as the most important, and which figured in almost every public speech, was the removal of the "disgrace" of the Armistice, and the restrictions of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain.
In a typical speech at Munich on the 13th April 1923, for example, Hitler said with regard to the Treaty of Versailles:
"The treaty was made in order to bring twenty German nation.
..At its foundation our movement "1. Setting aside of the Peace Treaty.
2. Unification of all Germans.
3. Land and soil to feed our nation. Greater Germany was to play a large part in the events preceding the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia; the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles was to become a decisive motive in attempting to justify the policy of the German Government; the demand for land was to be the justification for the acquisition of "living space" at the expense of other nations; the expulsion of the Jews from membership of the race of German blood was to lead to the atrocities against the Jewish people; and the demand for a national army was to result in measures of rearmament on the largest possible scale, and ultimately to war. name to National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbiter Partei (NSDAP) was reorganized, Hitler becoming the first "Chairman". It was in this year that the Sturmabteilung or SA was founded, with Hitler at its head, as a private protecting NSDAP leaders from attack by rival political parties, and para-military force, which allegedly was to be used for the purpose of preserving order at NSDAP meetings, but in reality was used for fighting political opponents on the streets.
In March 1923 the defendant Goering was appointed head of the SA. by the "leadership principle" (Fuehrerprinzip.) administer or decree, subject to no control of any kind and at his complete discretion, subject only to the orders be received from above. Leader of the party, and in a lesser degree to all other party officials. All members of the Party swore an oath of "eternal allegiance" to the Leader. main aims above-mentioned, by negotiation, or by force. The twenty-five points of the NSDAP programmed do not specifically mention the methods on which the leaders of the party proposed to rely, but the history of the Nazi regime shows that Hitler and his followers were only prepared to negotiate on the terms that their demands were conceded, and that force would be used if they were not. in Munich. Hitler and some of his followers burst into a meeting in the Buergerbraeu Cellar, which was being addressed by the Bavarian Prime Minister Kehr, with the intention of obtaining from him a decision to march forth no Bavarian support was forthcoming, and Hitler's demonstration with on Berlin.
On the morning of the 9th November, however, was not by the armed forces of the Reichswehr and the Police. Only a few volleys were fired and after a dozen of his followers had been killed, Hitler fled for his life, and the demonstration was over. The defendants Stretcher, Frisk and Hess all took part in the attempted rising. Hitler was later tried for high treason, and was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. The SA was outlawed. Hitler was released from prison in 1924 and in 1925 the Schutzstaffel, or SS, was created, nominally to act as his personal bodyguard, but in reality to terrorize political opponents. This was also the year of the publication of "Mein Kampf," containing the political views and aims of Hitler, which came to be regarded as the authentic source of Nazi doctrine. "Mein Kampf", the NSDAP greatly extended its activities throughout Germany, paying particular attention to the training of youth in the ideas of National Socialism. The first Nazi youth organization had come into existence in 1922, but it was in 1925 that the Hitler Jugend was officially recognized by the NSDAP. In 1931 Baldur von Schirach, who had joined the NSDAP in 1925, became Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP. from the German people. Elections were contested both for the Reichstag and the Landtage. The NSDAP leaders did not make any serious attempt to hide the fact that their only purpose in entering German political life was in order to destroy the democratic structure of the Weimar Republic, and to substitute for it a to carry out their avowed policies without opposition.
In National Socialist totalitarian regime which would enable them preparation for the day when he would obtain power in Germany, Hitler in January 1929 appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reichsfuehrer SS with the special task of building the SS into a strong but elite group which would be dependable in all cirsubstances.
appointed Chancellor of the Reich by President von Hindenburg. The defendants Goering, Schacht and von Papen were active in enlisting support to bring this about. Von Papen had been appointed Reich Chancellor on the 1st June 1932. On the 14th June he rescinded the decree of the Burdening Cabinet of the 13th April 1932, which had dissolved the Nazi Para-military organizations, including the SA and the SS. This was done by agreement between Hitler and von Papen, although von Papen denies that it was agreed as early as the 28th May, as Dr. Hans Volz assorts in Dates from the History of the NSDAP"; but that it was the result of an agreement was admitted in evidence by von Papen. in a great accession of strength to the NSDAP, and von Papen offered Hitler the post of Vice Chancellor, which he refused, insisting upon the Chancellorship itself. in November 1952 a petition signed by leading industrialists and financiers was presented to President Hindenburg, calling upon him to entrust the Chancellorship to Hitler; and in the collection of signatures to the petition Schacht took a prominent part. defeat of the Government, reduced the number of NSDAP members, but von Papen made further efforts to gain Hitler's participation, without success. On the 12th November Schacht wrote to Hitler:
can only lead to your becoming Chancellor. It seems as "I have no doubt that the present development of things in vain . . ."After Hitler's refusal of the 16th November, von Papen resigned, and was succeeded by General von Schleicher; but von Papen still continued his activities.
