. NMT05-T0999
Volume V · Page 999
| participation in these events was almost entirely hearsay and rumor, sprinkled with conclusions. Only the witness Otto claimed to have personal knowledge upon which to base his testimony. In view of the history of this witness, medical and otherwise, the Tribunal is unwilling to accept his testimony as true, especially when related to such a serious accusation. The number of military units which were present on the occasion — SS Einsatzgruppen, SD troops, Wehrmacht members, Ukrainian police, and others — make identification of the actual perpetrators unreliable. The Tribunal, therefore, finds no criminal responsibility attaches to defendant Fanslau's conduct as an officer of the Viking division. |
| COUNT FOUR |
| The Tribunal finds that the defendant Fanslau was a member of a criminal organization, that is, the SS, under the conditions defined by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal, and is therefore guilty under count four of the indictment. |
| HANS LOERNER |
| Defendant Hans Loerner joined the National
Socialist Party on 1 January- 1932, and the Allgemeine SS on 1 April 1933. He
served as an administrative officer of the Allgemeine SS until he was
transferred to the Waffen SS in October 1939, being later transferred to the
Central Administration Office at Berlin, where he became a subordinate of Pohl
as a personnel officer. He ultimately attained the rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer
(lieutenant colonel) in the SS. Upon the organization of WVHA in 1942, he was
appointed chief of Amt A I, the office of budgets. In April 1944, when Gustav
Eggert, chief of Amt A II, was transferred to a field unit, Amts A I and A II
were combined, and Loerner became chief of both Amts. Amt A II was concerned
with finance and payroll matters. In the summer of 1944 he became deputy chief
of Amtsgruppe A. It is Loerner's contention that, with the adoption of the open budget at the beginning of the war, his duties greatly diminished and subsequently all but disappeared, and that the only substantial task left for him to perform was the simplification of the Todt Organization, to which most of his time was devoted. The fact remains, however, that Loerner continued to perform important administrative duties in connection with his Amt all through the war. It is hardly conceivable that he would have been retained as head of an office which had entirely lost its usefulness. On 11 May 1942, Loerner and Frank conducted negotiations for 6 days with the Reich Minister of Finance on the SS budget, involving the |
