[_The Tribunal adjourned until 1 February 1946 at 1000 hours._]
FORTY-EIGHTH DAY
Friday, 1 February 1946
_Morning Session_
MARSHAL: May it please the Court, I desire to announce that Defendants
Kaltenbrunner and Seyss-Inquart will be absent from this morning’s
session on account of illness.
M. DUBOST: I have now completed my presentation of facts. This
presentation has consisted of a dry enumeration of crimes, atrocities,
extortions of all sorts, which I deliberately presented to you without
any embellishments of oratory. The facts have a profound eloquence which
suffices. These facts are, it seems to me, definitely established. I do
not believe that the Defense, nor history—even German history—will be
able to set aside their essential aspects. They will no doubt be exposed
to criticism.
Our evidence was hastily collected in a ruined country whose every means
of communication had been destroyed by an enemy in flight, in a country
where each individual was more concerned with preparation for the future
than with looking back upon the past, even to exact vengeance, for the
future is the life of our children, and the past is but death and
destruction.
For the whole of France, for each country in the West, the demands of
daily life, the difficulty of preparing for a better future once again
give full meaning to the words of the Scriptures, _Sinite mortuos
sepelire mortuos_ (Let the dead bury their dead.); and that is why in
spite of all our efforts, all our endeavors, to prepare the work of
justice which France and universal conscience demand, we were not able
to be more thorough. That is why errors of detail may have slipped into
our work, but the rectifications which time and the Defense will effect
can be only accessory. They will not eliminate the fact that millions of
men have been deported, starved, exhausted through labor and privation
before being put to death, like cattle without value; that innumerable
innocent persons have been tortured before being turned over to the
executioner. Rectifications may affect circumstances of time, sometimes
of place; they will not change the essential facts even if a few details
are modified.
But these facts, having been established in their general aspect, it
remains for us to complete our task by giving them juridical
significance, by analyzing them with reference to the law of which they
constitute a violation, and by making clear the inculpations, in other
words, by fixing the responsibilities, of each defendant in respect to a
law.
What law shall we apply? Taken one by one and separated from the
systematic policy which conceived, willed, and ordered them as a means
of achieving domination through terror and beyond that as a means of
extermination pure and simple; these facts constitute crimes against
common law as much as violations of the laws and usages of war and of
international law. All of them could therefore be defined separately as
a violation of an international convention and of a penal provision of
one or another of our established domestic laws. Or rather all could be
qualified as a violation of a rule of common law which has emerged from
each of our own domestic laws, as shown by M. De Menthon in his address;
of that common law which, in the last analysis, was designated by him as
being the foundation, as the root of international customs, which,
beyond the Charter itself, is and remains the one and only guide of your
decisions.
But it is right to know that this common law springs from our
established laws and, like them, punishes in principle actual misdeeds.
Now, all of our defendants remained physically divorced from each of the
criminal facts which in the ubiquity of their power they multiplied
throughout the world. It was their will which commanded; but, as Mr.
Justice Jackson recalled, they never reddened their own hands with the
blood of their victims. Therefore, if we refer exclusively to our
established laws and especially to French domestic law, the defendants
could not, in any case, be considered as principal authors but merely as
accomplices “who have provoked the act through abuse of authority or of
power.” All of that is indeed a contradiction to the conception which
each person in our countries holds of the guilt of the major war
criminals. To solve the problem thus would be to narrow singularly the
field of responsibility of each of the defendants. This responsibility
would appear merely accessory, where, in fact, it is the principal
responsibility; it would appear fragmentary, whereas to be truly fixed
it must be presented as one single time, in the whole of their thoughts,
intentions, and acts as chiefs of the Nazi government who conceived,
willed, ordered, or tolerated the development of that systematic policy
of terror and extermination, of which each fact taken separately is but
a particular aspect, merely a constituent element. Thus a simple
reference to common law does not bring us close enough to reality. If it
does not omit, as such, any of the facts to which guilt attaches, it
does leave aside the psychological factor and does not give us a
complete conception of the guilt of the accused in a single formula
embracing all the reality. That is because common law expresses a
certain status of common morality which is accepted by civilized nations
as law for the mutual relations of citizens. Profoundly imbued with the
concept of individualism, this common law is not adequate to meet the
exigencies of collective life which international morality must govern.
