MR. DODD: Mr. President, I'd like to point out to the Tribunal that Dr. Laternser spent between nine and ten days before the Commission on the General Staff; and, of course, he called witnesses here in the court room as well, two, I believe, or three -- I've forgotten the number.
DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, that was not quite correct. I used several days to examine witnesses but not to present documents; and I must be in a position to present this written evidence to the Court in a certain order. Otherwise, it cannot be effective.
THE PRESIDENT: You say you are not in a position to present it in a certain order. Well, nobody wishes you to present the affidavits in the order in which they are numbered on the document; but you can group them, presumably, unless they all deal with different subjects. I rather gather that you have a very great number of affidavits; and I feel quite certain that a great many of them deal with the same topic; and, therefore, in a very short time -- probably in the course of an hour -- anybody could go through that list of affidavits and could see which affidavits relate to the same subject and could, therefore, group them. It is perfectly simple; and the Tribunal will not under any circumstances be prepared to have their time taken up for longer than half a day in the presentation of documents by your organization or by any other organization.
DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, may I say something else on this point? I ask the Court to consider that the Russian prosecution used several days to make the most serious charges against the military leadership; and I ask that I may have approximately the same opportunity to answer these charges.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd has just pointed out that you have been before the Commission for nine or ten days; and you have already spent two days here. We have the very able and laborious work which has been performed by these Commissioners all before us in writing. I have before me at this moment a document. I don't whether it is in consecutive numbers -- not quite consecutive numbers -- but any rate it goes up to the number of 3,172, affidavits which have been summarized. I say not consecutive numbers but at any rate a bundle this thick if affidavits, which have been summarized in writing by these Commissioners.
the report which has been made by the principal Commissioner on these affidavits and have, as I understand, not commented adversely upon any remark in that report. All these matters are before the Tribunal; and in my opinion the Tribunal have granted to the organizations the fullest possible and most adequate opportunity of being heard before the Tribunal; and the Tribunal think that they have heard enough on this subject; and they adhere to the decision which I have announced.
All right, Dr. Pelckmann.
DR. PELCKMANN: High Tribunal, I shall now take up the last group of individual affidavits.
MR. DODD: Mr. President, I am sorry to interrupt, but we are a little bit confused. Sir David and I both feel that there may be some misunderstanding about the position of Dr. Pelckmann. We are rather of the opinion, from listening to him, that he means that he will be ready only to submit his speech for translation on Monday, and we wondered if the Tribunal did not understand him to say that he would be ready to make his speech on Monday, and there would be a spread the of three days.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, the way I understood you, Dr. Pelckmann, was that you would be prepared to make your speech on Monday; not that it would necessarily come on Monday because, of course, Dr. Servatius' speech will come before yours, Presumably, unless you make other arrangements amongst yourselves, the speeches will be made in the order in which the Documents and the witnesses have been presented. Doubtless you can make arrangements among yourselves--which the Tribunal will only be too glad to assent to--if one is ready and the other is not, but they will expect that there will be no delay.
DR. PELCKMANN: I believe, Your Lordship, that that will be all right. As stated in the latter, we will present the manuscripts for translation and mimeographing by the end of the week. If, for example, I turn it in on Friday afternoon, I believe I can speak on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.
THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute. That is all very well, but the Translating Division are human, and I don't see any reason why they should work on Sunday. I may be wrong, but I think I remember that you have assistants who are helping you and who presumably have been helping you ever since the 15th of August, on which day this document was presented. As I pointed out already, that is six days ago. Some parts of the speech ought to be ready now and ought to be in the hands of the Translating Division. or that Dr. Babel has four assistants and four secretaries, and that you have one associate counsel and a secretary. I don't understand why the speech, or some part of it, should not have been handed to the Translating Division already, and the Aug-21-RT-M-3-2-Daniels same with the other counsel appearing on behalf of the organizations.
