30 Aug A LJG 12-1 Williams (The Tribunal reconvened at 1400 Hours.)
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has had an application from Dr. Stahmer on behalf of the defendant Goering that certain affidavits offered in evidence on behalf of the General Staff and High Command should be considered on behalf of the defendant Goering. The Tribunal, of course, will consider those affidavits on behalf of the defendant Goering as it would consider all the rest of the record.
Yes, M. Champetier de Ribes.
M. CHAMPETIER DE RISES: Mr. President and gentlemen, the Defense submits a second argument. know each other. Some are subject to the State, the others to Party, while State and Party exert their activity in different domains. Within the organizations themselves watertight partitions divided the various sections that composed them, and which acted quite independently. And, at the risk of sacrificing the worst compromised cells, the defense counsel are trying to clear from responsibility the greater possible number of such supposedly isolated groups. general organization of the Reich's administrative services. As shown by Mr. Dubost in establishing the personal responsibility of each individual defendant, the close interlocking of the organizations and of the services is beyond discussion.
The National-Socialist State is totalitarian. Its officials as well as its services derive their inspiration from a common ideology, pursue common aims, and unity of action is insured by the penetration of the Party which is the expression of the politic al will of the People throughout the whole State machine. realized by the law of 1 December 1933: " The National - Socialist Party has become the representative of the idea of the German. State ano is indissolubly bound to the State" (Art. I) 30 Aug A LJG 12-2 Williams Public services must cooperate with the services of the Party.
and Party is realized by the concentration into the same hands of the powers emanating from one and the other. and of the Party. at the same time head of the Police which is subject to the State. representative of the State in their capacity of governors of the Reich or Chief Administrators of Prussia. elaboration of the more important laws and in the nomination of the higher State officials. officials suspected of insufficient devotion to the Party, and we know with what brutality this same purge was carried out in the High Command. Thus, in their acts as well as in their writings the inter-dependence of State, Party and Army is realized to the utmost extent, and in the sum total of their activity it is impossible to discern the share of responsibility belonging to the one or to the other. Is it necessary to give examples there of? We gave several examples thereof and fear to weary the attention of the Tribunal. the Gestapo, the SD, the SS and the Army in the common elaboration of the general instructions and incarrying out operations against the resistants, reprisals against the civil population and the extermination of the Jews?
Do we not find a convincing proof of it in Hitler's instruction of 30 July 1944 which has frequently been quoted:
"All acts of violence committed by non German civilians in the occupied territories against the Wehrmacht, the SS, and the Police and against the installations which they use, 30 Aug A LJG 12-3 Williams must as acts of terror or sabotage, be fought in the following way:
"a) The troops and each individual member of the Wehrmacht, SS and Police must kill then and there the terrorists and saboteurs who are caught in the very act.
"b) Anyone caught later on must be transferred to the nearest local service of the Security Police and the Security Service. SS and the Police, does not Hitler underline the close cooperation between these organizations?
Is It necessary to remind once more of Keitel's numerous instructions, Marshal Kesselring's order of 14 January 1944 and General von Brodowski's diary of operations that put the army at the disposal of the Police or the Police at the army's disposal with a view to the savage repression of the actions of the resistants?
is it necessary to recall to your memory Keitel's orders to the Generals in Command in France, Holland and in Belgium, that the army should be made to participate in the pillaging of art treasures oganized and directed by Rosenberg? Court on 1 August that the decree "Macht und Nebel" was the outcone of collaboration between the High Command and the Ministry of Justice? dividing them between agencies of the State and of the party, between the socalled independent organizations. partitions separate, within the same organization, the various sections of which it is composed. For example, whom does it expect to believe that the administrative officials of the SD. (Security Service) and of the Gestapo were ignorant of the magnitude of the deportations since they had to solve the difficult problem of arranging for convoys; or that the offices supplying material could fail to know about the exterminations by chemical processes, as they had to repair the gas vans?
In fact, all the departments of the Gestapo, the SD., the SS and the high Command are jointly responsible for the crimes which were committed in common; again, what holds true for the organizations applies likewise to the Reich Cabinet and the political chiefs, as has been brought out by my most honorable colleagues of the Public Prosecution. the deeds; has the brain less responsibility than the arm? those organizations which we request you to pronounce as criminal. the most severe verdicts against all members of these organizations?
Certainly not. In requesting of your justice the moral condemnation of the organizations, without which the crimes of National Socialism could not have been perpetrated, we are not asking you to condemn without hearing men who, on the contrary, could make their personal defense arguments prevail before the competant tribunals.