Furthermore, this common law which is the foundation of our tradition
has become static in a Cartesian sense, whereas our custom remains
enriched by all the dynamism of international penal law. The Charter has
not fixed the manner in which we are to qualify in a juridical sense the
facts which I have presented before you. In creating your Tribunal, the
authors of the Charter limited themselves to establishing the limits of
your jurisdiction: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, Crimes against
Peace; and even then they did not give an exhaustive definition of each
of these crimes. The Tribunal may refer on this point to Article 6,
paragraphs b and c of the Charter of the Tribunal. This article gives
only an indicative enumeration. That is because the authors of the
Charter bore in mind that international penal law is only still in the
first phase of the birth of a custom in which law is developed by
reaction to the deed and where the judge intervenes only to save the
criminals from individual vengeance or where law is applied by the judge
alone and the penalty pronounced according to his sole judgment. Thus,
the authors of the Charter abstained from giving us a fixed method of
qualification by reference to common law or on the contrary, to custom.
They did not say to you:
“You will take one by one the criminal facts submitted to you,
and each fact taken separately shall be isolated from the others
to be defined by reference to a stipulation of any one domestic
law or to a synthesis of domestic laws, yielding thus a common
law.”
Nor did they say to you:
“You will take these scattered criminal facts, you will group
them together to make of them one single crime of which the
definition, respecting in a general sense the rules of common
law, will be essentially determined by the sole intention or
purpose sought, without attempting to seek by analogy any
precedents in the different domestic laws which apply only,
moreover, to an entirely different subject.”
The authors of the Charter have left you free, entirely free, within the
limits of custom; and consequently we, ourselves, within the same
limitations are free to propose to you such qualification which appears
to us most practical, which appears to us to come closest to the
changing reality of facts in their relation to the general principles of
law and the broad rules of morality which may seem to us to be such as
to meet best the demands of human conscience expressed by international
public opinion duly enlightened on Hitlerian atrocities, which will, in
fact, remain within the limits of international penal custom. This
custom is indeed still in a formulative stage; but although this Trial
is without precedent, the problems that are being examined in this Court
have arisen before; and the jurists who preceded us have already given
them solutions. These solutions constitute precedents; and, as such,
they constitute the first elements of your custom. In their memorandum
to the Commission to the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on
Sanctions at the Peace Conference of 1919-1920 the French jurists, M.
Larnaude and M. De Lapradelle wrote:
“Criminal law could not foresee that through a singular defiance
of the essential laws of humanity, of civilization, of honor, an
army, by virtue of the instructions of its sovereign, could
systematically lend itself to perform deeds through the
perpetration of acts such as the enemy has not shrunk from
performing in order to achieve success and victory. Therefore,
domestic criminal law has never before been able to make
provisions which would permit the repression of such acts. And
still one must, in the interpretation of every law, cling to the
intention of the law maker. . . . If, in certain cases
considered particularly propitious, one might succeed in
apprehending individuals bearing responsibility of whom the
Emperor could be considered an accomplice one would only
succeed, and not without difficulty, in narrowing the field of
his responsibility by limiting it to a few precise cases. . . .
It is a very restricted approach to the problem of William II to
diminish it and reduce it to the proportions of a criminal or a
court-martial case. . . . The high justice which an anxious
world awaits would not be satisfied if the German Emperor were
judged only as an accomplice or even as the co-author of a
common-law crime. His actions as Chief of State must be
considered in conformity with their true juridical
character. . . .”
But except for minor details all of this is indeed implicitly contained
in the last paragraph of Article 6 of the Charter of your Tribunal:
“Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating
in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy
to commit any of the foregoing crimes”—Crimes against Peace,
War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity—“are responsible for all
acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.”
Fundamentally, all this is within strict conformity with the primordial
German concept of Führertum, which places all responsibility on the
leader and those who are with the leader from the very start. Thus we
can, by as close as possible to reality, by applying the Charter of 8
August and Article 6 of the Charter of your Tribunal, by respecting the
rules of common law defined by the chief of our delegation, M. De
Menthon, and by following custom, which is sketched in the field of
international penal law, require of your Tribunal to declare all the
defendants guilty of having, in their role as the chief Hitlerian
leaders of the German people, conceived, willed, ordained, or merely
tolerated by their silence that assassinations or other inhuman acts be
systematically committed, that violent treatment be systematically
imposed on prisoners of war or civilians, that devastations without
justification be systematically committed as a deliberate instrument for
the accomplishment of their purpose of dominating Europe and the world
through terrorism and the extermination of entire populations in order
to enlarge the living space of the German people.
