THE PRESIDENT: When it is convenient to you.
DR. MERKEL: I should prefer to do it after the witness has been heard.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. MERKEL: First of all, I would like to submit a list of the thirteen witnesses, who have been heard before the Commission. Furthermore, I should like to submit a German copy of the thirteen transcripts. I should like to submit this material as evidence and the arguments, which I will present myself, in connection with the examination of the witness. of the affidavits, given in the Commission, numbered one to eighty five, which I should like to offer in evidence. I shall submit as soon as I have them. I would like to submit in one summarizing affidavit, but that summary has not yet been completed. For this reason, I should like to ask that I be permitted to submit this after the witness has been heard. witness, Dr. Best.
THE PRESIDENT: Bring on the witness.
DR. KARL RUDOLF WERNER BEST, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows : BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Will you state your full name ?
A. Dr. Karl Rudolf Werner Best.
Q. Will you repeat this oath after me ? I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath.)
BY DR. MERKEL:
Q Mr. Witness, please tell us briefly your professional autobiography.
A I am a jurist and a professional civil servant. Beginning with 1929 I was a judge, and since 1933 I have been an administrative official, and since 1942 I have been a diplomat.
Q When and how did you join the Gestapo? administration and law, I was active in the Gestapo in Berlin. Beginning with 1936 in the Reich Ministry for the Interior and in the Special Department of the Security Police, up until 1940. Beginning with 1940 and until 1942 I was the administrative official, and since 1942 I have been Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark.
Q Was the Gestapo a union of people?
Q What was the Gestapo? of people joined together voluntarily in order to realize certain aims.
AAn organization has members. The official of the Secret State Police were officials hired by the state, and they occupied a public position. An organization sets its own aims, but the offices of the Secret State Police received their tasks from the state and from the state leadership, which put to them. Socialist organization? state ofices.
Q Witness, please speak a little more slowly. Otherwise, the interpreters can not keep up.
German territory?
A No. In the various states political police systems arose which the state government concerned set up.
Q Were these offices completely new? Were they a novel idea? existed through re-organization.
Q In what way did this take place? state governments? a state police system was created. The authority of the police had been shaken by the incidents that took place before 1933, and a new form of politic police was to be strengthened, and especially as it applied to members of the National Socialist movement. I assume that this reason existed and played a part in other German states as well.
Q Did these new agencies receive new tasks?
A No. No, they received the same tasks which the political police had had in the past,
Q What tasks were they? Can you enumerate them? there was a political motive, and on the other hand, the police prevention of such acts and deeds.
Q What do you mean by "preventive measures" by the police? perpetrators or to groups of perpetrators with the view that these groups or individuals concerned would not undertake criminal actions. Go man state. -- Polizeikommandeur? about an agreement with the governments of the various German states on his position as Polizeikommandeur of each individual state in Germany.
Q Did Himmler come from the police or from the police system as such?
political training of thoughts and methods of work was concerned, he never quite worked his way into that. responsible for Hitler's coming to power? accompli. states unified into a uniform German Secret State Police? the Reich Ministry of the Interior. That was in the year 1936. By several directives and decrees issued by the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the political police systems of the various German states were unified in a uniform Secret State Police. police, or was this ever done? by the state as a political police system? by Party members in the year 1933? remained, and only a few officials were taken on new at that time.
Q Were the leading officials members of the Party? Were they Party people?
A That varied in the various states. In part there were officials who had belonged to entirely different parties.
Q Can you give us an example along this line?
A There are several well known examples. It is well known that Mr. Diehls, the leader of the Prussian Socket State Police, had had different political beliefs in the past.
together with him were taken to Berlin -- such as Mueller, the later head of Amt IV; Huber, Fresch, Beck -- all of those men in the past had been follower of the Bavarian Peoples' Party, and the leader of my small Hessen police office was a former Democrat and Freemason. He was a man whom I considered suitable and proper for this post. National Socialist rule? the state, even though the government was changed. -- to serve the state as long as he is in a position to do so. later on? in the years that followed? offices of the Political Police, and they were transferred to these offices. In the meantime new candidates came in and were trained to be officials according to these rules that applied.
