A. It is very difficult to answer this question, not because it is difficult but because it is hard to explain this question to the layman. Vogt was approximately in the same position as the auditing court itself. That is to say, he was unable to carry out the preliminary auditing work by himself. He in turn had established his own preliminary auditing agencies which were not designated as such, which, however, were working for him. Such an agency was located within the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps. Therefore, he did not even see the direct bills from the concentration camps unless he ordered that such bills should be submitted to him. Of course he was able to do that.
Q. Witness, what preliminary auditing agencies with the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps are you referring to when you say that Vogt had a preliminary auditing agency to which the bills from the concentration camps were submitted? Is this an agency which was subordinated to Vogt or which worked independently beside him?
A. I have intentionally used the title "preliminary auditing agency" in order to make it clear to the Tribunal. It was a task of Amt D-4. In this office the so-called intermediate auditing work was carried out, or was mostly being done; a representative of the auditing court used to come to this agency and carried out the auditing work there directly. Therefore, the bills did not first have to be submitted to Vogt, but the auditing court went directly to Oranienburg. However, I also know cases where the auditing court carried out the auditing work directly in the concentration camps.
Q. Witness, in your affidavit, which has been referred to several times today, of the 17th of January, 1947, Document NO-1576, Exhibit 4, you have already stated that Vogt had to approve all the expenses of the chief of the Amtsgruppen A, B, and C, and that he was entitled to raise objections when funds were spent in violation of existing provisions.
Witness, I now ask you, what were you trying to say by making that statement?
A. That was done in theory. Of course it was not complied with in practice.
Let me take a practical case. Amtsgruppe B, Gruppenfuehrer Loerner had purchased clothing for the Waffen SS in the value of four million marks. This bill appeared in some compiled account of an agency which carried out the procurement in Amtsgruppe B. This compilation at the end of the three-month period, or at the end of the year, was subject to the preliminary auditing and if it had been discovered that these four million marks would not have been spent at all for this purpose, that is to say, things would have been purchased which certainly were not for clothing for the Waffen SS, then Vogt would have objected. However, in time of war this auditing activity became less from month to month. Even at the time when I was still with the WVHA an order was issued to the effect that the preliminary auditing was only to extend to certain percentages of the total bills.
The auditing agency of Vogt, according to my estimation as an expert, would have required at least three hundred collaborators in order to audit the giant sums of money which were spent in hundreds of thousands of individual amounts, if he wanted to audit them according to peacetime regulations. This task was completely impossible and the auditing court began to see that very quickly, and the extent of the auditing work which had to be done can be seen from the fact that Vogt in the year 1943, that is, at the time when I am still able to judge it, only had eight or ten officers to work for him.
Q. I take it from your answer that you did not want to say in your affidavit that Vogt could already object when the funds were spent, that is, when the orders for payment were issued. He could only object when these expenses had already been paid and the whole act of payment had already been completed, is that correct?
A. Yes. The words "preliminary auditing" lead to a wrong conclusion. As I had already said, this was not a preliminary auditing in the sense that the expenses had to be examined before the money was transferred, but that the words "preliminary auditing" only referred to the auditing court.
Therefore, it was preliminary work which actually had to be carried out by the Reich auditing court. It would have been better had it been called "subsequent auditing work".
Q. Is it therefore correct that Vogt, towards the chiefs of the Amtsgruppen A, B, and C, in financing matters, did not have any right of supervision?
A. No, they certainly would have stopped him from interfering. Only Pohl had this authority, as chief.
Q. Witness, in your affidavit from which I have already quoted just now you have further stated that within Amtsgruppe A you were the supreme auditing chief in the Waffen SS, and that you had been subordinated to Pohl. What did you try to say by that?
A. It was quite clear that the auditing court in carrying out its auditing work would find and discover things which would have given cause for objection. These objections were collected by the commissioner of the auditing court. He turned them over to this director and this director, who, in turn, was the representative of the president of the auditing court, would come at six-months intervals to see me in order to discuss the differences which existed, and in order to clear up these matters. In this respect I was the superior of Vogt and I was responsible for the expenditures. I was not responsible for them in the manner in which they had been spent, but rather with regard to the auditing court.
