Dr. Schilf: Please state the practical cause how these letters happened to be written. Due to the decision of the court, you do not have to discuss the contents any more.
Defendant Klemm: The method for writing such letters had already been established long before I entered the Ministry of Justice. If cases accumulated in one district, the president of the district court of appeal who was concerned received a letter so that in future cases a general just sentencing, as it happened in the entire Reich, would take place.
Presiding Judge Brand: Why did you write this particular letter? Just ask him why he wrote the particular letter shown in Exhibit 178.
Defendant Klemm: These cases had been collected in the Referat—in the Department—and then they were reported to the minister and the minister determined whether such a guidance letter was supposed to be written. In these two cases of Stuttgart and Hamburg, Franke and Vollmer, the department chief, reported to the minister about the jurisdiction exercised by these district courts of appeal and suggested to compile the most extreme cases and to call them to the attention of the presidents of the district courts of appeal. The minister approved of this suggestion and in addition to that determined that I had to sign these letters. That in these letters, the first person singular “I” was always used, is the accepted official style. To that extent I may refer to Exhibits 48, 94, 95, 96, and 99 in which simply Referenten and associates also write in the first person singular, although the letter bears the letterhead of the Reich Minister of Justice, and they sign it personally.
Dr. Schilf: Mr. Klemm, in regard to the two guidance letters to Hamburg and Stuttgart, were the judges who pronounced these sentences and who had aroused the disfavor of Thierack supposed to be called to account personally, or were measures supposed to be taken against them?
Defendant Klemm: That was not supposed to be done in any case. It would have been neither in accordance with the intentions of the Ministry nor was it the meaning of such a guidance. The president of the district court of appeals in Hamburg, who was requested at the end of the guidance letter to speak to the judges in the appropriate manner, that was what it says literally in the letter, could handle it directly. As the official superior, he did not use this letter at all; but within the framework of a community of work within the NS lawyers league, that is, on a purely comradeship basis and not as a superior, he spoke about these matters. Even less could the president of the district court of appeals in Stuttgart issue measures to the individual judges personally, or reproach them, because this letter was expressly addressed to him. At the end it says that “you, Mr. president of the district court of appeal should call direct and special attention to these problems.” There is also a circular letter by the Ministry of Justice which is known and which emphasizes again and again that the independence of the judges should not be touched.
Q. But in the Stuttgart case the names of the participating judges were listed. What was the purpose of that?
A. Of the twelve sentences which are mentioned in the Stuttgart letter, nine had been pronounced when different members were sitting in the court. For that very reason the names were listed to show that the issue was not the failure of one individual judge, but that the general jurisdiction of the district court of appeals of Stuttgart in matters of undermining military efficiency was not in accordance with the wishes of the Reich level and the needs of the time.
Q. In that connection the name of the codefendant Cuhorst is mentioned. Did you know at the time the then President Cuhorst?
A. No, his name did not mean anything to me.