My position within the Office A-4 had grown into a tiny and negligible routine position. I was no longer satisfied with my work, and there were other factors also which gave me cause to resign. I talked, therefore, with Obergruppenfuehrer von Herff, who was Chief of the Personnel Main Office. I asked him to pension me off. Von Herff told me it was difficult in wartime as a lot of objection was present there and that any resignation could only be allowed for total inefficiency. When celebrating X-mas in 1944, together with Hefff, I once more brought up the question about my health, I reminded him of my resignation, and he told me he would see what he could do, as I was then sixty-three years of age.
Q Excuse me, witness, you probably made a mistake, sixty years.
A Yes, of course, sixty years of age I mean. Thereupon in that year, February 1945, I was dismissed. The actual pension was carried out by the Supply Office of the Waffen-SS. The war condition, military situation, and heavy debt made it impossible for the pension to be done in a normal way, and it was only later that I was finally relieved of my duties.
DR. SCHMIDT: May it please the Court, at this point I would like to point out that I have an affidavit from the head of the Supply Office, ex-SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Gustav Exner, which actually confirms that in February 1945 he did receive a decree of release concerning Josef Vogt, and that he had passed that on to the department for officers' pensions. This affidavit has not been mimeographed or translated, and I would, therefore, like to ask the Court to be allowed to submit this affidavit later on.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, did you at any time wish to be transferred from the Administrative Office of the SS enterprises?
A In 1941 I received information that they were to have the Court No. II, Case No. 4.Supply Administration of the Waffen-SS subordinated to the Army.
I voluntarily at that moment had transferred to the Supply Office in order to try thereby to join the Army, but due to various reasons and particularly my rank, my transfer did not take place.
Q When was that?
A I don't recall the exact date. It must have been roughly in 1941.
Q What do you mean when you say you believed that your rank had prevented that transfer. Will you please explain that more in detail?
A The man in charge there, who was Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Exner, was afraid that if I would be transferred with my rank as Obersturmbannfuehrer, he would have been pushed into the background.
DR. SCHMIDT: Mr. President, that point of the reasons i.e. Vogt's application for transfer to this Supply Office is confirmed by the affidavit of Dr. Gustav Exner.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, when you joined the Administrative Office of the SS, were you a member of the NSDAP?
A No.
Q Did you join the Party later?
A I was later transferred into the party by the Personnel Office.
Q When was that?
A In 1937. I can not quite remember. '37 or '38, early in '38.
Q Did you, therefore, at that time not make an application to be received into the Party yourself?
A I don't know whether I signed an application or not. At that time I had to fill out quite a few questionnaires. I know for certain that prior to 1937 I had not made an application, and that when the question arose if I would be received in the Party, that Court No. II, Case No. 4.point was not touched upon at all.
Q Before that time, before 1937, had you been invited to join the Party by anybody?
A Well, that was the general custom at the time, in official positions, namely that those officials who were not members of the Party were again and again asked to join the party; for instance, in my office.....
Q Will you tell us what office you are referring to now, witness?
A I am now referring to my civilian office where I worked at that time, which was the Supply Office of Munich and surroundings, and, the custom there was that the block guardian would approach all those officials who were not members and give them an application form to fill in on every Monday.
Q Did you refuse at that time to work on joining the Party?
A Yes.
Q Do you wish or care to say anything about when your oldest son was to join the Leadership Corps of the Hitlers Youth, and that you prevented him from doing so?
A My son, when he had graduated from school, was invited by the Leadership of Hitler Youth to join the Hitler Youth as a fulltime leader. I heard about this when I was in the hospital where I was to be operated on. I did not stand for this for many specific reasons, and I achieved it, that my son did not join the Hitler Youth, but as an officer cadet he joined the Army.
DR. SCHMIDT: May I please the Court, I might point out here that in the affidavit of Kurt Ihssen, which I had submitted as Exhibit No. 2 sometime ago, it shows in paragraph 5 that the statement made by the defendant concerning his son is confirmed therein.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, did you subscribe to the ideology of the program of the NSDAP concerning the church and the Jewish problems?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A No. The attitude taken by the Party towards our church, and towards the Jews was in direct contradiction to my own personal sentiments. Being a Roman Catholic I could not conform with the idea of anti-Semitism. Therefore, after I joined the Administrative Department of the SS, and the Offices, and after I was received into the Party, I remained faithful to my sentiments, and I did not leave the church, nor did my family.
DR. SCHMIDT: In this connection I would like to submit a few confirming affidavits. I wish to make it clear that neither the defendant nor any member of his family left the church. These are VogtDocuments Nos. 14, 15, 16 and 17. I submit them as Exhibits Nos. 17, 18, 19 and 20. I would like for the Court to take judicial notice of the contents of these affidavits.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, are you in a position to give us examples of the fact that you were not an enemy of the Jews in your actions?
