people please stick to that and question me about this matter.
Q I'll come to that in due time. I shall ask you now again how you refused the first Heydrich order to join the Einsatzgruppe? leave Berlin, and I said in my direct examination I was indispensible to the Reich Trade Group, that is, I had a note in my military passport which obligated me to work for the Reich Trade Group, and, therefore, Heydrich first had to consult me and remove this note. Therefore I had the chance to discuss these matters with him. go to Russia, and twice I refused?
Q Did you go to Heydrich and say, I refused to go to Russia? I used the tact which is necessary when discussing such matters with a superior, that is usually customary.
Q On the second occasion what happened? you were able to persuade him to relieve you of that assignment?
A When the last order came I could not evade it. How strenuously he insisted on this could be seen from the fact that Mueller and Streckenbach, Chief of the Gestapo and Chief of Personnel, were of the opinion that it would not be useful to give me an Einsatzgruppe, and they also protested to Heydrich about giving me the command of an Einsatzgruppe, but since he wanted it, the third order came down, and there was no chance to evade it this time.
Q I didn't follow you there. Who was it that insisted, Streckenbach? Mueller.
were to do in Russia?
A I don't know.
Q I beg your pardon?
A I don't know whether he did. any idea of what they were to do? job away from the Army, whereas, up to that time he had detailed personnel to the Army, and the Army worked without letting him in on his work, therefore, he expanded his domination to include the operational areas. gruppen? Armed Forces High Command and the Army Command, and Heydrich commissioned these two agencies. you to go to Russia in command, he knew what work you were going to perform in Russia, did he not?
A Whether he already had the Fuehrer's Order I don't know. I only knew the fact that the Einsatzgruppen were being set up. say, what the Einsatzgruppens were to do?
Q Now he had a special order?
Q In your direct testimony you said the order read as follows: Did you see the order yourself?
A No, I did not say, it read as follows? I merely gave the contents, for I always said, there was no written order.
Q I misunderstood you, the transcript said "Read as follows," So your understanding of the purposes of the Einsatzgruppen came from Streckenbach orally at Pretsch?
Q And you protested? a general protest.
Q What form, did your protest to Streckenbach take? possibly accomplished. It is impossible to ask people to carry out such executions.
Q Why? for people spiritually than to have to shoot defenseless populations. worse than to be shot either, when you are defenseless? for example, to starve.
Q It is not meant entirely ironically. I have read the whole of your testimony, and I am impressed by the fact that not once did you express any sympathy or regret.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr Heath, I don't think that that observation is in place.
MR HEATH: I withdraw it, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: You are not to comment on the witness. Ask him questions, and he is to answer them. What you think about him is of no consequence.
MR. HEATH: I know that, Your Honor, and I ask the Court's forgiveness for having out the question. BY MR HEATH :
Q What form of protest did the other men present at the time? What did they say about this order which Streckenbach described?
bach and Millar were persons who had the same rank as the other Einsatzgruppen leaders, so that here there was lively protest not of a formal kind, but as among comrades, the reaction to this order was expressed in rough words, and I sail in my direct examination that Streckenbach immediately interfered in our argument and confirmed it in even stronger terms than we had just expressed it.
Q. What was Streckenbach's rank?
A. At that time he was Bridgadefuehrer or Gruppenfuehrer. At any rate he was the chief of an office, as I was, and as Nebe who led the Einsatzgruppe B, and besides Rasch was in the same rank.
Q. Now you have answered my question. What other protest was made besides pointing out to Streckenbach the bad effect on the morale of troops who would have to do these killings?
A. I didn't get the question.
(The question was repeated by the interpreter.)
A. I didn't mention that sentence. I merely said that the order for the killings was an inhumane order. I didn't speak of morale, for those experiences were to be made only afterwards when the order was carried out. Here is tas merely a protest of the inner being of each man against such an order.
Q. A protest against killing defenseless human beings, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. How strongly did you feel that at the time?
A. I don't know how to explain this to you.
Q. Was it sufficiently strong, your feeling of revulsion, was it sufficiently strong for you to doubt the possibility that the head of the German State had ordered any such thing?
A. I didn't understand the question.
Q. You say that you felt very strongly that this was an inhumane order.
A. Yes.
Q. Did your feeling of revulsion against what was ordered cause you to question whether the head of the German State had in fact made such an order?
