may be in social life, can only play a subordinate part in the prevention of war. This applies with limitation as long as the community of nations is composed of sovereign states acknowledging no legal order derived from a superior authority and as long as no procedure and no organization exists capable, by virtue of its own authoritative power, of legally limiting legitimate claims of nations and bringing them into harmony with one another. As long as these conditions are not fulfilled, justice cannot be in the domain of international relations the regulating force it is in national life, where it rests simply upon the power of the state, which is behind it. Tempting as it may be to try to establish at least an improved and more powerful international law on the ruins left us by the past world war, such an attempt must be doomed to failure from the outset if it does not coincide with a comprehensive new order of all international relations and if international law is not simultaneously an essential component of an order which guarantees the indispensable rights of all nations and which assures in particular the satisfaction of the legitimate claims of every nation to a proportionate share of the material wealth of the world. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal is undoubtedly not part of such a general new order. It was enacted by the victorious powers for a limited duration, namely as a foundation for a criminal trial against the statesmen, military commanders and economic leaders of the defeated Axis powers. The contents of the London Agreement makes the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which constitutes an essential part of the agreement, appear as a legislative measure ad hoc by reason of the very time limit of one year stipulated by Article 7. As a matter of fact, it can scarcely remain doubtful that essential parts of the Charter are not in accordance with the general sentiment of all members of the international legal community and that they do not therefore constitute a really valid international code. Under these circumstances, a conviction for a crime against the peace and for participation in a common plan to initiate a war of aggression could only take place at variance with the prevailing international law if the Tribunal decided, violating the principle Nulla poena sine lege, upon a juridical extension of international law. Great as this temptation may be, its consequences would be incalculable.
Not only a principle would be violated which is derived from the principles of the penal codes of all civilized nations and constitutes in particular an integral component of international law, namely that an act can be penalized only when its penal character has been juridically specified prior to the commission of the act; but above all, in view of the fact that in the present trial the jurisdiction on counts I and II of the indictment excludes the competence of the Tribunal so far, the violation of the principle Nulla Poena sine lege, combined with those special circumstances, must put the concept of law in doubt altogether. be obstructed, then the actual international code which is now valid must exclusively be considered as the legal foundation for the judgment of this Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn.
(The Tribunal adjourned until Friday 26 July 1946, at 1000 hours.)
THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief Prosecutors, the United States of America.
THE MARSHAL: May it please the Tribunal, the Defendant Hess is absent.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Mr. President and Members of the Tribunal: select his closing arguments whore there is great disparity between his appropriate time and his available material. In eight months -- a short time as state trials go -- we have introduced evidence which embraces as vast and varied a panorama of events as has ever been compressed within the framework of a litigation. It is impossible in summation to do more than outline with bold strokes the vitals of this trial's mad and melancholy record, which will live as the historical text of the Twentieth Century's shame and depravity. civilization, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronizingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be "progress." The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first. These two-score years in this Twentieth Century will be recorded in the book of years as one of the most bloody in all annals. Two World Wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities. The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repitition of these barbaric events, it is not on irresponsible prophecy to say that this Twentieth Century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilization.
of our era. The defendants complain that our pace is too fast. In drawing the Charter of this tribunal, we thought we were recording an accomplished advance in International Law. But they say that we have outrun our times, that we have anticipated an advance that should be, but has not yet been made. The Agreement of London, whether it originates or merely records, at all events marks a transition in International Law which roughly corresponds to that in the evolution of local law when men ceased to punish local crime by "hue and cry" and began to let reason and inquiry govern punishment. The society of nations has emerged from the primitive "hue and cry", the law of "catch and kill." It seeks to apply sanctions to enforce International Law, but to guide their application by evidence, law, and reason instead of outcry. The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting isasked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that "No thief ere felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law."
