VON RIBBENTROP: I repeatedly said at the very beginning of my examination, that in that sense I have never been anti-Semitic. But I was a faithful follower of Adolf Hitler.
M. FAURE: Apart from the Jewish question, you dealt with arrests of French people, did you not?
VON RIBBENTROP: The arrests of Frenchmen...
M. FAURE: Yes. Did you or did you not give orders to arrest Frenchmen?
VON RIBBENTROP: It is quite possible that this was so. Quite possible.
M. FAURE: Can you be more precise on that subject?
VON RIBBENTROP: No, I cannot, for the moment, remember any details. In any case I know that Frenchmen were arrested. Just how far this depended on us, at that time, I do not know. It was, I think, in 1944, shortly before the invasion that the Führer issued an order to the effect that a large number of important French members of the resistance movement were to be arrested on the spot, and I believe that we were advised accordingly. It is also possible that we co-operated in this action to a certain extent, but I cannot remember any details.
It was a question of arresting those elements who would kindle the flame of the Resistance Movement in the event of an invasion, and would attack the German armies in the rear. But I cannot give you any more particulars now.
M. FAURE: I ask that you be shown a document which will be submitted as Exhibit Number RF-1506 (Document Number RF-1506). It is an affidavit by Dr. H. Knochen. I shall read some passages from this document.
“At the end of 1943—it must have been in December—there was a conference at the Foreign Office on arrests to be made in France. As I was in Berlin, I was also summoned to it. Present at this conference were: The Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop; the State Secretary Von Steengracht; Ambassador Abetz; another member of the Foreign Office, whose name I do not know; the Chief of the SIPO and the SD, Dr. Kaltenbrunner; the Higher SS and Police Leader in France, Oberg; and representing the Military Commander-in-Chief was his Chief of Staff Colonel Kossmann, if my memory serves me right.