More specifically, we ask you to declare Göring, Keitel, and Jodl guilty
of having taken part in the execution of this plan by ordering the
seizure and the execution of hostages in violation of Article 50 of the
Hague Convention which prohibits collective sanctions and reprisals.
We ask you to find Keitel, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann,
and Ribbentrop guilty of having taken part in the execution of this
plan: 1. by ordering the terrorist murders of innocent civilians; 2. by
ordering the execution without trial and torture to death of members of
the resistance; 3. by ordering devastations without justification:
To declare Göring, Keitel, Jodl, Speer, and Sauckel guilty of having
taken part in the execution of this plan by jeopardizing the health and
the lives of prisoners of war, notably by submitting them to privations
and hard treatments, by exposing them, or by attempting to expose them
to bombings or other risks of war:
To declare Göring, Keitel, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, and Bormann guilty of
having taken part in the execution of this plan, by personally ordering
or by provoking the formulation of orders leading to terrorist murder or
to the lynching by the population of certain combatants, more
specifically, of airmen and members of commando groups as well as the
terrorist murder or slow extermination of certain categories of
prisoners of war:
To declare Keitel guilty of having taken part in the execution of this
plan by prescribing the deportation of innocent civilians and by
applying to some of them the NN (Nacht und Nebel) regime which marked
them for extermination:
To declare Jodl guilty of having taken part in the execution of this
plan by ordering the arrest, with a view to deportation, of the Jews of
Denmark:
To declare Frank, Rosenberg, Streicher, Von Schirach, Sauckel, Frick,
and Hess guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan, by
justifying the extermination of Jews or by working out a statute with a
view to their extermination:
To declare Göring guilty of having taken part in the execution of this
plan: 1. by creating concentration camps and by placing them under the
control of the State Police for the purpose of ridding National
Socialism of any opposition; 2. by tolerating and then by approving
fatal physiological experiments on the effect of cold, and of increasing
or decreasing pressure, which experiments were carried out—with
material provided by the Luftwaffe and controlled by Dr. Rascher,
medical officer of the Luftwaffe detailed to the concentration camp of
Dachau for that purpose—on healthy deportees who were involuntary
subjects for the said experiments with which he (Göring), as chief,
associated himself; 3. by utilizing in large numbers internees for
exhausting labor under inhuman conditions in the armament factories of
the Luftwaffe:
To find Speer guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan
by employing in large numbers the internees for exhausting labor under
inhumane conditions in the armament factories (Document Number 1584-PS):
To find Bormann guilty of having taken part in the execution of this
plan by participating in the extermination of internees in concentration
camps (Document Number 654-PS).
With regard to Dönitz, Raeder, Von Papen, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Funk,
and Schacht, we associate ourselves with the conclusion of our British
and American colleagues. And in connection with the acts above defined,
we ask you further, in accordance with the stipulation of Article 9 of
the Charter of your Tribunal, to find the OKW and the OKH guilty of the
execution of this plan by having ordered and participated in the
deportation of innocent civilians from the occupied countries in the
West:
To find the OKW, the OKH, and the OKL guilty of the execution of this
plan by participating in the setting-up of the doctrine of hostages as a
means to terrorize and by prescribing the seizure and execution of
hostages in the countries of the West, by reducing to a degrading level
the material living conditions of prisoners of war, by depriving the
latter of the guarantees granted them by international custom and by
positive international law, by ordering or by tolerating the employment
of prisoners of war in dangerous work or in labor directly connected
with military operations, by ordering the execution of escaped prisoners
or prisoners attempting to escape, and the execution of numerous groups
of commandos, and by giving the SS and SD directives for the
extermination of airmen:
To find the OKL guilty of having participated in the execution of this
plan: 1. by employing in large numbers internees in concentration camps
for exhaustive labor under inhuman conditions in the armament factories
of the Luftwaffe; 2. by participating in fatal physiological experiments
on the effect of cold and of increasing or decreasing pressure, which
experiments were carried out for the benefit of the Luftwaffe and
conducted by Dr. Rascher, medical officer of the Luftwaffe, attached to
the concentration camp at Dachau (Documents 343-PS, 1610-PS, 669-PS,
L-90, 668-PS, UK-56, 835-PS, 834-PS, F-278 (B)):
To find the SS and the SD guilty of the execution of this plan by having