DR. PELCKMANN: We are still in the presentation of evidence, Mr. President. So far it has not been possible for me to prepare a complete plea before the end of the presentation of evidence. But may I make a suggestion, in order to fix it exactly, Mr. President? I can turn in the manuscript of my plea for the Translating Section on Friday afternoon, and I can propably hand in a considerable part of it before that time.
THE PRESIDENT: All I am prepared to say is this, that I will not, on behalf the Tribunal, order the Translating Division to work any more than the officer in command of that Division thinks proper; and the Tribunal expects that the speech will go on without delay. Is that clear?
DR. PELCKMANN: I was just dealing with SS Affidavit 108. It makes it clear that the SS had nothing to do with the drive for the seizure of manpower. abbreviated FS--which the prosecution considers a fifth Column-- in Slovakia and the Sudetenland, had no connection with the SS and was never armed. NSDAP and with that of the NS Year Book. The prosecution quotes from these books to prove official opinions of the Party. These affidavits, however, state that the organizational book and the NS Year Book were not official publications and that they are therefore no proof for organizational questions. protected by the regime when they committed crimes. It proves that when SS member committed punishable actions, before the establishment of the SS courts in 1939, to the extent that these actions became known the SS officers saw to it that no difficulties were put in the way of the regular course of justice.
Finally, there is a last group, affidavits 90, 30, 91. and 92.
Affidavit 30 is available only in the French translation. It is an answer to the assertion of the prosecution that the whole SS organization and its members knew, or had to know, that the SS was a criminal organization. relations between the Foreign Diplomatic Corps and the SS, so that the SS members who heard of it could not assume that this organization was criminal.
ginning, of which no digest is available.
THE PRESIDENT: What did you mean by saying that there was a group, which to down as being 90, 31 or 30, or possibly both of them, and 92? By the document which is before me, Affidavits numbers 90, 91 and 92 have been withdrawn. Is that a mistake?
DR. PELCKMANN: I had made application in the Commission to have them admitted, and the prosecution did not want to have them admitted, as far as I can recall, no decision was reached by the Commission; the decision was postponed. I heard two days ago that Colonel Neave, who was presiding in the Commission at the time, had said that they had finally not been admitted. That is new to me. If that should be the case, then I would ask for a decision of the Tribunal whether these affidavits can be admitted.
THE PRESIDENT: You just cited them as a group. Have they got any relation at number 30? Number 30, you say, relates to the relationship between the SS and the Foreign Diplomatic Corps. Do 90 and 92 relate to that?
DR. PELCKMANN: Yes, 30 was approved and is available in the French translation.
THE PRESIDENT: Then we can take it then, and we will consider the application. We can take it that 90 and 92 deal with the same subject, is that right?
DR. PELCKMANN: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: That's quite sufficient. I don't want any more.
DR. PELCKMANN: Now I shall deal with the affidavits 68, 64, and 69. I must refute the assertion of the Prosecution that the mistreatment of the men, the mass exterminations and killings in the concentration camps can be charged against the whole SS because, as the Prosecution assorts, they were known to the great mass of SS men. The very important records of the trials of the Allied military Courts against members of the concentration camp Kommandanturs and against guards, for example, the trials at Belsen, Mauthausen, Dachau, Neuengamme and Rasstadt -- I was not able to obtain these transcripts. A systematic examination of the witnesses and a part of the affidavits from the camps made it possible for me to ascertain facts to refute the assertion of the Prosecution. ranted from the defense precisely on the point concerning concentration camps. On the same day, in answer to the question of the French Prosecutor Dubost, the Court was convinced that the same terrible conditions prevailed in all camps which two witnesses had testified to. The President answered, "If you want to prove that it is necessary to call a witness from each of the hundreds of camps." I refer to the transcript. And therefore, for the purpose of defense, I have a number of affidavits from guards, members of the Kommandanturs, and inmates of camps, and also from visitors of the concentration camps. I have submitted them as evidence to the contrary. Now, I refer only to an affidavit which seems very important to me, number 68.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, why don't you tell us which the affidavits are, that's what we want you to do. You are telling us new, and referring to some statement I made in January, that you have got affidavits made from each camp. Well, what are the affidavits? It's quite easy to tell us what the groups are, isn't it?
DR. PELCKMANN: These groups, Mr. President, I mentioned yesterday.
THE PRESIDENT: If you mentioned them yesterday, why do you go back to them today?
DR. PELCKMANN: In order to stress the importance of the affidavit number 68 which I am about to explain. It is an affidavit of a commandant of a concentration camp. I can understand that their general fooling, the Court will be distrustful of this commdant, but nevertheless, I ask that this very detailed affidavit be read. It deals with organizational questions which are significant in respect to the question of who is responsible for crimes and mistreatment of inmates in concentration camps, and who could know about them. I ask you to pay attention to the fact that this office must not be confused with the RSHA. Confusion has already occurred in sunning up the testimony of witnesses before the court. I should like to explain how important it is to re-examine the question of organization of the concentration camp system with the aid of this document 68. But the other parts of this affidavit are also very important.
The other important affidavits are numbers 64 and 69. They are also testimony of SS judges. Just like the witness Morgen, these judges had put in the investigation against concentration camp criminals. From the witness Morgen himself there are the affidavits 65, 66, and 67.
THE PRESIDENT: Why does he make two affidavits on one day?
THE PELCKMANN: I did not understand your Lordship.
THE PRESIDENT: I said, why does he make two affidavits on one day? Why not make one affidavit?
DR. PELCKMANN: On this day work piled up and there were examinations before the Commission. Witnesses were examined. The witness Morgen arrived quite at the end. I had to see to it that the affidavits were presented as quickly as possible. For that reason . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. PELCKMANN: It is only a technical reason, your Lordship. In order that this complex of concentration camp investigations which, in my opinion, is of importance for the court in judging the question of responsibility for the SS so far as the concentration camp system is concerned, I ask that those affidavits of those two judges be closely examined.
I will deal with them in my speech. translated completely and which is rather long. There is neither a French nor an English translation yet. This affidavit gives a cross-section from a camp with 2,800 SS inmates. They include reports from most Standarten of the General SS from all parts of Germany and reports of about 30 divisions, Oberkommandos, and replacement units of the Waffen SS. In addition, this affidavit is a good cross-section of the members at various camps. In accordance with the decision of the Court on 14 January, this might also be significant. The highest ranks are not represented; it is the so-called "little man" who is represented there. From a similar point of view, because this evidence of affidavits is still affecting the great mass of the SS, I ask for the hearing of the Tribunal for the 136,000 affidavits of which I have found a digest. For the evaluation of the credibility of these affidavits, the fact is important that they were taken down very early without juridical or any other explanations. The SS members comment only on one or several points which interest them the most. The fact that certain points are not mentioned in these affidavits is because the middle SS man naturally had only a limited view and was not able to judge on many subjects. As a result they could not write anything on this point. only evidence of their interest in their personal fate. But this digest is to refute that. In view of the individual, his general view is limited, and since the individual cannot testify to more them he knows, these affidavits with the viewpoint of the individual gained a great value for me, as defense counsel of the mass of the SS and not of the highest leaders assigned to them. They give a clear picture of the teachings, its training, statements end speeches of the leaders.
can speak of collective criminology in the SS, if that is at all possible juridically. These statements are also important for the question of conspiracy.
I may point out that this digest has not yet been translated. This digest consists of various groups. First, may I mention group I briefly. It deals with the motive of volunteering for the SS. The distinction is made between joining before 1933 and after 1933 in the General SS and volunteering for the Waffen SS before 1933. Of 12,749 affidavits, 12,671 say that the motive was idealism and patriotism alone. 78 affidavits give various other motives, transfer from other units for example, eventually cavalry units were transferred into the SS cavalry , and so forth. The fact that the motive for joining after the seizure of power is commented on only by 804 men proves that people did net join from pure Idealism and on a really voluntary basis to the same extent as before the 30th of January, 1933.
As for joining the Waffen SS there are only a few affidavits. Of 488 men, 406 say that the Waffen SS was select, young troops. Others say that they had to fulfil their military duties and that they preferred the Waffen SS. Many indicate that the Waffen SS considered itself a compulsory branch of the Wehrmacht. Many others indicate that they were racial Germans, and as I proved yesterday with the aid of documents, racial Germans could perform their military service only in the Waffen SS. Some reported to the Waffen SS because they wanted to be in the police service after the war. for joining the General SS and drafting into the Waffen SS. 67 affidavits say that the assimilation of the police brought them to a service rank in the General . teachers or members of the postal protection, the Reich Food Estate, civil service employees, Reich far Victims Care, and educators. Also honorary persons are in this group. 1,806 racial Germans and 1,826 transferred from other parts of the Wehrmacht or from the police, that is, ordered to the Waffen SS.
SS members. According to those statistics there were 246 Waffen SS members who were drafted into the Waffen SS by the Wehrbezirkskommando, the district command of the normal Wehrmacht. Only one-fifth of them belonged to the General SS. kommandos were drafting men for the Waffen SS. The witness Brill has also spoken on this subject. And Wehrbezirkskommandos drafted men to guard concentration camps by drafting them into the Waffen SS. into the Waffen SS. The concentration camps guards were supplied by the Labor Office, the so-called emergency service obligation. The Labor Office obtained the men for concentration camp guards, and they were taken over forcibly into the Waffen SS. Some other points are the forcible transfer of postal officials for the aid of the German Reich Post Office and for the SS field posts. with the knowledge which the SS members had of the intentions of their leaders -
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann, are you still dealing with Group I?
DR. PELCKMANN: No, your Lordship, I am on Group III.
THE PRESIDENT: Where did Group II begin?
DR. PELCKMANN: Group II began with the legal compulsion to join the General SS?
THE PRESIDENT: As far as the translation came through to me, I have taken down all the numbers you have given, and I thought they were all in group I
DR. PELCKMANN: I beg your pardon. I thought I said it. Perhaps it did not get through.
THE PRESIDENT: Now you have gotten to Group III, have you?
DR. PELCKMANN: Yes. It deals with the training which the SS members received. 55,303 SS members state that in this training they had no indication of criminal aims. It was training for character, for decency, for comradeship, and exemplary conduct of life. It is noteworthy that none of the SS men in connection with the training mentions Hitler's book "Mein Kampf."
Statistics will prove that the mass of SS men did not read this book at all.
289 affidavits deal with the racial doctrine. 223 do not consider the training for racial hatred, for the destruction of other races, or for the creation of a master race. They see only a demand for a separation of the races from one another. 57 affidavits see in the doctrine the purpose of selecting the best among the people. Various affidavits say that the racial doctrine included respect for other peoples. The problem of colonization and Germanization is not mentioned in any affidavit as a problem of training. were trained as political soldiers. 20,010 affidavits are available on this subject. 15,461 ascribe no military character to the General SS. They give, for example, the following reasons: They never had any military training in the General SS. The ranks of the General SS were not recognized in the Wehrmacht. There were no arms, so-called tactical exercises. Tactical discussions were forbidden. Shotting was only with small calibre guns. There were not enough guns. 1,053 affidavits confirm the testimony of various witnesses here that during the war, service in the General SS occurred not at all, or only in exceptional cases; at the end of the war, not at all. Say that they did not think of war and did not believe in war. At the Junker schools various affidavits say rejection of war was taught, since it created a so-called negative selection. And in the Verfuegungstruppe, so-called field service, a more military service was taken up only when general military service was introduced. obedience. That is, no oath which according to its form would obligate the individual to more than in the Wehrmacht or in the civil service.
As for the training of SS men, 2,874 affidavits report. In 2,138 affidavits it is asserted that orders against humanity were not known to them and were certainly not given.
the members recognized as the actual aim of the organization. The Question means whether there was contradiction between the theoretical training and the actual actions of the leaders. 688 affidavits deal with the question of whether the power in Germany was to be achieved through supression of political opponents. On the question of whether the destruction of Jewry was an aim of the leaders, whether the SS members recognized this as an aim of the leaders, of the 1,637 affidavits which mention this problem, 1,593 state that the Jewish problem was not to be solved by killing, or by the so-called "final solution" and that they had no knowledge of those intentions of the leaders. They point out that the SS members were forbid on to undertake individual acts against Jews. Humorous members, for evidence, refer to the fact that numerous condemnations to death or to high penitentiary sentences were passed because of crimes against Jewish persons or Jewish property.
Another question was whether the SS members recognized as an actual aim of the leaders, rule of Europe through war. 12, 596 affidavits say that neither statements of the SS leaders nor statements of Hitler made plain that the conquest of Europe was an aim of the SS -- an important group of Roman numeral four -- it includes affidavits on the question of the participation of the SS members in the crimes asserted in the Indictment. The first question deals with participation in the concentration camp system. 2,866 affidavits have been made out on this subject. They are mostly from guards, a few from former concentration camp inmates and a few from kitchen and workshop personnel. The deal with the treatment of the inmates and with the conduct of the guards. They only show, of course, how the guards saw the concentration camp conditions and the life of the inmates from their point of view. They give a cross-section through almost all concentration camps and labor camps. They give a unified picture of the impossibility of obtaining an insight into conditions; even for people employed near the camps, they give a unified picture of the degree of ignorance of the picture in the camp and also the reasons for this; namely, the order for extreme secrecy. 2,385 affidavits say that instructions were constantly given about the conduct of the guards; examples are given for disobedience of these rules, especially for mistreatment. Significant is the statement in many affidavits that the relationship between the guards and the command personnel was not only cool but even tense. Prisoners themselves, whose affidavits are presented, state that the great responsibility for the conditions belongs to the Kapos and the prisoners themselves who were often criminals. The question of the participation of the SS members in so-called mass exterminations in extermination camps, which are to be distinguished from the concentration camps, is not mentioned at all in the affidavits. We have heard from various witnesses that these camps had quite a special life and only a few SS or men in SS uniforms were stationed there.
Now, I come to another point. A cross-section through all well-known divisions of the Waffen SS is given by 8,242 affidavits and on the question of illegal treatment of prisoners of war, 4,306 concern constant instruction On correct conduct before action. Affidavits give examples of especially send treatment of prisoners of war.
13,613 affidavits deal with the question of the civilian population in the Occupied Territories contrary to international law; there were no orders to do so. Constant instructions about correct conduct were given. The mass of SS members can report only of good relations with the civilian population in the Occupied Territories. In no affidavit is the participation of the SS in resettlement or in deportation for slave labor mentioned. A few statements say that labor commitment was not an affair of the SS. Only a very few affidavits touch biological experiments. They came from men who were in the concentration camp system. These few say that they had heard that the prisoners volunteered for experiments. 1,271 affidavits deal with the so-called Roehm Putsch. The General SS did not participate in these events; parts of then had been alerted but net armed and not employed on the 9th of November 1935. 4,407 affidavits form a cross-section of various units of the SS Abschnitte and Standarten of the SS in almost all cities of Germany and all districts. It said with special emphasis that the SS did not participate in these excesses.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann, I suppose what you are doing is reading out your summary of these 136,000 affidavits; is that right?
DR. PELCKMANN: Yes. Your Lordship -
THE PRESIDENT: I asked you whether you were reading it out verbatim.
DR. PELCKMANN: As soon as the translation is available it will be presented.
THE PRESIDENT: That is net an answer to my question. I asked you whether you were reading it out verbatim.
DR. PELCKMANN: No, I am only giving a resume, your Lordship.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we better adjourn now.
(A recess was taken.)
DR. PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, I regret very much that the translation of the summary is not at hand. I am sure that the understanding and the grouping of this material would be considerably facilitated if the translation were at hand. ignorance of the bulk of the SS membership. 96,252 affidavits are at our disposal. They tell us that the majority of the members of the SS knew nothing about the crimes before the capitulation. They say that in general, and they make the statements in particular as well as when they deal with the various patterns of crimes concerned. One fact is especially significant in this connection and is being emphasized particularly. At the time when these crimes assumed larger scope, that is, namely during the war, the mass of the SS membership was fighting at the front; and for that reason alone, could not have any knowledge or receive any knowledge of incidents of that sort, for the horizon, the point of view, of the man at the front is, of course, limited.
The next group is Group Six. It deals with the assertion made by the Prosecution that the SS had been a unity. The first question reads whether the branch organizations formed an actual unit. 5,700 affidavits deal with this question. One half shows that knowledge was lacking for the banding together for the carrying through of the conspiracy. The other half refers to the fact that the Waffen SS was not basically recruited from the General SS. Therefore, it emphasizes the separation between the General SS. Therefore, it emphasizes the separation between the General SS and the Waffen SS. The second question reads whether the members of the various branch organizations knew of the activities carried out and carried on by the other branches. The significance of the question could not be recognized by the members of the SS without some explanation being given, and therefore few of the affidavits deal with this question. Those few affidavits that we have concerning that activity of the various main offices of the SS was set up separately and that a union of personnel existed only in the person of Himmler himself.
Severed affidavits refer to the fact that, for instance, and we are concerned with the manning of the concentration camps, these men were made up of the most various groups and components. Many affidavits emphasize the state of secrecy which had been decreed and resulted from the Fuehrer Decree Number One which has been quoted frequently, and also it came about because of special directives. And orientation of the various branches among the SS Were quite out of the question because of these directions and directives. In the other part of the affidavit it is said that the General SS, on one hand, and the police and the SD on the other hand, did not form a joint body or a unit. the Leibstandarte, 1934. Less than 10 percent of the members of this Liebstandarte were at the same time members of the General SS. A large part of this affidavit concerns itself with stating that during the war, practically speaking, the General SS did not exist. 342 affidavits deal with numerous affiliated groups or branches of the SS. In fact, they exercised special expert activities which were very, very much restricted. As far as the carrying through of the alleged SS activities, they were not concerned and had only a loose connection with the General SS. Among these groups we find the SS mounted units, the Reiter Stuerme, Reiter units which devoted themselves to riding motor units, SS female helpers, who were the the same as the Wehrmacht. Helpers were used during the war in intelligence and information service. The SS sport organizations, the Lebensborn, the medical units, or first aid, front units of the German Reichspost, and so forth. the attitude of the SS was toward the Church. 3,174 affidavits are on hand in this matter which, on the basis of their positive statements, conclude that according to their conviction, a persecution of the church by the SS leadership was not wanted.
which testify to the fact that many offices under Himmler had no connection with the SS and, further, that between Himmler and the SS, and especially in the ciurse of the war, an estrangement had arisen.
Under IX 435 affidavits are summarized. They deal with the behavior of our enemies during the war and after the capitulation. These affidavits, based on the experiences of the SS men, contain statements about actions contrary to international law which the enemy perpetrated in combat. Names of places are given, as are theatres of war, nationality of the enemy, and the kind of excesses that took place. The enumeration is intended to show that excesses of this kind can hardly be prevented during war and that for that reason you can not conclude that a system is present. They serve the purpose of showing that the German troop and especially the Waffen SS, if they are confronted with isolates eases of violations of international law which the affidavits say in part were punished, they cannot be charged with having acted according to or under a system.
The last group is X. It contains 57 affidavits which reproduce the factual personal impressions of foreigners about the SS. From the recognition given by these foreigners, which was known within the SS, the individual SS man concluded that the total behavior of the SS could not be criminal and that the activity was not objected to by general world opinion. Various personalities are mentioned. Americans, Englishmen and Russians are given, such as Daladier, Chamberlain, Lord Rothermere, and Chaim Weitzmann, and others.
detailed explanation, a statistical record, set up on the basis of a circular. affidavits and documents.
THE PRESIDENT : Are you next, Dr. Laternser?
DR. LATERNSER (Counsel for the General Staff and the OKW) : First of all, I should like to submit the list of those 14 witnesses whose testimony I expect to use, as well as the transcripts dealing with, their interrogations. submitted to the Commissions, and I have submitted this list. It is contained in one volume, which has been placed before the high Tribunal in an English translation. It is the list which has been mentioned this morning by the president. I have supplied this list with an index, and I have set up the various branches according to subject matter. The number of the affidavit is given, as are the name of the deponent and a brief description of the contents of the affidavit. In this way, it is rather comprehensive and, in my opinion, especially valuable. highest Wehrmacht leadership, for this purpose I should like to submit document Mil. No. 2, which you will find on pages 12 and 13 of the first volume. From the diagram on page 13 we can see the actual method of subordination as it obtained in the highest Wehrmacht leadership. The submission of this document is required for my refutation of the draft submitted by the Prosecution. USA Exhibit 331 and 531 have been submitted by the Prosecution and are not correct in various points and have let again and again to misunderstandings.
of the war is concerned, I should like to submit Document Mil. 3. This contains a rather large diagram.
THE PRESIDENT : Are you dealing with the one on page 137. Oh, the bigger one. Is it the same thing as page 13?
DR. LATERNSER : No, My Lord, the diagram on page 13 shows the structure, and in that way I should like to show that restriction of responsibility between the military leaders and the other organs for the conduct of the war. From this diagram we se first of all, that the military leadership is separated, and responsibility has to be placed on the military leadership as distinct from the political leadership which was headed by Hitler and his various agencies. Now will find the markings in blue for the military leaders, and the sphere of the ideological and political leadership is marked in red. hence, of responsibility between military and political leaders. The factual distribution is shown in the tasks which the military leaders had ans is marked in red, and this diagram, further shows what tasks, oven though they were in the spheres of the military leaders, were carried through under the responsibility of other agencies and offices. In this way, we see an undermining of the authority of the military leaders in the operational zones and a distribution of authority according to areas, and therewith, a distribution of responsibility. That is another thing which may be seen from this diagram. Only the clearly defined operational areas were under the jurisdiction of the military leaders, and only for the time the operations obtained. In all other cases, the executive power was purely and solely in the hands of the political leadership, and these functions are indicate in red.
Just one were remark in connection with this diagram : The areas outlined in black and dealing with the responsibility of the Wehrmacht commanders in chief do not involve the circle of people accused, for they as not fall under the sphere of the Indictment. affirmed and sworn to by General Winter of the Wehrmachts Fuehrungsstab-- the Wehrmacht Operational Staff. leadership as a basic step, I shall turn to the circle of persons and its composition.
THE PRESIDENT : Dr. Laternser, the Tribunal would like to know whether there are three colors indicated in this diagram; namely, blue for die armed forces, red for the political forces, and an indiscriminate color a mixture of red and blue and black-- for an indetermined body which is half political and half military.
DR. LATERNSER : Yes, Mr. President, that is quite true. The third color is supposed to be black, and these areas indicated in black show the areas of the Wehrmacht and military commanders in chief. They are not men who had their commands at the front, but rather commanders in chief who had a certain territorial power, and I added that this kind of commander in chief, such as is indicated in black, does not fall under the circle of persons accused.
THE PRESIDENT : Do you mean that in what you call black are included the static military commands, non operational? There is nothing political in the black?
DR. LATERNSER : No. But, Mr. President, those who had this power of command do not fall into the circle of people who are accused under the Indictment.