May I do so very briefly?
Q Yes, please.
A One must take into consideration all the inner and outer forces which were of decisive influence on his life and development. One must follow them back to their source. Otto was born as the son of a simple miner in a distressed area of the Lower Silesian industrial district. Both parents always had strong social and pacifist tendencies. They were also members of the corresponding political party in question and they brought up their son, who is quite a bright and open minded young man in these ideals.
As the father throughout the day was in the mine and did not make much money, and, as the mother had to work in order to support the family, the boy grew up in an atmosphere of freedom and all of those things which for a child are of such sensitive influence and of such importance, of such impressions for his future life within a sheltered family life and happy conditions, he was deprived of them. At an early date he became acquainted with social contrasts and merciless factors and phenomena of social life, which to him seemed unjust. There grew in him from the earliest childhood a strong feeling for justice which frequently brought him into smaller or larger conflicts between school friends of his. In each he always took the part of the underdog, as long as he thought he was in the right, irrespective of the fact that he himself would frequently be overpowered by the majority of the opposing party, in a physical sense. When the Youth Movement came into life which upheld the Fuehrer's plans for bodily obedience he perforce could only feel a growing opposition in himself. He reained outside of that movement, although he suffered disadvantages. After he left school for two years he could not find apprenticeship. Later on he worked in several agricultural enterprises and changed his job frequently.
After a certain time and at an early age, he established connections with the socialist youth movement of the Red Falcons, in which because of their liberal ideas, no being bound by any leader's principles, he felt happy with them and in 1939 he went to Hamburg where, as his date for the calling up of his class had approached, he once again had to leave, but in 1940 he finally was conscripted into the Wehrmacht.
At the beginning of February 1940 he was called up and joined an infantry unit. He joined this unit for the western campaign. For a short period of time he remained with the occupation forces in France, in order, after a short leave. To be suddenly drafted into a motorized unit of the Leibstandarte at Berlin-Lichterfelde. With that unit he took part in the Russian campaign until October 1941.
Now, although the opposition within himself to the physical obedience expected of a member of the Wehrmacht had intensified, the tests which he had to undergo in the campaign in Russian balanced this off to a point, but the decisive moment, the turning point which was of such significance for this future life, occurred in October 1941 when his vehicle owing to an engine breakdown and had to be left behind and when for some time he was separated from his unit.
On that occasion, he went near Dnjepopetrowsk in October 1941, where, within the scope of the reprisal action because of a bombing attempt allegedly carried out by Jews some days previously, he witnessed a mass execution. This execution, as he told me, took place on a playground. On that occasion he suddenly saw his former commanding officer of his battalion, Tschenscher, take a gun and shoot down about twenty Jews, including three or four -- I am not quite sure about the number -small children of school age.
This impression in him who for the last weeks had felt a growing opposition to the measures of the SS in occupied Russian territory, was the final reason to cut himself off completely from the unit. By accident he came into contact with members of a resistance movement who did their work in the Russian area.
They distributed leaflets, and so on.
He was arrested in the course of a rounding-up action against that group. He was taken to the battle headquarters of his division, where he remained at large within the headquarters for two days and was even assigned to guard duties.
A comrade of his gave him a gun, with which he shot himself through the left hand. He hoped thereby--by passing through a hospital-to get back his paybook, which had been taken away from him when he was arrested, and he also hoped to be removed from the battle area.
On 15 April 1942, he for the first time faced a court-martial. However, because of the testimony of one of his comrades who described the doubtlessly self-inflicted wound as an accident which was due to clumsy handling of the gun, he was acquitted of that charge, and was sentenced only in connection with the arrest.
I must make a correction here. No sentence was passed after the first trial be cause of a lack of evidence. A new trial was convened, when again, because of insufficient evidence, no final verdict was reached. It was only during the third trial, when new information had reached the court from his home region on his various attempts to evade being called up, that he was sentenced for attempted evasion of military duty and was sent to a punitive camp at Danzig-Matschkau.
In Danzig-Matschkau he attempted on 26 February 1943 to escape and to join a Swedish steamer, where he was hiding for some time, but after a few days, he was apprehended again by the Gestapo and was once again sent back to the camp Danzig-Matschkau, where he was treated particularly harshly.
