The fact that several of the principal defendants were honorary leaders of the SA in no way alters, the evidence presented in regard to the SA. When Hermann Goering headed the SA for a short time it had only a few thousand men.
At that time it was nothing but the Reichsbanner for the *PD. wreckage. A few leaders -- five altogether -- who had not proved satisfactory, were eliminated in the events of 30 June 1934. This is the only cricism which can be leveled against Roehm, the Chief of Staff at that time, who though in his political actions strove for order and integrity did not get rid of them in due time -- thereby playing into the hands of his opponents. In this, four percent of the High Leader Corps are involved; still a small fraction which never could justify condemnations. Among the salaried Obergruppenfuehrers and Gruppenfuehrers of the period from 1934 to 1945 there was not one who had been previously convicted. This was a requirement which the Supreme SA Leadership had to demand of its members because of the regulation that the ordinary SA member's admission was contingent upon a police certificate. None of them was a so-called ruined career. They all had been trained for a definite profession, with good possibilities for advancement, before they took steps to enter as a salaried member into the Leadership Corps of the SA. been conclusively shown by the evidence. Roehm did everything to strengthen the communal ideas of the German people. His aim was to increase the confidence already won. He waged war on the excesses during the political revolution. He wished to win over the trade unions, not to destroy them. Lutze, in himself a weak personality, repeatedly challenged incidents and measures of the Party. He opposed the party leadership. In an affidavit we submitted in evidence, it is stated that he condemned the so-called Nazism of the NSDAP. This is also the chief explanation of his well-known uncompromising opposition to Himmler and Bormann. There was hardly a question which he, as SA Chief of Staff, agreed with the two men. This applies especially to the question of the Herrenrasse and the attitude towards the Jews; to the Church question and also to the attitude towards political opponents.
unspeakable disaster, which has befallen the whole world, then they might proceed from the individual point of view. This standpoint we also find in a speech of Pope Pius XII, which has made on 20 February 1946: "Erroneous conceptions are circulating in the world which declare a man guilty and responsible solely because he was a member of or belonged to a community, without trying to examine or to investigate whether there really exists a personally responsibility for such acts of commission or omission. Redeemer, who, in the mysterious planning of His always loving Providence, is solely the absolute Master of events, and as such, when He thus decides in His eternal wisdom, links up the fates of guilty and innocent, responsible and irresponsible persons.
DR. PELCKMANN: May I call the attention of the Court for a few minutes.
In my plea on Monday I omitted important statements concerning Germanization, the Einsatzgruppen, the concentration camps, and mass exterminations, etc. Instead of that I referred to my written plea. The President repeatedly stated that the Court would study these written statements of all the defense counsel. Yesterday -
MR. PRESIDENT: When did they receive them. I say, we will start with them when we receive the statements; we have not asyet received them.
DR. PELCKMANN: I was about to say. Today I learned through the General Secretary, and the translation section that the English translation will not be prepared for the President, or the Tribunal; whether there is a Russian or French translation for the Judges, I do not know. My plea without the parts I omitted, and, particularly without the appendix, which I often quoted and I repeatedly mentioned in my plea, is incomplete and can not be understood. I therefore hand the Tribunal a complete copy of my plea with the appendix in German, and ask respectively for a translation.
MR. PRESIDENT: That will be done in every case. Dr. Gawlik?
DR. GAWLIK: I shall accept and I ask permissionto submit a complete copy of my plea for translation as they are submitted.
MR. PRESIDENT: Yes, that will be done. Would the Prosecution like to begin today?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FYFE: May it please the Tribunal.
In 1938 Hitler spoke in the Reichstag:
"National Socialism has given the German people and completely ..... There is no institution in this State which is not National Socialist."
German people. We know how and for what purposes the Nazi Party mobilized and organized the German nation - for world dominion at the cost of war and murder. The entire end complete possession of Germany by National Socialism meant the possession of the people, body and soul, by the organizations of the National Socialist Party and Government.
