Defendant Schlegelberger: These transfers are a very sad chapter for anybody who has a sense of justice. They came shortly after the beginning of the war in 1939. From publications in the press Guertner found out that the police had killed people. Guertner made notations about these notices in the press, had them filed and gave a compilation of these notices through Lammers to Hitler together with his compiled notes, and he explained the situation in detail. The purpose was clear. Hitler should be made to discontinue these things. Lammers actually submitted these compilations to Hitler, but told Guertner later that Hitler had said that he had not given a general directive to carry out these shootings but in individual cases he could not do without these measures, because the courts, that is, military courts as well as the civil courts, were not able to take care of the special conditions created by the war. At the same time Lammers announced that Hitler in a further case had already ordered the execution by shooting.
Q. I refer to Document NG-190, Prosecution Exhibit 284.[204]
A. I am certainly not making a mistake in saying that that decision on the part of Hitler was probably the most serious thing which ever happened to this man Guertner, whose main intention was to serve justice. It was an order which Hitler had given through administrative channels to the police, and the execution of it was assured on the basis of the means of power then prevailing. The attempt on the part of Guertner to reinstate the respect for court decisions therefore had failed; but he was not satisfied with that. He wanted to insure that the administration of justice should be given the authority to intervene in time and to attempt at least to thwart the execution of the order given to the police. That, of course, was only possible if the administration of justice was informed in time about the order that had been given to the police, and that request by Guertner was actually granted. Subsequently the administration of justice as a rule was informed by Hitler’s adjutant, Schaub, wherever an order of that kind was given to the police.
The question, therefore, as to how after one has been informed, one can make an attempt to prevent the execution of Hitler’s order involved great difficulties particularly because the police had a time limit of 24 hours after which it had to report to its superiors that the order had been executed. Guertner then was of the opinion that for these matters he had to assign the one official in his ministry whom he could use as a capable man with the police—who shared Guertner’s opinion in these matters—and from whom one could expect, on the basis of previous experience, that he would show sufficient cleverness. Guertner therefore charged my codefendant Joel with that mission.
When the information about such an order was received, feverish work started. First one had to try to extend the police time limit; that is, to persuade the police to delay the report. That alone brought great difficulties, because the police official incurred considerable risk. But in some individual cases it succeeded. At the same time, the files of the case were called to Berlin and all other bits of information which probably had caused Hitler to order the transfer of the person concerned to the police. Then a detailed report was made of the act and the culprit which justified the sentence, and telephone calls took place with various agencies whenever that seemed to have chances for success. Some individual cases were successful. But if it could not be achieved that the order turning over the individual to the police was rescinded, although everything had been tried, then there was no other alternative than to issue a directive to the authority which was about to carry it out, telling them that they should no longer resist but should turn over the man to the police.
If the Reich Ministry of Justice had failed to give the man up, the police would have broken the resistance by force; the condemned person could not be saved. During the war, civilian and military command offices in numerous cases were seriously charged with the fact that through a defense which they had to consider as useless, they had sacrificed many lives. Such a useless sacrifice it would have been if the Reich Ministry of Justice had instructed the prison authorities, via the executive office, to resist the police. The subject of this sacrifice would have been not only threats to officials or civil servants, but to the entire administration of justice, which would have been eliminated and its opponents would have triumphed. The acting official in the ministry would have been eliminated as a saboteur; and already at that time he would have been replaced by a person who would willingly and without exception have put the administration of justice in the service of the Party. The individual cases of transfer which the prosecution has described have to be evaluated from these points of view. I myself, after taking charge of the Ministry of Justice, immediately established contact with Minister Meissner in order to determine basically that no order for transfer made by the police was to be executed as long as the administration of justice did not have a report. This intention of mine was again foiled by Bormann. A letter from Meissner to me makes this apparent. Hitler had me informed by Bormann that the obtaining of the opinion of the Ministry of Justice was not necessary. Meissner, who shared my opinion, asked me in spite of that, in those cases where the ministry believed that Hitler was not properly informed, that a report should be sent to Meissner. I did that in all cases.
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Q. What do you have to say about the Markus Luftglas case, a case of transfer to the Gestapo, Document NG-287, Prosecution Exhibit 88?[205]
A. This case, too, I no longer remember even though the name recalls certain memories. In my statements I have to refer to the documents that have been submitted, and by referring to them I would like to determine the following: the Fuehrer order to the police was given to the Reich Ministry of Justice on 24 October 1941, through the usual channels by the Presidential Chancellery. That nothing happened in this case is absolutely impossible. It would have been inexplicable why my letter to Lammers in which I informed him of the release was written only 4 days later, on the 29th, for letters of that kind were answered immediately in our office as a matter of course. The fact that our letter is dated only the 29th shows me rather that in the meantime unsuccessful interventions had taken place.
Now I notice that in this letter to Lammers I informed him that Luftglas had been transferred to the police for the purpose of execution. That is noticeable because the information about the orders given by the police never said anything about executions, but merely stated “transfer” as the subject of the order. If in this letter to Lammers, I therefore informed him that Luftglas was transferred for the purpose of execution, this can only be based on the information we received from the police, and I am quite sure that I formulated the letter in that way in order to inform Lammers how the direct Fuehrer order—that is, the order to the police—was actually worded and in order to point out to him the effects of such transfer orders.