He was beaten in the face on several occasions. For four or five days his hands and legs were tied, and he had to lie on his stomach and was not given any food. After that he was still treated very harshly, and when his fact was beaten he last part of his hearing. Finally, the police court in Danzig sentenced him for the attempted escape and also for the evasion of military duty to twelve years Penitentiary.
He was sent to Dachau, where he had to serve his sentence. On 29 April 1945 he was liberated by the advancing American Forces.
As a consequence of the treatment he suffered in Danzig-Matschkau and Dachau, his physical state was so appalling at first that for some time he could not do any manual work, and, since throughout these years which were now behind him in the concentration camp and the punitive camp, the hatred of the regime had mounted within him, it was not incomprehensible that in Wasserburg, where he was finally released from being a prisoner of war, he volunteered to assist the CIC there with information about Gestapo agents, and people who had denounced other persons, and so on.
In his endeavors to tell people about the resistance movements within the Third Reich -- of which, even today, not very much is known -and as he wanted to pass these things on to as many people as possible in Wasserburg, he talked to a number of people about a political murder which a comrade of his, a fellow member of the resistance movement, had committed in 1941 in Poland at the Vistula.
The victim was an SD man, who persecuted these two when they were escaping. He described this murder in the minutest detail, and also wrote it down in his notebook.
As the population in Wasserburg, very understandably, saw in him who had reported a number of the citizens of Wasserburg to the CIC to have been former Gestapo-Agents, it was obvious that these people felt him to be a thorn in their flesh and that this resentment had to come to the surface one day in order to eliminate him.
He was, therefore, arrested on suspicion of murder of the said SD man. He was charged with using a false name. His name was not Guenter Otto but Thorsteh. He was committed to the Wasserburg prison. As he had lost all his papers, which had been destroyed by a comrade in Dachau when a large number of deserters were to be shot -- he had no possibility of proving his alibi. There was nothing that he could do about being arrested.
Resenting his arrest, which to him seemed to be a continuation of his suffering of the past few years, he at that time admitted to committing this murder, gave all sorts of details, embellished and reconstructed it, in order thereby to have the possibility of a quick investigation and thus to show how unjustified the accusation was.
As the investigations had led to his imminent release, and when it would appear that the Wasserburg population would have back this unpopular member of the community, another possibility had to be found to remove the man from among the Wasserburg citizens. Because he had admitted that he had committed the murder, he was classified as mentally incompetent and was committed to the Egelfing-Haar institution.
Anybody who knows conditions in an institution, particularly in the lunatic asylums of today, which, because they are short of space, are always overcrowded and in which people have to be accommodated on dock chairs, and where the trained nursing personnel is in short supply, can easily imagine that such a man who roached the institution under a cloud, will find it difficult to rid himself of this prejudice. He is one of three thousand. He joins the routine of this large institution, becomes a small, insignificant cog in the machine, among many patients, and--I am speaking here from my own experience--in the first week he never sees a doctor at all and has scarcely the possibility of giving the doctors and the nurses the right picture of his character and personality. He completely submerges in the uniform surface of the institution, in which there are mostly cases of schizophronia, paralytics, mentally deficient patients, and typical asocial elements, among whom one can easily in the course of time submerge completely. He acquaints himself with their crazy ideas, identifies himself with these abnormalities. This is a danger from which even a psychiatrist who has been working in an institution is not entirely free. One knows these crazy old gentlemen who, in the course of the years, identify themselves with the queer ideas of their patients, because, if they are to be good doctors, they must intuitively share the neurotic ideas of their patients.
It is, therefore, entirely comprehensible that in such an institute it is extremely difficult to cut a clear line between oneself and the other patients and to prove that mentally one is entirely normal and does not belong to that community at all. Particularly if a young man attempts to do so, if he lodges an energetic request to be separated from this lunatic asylum, when he sees the director about that, writes letters to him, bothers the nurses and asks to be released, the natural consequence is that the treatment will only be intensified and that by all those letters people in the course of time write themselves, as it were, into a sort of ectasy, and then they cannot be released because these letters give a picture of a confused and abnormal man to a normal person. In the course of this first revolt, the nurses will not gain a good impression, of course. That goes without saying.