For what purpose were the Nazis seeking this possession of the people?
Their aims were to have a controlled but fanatical police state geared for military aggression. If one imagines an "ersatz" Machiavelli presenting what this required, he well might have considered necessary:
1) A quick method of registering your laws and decrees. For this
2) Quick suppression of any signs of opposition or freedom of thought.
Here you want an espionage service and a police
3) A complete check and control of public opinion. This is pro
4) A Praetorian Guard who will rid you not only of any "turbulent priest" but of any person with a creed of their own, and so
5) A spreading executive hand which will grasp the population in its clutch of physical training and mental preparation for war;general violence is necessary; which will hold it firm in the ideologies of terror at home and abroad.
What could be more suitable than the SA who had just won "the battle of the street'
6) An instrument to turn your existing military forces to your purposes; to make them ready to commit any act even if it qualities; to give unquestining assent to the enslavement of other nations; to cooperate and hold the ring for the agencies human spirit.
This was the function which the General Staff internal suppression, external trained and calculated force. These are the eternal interlocked weapons without which tyranny cannot flourish. These are but other names for the Organizations which we have indicted as criminal and by which these defendants and their colleagues were able to lead and organize and possess a nation.
When Mr. Justice Jackson addressed this Tribunal on 28 February he emphasized that it was not our purpose to convict the whole German people of crime. I say again that we do not seek to convict the people of Germany. Our purpose now is to protect them and to give them opportunity to rehabilitate them selves in the esteem and friendship of the world. But how can this be done if we leave amongst them unpunished and uncomdemned those elements of Nazidom which were most responsible for the Nazi tyranny and crime and which, as this Tribunal may well believe, are beyond conversion to the ways of freedom and righteousness?
Nor is it only the German people that we seek to protect. All Europe needs protection. Consider the position of Europe today. Among the Germans who were Hitler's there are many thousands of men and women who with their own hands have done murder - murder not, perhaps of a single person, but of many. Hundreds of thousands, nay, millions more, became disciples of their Fuehrer's creed of hate and cruelty. Amongst them are those whose profession and training was to command and lead, militarily and politically, men who are still as fanatical and ruthless in their lust for power as at any time during the last 25 years. You remember the words:
"Fight? Why do you always talk of fighting.
regulate it differently! Why must you always talk of fighting?
For you have every power!
Over what do you fight? Outer-politically?
fight if it is required. Inner-politically?
you. We do not mean the fitht of all against all.
We do not fight against the other, but we fight because of the other."
sovereignty. They are not forgotten in a day. people of Europe? Already the difficulties of this unhappy continent are overwhelming. Apart from these who come within the definition of these Organizations, vast numbers of fanatical adherents of Nazidom must in any event remain at large.
We have a whole generation of the German people who kno no other ways than these prescribed for them by their Nazi rulers young men and women whose first lessons were taught by Nazi teachers, whose education was had in Nazis schools, and 28 Aug A LJG 22-1 Gallagher whose sport and recreation were found In the military exercises of the SA.
Are the leaders of Nazi Germany - in the shape of the members of those Organizations - to be let loose to work their influence upon such fertile ground?
The law is a living thing. It is not rigid and unalterable. Its purpose is to serve mankind and it must grow and change to meet the changing needs of society. The needs of Europe today Lave no parallel in history. Never before has the society of Europe faced the problem or the danger of having in their midst millions of ruthless, fanatical men, trained and educated in murder and racial hatred - and in war. It is a situation which, were there or were there not precedents from the past, would justify and indeed compel unusual legal provision. In fact, as the Tribunal will remember from the speech of Mr. Justice Jackson, there are ample precedents for the procedure which we are asking you to institute. If you are satisfied that those Organizations as a whole are criminal, that the great majority of the members of these Organizations knowingly and voluntarily supported the criminal policies, and participated in the criminal activities of the leaders of the Nazi Party, then it is your duty under the Charter to declare them criminal. You may well think that your duty under the Charter is only commensurate with your duty to Germany, to Europe and the World. clear. It is a practical application of the sound theory of punishment which we learnt in our youth - from, among others, that great German thinker, Kant. If men use society merely as a means to their own ends, then society is justified in putting them outside society. The immensity of the problem does not excuse its non-solution. The failure to perform this legal duty may well spell terror and racial persecution throughout a continent, and for the third time in our adult lives, world war. ing what is, if you will allow me to say so, a careful and learned 28 Aug A LJG 22-2a Gallagher argument from Dr. Klefisch.
