DR. JAHRREISS: I really do not need to ask you about this, for we have documentary proof of it. If Hitler was so enraged and demanded a decree with the urgency you have described, was it possible to pursue a delaying action?
BÜCHS: In a case of this kind, in which the Führer in the heat of his rage made such demands, it was impossible for the gentlemen to whom the demand was put to oppose him at the moment, let alone flatly refuse to carry out the order. There was nothing else for them to do—General Jodl used these tactics frequently—but to try by obtaining data, arguments pro and con, and asking for comments and opinions from all the offices concerned—to collect the material and at a quiet opportune moment approach the Führer on the matter again and try to dissuade him from his extravagant demand. Outwardly, this resulted in a lengthy correspondence, in which the files of the various departments involved were sent back and forth, all with the intent of delaying the matter to the utmost and, if possible, shelving it completely. My impression, as far as the treatment of the terror-fliers was concerned, was that in this case we really succeeded even though the Führer’s attention was repeatedly called to this question through new reports and statements and he demanded that a decree be put into execution.
DR. JAHRREISS: Then was no such order issued?
BÜCHS: I know of no such order.
DR. JAHRREISS: Can you cite an incident which shows clearly that no such decree was issued?
BÜCHS: On one occasion in August 1944 I personally was called to account by the Führer rather sharply. After an air raid on Munich, Fegelein had described low-level attacks to Hitler rather crudely and reported the incident where a plane was shot down by antiaircraft artillery, and two Allied airmen had made an emergency parachute landing. When they were captured and brought off by a Wachtmeister of the antiaircraft artillery, he himself said that he had called this man to account, and had asked him why he had not shot the two fliers. The man replied, “because I had no orders to do so.” At that moment I interpolated on my own account that no such order existed. And then the Führer reproached me in the most violent manner because the leading men of the Armed Forces had not issued a decree like that. Then, of course, he again demanded that the order be carried out.
DR. JAHRREISS: Was it carried out then?
BÜCHS: No, for that was the period after 20 July, and the time of the campaign in the West when there were more urgent questions in the foreground. And because of all of these questions that of the treatment of terror-fliers was again put aside.
DR. JAHRREISS: Witness, do you know about an incident in Berlin—I believe in March 1945—which is supposed to have taken place in the Reich Chancellery, where the Führer again complained that in spite of his demand this decree had not been issued?
BÜCHS: I recall that in March 1945 the Führer again expressed himself very heatedly on this problem to General Koller, who was then Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force. I myself was not present at the beginning of this conversation. I was called in, however, and heard the Führer say something to the effect that on the basis of the attitude taken by the Armed Forces, and especially by the Air Force, it had been impossible for him to counteract the terror of the Allied fliers over Germany by means of a corresponding counterterror...