Chapter VI: Part 6

“_Article 123._ All Germans have the right to assemble
peacefully and unarmed without giving notice and without special
permission.

“A Reich law may make previous notification obligatory for
assemblies in the open air, and may prohibit them in case of
immediate danger to the public safety.

“_Article 124._ All the Germans have the right to form
associations or societies for purposes not contrary to criminal
law. This right may not be curtailed by preventive measures. The
same provisions apply to religious associations and societies.

“Every association may become incorporated (Erwerb der
Rechtsfähigkeit) according to the provisions of the civil law.
The right may not be refused to any association on the grounds
that its aims are political, social-political, or religious.

“_Article 153._ Property is guaranteed by the Constitution. Its
content and limits are defined by the laws.

“Expropriation can only take place for the public benefit and on
a legal basis. Adequate compensation shall be granted, unless a
Reich law orders otherwise. In the case of dispute concerning
the amount of compensation, it shall be possible to submit the
matter to the ordinary civil courts, unless Reich laws determine
otherwise. Compensation must be paid if the Reich expropriates
property belonging to the Lands, Communes, or public utility
associations.

“Property carries obligations. Its use shall also serve the
common good.” (2050-PS)

It must be said in fairness to Von Hindenburg that the constitution itself authorized him temporarily to suspend these fundamental rights “if the public safety and order in the German Reich are considerably disturbed or endangered.” It must also be acknowledged that President Ebert previously had invoked this power.

But the National Socialist coup was made possible because the terms of the Hitler-Hindenburg decree departed from all previous ones in which the power of suspension had been invoked. Whenever Ebert had suspended constitutional guarantees of individual rights, his decree had expressly revived the Protective Custody Act adopted by the Reichstag in 1916 during the previous war. This act guaranteed a judicial hearing within 24 hours of arrest, gave a right to have counsel and to inspect all relevant records, provided for appeal, and authorized compensation from Treasury funds for erroneous arrests.

The Hitler-Hindenburg decree of February 28, 1933 contained no such safeguards. The omission may not have been noted by Von Hindenburg. Certainly he did not appreciate its effect. It left the Nazi police and party formations, already existing and functioning under Hitler, completely unrestrained and irresponsible. Secret arrest and indefinite detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the Nazi police suspected or disliked. No court could issue an injunction, or writ of _habeas corpus_, or _certiorari_. The German people were in the hands of the police, the police were in the hands of the Nazi Party, and the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men, of whom the defendants here before you are surviving and representative leaders.

The Nazi conspiracy, as we shall show, always contemplated not merely overcoming current opposition but exterminating elements which could not be reconciled with its philosophy of the state. It not only sought to establish the Nazi “new order” but to secure its sway, as Hitler predicted, “for a thousand years.” Nazis were never in doubt or disagreement as to what these dissident elements were. They were concisely described by one of them, Colonel General Von Fritsch, on December 11, 1938 in these words:

“Shortly after the first war I came to the conclusion that we
should have to be victorious in three battles if Germany were to
become powerful again: 1. The battle against the working
class—Hitler has won this. 2. Against the Catholic Church,
perhaps better expressed against Ultramontanism. 3. Against the
Jews.” (1947-PS)

The warfare against these elements was continuous. The battle in Germany was but a practice skirmish for the worldwide drive against them. We have in point of geography and of time two groups of Crimes against Humanity—one within Germany before and during the war, the other in occupied territory during the war. But the two are not separated in Nazi planning. They are a continuous unfolding of the Nazi plan to exterminate peoples and institutions which might serve as a focus or instrument for overturning their “new world order” at any time. We consider these crimes against humanity in this address as manifestations of the one Nazi plan and discuss them according to General Von Fritsch’s classification.

_1. The Battle against the Working Class_:

When Hitler came to power, there were in Germany three groups of trade unions. The General German Trade Union Confederation (ADGB) with 28 affiliated unions, and the General Independent Employees Confederation (AFA) with 13 federated unions together numbered more than 4,500,000 members. The Christian Trade Union had over 1,250,000 members.

The working people of Germany, like the working people of other nations, had little to gain personally by war. While labor is usually brought around to the support of the nation at war, labor by and large is a pacific, though by no means a pacifist force in the world. The working people of Germany had not forgotten in 1933 how heavy the yoke of the war lord can be. It was the workingmen who had joined the sailors and soldiers in the revolt of 1918 to end the first World War. The Nazis had neither forgiven nor forgotten. The Nazi program required that this part of the German population not only be stripped of power to resist diversion of its scanty comforts to armament, but also be wheedled or whipped into new and unheard of sacrifices as a part of the Nazi war preparation. Labor must be cowed, and that meant its organizations and means of cohesion and defense must be destroyed.

