I now come to “Crimes against the Jews.”

THE PRESIDENT: We shall now take our noon recess.

[_A recess was taken until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for 15 minutes at half past 3

and will then continue until half past 4.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I was about to take up the “Crimes Committed

against the Jews.”

_3. Crimes against the Jews_:

The most savage and numerous crimes planned and committed by the Nazis

were those against the Jews. Those in Germany in 1933 numbered about

500,000. In the aggregate, they had made for themselves positions which

excited envy, and had accumulated properties which excited the avarice

of the Nazis. They were few enough to be helpless and numerous enough to

be held up as a menace.

Let there be no misunderstanding about the charge of persecuting Jews.

What we charge against these defendants is not those arrogances and

pretensions which frequently accompany the intermingling of different

peoples and which are likely, despite the honest efforts of government,

to produce regrettable crimes and convulsions. It is my purpose to show

a plan and design, to which all Nazis were fanatically committed, to

annihilate all Jewish people. These crimes were organized and promoted

by the Party leadership, executed and protected by the Nazi officials,

as we shall convince you by written orders of the Secret State Police

itself.

The persecution of the Jews was a continuous and deliberate policy. It

was a policy directed against other nations as well as against the Jews

themselves. Anti-Semitism was promoted to divide and embitter the

democratic peoples and to soften their resistance to the Nazi

aggression. As Robert Ley declared in _Der Angriff_ on 14 May 1944: “The

second German secret weapon is Anti-Semitism because if it is constantly

pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations

will be forced to consider.”

Anti-Semitism also has been aptly credited with being a “spearhead of

terror.” The ghetto was the laboratory for testing repressive measures.

Jewish property was the first to be expropriated, but the custom grew

and included similar measures against anti-Nazi Germans, Poles, Czechs,

Frenchmen, and Belgians. Extermination of the Jews enabled the Nazis to

bring a practiced hand to similar measures against Poles, Serbs, and

Greeks. The plight of the Jew was a constant threat to opposition or

discontent among other elements of Europe’s population—pacifists,

conservatives, Communists, Catholics, Protestants, Socialists. It was in

fact, a threat to every dissenting opinion and to every non-Nazi’s life.

The persecution policy against the Jews commenced with non-violent

measures, such as disfranchisement and discriminations against their

religion, and the placing of impediments in the way of success in

economic life. It moved rapidly to organized mass violence against them,

physical isolation in ghettos, deportation, forced labor, mass

starvation, and extermination. The Government, the Party formations

indicted before you as criminal organizations, the Secret State Police,

the Army, private and semi-public associations, and “spontaneous” mobs

that were carefully inspired from official sources, were all agencies

that were concerned in this persecution. Nor was it directed against

individual Jews for personal bad citizenship or unpopularity. The avowed

purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a whole, as an end

in itself, as a measure of preparation for war, and as a discipline of

conquered peoples.

The conspiracy or common plan to exterminate the Jew was so methodically

and thoroughly pursued, that despite the German defeat and Nazi

prostration this Nazi aim largely has succeeded. Only remnants of the

European Jewish population remain in Germany, in the countries which

Germany occupied, and in those which were her satellites or

collaborators. Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in Nazi-dominated Europe,

60 percent are authoritatively estimated to have perished. Five million

seven hundred thousand Jews are missing from the countries in which they

formerly lived, and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for by the normal

death rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among displaced

persons. History does not record a crime ever perpetrated against so

many victims or one ever carried out with such calculated cruelty.

You will have difficulty, as I have, to look into the faces of these

defendants and believe that in this twentieth century human beings could

inflict such sufferings as will be proved here on their own countrymen

as well as upon their so-called “inferior” enemies. Particular crimes,

and the responsibility of defendants for them, are to be dealt with by

the Soviet Government’s counsel, when committed in the East, and by

counsel for the Republic of France when committed in the West. I advert

to them only to show their magnitude as evidence of a purpose and a

knowledge common to all defendants, of an official plan rather than of a

capricious policy of some individual commander, and to show such a

continuity of Jewish persecution from the rise of the Nazi conspiracy to

its collapse as forbids us to believe that any person could be

identified with any part of Nazi action without approving this most

conspicuous item in their program.

The Indictment itself recites many evidences of the anti-Semitic

persecutions. The Defendant Streicher led the Nazis in anti-Semitic

bitterness and extremism. In an article appearing in _Der Stürmer_ on 19

March 1942 he complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way

of “racial solution of the Jewish question in Europe”, and quoted

enthusiastically as the twentieth century solution the Führer’s

proclamation of February 24, 1942 that “the Jew will be exterminated.”

And on November 4, 1943 Streicher declared in _Der Stürmer_ that the

Jews “have disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish ‘Reservoir of the

East’ from which the Jewish plague has for centuries beset the people of

Europe, has ceased to exist.” Streicher now has the effrontery to tell

us he is “only a Zionist”—he says he wants only to return the Jews to

Palestine. But on May 7, 1942 his newspaper, _Der Stürmer_, had this to

say:

“It is also not only a European problem! _The Jewish question is

a world question!_ Not only is Germany not safe in the face of

the Jews as long as one Jew lives in Europe, but also the Jewish

question is hardly solved in Europe so long as Jews live in the

rest of the world.”

And the Defendant Hans Frank, a lawyer by profession, I say with shame,

summarized in his diary in 1944 the Nazi policy thus: “The Jews are a

race which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end”

(2233-PS, 4 March 1944, P. 26). And earlier, speaking of his function as

Governor General of Poland, he confided to his diary this sentiment: “Of

course I cannot eliminate all lice and Jews in only a year’s time”

(2233-PS, Vol. IV, 1940, P. 1158). I could multiply endlessly this kind

of Nazi ranting but I will leave it to the evidence and turn to the

fruit of this perverted thinking.

The most serious of the actions against Jews were outside of any law,

but the law itself was employed to some extent. There were the infamous

Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935 (_Reichsgesetzblatt_ 1935, Part.

I, P. 1146). The Jews were segregated into ghettos and put into forced

labor; they were expelled from their professions; their property was

expropriated; all cultural life, the press, the theater, and schools

were prohibited them; and the SD was made responsible for them (212-PS,

069-PS). This was an ominous, guardianship, as the following order for

“The Handling of the Jewish Question” shows:

“The competency of the Chief of the Security Police and Security

Service, who is charged with the mission of solving the European

Jewish question, extends even to the Occupied Eastern

Provinces. . . .

“An eventual act by the civilian population against the Jews is

not to be prevented as long as this is compatible with the

maintenance of order and security in the rear of the fighting

troops. . . .

“The first main goal of the German measures must be strict

segregation of Jewry from the rest of the population. In the

execution of this, first of all is the seizing of the Jewish

populace by the introduction of a registration order and similar

appropriate measures. . . .

“Then immediately, the wearing of the recognition sign

consisting of a yellow Jewish star is to be brought about and

all rights of freedom for Jews are to be withdrawn. They are to

be placed in ghettos and at the same time are to be separated

according to sexes. The presence of many more or less closed

Jewish settlements in White Ruthenia and in the Ukraine makes

this mission easier. Moreover, places are to be chosen which

make possible the full use of the Jewish manpower in case labor

needs are present. . . .

“The entire Jewish property is to be seized and confiscated with

exception of that which is necessary for a bare existence. As

far as the economical situation permits, the power of disposal

of their property is to be taken from the Jews as soon as

possible through orders and other measures given by the

commissariat, so that the moving of property will quickly cease.

“Any cultural activity will be completely forbidden, to the Jew.

This includes the outlawing of the Jewish press, the Jewish

theaters, and schools.

“The slaughtering of animals according to Jewish rites is also

to be prohibited. . . .” (212-PS)

The anti-Jewish campaign became furious in Germany following the

assassination in Paris of the German Legation Councillor Von Rath.

Heydrich, Gestapo head, sent a teletype to all Gestapo and SD offices

with directions for handling “spontaneous” uprising anticipated for the

nights of November 9 and 10, 1938 so as to aid in destruction of

Jewish-owned property and protect only that of Germans. No more cynical

document ever came into evidence. Then there is a report by an SS

brigade leader, Dr. Stahlecker, to Himmler, which recites that:

“. . . Similarly, native anti-Semitic forces were induced to

start pogroms against Jews during the first hours after capture,

though this inducement proved to be very difficult. Following

out orders, the Security Police was determined to solve the

Jewish question with all possible means and most decisively. But

it was desirable that the Security Police should not put in an

immediate appearance, at least in the beginning, since the

extraordinarily harsh measures were apt to stir even German

circles. It had to be shown to the world that the native

population itself took the first action by way of natural

reaction against the suppression by Jews during several decades

and against the terror exercised by the Communists during the

preceding period. . . .”

“. . . In view of the extension of the area of operations and

the great number of duties which had to be performed by the

Security Police, it was intended from the very beginning to

obtain the co-operation of the reliable population for the fight

against vermin—that is mainly the Jews and Communists. Beyond

our directing of the first spontaneous actions of

self-cleansing, which will be reported elsewhere, care had to be

taken that reliable people should be put to the cleansing job

and that they were appointed auxiliary members of the Security

Police. . . .”

“. . . Kovno. To our surprise it was not easy at first to set in

motion an extensive pogrom against Jews. Klimatis, the leader of

the partisan unit, mentioned above, who was used for this

purpose primarily, succeeded in starting a pogrom on the basis

of advice given to him by a small advanced detachment acting in

Kovno, and in such a way that no German order or German

instigation was noticed from the outside. During the first

pogrom in the night from 25 to 26 June the Lithuanian partisans

did away with more than 1,500 Jews, set fire to several

synagogues or destroyed them by other means and burned down a

Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During

the following nights about 2,300 Jews were made harmless in a

similar way. In other parts of Lithuania similar actions

followed the example of Kovno, though smaller and extending to

the Communists who had been left behind.

“These self-cleansing actions went smoothly because the Army

authorities who had been informed showed understanding for this

procedure. From the beginning it was obvious that only the first

days after the occupation would offer the opportunity for

carrying out pogroms. After the disarmament of the partisans the

self-cleansing actions ceased necessarily.

