Shakespeare attempted to picture that saturation point in the memorable lines:
"Blood and destruction shall be so in use Their infants quartered with the hands of war;All pity chok'd through custom of fell deeds?"
companion for 40 weeks that we realise that the "domestic fury and fierce civi strife", the results of which Mark Anthony was prophesying, are an inconsiderable bagatelle beside the facts which we have had to consider. have been the instruments of death for 22,000,000 people - it is the quality of cruelty which produced the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the routine shooting of Jewish children throughout a Continent claiming to be civilised. There is not one of these organizations which is not directly connected with the sorry trade of murder in a brutal form. Who can doubt that the Reich Cabinet knew of the euthanasia used to conserve the physical resources of Germany for war? It is beyond question that the High Command and General Staff passed on these orders of which you have heard so much and which are all reduced in the end to plain murder; the Leadership Corps' shared in killing Jews and ruining the bodies of slave labourers. I have simply to mention the SS and the crimes come unbidded into the mind without any words of mine. Conniving, assisting and finding a reason for these crimes were the SD and the Gestapo. The trained its Baltic recruits to reach the SA standard which came to fruition in the Ghetto of Kaunas or the pit at Vilna.
The late President Woodrow Wilson once said:
"It is indispensible that the Governments associated against Germany should know beyond a peradventure with whom they are dealing." If Europe is to be cleansed of Nazi evil it is indispensible that you and the world should know these organization for what they are.
It has been cur sombre task to assist you to this knowledge; having done so, we sometimes wonder if the stench of death will ever wholly pass from our nostrils.
But we are determined to do out utmost to see that it will pass from Germany, and that the spirit which, produced it will be exercised. It may be presumptuous for lawyers, who do not claim to be more than the cement of society, to speculate or even dream of what we wish to see in its place. But I give you the faith of a lawyer. Some things are surely universal: tolerance, decency, kindliness. It is because we believe that there must be a clearance before such qualities will flourish in peace that we ask you to condemn this organization of evil. ground that you have cleared, a great step will have been taken. It will be a step towards the universal recognition that "sights and sounds all happy as her day, And hearts at peace" are not the prerogative of any one nation.
They are the inalienable heritage of mankind.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.
(A recess was taken)
MR. DODD: Since the 20th day of November 1945, this International Military Tribunal has been in almost continual session. In these many months, a record of more than 15.000 pages has been compiled. Over 300.000 affidavits have been submitted," about 3.000 documents have been offered and oral testimony has been heard from some 200 witnesses. exclusively of German origin, has established beyond question the commission of the crimes of criminal conspiracy, aggressive war, mass murder, slave labor, racial and religious persecutions and brutal mistreatment of millions of innocent people. The four prosecuting powers have indicted and hold responsible for these frightful crimes as individuals the twenty-two defendants named in the Indictment. twenty-two individual defendants could not by themselves alone accomplish the execution of these enormous crimes, have also named in the Indictment the Nazi organizations, as the principal media, by and through which these transgressions were effected. These organizations -- some Nazi-created, some Nazi-perverted -- were the agencies upon which the defendants relied and through which they operated for the accomplishment of their criminal purposes over the complacent people of Germany and over the conquered peoples of Europa.
The named organizations fall into two classes: In the first class are those which are peculiarly Nazi creations, having no counterpart outside the Nazi regime and which had no intrinsically legitimate purpose. This group includes the Politische Leiter, the SA and the SS. In the second class care those which existed in one form or another before the Nazi regime but which were corrupted by the Nazis.
This group includes the Reich Cabinet, the High Command and General Staff, and the Gestapo. As to this second class, it is not our contention that the Institutions themselves were basically criminal, but rather that they became criminal under Nazi domination. Although, by its very nature as a secret political police system, the Gestapo was the most easily adapted to criminal purposes and became one of the most effective of all instruments of Nazi criminality. named in the Indictment, as isolated, independently functioning aggregations of persons, each pursuing separate tasks and objectives. They were all a part of, and essential to, the police state planned by Hitler and perfected by his clique into the most absolute tyranny of modern times. That police state was the political Frankenstein of our era, which brought terror and fear to Germany and spread horror and death throughout the world. The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party was its body, the Reich Cabinet its head, its powerful arms were the Gestapo and the SA, and when it strode over Europe its legs were. the armed forces and the SS. It was Hitler and his cohorts who created this police-statemonster, and it brought Germany to shame and the nations of Europe to ruin. of this police system as something casual or its growth and development as normal political phenomena. For it was place planned from the earliest days by the conspiratours. The Nazi "old fighters" had a design for despotism. They built the SA at the outset as a private band of strong-arm men to wield the club against the political opponent and the whip against the Jew. They established the SS as the dread guard of the Fuehrer and of themselves. When they seized power they abolished police protection and substituted police persecution as the mission of the Gestapo.
