In document PS-827 he states:
"I have charged a few intelligent men with special of the supreme chief of the SS and of the police.
I have for these men.
...." Such a declaration reduces to zero the insinuation of Speer's counsel that the French population accepted willingly their forced labor in Germany.
Alfred Jodl was chief of the operations staff of the OKW. He had the entire confidence of the Fuehrer to the same extent as Keitel (3798-PS) He participated in the drafting of the successive plans of aggression. Encouraged to serve Hitler by the presence of such conservatives as Neurath, Papen, Schacht, at Hitler's side, he transmitted the 22 March 1943 order concerning the expulsion of the Jews from Denmark and their internment in Germany. He also insured the execution of Hitler's order concerning the annihilation of commandos of 18 October 1942. flyers who had been forced down. He signed the notice of the High Command of the Army concerning the fight against the guerillas, notice which contained regulations contrary to the rules of humanity.
Von Papen prepared Hitler's accession to power. The constitution of his Cabinet on 30 May 1942 was contrary to the normal procedures of parliamentary institutions. On 2 June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag and at the same time gave free course to Hitler's terrorism. On the occasion of an interview with Hitler in June 1932 he said:
"I have accepted the demands of Hitler -
Namely the right of the SS and SA to wear uniforms." At the same time Papen had no illusions as to the consequences for his party of the Hitlerian disturbances which he had himself released. But he preferred Hitler to democracy. After the elections of 30 July he endeavored to induce Hindenburg to tolerate Hitler and he succeeded in doing so during the month of November.
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe reminded us of Von Papen's vindication of National Socialism in Essen in November 1933.
attitude in his speech at Gleiwitz in 1934. I quote:
"Surely nothing can be said against racial research or as much as possible.
..." We allknow what this care consisted of. the capitulation, and his activity was not interrupted, neither by the assassination nor the imprisonment of his collaborators and friends which the State and Party were guilty. March 1938. He occupied various positions within the core of the party or in the state civil service, and finally became Assistant Governor of Poland, then Reich Commissar for the Netherlands.
He declared, and I quote from document 2219-PS:
"I attach myself with indomitable tenacity to the goal in which I believe:
the greatest Germany and the Fuehrer.
(Excerpt from a letter of Seyss-Inquart to Goering on 14 July 1939."
) In a speech of January 23, 1939, document 3640-PS, he said:
"....the task of a generation, that is to say the vital blood of that nation.
..." And he also said:
"....as the task of a whole generation, the entire territory should be settled by Germans .... the present Slovakia, The situation appears to me to be ripe.
...I believe that tion for this entire territory."
This is a passage from a letter of Seyss-Inquart to Bormann of 20 July 1940 -
3645-PS. the party: conquest of space at any price. He used all his resources for theannexation of Austria, of which he was a native. He admits that he worked for 20 years to realize the idea of the Anschluss. And we have the proof of his collusion with Korrad Henlein for the reunion of the Sudeten territory with Germany. Finally, in Holland he bound that country politically and economically to the Reich. Furthermore, he is personally responsible for the systematic pillage suffered by Holland, for the deportation of part of the population and for measures which provoked famine.
Speer became a member of the Party in 1933. He was appointed by Hitler's personal architect, and in this capacity he came into very close contact with the Fuehrer. As chief of the Todt Organization from February 1942 on. Munitions Chief in the Four Years Flan since March 1942, Minister of Munitions since September 1943, he was one of the high ranking officials both in the State and in the Party. Speer exploited more than a million men in the Todt Organization, and in 1943 more than 50,000 deported Frenchmen in the territory of the Ruhr alone. He is responsible for the maltreatment of foreign workers in German factories, particularly in the Krupp plants. He employed more than 400,000 war prisoners in the armament industry. His delegates were authorized by the OKW to go to the camps and to select skilled workmen. He exploited the labor of the concentration camps, more than 32,000 men, as he has himself admitted. He visited Mauthausen and shared the responsibility for the deportation of Jews into special working camps, as well as the 100,000 Hungarian Jews who were assigned to aircraft factories. remained in this office when the Nazis seized power in 1933. He continued occupying this post until 1939 and was, together with his services, gradually absorbed in the growing State Party Machine. As a member of the government from the very outset, he was familiar with the political ideology of the movement. If he claims to have been radically upset in 1937 when he learned that Hitler was planning aggression, he nonetheless remained in his office and did nothing to dissuade Hitler.
