Did you ever attend a trial which was presided over by Rothaug?
A. Yes.
Q. From your observation, can you tell us briefly how Rothaug conducted his trials?
A. Once it was the case Heller and Muendel, well known highway trap-setters [Autofallensteller]. Then the case Feldstengel. There were several others. These were cases of burglary during the black-outs, black-out crimes.
May I pick out here the principal matters such as they presented themselves to me after my experiences as an SD man. I think I am not mistaken in assuming that Rothaug considered the trial before the Special Court as a means of direction and education and that accordingly he conducted the main trial on a broad basis and facts which constituted transgressions against the program of the Party, the directives of the political leadership, such facts were developed to such an extent that the illegal elements which were contained in the opposition against the political leadership were brought to the foreground. I would like to say that he rather disregarded other circumstances concerning the defendant, his office, his position. He wanted to remove those circumstances, to leave them aside, in order to develop clearly the criminality of the act of the defendant, and just because he considered the trial as a means for the direction and education of the people, he used every means to make it possible for as many people as possible to attend and underline matters which offered possibilities for the political education in order to exert influence on the listeners in that manner.
Q. In your conferences with Rothaug did he express the view that trials were to be used as a means of political education?
A. Yes, of course.
Q. From your observation of Rothaug’s conduct of trials where he was the presiding judge, your answer is that in practice they actually were conducted that way, as a means of political education; that was the purport of the answer to the next to the last question, I believe.
A. Yes, that was my personal impression, which I gathered from the comparatively few trials which I attended myself and also from information on the basis of the material about the trials. From those reports, it could be seen that Rothaug had the intention to use the many trials as a means for political education.[217]
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