A. First of all, it was not concerpt. If I must describe this feeling I would have to say grief and sorrow, not only for the momentary order but for the moral and spiritual consequences which such orders would have to have in their wake and which are still not concluded.
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, I don't think that you quite grasp the questions which Mr. heath put to you. Let me try to put it. Were you appalled and shocked by this order that you questioned whether it could be true and that possibly some mistake had been made and that the Head of the State had not issued such an order?
THE WITNESS: I did not doubt the fact that the Fuehrer had given it because this was also the first reaction of Streckenbach, that he repeated this word, "Fuehrerorder" to us.
Q. (By Mr. Heath) With no prior information from anyone about the order you were fully prepared to believe and did believe that Adolf Hitler had ordered those exterminations?
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Heath, I don't understand why you want to pursue that business. There is no doubt that the order was issued by the Head of the State. It was so explained to him. He believed it, acted on it and executed it, so why do you question that?
MR. HEATH: If your Honor please, I was trying to get, with the Court's permission, at this man's state of mind and why having access to Heydrich and having access to Himmler if he thought it impossible that.
THE PRESIDENT: He didn't think it was impossible. He never said he thought it was impossible. He knew the order came from Hitler, Himmler, et al., and accepted it.
MR. HEATH: I had not so understood, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think there is any Question that he accepted it as coming from the higher leaders. Do you have some doubt that he accepted it as such?
MR. HEATH: If your Honor please, I have no doubt that he accepted it as such and acted on it as such,
THE PRESIDENT: I am sorry, I forgot to turn the switch, I will remember to keep it up.
MR. HEATH: Shall I repeat that answer to your, your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, please.
MR. HEATH: I said, sir, I have no doubt that he accepted it and I have no doubt that he acted on it as an order coming from Hitler. What I am attempting to find out is his state of mind when he tells the Court as he has, "I felt bound I had to act because of the military command." I am trying to get the witness to explain to us why if he was horrified by this order, as he says he was, he did not use the channels that were open to him: to go to Heydrich, to go to Himmler, and to question whether Hitler had in fact ordered this thing.
THE PRESIDENT: For the simple reason that there was no doubt in his mind that the order had. come down.
MR. HEATH: Very well, very well.
THE PRESIDENT: That is the reason he didn't go.
MR. HEATH: Very well, if it is as clear as that, Your Honor, I shall certainly not labor it any further.
THE PRESIDENT: That is the conclusion the Tribunal reaches, and if we are in error I am sure the witness will volunteer directing us.
Q. (By Mr. Heath) Witness, I leave that now and go to this question that we haven't quite finished with yet. Streckenbach, when you men protested this order, said, "I myself protested a similar order in Poland, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. "And my protest came to nothing." I suppose he told you that, did he not?
A. Yes.
Q. In fact he said, I think, that Himmler had rebuked him for protesting.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, when he told you that, did it occur to you that Jews in Poland, who had been the subject of a similar order prior to your invasion of Russia were not properly classified as bearers of Bolshevism in what was the nearly Fascist state of Poland?
A. I don't know that the same thing was ordered and carried out in Poland what was ordered and executed in Russia. I know just from this talk with Streckenbach, that individual actions were ordered in Poland, but not that a general order existed, and Streckenbach already at that time protested against single actions. These aporadic actions were not so much directed against Jews as also against Poles for the reason that after the invasion of the German troops there were border guards who as exaggerated retaliation revenged themselves on the Poles who whortly before and after the outbreak of the war had committed misdeeds on Ethnic Germans and had killed a large number of them, and Streckenbach objected to these actions, and I was personally a witness in the dispute between him and. Himmler because this happened on the official trip on which I accompanied Himmler.
Q. How long have you known Walter Schellenberg?
A. Walter Schellenberg?
Q. Walter Schellenberg.
A. I know him since my SD time, since 1936.
Q. You have told the court that you did not want to go to Russia. Do you recall the conversation about going to Russia which you had with Walter Schellenberg after your return to Berlin?
A. No. I don't.
Q. Do you remember saying to Schellenberg that he was not a good National Socialist in that he had not proved himself?
A. I don't think I have ever expressed myself in such a primitive form. I never used such phraseology until this very day.
Q. You must understand that the language I use is a quotation from an interrogation of Walter Schellenberg. I know that you and Schellenberg used better German than comes out in English. I have heard it said that you use excellent German yourself.