“It proved much more difficult to set in motion similar

cleansing actions in Latvia. . . .” (L-180)

Of course, it is self-evident that these “uprisings” were managed by the

Government and the Nazi Party. If we were in doubt, we could resort to

Streicher’s memorandum of April 14, 1939 which says:

“The anti-Jewish action of November 1938 did not arise

spontaneously from the people. . . . Part of the Party formation

have been charged with the execution of the anti-Jewish action.”

(406-PS)

Jews as a whole were fined a billion Reichsmarks. They were excluded

from all businesses, and claims against insurance companies for their

burned properties were confiscated, all by decree of the Defendant

Göring. (_Reichsgesetzblatt_, 1938, Part I, Pp. 1579-82)

Synagogues were the objects of a special vengeance. On November 10, 1938

the following order was given:

“By order of the Group Commander:

All Jewish synagogues in the area of Brigade 50 have to be blown

up or set afire. . . . The operation will be carried out in

civilian clothing. . . . Execution of the order will be

reported. . . .” (1721-PS)

Some 40 teletype messages from various police headquarters will tell the

fury with which all Jews were pursued in Germany on those awful November

nights. The SS troops were turned loose and the Gestapo supervised.

Jewish-owned property was authorized to be destroyed. The Gestapo

ordered twenty to thirty thousand “well-to-do-Jews” to be arrested.

Concentration camps were to receive them. Healthy Jews, fit for labor,

were to be taken. (3051-PS)

As the German frontiers were expanded by war, so the campaign against

the Jews expanded. The Nazi plan never was limited to extermination in

Germany; always it contemplated extinguishing the Jew in Europe and

often in the world. In the West, the Jews were killed and their property

taken over. But the campaign achieved its zenith of savagery in the

East. The eastern Jew has suffered as no people ever suffered. Their

sufferings were carefully reported to the Nazi authorities to show

faithful adherence to the Nazi design. I shall refer only to enough of

the evidence of these to show the extent of the Nazi design for killing

Jews.

If I should recite these horrors in words of my own, you would think me

intemperate and unreliable. Fortunately, we need not take the word of

any witness but the Germans themselves. I invite you now to look at a

few of the vast number of captured German orders and reports that will

be offered in evidence, to see what a Nazi invasion meant. We will

present such evidence as the report of “Einsatzgruppe (Action Group) A”

of October 15, 1941 which boasts that in overrunning the Baltic States,

“Native anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against the

Jews during the first hours after occupation. . . .” The report

continues:

“From the beginning it was to be expected that the Jewish

problem in the East could not be solved by pogroms alone. In

accordance with the basic orders received, however, the

cleansing activities of the Security Police had to aim at a

complete annihilation of the Jews. Special detachments

reinforced by selected units—in Lithuania partisan detachments,

in Latvia units of the Latvian auxiliary police—therefore

performed extensive executions both in the towns and in rural

areas. The actions of the execution detachments were performed

smoothly.”

“The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to

71,105. During the pogroms in Kovno 3,800 Jews were eliminated,

in the smaller towns about 1,200 Jews.”

“In Latvia, up to now a total of 30,000 Jews were executed. Five

hundred were eliminated by pogroms in Riga.” (L-180)

This is a captured report from the Commissioner of Sluzk on October 30,

1941 which describes the scene in more detail. It says:

“. . . The first lieutenant explained that the police battalion

had received the assignment to effect the liquidation of all

Jews here in the town of Sluzk, within two days. . . . Then I

requested him to postpone the action one day. However, he

rejected this with the remark that he had to carry out this

action everywhere and in all towns and that only two days were

allotted for Sluzk. Within these two days, the town of Sluzk had

to be cleared of Jews by all means. . . . All Jews without

exception were taken out of the factories and shops and deported

in spite of our agreement. It is true that part of the Jews was

moved by way of the ghetto where many of them were processed and

still segregated by me, but a large part was loaded directly on

trucks and liquidated without further delay outside of the

town. . . . For the rest, as regards the execution of the

action, I must point out to my deepest regret that the latter

bordered already on sadism. The town itself offered a picture of

horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the

part of both the German police officers and particularly the

Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them

White Ruthenians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded

together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in

different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The

White Ruthenians were in greatest distress to free themselves

from the encirclement. Regardless of the fact that the Jewish

people, among whom were also tradesmen, were mistreated in a

terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Ruthenian

people, the White Ruthenians themselves were also worked over

with rubber clubs and rifle butts. There was no question of an

action against the Jews any more. It rather looked like a

revolution. . . .”

There are reports which merely tabulate the numbers slaughtered. An

example is an account of the work of Einsatzgruppen of SIPO and SD in

the East, which relates that:

In Estonia, all Jews were arrested immediately upon the arrival of the

Wehrmacht. Jewish men and women above the age of 16 and capable of work

were drafted for forced labor. Jews were subjected to all sorts of

restrictions and all Jewish property was confiscated. All Jewish males

above the age of 16 were executed, with the exception of doctors and

elders. Only 500 of an original 4,500 Jews remained. Thirty-seven

thousand, one hundred eighty persons have been liquidated by the SIPO

and SD in White Ruthenia during October. In one town, 337 Jewish women

were executed for demonstrating a ‘provocative attitude.’ In another,

380 Jews were shot for spreading vicious propaganda.

And so the report continues, listing town after town, where hundreds of

Jews were murdered:

In Vitebsk 3,000 Jews were liquidated because of the danger of

epidemics. In Kiev 33,771 Jews were executed on September 29 and 30 in

retaliation for some fires which were set off there. In Shitomir 3,145

Jews ‘had to be shot’ because, judging from experience they had to be

considered as the carriers of Bolshevik propaganda. In Cherson 410 Jews

were executed in reprisal against acts of sabotage. In the territory

east of the Dnieper, the Jewish problem was ’solved’ by the liquidation

of 4,891 Jews and by putting the remainder into labor battalions of up

to 1,000 persons. (R-102)

Other accounts tell not of the slaughter so much as of the depths of

degradation to which the tormentors stooped. For example, we will show

the report made to Defendant Rosenberg about the army and the SS in the

area under Rosenberg’s jurisdiction, which recited the following:

“Details: In presence of SS man, a Jewish dentist has to break all gold

teeth and fillings out of mouth of German and Russian Jews _before_ they

are executed.”

Men, women and children are locked into barns and burned alive.

Peasants, women and children are shot on the pretext that they are

suspected of belonging to bands. (R-135)

We of the Western World heard of gas wagons in which Jews and political

opponents were asphyxiated. We could not believe it. But here we have

the report of May 16, 1942 from the German SS Officer Becker to his

supervisor in Berlin which tells this story:

Gas vans in C group can be driven to execution spot, which is generally

stationed 10 to 15 kms. from main road, only in dry weather. Since those

to be executed become frantic if conducted to this place, such vans

become immobilized in wet weather.

Gas vans in D group were camouflaged as cabin trailers, but vehicles

well known to authorities and civilian population which calls them

‘death vans’.

Writer of letter (Becker) ordered all men to keep as far away as

possible during gassing. Unloading van has ‘atrocious spiritual and

physical effect’ on men and they should be ordered not to participate in

such work. (501-PS)

I shall not dwell on this subject longer than to quote one more

sickening document which evidences the planned and systematic character

of the Jewish persecutions. I hold a report written with Teutonic

devotion to detail, illustrated with photographs to authenticate its

almost incredible text, and beautifully bound in leather with the loving

care bestowed on a proud work. It is the original report of the SS

Brigadier General Stroop in charge of the destruction of the Warsaw

Ghetto, and its title page carries the inscription, “The Jewish ghetto

in Warsaw no longer exists.” It is characteristic that one of the

captions explains that the photograph concerned shows the driving out of

Jewish “bandits”; those whom the photograph shows being driven out are

almost entirely women and little children. It contains a day-by-day

account of the killings mainly carried out by the SS organization, too

long to relate, but let me quote General Stroop’s summary:

“The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could only be

suppressed by energetic actions of our troops day and night.

_The Reichsführer SS ordered, therefore, on 23 April 1943, the

cleaning out of the ghetto with utter ruthlessness and merciless

tenacity._ I, therefore, decided to destroy and burn down the

entire ghetto without regard to the armament factories. These

factories were systematically dismantled and then burned. Jews

usually left their hideouts, but frequently remained in the

burning buildings and jumped out of the windows only when the

heat became unbearable. They then tried to crawl with broken

bones across the street into buildings which were not afire.

Sometimes they changed their hideouts during the night into the

ruins of burned buildings. Life in the sewers was not pleasant

after the first week. Many times we could hear loud voices in

the sewers. SS men or policemen climbed bravely through the

manholes to capture these Jews. Sometimes they stumbled over

Jewish corpses; sometimes they were shot at. Tear gas bombs were

thrown into the manholes and the Jews driven out of the sewers

and captured. Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in

sewers and bunkers through blasting. The longer the resistance

continued the tougher became the members of the Waffen SS,

Police and Wehrmacht who always discharged their duties in an

exemplary manner. Frequently Jews who tried to replenish their

food supplies during the night or to communicate with

neighboring groups were exterminated.

“This action eliminated,” says the SS commander, “a proved total

of 56,065. To that, we have to add the number killed through

blasting, fire, etc., which cannot be counted.” (1061-PS)

We charge that all atrocities against Jews were the manifestation and

culmination of the Nazi plan to which every defendant here was a party.

I know very well that some of these men did take steps to spare some

particular Jew for some personal reason from the horrors that awaited

the unrescued Jew. Some protested that particular atrocities were

excessive, and discredited the general policy. While a few defendants

may show efforts to make specific exceptions to the policy of Jewish

extermination, I have found no instance in which any defendant opposed

the policy itself or sought to revoke or even modify it.

Determination to destroy the Jews was a binding force which at all times

cemented the elements of this conspiracy. On many internal policies

there were differences among the defendants. But there is not one of

them who has not echoed the rallying cry of nazism: “Deutschland

erwache, Juda verrecke!” (Germany awake, Jewry perish!).

