Belgium, Holland and Norway, however, an attempt was made to obtain the necessary workers on a voluntary basis.
How unsuccessful this was may be seen from the report of the meeting of the Central Planning Board on the 1st March 1944. The representative of the defendant Speer, one Koehrl, speaking of the situation in France, said:
"During all this time a great number of French Germany."
He was interrupted by the defendant Sauckel:
"Not only voluntary, some were recruited forcibly." To which Koehrl replied:
"The calling up started after the recruitment no longer yielded enough results."
To which the defendant Sauckel replied:
"Out of the five million workers who arrived tarily," and Koehrl rejoined:
"Let us forget for the moment whether or not some slight pressure was used.
Formally, at least, they were volunteers."
propaganda campaign was begun to induce workers to volunteer for service in Germany. This propaganda campaign included, for example, the promise that a prisoner of war would be returned for every laborer who volunteered to go to Germany. In some cases it was supplemented by withdrawing the ration cards of laborers who refused to go to Germany, or by discharging them from their jobs and denying them unemployment benefit or an opportunity to work elsewhere. In some cases workers and refused to go to Germany.
It was on the 21st March 1942 that the their families were threatened with reprisals by the police if they defendant Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary-General for the Utilization of Labor, with authority over "all available manpower, including that of workers recruited abroad, and of prisoners of war."
Commissioner of the Four Year Plan, and a Goering decree of the 27th March 1942 transferred all his authority over manpower to Sauckel. Sauckel's instructions, too, were that foreign labour should be recruited on a voluntary basis, but also provided that "where, however, in the occupied territories, the appeal for volunteers does not suffice, obligatory service and drafting must under all circumstances be resorted to." Rules requiring labor service in Germany were published in all the occupied territories. The number of laborers to be supplied was fixed by Sauckel, and the local authorities were instructed to meet these requirements by conscription if necessary. That conscription was the rule rather than the exception is shown by the statement of Sauckel already quoted, on the 1st March 1944. belonging to foreign nations were treated humanely, and that the conditions in which they lived were good. But whatever the intention of Sauckel may have been, and however much he may have desired that foreign laborers should be treated humanely, the evidence before the Tribunal establishes the fact that the conscription of labor was The "mistakes and blunders" were on a very great scale.
accomplished in many cases by drastic and violent methods. Manhunts took place in the streets, at motion picture houses, even at churches and at night in private houses. Houses were sometimes burnt down, and the families taken as hostages, practices which were described by the defendant Rosenberg as having their origin "in the blackest periods of the slave trade." The methods used in obtaining forced labor from the Ukraine appear from an order issued to SD officers which stated:
"It will not be possible always to refrain from using force.
.. When searching villages, sioner by force.
.. As a rule no more children will be shot.
.. If we limit harsh measures of workers."
The resources and needs of the occupied countries were completely disregarded in carrying out this policy. The treatment of the laborers was governed by Sauckel's instructions of the 20th April 1942 to the effect that:
"All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated conceivable degree of expenditure."
The evidence showed that workers destined for the Reich were sent under guard to Germany, often packed in trains without adequate heat, food, clothing or sanitary facilities. The evidence further showed that the treatment of the laborers in Germany in many cases was brutal and degrading. The evidence relating to the Krupp Works at Essen showed that punishments of the most cruel kind were inflicted on the workers. Theoretically at least the workers were paid, housed and fed by the DAF, and even permitted to transfer their savings and to send mail and parcels a proportion of the pay; the camps in which they were housed back to their native country; but restrictive regulations took were insanitary; and the food was very often less than the minimum necessary to give the workers strength to do their jobs.
