testified that he had done everything he could to bring Adolf Hitler to power and to carry out the ideas and the program of the National Socialist party. But whatever the defendant undertook in this respect was done openly. of the defendant Hess. The aim of the National Socialists before they assumed power can be expressed in a few words : ty; elimination of the huge mass of unemployment which had arisen in consequen ce of that Treaty, and of the unreasonnable Reparations policy of Germany's former enemies; elimination of the signs of degenaracy - political, economic, social and moral -connected with that unemployment; and finally, the restoration of the sovereignty of the German Reich in all spheres.
revision of the Versailles Treaty was, if necessary, to be carried out by violent means and by war. The political, military and economic situation in which Germany found herself before the assumption of power - a situation in which it could only be a question of eliminating, the terrible consequences of the economic collapse and of enabling seven million unemployed again to play their part in the economic process - necessarily made any serious thought of a war of aggression appear futile. common plan, the evidence and, in particular, the testimony given by the witness Dr. Lammers and the defendant himself in the witness box, has show in the contrary that Frank did not belong to the circle of Hitler's closer collaborators. The Prosecution was unable to present to the Tribunal a single document dealing with important political or military decisions with which the defendant Frank was connected. In particular, the defendant Frank was not present at any conference with Hitler which the Prosecution considered especially important for proving the alleged common plan, the minutes of which con ferences the Prosecution has submitted as Exh ibits USA numbers 25 to 34. ning the re-introdution of General Conscription of March 16, 1935. I have already explained in detail what led to the promulgation of that law and why it cannot be looked upon as an infringement of the Versailles Treaty.
The defendant Frank signed that law in his capacity as Reich Minister, as did all the other members of the Reich Government. That law, which had as its object the restoration-at least in the military sphere- of the sovereignty of the German Reich, did not harm to any other nation. Nor did the content of that law, or the circumstances which led to its enactment, allow the conclusion that it was part of a common plan whose object was the launching of a war of aggression. seventeen years, that the voice of a nation without military power, and in particular a nation in Germany's geographical and military situation, cannot make itself heard in the concert of nations if it has not at tis disposal adequate instruments of power.
The Government of the German Reich faced the consequences of this realization, after equality of rights had been promised the German people over and over again for fourteen years and that promise had not been kept, and in particular after it had become clear in the years 1933 and 1934 that the Disarmament Conference would not be capable of fulfilling its appointed functions. that law. of opwer and up to the beginning of the war, was confined almost exclusively to the execution of tasks connected with the leadership of the Academy for German Law and the National Socialist Lawyers' Association. concerning its establishment of July 11, 1933. It was intended to encourage the reform of German legal processes and, in close and constant cooperation with the appropriate legislative authorities, to put the National Socialist program into practice in the whole sphere of law. The Academy was under the supervision of the Reich Minister of Justice and the Reich Minister of the Interior. The function of the Academy was to prepare draft of statutes. Legislation itself was exclusively a matter for the appropriate Reich Ministries for the various departments.
Legal properties in this sense are honor, freedom, life and carnings from work. bled to procure someone to defend him who is capable of making legal statements on his behalf and he must have an impartial hearing according to law. If these principles are applied to their full extent, then the Germanic ideal of law is fulfilled." employed in a police-ruled State and imply, moreover, the unmistakable rejection of the system of concentration camps.. The defendant Frank had actually spoken against the establishment of concentration camps before the date indicated. The evidence has shown that in the year 1933, in his capacity as Bavarian Minister of Justice, he was opposed to the concentration camp at Dachau, that he urged the application of the so-called legality principle that is the prosecution of all offences by the State -even in these camps, and that, over and above this, he demanded the dissolution of the concentration campat Dachau. That this last point is a fa is shown by the evidence, taken on commission of the witness, Dr. Stepp.
The Prosecution also appears to see in the sentence "Law is what is useful to the people" an indication of the participation of the defendant Frank in the alleged common plan. Such a conclusion could only be drawn from a complete misapprehension of the idea which the defendant Frank wished to express by means of this sentence.
It is merely the issue of a challenge a to the individualistically, ever-sensitized legal idea. In the same sense as is implied in the phrase "The common good before one's own" the sentence quoted is intended to express the demand for a legal system, to a greater extent than in previous years, takes account of common law and socialist tendencies.
