The Nuremberg Trials (Vol.10). International Military Tribunal

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СКАЧАТЬ that you took an especial pride in the speed with which your reports came back?

      BOHLE: I did not say that, I believe, with respect to speed but rather with respect to the accuracy of their political survey.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: In fact, your reports did come back with great speed, did they not?

      BOHLE: I cannot say that in general. It depended on the possibility of dispatching these reports quickly to Berlin, and how far that was the case in individual instances, I naturally cannot say today. In any ease, I had no special speed or acceleration measures at my disposal.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: In fact, you told your interrogator -and I can refer you to it if necessary-that on occasion you got back information before Himmler or the Foreign Office had got similar information.

      BOHLE: That must be a misunderstanding. It concerns the political reports from the Landesgruppenleiter which I transmitted from Berlin to the different offices.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, we will leave the speed out. I have it from you that you had an efficient system of reporting, had you not?

      BOHLE: In order to answer that question I would have to know in respect to what reports I am supposed to have had an efficient system of reporting.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That was going to be my next question. I was going to ask you: What in fact did your Landesgruppenleiter report to you?

      BOHLE: The Landesgruppenleiter reported of their own accord to me, whenever they had anything of importance which they wanted to report to the competent offices in the Reich.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did they ever report anything which might have been of military or semimilitary value?

      BOHLE: That may have been the case in some instances, although at present I cannot recall any specific cases.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: They were never given any instructions, were they, to report that kind of information?

      BOHLE: No, generally not.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: How did you get your reports back? Did you have wireless sets with your organization in foreign countries?

      BOHLE: No, we did not have any such transmission or wireless stations. Reports either came through courier in special cases or were brought by individuals to. Germany.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: After the war started, did your organizations continue in neutral countries?

      BOHLE: Yes.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did they never have wireless sets reporting back information?

      BOHLE: I do not know anything about that. I do not believe they had them, for I would have had to know about it.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want to ask you about only one or two documents. Would you look at 3258-PS-My Lord, that is the exhibit already in, GB-262; I have copies of the extract for the Tribunal and members of Defense Counsel. I expect you read English-the book itself is coming.

      BOHLE: Yes.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: There you have before you a copy of some extracts from it. Would you look at the botbm of the first page, last paragraph, commencing "In 1938 ..." Did you have a Landesgruppenleiter in the Netherlands by the name of Butting?

      BOHLE: Yes. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Just pay attention to me for perhaps one moment before you look at that document. Do you know that Butting shared a house at The Hague with the military intelligence office? Do you know that?

      BOHLE: No, I do not.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want to quote you quite shortly two paragraphs of this document, which is a report, published as an official United States publication, called "National Socialism, Basic Principles, Their Application by the Nazi Party's Foreign Organization, and The Use of Germans Abroad for Nazi Aims." I just want you to tell the Tribunal what you think first of all about this report, which is printed in that book:

      "In 1938 the German Legation owned two houses in The Hague. Both were of course the subject of diplomatic immunity and therefore inviolable as concerned search and seizure by the Dutch police. I shall call the house in which Dr. Butting had his office House Number 2. What went on in House Number 2? It had been remodeled and was divided like a two-family house-vertically, not horizontally, but between the two halves there was a communicating door.

      One side of the house was Dr. Butting's. The other half housed the Nazi military intelligence agent for Holland. ..." You say that you do not know anything about that?

      BOHLE: Butting was Landesgruppenleiter of the Auslands-Organisation. I am hearing about this house-or these two houses for the first time, that is quite new to me.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. I will just go on.

      "S. B. (the military intelligence agent) may have had as many as a dozen subordinates working in Holland, all sub-agents of the Canaris bureau. These were professional spies who knew their trade. But they could not possibly know Holland as intimately as was required by the strategy of the German High Command, as it was revealed following the invasion of May 1940. For this, not a dozen but perhaps several hundred sources of information were necessary. And it is at this point that Butting and the military intelligence agent come together. Through his German Citizens' Association, Butting had a pair of Nazi eyes, a pair of Nazi ears, in every town and hamlet of the Netherlands. They were the eyes and ears of his minor Party officials. Whenever the military intelligence agent needed information concerning a corner of Holland which his people had not yet explored, or was anxious to check information relayed to him by one of his own people, he would go to Butting." Do you know whether Butting assisted the military intelligence agent in Holland in any way like that?

      BOHLE: I was told later that he aided in Holland. To what extent he helped him I do not know, for he had had no such mission from me.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I understand, he had no instructions but he was doing it. Just turn now to the last paragraph on that page, too:

      "'I know every stone in Holland,' S. B. once boasted, By 'stone' he meant canal, lock, bridge, viaduct, culvert, highway, by-road, airport, emergency landing field, and the name and location of Dutch Nazi sympathizers who would help the invading army when the time came. Had Dr. Butting's Party organization not existed under the innocent cover of his Citizens' Association, S.B.'s knowledge of Holland would have been as nothing compared with what it was. Thus the Citizens' Association served a double purpose; it was invaluable for espionage at the same time as it fulfilled its primary function as a Fifth Column agency." Do you know whether the members of your organization in Holland. were given instructions to learn about every canal, lock, bridge, viaduct, railway, and so on?

      BOHLE: No, I had not the least idea of this.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. I want you to be quite clear. I am putting to you that your organization was in the first place an espionage system reporting information of importance back to the Reich, and, in the second place, it was an organization aimed to help, and which did help, your invading German annies when they overran the frontiers of their neighboring states. Do you understand those two points?

      BOHLE: Yes, indeed.

      LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did your organization publish an annual СКАЧАТЬ