But from the very nature of German demands, the day was bound to come

when some country would refuse to buy its peace, would refuse to pay

danegelt, “for the end of that game is oppression and shame, and the

nation that plays it is lost.”

Did these defendants then intend to withdraw German demands, or was

Germany to enforce them and manipulate propaganda so as to place the

blame for the war on the nation so unreasonable as to resist? Events

have answered that question, and documents such as Admiral Carls’

memorandum, earlier quoted, leave no doubt that the events occurred as

anticipated.

But some of the defendants argue that the wars were not aggressive and

were only intended to protect Germany against some eventual danger from

the “menace of Communism,” which was something of an obsession with many

Nazis.

At the outset this argument of self-defense falls because it completely

ignores this damning combination of facts clearly established in the

record: First, the enormous and rapid German preparations for war;

second, the repeatedly avowed intentions of the German leaders to

attack, which I have previously cited; and third, the fact that a series

of wars occurred in which German forces struck the first blows, without

warning, across the borders of other nations.

Even if it could be shown—which it cannot—that the Russian war was

really defensive, such is demonstrably not the case with those wars

which preceded it. It may also be pointed out that even those who would

have you believe that Germany was menaced by Communism also compete with

each other in describing their opposition to the disastrous Russian

venture. Is it reasonable that they would have opposed that war if it

were undertaken in good-faith self-defense?

The frivolous character of the self-defense theory on the facts it is

sought to compensate, as advocates often do, by resort to a theory of

law. Dr. Jahrreiss, in his scholarly argument for the Defense, rightly

points out that no treaty provision and no principle of law denied

Germany, as a sovereign nation, the right of self-defense. He follows

with the assertion for which there is authority in classic international

law, that “... every state is alone judge of whether in a given case it

is waging a war of self-defense.”

It is not necessary to examine the validity of an abstract principle

which does not apply to the facts of our case. I do not doubt that if a

nation arrived at a judgment that it must resort to war in self-defense,

because of conditions affording reasonable grounds for such an honest

judgment, any tribunal would accord it great and perhaps conclusive

weight, even if later events proved that judgment mistaken. But the

facts in this case call for no such deference to honest judgment because

no such judgment was ever pretended, much less honestly made.

In all the documents which disclose the planning and rationalization of

these attacks, not one sentence has been or can be cited to show a

good-faith fear of attack. It may be that statesmen of other nations

lacked the courage forthrightly and fully to disarm. Perhaps they

suspected the secret rearmament of Germany. But if they hesitated to

abandon arms, they did not hesitate to neglect them. Germany well knew

that her former enemies had allowed their armaments to fall into decay,

so little did they contemplate another war. Germany faced a Europe that

not only was unwilling to attack, but was too weak and pacifist even

adequately to defend, and went to the very verge of dishonor, if not

beyond, to buy its peace. The minutes we have shown you of the Nazis’

secret conclaves identify no potential attacker. They bristle with the

spirit of aggression and not of defense. They contemplate always

territorial expansion, not the maintenance of territorial integrity.

Minister of War Von Blomberg, in his 1937 directive prescribing general

principles for the preparation for war of the Armed Forces, has given

the lie to these feeble claims of self-defense. He stated at that time:

“The general political situation justifies the supposition that

Germany need not consider an attack on any side. Grounds for

this are, in addition to the lack of desire for war in almost

all nations, particularly the Western Powers, the deficiencies

in the preparedness for war in a number of states and of Russia

in particular.”

Nevertheless, he recommended:

“... a continuous preparation for war in order to (a)

counterattack at any time, and (b) to enable the military

exploitation of politically favorable opportunities should they

occur” (C-175).

If these defendants may now cynically plead self-defense, although no

good-faith need of self-defense was asserted or contemplated by any

responsible leader at that time, it reduces nonaggression treaties to a

legal absurdity. They become additional instruments of deception in the

hands of the aggressor, and traps for well-meaning nations. If there be

in nonaggression pacts an implied condition that each nation may make a

_bona fide_ judgment as to the necessity for self-defense against

imminent threatened attack, it certainly cannot be invoked to shelter

those who never made any such judgment at all.

In opening this case I ventured to predict that there would be no

serious denial that the crimes charged were committed, and that the

issue would concern the responsibility of particular defendants. The

defendants have fulfilled that prophecy. Generally, they do not deny

that these things happened, but it is contended that they “just

happened,” and that they were not the result of a common plan or

conspiracy.

One of the chief reasons the defendants say there was no conspiracy is

the argument that conspiracy was impossible with a dictator. The

argument runs that they all had to obey Hitler’s orders, which had the

force of law in the German State, and hence obedience could not be made

the basis of an original charge. In this way it is explained that while

there have been wholesale killings, there have been no murderers.

This argument is an effort to evade Article 8 of the Charter, which

provides that the order of the Government or of a superior shall not

free a defendant from responsibility but can only be considered in

mitigation. This provision of the Charter corresponds with the justice

and with the realities of the situation, as indicated in Defendant

Speer’s description of what he considered to be the common

responsibility of the leaders of the German nation:

“... with reference to utterly decisive matters, there is total

responsibility. There must be total responsibility insofar as a

person is one of the leaders, because who else could assume

responsibility for the development of events, if not the

immediate associates who work with and around the head of the

State?”

Again he told the Tribunal:

“... it is impossible after the catastrophe to evade this total

responsibility. If the war had been won, the leaders would also

have assumed total responsibility.”

Like much of Defense Counsel’s abstract arguments, the contention that

the absolute power of Hitler precluded a conspiracy crumbles in the face

of the facts of record. The Führerprinzip of absolutism was itself a

part of the common plan, as Göring has pointed out. The defendants may

have become the slaves of a dictator, but he was their dictator. To make

him such was, as Göring has testified, the object of the Nazi movement

from the beginning. Every Nazi took this oath:

“I pledge eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. I pledge

unconditional obedience to him and the Führers appointed by him

(1893-PS).”

Moreover; they forced everybody else in their power to take it. This

oath was illegal under German law, which made it criminal to become a

member of an organization in which obedience to “unknown superiors or

unconditional obedience to known superiors is pledged.” These men

destroyed free government in Germany and now plead to be excused from

responsibility because they became slaves. They are in the position of

the fictional boy who murdered his father and mother and then pleaded

for leniency because he was an orphan.

What these men have overlooked is that Adolf Hitler’s acts are their

acts. It was these men among millions of others, and it was these men

leading millions of others, who built up Adolf Hitler and vested in his

psychopathic personality not only innumerable lesser decisions but the

supreme issue of war or peace. They intoxicated him with power and

adulation. They fed his hates and aroused his fears. They put a loaded

gun in his eager hands. It was left to Hitler to pull the trigger, and

when he did they all at that time approved. His guilt stands admitted,

by some defendants reluctantly, by some vindictively. But his guilt is

the guilt of the whole dock, and of every man in it.

But it is urged that these defendants could not be in agreement on a

common plan or in a conspiracy because they were fighting among

themselves or belonged to different factions or cliques. Of course, it

is not necessary that men should agree on everything in order to agree

on enough things to make them liable for a criminal conspiracy.

Unquestionably there were conspiracies within the conspiracy, and

intrigues and rivalries and battles for power. Schacht and Göring

disagreed, but over which of them should control the economy, not over

whether the economy should be regimented for war. Göring claims to have

departed from the plan because through Dahlerus he conducted some

negotiations with men of influence in England just before the Polish

war. But it is perfectly clear that this was not an effort to prevent

aggression against Poland but to make that aggression successful and

safe by obtaining English neutrality (TC-90). Rosenberg and Göring may

have had some differences as to how stolen art should be distributed but

they had none about how it should be stolen. Jodl and Göring may have

disagreed about whether to denounce the Geneva Convention, but they have

never disagreed about violating it. And so it goes through the whole

long and sordid story. Nowhere do we find a single instance where any

one of the defendants stood up against the rest and said: “This thing is

wrong and I will not go along with it.” Wherever they differed, their

differences were as to method or disputes over jurisdiction, but always

within the framework of the common plan.

Some of the defendants also contend that in any event there was no

conspiracy to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity because

cabinet members never met with the military to plan these acts. But

these crimes were only the inevitable and incidental results of the plan

to commit the aggression for Lebensraum purposes. Hitler stated, at a

conference with his commanders, that:

“The main objective in Poland is the destruction of the enemy

and not the reaching of a certain geographical line” (1014-PS).

Frank picked up the tune and suggested that when their usefulness was

exhausted,

“... then, for all I care, mincemeat can be made of the Poles

and Ukrainians and all the others who run around here—it does

not matter what happens” (2233-PS).

Reichskommissar Koch in the Ukraine echoed the refrain: “I will draw the

very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss...”

(1130-PS).

This was Lebensraum on its seamy side. Could men of their practical

intelligence expect to get neighboring lands free from the claims of

their tenants without committing crimes against humanity?

The last stand of each defendant is that even if there was a conspiracy,

he was not in it. It is therefore important in examining their attempts

at avoidance of responsibility to know, first of all, just what it is

that a conspiracy charge comprehends and punishes.

In conspiracy we do not punish one man for another man’s crime. We seek

to punish each for his own crime of joining a common criminal plan in

which others also participated. The measure of the criminality of the

plan and therefore of the guilt of each participant is, of course, the

sum total of crimes committed by all in executing the plan. But the gist

of the offense is participation in the formulation or execution of the

plan. These are rules which every society has found necessary in order

to reach men, like these defendants, who never get blood on their own

hands but who lay plans that result in the shedding of blood. All over

Germany today, in every zone of occupation, little men who carried out

these criminal policies under orders are being convicted and punished.

It would present a vast and unforgivable caricature of justice if the

men who planned these policies and directed these little men should

escape all penalty.

These men in this dock, on the face of this record, were not strangers

to this program of crime, nor was their connection with it remote or

obscure. We find them in the very heart of it. The positions they held

show that we have chosen defendants of self-evident responsibility. They

are the very top surviving authorities in their respective fields and in

the Nazi State. No one lives who, at least until the very last moments

of the war, outranked Göring in position, power, and influence. No

soldier stood above Keitel and Jodl, and no sailor above Raeder and

Dönitz. Who can be responsible for the diplomacy of duplicity if not the

Foreign Ministers, Von Neurath and Ribbentrop, and the diplomatic handy

man, Von Papen? Who should be answerable for the oppressive

administration of occupied countries if Gauleiters, protectors,

governors, and Kommissars such as Frank, Seyss-Inquart, Frick, Von

Schirach, Von Neurath, and Rosenberg are not? Where shall we look for

those who mobilized the economy for total war if we overlook Schacht and

Speer and Funk? Who was the master of the great slaving enterprise if it

was not Sauckel? Where shall we find the hand that ran the concentration

camps if it was not the hand of Kaltenbrunner? And who whipped up the

hates and fears of the public, and manipulated the Party organizations

to incite these crimes, if not Hess, Von Schirach, Fritzsche, Bormann,

and the unspeakable Julius Streicher? The list of defendants is made up

of men who played indispensable and reciprocal parts in this tragedy.

