Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 04 (part 3 of 3)
“5. This order does not apply to the treatment of any soldiers who, in the course of normal hostilities, large-scale offensive actions, landing operations, and airborne operations, are captured in open battle or give themselves up. Nor does this order apply to enemy soldiers falling into our hands after battles at sea, or to enemy soldiers trying to save their lives by parachute after air battles.
“6. I will hold responsible under military law, for failing to carry out this order, all commanders and officers who either have neglected their duty of instructing the troops about this order, or acted against this order when it was to be executed.”
It is signed Adolf Hitler, and the Tribunal will note that this order was issued by OKW in 12 copies, and the distribution shown on the second page included the three Supreme Commands, Army, Sea, and Air, and the principal field commands.
Now, the same day Hitler issued a supplementary order, that is, Document 503-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-542. This was issued for the purpose of explaining the reasons why the basic order was issued. In this explanation, Hitler gave a rather different set of reasons for the issuance of the order and pointed out that Allied commando operations had been extraordinarily successful in the destruction of rear communications, intimidating laborers, and destroying important war plants in occupied areas. This is the other basic document; and while I need not read it in full, I would like to read substantial excerpts, starting with the first paragraph at the top of the page:
“Added to the decree concerning the destruction of terror and sabotage troops”—then in parentheses was a cross reference to the order which I have just read—“a supplementary order of the Führer is enclosed.
“This order is intended for commanders only and must not, under any circumstances, fall into enemy hands.
“The further distribution is to be limited accordingly by the receiving bureaus.
“The bureaus named in the distribution list are held responsible for the return and destruction of all distributed copies of this order and copies made thereof.”
It is signed, “The Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, by order of Jodl.”
Thereafter follows a distribution list and then the supplementary order itself, signed by Hitler. I will start reading the first two paragraphs of the supplementary order which appear at the bottom of Page 1 of the translation:
“I have been compelled to issue strict orders for the destruction of enemy sabotage troops and to declare non-compliance with these orders severely punishable. I deem it necessary to announce to the competent commanding officers and commanders the reasons for this decree.
“As in no previous war, a method of destruction of communications behind the front, intimidation of the populace working for Germany, as well as the destruction of war-important industrial plants in territories occupied by us has been developed in this war.”
I propose to skip to the bottom of Page 2, the last two paragraphs on Page 2 of the translation:
“The consequences of these activities are of extraordinary weight. I do not know whether each commander and officer is cognizant of the fact that the destruction of one single electric power plant, for instance, can deprive the Luftwaffe of many thousand tons of aluminum, thereby eliminating the construction of countless aircraft that will be missed in the fight at the front and so contribute to serious damage of the homeland as well as to bloody losses of the fighting soldiers.
“Yet this form of war is completely without danger for the adversary. Since he lands his sabotage troops in uniform but at the same time supplies them with civilian clothes, they can, according to need, appear as soldiers or civilians. While they themselves have orders ruthlessly to remove any German soldiers or even natives who get in their way, they run no danger of suffering really serious losses in their operations, since at the worst, if they are caught, they can immediately surrender and thus believe that they will theoretically fall under the provisions of the Geneva Convention. There is no doubt, however, that this is a misuse in the worst form of the Geneva agreements, especially since part of these elements are even criminals liberated from prisons, who can rehabilitate themselves through these activities.
“England and America will therefore always be able to find volunteers for this kind of warfare, as long as they can truthfully assure them that there is no danger of loss of life for them. At worst, all they have to do is successfully to commit their attacks on people, traffic installations, or other installations and, upon being encountered by the enemy, to capitulate.
“If the German conduct of war is not to suffer grievous damage through these incidents, it must be made clear to the adversary that all sabotage troops will be exterminated, without exception, to the last man.
“This means that their chance of escaping with their lives is nil. Under no circumstances can it be permitted, therefore, that a dynamite, sabotage, or terrorist unit simply allows itself to be captured, expecting to be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. It must, under all circumstances, be ruthlessly exterminated.
“The report on this subject appearing in the Armed Forces communiqué will briefly and laconically state that a sabotage, terror, or destruction unit has been encountered and exterminated to the last man.
“I therefore expect the commanding officers of armies subordinate to them, as well as individual commanders, not only to realize the necessity of taking such measures, but to carry out this order with all energy. Officers and noncommissioned officers who fail through some weakness are to be reported without fail or, if the circumstances require it, e.g. if danger is imminent, to be at once made strictly accountable. The homeland, as well as the fighting soldier at the front, has the right to expect that behind their backs the essentials of nourishment as well as the supply with war-important weapons and ammunition remains secure.
“These are the reasons for the issuance of my decree.
“If it should become necessary, for reasons of interrogation, initially to spare one man or two, then they are to be shot immediately after interrogation.”
Your Lordship, the next is Document C-179, which will be Exhibit USA-543. As this document shows, 10 days later on 28 October 1942 and while the Defendant Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, the naval war staff in Berlin transmitted its copy of the basic order of 18 October to the lower naval commands. The copy distributed by the Navy and the covering memorandum from the naval war staff show clearly the secrecy which surrounded the dissemination of this order; and I read the first sheet of this document only, the cover sheet:
“Enclosed please find an order of the Führer regarding annihilation of terror and sabotage units. This order must not be distributed in writing by flotilla leaders, section commanders, or officers of this rank. After verbal notification to subordinate sections, the above officers must hand this order over to the next higher section, which is responsible for its withdrawal and destruction.”
Passing over to Page 3 of this document, at the very end we find a similar admonition in the notice for distribution, at the very end of the document; I read:
“These instructions are not to be distributed over and above the battalions and the corresponding staffs of the other services. After notification, those copies distributed over and above the regimental and corresponding staffs of the other services must be withdrawn and destroyed.”
The next document, Your Lordship, is C-178, which becomes Exhibit USA-544. This document is dated 11 February 1943, which was 12 days after the Defendant Dönitz had become Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. On that day, this memorandum was circulated within the naval war staff in order to clear up certain misunderstandings as to the scope of the basic order of 18 October 1942. This document, of which I will read the first four paragraphs, indicates why the earlier order had been treated as such a secret matter and also directs that all naval commanders and officers who failed to carry out the order, or to instruct their units concerning the order, would run the risk of serious court-martial penalties. I’ll read the first four paragraphs only:
“From the notice given by the 3rd Section of the Naval Operations Staff on 1 February 1943 it has been discovered that the competent departments of the General Staff of the Army, as well as those of the Air Force Operations Staff, have a wrong conception regarding the treatment of saboteurs. A telephone inquiry at the 3rd Section of the Operations Staff proved that this naval authority was not correctly informed either.
“In view of this situation, reference is made to Paragraph 6 of the Führer Order of 18 October 1942”—and then a cross-reference—“according to which all commanders and officers who have neglected their duty in instructing their units about the order referring to treatment of saboteurs are threatened with punishment by court-martial.
“The first Führer order concerning this matter of 18 October 1942 was given the protection of top secret merely because it stated therein (1) that according to the Führer’s views, the spreading of military sabotage organizations in the East and West may have tremendous consequences for our whole conduct of the war, and (2) that the shooting of uniformed prisoners acting on military orders must be carried out even after they have surrendered voluntarily and asked for pardon.
“On the other hand, the annihilation of sabotage units in battle is not at all to be kept secret; but on the contrary, to be currently published in the OKW reports. The purpose of these measures to act as a deterrent will not be achieved if those taking part in enemy commando operations would not learn that certain death and not safe imprisonment awaits them. As the saboteurs are to be annihilated immediately, unless their statements are first needed for military reasons, it is necessary that not only all members of the Armed Forces must receive instructions that these types of saboteurs, even if they are in uniform, are to be annihilated but also all departments of the home staff, dealing with this kind of questions, must be informed of the course of action which has been ordered.”
I will call the Tribunal’s attention to the two reasons given in that quotation for keeping secret from the public knowledge of the fact that uniformed prisoners would be shot, even after they had surrendered and asked for pardon. This shows a clear awareness that that was in direct contravention of the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Taylor, did you read the paragraph beginning, “Practical difficulties . . .”?
COL. TAYLOR: No, Your Honor. I’ll read that.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you should.
COL. TAYLOR: “Practical difficulties may develop because of the definition of the term ‘sabotage units.’ The annihilation and destruction, according to Paragraph 5 of the Führer Order of 18 October 1942, do not apply to troops participating in large-scale landing operations and large-scale airborne operations. The criterion is to be found in that, in the latter case, an open battle takes place, whereas, for instance, 10 or more people who land by sea or air, or drop by parachute not to fight an open battle but to destroy either a factory, a bridge, or a railway installation, would fall into the category of those who must be annihilated.”
The next document, Your Honor, is 508-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-545. Now, the Hitler order of 18 October 1942 was actually carried out in a number of instances, of which we have the documentary proof for several. Document 508-PS shows that during the night of 19-20 November 1942, a British freight glider crashed near Egersund, in Norway. The glider carried a British commando unit of 17 men, of whom three were apparently killed in the crash. All were in British uniform. Fourteen survivors were executed in accordance with the Hitler Order the evening of 20 November. In proof of this I will read certain extracts from 508-PS, beginning on Page 1 of the translation, the paragraph numbered “1)”:
“1. Following supplementary report is made about landing of a British freight glider at Egersund in the night of . . .”
It reads November 11 in the translation, but I believe in the original it was November 20; that is a typographical error.
“a) No firing on the part of the German defense.
“b) The towing plane (Wellington) crashed after touching the ground; 7-man crew dead. The attached freight glider also crashed; of the 17-man crew 14 alive. Indisputably a sabotage force. Führer Order has been carried out.”
I pass to Page 3 of the translation, on which page appear two teletype messages. I wish to read the first two paragraphs at the top of the page:
“On 20 November 1942 at 5:50 an enemy plane was found 15 kilometers northeast of Egersund. It is a British aircraft (towed glider) made of wood without engine. Of the 17-member crew three are dead, six are severely, the others are slightly, wounded.
“All wore English khaki uniforms without sleeve insignia. Furthermore, following items were found: 8 knapsacks, tents, skis, and radiosender, exact number still unknown. The glider carried rifles, light machine guns and machine pistols, number unknown. At present the prisoners are with the battalion in Egersund.”
Passing to the second teletype message, the first paragraph:
“Beside the 17-member crew extensive sabotage material and work equipment were found. Therefore the sabotage purpose was absolutely proved. The 280th Infantry Division ordered the execution of the action according to the Führer Order. The execution was carried out toward the evening of 20 November. Some of the prisoners wore blue ski-suits under their khaki uniforms which had no insignia on the sleeves. During a short interrogation the survivors have revealed nothing but their names, ranks and serial numbers.”