On the contrary, it was his favourable opinion that encouraged Hitler to militarize the left bank of the Rhine, which constituted the first stage in the war of aggression for the conquest of space.
He remained Minister of the Reich up to the end .... His presence encouraged conservative Germany to cooperate with Hitler. King pin of the Party State machine, von Neurath was closely connected with this machine in the crimes of extermination of which he had full knowledge.
....On 31 August 1940 von Neurath transmitted to Dr. Lammers two Notes Verbales, the one drawn up by him, and the other by his secretary of State Frank, both of which advised the total germanization of BohemiaMoravia and the elimination of the Czech intelligentsia. One of the two reports contains the following lines, and Von Neurath accepts the full responsibility for it since he transmitted it:
"As regards the future organization of Bohemia-Moravia, all From the political angle there can be but one goal:
the total incorporation into the Greater German Reich; from completely with Germans.
A brief survey of the actual posi in order to reach the clear and unequivocal goals; .... Things possible."
(Document 3859-PS) join until 1933 and quickly turned into a remarkable propagandist. In the course of the war he became the head of the Radio Service, of the Reich. Expressing the great idea of the system, he inci ted to the massacre of the Jews.
Moreover, his repeated speeches endeavored to implant into the German people's minds the idea that the Jews and Democracy endangered its very life, and that it was to yield itself without reserve to the men whom Providence had sent to govern them.
Schacht's position is something special. On his case I shall go into greater details. He presents himself here as the victim of the System and pretends to be surprised to find himself here at the side of Kaltenbrunner, was his gaoler. Schacht told us that the program of the party did not appeal to him. Still, during the Session of 21 May, 1946, former Minister Severing declared that he had learned from a communication of the Berlin Police that Schacht had been holding conversations with the Nazi Chiefs. He added that Schacht's relations with plutocracy and with militarism impressed him as most compromising, and that he himself would not have wished to join the same Cabinet as Schacht. Hitler bringing to him his credit both in Germany and abroad. National Socialism benefited from this in a considerable measure. Schacht took his seat by the side of Hitler, Hugenberg and Seldte. He had already attempted to bring Hitler into the Bruening Government. Schacht organized the financing of the decisive elections of March 1933 in the course of a reunion of the leading industrialists in Goering's home, on which occasion Hitler delivered a speech. USA 874. From the moment of the seizure of power, Schacht played an outstanding role in the machinery of the Party and of the State. He became President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economy. On 19 January 1939 he left the Reichsbank, but he became Minister of State and held that post until 21 January 1943. Clever, subtle and knowing how to hide his thoughts behind irony or insolence, he never committed himself completely, but it is also established that he persistently demanded extension of vital space for Germany. When he tried to put people on the wrong scent by speaking of colonial claims and the remark was made by his interlocutors that considering world conditions no possession of colonies could assist Germany in solving her domestic problems, he neglected to answer He knew how to use threats towards democracies and even resorted to blackmail when remarking on a Party success during a visit to America. He stated:
"I warned in the clearest Possible language by saying: if you in foreign countries do not change your policy towards Germany, there will very soon be many more members and adherents to Hitler's Party."