The criticism, however, which I should venture to make is that it is remote from the essential fact-finding function of this stage of the trial. The first 30 pages are in reality an attack on Articles 9 and 10 of the Charter, and the conclusion which is drawn that the Tribunal should use the word 'may' in Article 9 as a basis for saying on purely a priori reasoning that no Organization can be criminal is, in our submission, to make nonsense of articles 9 and 10, and to fly in the face of their connotation as well as their intendment.
In the succeeding parts of the argument Dr. Klefisch makes certain particular submissions to which attention might be drawn. and by whom must crimes be committed in order to be imputed to the Organization? To this we say that the practical answer presents no difficulties. No one can lay down categorically how many grains make a heap, but equally, no one can deny that he knows a heap when he sees one. Again, it is easy to decide and sensible grounds what crimes are within the general aims of the organization. The Prosecution not only accept but adopt the preposition that in the case of each organization certain crimes can be said to be typical and repetitive, and they draw attention to the number of such typical and repetitive crimes which occur in the evidence.
Similarly, no difficulty is found in the words " in connection with an individual defendant." To say that if an individual defendant committed his crime in a capacity other than that of a member of the organization, Article 9 is not complied with, is to view this case in a non-existent vacuum. It is the whole burden of the prosecution's case that individuals and organizations are so interlocked that the common end of internal and external domination is omnipresent. members were not aware of the criminal purpose of the organizations. Let us once and for all tear aside the artificial suggestion that large sections of the adherents to the Nazi Party were going about 28 Aug A LJG 23-1 Saslaw in blinkers.
It is a travesty of the facts and and insult to their intelligence.
We agree with Dr. Klefisch that non-participation in crimes under Article 6 of the Charter and a lack of will to support the policies and activities of the organization are the preconditions of innocence. It is the basis of our whole submission that, to use Dr. Klefisch's own words, "The members did subordinate and work continually for the aims of the organizations and the Nazis."
THE PRESIDENT: Would be convenient to break off there or do you want to go on a little further?
(The Tribunal adjourned until 29 August 1946, at 1000 hours.)
29 Aug M LJG 1-1 Perrin
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If Your Lordship pleases, when the court adjourned, I was dealing with some points in the memorandum of Dr. Klefisch, and 1 continue to deal with that document, Much emphasis has been laid by Dr. Klefisch and by all Defense Counsel on the serious consequences which will accrue to the persons affected by a declaration of guilt, not only to these against whom subsequent proceedings may be taken but to the others besides.
It is said "that the stigma inflicted upon members of organizations declared criminal would ... prove indelible ... Millions of members of organizations declared criminal would remain branded for the rest of their lives. One would point at them, saying "Look, there goes an SA criminal". But if they are guilt, if they have supported and assisted in a system which entailed throwing the world into war, reviving the horrors of slavery, persecution and mass murder, ought they not to be so branded? This can be no injustice: it is less - far less - than their desert. It is the only hope for Germany and the world that her people realize and repent their responsibility for what has happened. Dr. Servatius has asked you to excuse Ortsgruppenleiters because they are members of the lover middle class who lacked political experience. Can it really be that only the upper classes of the German people are able to recognize aggressive war for world domination, slavery, murder and persecution, as crimes? You have new seen and heard many witnesses who - some on their own admission, were themselves deeply involved in hideous crime. Have you been able to discern a sense of guilt or shame or repentance? Always it is someone who gave the orders that is to blame; never he who puts these orders into execution. Always it is some other agency of the State who was responsible; to support that 29 Aug M LJG 1-2 Perrin state and co-operate with these other agencies is without criticism.