I shall not labor the law of this case. The position of the United States was explained in my opening statement. My distinguished colleague, the Attorney General of Great Britain, will reply on behalf of all the Chief Prosecutors to the defendants' legal attack. At this stage of the proceedings, I shall rest upon the behalf these crimes as laid down in the Charter. The defendants, who except for the Charter would have no right to be heard at all, now ask that the legal basis of this trial be nullified. This Tribunal, of course, is given no power to set aside or modify the Agreement between the Four Powers, to which eighteen other nations have adhered. The terms of the Charter are conclusive upon every party to these proceedings. and emergent character of this body as an International Military Tribunal. It is no part of the constitutional mechanism of internal justice of any of the signatory nations. Germany has unconditionally surrendered, but no peace treaty has been signed or agreed upon. The Allies are still technically in a state of war with Germany, although the enemy's political and military institutions have collapsed.
As a Military Tribunal, this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations. As an International Tribunal, it is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional systems, nor will its rulings introduce precedents into any country's internal system of civil justice. As an International Military Tribunal, it rises above the provincial and transient and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations.
Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, What could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.
But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The prosecution's case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case by one after another of the defendants that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubts of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped write their own judgment of condemnation. put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilization of which Germany was once a part.
Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well.
The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of International Law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge and intent. or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy. The law, unlike politics, doesnot concern itself with the good orevil in the status quo, nor with the merits of thegrievances against it. It merely requires that the status quo be not attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by ar. We may admit that overlapping ethnological and cultural groups, economic barriers, and conflicting national ambitions created in the 1930's, as they will continue to create, grave problems for Germany as well as for the other peoples of Europe. We may admit too that the world had failed to provide political or legal remedies Which would be honorable and acceptable alternatives to war. We do not underwrite either the ethicsor the wisdom of any country, including my own, in the face of these problems. But we do say that it is now, as it was for sometime prior to 1939, illegal and criminal for Germany or any other nation to redress grievances or seek expansion by resort to aggressive war.
Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the civilization of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust, would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. But in summation we now have before us the tested evidences of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry evasions of the defendants. The suspended judgment with which we opened this case is no longer appropriate. The time has come for final judgment and if the case I present seems hard and uncompromising, it is because the evidence makes it so. of the morass of detail with which the record is full and put before you only the bold outlines of a case that is impressive in its simplicity.
True, its thousands of documents and more thousands of pates of testimony deal with an epoch and cover a continent, and touch almost every branch of human endeavor.
They illuminate specialities, such as diplomacy, naval development and warfare, land warfare, the genesis of air warfare, the politics of the Nazi rise to power, the finance and economics of totalitarian war, sociology, penology, mass psychology, and mass pathology. I must leave it to experts to comb the evidence and write volumes on their specialities, while I picture in broad strokes the offenses whose acceptance as lawful would threaten the continuity of civilization. I must, as Kipling put it, "splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair." count, which it is the duty of the United States to argue, is in its simplicity. It involves but threeultimate inquiries: First, have the acts defined by the Charter as crimes been committed; second, were they committed pursuant to a common plan or conspiracy; third, are these defendants among these who are criminally responsible? titude of isolated, unplanned, or disputed crimes. The substantive crimes upon which we rely, either as goals of a common plan or as means for its accomplishment, are admitted. The pillars which uphold the conspiracy charge may be found in five groups of overt acts, whose character and magnitude are important considerations in appraising the proof of conspiracy.
1. The Seizure of Power and Subjugation The Nazi Party seized control of the German state in 1933.
"Seizure of power" is a characterization used by defendants and defense witnesses, and so apt that it has passed into both history and every-day speech. (I) Geering, in 1934, pointed out that its' enemies were legion and said:
"Therefore, the concentration camps have been created, and Social democrat functionaries."
In 1933 Goering forecast the whole program of purposeful cruelty and oppression when he publicly announced:
"Whoever in the future raises a hand against a repre a very short while."
(3) New political crimes were created to this end.
It was made a treason, punishable with death, to organize or support a political party other than the Nazi Party. (4) Circulating a false for exaggerated statement, or one which would harm a state or even the Party, was made a crime.(5) Laws were enacted of such ambiguity that they could be used to punish almost any innocent act. It was, for example, made a crime to provoke "any act contrary to the public welfare." (6) viction for acts which no statute forbade. (7) Minister of Justice Guertner explained that National Socialism considered every violation of the goals of life which the community set up for itself to be a wrong per se, and that the act could be punished even though it was not contrary to existing "formal law." (8) which penetrated public life and private life.(9) Goering controlled a personal wire-tapping unit.(10) All privacy of communication was abolished. (11) Upon the strength of this spying individuals were dragged off to "protective custody" and to concentration camps without legal proceedings of any kind,(13) and without statement of any reason therefor.(14) The partison political police wereexempted from effective legal responsibility for their acts.(15) reduced to impotence, the judiciary remained the last obstacle to this reign of terror.(16) But its independence was soon overcome and it was reorganized to dispense a venal justice. (17) Judges were ousted for political or racial reasons and were speid upon and put under pressure to join the Nazi party.(18) After the Supreme Court had acquitted three of the four men whom the Nazis accused of setting the Reichstag fire, its jurisdiction over treason cases was transferred to a newly established "People's Court" consisting of two judges and five party officials.
(19) The German film of this "People's Court" in operation, which we showed in this chamber, revealed its presiding judge pouring partisan abuse upon speechless defendants.(20) courts were created to try political crimes, only party members were appointee judges, (21) and "Judges letters" instructed the puppet judges as to the "general lines" they must follow.(22) to change the government. Having sneaked through the portals of power, the Nazis slammed the gate in the face of all others who might also aspire to enter. Since the law was what the Nazis said it was, every form of opposition was rooted out and every dissenting voice throttled. Germany wasin the clutch of a police state, which used the fear of the concentration camp as a means to enforce non-resistance. The Party was the State, the State was the Party, and terror by day and death by night were the policy of both.
2. The Preparation and Waging of Wars of Aggression. stealthy efforts, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, to arm for war. In 1933 they found no airforce. By 1939 they had 21 squadrons, consisting of 240 echelons or about 2,400 first-line planes, together with trainers and transports. In 1933 they found an army of 3 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions. By 1939 they had raised and equipped an army of 51 divisions, four of which were fully motorized and four of which were panzer divisions. In 1933 they found a navy of one cruiser and 6 light cruisers. By 1939 they had built a navy of 4 battleships, 1 aircraft carrier, 6 cruisers, 22 destroyers, and 54 submarines. They had also built up in that period an armament industry as efficient as that of any country in the world.(23) series of undeclared wars against nations with which Germany had arbitration and non-aggressiontreaties, and in violation of repeated assurances.(24) On September 1, 1939, this rearmed Germany attacked Poland. The following April witnessed the invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway, and May saw the overrunning of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Another Spring saw Yugoslavia and Greece under attack, and in June 1941 came the invasion of Soviet Russia.
Then Japan, which Germany had embraced as a partner, struck without warning at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and four days later Germany declared war on the United States.
that can be conjured up about what constitutes aggression in doubtful cases.
I shall show you, in discussing the conspiracy, that by any test ever put forward by any responsible authority, by all the canons of plain sense, these were unlawful wars of aggression in breach of treaties and in violation of assurances.
The third group of crimes was: "Warfare in Disregard of International Law.
It is unnecessary to labor this point on the facts. Goering asserts that the Rules of Land Warfare were obsolete, that no nation could fight a total war within their limits. (25) He testified that the Nazis would have denounced the Conventions to which Germany was a party, but that General Jodl wanted captured German soldiers to continue to benefit from their observance by the Allies. (26) Teutonic fury knew no bounds, in spite of a warning by Admiral Canaris that the treatment was in violation of International Law. (27) recite the revolting details of starving, beating, murdering, freezing, and mass extermination admittedly used against the eastern soldiery. Also, we may take as established or admitted that the lawless conduct such as shooting British and American airmen, mistreatment of Western prisoners of war, forcing French prisoners of war into German war work, and other deliberate violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, did occur, and in obedience to hightest levels of authority.(28) The fourth group of crimes is:
Enslavement and Plunder of Populations in Occupied Countries. Labor,(29) authority for the statement that "out of five million foreign workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily." (30) It was officially reported to defendant Rosenberg that in his territory "recruiting methods were used which probably have their origin in the blackest period of the slave trade." (31) Sauckel himself reported that male and female agents went hunting for men, got them drunk, and "shanghaied" them to Germany. (32) These captives were shipped in trains without heat, food, or sanitary facilities.
The dead were thrown out at stations, and the newborn were thrown out the windows of moving trains. (33) Sauckel ordered that "all the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure". (34) About two million of those were employed directly in the manufacture of armaments and munitions.
(35) The director of the Krupp Locomotive factory in Essen complained to the company that Russian forced laborers were so underfed that they were too weakened to do their work,(36) and the Krupp doctor confirmed their pitiable condition, (37) Soviet workers were put in camps under Gestapo guards, who were allowed to punish disobedience by confinement in a concentration camp or by handing on the spot.(38) oppressed unmercifully. Terror was the order of the day. Civilians were arrested without charges, committed without counsel, executed with hearing. Villages were destroyed, the male inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps, the women sent to forced labor, and the children scattered abroad.(39) The extent of the slaughter in Poland alone was indicated by Frank, who reported, and I quotes:
"If I wanted to have a poster put up for every seven Poles who were paper for such posters."
(40) ing them. Boastful reports show how thoroughly and scientifically the resources of occupied lands were sucked into the German war economy, inflicting shortage, hunger, and inflation upon the inhabitants. (41) Besides this grand plan to aid the German war effort there were the sordid activities of the Rosenberg Einsatzstab, whihc pillaged art treasures for Goering and his fellow-bandits. (42) It is hard to say whether the spectable of Germany's No. 2 leader urging his people to give up every comfort and strain every sinew on essential war work while he rushed around confiscating art by the trainload should be cast as tragedy or comedy.
In either case it was a crime. prevision and authority respecting the protection due civilians of an occupied country, (43) and the slave trade and plunder or occupied countries was at all times flagrantly unlawful.
And the fifth group of crimes is: Persecution and Extermination of Jews and Christians. persecution of the Jews, the most far-flung and terrible racial persecution of all time. Although the Nazi Party neither invented nor monopolized antiSemitism, its leaders from the very beginning embraced it, incited it, and exploited it. They used it as "the psychological spark that ignites the mob." After seizure of power, it became an official state policy. The persecution began in a seriies of discriminatory laws eliminating the Jews from the civil service, the professions, and economic life. As it became more intense it included segregation of Jews in ghettos, and exile. Riots were organized by party leaders to loot Jewish business places and to burn synagogues. Jewish property was confiscated and a collective fine of a billion marks was imposed upon German Jewry. The program progressed in fury and irresponsibility to the "final solution." This consisted of sending all Jews who were fit to work to concentration camps as slace laborers, and all who were not fit, which included children under 12 and people over 50, as well as any others judged ubfit by an SS doctor, to concentration camps for extermination. (44) mination program, has estimated that the anti-Jewish activities resulted in the killing of six million Jews. Of these, four million were killed in extermination institutions, and two million were killed by Einsatzgruppen, mobile units of the Security Police and SD which pursued Jews in the ghettos and in their homes and slaughtered them by gas wagons, by mass shooting in anti-tank ditches and by every device which Nazi ingenuity could conceive. So thorough and uncompromising was this program that the Jews of Europe as a race no longer exist, thus fulfilling the diabolic "prophecy" of Adolf Hitler at the beginning of the war.
(45) Christian Church. This was recognized from the very beginning. Defendant Bormann wrote all Gauleiters in 1941 that "National Socialism, and Christian concepts are irreconciliable," and that the people must be separated from the Churches and the influence of the Churches totally removed. (46) Defendant Rosenberg even wrote dreary treatises advocating a new and weird Nazi religion. (47) The Gestapo appointed "Church specialists" who were instructed that the ultimate aim was "destruction of the confessional Churches."
(48) The record is full of specific instances of the persecution of clergymen, (49) the confiscation of Church property, (50) interference with religious publications, (51) disruption of religious education, (52) and suppression of religious organizations. (53) concentration camp, sired by the defendant Goering and nurtured under the overall authority of defendants Frick and Kaltenbrunner. documents (54) and testified to by witnesses.(55) The Tribunal must be satiated with ghastly verbal and pictorial portrayals. From your records it is clear that the concentration camps were the first and worst weapon of Nazi oppression used by the National Socialist State, and that they were the primary means utilized for the persecution of the Christian Church and the extermination of the Jewish race. This has been admitted to you by some of the defendants from the witness stand. (56) In the words of defendant Frank:
"A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Germany will still not be erased."
(57) Their commission, which cannot be denied, stands admitted. The defendant Keitel, who is in a position to know the facts, has given the Tribunal what seems to be a fair summation of the case on the facts:
"The defendant has declared that he admits the contents of the point of view (that is to say, not every individual case) and trial.
It would be senseless, despite the possibility of shake the Indictment as a whole."
(58) were integrated in a common plan or conspiracy. crimes were not separate and independent phenomena but that all were committed pursuant to a common plan or conspiracy. The defense admits that these classes of crimes were committed but denies that they are connected one with another as parts of a single program. them all together, is the plot for aggressive war. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact. Have we established the plan or conspiracy to make aggressive war? First is the fact that such war of aggression did take place. Second, it is admitted that from the moment the Nazis came to power, everyone of them and every one of the defendants worked like beavers to prepare for some war. The question therefore comes to this; Were they preparing for the war which did occur, or were they preparing for some war which never has happened? It is probably true that in their early days none of them had in mind what month of what year war would begin, the exact dispute which would precipitate it, or whether its first impact would be Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland. But I submit that the defendants either know or were chargeable with knowledge that the war for which they were making ready would be a war a German aggression. This is partly because there was no real expectation that any power or combination of powers would attack Germany. But it is chiefly because the inherent nature of the German plans was such that they were certain sooner or or later to meet resistance and that they could then be accomplished only by aggression.
"Mein Kampf," of which over six million copies were published in Germany. He not only openly advocated overthrowing the Treaty of Versailles, but made demands which went far beyond a mere rectification of its alleged injustices. (59) He avowed an intention to attack neighboring states and seize their lands,(60) which he said would have to be won with "the power of a triumphant sword."(61) Here, for every German to hearken to, were the "ancestral voices prophesying war." Hitler, long before the seizure of power: quoting:
"I noted that Hitler had a definite view of the impotency of pro many should be freed of the Peace of Versailles.
*** We did not say we shall have to have a war and defeat our enemies; this was situation."
(62) When asked if this goal were to be accomplished by war if necessary.
Goering did not deny that eventuality but evaded a direct answer by saying, "We did not even debate about those things at that time." He went on to say that the aim to overthrow the Treaty of Versailles was open and notorious and that I quote again "every German in my opinion was for its modification, and there was no doubt that this was a strong inducement for joining the party." (63) Thus, there can be no possible excuse for any person who aided Hitler to get absolute power over the German people, or who took a part in his regime, to fail to know the nature of the demands he would make on Germany's neighbors. plement these aggressive intentions by preparing for war. They first enliste German industrialists in a secret rearmament program. Twenty days after the seizure of power Schacht was host to Hitler, Goering, and some twenty leading industrialists. Among them were Krupp von Bohlen of the great Krupp armament works and representatives of I.G. Farben and other Ruhr heavy industries. Hitler and Goering explained their program to the industrialists, who became so enthusiastic that they set about to raise three million Reichsmarks to strengthen and confirm the Nazi Party in power (64). Two months later Krupp was working to bring a reorganized association of German industry into agreement with the political aims of the Nazi government (65). Krupp later boasted of the success in keeping the German war industries secretly alive and in readiness despite the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty, and recalled the industrialists' enthusiastic acceptance of "the great intentions of the Fuehrer in the rearmament period of 1933-1939." (66) the support of the industrialists, the Nazis moved to harness industrial labor to their aggressive plans. In April 1933 Hitler ordered Dr. Ley "to take over the trade unions", numbering- some 6 million members. By Party directive Ley seized the unions, their property and their funds. Union leaders, taken into "protective custody" by the SS and SA were put into concentration camps (67). The free labor unions were then replaced by a Nazi organization known as the German Labor Front, with Dr. Ley as its head.
