Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the Nazi
conspirators set about the consolidation of their position of power
within Germany, the extermination of potential internal resistance, and
the placing of the German Nation on a military footing.
(a) The Nazi conspirators reduced the Reichstag to a body of their own
nominees and curtailed the freedom of popular elections throughout
the country. They transformed the several states, provinces, and
municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers,
into hardly more than administrative organs of the central
Government. They united the offices of the President and the
Chancellor in the person of Hitler; instituted a widespread purge of
civil servants; and severely restricted the independence of the
judiciary and rendered it subservient to Nazi ends. The conspirators
greatly enlarged existing State and Party organizations; established
a network of new State and Party organizations; and “coordinated”
State agencies with the Nazi Party and its branches and affiliates,
with the result that German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and
practice and progressively mobilized for the accomplishment of their
aims.
(b) In order to make their rule secure from attack and to instil fear in
the hearts of the German people, the Nazi conspirators established
and extended a system of terror against opponents and supposed or
suspected opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such persons
without judicial process, holding them in “protective custody” and
concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation,
despoilment, enslavement, torture, and murder. These concentration
camps were established early in 1933 under the direction of the
Defendant GÖRING and expanded as a fixed part of the terroristic
policy and method of the conspirators and used by them for the
commission of the Crimes against Humanity hereinafter alleged. Among
the principal agencies utilized in the perpetration of these crimes
were the SS and the GESTAPO, which, together with other favored
branches or agencies of the State and Party, were permitted to
operate without restraint of law.
(c) The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in addition to the suppression
of distinctively political opposition, it was necessary to suppress
or exterminate certain other movements or groups which they regarded
as obstacles to their retention of total control in Germany and to
the aggressive aims of the conspiracy abroad. Accordingly:
(1) The Nazi conspirators destroyed the free trade unions in Germany
by confiscating their funds and properties, persecuting their
leaders, prohibiting their activities, and supplanting them by an
affiliated Party organization. The Leadership Principle was
introduced into industrial relations, the entrepreneur becoming
the leader and the workers becoming his followers. Thus any
potential resistance of the workers was frustrated and the
productive labor capacity of the German Nation was brought under
the effective control of the conspirators.
(2) The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices
incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the
influence of the churches over the people and in particular over
the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the
Christian churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefor
Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs, and pursued a program of
persecution of priests, clergy, and members of monastic orders
whom they deemed opposed to their purposes, and confiscated
church property.
(3) The persecution by the Nazi conspirators of pacifist groups,
including religious movements dedicated to pacifism, was
particularly relentless and cruel.
(d) Implementing their “master race” policy, the conspirators joined in a
program of relentless persecution of the Jews, designed to
exterminate them. Annihilation of the Jews became an official State
policy, carried out both by official action and by incitements to mob
and individual violence. The conspirators openly avowed their
purpose. For example, the Defendant ROSENBERG stated: “Anti-Semitism
is the unifying element of the reconstruction of Germany.” On another
occasion he also stated: “Germany will regard the Jewish question as
solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German
living space . . . Europe will have its Jewish question solved only
after the very last Jew has left the Continent.” The Defendant LEY
declared: “We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until
the last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It
is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind—the Jew has got
to be exterminated.” On another occasion he also declared: “The
second German secret weapon is anti-Semitism because if it is
consistently pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem
which all nations will be forced to consider.” The Defendant
STREICHER declared: “The sun will not shine on the nations of the
earth until the last Jew is dead.” These avowals and incitements were
typical of the declarations of the Nazi conspirators throughout the
course of their conspiracy. The program of action against the Jews
included disfranchisement, stigmatization, denial of civil rights,
subjecting their persons and property to violence, deportation,
enslavement, enforced labor, starvation, murder, and mass
extermination. The extent to which the conspirators succeeded in
their purpose can only be estimated, but the annihilation was
substantially complete in many localities of Europe. Of the 9,600,000
Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is
conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of
them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only
remnants of the Jewish population of Europe remain.
(e) In order to make the German people amenable to their will, and to
prepare them psychologically for war, the Nazi conspirators reshaped
the educational system and particularly the education and training of
the German youth. The Leadership Principle was introduced into the
schools and the Party and affiliated organizations were given wide
supervisory powers over education. The Nazi conspirators imposed a
supervision of all cultural activities, controlled the dissemination
of information and the expression of opinion within Germany as well
as the movement of intelligence of all kinds from and into Germany,
and created vast propaganda machines.
(f) The Nazi conspirators placed a considerable number of their dominated
organizations on a progressively militarized footing with a view to
the rapid transformation and use of such organizations whenever
necessary as instruments of war.
(E) THE ACQUIRING OF TOTALITARIAN CONTROL IN
GERMANY: ECONOMIC; AND THE ECONOMIC PLANNING
AND MOBILIZATION FOR AGGRESSIVE WAR
Having gained political power the conspirators organized Germany’s
economy to give effect to their political aims.
1. In order to eliminate the possibility of resistance in the economic
sphere, they deprived labor of its rights of free industrial and
political association as particularized in paragraph (D) 3 (c) (1)
herein.
2. They used organizations of German business as instruments of economic
mobilization for war.
3. They directed Germany’s economy towards preparation and equipment of
the military machine. To this end they directed finance, capital
investment, and foreign trade.
4. The Nazi conspirators, and in particular the industrialists among
them, embarked upon a huge re-armament program and set out to produce
and develop huge quantities of materials of war and to create a powerful
military potential.
5. With the object of carrying through the preparation for war the Nazi
conspirators set up a series of administrative agencies and authorities.
For example, in 1936 they established for this purpose the office of the
Four Year Plan with the Defendant GÖRING as Plenipotentiary, vesting it
with overriding control over Germany’s economy. Furthermore, on 28
August 1939, immediately before launching their aggression against
Poland, they appointed the Defendant FUNK Plenipotentiary for Economics;
and on 30 August 1939, they set up the Ministerial Council for the
Defense of the Reich to act as a War Cabinet.
(F) UTILIZATION OF NAZI CONTROL FOR FOREIGN
AGGRESSION