Thus was the purpose to subjugate German labor accomplished. In the words of Ley, this accomplishment consisted "in eliminating the association character of the trade union and employees' associations, and in its places we have substituted the conception 'soldiers of work'." The productive manpower of the German nation was thus brought under Nazi control and discipline. By these steps the defendants won the battle to liquidate labor unions as potential opposition and were enabled to impose upon the working class the burdens of preparing for aggressive war. answered our indictment with suicide. Apparently he knew no better answer.
2. I take up the battle against the churches, the second in the described elements that must be defeated. ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody's ideology. It is not because the Nazi themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches. point. Martin Bormann in June, 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. I quote from it. The decree provided: "With the Party, its components, and attached units, the Fuehrer has created for himself thereby the German Reich leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuehrer with the help of the National Socialist Party must be eliminated.
More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs and pastors. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich government, and by its direction the party, its components, and attached units have a right to leadership of the people. Just as the deleterious influence of astrologers, seers, and other fakirs are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed. Not until this has happened does the state leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all time."
Christian influence will be proved by such items as this telegram from the Gestapo, Berlin, to the Gestapo, Nurnberg on July 24, 1938, which recites what was going on in Rottenburg. (Document No. 848-PS).
I got from the Gestapo a telegram signed by Dr. Best from the Berlin office of the 23rd of July 1938.
"In connection with my report (special delivery of 23 July 1938 subject: Bishop Dr. Sproll of Rottenburg, I further communicate that the following teletype from the Gestapo office in Stuttgart just came in here: The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants, about 2,500-3,000, were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstrations. The town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party Member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace and beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows, and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg, and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth. Finally the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the one they are seeking. They *---* then be persuaded to leave the building. After the evacuation of the palace by the demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber, who left Rottenburg in the night.
Groeber wants to turn to the Fuehrer and Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick anew. On the course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I shall immediately hand in a full report, after I am in the act of suppressing counter mass meetings. Gestapo Office Stuttgart. In case the Fuehrer has instructions to give in this matter, I request that these be transmitted most quickly, best by telephone to Gestapo Office, telephone Berlin 12 00 40 attention of Regierung Assistant Freytag, so that corresponding instructions can be forwarded to Stuttgart.
(signed) Dr. Best. " the proposal of Kerrl as Church Minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its Supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that Naziism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war. such as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel. The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazis' own purposes. In September, 1933, Mueller was appointed the Fuehrer's representative with power to deal with the "affairs of the Evangelical Church" in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Paster Niemoeller was sent to concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the Churches occurred.
Catholic Church. After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in July, 1933 in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood and its members, was carried out. Church Schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith.
THE PRESIDENT: We shall now take our noon recess.
(Whereupon at 12:30 o'clock the adjournment was made)
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for fifteen minutes at half past three and then continue until half past four.
JUSTICE JACKSON: I was about to take up CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE JEWS. the Nazis were those against the Jews. Those in Germany, in 1933, numbered about 500,000. In the aggregate, they had made for themselves positions which excited envy, and had accumulated properties which excited the avarice of the Nazis. They were few enough to be helpless and numerous enough to be held up as a menace. ting Jews. What we charge against these defendants is not those arrogances and pretensions which frequently accompany the intermingling of different races and peoples and which are likely, despite the honest efforts of Government, to produce regrettable crimes and convulsions. It is our purpose to show plans and designs to which all Nazis were fanatically committed, to annihilate all Jewish people. These crimes were organized and promoted by the Party Leadership, executed and protected by the Nazi officials, as we shall convince you by written orders of the Secret State Police itself. policy. It was a policy directed against other nations as well as against the Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism was promoted to divide and embitter the democratic peoples and to soften their resistance to the Nazi aggression.
As Robert Ley himself declared, "The second German secret weapon is Anti-Semitism because if it is constantly pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider."