He also said :
"This is all quite clear : we ask for more space in order to feed our people". What part did he play in the development of this criminal policy? As soon as he came to the Reichsbank, a huge program for financing public works was launched; new railroads, motor highways, all of them works of strategic interest. Moreover, an important portion of the credits was secretly used for purely military purposes. of new financial measures devised by him. The academic and upright economist turned into an adventurer in order to carry into being the grand idea of the party. By means of accommodation drafts: the M E F O drafts, rearmament was financed. Issued on a drawee who had provided no cover, a Society created to serve the purpose, the drafts had blank endorsement by a second similar Society .... When issuing the first draft the drawer annexed extension drafts calculated in such a way that the last became due in January or March 1942. When looking *ack, the selection of that date attains full significance. The year 1942 was the time appointed by Schacht for the term of his swindle. He hoped that by then the war would help him to solve the problem. The original draft was discounted by the Reichsbank. The bills were not subject to fiscal law in order to prevent the evaluation of the volume in circulation by means of the modifications in the yield of the taxes. The operations were veiled in the utmost secrecy. All the available credits in marks were engaged by the Reichsbank in these armament drafts as far back as 1935. At the end of 1938 there were 6 million M E F O drafts in the assets of the Reichsbank and 6 million to discount, of which 3 million were short term. At the due date, Schacht could not but be aware that there were only three possible solutions:
1) Consolidation of the debt by foreign loans, but these would be refused of course to a nazified and overarmed Germany;
2) an inflation comparable to that of 1923 but this would have meant the end of the regime;
3) War.
1938 is shown by the calculation made by us and by Mr. Gerthofer of our delegation in particular (we annex his report hereto.) Let us not forget that Hitler, in his letter of 19 January 1939 to Schacht, wrote to the latter : "Your name will above all and for ever be connected with the first period of national re-armament". From 1 April 1935 to 31 December 1938 the expenditures for Germany's re-armament which we can now discover although part of them are missing, amounted to three hundred fortyfive million four hundred and fifteen million francs. During the same period France spent only thirty five milliard nine hundred and sixty four million francs. This was Schacht's work and only his work. Such a discrepancy shows quite clearly what Schacht's aim was. In 1940 the same proportion was found again on the battlefields of France : ten German armoured divisions against one French. Economics can in no way militate in his favour. Difficulties arose between Goering and him in regard to the carrying out of the Four Year Plan. Schacht did notwish to be subordinate to Gering. He resigned from the Ministry of Economy on 26 November 1937, but remained President of the Reichsbank and Minister without Portfolio. On 7 January 1939 he handed Hitler a memorandum in which he established that the volumen of the MEFO drafts in circulation through his own fault was becoming a menace to the currency. Technically his position at the Reichsbank had become impossible. The causes therefore underlying his departure were questions of economic organization, not political reasons. He, however, remained Minister without portfolio. He resigned this post only in January 1943 at the time of the Stalingrad defeat, when the Party-State machinery as well as the Reich were beginning to break down. Evidently he was of no more use them but it is equally evident that he might have be come useful again later on as negotiator of peace. guess at of Hitler's advisers. Was it machiavelism on his part or was it bad luck ? It is of little importance. This nefarious man who succeeded in rounding up and in handing over to Hitler all the financial and industrial pangermanist powers, who helped Hilter to seize power, who by his presence imspired confidence in Nazi Germany, who succeeded through his financial wizardry in providing Germany with the most powerful war machine of the time, and who did all this to enable the Party-State machine to rush to the conquest of space, this man was one of those mainly responsible for the criminal activities of the Party-State mcahined.
His financial clvereness was that of the Nazi, State, his participation in the crime of that State is beyond doubt. It is capital. His guilt, his responsibility are complete. With regard to the last of Hitler's confidents, Bormann, we know that he assumed the responsibility of the liquidation of the Jews. There is no need to say anything further.
I am new through with the demonstration of each defendant's guilty, not that the subject is exhausted, but the time allotted by the Court for each Prosecution expound his address to the Court only allows us to prepare the draft of a working plan, deserving of systematic execution. The example illustrating our thesis could be multiplied. All the facts submitted during the last nine months by the four delegations fit without any effort within our plan, and this single fact proves that our logic is unimpeachable and conforms strictly to reality. have been a party to the crime of the German State. That all these men were, in fact, united in the pursuit of the same political purpose and that all of them have in one way or another participated in the greatest crime of all: genocide, the extermination of the races or people from which they intended to conquer the space they deemed necessary for the so-called Germanic race. Dr. Seidl stated them most forcibly (on page 25 of his speech on behalf of Frank).
