The defense on this count of the indictment is ingenious bat unconvincing. As to the use of prisoners of war, the defendant testified that he had been advised by some unidentified person high in the National Socialist Councils that it was not unlawful to employ prisoners of war in war Industries. The defendant was an old and experienced soldier, and his testimony revealed that he was well acquainted with the provisions of the Geneva and Hague Treaties on this subject, which are plain and unequivocal. In the face of this knowledge, the advice which he claims to have received should have raised grave suspicions in his mind. Presenting, an entirely different aspect to his defense, he testifies that many of the Russian prisoners of war volunteered to serve in the war industries and apparently en joyed the opportunity of manufacturing munitions to be used against their fellow countrymen and their allies.
Other Russian prisoners of war, he states, were discharged as such and immediately enrolled as civilian workers. The photographs introduced in evidence, however, show that they still retained their Russian army uniforms, which makes their status as civilians suspect. Be that as it may, it does nor adequately answer the charge that hundreds of thousands of Polish prisoners of war were cast into concentration camps and parceled out to the various war factories, nor the further fact that thousands of French prisoners of war were compelled to labor the most harrowing conditions for the Luftwaffe.
As to the French civilian workers who were employed at war work in Germany after the conquest of France, it is the contention of the defendant that these workers were supplied by the French Government under a solemn agreement with the Reich. It is claimed with a straight face that the Vichy Government, headed by Laval, entered into an international compact with the German Government to supply French laborers for work in Germany. This contention entirely overlooks the fact that the Vichy Government was a mere puppet set up under German domination, which, in full collaboration with Germany, took its orders from Berlin. Tho position of the defendant seems to be that, if any force or coercion was used on French citizens, it was exerted by their own government, but this position entirely overlooks the fact that the transports which brought Frenchmen to Germans were manned by German armed guards and that upon their arrival they were kept under military guard provided by the Wehrmacht or the SS.
It was sought to disguise the harsh realities of the German foreign labor policy by the use of spacious legal and economic terms, and to make such policy appear as the exercise of conventional labor relations and Labor law. The fiction of a "labor contract" was frequently resorted to, especially in the operations of the Todt Organization, which implied that foreign workers were given a free choice to work or not to work for Germany military industry. This, of course, was purely fictitious, as is shown by the fact that thousands of these "contract workers" jumped from the trains transporting them to Germany and fled into the woods.
Does anyone believe that the vast hordes of Slavic Jews who labored in Germany's war industries were accorded the rights of contracting parties? They were slaves, nothing loss - kidnapped, regimented, herded under armed guards, and worked until they died from disease, hunger and exhaustion. The idea of any Jew being a party to a contract with Germans was unthinkable to the National Socialists. Jews were considered as outcasts and were completely at the mercy of their oppressors. Exploitation was merely a convenient and profitable means of extermination, to the end that, "when this war ends, there will be no more Jews in Europe". As to non-Jewish foreign labor, with few exceptions they were deprived of the basic civil rights of free men: they were deprived of the right to move freely or to choose their place of residence; to live in a household with their families; to rear and educate their children; to marry; to visit public places of their own choosing; to negotiate, either individually or through representatives of their own choice, the conditions of their own employment; to organize in trade unions; to exercise free speech or other free expression of opinion; to gather in peaceful assembly; and they were frequently deprived of the right to worship according to their own conscience. All these are the sign-marks of slavery, not free employment under contract.
The German nation, before the ascendancy of the NSDAP, had repeatedly recognized the rights of civilian in occupied countries. At the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, an amendment was submitted by the German delegate, Maj. Gen. von Gundell, which read:
"A belligerent is likewise forbidden to compel the nationals of the adverse party to take part in the operations of war directed against their country, even when they have been in his service before the commencement of the war."
The German manual for war on land (Kreigsbrauchin Landrecht. ed. 1902) stated:
"The inhabitants of an invaded territory are persons endowed with rights ...... subject to certain restrictions ......... but who otherwise may live free from vexations and, as in time of peace, under the protection of the laws."
During the First World War, an order of the German Supreme Command (Oct. 3, 1916) provided for the deportation of Belgian vagrants and idlers to Germany for work, but specified that such labor was not to be used in connection with operations of war. The order resulted in such a storm of protest that it was at once abandoned by the German authorities.
It cannot be contended, of course, that foreign workers were entitled to comforts or luxuries which were not accorded German workers. It is also recognized that, especially during the litter part of the war, there was a universal shortage of food and fuel throughout the Reich and in the discomforts arising therefrom foreign workers were bound to share. But it is an undoubted fact that the foreign workers were subjected to cruelties and torture and the deprivation of decent human rights merely because they were aliens. This was not true in isolated instances, but was universal and was the working out of the German attitude toward those whom it considered inferior peoples. If any decent human consideration was shown these workers, it was merely to maintain their productivity and did not stem from any humanitarian considerations.