It was expanded until it controlled over 23 million members(68). Collective bargaining was eliminated, the voice of la or could no longer be heard as to working conditions, and the labor contract was prescribed by "trustees of labor" appointed by Hitler. (69) The war purpose of this labor program was clearly acknowledged by Robert Ley five days after war broke out, when he declared in a speech that "We National Socialists have monopolized all resources and all our for the supreme effort of battle."
(70) of war. In April 1933 the Cabinet formed a Defense Council, the working committee of which met frequently thereafter. In the meeting of 23 May 1935 at which defendant Keitel presided, the members were instructed that "No document must be lost since otherwise the enemy propaganda would make use of it.
Matters communicated orally cannot be proven; they can be denied by us in Geneva."
(71) In January 1934, and, your Honors, dates, in this connection are important, with defendant Jodl present, the Council planned a mobilization calendar and mobilization order for some 240,000 industrial plants. Again it was agreed that nothing should be in writing so that "the military purpose may not be traceable." (72) On May 21, 1933 the top secret Reich Defense Law was enacted.
Defendant Schacht was appointed Plenipotentiary General for War Economy with the task of secretly preparing all economic forces for war and, in the event of mobilization, of financing the war. (73) Schacht's secret efforts were supplemented in October 1936 by the appointment of defendant Goering as Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan, with the duty of putting the entire economy in a state of readiness for war within four years. (74). credits necessary for extensive rearmament was also set on foot immediately upon seizure of power. In September of 1934, the Minister of Economics was already complaining that "The task of stockpiling is being hampered by the lack of foreign currency; the need for secrecy and camouflage also is a retarding influence."
(75) Foreign currency controls were at once established. (76) Financing was delegated to the wizard Schacht, who conjured up the MEFO bill to serve the dual objectives of tapping the short-term money market for rearmament purposes while concealing the amount of these expenditures. (77) at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, which included Schacht, on 27 May 1936, when he said, "All measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war."
(78) Most of the Generals, attracted by the prospect of rebuilding their armies, became willing accomplices. The hold-over Minister of War von Blomberg and the Chief of staff General von Fritsch, however, were not cordial to the increasingly belligernet policy of the Hitler regime, and by vicious and obscene plotting they were discredited and removed in January 1938. (79) Thereupon, Hitler assumed for himself Surpeme Command of the Armed Forces, and the positions of Blomberg said of Keitel, "a willing tool in Hitler's hands for every one of his decisions." (80) The Generals did not confine their participation to merely military matters. They participated in all major diplomatic and political maneuvers, such as the Obersalzburg meeting where Hitler, flanked by Keitel and other top Generals, issued his virtual ultimatum to Schischnigg. (81) definiteness as to time and victim. In a meeting which included the defendants Raeder, Goering, and von Neurath, Hitler stated the cynical objective:
"The question for Germany is where the greatest possible conquest could be made at the lowest possible cost."
He discussed various plans for the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia, indicating clearly that he was thinking of these territories not as ends in themselves, but as means for further conquest.
He pointed out that considerable military and political assistance could be afforded by possession of these lands and discussed the possibility of constituting from them new armies up to a strength of about 12 divisions. The aim he stated boldly and baldly as the acquisition of additional living space in Europe, and recognized that "The German question can be solved only by way of force." (82) Hitler, in a secret directive to Keitel, stated his "unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future." (83) On the same day, Jodl noted in his diary that the Fuehrer had stated his final decision to destroy Czechoslovakia soon and had initiated military preparations all along the line. (84) By April the plan had been perfected to attack Czechoslovakia "with lightning swift action as the result of an incident". (85) expansion on the assumption that it would result in a world-wide conflict. In September 1938 admiral Carls officially commented on a "Draft Study of Naval Warfare against England":
"There is full agreement with the main theme of the study.
"1. If according to the Fuehrer's decision Germany is to acquire a 2. Both requirements can only be fulfilled in opposition to Anglo French interests and will limit their positions as world powers.
It is unlikely that they can be achieved by peaceful means.
The deci 3. War against England meansat the same time war against the Empire of countries overseas; in fact, against one-half to one-third of the aim of conquering for Germany an outlet to the ocean."
(86) med world after the Anschluss, after Munich, after the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, that German ambitions were realized and that Hitler had "no further territorial demands to make in Europe."