And is the world to overlook the revival of slavery in Europe, slavery on a scale which involved 7,000,000 men, women and children taken from their homes, treated as beasts, starved, beaten and murdered?
of Germany share it in large measure, but it was these men who, with a handful of others, brought that guilt upon Germany and perverted the German people. "It is my guilt"- confessed the defendant Schirach "that I educated the German youth for a man who committed murders a millionfold." by summary executive action and had the treatment, which they had been parties to meting out against so many millions of innocent people been meted out to them they could hardly have complained. But this Tribunal is to adjudge their guilt not on any moral or ethical basis alone, but according to law. That natural justice which demands that these crimes should not go unpunished, at the same time insists that no individual should be punished unless patient and careful examination of the facts shows that he shared the guilt for what has been done. And so, during these many months, this Tribunal has been investigating the facts and has now to apply the law in order both that justice may be done to these individuals as to their countless victims, and also that the world may know that in the end the predominance of power will be drivenoout and law and justice shall govern the relations between States. ment of a score or so of guilty men. Issues are at stake far greater than their fate, although upon their fate those issues, in some measure, depend. In the pages of history it will count for nothing whether this trial lasted for two months or for ten. But it will count for much that by just and patient examination the truth has been established about deeds so terrible that their mark may never be erased, and it will count for much that law and justice have been vindicated in the end. presented to any Tribunal in history as been collected, sifted and placed before you. Almost all of that evidence consists of the captured records and documents of the Government to which these men belonged, and much of it directly implicates each one of them with knowledge of, and participation in one or other aspect of the crimes committed by the Nazi State.
This evidence has not been refuted and it will remain for ever to confront those who may hereafter seek to excuse or mitigate that which has been done. Yet now that this mass of evidence has been presented to you, shall invite you for a little to detach your minds from its detail to consider the cumulative effect and to review this overwhelming case as a whole. It is only by chance that their own captured papers have enabled us to establish these crimes out of the very mouths of the criminals. But the case against these men can be established on a broader basis than that, and must be looked at in the light of its historical background. ted, the responsibility of those who hold the highest positions of influence and authority in the Nazi State, is manifest beyond doubt. For years, in a world where was had itself been declared a crime, the German State was organized for war; in a world where we proclaim the equality of men, for years the Jews were boycotted, deprived of their elementary rights of property, liberty, life itself; for years honest citizens lived in fear of denunciation and arrest by one or other of the organizations, criminal as we allege them to be, through which these men ruled Germany; for years throughout the German Reich millions of foreign slaves worked in farm and factory, were moved like cattle on every road, on every railway line. ates were at once the leaders and the drivers of the German people; it was when they held the highest positions of authority and of influence that these crimes were planned and perpetrated. If these men are not responsible, who are? If minions who did no more than obey their orders, Dostler, Eck, Kramer and a hundred others have already paid the supreme penalty, are these men less responsible? How can it be said that they and the offices of State which they directed took no part? Lammers, their own witness, Head of the Reich Chancellory, said in 1938:
"Despite the total basic concentration of power every individual order he may issue.
This principle Fuhrer's unlimited power of command.
Willingness of his subordinate leaders.
Therefore he allows their tasks". the power and influence they exercised how they will, we have only to recall their ranting, as they strutted across the stage of Europe dressed in their brief authority, to see the part they played.
They did not then tell the German people or the world that they were merely the ignorant, powerless puppets of their Fuhrer. The Defendant Speer has said:
"Even in a totalitarian system there must be total responsibility.
....it is impossible after the cat astrophe to evade this total responsibility.
If assumed total responsibility". Had the war been won is it to be supposed that these men would have retired to the obscurity and comparative innocence of private citizenship?
That opportunity was denied to them before the war had they wished to disassociate themselves from what was taking place.
