A. Unfortunately I am not informed with sufficient accuracy about the history of the SS, and, therefore I cannot tell you at the moment when the SS acquired that insignia. The way I explained it to myself was that it was meant to be a symbol for loyalty in to death, and, of course, one can argue about it as to whether Himmler kept that faith with his people.
Q. The IMT found, Dr. Altstoetter, at page 16951, that the SS originally contained two formations, the SS Verfuepungstruppe forces consisting of SS members who volunteered for four years armed service in lieu of compulsory service with the Army, and the SS Totenkopfveroaende, special troops employed to guard concentration camps which came under the control of the SS in 1934. When you had your conversation with Himmler in 1937, did he have any insignia on at all of the SS of any kind?
A. Himmler?
Q. Yes.
A. Himmler was in uniform.
Q. In 1937?
A. Yes, he was.
Q. What uniform was he in?
A. I suppose he was wearing the black uniform but I am not prepared to swear to it; I think it must have been the black SS uniform which was the normal uniform to be worn in peace time.
Q. Now why did you find it necessary in this first conversation with Himmler about the activities of the SS to say to him that you would not be required to do anything which would force you out of the Catholic Church? Will you please explain that a little more fully to me?
A, Yes. While in Leipzig, I had a friend who was a Roman Catholic and just before he had told me that he had a letter from his nephew in which his nephew complained that the head of his unit had compelled him to leave the Church and he told me that hadn't happened to him alone but to other people too. Tnat news had come to me from Westphalia and because of that letter I talked to Himmler about this matter, as I wanted to find out what it was all about and Himmler did tell me, "I, Himmler, never gave any orders and never shall give any orders for people to leave the Church."
Q. You weren't disturbed about their being any conflick between the activities of the SS and your beliefs as a churchman, were there?
A. I didn't quite get that question. I am so sorry.
Q. Did you have any question in your mind that your activities as a member of the SS might throw you into conflict with the teachings of your church, which you observed?
A. I was not concerned with the question as to whether my activities in the SS might bring me into conflict with the Church, but I was concerned with the basic question whether there was hope that the Party too would recognize Christianity as a basis of the State, would continue to recognize it as a basis, or would regain recognition for that principle. I was concerned with the question as to whether there was any hope that that would happen, or whether there was no hope at all.
Q. And you thought there was some hope about the Party following in the tenets and the teachings of the Catholic Church in 1937, after the Nuernberg Laws had been passed?
A. That brings up a very deep question, and a very basic question. At that time I had the hope that that would be possible. I hoped that one day moderate people would attain leadership. According to the experience which has been gained with revolutions in other countries and in other times, in my view the institutions of the state and public life, as such, had to be guided through the times of extreme National Socialism so that, when one day the moderate people would attain leadership, the basis for a moral renaissance, if I may call it that, would exist.
Furthermore, I believed that one would not have done enough by everybody withdrawing into themselves and by leaving those who were at the helm at the time to run the roost. I believed it would be better to try and see to it that the moderate elements received support.
Q. You were in office on the 1st of July 1943. Did you still have this belief that you have just described when the Thirteenth Regulation, amending the Reich Citizenship Laws, of 1 July 1943 was passed, which stated in Article 1, "Criminal actions committed by Jews shall be punished by the police"?
A. At that time my hopes received a severe blow. I admit that without any reservation, However, I must point out one thing.
At that time I was a terrible optimist, and because of that I believed that those transfers were transfers to police jurisdiction and not to the arbitrariness of the police. I also hoped that this too was merely a transitional phenomenon, and I did not ignore the fact that this Article I of the Law of the 1st of June 1943 related exclusively to criminal elements.
Q. In Prosecution Exhibit 453, which you discussed with your lawyer, there is a paragraph which begins: "In cases of Jews who were deported to Theresienstadt or to other places, a hearing as witness or hereditary biological examination is impossible for reasons of the Security Police, because persons to accompany them and means of transportation are not available."
Did you think that all of those people were criminal elements?
