The Nuremberg Interviews (72 page)

“Whenever those factories needed labor, they received it through Sauckel or Speer, and I had very little to say about it except to supply it. Every week clerks would take those applications from Sauckel and Speer and submit them to me. There was nothing I could do about it except to approve them and refer them to my subordinate Gluecks, who had his headquarters in Oranienburg. I often had conferences with Gluecks, Sauckel, Speer, and others and we discussed whether we could possibly furnish the large number of concentration camp workers these people requested. Whenever we had enough people on hand in the concentration camps, I would approve the applications, but it was Gluecks who picked out the camp which was to furnish the labor. Furthermore, before any internees were given to a factory, a camp representative visited the factories in order to determine that the following conditions could be met: One, that the quarters must be sufficient. Now as far as the quarters for the camp workers in Landsberg that you referred to, that was a bad one obviously, and there were several bad ones. Two, food had to be adequate. Three, there had to be medical care.

“These questions were always arising and had to be talked over by the camp representative and the factory representative. The rule was that only after the things I mentioned were secured could the concentration camp commandant hand over the workers to the plant.

“The same thing was applicable to the guard situation. In the last few years, the camp commandants utilized only skeleton guards because of insufficient personnel. The factories themselves had to provide the other guards. These were regulations that I inaugurated. If these regulations would have been kept and the procedure worked according to my directives, the mishaps and bad conditions that were found later on would not have occurred.”

Had he himself ever seen these mishaps and bad conditions? He replied, “Yes, unfortunately I saw them. For example, in Württemberg, I
found a tremendous labor camp consisting of thousands of internees whose condition was completely deplorable. There was a complete lack of sanitary provisions. I was very upset and when I returned to Berlin after that trip, I ordered that all such internees should be returned to their respective concentration camps for medical care. I insisted that only after the factories installed better conditions could the internees be sent there.

“Whenever I traveled and passed by a camp, I visited it. I did this whenever I was able to do so. But there were several hundred labor camps, and I could not see them all. I can tell you about the airplane factory located north of Oranienburg, and I know personally that everything was in order there. Another factory in Silesia had three or four hundred workers from concentration camps, and everything was in order there. The only thing I found to criticize in that camp was the canteen, and I ordered it improved so that prisoners could buy cigarettes, et cetera, which up to the time of my visit, they had been deprived of.”

What happened to the internee who did not work hard enough? “He did not get additional rations. The good worker received premiums and the poor ones did not.” Were internees ever beaten to death? He replied automatically, “No, that was forbidden. Whenever I found out about a case where an internee was beaten to death — and it did happen, I don’t deny it — but if I caught such a thing I would take steps to bring those who did the beating into the other world.

“I hope that later on my legal adviser will help, and I will be able to prove how I treated such violators. I even investigated anonymous reports from internees. I remember a particular case where a thing like that happened. I received a report from a camp in Stutthof — a concentration camp near Danzig in East Prussia, where an internee was tied up and beaten to death. At first, I didn’t believe it. Previously, when the concentration camps were under the direction of Eicke, we knew of things like that happening all of the time because Eicke was a hard and ruthless man. Therefore, I sent my legal adviser to Stutthof to investigate personally for me. He returned and told me that it actually did happen. I was outraged. I brought the guilty man to trial.

“In all cases where I heard of such things, I proceeded sharply against them. But you have to consider that in many of the labor camps there were no longer SS guards, but civilian guards, and I could not punish civilians.”

I asked him whether he meant then that SS guards were better and kinder than the civilian guards. Pohl said emphatically, “Ach, yes! I don’t mean the SS guards were perfect, especially since you must understand that those SS guards who were left were not the best. The original SS guards had been drafted for frontline duty a long time before.

“For example, in 1944, I issued a directive concerning premiums and additional things which were to be given to internees — that is, to good workers. I printed a booklet about special premiums for prisoners. That never existed before.”

I supposed that this was what he had previously referred to as good business rather than a humane act. Pohl disagreed. “No, that was a humane deed. I was inwardly convinced that these internees had to be treated decently. I had internees — not too many, but several — whom I took from the concentration camps because they were good men and good workers. Later on these men became my employees. I was the only one who ever did anything like that. The manager of a plant for making wooden parts for airplanes was a former concentration camp internee whom I liberated, and whom I later paid a salary of a thousand marks a month. I didn’t have to give him a thousand marks — I could have paid him a hundred marks. Also in Dachau, there were other former internees to whom I gave such positions. I did it of my own free will. All of these facts I can prove. I can prove how I thought on the question of internees. Personally, I was humane. Whether the camps themselves were humane is another story, but not my fault.

“There was an excellent foreman in an iron foundry near Oranienburg. I spoke with him and told him I would get him out of the concentration camp. He is still around, and you can check with him about this story. I personally wrote to Kaltenbrunner to get approval for his release. Kaltenbrunner answered that it was impossible to release this man because he was a former Communist. That illustrates how hard it was to do anything. I can cite several cases.”

I asked him whether the man he tried to help was ever released from the concentration camp. “No, because Kaltenbrunner prevented it. I helped many internees out for humane reasons, and I didn’t personally profit by doing so.

