1
Dec. 45
officers
were employed or which you were charged to carry
out. Did you report these to any police station
as the law required? May I point out that
according to German law failure to report
intended crimes is punishable with imprisonment
or in serious cases with death.
LAHOUSEN:
Well, when you talk about German law, I cannot
follow you. I am not a lawyer, but just an
ordinary man.
DR. SAUTER. As far as I
know, that is also punishable according to
Austrian law.
LAHOUSEN: At that time
Austrian law, as far as I know, was no longer
valid.
DR. SAUTER: In other words, you
never reported the intended crime, either as a
private person or as an official?
LAHOUSEN: I should have had to make a great many
reports — about 100,000 projected murders,
of which I knew and could not help but know. You
can read about them in the records — and
about shootings and the like — of which of
necessity I had knowledge, whether I wanted to
know or not, because, unfortunately, I was in
the midst of it.
DR. SAUTER: It is not
a matter of shootings which had taken place and
could no longer be prevented, but rather a
matter of intended murder at a time when perhaps
it could have been prevented.
LAHOUSEN:
I can only answer: Why did the person who
received this order at first hand not do the
same thing? Why did he not denounce Hitler for
instance?
DR. SAUTER: You, as a
general of the German Wehrmacht, should have
asked Hitler. . .
LAHOUSEN: I am
sorry, you overestimate my rank, I had only been
a general in the German Wehrmacht since the
first of January 1945, that is, only for 4
months. At that time I was lieutenant colonel
and later colonel of the General Staff, not in
the General Staff.
DR. SAUTER: But in
1938, immediately after Hitler's attack on
Austria, you at once made a request to be taken
into the German Wehrmacht by Hitler.
LAHOUSEN:
I did not make a request, and I did not have to
do this. Wherever I was in the service, I was
known for my special services. I was not a
stranger. With the knowledge of the Austrian
Government and also, in a restricted sense, with
the knowledge of the German authorities (that
is, of certain persons) I was working for the
Austrian Government in a matter which
exclusively concerned things outside the scope
of Austrian internal