They could not disobey Hitler's orders, they could not even resign from office? Indeed: Hitler could doubtless govern their bodies but not their minds; by disobeying they would perhaps have lost their lives but the would have saved their honor at least. Cowardice has never been an excuse, nor even an extenuating circumstance. elaboration- the doctrines of National Socialism and its will for universal domination, that they well knew to what monstrous crimes it led its adepts and its performers with disastrous results, that they had accepted its responsibilities as they profited by the material and moral advantages which i lavished upon them. of victory, and that before the triumph of force, the question would not be asked: was the cause just? They persuaded themselves as they had done after the war of 1914, that no international jurisdiction could ever pursue them. They thought that Pascal's pessimistic judgment on human justice in international relations would always be true:" Justice is liable to argume Force is easily recognizable without argument. So being unable to make strong what is right, one has made right what is strong." and of Justice is born, and has taken shape in the international custom of civilized nations. of the charges of the Prosecution, the French Prosecution has stated precisly the responsibility of all the defendants, "guilty of having, in their capacity of principal Hitlerite leaders of the German people, conceived, desi ordered or only tolerated by their silence that murders or other inhuman actions be systematically committed, that violence be systematically exerted on prisoners-of-war or civilians, that devastation without justification be systematically committed as a deliberate means of accomplishing their design to dominate Europe and the world by terror, and to exterminate entire populations, so as to extend the living space of the German people."
place before you, have only confirmed and reinforced the accusations and the qualifications, that at the beginning of the proceedings we already formula against the big criminals, whom, in execution of the Charter and to satisfy the exigencies of Justice the United Nations have deferred to your Court.
I ask the Tribunal to allow M. Dubost to make these statements.
M. DUBOST: I am recalling the facts set forth by the French Delegation This reminder was needed to establish our contribution to the trial. We do not intend, however, to disjoin our work from the whole work of the trial, as results from the expositions of the other three Delegations and the debat It is on the basis of this work as a whole that we shall proceed with our indictment and examine the personal responsibility of the defendants. be murder, indictible theft, and other serious offenses against persons and their property which are always punishable in civilized countries. M. de Menthon has in his introductory address shown this already. with ordering them. In the technical sense of our French law, they are therefore accomplices. Makin allowance for certain differences, mostly differences of form only, in most countries the perpetrators of serious offices and their accomplices are punished by capital punishment or very severe penalties, forces labor, solitary confinement. That is the Anglo-Saxon practice. This also follows in France from application of Articles 221 ff, 379 ff, 59 ff of the French Penal Code. In Germany Article 211 punishes homicide, Article 212 murder, Articles 223 to 226 tortures, Article 229 poisoning and murder by gas. Article 234 covers slavery subjection to serfdom, incorporation with a view to military service in a foreign country; Articles 242 and 243 cover theft and pillage; Article 130 provoking the population to violence. The case of accomplices and of co-originators is covered by Articles 47 and 49. That, as the leaders of the Reich, as the accomplices of the Fuehrer, these men are all responsible for the crimes perpetrated under their rule, that before the universal conscience their responsibility is heavier than that of the common executioners, two defendants:
Frank and Schirach have admitted it:
Frank said:
"I never created extermination camps for Jews. I never favored the we made all kinds of statements against them.
...." and these last words of Frank condemn, with him, all those who pursued the campaign of instigation against the Jews in Germany of elsewhere. Let us remember Fran's answer to the question, put to him by his Defense Counsel regarding the charges stated in the indictment. It holds good against all the defendants and still more against those who were closer to Hitler than he was:
"Regarding the charges I will only say this: I request the Tribunal thoroughly guilty."
Von Schirach on his part stated:
"Here is my fault for which I am answerable before God and the German people.
I brought up our youth for a man whom in the course him I trained our youth that considered him as I myself did.
It is who killed millions of people . . . Any German who after Auschwitz still adheres to the social policy is guilty.
.. I consider it my duty to say so". frequently, copying Goering's quibbing vanity, the defendants tried to justify themselves in the name of a policy of Neo-Maohiavellism which would free the leaders of the State of all personal responsibility.
Let us note only that no such provisions are made anywhere in the laws in any of the civilized countries, and that on the contrary the arbitrary and aggresive acts aimed at individual liberty, at Civic rights or at the constitution are more severely punished when they have been committed by a public functionary, a Government official of higher rank, and that the severest punishment is meted out to the Ministers themselves (Article 114 and 115 of the French Penal Code).But let us limit ourselves on this point.
