KESSELRING: Obersturmbannführer.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You remember, after some comments in the Osservatore Romano you had an inquiry directed into the incident by your intelligence officer whose name was Zolling, don’t you?
KESSELRING: Yes, that is correct.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: And you also got a report from Kappler himself, did you not?
KESSELRING: Kappler merely had a brief report relayed to me by telephone to the effect that he had a corresponding number of condemned men available.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Didn’t Kappler tell you that he had executed 382 people?
KESSELRING: The execution lay in the hands of the 14th Army and I finally received merely the news of its being carried out without any further explanation, and had no direct conversation with Kappler.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you sure of that?
KESSELRING: At the end—I expressly emphasize this once more—I conversed with him briefly by telephone, after I had arrived at my command post and this report had been given me, as I said earlier. Otherwise I can recall no further direct communication. I do remember that perhaps 8 or 10 days later I met him and I told him that I was to a certain extent grateful to him that this very distasteful matter had been settled in a way which was legally and morally above reproach.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Let us see what you had to be grateful for. You were interrogated about this on the 8th of January. Do you remember being asked this question? “Then Zolling didn’t tell you that all this number that was executed had previously been convicted of some crime punishable by death?” And you answered, “Yes, I said that already. Yes, he did that. Even Kappler had told me that.”