VON STEENGRACHT: That I would not like to say either. That was limited to a certain circle of people. A large number even of fanatical Nazis knew nothing about these atrocities and repudiated them and would have repudiated them, had they been properly informed of them.
COL. PHILLIMORE: I understand you to say that you knew nothing of them yourself. Is that so?
VON STEENGRACHT: That I knew nothing?
COL. PHILLIMORE: Yes.
VON STEENGRACHT: In my position as State Secretary and because I read foreign papers, and particularly since I had contact with the opposition, I knew of many things connected with concentration camps. In all these cases, as far as it was in my power, I intervened. But regarding the things which I have heard here now, I knew nothing at all.
COL. PHILLIMORE: Now, I want to ask you about another matter. You have told us that Ribbentrop had no responsibility in the occupied territories. Your words were that “the Foreign Office lost responsibility at that moment at which the German bayonet crossed the frontier.” Is that right?
VON STEENGRACHT: I said that at that moment at which the German bayonet crossed the frontier the Foreign Office lost the sole right to negotiate with foreign governments everywhere. Beyond that, in most countries, the Foreign Office did not have the right to have even a diplomatic observer without authority, particularly in Norway and the Eastern Territories.
COL. PHILLIMORE: You have said the Foreign Office had no right to have an observer there, and that direct relations with occupied territories were withdrawn, is that right?
VON STEENGRACHT: No, I said that in all occupied territories the Foreign Office no longer had the sole right to negotiate with the government, since there was then either a civil administration in those countries or a military government with auxiliary command offices and a military administrative head, and that these offices themselves then approached the foreign governments and their executive organs in the countries occupied at that time. Consequently one can no longer say that the Foreign Office had the sole right to negotiate with the governments. But in some countries, as in the North and the East, we no longer had any of our people at all, and Hitler had issued the order that we withdraw our observers from the other countries, such as Holland, Belgium and so on. However, we did not do so.
COL. PHILLIMORE: You say that in France you had an ambassador reporting direct to Ribbentrop, did you not?