"The law in force starts from the individual.
..."
In conclusion he denies you the right of sentencing these men.
First let us say that not one of the defendants was the "single individual" that Dr. Seidl speaks about. We think that we have demonstrated their co-operation and their solidarity, strengthened by the Party system veyond the usual intercourse between the Ministers and the principle administrators of any democratic country. conscience to assure immunity to the men who have lent their intelligence, their good will to the "State" entity, to slaughter as is the case, millions of human beings in the execution of a criminal policy long since decided on. The principle of State sovereignty which might cover these men seems to be only a mask. Remove this mask, and the man's responsibility reappears! Maitre Seidl knows it was we do. But he states "Such is the International Law in force". What a respect on his part for the law in force, and how surprising in his mouth the words which follow. A few moments later, examining the Hague Conventions of 1907, which, let us remember, have not been denounced by any of the signatories, not even by Germany, he satisfies, under stress, that, inspired by the experiences of the wars of the XIXthe century, they are no longer valid in the XXth. Modern wars would have broken through the limitations foreseen by the Hague Conventions, and he states further:
"One cannot make use of the modalities thereon a personal penal responsibility". Thus for Dr. Seidl, International Law is static when he belives he can draw favorable conclusions therefrom, but this law is also in the process of evolution when it condemns his client.
are fallacious. Maitre Seidl is well versed in the art of sophism; but he convinces no one.
The immunity of the Chiefs of State and of their associates was hardly conceivable when they accepted the principle of the submission of wars to the restrictions and rules of common law, conventions and the rights of people.
of every rule, and under pressure of the universal conscience an evolution of international custom takes shape against it. I have already shown in concluding my statement in February last, I will not revert to that point. It should be enough to add that the Charter of 7 August 1945, considering thwe work of the different commissions of war crimes of 1940 at the capitulation, maintained the conclusions of a Frenchman M. de Lapradelle at the 1919 War Guilt Commission. It is because of their acts committed on behalf of the German State that the defendants are arragned before you - and if it is necessary that law should reinforce the authority of custom, the Statute of London, drawn up in accordance with the significance of the evolution of common law in course of formation, justifies still more our study of the defendants responsibility in regard to the crimes committed for such a State. Article 6 of the Charter concerns only with crimes committed for such a State. Defense Counsels put all their hopes on a narrow juridical or pseudojuridical reasoning.
Numerous questions were debated. Are there just and unjust wars, defensive wars and wars of aggression, is there, yes or no, a worldwide juridical conscience, are there unequivocal criterions of aggression? This is what makes the defense anxious, not knowing to what extent it is expedient to punish those who have collaborated in the machinery of extermination.
When the Defense Counsels speak of "law in force" it is to deny to this Tribunal the right to condemn, and Dr. Jahrreiss denied all authority to the law"such as it should be conceived" inthe light of morality and progress (page 3). All forget that the law in force is not only the law of the past, the only one which they invoke, but that the law in force is also the one that the judges invoke in a concrete manner from the Bench.
All forget that jurisprudence evolves with the times. There where there is no written law, one can only speak of the preceding tendencies and find out if they are still valid and can be invoked.
In any case, the charter must be applied.
But let is now follow this any further. We would ourselves confuse the issue. the one of the methodical, systematic extermination of all the men who occupied the space coveted by Germany. to the end. One is tempted to say secondarily and accessarily, so much is one overwhelmed to such an extent by the atrocity of the final crime. the danger that such a precedne is created for humanity and therefore demand adequate punishment.
These men's crimesis not a simple one, we have already shown that. The common criminal knows his victim, he sees it. He strikes him himself and knows the effect of his blow. Even if he is only an accomplice he is never, morally and psychologically, sufficiently far removed from the chief perpetrator not to share to a certain extent his apprehension end reactions when the blow is delivered and the victim falls. anonymous. Nobody bears the chief responsibility. Everybody stares it, those who, by their present maintain and support the administration, those who conceived it, those who willed it, as well as he who issues the order. As for the executioner, he repeats to himself: "Befehl ist Befehl", "An order is an Order" and he carries out his killers task.
