ROBERT H. JACKSON, OPENING STATEMENT AT THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY
TRIBUNAL (21 NOVEMBER 1945)
[1] May it please Your Honors,
[2] The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace
of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and
punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot
tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four
great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and
voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most
significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.
[3] This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of
abstract speculation nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest
represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of
15 more, to utilize International Law to meet the greatest menace of our times--
aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the
punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess
themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion
evils which leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that
the United Nations will lay before Your Honors.
[4] In the prisoners' dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the
humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they
have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive
in these men as captives the power which as Nazi leaders they once dominated most of
the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals, their fate is of little
consequence to the world.
[5] What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister
influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We
will show them to be the living symbols of racial hatreds, terrorism and of violence, and
of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are the symbols of fierce nationalisms and
militarism, of intrigue and warmaking which have embroiled Europe generation after
generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life. They
have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces
they have directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all
the evils which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise with
the social forces that would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or
indecisively with the men in whom these forces now precariously survive.
[6] What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will
give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalogue of crimes will omit
nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power.
These men created in Germany, under the "Führerprinzip," a National Socialist
despotism equalled only in the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the
German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable
rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying
hatreds towards those who were marked as "scapegoats." Against their opponents,
including Jews, Catholics, and free labor the Nazis directed such a campaign of
arrogance, and brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-
Christian era. They excited the German ambition to be a "master race," which of course
implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They
diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an
invincible war machine. They overran their neighbors. To sustain the "master race" in
their war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into
Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as "displaced persons". At length
bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping forces of
imperiled Civilization. Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to
fragments. But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a
demoralized society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that
sit with these defendants in the prisoners' dock.
[7] In justice to the men and to the nations associated in this prosecution, I must
remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before
in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation
the developments of a decade, covering a whole Continent, involving a score of nations,
countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the
world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though
perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts,
following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, dealing with the
consequences of local and limited events seldom commence a trial within a year of the
event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago today the courtroom in which you sit
was an enemy fortress in the hands of the SS troops. Less than eight months ago nearly
all of our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been
codified, no procedures had been established, no Tribunal was in existence, no usable
courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had
been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the present
defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in the
common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that this court, this case may
very well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of
professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor.
It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render,
and its fuller development we shall be obliged to leave to historians because we have
not had the time to examine all of the sources of evidence that might be available.
[8] Before I discuss particulars of the evidence we shall offer, some general
considerations which may affect the credit of this trial in the eyes of the world should be
candidly faced. There is a dramatic disparity between the circumstances of the accusers
and of the accused that might discredit our work if we should falter, in even minor
matters, in being fair and temperate.
[9] Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and
judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The worldwide scope of the
aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. Either the victors
must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After
the First World War, we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station
of these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct to
provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between the demand for a just and
measured retribution, and the unthinking cry for vengeance which arises from the
anguish of war. It is our task, so far as humanly possible, to draw the line between the
two. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is
the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. We must summon such
detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to
posterity as fulfilling humanity's aspirations to do justice.
[10] At the very outset, let us dispose of the contention that to put these men to
trial is to do them an injustice entitling them to some special consideration. These
defendants may be hard-pressed men but they are not ill-used men. Let us see what
alternative they would have to being tried.
[11] More than a majority of these prisoners surrendered to or were tracked
down by the forces of the United States of America. Could they expect us to make
American custody a shelter for our enemies against the just wrath of our Allies? Did we
spend American lives to capture them only to free them from punishment? Under the
principles of the Moscow Declaration, those suspected war criminals who are not to be
tried internationally must be turned over to individual governments for trial at the scene
of their outrages. Many less responsible and less culpable American-held prisoners than
these have been and will continue to be turned over to other United Nations for local
trial. If these defendants should succeed, for any reason, in escaping a condemnation of
this Tribunal, or if they obstruct or abort this trial, those who are American-held
prisoners would be delivered up, of course, to our continental Allies. For these
defendants, however, we have set up this International Tribunal and the United States
has undertaken the burden of participating in a complicated effort to give them fair and
dispassionate hearings. That is the best protection to any man with a defense worthy of
being heard.
[12] If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted
in the name of the law, they are also the first to be given a chance to plead for their lives
in the name of the law. Realistically, the Charter of this Tribunal, which gives them a
hearing, is also the source of their only hope. It may be that these men of troubled
conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as a
favor. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend themselves, represented here by
able counsel, who have shown their capacity to handle their case with credit and who've
acted with courage, and these men now enjoy a favor which, when in power, they rarely
extended even to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion may
already condemn their acts, we agree here that they must be given a presumption of
innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of
each of these defendants for their commission.
[13] When I say that we will not ask for convictions unless we prove crime, I do
not mean mere technical or incidental transgressions of international conventions. We
charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal
wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting
of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the
defendants' positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of human
beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings
them to this bar.
[14] We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of their foes.
There is no count in the Indictment that cannot be proved by books and records. The
Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these defendants had their share
of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper. Nor were they
without vanity. They arranged frequently to be photographed in action. We will show
you their own films. You will see their own conduct and hear their own voices as these
defendants reenact for you some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.
[15] We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the
whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority
of the German vote. We know it came to power by an evil alliance between the most
extreme of Nazi revolutionists, the most unrestrained of German reactionaries, and the
most aggressive of German militarists. If the German populace had willingly accepted
the Nazi program, no Stormtroopers would have been needed in the early days of the
Party and there would have been no need for concentration camps or the Gestapo, both
of which institutions were inaugurated as soon as the Nazis gained control of the
German state. Only after these lawless innovations proved successful at home were
they taken abroad.
[16] The German people should know by now that the people of the United
States hold them in no fear, and in no hate. It is true that the Germans have taught us
the horrors of modern warfare, but the ruin that lies from the Rhine to the Danube
shows that we, no more than our Allies, have been dull pupils. If we are not awed by
German fortitude or proficiency in war, and if we are not persuaded of their political
maturity, we do respect their skill in the arts of peace, their technical competence, and
the sober, industrious and self-disciplined character of the masses of the German
people. In 1933, we saw the German people recovering prestige in the commercial,
industrial and artistic world after the effect of the last war. We beheld their progress
neither with envy nor with malice. The Nazi regime interrupted this progress. The recoil
of the Nazi aggression has left Germany in ruins. The Nazi readiness to pledge the
German word without hesitation and to break it without shame has fastened upon
German diplomacy a reputation for duplicity that will handicap it for years. Nazi
arrogance has made the boast of the "master race" a taunt that will be thrown at
Germans for generations. The Nazi nightmare has given the German name a new and
sinister significance throughout the world which will retard Germany a century. The
German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to settle with these
defendants.
[17] The fact of the war and the course of the war, which is the central theme of
our case, is history. From September 1st, 1939, when the German armies crossed the
Polish frontier, until September, 1942, when they met epic resistance at Stalingrad,
German arms seemed invincible. Denmark and Norway, The Netherlands and France,
Belgium and the Luxembourg, Balkans and Africa, Poland and the Baltic States, and part
of Russia, all had been overrun and conquered by swift, powerful, well-aimed blows.
That attack on the peace of the world is the crime against international society which
brings into international cognizance crimes in its aid and preparation which otherwise
might be only internal concerns. It was aggressive war, which the nations of the world
had renounced. It was war in violation of treaties, by which the peace of the world had
sought to be safeguarded.
[18] This war did not just happen--it was planned and prepared for over a long
period of time and with no small skill and cunning. The world has perhaps never seen
such a concentration and stimulation of the energies of any people as that which
enabled Germany twenty years after it was defeated, disarmed, and dismembered to
come so near --so near--carrying out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we
may say of those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work
in organization, and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants
and their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war.
[19] In general, our case will disclose these defendants all uniting at some time
with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be accomplished only by an
outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the German state, their subjugation of the
German people, their terrorism and extermination of dissident elements, their planning
and waging of war, their calculated planned and ruthless conduct of warfare, their
deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered people,--all these are ends for
which they acted in concert; and all of these phases of the conspiracy, was a common
one to these defendants, and it was a conspiracy which reached one goal only to set out
for another and more ambitious one. We shall also trace for you the intricate web of
organizations which these men formed to accomplish these ends. We will show you how
the entire structure of offices and officials was dedicated to the criminal purposes and
committed to the use of criminal methods planned by these defendants and their co-
conspirators, many of whom war and suicide have put beyond reach.
[20] It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the
Indictment, and to deal with the common plan or conspiracy to achieve ends possible
only by resort to crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. My
emphasis will not be on individual barbarities and perversions which may have occurred
independently of any central plan. One of the dangers ever present in this trial is that it
may be protracted by details of particular wrongs and that we will become lost in a
"wilderness of single instances," covering so much space great condensation must take
place if we are to present this case within the time allotted to us to live, let alone the
time to which we should devote to this trial. Nor will I now dwell on the activity of each
individual defendant except as it may contribute to the exposition of the common plan.
[21] The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the
brains and the authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station
and a rank which does not soil its hands with blood. They were men who knew how to
use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and
leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long
scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and
convulsions, of this terrible war.
