His position as "Chief of the Secret State Police" was, moreover, eliminated with the appointment of the Chief of the German Police and with the Nationalization (Verreichlichung) of the Prussian Secret State Police in the years 1936 and 19 Frick, as Reich Minister of the Interior, was the competent minister for the Police but he was never an official of any particular branch of the Police. of the Security Police and the SD he was not made Chief of the Gestapo, and i fact he was not -- as Heydrich had been since 1934 -- the head of the Secret State Police Office. Nor was the Chief of the Security Police and the SD under the budget of the Secret State Police but was carried on the budget of the Reich Ministry of the Interior.
C. Substantive legal prerequisites (prerequisites for the establishment ofculpability) of the Indictment. be judged admissible, I now turn to the question of whether the substantive legal prerequisites are given for declaring it criminal. In other words it must be examined whether the Gestapo as a whole was a criminal organization or group in the sense of the Charter. In the examination of this question I shall follow the conditions laid dorm in the decision of the Court of 13 March 1946 and designated as relevant. regarding the type and extent of the activity of the Gestapo. Among the German people and perhaps even more abroad, it was customary to ascribe to the Gestapo all police measures, terror acts, deprivations of freedom, and killings, as long as they had any police tinge at all. It became the scapegoat for all misdeeds in Germany and in the Occupied Territories, and today it is to bear the responsibility for all evil. Yet nothing is more mistaken than that. The error arises from the fact that the whole Police whether Criminal Police, Wehrmacht Police, Political Police, or SD were, without distinction of the branches, considered Gestapo. When Heydrich said at the German Police Rally in 1941; "Secret State Police, Criminal Police and Security Service were enveloped in the mysterious auraof the political detective story", this characterized the almost legendary atmosphere by which the Gestapo in particular is surrounded to the present day.
It was apparently according to Heydrich's tactics to let the Gestapo appear in the opinion of people at home and abroad as an instrument of terror, to spread fear and horror of it, in order to create fear of the commission of intrigues hostile to the State. a few examples. One of the most disgraceful individual crimes during the war was the murder of the French General DeBoisse at the end of 1944 or the beginning of 1945. The French Prosecution charges it against the Gestapo on the basis of documents 4048 to 4052-PS. According to 4050-PS, however, Panzinger, who was entrusted with the execution of the plan, was at the time Head of Office V of the RSHA, that is Head of the Reich Criminal Police Office. Schulze, who is mentioned in 4052-PS, also belonged to the Reich Criminal Police Office. 4048-PS, according to the file note V. cB, was also drawn up by the Reich Criminal Police Office as Office V of the RSHA. Office IV of the RSHA -- Gestapo Office -- was thus not involved, but only the Reich Criminal Police Office which included the section charged with searching for prisoners of war. Himmler, who as Chief of the Replacement Army, was also in charge ofthe Prisoner of War System, contacted Panzinger directly in this matter; Office IV did not have knowledge of this occurrence at any stage. Whether Kaltenbrunner know anything, he must make clear.
These facts are proved by the Gestapo Affidavit No.88. in the Russian city of Krasnodar (USSR 55), which was submitted by the Russian Prosecution, the commission of these terrible crimes is charged again the Gestapo without further proof. In reality, this was the activity of an Einsatzkommando, not the Gestapo. (See Gestapo Affidavit No.5).
I may refer to the testimony of the witnesses Dr. Knochen and Franz Straub. It proves that in Belgium and France, as everywhere, the Gestapo was frequently unjustly accused of crimes.
Through several witnesses (Dr. Knochen, Straub, Kaltenbrunner), it has been established besides, that frequently in the Occupied Territories and in the home Area swindlers and other shady characters appeared, who falsely passed themselves off as Gestapo officials. Himmler himself demanded that such false Gestapo officials should be handed over to the concentration camps.
(See Gestapo Exhibit No.34 - USA 207;) Gestapo Affidavit No.68. without responsibility for the false opinion about the Gestapo. Thus he consciously furthered the rumor that the Gestapo knew everything politically suspicious because it spied on the population. This could not be true as is proved by the fact that the approximately 15,000 to 16,000 Gestapo officia in question, even if they had watched and spied on the people, would have been by far inadequate for this purpose (Dr. Best).
