“The Quartermaster General, together with the Economic Staff East, has proposed that the deportees should be sent either to prison camps or to reformatory labor camps in their own area and that deportation to Germany should take place only when the deportees are on probation and in less serious cases.
“In view of the Armed Forces Operations Staff, this proposal does not take sufficient account of the severity required and leads to a comparison with the treatment meted out to the ‘peaceful population’ which has been called upon to work. He recommends, therefore, transportation to concentration camps in Germany which have already been introduced by the Reichsführer SS for his sphere and which he is prepared to introduce for the Armed Forces in the case of an extension to the province of the latter. The High Command of the Armed Forces therefore orders that partisan helpers and suspects who are not to be executed should be handed over to the competent Higher SS and Police Leader, and orders that the difference between ‘punitive labor’ and ‘being set to labor in Germany’ be made clear to the population.”
Finally, I would like to offer a group of four affidavits which show that the anti-partisan activities on the Eastern Front were under the command of and supported by the Wehrmacht, and that the nature of these activities was fully known to the Wehrmacht.
The first of these is Affidavit Number 17, Exhibit USA-562, Document Number 3715-PS by Ernst Rode, who was an SS Brigadeführer and major general of the Police, and was a member of Himmler’s personal command staff from 1943 to 1945:
“I, Ernst Rode, was formerly Chief of the Command Staff of the Reichsführer SS, having taken over this position in the spring of 1943 as successor to former SS Obergruppenführer Kurt Knoblauch. My last rank was Major General of Police and of the Waffen-SS. My function was to furnish the forces necessary for anti-partisan warfare to the Higher SS and Police Leaders and to guarantee the support of Army Forces. This took place through personal discussions with the leading officers of the Operations Staff of the OKW and OKH, namely with General Warlimont, General Von Buttlar, Colonel General Guderian, Colonel General Zeitzler, General Heusinger, later General Wenk, Colonel Graf Kielmannsegg and later, Colonel Von Bonin. Since anti-partisan warfare also was under the sole command of the respective army group commander in operational areas—for instance, in Army Group Center under Field Marshal Kluge and later Busch—and since police troops for the most part could not be spared from the Reich Commissariats, the direction of this warfare lay practically always entirely in the hands of the Army. In the same way orders were issued not by Himmler but by the OKH. SS and Police troops transferred to operational areas from the Reichskommissariate to support the army groups were likewise under the latter’s command. Such transfers were frequent and therefore resulted in harm to anti-partisan warfare in the Reichskommissariate. According to a specific agreement between Himmler and the OKW and OKH, the direction of individual operations lay in the hands of the troop leader who commanded the largest troop contingent. It was therefore possible that an Army general could have SS and Police under him; and, on the other hand, that army troops could be placed under a general of the SS and Police. Anti-partisan warfare in operational areas could never be ordered by Himmler. I could merely request the OKH to order it, until 1944, mostly through the intervention of Generalquartiermeister Wagner or through State Secretary Ganzenmüller. The OKH then issued corresponding orders to the army groups concerned for compliance.
“The severity and cruelty with which the intrinsically diabolical partisan warfare was conducted by the Russians had already resulted in Draconian laws being issued by Hitler for its conduct. These orders, which were passed on to the troops through the OKW and OKH, were equally applicable to army troops as well as to those of the SS and Police. There was absolutely no difference in the manner in which these two components carried on this warfare. Army soldiers were exactly as embittered against the enemy as were those of the SS and Police.
“As a result of this embitterment orders were ruthlessly carried out by both components, a thing which was also quite in keeping with Hitler’s desires or intentions. As proof of this, the order of the OKW and OKH can be adduced which directed that all captured partisans, for instance, such as Jews, agents, and political commissars, should without delay be handed over by the troops to the SD for special treatment. This order also contained the provision that in anti-partisan warfare no prisoners except the above-named be taken. That anti-partisan warfare was carried on by army troops mercilessly and to every extreme, I know as the result of discussions with army troop leaders, for instance with General Herzog, Commander of the 38th Army Corps, and with his Chief of Staff, Colonel Pamberg, in the General Staff, both of whom support my opinion. Today it is clear to me that anti-partisan warfare gradually became an excuse for the systematic annihilation of Jewry and Slavism.”