Characteristic sentences in these courts were those pronounced for illegal possession of arms. I have already mentioned that in the decree issued by the military commander in normal cases the death sentence was provided and only in lighter cases a prison sentence. In fact, only very few death sentences were pronounced because of the illegal possession of arms. These cases were special cases, as for instance possession of an entire ammunition depot. In an overwhelming majority of cases—and I want to state that illegal possession of arms as far as the number of cases played an important role—only prison sentences were pronounced for the illegal possession of arms. The action by the president of the district court of appeals of Katowice who in the discussion at Oppeln instigated a more severe punishment because of possession of arms was at that time generally rejected. In the few cases in which because of illegal possession of arms, the death sentence was pronounced, almost without exception the execution of the death sentence was avoided by clemency pleas.
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Dr. Kubuschok: I now come to the clemency proceedings of the Reich Ministry of Justice in death sentences pronounced for NN cases. Please comment on this.
Defendant von Ammon: The clemency procedure in NN cases was in principle the same as in the case of other death sentences. However, there were some peculiarities. One of these was that the Gauleiter did not participate in the clemency proceedings, because the crime had been committed in occupied territory and not within the sphere of a Gauleiter.
A further peculiarity consisted in the fact that Hitler, as I already mentioned before, reserved to himself the right to make the clemency decision in death sentences pronounced against women from the Occupied Western Territories.
Finally, I should like to point out that in NN cases, because of the lack of the possibility of a deterrent, there was no so-called “lightning” [Blitz] executions. The practice in regard to clemency questions followed by Thierack was, as has been discussed here frequently, severe. It was not easy for a Referent to succeed in getting clemency granted by him. Nevertheless, I succeeded in doing so in a number of cases.
However, when I made the attempt to bring about the granting of a clemency plea in several cases, I became subject to the scorn of Thierack who made derogatory remarks about the obstinacy which I applied.
Q. The NN regulations in the execution of which you had to cooperate—did you have any misgivings about them?
A. In the application of the NN regulations I was, of course, conscious of their severity. I considered especially severe the strict regulations about the seclusion of NN prisoners from the outside world which made any correspondence of the NN prisoners with their relatives impossible. Furthermore, I considered very severe the regulations which provided that on principle also those NN prisoners, to whom no offense or at least no serious offense could be proved, should remain in custody. That I considered very severe. But I kept to the statements that were made when these regulations were issued, that these regulations were necessary in order to suppress the increasing resistance movement in the occupied territories.
The regulations issued seemed to me to be still better than—and this would have been possible in the case of offenses against the occupying forces in the occupied territories—indiscriminate death sentences.