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3. TESTIMONY OF DEFENSE WITNESS RUDOLF
HUENERMANN, CHIEF OF STAFF
TO GENERAL THOMAS |
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EXTRACT FROM THE TESTIMONY OF GENERAL
RUDOLF
HUENERMANN¹ |
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| REDIRECT EXAMINATION |
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| * * * * * * * * * * |
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DR. HOFFMANN (counsel for defendants Ambros and von der Heyde) :
Witness, in Exhibit 2221,² the Farben plants are mentioned repeatedly.
Witness, what would you have done if, to one of your requests where you
expressed a certain demand or desire about certain fields in economy, any
representative of Farben had answered: "I am not going to attend such a
conference"? The question is first: would it have been possible; would that
have been at all conceivable?
WITNESS HUENERMANN: It would have been
possible, it is true, but it never happened in practice. If we invited
representatives of large German industry to attend a conference, I never
experienced it that any German firm would have tried to get out of such a
request.
Q. My next question is this: In your opinion, was there any
reason at all to try to evade such a question or not comply with such a
request?
A. No, for these demands and requests that we made to German
industry we regarded as being completely within the limits of what was legally
permitted and necessary from the point of view of home defense.
Q. What
do you mean when you say within the limits of what was legally permitted?
A. That we were permitted and had the right to mobilize our forces
within Germany for the purposes of home defense, national defense.
Q.
You said that "we had the right." To what extent do you consider yourself an
authority that had the right to undertake such action?
A. Since we were
in the OKW we had the exclusive task to take |
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¹ Complete testimony is
recorded in mimeographed transcript. 81 October 1947 (tr. pp. 3147-3152) and 4,
5 May 1948 (tr. pp. 13408-1341O; 13495-18524). Huenermann, formerly a general
of the High Command (OKW) was chief of staff to General Thomas, chief of the
Military Economics and Armaments Office of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
He appeared also as a prosecution witness, on 31 October 1947.
²
Document NI-7452; this exhibit contained excerpts from drafts of the weekly
reports of the Office of Military Economics and Armaments. The reports showed a
number of conferences between representatives of this office and Farben
officials concerning mobilization problems. Extracts from this exhibit,
together with further testimony of General Huenermann, appear below in sections
VII H 2 and VII H 3.
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