THE PRESIDENT: If there is any disturbance in court, those who make it
will have to leave the court.
Joachim von Ribbentrop.
JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP: I declare myself in the sense of the Indictment
not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Wilhelm Keitel.
WILHELM KEITEL: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: In the absence of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Trial will
proceed against him, but he will have an opportunity of pleading when he
is sufficiently well to be brought back into court.
Alfred Rosenberg.
ALFRED ROSENBERG: I declare myself in the sense of the Indictment not
guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Hans Frank.
HANS FRANK: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Wilhelm Frick.
WILHELM FRICK: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Julius Streicher.
JULIUS STREICHER: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Walter Funk.
WALTER FUNK: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Hjalmar Schacht.
HJALMAR SCHACHT: I am not guilty in any respect.
THE PRESIDENT: Karl Dönitz.
KARL DÖNITZ: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Erich Raeder.
ERICH RAEDER: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Baldur von Schirach.
BALDUR VON SCHIRACH: I declare myself in the sense of the Indictment not
guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Fritz Sauckel.
FRITZ SAUCKEL: I declare myself in the sense of the Indictment, before
God and the world and particularly before my people, not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Alfred Jodl.
ALFRED JODL: Not guilty. For what I have done or had to do, I have a
pure conscience before God, before history and my people.
THE PRESIDENT: Franz von Papen.
FRANZ VON PAPEN: I declare myself in no way guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
ARTHUR SEYSS-INQUART: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Albert Speer.
ALBERT SPEER: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Constantin von Neurath.
CONSTANTIN VON NEURATH: I answer the question in the negative.
THE PRESIDENT: Hans Fritzsche.
HANS FRITZSCHE: As regards this Indictment, not guilty.
[_At this point Defendant Göring stood up in the prisoner’s dock and
attempted to address the Tribunal._]
THE PRESIDENT: You are not entitled to address the Tribunal except
through your counsel, at the present time.
I will now call upon the Chief Prosecutor for the United States of
America.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May it please Your Honors:
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against
the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which
we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and
so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored,
because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations,
flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance
and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law
is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to
Reason.
This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of
abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic
theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the
most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize
international law to meet the greatest menace of our times—aggressive
war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with
the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men
who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted
use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world
untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will
lay before Your Honors.
In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the
humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the
desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil
is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the
power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and
terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little
consequence to the world.
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent
sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies
have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial
hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of
power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of
intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after
generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and
impoverishing its life. They have so identified themselves with the
philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any
tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils
which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise
with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal
ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now
precariously survive.
What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We
will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalog of
crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological
pride, cruelty, and lust for power. These men created in Germany, under
the “Führerprinzip”, a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the
dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all
those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights
in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and
gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as “scapegoats”.
Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the
Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation
as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They
excited the German ambition to be a “master race”, which of course
implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for
domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation
of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their
neighbors. To sustain the “master race” in its war-making, they enslaved
millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these
hapless creatures now wander as “displaced persons”. At length
bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the
sleeping strength of imperiled Civilization. Its united efforts have
ground the German war machine to fragments. But the struggle has left
Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralized society
struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that
sit with these defendants in the prisoners’ dock.
In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I
must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on
this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to
bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a
decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations,
countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of
the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had
to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my
country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying
well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of
local and limited events seldom commence a trial within a year of the
event in litigation. Yet less than 8 months ago today the courtroom in
which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops.
Less than 8 months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in
enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been
established, no tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood
here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been
examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the
present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had
not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny
that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite
likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the
prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a
completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render, and
its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians.
Before I discuss particulars of evidence, some general considerations
which may affect the credit of this trial in the eyes of the world
should be candidly faced. There is a dramatic disparity between the
circumstances of the accusers and of the accused that might discredit
our work if we should falter, in even minor matters, in being fair and
temperate.
Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution
and judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The
worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but
few real neutrals. Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we
must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the first World War,
we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station of
these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of
their conduct to provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between
the demand for a just and measured retribution, and the unthinking cry
for vengeance which arises from the anguish of war. It is our task, so
far as humanly possible, to draw the line between the two. We must never
forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the
record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants
a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon
such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial
will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to
do justice.