A. We were told that those people were Jews who, for security reasons on the part of the police, had been taken away from Vienna. As to whether and in what manner those people had turned criminal, I don't know, and I could not find out about that at the time. However, I should like to point out that a mistake has occurred, a mistake which you, Mr. Prosecutor, might have made --- that is, provided I got the translation through properly, You said that those Jews were needed for proceedings before the hereditary health courts. That is not true. They were needed for descent cases; that is to say, for litigation before the ordinary courts, and not for hereditary health court proceedings.
Q. "Hereditary biological examination" is what was read.
A. Yes, hereditary biological investigations were means of evidence in those proceedings.
Q. Yes. Now let me ask you this. Didn't it occur to you as a little unusual that every one of these witnesses who was sought for hereditary biological examinations was a criminal?
A. I did not assume that every one of those Jews was a criminal.
All I said before was that I did not know to what extent those people were criminals, or for what other reasons the police had removed them for security purposes, nor was I able to examine that question in every detail.
Q. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions. Maybe we will examine it together, yes? If they weren't criminals, why did they have to be brought to testify in the hands of the Security Police, and why did you think that only the Security Police knew where to find them?
A. We were referred to the Security Police by the letter which we had from the Security Police itself. It was that very letter from the Security Police that drew our attention to the fact that the Vienna courts were having those difficulties. The President of the District Court of Appeals, as far as I know, never knew anything about those matters.
Q. And no question was raised in your mind about the condition of these Jews who had to be brought back only by the Security Police, other than the fact that they were criminal elements?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, I have already told you that I did not know whether they were criminals and to what extent they were criminal, but, after all, they might have become involved in some proceedings or other. One could imagine, for example, that in view of the accumulation of Jews in Vienna - that is, in comparison with the number of other inhabitants possibly the police, in war time, felt that that large proportion of Jews was a danger and therefore they might have thought it necessary to remove certain circles of Jews, that is to say, possibly leading circles, perhaps Jews of whom one knew that they had established contact among one another. Perhaps it was found necessary to remove those Jews from Vienna.
Q. Yes. As I remember, you testified that the prosecutors who brought these proceedings to establish the Aryan character of a man's heredity were considered to be friends of Jews because the cases were often successful. That being true, did you think that all of these friends of these Jews were criminals?
A. No. Why should they be criminals? These proceedings involved so-called marriage litigations, these proceedings which were instituted by prosecutors at the suggestion of Jews who asserted that they were not Jews. Those persons asked the prosecutor to institute proceedings to establish beyond all doubt that they were nob the progeny of the man who was supposed to be their father and who was a Jew. Those were the proceedings I have been talking about. As to why the prosecutor in the case should be criminal, I don't know. Those were orderly and properly conducted proceedings, and those proceedings were decided in favor of the person concerned, that is to say, in favor of the prosecutor, if no expert opinions on the basis of hereditary biological investigations could be produced, because in that case only such evidence was available which those concerned produced themselves.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you a question about that. With reference to this rather high-sounding title of the hereditary biological specialist, I presume you know what form their speciality took, and I assume that it related to the comparison of blood types, did it not?
THE WITNESS: No.
THE PRESIDENT: It didn't
THE WITNESS: The examination of blood types was an. independent examination which went side by side with the expert opinion given by the hereditary biological specialist.
TEE PRESIDENT: Suppose than some one, through the aid of the prosecutor, was trying to prove that his putative Jewish father was not his father. Wouldn't it have been very much in his favor if he could have produced his putative father and had a blood type taken which night conclusively prove that they were not father and son?
THE WITNESS: Yes, certainly.
THE PRESIDENT: But you said before that the absence of these witnesses invariably, or in general, operated greatly in favor of the person who was trying to prove his Aryan ancestry.
THE WITNESS: Yes, that is the experience we gained.
BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. You said that you weren't too much disturbed about the Thirteenth Regulation under the Citizenship Law of 1 July 1943, because that provided that only criminal actions committed by Jews shall be punished by the Police. Now, what I am trying to ask you is this. Where you found, in every case where a request was made for a Jewish witness in one of these biological tests, that he was in the hands of the police, didn't you think it unusual that every one of these people was criminal?
