camps. He had undoubtedly visited Mauthausen and witnesses testified that he had seen prisoners killed by the various methods of execution, hanging, shooting in the back of the neck, and gassing, as part of a demonstration. Kaltenbrunner himself ordered the execution of prisoners in those camps and his office was used to transmit to the camps execution orders which originated in Himmler's office. At the end of the war Kaltenbrunner participated in the arrangements for the evacuation of inmates of concentration camps, and the liquidation of many of them, to prevent them from being liberated by the Allied armies.

During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was Head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Einsatz Kommandos operating under the control of the Gestapo were engaged in the screening of Soviet prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi system were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered. An RSHA order issued during Kaltenbrunner's regime established the "Bullet Decree," under which certain escaped prisoners of war who were recaptured were taken to Mauthausen and shot. The order for the execution of commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the police not to interfere with attacks on bailed-out Allied fliers. In December 1944 Kaltenbrunner participated in the murder of one of the French generals held as a prisoner of war.

During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, the Gestapo and SD in occupied territories continued the murder and ill-treatment of the population, using methods which included torture and confinement in concentration camps, usually under orders to which Kaltenbrunner's name was signed.

The Gestapo was responsible for enforcing a rigid labor discipline on the slave laborers and Kaltenbrunner established a series of labor reformatory camps for this purpose. When the SS embarked on a slave labor program of its own, the Gestapo was used to obtain the needed workers by sending laborers to concentration camps.

The RSHA played a loading part in the "final solution" of the Jewish question by the extermination of the Jews. A special section under the Amt IV of the RSHA was established to supervise this program. Under its direction approximately 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 2 million were killed by Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. Kaltenbrunner had been informed of the activities of these Einsatzgruppen when he was a Higher SS