Q. As for the first group, approval of laws and drafts, was that approval of the Party Chancellery for drafts of law based on a legal foundation?
A. I have already made statements concerning that question when I explained why there was a Department III, the so-called state law and constitutional law department in the Party Chancellery. The chief of the Party Chancellery, on the basis of certain legal provisions in the case of any law or draft or any decree was a minister who had to participate in its drafting, that is to say, he had the same position as a minister participating in legislation.
Q. In discussing the first part of your activities you made the reservation that the legal group in the Party Chancellery dealt only with those drafts which for reasons of their subject did not belong within the competency of another group. Would you please elucidate to the Tribunal what you mean by that?
A. First I have to make a more general reservation. It was not the task of individual groups of Department III or of Department III itself to display any political activity. The Party political elements connected with a problem were to be dealt with by the political offices of the Party. I had listed before the Reich Legal Office, the Office for Agrarian Policy, the Office for Public Health and others. These offices within the Party developed their policies through the Reichsleiters who were in charge of these offices, and did that directly with the Fuehrer. The groups of Department III, and above all not the Legal Group, could not deal with the individually specialized matters to the extent that it would have been necessary. I have already explained that Group III-C comprised four to six officers. That group was balanced in the Ministry of Justice by well over 200 experts. Our tasks—and above all because each individual in that group considered himself a representative of the thought of the Ministry of Justice,—were to prevent difficulties which might arise by some legal arrangement between the Party and the offices of the administration of justice. For instance, in Group III-C, we always were very skeptical to any general clauses which were contained in a draft and laws because such general clauses are the pets of the layman, and he sticks to them because that affords him the opportunity to criticize. That arrangement which was as such provided by law that the chief of the Party Secretariat always had the capacity of a participating minister, was not agreed to by various sectors of the administration of the State, and thus, for instance, Goering in his various positions which he held at the same time, as Minister for Aviation, as Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, and as chairman of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, never stuck to it, and never submitted any drafts. Likewise, the High Command of the Armed Forces never submitted the drafts of laws as far as they concerned the administration of justice, penal regulations, et cetera, to the Party Chancellery. The individual group, however, the legal group could not independently deal with a draft, if problems were dealt with in that draft which did not immediately concern the legal group but in their essence concerned other ministries, for instance, all questions of nationality, were dealt within Group III-A. For instance questions of Poles and Jews, Group III-C, to cite another example, in the field of law concerning hereditary estates, could not decide independently. That was claimed by Group III-B, which was in charge of questions of food, the Food Ministry, to which the hereditary estate court belonged also. I believe these examples should be sufficient.
Q. You had set forth that the various subgroups of III were offices corresponding to the institutions of the State, that you would consider the Ministry of the Interior as analogous to Group III-A. I ask you now since you mention Poles and Jews, the problems of which were to be dealt with by III-A, whether the purpose for that was that as far as the organization of the State was concerned, the Ministry of the Interior took a leading part in dealing with these questions?
A. Group III-A had dealt with these problems because it was the equivalent of the Ministry of the Interior. It was dealt with there only and if on the one side the Ministry of the Interior took the leading part, then Group III-C had nothing to do with those matters at all.
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Q. Then, since you worked in the Party Chancellery, Document NG-151, Prosecution Exhibit 204[415] was submitted in connection with you. It is a proposal on the part of the Reich Minister of Justice of 3 August 1942, with the designation “Limitation of Legal Remedies in Penal Matters for Jews.” On page 108 of the German text, a letter is submitted which has the signature of Bormann. Next to Bormann’s signature there is also the file note “III-C,” that is to say, the symbol of the Legal Group [in the Party Chancellery].
I ask you to comment on that and to tell us whether you or your Legal Group had anything to do with that matter.
A. To answer this intelligently, I have to refer to the entire document submitted by the prosecution. The document comprises 25 pages, and that letter from Bormann is put at the end. The entire procedure, however, can be understood only if one puts these various documents in the correct chronological order, for only then can one see how this entire development can be subdivided into three phases.