DR. EXNER: First of all, I should like to put one question which came up again during the interrogation by the Defense Counsel. It was a point which seems to me in need of clarification.
One of the Defense Counsel reminded you of the photographs which were shown us here depicting atrocities in the occupied countries, and you said that the pictures were genuine.
What do you mean by that?
JODL: I meant to say that it was not trick photography, at which the Russian propagandists were past masters, according to my experience. I meant that they were pictures of actual events. But I also meant to say that the pictures offered no proof of whether it was a matter of atrocities at all, nor did they show who committed them. The fact that they were found in the possession of Germans would even lead us to assume that they were pictures of things which had been perpetrated by the enemy, by the forces of Tito or perhaps the Ustashi. Generally one does not take a picture of one’s own acts of cruelty if any were ever committed.
DR. EXNER: Very well. The English Prosecutor has submitted a new document, 754-PS, dealing with the destructions during the retreat in Norway. Why in this purely military Führer Decree did you write: “The Führer had agreed to the proposals of the Reich Commissioner for the occupied Norwegian territories, and has given his orders accordingly....” and so on? Why did you deliberately put in “to the proposals,” and so forth?
JODL: In issuing orders I had a kind of secret code for the commanders-in-chief. If an order was the result of an agreement between the OKW and the Führer, then I started with the words “The Führer has decreed....”
If a decree originated from the Führer himself, I started the decree with a preamble which gave the Führer’s reasons and the arguments in favor. Then, after the preamble, I wrote “The Führer, therefore, has decreed....”
If the Führer was prompted by the proposal of a nonmilitary agency to issue a decree, then, as a matter of basic principle, I added, “The Führer, on the proposal of this or that civil authority, has decided....” In this way the commanders-in-chief knew what it was all about.
DR. EXNER: Did you draft this decree—Document Number 754-PS—without objection or resistance?
JODL: This decree originated in much the same manner as the Commando Order. One of the Führer’s civilian adjutants advised me that Terboven wished to speak to the Führer. He had had trouble with the Wehrmacht in Norway because of the evacuation of the civilian population from northern Norway. The civilian adjutant said he wanted to advise me first before he established connections with Terboven by telephone. Thereupon I at once had inquiries made through my staff of the commander in Norway-Finland. I was told that the Wehrmacht—the commander of the Wehrmacht in Norway had rejected Terboven’s proposals and did not consider them possible on such a large scale. In the meantime Terboven had spoken with the Führer. I then remonstrated with the Führer and told him that, in the first place, the decree and Terboven’s intention were not practicable on such a scale, and secondly, that there was no necessity for it on such a large scale. I said that it would be better to leave it to the discretion of Generaloberst Rendulic to decide what he wanted or had to destroy for military reasons. The Führer however, incited by Terboven, insisted on the decree’s being issued on the grounds of these arguments which I had to set down. But it was certainly not carried out to this extent. This is also shown by the report of the Norwegian Government, and it can also be seen from personal discussions between me and my brother.