It is in reality nothing more than a different way of saying: Salus publica suprema lex. unthinkable that the defendant Frank could have belonged to the inner circle of Hitler's collaborators. The differences of outlook in regard to the functions of law were bound to become more apparent in the course of the war. It could therefore cause no surprise that after the death of the former Reich Minister of Justice, Dr. Guertner, it was not the defendant Frank who was appointed as his successor, but the President of the People's Court, Dr. Thierack.
And to sum up: It may be said that there is no factual foundation for the assumption that the defendant Frank participated in a common plan, a common plan which had as its object the waging of on aggressive war and in connection therewith the commission of crimes againt the rulesof war. Before I turn to the points of accusation brought against the defendant Front within the framework of his career as Governor-General, I will refer shortly to responsibility under penal law as a member of the organizations accused of criminality.
So far as Frank's responsibility as member of the Reich Government is under investigation, I can here refer in the main to the statements which I will also make in the case of the defendant Hess. The only difference lies in the fact that whereas Hess too was only Reich Minister without Portfolio, he had a as the Fuehrer's Deputy under the Fuehrer's decree of July 27, 1934 a considerable part to play in the preparation of laws. That however, was not the case with the defendant Frank. Frank had hardly any influence at all on the legislation of the Reich. That is why he was co-signatory of so extraordinary few Reich laws. With the exception of the law of the 16th of March, 1935, by which general conscription was re-introduced, his name is to be found under none of the laws which the Prosecution has presented to the Tribunal as relevant to the proof of the criminal nature of the Reich Government as an organization.
Reich Law Department, was also a member of the leadership Corps of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. An investigation of this point of accusation Frank which fulfil the requirements of any penal law. For the rest, and apart from that, here too I can refer to my statements in the case of the defendant Hess. a General of the SS. The evidence has shown that Frank at no time belonged to the SS and that he did not even have the honorary rank of a general of the SS. On the other hand, he was an Obergruppenfuehrer in the SA. With respect to the application made by the Prosecution to declare that organization as criminal too. the same may be said as in the case of the application to declare the Leadership Corps criminal. The Charter and the Prosecution here again depart from the principle which hitherto has been considered an indispensable component of my modern criminal law practice, the principle, namely, that no punishment is admissible unless guilt has been established in every individual case.
My Lords: defendant Frank as Governor-General. When the Polish Government had left the country after Poland's military collapse, the German occupying forces were faced with the task of building up an administration without the help of any parliamentary representation or any representatives of the former Polish STate. The difficulties arising out of this situation were bound to be all the greater because, in spite of the comparatively short time that the war had lasted, the war damage, especially to the communications system, was not inconsiderable. Above all, however the establishment of an orderly administrqtion was rendered more difficult by the fact that the unitary economic territory of the former Polish State was divided into three parts. Of the 388,000 square kilometers which made up the territory of the former Polish State, about 200,000 square kilometers were taken over by the Soviet Union, 97,000 sq. km. formed the Government-General, while the rest was incorporated in the German Reich. A change came on August 1, 1941. On that date Galicia was annexed to the GovernmentGeneral as a new district, whereby the territory of the Government-General was increased to an area of approximately 150,000 square kilometers with about 18 million inhabitants.
This frontier-delimitation made it all the more difficult for the administration, as the agricultural excess products all went to the Soviet Union, while on the other hand, important industrial cities such as Lodz, and above all the coal-fields of Dombrowa, fell to the Reich. was set up to cover the four military districts of East Prussia, Posen, Lodz and Cracow, and Commander-in-Chief General von Rundstedt being placed at the head of that Government. The defendant Frank became Supreme Chief of Administration (Oberverwaltungschef). into force of the Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor concerning the administration of the occupied Polish territories under the date of 12 October Through this decree the defendant Frank was appointed Governor-General for the occupied Polish territories which were not incorporated in the Reich and which shortly afterwards became known as the "Government-General". question as to whether the administration of the territories of the former Polish State jointly designated as the Government-General should have conformed to the principle of occupatis bellica(occupation of enemy territory), or whether it should not rather be assumed that the principles of dobellatio (complete subjection and incorporation in a foreign State) were applicable in that case. by virtue of his office of Governor-General. According to Article 3 of the Fuehrer Decree of October 12, 1939 the Governor-General was directly subordinate to the Fuehrer. The same provision placed all branches of the administration in the hands of the Governor-General. powers as it would seem at first sight. The Fuehrer's Decree itself, provided in Article 5, that the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich could also make laws for the territory of the Government-General.
The Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year-Plan had the same power. Articl 6 provided that over and above all, the highest Reich authorities could issue decrees necessary for planning within the German living space and economic area.
and that these would be effective also for the Government-General. as provided in the Fuehrer Decree of October 12, 1939, other powers were conferred at a later dat, which impaired to unequal degree the principle of a military administration. That is particularly true of the position of the Plenipotentiary for Labour. I refer at this point to the appropriate documents presented by the Prosecution and the Defense, in particular to the Fuehrer Decree of March 21, 1942, in which it is expressly provided that the powers of the Plenipotentiary for Labour extend to the territory of the GovernmentGeneral. The whole armament industry in the Government-General was at first in the hands of the OKW, but after the establishment of the Reich Ministry of Armaments, it came under the jurisdiction of the latter.
The evidence has also shown that in other directions too the principle of military administration was extensively infringed upon. For this I refer to the statements of the witnesses Dr. Lammers and Dr. Buehler and to the contents of the documents submitted by me, especially the document USA 135. This deals with the directives in "special matters concerning instruction No. 21" (case Barbaressa)", in which it is expressly provided that the Commander-in-Chief of the Army shall be entitled "to order such measures in-the Government-General a are necessary for the execution of his military duties and for safeguarding the troops", and in which the Commander-in-Chief is empowered to delegate his authority to the Army groups and armies. all special powers, however, pale beside the special position allotted to Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler even in respect of the territory of the GovernmentGeneral. The evidence, and particularly the testimony of Dr. Bilfinger, councillor in the RSHA, shows that as early as in 1939, when the defendant was appointed Governor-General, a secret decree was issued in which it was provided that the Higher SS and Police-Deader East was to receive his instructions direct from the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police Himmler. Similarly, it is provided in the Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor for the Consolidation of the German Nation that the Reichsfuehrer SS should be directly empowered to effect the formation of new German Settlement areas by means of resettlements. These two decrees conferred on the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler powers which from the very first day of the existence of the Government-General were to confront its administration with almost insurmountable difficulties. It was very soon evident that the general Administration under the Governor-General had at its disposal no executive organs in the true meaning of the term. Since the Higher SS and Police-leader East received his instructions and orders direct from Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler and refused to carry out instructions emanating from the Governor-General, it was very soon seen that in reality there were two separate authorities ruling over the Government-General. The difficulties which thus arose were bound to become all the greater as Higher SS and Policeleader Krueger, who for not loss than four years was Himmler's direct representative in the Government-General, did not even inform the administration of the Government-General before carrying out police measures.
administration lacking executive police organs is in the long run not capable of carrying out its appointed functions. This is even true under normal conditions, but must be more especially the case in the administration of occupied territory. If we remember, moreover, not only that Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler issued his instructions direct to the Higher SS and Police leader, ignoring the Governor-General, but that over and above this, the offices III, IV, V & VI of the RSHA also gave direct orders, namely to the Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Cracow - then we can assess the difficulties with which the civil administration of the Government-General had to wrestle day by day. every attempt to reach some form of cooperation with the Security Police, unless he was prepared to relinquish entirely any hope of building up a civil administration in the Government-General. And in fact the history of the administration of the Government-General -- which lasted more than five years is for the greater part nothing but a chronicle of uninterrupted struggles between the Governor-General and the administration on the one hand and, on the other, the Security Police (including the SD) represented by Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler and the Higher SS and Police leader East. resettlements. As Reichs Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation Himmler and his organs carried out resettlement measures without even getting into previous contact with the administration of the GovernmentGeneral or informing the Governor-General.
The numerous protests of the Governor-General, addressed to Dr. Lammers, Reichsminister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery, with regard to the measures taken by the Reichsfuehrer and the Higher SS and Police leader East and the difficulties they put in the way of the administration of that territory, have been established by the efidence. These protests led in the year 1942 to an attempted new regulation of the relationship between the administration and the police.