Q. I want to refer once more to your affidavit. You went on to say that the bills incurred by the concentration camps for food of the inmates were compiled by the administrative leaders of the various concentration camps; that they were submitted to Amtsgruppe B, and that they were compiled there; that they were then submitted to Vogt in order to have him carry out the auditing. He was to audit them, to see if they agreed with the amounts which had been appropriated for that purpose. That is how your statement reads in the affidavit.
A. Yes.
Q. Just a moment, witness. Now I must tell you that the man Burger whom you have named here, who was office chief of D-4 from June 1943 up to the end of the war, stated to me in an affidavit that he never received any bills from concentration camps about the food for inmates; that he did not compile them in his office; and that he did not submit them to Vogt, and he did not pass them on to Vogt for auditing--
MR. ROBBINS: Your Honor, I object to the counsel stating these extra-judicial statements into the record. It seems to me that if he has an affidavit from Burger, and this is the--
DR. HAENSEL: I would like to correct a mistake in the translation. Just now the translation should have been Amt D for dog, and not Amt B for baker. Perhaps in the text we should use the words "baker" for "B" and "dog" for "D".
THE PRESIDENT: Substitute dog for baker in the record.
MR. ROBBINS: I believe counsel should make available to the prosecution the affidavit that he is referring to, and that he should do that before examining the witness on them.
THE PRESIDENT: You are in the same position then that the defense counsel have been most of the time.
MR. ROBBINS: I think, Your Honor, every time we examined a witness on the basis of an affidavit we gave copies to the defense counsel.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes -- ultimately.
What is the paper you are reading from, Dr. Schmidt?
DR. SCHMIDT (Counsel for the defendant J. Vogt): Your Honor, I have not been reading from an affidavit, but I only repeated the statements which are contained in an affidavit by Burger, and which in my presentation of evidence in the case of Vogt I intend to submit as a document. I only wanted to tell the witness of the affidavit orally so that he will be able to give us his point of view on that subject.
MR. ROBBINS: I withdraw the objection.
THE PRESIDENT: There is no objection -- except that it is four-thirty.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until nine-thirty, Monday morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 9 June 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany on 9 June 1947, 0930-1630, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal No. 2.
Military Tribunal No. 2 is now in session. God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
DR. SCHMIDT (Counsel for the defendant Vogt): May it please the Court; may I proceed with my examination of defendant Frank?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
AUGUST FRANK - Resumed CROSS EXAMINATION - Continued BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q. Witness, last Friday, before the recess we stopped at the question of what happened when bills concerning the food supplied of concentration camps were made up. In your affidavit you said, under the date of 17 January, 1947, which is Document NO-1576. and is Exhibit 4 in Document Book 1, that these bills were sent to Office Group D, Burger, put together there and then checked up by Vogt. Now, last Friday I put it to you that Burger, whom you mentioned, said to me under oath that he had never received any such bill and passed them on to Vogt for checking up. I, therefore, would like to ask you, witness, what happened really when these bills for food supplies for concentration camps were examined? Can you give the Court more details as far as you remember these events?
A. In order to answer that question I have to go back a little. The interrogating officer asked me who it was that checked the food bills for the concentration camp. I had no misgivings to tell him. This was a regular proceeding and it went roughly like this, to give an example. The administrative officer of the Dachau concentration camp bought in March of 1943 from two slaughterhouses the meat which he needed.
