DR. PANNENBECKER: Witness, what did you do yourself when you saw all these things?
GISEVIUS: I, for my part, tried to contact those bourgeois circles which through my connections were open to me. I went to various ministries: to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, to State Secretary Grauert, and several ministerial directors and counsellors. I went to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, to the Ministry of Justice, to the Foreign Office, and the Ministry of War. I spoke repeatedly to the Chief of the Army High Command, Colonel General Von Hammerstein. Among all these connections I formed at that time, there is one other who is particularly important for my testimony.
At that time I met in the newly formed intelligence department of the OKW a Major Oster. I gave him all the material which by then had already accumulated. We started a collection—which we continued until 20 July—of all the documents we could get hold of; and Oster was the man who from then on, in the Ministry of War never failed to warn every officer he could contact officially or privately. In course of time, by favor of Admiral Canaris, Oster became Chief of Staff of the Intelligence. When he met his death by hanging he was a general. But I consider it my duty to testify here, in view of all this man has done—his unforgettable fight against the Gestapo and against all the crimes which were committed against humanity and peace—that among the inflation of German field marshals and generals there was one real German general.
DR. PANNENBECKER: How did the work develop, according to your observations in the Gestapo?
GISEVIUS: At that time conditions in Germany were still such that people kept their eyes open in the ministries. There was still an opposition in the bourgeois ministries; there was still the Reich President Von Hindenburg. Thus, at the end of October 1933 the Defendant Göring was forced to dismiss Diels, the Chief of the State Police. At the same time a commission of investigation was set up in order to re-organize that institution thoroughly. According to the ministerial decree, Nebe and I were members of that commission. But that commission never met, for the Defendant Göring found ways and means to thwart this measure. He appointed as Chief and successor of Diels a still worse Nazi named Hinkler, who some time before had been acquitted in a trial because of irresponsibility; and this Hinkler acted in such a way that before 30 days had passed he was dismissed. Then the Defendant Göring was able to restore his Diels to the office.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Do you know anything of the events which led to the Prussian law of 30 November 1933, by which the functions of the Gestapo were taken away from the office of the Minister of the Interior and transferred to the office of the Prussian Prime Minister?
GISEVIUS: That was just the moment of which I am speaking. Göring realized that it would not serve his purpose if other ministries were too much concerned in his Secret State Police. Though he was Prussian Minister of the Interior himself, he was disturbed by the fact that the police department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior could look into the affairs of his private domain; and so he separated the Secret State Police from the remaining police and placed it under his personal direction, thereby excluding all other police authorities. From the point of view of a proper police system this was nonsense, because you cannot run a Political Police properly if you separate it from the Criminal Police and the Order Police. But Göring knew why he did not want any other police authority to look into the affairs of the Secret State Police.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Witness, did you remain in the police service yourself?
GISEVIUS: On that day when Göring carried out his little—and I can’t find another word for it—coup d’état by assigning to himself a state police of his own, this Secret State Police issued a warrant of arrest against me. I had expected this and had gone into hiding. The next morning I went to the Chief of the Police Department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Ministerial Director Daluege—who was a high SS general—and said that it was really not quite in order to issue a warrant of arrest against me.
A criminal commissioner of the Secret State Police came to arrest me in the room of the Chief of the Prussian police. Daluege was kind enough to allow me to escape through a back door to State Secretary Grauert. Grauert intervened with Göring, and as always in cases of this kind, Göring was very surprised and ordered a thorough investigation. That was the usual way of saying that such incidents were to be pigeonholed. After that I was no longer allowed to enter the Secret State Police, but I was sent as an observer to the Reichstag Fire trial at Leipzig, which was just drawing to an end. During these last days of November I was able to get some insight into this obscure affair and having already tried, together with Nebe, to investigate this crime, I was able to add to my knowledge here.