"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.
Those are rules which every society has found necessary in order to reach men, like these defendants, who never get blood on their own hands but who lay plans that result in the shedding of blood. All over Germany today, in every zone of occupation, little men who carried out those criminal policies under orders are being convicted and punished.
It would present a vast and unforgiveable caricature of justice if the men who planned these policies and directed these little men should escape all penalty.(149) to this program of crime, nor was their connection with it remote or obscure. We find them in the very heart of it. The positions they held show that we have chosen defendants of self-evident responsibility. They are the very top surviving authorities in their respective fields and in the Nazi State. No one lives who, at least until the very last moments of the war, outranked Goering in position, power, and influence. No soldier stood above Keitel and Jodl, and no sailor above Raeder and Doenitz. Who can be responsible for the duplicitous diplomacy if not the Foreign Ministers, von Neurath and Ribbentrop, and the diplomatic handy man, von Papen? Who should be answerable for the oppressive administration of occupied countries if Gauleiters, Protectors, Governors and Commissars such as Frank, Seyss-Inquart, Frick, von Schirach, von Neurath, and Rosenberg are not? Where shall we look for those who mobilized the economy for total war if we overlook Schacht and Speer and Funk? Who was the master of the great slaving enterprise if it was not Sauckel? Where shall we find the hand that ran the concentration camps if it was not the hand of Kaltenbrunner? And who whipped up the hates and fears of the public, and manipulated the Party organizations to incite these crimes, if not Hess, von Schirach, Fritzsche, Bormann and the unspeakable Julius Streicher? The list of defendants is made up of men who played indispensable and reciprocal parts in this tragedy. The photographs and the films show them again and again together on important occasions. The documents show them agreed on policies and on methods, and all working aggressively for the expansion of Germany by force of arms.
Each of these men made a real contribution to the Nazi plan. Each man had a key part. Deprive the Nazi regime of the functions performed by a Schacht, a Sauckel, a von Papen, or a Goering, and you have a different regime. Look down the rows of fallen men and picture them as the photographic and documentary evidence shows them to have been in their days of power. Is there one who did not substantially advance the conspiracy along its bloody path towards its bloody goal? Can we assume that the great effort of these men's lives was directed towards ends they never suspected?
guilt from their activities, the defendants are almost unanimous in one defense. The refrain is heard time and again: these men were without authority, without knowledge, without influence, without importance. Funk summed up the general self-abasement of the dock in his plaintive lament that "I always, so to speak, came up to the door.
But I was not permitted to enter."
(150) the familiar blank wall: nobody knew anything about what was going on. Time after time we have heard the chorus from the dock, "I only heard about those things here for the first time."
(151) These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories from the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's government that emerges. It was composed of:
A No. 2man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination program although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecutions of that race;
A No. 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman, transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy; foreign policy; of the results they would have in practice; of his Gestapo and SD were somewhat on the order of directing traffic; no idea of the violence which his philosophy was inciting in the Twentieth Century;
A Governor General of Poland who reigned but did not rule;
writings about the Jews, but who had no idea that anybody would read them; of his own office, much less the interior of his own department, and nothing at all do out the interior of Germany; of the vaults of his bank; entire economy for armament, but had no idea it had anything to do with war. actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.
They do protest too much. They deny knowing that was Common knowledge. They deny knowing plans and programs that were as public as "Mein Kampf" and the Party program. They deny even knowing the contents of documents they received and acted upon. Let us illustrate the inconsistencies of their positions by the record of one defendant -- who, if pressed, would himself concede that he is the most intelligent, honorable and innocent man in the dock. That is Schacht. And this is the effect of his own testimony -- but let us not forget that I recite it not against him alone, but because most of its self-contradictions are found in the testimony of several defendants: openly desert it until it had lost. He admits that he never gave it public opposition, but asserts that he never gave it private loyalty. When we demand of him why he did not stop the criminal course of the regime in which he was a Minister, he says he had not a bit of influence. When we ask why he remained a member of the criminal regime, he tells us that by sticking on he expected to moderate its program. Like a Brahmin among untouchables, he could not bear to mingle with the Nazis socially, but never could he afford to separate from them politically. Of all the Nazi aggressions by which he now claims to have been shocked(152), there is not one that he did not support before the world with the weight of his name and prestige. Having armed Hitler to blackmail a continent, his answer now is to blame England and France for yielding.