These two slaughterhouses delivered the requested quantity daily or weekly. At the end of the month these two slaughterhouses sent their bills, and the bills said, for instance, "2,000 kilos of meat, and 1,000 kilos of sausage." The administrative officer of the camp then audited the bills to find out whether they were in accordance with the quantity ordered, and together with his other bills which collected throughout the maintain his office, he put this down in his monthly balance sheet for this particular month; and that balance sheet, together with the actual bills he sent to Oranienburg. In Oranienburg these bills from all concentration camps came together and prepared for auditing on the part of the Treasury Department. Now, whether Vogt, the auditing official of the WVHA, or the Treasury Department; whether either of those two audited the bills I couldn't say because that was an internal arrangement between the two agencies. But let us assume that the auditing official of the WVHA audited the bills. This is what the auditing official would have seen. He saw a bill from two slaughterhouses -- in order to continue with my example -- and he found that bills for 2,000 kilos of meat and 1, 000 kilos of sausage were in his hands. In order to check whether the inmates themselves received the quantity to which they were entitled, the auditing official would have had to, apart from the bill itself, have more documents at his disposal. For instance, he would have had to know for how many inmates these quantities were meant; for how many days they were supposed to last; whether for noon meals or evening meals, whether for working or non-working inmates. And also he would have had to know whether the sausage and the meat would really have reached the mouth of the inmate concerned.
That last examination could only have been done on the spot. It was not his business, but that of the commanding officer, the commandant's. Therefore, the auditing official, on the basis of the bill alone, would never have been in a position to know whether or not the inmate actually received his ration, for which reason, I do not understand the objection which comes from an affidavit, and so forth, because that was a perfectly normal auditing activity, which consisted merely in checking up on bills -- whether the prices were in accordance with the price regulations, whether the quantities had been correctly put down, and whether the whole sum was the correct result, and, in the end, whether the actual amount put down was justifiable. That was what an auditing official had to do. That was not only so with concentration camps, bat also for any other troop administration.
Q. From your description I might conclude, therefore, that it was not the duty of Office A-IV to supervise whether, for instance, inmates in concentration camps had sufficient food in accordance with the official rations, is that correct?
A. That is correct. For that purpose a so-called economic inspector would have had to be used. That in war time, because of the shortage of manpower, was quite impossible. One might say quite generally, as I said before myself, auditing as war went on became less and less frequent and, as far as I know, in 1944 it was discontinued altogether.
Q. When I asked you earlier, you told me that there was an order from the time when you were with the WVHA, which you recall and the order said that the auditing activities of A-IV were concerned only with bills as a whole Was that order connected with the fact that towards the end of 1942 or the beginning of 1943 with the larger garrison administrations who had several SS agencies under them there were so called collective agencies instituted at the camp and that collective treasury department would decide on the basic accounting for all SS agencies of that area, because up to that time the individual treasuries of the various SS agencies did not remain independent departments, but were merely paying offices?
Well, in that respect, we followed the example of the Army. The German Army administration from the beginning would establish in every garrison, for instance, in Munich, a single treasury and through that treasury all bills of the entire garrison would go, no matter whether it was an artillery regiment or a pioneer battalion. There was only one exchequer for all bills. It was, as it were, a decentralized organization, which had certain ministerial authority as far as the garrison exchequer was concerned. We followed that example and also followed this method with the result that in a large part of the work which had been previously done by the WEHA, we delegated that activity to below, which was the process you mean, Doctor, wasn't it?
A. Yes. May I add perhaps that the auditing offices of the WVHA, if it had to audit accounts on a peacetime basis in accordance with the official regulations, then in 1943, as far as an SS Army or roughly 350,000 men was concerned, with all its bits and pieces, the Auditing Department would have needed at least 150 officials, excluding assistant personnel, but actually in 1943 the Auditing Office, had, as I recall, about 12 or 14 officials and that figure alone shows how auditing activities decreased from 1942 and 1943 onwards.
Q. Is it correct, therefore, that because of the formation of collective exchequers in the garrison, concentration camp bills would no longer be separate items on the balance sheet, but merely reached the auditing official as part of the accounting of the collective treasury agency?
A. Quite so. The extent which the bills of a concentration camp reached in war time, just as in the case of the bills from the Army itself decreased from month to month, because either the articles needed were bought centrally or the purchase was impossible, because of the shortage of money. Therefore, for all practical purposes, they were only bills for feed and small items of daily needs which had to be paid by the socalled garrison exchequer.
