reprisal against the clergy which resulted in the murder of about 700 priests and the imprisonment of about 3000 clergymen, as early as January 1941. As it is thoroughly proven by the documents submitted by the Soviet Prosecution, the Gestapo established special mass *---* ination centers for the Jewish popolation of Poland. which were under the jurisdiction of the Administrative Command of the SS, the secret extermination camp in Helmno, where over three hundred and forty thousand Jews were done away with by mean of murder vans, was both founded and directly administered by the Gestapo which created for the purpose a special unit, "Senderkom mando Kulmhof. This Gestapo Senderkommando was under the administrative supervision of the Gestapo Chief in the City of Lodz Brautfisch. of all subsequent extermination camps. the help of special extermination camps created for the purpose by the "D" Section of SS, originated in the Gestapo where Eichmann worked as subordinate of the Gestapo official Mueller. 3,200,000 Jews in Poland, 112.000 in Czechoslovakia, and 65,000 Jews in Yugoslavia. territories of Eastern Europe the criminal system of hostages and the principle of collective responsivility, thus arbitratily and constantly widening the number of persons liable to reprisals. For example, it was the Gestapo that together with Defendant Frank issued the notorious decree of mass reprisals with regard to the "families of saboteurs", be the decree which stated that "not only should the seized saboteurs be immediately executed on the spot but also all the male kin of offenders should be immediately shot while all female relatives over 16 years of age, should be confined to concentration camps."
in Poland alone but applies also to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia Czechoslovakia, only during the period of occupation alone. Only 50,000 of these were freed. Others were killed or sent to slow death in the concentration camp. "preventive confinement" and "protective custody". lawyer and clergymen were arrested even prior to the war. In addition lists were compiled in each region of persons liable to be arrested as hostages at the first sign of disturbance of the social order or security. Karl Hans Frank addressing leaders of the "movement for national unity" announced in 1940 that 2,000 Czech hostages - then in concentrations camps - would be shot unless Czech leaders sign a declaration of loyalty.
When an attempt on Heydrich's life took place, many of the hostages were executed. house supervisors of the various Czech industrial concerns. They were made to sign the following statement: " I am cognizant of the fact that I shall be shot immediately if the plant stops work without a justifiable cause". tions making themselves responsible for the loyalty of their students.
crime of the annihilation of the village of Lidice and of it population. character. quotation from the Report No. 6 of the Yugoslav State commission for the Investigation of War Crimes:
"A group of hostages was hanged in Celsje (Zilli) on hooks used by butchers to suspend uncut meat. In Maribor, victims worked, in groups of five, placing vodies of shot hostages into boxes and then loading then on to trucks. As each five-man team finished its job, it was shot and the next group of five persons replaced it in the loading job. This went on continuously. The Sodna Street in Mar ber was covered with vlood from these lorries. The given number of 50,000 victims appears too small several hundred were shot each time, in Granz even as many as 500 being murdered at once." with the mass shooting of hostages and signed by the appropriate regiona chiefs of the Gestapo in Yugoslavia. I shall not well upon the details of these documents, as I suppose the Tribunal still has them clearly in mind. The Crimes of the Gestapo on the Temporarily-Occupied Territories crimes which the Gestapo had committed on the temporarily-occupied Soviet territory. There the Gestapo personnel functioned either among the operational units, i.e. the Einsatzaruppen, the Einsatzkommandos, and the Senderkommandos of the SD and of the Security police, or else it comrised the staff of the Secret Field Police, which was usually staffed, with both the Gestapo and the Criminal police employees. As a rule, it was the Gestapo official who on all occasions carried out themselves the inhuman "executions" and "mass actions," acting under the general political leadership of the members of the SD staff and with the assistance of officials of other police organizations, as well as units of the "Waffen-SS", widely used for these purposes.
