(87) The record of this trial shows that those promises were calculated deceptions and that those high in the bloody brotherhood of Nazidom knew it. that the possession of these territories would make possible an attack on Poland. (88) Ribbentrop's Ministry on August 26, 1938 was writing :
"After the liquidation of the Czechoslovakian question, it will be generally assumed that Poland will be next in turn". (89) Hitler, after the Polish invasion, boasted that it was the Austrian and Czechoslovakian triumphs by which "the basis for the action against Poland was laid."
(90) Goering suited the act to the purpose and gave immediate instructions to exploit for the further strengthening of the German's war potential, first of the Sudetenland, and then of the whole Protectorate. (91) Hitler confided to the defendants Goering, Raeder, Keitel, and others, his readiness "to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity", even though he recognized that "further successes cannot be attained without the shedding of blood." The larcenous motives behind this decision he made plain in word that echoed the coverous theme of "Mein Kampf:"
"Circumstances must be adapted to aims. This is impossible without invasion of foreign states or attacks upon foreign property.
Living living space in the East.
.." (92) assurances of peaceful intentions the Nazis prepared not as before for a war but now for the war. The defendants Goering, Keitel, Raeder, Frick and Funk with others, met as the Reich defense Council in June of 1939. The minutes, authenticayed by Goering, are revealing evidences of the way in which each step of Nazi planning devetailed with every other.
These five key defendants, three months before the first panzer unit had knifed into Poland, were laying plans for employment of the population in wartime", and had gone so far as to classify industry for priority in labor supply after "five million servicemen had been called up". They decided upon measures to avoid "confusion when mobilization takes place," and declared a purpose "to again and maintain the lead in the decisive initial weeks of a war."
They then planned to use in production prisoners of war criminal prisoners, and concentration camp inmates. They tehn decided on "compulsory work for women in wartime." They had already passed on applications from 1,172,000 specialist workmen for classification as indispensable, and had approved 727,000 of them. They boasted that orders to workers to report for duty "are ready and tied up in bundles at the labor offices." And they resolved to increase the industrial manpower supply by bringing into Germany "hundreds of thousands of workers" from the Protectorate to be "housed together in hutments." (93) which disclose how the plan to start the war was coupled with the plan to wage the war through the use of illegal sources of labor to maintain production.
Hitler, in announcing his plan to attack Poland, had already foreshadowed the slave labor program as one of its corollaries when he cryptically pointed out to the defendants Goering, Raeder, Keitel, and others that the Polish population "will be available as a source of labor" (94). This was part of the plan made good by Frank, who, as Governor General notified Goering that he would supply "at least one million make and female agricultural and industrial workers to the Reich," (95) and by Saukel, whose impressments throughout occupied territory aggreagated numbers equal, to the total population of some of the smaller nations of Europe. centration camps, a manpower source that was increasingly used and with increasing cruelty. An agreement between Himmler and the Minister of Justice Thierack in 1942 provided for "the delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reichs Fuehrer SS to be worked to death", (96). An SS directive provided that bedridden prisoners be drafted for work to be performed in bed. (97) The Gestapo ordered 46,000 Jews arrested to increase the "recruitment of manpower into the concentration camps". (98) One hundred thousand Jews were brought from Hungary to augment the camps' manpower. (99) On the initiative of the defendant Doenitz, concentration camp labor was used in the construction of submarines. (100) Concentration camps were thus geared into war production on the one hand, and into the administration of justice and the political aims of the Nazis on the other. also grew with German needs. At a time when every German soldier was needed at the front and forces were not available at home, Russian prisoners-of-war were forced to man anti-aircraft guns against Allied planes. Field Marshal Milch reflected the Nazi merriment at this flagrant violation of International Law, saying:
"....This is an amusing thing, that the Russians must work the guns."
(101) The orders for the treatment of Soviet prisoners-of-war were so ruthless that Admiral Canaris, pointing out that they would ''result in arbitrary mistreatments and killing," protested to the OKW against them as breaches of International Law.