They wiped out all semblance of free government and set themselves up in the Reich Cabinet with plenary powers. They depraved the highest traditions of military ethics and substituted "willing tools" for ranking men at arms. They obliterated all other political parties and fastened on the German people a political straight jacket in the form of the Leadership Corps. and they could never have accomplished their criminal aims. Take away the SA and they would have lost the mastery of the streets; take away the SS and they would have had no concentration camp system, take away the Gestapo and they would have had no means of illegal arrest and unlimited detention; take away the Reich Cabinet and they would have had no subservient law-making body; take away the truckling military men and they could not have secretly planned their attacks or ultimately waged their wars. to declare a group or organization criminal, and the functions of the Tribunal under those provisions, have been dealt with in the legal arguments and memoranda previously submitted to the Tribunal by the Chief Prosecutors..At that time, in response to the request of the Tribunal, Mr. Justice Jackson stated the grounds which, in our view, warrant declaring a group or organization criminal. may be well to restate those tests:
1. It must be a "group" or "organization" within the meaning of Article IX of the Charter--i.e., it must be an aggregation of persons, associated in some identifiable relationship, having a collective general purpose or pursuing a common plan of action.
2. Membership in the organization must have been basically voluntary, i.e., the membership of the organization as a whole, irrespective of particular cases of compulsion against individuals, or groups of individuals within the organization must not have been due to legal compulsion.
3. It must have participated directly and effectively in the accomplishment of the criminal aims of the conspiracy, and it must have committed crimes against the peace or war crimes or crimes against humanity, as charged in the Indictment.
4. The criminal aims or methods of the organization must have been of such character that its membership in general may properly be charged with knowledge of them.
5. Under the Charter the Prosecution must also establish that at least one of the defendants in the dock who is a member of the organization, is guilty of some act on the basis of which the organization may also be declared criminal. Prosecution has conceded must be met with respect to each organization before a declaration of criminality as to that organization is warranted. My distinguished colleague, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, has discussed in his address the evidence against most of the organizations; and the Russian and French Chief Prosecutors will review specific crimes committee by these groups. I shall not discuss the High Command since it is to be the subject of a special argument by a member of the American staff. I shall, with the consent of the Tribunal, address my remarks to the general proposition of whether the Prosecution has sustained the burden of proving by competent evedence that each of the named organizations is criminal under all of the principles stated.
organizations in question are groups or organizations as we interpret these terms in the Charter --that is, each is an an aggregation of persons, associated in an identifiable relationship having a collective general purpose. aggregate, had a common purpose, and functioned as a group, is clear. Ample evedence as to the structure and functions of the Leadership Corps of the Party is to be bound in Nazi publications - the Organization at Book of the NSDAP, " der Hoheitstraeger"; the official magazine of the Leadership Corps, in the chart of the Leadership Corps, and a chart of the Party itself. This group some 600,000 strong had special uniforms, carried special membership cards enjoyed countless special privileges. The term "Politische Leiter" is not one we have invented for the purpose of giving an appearance of cohesion to a number of unrelated individuals performing similar, but uncoordinated, functions in the Party. The Organization Book of the Party itself deals with all these Party workers as a unit under the designation "Politische Leiter". It shows the hierachrchical structure under which they were organized and the manner in which directives were passed down automatically through the chain of command to the lowest level and were carried into effect by all members of the group. It shows further that in the functioning of this corps, the Leadership principle reached perfection. All Party workers were bound by identical oaths to unconditional obedience to the Fuehrer and to all leaders appointed by him. At each level, regular and frequent conferences were held and the higher and lower levels met together periodically for discussions of policy.
