DR. HORN: What attitude did the Foreign Office take in view of the trend of this article?
VON STEENGRACHT: The Foreign Office repudiated the article vehemently, because it comprised an offense against international law and thus made us depart from international law in another field. Moreover, it appealed to the lower instincts of man, and both in internal and external policy did great damage.
Besides, such an article, that has been read by several hundred thousands or by millions, does irreparable damage anyway. We therefore insisted that under no circumstances should such things appear in the press again. I must regretfully state, however, that we had a very difficult stand in this matter, especially since low-flying enemy craft often shot peasants in the fields and pedestrians in the streets, that is to say, purely civilian people, with their murder weapons. And our arguments that in our field we wanted to observe international law under all circumstances, were not taken into account at all either by most German officers, or above all by Hitler personally. On the contrary, in this case too we were regarded again only as formal jurists. But later we did try, as much as we could, with the help of military offices, to prevent the carrying out of this order.
DR. HORN: Do you know of a Battalion Günsberg?
VON STEENGRACHT: I do not know of a Battalion Günsberg. I know, of course, of a former Legation Counsellor Von Günsberg in the Foreign Office. This Legation Counsellor Von Günsberg received, as far as I recall—I did not at that time do any work at all connected with these matters—received from Ribbentrop the assignment of following, with a few people from the Foreign Office and a few drivers, the fighting troops, and seeing to it that, firstly, the foreign missions, for instance in Brussels and Paris, and so forth, that stood under the protection of the protective powers, should not be entered by our troops. And at the same time Günsberg was charged with protecting the files in the Foreign ministries that were of foreign political interest.
After the conclusion of the French campaign, Günsberg, as far as I recall, was no longer in the active service of the Foreign Office, but was listed with the Secret Field Police, from which he had received a uniform, because as a civilian he could not enter these countries.
DR. HORN: How and when did Günsberg’s job end?
VON STEENGRACHT: Ribbentrop lost interest after these events in Günsberg and the original assignment. Then, after the beginning of the Russian campaign, Günsberg, so far as I remember, reported again for duty and said that he intended to do the same thing in the East, and Ribbentrop told him:
“Yes, that is very good. You may go with a few people to the army groups and see whether anything of interest for us is happening there and also see to it that when we approach Moscow the foreign embassies et cetera are not entered, and that the documents are preserved.”
But he did not consider himself any longer as belonging to the Foreign Office and apparently received orders from other offices. Then, as I later heard, he had a large number of men under him and had many automobiles which he could not have received from the Foreign Office any more than he could have received a military uniform from the Foreign Office so he was apparently working for other offices.