The Charterof this Tribunal embodies a beneficient principle - much more limited than some would like it to be - and it gives warning for the future.
I say, and repeat again, gives warning for the future, to dictators and tyrants masquerading asa State that if, in order to strengthen or further their crimes against the community ofnations they debase the sanctity of man in their own country they act at their peril for they affront the international law of mankind. that criminal which men did not know to be wrong when they committed it -what application can that have here. You will not disregard it even if these defendants time after time disregard it, the countless warnings that were given by foreign states and foreign statesmen on the counts which was being pursued by Germany before the War. No doubt these men counted on victory and little thought that they would be brought to account. But can anyone of them be heard to say that if he knew about these things at all he did not know them to be wrongs crying out to High Heaven for vengeance. the clearest crime of all, demands their conviction and will for all time stain the record of German arms. of Soviet prisoners of war in all prisoner of war camps were issued signed by General Reinecke, the head of the Prisoners of War Department of the High Command. They were the result of agreement with the SS and read as follows:
"The Bolshevist soldier has therefore lost all accor dance with the Geneva Convention.
... The especially in the case of Bolshevist fanatics.
Insub immediately by force of arms (bayonets, butts and firearms) ... anyone carrying out the order sufficient energy is punishable .... prisoners of previous challenge.
No warning shot must ever be fired .... the use of arms against prisoners of war, is, as a rule, legal .....camp police must be camp.
.. within the wire fence the camp police may to enable them to carry out their duties effectively."
The regulations go on to order the segregation of civilians 26 July A LJG 22-1 and politically undesirable prisoners of war taken during the eastern campaign.
After prescribing the importance for the armed forces of ridding themselves of all those elements among the prisoners of war which could be considered as the driving forces of Bolshevism, emphasis is placed on the need for special measures, free from bureaucratic adminsitrative influences, and accordingly their transfer to the security police and the SD is given as the way to reach the "appointed goal". was issuing it with full knowledge of its implications is made clear by the memorandum of Admiral Canaris dated 15th September 1941, protesting against it, and correctly stating the legal position, as follows:
"The Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of and the U.S.S.R. Therefore only the principles of General apply.
Since the 18th century these have gradually been from further participation in the war.
This principle or injure helpless people.
... The decrees for the treatment mentally different viewpoint."
Canaris went on to point out the shocking nature of the orders for use of arms by guards and for equipping the camp police with clubs and whips. On this memorandum, as you were reminded this morning, Keitel noted:
"The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare.
This is the destruction of an ideology. There fore I approve and back the measures.
K." Security Police and SD was intended to mean liquidation can hardly survive study of that document. Canaris writes of the screening, as it is called, of the undesirables:
"the decision over their fate is effected by the action detachments of the Security Police and the SD" on which Keitel, underlining Security Police, comments "very efficient" whilst on the further criticism by Canaris that the 26 July A LJG 22-2 principles of their decision are unknown to the Wehrmacht authorities, Keitel comments "not at all". recites the agreement with the High Command, and after enjoining the closest co-operation between the members of the Police teams and the Commandants of the Camp and listing those to be handed over, it roads:
"Executions must not be held in the camp. If the camps in ment". with regard to the numbers of Soviet and Polish prisoners in concentration camps.
Their treatment needs no further reminder than the report by the Commandant of Gross Resen Concentration Camp who on the 23rd October, 1941, reports the shooting of twenty Russian prisoners between five and six o'clock that day and Muller's circular from the same file, which states:
"The commandants of the concentration camps are complaining "It was particularly noted that, when marching, for example "It cannot be prevented that the German people take notice that could not be hidden from the German people?
I go on:
"Even if the transportation to the camps is generally taken "In order to prevent, if possible, similar occurrences in marked by death (for example with typhus) and who therefore "I request that the leaders of the Einsatz Kommandos be 26 July A LJG 22-3 On the 2nd March 1*44, the Chief of the SIPO and SD forwarded to his various bench offices a further order of the OKW for the treatment of prisoners recaptured after attempted escape.
