Structure and Component Parts: The Indictment has named the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party as a group or organization which should be declared criminal.
The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party consisted, in effect, of the official organization of the, Nazi Party, with Hitler as Fuehrer at its head. The actual work of running the Leadership Corps was carried out by the Chief of the Party Chancellery (Hess, succeeded by Bormann) assisted by the Party Reich Directorate, or Reichsleitung, which was composed of the Reichleiters, the heads of the functional organizations of the Party, as well as of the heads of the various main departments and offices which were attached to the Party Reich Directorate. Under the Chief of the Party Chanceller, were the Gauleiters, with territorial Jurisdiction over the major administrative regions of the Party, the Gaus. The Gauleiters were assisted by a Party Gau Directorate or Gauleitung, similar in composition and in function to the Party Reich Directorate. Under the Gauleiters in the Party hierarchy were the Kreisleiters with territorial Jurisdiction over a Kreis, usually consisting of a single county, and assisted by a Party Kreis Directorate, or Kreisleitung. The Kreisleiters were the lowest members of the Party hierarchy who were full time paid employees. Directly under the Kreisleiters were the Ortsgruppenleiters, then the Zellenleiters and then the Blockleiters. Directives and instructions were received from the Party Reich Directorate. The Gauleiters had the function of interpreting such orders and issuing them to lower formations. The Kreisleiters had a certain discretion but acted under definite instructions.
Instructions were only in interpreting orders, but the Ortsgruppenleiters had not, issued in writing down as far as the Ortsgruppenleiters.
The Block and Zellenleiters usually received Instructions orally. Membership in the Leadership Corps at all levels was voluntary. declaration asked for all members of the staffs of the Ortsgruppenleiters and all assistants of the Zellenleiters and Blockleiters. The declaration sought against the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party thus includes the Fuehrer, the Reichsleitung, the Gauleiters and their staff officers, the Kreisleiters and their staff officers, the Ortsgruppenleiters, the Zellenleiters and the Blockleiters, a group estimated to contain at least 600,000 people.
Aims and Activities: The primary purposes of the Leadership Corps from its beginning was to assist the Nazis in obtaining and, after January 30, 1933, in retaining, control of the German State. The machinery of the Leadership Corps was used for the widespread dissemination of Nazi propaganda and to keep a detailed check on the political attitudes of the German people. In this activity the lower Political Leaders played a particularly important role. The Blockleiters were instructed by the Party Manual to report to the Ortsgruppenleiters, all persons circulating damaging rumors or criticism of the regime. The Ortsgruppenleiters, on the basis of information supplied them by the Blockleiters and Zellenleiters, kept a card index of the people within their Ortsgruppe which recorded the factors which would be used in forming a judgment as to their political reliability. The Leadership of the Leadership Corps were active in getting out the vote Corps was particularly active during plebiscites.
All members and insuring the highest possible proportion of "yes" votes. Ortsgruppenleiters and Political Leaders of higher ranks often collaborated with the Gestapo and SD in taking steps to determine those who refused to vote or who voted " no ", and in taking steps against them which went as far as arrest and detention in a concentration camp.
Criminal Activity: These steps, which relate merely to the consolidation of control of the Nazi Party, are not criminal under the view of the conspiracy to wage aggressive war which has previously been set forth. But the Leadership Corps was also used for similar steps in Austria and those parts of Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Yugoslavia which were incorporated into the Reich and within the Gaus of the Nazi Party. In those territories the machinery of the Leadership Corps was used for their Germanization through the elimination of local customs and the detection and arrest of persons who opposed German occupation. This was criminal under Article 6(b) of the Charter in those areas governed by the Hague Rules of Land Warfare and criminal under Article 6(c) of the Charter as to the remainder. of the Jews. It was involved in the economic and political discrimination against the Jews, which was put into effect shortly after the Nazis came into power. The Gestapo and SD were instructed to coordinate with the Gauleiters and Kreisleiters the measures taken in the pogroms of November 9 and 10,/1938. The Leadership Corps was also used to prevent German public opinion from reacting against the measures taken against 30 Sept.
