Q. Well, let us assume that it was not in Dachau but in Ingolstadt or Wuerzburg. We could assume that, couldn't we?
A. Yes.
Q. Then the process would have been that agency would have received the money from the treasury in Wuerzburg to pay for the picks and shovels?
A. Only in the event of Wuerzburg having a garrison treasury at all.
Q. If it didn't, nobody paid for it?
A. No. If it had a treasury department there at all, they would have a treasury of their own.
Q. From where would the money come?
A. If Wuerzburg had not been coordinated to some garrison treasury, it probably had a treasury of its own. That independent treasury requested its money just as in my example of the garrison treasury at Dachau, from the WVHA. It would receive the money from the Reich Ministry of Finance and pay for its picks and shovels.
Q. Very well.
A. From 1944 onwards it paid for its own items by checks; received its money once again in order to pay for its bill.
Q. Therefore, in order to describe the process from B, B would receive a request for a thousand shovels, in its turn order that agency in Wuerzburg to supply Dachau with a thousand shovels, and B does not handle any money at all.
A. The WVHA had nothing to do whatever with the actual payment. I believe that should have become clear by now.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Haensel, I think you and I will have to do justice by Cassius. The quotation is, "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look." He didn't have an evil eye. Do you accept the correction?
DR. HAENSEL: Yes, Your Honor.
EXAMINATION BY DR. BELZER (For the defendant Earl Sommer):
Q. Witness, did you know Karl Sommer while you were with the WVHA? Did you, rather, know SS Standartenfuehrer Maurer?
A. Yes.
Q. I should like to refresh your memory and recall a more beautiful day in your life. Are you in a position to tell the Court today when and where you met Karl Sommer?
A. I can recall this incident because one prefers to recall good days rather than bad ones. That was when I had a week's leave in the SS House in Bayrischzell. I can recall that SS Standartenfuehrer Maurer was also there. He was there because in the evening we used to play cards. I can recall that on one occasion I saw defendant Karl Sommer.
Q. At the Berghaus in Bayrischzell?
A. Yes. He visited Standartenfuehrer Maurer. He was introduced to me.
Q. The thing was that Maurer was there to have a holiday?
A. Yes. He was there when I arrived, and he was still there when I left. I had only a week's leave.
Q. And Sommer was present on one certain day in that house to visit Maurer?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you and Sommer have any discussions on the purpose of his visit?
A. No, I did not know Sommer. He was just introduced to me. I did not talk to him a lot.
DR. BELZER: Thank you very much. I have no further questions.
EXAMINATION BY DR. KLINERT (For the defendant Bobermin):
Q. Witness, since when have you known Dr. Bobermin?
A. I knew Dr. Bobermin in the WVHA only by sight. I knew from the organization charts that Bobermin was working in Group W, but I had not close contact with him.
Q. Am I to understand that officially you had no connection with him?
A. I mentioned before that I and Office Group W had nothing to do with each other.
Q. Did you have any personal social contacts with him?
A. No, I knew him only by sight.
Q. Thank you very much.
THE PRESIDENT: Is there further cross examination by defense counsel? If not, Mr. Robbins may cross-examine.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, I believe you told us you joined the NSDAP on the 1st of January, 1932?
A. Yes.
Q. You joined the Allgemeine SS on the 1st of April, 1933?
A. Yes.
Q. Then you said you were drafted into the Waffen SS on the 1st of October, 1939?
A. Yes.
Q. What you actually meant by that was that as an SS man you had received orders to transfer to the Waffen SS, isn't that correct?
A. Yes, I was drafted just as I would have been to the Wehrmacht because I was liable to do service in the Waffen SS.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q You received orders as an SS-man, didn't you?
A In that case I received orders as Hans Loerner.
Q You don't claim that you were drafted into the SS originally, do you?
A I don't quite understand that question.
Q You don't claim that you were originally drafted into the General-SS?
A No, no. I volunteered.
Q And do you recall a time when Himmler closed the ranks of the SS, between the end of 1933 and the end of '35, do you recall that happened?
A All I know that for a time the ranks were closed.
Q And do you know that the reason the ranks were closed for a two year period was so that the unreliable SS-men could be weeded out, those who did not hold the proper SS Ideology?
A I did not know at that time. I didn't bother about it.
Q But you found it out later?
A No, I never bothered about that point at all. I know that the ranks had been closed for some time temporarily. For what reason that had been carried out, I didn't know.