With the exception of British and Americans, who were to be returned to the camps, the others were to be sent to Mauthausen and to be dealt with under operation "Kugel" which, as the Tribunal will remember, involved immediate shooting. Enquiries by relatives, other prisoners, the Protecting Power and the International Red Cross were to be dealt with in such a way that the fate of those men, soldiers whose only crime had been to do their duty, should be forever hidden.
It was shortly after the issue of the "Kugel" order that 80 British Officers of the R.A.T. made an attempt to escape from Stalag Luft III at Sagan. The defendants directly connected with this matter have not denied that the shooting of 50 of these officers was deliberate murder and was the result of a decision at the highest level. There can be no question that Goering, Keitel and probably Ribbentrop participated in this decision and that Jodl and Kaltenbrunner and, if he did not actually participate, Ribbentrop, were all aware of it at the time.
Goering's participation is a matter of inevitable inference from the following three facts:
First: The order was given y Hitler.
Second: Westhoff of the Prisoner of War Organization of Third:
In Goering's own Ministry which was responsible for the treatment of R.A.F. prisoners of war, Walde of executives and told General Grosch.
Grosch in formed Foerster, who went straight to Milch, Goering's You will say whether you to not consider the denials of Goering and Milch to be mere perjury.
Keitel admits that Hitler ordered transfer to the SD and 26 July A LJG 22-4 that he "was afraid" they might he shot.
He told his officers Graevenitz and Westhoff:
"We must set an example. They will be shot - probably some have been shot already."
and when Graevenitz protested, he replied:
"I don't care a damn." On this evidence of his own officers, surely his complicity is clear in this matter. was in the next room telephoning, he heard a very loud discussion and on Being to the curtain to hear what it was, he learned that there had been an escape from Sagan. It is incredible in these circumstances that even if he did not take part in the decision he did not at any rate know of it from Keitel immediately after the meeting. And knowing of it, he carried on playing his part in the conspiracy.
As to Kaltenbrunner's guilt the meeting at which Walde was informed of the decision was with Muller and Nebe, Kaltenbrunner': subordinates. Schellenberg's evidence of the discussion between Nebo, Muller and Kaltenbrunner about this time on the subject of an International Red Cross enquiry about 50 English or American prisoners of war is conclusive. He heard Kaltenbrunner providing his subordinates with the answer to be given to this inconvenient enquiry and one cannot doubt his full knowledge of this matter. The reply sent to the Protecting Power and the International Red Cross by Ribbentrop is new admitted on all hands to have been a pack of lies. Is It to be believed that he also was not a party to the decision? such a decision themselves or to comply with it if taken by Hitler is, we submit, clear from the correspondence providing for the lynching or shooting of what were called terror fliers. These documents, show that neither Keitel nor Jodl had any scruples in the matter while both Goering and Ribbentrop agreed 26 July A LJG 22-5 to the draft order.
spondence -- first a meeting between Goering, Ribbentrop and Himmler at which it was agreed to modify "the original suggestion made by the Reich Foreign Minister German civilian population as justifying action."
and which concluded that "lynch law would have to be the rule."
brunner it was agreed that "these aviators who escaped lynch law would in accordance for special treatment". Finally Keitel's note on the file:
"I am against legal procedure. It does not work out." taken up in February 1945, when Hitler wished to renounce the Geneva Convention. Doenitz advised that "it would be better to carry out measures considered with the outside world"-a decision with which Jodl and Ribbentrop's representative agreed.
Their defense that this was merely a technical measure and that they did not in fact intend any concrete action, is disposed of by Jodl's memorandum on the whole questions:
"Just as it was wrong in 1914 that we ourselves solemnly de again as the guilty party before the whole world."
nothing to prevent them in fact from sinking an English hospital ship as a reprisal and then expressing regret that it was a mistake.
Would that be a convenient place?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Mr. Attorney. Would it be convenient 26 July A LJG 22-6 to you to sit at 9:45 in the morning?