They chose a disferent path. From small beginning, at a time when resistance instead of participation could have destroyed thist thing, they fostered the Hitler legend, they heloed to build up the Nazi Power and ideology and to direct its acticities until, like some foul octopus, it spread its slime over Europe and extended its tentacles throughout the world. Were these men ignorant of the ends sought to be achieved during that period of the rise to power? Paul Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter, a witness of great knowledge, has testified:
"The general objectives of the Nazi leadership slogan of 'Lebensraum'". That slogan "Lebensraum" - that entirely false idea that the very existence of the German people depended upon territorial expansion under the Nazi flag - was from the earliest days an openly avowed part of the Nazi doctrine - yet any thinking person must have known that it would lead inevitabley to war.
at those secret meetings on the 5th November 1937, 23rd May and 23rd November 1939, at which the fate of so may countries was sealed. revision of the Treaty of Versailles. The so-called injustice of Versailles so cunningly exploited to provide a popular rallying point under the Nazi banner, had succeeded in unsuing behind the Nazis many Germans who would not otherwise have supported some of the rest of the Nazi program. efforts here made by the Defense to develop the alleged injustice of them Treat. Unjust or not, it was a Treaty and no Government content to live at peace need have complained of its provisions.
Even if the complaints were justified, there was comparatively soon no ground left for them.
They provisions of the Treaty could have been - in some respects they were revised by peaceful negotiations. By 1935, four years before the world was plunged into war, these men had publicly renounced the Treaty, and by 1939 not only were they free of nearly all the restrictions of which they had complained, but they had seized territory which had never belonged to Germany in the whole of European history. The cry of Versailles was a device for rallying men to wicked and aggressive purposes. But it was a device less diabolical than the cry of anti-Semitism and racial purity, by which these men sought both to rally in their own country and to sow discord and antagonism amongst the people of foreign lands. Rauschning reports Hitler's statement:
"Anti-Semitism is a useful revolutionary expedient.
campaign. You will see how little time we shall need world simply and solely by attacking Judaism.
It is paganda arsenal". words of Bach Zelewski who, when he was asked how Ohlendrof could admit that the men under his command had murdered 90,000 people, replied:
"I am of the opinion that when, for years, for then such outcome is inevitable."
And so, from the earliest day, the aims of the Nazi movement were clear:
and beyond dount: expansion, European domination, elimination of the Jews; ultimate aggression, ruthless disregard of the rights of any people but themselves.
Such were the beginnings. I shall not pause to trace the Nazi party's growth to power; how, as the writer of the History of the SA has said they found that "Possesion of the streets is the key to power in the State."
or how, by the organized terror which the witjess Severing has described the storm troops of Brownshirts terrified the people whilst the Nazi propaganda, headed by "Der Sturmer", vilified all opponents and incited people against the Jews. democratic peoples ought to learn from it, for it may not be easy to say exactly at what date each of these Defendants must have real zed, if, indeed, he had not know and gloried in it all from the beginning that Hitler's apparently hysterical outpourings in Mein Kampf were intended in all seriousness and that they formed the very basis of the German plan. Some, no doubt, such as Gearing, Hess, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Streicher, Frick, Frank, Schacht, Schirach and Fritzsche realized it, very early. In the case of one or two such as Doenitz and Speer, it may have been comparatively late. Few can have been ignorant after 1933: all must have been active participants by 1937. When one remembers the apprehension caused abroad during that period there can be no doubt, in our submission, that these men, almost all of whom were the rulers of Gemany from 1933 onwards, Hitler's intimate associates, admitted to his secret meetings, with full knowledge of plans and events not only acquiesced in what was taking place, but were active and willing participants. "build up" - the position of domestic government in Germany between 1933 and 1939; because what happened then makes clear the criminal involvment of these men in what was done later. What I say now has some special reference to the first Count in the Indictment, for it is against this general backgrond that must be considered the allegation that these men were common conspirators to commit the crimes (such as crimes against peace, and the crime against humanity), which are more specifically charged in the later Counts.
Totalitarian Government brooks no opposition. Any means justifies the end and the immediate end war ruthlessly to gain complete control of the German State and to brutalize and train its people for war. What stood in the way in January 1933? Firstly, the members of the other political parties; secondly the democratic system of election and of public assembly, the organisation of trade unions; thirdly the moral standards of the German people, and the Churches which fostered them. this opposition: the first, by imprisoning or terrorizing their opponents; the second, by declaring illegal all elements of tolerance and liberalism, outlawing trade unions and opposition parties, reducing the democratic assembly to a farce and controlling elections: the third, by systematic discouragement and persecution of religion, by replacing the ethics of Christianity with the idolatry of the Fuhrer and the cult of the blood and by rigidly controlling education and youth. Youth was systematically prepared for war and taught to hate and persecute the Jews; the plans for aggression required a nation trained in brutality and taught that it was both necessary and heroic to invade the peoples of other countries. tic policy that, after six years of rule, the Nazis found little difficulty in leading a perverted nation into the greatest criminal enterprize in history. It is perhaps, worth considering from the evidence, a few examples of how this policy developed during these six years. They are examples of what was happening in every German town and village: it must be remembered here, that in the need to avoid cumulative evidence you have, in the result, been deprived of its cumulative effect.