_Terrorism and Preparation for War_:

How a government treats its own inhabitants generally is thought to be

no concern of other governments or of international society. Certainly

few oppressions or cruelties would warrant the intervention of foreign

powers. But the German mistreatment of Germans is now known to pass in

magnitude and savagery any limits of what is tolerable by modern

civilization. Other nations, by silence, would take a consenting part in

such crimes. These Nazi persecutions, moreover, take character as

international crimes because of the purpose for which they were

undertaken.

The purpose, as we have seen, of getting rid of the influence of free

labor, the churches, and the Jews was to clear their obstruction to the

precipitation of aggressive war. If aggressive warfare in violation of

treaty obligation is a matter of international cognizance the

preparations for it must also be of concern to the international

community. Terrorism was the chief instrument for securing the cohesion

of the German people in war purposes. Moreover, these cruelties in

Germany served as atrocity practice to discipline the membership of the

criminal organization to follow the pattern later in occupied countries.

Through the police formations that are before you accused as criminal

organizations, the Nazi Party leaders, aided at some point in their

basic and notorious purpose by each of the individual defendants,

instituted a reign of terror. These espionage and police organizations

were utilized to hunt down every form of opposition and to penalize

every nonconformity. These organizations early founded and administered

concentration camps—Buchenwald in 1933, Dachau in 1934. But these

notorious names were not alone. Concentration camps came to dot the

German map and to number scores. At first they met with resistance from

some Germans. We have a captured letter from Minister of Justice Gürtner

to Hitler which is revealing. A Gestapo official had been prosecuted for

crimes committed in the camp at Hohnstein, and the Nazi Governor of

Saxony had promptly asked that the proceeding be quashed. The Minister

of Justice in June of 1935 protested because, as he said:

“In this camp unusually grave mistreatments of prisoners have

occurred at least since summer 1933. The prisoners not only were

beaten with whips without cause, similarly as in the

Concentration Camp Bredow near Stettin till they lost

consciousness, but they were also tortured in other manners,

e.g. with the help of a dripping apparatus constructed

exclusively for this purpose, under which prisoners had to stand

until they were suffering from serious purulent wounds of the

scalp. . . .” (787-PS)

I shall not take time to detail the ghastly proceedings in these

concentration camps. Beatings, starvings, tortures, and killings were

routine—so routine that the tormentors became blasé and careless. We

have a report of discovery that in Plötzensee one night, 186 persons

were executed while there were orders for only 180. Another report

describes how the family of one victim received two urns of ashes by

mistake.

Inmates were compelled to execute each other. In 1942 they were paid

five Reichsmarks per execution, but on June 27, 1942 SS General Glücks

ordered commandants of all concentration camps to reduce this honorarium

to three cigarettes. In 1943 the Reich leader of the SS and Chief of

German Police ordered the corporal punishments on Russian women to be

applied by Polish women and vice versa, but the price was not frozen. He

said that as reward, a few cigarettes was authorized. Under the Nazis,

human life had been progressively devalued, until it finally became

worth less than a handful of tobacco—ersatz tobacco. There were,

however, some traces of the milk of human kindness. On August 11, 1942

an order went from Himmler to the commanders of 14 concentration camps

that only German prisoners are allowed to beat other German prisoners

(2189-PS).

Mystery and suspense was added to cruelty in order to spread torture

from the inmate to his family and friends. Men and women disappeared

from their homes or business or from the streets, and no word came of

them. The omission of notice was not due to overworked staff; it was due

to policy. The Chief of the SD and SIPO reported that in accordance with

orders from the Führer anxiety should be created in the minds of the

family of the arrested person. (668-PS) Deportations and secret arrests

were labeled, with a Nazi wit which seems a little ghoulish, “Nacht und

Nebel” (Night and Fog) (L-90, 833-PS). One of the many orders for these

actions gave this explanation:

“The decree carries a basic innovation. The Führer and

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces commands that crimes of

the specified sort committed by civilians of the occupied

territories are to be punished by the pertinent courts-martial

in the occupied territories _only_ when (a) the sentence calls

for the death penalty, and (b) the sentence is pronounced within

eight days after the arrest.

“Only when both conditions are met does the Führer and

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces hope for the desired

deterrent effect from the conduct of punitive proceedings in the

occupied territories.

“In other cases, in the future, the accused are to be secretly

brought to Germany, and the further conduct of the trial carried

on here. The deterrent effect of these measures lies (a) in

allowing the disappearance of the accused without a trace, (b)

therein that no information whatsoever may be given about their

whereabouts and their fate.” (833-PS)

To clumsy cruelty, scientific skill was added. “Undesirables” were

exterminated by injection of drugs into the bloodstream, by asphyxiation

in gas chambers. They were shot with poison bullets, to study the

effects. (L-103)

Then, to cruel experiments the Nazi added obscene ones. These were not

the work of underling-degenerates but of master-minds high in the Nazi

conspiracy. On May 20, 1942 General Field Marshal Milch authorized SS

General Wolff to go ahead at Dachau Camp with so-called “cold

experiments”; and four female gypsies were supplied for the purpose.

Himmler gave permission to carry on these “experiments” also in other

camps. (1617-PS) At Dachau, the reports of the “doctor” in charge show

that victims were immersed in cold water until their body temperature

was reduced to 28 degrees centigrade (82.4 degrees Farenheit), when they

all died immediately (1618-PS). This was in August 1942. But the

“doctor’s” technique improved. By February 1943 he was able to report

that 30 persons were chilled to 27 to 29 degrees, their hands and feet

frozen white, and their bodies “rewarmed” by a hot bath. But the Nazi

scientific triumph was “rewarming with animal heat.” The victim, all but

frozen to death, was surrounded with bodies of living women until he

revived and responded to his environment by having sexual intercourse.

(1616-PS) Here Nazi degeneracy reached its nadir.

I dislike to encumber the record with such morbid tales, but we are in

the grim business of trying men as criminals, and these are the things

that their own agents say happened. We will show you these concentration

camps in motion pictures, just as the Allied armies found them when they

arrived, and the measures General Eisenhower had to take to clean them

up. Our proof will be disgusting and you will say I have robbed you of

your sleep. But these are the things which have turned the stomach of

the world and set every civilized hand against Nazi Germany.

Germany became one vast torture chamber. Cries of its victims were heard

round the world and brought shudders to civilized people everywhere. I

am one who received during this war most atrocity tales with suspicion

and scepticism. But the proof here will be so overwhelming that I

venture to predict not one word I have spoken will be denied. These

defendants will only deny personal responsibility or knowledge.

Under the clutch of the most intricate web of espionage and intrigue

that any modern state has endured, and persecution and torture of a kind

that has not been visited upon the world in many centuries, the elements

of the German population which were both decent and courageous were

annihilated. Those which were decent but weak were intimidated. Open

resistance, which had never been more than feeble and irresolute,

disappeared. But resistance, I am happy to say, always remained,

although it was manifest in only such events as the abortive effort to

assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. With resistance driven underground,

the Nazi had the German State in his own hands.

But the Nazis not only silenced discordant voices. They created positive

controls as effective as their negative ones. Propaganda organs, on a

scale never before known, stimulated the Party and Party formations with

a permanent enthusiasm and abandon such as we, democratic people, can

work up only for a few days before a general election. They inculcated

and practiced the Führerprinzip which centralized control of the Party

and of the Party-controlled State over the lives and thought of the

German people, who are accustomed to look upon the German State, by

whomever controlled, with a mysticism that is incomprehensible to my

people.

All these controls from their inception were exerted with unparalleled

energy and single-mindedness to put Germany on a war footing. We will

show from the Nazis’ own documents their secret training of military

personnel, their secret creation of a military air force. Finally, a

conscript army was brought into being. Financiers, economists,

industrialists joined in the plan and promoted elaborate alterations in

industry and finance to support an unprecedented concentration of

resources and energies upon preparations for war. Germany’s rearmament

so outstripped the strength of her neighbors that in about a year she

was able to crush the whole military force of continental Europe,

exclusive of that of Soviet Russia, and then to push the Russian armies

back to the Volga. These preparations were of a magnitude which

surpassed all need of defense, and every defendant, and every

intelligent German, well understood them to be for aggressive purposes.

_Experiments in Aggression_:

Before resorting to open aggressive warfare, the Nazis undertook some

rather cautious experiments to test the spirit of resistance of those

who lay across their path. They advanced, but only as others yielded,

and kept in a position to draw back if they found a temperament that

made persistence dangerous.

On 7 March 1936 the Nazis reoccupied the Rhineland and then proceeded to

fortify it in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Pact of

Locarno. They encountered no substantial resistance and were emboldened

to take the next step, which was the acquisition of Austria. Despite

repeated assurances that Germany had no designs on Austria, invasion was

perfected. Threat of attack forced Schuschnigg to resign as Chancellor

of Austria and put the Nazi Defendant Seyss-Inquart in his place. The

latter immediately opened the frontier and invited Hitler to invade

Austria “to preserve order”. On March 12th invasion began. The next day,

Hitler proclaimed himself Chief of the Austrian State, took command of

its armed forces, and a law was enacted annexing Austria to Germany.

Threats of aggression had succeeded without arousing resistance. Fears

nevertheless had been stirred. They were lulled by an assurance to the

Czechoslovak Government that there would be no attack on that country.

We will show that the Nazi Government already had detailed plans for the

attack. We will lay before you the documents in which these conspirators

planned to create an incident to justify their attack. They even gave

consideration to assassinating their own Ambassador at Prague in order

to create a sufficiently dramatic incident. They did precipitate a

diplomatic crisis which endured throughout the summer. Hitler set

September 30th as the day when troops should be ready for action. Under

the threat of immediate war, the United Kingdom and France concluded a

pact with Germany and Italy at Munich on September 29, 1938, which

required Czechoslovakia to acquiesce in the cession of the Sudetenland

to Germany. It was consummated by German occupation on October 1, 1938.