In the case of Poles employed on farms in Germany, the employers were giv en authority to inflict corporal punishment and were ordered, if possible, to house them in stables, not in their own homes. They were subject to constant supervision by the Gestapo and the SS, and if they attempted to leave their jobs they were sent to correction camps or concentration camps. The concentration camps were also used to increase the supply of labor. Concentration camp commanders were ordered to work their prisoners to the limits of their physical power. During the latter stages of the war the concentration camps were so productive in certain types of work that the Gestapo was actually instructed to arrest certain classes of laborers so that they could be used in this way. Allied prisoners of war were also regarded as a possible source of labor. Pressure was exercised on noncommissioned officers to force them to consent to work, by transferring to disciplinary camps those who did not consent. Many of the prisoners of war were assigned to work directly related to military operations, in violation of Article 31 of the Geneva Convention. They were put to work in munition factories and even made to load bombers, to carry ammunition and to dig trenches, often under the most hazardous conditions. This condition applied particularly to the Soviet prisoners of war. On the 16th February 1943, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, at which the defendants Sauckel and Speer were present, Milch said:
a certain percentage of men in the Ack-Ack "We have made a request for an order that artillery must be Russians; 50,000 will be taken altogether.
30,000 are already employed as gunners.
This is an amusing thing, that Russians must work the guns."
And on the 4th October 1943, at Posen, Himmler, speaking of the Russian prisoners, captured in the early days of the war, said:
"At that time we did not value the mass of ial, as labor.
What, after all, thinking in and hunger."
labor was stated by Sauckel on the 20th April 1942. He said:
"The aim of this new gigantic labor mobilization her Allies.
.. All prisoners of war from nutrition industries.
.. Consequently it is the fullest extent.
Should we not succeed of the labor programme in this war."
existence in Germany by the summer of 1940, under which all aged, insane, and institutions where they were killed, and their relatives informed incurable people, "useless eaters," were transferred to s pecial that they had died from natural causes.
The victims were not confined to German citizens, but included foreign laborers, who were no longer able to work, and were therefore useless to the German war machine. It has been estimated that at least some 275,000 people were killed in this manner in nursing homes, hospitals and asylums, which were under the jurisdiction of the defendant Frick, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior. How many foreign workers were included in this total it has been quite impossible to determine. Government has been proved in the greatest detail before the Tribunal. It is a record of consistent and systematic inhumanity on the greatest scale. Ohlendorf, chief of Amt III in the RSHA from 1939 to 1943, and who was in command of one of the Einsatz groups in the campaign against the Soviet Union testified as to the methods employed in the extermination of the Jews. He said that he employed firing squads to shoot the victims in order to lessen the sense of individual guilt on the part of his men; and the 90,000 men, women and children who were murdered in one year by his particular group were mostly Jews. could admit the murder of 90,000 people, he replied:
"I am of the opinion that when, for years, inevitable."
chapter of Nazi history when he testified in this court:
"We have fought against Jewry: we have fought against it for years:
and we have allowed our utterances which are terrible ... A thousand still not be erased."
Party Program which declared "Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race," Other points of the program declared that Jews should be treated as foreigners, that they should not be permitted to hold public office, that they should be expelled from the Reich if it were impossible to nourish the entire population of the State, that they should be denied any further immigration into Germany, and that they should be prohibited from publishing German newspapers. The Nazi Party preached these doctrines throughout its history. "Der Stuermer" and other publications were allowed to disseminate hatred of the Jews, and in the speeches and public declarations of the Nazi leaders, the Jews were held up to public ridicule and contempt. was intensified. A series of discriminatory laws were passed, which limited the offices and professions permitted to Jews; and restrictions were placed on their family life and their rights of citizenship. By the autumn of 1938, the Nazi policy towards the Jews had reached the of Jews from German life.
Pogroms were organized, which stage where it was directed towards the complete exclusion included the burning and demolishing of synagogues, the looting of Jewish businesses, and the arrest of prominent Jewish business men.
