DR. STAHMER: Very well, Mr. President. General Korten further stated that all the documents which are relevant to the question of terror-fliers and the shooting of the Royal Air Force officers have been submitted to him and after perusing them he arrived at the conclusion that the contents of these documents is proof of the fact that the High Command of the Armed Forces as well as the Reich Marshal opposed this action and did everything in their power to prevent the measure intended by Hitler from being put into effect. He particularly points out that in one of these letters there is a marginal note to the effect that it was not possible to get a reply from the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, and he concludes from that that the Reich Marshal personally opposed any final decision of this matter.
Then there is a further incident dealt with in:
“Question 8: Did the Führer, for the reason stated under Figure 5, on the occasion of a situation discussion and in the presence of all who attended it, excitedly accuse the German Luftwaffe of having made a mutual coward’s agreement with the Allied Air Forces?
“Answer: During the first half of March 1945, Bormann showed the Führer a note taken from a correspondent’s report in the Allied press. The gist of this note was: The crew of an American fighter plane, which shortly before had been shot down over Germany, had been picked up by advancing American troops. The crew had testified that the enraged civilians had mishandled them, had threatened them with death, and in all probability they would have been lynched if it had not been for the German soldiers who had liberated them and protected them. Bormann pointed out to Hitler in a few words that this confirmed the fact that German soldiers, in instances such as this, were going against their own countrymen; and he concluded his remarks somewhat as follows: ‘My Führer, that is the way your orders are being carried out.’ Thereupon in the presence of all who attended the situation discussion the Führer made some very excited statements and among other things the Führer said to me, ‘If my orders are not being carried out it is due to the cowardice of the Luftwaffe because the men in the Luftwaffe are cowards and they are afraid that something might happen to them, too, some day. The whole business is nothing but a cowards’ agreement between the German Luftwaffe and the English and American airmen.’ I reported this to the Reich Marshal.
“Whether Hitler made the same remark to the Reich Marshal personally, that I am not able to say; but I consider it quite probable, because when making reproaches of this kind, especially if they applied to the Luftwaffe, he often repeated himself and used the same expressions.
“Question 9: On what day did this discussion take place?
“Answer: I cannot give the date.”
Now we come to:
“Question 10: Did the Führer repeatedly order the former Reich Marshal to divulge the name of the officer of the Luftwaffe who, in May of 1944, protected an Allied airman who had been shot down in Munich from being lynched by the population? But despite repeated inquiries on the part of the Führer, the Reich Marshal gave no instructions to find out the name of this officer and to make it known to the Führer?”
I can summarize the answer. He says he cannot state this from his own experience; it had only been reported to him that an officer of the Luftwaffe and an Ortsgruppenleiter had interfered on behalf of this American crew; that the Ortsgruppenleiter, who was known, was shot on Hitler’s order; that Hitler then demanded to have the name of the Luftwaffe officer given to him and that he had not been told the name. He said further that if the Reich Marshal had actually wanted to find out the name of this Luftwaffe officer, he could easily have done so.