A. Mr. Prosecutor, you can depend on the fact that since 1937 I have had such a bad relationship with Schellenberg - which I don't want to describe here - that in the year 1942 when I know him even better than in 1937, I certainly did not have any such talks with him.
Q. Well, I don't want to increase your troubles with Mr. Schellenberg, but he has said some good things about you, as well as that. I will ask you again, did he not answer you and tell you that you were rather slow because he knew how to avoid service with the Einsatzgruppen and you didn't know how to do it?
A. That is so grotesque that I don't know any answer other than I can only say to you that Schellenberg would have taken any possibility to pick out an Einsatzgruppe in which he could have done the most to please Himmler, for nothing else was the purpose of his life down to the very moment when he believed he could please and had to please other persons.
Q. Now, let us move to something that is not qrotesque. I want to ask you, or I say this, Sir, You have told the Court repeatedly that to your knowledge there was absolutely no purpose to exterminate races. You are charged here, of course, with war crimes, which is one kind of killing, and crimes against humanity which is another kind of killing. You have told the Court that you have no reason today to believe that these killings were part of an extermination program. I want to ask you further, you are aware of this speech which Hitler made in 1953 at the party rally in Nurnberg, and I would like to ask you, when I have read you this quotation, to comment on it, "But long ago man has proceeded in the same way with his fellowmen. A higher race, at first higher in the sense of possessing a greater gift for organization, subjects to itself a lower race, and thus constitutes a relationship which now embraces races of unequal value. There thus results the subjection of a number of people under the will often of only a few persons, a subjection based simply on the right of the stronger, a right which, as we see it in nature can be regarded as the sole conceivable right because founded on reason." Do you recall that or any of the similar outgivings of Adolf Hitler during the period 1933 on?
please the Prosecution especially. Despite repeated readings I have still not understood it to this date, Perhaps the last two sentences are reasonable, but the first two-thirds I cannot make any sense out of. a great deal of Hitler's statements, were you not? about politics from various scattered quotations. If one were to do this it would be hard to find any statesman of one whom could say that he had ever any definite idea. for statesmen are in the difficult position of being in politics which is something changing and developing and statesmen always adapt themselves to this changing characteristic of politics. This has not been only a quality of Hitler but all statement use to do this until this very day. the jurists of the Third Reich, Karl Schmidt, whom you quote in your direct examination, as the author of what you call the theory of "friend and foe". You pointed out to the Court that this theoretician of the Nazi movement, the top legal theoretician, had, in your opinion, an impossible doctrine. Schmidt was the top juridical commentator on the Nazi State, was he not?
A In '33 and '34, yes, but then it was at an end after that,
Q Now, in Schmidt's conception man had the very power, which Hitler described here, too coerce his weaker brother, did he not, the moral, right to do it? ppeared as the top jurist of the Third Reich because he credited such mistaken theories to National Socialism. because he opposed your view of National Socialism?
A That is very difficult. You ask very much. National Socialism, unfortunately, had no time to work out its theory thouroughly and thus I looked in vain for even one book of principles on which National Socialism really was based.
MR. HEATH: If your Honor please, my connection is broken here now. Will you speak please?
(The interpreters tested the channel).
Q (By Mr. Heath) Let us go to Gottfried Feder. When was his influence ended in Germany? undersecretary in the Ministry of Agriculture in 33, this was the last honor which one gave him. Actually he didn't have anything to say in the Agricultural Ministry after 1933, nor did he have any political significance at all.
Q Very well. He was free of political pressure, and it was he who said that the master race dogma was the emotional foundation of the Nazi movement. Do you care to comment on that, do you care to comment on the Herrenvolk, the importance of it to the Nazi movement? arrived at the idea of the master race from his own vanity. Outside of him and Ley and two other people there was certainly no logic in the leadership for raising this nonsense of the master race. The office for racial politics dealing with such racial problems never represented this theory. dates. In August, 1942, we find Rosenberg, spokesman, saying "The Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we do not need them they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and Germanic health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undersirable." Now, Rosenberg, would you classify him as the spokesman for the National Socialist State?
A Certainly, but I don't believe that he expressed this in this form for I know him personally. He was anything but a man who would even say such a thing;certainly not act accordingly. I never could consider him an enemy of the Slavs.
Q Very well. He himself, I "believe, came from Russia, did he not?
