DR. SEIDL: Probably the witness Bühler knows something about it.
FRANK: Nevertheless, I would like to say that the method used at that time was a tremendous mistake.
DR. SEIDL: Witness, have you at any time recognized the principle introduced by the SD and SS of the liability of kin?
FRANK: No, on the contrary. When I received the first reports about it, I complained in writing to Reich Minister Lammers about that peculiar development of the law.
DR. SEIDL: The first SS and Police Leader East was Obergruppenführer Krüger. When was this SS leader recalled and how did it come about?
FRANK: The relations between him and myself became quite impossible. He wanted a peculiar kind of SS and police regime, and that state of affairs could be solved only in one way—either he or I had to go. I think that at the last moment, by the intervention of Kaltenbrunner, if I remember correctly, and of Bach-Zelewski, this remarkable fellow was removed.
DR. SEIDL: The Prosecution once mentioned that it was more a personal struggle for power. But is it more correct to say that there were differences of opinion on basic questions?
FRANK: Of course it was a struggle for power. I wanted to establish a power in the sense of my memoranda to the Führer, and therefore I had to fight the power of violence, and here personal viewpoints separated altogether.
DR. SEIDL: The successor of SS Obergruppenführer Krüger was SS Obergruppenführer Koppe. Was his basic attitude different?
FRANK: Yes. I had that impression; and I am thinking of him particularly when I say that even in the SS there were many decent men who also had a sense of what was right.