SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: There is one group to which the method of

annihilation was applied on a scale so immense that it is my duty to

refer separately to the evidence. I mean the extermination of the Jews.

If there were no other crime against these men, this one alone, in which

all of them were implicated, would suffice. History holds no parallel to

these horrors.

As soon as the prospect of a second World War became a certainty,

Streicher, who had preached this infamous doctrine as far back as 1925,

began in earnest to advocate annihilation (Document Number M-13). As he,

on his own admission, had been instrumental in effecting the Nuremberg

Decrees by years of propaganda in favor of racial laws, so now, in

January 1939, anticipating the war which was to come, he began, in

articles published in the _Stürmer_ with “the full support of the

highest Reich authority,” to demand with all vehemence the physical

extinction of the Jewish race. Unless words have completely lost their

meaning, what do these words mean but murder:

“They must be exterminated root and branch” (Document Number

D-811).

“Then will the criminal Jewish race be forever eradicated”

(Document Number D-813).

“Then will they slay the Jews in masses” (Document Number

D-817).

“Prepare a grave from which there can be no resurrection”

(Document Number M-148).

Almost immediately after the war had started the organized extermination

of the Jewish race began: Hoess has told you:

“The final solution of the Jewish question means the complete

extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish

extermination facilities in Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time

there were already in the Government General three other

extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek.”

Already the Jews in Germany and Poland had been concentrated in the

ghettos of the Government General. Over dinner in the Führer’s apartment

in October 1940, Frank had explained and I quote:

“The activities in the Government General could be termed very

successful. The Jews in Warsaw and other cities were now locked

up in ghettos, Kraków very shortly would be cleared of them.

“Reichsleiter Von Schirach ... remarked that he still had more

than 50,000 Jews in Vienna whom Dr. Frank would have to take

over from him” (Document Number USSR-172).

When the order actually came, therefore, the preparatory measures, so

far as they affected Poland and Germany, had already been taken. Of the

destruction of the ghettos and the slaughter of their populations

General Stroop’s report on the Warsaw action is eloquent evidence

(Document Number 1061-PS). But the fate of the Jews in Warsaw was only

typical of the fate of the Jews in every other ghetto in Poland.

When they were not slaughtered in the ghettos themselves they were

transported to the gas chambers. Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz,

described the procedure:

“I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their

exterminations. The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he

had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one half-year. He was

primarily concerned with the liquidation of the Jews from the

Warsaw ghetto.”

Hoess describes the improvements that he made at Auschwitz. He

introduced the new gas, Cyclone B which—I quote:

“... took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death

chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the

people were dead because their screaming stopped.... Another

improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas

chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at a time, whereas at

Treblinka their 10 gas chambers accommodated only 200 people

each.”

And he describes the selection of the victims from the daily transports

that arrived:

“Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others

were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of

tender years were invariably exterminated since, by reason of

their youth, they were unable to work. Still another improvement

we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost

always knew they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we

endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were

going through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they

realized our true intentions. Very frequently the women would

hide their children under the clothes but of course when we

found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We

were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but

of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous

burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the

people living in the surrounding communities knew that

exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.”

So also must they have known in the districts surrounding Belzek,

Treblinka, Wolzek, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme,

Gusen, Natzweiler, Lublin, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

I do not repeat these things in order to make the blood run cold. It is

right that a few of these typical matters should be extracted from the

great mass of the evidence which is accumulated here so that one may see

this thing in its true perspective and appreciate the cumulative effect

of what has been proved.

Whilst the German armies surged into Russia and the Baltic States, the

Einsatzkommandos followed in their wake. Their dreadful work had been

planned and prepared in advance. In the file describing the operations

of the Task Force A there is a map of the Baltic countries showing the

number of Jews that were living in each state who were to be hounded out

and killed (Document Number L-180). Another map shows the results

achieved after those 2 or 3 months’ work—a total of 135,567 Jews

destroyed. In another report on their operations during October 1941 it

is proudly stated that they continued “on the march with the advancing

troops into the sectors which have been assigned to them” (Document

Number 2273-PS).

These actions were not only the work of the SS and Himmler. They were

carried out in co-operation with the army commanders with the full

knowledge of Keitel and Jodl and, indeed, because every soldier fighting

in the East must have known about them, with the knowledge also of every

member of the Government and of the commanders of its Armed Forces.

“Our task”—so states the report of the Task Force A—“was

hurriedly to establish personal contact with the commanding

generals of the armies and with the commanding general of the

rear army. It may be stressed from the beginning that

co-operation with the Armed Forces was generally good. In some

cases, for instance, with Panzer Group 4 under Generaloberst

Hoeppner, it was very close, almost cordial” (Document Number

L-180).

The German generals were “almost cordial” as they weltered in the blood

of hundreds of thousands of helpless, innocent men, women, and children.

Perhaps they enjoyed this work—in the same way as the members of the

Einsatzkommandos themselves apparently enjoyed it.

“It should be mentioned”—states the report—“that the assigned

leaders of the Waffen-SS and of the Order Police, as far as they

are reserves, have declared their wish to stay on with the

Security Police and the SD” (Document Number L-180).

Again and again, in the reports of the Einsatzkommandos, progress,

co-operation with the Army authorities is emphasized. After describing

how thousands of Lithuanian Jews had been made harmless, during a

particular pogrom in June, it is stated: “These self-cleansing actions

went smoothly because the Army authorities who showed full understanding

for this procedure were informed of them.”

Nor was it only cordiality and understanding that the Army authorities

showed. In some cases they themselves took the initiative. After

describing the murder of inmates of lunatic asylums that had fallen into

their hands, the Einsatzkommando report continues:

“Sometimes authorities of the Armed Forces asked us to clear out

in a similar way other institutions which were wanted as

billets. However, as the interests of the Security Police did

not require any intervention, it was left to the authorities of

the Armed Forces to take the necessary action with their own

forces.”

And again:

“The advance of the forces of Special Task Group A which were

intended to be used for Leningrad was effected in agreement with

and on the express wish of Panzer Group 4.”

How can operations of this kind, extending for months and years over

vast territories, carried out with the co-operation of the Armed Forces

as they advanced and in the rear areas that they administered, have

remained unknown to the leaders in Germany? Even their own commissioners

in the occupied territories protested. In October 1941 the Commissioner

for White Ruthenia was forwarding to the Reich Commissioner for Eastern

Territories at Riga a report on the operations in his district. Some

idea of the horror of those operations can be seen from that report. I

quote:

“Regardless of the fact that the Jewish people, among whom were

also tradesmen, were mistreated in a terribly barbarous way in

the face of the White Ruthenian people, the White Ruthenians

themselves were also worked over with rubber clubs and rifle

butts ... the whole picture was generally more than ghastly....

I was not present at the shooting before the town. Therefore I

cannot make a statement on its brutality. But it should suffice

if I point out that persons shot have worked themselves out of

their graves some time after they had been covered” (Document

Number 1104-PS).

But such protests of this kind were of no avail; the slaughter continued

with unabated ghastliness.

In February 1942, in Heydrich’s activity and situation report on the

Einsatzkommandos in the U.S.S.R. of which a copy was addressed to

Kaltenbrunner personally, it was stated:

“We are aiming at cleansing the Eastern countries completely of

Jews.... Estonia has already been cleared of Jews.

“In Latvia the number of Jews in Riga, of which there were

29,500, has now been reduced to 2,500” (Document Number

3876-PS).

By June 1943 the Commissioner for White Ruthenia was again protesting.

After referring to 4,500 enemy dead, he says:

“The political effect of this large-scale operation upon the

peaceful population is simply dreadful in view of the many

shootings of women and children.”

The Reich Commissar for Eastern Territories, forwarding that protest to

Rosenberg, the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories in

Berlin, added:

“The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no

further discussions. However, it appears hardly believable that

this is done in the way described in the report of the

Commissioner General.... What is Katyn against this? Imagine

only that these occurrences would become known to the other side

and exploited by them. Most likely such propaganda would have no

effect if only because people who read and heard about it simply

would not be ready to believe it” (Document Number R-135).

How true that comment is. Are we ready even now to believe it?

Describing the difficulty of distinguishing between friend and foe, he

says:

“Nevertheless, it should be possible to avoid atrocities and to

bury those who have been liquidated. To lock men, women, and

children into barns and set fire to them does not appear to be a

suitable method of combating bands, even if it is desired to

exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the

German cause and hurts our reputation most severely.”

Of these Jews murdered in White Ruthenia, over 11,000 were slaughtered

in the district of Libau, and 7,000 of them had been killed in the naval

port itself (Documents Number L-180, D-841).

How can any of these defendants plead ignorance of these things? When

Himmler was speaking of these actions quite openly amongst his SS

generals and all the officers of his SS divisions in April 1943, he told

them:

“Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of

lice is not a question of ideology: it is a matter of

cleanliness. In just the same way, anti-Semitism for us has not

been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness which

now will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon be deloused.

We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished

off within the whole of Germany” (Document Number 1919-PS).

And in October of that year:

“Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying,

side by side, or 500, or 1,000.”

Meanwhile, the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz and the other

extermination centers was becoming a State industry with by-products.

Bales of hair, some of it, as you will remember, still plaited as it has

been shorn off the girls’ heads, tons of clothing, toys, spectacles, and

other articles went back to the Reich to stuff the chairs and clothe the

people of the Nazi State. The gold from their victims’ teeth, 72

transports full, went to fill the coffers of Funk’s Reichsbank. On

occasion, even the bodies of their victims were used to make good the

wartime shortage of soap (Document Number USSR-272).

The victims came from all over Europe. Jews from Austria,

Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Holland, Soviet Russia, France,

Belgium, Poland, and Greece were being herded together to be deported to

the extermination centers or to be slaughtered on the spot.

