RIECKE: I received no such orders.
DR. LATERNSER: Did you have any reason to believe, or did you establish, that looting was tolerated by higher military authorities?
RIECKE: No. On the contrary, looting was most severely punished.
DR. LATERNSER: Later you were also in the East, but—as I have heard not as a soldier. Could you look into the operational areas there, as well as the regions governed by the commissions?
RIECKE: Both were open to my observations.
DR. LATERNSER: What was the treatment of the local population by the German soldiers?
RIECKE: Taken as a whole it can be said that, especially in the Ukraine, the treatment of the civilian population in the army’s sector—in the operational area—was better than elsewhere; consideration was shown for the necessities of the civilian administrative sector.
DR. LATERNSER: And what do you think is the reason for that difference?
RIECKE: I attribute it to a different basic attitude of the soldier who was free of political tendencies and also to the fact that the troops, of course, wanted to have peace and quiet in the rear areas.
THE PRESIDENT: Do the Prosecution want to cross-examine?