Defendant Klemm: No, I did not. During the last 3 months of 1943 I heard Thierack say to me that he was thinking it over whether he should propose me to be his Under Secretary; then, I heard nothing more. I only told the head of my department at the Party Chancellery about that remark of Thierack’s.
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Q. Mr. Klemm, we shall now discuss the subject of Judges’ Letters and also the so-called Guidance Letters [Lenkungsbriefe]. You know that the prosecution submitted a very extensive amount of evidence in regard to this subject.
First I want to ask you about the Judges’ Letters. In what manner did you participate in Judges’ Letters?
For the information of the Tribunal, I would like to cite the documents that are concerned with this question. They are Exhibits 81 through 86, 90, and 94 to 96 inclusive. The NG numbers are given on the list which I have submitted. Since the documents do not have to be discussed individually, I believe it is sufficient to refer to exhibit number.
Please answer my question, Mr. Klemm.
A. The Judges’ Letters had already been issued for more than a year at the time when I became Under Secretary. I cannot say anything about the history of their origin. My participation was limited to having a carbon copy of the finished Judges’ Letters submitted to me in draft form. Thierack was given a copy at the same time. When looking it over, I had to start from the point of view of not only the selection of the cases which had to be treated and the subjects, but also of the fundamental opinion of Thierack which had already been laid down by him in advance. Technical changes would have been of little avail, since Thierack looked at these drafts word for word and changed them considerably. He regarded the Judges’ Letters as his own exclusive province.
Moreover, of the letters which the prosecution has submitted here, I myself participated only in the Judges’ Letters, Document NG-321, Prosecution Exhibit 86.[293] All of the other letters date from the time prior to which I was Under Secretary.
Q. The prosecution regards the Judges’ Letters, from the point of view of their contents as well as their form, as an illegal pressure exercised on judges and jurisdiction at that time. It asserts that it was a serious intervention into the independence of judges. When you were concerned with the Judges’ Letters, did you consider that effect? Did you fear it, or did you support it, or did you see those matters from a different point of view than the prosecution asserts here?
A. I wish to say the following about that. The thought never occurred to me that the impression could be created at all which the prosecution today raises as a charge. The sentences were incorporated into the Judges’ Letters anonymously, that is to say, without stating the name of the court, without stating the name of the condemned person or even the name of the judge, or the time. Through that, it was intended to be emphasized, especially by this means, that the question of general interest and not the individual case was at stake, nor the praise or the blame of a judge. By the manner in which these matters were incorporated into the Judges’ Letters, in particular, the judge could not feel himself being addressed directly, as usually occurs in legal journals, in which these sentences are published in the legal press with the full naming of the court, the file number and the date, and then there usually follows the discussions of the opinion.