If this is the mind of these people today, there can be no more pressing need nor greater justification for branding these guilty as criminal. Observations on the Defense these three Organizations Her which the British Delegation has taken particular responsibility an which, in the considered submission of all the four prosecuting Powers, are criminal. But before dealing with that evidence I trust the Tribunal will bear with me if I make one or two general observations upon the defense which has been put forward on behalf of all these Organizations.
In view of the word of Dr. Boehm, I desire to submit that no one can say hereafter that every opportunity has not been afforded them for their defense. An elaborate procedure has been evolved to obtain and place before you their evidence. 102 witnesses have been heard before your Commissioners - witnesses selected by Defense Counsel from the many thousands of members of the Organizations available. You have the transcripts of their evidence. Of these witnesses Defense Counsel have selected 20 who have given evidence in this Court and whom you have seen and heard yourselves, In addition to this oral testimony, you have also had submitted to you the substance of no less than 136,213 affidavits for the SS, 155,000 for the Political Leaders, 2,000 for the Gestapo, 10,000 for the SA and 7,000 for the SD, a total of 310,213. And you have also had presented before your Commissioners another 1,800 affidavits either in substance or in whole, the majority of which are new contained in the transcript of the Commissioners' proceedings. all the witnesses called before your Commissioners is untrue. You yourselves have seen and heard some of these witnesses, selected by Defense Counsel presumably because they were thought to be the most reliable and the ones most likely to impress you.
Their evi-
29 Aug M LJG 1-3 Perrin dence is no better.
of and participation in, the experiments on human beings and was presented with a file of his own incriminating correspondence. bookstalls and the other amenities of Buchenwald. Dachua, he said was a recreation camp..
Brill, who had served as an Obersturmbannfuehrer (Lt. Col.) in the SS division Leibstandardt from June until August, 1941, on the Eastern front, knew nothing of the Einsatzgruppe, the slaughter of Jews in the Eastern territories, or of the treatment of the peoples of Poland and Russia taken into captivity for forced labour. Had the conditions in June become so changed from what they had been two months before, when Himmler had said to all the officers that vision:
"Very frequently the members of the Waffen SS here.
These thoughts come to me today when your men, who help them a great deal.
Exactly thousands; where we had to have the toughness Poles."
General Hausser, one time Commander of the SS division "Das Reich", and subsequently Commander of a Corps, Army and Army Group, knew nothing of SS atrocities. He had never heard, of the massacre of Lidice. away his order of the 25th of February, 1945, encouraging the lynching of allied pilots, said that the order "slipped out" from his command post after he had refused to issue the draft submitted to him by his Staff Officer.
Organization in Essen during the lather part of the war, and himself responsible for circulating Himmler's orders to ensure "the discipline and output of foreign workers", denied all knowledge of the brutal treatment of slave labour. how "in the Spring of 1933, the S.A. in all German localities streamed into the churches. aged 44, denied having ever heard of the boycott of April 1933. Gestapo. Having seen the documents that were presented to him in crossexamination, can you believe one word of what he said? of almost every witness that has been called to defend these organizations.
Consider this evidence from another angle. We know that so-called "demonstrations" were organized and carried out throughout the whole Reich against the Jews on the night of 9/10 November, 1938, during the course of which 35 Jews were murdered, 20,000 seized and incarcerated for no other offence than that they were Jews; we know that 177 synagogues were destroyed by fire or demolished, that 7,500 stores were destroyed, and that the cost of damage to glass windows alone amount to 6 million Reichsmarks. even the Supreme Party Court reported:
"The public, down to the last man, realizes whether this is admitted or not.
When all must have been organized by the Party."