Q. Witness, one more question about Action Reinhardt, which is the auditing report by Vogt which he gave you when he returned from Lublin in June of 1943 for Pohl: in the affidavit which I referred to before, you told us that from that report you saw that the Reich had obtained millions of marks and a large number of foreign currency. On direct examination by your counsel, if I remember correctly, you stated that Vogt's report had not obtained figures. May I conclude from your statement on direct examination that the statement you made in your affidavit -- that you wish too modify that statement? Would you please say something about that briefly?
A. I think I said something about that already last week when I said that I could no longer distinguish what knowledge I had from written reports and what knowledge I had from oral reports. I can't recall the details of the time that Vogt, whom he returned from Lublin, gave me his report which was very brief and he added a few words by way of explanation. I think the whole conversation lasted for about five or ten minutes, as I recall it, and I can't remember whether in the oral report Vogt told me, or whether in the written report, about the considerable amount of foreign currency which he had discovered in the books kept at Lublin under the title, "Action Reinhardt". One mustn't forget here that all this happened three or four years ago and that the conversation was not of such vast significance that I would remember it word by word.
Q. Thank you very much. Can you tell me, witness, what the official conversations were about which you asked Vogt -- I refer to administration, for instance -- did you talk about the auditing activities of Office A-IV, or did you concern yourself with other duties of Office Group for example, the preparing of budgets, money, supplies, and so forth?
A. The main problem of these conversations held in 1943 was mainly concerned with personnel questions. We were short of people in every sense of the word and whenever I called on my office chiefs to report to me, the main motive, so to speak, always was where on earth can we save more men; can we release officers to go to the front; what work can be dispensed with, including, of course, the auditing side of everything. From 1942 to my resignation in 1943, I took at least 50% of Vogt's personnel away from him. I had to do this because the whole auditing business, I regarded in war time was pure paper work, whereas to supply the troop was to me more important than to audit bills.
Q. Witness, on several occasions you referred to the fact that office A-4 released its personnel. Did that release of personnel have any effect on the extent of the activities of the auditing office? For example, I am thinking of reduction of the auditing activity. Do you know anything about that?
A. Yes. I myself in 1943, in January or February, called on the president of the Treasury Department in Potsdam. I described to him the situation of the Waffen SS the extreme shortage of personnel, the increasing needs of the troops; and I expressed the urgent wish that he take care of the auditing needs and reduce it to the utmost, which he could answer for. The president saw my point and issued an order, according to which the auditing of all bills of the Waffen SS was to be postponed, mainly until after the war. The result was that Vogt's auditing department was changed from one of the most important departments, which it was at the beginning of the war, to a completely valueless - or, rather, I do not wish to say valueless but a less valuable and less obvious agency. Its main task was merely to have the troops not think that nothing was being audited at all because that would have meant the risk of individual administrative officers using the opportunity to embezzle or steal money, hoping that the war would hide this fact and they would not be found out, for which reason the impression was maintained that auditing went on quite normally. Meanwhile the auditing was piled up in the WVHA and shelved with the order to audit it after the war.
Q. A few questions. Did you and Vogt ever go on an official trip together, Witness?
A. No, I can't recall any such occasion.
Q. Did you and Vogt have intimate personal contact outside your office hours?
A. You did not. My last question, do you know whether Vogt was ever present at a meeting of the commandants in Berlin or Oranienburg or anywhere else?
A. As far as I know, I don't think so. I don't know. It wouldn't have been any of his business.
Q. Thank you very much. No further questions.
EXAMINATION BY DR. SEIDL (For the defendant Oswald Pohl):
Q. Witness, I have only two questions to ask you. My first question is concerned with Document NO-057, which is Prosecution Exhibit 487, in Document Book 19, Action Reinhardt. This is on Page 24 of the German Document Book.
A. Yes, I have found it.
Q. That is a report of SS Gruppenfuehrer Globocnik about the economic aspect of Action Reinhardt, dated 18 January 1944. The document says, and I quote: "The economic aspect of Action Reinhardt collected in the WVHA under Special Task G, which I am in charge of.." My question to you is connected with Globocnik's report. Do you know, Witness, whether in the WVHA there was such an agency which concentrated these tasks in its agency?