deported and participated in the deportation of innocent civilians from
the occupied countries in the West and by having tortured them and
exterminated them by every means in concentration camps:
To find the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of the execution of this
plan by having given direct orders for the execution or the deportation,
with a view to their slow extermination, of members of commando groups,
airmen, escaped prisoners, those who refused to accept forced labor, or
those who were rebellious to the Nazi order; by forbidding any
repression of acts of lynching committed by the German population on
airmen brought down:
To find the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of having tortured and of
having executed without trial members of the resistance:
To find the same organizations and in addition, the OKW and the OKH in
collusion with the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of having
committed or ordered massacres and devastations without justification
(Documents 1063-PS, F-285, R-91, R-129, 1553-PS, L-7, F-185(A)):
To find the Gestapo guilty of having participated in the execution of
this plan by the deportation of innocent civilians from the occupied
countries of the West by the tortures and assassinations which were
inflicted on them:
To find the Government of the Reich (Reichsregierung) and the Leadership
Corps of the National Socialist Party guilty of having, for the purpose
of dominating Europe and the world, conceived and prepared the
systematic extermination of innocent civilians from the occupied
countries of the West through their deportation and their assassination
in concentration camps:
To find the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party and the
Government of the Reich guilty of having, for the purpose of dominating
Europe and the world through terrorism, systematically conceived and
provoked tortures, summary executions, massacres, and devastation
without cause as described above:
To find the Government of the Reich and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi
Party guilty of having, for the purpose of dominating Europe and the
world, conceived and prepared the extermination of combatants who had
surrendered and the demoralization, extensive exploitation, and
extermination of prisoners of war, and having participated in it.
Such are the juridical qualifications of the facts which I have the
honor of submitting to you. But a few lessons emerge from these facts.
May the Tribunal permit me to state them in conclusion.
For hundreds of years humanity has renounced the deportation of the
vanquished, their enslavement, and their annihilation through misery,
through hunger, steel, and fire. It is because a message of brotherhood
had been given to the world, and the world could not entirely forget
this message even in the midst of the horrors of war. From generation to
generation we observed an upward effort ever since this message of peace
had been given. We were confident that it was without any thought of
regressing that man had taken the view of moral progress which formed a
part of the common heritage of civilized nations. All nations revered,
equally, good faith in relations among individuals. All of them had come
to accept good faith as the law of their mutual relationship.
International morality was little by little emerging and international
relationship, like that between individuals, was more and more falling
in line with the three precepts of the classical Roman jurists:
“_Honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere_.” (Live
honorably, inflict no harm on another, give each his due.)
Every civilized nation had been impregnated with a common humanism,
growth of a long tradition, Christian and liberal. Based on this common
heritage and achieved at the price of given experience, each nation,
enlightened by the well-conceived interests of man, had understood or
was coming to understand that in public as in private affairs loyalty,
moderation, and mutual aid were golden rules which none could transgress
indefinitely and with impunity.
The defeat, the catastrophe which has fallen upon Germany confirm us in
this thought and give only more meaning and more clarity to the solemn
warning addressed to the American people by President Roosevelt in his
address on 27 May 1940:
“Although our Navy, our guns, and our planes are the first line
of defense, it is certain that back of all of that there is the
spirit and the morality of a free people which give to their
material defense power, support, and efficiency. . . .”
And in this struggle, the echoes of which are still rumbling in our
ears, it was indeed those who could rest their strength upon law,
nourish their force with justice, who won out. But because we have
followed step by step the development of the criminal madness of the
defendants and the consequences of that madness throughout these last
years, we must conclude that the patrimony of man, of which we are the
recipients, is frail indeed, that all kinds of regressions are possible,
and that we must with care watch over their heritage. There is not a
nation which, ill-educated, badly led by evil masters, would not in the
long run revert to the barbarity of the early ages.
