CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Witness, were you in tho Luftwaffe?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. When did you enter?
A. I entered the Luftwaffe on the first of April,1935.
Q. And you stayed until the end of the War?
A. Yes, I stayed there until the end of the War.
Q. And were your duties always in the legal department of the Luftwaffe?
A. No. I was never in tho legal department of tho Luftwaffe, but I was always a supervisory judge in various courts in Koenigsberg, the field court, Braunschweig, and after 1938 supervisory judge in the field court, Berlin, of the Luftwaffe. I stayed in Berlin until 1939. Then I was in France during the first campaign as supervisory judge with the First Land Corps. Then in Autumn, 1940, I returned from France, and from then on until the first of January, 1944, I was supervisory judge for the field courts of the Luftwaffe, for the Luftgau III and IV; that is Berlin and Dresden, the division courts and the flak: courts the courts of the War, school courts and tho Z.B.V. special courts also belonged to that.
Q. Well, you always acted as a judge in a supervisory capacity, didn't you, that is, in the years 1939 to 1945 ?
A. No. In a general supervisory capacity mainly in regard to administration end my main task was to be examiner so that during the whole War I passed very f aw sentences myself. I was prosecutor and my main task Was the administrative part among other tasks also the training of the reserve judges and the personnel administrative part for these people which at the time amounted to from one hundred to one hundred ten judges and five hundred people as personnel.
Q. What was your rank?
A. My rank last was office with supreme authority Generalrickfer. I became general judge on the 24th of January 1945.
Q. What were you before that?
A. Before that I was Oberst judge from August, 1941, until my promotion 1389(a) to general judge.
Q. An Oberst judge is like a colonel , isn't it?
A. Yes, indeed.
Q. Now were you familiar with the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention?
A. Yes. They were familiar to me. We also had various teaching courses from 1937 to '38. Through the Division for International Law in the OKW and on the basis of those teaching courses, the Ten Commandments were written in the Soldier's Book of every soldier and brought to the attention of every soldier.
Q. Do you know those Ton Commandments that appeared in the Soldier's Book?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. Will you tell what they were?
A. Protection of private property, the enemy population must be outside of the War itself, the Ban on destruction of non-military buildings, furthermore, protection of the wounded and the prisoner of war, the enemy prisoner of war. These are the ten main commandments and also the protection of private property. These were the main points.
Q. Those were in a little book that was carried by every soldier in the German Army please let me finish. These precepts which you hare just enumerated for us were sot forth in the first page of a little book known as a sold-buch, 4 soldier's book?
A. Yes, the sold-buch; that's correct.
Q. Which was carried by everyone in the German Armed Forces?
A. Yes, indeed.
Q. So you had that sold-buch, didn't you?
A. Yes, indeed, I did.
Q. Every soldier had that sold-buch?
A. Yes, every soldier did.
Q. And the Field Marshal?
A. That I do not know if the Field Marshal himself had such a sold 1390(a) buch.
In any case, even the General and up to the General, every soldier had a booklet like that.
Q. Well, everybody didn't become a Field Marshal over night, did they?
A. No. That's correct; everyone has to be in the other ranks too. Every soldier gets this sold-buch, which also contains a record of his pay. However, if he gets the sold-buch that I do not know, because I did not Have so many dealings with the Field Marshal myself.
Q. Well, you know Milch pretty well, didn't you?
A. No. I only had official dealings with him -- if I am to guess as to oho date -- fifteen to eighteen tines. That is all. I tried to remember the actual number of tines I met him. however, I think this was the number, And all these meetings were just short informational meetings which usually took from fifteen to twenty minutes and not over that.
Q. In the investigation of Rudolf Udet's, did you talk to Milch?
A. General Field Marshal Milch was Called as a witness and examined as such. He was examined and questioned as to questions of armament and also as to the program and of his ideas on that program. Furthermore, General Jeschonek, General Field Marshal von Richter and various other members and people were examined, and the opinion of the Generals was to be found out, how their attitude was toward the program. Everyone of them Was to give his opinion if he approved of it or if he disapproved of this program. In any case, everyone of them had. to make a brief free statement in order to get a true picture of the reason for the big slumps in production of Materials for the Luftwaffe.
Q. Well, under Udet's leadership as Generalluftzeugmeister, the performance of the Luftwaffe so far as production was concerned of airplanes, motors and other things that had to do with keeping the Luftwaffe in the air had not been satisfactory.
A. No, this is a historical mistake to think that under the leadership of General Oberst Udet the Luftwaffe had reached his peak. The development of a plane, took three to four years -- that is, the body itself -- and the development and construction and testing, that took two to three years, the 1391 (a) engine, four years.
All that which had been available in the Luftwaffe in 1939 and '40 had been planned and worked out by General Weber, who approximately crashed in 1936 -- '37, and after General Oberst had taken over his official position, a new planning or rather a progressive program had not taken place. And everything became stagnant, that is why the Luftwaffe failed completely from 1942 to '44 in stopping the attacks. however, after the end of Udet, the air armament had started a new development stage.
Q. In other words, it was after Udet died that the air armament went into a new phase of development and began to improve?
A. Yes, indeed. They tried to build a stronger engine, and efforts were made for a new development of the engine between 1300 and 1200 PS; the total aggregate tried to reach that after they had tried to use the engine in one and DB 9; and also they tried to solve this problem by using both engines the DB 805 on a single crankshaft, that, is, in order to gain the necessary number of PS for stronger engines. PS means horsepower. This attempt however, failed.
Q. When you went up to; let's take this. How do you spell the name of this man who was the aluminum specialist, who was accused of misappropriating some funds which had been allocated for the purpose of machinery; whose case you investigated. How do you spell his name?
A. Rautenbach.
Q. You are sure his name is Rautenbach, and not Rautenberger?
A. No, Rautenbach, yes, indeed.
Q. You say that he did not steal 800,00 marks; he only stole about 200,00 is that right?
A. It was not a real theft because it belonged to the factory and all the credits which had been given by the bank for the Luftwaffe had to be paid back any way. Ho actually just misappropriated this money, in so far as he received special money for building, which he usually would not have been able to get because they were under the war economy plea.
Q. That was a comparatively minor matter; it didn't amount to much any way.
A. Yes, indeed; it was rather minor offense; it was more of an action which should not have taken place in war, and according to regulations concerning war economy were punishable.
Q. And you are not aware that he has ever been tried, are you?
A. No, there was no trial. He had just been arrested, but he was considered a free nan; and in the company of six others he was taken to Berlin and then on the same day he had a discussion with Milch and so far as I know he went back to Oranienburg on Saturday.
Q. Well, the answer is "no", is that right?
A. I don't quite understand, would you repeat the question?
Q. The answer is "no", is that right?
A. Do you want to know if he was put before a war court?
Q. That is all I asked you.
A. Then, in that case, the proceeding formally had been entered against him, and then this proceeding on the basis of Milch's order, as authority in this field, was said to be stopped until at the end of the war on a probationary basis.
Q. You made an investigation and Milch said : "Let's stop; this man is a good aluminum man, And it was stopped.
A. Yes, it was the right of every supreme judge to interrupt the proceeding until the end of the war, if the guilty crime is not as important as to necessitate and immediate proceeding.
Q. Now, another time you went up to Oranienburg, do you remember that in connection with these two gentlemen from Radie OPTA?
A. No. I was not at Oranienburg myself, but only these two, Riedel and Moissner from Division 4 were picked up from there and brought to my Field court; at Steglitz Riedel and Moissner made strong remarks that his hair had been cut off in the concentration camp; they had to have their hair cut very short.
Q. Who did you talk to when you got these people released from Oranienburg?
A. Concerning that matter, I spoke with a regierungsdirector, in Division 4. If I remember right.
Q. Do you know who ran Oranienburg?
A. No. I don't.
Q. Do you know who was in charge of the concentration camps in Germany?
A. It was known that the concentration camps were under the Gestapo.
Q. Under the Gestapo; didn't the SS have anything to do with it?
A. Concerning the SS, which was an absolutely different part of the Wehrmacht, or rather political part or the Wehrmacht, we know nothing, but we even did not know anything about the disposition and the organizational chart of this organization because the Wehrmacht went its own way and the other went its own way.
Q. You didn't know the SS had anything to do with concentration camps, did you?
A. Oh, yes, of course I did. Everybody knew that in Germany.
Q. Everybody in Germany knew about that?
A. If it was known to every one, I don't know, but one can really say that the larger part of the population knew that the concentration camps were under the supervision of the SS.
Q. What did they use the concentration camps for?
A. I only know that now from the daily press; In any case witnesses were shown to me who had been in the concentration camps and among them was a homosexual who had misled forty juveniles and had also relations of that sort to soldiers at Langwitz and had formed a real homosexual circle; and there were also incurable homosexuals in the concentration camp.
Q. You learned that from the German press during the war, did you?
A. No, not from the press, not from the German press. Those were things which one always heard in my official capacity in our office.
Q. Did you ever see any military court that tried Jews or Poles or Russians?
A. No. Luftwaffe courts were not competent for those people. Soldiers were tried by the military courts; the Luftwaffe courts had no jurisdiction whatsoever over or with respect to civilians unless it was a punishable act of a member of the Luftwaffe in which civilians had been used as accomplices.
Q. And so far as you knew, the Geneva Convention was always abides by the Wehrmacht and all of the subordinates?
A. Well, I can only speak of my own sector. I knew that we as field courts were too exact even with respect to the Geneva and Hague conventions, and I am sure that this Tribunal knows that the Fuehrer pronounced his distrust toward the German courts. Somebody else mentioned the fact about the military tribunal at the beginning of the Russian campaign would be left at home in Germany.
Q. Did you go along with that?
A. Yes, until the end of the war.
Q. Do you know that they branded Russian prisoners of war?
A. No, we had nothing to do with prisoners of war, in the Luftwaffe, that is, with regard to Russian prisoners of war. Although I was in Russia for fifteen months, I did not see one single Russian prisoner of war because we were too far removed and we had nothing to do with these things.
Q. You never heard of the Einsatz-Commandos over there?
A. No, never.
Q. Are you familiar with the protest dated 15 September 1941 against the order of General Reinicke of 8 September 1941 which denies to the Soviet Russians treatment as prisoners of war?
A. No, I do not know that order and I heard it from you for the first time in my life and it is absolutely new to me.
Q. You never heard of it before?
A. No, never.
Q. Now, how long did Milch have this authority as a judge?
A. He was not such a judge; he did not have full power of confirmation; the air fleet commander under Gen. Field Marshal Sperle, Colonel General Stumpf, General Kesselring, Dessler, General Flugbeil for the Northeast. Field Marshal Milch had the confirmation right to the extent of the regular division commander in his function as field judge.
Q. And how long did he have this confirmation power?
A. From October 1942 to January, possibly also February, 1943.
Q. And how do you spell the name of this man who was, in the end of Summer or early Autumn 1943, in a Luftschutzraum in Berlin and made some remarks about Hitler and the Luftwaffe?
A. His name - well, to give you his name is absolutely impossible for me. As a judge and as a supervisory judge I had approximately 1200 cases a month.
Q. The answer is "you don't know how to spell his name," is that right?
A. No, I cannot remember the man's name. All I know is that he was a soldier from the Flak and as far as I remember he was from Goering's regiment.
Q. And he was sentenced to death and Milch spoke to Goering about him and they returned him to duty, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. So far as you know, the only people that were ever tried by the Luftwaffe courts were Luftwaffe personnel, weren't they?
A. Yes. Military personnel, soldiers and members of the staff and the armament industry that had something to do with the Luftwaffe, according to the laws which existed in the military jurisdiction of the Luftwaffe.
Q. Did you know they had any prisoners of war working for the Luftwaffe?
A. No, I didn't know; it's absolutely new to me.
Q. You are hearing for the first time that the Luftwaffe employed prisoners of war?
A. No, I heard that in 1945.
Q. After the war was over?
A. Yes, indeed, because we didn't have anything to do with the industry. We had a different task, namely, purely judicial tasks during examinations. I was present during questionings at Messerschmitt but I only spoke to the contractors, constructors, and parts procurers and I had nothing to do with the workers and I could not speak to them so I could not learn anything at all and I could not inquire and never had the thought to inquire.
Q. Do you speak Russian and Polish?
A. No, neither Polish nor Russian. I can just speak a little bit of English, what I learned in school, that is, and a little bit of French and Spanish.
1398-A
Q. Did you ever go in the Messerschmitt plant at Regensburg?
A. No, not in Regensburg. I only went to the main factories in Augsburg in the Summer of 1942 from 10 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock in the afternoon and then the same evening I went back to Berlin. This was the time of the examination concerning the crashing of various planes of the type Messerschmitt 210, which crashed as a result of construction faults.
Q. Did you ever see any concentration camp inmates working in any of these airplane factories?
A. No, I didn't.
Q. Did you ever see any concentration camp inmates?
A. Yes, indeed. I even invited a man for coffee who had been presented to me for an examination, who was in a concentration camp and who was somewhat sad about the fact that he found conditions in the military court in Berlin on Woertherstrasse worse than those prevailing at Buchenwald and asked to be sent back to Buchenwald as soon as possible. I had a very open talk with him and he was Amtsgerichtsrat and worked in Buchenwald in some sort of a capacity. He wrote to the commander of the BGB, which is known to everybody and which is a civil court in Germany, and he said that he expected to stay for a few more years because he wasn't careful enough and for him as a single man he didn't have to worry about anything at all. He told them that he wanted to be honest.
Q. I am just going to ask you one more question and all you have to do is to give me a date. When was it that this gentleman wanted to go back to this haven of loveliness that you are talking about at Buchenwald? Just give me the date.
A. That was in May or June 1943.
DR. BERGOLD: I have two further questions, Your Honor.
RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, I shall come back to the case of Rautenbach. Is it correct that this case looked like a very bad case?
A. Yes, it looked so bad that even my best judge, which I knew at the ZBV Court as a very wise man and very energetic, was sent to Berninger-Rhode immediately. At that time this was an extraordinary measure.
1399-A
Q. Then the second question: You examined several concentration camp inmates as witnesses, did you? Did none of them complain about anything at all?
A. If the man is still alive I do not know, but I had a very good friend who was a worker and who had spent four years in the concentration camp. His name was Leim. The man had been a Communist and after four years of concentration camp he had learned how to fix floors. That man unfortunately in 1942 was entangled into another political proceeding because of a comrade whom he had met in a concentration camp and he had sheltered in his house for a night, although he knew that the police were looking for him. He was again sentenced. He was sentenced to jail. However, he was pardoned, then he was a good soldier. The man repeatedly wrote to me and he assured me that all he could build up - he could only do that because he had learned a trade in the concentration camp so that he was able to make 110 marks a week as a floor fixer. He had a library and a collection of books in his home which was a real pleasure to look at. It was really fun to watch the man try to educate himself and how he brought up his ten year old son so that one could really say that he was living the life of a good citizen.
Q. I only wanted to know: When you examined the many witnesses from the concentration camps, did anyone of them ever complain?
A. No.
Q. Well, will you continue?
A. During the examinations I even told them that they were free to tell anything they wanted to the judge and that every statement which they made before the police could be repeated before the judges because all of the statements made before the judge were the ones that were binding and that they did not have to be afraid about the statements they would make. That was a principle which every judge had or held, namely, that he separated the two jurisdictions between police and judge.
Q. Thank you. Witness, before you mentioned the Luftwaffe jurisdiction with respect to air armament industry. Did that refer to foreigners as well or only as to Germans?
A. Only as to Germans and only to the leading people in the industry. I 1400-A don't mean that the worker or laborer, if he had done something wrong was punished immediately by them, but the case was that if on purpose or without any purpose the procurers and directors and contractors, if the laws were violated there, that these people were put before an expert Luftwaffe Court and tried there.
Q. Witness, you testified before that you occupied yourself a lot with the Geneva Convention and that you knew it thoroughly?
A. Yes, as far as I can remember we repeatedly mentioned questions of the Geneva Convention. That is also for the purpose of troop instruction.
Q. Witness, were you yourself also treated according to the Geneva Convention?
A. I do not wish to answer that question.
DR. BERGOLD: I have no further questions to the witness.
MR. DENNY: No further questions, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: I have one or two questions.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Did the courts that you supervised try workmen for loafing or for sabotage or disobedience?
A. Please?
Q. Did the Luftwaffe courts, in which you were a judge, try workmen for loafing, sabotage, or disobedience?
A. No. Cases of disobedience could not be heard-committed by civilians because regulations of paragraph 92, concerning military disobedience, with military personnel, did not apply to civilian personnel. Subordinate workers, workmen, etc., were never tried by the Luftwaffe courts. This was an absolutely civilian matter. In these cases there was a special law, not only of the judicial authority, or the person with judicial authority but also the statement had to be made that these matters should be brought before the Luftwaffe Court. This was done when those things concerned air armament matters, which had to be kept secret, or when there were personalities involved which were of importance to air armament.
Q. I still haven't the faintest idea of what the answer is. If a man working on a machine was careless, or loafed, did not turn out his work, or injured the machine, before what court was he taken?
A. Those were civilian courts. There were definite civilian courts. In other words, let's take it that somebody sabotaged a machine; he puts some nails into a machine. The matter was not brought before a Luftwaffe Court. It didn't matter whether he worked with air armament or not; he was just brought before a competent civilian court, according to the severity of the case.
Q. Then your court only tried officers or uniformed members of the Luftwaffe?