A. No, never. I myself read for the first time in that document that Globocnik had established a Special Department G. He says himself, as you quoted, Doctor, "which I am in charge of." That is Globocnik. He must have collected a staff there with which he carried out this special task. How it occurred to him to refer himself to the WVHA here I am unable to understand. It would surely have been contained in some document of the WVHA, and the prosecution has not shown the document referring to the WVHA. Some reference would have been made to Special Task G, and so forth, by Pohl or by myself, or somebody else in the Main Office would have signed a document of that sort on that occasion. I wish to say that as far as the Special Task G was concerned or any other part of the Reinhardt Action, we never put any personnel at the disposal of the Action as Globocnik states, as far as I know, in his report. All we are concerned with here are the NCO's really because as far as officers were concerned, there was only Sturmbannfuehrer Winter in Lublin. He was not sent to Lublin because of the Action Reinhardt.
He was in charge of the garrison pay and account office, a purely military task, in other words; and the n.c.o. personnel was at no time directed by the WVHA during wartime. That was not the custom nor was it part of the official regulation. This personnel were changed by the agencies concerned without the WVHA having any part in it whatever.
Q. To sum up, I may say that there was never an agency or an official in the WVHA who had to deal with Special Task G?
A. No, not in the WVHA.
Q. Another question. Do you know anything about the authority which SS Gruppenfuehrer Globocnik received from Himmler and what the relations were between Globocnik and Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl?
A. I am not quite sure, Doctor, of what you mean by authority. Authority in respect to what do you mean?
Q. From the documents submitted by the prosecution the conclusion must be drawn that Gruppenfuehrer Globocnik just as much as Sturnmbannfuehrer Hoess had a definite order which he received from the Reichsfuehrer SS. My question to you is whether you know from that period anything about the fact that Hoess and Globocnik had a talk with you about this, which is one part of my question; and the other part is what the relations were between Globocnik and Pohl.
A. I have already expressed my opinion in this trial that today I think that Globocnik had received his orders to go to Lublin from Himmler direct. I said before that I arrived at this conclusion about Globocnik on the basis of his high position in the Party, because he had been in the Party for such a number of years, and because of his personal connections with Himmler. Had he not had all these advantages, he would never have been sent to Lublin as SS and Police Leader, The intimate relations between Himmler and Globocnik must have existed; but that became clear to me only later on and mainly from the documents; because otherwise how would it have been possible for Himmler to write to Globocnik "My dear Globus"? That shows such a degree of intimacy, and such a highly personal relationship of an unusual degree that one can no longer call this an official relation.
I am quite sure that he received his direct orders from Hitler himself, from Bouhler, and from Himmler. That one can figure out from the documents quite as well.
Globocnik lived veiled in secrecy to an unusual degree. He never discussed these things with anybody. On the contrary, Globocnik made great efforts to make known the fact that he had orders from Himmler to establish in the southern part of the Government General a cordon of fortresses, so-called SS and Police bases. I myself saw the plans and drawings of these fortresses which without a gap were to reach from north to south because in 1941 and 1942 one did not know whether one was to advance move or whether a fortified line was to be established. Globocnik himself, which I remember very well, before the Russian campaign built what was known as an Eastern wall.
Q. Witness, I don't think it is necessary for you to give us all these details.
A. But it is interesting because we knew Globocnik from that aspect, not from the point of view of extermination, which was the point I wished to make, and that is what we thought the authority of Globocnik was.
As far as the second part of your question is concerned, the relationship between Globocnik and Pohl was extremely bad. Proof can be found in the report by Dr. May, which is in one of the document books. Dr. May says in one paragraph, "It is my impression that relations between Globocnik and Pohl improved a little since my visit." From that it can been seen that relations were bad.
Q. What about your own observations?
A. They affirm that.
DR. SEIDL: No further questions.
BY DR. HOFFMANN (Counsel for defendant Scheide):
Q. Witness, I have only one question. If I understood you correctly, you said on Friday that for two reasons you had nothing against your resignation from the WVHA. One was the fact that you disliked the taking of clothes, valuables, and other things from Jews in the Eastern territories, and the other was that you no longer liked the general atmosphere which had come about when the concentration camps were incorporated. Is that correct?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. I should, therefore, like to ask you whether you know if the defendant Scheide, whom I represent, had the same knowledge as you had and faced therefore the same dilemma.
A. That does not apply to Scheide at all. At that time Scheide was taken from the front in order to organize the motorized transport questions with the WVHA. The WVHA had grown, and it was therefore necessary to have an expert to regulate all technical aspects of transportation. From our point of view Scheide, therefore, was a complete outsider.
Internally speaking, he knew nothing at all of the WVHA. He was not an administrative officer. He was purely a technical officer and remained that, and our nickname for him was "Gas Uncle" because we were deeply fond of him in that respect.
THE PRESIDENT: The nickname was what?
THE INTERPRETER: "Gasoline Uncle".
BY DR. CARL HAENSEL (Counsel for Georg Loerner):
Q. Herr Frank, you gave a number of affidavits during the interrogations.
A. I believe you are wrong, Doctor. I gave only one.
Q. You gave only one? That affidavit is contained in Document Book I and it deals with a large number of questions, including that of the food problem. There you refer to Georg Loerner, and I find the sentence in Document Book I, Document 1576-NO, Exhibit 4, pages 17 and 18 of the German text, pages 12 and 13 of the English text I wish to refer to now.
You say there of Goerg Loerner that he had been chief of Office Group B of the WVHA and that it had been his task as the Highest Food Chief with the Reichsfuehrer SS to see to it that shortages in one concentration camp should be made up. You continue to say that Loerner had been the highest official for the feeding and clothing of concentration camp inmates. This opinion of yours does not correspond with what Goerg Loerner has told me and what I have to tell this Court. Would you please tell me first of all how it came about that you arrived at that time, "Highest Food Chief"? In this trial we have seen a great many high chiefs, Higher SS and Police leaders, and lately even a "Highest SS and Police Leader", but the "Highest Food Chief" we have not yet had. Did that term and title exist, and what is the point of this particular term that you used?
A. I think I must have made a mistake. I must have meant the "Highest Food Inspectorate" with the Reichsfuehrer SS. That was Professor Doctor Schenk. As far as my high opinion of Loerner is con cerned concerning his food and clothing activities, this was based on the time when I myself was administrative officer of the Waffen SS in 1941 and 1942, until I was incorporated into the WHA.
During that period of time Loerner was very often my last refuge, because when I was worried about food and clothing for the troops he was at that time my ministerial agent, and whenever I had worries I would turn to Loerner. Then I was incorporated into the WVHA and I myself became a ministerial agent. Loerner's position did not change.
Now, when Mr. Ortman, my interrogator, asked me whether it was not quite obvious that Loerner, since he was a ministerial agency for the troops, would be the same for concentration camps, I said, "Well, that is the way I see it myself." Nevertheless, I had misgivings because I knew that concentration camps and their administrative officer received their food, not from Loerner's department, the Troop Administration, but from the Food Offices, and I arrived at the conclusion that that must have been incorrect. If the lower agency collaborates with the Reich Food Ministry, the higher agency cannot be something different, surely. Therefore, if concentration camps were fed by the civilian sector, help in cases of emergency could not be supplied by the Troop Administration. That also should come from the civilian sector, in other words, the Ministry of Food.
For that reason, immediately after my interrogation, when I had thought these things over, I turned again to Mr. Ortman through my counsel, and I asked him to allow me to make a correction, but Mr. Ortman, although he was always very correct and kind, in this case was quite merciless. One could find out through the files that this conversation concerning the correction of my affidavit took place in the presence of my counsel and lasted about an hour, and I thought I had persuaded Mr. Ortman that I had made a mistake, but as I said before, on that particular point he would not yield and would not allow me to make a correction.
Q. Now, Herr Frank, you said that Georg Loerner in the years before 1941 helped you whenever you were in difficulties as far as food was con cerned.
