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.
Nazi Party program of twenty-five points proclaimed by Hitler in 1920 and declared unalterable. It included demands for the unification of all Germans in Greater Germany, for the abrogation of the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain, for land and colonies and for the creation of a national army. As the Party Manual shows, this platform was the table of commandments, and from it was drawn the dogma for every Political leader. All members of the Leadership Corps bound themselves to follow these precepts and to spread this doctrine. created the Reich Defense Council, a body of cabinet members whose function was to prepare the nation for war. In October 1933, the Cabinet proclaimed Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. A year and a half later, in March 1935, it reestablished the Wehrmacht and provided for compulsory military service. Its war planning measures were carried further by its enactment in May 1935 if a secret unpublished Reich Defense Law, providing for the appointment of a plenipitentiary-general for war economy with sweeping powers, and its decision that the plenipotentiary should begin his work at once, even in peacetime. In February 1938, on the eve of the seizure of Austria, a second component of the Reich Cabinet, the Secret Cabinet Council, was created to advise Hitler in conducting foreign policy. And it was the defendant von Neurath, the President of that council who took diplomatic steps to justify and excuse this aggressive action.
After the seizure had been accomplished it was the Cabinet which providet for the reunion of Austria with the Reich. Six month later, by annother secret and wholly unpublished law, the Cabinet provided for a three-man college of plenipotentiaries whose function was to have prepared at all times complete plans and ready measures for the sudden and not-to-be-declared war. In November 1938, ist was a Cabinet law which provided for the integration of the Sudetenland with Germany, and in March 1939 for the incorporation of Memel into Germany. The Tribunal will remember the dramatic meeting of the Reich Defense Council held in June of 1939 where preparations were completed for the coming war and datailed plans were approved such as using prisoners of war and concentrationscamp inmates for war production, compulsory work for women in wan time, and the bringing of hundreds of thousands of workers from the Protectorate to be housed together in hutments. In August 1939, on the eve of the attack on Poland, the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, the third component of the Reich Cabinet, was created out of members of the Cabinet to act as a smaller working group in the exercise of legislative and executive wartime powers. Thereafter, it was this component of the Reich Cabinet, rather than the ordonary cabinet, which enacted most of the legislation for carrying on the war, but with the knowledge and participation of the entire membership of the ordinay Cabinet.
framework for aggression, the other organizations were actively engaged in related preperations to the same end. An aggressive militaristic psychology on the part of the people and the building up of a powerful army were essential to prepare the nation for war. To the Attainment of these ends, the SA assiduously devoted itself. First in 1933 by engaging in an intensive propaganda campaign demanding colonies, Lebensraum, the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, falsely attributing aggressive designs to Germany's neighbors and generally spreading the now well-known party bromides. Almost simultaneously, ist organized an training program for German youth in the technique of modern war, at first, in dark sececy but finally in the open when it felt itself sufficiently prepared and was sure of no outside interference. But the SA did not confine itself to more preparations. When the first aggressive action, that against Austria was taken units of the SA marched through the streets of Vienna and seized the principal government buildings and in the plans for the seizure of the Sudetenland, the SA formed a part of the Henlein Free Corps and furnished it with supplies and equipment. spread. Like the SA, it served as a paramilitary organization in the years preceding 1933. Like the SA , it participated in the aggression against Austria and; in the conspiracy to undermine Czechoslovakia, through the Henlein Free Corps. Its activities are distinguishable from those of the SA in these matters only because it played the more important part.
Its professional combat forces joined with the army in marching into the Sudentenland and Bohemia-Moravia, and in the invasion of Poland. One of its main departments, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, was a center for fifth column activities. The SD of the Reichsfuehrer-SS operated a network of spies throughout the world and its agents were spying in the United States before Germany declared war upon America. The largest branch of the SS, the Waffen SS, was created and developed for the solo purpose of carrying on the war and participated, as an SS army, in all phases of the war in the East and in the West. Its shameful record of war atrocities needs no amplification here. The Gestapo and SD were likewise involed in the commission of crimes against the peace. The very incident that served as an excuse for the invasion of Poland, and thus set off the intire war, ws executed by the Gestapo and the SD. I refere to the simulated Polish attack on the radio station at Gleiwitz, where concentration camp prisoners were dressed in Polish uniforms, murdered and left as evidence of a Polish raid, so as to afford Hitler a justification for the attack upon Poland. Of course the professional military clique planned and participated in all aggressions from the militarization of the Rhineland in 1936 to the attack on Soviet Russia in 1941. only by the utilization of millions of enslaved workers, and the slave labor program was possible only with the assistance of these organizations.
Sauckel was the master slaver but he needed a million party whips to enforce his merciless dictates. The SS, the Gestapo and the SD at his bidding drove the foreign serfs within the Reich borders under the lash of deceit, of kidnapping, of heart-breaking family separations, of arson, of torture and of murder. The Leadership Corps in cooperation with the Nazi labor front and with industrial management were Sauckel's receiving agents for these unfortunate ones. At the Reich level and at the Gau level members of the Leadership Corps helped arrange for the conditions of bedding, feeding and restraining these wretched humans giving them less attention and loss decent concern than primitive men often gave to his brutes. The Gauleiters functioning as Reich Defense Commissars, at the order of Speer and Sauckel, and under the most revolting conditions of conveyance shunted the shunted the slaves from receiving depots to armament industries where like stanchioned beasts they were submitted to sub-human indignities and worked to death. Medical care and even the most simple medical supplies were refused them. Denied even the social advantages of the barnyard they struggled under less then good stable standards. With a crassness unknown to ordinary domestic animal care directives providing for the abortion of female laborers were distributed to Gauleiters and Kriesleiters and their staffs. Their keepers were of the Gestapo and the SD and the cell blocks of the concentration camp awaited any who chafed under the cruelty. Urged on by Speer, the Gauleiters utilized prisoners of war for slave labor purposes and Rosenberg's minions in the Eastern territories under the spur of Sauckel's demands gleaned new millions for thralldom. The army harnessed thousands for the construction of military fortifications and for military production, and Keitel carried out Hitler's order by hitching honorable soldier-war-prisoners to machines that made materials for war. The greedy Goering sought war prisoner slaves for his air armament industries and suggested new uses for old orders violating recognized codes of warfare, and his aid Milch, thought of the forced use of Russian prisoners of war to man anti-aricraft batteries as comedy relief for the oppressive madness of the times. Depravity supplanted degradation and death became the declared objective of concentration camp labor establishments under the SS. Of necessity all of this went on with high Cabinet approval as the impact of this whole terrible program created new problems for Germany.
ands of them were farmed out for better or for worse to householders, to great and to small industries. Until, at last, in the closing hours of the conflict, under pressure of the frim necessities of the war situation and soldly to increase the war effort, the Nazi Government itself was forced to issue an order to slacken the violence against those who were in chains. The great significance of this order cannot be overstated. By its own terms, it makes perfectly clear that cruelty to the slaves was a state policy carried out by the German people. It is damning evidence against the whole German nation. It is, in our judgment, one of the most important documents in this case and it is shocking to realize that it came from the Party Chancellory and the Reich Security Main Office -- both high state agencies; and it was directed, in writing, to all political leaders down to Ortsgruppenleiters, and to the lowest level of German society by word of mouth. for the human mind to completely grasp. Our whole experience in living conditions our mental processes to make it so. We shudder at one bestial murder, we shrink from a few disgusting crimes, but when confronted with mass horror, we find ourselves groping for adequate reaction. We simply cannot comprehend six million murders. In the regular course of life it is good that this is so; but in weighing the evidence in this case it is something of a handicap for all parties except the guilty. Of some facts, however, we do have full knowledge and full understanding. They are all in evidence before this Tribunal. We know that these indicted organizations all share responsibility for the vast crimes committed against the Jewish people. We know at the evil geniuses of the Nazi plan understood how to nurture a call for hatred. They began easily by having the Leadership corps write to the Party platform that only a member of the race could be a citizen. Thus they laid the groundword for the basic premise upon which Jews were deprived of human rights in Germany. Then the same Leadership Corps began the work of directing a campaign of abuse against the whole Jewish people.
Every man's failure, all worry, each disappointment, any fear, was resolved in the crucible of Jewish responsibility. Throughout the Reich, Jew-baiting committees were established under the direction of various political leaders. And led by Gauleiter Streicher, Party members engaged in open violence against Jews and their property by destroying the synagogue here in Nurnberg. Then came the hideous occurrences on the night of November 10, 1938, under the incitement of Party propaganda leader Goebbels and with the open assistance of the Leadership Corps and the SA. To add mockery to malefaction, the Mann set up a supreme party court to investigate these outrages and although it found that instructions for carrying out these pograms had been telephoned by the Gauleiters to their subordinate leaders, it ruled that in the killing of Jews without orders or contrary to orders: "at heart the men were convinced that they had done a service to their Fuehrer and to their Party". discriminatory legislation was enacted to restrict the mobility of the Jew, to impoverish him, and to degrade him. Great numbers of these legislative monstrosities, all the creations of the Reich Cabinet, are in evidence in this record. With quickened pace the Nazis moved to new cruelties and from a mixed-up policy which demanded the departure of the Jew and called for his detention in German concentration camps, they approached the depths of shame in a Reich Cabinet proposal for the sterilization of even half-Jews. In a cold setting of sadism and sin, the Reich Cabinet reviewed the manner in who half-Jews were to be treated and them recommendations of the Cabinet were submitted to Hitler for final action. The SA men were among the first to apply direct force and brutality against the Jewish people in Germany. The witness Severing has told the Tribunal from the witness stand that during the years after 1921 the SA engaged in organized terror against the Jews. These street ruffians, having nearly completed their orgies against ordinary political opponents, now found new uses for their clubs and whips and new outlets for their perverse propensities. Any Jew was fair game and it was open season the year round for Jew-hunting. They smashed into private homes and abused the terrified Jewish inhabitants without any pretense of cause or provocation.
