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 “co-ordinated” 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 instill 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 therefore 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 liberties, 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 a vast
propaganda machine.
(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.