In addition to this, there is the fact that some of the nurses -a considerable part of the nurses, in fact--during that particular part of the political development, although they did not themselves take part in the then euthanasia program, knew all about the ideas, had slowly to acquaint themselves with these ideas, because they were told about them day after day, and, therefore, such a man, who was regarded as a deserter and is very possibly still regarded as such by a great many people, they would regard as an abnormal person. He is scarcely likely to become popular with them.
This is how it came about that when his requests were answered in the negative, when he was not released, when, on the contrary, he became quite a useful worker there and was allocated certain work, and as he felt that he had to stay there for a long time--knowing, in other words, that he could not leave this institution--he attempted by playacting the devoted, obedient patient, to obtain certain alleviations from the nurses and was given work where it was easier for him to smuggle a letter out or where an attempt to escape might be easier, and that was how, having some work outside, on August 2, 1945-- I'm sorry, on 11 August 1946, he escaped from the institution.
For a brief period of time he worked in the Giesser mine, having obtained papers from the Refugee Commission. Slowly finding himself bacl to a normal life as a free man, he was arrested once more on 18 October 1946. On that occasion, while he was being accommodated in a camp for refugees, somebody--a comrade or somebody--stole his diary, from his locker in which he had put down all the details of the murder of Thorsten and handed it over to the criminal police.
Once again he was arrested on suspicion dr murder, under the name of Thorsten, although he maintained violently that this was not his name--this name which once had been so fatal to him. He was partly apathetic and partly resentful of what had happened to him, and he once again embellished the affair in all detail, and on that occasion he transferred the locality of the deed from Poland to Augsburg, in order thus to speed up the investigations of the criminal police and show that the suspicion was completely untenable.
It became clear very soon that the suspicion was not tenable, and he was released.
He worked with a farmer for several months, and then on 15 July of this year he saw a poster that the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes had opened the trial against Pohl. It showed pictures of the defendants. He saw also the picture of his former commanding officer, Tschentscher, and Fanslau, and he at once reported through the VVM to Nurnberg, and since 18 July 1947 he has lived in the witness house as a Prosecution witness.
Looking over this history, which indeed is an adventurous one, it is impossible to suppress the impression, that here we have a man who gives his life history, which was scarcely favored by fate, and because of the education which was the decisive factor in his development, that was imprinted into a trend where future conflicts became compellant. He was driven to this, into this sad development and story typical of the youth of his age, who had very little joy, very little sunshine in the years of their development, and a young generation which at an early age must face the problems of life and existence, and who were driven into the mechanism of the National Socialist wheel; who instead of enjoying life in harmless games had at an early age to face the harsh realities of life, and the problems of security, and who were then driven into this war, which not only deprived them of their carefree youth, but also of their future.
Q Doctor, what is your conclusion with regard to Otto's state of mind?
A Guenther Otto, there is no doubt, is an intelligent and skillful young man, who, even if he cannot deny his primitive level, is entirely capable of enriching himself through the experiences of life, which he has faced with open and clear eyes. He will widen his mental horizon, at least, he is capable of it. He is a young man who very seriously endeavors to draw a final line under his adventurous past, and the necessities in which he was forced, of not taking a straight road in certain situations, in which he was to build up a new life. It is an endeavor about which he talked to me, not only when I asked him about it but quite spontaneously, or at least had long asked for or wanted to have a new start to lead an orderly life in hard work.
Q Doctor, in your opinion is Otto sane?
A Otto, he is undoubtedly mentally sane.
Q In your opinion has he ever been insane?
A I should hardly think so.
Q We have heard the tern used here of "Pseudologica-psychological fantastica". Would you say that applied to Otto?
A I don't think so. I think that that diagnosis merely expresses the wrong opinion written out at Egelefing-Haare by necessity. In the Institution of Egelfing-Haare individual treatments, of course, were quite impossible, and on the basis of the diagnosis one final diagnosis can impossibly be arrived at in a case of this sort.