Those who decide do it without shuddering. They have perhaps, not an accurate, concrete idea of the consequences of their orders. Thus the amazement of some of the accused in the few minutes after the showing of the film about the camps must be understood. As for those who promote the execution of the crime by their general cooperation in the work of Party and State, these have the feeling of being passive witnesses of a scene in which they are no concerned. Indeed, there is no there is no punishment to be feared.
In the German scheme the State and the Party are strong, and determined to remain so for a thousand years.
They have destroyed Justice. munity or at least is believed to ensure it. Moreoever, there exists no permanent international jurisdiction that can stand up against gangster States. As for the possibility of a military failure, nobody stops to consider it in view of the seemingly thorough precuations taken. It is in fact remarkable that the culmination of the massacres coincided with due consideration for the delay necessary for the operation of the gas chambers, with the period in which the State and regime believe in the certitude of victory, or have not yet taken the omens of defeat seriously. It is really the perfect anonymous crime as imagined by the French moralist when he propounded the case of the mandarin as a test of moral conscience. And conditions were all in favor of absence of reaction. The facts have demonstrated that none of these men felt a decisive recoil in those conditions. They have, I think, been more intent on relieving their conscience than on attempting to deceive their judges by casting their guilt on their neighbors. Few of them have had the courage to acknowledge, as did Schirach and Frank, that they were components and part of the whole system, and as such could not evade their responsibility.
At the rist of letting the guilt fall upon the German people which proved incapable of rejecting their evil master, the others excused themselves. They attempt, in the exposition of their case, to minimize responsibilities in the hope of conjuring them away, but since it is true, as was stated by Severing and previously by the Mayor of Oranienberg, and the Mayor of Buchenwald and was confirmed by Frank, that it was whispered all over Germany that people died in camps as everybody now knows, do they hope to make us believe that they alone were in ignorance thereof?
The less guilty among them, if one can establish a hierarchy among "major criminals", did not dare to object, but their criminal cowardice had such appalling consequences that there cannot possibly be any extenuation of penalty. one, and where there is no popular control through lack of freedom of thought, freedom of expression and lack of free elections, State-committed crime is of all crimes the easiest to commit subjectively speaking. Moreover, the technical progress made the world over has put almost every natural force at man's service His capacity for evil has been considerably increased thereby. gratification which is also the corrupt fruit of material progress unbridled by intellect. highly improved methods of repression. In the international scheme the process is similar. It is only on a larger scale, because so far there have been no means of repression on an international scale. Industrial revolution and the development of natural sciences have multiplied the virtual power of States. If the State concentrates in its hands natural wealth in its exploitation, if it accentuates its grip upon credit by monetary manipulations, increase of taxation multiplication of free or forced loans; and still further bind the populations to its fate by the development of public charity: control thought by radio propaganda; use to this end eloquent propagandists capable of stirring blind mob passions within the most scattered and the most peaceful of men; if this State at the same time annihilates in its opponents every mode of expression, prevents all popular control, all, including private, criticism it becomes a despotic ruler holding in his hands tremendous means of action for better or worse. Every criminal technicality is within its reach and it can make use of them without restraint, unless, Gentlemen, you insert the element of sanctions in International Law. It must henceforth be possible to put an end to the criminal activity of a gangster State through the power of a super - State organization directed by a legal institution of the same kind, otherwise the freedom of nations is doomed. The weapons of revolt fell from their hands the day when States and States alone could possess methods of destruction against which the courage of citizens remains helpless.
