All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a period of years
preceding 8 May 1945, participated as leaders, organizers, instigators,
or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or
Conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes
against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, as defined in
the Charter of this Tribunal, and, in accordance with the provisions of
the Charter, are individually responsible for their own acts and for all
acts committed by any persons in the execution of such plan and
conspiracy. The Common Plan or Conspiracy embraced the commission of
Crimes against Peace, in that the defendants planned, prepared,
initiated, and waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in
violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. In the
development and course of the Common Plan or Conspiracy it came to
embrace the commission of War Crimes, in that it contemplated, and the
defendants determined upon and carried out, ruthless wars against
countries and populations, in violation of the rules and customs of war,
including as typical and systematic means by which the wars were
prosecuted, murder, ill-treatment, deportation for slave labor and for
other purposes of civilian populations of occupied territories, murder
and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of persons on the High Seas,
the taking and killing of hostages, the plunder of public and private
property, the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages, and
devastation not justified by military necessity. The Common Plan or
Conspiracy contemplated and came to embrace as typical and systematic
means, and the defendants determined upon and committed, Crimes against
Humanity, both within Germany and within occupied territories, including
murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts
committed against civilian populations before and during the war, and
persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, in execution of
the plan for preparing and prosecuting aggressive or illegal wars, many
of such acts and persecutions being violations of the domestic laws of
the countries where perpetrated.
IV. _Particulars of the Nature and Development of the Common Plan or
Conspiracy._
(A) The Nazi Party as the central core of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Führer of the
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist
German Workers Party), also known as the Nazi Party, which had been
founded in Germany in 1920. He continued as such throughout the period
covered by this Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with certain of its
subsidiary organizations, became the instrument of cohesion among the
defendants and their co-conspirators and an instrument for the carrying
out of the aims and purposes of their conspiracy. Each defendant became
a member of the Nazi Party and of the conspiracy, with knowledge of
their aims and purposes, or, with such knowledge, became an accessory to
their aims and purposes at some stage of the development of the
conspiracy.
(B) Common objectives and methods of conspiracy.
The aims and purposes of the Nazi Party and of the defendants and divers
other persons from time to time associated as leaders, members,
supporters, or adherents of the Nazi Party (hereinafter called
collectively the “Nazi conspirators”) were, or came to be, to accomplish
the following by any means deemed opportune, including unlawful means,
and contemplating ultimate resort to threat of force, force, and
aggressive war: (1) to abrogate and overthrow the Treaty of Versailles
and its restrictions upon the military armament and activity of Germany;
(2) to acquire the territories lost by Germany as the result of the
World War of 1914-18 and other territories in Europe asserted by the
Nazi conspirators to be occupied principally by so-called “racial
Germans”; (3) to acquire still further territories in continental Europe
and elsewhere claimed by the Nazi conspirators to be required by the
“racial Germans” as “Lebensraum,” or living space, all at the expense of
neighboring and other countries. The aims and purposes of the Nazi
conspirators were not fixed or static, but evolved and expanded as they
acquired progressively greater power and became able to make more
effective application of threats of force and threats of aggressive war.
When their expanding aims and purposes became finally so great as to
provoke such strength of resistance as could be overthrown only by armed
force and aggressive war, and not simply by the opportunistic methods
theretofore used, such as fraud, deceit, threats, intimidation,
fifth-column activities, and propaganda, the Nazi conspirators
deliberately planned, determined upon and launched their aggressive wars
and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and
assurances by the phases and steps hereinafter more particularly
described.
(C) Doctrinal techniques of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
To incite others to join in the Common Plan or Conspiracy, and as a
means of securing for the Nazi conspirators their highest degree of
control over the German community, they put forth, disseminated, and
exploited certain doctrines, among others, as follows:
1. That persons of so-called “German blood” (as specified by the Nazi
conspirators) were a “master race” and were accordingly entitled to
subjugate, dominate, or exterminate other “races” and peoples;
2. That the German people should be ruled under the Führerprinzip
(Leadership Principle) according to which power was to reside in a
Führer from whom sub-leaders were to derive authority in a hierarchical
order, each sub-leader to owe unconditional obedience to his immediate
superior but to be absolute in his own sphere of jurisdiction; and the
power of the leadership was to be unlimited, extending to all phases of
public and private life;