. NMT05-T0919
Volume V · Page 919
| troops, the settlement of all budget matters
and the building of barracks, administration building, and hospitals.
Apart from this the defendant Oswald Pohl was in charge of five building Inspectorates and seven main warehouses. In his capacity as chief of office group W he was director of the DWB Konzern (Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe G.m.b.H.) and had to supervise and manage no less than 60 sometimes very large plants of this office group. By order of the Reich Leader SS Himmler, issued on 3 March 1942, he was put in charge of the uniform direction of the allocation of concentration camp labor. Although the formal incorporation of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps into the Administrative and Economic Main Office did not involve a change in the organization and functions of either the Administrative and Economic Main Office or of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, it did mean the personal subordination of the Inspector, whose tasks consisted of the administration of 13 concentration camps and about 500 labor camps, to the chief of the Administrative and Economic Main Office. These independent offices were distributed all over the Reich and parts of the occupied territories. This fact alone proves the impossibility of constant personal supervision. It is evident and requires no special proof that the extent of the defendant Oswald Pohl's criminal responsibility must be considered as much smaller than the extent of his work. The ordinance of the SS Main Legal Office of 1 July 1942 dealing with the competency of the Higher SS and Police Leaders as highest court authority for the members of the branch offices of the Main Office and which I submitted as part of document book Pohl, may give an indication of this. In this ordinance it is expressively ordered, "that the chiefs of the individual Main Offices are only competent as highest court authority for proceedings concerning members of their staff at the permanent headquarters of the Main Office. On the other hand and according to the express wish of the Reich Leader SS, the branch offices of the Main Office come under the jurisdiction of the respective Higher SS and Police Leaders in charge of the area in which those offices are situated. For details concerning these facts I refer to the statement of the witness Dr. Schmidt-Klevenow. This decree of the SS Main Legal Office was evidently based on the correct idea that the supervisory powers of the highest court authority cannot exceed his local powers of command. The result of the regulations laid down by this ordinance was that commandants, concentration camp officers, and concentration camp guards came under the jurisdiction of the SS and Police court of the district in which the camp was situated and competent for the |
