GISEVIUS: Yes, some very brave Czechs were able to do what we unfortunately could not achieve. That will always be to their glory.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, I suppose the Czechs expected, and did you expect that the assassination of Heydrich would result in some improvement in this condition?
GISEVIUS: We doubted—we, Canaris, Oster, Nebe, and the others of the group—whether it was possible at all for an even worse man to be found to succeed such a monster as Heydrich, and to that extent we really did think that the Gestapo terror would now subside, and that perhaps we would return to a certain amount of honesty and integrity, or that at least the cruelties might be lessened.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And then came Kaltenbrunner. Did you notice any improvement after the appointment of Kaltenbrunner? Tell us about that.
GISEVIUS: Kaltenbrunner came and things became worse from day to day. More and more we learned that perhaps the impulsive actions of a murderer like Heydrich were not so bad as the cold, legal logic of a lawyer who took over the administration of such a dangerous instrument as the Gestapo.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Can you tell us whether Kaltenbrunner took an even more sadistic attitude than Himmler and Schellenberg had done? Were you informed about that?
GISEVIUS: Yes. I know that Heydrich, in a certain sense, really had something akin to a bad conscience when he committed his crimes. At any rate, he did not like it when those things were discussed openly in Gestapo circles. Nebe, who as Chief of the Criminal Police had the same rank as the Chief of the Gestapo, Müller, always told me that Heydrich took care to conceal his crimes.
With the entry of Kaltenbrunner into that organization, this practice ceased. All those things were now openly discussed among the department chiefs of the Gestapo. By now the war had started, of course. These gentlemen lunched together, and Nebe often came to me from such luncheons so completely exhausted that he had a nervous breakdown. On two occasions Nebe had to be sent on long sick leave because he simply could not stand the open cynicism with which mass murder, and the technique of mass murder, were discussed.
I remind you only of the gruesome chapter of the installation of the first gas chambers, which was discussed in detail in this circle, as were the experiments as to how one could remove the Jews most quickly and most thoroughly. These were the most horrible descriptions I have ever heard in my life. It is, of course, so much worse when you hear them first-hand from someone who is still under the direct impression of such discussions—and who because of this is almost at the point of physical and mental collapse, than when you hear of them now from documents. Nebe became so ill that actually as early as 20 July he suffered from a persecution mania and was a mere human wreck after everything he had gone through.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Was it the custom to have daily dinner conferences of the chiefs of the Main Security Office, those who happened to be in town?