If moreover the Charter of your Tribunal does decree that "in every case in which the Tribunal has proclaimed the criminal character of a group or organization ... such criminal character shall be considered as established and can no longer be contested", it does not say anywhere that all members of such groups or organizations will have to be arraigned before competent authorities, and in our opinion only those will have to be prosecuted who, having knowledge of the group or organization's criminal activity, have deliberately joined it, thus participating personally in the crime committed by all collectively. justice and the hope of universal pacification, the penalties must be made proportionate to the gravity of the offence charged, and that if the most severe penalties are justly attendant upon the crimes of which a member of an organization is found to be personally guilty, mere affiliation, even voluntary to one of these groups should only be punished by penalties involving deprivation of freedom or even by mere deprivation of all or part of the civil or political rights. Charter to prevent it from saying so in whatever form it deems most fitting.
Your verdict therefore will not be, as Dr. Steinbauer seemed to fear in his final pleading for Seyss-Inquart, the conclusion of a "trial of the vanquished by the civtor". It will be the solemn and serene manifestation of eternal justice.
In this same final pleading, trying to oppose the words of M. de Menthon to the attitude of one of the most heroic chiefs of the French Resistance, who has since become President of theGoverment of the Republic, Dr. Steinbauer recalled Mr. Georges Bidault's words while visiting severly wounded Germans after the liberation, "Comrades", he said to them, "I wish you a prompt recovery and a happy return to your country".
The defense counsel of Seyss-Inquart was wrong. There is no Contradiction between the words of Francois de Menthon and those of Georges Bidault, and the Frenchmen, as well as, I am sure, all the free citizens of the United Nations will agree to reconcile the necessary severity for the culprits with the pity for those who perhaps have only been the victims.
competent authorities to punish the guilty and only the guilty, in solemnly recalling to the world that a moral law existed before the arbitrary conduct of persons, on nations as well as on individuals, and that it is criminal to violate it, your sentence will contribute forcibly to the great work of universal pactification which the representatives of the free peoples undertake in the organization of the United Nations, as at the Peace Conference, in New York as in Paris, "in the great hope of the plain people with upright hearts".
Your Lordship! Your Honors ! with exceptional care and with the greatest skill. The Prosecution has presented exhaustive proofs for the individual cases of the major war criminal now at the dock. We fully support also the charges against the criminal organizations --the Government of Fascist Germany, the General Staff and High Command of German Armed Forces, the Leadership Corps of the German National Socialist Party, the State Secret Police (Gestapo), the Security Detachments of the German National Socialist Party (SS), Security Service (SD) and Detachments of SA. was headed by a sang of conspirators, who seized the Government power and the Administration of all Germany. population of many millions, at the centre of a huge state machinery could not exist without a whole system of subsidiary criminal organizations, connecting the conspirators with the remote districts, the leaders of the thoroughfare with the leaders of the streets and bye streets. Therefore in Hitler's Germany there was a network of organizations assigned with great power: the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, Gestapo, SS, SD etc., which functioned under the constant and direct leadership of the conspirators.
The law of 1933 according to which the machinery of the Fascist party was Merged in the state machinery of Hitler's Germany, was an open local recognition of the fact.
each of the conspirators acted in several capacities and held several offices, representing many persons: Goering for example, as Minister, Commander of the Air Force, plenipotentiary for the four year plan, Reichsleiter, supreme Commander of SA and SS; Hess -- Cabinet Minister, Hitler's deputy for the party, General of SS and SA; Rosenberg -- Reichsleader of the National Socialist party for questions of ideology and foreign policy, as well as Cabinet Minister and Obergruppenfuehrer of SA and SS etc. Just as Goering -Minister is inseparable from Goering -- Obergruppenfuehrer of SS, so are Gestapo and the ether criminal or animations inseparable from the State under Hitler's Germany. It is impossible to imagine Hitler's Germany without libraries, without schools, even without hospitals, but Hitler's Germany without SS and Gestapo could not exist. Military Tribunal provides for two kinds of participation in the criminal associations of Hitler: Art. 6 of the Charter refers to participation in the criminal conspiracy, and Art. 9-10 refers to the participation in the criminal organizations. Both of these conceptions are organically and indissolubly connected, for they express in legal terms the correlation and the connection which actually existed in real life between the conspiracy and the organizations in Hitler's Germany. Hitlerites in the international crimes, that is, participation in the conspiracy and participation in the organizations, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal had established with full reason different criminal and local consequences for two kinds of participation.