That is all very nice, but there is a major difference between something happening outside my competence and duties when there is an emergency and my being the responsible official for the fact that everything reaches the spot that it should reach, and that important difference must be defined with extreme clarity.
A. Excuse me, Doctor, if I interrupt you. I believe you are making a mistake here. In 1941, as long as I was an administrative official of the Waffen SS, it was not Loerner's kindness or friendship to help me, it was his duty to help me, but as far as concentration camp emergencies were concerned, he did it although it was not his duty. It was indeed outside his duty.
Q: That is an important difference, quite right. How do you conclude that, that it was not his duty, it was merely a kindness to help the concentration camps? You are our witness. Please tell the facts.
A: It is quite simple. It can be concluded from the fact that all concentration camp inmates, as the documents show, were fed by the civilian sector. That is to say from the same sector which fed the civilian population in Germany. We had two food sectors. One sector was the armed forces and the other sector was the German civilian population. As a very prominent official I am in a position to say this because I myself was in charge of the armed forces eating sector. Therefore in that position Reichsminister Backe was my colleague in the civilian sector. These were the two large circles in the food sector. The other sector, which Backe was in charge of included concentration-camp inmates.
There would have been, at the most, an enormous muddle, if suddenly ne day 100,000 concentration-camp inmates were fed by Backe's sector and the next day Loerner would suddenly send 300 wagons of food to the concentration camps, thereby taking them away from the armed forces feeding sector. That would have been an offended even.
I would like to say briefly that helping out, because of orders from higher up, when I was in the WVHA, was not necessary. At that time I had no experience of that sort because helping but became necessary at a time only when the heavy air raids began, when rail communications had been interrupted, when camps were overcrowded because of confused decisions and so on and so forth. In 1933 when I was in the WVHA one might call conditions normal.
Q: It seems to me that it is quite clear now that we must continue to clear this matter up, the particular distinction between the military sector on the one hand, and the civilian sector on the other. You dealt with the military sector yourself, if I understood you correctly. Now, what was George Loerner's part of it, where did he belong?
A: He belonged, through the time I knew him, to the military sector.
Q: Not to the civilian sector?
A: Never.
Q: Tell me, in your interrogation you said something which I made a note of because it seemed so important to me. You said that in wartime such moneys as were needed by you for your military sector you had at your disposal from the Reich treasury as your needed them. You called this an open budget. You also said that such money as for some reason was lacking would be booked the treasury. That, in other words, was a process which relieved you of any financial care, or any necessity to make any money. Now, from that basis, if you look at the economic enterprises of the WVHA, the question arises, what was the point of all this effort to make money? After all the money was there. Why should you wish to make money? Did you wish to finance the SS with that money, because that is what the indictment says? Did you wish to use the money you earned to finance the SS illegally, or did you think that the money also, as far as you wanted to have it, would be at your disposal?
A: That question, Doctor, is most interesting. In wartime we coined an extremely ugly term. That term was "money doesn't matter". That wont so far that that was a widely used quotation. It was extremely dangerous really. That the economic enterprises in wartime, to say nothing about the time before the war, had in no sense of the work the purpose of making money; I, as an outsider, think I really am in a position to say that. Because it was not necessary to make money for the troops or the Allgemeine-SS. The AllgemeineSS in wartime had decreased respectively to zero. The Waffen-SS, on the other hand, had the money which it needed. Whether Pohl had the ambition to be an economic giant, or become one, or whether the Reichsfuehrer was particularly interested to carry out part of the armament program, through the concentration camps, I am unable to say, being a simple military expert, but I do not think that at any time during the war making money was an important motive.
Q: Tell me, you spoke of Pohl and his possible ambitions to be a little Stinnes or a great Stinnes. Let's talk about Georg Loerner and yourself. You two had a fairly similar career, did you not, and you have known each other for a long time. I believe you met in 1934. You on the one side, and the economic experts on the other were, so to speak, slightly opposed to one another. I would like to ask you, did Georg Loerner and yourself take an important view of the activities you did in the economic sector outside your task in the military sector?