THE PRESIDENT: M. Debenest, the document is before us, don’t you think?
M. DEBENEST: Yes, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: It is scarcely worth while to argue with the witness about it.
M. DEBENEST: I will not insist upon it, Mr. President.
Witness, how do you explain the fact that Schöngarth—you saw the document yesterday, did you not, which counsel for the defense submitted to you, the interrogatory of Schöngarth—how do you explain the fact that Schöngarth, on the very morning after the attempt on Rauter’s life, went to Seyss-Inquart and that Seyss-Inquart gave him the order, as he himself states in the document, to take increased measures of reprisal and to execute 200 prisoners, and this with the aim of intimidating the population?
WIMMER: Yesterday, I believe, I exhausted this subject. I said everything I knew about it.
M. DEBENEST: Will you give me the explanation I am asking you to make?
WIMMER: I said yesterday that Brigadeführer Schöngarth came to me and—to be brief about it—represented the matter to me to the effect that the Reichsführer SS had demanded 500 shootings and that Schöngarth, on the advice and the request of the Reich Commissioner, had succeeded in reducing the number to 200. That is what I said yesterday.
M. DEBENEST: You maintain that he had received orders previous to the ones he received from the Reich Commissioner then?
WIMMER: Not from the Reich Commissioner but from the Reichsführer SS.