Chapter XXXIX: Part III

This then is the case against these Defendants, as amongst the rulers of Germany, under Count 2 of this Indictment. It may be said that many of the documents which have been referred to were in Hitler’s name, that the orders were Hitler’s orders, that these men were mere instruments of Hitler’s will. But they were the instruments without which Hitler’s will could not be carried out. And they were more than that. These men were no mere willing tools, although they would be guilty enough if that had been their role. They are the men whose support had built Hitler up into the position of power he occupied: they are the men whose initiative and planning perhaps conceived and certainly made possible the acts of aggression made in Hitler’s name, and they are the men who enabled Hitler to build up the Army, Navy and Air Force by which these treacherous attacks were carried out, and to lead his fanatical followers into peaceful countries to murder, to loot and to destroy. They are the men whose cooperation and support made the Nazi Government of Germany possible. The Government of a totalitarian country may be carried on without the assistance of representatives of the people. But it cannot be carried on without any assistance at all. It is no use having a leader unless there are also people willing and ready to serve their personal greed and ambition by helping and following him. The dictator who is set up in control of the destinies of his country does not depend upon himself alone either in acquiring power or in maintaining it. He depends upon the support and backing which lesser men, themselves lusting to share in dictatorial power, anxious to bask in the adulation of their leader, are prepared to give. In the Criminal Courts, where men are put upon their trial for breaches of the municipal laws, it not infrequently happens that of a gang indicted together in the Dock, one has the master mind, the leading personality. But it is no excuse for the common thief to say “I stole because I was told to steal”; for the murderer to plead “I killed because I was asked to kill”. These men are in no different position for all that it was nations they sought to rob, whole peoples they tried to kill. “The warrant of no man excuseth the doing of an illegal act.” Political loyalty, military obedience are excellent things. But they neither require nor do they justify the commission of patently wicked acts. There comes a point where a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his conscience. Even the common soldier, serving in the ranks of his Army is not called upon to obey illegal orders. But these men were no common soldiers: they were the men whose skill and cunning, whose labour and activity made it possible for the German Reich to tear up existing treaties, to enter into new ones and to flout them, to reduce international negotiations and diplomacy to a hollow mockery, to destroy all respect for and effect in International Law and finally to march against the peoples of the world to secure that domination in which as arrogant members of their self-styled master race they professed their belief. If the crimes were in one sense the crimes of Nazi Germany, they also are guilty as the individuals who aided, abetted, counselled, procured and made possible the commission of what was done.

The sum total of the crime these men have committed—so awful in its comprehension—has many aspects. Their lust and sadism, their deliberate slaughter and the degradation of so many millions of their fellow creatures that the imagination reels incomprehensively, are but one side only of this matter. Now that an end has been put to this nightmare and we come to consider how the future is to be lived, perhaps their guilt as murderers and robbers is of less importance and of less effect to future generations of mankind than their crime of fraud—the fraud by which they placed themselves in a position to do their murder and their robbery. This is the other aspect of their guilt. The story of their “diplomacy”, founded upon cunning, hypocrisy and bad faith, is a story less gruesome but no less evil and deliberate. And should it be taken as a precedent of behaviour in the conduct of international relations, its consequences to mankind will no less certainly lead to the end of civilized society. Without trust and confidence between Nations, without the faith that what is said is meant and what is undertaken will be observed, all hope of peace and of security is dead. The Governments of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, of the USA, of the USSR, and of France, backed by and on behalf of every other peace-loving Nation of the world, have therefore joined to bring the inventors and perpetrators of this Nazi conception of international relationship before the bar of this Tribunal.

They do so that these Defendants may be punished for their crimes. They do so also that their conduct may be exposed in its naked wickedness. And they do so in the hope that the conscience and good sense of all the world will see the consequences of such conduct and the end to which inevitably it must always lead. Let us once again restore sanity and with it also the sanctity of our obligations towards each other.

6. AGGRESSION AS A BASIC NAZI IDEA: MEIN KAMPF

Hitler’s _Mein Kampf_, which became the Nazi statement of faith, gave to the conspirators adequate foreknowledge of the unlawful aims of the Nazi leadership. It was not only Hitler’s political testament; by adoption it became theirs.

_Mein Kampf_ may be described as the blueprint of the Nazi aggression. Its whole tenor and content demonstrate that the Nazi pursuit of aggressive designs was no mere accident arising out of an immediate political situation in Europe and the world. _Mein Kampf_ establishes unequivocally that the use of aggressive war to serve German aims in foreign policy was part of the very creed of the Nazi party.

A great German philosopher once said that ideas have hands and feet. It became the deliberate aim of the conspirators to see to it that the idea, doctrines, and policies of _Mein Kampf_ should become the active faith and guide for action of the German nation, and particularly of its malleable youth. From 1933 to 1939 an extensive indoctrination in the ideas of _Mein Kampf_ was pursued in the schools and universities of Germany, as well as in the Hitler Youth, under the direction of Baldur von Schirach, and in the SA and SS, and amongst the German population as a whole, by the agency of Rosenberg.

A copy of _Mein Kampf_ was officially presented by the Nazis to all newly married couples in Germany. [A copy of _Mein Kampf_ (_D-660_) submitted by the prosecution to the tribunal contains the following dedication on the fly-leaf:

“To the newly married couple, Friedrich Rosebrock and Else
Geborene Zum Beck, with best wishes for a happy and blessed
marriage. Presented by the Communal Administration on the
occasion of their marriage on the 14th of November, 1940. For
the Mayor, the Registrar.”

This copy of _Mein Kampf_, which was the 1945 edition, contains the information that the number of copies published to date amount to 6,250,000.]

As a result of the efforts of the conspirators, this book, blasphemously called “The Bible of the German people,” poisoned a generation and distorted the outlook of a whole people. For as the SS General von dem Bach-Zelewski testified before the Tribunal, [on 7 January 1946] if it is preached for years, as long as ten years, that the Slav peoples are inferior races and that the Jews are subhuman, then it must logically follow that the killing of millions of these human beings is accepted as a natural phenomenon. From _Mein Kampf_ the way leads directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz and the gas chambers of Maidanek.

What the commandments of _Mein Kampf_ were may be indicated by quotations from the book which fall into two main categories. The first category is that of general expression of Hitler’s belief in the necessity of force as the means of solving international problems. The second category is that of Hitler’s more explicit declarations on the policy which Germany should pursue.

Most of the quotations in the second category come from the last three chapters—13, 14, and 15—of Part II of _Mein Kampf_, in which Hitler’s views on foreign policy were expounded. The significance of this may be grasped from the fact that Part II of _Mein Kampf_ was first published in 1927, less than two years after the Locarno Pact and within a few months of Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. The date of the publication of these passages, therefore, brands them as a repudiation of the policy of international cooperation embarked upon by Stresseman, and as a deliberate defiance of the attempt to establish, through the League of Nations, the rule of law in international affairs.

The following are quotations showing the general view held by Hitler and accepted and propagated by the conspirators concerning war and aggression generally. On page 556 of _Mein Kampf_, Hitler wrote:

“The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven
on our forefathers. But they had to conquer it by risking their
lives. So also in the future our people will not obtain
territory, and therewith the means of existence, as a favour
from any other people, but will have to win it by the power of a
triumphant sword.”

On page 145, Hitler revealed his own personal attitude toward war. Of the years of peace before 1914 he wrote:

“Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that
I had arrived too late on this terrestrial globe, and I felt
chagrined at the idea that my life would have to run its course
along peaceful and orderly lines. As a boy I was anything but a
pacifist and all attempts to make me so turned out futile.”

On page 162 Hitler wrote of war in these words:

“In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke stated
that in time of war the essential thing is to get a decision as
quickly as possible and that the most ruthless methods of
fighting are at the same time the most humane. When people
attempt to answer this reasoning by highfalutin talk about
aesthetics, etc., only one answer can be given. It is that the
vital questions involved in the struggle of a nation for its
existence must not be subordinated to any aesthetic
considerations.”

Hitler’s assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for survival is linked up in Chapter II of Book I of _Mein Kampf_, with the doctrine of Aryan superiority over other races and the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends. The whole of Chapter II of _Mein Kampf_ is dedicated to this “master race” theory and, indeed, many of the later speeches of Hitler were mainly repetitive of Chapter II.

On page 256, the following sentiments appear:

“Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the
inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have
been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led
them to a later type of culture; just as, without the help of
certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they
would never have come to the invention of mechanical power,
which has subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts.
For the establishment of superior types of civilization the
members of inferior races formed one of the most essential
prerequisites.”

In a later passage in _Mein Kampf_, at page 344, Hitler applies these general ideas to Germany:

“If in its historical development the German people had
possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other people have
so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be
mistress of the globe today. World history would have taken
another course, and in this case no man can tell if what many
blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining and
crying may not have been reached in this way; namely, a peace
which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches and
tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that
would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed
with the power to master the world and administer it in the
service of a higher civilization.”

These passages emphasize clearly Hitler’s love of war and scorn of those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of this book, which appears again and again, is, firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan-German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of international problems represent a disastrous weakness in a nation that adopts them. Implicit in the whole of the argument is a fundamental and arrogant denial of the possibility of any rule of law in international affairs.

It is in the light of these general doctrines of _Mein Kampf_ that the more definite passages should be considered, in which Hitler deals with specific problems of German foreign policy. The very first page of the book contains a remarkable forecast of Nazi policy:

“German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland.
And not, indeed on any grounds of economic calculation
whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic
indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the
economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the
same blood should be in the same Reich. The German people will
have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall
have brought all their children together in one State. When the
territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself
unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral
right arise, from the need of the people, to acquire foreign
territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war
will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.”

Hitler, at page 553, declares that the mere restoration of Germany’s frontiers as they were in 1914 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes:

“In regard to this point I should like to make the following
statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers should be restored
is a glaring political absurdity that is fraught with such
consequences as to make the claim itself appear criminal. The
confines of the Reich as they existed in 1914 were thoroughly
illogical; because they were not really complete, in the sense
of including all the members of the German nation. Nor were they
reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of military
defense. They were not the consequence of a political plan which
had been well considered and carried out, but they were
temporary frontiers established in virtue of a political
struggle that had not been brought to a finish; and indeed, they
were partly the chance result of circumstances.”

In further elaboration of Nazi policy, Hitler does not merely denounce the Treaty of Versailles; he desires to see a Germany which is a world power with territory sufficient for a future German people of a magnitude which he does not define. On page 554 he declares:

“For the future of the German nation the 1914 frontiers are of
no significance * * *”

* * * * * *

“We National Socialists must stick firmly to the aim that we
have set for our foreign policy, namely, that the German people
must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it
to exist on this earth. And only for such action as is
undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of
God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to
be shed once again. Before God, because we are sent into this
world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread, as
creatures to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win
and hold their position as lord of the earth only through their
own intelligence and courage. “And this justification must be
established also before our German posterity, on the grounds
that for each one who has shed his blood the life of a thousand
others will be guaranteed to posterity. The territory on which
one day our German peasants will be able to bring forth and
nourish their sturdy sons will justify the blood of the sons of
the peasants that has to be shed today. And the statesmen who
will have decreed this sacrifice may be persecuted by their
contemporaries, but posterity will absolve them from all guilt
for having demanded this offering from their people.”

At page 557 Hitler writes:

“Germany will either become a world power or will not continue
to exist at all. But in order to become a world power, it needs
that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary
importance today and assures the existence of its citizens.”

* * * * * *

“We must take our stand on the principles already mentioned in
regard to foreign policy, namely, the necessity of bringing our
territorial area into just proportion with the number of our
population. From the past we can learn only one lesson, and that
is that the aim which is to be pursued in our political conduct
must be twofold, namely: (1) the acquisition of territory as the
objective of our foreign policy and (2) the establishment of a
new and uniform foundation as the objective of our political
activities at home, in accordance with our doctrine of
nationhood.”

Now, these passages from _Mein Kampf_ raise the question, where did Hitler expect to find the increased territory beyond the 1914 boundaries of Germany? To this Hitler’s answer is sufficiently explicit. Reviewing the history of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, he wrote, on page 132:

“Therefore, the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a
sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new
territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose
so long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a
large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible
to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore, any
attempt at such colonial expansion would have meant an enormous
military struggle. Consequently it would have been more
practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory
in Europe, rather than to wage war for the acquisition of
possessions abroad.

“Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation’s undivided
energies should be devoted to it. A policy of that kind, which
requires for its fulfillment every ounce of available energy on
the part of everybody concerned, cannot be carried into effect
by half measures or in a hesitant manner. The political
leadership of the German Empire should then have been directed
exclusively to this goal. No political step should have been
taken in response to other considerations than this task and the
means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive to the
fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and
the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and
collected determination. The whole system of alliances should
have been envisaged and valued from that standpoint.

“If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have
been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German
Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as
was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to
acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword
and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.”

To this program of expansion in the East Hitler returns again, at the end of _Mein Kampf_. After discussing the insufficiency of Germany’s pre-war frontiers, he again points the path to the East and declares that the _Drang nach Osten_, the drive to the East, must be resumed:

“Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line
through the line of conduct followed by pre-war Germany in
foreign policy. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march
towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards
the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and
trade policy of pre-war times and pass over to the territorial
policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in
Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border
states subject to her.”

Hitler was shrewd enough to see that his aggressive designs in the East might be endangered by a defensive alliance between Russia, France, and perhaps England. His foreign policy, as outlined in _Mein Kampf_, was to detach England and Italy from France and Russia and to change the attitude of Germany towards France from the defensive to the offensive.

On page 570 of _Mein Kampf_ he wrote:

“As long as the eternal conflict between France and Germany is
waged only in the form of a German defense against the French
attack, that conflict can never be decided, and from century to
century Germany will lose one position after another. If we
study the changes that have taken place, from the twelfth
century up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German
language is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to
result from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct
which has hitherto been so detrimental for us.

“Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account
will they cease from allowing the national will-to-live to wear
itself out in merely passive defense; but they will rally
together for a last decisive contest with France. And in this
contest the essential objective of the German nation will be
fought for. Only then will it be possible to put an end to the
eternal Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved so
sterile.

“Of course it is here presumed that Germany sees in the
suppression of France nothing more than a means which will make
it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter.
Today there are eighty million Germans in Europe. And our
foreign policy will be recognized as rightly conducted only
when, after barely a hundred years, there will be 250 million
Germans living on this Continent, not packed together as the
coolies in the factories of another Continent but as tillers of
the soil and workers whose labour will be a mutual assurance for
their existence.”

_Mein Kampf_, taken in conjunction with the facts of Nazi Germany’s subsequent behavior towards other countries, shows that from the very first moment that they attained power, and indeed long before that time, Hitler and his confederates were engaged in planning and fomenting aggressive war.

Events have proved that _Mein Kampf_ was no mere literary exercise to be treated with easy indifference, as unfortunately it was treated for so long. It was the expression of a fanatical faith in force and fraud as the means to Nazi dominance in Europe, if not in the whole world. In accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of _Mein Kampf_, the Nazi conspirators deliberately set about to push civilization over the precipice of war.

7. TREATY VIOLATIONS

It might be thought, from the melancholy story of broken treaties and violated assurances, that Hitler and the Nazi Government did not even profess that it is necessary or desirable to keep the pledged word. Outwardly, however, the professions were very different. With regard to treaties, on the 18 October 1933, Hitler said, “Whatever we have signed we will fulfill to the best of our ability.”

The reservation is significant—“Whatever we have signed.”

But, on 21 May 1935, Hitler said, “The German Government will scrupulously maintain every treaty voluntarily signed, even though it was concluded before their accession to power and office.”

On assurances Hitler was even more emphatic. In the same speech, the Reichstag Speech of 21 May 1935, Hitler accepted assurances as being of equal obligation, and the world at that time could not know that that meant of no obligation at all. What he actually said was,

“And when I now hear from the lips of a British statesman that
such assurances are nothing and that the only proof of sincerity
is the signature appended to collective pacts, I must ask Mr.
Eden to be good enough to remember that it is a question of
assurance in any case. It is sometimes much easier to sign
treaties with the mental reservations that one will consider
one’s attitude at the decisive hour than to declare before an
entire nation and with full opportunity one’s adherence to a
policy which serves the course of peace because it rejects
anything which leads to war.”

And then he proceeded with the illustration of his assurance to France.

In this connection the position of a treaty in German law should not be forgotten. The appearance of a treaty in the _Reichsgesetzblatt_ makes it part of the statute law of Germany, so that a breach thereof is also a violation of German domestic law.

(This section deals with fifteen only of the treaties which Hitler and the Nazis broke. The remainder of the 69 treaties which the German Reich violated between 1933 and 1941 are dealt with in other sections of this chapter.)

A. _Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed at the Hague on the 29th of July, 1899._

The Hague Conventions are of course only the first gropings towards the rejection of the inevitability of war. They do not render the making of aggressive war a crime, but their milder terms were as readily broken as more severe agreements.

On 29 July, 1899, Germany, Greece, Serbia, and 25 other nations signed a convention (_TC-1_). Germany ratified the convention on 4 September 1900, Serbia on the 11 May 1901, Greece on the 4 April 1901.

By Article 12 of the treaty between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers and the Serb-Croat-Slovene State, signed at the St. Germaine-en-Laye on 10 September 1919, the new Kingdom succeeded to all the old Serbian treaties, and later changed its name to Yugoslavia.

The first two articles of this Hague Convention read:

“Article 1: With a view to obviating as far as possible recourse
to force in the relations between states, the signatory powers
agree to use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement
of International differences.

“Article 2: In case of serious disagreement or conflict, before
an appeal to arms the signatory powers agree to have recourse,
as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation
of one or more friendly powers.” (_TC-1_)

B. _Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed at the Hague on 18 October 1907._

This Convention (_TC-2_) was signed at the Hague by 44 nations, and it is in effect as to 31 nations, 28 signatories, and three adherents. For present purposes it is in force as to the United States, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Russia.

By the provisions of Article 91 it replaces the 1899 Convention as between the contracting powers. As Greece and Yugoslavia are parties to the 1899 convention and not to the 1907, the 1899 Convention is in effect with regard to them, and that explains the division of countries in Appendix C.

The first article of this treaty reads:

“1: With a view to obviating as far as possible recourse to
force in the relations between States, the contracting powers
agree to use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement
of international differences.” (_TC-2_)

C. _Convention Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, signed at the Hague on 18 October 1907._

This Convention (_TC-3_) applies to Germany, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Russia. It relates to a procedural step in notifying one’s prospective opponent before opening hostilities against him. It appears, to have had its immediate origin in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, when Japan attacked Russia without any previous warning. It will be noted that it does not fix any particular lapse of time between the giving of notice and the commencement of hostilities, but it does seek to maintain an absolutely minimum standard of International decency before the outbreak of war.

The first article of this treaty reads:

“The contracting powers recognize that hostilities between them
must not commence without a previous and explicit warning in the
form of either a declaration of war, giving reasons, or an
ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war.” (_TC-3_)

D. _Convention 5, Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land, signed at the Hague on 18 October 1907._

Germany was an original signatory to this Convention (_TC-4_), and the treaty is in force as a result of ratification or adherence between Germany and Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, the USSR, and the United States.

Article 1 reads:

“The territory of neutral powers is inviolable.” (_TC-4_)

A point arises on this Convention. Under Article 20, the provisions of the present Convention do not apply except between the contracting powers, and then only if all the belligerents are parties to the Convention.

As Great Britain and France entered the war within two days of the outbreak of the war between Germany and Poland, and one of these powers had not ratified the Convention, it is arguable that its provisions did not apply to the Second World War.

Since there are many more important treaties to be considered, the charge will not be pressed that this treaty was likewise breached. The terms of Article 1 are cited merely as showing the state of International opinion at the time, and as an element in the aggressive character of the war.

E. _Treaty of Peace between the Allies and the Associated Powers of Germany, signed at Versailles on 28 June 1919._