The Munich Pact pledged no further aggression against Czechoslovakia,

but the Nazi pledge was lightly given and quickly broken. On the 15th of

March 1939, in defiance of the treaty of Munich itself, the Nazis seized

and occupied Bohemia and Moravia, which constituted the major part of

Czechoslovakia not already ceded to Germany. Once again the West stood

aghast, but it dreaded war, it saw no remedy except war, and it hoped

against hope that the Nazi fever for expansion had run its course. But

the Nazi world was intoxicated by these unresisted successes in open

alliance with Mussolini and in covert alliance with Franco. Then, having

made a deceitful, delaying peace with Russia, the conspirators entered

upon the final phase of the plan to renew war.

_War of Aggression_:

I will not prolong this address by detailing the steps leading to the

war of aggression which began with the invasion of Poland on September

1, 1939. The further story will be unfolded to you from documents

including those of the German High Command itself. The plans had been

laid long in advance. As early as 1935 Hitler appointed the Defendant

Schacht to the position of General Deputy for the War Economy (2261-PS).

We have the diary of General Jodl (1780-PS); the “Plan Otto,” Hitler’s

own order for attack on Austria in case trickery failed (C-102); the

“Plan Green” which was the blueprint for attack on Czechoslovakia

(388-PS); plans for the war in the West (375-PS, 376-PS); Funk’s letter

to Hitler dated August 25, 1939 detailing the long course of economic

preparation (699-PS); Keitel’s top-secret mobilization order for 1939-40

prescribing secret steps to be taken during a “period of tension” during

which no “‘state of war’ will be publicly declared even if open war

measures against the foreign enemy will be taken.” This letter order

(1639A-PS) is in our possession despite a secret order issued on March

16, 1945, when Allied troops were advancing into the heart of Germany,

to burn these plans. We have also Hitler’s directive, dated December 18,

1940, for the “Barbarossa Contingency” outlining the strategy of the

attack upon Russia (446-PS). That plan in the original bears the

initials of the Defendants Keitel and Jodl. They were planning the

attack and planning it long in advance of the declaration of war. We

have detailed information concerning “Case White,” the plan for attack

on Poland (C-120). That attack began the war. The plan was issued by

Keitel on April 3rd, 1939. The attack did not come until September.

Steps in preparation for the attack were taken by subordinate

commanders, one of whom issued an order on June 14, providing that:

“The Commander-in-Chief of the Army has ordered the working out

of a _plan of deployment against Poland_ which takes in account

the demands of the political leadership _for the opening of war

by surprise and for quick success_. . . .

“I declare it the duty of the commanding generals, the

divisional commanders, and the commandants to limit as much as

possible the number of persons who will be informed, and to

limit the extent of the information, and ask that all suitable

measures be taken to prevent persons not concerned from getting

information. . . .

“The operation, in order to forestall an orderly Polish

mobilization and concentration, is to be opened by surprise with

forces which are for the most part armored and motorized, placed

on alert in the neighborhood of the border. The initial

superiority over the Polish frontier guards and surprise that

can be expected with certainty are to be maintained by quickly

bringing up other parts of the Army as well to counteract the

marching up of the Polish Army. . . .

“If the development of the political situation should show that

a surprise at the beginning of the war is out of question,

because of well-advanced defense preparations on the part of the

Polish Army, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army will order the

opening of the hostilities only after the assembling of

sufficient additional forces. The basis of all preparations will

be to surprise the enemy. . . .” (2327-PS)

We have also the order for the invasion of England, signed by Hitler and

initialed by Keitel and Jodl. It is interesting that it commences with a

recognition that although the British military position is “hopeless,”

they show not the slightest sign of giving in. (442-PS)

Not the least incriminating are the minutes of Hitler’s meeting with his

high advisers. As early as November 5, 1937 Hitler told Defendants

Göring, Raeder, and Neurath, among others, that German rearmament was

practically accomplished and that he had decided to secure by force,

starting with a lightning attack on Czechoslovakia and Austria, greater

living space for Germans in Europe no later than 1943-45 and perhaps as

early as 1938 (386-PS). On the 23rd of May, 1939 the Führer advised his

staff that:

“It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and

of securing our food supplies. . . . Over and above the natural

fertility, thorough-going German exploitation will enormously

increase the surplus.

“There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and we are

left with the decision: _To attack Poland at the first suitable

opportunity_. We cannot expect a repetition of the Czech affair.

There will be war.” (L-79)

On August 22nd, 1939 Hitler again addressed members of the High Command,

telling them when the start of military operations would be ordered. He

disclosed that for propaganda purposes, he would provocate a good

reason. “It will make no difference,” he announced, “whether this reason

will sound convincing or not. After all, the victor will not be asked

whether he talked the truth or not. We have to proceed brutally. The

stronger is always right.” (1014-PS) On 23 November 1939, after the

Germans had invaded Poland, Hitler made this explanation:

“. . . For the first time in history we have to fight on only

one front, the other front is at present free. But no one can

know how long that will remain so. I have doubted for a long

time whether I should strike in the East and then in the West.

Basically I did not organize the armed forces in order not to

strike. The decision to strike was always in me. Earlier or

later I wanted to solve the problem. Under pressure it was

decided that the East was to be attacked first. . . .” (789-PS)

We know the bloody sequel. Frontier incidents were staged. Demands were

made for cession of territory. When Poland refused, the German forces

invaded on September 1st, 1939. Warsaw was destroyed; Poland fell. The

Nazis, in accordance with plan, moved swiftly to extend their aggression

throughout Europe and to gain the advantage of surprise over their

unprepared neighbors. Despite repeated and solemn assurances of peaceful

intentions, they invaded Denmark and Norway on 9th April 1940; Belgium,

The Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10th May 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece

on 6th April 1941.

As part of the Nazi preparation for aggression against Poland and her

allies, Germany, on 23rd August 1939, had entered into a non-aggression

pact with Soviet Russia. It was only a delaying treaty intended to be

kept no longer than necessary to prepare for its violation. On June 22,

1941, pursuant to long-matured plans, the Nazis hurled troops into

Soviet territory without any declaration of war. The entire European

world was aflame.

_Conspiracy with Japan_:

The Nazi plans of aggression called for use of Asiatic allies and they

found among the Japanese men of kindred mind and purpose. They were

brothers, under the skin.

Himmler records a conversation he had on January 31, 1939 with General

Oshima, Japanese Ambassador at Berlin. He wrote:

“Furthermore, he (Oshima) had succeeded up to now to send 10

Russians with bombs across the Caucasian frontier. These

Russians had the mission to kill Stalin. A number of additional

Russians, whom he had also sent across, had been shot at the

frontier.” (2195-PS)

On September 27th, 1940 the Nazis concluded a German-Italian-Japanese

10-year military and economic alliance by which those powers agreed “to

stand by and cooperate with one another in regard to their efforts in

Greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their

prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things.”

On March 5, 1941 a top-secret directive was issued by Defendant Keitel.

It stated that the Führer had ordered instigation of Japan’s active

participation in the war and directed that Japan’s military power has to

be strengthened by the disclosure of German war experiences and support

of a military, economic, and technical nature has to be given. The aim

was stated to be to crush England quickly thereby keeping the United

States out of the war. (C-75)

On March 29, 1941 Ribbentrop told Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign

Minister, that the German Army was ready to strike against Russia.

Matsuoka reassured Ribbentrop about the Far East. Japan, he reported,

was acting at the moment as though she had no interest whatever in

Singapore, but intends to strike when the right moment comes. (1877-PS)

On April 5, 1941 Ribbentrop urged Matsuoka that entry of Japan into the

war would “hasten the victory” and would be more in the interest of

Japan than of Germany since it would give Japan a unique chance to

fulfill her national aims and to play a leading part in Eastern Asia

(1882-PS).

The proofs in this case will also show that the leaders of Germany were

planning war against the United States from its Atlantic as well as

instigating it from its Pacific approaches. A captured memorandum from

the Führer’s headquarters, dated October 29, 1940, asks certain

information as to air bases and supply and reports further that:

“The Führer is at present occupied with the question of the

occupation of the Atlantic islands with a view to the

prosecution of war against America at a later date.

Deliberations on this subject are being embarked upon here.”

(376-PS)

On December 7th, 1941, a day which the late President Roosevelt declared

“will live in infamy,” victory for German aggression seemed certain. The

Wehrmacht was at the gates of Moscow. Taking advantage of the situation,

and while her plenipotentiaries were creating a diplomatic diversion in

Washington, Japan without declaration of war treacherously attacked the

United States at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. Attacks followed

swiftly on the British Commonwealth, and The Netherlands in the

Southwest Pacific. These aggressions were met in the only way that they

could be met, with instant declarations of war and with armed resistance

which mounted slowly through many long months of reverse until finally

the Axis was crushed to earth and deliverance for its victims was won.

Your Honor, I am about to take up “Crimes in the Conduct of War”, which

is quite a separate subject. We are within 5 minutes of the recessing

time. It will be very convenient for me if it will be agreeable to you.

THE PRESIDENT: We will sit again in 15 minutes’ time.

[_The Tribunal recessed until 1550 hours._]

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal must request that if it adjourns for 15

minutes members of the bar and others are back in their seats after an

interval of 15 minutes. Mr. Justice Jackson, I understand that you wish

to continue to 5:15, when you may be able to conclude your speech?

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think that would be the most orderly way.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, the Tribunal will be glad to do so.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May it please your Honor, I will now take up the

subject of “Crimes in the Conduct of War”.

Even the most warlike of peoples have recognized in the name of humanity

some limitations on the savagery of warfare. Rules to that end have been

embodied in international conventions to which Germany became a party.

This code had prescribed certain restraints as to the treatment of

belligerents. The enemy was entitled to surrender and to receive quarter

and good treatment as a prisoner of war. We will show by German

documents that these rights were denied, that prisoners of war were

given brutal treatment and often murdered. This was particularly true in

the case of captured airmen, often my countrymen.

It was ordered that captured English and American airmen should no

longer be granted the status of prisoners of war. They were to be

treated as criminals and the Army was ordered to refrain from protecting

them against lynching by the populace. (R-118) The Nazi Government,

through its police and propaganda agencies, took pains to incite the

civilian population to attack and kill airmen who crash-landed. The

order, given by the Reichsführer SS Himmler on 10 August 1943, directed

that: “It is not the task of the police to interfere in clashes between

German and English and American flyers who have bailed out”. This order

was transmitted on the same day by SS Obersturmbannführer Brand of

Himmler’s personal staff to all senior executive SS and Police officers,

with these directions:

“I am sending you the inclosed order with the request that the

Chief of the Regular Police and of the Security Police be

informed. They are to make this instruction known to their

subordinate officers verbally.” (R-110)

Similarly, we will show Hitler’s top secret order, dated 18 October

1942, that Commandos, regardless of condition, were “to be slaughtered

to the last man” after capture (498-PS). We will show the circulation of

secret orders, one of which was signed by Hess, to be passed orally to

civilians, that enemy fliers or parachutists were to be arrested or

liquidated (062-PS). By such means were murders incited and directed.

This Nazi campaign of ruthless treatment of enemy forces assumed its

greatest proportions in the fight against Russia. Eventually all

prisoners of war were taken out of control of the Army and put in the

hands of Himmler and the SS (058-PS). In the East, the German fury spent

itself. Russian prisoners were ordered to be branded. They were starved.

I shall quote passages from a letter written February 28, 1942 by

Defendant Rosenberg to Defendant Keitel:

“The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is on the

contrary a tragedy of the greatest extent. Of 3,600,000

prisoners of war, only several hundred thousand are still able

to work fully. A large part of them has starved, or died,

because of the hazards of the weather. Thousands also died from

spotted fever. . . .

“The camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to

put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather

let them starve to death. . . .

“In many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on

the march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot

before the eyes of the horrified population, and the corpses

were left.

“In numerous camps, no shelter for the prisoners of war was

provided at all. They lay under the open sky during rain or

snow. Even tools were not made available to dig holes or

caves. . . .

“Finally, the shooting of prisoners of war must be mentioned;

for instance, in various camps, all the ‘Asiatics’ were shot”.

(081-PS)

Civilized usage and conventions to which Germany was a party had

prescribed certain immunities for civilian populations unfortunate

enough to dwell in lands overrun by hostile armies. The German

occupation forces, controlled or commanded by men on trial before you,

committed a long series of outrages against the inhabitants of occupied

territory that would be incredible except for captured orders and

captured reports which show the fidelity with which those orders were

executed.

We deal here with a phase of common criminality designed by the

conspirators as part of the common plan. We can appreciate why these

crimes against their European enemies were not of a casual character but

were planned and disciplined crimes when we get at the reason for them.

Hitler told his officers on August 22, 1939 that: “The main objective in

Poland is the destruction of the enemy and not the reaching of a certain

geographical line” (1014-PS). The project of deporting promising youth

from occupied territories was approved by Rosenberg on the theory that

“a desired weakening of the biological force” of the conquered people is

being achieved (031-PS). To Germanize or to destroy was the program.

Himmler announced, “Either we win over any good blood that we can use

for ourselves and give it a place in our people or, gentlemen—you may

call this cruel, but nature is cruel,—we destroy this blood.” As to

“racially good types” Himmler further advised, “Therefore, I think that

it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their

environment, if necessary by robbing or stealing them” (L-70). He urged

deportation of Slavic children to deprive potential enemies of future

soldiers.

The Nazi purpose was to leave Germany’s neighbors so weakened that even

if she should eventually lose the war, she would still be the most

powerful nation in Europe. Against this background, we must view the

plan for ruthless warfare, which means a plan for the commission of War

Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

Hostages in large numbers were demanded and killed. Mass punishments

were inflicted, so savage that whole communities were extinguished.

Rosenberg was advised of the annihilation of three unidentified villages

in Slovakia. (970-PS) In May of 1943 another village of about 40 farms

and 220 inhabitants was ordered wiped out. The entire population was

ordered shot, the cattle and property impounded, and the order required

that “the village will be destroyed totally by fire.” (163-PS) A secret

report from Rosenberg’s Reich Ministry of Eastern Territory reveals

that:

“Food rations allowed the Russian population are so low that

they fail to secure their existence and provide only for minimum

subsistence of limited duration. The population does not know if

they will still live tomorrow. They are faced with death by

starvation. . . .

“The roads are clogged by hundreds of thousands of people,

sometimes as many as one million according to the estimate of

experts, who wander around in search of nourishment. . . .

“Sauckel’s action has caused unrest among the civilians. . . .

Russian girls were deloused by men, nude photos in forced

positions were taken, women doctors were locked into freight

cars for the pleasure of the transport commanders, women in

night shirts were fettered and forced through the Russian towns

to the railroad station, etc. All this material has been sent to

the OKH.” (1381-PS)

Perhaps the deportation to slave labor was the most horrible and

extensive slaving operation in history. On few other subjects is our

evidence so abundant or so damaging. In a speech made on January 25,

1944 the Defendant Frank, Governor General of Poland, boasted, “I have

sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich” (059-PS, P. 2). The

Defendant Sauckel reported that “out of the 5 million foreign workers

who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily.” This fact was

reported to the Führer and Defendants Speer, Göring, and Keitel. (R-24)

Children of 10 to 14 years were impressed into service by telegraphic

order of Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories:

“The Command is further charged with the transferring of

worthwhile Russian youth between 10-14 years of age, to the

Reich. The authority is not affected by the changes connected

with the evacuation and transportation to the reception camps of

Bialystok, Krajewo, and Olitei. The Führer wishes that this

activity be increased even more.” (200-PS)

When enough labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced into

war work in flagrant violation of international conventions (016-PS).

Slave labor came from France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the East.

Methods of recruitment were violent (R-124, 018-PS, 204-PS). The

treatment of these slave laborers was stated in general terms, not

difficult to translate into concrete deprivations, in a letter to the

Defendant Rosenberg from the Defendant Sauckel, which stated:

“All _prisoners of war_, from the _territories_ of the West as

well as of the East, actually in Germany, must be completely

incorporated into the German armament and munition industries.

Their production must be brought to the highest possible

level. . . .

“The complete employment of all prisoners of war as well as the

use of a gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men

and women, has become an indisputable necessity for the solution

of the mobilization of labor program in this war.

“All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way

as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest

conceivable degrees of expenditure. . . .” (016-PS)

In pursuance of the Nazi plan permanently to reduce the living standards

of their neighbors and to weaken them physically and economically, a

long series of crimes were committed. There was extensive destruction,

serving no military purpose, of the property of civilians. Dikes were

thrown open in Holland almost at the close of the war not to achieve

military ends but to destroy the resources and retard the economy of the

thrifty Netherlanders.

There was carefully planned economic syphoning off of the assets of

occupied countries. An example of the planning is shown by a report on

France dated December 7, 1942 made by the Economic Research Department

of the Reichsbank. The question arose whether French occupation costs

should be increased from 15 million Reichsmarks per day to 25 million

Reichsmarks per day. The Reichsbank analyzed French economy to determine

whether it could bear the burden. It pointed out that the armistice had

burdened France to that date to the extent of 18½ billion Reichsmarks,

equalling 370 billion francs. It pointed out that the burden of these

payments within 2½ years equalled the aggregate French national income

in the year 1940, and that the amount of payments handed over to Germany

in the first 6 months of 1942 corresponded to the estimate for the total

French revenue for that whole year. The report concluded:

“In any case, the conclusion is inescapable that relatively

heavier tributes have been imposed on France since the armistice

in June 1940 than upon Germany after the World War. In this

connection, it must be noted that the economic powers of France

never equalled those of the German Reich and that the vanquished

France could not draw on foreign economic and financial

resources in the same degree as Germany after the last World

War.”

The Defendant Funk was the Reich Minister of Economics and President of

the Reichsbank; the Defendant Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister; the

Defendant Göring was Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan; and all of

them participated in the exchange of views of which this captured

document is a part. (2149-PS) Notwithstanding this analysis by the

Reichsbank, they proceeded to increase the imposition on France from 15

million Reichsmarks daily to 25 million per day.

It is small wonder that the bottom has been knocked out of French

economy. The plan and purpose of the thing appears in a letter from

General Stülpnagel, head of the German Armistice Commission, to the

Defendant Jodl as early as 14 September 1940 when he wrote, “The slogan

‘Systematic weakening of France’ has already been surpassed by far in

reality” (1756-PS).

Not only was there a purpose to debilitate and demoralize the economy of

Germany’s neighbors for the purpose of destroying their competitive

position, but there was looting and pilfering on an unprecedented scale.

We need not be hypocritical about this business of looting. I recognize

that no army moves through occupied territory without some pilfering as

it goes. Usually the amount of pilfering increases as discipline wanes.

If the evidence in this case showed no looting except of that sort, I

certainly would ask no conviction of these defendants for it.

But we will show you that looting was not due to the lack of discipline

or to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature. The German organized

plundering, planned it, disciplined it, and made it official just as he

organized everything else, and then he compiled the most meticulous

records to show that he had done the best job of looting that was

possible under the circumstances. And we have those records.

The Defendant Rosenberg was put in charge of a systematic plundering of

the art objects of Europe by direct order of Hitler dated 29 January

1940 (136-PS). On the 16th of April 1943 Rosenberg reported that up to

the 7th of April, 92 railway cars with 2,775 cases containing art

objects had been sent to Germany; and that 53 pieces of art had been

shipped to Hitler direct, and 594 to the Defendant Göring. The report

mentioned something like 20,000 pieces of seized art and the main

locations where they were stored. (015-PS)

Moreover this looting was glorified by Rosenberg. Here we have 39

leather-bound tabulated volumes of his inventory, which in due time we

will offer in evidence. One cannot but admire the artistry of this

Rosenberg report. The Nazi taste was cosmopolitan. Of the 9,455 articles

inventoried, there were included 5,255 paintings, 297 sculptures, 1,372

pieces of antique furniture, 307 textiles, and 2,224 small objects of

art. Rosenberg observed that there were approximately 10,000 more

objects still to be inventoried. (015-PS) Rosenberg himself estimated

that the values involved would come close to a billion dollars (090-PS).