In April 1943, Hitler and Ribbentrop were pressing the Regent Horthy to

take action against the Jews in Hungary. Horthy asked:

“What should he do with the Jews now that he had deprived them

of almost all possibilities of livelihood? He could not kill

them off. The Reich Foreign Minister declared that the Jews must

be either exterminated or taken to concentration camps. There

was no other possibility” (Document Number D-736).

Hitler explained:

“In Poland the state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared

up. If the Jews there did not want to work, they were shot. If

they could not work they had to succumb. They had to be treated

like tuberculosis bacilli. This was not cruel if one remembered

that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer,

have to be killed so that no harm is caused by them.”

In September 1942, Ribbentrop’s State Secretary, Luther, was writing:

“The Reich Foreign Minister has instructed me today by telephone

to hasten as much as possible the evacuation of the Jews from

different countries.... After a short lecture on the evacuation

now in progress in Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, and the occupied

territories, the Reich Foreign Minister has ordered that we are

to approach the Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Danish Governments

with the goal of getting evacuation started in those countries”

(Document Number 3688-PS).

By the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from Hungary alone had been executed in

Auschwitz. In the German Embassy in Bucharest the files contained a

memorandum:

“... 110,000 Jews are being evacuated from Bukovina and

Bessarabia into two forests in the area of the river Bug.... The

purpose of the action is the liquidation of these Jews.”

(Document Number 3319-PS)

Day by day, over years, women were holding their children in their arms

and pointing to the sky while they waited to take their place in

blood-soaked, communal graves. Twelve million men, women, and children

have died thus, murdered in cold blood; millions upon millions more

today mourn their fathers and mothers, their husbands, their wives, and

their children. What right has any man to mercy who has played a

part—however indirectly—in such a crime?

Let Gräbe speak again of Dubno (Document Number 2992-PS):

“On 5 October 1943 when I visited the building office at Dubno

my foreman ... told me that in the vicinity of the site, Jews

from Dubno had been shot in three large pits, each about 30

meters long and 3 meters deep. About 1,500 persons had been

killed daily. All of the 5,000 Jews who had still been living in

Dubno before the action were to be liquidated. As the shooting

had taken place in his presence, he was still much upset.

“Thereupon I drove to the site, accompanied by my foreman, and

saw near it great mounds of earth, about 30 meters long and 2

meters high. Several trucks stood in front of the mounds. Armed

Ukrainian militia drove the people off the trucks under the

supervision of an SS man. The militia men acted as guards on the

trucks and drove them to and from the pit. All these people had

the regulation yellow patches on the front and back of their

clothes and thus could be recognized as Jews.

“My foreman and I went directly to the pits. Nobody bothered us.

Now I heard rifle shots in quick succession from behind one of

the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks—men,

women, and children of all ages—had to undress upon the orders

of an SS man, who carried a riding or dog whip. They had to put

down their clothes in fixed places, sorted according to shoes,

top clothing, and underclothing. I saw a heap of shoes of about

800 to 1,000 pairs, great piles of under linen and clothing.

Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood

around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells, and

waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit,

also with a whip in his hand. During the 15 minutes that I stood

near I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family

of about eight persons, a man and a woman both about 50 with

their children of about 1, 8, and 10, and two grown-up daughters

of about 20 to 24. An old woman with snow-white hair was holding

the one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and

tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The couple were

looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the

hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the

boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky,

stroked his head, and seemed to explain something to him. At

that moment the SS man at the pit shouted something to his

comrade. The latter counted off about 20 persons and instructed

them to go behind the earth mound. Among them was the family

which I have mentioned. I well remember a girl, slim and with

black hair, who as she passed close to me, pointed to herself

and said, ‘23’. I walked around the mound and found myself

confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged

together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads

were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders

from their heads. Some of the people shot were still moving.

Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show

that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds full.

I estimated that it already contained about 1,000 people. I

looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an SS man, who

sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling

into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a

cigaret. The people, completely naked, went down some steps

which were cut in the clay wall of the pit and clambered over

the heads of the people lying there, to the place to which the

SS man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or

injured people; some caressed those who were still alive and

spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I

looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or

the heads lying motionless on top of the bodies which lay before

them. Blood was running away from their necks. I was surprised

that I was not ordered away but I saw that there were two or

three guards in uniform nearby. The next batch was approaching

already. They went down into the pit, lined themselves up

against the previous victims and were shot. When I walked back

round the mound I noticed another truck load of people which had

just arrived. This time it included sick and infirm persons. An

old, very thin woman with terribly thin legs was undressed by

others who were already naked, while two people held her up. The

woman appeared to be paralyzed. The naked people carried the

woman around the mound. I left with my foreman and drove in my

car back to Dubno.

“On the morning of the next day, when I again visited the site,

I saw about 30 naked people lying near the pit—about 30 to 50

meters away from it. Some of them were still alive; they looked

straight in front of them with a fixed stare and seemed to

notice neither the chilliness of the morning nor the workers of

my firm who stood around. A girl of about 20 spoke to me and

asked me to give her clothes and help her escape. At that moment

we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an SS

detail. I moved away to my site. Ten minutes later we heard

shots from the vicinity of the pit. The Jews still alive had

been ordered to throw the corpses into the pit, then they had

themselves to lie down in this to be shot in the neck.”

That no man in that dock can have remained ignorant of the horrors

perpetrated to support the Nazi war machine and the policy of genocide

becomes the more clear when you consider the evidence with regard to

another great crime little heard of during the course of this Trial but

which, as clearly as any other, illustrates the wickedness of these men

and of their regime—the murder of some 275,000 persons by so-called

mercy killing. To what base uses that beautiful word was put!

Sometime in the summer of 1940 Hitler secretly ordered the murder of ill

and aged people in Germany who were no longer of productive value for

the German war machine. Frick, more than any other man in Germany, was

responsible for what took place as a result of that decree. Of his

knowledge and of the knowledge of a great many people in Germany there

is abundant evidence. In July 1940 Bishop Wurm was writing to Frick

(Document Number M-152):

“For some months past, insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic

patients of state and private medical establishments have been

transferred to another institution on the orders of the Reich

Defense Council. Their relatives, even when the patient was kept

at their cost, are not informed of the transfer until after it

has taken place. Mostly they are informed a few weeks after that

the patient concerned has died of an illness and that owing to

the danger of infection the body has had to be cremated. At a

superficial estimate several hundred patients of an institution

in Württemberg alone must have met their death in this way ...

“Owing to numerous inquiries from town and country and from the

most variegated circles, I consider it my duty to point out to

the Reich Government that this fact is causing a particular stir

in our small province.... Transports of sick people who are

unloaded at the small railway station of Marbach on the Lahn,

the buses with opaque windows which bring sick persons from more

distant railway stations or directly from the institutions, the

smoke which rises from the crematorium and which can be noticed

even from a considerable distance ... all this gives rise to

speculation the more so as no one is allowed into the castle....

Everybody is convinced that the causes of death which are

published officially are selected at random. When, to crown

everything, regret is expressed in the obituary notice that all

endeavors to preserve the patient’s life were in vain, this is

felt as a mockery. But it is above all the mysteriousness which

gives rise to the thought that something is happening which is

contrary to justice and ethics and cannot therefore be openly

defended by the Government like other necessary and stringent

war measures.... This point is continually stressed by simple

people as well as in the numerous oral and written statements

which come to us ...”

Frick’s ears were deaf to pleas for justice and ethics such as that. A

year later, in August 1941, the Bishop of Limburg wrote to the Reich

Ministries of the Interior, of Justice, and Church Affairs (Document

Number 615-PS):

“About 8 kilometers from Limburg in the little town of Hadamar,

on a hill overlooking the town there is an institution which had

formerly served various purposes and of late has been used as a

nursing home. This institution was renovated and furnished as a

place in which, by consensus of opinion, the above-mentioned

euthanasia had been systematically practiced for months,

approximately since February 1941. The fact has become known

beyond the administrative district of Wiesbaden....

“Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a

considerable number of such victims. School children of the

vicinity know this vehicle and say: ‘There comes the murder box

again.’ After the arrival of these vehicles citizens of Hadamar

watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured with

the constant thought of the misery of the victims, especially

when repulsive odors annoy them....

“The effect of the principles at work here are that children

call each other names and say: ‘You are crazy, you will be sent

to the baking ovens in Hadamar.’ Those who do not want to marry

or find no opportunity say: ‘Marry, never! Bring children into

the world so that they can be put into the pressure steamer!’

You hear old folks say: ‘Do not send me to a state hospital.

After the feeble minded have been finished off the next useless

eaters whose turn it will be are the old people ...’

“Officials of the Secret State Police, it is said, are trying to

suppress discussion of the Hadamar occurrences by means of

severe threats. In the interests of public peace this may be

well intended, but the knowledge and the conviction and the

indignation of the population cannot be changed by it. The

conviction will be increased with the bitter realization that

discussion is prohibited with threats, but that the actions

themselves are not prosecuted under penal law. _Facta

loquuntur._”

If the common people of Germany knew and were complaining of these

relatively insignificant murders, when the Ministries of Justice, of the

Interior, and of Church Affairs were receiving protests from the Bishop

of two districts far removed from each other, on what was common

knowledge in their dioceses, how much greater were the security problems

of the Einsatzkommandos in the East. In May 1942 an SS leader reporting

to Berlin on a tour of inspection of the progress of the extermination

drive wrote of the gas vans:

“By having small shutters introduced, one on each side of the

smaller van and two on each side of the bigger van, such as one

sees often on peasants’ houses in the country, I have had the

vehicles in Group D disguised to look like vans for living in.

The cars were so well known that not only the authorities but

also the civilian population allude to it as the ‘Death Car’ as

soon as one of these vehicles appears. In my opinion even with

camouflage it cannot be kept secret for any length of time”

(Document Number 501-PS).