Operated by a small number of men devoted to the criminal regime, these arms which are the property of the States can drown in blood the slightest attempts at resistance, and if revolt against tyranny remains the most sacred of duties, such revolt is now hopeless. This is the danger, and Germany succumbed to it. It is true that favourable conditions were present there all at the same time. Under the impulse of the industrial revolution which ever since 1850 was more violent in this country than in any other, a sweeping change in social standards has taken place, the population meanwhile changing from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. From this, there resulted in a lowering of the spiritual level with disastrous consequences, since the bourgeoisie had received no political education under the Empire. Deliberately kept away from public affairs by their past rulers, the German masses, where the industrialist upper class and proletariat are concerned, were interested only in the economic development of the Reich, and where the middle class is concerned, only in the Army and in the future of the Reich. When, after the first war, the Germans were forced to suffer the disillusionments of defeat; when, in a common and embittered environment all the rancour and resentment as described by defendant Goering at the beginning of his testimony was added thereto as well as the bitter feeling of material and social downfall; when in particular youth strove to materialize its hopes into a concrete reality, Pangermanism then awoke, was spread, popularised and came within the reach of all the dissatisfied. At the same time, the old antithesis between vitalism and intellectualism, between culture and civilization, healthy eagerness and decadent lassitude, the cult of life and the cult of intellect has been awoken and crystallized for the use of simple and puerile brains in the form of the dynamic antithesis between the Nordic Aryan and the Semitic Jew. Appropriate education has easily imposed this biologic materialism. The gound had long been ready. The German is particularly attracted to inculcated doctrine because it alone can make up for the lack of personal, independent discipline which is characteristic of him on the intellectual and moral plane. He loves anything that can be recited as a creed simultaneously admitted by everybody, and as a stereotypes phrase easy to make use of on all occasions. Young Germans therefore learned for their Abitur examination the six races allowed by Guenther in the same way as they learned Grammar, and did not dream of doubting the former any more than they doubted the latter.
And when the German mind reproached nations as lively, as attached to their soil, to their tradition, to their supple and varied human culture, such as England and France, contenting themselves with a miserable and artificial intellectualism, while it reproached them with the crime against life (and Dr. Stahmer was the echo thereof) - the German mind created for itself, as a result of the coarse and facile instructions it claimed to inflict upon all, an intellectualism different to ours in its danger and artificiality. The aim of these so-called ethics of Life was a practice and a doctrine of pure collecti social pseudo-scientific, biological - materialistic opportunism. This aim was the sterilizations, the physiological experiences in the camps, and 15,000,000 persons dead. The reflection of the old French thinker flashes irresistibly through our minds at this result: "Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul" - Neo-Machiavellism, of which Goering gave an example in his statement took root ..... exist, and that the search for the boundaries between right and wrong is determined by historical and national standards (Dr. Nelte). Hitler had already said: "That which is right is that which is profitable to the nation" and Frank paraphrased thus the testimony of his Defense Counsel, "What is profitable for the people is right. The common interest has priority over the individual interest". While reading this, I think of the answer which would have been given by the absolutist Bossuet, who knew how to determine the human measure. (The Defense Counsel compared French absolutism with Nazism: Here is the answer " Politics sacrifice the individual to the common weal, and this is right to a certain degree.
It is good that one man die for the people.
revenge against those who shed it."
We are aware of what could be the result of the Nazi precepts. The witness Roser related the words of this young German soldier, who, after having described the mass murders in a ghetto, concluded: "Ah, my dear Friend, it was horrible, but .... an order is an order". The Tribunal will find at the end of document F-655 which is in one of the Document Books submitted by the French Delegation, Kramer's terrible reflection. Before being Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Kramer commanded the Natzwiller camp in Alsace, where he himself asphyxiated eighty persons by gas, the proof of which has been given. To the question: What would you have done if all of them had no been dead?", he answered: "I should have tried again to asphyxiate them by injecting a second dose of gas into the room. I felt no emotion at all while accomplishing these acts, for I had received the order to execute the eighty internees in the way I explained you. After all I have been trained in that way What a terrible charge against the system! Before being assasin by order, this man had been a book-keeper at Augsburg. How many peaceful accountants trained in that way are left in the Fermany of to-day? and now "the innocent blood cries for vengeance."