Numerous cases of mass murder and torture of Soviet peaceful citizens by the Gestapo, have been established at the Tribunal. As an example I shall content myself with the description of separate characteristic facts. several thousands of peaceful citizens were killed or tortured to death. The fascist monsters not only killed their victims, but made them dig their own graves. into one house 23 old men, women add children, set the house on fire, burning alive all those who were inside. In the psychiatric hospitals of Riga, the Gestapo men exterminated all the inmates of these asylums. the crimes of the German fascist usurpers in the town of Rovno, in the Rovno district, as retaliation to each act of resistance, the Gestapo men had recourse to mass murder. in Rovno, the Gestapo shot more than 350 prisoners, detained in the town prison. crimes of the German-Fascist usurpers, that the Gestapo men used "dead-vans" for the extermination of Soviet citizens. In the town of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar region, the Gestapo men, forming part of operational groups, exterminated through poisoning by carbon oxide, more than 6.700 Soviet citizens, including women, old men and children, who were in treatment in the Krasnodar hospital as well as persons held in the Gestapo prison. were buried several thousands of corpses of Soviet citizens who had been poisoned by gas and thrown in there by the Gestapo.
being treated at the health - resort of Tiberda, were poisoned by gas in dead-vans, as were also 660 patients of the Stavropol psychiatric hospital. gives us an idea of the tortures practiced by the Gestapo-men. They interrogated at night only. These interrogations word made in a separate room, where special torture devices had been set up, amongst them chains with metal bars fixed in the concrete floor and to when the prisoner's arms and looks were chained. The arrested person was first of all stripped naked then lain on the floor, his hands and legs shackled, after which he was broken with rubber sticks. Sometimes a wooden board was placed on the back of the victim and sharp blows were then dealt with heavy weights, on the bound. person was tortured, the other arrested people who were in an adjoining ward awaiting torture, were able to follow the scone. After the tortures the unconscious prisoner was temporarily thrown aside by the "modern inquisiters" and the next victim, in most cases already half unconscious, was dragged into the room.
I shall mention one example only. Such tortures during interrogation were most extensively used through but the occupied territories of the USSR. of special orders emanating from the RSHA and Mueller, chief of the Gestapo. In one of those strictly secret orders the authorities gave the following instructions: "Third degree can include the following treatment: a very simple diet (bread and water); a hard berth, a dark cell, deprival of sleep, an exhausting drill, beating with birch rods". where in the Soviet territories remporarily occupied by the Germans, were likewise subjected by the Gestapo to unheard of torture and persecutions. was carried out following a plan which had been elaborated before hand. For instance, before the German troops had occupied Lwow, detachments of the Gestapo had in their possession lists of the principal representatives of the Lwow intelligentzia who were to be exterminated.
Immediately after the occupation of Lwow by the Germans, mass arrests and shooting of professors, physicians, lawyers, writers and artists started to occur. Paying no heed to the human merit of their victims, the Gestapo subjected the arrested scientists to the most refined tortures after which they finally shot them. had been freed from the German occupants, showed that over 70 prominent scientists, technicians and artists had been killed by the Germans, their bodies being subsequently burned by the Gestapo. painstakingly tried to conceal the facts about the extermination of the Lwow intelligentzia.
During the court proceedings we heard a directive of department IV of the Reich Security Head Office, dated the 17th of June 1941; it concerned the activity of detachments of the security police and SD, in the prisoner of war camps. Your Honors also know the directive of Mueller dated the 9th of November 1941 sent to all departments of the Gestapo and which related to the throwing away of the bodies of people who had died on their way to the place of execution. at the disposal of the tribunal. This document concerns the execution of Soviet political commissars, and also deals with an order of the Chief of the security police and SD transmitted to the local organs of the Gestapo concerning the sending of certain categories of escaped officers from prisoner of war camps, to the Hauthausen concentration camp for the carrying out of the "Kugel" (bullet) acting ry district, dated July 27th, 1944, stating that recaptured escaped prisoners of war lose their rights and are to be turned over to the Gestapo, as well as with Keitel's order to the armed forces, dated August 4th, 1942, which stated that the adoption of action against separate paratroopers and groups of paratroopers belongs to the jurisdiction of the SD and the Gestapo. thousands of peaceful citizens from the territories temporarily occupied by Germ ny and inflicted cruel repressive measures upon these persons on their arrival: Germany. In a like manner, Mueller, the chief of the Gestapo, in his telegram D 16 December 1942, stated that the Gestapo could arrest some 45,000 Jews to serve as workers in the concentration camps. with 35,000 Jews. the indispensable measures to be taken in order to prevent agitation among fore workers. with the extermination of Jews. that the Gestapo exterminated some 6 million Jews.