Our only aim is to recall that the main facts charged against the defendants my be analysed separately as violations of the criminal laws of any one of the positive internal laws of all civilized countries, or else of that common internation law which M. de Menthon has already interpreted and which has been submitted here as the root of international custom, and that thus the punishment of each of these facts is not without a foundation, but that on the contrary, even restricting one's self to this analytical preview, the gravest penalties have already been incurred. any culpable fact as such, the analysis of the defendant's guilt in the light of internal laws is only a first approximation which would enable us to prosecute the defendants merely as accomplices and not as principal perpetrators. And we are anxious to demonstrate that indeed they were the principal culprits.
We hope to succeed in this by developing the following three propositions:
1.) The acts of the defendants are the elements of a criminal political plan.
2.) The coordination of the various departments which were headed by these men implies a close cooperation between them for the realization of their criminal policy.
3.) They must be judged as acting in behalf of this criminal policy.
The defendants have practised widely different activities. As politicians, diplomats, soldiers, sailors, economists, financeers, jurists, or propagandists, they represent practically all the forms of liberal activity. Without any hesitation, however, one is able to recognize the tie that binds them together. All have placed the best -- or the worst of themselves -- at the service of the Hitlerite State. To a certain extent they represent the brains of that state. By themselves alone they did not represent it entirely.
Nevertheless, nobody can doubt that they were an important part of it. They conceived the policy of that state. They wanted their thought to become action and all in scarcely differing degrees have contributed toward its realization. This is true whether it applies to Hess, to Goering, professional politicians who admit never having practised any other profession than that of agitator or statesman, or to Ribbentrop, to Neurath, to Papen, the diplomats of the regimes, or to Keitel, to Jodl or Doenitz or Raeder the military men, to Rosenberg, to Streicher, to Frank, to Frick, the thinkers (if that term can be applied to them) of the ideology of the system; to Schacht, to Funk, the financiers without whom the system would have failed and collapsed before it was able to rearm, to jurists like Frank, to publicists and propagandists like Fritzsche, and, again, Streicher, devoted to the diffusion of the common idea or again to technicians like Speer or Sauckel, without whom the idea never could have been developed into action as it has been, to policemen such as Kalterbrunner who subdued minds by terror, or simply Gauleiters like Seyss-Inquart, Schirach or, again, Sauckel, administrators, officials of high authority as well as politicians, who shaped into a concrete whole the common policy conceived for the sum-total of the State and of party machinery. machines, and today's defendants are always reminding us: "Hitler wanted this, Himmler wanted this, Bormann wanted this", they say. "I only obeyed", and their defence counsels stress the point. Hitler the prodigious tyrant, the fanatic visionary imposing his will with an irresistible magnetic power. This is too simple. This is too sketchy. No man is entirely non-receptive to suggestions, to insinuations, to influence, and Hitler could escape that law no more than any other man. We have had irrefutable proof of this in all that these proceedings have permitted us to guess concerning the struggle for influence which was waged in the "great man's" entourage. The treacherous, underhanded slanders were unrolled, the intrigues which reminded us at certain time during the proceedings of the small courts of the Italian Renaissance. Everything was included, even up to murder. Is it not true that Goering, before he himself fell into disgrace, got rid of Roehm and Ernst, who had not plotted against their master, but against him, as Gisevius told us.
So much imagination such perseverance in evil, but also such efficiency, show us that Hitler was not insensible to the actions and intrigues of the men around him. What a pity that these intrigues were not trained in the right direction! But of Hitler's receptiveness to influences we have direct evidence, and it is given us by Schacht who thereby apart from these men involves the German masses, the good sense of which these men had contributed to warp and in which they roused the worst of passions.
Did not Schacht say of Hitler in Court:
"I believe that in the beginning he did not have only evil tendencies should strive to avoid."
What was then the great idea of them all? means, even the most criminal. quired, Schacht, who is on Hitler's side, asks for colonies; we remember Hirschfeld's testimony, but he dissembles, he partly disguises the great idea of the State machine to which he belongs, and this idea we would be less easy in our mind in denouncing it without the disconcerting artlessness of "the great man", who ten years previously had revealed the whole of his plans of battle for all the world to see.