I pass to the last paragraph of that teletype, at the foot of Page 3 of the translation:
“In connection with the shooting of the 17 members of the crew, the Armed Forces Commander of Norway has issued an order to the district commanders, according to which the interrogations by G-2”—that was I. C. in the German—“and by BDS”—police—“are important before the execution of the Führer Order; in case of Paragraph Number 4 of the Führer Order, the prisoners are to be handed over to the BDS.”
Your Lordship, the next document is 512-PS, Exhibit USA-546. This document recites three specific instances where the Hitler Order was carried out in Norway and especially emphasizes the desirability of taking individual commandos prisoner for interrogation. I read from Document 512-PS, dated 13 December 1942:
“According to the last sentence of the Führer Order of 18th October, individual saboteurs can be spared for the time being in order to keep them for interrogation. The importance of this measure was proved in the cases of the Glomfjord, 2-man torpedo Drontheim, and glider plane Stavanger, where interrogations resulted in valuable knowledge of enemy intentions. Since in the case of Egersund the saboteur was liquidated immediately and no clues were obtained; therefore, Armed Forces Commander refers to the above-mentioned last sentence of the Führer Order calling for liquidation only after a short interrogation.”
One final document from the Norwegian Theater of War is relative.
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Taylor, what does “RK” in the last paragraph mean? The first words of the last paragraph?
COL. TAYLOR: Red Cross (Rotes Kreuz).
THE PRESIDENT: So they had a protest from the Red Cross?
COL. TAYLOR: Yes, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: And “BDS”?
COL. TAYLOR: That is “Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo).”
Document 526-PS which is Exhibit USA-502, dated 10 May 1943, Colonel Storey has already brought to the Tribunal’s attention in connection with the presentation against the Sicherheitsdienst. I will first read the opening sentences:
“On 30 March 1943, in Toftefjord (degree of latitude 70), an enemy cutter was sighted. Cutter was blown up by enemy.
“Crew: 2 dead and 10 taken prisoners.
“Cutter sent from Scalloway (Shetland Isles) by the Norwegian Navy.”
Passing to the word “Purpose”:
“Purpose: Building of an organization for the sabotaging of strong-points, battery positions, staff and troop billets and bridges.
“Assigner of mission in London: Norwegian Major Munthe.
“Führer Order executed by Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service).
“Wehrmacht communiqué of 6 April announces the following about it: ‘In northern Norway an enemy sabotage unit was engaged and destroyed on approaching the coast.’”
Now, shifting to the Italian Theater of War, I call the Court’s attention to 509-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-547. This document is dated 7 November 1943; and is a telegram from the Supreme Commander in Italy to OKW; and it shows that on 2 November 1943 three British commandos, taken prisoner near Pescara in Italy, were given “special treatment” (sonderbehandelt), which as the Court knows from previous evidence in the case, meant death. What happened to the nine remaining prisoners of war in the hospital, we do not know.
I have one more document from the Italian Theater, 2610-PS, Exhibit USA-548. This specifically shows the carrying out of Hitler’s orders. It consists of an affidavit, dated 7 November 1945, by Frederick W. Roche, a major in the Army of the United States. Major Roche was the Judge Advocate of an American Military Commission which tried General Anton Dostler, formerly Commander of the 75th German Army Corps, for the unlawful execution of 15 members of the United States Armed Forces. I will read from this affidavit:
“Frederick W. Roche, being duly sworn, deposes and says:
“I am a major in the Army of the United States. I was the Judge Advocate of the Military Commission which tried Anton Dostler for ordering the execution of the group of 15 United States Army personnel who comprised the ‘Ginny Mission.’ This Military Commission, consisting of five officers, was appointed by command of General McNarney, by Special Order, Number 269, dated 26 September 1945, Headquarters, Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army, APO 512.
“The Military Commission met at Rome, Italy, on 8 October 1945, and proceeded with the trial of the case of the United States versus Anton Dostler. The trial of this case consumed 4 days, and the findings and sentence were announced on the morning of 12 October 1945. The charge and specification in this case are as follows:
“Charge: Violation of the law of war.
“Specification: In that Anton Dostler, then general, commanding military forces of the German Reich, a belligerent enemy nation, to wit the 75th Army Corps, did, on or about 24 March 1944, in the vicinity of La Spezia, Italy, contrary to the law of war, order to be shot summarily, a group of United States Army personnel consisting of two officers and 13 enlisted men who had then recently been captured by forces under General Dostler, which order was carried into execution on or about 26 March 1944, resulting in the death of the said 15 members of the Army of the United States. . . .”—and a list of names follows.
“I was present throughout the entire proceeding. I heard all the testimony and I am familiar with the records in this case. The facts developed in this proceeding are as follows:
“On the night of 22 March 1944 two officers and 13 enlisted men of the 2677th Special Reconnaissance Battalion of the Army of the United States disembarked from some United States Navy boats and landed on the Italian coast near Stazione di Framura. All 15 men were members of the Army of the United States and were in the military service of the United States. When they landed on the Italian coast, they were all properly dressed in the field uniform of the United States Army and they carried no civilian clothes. Their mission was to demolish a railroad tunnel on the main line between La Spezia and Genoa. That rail line was being used by the German forces to supply their fighting forces on the Cassino and Anzio beachhead fronts. The entire group was captured on the morning of 24 March 1944 by a patrol consisting of Fascist soldiers and a group of members of the German Army. All 15 men were placed under interrogation in La Spezia and they were held in custody until the morning of 26 March 1944, when they were all executed by a firing squad. These men were never tried nor were they brought before any court or given any hearing; they were shot by order of Anton Dostler, then general commanding the 75th German Army Corps.
“Anton Dostler took the stand in this case and testified, by way of defense, that he ordered the 15 American soldiers to be shot pursuant to the Hitler Order of 18 October 1942 on commando operations, which provided that commandos were to be shot and not taken prisoners of war, even after they had been interrogated. He also testified that he would have been subject to court-martial proceedings if he did not obey the Hitler Order.
“The following is a true copy of the findings and sentence in the case of the United States against Anton Dostler, as these findings and sentence appear in the original record of the trial and as they were announced in open court at Rome, Italy, on 12 October 1945:
“Findings: General Dostler, as President of this Commission it is my duty to inform you that the Commission, in closed session and upon secret written ballot, at least two-thirds of all the members of the Commission concurring in each finding of guilty, finds you of the specification and of the charge: Guilty.
“Sentence: And again in closed session and upon secret written ballot, at least two-thirds of all the members of the Commission concurring, sentences you: To be shot to death by musketry.”
Now the order of 18 October 1942 remained in force, so far as we know, until the end of the war. I wish to offer 506-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-549. This document is dated 22 June 1944. It is initialed by Warlimont, and in it the OKW made it where the commando operation was undertaken by only one person. I will read the single paragraph of the order:
“The Operations Staff agrees with the view taken in the letter of the army group judge to the Supreme Commander Southwest of 20 May 1944. The Führer Order is to be applied even if the enemy employs only one person for a task. Therefore, it does not make any difference if several persons or a single person take part in a commando operation. The reason for the special treatment of participants in a commando operation is that such operations do not correspond to the German concept of usage and customs of warfare.”
The Allied landing in Normandy early in June 1944, in the course of which large-scale airborne operations took place, raised among the Germans the question as to how far the Hitler Order would be applied in Normandy, and in France behind the German lines. I direct the Court’s attention to Document 531-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-550. The memorandum is dated 23 June 1944 and is signed by Warlimont. Warlimont’s memorandum starts by quoting a teletype received from the Supreme Command in the West, inquiring what should be done about applying the Hitler Order to airborne troops and commandos.
I would like to read a small part of the teletype, beginning at the beginning:
“Supreme Command West; teletype message Number 1750/44; top secret; 23 June 1944.
“The treatment of enemy commando groups has so far been carried out according to the order referred to.”
If I may interpolate here, the order referred to is shown in the cross-reference to the Führer Order of 18 October 1942.
“With the large-scale landing achieved, a new situation has arisen. The order referred to directs, in Paragraph 5, that enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner in open combat or surrender within the limits of normal combat operations (such as large-scale landing operations and undertakings) are not to be treated according to Paragraphs 3 and 4. It must be established in a form easily understood by the troops how far the concept ‘within the limits of normal combat operations, et cetera’ is to be extended.”
Then I pass down to Subparagraph D and read the first sentence of that subparagraph.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you ought to read the latter part of “C.”
COL. TAYLOR: Your Honor, I think it is all summarized in the one sentence.
THE PRESIDENT: The last sentence is the one that I mean.
COL. TAYLOR: “Considerable reprisals against our own prisoners must be expected if its contents become known.”
Then, continuing with “D”:
“The application of Number 5 for all enemy soldiers in uniform penetrating from the outside into the occupied western territories is held by the Supreme Command West to be the most correct and clearest solution.”
Accordingly, as it is there shown, the Supreme Command in the West directed that Paragraph 5, which is the paragraph under which the orders for execution are not to be applied, should be utilized in the West.
At the foot of the page is the position taken by the Armed Forces Operational Staff, the recommendation they were making:
“1. The Commando Order remains basically in effect, even after the enemy landing in the West.
“2. Number 5 of the order is to be clarified to the effect that the order is not valid for those enemy soldiers in uniform who are captured in open combat in the immediate combat area of the beachhead by our troops committed there, or who surrender. Our troops committed in the immediate combat area means the divisions fighting on the front line as well as reserves up to and including corps headquarters.
“3. Furthermore, in doubtful cases, enemy personnel who have fallen into our hands alive are to be turned over to the SD, upon whom it is incumbent to determine whether the Commando Order is to be applied or not.
“4. Supreme Command West is to see to it that all units committed in its zone are orally acquainted in a suitable manner with the order concerning the treatment of members of commando undertakings of 18 October 1942, along with the above explanation.”
The final document on this episode, or inquiry, is 551-PS, which becomes Exhibit USA-551, and this is the actual order of 25 June 1944, constituting OKW’s reply to the inquiry from the Supreme Command West, signed by Keitel, initialed by Warlimont and Jodl. I will read beginning with:
“Subject: Treatment of commando participants.
“1. Even after the landing of Anglo-Americans in France, the order of the Führer on the annihilation of terror and sabotage units of 18 October 1942 remains fully in force.
“Enemy soldiers in uniform in the immediate combat area of the bridgehead, that is, in the area of the divisions fighting in the most forward lines, as well as of the reserves up to the corps commands, according to Number 5 of the basic order of 18 October 1942, remain exempted.
“2. All members of terror and sabotage units, found outside the immediate combat area, who include fundamentally all parachutists, are to be killed in combat. In special cases, they are to be turned over to the SD.
“3. All troops committed outside the combat area of Normandy are to be informed about the duty to destroy enemy terror and sabotage units briefly and succinctly, according to the directives issued for it.