In retrospect, it can be said today as a result of the evidence that even this attempt was only utilized by Himmler and the Security Police to undermine internally and externally the position of the Governor-General and his civil administration. Security was established in the Government-General, and the Higher SS and Police leader was appointed State Secretary. According to Article II of this Decree, the State Secretary for Security also became the representative of the Reichsfuehrer SS in his capacity as Reichs Commissioner for the consolidation of the German nation. The, decisive provision of this decree is contained in Article IV, in which it is stated verbatim:
"The Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of German Police can issue direct instructions to the State Secretary for Security in natters pertaining to Security and the Consolidation of the German nation." the establishment of the Government-General - which also provided that the Higher SS and Police leader East was to receive his instructions direct from the Berlin central offices and above all from the Reichsfuehrer SSin person was expressly and now publicly confirmed. It is true that Article V of the Fuehrer Decree of May 7, 1942 provided that in case of differences of opinion between the Governor-General and the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of German Police the Fuehrer's decision was to be obtained through the Reichs Minister and Chief of Chancellery. when he appeared as witness before this Tribunal. He testified that in so far as he found it possible at all to gain the Fuehrer's ear in these matters, the latter on principle invariably approved Himmler's view. This is not surprising if we remember Himmler's position in the German Governmental system, particularly during the later war years. This deprived the defendant Frank of the last possibility of influencing in any way the measures taken by Himmler and the Higher SS and Police leader East. 1942, the scope of duties of the State Secretary for Security had to be newly defined.
Both the Higher SS and Police leader, and backing him, the Reichsfuehrer SS, attempted to bring as much as possible under their jurisdiction in connection with the new regulation of the competence of the State Secretariat; on the other hand, the Governor-General, in the interest of the maintenance of some sort of order in the administration, naturally tried to obtain control of at least certain departments of the order Police and the administration Police. There is no doubt at all that it was the Police that emerged the victor in these struggles. the transfer of offices to the State Secretary for Security - to declare himself willing to transfer to the State Secretary all the departments of the Security Police and the order Police. I have submitted this decree to the Tribunal (together with its two appendices A and B) in the course of the evidence as Exhibit Frank No. 4. The two appendices list all the departments of the order and security police that have ever existed in the German Police system. In Appendix A, which covers the departments of the order police, there are 26 numbers in which not only all the departments of the order police are transferred to the State Secretary for Security, but over and above that, almost all the departmental functions of the so-called administration police. I will only mention No. 18 as one example among many. This transfers to the order Police, and therewith to the Higher SS and Police leader, all matters connected with price control. What is true of the order Police is true in still greater measure of the departments of the Security Police. No change as compared with the earlier situation was brought about by placing under the jurisdiction of the Higher SS and Police leader the whole of the political and criminal police, political intelligence, Jewish affairs and similar departments; these competencies were already his as leader of the Security Police and the SD, and were made entirely independent of the administration of the Government-General under the secret decree of the year 1939. Departments were also transferred to the State Secretary for Security which had only the remotest connection with the tasks of the Security Police, i.e. matters such as the regulation of holidays and so on.
Of no inconsiderable importance are the twl last numbers in the appendix A and B, in which it is expressly provided that at conferences and meetings, particularly with the central Reich authorities, on all matters pertaining to the Order and security police, the Government-General -- not the Governor -should no represented by the Higher SS and Police Leader.
Therewith any competency possessed, by the Governor-General, even in regard to comparitively unimportant branches of the Administrative police, was transferred to the organs of Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, and the Government-General was thus deprived of even the last remnants of an executive of its own. conditions obtaining between administration and police in the Government-General, is it possible to form an even approximately correct appreciation of the events in the Government-General which form part of the subject of the indictment in this trial. tions against the defendant Dr. Prank in the main, by quotations from the defendant's diary. In this connection I have the following basic observation to make: but was compiled by stenographers who were present at Government conferences and other meetings with the Governor-General. The diary consists of 42 volumes with not less than 10,000 to 12,000 pages of typescript. of ditation by the Defendant, but in the form, of stenographers' transcripts. For the greater part--and this is evident from the Diary itself--the authoris of this Diary did not record the various speeches and remarks word for word, but made a summarized version in their own words. The entries in the Diary were not cheeked by the defendant and--again with one single exception--were not signed by him. The attendance lists stapled into several volumes of the Diary--they are only contained in such, volumes as relate to Government conferences--cannot be looked upon as a substitue for a confirmatory note.
many entries in the diary were not made on the basis of personal observations, but came about throught the fact that the author was told, by the participatns, about the subject of government meetings or other conferences after they had taken place, and then expressed it in the diary in his own words. be determined that the entries cannot be considered complete. erial evidential value of this diary must not be overestimated. The evidential value of this diary stands in no way in comparison to the evidential value of entries, which have been made personally by the persons in question. the following: importance in so far as the document is investigated in its entirety. The diary of the Defendant Frank with its 10,000 to 12 ,000 ages is me uniform document. It is improper to put in as evidence certain simple entries without showing the context in which alone some of them can be understood. But it is particularly improper--and this infringes the principles of any presentation of evidence--to select from some uniform whole, such as a long speech, a few sentences and put them in as evidence. In Document Book No.II, I have listed a few examples of this, and hereby refer to them. witness-box, the diary is a uniform whole; only in its entirety can it be probative, and form part of the presentation of evidence. I have read through that diary of more than 10,000 pages, and can only confirm his opinion. And that was why I did not use single entries in presenting my evidence, but put in the whole diary.
If I myself, in presenting evidence, have read certain single entries from the diary, and if in the course of my present address I shall quote a few more passages from it, then, just as in the case of the extracts put forward by the prosecution, their evidential value can certainly be gagued only within the framework of the whole diary.
established by the evidence: As the diaries show, and as is evident in particular from the testimony given by the witnesses Buehler, Boepple and Meidinger, the defendant Frank, in his capacity as Governor-General often made two or three improvised speeches in the course of one day. consist for the most part of single sentences from such speeches. If we take into consideration both the temperament of the defendant and his habit of expressing himself in an incisive manner, then that is another reason which tends to reduce the probative value of these extracts from the diary. And we actually do find many diary entries which flatly contradict other entries on the same subject occurring a little earlier or later. dant Frank, the following must not be left out of consideration--and this too may be looked up on as established by the evidence: It was a foregone conclusion that the defendant Frank, as open champion idea of a State resting on law and of the indepepdence of the judiciary, would come into increasingly sharp conflict with the representatives of the Police-State System; this developed to an even greater degree in the course of the war, both within the Reich territory and in occupied country. The representatives of the Police-State, however, were Reich Fuehrer SS Himmler and, for the area of the Government General, the Higher SS and Police Leader East, above all and in particular SS Ober gruppenfuehrer and General of Police Krueger.
The rela-
tions between the defendant Frank on the one hand, and Reich Fuehrer S S Himmler and his representative Obergruppenfuehrer Krueger on the other, had been extremely bad even at the time the Government-General was established. They detiriorated still more as the divergence of outlook concerning the tasks of the police came over more openly to the fore, and the defendant Frank was forced to make increasingly strong protests to the chief of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, and to the Fuehrer himself, regarding the violent measures taken by the Security Police and the SD. an executive of his own, had on the other hand no choice but to make repeated attempts to co-ordinate the work of the general administration with that of the police, in order to be in a position to carry out any administrative work at all. Obviously, those objectives demanded--at least on the face of things-a degree of conciliation towards the general attitude of the Security Police and, above all, of the Higher SS and Police Leader East. Moreover, the evidence has further established that the tension existing between the Governor-General and the Higher SS and Police Leader often reached such, a degree that the defendant Frank could not but feel himself menaced and--to quote the words of the witness Buehler--was no longer a free agent and master of his own decisions.
The testimony of the witnesses Bach-Zelowsky and Dr. Albrecht leave no doubt on this point. Quite rightly, therefore, the witness Dr. Buehler also pointed out that the defendant Frank expressed himself with particular vehemence when the Higher SS and Police Leader, or the Commander in Chief of the Security Police and the SD were present at conferences and that his utterances were made on quite a different note when he was speaking to an audience composed only of members of the administration. Even a cursory inspection of the diary will confirm this. All these circumstances must be taken into consideration in assessing the substantive evidencial value of the defendant Frank's diary.
only personal property that Frank was able to rescue from the castle at Cracow. On his arrest, he handed all the diaries to the officers who took him into custody. It would have been an easy matter for him to destroy those diaries. brought against the defendant, and their legal aspects. The defendant Frank is accused of having approved, led and participated in war crimes, and crimes agains t humanity in the administration of occupied territory. sovereign state, not an individual, can be a subject of International Law. To make International Law binding on an individual, International Law itself would have to lay down that a certain set of facts constitutes a wrong and that the rule thereby established is applicable to an individual creating such a set of facts. Only in that way can individuals, who under the law as it stands, are subjected only to municipal criminal law, by way of exception be bound directly by International Law. exceptional cases only, permits a State to punish the national of an enemy State who has fallen into its power, if before his capture, he has been guilty of infringing the rules of war. But even no re punishment is excluded if the deed was not committed on the person's own initiative, but can only he atrributed to his s tate of allegiance, moreover, the conception of war crimes and their factual characteristics are the subject of great controversy both in judicial decisions and in legal literature. nex to the IVth Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on hand, and purport to be a codification of certain section of in assessing the substantive evidencial value of the defendant Frank's diary.
