“A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself
to the care of its best racial elements must some day become
lord of the earth.”
(Excerpt from Page 135)
“A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in
its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd
fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals in order to
replace it by the humanity of nature, which destroys the weak to
give place to the strong.”
And then the machinery of State and Party gathered force. The Army
secretly reorganized, was soon strong enough to allow Germany to rearm
openly. Who, at that time, would have dared to interfere with the
monstrous growth of this biological materialism? Hitler expounded his
theories to a small circle and those who heard his words are by no means
all Nazis. Informed of their master’s aims, they were still willing, to
stay by his side, and that condemns them. Is this not the case with
Raeder?
“It is not a question of conquering populations but of
conquering territories suitable for cultivation....”
Hitler, in conference with Von Blomberg, Von Fritsch, Raeder, 5
November, said: “Expansion cannot be achieved without breaking
resistance and without taking risks ...” (Document Number 386-PS).
After the disgrace of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, Keitel and Jodl,
chosen for their servile attitude to the regime, had a solid weapon in
their hands. On the eve of the conflict Hitler reiterated his ideas:
“Circumstances must rather be adapted to aims. This is
impossible without invasion of foreign states or attacks on
foreign property.
“Living space, in proportion to the magnitude of the state, is
the basis of all power. One may refuse for a time to face the
problem, but finally it is solved one way or the other. The
choice is between advancement or decline. In 15 or 20 years’
time we shall be compelled to find a solution. No German
statesman can evade the question longer than that. We are at
present in a state of patriotic fervor, which is shared by two
other nations, Italy and Japan.
“The period which lies behind us has indeed been put to good
use. All measures have been taken in the correct sequence and in
harmony with our aims.
“After 6 years, the situation is today as follows:
“The national-political unity of the Germans has been achieved,
apart from minor exceptions. Further successes cannot be
attained without the shedding of blood....
“Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a
question of expanding our living space in the East and of
securing our food supplies.... The population of non-German
areas will perform no military service, and will be available as
a source of labor.
“The Polish problem is inseparable from the conflict with the
West.”
Extract from minutes of a conference held at the Reich Chancellery on 23
May 1939, in the presence of Hitler, Göring, Raeder, Keitel, and others
(Document Number L-79, Exhibit USA-27).
And then came the war; and in a few months’ time all Germany was led to
believe that her strength was irresistible and that she was on the way
to the conquest of the world. All that was implied by Hitler’s cruel and
monstrous words:
“As opposed to that we National Socialists must keep firmly to
the aim of our foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German
people the territory to which it is entitled in this world. And
this act is the sole act which, before God and our German
posterity, justifies bloodshed....”
All the cruel and monstrous implications of these words were elaborated
here.
Speech by Hitler on the Eastern Territories 16. 7. 41 (Document Number
L-221):
“We shall emphasize again that we were forced to occupy,
administer, and secure a certain area.... Nobody shall be able
to recognize that it initiates a final settlement. This need not
prevent us taking all necessary measures: shooting, deportation
... _et cetera_.”
Further: “Partisan warfare will have one advantage for us; it enables us
to eradicate all those who oppose us....”
The same theme was taken up and cynically proclaimed by the spokesmen of
the State. This Trial has brought you many echoes thereof. In a speech
by Himmler we find these words again:
“What the nations can offer us of good blood we shall take, if
necessary by taking their children away from them and bringing
them up among us.”
From the same speech:
“Whether nations thrive or starve only interests me inasmuch as
we can use them as slaves for our civilization.”
Still from the same speech:
“That 10,000 Russian women should die of exhaustion in digging
an antitank ditch only interests me as to whether or not the
antitank ditch has been completed for Germany.
“When somebody comes and says to me, ‘I cannot dig the antitank
ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill
them’; then I have to say, ‘You are a murderer of your own kin,
because if the antitank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will
die and they are sons of German mothers.’”
And concerning the extermination of Jews:
“We have exterminated a microbe. We do not wish to be
contaminated and die from it. We have fulfilled this duty for
the sake of our people. Our spirit and character have not
suffered from it” (Document 1919-PS).
The conquest of living space, that is, of territories emptied of their
population by every means including extermination—that was the great
idea of the Party, the system, the State, and consequently of all those
at the head of the main administration of both State and Party.
That is the main idea, in the pursuit of which they united and for which
they worked. They stopped at nothing in order to achieve their end:
Violation of treaties, invasion, and enslavement in peacetime of weak
and peaceful neighbors, wars of aggression, and total warfare, with all
the atrocities which these words imply. Göring and Ribbentrop cynically
admitted that they took both a spiritual and a material part in it; and
the generals and admirals did their utmost to help matters forward.
Speer exploited to the point of exhaustion and death the manpower
recruited for him by Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, the NSDAP Gauleiter, and
the generals. Kaltenbrunner made use of the gas chambers, the victims
for which were furnished by Frick, Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Frank, Jodl,
Keitel, and the rest. But the existence of the gas chambers themselves
was only made possible through the development of a political ideology
favorable to such things; there, inextricably merged, we find the
responsibility of all of them—Göring, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher,
Frick, Frank, Fritzsche, down to Schacht himself, the pro-Jewish
Schacht. Did he not say to Hirschfeld: “I want Germany to be great; to
accomplish this I am prepared to ally myself with the very devil.”
He did enter into this alliance with the devil and with hell.
We may include Papen, who saw his secretaries and his friends killed
around him and still continued to accept official missions in Ankara and
Vienna because he thought he could appease Hitler by serving him.
Some are not present; some are dead, and some still living, as, for
example, the industrialists who exploited the workers of the enslaved
countries after putting Hitler and his system in power by providing the
funds, without which no action could have been possible, and who put
them in power as much for reasons of nationalistic fanaticism as because
they expected from Nazism the guarantee of their privileges.
Everything kept steady, everything was indissolubly united because
totalitarian policy, total war, the preparation and direction of the
campaign of extermination of peoples for the conquest of living space,
implied the closest co-ordination and liaison between all the parts of
the machine, between Police and Army; Foreign Affairs and Police and
Army; Justice and Police; Economics and Justice; Universities and
Propaganda and Police. And now we come to the second point which we have
to present to you.
The co-ordination of the various departments at the head of which these
men stood, implies close co-operation between them.
The Defense have tried to establish the existence of watertight
partitions between the different elements of the German State.
According to them, there is supposed to be a parallel without a
horizontal bond between the various State and Party departments, between
individual ministerial administrations and between individual National
Socialist organizations. The only connecting link would be the person of
the chief, at the head. According to the Defense, the dominating
principle of the German structure would be a personal union, not
co-ordination and co-operation.
This is false. This is contrary to the principles of the Nazi State and
requirements of a State in which every force strives toward the same
goal and toward the actual reality of German life as revealed by the
debates.
According to National Socialist conception, the Party must take the
place of democracy. The Party is the political expression of the nation,
which materializes in the political action of the State carried out by
the activity of its administrations. The 1st of December 1933 Act
proclaims, for the purpose of insuring the unity of the Party and State,
that the Party is the exclusive support of the State conception, and
indissolubly unites the Party and the State.
At the Party Congress in 1931, Hitler says:
“It is not the State that created us. We create the State for
ourselves. To some it may appear as the Party, to others as an
organization, for yet others as something different, but
actually we are what we are.”
The aim pursued by the Party was therefore the achievement of an
increasingly complete union between the State and the Party. This is the
reason of the legislation which makes it compulsory for the head of the
Party Chancellery to be consulted on the appointment of high-ranking
officials, which incorporates Party chiefs into municipal
administration, integrates the SS into the Police, and converts the SS
to police officers, makes the direction of the Hitler Youth a State
department, brings the direction of Party headquarters abroad under the
Foreign Office, and merges the military personnel of the Party to an
ever increasing degree with those of the Army. General Von Brodowsky’s
war diary, which we have submitted to the Tribunal, shows that this
merger was a fact at the time of the landing in France. Hitler, however,
continued to maintain the system of parallel State and Party
administration, because they exercised mutual control and supervision.
But he insisted on the closest co-operation by both parties in order to
be certain that the control was effective.
All the defendants, moreover, with the exception of Hess, are
representatives of State departments. They cannot plead the absolute
power of the Party as an excuse, since Party and State shared the power.
The doctrine preached by the Party must guide the actions of the State,
but the actions of the State in turn modify and develop the doctrine of
the Party. Many items of the Party Program of 24 February 1920 never
came into effect and were completely forgotten when the Party had been
in power for some time. For instance, unearned income was not abolished
(Item 11); trusts were not nationalized (Item 13); land reform was not
carried out as provided for in Item 17;[14] interest on property and
speculation in real estate remained. In the end, every aspect of German
life was affected by the combined influence of the State and Party
forces. All the departments of the State and the Party combined to make
the component parts. Examples are plentiful and may be found in every
State department.
-----
[14] This program, known as the 25-point Program, was drawn up by
Hitler, Drexler, and Feder and read out on 24 Feb. 1920 at the Hofbräu
beer house. It was the program of the German Labor Party.
-----
Let us take the department of Foreign Affairs. Of all the
administrational sections of the State, this, according to the orthodox
conception, should be the farthest removed from political doctrine. Not
so in Nazi Germany. With a view to the extermination of the Jews,
headquarters abroad co-operated with the Reich Security Main Office
through Wilhelmstrasse, as is shown by Documents RF-1206, 1220, 1502,
1210, and Exhibit Number USA-433 (Document Number 3219-PS).
Wilhelmstrasse officials were called upon to advise the military police
and Secret State Police (Document Number RF-1061). It was Best,
Ribbentrop’s representative in Denmark, who transmitted the order for
the deportation of the Jews to the Chief of the German Police Mildner
(Document Number RF-1503). Document Number RF-1501 shows Ribbentrop
defending anti-Semitism to Mussolini and asking for Italian
co-operation.
Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are implicated in all the terrorist
measures taken against the elite. The SD and Wilhelmstrasse are also
involved in the organization of attacks of a provocative nature, such as
that made on the broadcasting station at Gleiwitz in order to furnish
the pretext of an attack by the Poles. The report made by the German
military administration on the pillage of art treasures in France
incriminates both the special staff of Rosenberg and the German Embassy
in Paris (Document Number RF-1505). Wilhelmstrasse and the Army are
involved along with the Police in the question of hostages, reprisals,
and deportations. Examples could be multiplied. We do not claim to
exhaust the subject, but only to give illustrations in support of an
opinion.
