All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1 September 1939 and 8
May 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied
by the German Armed Forces since 1 September 1939, and in Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Italy, and on the High Seas.
All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and
executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in
Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things,
the practice of “total war” including methods of combat and of military
occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the
perpetration of crimes committed on the field of battle during
encounters with enemy armies, against prisoners of war, and in occupied
territories against the civilian population of such territories.
The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other
persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6
of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War
Crimes performed their acts in execution of a Common Plan and Conspiracy
to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which
plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders,
organizers, instigators, and accomplices.
These methods and crimes constituted violations of international
conventions, of internal penal laws, and of the general principles of
criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations,
and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct.
(A) Murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations of or in occupied
territory and on the High Seas.
Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by
their armed forces, the defendants, for the purpose of systematically
terrorizing the inhabitants, ill-treated civilians, imprisoned them
without legal process, tortured, and murdered them.
The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, such as
shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic
undernutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength
of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and
medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all
kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and
the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on
living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants
interfered with religious services, persecuted members of the clergy and
monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted
deliberate and systematic genocide; viz., the extermination of racial
and national groups, against the civilian population of certain occupied
territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people,
and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and
Gypsies.
Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with
the object of obtaining information.
Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to
“protective arrests”, that is to say they were arrested and imprisoned
without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and
they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.
In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified
“Nacht und Nebel”. These were entirely cut off from the world and were
allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without
trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German
authorities.
Such crimes and ill-treatment are contrary to international conventions,
in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and
customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from
the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of
the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b)
of the Charter.
The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in
this Count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive
of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right
of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and
ill-treatment of civilians.
1. In France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy, and
the Channel Islands, (hereinafter called the “Western Countries”), and
in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due north and
south through the center of Berlin (hereinafter called “Western
Germany”).
Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and
similar establishments set up by the defendants, and particularly in the
concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck,
Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbrück, Vught, and Amersfoort, and in numerous
cities, towns, and villages, including Oradour sur Glane, Trondheim, and
Oslo.
Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following
forms:
Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts;
they were either individual or collective; notably in Paris (round-up of
the 18th Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish
population of the 11th Arrondissement in August 1941, round-up in July
1942); at Clermont-Ferrand (round-up of professors and students of the
University of Strasbourg, which had been evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand,
on 25 November 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000
persons in January 1943); at Grenoble (round-up of 24 December 1943); at
Cluny (round-up on 24 December 1943); at Figeac (round-up in May 1944);
at Saint Pol de Léon (round-up in July 1944); at Locminé (round-up on 3
July 1944); at Eysieux (round-up in May 1944); and at Meaux-Moussey
(round-up in September 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal
treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as
immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use
of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current,
and practiced in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons,
Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Grenoble,
Annecy, Arras, Béthune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes, and
Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centers.
In the concentration camps, the health regime and the labor regime were
such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes)
attained enormous proportions, for instance:
1. Out of a convoy of 250 French women deported from Compiègne to
Auschwitz in January 1943, 180 had died of exhaustion at the end of 4
months.
2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23 March and 6 May 1943 in
Block 8 at Dachau.
3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21 November 1943 and 15
March 1945 in the block at Dora.