SS Judge Dr. Konrad Morgen

[Sean_Lamb]

Does his story about investigating the gas chambers at Auschwitz during 1944 sound plausible? Or do you think he made some kind of plea bargin with the IMT prosecutors to avoid being charged himself?

I notice he misnamed the camp where the gas chambers were located as Monowitz, an understandable mistake for anyone EXCEPT someone who had claimed to have spent weeks investigating what was happening at Auschwitz.

Here is what Dr Konrad Morgen had to say as to why he made no written reports.

A. I would have needed access to technical means for that -
the Press and radio - which I did not have. If I had
screamed it from the roof-tops, no one would have believed
me, because this system was beyond human imagination. I
would have been locked up as insane.

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/imt/ftp.p ... -20-198.03

Is his testimony plausible? Or was he just trying to hide his own involvement in the SS?

[David Thompson]

Is his testimony plausible? Or was he just trying to hide his own involvement in the SS?

Dr. Morgen testified as a defense witness on behalf of the SS.

Testimony of Dr. jur. Konrad Morgen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0653#50653

[Sean_Lamb]

This would not in itself preclude the fact that a deal had been done with the prosecution.

Consider Dr Morgen's position. He was the head of investigation of abuses at Concentration Camps for the SS.
His options after the war were either be
a) Complicit
or b) Struggling valiantly against the evil machinations of the SS, of which he was a senior member.

If the SS was indeed ideologically set on mass murder, which is afterall the indisputable fact, why on earth would they employ the only "cleanskin" as the investigative judge? Equally for the Allies it may have been valuable to have someone who would break through the culture of silence in the SS by allowing someone to testify a wholly false story of "resistance" in order to allow the historical facts to be endorsed by a member of the SS.

The art of history is to critically evaluate documents and witnesses.

So the question for me is: Was Dr Konrad "The Good SS" Morgan fabricating his alibi of strenous investigation of the "Gas Chambers of Monowitz". An alibi that allowed him to entirely escape sanction.

[David Thompson]

This would not in itself preclude the fact that a deal had been done with the prosecution.

If it's a fact, prove it. If it's a speculation, admit it and don't try to suggest it's something else.

The art of history is to critically evaluate documents and witnesses.

Indeed. We're interested in factual information from informed posters in this section of the forum, not questions like:

Or was he just trying to hide his own involvement in the SS?

when the transcript shows that the very first question the SS defense attorney asked Dr. Morgen was about his involvement in the SS:

THE PRESIDENT: . . . Call Dr. Morgen then.
[The witness Morgen took the stand.]
Will you state your full name, please?
GEORG KONRAD MORGEN (Witness): Georg Konrad Morgen.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:
I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I will speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing.
[The witness repeated the oath.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
HERR PELCKMANN: Witness, in view of the importance of your testimony, I will first ask you in detail about your person. Were you an SS judge of the Reserve?
MORGEN: Yes.

Testimony of Dr. jur. Konrad Morgen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0653#50653

[Sean_Lamb]

If it's a fact, prove it. If it's a speculation, admit it and don't try to suggest it's something else.

Fighting words. I would have felt my two posts on this subject were liberally enough sprinkled with question marks to indicate that I felt that this was simply a matter for discussion.
However, I think there are plenty of internal indications of his testimony that would suggest my interpretation could well be a correct one.

1) He misidentifies the camps where homicidal gassings were taking place as Monowitz. [fact]
2) He had plenty of motive for such a course of action. Unless he could demonstrate that he tried to "resist" the evil machinations of the SS his position as Investigator of the Concentrations Camps would surely have seen him hung [strongly factual based speculation]. If he wished to escape the noose he would need to demonstrate that he had tried to investigate the atrocities but failed [speculation].
3) He spent a large portion of his testimony saying that the "Monowitz Extermination Camp" was run by Balts, Ukrainians etc, rather than the true culprits [german SS]
4) He claims that the chimneys of the crematorium were indistinguishable because of the industrial chimneys near by. This is totally incorrect[fact]

Has any of his claims concerning his fearless investigation at Auschwitz been backed up by even so much as one German archival record?[speculation]

If it has, I have not heard of it.[fact]

Or was he just trying to hide his own involvement in the SS?

You have appeared to have tripped me up on a piece of semantics. I should ammend this to:

Or was he just trying to conceal his culpability in the genocidal programme of the SS? [speculation]

[David Thompson]

(1)

Or was he just trying to conceal his culpability in the genocidal programme of the SS? [speculation]

The form of this question assumes, without proving, that Dr. Morgen was in some way culpable for what you refer to as "the genocidal programme of the SS."

If you have any evidence for Dr. Morgen's culpability, let's see it.