He not Hitler at the house of the Cologne banker von Schroeder on the 4th January 1933, and attended a meting at the defendant Ribbentrop's house on the 22nd January, with the defendant Goering and others. He also had an interview with President Hindenburg on the 9th January, and from the 22nd January onwards he discussed officially with Hindenburg the formation of a Hitler Cabinet. ment as Chancellor, at which the defendants Goering, Frick, Funk, von Neurath and von Papen were present in their official capacities. On the 23th February 1933 the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire. This fire was used by Hitler and his Cabinet as a pretext for passing on the same day a decree suspending the constitutional guarantees of freedom. The decree was signed by President Hindenburg and countersigned by Hitler and the defendant Frick, who then occupied the post of Reich Minister of the Interior. On the 5th March elections were held, in Which the USDAP obtained 288 seats of the total of 647. The Hitler Cabinet was anxious to pass an "Enabling Act" that would give thou full legislative powers, including the power to deviate from the Constitution. They were without the necessary majority in the Reichstag to be able to do this constitutionally. They therefore made use of the decree suspending the guarantees of freedom and took into so-called "protective custody" a large number of Communist deputies and party officials. Having done this, Hitler introduced the "Enabling Act" into the Reichstag, and after he bad made it clear that if it was not parsed, further forceful measures would be taken, the act was passed on the 24th March 1933.
THE PRESIDENT: I will how ask Mr. Justice Birkett to continue reading the judgment. BY MR. JUSTICE BIRKETT:
The NSDAP, having achieved power in this way, now pro-
ceeded to extend its hold on every phase of German life. Other political parties were persecuted, their property and assets confiscated, and many of their members placed in concentration camps. On 26th April 1933 the defendant Goering founded in Prussia the Gestapo as a secret police, and confided to the deputy loader of the Gestapo that its main task was to eliminate political opponents of National Socialism and Hitler. On the 14th July 1933 a law was passed declaring the NSDAP to be the only political party, and making it criminal to maintain or from any other political party. of Government in the hands of the Nazi leaders, a series of laws and decrees were passed which reduced the powers of regional and local governments throughout Germany, transforming them into subordinate divisions of the Government of the Reich. Representative assemblies in the Laender were abolished, and with them all local elections. The Government then proceeded to secure control of the Civil Service, This was achieved by a process of centralization, and by a careful sifting of the whole Civil Service administration. By a law of the 7th April it was provided that officials "who were of non-Aryan descent" should be retired; and it was also decreed that "officials who because of their previous political activity do not security that they will exert be discharged."
The law of the 11th April 1953 provided themselves for the national state without reservation shall for the discharge of "all Civil Servants who belong to the Communist Party."
Similarly, the Judiciary was subjected to control. Judges were removed from the Bench for political or racial reasons. They were spied upon and made subject to the strongest pressure to Join the Nazi Party as an alternative to being dismissed. When the Supreme Court acquitted three of the four defendants charged with complicity in the Reichstag fire, its Jurisdiction in cases of treason was thereafter taken away and given to a newly established "People's Court", consisting of two Judges and five officials of the Party. Special courts were set up to try political crimes and only party members were appointed as judges. Persons were arrested by the SS for political reasons, and detained in prisons and concentration camps? and the judges were without power to intervene in any way. Pardons were granted to members of the Party who had been sentenced by the judges for proved offenses. In 1935 several officials of the Hohenstein concentration camp were convicted of inflicting brutal treatment upon the inmates. High Nazi officials tried to influence the Court, and after the officials had been convicted, Hitler pardoned them all. In 1942 "Judges' letters" were sent to all German judges by the Government, instructing them as to the "general lines" that they must follow. opposition, the NSDAP leaders turned their attention to the trade unions, the churches and the Jews. In April 1933 Hitler ordered the late defendant Ley, who was then staff director of the political organization of the NSDAP, "to take over the trade unions." Most of the trade unions of Germany were joined together in two Trade Unions."
Unions outside these two largo federations large federations, the "Free Trade Unions" and the "Christian contained only 15 percent of the total union membership.
