mitted here, but I discussed these facts on the basis of the documents.
Q The order to which I just referred is dated December 1943.
A That came later.
Q I see. Do you happen to know whether this so-called Loehr Order effected a change in the situation on the Peloponnes?
A I don't believe it effected any change; or, at least, not to the best of my knowledge.
Q General, yesterday you mentioned that on the Peloponnes there were two Naval commanders. Did the Military Commander Greece have any official jurisdiction or supervisory authority over these Naval commanders regarding any such reprisal measures as were ordered by these Naval commanders?
A No; nor did I have such an authority. They had their own channels.
Q My last, but one, question: Yesterday you discussed the great raid which took place in Athens in August 1944, where there were more than one hundred wounded, and five thousand arrestees. You mentioned that at the time, on request of the Military Commander, you and your troop participated in this raid. I would like to know from you now, General, who was, in August 1944, Military Commander in Greece.
A In August 1944 General Scheurlen was Military Commander. S-c-h-e-u-r-l-e-n.
Q In my last question I had reference to a passage in the War Diary of the 68th Corps. This entry is dated the 8th of May 1944. It is contained in Felmy Document Book IV, and has been submitted by Dr. MuellerTorgow. The page number is 50 of both the English and the German texts. I am reading from the passage which is approximately towards the middle of the page, I quote:
"Ths Higher SS and Police Leader Greece, Major General Schimana, states by teletype (see enclosure), that he will be able to pacify the Peloponnesus within two months with the SS-Police Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 18. The Army Corps is of the opinion that Court No. V, Case No. VII.
the Boeotian area, in which the SS-Police Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 18 is employed at present, is not pacified at all yet, and does not think it expedient to transfer the SS-Police Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 18 to the Peloponnesus."
I will show this passage to you, General. My question is the following: Did Major General Schimana mention anything to you concerning the fact that he negotiated with you concerning the taking over of the Peloponnes by order of the Military Commander Greece?
A No; I remember the events quite well, because they were somewhat significant, for the way in which the SS acted. Where we with two divisions fought for more than one year, the SS -- not, in this case, General Schimana, but his superior agency -- imagined that they could, alone, with the SS Police Regiment No. 18, have to appear on the Peloponnes, and that would solve the whole problem. I rendered him somewhat ridiculous when he came with that request, and I remember quite well that he said, "Well, that is coming from higher up from our central office for the combatting of bands -- or something like that. There was one certain department in Himmler's staff which dealt with the combatting of bands. This left me with the impression that he himself did not believe in the behaviorism which he was trying to express. Since the highest SS leadership pressed for this measure, we actually -in June, July -- transferred this SS regiment to the Peloponnes and to the area Boeotia which thus had been left unprotected, the 7th SS Regiment was transferred as replacement for the 18th SS Police Regiment. The Military Commander was not the one who initiated this suggestion. I know that quite definitely.
DR. WEISGERBER: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Are there other counsel who wish to examine this defendant? Apparently not. You may cross-examine.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. FENSTERMACHER:
Q General Felmy, just now in answer to a question by Dr. Weisgerber you touched upon a dispute which apparently existed on the peloponnes peninsula between the 117th Division stationed there, and the administrative sub-headquarters. Isn't it true, General Felmy, that the dispute there was whether, who had the right and the jurisdiction over reprisal measures, and the administrative sub-areas headquarters in that particular instance waived its right to carry out reprisal measures and permitted the Division to do that?
A That is correct. And a remark of the 117th Division in its activity report proves that.
Q Did the administrative sub-area headquarters have the jurisdiction over reprisal measures originally, and simply yielded it in that particular case to the Division?
A I have no exact information about that. That was only made completely clear in the Loehr Order of the 22nd of December 1943.
Q The administrative sub-area headquarters were subordinate to General Speidel, were they not?
A Where sub-area administrative headquarters existed, they were subordinate to the Military Commander.
Q Who carried out most of the reprisal measures on the peloponnes -- the divisions subordinate to you, or the administrative headquarters subordinate to General Speidel?
A The divisions subordinated to me.
Q You then take the responsibility for these reprisal measures?