The reply of Keitel was unambigugous. He said:
"The objections arise from the military con ception of chivalrous warfare! This is the destruction of an ideology! Therefore, I approve and back the measures". (102). that Jodl objected because he would the benefits of Allied observance of it while it was hot being allowed to hamper the Germans in any way (103). ness as a means of insuring victory of German arms.
In October 1938, almost, a year before the start of the war, the large-scale violation of the established rules of warfare was contemplated as a policy, and the Supreme Command circulated a Most Secret list of devious explanations to be given by the Propaganda Minister in such cases (104). Even before this time commanders of the armed forces were instructed to employ any means of warfare so long as it facilitated victory (105). After the war was in progress the orders increased in savagery. A typical Keitel order, demanding the use of the "most brutal means", provided that:
"...It is the duty of the troops to use all success."
(106). the land forces. Reader ordered violations of the accepted rules of warfare wherever necessary to gain strategic successes. (107). Doenitz urged his submarine crews not to rescue survivors of torpedoed enemy ships in order to cripple merchant shipping of the Allied Nations by decimating their crews. (108).
Thus, the war crimes against Allied forces and the crimes against humanity committed in occupied territories are incontestably part of the program of making the war because, in the German calculations, they were indispensable to its hope of success.
secutions within Germany, fall into place around the plan for aggressive war like stones in a finely wrought mosaic. Nowhere is the whole catalogue of crimes of Nazi oppression and terrorism within Germany so well integrated with the crime of war as in that strange mixture of wind and wisdom which makes up the testimony of Hermann Goering. In describing the aims of the Nazi program before the seizure of power, Goering said:
"The first question was to achieve and establish tate (of Versailles), and not only a protest, actually be considered."
(109). With these purposes, Goering admitted that the plan was made to overthrow the Weimar Republic, to seize power, and to carry out the Nazi program by whatever means were necessary, whether legal or illegal. (110).
From Goering's cross-examination we learn how necessarily the whole program of crime followed. (111). Because they considered a strong state necessary to get rid of the Versailles Treaty, they adopted the fuehrerprinzip. Having seized power, the Nazis thought it necessary to protect it by abolishing parliamentary government, and suppressing all organized opposition from political parties. (112) This was reflected in the philosophy of Goering that the opera was more important than the Reichstag (113). Even the "opposition of each individual was not tolerated unless it was a matter of unimportance." To insure the suppression of opposition a secret political force was necessary. In order to eliminate incorrigible opponents, it was necessary to establish concentration camps and to resort to the device of protective custody. Protective custody, Goering testified, meant that:
"People were arrested and taken into State."
(114).
The same war purpose was dominant in the persecution of the Jews. In the beginning, fanaticism and political opportunism played a principle part, for anti-Semitism and its allied scapegoat, mythology, was a vehicle on which the Nazis rode to power. It was for this reason that the filthy Streicher and the blasphemous Rosenberg were welcomed at Party rallies and made leaders and officials of the State or Party. But the Nazis soon regarded the Jews as foremost amongst the opposition to the policestate with which they planned to put forward their plans of military aggression. Fear of their pacifism and their opposition to strident nationalism was given as the reason that the Jews had to be driven from the political and economic life of Germany. (115) Accordingly, they were transported like cattle to the concentration camps, where they were utilized as a source of forced labor for war purposes. anti-Jewish pogroms instigated by Goebbels and carried out by the Party Leadership Corps and the SA, the program for the elimination of Jews from the German economy was mapped out by Goering, Funk, Heydrich, Goebbels, and the other top Nazis. The measures adopted included confinement of the Jews in ghettos, cutting off their food supply, "aryanizing" their shops, and restricting their freedom of movement. (116) Sere another purpose behind the Jewish persecutions crept in, for it was the wholesale confiscation of their property which helped finance German rearmament. Although Schacht's plan to have foreign money ransom the entire race within Germany was not adopted, the Jews were stripped to the point where Goering was able to advise the Reich Defense Council that the critical situation of the Reich exchequer, due to rearmament, had been relieved "through the billion Reichsmark fine imposed on Jewry, and through profits accrued to the Reich in the aryanization of Jewish enterprises." (117) A glance over the dock will show that, despite quarrels among them-selves, each defendant played a part which fitted in with every other, and that all advanced the common plan.
