DR. LATERNSER : Witness, I had asked you about the methods, did you yourself look at any documents which might have shown the methods of the bands, above all did you see pictures, did you read reports; will you tell us something briefly about all this?
WITNESS IBBEKEN : In the documentary material mentioned, there are numerous reports about the methods of fighting of the partisans in such an abundance that somebody who for a year and a half studies these figures, for the period from 1941 to 1944, at least gains a file knowledge of these facts, and beyond that I can only personally state that to land with an airplane in the occupational area Zagreb would generally be in this way: As soon as one wanted to alight from the plane there would be machine guns from the partisans all around, and they would shoot until German antiaircraft guns quieted these guns, and then one would land.
Q. Did that happen to you personally?
A. Yes. And from personal knowledge I could personally say that during the time when I was in the Balkans, and repeatedly after I went home to the Reich to work in the archives, it was the regular situation that in each leave train a combat force was formed in order not to be surprised during sleep by partisan attacks, Those were matters of course to us.
Q. Witness, did you see pictures, photographs, which showed mutilated German soldiers?
A. The documentary material mentioned contained a considerable number of photographs which showed mutilations. The photographs which I remember concerned first of all atrocities between the fighting parties of the population, that is, Ustasha against the Serbs, and the Serbs against the Moslems. The pictures were submitted so often down there that finally one just pushed them aside, because they are not a very pleasant sight, but there is one detail I want to mention. Among the documentary material of the staff of the division stationed in Sarajevo in 1942—these must be pictures which were submitted to the division judge—these pictures showed murdered women who were murdered by driving long wooden sticks into their genitals. Then there were numerous other pictures, and I ask not to have to testify about these, because I cannot give their sources exactly.
Q. Witness, we strayed from the actual subject. I had asked you about the actual relation between the occupation powers in Serbia and the population; what was the attitude of the officers, as far as you knew them, towards the Serbs?
A. I knew the officers of the staff of the Commander in Chief Southeast, and I was mainly interested in the political problems of the area. It was the constantly expressed opinion of these officers that the Serbs were the most remarkable and most gifted elements in that area and nobody really trusted them very far.
Q, What now were the relations between the occupation power and the population in Croatia?
A. This relation was completely different from a political and military point of view. It had to be different because Croatia was an independent state where the German armed forces, to put it quite briefly, had nothing to say. In Croatia, under the head of the state, the Poglavnik, who had come [back] from Italian immigration [exile] —
Q. What does the word "Poglavnik"
da imas sta da kazes i te kak bi rekao...ili zasto onda uopste i ucestvujes u diskusiji...jasno je i tebi i meni da tu nema mnogo sta da se kaze...pa je najlakse izbeci...