The German people whose military virtue we recognize, whose poets and
musicians we love, whose application to work we admire, and who did not
fail to give examples of probity in the most noble works of the spirit;
this German people, which came rather late to civilization, beginning
only with the eighth century, had slowly raised itself to the ranks of
nations possessing the oldest culture. The contribution to modern or
contemporary thought seemed to prove that this conquest of the spirit
was final; Kant, Goethe, Johann Sebastian Bach belong to humanity just
as much as Calvin, Dante, or Shakespeare; nevertheless, we behold the
fact that millions of innocent men have been exterminated on the very
soil of this people, by men of this people, in execution of a common
plan conceived by their leaders, and this people made not a single
effort to revolt.
This is what has become of it because it has scorned the virtues of
political freedom, of civic equality, of human fraternity. This is what
has become of it, because it forgot that all men are born free and equal
before the law, that the essential action of a state has for its purpose
the deeper and deeper penetration of a respect for spiritual liberty and
fraternal solidarity in social relations and in international
institutions.
It allowed itself to be robbed of its conscience and its very soul. Evil
masters came who awakened its primitive passions and made possible the
atrocities which I have described to you. In truth, the crime of these
men is that they caused the German people to retrogress more than 12
centuries.
Their crime is that they conceived and achieved, as an instrument of
government, a policy of terrorism toward the whole of the subjugated
nations and toward their own people; their crime is that they pursued,
as an end in itself, a policy of extermination of entire categories of
innocent citizens. That alone would suffice to determine capital
punishment. And still, the French Prosecution, represented by M. Faure,
intends to present proof of a still greater crime, the crime of
attempting “to obliterate from the world certain ideas which are called
liberty, independence, security of nations, which are also called faith
in the given word and respect for the human person,” the crime of having
attempted to kill the very soul, the spirit of France and other occupied
nations in the West. We consider that to be the gravest crime committed
by these men, the gravest because it is written in the Scriptures,
Matthew, XII, 31-32:
“All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but
the blasphemy unto the Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men.
Whosoever speaketh against the Spirit shall not be forgiven,
neither in this world, nor in the world to come. . . . For the
tree is known by its fruit. Race of vipers, how could ye speak
good words when ye are evil. . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: [_To M. Faure of the French Delegation_] Yes, M. Faure.
M. EDGAR FAURE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr.
President, Honorable Judges, I have the honor of delivering to the
Tribunal the concluding address of the French Prosecution. This
presentation relates more particularly to the sections lettered (I) and
(J) of Count Three of the Indictment: oath of allegiance and
Germanization; and on the other hand to section (B) of Count Four,
persecutions on political, racial, and religious grounds.
First of all I should like to present in a brief introduction the
general ideas which govern the plan of my final pleading. The concept of
Germanization has been stated in the presentation of M. De Menthon. It
consists essentially in imposing upon the inhabitants of occupied
territories norms for their political and social life such as the Nazis
had determined according to their own doctrine and for their own profit.
The combined activities which carried out Germanization or which have
Germanization for their purpose, and which are illegal, have been
defined as a criminal undertaking against humanity. The complete process
of Germanization was employed in certain territories to annex them to
the Reich. The Germans intended even before the end of the war to
incorporate these territories within their own country. These
territories, annexed and then germanized in an absolute manner, are the
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Belgian Cantons of Eupen, Malmédy, and
Moresnet, and the three French Departments of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin and
the Moselle.
These territories can be considered relatively small in comparison with
the total area of the territories occupied by the Germans. This in no
wise mitigates the reprehensible character of these annexations;
moreover, we should note at this point two essential aspects of our
subject.
The first proposition: The Germans had conceived and prepared more
extensive annexations than those actually carried out in an official
manner. For reasons of expediency, they did not proceed with these
annexations during the period of time at their disposal.
The second proposition: Annexation, on the other hand, was not the
unique or obligatory procedure of Germanization. The Nazis discovered
that they could employ different and various means to achieve their
purpose of universal domination. The selection of means which vary
according to circumstances, to attain and to camouflage an identical
result, was characteristic of what has been called Nazi Machiavellism.
Their conception is technically much more pliable, more clever, and more
dangerous than the classical conception of territorial conquest. In this
respect the most brutal competitor has over them the advantage of
candor.
To begin with I say that the Germans had formulated the plan to annex
more extensive territory. Numerous indications point to this. I would
like to give you only two citations.
The first of these is taken from the documentation collected by our
colleagues of the American Prosecution, an American document which has
not yet been submitted to the Tribunal. I should say in addition that in
my final pleading I shall refer only twice to very remarkable American
documents. All the other documents which I shall submit will be new ones
belonging to the French Prosecution. The document of which I speak now
is Number 1155-PS of the American documents, and it appears in the file
of documents submitted to you under Number RF-601, which will become,
may it please the Tribunal, that number in French documentation.
This document is dated Berlin, 20 June 1940. It bears the notation: “Top
Secret Staff Document.” Its title is: “Note for the Dossier on the
Conference of 19 June 1940, at Headquarters of General Field Marshal
Göring.”
The notes which are included in this document reflect, therefore, the
views of the leaders and not individual interpretations. I would like to
read to the Tribunal only Paragraph 6 of that document, which is to be
found on Page 3. It is the first document bearing Number RF-601
(Document Number 1155-PS), I proceed with the reading of Paragraph 6,
Page 3:
“General plans regarding the political development.
“Luxembourg is to be annexed by the Reich. Norway is to become
German. Alsace-Lorraine is to be reincorporated into the Reich.
An autonomous Breton state is to be created. Considerations are
pending concerning Belgium, the special treatment of the Flemish
in that country, and the creation of a State of Burgundy.”
The second citation which I shall submit to the Tribunal on this point
refers to a French document which I submit as Document Number RF-602.
This document comprises the minutes of the interrogation of Dr. Globke,
a former assistant of State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior,
Dr. Stuckart. It is dated 25 September 1945. This interrogation was
taken by Major Graff of the French Judicial Service.
To the minutes of the interrogation has been added a memorandum which
was delivered following the questioning by Dr. Globke. I read a passage
from this interrogation, at the beginning of the document, Paragraph 1:
“Question: ‘Have you any knowledge of plans which envisage the
annexation of other French territories at the conclusion of
peace between Germany and France? (Belfort, Nancy, Bassin de
Briey, the coal fields of the North, the so-called “Red Zone”,
territory attached to the Government General of Belgium)?’
“Answer: ‘Yes, those plans did exist. They were worked out by
Dr. Stuckart, upon the personal instruction of the Führer, and I
have seen them. They were communicated to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, to the OKW, and to the Armistice Commission in
Wiesbaden. All these documents have been destroyed (Dr. Globke
maintains). The State Secretary, M. Stuckart, was ordered to
deliver a preliminary draft at the headquarters of the Führer
(End of 1940, before the launching of the Russian campaign).
“‘After examination the Führer considered the proposal was too
moderate; and he ordered provisions for the incorporation of
further territories, specifically those along the Channel.
“‘Dr. Stuckart then prepared a second draft, with a map
attached, on which the approximate borders were indicated. I
have seen it, and I can show it to you roughly on a large scale
map of France. I do not know whether this second plan was
approved by Hitler.’”
THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, did you tell us who Dr. Globke was?
M. FAURE: Yes, Mr. President, he was the assistant of Dr. Stuckart,
State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior. He styled himself in his
interrogation “officer in charge of matters concerning Alsace-Lorraine
and Luxembourg in the Ministry of the Interior, since 1940.”
I now read a passage from the attached memorandum. This appears in your
document book immediately after the passage I have just read. Still
under Document Number RF-602, I now read Paragraph 6 of the memorandum
in question; it is the beginning of the document before your eyes.
“The plan of a new Franco-German border was elaborated upon in
the Ministry of Interior by the State Secretary Dr. Stuckart,
upon the order given to him by Hitler. This plan envisaged that
the territory in the north and the east of France which, for
historical, political, racial, geographical, or any other
reasons ostensibly did not belong to western but to central
Europe, should be given back to Germany. A first draft was
submitted to Hitler at his general headquarters and it was
approved by him in full. Hitler nevertheless wanted . . .”
DR. STAHMER: The Defense has not received these documents. Consequently,
even today we are not in a position to follow the presentation. Above
all, we are not in a position to check individually whether the validity
of these documents really exists at all.
THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, is that correct, that none of these documents
have been deposited in the Defense Information Center?
M. FAURE: They have been deposited with two photostatic copies in the
document center of the defendants’ counsel. Moreover, before I complete
my statement, I think that the Defense Counsel will have full
opportunity to study this very brief document and to make any
observations which he may desire; but I can give you assurance that
those documents were delivered.