Let us now examine the activities of Rosenberg’s organizations.
Rosenberg, by virtue of his function, co-ordinated several branches of
the German State. His function in foreign policy was incorporated in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, he was the philosopher of the
regime, Minister for the Eastern Territories, and chief of the special
staff in charge of art treasures. The SD and the Secret Police worked in
liaison with him (Documents Number L-188 and 946-PS).
We note the same liaison and the same co-ordination within the machinery
of the State in questions, of forced labor. All the ministers and higher
functionaries, such as the Gauleiter, were involved, either by planning
or preparing the operation, or simply enforcing it, or benefiting by it.
We remember the interministerial meetings in Berlin to discuss this
subject and the conference between Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Funk,
and the representatives of the OKW which forms the subject of Document
Number PS-3819. We remember the meeting in Paris presided over by
Sauckel and attended by representatives of the Army, the Police, and the
Embassy (Document Number RF-1517).
Neither was economic life any more independent. During the war there
existed under Funk a close co-operation between the economic and
administrative services of the Army and those of economic affairs
(Document Number RF-3 bis). The Ministry of Economy appealed to the
Police to work out plans for economic Germanization (Documents RF-803
and 814). The Ministry of Finance subsidized the SS to carry out
scientific research under abominable conditions using internees as
involuntary subjects for experiment (Document Number 002-PS). Under
Schacht and long before the war, politics, finance, and economic affairs
were linked with the Army, at first secretly, and then publicly, and by
bands closer than in any other country in the world. Schacht, in a
speech on 29 November 1938, pronounced the following opinion on his
achievement:
“It is impossible that any other issuing bank has followed in
peacetime a credit policy so audacious as that of the Reichsbank
since the assumption of power by National Socialism. With the
aid of this policy, however, Germany has created an armament
that ranks foremost in the world, and this armament has made
possible the results of our policy ...” (EC-611).
Nor was the judicial system more independent. We find it associated with
the Police in highly criminal enterprises. Document Number 654-PS
contains an account of a discussion between Thierack, Himmler, and
others, at the end of which it was decided that antisocial elements and
concentration camp prisoners—Jews, gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians,
Poles—sentenced to more than 3 years’ imprisonment should be turned
over by the administration to Himmler to be exterminated through labor,
and that in future individuals belonging to these categories should not
be judged by ordinary tribunals but handed over immediately to Himmler’s
department.
Finally, during the war, the terrorist activities of the Army and the
German Police and the activities of the State and the Party merged
together. On occasion, the Police were subordinated to the Army, though
retaining a certain autonomy, on the orders of the Reich Security Main
Office. This was the case in Belgium. In France, although separate from
the Army, the Police maintained close co-operation with it. The Army
participated with the Sipo (Security Police) and the SD in the
persecution of the Jews, the administration of the internment camp at
Compiègne and the selection of hostages (Documents RF-1212 and 1212 bis)
and execution (Document Number RF-1244). As we have seen, the Army and
the Police were associated in the terrorist actions against the
populations. The Navy and the Police are also associated in the massacre
of the Commandos, and the Police were responsible for the murder of
certain categories of war prisoners, although all these prisoners
without exception came under the authority of the OKW (Document Number
1165-PS). One might multiply instances of the close association of Party
machinery and State services and the co-ordination between them, which
at times amounted to symbiosis. In one way or another, they all worked
for the realization of the common political aim: the conquest of space
by all possible means.
The co-operation of the defendants is an obvious consequence. Apart from
the definite fact of co-operation alleged by us, all that we know of the
general functioning of this totalitarian State, bound to the destiny of
the Party, the vigorous measures taken by it against its opponents, for
whom it prepared camps and gas chambers—all this leads us to affirm
that the defendants, whether ministers, dignitaries or high
functionaries with State or Party powers, combined with others who are
not present—who are dead or held for Trial in other courts—to form one
whole. And this entity was the Government of the Reich, this was the
State-Party or Party-State; an entity, perhaps, but a conscious and
criminal entity which decreed the murder of millions of human beings in
order to enlarge the Reich beyond all limits.
The acts of the defendants are not only those particular ones which we
analyzed a moment ago in the light of the national penal codes of their
own or our countries respectively. They include also these members of
the German State for whom they acted, of that German State to which they
gave life, conscience, thought, will, and for which they must now assume
responsibility and bear the consequences, even the most extreme
consequences, because they could not dissociate individually from these
crimes. And this brings us to our third point.
The defendants must be judged on the basis of that criminal policy of
which they were promoters and instruments.
Was it not Dr. Seidl who, defending Frank, has said (Page 55 of his
text):
“This is an acknowledged principle deriving from the penal code
of all civilized nations, that a uniform and natural action must
be appraised in its entirety, and that all circumstances which
can be considered must be examined in order to form a basis for
passing judgment.”
All the crimes of the defendants lie in their political life. They are,
as we know, the elements of a criminal State policy. To consider the
defendants as offenders against common law, to forget that they have
acted in the name of the German State and on account of that State, to
apply the same standard to them as that applied to hooligans or to
murderers, would narrow the scope of the Trial and misrepresent the
character of their crimes. The crimes ordinarily tried by the courts of
our countries show the criminal as opposed to the social order. These
are individual deeds; their range is limited and their consequences
circumscribed. Their crimes never strike more than a very few victims,
and there are no examples in the annals of our countries of murder
methodically perpetrated by terror organizations whose victims number
more than a few hundred people.
That is the highest cost of a criminal plot within our own national
communities. Organized as they are, extremely hierarchichal, and
possessed of armed forces and judicial institutions, our national
communities can eliminate delinquents before they can do all the harm of
which they are capable.
These defendants, on the contrary, developed their criminal activity
within the community of states in an unorganized world which was just
beginning to be conscious of its own existence and at that time
possessed neither armed power nor judges.
These defendants seized the German State and turned it into a gangster
State, pressing into the service of their criminal plans all the
executive power of that State. They acted as chiefs or heads of
political, diplomatic, juridical, military, economic, and financial
staffs. The activity of these staffs is normally co-ordinated in any
country as they serve a common purpose deriving from a common political
idea. But in National Socialist Germany, as we know, such co-ordination
was reinforced by the overlapping of Party and administrative
departments. Individual crimes were crimes of the community when they
became the crimes of the State. Indeed, they were fostered by the
political conception of each individual: “Conquest of space at any
price.”
State crimes committed by any one of those who controlled a major
department were made possible only because all those who controlled
every other major department contributed their share. If some of them
and their departments defaulted, it meant the collapse of the State, the
annihilation of its criminal power and with it the end of the gas
chambers or the technical impossibility of creating them. But none had
either the intention or the desire to default, for gas chambers and
extermination, for the sake of gaining living space, were the dominant
idea of the system—were, indeed, themselves the system.
Is not evidence of this unity in crime furnished by the very statements
made by the defendants, the unremitting efforts of themselves and their
counsels to prove the autonomy of their departments and throw the
responsibility of the Army on to the Police, that of the Foreign Office
on to the head of the Government, that of the Labor Department on to the
Four Year Plan, that of the Gauleiter on to the generals; in short, by
their attempt to persuade us that everything in Germany was organized in
watertight compartments, whereas the interdependence of the
administration and Party and the multiplicity of connecting and
controlling links between the State and Party prove the contrary by
their skillful dovetailing. All French people who have lived in occupied
France remember having seen on the walls of local Kommandanturs a poster
depicting the bricks of a wall with the words _Teneo quia teneor_
printed over the picture. It was the whole motto of the system. It only
needed a few bricks to be taken away for the wall to collapse. None of
those men did that. On the contrary, they all contributed their own
brick to the edifice.
In this way, Gentlemen, by presenting the facts, apart from any legal
conception of conspiracy or complicity which might be debatable
according to the varying opinions of the jurists, we furnish proof of
solidarity and of the equal culpability of all in the crime.
To prove that they perpetrated the crime, it suffices to show that they
were chiefs or high officials of the Party or one of the main State
departments and that they acted on behalf of the State; that, in order
to extend German living space by every means at their command, they
conceived, willed, ordered, or merely tolerated by their silence the
violation of treaties guaranteeing the independence of other countries;
prepared or declared wars of aggression; systematically carried out mass
murder and other atrocities; and systematically committed demolition and
looting without justification. This is the crime of the German Reich,
and all the defendants have conspired to commit it.
We will prove this in the case of each of the defendants by means of
examples taken from the proceedings.
Concerning each of the defendants, the three main points of this
presentation will be the following:
1) The defendant occupied within the machinery of the State and the
Party a position of eminence which endowed him with authority over one
entire office or several.
2) The defendant complied with, if he did not conceive, the doctrine of
the regime: Conquest of space by any means.
3) He personally played an active part in the political development of
this doctrine.
As to Göring and Hess, the Tribunal will undoubtedly allow me to
dispense with developing their case at length. They were the appointed
successors of the Führer. They belonged to the Movement from the
beginning. Hess assumed responsibility for the racial laws. Both played
a part in formulating the political doctrine of the regime, of which
they were the embodiment in the eyes of the masses. By their speeches,
their lectures, they made this doctrine familiar to all classes. Göring
made an active and essential contribution to the military and economic
preparations for wars of aggression. Göring is the founder of the
Gestapo and the concentration camps where millions of alleged enemies of
the regime found their death, and where ultimately genocide was almost
totally achieved.
The major part of his criminal activities concerns the putting into
practice of The Four Year Plan, the sole object of which, as has been
proved, was the preparation for war. In common with others, he is
responsible for the deportation and brutal treatment of workers and for
their allocation to spheres of production aimed against their own
country. Further, he was party to the allocation of prisoners of war and
political prisoners to labor directly connected with the war effort of
the Reich. He organized the plunder of the occupied countries and the
destruction of their economy. Lastly, he organized, with the help of
Einsatzstab Rosenberg, the wholesale looting of works of art, often with
the object of enriching his own collections.
Hess, by a decree of the Führer dated 21 April 1933, was given full
powers to decide all questions of Party management. He participated in
the preparation of laws and decrees in general, and even in the
preparation of the Führer’s decrees. He took part in the appointment of
government officials and the chiefs of labor services. He strengthened
the Party’s hold on the internal life of Germany. He exerted a direct
influence on the Army and on foreign policy. The part which he played in
the growth of anti-Semitism implicates him in the criminal consequences
of the Movement and condemns him.