Q Were people taken over from the Party, from the SS, and the SA? agencies paid very little in wages and therefore it was not desirable.
Q Did the officials volunteer to enter the political Police? to office.
Q Did the officials have to comply with these transfers?
Q What would have been the consequence if they had refused? dismissed from office, and they would have lost their seniority rights and their rights to a pension.
Q Do you know of any such refusal?
administrative set-up of the state? police agencies, with the political experts of the government; inspectors of the security police were personally responsible to the presidents of the states and had to comply with their directives. political activity in the political police system? exercised it.
Q In what way? gendarmerie, and the administrative systems, either on the basis of announcements that came in to them were activated that way, or they carried out the orders of the competent state police.
Q What part in the entire political police system did the Kreis and Orts police agencies have?
systems did the major part, of the state police cases and dealt with them. The state police offices sent out their men in special cases such as cases of treason and high treason. that went out from the secret police?
A Yes, they received these decrees and directives if it wasn't prohibited in special cases on specialrequest. prosecute certain crimes? from private persons or other agencies outside of the police, reports which were addressed to them.
Q And in what lines did this apply? political police. The police, therefore, were not in a position to investigate these cases and to check whether they actually existed, and a message service was organized where groups were suspected of activities such as the illegal Communist party or in cases of espionage. In cases like that, through agents of through similar means they tried to find these groups and to clarify the matters. other measures against people come about for political statements which they had made? the Gestapo was a not of spies and information agencies which kept track of the entire people. With a few officials who were always busy, anything like that could not be carried on. Such single reports dealing with unsuitable political statements come to the police. Reports like that were not locked for, were not sought after, for with 90% of the cases you couldn't do anything to start with, anyway.
Q Please speak a little slower. Was there a special class of Gestapo officials which differentiated itself completely from the other classes of Gestapo officials?
A No. The officials of the secret police belonged to the same categories as the corresponding officials of other police systems.
Q What categories of officials were there in the Gestapo? administrative officials and executive officials.
Q How did these branches differ? status, and through their training.
Q To what extent did the legal status differ? service laws. But for executive officials there was a special branch in the police law books.
Q How did they differ in training? as higher or lower or medium administrative officials, according to the procedure set up in the internal administrative agencies -- that is, the police praesidium, and so forth. The executive officials, however, were trained in the so-called "Fuehrerschule", of the security police and in the agencies of the secret state police and the criminal police.
Q Which tasks did the administrative officials in the Gestapo have? all other police agencies. That is, dealing with personnel records, with internal matters, and economic tasks, and on the other hand, the dealing with substantive laws such as passport laws or the laws dealing with foreigners. officials?
A No. If there wasn't an administrative official to keep track of and look after them, and if he wasn't designated to do that, as far as carrying out of sentences, they had no connection with that. tasks?
A No. That was almost impossible, for each official was obligated to keep the matters that he concerned himself with secret, which was a customs maxim of the police, that one did not discuss the individual cases that were before one.
Q Did the administrative officials join the Gestapo voluntarily?
A No. Administrative officials were transferred from the other internal administrative or from other police agencies. activities?
A No. Each carried out his tasks to which he had been assigned.
Q That departments were there? border police, later the defensive part of the military Abwe hr, and the border members were incorporated into the Gestapo so that they became part of it later on. Gestapo after 1933 for the first time?
A No. Even before 1933 they existed. They were carried out by the same officials who were later on taken over into the Gestapo, and the officials who had beenactive in the so-called Central police agencies.
Q You mentioned the Abwehr police as a part of the Gestapo. That were the tasks of the Abwehr police? without exception, were given over to the courts for sentencing
Q And you mentioned the border police, also. That were its tasks? They checked the so-called small border traffic. They gave legal assistance to neighboring foreign police, supervised the deporting of people, the combatting of narcoti cs, international narcotic traffic, and prosecuted criminals at the border. which was a part of the Gestapo?
A As I have already said, the defensive part of the military counter-
intelligence which was assigned to the Gestapo during the war had the task of checking and clarifying the intelligence systems which were applied agains Germany and making them harmless through their work.
Q A further part of the Gestapo was the so-called "Zollgrenzschutz" (Border and Custom Protection). What were its tasks? and incorporated into the Gestapo, had the task of watching the so-called "green border", that is, beyond the border, and those border towns and passes where no border police was stationed. In cases like that it carried out the tasks of the border police.
Q. Beyond the executive and the administrative officials, were there other categories of Gestapo members ?
A. Yes; there were technical officials, and beyond that there was a large number of people who worked for wages who worked in the office.
Q. What percentage of the entire personnel was made up of these who received their wages and other people who were hired ?
A. Depending on the particular year, this percentage varied from 35 to 40 percent.
Q. Did the employees and hirelings know what tasks were carried out by the executive members ?
A. As far as the people, for instance typists or other people like that, were needed, they only learned of the single action affecting them without being notified about the incidents connected with it.
Q. Did the Gestapo pay especially large salaries to its employees ?
A. No; the salaries were given out according to the various civil service laws, and they were so small that it washard to replace officials.
Q. And where did you get your replacements for the Gestapo ?
A. according to the law, 90 % of the candidates for executive and administrative services had to be taken over for candidates from the Protective Police candidates who wanted to make police work their life work. Only perhaps 10 percent of the new officials, according to the law, could be taken over from other agencies.
Q. Did the candidates from the Schutzpolizei choose to work for the Gestapo of their own will or not ?
A. The members of the Schutzpolizei had to put down their name on a list, at. Potsdam, and without their being asked, they were assigned either to the Secret State Police or to the criminal police.
Q. How were the candidates for the executive positions trained ?
A. These candidates were trained in a Fuehrer school, which was a school for experts of the Security Police. The training courses, to a large extent were the same for the criminal police as well as the Gestapo, and they were trained in the various offices and agencies.
Q. Were the officials who were in office indoctrinated politically, and were they influenced politically ?
A. No. It might have a plan of Hitler's at about the year 1935 that the Rasse und Siedlungs Hauptamt, (The Main Office For Race and Settlement of the SS) take ever a general training program. As long as I was in office, that is, up until 1940 this did not take place.
Q. Weren't the officials of the Gestapo to carry through their tasks according to political views ?
A. No; it would have been most undesirable if a law official used political judgment and had made his own political decisions. The official was to act only according to the general official directives and the orders of the superiors without interfering in politics himself in anyway.
Q. And what is the coordination of the Gestapo officers and the officials to the SS ?
A. That meant -
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Merkel, Are you summarizing the evidence that has been given before the Commission ? I ask that because, you see, we do not want to have it all over again, We have a written summary ourselves. We have the evidence taken before the Commission, and all we want you to do is to bring out the really important points and to call the witness before so that we may see them and form our opinion of the credit and hear them cross-examined in so far as it is necessary. We do not want to go through all the evidence over again that has been given before the Commission
DR. MERKEL: Yes, indeedn, Mr. President; and for that very reason, from the beginning, I asked for only two witnesses. The examination of this witness was to be directed by me in such a way that an essential summary would be given by the witness at this point summarizing those things that he has already deposed.
MR. DODD: Mr President, I think we have gone in to much more detail than we went into before the Commission, into matters that have been inquire about here before the Tribunal. I think counsel may be under some kind of misunderstanding, because before the started his examination, I asked him about howlong he thought he would be.
I thought he was being whimsical when he told me betwee four and a half and five hours, since he took only two hours or so before the Commission. I fear that if he has in mind a four and half or five hour examination when he took only two or two and a half hours before the Commission, then he must be under a misunderstanding as to what is in the minds of the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: I hope, Dr. Merkel, we have made it quite clear what we want. You have only got two witnesses. We shall no doubt read the evidence before the Commission of those two witnesses. We want to see the witnesses in order to see what credit is to the attached thereto, and we want to give you the opportunity of bringing out may particularly important points. We do not want to go through the whole thing over again.
DR. MERKEL.: Yes, indeed, Mr. President. BY MR. MERKEL:
Q. What is meant by the coordination of the Gestapo officers and official; to the SS ?
A. That meant that the official, because he was an official of the Gestapo, was taken over into the SS and received SS rank commensurate with his position.
Q. Was only the Gestapo to be assimilated ?
A. No, the officials of the criminal police were to be assimilated as well.
Q. When and how did the Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Main Security Office, originate ?
chief of the Security Police, Heydrich, in exploring the war situation, tried to merge his various departments into one. Up to that time, the Reich Ministry of the Interior had opposed, and the SS had also opposed, this unifying move. Gestapo?
Q Weren't there any legal directions in this regard? of the police decree of 1936, there was a sentence that the Secret State Police system was to administer the concentration camps. Himmler, however, never carried out this directive, for he wanted the status quo to be maintained, that the director of the camps was directly subordinate to him. concentration camps the health and life of the inmates was being endangered? during that time, the attitude of the officials of the Secret State Police was not such that the life and health of the inmates was being endangered in one concentration camps. The officials had contact with the inmates' families, who were looked after by the Secret State Police, and they had to see that the people who liberated and might work for them kept contact with them, and from their activities they could gather a picture of life in a. concentration camp. or purpose was the final one?
A No; but the work of the Gestapo had no final aim which was to be achieved. Rather it was to carry out and fulfill the orders or regulations and the tasks which were put to them from day to day the general police measures which were expected of them? out actions which were not provided for in a general regulation. It was merely an instrument for the carrying out of the matters which were foreign to the police.
I might say it was misused and abused along these lines. In the first case of this type, I should like to remind the Tribunal of the arrest of perhaps 20,000 in November of 1938. This is a measure which was not necessary from the police point of view, and would never have been carried through by the Secret State Police of its own initiative if it had not received this order for political reasons from the government. arrest 20,000 Jews?
A No. From my own experience I know that Heydrich, who was then the chief of the State Police, was completely surprised by these measures filed with him, when but a few meters from the hotel where we were staying a Synagogue went up in flames. We did not know a thing about it. Thereupon, Heydrich rushed to Himmler, and received orders there, which he transmitted to the agency of the State Police.
Q And how did the so-called intensified interrogations take place?
A Concerning the Verschaerfte Vernehmungen (intensified interrogation methods), Heydrich gave out a decree in the year 1937, which I saw for the first time after it had been issued, for I was not called in on such matters, as an administrative official. Thereupon I questioned him about this, calling him to account.
Q What reason did Heydrich give for this decree? permission from higher authority to issue this decree, that this measure was necessary to prevent conspiracy activity on the part of inimical factions against the state. But on the other hand, confessions were not to be arrived through methods comparable to the "third degree", and he called attention to the fact that foreign police agencies used such measures. He emphasized, however, that he had reserved for himself the right of approval on every individual case in the German Reich. He considered any abuse quite out of the question. plan, prepare, and unleash wars of aggression?
A No. I believe I may be able to say that, for I, as head of a department in the central office, did not know anything about it. Then the more petty officials could not have known it, either.
Q Was the Gestapo prepared for war commitments?
A No. On the one hand, in a material way, it was not armed. It especially lacked arms, vehicles and signal material. There was, on the other hand, a possibility of calling in police reserves. The entire matter was in the guinea pig state of construction. Buildings were put up so that you could not in any way say that the Secret State Police or the Security Police was ready for a burden of that nature.
Q For what purpose were the Einsatz Commandos set up?
31 July A LJG 22-1 agreement with the High Command of the Wehrmacht so that in occupied foreign countries, fighting units would agree to protect them and also, so that in the occupied countries the most elementary measures could be taken.
Q And to whom were they subordinate? were subordinate to the military commanders in chief with whose units they marched after the operation was concluded. Their subordination varied according to the administrative system which was in operation in the area. That meant, if a military chief or a Reich Commissar were set up, the higher SS leader was subordinate to this superior head, and the Einsatz Commandos were subordinate to the Higher SS leaders.
Q And how were they comprised, these Einsatz Commandos? Security Service of the Criminal Police. During the war, however, personnel had to be supplemented by members of the regular order Police, others who belonged to the Waffen SS, and employees of the various areas themselves, so that finally the officials of the secret order police were only 10% of the entire membership. police commissions? but they were security police units of a special kind. of the Einsatz Commandos?
A Yes, especially in Denmark. I had occasion to watch and observe the activities of one of these Einsatz Commandos and I am also informed about conditions in Norway as well. Commandos in Denmark and Norway, for instance?
which were committed there, very very frequently objected to the 31 July A LJG 22-2 directives that they received from central agencies, measures which would have led to severe treatment of the population.
For instance, they were against the use of the Nacht Und Nobel decree; against the use of the Kugel decree; and against the use of the Commando decree. They rejected and they fought other measures and rejected them. For instance, the Security Police were against the deportation of Danish Jews. We fought it in Norway. The Commander of the Security Police and the Reichs Commissar Terbeven told me that the severe measures which the Reichs Commissar Terbeven suggested again and again were fought against, and sometimes they were taken up with the central office in Berlin who prevented these measures. This finally caused a break between Terbeven and the Police.
Q Did you yourself *---*casion suggest the deportation of Jews from Denmark?
A No. In frequent reports the course of the year 1943, I was very much against these measures and I sharply rejected this measure. On 29 August 1943, when the State of military emergency was set up in Denmark, the deportation of Jews was ordered by Hitler and there, once more, I objected. But, when the Foreign Office confirmed that the order had finally gone out, then I demanded that a state of military emergency be maintained as long as the action was going on for I expected unrest and this demand of mine that the action take place through the state of military emergency was misinterpreted to the effect that I wanted it. I actually sabotaged it by informing the Danish politicians of the date that this was to take place so that they could do the necessary, and it was brought about that 6,000 Jews could flee and only 450 were arrested. In this manner the Security Police helped me. The Command or of the Security Police could have reported me because he knew about it, and this action would have cost me my head.
participate in the deportation of workers to the Reich Area?
31 July A LJG 22-3 deported from Denmark to the Reich as far as I know. The Security Police in other areas as well did not help in any way. hostages? Was that the Police, or who was it? the shooting of hostages in France, as a regulation, came from the Fuehrer's Headquarters. The military commanders in chief who had to carry out this decree, until 1942, were against this measure, and General Otto von Stuelpnagel, because of his conflict with the Fuehrer's Headquarters, had a nervous breakdown and had to leave the service. The new Hither SS and Police Leader, Obert, when he took over the office, assured me that he also was against these measures. tell me who decreed the harsh treatment in the occupied territories? in each case, gave decrees like that.
Q And what was the characteristic point in Hitler's decrees?
A I found this to be especially characteristic in Hitler's decrees that in the most astonishing way he dealt with details which the head of a State and Aommander-in-Chief of the Armed forces would not be aware of in a normal manner, and that these decrees always, so far as they applied to occupied territories, were governed by a deterring effect and contained intimidations to accomplish something without taking into consideration that the other side had to be considered.
Q And how did he react to objections? ing of his attitude.
Q Does your book, " The German Police", have an official character?
31 J uly A LJG 22-4 also facts?
A No. In parts the tendencies which were prevalent at the time it was set up were pictured as being quite complete, for I checked the tendencies to the briefest points and at the time of the publication of the book these would have met with difficulties.
Q Doesn't the following facts lead you to believe that a certain arbitrary tendency led into the security police measures that the chief of the German police could take measures beyond the ordinary decrees described to him? occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland, it meant that the Chief of the German Police by law would have the authority to issue police decrees in these regions.... measures which might deviate from the laws existing there by the transferring of authority by single acts were not to be taken either illegally or arbitrarily.
Q What was the existing police law? with the promise of the National Socialist conception of right and with the conception of legality in Germany. After the year 1933 the power to give laws, to make laws, was transferred to the Government gradually. A State law arose to the effect that the will of the head of the State would establish law. This principle was recognized in law for these were worked according to which a large state lived for years. You cannot characterize that by anything definite in customary law, and on this basis, the police law developed in the State in the same way. A law of decrees, laws of the President, and in February, 1933, the barriers which the Weimar constitution had put up were done away with and the police had quite a bit of a scope. This was regulated through numerous Fuehrer decrees, orders, directives, 31 July A LJG 22-5 and so forth which, since they were decreed by the fuehrer's authority, by the head of the State himself, were considered existing police laws and had to be considered as such.