First then, the elimination of political opponents. Within six weeks of the Nazis coming to power in January 1933, the German newspapers were quoting official sources for the statement that 18,000 Communists had been imprisoned whilst the 10,000 prisoners in the gaols of Prussia included many Socialists and intellectuals.
The fate of many of these men was described by Severing, who estimated that at least 1,500 Social Democrats and a similar number of Communists were murdered in the concentration camps recently established by Goering as Chief of the Gestapo. run as to strike terror throughout the country. In the words of the witness Severing, the concentration camps represented for the people "the incarnation of all the terrible".
Goering has said:
"We found it necessary that we should permit no opposition to us" and he admitted that there were arrested and taken into protective custody people who had commited no crime.
which they spoke yesterday, nulla poena sine lege.
Goering added:
"if everyone knows that if he acts against camp.
......that is to our advantage". and according to Goering were created "as an instrument which at all times was gave the following description:
"I was hardly more that two days in that ted there.
There was not police which against arrests, against burglary.
There just those who committed such crimes.
Those their cries for help to the police.
It was crimes; those commandos of the SA and SS who "Special concentration camps for the Gestapo for a terrible shame in history.
They were "Columbia Diele"........I asked one of my civil servant.
...'Tell me, please; am I here in a police office or in a robber's cave?
' The answer that I received was:
'You are in a burgler's cave and you can expect that you will see much more yet'".Gisevius went on to describe Goering's order to murder the National Socialist Strasser and how he gave "blank authority" for murder to the political police, by signing a form granting amnesty to the policeman, leaving a blank space for the name of the murdered person in respect of whom the amnesty had been granted.
required, it is to be found in the seriod of reports dated May and June 1933, from the Munich Public Prosecutor to the Minister of Justice which are in evidence recording a succession of murders by SS officials in the concentration camp at Dachau.
testing against numerous instances of ill treatment in concentration camps including "Beating as a disciplinary punishment.
....
"ill-treatment mostly of political internees in order to make them talk"..... and "ill-treatment of internees arising out of sheer fun or sadistic motives". went on to compain that "the beating of the Communists held in pression of Communist activities". And after citing instances of torture, he concludes:
"These few examples show a degree of German sensibility".Frick's sensibility was apparently not so tender - the very next year he received a similar protest from one of his own subordinates and shortly afterwards he issued a decree making all police forces subordinate to Himmler, the very man whom he knew to be responsible for these atrocities.
were not confined to the privacy of concentration camps. It is perhaps worth quoting one instance from the thousands who suffered from the policy which was being persued. and member of the Reichstaf from 1919 to 1933. He spoke of the incident on March 9th of 1933 when, to quote his own words:
my personal records. At that time I was taken to the Brown House in Cologne, kicked for several hours.
I was then day.
On March 11th 1933 I left Germany". comparatively simple. The necessary laws were passed to outlaw trade unions: the Reichstaf became a farce directly the opposition parties had been disolved and their members had been put in concentration camps. The witness Severing has spoken of the treatment of the Reichstag members. In 1932, on von Papen's order he, who was chief of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, was forcibly removed from his office. It was not long after the 30th of January 1933, that the Communist and Social Democratic parties were decreed illegal and all form of public expression, other than by the Nazis, was prevented. This action resulted from deliberate planning. Frick had said as long before as 1927:
"The National Socialists longed for the dictatorship". throughout the world, the Nazi attitude to elections is not to be forgotten.
Free elections could not, of course, be permitted. Goering had told Schacht in February 1933 when seeking money for the Party from industry and I quote:
"The sacrifices asked for will surely be so much easier for for the next 100 years."
the evidence such as the SD report on the conduct of the plebiscite at Kappel makes clear, the occasional votes of the people, always announced as triumphs for the Nazis, were conducted dishonestly.