gation of German-fascist atrocities on the territory of the USSR and in other documents as well are brought forward innumerable facts of torture, of different ou rages and mass murder of Jews by the Gestapo-men. criminal activity of the Gestapo. as a criminal organization.
THE SECURITY SERVICE - "SD".
The Security Service or "Sicherheitsdienst" was usually referred to in the official police documents under the abbreviation of "SD". It originated as a muta organization of the Party and the SS which was to be a secret intelligence, organization of a conspiratorial and strictly under cover nature. The SD, as well as the SS, was organized by Himmler. of power by the Hitlerites, had most speedily merged with the police agencies and had promptly installed into the leading secret police positions the cadres of bet the SA and the SS. It had played a leading role in the German scheme of political intelligence and "preventive extermination" of the undesirable elements both before and after the formation of the RSHA. Nazi conspirators i.e. the Party Leadership. And that is why the SD participated most actively in planning those police activities which invariably accompanied all Hitlerite plans of aggression.
As will be shown below it was the SD which created the first "Einsatzgruppen supplied these predatory organizations of German fascism with executive personnel and organizationally helped with atrocities later committed in the occupied territories of Poland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, as well as in other countries. with which it is charged, the Defense started an argument about the meaning of the very term "SD".
The reasons for the Defense starting this terminological discussion are quite clear. The Defense endeavoured to support Kaltenbrunner', version of SD as an organization whose functions were strictly limited to the Intra-Reich information services and which remaine entirely alien to all police functions. The Defense began this argument so that only the most apparent part of the criminal activity of the SD would be revealed while the rest could hide behind such terms as "general information services of trends and tendencies among the different circles of German society". All the political and the police functions of the SD, as leading organization of the Police-SS machinery, would stand unrevealed. In reality, however, SD was a widely spread espionage organization of German fascism, which actively contributed to the realization of the criminal plans of aggression and operated both inside and outside Germany, in the occupied regions and abroad. Along with the Gestapo, it was the SD cadres who formed the backbone of Einsatzgruppen, where it was always the SD personnel that occupied leading posts. The functions of SD can be subdivided as follows: 1/ The "General Information" function which covered, as shown by the SD official documents, the "Lebensgebiete" or spheres vi2/ The "Special Function" referring to personnel care files and vaded.
The card files and lists contained names of people who were to be subjected to the "special regime" i.e. either 3/ The function of supplying personnel to those criminal or The entire staff of SD consisted of SS men.
This is understandable, considering that SD was an offspring of the SS and up to the very last moment was referred to as the "SD of the Reichsfuehrer SS". The many-brached SD system included the following: The III Department of RSHA (i.e.Amt III which consted of the Domestic and Occupied Regions Political Intelligence Service); the VI Department of RSHA (consisting of the Foreign Intelligence Services and headed by one of the closest associates of Himmler -Walter Schellenberg whose testimony is well known to the Tribunal); and the VII Department (Amt-VII), sometimes called the "Department for Ideological Warfare". The latter also included a number of very important auxiliary branches which made up the analysis organizations for data resulting from both foreign and domestic espionage activities of the SD. In order to refute the statements of the Defense I should like to refer to one of the documents showing the actual position of the SD in the police and SD scheme of Hitlerite Germany. I am speaking now of the document entitled: "Utilization of SD in case of emergency in Cechoslovakia". The document is marked; "Secret - Of State Importance" and is dated June 1938 i. e. more than nine months before the actual seizure of Czechoslovakia. It was found by the Red Army amongthe Berlin files of the SD and has been submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecation. The contents of the document leave no doubts first, as to the facts of the active SD participation in the preparation and realization of the criminal plans of aggression, and secondly in the fact that it was specifically the SD that both initiated and organized the Einsatzgruppen. I have some excerpts from this document, but I will skip them.