The photographs and the films show them again and again together on

important occasions. The documents show them agreed on policies and on

methods, and all working aggressively for the expansion of Germany by

force of arms.

Each of these men made a real contribution to the Nazi plan. Each man

had a key part. Deprive the Nazi regime of the functions performed by a

Schacht, a Sauckel, a Von Papen, or a Göring, and you have a different

regime. Look down the rows of fallen men and picture them as the

photographic and documentary evidence shows them to have been in their

days of power. Is there one who did not substantially advance the

conspiracy along its bloody path toward its bloody goal? Can we assume

that the great effort of these men’s lives was directed toward ends they

never suspected?

To escape the implications of their positions and the inference of guilt

from their activities, the defendants are almost unanimous in one

defense. The refrain is heard time and again: These men were without

authority, without knowledge, without influence, without importance.

Funk summed up the general self-abasement of the dock in his plaintive

lament that: “I always, so to speak, came up to the door, but I was not

permitted to enter.”

In the testimony of each defendant, at some point there was reached the

familiar blank wall: Nobody knew anything about what was going on. Time

after time we have heard the chorus from the dock: “I only heard about

these things here for the first time.”

These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their

presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one

defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression

which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is

ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is

the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler’s Government that emerges. It

was composed of:

A Number 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he

created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination program although

he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the

persecutions of that race;

A Number 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting

Hitler’s orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery

boy;

A foreign minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of

foreign policy;

A field marshal who issued orders to the Armed Forces but had no idea of

the results they would have in practice;

A security chief who was of the impression that the policing functions

of his Gestapo and SD were somewhat on the order of directing traffic;

A Party philosopher who was interested in historical research and had no

idea of the violence which his philosophy was inciting in the twentieth

century;

A governor general of Poland who reigned but did not rule;

A Gauleiter of Franconia whose occupation was to pour forth filthy

writings about the Jews, but who had no idea that anybody would read

them;

A minister of interior who knew not even what went on in the interior of

his own office, much less the interior of his own department, and

nothing at all about the interior of Germany;

A Reichsbank president who was totally ignorant of what went in and out

of the vaults of his bank;

And a plenipotentiary for the war economy who secretly marshaled the

entire economy for armament, but had no idea it had anything to do with

war.

This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would

actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.

They do protest too much. They deny knowing what was common knowledge.

They deny knowing plans and programs that were as public as _Mein Kampf_

and the Party program. They deny even knowing the contents of documents

they received and acted upon.

Nearly all the defendants take two or more conflicting positions. Let us

illustrate the inconsistencies of their positions by the record of one

defendant—who, if pressed, would himself concede that he is the most

intelligent, honorable, and innocent man in the dock. That is Schacht.

And this is the effect of his own testimony—but let us not forget that

I recite it not against him alone, but because most of its

self-contradictions are found in the testimony of several defendants:

Schacht did not openly join the Nazi movement until it had won, nor

openly desert it until it had lost. He admits that he never gave it

public opposition, but asserts that he never gave it private loyalty.

When we demand of him why he did not stop the criminal course of the

regime in which he was a minister, he says he had not a bit of

influence. When we ask why he remained a member of the criminal regime,

he tells us that by sticking on he expected to moderate its program.

Like a Brahmin among untouchables, he could not bear to mingle with the

Nazi socially, but never could he afford to separate from them

politically. Of all the Nazi aggressions by which he now claims to have

been shocked there is not one that he did not support before the world

with the weight of his name and prestige. Having armed Hitler to

blackmail a continent, his answer now is to blame England and France for

yielding.

Schacht always fought for his position in a regime he now affects to

despise. He sometimes disagreed with his Nazi confederates about what

was expedient in reaching their goal, but he never dissented from the

goal itself. When he did break with them in the twilight of the regime,

it was over tactics, not principles. From then on he never ceased to

urge others to risk their positions and their necks to forward his

plots, but never on any occasion did he hazard either of his own. He now

boasts that he personally would have shot Hitler if he had had the

opportunity, but the German newsreel shows that even after the fall of

France, when he faced the living Hitler, he stepped out of line to grasp

the hand he now claims to loathe and hung upon the words of the man he

now says he thought unworthy of belief. Schacht says he steadily

“sabotaged” the Hitler Government. Yet the most relentless secret

service in the world never detected him doing the regime any harm until

long after he knew the war to be lost and the Nazis doomed. Schacht, who

dealt in hedges all his life, always kept himself in a position to claim

that he was in either camp. The plea for him is as specious on analysis

as it is persuasive on first sight. Schacht represents the most

dangerous and reprehensible type of opportunism—that of the man of

influential position who is ready to join a movement that he knows to be

wrong because he thinks it is winning.

These defendants, unable to deny that they were the men in the very top

ranks of power, and unable to deny that the crimes I have outlined

actually happened, know that their own denials are incredible unless

they can suggest someone who is guilty.

The defendants have been unanimous, when pressed, in shifting the blame

on other men, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names

they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, and

Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have

pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger

at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous

workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the

innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable.

The chief villain on whom blame is placed—some of the defendants vie

with each other in producing appropriate epithets—is Hitler. He is the

man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger.

I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these

dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that

degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the

most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler

did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is

not wrapped in Himmler’s shroud. It was these dead men whom these living

chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and

the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.

It may well be said that Hitler’s final crime was against the land he

had ruled. He was a mad messiah who started the war without cause and

prolonged it without reason. If he could not rule he cared not what

happened to Germany. As Fritzsche has told us from the stand, Hitler

tried to use the defeat of Germany for the self-destruction of the

German people. He continued to fight when he knew it could not be won,

and continuance meant only ruin. Speer, in this courtroom, has described

it as follows:

“...The sacrifices which were made on both sides after January

1945 were without sense. The dead of this period will be the

accusers of the man responsible for the continuation of that

fight, Adolf Hitler, just as much as the destroyed cities,

destroyed in that last phase, who had lost tremendous cultural

values and tremendous numbers of dwellings.... The German

people”—he said—“remained faithful to Adolf Hitler until the

end. He has betrayed them knowingly. He has tried to throw them

into the abyss...”

Hitler ordered everyone else to fight to the last and then retreated

into death by his own hand. But he left life as he lived it, a deceiver;

he left the official report that he had died in battle. This was the man

whom these defendants exalted to a Führer. It was they who conspired to

get him absolute authority over all of Germany. And in the end he and

the system they created for him brought the ruin of them all. As stated

by Speer on cross-examination:

“...the tremendous danger, however, contained in this

totalitarian system only became abundantly clear at the moment

when we were approaching the end. It was then that one could see

what the meaning of the principle was, namely, that every order

should be carried out without any criticism. Everything ... you

have seen in the way of orders which were carried out without

any consideration, did after all turn out to be mistakes... This

system—let me put it like this—to the end of the system it had

become clear what tremendous dangers are contained in any such

system, as such, quite apart from Hitler’s principle. The

combination of Hitler and this system, then, brought about this

tremendous catastrophe to this world.”

But let me for a moment turn devil’s advocate. I admit that Hitler was

the chief villain. But for the defendants to put all blame on him is

neither manly nor true. We know that even the head of the state has the

same limits to his senses and to the hours of his days as do lesser men.

He must rely on others to be his eyes and ears as to most that goes on

in a great empire. Other legs must run his errands; other hands must

execute his plans. On whom did Hitler rely for such things more than

upon these men in the dock? Who led him to believe he had an invincible

air armada if not Göring? Who kept disagreeable facts from him? Did not

Göring forbid Field Marshal Milch to warn Hitler that in his opinion

Germany was not equal to the war upon Russia? Did not Göring, according

to Speer, relieve General Galland of his air force command for speaking

of the weaknesses and bungling of the air forces? Who led Hitler,

utterly untraveled himself, to believe in the indecision and timidity of

democratic peoples if not Ribbentrop, Von Neurath, and Von Papen? Who

fed his illusion of German invincibility if not Keitel, Jodl, Raeder,

and Dönitz? Who kept his hatred of the Jews inflamed more than Streicher

and Rosenberg? Who would Hitler say deceived him about conditions in

concentration camps if not Kaltenbrunner, even as he would deceive us?

These men had access to Hitler and often could control the information

that reached him and on which he must base his policy and his orders.

They were the Praetorian Guard, and while they were under Caesar’s

orders, Caesar was always in their hands.

If these dead men could take the witness stand and answer what has been

said against them, we might have a less distorted picture of the parts

played by these defendants. Imagine the stir that would occur in the

dock if it should behold Adolf Hitler advancing to the witness box, or

Himmler with an armful of dossiers, or Goebbels, or Bormann with the

reports of his Party spies, or the murdered Röhm or Canaris. The

ghoulish defense that the world is entitled to retribution only from the

cadavers is an argument worthy of the crimes at which it is directed.

We have presented to this Tribunal an affirmative case based on

incriminating documents which are sufficient, if unexplained, to require

a finding of guilt on Count One against each defendant. In the final

analysis, the only question is whether the defendant’s own testimony is

to be credited as against the documents and other evidence of their

guilt. What, then, is their testimony worth?

The fact is that the Nazi habit of economizing in the use of truth pulls

the foundations out from under their own defenses. Lying has always been

a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler, in _Mein Kampf_, advocated

mendacity as a policy. Von Ribbentrop admits the use of the “diplomatic

lie.” Keitel advised that the facts of rearmament be kept secret so that

they could be denied at Geneva (EC-177). Raeder deceived about

rebuilding the German Navy in violation of Versailles. Göring urged

Ribbentrop to tell a “legal lie” to the British Foreign Office about the

Anschluss, and in so doing only marshaled him the way he was going

(2947-PS). Göring gave his word of honor to the Czechs and proceeded to

break it (TC-27). Even Speer proposed to deceive the French into

revealing the specially trained among their prisoners (R-124).

Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a

Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Nazi

dictionary of sardonic euphemisms “final solution” of the Jewish problem

was a phrase which meant extermination; “special treatment” of prisoners

of war meant killing; “protective custody” meant concentration camp;

“duty labor” meant slave labor; and an order to “take a firm attitude”

or “take positive measures” meant to act with unrestrained savagery.

Before we accept their word at what seems to be its face, we must always

look for hidden meanings. Göring assured us, on his oath, that the Reich

Defense Council never met “as such.” When we produced the stenographic

minutes of a meeting at which he presided and did most of the talking,

he reminded us of the “as such” and explained this was not a meeting of

the Council “as such” because other persons were present. Göring denies

“threatening” Czechoslovakia; he only told President Hacha that he would

“hate to bomb the beautiful city of Prague.”

Besides outright false statements and double talk, there are also other

circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and

absurd professions. Streicher has solemnly maintained that his only

thought with respect to the Jews was to resettle them on the island of

Madagascar. His reason for destroying synagogues, he blandly said, was

only because they were architecturally offensive. Rosenberg was stated

by his counsel to have always had in mind a “chivalrous solution” to the

Jewish problem. When it was necessary to remove Schuschnigg after the

Anschluss, Ribbentrop would have had us believe that the Austrian

Chancellor was resting at a “villa.” It was left to cross-examination to

reveal that the “villa” was Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The record is

full of other examples of dissimulations and evasions. Even Schacht

showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any

story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record

of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification—and I

quote from the record:

“I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead

someone if you don’t tell them the truth than if you tell them

the truth.”

This was the philosophy of the National Socialists. When for years they

have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can

anyone be surprised that they continue their habits of a lifetime in

this dock? Credibility is one of the main issues of this Trial. Only

those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can

doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of

generous opponents would not hesitate to do the same, now.

It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this

Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or

conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand

before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the

body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: “Say

I slew them not.” And the Queen replied, “Then say they were not slain.

But dead they are...” If you were to say of these men that they are not

guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are

no slain, there has been no crime.

THE PRESIDENT: I call upon the chief prosecutor for the United Kingdom

of Great Britain.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Would it be agreeable, Your Honors, if Sir Hartley

Shawcross should start his address after the recess?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Then we will sit again at a quarter to 2.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And may I add this for the purpose of the record. I

have filed with the Tribunal and furnished to counsel copies of the

summation with footnotes to the record. These footnotes are designed, of

course, to direct the attention of adversaries and of the Tribunal to

the supporting data in the record. I thought they might be helpful in

reading it.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. The Tribunal will adjourn.

[_The Tribunal recessed until 1345 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief Prosecutor of the United Kingdom of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS (Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom): May it

please the Tribunal; like my distinguished colleague, whose succinct,

able, and eloquent speech I cannot hope to emulate, I desire on behalf

of the British prosecutors at this Trial to lay before the Tribunal some

comment. I am afraid it is of some length on those salient and

outstanding features of the evidence which, in our submission, make

clear the guilt of these defendants. Although throughout these

proceedings the representatives of the prosecuting powers have worked in

the closest co-operation and agreement and although there are certain

matters which I shall be laying before the Tribunal on behalf of all of

us, we all thought it right at this final stage, even at the cost of

some inevitable repetition and overlapping, that we should prepare our

final submissions quite independently so that the Tribunal and our own

countries might know exactly the grounds on which we seek the

condemnation of these men; and if it turns out that several of us point

to the same evidence or reach similar conclusions, as no doubt it will,

that very coincidence reached independently may perhaps add force to our

submissions that each of these defendants is legally guilty.

I say legally guilty. That these defendants participated in and are

morally guilty of crimes so frightful that the imagination staggers and

reels back at their very contemplation is not in doubt. Let the words of

the Defendant Frank, which were repeated to you this morning, be well

remembered: “Thousands of years will pass and this guilt of Germany will

not be erased.” Total and totalitarian war, waged in defiance of solemn

undertakings and in breach of treaties; great cities, from Coventry to

Stalingrad, reduced to rubble, the countryside laid waste, and now the

inevitable aftermath of war so fought—hunger and disease stalking

through the world; millions of people homeless, maimed, bereaved. And in

their graves, crying out, not for vengeance but that this shall not

happen again: 10 million who might be living in peace and happiness at

this hour, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians killed in battles

that ought never to have been.

Nor was that the only or the greatest crime. In all our countries when

perhaps in the heat of passion or for other motives which impair

restraint some individual is killed, the murder becomes a sensation, our

compassion is aroused, nor do we rest until the criminal is punished and

the rule of law is vindicated. Shall we do less when not one but on the

lowest computation 12 million men, women, and children, are done to

death? Not in battle, not in passion, but in the cold, calculated,

deliberate attempt to destroy nations and races, to disintegrate the

traditions, the institutions, and the very existence of free and ancient

states. Twelve million murders! Two-thirds of the Jews in Europe

exterminated, more than 6 million of them on the killers’ own figures.

Murder conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers

and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen,

Maidanek, and Oranienburg.

And is the world to overlook the revival of slavery in Europe, slavery

on a scale which involved 7 million men, women, and children taken from

their homes, treated as beasts, starved, beaten, and murdered?

It may be that the guilt of Germany will not be erased, for the people

of Germany share it in large measure, but it was these men who, with a

handful of others, brought that guilt upon Germany and perverted the

German people. “It is my guilt”—confessed the Defendant Schirach—“that

I educated the German youth for a man who committed murders a

millionfold.”

For such crimes these men might well have been proceeded against by

summary executive action and had the treatment, which they had been

parties to meting out against so many millions of innocent people, been

meted out to them, they could hardly have complained. But this Tribunal

is to adjudge their guilt not on any moral or ethical basis alone, but

according to law—that natural justice which demands that these crimes

should not go unpunished, at the same time insists that no individual

should be punished unless patient and careful examination of the facts

shows that he shared the guilt for what has been done. And so, during

these many months, this Tribunal has been investigating the facts and

has now to apply the law in order both that justice may be done to these

individuals as to their countless victims, and also that the world may

know that in the end the predominance of power will be driven out and

law and justice shall govern the relations between states.

For the effects of this Trial will reach out far beyond the punishment

of a score or so of guilty men. Issues are at stake far greater than

their fate, although upon their fate those issues, in some measure,

depend. In the pages of history it will count for nothing whether this

Trial lasted for 2 months or for 10. But it will count for much that by

just and patient examination the truth has been established about deeds

so terrible that their mark may never be erased, and it will count for

much that law and justice have been vindicated in the end.

Within the space of a year evidence far exceeding that previously

presented to any tribunal in history has been collected, sifted, and

placed before you. Almost all of that evidence consists of the captured

records and documents of the government to which these men belonged, and

much of it directly implicates each one of them with knowledge of, and

participation in one or other aspect of the crimes committed by the Nazi

State. This evidence has not been refuted and it will remain forever to

confront those who may hereafter seek to excuse or mitigate that which

has been done. Yet now that this mass of evidence has been presented to

you, I shall invite you for a little to detach your minds from its

detail to consider the cumulative effect and to review this overwhelming

case as a whole. It is only by chance that their own captured papers

have enabled us to establish these crimes out of the very mouths of the

criminals. But the case against these men can be established on a

broader basis than that, and must be looked at in the light of its

historical background.

When one considers the nature and the immensity of the crimes committed,

the responsibility of those who held the highest positions of influence

and authority in the Nazi State is manifest beyond doubt. For years, in

a world where war had itself been declared a crime, the German State was

organized for war; in a world where we proclaim the equality of men, for

years the Jews were boycotted, deprived of their elementary rights of

property, liberty, life itself; for years honest citizens lived in fear

of denunciation and arrest by one or other of the organizations,

criminal as we allege them to be, through which these men ruled Germany;

for years throughout the German Reich millions of foreign slaves worked

in farm and factory, were moved like cattle on every road, on every

railway line.

These men, with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and a few other confederates,

were at once the leaders and the drivers of the German people; it was

when they held the highest positions of authority and of influence that

these crimes were planned and perpetrated. If these men are not

responsible, who are? If minions who did no more than obey their orders,

Dostler, Eck, Kramer, and a hundred others, have already paid the

supreme penalty, are these men less responsible? How can it be said that

they and the offices of state which they directed took no part? Lammers,

their own witness, head of the Reich Chancellery, said in 1938 (Document

Number 3863-PS):

“Despite the total concentration of power of authority in the

person of the Führer as a matter of principle, no excessively

strong and unnecessary centralization of administration in the

hands of the Führer results in the governmental

administration....

“The authority of the subordinate leaders”—the

Unterführer—“directed downwards, forbids interference with

every individual order he may issue. This principle is applied

by the Führer in his governmental leadership in such a way that,

for example, the position of Reich ministers is actually much

more independent today than formerly, even though today the

Reich ministers are subordinated to the Führer’s unlimited power

of command.... Willingness to bear responsibility, ability to

make decisions, aggressive energy, and real authority—these are

the qualities which the Führer demands primarily of his

subordinate leaders. Therefore he allows them the greatest

freedom in the direction of their affairs and in the manner in

which they fulfill their tasks.”

Let them now, accused murderers as they are, attempt to belittle the

power and influence they exercised how they will, we have only to recall

their ranting as they strutted across the stage of Europe dressed in

their brief authority, to see the part they played. They did not then

tell the German people or the world that they were merely the ignorant,

powerless puppets of their Führer. The Defendant Speer has said (Session

of 21 June 1946):

“... even in a totalitarian system there must be total

responsibility... it is impossible after the catastrophe to

evade this total responsibility. If the war had been won, the

leaders would also have assumed total responsibility.”

Had the war been won is it to be supposed that these men would have

retired to the obscurity and comparative innocence of private

citizenship? That opportunity was not denied to them before the war had

they wished to disassociate themselves from what was taking place. They

chose a different path. From small beginnings, at a time when resistance

instead of participation could have destroyed this thing, they fostered

the Hitler legend, they helped to build up the Nazi power and ideology

and to direct its activities until, like some foul octopus, it spread

its slime over Europe and extended its tentacles throughout the world.

Were these men ignorant of the ends sought to be achieved during that

period of the rise to power? Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter, a

witness of great knowledge, has testified (Document Number 3308-PS):

“The general objectives of the Nazi leadership were apparent

from the start—namely, the domination of the European

continent, to be achieved first by the incorporation of all

German-speaking groups in the Reich, and secondly, by

territorial expansion under the slogan of ‘Lebensraum.’”