“4. Supreme Commander West will report immediately daily how many saboteurs have been liquidated in this manner. This applies especially also to undertakings by the military commanders. The number is to be published daily in the Armed Forces communiqué to exercise a frightening effect, as had already been done toward previous commando undertakings in the same manner.”
Your Lordship, there is just one further development in connection with this order, this basic order, and that was that in July 1944. The question was then raised within the German High Command as to whether the order should be applied to members of foreign military missions with special regard to the British, American, and Soviet military missions which were co-operating with Allied Forces in Southeastern Europe, notably in Yugoslavia. A long document signed by Warlimont, which is 1279-PS, and becomes Exhibit USA-552, embodies the discussions which were had at OKW. I think I need not read from this document, and merely wish to point out that the Armed Forces operational staff recommended that the order should be applied to these military missions and drew up a draft to this effect. I would, however, like to read 537-PS, which is Exhibit USA-553. This is the order which actually resulted from these discussions. It is dated 30 July 1944. I will read that in full:
“Subject: Treatment of members of foreign ‘Military Missions’ captured together with partisans.
“In the areas of the High Command Southeast and Southwest, members of foreign so-called ‘Military Missions’ (Anglo-American as well as Soviet-Russian) captured in the course of the struggle against partisans shall not receive the treatment as specified in the special orders regarding the treatment of captured partisans. Therefore they are not to be treated as prisoners of war but in conformity with the Führer’s order concerning the annihilation of terror and sabotage troops of 18 October 1942.
“This order shall not be transmitted to units subordinate to the corps commands and the equivalent staffs of the other branches of the Armed Forces, and is to be destroyed after being made known.
“The Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, Keitel.”
Pursuant to this order, approximately 15 members of an Allied military mission to Slovakia were executed in January 1945, as is shown by Document L-51, which is already in the record as Exhibit USA-521, and which has been read in full by Lieutenant Harris. I will not read it again.
This concludes the presentation of documents with respect to the order of the 18th of October 1942 and its subsequent enforcement and application. I can pass from here to another subject.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn for 10 minutes now.
[A recess was taken.]
COL. TAYLOR: Your Lordship, the order I have just been discussing operated chiefly in the Western Theater of War. This was natural, since Germany occupied almost the entire western coast of Europe from 1940 until the last year of the war, and during that period land fighting in Western Europe was largely limited to commando operations.
I want to pass now to the Eastern Front, where there was large-scale land fighting in Poland and the Soviet Union, from 1941 on. Here the German forces were fighting among a hostile population and had to face extensive partisan activities behind their lines. I propose to show here that the activities of the German Armed Forces against partisans and against other elements of the population became a vehicle for carrying out Nazi political and racial policies and a vehicle for the massacre of Jews and numerous segments of the Slav population which were regarded by the Nazis as undesirable. I will show that it was the policy of the German Armed Forces to behave with the utmost severity to the civilian population of the occupied territories; and that its military operations, particularly against partisans, were so conducted as to advance the Nazi policies to which I have referred.
I will show that the Armed Forces supported, assisted, and acted in co-operation with the SS groups to which reference has been made in the presentation by Major Farr and Colonel Storey.
I do not plan to make a full or even partial showing of war crimes on the Eastern Front. That will be done by the Soviet Delegation. Nor do I plan to retrace the ground covered by Colonel Storey and Major Farr during their presentation of the evidence against the SS, SD, and Gestapo, except to the extent necessary to clarify the relations between these organizations and the German Armed Forces and to demonstrate their close collaboration in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe.
The first document to which I will make reference is Document C-50, which will be Exhibit USA-554; and it will show that these policies of severity were determined upon and made official even before the invasion of the Soviet Union took place. This document consists of an order by Hitler dated 13 May 1941 and two covering transmittal sheets of subsequent date. I ask the Tribunal to note on Page 4 of the translation that the order is signed by Keitel, the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, and also to note the distribution, which appears at the foot of the second sheet, showing the distribution to the principal staff sections. The order itself begins on the third page, and that is where I propose to read. The document is entitled, “Order concerning the exercise of martial jurisdiction and procedure in the area ‘Barbarossa’ and special military measures”:
“The application of martial law aims, in the first place, at maintaining discipline.
“The fact that the operational areas in the East are so far-flung, the battle strategy which this necessitates, and the peculiar qualities of the enemy, confront the courts-martial with problems which, being short-staffed, they cannot solve while hostilities are in progress and until some degree of pacification has been achieved in the conquered areas, unless jurisdiction is confined, in the first instance, to its main task.
“This is possible only if the troops themselves take ruthless action against any threat from the enemy population.
“For these reasons I herewith issue the following order effective for the area ‘Barbarossa’ (area of operations, Army rear area, and area of political administration):
“I. Treatment of offenses committed by enemy civilians.
“1. Until further notice the military courts and the courts-martial will not be competent for crimes committed by enemy civilians.
“2. Guerillas should be disposed of ruthlessly by the military, whether they are fighting or in flight.
“3. Likewise all other attacks by enemy civilians on the Armed Forces, its members, and employees, are to be suppressed at once by the military, using the most extreme methods, until the assailants are destroyed.
“4. Where such measures have been neglected or were not at first possible, persons suspected of criminal action will be brought at once before an officer. This officer will decide whether they are to be shot.
“On the orders of an officer with the powers of at least a battalion commander, collective drastic measures will be taken without delay against localities from which cunning or malicious attacks are made on the Armed Forces, if circumstances do not permit of a quick identification of individual offenders.
“5. It is expressly forbidden to keep suspects in custody in order to hand them over to the courts after the reinstatement of civil courts.
“6. The commanders of the army groups may, by agreement with the competent naval and air force commanders, reintroduce military jurisdiction for civilians in areas which are sufficiently pacified.
“For the area of the political administration this order will be given by the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces.
“II. Treatment of offenses committed against inhabitants by members of the Armed Forces and its employees.
“1. With regard to offenses committed against enemy civilians by members of the Wehrmacht and its employees prosecution is not obligatory, even where the deed is at the same time a military crime or offense.
“2. When judging such offenses, it must be borne in mind, whatever the circumstances, that the collapse of Germany in 1918, the subsequent sufferings of the German people, and the fight against National Socialism which cost the blood of innumerable supporters of the movement, were caused primarily by Bolshevistic influence and that no German has forgotten this fact.
“3. Therefore, the judicial authority will decide in such cases whether a disciplinary penalty is indicated, or whether legal proceedings are necessary. In the case of offenses against inhabitants it will order a court-martial only if maintenance of discipline or security of the forces call for such a measure. This applies, for instance, to serious offenses originating in lack of self-control in sexual matters or in a criminal disposition and to those which indicate that the troops are threatening to get out of hand. Offenses which have resulted in senseless destruction of billets or stores or other captured material, to the disadvantage of our forces, should as a rule be judged no less severely.
“The order to institute proceedings requires in every single case the signature of the judicial authority.
“4. Extreme caution is indicated in assessing the credibility of statements made by enemy civilians.
“III. Responsibility of military commanders of the troops. Within their sphere of competence military commanders are personally responsible for seeing that:
“1. Every commissioned officer of the units under their command is instructed promptly and in the most emphatic manner on principles set out under I, above.
“2. Their legal advisers are notified promptly of these instructions and of verbal information in which the political intentions of the High Command were explained to the commanders-in-chief.
“3. Only those court sentences are confirmed which are in accordance with the political intentions of the High Command.
“IV. Security. Once the camouflage is lifted, this decree will be treated as ‘most secret.’”
Your Lordship, the next document will be C-148, Exhibit USA-555. Less than 3 months after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the instructions which I have just read were amplified and made even more drastic. Document C-148 is an order dated 16 September 1941, signed by Keitel, widely distributed, as is shown on the second sheet where the distribution is listed. This order is of general application in all theaters of war, but from its contents it is clearly of primary importance for the Eastern Front. I read, beginning at the start of the order:
“Subject: Communist insurrection in occupied territories.
“1. Since the beginning of the campaign against Soviet Russia, Communist insurrection movements have broken out everywhere in the area occupied by Germany. The type of action taken is growing from propaganda measures and attacks on individual members of the Armed Forces into open rebellion and widespread guerilla warfare.
“It can be seen that this is a mass movement centrally directed by Moscow, which is also responsible for the apparently trivial isolated incidents in areas which up to now have been otherwise quiet.
“In view of the many political and economic crises in the occupied areas, it must, moreover, be anticipated that nationalist and other circles will make full use of this opportunity of making difficulties for the German occupying forces by associating themselves with the Communist insurrection.
“This creates an increasing danger to the German war effort, which shows itself chiefly in general insecurity for the occupying troops, and has already led to the withdrawal of forces to the main centers of disturbance.
“2. The measures taken up to now to deal with this general Communist insurrection movement have proved inadequate. The Führer has now given orders that we take action everywhere with the most drastic means, in order to crush the movement in the shortest possible time. Only this course, which has always been followed successfully throughout the history of the extension of influence of great peoples, can restore order.
“3. Action taken in this matter should be in accordance with the following general directions:
“a. It should be inferred in every case of resistance to the German occupying forces, no matter what the individual circumstances, that it is of Communist origin.
“b. In order to nip these machinations in the bud the most drastic measures should be taken immediately and on the first indication, so that the authority of the occupying forces may be maintained and further spreading prevented. In this connection it should be remembered that a human life in the countries concerned frequently counts for nothing, and a deterrent effect can be attained only by unusual severity. The death penalty for 50-100 Communists should generally be regarded in these cases as suitable atonement for one German soldier’s death. The way in which sentence is carried out should still further increase the deterrent effect.
“The reverse course of action, that of imposing relatively lenient penalties and of being content, for purposes of deterrence, with the threat of more severe measures does not accord with these principles and shall not be followed.”
Unless the Court desires the next paragraph read, I will pass to Page 2, at the very end of the document, Paragraph Number 4:
“The commanding officers in the occupied territories shall see to it that these principles are made known without delay to all military establishments concerned in dealing with Communist measures of insurrection”—Signed—“Keitel.”
Your Lordship, the next document will have the Exhibit Number USA-556, and it has been given the number D-411. It also has the designation UK-81. It is the last document in Document Book 2. This is a set of documents which includes a directive, dated 10 October 1941, by Field Marshal Von Reichenau, who was the Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber) of the German 6th Army then operating on the Eastern Front. Reichenau, who died in 1942, was therefore a member of the group as defined in the Indictment; and here is what he had to say. I begin reading at Page 5 of the translation:
“Subject: Conduct of troops in Eastern Territories.
“Regarding the conduct of troops towards the Bolshevistic system, vague ideas are still prevalent in many cases. The most essential aim of war against the Jewish-Bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of Asiatic influence from the European culture. In this connection the troops are facing tasks which exceed the one-sided routine of soldiering. The soldier in the Eastern Territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war, but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations.