On the 21st April 1933 Ley issued an NSDAP directive announcing a "coordination action" to be carried out on the 2nd May against the Free Trade Unions. The directive ordered that SA and SS men were to be employed in the planned "occupation of trade union properties and for the taking into protective custody of personalities who come into question." At the conclusion of theaction the official NSDAP press service reported that the National Socialist Factory Cells Organization had "eliminated the old leadership of Free Trade Unions" and taken over the Leadership themselves. Similarly, on the 3rd May 1933 the NSDAP press service announced that the Christian trade unions "have unconditionally subordinated themselves to the leadership of Adolf Hitler." In place of the trade unions the Nazi Government set up a German Labor Front (DAF), controlled by the NSDAP, and which, in practice, all workers in Germany were compelled to join. The chairmen of the unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-treatment, ranging from assault and battery to murder. churches, whose doctrines were fundamentally at variance with National Socialist philosophy and. practice, the Nazi Government proceeded more slowly. The extreme step of banning the practice of the Christian religion was not taken, but year by year efforts were made to limit the influence of Christianity on the German people, since, in the words used by the defendant Bormann to the defendant Rosenberg in an official letter, "the Christian religion and National Socialist doctrines are not compatible." In the month of June 1941 the defendant Bormann Issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and "For the first time in German history the Fuehrer National Socialism.
The decrees stated that:
his own hand. With the Party, its components Treaty ... More and more the people must be Pastor ... Never again must an influence on right to leadership of the people."
prominent place in national Socialist thought and propaganda. The Jews, who were considered to hove no right to German citizenship, were held to have been largely responsible for the troubles with which the nation was afflicted following on the war of 1914-1918. Furtheremore, the antipathy to the Jews was intensified by the insistence which was laid upon the superiority of the Germanic race and blood. The second chapter of Book 1 of "Mein Kampf" is dedicated to what may be called the "Master Race" theory, the doctrine of Aryan superiority over all other races, and the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends. With the coming of the Nazis into power in 1933, persecution of the Jews became official state policy. On the 1st April 1933, a boycott of Jewish enterprises was approved by the Nazi Reich Cabinet, and during the following years a series of anti-Semitic laws were, passed, restricting the activities of Jews in the Civil Service, in the legal profession, in journalism and in the armed forces. In September 1933, the so-called Nuremberg Laws were passed, the most important effect of which was to deprive Jews of German citizenship. In this way the influence of Jewish elements on the affairs of opposition to Nazi policy was rendered powerless.
of Germany was extinguished, and one more potential source massacre of the 30th June 1934 must not be forgotten. It has become known as the "Roehm Purge" or "the blood bath", and revealed the methods which Hitler and his immediate associates, including the defendant Goering, were ready to employ to strike down all opposition and consolidate their power. On that day Roehm, the Chief of Staff of the SA since 1931, was murdered by Hitler's orders, and the "Old Guard" of the SA was massacred without trial and without warning. The opportunity was taken to murder a large number of people who at one time or another had opposed Hitler. he was plotting to overthrow Hitler, and the defendant Goering gave evidence that knowledge of such a plot had come to his ears. Whether this was so or not it is not necessary to determine.
On July 3rd the Cabinet approved Hitler's action and described it as "legitimate self-defense by the State." both Reich President and Chancellor. At the Nazi-dominated Plebiscite, which followed, 38 million Germans expressed their approval, and with the Reichswehr taking the oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer, full power was now in Hitler's hands. methods of terror, and its cynical and open denial of the rule of law.
ents of their regime, the Nazi Government took active stops to Increase its power over the German population.
In the field of education, everything was done to ensure that the youth of Germany was brought up in the atmosphere of National Socialism and accepted National Socialist teachings. As early as the 7th April 1933 the law reorganizing the Civil Service had made it possible for the Nazi Government to remove all "subversive and unreliable teachers"; and this was followed by numerous other measures to make sure that the schools were staffed by teachers who could be trusted to teach their pupils the full meaning of National Socialist creed. Apart from the influence of National Socialist teaching in the schools, the Hitler Youth Organization was also relied upon by the Nazi Leaders for obtaining fanatical support from the younger generation. The defendant von Schirach, who had been Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP since 1931, was appointed Youth Leader of the German Reich in June 1933. Soon all the youth organizations had been either dissolved or absorbed by the Hitler Youth, with the exception of the Catholic Youth. The Hitler Youth was organized on strict military lines, and as early as 1933 the Wehrmacht was cooperating in providing pre-military training for the Reich Youth. support of their policies through the extensive use of propaganda. A number of agencies were set up whose duty was to control and influence the press, radio, films, publishing firms, etc., in Germany, and to supervise entertainment and cultural and artistic activities. All these agencies came under Goebbels' Ministry of the People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, which together with a corresponding organization in the NSDAP and the Reich ing this supervision.