The purpose to regiment labor for the Nazi Party was avowed by Ley in a speech to workers on May 2, 1933 as follows:

“You may say what else do you want, you have the absolute power.
True we have the power, but we do not have the whole people, we
do not have you workers 100 per cent, and it is you whom we
want; we will not let you be until you stand with us in
complete, genuine acknowledgment.” (614-PS)

The first Nazi attack was upon the two larger unions. On April 21, 1933 an order not even in the name of the Government, but of the Nazi Party was issued by the conspirator Robert Ley as “Chief of Staff of the political organization of the NSDAP,” applicable to the Trade Union Confederation and the Independent Employees Confederation. It directed seizure of their properties and arrest of their principal leaders. The Party order directed Party organs which we here denounce as criminal associations, the SA and SS “to be employed for the occupation of the trade union properties, and for the taking into custody of personalities who come into question.” And it directed the taking into “protective custody” of all chairmen and district secretaries of such unions and branch directors of the labor bank. (392-PS)

These orders were carried out on May 2, 1933. All funds of the labor unions, including pension and benefit funds, were seized. Union leaders were sent to concentration camps. A few days later, on May 10, 1933, Hitler appointed Ley leader of the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) which succeeded to the confiscated union funds. The German Labor Front, a Nazi controlled labor bureau, was set up under Ley to teach the Nazi philosophy to German workers and to weed out from industrial employment all who were backward in their lessons. (1940-PS) “Factory troops” were organized as an “ideological shock squad within the factory” (1817-PS). The Party order provided that “outside of the German Labor Front, no other organization (whether of workers or of employees) is to exist.” On June 24, 1933 the remaining Christian Trade Unions were seized, pursuant to an order of the Nazi Party signed by Ley.

On May 19, 1933, this time by a government decree, it was provided that “trustees” of labor appointed by Hitler, should regulate the conditions of all labor contracts, replacing the former process of collective bargaining (405-PS). On November 30, 1934 a decree “regulating national labor” introduced the Führer Principle into industrial relations. It provided that the owners of enterprises should be the “Führer” and the workers should be the followers. The “enterprise-Führer” should “make decisions for employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise” (1861-PS). It was by such bait that the great German industrialists were induced to support the Nazi cause, to their own ultimate ruin.

Not only did the Nazis dominate and regiment German labor, but they forced the youth into the ranks of the laboring people they had thus led into chains. Under a compulsory labor service decree on 26 June 1935 young men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 were conscripted for labor (1654-PS). Thus was the purpose to subjugate German labor accomplished. In the words of Ley, this accomplishment consisted “in eliminating the association character of the trade union and employees’ associations, and in its place we have substituted the conception ‘soldiers of work’.” The productive manpower of the German nation was in Nazi control. By these steps the defendants won the battle to liquidate labor unions as potential opposition and were enabled to impose upon the working class the burdens of preparing for aggressive warfare.

Robert Ley, the field marshal of the battle against labor, answered our Indictment with suicide. Apparently he knew no better answer.

_2. The Battle against the Churches_:

The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazi themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.

We will ask you to convict the Nazis on their own evidence. Martin Bormann, in June 1941, issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree provided:

“For the first time in German history the Führer consciously and
completely has the leadership of the people in his own hand.
With the Party, its components, and attached units the Führer
has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership
an instrument which makes him independent of the church. All
influences which might impair or damage the leadership of the
people exercised by the Führer with help of the NSDAP, must be
eliminated. More and more the people must be separated from the
churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches
must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves
against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on
leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This
(influence) must be broken completely and finally.

“Only the Reich Government and by its direction the Party, its
components, and attached units have a right to leadership of the
people. Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers,
seers, and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the
State, so must the possibility of church influence also be
totally removed. Not until this has happened, does the State
leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until
then are people and Reich secure in their existence for all the
future.” (D-75)

And how the Party had been securing the Reich from Christian influence, will be proved by such items as this teletype from the Gestapo, Berlin, to the Gestapo, Nuremberg, on July 24, 1938. Let us hear their own account of events in Rottenburg.

“The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third
demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about
2500-3000 were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The
Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the
demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the
demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the
Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the
palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people
forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw
files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the
rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to
the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the
flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire
extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg
and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at
prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and
molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop
Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth.
Finally the intruders realized that Bishop Groeber is not the
one they are seeking. They could then be persuaded to leave the
building. After the evacuation of the palace by the
demonstrators I had an interview with Archbishop Groeber who
left Rottenburg in the night. Groeber wants to turn to the
Führer and Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, anew. On
the course of the action, the damage done as well as the homage
of the Rottenburg populace beginning today for the Bishop I
shall immediately hand in a full report, after I am in the act
of suppressing counter mass meetings. . . .

“In case the Führer has instructions to give in this matter, I
request that these be transmitted most quickly. . . .” (848-PS)

Later, Defendant Rosenberg wrote to Bormann reviewing the proposal of Kerrl as Church Minister to place the Protestant Church under State tutelage and proclaim Hitler its supreme head. Rosenberg was opposed, hinting that nazism was to suppress the Christian Church completely after the war (See also 098-PS).

The persecution of all pacifist and dissenting sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Association, was peculiarly relentless and cruel. The policy toward the Evangelical Churches, however, was to use their influence for the Nazis’ own purposes. In September 1933 Mueller was appointed the Führer’s representative with power to deal with the “affairs of the Evangelical Church” in its relations to the State. Eventually, steps were taken to create a Reich Bishop vested with power to control this Church. A long conflict followed, Pastor Niemöller was sent to concentration camp, and extended interference with the internal discipline and administration of the churches occurred.

