No. 771793/44 Top Secret Chief matter
Field Headquarters, 6 June 1944
Top Secret
3 copies—1st copy
Subject: Treatment of enemy terrorist airmen
Notes on a report
1. In the afternoon of 6 June, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Kaltenbrunner[297] informed the Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces, in Klessheim, that this question had been discussed a short time previously between the Reich Marshal, the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Reich Leader SS. In the course of this conference, and in opposition to the original suggestion of the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, who wanted to include any kind of terror attack against our own civilian population—thus bomb attacks on cities too—an agreement was reached, according to which only machine-gun attacks directly aimed at the civilian population and its property, should be considered as constituting criminal acts in this sense. Lynch justice should be considered as being the rule. Sentencing by court martial and transfer to the police, on the contrary, had not been discussed.
2. The Deputy Chief of Armed Forces Operations Staff set forth—
a. In pursuance of the broad outlines sketched by Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels and various press reports which point in the same direction the main task now consists in making public a case of this kind which has been unexceptionally confirmed stating the name and the unit of the concerned airman, the place where it happened, and other details in order to establish accordingly the seriousness of the German intentions in the face of incredulous enemy propaganda, and above all in order to achieve the desired deterrent from further assassinations of our own civilian population. Accordingly, the question is to be put whether such a case is in the files of the SD, or whether the necessary facts are at hand in order to fabricate such a case with the necessary details.
Obergruppenfuehrer Kaltenbrunner answered both questions in the negative.