JP Take 23 the Jews in the East. On October 9, 1942, a confidential information bulletin was sent to all Gauleiters and Kreisleiters entitled "Preparatory Measures for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe. Rumors concerning the Conditions of the Jews in the East". This bulletin stated that rumors were being started by returning soldiers concerning the conditions of Jews in the East which some Germans might not understand, and outlined in detail the official explanation to be given. This bulletin contained no explicit Statement that the Jews were being exterminated, but it did indicate they were going to labor camps, and spoke of their complete segregation and elimination and the necessity of ruthless severity. Thus, even at its face value, it indicated the utilization of the machinery of the Leadership Corps to keep German public opinion from rebelling at a program which was stated to involve condemning the Jews of Europe to a lifetime of slave ry. This information continued to be available to the Leadership Corps. The August 1944 edition of "Die Lage" a publication which was circulated among the Political Leaders, described the deportation of 430,000 Jews from Hungary. of the Slave Labor Program. A Sauckel decree dated April 6, 1942, appointed the Gauleiters as Plenipotentiary for Labor Mobilization for their Gaus with authority to coordinate all agencies dealing with labor questions in their Gaus, with specific authority over the employment of foreign workers, including their conditions of work, feeding and housing. Under this authority the Gauleiters assumed control ever the allocation of labor in their Gaus, including the forced laborers from foreign countries. In carrying out this task the Gauleiters used many Party offices within their Gaus, including subordinate Political 1942, relative to the allocation for household labor of Leaders.
For example, Sauckel's decree of September 8, Under Sauckel's directive the Leadership corps was workers, and the Gauleiters were specifically instructed to prevent "politically inept factory heads" from giving "too much consideration to the care of Eastern workers.
" result in an abortion if the child's parentage would not detention in a concentration camp for the female slave laborer.
The evidence has established that under the corporal punishment.
The Political Leaders, at least supervision.
On May 5, 1943, a memorandum of Bormann was distributed down to the Ortsgruppenleiters.
Similarly leiters of their duty to keep foreign workers under careful observation.
instructions from the Kreisleiter, would be warned by the Ortsgruppenprisoners of war. On November 5, 1941, Bormann transmitted a directive down to the level of Kreisleiter instructing them to insure compliance by the Army with the recent directives of the Department of the Interior ordering that dead Russian pri soners of war should be buried wrapped in tar paper in a remote place without any ceremony or any decorations of their graves. On November 25, 1943, Bormann sent a circular instructing the Gauleiters to report any lenient treatment of prisoners of war. On September 13, 1944, Bormann sent a directive down to the level of Kreisleiter ordering that liaison be established between the Kreisleiters and the guards of the pri soners of war in order "to better assimilate the commitment of the prisoners of war to the political and economic demands". On October 17, 1944, an OKW directive instructed the officer in charge of the prisoners of war to confer with the Kreisleiters on questions of the productivity of labor. The use of prisoners of war, particularly those from the East, was accompanied by a widespread the violation of rules of land warfare. This evidence establishes that the Leadership Corps down to the level of Kreisleiter was a participant in this illegal treatment. made to deprive Allied airmen of the protection to which they were on titled under the Geneva Convention. On March 13, 1940, a directive of Hess transmitted instructions through the Leadership Corps down to the Blockleiter for the guidance of the civilian population in case of the landing of enemy planes or parachutists, which stated that enemy parachutists Bormann sent a circular letter to all Gau and Kreisleiters reporting were to be immediately arrest for "made harmless". On May 30, 1944, instances of lynchings of Allied low level fliers in which no police action was taken.
It was requested that Ortsgruppenleiters be informed orally of the contents of this letter. This letter accompanied a propaganda drive which had been instituted by Goebbels to induce such lynchings, and clearly amounted to instructions to induce such lynchings or at least to violate the Geneva Convention by withdrawing any police protection. Some lynchings were carried out pursuant to this program, but it does not appear that they were carried out throughout all of Germany. Nevertheless, the existence of this circular letter shows that the heads of the leadership Corps were utilizing it for a purpose which was patently illegal and which involved the use of the machinery of the Leadership Corps at least through the Ortsgruppenleiter. under the Charter and involved the Germanization of incorporated territory, the persecution of the Jews, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment of prisoners of war. The defendants Bormann and Sauckel, who were members of this organization, were among those who used it for these purposes. The Gauleiters, the Kreisleiters, and the Ortsgruppenleiters participated, to one degree or another, in these criminal programs. The Reichsleitung as the staff organization of the Party is also responsible for these criminal programs as well as the heads of the various staff organizations of on these staff organizations includes only the Amtsleiters who the Gauleiters and Kreisleiters.
The decision of the Tribunal were heads of offices on the staffs of the Reichsleitung, Gauleitung and Kreisleitung. With respect to other staff officers and party organizations attached to the Leadership Corps other than the Amtsleiters referred to above, the Tribunal will follow the suggestion of the Prosecution in excluding them from the declaration. of the Charter the group composed of those, members of the Leadership Corps holding the positions enumerated in the preceding paragraph or who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes. The basis of this finding is the participation of the organization in war crimes and crimes against humanity connected with the war; the group declared criminal cannot include, therefore, persons who had ceased to hold the positions enumerated in the preceding paragraph prior to September 1, 1939.
Structure and Component Parts: The Prosecution has named Die Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) and Die Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer SS (SD) as groups or organizations which should be declared criminal.
The Prosecution presented the cases against the Gestapo and SD together, stating that this was necessary because of the close working relationship between them. The Tribunal permitted the SD to present its defense separately because of a claim of conflicting interests, but after examining the evidence has decided to consider the case of the Gestapo and SD together. June 26, 1936, by the appointment of Heydrich, who was the Chief of the SD, to the position of Chief of the Security Police, which was defined to include both the Gestapo and the Criminal Police, Prior to that time the SD had been the intelligence agency, first of the SS, and, after June 4, 1934, of the entire Nazi Party. The Gestapo had been composed of the various political police forces of the several German Federal states which had been unified under the personal leadership of Himmler, with the assistance of Goering. Himmler had been appointed Chief of the German Police in the Ministry of the Interior on June 17, 1936, and in his capacity as Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police issued his decree of June 26, 1936, which placed both the Criminal Police, or Kripo, and the Gestapo in the Security Police, and placed both the Security Police and the SD under the command of Heydrich. the Security Police, a state organization, and the SD, a Party organization, was formalized by the decree of September 27, 1939, which united the various Police and SD into one administrative unit, the Reichs Security Head state and party offices which were under Heydrich as Chief of the Security Office (RSHA) which was at the same time both one of the principal offices (Hauptamter) of the SS under Himmler as Reichsfuehrer SS and an office in the Ministry of the Interior under Himmler as Chief of the German Police.
The internal structure of the RSHA shows the manner in which it consolidated the offices of the Security Police with those of the SD. The RSHA was divided into seven offices (Amter), two of which (Amt I and Amt II) dealt with administrative matters. The Security Police were represented by Amt IV, the head office of the Gestapo, and by Amt V, the head office of the Criminal Police. The SD were represented by Amt III, the head office for SD activities inside Germany, by Amt VI, the head office for SD activities outside of Germany and by Amt VII, the office for ideological research. Shortly after the creation of the RSHA, in November 1939, the Security Police was "coordinated" with the SS by taking all officials of the Gestapo and Criminal Police into the SS at ranks equivalent to their positions. top level, of the relationship under which the SD served as the intelligence agency for the Security Police. A similar coordination existed in the local offices. Within Germany and areas which were incorporated within the Reich for the purpose of civil administration, local offices of the Gestapo, Criminal Police and SD were formally separate. They were subject to coordination by Inspectors of the Security Police and SD on the staffs of the local Higher SS and Police Leaders, however, and one of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo, agency for the local Gestapo units.
In the occupied territories, Criminal Police and SD was slightly closer. They were organized into local units of the Security Police and SD and were under the control of both the RSHA and of the Higher SS and Police Leader who was appointed by Himmler to serve on the staff of the occupying authority. The offices of the Security police and SD in occupied territory were composed of departments corresponding to the various Amts of the RSHA. In occupied territories which were still considered to be operational military areas or where German control had not been formally established, the organization of the Security Police and SD was only slightly changed. Members of the Gestapo, Kripo and SD were joined together into military type organizations known as Einsatz Kommandos and Einsatzgruppen in which the key positions were held by members of the Gestapo, Kripo and SD and in which members of the Order Police, the Waffen SS and even the Wehrmacht were used as auxiliaries. These organizations were under the overall control of the RSHA, but in front line areas were under the operational control of the appropriate Army Commander. both the Gestapo and the SD were important and closely related groups within the organization of the Security Police and the SD. The Security police and SD was under a single command, that of Heydrich and later Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of the Security Police and SD; it had a single headquarters, the RSHA; it had its own command channels and worked as one organization both in Germany, in occupied territories and in the areas immediately behind the front lines. During the period with which the Tribunal is Police and SD received training in all its components, the primarily concerned, applicants for positions in the Security Gestapo, Criminal police and SD.
Some confusion has been caused by the fact that part of the organization was technically a formation of the Nazi Party while another part of the organization was an office in the Government, but this is of no particular significance in view of the law of December 1, 1933, declaring the unity of the Nazi Party and the German State. It is true that many civil servants and administrative officials were transferred into the Security Police. The claim that this transfer was compulsory amounts to nothing more than the claim that they had to accept the transfer or resign their positions, with a possibility of having incurred official disfavor. Durin the war a member of the Security Police and SD did not have a free choice of assignments within that organization and the refusal to accept a particular position, especially when serving in occupied territory, might have led to serious punishment. The fact remains, however, that all members of the Security Police and SD joined the organization voluntarily under no other sanction than the desire to retain their positions as officials. cluded three special units which must be dealt with separately. The first of these was the Frontier Police or Granzpolizei which came under the control of the Gestapo in 1937. Their duties consisted in the control of passage over the borders of Germany. They arrested persons who crossed illegally. It is also clear from the evidence presented that they received directives from the Gestapo to transfer foreign workers the local office of the Gestapo for permission to commit persons arrested whom they apprehended to concentration camps.
They could also request to concentration camps. The Tribunal is of the opinion that the Frontier Police must be included in the charge of criminality against the Gestapo. of the Gestapo in the summer of 1944. The functions of this organization were similar to the Frontier Police in enforcing border regulations with particular respect to the prevention of smuggling. It does not appear, however, that their transfer was complete but that about half of their personnel of 54,000 remained under the Reich Finance administration or the Order Police. A few days before the end of the war the whole organization was transferred back to the Reich Finance Administration. The transfer of the organization to the Gestapo was so late and it participated so little in the overall activities of the organization that the Tribunal does not feel that it should be dealt with in considering the criminality of the Gestapo. was originally under the Army but which in 1942 was transferred by military order to the Security Police. The Secret Field Police was concerned with security matters within the Army in occupied territory, and also with the prevention of attacks by civilians on military installations or units, and committed War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity on a wide scale. It has not been proved, however, that it was a part of the Gestapo and the Tribunal does not consider it as coming within the charge of criminality contained in the Indictment, except such members as may have been transferred to Amt IV of the RSHA or were members of organizations declared criminal by this Judgment.
the Gestapo was the prevention of any political opposition to the Nazi Criminal Activity:
Originally, one of the primary functions of regime, a function which it performed with the assistance of the SD. The principal weapon used in performing this function was the concentration camp. The Gestapo did not have administrative control over the concentratio camps, but, acting through the RSHA, was responsible for the detention of political prisoners in those camps, Gestapo officials were usually responsible for the interrogation of political prisoners at the camps. questions relating to the press, the Churches and the Jews, As the Nazi program of anti-Semitic persecution increased in intensity the role played by these groups became increasingly important. In the early morning of November 10, 1938, Heydrich sent a telegram to all offices of the Gestapo and SD giving instructions for the organization of the programs of that date and instructing them to arrest as many Jews as the prisons could hold "especially rich ones", but to be careful that those arrested were healthy and not too old. By November 11, 1938, 20,000 Jews had been arrested and many were sent to concentration camp. On January 24, 1939, Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and SD, was charged with furthering the emigration and evacuation of Jews from Germany, and on July 31, 1941, with bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish problem in German dominate Europe. A social section of the Gestapo office of the RSHA under Standartenfuehrer Eichmann was set up with responsibility for Jewish matters which employed its own agents to investigate the Jewish problem in occupied territory. Local offices of the Gestapo were used first to supervise the emigration of Jews and later to deport them to the East both from Germany and from the Security Police and SD operating behind the lines of the Easter territories occupied during the wars.
Einsatzgruppen of the Front engaged in the wholesale massacre of Jews. A special detachment from Gestapo headquarters in the RSHA was used to arrange for the deportation of Jews from Axis satellites to Germany for the "final solution". important role in the German administration of occupied territories. The nature of their participation is shown by measures taken in the summer of 1938 in preparation for the attack on Czechoslovakia which was then in contemplation. Einsatzgruppen of the Gestapo and SD were organized to follow the Army into Czechoslovakia to provide for the security of political life in the occupied territories. Plans were made for the infiltration of SD men into the area in advance, and for the building up of a system of files to indicate what inhabitants should be placed under surveillance, deprived of passports or liquidated. These plans were considerably altered due to the cancellation of the attack on Czechoslovakia, but in the military operations which actually occurred, particularly in the war against USSR, Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD went into operation, and combined brutal measures for the pacification of the civilian population with the wholesale slaughter of Jews. Heydrich gave orders to fabricate incidents on the Polish-German frontier in 1939 which would give Hitler sufficient provocation to attack Poland. Both Gestapo and SD personnel were involved in these operations. continued their work in the occupied territories after they had ceased to be an area of operations. The Security Police and SD engaged in widespread arrests of them under inhumane conditions, subjected them to brutal third degree the civilian population of these occupied countries, imprisoned many of methods, and sent many of them to concentration camps.
Local units of the Security Police and SD were also involved in the shooting of hostages, the imprisonment of relatives, the execution of persons charged as terrorists and saboteurs without a trial, and the enforcement of the "Nacht und Nebel" decrees under which persons charged with a type of offense believed to endanger the security of the occupying forces were either executed within a week or secretly removed to Germany without being permitted to communicate with their family and friends. tion of the Slave Labor Program. In some occupied territories they helped local labor authorities to meet the quotas imposed by Sauckel. Gestapo offices inside of Germany were given surveillance over slave laborers and responsibility for apprehending those who were absent from their place of work. The Gestapo also had charge of the so-called work training camps. Although both German and foreign workers could be committed to these camps they played a significant role in forcing foreign laborers to work for the German war effort. In the latter stages of the war as the SS embarked on a slave labor program of its own, the Gestapo was used to arrest workers for the purpose of insuring an adequate supply in the concentration camps. in the commission of war crimes involving the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Soviet prisoners of war in prisoner of war camps in Germany were screened by Einsatz Kommandos acting under the directions the intelligentsia, "fanatical Communists" and even those who of the local Gestapo offices.
Commissars, Jews, members of were considered incurably sick were classified as "intolerable", and exterminated. The local offices of the Security Police and SD were involved in the enforcement of the "Bullet" decree, put into effect on March 4, 1944, under which certain categories of prisoners of war, who were recaptured, were not treated as prisoners of war but taken to Mauthausen in secret and shot. Members of the Security police and the SD were charged with the enforcement of the decree for the shooting of parachutists and commandos. criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. The defendant Kaltenbrunner, who was a member of this organization, was among those who used it for these purposes. In dealing with the Gestapo the Tribunal includes all executive and administrative officials of Amt IV of the RSHA or concerned with Gestapo administration in other departments of the RSHA and all local Gestapo officials serving both inside and outside of Germany, including the members of the Frontier Police, but not including the members of the Border and Customs Protection or the Secret Field Police, except such members as have been specified above. At the suggestion of the Prosecution the Tribunal does not include persons employed by the Gestapo for purely clerical, stenographic, janitorial or similar unofficial routine tasks. In dealing with the SD the Tribunal includes Amts III, VI, IV and Vof the and agents, honorary or otherwise, whether they were technically members RSHA and all other members of the SD, including all local representatives of the SS or not.
Charter the group composed of those numbers of the Gestapo and SD holding the positions enumerated in the preceding paragraph who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes. The basis for this finding is the participation of the organization in war crimes and crimes against humanity connected with the war; this group declared criminal cannot include, therefore, persons who had ceased to hold the positions ended in the preceding paragraph prior to September 1, 1939.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for ten minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE PRESIDENT: Owing to a mistake in the text, there are two corrections which I desire to make on behalf of the Tribunal. The first occurs on Page 149 in the sentence which reads as follows: "The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those members of the Leadership Corps holding the positions enumerated in the preceding paragraph" -- and then the word "or" should be emitted and the sentence should continue "who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter." That was the first mistake. page which reads as follows: "In dealing with the SD the Tribunal includes Amts III, VI and VII of the RSHA." The translation came through "Amts III, IV and V.". It should have been Amts III, VI and VII.
S. S.
Structure and Compnent Parts: The Prosecution has named Die Schutzstaffeln Der Nationalsocialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (commonly known as the SS) as an organization which should be declared criminal. The portion of the Indictment dealing with the SS also includes the Die Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer--SS (commonly known as the SD). This latter organization, which was originally an intelligence branch of the SS, later became an important part of the organization of Security Police and SD and is dealt with in the Tribunal's Judgment on the Gestapo. the SA for political purposes under the pretext of protecting speakers at public meetings of the Nazi Party. After the Nazis had obtained power the SS was used to maintain order and control audiences at mass demonstrations and was given the additional duty of "internal security" by a decree of the Fuehrer. The SS played an important role at the time of the Roehm purge of June 30, 1934, and, as a reqard for its services, was made an independent unit of the Nazi Party shortly thereafter.
sisted of 280 men who were regarded as especially trustworthy. In 1933 it was composed of 52,000 men drawn from all walks of life. The original formation of the SS was the Allgemeine SS, which by 1939 had grown to a corps of 240,000 men, organized on military lines into divisions and regiments. During the war its strength declined to well under 40,000. a force consisting of SS members who volunteered for four years and the SS Totenkopf Verbaende, special troops employed to armed service in lieu of compulsory service with the Army, guard concentration camps, which came under the control of the SS in 1934.