. NMT03-T1108
Volume III · Page 1108
| who was the representative of German sovereignty in the Gau and who was, for all intents and purposes, a local dictator. As Gaufuehrer during the period following the seizure of power, Rothenberger had ample opportunity to learn of the corruption which permeated the administration of justice. He testified: |
"It has been emphasized here time and again how during the first period, after the revolution of 1933, every Kreisleiter attempted to interfere in court proceedings; the Gestapo tried to revise sentences, and it is known how the NSRB, the National Socialist Jurists' League, tried to gain influence with the Gauleiter or the Reichsstatthalter in order to act against the administration of justice." |
| Concerning the dual capacity in which he served, he said: |
"On account of the identity, of course, between president of the district court of appeals and Gaufuehrer, I was envied by all other district courts of appeal because they continually had to struggle against the Party while I was saved this struggle." |
| In August 1939, on the eve of war, Rothenberger was in conference with officials of the SS and expressed to them the wish to be able to fall back on the information apparatus of the SD, and offered to furnish to the SD copies of "such sentences as are significant on account of their importance for the carrying-out of the National Socialist ideas in the field of the administration of justice." Rothenberger testified that during the first few years after the seizure of power, there was the usual system of SD informers in Hamburg. The unsatisfactory personnel in the SD was removed by Reichstatthalter Kauffmann, and the defendant Rothenberger nominated in their place individuals who, he said, "were judges and who I knew would never submit reports which were against the administration of justice." He states also: |
"In the meantime, the directive had been sent down from the Reich Ministry of Justice to the effect that the SD should be considered and used as a source of information of the State by agencies of the administration of justice." |
| While he was president of the district court of appeals at Hamburg, and during the war, this ardent advocate of judicial independence was not adverse to acting as the agent of Gauleiter Kauffmann. On 19 September 1939 Kauffmann, as Reichsstatthalter and defense commissioner, issued an order as follows: |
"The president of the Hanseatic Court of Appeals, Senator Dr. Rothenberger, is acting on my order and is entitled to demand information in matters concerning the special courts and to inspect documents of every kind. All administrative |
