DR. SEIDL: You came to the Government General later, did you?
BILFINGER: I came to the Government General in August 1940.
DR. SEIDL: I have no further questions for this witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendants’ counsel want to ask questions?
DR. RUDOLF MERKEL (Counsel for Gestapo): May I put a few questions to the witness?
Witness, the Prosecution states that the State Police was a circle of persons formed in accordance with a common plan, and that membership in it was voluntary. Since you had an especially high position in the RSHA, I ask you to tell me briefly what you know about these questions?
BILFINGER: Of the members of the Secret State Police only a small part were volunteers. The former officials, the officials of the former political department of the headquarters of the Commissioner of the Police, constituted the nucleus of the membership of the Secret State Police. The various local police head offices were created from these former political departments of the central police headquarters, and at the same time practically all the officials from these former political departments were taken over. In Berlin, for example, it was Department I-A of the central police headquarters.
Apart from that, administrative officials were transferred from other administrative authorities to the Secret State Police, or were detailed to go here. As time went on people from other administrations and offices were forced to transfer to the Secret State Police. Thus, for instance, the entire frontier customs service was transferred to the Secret State Police in 1944 by order of the Führer. At about the same time the whole of the intelligence service was transferred.
In the course of the war numerous members of the Waffen-SS who were no longer eligible for active military service were detailed to the Secret State Police. In addition many people who originally had had nothing to do with police work were drafted as emergency members to the Secret State Police.
DR. MERKEL: If I summarize it by saying that the Secret State Police was a Reich authority and that the German civil service law applied to its employees, is that correct?