DR. SIEMERS: Minister Severing, as far as I have been able to ascertain, you have inadvertently not yet answered one of my questions clearly.
With reference to the concentration camps you said that you had heard of certain individual cases, and you named the individual cases. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I just want to ask you in conclusion: did you hear of the mass murders which have been mentioned in this Trial, whereby at Auschwitz, for instance, an average of about 2,000 persons a day were exterminated in the gas chambers? Were you in possession of this knowledge before the collapse, or did you not know anything about that either?
SEVERING: I knew nothing whatsoever about these mass murders, which only became known in Germany after the collapse of the Hitler regime, partly through announcements in the press and partly through trials.
DR. SIEMERS: Minister Severing, what could you and your friends in the Party do during the National Socialist regime, against the National Socialist terror which you have partly mentioned, and did anyone abroad support you in any way in this respect?
SEVERING: If you will limit the question to asking what I and my political friends could do and did do after 30 January to combat the Hitler regime, then I can only say—but little. If there was any question of resistance against the Hitler regime, then that resistance was not a centrally organized one. It was restricted to the extent that in various cities the opponents of the Nazis met to consider how one might, at least by propaganda, overcome the mental terror. No open resistance was possible.
But perhaps I should here draw your attention to the following: On 30 January I personally made a decisive attempt—or rather an attempt which, in my opinion, might have proved decisive—to oppose the Hitler regime. In the autumn of 1931 I had an interview with the Chief of the Army Command, Von Hammerstein, during which Von Hammerstein explained to me that the Reichswehr would not allow Hitler to usurp the seat of the President of the State. I remembered that conference, and on 30 January 1933 I inquired whether Von Hammerstein would be prepared to grant me an interview. I wanted to ask him, during that interview, whether he was still of the opinion that the Reichswehr would not only declare itself to be against the Hitler regime, but would oppose such a regime by force of arms.
Herr Von Hammerstein replied to the effect that, in principle, he would be prepared to have such an interview with me, but that the moment was not a propitious one. The interview never took place.
If you were to ask me whether in their efforts to fight the Hitler regime, at least by propaganda, my political friends had received any support from foreign personalities whom one might have called anti-Fascists, then I must say—unfortunately no. On the contrary, we quite often noticed, with much sorrow, that members of the English Labor Party, not officials but private individuals, were Hitler’s guests and that they returned to England to praise the then Chancellor Hitler as a friend of peace. I mention Philipp Snowden in that connection and the doyen of the Labor Party, Lansbury. In this connection I would like to draw your attention to the following facts: In the year...
THE PRESIDENT: The attitude of political parties in other countries has nothing to do with any question we have to decide, absolutely nothing.
DR. SIEMERS: I believe that this is sufficient. I have no further questions to ask, Herr Minister, and I thank you.