It contradicts experience that men of such diverse backgrounds and talents should so forward each other's aims by coincidence. gangster. He stuck his pudgy finger in every pie. He used his SA musclemen to help bring the gang into power. In order to entrench that power he contrived to have the Reichstag burned, established the Gestapo, and created the concentration camps. He was equally adept at massacring opponenets and at framing scandals to get rid of stubborn generals. He huilt up the Luftwaffe and hurled it at his defenseless neighbors. He was among the foremost in harrying Jews out of the land. By mobilizing the total economic resources of Germany he made possible the waging of the war which he had taken a large part in planning. He was, next to Hitler, the man to tied the activities of all the defendants together in a common effort. and loss spectacular than that of the Reichsmarshal, were nevertheless integral and necessary contributions to the joint undertaking, without any one of which the success of the common enterprize would have been in jeopardy. There are many specific deeds of Which these men have been proven guilty. No purpose would be served -- nor indeed is time available -- to review all the crimes which the evidence has charged up to their names. Nevertheless, in viewing the conspiracy as a whole and as an operating mechanism, it may be well to recall briefly the outstanding services which each of the men in the dock rendered to the common cause.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to adjourn?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Entirely, your Honor.
(A recess was taken).
the Party machinery, passing orders and propaganda down' to the Leadership Corps, supervising every aspect of Party activities, and maintaining the organization as a loyal and ready instrument of power. When apprehensions abroad threatened the success of the Nazi regime for conquest, it was the duplicitous Ribbentrop, the salesman of deception, who was detailed to pur wine on the troubled waters of suspicion by preaching the gospel of limited and peaceful intentions. Keitel, the weak and willing tool, delivered the armed forces, the instrument of aggression, over to the Party and directed then in executing its felonous designs. to stifle opposition and terrorize compliance, and buttressed the power of National Socialism on a foundation of guiltless corpses. It was Rosenberg, the intellectual high priest of the "master race", who provided the doctrine of hatred which gave the impetus for the annihilation of Jewry, and put his infidel theories into practice against the eastern occupied territories. His woolly philosophy also added boredom to the long list of Nazi atrocities. The fanatical Frank, who solidified Nazi control by establishing the new order of authority without law, so that the will of the Party was the only test of legality, proceeded to export his lawlessness to Poland, which he governed with the lash of Caesar and whose population he reduced to sorrowing remnants. Frick, the ruthless organizer, helped the Party to seize power, supervised the police agencies to insure that it stayed in power, and chained the economy of Bohemia and Moravia to the German war machine. racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of "race purification". As Minister of Economics Funk accelerated the pace of rearmament, and as Reichsbank president banked for the SS the gold teeth fillings of concentration camp victims -- probably the most ghoulish collateral in banking history. It was Schacht, the facade of starche respectability, who in the early days provided the window dressing, the bait fo: the hesitant, and whose wizardry later made it possible for Hitler to finance the colossal rearmament program, and to do it secretly.
Doenitz, Hitler's legatee of defeat, promoted the success of the Nazi aggressions by instructing his pack of submarine killers to conduct warfare at sea with the illegal ferocity of the jungle. Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning. Von Schirach, poisoner of a generation, initiated the German youth in Nazi doctrine, trained then in legions, for service in the SS and Wehrmacht, and delivered then up to the Party as fanatic, unquestioning executors of its will. produced desperately needed manpower by driving foreign peoples into the land of bondage on a scale unknown even in the ancient days of tyranny in the kingdom of the Nile. Jodl, betrayer of the traditions of his profession, led the Wehrmacht in violating its own code of military honor in order to carry out the barbarous aims of Nazi policy. Von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricated the Austrian annexation, and devoted his diplomatic cunning to the service of Nazi objectives abroad. government of his own country only to make a present of it to Hitler, and then, moving north, brought terror and oppression to the Netherlands and pillaged its economy for the benefit of the German juggernaut. Von Neurath, the old-school diplomat, who cast the pearls of his experience before Nazis, guided Nazi diplomacy in the early years, soothed the fears of prospective victims, and as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, strengthened the German position for the coming attack on Poland. Speer, as minister of Armaments and Production, joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the laborers waned in starvation. Fritsche, radio propaganda chief, by manipulation of the truth goaded German public opinion into frenzied support of the regime and anesthetized the independent judgment of the population so that they did without question their masters' bidding. And Bormann, who has not accepted our invitation to this reunion, sat at the throttle of the vast and powerful engine of the Party, guiding it in the ruthless execution of Nazi policies, from the scourging of the Christian Church to the lynching of captive Allied airmen.