[22] I shall first take up the lawless road by which these men came to possess the
power which they have so used.
[23] The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and in action was the National
Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazi Party. Some of these defendants
were with it from the beginning. Others joined it only after success seemed to have
validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with an immunity from the processes
of the law. Adolf Hitler became its supreme leader or "fuehrer" in 1921.
[24] On the 24th of February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had proclaimed its
program. I shall not undertake to read it in full. Some of its purposes would of course
commend themselves to many good citizens, such as the demands for "profit-sharing in
the great industries," "generous development of provisions for old age," "creation of a
healthy middle class," "a land reform suitable to national requirements," and "raising
the standard of health." It had in its program, of course, items of strong appeal. It also
made a strong appeal to that sort of nationalism which in ourselves we call patriotism
and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded "equality of rights for the German people in
dealing with other nations and evolution of the peace treaties of Versailles and St.
Germaine." It demanded the "union of all Germans on the basis of the right of self-
determination of peoples to form a Great Germany." It demanded "land and territory
(colonies)," I'm quoting, "land and territory (colonies) for the enrichment of our people
and the settlement of our surplus population." All of these were legitimate objectives if
they were to be attained without resort to aggressive warfare.
[25] The Nazi Party, however, from its inception contemplated war. In its Munich
Declaration of 1920, it demanded "the abolition of mercenary troops and the formation
of a national army." It proclaimed that, and I quote, "In view of the enormous sacrifice
of life and property demanded of a nation by every war, personal enrichment through
war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand, therefore, ruthless
confiscation of all war profits." I do not mention this provision to criticise it. I wish it
were universal. I merely point out that in a time of peace, in 1920, war was a
preoccupation of the Nazi Party, and it started the work of making war less offensive to
the masses of the people and progressed rapidly from that point on. With this it
combined a program of physical training and sports for youth, which became, as we
shall show you, the cloak for a secret program of military training.
[26] The Nazi Party declaration committed its members to an anti-Semitic
program. It declared that no Jew or person of non-German blood could be a member of
the nation. Such persons were to be disfranchised, disqualified for office, subject to the
alien laws, and entitled to nourishment only after the German population had first been
provided for. All who entered Germany after August 2, 1914 were to be required to
depart, and all non-German immigration was prohibited. The significance of this early
declaration is that it became the publicly known and avowed policy of this party, which
every man who joined in forwarding its purposes knew and understood.
[27] The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an authoritarian and
totalitarian program for Germany. It demanded creation of a strong central power with
unconditional authority, nationalization of all businesses which had become
"amalgamated," and a "reconstruction" of the national system of education, quoting,
which "must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State." Its hostility
to civil liberties and to freedom of the press was distinctly announced in these words,
quoting: "It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which do not conduce to the
national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all tendencies in art and literature
of a kind likely to disintegrate our life as a nation and the suppression of institutions
which might militate against the above requirements," of course as interpreted by the
Nazis.
[28] The forecast of religious persecution was there, but it was clothed in the
language of religious liberty, for the Nazi program stated, "We demand liberty for all
religious denominations in the State." It didn't stop there. But, it continues with the
limitation, "so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality
and moral sense of the German race," of course again, according to their conception.
[29] The Party program foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It announced,
quoting, "We demand ruthless war upon those whose activities are injurious to the
common interest," and it demanded that such offenses be punished with death.
[30] It is significant that the leaders of this Party interpreted this program as a
belligerent one certain to precipitate conflict. The Party platform concluded, quoting,
"The leaders of the Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences--if necessary, at
the sacrifice of their lives--toward the fulfillment of the foregoing points." It is this
Leadership Corps of the Party, not its entire membership, that stands accused before
you as a criminal organization. We have not sought to include every person who may at
some time have supported the Nazi Party, but only the leadership core which pledged
itself to achieve its ends at risk of their lives.
[31] Let us now see how the leaders of the Party fulfilled their pledge to proceed
regardless of consequences. Obviously, their foreign objectives, which were nothing less
than to undo international treaties and to wrest territory from foreign control, as well as
most of their internal program, could be accomplished only by possession of the
machinery of the German State. The first effort, accordingly, was to subvert the Weimar
Republic by violent revolution. An abortive putsch at Munich in 1923 landed many of
them in jail. A period of meditation which followed produced "Mein Kampf," henceforth
the source of law to the Party workers and the source of a good deal of revenue to its
supreme leader. The Nazi plan for the violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then
turned to plans for its capture.
[32] No greater mistake could be made than to think of the Nazi Party in terms of
the loose organizations which we of the western world call "political parties." In
discipline, structure, and method the Nazi Party was not adapted to the democratic
process of persuasion. It was an instrument of conspiracy and coercion. The Party was
not organized to take over power in the German State by winning support of a majority
of the German people. It was organized to seize power in defiance of the will of the
people.
[33] The Nazi Party, under the "Führerprinzip," was bound by an iron discipline
into a pyramid, with the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, at the top and broadening into a
numerous Leadership Corps, composed of overlords of a very extensive Party
membership at the base. By no means all of those who have supported the movement
in one way or another were actual Party members. The membership took the Party oath
which in effect, amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral
responsibility. This was the oath: "I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I vow absolute
obedience to him and to the leaders he designates for me." Nor did they take this vow
with their tongue in their cheeks. The membership in daily practice followed its leaders
with an idolatry and self-surrender that was more Oriental than Western.
[34] We shall not be obliged to guess as to the motives or goal of the Nazi Party.
The immediate aim was to undermine the Weimar Republic. The order to all Party
members to work to that end was given in a letter from Hitler of August 24, 1931 to the
defendant Rosenberg, of which we will produce the original. And Hitler complains to
Rosenberg about an article appearing in his newspaper. He says that:
"The tendency of the article is to prevent on our part a crumbling
away from the present form of government. I myself am travelling all
over Germany to achieve exactly the opposite. May I therefore ask that
my own paper will not stab me in the back with tactically unwise
articles..."
Captured film will enable us to present to you the defendant, Alfred Rosenberg, who
from the screen will himself tell you his story. The SA practised violent interference with
the elections. We have the reports of the SD describing in detail how its members
violated the secrecy of elections in order to identify those who opposed them. The
report on the seventh of May, 1938 will be offered to you in due course and points out
exactly the method by which some members of the election committee marked all the
ballots with numbers and made up a list. And it points out how this resulted in--it was
marked with skim milk, by the way--and points out how they were then enabled to bring
back the markings and to identify all those who ventured to oppose the Nazi Party in the
elections.
[35] The Party activity, in addition to all the familiar forms of political contest
that we know about, took on an aspect of rehearsal for warfare. It utilized a Party
formation, which has been described to you in the indictment as the SA. This was a
voluntary organization of youthful and fanatical Nazis trained for the use of violence
under semi-military discipline. Its members began by acting as bodyguards for the Nazi
leaders and they rapidly expanded from defensive to offensive tactics. They became
disciplined ruffians for breaking up opposition meetings and terrorization of adversaries.
They boasted that their task was to make the Nazi Party the "master of the streets." The
SA was the parent organization of a number of others, such as the SS, formed in 1925
and distinguished throughout this evidence for the fanaticism and cruelty of its
members. Then there was the SD and the State Secret Police, the infamous Gestapo
formed in 1934 immediately after the Nazi accession to power.
[36] A glance at the charts, and we shall offer to you evidence in due course a
complete chart of the Nazi Party. I'll not take time to point out more than these things
significant at this point in the argument. It was organized on semi-military lines. It had
chiefs of staff of the Stormtrooper. It had an elite guard and a motor corps, and it had a
flying corps. It had a chief of legal office and a Party Supreme Court, which passed upon
the memberships' activities. Throughout, it had a "Deaths Head Corps," too, which was
not misnamed. It presents nothing, as you will see when this chart is placed in
evidence—it presents nothing that resembles what you or I know in our respective
countries as political parties. It had its own source of law in the fuehrer and the sub-
fuehrers, more absolute than any parliament. It had its own courts and its own police.
The conspirators set up a government within the Party to exercise outside of the law
every sanction that a legitimate state could exercise and many that it could not. Its chain
of command was military, and its formations were martial in name as well as in
function. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate
spies and informers, to manage concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to
finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party, as
its leadership boasted, eventually organized and dominated every phase of German life-
-but not until they had waged a bitter internal struggle characterized by the brutal
criminality we charge here. In preparation for this phase of their struggle, they created
the party police system, which became the pattern and the instrument of the police
state, which was the final goal of their plan in Germany.
[37] These Party formations, including the Leadership Corps of the Party, the SD,
the SS, the SA and the infamous State Secret Police, or Gestapo--all these stand accused
before you as criminal organizations; organizations which, as we will prove from their
own documents, were recruited only from recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction
and temperament to do the most violent deeds to advance the common program. They
terrorized and silenced democratic opposition and were able at length to combine with
political opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists, and political reactionaries.
[38] On the thirtieth of January, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the
German Republic. An evil combination, represented in the prisoners' dock by its most
eminent survivors, had succeeded in possessing itself of the machinery of the German
Government, a facade behind which they thenceforth would operate to make a reality
of the war of conquest which they long had plotted. The conspiracy had passed into its
second phase.
[39] We shall now consider the steps, which embraced the most hideous of
crimes against humanity, to which these conspirators resorted in perfecting their
control of the German State and in preparing Germany for the aggressive war which was
indispensable to their ends.
[40] The Germans of the 1920's were a frustrated and baffled people as the
result of defeat and disintegration of their traditional government. The democratic
elements, which were trying to govern Germany through the new and feeble machinery
of the Weimar Republic, got inadequate support from the democratic forces of the rest
of the world, including my country. It is not to be denied that Germany, when world-
wide depression was added to her other problems, was faced with urgent and intricate
problems and pressures in her economic and political life which necessitated bold
measures.
[41] The internal measures by which a nation attempts to solve its problems are
ordinarily no concern to other nations. But the Nazi program from the first was
recognized as a desperate program for a people still suffering the effects of an
unsuccessful war. The Nazi policy embraced ends recognized from the beginning as
attainable only by a renewal and a more successful outcome of the war in Europe. The
conspirators' answer to Germany's problems was nothing less than to plot the regaining
of territories lost in the First World War and the acquisition of other fertile lands of
Central Europe by dispossessing or exterminating those who inhabited them. They also
contemplated, and I want to emphasize this point for it runs through the whole Nazi
history, they also contemplated destroying or permanently weakening all other
neighboring peoples so as to win virtual domination over Europe and probably of the
world. The precise limits of their ambition we need not define for it was and is as illegal
to wage an aggressive war for small stakes as for large ones.
[42] We find at this period of time two governments in Germany--the real and
the ostensible. The forms of the German Republic were maintained for a time, and it
was the outward and visible government. But the real authority in the State was outside
of and above the law and rested in the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party.
[43] On February 27, 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor, the
Reichstag building was set on fire. The burning of this symbol of free parliamentary
government was so providential for the Nazis that it was believed they staged the fire
themselves. Certainly when we contemplate their known crimes, we cannot believe
they would shrink from mere arson. It is not necessary, however, to resolve the
controversy as to who set the fire. The significant point is in the use that was made of
the fire and of the state of public mind it produced. The Nazis immediately accused the
Communist Party of instigating and committing the crime, and turned every effort to
portray this single act of arson as the beginning of a communist revolution. Then, taking
advantage of the hysteria, the Nazis met this phantom revolution with a real one. In the
following December, the German Supreme Court with commendable courage and
independence acquitted the accused communists, but it was too late to influence the
tragic course of events which the Nazi conspirators had set rushing forward.
[44] Hitler, on the morning after the fire, obtained from the aged and ailing
President von Hindenburg a Presidential decree suspending the extensive guarantees of
individual liberty contained in the constitution of the Weimar Republic. That decree
provides in Article I that:
"Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the
Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice."
It goes on:
"Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free
expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of
assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of
postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for
house-searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on
property, are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."
[45] Now, the Weimar Constitution contained extensive guarantees of personal
freedom. One hundred fourteen, which the decree suspended, had provided that:
"The freedom of the person is inviolable. Curtailment or
deprivation of personal freedom by a public authority is only permissible
on a legal basis.
"Persons who have been deprived of their freedom must be
informed at the latest on the following day by whose authority and for
what reasons the deprivations of freedom were ordered; opportunity
shall be afforded them without delay of submitting objections to their
deprivations of freedom.
Article 115 provided that: "Every German's home is his sanctuary and is inviolable.
Exceptions may be made as provided by law.
*****
117 provided for the secrecy of the mails.
118 provided freedom of speech in language which might have
been applicable in any of our countries.
*****
123 gave the right to peaceably assemble without notice and
without special permission.
And 124 gave them the right to form associations and societies for
purposes not contrary to criminal law.
*****
And 153 guaranteed their rights of property.
All of these guarantees of the Weimar Constitution were swept away by the Hitler-
Hindenburg decree the morning after the fire
[46] Now, it must be said in fairness to von Hindenburg that the constitution
itself authorized him temporarily to suspend these fundamental rights, quoting, "if the
public safety and order in the German Reich are considerably disturbed or endangered."
It must also be acknowledged in fairness that President Ebert previously had invoked
this power.
[47] But the National Socialist coup was made possible because the terms of the
Hitler-Hindenburg decree departed from all previous ones. Whenever President Ebert
had suspended constitutional guarantees of individual rights, his decree had expressly
revived the Protective Custody Act adopted by the Reichstag in 1916 during the previous
war. This Act guaranteed a judicial hearing within 24 hours of arrest, gave a right to have
counsel and to inspect relevant records, provided for an appeal, and authorized
compensation from the Treasury for erroneous arrests.
[48] The Hitler-Hindenburg decree of February 28, 1933, contained no such
safeguards. The omission may not have been noted by Hindenburg. Certainly he did not
appreciate its effect. It left the Nazi police and party formations, already existing and
functioning under Hitler, completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and
indefinite detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without
counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the Nazi
police suspected or disliked. No court could issue an injunction, or writs of
habeas
corpus
, or
certiorari
. The German people were in the hands of the police, the police
were in the hands of the Nazi Party, and the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men,
of whom the defendants here before you are their surviving and representative leaders.
[49] The Nazi conspiracy, as we shall show, always contemplated not merely
overcoming current opposition but it contemplated exterminating elements which could
not be reconciled with the Nazi philosophy of the state. It not only sought to establish
the Nazi "new order" but to secure its sway, as Hitler predicted, "for a thousand years."
The Nazis were never in doubt or disagreement as to what these dissident elements
were. They were concisely described by one of them, Col. General von Fritsch, on
December 11, 1938, in these words, which I emphasize because they identify, so clearly,
the object of the Nazi program of extermination. He writes, in a document which will be
proven to you:
"Shortly after the First World War I came to the conclusion that
we should have to be victorious in three battles if Germany were to
become powerful again: 1. The battle against the working class--Hitler
has won this." This was in 1938. "2. Against the Catholic Church, or
perhaps better expressed as Ultramontanism. 3. Against the Jews."
That ends the quote.
[50] The warfare against these 3 elements was continuous. The battle in
Germany was but a practice skirmish for the worldwide drive against them. We have
here in point of geography and of time two groups of crimes against humanity--one
within Germany before and during the war, and one in occupied territory during the
war. But these two are not separate in Nazi planning. They are a continuous unfolding of
the Nazi plan to exterminate peoples and institutions which might serve as a focus or
instrument for overturning their "new world order" at any time or place. We consider
these crimes against humanity in this opening address as manifestations of the one Nazi
plan, and I propose to unfold to you our proposals of proof according to General von
Fritsch's classification.
[51] First, the battle against the working class.
[52] When Hitler came to power, there were in Germany three groups of trade
unions. The General German Trade Union Confederation with twenty-eight affiliated
unions, and the General Independent Employees Confederation with thirteen federated
unions together numbered 4,500,000 members. The Christian Trade Union had over
1,250,000 members.
[53] The working people of Germany, like the working people of other nations,
had little to gain personally by war. While labor is usually brought around to the support
of the nation at war, labor by and large is a pacific, though by no means a pacifist force
in the world. The working people of Germany had not forgotten in 1933 how heavy the
yoke of the war lord can be. Moreover, the German working people were identified in
the minds of the militarists with the Revolution of 1918 when the workers joined with
the revolting seamen and soldiers against a continuance of the First World War, an act
for which German labor was never forgiven by the military crowd. The Nazi program
required that this part of the German population not only be stripped of power to resist
diversion of its scanty comforts to armament, but also be wheedled or whipped into
new and unheard of sacrifices as a part of the Nazi war preparation. Labor must be
cowed, and that meant that its organizations and means of cohesion and defense must
be destroyed.
[54] The purpose to regiment labor for the Nazi Party was avowed by Robert Ley
in a speech to workers on May 2, 1933, in which he said this:
"You may say what else do you want, you have the absolute
power. True we have the power, but we do not have the whole people,
we do not have you workers 100%, and it is you whom we want; we will
not let you be until you stand with us in complete, genuine
acknowledgment."
[55] The first Nazi attack was upon the two larger unions. On April 21, 1933, an
order not even in the name of the Government, but in the name of the Nazi Party was
issued by the conspirator Robert Ley describing himself therein as "Chief of Staff of the
political organizations of the NSDAP." This order was applicable to the Trade Union
Confederation and the Independent Employees Confederation, the two largest of the
German unions. It directed seizure of their properties and arrest of their principal
leaders. The party order directed the party organs which we here denounce as criminal
associations, the SS and the SA "to be employed for the occupation of trade union
properties, and for the taking into custody of personalities who come into question."
And it directed taking into "protective custody" of all chairmen and district secretaries of
unions and branch directors of the labor bank.
[56] These orders were carried out on May the second, 1933. All funds of the
labor unions, including pension and benefit funds, were seized. Union leaders were sent
to concentration camps. A few days later, on May 10, 1933, Hitler appointed Robert Ley
leader of the German Labor Front which succeeded to all the confiscated union funds.