Q You don't know --
A I was an accountant, and did hardly take part in any active service.
Q You had not found that out, the reason for the ranks being closed after two years; even as of today?
A I assume today, that Himmler did not want at that time to have too many people in the carder.
Q And why do you think he expelled quite a number of people during that period?
A There were a great many who joined us who were not reliable from the point of view of character.
Q You were not expelled from the SS during that period, Court No. II, Case No. 4.were you?
A No.
Q Witness, were you at any time connected with the Verwaltungsamt-SS?
A I was attached to the Verwaltungsamt-SS Munich as the chief of the sector of Nurnberg.
Q Yes, and what period of time was that?
A That was from the Summer of 1938 onwards, until the outbreak of the war.
Q You were subordinated to the defendant Pohl in that position, weren't you?
A Yes.
Q And what offices in the Verwaltungsamt-SS were you subordinated to, which of the offices?
A I was not subordinated under an office. I was immediately under Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl as my chief. As to the individual fields, I was only connected as long as it concerned the fields with the Sector Main, but as to the question, so far as the clothing was concerned, it was in the clothing sector.
Q And did this clothing sector have anything to do with supplying the clothing for the concentration camps?
A No, that was Allgemeine-SS at that time. I had nothing to do with the concentration camps at all.
Q And did it have anything to do with the clothing of the Waffen-SS?
A No. There was no Waffen-SS at that time, and so far as special task group was concerned, or the Death Head Units were concerned, the Allgemeine-SS had nothing to do. I would like to add briefly here, that the members of the Allgemeine-SS paid for their uniforms from their own pockets, it was not supplied to them. The Allgemeine-SS men had to pay for all of their uniform pieces from their money.
Q And after 1939 were you at any time connected with the Court No. II, Case No. 4.main office of Haushalt und Bauten, the Budget and Construction Office under Pohl?
A The Main Office as to any building I had nothing to do with, as I said before from the 1 May 1940 I was in the Troop Administration of the SS. I was only after my six or eight weeks, as I had indicated, in Pohl's Personnel office, and that was the Main Office Administration and Economy, and there I was concerned only with the personnel offices which I had to set up jointly with others.
Q And were you subordinated to any of the Main Offices under Pohl, that is, Offices I, II, III and so on?
A All those offices I had nothing to do with.
Q You told us that for a time you supervised the Office B-1. Will you give us the date for that, please?
A I don't recall the exact date, but I assume it must have been from the Spring 1943 onwards. It might have been March or April, or May, but I am not quite sure about the exact date, because I was not too much bothered about this. Chief of Office B-1, which was the defendant Tschentscher, came, I believe, in July or August, as the chief. In August and September I was -- in August I was ill, and in September I was on leave. Therefore, it must have been roughly that period, and from the 1st of August onwards I was no longer on duty until October.
Q When did you give up your duties as supervising B-1?
A After Tschentscher's arrival.
Q When was that?
A If I quite remember, it was in August or September 1943.
Q Were you at any time connected with any of the other Amtsgruppen in WVHA, other than the ones you have mentioned?
A I used to contact the office groups only through the Main Office Chief, if there was anything carried out; if it concerned another office group, Pohl would decide about that.
Q Were you attached at any time to any of the other offices Court No. II, Case No. 4.of Amtsgruppen in WVHA, other than B-1, or A-1, and A-II?
A No, I was only in Office Group A, to which I was attached.
MR. ROBBINS: Would this be a convenient time for the Court to recess for the noon hour, Your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1:45.
(Noon recess until 1345, 13 June 1947)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1345 hours)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
HANS LOERNER: Resumed CROSS EXAMINATION:
Continued BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, in Sievers' letter which you were asked about on direct examination -- which is NO-098 in Document Book 9 -- I don't think it is necessary for you to turn to it -- Sievers said, "The budget of the Institute will be met according to the order of the Reich Leader SS--" He is talking about the budget of the Ahnenerbe, and: "as already discussed by me in detail with SS-Standartenfuehrer Loerner out of the funds of the Waffen SS." Is it true as Sievers says that you discussed the budget in detail with him?
A. I mentioned this on direct examination. All that we are concerned with here is what treasury was to put up the money. In no case was it discussed what experiments or what sort of research work that institute was to carry out. That was no longer necessary after the Reichsfuehrer's order that those expenses should be met by the Waffen SS. Moreover, this is not a fund but a normal budget item of the Waffen SS.