At the very outset, let us dispose of the contention that to put these
men to trial is to do them an injustice entitling them to some special
consideration. These defendants may be hard pressed but they are not ill
used. Let us see what alternative they would have to being tried.
More than a majority of these prisoners surrendered to or were tracked
down by the forces of the United States. Could they expect us to make
American custody a shelter for our enemies against the just wrath of our
Allies? Did we spend American lives to capture them only to save them
from punishment? Under the principles of the Moscow Declaration, those
suspected war criminals who are not to be tried internationally must be
turned over to individual governments for trial at the scene of their
outrages. Many less responsible and less culpable American-held
prisoners have been and will continue to be turned over to other United
Nations for local trial. If these defendants should succeed, for any
reason, in escaping the condemnation of this Tribunal, or if they
obstruct or abort this trial, those who are American-held prisoners will
be delivered up to our continental Allies. For these defendants,
however, we have set up an International Tribunal and have undertaken
the burden of participating in a complicated effort to give them fair
and dispassionate hearings. That is the best-known protection to any man
with a defense worthy of being heard.
If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be
prosecuted in the name of the law, they are also the first to be given a
chance to plead for their lives in the name of the law. Realistically,
the Charter of this Tribunal, which gives them a hearing, is also the
source of their only hope. It may be that these men of troubled
conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard
a trial as a favor. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend
themselves—a favor which these men, when in power, rarely extended to
their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion already
condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption
of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the
responsibility of these defendants for their commission.
When I say that we do not ask for convictions unless we prove crime, I
do not mean mere technical or incidental transgression of international
conventions. We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that
involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that
is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as
many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants’
positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of
human beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman
conduct which brings them to this bar.
We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of their foes.
There is no count in the Indictment that cannot be proved by books and
records. The Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these
defendants had their share of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in
putting things on paper. Nor were they without vanity. They arranged
frequently to be photographed in action. We will show you their own
films. You will see their own conduct and hear their own voices as these
defendants re-enact for you, from the screen, some of the events in the
course of the conspiracy.
We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the
whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by
a majority of the German vote. We know it came to power by an evil
alliance between the most extreme of the Nazi revolutionists, the most
unrestrained of the German reactionaries, and the most aggressive of the
German militarists. If the German populace had willingly accepted the
Nazi program, no Storm-troopers would have been needed in the early days
of the Party and there would have been no need for concentration camps
or the Gestapo, both of which institutions were inaugurated as soon as
the Nazis gained control of the German State. Only after these lawless
innovations proved successful at home were they taken abroad.
The German people should know by now that the people of the United
States hold them in no fear, and in no hate. It is true that the Germans
have taught us the horrors of modern warfare, but the ruin that lies
from the Rhine to the Danube shows that we, like our Allies, have not
been dull pupils. If we are not awed by German fortitude and proficiency
in war, and if we are not persuaded of their political maturity, we do
respect their skill in the arts of peace, their technical competence,
and the sober, industrious, and self-disciplined character of the masses
of the German people. In 1933 we saw the German people recovering
prestige in the commercial, industrial, and artistic world after the
set-back of the last war. We beheld their progress neither with envy nor
malice. The Nazi regime interrupted this advance. The recoil of the Nazi
aggression has left Germany in ruins. The Nazi readiness to pledge the
German word without hesitation and to break it without shame has
fastened upon German diplomacy a reputation for duplicity that will
handicap it for years. Nazi arrogance has made the boast of the “master
race” a taunt that will be thrown at Germans the world over for
generations. The Nazi nightmare has given the German name a new and
sinister significance throughout the world which will retard Germany a
century. The German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to
settle with these defendants.
The fact of the war and the course of the war, which is the central
theme of our case, is history. From September 1st, 1939, when the German
armies crossed the Polish frontier, until September 1942, when they met
epic resistance at Stalingrad, German arms seemed invincible. Denmark
and Norway, the Netherlands and France, Belgium and Luxembourg, the
Balkans and Africa, Poland and the Baltic States, and parts of Russia,
all had been overrun and conquered by swift, powerful, well-aimed blows.