AAs far as I ordered them myself, certainly.
Q You also take the responsibility when they were carried out in compliance with orders which you had previously passed on?
A I cannot answer that in this general manner. I would have to know of one specific instance. The OKW had in basic directives ordered the carrying out of reprisal measures was up to the divisional commanders. Earlier, in summer 1943, even regimental commanders were allowed to order reprisal measures. I don't know the exact year when this was changed, but I believe it also was in the late summer months of 1943.
Q Do you consider yourself responsible, General Felmy, for actions taken by units subordinate to your command?
A No; where I did not order then myself I do not consider myself responsible.
Q You testified, General, that you were dismissed from the Air Force in January of 1940 because you were hold responsible for an action of a subordinate officer -
A Yes, that is correct. What I said was that I, personally, was charged with having given the secret document involved, which was lost in this incident, to the Air Force units concerned, and that was somehow involved with the emergency landing which took place. Soon afterwards, the Fuehrer order was issued which, as I might say, was posted on almost every door of every house , approximately, that no agency was to know more about any task than fell within its own sphere of competency, and that was to be upheld during combat time, and the whole order was meant to make the secrecy even more applicable.
Q One of your affiants, General Felmy, in your Document Book I, at page 46, states -- regarding that particular incident -- that there the OKW held you responsible for actions of a subordinate over whom you had no influence. Was it usual for the OKW to hold commanders responsible for what their subordinate did?
A That depended on what those people happened to fool like. It also depended on the esteem in which the person who might have been involved was held in higher agencies. One could not know that beforehand.
Q Was the "Fuehrerprinzip" applied within the German Army?
A I don't understand what you mean by this question?
Q I mean by that, the Leader Principle of holding a leader responsible for what those under him carried out. I believe that was the principle applied within the Nazi Party, of which you were a member.
A No, I don't believe that was the principle which was applied. Besides, this had nothing to do with the fact that I was a member of the Party, Neither did I draft the points of the Nazi program, nor did I disseminate the ideology in any written documents or speeches.
Q In what month of 1940 did you join the Party, General Felmy?
A Presumably it was September when I announced my joining, and then the application would run for some time until the formalities were dealt with. And then one was accepted into the Party, and the date which counted was the date of the first application. About three months passed since that application.
Q Then you testified, I believe, on direct examination that in October 1940, that is, one month later, you went back to Berlin on duty with the Air Corps.
A No, that is a mistake. In October 1940 an old friend of mine asked me to come to Berlin, and to help him.
He was in charge of several cartels, which is a civil occupation, and had nothing to do with flying, by the way.
Q YOU don't believe that your joining the Party had anything to do with your restoration to active service?
A No.
Q At the time you joined the Party, General, did you know about its political, religious and racial theories?
A Points of the Party program had been published, but I did not concern myself very much with them. After all, every Party publishes its program. I entered the Party, as I have stated, in order to --during the time of war -avoid disputes and to take special ways -- during the war we were not so much interested in the Party - we were only interested in Germany.
Q I believe you testified, General, that after the incident which caused your dismissal in January of 1940, you were considered persona in grata with the Party, and thereafter received no promotions.
A Whether the Party already at that time influenced promotions, I don't know. At a later time obviously that was the case. But whether it was so at that early time, I don't know.
Q Then your first position after you were restored to active service was as chief of the military mission to Iraq?
A That is correct.
Q Before you took that position you had an interview with both Hitler and Ribbentrop, did you not?
A Yes.
Q Your mission there was more political than military?
A I don't think that they pondered that problem very much.
I think they just wanted to show a gesture to the Iraq people. If one had intended to commission me with the execution of a political mission, that should have been done earlier. On the 21st of May I was reactivated, and towards the end of April the dispute between Iraq and England had developed to a local state of war -- and that was almost three weeks later. At that time the facts had been fairly much established.
Q You first became deputy to Field Marshal List, I believe, in July 1941. Do you recall the exact dates?
A 23rd of July until the 23rd of August. These are the exact dates, I believe.
Q General, is a deputy a figurehead when he takes over for another commander, or does he actually have a good deal of power?.
A Well, as a deputy he has full authority. For instance I as deputy had also judicial authority.
Q You then would take full responsibility, so far as OKW was concerned, for what went on within the area of the 12th Army while you were deputy to Field Marshal List?
A Yes, formally so.
Q Why do you say formally so?
A Because there were many things which took place, and which I really learned here from the files -- which doesn't, however, exclude that it was already reported to me at the time, only I don't remember it any longer. I cannot recall it. I don't recall any single major incident; and generally it was known that excesses took place in Serbia, and that constant surprise attacks took place in Serbia.
Q When you talk about excesses in Serbia, on whose part do you mean ... on the part of Germans, or on the part of occupied peoples?
A I mean excesses committed by the Serbs.
Q Did you ever hear during the period while you deputized for Field Marshal List, of any excesses on the part of German occupation troops?
A No.
DR. LATERNSER: I want to make a statement with the permission of my colleague, Dr. Mueller-Torgow. I just established that there was a mistake in the translation just now which changes the meaning. General Felmy said that it was generally known that in Serbia "Schweinereien" took place. With this he does not mean excesses; and it was also added that counter measures were taken ... no, instead, this word means, according to what General Felmy said in German, surprise attacks from partisans. But he did certainly not mean -- and it was quite clear -- that they were excesses committed by the Germans.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: Your Honor, please, I think General Felmy can state exactly what he means without Dr. Laternser, and I believe, as a matter of fact, that he has clarified precisely what he meant.
DR. LATERNSER: Your Honor, I had not quite finished yet. The later question was based on this misunderstanding in the translation and can only thus be explained.
INTERPRETER: May I say something, your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.
INTERPRETER: The word "schweinerei", which was used in German, is a derogatory word, and I have translated it as "excesses", which I believe is correct. The fact that the word "excesses" was used in this trial fairly much in conjunction with the German troops, does not mean that it cannot be applicable also to excesses by other people, and I believe the word "excesses" is correct for the German word used.
DR. LATERNSER: If it please the Tribunal, I listened to the statement of the interpreter, and it is quite correct; but it has only been interpreted in a way as if the excesses had been committed by German troops.
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps we can clarify this by a question by Mr. Fenstermacher to the witness as to his interpretation of the word in question; and that he may, if he so desires, make any statement in explanation of his previous statement that he may care to make.
BY MR FENSTERMACHER:
Q General Felmy, when you characterized certain actions which occurred in Serbia during the time that you were the Deputy for Field Marshal List, will you kindly explain what you had in mind?
A I wanted to say by the expression which I used, that a number of surprise attacks and other sabotage acts took place, they were committed by the Serbian population and directed against the German occupational troops.
Q When you were appointed Deputy for Field Marshal List in July 1941 -- you were appointed Deputy for Field Marshal List in July 1941, when he went on leave, because you were the Senior Corps Commander within the 12th Army, is that not so?
A I was the ranking officer. I was no corps commander, I had no corps headquarters, but at the time I was the ranking officer in the Balakans and as such I was made Deputy of Field Marshal List.
Q That was a customary procedure for OKW, to appoint the senior ranking commander a deputy when the top commander left?
A Yes, that is how it was handled in most cases.
Q Field Marshal List has said he became ill about the 15th of October, and General Kuntze did not come down to replace him until 27 October, 1941; were you not as the senior ranking commander in the Balkans at the time, also placed in charge of the 12th Army during General List's illness and prior to General Kuntze's arrival?
A No. I said on direct examination quite clearly, and General Foertsch in his examination also said how the circumstances came about. He explained how he telephoned the OKW, and how the OKW appointed Kuntze, and, at the same time ordered that for the time being the Military Commanders in Serbia, Northern Greece, myself in Southern Greece, should act independently. The OKW apparently had the opinion that General Kuntze would arrive very shortly down there; that his arrival was somewhat delayed could at the time not be be expected.
Q Did the OKW know when General Kuntze would leave and when he would arrive in the Balkans?
A I can not very well tell what the OKW knew, but since in most cases the personnel office mentioned and appointed the deputy, and since the personnel office is not always quite correctly informed of the situation, this error could thus come about; that is my explanation.
Q Whom did the OKW hold responsible for the excesses -- by excesses this time I mean excesses on the part of German troops, if they occurred within the area of the 12th Army, when List was ill and prior to Kurtze's arrival?
A The Military Commander, the commanders concerned within their own area; that would be my person for Southern Greece, the Northern commander for Serbia, and the one in Saloniki-Aegean for Northern Greece.
Q There is nothing in the documents mentioning that particular subordination or arrangement, is there General?
A No, but if the OKW does not expressly appoint a deputy on the spot, it is quite obvious that everybody is responsible for his own area; after all, he has his assignment.
Q You were not expressly appointed Deputy in July by the OKW, were you, General?
A Oh, yes, I was. Under a statement made by General Foertsch, I was expressly appointed Deputy for the total area of the 12th Army.
Q Did you ever receive from Field Marshal List the Keitel Directive regarding execution of hostages at the rate of fifty and one--hundred to one, the order dated 16 September 1941?
A I said on direct examination that I know the order; when I received it, I don't know. In the document submitted by the Prosecution my agency was not mentioned. In September 1941 I was in Germany for a conference, and on leave, and after my return I suppose my chief of staff informed my about the order, which had in the meantime been received.
Q General Foertsch presented his book which showed the dates on which he had been on leave. General, have you one of those?
A My pay book which contained such dates had been taken away from me while in an American camp, though I protested against this, and, therefore, I can not at the moment show any certificate for the truth of my statements, but since I can make my statement under oath, the days are correct, even if I cannot give you the very day on which I might or might not have been there. I know that in September 1941 I was in Berlin for a conference, and I was on leave in Salzburg and Brunswick.
Q Do you recall Field Marshal List's testimony that he received the OKW Directive of 16 September 1941 in many copies, in enough copies to simply pass them to his subordinate units?
A How many copies, I don't know, but to the best of my recollection there were three or four copies mentioned, which were intended for the subordinate agencies, and by these are meant the Military Commanders, the Commander in Serbia, the Commander in Northern Greece, and my person, and possibly the Commander for Crete; he should have had three or four copies to pass on.
Q Have you any doubt that you received that order?
A No. I don't doubt in the least that I received it.
Q Did you pass that order on to your subordinate units?
A I don't know whether I passed them on to Crete, or whether for Crete there was a special copy which had been enclosed. At the time I had no troops except the three rifle battalions as Commander of Southern Greece.
Q Did you pass the order on to those of your battalions?
A No, I don't believe that I did that. They only served the purpose of guarding, etc., and they had nothing to do with reprisal measures. Furthermore, there were no actions which could have been retaliated, because the Greeks were very sensible, and they remained peaceful, and there was nothing to do except the difficulty of supplies and food.
Everything else was normal.
Q You did not refuse to pass the order on because you thought it was unlawful, did you?
A No, I didn't consider it unlawful.
Q Did you also pass on the Keitel Order of 28 September 1941, regarding having hostages ready at all times in the occupied territories?
A If a copy had been enclosed intended for Crete, then I passed it onto Crete, for the whole supply traffic went via the agency of the Military Commander of Crete, and mail was part of this. My good rifle battalion members did not receive this order because they had nothing to do with it.
Q Would you look at Document Book I General Foertsch, at page 91 of the English, and page 71 of the German. This is General Foertsch's order which was issued from the 12th Army Headquarters on 29 July 1941, at the time when you were deputizing for Field Marshal List, do you recall it?
A I can neither say yes or no to this question, since I am under oath. It is dated during the period of time when I was deputizing. It is signed Armed Forces Commander Greece, 12th Army, with the I-c reference number; whether it was hurriedly reported to me at the time I can no longer tell you.
Q General, Felmy, you have quite a good recollection of the days when you were on leave. Why do you not have a similar vivid recollection regarding orders of this kind?
A Leave days form an exception, especially so during the war, when they represented recreational time which one remembers gladly. Orders such as the one which I have just looked at, and similar orders you just mentioned, the Keitel Order, establishing the hostage ratio, and then also around that time comes the arrest of hostages for political reasons, a third order of that kind, and so one might easily get mixed up in these orders.
I don't think that has anything to do with a good memory.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Fenstermacher, before adjournment may I make this statement and request that you advise the messenger as to what document books we may need for this afternoon, so we may have them for examination.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: I will be glad to do that, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess until 1:30.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1330 hours.
(Noon recess until 1330 hours, 5 December 1947)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing convened at 1330 hours, 5 December 1947) HELMUTH FELMY - continued CROSS EXAMINATION - resumed BY MR. FENSTERMACHER:
Q General Felmy, prior to the luncheon recess we were discussing the period during which you deputized for Field Marshal List in July 194, and, we were looking at Document Book I, page 91 of the English, and on page 71 of the German, that's an order issued by the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast, on 29 July 1941. What is meant, General Felmy, if you know, by the words "All other means of intimidation which are customary with residents in the country."
A The provision shows that death sentences for sabotage acts should be carried out by hanging, so that the people guilty should not be shot. What it means by way of addition, "All other means of intimidation which are customary with residents of the country should be employed." I don't know what that remark is supposed to mean.
Q Did it mean concentration camps, perhaps?
A I can not say that.
Q Do you know General Felmy, on page 48 of your book, page 67 of the English, Your Honors, the notation for the 19 July 1941, about your deputizing for Field Marshal List, about which I believe that you said you didn't take over until 23 July, was Field Marshall List still in the Balkans between the 19th and the 23rd, do you know?
A The 23 July, my period of deputizing started, and it lasted until 23 of August. It had been ordered prior to this because Field Marshall List didn't stay throughout his leave.
Q Will you turn now to page 67 of your book, page 87 of the English, Document Book I, in the SD report, there is mentioned the execution of one-hundred Jews on 25 July 1943; as a matter of fact, I believe the execution didn't take place until 29 July 1941, in reprisal for an action which occurred on the 25th.
Did you hear about that reprisal measure when you were deputizing for List?
A I could not tell you that. I don't recall it, anyway. At any rate, not even after looking at the document here.
Q It would have been General Foertsch's duty to inform you of such an event at the time, would it not?
A Yes, if he knew about it, and I am quite sure he would have informed me. But this here is a report of the Chief of Security Police, which I am sure that Foertsch didn't get. He could have only received a similar report which had been made to the Army Corps from Serbia. It is possible that he informed me, but I can at this point no longer say that I remember it.
Q You remember this same incident in other reports which General Boehme in fact sent to the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast?
A To be quite honest, I am getting a little confused. In the comparatively short time I had to read and to deal with twenty-five document books, the whole thing is by now a little involved. After all, I didn't have one year to prepare myself for this.
Q Will you look now, General Felmy, at Document Book II, on page 8 of the English, and page 11 of the German, which is a daily report of the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast for the 15 August 1941, and, it states on the 14th August Skela was burned down, and fifty Communists wore hanged as a reprisal measure. You were List's Deputy at the time. Do you recall this incident, or perhaps whether General Foertsch mentioned it to you?
A No, I can not tell you that with certainty. The situation is that during the war we did not only receive the reports which were selected here for the document books, but instead of that, the flood of papers was very much larger than this selection. There were all kinds of organization cases, provisional cases, and the purely daily and situational reports. If we would have had only to deal with these reports, I suppose I would remember that better than I do, but that was only a small part of the reports which we actually had to deal with.
I know whenever my chief of staff took up the courier briefcase, he could not carry all the mail, as he had both his armsfull, and his orderly was also carrying two arms full of mail, and that would be the mail received during the four to five days.
Q Foertsch would have told you about a reprisal measure, would not he, General: They were not that unimportant? Were they?
A I assume that. What in detail General Foertsch report already to me I do no longer recall. It might have also been done in the shadow of later events, and the incident Kalavritz didn't take place during the time when I deputized for Field Marshal List.
Q I don't ask first for your detailed recollection, General, but don't you have a general recollection of the reprisal measures during the time you deputized for List?
A I said just before when I was misunderstood, that in Serbia the devil was loose; sometimes sabotage expeditions were carried out by the population, and directed against the occupational forces, in contrast to our peaceful southern Greece. I realized that this contrast existed, but I did not realize the details which might have prevailed.
Q Do you recall, General Felmy, that in October 1941, on 1 October 1941, twenty--one persons were shot in reprisal for the murder of twenty-one German soldiers near Biprowa, and that on 15 October 1941, 1736 persons were shot in reprisal at Kraljevo, and on 21 October 1941, twenty-three hundred were shot at Kragujevac; that two of those incidents, the one on 15 October and the other on 21 October, occurred when Field Marshal List claimed he was ill, and before General Kuntze arrived to take his place, and, am I correct in believing that you placed the responsibility for those two reprisal executions on the deceased General Boehme?
A These incidents at Topola and other localities, which you also mentioned, I only learned of here while looking at the documents in this courtroom, as just before when we received the documents I learned of this for the first time.
DR. MUELLER-TORGOW: If it please the Tribunal, I would like to object to this question because it has nothing to do with the complex of General Felmy's case. General Felmy said this morning that he didn't deputize for General List during that time, in October 1941.
MR. FENSTERMACHER: I am finished with the complex in any event, Your Honor -----
THE COURT: It is a little hard to restrict as to the time, after the answer having been given. The objection will be overruled.
BY MR. FENSTERMACHER:
Q General Felmy, will you look ad the document in the same detail that you did the events in Kilssura and Distomon. This document is found in Document Book 41 Your Honors.
The account of Distomon, your Honors, is on Page 19 of the English and Page 14 of the German document book. How many persons were killed at Distomon, General Felmy?
A. I couldn't tell you that by heart. In the report which we made, and which afterwards was found out to be wrong, more than 100, I believe 134, were mentioned, but I really can't give you the figure by heart. It could only be seen from the entry in the war diary of the Sixty-Eighth Corps, unless it is here in this document we are looking at, here some place. I don't know that.
Q. On the first page, I believe in the first sentence, I believe, General Felmy, it mentions there were about 250 to 300 persons killed. Do you remember what the German losses were?
A. At any rate they were not as high. There was no relation between the German losses and the figure given here. Possibly 16 or 20.
Q. As a matter of fact there were 3 German dead and 18 wounded, isn't that so?
A. Approximately so. Yes, roughly 20.
Q. Do you consider this whole Distomon incident an excess on the part of the German troops?
A. Yes, I do. There is no doubt about that.
Q. But why, General? Wasn't the population an instrument in assisting the bandits, didn't the population refrain from informing the German troops of the nearness and the proximity of the bandits and of the fact that the bandits had stayed overnight in their village?
A. Afterwards it was discovered that the first report made by the SS regiment was a false report, that what was stated in it was not correct. I had that cleared up by investigation.
Q. You don't believe that the partisans had in fact stayed overnight in this particular village?
A. In Distamon, you mean? I couldn't know that. Since they had at one time made a false report I became suspicious, of course, and distrusted their statements. There is a German proverb, "He who lies once cannot be believed even if he in future speaks the truth," and the same applies here.
Q. After you had the incident investigated, what did you learn to be the truth? Did the partisans in fact remain overnight in the village of Distomon prior to the attack?
A. I can't give you any details about that now. All I said was, which I remember exactly, that the report as such was a false report, I mean the report submitted by the regiment. I can no longer recall the details and I can make no statements about it.
Q. General, if you don't recall the details, why do you feel authorized and competent to characterize this as an excess?
A. At the time I realized things more clearly and I was better informed than I am now, four years later. To the best of my recollection now, NCO Koch reported to me that there was no resistance at all in Distomon, but that the troops stayed for a few hours in Distomon without being fired at. That is why it was an excess, because it was directed against a more or less peaceful village.
Q. Suppose the population of Distomon had, in fact, refrained from announcing to the German troops the nearness of the partisans and then in fact the events at Distomon occurred. Would you then have considered them to be an excess on the part of the German troops?
A. That is a hypothetical question, and I wouldn't like to reconstruct anything on the basis of such a question because that would look as though the grounds were correct and the conclusion which one draws than would be wrong.