Ribbentrop was one of the mainsprings of the Party and State machine.
Placed in Wilhelmstrasse by Hitler who distrusted “old-fashioned”
diplomats, he worked with all his might to create diplomatic conditions
which would favor a war of aggression, the essential means for realizing
the conquest of space. We recall the document submitted by our British
colleagues establishing the fact that Ribbentrop assured Ciano in August
1939 that Germany would make war even if Danzig and the Corridor were
ceded to her. As has already been shown, he and his office were involved
in acts of terrorism and extermination in the occupied countries.
My comments on Keitel are equally brief. The conditions under which he
consented to be placed by Hitler at the head of the High Command of the
Army in the place of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, and brought into the
councils of the Government, his political activities in these posts, as
indicated by his presence at the Führer’s side in Godesberg and later
during the interviews with Pétain and Horthy—to say nothing of the
orders which he signed, not the least notorious of which was the order
for the implementation of the N.N. (Night and Fog) decree—all these
facts reveal that we are dealing here not with an ordinary soldier, but
with a general who was also a politician, under orders of the regime.
The part he played in the arrest and murder of patriots condemns him.
There is no doubt whatsoever that he participated in the work of
extermination, if only by handing over to the Police for special
treatment certain classes of prisoners of war in defiance of military
honor. Moreover, we remember connections between his office and the
police services and armed forces of the Party.
In the year 1932 Kaltenbrunner became a member of the Party and of the
SS in Austria. He became Secretary of State for Security and the Police
in Austria and then Chief of Police in Vienna and Chief of RSHA (Reich
Security Main Office) from 30 January 1943 up to the capitulation.
During this latter period he was responsible for the Gestapo, the
Police, the Security Service and the concentration camps.
He was one of the most important factors in the criminal organization
which carried out the policy of extermination and genocide. His
responsibility for these mass murders has been established. Orders for
imprisonment and execution were signed by him.
“Detention and protective custody,” he said, “were measures justified by
the war.” At the same time, however, he tried to make us believe that he
opposed the introduction of these measures. It is impossible to believe
this, for we have proof that he had supreme authority over the camps.
We are aware of Rosenberg’s important position in the Third Reich. A
department bore his name. Moreover, he was Minister for the Occupied
Eastern Territories and an exponent of the Nazi doctrine. In “Blood and
Honor” (Blut und Ehre), in particular, he revived and elaborated the
theory of living space to which the so-called German race was entitled.
He started with the unfounded statements that “the evolution of humanity
owes its entire meaning to the irradiation of Nordism” and that “a
decline takes place wherever this Nordic culture, instead of condemning
Asiatics and Jews to permanent enslavement, mingles with these impure
elements ...” He concluded by saying that the continent must be
subjected to the German philosophy and race. To restore the racial
purity of Germany by any means was the subject of his speech at
Nuremberg in 1933. He extolled the extermination of the Jews, and we
know today that it was no empty phrase. Furthermore, in a report to the
Führer dated 11 August 1942 (Document Number 042-PS) he wrote:
“Decrees not to support an increase in the population of the
Ukraine and to render inapplicable Article 218 of the German
Penal Code were issued last year on the occasion of an address
and were pronounced again on the occasion of a visit made by the
Director of the Ministry of Health ... In the Ukraine, measures
were taken to prevent the spreading of epidemics, not in the
interest of other peoples, but exclusively to secure German
occupation and keep up the efficiency of the labor in the
service of the German war industry.”
Finally, he was implicated in the attack on Norway, and thanks to his
special staff he conducted the methodical plundering of the artistic
wealth of Europe.
Frank was one of the Party’s earliest adherents. He was its legal
adviser and took part in the elaboration of its program. He was also the
Führer’s adviser. He was Minister of Justice in Bavaria, then Minister
of State charged with the co-ordination of justice in the Reich, and
finally Governor General of Poland. It is he who tried to give legal
form to the program of persecution and extermination drawn up by the
State and the Party. He defended the establishment of concentration
camps in the German _Legal Gazette_ in 1936 and he proclaimed that the
second fundamental concept of the Hitlerite Reich was racial
legislation. His personal activities in Poland contributed to the
extermination of numerous Poles. He boasted of these activities in his
diary.
Frick was a member of the Party from 1925. He became a Reichsleiter and
afterward Reich Director for Elections from 30 January 1933 to 20 August
1943. He was chief of the service for the annexation of Austria by
Germany and for the incorporation of the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the
Eastern Territories, Eupen-Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was also Director
of the Central Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, the
Government General, Lower Styria, Upper Carinthia, Norway, Alsace,
Lorraine, and all the other occupied countries. He was Protector of
Bohemia and Moravia for over a year. He had been Reich Minister of the
Interior ever since the assumption of power and a member of the Defense
Council. When he was elected to the Reichstag in 1924, he proposed
anti-Jewish laws. Strictly obedient, on several occasions he gave
expression to the political theories of the Party. In particular he
declared:
“In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of an
organized community, that is, the National Socialist Party; and
as the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy
adopted by it, in harmony with the vital interests of the
nation, is at the same time the policy adopted by the country”
(Document Number 3258-PS).
He it was who appointed Himmler. He was responsible for the anti-Jewish
legislation and ordered sterilization for the descendants of colored
soldiers. Furthermore, he gave orders that the incurably insane should
be put to death.
Streicher entered the Party almost as soon as it was formed. He indulged
in unbridled propaganda against the Jews, both in his speeches and in
his writings and incited the German people to persecute and to
exterminate them. He was made Gauleiter. He does not dissociate himself
from anything that has been done. He stated:
“When one has known the profound depths of the Führer’s
character as I have done, and when I later learned from his
testament that he deliberately gave the order to execute the
Jews, well, I declare that this man had a right to do so.”
Funk entered the Party in 1931 and was decorated with the Golden Party
Badge. He was Chief of the Reich Press and Secretary of State for
Propaganda; eventually he succeeded Schacht in the Ministry of Economics
in 1937. He became Plenipotentiary for Economy and President of the
Reichsbank in 1941. In 1932 he acted as middleman between the Führer and
certain leaders of German industry. He attended the meeting of
industrialists organized by Göring on 20 February 1933 to obtain the
political and financial support of industry for the realization of the
Nazi program. He stated on 4 May 1946:
“As State Secretary for Propaganda I have a formal
responsibility. I have, of course, favored propaganda, as did
all those who found themselves in positions of importance in
Germany, for propaganda filled and permeated the nation’s
intellectual life.”
He asked that the Jews be excluded from important positions and issued
decrees to that effect. He received from the SS deposits of gold and
valuables from the victims of mass exterminations. He built up Germany’s
economy and signed the Secret Law of 4 September 1938.
Dönitz was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. He succeeded Hitler
with Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. He was a recipient of the Golden
Party Badge. His adherence to the criminal policy of the system is
indisputable. He said, among other things (Document Number D-640): “The
officer is the representative of the State. This talk about nonpolitical
officers is sheer nonsense.”
He recommended the use of labor from the extermination camps in order,
he said, to increase output by 100 percent. He proclaimed unrestricted
submarine warfare and ordered his sailors “to be hard,” and not to
effect any further rescues. He approved and extolled massacres of
Communists.
Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy before Dönitz. He was
present at the conferences at which Hitler revealed his plans, notes of
which were taken at the time. He put the Navy at the service of the Nazi
regime. He conducted clandestine rearmament activities and contributed
to the preparation of aggression against Poland and Norway. His contempt
for international law is well known. It will suffice to refer to the
memorandum of 15 October 1939, Document Number UK-65.
Schirach became a member of the Party at the age of 18. He joined in
1925, was Leader of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940 and Gauleiter of
Vienna up to the capitulation. He was one of the essential parts of the
Nazi machine. He admits that as Gauleiter of Vienna he united in himself
the powers of the State, the city, and the Party. He moulded the youth
of Germany according to the ideology of the Party; and he has claimed
responsibility for the consequences resulting from this exclusive
formation. He allowed Himmler to recruit the SS from among the Hitler
Youth.
From 1943 onward, as he himself admits, he was aware of the treatment
inflicted on the Jews. Long before that date, however, he had taken a
very definite stand as to this question and had been active in
conducting anti-Semitic propaganda.
Sauckel joined the Party in 1925. Gauleiter of Thuringia,
Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor and honorary
Obergruppenführer of the SS, he held a highly enviable position in the
State and Party machine. A fiery propagandist, he delivered more than
five hundred speeches, in all of which he expounded the Nazi ideology.
He approved the principle of extermination. He said:
“With regard to the extermination of asocial elements, Dr.
Goebbels is of the opinion ... the method of extermination by
work is the best” (Document Number 682-PS).
He also stated:
“The Führer has ... said that we must revise our habitual
conception about the migration of peoples.... It is the Führer’s
wish that a hundred years from now, 250 million people speaking
the German language be settled in Europe” (Document Number
025-PS).
He personally played an active part in preparing the way for the
exterminations. On 28 May 1946, he made here the following statement on
the subject: “Best results in production can only be obtained by
judicious use of manpower.”
He forced over 2 million Frenchmen to collaborate in the war effort with
their labor—to say nothing of millions of people of other
nationalities. They were recruited by force with the help of the Police,
the SS, and the Armed Forces (Document Number S-827):
“I have”—he said—“given special authority to a few intelligent
men, with a view to procuring labor. They are working under the
direction of the Reichsführer SS and Police. I have armed and
trained a certain number of them, and I must make application to
the Ministry of Armaments for the necessary supplies for these
men ...” (R-124).
Through this declaration, the insinuation of counsel for Defendant Speer
to the effect that the French Government had voluntarily given their
assent to sending forced labor to Germany, is reduced to nought.
Alfred Jodl was Chief of the Operations Staff of the OKW. He enjoyed the
absolute confidence of the Führer in the same degree as Keitel (Document
Number 3798-PS). He took part in drafting the various plans for
aggression. Encouraged to serve Hitler by the presence of such
conservatives as Neurath, Papen, and Schacht at Hitler’s side, he
transmitted on 22 March 1943 the decree ordering the expulsion of Jews
from Denmark and their internment in Germany. He was also responsible
for the execution of Hitler’s order of 18 October 1942 for the
annihilation of Commandos (Document Number 530-PS).