and talents, were joined with the efforts of other conspirators not now in the dock, who played still other essential roles. They blend together into one consistent and militant pattern animated by a common objective to reshape the map of Europe by force of arms. Some of those defendants were ardent members of the Nazi movement from its birth. Others, less fanatical, joined the common enterprise later, after success had made participation attractive by the promise of rewards. This group of latter-day converts remedied a crucial defect in the ranks of the original true believers, for as Dr. Seimers has pointed out in his summation:
"...There were no specialists among the National Socialists for the particular tasks.
Most of the National Socialist technical education."
(118) It was the fatal weakness of the early Nazi band that it lacked technical competence. It could not from among its own ranks make up a government capable of carrying out all the projects necessary to realize its aims. There lies the special crime and betrayal of men like Schacht and von Neurath, Speer and von Papen, Raeder and Doenitz, Keitel and Jodl. It is doubtful whether the Nazi master plan could have succeeded without their specialized intelligence which they so willingly put at its command.(119) They did so with knowledge of its announced aims and methods, and continued their services after practice had confirmed the direction in which they were tending. Their superiority to the average run of Nazi mediocrity is not their excuse. It is their condemnation. record of this trial is that the central crime of the whole group of Nazi crimes -- the attack on the peace of the world -- was clearly and deliberately planned. The beginning of these wars of aggression was not an unprepared and spontaneous springing to arms by a population excited by some current indignation. A week before the invasion of Poland Hitler told his military commanders:
"I shall give a propagandist cause for starting war -- never mind whether it be plausible or not.
The victor shall not be asked later on whether we told the truth or not.
In but victory."
(120) The propagandist incident was duly provided by dressing concentration camp inmates in Polish uniforms, in order to create the appearance of a Polish attack on a German frontier radio station.(121) The plan to occupy Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg first appeared as early as August 1938 in connection with the plan for attack on Czechoslovakia.(122) The intention to attack became a program in May 1939, when Hitler told his commanders that "The Dutch and Belgian air bases must be occupied by armed forces.
Declarations of neutrality must be ignored."(123). Thus, the follow-up wars were planned before the first was launched. These were the most carefully plotted wars in all history. Scarcely a step in their terrifying succession and progress failed to move according to the master blueprint or the subsidiary schedules and timetables until long after the crimes of aggression were consummated. or spontaneous offenses. Aside from our undeniable evidence of their plotting, it is sufficient to ask whether six million people could be separated from the population of several nations on the basis of their blood and birth, could be destroyed and their bodies disposed of, except that the operation fitted into the general scheme of government. Could the enslavement of five millions of laborers, their impressment into service, their transportation to Germany, their allocation to work where they would be roost useful, their maintenance, if slow starvation can be called maintenance, and their guarding have been accomplished if it did not fit into the common plan? Could hundreds of concentration camps located throughout Germany, built to accommodate hundreds of thousands of victims, and each requiring labor and materials for construction, manpower to operate and supervise, and close gearing into the economy -- could such efforts have been expended under German autocracy if they had not suited the plan? Has the teutonic passion for organization suddenly become famous for its toleration of non-conforming activity? Each part of tire plan fitted into every other. The slave labor program meshed with the needs of industry and agriculture, and these in turn synchronized with the military 26 July M LJG 7-1 machine.