Participation in the conspiracy, and it's very natural conception precludes by its very nature a very considerable number of persons, and is provided for by the Charter as an independent criminal action.
organizations, comprising hundreds of thousands of members on the other hand is differently defined by the Charter. Based entirely upon the principles of law and justice the Charter of the Tribunal leaves it to the competence of the national Tribunals to determine the individual responsibility of the members of the organization which is closely connected with the determination of guilt and of the criminality of a great number of individual persons.
According to Art. 10 of the Charter "if the Tribunal considers one or another organization as criminal, the national courts have a right to prosecute Separate individuals for belonging to criminal organizations". Therefore the Tribunal has the right to consider an organization as criminal not for the purpose of punishing this organization as a whole or all of its members but to enable thus the national courts to prosecute individuals for belonging to such organizations as have been declared criminal.
In accordance with the instructions of Art. 10 of the Charter the Tribunals of USSR, USA, Great Britain and France and of 18 states which joined the London Agreement, may certainly condemn, but they have the right also to come to a conclusion, that the defendant is not a member of the organization at all, or belonging to it only formally, was in fact far from it and according to such a conclusion they may acquit him. All those questions as well as related questions were and remained the competence of the national courts. These courts are United only in one theoretically important respect which is on principle of profound importance: if the International Tribunal considers the organization as criminal, the National Tribunals can neither deny nor even discuss the criminal character of such an organization; here for the first time in legal history the sovereignty of individual countries is limited by the enforcing power of the verdict of the International legal authority the Tribunal. Tribunal and the National Courts is very essential in order to understand the regulations of the Charter of the Tribunal concerning criminal organizations. general question concerning die criminality of the organization and not separate questions about the individual responsibility of these various organizations, the Charter does not indicate any particular criterion of the concept "organization" and in this case it does not bind the Tribunal by any formal requirement The absence in the Charter of a detail definition of a criminal organization is not, therefore, an omission in the Charter but a theoretical position on principle which fellows from the above mentioned fact, namely, consigning the elucidation of the question of facts to the agencies of National Justice.
Therefore, attempts to require some kind of factual signs (voluntary membership, mutual information) in order to consider the organization as criminal do not find any support in the Charter but differ from its entire structure. The main and only task presenting itself to the Tribunal is not such investiagions with which national courts deal and will have to deal, but the establishing of one decisive fact; namely; whether by its criminal actions the organization participated in the realization of the plan of Hitler's conspirators. ceedings for the prosecution of organizations. question concerning criminal organizations under the indispensable condition to consider the case of a real representative of this organization sitting in the dock of the defendants. The defendants at this Trial who are now and were at the same time the participants of the conspiracy and the leading members of the organization, in whose reference the Tribunal has to decide the question of considering them as criminal. For this reason, the evidence submitted that has been used for the individual cases of the defendants, is at the same time the fundamental evidence for the organizations which they represent. The documents submitted by the Prosecution have quite clearly proved the organizations mentioned in the Indictment served as constant and direct as instruments for realizing the criminal plots of the conspirators. Thus the legal proceedings have fully and comprehensively proved the criminal character of these organizations, in the curt of the present proceedings. organizations the Charter of the Tribunal invited by broadcastings, through the Press and by special announcements the members of the accused organizations to submit their explanations to the Tribunal. The Tribunal is aware of the number of persons kept in concentration camps who wished to avail themselves of this possibility. The formation of an auxiliary commission made it possible for the Tribunal to interrogate the greatest possible number of members of the organizations who are later to be examined and judged later by the National Courts.
Thus as a result of complicated preliminary work the group of witnesses selected by the Defense Counsel appeared before the Tribunal. Not being able to deny the irrefutable force of the documental proofs submitted by the Prosecution, the Defense Counsel decided to summon its own witnesses in contrast to them.
Your Honors, we remember those witnesses and their testimonies. If more evidence is required to prove that falsehood is a constant and imariable companion of crime among the Hitlerites, the false testimonies of Kaufman, Sievers, Manstein, Reinecke, Besta and others can serve as convincing illustrations. These "witnesses" in their effort to whitewash the criminal organizations, of which they were the loading members, reached absurdity. SS and the Gestapo are found to be a society of the elect, a club of noble men, order of Knights. It is not without reason that the Counsel for the defense included Rosenberg among the Knights. All of them sparkle with moral purity and all of them are filled with Pity towards their neighbours. The Obergruppenfuehrer of professional henchmen of SS worked to save Jews from the pogroms while General Brauchitsch was a zealous pacifist. It is instructive that all the organizations without any exception, which are considered as criminal by the Indictment, are pure and immaculate according to the testimonies of the witnesses, Who then murdered the 12 million peaceful citizens. Who tortured the prisoners of war and deported millions of people for slave labour in Germany from the occupied territories? No defendants are to be found! hestiate before murder, where honor did not keep them from perjury, do not deserve to be refuted. prosecution submitted supplementary striking documents testifying to new atrocities of the criminal organizations of the Hitlerites.
Facts, irrefutable facts have been established. The inflexible will of the law is clear. The time has come to draw conclusions.
At the congress of the Nazi Party in 1934 Hitler declared: "It is not the state that has created us, but we have created the state. It is possible that we are considered by some as a party - by others as an organization, by others as something else, but in reality we are what we are." tion of who the Hitlerites were. The Fuehrer at the head of a criminal gang of conspirators, appearing in different roles and nominations (Ministers, Gauleiters, Obergruppenfuehrers, etc.) surrounded by a network of criminal organizations created by him, who had seized in their grip millions of German citizens - this was the outline of the political structure of Hitler's Germany. the Indictment, as well as the acknowledgment of the existence of the conspiracy, are therefore the necessary conditions for the triumph of Justice, the triumph longed for by all freedom loving nations. sidered as criminal by the Prosecution, I find it necessary to mention the following in addition to the convincing arguments expressed by my honorable colleagues:
In Count I paragraph 4, art. "A" of the Indictment, entitled "Nazi Party as the central core of the common plan or conspiracy," it says:
"In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Fuehrer of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), known as the Nazi Party, which was founded in Germany in 1920.
The Nazi Party, together with for the carrying out of the aims and purposes of their conspiracy."
The numerous crimes of Hitler's clique were inspired and directed by theNazi Party - the motive power of the Fascistconspiracy. that they werenationalists, who had protected Germany from other countries attempting her existence. This is evident falsehood. Only imposters can assert that Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and other free loving countries made attempts against the integrity and independence of Germany.
In reality the German Fascists are not nationalists but imperialists whose main and decisive purpose was the seizure of foreign land in order to secure the expansion of militant German capitalism. They shamelessly called themselves socialists. Only insolent demagogues can assert that German Fascists, who have eliminated all the democratic freedom of the people substituting it by concentration camps, who have introduced slave labor at works and factories and restored serfdom in the villages of Germany and in the countries occupied by than - are defenders of the interests of the workers and peasants. the garments of "nationalists" and "socialists", they did it exclusively to deceive the nation. plan for domination, seizure of foreign territories and the principles of human hatred. it was said:
"The program - is the political foundation of NSDAP and, con sequently, the fundamental political law of the state.
All program.
After seizing power the Fuehrer managed to realize basic principles up to the details."
Hitler's party is inseparable from Hitler's government, from the SS, Gestapo and other criminal organizations of Hitler's regime, as the Nazi leaders in the dock are inseparable from the henchmen of Auschwitz and Majdanek, Baby-Yar and Treblinka.
"What I have achieved," said Hitler, "is known to the party thanks to which I became great and which was in turn glorified by me."
And indeed; Soon after the Hitlerites seized power the decree of 14 VII 1933 forbade the creation of any other political parties besides the the Nazi Party.
The NSDAP became the only political party in Germany. A little later on 1. XII 1933 the law was issued "Concerning the unity of the party and state", in which it was mentioned:
"After the victory of the national socialist revolution, "To ensure close collaboration of the party organizations with the offices of the state, the deputy Fuehrer is appointed member of the Government of the Reich."
Paragr. 3 of this law proclaimed the members of NSDAP and the shock detachments (including the organizations subordinated to them) as "the loaders and motive power of the national socialist government."
The law of 1. XII 1933 was the fundamental measure, which provided the loaders of the criminal Nazi Party with full political power in Germany, as this law established the Nazi Party as the embodiment of the state. the Hitlerites introduced the most shameless social bribery besides speculating upon the national feelings and the unheard of social demagogy. Major organizations were created: The Union of Hitler's Youth, "Labor Front", SA men, SS men etc. Numerous members of these organizations were connected with the Fascist regime, not only through various privileges and material advantages, but also by mutual responsibility for committing common crimes. The overwhelming machine of terror with its ramified network of detection, provocation, perfidy, concentration camps, summary justice operated against all discontented with the regime. leading posts of the terroristic organizations - SS, SD, Gestapo, - and of the government, promoted the realization of the plans of the Fascist conspirators, relieved the realization of the plans of subordination and control ever the German nation and German State. the deputy Fuehrer Hess was simultaneously - Reichsminister.
of the Leaders of Gestapo -- Best was Kreisleiter of the Nazi party etc. Germany, Hitler's conspirators began the realizations of their aggressive plans. In his speech at the Reichstag on 20th February 1938, Hitler said:
"The greatest guarantee of the National Socialist revolution consists Germany . . . All Offices are under control of the supreme political leadership."
under the leadership of Bormann in political organization, which was in close interaction with the German secret police and SS; that the entire party machinery was drawn in for the realization of the aggressive plans of the leaders of Hitlerite Germany; that the party machinery took an active part in the measures of the German military and civil authorities for the inhuman allocation of prisoners of was and the population of the territories occupied by the Germans deported for slavery.
When we speak here at the trial about Goebbels' lies, Himmler's terror and Ribbentrop's perfidy -- this refers fully to the Nazi party. When the Prosecution submitted proofs of the criminal activity of Goering and Hess, Rosenberg and Streicher, von Schirach and Frank, Spoor and Sauckel, these were simultaneous proofs of chars against the Party, at the head of which were the defendants. Those proofs were quite sufficient to consider the entire Nazi party as a criminal organization, as it is understood in Art. 9 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. However, the Prosecution does not put the question of the responsibility of the rank and file members of the party, many of when became the victims of their confidence. declaring it as a criminal organization, only as far as it concerns the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, which was the brain, the backbone and the impelling paver of the party, without which the Hitlerite conspirators could not be able to carry out their criminal plans.
party, and as such was endowed with extraordinary prerogatives. Political Leaders were organized according to principles ox leadership, which was applied not only to Hitler, but to the entire Leadership Corps.
"The basis of the party organization is the principle of leadership" -is written in the charter of the Nazi Party.
Each political leader was sworn in. According to the party charter the wording of the oath was as follows:
"I pledge eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler: I pledge unconditional obedience to him and to the leaders appointed by him."
All political leaders were appointed by a special selection. The only difference was, that some of them, as Reichsleiters, Gauleiters and Kreisleiters, were appointed by Hitler himself, and the others by department and division Chiefs in Gau and Kreis, as well as Ortsgruppenleiters -- by Gauleiters. Such political leaders as Block and Cell leaders were appointed by Kreisleiters. Honor. In the defendant's dock are Reichsleiters Rosenberg, Schirach, Frick, together with the missing Reichsleiters Bormann, Himmler, Ley and Goebbels they represented the leading group of the Nazi party and they were leaders of the fascist conspiracy as well.
Here is Gauleiter of Franconia -- Streicher. There is slave trader Sauckel -- Gauleiter of Thuringia. You have heard of the Erich Koch's henchman activity in Ukraine. Erich Koch was a Geuleiter too. shooting and executions in Yugoslavia. I will quote sonic short extracts concerning his activity:
"20/6/1942. Within the reporting period in the district of Celje, 105 people were shot end 362 arrested . . . The chief of the security police will empty the prison in two weeks' time.
A part of the imprisoned Thus we shall prepare enough room for the next large scale action."
"30/6/1942. 67 persons were shot in Celje. Among them 6 women" etc.
Gauleiter Wagner terrorized people in Alsace, Gauleiter Terboven - in Norway. Gauleiter Bohle, leader of the organization of the NSDAP abroad, set up and directed a widely ramified terroristic net-work for espionage and diversionist activities abroad and created the so-called "fifth columns" in different countries.
According to the decree of the 1/9/1939 sixteen gauleiters were appointee Reichs Plenipotentiaries for the Defense of the Reich. Later, in connection with the necessity of the utilization of the military resources, the Gauleiters carried out even more and more important tasks. became commissars of these areas. According to the decree of the Cabinet's Council of 16/11/1942, it was ascertained that "in war time, Gauleiters are charged with extraordinary tasks". During the war, Gauleiters had carried out the tasks of billeting; they were charged with the important military functions, and all branches of German war economy were coordinated by them. in appropriate areas.
We should remember that when in March, 1945, Speer was appointed Hitler's plenipotentiary for the total destruction of industrial objectives, railways and other means of communications -- he sent his telegraph-order to Gauleiters for they had personally directed the carrying out of destructions of the important objectives on the spot. Hitler's party as a kind of welfare society, and its leaders as lady patroness it is trying to embroil a quite clear matter with a heap of written documentary evidence collected in various prisons and camps where the arrested fascists have been kept. of this mass of written evidence is highly dubious, and he resorts to the last argument, stating that; "Counsel for the Defense was unable to visit the camps in Austria, no claims having been received from the Soviet Zone". But did the testimony of the witnesses for the Defense become more convincing in consequence Does the fact that Servatius did not visit Austria change the situation in the very least?
Servatius was given unlimited possibilities for visiting the camps in the Soviet Zone of occupation. He visited certain camps. He knew that the right of the members of the organizations to submit declarations, and to make statements before the Tribunal, had been repeatedly announced in the newspapers published in the Soviet Zone and broadcast by radio. Servatius know all this, but nevertheless he still endeavoured to deceive the Tribunal. He attempted to do this in other cases as well.
When Servatius refers to Hess' directive of the 27 July, 1935, in order to confirm the fact that the Corps of the Political Leaders never existed, and that allegedly the title of "Political Leader" was not an official one -he passes over in silence that it was indicated, in this very same directive, that "it stands to reason that the term "Political Leaders' remains in use". NSDAP to 2,100,000, persons, in order demagogically to impute to the Prosecution, a tendency to punish millions of Germans. At the same time, and in order to shelter outstanding fascist leaders from all legal responsibil he, without any proof whatsoever, affirms that, of the workers of the Gauleite organizations, only 140,000 were "honorary workers".
The ill-famed fascist, Kaufmann, summoned by the Defense to the witness stand being member of the Nazi Party since 1921, and Gauleiter for 20 years, - did not knew anything about crimes of Hitlerite conspirators He was a "socialist", and was taking care only of the welfare of the population. or a period of 12 years, went even further in his testimonies. He declared that during these 12 years, he did not get enough time to read over "Mein Kampf". even Kaufmann by trying to hlep his accomplices. When the latter gave an affirmative answer to the questions: "Were Black - and Zellenleiters a kind of political loaders?"- Meier Wendeborn answered to the question in the negative. of the defense standpoint, but I consider it useless to enter into a discus ion with the Defense summoning such witnesses as Kaufmann, Wendeborn and similar.
Among the politicical leaders of Hitlerite Germany (this title was legalized by Hess' decree of 27/7/1935, as shown in the defense document 12) there was within the party hierarchy a separate group of so-called "Hoheitstrager" (bearers of sovereignty) which occupied a special position.
Together with the Gauleiters and Kreisleiters, the group of "Hoheitstraeger" included the Ortsgruppenleiters, Zellenleiters and Blockleiters also.
The special character of political leaders called "Hoheitstraeger" is described in the party Manual of NSDAP, and in the periodical called "Der Hoheitstraeger" which was strictly confidential to everybody except a certain group of the Leadership Corps of the Party SS and SA. Leadership Corps of the Nazi party, paid continual attention to the measures and doctrines, carried out as the fascist conspiracy was being realized. In 1937/38, the following problems were treated in the mentioned periodical; Ley, the attacks on the church, the substantiated necessity of increasing the Lebensraum and seizing colonies; the motorization of the armed forces; the utilization of the Nazi Party cells and blocks to gain favorable vote for the Hitlerites in the plebiscite; the cult of leadership race-theory etc.
These problems were treated in each copy of the periodical. And even after this evidence, the Defense is trying to assert that the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party was not acquainted with the plans of the Hitlerite conspirators. with Gestapo and SD, but these connections are indisputable.
As early as on the 26. VI, 1935, Bormann had issued an order which reads:
"In order to ef ect a cleoser content between the Party offices and its organizations."
In another regulation issued on the 14.2. 1935, end signed by Bormann to, it was stated:
"Because the work of the Party, is primarily benefited by the work prejudiced attacks when individuals fail.
On the contrary, it must be who leheartedly assisted."
the entire leadership Corps of the Nazi party participated from Reichsleiter t Blockleiter included. I will mention here only a few of them. ment of the Yugoslav people, the Kreisleiter of the Pettau district, helped by Ortsgruppenleiter and Blockleiter, destroyed all inscriptions, posters, and announcements written in the Slovene language. This fascist ruler went even so far asto order the Gruppenleiter "to take care that 11 Slovene inscriptions on the saint images (icons), chapels and churches should be immediately and completely removed."
In the letter of 13.11. 1944, addressed to all Reichsleiters, Gauleiters OKW concerning the "cooperation of the Party in the commitment of prisoners on War.