30 Nov. 45

diary of the division which was kept not by me, but by my adjutant, was received by Canaris from the Wehrmacht Operations Staff or from the National Defense Department. I believe the name of General Warlimont is mentioned.

COL. AMEN: Do you know where this request originated?

LAHOUSEN: Where the request originated I cannot say, I can only say that it reached us in the form of an order. It was, to be sure, an order on which we, the divisional chiefs concerned, already had some misgivings without knowing what, in the last analysis, it meant. The name Himmler, however, spoke for itself, and that is also evident from entries of the diary which record my question why Herr Himmler should come to receive uniforms from us.

COL. AMEN: To whom was the Polish material to be furnished by the Abwehr?

LAHOUSEN: These articles of equipment had to be kept in readiness, and one day some man from the SS or the SD--the name is given in the official war diary of the division--collected them.

COL. AMEN: At what time was the Abwehr informed as to how this Polish material was to be used?

LAHOUSEN: The real purpose was unknown to us then; we do not know its details even today. All of us, however, had the reasonable suspicion that something entirely crooked was being planned; the name of the undertaking was sufficient guarantee for that.

COL. AMEN: Did you subsequently find out from Canaris what in fact had happened?

LAHOUSEN: The actual course of events was the following: When the first Wehrmacht communiqué spoke of the attack of Polish units on German territory, Pieckenbrock, holding the communiqué in his hand, and reading it aloud, observed that now we knew why our uniforms had been needed. On the same day or a few days later, I cannot say exactly, Canaris informed us that people from concentration camps had been disguised in these uniforms and had been ordered to make a military attack on the radio station at Gleiwitz. I cannot recall whether any other locality was mentioned. Although we were extremely interested, particularly General Oster, to know details of this action, that is, where it had occurred and what had happened--actually we could well imagine it, but we did not know how it was carried out--I cannot even today say exactly what happened.

COL. AMEN: Did you ever find out what happened to the men from the concentration camps who wore the Polish uniforms and created the incident?