at all.
Q Then Loerner was the only person with whom you had contact in Amtsgruppe C?
A Yes, that was Office C-V and there was a man called Obersturmfuehrer Prinzel, who, when requests for inmates were made, would pass them on to us. The letters as I remember it, were all signed by Kammler.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 2 July 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 2 July 1947, 0930-1630, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please take their seats.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II.
Military Tribunal II is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
KARL SOMMER - Resumed CROSS EXAMINATION (Continued) BY MR. RUDOLPH:
Q Witness, at the close of yesterday's session I was in the process of asking you which defendants you had contact with in either a personal or official way. To preclude the possibility of any misunderstanding, let me explain that when I say "contact" I mean to include all types of contact, whether in person, by letter, memoranda, telegram, or other type of correspondence or by telephone. In giving your answers yesterday, did you include all these types of communication?
A Yes, I recall, certainly. May I perhaps add the following: I estimated in Office D-II that fifty to one hundred letters would arrive per day. That is to say in three years of my work there that amounts to roughly 90,000 letters. Of course, I cannot remember every single letter. The principle we observed was that when inmates were requested, the person in whose building they were to work had to make the initial request. Great attention was paid to the fact that this was carried out. I have taken the witness stand in order to speak the truth. I have no reason to cover up for any of the defendants in the dock. I gave my answers in accordance with the truth as I remember it.