You know the crime: You know why and by what means it was perpetrated! The heinous crime without precedent is that of the National Socialist "StateParty", but the defendants in their capacity of chiefs of the National Socialist Party and the great State officials, have all accepted major responsibilities in the conception and perpetration of this crime. Their participation in the crime of the "State-Party" is their personal error which is covered by no immunity whatsoever! and the proof of it has been given for all time.
They must be punished; you are also aware of the dangers to which the world is exposed by their crime, the miseries, the misfortunes it spread among mankind.
You must hit hard, without pity! Let your verdict be just, that is sufficient! To be sure, there are shades in their guilt. Does it follow that the penalties themselves must be caried, if even the least guilty as we think deserves the death-penalty? To-morrow, whence this international trial will be closed and these principal war criminals sentenced, we shall go back to our own countries where, before our own Tribunals we shall perhaps have to prosecute those who merely executed the orders of the National Socialist State, those who were only executioners. another Hoess, for the camp commandants who have on their conscience millions of human creatures by order, if today we hesitate to claim the supreme penalty against these who were the instruments of the criminal State, the State which issued the orders.
Moreover the fate of these men lies entirely with your conscience! This is beyond our competence, our task is finished. Now, it is for you in the silence of your deliberations to listen to the innocent blood crying for justice.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.
(A recess was taken until 1400 hours.)
( The hearing reconvened at 1400 hours, July 29 1946)
THE PRESIDENT: I call on the chief prosecutor for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
GENERAL RUDENKO: My Lord, your Honors : German war criminals. During nine months, all the aspects of the case and all the evidence, presented to the Tribunal by the Prosecution and by the Defense, have been subjected to the most meticulous and detailed examination. accused, has been left without verification, not a single significant circumstances has been overlooked during the investigation of the present case.
For the first time in the history of manking. criminals against humanity are being held responsible for their crimes before an International Criminal Tribunal; for the first time, nations are trying these who had inundated vast expanses of the earth with blood, who had annihilated millions of innocent people, destroyed cultural treasures, who had made a system of massacres tortures, extermination of aged people, women and children, who had made a wild claim to the mastery of the world and hurled it into an abyss of unheardof calamities. A Tribunal sits in judgment, a Tribunal created by the peace-loving and freedom-loving countries, who represent the will of and who defend the interests of the whole progress-loving mankind, for mankind does not wish the recurrence of calamities, which will not permit a gang of criminals to carry out with impunity their preparations for the enslavement of nations and the extermination of peoples, prior to putting their heinous plans, into effect.
Mankind calls the criminals to account; and on the behalf of mankind we, the prosecutors, accuse at this trial. judge the enemies of mankind, how vain the attempts to deprive nations of the right to punish those who made the enslavement and the extermination of peoples -their aim, and who for many years strove to realize this criminal aim by criminal methods.
who are accused of the most heinous crimes, are given all the possibilities for a defense, all the necessary legal guarantees. In their own country, the defendants who stood at the head of the Government, destroyed all legal forms of justice, and discarded all the principles of legs proceedings accepted by civilized mankind. dance with all legal guarantees and they are assured of all their defense rights. drawing conclusions from the evidence examined before the Court; we are considering all the data upon which the accusation is based.
We ask : were the charges put against the defendants proved before the Court; has their guilt been established ?
To this question, there is only one answer : the legal proceedings fully established and proved to the Court beyond all doubt, whilst all the menstrous crimes have indeed been proved, crimes which were prepared over a period of many years by a band of wild criminals, who seized power in Germany, and who perpetrated these crimes during many years, having no regard for the principles of law or the most elementary standards of human morality.
These crimes have been proved; the defendants' testimonies and the arguments of the defense have been powerless to contend the charges; they is the lasting result of this trial, the unfailing issue of our long and stubborn efforts. that there existed a common plan or conspirancy for the preparation of aggressive wars, in violation of international law, the planned enslavement and the extermination of peoples, in which the defendants took part.