That slogan “Lebensraum”—that entirely false idea that the very

existence of the German people depended upon territorial expansion under

the Nazi flag—was from the earliest days an openly avowed part of the

Nazi doctrine—yet any thinking person must have known that it would

lead inevitably to war.

It was the justification Hitler offered to his fellow conspirators at

those secret meetings on the 5th of November 1937 (Document Number

386-PS), 23d of May (Document Number L-79), and 23d of November 1939

(Document Number 789-PS), at which the fate of so many countries was

sealed.

Although less concrete it was no less false than the demand for a

revision of the Treaty of Versailles. The so-called injustice of

Versailles, so cunningly exploited to provide a popular rallying point

under the Nazi banner, had succeeded in uniting behind the Nazis many

Germans who would not otherwise have supported some of the rest of the

Nazi program.

And the effect of that propaganda can be judged from the repeated

efforts here made by the Defense to develop the alleged injustice of the

treaty. Unjust or not, it was a treaty and no government content to live

at peace need have complained of its provisions. Even if the complaints

were justified, there was comparatively soon no ground left for them.

The provisions of the treaty could have been—in some respects they

were—revised by peaceful negotiations. By 1935, 4 years before the

world was plunged into war, these men had publicly renounced the treaty.

What miserable rubbish is the long tirade on behalf of the treaty, when

one realizes that by 1939 not only were they free of nearly all the

restrictions of which they had complained, but they had seized territory

which had never belonged to Germany in the whole of European history.

The cry of Versailles was a device for rallying men to wicked and

aggressive purposes. But it was a device no less diabolical than the cry

of anti-Semitism and racial purity, by which these men sought both to

rally and cement the various forms of public opinion in their own

country and to sow discord and antagonism amongst the people of foreign

lands. Rauschning reports Hitler’s statement (Document Number USSR-378):

“Anti-Semitism is a useful revolutionary expedient. Anti-Semitic

propaganda in all countries is an almost indispensable medium in

the extension of our political campaign. You will see how little

time we shall need in order to upset the ideas and criteria of

the whole world simply and solely by attacking Judaism. It is

beyond question the most important weapon in our propaganda

arsenal.”

And as a result of this wicked propaganda, I would remind you of the

words of Bach-Zelewski who, when he was asked how Ohlendorf could admit

that the men under his command had murdered 90,000 people, replied:

“As to this I am of a different opinion. When, for years, for

decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav race is an

inferior race and Jews are not even human beings, then such

outburst is inevitable.” (Session of 7 January 1946.)

And so, from the earliest day, the aims of the Nazi movement were clear

and beyond doubt: Expansion, European domination, elimination of the

Jews, ultimate aggression, ruthless disregard of the rights of any

people but themselves.

Such were the beginnings. I shall not pause to trace the Nazi Party’s

growth to power; how, as the writer of the history of the SA has said,

they found that (Document Number 2168-PS) “... possession of the streets

is the key to power in the state,” or how, by the organized terror which

the witness Severing has described the storm troops of Brown Shirts

terrified the people whilst the Nazi propaganda, headed by _Der

Stürmer_, vilified all opponents and incited people against the Jews.

I shall not examine that period, grave as are the lessons which

democratic peoples ought to learn from it, for it may not be easy to say

exactly at what date each of these defendants must have realized, if,

indeed, he had not known and gloried in it all from the beginning, that

Hitler’s apparently hysterical outpourings in _Mein Kampf_ were intended

in all seriousness and that they formed the very basis of the German

plan. Some, no doubt, such as Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg,

Streicher, Frick, Frank, Schacht, Schirach, and Fritzsche, realized it,

very early. In the case of one or two, such as Dönitz and Speer, it may

have been comparatively late. Few can have been ignorant after 1933; all

must have been active participants by 1937. When one remembers the

apprehension caused abroad during that period there can be no doubt, in

our submission, that these men, almost all of whom were the rulers of

Germany from 1933 onward, Hitler’s intimate associates, admitted to his

secret meetings, with full knowledge of plans and events, not only

acquiesced in what was taking place, but were active and willing

participants.

May I then examine in a little more detail the period of the

“build-up”—the position of domestic government in Germany between 1933

and 1939, because what happened then makes clear the criminal

involvement of these men in what was done later. What I say now has some

special reference to the first Count in the Indictment, for it is

against this general background that we must consider the allegation

that these men were common conspirators to commit the crimes (such as

Crimes Against Peace, and the Crime Against Humanity), which are more

specifically charged in the later Counts.

Totalitarian government brooks no opposition. Any means justifies the

end and the immediate end was ruthlessly to gain complete control of the

German State and to brutalize and train its people for war. What stood

in the way in January 1933? First, the members of the other political

parties; secondly, the democratic system of election and of public

assembly, the organization of trade unions; thirdly, the moral standards

of the German people, and the churches which fostered them.

Accordingly the Nazis set out, quite deliberately, to eliminate this

opposition: first, by imprisoning or terrorizing their opponents;

second, by declaring illegal all elements of tolerance and liberalism,

outlawing trade unions and opposition parties, reducing the democratic

assembly to a farce and controlling elections; third, by systematic

discouragement and persecution of religion, by replacing the ethics of

Christianity with the idolatry of the Führer and the cult of the blood

and by rigidly controlling education and youth. Youth was systematically

prepared for war and taught to hate and persecute the Jews; the plans

for aggression required a nation trained in brutality and taught that it

was both necessary and heroic to invade the peoples of other countries.

It is a measure of the wickedness and effectiveness of this domestic

policy that, after 6 years of rule, the Nazis found little difficulty in

leading a perverted nation into the greatest criminal enterprise in

history. It is perhaps worth considering from the evidence a few

examples of how this policy developed during these 6 years. They are

examples of what was happening in every German town and village. It must

be remembered here that in the need to avoid cumulative evidence you

have, in the result, been deprived of its cumulative effect (Document

Number D-911).

First then, the elimination of political opponents. Within 6 weeks of

the Nazis coming to power in January 1933, the German newspapers were

quoting official sources for the statement that 18,000 Communists had

been imprisoned whilst the 10,000 prisoners in the jails of Prussia

included many Socialists and intellectuals. The fate of many of these

men was described by Severing, who estimated that at least 1,500 Social

Democrats and a similar number of Communists were murdered in

concentration camps recently established by Göring as Chief of the

Gestapo.

These camps, controlled by the Party organizations, were deliberately so

run as to strike terror throughout the country. In the words of the

witness Severing, the concentration camps represented for the people

“the incarnation of all that was terrible.”

Göring has said: “We found it necessary that we should permit no

opposition,” and he admitted that there were arrested and taken into

protective custody people who had committed no crime.

It might have been well if at that time they had read the maxim of which

they spoke yesterday, _nulla poena sine lege_.

Göring added: “... if everyone knows that if he acts against the State

he will end up in a concentration camp that is our advantage.”

The camps were at first run indiscriminately by the SA and the SS, and

according to Göring were created “... as an instrument which at all

times was the instrument of power for home politics.”

Gisevius, who at that time had recently joined the Gestapo, you

remember, gave the following description:

“I was hardly more than 2 days in that new police office when I

had discovered already that incredible conditions existed there.

There was no police which interfered against crimes, against

murder, against arrests, against burglary. There was a police

organization which protected just those who committed such

crimes. Those arrested were not those who were guilty of such

crimes; they arrested those who sent their cries for help to the

police. It was not a police which interfered for protection, but

a police whose task, it seemed, was in fact to hide, to cover

up, and to sponsor crimes; those commandos of the SA and SS who

played police were encouraged by that so-called Secret State

Police and all possible aid was given to them....

“Special concentration camps for the Gestapo were installed, and

their names will remain as a terrible shame in history. They

were Oranienburg and the private prison of the Gestapo, in the

Papestrasse, the Columbia House, or, as it was called cynically,

the ‘Columbia Diele’.... I asked one of my colleagues, who was

also a professional civil servant.... ‘Tell me, please, am I

here in a police office or in a robber’s cave?’ The answer that

I received was: ‘You are in a robber’s cave and you can expect

that you will see much more yet.’”

Gisevius went on to describe Göring’s order to murder the National

Socialist Strasser and how he gave “blank authority” for murder to the

political police by signing a form granting amnesty to the policeman,

leaving a blank space for the name of the murdered person in respect of

whom the amnesty had been granted.

If confirmation of the evidence of these defense witnesses were

required, it is to be found in the series of reports dated in May and

June 1933, from the Munich Public Prosecutor to the Minister of Justice,

which are in evidence recording a succession of murders by SS officials

in the concentration camp at Dachau (Documents 641, 642, 644, 645-PS).

In 1935 the Reich Minister of Justice is writing to Frick (Document

Number 3751-PS). He is protesting against numerous instances of

ill-treatment in concentration camps, including:

“Beating as a disciplinary punishment...

“Ill-treatment—mostly of political internees—in order to make

them talk.”—and—“Ill-treatment of internees arising out of

wantonness or sadistic motives.”

He went on to complain that:

“The beating of the Communists held in custody is regarded as an

indispensable police measure for a more effective suppression of

Communist activities.”

And after citing instances of torture, he concludes: “These few examples

show a degree of cruelty which is an insult to German sensibility....”

Frick’s sensibility was apparently not so tender. The very next year he

received a similar protest from one of his own subordinates and shortly

afterward he issued a decree making all police forces subordinate to

Himmler, the very man whom he knew to be responsible for these

atrocities (Document Number 775-PS).

These brutalities, well known to ministers, as we suggest they were,

were not confined to the privacy of concentration camps. It is perhaps

worth quoting one instance from the thousands who suffered from the

policy which was being pursued.

The Tribunal will remember the account by Sollman, a Social Democrat,

and member of the Reichstag from 1919 to 1933. He spoke of the incident

on 9 March 1933 when, to quote his own words (Document Number 3231-PS):

“... members of the SS and SA came to my home in Cologne and

destroyed the furniture and my personal records. At that time I

was taken to the Brown House in Cologne, where I was tortured,

being beaten and kicked for several hours. I was then taken to

the regular Government prison in Cologne where I was treated by

two medical doctors and released the next day. On 11 March 1933

I left Germany....”

The second object, the suppression of all democratic institutions, was

comparatively simple. The necessary laws were passed to outlaw trade

unions. The Reichstag became a farce directly the opposition parties had

been dissolved and their members had been put in concentration camps.