The Leadership Corps constituted a perfect pyramid in which every stone at every level was necessary to maintain the whole structure It had one single, common pupose -- the maintenance of the organization and ideology of the Nazi Party. three classes of persons: (1) members of the ordinary cabinet after 30 January 1933; (2) members of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich; and (3) members of the Secret Cabinet Council. These three classes together make up the group of 48 members which we are prosecuting under the designation "Reichsregierung", Each of these, taken by itself, constitutes an identifeable aggregate working toward a common end. The ordinary cabinet of any government is as clear an example of a group as could be found. The ordinary cabinet of the Nazi Reich did not differ in that respect from similar institutions in other governments. It met frequently as a cabinet in the early days of the Nazi regime, and when meetings thereafter became uncommon, it continued to function as a group in passing on decrees and laws through the procedure of circulating drafts of proposed enactments to all its members. An example of this procedure is before the Tribunal in the form of a memorandum from the Defendant Frick to the Chief of the Reichs Chancellory. The same cohesion and unified function is found in the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, which was established in 1939. Like the ordinary cabinet, its members consulted together in actual meetings as shown by the minutes of such meetings in September, October, and November, 1939. And, like the ordinary cabinet, it also functioned by using the circulation procedure, a typical instance of which is the letter from Dr. Lammers 17 September, 1939, to members of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich. The Secret Cabinet Council, an advisory body on foreign policy, consisting of eight members, was an identifiable unified aggregation as appears from the decree which created it.
The inclusion of those three classes under the single designation "Reichsregierung" is not an attempt to create an artificial relationship among three separate and independent entities. Actually, the three were collectively as much a group 29 Aug A LJG 18-1 Daniels as each was independently, for the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich and the Secret Cabinet Council were really committees formed out of the ordinary cabinet.
The decrees creating these two committees demonstrate that the entire personnel was composed of individuals who were in the ordinary cabinet, Not only in personnel, but in action, functions, and purpose as well the ordinary cabinet and its committees were unified, Member of the ordinary cabinet who were not members of these committees, were nevertheless, present at meetings of the Council of Ministers, as shown by minutes of such meetings, and, under the circulation procedure, received drafts of decrees prepared by the Council of Ministers. This aggregation the cabinet and committees formed of some of its members--had a single collective purpose, that of governing the Reich in such a fashion as to carry out the schemes of the Nazi conspirators. examples of the type of group or association contemplated by the provisions of the Charter. It was defined by a German Law as a component of the Party, having its own legal personality, and it was characterized by the Nazi Party Organization Book as a distinct entity. It had an identifiable membership of from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 members, bound together by common standards, wearing a common and distinctive uniform, having common aims and objective and carrying on common activities. The general purpose of the SA, to which the whole membership was devoted, was stated in the Organization Book of the Party, " to be the bearer of The National Socialist armed will", and, according to the same Party manual, a member had to withdraw if he no longer agreed with the SA views or was not in a position to fulfill completely the duties imposed upon him as a member of the SA. It was established by German law as a component of the Party having its own legal personality. It was described in the Organization Book of the Party as a "homogeneous firmly welded fighting force bound by Ideological oaths." It had a clearly identifiable 29 Aug A LJG 18-2 Daniels membership which rose to about 600,000 toward the end of the war, composed of persons who net the same basic uniform standards of race ideology.
Despite its many functions and activities, and its numerous departments and offices and branches, it was an integrated and unified organization and it was, according to Himmler's tirade to the SS Gruppenfuehrers on 4 October, 1943: "One bloc, one body, one organization". It had of course its own uniform and enjoyed special privileges while pursuing the general purposes of the Nazi conspirators running all the way from neighborhood bullying through political, racial and religious barbarities to the waging of wars of aggression, and the most violent and revolting crimes against humanity. of the police forces called the "Gestapo", or " Secret State Police", as a separate group, a clearly identifiable aggregate performing a common function. The very purpose of Goering's decree of 26 April 1935, establishing the Gestapo in Prussia was to create in that province a single body of secret political police, separated from the other Prussian police forces, an independent force having its own particular task, on which he could entirely rely. The same motives led to the establishment of similar identifiable groups of secret political police in other German provinces. The steps by which these groups were all consolidated into a single secret political police force for the whole Reich are fully detailed in the decrees and laws which have been cited to the Tribunal. When the RSHA was created in 1939 the Gestapo was not dispersed, but become a distinct department of that central office, as shown by the Chart of the RSHA introduced in evidence, and by the testimony of the witnesses Ohlendorf and Schellenberg. They easily estimated the number of persons in the Gestapo at from 30,000 to 40,000. been considered together due to the fact that criminal enterprises with which each is chargeable were supported, to a greater or lesser degree, by both. The Indictment charges the Gestapo with 29 Aug LJG A 18 3 Daniels criminality as a separate and independent group or organization.
The Indictment includes the SD by special reference as a part of the SS, since it originated as part of the SS and always ratained its character as a Party organization as distinguished from the Gestapo which, was a State organization. The SD, of course had its own organization, an independent headquarters with posts established throughout the Reich and in occupied territories and with agents in every country abroad. It had a membership of from 3,000 to 4,000 professionals assisted by thousands of honorary informers, known as V-men, and by spies in other lands; but we do not include honorary information who were not members of the SS. Nor do we include--end I part this--members of the Abwehr who weretransferred to the SD toward the end of the war, excepting insofar as such Abwehr members also belonged to the SS. found, the answer is not at all difficult, although some of the testimony and arguments made before the Tribunal have been confusing, we fear. office of the SD, of the Reichsfuehrer SS, or in the various regional offices of the SD throughout the Reich. During that period the SD was repeatedly identified as a department of the SS in SS organization charts and plans and by-laws and decrees issued by the government. cy of the SS, the Party and the State, and it provided secret political information to the executive departments of the State to and Party, but particularly through the Gestapo. of the RSHA, and in the various regional SD offices within Germany, in the occupied territories, and in the Einsatz groups of the Secur ity Police and the SD in areas close behind the front. over the characterization of the RSHA, WVHA, Department Eichmann, and Einsatz groups.
29 Aug A LJG 18-4 Daniels of its personnel belonged to the SS. It was under the command of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Kaltenbrunner. In addition to the SD, which was always an SS formation, it included the Gestapo and the Reich Criminal Police, both of which were state agencies. For this reason the RSHA was also carried as a department of the Reich Minister of the Interior.
The WVHA was strictly another SS department. The WVHA was under the leadership of SS Obergruppenfuehrer P ohl, who was charged with the administration of concentration camps and the exploitation of the labor of the inmates.
There was no Department Eichmann as such. Eichmann was simply the head of the department of the Gesta po which was charged with matters pertaining to the churches and to the Jews. It was this department of the Gestapo which had primary executive responsibility for the rounding up of the Jews of Europe and the committing of them to concentration camps. The Eichmann Department, so-called, within the Gestapo, was no more independent of the Gestapo than any other department under Mueller. very important, we think, that the full title be held in mind at all times--were the offices of the Security Police and SD operating in the field behind the Army. When police control had been sufficiently established in newly occupied territories, the mobile Einsatz Groups were eliminated and they became regional offices under the commanders of the Security Police and SD in occupied territory The Einsatz Groups were a part of the Office of the Security Police and SD, the RSHA, and as such were a part of the SS, limited only by the fact that some personnel assigned to the groups were not members of the SS. consolidated in the RSHA, but the SD at all times preserved its independent identity.
29 Aug A LJG 18-5 Daniels proof as to these organizations, not only by the standards which it has imposed, upon itself but as well by every ordinary rule of reason and experience. No one was compelled to join the DAP much loss to become one of the leaders of the Nazi Party. We do not doubt that many joined the Leadership Corps for business, social, or other selfish reasons. These are the commonplace motives for cheap political prestige but they cannot and do not amount to legal compulsion. of its members resigned when they Pound themselves in conflict with its aims and objectives. Schlegelberger left because of the infringement of the independence of the judiciary; Schmitt resigned because he was convinced that Hitler's course was the way to war; Eltz von Ruebenach resigned because of Hitler's policies against the Christian Churches. A place in the Nazi Cabinet circle with its titles and tinsel was the high ambition of most of the Nazis. Competition for these places was fierce and any present effort to mind of a declaration of criminality against this group with a pretense of membership by force is ludicrous. Party Organization Book, as late as 1943, urged SA men to withdraw from the organization if they felt they were unable to agree with the aims and ideology and to fulfill all the duties imposed upon them. Party members were not forced into the SA lists. The controls and the disciplines imposed on SA members within the framework of the organization have nothing to do with the voluntary character of the membership itself. The willing submission of the SA man to the SA Command is not the same thing as compulsory and involuntary entry into the organization. they had to meet the strictest standards of selection, as is illustrated in the SS Soldiers Manual, and by Himmler's insistence on free and voluntary applications for membership as set out in 29 Aug A LJG 18-6 Daniels his letter of 1943 to Kaltenbrunner.
The SS characterized itself as an elite and select corps, advertised that it carefully weeded out every applicant who did not conform to its racial, biological, and ideological standards, and made it plain to everyone that unusual qualifications were required for membership. Such in fact was Himmler's beast to the Wehrmacht when he said, and I quote : "Should I succeed in selecting from the German people for the organization as many as possible who possess this desired blood and in teaching them military discipline and in the understanding of the value of blood and the entire ideology resulting from it, then it would be possible actually to create such an elite organization as should successfully hold its own in all cases of emergency" The "elite" were required to establish Nordic descent:
I am the case of an officer applicant as far back as the year 1750, and for regular applicants to the year 1800. In addition, unusual physical standards of height and off requirements of Nordic appearance were set up and the political and ideological background of every "elite" candidate was carefully scrutinized. It is highly significant that we have proof of insistence on these racial and ideological qualifications as late as 1943, even in the Waffen SS. It has been argued that because some men were conscripted into the Waffen SS in the last desperate stages of the war, the organization as a whole was not a voluntary one. Those who were actually forced into divisions of the Waffen SS may have an adequate defense in subsequent hearings, but we insist that compulsion born of a frantic effort to stave off defeat In the closing hours of the war does not change the essentially voluntary aspect of the membership as a whole. Whatever pressures may have been exerted to expand the membership of this organization it originated and remained basically voluntary and selective. special qualifications. The deeds of this organization best explain the nature of those special qualifications, for the record in this case is replete with horrible tales of their doings.
The SD man was simply a surcharged SS man. If the membership of the SS was basically and fundamentally voluntary, as we claim it was, then it follows automatically that the SD membership was likewise voluntary. The Gestapo was at all times a State organization, a branch of the government similar in all usual respects to other branches of the government. In considering the voluntary character of its membership, all other considerations are secondary to this basic determination of the Gestapo as an agency of State, If membership in the Gestapo was compulsory, membership in the Order Police, and in the Department of Safety, and in the Department of finance must have been compulsory. Then the Gestapo was created, following the seizure of power, it is true that many members of the previously existing political police system of the various Laender were transferred to it. But they were under no legal compulsion to join. As the Gestapo affiant Losse stated, and I quote from his affidavit "If they had refused, they would have had to reckon with a dismissal from the service without pension so that unemployment would have threatened them". The witness Schellenberg stated that new members of the Gestapo were taken on a voluntary basis. Any one of them could have resigned and sought employment in other branches of the Government or in positions disassociated from Government service. To become a member of the Secret State Police, a person applied for a position just as in any other branch of Government. The witness Hoffman, in testifying before the Commission, stated that he applied for a job in three branches of the Government of which the Gestapo was one. The Gestapo accepted his application and in that way he became a member of the organization. There was nothing to prevent a Gestapo official from resigning his position if the aims and activities and methods of the organization became repugnant to him. The witness Tesmer testified before the Commission that if an officer refused to carry out a criminal order he probably would be removed from his employment, Even after the war began, when all Governmental officials were more or less frozen in their positions, members of the Gestapo were able to resign. The witness Tesmer himself resigned from the Gestapo during the war, and the witness Straub testified that a person could resign his position in the Gestapo at the risk of going to the front in active military service. Surely this was not compulsion in any legal sense. The sacrifices which members of the political police might face upon resignation, such as loss of seniority and forfeiture of pension rights may have seemed decisive to those who remained in the Gestapo, but such considerations could under no circumstances be construed as legal compulsion justifyin continued membership in an organization of such notorious criminality.