The Tribunal anticipates in those circumstance we might be able to finish at one o'clock or shortly afterwards. In any event, we would sit on in order to finish.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: I think I would he very much obliged if the Court would do that.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 27 July 1946 at 0945 hours.)
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: May it please the Tribunal : stricto senso and in particular with the murder of the RAF officers from Stalagluft 3. prisoners of war. Under article 31 of the Geneva Convention it might have been permissible to employ prisoners on certain work in connection with the raw materials of the armament industry. But the statement made by Milch at the Central Planning board on the 16th of February 1943 in the presence of Speer and Sauckel had no legal justification at all. He dais, if you will remember, and I quote :
"We have made a request for an order that a certain percentage of me in the Ack-Ack artillery must be russians. 50,000 will be taken altogether 30,000 are already employed as gunners. This is an amusing thing that Russians must work the guns." That was obviously flagrantly illegal. Nobody could have had the faintest doubt about it. The minutes record no protest. It has not been suggested that Goering or any of the others who must have read the minutes and known what was going on, regarded this outrage by the effective head of the German Air Force as in any way unusual.
Himmler's cynical words spoken at Posen on the 4th October 1943 on the subject of the Russian prisoners captured in the early days of the campaign ought again to be put on record for history :
"At that time we did not value the mass of humanity as we value it to day as raw material, as labour. What, after all, thinking in terms of gene rations is not to be regretted but is now deplorable by reason of the loss of labour is that the prisoners died in tens and hundreds of thousands of exhaustion and hunger."
I turn now to the murder of the Commandos. rectly involves Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz, Raeder, Goering and Kaltenbrunner. By article 30 of the Hague Rules and I quote:
"A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial." Whilst even the regulations printed in the book of every German soldier provide :
"No enemy can be killed who gives up, not even a partisan or a spy. These will be brought to punishment by the Courts." These men were not spies : they were soldiers in uniform. It is not suggest that any man dealt with under this Order was ever given a trial before he was shot. Legally there can be no answer to the guilt of any of these defen dants who passed on or who applied this wickedorder, and order which Jodl admitted to be murder and in respect of which Keitel, confessing his shame, admitted its illegality. Raeder admitted that it was an improper order. Even Doenitz stated that no he knewthe true facts be no Ion er regarded it as correct. The only defen put forward have been that the individual in question did not personally carry it cut, that they regarded the statement the first paragraph of the order as justifying the action by way of reprisal, that they did their best to minimise its effect and that it was not up to the individual to question the directives of a superior. But no one has seriously disputed that handing ever to the SD in the context here meant shooting without a trial. dishonest, is that the security precautions provided in the order itself were the plainest indication that the facts stated in the first paragraph did not constitute any justification which would bear the light of day. No higher degree of precaution accompanied the Kugel Order, Nacht und Nebel Or der, or any other of their brutal orders. That the shackling incident at Dieppe had nothing to do with it appears from Jodl's staff memorandum of the 14th October 1942 which states in terms that the Fuehrer's aim was to prevent the Commando method of waging war by dropping small detachments who di great damage by demolitions, etc., and then surrendered.
responsible for it recognised their guilt, guilt which was perhaps best summarised by the entry in the War Diary of the Naval War Staff with regard to the shooting of the Commandos taken in uniform at Bordeaux; "Something new in International Law". Yet Raeder and his Chief of Staff were prepared to initial that entry. Kaltenbrunner's knowledge is clearly shown by his letter to the Armed Forces Planning Staff of the 23rd January 1945 referring to it in detail and disputing its application to particular categories. men whose only defence was that they obeyed an order from their superiors. I refer to the members of the SD who were executed for the murder of the crew of Motor Torpedo Boat 345 in Norway and General Dostler in Italy. Innumerable instances from their own records have been proved against these defendants. Shall they escape ? You will remember the attitude of the Nazi People's Court, in 1944 to the pea of superior orders. the Nacht and Nebel (Order (Night and Fog Order) of the 7th December 1941. The Hitler directive signed by Keitel, after prescribing the death penalty for offences endangering the security or state of readiness of the occupying powers, orders the removal to Germany of offenders, other than those whose execution could be completed in a very short time, under circumstances which would deny any information with regard to their fate. And Keitel's coverin letter of the 12th December gives the reason :
"Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals and the population do not know the fate of the criminal. This aim is achieved when the criminal is transferred to Germany." that Germany was winning the war with his evidence before the Tribunal. He said, you will remember :
"Penal servitude would be considered dishonourable by these patriots By going to Germany they would suffer no dishonour."
