. NMT04-T0515
Volume IV · Page 515
| the extermination program in principle. He
asserted that later he was recalled and subjected to disciplinary action.
Although he retained his general officer rank in the police he was sent to the
front, as a sergeant in the Waffen SS. The credibility of this story depends
entirely on Jost, since all the other alleged conferees are dead, and there
were apparently no surviving witnesses that he could call to confirm his
conversations. Although it is possible that his illness at the time had something to do with the reversal in his military fortunes, it can be believed that illness alone could not have brought about such a drastic change in his situation. Nonetheless the evidence is irrefutable that he was a principal in and an accessory to the extermination program in his territory. He may have, after participation in this enterprise, at last relented, and this is to his credit, but this cannot wipe out the criminality which preceded his withdrawal from the field. The Tribunal finds from all the evidence in the case that the defendant is guilty under counts one and two of the indictment. The Tribunal also finds that the defendant was a member of the criminal organizations SS and SD under the conditions defined by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal and is, therefore, guilty under count three of the indictment. |
| DEFENDANT ERICH NAUMANN |
| SS Brigadier General Erich Naumann left
school at the age of sixteen and obtained employment in a commercial firm in
his home town of Meissen, Saxony. In 1933 he joined the SA in a fulltime
capacity and then became official and officer of police. He joined the SD in
1935. He was Chief of Einsatzgruppe B from November 1941 until February or
March 1943. The prosecution contends that he took over the command of this
organization on 1 November 1941 and points to various pieces of evidence to
confirm that contention. (1) Naumann's personal SS record. (2) Reports listing Naumann as being in Smolensk (Headquarters of Einsatzgruppe B) on 12 November 1941. (3) Testimony of Steimle that he met Naumann in Russia about the middle of November. (4) Naumann's note to the codefendant Klingelhoefer under circumstances which would suggest an attempt to influence Klingelhoefer's testimony that Naumann's duties began on 30 November. Naumann's purpose in establishing the latter date of induction into the chiefship of Einsatzgruppe B is to refute the prosecution's |
