THE PRESIDENTS: These aren't documents which have already been put in evidence, are they?
COLONEL CAREV: No, Mr. Chairman; these documents have been presented to the Tribunal but not from the viewpoint of the Gestapo but with regard to other questions; therefore, I would like to draw your attention to them simply because here there are facts which refer to the Gestapo which so far have been ignored, although the documents themselves have been submitted to the Tribunal on other occasions.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks that the appropriate time for you to deal with these documents will be when the case is argued on behalf of the prosecution if there are documents which have already been put in evidence.
COLONEL CAREV: They will; than you, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, the witness may retire. Have you had all your witnesses?
DR. MERKEL: Yes, Mr. President. If I understood your Lordship, the quotation of documents and submission of documents is to take place after all the witnesses to the organizations have been heard.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, the object of that being that all the documents can then be dealt with together, as some of the documents are not yet available; so we will go on with the next organization.
DR. MERKEL: I should like to ask but one thing. In my submission of documents, may I refer and refute the documents which are now being brought forth by the prosecution in this connection, dealing with these documents which today have been introduced for the first time?
THE PRESIDENT: When you say "refute" you mean criticize the documents and argue upon them, I suppose.
DR. MERKEL: I mean argumentation and perhaps by the new affidavits or new documents, to bring a counter evidence for these documents which have been submitted to-day for the first time.
THE PRESIDENT: The time for you to "refute", as you say, or to argue upon the documents which have been put in today by the prosecution, will be made when you make your final argument.
At the end of the record of all evidence for all the commissions, all the organizations will offer their evidence and comment upon it shortly and then they will have time within which they may argue the whole case and at that time you will be able to argue and "refute", as you put it, the documents which have been put in today.
DR. MERKEL: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Now I call upon counsel for the SD. Will you please call your witnesses now?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes, Mr. President. Before the Commission I Interrogated seven witnesses. The transcript I do not have in my hands in their complete state. With the approval of the high Tribunal I should like to call the witness Hoeppner. follows: BY THE PRESIDENT :
Q. Will you state your full name?
A. Relf-Heinz Hoeppner.
Q. Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak too pure truth and will withheld and add nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath.)
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down. BY DR. GAWLIK:
Q. First, I should like to put a few preliminary questions in order to prove that the witness has the necessary knowledge for the answering of questions on facts. When were you born?
A. On 24 February 1910.
Q. Since when have you been a member of the SD?
A. Since the beginning of 1934.
Q. What activity did you carry on before then?
A. Before that I studied and I tried to become a Jurist.
Q. What examination did you pass?
A. The first and second. I made the first and second examinations at the bar and passed them.
Q. What was your rank or position in the SD?
A. First of all I was an honorary member and expert, then I went to the higher level and leader, then Abschnittsfuehrer, and at the end I was Gruppenleiter in the RSHA.
Q. What group did you head?
A. I lead the group Roman III-A, law administration and communal life.
Q. What other sphere of activity did you deal with in the SD?
A. In the beginning, during my activity as an honorary member, I dealt with the press, press matters, later with personnel and organizational questions, and as staff fuehrer and Abschnitts fuehrer I was responsible for the entire sphere of the Security Office in my area.
Q. Now I shall turn to my first topic. I should like to prove that the SD and the SSF formations were completely different organizations. What do the abbreviations SD mean?
A. The SD means Security Service, Sicherheitsdienst.
Q. What different significations does this word have?
A. The word Sicherheitsdienst has two meanings. On one hand it means the special SS formation, SD, and on the second hand, the Security Service has an information service.
Q. Was the-foreign information service characterized as SD?
A. Yes, it was information, as SD abroad, Office VII.
Q. Was the Office VII known as SD also?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the Office VII concerning itself with?
A. It concerned itself with questions on archives and library matters, and us far as I know, it has special scientific missions.
Q. Was the SD completely different from the internal service, Office VII?
A. Yes. The special formation of the SS was subordinate to the chief of the Security Police.
Q. Who belonged to this special formation?
A. This special formation consisted of these members of the Security Police who belonged to the information branch. Secondly, these who belonged to the second formation, and who after that worked in the formation we talked of. Thirdly, to this special formation belonged these members of the SS who belonged to the Security Police and the State Police, and finally, point four, the members of those formations who were in business-like connection with the formation.
Q. The other persons as well belonged to the special formation.
People not active with the Security Police or the SD?
