DR. LATERNSER: Did you read that memorandum?
JODL: No, I did not read it. I only heard about it.
DR. LATERNSER: Furthermore, the Prosecution have submitted Affidavit Number 13 from Rittmeister Wilhelm Scheidt. It is Document 3711-PS, Exhibit USA-558. Scheidt says in this affidavit, and I quote from Page 2: “It was a generally known fact that the partisan fights were conducted with cruelty on both sides.”
I skip a sentence. He goes on to say:
“There is no question but that these facts must have been known to the leading officers in the Armed Forces Operations Staff and in the General Staff of the Army. It was also known that it was Hitler’s view that in the fight against partisans only the use of cruel, intimidating punishment could be successful.”
Is Rittmeister Scheidt’s statement correct, namely, that the leading officers of the Armed Forces Operations Staff and the General Staff of the Army knew of the cruelty employed by both sides in the partisan fighting?
JODL: What we knew about the conduct of partisan warfare has already been submitted to this Tribunal. I refer to the instructions which I signed regarding the combating of partisans in Document F-665, Exhibit RF-411. It begins with a lengthy discourse on how the partisans conducted this war. Of course, we did not invent this. This was extracted from hundreds of reports. That troops in such a fight, seeing the methods employed by the enemy, would on their part not be exactly mild can readily be imagined. In spite of that the directives which we issued never contained a word to the effect that no prisoners were to be taken in these partisan fights. On the contrary, all reports showed that the number taken prisoner was larger by far than the number killed. That it was the Führer’s view that in their fight against the partisans the troops should in no way be restricted is authentically proved by the many arguments which I, as well as the General Staff of the Army, had with the Führer on this subject.
DR. LATERNSER: What if the commanding generals received reports about cruelties committed by their own soldiers?
JODL: Then they would be court-martialed. That again is established in the documents. I remind you of an order, issued by the Führer, which begins with the sentence, “It has been reported to me that individual soldiers of the Armed Forces have been dealt with by court martial because of their behavior when fighting partisans.”
DR. LATERNSER: And that was the only thing the commanding general could do in a case like that?