I shall not go into further details of the War Crimes and Crimes against

Humanity committed by the gangster ring whose leaders are before you. It

is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual

crimes. I am dealing with the Common Plan or design for crime and will

not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is to show the scale on

which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men who were

in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which

renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was

actually executed by others.

At length, this reckless and lawless course outraged the world. It

recovered from the demoralization of surprise attack, assembled its

forces and stopped these men in their tracks. Once success deserted

their banners, one by one the Nazi satellites fell away. Sawdust Caesar

collapsed. Resistance forces in every occupied country arose to harry

the invader. Even at home, Germans saw that Germany was being led to

ruin by these mad men, and the attempt on July 20, 1944 to assassinate

Hitler, an attempt fostered by men of highest station, was a desperate

effort by internal forces in Germany to stop short of ruin. Quarrels

broke out among the failing conspirators, and the decline of the Nazi

power was more swift than its ascendancy. German Armed Forces

surrendered, its Government disintegrated, its leaders committed suicide

by the dozen, and by the fortunes of war these defendants fell into our

hands. Although they are not, by any means, all the guilty ones, they

are survivors among the most responsible. Their names appear over and

over in the documents and their faces grace the photographic evidence.

We have here the surviving top politicians, militarists, financiers,

diplomats, administrators, and propagandists, of the Nazi movement. Who

was responsible for these crimes if they were not?

_The Law of the Case_:

The end of the war and capture of these prisoners presented the

victorious Allies with the question whether there is any legal

responsibility on high-ranking men for acts which I have described. Must

such wrongs either be ignored or redressed in hot blood? Is there no

standard in the law for a deliberate and reasoned judgment on such

conduct?

The Charter of this Tribunal evidences a faith that the law is not only

to govern the conduct of little men, but that even rulers are, as Lord

Chief Justice Coke put it to King James, “under God and the law.” The

United States believed that the law long has afforded standards by which

a juridical hearing could be conducted to make sure that we punish only

the right men and for the right reasons. Following the instructions of

the late President Roosevelt and the decision of the Yalta conference

President Truman directed representatives of the United States to

formulate a proposed International Agreement, which was submitted during

the San Francisco Conference to Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom,

the Soviet Union, and the Provisional Government of France. With many

modifications, that proposal has become the Charter of this Tribunal.

But the Agreement which sets up the standards by which these prisoners

are to be judged does not express the views of the signatory nations

alone. Other nations with diverse but highly respected systems of

jurisprudence also have signified adherence to it. These are Belgium,

The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Poland,

Greece, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Australia, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, New

Zealand, Venezuela, and India. You judge, therefore, under an organic

act which represents the wisdom, the sense of justice, and the will of

21 governments, representing an overwhelming majority of all civilized

people.

The Charter by which this Tribunal has its being, embodies certain legal

concepts which are inseparable from its jurisdiction and which must

govern its decision. These, as I have said, also are conditions attached

to the grant of any hearing to defendants. The validity of the

provisions of the Charter is conclusive upon us all, whether we have

accepted the duty of judging or of prosecuting under it, as well as upon

the defendants, who can point to no other law which gives them a right

to be heard at all. My able and experienced colleagues believe, as do I,

that it will contribute to the expedition and clarity of this Trial if I

expound briefly the application of the legal philosophy of the Charter

to the facts I have recited.

While this declaration of the law by the Charter is final, it may be

contended that the prisoners on trial are entitled to have it applied to

their conduct only most charitably if at all. It may be said that this

is new law, not authoritatively declared at the time they did the acts

it condemns, and that this declaration of the law has taken them by

surprise.

I cannot, of course, deny that these men are surprised that this is the

law; they really are surprised that there is any such thing as law.

These defendants did not rely on any law at all. Their program ignored

and defied all law. That this is so will appear from many acts and

statements, of which I cite but a few.

In the Führer’s speech to all military commanders on November 23, 1939

he reminded them that at the moment Germany had a pact with Russia, but

declared: “Agreements are to be kept only as long as they serve a

certain purpose.” Later in the same speech he announced: “A violation of

the neutrality of Holland and Belgium will be of no importance”

(789-PS). A top secret document, entitled “Warfare as a Problem of

Organization,” dispatched by the Chief of the High Command to all

commanders on April 19, 1938 declared that “the normal rules of war

towards neutrals may be considered to apply on the basis whether

operation of rules will create greater advantages or disadvantages for

the belligerents” (L-211). And from the files of the German Navy Staff,

we have a “Memorandum on Intensified Naval War,” dated October 15, 1939,

which begins by stating a desire to comply with International Law.

“However,” it continues, “if decisive successes are expected from any

measure considered as a war necessity, it must be carried through even

if it is not in agreement with international law.” (L-184) International

law, natural law, German law, any law at all was to these men simply a

propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it

would condemn what they wanted to do. That men may be protected in

relying upon the law at the time they act is the reason we find laws of

retrospective operations unjust. But these men cannot bring themselves

within the reason of the rule which in some systems of jurisprudence

prohibits _ex post facto_ laws. They cannot show that they ever relied

upon international law in any state or paid it the slightest regard.

The third Count of the Indictment is based on the definition of War

Crimes contained in the Charter. I have outlined to you the systematic

course of conduct toward civilian populations and combat forces which

violates international conventions to which Germany was a party. Of the

criminal nature of these acts at least, the defendants had, as we shall

show, clear knowledge. Accordingly, they took pains to conceal their

violations. It will appear that the Defendants Keitel and Jodl were

informed by official legal advisors that the orders to brand Russian

prisoners of war, to shackle British prisoners of war, and to execute

commando prisoners were clear violations of international law.

Nevertheless, these orders were put into effect. The same is true of

orders issued for the assassination of General Giraud and General

Weygand, which failed to be executed only because of a ruse on the part

of Admiral Canaris, who was himself later executed for his part in the

plot to take Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944.

The fourth Count of the Indictment is based on Crimes against Humanity.

Chief among these are mass killings of countless human beings in cold

blood. Does it take these men by surprise that murder is treated as a

crime?

The first and second Counts of the Indictment add to these crimes the

crime of plotting and waging wars of aggression and wars in violation of

nine treaties to which Germany was a party. There was a time, in fact, I

think the time of the first World War, when it could not have been said

that war-inciting or war making was a crime in law, however

reprehensible in morals.

Of course, it was, under the law of all civilized peoples, a crime for

one man with his bare knuckles to assault another. How did it come that

multiplying this crime by a million, and adding fire arms to bare

knuckles, made it a legally innocent act? The doctrine was that one

could not be regarded as criminal for committing the usual violent acts

in the conduct of legitimate warfare. The age of imperialistic expansion

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries added the foul doctrine,

contrary to the teachings of early Christian and international law

scholars such as Grotius, that all wars are to be regarded as legitimate

wars. The sum of these two doctrines was to give war-making a complete

immunity from accountability to law.

This was intolerable for an age that called itself civilized. Plain

people with their earthy common sense, revolted at such fictions and

legalisms so contrary to ethical principles and demanded checks on war

immunities. Statesmen and international lawyers at first cautiously

responded by adopting rules of warfare designed to make the conduct of

war more civilized. The effort was to set legal limits to the violence

that could be done to civilian populations and to combatants as well.

The common sense of men after the first World War demanded, however,

that the law’s condemnation of war reach deeper, and that the law

condemn not merely uncivilized ways of waging war, but also the waging

in any way of uncivilized wars—wars of aggression. The world’s

statesmen again went only as far as they were forced to go. Their

efforts were timid and cautious and often less explicit than we might

have hoped. But the 1920’s did outlaw aggressive war.

The re-establishment of the principle that there are unjust wars and

that unjust wars are illegal is traceable in many steps. One of the most

significant is the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, by which Germany, Italy,

and Japan, in common with practically all nations of the world,

renounced war as an instrument of national policy, bound themselves to

seek the settlement of disputes only by pacific means, and condemned

recourse to war for the solution of international controversies. This

pact altered the legal status of a war of aggression. As Mr. Stimson,

the United States Secretary of State put it in 1932, such a war:

“. . . is no longer to be the source and subject of rights. It

is no longer to be the principle around which the duties, the

conduct, and the rights of nations revolve. It is an illegal

thing. . . . By that very act, we have made obsolete many legal

precedents and have given the legal profession the task of

re-examining many of its codes and treaties.”

The Geneva Protocol of 1924 for the Pacific Settlement of International

Disputes, signed by the representatives of 48 governments, declared that

“a war of aggression constitutes . . . an international crime.” The

Eighth Assembly of the League of Nations in 1927, on unanimous

resolution of the representatives of 48 member nations, including

Germany, declared that a war of aggression constitutes an international

crime. At the Sixth Pan-American Conference of 1928, the 21 American

Republics unanimously adopted a resolution stating that “war of

aggression constitutes an international crime against the human

species.”

A failure of these Nazis to heed, or to understand the force and meaning

of this evolution in the legal thought of the world, is not a defense or

a mitigation. If anything, it aggravates their offense and makes it the

more mandatory that the law they have flouted be vindicated by juridical

application to their lawless conduct. Indeed, by their own law—had they

heeded any law—these principles were binding on these defendants.

Article 4 of the Weimar constitution provided that: “The generally

accepted rules of international law are to be considered as binding

integral parts of the law of the German Reich” (2050-PS). Can there be

any doubt that the outlawry of aggressive war was one of the “generally

accepted rules of international law” in 1939?

Any resort to war—to any kind of a war—is a resort to means that are

inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults,

deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property. An honestly

defensive war is, of course, legal and saves those lawfully conducting

it from criminality. But inherently criminal acts cannot be defended by

showing that those who committed them were engaged in a war, when war

itself is illegal. The very minimum legal consequence of the treaties

making aggressive wars illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them

of every defense the law ever gave, and to leave war-makers subject to

judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes.

But if it be thought that the Charter, whose declarations concededly

bind us all, does contain new law I still do not shrink from demanding

its strict application by this Tribunal. The rule of law in the world,

flouted by the lawlessness incited by these defendants, had to be

restored at the cost to my country of over a million casualties, not to

mention those of other nations. I cannot subscribe to the perverted

reasoning that society may advance and strengthen the rule of law by the

expenditure of morally innocent lives but that progress in the law may

never be made at the price of morally guilty lives.