A That can not be told in one or two sentences. Nor do I wish to acquire a halo. But I do think it is necessary for me to tell the Court what my reasons were. I had two reasons. First of all, my own experience. I was born in Lower Frankonia. In that district the Jewish population was relatively large. In my own native village there were about thirty percent Jews. I grew up together with Jewish children, we played together, and attended the short term school. We visited the High School together. We played games together. During my military service my superior officers were of ten Jews. My social contacts very often were concerned with Jewish families. When the war broke out my Battery Commander was a Jew. Two Jewish officers were Schaal and Marx, and were good comrades of mine.
THE PRESIDENT: This is in the First World War?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Our relationship with one another was very extremely good. After the war we continued our contact socially, and also so far as business was concerned. That is, in my association with Court No. II, Case No. 4.the Jews we never felt that these people were different from us, and that principle I maintained faithfully, until this day.
My wife with my agreement and active support in war time until the Spring of 1945 had a Jewish family in Berlin, who lived in FeuerbachStr., and she gave them food and tobacco. Furthermore, on the occasion of a T.D.Y. detached assignment in Berlin in 1938 I lived in a boarding house which was Jewish owned.
Then I came back, when in October, 1939, I was transferred to Berlin, because my attitude towards the Jews was that these people are not different from us.
The second point at the back of my attitude is connected with my faith. I am a Roman Catholic and the Pope once said: "There is a divine and eccleastical law which says, 'Whoever regards the Jew as a different human being violates the divine law.'" Such were my reasons about my attitude against anti-Semitism.
Q.- Witness, would it not have been a logical thing to do for you, as a man with that ideological attitude, opposing as such National Socialism, to have declined to serve the Administrative Office of the Waffen SS?
A.- I regarded the Waffen SS, the SS Verfuegunstruppe at the time, as a purely military organization. They lived in barracks and they were armed. My own position was under the Reich Security Office and I had my pension to look forward to. And then I joined the party it did not shake my fundamental principles. The agitation of a pathological type like Streicher could not influence me. What he said in his paper I did not bother about either, No sensible human being took any notice of that rubbish.
Q.- Witness, apart from your work as an expert in the Waffen SS, did you work in any sense politically or otherwise?
A.- Because of my education I had no political training of any sort, Since the age of 15 I was a man in the soldiers' class and a soldier, of course, is not a politician. Therefore, later on I never dealt with political matters.
Q.- Did you take part in political meetings?
A.- No; nor did I visit the Reich Party rally.
Q.- Now, witness, another question: in this trial, when evidence was submitted by the prosecution, you heard of a large number of the most atrocious crimes committed by members of the SS in concentration camps.
My question is, did you know about these crimes?
A.- No. These enormities became known to me only here when I studied the documents. What we heard in war time was usually vague rumors and cross notices. In some cases one listened to foreign broadcasts despite the severe laws against it. But one could not always check up on these reports because one still thought that those things were propaganda on the part of the enemy.
As far as the extermination program is concerned, of Hitler and Himmler, I did not know anything of the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto and its consequences. We knew only what we saw in the papers, and in Germany there was really only one newspaper which was the Voelkische Beobachter.
DR. SCHMIDT: Before resting my examination of this defendant I would like, in order to give a picture of the defendant's character, to point to two statements made in the document which I have submitted. This is first the character description contained in Kurt Ihssen's affidavit, Exhibit Vogt 2, in Document Book Vogt No. 1, Page 4 of the German. Before I read this paragraph I would like to read the second paragraph of this affidavit where the man Ihssen says about himself, and I quote:
"I" -- that is Kurt Ihssen -- "have not been a member of the party, I have a politically and militarily clean record and I welcome this opportunity of making, from my own knowledge and experience the following affidavit with regard to Herr Josef Vogt."
And then on Page A of that affidavit it says, and I quote:
"To sum up, I can, with a clear conscience, make the following statement as my personal opinion of Josef Vogt: If all representatives of the SS up to the very top had the same inherent principles as Vogt, this nameless disaster would never have befallen our Germany. These scandalous transgressions against Jews or helpless people would never have happened. Nobody would ever have been hindered in his re ligious practice, not even in the slightest degree.
For me and my family, Vogt will always remain the intrinsically decent, modest and shy man and father, faithfully caring for his family, whom we would never think capable of any evil. It is possible that by his promotion to higher ranks his appearance became more self-confident and assertive, but we always saw him as timid and uncertain of himself rather than arrogant and conceited."