There may be particular instances where some members of the army secret field police were later transferred from the military to the Gestapo. In such instances, these individuals may have gained on the basis of military orders a personal defense to the crimes committed by the Gestapo during the period of their membership, But such special instances justiciable in subsequent proceedings, can in no way affect the basic character of the Gestapo as a single department of the Government with no greater degree of compulsion to join and no greater legal restraint from resigning than any other department of the State. Now, it takes character to stand up against great evil -- this has always been so. It may be necessary for a man to brave some humiliation and some sacrifice, in order to refuse to do the evil bidding of an evil master. But responsibility for the crimes of these organizations should not be evaded by the application of a dry, technical or meaningless concept of compulsion. the war in 1945, these organizations were used by the conspirators for the execution of their schemes and each committed one or more of the crimes described in Article VI of the Charter and participated in the general conspiracy. The Leadership Corps was the first of the organizations to appear on the stage. The next step was the creation in 1920 of a semi-military organization, the SA, to secure by violence a predominant place for the Party in the political scene. Out of this group, the more select and fanatical SS was formed in 1925, to replace the SA while the latter was banned, and then to join with it in laying the groundwork for the revolution. Upon the seizure of power in 1933, the next organization, the Reich Cabinet, took its place in the conspiracy. With the Government in their hands, the conspirators hastened to suppress all potential opposition, and to that end they created the Gestapo and the SD. Inte nal security having been guaranteed, they then obtained for promotion of their plans of aggrandizement the last of their implements in the form of the military Each of these was necessary to the successful execution of the conspiracy-- the Leadership Corps to direct and control the Party through which political power had to be seize of the SA and SS to oppose political opponents by violence and, after 1933, to fasten the Nazi's control on Germany by extra-legal activities; the Cabinet to devise and enact the laws needed to insure continuance of the regime; the Gestapo and the SD to detect and suppress internal opposition; and some servile soldiery to prepare and carry out the expension of the regime through aggressive war.
and vital part at all times throughout the conspiracy. The program of the Nazi regime stated from the Nazi Party. As Hitler said in 1933. "It is not the State which gives orders to us, it is we who give orders to the State." and later in 1938 headded, "National Socialism possesses Germany entirely and completely since the day when, five years ago, I left the house in Wilhelmplatz as Reich Chancellor ..... The greatest guaranty of the National Socialist revolution lies in the complete domination of the Reich and all of its institutions and organizations, internally and externally, by the National Socialist Party." It was the Leadership Corps that formulated the policy of that Party. It was the Leadership Corps that held the Party together. It was the Leadership Corps, through its descending hierarchy of fuehrers, down to the Blockleiter who controlled forty households, that kept a firm grip upon the entire populace. Every crime charged in the Indictment was a crime committed by a regime controlled by the Party, and it was the Leadership Corps whim controlled the Party and made it function. orders to the State, it was the Reich Cabinet - - the lawmaking, executive and administrative representative of the State -- that transformed those orders into laws. Just as the Leadership Corps made the Party function, so the Cabinet made the State function. Every crime which we have proved was a crime of the Nazi State, and the Reich Cabinet was the highest agency for political control and direction within the Nazi State.
But policy and laws are not enough. They must he put into effect and carried into operation. The four other organizations were the executive agencies of the Party and the State. When it was a question of enforcing laws, of detecting, apprehending, imprisoning end eliminating opponents or potential opponents, the SD, the Gestapo, the SS and the machinery of concentration camps came into play. The close relationship between the SD and the Gestapo and the importance of the former in selection of Nazi officials is disclosed by the defense affidavit of Karl Weiss who averred that all political police officials were screened by the SD before being accepted into the Gestapo. And the SD violated the integrity of German elections by reporting how the people voted in secret ballots. When the policy called for war, the para-military organizations like the SA and SS laid the foundation, and top militarists prepared the plans for a powerful German army. When it became a question of exterminating the population of conquered territories, of deporting them for slave labor and of confiscating their property, the OKW and the SS had to plan joint operations and, in collaboration with the Gestapo, to carry them into effect. Thus, the Party planned, the Cabinet legislated, and the SS, SA, Gestapo and the military leaders executed. The manner in which this was done can be illustrated by taking up a number of the principal crimes alleged in the Indictment and showing how the five organizations participated in the commission of each crime.