Commanders of some 18 concentration camps were being reminded of its purpose and how to dispose of the bodies of the "Night and Fog" prisoners without revealing the place of death. The treatment of these prisoners was described by the Norwegian witness, Cappelen, and members of the Tribunal will not have forgotten his account of the transport of between 2500 and 2800 Nacht und Nebel prisoners from one concentration camp to another in 1945 when 1,347 died on the way. We who talk about the dignity of man let us remember this and I quote again (Cappelen speaking):
"Feeble as we were, we could not walk fast enough and when they took their guns, the line of five, the line just before us -they took their runs and smashed in the heads of all five of them and they said :
"If you don't walk in an intelligent way see what will happen to you". But at last after six to eight hours we came to a railway station. It was very cold and we had only such striped prison clothes on and bad boots, naturally but we said, 'Oh, we are glad that we have come to a railway station It is better to stand in a cow truck than to walk in the middle of winter.
It was very cold, ten to twelve degrees I suppose, very cold.
There was a long train with open trucks.
In Norway we call then sand trucks and we were kicked on to those trucks about 80 on each truck.
.In this When it was snowing we made like this (indicating) just to get some water the neighbourhood of Buchenwald.
we came there. They kicked us down from thetrucks, but many were dead.
The man who sat by me, he was dead, but I had no right to get away.
I had to sit with a dead man for the last day, and I didn't see the cyphers myself, naturally, but about half Well, from Dora I don't remember so much, because I was more or less dead.
I have always been a man of good humour and high spirited, to help myself first and my friends, but I had nearly given up.
And then conditions.
Many of my friends are still in hospital inNorway, soon died after coming home."
In July 1944 a yet more drastic order followed the Night and Fog. On the 30th of that month Hitler issued the Terror and Sabotage decree providing that all acts of violence by non-German civilians in occupied territories should be combatted as acts of terrorism and sabotage. Those not overcome on the spot were to be handed over to the SD, women put to work, only children spared. Within a month Keitel extended the order to cover persons endangering security or war preparedness by any means other than acts of terrorism or sabotage, the usual secrecy requirements were laid down, restricting distribution: in writing to a minimum. He then ordered that the Terror and Sabotage decree was to form the subject of regular emphatic instruction to all personnel of the armed forces, SS and Police:
it was to be extended to crimes 27 July M LJG 2-1a affecting Go men interests, but not imperilling the security or war preparedness of the occupying power.
Now regulations could be made by the agreement of particular commanders and higher SS Chiefs. In other words and offense by any person in the occupied territories could be dealt with under this decree. between representatives of the high Command and SS to discuss the relationship of the Night and Fog Order to the Terror and Sabotage decree. It was considered that the Night and Fog order had become superfluous and the meeting wont on to consider the transfer of the 24,000 non-German civilians held under it by the SS to the SD. The meeting discussed the problem of certain neutrals who had been "turned into fog" by mistake. The German word "Vernebelt" justifies the statement of the witness Blaha that the special and technical expressions used in concentration camps can only be said in German and cannot really be translated into any other language. It is perhaps superfluous to remind the Tribunal that when the Luftwaffe General in Holland asked for authority to shoot striking railwaymen, since the procedure of handing over to the SD under the decree was too roundabout, Keitel, in a reply, copies of which were sent both to the Admiralty and to the Air Ministry as well as to the principal commanders in occupied territories, agreed at once that if there was any difficulty in handing over to the SD:
"Other effective measures are to be taken ruthlessly and independently."
waymen if he thought fit. in these days, that it is not easy for anyone who has not had to live in territory occupied by the Germans to realize the suffering and the state of terror and constant apprehension in which the peoples of Europe lived through the long years of subjection. It was Frank, who, writing on the 16th December 1941, said:
"As a matter of principle we shall have pity only for 27 July M LJG 2-2a.the German people - and for no one else in the world."
faithfully these non carried out that principle.
I turn now to the attack on the Partisans. If any doubt remained that the German armed forces were directed not by honourable soldiers but by callous murderers, it must be dissolved by the evidence as to the appalling ruthlessness with which it was sought to put down the Partisans. The witness Ohlenderf said that the direction of anti-Partisan warfare was the subject of a written agreement between the German War Office, the High Command, and the Ss. As a result of that agreement an Einsatz Group was attached to each Army Group H.Q. and directed the work of the Einsatz Commandos, allotted to the group in co-ordination and agreement with the Military authorities. If confirmation of the Army's support, knowledge and approval were needed, one has only got to look at the report of the Einsatz Group A on its activities during the first three months of the campaign.
against the Soviet Union "Our task was to establish hurriedly personal contact with the Commander of the Armies and with the Commander of the Army of the rear area.
It must be stressed from the beginning that cooperation with the armed forces was general good, in some cases.....it was very close, almost cordial." a particular area, "After the failure of purely military activities such as the placing of sentries and combing through the newly occupied territories with whole divisions, even the armed forces had to look out for new methods.
The Action group under took to search for new methods. Soon therefore the armed forces adopted the experiences of the security police and their methods of combating the partisans."
One of these methods is described in the same report in those words:"After a village had been surrounded, all the inhabitants were forcibly shepherded into the main square. The persons suspected on account of confidential information and the other villagers were interrogated and thus it was possible in most cases to find the people who helped the partisans. Those were either shot offhand, or, if further interrogations promised useful information, taken to Headquarters. After the interrogation they were shot. In order to get a deterring effect the houses of those who had helped the partisans were burnt down on several occasions." burning of the whole village, the report adds:
"The tactics to put terror against terror succeeded marvellously."
The Einsatz Commandos were, as Ohlendorf stated, under Kaltanbrunner's command, but the orders under which they were acting cannot have exceeded in severity those which were issued by Keitel. The Fuehrer order issued by him on 16th December 1942 on the combating of partisans states:
"If the fight against the partisans in the east as well as in the Balkans is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point wen the available forces are insufficient to control this area. It is therefore not only justifiable but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction -- even against women and children so long as it ensures success."
site numbers at breakfast that :
"The fuehrer had declared that the Serbian conspirators were to be turned out and that no gentle methods might be used in doing this."
Keitel interjected :
"every village in which partisans were found had to be burnt down." to greater brutality in dealing with the partisans in Croatia:
"The gangs had to be exterminated and that included men women and chil dren as their continued existence imperilled the lives of German and Italian men, women and children." personnel for anti-partisan Work and he is recorded by a Cabinet Councillor on the 24th of September 1942 as stating that he was looking for daring fellows for employment in the East as Special Purpose Units and that he was considering convicts and poachers for the purpose. His idea was :
"in the regions assigned for their operations these bands, whose first task should be to destroy the communications of the partisan groups, could murder burn and ravish. In Germany they would once again come under strict supervision."
A month later he gave the Duce a description of Germany's method in combatting the partisans in the following terms:
"To begin with the entire livestock and all foodstuff is taken away from, the areas concerned so as to deny the partisans all sources of food. Men and women are taken away to Labor camps, children to children's comps and the villages burnt down.. Should attacks occur, then the entire male population of villages would be lined up one side and the women on the other side. The women would be told that all men would be shot unless they (the women) indicated which of the men did not belong to the village. In order to save their men the women always pointed out the stranger."