He took part in the discussions on the measures to be taken against
airmen who were forced down. He signed the proclamation published by the
High Command of the Armed Forces relative to the struggle against
guerrilla troops—a proclamation containing regulations which outraged
the laws of humanity.
Von Papen paved the way for Hitler’s accession to power. The formation
of his Cabinet on 30 May 1932 was contrary to the normal parliamentary
procedure. On 2 June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag,
thereby giving free rein to Hitler’s terrorism. With respect to an
interview with Hitler in June 1932 he said: “I have agreed to Hitler’s
demands, the right of the SS and SA to wear uniform.”
At the same time Papen for his part was under no illusions as to the
consequences of the Hitlerian agitation which he had himself instigated.
But he preferred Hitler to democracy. After the elections of 30 July he
endeavored to induce Hindenburg to accept Hitler and in the month of
November he succeeded. He allowed Nazi functionaries to usurp the public
services. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe reminded us of Von Papen’s vindication
of National Socialism in Essen in November 1933. Papen expressed himself
very definitely on the racial problem (speech at Gleiwitz in 1934).
“Certainly no objection can be made to racial research and
racial hygiene with the aim of preserving as far as possible the
national characteristics of the people and awakening the spirit
of national community.”
We know what these measures were.
Papen served the Party and State administration until the capitulation.
Neither the murder nor the imprisonment of his collaborators, of which
the State and the Party were guilty, interrupted his activities.
Seyss-Inquart joined the National Socialist Party on 13 March 1938. He
occupied various positions within the inner circle of the Party and in
the State services, was finally made Assistant Governor of Poland and
later Reich Commissar for the Netherlands. He declared—I quote: “I
cling with unchanging tenacity to the aims in which I believe: Greater
Germany and the Führer.” (Excerpt from a letter of Seyss-Inquart to
Göring on 14 July 1939; Document Number 2219-PS).
“We hold the task of a generation, that is to say of the vital
force of a people, to be the creation and the security of
Lebensraum for the cultural and economic life of that nation.”
(Speech of Seyss-Inquart of 23 January 1939; Document Number 3640-PS.)
“As the task of a whole generation, the entire Vistula region,
and not only the territories now gained in the East, must be
settled by Germans ... the Slovakia of today, the Hungary of
today, the Romania of today, must be reorganized. I believe that
the time has come for that.... I believe that soon the whole of
this territory will be under the sole administration of
Germany.”
(Letter of Seyss-Inquart to Bormann of 20 July 1940; Document Number
3645-PS.)
Seyss-Inquart endeavored to realize the main political object of the
Party: Conquest of space at all costs. He used all his available
resources for the annexation of Austria, of which he was a native (He
admitted that he had worked for 20 years to bring about the Anschluss).
His collusion with Konrad Henlein for the reincorporation of the Sudeten
territory in Germany has been proved. In Holland he gave orders for the
execution of hostages and forged political and economic links between
that country and the Reich. He is further responsible for the systematic
pillage inflicted on Holland, for the deportation of the population and
for the introduction of measures which led to famine.
Speer joined the Party in 1933. He was appointed personal architect to
Hitler, and in this capacity he came into very close contact with the
Führer. Chief of the Todt Organization from February 1942, Armaments
Chief for the Four Year Plan from March 1942, Minister for Armaments
from September 1943, he was one of the high-ranking officials in both
the State and the Party. Speer utilized more than a million men in the
Todt Organization and more than fifty thousand deported Frenchmen in the
Ruhr territory alone in 1943. He is responsible for the ill-treatment of
foreign workers in German factories, particularly in the Krupp plants.
He employed more than 400,000 war prisoners in the armament industry.
His delegates were authorized by the OKW to enter the camps and to
select skilled workmen. He exploited the manpower of the concentration
camps, affecting a total of more than 32,000 men, as he has himself
admitted. He visited Mauthausen and shares the responsibility for the
deportation of Jews to special labor camps, where they were
exterminated, as well as the deportation of 100,000 Hungarian Jews to
aircraft factories.
Von Neurath, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1932, remained in this
office when the Nazis seized power in 1933. He continued to occupy this
post until 1939 and both he and his departments were gradually absorbed
by the growing State and Party machine. As he was a member of the
Government from the outset, he cannot have been ignorant of the
political ideology of the Movement. If he claims to have been shocked
when he learned in 1937 that Hitler was planning aggression, he
nevertheless remained in office and made no attempt to dissuade Hitler.
On the contrary, it was he who by his approval encouraged Hitler to
reoccupy the left bank of the Rhine—the first stage in the wars of
aggression for the conquest of living space. He remained Minister of the
Reich until the end. A conservative himself, his presence encouraged
conservative elements in Germany to co-operate with Hitler. Mainspring
of the Party and State machine, Von Neurath is closely connected with
this machine in the crimes of extermination of which he was fully aware
and which he himself decreed.
On 31 August 1940 Von Neurath transmitted to Dr. Lammers two memoranda,
one drawn up by himself and the other by his Minister of State Frank,
both advocating the total Germanization of Bohemia and Moravia and the
elimination of the Czech intelligentsia. One of these reports contains
the following lines:
“With regard to the future organization of Bohemia and Moravia,
all considerations should be based on the goal set for this
territory, from the state political and national political
angle. From the state political angle there can be only one
goal: Complete incorporation into the Greater German Reich. From
the national political angle: Settling these territories
completely with Germans. A brief survey of the actual position
as it presents itself from observations and experience gained
since the annexation with regard to the state political and
national political angle, indicates the path to be followed in
order to reach the clearly defined and unequivocal goal. If
things present themselves in such fashion then a decision must
be taken on the fate of the Czech people so that the end in view
may be achieved, which is to incorporate the country and
populate it with Germans as quickly and as completely as
possible” (Document Number 3859-PS).
Fritzsche served the Party before it came to power, but he did not
actually become a member of it until 1933 and then he quickly became a
remarkably efficient propagandist. In the course of the war he became
the head of the radio service. Expounding the doctrine of the regime, he
agitated for the massacre of Jews.
By means of repeated addresses he furthermore endeavored to imprint in
the German mind the idea that its very life was imperiled by the Jews
and democracy, and that it must yield itself unreservedly to the men of
destiny who governed it.
Schacht’s position is peculiar in itself. I shall deal with his case at
greater length. He claims to be a victim of the system and is surprised
to find himself here cheek by jowl with Kaltenbrunner, his jailer.
Schacht told us that the ideals of the Party did not appeal to him.
Nonetheless, former Minister Severing stated at the session of 21 May
1946, that in 1931 he had learned from a communication of the Berlin
police that Schacht had taken part in discussions with the Nazi chiefs.
He added that Schacht’s relations with plutocracy and militarism struck
him as highly compromising, and that he would not have cared to be a
member of the same Cabinet. We know that Schacht had established
relations with Hitler in 1930, bringing to him the advantages of his
repute in Germany and abroad. National Socialism derived considerable
benefit from this.
At the National Front rally at Harzburg in October 1931, Schacht took
his seat next to Hitler, Hugenberg, and Seldte. He had already attempted
to draw Hitler into the Brüning Government. He was responsible for
procuring funds for the decisive elections of March 1933 (USA-874,
Document Number EC-440) at a meeting between Göring and the leading
industrialists, on which occasion Hitler delivered a speech. After the
seizure of power, Schacht played an outstanding role within the
machinery of Party and State. He became President of the Reichsbank and
Minister of Economics. On 19 January 1939 he left the Reichsbank, but he
became a Minister of State and held that post until 21 January 1943.
Clever, subtle, and capable of disguising his real thoughts behind a
mask of irony or insolence, he never committed himself completely. It
has, however, been proved that he persistently demanded increased living
space for Germany. When he tried to mislead his questioners by speaking
of colonial claims and it was pointed out that, considering world
conditions, the possession of colonies could in no way assist Germany in
solving her domestic problems, he failed to reply. He knew how to
threaten the democracies and even resorted to a form of extortion
through fear. When speaking of a Party success during a visit to
America, he said:
“I gave the greatest possible warning saying that: If you
foreigners do not change your policy toward Germany, there will
in a very short time be many more members and adherents of
Hitler’s Party.”
He also said: “It is perfectly clear: We ask for territory in order to
feed our people.”
What part did he play in the development of the criminal policy? As soon
as he was established in the Reichsbank, a vast program for financing
public works was launched. All of these works—new railroads, motor
highways, _et cetera_—were of strategic importance. Moreover, a large
proportion of the credits was secretly used for purely military
purposes.
From 1935 onward, rearmament was speeded up under the vigorous impulse
of the new financial measures which he devised. The academic and upright
economist of tradition turned into a sharper in order to realize the
great aims of the Party. By means of accommodation drafts—mefo
drafts—the rearmament was financed. Drawn on a drawee who provided no
cover, a company created to serve this express purpose, the blank drafts
were endorsed by a second and similar company.
When the first draft was drawn, the drawer added extension drafts so
calculated that the last fell due in January or March 1942. When we look
back, the full significance of the date chosen becomes evident. The year
1942 was the date fixed by Schacht for the full extent of his fraudulent
enterprise, in the hope that by that time the war would have solved the
problem for him. The original draft was discounted by the Reichsbank.
Bills were not subject to fiscal taxes so as to prevent any evaluation
of the amount in circulation by means of a control in the yield of the
taxes. Operations were conducted with the utmost secrecy. Even as early
as 1935, all available Reichsmark credits were utilized by the
Reichsbank for these armament drafts. At the end of 1938 there were 6
billion marks in mefo drafts in the assets of the Reichsbank and 6
billion marks worth to discount, of which 3 billion worth were
short-dated. When the drafts fell due, Schacht could not but be aware
that there were only three possible solutions:
1) Consolidation of the debt by foreign loans, which would not be
extended to Nazi Germany, already armed to excess.
2) An inflation comparable to that of 1923, which would mean the end of
the regime.
3) War.
The scope of the rearmament operations financed by Schacht up to 31
December 1938 is revealed by calculations made by M. Gerthoffer of our
delegation (we attach his report hereto). Let us not forget that Hitler,
in his letter to Schacht, dated 19 January 1939, wrote: “Your name will
be connected above all and for all time with the first period of
national rearmament” (EC-397). We may take note of that—from April 1935
to 31 December 1938, there were spent 345,415 million francs on the
rearming of Germany. During the same period France spent only 35,964
million francs. Such a discrepancy shows quite clearly what Schacht’s
aim was. This was Schacht’s doing and his alone. On the battlefields of
France in 1940 we find again the same ratio of 10 German armored
divisions to 1 French division.