The Tribunal therefore finds the defendant guilty of the war crimes charged in Count One of the Indictment, to wit, that he was a principal in, accessory to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in and was connected with, plans and enterprises involving slave labor and deportation to slave labor of the civilian populations of countries and territories occupied by the German armed forces, and in the enslavement, deportation, ill-treatment and terrorization of such persons and further that the defendant was a principal in, accessory to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and was connected with, plans and enterprises involving the use of prisoners of war in war operations and work having a direct relation to war operations.
THE PRESIDENT: Presiding Judge continuing:
Count Three of the Indictment charges the defendant with crimes against humanity committed against "German nationals and nationals of other countries." Sufficient proof was not adduced as to such offenses against German nationals to justify an adjudication of guilt on that ground. As to such crimes against nationals of other countries, the evidence shows that a large number of Hungarian Jews and other nationals of Hungary and Rumania, which countries were occupied by Germany but were not belligerents, were subjected to the same tortures and deportations as were the nationals of Poland and Russia. In Count One of the Indictment these acts are charged as war crimes and have heretofore been considered by the Tribunal under that count in this judgment. In the judgment of the International Military Tribunal (Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 254), the court stated:
"From the beginning of the war in 1939, war crimes were committed on a vast scale which were also crimes against humanity."
This is a finding of law and an interpretation of Control Council Law No. 10, with which this Tribunal is in full accord.
Our conclusion is that the same unlawful acts of violence which constituted war crimes under Count One of the Indictment also constitute crimes against humanity as alleged in Count Three of the Indictment. Having determined the defendant to be guilty of war crimes under Count One, it follows, of necessity, that he is also guilty of the separate offense of crimes against humanity, as alleged in Count Three, and this Tribunal so determines.
In exculpation, the defendant states that he was a German soldier and that whatever was done by him or with his knowledge or consent was done in pursuance of a national military policy promulgated by Hitler and in obedience to military orders. He protests that, no matter how violently he disagreed with the methods used by the German Reich in the furthering of its policy of aggressive war, he was helpless to extricate himself and had no alternative except to stay with the venture to the bitter end. It is true that withdrawal may involve risks and dangers, but these are incidental to the original affiliation with the unlawful scheme. He who elects to participate in a venture which may result in failure must make his election to abandon the enterprise if it is not to his liking or to stay as a participant, and win or lose according to the outcome.
Much significance must be attached to the meeting of May 23, 1939, at which the defendant was admittedly present and in which Hitler spoke at great length as to his plans for the subjugation of friendly minor nations and the ultimate conquest of Europe. A purported record of the events at this meeting has been introduced in evidence and has been found to be reliable and accurate by the' International Military Tribunal. The defendant has throughout insisted that this record is spurious and was made by Schmundt long after the occasion which it records. Of course, it was never anticipated that this record, which was marked "Top Secret, To Be Transmitted by Officer Only," would ever be captured and its contents become known. It is not surprising that those who sat and listened to the astounding program of the Fuehrer now wish that they had been absent. It cannot be denied that there was a meeting of some kind which the defendant attended and at which the Fuehrer spoke, and further that it was hold a few short months before the actual invasion of Poland, as forecast in the report of the meeting. The Schmundt paper does not pretend to be a verbatim report of Hitler's exact words, but certainly all of the diabolical plans which it reveals were not manufactured by Schmundt out of thin air, attributed to Hitler, and then marked "Top Secret". Even if Hitler said only a small part of what is attributed to him by Schmundt, there was enough said to advise and warn a man of the defendant's intelligence and experience that mischief was afoot.
Every sentence shrieks of war. The record hints at nothing else, and, if all references to conquest and war and world domination are eliminated, Hitler did not speak at all. At this early date, the defendant must be charged with knowledge that a war of aggression, to be ruthlessly pursued, was planned. This, then, was the time for him to have made his decision - the decision which confronts every man daily - to be honorable or dishonorable. Life consists quite generally in making such decisions. As an old soldier, schooled in the code of war and well aware of the principles to which an honorable soldier must adhere, he sat complacently and listened to a proposed program which violated national honor, personal integrity and the moral code of an honest soldier. He made his choice and elected with the tyrant.