The German Labor Front, a Nazi-controlled labor bureau, was then set up under Ley to
teach the Nazi philosophy to the German workers and to weed out from industrial
employment all who were backward in their lessons. "Factory Troops" as they were
called, were organized, and I quote, as an "ideological shock squad within the factory,"
ending the quote. The Party order provided that "outside the German Labor Front, no
other organization (whether of workers or employees) is to exist." On June 24, 1933, the
remaining Christian Trade Unions were seized pursuant to an order, again, of the Nazi
Party signed by Ley.
[57] On May 19, 1933, this time by a government decree, it was provided that
"trustees," and I quote the word "trustees," of labor, appointed by Hitler, should
regulate the conditions of all labor contracts, thereby replacing the former process of
collective bargaining. On November 30, a decree "regulating national labor" introduced
the fuehrer principle into industrial relations. It provided that the owners of the
enterprise should be the leaders, or "fuehrers," and the workers should be the
followers. And it authorized the owner-fuehrers to, quote, "make decisions for
employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." It was by such bait
that the great German industrialists were induced to support the Nazi cause, to their
own ultimate ruin.
[58] Not only did the Nazis thus dominate and regiment German labor, but they
forced the youth into the ranks of the laboring people they had thus led into chains.
Under a compulsory service decree on the twenty-sixth of June, '35, young men and
women between the ages of 18 and 25 were conscripted for labor. Thus was the
purpose to subjugate German labor accomplished. In the words of Ley, this
accomplishment consisted, and I'm quoting, "in eliminating the association character of
the trade union and employees' associations, and in its place we have substituted the
conception 'soldiers of work'." The productive manpower of the German nation was
thus brought under Nazi control and discipline. By these steps these defendants won
the battle to liquidate labor unions as potential opposition and were enabled to impose
upon the working class the burdens of preparing for aggressive warfare.
[59] Robert Ley, the field marshal of this battle against labor, answered our
indictment with suicide. Apparently he knew no better answer.
[60] I take up the battle against the churches, the second in the described
elements that must be defeated.
[61] The Nazi Party was always predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology. But
we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality
on anybody's ideology. It is not because the Nazis themselves were irreligious or pagan,
but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of
crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive
warfare that the offense becomes one of international cognizance. To remove every
moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total
war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless
repression of all Christian sects and churches.
[62] We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence on this point.
Martin Bormann in June of 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity
and National Socialism. I quote from it:
"With the party, its components and attached units the Fuehrer
has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership an
instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences
which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by
the Fuehrer with the help of the National Socialist Party must be
eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the
churches and their organs, the pastors…But never again must an
influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This
(influence) must be broken completely and finally.
"Only the Reich government and by its direction the party, its
components and attached units have a right to leadership of the people.
Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers
are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of
church influence also be totally removed.... Not until this has happened,
does the state leadership have influence on individual citizens. Not until
then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all the future."
[63] And how the party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence,
will be proved by such items as this telegram from the Gestapo of Berlin, to the Gestapo
of Nürnberg on July the twenty-fourth of 1938, which recites what was going on in
Rottenburg. I quote from the Gestapo telegram signed by Dr. Best from the Berlin office
of the twenty-fourth of July, 1938. In connection with my report, special delivery of 23
July, '38. Subject: Bishop Sproll of Rottenburg. I further communicate that the following
teletype from the Gestapo office in Stuttgart just came in here. It's now quoted.
"The Party on the 23rd of July 1938 starting at 21:00 carried out
the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about 2500-
3000 were brought in from outside by bus, and so forth. The Rottenburg
populace again did not participate in the demonstrations. The action got
completely out of hand of the Party Member responsible for it. The
demonstrators stormed the Palace. Beat in the gates and doors. About
150 to 200 people forced their way into the Palace, searched the rooms,
threw files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the
rooms of the Palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other
objects of equipment in the room and palace, the flaming bed could be
thrown from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with
Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg and the ladies and gentlemen of his
ménage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this
Chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop
Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth. Finally
the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the one they are
seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the building. In the
course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage of the
Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I shall immediately
have a full report, after I am in the act of suppressing counter meetings....
"In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I
request that these be transmitted most quickly...."
[64] Later, the defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal
of the Church Minister Kerrl to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and to
proclaim Hitler its Supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that Naziism was to
suppress the Christian Church completely after the war.
[65] The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah's
Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was particularly relentless and cruel. The
policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the
Nazis' own purposes. In September, 1933, Mueller was appointed the Fuehrer's
representative with power to deal with the "affairs of the Evangelical Church" in its
relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with
power to control the Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemoeller was sent to the
concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and
administration of the Churches occurred.
[66] A most intensive drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church.
After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in July, 1933 in Rome, which never
was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic
Church, its priesthood and its members, was carried out. Church Schools and
educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching
inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and
inspired vandalism directed against Church property was left unpunished. Religious
instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops
were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to
concentration camps.
[67] After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater
vigor than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests
made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, summarizing the persecutions
to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this Twentieth Century
under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny, and he
dared not justify.
[68] I was about to take up the crimes committed against the Jews.
[69] The most savage and numerous crimes 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 they had
accumulated property which excited the avarice of the Nazis. They were few enough to
be helpless and numerous enough to be held up as a menace.
[70] Let there be no misunderstanding about the charge of persecuting the Jews.
What we charge against these defendants is not those arrogances and pretensions
which frequently accompany the intermingling of races and different peoples and which
are likely, despite the honest efforts of government, to produce regrettable crimes and
convulsions. It is our purpose on the contrary to show a plan and a 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.
[71] 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 Nazi aggression. As Robert Ley himself declared, I quote, "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."
[72] 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 and
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.
[73] The persecution policy against the Jews commenced with nonviolent
measures, such as disfranchisement and discriminations against their religion, and the
placing 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, an end in itself, a
measure of preparation for war, and a discipline for conquered people.
[74] The conspiracy or common plan to exterminate the Jew was so methodically
and thoroughly pursued that despite 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. 5,700,000 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 carried out with such calculated cruelty.
[75] 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 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 now
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 a continuity of Jewish persecution from the rise of the Nazi
conspiracy to its collapse which forbids us to believe that any person could be identified
with any part of the Nazi action without approving this most conspicuous item in their
program.
[76] The Indictment itself recites many evidences of the anti-Semitic
persecutions. The defendant Streicher led the Nazis in anti-Semitic bitterness and
extremism. In March of 1942, he complained that Christian teachings have stood in the
way of, quoting him, "radical solution of the Jewish question in Europe," and quoted
enthusiastically as the Twentieth Century solution the fuehrer's proclamation of
February 24, 1942 that, and I quote, "the Jews will be exterminated." And on November
4, 1943, Streicher declared that the Jews, and I quote his words, "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
had the effrontery to tell us that he is "only a Zionist"--that he only wants to return the
Jews to Palestine. But on May the seventh, 1942, he wrote, and I quote:
"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."
[77] And the defendant Hans Frank, a lawyer by profession I blush to say,
summarized in his Diary in 1944 the Nazi policy thus, and I quote: "The Jews are a race
which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end." And earlier, speaking
of his function as Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank confided to his diary this
sentiment, quoting: "Of course I cannot eliminate all lice and Jews in only a year's time."
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.
[78] 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 Nürnberg decrees
of September 15, 1935. 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 theatre, and schools were prohibited among them; and the
SD was made responsible for them. This was an ominous guardianship. It was ordered
that:
"An eventual act by the civilian population against Jews is not to be
prevented as long as this is compatible with the maintenance of order and
security in the rear of fighting troops…
And again:
"The first main goal of the German measures must be the 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 commissariate, 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 theatres and schools.
"The slaughtering of animals according to Jewish rites is also to be
prohibited…" (212-PS)
[79] 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.
(Document No. 765-PS.) No more cynical document ever came into evidence. Then
there is a report by an SS Brigade Leader to Himmler (Document No. L-180) 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..."
[80] 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, 1935, in which he says, "The anti-Jewish action of November,
1938 did not arise spontaneously from the people. * * *" I still quote: "Part of the party
formation have been charged with the execution of the anti-Jewish action." Jews as a
whole were fined a billion Reichsmarks. They were excluded from all businesses, and the
claims against insurance companies for their burned properties were confiscated, all by
the decree of the defendant Goering.
[81] Synagogues were the objects of a special vengeance. On November 10,
1938, the following order was given, I quote: "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 * *." Some 40 teletype messages from various police headquarters, which will
be introduced to you, 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 destroyed. The Gestapo ordered twenty to
thirty thousand "well-to-do Jews," and I quote the term "well-to-do Jews," to be
arrested. Concentration camps were to receive them and the order provided that
healthy Jews, fit for labor, were to be taken.
[82] As the German frontiers were expanded by war, so the campaign against the
Jews expanded. The Nazi plan was never 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 in occupied countries. 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 a
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 and common plan for killing Jews.
[83] 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 "Action Group A" of
October 15, 1941, which boasts that in overrunning the Baltic State, I quote, "Native
Anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms during the first hours of the
occupation * * *." The report continues, and I quote:
"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 rural areas. The
actions of the execution detachments were performed smoothly."
"The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania," I'm still giving
the report, quoting the report, "amounts to 71,105. During the pogroms
in Kowno 3,800 Jews were eliminated, and in the smaller towns about
1,200 Jews."
