ROSENBERG: Well, I have to answer these accusations.
MR. DODD: That is no answer to this, if Your Honor pleases, and no explanation of this document. He is launching off on one of these long speeches again about what he did after the document was received or after he wrote the letter, and I ask that he be instructed to answer that question and not to go on into statements about what he did in the administration in the Ukraine. I don’t think it is pertinent.
ROSENBERG: I spoke to the Führer personally about this and told him—that decree of May 1943 is in my file—I told him that it was impossible to work in the East with this kind of talk from Koch and his following.
THE PRESIDENT: If there is a letter in your file or if there is not a letter in your file, your counsel can re-examine you upon cross-examination, but you cannot in cross-examination go into long explanations. You must answer the question “yes” or “no” and explain, if you must explain, shortly. You have been explaining this document for a long time.
MR. DODD: When did you first meet Erich Koch?
ROSENBERG: Erich Koch?
MR. DODD: Yes.
ROSENBERG: In the twenties. It may have been 1927 or 1928...
MR. DODD: Apparently you have known him, then, a great many years?
ROSENBERG: I have not seen him often, but as Gauleiter I talked to him personally now and again.