A. Here I can see that the various divisions are divided up into brigades of which the strength is different, one has 8,000, one has 9,000, and one has 1,000 men. And here is another group, yes, it has three battalions of in all 500 men. Those were the designations they certainly had.
Q. Well, in many cases doesn't this report also furnish the names and professions, not only of the officers in the brigade staff, but also the names of the officers and political commissars of the battalion. In one instance it even gives the Battalion vetinarian's name?
A. Well, it probably was mentioned somewhere in the report, or in the radio broadcast,but it can also be seen here from the reports how the divisional staff did not remain in one place. Once it was here and other times it was there. It didn't always remain at the same place. It kept moving around.
Q. And the heavy weapons of these brigades are also described in some detail, are they not?
A. Yes, but not very much. They were probably the ones which they took over from the Italians. It wasn't the proper equipment of the Division.
Q. Well, now will you turn to page 12 of the original?
A. Yes.
Q. It is on page 42 in the English, page 43 of the German. Would you be good enough to read the first sentence which follows the heading: "Rank, Insignia."
A. "With the 7th Division the yellow officers badges (which is 3 Stars, with one to 3 stripes for generals, staff officers two, and other officers one stripe.) This has already been carried out."
Q. Well, General, as far as this troup of 5,000 men here is concerned in this 7th Partisan Division, is it your contention that at the time this report was made that they were just an unorganized armed group who had no particular leadership, or table of organization?
A. They were certainly organized, but they gave themselves here designations which could not be understood from a military point of view, because what they understood by a division was different with us. From the various strength alone this can be seen, because an artillery regiment, if it is a proper artillery regiment will request a number of guns. One can't call this regular army, they were just bands.
Q. Well, now the Hague Convention doesn't require that a regiment have 5,000 men in it , does it?
A. No.
Q Well, the Intelligence Officer who wrote this report seemed to understand what was meant by a regiment. He wrote down the number of men it had in it, the names of the officers, the insignia they wore, the arms they had. He seemed to understand what was meant by a regiment.
A Just because the people gave themselves designations, this doesn't make them a regular army.
Q Well, excuse me, General, I am talking now about your contention that those people were not entitled to be recognized as belligerents, first, because they didn't have any organization and, second, because they didn't have any insignia, they weren't recognizable as soldiers. Now you arc falling back on something entirely different, it seems to me. Let's just stick to those two points first. You can certainly gather from this that there is not only an organization but a rather elaborate organization among these people, even though it didn't live up to your standards of what an army organization should be, so far as numerical strength was concerned; isn't that right?
A Well, but that certainly doesn't give these people the right to act like this after the Yugoslavian Army had capitulated, they could not just go and sot up an army.
Q But you are talking about a slightly different concept. You are now falling back on your other argument, which is that these people couldn't be called belligerent because there was the Croatian Domobrans in existence which was an Ally of Germany and it was the only regular Army in the country, that therefore no other army could exist. That is what you are talking about now, isn't it?
A Yes.
Q Well, I don't want to discuss that concept just now.
I just want to take up the first two things that you talked about -- the organization and the fact that these people could not be recognized as soldiers -- and I think it is clear from this document that in the case of this particular division those two objections don't apply, do they?
A I don't understand. I can only say that what is reported here was reported at that time by tho Ic and that we maintained their designations in order to have some kind of idea about what bands there were.
Q Well, now, General, the other day when you were discussing the Panther operation the Presiding Judge interrupted you and after you had -- and asked you how many men were taking part in the resistance, or, at least, how many partisans -- how many "bandits", as you called them -were involved in the group which occupied the area that you were supposed to mop up and you said "about 5000". Do you remember that?
A Yes.
Q And then the Presiding Judge asked you, "Well, what kind of organization did they have? Did they have any leaders?" and you said you didn't have any idea about that at all.
A I was asked whether I knew the officers. Of course, every band had officers, but they weren't only for these 5000 or 6000 men, these two brigades, but they were for the whole area, and then there were these individual small bands. If 10 or 20 or 100 or however many people there were in these bands grouped together they had to have some kind of leader or officer. That cannot be denied.