"Whether this is admitted or not!" Can you find one single man among the 102 witnesses that have been called on behalf of the Party Organizations who is prepared to admit it - or anything like it? Can you find one word of admission from among the affidavits that have been submitted by over 312,000 members of these Party organizations?
If it was not the Political Leaders, if it was not the SA or the SS, if it was not the Gestapo or SD what in the name of all common sense was it that organized and directed these demonstrations? out Germany. We know that in 1943, it even became necessary - necessary only in order to increase production and for no reasons of humanity - to alter "the hitherto prevailing treatment of Eastern workers" and for the Party Chancellery and the RSHA to issue orders to all Political Loaders down to Ortsgruppenleiters, and presumably to all stations of the SD and Gestapo that "injustices, insults, trickery, mistreatments, etc.
, must be discontinued. Punishment by beating is forbidden."
But can you find one single one from among all the 102 witnesses and the persons who have swing affidavits on oath, who has ever seen or heard of the mistreatment of foreign laborers, save only in one or two exceptional instances? of the persecution and annihilation of the Jews, of the dread work of the Gestapo, of the atrocities within the concentration camps, of the illtreatment of slave labour, of the intention and preparation to wage aggressive war, of themurder of brave soldiers, sailors and airmen. And they reply with "the everlasting no". You may be reminded of the words of a great Irishmen:
"Falsehood has a perennial spring". ponsible - the Corps of political Leaders, the SA and the SS. have been made by Counsel and witnesses for the Defense, which it is convenient to mention before dealing with the evidence.
Political Leaders; that they were never regarded as such, and had no authority or political tasks; that they were subordinate to the staff officers on the Ortsgruppe whom the Prosecution has agreed to exclude; that they were completely unimportant and in practice little more than themessenger boys of their Ortsgruppenleiter. When you examine the evidence you find them implicated in criminal activities of many kinds. I would ask you particularly to bear this in mind - that it was the normal procedure in the Corps of Political Leaders to pass nothing in writing below the rank of Ortsgruppenleiter. The Organization Book of the Party prescribed "In principle, the Blockleiter will settle in the same way.
Correspondence will only practicality."
The witness Meyer-Wendeborn confirmed that this was so in practice:
"Between the Blockleiters and Zellenleiters on positions, not to make than too much work."
In view of that, you may well think it remarkable that we have happened, to find so many written documents as we have which directly implicate the Zell- and Blockleiters. In dealing with the evidence I shall draw your attention to these documents. But I would also emphasize the other evidence you hove of the vitally important role the Zell- and Blockleiters played. suggest, and various documents have been submitted by the Defense Counsel to establish this contention.
Be it right or wrong, it matters little. You will remember that they were included as Hoheitstraeger in the Party's Organization Book which states:
"Among the Politische Leiter, the bearers of sovereignty assume a special position."
It is answered that the Organization Book is inaccurate. The same is said of the "SA-Mann" - an equally inconvenient publication for the members of the SA. Is there any official publication issued by the officail Party publishers which is accurate? and Blockleiters formed the essential asis of the whole Party system. Gauleiter Kaufmann admitted:
"Blockleiter and Zellenleiter were the executive organs of the Ortsgruppenleiter."
Zellenleiter Schneider was asked:
"Would you agree with me that without the carried on the tasks they had to perform?"
and answered:
"Yes, that is correct." They were much more than the messenger boys they are now made out to have been Hirt staged that only persons who were "completely politically reliable" were appointed either as staff officers in the Gaus, Kreis, and arts or as Zelland/or Blockleiters and that the people who held the positions of Zell-and Blockleiters appeared to be suppurations the Nazi Party. The evidence shows the kind of tasks with which they were entrusted which included the responsibility of assisting in forming the political judgment" of the members.
their area.
(2) It has been suggested that Political Leaders -- particularly in war time -- were compelled against their Well to assume their appointments. But the whole basis of the system was voluntary service, paid or unpaid, and it is confirmed by their own witness Meyer Wendeborn. Let me quote from his cross-examination before the commission:
Q "May I take it that Political Leaders were all voluntarily occupying their offices?"
A "Yes."
Q "And that also applies, does it not, to the Zellenleiter and Blockleiter ?"A "The Zellenleiter and Blockleiter were appointed through the staff.
However, if a person considered himself not up to not have the time, we looked for another one."
Q "And it was decidedly voluntary on the part of the the position?"
A "Yes." it could only have happened in the most exceptional cases. If the holders of these offices were required to be "completely politically reliable" it would be remarkable to find among them many opponents of the Party forced unwilling: to act.
(3) It is said also that because, as in peace time, their appointments were not confirmed, their oath taken only at irregular intervals and because they were given no uniform, they were not, in the words of the Indictment, "according to common Nazi terminology Politisehe Leiter of any grade or rank."
I submit that there can be no substance in such an argument. They performed the same tasks, were regarded as the same officials and hold the same authority and influence as these whom they replaced.
(4) Again, it is suggested that there was no "corps" or organization of Political Leaders; but the evidence shows that Politische Leiter of all class formed a close and well-defined Corps. They are described as a "Corps" in the Organization Book. Together they had a common purpose:
"the complete penetration of the German nation with the National Socialist spirit."
They were a common uniform. They were issued with a common identity card -common to themselves but distinct from the rest of the population. Yearly they took their common oath to their Fuehrer:
"I pledge eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. I pledge by him."
And, as the Organization Book says of each one of them:
"The Political Leader is inseparably tied to the ideology and the organization of the NSDAP."
(5) There is one further matter upon which I ought to say a word of explanation. It has been argued by the Defense that a great number of the Amtsleiter on the staffs of the various Hoheitstrager ought not to be included in any declaration of criminality that you make against the Corps of Political Leaders. In the same way as the Blockleiters were said to be innocent, harmless messenger boys, so, too, it is said that these Amtsleiter were harmless and innocent expert advisers to their respective Gau-, Kreis- or Ortsgruppenleiter. They may have been expert advisers, but they were much more besides, and they certainly were neither innocent nor harmless. They were properly appointed political leaders -- persons who were "completely politically reliable" and supporters of the Nazi Party. All of them, just as the Hoheitstrager themselves, took their annual oath of allegiance binding them in blind obedience to their Fuehrer. All of them, although naturally they received their instructions concerning their particular fields of activity from the State Department to which they belonged, nevertheless were subject to the orders of their Hoheitstrager upon all political matters and in all matters of Party discipline. You may think that these men exercised as dangerous an influence as any ether political leader because between them they were in closest contact with all grades of society and with all professions and trades. We have not documents directly implicating every class of these so-called nonpolitical political leaders but a great many are directly involved by the documents you have seen. I will not enumerate them new. I shall draw your attention to them as I discuss the evidence. It is the submission of the Prosecution that from that evidence and from the general evidence of the conditions in Germany and of the influence of the Political Leaders, you are entitled and, indeed, compelled to draw the inference that if the purpose and activity of that Organization was criminal, then every member of the staffs of the Gau, Kreis and Ortsgruppen ought to be included.
Let it not be thought that because we have all deliberately excluded these members of the Ortsgruppenleiters' staffs, no have done so on account of their innocence. That decision was taken for practical rather than any other reason and it may well be that that decision was wrong. various Party organizations such as the DAF, NSV, Labor Welfare, Students' and Womens' organizations who were also known as Politische Leiter. Their numbers are given as one and a half million. Let me once again make it clean that if such political leaders existed the Prosecution do not seek a declaration of criminality against them. We include, only Reichsleiters, Gauleiters, Kreisleiters, Ortsgruppenleiters, Zellenleiters and Blockleiters and the Amtsleiters or heads of offices on the staffs of the Reichsleitung, Gauleitung and Kreisleitung -these Political leaders who, organized on a geographical basis, were responsible for the political control of the people and the execution and administration of Nazi policy.