Q Would you say that he is psychopathic?
A No.
Q In your opinion has he been psychopathic in the past?
A No, it is not possible. A psychopathic is a man with an abnormal disposition, which, of course, will remain in existence throughout the man's life.
Q And in your opinion what is this witness' capacity for voracity and truthfulness?
A I have no doubt in the veracity of the statements made by the witness Otto, especially as his testimony did not vary even though he described it for five times, dates and localities, which were always the same. It is quite impossible to so declare one such in this sense. I, of course, asked him the same questions several times, and it is quite impossible for anybody to react so swiftly as he did, and a man with such primitive standards and background would hardly be in a position to do that.
Q How would you classify his memory? Is it above the average?
A I should at least call it average. He has also very considerable knowledge of history, and is not without experience and judgment in social and political problems. One can discuss it with him. He is not opposed to any type of authority which one might expect from a deserter. He regards the term of authority in a sense that there he has some agency about him which will make it possible for an individual to grow and develop freely.
Q Doctor, can you answer the following question: Would an elderly psychologist who received his training long before the war started be handicapped in making a diagnosis of a victim of World War II?
A I have not followed this problem entirely, I am afraid.
Q Do you understand my question?
A (Whereupon the question was repeated by the interpreter) I think so, yes. I think an elderly psychologist who has certainly not seen the problematic conflicts of the present youth would not know about these things, as well as we would in the last few years. In my Institute in Berlin I frequently took in deserters who without doubt should not have been regarded as deserters from the way the word goes. They were highly sensitive men, and in the first instance they threw down their arms, cried for their mother, and then ran away from their unit. After a competent treatment they were able to go back to their unit, and then return back to the community as such. I could hardly think than elderly psychologist, and I want to point out within the last few years of the important education among the psychologists, especially, in the last few years of the war, has one received a definite outline which still holds along with a dictionary as being synonymous with that term. This is how we see today that the public welfare agencies commence to use questionnaires when we put down the diagnosis, psychopathological by the psychologist, when they would come back to us well. Psycho-pathology is the same thing as psychosis insanity, and insane people do not suffer, and they need no treatment, and, therefore, they have no effect to this extent.
Q I want to ask you one last question. Have you read the letter that Otto wrote to the District Attorney in Augsburg on 17 August. I think the translation, Your Honor, will be here very soon, it is being typed right now. I should like to ask you, Doctor, how this letter fits into the entire picture?
A The letter fits entirely into his development and personality. It is an entirely personal debate with the public prosecutor in Augsburg at the time and during the trial and during the interrogations about the murder, which had actually perturbed him but had not been done by him.
He said that matter is undoubtedly a piece of lustful activity, because it was committed on a NSD man who was defending his country. Otto contradicted this violently, but he was told that very strongly by the public prosecutor, and now that he has finally regained his freedom, he is in a position and attitude, although he experienced himself in an exaggerated manner, he very plausibly once again answers the questions of the public prosecutor, of what his attitude of today was to the murder which had not then happened. This reaction in this letter is entirely plausible and understandable. It is not the document of a psychopathic patient.
MR. ROBBINS: I have no further questions.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: Doctor, I would like to ask two questions, please.
Q Doctor, in your opinion as an expert, does the witness Otto suffer from hallucinations?
A I saw no indications of hallucinations in his case. We went into that problem very very thoroughly, as we do with all our patients, and we saw no such symptoms at all.
Q Doctor, in your opinion as an expert, is the mind of the witness Otto in such condition that he could imagine the stories that he has told, when there is no foundation in fact for what he has told?
A I hardly think that Otto has imagined these things which he repeatedly told me in such intimate detail, because the dates and the contents of the story always coincided to the last iota. When he gave me the description he did not seem to be giving it for theatrical effect, nor did he recite it dramatically, but he made an impression in another way, and took it along the lines of telling his story by telling it entirely clearly, very manifestly, without being excited in telling it at all. I can hardly imagine, and I can not believe in fact, he could have invented these things.
Q Doctor, you spoke of a physician in charge and collaborating with you in your examination of the witness Otto. Now who was this doctor?