despise. He sometimes disagreed with his Nazi confederates about what was expedient in reaching their goal, but he never dissented from the goal itself. When he did break with them in the twilight of the regime, it was over tactics, not principles. From then on he never ceased to urge others to risk their positions and their necks to forward his plots, but never on any occasion did he hazard either of his own. He now boasts that he personally would have shot Hitler if he had had the opportunity, but the German newsreel shows that even after the fall of France, when he faced the living Hitler, he stepped out of line to grasp the hand he now claims to loath and hung upon the words of the man he now says he thought unworthy of belief. Schacht says he steadily "sabotaged" the Hitler government.(153) Yes, the most relentless secret service in the world never detected him doing the regime any harm until long after he knew the war to be lost and the Nazis doomed. Schacht, who dealt in hedges all his life, always kept himself in a position to claim that he was in either camp. The plea for him is as specious on analysis as it is persuasive on first sight. Schacht represents the most dangerous and reprehensible type of opportunism -- that of the man of influential position who is ready to join a movement that he knows to be wrong because he thinks it is winning. ranks of power, and unable to deny that the crimes I have outlined actually happened, know that their own denials are incredible unless they can suggest someone who is guilty. blame on other man, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels and Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable. via with each other in producing appropriate epithets -- is Hitler. He is the man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger.
dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. It was these dead men whom these living chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.
It may well be said that Hitler's final crime was against the land he had ruled. He was a mad messiah who started the war without cause and prolonged it without reason. If he could not rule he cared not what happened to Germany. As Fritzsche has told us from the stand, Hitler tried to use the defeat of Germany for the self-destruction of the German people.(154) He continued the fight when he knew it could not be won, and continuance meant only ruin. Speer, in this courtroom, has described it as follows:
"...The sacrifices which ware made on both sides after January 1945 were without sense. The dead of this period will be the accusers of the man responsible for the continuation of that fight, Adolf Hitler, just as much as the destroyed cities, destroyed in that last phase, who had lost tremendous cultural values and tremendous numbers of dwellings.... The German people, he said, remained faithful to Adolf Hitler until the end. He has betrayed them knowingly. He has tried to throw it into the abyss..."(155) into death by his own hand. But he left lifeas he lived it, a deceiver; he left the official report that he had died in battle.
This was the man whom these defendants exalted to a Fuehrer. It was they who conspired to get him absolute authority over all of Germany. And in the end he and the system they created for him brought the ruin of them all. As stated by Speer on cross-examination:
"...the tremendous danger, however, contained in this moment when we were approaching the end.
It was then any criticism.
Everything... you have seen in the did after all turn out to be mistakes.
.. This Hitler's principle.
The combination of Hitler and this to this world."
(156) But let me for a moment turn devil's advocate.
I admit that Hitler was the chief villain. But for the defendants to put all blame on him is neither manly nor true. We know that even thehead of a state has the same limits to his senses and to the hours of his day as do lesser men. He must rely on others to be his eyes and ears as to most that goes on in a great empire. Other legs must run his errands; other hands must execute his plans. On whom did Hitler rely for such things more than upon these men in the dock? Who led him to believe he had an invincible air armada if not Goering? Who kept disagreeable facts from him? Did not Goering forbid Fieldmarshal Milch to warn Hitler that in his opinion Germany wasnot equal to the war upon Russia?(157) Did not Goering, according, to Speer, relieve General Gallant of his air force command for speaking of the weaknesses and bungling of the air force?(158) Who led Hitler, utterly untraveled himself, to believing in the indecision and timidity of democratic peoples if not Ribbentrop, von Neurath, and von Papen? Who fed his illusion of German invincibility if not Keitel, Jodl, Raeder and Doenitz? Who kept his hatred of the Jews inflamed more than Streicher and Rosenberg? Who would Hitler say deceived him about conditions in concentration camps if not Kaltenbrunner, even as he would deceive us? These men had access to Hitler and often could control the information thatreached him and on which he must base his policy and his orders. They were the Praetorian Guard, and while they were under Caeser's orders, Caesar was always in their hands.
