BOHLE: I do not quite understand your question.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did Hitler, before the war, in your presence and before the other Gauleiter, frequently emphasize the fact that he wanted at all costs an understanding with England, and that you also were to work for its achievement?
BOHLE: I received no orders in this respect from the Führer, but certainly from the Deputy of the Führer. The Führer never discussed foreign political matters with me during the 12 years I was in office.
DR. SERVATIUS: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any members of the Defense Counsel want to ask any other questions?
LIEUTENANT COLONEL J. M. G. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): Your Auslands-Organisation was organized in the same way as the Party in Germany was organized; is that not so?
BOHLE: Not in all points, because there were various organizations within the body of the Party in the Reich which were not intended for foreign countries, for example, the Office for Municipal Policy.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Perhaps I can shorten my question: Did you have Hoheitstrager abroad in the same way as you had them in Gmany?
BOHLE: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: The organization in each country was under the Landesgruppenleiter; is that correct?
BOHLE: In almost all countries.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And under many there were lowerranking Hoheitstrager?
BOHLE: Yes, the Ortsgruppenleiter.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Was the result of that, that you had your German population in foreign countries well organized and known to the leaders in those countries? BOHLE: To a great extent that might be correct, but it was not SO thoroughly organized, nor could it actually be so, because the leader of the Party did not know all the Reich Germans in the country concerned.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did it never occur to you that in the event of your army's invading a country where you had a well-organized organization, that organization would be of extreme military value?
BOHLE: No, that was not the sense and the purpose of the Auslands-Organisation and no offices ever approached me in this connection.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Are you telling this Tribunal now that when the various countries of Europe were in fact invaded by the German Army your local organizations did nothing to assist them in a military or semimilitary capacity?
BOHLE: Yes, indeed.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. Now, let me ask you about something else for a moment: You had, had you not, an efficient system of reporting from your Landesgruppenleiter to your head office in Berlin?
BOHLE: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I think you have said yourself, did you not, in your interrogations, that you took an especial pride in the speed with which your reports came back?
BOHLE: I did not say that, I believe, with respect to speed but rather with respect to the accuracy of their political survey.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: In fact, your reports did come back with great speed, did they not?
BOHLE: I cannot say that in general. It depended on the possibility of dispatching these reports quickly to Berlin, and how far that was the case in individual instances, I naturally cannot say today. In any ease, I had no special speed or acceleration measures at my disposal.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: In fact, you told your interrogator -and I can refer you to it if necessary-that on occasion you got back information before Himmler or the Foreign Office had got similar information.
BOHLE: That must be a misunderstanding. It concerns the political reports from the Landesgruppenleiter which I transmitted from Berlin to the different offices.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well, we will leave the speed out. I have it from you that you had an efficient system of reporting, had you not?
BOHLE: In order to answer that question I would have to know in respect to what reports I am supposed to have had an efficient system of reporting.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: That was going to be my next question. I was going to ask you: What in fact did your Landesgruppenleiter report to you?
BOHLE: The Landesgruppenleiter reported of their own accord to me, whenever they had anything of importance which they wanted to report to the competent offices in the Reich.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did they ever report anything which might have been of military or semimilitary value?
BOHLE: That may have been the case in some instances, although at present I cannot recall any specific cases.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: They were never given any instructions, were they, to report that kind of information?
BOHLE: No, generally not.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: How did you get your reports back? Did you have wireless sets with your organization in foreign countries?
BOHLE: No, we did not have any such transmission or wireless stations. Reports either came through courier in special cases or were brought by individuals to. Germany.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: After the war started, did your organizations continue in neutral countries?
BOHLE: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Did they never have wireless sets reporting back information?
BOHLE: I do not know anything about that. I do not believe they had them, for I would have had to know about it.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want to ask you about only one or two documents. Would you look at 3258-PS-My Lord, that is the exhibit already in, GB-262; I have copies of the extract for the Tribunal and members of Defense Counsel. I expect you read English-the book itself is coming.
BOHLE: Yes.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: There you have before you a copy of some extracts from it. Would you look at the botbm of the first page, last paragraph, commencing "In 1938 ..." Did you have a Landesgruppenleiter in the Netherlands by the name of Butting?
BOHLE: Yes. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Just pay attention to me for perhaps one moment before you look at that document. Do you know that Butting shared a house at The Hague with the military intelligence office? Do you know that?
BOHLE: No, I do not.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now, I want to quote you quite shortly two paragraphs of this document, which is a report, published as an official United States publication, called "National Socialism, Basic Principles, Their Application by the Nazi Party's Foreign Organization, and The Use of Germans Abroad for Nazi Aims." I just want you to tell the Tribunal what you think first of all about this report, which is printed in that book:
"In 1938 the German Legation owned two houses in The Hague. Both were of course the subject of diplomatic immunity and therefore inviolable as concerned search and seizure by the Dutch police. I shall call the house in which Dr. Butting had his office House Number 2. What went on in House Number 2? It had been remodeled and was divided like a two-family house-vertically, not horizontally, but between the two halves there was a communicating door.
One side of the house was Dr. Butting's. The other half housed the Nazi military intelligence agent for Holland. ..." You say that you do not know anything about that?
BOHLE: Butting was Landesgruppenleiter of the Auslands-Organisation. I am hearing about this house-or these two houses for the first time, that is quite new to me.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Very well. I will just go on.
"S. B. (the military intelligence agent) may have had