(2)

He had plenty of motive for such a course of action. Unless he could demonstrate that he tried to "resist" the evil machinations of the SS his position as Investigator of the Concentrations Camps would surely have seen him hung [strongly factual based speculation].

Morgen was not the "Investigator of the Concentrations Camps," but one of 30-50 SS judges and their assistants assigned to investigate allegations of corruption in the concentration camp administrative system. See the IMT testimony of SS-Oberfuehrer Dr. jur. Guenther Reinecke, the deputy chief of the SS Court system and Dr. Morgen's superior, who also testified as a defense witness for the SS:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 821#503821

THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): How many investigators were you using at any one time?

REINECKE: The total of investigating officials may have varied from 30 to 50 people, the majority of whom were not taken from the legal authorities but were experts from the Reich Security Main Office and from the Criminal Police.

See also the description of the corruption investigations given by Heinrich Hoehne in his history of the SS, starting at:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 954#422954

For the experiences of another SS investigator in the SS corruption probe -- SS-Haupsturmfuehrer Heinrich Gustav Wilhelm Wied -- see Joseph Poprzeczny, Odilo Globocnik: Hitler's Man in the East, McFarland & Co., London: 2004, pp. 261-263, 265, 268, 272.

(3)

He spent a large portion of his testimony saying that the "Monowitz Extermination Camp" was run by Balts, Ukrainians etc, rather than the true culprits [german SS]

If you read Dr. Morgen's testimony carefully, you will see that this is an attempt to distance the death camp administration from the SS as an institution. The testimony of SS-Oberfuehrer Dr. jur. Guenther Reinecke has the same tendency, as does the testimony of all the other SS defense witnesses. Here are some examples (my emphases):

(a) Reinecke:

HERR PELCKMANN: In that case, I shall postpone this question. Witness, evidence has been submitted to this Tribunal that in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other places, millions of Jews were murdered. You, however, discovered in your investigations that individual persons and a small circle of persons committed the crimes which you described. Is it possible, as far as you know, that this comparatively small circle of persons is also responsible for the extermination of these millions?

REINECKE: Investigations of the head office "SS Courts," particularly the final stages of the investigations just before the end of the war, show that individual persons and a small circle of persons are also exclusively responsible for these things. Otherwise, these outrageous things could not possibly have escaped the attention of the legal authorities for so long.

HERR PELCKMANN: Did you, in your conversations with Dr. Morgen, gather any further information which might support this assertion?

REINECKE: Dr. Morgen was a judge before me, who during all the years was attached to the Reich Criminal Police Department in order to carry out investigations in the concentration camps from there. Dr. Morgen has extensive knowledge. I know today that he himself talked with those responsible for these mass exterminations, and he gained a clear insight into all these matters. He can prove that the origin of the extermination of the Jews is not to be found in the SS but in the Chancellery of the Führer.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 821#503821

(b) Morgen:

HERR PELCKMANN: Was Wirth a member of the SS?

MORGEN: No, he was a Kriminalkommissar in Stuttgart.

HERR PELCKMANN: Did you ask Wirth how he arrived at this devilish system?

MORGEN: When Wirth took over the extermination of the Jews, he was already a specialist in mass-destruction of human beings. He had previously carried out the task of getting rid of the incurably insane. By order of the Fuehrer himself, whose order was transmitted through the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, he had, at the beginning of the war, set up a detachment for this purpose, probably composed of a few officials of his, as I believe, the remainder being agents and spies of the Criminal Police.

Wirth very vividly described how he went about carrying out this assignment. He received no aid, no instructions, but had to do it all by himself. He was only given an old empty building in Brandenburg. There he made his first experiments. After much consideration and many individual experiments, he evolved his later system, and then this system was used on a large scale to exterminate the insane.

A commission of doctors previously investigated the files, and those insane who were listed by the asylums as incurable were put on a separate list. Then the asylum concerned was told one day to send these patients to another institution.

From this asylum

494 7 Aug. 46

the patient was transferred again, often more than once. Finally he came to Wirth's institution, where he was killed by gas and cremated. This system, which deceived the asylums and made them unknowing accomplices, enabled him with very few assistants to exterminate large numbers of people, and this system Wirth now employed with a few alterations and improvements for the extermination of Jews. He was also given the assignment by the Fuehrer's Chancellery to exterminate the Jews.

HERR PELCKMANN: The statements which Wirth made to you must have surpassed human imagination. Did you immediately believe Wirth?

MORGEN: At first Wirth's description seemed completely fantastic to me, but in Lublin I saw one of his camps. It was a camp which collected the property or part of the property of his victims. From the piles of things-there were an enormous number of watches piled up-I had to realize that something frightful was going on here. I was shown the valuables. I can say that I never saw so much money at one time, especially foreign money-all kinds of coins, from all over the world. In addition, there was a gold smelting furnace and really prodigious bars of gold.