The defendant Rosenberg played a lead-
Chamber of Culture, was ultimately responsible for exercising part in disseminating the National Socialist doctrines on behalf of the Party, and the defendant Fritzsche, in conjunction with Goebbels, performed the same task for the State. the German people to lead and dominate by virtue of their Nordic blood and racial purity; and the ground was thus being prepared for the acceptance of the idea of German world supremacy. the German people, during the years which followed 1933, were subjected to the most intensive propaganda in furtherance of the regime. Hostile criticism, indeed criticism of any kind, was forbidden, and the severest penalties were imposed on those who indulged in it. rendered quite impossible.
During the years immediately following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the Nazi Government set about re-organizing the economic life of Germany, and in particular the armament industry. This was done on a vast scale and with extreme thoroughness. for the building of armaments, and in April 1936 the defendant Goering was appointed coordinator for raw materials and foreign exchange, and empowered to supervise all state and party activities in these fields. In this capacity he brought together the War Minister, the Minister of Economics, the Reich Finance Finance Minister to discuss problems connected with war Minister, the President of the Reichsbank and the Prussian mobilization, and on the 27th May 1936, in addressing these men, Goering opposed any financial limitation of war production and added that "all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war."
At the Party Rally in Nuremberg in 1936, Hitler announced the establishment of the Four Year Plan and the appointment of Goering as the Plenipotentiary in charge. Goering was already engaged in building a strong air force and on the 8th July 1938 he announced to a number of leading German aircraft manufacturers that the German Air Force was already superior in quality and quantity to the English. On the 14th October 1938, at another conference, Goering announced that Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program, which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He said that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force five times as large as originally planned, to increase the speed of the rearmament of the navy and army, and to concentrate on offensive weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks. He then laid down a specific program designed to accomplish these ends. The extent to which rearmament had been accomplished was stated by Hitler in his memorandum of October 9th, 1939, after the campaign in Poland. He said:
"The military application of our people's strength "The warlike equipment of the German people is at year 1914.
The weapons themselves, taking a substan with any other country in the world at this time.
They their victorious campaign ... There is no evidence by any country in the world."
Reich ... The A. A. artillery is not equalled military purposes, the Nazi Government found the German armament industry quite willing to cooperate, and to play its part in the rearmament programme. In April 1933, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen submitted to Hitler on behalf of the Reich Association of German Industry a plan for the re-organization of German industry, which he stated was characterized by the desire to coordinate economic measures and political necessity. In the plan itself, Krupp stated that "the turn of political events is in line with the wishes which I myself and the board of directors have cherished for a long time." What krupp meant by this statement is fully shown by the draft text of a speech which he planned to deliver in the University of Berlin in January 1944, though the speech was in fact never delivered. Referring to the years 1919 to 1933, Krupp wrote: "It is the one great merit of the entire German war economy that it did not remain idle during the 30 bad years, even though its activity could not be brought to light, for obvious reasons. Through years of secret work, scientific and basic groundwork was laid in order to be ready again to work for the German armed forces at the appointed hour, without lose; of time or experience ... Only through the secret activity of German enterprise together with the experience gained meanwhile through production of peace time goods, was it possible after 1933 to fall into stop with the now tasks arrived at, restoring Germany's military power." Conference and league of Nations. In 1935 the Nazi Government decided to take the first open stops to free itself from its obligations under the announced that Germany was building a military air fore.
Six days later, Treaty of Versailles.
On the 10th March 1935 the defendant Goering on the 16th March 1935, a law was passed bearing the signatures, among others, of the defendants Goering, Hess, Frank, Frick, Schacht and von Neurath, instituting compulsory military service and firing the establishment of the German Army at a peace time strength of 500,000 men. In an endeavour to reassure public opinion in other countries, the Government announced on the 21st May 1935 that Germany would, though renouncing the disarmament clauses, still respect the territorial limitations of the Versailles Treaty, and world comply with the Locarno Facts. Nevertheless, on the very day of this announcement, the secret Reich Defence Law was passed and its publication forbidden by Hitler. In this law, the powers and duties of the Chancellor and other ministers were defined, should Germany become involved in war. It is clear from this law that by May of 1935 Hitler and his Government had arrived at the stage in the carrying out of their policies whop it was necessary for them to have in existence the requisite machinery for the administration and government of Germany in the event of their policy leading to war. was being carried out, the German armed forces themselves were preparing for a rebuilding of Germany's armed strength.