Can these defendants have remained in ignorance? What peculiar

dispensation of Providence was there that protected them from knowledge

of these matters, matters which were their concern?

This slaughter of the aged and imbeciles—the subject of gossip

throughout Germany and of articles in the world press—must have been

known to every one of these men. How much more then must they have known

of the concentration camps which, during those years, covered like a

rash the whole of Germany and the occupied territories. If they could

only acquiesce in the mercy killings, with what favor they must have

regarded the extermination of the Jews.

In 1939 there had been six main concentration camps—Dachau,

Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbruck.

Frick’s budget for the Ministry of the Interior for that year includes a

sum of RM 21,155,000 for armed SS and concentration camps—no less than

a fifth of the total budget (Document Number 2873-PS). By April 1942

there had been added to those six camps nine more and more were to

follow afterward.

But these were only the core of the system. Like planets, each of them

had its attendant satellites. Ziereis has given you some idea of the

extent of this system (Document Number D-626). He describes the

subsidiary camps that were based on Mauthausen alone: 33 of them he

mentioned by name, giving the numbers of prisoners at each—a total of

over 102,000. Besides those 33, there were another 45, also all under

the authority of the Mauthausen commandant.

You have seen the map of Europe showing the location of as many of these

main subsidiary concentration camps as are known. Over 300 of them are

marked on that map (Document Number F-321).

By August 1944 there was a total of 1,136,000 prisoners, which included

90,000 from Hungary, 60,000 from the police prison and ghetto of

Litzmannstadt, 15,000 Poles from the Government General, 10,000 convicts

from Eastern Territories, 17,000 former Polish officers, 400,000 Poles

from Warsaw and between 15,000-20,000 continually arriving from France

(Document Number 1166-PS).

These were only the physically fit and therefore permanent

residents—permanent, at least until through physical exhaustion their

productive capacity was no longer worth the nuisance that their

continued existence meant. Then they took their place in the daily

detail for the gas chambers.

Day after day the chimneys of the crematoria belched their nauseating

stench over the countryside. When the Bishop of Limburg could write to

Frick of the repulsive odors from the comparatively insignificant ovens

at Hadamar, can we doubt the evidence of Hoess that I mentioned?

“The foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of

bodies permeated the entire area and all the people living in

the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going

on at Auschwitz.”

Day after day trainloads of victims traveled over the railroads of the

whole Reich on their way to the extermination centers or their own

slavery. Many arrived dying and even dead through the appalling

conditions under which they journeyed. An official at the railway

station at Essen has described the arrival of workers from Poland,

Galicia, and the Ukraine:

“They came in goods wagons in which potatoes, building

materials, and also cattle had been transported. The trucks were

jammed full with people. My personal view was that it was

inhuman to transport people in such a manner.

“The people were squashed closely together and they had hardly

any room for free movement.... It was enraging to every decent

German to see how the people were beaten and kicked and

generally maltreated in a brutal manner. In the very beginning,

as the first transports arrived, we could see how inhumanly

these people were treated. Every wagon was so overfull that it

was incredible that such a number could be jammed into one

wagon.... The clothing of prisoners of war and civilian workers

... was catastrophic. It was ragged and ripped and the footwear

was the same. In many cases they had to go to work with rags

round their feet. Even in the worst weather and bitterest cold I

have never seen that any of the wagons were heated” (Document

Number D-321).

Those men were not destined for concentration camps—that was certain.

How much worse the conditions of these who were. Great columns, too,

trekked on foot along the highways of the Reich. They walked until they

could walk no more; then they died by the side of the road. Ziereis,

commandant of Mauthausen, in his dying confession said:

“In the presence of Baldur von Schirach and others I received

the following order from ... Himmler ...:

“All Jews of localities in the Southeast, working on the

so-called fortification commands ... are to be sent on foot to

Mauthausen.

“In consequence of this order of Himmler’s 60,000 Jews were to

come to Mauthausen, but in fact only a small fraction of this

number arrived. As an example I mention that out of one convoy

of 4,500 Jews which started out from somewhere in the country,

only 180 arrived ... women and children had been without shoes

and were in rags and were very verminous. In that convoy were

complete families of which due to weakness an immense number had

been shot on the way” (Document Number D-626).

Now, whatever may have been hidden from view behind the stockades of the

concentration camps, these things were open for all to see. Every one of

these defendants must have seen them and the thousands of concentration

camp prisoners working in the fields and factories adorned in their

striped pajamas—a uniform that was as familiar as any other in Germany.

How possibly could any one of these defendants, had he even a spark of

human pity, have continued to take active part in support of a system

that was responsible for such suffering? But they had no pity—and by

their ideology and teaching they had deprived the German people of pity.

Ziereis describes the frightful end that Kaltenbrunner contemplated for

the concentration camps and their inmates when the advancing Allied

Armies brought with them the danger of capturing those camps and of

disclosing the guilt of the Nazi Government.

“... Prisoners were to be led into the tunnels of the factory

Bergkristall ... the only entrance was to be blown up by the use

of explosive and the death of the prisoners was to be effected

in this manner” (Document Number 3870-PS).

Even Ziereis, murderer of Mauthausen’s 65,000 dead, shied, and refused

that order.

That evidence is corroborated beyond question by the written order

issued by the commandant of the Sipo and SD in the Government General,

which has been put in as evidence:

“Should the situation at the front necessitate it, early

preparations are to be made for the total clearance of the

prisons. Should the situation develop suddenly, in such a way

that it is impossible to evacuate the prisoners the present

inmates are to be liquidated and their bodies disposed of as far

as possible (burning, blowing up the building, et cetera). If

necessary, Jews still employed in the armament industry or on

other work are to be dealt with in the same way. The liberation

of prisoners or Jews by the enemy, be it the Western enemies or

the Red Army, must be avoided under all circumstances. Nor may

they fall into their hands alive” (Document Number L-53).

And Kaltenbrunner himself saw to it that these orders should be carried

out. With this evidence before us, there can be only one meaning to that

teleprint message which was found among his papers on his arrest:

“Please inform the Reichsführer SS and report to the Führer that

all arrangements as to Jews, political and concentration camp

internees in the Protectorate have been taken care of by me

personally today” (Document Number 2519-PS).

The proposition which you are asked to accept is that a man who was

either a minister or a leading executive in a state which, within the

space of 6 years, transported in horrible conditions some 7 million men,

women, and children for labor, exterminated 275,000 of its own aged and

mentally infirm and annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting what

must at the lowest computation be 12,000,000 people, remained ignorant

of or irresponsible for these crimes. You are asked to accept that the

horrors of the transports, of the conditions of this slave labor,

deployed as it was in labor camps throughout the country, the smell of

the burning bodies, all of which were known to the world, were not known

to these 21 men by whose orders such things were done. When they spoke

or wrote in support of this horrible policy of genocide you are asked to

accept that their utterances were made in ignorance of the facts, as

part of their general duty to support the policy of their government, or

finally, should be regarded merely as, tactical—that is to say, that

only by talking or writing in such a way could they divert Hitler from

cruelty or aggression. It is for you to decide.

Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank,

Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel,

Jodl, Von Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche,

Bormann—these are the guilty men.

Let me make brief comments upon each one of them, but in particular upon

those whose close complicity in the most sordid crimes of all, the

bestial murders, has possibly been less manifest.

Göring’s responsibility in all these matters is scarcely to be denied.

Behind his spurious air of bonhomie, he was as great an architect as any

in this satanic system. Who, apart from Hitler, had more knowledge of

what went on, or greater influence to affect its course? The conduct of

government in the Nazi State, the gradual build-up of the organization

for war, the calculated aggression, the atrocities—these things do not

occur spontaneously or without the closest co-operation between the

holders of the various offices of state. Men do not advance into foreign

territory, pull the trigger, drop their bombs, build the gas chambers,

collect the victims, unless they are organized and ordered to do it.

Crimes on the national and systematic scale which occurred here must

involve anyone who forms a part of the necessary chain, since without

that participation, plans for aggression here, mass murder there, would

become quite impossible. The Führer Principle by which the Nazis placed

their bodies and their very souls at the disposal of their leader was

the creation of the Nazi Party, and of these men. When I addressed you

at the opening of this Trial, I remarked that there comes a time when a

man must choose between his conscience and his leader. No one who

chooses, as these men did, to abdicate their consciences in favor of

this monster of their own creation can complain now if they are held

responsible for complicity in what their monster did.

And least of all, Hess. The role Hess played in the Nazi Party is well

established. But not content with creating the monster, he aided it in

every aspect of its monstrous work.

I mention only one instance. You will recall, in connection with the

extermination of the Eastern peoples, his direction to Party officials

to support recruitment for the Waffen-SS. He said:

“... it consists of National Socialists who are more suitable

than other armed units for the specific tasks to be solved in

the Occupied Eastern Territories, owing to their intensive

National Socialist training in regard to questions of race and

nationality” (Document Number 3245-PS).

Ribbentrop’s part, also, is clear. No one in history has so debauched

diplomacy. No one has been guilty of meaner treachery. But he, like the

rest of them, is just a common murderer. Ribbentrop it was who, since

1940, had been directing the minions in his Embassy and legations

throughout Europe to accelerate the execution of such “political

measures,” that is, measures of racial extermination (Document Number

EC-265). It was not Himmler, but the Reich Foreign Minister who proudly

reported to the Duce in February 1943 that, “All Jews had been

transported from Germany and from the territories occupied by her to

reservations in the East” (Document Number D-734).

His bald recommendations to Horthy two months later and the record of

the conference called by Steengracht, his permanent Under Secretary of

State, betray the meaning of these ghastly euphemisms (Documents D-736,

3319-PS).

No one was more insistent on merciless action in the occupied

territories than Ribbentrop. You will remember his advice to the

Italians on how to deal with strikes: “... in such a case only merciless

action is any good ... in the occupied territories where it has proved

that we would not get anywhere with soft measures or the endeavor to

reach an agreement” (Document Number D-740).

Advice which he proceeded to reinforce by referring with pride to the

successes of “brutal measures” in Norway, “brutal action” in Greece, and

in France and Poland the success of “Draconian measures.”

Were Keitel and Jodl less involved in murder than their confederates?

They cannot deny knowledge or responsibility for the operations of the

Einsatzkommandos with whom their own commanders were working in close

and cordial co-operation. The attitude of the High Command to the whole

question is typified by Jodl’s remark about the evacuation of Danish

Jews: “I know nothing of this. If a political measure is to be carried

out by the military commander in Denmark, the OKW must be notified by

the Foreign Office” (Document Number D-547).

You cannot disguise murder by calling it a political measure.

Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, must be guilty. The reports of the

Einsatzkommandos were sent to him monthly (Document Number 3876-PS). You

will remember the words of Gisevius, a witness for the Defense:

“We asked ourselves whether it was possible that an even worse

man could possibly be found after such a monster as Heydrich....

Kaltenbrunner came ... and things got worse every day.... We had

the experience that perhaps the impulsive actions of a murderer

like Heydrich were not as bad as the cold legal logic of a

lawyer who was handling such a dangerous instrument as the

Gestapo.”

You will remember his description of those horrible luncheon parties at

which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of

the technique of mass murder.

Rosenberg’s guilt as the philosopher and theorist who made the ground

fertile for the seeds of Nazi policy is not in doubt, and it is beyond

belief that he, as Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories, did

not know of and support the destruction of the ghettos and the

operations of the Einsatzkommandos. In October 1941, when the operations

of those Kommandos were at their height, one of Rosenberg’s ministerial

departmental chiefs was writing to the Reich Commissioner for the East

in Riga informing him that the Reich Security Main Office had complained

that he had forbidden the executions of the Jews in Libau and asking for

a report upon the matter. On 15 November, the report comes back

addressed to the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories:

“I have forbidden the wild execution of Jews in Libau because

they were not justifiable in the manner in which they were

carried out. I should like to be informed whether your inquiry

of 31 October is to be regarded as a directive to liquidate all

Jews in the East? Shall this take place without regard to age

and sex and economic interests...? ... of course, the cleansing

of the East of Jews is a necessary task; its solution, however,

must be harmonized with the necessities of war production”

(Document Number 3663-PS).

Frank—if it is not sufficient to convict him that he was responsible

for the administration of the Government General and for one of the

bloodiest and most brutal chapters in Nazi history—has himself stated:

“One cannot kill all lice and all Jews in one year” (Document Number

2233-C-PS).

It is no coincidence that that was exactly Hitler’s language. And again:

“As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite

frankly that they must be done away with in one way or

another.... Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all

feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find

them and whenever it is possible in order to maintain the

structure of the Reich as a whole.... We cannot shoot or poison

these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take

measures which will lead to their annihilation in some way”

(Document Number 2233-D-PS).

Can Frick, as Minister of Interior, have been unaware of the policy to

exterminate the Jews? In 1941 one of his subordinates, Heydrich, was

writing to another—the Minister of Justice: “... it may safely be

assumed that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed

Eastern Territories” (Document Number R-96).

Can he, as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, deny responsibility

for the deportations of thousands of Jews from his territory to the gas

chambers of Auschwitz, only a few miles across the frontier?

Of Streicher, one need say nothing. Here is a man more responsible,

perhaps, than any, for the most frightful crime the world has ever

known. For 25 years the extermination of the Jews had been his terrible

ambition. For 25 years he had educated the German people in the

philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He had incited and prepared

them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal

persecution and slaughter of millions of his fellow men. Without him

these things could not have been. It is long since he forfeited all

right to live.

The fact that the Defendants Schacht and Funk dealt chiefly with

economics ought not blind the Tribunal to their important part in the

general plan. Schacht says that he had clean hands in this matter. It is

for you to say. Schacht played his part in bringing Hitler to power. He

says he thought that Hitler was “a man with whom one could co-operate,”

and assured Hitler that he could always count on him “as your reliable

assistant” (Document Number EC-457). He helped to consolidate the Nazi

position and he was the main figure in collecting election funds from

the industrialists.

It then became his task to provide the economic plan and machinery

necessary to launch and maintain aggression. He knew the policy about

the Jews, he knew the methods Hitler was using to build up his power, he

knew the ultimate aim was aggression. But he continued to play his part.

Messersmith has summed up his work:

“... yet by Schacht’s resourcefulness, his complete financial

ruthlessness and his absolute cynicism, Schacht was able to

maintain and to establish the situation for the Nazis.

Unquestionably, without this complete lending of his capacities

to the Nazi Government and all of its ambitions, it would have

been impossible for Hitler and the Nazis to develop an armed

force sufficient to permit Germany to launch an aggressive war”

(Document Number EC-451).

The fact that that was in Schacht’s mind was shown at a very early date

most clearly in a secret report issued by his Ministry of Economics on

30 September 1934 (Document Number EC-128). I have already referred to

his deputy’s report showing the amazing detail in which plans and

preparations for the management of German economy in time of war had

been worked out before Schacht resigned in 1937 (Document Number

EC-258).

It is not surprising that on Schacht’s sixtieth birthday the then German

Minister of War, Von Blomberg, said to him: “Without your help, my dear

Schacht, none of this armament could have taken place.”

In the witness box Schacht says that as early as the second half of 1934

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

Hitler would bring the “revolutionary forces” of Nazism into the regular

atmosphere and he discovered that Hitler did nothing to stop the

excesses of individual Party members or Party groups. He was pursuing a

“policy of terror.”

That accords very closely with Schacht’s statement to the American

Ambassador in September 1934: “... the Hitler Party is absolutely

committed to war and the people too are ready and willing. Only a few

government officials are aware of the danger and are opposed” (Document

Number EC-461).

Schacht’s further suggestions that his purpose in the Government was to

be critical and was to act as a brake are, as we submit, impossible to

reconcile with his own actions. He need not have become Minister of

Economics according to his own account, but he did so nonetheless. In

May 1935, the month in which he undertook his task as General

Plenipotentiary for War Economy, “to put all economic forces in the

service of carrying on war and to secure the life of the German people

economically,” he wrote to Hitler:

“... all expenditures which are not urgently needed in other

matters must stop and the entire, in itself small, financial

power of Germany must be concentrated toward the one goal—the

financing of the armament” (Document Number 1168-PS).

In May 1936 he told a secret meeting of Nazi ministers that his program

of financing armaments had meant “the commitment of the last reserve

from the beginning” (Document Number 1301-PS). He said he would continue

to work since he stood “with unswerving loyalty to the Führer because he

fully recognizes the basic idea of National Socialism.”

In 1937, when Hitler bestowed the Golden Party Badge upon him, Schacht

appealed to all his colleagues: “... further to devote with all their

hearts their entire strength to the Führer and the Reich. The German

future lies in the hands of our Führer” (Document Number EC-500).

The mercy killings; the persecution of the Jews. These things must have

been known at that time. Were his hands so clean?

In the light of these quotations it is not unexpected to find Ambassador

Dodd, whom Schacht counted among his friends, recalling in his diary on

21 December 1937:

“Much as he dislikes Hitler’s dictatorship, he (Schacht), as

most other eminent Germans, wishes annexation—without war if

possible, with war, if the United States will keep hands off”

(Document Number 2832-PS).

These quotations, in our submission, make it clear that Schacht knew

well that Hitler’s aim was war very much earlier than he himself admits.

He does admit, however, that he knew that the plot to discredit General

Von Fritsch meant war. Despite that knowledge, on 9 March 1938, he

accepted the appointment as Reichsbank president for an additional 4

years. He joyously took part in the acquisition of the former Austrian

National Bank on 21 March 1938 and on 7 June 1939 wrote to Hitler:

“From the beginning the Reichsbank has been aware of the fact

that a successful foreign policy could be attained only by the

reconstruction of the German Armed Forces. It therefore assumed

to a very great extent the responsibility to finance the

rearmament in spite of the inherent dangers to the currency. The

justification thereof was the necessity—which pushed all other

considerations into the background—to carry through the

armament at once, out of nothing and furthermore under

camouflage in the beginning, which made a foreign policy

commanding respect possible” (Document Number EC-369).

These words, and others like them, are merely putting into fine phrases

Schacht’s knowledge that, if the proposed victims resisted, Hitler was

prepared and would be able to plunge into war conditions to achieve his

aims. Schacht’s intellect and international position only increased the

cynical immorality of his crimes.

Moreover Schacht must face these facts. The Tribunal has seen the

evidence of the film which showed his sycophantic trotting beside Hitler

and swarming over him in 1940. Long before 1943 he must have known of

the treatment of the Jews and the reign of terror in occupied countries.

Yet until 1943 Schacht remained a Minister without Portfolio and at all

events lent his name and weight to this regime of horror. Should anyone

be left to boast that he did this with impunity?

Funk carried on Schacht’s work. He had already rendered invaluable

service to the conspirators by his organization of the Ministry of

Propaganda. From 1938 on he was Minister of Economics, president of the

Reichsbank and chief Plenipotentiary for Economics, mobilizing economy

for aggressive war, well knowing the Nazi plans for aggression. We find

him in every field; attending Göring’s conference on 12 November 1938,

the meeting of the Reich Defense Council in June 1939, advising on

decrees to be issued against the Jews at the former and the employment

of concentration camp and slave labor at the latter. The final proof of

the welcome with which he viewed aggression is found in his letter to

Hitler on the 25th of August 1939, the day before the invasion of Poland

had been said to begin; he said:

“How happy and how grateful we must be to you to be favored to

experience these colossal and world-moving times, and that we

can contribute to the tremendous events of those days.

“... Generalfeldmarschall Göring informed me last night that

you—my Führer—have approved in principle the measures prepared

by me for financing a war, for setting up the wage and price

system and for carrying out the plan for an emergency

contribution....

“With the proposals worked out by me regarding a ruthless

restriction of any unessential consumption and any public

expenditure and project not necessary for war, we will be able

to meet all financial and economic demands without any serious

reverberations” (Document Number 699-PS).

His part during the war needs no further mention than reference to the

minutes of the Central Planning Board and to his arrangement with

Himmler for the exploitation of the SS loot which, as he knew, came in

truckloads from Auschwitz and the other concentration camps to the

vaults of the Reichsbank. The Tribunal will also remember the document

which shows that his Ministry of Economics received enormous quantities

of civilian clothing from these unhappy victims (Document Number

1166-PS).

Was Dönitz ignorant, when he addressed to a Navy of some 600,000 men, a

speech on the “spreading poison of Jewry” (Document Number 2878-PS)?

Dönitz, who thought fit to circulate to the Naval War Staff Hitler’s

directive for dealing with the general strike at Copenhagen—“terror

should be met by terror”—and asked for 12,000 concentration camp

workers for the shipyards, recommending collective reprisals for

Scandinavian workers in view of the efficacy of similar methods in

France (Documents C-171, C-195).

Are Raeder’s hands unstained with the blood of murder? As early as 1933,

to use his own words: “... Hitler had made the clear political request

to build up ... by 1 April 1938 armed forces which he could put in the

balance as an instrument of political power” (Document Number C-135).

When, therefore, he received successive orders to fight if war resulted

from Hitler’s foreign policy, he knew very well that war was a certain

risk if that policy went awry. Again and again he had this warning,

first when Germany left the Disarmament Conference, again at the time of

the negotiations for the Naval Agreement in 1935, at the time of the

Rhineland, and later when he attended the famous Hossbach conference. He

has tried to persuade this Tribunal that he regarded Hitler’s speeches

at these meetings as mere talk, yet we know that they gave Neurath a

heart attack. His old service comrades, Von Blomberg and Von Fritsch,

who were unwise enough to object at the conference which sealed the fate

of Austria and Czechoslovakia, were dealt with in a manner which, in his

own words, shook his confidence not only in Göring, but in Hitler as

well.

Can Raeder have been ignorant of the murder of thousands of Jews at

Libau in the Baltic? You will remember the evidence that many of them

were killed in the naval port and the facts reported by his naval

officers at the local headquarters to Kiel (Documents D-841, L-180). We

now know from the report of the Kommando which dealt with the Jews of

Libau that at the end of January 1942 they had accounted for 11,860 in

that district alone. Raeder, on Heroes Day 1939, spoke of the clear and

inspiring summons to fight international Jewry (Document Number D-653).

Do you really believe, when he was always helping individual Jews, he

had never heard of the horrors of concentration camps or the murder of

millions? Yet he still went on.

Von Schirach. What need one say of him? That it were better that a

millstone had been placed round his neck...? It was this wretched man

who perverted millions of innocent German children so that they might

grow up and become what they did become—the blind instruments of that

policy of murder and domination which these men carried out.

The infamous “Heu Aktion” by which between 40,000 and 50,000 Soviet

children were kidnapped into slavery was a product of his work (Document

Number 031-PS). You will remember the weekly SS reports on the

extermination of the Jews found in his office (Document Number 345-PS).

What is the crime of Sauckel whose Gau contained the infamous camp of

Buchenwald? Sauckel may now seek to put a gloss on his order to shanghai

Frenchmen, to deny that he advocated the hanging of a prefect or a mayor

to crush opposition, to say that references to ruthless action referred

to interdepartmental disputes and that reformatory labor camps were

purely educational institutions. You who have seen the documents which

attest the horrors perpetrated in what we are now told was the product

of an emergency—the urgent need for workers to feed the Nazi war

machine, you who have heard and read of the conditions in which 7

million men, women, and children torn from their homes were dragged into

slavery at his orders can need no further proof of his guilt.

Papen and, if mercy can survive his record in Czechoslovakia, Neurath,

are in like case with Raeder. Like him they professed old family and

professional integrity, facts which carry with them a great

responsibility from which men like Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are

free.

Within 18 months of putting Hitler in power Papen knew that Hitler’s

Government meant oppression of opponents, ill-treatment of the Jews, and

persecution of the churches including his own. His recent political

friends had been sent to concentration camps or killed, including men

like Von Schleicher, and Von Bredow. He had himself been arrested, two

members of his staff killed and another compelled to witness killing.

None of these things were hidden from Von Neurath, yet he remained in

office.

In 1934 Papen was writing sycophantic letters to Hitler and shortly

afterward we find him in Austria working for a man he knows to be a

murderer, undermining a regime for which he professed outward

friendship. Even after the Anschluss he was still working for a regime

which he knew used murder as an instrument of policy and after losing

yet another secretary by murder he was ready to accept a post in Turkey.

The Concordat with his own Church which he had himself negotiated is

treated as “a scrap of paper” to use his own words, and Catholics from

archbishops to simple believers were outraged. He has said: “Hitler was

the greatest crook that ever lived.” The case for the Prosecution in a

sentence is that, knowing this only too well, Von Papen gave Hitler his

support and co-operation because his greed for power and office made it

“better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”

Defense Counsel have sought to portray Papen as an advocate of peace. If

he preferred to attain the objects of the conspiracy by the methods of

assassination, bullying, and blackmail rather than open war, the reason

may be that provided by him in his own evidence, namely that he feared

that: “If a world war were to break out, Germany’s situation would be

hopeless.”

As to Seyss-Inquart, you will remember Göring’s instructions to him on

the 26th of March 1938, to institute anti-Semitic measures in Austria,

followed by the progress report on 12 November by one of his officials

(Documents 3460-PS, 1816-PS). As far as concerns the Jews in the

Netherlands, he admits that he knew they were being deported, but says

he was powerless to stop it as it was ordered from Berlin. He has

further said that he knew they went to Auschwitz but he says he sent

there to inquire about them, was told they were well off, and arranged

for them to send mail from Auschwitz to Holland. It is likely that

Seyss-Inquart who admits knowledge of large-scale crimes against the

Jews in the Netherlands, for example “a drive to force the Jews to be

sterilized,” who admits that many and grave excesses occurred in the

Netherlands concentration camps and indeed that in wartime he

“considered that almost inevitable,” who pleads that in comparison with

camps elsewhere “it was perhaps not quite so bad in the

Netherlands,”—is it possible that he was really deceived as he says

into thinking the people in Auschwitz were “comparatively well off”?

One comes next to the Defendants Speer and Fritzsche who have appeared

in this Trial as experts. Speer has admitted that his responsibility for

conscription of labor helped to bring up the total number of workers

under him to 14 million. He stated that when he took over office in

February 1942 all the perpetrations or violations of international law

of which he could be accused had already been realized. Nevertheless he

went on to say:

“the workers were ... brought into Germany against their will. I

had no objection to their being brought to Germany against their

will. On the contrary during the first period until autumn of

1942 I certainly used all my energy, that as many workers as

possible should be brought to Germany.”

Further, workers were placed at his disposal by Sauckel and he was

responsible for their allocation priorities.

He acknowledged the receipt of 1 million Soviet laborers in August 1942

(Document Number R-124). On 4 January 1944 he demanded 1,300,000 workers

for the coming year. Speer produced no defense of this conscription of

labor but he did assert that from 1943 he had supported the retention of

French workers in France, which is a mere matter of mitigation (Document

Number 1202-PS). The moderation of Speer’s manner ought not to hide the

fact that this policy, which he cheerfully adopted and applied, was one

that meant the most appalling misery and suffering for millions of

Soviet and other families.

It displays once again the complete disregard for the fate of other

people which runs like a sordid thread through the evidence in this

Trial, and no moral awakening regarding the interest of the German

people—I repeat “the German people”—at the end of the war, can offset

the participation in this horrible action.

With regard to the treatment of foreign workers Speer’s general point

was that the evidence for the Prosecution is simply that of individual

bad instances and should not be taken as the general condition. If it

were the general condition he would accept responsibility. The

Prosecution submit that their evidence, viewed as a whole, is conclusive

evidence of general bad conditions.

Neurath, who has told the Tribunal that he joined Hitler’s Government to

keep it peace-loving and respectable, knew within a few weeks that the

Jews were being persecuted, that reputable foreign papers and reputable

German papers too for that matter were quoting official figures of

10,000 to 20,000 internees. He knew that the opposition, the Communists,

the trade unionists and Social Democrats were being destroyed as

political forces. The blood purge followed, yet he went on and seconded

Hitler in his breaches of the Treaty of Versailles. We have the evidence

of Paul Schmidt that the murder of Dollfuss and the attempted Putsch in

Austria seriously disturbed the career personnel of the Foreign Office

whilst they regarded the Mutual Assistance Pact between France and the

Soviet Union as a further very serious warning as to the potential

consequences of German foreign policy.

“At this time the career officials at least expressed their

reservation to the Foreign Minister Neurath. I do not know

whether or not Neurath in turn related these expressions of

concern to Hitler” (Document Number 3308-PS).

Yet when Raeder was issuing orders about the danger of showing

“enthusiasm for war,” Von Neurath would have you believe that he had

failed to realize its growth. He, as much as Raeder, saw and took part

in the events which followed, the secret meetings, the treatment of Von

Blomberg and Von Fritsch; he it was at the time of the Anschluss who,

though no longer Foreign Minister gave the support of a name, not yet

notably tarnished, to Hitler’s action by transmitting untruths in denial

of the British note and by reassuring the Czechs (Document Number

C-194). That reassurance ought never to be forgotten—there can be few

things more grimly cynical than Von Neurath who had listened to the

Hossbach meeting solemnly telling M. Mastny that Hitler would stand by

the Arbitration Treaty with Czechoslovakia. As soon as Hitler had

marched into Prague, he it was who became Protector of Bohemia and

Moravia. You have heard his admission that he applied all decrees for

the treatment of the Jews which had appeared in Germany between 1933 and

1939.

