“Later, when Thierack entered the Reich Ministry of Justice, he changed the decree in such a manner that the courts no longer had to declare their dissenting views to the public prosecutor, but that the acquitted NN prisoners or those who had served their sentences had to be handed over by the court authorities to the Gestapo for protective custody. Under Secretary of State Schlegelberger himself was not present at the conference, but Under State Secretary Freisler left the conference briefly in order to secure the signature of Schlegelberger.
“I must admit that, in dealing with these matters, I did not particularly feel at ease. It was my intention to get the best out of this thing and to emphasize humanitarian considerations as much as possible in these hard measures. I have seen from the first Nuernberg trials that the court has declared the ‘Night and Fog’ decree as being against international law and that Keitel, too, declared that he had been aware of the illegal nature of this decree. Freisler, though, represented it to us in such a manner as to create the impression that the decree was very hard but altogether admissible.”
Mettgenberg and von Ammon were sent to the Netherlands occupied territory because some German courts set up there were receiving Night and Fog cases in violation of the decree that they should be transferred to Germany. They held a conference at The Hague with the highest military justice authorities and the heads of the German courts in the Netherlands, which resulted in a report of the matter to the OKW at Berlin, which agreed with Mettgenberg and von Ammon that—
“The same procedure should be used in the Netherlands as in other occupied territories, that is, that all Night and Fog matters should be transferred to Germany.”
With respect to the effectiveness and cruelty of the NN decree, the defendant von Ammon commented thus:
“The essential point of the NN procedure, in my estimation, consisted of the fact that the NN prisoners disappeared from the occupied territories and that their subsequent fate remained unknown.”
The distribution of the NN cases to the several competent Special Courts and the People’s Court was decided upon by defendant von Ammon. A report of 9 September 1942, signed by von Ammon, addressed to defendant Rothenberger, to be submitted to the Minister of Justice and the defendant Mettgenberg, stated that there are pending in Special Courts Night and Fog cases as follows: At Kiel, nine cases with 262 accused; at Essen, 180 cases with 863 accused; and at Cologne, 177 cases with 331 accused. By November 1943 there were turned over at Kiel, 12 cases with 442 accused; at Essen, 474 cases with 2,613 accused; and at Cologne, 1,169 cases with 2,185 accused.
A note dated Berlin, 26 September 1942, for the attention of defendant Rothenberger, signed by defendant von Ammon, stated that by order of the Reich Minister the hitherto—
“Exclusive jurisdiction of the Special Courts over NN cases is to some extent to be replaced by the People’s Court of justice.”
A letter dated 14 October 1942 to Minister of Justice Thierack from Freisler, then president of the People’s Court, states that he understood that a conference held on 14 October 1942 extended the jurisdiction of the People’s Court over NN cases. Freisler states that he conducted the preliminary proceedings with Ministerial Director Lehmann of the OKW with regard to the Ministry of Justice taking over the Night and Fog proceedings. He explains that the Night and Fog proceedings were top secret and no file or records were made in order to be quite sure that under no circumstances should any information be obtained by the outside world with regard to the fate of the alien prisoners. He also emphasizes the fact that under no circumstances could any other sentence than the one proposed by the public prosecutor be passed and to make sure of this in the technical routine it was decided that—