A This was the doctor in charge of the whole hospital or clinic.
Q After your examination of the witness, and after his examination of the witness, did you and he agree in your diagnosis of the mental conditions of the witness Otto?
A Yes, we agreed entirely.
CROSS EXAMINATION
DR. STAKELBERG: Dr. Stakelberg for the defendant Fanslau.
Q Witness, are you an expert physician doctor? Are you a specialist?
A I am not a specialist.
Q If I have understood you correctly, the last part of your activity you worked in a psychological clinic as a student?
A I spent eighteen months in the clinic here; before then in the last year of my studies I worked in the Berlin Institution for psychologists, where these symptoms of conflicts of young men were brought in, which is where I started.
Q Yes, but you have not completed your training as a specialist as yet, have you?
A No.
Q How is it that you then think yourself a fit person to give an export opinion?
A I would like to take into consideration that I did not give this expert opinion alone, but in agreement with the doctor in charge of the hospital.
Q You said that you introduced Otto on Monday morning only to your chief?
A The chief saw Otto Monday afternoon, and also on Tuesday morning.
Q But he did not examine him?
A Yes, he examined him. Well, if you examine somebody as a psychologist you don't test his reflexes or anything like that. You test his mind. You talk to him. You have a conversation with him.
Q Why did your chief not testify here?
A He did.
Q How is that?
A The expert opinion is in the hands of the prosecution.
MR. ROBBINS: Your Honor, it is being translated. It will be here very soon.
THE PRESIDENT: What will be?
MR. ROBBINS: The certificate that the chief gave.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean his clinical findings are being prepared in a written form?
MR. ROBBINS: Yes, your Honor.
BY DR. STAKELBERG:
Q On what did your chief base his findings when he gave the certificate?
A On the files in the case taken from Egglefing, and he lastly based himself on his own examination, which he stated to question him for two hours on Monday afternoon, and the second examination which he made on Tuesday morning.
Q Is it possible in an examination of about three hours to form an impression and to give a final expert opinion on a psychopathic problem?
A Yes, I think so, definitely, unless you have a definite psyshosis which frequently does not manifest itself within a fortnight or few weeks. In those cases, or in his case, where we do not have a case of insanity, which we often have to examine for the regional insurance companies, we can easily reach a final verdict in perhaps an hour.
Q So you state, apart from a psychosis which manifest itself temporarily in a fortnight or so; but you do not exclude the possibility of psychosis in the case of Otto?
A It seems to me quite impossible to reach that conclusion. He was anything but for that one diagnosis, during which period, during the one period for which the psychosis was being expressed.
Q You said most assiduously and emphatically just now, it was quite impossible for anyone to reach an objective conclusion in Egelfink. Now how can you base yourself on a finding at Egelfink?
A Well, in the case of psychosis, it is quite simple for almost all nurses at once to find symptoms of psychosis. They have a special behavior, and within a quarter of an hour to an hour this function is quite familiar to everybody.
THE PRESIDENT: We will take a recess now.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess for fifteen minutes.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
MR. ROBBINS: May I ask the advice of the Tribunal on a point of getting some documents together and also advise the defense counsel of the procedure we intend to follow? We have quite a number of documents, huge reports, official SS reports, that show that wholesale shooting of Jews occurred in these various villages at various times in Russia. Now, it isn't going to be necessary, I take it, to translate the entire report. In many cases it will only be three lines in an entire report, and we propose just to read those lines into the record and let the defense counsel check the translations for their authenticity, if they have no objection to that.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you having the whole report translated?
MR. ROBBINS: No, that was what I was trying to avoid, Your Honor. We have had it photostated, but we don't intend to have it all translated.
THE PRESIDENT: Good. Is there any objection to the translation being limited to the pertinent and material parts of the report?
DR. VON STAKELBERG: Your Honor, perhaps we could be told just what parts are going to be submitted to the Tribunal. I don't know for certain. Today I received document Book No. XXVI, I believe, and I am not acquainted yet with its contents, and consequently I don't know whether the Prosecution intends to submit part of this document book in evidence or all that is included in it.