A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. After a strategic concordat with the Holy See, signed in July 1933 in Rome, which never was observed by the Nazi Party, a long and persistent persecution of the Catholic Church, its priesthood, and its members, was carried out. Church schools and educational institutions were suppressed or subjected to requirements of Nazi teaching inconsistent with the Christian faith. The property of the Church was confiscated and inspired vandalism directed against Church property was left unpunished. Religious instruction was impeded and the exercise of religion made difficult. Priests and bishops were laid upon, riots were stimulated to harass them, and many were sent to concentration camps.

After occupation of foreign soil, these persecutions went on with greater vigor than ever. We will present to you from the files of the Vatican the earnest protests made by the Vatican to Ribbentrop summarizing the persecutions to which the priesthood and the Church had been subjected in this twentieth century under the Nazi regime. Ribbentrop never answered them. He could not deny. He dared not justify.

I now come to “Crimes against the Jews.”

THE PRESIDENT: We shall now take our noon recess.

[_A recess was taken until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn for 15 minutes at half past 3 and will then continue until half past 4.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I was about to take up the “Crimes Committed against the Jews.”

_3. Crimes against the Jews_:

The most savage and numerous crimes planned and committed by the Nazis were those against the Jews. Those in Germany in 1933 numbered about 500,000. In the aggregate, they had made for themselves positions which excited envy, and had accumulated properties which excited the avarice of the Nazis. They were few enough to be helpless and numerous enough to be held up as a menace.

Let there be no misunderstanding about the charge of persecuting Jews. What we charge against these defendants is not those arrogances and pretensions which frequently accompany the intermingling of different peoples and which are likely, despite the honest efforts of government, to produce regrettable crimes and convulsions. It is my purpose to show a plan and design, to which all Nazis were fanatically committed, to annihilate all Jewish people. These crimes were organized and promoted by the Party leadership, executed and protected by the Nazi officials, as we shall convince you by written orders of the Secret State Police itself.

The persecution of the Jews was a continuous and deliberate policy. It was a policy directed against other nations as well as against the Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism was promoted to divide and embitter the democratic peoples and to soften their resistance to the Nazi aggression. As Robert Ley declared in _Der Angriff_ on 14 May 1944: “The second German secret weapon is Anti-Semitism because if it is constantly pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider.”

Anti-Semitism also has been aptly credited with being a “spearhead of terror.” The ghetto was the laboratory for testing repressive measures. Jewish property was the first to be expropriated, but the custom grew and included similar measures against anti-Nazi Germans, Poles, Czechs, Frenchmen, and Belgians. Extermination of the Jews enabled the Nazis to bring a practiced hand to similar measures against Poles, Serbs, and Greeks. The plight of the Jew was a constant threat to opposition or discontent among other elements of Europe’s population—pacifists, conservatives, Communists, Catholics, Protestants, Socialists. It was in fact, a threat to every dissenting opinion and to every non-Nazi’s life.

The persecution policy against the Jews commenced with non-violent measures, such as disfranchisement and discriminations against their religion, and the placing of impediments in the way of success in economic life. It moved rapidly to organized mass violence against them, physical isolation in ghettos, deportation, forced labor, mass starvation, and extermination. The Government, the Party formations indicted before you as criminal organizations, the Secret State Police, the Army, private and semi-public associations, and “spontaneous” mobs that were carefully inspired from official sources, were all agencies that were concerned in this persecution. Nor was it directed against individual Jews for personal bad citizenship or unpopularity. The avowed purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a whole, as an end in itself, as a measure of preparation for war, and as a discipline of conquered peoples.

The conspiracy or common plan to exterminate the Jew was so methodically and thoroughly pursued, that despite the German defeat and Nazi prostration this Nazi aim largely has succeeded. Only remnants of the European Jewish population remain in Germany, in the countries which Germany occupied, and in those which were her satellites or collaborators. Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in Nazi-dominated Europe, 60 percent are authoritatively estimated to have perished. Five million seven hundred thousand Jews are missing from the countries in which they formerly lived, and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for by the normal death rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among displaced persons. History does not record a crime ever perpetrated against so many victims or one ever carried out with such calculated cruelty.

You will have difficulty, as I have, to look into the faces of these defendants and believe that in this twentieth century human beings could inflict such sufferings as will be proved here on their own countrymen as well as upon their so-called “inferior” enemies. Particular crimes, and the responsibility of defendants for them, are to be dealt with by the Soviet Government’s counsel, when committed in the East, and by counsel for the Republic of France when committed in the West. I advert to them only to show their magnitude as evidence of a purpose and a knowledge common to all defendants, of an official plan rather than of a capricious policy of some individual commander, and to show such a continuity of Jewish persecution from the rise of the Nazi conspiracy to its collapse as forbids us to believe that any person could be identified with any part of Nazi action without approving this most conspicuous item in their program.

The Indictment itself recites many evidences of the anti-Semitic persecutions. The Defendant Streicher led the Nazis in anti-Semitic bitterness and extremism. In an article appearing in _Der Stürmer_ on 19 March 1942 he complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way of “racial solution of the Jewish question in Europe”, and quoted enthusiastically as the twentieth century solution the Führer’s proclamation of February 24, 1942 that “the Jew will be exterminated.” And on November 4, 1943 Streicher declared in _Der Stürmer_ that the Jews “have disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish ‘Reservoir of the East’ from which the Jewish plague has for centuries beset the people of Europe, has ceased to exist.” Streicher now has the effrontery to tell us he is “only a Zionist”—he says he wants only to return the Jews to Palestine. But on May 7, 1942 his newspaper, _Der Stürmer_, had this to say:

“It is also not only a European problem! _The Jewish question is
a world question!_ Not only is Germany not safe in the face of
the Jews as long as one Jew lives in Europe, but also the Jewish
question is hardly solved in Europe so long as Jews live in the
rest of the world.”

And the Defendant Hans Frank, a lawyer by profession, I say with shame, summarized in his diary in 1944 the Nazi policy thus: “The Jews are a race which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end” (2233-PS, 4 March 1944, P. 26). And earlier, speaking of his function as Governor General of Poland, he confided to his diary this sentiment: “Of course I cannot eliminate all lice and Jews in only a year’s time” (2233-PS, Vol. IV, 1940, P. 1158). I could multiply endlessly this kind of Nazi ranting but I will leave it to the evidence and turn to the fruit of this perverted thinking.

The most serious of the actions against Jews were outside of any law, but the law itself was employed to some extent. There were the infamous Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935 (_Reichsgesetzblatt_ 1935, Part. I, P. 1146). The Jews were segregated into ghettos and put into forced labor; they were expelled from their professions; their property was expropriated; all cultural life, the press, the theater, and schools were prohibited them; and the SD was made responsible for them (212-PS, 069-PS). This was an ominous, guardianship, as the following order for “The Handling of the Jewish Question” shows:

“The competency of the Chief of the Security Police and Security
Service, who is charged with the mission of solving the European
Jewish question, extends even to the Occupied Eastern
Provinces. . . .

“An eventual act by the civilian population against the Jews is
not to be prevented as long as this is compatible with the
maintenance of order and security in the rear of the fighting
troops. . . .

“The first main goal of the German measures must be strict
segregation of Jewry from the rest of the population. In the
execution of this, first of all is the seizing of the Jewish
populace by the introduction of a registration order and similar
appropriate measures. . . .

“Then immediately, the wearing of the recognition sign
consisting of a yellow Jewish star is to be brought about and
all rights of freedom for Jews are to be withdrawn. They are to
be placed in ghettos and at the same time are to be separated
according to sexes. The presence of many more or less closed
Jewish settlements in White Ruthenia and in the Ukraine makes
this mission easier. Moreover, places are to be chosen which
make possible the full use of the Jewish manpower in case labor
needs are present. . . .

“The entire Jewish property is to be seized and confiscated with
exception of that which is necessary for a bare existence. As
far as the economical situation permits, the power of disposal
of their property is to be taken from the Jews as soon as
possible through orders and other measures given by the
commissariat, so that the moving of property will quickly cease.

“Any cultural activity will be completely forbidden, to the Jew.
This includes the outlawing of the Jewish press, the Jewish
theaters, and schools.

“The slaughtering of animals according to Jewish rites is also
to be prohibited. . . .” (212-PS)

The anti-Jewish campaign became furious in Germany following the assassination in Paris of the German Legation Councillor Von Rath. Heydrich, Gestapo head, sent a teletype to all Gestapo and SD offices with directions for handling “spontaneous” uprising anticipated for the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938 so as to aid in destruction of Jewish-owned property and protect only that of Germans. No more cynical document ever came into evidence. Then there is a report by an SS brigade leader, Dr. Stahlecker, to Himmler, which recites that:

“. . . Similarly, native anti-Semitic forces were induced to
start pogroms against Jews during the first hours after capture,
though this inducement proved to be very difficult. Following
out orders, the Security Police was determined to solve the
Jewish question with all possible means and most decisively. But
it was desirable that the Security Police should not put in an
immediate appearance, at least in the beginning, since the
extraordinarily harsh measures were apt to stir even German
circles. It had to be shown to the world that the native
population itself took the first action by way of natural
reaction against the suppression by Jews during several decades
and against the terror exercised by the Communists during the
preceding period. . . .”

“. . . In view of the extension of the area of operations and
the great number of duties which had to be performed by the
Security Police, it was intended from the very beginning to
obtain the co-operation of the reliable population for the fight
against vermin—that is mainly the Jews and Communists. Beyond
our directing of the first spontaneous actions of
self-cleansing, which will be reported elsewhere, care had to be
taken that reliable people should be put to the cleansing job
and that they were appointed auxiliary members of the Security
Police. . . .”

“. . . Kovno. To our surprise it was not easy at first to set in
motion an extensive pogrom against Jews. Klimatis, the leader of
the partisan unit, mentioned above, who was used for this
purpose primarily, succeeded in starting a pogrom on the basis
of advice given to him by a small advanced detachment acting in
Kovno, and in such a way that no German order or German
instigation was noticed from the outside. During the first
pogrom in the night from 25 to 26 June the Lithuanian partisans
did away with more than 1,500 Jews, set fire to several
synagogues or destroyed them by other means and burned down a
Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During
the following nights about 2,300 Jews were made harmless in a
similar way. In other parts of Lithuania similar actions
followed the example of Kovno, though smaller and extending to
the Communists who had been left behind.

“These self-cleansing actions went smoothly because the Army
authorities who had been informed showed understanding for this
procedure. From the beginning it was obvious that only the first
days after the occupation would offer the opportunity for
carrying out pogroms. After the disarmament of the partisans the
self-cleansing actions ceased necessarily.

“It proved much more difficult to set in motion similar
cleansing actions in Latvia. . . .” (L-180)

Of course, it is self-evident that these “uprisings” were managed by the Government and the Nazi Party. If we were in doubt, we could resort to Streicher’s memorandum of April 14, 1939 which says:

“The anti-Jewish action of November 1938 did not arise
spontaneously from the people. . . . Part of the Party formation
have been charged with the execution of the anti-Jewish action.”
(406-PS)

Jews as a whole were fined a billion Reichsmarks. They were excluded from all businesses, and claims against insurance companies for their burned properties were confiscated, all by decree of the Defendant Göring. (_Reichsgesetzblatt_, 1938, Part I, Pp. 1579-82)

Synagogues were the objects of a special vengeance. On November 10, 1938 the following order was given:

“By order of the Group Commander:

All Jewish synagogues in the area of Brigade 50 have to be blown
up or set afire. . . . The operation will be carried out in
civilian clothing. . . . Execution of the order will be
reported. . . .” (1721-PS)

Some 40 teletype messages from various police headquarters will tell the fury with which all Jews were pursued in Germany on those awful November nights. The SS troops were turned loose and the Gestapo supervised. Jewish-owned property was authorized to be destroyed. The Gestapo ordered twenty to thirty thousand “well-to-do-Jews” to be arrested. Concentration camps were to receive them. Healthy Jews, fit for labor, were to be taken. (3051-PS)

As the German frontiers were expanded by war, so the campaign against the Jews expanded. The Nazi plan never was limited to extermination in Germany; always it contemplated extinguishing the Jew in Europe and often in the world. In the West, the Jews were killed and their property taken over. But the campaign achieved its zenith of savagery in the East. The eastern Jew has suffered as no people ever suffered. Their sufferings were carefully reported to the Nazi authorities to show faithful adherence to the Nazi design. I shall refer only to enough of the evidence of these to show the extent of the Nazi design for killing Jews.

If I should recite these horrors in words of my own, you would think me intemperate and unreliable. Fortunately, we need not take the word of any witness but the Germans themselves. I invite you now to look at a few of the vast number of captured German orders and reports that will be offered in evidence, to see what a Nazi invasion meant. We will present such evidence as the report of “Einsatzgruppe (Action Group) A” of October 15, 1941 which boasts that in overrunning the Baltic States, “Native anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against the Jews during the first hours after occupation. . . .” The report continues:

“From the beginning it was to be expected that the Jewish
problem in the East could not be solved by pogroms alone. In
accordance with the basic orders received, however, the
cleansing activities of the Security Police had to aim at a
complete annihilation of the Jews. Special detachments
reinforced by selected units—in Lithuania partisan detachments,
in Latvia units of the Latvian auxiliary police—therefore
performed extensive executions both in the towns and in rural
areas. The actions of the execution detachments were performed
smoothly.”

“The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to
71,105. During the pogroms in Kovno 3,800 Jews were eliminated,
in the smaller towns about 1,200 Jews.”

“In Latvia, up to now a total of 30,000 Jews were executed. Five
hundred were eliminated by pogroms in Riga.” (L-180)

This is a captured report from the Commissioner of Sluzk on October 30, 1941 which describes the scene in more detail. It says:

“. . . The first lieutenant explained that the police battalion
had received the assignment to effect the liquidation of all
Jews here in the town of Sluzk, within two days. . . . Then I
requested him to postpone the action one day. However, he
rejected this with the remark that he had to carry out this
action everywhere and in all towns and that only two days were
allotted for Sluzk. Within these two days, the town of Sluzk had
to be cleared of Jews by all means. . . . All Jews without
exception were taken out of the factories and shops and deported
in spite of our agreement. It is true that part of the Jews was
moved by way of the ghetto where many of them were processed and
still segregated by me, but a large part was loaded directly on
trucks and liquidated without further delay outside of the
town. . . . For the rest, as regards the execution of the
action, I must point out to my deepest regret that the latter
bordered already on sadism. The town itself offered a picture of
horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the
part of both the German police officers and particularly the
Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them
White Ruthenians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded
together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in
different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The
White Ruthenians were in greatest distress to free themselves
from the encirclement. Regardless of the fact that the Jewish
people, among whom were also tradesmen, were mistreated in a
terribly barbarous way in the face of the White Ruthenian
people, the White Ruthenians themselves were also worked over
with rubber clubs and rifle butts. There was no question of an
action against the Jews any more. It rather looked like a
revolution. . . .”

There are reports which merely tabulate the numbers slaughtered. An example is an account of the work of Einsatzgruppen of SIPO and SD in the East, which relates that:

In Estonia, all Jews were arrested immediately upon the arrival of the Wehrmacht. Jewish men and women above the age of 16 and capable of work were drafted for forced labor. Jews were subjected to all sorts of restrictions and all Jewish property was confiscated. All Jewish males above the age of 16 were executed, with the exception of doctors and elders. Only 500 of an original 4,500 Jews remained. Thirty-seven thousand, one hundred eighty persons have been liquidated by the SIPO and SD in White Ruthenia during October. In one town, 337 Jewish women were executed for demonstrating a ‘provocative attitude.’ In another, 380 Jews were shot for spreading vicious propaganda.

And so the report continues, listing town after town, where hundreds of Jews were murdered:

In Vitebsk 3,000 Jews were liquidated because of the danger of epidemics. In Kiev 33,771 Jews were executed on September 29 and 30 in retaliation for some fires which were set off there. In Shitomir 3,145 Jews ‘had to be shot’ because, judging from experience they had to be considered as the carriers of Bolshevik propaganda. In Cherson 410 Jews were executed in reprisal against acts of sabotage. In the territory east of the Dnieper, the Jewish problem was ’solved’ by the liquidation of 4,891 Jews and by putting the remainder into labor battalions of up to 1,000 persons. (R-102)

Other accounts tell not of the slaughter so much as of the depths of degradation to which the tormentors stooped. For example, we will show the report made to Defendant Rosenberg about the army and the SS in the area under Rosenberg’s jurisdiction, which recited the following:

“Details: In presence of SS man, a Jewish dentist has to break all gold teeth and fillings out of mouth of German and Russian Jews _before_ they are executed.”

Men, women and children are locked into barns and burned alive.

Peasants, women and children are shot on the pretext that they are suspected of belonging to bands. (R-135)

We of the Western World heard of gas wagons in which Jews and political opponents were asphyxiated. We could not believe it. But here we have the report of May 16, 1942 from the German SS Officer Becker to his supervisor in Berlin which tells this story:

Gas vans in C group can be driven to execution spot, which is generally stationed 10 to 15 kms. from main road, only in dry weather. Since those to be executed become frantic if conducted to this place, such vans become immobilized in wet weather.

Gas vans in D group were camouflaged as cabin trailers, but vehicles well known to authorities and civilian population which calls them ‘death vans’.

Writer of letter (Becker) ordered all men to keep as far away as possible during gassing. Unloading van has ‘atrocious spiritual and physical effect’ on men and they should be ordered not to participate in such work. (501-PS)

I shall not dwell on this subject longer than to quote one more sickening document which evidences the planned and systematic character of the Jewish persecutions. I hold a report written with Teutonic devotion to detail, illustrated with photographs to authenticate its almost incredible text, and beautifully bound in leather with the loving care bestowed on a proud work. It is the original report of the SS Brigadier General Stroop in charge of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and its title page carries the inscription, “The Jewish ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists.” It is characteristic that one of the captions explains that the photograph concerned shows the driving out of Jewish “bandits”; those whom the photograph shows being driven out are almost entirely women and little children. It contains a day-by-day account of the killings mainly carried out by the SS organization, too long to relate, but let me quote General Stroop’s summary:

“The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could only be
suppressed by energetic actions of our troops day and night.
_The Reichsführer SS ordered, therefore, on 23 April 1943, the
cleaning out of the ghetto with utter ruthlessness and merciless
tenacity._ I, therefore, decided to destroy and burn down the
entire ghetto without regard to the armament factories. These
factories were systematically dismantled and then burned. Jews
usually left their hideouts, but frequently remained in the
burning buildings and jumped out of the windows only when the
heat became unbearable. They then tried to crawl with broken
bones across the street into buildings which were not afire.
Sometimes they changed their hideouts during the night into the
ruins of burned buildings. Life in the sewers was not pleasant
after the first week. Many times we could hear loud voices in
the sewers. SS men or policemen climbed bravely through the
manholes to capture these Jews. Sometimes they stumbled over
Jewish corpses; sometimes they were shot at. Tear gas bombs were
thrown into the manholes and the Jews driven out of the sewers
and captured. Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in
sewers and bunkers through blasting. The longer the resistance
continued the tougher became the members of the Waffen SS,
Police and Wehrmacht who always discharged their duties in an
exemplary manner. Frequently Jews who tried to replenish their
food supplies during the night or to communicate with
neighboring groups were exterminated.

“This action eliminated,” says the SS commander, “a proved total
of 56,065. To that, we have to add the number killed through
blasting, fire, etc., which cannot be counted.” (1061-PS)

We charge that all atrocities against Jews were the manifestation and culmination of the Nazi plan to which every defendant here was a party. I know very well that some of these men did take steps to spare some particular Jew for some personal reason from the horrors that awaited the unrescued Jew. Some protested that particular atrocities were excessive, and discredited the general policy. While a few defendants may show efforts to make specific exceptions to the policy of Jewish extermination, I have found no instance in which any defendant opposed the policy itself or sought to revoke or even modify it.

Determination to destroy the Jews was a binding force which at all times cemented the elements of this conspiracy. On many internal policies there were differences among the defendants. But there is not one of them who has not echoed the rallying cry of nazism: “Deutschland erwache, Juda verrecke!” (Germany awake, Jewry perish!).

_Terrorism and Preparation for War_:

How a government treats its own inhabitants generally is thought to be no concern of other governments or of international society. Certainly few oppressions or cruelties would warrant the intervention of foreign powers. But the German mistreatment of Germans is now known to pass in magnitude and savagery any limits of what is tolerable by modern civilization. Other nations, by silence, would take a consenting part in such crimes. These Nazi persecutions, moreover, take character as international crimes because of the purpose for which they were undertaken.

The purpose, as we have seen, of getting rid of the influence of free labor, the churches, and the Jews was to clear their obstruction to the precipitation of aggressive war. If aggressive warfare in violation of treaty obligation is a matter of international cognizance the preparations for it must also be of concern to the international community. Terrorism was the chief instrument for securing the cohesion of the German people in war purposes. Moreover, these cruelties in Germany served as atrocity practice to discipline the membership of the criminal organization to follow the pattern later in occupied countries.

Through the police formations that are before you accused as criminal organizations, the Nazi Party leaders, aided at some point in their basic and notorious purpose by each of the individual defendants, instituted a reign of terror. These espionage and police organizations were utilized to hunt down every form of opposition and to penalize every nonconformity. These organizations early founded and administered concentration camps—Buchenwald in 1933, Dachau in 1934. But these notorious names were not alone. Concentration camps came to dot the German map and to number scores. At first they met with resistance from some Germans. We have a captured letter from Minister of Justice Gürtner to Hitler which is revealing. A Gestapo official had been prosecuted for crimes committed in the camp at Hohnstein, and the Nazi Governor of Saxony had promptly asked that the proceeding be quashed. The Minister of Justice in June of 1935 protested because, as he said:

“In this camp unusually grave mistreatments of prisoners have
occurred at least since summer 1933. The prisoners not only were
beaten with whips without cause, similarly as in the
Concentration Camp Bredow near Stettin till they lost
consciousness, but they were also tortured in other manners,
e.g. with the help of a dripping apparatus constructed
exclusively for this purpose, under which prisoners had to stand
until they were suffering from serious purulent wounds of the
scalp. . . .” (787-PS)

I shall not take time to detail the ghastly proceedings in these concentration camps. Beatings, starvings, tortures, and killings were routine—so routine that the tormentors became blasé and careless. We have a report of discovery that in Plötzensee one night, 186 persons were executed while there were orders for only 180. Another report describes how the family of one victim received two urns of ashes by mistake.

Inmates were compelled to execute each other. In 1942 they were paid five Reichsmarks per execution, but on June 27, 1942 SS General Glücks ordered commandants of all concentration camps to reduce this honorarium to three cigarettes. In 1943 the Reich leader of the SS and Chief of German Police ordered the corporal punishments on Russian women to be applied by Polish women and vice versa, but the price was not frozen. He said that as reward, a few cigarettes was authorized. Under the Nazis, human life had been progressively devalued, until it finally became worth less than a handful of tobacco—ersatz tobacco. There were, however, some traces of the milk of human kindness. On August 11, 1942 an order went from Himmler to the commanders of 14 concentration camps that only German prisoners are allowed to beat other German prisoners (2189-PS).

Mystery and suspense was added to cruelty in order to spread torture from the inmate to his family and friends. Men and women disappeared from their homes or business or from the streets, and no word came of them. The omission of notice was not due to overworked staff; it was due to policy. The Chief of the SD and SIPO reported that in accordance with orders from the Führer anxiety should be created in the minds of the family of the arrested person. (668-PS) Deportations and secret arrests were labeled, with a Nazi wit which seems a little ghoulish, “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog) (L-90, 833-PS). One of the many orders for these actions gave this explanation:

“The decree carries a basic innovation. The Führer and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces commands that crimes of
the specified sort committed by civilians of the occupied
territories are to be punished by the pertinent courts-martial
in the occupied territories _only_ when (a) the sentence calls
for the death penalty, and (b) the sentence is pronounced within
eight days after the arrest.

“Only when both conditions are met does the Führer and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces hope for the desired
deterrent effect from the conduct of punitive proceedings in the
occupied territories.

“In other cases, in the future, the accused are to be secretly
brought to Germany, and the further conduct of the trial carried
on here. The deterrent effect of these measures lies (a) in
allowing the disappearance of the accused without a trace, (b)
therein that no information whatsoever may be given about their
whereabouts and their fate.” (833-PS)

To clumsy cruelty, scientific skill was added. “Undesirables” were exterminated by injection of drugs into the bloodstream, by asphyxiation in gas chambers. They were shot with poison bullets, to study the effects. (L-103)

Then, to cruel experiments the Nazi added obscene ones. These were not the work of underling-degenerates but of master-minds high in the Nazi conspiracy. On May 20, 1942 General Field Marshal Milch authorized SS General Wolff to go ahead at Dachau Camp with so-called “cold experiments”; and four female gypsies were supplied for the purpose. Himmler gave permission to carry on these “experiments” also in other camps. (1617-PS) At Dachau, the reports of the “doctor” in charge show that victims were immersed in cold water until their body temperature was reduced to 28 degrees centigrade (82.4 degrees Farenheit), when they all died immediately (1618-PS). This was in August 1942. But the “doctor’s” technique improved. By February 1943 he was able to report that 30 persons were chilled to 27 to 29 degrees, their hands and feet frozen white, and their bodies “rewarmed” by a hot bath. But the Nazi scientific triumph was “rewarming with animal heat.” The victim, all but frozen to death, was surrounded with bodies of living women until he revived and responded to his environment by having sexual intercourse. (1616-PS) Here Nazi degeneracy reached its nadir.