“I had in my household five internees. I was the one who took up the question of Jehovah’s Witnesses with Himmler. I was instrumental in making the ruling that members of this sect, all of whom were in concentration
camps because they were pacifists, were to be employed in various households as servants. I employed five in my household. There were four women and one man. Now, would I do that if I thought there were no good people? Why, my wife even gave our own children into the care of these internees. They were middle-aged or elderly women who were Jehovah’s Witnesses and who would otherwise probably have died in the concentration camps. In my home, they received a regular salary, and up until the capitulation, they remained there.

“A better example of my feelings towards these internees cannot be given. You can ask them how they were treated by Pohl! Surely you can’t think that I murdered internees on the one hand and kept internees in my house and treated them well on the other hand!” I replied that unfortunately, I could very well imagine this because the notorious Hoess, the commandant at Auschwitz, who had exterminated 2.5 million Jews and others, told me that he too had several Jehovah’s Witnesses as servants in his house. Therefore, Hoess had murdered on the one hand and had internees working for him on the other hand. I remarked that it seemed to prove nothing. Pohl replied, “It is frightful! I could never have done what Hoess did.” I remarked that it was interesting to hear him label Hoess’s actions as frightful at this late date; he obviously knew all about it because Auschwitz was merely one of the many concentration camps of which Pohl was in charge. He replied lamely, “In 1942, after the extermination program at Auschwitz had started, was when I first knew of it.” I asked him whether he ever did anything about it. “What could I do? If I had seen any means of preventing it, I would have done so.”

Walter Schellenberg
1910–1952

Walter Schellenberg was chief of Office Group IVE (counterespionage services) from 1939, chief of Office VI (secret intelligence services) of the RSHA from 1942, and appointed head of the united SS and army military intelligence in 1944. After the war Schellenberg was brought before the American military tribunal at a follow-up trial at Nuremberg. He was found guilty of complicity to murder Russian prisoners of war. Sentenced on April 2, 1949, to six years’ imprisonment, he was released from prison in December 1950.

Walter Schellenberg is thirty-six years old, with a thin, asthenic build, medium stature, reserved manner, thin smile, some slight facial scarring near the chin.

Occupation:
“At first I was in charge of counterespionage and later of the secret intelligence service, Office VI and Office Military (military intelligence). The latter two organizations were part of the RSHA. The counterespionage department was part of the police systems.”
¹

He is uncertain as to whether he is a prisoner of war or a witness. As a member of the RSHA, he believes, he is subject to automatic arrest. He also states that he thinks, because of the “special tasks” of Office VI and Office Military, those organizations might not be counted by the trials as part of the RSHA.

What was your work in the RSHA? “Practically, our function was collecting
news — military, economic, and technical — from foreign countries. We had nothing to do with the Gestapo, headed by Mueller.”

Did you have anything to do with Himmler? “I had to take orders from Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, but I had the right in certain important cases to request a conference with Himmler directly without having to go through Kaltenbrunner.

“That right was always attacked, but I maintained the privilege. I saw Himmler every five to six weeks for a report on my work.”

Early Development:
Born in Saarbrücken January
16
, 1910. He lived there until graduating from the gymnasium in 1928. He then attended the Universities of Marburg and Bonn, where he studied jurisprudence until his graduation in 1933. He then took his law examinations but practiced law for only about three months, toward the end of 1936.

When were you first associated with the Nazi Party? “In 1933. I was short of money from home, and that year there was a law passed that one could get support financially only if one belonged to a Nazi organization. I needed support from the state.”

For what? “For my activity on the court — I had to bring a certificate every two months, and if I were lazy or indifferent I might not get this support. I was learning law by apprenticeship at the time.”

Previous Illnesses:
Measles for short period, at age six. Two attacks of pleurisy at eight or nine years. “I was always sickly as a child, with infections, head colds, and diarrheas. In general I was weak and sickly, until the age of fourteen or fifteen, when my health improved. In 1940 I was ill in Africa, got ‘poisoning of the liver’ and spent four months in a hospital.”

Although very sickly as a child, he still made progress in school because of his capacity for learning quickly. He always stood first or second in his class, he says. As at present, he was always thin for his age, though of medium height.

How did you happen to get into such an occupation as espionage? “It was all a matter of chance and accident as I view it retrospectively.” He threw up his hands and smiled as he said that.

“In May 1933 I became a member of the general SS, because I had to be a member of an active organization — I had to bring a certificate that activity was being undertaken.”

How much did you devote to the SS at the time? “Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and the weekends. We stayed in SS camps. It was difficult,
and I always tried to get away with as little work in the SS as possible. I tried to work in the office, things like that. I applied for a job as a teacher of history to the SS boys.”

Could you not have chosen an organization less noxious than the SS? “Retrospectively yes, but at that time I was completely unpolitical. The choice was between the SS, SA, and so on. There were five in my crowd and we had to decide what organization to choose. We decided to join the SS, because the SA might have entailed more work. Later we discovered that the reverse was true, that the SS had more of a working schedule.”

Did you enjoy the work at all? “No. That’s why I turned to more intellectual things like giving history lectures.

“One evening, while I lectured, two professors from the University of Bonn attended. They were members of the same SS group as I was. They advised that there was no sense in my lecturing to the SS, and that I really belonged to the SD. I made an appointment with these professors, who were also members of the SD. The professors were probably in the SS for the purpose of finding people for the SD.