"Mein Kampf" (French text) "The German people cannot consider its future otherwise than as that of a world power.
During nearly two thousand years the steward ship of our people's interest, as we must call our more or less world history.
We have even witnessed it; for the gigantic conflict "between nations from 1914 to 1918 was nothing else than the globe and we even call that event the World War.
"The German people went into the fight as a so-called world power.
I say 'so-called' for in reality it was not.
If in 1914 there had been a different the other factors might have found a successful issue"... This is the next quotation:
"I would rather say this: The claim for the reestablishment of the logical.
In reality they did not include all the men of German point of view.
They were not the result of a calculated political plan, but rather temporary frontiers; in the couse of a struggle by no means ended, they were even partly the result of a gamble."
of the German nation. They constituted neither a safeguard for the past nor a power for the future. They will not enable the German people "to maintain its inner unity nor to assure its subsistence.
Regarded powers or to be more correct, in relation to the real world powers."
Here is another quotation:
"But we, we other National-Socialists, must hold immovably to the goal of our foreign policy:
to secure for the German people the territory to which it is entitled in this world.
And this is the only action which before God and before Germany's future generations justifies the shedding of blood; before God, because we were placed upon this earth "to gain our daily bread through perpetual striving, as creatures to thousands of new citizens.
The territory upon which the robust imposed upon our people."
A further quotation:
"A State which in an age of racial contamination keeps jealous watch become the master of the earth.
...."
The last quotation:
"A stronger race will drive away the in order to give their place to the strong.
..."
("Mein Kampf", page 135). The recognized army was soon powerful enough to permit Germany to arm openly. Who, at that time, would dare to interrupt the monstrous development of this biological materialism? Hitler specified his ideas in a smaller circle, and those who heard his words were not all Nazis. Enlightened as to the master's purposes, they will yet stay by his side, and that is what condemns them. Is it not so Raeder?
"The question is not of conquering pop suitable for cultivation.
.." Hiter said in conference with von Blomberg, von Fritsch, and Raeder on 5 November 1937 "Expansion cannot be made a reality except ning the risks.
....." That comes from the same speech. and Jodl, picked because of their servility to the system, had a solid war-tool in their hands. On the evening before the at break of the conflict, Hitler recalled his thoughts:
"Circumstances must be adapted to goals which are to be attained.
This is im "Vital space proportionate to the great way or another.
The choice is between pro gress or decline.
Fifteen or twenty years any longer.
We are, at this moment, filled "The period which is behind us was well utilized.
All measures were taken con "After six years, the situation today is as follows:
National political unity of for a few details.
The ultimate success "Danzig is in no case a subject of dispute.
of space needed for our existnece (Lebens raum) and of assuring our food supplies.
"The peoples of non-German territories will "The Polish problem is inseparable from a conflict in the West."
Keitel and others. - Doc. L.79, Exhibit USA 27). believe that her force was irresistable and that she could proceed to conquer the world.
All that was meant by this cruel, monstrous phrase of Hitler:
"We must keep firmly to the aim of our for eign policy:
secure for the German people this world.
And this act is the sole act justifies bloodshed.
..." All this monstrous phase was thus developed:
"We claim to have been compelled to carry out occupation, administration etc.
,...
a permanent settlement. It will not prevent us from taking the necessary measures:
executions, deportations... etc."
(Speech by Hitler on the Eastern Territo ries, 16.
7.41) (L.221). And further on:
"Partisan warfare will have one advantage for us.
It will enable us to exterminate all those who oppose us.
.."
(Same speech L.221). The same these was taken up and cynically proclaimed by the spokesmen of the State.
This Trial has brought you echos thereof. And in a speech by Himmler, document PS-1919:
"Whatever the nations of category A blood and bringing them up among us". From the same speech:
"whether nations thrive or starve only them as slaves for our civilization".From the same speech again:
"That 10,000 Russian women should die of for Germany".And further from the same speech:
"When somebody comes and says to me:
'I cannot have the anti-tank ditch dug human and would kill them, 'I reply:
You mothers."
And from the same speech; and concerning the extermination of the Jews:
"We have exterminated microbes. We did not with to be contaminated and die.
We have people.
Our spirit and character have not suffered from it".The conquest of vital space, i.e., of Territories emptoed of which they have been working.
To realize this all measures were weak and peaceful neighbors in peactime, wars of aggression, total wars with all the atrocities the words imply.
Goering and Ribbentrop cynically admitted that they particpated in it spiritually and materially, and the generals and the admirals helped as hard as they could. for him by Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, the regional leaders of the NSDAP (the Gaulieters), and the Generals. Kaltenbrunner exploited the gas chambers which Frick, Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Frank, Jodl, Keitel and the others furnished with victims. But the creation of the gas chambers themselves had been made possible because of a favorable political ideology had been developed and there each overlapping the other, you find the responsibility of all, of Georing, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher, Frick, Frank, Fritsche, even of Schacht himself, the pro-Jewish Schacht included. Did he not say to Hirschfeld:
"I want to the greatness of Germany, and to the devile himself."
He entered into this alliance with the devil and with hell. Papen included, who sees his secretaries and friends killed around him and continues to accept official missions in Ankara, in Vienna, because he believes he can appease Hitler by serving him. living; for example the industrialists who exploited the workers of the enslaved countries after having carried Hitler and his system to power by providing the money without which nothing could have been done; who carried them to power by nationalistic fanaticism as well becuase they expected from Nazidom the guarantee of their privileges. the totalitarism policy, the total war, preparation and conduct of the plan of extermination of the peoples for the conquest of space, implied a co-ordination, a close liaison between all government administrations: Police and Army, Forien Affairs, and Police and Army, Justice and Police, economics and justice, Universities and Propaganda and Police.
And now we come to the secoudn preposition which we have to demonstrate. men stood, implies close cooperation between them. different elements of the German state. zontal bond between the various State and Party departments, between individual ministerial administrations and between individual National-Socialist organizations. They only connecting link would be the person of the Chief, at the head. According to the defense, the dominating principle of German structure would be personal union, not coordination and cooperation.
This is false. This is contrary to the principles of the Nazi State and requirments of a State in hich every force strives towards the same goal and towards the actual reality of German life as revealed by the debates. place of Democracy. The Party is the political expression of the Nation, which materialises in the political action of the State carried out by the activity of its administrations. The 1 December 1933 Act proclaims, for the purpose of ensuring the unity of the Party and State, that the Party is the exclusive support of the State conception, and indissolubly unites the party and the State.
At the Party Congress in 1934, Hitler says:
"It is not the State that created us. We create the State for ourselves.
To some it but actually we are what we are."
complete union between the State and the Party. This explains the legislation which makes it compulsory for the 29 July M LJG 5-1 chief of the Party Chancery to be consulted in the appointment of ranking officials; which incorporates Party chiefs in municipal administration, integrates the SS into the Police, and assimilates the SS to police officers; makes the direction of the Hitler Youth a State department, integrates the direction of Party headquarters abroad into the Foreign Department and merges together to an increasing extent the military personnel of the Party and these of the State.
General von Brodowsky's war diary, which we have submitted to the Tribunal, shows that this merger was a fact at the time of the landing in France. Hitler, hwoever, continued to maintain the system of parallel State and Party administration, because they control and supervise each other. But he compelled both parties to cooperate closely to be certain of the effectiveness of the control. tives of State departments. They cannot hide behind the might of the Party, since Party and State shared the power. The Party expresses a doctrine which must direct the action of the State, but the State in its turn alters the Party doctrine to suit itself. Many items of the Party Program dated 24 February 1920, were never carried out and fell completely into oblivion after a certain experience of power. Income other than that from labor was not abolishod (item II); the trusts were not nationalized (item 13); land reform was not carried out according to the provisions of item 17 (I); property interest and land speculations remained. combined effect of State and Party forces. All the State departments and Party departments contributed to the creation of its components. department.
Let us take Foreign Affairs. It is one of the State administrations which, in its correct conception, should remain the farthest removed from any political doctrine. Not so in 29 July M LJG 5-2 Nazi Germany.