The witness Severing has spoken of the treatment of the Reichstag

members. In 1932, on Von Papen’s order he, who was chief of the Prussian

Ministry of the Interior, was forcibly removed from his office. It was

not long after the 30th of January 1933 that the Communist and Social

Democratic parties were decreed illegal and all form of public

expression, other than by the Nazis, was prevented. This action resulted

from deliberate planning. Frick has said as far back as 1927 (Document

Number 2513-PS):

“The National Socialists longed for the day when

...”—they—“... could put an inglorious but well-deserved end

to this infernal sham (the Reichstag) and open the way for a

national dictatorship.”

At this time when democratic government is seeking to re-establish

itself throughout the world, the Nazi attitude to elections is not to be

forgotten. Free elections could not, of course, be permitted. Göring had

told Schacht in February 1933 when seeking money for the Party from

industry, and I quote (Document Number D-203):

“The sacrifice asked for will surely be so much easier for

industry to bear if it is realized that the election of 5 March

will be the last one for the next 10 years, probably for the

next 100 years.”

In these circumstances it is not surprising to find that thereafter, as

the evidence such as the SD report on the conduct of the plebiscite at

Kappel makes clear, the occasional votes of the people, always announced

as triumphs for the Nazis, were conducted dishonestly (Document Number

R-142).

I turn to the third class of opposition, the churches—Bormann’s

memorandum sent in December 1941 to all Gauleiter and distributed to the

SS sums up the Nazi attitude to Christianity (Document Number D-75):

“National Socialist and Christian, concepts are irreconcilable.

... If therefore in the future our youth knows nothing more of

this Christianity whose doctrines are far below ours,

Christianity will disappear by itself.... All influences which

might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by

the Führer with the aid of NSDAP must be eliminated. More and

more the people must be separated from the churches and their

organs, the pastors....”

The persecution of the churches makes a melancholy story. From the

abundance of evidence which has been submitted to the Tribunal it is

perhaps permissible to quote from a complaint to Frick made early in

1936 (Document Number 775-PS):

“... lately half the political police reports concern clerical

matters. We have untold petitions from all kinds of cardinals,

bishops, and dignitaries of the Church. Most of these complaints

concern matters under the jurisdiction of the Reich Ministry of

the Interior, although the respective rules were not decreed by

it....”

And then after referring to the chaos resulting from the division of

authority between the various police forces, the report goes on to refer

to the results of the religious struggle:

“Instances of disturbances of congregations are mounting

terribly fast lately, often necessitating the intervention of

the emergency squad.... After discarding the rubber truncheon,

the idea of exposing executive officials to situations in which,

during interruptions of meetings, they may be forced to use cold

steel, is unbearable.”

The diary of the Minister of Justice for 1935 provides ample instances

of the sort of behavior which was being encouraged by the Hitler Youth

under the Defendant Schirach and the Defendant Rosenberg. The Hitler

Jugend, whose membership increased from just under 108,000 in 1932 to

nearly 8 million in 1939, was organized on a military basis (Document

Number 2435-PS). The close collaboration between Keitel and Schirach in

their military education has been described; the special arrangement

between Schirach and Himmler by which the Hitler Jugend became the

recruiting organization for the SS is in evidence (Document Number

2396-PS). You will not have forgotten the words of Schirach’s deputy

(Document Number 1992-PS): “In the course of years we want to insure

that a gun feels just as natural in the hands of a German boy as a pen.”

What a horrible doctrine!

The terrorization, murder, and persecution of political opponents, the

dissolution of all organizations affording opportunity for opposition,

criticism, or even free speech, the systematic perversion of youth and

training for war would not, however, have sufficed without persecution

of the Jews.

Let no one be misled by the metaphysical explanations which are put

forward for this most frightful crime. What Hitler himself in this very

town described as the fanatical combat against the Jews was part and

parcel of the policy of establishing “ein Volk”—“ein Herrenvolk,” which

would dominate Europe and the world. And so the persecution of the Jews

was popularized throughout the country. It provided the cement which

bound the people to the regime. It gave the youths a butt to bully and

so to acquire practical schooling in brutality.

With the accession to power the persecution of the Jews increased in

violence. The final solution of mass murder had then been conceived. In

_Mein Kampf_ of Hitler, the bible of the Nazis, Hitler had regretted

that poison gas had not been employed to exterminate the German Jews

during the last war, and as early as 1925 Streicher said (Document

Number M-13): “Let us make a new beginning today, so that we can

annihilate the Jew.” It may be that he, even before Hitler, Himmler, or

the others, had visualized the annihilation of the Jews, but the Nazis

were not at first ready completely to defy world opinion and they

confined themselves to persecution and to making life in Germany

unbearable for Jews. To the never-ceasing accompaniment of the _Stürmer_

and the official Nazi press the campaign of Jew-baiting was fostered and

encouraged. Rosenberg, Von Schirach, Göring, Hess, Funk, Bormann, Frick

joined hands with Streicher and Goebbels. The boycott in April 1933

celebrated the Nazi accession to power and provided only a taste of what

was to follow. It was accompanied by demonstrations and

window-smashing—“Action Mirror” as it has been referred to in this

Court. Accounts of typical incidents are given in the affidavit of the

witness Geist who describes the events in Berlin on 6 March 1933

(Document Number 1759-PS):

“Wholesale attacks on the Communists, Jews, and those who were

suspected of being either; mobs of SA men roamed the streets,

beating up, looting, and even killing persons.”

In 1935 followed the infamous Nuremberg Decrees. In 1938 the so-called

spontaneous demonstrations ordered throughout Germany resulted in the

burning of the synagogues, the throwing of 20,000 Jews into

concentration camps with the accompaniment of penalties, of Aryanization

of property, and the wearing of a yellow star.

The cynicism of these men and the merciless character of their policy

towards the Jews appeared at Göring’s meeting of 12 November 1938, when

they vied with each other in suggesting methods of degrading and

persecuting their helpless victims. Neither Hitler nor Himmler, whom

today they seek to blame, was present, but who, reading the record of

that meeting, can doubt the end in store for the Jews of Europe? At that

meeting Heydrich reported on the events which occurred on the night of 9

November: 101 synagogues destroyed by fire, 76 demolished and 7,500

stores ruined throughout the Reich. The Reichsmark approximate cost of

replacing broken glass alone was estimated at 6 million and the damage

to one store alone in Berlin at 1.7 million Reichsmark. Heydrich also

reported 800 cases of looting, the killing of 35 Jews, and estimated the

total damage of property, furniture, and goods at several hundred

million Reichsmark.

You will recall Heydrich’s order for the riot, including the arrests of

the Jews and their removal to concentration camps. After referring to

the fact that demonstrations were to be expected in view of the killing

of a German legation official in Paris that night, he instructs the

Police on the prospective burning of synagogues, destruction of

business, and private apartments of Jews, and in their duty to refrain

from hindering the demonstrators: “... the Police has only to supervise

compliance with the instructions.” And finally (Document Number

3051-PS):

“In all districts as many Jews—especially rich ones—are to be

arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons. For the

time being only healthy men, not too old, are to be arrested.

Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be

contacted immediately in order to confine them in these camps as

fast as possible.”

We now know from the evidence with regard to the seizure of the houses

of Jews by Neurath and Rosenberg why the orders were to concentrate upon

the richest (Document Number 1759-PS).

These events are neither secret nor hidden. Ministers were writing to

each other and discussing them. Long before 1939 they were common

knowledge not only to Germany but to the whole world. Every one of these

defendants must have heard again and again stories similar to that of

Sollman. Almost all of them have sought to gain credit from helping one

or two Jews; and you will remember the evidence of a special office in

Göring’s Ministry to deal with protests, and his witness Körner who

stated with pride that Göring had always intervened on behalf of

individuals (Session of 12 March 1946 a. m.). Perhaps it afforded them

some gratification or eased their conscience in some way occasionally to

demonstrate their influence by exempting some unhappy individual who

sought their favor from the general horror of the regime which they

continued to uphold. But these men participated in a Government which

was conducted without any regard for human decency or established law.

There is not one of them who, being a member of the Government during

that period, has not got the blood of hundreds of his own countrymen on

his hands.

Göring and Frick established the concentration camps; the witness

Severing and the documents quoted testify to the murders which took

place in them at a time when these two were directly responsible. Even

Göring could not defend all the murders of 30 June 1934. He shares with

Hess and Frick the responsibility for the Nuremberg Laws. The record of

the meeting of 12 November 1938 (Document Number 1816-PS) and Göring’s

initials on Heydrich’s order of the 9 November (Document Number 3051-PS)

require no comment.

As Ambassador in England, Ribbentrop must have been well aware of the

facts, if only from the English papers, whilst his delegate Woermann

assented to the atrocities reported to the meeting of 12 November 1938.

The previous owner of his country house, Herr Von Remitz, was placed in

a concentration camp, and he expressed his sentiments toward the Jews to

M. Bonnet, on 8 December 1938 in the following terms (Document Number

L-205):

“The German Government had therefore decided to assimilate

them”—the Jews—“with the criminal elements of the population.

The property which they acquired illegally would be taken from

them. They would be forced to live in districts inhabited by the

criminal classes.”

Hess, who set up an office for racial policy in 1933, shares

responsibility for the Nuremberg Decrees (Document Number 1814-PS).

At the meeting of 12 November 1938 a full report was given of similar

measures against the Jews in Austria (Document Number 1816-PS) and it

seems certain that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner as a faithful member of

the Party was giving full support to the necessary measures. The

evidence that Seyss-Inquart was playing his part is before the Tribunal.

Rosenberg was writing _The Myth of the 20th Century_ and taking his full

share in the struggle against the Church and in the anti-Semitic policy

of the Government; whilst even Raeder on Heroes’ Day 1939 was speaking

of “the clear and inspiring summons to fight Bolshevism and

international Jewry whose race-destroying activities we have

sufficiently experienced on our own people.”

Frick, as Minister of the Interior, bears a responsibility second to

none for the horrors of the concentration camps and for the Gestapo,

whilst Frank, as Minister of Justice for Bavaria, was presumably

receiving the reports on the murders in Dachau. He was the leading

jurist of the Party, a member of the Central Committee which carried out

the boycott of the Jews in March 1933 and he spoke on the wireless in

March 1934 justifying racial legislation and the elimination of hostile

political organizations. He also was present at Göring’s meeting.

