"In March, 1941, part of Lofoten in Norway was destroyed.
"In April, 1942, the town of Telerag in Norway was destroyed.
"Entire villages were destroyed in France, among others, Oradoursur-Glane, Saint-Nizier and, in the Vercors, La Mure, Vassieuz, La Chappelle en Vercors. The town of Saint Die was burnt down and destroyed. The Old Port District of Marseilles was dynamited in the beginning of 1943 and resorts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts, particularly the town of Sanary, were demolished.
"In Holland there was most widespread and extensive destruction, not justified by military necessity, including the destruction of harbours, locks, dykes and bridges: immense devastation was also caused by inundations which equally were not justified by military necessity.
"(H) CONSCRIPTION OF CIVILIAN LABOUR "Throughout the occupied territories the defendants conscripted and forced the inhabitants to labour and requisitioned their services for purposes other than meeting the needs of the armies of occupation and to an extent far out of proportion to the resources of the countries involved.
All the civilians so conscripted were forced to work for the German war effort. Civilians were required to register and many of those who registered were forced to join the Todt Organization and the Speer Legion, both of which were semi-military organizations involving some military training. These acts violated Articles 46 and 32 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws or all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
"Particulars, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:
"1. Western Countries:
"In France, from 1942 to 1944, 964,813 persons were compelled to work in Germany and 747,000 to work in France for the German Army.
"In Luxembourg in 1944 alone, 2,500 men and 300 girls were conscripted for forced labor."
THE PRESIDENT: The Court will now adjourn until 2 o'clock.
(Whereupon, at 12:30 o'clock p.m. the Court recessed until 2 o'clock p.m. of the same day) attack, invade and commit other acts of aggression against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
(Whereupon, at 1705 hours the hearing of the Tribunal adjourned to reconvene on 21 November 1945, at 1000 hours.)
Official transcript of the International Military Tribunal, in the matter of:
The United States of THE PRESIDENT: A motion has been filed with the Tribunal and the Tribunal has given it consideration. Insofar as it may be a plea to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, it conflicts the Article 3 of the Charter and will not be entertained. Insofar as it may contain other arguments, which may be opened to the Defendents, they may be heard at a later stage. provides that after the indictment has been read in court, the Defendants shall be called upon to plead guilty or not guilty; I now direct the Defendants to plead either guilty or not guilty.
MR. RUDOLF DIX (Defense Counsel): May I speak to Your Lordship for just a moment?
THE PRESIDENT: You may not speak to me in support of the motion with which I have just dealt on behalf of the Tribunal. So far as that motion is a plea to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, it conflicts with Article 3 and will not be entertained. Insofar as it containes or may contain arguments, which may be open to the Defendants, those arguments may be heard later.
MR. RUDOLF DIX: As a speaker for the defense as a whole, I have another question I would like to ask. The defense counsel was forbidden to talk with the Defendants this morning. It is an absolute necessity that before the session the defence Counsel should speack with the Defentants. It sometimes happens that in the evening after the session one cannot reach one's Defentant, and it is also possible that one has to prepare things over night and one wants to talk with hime about the next morning. It is usually always possible that the defense counsel should speack to his client before the session. I, therefore, make the request in the name of the entire defense, that we be allowed to consult with our clients in the courtroom itself; otherwise we are not able to arrange our defense as we wish.
THE PRESIDENT: I am afraid that you cannot consult with your clients in the courtroom except by written communication. When you are out of the courtroom, security regulations can be carried out and you have, so far as those security regulations go, full opportunity to consult with your clients.
In the courtroom we must confine you to written communications to your clients. At the end of each day's sitting, you will have full opportunity to consult with them in private.
MR. RUDOLF DIX: I shall discuss this with my colleagues of the defense and we should like perhaps to return to this question.
DR. RALPH THOMA (Defense Counsel): May I have the floor?
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your name please.
DR. RALPH THOMA: Dr.Ralph Thoma. I represent the Defendant Rosenberg. Yesterday my client gave me a statement as regards the question of guilt or innocence. I took this statement and promised him to talk with him about it. Neither last night nor this morning have I had an opportunity to talk with him; and, consequently, I am not in a position, nor is my client In a position to make a statement as to whether he is quilty or not guilty. I consequently request an interruption of the trial so that I may speack with my client.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Thoma, the Tribunal will be prepared to adjourn for fiteen minutesin order that you may have an opportunity of consulting with your clients.
DR. RALPH THOMA: Thank you. I should like to make a statement. A number of my colleagues have just told me that they are in the same position as I am.
THE PRESIDENT: I meant that all defense counsel should have an opportunity of consulting with their clients; but I would point out to the defense counsel that they have had several weeks preparation for this trial, and that they must have anticipated that the provisions of Article 24 would be follwed, but now we will adjourn for fifteen minutes in which all of you may consult with your clients.
DR. RALPH THOMA: May I say something further in that respect, your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
DR. RALPH THOMA: We only found out a day before yesterday that statements should be made as regards innocence or guilt. Can this question be answered at greater length or only with the answer "yes" or "no". We have had no time to talk at great length about it.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment. The question will have to be answered in the words of Article 24 of the Charter, and those words are printed in italics: "The Tribunal shall ask each defendant whether he pleads guilty or not guilty." That is what they have to do at that stage. Of course the Defendants will have a full opportunity themselves, if they are called as witnesses, and through their counsel to make their defense fully at a later stage.
(A recess was taken.)
(The member of the Bench returned to the court room.)
THE PRESIDENT: I will now call upon the defendants to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. They will proceed in turn to a point in the dock opposite to the microphone.
HERMANN GOERING: Before I answer the question of the high
THE PRESIDENT: I informed the Court that defendants were
HERMANN GOERING: I declare myself in the sense of the
THE PRESIDENT: Rudolf Hess.
RUDOLF HESS: No.
THE PRESIDENT: That will be entered as a plea of not guilty (Laughter).
THE PRESIDENT: If there is any disturbance in court, those Joachim von Ribbentrop:
JOACHIM von RIBBENTROP: I declare myself in the sense of
THE PRESIDENT: Wilhelm Keitel.
WILHELM KEITEL: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: In the absence of Ernest Kaltonbrunner,
ALFRED ROSENBERG: I declare myself in the sense ofnthe
THE PRESIDENT: Hans Frank.
HANS FRANK: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Wilhelm Frick.
WILHELM FRICK: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Julius Streicher.
JULIUS STREICHER: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Walter Funk.
WALTER FUNK: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Hjalmar Schacht!
HJALMAR SCHACHT: I am guilty in no respect.
THE PRESIDENT: Karl Doenitz.
KARL DOENITZ: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Erich Raeder!
ERICH RAEDER: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Baldur von Schirach!
BALDUR von SCHIRACH: I declare myself in the sense of the
THE PRESIDENT: Fritz Sauckel!
FRITZ SAUCKEL: I declare myself in the sense of the
THE PRESIDENT: Alfred Jodl!
ALFRED JODL: Not guilty. What I have done or had to do, I
THE PRESIDENT: Franz von Papen!
FRANZ von PAPEN: I declare myself guilty not at all,
THE PRESIDENT: Arthur Seyss-Inquart!
ARTHUT SEYSS-INQUART: I declare myself not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Albert Speer!
ALBERT SPEER: Not guilty.
THE PRESIDENT: Konstantin von Neurath!
KONSTANTIN von NEURATH: I answer the question in the
THE PRESIDENT: Hans Fritzche!
HANS FRITZCHE: As regards this indictment, not guilty.
(At this point Hermann Goering arose in the prisoner's box.
THE PRESIDENT: You are not entitled to address the tribunal
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May it please Your Honors, 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 hands of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason. not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of fifteen 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 this magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honors.
