. NMT04-T0357
Volume IV · Page 357
| and orders were carried out to bomb, no
matter whether many children were killed or not. Q. Now, I think we are getting somewhere, Mr. Ohlendorf. You saw German children killed by Allied bombers and that is what you are referring to? A. Yes, I have seen it. Q. Do you attempt to draw a moral comparison between the bomber who drops bombs hoping that it will not kill children and yourself who shot children deliberately? Is that a fair moral comparison? A. I cannot imagine that those planes which systematically covered a city that was a fortified city, square meter for square meter, with incendiaries and explosive bombs and again with phosphorus bombs, and this done from block to block, and then as I have seen it in Dresden likewise the squares where the civilian population had fled to -- that these men could possibly hope not to kill any civilian population, and no children. And when you then read the announcements of the Allied leaders on this — and we are quite willing to submit them as document — you will read that these killings were accepted quite knowingly because one believed that only through this terror, as it was described, the people could be demoralized and under such blows the military power of the Germans would then also break down. Q. Very well, let's concede — I think there is truth in what you say, though I never saw it. Does it occur to you that when the German Wehrmacht drove into Poland without provocation, and when you drove into Norway, and when you drove into the Low Countries, and when you crushed France, and when you destroyed Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Greece, when you put Rumania, Bulgaria under your heel, and then attempted to destroy the Russian State, does it occur to you that people resisting your tyranny stand on a higher moral level when they resort to the same horrible cruelties which you initiated in order to destroy your tyranny? Answer that, please. A. You will understand that I look at the events of the war which you referred to in a different way than you do. Q. And that is also my opinion; on that we have a difference. A. That is quite so on my side, and I believe that just the events of the last weeks in particular show that even if the price of peace calls for force because there is a danger which, if it is not broken by force, will cause a battle of bloodshed, that we then as the ones who were closer to bolshevism than you in the States, much sooner came to realize than you; and with this view I agree principally with your statesmen in America at the moment, and I believe that among these statesmen hardly anyone |