been said against them, we might have a less distorted picture of the parts played by these defendants. Imagine the stir that would occur in the dock if it should behold Adolf Hitler advancing to the witness box, or Himmler with an armful of dossiers, or Goebbels, or Bormann with the reports of his Party spies, or the murdered Roehm or Canaris. The ghoulish defense that the world is entitled to retribution only from thecadavers, is an argument worthy of the crimes at which it is directed. criminating documents which are sufficient, if unexplained, to require a finding of guilt on Count One against each defendant. In the final analysis, the only question is whether the defendant's own testimony is to be credited as against the documents and other evidence of their guilt. What, then, is their testimony worth? the foundations out from under their own defenses. Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler, in "Mein Kampf", advocated mendacit as a policy. Von Ribbentrop admits the use of the "diplomatic lie". (159) Keitel advised thatthe facts of rearmament be kept secret so that they could be denied at Geneva. (160) Raeder deceived about rebuilding the German navy in violation of Versailles. (161) Goering urged Ribbentrop to tell a "legal lie" to theBritish Foreign Office about the Anschluss, and in so doijg only marshaled him the way he was going.(162) Goering gave his word of honor to the Czechs and proceeded to break it.(163) Even Speer proposed to deceive the French into revealing the specially trained among their prisoners, (164) Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood.
They all speak with a Nazi doubletalk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "Final solution" of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination; "Special treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "Protective custody" meant concentration camp; "Duty labor" meant slave labor; and in order to "take a firm attitude" or "take positive measures" meant to act with unrestrained savagery. Before we accept their word at what seems to be its face, we must always look for hiddenmeanings.
Goering assured us, on his oath, that the Reich Defense Council never met "as such".(165) When we produced the stenographic minutes of a meeting at which he presided and did most of the talking, he reminded us of the "as such" and explained this was not a meeting of the Council "as such" because other persons were present.(166) Goering denies "threatening Czechoslovakia he only told President Hacha that he would "hate to bomb the beautiful city of Prague." (167) circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and absurd professions. Streicher has solemn maintained that his only thought with respect to the Jews was to resettle them on the island of Madagascar. (168) His reason for destroying synagogues, he blandly said, was only because they were architecturally offensive. (169) Rosenberg was stated by his counsel to have always had in mind a "chivalrous solution" to the Jewish problem. (170) When it was necessary to remove Schuschnigg after the Anschluss, Ribbentrop would have had us believe that the Austrian Chancellor was resting at a "villa". It was left to cross-examination to reveal that the "villa" was Buchenwald Concentration Camp. (171) The record is full of other examples of dissimulations and evasions. Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a *---* record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification - and I quote from the record:
"I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don'ttell them the truth than if you tell them the truth."
(172) This was the philosophy of the National Socialists.
When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue the habits of a lifetime in this dock? Credibility is one of the main issues of this trial. Only those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of generous opponents would not hesitate to do the same, now. Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this trial as blood-stained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain King.
He begged of the widow, as they beg of you; "Say I slowthem not." And the Queen an replied, "Then say they werenot slain. But dead they are ...." If you were to say of these men that they a re not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
THE PRESIDENT: I call upon the Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
MR. JUSTICEJACKSON: Would it be agreeable, Your Honors, if Sir Hartley Shawcross should start his address after the recess?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Then we will sit again at a quarter to two.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And may I add this for thepurpose of the record. I have filed with the Tribunal and furnished to Counsel copies of the summation with footnotes to the record. Those footnotes are designed, of course, to direct the attention of adversaries and of the Tribunal to the supporting data in the record. I thought they might be helpful in reading it.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.