Only sanctions which roach individuals can peacefully and effectively be enforced. Hence, the principal of the criminality of aggressive was is implemented by the Charter with the principal of personal responsibility. poration, commits a crime is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. While it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a state or corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of a personal immunity. criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of states. These twin principles working together have heretofore resulted in immunity for practically everyone concerned in the really great crimes against peace and mankind. Those in lower ranks were protected against liability by theorders of their superiors. The superiors were protected because their orders were called acts of state. Under the Charter, no defense based on either of these doctrines can be entertained. Modern civilization puts unlimited weapons of destruction in the hands of its statesmen. It cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal irresponsibility.
Even the German Military Code provides,and I quote:
"If the execution of a miliatry order in the responsibility therefor.
However, the obeying sub ordinate will share the punishment of the participant:
(1) if he has exceeded the order given to him, or (2)
gression." (Reichsgesetzblatt 1926 No.37, p.278,Art.47) which one commits an act should be disregarded in judging its legal effect. A conscripted private on a firing squad cannot be expected to hold an inquest on the validity of the execution.
The Charter implies common sense limits to liability just as it places common sense limits upon immunity. But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of then was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power and know; the purpose of the acts they were committing. Their responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that fictional being, "the State", which can not be produced for trial, can not testify, and can not be sentenced. responsibility is recognized by most modern systems of law, for acts committed by others in carrying out a common plan or conspiracy to which the defendant has become a party. I need not discuss the familiar principles of such liability, Every day in the court, of countries associated in this prosecution, men are convicted for acts that they did not personally commit but for which they were held responsible because of membership in illegal combinations or plans or conspiracies. are certain political and police organizations which the evidence will show to have been instruments of cohesion in planning and executing the crimes I have detailed. Perhaps the worst of the movement were the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, the Schultzstaffel or "SS", and the Sturmabteilungen or "SA", and the subsidiary formations which these include. These were the Nazi leadership, espionage, and policing groups. They were the real government, above and outside of any law. Also accused as organizations are the Reich Cabinet and the Secret State Police, or Gestapo, which were fixtures of the Government but animated solely by the Nazi Party. was done in the SS, membership in all these militarized organizations was voluntary. The police organizations were recruited from ardent partisans who enlisted blindly to do the work the leaders planned.
The Reich Cabinet was the governmental facade for Nazi Party Govermnet and in its members legal as well as actual responibility was vested for the entire program. Collectively they were responsible for the program in general, individually they were responsible for particular segments of it. The finding which we ask you to make, that those are criminal organizations, will subject members to punishment to be hereafter determined by appropriate tribunals, unless some personal defense - such as becoming a member under duress, under threat to person, to family, or inducement by false representation, or the like can be established. Every member will have a chance to be heard in the subsequent forum on his personal relation to the organization, but your finding in this trial will conclusively establish the criminal character of the organization as a whole. High Command and the General Staff of the German Armed Forces. We recognize that to plan warfare is the business of professional soldiers in every country. But it is one thing to plan strategic moves in the event war comes, and it is another thing to plot and intrigue to bring on that war. We will prove the leaders of the German General Staff and of the High Command to have boon guilty of just that. Military men are not before you because they have served their country. They are here because they mastered it, and along with those others, drove it to war. They are not here because they lost the war but because they started one. Politicians may have thought of them as soldiers, but soldiers know they were politicians. We ask that the General Staff and the High Command, as defined in this Indictment, be condemmed as a criminal group whose existence and tradition constitute a standing menace to the peace of the world. and will not stand alone in punishment. Your verdict of "guilty" against those organizations will render prima facie guilty, as nearly as we can learn, many thousands of members now in custody of United States forces and of other Armies.
criminal by the standards I have outlined, is the responsibility committed by the Charter to this Tribunal. It is the first court ever to undertake the difficult task of overcoming the confusion of many tongues and the conflicting concepts of just procedure among divers systems of law, so as to reach a common judgment. The tasks of all of us are such as to make heavy demands on patience and good will. Although the need for prompt action has admittedly resulted in imperfect work on the part of the prosecution, four great nations bring you their hurriedly assembled contributions of evidence. What remains undiscovered we can only guess. We could, with witnesses' testimony, prolong the recitals of crime for years - but to what avail? We shall rest the case when we have offered what seems convincing and adequate proof of the crimes charged without unnecessary cumulation of evidence. We doubt very much whether it will be seriously denied that the crimes I have outlined took place. The effort will undoubtedly be to mitigate or escape personal responsibility. States is perhaps in a position to be the most dispassionate, for, having sustained the least injury, it is perhaps the least animated by vengeance. Our American cities have not been bombed by day or night, by humans, and by robots. It is not our temples that have been laid to ruins. Our countrymen have not had their homes destroyed over their heads. The menace of Nazi aggression, except to those in actual service, has seemed less personal and immediate to us than to European peoples. But while the United States would not be first in rancer, it is not second in determination that the forces of law and order be made equal to the task of dealing with such international lawlessness as I have recited here. across the Atlantic, drained its resources, and burdened itself with debt to help defeat Germany, But the real hope and faith that has sustained the American people in these great efforts was that victory for ourselves and our Allies would lay the basis for an ordered international relationship in Europe and would end the centuries of strife on this embattled continent.
in the belief that it might be confined to a purely European affair. In the United States, we have tried to build an economy without armament, a system of government without militarism, and a society where men are not regimented for war. This purpose, we know now, can never be realized if the world periodically is to be embroiled in war. The United States cannot, generation after generation, throw its youth or its resources onto the battlefields of Europe to redress the lack of balance between Germany's strength and that of her enemies, and to keep the battles from our shores. hopes of other nations, can never be fulfilled if those nations are involved in a war every generation so vast and devastating as to crush the generation that fights and burden the generation that follows, Experience has shown that wars are no longer local. All modern wars become world wars eventually. And none of the big nations at least can stay out. If we cannot stay out of wars, our only hope is to prevent wars. to contend that in itself your decision under this Charter can prevent future wars. Judicial action always comes after the event. Wars are started only on the theory and in the confidence that they can be won. Personal punishment, to be suffered only in the event the war is lost, will probably not be sufficient deterent to prevent a war where the warmakers feel the chances of defeat to be negligible. inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law. And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggessors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when we make all men answerable to law.
This trial represents mankind's desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world's peace and to commit aggressions against the rights of their neighbors. by considering the law or your judgment in isolation. This trial is part of the great effort to make the peace more secure. One step in this direction is the United Nations organization, which may take joint political action to prevent war if possible, and joint military action to insure that any nation which starts a war will lose it. This Charter and this trial, implementing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, constitute another step in the same direction - juridical action of a kind to ensure that those who start a war will pay for ir personally. dividuals, it is not the triumph of either group alone that is committed to your judgment. Above all personalities there are anonymous and impersonal forces whose conflict makes up much of human history. It is yours to throw the trength of the law back of either the one or the ether of these forces for at least another generation. What are the real forces that are contending before you? defendants represent, the forces that would advantage and delight in their acquittal, the forces with which they have identified themselves and whose crimes they have committed, are; the darkest and most sinister forces in society - dictatorship and oppression, malevolence and passion, militarism and lawlessness. By their fruits we best know them. Their acts as we shall recount them before you, have bathed the world in blood and set civilization back a century. They have subjected their European neighbors to every outrage and torture, every spoliation and deprivation that insolence, cruelty, and greed could inflict.
They have brought the German people to the lowest pitch of wretchedness, from which they can entertain no hope of early deliverance. They have stirred hatred and melted domestic violence on every continent. There are the things that stand in the dock shoulder to shoulder with these prisoners.
The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization. In all our countries it is still a struggling and imperfect thing. It does not plead that the United States, or any other country, has been blameless of the conditions which made the German people easy victims to the blandishments and intimidations of the Nazi conspirators. have recited, it points to the weariness of flesh, the exhaustion of resources, and the destruction of all that was beautiful or useful in so much of the world, and to greater potentialities for destruction in the days to come. It is not necessary among the ruins of this ancient and beautiful city with untold members of its civilian inhabitants still buried in its rubble, to argue the proposition that to start or wage an aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst crimes. The refuge of the defendants can be only their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocence in law. We challenge that proposition,' to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of International Law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and womwn of good will in all countries may have "leave to live by no man's leave , underneath the law".
THE PRESIDENT: The tribunal will now adjourn until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
(Whereupon at 1700 hours the Tribunal adjourned, to reconvine at 1000 hours the following day.)
THE PRESIDENT: Before the Chief Prosecutor for the United States proceeds to present the evidence on Count 1, the Tribunal wishes me to announce the decision on the application made on behalf of the Defendant Julius Streicher by his counsel that his condition should be examined. It has been examined by three medical experts on behalf of the Tribunal and their report has been submitted to and considered by the Tribunal; and it is as follows:
"1. The Defendant Julius Streicher is same.
"2. The Defendant Julius Streicher is fit to appear before the Tribunal, and to present his defense.
"3. It being the unanimous conclusion of the examiners that Julius Streicher is sane, he is for that reason capable of understanding the nature and policy of his acts during the period of time covered by the indictment." trial against Julius Streicher will, therefore, proceed. of counsel for Bormann, whom the Tribunal have decided to try in his absence in pursuance of Article 12 of the Charter, Counsel for Bormann have made a motion that the trial against him should be postponed, but in view of the fact that the provisions of the Charter and the Tribunal's rules of procedure have been strictly carried out in the notices which have been given, and the fact that counsel for Bormann will have ample time before they are called upon to present defense on his behalf, the motion is denied.
evidence on Count 1.
COLONEL STOREY: May it please the Tribunal: As the first order of business concerning the evidence, it shall be my purpose to outline the method of capturing, assembling, processing and authenticating documents to be presented in evidence by the United States. I shall also describe and illustrate the plan of presenting documents and briefs relating to the United State's Case in Chief. were attached to each Army and subordinate organization specialized military personnel whose duties were to capture and preserve enemy information in the form of documents, records, reports and other files. The Germans kept accurate and voluminous records. They were found in Army headquarters, government buildings and elsewhere. During the later stages of the war, particularly, such documents were found in salt mines, buried in the ground, behind false walls and many other places believed secure by the Germans, For example, the personal correspondence and diaries of Defendant Rosenberg, including his Nazi Party correspondence, were found behind a false wall in an old castle in Eastern Bavaria, The records of the OKL, or Lutfwaffe -of which the Defendant, Goering, was Commander-in-Chief -- equivalent to the Headquarters of the Air Staff of our Army Air Forces of the United States, were found in various places in the Bavarian Alps Most of such Luftwaffe records were assembled and processed by the Army at Berchtesgaden. placed the materials under guard and later assembled them in temporary Document Centers, Many times the records were so voluminous that they were hauled by fleets of Army trucks to document centers. Finally, as the territory seized was made secure, Army zones were established and each Army established a fixed document center to which were transported the assembled documents and records. Later this material was indexed and cataloged, which was a slow process.
Beginning last June, Mr. Justice Jackson requested me to direct the assembling of documentary evidence on the Continent for the U. S. case. Field teams from our office were organized under the direction of Major William H. Coogan, who established U.S. liaison officers at the main Army document centers. Such officers were directed to screen and analyze the mass of captured documents, and select those having evidentiary value for our case. Literally hundreds of tons of enemy documents and records were screened and examined and those selected were forwarded to Nurnberg for processing, I now offer in evidence an affidavit of Major Coogan, dated 19 November 1945, attached hereto, describing the method of procedure, capture, screening, and delivery of such documents to Nurnberg. this matter to the Tribunal, I believe it wise to read at last substantial portions of this affidavit. It is dated the 19th of November, 1945.
19 November 1945 I, MAJOR WILLIAM H. COOGAN, 0-455814, Q.M.C., a commissioned officer of the Army of the United States of America, do hereby certify as follows:
Field Branch of the Documentation Division with the responsibility of collecting, evaluating and assembling documentary evidence in the European Theater for use in the prosecution of the major Axis war criminals before the International Military Tribunal. I was appointed Chief of the Field Branch on 20 July 1945. I am now the Chief of the Documentation Division, Office of United States Chief of Counsel. and am a practicing attorney by profession. Based upon my experience as an attorney and as a United States Army officer, I am familiar with the operation of the United. States Army in connection with seizing and processing captured enemy documents. In my capacity as Chief of the Documentation Division, Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, I am familiar with and have supervised the processing, filing translation and photostating of all documentary evidence for the United States Chief of Counsel. personnel thoroughly conversant with the German language. Their task was to search for and select captured enemy documents in the European Theater which disclosed information relating to the prosecution of the major Axis war criminals. Officers under my command were placed on duty at various document centers and also dispatched on individual missions to obtain original documents, When documents were located, my representatives made a record of the circumstances under which they were found and all information available concerning their authenticity was recorded. Such documents were further identified by Field Branch pre-trial serial numbers, assigned by my representatives who would then periodically dispatch the original documents by courier to the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel. indexed. After this operation, they were delivered to the Screening and Analysis Branch of the Documentation Division of the Office of United States Chief of Counsel, which Branch re-examined such documents in order to finally determine whether or not they should be retained as evidence for the prosecutors.
This final screening was done by German-speaking analysts on the staff of the United States Chief of Counsel.
When the document passed the screeners, it was then transmitted to the Document Room of the Office of United States Chief of Counsel, with a covering sheet prepared by the screeners showing the title or nature of the document, the personalities involved, and its importance. In the Document Room, a trial identification number was given to each document or to each group of documents, in cases where it was desirable for the sake of clarity to file several documents together. in one of five series designated by the letters: "PS", "L", "R", "C", and "EC", indicating the means of acquisition of the documents. Within each series documents were listed numerically. specking analyst who prepared a summary of the document with appropriate references to personalities involved, index headings, information as to the sources of the document as indicated by the Field Branch, and the importance of the document to a particular phase of the case. Next, the original document was returned to the Document Room and then checked out to the photostating department, where photostatic copies were made. Upon return from photostating, it was placed in an envelope in one of several fireproof safes in the rear of the Document Room. One of the photostatic copies of the document was sent to the translators, thereafter leaving the original itself in the safe. A commissioned officer has been, and is, responsible for the security of the documents in the safe. At all times when he is not present the safe is locked and a military guard is on duty outside the only door. If the officers preparing the certified translation, or one of the officers working on the briefs, found it necessary to examine the original document, this was done within the Document Room in the section set aside for that purpose. The only exception to this strict rule has been where it has been occasionally necessary to present the original document to the defendants for examination. In this case, the document was entrusted to a responsible officer of the prosecution staff.
Room, where they will be secured until they are presented by the prosecution to the court during the progress of the trial. United States Chief of Counsel were seized and processed by the British Array. Also, personnel from the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel and the British War Crimes Executive have acted jointly in locating, seizing and processing such documents. was utilized by the British Army and the British War Crimes Executive as that hereinabove set forth with respect to the United States Army and the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel. to the best of my knowledge and belief, that the documents captured in the British Zone of Operations and Occupation, which will be offered in evidence by the United States Chief of Counsel, have been authenticated, translated, and processed in substantially the same manner as hereinabove set forth with respect to the operations of the United States Chief of Counsel. United States Chief of Counsel, including those documents from British Army sources, are in the same condition as captured by the. United States and British Armies; that they have been translated by competent and qualified translators; that all photostatic copies are true and correct copies of the originals and that they have been correctly filed, numbered and processed as above outlined."
" WILLIAM H. COOGAN 0-455814" describing the method of capture, screening, and delivery of such documents to Nurnberg.
reached our office, they were again examined, re-screened, and translated by expert U. S. Army personnel, as outlined by major Coogan . in the Court House. At least several hundred will be offered in evidence. They have been photographed, translated into English, filed, indexed, and processed. The same general procedure was followed by the British Army, and there has been complete integration and cooperation of prepared written briefs on each phase of our case which cite the documents by appropriate numbers. Legal propositions of the United States will also be presented in such briefs. The briefs and documents will cover each allegation of the Indictment which is U. S. responsibility . I hold in my hand one of the trials briefs entitled "Reshaping of Education, Training of Youth," which will be offered later on this day. Accompany each brief is a Document Book containing true copies in English of all documents referred to in the brief. I hold in my hand the German have been, or will be, furnished to Defense Council at the time such documents are offered in evidence. Upon conclusion of the present ation of each phase or section of our case by council, the entire book of documents will be offered in evidence such as this book. At the same time, Lt Barrett who will sit right here all during the trial and original documents that may be offered in evidence in this form. It will have the seal of the Tribunal, will be exhibit U.S.A. 2836-PS, and Tribunal, In the same manner, the document book will be passed by by Lieutenant Barrett to the clerk of the Court, and these trial briefs for the assistance of the Tribunal will be made available to the Court and to Defense Council.
Likewise , copies of documents actually introHonors please, it is hoped that by this procedure the usual laborious and tedious method on introducing documentary evidence may be expedited. Defense Council if there is ant objection to the procedure outlined. If not, the United States will proceed with the presentation of the docu
THE PRESIDENT: Will you wait one moment?
COLONEL STOREY: Yes, Sir,
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has no objection to the course that you propose.
COLONEL STOREY: If I may, if your Honors please, may I now announce what will be presented immediately following by the United States?
THE PRESIDENT: I think perhaps that I ought to say for Counsel for the defendants that their silence will be taken as their assent to the course proposed. In the absence of any objection by them to the course proposed by Colonel Storey on behalf of the Chief Prosecutor for the United States, the Tribunal will take it that they agree that the course
COLONEL STOREY: If your honors please, the next presentation will 1939. We will open by presentation of charts of the Nazi Party and Reich Government with exhibits and explanation by Hr Albrecht. Then will be followed a presentation of the trials briefs and documents on the other phases of the common plan or conspiracy up to 1939.
MR. ALBRECHT: May it please the Tribunal, the prosecution will now allude breifly to certain facts, which may wall be considered to be within judicial purview, the consideration of which the prosecution has found useful in understanding and evaluation the evidence that will be ations of the Indictment.
be made to the National Socialist German Labor Party, the NSDAP, which is not itself one of the defendant organizations in this proceeding, but which is represented among the defendant organizations by its most important formations, viz.
the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, which you will hear referred to as Das Korps der Politischen Leiter der NSDAP, the SS (Die Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP), and the SA (Die Sturmabteilungen der NSDAP). point, as its first exhibit, a chart showing the structure and organization in March 1945 This chart has been prepared by the prosecution on the basis of information contained in important and well-known official publications of the National Socialist Party with which the defendants must be presumed to have been well acquainted. We refer particularly to the Organization Book of the Party (Das Organisationsbuch der NSDAP), and to the National Socialist Year Book (Nationalsozialistisches Jahrbuch), of both of which, be it noted, the late defendant, Robert Ley, was the chief editor or publisher. Both books appeared in the course of time and were printed in many editions and appeared in hundreds of thousands of copies, throughout the period when the National Socialist Party was in control of the German Reich and of the German people. The chart, furthermore, which we are offering has been certified on its face as correct by a high official of the Nazi Party, viz. Franz Xaver Schwarz, its Treasurer (Reichsschatzmeister der NSDAP),and official in charge of Party administration. The first affidavit is being submitted with the chart, and I now wish to offer this chart in evidence. mission of the Tribunal, are making it available to all concerned. tion of the National Socialist German Labor Party, which we believe will be found useful in connection with the prosecution's case, I would just like to call the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that the larger chart which now appears is a simplification of the duplicated chart which your Honors have been furnished, for if it had been reproduced in the same detail, I am afraid many of the boxes would not have appeared intelligible from this point.
which we will have to become very familiar, the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, the Reichsleiter, which has been named as a defendant organization and which comprises the sum of the officials and leaders of the Nazi Party. If your Honors will be good enough to follow me down the center line of the chart, we come to the main horizontal line of division where the word "Reichsleiter" appears. That is the first category of the Leadership Corps, I should say, the main category, perhaps, of the Leadership Corps.
The Fuehrer, of course, stands above it. As we follow the vertical line of division to the lower part of the chart, we reach five additional boxes, which may be referred to collectively as the Hoheitstraeger, the bearers of the sovereignty of the Party, and those are the Gauleiter, the Kreisleiter, the Ortsgruppenleiter, the Zellenleiter, and the Blockleiter. stands at the top of the Party hierarchy. His successor designate was first, the defendant Hess, and second, the defendant Goering. collectively the Party Directorate (Reichsleitung). Through them, coordination of Party and State machinery was achieved. A number of these Reichsleiters, each of whom at some time was in charge of at least one office within the Party Directorate, were also the heads of other Party formations and of affiliated or supervised organizations of the Party and also of agencies of the State, or even held ministerial positions. The Reichsleitung may be said to represent the horizontal organization of the Party according to functions, within which all threads controlling the varied life of the German people meet. Each office within the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP executed definite tasks assigned to it by the Fuehrer, or by the leader of the Party Chancellery (Chef der Parteikanzlei), who on the chart before you appears directly under the Fuehrer. your Honors please, was Martin Bormann, the defendant in this proceeding, and before him and until his flight to England in 1941, the defendant Hess.