In the prisoners' dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these miserable men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals, their fate is of little consequence to the world.
prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show than to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homos, and impoverishing its life. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to then is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive. 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. Those men created in Germany, under the "Fuhrerprinzip", a National Socialist depotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds toward those who were marked as "scapegoats." Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pro-Christian ages.
They excited the German ambition to be a "master race," which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbors. To sustain the "master race" in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as "displaced persons". At length bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping 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.
tion, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole Continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago today the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no Tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render, and its 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. eral 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. 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 those defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct to provoke retaliation make it hard to distinugish 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. these men to trial is to do them an injustice entitling them to some special consideration. These defendants may be hard pressed but they are not ill used. Let us see what alternative they would have to being tried. tracked down by 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 save them from punishment? Under the principles of the Moscow Declaration, those suspected war criminals who are not to be tried internationally must be turned over to individual governments for trial at the scene of their outrages. Many less responsible and less culpable American-held prisoners 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 the condemnation of this Tribunal, or if they obstruct or abort this trial, those who are Americanheld prisoners will be delivered up.
to our continental Allies. For these defendants, however, we have set up an 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 known protection to any man with a defense worthy of being heard. 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 have 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 already condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of each of these defendants for their commission. do not mean mere technical or incidental transgression of international conventions. We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants' positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of human beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar. foes. There is no count of the Indictment that cannot be proved by books and records. The Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these defendant 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, from the screen, some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.
the whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote. We know it came to power by an evil alliance between the most extreme of the Nazi revolutionists, the most unrestrained of the German reactionaries, and the most aggressive of the German militarists. If the German populace had willingly accepted the Nazi program, no 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. States hold them in no fear, and in no hate. It is true that the Germans have taught us the horrors of modern warfare, but the ruin that lies from the Rhine to the Danube shows that we, like our Allies, have not been dull pupils. If we are not awed by German fortitude and proficiency in war, and if we are not persuaded of their political maturity, we do respect their skill in the arts of peace, their technical competence, and the sober, industrious and self-disciplined character of the masses of the German people. In 1933, we saw the German people recovering prestige in the commercial, industrial and artistic world after the set-back of the last war. We beheld their progress neither with envy nor malice. The Nazi regime interrupted this advance. The recoil of the Nazi aggression has left Germany in ruins. The Nazi readiness to pledge the German word without hesitation and to break it without shame has fastened upon German diplomacy a reputation for duplicity that will handicap it for years. Nazi arrogance has made the boast of the "master race" a taunt that will be thrown at Germans the world over for generations. The Nazi nightmare has given the German name a new and sinister significance through out the world which will retard Germany a century.
The German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to settle with these defendants. theme of our case, is history. From September 1st, 1939, when the German armies crossed the Polish frontiers, until September, 1941, when they met epic resistance at Stalingrad, German arms seemed invincible. Denmark and Norway, The Netherlands and France, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Balkans and Africa, Poland and the Baltic States, and parts of Russia, all had been overrun and conquered by swift, powerful, well-aimed blows. That attack upon the peace of the world is the crime against international society which brings into international cognizance crimes in its aid and preparation which otherwise might be only internal concerns. It was aggressive war, which the nations of the world had renounced. It was war in violation of treaties, by which the peace of the world was sought to be safeguarded. 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 dismmembered to come so near carrying out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work in organization, and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants and their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war. some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the German state, their subjugation of the German people, their terrorism and extermination of dissident elements, their planning and waging of war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in the conduct of warfare, their deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered peoples, - all these are ends for which they acted in concert; and all of these phases of the conspiracy were common ones 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 and utilized to accomplish these ends. We will show how the entire structure of offices and officials was dedicated to the criminal purposes and committed to use of the criminal methods planned by these defendants and their co-conspirators, many of whom war and suicide have put beyond reach. the Indictment, and to deal with the common plan or conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. My emphasis will not be on individual barbarities and perversions which may have occurred independently of any central plan. One of the dangers ever present is that this trial may be protracted by details of particular wrongs and that we will become lost in a "wilderness of single instances". Nor will I now dwell on the activity of individual defendants except as it may contribute to exposition of the common plan. brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war. possess the power which they have so used. The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazi Party. Some of the defendants were with it from the beginning. Others joined only after success seemed to have validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with immunity from the processes of the law. Adolf Hitler became its supreme leader or "fuehrer" in 1921.