The German Navy was particularly active in this regard. The official German Naval historians, Assmann and Gladisch, admit that the Treaty of Versailles had only been in force for a few months before it was violated, particularly in the construction of a now submarine arm. which were sponsored by the defendant Raeder, were designed to show the German Treaty of Versailles.
people the nature of the Navy's effort to rearm in defiance of the armament plan for what was called the Third Armament Phase. This contained the sentence.
"All theoretical and practical A-preparations readiness for a war without any alert period."
One month later, in June 1934, the defendant Raeder had a conversation with Hitler in which Hitler instructed him to keep secret the construction of U-boats and of warships over the limit of 10,000 tons which was then being undertaken. conversation with Hitler and the defendant Goaring, in which Hitler said that he considered it vital that the German Navy "should be increased as planned, as no war could be carried on if the Navy was not able to safeguard the ore imports from Scandinavia." excused by the defendant Raeder on the ground that negotiations were in progress for an agreement between Germany and Great Britain permitting Germany to build ships in excess of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. This agreement, which was signed in 1935, restricted the German Navy to a tonnage equal to one-third of that of the British, except in respect of U-boats where 45% was agreed, subject always to the right to exceed this proportion after first informing the British Government and giving them an opportunity of discussion.
least four months before any action was taken.
bound themselves to notify full details of their building programme at falsified by 20%, whilst in the case of U-boats, the German historians Assmann and Gladisch say:
"It is probably just in the sphere of submarine the restrictions of the German-British Treaty."
The importance of these breaches of the Treaty is seen when the motive for this re-armament is considered. In the year 1940 the defendant Raeder himself wrote:
"The Fuehrer hoped until the last moment to be England until 1944-5. At that time, the Navy on the high Seas."
their intention to respect the territorial limitations of the Treaty of Versailles. On the 7th March 1936, in defiance of that Treaty, the demilitarized zone of the Rhiheland was ordered by German troops. In announcing this action to the German Reichstag, Hitler endeavored to justify the re-entry by references to the recently concluded alliances between Prance and the Soviet Union, and between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. He also tried to meet the hostile reaction which he no doubt expected to follow this violation of the Treaty by saying:
"We have no territorial claims to make in Europe."
AND AGGRESSIVE WAR.
peace charged in the Indictment. Count it One of the Indictment charges the defendants with conspiring or having a common plan to commit crimes against peace. Count Two of the Indictment charges the defendants with committing specific crimes against peace by planning, preparing, initiating, and waging wars of aggression against a number of other States. It will be convenient to consider the question of the existence of a common plan and the question of aggressive war together, and to deal later in this Judgment with the question of the individual responsibility of the defendants. aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. national crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia: and the first war of aggression charged in the Indictment is the war against Poland begun on the 1st September 1939.
at some of the events which preceded these acts of aggression. The war against Poland did not cone suddenly out of an otherwise clear sky; the evidence has made it plain that this war of aggression, as well as the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia, was pre-meditated and carefully prepared, and was not undertaken until the moment was thought opportune for it to be carried through as a definite port of the pre-ordained scheme find plan.
arising out of the immediate political situation in Europe and the worlds they were a deliberate and essential part of Nazi foreign policy. object was to unite the German people in the consciousness of their mission and destiny, based on inherent qualities of race, and under the guidance of the: Fuehrer.
For its achievement, two things were deemed to be essential: the disruption of the European order as it had existed since the Treaty of Versailles, and fix creation of a Greater Germany beyond the frontiers of 1914. This necessarily involved the seizure of foreign territories. able, if these purposes were to be accomplished. The German people, therefore, with all their resources, were to be organized as a great political-military army, schooled to obey without question any policy decreed by the State.
In "Mein Kampf" Hitler had made this view quite plain. It must be remembered that "Mein Kampf" was no mere private diary in which the secret thoughts of Hitler were set down.
Its contents were rather proclaimed from the house-tops. It was used in the schools and Universities and among the Hitler Youth, in the SS and the SA, and among the German people generally, even down to the presentation of an official copy to all newly-married people. By the year 1945 over 6 1/2 million Copies had been circulated. The general contents are well known. Over and over again Hitler asserted his belief in the necessity of force as the means of solving international problems, as in the following quotation:
"The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers.
They had to conquer it by risking their lives.
So also in power of a triumphant sword."
"Mein Kampf" contains many such passages, and the extolling of force as an instrument of foreign policy is openly proclaimed. in detail. The very first page of the book asserts that "GermanAustria must be restored to the great German Motherland," not on economic grounds, but because "people of the same blood should be in the Same Reich." Wholly insufficient, and if Germany is to exist at all, it must be as a world power with the necessary territorial magnitude.
"Mein Kampf" is quite explicit in stating where the increased territory is to be found: