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 Its war planning measures were carried further by its enactment in May 1935 if a secret unpublished Reich Defense Law, providing for the appointment of a plenipitentiary-general for war economy with sweeping powers, and its decision that the plenipotentiary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 Six month later, by annother secret and wholly unpublished law, the Cabinet provided for a three-man college of plenipotentiaries whose function was to have prepared at all times complete plans and ready measures for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.
obstacle to their evil intentions, but, with characteristic cunning, they first moved against it under the disguise of necessary emergency legislation, which was enacted by the Reich Cabinet and which laid the groundwork for the later enabling legislation placing all manner of restrictions on usual church activities. This was the first and the decisive step, and once it had been taken, the fate of the Christian church was sealed; only time and the turn of events remained for its fulfillment. In the entire Reich Cabinet of that time, made up almost exclusively of men who pretended to wear the badge of Christianity, only one (Baron Eltz von Rubenach) stood up for the faith. So clear was the intention of the Cabinet decrees, that he had no hesitancy in asserting that Nazism and Christianity could never be reconciled. But for one Eltz von Rubenach, there were many who were willing to play the Nazi game. For a mass of political pottage, they denied their faith and handed to the political leadership its first weapon for use against the clergy. From these first steps, much of the hitherto unexplained moral decadence of the times undoubtedly stems. From these beginnings came the speedily declining influence of the Church. The Nazis wanted it that way. In their political philosophy there was no place for Caesar and for God. Schirach and Rosenberg as Reichleiters and members of the Leadership Corps, together with countless associates, hammered away at all spiritual forces -- never by a frontal attack, but always from the flank, while the hounds of the Leadership Corps carried out systematic slandering of the clergy and constant undermining of sacred religious practices. Soon the anti-clerical campaign was expanded to the confiscation of church properties, and in the later years broke out into open suppression of religious education and even of simple spiritual activities There can be no doubt as to the real attitude toward the Christian Church for it clearly appears in the organized espionage system instituted against the clergy by the Gestapo and the SD. For this shabby task, members of these two organizations were carefully schooled in a deceitful course of conduct rigged to establish a record, as a later basis, for the complete abolition of the Christian Church in Germany when the war was over.
Lying, falsification, and entrapment were fundamental methods for the building up of this fabricated evidence. The Gestapo, not content with breaking up church organizations and prohibiting church groups from social gatherings, or with its task of preparing false testimony, made wholesale arrests of clergymen, placed them in protective custody, and finally lodged them in concentration camps. From a program of such basic evil, it was not to be expected that the SS would remain aloof. Although heavily occupied with wrong-doing all over Europe, it found time to confiscate church properties and monasteries on its own responsibility and had Catholic priests by the hundreds cruelly murdered in the Dachau concentration camp. suffering. And thus in a strange arrangement of circumstances, the Nazis who tried to destroy both, may have founded the beginnings of an understanding that can grow best because it has survived the worst. tyranny. To the SA belongs the disgrace of having first established and maintained such camps to which it sent persons whom it had illegally arrested. Even SA meeting places were used for the confinement of potential opponents who were beaten and abused by SA men. SA members served as guards of the state concentration camps during the first months of the Nazi regime, and there applied the technique of brutality which they had acquired in operating their own illegal camps. Although the legal basis for protective custody was the extorted decree of the Reich President for the protection of the State in 1933 which suspended clauses of the Weimar constitution guaranteeing civil liberties to the German people, the Reich Cabinet soon obliged with ready legislation which made more expeditious the internment of political enemies and other undesirables under the concentration camp system. So interested in the establishment of these camps were members of the Reich Cabinet that Frick, Rosenberg, and Funk, while serving in that body, inspected the camps. And the Reich Cabinet budget set aside 125 million Reichsmarks for the SS and for the management and maintenance of the concentration camps.
In order to achieve domination of the German people, the concentration camp system was placed at the disposal of the Leadership Corps, and it made use of these camps as a dumping ground for thousands of Jews who were apprehended under Leadership Corps auspices during the pogroms of November 1938. As shown by the affidavit of the defense witness Karl Weiss, Gauleiters frequently put pressure upon the Gestapo to commit political enemies to concentration camps or tp prevent their release in proper time. camps system; Soviet prisoners of war were sent to concentration camps to be employed in the armament industries of the Reich, and officers of the OKW worked out with the Gestapo the plans for sending returned Soviet prisoners of war to the concentration camp Mauthausen where they were put to death for honorable attempts to escape from their captors. implicated in the concentration camps system were the Gestapo and the SS. In the early days the concentration camps were under the political direction of the Gestapo which issued orders for punishment to be inflicted upon the inmates. The decree of 1936 declared that the Gestapo should administer the concentration camps, but it was the SS which furnished guards from the Death's Nona Battalions and ultimately became responsible for all internal administration of the camps. The Geatpo remained the sole authority in the Nazi State empowered to commit political prisoners to concentration camps, although the SD joined the Gestapo in committing Poles who did not qualify for Germanization. The Gestapo sent thousands upon thousands of persons to concentration camps for slave labor and shipped millions of persons to annihilation centers for extermination. in themselves adequate to convict the SS as a criminal organization. The witness Hoess testified that toward the end of the war approximately 35,000 members of the Waffen SS were employed as guards in concentration camps.
In his never-to-be-forgotten confession in this courtroom he said that in Auschwitz alone during the time he was commandant the SS exterminated two and one half million men, women, and children by gassing and burning, and that another half million died from st*---*ion and disease, and among those killed were 20,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war. When the SS did not murder bedridden patients they drafted them for labor which they could perform in their beds. It ordered women prisoners to be beaten by other prisoners, and, in its unrestrained savagery killed, maimed, and tortured inmates of concentration camps by carrying out what were called medical experiments, but which were in fact sojourns in sadism. tyranny. Conditions in these camps were cruel, because the Nazis required the force of fear to perpetuate their hold over the common people. Behind every Nazi law and decree stood the specter of concentration camp confinement. The agencies which created, maintained, directed and utilized these camps were the organizations named in this Indictment. churches, and concentration camps, which we have been considering, the indicted organizations participated in many other crimes in aid of the conspiracy. The Leadership Corps was active in destroying the free trade union movement, and the SA took the initial direct action against the trade unionists. The art treasures of Europe were seized and despoiled by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg of the Leadership Corps in conjunction with the Gestapo and the SD.
The SS carried out the vicious Germanization program under which citizens of occupied territories were driven from their homes and lands to make way for racial Germans. The Gestapo and officers of the OKW conceived and carried out the hellish "Night and Fog" decree, by which hapless civilians of occupier countries disappeared into the Reich never to be heard of again. Thus, in a crime of which only the Nazis were capable, the awful anguish of relative and friend was added to wanton murder. better illustrated than in the murderous work of the Einsatz Groups of the Security Police and the SD, which were first organized by the SD in September of 1938 In anticipation of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. With their loaders drawn from the SD and the Gestapo and staffed by members of the Waffen SS, they coordinated slaughter and pillage with military manoeuvres, and reports of their activities were forwarded to the political leaders through the Reich Defense Commissioners. Even the SA participated in these jackal anti-partisan expeditions in the East. and Norway, the Einsatz bandits followed for the purpose of striking down resistance, terrorizing the population, and exterminating racial groups. So well did these terror specialists do their work, that four new units were set up before the attack on the Soviet Union, one of them headed by the infamous Chief of the SD, Ohlendorf, who testified in this courtroom, to the incredible brutality of his accomplishments, and to the shocking details of the operation carried out in coordination with branches of the military.
His testimony will be remembered for its cold account of callous murder, enslavement and plunder, and most of all for the horrible program of destroying men, women, and children of the Jewish Race. Mankind will not soon forget his sickening story of the mobile murder of women and little children in gas vans, nor of the evil-hardened killers whose very stomachs turned at the awful sight when they unlatched the doors of the death cars at gravesides. These were the men who sat at the edge of anti-tank ditches, cigarette in mouth, calmly shooting their naked victims in the back of the neck with their machine pistols. These were the men who, according to their own corpse accountants, murdered some two million men, women and children. These were the men of the SD. The organization Chart of the Security Police and the SD now before the Tribunal(USA 493) was prepared and certified to by SD official Schellenberg, the Chief of Office VI of the RSHA and by SD official Ohlendorf, Chief of Office III of the RSHA. This chart shows that these Einsatz Groups were an integral part of the Security Police and SD under the supreme command of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner and, not, as has been argued, independent organizations responsible directly to Himmler.The officers of these groups were drawn from the Gestapo and the SD, and, to a lesser extent, from the criminal police. They received their orders from the various offices of the RSHA, that is, from Office III or VI as appears on that Chart as to matter pertaining to the SD and from Office IV as to matters pertaining to the Gestapo. They filed their reports with these offices and these offices made up consolidated reports from which were distributed to higher police officials and Reich Defense Commissioners, several examples of which have been introduced in the course of these proceedings. been made by counsel for Defendants. Counsel for the Gestapo argued that the Gestapo was erroneously blamed for the crimes committed in the occupied territories and that the SS was responsible for them. Counsel for the SS said that the SS was erroneously blamed and that the SD was to blame. Counsel for the SD said that the SD was erroneously blamed and the Gestapo was really to blame. The counsel for the SS said that the Gestapo also were the feared black uniform and that therefore Gestapo men were frequently mistaken for SS men.
Counsel for the SS blamed the Gestapo for the running of the concentration camp and counsel for the Gestapo blamed the SS. The fact is that all of these executive agencies participated in the commission of these vast crimes against humanity. Counsel do not point to any agencies other than those indicted here as the guilty organizations; the defense of each organization has been simply to fasten the responsibility on one of the other indicted organizations. The conclusion is irresistible that all of the organizations participated in the commission of these great crimes. organizations have not sought to deny these crimes but only to shift responsibility for their commission. The military defendants blame the Political Leaders for initiating wars of aggression; the Gestapo blames the soldiers for the murder of escaped prisoners of war; the SA blames the Gestapo for concentration camp murders; the Gestapo blames the Leadership Corps for anti-Jewish programs? the SS blames the Cabinet for the concentration camp system; and the Cabinet blames the SS for exterminations in the East.
The fact is that all of these organizations united in carrying out the criminal program of Nazi Germany. They are to blame as they complemented each other it is unnecessary to define as a matter of precise proof the borders of their own deviltry. When the Reich Cabinet promulgated the decree for "Securing the unity of the Party and State." it insolubly bound these organizations for good and for bad. When the membership of these organizations swore an unconscionable oath of obedience to Hitler, they united themselves for all time within him, his work, and his guilt. activities of the Cabinet. They carried out their work together. They met as a body. They considered proposed measures as a group, and they acted as a Cabinet, Somethimes they met as the Reich Cabinet, sometimes they met as the Reich Defense Council. But in every case they jointly considered proposed legislation to the machinations of the top conspirators. From the budgetary matters of the Reich alone, if from no other source, the members of the Cabinet, each year of the Nazi regime, were of necessity informed to a very extensive degree on all matters that were going on in Germany. They knew about the concentration camp system because they voted the money for maintenance of concentration camps, and because their ministers inspected concentration camps. They knew about the plans for aggress war because they laid the groundwork for the war economy. They knew about the forced labor of prisoners of war in armament industries became they planned it even in advance of war as the evidence shows. They prepared the political blueprints for the entire program of aggression and of aggrandizement. Planning requires consultation, and consultation imparts knowledge. objectives of the SA. The weekly periodical, the SA Mann, and the monthly periodical, the SA Leader, stated time and again the purposes, objectives, tasks and methods of the SA. The duties and activities of the SA in fighting in the streets abusing political opponents, and in chastising Jews are stated in almost every issue of these publications. The para-military nature of the organization was self evident. The SA participated in election proceedings, in the plan to set fire to the Reichstag, in anti-Jewish programs and boycott activities. Its activities were widespread and well-known and its criminality was open and notorious. Much of the infamy was commonly known throughout the world.
Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner, the Prime Minister of Bavaria, stated by way of affidavit: "The gross excesses of the SA and SS in the service of the NSDAP were accomplished so publicly that the whole populace knew of them. Everyone who entered these organizations as a member k of such excesses". That is what Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner said.
The Political Leaders dealt in information and in propaganda. They were the agents of the ideology and the political detectives who checked on the reaction of the people. Knowledge for them was a two-way circuit. They knew the plan and its operations and they learned of its effects. A typical example is found in the order to lynch Alled Airmaen. This order had to be passed throughout the Leadership Corps in order to reach the lower echelons who were to carry out the lynchings. They saw to it that the order was carried out and they made reports on its effectiveness. There were no secrets in any Nazi call or block unknown to them. The turn of a radio dial--the facial expression of disapproval--the in violate secrets between cleric and suppliant--the ancient trust between father and son--even the sacred confidences of marriage--were their stock in trade. Knowledge was their business. every member of the SS was indoctrinated in the full meanings of Hitlerian idea logy. In 1936, Himmler, in describing the SS as an anti-Bolshevistic Fighting Organization openly stated: "We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of sub-humans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without." Can anyone doubt that SS men understood the meaning of these words? Or of Himmler's confession: "I know that there are some people in Germany who become sick when they see these black coats," He went on to say: "We understand the reason for this and do not expect that we shall be loved by too many." The sickness which overcame people when they saw the black coats was the malady of fear--fear of the brutal methods of the SS, the murders they committed on the streets, and the beatings they inflicted in the concentration camps. It was known to everyone that black-coated SS men carried out the murders of 30 June 1934. Even von Mannestein testified the soldiers so feared the evil SS that they were afraid to report SS mass killings in the East. The knowledge that is necessary to bind the SS organization is the knowledge that a member of the Death's Head Battalion had of atrocities committed in the concentration camp, that a member of the anti-partisan bands had of the killings, kidnappings, and plunder that went on behind the fighting lines, that a member of the SS Panzer Divisions had of the killings of prisoners of war or that a member of the SS Medical Corps had of the savage experiments on human beings.
This knowledge was diffused by frequent changes in their duties. The Death's Head Battalions which at first were charged with the guarding of concentration camp inmates subsequently were put into the fighting front; whereas ing the war the fighting troops, the Waffen SS, were used for guarding concentration camps and for carrying out exterminations in annihilation centers. The letters SS came generally to be known as the symbol for an organization both sinister and savage. again in semi-official publications such as the Voelkischer Beobachter, Das Arc* the magazine of the German Police, and Best's basic handbook on the German Police Every member knew that the Gestapo was the special police force set up be Goering and developed by Himmler to strike down potential opponents of the tyranny. Even member knew that the Gestapo operated outside the law, that the Gestapo could of arrest on its own authority and imprison on its independant judgment. Every member knew that the Gestapo was the agency which filled the concentration camps with political opponents. All knew that the Gestapo was organized for the special purpose of persecuting the victims of Nazi oppression--the Jews, the Communist and the Churches. The right to use torture in interrogations had to be known to all who interrogated. There could be no secrecy as to the criminal aims of the Gestapo or the criminal methods by which this primary agency of terror carried out its work. And that it was an instrument of terror was known not merely to the membership--it was known throughout Germany and Europe, and in every country of the owrld, where the very name Gestapo became the watchword of terror and of fear. Tribunal in judging these organizations for what they are, the most vicious and evil of all Nazi inventions. Surely they shall not escape condemnation for the vast crimes they have committed through a false and flimsy defense of ignorance in their own circles.