Q Well, you just said a minute ago that the 4th partisan Corps contained most of tho men who were fighting with these men in the -- who were fighting in the 15th German Army Mountain Corps?
A Yes, according to this report, it seems as if this was the case in my area.
Q Now, the 4th Partisan Corps area, according to this report, was divided into three divisions, and the report not only describes the divisions but also the brigades and battalions and detachments and gives the names of the officers even in the small units, as those of a battalion. That is true, isn't it?
A Yes.
Q. Well, you were interested in this for you own information, weren't you?
A Yes, that was the basis on which I formed my judgment about the bands.
Q Well in the face of your knowledge at that time of this elaborate organization that the Partisans had in the area of the 15th Corps, how could you sit there and tell the court the other day that you didn't know anything about the leaders, the leadership of the organization?
A I was asked and I understood it to mean whether I knew who the officers were -- who the officers were. I think that is what it was. I can't remember it exactly any more.
Q Well, now, here is the English text of what you said on the 7th of November. The Court asked you, "Where a force of 6000 men is concerned, it naturally would be divided into military units, would it not?" and your answer was, "That might quite easily be the case in the instance of these bands, and they did give their units names." As a matter of fact, when you made that answer you knew perfectly well that all of these people that were in groups whose designation was perfectly well known to you at the time or to your Intelligence Officer; isn't that true?
A The fact that the bands had officers, of course, I knew that, but I didn't know the names; I didn't know who they were.
Q Nobody asked you the names. The Court didn't ask you what the names of the leaders of these bands were.
A No, but they asked me "who".
Q. What they asked you was, "Well, was anyone in command of these 6000 individuals or soldiers or whatever you may call them?" and your answer was, "I am afraid I can't state that. I don't know."
A I said: I am very sorry, I can't tell whether these 6000, as it states here were led by one man as a brigade or something like that, or whether they spread over the country in small units and each of them had a leader. I really don't know. I didn't know that. From this report as you say it can be seen that if it was the 7th Brigade, then the 7th Division had an officer, but whether during the Operation Panther, whether all the units concerned there had one leader, I couldn't say because I didn't know.
Q Well, now, another thing that you testified to on direct examination was that these bands had the habit, when they were approached by the German troops, of suddenly dissolving into nothing, that they threw their caps with the red stars on them away, hid their rifles under rocks, and became little harmless civilians; is that correct?
A Yes.
Q. Well, General, how do you go about hiding a heavy motor under a rock? There are said -- Several of these battalions are described as having a good many heavy weapons. I realize they were not up to your standard, but still they did have some.
How were they able to melt away in this manner?
A They actually disappeared into nothing and that was their characteristic. Of course, they couldn't hide their guns in their pockets. They didn't have their guns with them all the time. But the guns were hidden in some house or something like that, but they weren't like our proper troops who had their guns, their weapons in a courtyard or in a street, somewhere. These people didn't have their weapons in the usual place as proper troops had them, but they hid them in houses and covered them up with straw or something else, but only when the fighting started and they wanted to fire with these guns, then they had to bring them out. Otherwise, they couldn't shoot. But when the fighting was going on, one couldn't say that they didn't show the weapons, but as soon as they were out of the fighting and realized that they would likely get into difficulties, then they used to throw their guns away and then they would walk around like harmless civilians. As soon as we were successful with the Operation Panther then the people suddenly would disappear, but just previously they had been shooting. Why did they disappear so quickly? They probably hid their weapons quickly in a house. That was easy to do. of course, the heavy weapons, they couldn't hide as quickly. They were captured probably. And they were then going about as civilians, and a moment ago they were fighting in the same manner as ordinary soldiers are shooting. This was a very amazing fact. But I never heard about French, or English or Belgian soldiers who suddenly disappeared from a battle. They were -
JUDGE BURKE: The Court will take the usual recess at this time.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats.
The Tribunal is again in session.
PRESIDING JUDGE BURKE: You may continue, Mr. Fulkerson.
BY MR. FULKERSON:
Q This enemy news sheet that we discussed was dated the 2nd of December 1943. I want to turn to another document now of a slightly later date. This is NOKW-1331. It is in Book XV, Exhibit 367. It is page 24 of the English, 23 of the German. It is a rather longish affair but I am only interested in one sentence, the one contained in the daily report for December 2, 1943, concerning the 264th Division. It says: "The medium sized band in English uniform transferred from Brac and Vis to area south of Primosten confirmed." Did you find it?
A Yes.
Q Now, isn't it reasonable to assume from that report that all the members of this band were clothed in English uniforms?
A It says: "Medium sized bands are being transferred in British uniforms from Brac to Vis." Vis is not within any sector at all. One can conclude from that that this medium sized band wore British uniforms.
Q And if any of them had been garbed differently, that would have been mentioned in the report, wouldn't it?
A That the whole of the band wore uniforms is not necessarily so from this report. One might assume it. After all, it is only a small or medium sized band. There are not too many people there. The possibility exists because here we are concerned with the islands and I believe Vis was a strong point from where British arms were landed which is the reason why some of the people wore partly uniforms.
Q Well, that is to say when we look at these daily reports generally and we find that it says so many people, some of whom wore black uniforms or so many people some of whom were in grey uniforms, it was important, was it not, for the Ic to know whether the whole hand was in uniform or whether only some of them were?
A On direct examination I stated if the report is, say, that this or that band wore black uniforms or as, in this case, British uniforms , this was an exception. That did not mean that all of them wore them. Perhaps only some of them did.
Q But the other reports state that only some of them did. A distinction in other words, seems to be made in these reports between bands only some of whose members were in uniforms and members all of whose bands were in uniform.
A But here we happen to have a report that by chance they were wearing uniforms and we are concerned only with a medium sized band, 40 or 50 men perhaps, who came from Vis and in Vis they were probably given these uniforms.
Q That is something else I want to ask you. What is your definition of the size of these bands. Now, as I recall it, you have mentioned small bands, medium sized bands and large bands. What is meant by those different terms?
A That varied very much. By a small band I may mean anything between 1 man and 50 men. A medium sized band may be anything between 35, 50 or 100. A large band would be, perhaps, a battalion even; that you would call a big hand.
Q Now, you testified earlier that one of your objections to this use of nomenclature such as battalion, regiment, brigade, division, and so forth as used in connection with these bands was that they didn't convey an accurate idea of the number of men who were actually in them. Is that correct?
A The strength of a band varied and, therefore, these terms were not precise.
Q Well, are the terms that you propose - that is small bands, medium size bands and large bands - are they any more precise than these other terms?
A They designate merely the strength of the band as compared to the strength of our own troops, for instance, any numerical precision there by is not given if you say a "medium size" band.
Q I know but if we use the word, the term "large band", you mean a sort of indeterminate number of people. It might be 5,000 and it might be 500.
A Yes.
Q That you think is more accurate than saying "1 brigade" or "2 brigades."
A The reason there is that this troop here does not know what sort of brigade is opposite them. They simply report "a large band" because the troops themselves did not know the Ic report so well so that they could say: "This is the xth brigade which we have to face"; but what was most important was whether they said: "This is a large band" or perhaps "it is only ten men."
Q So that - did I misunderstand you the other day? I thought you said that you personally objected to the use of these military terms, this military nomenclature to describe the size of these bands. Am I wrong about that?
A I didn't say that hut perhaps you have in your documents an order of mine which I issued at the time when I encountered the battalion toward Zara, as I told you the other day, and the Italian commander, on the basis of the reports he had received -- namely, that he was facing an entire division - thereupon believed he could not attack with one battalion. That is how I described it the other day - what was to be understood by a battalion or a band. I can remember that and I thereupon issued an order on one occasion that, as these troops were now down there, it should not always be reported about divisions and brigades because that to them , as they were troops in a new area, would be confusing and they were to make distinctions between small bands, medium sized bands and big bands.
Q So that tho purpose of this order of yours was just in the interest of accuracy?
A It should show how the troops would actually find conditions in a certain locality.
Q This division you said you encountered near Zara actually was no bigger than the German regiment. I believe that was your testimony the other day. Is that correct?
A Yes.
Q That is about 5,000 men?
A No; a German regiment at the most consists of 2,500 to 3,000 men.
Q Well, how would you describe a groups of 3,000 men, as a large band, small band, medium sized band?
A That is a large band.
Q Well, how would you describe a group of 15,000 men?
AAgain a large band if they are so many together.
Q Well, what purpose could this order of yours have served in such a case? If you couldn't distinguish between 5,000 and 15,000 men by the terminology that you suggested, how did it contribute to the interest of accuracy?
A For instance, a company is attacked by a hundred men and the company itself consists of a hundred men. It docs not have to say that they are a large band. I would, therefore, call them a medium sized band and when one company is attacked by 5,000 men they would call it a large band. You can never count that precisely whether there are 5,000 or 2,000. The most important thing was to the troops that this was a large band.
Q Now, lot's turn to the operation Panther. I believe that the first knowledge that we got of this operation from the documents is a teletype dispatch from the 15th Corps to the Second Panzer Army on the 27 November, 1943.
Does that correspond with your recollection?
A Yes, quite correct.
Q. That was actually the first correspondence anywhere about the Panther operation, is that correct? That was the first mention that anybody made of the Panther operation, not only in these documents but anywhere; that was the first communication between the 15th Corps and the 2nd Panzer Army about the operation Panther?
AAs far as I can remember, yes. I don't know if something happened before, which is possible. I do not know that any more.
Q But that teletype contained the proposal of the Corps to undertake the operation?
A Yes, it did.
Q So that about three or four weeks after you arrived you had already formulated your plan to conduct this operation?
A On the basis of the oral reports made to me by my chief of staff and on the basis of the assignment which I had, the thing was then so formulated.
Q In other words, you took over the Corps Headquarters, I believe, on about the 20th of October and a month later -
A On the first of November.
Q On the first of November; and on the 27th you made this proposal to conduct the Panther operation. Did the idea of this operation originate with you?
A The idea, I think, was already existing because in that area up to then, that is to say, after the capitulation of the Italians no German troops had arrived yet and because at that period of time the 371st Division was transferred to that area. Whether this idea originated with me or not, or whether it existed before with the Corps, I do not know; but the mopping up in that area had to be carried out so that the right sector of the Corps could at least roach the coast.
A But as far as you remember, the first communication to the 2nd Army about the operation came from you?
A In that period of time, on the 27th. of November, probably.
Q In other words, three weeks after you arrived there you proposed to seize the entire population fit for military service in this rather extensive area?
A I suppose my chief of staff reported this to me. He described conditions to me and on the basis of the experiences which he had suggested plans to me I probably agreed because I saw no other possibility to have this area finally secured as it was intended.
Q And your original idea as contained in that proposal was to evacuate all the males between the ages of 15 and 55?
A I believe that is what was intended, yes.
Q Well, what were you going to do with these people?
A The Croatian government had said - I think I saw that in the documents which will refresh my memory - that concerning that area which had been occupied by the Italians who afterwards then evacuated it, that it had not been able to penetrate into that area infested by the bands in order to employ the population of military ages for their own military purpose. For that reason it was intended that these people should be put at the disposal of the Croatian government as a matter of course, but what happened to these people was none of my concern. That was no longer a tactical task. I was purely the tactical leader with my staff. As far as I was concerned, as a tactical leader I had to guarantee the security of my troops.
Q You don't think then that it is part of a soldier's duty when he goes into an area and arrest a number of people from their homes you don't think it is any of his concern at all what is to be done with him after that?
AAs far as that goes, it is some of his, namely, in as much as they are going to be deported; but what happened to them otherwise, as they were Croats and as they were at the disposal of the Croat agencies, that was none of my business as a tactical leader. I am purely a tactical leader in combat. What happens after that is no longer the business of the tactical leader.
Q Even though you have to be consulted and in fact since you had been the author and originator of this plan, since you had to decide yourself in the first place what was to be done with them, it was still no concern of yours?
A What was to happen to the people afterwards, you mean?
A Yes.
AAs the man in charge tactically, I was concerned with the regular army. If I made prisoners, for instance, I had nothing further to do with the prisoners once the prisoners had been sent away; to me the battle was over then. The soldiers who have been captivated are being sent away and their feeding and so forth is being taken care of by the agencies in the rear and the same applied to this case. What mattered to me was that I would gain the utmost advantages for my soldiers and that my soldiers would suffer the least losses and that was guaranteed in that area by the fact that, as the bands always disguised themselves as civilians, the civilians should be removed from that area and these were the people of military ages, which is the reason why they had to be sent away.
They were then handed over to the Croatian authorities because they were Croats. What they did with them - I could scarcely go and see if they could accommodate them. That is entirely up to the Croats authorities.
Q Well now, after the army had received this proposal of yours they answered it by approving it and making one suggested improvement, that is, that all these men be deported to Germany as impressed laborers. Isn't that correct?
A No.
DR. TIPP: May I ask the Prosecution something? They are not putting documents before General von Leyser. May I ask that I could always submit these documents to General von Leyser concerning the Prosecution's reference. I don't think, in view of the many documents which are submitted, it is impossible for the witness to remember them offhand. If a document is being discussed,I think it is usual that the document be shown to the witness first.
MR. FULKERSON: If the witness doesn't know what I am talking about I will be glad to furnish him the document any time he asks for it, but I simply was trying to expedite this proceeding as much as possible.
PRESIDING JUDGE BURKE: Well, you may proceed and we will join very heartily in the last observation you made.
A May I now see the document, please?
Q It is in Book XIV, NOKW-830, page 128 of the English and 96 of the German. It is the entry for the third of December, 1943. It is the last entry in the document.
A This is an entry into the War Diary, but it is not the proposition of the Corps as far as I can remember from the documents. The report by the Corps was submitted by the army to some agency but the Corps did not make that remark.
Q No, no, that was the army's response to your first suggestion. In other words, you first proposed on November 27 to evaluate the whole population and then the army responded by saying, "Yes, we approve that. It is practicable to transport all these people to Germany for labor employment."
A I believe that that does not become clear from the document at all. I think all it says is that the army approves and afterwards the Corps heard that the army suggested to the Croatian Plenipotentiary General this proposition which, however, was turned down by the Plenipotentiary General in Croatia, because it was not practicable and as was found later it was entirely a Croatian matter, but the proposition by the Corps to send these people to Germany was not made at all.
Q Well, how did it get into the War Diary of the XV Corps if the army never made it?
AAs I said, the proposition was not made by the Corps.
Q No.
A But by the army, which is the reason why, afterwards, the Corps heard that the intention existed but nothing further; end therefore this is contained in the War Diary as the intention existed, but after the negotiations, which took place between the army and the Plenipotentiary General, it was found not to be practicable because it was entirely a Croatian matter.
Q All right, but as of December 3, 1943, when that entry there was made in the War Diary, the situation stood this way, that you had proposed to evacuate the male population between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five, the army had approved it and said further it would be a good idea, to ship them all off to Germany and there the matter stood at that moment.
Is that correct?
A No, no, that is not correct. This entry of 3 December - it does not mean that it was made on the third of December. A War Diary is being compiled in the course of time; there isn't an entry for every day. Therefore, if I have actually heard about this matter, to me, as the tactical leader, the most important thing was to get these people away.
Q And you didn't care whether they were shipped off to Germany or what happened to them? That was no affair of yours?
A You can't say that I didn't care but this matter is not a tactical matter any more, and therefore I was not in the position to do anything about this thing and because I had so many other things to do during the same period of time.
Q Now, you made it clear, I think, there are at least three references in the transcript now to the fact that only 96 people actually were evacuated in the course of this operation, and you said that this proved that the evacuation of the population was just an incidental aim of the whole operation because the report of the operation said it was successful, is that correct?
A Yes.
Q Well, now, who was it who said that the operation was successful?
AAccording to the document, I think it was the Corps.
Q In other words, someone on the Corps staff, in writing a summary of the operation, said that it had been successful and that report was passed on to the army?
A Yes.
Q And because of that, you draw the conclusion that the evaluation of the population was really not an important feature of this Panther operation at all?
You don't think that is a non sequetur?
A Yes, yes.
Q You do think it. is a non sequetur?
A What you asked me was whether this was a side issue, and to that I said "yes".
Q Is it very likely, General, that in summing up an operation of the XV Corps, which was conceived and directed by you and in which you employed three divisions, that a member of your staff, in summing up the results of the report to the army, was going to call it a failure?
AAs far as I know, I don't think anybody spoke about a failure. The Chief of staff was compiling these reports; the final result of the Panther operation, for instance. It says everything there, and also that the tactical aspect of the matter was a successful one.
Q That is right end the chief of staff -
A He didn't say tactically, actually; in fact it said the entire operation was successful from which it becomes clear that as we did not evacuate 6,000 people as the Prosecution alleged at the beginning but only arrested 96 band suspects, you really can't say that the success was related to the evacuation. The evacuation was not carried out in that sense at all. In actual fact, only 96 band suspects were arrested.
Q. What I am getting at is this, General. If that report had said that the operation was a failure, it would certainly have been a reflection on you, wouldn't it?
A No.
Q Although you had conceived the operation in the first plane, proposed it to the army, and had actually executed it?
A If I am unsuccessful as a soldier, I was always brave enough and not afraid to say I was wrong. That does not mean that I made mistakes intentionally. There is always the possibility that something prevents success from materializing but I never hesitated to report and admit it to higher authorities that something had gone wrong.
I am a soldier and that can happen every time. Should my superiors then say "he is not longer suitable", well they can sack me.
Q Now I believe that you testified that the reason, among others, that more people were not evacuated was that when the army reached the areas, the people were not there?
A That becomes clear from the report.
Q And I believe that the report says that the reason that people were not there was that they were forcibly evacuated by the Communists?
A That proved, in other words, that my suggestion to evacuate them in good time was the correct one but now the partisans did the very thing I wanted to prevent. I was unlucky from the point of view of sequence of time.
Q Now in this operation, General, you had in each division - or you had attached to each division either one or two groups of the SD, did you not?
A That was ordered, yes, because all these arrests were more or less a territorial matter because afterwards the people would have to be handed over to the Croatian authorities and because it was hoped that it could be checked up whether or not they were suspect and as the 371st Division had just arrived recently from the West, I believe, in this area, they had no idea and experience in these things which is the reason why General von Glaise, the German plenipotentiary General in Albania, suggested to the army to take along the SD for these things under a special cover name, which happened as was ordered.
Q Well now, if the people had all left en masse, as you testified, it must have been because there was a leak somewhere about what your intentions were. Is that not true?
The bands must have known before you got there that you were coming, in other words?
A That is entirely possible. It was only mentioned yesterday that on many occasions these operations were betrayed to the bands by the Croats beforehand and this is the reason why one of these orders says that the Croatian agencies must not be informed beforehand. The possibility that the bands heard of this beforehand most certainly existed and I think this is what happened.
Q All right, now, put yourself in the position of a native of this area which you proposed to comb. Let's just assume that he was neither sympathetic to the Germans nor to the partisans and all he wanted was to be left alone, and he was told that the German troops proposed to come in there with several groups of the SD. Do you honestly think that a man in such a position would prefer to trust himself to the tender mercies and delicate sensibilities of the SD or do you think that he would prefer to be absent from his house for a few days?