Schacht’s retirement from the Reichsbank and the Ministry of Economics
can in no way speak in his favor. Difficulties arose between Göring and
himself in regard to the realization of the Four Year Plan. Schacht
would not admit Göring as his superior. He resigned from the Ministry of
Economics on 26 November 1937, but remained president of the Reichsbank
and Minister without Portfolio. On 7 January 1939 he handed Hitler a
memorandum pointing out that the volume of the mefo drafts in
circulation through his own fault was threatening the stability of the
currency. Technically speaking, his position at the Reichsbank had
become untenable. His retirement, therefore, was due to questions of
economic organization and not to political reasons. In any case, he
retained the functions of Minister without Portfolio, and did not give
up this post until January 1943, at the time of the Stalingrad defeat,
when both the Party-State machine and the Reich were beginning to break
down. Obviously he no longer served any useful purpose, but it is
equally obvious that he might again have done so at some later date, in
the capacity of negotiator of a peace compromise.
Are his further political troubles due to the intrigue by Hitler’s
advisers which we can now well imagine, or were they due to
Machiavellism on his part, or to sheer bad fortune? What is the
significance of the part played by this ill-starred man who succeeded in
gathering round him all of the great financiers and industrials with
pan-Germanic leanings, who helped Hitler to power, whose presence
inspired confidence in Nazi Germany, whose financial wizardry provided
Germany with the most powerful war machine of the age, and who did all
this to enable the Party-State machine to hurl itself forward to the
conquest of living space? This man was among those mainly responsible
for the criminal activities of the Party-State machine. His financial
genius was that of the Nazi State; and there is no doubt of his
participation in its crimes. It is of fundamental importance. The
measure of his guilt is full, his responsibility complete.
As for the last of Hitler’s confidants, Bormann, we know that he was
responsible for the mass extermination of the Jews. There is no need to
say more.
I have now reached the end of my demonstration of the guilt of each
individual defendant. Not that the subject is exhausted, but the time
allowed by the Tribunal for each representative of the Prosecution to
address the Court only permits us to sketch the outline of a
presentation which deserves more systematic treatment. A multiplicity of
examples could be found to illustrate our presentation. All the facts
submitted during the last 9 months by all four delegations fit of their
own accord into our plan; and this in itself is sufficient to prove that
our logic is unimpeachable and that our conclusions are in strict
accordance with the truth.
We consider, therefore, that proof has been furnished that all these men
have been parties to the crimes of the German State, that all these men
were in fact united in pursuit of the same political aim and that all of
them have in one way or another participated in the greatest crime of
all, genocide, the extermination of the races or people at whose expense
they intended to conquer the living space they held necessary for the
so-called Germanic race.
We have all heard the objections raised by the Counsel for the Defense.
It is Dr. Seidl who stated them most forcibly (Page 25 of his speech for
Frank).
“The law in force”—he said—“is based on the fundamental
principle that international law deals solely with the sovereign
state and not with the isolated individual.”
In conclusion he denies the right to sentence these men. First let us
say that not one of the defendants was an “isolated individual” of whom
Dr. Seidl speaks. We think that we have demonstrated their co-operation
and solidarity, strengthened by the Party system beyond the usual
intercourse between the ministers and principal administrators of any
democratic country.
We may observe in addition that it seems intolerable to every sensitive
human being that men who put their intelligence and their good will at
the disposition of the state entity in order to make use of the power
and the material resources of this entity to slaughter, as they have
done, millions of human beings in the execution of a criminal policy
long since determined, should be assured of immunity. The principle of
state sovereignty which might protect these men is only a mask. This
mask removed, the man’s responsibility reappears. Dr. Seidl knows that
as well as we do. But he says, “such is the international law in force.”
What respect on his part for the law in force, but how surprising in his
mouth the words which follow! A few moments later, examining the Hague
Conventions of 1907, which, we must remember, have not been denounced by
any of the signatories, not even by Germany, he complacently points out
that they were inspired by the experiences made during the wars of the
nineteenth century and are no longer valid in the twentieth. Modern wars
were no longer subject to the restrictions of the Hague Conventions. He
states further:
“Under these circumstances one cannot make use of the
prescriptions of the Hague Convention with regard to land
warfare—even if interpreted in the widest sense and adapted in
a suitable manner as a basis for the criminal responsibility of
the individual.”
Dr. Seidl therefore considers international law as static when he
believes that this will enable him to draw favorable conclusions
therefrom; but when this law condemns his client, it must be considered
as still in process of evolution.
Dialectics of this kind, which make use of paralogism, are specious. Dr.
Seidl is well versed in the art of sophism, but he convinces no one. The
immunity of the chiefs of state and their associates was hardly
conceivable when it was allowed to be subject to the rules and
restrictions of custom, convention, and international law. This immunity
became intolerable from the moment that they freed themselves from every
rule, and pressure from the universal conscience gave rise to new
developments in international custom in order to oppose it. I have
already shown this at the end of my statement last February; I shall not
revert to that point. It should suffice to add that the Charter of 7
August 1945, taking in consideration the work of the various war crimes
commissions from 1940 up to the capitulation, upheld the conclusions
drawn by a Frenchman, M. de Lapradelle, at the War Guilt Commission
1919. The defendants are arraigned before you on account of the acts
they committed on behalf of the German State and if it is necessary that
law should reinforce the authority of custom, then the Statute of
London, drawn up on the basis of common law in course of formation,
still justifies our study of the defendants’ responsibility with regard
to the crimes of the German State. In fact, Article 6 of the Statute
deals only with crimes committed on account of the state.
The impression we draw from the final pleadings is that most of the
defense counsels put all their hopes in a concise juridical or
pseudojuridical process of reasoning. Many questions were debated. Are
there just and unjust wars, defensive wars and wars of aggression, is
there a world-wide juridical conscience? Are there unequivocal criteria
of aggression? This is what worries the Defense; and not the question of
the extent to which those who have collaborated in the work of
extermination should be punished.
When the defense counsels speak of “law in force” they do so for the
purpose of denying this Tribunal the right to condemn, and Dr. Jahrreiss
denied all authority to the law “such as it should be conceived” in the
light of morality and progress (Page 3). All of them forget that the law
in force is not only the law of the past, the only one to which they
themselves appeal, but that the law in force is also that which the
judges invoke in a concrete manner from the bench. All of them forget
that jurisprudence is subject to the laws of evolution. Where no written
law exists one can only speak of the former tendencies and ascertain
whether they are still valid and can be invoked. But let us stop here.
We would ourselves confuse the issue.
The unique fact of this Trial, the fact that stands out above all
others, is that of the methodical, systematic extermination of all those
who occupied the living space coveted by Germany.
Other crimes have certainly been committed, but only as means to an end.
We are tempted to describe them as secondary and accessory to the main
crime, so overwhelming is the atrocity of the latter.
We must realize the full magnitude of these atrocious crimes and
appreciate the danger to humanity which is constituted by such a
precedent, in order to exact adequate punishment.
Atrocity of the State-Committed Crime.
We have already shown that the crime committed by these men is not a
simple crime. The common criminal knows his victim; he sees him with his
own eyes. He himself strikes and knows the effect of his blow. Even if
he is only an accomplice he is never sufficiently dissociated, morally
and psychologically speaking, from the chief perpetrator, not to share
to a certain extent his apprehensions and reactions when the blow is
delivered and the victim falls.
Genocide, murder, or any other crime becomes anonymous when it is
committed by the State. Nobody bears the chief responsibility. Everybody
shares it—those who by their presence maintain and support the
administration, those who conceived the crime and those who ordained it,
as well as he who issued the order. As for the executioner, he says to
himself, “Befehl ist Befehl,” “An order is an order,” and carries out
his hangman’s task.
Those who make the decision do so without shuddering. It is possible
that they have no accurate and concrete picture in their minds of the
consequences of their orders. The stupefaction of some of the accused
immediately after the showing of the film about the camps is
understandable in the light of this reflection. As for those who promote
the execution of the crime by their general co-operation in the work of
Party and State, they feel that they are passive spectators of a scene
which does not concern them. They have, in any case, no punishment to
fear. In the German sphere the State and the Party are strong, and
determined to remain so for a thousand years. They have destroyed
justice. In the international sphere, the prevailing code insures—or,
at least, is believed to insure—immunity. Moreover there is no
permanent international jurisdiction capable of opposing the gangster
states. The possibility of a military defeat is not taken into
consideration, since the precautions taken are apparently so thorough.
It is a remarkable fact that, allowance made for the delay necessary for
the installation of gas chambers, the peak of the murders coincides with
the period in which the State and regime believe in certain victory, or
have not yet taken seriously the omens of defeat. It is really the
perfect anonymous crime imagined by the French moralist when he
propounded the case of the mandarin as a test of moral conscience. And
all the conditions favor the absence of a reaction. The facts have
demonstrated that none of those men have experienced the decisive
revulsion in those circumstances.
Most of them did feel that they had played a part in the tragedy. They
have, I think, been more intent on relieving their consciences than on
attempting to deceive their judges by shelving guilt onto their
neighbors. Few of them have had the courage to acknowledge, as did
Schirach and Frank, that they were component parts of the whole system,
and as such could not evade responsibility. The others deny it at the
risk of letting the guilt fall upon the German people who were incapable
of throwing off the yoke of their evil masters. They attempt, in the
exposition of their case, to minimize their responsibility in the hope
of conjuring it away, but since Severing’s statement and those made
previously by the mayor of Oranienburg and the mayor of Buchenwald and
confirmed by Frank, are true, namely, that there were rumors all over
Germany that people died in these camps, as everybody now knows, do they
expect to make us believe that they alone were in ignorance thereof?
The less guilty among them, if one can establish different categories of
“major criminals,” did not dare to object, but their criminal cowardice
had such appalling consequences that they cannot possibly justify any
lessening of the penalty.
As we now see, crime committed by the state in a regime in which state
and party are one, and in which popular control is prevented by the
absence of freedom of thought, freedom of expression and free elections,
is, from the point of view of the criminal, the easiest to commit.