The elaborate propaganda apparatus geared with the program to dominate the people and incite them to a war their sons would have to fight. The armament industries were fed by the concentration camps. The concentration camps were fed by the Gestapo. The Gestapo was fed by the spy system of the Nazi Party. Nothing was permitted under the Nazi iron rule that was not in accordance with the program. Everything of consequence that took place in this regimented society was but a manifestation of a premeditated and unfolding purpose to secure the Nazi state a place in the sun by casting all others into darkness. ting a limited responsibility, (124) some by putting the blame on others, (125) and some by taking the position, if effect, that while there have been enormous crimes there are no criminals. Time will not permit mo to examine each individual and particular defense, but there are certain lines of defense common to so many cases that they deserve some consideration. conspiracy or common planning charge on the ground that the pattern of the Nazi plan does not fit into the concept of conspiracy applicable in German law to the plotting of a highway robbery or a burglary. (126) Their concept of conspiracy is in the terms of a stealthy meeting in the dead of night, in a secluded hideout, in which a small group of felons plot every detail of a specific crime. The Charter forestalls resort to such parochial and narrow concepts of conspiracy taken from local law by using the additional and non-technical term, "common plan." Omitting entirely the alternative term of "conspiracy," the darter roads that "leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or elocution of a common plan to commit" and of the described crimes" are respon 26 July M LJG 7-2 sible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan."
conspiracy principle in an international context. A common plan or conspiracy to seize the machinery of a state, to commit crimes against the peace of the world, to blot a race out of existence, to enslave millions, and to subjugate and loot whole nations cannot be thought of in the same terms as the plotting of petty crimes, although the same underlying principles are applicable. Little gangsters may plan which will carry a pistol and which a stiletto, who will approach a victim from the front and who from behind, and where they will waylay him. But in planning a war, the pistol becomes a Wehrmacht, the stiletto, a Luftwaffe. Where to strike is not a choice of dark alloys, but a matter of world geography. The operation involves the manipulation of public opinion, the law of the state, the police power, industry, and finance. The baits and bluffs must be translated into a nation's foreign policy. Likewise, the degree of stealth which points to a guilty purpose in a conspiracy will depend upon its object. The clandestine preparations of a state against international society, although camouflaged to those abroad, night be quite open and notorious among its own people. But stealth is not an essential ingredient of such planning. Parts of the common plan may be proclaimed from the housetops, as anti-Semitism was, and parts of it kept undercover as rearmament for a long time was. It is a matter of strategy how much of the preparation shall be made public, as was Georing announcement in 1935 of the creation of an air force, and how much shall be kept covert, as in the case of the Nazis' use of shovels to teach "labor corps" the manual of arms.(127) The forms of this grand type of conspiracy are amorphous, the means are opportunistic, and neither can divert the law from getting at the substance of things.
conspiracy involving aggressive war because (1) none of the 26 July M LJG 7-3 Nazis wanted war; (128) (2) rearmament was only intended to provide the strength to make Germany's voice heard in the family of nations; (129) and (3) the wars were not in fact aggressive wars but were defensive against a "Bolshevik menace."
(130) war it comes down, in substance, to this; "The record looks bad indeed -- objectively -- but when you consider the state of my mind -- subjectively I hated war. I know the horrors of war. I wanted peace." I am not so sure of this. I am oven loss willing to accept Goering's description of the General Staff as pacifist. (131) However, it will not injure our case to admit that as an abstract proposition none of the so defendants liked war. (132) But they wonted things which they know they could not got without war. They wanted their neighbors' lands and goods. Their philosophy seems to be that if the neighbors would not acquiesce, then they are the aggressors and are to blame for the war. The fact is, however, that war never became terrible to the Nazis until it came home to then, until it exposed their deceptive assurances to the German people that German cities, like the ruined one in which we meet, would be invulnerable. From then on, war was terrible.
But again the defendants claim, "To be sure, we were building guns. But not to shoot. They were only to give us weight in negotiating." At its best this argument amounts to a contention that the military forces were intended for blackmail, not for battle. The threat of military invasion which forced the Austrian Anschluss, the threats which preceded Munich, and Goering's throat to bomb the beautiful city of Prague if the President of Czechoslovakia did not consent to the Protectorate, (133) are examples of what the defendants have in mind when they talk of arming to back negotiation. bound to come when some country would refuse to buy its peace, would refuse to pay Dane-geld, --26 July M LJG 7-4 "For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost."
or was Go many to enforce then and manipulate propaganda so as to place the blame for the war on the nation so unreasonable as to resist? Events have answered that question, and documents such as Admiral Carl's memorandum, earlier quoted, leave no doubt that the events occurred as anticipated. (134) aggressive and were only intended to protect Germany against some eventual danger from the "menace of Communism," which was something of an obsession with many Nazis. it completely ignores this damning combination of facts clearly established in the record: first, the enormous and rapid German preparations for war; second, the repeatedly avowed intentions of the German loaders to attack, which I have previously cited; end third, the fact that a series of wars occurred in which German forces struck the first blows, without warning, across the borders of other nations. Russian war was really defensive, such is demonstrably not the case with those wars which preceded it. you believe that Germany was menaced by Communism also compete with each other in describing their opposition to the disastrous Russian venture. (135) Is it reasonable that they would have opposed that war if it were undertaken in good faith self-defense. facts it is sought to compensate, as advocates often do, by resort to a theory of law. Dr. Jahrreiss, in his scholarly argument for the defense, rightly points out that no treaty provision and no principle of law denied Germany, as a sovereign nation, the right of self-defense. He follows with the assertion, for which there is authority in classic International Law, that ".... every state is alone judge of whether in a given 26 July M LJG 7-5 case it is waging a war of self-defense."
(136) It is not necessary to examine the validity of an abstract principle which does not apply to the facts of our case. I do not doubt that if a nation arrived at a judgment that it must resort to war in self-defense, because of conditions affording reasonable grounds for such an honest judgment, any Tribunal would accord it great and perhaps conclusive weight, even if later events proved that judgment mistaken. honest judgment because no such judgment was ever pretended, much loss honestly made. alization of these attacks, not one sentence has been or can be cited to show a good faith fear of attack. It may be that statesmen of other nations lacked the courage forthrightly and fully to disarm. Perhaps they suspected the secret rearmament of Germany. But if they hestiated to abandon arms, they did not hesitate to neglect them. Germany well knew that her former enemies had allowed their armaments to fall into decay, so little did they contemplate another war. Germany faced a Europe that not only was unwilling to attack, but was too weak and pacifist oven adequately to defend, and went to the very verge of dishonor, if not beyond, to buy its peace. The minutes we have shown you of the Nazis' secret conclaves identify no potential attacker. They bristle with the spirit of aggression and not of defense. They contemplate always territorial expansion, not the maintenance of territorial integrity. prescribing general principles for the preparation for war of the armed forces, has given the lie to these feeble claims of self-defense. He stated at that time:
"The general political situation justifies the supposition a number of states and of Russia in particular."
Nevertheless, he recommended 26 July M LJG 7-6 "a continuous prepraredness for war in order to (a) counter attack at any time, and (b) to enable the military exploita occur."
(137) although no good faith need of self-defense was assorted or contemplated by any responsible leader at the time, it reduces non-aggression treaties to a legal absurdity. They become only additional instruments of deception in the hands of the aggressor, and traps for well-meaning nations. If there be in non-aggression pacts an implied condition that each nation may make a bona fide judgment as to the necessity for self-defense against imminent threatened attack, it certainly cannot be invoked to shelter those who never made any such judgment at all. would be no serious denial that the crimes charged were committed, and that the issue would concern the responsibility of particular defendants. The defendants have fulfilled that prophecy. Generally, they do not deny that these things happened, but it is contended that they "just happened," and that they were not the result of a common plan or conspiracy.
is the argument that conspiracy was impossible with a dictator. (138) The argument runs that they all had to obey Hitler's orders, which had the force of law in the German State, and hence obedience could not be made the basis of a criminal charge. In this way it is explained that while there have been wholesale killings, there have been no murderers. provides that the order of the government or of a superior shall not free a defendant from responsibility but can only be considered in mitigation. This provision of the Charter corresponds with the justice and with the realities of the situation, as indicated in defendant Speer's description of what he considered to be the common responsibility of the leaders of the German nation "...with reference to utterly decisive matters, there is total responsibility.