A. No, no, those things don't fit together, Mr. Prosecutor. It is not necessary at all that every witness at such proceedings should be criminal, not even if the police said, "For reasons of security, the police have removed this nan from Vienna."
Q. Well, you did know, then, that the police punished Jews for other than criminal acts?
A. I don't know why the police are supposed to have punished noncriminal Jews. I never said so, and it never occurred to me. From what I have said here one cannot draw such conclusions either.
Q. Well, let me just ask this one more question about this. I read you two sentences and I ask you whether or not these didn't raise some question in your mind as to what had happened to the Jews who had been removed. Now let me read you the sentences:
"If the Residents' Registration Office or another police officer gives the information that a Jews has been deported, all other inquiries as to his place of abode as well as application for his admission to a hearing or examination are superfluous. On the contrary, it has to be assumed that the Jew is not attainable for the taking of evidence."
A. I have said that we were struck by those things, and that therefore, through the competent sub-department chief, we contacted the police. The police told us that the measures which they had taken had been taken for security reasons. Secondly, they said, "We cannot produce those Jews who are no longer in Vienna and who have been removed from Vienna, for technical reasons, because there is a shortage of transportation and also a shortage of escort personnel. However, as an exception, we are prepared to make these people available to you if you consider their presence really necessary in an individual case."
THE PRESIDENT: Will you remind me from which exhibit you are reading?
MR. LA FOLLETTE: Yes, Your Honor. I am reading from Exhibit 453, NG-900.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. Well, if you didn't think that all of these Jews were criminal, then why --- I beg your pardon; let me state it again. If you didn't think that all these Jews were criminal, then why did there have to be transport personnel with them?
A. Well, Mr. Prosecutor, if, for reasons of the security police any person whatsoever had to be taken to any place whatsoever, one obviously could not let them travel by themselves, because otherwise those reasons for police security would have been foiled if such a person traveled on his own.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you a question, please. As a matter of fact, what counsel is getting at is this. You knew--do you hear me?
THE WITNESS: I do not understand.
THE PRESIDENT: You knew that some of the Jews who were in protective custody were not criminals, didn't you?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: That is what he said.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. This first letter was in May 1944. When you met Kaltenorunner in June 1944, did it ever occur to you to ask him about this matter that pertained to the production of witnesses?
A. No, I didn't discuss that question with him. It was just by accident that we met, and we were only together for a very short time. It wasn't an official conference. I was introduced to him and we exchanged a few words. I then told him the story about my schoolmate, and that was all.
Q. Perhaps, I misunderstood you. I thought you said you met him coming back from a trip, and that you traveled together. Was I wrong about that?
A. I said that it was in the sleeper part of the train where we were introduced to each other, and that was on an official trip. However, if you are introduced to somebody, and particularly if it happens in a sleeper, well, as a rule if you don't know the man at all you only exchange a few superficial words with him.
THE PRESIDENT: We are only concerned with the particular instance and not the customs on sleepers.
BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. I want to ask you about these special places for the illegitimate children of foreign female workers. There were these nurseries in the Incorporated Eastern Territory, were there not?
A, I don't know.
Q. Well, am I mistaken? This morning, in answer to the presiding judge, didn't you say that these children were born both in the Altroich and in the expanded Reich?
A. That wasn't the way I put it. I was asked whether the term "Reich" referred only to the Altreich or to Greater Germany, and in reply I said that in accordance with the customs of those days, that is to say, in accordance with the legal views of those days, we meant Germany inclusive of the Incorporated Territories. However, I did not say that any children's homes were there. I don't even know anything about it.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me put it this way. If any such children were born in the Incorporated Eastern Territories, then the law applied to them?
THE WITNESS: Your Honor, we are not concerned with a law here. The legal situation, such as it had existed before, remained the same This was merely a decree by the Minister of the Interior: it wasn't a decree by the Ministry of Justice.
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps I should hate said the "decree" and not the "law".
THE WITNESS: If children of foreign women workers-- who had come to the Reich to work there--were born in the Incorporated Eastern Territories, then the sane treatment was accorded to them in the Incorporated Eastern Territories as was accorded them in the Altreich. BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. That is exactly what I want to ask you. Now I want to know this. Then, if a Polish mother in the Incorporated Eastern Territories gave birth to an illegitimate child, was her child to be treated differently than the child of a German, an illegitimate child born in that territory?
A. In principle, no. This decree related only to children who had been brought to Germany from somewhere else, and in this case, to stick to the Polish example, they were the children of Polish mothers who, as workers, had come from the Government General, shall we say, - I don't know whether that actually happened - to the Incorporated Eastern Territories. And I would also ask you to bear in mind that this decree of November 1944 was promulgated at a time when that question probably, in practice, played no part at all.
Q. I didn't hear you express any disapproval of the sentiments of this decree in the order that you sent out. May I ask you what you thought of this sentence when you wrote it?
"Those illegitimate children of the above-mentioned foreign female workers, who fathers belonged to the German nation or to the Danish, Flemish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, or Waloon, and who can be considered valuable from the racial point of view, should not be cared for at the nurseries for children of foreigners, but should be brought up like German children."
Now, as a good Catholic, will you explain to me why one soul should be brought up differently from another?
A Yes, I can explain that, because where one can no longer speak of the ability to do a thing one can no longer speak of a "must" either. It became an impossibility in Germany to attempt to educate all those children as if they were German children, for there was a spate of children and that was why everything failed. And the steps that were taken constituted a true effort to look after these children decently. That those children whose father was a German or, as one said at that time, of the same race, reaped the first benefit of education with a family, that is to say that we got them foster-parents, that we took that step is of course only natural. It seems to me that the essential point is whether these children were treated badly and unfairly, but one can't speak of any such thing.
Q You weren't concerned about that then much as a Catholic?
A Well, I don't quite know what I should have been concerned about.
Q I only go back to the fact that I want to know what it is could have concerned you about membership in your church and the actions of Himmler if none of these things disturbed you. What was it that you thought Himmler was going to ask you to do as a member in the SS that was different from this that you approved?
A I didn't met that question.
Q What was there that you thought Himmler would ask you to do as a member of the SS which was any worse than treating children differently on the basis of their parentage?
A Mr. Prosecutor, that presupposes that I should have been of the opinion that those children who were sent to nurseries or whatever else we called them, were treated badly and unfavorably, but there is no indication that that was so. The difference lay on an entirely different plane. The difference was simply this, in one case the costs were born by the Labor Front and by the Reich Food estate, and in the other case the costs were borne by the NSV or the costs were paid out of public funds. As in all these welfare questions, that point in the last analysis represents the crux of the matter.
German children, too, were sent to nurseries and for German children too, we had just emergency homes. There is no other way out in wartime.
Q May I ask you then why does the last sentence of this order read this way: This circular decree is not to be published, not even in the Information Gazettes for official use, either?
A I don't know what you mean, not even for official use and not in the Information Gazettes, for what?
Q "Not even in the Information Gazette for official use, either", is the translation that I have. That is the best I can do for you.
A Well, I couldn't see anything in that clause, because art that time, that is at the beginning of 1944, we came across that clause very frequently, and the true reason why such measures were taken, in other directions as well, was that we were compelled to save labor and material, and also it was obvious that many things were only of temporary significance. Therefore one did not wish to burden the official gazettes with such matters which were only of temporary significance.
Q Who operated these nurseries?
A I don't know. In the decree it only says that the Labor Front and the Reich Food Estate and the NSV would be in charge of them.
Q And the judges of the courts under your administration were advised as to where they were to send these children, were they not?
A No. The Guardianship courts had nothing to do with the accommodation of those children. That was a matter for the agencies of the internal administration to deal with, and the Guardianship Courts were there for people to apply to them who had some legal complaint to make or people applied to those courts to ask for aid in some way or another.
Q You were telling them what to do when they applied, were you not?
A I told them that they had to observe international private law.
Q Now let me ask you if you ever heard of this situation according this is dated in January, 1946, but it relates to the period during the war at Braunschweig.