Those methods were not confined to the East. They were going on throughout the length and breadth of every occupied territory. Wherever the slightest resistance was offered the German answer was to attempt to stamp it out with the utmost brutality. It would not be difficult to rival the events of Lidice and Oradour sur Glane by a hundred other instances. ject of an order by the German High Command on 16th Spetember 1941. Keitel todered:
"It should be inferred in every case of resistance to the German occupying forces no matter what the individual circumstances that it is of Communist origin."
"In order to nip these machinations in the bud the most drastic measures should be taken immediately on the first indication so that the authority of the occupying forces may be maintained and further spreading prevented. In this connection it should be remembered that a human life in unsettled countries frequently counts for nothing and a deterrent effect can be attained only by unusual severity. The death penalty for 50 to 100 Communists should generally be regarded in these cases as suitable atonement for one German soldier's life. The way in which sentence is carried out should still further increase the deterrent effect."
We may compare the wording of the Einsatz Commando Report:
"In the knowledge that the Russian has been accustomed from old to ruthless measures on the part of the authorities, the most severe measures were applied."
There is no difference in outlook between Keitel and Kaltenbrunner: the German soldier was being ordered to emulate the SS.
A. fortnight after issuing that order, Keitel, whose only defence was that he had pressed for 5 to 10 hostages for one German in place of 50 to 100, had had a further idea, and on the 1st October 1941 he suggested that it is advisable that military commanders should always have at their disposal a number of hostages of different political tendencies, Nationalist, democraticbourgeois, or Communist, adding:
"It is important that among them shall be well known leading personalities of members of their families whose names are to be made public, Depending on the membership of the culprit, hostages of the corresponding group are to be shot in case of attacks."
The original document bears the ominous note: "Complied with in France and Belgium." from three instances of the action taken by a local commander.
In Yugoslavia, a month after Keitel's original order a station commander reported that in revenge for the killing of ten German soldiers and the wounding of another twenty six, a total of 2,300 people had been shot, 100 for each killed and 50 for each wounded German soldier. was, in a public poster, threatening to kill 50 men for every member of the German Armed Forces whether military of civilian, who was wounded, and a hundred if a German was killed. In the event of more than one soldier or civilian being killed or wounded, all the men of the district would be shot, the houses set on fire, the women interned, and the cattle confiscated immediate ly. In June of the same year 560 persons, including 250 men, were reported by Kesselring as having been taken into custody under threat of shooting within 48 hours, some German colonel having been captured by bandits. trop, Keitel, Jodl, and Kaltenbrunner, but who can doubt that every man in that dock knew of the orders and of the way in which the German Armed Forces wore being taught to murder men, women and children, and were doing so throughout the length and breadth of Europe?
Raeder, who says he disapproved of this sort of policy in Norway, states that he tried to dissuade Hitler, yet he continued to hold his post and to lend his name to the regime under which these theings were being done. responsible. The conduct of the war at sea reveals exactly the same pattern of utter disregard for law and for decency. There can seldom have been an occasion when the minds of two naval commanders have been so clearly read from their documents as those of the defendants Raeder and Doenitz that can be read in the present case. the Foreign Office, were seeking agreement to a policy of sinking without warning both enemy and neutral merchant ships in disregard of the London Submarine Rules, their own Price Ordinance and of international Law. A series of documents during the following six weeks reveals constant pressure on the Foreign Office by Raeder to consent to this policy. fication of naval war against England. In this document, having proclaimed the "utmost ruthlessness" as necessary and the intention to destroy Britain's fighting spirit within the shortest possible time, Raeder went on to say:
"The principal target is the merchant ship, not only the enemy's but in general every merchant ship which sails the seas in order to supply the enemy's war industry both for imports and exports."
It is that document which contains the infamous passage:
"It is desirable to base all military measures taken on existing intercational law; however measures which are considered necessary from a military point of view, provided a decisive success can be expected from them, will have to be carried out even if they are not covered by existing international law. In principle, therefore, any means of war which is effective in breaking enemy resistance should be used on some legal conception, even if this entails the creation of a new code of naval warfare."