There must be total responsibility insofar of the state?"
(139) And again he told the Tribunal:
"...it is impossible after the catastrophe to evade this total responsibility.
If the war had been won, the loaders would also have assumed total responsibility."
(140) Like much of defense counsel's abstract arguments, the contention that the absolute power of Hitler precluded a conspiracy crumbles in fact of the facts of record.
The Fuehrerprinzip of absolutism was itself a part of the common plan, as Goering has pointed out.(141) The defendants may have become the slaves of a dictator, but he was their dictator. To make him such was, as Goering has testified, the object of the Nazi movement from the beginning. Every Nazi took this oath:
"I pledge eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. I pledge by him."
(142) Moreover, they forced everybody else in their power to take it. This oath was illegal under German law, which made it criminal to become a member of an organization in which obedience to "unknown superiors or unconditional obedience to known superiors is pledged."
(143) Those men destroyed free government in Germany and now plead to be excused from responsibility because they became slaves. They are in the position of the fictional boy who murdered his father and mother and then pleaded for leniency because he was an orphan.
What those men have overlooked is that Adolf Hitler's acts are their acts. It was those men among millions of others, and it was these men loading millions of others, who built up Adolf Hitler and vested in his psychopathic personality not only innumerable lesser decisions but the supreme issue of war or peace. They intoxicated him with power and adulation. They fed his hates and aroused his fears. They put a loaded gun in his eager hands. It was left to Hitler to pull the trigger, and when he did they all at that tire approved. His guilt stands admitted, by some defendants reluctantly, by some vindictively. But his guilt is the guilt of the whole dock, and of every man in it. common plan or in a conspiracy because they were fighting among themselves or belonged to different factions or cliques. Of course, it is not necessary that men should agree on everything in order to agree on enough things to make them liable for a criminal conspiracy. Unquestionably there were conspiracies within the conspiracy, and intrigues and rivalries and battles for power. Schacht and Goering disagreed, but over which of them should control the economy, not over whether the economy should be regimented for war.(144) Goering claims to have departed from the plan because through Dahlerus he conducted some negotiations withmen of influence in England just before the Polish war. But it is perfectly clear that this was not an effort to prevent aggression against Poland but to make that aggression successful and safe by obtaining English neutrality.(145) Rosenberg and Goering may have had some differences as to how stolen art should be distributed but they had none about how it should be stolen. Jodl and Goebbels may have disagreed about whether to denounce the Geneva Convention, but they never disagreed about violating it.
And so it goes through the whole long and sordid story. Nowhere do we find an instance where any one of the defendants stood up against the rest and said, This thing is wrong and I will not go along with it. Wherever they differed, their differences were as to method or disputes over jurisdiction, but always within the framework of the common plan. conspiracy to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity because cabinet members never met with the military to plan these acts. But these crimes were only the inevitable and incidental results of the plan to commit the aggression for Lebensraum purposes. Hitler stated, at a conference with his commanders, that "The main objective in Poland is the destruction of the enemy and not the reaching of a certain geographical line."
(146) Frank picked up the tune and suggested that when their usefulness was exhausted, "...then, for all I care, mincemeat can be made of the Poles it does not matter what happens."
(147) Reichscommissar Koch in the Ukraine echoed the refrain:
"I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss.
.." (148) This was Lebensraum on its seamy side.
Could men of their practical intelligence expect to got neighboring lands free from the claims of their tenants without committing crimes against humanity? he was not in it. It is therefore important in examining their attempts at avoidance of responsibility to know, first of all, just what it is that a conspiracy charge comprehends and punishes.
In conspiracy we do not punish one man for another men's crime. We seek to punish each for his own crime of joining a common criminal plan in which others also participated. The measure of the criminality of the plan and therefore of the guilt of each participant is, of course, the sum total of crimes committed by all in executing the plan. But the gist of the offense is participation in the formulation or execution of the plan.