Anti-Semitism also has been aptly credited with being a "spearhead of terror." The ghetto was the laboratory for testing repressive measures. Jewish property was the first to be expropriated, but the custom grew and included similar measures against Anti-Nazi Germans, Poles, Czechs, Frenchman, and Belgians. Extermination of the Jews enabled the Nazis to bring a practiced hand to similar measures against Poles, Serbs, and Greeks. The plight of the Jew was a constant threat to opposition and discontent among other elements of Europe's population -- pacifists, conservatives, communists, Catholics, Protestants, socialists. It was in fact, a threat to every dissenting opinion and to every non-Nazi's life. violent measures, such as disfranchisement and discriminations against their religion, and the placing of impediments in the way of success in economic life. It moved rapidly to organized mass violence against them, physical isolation in ghettos, deportation, forced labor, mass starvation, and extermination. The Government, the Party formations indicted before you as criminal organizations, the Secret State Police, the Army, private and semi-public associations, and "spontaneous" mobs that were carefully inspired from official sources, were all agencies that were concerned in this persecution. Nor was it directed against individual Jews for personal bad citizenship or unpopularity. The avowed purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a whole, an end in itself; a measure of preparation for war, and a discipline for conquered peoples. methodically and thoroughly pursued that despite German defeat and Nazi prostration, this Nazi aim largely has succeeded. Only remnants of the European Jewish population remain in Germany, in the countries which Germany occupied, and in those which were her satellites or collaborators.
Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in Nazi dominated Europe, 60 percent are authoritatively estimated to have perished. 5,700,000 Jews are missing from the countries in which they formerly lived, and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for by the normal death rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among displaced persons. History does not record a crime perpetrated against so many victims or ever carried out with such calculated cruelty. these defendants and believe that in this Twentieth Century human beings could inflict such sufferings as will be proved here on their own countrymen as well as upon their so-called "inferior" enemies. Particular crimes, and the responsibility of defendants for them, are to be dealt with by the Soviet Government's Counsel, when committed in the East, and by Counsel for the Republic of France when committed in the West. I advert to them now only to show their magnitude as evidence of a purpose and a knowledge common to all defendants, of an official plan rather than of a capricious policy of some individual commander, and to show a continuity of Jewish persecution from the rise of the Nazi conspiracy to its collapse which forbids us to believe that any person could be identified with any part of Nazi action without approving this most conspicious item in their program. persecutions. The defendant Streicher led the Nazis in anti-Semitic bitterness and extremism. In March of 1942 he complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way of "radical solution of the Jewish question in Europe", and quoted enthusiastically as the Twentieth Century solution the fuehrer's proclamation of February 24, 1942 that "the Jew will be exterminated". (Document No. 1957PS). And on November 4, 1943, Streicher declared that the Jews, and I quote his words, "have disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish plague has for centuries beset the people of Europe, has ceased to exist." (Document No. 1965-PS, Nov. 4, 1943). Streicher now the effrontery to tell us he is "only a Zionist" and he only wants to return the Jews to Palestine.
But on May, 1, 1942 (Document No. 1979-PS) he wrote:
"It is also not only an European problem! The Jewish question is a world question! Not only is Germany not safe long as Jews live in the rest of the world."
say, summarized in his Diary in 1944 the Nazi policy thus: "The Jews are a race which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end." (Document No. 2233-PS, Vol. 1944, P. 26.) And earlier, speaking of his function as Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank confided to his diary this sentiment: "Of course I cannot eliminate all lice and Jews in only a year's time." (Document No. 2233-PS, Vol. IV, 1940, p. 1158.) I could multiply endlessly this kind of Nazi ranting but I will leave it to the evidence and turn to the fruit of this perverted thinking. law, but the law itself was employed to some extent. There were the infamous Nurnberg decrees of September 15, 1935. (R. 613-L.I., P. 1146.) The Jews were segregated into ghettos and put into forced labor; they were expelled from their professions; their property was expropriated; all cultural life, the press, the theatre, and schools were prohibited them; and the SD was made responsible for them. (Documents Nos. 112-PS, 212-PS, 069-PS.) This was an ominous guardianship.