Q Wall, let's see about Hans Frank. How do you place him in the Nazi hierarchy in 1941 at the time you were in Russia? conditions in the Reich considered him anything else, not even Hitler.
A The same thing would go for Frank as what I said before. You might quote from him about the legal state as it could not have been formulated any better by the best Democrat, and you could list him as the greatest enemy of the SS and of the police, but he was taken seriously neither as the one nor as the other, and the fact that he came to the General Government was the result of the fact that Hitler did not want to make him Minister of Justice, even though the Minister of Justice was deceased and no one had been found to replace him. The General Government was not considered to be a permanent organization and therefore the Governor General, the title of the Governor General was considered to be honorary, and even a Frank was not considered to be able to spoil it, because he had a "spiritual strength". (Tuhalt") Socialism, is it not, that psychopaths and irresponsibles were given power in a personal state?
A I don't think that it is a single case, but this has happened time and again in politics. difficulties in the Party came from your opposition to those men who advocated total destruction of the objective or instituional state, is that right?
Q You had been convinced by a year's study of Mussolini's personal autocracy that Italian Fascism was a bad thing?
institutional restraints on men who weilded power? unrestricted dictatorship in the form of a totalitarian state. words, do we not? power to legislate by himself without the restraint of any constitution, was he not in precisely the same situation and did he not have the same power to act that Mussolini had acquired, from the legal standpoint?
A Yes, I understand you completely. The difference is that the one was National Socialist and the other was FAscist. Hitler did not for himself, did not make up a constitution for an ah solute; stats, but because he had a different opinion of the state he had himself given power for a definite period of time. And this was nothing else but a constitutional means, which during the parliamentary period of the Weimar Constitution was also used then, especially in the years '31 and '32, when Paragraph 48 of the Weimar Constitution was the basic support of the government. This law giving a government the power must not let one conclude that Hitler wanted to establish a dictatorships, but he took a constitutional means, and I know that during the entire time of the Hitler Government, even during the wars it was the idea to build a senate, a kind of parliamentary system, and I know, that several times Hitler complained to acquaintances that he still had not found any man who could rebuild the state for him and who could give the state the appropriate legal form. I don't believe that Hitler wanted a dictatorship.
mind Hitler wanted something other than a personal dictatorship. power? power? you entertained, you have told the Court, was shared by a number of intellectuals who gathered around you in the SD -you persevered in the hope that some day your view would succeed and the absolute dictatorship would be limited by institutions or by law?
A Yes, that is right, I was convinced of this fact for two reasons: especially because it was known that after the war Hitler wanted to lay down the affairs of state and merely wanted to remain head of the State and thus I understood from his misgivings and from his contempt toward very many people, it was his interest to establish certain safeguards for the new political forces.
And the second reason was the knowledge of the front generation. In the SD we had knowledge of a great number of letters, for example, of Hitler Youth Leaders, who severely objected to functions of the leader corps of the Nazi Party that is to say to the absolute power of the Party. Therefore, I was firmly convinced that the front generation after the war would start to have other conditions in German -- other than those which now existed as a result of a five-year war.
Q I understood you to qualify all of Hitler's hopes and expectations for limiting his absolute paver with this statement, "He hoped after the war to do that."
or until the war was finished? strict kind of leadership in Germany as existing in other states during the war; because of the fact that Hitler formally held the entire power, which actually was being distributed among the hierarchs below him -there was no genuine leadership in Germany during the war.
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, I think we are drifting very far afield here, but you just made one observation which has aroused a question in me. You stated that you would have wished that in Germany during the war there might have been leadership such as existed in other nations. Do you want to give an example?
THE WITNESS: For example, America.
THE PRESIDENT: If you would have had this kind of leadership in Germany there would have been no need for Hitler or for a war, don't you think?
THE WITNESS: I spoke of leadership during the war, Your Honor. I believe the leadership in America during the war was slightly different than the one during peace. The war legislation gave the President extraordinary powers and he then found organs who supplied him with extraordinary powers during war time, whereas in Germany, the means of power were actually already used up during the war because a Bormann and a Ley had spent these forcible measures too early; for psychologically seen, the subordinate will adapt himself to the measures of the superiors and the method uses itself up, but I am convinced that in America war was directed more strictly and organically than in Germany,
THE PRESIDENT: Proceed, Mr. Heath. under Himmler, did you not?