I also saw that the headquarters from which Wirth directed his operations was very small and inconspicuous., He had only three or four people working there for him. I spoke to them too.

I saw and watched his couriers arrive. They actually came from Berlin, Tiergartenstrasse, the Fuehrer's Chancellery, and went back there. I investigated Wirth's mail and I found in it confirmation of all this. Of course, I could not do or see all this on this first visit. I was there frequently. I pursued Wirth up to his death.

HERR PELCKMANN: Did Wirth give you names of people who were connected with this operation?

MORGEN: Not many names were mentioned, for the simple reason that the number of those who participated could be counted, so to speak, on one's fingers. I remember one name: I think the name was Blankenburg, in Berlin.

HERR PELCKMANN: Blankenburg?

MORGEN: Blankenburg, of the Fuehrer's Chancellery.

(4)

He misidentifies the camps where homicidal gassings were taking place as Monowitz. [fact]

and

He claims that the chimneys of the crematorium were indistinguishable because of the industrial chimneys near by. This is totally incorrect[fact]

What does this have to do with Dr. Morgen's supposed "culpability in the genocidal programme of the SS"?

[Sean_Lamb]

for what you refer to as "the genocidal programme of the SS."

Gosh, I was unaware that this was still a matter of controversy.

Are you suggesting that perhaps Morgen was right? That the SS are an innocent victim of the misbehaviour of the Balts and the Ukrainians.

I had always understood that the SS as an organisation were ideological committed to the genocide, the lynchpin, if you like, of the whole operation.

[David Thompson]

Unless he could demonstrate that he tried to "resist" the evil machinations of the SS his position as Investigator of the Concentrations Camps would surely have seen him hung [strongly factual based speculation].

If you have any evidence for Dr. Morgen's culpability, produce it. If you can't or won't, the readers can draw their own conclusions about your credibility.

[Jeff_36]

Hate to bump this decades old thread gents, but I honestly belive that Morgen was bullshitting 300% of the time there. The extermination that he witnessed was true, but his description was totally skewed to make the SS look good, which was his job as their witness.

[David Thompson]

Jeff_36 -- Do you have any evidence supporting your belief? If you do, please post it at the same time. If you don't, we have a policy against opinion posts here. Check the forum rules:

3. Opinions

Since the purpose of this section of the forum is to exchange information and hold informed discussions about historical problems, posts which express unsolicited opinions without supporting facts and sources do not promote the purposes of the forum. Consequently, such posts are subject to deletion after a warning to the poster.

The same reasoning applies to opinion threads.

http://forum.axishistory.com/rules

[Brumbar]

Does his story about investigating the gas chambers at Auschwitz during 1944 sound plausible?

HERR PELCKMANN: How did you come on the trail which led to Auschwitz? MORGEN: I got a clue by a remark of Wirth himself. Now I had only to find a reason to institute investigations in Auschwitz itself. I beg to bear in mind that my assignment was limited; I had to investigate crimes of corruption and crimes committed in connection with them.

Seems the original poster got off onto the wrong (Rabbit) foot. Morgen wasn't investigating gas chambers. He was investigating corruption in KZs. Whilst investigating the Lublin camps he came across the AR camps and Wirth and stumbled into something he either didn't reckon was taking place or had heard rumours about. So he figures out there's a state-sanctioned murder/plunder process that's traceable back to the Fuhrer Chancellery in Berlin. So what's he to do? Expose that and risk everything or just do his original brief, follow the corruption trail to Auschwitz and get on with his day job?

[Jeff_36]

Mr. Thompson, It does not take a genius to realize that some of Morgens descriptions of the AR camps were inaccurate. They were not run by the Chancellory, but by the Odilo Globicnik of HSSPF Lublin. Wirth reported to Globicnik, not directly to the FC.

Also, the whole operation was being winded up by the end of 1943. The only camp still in operation was Sobibor and it was being demolished.

[Brumbar]

No one said AR was being run from the Fuhrer Chancellery. Many of the T4 personnel were seconded to Globocnik through Viktor Brack of the FC. You will also find that Greiser in Warthegau asked permission of Himmler to exterminate 100K Jews in the Warthegau "using the Brack method" which is another link from exterminations in Poland to the FC but doesn't mean that the FC was administering them.

[Brumbar]

But then you knew that already:

http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.p ... 58#p452458

So why waste folk's time here?

[Jeff_36]

Bro, I knew that the personnel were from the FC, but Morgen stated that the orders came from the FC which is not true at all. His dating is out of whack and he staes that Wirth ran the whole thing when in fact he was #2 to Globicnik. This is well known.