Fritzsche’s work was to organize the entire German press so that it

became “a permanent instrument of the Propaganda Ministry” (Document

Number 3469-PS). Propaganda was the most potent factor in all Nazi

strategy. Here in turn that factor made all the press its most potent

weapon. The fact that he knew and participated in the use of his

organization is shown by his attempt to whitewash the successive

propaganda actions which led up to each of the various aggressions

mentioned in his affidavit. As he said: “All news checked by me was full

of tendency while not invented” (Document Number 3469-PS).

It is incredible that when he was called upon time after time to conduct

what was specifically referred to as actions and when each time he saw

the practical results he did not realize the dishonesty with which the

German policy was being conducted or that the aim of the Nazi Government

was aggressive war. His personal ability as a broadcaster caused him to

become virtually an official commentator. To quote his own words: “May I

add that it is even known to me that in remote front sectors, for

instance, or in German colonies abroad my radio speeches were

considered, shall we say, the political guide.”

He has emphasized that in these comments he had a free hand. Is it to be

doubted that this was because he was prepared to broadcast whatever lie

Goebbels wanted? He himself says, in dealing with the uses to which his

influence was put: “... again and again I was requested to awaken hatred

against individuals and against systems.”

You have seen a sample in his broadcast on the _Athenia_ (Document

Number D-912). As early as 1940 he broke far enough away from the

restraint which he tried to picture in the witness box to call the Poles

“underpeople” and “beasts in human form” (Document Number USSR-492).

On the 18th of December 1941 he referred to the fate of European Jews in

the following words:

“The fate of Jewry in Europe has turned out to be as unpleasant

as the Führer predicted it would be in the event of a European

war. After the extension of the war instigated by the Jews, this

unpleasant fate may also spread to the New World, for you can

hardly assume that the nations of the New World will pardon the

Jews for the misery of which the Old World did not absolve them”

(Document Number 3064-PS).

There were few more dreadful or hate-provoking accusations among the

whole miasma of Nazi lies against the Jews, than that of instigating the

war which brought such misery to humanity, yet this educated and

thoughtful defendant deliberately made it.

It is difficult to imagine any more fulsome or callous adulation of

Hitler’s aggression than his speech on 9 October 1941 which contained

the words:

“... and we are particularly grateful for these lightning

victories because—as the Führer emphasized last Friday—they

gave us the possibility of embarking on the organization of

Europe and of lifting the treasures of this old continent even

now in the middle of a war, without having to keep millions and

millions of German soldiers on guard ...” (Document Number

3064-PS).

Perhaps the key to Fritzsche’s readiness to conceal the war crimes of

his masters is revealed by the basic principle of his propaganda. I

quote:

“But decisive for such a news machine is not the detail but the

final fundamental basis on which propaganda is built. Decisive

is the belief in the purity of the leader’s of the state on

which in some way every journalist must rely.”

Fritzsche maintained until practically the very end the most excellent

relations with Dr. Goebbels. When the Tribunal consider the picture of

total extremism and violent anti-Semitism which the other defendants

have painted of Goebbels it is difficult to imagine that the worship of

his closest collaborator could have been based on innocent ignorance.

The Prosecution submit that it is laughable that such a man should try

and persuade you that it was in ignorance of these horrors that he went

on exhorting and persuading the German people to tread the path to their

doom. Fritzsche shares with Streicher, Rosenberg, and Schirach the

responsibility for the utter degradation of the German people so that

“they shut the gates of mercy on mankind.” It was because of them that

such scenes as that in the Jewish cemetery at Schwetz on that Sunday

morning in October 1939 occurred, when 200 of Keitel’s decent Wehrmacht

soldiers watched without a murmur the murder of that lorry-load of women

and children. You will remember the story as three of them have told it:

“On Saturday ... I heard ... from conversations among my

comrades that a large number of Poles had been shot at the

Jewish cemetery of Schwetz in the morning.... Talk about the

imminent shootings was common among the soldiers stationed in

Schwetz. For this reason I went to the Jewish cemetery on Sunday

morning together with most of the comrades of my company. We

waited there in vain until 9 o’clock.

“... when a large truck loaded with women and children entered

the cemetery. We saw how a group of one woman and three children

... were led to a ready-dug grave. The woman had to get down

into the grave, holding her youngest child in her arms. The two

other children were handed to her by two men of the execution

squad. The woman had to lie face downward in the grave; her

three children on her left in the same way. After that four men

of the squad got down into the grave, raised their rifles and,

aiming the muzzles at the woman and the children about one foot

from their necks, shot them. In all, about nine or ten groups of

women and children were shot in this mass grave in groups of

four. When three or four groups had been shot, two more comrades

were ordered to fill in the graves. Two hundred soldiers of the

Wehrmacht witnessed these shootings from a distance of about 100

feet.

“Somewhat later a second bus arrived at the cemetery, loaded

with men; one woman was among them. These men were separated

into groups of four and made to get down into the grave. The

corpses there were only barely covered with sand. They had to

lie face downward and were executed by the four men of the

squad, who shot them in the back of the neck.”

You are asked to believe that these 21 ministers and leading officers of

state did not know about those matters—were not responsible. It is for

you to decide.

Years ago Goethe said of the German people that some day fate would

strike them ...

“... would strike them because they betrayed themselves and did

not want to be what they are. It is sad that they do not know

the charm of truth, that mist, smoke, and berserk immoderation

are so dear to them, pathetic that they ingenuously submit to

any mad scoundrel who appeals to their lowest instincts, who

confirms them in their vices and teaches them to conceive

nationalism as isolation and brutality.”

With what a voice of prophecy he spoke—for these are the mad scoundrels

who did those very things.

Some it may be are more guilty than others; some played a more direct

and active part than others in these frightful crimes. But when those

crimes are such as you have to deal with here—slavery, mass murder and

world war, when the consequences of the crimes are the deaths of over 20

million of our fellow men, the devastation of a continent, the spread of

untold tragedy and suffering throughout the world, what mitigation is it

that some took less part than others, that some were principals and

others mere accessories. What matters it if some forfeited their lives

only a thousand times whilst others deserved a million deaths?

In one way the fate of these men means little: Their personal power for

evil lies forever broken; they have convicted and discredited each other

and finally destroyed the legend they created round the figure of their

leader. But on their fate great issues must still depend, for the ways

of truth and righteousness between the nations of the world, the hope of

future international co-operation in the administration of law and

justice are in your hands. This Trial must form a milestone in the

history of civilization, not only bringing retribution to these guilty

men, not only marking that right shall in the end triumph over evil, but

also that the ordinary people of the world—and I make no distinction

now between friend or foe—are not determined that the individual must

transcend the state. The state and the law are made for men, that

through them he may achieve a fuller life, a higher purpose, and a

greater dignity. States may be great and powerful. Ultimately the rights

of men, made as all men are made in the image of God, are fundamental.

When the state, either because as here its leaders have lusted for power

and place, or under some specious pretext that the end may justify the

means, affronts these things, they may for a time become obscured and

submerged. But they are immanent and ultimately they will assert

themselves more strongly still, their immanence more manifest. And so,

after this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind

itself—struggling now to re-establish in all the countries of the world

the common simple things—liberty, love, understanding—comes to this

Court and cries: “These are our laws—let them prevail!”

Then shall those other words of Goethe be translated into fact, not

only, as we must hope, of the German people but of the whole community

of man:

“... thus ought the German people to behave—giving and

receiving from the world, their hearts open to every fruitful

source of wonder, great through understanding and love, through

mediation and the spirit—thus ought they to be; that is their

destiny.”

You will remember when you come to give your decision the story of

Gräbe, but not in vengeance—in a determination that these things shall

not occur again.

“The father”—do you remember?—“pointed to the sky, and seemed to say

something to his boy.”

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 29 July 1946 at 1000 hours._]

ONE HUNDRED

AND EIGHTY-NINTH DAY

Monday, 29 July 1946

_Morning Session_

THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief Prosecutor for the Provisional

Government of the Republic of France, M. Champetier de Ribes.

M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French

Republic): Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Tribunal:

On presenting the final address of the French Public Prosecutor, I beg

the Tribunal to permit me to express the admiration and the gratitude of

my country for the objectivity and calm with which these proceedings

have been conducted. In the course of the last 9 months the events of

more than 15 years of history have been evoked at this bar. Germany’s

archives, those of them that the Nazis were unable to burn before their

defeat, have yielded up their secrets. We have heard numerous witnesses,

whose recollections would have been lost to history but for the present

Trial.

All the facts have been presented with strict objectivity, leaving no

room for passion nor even for sensibility. The Tribunal have excluded

from the proceedings everything that, in their opinion, seemed

insufficiently proved, everything that might have appeared to be

dictated by a spirit of vengeance. For the chief concern of this Trial

is above all that of historical truth.

Thanks to it, the historian of the future, as well as the chronicler of

today, will know the truth of the political, diplomatic, and military

events of the most tragic period of our history; he will know the crimes

of Nazism as well as the irresolution, the weaknesses, the omissions of

the peace-loving democracies.

He will know that the work of twenty centuries of a civilization, which

believed itself eternal, was almost destroyed by the return of ancient

barbarism in a new guise, all the more brutal because more scientific.

He will know that the progress of mechanical science, modern means of

propaganda, and the most devilish practices of a police which defied the

most elementary rules of humanity, enabled a small minority of criminals

within a few years to distort the collective conscience of a great

people, and to transform “the nation described by Dr. Sauter at the

conclusion of his speech in defense of Von Schirach, as loyal, upright,

and full of virtue, into that of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels—to

mention only those of them who are dead. He will know that the real

crime of these men was the conception of the gigantic plan of world

domination and the attempt to realize it by every possible means. By

every possible means, that is of course, by the breaking of pledges and

by unleashing the worst of all wars of aggression, but, above all, by

the scientific and systematic extermination of millions of human beings

and more especially of certain national or religious groups whose

existence hampered the hegemony of the Germanic race. This is a crime so

monstrous, so undreamt of in history throughout the Christian era up to

the birth of Hitlerism, that the term “genocide” has had to be coined to

define it and an accumulation of documents and testimonies has been

needed to make it credible.

The perfect collaboration of the four public prosecutors has enabled it

to be proved, to the shame of the times we live in, that this crime was

possible; and, within the limits of those Counts of the Indictment

reserved for herself, France believes that she has done her part in the

common task.

While the defendants and their counsels have said a great deal before

the Tribunal regarding the protection to which the innocent civilian

population is entitled, and have referred to this as to an obvious

principle, we have established the fact that the defendants have

deliberately violated this principle by treating these civilian

populations with the most complete disregard for human life. Is it

necessary to recall the terrible words of the Defendant Keitel, “human

life is worth less than nothing in the occupied territories.”

By reverting to the taking of hostages the defendants revived a

tradition which symbolizes the most primitive practices of warfare. They

put their signatures to general orders decreeing the capture and

execution of thousands of martyrs. In France alone 29,000 hostages were

shot. We know that the champions of the resistance movement, whose

patriotism is now admired by the defendants, were massacred, tortured,

and imprisoned with a view to their slow extermination. We know, too,

that, on the pretext of reprisals, in execution of orders or by the

cruelty of individuals covered by the complicity of the authorities,

civilians were taken at random and executed and that whole villages were

burnt down: Oradour-sur-Glane and Maillé in France, Putten in Holland

have not risen again from their ruins.

The atrocious orders issued in Marshal Kesselring’s operational sector

for combating partisan activity by terror are in all our minds. There we

saw one officer order the execution of fifty or a hundred men or even of

the entire male population of a region as a reprisal for isolated acts

directed against the German Army. The execution of that order was

authorized by instructions from the commander of the theater of

operations, who was himself acting on more general instructions issued

by the Defendant Keitel. This is an example of the perfect collaboration

existing between the National Socialist cadre and the State and is an

argument, if such be still necessary, for the joint responsibility of

the leading personalities of the regime. We know that thousands of men

were torn from their homes and forced to make arms to be used against

their own country.

The harsh treatment given to soldiers shocked us even more deeply,

because Germany, be it the traditional Germany, the Nazi Germany when it

was in power, or the Germany which is now presenting the paltry

arguments for its defense in the prisoners’ dock, has always claimed to

uphold the universal rules governing military honor and the respect due

to all combatants. In spite of this, we have seen Keitel himself, who

championed these ideas to such a degree that he even referred to them

again at the conclusion of his testimony in the witness box, urge

Wilhelmstrasse and his Codefendant Göring to approve his criminal

proposals for the treatment of airmen who fell into their hands.

Documents such as the testimony of Grüner leave no room for doubt that

criminal orders to exterminate and lynch airmen were given in the

customary way and transmitted to those responsible for their execution.

There is no doubt as to the principles which governed the drafting of

the order concerning the Commandos, nor as to the execution of this

order in the various theaters of operations. The Prosecution have

produced a striking collection of evidence on this point.

Our consternation was even greater when it was borne upon us with

certainty that cruel decrees had been issued for the execution or

imprisonment for the purpose of extermination of men already reduced to

a state of helplessness by their internment in prisoner-of-war camps.

The sinister affair of Sagan, often evoked in the course of this Trial,

is present in our minds. The defendants themselves attempt only to evade

personal responsibility without denying the atrocity of the truth of the

facts. We have shown how rebellious escaped officers and noncommissioned

officers, whose past records and attitude are proof of their moral

strength, were exterminated by “Aktion Kugel.”

At length, Nazi Germany unveiled her plans for expansion and world

domination by organizing the systematic extermination of the peoples

whose territories she had occupied. This operation was carried out at

first, as we have shown, by the political, economic, and moral

destruction of the occupied countries. The methods employed were the

brutal or gradual seizure of power, or carefully calculated infiltration

of German authority in every sphere, the preparation of a program of

economic pillage and its pitiless execution so as to lead to the

exhaustion of the occupied country and to put it at the absolute mercy

of the occupying power; in a word the Nazification of the State and the

people, as well as the destruction of cultural and moral values.

But this methodical extermination was carried out also in a concrete way

by the systematic massacre of the people. Is it necessary to recall the

mass extermination of groups considered impossible of assimilation into

the National Socialist world, the vast graveyard of the concentration

camps, where 15 million people perished, the abominable achievements of

the “Einsatzgruppen” (special purposes groups), described with

irrefutable precision by General Ohlendorf?

We consider we have also established proof of those pernicious attempts

at extermination, which on examination are seen to be one of the most

perfect examples of the defendants’ policy. I refer to the deliberate

undernourishment to which those non-Germans were subjected who for any

reason whatsoever came under Nazi authority—whole nations starved by

way of reprisal, civilian rations in occupied territories ruthlessly cut

to enable the plan for the pillage of the territory to be carried out.

The Tribunal will recall Göring’s speech to the Gauleiter which has been

submitted under Document Number USSR-170:

“It is absolutely immaterial to me if you say that your people

are fainting from hunger. Let them faint, as long as no German

starves.”

And again, with reference to Holland:

“It is not our mission to feed a nation which turns from us in

spirit. If its people are so weak that they cannot even raise a

hand where they are not employed to work for us ... so much the

better.”

Famine, bodily misery, and the resulting reduction of the potential of

life, are all included, together with the slow exhaustion of political

internees and prisoners of war, in the plan for the extermination of

populations in order to free German living space.

The same idea is behind the detention in captivity or semi-captivity, as

in the case of labor deportees, of healthy young men whose presence at

home was of vital importance for the future of their country. All this

has been confirmed by the latest census results.

These reveal that all the countries occupied by Germany show a decrease

in their population varying from 5 percent to 25 percent, whereas

Germany herself is the only country in Europe which shows an increase.

Gentlemen, we have proved all these crimes. After the submission of our

documents, the hearing of the witnesses, the projection of films which

the defendants themselves could not see without shuddering with horror,

nobody in the world can possibly claim that the extermination camps, the

executed prisoners, the slaughtered peoples, the mounds of corpses, the

human herds maimed in body and soul, the instruments of torture, the gas

chambers and crematories—no one can claim that all these crimes existed

only in the imagination of anti-German propagandists.

Indeed, none of the defendants have challenged the truth of the facts we

have reported. Unable to deny them, they try only to evade their own

responsibility by placing the guilt on those of their accomplices who

committed suicide.

“We knew nothing of those horrors,” they say, or else: “We did

everything we could to prevent them but Hitler, who was all-powerful,

gave the orders and allowed no one to disobey or even resign from

office.” What a poor defense! Who is likely to believe that they alone

were ignorant of what the whole world knew and that their monitoring

stations never reported to them the solemn warnings which were broadcast

repeatedly by the heads of the United Nations?

They could not disobey Hitler’s order, they could not even resign from

office? Indeed! Hitler might have governed their bodies but not their

souls. By disobeying him they might perhaps have lost their liberty or

even their lives but they would at least have saved their honor.

Cowardice has never been an excuse, nor even an extenuating

circumstance.

The truth is that having taken part in its elaboration they all knew

perfectly well the doctrine of National Socialism and its will to

universal domination. They were very well aware of the monstrous crimes

to which it inevitably led its adepts and its exponents and that all

accepted the responsibility in the same way that all accepted the

material and moral advantages which it lavished upon them.

But they thought themselves sure of impunity because they were certain

of victory, and that in the face of force triumphant no questions would

be asked about the justice of the cause. They persuaded themselves, as

they had done after the war of 1914, that no international jurisdiction

could ever indict them. They thought that Pascal’s pessimistic judgment

on human justice in international relationship would always be true.

“Justice can be disputed; force is easily recognizable and cannot be

disputed. So, as right cannot be made into might, might has been made

into right.” They are mistaken. Since Pascal’s day, the concepts of

morality and justice have slowly but surely taken shape and been

incorporated in the international customs of civilized nations.

The Tribunal will doubtless remember that at the conclusion of his

presentation of the charges made in the Indictment, the French

prosecutor stated in precise terms the responsibility of all the

defendants who are “guilty of having, in their role as the chief

Hitlerian leaders of the German people, conceived, willed, ordained, or

merely tolerated by their silence that assassinations or other inhuman

acts should be systematically committed, that violent treatment should

be systematically imposed on prisoners of war or civilians, that

devastations without justification be systematically committed as a

deliberate instrument for the accomplishment of their purpose of

dominating Europe and the world through terrorism and the extermination

of entire populations in order to enlarge the living space of the German

people.”

All that is left to us now is to demonstrate that the proceedings which

have taken place before you have served only to confirm and reinforce

the accusations and the statements formulated at the beginning of these

proceedings against the major criminals who, in execution of the

Charter, and to satisfy the demands of justice, have been committed by

the United Nations for trial by your Tribunal.

I ask the Tribunal to allow M. Dubost, the chief prosecutor, to present

his final statement.

M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic):

Such are the facts set forth by the French Delegation. It was necessary

to recall them in order to establish our contribution to the Trial. We

do not intend, however, to deal with our own work apart from the whole

resulting from the presentations of the other three delegations and the

general proceedings. It is on the basis of this work as a whole that we

shall proceed with our indictment and examine the personal

responsibility of the defendants.

Taking one by one the deeds for which they are responsible, there are

found to be murder, indictable theft, and other serious offenses against

persons and property which are always punishable in civilized countries.

M. de Menthon has already shown this in his introductory address.

The defendants did not actually commit the crimes; they were content to

decree them. According to our French law, they are therefore accomplices

in the technical sense of the term. Allowing for certain differences

which are mostly only differences of form, the perpetrators of serious

offenses and their accomplices are subject in most countries to capital

punishment or to very severe penalties, such as forced labor or solitary

confinement.

That is the Anglo-Saxon practice. This also holds good in France from

application of Articles 221 ff, 379 ff, 59 ff of the French Penal Code.

In Germany, Article 211 provides for the punishment of homicide; Article

212 relates to murder; Articles 223 to 226 to torture; Article 229 to

poisoning and murder by gas. Article 234 covers slavery, reduction to

serfdom, incorporation with a view to military service abroad; Articles

242 and 243 cover theft and pillage; Article 130 deals with the

incitement of the populace to violence. The position of accomplices and

co-originators is covered by Articles 47 and 49 of German law. Similar

provisions exist in Soviet legislation as well as in the legislation of

all great civilized countries.

The fact that, as leaders of the Reich and accomplices of the Führer,

these men are all responsible for the crimes committed under their

regime, and that in the eyes of all men of conscience their

responsibility is heavier than that of those who carried out their

orders, has been admitted by two of the defendants, Frank and Schirach.

Frank said:

“I have never founded extermination camps for Jews, nor was I

ever in favor of the existence of these camps; but if Adolf

Hitler placed this terrible responsibility on the shoulders of

his people, I, too, share in it; for we conducted a campaign

against the Jews for years, we made all kinds of statements

against them ...”

In his last few words Frank condemns, along with himself, all those who

pursued the campaign of incitement against the Jews in Germany and

elsewhere. Let us remember Frank’s answer to the question put to him by

his defense counsel as to the charges brought against him in the

Indictment. It is true of all the defendants and still more of those who

were closer to Hitler than he himself:

“As to these charges, I have only this to say: I ask the

Tribunal to determine the extent of my guilt at the end of these

proceedings; but I should like to say on my own account that

after all I have seen in the course of these 5 months of the

Trial, which have given me a general view of all the atrocities

that have been committed, I myself feel thoroughly guilty.”

Von Schirach for his part stated:

“This is the crime for which I am answerable, before myself,

before God, and before the German people: I trained the youth of

our country for the man whom, for years and years, I considered

unimpeachable as the head of our country. I trained our youth

for him. My crime lies in the fact that I trained our youth for

a man who was a murderer, who killed millions of people.... Any

German who, after Auschwitz, still adheres to the racial policy,

is guilty....

“I feel it my duty to say this.”

Such cries of conscience were rare in the course of this Trial and more

frequently, copying Göring’s quibbling vanity, the defendants tried to

extricate themselves by invoking a policy of neo-Machiavellism which

would free the leaders of the State of all personal responsibility. Let

us simply state that no such provisions exist in the laws of any

civilized country, and that, on the contrary, arbitrary and aggressive

acts aimed at personal liberty, at civic rights or at the constitution,

are all the more severely punished in cases where they have been

committed by a public functionary or high-ranking government official;

and that the most severe penalties are reserved for the ministers

themselves (Articles 114 and 115 of the French Penal Code).

But let us limit ourselves on this point. We aim only at recalling that

each of the principal deeds charged against the defendants may be

considered by itself as violating the criminal laws of one or other of

the positive internal laws of every civilized country, or as violating

that common international law, which M. de Menthon has already

interpreted and which has been submitted here as the root of

international custom, and that the punishment of each of these deeds is

therefore not without foundation; on the contrary, even if we restrict

ourselves to this preliminary analysis, the heaviest penalties have

already been incurred.

We must, however, go further; for while it does not omit any culpable

fact as such, the analysis of the defendant’s guilt in the light of

internal law is only a first approximation which would enable us to

prosecute the defendants merely as accomplices and not as principal

authors. And we are anxious to prove that they were in reality the

principal culprits.

We hope to succeed in this by developing the following three points:

1) The defendants’ acts are elements in a criminal political

plan.

2) The co-ordination of the various departments headed by these

men implies close co-operation between them for the realization

of their criminal policy.

3) They must be judged as functioning within the scope of this

criminal policy.

The acts of the defendants are the elements of a criminal political

plan:

The defendants have been active in widely differing spheres. As

politicians, diplomats, soldiers, sailors, economists, financiers,

jurists, or propagandists, they represent practically every form of

liberal activity. We recognize unhesitatingly, however, the tie that

binds them together. They have all put the best—or the worst—of

themselves at the service of the Hitlerite State. To a certain extent

they represent the brains of that State; but they themselves were not

the whole brain. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that they were an

important part of it. They conceived the policy of that State. They

wanted to transform their thoughts into action and all contributed in

almost the same degree toward its realization. This is true, no matter

whether it applies to Hess or Göring, professional politicians who admit

never having practiced any other profession but that of agitator or

statesman, or to Ribbentrop, Neurath, Papen, the diplomats of the

regime, or to Keitel, Jodl, Dönitz, or Raeder, the fighting men, to

Rosenberg, Streicher, Frank, or Frick, the inventors—if that term can

be applied to them—of the ideology of the system, to Schacht and Funk,

the financiers without whom the system would have gone bankrupt and

collapsed in the resulting inflation before it could rearm, to jurists

like Frank, to publicists and propagandists like Fritzsche

and—again—Streicher, devoted to the dissemination of the common idea,

or to technicians like Speer or Sauckel, without whom the idea could

never have been translated into action as it has been, to policemen such

as Kaltenbrunner who destroyed morale by terror, to ordinary Gauleiters

like Seyss-Inquart, Schirach, or—again—Sauckel, to administrators and

high-ranking officials as well as politicians, who gave definite shape

to the common policy conceived by the whole state and Party machine.

I know very well that the shadow of those who are absent looms over this

machine, and today’s defendants are perpetually reminding us of them:

“Hitler wanted this, Himmler wanted this, Bormann wanted this.” They

say: “I only obeyed,” and their defense counsels outdid them. Hitler,

the monstrous tyrant, the fanatic visionary, imposing his will with an

irresistible magnetic power—this is too simple; this is too sweeping.

No man is entirely unreceptive to suggestion, insinuation, and

influence; and Hitler escaped that law no more than any other man. We

have had irrefutable proof of this in all the glimpses afforded us by

these proceedings of the struggle for influence which went on in the

“great man’s” entourage. Malicious, underhand calumnies were circulated;

there were intrigues which reminded us at times during the proceedings

of the little courts of the Italian Renaissance. All the elements were

present, even murder. Did not Göring, before he himself fell into

disgrace, rid himself of Röhm and Ernst, who had plotted, not against

their master, but against him, as Gisevius told us. So much imagination,

such perseverance in evil, but also such efficiency, show us that Hitler

was not blind to the actions and intrigues of the men around him. What a

pity that these intrigues did not work in the right direction! But éwe

have direct evidence of Hitler’s responsiveness to influences and it is

given us by Schacht who, at the same time apart from these men, raises

the question of the German masses, whose good judgment they had

contributed to warp and whose worst passions they roused.

Did not Schacht say of Hitler in Court:

“I believe that at first his tendencies were not wholly evil; he

undoubtedly believed that his intentions were only good, but

little by little he became the victim of the charm he exerted

over the masses; for he who begins by seducing the masses is in

the end himself seduced by them, so that this relation between

leader and follower helped to lead him into the erroneous ways

of mob instincts, which every political leader should strive to

avoid.”

What was then the great idea behind it all? It was indisputably that of

the conquest of living space by any and every means, even the most

criminal.

At a time when Germany was still disarmed and when discretion was still

necessary, Schacht, who was at Hitler’s side, asked for colonies. We

remember Hirscheid’s testimony. He dissembled, however, and in part

disguised the master conception of the state machine to which he

belonged and we could not denounce this idea so easily were it not for

the disconcerting naiveté of the “great man” who had laid his entire

plan of campaign open to the inspection of the whole world 10 years

before.

Indeed we read in _Mein Kampf_ (Excerpt from Page 641), First quotation:

“Hence, the German nation can defend its own future only as a

world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our

people’s interests, as we should designate our more or less

successful activity in the field of foreign affairs, was world

history. We ourselves were witnesses to this fact: For the

gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914-18 was only

the struggle of the German people for its existence on the

globe, but we designated the type of event itself as a world

war.

“The German people entered this struggle as a supposed world

power. I say here ‘supposed,’ for in reality she was none. If

the German nation in 1914 had had a different relation between

area and population, Germany would really have been a world

power, and the war, aside from all other factors, could have

been terminated favorably.”

(Excerpt from Page 647) Second quotation:

“I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The

demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political

absurdity of such proportion and consequences as to make it seem

a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich’s frontiers in

1914 were anything but logical! For in reality they were neither

complete in the sense of embracing the people of German

nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency.

They were not the result of a considered political action, but

momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means

concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance.”

(Excerpt from Page 649) Third quotation:

“The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for the

German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past,

nor would they contain any strength for the future. Through them

the German nation will neither achieve its inner integrity, nor

will its sustenance be safeguarded by them, nor do these

boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem expedient

or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relations

in which we at present find ourselves toward the other world

powers, or, better expressed, the real world powers.”

(Excerpt from Page 650) Another quotation:

“As opposed to this we National Socialists must hold

unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure

for the German people the land and soil to which they are

entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which,

before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of

blood seem justified; before God, since we have been put in this

world with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread,

beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position

as lords of the earth only to the genius and courage with which

they can conquer and defend it; and for German posterity insofar

as we have shed its blood out of which a thousand others will

rise. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants

can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons

of today, and will someday acquit the statesmen of blood-guilt

and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by

their contemporaries.”