A No, one couldn't say that. This was only a little side activity. The main time of my activity was spent in economics, from 1938 to 1943 as a private man and from November 1943 to the end of the war as an official of the Reich Economics Ministry. the end of the war?
Q Yes. Now I want to question you about your relationship with Himmler, briefly. I understand you to say in your direct examination that in - Let's begin at the beginning. May I recite briefly: In 1926 you joined the NSDAP.
Q 1925. Then you distributed booklets from house to house according to your word you did everything that was to be done in the small party membership at that time. Then you went to Italy, I believe, and when you came back you conducted a Party training course.
Q Well, those dates are not important. Let us begin in 1933. Your first official position was referendar in Hildesheim. Economy in Kiel?
A Yes, that's right. 1934? the Roehm action in the Party, also the Bolshevist tendencies?
A That would be very nice for you, but it wasn't that way, unfortunately. These were National Bolshevist circles and not Roehm circles. I could give you the names, but I do not think they will interest you.
Q No, they don't. I wasn't clear. I didn't know what you meant precisely because I find this -
A It was a mistake in the translation. These were National Bolchevist circles.
Q You were arrested in 1934 at the request of the Party?
Q That is the NSDAP? from Kiel?
Q At the request of the Party?
Q Rosenberg?
A That again was somewhat later. That was during the activity in Berlin. in 1934?
Q You then went to Berlin?
A I am sorry I didn't get it in the German.
(The interpreter repeated the question.) school into an economic school. National Socialism?
Q And Rosenberg then killed that plan for you? examination "Thus my scholastic plans were definitely at an end, but simultaneously my political activity was also at an end. Dr. Wagner warned me about attacking National Socialist politics in my speeches." Is that right? So thus far you were in opposition to the ruling Party authority?
Q Now, you were out of work in 1935 and 1936, or weren't you?
A I was not without work. I said in already the direct examination that I did earn my living, but I bad no great future plans. I also stated that I directed a library in the Institute for Applied Sciences.
Q All right. In May you entered the SD, May, 1936? SD?
Q Who was that?
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Heath, do you want to suspend now for the afternoon recess?
MR. HEATH: I beg your pardon.
THE PRESIDENT: Suspend now for the afternoon recess?
MR. HEATH: Whatever time suits Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
MR. HEATH: May I proceed your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed, Mr. Heath. BY MR. HEATH:
Q Mr. Ohlendorf, at length I was attempting, before the recess, to show what I will now summarize.
You were in constant conflict with Party leadership on matters of ideology and practice, were you not?
A I want to intervene here. During the time the Prosecution refers to the Party had very little to do with ideologies; but my interventions were mostly concerned with practical politics - that is, in particular against the policy of the food Ministry Reichsnaehrstand.
Q Let me rephrase the question. Prom time to time, from 1936 until the end, you found yourself in opposition to so powerful leaders of the State as Goebbels, Bormann, Ley---is that right? in writing your reports he would speak to the Fuehrer about you and have put where you belonged, and your subordinates put where they could do more useful labor?
A Did you say Himmler?
A I can't remember that. on the occasion? I believe.
belonged. Soon after that you went with Himmler on a official trip to Warsaw, did you not?
A There is an error concerning the years. The occurrence you described as a Himmler occurrence when he threatened to send me to a concentration camp and to dissolve my office was in the year 1943.
My official trip with Himmler--when I was one among fifty--was at the beginning of November 1939.
Q I see. I think I have made the error; all right. Well, you went to Poland with Himmler in 1940?
Q 1939. All right. And Heydrich sent you along with Himmler, you say? Disputes arose between you and Himmler in 1939?
Q That's all right, whether it was monoloque or not. He reproached you that members of the SD in Poland had not been able to treat the Jews in a manner in which he wanted, and that you say, "was a product of my education."
What was it he wanted done to the Jews in Poland which he said you had failed to do?
to the prosecutor or his previous questions. It was in the same city, where differences between Streckenbach and Himmler occured. It concernto the order which controlled you in Russia?
A Yes. During the direct examination I already answered the questions, but the President, and today I answered your questions, that once concerning certain definite single actions. differed from the order which controlled killing of Jews in Poland in 1939? during the entire time of the committment, the killing of all Jews had been ordered. Special actions in Poland had been ordered, whose contents I do not know in detail.