Q. And you told us that you did not know that this so-called research of Ahnenerbe was being carried out in concentration camps; is that right?
A. All I said was that I did not know that we had anything to do here with experiments on inmates.
Q. I would like to show you a letter and see if you can give us any more details after having seen it. Is this your letter, witness?
A. Yes, it is. It bears my signature.
Q. Why was it being sent to concentration camp Dachau?
A. In this letter reference is made to a letter from a concentration camp of 4 January 1943. From that letter it does not become clear at all that these experiments on concentration camp inmates. Probably the administration of the Dachau camp wrote to me to inquire if the expenses of the military research institute could be paid from funds of the Waffen SS, and in accordance with my order, which has been submitted as a document, I wrote to the administration in Dachau.
MR. ROBBINS: I had better identify this document before going further. It is NO-243, and I will mark it as Prosecution's Exhibit No. --- Can the Secretary General tell me what the next exhibit number is?
THE SECRETARY GENERAL: 553, I believe.
MR. ROBBINS: I think that is right.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Didn't this give you some idea that some sort of research was being carried out in concentration camps, particularly at Dachau?
A. No, because in concentration camps there were also enterprises. This letter might just have been about experiments carried out in the enterprises there.
Q. What kind of experiments were they carrying out in the enterprises at Dachau?
A. I don't know, nor does it become clear from the letter.
Q. You know, don't you, that the Military Scientific Research Institute carried out no experiments, had no activity whatsoever, except in connection with the human experiments? Didn't you know that?
A. No. I dispute that most definitely, and I never said that I knew it.
Q. You know it today, don't you?
A. I know it today from the documents, yes.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: Let me ask him one question.
BY JUDGE PHILLIPS:
Q. Witness, you say in this letter, which you say that you wrote on the 28th of January, 1943, the following: "According to an order of the Reichsfuehrer SS dated 7 July 1942 concerning the establishment of an Institute for Military Scientific Research, the cost of this will be paid from the funds of the Waffen-SS." What did the order that you referred to in your letter, of the Reichsfuehrer SS, dated the 7th of July, 1942, say?
A. That is the order which has been submitted here as a document to establish the scientific military research in the Ahnenerbe, and secondly, that the cost had to be met by funds of the Waffen-SS.
Q. We haven't seen that letter. Have we the order of the Reichsfuehrer SS dated July 7th?
A. Oh, yes, I saw it myself, because otherwise I could not issue any orders to the personal staff.
Q. I know you saw it, but it has not been offered here in evidence, has it?
A. Yes, it was part of the document book, sir. That order of the Reichsfuehrer has been submitted also by my defense counsel today.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: I was mistaken. I thought it referred to this order in the documents that were offered this morning, but the document itself was not offered. I may be mistaken about that. That was in Document Book No. 9, page 36, was it not?
DR. RAUSCHENBACH (For the defendant Hans Loerner): Perhaps I can help here. It is Document Book 7. It is Exhibit 202 and 204, 204 particularly, NO-266.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: I was mistaken about that.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Do you recall any inquiries as to what kind of apparatus or equipment, accessories as referred to in this order, had to be purchased?
A. No, nor did I have any cause to do so, because the order that the bills must be met had already reached the treasury of the personal staff.
Q. While you were supervising Amt B-I, didn't you hear at any time about the food experiments that were being carried on under the supervision of that office?
A. No, I heard nothing at that time. The Food Inspectorate was not under A-I, but immediately under Pohl.
Q. Did you know Dr. Schenk?
A. I knew him by sight, but I did not know him very well.
Q. Did you ever have any conferences with him?
A. Dr. Schenk at that time supervised the new food, which was to say both packing and material, for the troops, from which I knew him because he described it and showed it to me quite often. It was socalled economy food, utility food, which was carried out by the army too, and when I supervised B-I that was being carried out.
Q. Are you telling us that Dr. Schenk had no connection with A-I or B-I?
A. He was merely a collaborator in that respect, particularly research into calories and things like that.
Q. Did you hear about research on poisoned food, and feeding of poisonous substances to concentration camp inmates?
A. No. I said before that any medical experiments, food experiments on concentration camp inmates, I heard nothing at all.
Q. Did you see any of the documents which were submitted here in evidence by the prosecution on the food experiments, that is in 1942 - did you see them - 1943?
A. No. Such documents which were submitted here I only saw here from the document books.
Q. Do you know whether the defendant Tschentscher supervised Dr. Schenk in any of these experiments on poisonous foods?
A. With the activities of defendant Tschentscher I am no longer informed. I had nothing to do with it in the end.
Q. Turning to another subject for a moment, when you received the document which was discussed this morning in connection with the Action Reinhardt, which was Pohl's order of the 4th of July, 1944, addressed to Office A-I, and you saw the subject, "Administration of Jewish Property Values", what did you assume that this action concerned itself with?
A. Mr. Prosecutor, this morning I said that I no longer today know whether I saw the order or not. If I had seen it at the time, it did not interest me, because reference was made to a letter which I had not received, to that letter A-II/3 Reinhardt, and therefore I had to assume that there was a mistake there, because the whole business Reinhardt was never referred to me before.
Therefore there was no cause, as far as I was concerned, to investigate that matter.
Q. And you are telling us you never heard of the term "Action Reinhardt"?
A. No, I never heard it before. Office A-I took no part in this action.
Q. Is it possible that a letter marked "secret" would be addressed to Office A-I, a letter concerning an important subject, and not come to your attention?
A. I said this morning that at that time, as I was working on the Todt Organization and the simplification of the administration, I would be absent from Berlin for about a fortnight at a time. The expert in the Office A-I/1, when he received that letter and saw that Office A-I was not interested in it, could, without any difficulty, file it, because it concerned a matter with which the Office A-I had no contact.
Q. Do you have Document Book 19 in front of you?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you turn to the last document in the book, which is NO2130, Exhibit 497, which is an order by Pohl concerning the dissolution of the SS economists in the Government General, Eastern Territories. This was addressed to Office A-I also. Do you recall seeing this letter?
A. Document 2130?
Q. Yes. You see the so-called special distribution on the last page of the document?
A. Yes, but there is no reference to Action Reinhardt here.
Q. I am just asking you if you saw the document, if you saw the letter?
A. It is possible that I saw it because the distribution names Office A-I.
Q. But you cannot remember having seen it?
A. I cannot recall today the detail of it, whether I saw the letter or not, but it is entirely possible.
Q. Why is it that a letter of this kind concerning the dissolution of the SS economists in the east would be addressed to A-I? It isn't addressed to the other sub-offices in the other departments.
A It is addressed to all offices: A1, A2, A4, A5; Office Group, B, C, D, and W -- the whole of the WVHA.
Q. Why is it addressed to all of the offices in A-1? What connection did all the offices--what connection did Office A-1 have with this?
AAny special connection A1- did not have. The SS Economist East was being referred to here only, and that SS economist had funds of the Waffen-SS at this disposal which, however, he administered independently. And that is probably the reason why Office A-1 is named on the distribution list.
Q Well, it is true, isn't it that office A-1 was kept informed about all the financial matters of the SS and the government in general?
A Only as far as it concerned the economist in connection with general budget matters informative reasons. I didn't know what the SS economist would spend. According to the documents submitted this morning, he was responsible for all expenses, and also he received his monies through a special field treasury so that I in Berlin was unable to find out what the SS economist would have spent. Auditing was not my business--the Reich Auditing Court of the German Reich -- that auditing was none A-1's business.
Q You told us that you were sent to the Todt organization--TODT-for the purpose of simplifying its administration. Is that correct?
A It was not sent to the Todt organization. A staff was set up in order to make proposals as to how to simplify the administration of the Todt organization.
Q And in accomplishing that task you had to familiarize yourself with the nature and the organization and the purpose of the Todt organization, didn't you?
A I had to mainly concentrate and the administrative organization of the Todt organization. The specifications of the Todt organization, the specification of the organization as such was not within my sphere. That was up to the expert in the Todt organization who was called Ministerialrat Schnell; for Ministerial tasks, there was a representative of the Ministry there.
And as far as the purely administrative tasks were concerned: accounting, wage paying, budget matters, which were to be carried out in accordance with the simplification of army administration -- that was my duty.
Q. Well, then according to these tasks, you became familiar with the fact, did you not, that the Todt organization was a construction outfit?
A. The Todt organization within the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Armament Industry, and it carried out construction tasks for the Armament Industry.
Q. And who was its chief at the time you were there - working in the simplification, rather?
A. The actual chief was at that time -- I cannot recall the name anymore because I did not have anything to do with him. The supreme chief of course was the chief of the Armament Industry. As far as I know, the Chief of the OT organization was only provisionally. A full time chief, as far as I can recall, had not yet been appointed at that time. If I might be allowed to describe briefly my activity there, how these things -
Q. No; I am not very much concerned with that. You became familiar with the fact while you were there that these construction projects in armament industries were being carried out with the use of the concentration camp inmates, didn't you?
A. No; that did not become clear for my duties at all.
Q. Well, who did you think was being employed in these giant construction projects carried out by Todt? Did you think they were free workers?
A. They were, some of them, free-workers, and there must have been some inmates of concentration camps. I mean to say, anybody could see who went around in Germany, when buildings were being constructed, after air-raids after which the Todt organization looked also, when buildings were reconstructed, 2735(a) after air-raids after which the Todt organization looked also, when buildings were reconstructed, public buildings, I mean; and anybody could see who was working there.
Therefore, one need not have a special position to see that. If you went through a station, for instance, after an air-raid you could see side-by-side next to the usual civilian workers, inmates working on repairing the railroad tracks or houses. That was no secret.
Q Practically everybody in Germany knew that, didn't they?
A I don't know who saw it.
Q But it was a public sight?
A Yes, if the building was a public building, anybody could see who was working there.
Q Then you knew before you took this assignment with the Todt organization that it employed concentration camp inmates in its construction program?
A Yes...whether the Todt organization used them, I did not know. Quite generally, whenever building programs were being carried out that inmates were being used, that, most certainly, was no secret.
Q Going back to your discussion this morning of the duties of A-1 with regard to the budget, did I understand you to say that A-1 had no points of contact whatever with Amtsgruppen B, W, C, and D?
A No direct contacts, because we had an open budget. Office Group W did not have any Waffen-SS funds at all. It was financed from private means.
Q So you didn't have any contact either directly or indirectly with Office Group W?
A I had no contacts. It might happen, as I mentioned this morning, when I bought a site on the occasion of Stutthof, when Office Group W was ordered to pay back the 300,000 marks to the police treasury, such cases occurred, yes.
Q It not only might have happened -- it actually did happen?
A Yes, but only in exceptional cases, such as the one I described just now.
Q And you kept no account whatever of the income of the SS industries? That wasn't your function?
A No, that was up to the auditing court. Income from the inmates' moneys went to the Reich treasuries of the various concentration camps, and from there they went direct to the Reich Main Treasury. Income, just as expenses, were audited and examined by the auditing court.
Q Well, I understand that the income, the actual money, went direct to the Reich Main Treasury. But weren't records of this income and what had been sent to the treasury kept by office A, Amtsgruppe A?
A Office A-2 -- that is, the Accounting Office -- would receive monthly financial balance sheets, and that balance sheet contained all expenses and the whole of the income of the agencies. Income was listed in only one total sum. Inmate money would not be kept separately, for instance. That was again up to the auditing courts who examined that on the spot. Whether the money actually received would correspond to the bills and the balance sheets, that was not a matter for Office A-1.
Q And they were audited and checked by Office A-4, were they not?
A Whether A-4 audited it or the auditing court, I do not know. I am not very well informed about internal affairs of Office A-4.
Q Well, tell us then what points of contact there were between your office, A-1, and Amtsgruppe B?
A No direct contact, actually.
Q Well, what indirect contact as far as the budget was concerned?
A When, for instance, the administrative stores which supplied the food, or the supply stores, would request the money through the WVHA from the Reich Ministry of Finance, that was the only point of contact. After 1944, which I described before, the agencies raised their money directly by so-called "brown checks" with the result that no more requests for money were necessary. These troops supply camps and storage camps no longer had to request the WVHA to supply them because the Reich Ministry of Finance had given permission.
Q You have explained all that. Were there any points of contact, either directly or indirectly between A-1 and Amtsgruppe C?
A Only as I have described it, with Office Group B, that the building inspectorate which had a treasury would request their money or direct with the banks, just as the agency did in Office Group B.
Q And is the same true for Amtsgruppe D?
A Office Group D? The same applies there for the treasuries of the concentration camps as far as they were not subordinate to garrison treasuries. That is why I used the example of the garrison treasury of Dachau.
Q Now, referring to that example briefly, you said that the total demand would be put together in Amtsgruppe A, and this total demand passed on to the Minister of Finance as to money needed by the Waffen SS for the month of October, and then the Reich Minister of Finance transmitted the money directly to the various units?
A Yes.
Q Now, what did Office A-1 have to do in this transaction? Was it by-passed completely?