It was ordered that "An eventual act by the civilian population against the Jews is not to be prevented as long as this is compatible with the maintenance of order and security in the rear of fighting troops." And again, "The first main goal of the German measures must be the strict segregation of Jewry from the rest of the population. In the execution of this, first of all, is the seizing of the Jewish populace by the introduction of a registration order and similiar, appropriate measures. Then immediately, the wearing of the recognition sign, consisting of a yellow Jewish star, is to be brought about and all rights of freedom for Jews are to be withdrawn. They are to be placed in ghettos, and, at the same time, are to be separated according to sexes. The entire Jewish property is to be seized and confiscated, with the exception of that which is necessary for a bare existence."
the assassination in Paris of the German Legation Councillor von Rath. Heydrich, Gestapo head, sent a teletype to all Gestapo and SD offices with directions for handling "spontaneous" uprisings anticipated for the nights of November 9 and IQ, 1938, and directed them to aid in destruction of Jewish-owned property and protect only that of Germans. (Document No. 765-PS.) No more cynical document ever came into evidence.
Then there is a report by an SS Brigade Leader, Dr. Stahlig, to Himmler, dated in 1942 (Document No. L-180)--and it will be put in evidence -- which recites the measures taken against Jews, as they proceeded in occupied countries, and I quote:
"Similarly, anti-semitic forces were induced to start progroms "Following our orders, the Security Police was determined to solve took the first actions by way of natural reaction.
.."
Of course, it is self-evident that these "uprisings" were managed by the government and the Nazi Party. If we were in doubt, we could resort to Streicher's memorandum of April 14, 1939, which says, "The anti-Jewish action of November, 1938 did not arise spontaneously from the people. * * * Part of the party formation have been charged with the execution of the anti-Jewish action." (Document No. 406-PS.) Jews as a whole were fined a billion Reichsmarks. They were excluded from all businesses, and claims against insurance companies for their burned properties were confiscated, all by decree of the defendant Goering. (Reich Law Register, 1938, Teil I, No. 189, pp. 1579-1582. Document No. L-1.)
Synagogues were the objects of a special vengeance. On November 10, 1938, the following order was given: "By order of the Group Commander, all Jewish Synagogues in the area of Brigade 50 have to be blown up or set afire.
* * * The operation will be carried out in civilian clothing. * * * Execution of the order will be reported * * ." (Document No. 1721-PS.) Some 40 teletype messages from various police headquarters, which will be introduced to you, will tell the fury with which all Jews were pursued in Germany on those awful November nights. The SS troops were turned loose and the Gestapo supervised. Jewish owned property was destroyed. The Gestapo ordered twenty to thirty thousand "well-to-do- Jews" to be arrested. Concentration camps were to receive them and the order provided healthy Jews, fit for labor, were to be taken. (Document No. L-13) (Document No. L-33). against the Jews expanded. The Nazi plan never was limited to extermination in Germany; always it contemplated extinguishing the Jew in Europe and often in the world. In the west, the Jews were killed and their property taken over in occupied countries. But the campaign achieved its zenith of savagery in the East. The Eastern Jew has suffered as no people every suffered. Their sufferings were carefully reported to the Nazi authorities to show faithful adherence to the Nazi design. I shall refer only to enough of the evidence of these to show the extent of the Nazi design and common plan for killing Jews. think me intemperate and unreliable. Fortunately, we need not take the word of any witness but the Germans themselves. I invite you now to look at a few of the vast number of captured German orders and reports that will be offered in evidence, to see what a Nazi invasion meant. We will present such evidence as the report of Action Group A of October 15, 1941, which boasts that in overruning the Baltic States, "Native Anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against the Jews during the first hours after occupation * * * . " (Document No. L-180, p. 4.) The report continues:
"From the beginning it was to be expected that the Jewish problem in the East could not be solved by pogroms alone.
In hilation of the Jews.
Special detachments reinforced by selected tions both in the town and in rural areas.
The actions of the execution detachments were performed smoothly."
"The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to 71,105.
During the pogroms in Kowno 3,800 Jews were elimi nated, in the smaller town about 1,200 Jews."
"In Latvia, up to now a total of 30,000 Jews was executed.
500 were eliminated by pogroms in Riga." October 20, 1941, which describes these executions in more detail. Let me quote from it:
"... The first lieutenant explained that the police of all Jews here in the town of Sluzk, within two days . . Then I requested him to postpone the action one day.
However, he allotted for Sluzk.
Within these two days, the town of Sluzk had to be cleared of Jews by all means . . . All Jews without ported in spite of our agreement.
It is true that part of delay outside of the town . . . For the rest, as regards the execution of the action.
I must point out to my deepest regret that the latter bordered already on sadism.
The town itself offered a picture of horror during the action.
With indescrib dwellings and herded together.
Everywhere in the town shots Jews accumulated.
The White Ruthenians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement. Regardless of the fact that the Jewish people, among whom were also tradesmen, were mistreated in a terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Ruthenian people, the White Ruthenians themselves were also worked over with rubber clubs and rifle butts. There was no question of an action against the Jews any more. It rather looked like a revolution. . ." slaughtered. Another example relates that - - (Document No. R-102) arrival of the Wehrmacht. report of the Wehrmacht, the Army, which became implicated in this business along with the SS. Jewish men and women above the age of 16 and capable of work were drafted for forced, labor. (P.8) Jews were subjected to all sorts of restrictions and all Jewish property was confiscated. (P.8) with the exception of doctors and elders. Only 500 of an original 4,500 Jews remained. (P.8) SD in White Ruthenia during October. demonstrating a 'provocative attitude.' (P.13) In another, 380 Jews were shot for spreading vicious propaganda. (P.13) where hundreds upon hundreds of Jews were murdered.
In one town 3,000; in another, 33,771; in another 3,145; in another 410; all listed in detail. the depths of degradation to which the tormentors stooped. For example, we will show the report made to defendant Rosenberg about the army and the SS in the area under Rosenberg's jurisdiction, which recited the following, (Document No. R. 135) and I quote:
"In the presence of SS man, a Jewish dentist has to break all gold teeth and fillings out of mouth of German and Russian Jews before they are executed." (Document B.)
It also says: burned alive. (Document A.) that they are suspected of belonging to bands. (Document C.) Jews and political opponents were asphyxiated. We could not believe it. But here we will produce for you the report of May 16, 1942 from the German SS officer, Becker, to his supervisor in Berlin, and this is the story that it tells: (Document No. 656-PS.)
Gas vans in C. group can be driven to execution spot, which is generally stationed 10 to 15 kms. from main road only in dry weather. Since those to be executed become frantic if conducted to this place, such vans become immobilized in wet weather. (Letter, p.1.) but vehicles well known to authorities and civilian population which calls them 'Death Vans'. (Letter, p.2.)
far away as possible during gassing. Unloading van after the gassing has 'atrocious spiritual and physical effect' on the men who have to unload them and they should be ordered not to participate in such work. (Letter, p.2.) one more sickening document which evidences the planned and systematic character of these Jewish persecutions. I hold an original report written with Teutonic thoroughness as to detail, illustrated with photographs to authenticate its almost incredible text, and beautifully bound in leather with the loving care bestowed to a proud work. It is the original report of the SS Brigade General Stroop in charge of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Hans Frank was Governor General of Poland. Its title page carries the inscription, "The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists." care the photographs (showing to Tribunal) with which this document abounds, showing the destruction of this ghetto, showing the people driven before the flames, with the title "Jews and Bandits"; women and children and old men, not a man of fighting age in the picture except the German soldiers; the masses lined up against the wall for execution; the picture to illustrate the text showing that they jumped from the windows to escape the flames.
Now, let's read what General Stroop says in here:
"The resistance put up by the Jews aid bandits could only be suppressed by energetic actions of our troops day and night. The Reichsfuehrer SS ordered, therefore on 25 April 1943 the cleaning out of the ghetto with utter ruthlessness and merciless tenacity.
I, therefore, decided to destroy and burn down the entire ghetto without regard to the armament factories. These factories were systematically dismantled and then burned. Jews usually left their hideouts, but frequently remained in the burning buildings and jumped out of the windows only when the heat became unbearable. They then tried to crawl with broken bones across the street into buildings which were not afire. Sometimes they changed their hideouts during the night into the ruins of burned buildings. Life in the sewers was not pleasant after the first week. Many times we could hear loud voices in the sewers. SS men or policemen climbed bravely through the manholes to capture these Jews. Sometimes they stumbled over Jewish corpses; sometimes they were shot at. Tear gas bombs were thrown into the manholes and the Jews driven out of the sewers and captured. Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through blasting. The longer the resistance continued the tougher became the members of the Waffen SS police and Wehrmacht who always discharged their duties in an exemplary manner. Frequently Jews who tried to replenish their food supplies during the night or to communicate with neighboring groups were exterminated."
