MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You never saw any such reactions on their part on those bombings, I take it?
BODENSCHATZ: I only know that Warsaw was a fortress which was held by the Polish Army in very great strength, provided with excellent pieces of artillery, that the forts were manned, and that two or three times Adolf Hitler announced that civilians should be evacuated from the city. That was rejected. Only the foreign embassies were evacuated, while an officer with a flag of truce entered. The Polish Army was in the city defending it stubbornly in a very dense circle of forts. The outer forts were very strongly manned, and from the inner town heavy artillery was firing towards the outskirts. The fortress of Warsaw was therefore attacked, and also by the Luftwaffe, but only after Hitler’s ultimatum had been rejected.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Was Coventry a fortified city?
BODENSCHATZ: Coventry was no fortress. Coventry, however, was a city which housed the key industry of the enemy air force, in which the aircraft engines were built, a city in which, as far as I know, many factories were situated and many parts of these aircraft engines were manufactured. In any case, the Luftwaffe had at that time received orders to bomb only the industrial targets. If the city also suffered, it is understandable, considering the means of navigation at that time.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You were interrogated in November of 1945, were you not, by Colonel Williams?
BODENSCHATZ: Yes, I was interrogated.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And Colonel Williams asked you about certain fictitious incidents along the German-Polish border late in August of 1939, did he not?
BODENSCHATZ: Yes, he asked me about that.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And would you care to tell the Tribunal what you know about the fictitious incidents along the Polish border?
BODENSCHATZ: I do not know anything positive. I was asked by Colonel Williams whether I knew in advance about the incident of the Gleiwitz broadcasting section. I told him I knew nothing about it. It was only that the incidents on the Polish border were very similar to those which happened on the Czech border. It may have been presumed—that was only my opinion—that they were perhaps deliberate. But I had no positive proof that anything had been staged on our part.