When the defendant joined the National Socialist Party in 1933, Germany was in the throes of dire economical and political distress and was burdened by a myriad of political parties, each with its separate program and all functioning at cross-purposes. The defendant elected to affiliate with the NSDAP because, he testified, he believed it offered the most likely agency for bringing order out of chaos. But very soon he must have realized that he had joined a band of villains whose program contemplated every crime in the calendar. The Nazi code was not a secret. It was published and proclaimed by the party leaders in long harangues to the people; decrees a and directives were broadcast; the infamous Streicher was spreading anti-Jewish obscenities throughout the Reich in "Der Stuermer"; Roehm and a large number of the SA were murdered by Hitler's orders;
hundreds of German citizens' were cast into concentration camps for "political reeducation," without hearing or opportunity for defense; the iniquitous Gestapo stormed through the land, with power over life and liberty which could not be questioned; in public view Jews were beaten and killed, their synagogues burned and their stores destroyed. The Party proclaimed its objectives from the house tops and verified them by open public conduct throughout the Reich. The significant fact which must not be overlooked is that all these things happened before the war was launched, at a time when there was no claim upon the loyalty of the defendant as a soldier to protect his homeland at war. He protests that he never subscribed to the Master Race philosophy, but 13 years before he joined the Party in 1933, its precepts and demands had been proclaimed, among which was Point 4:
"Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race."
The humblest citizens of Germany knew that the iniquitous doctrines of the Party were being implemented by ruthless acts of persecution and terrorism which occurred in public view. Thousands of obscure German citizens were only too well aware that they were living under the scrutiny of an army of spies and saw their friends and relatives summarily dispatched to concentration camps for the slightest suspicion of dissidence. The defendant did not live in a vacuum. He was not blind nor deaf. Long before 1939, long before his military loyalty was called into lay, long before the door withdrawal was closed, he could have seen the bloody handwriting on the wall, for murder and enslavement of his own countrymen was there written in blazing symbols.
But he had taken on the crymson mantle of the Party, with all its ghastly implication, and he were it with glory and profit to himself to the end. Others with more courage and higher principles and with more loyalty to the ancient German ideals rebelled and withdrew from the brutal crew: Von Clausewitz Yorck von Wartenberg, Schlegelberger, Schmitt, Eltz von Ruebenach, Tesmer, These men in high positions had the character to repudiate great civil, and if in so doing they took risks and made sacrifies nevertheless, they made their choice to stand with decency and justice and honor, The defendant had his opportunity to join those who refused to do the evil bidding of an evil master, but he cast it aside and his professed repentance now comes too late.
What a sordid of a civilized nation- the nation of Goethe and Hiene, of Beethoven and Chubert, even of Bismarck and von Hindenberg,- fawning and cringing at the feet of a small man with delusions of granduer: Even when madness in to intensify his frenzy and fear and defeat put spurs to his ferovity, they still said, " We are his people. He is our immaculate leader." Men of large capacities, even genius, prostitute their talents before a puny renegade who used them impiously and paid off his puppets with medals and pelf. But the strutting menials stayed with him. So long as success was on the horizon, they bowed and scrapped and sought to out do each other in supine adulation. They tell us now, Hitler was wrong." But they told him that. Right or wrong, their only concern was, " Can him the war? And what will it mean for me?" They heard him proclaim as early as November, 1937, " The question for Germany is where the greatest possible conquest could be made at the lowest possible cost," and they nodded and shouted, "Heil Hitler," and maneuvered to get closer to him.
Before the invasion of Poland, they heard this blood-thirsty tyrant say,"In starting and making a war, not the right is what matters, but victory." And this defendant, as part of the unholy array, rolled up his sleeves and said "Let me help. Give men and more men, no matter where you get them."
In a civilized state which recognizes the sanctity of human lives and human rights, no man - no group of men - should be endowed with omnipotence. The history of human relations, from Herod to Hitler, has repeatedly demonstrated this to be true. Omnipotence is only for God. Be a man over so wise, ever so benevolent, ever so trustworthy, there still exists in him the frailty, tho fallibility, the susceptibility to temptation that is inherent in every man. If the only protection against the tyranny of an autocrat is his own selfrestraint, that is not enough, for power feeds or power, and the temptation to stretch authority to its limit is irresistible.
What, then, of the responsibility of those who bask in the reflected radiance of omnipotence, who get their sustenance from it and who arrogantly carry out its mandates and crush any resistance to it? Are they not the hands and limbs of the monster, carrying out the orders of the head? Surely, they cannot be allowed to detach themselves from tho corpus by saying, "Those arms and legs are innocent - only the head is guilty."
In an authoritarian state, the head becomes the supreme authority for woe as well as weal. Those who subscribe to such a state submit to that principle. If they abjectly place all the power in the hands of one man, with me right reserved to check or limit or repudiate, they must accept the bitter with the sweet.
This is especially true of those in high places in the state -- these who choose to enjoy the honor, the emoluments and the power of such high stations. By accepting such attractive and lucrative posts under a head whose newer they know to be unlimited, they ratify in advance his every act, good or bad. They cannot say at the beginning, "The Fuehrer's decisions are final; we will have no voice in them; it is not for us to reason why; his will is law," and then, when the Fuehrer decrees aggressive war or barbarous inhumanities or broken covenants, to attempt to exculpate themselves by saying. "Oh, we were never in favor of those things."
One cannot escape the conviction that, had the war terminated in victory for Germany, all of the acts of Hitler, including those related to the charges in this indictment, would have been hailed as stroke of genius, and that this defendant would now be elbowing his way into the front row of those claiming to have successfully and victoriously carried out Hitler's orders and policies - in fact, claiming co-authorship in many. But with Germany defeated and Hitler dead, it becomes naively convenient to take refuge in the flimsy claim that no one except Hitler was in favor of the invasion of Poland and Russia and France and the rape of Holland and Belgium and Norway and Denmark.
The defendant insist that he knew nothing of the atrocities and violence which were cumulating day by day throughout Europe. Being a good German, he says, he supinely obeyed the decree which forbade listening to foreign broadcasts or reading foreign periodicals. He surrendered to a political philosophy which outlawed the ordinary means of knowledge and which prevented the formation of rationalized opinion or judgment. No one might read or listen or talk except in predetermined channels. Ignorance was prescribed by law.
The first weapon of tyranny is to keep its victims in darkness. The Germans were an intelligent, cultured people; they were not ignorant serfs. What a travesty to say that a people which has produced some of the greatest intellects in human history is not fit to be told the truth.
Desperate and discouraged peoples, distraught with the crushing problems of hunger and insecurity, have always cried out for a miracle worker to lead them out of the wilderness. Then is the golden opportunity for the mountebank with bland promises and soothing phrases to provide a poisonous panacea for their distress. In their desperation they fail to realize that despotism has a way of beginning with benevolence and ends by being merely despotic. Marquerading in the mantle of a messiah, the wily opportunist lulls them into subscribing to some glib fuhrerprinzip which means, "Ask no questions; leave everything to me." And when the debacle comes, they realize that they have left everything to him - honor, dignity, self-respect, liberty, even life itself - and they end up degraded, ashamed, impoverished and hopeless. But have type ended up wiser? The universal fear today is that in their desperation they will repeat the vicious process by saying, "Last time we picked the wrong man. Let us seek a new messiah. He will save us." The lessons of one generation are quickly forgotten by the next, but the inexorable laws of nature are immutable. The tragic fruits of tyranny and intolerance will always be the moral decay of peoples and the degradation of human dignity.
Over the heavy gates which shut in the hapless victims at Dachau is a legend reading, "Work will set you free." The toil of slaves cannot set them free; it only serves to further enslave them.
Come dry an enlightened German people will storm those gates and all others like then and recast them into an image of Truth - an imprerishable figure with eyes open and unbandaged. So long as Truth stands free and untarnished, no future Hitler will ever arise to deceive and degrade the German nation. Then there will never be another Dachau.
Everyone will remain seated while the defendant is removed from the courtroom by the Marshal.
The Tribunal will be in recess until tomorrow morning at 9:30 promptly in this courtroom.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until 0930 hours tomorrow morning.
(Tim Tribunal adjourned until 17 April 1947, at 0930 hours.)
Official transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Erhard Milch, defendant, sitting at Nuernberg, Germany, on 17 April 1947, 0930-0935, Justice Toms presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please take their seats. The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II. Military Tribunal II is now in session. God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal. There will be order in the courtroom.
THE PRESIDENT: The case of the United States of America against Erhard Milch, Case Number 2. The defendant will stand. This Tribunal takes no pleasure in performing the duty which confronts it, but the deliberate enslavement of millions must not go unexpiated. The barbarous acts which have been revealed here originated in the lust and ambition of comparatively few men, but all Germans are paying and will pay for the degradation of their souls and the debasement of the German honor, caused by following the false prophets who led them to disaster.
It would be a travesty on justice to permit these false leaders, including this defendant, to escape responsibility for the deception and betrayal of their people. It would be even a greater injustice to view with complacence the mass graves of millions of men, women, and children whose only crime was that they stood in Hitler's way. Retribution for such crimes against humanity must be swift and certain. Future would-be dictators and their subservient satellites must know what follows their defilement of international law and of every type of decency and fair dealing with their fellowmen. Civilization will be satisfied with nothing less.
It is the sentence of this Tribunal that the defendant Erhard Milch be confined to the Rebdorf Prison for the remainder of his natural life.
The Marshal will remove the defendant from the courtroom. The Secretary General will record the sentence of the Tribunal which I hand him.
This Tribunal will now be in recess until 1:30 this afternoon in Courtroom 581.