And they interlaced their physical violence with their constant tirade of slanderous anti-Jewish propaganda. the Leadership Corps, the Reich Cabinet and the SA were only the beginnings of the dreadful fate that the Nazis prepared for the Jews. In this fashion, the way was paved for the sinister activities of the Gestapo when it came into play. Now these secret policemen moved in with their wraith-like methods. Trembling Jews were hauled from their beds in the middle of the night and dispatched without semblance of accusation to concentration camps, and often their family members awoke to find them missing. Thousands of Jewish people so disappeared never to be seen or heard of again and all over Europe today surviving family remnants with aching hearts are seeking slues or indications of the fate that befell them. Sad to relate, the only answer to most of the searching is to be found in the records of this Tribunal, in the captured documents of the SS, the SD and the Gestapo, and in the death books of the gas chambers, the mass graves and the crematoria.
By this time the Nazis were astride much of Central Europe. Wallowing in their early bloody successes and puffed up with premature confidence in their ability to dominate the continent, they dropped all sham about the Jew in Germany and laid bare his ultimate doom. The Jew was to be wiped from the face of Europe -- not by migration, not by mass movement, but by annihilation. It was Goering who ordered Heydrich as chief of the security police and SD to work out a "complete solution" of the Jewish problem in the areas occupied by the Reich. And it was Heydrich, as chief of the Security Police and SD and acting upon Goering's order, who instructed the Gestapo to murder all Jews who could not be used for slave labor. Gestapo men, under the leadership of Eichmann, went into the occupied territories, and, with the assistance of local officers of the Security Police and SD, succeeded in herding virtually all of the Jews of Europe into concentration camps and annihilation centers. With unabated fury the Nazis plunged from Goering's "complete solution" to Himmler's "final solution". This was the last responsibility and who but Himmler as head of the SS could fulfill this unholy mission.
In his foul hands and these of his SS was placed the assignment for the complete destruction of the Jew, He warmed to his task. His SS men, having been tested and proved in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the clearing of the Jews from Galacia, were ready for the refinements of the extermination plants. And with Hitler's order to Himmler, SS exterminator Hoess opened the largest murder mart in history. Two thousand human beings at a time perished in his modern slaughterhouse. All over German-occupied Europe SS plants of the Hoess-Auschwitz design gassed living Jews with dispatch and destroyed their remains in evens stream-lined for mass operation. Thus the SS made it possible for Himmler to declare in his speech at Posen:
"I also want to take to you quits frankly on a very grave matter... I mean the clearing out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race... this is a page of glory in our history....."
And I would like to say parenthetically, Mr. President, that the quotation which appears on page 23 of the text is incorrect and should be stricken, and the one which I have read is the proper one. the fact of this crime -- a crime that can never be completely understood, completely explained, or properly requited. Slowly mankind moved to its sad and sober acceptance. But this was not the end, for the Nazis, through propaganda conduits, had piped their racial and religious poison into most of Eruope and to a large part of the world. To restore the moral health of Central Europe is not enough, seepage from Nazi sewers of slander has polluted many of man's Pierian springs and the virus of hate and bigotry and intolerance has fouled the waters. It will take generations of mental and moral sanitation to stamp out this Nazi Plague. Thus the crime lives after the criminals -- these defendants and these organizations.
and religious groups to the abuse and the killing of prisoners of war in violation of the rules of warfare was not difficult for the members of the indicted organizations. These offenses were the result of the aggressive war aims for which the Reich Cabinet has a direct responsibility. The history of mistreatment of honorable soldiers who had surrendered is too well-known to this Tribunal to require detailed discussion here. Yet it is worthwhile to recall to mind that Reichleiters Goebbels and Bormann, speaking for the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, were these who instituted the policy of lynching allied airmen by the German populace. This savage policy was carried out by the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, while, at the same time, military units of the SS wantonly executed prisoners of war on every battlefield. To the Gestapo and the SD was given the first responsibility for carrying out the barbaric Hitler order of October 18, 1942, and its subsequent amendments calling for the summary execution of allied commandos and paratroopers. Now should it be for button that throughout the war the Gestapo screened prisoner-of-war camps for laws and these of the Communist political faith who were then deliberately murdered. It was the same Gestapo who sent recaptured officer prisoners of war to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp for execution by SS guards under the Bullet decree. The Tribunal will recall the document concerning the screening of prisoner-of-war camps introduced in the later stages of the triad which proved conclusively that loval Gestapo offices at Munich, Regensberg, Furth and Nurnberg screened prisonerof-war camps in Bavaria for classes of prisoners of war to be sent to Dachau for liquidation by SS guards, and that these Gestapo offices were criticized by the high Command for failure to screen as effectively as the High Command desired. This crime has been carefully avoided by counsel in pleading the case for the implicated organizations. It is one of the clearest cases of willful premeditated murder of prisoners of war in violation of established Internation Law. It is positive demonstration of the complete savagery of the responsible organizations with respect to the treatment of prisoners of war. The infamous Bullet Decree under which the Gestapo sent re-captured officer prisoners of war to Mauthausen Concentration Camp for execution by SS guards is additional proof of the criminal character of these organizations.