"In Latvia, up to now a total of 30,000 Jews was executed. 500
were eliminated by pogroms in Riga."
[84] Then there is a captured report from the Commissioner of Sluzk on October
20, 1941, which describes these executions more in detail. Let me quote from it:
". . . The first lieutenant explained that the police battalion had
received the assignment to affect 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 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. . ."
[85] Then there are reports which merely tabulate the numbers slaughtered.
Another example relates that--
In Estonia, all Jews were arrested immediately upon the arrival of
the Wehrmacht.
And I call your attention to the fact that this is the report of the Wehrmacht, the army,
which became implicated in this business along with the SS.
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.
37,180 persons have been liquidated by the Sipo and SD in White
Ruthenia during October.
In one town, 337 Jewish women were--I'm quoting, from the
report--were executed for demonstrating a 'provocative attitude.' In
another, 380 Jews were shot for spreading vicious propaganda.
[86] And the report continues, listing town after town, where hundreds upon
hundreds of Jews were murdered.
In one town, 3,000.
In another, 33,771.
In another, 3,145.
In another, 410, all listed in detail.
[87] 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 the defendant Rosenberg about the army and the SS in the area under
Rosenberg's jurisdiction, which recited that:
"In the presence," I'm quoting, "of SS men, a Jewish dentist has to
break all gold teeth and fillings out of the mouth of German and Russian
Jews
before
they are executed."
It also says,
Men, women and children are locked into barns and burned alive.
It says,
Peasants, women and children are shot on pretext that they are
suspected of belonging to bands.
[88] 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 will produce for you
the report of May 16, 1942 from the German SS officer, Becker, to his supervisor in
Berlin, and this is the story that it tells:
Gas vans in the C. group can be driven to the execution spot,
which is generally stationed 10 to 15 kms. from the 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 group D were camouflaged as cabin trailers, but
vehicles well known to the authorities and the civilian population which
calls them 'Death Vans.'
The writer of the letter ordered all men to keep as far away as
possible during the gassing. Unloading the van, after the gassing, has
'atrocious spiritual and physical effects' on the men who have to unload
them, and they should be ordered not to participate in such work.
[89] I shall not dwell on this subject longer than to quote one more sickening
document which evidences the planned and systematic character of these Jewish
persecutions. I hold an original report written with Teutonic thoroughness as to detail,
illustrated with photographs to authenticate its almost incredible text, and beautifully
bound in leather with loving care bestowed on a proud work. It is the original report of
the SS Brigade General Stroop in charge of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and
Hans Frank was Governor-General of Poland. Its title page carries this inscription, "The
Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists." I shall ask your honors to examine with care
the photographs with which this document abounds, showing the destruction of this
ghetto, showing the people driven before the flames with the title, “Jews and Bandits,”
women and children and old men, not a man of fighting age in the picture except the
German soldiers. The masses lined up against the wall for execution. The picture to
illustrate the text showing that they jumped from the windows during the flames to
escape.
[90] Now let us read what General Stroop says he did:
"The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could only be
suppressed by energetic action of our troops day and night.
The
Reichsfuehrer SS ordered, therefore on the twenty-third of 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. The 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."
[91] This action eliminated, says the SS commander, I quote, "a proved total of
56,065" Jews. "To that," he says, "we have to add the number of those killed through
blasting, fire, and so forth, which cannot be counted."
[92] We charge that all of the atrocities against Jews were the manifestation and
culmination of the Nazi plan to which every defendant in this box 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 unrescued Jews. Some protested that
particular atrocities were excessive, and discredited the general policy. While a few
defendants may show some 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 to modify it.
[93] Determination to destroy the Jew 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 Naziism--GERMANY AWAKE, JEWS PERISH!
[94] I come to the discussion of terrorism and the preparation for the war.
[95] 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, however, take character as
international crimes because of the purpose for which they were undertaken.
[96] 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 organizations to follow the
pattern later in occupied countries.
[97] Through these police organizations and 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, and Dachau in 1934. And
Dachau lies but a few miles from here and but a few hours drive, and we hope this
Tribunal will visit this place and see the magnitude of the layout which goes with a
concentration camp and the implements of torture that remain. 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 Guertner to Hitler which is revealing of this. A
Gestapo official had prosecuted for crimes committed in one of these camps, and the
Nazi Governor of Saxony had promptly asked that the proceedings be quashed. The
Minister of Justice greatly to his credit in June of 1935, this was, protested because, as
he called to the attention of Hitler himself, and I now quote his, the statement of the
Minister of Justice:
"In this camp unusually grave mistreatments of prisoners has
occurred at least since the Summer 1933. The prisoners not only were
beaten with whips without cause, similarly as in Concentration Camp
Bredow near Stettin until they lost consciousness, but they were also
tortured in other manners, that is, 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. . ."
[98] I shall not take time to detail the ghastly proceedings in these concentration
camps. Beatings, starvings, tortures, and killings were routine--they were so routine that
the tormenters became blasé and careless. We will show you a discovery that one night,
in one of these camps, 186 persons were executed when they only had orders to
execute 180. And another report describes how they made a mistake and sent two urns
to a family where there was only one victim. The inmates were compelled to execute
each other. In 1942, they were paid five Reichsmarks per execution, but on June 27,
1942, SS General Gluecks ordered commandants of all concentration camps to reduce
this honorarium to three cigarettes. In 1943, the Reichs leader of the SS and Chief of
German Police ordered the corporal punishment on Russian women to be applied by
Polish women and vice versa, but the price was not frozen. He said, "As a 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 fourteen concentration camps that,
and I quote, "only German prisoners are allowed to beat other German prisoners."
[99] Mystery and suspense was added 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 reported that in
accordance with orders from the Fuehrer anxiety should be created in the minds of the
family of the arrested person. Deportations and secret arrests were labeled, with a Nazi
wit that seems a little ghoulish, "Nacht und Nebel" (Night and Fog orders). On the
second of February, 1942, an order was issued for the Chief of the Wehrmacht High
Command, in which the fields were advised that:
"This decree carries a basic innovation. The Fuehrer 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 8 days after arrest.
"Only when both conditions are met does the Fuehrer 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 those 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)
[100] 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.
[101] 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" elsewhere.
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 Fahrenheit), when they all died immediately. This was in August 1942. But the
"doctor's" technique improved. By February, 1943, he was able to report that thirty
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.
Here Nazi degeneracy reached its nadir.
[102] I dislike to encumber your records with such morbid tales, but we are in
the grim business of trying men as criminals, and these are the things that their 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.
[103] 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 skepticism. But the proof
here will be so overwhelming that I venture to predict that not one word of what I have
now spoken will be denied. These defendants will only deny personal responsibility or
knowledge.
[104] 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.
[105] 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 peoples 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 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.
[106] All of 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 preparation 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.
[107] Before resorting to open aggressive warfare, the Nazis undertook some
rather cautious experiments to test the spirit and 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 temper which made persistence dangerous.
[108] On March 7, 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 defendant Seyss-Inquart in his place. The
latter immediately opened the frontier and invited Hitler to invade Austria "to preserve
order." On March 12th the 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.
[109] 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, according to their own documents, 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 the 28th 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 the twenty-ninth, 1938, which required
Czechoslovakia to acquiesce in the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. It was
consummated by German occupation on October the first, 1938.
[110] 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, and 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
and delaying peace with Russia, the conspirators entered upon the final phase to renew
world war.
[111] I am not going to 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 by the British delegation from documents including
those of the German High Command itself. I speak only of the conspiracy aspects of the
aggression. 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." We
have the diary of General Jodl; the "Plan Otto," Hitler's own order for attack on Austria
in case trickery failed; the "Plan Green" which was the blueprint for attack on
Czechoslovakia; the plan for the War in the West; Funk's letter to Hitler dated August
25, 1939, detailing the long course of economic preparation for war; we have the top
secret mobilization order for 1939 or 40 prescribing the steps to be taken during a
"period of tension," as it was described, during which no "'state of war' will be publicly
declared even if open war measures against the enemy will be taken." This latter order
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," which was a
codename outlining the strategy of the attack on Russia. And that plan in the original
bears the initials of the defendants Keitel and of Jodl. They were planning the attack and
planning it long in advance of the declaration of war. We have detailed information
concerning the "Case White," which was the plan for the attack on Poland. That began
the war. This was in June, the fourteenth... The attack did not come until September. It's
a top-secret document, only 20 copies were circulated. We have number 8. It starts:
"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 political leadership
for the opening of the war by surprise and
for quick successes
. . .
It also declares that:
"…it is the duty of Commanding Generals, divisional commanders
and commandants to limit as much as possible the number of persons
who will be informed, and to limit the extent of the information, so that
no persons will get information of this plan."
We also have the order for the attack on England, initialed again by Keitel and Jodl. It's
interesting that it commences by saying that although the British military position is so
"hopeless," they show not the slightest sign of giving in.
[112] As early as November 5, 1937, Hitler told the defendants Goering, 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
1943-5 and perhaps as early as 1938. Not the least incriminating are the minutes of
Hitler's own meetings with his high advisors, which we have. These minutes were rather
meticulously kept as the Germans were apt to do. And the Fuehrer advised his staff
that--
"It is a question of expanding living space in the East and of
securing our food supplies . . . over and above natural fertility,
thoroughgoing German exploitation will enormously increase the
surplus."
And he said:
"There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and we are left
with a decision," their own underscoring:
"
To attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.
"
He adds,
"We cannot expect a repetition of the Czech affair. There will be
war."
Conclusive evidence. When these men entered Poland, they knew they were
precipitating war.
[113] On August 22nd, 1939, Hitler again addressed the 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. But he
added, "It will make no difference 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." It was at all times utterly hopeless for
the Western powers to avoid war because Hitler was determined to make war. In his
conference with all supreme commanders dated November 23, 1939, he said this:
". . . 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 would 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. . ."
[114] 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; and Poland fell. The Nazis, in accordance
with plan, which will be developed more fully by my colleagues, moved swiftly to extend
their aggression throughout Europe and to gain the advantage of surprise over their
unprepared neighbors. And I might say parenthetically that in these remarks of Hitler he
goes to some length pointing out that the powers of the West were unprepared and
unexpectant of war. Despite repeated and solemn assurances of peaceful intentions,
they invaded Denmark and Norway on the 9th April, 1940; Belgium, The Netherlands
and Luxembourg on the 10th May, 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece on the 6th of April,
1941.
[115] As part of the Nazi preparation for aggression against Poland and her allies,
Germany, on the 23rd of August, 1939, had entered into a non-aggression pact with
Soviet Russia. It was only a delaying treaty intended, as the documents will show, 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.
[116] I have asked to present to you a chart illustrative of much that might be
explained showing the violation of treaties which were involved, and showing the
systematic plan of violation. There is a key as you will observe in the lower left corner to
the treaties involved in these aggressions. And each of the prongs showing the series of
attacks carries marks which show the treaties that were violated. I shall not take pains
to go into a detailed analysis of these documents, which falls to my brethren
representing the British. I think it is sufficient to show the calculated disregard, the
uniform disregard, toward the entire world of the obligations into which Germany had
entered.
[117] Now I'll ask you, if you will, to change quickly, if you can, and show us the
charts, which show you the Germany of 1935 and show you the Germany as it stood
when the Nazi conquest was at its height. This chart will make plain the extent to which
Germany had incorporated territory and the extent to which it had occupied and
controlled territory, although not incorporated.
[118] And I may say that it is our purpose as the evidence proceeds to put these
charts in such form as I have here so that you may be enabled to have them in more
convenient form.
[119] By these aggressions Germany had incorporated the red on the chart and
had occupied or controlled the territories shown in blue, if that's the color that we
would call it. Now, the Nazi plans did not stop at the point I've indicated. The Nazi plans
involved a conspiracy with Japan.
[120] The Nazi plans of aggression called for the use of Asiatic allies and they
found among the Japanese men of kindred mind and purpose. They were brothers,
under the skin.
[121] Himmler records a conversation that he had on January the thirty-first,
1939 with General Oshima, Japanese Ambassador at Berlin. We have Mr. Himmler's
original memorandum, signed with his signature. He wrote, among other things of his
interview with Oshima, this:
"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."
Exchanging secrets with the Japanese.
[122] On September the 27th, 1940, the Nazis concluded a German-Italian-
Japanese ten-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 Asia and
regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and
maintain a new order of things * *."
[123] On March 5, 1941, a top-secret directive was issued by the defendant
Keitel. It stated this, quote, "The Fuehrer has ordered instigation of Japan's active
participation in the war," and it directed, quoting again, "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 and to "keep the United States out of the war."
[124] On March the twenty-ninth, 1941, the defendant Ribbentrop told
Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, that the German Army was ready to strike
against Russia. Matsuoka in turn reassured Ribbentrop about the Far East. Japan, he
reported, was acting at the moment as though she had no interest whatever in
Singapore, but, quoting, "intends to strike when the right moment comes." On April 5,
Ribbentrop urged Matsuoka that entry of Japan into the war would, quoting, "hasten
the victory," end of the quote, 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.
[125] The proofs in this case will also show that the leaders of Germany were
planning a war against the United States from its Atlantic as well as instigating it from its
Pacific approaches. A captured memorandum from the Fuehrer's headquarters dated
October the twenty-ninth, 1940, signed by General Falkenstein, asks certain information
as to air bases and supply and reports--here again, we do not speculate. We have the
original document signed by the General, and it says, dated October the twenty-ninth,
1940--"The Fuehrer 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."
[126] 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 Stalingrad. Taking advantage of that 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, French Indo-China,
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.
[127] 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.
[128] On June 1, 1944, 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. This order was sent out at the request of the Reichsfuehrer SS.
"I am sending you the enclosed 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."
"It is not the task of the police to interfere in clashes between
Germans and English and American terror flyers who have bailed out."
The Nazi Government, through its propaganda agencies, took pains to incite the civilian
population to attack and kill airmen who crash-landed. Similarly, we will show Hitler's
top-secret order that commandos, regardless of condition, were to be killed to the last
man. In that case we have the original documents with the fuehrer's signature attached.
We will show the circulation of secret orders, to be passed orally to civilians that enemy
parachutists were to be arrested or liquidated. By such means murders were incited and
directed.
[129] The 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. In the
East, the German fury spent itself. Russian prisoners of war were ordered to be
branded. They were starved. I shall quote passages from a letter written February 28,
1942 by the defendant Rosenberg to the defendant Keitel. And this is what he said:
"The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is on the
contrary a tragedy of the greatest extent. Of three million six hundred
thousand 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 civilian 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,'" and "Asiatics" is quoted, "all
of the 'Asiatics' were shot."
[130] Civilized usage and conventions to which Germany was a party had
prescribed certain immunities also for civilian populations that were 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.
[131] We deal here with a phase of common criminality designed by the
conspirators as part of a common plan. We can appreciate why these crimes against
their European enemies were not of a casual character but were planned and disciplined
crimes only 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." Those words were quoted. The project of
deporting promising youth from occupied territories was approved by Rosenberg on the
theory that, quoting him, "a desired weakening of the biological force of the conquered
people is being achieved." To Germanize or to destroy was the program. Himmler
announced, and I quote, "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." That's the end of the quote. As to the "racially
good types" Himmler further advised, and I quote again, "Therefore, I think it is our duty
to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment if necessary by
robbing or stealing them." He urged deportation of Slavic children to deprive potential
enemies of future soldiers.
[132] 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 this plan for ruthless warfare, which
means a plan for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
[133] 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. 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, quote, "the village will be destroyed totally by fire." A secret report from
Rosenberg's Reich Ministry of Eastern territory, where he was responsible, reveals this,
and I quote it:
"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 great unrest among civilians. Russian
girls were deloused by men, nude photos in forced positions were taken,
women doctors were locked into freight cars for the pleasure"--I think it's
nurses--"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, and so forth. All of this material
has been sent to the OKH."
[134] 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 and so
damaging. A speech of the defendant Frank, Governor General of Poland, made on
January 25, 1944 boasts, "I have sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich." The
defendant Sauckel reported that, and I quote, "out of the five million foreign workers
who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily." This fact was reported to
the Fuehrer and defendants Speer, and Goering, and Keitel. Children of 10 to 14 years
were impressed into service. We have the order in which the command is further
charged with transferring of worthwhile Russian youth between 10 and 14 years to the
Reich. When enough slave labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced into
war work in flagrant violation of international conventions. Slave labor came from
France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the East. Methods of recruitment were violent.
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. It is stated:
"All the men (prisoners of war and foreign civilian workers) must
be fed, sheltered and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the
highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure."
It doesn't take much imagination to translate that order into action. And prisoners of
war, the same order. Same captured order provides:
"All
prisoners of war
, from
territories
of the West as well as of the
East, actually in Germany, must be completely incorporated into the
German armament and munition industries..."
A more flagrant violation of international law as to prisoners of war is inconceivable. But
the order further provides:
"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.
[135] 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.
[136] 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 the seventh, 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 18 and a half billion
Reichsmarks, equalling 370 billion Francs. It pointed out that the burden of these
payments within two and a half years equalled the aggregate French national income in
the year 1940, and that the amount of payments handed over to Germany in the first six
months of 1942 corresponded to the estimate for the total French revenue for that
year. The report concluded, and I quote, "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,"
still quoting, "that the economic powers of France never equalled those of the German
Reich and that vanquished France could not draw on foreign economic and financial
resources in the same degree as Germany after the last War." That is the end of the
quote.
[137] The defendant Funk was the Reichs Minister of Economics and President of
the Reichsbank that made that report; the defendant Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister;
the defendant Goering was Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, and all of them
participated in this exchange of views of which this captured document is a part.
Notwithstanding this analysis by the Reichsbank, they proceeded to increase the
imposition on France from 10 million daily to 25 million Reichsmarks per day.
[138] 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
Stulpnagle, head of the German Armistice Commission, to the defendant Jodl as early as
September, 1940 when he wrote these words, "The slogan" quote "'Systematic
weakening of France' has already been surpassed by far in reality."
[139] 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 do not need to 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. Exactly the contrary with the German army. If the evidence in this case
showed no looting except from lack of discipline, I certainly would ask no conviction of
these defendants for it.
[140] But we will show you that looting was not due to 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.
[141] The defendant Rosenberg was put in charge of a systematic plundering of
the art objects of Europe by direct order of Hitler dated September 17, 1940. 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 Goering. The defendant
apparently did ten times as well in the collection of art objects as the Fuehrer. The
report also mentioned something like 20,000 pieces of seized art and the main locations
where they were stored.
[142] 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. Thirty-nine
volumes, such as I hold in my hand. 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, 2,224 small objects of art. Rosenberg observed that there
were approximately 10,000 more still to be inventoried. Rosenberg himself estimated
that the values involved would come close to a billion dollars. The inventory is typically
methodical. A list of the objects dealt with in the particular volume and photographs of
the great masterpieces of art looted from the cultural centers of Europe and shipped to
Germany. Thirty-nine volumes. The one that I hold deals with paintings, sculpture,
likewise.
[143] Such was the looting that we're prepared to show in this case, and not the
looting of individual soldiers, long away from home who helped themselves to what
comes to hand, but organized, systematic plans to loot Europe.
[144] I shall not go into further details of the war crimes and crimes against
humanity committed by the Nazi gangster ring whose leaders are before you. It is not
the purpose of my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am dealing with
the common plan or design for crime. I will not dwell on individual offenses. My task is
to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men
who--in responsible positions--conceived the plan and design which renders them
answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others.
[145] 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 the 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 Nazi power was even more swift than its ascendance. German armed
forces surrendered, its government disintegrated, its leaders committed suicide by the
dozens, and by the fortunes of war these men fell into our hands. Although they are not
by any means all the guilty ones, they are the 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?
[146] The end of the war and the 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?
[147] 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 believe that the law long
has afforded standards by which a juridical hearing could be conducted to which would
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.
[148] But the Agreement which sets up 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 have also signified
adherence to it. These are Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway,
Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Australia, Haiti,
Honduras, Panama, and New Zealand. You judge, therefore, under an organic act which
represents the wisdom, sense of justice, and the will of 19 governments, representing
an overwhelming majority of all civilized people.
[149] The Charter by which this Tribunal has its being embodies certain legal
concepts which are inseparable from its jurisdiction and which govern its decision.
These, as I have said, are also conditions attached to any grant of hearing to the
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 briefly explain the application of the legal
philosophy of the Charter to the facts which I have recited.
[150] 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
charitably if at all. Of course, in codifying into a few paragraphs, many questions of
application must be left unsolved. 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 law has
taken them by surprise.
[151] 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. I have already called
your to attention the Fuehrer's remark before invading Poland that the victor is never
asked whether he spoke the truth. In his speech to all military commanders on
November 23, 1939, he reminded them that at the moment Germany had a pact with
Russia, but he 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." 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, quoting, "the normal rules of war
toward neutrals must be considered to apply on the basis whether operation of rules
will create greater advantages or disadvantages for the belligerents." 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 tho it is not in agreement
with international law." 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 that we find laws of retrospective
operations sometimes 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.
[152] 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, the clearest 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.
[153] 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?
[154] 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 at 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.
[155] Of course, it was under the law of all civilized people 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 conduct of legitimate war. 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 for a time to give war
making a complete immunity from accountability to law.
[156] 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.
[157] The common sense of men after the First World War demanded, however,
that the law's condemnation reach much 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.
[158] The reestablishment 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
Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, by which Germany, Italy, and Japan, in common with
practically all the 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 of aggression "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,"
said Secretary Stimson speaking on behalf of the United States, "we have made obsolete
many legal precedents and have given the legal profession the task of reexamining many
of its codes and treaties."
[159] The Geneva Protocol of 1924 for the Pacific Settlement of International
Disputes, signed by the representatives of forty-eight 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 forty-
eight member nations, including Germany, declared that a war of aggression constitutes
an international crime. At the Sixth Pan-American Conference of 1928, the twenty-one
American Republics unanimously adopted a resolution stating that "war of aggression
constitutes an international crime against the human species."
[160] 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 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--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." Can there be any doubt that the outlawry of aggressive war was one of
the "generally accepted principles of international law" in 1939?
[161] Any resort to war--any kind of war--is a resort to means that are inherently
criminal as means. 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, which
was itself 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 which the law
ever gave, and to leave warmakers subject to judgment by the usually accepted
principles of the law of crimes.
[162] 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 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.
[163] It is true, of course, that we have no judicial precedent for this 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 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 in 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 actions 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 the
International Law must do, if it is to advance at all, it does advance 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 announced when these acts took
place. Hence, we are not disturbed by the lack of a judicial precedent for the inquiry
which it is proposed to conduct.
[164] 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 if
guilty to 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.
[165] 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, or
assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime.
[166] It is perhaps a weakness in this Charter that it fails 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 us 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 crystalized.
[167] 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
Roumania, 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 it is relevant to 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) A 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 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 measures in its power to deprive
those bands of assistance and 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 aggressive actions;
but, of course, the 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, of course, constitute a war of aggression.
[168] It is upon such an understanding of the law that our evidence of 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.
[169] 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 the war. They are for history to unravel. It is no part of our task
to vindicate the European
status quo
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 that 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, were utilized. "Lebensraum" represented a vicious
circle of demand--from neighbors more space, and from Germans more progeny. We
need not investigate the verity of such doctrines which led to constantly expanding
circles of aggression. It is the plot and the act of aggression which we charge to be
crimes.
[170] Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however
objectionable it finds the
status quo
, aggressive warfare is not a legal 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
propose or need to inquire because that is as far as we accuse.
[171] 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 a 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
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.
[172] Of course, the idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits a
crime 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 a personal immunity.
[173] 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 state.
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 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 its statesmen. It
cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal irresponsibility.
[174] Even the German Military Code provides, and I quote:
"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."
[175] 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 be expected 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 on immunity. But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of
them was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power and knew the
purpose of the acts they were committing. Their responsibility is correspondingly great
and may not be shifted to that fictional being, "the State", which can not be produced
for trial, can not testify, and can not be sentenced.
[176] 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 the defendants have 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 memberships in illegal
combinations or plans or conspiracies.
[177] 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 Nazi Party, the "SS", the "SA", and the
subsidiary formations which these include. They were the Nazi Party leadership,
espionage, and policing groups. They were the real government, above and outside of
the law. Also accused as organizations are the Reich Cabinet and the Secret Police, or
Gestapo, which were fixtures of the Government but were animated solely by the Party.
[178] Except for a late period when some compulsory recruiting was done in the
SS, membership in all of these militarized organizations was voluntary. The police
organizations were recruited from ardent partisans who enlisted blindly to do the 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
program. Collectively they were responsible for the program in general, individually they
were responsible for particular 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 duress, under threat to the person, or to family, or
inducement by false representation, or the like--can 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 would conclusively establish the criminal
character of the organization as a whole.
[179] 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 event war comes, and it is another thing to plot and intrigue to bring on that
war. We will prove that the leaders of the German General Staff and the High Command
have been guilty of just that. Military men are not before you because they have served
their country. They are here because they mastered it, and along with others, drove it to
war. They are not here because they lost a war but because they started one. Politicians
may have thought of them as soldiers, but soldiers knew they were politicians. We ask
that the General Staff and the High Command, as defined in this Indictment, be
condemned as a criminal group whose existence and tradition constitute a standing
menace to the peace of the world.
[180] 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, many thousands of members now in the
custody of the United States forces and of other Armies.
[181] To apply the sanctions of the law to those whose conduct is found criminal
by the standards I have outlined, is the responsibility committed by the Charter 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, our great
nations bring you their hurriedly assembled contributions of evidence. What remains
undiscovered we can only guess. We could, with witnesses' testimony, prolong the
recital 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.
[182] 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
have 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 would not be 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.
[183] 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 ourself 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.
[184] 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, 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 onto
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.
[185] The American dream of a peace and plenty economy, as well as the hopes
of other nations, can never be fulfilled if these nations are involved in a war every
generation so vast and devastating as to crush the generation that fights and to burden
the generations that follow. 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.
[186] I am too well aware of the weakness 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 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.
[187] 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 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.
[188] 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.
[189] 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 forces
that are contending before you?
[190] No charity can disguise the fact that the forces which these defendants
represent, the forces that would advantage and delight in their acquittal, the forces with
which they have identified themselves and whose crimes they have committed, 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,
as we shall recount them before you, 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, and 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 hatred and
incited domestic violence on every continent. These are the things that stand in the
dock shoulder to shoulder with these prisoners.
[191] 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.
[192] 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 all untold numbers 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 moral sense must be regarded as innocence in law. We
challenge that proposition.
[193] 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."
TEXTUAL AUTHENTICATION
Sound Recording 238-1-24B through 238-1-42B. Justice Jackson's Opening Address to
the Tribunal, November 21, 1945;
Records of the United States Counsel for the
Prosecution of Axis Criminality, RG 238-1; National Archives at College Park, College
Park, MD. [=A]
Jackson, Robert H. Opening Address to Tribunal,
November 21, 1945; RHJ Opening
Address to Tribunal; Personal Files (Lindenstrasse Files); 1945-1946;
Office of the U.S.
Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality;
World War II War Crimes
Records RG 0238; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. [=B]
Jackson, Robert H. Justice Jackson's Opening Address to the Tribunal, November 21,
1945; Opening Address Delivered by Justice Robert H. Jackson to the International
Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuernberg, Germany (Nov. 21, 1945); Records Retained by
Justice Jackson; Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis
Criminality;
World War II War Crimes Records RG 0238; National Archives at College
Park, College Park, MD. [=C]
Statement of Editorial Procedure:
The copy-text is Jackson 1945 (=A), an audiotape recording of the delivered speech. This
text was selected to minimize subsequent editorial intervention and centralize Jackson's
delivery of the address. Additional archival material demonstrates the US prosecutorial
team's interest in editing trial material for subsequent publication. Jackson 1945 (=A)
preserves Jackson's voice on the date of the trial's open and contains errors and
extemporaneous additions to the text subsequently removed from other editions of the
speech. Primacy has been given to the words delivered by Jackson even when they alter,
abridge, or modify the secondary source material from which Jackson is quoting or
citing. As such, this version of the address differs significantly from many other available
versions of the speech text.
Verbal non-fluencies, stutters, irregular pauses, unnecessary repetition of words and
verbal asides between Jackson and other court officials have been removed from this
text without comment.
Jackson 1945 (=B) is followed for paragraphing, spelling, and punctuation. In all cases
where the audio is unclear, the clear reading text includes the language from (B). When
no equivalent of the spoken text exists in (B), (C) was consulted. When no equivalent
appears in (B) or (C), standard grammatical forms and punctuation practices were
followed. Missing punctuation marks in (B), excluding quotation marks when not
replicated in (C), have been added without notation.
Paragraph numbers have been added in square brackets.
Indications of any normalization of the text are addressed in the notes below.
Typographical errors in Jackson 1945 (=B) have been corrected without notation when
properly pronounced in Jackson 1945 (=A). Such corrections include adding missing
diacritical marks to words written in their German spelling.
The word "kan-eh-cents" has been rendered “cognizance” in line with (B).
The word "rough-ins" has been rendered "ruffians" in line with (B).
The word "par-lee-ment" has been rendered "parliament."
The word "debt-turrent" has been rendered "deterrent."
The word "in-des-spit-able" has been rendered "indisputable. "
The word "mah-TERD" has been rendered "matured" in line with (B).
The word "gay-toes" has been rendered "ghettos" in line with (B).
The word "FINN-nan-seers" has been rendered "financiers" in line with (B).
The text of this edition has been thoroughly checked and proofread.
All double quotations are rendered with ", all single quotation marks with an
apostrophe '.
Jackson 1945 (=B) was subject to end-of-line hyphenation. End-of-line hyphens were
removed in the construction of the clear speaking text.
Special characters and characters with diachronic marks: paragraph 6, 33 and 105,
"Führerprinzip;" paragraph 63 and 78, Nürnberg; paragraph 63, ménage; paragraph 98,
blasé.
Departures from the copy-text and general editorial procedures are as follows
2 for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs
which we seek B: missing audio A
17 The fact of B: missing audio A
17 treaties, by which B: treaties, which the peace of the world--by which A
19 which reached one B: which reach one A
21 who knew how B: who know how A
24 "raising the standard of health." B: "raising the habits—the standards of health." A
27 "…of institutions which…" B: "…of institution which…" A
28: liberty, for the B: liberty, the A
31 Party fulfilled their B: Party fulfill their A
34 of which we B: of this letter we A
35 semi-military discipline. Its B: semi-military despotism. Its A
36 office and Donofrio: office, the defendant (unclear audio), and A
36 and the sub-fuehrers B: and the sub-fuehrer A
37 or Gestapo--all Donofrio: or Gestapo,--all B
41 internal measures B: internal nation, measures A
41 The precise limits of their ambition we need not define for it was and is as illegal to
wage an aggressive war for small stakes as for large ones. B: missing audio A
42 We find at this period of time two governments in Germany--the real and the
ostensible. The forms of the German Republic were maintained for a time, and it was
the outward and visible government. But the real authority in the State was outside of
and above the law and rested in the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party. B: missing audio
A
43 On February 27, 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor, the
Reichstag building was set on fire. The burning of this symbol of free parliamentary
government was so providential for the Nazis that it was believed they staged the fire
themselves. Certainly when we contemplate their known crimes, we cannot believe
they would shrink from mere arson. It is not necessary, however, to resolve the
controversy as to who set the fire. The significant point is in the use that was made of
the fire and of the state of public mind it produced. The Nazis immediately accused the
Communist Party of instigating and committing the crime, and turned every effort to
portray this single act of arson as the beginning of a communist revolution. Then, taking
advantage of the hysteria, the Nazis met this phantom revolution with a real one. In the
following December, the German Supreme Court with commendable courage and
independence acquitted the accused communists, but it was too late to influence the B:
missing audio A
48 The Hitler-Hindenburg decree Donofrio: The Hitler-Hindenberg decree B:
48 inflicting inhuman punishment B: inflicting human punishment A
49 "…expressed against Ultramontanism…" B "…expressed as Ultramontanism…" A
50 General von Fritsch's classification B: General von Fritsch classification A
55 the SA "to…" Donofrio: the A-SA "to…" A
56 The Party order provided B: The factory order pr--th-the Party order provided A
58 I'm quoting Donofrio: I quoting A
63 July 1938 starting at 21:00 carried B: July 1939 from 2100 hours carried A
73 formations indicted before you B: formations indicated before--indicted before you A
77 "…Jews are a race…" B: " …Jews as a race--are a race…" A
78 "…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 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
commissariate, 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 theatres and schools. "The slaughtering of animals according to Jewish
rites is also to be prohibited…" (212-PS) C: missing audio A
79 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. (Document No.
765-PS.) No more cynical document ever came into evidence. Then there is a report by
an SS Brigade Leader to Himmler (Document No. L-180) which recites that: B: missing
audio A
79 "…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."
C: missing audio A
80 April 14, 1939, B: April 14, 1935, A
83 "….occupation * * *." The report continues B: "….occupation * * *." But it
concludes—continues A
83 "…the execution detachments…" B: "…the executive detachments…" A
84 "…the face of…" B: "…the fate of--face of…" A
85 "…males above the…" B: "…males of the…" A
91 "…that," he says Donofrio: "…that, " he add says A
95 any limits of what is B: any limits that is A
96 the precipitation of B: the participation--precipitation of A
96 to the B: to it--the A
97 had prosecuted for B: had been persecuted--prosecuted, prosecuted for A
98 tortures, and killings B: tortures, killings A
98 persons were executed B: persons was executed A
99 Mystery and suspense was added 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; B: missing audio A
99 "…pertinent courts-martial…" C: "…pertinent court-martials…" A
99 "…of those 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) C: missing audio A
100 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. B: missing audio A
101 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" elsewhere. 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
Fahrenheit), when they all died immediately. This was in August 1942. But the "doctor's"
technique improved. By February, 1943, he was able to report that thirty 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 B: missing audio A
102 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. B: missing audio A
103 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 B: missing audio A
106 controls from their inception B: controls for their inception--from their inception
111 of Germany, to B: of Russia, to A
111 War in the B: War on the A
111 Hitler dated August B: Hitler in August A
111 Russia. And Donofrio: Russia. We have detailed…. And A
111 which was the Donofrio: which is the A
111 It also declares that: "…it" Donofrio: It also provides that the…it declares that the:
"…it…" A
111 so "hopeless," they C: so "helpless"--"hopeless," they A
112 "…a repetition of…" B: "… a reposition--repetition of…" A
128 "…their subordinate officers verbally." C: "…their subordinates, subordinate offices
verbally." A
133 "…be destroyed totally…" B: "…be stroyed totally…" A
133 "…men, nude photos…" B: "…men, nude, nude photos…" A
134 made on January B: made in January A
134 and defendants Speer B: and to the defendant Speer A
134 10 to 14 B: 10 and 14 A
134 "…armament and munition industries..." C: "…armament and nutrition industries..."
A
141 art and the B: art in the A
142 leather-bound tabulated volumes of his inventory B: leather-bound volumes
tabulated, uh, the inventory A
144 the plan and design which B: the plan design which A
147 which would make B: which we could make sure, so that we could make A
147 Yalta conference B: Yalta congress--conference A
148-149 people. The Charter B: people. Charter A
150 acts it condemns B: acts condemns A
151 they really are B: they rarely are A
151 "…of war toward…" B: "…of law toward…" A
151 "…Naval War," dated B: "…Naval Warfare," dated A
152 effect. The same B: effect. Same A
152-153 1944. The Fourth B: 1944. Fourth A
153 take these men B: take men A
158 the Kellogg-Briand Pact Donofrio: the Briand-Kellogg Pact A
158 of disputes only B: of dispute only A
158 condemned recourse to B: condemned resource--recourse to A
158 of the United States Donofrio: of United States A
160 by juridical application B: by judicial application A
163 decreed, had been C: decreed, has been A
169 from Germans more B: from Germany more A
177 organizations are the Reich B: organizations of the Reich A
181 the first court B: the force--first court A