See if you ever heard of this. According to the Associated Press an examination has been completed of the methodical Nazi murder of 462 babies and the removal of their bodies in cardboard containers to unnamed graves from two baby homes. The babies were considered -
THE INTERPRETER: Would you repeat, please? There was something wrong here.
MR. LA FOLLETTE: According to the Associated Press an examination has been completed of the methodical -
THE PRESIDENT: The electrical transcription has run out of film. We will take our recess now instead of five minutes later.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. La Follette, will you pardon us a moment while we dispose of a matter here before you start? These matters are not ordinarily discussed in open court. They are matters which relate to the administrative work of the Tribunal, but this presents a situation which is different from anything which we have had before. We have here two applications for additional witnesses for the defendant Rothenberger. The application in one case -
MR. LA FOLLETTE: If Your Honor please, may I interrupt a minute? I believe Mr. Wandschneider is right outside.
THE PRESIDENT: WEll, he can read it in the transcript. We have here two applications for additional witnesses for the defendant Rothenberger. One is dated 12 September and the other the 11th of September. In both cases the statement as to the proposed evidence which will be sought from the requested witness shows that the matter and the evidence offered or sought is purely cumulative. It relates to the matter of guidance of jurisdiction of the Special Courts in Hamburg by Dr. Rothenberger, concerning which we have had testimony on the Rothenberger attitude toward the Jewish question, which was fully covered in their main defense.
We do not look with favor upon applications at this late date for matters which have already been covered in the main defense of the respective defendants, and we call attention to the very real distinction which exists between the situation of the prosecution and the defense.
The defense, before it put on its testimony in chief, had heard the testimony of the prosecution and had an opportunity to rebut it. The prosecution, on the other hand, has not had an opportunity as yet to rebut the defense's testimony, which is put in by the defendants in their case in chief. It may be that some proper evidence in rebuttal may be receivable when offered by the prosecution because it will be their first opportunity to rebut the evidence presented by the defendants. The defendants have already had that opportunity as to the prosecution's case. The matter is within the discretion of the Court, but we see no good purpose in calling witnesses requested at this late date for purely cumulative evidence, so the application will be denied.
You may proceed.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. LA FOLLETTE:
Q. I want to read you this account and ask you whether you heard of any of these things during your time in the Ministry of Justice, and, if so, what you did about them.
"According to the Associated Press, an examination has been completed of the methodical Nazi murder of 462 babies and the removal of their bodies in cardboard containers to unnamed graves in two baby homes, The babies were considered illegitimate children of slave laborers. The mothers worked on farms and in the Volkswagen factory near Braunschweig. They were taken from their mothers at the age of up to three months, and taken to two clinics in the village of Welbke and Ruhen. Out of 114 babies who were located in wooden huts in Welbke, 92 died, but the mortality figure in the corrugated huts in Ruhen was 100 percent. Three hundred seventy were located there and 370 died. The baby homes were supervised by a German administrator and medical personnel. The British investigators have arrested 16 men and 3 women who are to be interrogated as war criminals.
The babies were killed by wilful neglect, wrong feeding, and premature separation from their mothers, and the general filthy condition in the clinics."
Did you ever hear about that during the time that these children were being sent to these babies' nurseries?
A. No, never. I cannot remember any case of that kind at all.
Q. How many trips did you take between January 1943 and the end of the war around Germany?
A. Within the country?
Q. Yes.
A. That is very hard to say. In the beginning, on the average, I had to attend a meeting of a committee concerning civil cases, which was out of town, every two weeks. Then in the summer, about May 1943 that is, I went to negotiations concerning legal means and legal remedies which took place outside of Germany. In June and July again, about every two weeks, I made a duty trip. Then from the month of August on, after the department had been evacuated, regularly every week I went once to Boehmisch/Laipa and once to Berlin. In addition, I made official trips to the districts of Koenigsberg, Hamm, and Zweibruecken, Duesseldorf, Innsbruck, and Graz. Then during the entire year of 1944, that is to say, from April on until August inclusive, altogether perhaps 8 to 10 times I traveled to Kochem to attend courses which took place there and which I had to direct. I cannot guarantee that that is complete, but there were so many trips that I just came and went.
Q. Yes. And in none of these many trips, so numerous that you can't remember, you never made any inquiry in any place about how these foreign children were kept?
A. I had nothing to do with it at all. That was not within my sphere of work. I only had to take care of the Surrogate's Courts. I said before already that the care of the children was a matter of another administration.
Q. You have answered it. You never made any investigations. Did you ever, in all of these trips, did you ever go to see any of your friends in the SS at any concentration camp?
A. No, no. I was never in any concentration camp, and I never had any SS friends.
Q. You were at Kochem when Himmler Came and made this speech of 1944, were you not?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you and your old hometown friend have time to talk together while you were there?
A. Yes.
Q. About how much time did you have to talk with him - approximately?
A. I did not speak alone with Himmler, but I was in the group where Himmler was received when he arrived. It was intended that Himmler should arrive toward noon and then make his speech about three o'clock. He arrived at half-past three and had to begin speaking at four o'clock. After the speech he left again, so that the time was very short. Moreever, the time was filled in by short conversations with the Minister.
Q. When you went to visit him at his headquarters, how much time did you spend? Didn't you spend overnight with him?
A. No. I used to arrive in the morning at half-past ten. I had spent the night on the train, and I had expected that sometime in the afternoon there would be a possibility of a conference, but that did not succeed. All day long I was free. I was told that I wouldn't have anything to do until dinner. Then at a table where Himmler was also eating there were about 12 people sitting around. At a certain distance from Himmler I ate my dinner, and subsequently after the dinner I had the possibility of having a very short conference with Himmler and I left again at half-past eight.
Q. Do you remember any of the people who were at that dinner on this occasion?
The twelve people?
A. I remember two people: one was Himmler's adjutant, by the name of Brandt, and the other one was an Obergruppenfuehrer by the name of Pohl.
Q. Was Brandt the man who was sentenced in Tribunal II recently be convicted?
A. Yes.
Q. And is Pohl the man who has just been tried in Tribunal II -- I believe the other was Tribunal I -- is that the same Pohl who has been on trial here?
A. Yes, he is on trial at present, yes.
Q. During this meal, what did the men at the table talk about?
A. As far as I remember, the conversation dealt with quite general problems, such as, well what one discusses at a table, art and similar matters, but certainly not crimes.
Q. Now then, this was just about the time of Stalingrad, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. And Himmler and everyone was very busy? All these men were busy men, were they not?
THE PRESIDENT: We will assume they were busy.
MR. LAFOLLETTE: I am entitled to an answer, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we know the answer.
BY MR. LAFOLLETTE:
A. I said already that just because they were very busy, because Himmler was very busy indeed, I only had the opportunity of speaking very briefly with him.
Q. And at this time with these busy men you talked about art and incidentals and nothing about concentration camps and the runnings of the war or duties of the SS? That wasn't mentioned at the dinner?
A. I could imagine, Mr. Prosecutor, that if all day long one has to worry about all possible and impossible questions, that the dinner time is certainly the time used for some relaxation, since the whole time was about a half-hour altogether.
Q. Yes. How many times had you seen Himmler between the time you saw him in 1937 and the fall of 1942?
A. In the fall of 1942 I did not see Himmler.
Q. I said how many times between November '42 and 1937 did you see him? I don't say you saw Him in November '42, only from that interval.
A. I spoke to him twice.
Q. In five years?
A. In five years. Yes, in five years.
Q. And you testified that you never served actively in any of these legal capacities with which you were connected with the SS. Then may I ask you, how do you account for the fact that on the 18th of September 1942, at the meeting with Thierack and Dr. Rothenberger where the matter of the disposition of Jews and gypsies was discussed, Himmler said, and pointed you out as an example, as a reliable SS-Obersturmfuehrer, Reichsgerichtsrat Dr. Altstoetter?
A. I am not of the opinion that Himmler made that emphasis in my person as a positive emphasis in connection with the extermination of Jews and so on. And how he came to point at me, that is also unknown to me. It could be that his attention was drawn to my person by some information which he may have received about the fact that I, as an older man during the war, received an important decoration for wartime service.