The Tribunal will not require to be reminded of the part played by

Streicher. It was in March 1938 that the _Stürmer_ began consistently to

advocate extermination, the first article of a series which was to

continue throughout the next 7 years, beginning with an article signed

by Streicher ending with the words: “We are approaching wonderful

times—a Greater Germany without Jews.”

Funk, as Vice President of the Reich Chamber for Culture from 1933, had

participated in the policy for the elimination of the Jews (Document

3505-PS); he was present and assented to the recommendations at Göring’s

November meeting in 1938 at which it will be remembered Göring suggested

that it would have been better to kill 200 Jews, whereupon Heydrich

mentioned that in fact the number was a mere 35 (Document 1816-PS).

Schacht himself admitted that as early as the second half of 1934 and

the first half of 1935 he found that he was wrong in thinking that

Hitler would bring the “revolutionary” force of the Nazis into a

regulated atmosphere, and that he discovered that Hitler, having done

nothing to stop the excesses of individual Party members or Party

groups, was in fact pursuing a “policy of terror.” Nevertheless he

remained in office and Schacht accepted the Golden Party Badge in

January 1937 when Von Eltz refused it.

Schirach has confirmed his part in insuring that the younger generation

of Germany grew up rabid anti-Semites under his teaching. He cannot

escape responsibility for training the youth to bully Jews, to persecute

the Church, to prepare for war. This perversion of children is perhaps

the basest crime of all.

Sauckel, who had joined the Party in 1921, filled the post of Gauleiter

of Thuringia (Document Number 2974-PS). He cannot have been ignorant of

the persecution of the churches, of the trade unions, of other political

parties and of the Jews, taking place throughout this important Gau, and

there is every reason to suppose that he gave the fullest support to

these policies and thus enhanced his reputation with the Nazis. Papen

and Neurath were in a better position to judge these matters than any of

the other defendants, since it was their political associates who were

being persecuted; whilst, in the case of Papen, some of his own staff

were killed and he himself arrested and was lucky to escape with his

life.

Neurath’s attitude to the Jews is shown by his speech in September 1933:

“The stupid talk about purely internal affairs, as for example

the Jewish question, will quickly be silenced if one realizes

that the necessary cleaning up of public life must temporarily

entail individual cases of personal hardship but that

nevertheless it only serves to establish all the more firmly the

authority of justice and law in Germany.”

What prostitution of these great words!

Of the remainder, all were men of intelligence and already held

positions of considerable authority. None of them can have been ignorant

of what the whole world knew, yet not one of them has suggested that he

made any effective protest against this regime of brutality and terror.

All of these men continued in their spheres of government and in the

highest positions of responsibility. Each in his part—and such a vital

part—these men built up the evil thing, the ultimate purpose of which

was so well known to them, and instilled the evil doctrines which were

essential to the achievement of that purpose. It was Lord Acton—that

great European—who, 80 years ago, in expressing his conviction of the

sanctity of human life, said: “The greatest crime is homicide. The

accomplice is no better than the assassin; the theorist is the worst.”

I shall return if I may, later, to the question of conspiracy and to the

part these men played in it, but no conclusion upon the conspiracy

charge in the first Count of the Indictment is really possible until the

specific crimes set out in the subsequent counts have been considered.

And first of these is the Crime against Peace, set out in Count Two. I

say first, first in its place in the Indictment. Moralists may argue

which is greatest in moral guilt. But this perhaps should be said at the

very outset. It is said that there is no such crime as a crime against

peace, and those superficial thinkers who, whether in this Court or in

armchairs elsewhere, have questioned the validity of these proceedings,

have made much of this argument. Of its merits I shall have something to

say presently. But let it be said plainly now that these defendants are

charged also as common murderers. That charge alone merits the

imposition of the supreme penalty and the joinder in the Indictment of

this Crime against Peace can add nothing to the penalty which may be

imposed on these individuals. Is it, then, a mere work of supererogation

to have included this matter in the Indictment at all? We think not, for

the very reason that more is at stake here than the fate of these

individuals. It is the crime of war which is at once the object and the

parent of the other crimes; the Crimes against Humanity, the War Crimes,

the common murders. These things occur when men embark on total war as

an instrument of policy for aggressive ends.

Moreover, taking this crime, the Crime against Peace, in isolation, it

was responsible for the deaths in battle of 10 million men, and for

bringing to the very edge of ruin the whole moral and material structure

of our civilization. Although it may be that it may add nothing to the

penalty which may be imposed upon these men, it is a fundamental part of

these proceedings to establish for all time that international law has

the power, inherent in its very nature, both to declare that a war is

criminal and to deal with those who aid and abet their states in its

commission. I shall come back to the law. Let me first refer to the

facts.

You have had from Defense Counsel an elaborate, but a partial and a

highly controversial account of foreign relations leading up to 1939. I

do not propose to follow them in that examination, nor am I concerned to

say that as events have turned out, the policies pursued by the

democratic powers may not sometimes have been weak, vacillating, and

open to criticism. Defense Counsel have sought to base some argument on

the protocol attached to the German-Soviet Pact. They argue that it was

wrong. I am not concerned with that, and, of course, I do not concede

it. But let them argue that it was wrong. Do two wrongs make a right?

Not in that international law which this Tribunal will administer.

The review which Defense Counsel have made entirely overlooks the two

basic facts in this case, that from the time of _Mein Kampf_ on, the

whole aim of Nazi policy was expansion, aggression, domination, and that

the democratic powers had to deal with a Germany of which that was, in

spite of occasional lip service to peace, the fundamental aim. If peace

was contemplated at all, it was peace only at Germany’s price. And

knowing that that price would not be and could not be paid voluntarily,

the Germans were determined to secure it by force.

Whilst the German people were being psychologically prepared for war,

the necessary measures of rearmament were taken simultaneously. At his

conference on the 23d of November 1939, Hitler summed up this period of

preparation in these words (Document Number 789-PS):

“I had to reorganize everything beginning with the mass of the

people extending it to the Armed Forces. First internal

reorganization, eradication of appearances of decay and of

defeatist ideas, education for heroism. While reorganizing

internally, I undertook the second task to release Germany from

its international ties ... secession from the League of Nations

and denunciation of the Disarmament Conference ... After that

the order for rearmament... In 1935 the introduction of

compulsory armed service. After that militarization of the

Rhineland...”

The conspirators set out first to get rid of the political restraints

which prevented rearmament. In October 1933 Germany left the League of

Nations and in March 1935 renounced the armament clauses of Versailles

and informed the world of the establishment of an air force, of a large

standing army, and of conscription. Already the Reich Defense Council

had been set up and its Working Committee had had its second meeting as

early as 26 April 1933 with representatives from every department. It is

difficult, is it not, to believe that reading the minutes of these

meetings, as they must have done, Neurath, Frick, Schacht, Göring,

Raeder, Keitel, and Jodl, the last two being generally present, can have

supposed that the regime did not intend war.

On the economic side Schacht, already President of the Reichsbank and

Minister of Economics, was made General Plenipotentiary for War Economy

in May 1935. The appointment was to be a complete secret (Document

Number 2261-PS). His contribution is best expressed in his own words

(Document Number EC-611):

“It is possible that no bank of issue in peacetime carried on

such a daring credit policy as the Reichsbank since the seizure

of power by National Socialism. With the aid of this credit

policy, however, Germany created an armament second to none and

this armament in turn made possible the results of our policy.”

Schacht’s speech on 29 November 1938 is seen to be no boast when the

report of his deputy, which has been put in evidence, is considered.

That report shows that under Schacht’s guidance, 180,000 industrial

plants had been surveyed as to usefulness for war purposes (Document

Number EC-258). Economic plans for the production of 200 basic materials

had been worked out. A system for the letting of war contracts had been

revised, allocations of coal, motor fuel and power had been determined,

248 million Reichsmark had been spent on storage facilities alone,

evacuation plans for skilled workers and war materials and military

zones had been worked out; 80 million wartime ration cards had already

been printed and distributed to local areas and a card index on the

skill of some 20 million workers had been prepared.

The most detailed and thorough preparations which that report sets out

were not made without the knowledge of every member of the Government

and no more graphic illustration of the common purpose and awareness of

the aim which permeated all departments of the State is to be found than

the second meeting of the Reich Defense Council itself held on 25 June

1939, under the presidency of the Defendant Göring, the head of the Four

Year Plan. The Defendants Frick, Funk, Keitel, and Raeder were present

and Hess and Ribbentrop were represented. The methodical detail in the

plans which were being worked out—the preparation in respect of

manpower involving the use of concentration camp workers and the

unfortunate slaves of the protectorate are eloquent testimonies to the

size of the struggle upon which these men knew that Germany was about to

embark.

The major share in rearmament must be attributed to the Defendants

Göring, Schacht, Raeder, Keitel, and Jodl, but the others, too, each in

his sphere, played their parts: Rosenberg, Schirach, and Streicher in

education, Dönitz in the preparation of the U-boat fleet, Neurath and

Ribbentrop in the field of foreign affairs.

Funk and Fritzsche were reorganizing propaganda and news systems until

the former succeeded Schacht and became Minister of Economics and in

September 1938 General Plenipotentiary for Economics. As Plenipotentiary

Funk was charged with insuring the economic conditions for the

production of the armament industry, according to the requirements of

the High Command. Frick as Plenipotentiary for the Reich Administration

(Document Number 2978-PS), with Funk and Keitel, formed the Three Man

College planning the necessary steps and decrees in case of war.

It is unnecessary in assessing this work of rearmament to do more by way

of summary than to quote the words of Hitler himself in the memorandum

which Jodl described as written during two nights of work by the Führer

personally and which he sent to the Defendants Raeder, Göring, and

Keitel. In that memorandum of 9 October 1939, Hitler finally disposes of

the evidence of these defendants that Germany was never adequately

prepared for war (Document Number L-52):

“The military application of our people’s strength has been

carried through to such an extent that within a short time at

any rate it cannot be markedly improved upon by any manner of

effort.”

And again:

“The warlike equipment of the German people is at present larger

in quantity and better in quality for a great number of German

divisions, than in the year 1914. The weapons themselves, taking

a substantial cross section, are more modern than is the case

with any other country in the world at this time. They have just

proved their supreme warworthiness in a victorious campaign. In

the case of the armaments of other countries this has yet to be

demonstrated. In some arms Germany today possesses clear

indisputable superiority of weapons.”

And then, speaking of the ammunition available after the conclusion of

the Polish campaign:

“There is no evidence available to show that any country in the

world disposes of a better total ammunition stock than the

German Reich.... The Air Force at present is numerically the

strongest in the world.... The anti-aircraft artillery is not

equalled by any country in the world.”

That, then, was the practical result of 6 years of intensive rearmament

carried out at the expense and with the knowledge of the whole of the

German people.

Meanwhile the youth of Germany was educated and drilled in semimilitary

formations for war and then, on reaching the age for conscription, was

called up for more intensive training. This was going on throughout the

Reich, together with the enormous work of economic preparation. Is it to

be believed that any one of these men did not guess—did not, indeed,

know—the purpose of this terrific effort?

If, indeed, any of them was in doubt, the successful actions in

which—to use the words of one of Neurath’s witnesses—“the Nazis were

able to reap cheap laurels without war through the successfully

practiced tactics of bluff and sudden surprise,”—must have opened their

eyes.

The first step was the Rhineland and the technique became the model for

each subsequent move. On 21 May 1935, Hitler gave a solemn assurance

that the stipulations of Versailles and Locarno were being observed. Yet

3 weeks earlier on the very day of the conclusion of the Franco-Soviet

Pact, later to become the official excuse for the reoccupation of the

Rhineland, and the defense for it, before this Tribunal, the first

directive for reoccupation had been issued to the service chiefs. The

Defendant Jodl, having perhaps noted the significance of the date, has

sought to persuade the Tribunal that his first admission, that

“Operation Schulung” referred to the reoccupation of the Rhineland, was

wrong, and that it applied to some military excursion in the Tyrol. Yet

on the 26th of June he himself was addressing the Working Committee of

the Reich Defense Council on the plans for reoccupation and revealing

that weapons, equipment, insignia, and field grey uniforms were being

stored in the zone under conditions of the greatest secrecy (Document

Number EC-405). Can anyone who reads his words doubt that this process

had been going on at least for 7 weeks?

Any representative of the innumerable departments who attended that

meeting and heard Jodl’s remarks on the 26th of June 1935 or who

subsequently read the minutes knew what to expect. On the 2d of March

1936 the final orders were given and passed to the Navy 4 days later

(Document Number C-194). The Defendants Keitel, Jodl, Raeder, Frick,

Schacht, and Göring were all involved in the necessary executive action

and, if his U-boats complied with the instruction of the 6th of March,

the Defendant Dönitz, as well.

From the beginning, at every stage you see the common plan worked

out—and worked out as it could only be if each of those men played his

allotted part. First the period of apparent quiet, during which treaties

are concluded, assurances given, and protestations of friendship made

while beneath the surface the Auslands-Organisation under Hess and

Rosenberg begins to undermine and disrupt. The victim is deceived by

open promises and weakened by underhand methods. Next, the decision to

attack is taken and military preparations are hastened. If the victim

shows signs of suspicion, the assurances of friendship are redoubled.

Meanwhile, the finishing touches are put to the work accomplished by the

fifth column. Then when all is prepared, what Hitler called “the

propagandist cause for starting the war” is chosen, frontier incidents

are faked, abuse and threats take place of fair words and everything is

done to terrify the victim into submission. Finally, the blow is struck

without warning. The plan varies in detail from case to case, but

essentially, it is the same, the perfect example repeated again and

again, of treachery, intimidation, and murder.

The next step was Austria. First, the Nazis arranged the murder of

Dollfuss in 1934. After the evidence in the case of the Defendant

Neurath, there can be little doubt as to his assassination being plotted

in Berlin and arranged by Habicht and Hitler some six weeks before. The

failure of that Putsch made it necessary to temporize, and accordingly

in May 1935 Hitler gave a complete assurance to Austria (Document Number

TC-26). At the same time the Defendant Papen was sent to undermine the

Austrian Government. With the occupation of the Rhineland, Austria was

next on the program but Hitler was still not yet ready, hence the solemn

agreement of July 1936 (Document Number T-22). By the autumn of 1937

Papen’s reports showed progress and accordingly the plot was divulged at

the Hossbach meeting (Document Number 386-PS). A slight delay was

necessary for the removal of the refractory Army leaders, but in

February 1938, Papen having completed his plotting with Seyss-Inquart,

Schuschnigg was lured to Berchtesgaden and bullied by Hitler,

Ribbentrop, and Keitel. Shortly afterward, the final scene took place;

Göring played his part in Berlin. The defendants, Göring, Hess, Keitel,

Jodl, Raeder, Frick, Schacht, Papen, and Neurath, were all aware of this

Austrian plot, Neurath and Papen from the very beginning of it.

With the exception of Göring, each one of them has attempted to put

forward a defense of ignorance which cannot be regarded as other than

ludicrous in the light of the documents. Not one of them has suggested

that he protested, each one of them remained in office thereafter.

Already the plan for Czechoslovakia was ready; it had been discussed at

the Hossbach meeting in November 1937, within 3 weeks of the Munich

Agreement the directive to prepare to march in had been given and on the

15th of March 1939, President Hacha having been duly bullied by Hitler,

Ribbentrop, Göring, and Keitel, Prague was occupied and the Protectorate

established by Frick and Neurath. You will remember the astonishing

admission of Göring that although he certainly threatened to bomb Prague

he never really intended to do it. Ribbentrop also seems to have

considered that in diplomacy any lie is permissible.

The stage was now set for Poland.

As Jodl explained (Document Number L-172):

“The peaceful solution of the Czech conflict in the autumn of

1938 and the annexation of Czechoslovakia rounded off the

territory of greater Germany so that it was possible to consider

the Polish problem on a basis of more or less favorable

strategic premises.”

And now the time has come when, to use Hitler’s words (Document Number

386-PS): “German policy must reckon with its two hateful enemies,

England and France.” And accordingly followed the policy laid down by

Ribbentrop in January 1938 (Document Number TC-75): “The formation in

great secrecy but with whole-hearted tenacity of a coalition against

England.”

In the case of Poland, however, the German Foreign Office had already

advised Ribbentrop as long ago as a month before Munich in the following

terms (Document Number TC-76):

“It is unavoidable that the German departure from the border

problems in the southeast and their direction to the east and

northeast must make the Poles sit up. The fact is that after the

solution of the Czech problem it will be generally assumed that

Poland will be the next in turn. But the later this assumption

sinks in in international politics as a firm factor the better.

In this sense, however, it is important for the time being to

carry on German policy under the well-known and proved slogans

of the right to autonomy and racial unity. Anything else might

be interpreted as pure imperialism on our part and create

resistance to our plan by the Entente at an earlier date and

more energetically than our forces could stand up to.”

In this case, therefore, the usual assurances were reiterated and again

and again Hitler and Ribbentrop made the most explicit statements.

Meanwhile the usual steps were taken, and following the meeting of the

23d of May 1939 (Document L-79), which Raeder described as an academic

lecture on war, the final military economic and political preparations

for war against Poland were taken and in due time war was commenced; and

you get that quotation that you have heard so often, and it ought to be

remembered for all times (Document Number 1014-PS):

“The victor shall not be asked later on whether we were telling

the truth or not. In starting and making a war, not the right is

what matters, but victory.”

These were Hitler’s words, but those men echoed and implemented them at

every stage. That was the doctrine underlying Nazi policy. Step by step

the conspirators had reached the crucial stage and had launched Germany

upon an attempt to dominate Europe and involve the world in untold

horror. Not one of these men had turned against the regime. Not one of

them except Schacht—to whose vital contribution to the creation of the

Nazi monster I shall return later—had resigned and even he continued to

lend his name to the Nazi Government.

Would that be a convenient place to adjourn?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we will adjourn now.

[_A recess was taken._]

SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: If it please the Tribunal: Holland having been

overrun, the course of the war soon showed that Germany’s military aims

and the interests of her strategy would be improved by further

aggression. I do not propose to take time now by tracing again the

various steps. As Hitler said at the meeting in November 1939 (Document

739-PS):

“Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is meaningless.

No one will question that when we have won. We shall not bring

forth as silly a reason for the breach of neutrality as in

1914.”

Norway and Denmark were invaded. No kind of excuse, then or now, has

been put forward for the occupation of Denmark, but a strenuous attempt

has been made in the course of this Trial to suggest that Norway was

invaded only because the Germans believed that the Allies were about to

take a similar step. Even if it were true, it would be no answer, but

the German documents completely dispose of the suggestion that it was

for such a reason that the Germans violated Norwegian neutrality.

Hitler, Göring, and Raeder had agreed as early as November 1934, and I

quote (Document Number C-190): “... no war could be carried on if the

Navy was not able to safeguard the ore imports from Scandinavia.”

Accordingly, as the European struggle drew near, a nonaggression pact

was made with Denmark on 31 May 1939 (Document Number TC-24) following

the mutual assurance to both Norway and Denmark which had already been

given a month earlier (Document Number TC-30). At the outbreak of the

war a further assurance was made to Norway (Document Number TC-31),

followed by another on the 6th of October (Document Number TC-32). On

the 6th of September, 4 days after his assurance, Hitler was discussing

with Raeder the Scandinavian problem and his political intentions in

regard to the Nordic states, expressed in Admiral Assman’s diary as: “a

North Germanic community with limited sovereignty in close dependence on

Germany.”

On the 9th of October, 3 days after his most recent assurance, in his

memorandum for the information of Raeder, Göring, and Keitel, Hitler was

writing of the great danger of the Allies blocking the exits for U-boats

between Norway and the Shetlands and of the consequent importance of

“the creation of U-boat strongpoints outside these constricted home

bases” (Document Number L-52). Where outside the constricted home bases

if not in Norway?

It is significant that the very next day Dönitz submitted a report on

the comparative advantages of the different Norwegian bases (Document

C-5), having discussed the matter with Raeder some 6 days before

(Document C-122). The strategic advantages were apparent to all these

men and the hollowness of the defense that the invasion of Norway was

decided upon because it was believed that the Allies were going to

invade is completely exposed when you consider the statement in Hitler’s

memorandum preceding the passage I have just quoted, that (Document

Number L-52):

“Provided no completely unforeseen factors appear, their

neutrality in the future is also to be assumed. The continuation

of German trade with these countries appears possible even in a

war of long duration.”

Hitler saw no threat from the Allies at that time.

Rosenberg and Göring’s deputy, Körner, had been in touch with Quisling

and Hagelin as early as June and it is clear from Rosenberg’s subsequent

report that Hitler had been kept fully informed (Document Number

004-PS). In December the time for planning had arrived and the decision

to prepare for invasion was accordingly taken at a meeting between

Hitler and Raeder (Document Number C-66). It was not long before Keitel

and Jodl issued the necessary directives and in due course as necessary,

Göring, Dönitz, and Ribbentrop were involved.