On the 24th of February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had proclaimed its program.
I cannot undertake to read it in full. Some of its purposes would commend themselves to many good citizens, such as the demands for "profit-sharing in the great industries," "generous development of provision for old age," "creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class," "a land reform suitable to our national requirements," and "raising the standard of health." It also made a strong appeal to that sort of nationalism which in ourselves we call patriotism and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded "equality of rights for the German people in its dealing with other nations and the 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) for the enrichment of our people and the settlement of our surplus population." All these, of course, were legitimate objectives if they were to be attained without resort to aggressive warfare. It demanded "the abolition of mercenary troops and the formation of a national army." It proclaimed that "In view of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a nation by every war, personal enrichment through war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand, therefore, the ruthless confiscation of all war profits." I do not criticise this policy. Indeed, I wish it were universal. I merely point out that in a time of peace, in 1920, war was a preoccupation of the Party, and it started the work of making war less offensive to the masses of the people. With this it combined a program of physical training and sports for youth that became, as we shall see, the clak for a secret program of military training. anti-Semitic program. It declared that no Jew or any person of nonGerman blood could be a member of the nation. Such persons were to be disfranchised, disqualified for office, subject to the alien laws, and entitled to nourishment only after the German population had first been provided for. All who had entiered Germany after August 2, 1914 were to be required forthwith to depart, and all non-German immigration was to be prohibited.
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 the risk of their lives.
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. The period of meditation which followed produced "Mein Kampf", henceforth the source of law for the Party workers and a source of considerable revenue to its supreme leader. The Nazi plans for the violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then turned to plans for its capture. in terms of the loose organizations which we of the western world call "political parties." In discipline, structure, and method the Nazi Party was not adapted to the democratic process of persuasion. It was an instrument of conspiracy and of coercion. The Party was not organized to take over power in the German State by winning support of a majority of the German people. It was organized to seize power in defiance of the will of the people.
The Nazi Party, under the "Fuehrerprinzip," 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 may have supported the movement in one way or another were actual Party members. The membership took the Party oath which in effect, amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral responsibility. This was the oath: "I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he designates for me." The membership in daily practice followed its leaders with an idolatry and selfsurrender more Oriental than Western.
The significance of this early declaration is that it became the publicly known and avowed policy of this party, that every man who joined in forwarding its purposes knew and understood.
The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an authoritarian and totalitarian program for Germany. It demanded creation of a strong central power with unconditional authority, nationalization of all businesses which had been "amalgamated," and a "reconstruction" of the national system of education which "must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State (state sociology)." Its hostility to civil liberties and freedom of the press was distinctly announced in these words: "It must be forbidden to publish newpapers which do not conduce to the national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all tendencies in art or literature of a kind likely to disintegrate our life as a nation and the suppression of institutions which might militate against the above requirements," of course, as interpreted by the Nazis. guage of religious liberty, for the Nazi program stated, "We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State." But, it continues with the limitation, "so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race." Of course, again according to their conception.
The Party program foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It announced, "We demand ruthless war upon those whose activities are injurious to the common interests", and it demanded that such offenses be punished with death. this program as a belligerent one certain to precipitate conflict. The Party platform concluded, "The leaders of the Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences - if necessary, at the sacrifice of their lives toward the fulfillment of the foregoing points." It is this Leadership Corps of the Party, not its entire membership, that stands accused as a criminal organization.