For the purpose of the extermination of the Jews, headquarters abroad cooperate with RSHA by the intermediary of the Wilhelmstrasse, as evidenced by Documents RF 12 06, 1220, 1502, 1210 and USA 433. Wilhelmstrasse officials are called upon to advise the military police and Secret State Police (Document RF 1061). It is Best, Ribbentrop's representative in Denmark, who transmits the order for deportation of the Jews to the Chief of the German Police, Mildner (Document RF 1503). Document RF 1501 shows Ribbentrop vindicating anti-Semitism to Mussolini and requesting Italian cooperation. terrorist measures against the elites; the SD and the Wilhelmstrasse are also involved in the organization of the aggression against the broadcast station of Gleixitz in order to furnish the pretext of a Polish attack. The report of the German military administration concerning the pillage of art treasures in France incriminates at the same time the special staff of Rosenberg and the German Embassy in Paris (Document RF 1505). The Wilhelmstrasse and the army are involved with the police in the question of hostages, reprisals, and deportations. The examples could be multiplied. We do not pretend to exhaust the subject, but only to illustrate an opinion. Rosenberg. Rosenberg, by virtue of his function, already coordinates several branches of the German State. His service of foreign policy has been incorporated in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is furthermore the philosopher of the regime, Minister for the Eastern Territories and chief of the special Staff entrusted with the control of art treasures. The SD and the secret police work in liaison with him (documents L 188 and 946 PS). the order of the State machinery in matters concerning forced labor. All the ministers and all the higher functionaries, like 29 July M LJG 5-3 the Gauleiters, are involved in it, be it that they conceived or prepared the operation, or still more simply that they gave it a helping hand or that they benefited by it.
this subject, and the conference between Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Funk and the representatives of the OKW, which is the subject of document PS 3819, the meeting in Paris presided ever by Sauckel which was attended by representatives of the army, the police and the Embassy (document RF 1517) Economy is no longer independent.
Furing the war there exists under Funk a close cooperation between the economic and administrative services of the army and those of economic affairs. (document RF 3bis). The Ministry of Economy appeals to the police to develop plans for the germanization of economy, (document RF 803 and 814). The Ministry of Finance subsidized the SS to carry out scientific research on the internees, involuntary subjects of abominable experiments (D.002 PS) Long before the war and under Schacht, the same bonds, first secret, later on public, and closer than any other country in the world, unite politics, finance and economy with the army. Schacht, in a speech on 29 November 1938 pronounced the following opinion on his achievement:
"It is possible that no other issuing bank has followed Socialism.
With the aid of this policy, however, Germany policy.
...."
The judicial system is no longer independent. We find it associated with the police in the most criminal enterprises. Document PS 654 gives an account of a discussion between Thierack, Himmler and others, at the end of which it was decided that the anti-social elements and the internees of the concentration camps, the Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles sentenced to more than three years in prison should be turned over to Himmler by the administration, to be exterminated, by work, and that in the future individual belonging to the same categories should not be judged by ordinary tribunals but handed over immediately to Himmler's administration.
police, of the State and the Party merge together. Sometimes the police is made subordinate to the army, though acting with a certain autonomy according to the orders of the RSHA. This is the case in Belgium. In France, in spite of being detached from the army, the police maintains close cooperation with it. The army participates with the SIPO, (Security Police and the SD in the persecution of the Jews, in the administration of the internment camp of Compiegne and in the designation of hostages (RF 1212 and 1212 bis) and in their execution (RF 1244). As we have seen the army and the police were accomplices in the terrorist actions against the Population. The navy and the Police are also accomplices in the massacre of the commandos, and it is the police which massacres certain categories of War Prisoners, although all the prisoners without exception come under the authorit of the OKW (PS 1165, with the State services of their coordination which at times goes so far as to result in a symbiosis, Realization of the common political idea : the conquest of space by all possible methods, is the Path pursued by all, one way or another.
The cooperation of the defendants is an evident result. Apart from the definite facts of co-operation which we allege, what we know of the general functioning of this totalitarian State, bound to the destiny of the Party, its vigour against the heretics for whom came with their gas chambers waited all that leads us to affirm that the defendants, be they Ministers or dignitaries or high functionaries with State or party authority, together with other who are not there -dead or held for trial in other Courts, formed an entity. And this, taken altogether, was the Government of the Reich; this was the Stated-Party or Party-State ;
an entity, perhaps, but a conscious and criminal entity which caused the massacre of millions of human beings in order to enlarge the Reich beyong all measure. analysed just a minute ago in the light of the national penal codes of their and our countries, respectively. They comprise also in their entirety those of the German State for which they acted of that German State, to which they gave life, conscience, thought, will and of which they must now assume the responsibility for the consequences, even the most extreme ones, because they could not personally disentangle themselves from these crimes.