This action eliminated, says the SS commander, "a proved total of 56,065 Jews. To that, he says, we have to add the number of those killed through blasting, fire etc., which cannot be counted." were the manifestation and culmination of the Nazi plan to which every defendant in this box was a party. I know very well that some of these men did tike steps to spare some particular Jew for some personal reason from the horrors that awaited the unrescued Jew.
Some protested that particular atrocities were excessive, and discredited the general policy. While a few defendants may show some efforts to make specific exceptions to the policy of Jewish extermination, I have found no instance in which any defendant opposed the policy itself or sought to revoke or even modify it. which at all times cemented the elements of this conspiracy. On many internal policies there were differences among the defendants. But there is not one of them who has not echoed the rallying cry of Naziism - GERMANY AWAKE, JEWRY PERISH.
war. to be no concern of other Governments or of international society. Certainly few oppressions or cruelties would warrant the intervention of foreign powers. But the German mistreatment of Germans is now known to pass in magnitude and savagery any limits of what is tolerable by modern civilization. Other nations, by silence, would take a consenting part in such crimes. These Nazi persecutions, moreover, take character as international crimes because of the purpose for which they were undertaken. of free labor, the churches, and the Jews was to clear their obstruction to the precipitation of aggressive war. If aggressive warfare in violation of treaty obligation is a matter of international cognizance, the preparations for it must also be of concern to the international community. Terrorism was the chief instrument for securing the cohesion of the German people in war purposes. Moreover, these cruelties in Germany served as atrocity practice to discipline the membership of the criminal organization to follow the pattern later in occupied countries. you accused as criminal organizations, the Nazi Party leaders, aided at some point in their basic and notorious purpose by each of the individual defendants instituted a reign of terror. These espionage and police organizations were utilized to hunt down every form of opposition and to penalize every noncomformity. These organizations early founded and administered concentration camps - Buchenwald in 1933, Dachau in 1934. Dachau lies but a few miles from here, and but a few hours' drive. We hope this Tribunal will visit this place and see the magnitude of the layout which goes with a concentration camp, and the implements of torture that remain. But these notorious names were not alone. Concentration camps came to dot the German map and to number scores. At first they met with resistance from some Germans. We have a captured letter from Minister of Justice Guertner to Hitler which is revealing.
(Document No. 787-PS.) A gestapo official had been prosecuted for crimes committed in one of these camps, and the Nazi Governor of Saxony had promptly asked that the proceeding be quashed. The Minister of Justice, to his credit, in June of 1935 protested because, as he called to the attention of Hitler himself and I now quote the statements of the Minister of Justice himself -"In this camp unusually grave mistreatments of prisoners has occurred at least since Summer 1933. The prisoners not only were beaten with whips without cause, similarly as in the Concentration Camp Bredow near Stettin till they lost consciousness, but they were also tortured in other manners, e.g. with the help of a dripping apparatus constructed exclusively for this purpose, under which prisoners had to stand until they were suffering from serious purulent wounds of the scalp". these concentration camps. Beatings, starvings, tortures, and killings were routine -- so routine that the tormenters became blase and careless. We will show you a report of discovery that one night, in one of these camps, 186 persons were executed while there were orders for only 180. (Document No. 653-PS.) Another report describes how they made a mistake and sent two urns to a family where there was only one victim. (Document No. 843-PS.) Inmates were compelled to execute each other. In 1942, they were paid five Reichsmarks per execution, but on June 27, 1942, SS General Gluecks ordered commandants of all concentration camps to reduce this honorarium to three cigarettes. (Document No. 1934-PS.) In 1943, the Reichs leader of the SS and Chief of German Police ordered the corporal punishments on Russian women to be applied by Polish women and vice versa, but the price was not frozen. "As reward, a few cigarettes" was authorized. (Document No. 804-PS.) Under the Nazis, human life had been progressively devalued until it finally became worth less than a handful of tobacco - ersatz tobacco. There were, however, some traces of the milk of human kindness. On August 11, 1942, an order went from Himmler to the commanders of fourteen concentration camps that "only German prisoners are allowed to beat other German prisoners." (Document No. 1654-PS.)