The whole territory of Czechoslovakia, in accordance with the territorial structure of the SD in Germany, was, beforehand separated into important (Oberabschnitt) and small (Unterabschnitt) territorial units, and for each of those, special Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommandos were prepared and staffed accordingly. In the text of the document we can read that a system of Oberabschnitte for Prague, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Bachtelle, and others, was prepared and planned. The staffing of the Einsatzgruppe and Einsazkommandos was entirely a matter of the SD. In the text of the document we can read in this connection: "the staffing of the SD agencies could be conducted in consideration of the following: 1. the requirements of the SD itself. 2. the requirements of economy." An entire program for training members of the Einstzgruppe recruited from collaborators in foreign countries and Sudet-Germans was prepared. The utilization of "suitable persons" of German origin living in Czechoslovakia was equally foreseen, and special mention was made of the point that: "one must consider that in spite of all precautionary measures we will not have many such people at our disposal as under certain conditions a considerable number will be arrested, deported or killed." The Einsatzgruppe organized and prepared in German territory were to be concentrated near the German-Czechoslovakian border in order to move into Czechoslovakian territory jointly with the invading armies. In this connection the document says:
"As soon as any district is free from the enemy, that is, when occupied, the allocated groups are immediately sent to the district administration center". with the killing of people in the territories temporarily occupied by the Germans, and that was the immediate function of the SD. attached to the Einsatzgruppe had to establish liaison with the Unite of the armed SS forces. They had to establish these lists, and the collaborators of the SD prepared who were to be eliminated for some reason or other. This was done in conformance with special directives. Appendix number 2 to Operational Order Number 8 of the Chief of the Security Police of the SD, dated 17 July 1941, said: Long before we beginning of the war against the Soviet Union the security service had compiled the "German Research Book", "Lists of the addresses", and a "special Research Book for the USSR", where all the names of "Soviet Russians considered as dangerous" are entered. lerite criminals in the respect to those "dangerous Russians" were. minated by the Sendercommandos in conformity with instructions # 8 and # 14 of the main office of the Reich dated the 17 of July and 29 October 1941. Yugoslavia. The Soviet prosecution presented to the Tribunal a "Research Book" prepared by the so-called German Balkan institute: "Sued-Ostdeutsches Institut", pertaining to the SD. This book contained the names of over 4000 Yugoslav citizens who were to be arrested immediately after the invasion of Yugoslavia, This book, which was prepared by the SD, was transmitted to the executive police, i.e. the Gestapo, which was to operate these arrests. bore the following stamp made by a member of the SD: "The persons mentioned in the text are to be arrested and the RSHA is to be informed immediately about the completion of the assignment".
by preparing the fifth column in Yugoslavia. A member of the SD, the dean of the Graz university, Hermann Ibler, prepared in connection with this a special work entitled "Des Reiches Suedgrenze" which bears the stamp "strictly secret" and includes a list of the fifth column agents in Yugoslavia.
It was the SD who was occasioning political provocation abroad. The former Chief of the Security Police and SD, Kaltenbrunner, had to confess to that when interrogated by the representative of the Soviet prosecution. He couldn't even deny his signature on the letter to Ribbentrop, concerning the allocation by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of one million humans for bribing the voters in Iran. pied territories in the realization of the inhuman plans of the Hitlerites concerning the extermination of the enslaved nations. From this point of view a German document, captured by the units of the Polish Army in the building of the SD, at Mogilno (Poland), and presented to the Tribunal by the Soviet prosecution, is most characteristic. Hauptsturmfuehrer SS informs them of Himmler's speech of 15 March 1940 in which the latter requested the Commanders of the concentration camps situated in Poland to first utilize the qualified polish workers in the militaery industry of the concentration camps, and later to exterminate all those Poles. This Hauptsturmfuehrer SS from Mogilno requested, therefore, all his trusted agents of the SD to prepare the lists of the Poles they considered as dangerous in order to exterminate them later on. of the SS and German Fascism. It was an organization of solving and information spread over the whole territory of the "old Reich", as well as throughout oil of the temporarily occupied areas and countries, certain moments the members of SD initiated the most cruel police measures of the Hitlerites. consider that the whole system of the SD is to be declared criminal.
attempts on the part of several of the defendants, the defense attorneys, and those witnesses for the defense who were generals in Hitlerite Germany, to represent both the German High Command and the General Staff as organizations whose activities were guided by the sole principle of " fulfilling their soldierly duty." to this concept, far removed from criminal politics of the Hitler government, took no part in political decisions and confined themselves entirely to the fulfillment of orders emanating from the Commander-in-chief and dealing with purely military matters. Staff, in view of the nature of the military structure then existing in Hitler Germany, was no more and no less than an auxiliary organization dealing with purely technical matters. quite understandable, to represent the Army High Command as something quite distinct and not having anything in common with the activity of the German police organization and of the SS. First World War knows that the generals and officers of the Kaiser's army were only too ready to repeat the game that they had once lost. For the German military defeat they blamed everything and everybody -- except themselves. Meanwhile they worked on creating undercover military organizations, dreamed of revenge, and appeared prepared to offer their honor and their swords to any political adventurer who would not stop before starting another world war. It was amidst this type of new " tradition" that there grew up in Germany the present officer generation. And neither was it accident that the future leader of this generation, Adolf Hitler, made his political entrance out of nowhere with the moral and financial support of the Reichswehr.
Hitler support, and when he seized power, rearmament began almost immediately. The haughty Prussian Generals bowed to Hitler, the corporal, because they knew that Hitler meant war. rived here under the Allied guard to give false testimony of their own positions to the International Military Tribunal.
And so we saw a peculiar spectacle. Wolves became sheep. I do not know just what kind of naive people they expected to find here, Brauchitsch particularly, when he presented himself here as a confirmed pacifist. If we allow ourselves to believe him, we would then also have to beliefe that he, the Commanderin-Chief of the German Land Forces, knew nothing whatever of Germany's aggressive plans, nothing of the coming invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, but was persistently and continuously persuading Hitler not to fight. disapproving the ricks and the maneuvers of defense whose main aim has been to masque and diminish the scope of the criminal activity of the high German military organs. Crimes Against Humanity : that both the General Staff and the OKW were fully informed of the criminal intentions for aggression on the part of the Hitlerite Government, that they shared these plans, and participated actively in both their preparation end their realization. became known to every German as soon as Hitler's " Mein Kampf " appeared. These were widely propagandiesed and publicised from day to day and month to month. military leaders who subsequently put both their experience and their knowledge at the service of the Hitlerite state.
of the Hitlerite state end its military machine to prove just when and how the subsequent criminal activity of the leading German military organs began. beginning of the war. place in the new Reich Chancellery, Hitler said to his top military leaders :
" Danzig is not the point. What I am talking about is the expansion of our " Lebensraum " to the East. Thus the question of whether Poland is to be spared automatically disappears and there remains only the decision to attack Poland at the first opportunity. officers and generals at the staff meeting of August 22, 1939, in Obersalzberg, Hitler stated :
" In the first place there is the annihilation of Poland. If there also will be war in the West, then the primary task is to destroy Poland. I shall provide some excuse for beginning the war which will serve propaganda purposes, whether it is true or not is unimportant." place on the 23 of November, 1939, Hitler stated as follows while talking to his closest military adisors :
"Basically I did not organize the armed forced in order not to strike. The decision to strike was always in me. Earlier or later I wanted to solve the problem. The situation is necessarily such that at least for the moment action in the East is out of question." plans, so far as his top military officials were concerned ? of the German Command which quite cynically describe the criminal aims of aggression on the part of the Hitler government.
In Hitler's directive of 30 May 1933, dealing with the execution of the plan "Gruen" for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, it is stated:
"It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future. course is a lightning-swift action as the result of an incident through which Germany is provoked in an unbearable way and for which at least part of the world opinion will rant the moral justification of military action." the invasion of Yugoslavia which provides that:
"Even if Yugoslavia will declare its loyalty to us, we should still consider her an enemy and subsequently beat her down at the first opportunity." material dealing with plans for attacking the Soviet Union.
"special regions" long before the attack on the Soviet Union, it was stated.
"The Russian territory which is to be occupied shall be divided up into individual states with governments of their own, according to special orders, as soon as military operations are concluded."
In the "instructions on the use of propaganda in the Barbarossa region" published by the OKW in June 1941, it was foreseen that "for the time being it is not suitable that the aims of our propaganda should be the dismemberment of the Soviet Union."
Finally, document Nr.21 dated 18 December 1940, known under the code "Plan Barbarossa", stated:
"The final aim of the operation is to fence oneself off from Asiatic Russia following a gereral line Archangelsk-Volga." the Tribunal an exhaustive explanation of this "final aim" prsued by Hitlerite Germany in its war against the Soviet Union, and which was know to the entire High Command of the German armed forces. Tribunal by my American colleague, who presented an order of Fieldmarsha von Manstein, former commander of the XI German army. In this order, von Manstein, giving an account on the politicial aims of the war against the Soviet Union in accordance with Hitler's instructions, informs his subordinates in a non-equivocalmanner that the aim of the attack on the Soviet Unionis the destruction of the political system of its government. General von Manstein that he was only a soldier, who was not informed of the policy of the Hitler government. the political aims of the war but also that they approved them.
And it could not be otherwise. What could Hitler and his clique have done if the military specialists, the generals of the German army did not approve his plans.
B. The direct participation of the German General Staff in this crime. Germany. Simultaneously with the OKW functioned the General Staff of the land forces, as well as staffs of the air forces and naval forces. aggressive plans of Hitlerite Germany, which were in the sphere of their competence, and the OKW coordinated and. combined this work. lay upon the land forces, with their numerous and powerful armored forces, the outstanding position in the preparation of aggressive measures of the Hitlerit Government was naturally held by the German General Staff. no means excluded, but on the contrary foresaw in the elaboration, preparation and execution of the criminal aggressive plans of the Hitlerite Government, a most active role of the General Staff. the elaboration and preparation of the aggressive plans bf Germany, I shall refer to some facts: which he confirmed in this Tribunal.
Paulus stated: "When on September 3, 1940 I took office in the OKH, among other plane, I found there a still incompleted preliminary plan of the attack on the Soviet Union, known under the conventional name of "Barbarossa".
The working out of the preliminary "Barbarossa" plan began in August 1940 and ended by the carrying out of two military maneuvers (Kriegsspiele) at the Headquarters of the OKH at Zessen. the OKW, were the creators of the criminal "Barbarossa" plan.
and von Manstein, tried to establish here, did not remain only on paper. They were enforced with German punctuality. Major General of the listened Service of the German army, Walter Schreiber. Schreiber, who is a bacteriological specialist told us of the plans of the Hitlerite conspirators to use as a weapon, the death dealing plague bacilla as a weapon in the war. He informed us how this crime inspired by the German High Command, the General Staff and by the defendants Hermann Goering and Wilhelm Keitel was conceived and realized. prevented this criminal plan of the Hitlerite clique, the realization of which would have threatened the whole of Europe with new and dire calamities and devastation." establishment of a connection between the military apparatus Hitlerite Germany and other German State organizations. officers, and at the same time many ministries had their representatives in the OKW. military and civil authorities in the occupied territories. obliged to acknowledge their connection, for instance with the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of the Occupied Territories in the Mast, they flatly refuse to admit their connection with the German State police and the SS.
This is easy to conceive. The fact alone of such a connection would disclose their participation, in numerous, crimes in the occupied territories. connection of the German military command and the German Secret State Police with other police agencies.