That attack on the peace of the world is the crime against international
society which brings into international cognizance crimes in its aid and
preparation which otherwise might be only internal concerns. It was
aggressive war, which the nations of the world had renounced. It was war
in violation of treaties, by which the peace of the world was sought to
be safe-guarded.
This war did not just happen—it was planned and prepared for over a
long period of time and with no small skill and cunning. The world has
perhaps never seen such a concentration and stimulation of the energies
of any people as that which enabled Germany 20 years after it was
defeated, disarmed, and dismembered to come so near carrying out its
plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of those who were the
authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work in organization,
and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants and
their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war.
In general, our case will disclose these defendants all uniting at some
time with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be
accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the
German State, their subjugation of the German people, their terrorism
and extermination of dissident elements, their planning and waging of
war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in the conduct of
warfare, their deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered
peoples,—all these are ends for which they acted in concert; and all
these are phases of the conspiracy, a conspiracy which reached one goal
only to set out for another and more ambitious one. We shall also trace
for you the intricate web of organizations which these men formed and
utilized to accomplish these ends. We will show how the entire structure
of offices and officials was dedicated to the criminal purposes and
committed to the use of the criminal methods planned by these defendants
and their co-conspirators, many of whom war and suicide have put beyond
reach.
It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the
Indictment, and to deal with the Common Plan or Conspiracy to achieve
ends possible only by resort to Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and
Crimes against Humanity. My emphasis will not be on individual
barbarities and perversions which may have occurred independently of any
central plan. One of the dangers ever present is that this Trial may be
protracted by details of particular wrongs and that we will become lost
in a “wilderness of single instances”. Nor will I now dwell on the
activity of individual defendants except as it may contribute to
exposition of the common plan.
The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the
brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men
of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They
were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the
planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil
architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the
violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions,
of this terrible war.
_The Lawless Road to Power_:
The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was the
National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazi Party. Some
of the defendants were with it from the beginning. Others joined only
after success seemed to have validated its lawlessness or power had
invested it with immunity from the processes of the law. Adolf Hitler
became its supreme leader or “Führer” in 1921.
On the 24th of February 1920, at Munich, it publicly had proclaimed its
program (1708-PS). Some of its purposes would commend themselves to many
good citizens, such as the demands for “profit-sharing in the great
industries,” “generous development of provision for old age,” “creation
and maintenance of a healthy middle class,” “a land reform suitable to
our national requirements,” and “raising the standard of health.” It
also made a strong appeal to that sort of nationalism which in ourselves
we call patriotism and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded “equality
of rights for the German people in its dealing with other nations, and
the abolition of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.” It
demanded the “union of all Germans on the basis of the right of
self-determination of peoples to form a Great Germany.” It demanded
“land and territory (colonies) for the enrichment of our people and the
settlement of our surplus population.” All of these, of course, were
legitimate objectives if they were to be attained without resort to
aggressive warfare.
The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated war. It
demanded the “abolition of mercenary troops and the formation of a
national army.” It proclaimed that:
“In view of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded
of a nation by every war, personal enrichment through war must
be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand, therefore,
ruthless confiscation of all war profits.”
I do not criticize this policy. Indeed, I wish it were universal. I
merely wish to point out that in a time of peace, war was a
preoccupation of the Party, and it started the work of making war less
offensive to the masses of the people. With this it combined a program
of physical training and sports for youth that became, as we shall see,
the cloak for a secret program of military training.
The Nazi Party declaration also committed its members to an anti-Semitic
program. It declared that no Jew or any person of non-German blood could
be a member of the nation. Such persons were to be disfranchised,
disqualified for office, subject to the alien laws, and entitled to
nourishment only after the German population had first been provided
for. All who had entered Germany after August 2, 1914 were to be
required forthwith to depart, and all non-German immigration was to be
prohibited.
The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an authoritarian and
totalitarian program for Germany. It demanded creation of a strong
central power with unconditional authority, nationalization of all
businesses which had been “amalgamated,” and a “reconstruction” of the
national system of education which “must aim at teaching the pupil to
understand the idea of the State (state sociology).” Its hostility to
civil liberties and freedom of the press was distinctly announced in
these words:
“It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which do not conduce
to the national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all
tendencies in art or literature of a kind likely to disintegrate
our life as a nation and the suppression of institutions which
might militate against the above requirements.”
The forecast of religious persecution was clothed in the language of
religious liberty, for the Nazi program stated, “We demand liberty for
all religious denominations in the State.” But, it continues with the
limitation, “so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate
against the morality and moral sense of the German race.”
The Party program foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It announced,
“We demand ruthless war upon those whose activities are injurious to the
common interests”, and it demanded that such offenses be punished with
death.
It is significant that the leaders of this Party interpreted this
program as a belligerent one, certain to precipitate conflict. The Party
platform concluded, “The leaders of the Party swear to proceed
regardless of consequences—if necessary, at the sacrifice of their
lives—toward the fulfillment of the foregoing points.” It is this
Leadership Corps of the Party, not its entire membership, that stands
accused before you as a criminal organization.
Let us now see how the leaders of the Party fulfilled their pledge to
proceed regardless of consequences. Obviously, their foreign objectives,
which were nothing less than to undo international treaties and to wrest
territory from foreign control, as well as most of their internal
program, could be accomplished only by possession of the machinery of
the German State. The first effort, accordingly, was to subvert the
Weimar Republic by violent revolution. An abortive putsch at Munich in
1923 landed many of them in jail. A period of meditation which followed
produced _Mein Kampf_, henceforth the source of law for the Party
workers and a source of considerable revenue to its supreme leader. The
Nazi plans for the violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then turned
to plans for its capture.
No greater mistake could be made than to think of the Nazi Party in
terms of the loose organizations which we of the western world call
“political parties”. In discipline, structure, and method the Nazi Party
was not adapted to the democratic process of persuasion. It was an
instrument of conspiracy and of coercion. The Party was not organized to
take over power in the German State by winning support of a majority of
the German people; it was organized to seize power in defiance of the
will of the people.
The Nazi Party, under the “Führerprinzip,” was bound by an iron
discipline into a pyramid, with the Führer, Adolf Hitler, at the top and
broadening into a numerous Leadership Corps, composed of overlords of a
very extensive Party membership at the base. By no means all of those
who may have supported the movement in one way or another were actual
Party members. The membership took the Party oath which in effect
amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral
responsibility. This was the oath: “I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf
Hitler; I vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he designates
for me.” The membership in daily practice followed its leaders with an
idolatry and self-surrender more Oriental than Western.
We will not be obliged to guess as to the motives or goal of the Nazi
Party. The immediate aim was to undermine the Weimar Republic. The order
to all Party members to work to that end was given in a letter from
Hitler of August 24, 1931 to Rosenberg, of which we will produce the
original. Hitler wrote:
“I am just reading in the _Völkischer Beobachter_, edition
235/236, page 1, an article entitled “Does Wirth Intend To Come
over?” The tendency of the article is to prevent on our part a
crumbling away from the present form of government. I myself am
travelling all over Germany to achieve exactly the opposite. May
I therefore ask that my own paper will not stab me in the back
with tactically unwise articles. . . .” (047-PS)
Captured film enables us to present the Defendant Alfred Rosenberg, who
from the screen will himself tell you the story. The SA practiced
violent interference with elections. We have the reports of the SD
describing in detail how its members later violated the secrecy of
elections in order to identify those who opposed them. One of the
reports makes this explanation:
“. . . . The control was effected in the following way: some
members of the election committee marked all the ballot papers
with numbers. During the ballot itself, a voters’ list was made
up. The ballot-papers were handed out in numerical order,
therefore it was possible afterwards with the aid of this list
to find out the persons who cast ‘No’—votes or invalid votes.
One sample of these marked ballot-papers is enclosed. The
marking was done on the back of the ballot-papers with skimmed
milk. . . .” (R-142)
The Party activity, in addition to all the familiar forms of political
contest, took on the aspect of a rehearsal for warfare. It utilized a
Party formation, “Die Sturmabteilungen”, commonly known as the SA. This
was a voluntary organization of youthful and fanatical Nazis trained for
the use of violence under semi-military discipline. Its members began by
acting as bodyguards for the Nazi leaders and rapidly expanded from
defensive to offensive tactics. They became disciplined ruffians for the
breaking up of opposition meetings and the terrorization of adversaries.
They boasted that their task was to make the Nazi Party “master of the
streets”. The SA was the parent organization of a number of others. Its
offspring include “Die Schutzstaffeln”, commonly known as the SS, formed
in 1925 and distinguished for the fanaticism and cruelty of its members;
“Der Sicherheitsdienst”, known as the SD; and “Die Geheime
Staatspolizei”, the Secret State Police, the infamous Gestapo formed in
1934 after Nazi accession to power.
A glance at a chart of the Party organization is enough to show how
completely it differed from the political parties we know. It had its
own source of law in the Führer and sub-Führer. It had its own courts
and its own police. The conspirators set up a government within the
Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any legitimate
state could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain of command
was military, and its formations were martial in name as well as in
function. They were composed of battalions set up to bear arms under
military discipline, motorized corps, flying corps, and the infamous
“Death Head Corps”, which was not misnamed. The Party had its own secret
police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its
raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate
administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers,
to manage concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to finance the
whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party,
as its leadership later boasted, eventually organized and dominated
every phase of German life—but not until they had waged a bitter
internal struggle characterized by brutal criminality we charge here. In
preparation for this phase of their struggle, they created a Party
police system. This became the pattern and the instrument of the police
state, which was the first goal in their plan.
The Party formations, including the Leadership Corps of the Party, the
SD, the SS, the SA, and the infamous Secret State Police, or
Gestapo,—all these stand accused before you as criminal organizations;
organizations which, as we will prove from their own documents, were
recruited only from recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction and
temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the common
program. They terrorized and silenced democratic opposition and were
able at length to combine with political opportunists, militarists,
industrialists, monarchists, and political reactionaries.
On January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the German
Republic. An evil combination, represented in the prisoners’ dock by its
most eminent survivors, had succeeded in possessing itself of the
machinery of the German Government, a facade behind which they
thenceforth would operate to make a reality of the war of conquest they
so long had plotted. The conspiracy had passed into its second phase.
_The Consolidation of Nazi Power_:
We shall now consider the steps, which embraced the most hideous of
Crimes against Humanity, to which the conspirators resorted in
perfecting control of the German State and in preparing Germany for the
aggressive war indispensable to their ends.
The Germans of the 1920’s were a frustrated and baffled people as a
result of defeat and the disintegration of their traditional government.
The democratic elements, which were trying to govern Germany through the
new and feeble machinery of the Weimar Republic, got inadequate support
from the democratic forces of the rest of the world, including my
country. It is not to be denied that Germany, when worldwide depression
was added to her other problems, was faced with urgent and intricate
pressures in her economic and political life which necessitated bold
measures.
The internal measures by which a nation attempts to solve its problems
are ordinarily of no concern to other nations. But the Nazi program from
the first was recognized as a desperate program for a people still
suffering the effects of an unsuccessful war. The Nazi policy embraced
ends recognized as attainable only by a renewal and a more successful
outcome of war, in Europe. The conspirators’ answer to Germany’s
problems was nothing less than to plot the regaining of territories lost
in the First World War and the acquisition of other fertile lands of
Central Europe by dispossessing or exterminating those who inhabited
them. They also contemplated destroying or permanently weakening all
other neighboring peoples so as to win virtual domination over Europe
and probably of the world. The precise limits of their ambition we need
not define for it was and is as illegal to wage aggressive war for small
stakes as for large ones.
We find at this period two governments in Germany—the real and the
ostensible. The forms of the German Republic were maintained for a time,
and it was the outward and visible government. But the real authority in
the State was outside and above the law and rested in the Leadership
Corps of the Nazi Party.
On February 27, 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor,
the Reichstag building was set on fire. The burning of this symbol of
free parliamentary government was so providential for the Nazis that it
was believed they staged the fire themselves. Certainly when we
contemplate their known crimes, we cannot believe they would shrink from
mere arson. It is not necessary, however, to resolve the controversy as
to who set the fire. The significant point is in the use that was made
of the fire and of the state of public mind it produced. The Nazis
immediately accused the Communist Party of instigating and committing
the crime, and turned every effort to portray this single act of arson
as the beginning of a communist revolution. Then, taking advantage of
the hysteria, the Nazis met this phantom revolution with a real one. In
the following December the German Supreme Court with commendable courage
and independence acquitted the accused Communists, but it was too late
to influence the tragic course of events which the Nazi conspirators had
set rushing forward.
Hitler, on the morning after the fire, obtained from the aged and ailing
President Von Hindenburg a presidential decree suspending the extensive
guarantees of individual liberty contained in the constitution of the
Weimar Republic. The decree provided that:
“Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the
Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further
notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of
free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on
the right of assembly and the right of association, and
violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic
communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders for
confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also
permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”
(1390-PS)
The extent of the restriction on personal liberty under the decree of
February 28, 1933 may be understood by reference to the rights under the
Weimar constitution which were suspended:
“_Article 114._ The freedom of the person is inviolable.
Curtailment or deprivation of personal freedom by a public
authority is only permissible on a legal basis.
“Persons who have been deprived of their freedom must be
informed at the latest on the following day by whose authority
and for what reasons the deprivation of freedom was ordered;
opportunity shall be afforded them without delay of submitting
objections to their deprivation of freedom.
“_Article 115._ Every German’s home is his sanctuary and is
inviolable. Exceptions may only be made as provided by law.
“_Article 117._ The secrecy of letters and all postal,
telegraphic, and telephone communications is inviolable.
Exceptions are inadmissible except by Reich law.
“_Article 118._ Every German has the right, within the limits of
the general laws, to express his opinions freely in speech, in
writing, in print, in picture form, or in any other way. No
conditions of work or employment may detract from this right and
no disadvantage may accrue to him from any person for making use
of this right. . . .
“_Article 123._ All Germans have the right to assemble
peacefully and unarmed without giving notice and without special
permission.
“A Reich law may make previous notification obligatory for
assemblies in the open air, and may prohibit them in case of
immediate danger to the public safety.
“_Article 124._ All the Germans have the right to form
associations or societies for purposes not contrary to criminal
law. This right may not be curtailed by preventive measures. The
same provisions apply to religious associations and societies.
“Every association may become incorporated (Erwerb der
Rechtsfähigkeit) according to the provisions of the civil law.
The right may not be refused to any association on the grounds
that its aims are political, social-political, or religious.
“_Article 153._ Property is guaranteed by the Constitution. Its
content and limits are defined by the laws.
“Expropriation can only take place for the public benefit and on
a legal basis. Adequate compensation shall be granted, unless a
Reich law orders otherwise. In the case of dispute concerning
the amount of compensation, it shall be possible to submit the
matter to the ordinary civil courts, unless Reich laws determine
otherwise. Compensation must be paid if the Reich expropriates
property belonging to the Lands, Communes, or public utility
associations.
“Property carries obligations. Its use shall also serve the
common good.” (2050-PS)
It must be said in fairness to Von Hindenburg that the constitution
itself authorized him temporarily to suspend these fundamental rights
“if the public safety and order in the German Reich are considerably
disturbed or endangered.” It must also be acknowledged that President
Ebert previously had invoked this power.
But the National Socialist coup was made possible because the terms of
the Hitler-Hindenburg decree departed from all previous ones in which
the power of suspension had been invoked. Whenever Ebert had suspended
constitutional guarantees of individual rights, his decree had expressly
revived the Protective Custody Act adopted by the Reichstag in 1916
during the previous war. This act guaranteed a judicial hearing within
24 hours of arrest, gave a right to have counsel and to inspect all
relevant records, provided for appeal, and authorized compensation from
Treasury funds for erroneous arrests.
The Hitler-Hindenburg decree of February 28, 1933 contained no such
safeguards. The omission may not have been noted by Von Hindenburg.
Certainly he did not appreciate its effect. It left the Nazi police and
party formations, already existing and functioning under Hitler,
completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and indefinite
detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without
counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom
the Nazi police suspected or disliked. No court could issue an
injunction, or writ of _habeas corpus_, or _certiorari_. The German
people were in the hands of the police, the police were in the hands of
the Nazi Party, and the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men, of
whom the defendants here before you are surviving and representative
leaders.
The Nazi conspiracy, as we shall show, always contemplated not merely
overcoming current opposition but exterminating elements which could not
be reconciled with its philosophy of the state. It not only sought to
establish the Nazi “new order” but to secure its sway, as Hitler
predicted, “for a thousand years.” Nazis were never in doubt or
disagreement as to what these dissident elements were. They were
concisely described by one of them, Colonel General Von Fritsch, on
December 11, 1938 in these words:
“Shortly after the first war I came to the conclusion that we
should have to be victorious in three battles if Germany were to
become powerful again: 1. The battle against the working
class—Hitler has won this. 2. Against the Catholic Church,
perhaps better expressed against Ultramontanism. 3. Against the
Jews.” (1947-PS)
The warfare against these elements was continuous. The battle in Germany
was but a practice skirmish for the worldwide drive against them. We
have in point of geography and of time two groups of Crimes against
Humanity—one within Germany before and during the war, the other in
occupied territory during the war. But the two are not separated in Nazi
planning. They are a continuous unfolding of the Nazi plan to
exterminate peoples and institutions which might serve as a focus or
instrument for overturning their “new world order” at any time. We
consider these crimes against humanity in this address as manifestations
of the one Nazi plan and discuss them according to General Von Fritsch’s
classification.
_1. The Battle against the Working Class_:
When Hitler came to power, there were in Germany three groups of trade
unions. The General German Trade Union Confederation (ADGB) with 28
affiliated unions, and the General Independent Employees Confederation
(AFA) with 13 federated unions together numbered more than 4,500,000
members. The Christian Trade Union had over 1,250,000 members.
The working people of Germany, like the working people of other nations,
had little to gain personally by war. While labor is usually brought
around to the support of the nation at war, labor by and large is a
pacific, though by no means a pacifist force in the world. The working
people of Germany had not forgotten in 1933 how heavy the yoke of the
war lord can be. It was the workingmen who had joined the sailors and
soldiers in the revolt of 1918 to end the first World War. The Nazis had
neither forgiven nor forgotten. The Nazi program required that this part
of the German population not only be stripped of power to resist
diversion of its scanty comforts to armament, but also be wheedled or
whipped into new and unheard of sacrifices as a part of the Nazi war
preparation. Labor must be cowed, and that meant its organizations and
means of cohesion and defense must be destroyed.
The purpose to regiment labor for the Nazi Party was avowed by Ley in a
speech to workers on May 2, 1933 as follows:
“You may say what else do you want, you have the absolute power.
True we have the power, but we do not have the whole people, we
do not have you workers 100 per cent, and it is you whom we
want; we will not let you be until you stand with us in
complete, genuine acknowledgment.” (614-PS)
The first Nazi attack was upon the two larger unions. On April 21, 1933
an order not even in the name of the Government, but of the Nazi Party
was issued by the conspirator Robert Ley as “Chief of Staff of the
political organization of the NSDAP,” applicable to the Trade Union
Confederation and the Independent Employees Confederation. It directed
seizure of their properties and arrest of their principal leaders. The
Party order directed Party organs which we here denounce as criminal
associations, the SA and SS “to be employed for the occupation of the
trade union properties, and for the taking into custody of personalities
who come into question.” And it directed the taking into “protective
custody” of all chairmen and district secretaries of such unions and
branch directors of the labor bank. (392-PS)
These orders were carried out on May 2, 1933. All funds of the labor
unions, including pension and benefit funds, were seized. Union leaders
were sent to concentration camps. A few days later, on May 10, 1933,
Hitler appointed Ley leader of the German Labor Front (Deutsche
Arbeitsfront) which succeeded to the confiscated union funds. The German
Labor Front, a Nazi controlled labor bureau, was set up under Ley to
teach the Nazi philosophy to German workers and to weed out from
industrial employment all who were backward in their lessons. (1940-PS)
“Factory troops” were organized as an “ideological shock squad within
the factory” (1817-PS). The Party order provided that “outside of the
German Labor Front, no other organization (whether of workers or of
employees) is to exist.” On June 24, 1933 the remaining Christian Trade
Unions were seized, pursuant to an order of the Nazi Party signed by
Ley.
On May 19, 1933, this time by a government decree, it was provided that
“trustees” of labor appointed by Hitler, should regulate the conditions
of all labor contracts, replacing the former process of collective
bargaining (405-PS). On November 30, 1934 a decree “regulating national
labor” introduced the Führer Principle into industrial relations. It
provided that the owners of enterprises should be the “Führer” and the
workers should be the followers. The “enterprise-Führer” should “make
decisions for employees and laborers in all matters concerning the
enterprise” (1861-PS). It was by such bait that the great German
industrialists were induced to support the Nazi cause, to their own
ultimate ruin.
Not only did the Nazis dominate and regiment German labor, but they
forced the youth into the ranks of the laboring people they had thus led
into chains. Under a compulsory labor service decree on 26 June 1935
young men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 were conscripted for
labor (1654-PS). Thus was the purpose to subjugate German labor
accomplished. In the words of Ley, this accomplishment consisted “in
eliminating the association character of the trade union and employees’
associations, and in its place we have substituted the conception
‘soldiers of work’.” The productive manpower of the German nation was in
Nazi control. By these steps the defendants won the battle to liquidate
labor unions as potential opposition and were enabled to impose upon the
working class the burdens of preparing for aggressive warfare.
Robert Ley, the field marshal of the battle against labor, answered our
Indictment with suicide. Apparently he knew no better answer.
_2. The Battle against the Churches_:
The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology.
But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no
charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazi
themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others
of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is
because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive
warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To
remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its
population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried
out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and
churches.
We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence. Martin
Bormann, in June 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of
Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided:
“For the first time in German history the Führer consciously and
completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand.
With the Party, its components, and attached units the Führer
has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership
an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All
influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the
people exercised by the Führer with help of the NSDAP, must be
eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the
churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches
must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves
against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on
leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This
(influence) must be broken completely and finally.
“Only the Reich Government and by its direction the Party, its
components, and attached units have a right to leadership of the
people. Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers,
seers, and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the
State, so must the possibility of church influence also be
totally removed. Not until this has happened, does the State
leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until
then are people and Reich secure in their existence for all the
future.” (D-75)
And how the Party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence,
will be proved by such items as this teletype from the Gestapo, Berlin,
to the Gestapo, Nuremberg, on July 24, 1938. Let us hear their own
account of events in Rottenburg.
“The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third
demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about
2500-3000 were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The
Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the
demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the
demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the
Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the
palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people
forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw
files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the
rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to
the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the
flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire
extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg
and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at
prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and
molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop
Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth.
Finally the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the
one they are seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the
building. After the evacuation of the palace by the
demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber who
left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the
Führer and Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, anew. On
the course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage
of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I
shall immediately hand in a full report, after I am in the act
of suppressing counter mass meetings. . . .
“In case the Führer has instructions to give in this matter, I
request that these be transmitted most quickly. . . .” (848-PS)
Later, Defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of
Kerrl as Church Minister to place the Protestant Church under State
tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed,
hinting that nazism was to suppress the Christian Church completely
after the war (See also 098-PS).
The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s
Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and
cruel. The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use
their influence for the Nazis’ own purposes. In September 1933 Mueller
was appointed the Führer’s representative with power to deal with the
“affairs of the Evangelical Church” in its relations to the State.
Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power
to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemöller was
sent to concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal
discipline and administration of the churches occurred.
A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church.
After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in July 1933 in
Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent
persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood, and its members, was
carried out. Church schools and educational institutions were suppressed
or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the
Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired
vandalism directed against Church property was left unpunished.
Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made
difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to
harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.
After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with
greater vigor than ever. We will present to you from the files of the
Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop
summarizing the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had
been subjected in this twentieth century under the Nazi regime.
Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.