A collective fine of one billion marks was imposed on the Jews, the seizure of Jewish assets was authorized, and the movement of Jews was restricted by regulations to certain specified districts and hours. The creation of ghettoes was carried out on an extensive scale, and by an order of the Security Police Jews were compelled to wear a yellow star to be worn on the breast and back. of this anti-Semitic policy were connected with the plans for aggressive war. The violent measures taken against the Jews in November 1938 were nominally in retaliation for the killing of an official of the German Embassy in Paris. But the decision to seize Austria and Czechoslovakia had been made a year before. The imposition of a fine of one billion marks was made, and the confiscation of the financial holdings of the Jews was decreed, at a time when German armament expenditure had put the German treasury in difficulties, and when the reduction of expenditure on armaments was being considered. These steps were taken, moreover, with the approval of the defendant Goering, who had been given responsibility for economic matters of this kind, and who was the strongest advocate of an extensive rearmament program notwithstanding the financial difficulties. Semitic policy with aggressive war was not limited to economic matters. The German Foreign Office circular, in an article of January 25th 1939, entitled "Jewish question as a factor in German Foreign Policy in the year 1938", in these words:
described the new phase in the Nazi anti-Semitic policy "It is certainly no coincidence that the fate quence of the events of the year 1938.
The advance World War.
The healing of this sickness among of Greater Germany in defiance of the world."
severe and repressive as it was, cannot compare, however, with the policy pursued during the war in the occupied territories. Originally the policy was similar to that which had been in force inside Germany. Jews were required to register, were forced to live in ghettoes, to wear the yellow star, and were used as slave laborers. In the summer of 1941, however, plans were made for the "final solution" of the Jewish question in/Europe. This "final solution" meant the extermination of the Jews, which early in 1939 Hitler had threatened would be one of the consequences of an outbreak of war, and a special section in the Gestapo under Adolf Eichmann, as head of Section B 4 of the Gestapo, was formed to carry out the policy. after the attack on the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, formed for the purpose of breaking the resistance of the population of the of exterminating the Jews in those areas.
The effectiveness of the areas lying behind the German armies in the East, were given the duty work of the Einsatzgruppen is shown by the fact that in February 1942 Heydrich was able to report that Esthonia had already been cleared of Jews and that in Riga the number of Jews had been reduced from 29,500 to 2,500.
Altogether the Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied Baltic States killed over 135,000 Jews in three months. the German Armed Forces. There is clear evidence that leaders of the Einsatzgruppen obtained the co-operation of Army Commanders. In one case the relations between an Einsatzgruppe and the military authorities was described at the time as being "very close, almost cordial"; in another case the smoothness of an Einsatzcommando's operation was attributed to the "understanding for this procedure" shown by the army authorities. of the East, which were under civil administration, were given a similar task. The planned and systematic character of the Jewish persecutions is best illustrated by the original report of the SS Brigadier-General Stroop, who was in charge of the destruction of the ghetto in Warsaw, which took place in 1943. The Tribunal received in evidence that report, illustrated with photographs, bearing on its title page: "The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists." The volume records a series of reports sent by Stroop to the Higher SS and Police Fuehrer East. In April and Fay of 1943, in one report, Stroop wrote:
"The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits of our troops day and night.
The Reichsfuehrer burn down the entire ghetto, without regard to tenacity.
I therefore decided to destroy and the armament factories.
These factories were systematically dismantled and then burnt.
Jews week.
Many times we could hear loud voices in the sewers.
.. Tear gas bombs were thrown into the captured.
Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through blasting.
The longer Stroop recorded that his action at Warsaw eliminated "a proved total of 56,065 people.
To that we have to add the number of those killed through blasting, fire, etc.
, which cannot be counted." Grim the brutal manner in which the killings were carried out.
But the methods employed never conformed to a single pattern.
The massacres concentration camps, was another.
Part of the "final solution" was camps.
Their physical condition was the test of life or death. All and their bodies burnt.
Certain concentration camps such as Treblinka camps; all who were not fit to work were destroyed in gas chambers and Auschwitz were set aside for this main purpose.
With regard to Auschwitz, the Tribunal heard the evidence of Hoess, the Commandant of the camp from May 1st 1940 to December 1st 1943. He estimated that in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2,500,000 persons were exterminated, and that a further 500,000 died from disease and starvation. Hoess described the screening for extermination by stating in evidence "We had two SS doctors on duty Auschwitz to walked by.
Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp.
Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants.
Children of tender of their youth they were unable to work.
Still they were to go through a delousing process.
Of that fact.
Very frequently women would hide their exterminated."
He described the actual killing by stating:
"It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the conditions.
We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.
We usually waited removed the bodies.
After the bodies were removed the gold from the teeth of the corpses."