And in the last paragraph it says: "In conclusion, I and my family are firmly convinced, that Herr Josef Vogt, due to his fundamentally honest and modest attitude and disposition which appeared somewhat hesitant could never have done anything which by our general moral standards would have to be called damnable."
And as a second description of his character I wish to read from Document 9, Exhibit 9, which is the affidavit of Arthur Haleck. In that affidavit it says, under Paragraph 3:
"Description of Vogt's Character: In regard to Vogt with whom I have been closely associated for more than five years, I wish to make the following statement concerning his character:
"Vogt is a modest man. In his personal contacts, especially in those with superiors, he was full of inhibitions and his bearing was diffident rather than self-confident. Although his appearance conformed due to a well-fitting uniform and high rank insignia to the type of SS-Fuehrer which the late Reichfuehrer SS emphatically demanded, inside, however, he had remained the simple average administrative army official, which he had been before he joined the Waffen SS. His modest home and his family conformed to his petty-bourgeois character. His family meant much to him. I had especially occasion to observe how pathetically concerned a father he was to his sons. His political views were not those of a blind follower of the SS. Exaggerations of any kind were against his sound sense of justice. Often, in confidential conversation, he would raise critical objections against radical measures.
"In summing up I would like to say: Vogt is everything but a conspirator by nature."
May it please the Court, I have at this point no further questions to the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: We will take our customary recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess for fifteen minutes.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. HAENSEL: (Attorney for Defendant Georg Loerner)
Q. Tell me, witness, you had to do a good deal with figures during your activities. Did you ever deal with mysticism of figures, a strange combination of figures? I should like to give you an example. In the Document Book I, of the Prosecution, there is an affidavit, NO-1576, and another affidavit, NO-1567, which is just a slight change. One is Exhibit No. 4 and the other is Exhibit twice 4 No. 8. And both of those affidavits are of two entirely different persons -- there are the same statements and the same expressions. I shall quote in Exhibit No. 4 NO-1576, on page 6, Document Book I-- that is the German document book. Georg Loerner, the chief of food questions with the Reichsfuehrer SS, and on the next page it says: Georg Loerner as the highest authority for food and clothing of the concentration camp inmates. And in the other affidavit, NO1567, Exhibit No. 8, it says on page 45: Georg Loerner, highest authority for food of concentration camp inmates, and also the highest food chief of the SS. However, in these twenty-two document books otherwise, I have not found this term highest chief of food questions for the SS. How did you find this expression?
A. This expression is the interrogator's expression; I did not tell him myself.
Q. You did not?
A. No.
DR. HAENSEL: This is the end of my mysticism of figures.
EXAMINATION BY DR. HOFFMAN: (Attorney for Defendant Scheide)
Q. I have only one question, witness. When did you say you entered the WVHA?
A. October, 1936.
Q. And you told us yesterday that in your civilian office you made no progress because you did not want to join the party?
A. Yes.
Q. But you had entered the SS.
A. Yes.
Q. How did it come about that you did not join the party, but the SS? Did you find the SS loss unpleasant, or what were the reasons; it would have been easier to enter the party and make good progress.
A. In my interrogation I have already explained that I joined the SS for the reasons of my profusion. In my dealings with the personnel chief of the WVHA I wasn't asked for membership of the party, I did not do anything about it; only after I joined the SS, I joined the party.
Q. That is right, witness, but that does not answer my question. You must have known about the ideology of the SS when you joined it, or did that play no part?
A. If you mean it that way, the way I regarded the SS, I have already said that in my interrogation, for the SS was the so-called fourth part of the Wehrmacht, a purely military organization which had nothing to do with politics.
Q. And what gave you this attitude -- your own knowledge?
A. Yes, my own knowledge, and that as regarded by the population, because we did not know it otherwise.
DR. HOFFMANN: I have nothing else.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: I did not catch the word that the SS was a blank spot of the Wehrmacht -- what was that word?
A. The fourth part.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: I see.
EXAMINATION.
BY DR. VON STEIN: (Attorney for Defendant Eirenschmalz)
Q. Eirenschmalz was the Office Chief of the C-6, and had also to deal with preliminary checking of the department building. Your task included preliminary checking the expenses. I ask you now, witness, in these two parts, were there any points of contact between these two parts, or were they completely separated?
A. These OO's two spheres of activities were completely separated; there was no connection between the two.
DR. VON STEIN: Thank you. I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Is there no further examination by Defense Counsel? Apparently not. Mr. Robbins, you may proceed.
