. NMT06-T0675
Volume VI · Page 675
| fellow Hugo Dietrich addressed to
you. This is Document NI-898, Prosecution Exhibit
437.* This is in document book 10-B, Your honor, on page 5. I beg your pardon,
Your Honor, it begins on page 3 of the English document book. Now there has
been a lot of discussion about this letter. I am sure you are quite familiar
with it now, Defendant. I would just like to ask you a few questions about it.
This letter from Dietrich to you encloses what he refers to as an exposé
which runs to several pages, six or seven pages, and which includes among other
things a suggested draft of an Aryanization law. Now this work of Dietrich's
was undertaken at your request, wasn't it? That is, I mean you, personally.
DEFENDANT STEINBRINCK: Yes. On 18 June I asked Dietrich to think about certain questions, and these thoughts he put down here. Q. Did you ever inform Flick about this? A. I can't say whether Herr Flick knew about this before I gave the commission. I don't think so. Certainly not. It was a Saturday and obviously I had returned from a discussion at the Ministry, and Dietrich's reply arrived on Tuesday. I hardly think that before receiving this document I would have told Flick about the matter. Q. Well, did you inform him about it afterward? A. I can't tell you that either. As far as I remember this document which went through the mail has his initials, but I am not sure. Q. Well, you did assume that he might see it in the ordinary course while looking over the correspondence, didn't you? A. I didn't understand. Q. You assumed that he might see it, didn't you, in the ordinary course while looking over the correspondence or memoranda? A. I can't, of course, know in this specific case. Normally our correspondence, if it was interesting, went to all our colleagues in turn. Whether this letter which obviously I sent on the 22d arrived with the ordinary mail and was passed on to Mr. Flick and Mr. Weiss, I can't say, nor do I remember who initialed Dietrich's letter. I believe it even has my own initials on it, but I don't know for certain any longer. Q. Well, now, do you remember whether Flick ever talked to you about it and told you whether he thought you were making a mistake in getting these drafts from Dietrich and sending them on? A. That I cannot say. |
* Letter from Dietrich to defendant Steinbrinck, 20 June 1938, enclosing expert opinion on the Petschek question. Reproduced in B above.
