WAR GUILTY

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1946, Page 7

WAR GUILTY

ROSENBERG CLAIMS LOYALTY TO HITLER BLAME (Rec. 12.5 p.m.) NUREMBERG, April 16. Continuing his evidence before the War Crimes Tribunal Rosenberg said much of what happened in the eastern occupied territories he had heard in the Court for the first time. He claimed that he was concerned only with civil administration, and held Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Sauckel responsible for the starvation, deportation and massacre of millions of Russian civilians. Hitler had not allowed him to name or dismiss his own commissioners. Goering blocked his humanitarian plans, especially for the Ukraine, saying: “We have to think first of securing our own food.” Regarding the army’s reprisals against civilians in France, Rosenberg said he considered the shooting of hostages justified in certain cases. Some of these occurred in excitement after the outbreak of war with America. , , Rosenberg presented documents to prove his constant criticism of police misbehaviour in the East when he heard of it. This led to a curtailment of his powers, as a result of which he tried to resign. Rosenberg said that when he asked Himmler whether the foreign press reports of conditions at Dachau and other camps were true, Himmler replied: “Why not visit Dachau yourself? We have a swimming pool and first class sanitary installations? there.” Rosenberg added that he did not visit Dachau. Fervently reaffirming his faith m Hitler, Rosenberg concluded his defence by declaring: “I was completely loyal to him from the beginning.” He and Hitler were in full agreement that the Fuehrer principle should not mean one-man rule, but war-time emergencies had forced dictatorship on Hitler. “It was a wartime phenomenon. I never regarded Hitler as a tyrant.”