I dislike to encumber the record with such morbid tales, but we are in the grim business of trying men as criminals, and these are the things that their own agents say happened. We will show you these concentration camps in motion pictures, just as the Allied armies found them when they arrived, and the measures General Eisenhower had to take to clean them up. Our proof will be disgusting and you will say I have robbed you of your sleep. But these are the things which have turned the stomach of the world and set every civilized hand against Nazi Germany.

Germany became one vast torture chamber. Cries of its victims were heard round the world and brought shudders to civilized people everywhere. I am one who received during this war most atrocity tales with suspicion and scepticism. But the proof here will be so overwhelming that I venture to predict not one word I have spoken will be denied. These defendants will only deny personal responsibility or knowledge.

Under the clutch of the most intricate web of espionage and intrigue that any modern state has endured, and persecution and torture of a kind that has not been visited upon the world in many centuries, the elements of the German population which were both decent and courageous were annihilated. Those which were decent but weak were intimidated. Open resistance, which had never been more than feeble and irresolute, disappeared. But resistance, I am happy to say, always remained, although it was manifest in only such events as the abortive effort to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. With resistance driven underground, the Nazi had the German State in his own hands.

But the Nazis not only silenced discordant voices. They created positive controls as effective as their negative ones. Propaganda organs, on a scale never before known, stimulated the Party and Party formations with a permanent enthusiasm and abandon such as we, democratic people, can work up only for a few days before a general election. They inculcated and practiced the Führerprinzip which centralized control of the Party and of the Party-controlled State over the lives and thought of the German people, who are accustomed to look upon the German State, by whomever controlled, with a mysticism that is incomprehensible to my people.

All these controls from their inception were exerted with unparalleled energy and single-mindedness to put Germany on a war footing. We will show from the Nazis’ own documents their secret training of military personnel, their secret creation of a military air force. Finally, a conscript army was brought into being. Financiers, economists, industrialists joined in the plan and promoted elaborate alterations in industry and finance to support an unprecedented concentration of resources and energies upon preparations for war. Germany’s rearmament so outstripped the strength of her neighbors that in about a year she was able to crush the whole military force of continental Europe, exclusive of that of Soviet Russia, and then to push the Russian armies back to the Volga. These preparations were of a magnitude which surpassed all need of defense, and every defendant, and every intelligent German, well understood them to be for aggressive purposes.

_Experiments in Aggression_:

Before resorting to open aggressive warfare, the Nazis undertook some rather cautious experiments to test the spirit of resistance of those who lay across their path. They advanced, but only as others yielded, and kept in a position to draw back if they found a temperament that made persistence dangerous.

On 7 March 1936 the Nazis reoccupied the Rhineland and then proceeded to fortify it in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Pact of Locarno. They encountered no substantial resistance and were emboldened to take the next step, which was the acquisition of Austria. Despite repeated assurances that Germany had no designs on Austria, invasion was perfected. Threat of attack forced Schuschnigg to resign as Chancellor of Austria and put the Nazi Defendant Seyss-Inquart in his place. The latter immediately opened the frontier and invited Hitler to invade Austria “to preserve order”. On March 12th invasion began. The next day, Hitler proclaimed himself Chief of the Austrian State, took command of its armed forces, and a law was enacted annexing Austria to Germany.

Threats of aggression had succeeded without arousing resistance. Fears nevertheless had been stirred. They were lulled by an assurance to the Czechoslovak Government that there would be no attack on that country. We will show that the Nazi Government already had detailed plans for the attack. We will lay before you the documents in which these conspirators planned to create an incident to justify their attack. They even gave consideration to assassinating their own Ambassador at Prague in order to create a sufficiently dramatic incident. They did precipitate a diplomatic crisis which endured throughout the summer. Hitler set September 30th as the day when troops should be ready for action. Under the threat of immediate war, the United Kingdom and France concluded a pact with Germany and Italy at Munich on September 29, 1938, which required Czechoslovakia to acquiesce in the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. It was consummated by German occupation on October 1, 1938.

The Munich Pact pledged no further aggression against Czechoslovakia, but the Nazi pledge was lightly given and quickly broken. On the 15th of March 1939, in defiance of the treaty of Munich itself, the Nazis seized and occupied Bohemia and Moravia, which constituted the major part of Czechoslovakia not already ceded to Germany. Once again the West stood aghast, but it dreaded war, it saw no remedy except war, and it hoped against hope that the Nazi fever for expansion had run its course. But the Nazi world was intoxicated by these unresisted successes in open alliance with Mussolini and in covert alliance with Franco. Then, having made a deceitful, delaying peace with Russia, the conspirators entered upon the final phase of the plan to renew war.

_War of Aggression_: