A. Yes, I assume so. Please take into consideration when considering my answers that these matters were apart from my official activity. Therefore, I can rather give an expert opinion than a testimony as a witness.
Q. Well, the effect of this decree was to deprive the people in the hands of the police of all legal recourse, is that not correct?
A. The effect was in any case that they had no recourse to the ordinary means of administration of justice. But the SS jurisdiction in my opinion had the same duties, the same possibilities for their people as we had.
Q. The only recourse, then, was to the SS administration of justice—now, on page 56 there is this decree which is signed by you, implementing that order, which places the police beyond the administration of justice.
A. I didn’t quite understand.
Q. I have here on page 56 of volume 2 a decree concerning the jurisdiction of SS courts and police courts in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia[468] which implements to some extent the preceding decree which I called to your attention. This decree is signed by you, which sets up Special Courts for the police, that is, takes them out from under the administration of justice. Now, this is signed by you. Do you have any explanation of that?
A. May I ask you to state the date again, just the date?
Q. 15 July 1942.
A. Is that an order which was cosigned by Keitel? (Document handed to the witness.)
Yes. This decree, however, I believe, has nothing to do with the matters we have discussed so far. This decree as far as I remember, was connected with a decree of January of the same year. In this decree of January in the Protectorate military jurisdiction was rescinded, and only for certain cases the Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht was granted the right, in the matter of attacks against the Wehrmacht, to found the competency of Wehrmacht courts. The text of this decree which concerns itself with the policy is almost literally the same one as that of the decree of January 1942 regarding the Wehrmacht. Here in this decree for the police, they were concerned with certain courts for the SS. But the Wehrmacht SS [sic], which was considered a special group of the SS was supposed to be treated in the same way [as the Wehrmacht]. Therefore, after a discussion between Keitel and the commander of the SS Wehrmacht [sic], the possibility just as it was given to the Wehrmacht, was given to the SS as a fighting troop, to found such courts. But this has nothing to do with the question of SS jurisdiction, which is another question.