I turn to the third class of opposition, the Churches:- Bormann's memorandum sent in December 1941 to all Gauleiters and distributed to the SS sums up the Nazi attitude to Christianity:
"National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable.....
will disappear by itself..... All influences which might impair with the aid of NSDAP must be eliminated.
Mere and more the pastors."
The persecution of the churches makes a melancholy story. From the abundance of evidence which has been submitted to the Tribunal it is perhaps permissible to quote from a complaint to Frick made early in 1936:
"Lately half the political police reports concern clerical matters.
we have untold petitions from all kinds of cardinals, bishops and dignitaries of the Church.
Most of rules were not decreed by it.
...." And then after referring to the chaos resulting from the division of authority between the various police forces, the report goes on to refer to the results of the religious struggle:
"Instances of gross disturbances of congregations are mounting the emergency squad.
.... After discarding the rubber truncheon, cold steel, is unbearable."
The diary of the Minister of Justice for 1935 provides ample instances of the sort of behaviour which was being encouraged by the Hitler Youth under the defendant Schirach end the defendant Rosenberg. The Hitler Jugend, whose membership increased from just under 108,000 in 1932 to nearly 8,000,000 in 193 was organised on a military basis. The close collaboration between Keitel and Schirach in their military education has been described, the special arrangeme between Schirach and Himmler by which the Hitler Jugend became the recruiting organisation for the SSis in evidence.
You will not have forgotten the words of Schirach's deputy:
"In the course of years we want to ensure that a gun feels just as natural in the hands of a German boy as a pen."
What a horrible doctrine. dissolution of all organisations affording opportunity for opposition, criticism or even free speech, the systematic perversion of youth and training for war would not, however, have sufficed without persecution of the Jews. Let no one be misled by the metaphysical explanations which are put forward for this most frightful crime. What Hitler himself in this very town described as the fanaticalcombat against the Jews was part and parcel of the policy of the policy of establishing Ein Herrenvolk, which would dominate Europe and the world, and so persecution of the Jews was popularized throughout the regime. It gave the youths a butt to bully and so to acquire practical schooling in brutality. violence. The final solution of mass murder had them been conceived. In Mein Kampf of Hitler, the Bible of the Nazis, Hitler had regretted that poison gas had not been employed to exterminate the German Jews during the last war, and as early as 1925 Streicher said, "Let us make a nowbeginning to-day, so that we can annihilate the Jew."
It may be that he, even before Hitler, Himmler or the others, had visualised the annihilation of the Jews, but the Nazis were not at first ready completely to defy world opinion and they confined themselves to persecution and to making life in Germany unbearable for Jews. To the never ceasing accompaniment of the Sturmer and the official Nazi Press the campaign of Jew baiting was fostered and encouraged. Rosenberg, von Schirach, Goering, Hess, Funk, Bormann, Frick joined hands with Streicher and Goebbels. The boycott in April 1933 celebrated the Nazi accession to power and provided only a taste of what was to follow. It was accompanied by demonstrations and window smashing -- action "mirror" as it has been referred to in this Court. Accounts of typical incidents are given in the affidavit of the witness Geist who describes the events in Berlin on March 6th, 1933:
"Wholesale attacks on the Communists, Jews and those who streets, beating up, looting and even killing persons."
In 1935 followed the infamous Nuremberg Decrees. In 1938 the so-called spontaneous demonstrations ordered throughout Germany resulted in the burning of the synagogues, the throwing of 20,000 Jews into concentration camps with the accompaniment of penalties, of aryanization of property, and the wearing of a yellow star. towards the Jews appeared at Goering's meeting of 12th November 1938, when they vied with each other in suggesting methods of degrading and persecuting their helpless victims. Neither Hitler nor Himmler, whom to-day they seek to blame, was present, but who, reading record of that meeting, can doubt the end in store for the Jews of Europe? At that meeting Heydrich reported on the events of the 12th November: 101 synagogues destroyed by fire, 76 demolished and 7,500 stores ruined throughout the Reich. The approximate cost of replacing broken glass alone wasestimated at RM 6,000,000 and the damage to one store alone in Berlin at RM ,1700,000. Heydrich also reported 800 cases of looting, the killing of 35 Jews and estimated the total damage of property, furniture and goods at several hundred million Reichsmarks.