only personal property that Frank was able to rescue from the castle at Cracow. On his arrest, he handed all the diaries to the officers who took him into custody. It would have been an easy matter for him to destroy those diaries. brought against the defendant, and their legal aspects. The defendant Frank is accused of having approved, led and participated in war crimes, and crimes agains t humanity in the administration of occupied territory. sovereign state, not an individual, can be a subject of International Law. To make International Law binding on an individual, International Law itself would have to lay down that a certain set of facts constitutes a wrong and that the rule thereby established is applicable to an individual creating such a set of facts. Only in that way can individuals, who under the law as it stands, are subjected only to municipal criminal law, by way of exception be bound directly by International Law. exceptional cases only, permits a State to punish the national of an enemy State who has fallen into its power, if before his capture, he has been guilty of infringing the rules of war. But even here punishment is excluded if the deed was not committed on the person's own initiative, but can only he atrributed to his s tate of allegiance, Moreover, the conception of war crimes and their factual characteristics are the subject of great controversy both in judicial decisions and in legal literature. nex to the IVth Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, and purport to be a codification of certain section of the law of war, list any sets of facts which could be inter-preted as a basis for the criminal liability of individuals.
In Article 3 of this Concention it is, on the contrary, expressly provided that not individuals but the State that has infringed the Rules, may, under certain circumstances, be liable to pay an indemnity and is also responsible for all acts done by persons belonging to its armed forces.
following should also be noted: of wars in the 19th Century. Those wars were confined in the main to the armed forces directly concerned in them. in respect of the geographical extent of the bellicose conflicts. On the contrary, the war became a struggle for extermination of the nations concerned, a struggle in which each belligerent party utilized the whole of its war potential and all its material and imponderable resources. War technique having been meanwhile brought to perfection point, the second World War was bound to destroy altogether the framework set up for the conduct of war by the Hague Rules for Land Warfare. That is easily shown by circumstantial evidence: the present condition of Europe today reveals this. If we remember in addition that in Germany alone the greater part of almost every city has been destroyed as a result of bombing raids; and not only that, but that considerably more than a million civilians thereby lost their lives and that in a single major raid on the city of Dresden almost 300,000 people were killed, then it will be possible to realize that the Hague Rules for Land Warfare (at any rate in respect of many activities coming under the rules of war) can no longer be an adequate expression of the laws and customs to be observed in waging war. But if any doubt should exist on this subject, then that doubt will certainly be removed on contemplation of the consequences of the two atom bombs which razed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the ground and killed hundreds of thousands of people. adduce the provisions of the Hague Rules for Land Warfare, even indirectly and by way of analogy, to establish individual criminal Liability. give a clear, general definition of the factual characteristics of so-called war crimes. Referring to the fact that even Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal only purports to furnish a list of examples, it will be realized that the question as to whether a certain line of conduct amounts to the commission of a war crime or not, can only be answered on the merits of each particular case and then only if all the circumstances are taken into consideration.
responsibility of the defendant Frank, the Prosecution submitted as Exhibit USA 609 (864 PS) minutes of a conference held by the Fuehrer with the Chief of the OKW on the future form of Polish relations to Germany. This Conference took place on October 17, 1939. It is alleged that these minutes alone, in which the administrative goals of the defendant Frank in the Government-General are said to be established,reveal a plan or conspiracy at variance with the laws of warfare and humanity. This is an inadmissible conclusion, at least in so far as the defendant Frank is concerned. the defendant Frank with a task in conformity with the administrative aims demanded in that conference. Moreover, this seems very unlikely, because the directives laid down at that conference dealt mainly with measures which could only be carried out, not by the general administration, but alone by the Security Police, the SD and the other organs and offices under Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler. In this connection special mention should also be made of the powers entrusted to Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler ( before the date of that conference) in his capacity of Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation. Actually, there is at the end of document USA-609, a reference to a commission with which Himmler was charged. In consideration of the fact that the defendant Frank, in the course of a short interview with Hitler, about the middle of September 1939, had been told to take over the civil administration of occupied Polish territory as Chief of Administration and had not seen Hitler for a very long time after that, it can safely be assumed that the directives laid down at the conference between Hitler and the Chief of the OKW were intended, not for the defendant Frank, but for Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, who was the only person to have the necessary executive organs at his disposal.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.
(A recess was taken.)