MR. ROBBINS: We are going to submit all of this document book. This concerns other reports on SS activities in Russia.
DR. VON STAKELBERG: Then I suggest that the Prosecution should give us exactly the same material as it turns over to the Tribunal, then we will be precisely informed.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh yes, oh yes, the only point is, it isn't necessary to translate the whole book of reports but only the portions of it, the sentences that have to do with the extermination of Jews in Russia and Poland.
DR. VON STAKELBERG: Yes, Your Honor. However, I believe that it will be necessary that there is indicated for us just what parts were translated, because in the report there may be something contained which is important for the defense, and we might be believing that actually this had been submitted to the Tribunal when it actually has not.
THE PRESIDENT: No, you will be informed of the portions that are translated and submitted to the Tribunal, and then if there are other parts of it that you want to introduce and show to the Tribunal, why you would have that privilege.
DR. VON STAKELBERG: Very well, Your Honor, I don't have any objections on my part against this procedure.
THE PRESIDENT: Do other counsel agree? They indicate that they do.
MR. ROBBINS: Your Honor, I have had translated the letter which Otto wrote to the district attorney, which the Court requested, and I will hand it up to the Tribunal now.
DR. VON STAKELBERG: Your Honor, I haven't quite looked at the translation yet. However, I must say one thing here. Especially in these questions it is particularly regrettable that we are forced here to work in two different languages, because the direct impression which the original letter gives is different than the selected and good translation, the same as the Witness Otto in his original language and in his original sentences probably made a different impression than was conveyed by the good translation which has been given by the translators.
BY DR. VON STAKELBERG:
Q Witness, we previously established that you are not a specialist and, therefore, independently you are not able to give an expert opinion, and you said that you supported yourself on the fact that your chief had confirmed it or that he himself gave an expert opinion?
A Yes.
Q How old is your chief?
AAs far as I know my chief is forty-five years old.
Q Before that you talked about the old psychiatrists in a derogatory manner.
A I want to point out that my chief served in the Wehrmacht from 1933 until the time of the surrender, and since frequently he had the opportunity, since he worked in the psychopathic department, and since he was in the east in that capacity, he would be able to look at the younger people and he was able to gain a very extensive experience.
Q My question was a different one, in your opinion your chief also belongs to the category of the psychopathic physicians who identify themselves with their patients?
A We must make a strong difference between clinical psychopathic that is those who get to know the now cases, and those physicians of an institution who are only able to see the very old bad cases.
Q You would say no?
A Yes.
Q And you yourself are still free from the very old identification?
A Yes.
Q On what do you base your statement which you have brought forth here about the curriculum vitae of Otto?
A The statements are based on the statistics contained in his case history and the description which Otto gave us of his life during the course of our conversations.
Q Do you know that Otto at the time was turned over to the institute without any papers?
A Turned over where?
Q At Eglfing.
A Yes, I know that.
Q And that consequently all statements about his curriculum vitae in his case history can only have come from himself?
A Well, in every case a curriculum vitae can only be given by the patient himself if there are not any other documents available.
Q Therefore, we can maintain that all the statements about the curriculum vitae only came from Otto himself?
A Yes, naturally.
Q Now, you know that he made various statements. Why do you agree with these statements and not with the others?
A In the entire observation he gave us two different stories of his life. The first time, after he had been taken to Eglfing, he described the curriculum vitae of Thorsten with whom he was falsely identified and who was accused of murder.
Q May I interrupt you? Here you say he was falsely accused. How do you know he was falsely accused?
A That became evident from his release, which took place soon afterwards, or the dismissal of this case which was brought against him.
Q Do you know why the suspicion was quashed at the time?
A Because there were no motives for it; there was no evidence.
Q No, but because Otto was considered to be mentally incompetent.
A He was stated to be mentally incompetent because he had described the murder so much in detail, and he gave motives for it, so it had to appear as being fantastic from the very beginning.
Q That is not correct either, Witness. You have described and looked at the thing somewhat superficially. On the contrary the statements of Otto were so clear and they were so precise and they sounded so credible that the Prosecution was quite ready to believe this description. Only very small details showed certain contradic tions.