Beating, starvation, torture, and killing were general. The inmates were subjected to cruel experiments at Dachau in August 1942, victims were Centigrade, when they died immediately.
Other experiments included immersed in cold water until their body temperature was reduced to 28 degrees high altitude experiments in pressure chambers, experiments to determine how long human beings could survive in freezing water, experiments with poison bullets, experiments with contagious diseases, and experiments dealing with sterilization of men and women by X-rays and other methods.
their extermination. There was testimony that the hair of women victims was cut off before they were killed, and shipped to Germany, there to be used in the manufacture of mattresses. The clothes, money and valuables of the inmates were also salvaged and sent to the appropriate agencies for disposition. After the extermination the gold teeth and fillings were taken from the heads of the corpses and sent to the Reichsbank. instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufactured soap. Special groups traveled through Europe to find Jews and subject them to the "final solution." German missions were sent to such satellite countries as Hungary and Bulgaria, to arrange for the shipment of Jews to extermination camps and it is known that by the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from Hungary had been murdered at Auschwitz. Evidence has also been given of the evacuation of 110,000 Jews from part of Rumania for "liquidation." Adolf Eichmann, who had been put in charge of this program by Hitler, has estimated that the policy pursued resulted in the killing of 6,000,000 Jews, of which 4,000,000 were killed in the extermination institutions.
Article 6 of the Charter provides:
"(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war.
Such violations shall include, but justified by military necessity;"(c) Crimes against Humanity:
namely, murder, population, before or during the war; or of the country were perpetrated."
any conspiracy except the one set out in Article 6(a), dealing with crimes against peace. which it gives both of war crimes and crimes against humanity. With respect to war crimes, however, as has already been pointed out, the crimes defined by Article 6, section (b), of the Charter were already recognized as war crimes under international law. They were covered by Articles 46, 50, 52, and 56 of the Hague Convention of 1907, and Articles 2, 3, 4, 46, and 51 of the Geneva Convention of 1929. That violations of these provisions constituted crimes for which the guilty individuals were punishable is too well settled to admit of argument. case, because of the "general participation" clause in Article 2 of the Hague Convention of 1907. That clause provided:
of Land Warfare) referred to in Article I as well as "The provisions contained in the regulations (Rules gerents are parties to the convention."
Several of the belligerents in the recent war were not parties to this convention. tion. The rules of land warfare expressed in the convention undoubtedly represented an advance over existing international law at the time of their adoption. But the convention expressly stated that it was an attempt "to revise the general laws and customs of war", which it thus recognized to be then existing, but by 1939 the so rules laid down in the convention were recognized by all civilized nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6(b) of the Charter. rules of land warfare in many of the territories occupied during the war, because Germany had completely subjugated, those countries and incorporated then into the German Reich, a fact which gave Germany authority to deal with the occupied countries as though they were part of Germany. In the view of the Tribunal it is unnecessary in this case to decide whether this doctrine of subjugation, dependent as it is upon military conquest, has any application where the subjugation is the result of the crime of aggressive war. The doctrine was never considered to be applicable so long as there was an army in the field attempting to restore the occupied countries to their true owners, and in this case, therefore, the doctrine could not apply to any territories occupied after the 1st September 1939. As to the war crimes committed in Bohemia and Moravia, it is a sufficient answer that these territories were With regard to crimes against humanity, there is no doubt whatever never added to the Reich, but a mere protectorate was established over them.
that political opponents were murdered in Germany before the war, and that many of them were kept in concentration camps in circumstances of great horror and cruel by. The policy of terror was certainly carried out on a vast scale, and in many cases was organized and systematic. The policy of persecution, repression and murder of civilians in Germany before the war of 1939, who were likely to be hostile to the Government, was most ruthlessly carried out. The persecution of Jews during the same period is established beyond all doubt. To constitute crimes against humanity, the acts relied on before the outbreak of war must have been in execution of, or in connection with, any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. The Tribunal is of the opinion that revolting and horrible as many of these crimes were, it has not been satisfactorily proved that they were done in execution of, or in connection with, any such crime. The Tribunal therefore cannot make a general declaration that the acts before 1939 were crimes against humanity within the meaning of the Charter, but from the beginning of the war in 1939 war crimes were committed on a vast scale, which were also crimes against humanity; and insofar as the inhumane acts charged in the Indictment, and committed after the beginning of the war, did not constitute war crimes, they were all committed in execution of, or in connection with, the aggressive war, and therefore constituted crimes against humanity.