It is true of course, that we have no judicial precedent for the

Charter. But international law is more than a scholarly collection of

abstract and immutable principles. It is an outgrowth of treaties and

agreements between nations and of accepted customs. Yet every custom has

its origin in some single act, and every agreement has to be initiated

by the action of some state. Unless we are prepared to abandon every

principle of growth for international law, we cannot deny that our own

day has the right to institute customs and to conclude agreements that

will themselves become sources of a newer and strengthened international

law. International law is not capable of development by the normal

processes of legislation, for there is no continuing international

legislative authority. Innovations and revisions in international law

are brought about by the action of governments such as those I have

cited, designed to meet a change in circumstances. It grows, as did the

common law, through decisions reached from time to time in adapting

settled principles to new situations. The fact is that when the law

evolves by the case method, as did the common law and as international

law must do if it is to advance at all, it advances at the expense of

those who wrongly guessed the law and learned too late their error. The

law, so far as international law can be decreed, had been clearly

pronounced when these acts took place. Hence, I am not disturbed by the

lack of judicial precedent for the inquiry it is proposed to conduct.

The events I have earlier recited clearly fall within the standards of

crimes, set out in the Charter, whose perpetrators this Tribunal is

convened to judge and punish fittingly. The standards for War Crimes and

Crimes against Humanity are too familiar to need comment. There are,

however, certain novel problems in applying other precepts of the

Charter which I should call to your attention.

_The Crime against Peace_:

A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate, or

wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international

treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a

common plan to do so, is a crime.

It is perhaps a weakness in this Charter that it fails itself to define

a war of aggression. Abstractly, the subject is full of difficulty and

all kinds of troublesome hypothetical cases can be conjured up. It is a

subject which, if the defense should be permitted to go afield beyond

the very narrow charge in the Indictment, would prolong the Trial and

involve the Tribunal in insoluble political issues. But so far as the

question can properly be involved in this case, the issue is one of no

novelty and is one on which legal opinion has well crystallized.

One of the most authoritative sources of international law on this

subject is the Convention for the Definition of Aggression signed at

London on July 3, 1933 by Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Turkey, the

Soviet Union, Persia, and Afghanistan. The subject has also been

considered by international committees and by commentators whose views

are entitled to the greatest respect. It had been little discussed prior

to the first World War but has received much attention as international

law has evolved its outlawry of aggressive war. In the light of these

materials of international law, and so far as relevant to the evidence

in this case, I suggest that an “aggressor” is generally held to be that

state which is the first to commit any of the following actions:

(1) Declaration of war upon another state;

(2) Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war,

of the territory of another state;

(3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a

declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another

state; and

(4) Provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of

another state, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded

state, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to

deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.

And I further suggest that it is the general view that no political,

military, economic, or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or

justification for such actions; but exercise of the right of legitimate

self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or

action to assist a state which has been subjected to aggression, shall

not constitute a war of aggression.

It is upon such an understanding of the law that our evidence of a

conspiracy to provoke and wage an aggressive war is prepared and

presented. By this test each of the series of wars begun by these Nazi

leaders was unambiguously aggressive.

It is important to the duration and scope of this Trial that we bear in

mind the difference between our charge that this war was one of

aggression and a position that Germany had no grievances. We are not

inquiring into the conditions which contributed to causing this war.

They are for history to unravel. It is no part of our task to vindicate

the European _status quo_ as of 1933, or as of any other date. The

United States does not desire to enter into discussion of the

complicated pre-war currents of European politics, and it hopes this

trial will not be protracted by their consideration. The remote

causations avowed are too insincere and inconsistent, too complicated

and doctrinaire to be the subject of profitable inquiry in this trial. A

familiar example is to be found in the “Lebensraum” slogan, which

summarized the contention that Germany needed more living space as a

justification for expansion. At the same time that the Nazis were

demanding more space for the German people, they were demanding more

German people to occupy space. Every known means to increase the birth

rate, legitimate and illegitimate, was utilized. “Lebensraum”

represented a vicious circle of demand—from neighbors more space, and

from Germans more progeny. We do not need to investigate the verity of

doctrines which led to constantly expanding circles of aggression. It is

the plot and the act of aggression which we charge to be crimes.

Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however

objectionable it finds the _status quo_, aggressive warfare is an

illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those

conditions. It may be that the Germany of the 1920’s and 1930’s faced

desperate problems, problems that would have warranted the boldest

measures short of war. All other methods—persuasion, propaganda,

economic competition, diplomacy—were open to an aggrieved country, but

aggressive warfare was outlawed. These defendants did make aggressive

war, a war in violation of treaties. They did attack and invade their

neighbors in order to effectuate a foreign policy which they knew could

not be accomplished by measures short of war. And that is as far as we

accuse or propose to inquire.

_The Law of Individual Responsibility_:

The Charter also recognizes individual responsibility on the part of

those who commit acts defined as crimes, or who incite others to do so,

or who join a common plan with other persons, groups or organizations to

bring about their commission. The principle of individual responsibility

for piracy and brigandage, which have long been recognized as crimes

punishable under international law, is old and well established. That is

what illegal warfare is. This principle of personal liability is a

necessary as well as logical one if international law is to render real

help to the maintenance of peace. An international law which operates

only on states can be enforced only by war because the most practicable

method of coercing a state is warfare. Those familiar with American

history know that one of the compelling reasons for adoption of our

constitution was that the laws of the Confederation, which operated only

on constituent states, were found ineffective to maintain order among

them. The only answer to recalcitrance was impotence or war. Only

sanctions which reach individuals can peacefully and effectively be

enforced. Hence, the principle of the criminality of aggressive war is

implemented by the Charter with the principle of personal

responsibility.

Of course, the idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits

crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. While

it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a state or

corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is

quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal

immunity.

The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not

take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were

acts of states. These twin principles working together have heretofore

resulted in immunity for practically everyone concerned in the really

great crimes against peace and mankind. Those in lower ranks were

protected against liability by the orders of their superiors. The

superiors were protected because their orders were called acts of state.

Under the Charter, no defense based on either of these doctrines can be

entertained. Modern civilization puts unlimited weapons of destruction

in the hands of men. It cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal

irresponsibility.

Even the German Military Code provides that:

“If the execution of a military order in the course of duty

violates the criminal law, then the superior officer giving the

order will bear the sole responsibility therefor. However, the

obeying subordinate will share the punishment of the

participant: (1) if he has exceeded the order given to him, or

(2) if it was within his knowledge that the order of his

superior officer concerned an act by which it was intended to

commit a civil or military crime or transgression.”

(_Reichsgesetzblatt_, 1926 No. 37, P. 278, Art. 47)

Of course, we do not argue that the circumstances under which one

commits an act should be disregarded in judging its legal effect. A

conscripted private on a firing squad cannot expect to hold an inquest

on the validity of the execution. The Charter implies common sense

limits to liability just as it places common sense limits upon immunity.

But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of them was

entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power. Their

responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that

fictional being, “the State”, which cannot be produced for trial, cannot

testify, and cannot be sentenced.

The Charter also recognizes a vicarious liability, which responsibility

is recognized by most modern systems of law, for acts committed by

others in carrying out a common plan or conspiracy to which a defendant

has become a party. I need not discuss the familiar principles of such

liability. Every day in the courts of countries associated in this

prosecution, men are convicted for acts that they did not personally

commit, but for which they were held responsible because of membership

in illegal combinations or plans or conspiracies.

_The Political, Police, and Military Organizations_:

Accused before this Tribunal as criminal organizations are certain

political and police organizations which the evidence will show to have

been instruments of cohesion in planning and executing the crimes I have

detailed. Perhaps the worst of the movement were the Leadership Corps of

the NSDAP, the Schutzstaffeln or “SS”, and the Sturmabteilungen or “SA”,

and the subsidiary formations which these include. These were the Nazi

Party leadership, espionage, and policing groups. They were the real

government, above and outside of any law. Also accused as organizations

are the Reich Cabinet and the Secret Police, or Gestapo, which were

fixtures of the Government but animated solely by the Party.

Except for a late period when some compulsory recruiting was done in the

SS, membership in all these militarized organizations was voluntary. The

police organizations were recruited from ardent partisans who enlisted

blindly to do the dirty work the leaders planned. The Reich Cabinet was

the governmental facade for Nazi Party Government and in its members

legal, as well as actual responsibility was vested for the entire

program. Collectively they were responsible for the program in general,

individually they were especially responsible for segments of it. The

finding which we ask you to make, that these are criminal organizations,

will subject members to punishment to be hereafter determined by

appropriate tribunals, unless some personal defense—such as becoming a

member under threat to person, to family, or inducement by false

representation, or the like—be established. Every member will have a

chance to be heard in the subsequent forum on his personal relation to

the organization, but your finding in this trial will conclusively

establish the criminal character of the organization as a whole.

We have also accused as criminal organizations the High Command and the

General Staff of the German Armed Forces. We recognize that to plan

warfare is the business of professional soldiers in all countries. But

it is one thing to plan strategic moves in the event war comes, and it

is another thing to plot and intrigue to bring on that war. We will

prove the leaders of the German General Staff and of the High Command to

have been guilty of just that. Military men are not before you because

they served their country. They are here because they mastered it, along

with these others, and drove it to war. They are not here because they

lost the war, but because they started it. Politicians may have thought

of them as soldiers, but soldiers know they were politicians. We ask

that the General Staff and the High Command, as defined in the

Indictment, be condemned as a criminal group whose existence and

tradition constitute a standing menace to the peace of the world.

These individual defendants did not stand alone in crime and will not

stand alone in punishment. Your verdict of “guilty” against these

organizations will render _prima facie_ guilty, as nearly as we can

learn, thousands upon thousands of members now in custody of United

States forces and of other armies.

_The responsibility of this Tribunal_:

To apply the sanctions of the law to those whose conduct is found

criminal by the standards I have outlined, is the responsibility

committed to this Tribunal. It is the first court ever to undertake the

difficult task of overcoming the confusion of many tongues and the

conflicting concepts of just procedure among divers systems of law, so

as to reach a common judgment. The tasks of all of us are such as to

make heavy demands on patience and good will. Although the need for

prompt action has admittedly resulted in imperfect work on the part of

the Prosecution, four great nations bring you their hurriedly assembled

contributions of evidence. What remains undiscovered we can only guess.

We could, with witnesses’ testimony, prolong the recitals of crime for

years—but to what avail. We shall rest the case when we have offered

what seems convincing and adequate proof of the crimes charged without

unnecessary cumulation of evidence. We doubt very much whether it will

be seriously denied that the crimes I have outlined took place. The

effort will undoubtedly be to mitigate or escape personal

responsibility.

Among the nations which unite in accusing these defendants the United

States is perhaps in a position to be the most dispassionate, for,

having sustained the least injury, it is perhaps the least animated by

vengeance. Our American cities have not been bombed by day and by night,

by humans, and by robots. It is not our temples that had been laid in

ruins. Our countrymen have not had their homes destroyed over their

heads. The menace of Nazi aggression, except to those in actual service,

has seemed less personal and immediate to us than to European peoples.

But while the United States is not first in rancor, it is not second in

determination that the forces of law and order be made equal to the task

of dealing with such international lawlessness as I have recited here.

Twice in my lifetime, the United States has sent its young manhood

across the Atlantic, drained its resources, and burdened itself with

debt to help defeat Germany. But the real hope and faith that has

sustained the American people in these great efforts was that victory

for ourselves and our Allies would lay the basis for an ordered

international relationship in Europe and would end the centuries of

strife on this embattled continent.

Twice we have held back in the early stages of European conflict in the

belief that it might be confined to a purely European affair. In the

United States, we have tried to build an economy without armament, a

system of government without militarism, and a society where men are not

regimented for war. This purpose, we know now, can never be realized if

the world periodically is to be embroiled in war. The United States

cannot, generation after generation, throw its youth or its resources on

to the battlefields of Europe to redress the lack of balance between

Germany’s strength and that of her enemies, and to keep the battles from

our shores.

The American dream of a peace-and-plenty economy, as well as the hopes

of other nations, can never be fulfilled if those nations are involved

in a war every generation so vast and devastating as to crush the

generation that fights and burden the generation that follows. But

experience has shown that wars are no longer local. All modern wars

become world wars eventually. And none of the big nations at least can

stay out. If we cannot stay out of wars, our only hope is to prevent

wars.

I am too well aware of the weaknesses of juridical action alone to

contend that in itself your decision under this Charter can prevent

future wars. Judicial action always comes after the event. Wars are

started only on the theory and in the confidence that they can be won.

Personal punishment, to be suffered only in the event the war is lost,

will probably not be a sufficient deterrent to prevent a war where the

warmakers feel the chances of defeat to be negligible.

But the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in

a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible

to law. And let me make clear that while this law is first applied

against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a

useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations,

including those which sit here now in judgment. We are able to do away

with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power

against the rights of their own people only when we make all men

answerable to the law. This trial represents mankind’s desperate effort

to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their

powers of state to attack the foundations of the world’s peace and to

commit aggressions against the rights of their neighbors.

The usefulness of this effort to do justice is not to be measured by

considering the law or your judgment in isolation. This trial is part of

the great effort to make the peace more secure. One step in this

direction is the United Nations organization, which may take joint

political action to prevent war if possible, and joint military action

to insure that any nation which starts a war will lose it. This Charter

and this Trial, implementing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, constitute another

step in the same direction—juridical action of a kind to ensure that

those who start a war will pay for it personally.

While the defendants and the prosecutors stand before you as

individuals, it is not the triumph of either group alone that is

committed to your judgment. Above all personalities there are anonymous

and impersonal forces whose conflict makes up much of human history. It

is yours to throw the strength of the law back of either the one or the

other of these forces for at least another generation. What are the real

forces that are contending before you?

No charity can disguise the fact that the forces which these defendants

represent, the forces that would advantage and delight in their

acquittal, are the darkest and most sinister forces in

society—dictatorship and oppression, malevolence and passion,

militarism and lawlessness. By their fruits we best know them. Their

acts have bathed the world in blood and set civilization back a century.

They have subjected their European neighbors to every outrage and

torture, every spoliation and deprivation that insolence, cruelty, and

greed could inflict. They have brought the German people to the lowest

pitch of wretchedness, from which they can entertain no hope of early

deliverance. They have stirred hatreds and incited domestic violence on

every continent. These are the things that stand in the dock shoulder to

shoulder with these prisoners.

The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization. In all our

countries it is still a struggling and imperfect thing. It does not

plead that the United States, or any other country, has been blameless

of the conditions which made the German people easy victims to the

blandishments and intimidations of the Nazi conspirators.

But it points to the dreadful sequence of aggressions and crimes I have

recited, it points to the weariness of flesh, the exhaustion of

resources, and the destruction of all that was beautiful or useful in so

much of the world, and to greater potentialities for destruction in the

days to come. It is not necessary among the ruins of this ancient and

beautiful city with untold members of its civilian inhabitants still

buried in its rubble, to argue the proposition that to start or wage an

aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst of crimes. The

refuge of the defendants can be only their hope that international law

will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is

crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law.

Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to

deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of

importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does

expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international

law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on

the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries,

may have “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law.”

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn until 10 o’clock tomorrow

morning.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 22 November 1945 at 1000 hours._]

THIRD DAY

Thursday, 22 November 1945

_Morning Session_

THE PRESIDENT: Before the Chief Prosecutor for the United States

proceeds to present the evidence on Count One, the Tribunal wishes me to

announce the decision on the application made on behalf of the Defendant

Julius Streicher by his counsel that his condition should be examined.

It has been examined by three medical experts on behalf of the Tribunal

and their report has been submitted to and considered by the Tribunal;

and it is as follows:

“1. The Defendant Julius Streicher is sane.

“2. The Defendant Julius Streicher is fit to appear before the

Tribunal, and to present his defense.

“3. It being the unanimous conclusion of the examiners that

Julius Streicher is sane, he is for that reason capable of

understanding the nature and policy of his acts during the

period of time covered by the Indictment.”

The Tribunal accepts the report of the medical experts and the trial

against Julius Streicher will, therefore, proceed.

The other matter to which I have to refer is a motion on behalf of

counsel for Bormann, whom the Tribunal have decided to try in his

absence in pursuance of Article 12 of the Charter. Counsel for Bormann

has made a motion that the trial against him should be postponed, but,

in view of the fact that the provisions of the Charter and the

Tribunal’s rules of procedure have been strictly carried out in the

notices which have been given, and the fact that counsel for Bormann

will have ample time before he is called upon to present defense on his

behalf, the motion is denied.

I will now call upon counsel for the United States to present the

evidence on Count One.

COL. STOREY: May it please the Tribunal, as the first order of business

concerning the evidence, it shall be my purpose to outline the method of

capturing, assembling, processing, and authenticating documents to be

presented in evidence by the United States. I shall also describe and

illustrate the plan of presenting documents and briefs relating to the

United States’ case-in-chief.

As the United States Army advanced into German territory, there were

attached to each Army and subordinate organization specialized military

personnel whose duties were to capture and preserve enemy information in

the form of documents, records, reports, and other files. The Germans

kept accurate and voluminous records. They were found in Army

headquarters, Government buildings, and elsewhere. During the later

stages of the war, particularly, such documents were found in salt

mines, buried in the ground, behind false walls, and many other places

believed secure by the Germans. For example, the personal correspondence

and diaries of the Defendant Rosenberg, including his Nazi

correspondence, were found behind a false wall in an old castle in

eastern Bavaria. The records of the OKL, or Luftwaffe, of which the

Defendant Göring was Commander-in-Chief—equivalent to the records of

the Headquarters of the Air Staff of the United States Army Air

Forces—were found in various places in the Bavarian Alps. Most of such

Luftwaffe records were assembled and processed by the Army at

Berchtesgaden.

When the Army first captured documents and records, they immediately

placed the materials under guard and later assembled them in temporary

document centers. Many times the records were so voluminous that they

were hauled by fleets of Army trucks to document centers. Finally, as

the territory seized was made secure, Army zones were established and

each Army established a fixed document center to which were transported

the assembled documents and records. Later this material was indexed and

cataloged, which was a slow process.

Beginning last June, Mr. Justice Jackson requested me to direct the

assembling of documentary evidence on the continent for the United

States case. Field teams from our office were organized under the

direction of Major William H. Coogan, who established United States

liaison officers at the main Army document centers. Such officers were

directed to screen and analyze the mass of captured documents, and

select those having evidentiary value for our case. Literally hundreds

of tons of enemy documents and records were screened and examined and

those selected were forwarded to Nuremberg for processing. I now offer

in evidence an affidavit by Major Coogan, dated November 19, 1945,

attached hereto, describing the method of procedure, capture, screening

and delivery of such documents to Nuremberg. (Document Number 001 A-PS,

Exhibit USA-1)

At this time, if Your Honors please, and in order to present this matter

to the Tribunal, I believe it wise to read at least substantial portions

of this affidavit. It is dated November 19, 1945.

“I, Major William H. Coogan, 0-455814, Q.M.C., a commissioned

officer of the United States of America, do hereby certify as

follows:

“1. The United States Chief of Counsel in July 1945 charged the

Field Branch of the Documentation Division with the

responsibility of collecting, evaluating, and assembling

documentary evidence in the European Theater for use in the

prosecution of the major Axis War Criminals before the

International Military Tribunal. I was appointed Chief of the

Field Branch on 20 July 1945. I am now the Chief of the

Documentation Division, Office of United States Chief of

Counsel.

“2. I have served in the United States Army for more than 4

years and am a practicing attorney by profession. Based upon my

experience as an attorney and as a United States Army officer, I

am familiar with the operation of the United States Army in

connection with seizing and processing captured enemy documents.

In my capacity as Chief of the Documentation Division, Office of

the United States Chief of Counsel, I am familiar with and have

supervised the processing, filing, translating, and photostating

of all documentary evidence for the United States Chief of

Counsel.”