I should like to say now that our attempt was to prevent Hitler from changing sentences after they had been passed by suggesting that the presidents of the district court of appeal should confirm the sentences whereby merely a technical, nonpolitical review would have been carried out. That attempt was intentionally brought to naught by Bormann for he realized that thereby it would have been impossible for Hitler to reopen, on the initiative of Party, trials which had been concluded. Q. The possibility which the witness mentioned concerning the possibility of Bormann’s interference with every appointment of an official results from the decree of 10 July 1937 published in the Reichsgesetzblatt of 1937, page 769.[163] I shall submit that decree in a supplement to my document book. Witness, concerning the evidence submitted by the prosecution, could you discuss a case which reveals such efforts being made by the Party? A. I am able to do that. I refer to the statements made by the prosecution witness Ferber. He dealt with a case about which Guertner had frequently talked to me. That was the case against Heller in which the law against motor car traps [Gesetz ueber die Autofallen-Stellung] had been applied. For the information of the Tribunal I may say that law was promulgated on 22 June 1938. It is based on the particular initiative of Hitler. The facts of the case were as follows: Soon after that law had been promulgated, Heller and his mistress as the riders of a driving school [sic][164] had attacked a driver and had robbed his money. While the case was being tried before the Special Court in Nuernberg in the presence of Gauleiter Streicher, and Denzler, the Gau legal office leader, Hitler appeared in Nuernberg unexpectedly. A death sentence against Heller was expected for certain. Evidently Streicher and Denzler intended to submit to Hitler in his presence a proposal for a death sentence on the basis of this new law in which Hitler was particularly interested. A telephone call was put through to the Ministry of Justice to hear an opinion on the question of clemency. Opposition was encountered there on the part of the Referent. That Referent was Ministerialrat Westphal, who was indicted here.[165] He refused to give his opinion because the legal problem which had arisen in the Heller case was being dealt with in a case before the Reich Supreme Court which was still pending and was there to be submitted for the opinion of the Reich Supreme Court judges. At that point the Party representatives became busy. Denzler reported this information to Hitler implying that Guertner obviously was sabotaging the application of this law, which Hitler himself had promoted, and he boasted that that was enough to bring about Guertner’s fall. At any rate, that interference on the part of the Party led to the fact that Hitler, following Denzler’s report, ordered the death sentence to be executed without waiting for the Ministry of Justice to give its opinion.