I am in a position to give some information about that dark chapter, because I dealt with and followed up this case in the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, and because the radiograms sent during these days by Göring and Himmler to the police authorities of the Reich came into my hands. The last of these radiograms reads: “By order of Göring all documents relating to 30 June shall be burned immediately.”
At that time I took the liberty of putting these papers into my safe, and to this day I do not know whether or not they survived Kaltenbrunner’s attempts to get them. I still hope to recover these papers, and if I do, I can prove that throughout the whole 30 June not a single shot was fired by the SA. The SA did not revolt. By this, however, I do not wish to utter a single word of excuse for the leaders of the SA. On 30 June not one of the SA leaders died who did not deserve death a hundred times—but after a proper trial.
The situation on that 30 June was that of a civil war; on one side were the SA headed by Röhm, and on the other side, Göring and Himmler. It had been arranged for the SA, several days before 30 June, to be sent on leave. The SA leaders had been purposely called by Hitler for a conference at Wiessee that 30 June, and it is not usual for people who intend to effect a coup d’état to travel by sleeping car to a conference. To their surprise they were seized at the station and at once driven off to execution.
The so-called Munich Putsch took place as follows: The Munich SA did not come into it at all, and at 1 hour’s driving distance from Munich the alleged traitors, Röhm and Heines, fell into the sleep of death completely ignorant of the fact that, according to Hitler and Göring, a revolt had taken place in Munich the previous night.
I was able to observe the Putsch in Berlin very closely. It took place without anything being known about it by the public and without any participation by the SA. We in the police were unaware of it. It is true, however, that 4 days before 30 June one of the alleged ringleaders, SA Gruppenführer Karl Ernst of Berlin, came to Ministerial Director Daluege looking very concerned and said that there were rumors going round in Berlin that the SA were contemplating a Putsch. He asked for an interview with Minister of the Interior Frick, so that he, Ernst, could assure him that there was no such intention.
Daluege sent me with this message to the Defendant Frick, and I arranged for this strange conversation where an SA leader assured the Minister of the Interior that he did not intend to stage a Putsch.
Ernst then set out on a pleasure trip to Madeira. On 30 June he was taken from the steamer and sent to Berlin for execution. I saw him arrive at the Tempelhof airport. This struck me as particularly interesting, because a few hours before I had read the official report about his execution in the newspaper.
That, then, was the so-called SA and Röhm Putsch. And because I am not to withhold anything, I must add that I was present when on 30 June the Defendant Göring informed the press of the event. On this occasion the Defendant Göring made the cold-blooded remark that he had for days been waiting for a code word which he had arranged with Hitler. He had then struck, of course with lightning speed, and had also extended the scope of his mission. This extension of his mission caused the death of a large number of innocent people. To mention only a few, there were Generals Schleicher—who was killed together with his wife—and Von Bredow, Ministerial Director Klausner, Edgar Jung, and many others.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Witness, you were in the Ministry of the Interior yourself at that time. How did Frick hear about these measures, and was he himself in any way involved in the quelling of this so-called Putsch?
GISEVIUS: I was present when, at about half past 9, Ministerial Director Daluege came back quite pale after seeing Göring and having just been told what had happened. Daluege and I went to Grauert and we drove to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, to Frick. Frick rushed out of the room—it may have been about 10 o’clock—in order to go to Göring to find out what had happened in the meantime, only to be told that he, as Police Minister of the Reich, should go home now and not worry about further developments. In fact, Frick did go home, and during those 2 dramatic days he did not enter the ministry.