THE PRESIDENT: I now ask Colonel Volchkov to continue the reading of the judgment.
THE ACCUSED ORGANIZATIONS
COLONEL VOLCHKOV:
Article 9 of the Charter provides:
"At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) "After receipt of the Indictment the Tribunal shall give of the organization.
The Tribunal shall have power to allow or reject the application.
If the application applicants shall be represented and heard."
nality against an accused organization is final, and cannot be challenged in any subsequent criminal proceeding against a member of that organization. Article 10 is as follows:
"In cases where a group or organization is declared before national, military or occupation courts.
In questioned."
illustrated by Law Number 10 of the Control Council of Germany passed on the 20th day of December, 1945, which provides:
...
"Each of the following acts is recognized as a crime:
"(d) Membership in categories of a criminal "(3) Any person found guilty of any of the just.
Such punishment may consist of one or more of the following:
(a) Death.
(b) Imprisonment for life or a term of (c) Fine, and Imprisonment with or without hard labor, in lieu thereof."
the Tribunal has declared to be criminal may be subsequently convicted of the crime of membership and be punished for that crime by death. This is not to assume that international or military courts which will try these individuals will not exercise appropriate standards of justice. This is a far reaching and novel procedure. Its application, unless properly safeguarded, may produce great injustice.
Article 9, it should be noted, uses the words "The Tribunal may declare", so that the Tribunal is vested with discretion as to whether it will declare any organization criminal. This discretion is a Judicial one and does not permit arbitrary action, but should be exercised in accordance with well settled legal principles, one of the most important of which is that criminal guilt is personal, and that mass punishments should be avoided. If satisfied of the criminal guilt of any organization or group, this Tribunal should not hesitate to declare it to be criminal because the theory of "group criminality" is new, or because it might be unjustly applied by some subsequent tribunals. On the other so far as possible in a manner to insure that innocent persons hand, the Tribunal should make such declaration of criminality will not be punished.
conspiracy in that the essence of both is cooperation for criminal purposes. There must be a group bound together and organized for a common purpose. The group must be formed or used in connection with the commission of crimes denounced by the Charter, Since the declaration with respect to the organizations and groups will, as has been pointed out, fix the criminality of its members, that definition should exclude persons who had no knowledge of the criminal purposes or acts of the organization and those who were drafted by the State for membership, unless they were personally implicated in the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter as members of the organization. Membership alone is not enough to come within the scope of these declarations. makes will be used by other courts in the trial of persons on account of their membership in the organizations found to be criminal, the Tribunal feels it appropriate to make the following recommendations:
1. That so far as possible throughout the four zones of occupation in Germany the classifications, sanctions and penalties be standardized. Uniformity of treatment so far as practical should be a basic principle. This does not, of course, mean that discretion in sentencing should not be vested in the court; but the discretion should be within fixed limits appropriate to the nature of the crime.
2. Law No. 10, to which reference has already been made, leaves punishment entirely in the discretion of the trial court even to the extent of inflicting the death penalty.
passed for Bavaria, Greater-Hesse and Wuerttemberg-Baden, provides definite sentences for punishment in each type of offense.
The Tribunal recommends that in no case should punishment imposed under Law No. 10 upon any members of an organization or group declared by the Tribunal to be criminal exceed the punishment fixed by the De-Nazification Law. No person should be punished under both laws.
3. The Tribunal recommends to the Control Council that Law No. 10 be amended to prescribe limitations on the punishment which may be imposed for membership in a criminal group or organization so that such punishment shall not exceed the punishment prescribed by the DeNazification Law. criminal the following organizations: The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party; The Gestapo; The S.D.; The S.S.; The S.A.; The Reich Cabinet, and The General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces.