The Holocaust Historiography Project

Copy of document 3399-PS

AFFIDAVIT

I, Robert M.W. Kempner, as expert Consultant of the War Department appeared before the undersigned attesting officer and having been duly sworn stated as follows:

In the summer of 1930, when I was legal counsellor of the Police Division of the Prussian Ministry of Interior, I was officially notified that the then Minister of the Interior of Thuringia, Wilhelm Frick, identical with the defendant Wilhelm Frick in Nurnberg, made attempts, by misusing his own official position, to secure a fraudulent naturalization for the then stateless Adolf Hitler.

As Minister of the Interior of Thuringia, Frick had jurisdiction to appoint civil servants. Such an appointment would have conferred automatically German citizenship Law of 1913, which was then in force.

The National Socialist Minister, Frick, together with other officials of his ministry took at that time the preparatory steps in order to secure German citizenship for the Party Leader, Adolf Hitler. This act was fraudulent because Frick himself and Hitler knew that the latter was not supposed to perform any functions of the office to which he was to be appointed, but that the whole maneuver was only done in order to naturalize Hitler and thus enable him to run for high office in Germany.

When this matter became officially known to the undersigned and his superior it was decided to intervene officially and to prevent the fraudulent appointment, by making these plans public. This was done and Frick did not succeed with his project.

Only a considerable time later the National Socialist Ministry of the German State of Brunswick succeeded in naturalizing Hitler by appointing him to the position of a government counsellor of the State of Brunswick, attaching him to the Legation of the State of Brunswick in Berlin. The importance of this whole maneuver became apparent when immediately thereafter the newly naturalized Hitler became able to run for the office of Reichs-President.

[signed] Robert M.W. Kempner ROBERT
M.W. KEMPNER

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 11th day of December 1945

[signed] Norman A. Stoll
NORMAN A. STOLL Captain, JAGD