GÖRING: Actually I was in charge until the beginning of 1934, that is, at the beginning of 1934 Diels was the head and he gave me frequent reports about the Gestapo and about the concentration camps. Meanwhile, outside Prussia a re-grouping of police had taken place with the result that Himmler was in charge of the police in all the provinces of Germany with the exception of Prussia only. Probably following the example of my measures, he had installed the Secret State Police there, because the police at that time was still a matter of the states. There were the police of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse, Saxony, et cetera.
He had become the leader of all these police forces, and of course he now sought to get the leadership of the police in Prussia as well. I was very satisfied with Diels at that time, and from my point of view I saw no reason for letting any change take place.
These efforts, I believe, started as early as in the late summer of 1933. Shortly after I had transferred the Prussian Ministry of the Interior to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, in the spring of 1934, and so was no longer a departmental minister, Himmler, I assume, probably urged the Führer more strongly to put him in charge of the Prussian police as well. At that time I did not expressly oppose it. It was not agreeable to me; I wanted to handle my police myself. When, however, the Führer asked me to do this and said that it would be the correct thing and the expedient thing, and that it was proved necessary for the enemy of the State to be fought throughout the Reich in a uniform way, I actually handed the police over to Himmler, who put Heydrich in charge. But legally I still retained it, because there was still no Reich police in existence.
The rest of the police, the state police—that is the uniformed police—I did not turn over to him, because, as I shall explain later, I had to a large extent organized this police in Prussia along military lines, in order to be able to fit it into the future rearmament program. For this reason I could not and did not want to give him the uniformed police, because it had been trained for purely military purposes—by me, at my instigation, and on my responsibility—and had nothing to do with the actual police. It was turned over to the Armed Forces by me in 1935.
In 1936 the Reich Police Law was issued, and thereby the office of the Chief of the German Police was created. By virtue of this law the police was then legally and formally turned over to the Reichsführer SS, or, as he was called, the Chief of the German Police.
DR. STAHMER: You mentioned before the Röhm Putsch. Who was Röhm, and with what event was this Putsch connected?
GÖRING: Röhm had become leader of the SA, Chief of Staff of the SA.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we had better adjourn. It is 5 o’clock now.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 14 March 1946 at 1000 hours.]