Q. The passage in the opinion of the International Military Tribunal, to which the witness referred, is contained in the English transcript on page 16,813.[170] Witness, the prosecution charges you with the fact that the Ministry of Justice was in an official contact with these offices which you have just mentioned. What can you say about this?
A. I believe that that contact is inherent in the structure of the State: the distribution of tasks to the various agencies. A cooperation with the police was certainly to a certain extent unavoidable. According to German law of criminal procedure, the prosecution is not in a position at all, without the cooperation of the police, to carry out the required investigations pending trial. If a denouncement has been received by the prosecution, the prosecution has to conduct the necessary investigation first of all. That the prosecution should do all that itself, considering the large number of things to be done, is quite impossible. The prosecution, therefore, has to turn to the local police and, for good reasons, in the German Judicature Act and the German Code for Penal Procedure, the police are designated as an auxiliary organ for the prosecution and directed to cooperate upon request of the prosecution.
Apart from the police, frequently the SD is mentioned in the trial. On the part of Hitler, the SD apart from its function within the Party had received important tasks, such as the delivery of information to various Reich agencies, and therefore even the court authorities had to refer to that source of information.
Q. In this connection, may I refer to Document NG-219, Prosecution Exhibit 42.[171] Please continue.
A. The position of the Party Chancellery, was regulated legally in a way that changes of personnel, that is to say, promotions and appointments could only take place with the cooperation on the part of the Party Chancellery. That I have already pointed out. Added to this was the fact that in 1942, the Chief of the Party Chancellery was given the position of a Reich Minister participating in legislation. It was therefore necessary to let him participate in the preparation of every law.
Q. The decree of 16 January 1942, to which reference was just made, I shall submit as Schlegelberger Document 23, Schlegelberger Exhibit 63.[172]
A. And then finally the Ministry of Propaganda. The fact that this Ministry was directed by Goebbels may cause, to a non-German’s mind, the misconception that this was a Party function. That, as I said, would be a misconception because the Ministry of Propaganda was not a Party office but a Ministry, just as the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Finance, or the Foreign Office, and that there was an official channel between all the ministries is a matter of course in every state. But that connection was also a necessity from the point of view of [self] defense. Only thus was it possible, at least from time to time, to guard oneself against surprises. Only thus was it possible, perhaps in the very last moment, to make successful objections.
Q. The witness referred to a provision of the Code of Penal Procedure according to which the prosecution could authorize the police to make investigations. That is article 161 of the Code of Penal Procedure. Furthermore, in this connection, article 146 of the Judicature Act has to be considered. About the importance of reports and information from the SD, I shall submit as Schlegelberger Document 92, Schlegelberger Exhibit 85, a report from the handbook for allied troops.
Witness, in your own camp, that is to say in the field of the administration of justice itself, did you have to fight against opposition?
A. That question, unfortunately, I have to confirm emphatically. First of all, and very briefly, I again have to mention Frank in this connection, the representative of the National Socialist legal ideology, who through all available channels succeeded in bringing this thought before the public. As means, he had at his disposal, first the legal publications under his influence, the National Socialist Legal Workers’ League whose president he was, and the Academy of German Law which he had created. That academy which possibly, in view of its composition, could be considered a sort of scientific institute to aid the administration of justice, evolved by Frank as a competition in order to direct the Ministry of Justice, to overrule and to discredit it with the Party. As soon as he found out, from his own information sources, that the Ministry of Justice intended to carry out reforms, he mobilized his academy immediately which on its part was to prepare plans and to publish them, and not much emphasis was placed upon their quality. But the main purpose was to demonstrate that Frank was the leader of the living young justice in opposition to the old senile machinery of justice of the State. Apart from that goal to carry out his famous thesis, “Right is that which serves the German people,” he also for personal ambitions and, last but not least, for that ambition, had intentions to take over the post of Ministry of Justice.