THE PRESIDENT: What assurance can you give me that the orders which the
Tribunal has given have been carried out?
M. FAURE: The documents have been delivered to the Defense Counsel in
accordance with instruction and two photostatic copies have been
delivered in the document room of the Defense. These documents are,
moreover, in the German language, which should greatly facilitate the
task of the Defense Counsel, as the interrogation was taken in the
German language by an officer of the French Judiciary Services.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, did you hear what M. Faure said?
DR. STAHMER: I should certainly not raise any objections if these
documents had actually been sent to our document room and put at our
disposal. This morning I and several others looked into the matter and
made an effort to determine whether the documents were really there. We
could not find out. Dr. Steinbauer and I went there; we could not find
the documents. I shall go there again to see whether they may not have
come in the meantime.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has stated on a variety of occasions that
they attach a great importance to the documents being deposited in the
defendants’ Information Center and copies supplied in accordance with
the regulations which they have laid down. Whether that has been done on
this occasion, is disputed by Dr. Stahmer. The Tribunal proposes
therefore to have the matter investigated as soon as possible and to see
exactly whether the rules have been carried out or not. And in future
they hope that they will be carried out with the greatest strictness. In
the meantime, I think it will be most convenient for you to continue.
M. FAURE: The defendants’ counsel tells me that the documents are in the
Defense Counsel Room, but they have not yet been distributed. It can be
seen, therefore, that the orders were fully respected; but because of
the burden of work it may be that the Defense may not individually have
received these documents. In any event, I am prepared to submit
immediately to the Defense Counsel mainly concerned with this,
photostatic copies which will enable them to follow my reading of the
documents, which, incidentally, are quite brief.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal will have the facts investigated by
the Marshal. And in the meantime, you can continue. The Marshal of the
Court will immediately find out and report to the Tribunal what the
facts are about the deposition of the documents and the time at which
they were deposited. In the meantime you can continue, and we shall be
glad if you will assist the defendants’ counsel by giving them any
copies you may have available.
M. FAURE: I was reading then, Document Number RF-602, the attached
memorandum. If the Tribunal wishes to follow the reading of this
document will it kindly take the book entitled “Exposé” or
“Presentation,” and turn to Page 6 thereof. The passage which I am now
coming to is the last paragraph of Page 6. “Introduction—Exposé,” Page
6, third and last paragraph, I am continuing:
“A first draft was submitted to Hitler at his general
headquarters and was approved by him as a whole; but,
nevertheless, he called for an enlargement of the territory
falling to Germany, in particular, along the Channel coast. The
final draft was to serve as the basis for future discussions
with the administrative departments concerned. These discussions
did not take place. The intended frontier followed approximately
a course beginning at the mouth of the Somme, turning eastward
along the northern edge of the Paris Basin and Champagne to the
Argonne, then bent to the south crossing Burgundy, and westward
of the Franche-Comte, reaching the Lake of Geneva. For some
districts alternative solutions were suggested.”
These German plans were indicated on several occasions by specific
measures having to do with the territories in question, measures which
might be designated preannexation measures.
I come now to the second proposal which I referred to a while ago. With
or without annexation, the Germans had in mind to take and maintain
under their domination all the occupied countries. As a matter of fact
their determination was to germanize and to nazify all of Western Europe
and even the African Continent. This intention appears from the very
fact of the conspiracy which has been laid bare before the Tribunal so
completely by my colleagues of the American Prosecution. That will also
be shown by the applications made of it, of which the principal ones
will be retraced in this concluding address.
I merely want to recall to the Tribunal this general point that the plan
for Germanic predominance is defined according to the German
interpretation itself in a public diplomatic document, which is the
Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940 between Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In this connection I would like to quote before the Tribunal a few
sentences of a comment made upon this treaty by an official German
author, Von Freytagh-Loringhoven, a member of the Reichstag, who wrote a
book on German foreign policy from 1933 to 1941. This book was published
in a French translation in Paris at the publishing house of Sorlot,
during the occupation.
I do not want to submit this as a document, but merely as a quotation
from a published work, a book, which is here in your hands. I read from
Page 311:
“This treaty granted Germany and Italy a dominant position in
the new European order, and it accorded Japan a similar role in
the area of eastern Asia.”