Chapter X: Part 10

The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was characterized by particular inhumanity. The death of so many of them was not due merely to the action of individual guards, or to the exigencies of life in the camps. It was the result of systematic plans to murder. More than a month before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the OKW were making special plans for dealing with political representatives serving with the Soviet Armed Forces who might be captured. One proposal was that “political Commissars _of the Army_ are not recognized as _Prisoners of War_, and are to be _liquidated_ at the latest in the transient prisoner of war camps.” The Defendant Keitel gave evidence that instructions incorporating this proposal were issued to the German Army.

On 8 September 1941 regulations for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war in all prisoner of war camps were issued, signed by General Reinecke, the head of the prisoner of war department of the High Command. Those orders stated:

“The Bolshevist soldier has therefore lost all claim to
treatment as an honorable opponent, in accordance with the
Geneva Convention . . . . The order for ruthless and energetic
action must be given at the slightest indication of
insubordination, especially in the case of Bolshevist fanatics.
Insubordination, active or passive resistance, must be broken
immediately by force of arms (bayonets, butts, and firearms)
. . . . Anyone carrying out the order who does not use his
weapons, or does so with insufficient energy, is punishable
. . . . Prisoners of war attempting escape are to be fired on
without previous challenge. No warning shot must ever be fired
. . . . The use of arms against prisoners of war is as a rule
legal.”

The Soviet prisoners of war were left without suitable clothing; the wounded without medical care; they were starved, and in many cases left to die.

On 17 July 1941, the Gestapo issued an order providing for the killing of all Soviet prisoners of war who were or might be dangerous to National Socialism. The order recited:

“The mission of the Commanders of the SIPO and SD stationed in
Stalags is the political investigation of all camp inmates, the
elimination and further ‘treatment’ (a) of all political,
criminal, or in some other way unbearable elements among them,
(b) of those persons who could be used for the reconstruction of
the occupied territories . . . . Further, the commanders must
make efforts from the beginning to seek out among the prisoners
elements which appear reliable, regardless of whether there are
Communists concerned or not, in order to use them for
intelligence purposes inside of the camp, and if advisable,
later in the occupied territories also. By use of such
informers, and by use of all other existing possibilities, the
discovery of all elements to be eliminated among the prisoners
must proceed step by step at once . . . .”

“Above all, the following must be discovered: all important
functionaries of State and Party, especially professional
revolutionaries . . . all People’s Commissars in the Red Army,
leading personalities of the State . . . leading personalities
of the business world, members of the Soviet Russian
Intelligence, all Jews, all persons who are found to be
agitators or fanatical Communists. Executions are not to be held
in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp . . . . The
prisoners are to be taken for special treatment if possible into
the former Soviet Russian territory.”

The affidavit of Warlimont, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, and the testimony of Ohlendorf, former Chief of Amt III of the RSHA, and of Lahousen, the head of one of the sections of the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht’s Intelligence Service, all indicate the thoroughness with which this order was carried out.

The affidavit of Kurt Lindown, a former Gestapo official,
states: “. . . . There existed in the prisoner of war camps on
the Eastern Front small screening teams (Einsatz commandos),
headed by lower ranking members of the Secret Police (Gestapo).
These teams were assigned to the camp commanders and had the job
of segregating the prisoners of war who were candidates for
execution according to the orders that had been given, and to
report them to the office of the Secret Police.”

On 23 October 1941 the camp commander of the Gross Rosen concentration camp reported to Müller, Chief of the Gestapo, a list of the Soviet prisoners of war who had been executed there on the previous day.

An account of the general conditions and treatment of Soviet prisoners of war during the first eight months after the German attack upon Russia was given in a letter which the Defendant Rosenberg sent to the Defendant Keitel on 28 February 1942:

“The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is on the
contrary a tragedy of the greatest extent . . . . A large part
of them has starved, or died because of the hazards of the
weather. Thousands also died from spotted fever.

“The camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to
put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather
let them starve to death.

“In many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on
the march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot
before the eyes of the horrified population, and the corpses
were left.

“In numerous camps, no shelter for the prisoners of war was
provided at all. They lay under the open sky during rain or
snow. Even tools were not made available to dig holes or caves.”

In some cases Soviet prisoners of war were branded with a special permanent mark. There was put in evidence the OKW order dated 20 July 1942 which laid down that:

“The brand is to take the shape of an acute angle of about 45
degrees, with the long side to be 1 cm. in length, pointing
upwards and burnt on the left buttock . . . . This brand is made
with the aid of a lancet available in any military unit. The
coloring used is Chinese ink.”

The carrying out of this order was the responsibility of the military authorities, though it was widely circulated by the Chief of the SIPO and the SD to German police officials for information.

Soviet prisoners of war were also made the subject of medical experiments of the most cruel and inhuman kind. In July 1943 experimental work was begun in preparation for a campaign of bacteriological warfare; Soviet prisoners of war were used in these medical experiments, which more often than not proved fatal. In connection with this campaign for bacteriological warfare, preparations were also made for the spreading of bacterial emulsions from planes, with the object of producing widespread failures of crops and consequent starvation. These measures were never applied, possibly because of the rapid deterioration of Germany’s military position.

The argument in defense of the charge with regard to the murder and ill-treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, that the U.S.S.R. was not a party to the Geneva Convention, is quite without foundation. On 15 September 1941 Admiral Canaris protested against the regulations for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, signed by General Reinecke on 8 September 1941. He then stated:

“The Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war is
not binding in the relationship between Germany and the U.S.S.R.
Therefore only the principles of general international law on
the treatment of prisoners of war apply. Since the 18th century
these have gradually been established along the lines that war
captivity is neither revenge nor punishment, but solely
protective custody, the only purpose of which is to prevent the
prisoners of war from further participation in the war. This
principle was developed in accordance with the view held by all
armies that it is contrary to military tradition to kill or
injure helpless people . . . . The decrees for the treatment of
Soviet prisoners of war enclosed are based on a fundamentally
different view-point.”

This protest, which correctly stated the legal position, was ignored. The Defendant Keitel made a note on this memorandum:

“The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous
warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I
approve and back the measures.”

_Murder and Ill-treatment of Civilian Population_

Article 6 (b) of the Charter provides that “ill-treatment . . . of civilian population of or in occupied territory . . . killing of hostages . . . wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages” shall be a war crime. In the main, these provisions are merely declaratory of the existing laws of war as expressed by the Hague Convention, Article 46, which stated: “Family honor and rights, the lives of persons and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice must be respected.”

The territories occupied by Germany were administered in violation of the laws of war. The evidence is quite overwhelming of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terror. On 7 December 1941 Hitler issued the directive since known as the “Nacht und Nebel Erlass” (Night and Fog Decree), under which persons who committed offenses against the Reich or the German forces in occupied territories, except where the death sentence was certain, were to be taken secretly to Germany and handed over to the SIPO and SD for trial or punishment in Germany. This decree was signed by the Defendant Keitel. After these civilians arrived in Germany, no word of them was permitted to reach the country from which they came, or their relatives; even in cases when they died awaiting trial the families were not informed, the purpose being to create anxiety in the minds of the family of the arrested person. Hitler’s purpose in issuing this decree was stated by the Defendant Keitel in a covering letter, dated 12 December 1941, to be as follows:

“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either
by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of
the criminal and the population do not know the fate of the
criminal. This aim is achieved when the criminal is transferred
to Germany.”

Even persons who were only suspected of opposing any of the policies of the German occupation authorities were arrested, and on arrest were interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most shameful manner. On 12 June 1942 the Chief of the SIPO and SD published, through Müller, the Gestapo Chief, an order authorizing the use of “third degree” methods of interrogation, where preliminary investigation had indicated that the person could give information on important matters, such as subversive activities, though not for the purpose of extorting confessions of the prisoner’s own crimes. This order provided:

“. . . . Third degree may, under this supposition, only be
employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements,
parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet Russian
loafers or tramps; in all other cases my permission must first
be obtained . . . . Third degree can, according to
circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet
(bread and water), hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep,
exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more than twenty
strokes a doctor must be consulted).”

The brutal suppression of all opposition to the German occupation was not confined to severe measures against suspected members of resistance movements themselves, but was also extended to their families. On 19 July 1944 the Commander of the SIPO and SD in the district of Radom, in Poland, published an order, transmitted through the Higher SS and Police Leaders, to the effect that in all cases of assassination or attempted assassination of Germans, or where saboteurs had destroyed vital installations, not only the guilty person, but also all his or her male relatives should be shot, and female relatives over 16 years of age put into a concentration camp.

In the summer of 1944 the Einsatz Commando of the SIPO and SD at Luxembourg caused persons to be confined at Sachsenhausen concentration camp because they were relatives of deserters, and were therefore “expected to endanger the interest of the German Reich if allowed to go free.”

The practice of keeping hostages to prevent and to punish any form of civil disorder was resorted to by the Germans; an order issued by the Defendant Keitel on 16 September 1941 spoke in terms of fifty or a hundred lives from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union for one German life taken. The order stated that “it should be remembered that a human life in unsettled countries frequently counts for nothing, and a deterrent effect can be obtained only by unusual severity.” The exact number of persons killed as a result of this policy is not known, but large numbers were killed in France and the other occupied territories in the West, while in the East the slaughter was on an even more extensive scale. In addition to the killing of hostages, entire towns were destroyed in some cases; such massacres as those of Oradour-sur-Glane in France and Lidice in Czechoslovakia, both of which were described to the Tribunal in detail, are examples of the organized use of terror by the occupying forces to beat down and destroy all opposition to their rule.

One of the most notorious means of terrorizing the people in occupied territories was the use of concentration camps. They were first established in Germany at the moment of the seizure of power by the Nazi Government. Their original purpose was to imprison without trial all those persons who were opposed to the Government, or who were in any way obnoxious to German authority. With the aid of a secret police force, this practice was widely extended, and in course of time concentration camps became places of organized and systematic murder, where millions of people were destroyed.

In the administration of the occupied territories the concentration camps were used to destroy all opposition groups. The persons arrested by the Gestapo were as a rule sent to concentration camps. They were conveyed to the camps in many cases without any care whatever being taken for them, and great numbers died on the way. Those who arrived at the camp were subject to systematic cruelty. They were given hard physical labor, inadequate food, clothes and shelter, and were subject at all times to the rigors of a soulless regime, and the private whims of individual guards. In the report of the War Crimes Branch of the Judge Advocate’s Section of the Third U.S. Army, under date 21 June 1945, the conditions at the Flossenburg concentration camp were investigated, and one passage may be quoted:

“Flossenburg concentration camp can best be described as a
factory dealing in death. Although this camp had in view the
primary object of putting to work the mass slave labor, another
of its primary objects was the elimination of human lives by the
methods employed in handling the prisoners. Hunger and
starvation rations, sadism, inadequate clothing, medical
neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, forced suicides,
shooting, etc. all played a major role in obtaining their
object. Prisoners were murdered at random; spite killings
against Jews were common, injections of poison and shooting in
the neck were everyday occurrences; epidemics of typhus and
spotted fever were permitted to run rampant as a means of
eliminating prisoners; life in this camp meant nothing. Killing
became a common thing, so common that a quick death was welcomed
by the unfortunate ones.”

A certain number of the concentration camps were equipped with gas chambers for the wholesale destruction of the inmates, and with furnaces for the burning of the bodies. Some of them were in fact used for the extermination of Jews as part of the “final solution” of the Jewish problem. Most of the non-Jewish inmates were used for labor, although the conditions under which they worked made labor and death almost synonymous terms. Those inmates who became ill and were unable to work were either destroyed in the gas chambers or sent to special infirmaries, where they were given entirely inadequate medical treatment, worse food if possible than the working inmates, and left to die.

The murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations reached its height in the treatment of the citizens of the Soviet Union and Poland. Some four weeks before the invasion of Russia began, special task forces of the SIPO and SD, called Einsatz Groups, were formed on the orders of Himmler for the purpose of following the German Armies into Russia, combating partisans and members of Resistance Groups, and exterminating the Jews and communist leaders and other sections of the population. In the beginning, four such Einsatz Groups were formed, one operating in the Baltic States, one towards Moscow, one towards Kiev, and one operating in the south of Russia. Ohlendorf, former Chief of Amt III of the RSHA, who led the fourth group, stated in his affidavit:

“When the German army invaded Russia, I was leader of
Einsatzgruppe D, in the southern sector, and in the course of
the year during which I was leader of the Einsatzgruppe D it
liquidated approximately 90,000 men, women, and children. The
majority of those liquidated were Jews, but there were also
among them some communist functionaries.”

In an order issued by the Defendant Keitel on 23 July 1941, and drafted by the Defendant Jodl, it was stated that:

“In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East, the
forces available for establishing security in these areas will
be sufficient only if all resistance is punished, not by legal
prosecution of the guilty, but by the spreading of such terror
by the Armed Forces as is alone appropriate to eradicate every
inclination to resist among the population . . . . Commanders
must find the means of keeping order by applying suitable
Draconian measures.”

The evidence has shown that this order was ruthlessly carried out in the territory of the Soviet Union and in Poland. A significant illustration of the measures actually applied occurs in the document which was sent in 1943 to the Defendant Rosenberg by the Reich Commissar for Eastern Territories, who wrote:

“It should be possible to avoid atrocities and to bury those who
have been liquidated. To lock men, women, and children into
barns and set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable
method of combating bands, even if it is desired to exterminate
the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause,
and hurts our reputation severely.”

The Tribunal has before it an affidavit of one Hermann Graebe, dated 10 November 1945, describing the immense mass murders which he witnessed. He was the manager and engineer in charge of the branch of the Solingen firm of Josef Jung in Spolbunow, Ukraine, from September 1941 to January 1944. He first of all described the attack upon the Jewish ghetto at Rowno:

“. . . . Then the electric floodlights which had been erected
all around the ghetto were switched on. SS and militia details
of four to six members entered or at least tried to enter the
houses. Where the doors and windows were closed, and the
inhabitants did not open upon the knocking, the SS men and
militia broke the windows, forced the doors with beams and
crowbars, and entered the dwelling. The owners were driven on to
the street just as they were, regardless of whether they were
dressed or whether they had been in bed. . . . Car after car was
filled. Over it hung the screaming of women and children, the
cracking of whips and rifle shots.”

Graebe then described how a mass execution at Dubno, which he witnessed on 5 October 1942, was carried out:

“. . . . Now we heard shots in quick succession from behind one
of the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks, men,
women, and children of all ages, had to undress upon the orders
of an SS man, who carried a riding or dog whip . . . . Without
screaming or crying, these people undressed, stood around by
families, kissed each other, said farewells, and waited for the
command of another SS man, who stood near the excavation, also
with a whip in his hand. . . . At that moment the SS man at the
excavation called something to his comrade. The latter counted
off about 20 persons, and instructed them to walk behind the
earth mound . . . . I walked around the mound and stood in front
of a tremendous grave; closely pressed together, the people were
lying on top of each other so that only their heads were
visible. The excavation was already two-thirds full; I estimated
that it contained about a thousand people. . . . Now already the
next group approached, descended into the excavation, lined
themselves up against the previous victims and were shot.”

The foregoing crimes against the civilian population are sufficiently appalling, and yet the evidence shows that at any rate in the East, the mass murders and cruelties were not committed solely for the purpose of stamping out opposition or resistance to the German occupying forces. In Poland and the Soviet Union these crimes were part of a plan to get rid of whole native populations by expulsion and annihilation, in order that their territory could be used for colonization by Germans. Hitler had written in Mein Kampf on these lines, and the plan was clearly stated by Himmler in July 1942, when he wrote: “It is not our task to Germanize the East in the old sense, that is to teach the people there the German language and the German law, but to see to it that only people of purely Germanic blood live in the East.”

In August 1942 the policy for the Eastern Territories as laid down by Bormann was summarized by a subordinate of Rosenberg as follows:

“The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we do not need them,
they may die. Therefore, compulsory vaccination and Germanic
health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is
undesirable.”

It was Himmler again who stated in October 1943:

“What happens to a Russian, a Czech, does not interest me in the
slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood
of our type, we will take. If necessary, by kidnapping their
children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in
prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we
need them as slaves for our Kultur, otherwise it is of no
interest to me.”

In Poland the intelligentsia had been marked down for extermination as early as September 1939, and in May 1940 the Defendant Frank wrote in his diary of “taking advantage of the focussing of world interest on the Western Front, by wholesale liquidation of thousands of Poles, first leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia.” Earlier, Frank had been directed to reduce the “entire Polish economy to an absolute minimum necessary for bare existence. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German World Empire.” In January 1940 he recorded in his diary that “cheap labor must be removed from the General Government by hundreds of thousands. This will hamper the native biological propagation.” So successfully did the Germans carry out this policy in Poland that by the end of the war one-third of the population had been killed, and the whole of the country devastated.

It was the same story in the occupied area of the Soviet Union. At the time of the launching of the German attack in June 1941 Rosenberg told his collaborators:

“The object of feeding the German People stands this year
without a doubt at the top of the list of Germany’s claims on
the East, and there the southern territories and the northern
Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the
German People . . . . A very extensive evacuation will be
necessary, without any doubt, and it is sure that the future
will hold very hard years in store for the Russians.”

Three or four weeks later Hitler discussed with Rosenberg, Göring, Keitel, and others his plan for the exploitation of the Soviet population and territory, which included among other things the evacuation of the inhabitants of the Crimea and its settlement by Germans.

A somewhat similar fate was planned for Czechoslovakia by the Defendant Von Neurath, in August 1940; the intelligentsia were to be “expelled”, but the rest of the population was to be Germanized rather than expelled or exterminated, since there was a shortage of Germans to replace them.

In the West the population of Alsace were the victims of a German “expulsion action.” Between July and December 1940, 105,000 Alsatians were either deported from their homes or prevented from returning to them. A captured German report dated 7 August 1942 with regard to Alsace states that: “The problem of race will be given first consideration, and this in such a manner that persons of racial value will be deported to Germany proper, and racially inferior persons to France.”

_Pillage of Public and Private Property_

Article 49 of the Hague Convention provides that an occupying Power may levy a contribution of money from the occupied territory to pay for the needs of the army of occupation, and for the administration of the territory in question. Article 52 of the Hague Convention provides that an occupying Power may make requisitions in kind only for the needs of the army of occupation, and that these requisitions shall be in proportion to the resources of the country. These articles, together with Article 48, dealing with the expenditure of money collected in taxes, and Articles 53, 55, and 56, dealing with public property, make it clear that under the rules of war, the economy of an occupied country can only be required to bear the expense of the occupation, and these should not be greater than the economy of the country can reasonably be expected to bear. Article 56 reads as follows:

“The property of municipalities, of religious, charitable,
educational, artistic, and scientific institutions, although
belonging to the State, is to be accorded the same standing as
private property. All pre-meditated seizure, destruction, or
damage of such institutions, historical monuments, works of art
and science, is prohibited and should be prosecuted.”

The evidence in this case has established, however, that the territories occupied by Germany were exploited for the German war effort in the most ruthless way, without consideration of the local economy, and in consequence of a deliberate design and policy. There was in truth a systematic “plunder of public or private property”, which was criminal under Article 6 (b) of the Charter. The German occupation policy was clearly stated in a speech made by the Defendant Göring on 6 August 1942 to the various German authorities in charge of occupied territories:

“God knows, you are not sent out there to work for the welfare
of the people in your charge, but to get the utmost out of them,
so that the German People can live. That is what I expect of
your exertions. This everlasting concern about foreign people
must cease now, once and for all. I have here before me reports
on what you are expected to deliver. It is nothing at all, when
I consider your territories. It makes no difference to me in
this connection if you say that your people will starve.”

The methods employed to exploit the resources of the occupied territories to the full varied from country to country. In some of the occupied countries in the East and the West, this exploitation was carried out within the framework of the existing economic structure. The local industries were put under German supervision, and the distribution of war materials was rigidly controlled. The industries thought to be of value to the German war effort were compelled to continue, and most of the rest were closed down altogether. Raw materials and the finished products alike were confiscated for the needs of the German industry. As early as 19 October 1939 the Defendant Göring had issued a directive giving detailed instructions for the administration of the occupied territories; it provided:

“The task for the economic treatment of the various
administrative regions is different, depending on whether the
country is involved which will be incorporated politically into
the German Reich, or whether we will deal with the
Government-General, which in all probability will not be made a
part of Germany. In the first mentioned territories, the . . .
safeguarding of all their productive facilities and supplies
must be aimed at, as well as a complete incorporation into the
Greater German economic system, at the earliest possible time.
On the other hand, there must be removed from the territories of
the Government-General all raw materials, scrap materials,
machines, etc., which are of use for the German war economy.
Enterprises which are not absolutely necessary for the meager
maintenance of the naked existence of the population must be
transferred to Germany, unless such transfer would require an
unreasonably long period of time, and would make it more
practicable to exploit those enterprises by giving them German
orders, to be executed at their present location.”

As a consequence of this order, agricultural products, raw materials needed by German factories, machine tools, transportation equipment, other finished products, and even foreign securities and holdings of foreign exchange were all requisitioned and sent to Germany. These resources were requisitioned in a manner out of all proportion to the economic resources of those countries, and resulted in famine, inflation, and an active black market. At first the German occupation authorities attempted to suppress the black market, because it was a channel of distribution keeping local products out of German hands. When attempts at suppression failed, a German purchasing agency was organized to make purchases for Germany on the black market, thus carrying out the assurance made by the Defendant Göring that it was “necessary that all should know that if there is to be famine anywhere, it shall in no case be in Germany.”

In many of the occupied countries of the East and the West, the authorities maintained the pretense of paying for all the property which they seized. This elaborate pretense of payment merely disguised the fact that the goods sent to Germany from these occupied countries were paid for by the occupied countries themselves, either by the device of excessive occupation costs or by forced loans in return for a credit balance on a “clearing account” which was an account merely in name.

In most of the occupied countries of the East even this pretense of legality was not maintained; economic exploitation became deliberate plunder. This policy was first put into effect in the administration of the Government General in Poland. The main exploitation of the raw materials in the East was centered on agricultural products and very large amounts of food were shipped from the Government General to Germany.

The evidence of the widespread starvation among the Polish People in the Government General indicates the ruthlessness and the severity with which the policy of exploitation was carried out.

The occupation of the territories of the U.S.S.R. was characterized by premeditated and systematic looting. Before the attack on the U.S.S.R. an economic staff—Oldenburg—was organized to ensure the most efficient exploitation of Soviet territories. The German Armies were to be fed out of Soviet territory, even if “many millions of people will be starved to death.” An OKW directive issued before the attack said: “To obtain the greatest possible quantity of food and crude oil for Germany—that is the main economic purpose of the campaign.”

Similarly, a declaration by the Defendant Rosenberg of 20 June 1941 had advocated the use of the produce from Southern Russia and of the Northern Caucasus to feed the German People, saying:

“We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to
feed also the Russian People with the products of that surplus
territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any
feelings.”

When the Soviet territory was occupied, this policy was put into effect; there was a large scale confiscation of agricultural supplies, with complete disregard of the needs of the inhabitants of the occupied territory.

In addition to the seizure of raw materials and manufactured articles, a wholesale seizure was made of art treasures, furniture, textiles, and similar articles in all the invaded countries.

The Defendant Rosenberg was designated by Hitler on 29 January 1940 Head of the Center for National Socialist Ideological and Educational Research, and thereafter the organization known as the “Einsatzstab Rosenberg” conducted its operations on a very great scale. Originally designed for the establishment of a research library, it developed into a project for the seizure of cultural treasures. On 1 March 1942 Hitler issued a further decree, authorizing Rosenberg to search libraries, lodges, and cultural establishments, to seize material from these establishments, as well as cultural treasures owned by Jews. Similar directions were given where the ownership could not be clearly established. The decree directed the co-operation of the Wehrmacht High Command, and indicated that Rosenberg’s activities in the West were to be conducted in his capacity as Reichsleiter, and in the East in his capacity as Reichsminister. Thereafter, Rosenberg’s activities were extended to the occupied countries. The report of Robert Scholz, Chief of the special staff for Pictorial Art, stated: “During the period from March 1941 to July 1944 the special staff for Pictorial Art brought into the Reich 29 large shipments, including 137 freight cars with 4,174 cases of art works.”

The report of Scholz refers to 25 portfolios of pictures of the most valuable works of the art collection seized in the West, which portfolios were presented to the Führer. Thirty-nine volumes, prepared by the Einsatzstab, contained photographs of paintings, textiles, furniture, candelabra, and numerous other objects of art, and illustrated the value and magnitude of the collection which had been made. In many of the occupied countries private collections were robbed, libraries were plundered, and private houses were pillaged.

Museums, palaces, and libraries in the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. were systematically looted. Rosenberg’s Einsatzstab, Von Ribbentrop’s special “Battalion”, the Reichscommissars and representatives of the Military Command seized objects of cultural and historical value belonging to the People of the Soviet Union, which were sent to Germany. Thus the Reichscommissar of the Ukraine removed paintings and objects of art from Kiev and Kharkov and sent them to East Prussia. Rare volumes and objects of art from the palaces of Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, and Pavlovsk were shipped to Germany. In his letter to Rosenberg of 3 October 1941 Reichscommissar Kube stated that the value of the objects of art taken from Bielorussia ran into millions of rubles. The scale of this plundering can also be seen in the letter sent from Rosenberg’s department to Von Milde-Schreden in which it is stated that during the month of October 1943 alone, about 40 box-cars loaded with objects of cultural value were transported to the Reich.

With regard to the suggestion that the purpose of the seizure of art treasures was protective and meant for their preservation, it is necessary to say a few words. On 1 December 1939 Himmler, as the Reich Commissioner for the “strengthening of Germanism”, issued a decree to the regional officers of the secret police in the annexed eastern territories, and to the commanders of the security service in Radom, Warsaw, and Lublin. This decree contained administrative directions for carrying out the art seizure program, and in Clause 1 it is stated:

To strengthen Germanism in the defense of the Reich, all
articles mentioned in Section 2 of this decree are hereby
confiscated . . . . They are confiscated for the benefit of the
German Reich, and are at the disposal of the Reich Commissioner
for the strengthening of Germanism.”

The intention to enrich Germany by the seizures, rather than to protect the seized objects, is indicated in an undated report by Dr. Hans Posse, director of the Dresden State Picture Gallery:

“I was able to gain some knowledge on the public and private
collections, as well as clerical property, in Cracow and Warsaw.
It is true that we cannot hope too much to enrich ourselves from
the acquisition of great art works of paintings and sculptures,
with the exception of the Veit-Stoß altar, and the plates of
Hans von Kulnback in the Church of Maria in Cracow . . . and
several other works from the National Museum in Warsaw.”

_Slave Labor Policy_

Article 6 (b) of the Charter provides that the “ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory” shall be a War Crime. The laws relating to forced labor by the inhabitants of occupied territories are found in Article 52 of the Hague Convention, which provides:

“Requisition in kind and services shall not be demanded from
municipalities or inhabitants except for the needs of the army
of occupation. They shall be in proportion to the resources of
the country, and of such a nature as not to involve the
inhabitants in the obligation of taking part in military
operations against their own country.”

The policy of the German occupation authorities was in flagrant violation of the terms of this convention. Some idea of this policy may be gathered from the statement made by Hitler in a speech on 9 November 1941:

“The territory which now works for us contains more than
250,000,000 men, but the territory which works indirectly for us
includes now more than 350,000,000. In the measure in which it
concerns German territory, the domain which we have taken under
our administration, it is not doubtful that we shall succeed in
harnessing the very last man to this work.”

The actual results achieved were not so complete as this, but the German occupation authorities did succeed in forcing many of the inhabitants of the occupied territories to work for the German war effort, and in deporting at least 5,000,000 persons to Germany to serve German industry and agriculture.

In the early stages of the war, manpower in the occupied territories was under the control of various occupation authorities, and the procedure varied from country to country. In all the occupied territories compulsory labor service was promptly instituted. Inhabitants of the occupied countries were conscripted and compelled to work in local occupations, to assist the German war economy. In many cases they were forced to work on German fortifications and military installations. As local supplies of raw materials and local industrial capacity became inadequate to meet the German requirements, the system of deporting laborers to Germany was put into force. By the middle of April 1940 compulsory deportation of laborers to Germany had been ordered in the Government General; and a similar procedure was followed in other eastern territories as they were occupied. A description of this compulsory deportation from Poland was given by Himmler. In an address to SS officers he recalled how in weather 40 degrees below zero they had to “haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands”. On a later occasion Himmler stated:

“Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion
while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as
the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished . . . . We must
realize that we have 6-7 million foreigners in Germany . . . .
They are none of them dangerous so long as we take severe
measures at the merest trifles.”

During the first two years of the German occupation of France, 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 1 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 Frenchmen was recruited, and voluntarily went to 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 in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily”, and Koehrl rejoined: “Let us forget for the moment whether or not some slight pressure was used. Formally, at least, they were volunteers.”

Committees were set up to encourage recruiting, and a vigorous 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 their families were threatened with reprisals by the police if they refused to go to Germany. It was on 21 March 1942 that the 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”.

The Defendant Sauckel was directly under the Defendant Göring as Commissioner of the Four Year Plan, and a Göring decree of 27 March 1942 transferred all his authority over manpower to Sauckel. Sauckel’s instructions, too, were that foreign labor 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 1 March 1944.

The Defendant Sauckel frequently asserted that the workers 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 accomplished in many cases by drastic and violent methods. The “mistakes and blunders” were on a very great scale. Man-hunts 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, especially when it has been
necessary to burn down a village, the whole population will be
put at the disposal of the Commissioner by force . . . . As a
rule no more children will be shot . . . . If we limit harsh
measures through the above orders for the time being, it is only
done for the following reason . . . . The most important thing
is the recruitment 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 20 April 1942 to the effect that: “All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent, at the lowest 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 back to their native country; but restrictive regulations took a proportion of the pay; the camps in which they were housed were unsanitary; 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 given 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 non-commissioned 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 16 February 1943, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, at which the Defendants Sauckel and Speer were present, Milch said:

“We have made a request for an order that a certain percentage
of men in the Ack-Ack artillery must be Russians; 50,000 will be
taken altogether. Thirty thousand are already employed as
gunners. This is an amusing thing, that Russians must work the
guns.”

And on 4 October 1943, at Posen, Himmler, speaking of the Russian prisoners, captured in the early days of the war, said:

“As that time we did not value the mass of humanity as we value
it today, as raw material, as labor. What, after all, thinking
in terms of generations, is not to be regretted, but is now
deplorable by reason of the loss of labor, is that the prisoners
died in tens and hundreds of thousands of exhaustion and
hunger.”

The general policy underlying the mobilization of slave labor was stated by Sauckel on 20 April 1942. He said:

“The aim of this new gigantic labor mobilization is to use all
the rich and tremendous sources conquered and secured for us by
our fighting Armed Forces under the leadership of Adolf Hitler,
for the armament of the Armed Forces, and also for the nutrition
of the Homeland. The raw materials, as well as the fertility of
the conquered territories and their human labor power, are to be
used completely and conscientiously to the profit of Germany and
her allies . . . . All prisoners of war from the territories of
the West, as well as the East, actually in Germany, must be
completely incorporated into the German armament and nutrition
industries . . . . Consequently it is an immediate necessity to
use the human reserves of the conquered Soviet territory to the
fullest extent. Should we not succeed in obtaining the necessary
amount of labor on a voluntary basis, we must immediately
institute conscription or forced labor. . . . The complete
employment of all prisoners of war, as well as the use of a
gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and women,
has become an indisputable necessity for the solution of the
mobilization of the labor program in this war.”

Reference should also be made to the policy which was in existence in Germany by the summer of 1940, under which all aged, insane, and incurable people, “useless eaters,” were transferred to special institutions where they were killed, and their relatives informed 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.

_Persecution of the Jews_

The persecution of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi 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.

When the witness Bach Zelewski was asked how Ohlendorf could admit the murder of 90,000 people, he replied: “I am of the opinion that when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav race is an inferior race, and Jews not even human, then such an outcome is inevitable.”

But the Defendant Frank spoke the final words of this 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 ourselves to make utterances and my
own diary has become a witness against me in this
connection—utterances which are terrible . . . . A thousand
years will pass and this guilt of Germany will still not be
erased.”

The anti-Jewish policy was formulated in Point 4 of the 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 Stürmer_ 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.

With the seizure of power, the persecution of the Jews was intensified. A series of discriminatory laws was 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 stage where it was directed towards the complete exclusion of Jews from German life. Pogroms were organized, which included the burning and demolishing of synagogues, the looting of Jewish businesses, and the arrest of prominent Jewish business men. A collective fine of 1 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 ghettos 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.

It was contended for the Prosecution that certain aspects 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 Göring, 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.