Chapter XX: Part 20

An inquiry has been conducted since; it is summed up in the book which has just been placed before you. This inquiry has shown that no member of the French Forces of the Interior was in the village, that there was none within several kilometers. It seems even proved that the causes of the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane are remote. The unit which perpetrated this crime apparently did so as an act of vengeance, because of an attempt against it about 50 kilometers further away.

The German Army ordered a judicial inquiry. Document F-673, already submitted as RF-392, so indicates; Pages 175 and 176. This document is dated 4 January 1945. There were no Germans in France at that time, at least not in Oradour-sur-Glane. The version given by the German authority is that the reprisals appear to be absolutely justified for military reasons. The German military commander who was responsible for it fell in combat in Normandy.

We shall remember the phrase “The reprisals appear to be absolutely justified, for military reasons.” Therefore, in the eyes of the German Army, the crime of Oradour-sur-Glane which I have described to you plainly, is a crime which is fully justified.

The guilt of Keitel in all these matters is certain.

In Document F-673, Exhibit Number RF-392—and this will be the end of my statement—there is a strange document which is signed by him. It was drawn up on 5 March 1945. It concerns alleged executions, without trial, of French citizens. You will find it on Page 177. It will show the Tribunal the manner in which these criminal inquiries were conducted, on orders, by the German Army, following incidents as grave as that of Oradour-sur-Glane, which had to be justified at any price. In this document, which should be cited in its entirety, I wish only to look at the next to the last paragraph. It was in the German interest to answer these reproaches as promptly as possible.

THE PRESIDENT: This is not a document of which we can take judicial notice and therefore if you want to put the whole document in you must put it in.

M. DUBOST: I am surprised, Your Honor; you have already accepted it. This is Document F-673. It was submitted as Exhibit Number RF-392 and is the whole bundle of documents of the Wiesbaden German Armistice Commission.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but is it a public document? It is not a public document, is it?

M. DUBOST: Am I to understand that the Tribunal wants me to read it in its entirety?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, F-673 seems to be a very large bundle of documents. This particular part of it, this document signed by Keitel, is a private document.

M. DUBOST: It is a document which comes from the German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden, which was presented several hours ago under Exhibit Number RF-392, and you accepted it.

THE PRESIDENT: I know we accepted its being deposited, but that does not mean that the whole of the document is in evidence. I mean, we have ruled over and over again that documents of which we do not take judicial notice must be read so that they will go through the interpreting system and will be interpreted into German to the German counsel.

M. DUBOST: I am therefore going to give you the reading of the whole document.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

M. DUBOST: “The High Command of the Wehrmacht, Headquarters of
the Führer, 5 March 1945. WFST Qu 2 (I) Number 01487/45-g; By
Captain Cartellieri. Secret. Subject: Alleged executions of
French citizens without trial.

“1. German Armistice Commission.

“2. High Command West.

“In August 1944, the French Commission attached to the German
Armistice Commission addressed a note to the latter, giving an
exact statement of incidents concerning alleged arbitrary
executions of Frenchmen from 9 to 23 June 1944.

“The information given in the French note was for the most part
so detailed that verification from the German side was
undoubtedly possible.

“On 26 September 1944 the High Command of the Wehrmacht
entrusted the German Armistice Commission with the study of this
affair. The said commission later requested High Command West
for an inquiry on the incidents and an opinion on the facts
submitted in the French note.

“On 12 February 1945 the German Armistice Commission received
from the Army Group B (from the President of the Military
Tribunal of Army Group B) a note stating that the documents
referring to this affair had been since November 1944 with the
Army Judge of Pz. AOK 6, and that Pz. AOK 6 and the Second SS
Panzer Division ‘Das Reich’ had in the meantime been detached
from Army Group B.

“The manner in which this affair was inquired into causes the
following remarks to be made:

“The French, that is, the Delegation of the Vichy Government
have in this memorandum brought on the German Wehrmacht the
grave charge of having carried out numerous executions of French
subjects, executions which are unjustified by law and therefore
murders. It was in the interest of Germany to reply as promptly
as possible to such charges. In the long period which has
elapsed since the receipt of the French note it should have been
possible, in spite of the development of the military situation
and the movement of troops resulting therefrom, to single out at
least part of these charges and to refute them by examination of
the facts. If merely one fraction of the charge had been
refuted”—this sentence is important—“it would have been
possible to show the French that all their claims were based
upon doubtful data. By the fact that nothing at all was done in
this matter by the Germans, the enemy must have the impression
that we are not in a position to answer these charges.

“The study of this matter shows that there is often a
considerable lack of understanding of the importance of
counteracting all enemy propaganda and charges against the
German Army by immediately refuting alleged German atrocities.

“The German Armistice Commission is hereby entrusted to continue
the study of this matter with all energy. We ask that every
assistance be given them for speeding up this work now, within
their own field of duty. The fact that Pz. AOK 6 is no longer
under High Command West is no reason for impeding the making of
the necessary investigations for clearing up and refuting the
French charges.”

THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, you stated, I think, that this document implicated Keitel.

M. DUBOST: It is signed by Keitel, Sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Signed by him, yes, but how does it implicate him in the affair of Oradour?

M. DUBOST: Mr. President, the French Commission, together with the _de facto_ Vichy Government, frequently brought to the attention of the German authorities not only the atrocities of Oradbur-sur-Glane, but numerous other atrocities. Orders were given by Keitel that these facts, which constitute absolute reality not merely in the eyes of the French but in the eyes of all those who have objectively and impartially inquired into the matter, should be examined for the purpose of refuting part of these charges. This letter refers to the protest lodged earlier by the French, and we read part of it before you in the course of this examination of the question, particularly the facts noted in the letter of General Bridoux which mentions the murder of French people at Marsoulas in the department of Haute-Garonne, among them fourteen children.

THE PRESIDENT: I think you said that that was the last document you were going to refer to?

M. DUBOST: It is the last document.

THE PRESIDENT: Ten minutes past five. Shall we adjourn? M. Dubost, could you let us know what subject is to be gone into tomorrow?

M. DUBOST: Crimes against Humanity, by my colleague M. Faure. If you will allow me to present my conclusion this evening—it will not take long. Our work has been delayed somewhat this afternoon.

THE PRESIDENT: How long do you think you will take, M. Dubost, to make your concluding statement?

M. DUBOST: I think by five-thirty I shall be through.

THE PRESIDENT: I think perhaps, if it is as convenient to you, we had better hear you in the morning. Is it equally convenient to you?

M. DUBOST: I am at the orders of the Tribunal.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 1 February 1946 at 1000 hours._]

FORTY-EIGHTH DAY
Friday, 1 February 1946

_Morning Session_

MARSHAL: May it please the Court, I desire to announce that Defendants Kaltenbrunner and Seyss-Inquart will be absent from this morning’s session on account of illness.

M. DUBOST: I have now completed my presentation of facts. This presentation has consisted of a dry enumeration of crimes, atrocities, extortions of all sorts, which I deliberately presented to you without any embellishments of oratory. The facts have a profound eloquence which suffices. These facts are, it seems to me, definitely established. I do not believe that the Defense, nor history—even German history—will be able to set aside their essential aspects. They will no doubt be exposed to criticism.

Our evidence was hastily collected in a ruined country whose every means of communication had been destroyed by an enemy in flight, in a country where each individual was more concerned with preparation for the future than with looking back upon the past, even to exact vengeance, for the future is the life of our children, and the past is but death and destruction.

For the whole of France, for each country in the West, the demands of daily life, the difficulty of preparing for a better future once again give full meaning to the words of the Scriptures, _Sinite mortuos sepelire mortuos_ (Let the dead bury their dead.); and that is why in spite of all our efforts, all our endeavors, to prepare the work of justice which France and universal conscience demand, we were not able to be more thorough. That is why errors of detail may have slipped into our work, but the rectifications which time and the Defense will effect can be only accessory. They will not eliminate the fact that millions of men have been deported, starved, exhausted through labor and privation before being put to death, like cattle without value; that innumerable innocent persons have been tortured before being turned over to the executioner. Rectifications may affect circumstances of time, sometimes of place; they will not change the essential facts even if a few details are modified.

But these facts, having been established in their general aspect, it remains for us to complete our task by giving them juridical significance, by analyzing them with reference to the law of which they constitute a violation, and by making clear the inculpations, in other words, by fixing the responsibilities, of each defendant in respect to a law.

What law shall we apply? Taken one by one and separated from the systematic policy which conceived, willed, and ordered them as a means of achieving domination through terror and beyond that as a means of extermination pure and simple; these facts constitute crimes against common law as much as violations of the laws and usages of war and of international law. All of them could therefore be defined separately as a violation of an international convention and of a penal provision of one or another of our established domestic laws. Or rather all could be qualified as a violation of a rule of common law which has emerged from each of our own domestic laws, as shown by M. De Menthon in his address; of that common law which, in the last analysis, was designated by him as being the foundation, as the root of international customs, which, beyond the Charter itself, is and remains the one and only guide of your decisions.

But it is right to know that this common law springs from our established laws and, like them, punishes in principle actual misdeeds. Now, all of our defendants remained physically divorced from each of the criminal facts which in the ubiquity of their power they multiplied throughout the world. It was their will which commanded; but, as Mr. Justice Jackson recalled, they never reddened their own hands with the blood of their victims. Therefore, if we refer exclusively to our established laws and especially to French domestic law, the defendants could not, in any case, be considered as principal authors but merely as accomplices “who have provoked the act through abuse of authority or of power.” All of that is indeed a contradiction to the conception which each person in our countries holds of the guilt of the major war criminals. To solve the problem thus would be to narrow singularly the field of responsibility of each of the defendants. This responsibility would appear merely accessory, where, in fact, it is the principal responsibility; it would appear fragmentary, whereas to be truly fixed it must be presented as one single time, in the whole of their thoughts, intentions, and acts as chiefs of the Nazi government who conceived, willed, ordered, or tolerated the development of that systematic policy of terror and extermination, of which each fact taken separately is but a particular aspect, merely a constituent element. Thus a simple reference to common law does not bring us close enough to reality. If it does not omit, as such, any of the facts to which guilt attaches, it does leave aside the psychological factor and does not give us a complete conception of the guilt of the accused in a single formula embracing all the reality. That is because common law expresses a certain status of common morality which is accepted by civilized nations as law for the mutual relations of citizens. Profoundly imbued with the concept of individualism, this common law is not adequate to meet the exigencies of collective life which international morality must govern. Furthermore, this common law which is the foundation of our tradition has become static in a Cartesian sense, whereas our custom remains enriched by all the dynamism of international penal law. The Charter has not fixed the manner in which we are to qualify in a juridical sense the facts which I have presented before you. In creating your Tribunal, the authors of the Charter limited themselves to establishing the limits of your jurisdiction: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, Crimes against Peace; and even then they did not give an exhaustive definition of each of these crimes. The Tribunal may refer on this point to Article 6, paragraphs b and c of the Charter of the Tribunal. This article gives only an indicative enumeration. That is because the authors of the Charter bore in mind that international penal law is only still in the first phase of the birth of a custom in which law is developed by reaction to the deed and where the judge intervenes only to save the criminals from individual vengeance or where law is applied by the judge alone and the penalty pronounced according to his sole judgment. Thus, the authors of the Charter abstained from giving us a fixed method of qualification by reference to common law or on the contrary, to custom. They did not say to you:

“You will take one by one the criminal facts submitted to you,
and each fact taken separately shall be isolated from the others
to be defined by reference to a stipulation of any one domestic
law or to a synthesis of domestic laws, yielding thus a common
law.”

Nor did they say to you:

“You will take these scattered criminal facts, you will group
them together to make of them one single crime of which the
definition, respecting in a general sense the rules of common
law, will be essentially determined by the sole intention or
purpose sought, without attempting to seek by analogy any
precedents in the different domestic laws which apply only,
moreover, to an entirely different subject.”

The authors of the Charter have left you free, entirely free, within the limits of custom; and consequently we, ourselves, within the same limitations are free to propose to you such qualification which appears to us most practical, which appears to us to come closest to the changing reality of facts in their relation to the general principles of law and the broad rules of morality which may seem to us to be such as to meet best the demands of human conscience expressed by international public opinion duly enlightened on Hitlerian atrocities, which will, in fact, remain within the limits of international penal custom. This custom is indeed still in a formulative stage; but although this Trial is without precedent, the problems that are being examined in this Court have arisen before; and the jurists who preceded us have already given them solutions. These solutions constitute precedents; and, as such, they constitute the first elements of your custom. In their memorandum to the Commission to the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Sanctions at the Peace Conference of 1919-1920 the French jurists, M. Larnaude and M. De Lapradelle wrote:

“Criminal law could not foresee that through a singular defiance
of the essential laws of humanity, of civilization, of honor, an
army, by virtue of the instructions of its sovereign, could
systematically lend itself to perform deeds through the
perpetration of acts such as the enemy has not shrunk from
performing in order to achieve success and victory. Therefore,
domestic criminal law has never before been able to make
provisions which would permit the repression of such acts. And
still one must, in the interpretation of every law, cling to the
intention of the law maker. . . . If, in certain cases
considered particularly propitious, one might succeed in
apprehending individuals bearing responsibility of whom the
Emperor could be considered an accomplice one would only
succeed, and not without difficulty, in narrowing the field of
his responsibility by limiting it to a few precise cases. . . .
It is a very restricted approach to the problem of William II to
diminish it and reduce it to the proportions of a criminal or a
court-martial case. . . . The high justice which an anxious
world awaits would not be satisfied if the German Emperor were
judged only as an accomplice or even as the co-author of a
common-law crime. His actions as Chief of State must be
considered in conformity with their true juridical
character. . . .”

But except for minor details all of this is indeed implicitly contained in the last paragraph of Article 6 of the Charter of your Tribunal:

“Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating
in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy
to commit any of the foregoing crimes”—Crimes against Peace,
War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity—“are responsible for all
acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.”

Fundamentally, all this is within strict conformity with the primordial German concept of Führertum, which places all responsibility on the leader and those who are with the leader from the very start. Thus we can, by as close as possible to reality, by applying the Charter of 8 August and Article 6 of the Charter of your Tribunal, by respecting the rules of common law defined by the chief of our delegation, M. De Menthon, and by following custom, which is sketched in the field of international penal law, require of your Tribunal to declare all the defendants guilty of having, in their role as the chief Hitlerian leaders of the German people, conceived, willed, ordained, or merely tolerated by their silence that assassinations or other inhuman acts be systematically committed, that violent treatment be systematically imposed on prisoners of war or civilians, that devastations without justification be systematically committed as a deliberate instrument for the accomplishment of their purpose of dominating Europe and the world through terrorism and the extermination of entire populations in order to enlarge the living space of the German people.

More specifically, we ask you to declare Göring, Keitel, and Jodl guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by ordering the seizure and the execution of hostages in violation of Article 50 of the Hague Convention which prohibits collective sanctions and reprisals.

We ask you to find Keitel, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann, and Ribbentrop guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan: 1. by ordering the terrorist murders of innocent civilians; 2. by ordering the execution without trial and torture to death of members of the resistance; 3. by ordering devastations without justification:

To declare Göring, Keitel, Jodl, Speer, and Sauckel guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by jeopardizing the health and the lives of prisoners of war, notably by submitting them to privations and hard treatments, by exposing them, or by attempting to expose them to bombings or other risks of war:

To declare Göring, Keitel, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, and Bormann guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan, by personally ordering or by provoking the formulation of orders leading to terrorist murder or to the lynching by the population of certain combatants, more specifically, of airmen and members of commando groups as well as the terrorist murder or slow extermination of certain categories of prisoners of war:

To declare Keitel guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by prescribing the deportation of innocent civilians and by applying to some of them the NN (Nacht und Nebel) regime which marked them for extermination:

To declare Jodl guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by ordering the arrest, with a view to deportation, of the Jews of Denmark:

To declare Frank, Rosenberg, Streicher, Von Schirach, Sauckel, Frick, and Hess guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan, by justifying the extermination of Jews or by working out a statute with a view to their extermination:

To declare Göring guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan: 1. by creating concentration camps and by placing them under the control of the State Police for the purpose of ridding National Socialism of any opposition; 2. by tolerating and then by approving fatal physiological experiments on the effect of cold, and of increasing or decreasing pressure, which experiments were carried out—with material provided by the Luftwaffe and controlled by Dr. Rascher, medical officer of the Luftwaffe detailed to the concentration camp of Dachau for that purpose—on healthy deportees who were involuntary subjects for the said experiments with which he (Göring), as chief, associated himself; 3. by utilizing in large numbers internees for exhausting labor under inhuman conditions in the armament factories of the Luftwaffe:

To find Speer guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by employing in large numbers the internees for exhausting labor under inhumane conditions in the armament factories (Document Number 1584-PS):

To find Bormann guilty of having taken part in the execution of this plan by participating in the extermination of internees in concentration camps (Document Number 654-PS).

With regard to Dönitz, Raeder, Von Papen, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Funk, and Schacht, we associate ourselves with the conclusion of our British and American colleagues. And in connection with the acts above defined, we ask you further, in accordance with the stipulation of Article 9 of the Charter of your Tribunal, to find the OKW and the OKH guilty of the execution of this plan by having ordered and participated in the deportation of innocent civilians from the occupied countries in the West:

To find the OKW, the OKH, and the OKL guilty of the execution of this plan by participating in the setting-up of the doctrine of hostages as a means to terrorize and by prescribing the seizure and execution of hostages in the countries of the West, by reducing to a degrading level the material living conditions of prisoners of war, by depriving the latter of the guarantees granted them by international custom and by positive international law, by ordering or by tolerating the employment of prisoners of war in dangerous work or in labor directly connected with military operations, by ordering the execution of escaped prisoners or prisoners attempting to escape, and the execution of numerous groups of commandos, and by giving the SS and SD directives for the extermination of airmen:

To find the OKL guilty of having participated in the execution of this plan: 1. by employing in large numbers internees in concentration camps for exhaustive labor under inhuman conditions in the armament factories of the Luftwaffe; 2. by participating in fatal physiological experiments on the effect of cold and of increasing or decreasing pressure, which experiments were carried out for the benefit of the Luftwaffe and conducted by Dr. Rascher, medical officer of the Luftwaffe, attached to the concentration camp at Dachau (Documents 343-PS, 1610-PS, 669-PS, L-90, 668-PS, UK-56, 835-PS, 834-PS, F-278 (B)):

To find the SS and the SD guilty of the execution of this plan by having deported and participated in the deportation of innocent civilians from the occupied countries in the West and by having tortured them and exterminated them by every means in concentration camps:

To find the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of the execution of this plan by having given direct orders for the execution or the deportation, with a view to their slow extermination, of members of commando groups, airmen, escaped prisoners, those who refused to accept forced labor, or those who were rebellious to the Nazi order; by forbidding any repression of acts of lynching committed by the German population on airmen brought down:

To find the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of having tortured and of having executed without trial members of the resistance:

To find the same organizations and in addition, the OKW and the OKH in collusion with the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo guilty of having committed or ordered massacres and devastations without justification (Documents 1063-PS, F-285, R-91, R-129, 1553-PS, L-7, F-185(A)):

To find the Gestapo guilty of having participated in the execution of this plan by the deportation of innocent civilians from the occupied countries of the West by the tortures and assassinations which were inflicted on them:

To find the Government of the Reich (Reichsregierung) and the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party guilty of having, for the purpose of dominating Europe and the world, conceived and prepared the systematic extermination of innocent civilians from the occupied countries of the West through their deportation and their assassination in concentration camps:

To find the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party and the Government of the Reich guilty of having, for the purpose of dominating Europe and the world through terrorism, systematically conceived and provoked tortures, summary executions, massacres, and devastation without cause as described above:

To find the Government of the Reich and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party guilty of having, for the purpose of dominating Europe and the world, conceived and prepared the extermination of combatants who had surrendered and the demoralization, extensive exploitation, and extermination of prisoners of war, and having participated in it.

Such are the juridical qualifications of the facts which I have the honor of submitting to you. But a few lessons emerge from these facts. May the Tribunal permit me to state them in conclusion.

For hundreds of years humanity has renounced the deportation of the vanquished, their enslavement, and their annihilation through misery, through hunger, steel, and fire. It is because a message of brotherhood had been given to the world, and the world could not entirely forget this message even in the midst of the horrors of war. From generation to generation we observed an upward effort ever since this message of peace had been given. We were confident that it was without any thought of regressing that man had taken the view of moral progress which formed a part of the common heritage of civilized nations. All nations revered, equally, good faith in relations among individuals. All of them had come to accept good faith as the law of their mutual relationship. International morality was little by little emerging and international relationship, like that between individuals, was more and more falling in line with the three precepts of the classical Roman jurists: “_Honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere_.” (Live honorably, inflict no harm on another, give each his due.)

Every civilized nation had been impregnated with a common humanism, growth of a long tradition, Christian and liberal. Based on this common heritage and achieved at the price of given experience, each nation, enlightened by the well-conceived interests of man, had understood or was coming to understand that in public as in private affairs loyalty, moderation, and mutual aid were golden rules which none could transgress indefinitely and with impunity.

The defeat, the catastrophe which has fallen upon Germany confirm us in this thought and give only more meaning and more clarity to the solemn warning addressed to the American people by President Roosevelt in his address on 27 May 1940:

“Although our Navy, our guns, and our planes are the first line
of defense, it is certain that back of all of that there is the
spirit and the morality of a free people which give to their
material defense power, support, and efficiency. . . .”

And in this struggle, the echoes of which are still rumbling in our ears, it was indeed those who could rest their strength upon law, nourish their force with justice, who won out. But because we have followed step by step the development of the criminal madness of the defendants and the consequences of that madness throughout these last years, we must conclude that the patrimony of man, of which we are the recipients, is frail indeed, that all kinds of regressions are possible, and that we must with care watch over their heritage. There is not a nation which, ill-educated, badly led by evil masters, would not in the long run revert to the barbarity of the early ages.

The German people whose military virtue we recognize, whose poets and musicians we love, whose application to work we admire, and who did not fail to give examples of probity in the most noble works of the spirit; this German people, which came rather late to civilization, beginning only with the eighth century, had slowly raised itself to the ranks of nations possessing the oldest culture. The contribution to modern or contemporary thought seemed to prove that this conquest of the spirit was final; Kant, Goethe, Johann Sebastian Bach belong to humanity just as much as Calvin, Dante, or Shakespeare; nevertheless, we behold the fact that millions of innocent men have been exterminated on the very soil of this people, by men of this people, in execution of a common plan conceived by their leaders, and this people made not a single effort to revolt.

This is what has become of it because it has scorned the virtues of political freedom, of civic equality, of human fraternity. This is what has become of it, because it forgot that all men are born free and equal before the law, that the essential action of a state has for its purpose the deeper and deeper penetration of a respect for spiritual liberty and fraternal solidarity in social relations and in international institutions.

It allowed itself to be robbed of its conscience and its very soul. Evil masters came who awakened its primitive passions and made possible the atrocities which I have described to you. In truth, the crime of these men is that they caused the German people to retrogress more than 12 centuries.

Their crime is that they conceived and achieved, as an instrument of government, a policy of terrorism toward the whole of the subjugated nations and toward their own people; their crime is that they pursued, as an end in itself, a policy of extermination of entire categories of innocent citizens. That alone would suffice to determine capital punishment. And still, the French Prosecution, represented by M. Faure, intends to present proof of a still greater crime, the crime of attempting “to obliterate from the world certain ideas which are called liberty, independence, security of nations, which are also called faith in the given word and respect for the human person,” the crime of having attempted to kill the very soul, the spirit of France and other occupied nations in the West. We consider that to be the gravest crime committed by these men, the gravest because it is written in the Scriptures, Matthew, XII, 31-32:

“All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but
the blasphemy unto the Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men.
Whosoever speaketh against the Spirit shall not be forgiven,
neither in this world, nor in the world to come. . . . For the
tree is known by its fruit. Race of vipers, how could ye speak
good words when ye are evil. . . .”

THE PRESIDENT: [_To M. Faure of the French Delegation_] Yes, M. Faure.

M. EDGAR FAURE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President, Honorable Judges, I have the honor of delivering to the Tribunal the concluding address of the French Prosecution. This presentation relates more particularly to the sections lettered (I) and (J) of Count Three of the Indictment: oath of allegiance and Germanization; and on the other hand to section (B) of Count Four, persecutions on political, racial, and religious grounds.

First of all I should like to present in a brief introduction the general ideas which govern the plan of my final pleading. The concept of Germanization has been stated in the presentation of M. De Menthon. It consists essentially in imposing upon the inhabitants of occupied territories norms for their political and social life such as the Nazis had determined according to their own doctrine and for their own profit. The combined activities which carried out Germanization or which have Germanization for their purpose, and which are illegal, have been defined as a criminal undertaking against humanity. The complete process of Germanization was employed in certain territories to annex them to the Reich. The Germans intended even before the end of the war to incorporate these territories within their own country. These territories, annexed and then germanized in an absolute manner, are the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Belgian Cantons of Eupen, Malmédy, and Moresnet, and the three French Departments of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin and the Moselle.

These territories can be considered relatively small in comparison with the total area of the territories occupied by the Germans. This in no wise mitigates the reprehensible character of these annexations; moreover, we should note at this point two essential aspects of our subject.

The first proposition: The Germans had conceived and prepared more extensive annexations than those actually carried out in an official manner. For reasons of expediency, they did not proceed with these annexations during the period of time at their disposal.

The second proposition: Annexation, on the other hand, was not the unique or obligatory procedure of Germanization. The Nazis discovered that they could employ different and various means to achieve their purpose of universal domination. The selection of means which vary according to circumstances, to attain and to camouflage an identical result, was characteristic of what has been called Nazi Machiavellism. Their conception is technically much more pliable, more clever, and more dangerous than the classical conception of territorial conquest. In this respect the most brutal competitor has over them the advantage of candor.

To begin with I say that the Germans had formulated the plan to annex more extensive territory. Numerous indications point to this. I would like to give you only two citations.

The first of these is taken from the documentation collected by our colleagues of the American Prosecution, an American document which has not yet been submitted to the Tribunal. I should say in addition that in my final pleading I shall refer only twice to very remarkable American documents. All the other documents which I shall submit will be new ones belonging to the French Prosecution. The document of which I speak now is Number 1155-PS of the American documents, and it appears in the file of documents submitted to you under Number RF-601, which will become, may it please the Tribunal, that number in French documentation.

This document is dated Berlin, 20 June 1940. It bears the notation: “Top Secret Staff Document.” Its title is: “Note for the Dossier on the Conference of 19 June 1940, at Headquarters of General Field Marshal Göring.”

The notes which are included in this document reflect, therefore, the views of the leaders and not individual interpretations. I would like to read to the Tribunal only Paragraph 6 of that document, which is to be found on Page 3. It is the first document bearing Number RF-601 (Document Number 1155-PS), I proceed with the reading of Paragraph 6, Page 3:

“General plans regarding the political development.

“Luxembourg is to be annexed by the Reich. Norway is to become
German. Alsace-Lorraine is to be reincorporated into the Reich.
An autonomous Breton state is to be created. Considerations are
pending concerning Belgium, the special treatment of the Flemish
in that country, and the creation of a State of Burgundy.”

The second citation which I shall submit to the Tribunal on this point refers to a French document which I submit as Document Number RF-602. This document comprises the minutes of the interrogation of Dr. Globke, a former assistant of State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Dr. Stuckart. It is dated 25 September 1945. This interrogation was taken by Major Graff of the French Judicial Service.

To the minutes of the interrogation has been added a memorandum which was delivered following the questioning by Dr. Globke. I read a passage from this interrogation, at the beginning of the document, Paragraph 1:

“Question: ‘Have you any knowledge of plans which envisage the
annexation of other French territories at the conclusion of
peace between Germany and France? (Belfort, Nancy, Bassin de
Briey, the coal fields of the North, the so-called “Red Zone”,
territory attached to the Government General of Belgium)?’

“Answer: ‘Yes, those plans did exist. They were worked out by
Dr. Stuckart, upon the personal instruction of the Führer, and I
have seen them. They were communicated to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, to the OKW, and to the Armistice Commission in
Wiesbaden. All these documents have been destroyed (Dr. Globke
maintains). The State Secretary, M. Stuckart, was ordered to
deliver a preliminary draft at the headquarters of the Führer
(End of 1940, before the launching of the Russian campaign).

“‘After examination the Führer considered the proposal was too
moderate; and he ordered provisions for the incorporation of
further territories, specifically those along the Channel.

“‘Dr. Stuckart then prepared a second draft, with a map
attached, on which the approximate borders were indicated. I
have seen it, and I can show it to you roughly on a large scale
map of France. I do not know whether this second plan was
approved by Hitler.’”

THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, did you tell us who Dr. Globke was?

M. FAURE: Yes, Mr. President, he was the assistant of Dr. Stuckart, State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior. He styled himself in his interrogation “officer in charge of matters concerning Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg in the Ministry of the Interior, since 1940.”

I now read a passage from the attached memorandum. This appears in your document book immediately after the passage I have just read. Still under Document Number RF-602, I now read Paragraph 6 of the memorandum in question; it is the beginning of the document before your eyes.

“The plan of a new Franco-German border was elaborated upon in
the Ministry of Interior by the State Secretary Dr. Stuckart,
upon the order given to him by Hitler. This plan envisaged that
the territory in the north and the east of France which, for
historical, political, racial, geographical, or any other
reasons ostensibly did not belong to western but to central
Europe, should be given back to Germany. A first draft was
submitted to Hitler at his general headquarters and it was
approved by him in full. Hitler nevertheless wanted . . .”

DR. STAHMER: The Defense has not received these documents. Consequently, even today we are not in a position to follow the presentation. Above all, we are not in a position to check individually whether the validity of these documents really exists at all.

THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, is that correct, that none of these documents have been deposited in the Defense Information Center?

M. FAURE: They have been deposited with two photostatic copies in the document center of the defendants’ counsel. Moreover, before I complete my statement, I think that the Defense Counsel will have full opportunity to study this very brief document and to make any observations which he may desire; but I can give you assurance that those documents were delivered.

THE PRESIDENT: What assurance can you give me that the orders which the Tribunal has given have been carried out?

M. FAURE: The documents have been delivered to the Defense Counsel in accordance with instruction and two photostatic copies have been delivered in the document room of the Defense. These documents are, moreover, in the German language, which should greatly facilitate the task of the Defense Counsel, as the interrogation was taken in the German language by an officer of the French Judiciary Services.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, did you hear what M. Faure said?

DR. STAHMER: I should certainly not raise any objections if these documents had actually been sent to our document room and put at our disposal. This morning I and several others looked into the matter and made an effort to determine whether the documents were really there. We could not find out. Dr. Steinbauer and I went there; we could not find the documents. I shall go there again to see whether they may not have come in the meantime.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has stated on a variety of occasions that they attach a great importance to the documents being deposited in the defendants’ Information Center and copies supplied in accordance with the regulations which they have laid down. Whether that has been done on this occasion, is disputed by Dr. Stahmer. The Tribunal proposes therefore to have the matter investigated as soon as possible and to see exactly whether the rules have been carried out or not. And in future they hope that they will be carried out with the greatest strictness. In the meantime, I think it will be most convenient for you to continue.

M. FAURE: The defendants’ counsel tells me that the documents are in the Defense Counsel Room, but they have not yet been distributed. It can be seen, therefore, that the orders were fully respected; but because of the burden of work it may be that the Defense may not individually have received these documents. In any event, I am prepared to submit immediately to the Defense Counsel mainly concerned with this, photostatic copies which will enable them to follow my reading of the documents, which, incidentally, are quite brief.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal will have the facts investigated by the Marshal. And in the meantime, you can continue. The Marshal of the Court will immediately find out and report to the Tribunal what the facts are about the deposition of the documents and the time at which they were deposited. In the meantime you can continue, and we shall be glad if you will assist the defendants’ counsel by giving them any copies you may have available.

M. FAURE: I was reading then, Document Number RF-602, the attached memorandum. If the Tribunal wishes to follow the reading of this document will it kindly take the book entitled “Exposé” or “Presentation,” and turn to Page 6 thereof. The passage which I am now coming to is the last paragraph of Page 6. “Introduction—Exposé,” Page 6, third and last paragraph, I am continuing:

“A first draft was submitted to Hitler at his general
headquarters and was approved by him as a whole; but,
nevertheless, he called for an enlargement of the territory
falling to Germany, in particular, along the Channel coast. The
final draft was to serve as the basis for future discussions
with the administrative departments concerned. These discussions
did not take place. The intended frontier followed approximately
a course beginning at the mouth of the Somme, turning eastward
along the northern edge of the Paris Basin and Champagne to the
Argonne, then bent to the south crossing Burgundy, and westward
of the Franche-Comte, reaching the Lake of Geneva. For some
districts alternative solutions were suggested.”

These German plans were indicated on several occasions by specific measures having to do with the territories in question, measures which might be designated preannexation measures.

I come now to the second proposal which I referred to a while ago. With or without annexation, the Germans had in mind to take and maintain under their domination all the occupied countries. As a matter of fact their determination was to germanize and to nazify all of Western Europe and even the African Continent. This intention appears from the very fact of the conspiracy which has been laid bare before the Tribunal so completely by my colleagues of the American Prosecution. That will also be shown by the applications made of it, of which the principal ones will be retraced in this concluding address.

I merely want to recall to the Tribunal this general point that the plan for Germanic predominance is defined according to the German interpretation itself in a public diplomatic document, which is the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940 between Germany, Italy, and Japan. In this connection I would like to quote before the Tribunal a few sentences of a comment made upon this treaty by an official German author, Von Freytagh-Loringhoven, a member of the Reichstag, who wrote a book on German foreign policy from 1933 to 1941. This book was published in a French translation in Paris at the publishing house of Sorlot, during the occupation.

I do not want to submit this as a document, but merely as a quotation from a published work, a book, which is here in your hands. I read from Page 311:

“This treaty granted Germany and Italy a dominant position in
the new European order, and it accorded Japan a similar role in
the area of eastern Asia.”

I am now skipping a sentence that has no significance.

“At first glance, one could realize that the Tripartite Pact had
in mind a double purpose.”

I shall skip the following sentence which is without interest, and I go to the sentence dealing with the second purpose:

“Moreover, it entrusted the parties with a mission for the
future, that is to say, the establishment of a new order in
Europe and eastern Asia.

“Without seeking to lessen the importance of the first question,
there can be no doubt that this second purpose, dealing with the
future, involved vaster projects and was, in fact, the principal
point. For the first time in an international treaty, in the
Tripartite Pact, the terms ‘space’ and ‘orientation’ were used
linking one with the other.”

I now go to Page 314 where the author makes a remark which appears to me to be significant:

“Now, the Tripartite Pact places a clear delimitation of the
wider spaces created by nature on our globe. The concept of
space, it is true, is employed explicitly only for the Far East,
but it is equally applicable to Europe and that within this
conception Africa is comprised. The latter is certainly
politically and economically a complement, or if one wishes, an
annex of Europe. Moreover, it is obvious that the Tripartite
Pact fixes the limits of the two great regions or spaces
reserved for the partners, that the pact tacitly recognizes the
third area, that is Asia, properly speaking, and that it leaves
aside the fourth, the American Continent, thus leaving the
latter to its own destiny. In this way the whole surface of the
globe is concerned; and an idea, which as yet has not been
considered except in theory, was given the significance of a
political principle derived from international law.”

I have felt that this text was of interest because, on the one hand, it clarifies the fact that the African Continent is itself included in the space reserved to the German claimants, and on the other, it states that the government of such an immense space by Germany constitutes international law. This pretense of acting juridically is one of the characteristics of the undertaking to germanize the world from 1940 to 1945. It is undoubtedly one of the reasons which inspired Nazi Germany to proceed only on rare occasions by the annexation of territories.

Annexation is not indispensable for the domination of a great area. It can be replaced by other methods which correspond rather accurately to the usual term of “vassalization.”

THE PRESIDENT: Do you not think this will be a convenient time to break off?

[_A recess was taken._]

M. FAURE: Mr. President, before resuming my brief, I should like to ask the Tribunal if they could agree to hear, during the afternoon session, a witness who is M. Reuter, President of the Chamber of Luxembourg.

THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, M. Faure, if that is convenient to you, the Tribunal is quite willing to hear the witness you name.

M. FAURE: I propose on those conditions to have him heard at the beginning of the second part of the afternoon session.

I pointed out a moment ago that the different methods of disguised annexation can correspond to the term “vassalization.” From a German author I shall borrow a formula which is eloquent. It is Dr. Sperl, in an article in the _Krakauer Zeitung_, who used this expression: “A differentiation in methods of German domination.” In using, thus, indirect and differentiated methods of domination, the Germans acted in political matters, as we have seen before, in the same way as they acted in economic matters. I had the opportunity to point out to the Tribunal, in my first brief, that the Germans immediately seized the keys of economic life. If you will permit me to use this Latin expression, I shall say as far as sovereignty in the occupied countries is concerned, they insured for themselves the power of the keys, “_potestas clavium_.” They seized the keys of sovereignty in each country. In that fashion, without being obliged to abolish officially national sovereignty as in the case of annexation, they were able to control and direct the exercise of this sovereignty.

Beginning with these principle ideas, the plan of my brief was conceived as follows:

In the first chapter I shall examine the regime in annexed territories where national sovereignty was abolished. In a second chapter I shall examine the mechanism of the seizure of sovereignty for the benefit of the occupying power in the regions which were not annexed. Then it will be suitable to examine the results of these usurpations of sovereignty and the violation of the rights of the population which resulted from them. I thought it necessary that I should group these results by dealing with the principal ones in a third and fourth chapter. The third chapter will be devoted to spiritual Germanization, that is, to the propaganda in the very extensive sense that the German concept gives to this term. Chapter four, and the last, will bear the heading, “The Administrative Organization of Criminal Action.”

I would now like to point out, as far as the documentation of my brief is concerned, I have forced myself to limit the number of texts which will be presented to the Tribunal; and I shall attempt to make my quotations as short as possible. For the fourth chapter, for example, I might point out that the French Delegation examined more than 2,000 documents, counting only the original German documents, of which I have kept only about fifty.

I should like also to point out to the Tribunal how the documents will be presented in the document books which you have before you. The documents are numbered at the top of the page to the right; they are numbered in pencil and correspond to the order in which I shall quote them. Each dossier has a pagination which begins with the number 100.

I would ask the Tribunal now to take up the document book entitled: “The Annexed Territories of Eupen, Malmédy, and Moresnet.”

In carrying out, without any attempt or cloak of legality, the annexation of occupied territories, Germany did something much more serious than violating the rules of law. It is the negation of the very idea of international law. The lawyer, Bustamante y Sirven, in his treatise on international law expresses himself in the following terms regarding this subject:

“It can be observed that never have we alluded at any moment to
the hypothesis that an occupation terminates because the
occupying power takes possession of the occupied territory
through his military forces and without any convention. The
motive for this mission is very simple and very clear. Since
conquest cannot be considered as a legitimate mode of
acquisition, these results are uniquely the result of force and
can be neither determined nor measured by the rules of law.”