All information went to him, and the inspectors for these army motor pools were twenty air corps generals who received a special authority, which never existed before.
General Koll issued an entire book containing regulations with reference to these army motor pools, and anyone who was found guilty of having used a truck illegally was given a court martial.
In conclusion I would like to say that Hitler here tried to save whatever could be saved because the transportation situation in the entire German Reich was with one word catastrophical. Within one month three thousand railroad engines were knocked out by airplanes. All these figures never became known. We were unable to supply the small towns or villages which had been bombed out, neither by trucks nor by railroads.
The situation was absolutely impossible.
Q. Witness, with reference to these army motor pools, I would like to ask you again: if a general, for instance, had a car at his disposal and he didn't use it, for instance, at night, was the man in charge of the army motor pool then able to use that vehicle and assign it to a different duty?
A. There were a few exceptions in Germany. I should think about twenty or fifty sedans may have been exceptions in this case. Certain people could still use their vehicles because Hitler personally had given them permission to do so. They had special passes, and that was the reason why they were passed by those "combing-out" groups.
Whereas before the generals left their vehicles in some garage and could do whatever they wanted with them, their vehicles now had to be attached to the army motor pool, and the army motor pool could dispose of that vehicle--even at night, by the man in charge of the motor pool.
I only want to make a comparison; namely, the Wehrmacht garage which is the Army Motor Pool, Lichterfelde Berlin, South, was directed by a captain of the army, and I asked him to give me my own vehicle, for a trip I wanted to make.
BY JUDGE MUSMANNO:
Q. Did I understand you to say that if a general wanted to use his vehicle he had to have permission from Hitler himself?
A. No, Your Honor, not quite. General Koll, who was in charge of the Wehrmacht Transportation System had his representatives all over the German Reich; they were army officers, and they were in charge of all the vehicles which were contained in the army motor pools. To be more precise about it, they were executive organs.
Q. I understood you to say that Hitler's personal approval was required. What was it that required his personal approval?
DR. HOFFMANN (Counsel for defendant Scheide): Witness, you just stated that a few generals had received a special permission by Hitler to continue using their vehicles without restriction. That is what you meant?
WITNESS: Yes, it was a special permission.
BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q. Witness, in order to be more precise about it, all other persons with the exception of these twenty to fifty people you mentioned, had to turn in their vehicles if they had been requested to do so by the man in charge of the motor pool in the army without interference and without argument?
A. Yes.
Q. And what did that mean for the motor pool which you were in charge of in the WVHA at the end of the war? How were the trips distributed there?
A. The same thing applied there as it applied to any other army motor pool. As I stated before, we were attached to the army motor pool Lichterfelde Berlin, South, of which a captain was in charge.
Q. Your own trips, therefore, you had to report to that captain, is that correct?
A. In this particular case it worked out a little bit differently. Toward the middle of 1944, General Koll, who knew me from my activities on the front line, asked me to help him while carrying out his task. That was the reason why I was traveling on direct orders issued by General Koll. It developed that way all technical officers of the homeland, were concentrated in one spot in order to eliminate this catastrophe, and to prevent it. I can tell you that we never succeeded in doing so.
Q. Witness, I shall now come back to the subject of vehicles and I am talking about the requisition of new vehicles and spare parts. When you joined the WVHA you already had a motor pool there, didn't you? Now that motor pool, of course, had to receive additional vehicles. Were you in charge of requisitioning new vehicles and spare parts?
A. The procurement of new vehicles could best be explained if I may use an example. Let us assume that a commander of a concentration camp needed a vehicle. Then he applied for this vehicle through special application forms and through special channels with his Amtsgruppe chief. The Amtsgruppe chief compiled all the reports which apparently came from other agencies also, so that perhaps he had application for three vehicles. He could understand the necessity for such a vehicle best because, as an Amtsgruppe chief, he could judge the necessities of the tasks of that Amtsgruppe; after all, they did work under his orders. The requests from all the agencies of the WVHA, from all the Amtsgruppen, went to Office B-5, where they were compiled in one single report, and then they were sent to Office 10 of the Operational Main Office. The assignment of the vehicles was not carried out in such a manner that Office B-5 received twenty or thirty vehicles and distributed these vehicles personally. The assignment was carried out on paper; that is, they received a special paper stating that so-and-so many vehicles would be assigned to us, and all those papers went directly from the Operational Main Office to the Amtsgruppe.
That was a paper which was addressed to the motor pool in Berlin or Hamburg which gave us permission to the bearer to pick up the vehicles there; that was because the Operational Main Offices compiled all these requests from all SS agencies, generally speaking, and passed them on to the army.
The Army then gave its approval and the vehicles were picked up at the Army motor pool. During my entire activity in the WVHA I assigned to Amtsgruppe D one single request consisting of 60 trucks. Of course, more and more trucks and vehicles were requested constantly, for instance, to replace vehicles which had been destroyed by air raids due to the vehicle being pretty old. The requests turned in by the Main Operational Office could not possibly be complied with, because there were hardly any vehicles left for the homeland. Therefore, we automatically had to wait for a long period of time until vehicles were returned from the front line which could not be used there and then the Operational Main Office would have the opportunity of assigning vehicles to the WVHA. Therefore, during those two and a half years I was there approximately 100 vehicles altogether were assigned. Amtsgruppe D received 60 of them. That is all that the Operational Main Office dispatched to them, because they had nothing else. I can recall one more instance. By virtue of my connections, with the combat units which lasted up to the very end, and through the fact that I continued to be in charge of the depot of the First Panzer Division, I received a small number of vehicles which could no longer be used in the front line and I gave permission to Hauptsturmfuehrer Schulz, who came to see me in the WVHA to take whatever he wanted and whatever he needed from that particular motor pool. I told him that if one vehicle wouldn't do, come and take two, put them together, and make one good one. As far as I can recall today, he selected from five to 10 vehicles out of the whole lot so that if we figure approximately 10, Amtsgruppe D received approximately 70 vehicles.
Q. Witness, I would like to come back now to a question, which according to my opinion, was not answered as yet. You had mentioned before that Tschentscher at one time, had approached you with respect to his assignment at Dora and you pointed out to him that at that time already that your vehicles were under the Army motor pool at the same time.
Couldn't you comment on my question?
A. All I wanted to say was that through the establishment of the Army motor pool, it operated in such a manner that all the vehicles were on the way and on the road at all times. The moment they came back from a trip they reported to the Obersturmfuehrer who was in charge of the motor pool of the WVHA as long as there was one and he was permitted to assign those vehicles to new duties as soon as they came back from their trip, in order to eliminate all those troubles. It really wouldn't have worked out in such a way that we compiled all these trucks together and took care of all these requests at one time, but, rather, the moment the vehicles came back from their trips they were used for a new trip. That was the reason why it was not a collective order, but rather a request which had been divided up where the use of these vehicles was not clearly specified, because thousands and thousands of trips occurred in a year, due to the approval which had to be given by the Captain of Lichterfelde-South at the Army Motor Pool.
THE PRESIDENT: But you've lost Tschentscher again.
Q. Yes, Witness, I asked you if you could remember Tschentscher and you told us you were going to explain to us, because this was not a collective order that you were going to tell us about those single orders. Weren't you going to tell us about it?
A. I already stated at the beginning that I simply couldn't recall all those things. I would like to state in connection with this the following: At the same time I received the order and instructions from General Koll, as far as it was possible to keep our vehicles rolling day and night with the help of that captain who was in charge of the Army Motor Pool and to transport arms to the front line and evacuate women and children from the front lines and the surrounding areas. I don't quite remember where I was at that particular moment, unfortunately. I just don't remember those details.
Q. Witness -
THE PRESIDENT: Did we finally learn what happened to Tschentscher's request?
DR. HOFFMANN: No, not quite, All I know is that the witness just can't remember those things and I believe he stated a series of reasons why he just couldn't remember about it.
THE WITNESS: Your Honor, I really don't remember anything about it.
THE PRESIDENT: That was the original answer.
Q. Now, Witness now that we have discussed the procurement of new vehicles, I would like to touch upon a different field, namely, the procurement and distribution of fuel. What kind of fuel went through your office according to the requisition. Would you explain it in brief terms?
A. I already told you something about the procurement of fuel when I was speaking about the policy in the first part of this trial today. However, I stated before, based on the reports coming in concerning the vehicles, the Operational Main Office compiled the necessities of the various agencies for use of gasoline and then passed it on to B-V in coupons. These coupons were placed in envelopes and sent to the particular persons by mail. The Army approved requests for all homeland vehicles at the end including all agencies and gave them one and a half coupons, so to say, One and a half coupons stood for the distance that the car could travel with them. That was 150 Kilometers. That person simply couldn't exceed the distance of 150 kilometers. It can be understood now why no one was able to exert influence on the agency chief at Berlin by telling him that their trip was very important. The only man who can know about it is the man who is in charge of that agency and who is using up the gasoline for their vehicles. At the request for fuel, for instance, when there were special orders or requests in some agency, they could not be complied with, at least during the war.
However, the Operational Main Office basically speaking would issue certain additional amounts of fuel if the fuel factories were working properly and if the number of coupons was higher than usual. During the last year of the war, 1944 or 1945, the entire WVHA, including all agencies and including Amtsgruppe D, received eight to ten thousand liters a month.
Q. Witness, were there any major transports of thousands of people possible with such small amounts of gasoline or fuel?
A. It is absolutely impossible. I figured out once here what an inmate transport of 10,000 inmates traveling over a distance of 500 kilometers would require in vehicles and fuel. In order to transport 10,000 people, if I place 30 people in one truck without their baggage, I need 350 trucks in a round figure, and 55,000 litres of fuel. The Army simply didn't have such amounts of gasoline at its disposal, nor did it have the vehicles, so that it was absolutely impossible to carry out inmate transports with trucks and vehicles.
Q. Were any such requests turned in to you?
A. I never received any order nor did I receive any assignment to take over such transports and if anyone had issued any such order, then, if it had been in my power, I would have carried it out in such a manner that today I would be able to say to this Tribunal I did that and I was unable to do any more. On the basis of the situation of the vehicles at the time, it was absolutely indisputable and it was not possible to carry it out, due to the lack of large numbers of vehicles.
Q. Witness, I shall now come to a subsidiary question, which might play a small part in your case here. I would like to speak about the gas trucks, gas vans -- they were called -- they were not mentioned here as yet, but they were mentioned in the trial before the International Military Tribunal and they played a certain part --- they were the trucks or vans which were used for gassing human beings. Did you ever have anything to do with such vans within the WVHA or did you know anything about them?
A. I didn't know then and I don't know now that the WVHA had gas vans nor did I know anything about the existence of gas vans. I heard about that fact for the first time during the IMT trials.
DR. HOFFMANN: Your Honors, in order to prove that and to show you who was in charge of these gas vans, I would like to introduce now Scheide Document No. 19; it will become Exhibit No. 13. It is on page 30 of Document Book No. 1.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Doctor Hoffmann, I wish to suggest that when you say "Document Book No. I"---
DR. HOFFMANN: Yes.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: That you say "Scheide's Document Book No. I".
DR. HOFFMANN: Yes.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Because throughout the trial we have many Document books.
THE PRESIDENT: I believe he said "Scheide's Document Book".
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Oh, I am very sorry, then, I did not catch that.
BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q. It is Scheide Document No. 19 from Scheide's Document Book No. 1, and Document No. 20, on page 30. They are on the pages 30 to 32 of Document Book No. 1, Scheide. It is stated here on page 32 of the English Document Book in the last paragraph under "A": "The gas vans did not belong to the motor pool of the Einstz Group but came from a special Kommando. This Kommando was led by the man who made these vans. The vans were given to the individual groups by the RS HA," or the Reich Security Main Office. Witness, I would like to leave this question about vehicles now, and talk to you about an entirely different field of which you were in charge also. Let us talk about the railroad transportation which you procured while working for the WVHA. Please explain to this Tribunal in brief terms your activity in that particular field?
A. Prior to my time requisitions for railroad transportation were submitted to the Operational Main Office directly. The same applies here what I said about the vehicle transportation system, namely, the Operational Main Office had to contact many smaller agencies, and it wanted to have this situation changed. That was the reason why I had an Oberscharfuehrer of the transportation system of the WVHA transferred to me. This Oberscharfuehrer was in charge of railway transportation until the end of the war, under my supervision, of course.
The way it worked, was that the rail transportation was requested by Amtsgruppe-B, that is to say for army depots and clothing depots, main depots, etc., etc., etc., and the same applied to Amtsgruppe-C, which had to procure construction material of those things which the agency then applied for, and they applied for them in our agency. As far as Amtsgruppe-W is concerned, because they were economic enterprises, and as far as I was concerned, they were private and civilian enterprises, we did not put any transportation at their disposal, because I did not have the right to request transports with the Operational Main Office. The same applied to Amtsgruppe-D, Amtsgruppe-D did not request any transportation from my office. I believe I will be able to introduce an affidavit later on, and I am quite convinced that this question of transportation, particularly of the inmate transportation system, is clearly explained in this affidavit. I really can not state anything at all about it, because we did not receive any request for the transportation of inmates.
Q. Could you freely dispose over railway transportation particularly where transportation was concerned which had been applied for through your office by these various agencies? Could you, for instance, place ten railroad wagons at the disposal of the Amtsgruppe C for transportation and then ten for another Amtsgruppe and then just communicate between the two and divide your railroad Wagons?
A. The same applied here what applied to motor transportation. We had considerable difficulty in the procurement of railroad wagons. There were certain priorities in the rail transport system. The first priority was given to front line replacements the transportation of armies, the ammunition supplies, clothing, etc., etc. Then came the homeland, then the WVHA, and in the home land, they already had certain priority for supply transportation.
Such requests were placed in the following manner: Let's assume that the clothing depot was located at Stremberg. The whole railroad train did the transporting of clothing to the front line. B-5 called up this Oberscharfuehrer by telephone, and told him, we need for transportation to Dnjeprpetrowsk one whole train for clothes wagons. The way it was carried out was that he forwarded the telephone call to the Operational Main Office, and then in addition to the Operational Main Office there was a central office for the SS transportation problem in Germany proper. That central office contacted the office, and affirmed it, and then assigned the priority number to that particular person requesting it. That priority number was again passed on to the various agencies, and this was a special pass as far as the rail transportation office was concerned. The reloading and unloading, Office B-5 never saw. This entire task was taken care of by an Oberscharfuehrer.
Q. Witness, I would like to show you a document now concerning this matter and this is Document Scheide No. 17 in Document Book Scheide No. I. Would you please comment on this?
A. During my first examination here I stated without remembering all the details, namely, that the central office for the executive matters and supervision of the SS and Police was the Operational Main Office. The transportation officer had his office in Gerlin in the Operational Main Office Building, and for this purpose he had those officers as contained under "A" in paragraph 1, SS Transportation Officer "East", South-east, south, west, northwest, Paris, Russia, north of Riga, central Russia in Minsk, and south Russia in the upper Dnjeprropetrowsk. All the transportation problems which were compiled somewhere abroad were reported to the transportation officer of the Operational Main Office, and from there they called directly to the Operational Main Office.
What I mean to say by that is that all transports including those of the WVHA which came from abroad did not have to be cleared through the long telephone communication system, and that the request from France to Berlin, but they were requested from the nearest transportation office of the of the SS in Paris itself. Transports arrived from agencies of the WVHA of which we did not only have any knowledge but of which we did not have to have any knowledge, because we had no connections whatsoever with their technical aspects. Therefore, the whole idea here was to supervise those transports in Germany as far as they were still possible in spite of the damage which was done to them and to submit requests from the WVHA to the Operational Main Office.
Q. With respect to all of those requests, did you ever receive a request for transportation from Munich?
A. The WVHA, apart from Amtsgruppe-D, did not carry out any transportation of human beings. Those rail transportation orders by the Waffen-SS explained quite clearly what was to be transported, and what not. In dealing with this subject, in one document introduced here before, it is pointed out explicitly that Amtsgruppe-D is not an exception in the question when accidents occurred. In reference to the full extent of this transportation order which we have here, I am convinced that all inmate transports are carried out on the largest scale, and if an order for a complete seizure of all those things had originated towards the middle of 1943, Amtsgruppe-D, would not forget them.
THE PRESIDENT: This is a good time for recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess until 1345 hours.
(Whereupon the Tribunal recessed until 1345 hours, 10 July 1947).
AFTERNOON SESSION
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session RUDOLF SCHEIDE - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION - Continued BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q Witness, before lunch we had discussed railroad transports, and I would like to put a final question to you. When you worked on that problem, did you ever hear anything about transports of inmates to Auschwitz or other extermination camps?
A No.
DR. HOFFMANN: I would like to submit to the Court, in connection with the answer the defendant has just given, Documents 20 and 21 from Document Book 1, which will be Exhibit 16. I'm sorry-Document 21 from Document Book 1, which will be Exhibit 16. I have already offered Document 20. This is an extract from the minutes of the session of the International Military Tribunal, and it deals with the transport of 50,000 Jews from Greece.
THE PRESIDENT: Which document is Exhibit 15, please?
DR. HOFFMANN: I'm sorry; it should be 15.
THE PRESIDENT: Document No. 17 was Exhibit 14?
DR. HOFFMANN: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: And this is the next one, is it not?
DR. HOFFMANN: It is the second next one. It is Scheide Document 21.
THE PRESIDENT: Number 15, all right.
DR. HOFFMANN: The question of transports is dealt with here, and this record shows clearly that the WVHA did not arrange these transports, consequently the defendant Scheide can not have been connected with them. Although we are concerned with only one transport in this case, it can be assumed that other transports were handled similarly.
BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q Witness, I am now reaching a third field of tasks which you were concerned with. In your affidavit you stated that you were an expert in arms and ammunition. The expression "arms and ammunition" -- is that an official designation, or what was your field of tasks?
A The expression "arms and ammunition" became familiar in the course of the war. It became clear from the front that arms and ammunition were the most important things for a soldier, and that is how I became used to this expression. The actual expression should not be "arms and ammunition", but "arms and equipment". From that point of view, my affidavit is wrong because it does not give the correct title, "arms and equipment".
Q.- For what agencies did you have to carry out the supplies for the whole of the WVHA? What directives did you have?
A.- Only the army orders.
Q.- Did that include supplies for Office Group D?
A.- Including Office Group D, yes.
Q.- Witness, in this connection I would like to discuss your work and reconstruct it on the basis of the document books. For that purpose I submit from Document Book Scheide I, Document 13, page 17 of the English document book. This will become Exhibit No. 16. In that document a complete list is contained. What was done by the Defendant Scheide in this connection. Will you please describe to the Court in detail what you had to do and what you didn't do in this respect?
A.- To go back to the beginning, the field of tasks, weapons and equipment, was handled on the basis of army orders, and they were published in the Official Gazette of the Waffen-SS, in Document No. 13. All requests had to be directed to the group, Weapons and Equipment, in the Main Operational Office. Equipment or initial provision with weapons, for instance, when new guard units were established, Office B-V did not have anything to do with it. It was done by direct arrangement between the Main Operational Office and the agency for supplying the troops, for instance, Luftwaffe, Army, etc. The account of weapons kept in B-V, as far as I can remember today, contained, for instance, 15,000 rifles, and that means from the whole of the WVHA, including all its agencies. All I can imagine, therefore, as it is here for the first time that I have heard of 40,000 guard units, that these units which were transferred from the Army had brought their own weapons along. That can only have been arranged by the Chief of the Main Operational Office, or his deputy or Office Group W, Arms and Equipment.
Q.- Now II, "Current supply with weapons, equipment and ammunition."
A.- That is contained in Paragraph 2 in this document. All requests for ammunition had to be submitted to SS-Operational Main Office. The supply would be effected depending on what stocks were available.
Requests had to be made out in accordance with the sample as par annex 2 and they had to be submitted in three copies. Special attention had to be given to the explanation given in the example.
On the next page, Paragraph 3, "Current supplies of ammunition": The replacement units must compute their requirements of practice ammunition according to the Practice Ammunition Decree" of the Chief of Army equipment, to call the thing by its proper name, because the abbreviation will not be intelligible, and the Commander in Chief of the Reserve Army, of 6 December 1940. The ammunition must be obtained directly from the competent Army ammunition depots. The Army ammunition depots are mentioned in the General Army Bulletin 42, No. 760."
"The replacement units report to the SS-Operational Main Office, Section Ib on the 5 January, 5 April, 5 July and 5 October of each year the quantity of practice ammunition used during the passed 3 months in accordance with the above-mentioned Practice Ammunition Decree. The reports have to be made in accordance with the sample submitted with decree Ib, dated 20 December 1940.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Hoffmann, this defendant is not charged with supplying ammunition to the Wehrmacht or to the SS. How is this important, this document?
DR. HOFFMANN: Mr. President, what I wanted was to describe the activity as fully as possible, and ammunition was part of his duties, and on the basis of these decrees he did his work.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, there is nothing wrong with his supplying ammunition to the Wehrmacht and the SS. That isn't charged as a crime. That was his duty.
DR. HOFFMANN: If the Tribunal takes this attitude and includes there in the equipment of the guard units in the concentration camps, I shall only be too happy to leave this point.
THE PRESIDENT: There was nothing wrong in supplying ammunition to the guards in the concentration camps. They were SS soldiers and they needed guns and ammunition. Nothing wrong about that.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: I just might add, Dr. Hoffmann, that unless it can be shown that he, the defendant, was aware that the ammunition was being used improperly, inhumanely, and there are some documents to the effect that guards shot down inmates, the mere supplying of ammunition in itself is certainly a legal activity, especially in time of war.
Q. (By Dr. Hoffmann)- To leave this point now, I shall now talk about a side issue contained in the affidavit of the Defendant Scheide, and which might be of interest to this Court. In your affidavits you stated that you were going to build up SS-shipping. Will you please tell the Court briefly what the position was there?
A.- By the middle of 1943 an order of the Reichsfuehrer came out which reached Pohl and was addressed to the Chief of the WVHA to look into the economic implications of SS-shipping on the Black Sea. This was to be built up and established, SS freight ships of 100,000 tons. This proposition originated from General Gerloff who was the Chief of the SS and Police Academy. The idea was that transport ships should bring supplies to the eastern front. They should take the route through the Danube and the Black Sea to the Crimea, etc. Pohl then gave me the order to go to Vienna and use the harbor installations in Vienna on the Danube, and to discuss it with the engineer of the Police and SS Academy. The WVHA was to look after the economic implications of this idea, to establish the whole thing. I went to Vienna together with General Gerloff and looked into matters there. I looked at the shipbuilding yards which we were to be established I returned and told Pohl, suggested to him not to go through with this because we didn't have the ships as yet. When the first ship would reach Vienna then the time would be ripe to construct the shipbuilding yards. As our first ship had not reached Vienna yet we did not do anything about it. That is what I had to do with SS-shipping.
Q.- In your affidavit, Witness, you mentioned the name "Kammler" and it can be seen from your affidavit that Kammler once requested you to work for him. Please tell the Court about that.
A.- As I was working in Office Group C in transportation matters, I knew, of course, Gruppenfuehrer Kammler. Kammler, in the winter of '42 to '43 received the order from the Reichsfuehrer, as I knew, and I also knew later on, to establish the V-weapons. He expected me to give him about 1,000 tons of trucks for that purpose through our Main Operational Office. I established contact with Juettner as Chief of the Main Operational Office. He knew about Kammler's order and declined point blank because the Waffen-SS would never be in a position to equip the chief of army equipment with lorries. Kammler did this, not in his capacity as Chief of Office Group C but on orders of Speer, or at least agencies which were outside the WVHA and the Waffen-SS. Therefore, we did not equip them with the trucks because we did not have them for those purposes, nor were we competent to do so. The trucks came then from the Chief of the OKW, the Chief of Transportation in the OKW, from the Luftwaffe, the Army, the Navy, Todt Organization, etc, to Kammler, including all technical personnel.
Q.- Therefore, within the framework of Action Reinhardt you did not arrange for any transportation or transfers of inmates?
A.- No, and I didn't hear anything about it either.
Q.- Towards the end of the war did your duties change?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
AAt the end of the War, roughly from the middle of 1944 onwards, I worked very closely together with the Chief of the Army Transportation Services, General Koll. What we had to do there, as I mentioned before, was to concentrate the balance of the trucks which had been left over and to use them as economically as possible. He needed expert transportation officers for that purpose who had experience both at the front and at home. All relevant Army orders had to be known to these officers which is the reason why it was intended to release me from the WVHA altogether and transfer me to General Koll who was the Chief of the Army Transportation Services.
Q Did you remain in Berlin until the end of the War because of that task?
A General Koll gave the following order: The situation was that at the end of the War, when the front approached Berlin more and more closely, the machines had reached Berlin to a distance of 28 kilometers. There was a front between the Oder and Berlin. The front had gone to the North and it was that anything available in the way of trucks or motor cars was used by people to transfer private families and they had hoarded fuel to take evasive action toward the South. This reached such dimensions that it became impossible to take action at all and General Koll attempted to do what he could. When we took evasive action to the South from Berlin, and even before, General Koll gave me the order to go with 35 officers and take such trucks which were not on important duties and confiscate them. That task had nothing to do with WVHA. It was a typical Air Force business, arranged at the order of General Koll.
Q Now, where did this task take you at the end of the War?
AAt the end of the War I collaborated with the representative of General Koll which was Brigadefuehrer Zimmermann. I should mention that the task was subdivided between the South and the North. Brigadefuehrer Zimmermann, as Chief of the Transportation Services acted in Bavaria. The idea was to have these trucks confiscated in order to Court No. II, Case No. 4.supply the Alpine Redoubt.