RE-CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, you say in your affidavit, which is in Document Book No. 1, Exhibit 8, that you were taken into the party on the 1st of April, 1938, and according to my notes you told us today that you were taken into the party in 1937. Suppose you tell us now when you really were taken into the party.
A. I do not remember the date exactly; I do not know.
Q. Well, it was a long way from 1937, wasn't it?
A. From April 1937 I was on leave from my office, and then I was not a party member.
Q. If I tell you that the Prosecution has in its possession your curriculum vitae in your own handwriting, which is a part of your 201 file, your personal records, with the SS, will that refresh your memory?
A. Yes. I don't know it by heart; it could, of course.
Q. Suppose I tell you that you say in that record, in your own handwriting, that you joined the party in April 1920; and that in 1921 you organized a party group in Dengeldorf. Does that help your recollection any?
A Mr. Prosecutor, that was no organization of the Party. At that time I was a member of an organization; was the Bund Bayern und Reich, and it was the Voelkische Block. That means the Nationalist Block and that was called the beginning of the Party. I myself came from the Army and I joined the Home Guard and took part -- I did not take part in general revolutionary movements only insofar as others took part in it, but that was not the Party in the ordinary sense of the word.
Q You don't deny that you took credit in your curriculum vitae for joining the Party in 1920 and for organizing a Party group in 1921, do you?
A I did not organize a party myself.
Q I didn't ask you that. I asked you if you denied that you stated in your curriculum vitae that you were a member of the Party in 1920 and that you organized a Party group in Dangeldorf in 1921? Do you remember that from your curriculum vitae?
A No, I do not remember that, but Mr. Prosecutor, this matter was organized by Gregor Strasser at that time, who was from Gengeldorf.
Q I didn't ask you if you were a member. I asked you if you denied that you took credit for it in your curriculum vitae? Do you now deny that that is in the document in your own handwriting?
A I cannot say it. I cannot speak about that at all.
Q All right. Suppose you tell us what this Party organization was and why you joined it and why it was that you couldn't remember about it when you were asked by your defense counsel?
A But I did not join the Party then. I would have had a membership card if I had done that.
Q You don't deny that you joined this Bund which was the predecessor of the Party, do you?
AAt that time it was Bund Bayern und Reich.
Q And it later became the Nazi Party, didn't it?
A Yes.
Q All right, let's go on to another point. Perhaps the existence of this curriculum vitae will help your memory some. You told us that you never belonged to the Allgemeine SS. Is your memory any better in that respect now?
A I was not a member of the general SS, the Allgemeine SS.
Q Do you deny that you say in your curriculum vitae that you joined the Allgemeine SS on the 1st of October 1936? Do you remember that in your curriculum vitae?
A Mr. Prosecutor, I joined the SS to take over a position provided for by the budget. This promotion it was on the 1st of October 1936, was not in accordance with a position provided in the budget. I never applied to join the Allgemeine SS.
Q Well, that's not what you say in your affidavit. You say in your affidavit: "On the 1st of April 1938 I was transferred to the SS. You don't say anything about '36 in your affidavit.
A Mr. Prosecutor, it was only the 1st of April 1938 that I joined. Until then I was an official and on the 1st of April 1938 I came to this position provided by the budget, and from 1936 I was on leave.
Q Well, let's just start from the beginning. When did you join the Waffen SS?
A To this position provided by the budget I came in 1938. To the WVHA, the Administration Office, I came in 1936. I think I seem to remember that was in October 1936.
Q Well, you joined the SS in 1936, didn't you, and you were given SS number 277081 in May 1936? Do you remember that?
A Yes, it was 277081.
Q It was May, 1936?
A I don't remember the date.
Q Well, what organization was that? That was the Waffen SS, wasn't it?
A Yes, Waffen SS, Special Task Troop.
Q Well, what did you mean in your affidavit when you say, "On the 1st of April 1938 I was transferred to the SS". You were already a member of the SS.
AAt that time I was taken over to a position provided by the budget and before that I was with the special task troop, and I never applied for employment in the general SS. I was a civil servant.
Q Well then, when you said in your affidavit you were transferred to the SS in April '38 you didn't mean you were transferred to the SS; you meant you were transferred from one position to another. Is that right?
A Yes, that is right.
Q Now, what about the Allgemeine SS? You say in your curriculum vitae in your own handwriting that you joined the Allgemeine SS on the 1st of October 1936, after having joined the Waffen SS in May, 1936. Do you have any recollection about that?
A Mr. Prosecutor, I have never applied for employment in the general SS because when I was employed in this special task troop, I didn't have to join the general -- the Allgemeine SS.
Q I didn't ask you that. I am just asking you if you ever belonged to the Allgemeine SS?
A No.
Q Did you ever make the statement in your curriculum vitae that you belonged to the Allgemeine SS?
A I do not remember.
Q Well, are you in the habit of making statements that aren't true in official documents? It looks to me like you could remember something like that.
A The curriculum vitae is so far back that I cannot remember what I have written in it.
Q You didn't tell us that you belonged to the SA either, did you? Suppose you give us some details on that. That goes back a long way. Your non-political activities, tell us about your non-political military activities in the SA.
A I did not join the SA then, but we all became Party members and we were employed in the SA Reserve.
Q What do you mean, you all became Party members? This is way back in 1933, the 1st of July, when you joined the SA, to help your recollection. Did you join the Party then?
A No.
Q Go ahead.
A The use in the SA Reserve was a forced measure, an emergency measure of the civil servants association who used every civil servant. Therefore, we came to the Reserve troop but that had nothing to do with entering the SA itself. I do not remember -- I never were a uniform and I never bought one.
Q Well, let me ask you a very simple question. Did you ever belong to the SA?
A No.
Q Did you ever make a statement in your curriculum vitae that you did belong to the SA?
A I do not remember, but I was in the SA Reserve three or four times.
Q You were in the SA Reserve?
A Yes, we were attached to it. I should like to say here, Mr. Prosecutor, I should like to add something here. In the end of 1933 I was operated on. It was a very complicated stomach operation and twothirds of my stomach was taken away. Before that I had been ill for a very long time. Any activity in the SA would have been impossible at that time. From October, 1933 I was in the hospital for five months, and for another year I could not indulge in any activities whatever. Therefore, activities in the SA Reserve -- I had to be there two or three times, it was impossible -- but a member of the SA itself as I conceived it. I have not been.
Q Well, when did you leave the SA?
A Well, I did not feel myself an SA member.
Q When did you leave the reserve of the SA? You never took any formal steps to sever yourself from that organization, did you?
A I think that must have been before my joining the SS.
Q What did you do? Did you resign from your reserve in the SA?
A Well, it wasn't so that I had a position, but we were used in the SA Reserve as far as it was necessary for blocking measures and such like; the name reserve implied that.
Q Now then, you say you were dismissed in February 1945. That isn't true, is it?
A The official who was dealing in the pay agency with this matter, Dr. Exner, certified this. My files were dealt with by him, my pension files, and at the beginning of April I was dismissed finally.
Q In April?
A Yes, in April.
Q That is not in February.
A But in February the dismissal files came to the office.
Q When did you take your last order from a superior in the WVHA?
A That must have been either in the end of March or the beginning of April.
Q Well, when did you get your last order as an office chief of the WVHA?
A That I cannot say.
Q Did you have anything to do with or did you know anything about the destruction of the files of Amtsgruppe A and the other Amtsgruppen in the WVHA?
A No.
Q Then this is the first time you have heard that, they were destroyed?
A In the Amtsgruppe A?
Q Yes in Amtsgruppe A.
A I was not in Berlin.
Q Well, you had files in your office?
A Yes.
Q Were they destroyed?
A My files were left there and came to the SS hospital in Hohenlychen which had an ambulance post there. There were barracks full of files.
Q And you don't know anything about the destruction of the files for Office A-IV? You don't know anything about that at all?
A When we left, the files were handed over. If the files were destroyed, Mr. Prosecutor, that must have been within the framework of the general destroying according to the law, because I had to keep to the regulation of the Reich Auditing Court as how far I could go with the files.
Q That doesn't answer my question. I asked you if you knew anything at all about the destruction of the files of Office A-IV. You haven't answered the question. Do you know anything about it, to your own knowledge?
A Yes. The files were destroyed but not because they should not come into the hands of the enemy but for merely office reasons.
Q Now let me direct your attention to the Verwaltungsamt for a moment. You were in charge of Office V-II for a time, were you not?
A No.
Q Well, what position did you hold in V-II?
A I was in V-II in charge of a department, an expert.
Q What department?
A I had to examine the VT.
Q During what period of time was this? VT -- that is a special task unit in the SS?
A Special task troops.
Q During what period of time was this?
A When I came to the administration office at that time the first office that was given to me was that. That was 1936.
Q You came to the Verwaltungsamt which was a precursor of the WVHA which was in 1936?
A Yes.
Q And when did you leave there?
A Middle of August, 1939.
Q And do I understand you to take the position that at no time during those three years when you were in office V-II of the Verwaltungsamt that you had anything to do with the auditing and checking of concentration camp records and the Death Head Units? You had nothing whatever to do with that?
A There is a possibility that I had to audit bills as a deputy for somebody else, but my own field was as I have already said yesterday the SS Special Task Troops.