A. Yes, by that I meant this group 4, they dealt especially with border customs regulation.
Q. Did they have a general purpose or a common purpose?
A. No. They are a union of people. We were connected solely for the fact that later in 1939, the RHA was cut and registered under office one.
THE PRESIDENT: The light Keeps coming on. Will you try and pause between question and answer?
Q. Now I shall turn to the second topic. I would like to prove the relationship of the information office on 3, and National Service, and office 6 and 7. We are concerned with the offices 3, 6 and 7.
A. We were concerned with different organizations. Perhaps I can give you my reasons. First, the purpose of these three offices were quite different. Office 3 dealt with information and intelligence service. Office 6 with these matters abroad, and office 7 with questions on libraries and archives. Secondly, office 3, the main purpose of the organization was that it was centralized at the time. The work was decentralized. With office 6, we war concerned with a strong centralization of work. Office 7 had only one branch.
Q. Between these offices, 3, 6 and 7, was there any connection, which could be determined as a connection with a general common purpose?
A No. The aims of these offices were too varied for that. The members of these offices hardly had any connection with each other. development of the SD particularly dealing with the questions whether during this time it was a task of the SD to work with others in a general plan.
When did the SD originate When was it established?
A The SD was established in '31-'32. the same task and aims and activities?
A That you can't say at all. The task and aims varied strongly according to the political constellation; during the Security service up until '33 and beginning of '34 the task was to help this SS.
This task has been changed completely, after the parties with which the SNP had been in rivalry and it was dissolved, and then therefore there was no more rivalry, and the combatting of an opponent became the task.
Q. What time was it when it differentiated?
A. I already mentioned part of the time. '31, and perhaps '33 to '34. The second period of time was beginning in '34. I should like to quote the document of special significance, of the deputy fuehrer.
Q. Perhaps first of all you can just give us the various periods of time.
A. The first period of time was from '31 to '34, the middle of '34. The second was from the middle of '34 to the creation of the RSHA, and the third deals with the time of the establishment of the RSHA to the end of the war.
Q. What was the aim, the task and the activity of the SD from '31 to '34?
A. The task from '31 to '34 was that of protecting the Fuehrer and protecting the meetings and help that way. I think the SS received reports' about the rivalry of opposing parties. We helped that way and protected. Just what plans were being made by the then parties and what they had in mine we didn't know. We protected the meetings.
Q. Was the SD already under its leader, Heydrich, and did it develop into an espionage system? Mr. President, I should like to refer to the entire brief of the SS, page 8-b of the English text, pages 1 and 2. Please answer the question.
A. In answering this question, I have to start -with the fact when I entered the SD, in '34, and tell you things I myself saw. Things that also were told me at that time about my friend. When-the Security Service began in January '34, we were concerned with a very small arrangement, which hardly had more than 20 or 30 members, who were paid, and many still who were honorary. But you can hardly speak of an experienced training such asit would apply to an actual organization. That you cannot consider at all.
Q. The 22 to 25 paid, what area did they comprise. Were there other honorary members?
A. The number of the honorary members were not much larger.
Q. Did the members of the SD have a general agreement among themselves to cooperate against peace and against laws of war and humanity?
A. No. If you can speak on any agreement system, they hardly knew which; there were just parties fighting in rivalry. We helped them in such ways.
Q. Did the members of the SD in '31 to '34 have an aim of separating people who had a general and common plan -- an aim to agree against peace and against laws of war and humanity?
A. No.
Q. In the years '31 to '34, did the members knew anything of a plan like that?
A. I believe the members of the SD did not have any different experiences than the greater part of the German people and there was nothing known.
Q. Now I shall turn to the second span of time. 1934 until the erection of the RSHA in the year 1939 ?
A. After a legal, rival party was no longer in existence we had only illegal political followers, and as I have already mentioned it was the task of the political police system to combat this and this evolved into the State Police and the task of the Security Service had to change as well. First, it changed in this way, that other ideological and political symptoms, other ideological groups -
Q. Witness, can you be a little more brief in enumerating the tasks and aims?
A. In order to give you a few examples, for instance, Free Masons, Marxists, Jews, all these groups should be looked into in a more scientific way and the party should have material for training and similar tasks. That was the final task set by the party, beginning with June of 1943, that is to have an intelligence service for the party, something which, by the way, never did happen, and - that a large number of information services were to be active to that end. This work dealing with other ideological symptoms of political parties and research as to it did not last but after a period of time it became obvious that this research work belonged in the sphere of activity of the Secret State police for any research dealing with opponents, in the long run could not be separated from the executive, dealing with the results of daily interrogations and so forth. Therefore, this task ended with a clear division of tasks between the Security Service and the State police, a division which started in the middle of 1938 and was carried through particularly in the year 1939 and on the Whole, with the erection of the RSHA in September of 1939 this reached its final phase. police Service would have been concluded if it had not been that the Security Service, beginning with the so-called "spirit SD" in 1933 and 1934 dealing with special phases of culture and dealing with a special department and off-set from this Security Service itself a special task had not arisen for the internal intelligence service.
By that task I mean namely that the various lapses amongst the German population be looked into and reported on.
THE PRESIDENT: As I said to the other counsel, we do not want these witnesses to go over exactly the same grounds that they have gone through before the Commissions. he have got that evidence. We only want you to present them here in order that we may see what credibility is to be attached and to deal with any particularly important or new subject which has not been dealt with before the Commission. he has gone over before the Commission and at great length. It is simply doing the same thing twice over.
DR. GAWLIK: As I understood it, Mr. President, these matters which were dealt with before the Commissions at length, which were dealt with in more than two clays, that I should summarize the results thereof and in that way it might be carried through. Is that correct ? This witness has been heard for two days before the Commission and I shall present the results of what we learned before the Commission in one and a half or two hours. the various years would be of interest to the High Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, will you try to present the summary within reasonable limits?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes, indeed, Mr. President.
BY DR. GAWLIK:
Q. What do you knew about the significance of the work of the SD during these various periods of time?
A. The work of the SD during this period of time was without significance First of all we really had to look for the actual tasks and we had to set up a source of information and for the collection of necessary, basic material. Particularly important is the fact that during this time the Security Service really did not come to the surface.
Q. The Prosecution has submitted that the SS and the SD had been an elite group of the party and that the most active members of the party were involved; that they took over a blind obedience for the Nazi activities and were ready without asking any questions to carry out their tasks, no matter what the sacrifices or cost would be. VII B, I should like to ask you witness, were the paid and honorary members of the SD selected along the lines and principles I enumerated ?
A. The paid and honory members were selected on this basis; that they were skilled and as far as their characters were concerned, decent people.
Q. Perhaps you can answer this question first of all with yes or no.
A. No.
Q. Please give me your reasons now.
A. I have already said that the paid and honorary members were selected on this basis; that they were skilled people and were reliable as far as their character was concerned. Neither for the paid nor for the honorary members was it a prerequisite that they were party members or that they belonged to the SS. political party, no even the Nazi Party, wanted to carry public responsibility for? trial brief against the SS page VII, second paragraph of the document.
A. No.
Q. Did the SD from the time of its establishment until 1939 work secretly and sort of, behind the scenes?
A. No. I could give, a series of examples to prove my point. First of all the paid members were uniforms. They had the insignia of the SD on their sleeves. The officers had insignias and were listed in the telephone directory.
Q. Did the members of the SD, during the period of time from 1934 to 1939, have a common and general agreement to participate in crimes against humanity and war crimes and did they participate in such crimes?
A. No.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off ?
(A recess was taken).
1 Aug A LJG 18-1 BY DR GAWLIK:
Q. Did the members of the SD during the period from 1934 until 1939 pursue the aim of supporting any individual who had a common plan for the cimmitting of crimes against the laws of warfare or against humanity? receiving information on actual or prospective opponents of the Nazis, contributed to the doing away with the opposition?
A. No.
Q. Can you give reasons for that?
A. Yea. investigate wrong developments in all fields of life. Examples were that it was not the task to start procedures against individuals with other offices.
Q. Was it not a fact that these reports about the situation, about various fields of public life, from the occupation of the Rhineland until the beginning of the second world war that the members of the SD had to be convinced that war was expected by everybody in Germany?
Q Please, will you answer the question with Yes or No?
A I said quite on the contrary. During that period there was hardly anybody in Germany who expected a war. The reports on all walks of life--for instance, the food economy, the industrial-have shown that armament in a limited measure was about to be started but that did not show any indication for an aggressive war or for any preparation for an aggressive war.
1 Aug A LJG 18-2 Was the SD always an inseparable and important part of the SS? and to page 1798 of the English transcript, where that has been alleged by the Prosecution. task for the SS was to help protect meetings, the now task was formed and developed by the staff of the SD. of the English transcript that the General SS was the basis, the root from which the various branches grow. Will you state your opinion about that and your experience concerning the Inland Information Service? Service because only about ten percent of the main functionaries had come from the General SS, the Allgemeine SS, and that leaves 90 percent of all honorary functionaries of the network, the information network, neither members of the SS nor intended to be members of the SS, nor should they have been members of the SS. individual main offices operated together, or were working together automatically in such a way that each branch of the SD would have had a special task within the entire scope of the work? That is the English transcript.
Will you state your opinion on that? SS. The main offices which were under him were in no way commands. They represented to the outside various points of view in different questions. They competed with each other.
1 Aug A LJG 18-3 Frequently they were jealous of each other's authority, and it was not even true that each one of these main offices represented any branch which was necessary for the entity of the SS, because very often their various competencies were overlapping. For instance, in questions of Volk*tum--Folkdom--there were four or five offices co-responsible, and it was not possible, although the suggestion was made, to separate or to limit the competencies to one office. Among these main offices there was no leadership office, had only to supervise he functions of the armed SS, the Waffen SS. if any office ad assumed that leadership, all the other offices would have r*volted against it. of the tasks of the Inland Information Service? opment of the tasks. That task grow out of the work of the office, and it could equally well have developed in some other office, or there were even a large number of cases in which the task, being connected with one individual who was one among others, in which the task suffered because it was not always possible to send reports directly, without sending them to the Reichsfuehrer SS, to the various offices in question.
Q. In order to prove a uniform will and an planned connection between the SD and SS the Prosecution particularly referred to the bock by Dr. Best, "The German Police", and the speech by Himmler about the organization and aims of the SS and police. These are documents PS 1852 and PS 1992. Do you know the book by Dr. Best and do you know that speech by Himmler concerning the organization and the aims of the SS and Police?
A. Generally yes.
Q. Will you please tell us whether in that book by Dr. Best and in the speech by Himmler the relation between the SS and SD is described correctly? concept which in many speeches and publications was designated as "Staats Schutz Korps", a corps for the protection of the state, and that thought of a Staats Schutz Korps has very early been expressed by Himmler and Heydrich since 1936, but its content changed. But although that thought *came back again and again, it was never really put into practice. But individual parts of that concept, that so-called "Staats Schutz Korps" have developed independently, have spread out independently here to have a uniform concept, so that here we can say that it was the wish of Himmler to create that state protection corps, but that the thought never was put into practice.
Q. Did the Higher SS as police leaders do, also have any authority ever the SD, and were they to supervise the activity of the SD ? I refer to the trial brief against the Gestapo and SD, page 12 of the English edition, and the trial brief of the SS, page 12 of the English edition also.
A. The higher SS and police leaders neither had any command authority nor did they have to supervise the SD. They only represented the Reich Fuehrer, so without having any jurisdiction over the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, any attempts in that direction in connection with the Staats Schutz Korps -- but it was just the Inland, information Service which fought against them and combatted them.
Q. Now I come to the relation between the SD and the Party. How was the connection in the way of organization between the Inland Information Service and the political leadership of the NSDAP?
A. The Inland Information Service was an institution of the Party, but it did not belong to the organization of the political leadership. There was no connection in the way of organization with them. The real and final talk of the Inaldn Information Service was not given to it by the Party. The mission issued by the party had been finished, essentially, in '38 and'39
Q. Did the SD have the mission to help keep the Nazi leaders in power ?
A. The SD had the task of -
Q. Would you first answer the question yes or no?
A. No.
Q. Then please give me your reason.
A. The Security Service had a different task. It had the mission to watch the Consequences of measures by the leadership of the state party in economy and in other fileds and to determine what the people were saying to these measures, how they reacted whether these reactions were positive ones or negative one, and then to inform the leadership about what they had found out.
Q. The Inland Information Service was that the espionage system of the NSDAP? I refer to the trial brief against the SS page 8a and 8b of the English edition.
A. No. First, the Security Service was no espionage service at all. Secondly, it sent its reports to all leadership offices, not only to the party, but also other leading offices of the state.
Q. Now I come to the next subject of evidence, the relation between the SD and the Gestapo. Were the Gestapo and the SD a uniform police system? I refer to the trial brief against the Gestapo and SD page XII, page XIV, XII, XVII, XXL of the English edition. What were the connections between the organizations Gestapo and SD concerning their aims, tasks, activities and methods?
A. First in answer to the first question, it was not a uniform police system, since the SD and police system did not have anything to do with each other. The SD and the secret state police were two entirely different organizations. While the SD had developed from a formation of the Party, the Secret State Police was a continuation of an already existing institution of the State.
Since the Security Service, the SD saw its aim and its task in gaining a correct picture of various forms of life, activities, of ideological groups -- and to take the individual cases as an example, it was the task of the Secret State Police on the basis of laws, decrees, directives, and so on, to deal with that individual case and to take measures of a preventive nature, or police measures; whereas the Secret State Police used methods of an executive type, such as interrogations, confiscations, and so on. The Security Service never had such powers.
Q. What was the task of the SD to support the Security Police such as has been stated in decrees and other regulations on 11 November 1938, document 638 PS?
A. No, that is misunderstood. That has been misunderstood. May I say to that circular decree, circular letter of the 11th of November 1938 just a few words. We are here concerned with the fact that for the first time an agreement had been made between the Security Service and the office of the state. The main purpose of this agreement was that the Security Service was recognized by an office of the state by that decree, and that officials who worked in the SD, not as it had happened up to then, frequently on the basis of that work would have been persecuted for various reasons. The agreement at that time depended on the mentioning of some task vital for the state, because first of all the Security Service on the outside was hardly visible, hardly noticeable. That was in 1938. And then that work in various fields of life could not be mentioned in the decree because the Party did not state it, and therefore Heydirch mentioned they were supporting the Security Police, becaise that could not be checked from the outside.
Q. Did the SD have the task to watch over the members of the Gestapo?
A. No.
Q. Can we concluded from the fact of the institution of inspectors of the Security Police and SD that there was a connection between these two organizations?
A. No; The inspectors had only a certain authority of supervision over the organization; that of directives and tasks were sent down from Berlin.
Q. "hat was the relation between the Department 3 with the Kommandeure of the Security Police and the SD?
A. I don't quite understand that question.
Q. Security Police.
A. The Department 3 of the various offices of the Kommandeure was a department just the same way as the Department 4. They had administrative tasks whereas Department 4 had political tasks. They were departments of the office of the Kommandeure, not parts of institutions of office 3, just as the departments 4 were not departments of the RSHA department 4.
Q. Now I dcome to a short discussion of individual war crimes with which the SD is charged. First, the Einsatzgruppen. I refer to VI-A of the trial brief. Were the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos which were put to use in the East a part of the SD
A. No, these Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos were special institutions of their own.
the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos?
A That question, such as it has been put, has to be answered by no. It is not so that, for instance, parts of that organization were transferred to the Einsatzgruppen Special Task Force. If individual members of the SD were transferred to the Einsatzgruppen or Einsatzkommando, then one can compare that with a military induction. Just as an employee who is a civil servant and who is called into the armed forces can be given different tasks, so that also the case with the SD. As far as they had tasks of security, for instance, a directive came to the Einsatzgruppen from the Office 3 (Amt 3). from the East or reports received from Einsatzgruppen, obtain any knowledge about mass shootings or similar crimes, or crimes against humanity? offices in the Reich, so that the members of these offices could not have any knowledge of these incidents. organization in its administration of concentration camps?
Q Could you give me any reasons for that answer? jurisdiction to do with these matters.
Q Did the SD establish any concentration camps?
Q Did the SD organize any concentration camps? camps? the treatment of inmates of concentration camps?
Q Did the Inland Information Service (Inland Nachrichten Dienst) receive any directives from Himmler to refrain from any action in the case of clashes between Germans and American fliers that had been shot down?
police functions, and it could not intervene, in any case. to pass judgment on persons in shortened proceedings? This question refers to Item VI-H of the trial brief. court of that kind, because that again would have been an executive measure with which the Security Service had nothing to do. or keep then prisoners on account of crimes which allegedly had been committed by relatives? This question refers to VI-J of the trial brief.
Q Did the SD carry out any "third degree" in interrogations? This question refers to Item VI-L. certainly not any with the third degree. the Group 3-A of the RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office, of which you were in charge for some time? of legislation, jurisdiction, and administrative measures on the part of the German people, and these observations were to be put down in the form of reports and made accessible to leadership offices. It was, furthermore, the task of the Group 3-A, in particular the Department 3-A-4, to send regular reports about the reaction of the German population to leadership offices to give them a continuous picture. decrees?
A That question cannot be answered by yes or no. May I take up my group as an example? In my group, at the end, I had about 60 employees. At out 75 percent of those worked there on the basis of legal decrees. For instance, all my chiefs of departments, my four chiefs of departments, had been transferred to the Security Service by orders. I believe that for the entire Security Service, that number may be estimated at from 50 to 60 percent for those people who were working there on directives.