On the 9th of October, as I have already said, Hitler was confident that

there would be no danger to the Nordic states from the Allies. All the

alleged intelligence reports contain no information which comes within

miles of justifying an anticipatory invasion based—you might think it

is laughable—on the doctrines of self-preservation. It is true that in

February 1940 Raeder pointed out to him that if England did occupy

Norway the whole Swedish supply of ore to Germany would be endangered

(Document Number D-881), but on the 26th of March he advised that the

Russo-Finnish conflict having ceased, the danger of an Allied landing

was no longer considered serious. Nonetheless he went on to suggest that

the German invasion, for which all the directives had been issued,

should take place at the next new moon, on the 7th of April (Document

Number R-81). It is interesting to note that Raeder’s own war diary

signed by himself and his chief of staff operations records a similar

opinion 4 days earlier. If further evidence were needed to show that the

actual step was taken regardless of any risk of interference from the

West, it is to be found in telegrams from the German ministers at both

Oslo and Stockholm and from the German military attaché at Stockholm,

advising the German Government that, far from being worried over

invasion by the British, the Scandinavian Governments were apprehensive

that it was the Germans who intended to invade (Documents Number D-843,

D-844, D-845). Perhaps Jodl’s comment in his diary for March that Hitler

“is still looking for an excuse” (Document Number 1809-PS) with Raeder’s

lame explanation that this refers to the text of the diplomatic note

which would have to be sent and Ribbentrop’s assertion that he was

informed of the invasion only a day or so before it was to take place

are as conclusive as anything else of the dishonesty of this defense.

Once again all these men in their different spheres were playing their

appointed parts—notably, of course, Rosenberg, who paved the way,

Göring, Raeder, Keitel, Jodl, and Ribbentrop who took the necessary

executive action. Not one of them protested: Even Fritzsche’s only

defense is that he was not told until a very late stage when he was as

usual required to broadcast. He does not suggest that he protested. Once

again, a completely ruthless invasion of two countries was undertaken in

breach of every treaty and assurance, solely because it was

strategically desirable to have Norwegian bases and to secure

Scandinavian ore.

And so it went on: Yugoslavia, her fate settled before the war, Greece,

and then Soviet Russia. The German-Soviet Pact of the 23d of August 1939

paved the way. Complete worthlessness of a Ribbentrop signature is made

clear by Hitler’s memorandum 6 weeks later, where he remarked (Document

Number L-52): “The trifling significance of treaties of agreement has

been proved on all sides in recent years.”

By the 18th of December 1940 it must have become apparent that the

German hopes of overcoming the resistance of Great Britain—then and for

many months holding the fort of freedom and democracy alone against an

enemy never more powerful than at that time—were vain, and so the first

directive was issued for an attack in another direction this

time—against Soviet Russia (Document Number 446-PS). It is indeed

true—and it is interesting—that on this occasion a number of the

defendants did make some objection. Little Norway might be violated

without protest: There was no danger there. There was happy acquiescence

in the rape of the gallant Netherlands and of Belgium. But here was an

enemy which might perhaps strike fear in the heart of the bully. The

defendants objected, of course, if at all, on purely military grounds,

although Raeder does say that he was influenced by the moral wrong which

a breach of the German Soviet treaty would involve. It is for you to

say. These moral scruples which ought so properly to have manifested

themselves on countless other occasions are only previously recorded

when one of his officers wishes to marry a lady of doubtful reputation.

The truth is that some of these men were beginning to become

apprehensive. Great Britain’s resistance had already begun to make them

think. Was Hitler now taking on another enemy whom he could not defeat?

Once the decision was taken, however, every one of them set to work to

play his part with his usual disregard for all laws of morality or even

decency.

In no single case did a declaration of war precede military action. How

many thousands of innocent, inoffensive men, women, and children,

sleeping in their beds in the happy belief that their country was and

would remain at peace, were suddenly blown into eternity by death

dropped on them without warning from the skies? In what respect does the

guilt of any one of these men differ from the common murderer creeping

stealthily to do his victims to death in order that he may rob them of

their belongings?

In every single case, as the documents (Documents 386-PS, L-79) make

clear, this was the common plan. The attack must be “blitzartig

schnell”—without warning, with the speed of lightning—Austria,

Czechoslovakia, Poland—Raeder repeating Keitel’s directive for “heavy

blows struck by surprise” (Document Number C-126)—Denmark, Norway,

Belgium, Holland, Russia. As Hitler had said in the presence of a number

of these men (Document Number L-79): “Considerations of right or wrong

or treaties do not enter into the matter.”

The killing of combatants in war is justifiable, both in international

and in municipal law, only where the war itself is legal. But where a

war is illegal, as a war started not only in breach of the Pact of Paris

but without any sort of warning or declaration clearly is, there is

nothing to justify the killing, and these murders are not to be

distinguished from those of any other lawless robber bands.

Every one of these men knew of these plans at one stage or another in

their development. Every one of these men acquiesced in this technique,

knowing full well what it must represent in terms of human life. How can

any one of them now say he was not a party to common murder in its most

ruthless form?

But I am dealing now not with the murders which alone so well justify

the condemnation of these men, but with their crime against peace. Let

me say something about the legal aspect of this matter, for it is one to

the firm establishment of which His Majesty’s Government of the United

Kingdom, and indeed all the chief prosecutors here, attach great

importance.

The distinguished speech by Professor Jahrreiss for the Defense was free

of ambiguity. The effect was that though the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the

other international declarations and treaties rendered aggressive war

illegal, they did not make it criminal. In support of this contention it

was argued that they could not have done so because any such attempt to

make aggressive war a crime would be contrary to the sovereignty of

states, and that, in any event, the entire system of prohibition of war

had collapsed before the outbreak of the second World War and therefore

ceased to be law. It was further argued that these treaties were not

taken seriously by numerous jurists and journalists whose opinions were

cited and were not really entitled to be treated seriously because they

contained no provision for coping with the problem of the peaceful

change of the _status quo_. With regard to the Pact of Paris itself,

counsel contended that there could be no question of a criminal—or even

unlawful—breach of that Pact of Paris because it left to each state,

including Germany, the right to determine whether it was entitled to go

to war in self-defense. Finally it was suggested that the state could

not become the subject of criminal responsibility and that, if that

proposition were not admitted, the crime was one of the German State and

not of individual members of it, because in the German State which

launched that war upon the world there were no individual wills but only

one sovereign, uncontrolled, and final will—that of the

dictator-Führer.

It might be enough for me to say that this entire line of arguments is

beside the point and cannot be heard in this Court since it is in

contradiction to the Charter. For the Charter lays down expressly that

the planning—and I emphasize the word “planning”—preparation,

initiation, or waging of a war of aggression or of a war in violation of

international treaties, agreements, or assurances shall be considered

crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. It would appear,

therefore, that the only way in which the accused can escape liability

is to show to the satisfaction of the Tribunal that these wars were not

wars of aggression or in violation of treaties. They have not done that.

That being so one asks what is the purpose of the argument which has

been advanced in their behalf. Is it to deny the jurisdiction of this

Tribunal in this matter? Or what is perhaps more probable, is it a

political appeal to some outside audience which may be more easily

impressed by the complaint that the accused are being made the object of

post factum legislation?

Whatever its object, it is important that the argument should not go

unchallenged. I am anxious not to take up time by repeating what I said

in my opening statement on the change effected in the position of war in

international law as the result of the long series of treaties, in

particular the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War. I have

submitted that that treaty, one of the most generally signed

international treaties, established a rule of international law with a

solemnity and clarity which is often lacking in customary international

law; that the profound change which it produced, and this is important,

although indeed the distinction between just and unjust wars had been

recognized in medieval times, was reflected in weighty pronouncements of

governments and statesmen. I submit that it rendered illegal recourse to

war in violation of the treaty, and that there is no difference between

illegality and criminality in a breach of law involving the deaths of

millions and a direct attack on the very foundations of civilized life.

Nor do I propose to take time by answering in detail the, if I may say

so, strange chain of legal argument put forward by the Defense such as

that the treaty had no effect attributed to it by its signatories on the

ground that it was received in some quarters with disbelief or cynicism.

Even more curious to ordinary legal thinking is the reasoning that in

any case that treaty—and the other treaties and assurances which

followed it—had ceased to be legally binding by 1939 because by that

time the entire system of collective security had collapsed. The fact

that the United States declared its neutrality in 1939 was cited as an

example of the collapse of the system as if the United States had been

under any legal obligation to act otherwise. But what is the relevance

of the fact that the system designed to enforce these treaties and to

prevent and to penalize criminal recourse to war failed to work? Did the

aggressions of Japan and Italy and the other states involved in the Axis

conspiracy, followed by the German aggressions against Austria and

Czechoslovakia, deprive those obligations of their binding effect simply

because those crimes achieved a temporary success? Since when has the

civilized world accepted the principle that the temporary impunity of

the criminal not only deprives the law of its binding force but

legalizes his crime?

And you will notice, incidentally, that in the case both of the Japanese

and Italian aggressions, the Council and the Assembly of the League of

Nations denounced these acts as violations both of the Covenant and of

the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War and that in both cases

sanctions were decreed. It may be that the policemen did not act as

effectively as one could have wished them to act. But that was a failure

of the policeman, not of the law.

But not content with the remarkable suggestion that by their very

aggressions, because of the reluctance of the peace-loving states to

take arms against the blackmail and the bullying which was directed

against them, the aggressors had abrogated the law against aggression,

the defendants have introduced some question of self-defense. They have

not, indeed, really suggested that these wars were defensive wars. Not

even Goebbels in his wildest extravagances went quite so far as that. It

appears that what they seek to say is not that their wars were wars in

self-defense, but that since the Pact of Paris not only left intact the

right of states to defend themselves but also the sovereign right of

each state to determine whether recourse to war in self-defense was

justified in the circumstances, it did not in fact contain any legal

obligation at all. That is, in our strong submission, a wholly

fallacious argument. It is true that in the declarations preceding and

accompanying the signature and the ratification of the Pact of Paris,

self-defense was not only recognized as an inherent and inalienable

right of the parties to the treaty, but its signatories reserved for

themselves the exclusive right of judging whether circumstances called

for the exercise of that right.