You will recall Heydrich's order for the riot, including the arrests of the Jews and their removal to concentration camps. After referring to the fact that demonstrations were to be expected in viewof the killing of a German Legation official in Paris that night, he instructs the Police on the prospective burning of synagogues, destruction of business and private apartments of Jews, and in their duty to refrain from hindering the demonstrators.
"The Police has only to supervise compliance with the instructions."
And finally:
"In all districts as many Jews, especially rich ones, are to For the time being only healthy men, not too old, 'arc to be arrested.
Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration in these camps as fast as possible."
We now know from the evidence with regard to the seizure of the houses of Jews by Neurath and Rosenberg why the orders were to concentrate upon the richest.
These events were neither secret nor hidden. Ministers were writing to each other and discussing then. Long before 1939 they were common knowledge not only to Germany but to the whole world. Every one of these defendants must have heard again and again stories similar to that of Sollman. Almost all of them have sought to gain credit from, helping one or two Jews; and you will remember the evidence of a special office in Goering's Ministry to deal with protests, and his witness Koerner who stated with pride that Goering had always intervened on behalf of individuals. Perhaps it afforded then some gratification or eased their conscience in some way occasionally to demonstrate their influence by exempting some unhappy individual who sought their favour from the general horror of the regime which they continued to uphold. But these men participated in a Government which was conducted without any regard for human decency or established law. There is not one of them who, being a member of the Government during that period, has not got the blood of hundreds of his own countrymen on his hands.
Goering and Frick established the concentration camps; the witness Severing and the documents quoted testify to the murders which took place in them at a time when these two were directly responsible. Ever. Goering could not defend all the murders of the 30 June, 1934. He shares with Hess and Frick the responsibility for the Nuremberg Laws. The record of the meeting of the 12th November 1938 and Goering's initials on Heydrich's order of the 9th November require no comment. facts, if only from the English papers, whilst his delegate Woermann assented to the atrocities reported to the meeting of the 12th November 1938, The previous owner of his country house, Herr von Remiz was placed in a concentration comp, and he expressed his sentiments towards the Jews to M. Bonnet, on the 8th December 1938 in the following terms:
"The German Government had therefore decided to assimilate then (the Jews) with the criminal elements of the population.
taken from them. They would be forced to live in districts frequented by the criminal classes."
for the Nuremberg decrees. measures against the Jews in Austria end it seems certain that the defendant Kaltenbrunner as a faithful member of the Party was giving fullsupport to the necessary measures.
The evidence that Seyss-Inquart was playing his part is before the Tribunal. Rosenberg was writing "The Myth of the Twentieth Century" and taking his full share in the struggle against the Church and the Anti-Semitic policy of the Government: whilst even Raeder on Heroes' day 1939 was speaking of "the clear and inspiring summons to fight Bolshevism and International Jewry whose race-destroying; activities we have sufficiently experienced on own people". none for the horrors of the concentration camps and for the Gestapo, whilst Frank, as Minister of Justice for Bavaria, was presumably receiving the reports on the murders in Dachau. He was the leading jurist of the Party, a member of the Central Committee which carried out the boycott of the Jews in March 1933 and spoke on the wireless in March 1934 justifying racial legislation and the elimination of hostile political organizations. He also was present at Goering's meeting. Streicher. It was in March 1938 that the Sturmer began consistently to advocate extermination, the first article of a series which was to continue throughout the next seven years, beginning with an article signed by Streicher ending with the words: "We are approaching wonderful times -- a Greater Germany without Jews". had participated in the policy for the elimination of the Jews; he was present and assented to the recommendations at Goering's meeting in 1938 at which it will be remembered Goering suggested that it would havebeen better to kill 200 Jews, whereupon Haydrich mentioned that in fact the number was a mere 35. the first half of 1935 he found that he was wrong in thinking that Hitler would bring the "Revolutionary" force of the Nazis into a regulated atmosphere, and that he discovered that Hitler having done nothing to stop the excesses of individual Party members or Party groups, was pursuing a "policy of terror". Nevertheless he remained in office and Schacht accepted the the Golden Party Badge in January 1937 when von Elz refused it.