The crimes which Gestapo/members actually committed are not to be excused But it is equally certain that many things occurred for which the Gestapo officials are not responsible, and that it was customarily not examined and differentiated whether certain deeds or misdeeds were carried out by members of the Gestapo or the Kripo, the SS or the SD, or even by native criminals. If, in the interest of combating crimes, it is judged proper in a penal condemnation to give a choice as regards the deed in the sense that punishment is to be inflicted whether the established deed falls under this or that pena law, such a choice can never be given as regards the person of the perpetrator. In other words: it would not be just to ascribe a deed to the Gestapo if the guilt of its members is not absolutely established. sense and probably also in the sense of the charter. Its constitution, its aims and tasks and the methods employed by it cannot fundamentally be designated as criminal. The position of the political police, its special tasks and the measures to be taken by it, of course demanded the form of organization especially adapted to these purposes. In this connection I consider a separatebut still comprehensive presentation of the organization and personnel structure of the Gestapo all the more important since the court in its decisions of 14 January and 13 March 1946, showed that it might ascribe decisive importance to the clarification of this question. the organizational structure and the personnel structure, I shall not read th next mine pages, but shall ask the Court to take judicial notice of them.
I draw the special attention of the Court to pages 20 to 24. They deal with the fundamental difference between administrative and execution officials, the technical personnel, the employees, the emergency service workers, and the groups of persons who were taken over as units into the Gestapo -- the Secret Field Police, the Customs Border Protection, the Military Counter-Intelligence, and affiliated units. character as a branch of the State administration was outside the stricture of the NSDAP and its organizations. The Gestapo was not dominated by the Party; to the contrary, its assumption of independence within the State and outside the structure of the Party was to serve the purpose to proceed in cases of perpetrations committed by Party members with measures of the State in particular. If Himmler as Vice-Fuehrer SS became the chief of the Political P* in all counties and later in the Reich in 1933, then the oganizations of the County Police were without influence in that connection. Nothing important changed, in fact, with regard to their activities. The Political Police in the German counties, when they were reconstructed in 1933, were mostly staffed with officials from the previous police authorities; not even directing official were Party members in every case. Even later these officials who had been taken over were not replaced by Party members. Only to a small extent, and on as employees and workmen for technical duties, such as drivers, teleprint operators and auxiliaries, were persons from the Party, the SS and the SA taken over. contradict the so-called assimilation of the Gestapo into the SS. This assimilation merely meant on affiliation by name to the SS. The reason for the assimilation was the following: Gestapo, and maintained. On the other hand,civil serv ants were partly not particularly respected by the Party because of their political or nonpolitical past. In order to strengthen their authority during the carrying out of their duties, in particular when acting against national socialists, they were to appear in uniform, as witness Dr. Best has testified -- who has described himself as the "motor" of this assimilation.
With this assimilation the Gestapo officials -- as, incidentally, also criminal police officials who were also to be assimilated -- were formally listed among the SD formations of the SS, though they remained solely under the jurisdiction of their own superiors without doing any SSor SD duties. Furthermore, the assimilation was only carried out slowly and to an inconsiderable degree. At the outbreak of war in 1939 only approximately 3,000 of the members of th Gestapo, out of a total of 20,000, had been assimilated. It is significant that Himmler, by no means liked to see the Gestapo appear publicly wearing SS uniforms, as becomes evident from Document USA-447. on certain duties without being members of the SS. Apart from that the SS did not control the police or exert any type of influence upon its activitie it was only in Himmler 's person that there was personal union in the leader ship of the two.
With reference to this statement I refer you to the testimony of Dr. Be known, was purely an organization of the Party. Personal union only existed in the position of the chief of the SIPO and the SD (Heydrich, later Kaltenbrunner), which was accidental,however, and did not form an organizational or functional interconnection.
In no case was the SD centralized with the Gestapo in order to form a system of police. The SD did not have to support the Gestapo in its tasks,it had no police tasks whatever. members of a uniform organization with the SS and the SD. Every member of one of the three organizations knew that he belonged to an independent institution serving independent purposes. point of view of duties, connected with the party, it was, nevertheless, not altogether detached from the administrative tasks of the State being, as it was, a State authority. To the contrary, on every level interconnection existed with the general and interior administration. The higher administrative organizations, The ministers of the Interior in the counties, the Supreme Presidents and Government Presidents were entitled to receive reports and issue instructions. Evidence has, in fact, shown that the majority of all State Police actions were carried out by the district and local police organizations and the Gendarmerie. This fact particularly furnishes on indication how serious, and doubtful it is to indict the Gestapo as an institution of the State. Because, thinking consequently, the officials of the aforementioned administrative organizations as well as those working in a State Police capacity would have to be indicted together with the Gestapo, and that thought alone appears absurd. personnel in the case of the Gestapo, then it is equally impossible to speak of a membership in the sense of the indictment, and the demands of voluntary service were even less fulfilled. Not one of the witnesses examined was able to justify this, the Prosecution's allegation, to the contrary, all witnesses had to testily that as a matter of principle membership of the Gestapo was generally not on a voluntary basis. in that manner, that from a previous organization they were transferred to a organization of the Gestapo. The order for transfer had to be obeyed on the strength of the existing civil servants law. Severe disciplinary disadvantages would have been the result of a refusal and very probably the the loss of the position held; and had such a refusal been based on the statement that for reasons of conscience the officials did not agree with activities of the Gestapo then he would, as would have any civil servant in a similar case, become subject to disciplinary proceedings or even penal proceedings resulting in the loss of his position and hard earned privileges and, apart from that, he would even have gone to a concentration camp.
a way that, in accordance with police civil service law, 90% were drawn from the former protection police officials who wished to become original police officials, whereas only 10% could be taken from other professions. whether to join the Gestapo or Kripo; they were allotted by the "assignment department of the police " at Potsdam to the Gestapo or the Kripo, according to requirements and, even, against their will. Incidentally, we are here concerned with protection police officials with 8 to 12 years service, as well as old police officials who had been in the police service already before 1933. Gestapo, apart from general reasons such as death, sickness and dismissal because of a crime. During war the Gestapo, just like the entire police, was considered as being on active service and was subject to military discipline so that resignation was totally impossible. It was even prohibited to volunteer for military service at the front. institutions under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo, such as Border Police, Military Counter Intelligence, and Customs Police, not to forget the numerous Emergency Service employees who, at times, represented nearly one-half the total personnel strength. particularly from the witnesses Best, Knochen and Hoffmann, the following becomes apparent: The Gestapo consisted of a multitude of State organization But in the case of such an organization one cannot mention members of that organization in the same way as members of a private organization. For that reason there was no membership of the Gestapo and even less a voluntary one; on the contrary, there was only a public-legal position of a civil servant.
must be answered in the negative. The aim of the Gestapo -- just like that of any political police -- was the protection of the people and the State against attacks of elements hostile to the State against its existence or its free development. Accordingly, the task of the Gestapo is defined in paragraph 1 of the Law of the 10th of February 1936, (Gestapo Exhibit No. 7) as follows: I quote:
"The Secret State Police has the task to investigate all currents dangerous to the State and combat them; to collect and exploit the result of such investigation; to inform the government of the them informed and supply them with suggestions."
of the Political Police before 1933, and as those of any Political police in foreign countries. What is to be understood by "currents hostile to the State" depends upon the respective political structure of a State. A change in the political leadership cannot retroactively render illegal the activities of a political police which have been directed against forces other than those hostile to the State. The activities of the Gestapo had been legally regulated by instructions issued by the State. Its tasks consisted, in the first place and mainly in the investigation of politically punishable actions in accordance with the general penal code in which connection the officials of the Gestapo became active as auxiliary officials of the Public Prosecutor's Department and it further consisted of the prevention of such actions through preventive measures. serious accusations against it in three ways. They are even hold against them as crimes. One method is the protective custody and transfer of person to concentration camps. I know even when I only mention that name it radiates something like the cold breath of graves. But even then imposing of protective custody was governed by exact regulations. Protective custody which in addition is not a specifically German or specifically national socialist invention, was recognized as legal in several findings of the Reich Courts, the Prussian Supreme Administrative Court, and also Constitutional Courts.
must, to put it mildly, give cause to serious misgivings. On the other hand, this method was only rarely used (see particularly witness Dr. Best), and then only by order from the highest authorities and never to force a confession. the discussion of the individual crimes was regulated by law and even during the time of the war (compare Gestapo Exhibit No. 60). to the effect that it was not bound by law but rather that it acted purely arbitrarily. In reply to this, I should like to say that if it is established in two laws (dealing with the Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland) that the chief of the German Police can take measures going beyond the existing laws, in that way arbitrary police power is not legalized; rather, we are concerned with a typical legal transfer of the authority to establish police law. Measures in the sense of a general sort which could be issued even if in the annexed countries no laws existed as yet in this regard but which were, nevertheless, binding for the population and the executive power of the police because the necessary authority had been granted by the head of the State. arbitrary lines, but rather that exact regulations existed and were to be observed in all executive actions, was strictly adhered to. (Witness Dr. Best). war, that they might be accused of arbitrary actions from abroad. The tasks and methods, which were for all the world to see legally restricted and which did not apply only to the members of the Gestapo, cannot be considered criminal by the world, a world which not only formally recognized the German Reich Government, who carried the sole responsibility in this matter, but a world which repeatedly showed its recognition to the German people.
it would not have been conceivable that numerous foreign police systems worked in close collaboration with the German Gestapo, a collaboration by the way which was not negotiated through diplomatic circles and that foreign police officials visited the German Gestapo, obviously with the insertion of learning from it (compare Gestapo Affidavit Nos. 26 and 89). In any event, because of this, the individual Gestapo official must have considered his activity internationally recognized. the war. Insofar as other acts were intended for it, other than the acts described, they must be evaluated as acts foreign to the police and outside the organization. Later we shall deal with the Einsatzgruppen, their composition their activity and their relation to the Gestapo. the Gestapo participated in a joint plan for the committing of crimes and whether it participated as a deliberate part of the whole in the sense of the Indictment in the so-called Nazi conspiracy. In order to deal with those questions,it appears necessary to examine, first of all, just which crimes it can be proved were committed by the Gestapo. case of an individual, only typical aspects may be considered; that is, only such actions and characteristics which are in accord with the peculiar nature of the respective organization. within the organization, must be considered as foreign to the organization, in this case foreign to the police; and furthermore actions may not be cited winch were committed by individual members. criminal , German law should be consulted, which does not deviate from the Views held by other civilized countries in the designation of general criminality.
subdivide the crimes of which the Gestapo is accused into crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Crimes against peace. In this connection the Indictment raises the accusation that the Gestapo, together with the SD, had artificially created border incidents in order to give Hitler a pretext for a was with Poland. Tow border incidents are cited; the attack on the radio station Gleiwitz and a feigned attack by a Polish group at Hohenlinden. the participation of Gestapo officials. Witness Naujocks, who was the leader of this undertaking and who, however, did not belong to the Gestapo, has confirmed unequivocally that not a single member of the Gestapo participated in this action. Instructions for this undertaking emanated directly from Heydrich and were transmitted orally by him directly to Naujocks. transmitted by Mueller the Chief of Amt IV of the RSHA to Naujocks; however Naujocks, who directed this action, has expressly denied any participation by Amt IV.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Merkel, would that be a convenient time to break off?
(A recess was taken until 1400 hours.)
(The hearing reconvened it 14000 hours, August 23, 1946).
DR. MERKEL: Mr. President, I have heard that the French translation of my final plea is not yet available to the interpreters. For that reason I will have to speak more slowly in the interest of the interpreters. comply with the rule that I should finish in a certain period of time
THE PRESIDENT: No doubt; your speech will subsequently be translated and we shall have these pages before us.
DR. MERKEL: Yes, Mr. President. I had gone as far as the testimony of the witness, Naujox, regarding the attack on the railroad station at Gleiwitz and the attack of that group near Hohenlinden. He stated that quite naturally it was not one of the tasks of Department IV of the RSHA to engineer border incidents. Mueller did not select ,embers of Department IV for the carrying out of the latter border incident, but only individuals who were in his confidence for Heydrich did not trust the Gestapo with respect to secrecy and reliability . Naujox stated literally :"I cannot identify Mueller wit the organization of to Gestapo." rather a personal concern of Heydrich, even to the extent to which Mueller participated. The Gestapo has not been accused of other crimes against peace.
(b) War Crimes.
1. One of the gravest accusations raised against the Gestapo deals with the mass murder of the civilian population of the occupied countries through the so-called Einsatzgruppen. Not only the defense but the entire German people condemn the inhuman cruelties committed by the Einsatzgruppen. Those who committed cruelties like that have defiled the name of Germany and must be called to account.
I should like to examine the extent to which the organization of the Gestapo in toto, can be held responsible for the criminal deeds of the Einsatzgruppen. and of the SD in rear echelon areas which meant that they had to safeguard law and order along, the rear of the fighting unit. They were subordinate to the armies and liaison men were detailed to the armies. purposes. They were composed of members of the SD of the SS, of the Kripo, of the Gestapo, the Order Police of those who had to render emergency service, and of indigenous forces. The members of the SD of the Kripo and of the Gestapo were used without consideration for their former membership in their own branch. here with the use of the entire police and of the SD, not with the use of the Gestapo alone. The actual participation of the Gestapo in the Einsatzgruppen amounted to approximately ten per cent. This, of course, was a very small number in comparison with the total figure of Gestapo officials. Being detailed to the Einsatzgruppen took place without any effort on their part, very frequently against their will, but on the strength of orders from the RSHA. Upon being detailed to the Einsatzgruppen, they were eliminated from the organization of the Gestapo. They were exclusively subordinate to the leadership of the Einsatzgruppen which received its orders in part from the higher SS and police leader, in part from the high Command of the Army and in part from the RSHA directly. Any connection to the Home Department and to their organization of the Gestapo as finally severed through their being used by the Einsatzgruppen. They could not receive orders of any kind from the Gestapo, and they had been removed from the sphere of influence of the Gestapo. Einsatzgruppen in the East which are the ones that have been accused of the most crimes and the most serious crimes. To them also applies the fact that the Osteinsatz was not a Gestapoeinsatz either in personnel or in the tasks given but an Einsatz of various units which had been set up especially for this purpose.
The witness Ohlendorf testified to the same effect. the conclusion that it was responsible for deeds committed by the Einsatzgruppen. Nor is this changed by the fact that the Chief of Office IV, Mueller that is, the Director of the Gestapo within the RSHA had an important part in passing on all orders. He was acting here directly on behalf of Himmler and Heydrich. The activity of Mueller cannot be decisive in view of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the agents under him had no knowledge of the events. If that had been the case the Kripo or the Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) would have had to told equally responsible for the events, But the Gestapo cannot be declared criminal because of Mueller's position in regard to the Einsatzgruppen any more than the Kripo -- whose Chief, Nebe, by the way, was himself the leader of an Einsatzgruppen in the East -can be held responsible, on the basis of the participation of its Chief and individual members, for the mass exceptions undertaken by the Einsatzgruppen. Therefore, mass murders of the civilian population, like all other atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen cannot be charged against the Gestapo as such.
2. The next charge refers to the execution of politically and racially undesirable prisoners in camps. the third point, according to which the further charge is made against the Gestapo that together with the SD it sent prisoners of war who had escaped and who had been recaptured to concentration camps.
I continue on Page 38 of the original. I further have to deal with the concentration camps. ponsibility for the establishment and distribution of the concentration camps and for the assignment of racially and politically undesirable persons together concentration and extermination camp for forced labor and mass muders; that the Gestapo was by law given the responsibility for administering the concentration camps; that it alone had the power to take persons into protective custody and to execute the protective custody orders in the state concentration camps and that the Gestapo issued the orders to establish concentration camps , to convert prisoner of war camps to concentration camps, and to establish labor training camps.
must be corrected that the concentration camps were an institution of the Gestapo. ministered by the Gestapo. It is true that paragraph 2 of the order for the execution of the law on the Secret at the Police of 10 February 1936,-- Gestapo Exhibit Number 8 -- says that the secret state police office administers the state concentration camps, but this regulation was only on paper and was never carried out in practice. It was rather the Reichsfuehrung-SS which was responsible for the concentration camps which appointed an inspector of concentration camps whose duties were later (1941) transferred to Amtsgruppe, Dept. Bor. D of the WVHA of the SS. Dr. Best and a large number of documents marked as the Gestapo Exhibit No. 40, and it is up to and including No. 45.
After Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 the SA and SS had independently established numerous camps for political prisoners. The Gestapo on its own initiative took steps against those unauthorized concentration camps, eliminated them, an released the inmates. Gestapo Chief, Dr. Diels, even brought upon himself the accusation that he was supporting the Communists and sabotaging the Revolution. (See Affidavit Number 41, testimony of the witnesses Vitzdamm and Grauert.)
Thus the concentration camps were never under the Gestapo. The inspectorate of concentration camps and the Economic and Administrative Departments , the WVHA remained, independent agencies and their chiefs were directly subordinate to Himmler. tion of concentration camps but it regulates -- in the interest of the prisoners-- the assignment of prisoners to the various camps, so that political prisoners would not be sent to camps, which, according to their structure and their formed work, were meant for hardened criminals.
the Gestapo in the a ministration of the concentration camps, I should like to mention only one more : Gestapo Exhibit No. 38. This shows that all persons not mentioned there and thus all Gestapo Officials regardless of their rank or position needed written permission of the Inspector of the concentration camps. If the concentration camps would have been subordinate to the Gestapo, there would not have existed a necessity to obtain this written permission to enter a concentration camp. ment the position of which in the camp and its relationship to the Gestapo is a matter of conflicting views. In this political department were employed one to three criminal officials of the Gestapo or of the KRIPO. These officials did not form an office of the Gestapo or of the KRIPO; they rather were attached to the Commandant of the camp as political experts to fill police tasks in regard to individual prisoners. Above all, they had to conduct the interrogations of those prisoners against whom there was pending a case before the ordinary courts; this was done upon the request of their ordinary courts or the secret state police, or the criminal police. In regard to the power to issue orders they were exclusively subordinate to the commandant of the concentration camp. They had no influence whatsoever on the administration and conduct of the camp or on the transfer, discharge, punishments, and or execution of the prisoners. institution of the Gestapo, but rather, institutions which served its purposes in the transaction of its police tasks. For the Gestapo they were the same as the regular prisons were for the courts or for the state attorney's , namely executive institutions to carry out the protective custody ordered by the Gestapo on which I shall dwell now. to sending people to concentration camps just as he pleased.
In the English Court Transcript of 23 August 1946, Afternoon
"Dr. Best made this statement before the Commission on 6 July 1946."
This is incorrect. I shall again not deal with my plea about the opinion prevailing and beg the Tribunal to take judicial notice of it.
I shall go on to Page 43. the second sentence of the last paragraph. If one takes the trouble to examine the questionwhat has been the numerical relationship of the cases when among the various available measures as instru tions, warning, security fee and protective custody, the latter was actually chosen, one shall find that the transfer to a concentration camp was the leas practiced means. At the beginning of the war approximately 20,000 people four themselves in protective custody in the concentration camps, half of them approximately were professional criminals, the other half political prisoners At the same time there were found in the regular prisons approximately 300,000 prisoners, of whom approximately one-tenth-- and that means about 30,000 -- were sentenced for political crimes.
THE PRESIDENT: What evidence is there of these figures all the propor tions ?
DR. MERKEL: Witness Hoffmann has testified that before the Commission. Larger use of the concentration camps was made by transferring there the professional criminals and the anti-social elements, particularly those who had been sentenced by the court to security custody, a measure which was ordered and executed not by the Gestapo (Compare Witness Hoffmann).
On the basis of Gestapo Affidavit No. 86 the maximum numbers of prisoners referred to the concentration camps by the Gestapo were at the beginning of 1945 about 30,000 Germans, about 60,000 Poles, about 50,000 subjects of other states. All other prisoners -- on December 19, 1945, the prosecuti claimed that there were in the concentration camps on August 1, 1944, 524,277 prisoners -- had been referred there not by the Gestapo but by the criminal police, the courts, and various authorities, in the occupied territories. of concentration camps will also be omitted by me; and I again beg the Tribunal to take judicial notice of them. I shall continue on Page 50. approximately in the middle of the page.
training camps and that it was responsible for the referrals to them.
The purpose of a work training camp is described by the periodical "The German Police" (Gestapo Exhibit No. 59):
"The purpose of the work training camps is to educate in a spirit or workers' discipline those who have broken their work contracts and those who shirk their duty, and to bring them back to their old jobs after that aim has been accomplished. Those referrals are handled exclusively by offices of the State Police. To stay there is not to be considered a penalty, but an educational measure." laborers were put into the work training camps. They had been established in the same manner both for Germans and for foreign laborers, but even for employers who had transgressed their rights toward their employees. investigation in each individual case, originally 21 days, later 56 days, were stipulated, as contrasted to the verdicts of courts for breach of contract which ran from three months up to one year of imprisonment. Those who had briken a contract and were referred to a work training camp, in every respect found themselves in better conditions than those who were referred for sentencing to the courts. The referral was not included in the individual's court register of penalties, and in general, shelter, feeding and treatment in the work training camps was also better than in the prisons. The food consisted of the regular prisoners' rations supplemented by the additional rations for hard laborers; these rations were continuously submitted to inspection as far as quantity, quality, and taste were concerned, as is shown by the document Gestapo Exhibit No. 58. the supervision of the foreign laborers and particularly the establishment and referral to work training camps by the Gestapo as a crime or even a typical crime.
6. Execution of Commandos and Paratroopers. accused is the charge that the Gestapo and the SD executed Commandos and Parachutists who had been taken prisoners and protected civilians who had lynched Allied fliers. What may be said in this connection? 1942 concerning countermeasures against Parachutists -- the combat of Paratroopers is characterized as the exclusive concern of the army, while the combat of"single parachutists" was transferred to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD. The latter task did not consist in the execution of the Parachutists. The transfer should serve only the purpose of establishing eventual sabotage orders of these parachutists an to receive news about the intentions of the enemy. groups (USA 501). This order was directed not to the German Police but to the German Army. Paragraph 4 of that order stated that all members of such Commandfalling into the hands of the army should be transferred to the SD. Nothing can be learned about any part played by the Gestapo in these measures against the Sabotage Commandos. If, however, the Gestapo would have been transferred to it, the execution of which cannot be accounted for by the Gestapo as such, since doubtless under any circumstances only a small number of individuals participated in it.
Besides, the following should be pointed out: As Rudolf Mildner in his affidavit of November 16, 1945 -- PS 2374 -- stated, an order was issued in the summer of 1944 to the Commanders and Inspectors of the Sipo and the SD to the effect that all members of the American and English Commando Troops should be surrendered to the Sipo for interrogation and shooting execution. This may be taken as a proof that at least up to that moment the Sipo had not shot any Commando groups, or a need for this order had not existed. Mildner continues to say that that order had to be destroyed immediately, which means that only the commanders and Inspectors of the Sipo could gain knowledge of it. Since the the invasion had started long ago and since the Allies relentlessly advanced in France, it was impossible to execute these orders actually, since there were not left any officers of the Sipo in the field of operations, which was pushed back continuously.