(_e_) This limitation of the tasks of the under secretary through the organization was furthered through the personal qualities of the Minister, Thierack. A picture of Thierack will result from the documents and the statements of witnesses. He was an autocratic, brutal, and even a rude person. He pursued his views and objectives with remarkable stubbornness. Accordingly, he was hardly to be persuaded from an opinion once formed. He tolerated no one next to himself in his struggle for power. For such a person it must have been easy to suppress such a soft and yielding personality as Klemm. Thierack was not interested in problems of the jurisprudence in concepts of law. He thought that he was a politician and merely a practitioner of the administration of justice. The contrast in the characters had an especially unfavorable effect on Klemm’s method of working since Thierack thought he could treat Klemm merely as an official dependent on him personally. That resulted from the previous personal relations of the two men. When Thierack filled the post of Minister of Justice for Saxony immediately after the seizure of power by the NSDAP, Klemm was his adjutant. When Klemm after many years again had to come into personal contact with Thierack through his appointment to under secretary, he was in the opinion of Thierack, not more than his adjutant again. When he contacted his Under Secretary Klemm, his manners were just as rough as in his contact with other subordinate officials. Even in the presence of other officials he showed tactlessness, and treated him, too, with disdain and certainly not as a “friend and confidant,” as the prosecution obviously assumes. Thierack would not attach such weight to an opinion voiced by Klemm as would have been appropriate because of the latter’s official position. In my defense plea this personal relationship is of importance, so that it must also be shown that Thierack was an extremely reserved person. He disclosed his plans and intentions to nobody before they were carried out. He kept the most important political-judicial events and decisions secret even from his under secretary. When he received the visits of other Ministers, or higher Party and SS officials nobody else was present as a rule. This was particularly true in his contacts with Himmler and the people surrounding him, such as Kaltenbrunner. Of the contents of the discussions Klemm like the other officials of the Ministry was not informed until a decree of Thierack was published for the individual sections of the Ministry.