of Germany grew up rabid anti-Semites under his teaching. He cannot escape responsibility for training the youth to bully Jews: to persecute the Church; to prepare for war. This perversion of children is perhaps the basest crime of all. leiter of Thuringia. He cannot have been ignorant of the persecution of the Church; of the Trades Unions, of other political parties and of the Jews, throughout this important Gau, and there is every reason to suppose that he gave the fullest support to these policies and thus enhanced his reputation with the Nazis. Papen and Neurath were in a better position to judge these matters than any of the other defendants, since it was their political associates who were being persecuted, whilst, in the case of Papen, some of his own staff were killed and he himself arrested, he was lucky to escape with his life.
Neurath's attitude to the Jews is shown by his speech in September 1933:
"The stupid talk about purely internal affairs, as for example the and law in Germany."
What prostitution of these great words! tions of considerable authority. None of them can have been ignorant of what the whole world knew, yet not one of than has suggested that he made any effective protest against this regime of brutality and terror. All of these men continued in their spheres of government and in the highest positions of responsibility. Each in his part -- and each a vital part -- these men built up the evil thing, the ultimate purpose of which was so well known to them, and instilled the evil doctrines which were essential to the achievement of that purpose.
It was Lord Acton -- that great European -who, 80 years ago, in expressing his conviction of the sanctity of human life, said:
"The greatest crime is homicide. The accomplice is no better than the Assassin:
the theorist is the worst." part these men played in it, but no conclusion upon the conspiracy charge in the first count of this Indictment is really possible until the specific crimes set out in the subsequent counts have been considered. And first of these is the crime against Peace, set out in Count 2. I say first, first in its place in the Indictment. Moralists may argue which is greatest in moral guilt. But this perhaps should be said at the very outset. It is said that there is no such crime as a crime against peace, and those superficial thinkers who, whether in this Court or in armchairs elsewhere, have questioned the validity of these proceedings, have made much of this argument. Of its merits I shall say something presently. But let it be said plainly now, that these defendants are charged also as common murderers. That charge alone merits the imposition of the supreme penalty and the joinder of this crime against peace in the Indictment can add nothing to the penalty which may be imposed on these individuals. Is it, then, a mere work of supererogation to have included this matter in the indictment at all? We think not for the very reason that more is at stake here then the fate of these individuals. It is the crime of war which is at once the object and the parent of the other crimes; the crimes against humanity, the war crimes, the common murders. These things occur when men embark on total war as an instrument of policy for aggressive ends. was responsible for the deaths in battle of ten million men, and for bringing to the very edge of ruin the whole moral and material structure of our civilization. Although it may be that it may add nothing to the penalty which may be imposed upon these men, it is a fundamental part of these proceedings to establish for all time that International Law has the power, inherent in its very nature, both to declare that a war is criminal, and to deal with those who aid and abet their States in its commission.
I shall come back to the Law: let me first refer to the facts. highly controversial account of foreign relations leading up to 1939. I do not propose to follow them in that examination, nor am I concerned to say that as events have turned out, the policies pursued by the democratic powers may not sometimes have bean weak, vacillating, and open to criticism. Defense counsel have sought to hase some argument on the protocol attached to the German-Soviet Pact. They argue that it was wrong. I am not concerned with that, and of course I do not concede it. But let them argue that it was wrong. Do two wrongs make a right? Not in that international law which this Tribunal will administer. basic facts in this case, that from the time of "Mein Kampf" on, the whole aim of Nazi policy was expansion, aggression, domination, and that the democratic powers had to deal with a Germany of which that was, in spite of occasional lip service to peace, the fundamental aim. If peace was contemplated at all, it was peace only at Germany's price. And knowing that that price would not be and could not be paid voluntarily, the Germans were determined to secure it by force. the necessary measures of re-armament were taken simultaneously. At his conference on the 23rd November 1939, Hitler summed up this period of preparation in these words:
"I had to reorganize everything beginning with the mass of the people extending it to the Armed Forces.
First internal re ist ides, education to heroism.
While reorganizing internally, I national ties.
.. secession from the League of Nations and de nunciation of the Disarmament Conference.
... After that the order for rearmament.