Moreover, technical progress all over the world has harnessed almost
every natural force in the service of mankind. His capacity to work evil
has been considerably increased thereby. Moral restraint has at the same
time been relaxed by the pursuit of materialistic gratification which is
also the corrupt fruit of material progress not controlled by intellect.
Generally speaking, crime seems to be on the increase in every state, in
spite of highly improved methods of repression. In the international
scheme of things, the process is similar. The only difference is that it
is on a larger scale, because as yet there is no international means of
repression. The industrial revolution and the development of natural
sciences have multiplied the virtual power of states. If the state keeps
in its own hands natural wealth and its exploitation, accentuates its
grip on credit by monetary operations, increase in taxation, the levying
of additional loans, whether voluntary or forced, if it binds its people
even more firmly to it by developing public welfare institutions, and
influences their mental life by means of radio propaganda, employing
with this end in view eloquent propagandists capable of arousing the
blind passions of the mob within men most peacefully disposed and most
widely scattered—if this state at the same time takes away from its
opponents every possibility of expressing their views, prevents any
control by the people and every form even of private criticism, it
becomes an absolute ruler possessed of tremendous means of action for
better or worse. Every criminal technique is within its reach and it can
make unrestrained use of it unless, Gentlemen, you introduce the element
of sanctions in international law. It must be possible henceforth to put
an end to the criminal activities of a gangster state through the power
of a superstate organization directed by a legal institution of the same
kind, otherwise the freedom of nations is doomed. The weapons of revolt
fell from their hands as soon as states—and states alone—could possess
methods of destruction against which the courage of individual citizens
was unavailing. Operated by a small number of men devoted to the
criminal regime, those arms which are the property of the state can
drown in blood the slightest attempts at resistance, and although revolt
against tyranny is still the most sacred of duties, such revolt is now
hopeless. This is the danger, and Germany succumbed to it. It is true
that every favorable condition was present at the same time. Under the
impulse of the industrial revolution which from 1850 onward was more
violent in this country than in any other, social standards have changed
enormously; and at the same time the population itself has changed from
rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. This has resulted in a
lowering of its mental level which has brought with it disastrous
consequences, since the bourgeoisie had received no political education
under the Empire.
Deliberately kept at a distance from public affairs by their former
rulers, the German masses, with regard to the industrialist upper class
and proletariat, were interested only in the economic development of the
Reich, and, with regard to the middle class, only in the Army and the
future Reich. When, after the first World War, the Germans had to endure
the disappointment of defeat; when to shabby and commonplace
surroundings were added all the rancor and resentment described by the
Defendant Göring at the beginning of his testimony, in addition to the
bitter consciousness of social and material downfall; when youth in
particular strove to make its hopes a concrete reality, Pan-Germanism
awoke, was disseminated and brought down to the level of the mob and
then came within reach of all the discontented elements. At the same
time, the old antithesis between vital force and intellectualism,
culture and civilization, healthy eagerness and decadent lassitude, the
cult of life and the cult of intellect was brought to life and given
definite shape for the use of simple and puerile minds in the form of
the dynamic antithesis between the Nordic Aryan and the Semitic Jew.
With the help of appropriate education this biological materialism was
easily imposed. The ground had long been prepared. The German is
particularly attracted by inculcated doctrine because it alone can
supply the lack of personal, independent discipline which is
characteristic of him on the intellectual and moral plane. He loves
anything that can be recited as a universally acknowledged creed, a
stereotyped phrase suitable for use on all occasions. For this reason,
young Germans learned for their Abitur examination the six races
admitted by Guenther just as they learned grammar, and no more dreamed
of doubting the former than they doubted the latter. And when the German
mentality accused nations as much alive and as strongly attached to
their land, their traditions, and their flexible and varied human
culture, as England and France, of being content to possess only a puny
and artificial intellectual life, when it accused them with the crime
against life—and Dr. Stahmer echoed this—the German mind created for
itself, by reason of the coarse and facile creed which it claimed to
impose upon all alike, an intellectualism differing from ours in its
danger and its artificiality. The result of these so-called ethics of
life was a practice and a doctrine of pure opportunism—collective or
social, pseudoscientific, biological, materialistic—which resulted in
the sterilization, the physiological observations made in the camps, and
12 million dead. The reflection of the old French philosopher comes
irresistibly to our minds when we are confronted with this result:
“Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul.” A
neo-Machiavellism, an example of which was afforded us by Göring in his
statement, took root.
I read lately somewhere in a final pleading that right in itself does
not exist, and that efforts to establish a dividing line between right
and wrong are guided by historical and national standards (Dr. Nelte).
Hitler had already said: “Right is what is profitable to the nation”
and, according to his defense counsel, Frank paraphrased this statement
as follows: “What is profitable for the people is right. Collective
interests take precedence over individual interests.” On reading this, I
thought of the answer which would have been given by the absolutist,
Bossuet, who knew how to determine human standards. The Defense Counsel
compared French absolutism with Nazism. Here is my answer:
“Politics sacrifice the individual to the common good, and this
is right to a certain extent; it is good that one man should die
for the people. By that, Caiaphas understood that an innocent
person could be sentenced to the supreme penalty for the sake of
the common good, which is never allowed, for, on the contrary,
innocent blood cries for vengeance against those who shed it.”
We know what consequences the Nazi precepts could produce. The witness
Roser reported the words of this young German soldier who, after
describing a massacre in a ghetto, concluded: “Ah, my dear friend, it
was horrible, but ... an order is an order.” The Tribunal will find
Kramer’s terrible words at the end of Document Number F-655, which is in
one of the document books submitted by the French Delegation. Before he
was made commandant of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Kramer
commanded the Natzweiler Camp in Alsace, where he himself asphyxiated 80
persons by gas. This has been proved. In answer to the question: “What
would you have done if they had not all been dead?” he said:
“I should again have tried to asphyxiate them by letting a
second dose of gas into the room. I did not feel any emotion
while carrying out these acts, for I had received orders to
execute the 80 internees in the way I told you. After all I have
been trained in that way.”
What a terrible charge against the system! Before becoming a murderer by
order, this man had been a bookkeeper in Augsburg. How many peaceful
bookkeepers so trained are still in Germany today? And now “innocent
blood cries for vengeance.”
Conclusion:
You know the crime! You know why and by what means it was perpetrated!
This heinous and unprecedented crime is that of the National Socialist
Party-State, but the defendants in their capacity as chiefs of the
National Socialist Party and high State officials have all accepted
major responsibility in the conception and perpetration of this crime.
Their participation in the crime of the Party-State is their own
personal fault and brings with it no claim whatsoever to immunity! Proof
has now been brought against them!
They must be punished; you know also the dangers to which the world is
exposed by their crime and the misery and misfortune it has brought to
mankind. You must hit hard without pity. It is enough that the verdict
be just! To be sure, there are degrees in their guilt. Does it follow
that there must be degrees in the penalties themselves, when those whom
we consider the least guilty merit the death penalty! Tomorrow, this
International Trial over and the principal war criminals sentenced, we
shall go back to our own countries where we may have to prosecute before
our own tribunals those who merely carried out the orders of the
National Socialist State, who only played the part of hangman.
How could we demand the death penalty for another Kramer, or another
Hoess, or for the camp commandants who have on their conscience the
deaths of millions of human creatures whom they killed by order, if we
hesitated today to demand the supreme penalty for those who were the
driving force of the criminal State which gave the orders.
The fate of these men lies entirely with your conscience! It is now out
of our hands, our task is finished. Now, it is for you in the silence of
your deliberations to heed the voice of innocent blood crying for
justice.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.
[_The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours._]
_Afternoon Session_
THE PRESIDENT: I call on the chief prosecutor for the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
GEN. RUDENKO: Your Lordship, Your Honors.
We are summing up the results of the legal proceedings against the major
German war criminals. In the course of 9 months all the aspects of the
case and all the evidence presented to the Tribunal by the Prosecution
and by the Defense have been subjected to a careful and detailed
scrutiny. Not a single deed of which the defendants have been accused
has been left without verification, not a single significant
circumstance has been overlooked during the investigation of the present
case.
For the first time in the history of mankind criminals against humanity
are being held responsible for their crimes before an international
criminal tribunal; for the first time nations are trying those who have
soaked large areas of the earth with blood, who have annihilated
millions of innocent people, destroyed cultural treasures, instituted a
systematic massacre and torture, exterminated old people, women, and
children, and who in their mad desire for world domination have hurled
the universe into an abyss of unprecedented misery.
This Trial, to be sure, is the first of its kind in legal history. A
tribunal is sitting in judgment, a tribunal created by the peace-loving
free countries, who represent the desire of mankind for progress and to
prevent the recurrence of calamities suffered, determined not to permit
a gang of criminals to carry out with impunity their preparations for
the enslavement of nations and the extermination of peoples in the
realization of their fanatic plans. Mankind has called the criminals to
account and we, the prosecutors, on behalf of all mankind, are the
accusers at this Trial.
And how pitiful are the efforts to dispute the right of mankind to judge
its enemies, how vain the efforts to deprive nations of the right to
punish those who made enslavement and genocide their aim, and who for
many years strove to realize this criminal aim by criminal methods. The
present Trial is being so conducted that the defendants, who are accused
of the most heinous crimes, are given every possibility to defend
themselves and are offered all the necessary legal guarantees. In their
own country the defendants who stood at the helm of the Government
destroyed all legal forms of justice, and discarded all the principles
of legal procedure accepted by civilized mankind. But they themselves
are being tried by an international court with legal guarantees to
assure all the rights of defense.
We are now summing up the results of the legal proceedings, we are
drawing conclusions from the evidence examined before the Court, we are
considering all the data upon which the accusation is based. We now ask:
Were the charges levied against the defendants proved before the Court,
has their guilt been established? There is only one answer to this
question: The legal proceedings fully confirm the charges.
We charge the defendants only with those facts which have been fully
established and proved beyond all doubt in the course of the proceedings
in which monstrous crimes have been proved, crimes which were prepared
over a period of many years by a band of bragging criminals who had
seized power in Germany, and who perpetrated these crimes over a period
of many years, without regard for the principles of law or the most
elementary standards of human morality. These crimes have been proved,
the defendants’ testimony and the arguments of the Defense have been
powerless to refute the charges—they cannot be refuted because it is
impossible to refute the truth, and truth is the enduring result of this
Trial, the consequence of our long and stubborn efforts. The accusation
has been proved in every detail. It has been proved that there existed a
Common Plan or Conspiracy in which the defendants participated for the
preparation of aggressive wars, in violation of international law and
for the enslavement and extermination of peoples. There can be no doubt
as to the existence of such a plan just as there is no doubt about the
leading part played in it by the defendants. This point of the
accusation is confirmed by all the data introduced during the legal
proceedings by irrefutable documents, and by the testimonies of
witnesses and of the defendants themselves.
All the activities of the defendants were directed toward the
preparation and the launching of aggressive wars. All their so-called
“ideological work” consisted in the cultivation of bestial instincts, in
the installation of the absurd idea of racial superiority in the
conscience of the German people, and in the practical realization of
their plans for the extermination and enslavement of peoples of
“inferior” races, who were supposed only to serve for fertilizing the
growth of the “master race.” Their “ideological work” consisted in a
call to murder, to plunder, to the destruction of culture, and to the
extermination of human beings.
The defendants prepared these crimes a long time in advance and then
committed them by attacking other countries, seizing foreign territories
and exterminating the population. When was this plan or conspiracy
conceived? Of course, it is scarcely possible to give an exact date, day
and hour on which the defendants conspired to commit their crimes. We
cannot and shall not establish our conclusions and assertions on guesses
and suppositions. But it must be considered as established beyond any
possible doubt that from the moment when the fascists seized power in
Germany they embarked on their criminal aims and utilized this power for
the preparation of aggressive war. All the activity of the defendants
was directed toward the preparation of Germany for war. The rearmament
and reconversion of economy for war purposes is an irrefutable fact—it
has been proved by documents and admitted by the defendants themselves.
We may ask, what was this war for which the defendants began to prepare
immediately after the seizure of power? Could this possibly be a
defensive war? But then nobody intended attacking Germany; nobody had
any idea of the kind, and—in my opinion—such an idea could not even
have existed. Since Germany was not preparing for a defensive war and
inasmuch as the very fact that she did prepare for war has been
established—it is evident that she was preparing for a war of
aggression. That is the logic of the facts and such are the facts
themselves. Germany initiated and waged this very war which she had been
preparing, and in 1937-39 occurred precisely that for what she had been
preparing since 1933. Hence the conclusion: The plan or the conspiracy
existed at least since 1933, that is, from the moment when the fascists
seized power and used it for their criminal purposes. These are the
facts which are confirmed by the words of the defendants themselves
uttered at a time when they did not expect that they would ever be
defendants. It is enough to mention the speeches of Schacht, Krupp and
others in which they describe how the fascist Government was preparing
for war and how all fields of political and economic life were subjected
to this one purpose.
I consider as fully proved the charges against the defendants to the
effect that in 1933, when the Hitlerites seized power in Germany, they
created a plan or conspiracy for the perpetration of crimes against
peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The legal proceedings
have unequivocally proved the crimes against peace committed by the
defendants, which consisted in planning, preparing, initiating and
waging aggressive wars, in violation of international treaties,
agreements and assurances. Here the facts speak for themselves—wars
which involved innumerable victims and destruction, wars whose
aggressive nature has been undoubtedly established. The guilt of the
defendants in the perpetration of crimes against peace has therefore
been fully proved.
The charge of perpetrating war crimes, in waging war by methods contrary
to all laws and customs of war, has also been fully proved. Neither the
defendants themselves, nor their defense counsel could raise any
objections to the very fact of their having committed these crimes.
All that they could say to this was that the defendants themselves had
not committed these atrocities, as for instance the extermination of
people in “murder vans” and concentration camps; they had not destroyed
the Jews with their own hands, and some of them had not even known about
such particular facts. But that such facts really did exist the
defendants themselves do not deny. The defendants admit these facts. A
fruitless method of defense!
Certainly, the defendants occupying high leading posts in Hitler’s
Germany were in no need of personally shooting, hanging, smothering,
freezing live people to death by way of an experiment, and so on. Their
subordinates did that according to their instructions, their henchmen
did the dirty work, so to speak, while the defendants only had to give
orders which were obeyed without a murmur. Therefore, the attempts of
the defendants to deny their connection with these henchmen, to detach
themselves from them, were hopeless.
This connection is evident and indisputable. If the commandant of
Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, extracted the gold teeth of the dead, we may
say that the Reich Minister, Walter Funk, opened special vaults in the
cellars of the Reichsbank in which to keep these gold teeth. If
Kaltenbrunner’s subordinates exterminated people in “murder vans,” the
vans themselves were built at the works of Sauer, Daimler and Benz, who
again were the subordinates of the Defendant Speer. If the prisoners of
war were destroyed by professional henchmen of the Death’s-Head unit and
by the camp guards, the orders to exterminate were signed by Keitel,
Generalfeldmarschall of the German Armed Forces. That is to say, it is
the defendants who gave the sign for extermination, issued the orders to
create a special murder technique, and explained the ideological reasons
for the right of the master races to exterminate “inferior races.” It
was they who calmly and ruthlessly watched the tortured victims and, as
Hans Frank, delivered solemn speeches about “one more step forward”
taken by German fascism toward ridding “the living space” of “the
inferior races.”
The defendants are responsible for every murder, for every drop of
innocent blood shed by Hitler’s hangmen, for between them and the direct
perpetrators of the crimes, murders, tortures, there is a difference
only in rank and scope of action. Those are the direct hangmen, and
these are the principal hangmen, hangmen of a higher rank. They are far
more dangerous than those they trained, in the spirit of hatred toward
humanity and cruelty, and whom they now repudiate in order to save
themselves.
The criminality of the defendants in the perpetration of war crimes has
been fully proved in the sense that they initiated a system of
exterminating prisoners of war, peaceful inhabitants, women, old men,
and children. It is their fault that wherever the German soldier stepped
there lay the heaps of murdered and tortured people, ruins and places
left barren by fire, devastated towns and villages and the land
desecrated and soaked in blood.
The crimes committed against humanity have been completely proved. We
cannot omit the crimes committed by the defendants in Germany during
their domination: The extermination of all those who in any way
expressed their discontent with the Nazi regime, the slave labor and the
extermination of human beings in concentration camps, mass extermination
of Jews, and the same slave labor and extermination of people in the
occupied territories—all this has been proved and the charges are
irrefutable. What means of defense have the counsels used, what kind of
proofs and arguments could they give to refute the charges?
The arguments of the defendants may be divided into two main groups.
First, a number of witnesses summoned by the Defense Counsel. These
witnesses were to extenuate the guilt of the defendants by their
evidence, to play down the part taken by them in committing the crimes,
and to rehabilitate them by all possible means.
These witnesses themselves were, in most cases, defendants in other
trials. How can we discuss the objectivity and authenticity of the
evidence given by such witnesses of the Defense, if the innocence of the
Defendant Funk should be confirmed by his deputy and accomplice, a
member of the SS since 1931, Hayler, bearing the rank of SS
Gruppenführer; if the criminal Rainer, member of the fascist Party since
1930, and Gauleiter of Salzburg and then of Kärnten, was summoned to
give evidence on behalf of Seyss-Inquart.
Those so-called “witnesses”—such as for instance Bühler—the right-hand
man of the Defendant Frank and accomplice in all his crimes, or Bohle,
one of the principal leaders of the Hitlerite espionage and
counterespionage activities and chief of the Auslands-Organisation of
the fascist party, came here in order to commit perjury to try to
protect their former “bosses” and to save their own lives.
And yet most of the “witnesses” for the Defense in the course of the
interrogation became witnesses for the Prosecution. They were convicted
by the “mute witnesses”—documents, mostly of German origin; they
themselves were forced to expose those whom they intended to protect.
Another type of the means used by the Defense is legal arguments and
considerations.
a) Some legal aspects of the Trial.
The accusation in the present Trial is based on an enormous quantity of
irrefutable facts and is firmly established on the principles of law and
justice. Therefore, in the opening speeches for the Prosecution, so much
attention has already been paid to the legal justification of the
responsibility of the defendants.
In the speeches of the Defense a number of legal questions was again
raised:
a) On the importance of the principle _Nullum crimen sine lege_;
b) on the importance of the order;
c) on the responsibility of the state and individuals;
d) on the concept of conspiracy.
I therefore consider it necessary to return again to some legal
questions in order to answer the attempts of the Defense to confuse
clear and simple statements and to change the legal argumentation into a
kind of “smoke screen” in an effort to conceal from the Tribunal the
gruesome reality of the fascist crimes.
a) Principle _Nullum crimen sine lege_.
The Defense attempted to deny the accusation by proving that at the time
the defendants were perpetrating the offenses with which they were
charged, the latter had not been foreseen by existing laws, and that
therefore the defendants cannot bear criminal responsibility for them.
I could simply pass over the principle _Nullum crimen sine lege_, as the
Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which is an immutable
law and is unconditionally to be carried out, provides that this
Tribunal “shall have the power to try and punish all persons, who acting
in the interest of European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as
members of organization or group,” committed any of the crimes
enumerated in Article 6 of the Charter.
Therefore, from the legal point of view, sentence can be pronounced and
carried out without requiring that the deeds which incriminate the
defendants be foreseen by the criminal law at the time of their
perpetration. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the deeds of the
defendants, at the time when they were being committed, were actual
criminal acts from the standpoint of the then existing criminal law.
The principles of criminal law contained in the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal are the expression of the principles
contained in a number of international, agreements, enumerated in my
opening statement of 8 February 1946 and in the criminal law of all
civilized countries. The law of all civilized countries provides
criminal responsibility for murder, torture, violence, plunder, _et
cetera_. The fact that those crimes have been initiated by the
defendants on a scale surpassing all human imagination and bear the
marks of unheard-of sadistic cruelty does not, of course, exclude but
rather increases the responsibility of the defendants. If the defendants
had committed the crimes on the territory and against the citizens of
any one country, then in accordance with the declaration of the heads of
the Governments of the U.S.S.R., of Great Britain and the United States
of America, published on 2 November 1943, and in full agreement with the
universally accepted principles of criminal law, they would be tried in
that country and according to that country’s laws.
This declaration set forth that “the German officers, soldiers, and
members of the Nazi Party who were responsible for the afore-mentioned
cruelties, murders and executions, or who voluntarily took part in them,
would be deported to the countries where those gruesome crimes had been
committed, in order to be tried and punished according to the law of
those liberated countries and free governments which would be
established there.”
Nevertheless, the defendants are war criminals “whose offenses have no
particular geographical location” (Article 1 of the Agreement of the
Four Powers of 8 August 1945) and, therefore, the International Military
Tribunal, acting in accordance with the Charter, is competent to try
their crimes. The counsel for the Defendant Hess took the liberty to
affirm that, “there can be no doubt that the Crimes against Peace, as
they are stated in Article 6, Paragraph 2a, of the Charter, do not
exist.”
There is no need here to refer to the international agreements as I have
already mentioned them in my opening statement on 8 February 1946, in
which aggressive war was declared an international crime. Therefore the
attempts of the defendants and their counsels to hide behind the
principle _Nullum crimen sine lege_ have failed. They are charged with
deeds which civilized humanity had long ago recognized as criminal.
b) Execution of an order.
Some of the defendants, in their depositions before the Tribunal,
attempted to present themselves as pitiful dwarfs, blind and obedient
executors of another’s will—the will of Hitler.
In his search for a legal basis for this assertion, counsel for the
defense, Jahrreiss, spoke at great length about the importance of
Hitler’s orders. In the opinion of the counsel Jahrreiss, an order of
Hitler’s “was something quite different” from the order of any other
leader, that a Hitler order was an act “legally immutable.” Therefore,
Professor Jahrreiss questions whether, whatever the Charter may mean by
the orders which it rejects as a factor excluding criminal
responsibility, it would, be possible to adopt the same attitude toward
an order of Hitler’s. He asks: Could such an order be looked upon as an
“order” within the meaning of the Charter?
The right to interpret law is the irrefutable right of every lawyer,
including the counsels for the Defense. Nevertheless, it is quite
incomprehensible what logical or other methods have led him to assert
that the provisions of the Charter, specially drafted for the trial of
major war criminals of fascist Germany, did not factually imply the very
conditions themselves of the activities of these criminals. What orders
then issued by whom and in what country are meant by the Charter of the
Tribunal?
On, the contrary it is indisputable that the authors of the Charter were
fully aware of the specific conditions existing in Hitlerite Germany,
were thoroughly familiar—from the material of the Kharkov and other
trials—with the attempts of the defendants to hide behind Hitler’s
orders, and it is for this very reason that they made a special proviso
to the effect that the execution of an obviously criminal order does not
exonerate one from criminal responsibility.
c) Responsibility of countries and individuals.
We think that the very authors of this attempt to conceal a large group
of ministers, Gauleiter, and military commanders behind Hitler’s back
doubted to a certain extent the efficacy of a similar defensive maneuver
since a new line of defense was introduced to support the maneuver in
question.
“If the German Reich launched an attack in spite of a
still-existent nonaggression pact”—said counsel
Jahrreiss—“then Germany committed an international offense and
must answer for it according to the principles of international
law—the Reich alone, but not the individual person...”
We cannot help noticing that the above point of view is not exactly a
brand new one: Even before the beginning of the official Defense at this
Trial, certain unofficial advocates of war criminals propagated a
version to the effect that it was the German Government and the German
nation who were to bear responsibility for the criminal aggression and
war crimes and not individual persons. When one who is subject to
international law, that is the state, violates its principles, certain
consequences of an international character are entailed, but in no case
does it entail the criminal responsibility of the state. Any action on
the part of the state in the sphere of international relations is
committed by individual persons, by officials, and by the agents of that
state. In carrying out such acts, these individuals may be guilty of the
most varied offenses in violation of either the common or the criminal
law. In the latter case, that is, when their individual criminal
responsibility is involved, they have to bear this legal responsibility
before the court, in conformity with the laws of their own country, as
well as—if such is the case—in conformity with the laws and before the
courts of a foreign state.
In the present case, not only did the Hitlerite State violate the
principles of international law, as a result of which measures were
taken against the states; but also some particular individuals, in
committing those acts, have personally committed criminal offenses for
which they bear the criminal responsibility in accordance with the
Charter before the International Military Tribunal.
d) Concerning the concept of conspiracy.
The Defense Counsel is unanimous in trying, although in different forms
and versions, to contest the charges of criminal conspiracy directed
against the defendants. Extracting from various sources one-sided and
tendentiously selected definitions of conspiracy, the Defense Counsel
have endeavored to prove that Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, and others
cannot be considered as participants in the conspiracy. I should like to
quote here several arguments proving the lack of basis for the
statements of the Defense.
Conspiracy implies the existence of a criminal society created for and
working toward the achievement of a common criminal purpose. Such a
society undeniably existed. It stands to reason that in this case the
threads and levers uniting the members of this conspiratory criminal
society are extremely complicated, since the conspirators had seized the
government of the state.
In any criminal society and particularly in a highly complicated society
like this, individual participants commit criminal acts included in the
general plan of the conspiracy but they can practically remain unknown
to a number of the members of this society. Nevertheless, as these
crimes result from a single criminal plan, common to the entire society,
the participants who have not personally committed these separate
criminal actions and were not practically informed of them, still bear
the responsibility for them.
In this particular case the existence of the conspiracy is not precluded
by the circumstance that, for instance, Schirach could be unaware of
some of the measures of the slave trader Sauckel, or the “pogrom maker”
Streicher; neither is the existence of the conspiracy precluded by the
differences of opinion among individual participants in the conspiracy
concerning particular questions, the intrigues of Göring against
Bormann, _et cetera_. Such dissensions may occur in any gang of robbers
and thieves, but the gang does not cease to exist on this account.
In nearly every society there exists a certain hierarchy among its
members. Very often the head of a criminal gang usurps unlimited power
over the other members, even the right of life and death, but it never
occurred to any lawyer in the world to deny the existence of a criminal
society merely because its participants were not equal among themselves
and one of them had power over the others.
It is, at any rate, strange to deny the existence of the conspiracy in
the present case because of the fact that enormous personal power was
vested in the hands of the leader Hitler. In the same way the existence
of the conspiracy does not preclude but, _per contra_, implies a
definite distribution of the parts played by the participants of the
criminal group in pursuance of the common criminal aim: One directs all
the criminal activities, the other is in charge of questions of
ideological training, the third prepares the army, the fourth organizes
the war industry, the fifth carries on diplomatic preparations, _et
cetera_. Therefore, the fascist conspiracy does not cease to be a
conspiracy, but is one which presents special danger, since the entire
machinery of the government and enormous resources of men and material
are in the hands of the conspirators. In the hands of the international
criminals, in the hands of Göring, Keitel, and the other defendants
countless people became instruments of most grievous crimes. This is the
reason why specific features which distinguish the conspirators of
fascist Germany from any other gang only lend it a specially dangerous
character without changing in any way the legal nature of the
conspiracy. This completes the analysis of the legal arguments of the
Defense, which were examined in detail by my honorable colleagues. As
you have seen, Your Honors, the arguments of the Defense were found to
be inconsistent and incapable of rebutting the charges. I shall now
consider the question concerning the guilt of the individual defendants.
Göring.
In Hitlerite Germany the Defendant Göring was next in importance to
Hitler himself, he stood next in the line of succession. He assumed
enormous powers, and seized the most responsible posts. He was the
president of the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, he was
the dictator of German economy—the Delegate for the Four Year Plan—and
the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. The main point was that he
utilized this extensive field and dedicated all his forces to the
organization and perpetration of the crimes set out in the Indictment.
As we already know, the aim of this conspiracy consisted first of all in
the conquest of Europe and then in the world supremacy of Hitlerite
Germany, regardless of any methods, however criminal and inhuman. To
realize this aim, the way had to be cleared since Hitler had already
declared in February 1933 at a conference with prominent German
industrialists that the parliamentary system must be destroyed.
Göring undertook this task. He began energetically to exterminate the
political opponents of fascism, and for this purpose carried out mass
arrests of members of political parties unfavorable to Nazism. He
organized concentration camps where he interned, without trial, all
those who disagreed with fascism. He created the Gestapo which, from the
day of its birth, established a regime of bloody terror. He demanded of
all the officials, in the camps, and of the Gestapo to stop at
nothing—and savage punishments of human beings, tortures and massacres
became under his guidance fundamental procedures. It is he, Göring, who
declared: “Every bullet fired from the pistol of a policeman is my
bullet, and if anyone calls it murder, this means that I have committed
murder ...” (From Göring’s book, _Aufbau einer Nation_, published by him
in 1934). Thus he cleared the way for fascism and paved the path for the
unhampered progress and the realization of the fascist conspiracy.
Göring was tireless in his efforts to annihilate everybody and
everything which hampered this conspiracy. And Hitler praised him for
this. For example, on 13 July 1934 he declared to the Reichstag that
Göring, “... with his iron fist smashed the attack against the National
Socialist State before this attack could become effective.”
All these terroristic activities of Göring were calculated to clear the
way for the realization of the fundamental idea of the fascist
conspiracy, that is, the conquest of Europe and, later, to achieve world
supremacy of Hitlerite Germany. The legal proceedings have established
Göring’s guilt in the planning and preparation of all aggressive wars by
Hitlerite Germany.
Numerous documents have been presented to the Tribunal, testifying to
the active part played by Göring in launching aggressive wars. I shall
remind you of Göring’s declaration in 1935 at a meeting of Air Force
officers. At that conference he declared that it was his intention “to
create an air force which shall strike the enemy an avenging blow. Even
before the attack, the enemy must feel that his cause is lost”; and this
intention, as we know, he realized by preparing for war from day to day.
At the conference of the leaders of the German air industry on 8 July
1938 Göring hinted that war was near, and that if Germany emerged
victorious from this war she would be the most powerful state in the
world, dominating the world markets, and she would become a wealthy
nation. “But one must risk, one must stake all.” Such was the slogan
which Göring coined on that occasion.
On 14 October 1938, not long before he presented demands to
Czechoslovakia, Göring declared that he had begun to carry out a
gigantic program in comparison with which all previous undertakings were
insignificant.
“In the shortest possible time, the Air Force must be increased
fivefold; the Navy must be rearmed at a much greater speed, and
the Army has to procure more speedily large numbers of weapons
of attack, especially heavy artillery and heavy tanks. This must
be accompanied by the production of war materials and
particularly explosives.”