“Therefore, the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, that is the annihilation of revolts in the hinterland, which as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.
“The combatting of the enemy behind the front line is still not being taken seriously enough. Treacherous, cruel partisans and unnatural women are still being made prisoners of war; and guerilla fighters dressed partly in uniforms or plain clothes and vagabonds are still being treated as proper soldiers and sent to prisoner-of-war camps. In fact, captured Russian officers talk even mockingly about Soviet agents moving openly about the roads and very often eating at German field kitchens. Such an attitude of the troops can only be explained by complete thoughtlessness, so it is now high time for the commanders to clarify the meaning of the present struggle.
“The feeding of the natives and of prisoners of war who are not working for the Armed Forces from army kitchens is an equally misunderstood humanitarian act, as is the giving of cigarettes and bread. Things which the people at home can spare under great sacrifices and things which are being brought by the command to the front under great difficulties should not be given to the enemy by the soldier, not even if they originate from booty. It is an important part of our supply.
“When retreating the Soviets have often set buildings on fire. The troops should be interested in extinguishing fires only as far as it is necessary to secure sufficient numbers of billets. Otherwise, the disappearance of symbols of the former Bolshevistic rule, even in the form of buildings, is part of the struggle of destruction. Neither historic nor artistic considerations are of any importance in the Eastern Territories.
“The command issues the necessary directives for the securing of raw materials and plants essential for war economy. The complete disarming of the civil population in the rear of the fighting troops is imperative, considering the long and vulnerable lines of communication. Where possible, captured weapons and ammunition should be stored and guarded. Should this be impossible because of the situation, the weapons and ammunition will be rendered useless. If isolated partisans are found using firearms in the rear of the Army, drastic measures are to be taken. These measures will be extended to that part of the male population who were in a position to hinder or report the attacks. The indifference of numerous allegedly anti-Soviet elements, which originates from a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude, must give way to a clear decision for active collaboration. If not, no one can complain about being judged and treated as a member of the Soviet system.
“The fear of the German counter measures must be stronger than the threats of the wandering Bolshevistic remnants. Being far from all political considerations of the future, the soldier has to fulfill two tasks:
“1. Complete annihilation of the false Bolshevistic doctrine of the Soviet State and its armed forces.
“2. The pitiless extermination of alien treachery and cruelty and thus the protection of the lives of German military personnel in Russia.
“This is the only way to fulfill our historic task to liberate the German people once and forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger. Signed: Von Reichenau, Oberbefehlshaber.”
The Tribunal will note the sheet immediately preceding Reichenau’s order. That is Sheet Number 4 of the translation, which is a memorandum dated 28 October 1941. It shows that Reichenau’s order met with Hitler’s approval and was thereafter circulated by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army.
The Tribunal will also note from the first sheet, the very top sheet in the several ensuing, that Reichenau’s order was thereafter circulated down to divisional level, and was received by the 12th German Infantry Division on 27 November 1941.
These being the directives and policies prescribed by the German military leaders, it is no wonder that the Wehrmacht joined in the monstrous behavior and activities of the SS and SD on the Eastern Front.
Colonel Storey described to the Tribunal the formation of units known as Einsatzgruppen by the Sipo and SD, which were sent out to operate in and behind the operational areas on the Eastern Front, in order to combat partisans and to cleanse and pacify the civilian population. Major Farr and Colonel Storey both presented to the Tribunal a large amount of evidence showing the manner in which these units operated.
I want to refer back briefly to a few of these documents in order to trace the participation of the Armed Forces in those circumstances.
Colonel Storey read at length from 3012-PS, which is Exhibit USA-190, dated 19 March 1943. It is a directive from the commanding officer of one of these groups. This directive praised and justified such activities as the shooting of Hungarian Jews, shooting of children, and the total burning of villages and directed that in order not to obstruct the procuring of slave labor for the German armament industry, “as a rule no more children will be shot.”
Major Farr read from R-102, which is Exhibit USA-470, a report covering the work of the Einsatzgruppen in the German occupied territories of the Soviet Union during the month of October 1941. This report states cynically on Page 7:
“Spontaneous demonstrations against Jewry followed by pogroms on the part of the population against the remaining Jews have not been recorded on account of the lack of adequate instructions.”
It shows as clearly as the human eye can see that pacification and anti-partisan activities became mere code words for the extermination of Jews just as much as Weserübung was the code word for the invasion of Norway and Denmark.
We have seen from the documents quoted a few moments ago that the German Army received some similar policies and directives. It only remains to show that in the field the Army and the SS worked hand in glove.
The Tribunal will recall the document quoted by Major Walsh, 1061-PS, already in evidence as Exhibit USA-275. It describes the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto; and at this time I merely want to call attention to one paragraph appearing at Page 6 of the translation, the third paragraph from the bottom of the page, where the author of the document stresses the close co-operation between the SS and the Army. I read that one paragraph and quote:
“The longer the resistance lasted, the tougher the men of the Waffen-SS, Police, and Wehrmacht became; they fulfilled their duty indefatigably in faithful comradeship and stood together as models and examples of soldiers. Their combat duty often lasted from early morning until late at night. At night search patrols with rags wound round their feet remained at the heels of the Jews and gave them no respite. Not infrequently they caught and killed Jews who used the night hours for supplementing their stores from abandoned dug-outs and for contacting neighboring groups or exchanging news with them.”
To the same general effect is R-135, Exhibit USA-289, which is a report dated 5 June 1943 by the German General Commissioner for Minsk. Major Farr read from this report, describing an anti-partisan operation in which 4,500 enemies were killed: 5,000 suspected partisans and 59 Germans. The co-operation by the German Army is shown in the following excerpt, and I will begin reading at the bottom of Page 3 of the translation:
“The figures mentioned above indicate that again a heavy destruction of the population must be expected. If only 492 rifles are taken from 4,500 enemy dead, this discrepancy shows that among these enemy dead were numerous peasants from the country. The battalion Dirlewanger especially has a reputation for destroying many human lives. Among the 5,000 people suspected of belonging to bands, there were numerous women and children.
“By order of the chief of anti-partisan units, SS Obergruppenführer Von dem Bach, units of the Wehrmannschaften have also participated in the operation. SA Standartenführer Kunze was in command of the Wehrmannschaften, among whom there were also 90 members from my office and from the District Commissariat of Minsk. Our men returned from the operation yesterday without losses.”
I need not read the rest of that. The next paragraph shows again the participation of the Armed Forces personnel.
The SS Obergruppenführer Von dem Bach, referred to in this quotation, will be a witness later in the day, and in this connection I want to call the Court’s attention to 1919-PS, Exhibit USA-170, which is Himmler’s speech on October 4, 1943 to a gathering of SS generals at Posen. In this speech Himmler mentioned the appointment of Von dem Bach to be chief of all anti-partisan units, and I would like to read one paragraph from Page 3 of the document merely for purpose of identification of the witness:
“Chief of the anti-partisan combat units:
“In the meantime I have also set up the department of the Chief of the anti-partisan combat units. Our comrade SS Obergruppenführer Von dem Bach is Chief of the anti-partisan combat units. I considered it necessary for the Reichsführer SS to be in authoritative command in all these battles, for I am convinced that we are best in a position to take action in this struggle, which is decidedly a political one. Except where the units which had been supplied and which we had formed for this purpose were taken from us to fill in gaps at the front, we have been very successful.”
There is one further document which has already been introduced from which I wish to read new material. That is L-180, which is already in evidence as Exhibit USA-276. It is the report of Einsatzgruppe A, covering the period up to 15 October 1941. I think the excerpts which I will read will make clear beyond doubt the participation of the German military leaders and Armed Forces in the activities of these Einsatzgruppen. I read first from Page 2 of the translation, the top of the page:
“Einsatz Group A, after preparing their vehicles for action, proceeded to their area of concentration as ordered on 23 June 1941, the second day of the campaign in the East. Army Group North, consisting of the 16th and 18th Armies and Panzer Group 4, had started the advance the day before. Our task was to establish hurriedly personal contact with the commanders of the armies and with the commander of the army rear area. It must be stressed from the beginning that co-operation with the Armed Forces was generally good; in some cases, for instance with Panzer Group 4 under Colonel General Höppner, it was very close and almost cordial. Misunderstandings which cropped up with some authorities in the first days were cleared up mainly through personal discussions.”
This ends that particular extract. I read next a series of extracts, of which the first is at the bottom of Page 2:
“Similarly, native anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against Jews during the first hours after the entry, 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.”
Next I pass to Page 4 of the translation, about half way down the page, the middle of the first complete paragraph:
“After the failure of purely military activities, such as the placing of sentries and combing through the newly occupied territories with whole divisions, even the Armed Forces had to look out for new methods. The Einsatz group undertook the search for new methods as an essential task. Soon, therefore, the Armed Forces adopted the experiences of the Security Police and their methods of combatting the partisans. For details I refer to the numerous reports concerning the struggle against the partisans.”
I pass next to Page 6 under “Instigation of self-cleansing actions”:
“Considering that the population of the Baltic countries had suffered very heavily under the government of bolshevism and Jewry while they were incorporated in the U.S.S.R., it was to be expected that after the liberation from that foreign government, they (that is, the population themselves) would render harmless most of the enemies left behind after the retreat of the Red Army. It had to be the duty of the Security Police to set in motion these self-cleansing movements and to direct them into the correct channels in order to accomplish the purpose of the cleansing operations as quickly as possible. It was no less important, in view of the future, to establish the unshakeable and provable fact that the liberated population themselves took the most severe measures against the bolshevist and Jewish enemy quite on their own, so that the direction by German authorities could not be found out.
“In Lithuania this was achieved for the first time by partisan activities in Kovno. To our surprise it was not easy, at first, to set in motion an extensive pogrom against the 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, setting fire to several synagogues or destroying them by other means and burning down a Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During the following nights 2,300 Jews were eliminated 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.”
I pass to Page 10 of the translation, toward the bottom under “Other jobs of the Security Police”:
“Occasionally the conditions prevailing in the lunatic asylums necessitated operations of the Security Police.”
Passing to the next paragraph:
“In some cases authorities of the Armed Forces asked us to clean out, in a similar way, other institutions which were wanted as billets. However, as interests of the Security Police did not require any intervention, it was left to the authorities of the Armed Forces to take the necessary action with their own forces.”
I pass on to Page 17 of the translation, the paragraph at the top of the page: “But it was decided . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Taylor, did you read Paragraph 5 (1) on Page 10?
COL. TAYLOR: 5 (1) on Page 10? I read the first passage, Your Honor. If you would like it in full . . .
THE PRESIDENT: I think perhaps you might go to the end of it.
COL. TAYLOR: “Occasionally the conditions prevailing in the lunatic asylums necessitated operations of the Security Police. Many institutions had been robbed by the retreating Russians of their whole food supply. Often the guard and nursing personnel had fled. The inmates of several institutions broke out and became a danger to the general security; therefore, in Aglona (Lithuania) 544 lunatics, in Mariampol (Lithuania) 109 lunatics, and in Mogutowo, near Luga, 95 lunatics were liquidated.”
Passing back to Page 17, the first paragraph on that page:
“When it was decided to extend the German operations to Leningrad and also to extend the activities of Einsatz Group A to this town, I gave orders on 18 July 1941, to parts of Einsatzkommandos 2 and 3 and to the staff of the group to advance to Novosselje, in order to prepare these activities and to be able to advance as early as possible into the area around Leningrad and into the city itself. The advance of the forces of Einsatz Group A, which were intended to be used for Leningrad, was effected in agreement with and on the express wish of Panzer Group 4.”
The final quotation from this document is Page 18, last paragraph:
“Einsatzkommandos of Einsatz Group A of the Security Police participated from the beginning in the fight against the nuisance created by partisans. Close collaboration with the Armed Forces and the exchange of experiences which were collected in the fight against partisans, brought about a thorough knowledge of the origin, organization, strength, equipment and system used by the Red partisans as time went on.”
Now, in the light of these documents, I would like to turn to some of the remaining affidavits which are before the Tribunal in Document Book I. These affidavits have been furnished by responsible officials in both the Wehrmacht and the SS and fill in much of the background for the documents.
Affidavit Number 12 is an affidavit by Schellenberg, which in view of the fact that its contents have been covered in Schellenberg’s and Ohlendorf’s testimony, I do not propose to read. It covers much of the same ground, and I see no reason to take the time of the Tribunal by reading it. I should like to have it considered, subject to the usual rule that Schellenberg can be questioned on any of these matters by the Defense. The affidavit itself is available in French and Russian as well as in English and in German for the Defense, so I will pass over that one.
I turn to Affidavit Number 13, which will be Exhibit USA-558, Document Number 3711-PS. Schellenberg’s affidavit will be Exhibit USA-557, Document Number 3710-PS; Number 13 is 558. This is an affidavit by Wilhelm Scheidt, a retired captain of the German Army, who worked in the War History Section of the OKW from 1941 to 1945. It sheds considerable light on the relations between the Wehrmacht and the SS at the top with respect to anti-partisan warfare. I will read the affidavit:
“I, Wilhelm Scheidt, belonged to the War History Section of the OKW from the year 1941 to 1945.
“Concerning the question of partisan warfare I state that I remember the following from my knowledge of the documents of the Operations Staff of the OKW as well as from my conversations in the Führer’s headquarters with Major General Walter Scherff, the Führer’s appointee for the compilation of the history of the war.
“Counter-partisan warfare was originally a responsibility of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who sent police forces to handle this matter.
“In the years 1942 and 1943, however, counter-partisan warfare developed to such an extent that the Operations Staff of the OKW had to give it special attention. In the Army Operations Section of the Operations Staff of the OKW, a specific officer was assigned the development of counter-partisan warfare as his special task. It proved necessary to conduct extensive operations against the partisans with Wehrmacht troops in Russian, as well as Yugoslavian territory. Partisan operations for a long while threatened to cut off the lines of communication and transport routes that were necessary to support the German Wehrmacht. For instance, a monthly report concerning the attacks on the railroad lines in occupied Russia revealed that in the Russian area alone from 800 to 1,000 attacks occurred each month during that period causing among other things the loss of from 200 to 300 locomotives.
“It was a well-known fact that partisan warfare was conducted with cruelty on both sides. It was well known that reprisals were inflicted on hostages and communities whose inhabitants were suspected of being partisans or of supporting them. It is beyond question that these facts must have been known to the leading officers in the Operations Staff of the OKW and in the Army’s General Staff. It was further well known that Hitler believed that the only successful method of conducting counter-partisan warfare was to employ cruel punishments as deterrents.
“I remember that, at the time of the Polish revolt in Warsaw, SS Gruppenführer Fegelein reported to Colonel General Guderian and Jodl about the atrocities of the Russian SS Brigade Kaminski, which fought on the German side.”
Now, the foregoing documents and the testimony of Ohlendorf and Schellenberg relate to the arrangements which were made between the OKW, OKH, and Himmler’s headquarters with respect to anti-partisan warfare. They show conclusively that these arrangements were made jointly and that the High Command of the Armed Forces was not only fully aware of, but was an active participant in, these plans.
Turning now to the field, I would like to read three statements by General Hans Röttiger, which will be Affidavits Numbers 15 and 16: Exhibit USA-559, Document Number 3713-PS; and USA-560, Document Number 3714-PS. General Röttiger attained the rank of general of panzer troops, the equivalent of a lieutenant general in the American Army, and was Chief of Staff of the German 4th Army, and later of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front, during the period of which he speaks.
The first statement is as follows:
“As Chief of Staff of the 4th Army from May 1942 to June 1943, to which was later added the area of the 9th Army, I often had occasion to concern myself officially with anti-partisan warfare. For the execution of these operations the troops received orders from the highest authority, as for example even the OKH, to use the harshest methods. These operations were carried out by troops of the army group and of the army, as, for example, security battalions.
“At the beginning, in accordance with orders which were issued through official channels, only a few prisoners were taken. In accordance with orders Jews, political commissars, and agents were delivered up to the SD.
“The number of enemy dead mentioned in official reports was very high in comparison with our own losses. From the documents which have been shown to me I have now come to realize that the order from the highest authorities for the harshest conduct of the anti-partisan war can only have been intended to make possible a ruthless liquidation of Jews and other undesirable elements by using for this purpose the military struggle of the Army against the partisans.”
The second statement:
“Supplementary to my first declaration of 8 December 1945, I declare:
“As I stated orally on 28 November 1945, my then commander of the 4th Army instructed his troops many times not to wage war against the partisans more severely than was required at the time by the position. This struggle should only be pushed to the annihilation of the enemy after all attempts to bring about a surrender failed. Apart from humanitarian reasons we necessarily had an interest in taking prisoners, since very many of them could very well be used as members of native volunteer units against the partisans.
“Alongside the necessary active combatting of partisans, there was propaganda directed at the partisans and also at the population with the object, by peaceful means, of causing them to give up partisan activities. For instance, in this way the women, too, were continually urged to get their men back from the forests or to keep them by other means from joining the partisans. And this propaganda had good results. In the spring of 1943 the area of the 4th Army was as good as cleared of partisans. Only on its boundaries, and then only from time to time, were partisans in evidence when they crossed into the area of the 4th Army from neighboring areas. The army was obliged on this account, on the orders of Army Group Center, to give up security forces to the neighboring army to the south.”
The third statement by Röttiger, Number 16:
“During my period of service, from May 1942 to June 1943, as Chief of Staff of the 4th Army of the Army Group Center, SD units were attached in the beginning, apparently for the purpose of counter-intelligence activity in front-line areas. It was clear later on that these SD units were causing great disturbances among the local civilian population, with the result that my commanding officer therefore asked the commander of the Army Group, Field Marshal Von Kluge, to order the SD units to clear out of the front-line areas, which took place immediately. The reason for this, first and foremost, was that the excesses of the SD units, by way of execution of Jews and other persons, assumed such proportions as to threaten the security of the army in its combat areas because of the infuriated civilian populace. Although in general the special tasks of the SD units were well known and appeared to be carried out with the knowledge of the highest military authorities, we opposed these methods as far as possible because of the danger which existed for our troops, as I have mentioned above.”
I would like now to offer one final document, the last document, 1786-PS, which will be Exhibit USA-561. This is an extract from the war diary of the Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces Operational Staff, dated 14 March 1943. I propose to read the last two paragraphs, which deal with the problem of shipping of suspected partisans to concentration camps in Germany.
The Tribunal will see, from the extracts which I will read, that the Army was chiefly concerned with preserving a sufficient severity of treatment for suspected partisans without at the same time obstructing the procurement of labor from the occupied territories.
I will read the last two paragraphs:
“The Quartermaster General, together with the Economic Staff East, has proposed that the deportees should be sent either to prison camps or to reformatory labor camps in their own area and that deportation to Germany should take place only when the deportees are on probation and in less serious cases.
“In view of the Armed Forces Operations Staff, this proposal does not take sufficient account of the severity required and leads to a comparison with the treatment meted out to the ‘peaceful population’ which has been called upon to work. He recommends, therefore, transportation to concentration camps in Germany which have already been introduced by the Reichsführer SS for his sphere and which he is prepared to introduce for the Armed Forces in the case of an extension to the province of the latter. The High Command of the Armed Forces therefore orders that partisan helpers and suspects who are not to be executed should be handed over to the competent Higher SS and Police Leader, and orders that the difference between ‘punitive labor’ and ‘being set to labor in Germany’ be made clear to the population.”
Finally, I would like to offer a group of four affidavits which show that the anti-partisan activities on the Eastern Front were under the command of and supported by the Wehrmacht, and that the nature of these activities was fully known to the Wehrmacht.
The first of these is Affidavit Number 17, Exhibit USA-562, Document Number 3715-PS by Ernst Rode, who was an SS Brigadeführer and major general of the Police, and was a member of Himmler’s personal command staff from 1943 to 1945:
“I, Ernst Rode, was formerly Chief of the Command Staff of the Reichsführer SS, having taken over this position in the spring of 1943 as successor to former SS Obergruppenführer Kurt Knoblauch. My last rank was Major General of Police and of the Waffen-SS. My function was to furnish the forces necessary for anti-partisan warfare to the Higher SS and Police Leaders and to guarantee the support of Army Forces. This took place through personal discussions with the leading officers of the Operations Staff of the OKW and OKH, namely with General Warlimont, General Von Buttlar, Colonel General Guderian, Colonel General Zeitzler, General Heusinger, later General Wenk, Colonel Graf Kielmannsegg and later, Colonel Von Bonin. Since anti-partisan warfare also was under the sole command of the respective army group commander in operational areas—for instance, in Army Group Center under Field Marshal Kluge and later Busch—and since police troops for the most part could not be spared from the Reich Commissariats, the direction of this warfare lay practically always entirely in the hands of the Army. In the same way orders were issued not by Himmler but by the OKH. SS and Police troops transferred to operational areas from the Reichskommissariate to support the army groups were likewise under the latter’s command. Such transfers were frequent and therefore resulted in harm to anti-partisan warfare in the Reichskommissariate. According to a specific agreement between Himmler and the OKW and OKH, the direction of individual operations lay in the hands of the troop leader who commanded the largest troop contingent. It was therefore possible that an Army general could have SS and Police under him; and, on the other hand, that army troops could be placed under a general of the SS and Police. Anti-partisan warfare in operational areas could never be ordered by Himmler. I could merely request the OKH to order it, until 1944, mostly through the intervention of Generalquartiermeister Wagner or through State Secretary Ganzenmüller. The OKH then issued corresponding orders to the army groups concerned for compliance.
“The severity and cruelty with which the intrinsically diabolical partisan warfare was conducted by the Russians had already resulted in Draconian laws being issued by Hitler for its conduct. These orders, which were passed on to the troops through the OKW and OKH, were equally applicable to army troops as well as to those of the SS and Police. There was absolutely no difference in the manner in which these two components carried on this warfare. Army soldiers were exactly as embittered against the enemy as were those of the SS and Police.
“As a result of this embitterment orders were ruthlessly carried out by both components, a thing which was also quite in keeping with Hitler’s desires or intentions. As proof of this, the order of the OKW and OKH can be adduced which directed that all captured partisans, for instance, such as Jews, agents, and political commissars, should without delay be handed over by the troops to the SD for special treatment. This order also contained the provision that in anti-partisan warfare no prisoners except the above-named be taken. That anti-partisan warfare was carried on by army troops mercilessly and to every extreme, I know as the result of discussions with army troop leaders, for instance with General Herzog, Commander of the 38th Army Corps, and with his Chief of Staff, Colonel Pamberg, in the General Staff, both of whom support my opinion. Today it is clear to me that anti-partisan warfare gradually became an excuse for the systematic annihilation of Jewry and Slavism.”
Your Lordship, I am told that I misread and said “Hitler” instead of “Himmler”.
I next wish to offer another and shorter statement by Rode, which shows that the SD Einsatzgruppen were under Wehrmacht command. This is Number 18, Exhibit USA-563; Document Number 3716-PS:
“As far as I know, the SD Einsatz groups with the individual army groups were completely subordinate to them, that is to say tactically as well as in every other way. The commanders were therefore thoroughly cognizant of the missions and operational methods of these units. They approved of these missions and operational methods because, apparently, they never opposed them. The fact that prisoners, such as Jews, agents, and commissars, who were handed over to the SD, underwent the same cruel death as victims of so-called purifications, is a proof that the executions had their approval. This also corresponded with what the highest political and military authorities wanted. Frequent mentions of these methods were naturally made in my presence at the OKW and OKH; and they were condemned by most SS and Police officers, just as they were condemned by most army officers. On such occasions I always pointed out that it would have been quite within the scope of the authority of the commanders of army groups to oppose such methods. I am of the firm conviction that an energetic and unified protest by all field marshals would have resulted in a change of these missions and methods. If they should ever assert that they would then have been succeeded by even more ruthless commanders, this, in my opinion, would be a foolish and even cowardly dodge.”
I would like next to read the final affidavit, Number 24, in Document Book I.
THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Taylor, unless you are going to conclude this particular part, I think we had better adjourn now.
COL. TAYLOR: I will conclude with two affidavits, Your Honor, but it will take probably 10 minutes.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, if that will conclude it, go on.
COL. TAYLOR: It will conclude it. Firstly, Affidavit Number 24, which becomes Exhibit USA-565, Document Number 3718-PS. This is by Colonel Bogislav von Bonin, who, at the beginning of the Russian campaign, was a staff officer with the 17th Panzer Division:
“At the beginning of the Russian campaign, I was the first General Staff officer of the 17th Panzer Division which had the mission of driving across the Bug, north of Brest-Litovsk. Shortly before the beginning of the attack my division received, through channels from the OKW, a written order of the Führer. This order directed that Russian commissars be shot upon capture without judicial process immediately and ruthlessly. This order extended to all units of the Eastern Army. Although the order was supposed to be relayed to companies, the commanding general of the 37th Panzer Corps—General of Panzer Troops Lemelsen—forbade its being passed on to the troops because it appeared unacceptable to him from military and moral points of view.”
That brings us to the final affidavit, Number 20, Exhibit USA-564, Document Number 3717-PS, which is by Adolf Heusinger, Generalleutnant in the German Army, and from 1940 to 1944 Chief of the Operations Section at OKH. I read:
“1. From the beginning of the war in 1939 until autumn 1940, I was I-a of the Operations Section of the OKH, and from autumn 1940 until 20 July 1944 I was chief of that section.
“When Hitler took over supreme command of the Army, he gave to the Chief of the General Staff of the Army the function of advising him on all operational matters in the Russian theater.
“This made the Chief of the General Staff of the Army responsible for all matters in the operational areas in the East, while the OKW was responsible for all matters outside the operational areas, for instance all troops—security units, SS units, Police—stationed in the Reich commissariats.
“All Police and SS units in the Reich commissariats were also subordinate to the Reichsführer SS. When it was necessary to transfer such units into operational areas this had to be done by order of the Chief of the OKW. On the other hand, corresponding transfers from the front to the rear were ordered by the OKW with the concurrence of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army.
“The Higher SS and Police Leaders normally had command of operations against partisans. If stronger army units were committed together with the SS and Police units within operational areas, a higher commander of the Army could be designated commander of the operation.
“During anti-partisan operations within operational areas all forces committed for these operations were under the command of the commander of the respective army group.
“2. Directives as to the manner and methods of carrying on counter-partisan operations were issued by the OKW—Keitel—to the OKH upon orders from Hitler and after consultation with Himmler. The OKH was responsible merely for the transmission of these orders to army groups, for instance, such orders as those concerning the treatment to be accorded to commissars and Communists, those concerning the manner of prosecuting by courts-martial army personnel who had committed offenses against the population, as well as those establishing the basic principles governing reprisals against the inhabitants.
“3. The detailed working out of all matters involving the treatment of the local populace, as well as anti-partisan warfare in operational areas in pursuance of orders from the OKW, was the responsibility of the Quartermaster General of the OKH.
“4. It had always been my personal opinion that the treatment of the civilian population and the methods of anti-partisan warfare in operational areas presented the highest political and military leaders with a welcomed opportunity of carrying out their plans, namely, the systematic extermination of Slavism and Jewry. Entirely independent of this, I always regarded these cruel methods as military insanity, because they only helped to make combat against the enemy unnecessarily more difficult.”
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn until a quarter past 2.
[A recess was taken until 1415 hours.]
Afternoon Session
COL. TAYLOR: Will Your Lordship swear the witness?
THE PRESIDENT: What is his name?
COL. TAYLOR: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.
[The witness, Von dem Bach-Zelewski, took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?
ERICH VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI (Witness): Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you take this oath: “I swear by God—the Almighty and Omniscient—that I will speak the pure truth—and will withhold and add nothing.”
[The witness repeated the oath.]
COL. TAYLOR: May I remind the witness to speak very slowly, and to keep his answers as short as possible? Can you hear me?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Were you a member of the SS?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: What was the last rank you held in the SS?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: SS Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you serve in the 1914-18 war?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes. I was at the front from 1914 to 1918, was wounded twice, and received the Iron Cross, First and Second Class.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you remain in the army after the end of the last war?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, I stayed in the 100,000-man army.
COL. TAYLOR: How long did you remain in the army?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Till 1924, when I took my discharge.
COL. TAYLOR: Did your military activities then stop?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I was battalion leader in the Border Defense, and subsequently I took part in maneuvers with the Wehrmacht until the campaign against Poland.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you join the Nazi Party?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: In what year?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: In the year 1930.
COL. TAYLOR: What branch of the party did you join?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The Allgemeine-SS.
COL. TAYLOR: What were your activities in the SS prior to the outbreak of the war?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I established the Allgemeine-SS Border Defense in the districts of Schneidemühl and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and from 1934 I was Oberabschnittsführer in East Prussia and afterwards in Silesia.
COL. TAYLOR: Were you a member of the Reichstag during this period?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, I was a member of the Reichstag from 1932 right up to the end.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you take any active part during this war, before the campaign against the Soviet Union?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, not before the campaign against Russia.
COL. TAYLOR: What was your rank at the beginning of the war?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: At the beginning of the war I was SS Gruppenführer and lieutenant general.
COL. TAYLOR: And when were you promoted?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I was promoted on 9 November 1941 to SS Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS.
COL. TAYLOR: What was your position after the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Would you please repeat the question; it was not quite clear.
COL. TAYLOR: What was your position, your function, at the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: At the beginning of the campaign against Russia I served as Higher SS and Police Leader in the central sector of the Russian Front, in the rear zone of Army Group Center.
COL. TAYLOR: Was there a similar SS official in the rear zone of each army group?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI; Yes, in each army group, North, Center, and South, there was a Higher SS and Police Leader.
COL. TAYLOR: Who was the commander of Army Group Center?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The commander of Army Group Center was, in the beginning, General Field Marshal Von Bock, and later General Field Marshal Kluge.
COL. TAYLOR: Who was the Armed Forces commander in the rear zone of Army Group Center?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: General of the Infantry Von Schenkendorff.
COL. TAYLOR: Was he directly subordinate to the commander of the army group?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Who was your immediate superior in the SS?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Heinrich Himmler.
COL. TAYLOR: And who was your immediate superior in the rear zone of the army?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: General Von Schenkendorff.
COL. TAYLOR: What was your principal task as Higher SS and Police Leader in central Russia?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: My principal task was fighting partisans.
COL. TAYLOR: Are you generally familiar with the operations of the so-called Einsatzgruppen of the SD?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Did these units play any important part in large-scale anti-Russian operations?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
COL. TAYLOR: What was the principal task of the Einsatzgruppen?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The principal task of the Einsatzgruppen of the Sicherheitspolizei was the annihilation of the Jews, gypsies, and political commissars.
COL. TAYLOR: Then what forces were used for large-scale anti-partisan operations?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: For anti-partisan activities formations of the Waffen-SS, of the Ordnungspolizei, and above all, of the Wehrmacht were used.
COL. TAYLOR: Please describe the nature of these regular army units that were used for anti-partisan operations.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: These units of the Wehrmacht were composed, in the first place, of the security divisions in the rear zone, just behind the battle front; then there were the so-called Landesschützen battalions which were independent units under the orders of the Wehrmacht commanders; and there were also Wehrmacht formations used for the defense of certain installations such as railways and landing grounds and other military objectives. Moreover, as from 1943 or 1942, there were the so-called “alarm units” composed of formations in the rear zone.
COL. TAYLOR: Until what date did you remain Higher SS and Police Leader for central Russia?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I was Higher SS and Police Leader for central Russia until the end of 1942, with occasional interruptions when I was at the front and with one interval of about 6 months when I had an illness. At the end of 1942 I was appointed Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units.
COL. TAYLOR: Was this position of Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units created specially for you?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: To whom were you directly subordinate in this new capacity?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Heinrich Himmler.
COL. TAYLOR: Were your functions in this new capacity restricted to any particular part of the Eastern Front?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No. My sphere of activity comprised the entire Eastern zone.
COL. TAYLOR: What was the general nature of your duties as Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: First of all, I had to establish an intelligence center at Himmler’s headquarters to which all reports in connection with partisan activities were dispatched, where they were evaluated, and then forwarded to the competent authorities.
COL. TAYLOR: In the course of your duties did you confer with the commanders of army groups and armies on the Eastern Front?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: With the commanders of the army groups, not of the armies, and with the district commanders of the Wehrmacht.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you advise these commanders with respect to the methods which should be employed to combat partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Will you name some of the commanders with whom you personally conferred?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I am quoting from memory, without giving a complete list: General of Cavalry Bremer, Wehrmacht commander in the East; General Field Marshal Küchler, commanding general of Army Group North; the commanding generals of Army Group Center, Kluge and Busch; the Wehrmacht commander in the Ukraine, General of the Luftwaffe Kitzinger; General Field Marshal Freiherr von Weichs, commanding general in Serbia, at Belgrade; and General Kügler, Wehrmacht commander in the Trieste area.
COL. TAYLOR: What proportion of Wehrmacht troops was used in anti-partisan operations as compared to Police and SS troops?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Since the number of Police and SS troops was very small, anti-partisan operations were undertaken mainly by Wehrmacht formations.
COL. TAYLOR: Were the anti-partisan troops usually commanded by Wehrmacht officers or by SS officers?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: It varied, depending mostly on the individual area; in the operational areas Wehrmacht officers nearly always commanded, but an order existed to the effect that the formation, be it Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS or Police, which supplied the most troops for a particular operation, had command of it.
COL. TAYLOR: Did the highest military leaders issue instructions that anti-partisan operations were to be conducted with severity?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Did the highest military authorities issue any detailed instructions as to the methods to be used in anti-partisan operations?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
COL. TAYLOR: What was the result, in the occupied territories, of this lack of detailed directives from above?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: This lack of detailed directives resulted in a wild state of anarchy in all anti-partisan operations.
COL. TAYLOR: In your opinion, were the measures taken in anti-partisan operations far more severe than the circumstances warranted, or were they not?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Since there were no definite orders and the lower commanders were forced to act independently, the operations varied according to the character of the officer in command and the quality of the troops. I am of the opinion that the operations often not only failed in their purpose but even overshot their mark.
COL. TAYLOR: Did these measures result in the unnecessary killing of large numbers of the civilian population?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. TAYLOR: Did you report these excessive measures to the commanders of the army groups and other Wehrmacht officers with whom you worked?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: This state of affairs was generally known. There was no necessity to make a special report about it, since every operation had immediately to be reported in all detail, and was known to every responsible leader.
COL. TAYLOR: Were any effective steps taken by the higher military authorities or by the commanders of army groups to stop these excesses?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I remember that General Von Schenkendorff in particular made innumerable reports in this connection and discussed them with me; both of us forwarded them through our service channels.
COL. TAYLOR: Did these reports by General Von Schenkendorff have any effect?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
COL. TAYLOR: Why not?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Quartermaster General Wagner certainly attempted to effect a change by suggesting that more rigid supervision be imposed on the troops, but he did not succeed in his purpose.
COL. TAYLOR: Was an order ever issued by the highest authorities, that German soldiers who committed offenses against the civilian population were not to be punished in the military courts?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, this order was issued.
COL. TAYLOR: Was this order an obstacle to correcting the excesses of the troops?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, in my opinion this order prevented the orderly conduct of operations, since one can train troops only if one has adequate disciplinary powers and jurisdiction over them and is able to check excesses.
COL. TAYLOR: What decorations did you win during the war?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: In this war I received the clusters to the Iron Cross I and II, the German Cross in gold, and the Knight’s Cross to the Iron Cross.
COL. TAYLOR: Your Lordship, the witness is available for examination by others.
THE PRESIDENT: Does the Soviet Prosecutor wish to ask any questions?
COL. POKROVSKY: With your permission, I wish to ask a series of questions.
[Turning to the witness.] What forces of the Police and SS were at your disposal in 1941 and 1942, when you were Chief of the Police and SS in the rear zone of Army Group Center?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Directly under my command in 1941 were one police regiment of the Regular Police, and occasionally, for about 2 or 3 months at a time, one SS cavalry brigade.
COL. POKROVSKY: Was the Einsatzgruppe B, headed by Nebe, under your command?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
COL. POKROVSKY: Did you or did you not receive Nebe’s reports?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Not directly, but I managed to see them.
COL. POKROVSKY: What do you know of the activities of Einsatzgruppe B?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Einsatzgruppe B was located in Smolensk, and operated in precisely the same way as all the other Einsatzgruppen. One heard everywhere in conversation that the Jews were being rounded up and sent to ghettos.
COL. POKROVSKY: Did you report to the commands of the operational groups on the activities of Einsatzgruppe B?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I asked for information on the activities of Einsatzgruppe B directly through Schenkendorff, from the I. C. of Army Group Center.
COL. POKROVSKY: Did you know of the order issued by the commander of the 6th Army, General Reichenau, regarding the partisan movement?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Would you be good enough to repeat the name; was it General Von Reichenau?
COL. POKROVSKY: Yes.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, I know of that. I think it was in 1941, but I am not certain—it might have been in 1942—when General Von Reichenau sent to all the Wehrmacht commanders an order approving the actions taken against the Jews and partisans.
COL. POKROVSKY: In 1943 or later were there, under your command, units or companies specially selected to combat the partisan movement?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: In 1943, as Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, I had no direct authority to issue orders, since I was head of the central office, but I did lead some operations wherever the authority of two commanders overlapped.
COL. POKROVSKY: Do you know anything about the existence of a special brigade consisting of smugglers, poachers, and persons released from prison?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: When all the troops really suitable for anti-partisan warfare had been withdrawn, an anti-partisan battalion under the command of Dirlewanger was formed and attached to Army Group Center at the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942. This battalion was gradually strengthened by the addition of reserve units until it reached the proportions, first, of a regiment and, later, of a brigade. This “Dirlewanger Brigade” consisted for the most part of previously convicted criminals; officially it consisted of so-called poachers, but it did include real criminals convicted of burglary, murder, et cetera.
COL. POKROVSKY: How do you explain the fact that the German Army Command so willingly strengthened and increased its forces by adding criminals to them and then using these criminals against the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I am of the opinion that this step was closely connected with a speech made by Heinrich Himmler at Wezelsburg at the beginning of 1941, prior to the campaign against Russia, when he spoke of the purpose of the Russian campaign, which was, he said, to decimate the Slav population by 30 million, and that it was in order to achieve this purpose that troops of such inferior caliber were introduced.
COL. POKROVSKY: Is it correct then to say that the character of the troops used by the commanders to fight the partisans had been given careful consideration? Did they receive precise instructions how to treat the population and how to fight against the partisans? I am now referring to the proposed and officially sanctioned extermination of the population.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, I think this purpose was a decisive factor in the selection of certain commanders and formations.
COL. POKROVSKY: By what means and by what measures were Wehrmacht units brought in to fight the partisans? Were they specially recruited or were they used from time to time according to some set plan?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I think that on the whole there was no definite set plan. So-called large-scale operations were initiated, planned, and executed by headquarters. Anti-partisan fighting, however, was mostly of a spontaneous nature, since every lower commander was obliged to keep his own area free of partisans and thus had to act on his own initiative.
COL. POKROVSKY: You said that in very many cases generals and officers of the Wehrmacht personally headed the operations against the partisans. Can you give us some concrete facts and the names of some of the generals and officers?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the question. The names of commanders?
COL. POKROVSKY: You have told us that certain operations during the struggle against the partisans were conducted by officers and generals of the Wehrmacht, and I now ask you if you can name some of the officers and generals?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, some of the generals I have already mentioned. In addition I remember Major General Hartmann, in central Russia. One large-scale anti-partisan operation was either led by him or at least directed by him from his headquarters. I also remember Colonel General Reinhardt in whose rear zone there were important partisan groups. I might even say that there was not a single general in the rear zone who did not participate in the struggle against the partisans. I cannot, of course, remember all the names; but if I hear them mentioned, I can tell you whether or not they participated.
COL. POKROVSKY: Could you tell us what undertaking was commanded by General Ackmann?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I cannot remember that.
COL. POKROVSKY: Were there any general orders relating to prisoners of war, the civilian population, or the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Unfortunately there were no general instructions which clearly stated how the partisans or the population were to be treated. That was the complaint I made: That no instruction was issued on the treatment of the partisans and that we were not even told who was to be considered a partisan. When anything happened and the German Wehrmacht was attacked, there were never clear orders on what was to be done by way of reprisals.
COL. POKROVSKY: Am I to understand that in the absence of direct orders commanders were given a clear field and had the right to declare any person they wished a partisan and treat him accordingly?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The commanders certainly had to and could act and decide independently. No precise control was possible in individual cases, but the activities of all the troops used were always clearly known to the High Command, because the individual reports of the troops contained all details of the counter measures taken against the partisans—that is, they had to contain the number of partisans killed in combat, the number of partisans shot, of partisan suspects shot, and the number of our own losses. At the same time captured weapons had to be listed in detail, so that each leader could therefore see clearly how an operation worked out in practice.
COL. POKROVSKY: That means that each commander decided for himself whether there was any reason to suspect a man and to execute him?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. POKROVSKY: Do you know of any order prescribing the seizure of hostages and the burning of villages as a reprisal for abetting the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No. I do not think that written orders to that effect were ever issued, and it is precisely this lack of any orders which I considered a mistake. It should, for instance, have been definitely stated how many people could be executed as a reprisal for the killing of one, or of 10 German soldiers.
COL. POKROVSKY: Am I to understand that if certain commanders burned villages as a punitive measure against the local population, they, the commanders, would be acting on their own initiative?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes. These steps would be taken by a commander on his own initiative. Nor could his superior officers do anything against it, since orders emanating from the highest authorities definitely stated that if excesses were committed against the civilian population in the partisan areas, no disciplinary or juridical measures could be taken.
COL. POKROVSKY: And can we assume that the same applied to the seizure of hostages?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Well, I think that the question of hostages did not arise at all in the anti-partisan struggle. The hostage system was more common in the West. At any rate the term “hostage” was not used in anti-partisan warfare.
COL. POKROVSKY: Do you know anything about the forcible abduction and deportation to Germany of minors between 14 and 18 years of age?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Naturally, I do not remember details such as the age groups, but when I was appointed Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, I welcomed an order, issued at my suggestion, forbidding indiscriminate reprisals of the troops and decreeing that in future captured partisans and partisan suspects would no longer be shot but would be brought to the Reich by the Sauckel organization.
COL. POKROVSKY: If I understood you correctly, you replied to a question of my colleague, the American Prosecutor, by saying that the struggle against the partisan movement was a pretext for destroying the Slav and Jewish population?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
COL. POKROVSKY: Was the Wehrmacht Command aware of the methods adopted for fighting the partisan movement and for destroying the Jewish population?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The methods were known generally, and hence to the military leaders as well. I do not, of course, know whether they were aware of the plan mentioned by Himmler.
COL. POKROVSKY: Did you personally take part in any conferences with generals of the Wehrmacht during which the methods of anti-partisan warfare were clearly and plainly discussed?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The methods as such were discussed in detail and knowledge of them was taken for granted, but it was not mentioned at these discussions that such and such a number of persons were to be shot. That would be a wrong conclusion.
COL. POKROVSKY: You have told us that the Germans intended to destroy the Slav population in order to reduce the number of Slavs to 30 million. Where did you get this figure and this order?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I must correct that: Not to reduce to 30 million, but by 30 million. Himmler mentioned this figure in his speech at the Wezelsburg.
COL. POKROVSKY: Do you confirm the fact that actually all the measures carried out by the German commanders and by the Wehrmacht in the occupied Russian territories were directed to the sole purpose of reducing the number of Slavs and Jews by 30 million?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The meaning of that is not quite clear to me. Did the Wehrmacht know that the Slav population was to be diminished by 30 million? Would you please repeat the question, it wasn’t quite clear?
COL. POKROVSKY: I asked: Can you actually and truthfully confirm that the measures taken by the Wehrmacht Command in the district administrative areas then occupied by the Germans were directed to the purpose of diminishing the Slavs and Jews by 30 million? Do you now understand the question?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I believe that these methods would definitely have resulted in the extermination of 30 million if they had been continued, and if developments of that time had not completely changed the situation.
COL. POKROVSKY: I have no further questions to put to the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Does the Defense have any questions?
DR. EXNER: Witness, you said you were chief of anti-partisan operations, didn’t you?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units.
DR. EXNER: Well, if such chaotic conditions really existed, why didn’t you alter the system?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Because I was never given the requisite authority.
DR. EXNER: I beg your pardon?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Because I was never given authority. I could not issue orders, I had no disciplinary powers, and I was not an appointing authority for military courts.
DR. EXNER: Then did you make a report on the existing conditions to your superior officers?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Every day. I had a permanent staff at Himmler’s headquarters.
DR. EXNER: Did you suggest any changes?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Persistently.
DR. EXNER: And why were these changes never realized?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I think I have already expressed myself quite clearly on this point: because I think that these changes were not desired.
DR. EXNER: You also, as you have informed us, reported to your superior authorities on the number of enemy dead, wounded, and prisoners after each operation. Tell me what, approximately, was the proportion of enemy prisoners to the enemy dead?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The figures varied in each case. I cannot generalize, but it was a fact that prisoners usually far outnumbered the enemy dead.
DR. EXNER: The prisoners outnumbered the dead?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, but only in the years after the order allowing prisoners to be taken.
DR. EXNER: The system was harsher at first, you say, and milder later on?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, it was milder insofar as we now had definite orders stating where the prisoners were to be brought and to whom they were to be turned over. There were no such orders in the beginning.
DR. EXNER: Can you name any orders which you received from military authorities, dealing in any way with the annihilation of millions of Slavs?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I already gave my answer to that question to the prosecutor when I said that a written order to that effect did not exist.
DR. EXNER: Do you know that the reports which you sent to Himmler on the actions which you had carried out were submitted by Himmler directly to the Führer?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: May I reply to that in some detail? At first I had a permanent staff at Himmler’s headquarters. My chief of staff was there permanently while I was at the front. Between the Wehrmacht offices—that is, OKW and OKH—and my own staff there was constant and organized interchange of reports, for reports on partisan activities did not always reach me first, since from some operational areas the channel for reports was through the OKH. Therefore the Wehrmacht sent me as many reports as I sent to the Wehrmacht. These reports were collected in my staff, and were daily sent to Himmler who forwarded them again.
DR. EXNER: To whom?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The gentlemen of the Wehrmacht have confirmed to me, here in prison, that these reports were submitted during strategic conferences.
DR. EXNER: Can you tell me whether Jews participated in the partisan groups?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: There is no question but that in individual partisan groups Jews did participate, in numbers corresponding to the size of the Jewish population.
DR. EXNER: In individual groups? Was it not more in the nature of an exception?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, it was definitely an exception.
DR. EXNER: That is why I do not quite understand how actions taken against the partisans were to lead to the extermination of the Jews.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I did not say that; I was speaking earlier of the Einsatzgruppen of the Sicherheitspolizei.
DR. EXNER: Oh, I see, that is different. Do you know anything about the Dirlewanger regiment?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: That was the Dirlewanger Brigade, which I described in detail to the prosecutor a short time ago.
DR. EXNER: Yes. Was that brigade at any time under your command?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, in 1941.
DR. EXNER: Was it a formation of the Army or the SS?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, it was not a formation of the Waffen-SS; it was supplied by the Allgemeine SS, that is, by the Berger office.
DR. EXNER: Can you tell me who was present at Himmler’s speech at the Wezelsburg?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: About 12 Gruppenführer were present, I can name them if you like.
DR, EXNER: You mean Gruppenführer . . .
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Gruppenführer of the SS.
DR. EXNER: Were any officers of the Wehrmacht present?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
DR. EXNER: Thank you very much.
DR. KRAUS: You were present in Königsberg on the 18th of August 1935 when the former President of the Reichsbank, Schacht, made a speech at the Eastern Fair (Ostmesse)?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. KRAUS: What was your position at that time?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I was Oberabschnittsführer.
DR. KRAUS: Were you present at the speech in your official capacity?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, as Oberabschnittsführer of the SS.
DR. KRAUS: And you suddenly left the room in the middle of the speech, as a protest?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, in the middle of the speech I left the room.
DR. KRAUS: In protest?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. KRAUS: Then you did not agree with the speech?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I did not leave on account of the speech but as a protest.
DR. KRAUS: As a protest against the contents of the speech?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
DR. KRAUS: May I ask, then, why you protested?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: It is well known that in East Prussia I conducted a violent campaign against the then Gauleiter Koch, which, led to his suspension. Koch and I were bitterly opposed and I could not therefore understand why Reich Minister Schacht, who God knows did not belong to Koch’s school of thought, should take pains to pay compliments to this man, whom I knew to be corrupt.
DR. KRAUS: Were you protesting, then, against the attitude of Herr Schacht or that of Herr Koch?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I think Herr Schacht must have known that it was a protest against Koch. In any case I had it explained to him later, and we finally settled the matter amicably through mediators.
DR. KRAUS: I see. Thank you.
DR. SERVATIUS: Witness, you said that a change was made regarding the treatment of partisans, and that it was ordered that the partisans were to be placed into the labor service. Where did this order originate?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I cannot give you detailed information about this, I only know that Herr Sauckel himself went around in the East and made long speeches to the effect that it would be best if these men who were captured in partisan warfare were placed in the labor service through his organization.
DR. SERVATIUS: I asked where this order originated. Did it originate with Himmler or, as you described it, with the Sauckel organization?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No. The Sauckel organization could, of course, never issue orders relating to partisan warfare. I presume that the Sauckel organization suggested the order, but of course it had to originate with Himmler or the OKW.
DR. SERVATIUS: What do you know of the Sauckel organization? Where did it exist?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I know only what was generally known: namely, that this organization existed for the purpose of bringing manpower into the Reich for work in the armament industry.
DR. SERVATIUS: You spoke of an organization; but you don’t know anything about this organization, do you?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I don’t mean it in your sense, a large independent organization; that is not what I mean. But it was obvious that a man who was responsible for the whole of manpower must have an organization at his disposal. I beg your pardon, it was a mistake on my part.
DR. SERVATIUS: Then you do not know that Sauckel had no executive power at all and that he was not provided with an administrative machine of his own.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I don’t know that.
THE PRESIDENT: I want the attention of the defendants’ counsel. What I want to say is this, that unless counsel and the witnesses speak slowly and make adequate pauses between the questions and the answers, it is impossible for the interpreters to interpret properly, and the only result is that the questions and answers do not come through to the Tribunal, nor do the defendants’ counsel get the benefit of the true meaning of the answers which have been given in the examination-in-chief, and everything that you may think you gain by rapidity of cross-examination, you lose by the inadequacy of the translation. I will repeat, that you should pause at the end of your sentences and at the end of your questions, so as to give the interpreter’s voice time to come through.
DR. STAHMER: Witness, you said that from 1942 onwards you were Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units. As such, it was your duty to fight the partisans in the East?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, that is correct, in the East.
DR. STAHMER: Now, you said that it was not quite clear what was to be understood by the term “partisan”; the concept of “partisan” was never during the entire period clearly defined. Is that correct?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, the sense of that is correct. In my opinion a distinction should be drawn between partisans and partisan suspects. The troops did not always make this distinction. A partisan was a man carefully selected and trained by the enemy. He was also very well armed. I always insisted that this concept was not vague, but concrete. If fire is opened from a wood, a house, or a village, it is not correct to say that everyone in the wood, house, or village is a partisan; for this reason: The tactics of the partisans were to disappear rapidly after a successful action; they relied on the element of surprise inherent in this method of warfare. If the troops took their counter measures without being specially trained and without exact knowledge of this concept of “partisan,” then they would conclude from the fact that they had been fired on from a village, that all the inhabitants were partisans. In my view, a partisan can be considered as such only if he is encountered or captured with a weapon in his hand. If he has no weapon, he cannot be considered a partisan.
DR. STAHMER: Now, what did you do in a positive way to clarify this concept of “partisan”?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: As I have already said, ever since 1941, even before I was Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, not only I but also General Von Schenkendorff, continually sent numbers of memoranda containing suggestions. Moreover, in the Russian Army Group Center, for instance, we organized schools for fighting partisans, where the troops were to be trained along these lines. Schenkendorff and I, together, worked out a series of regulations for fighting partisans, but they were never published. Immediately after I was appointed Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units, that is, in the beginning of 1943, my staff began to prepare a new series of regulations for fighting partisans. Many months passed, however, before these regulations were finally published, in 1944, when they were already practically useless.
DR. STAHMER: Who issued these regulations?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: These regulations were published by the Wehrmacht, in the form of an ordinary Wehrmacht directive.
DR. STAHMER: They were issued by the Wehrmacht?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They came out in 1944.
DR. STAHMER: What were their contents?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They were entitled, Regulations for the Fighting of Partisans (Bandenkampfvorschrift).
DR. STAHMER: What were their contents?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: They comprised the whole of partisan warfare; thus they contained reconnaissance, operational details, differences between small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale operations.
DR. STAHMER: Since these partisan combat regulations did not appear before 1944, was it not your task, as you had all anti-partisan forces in the whole East, to instruct your forces directly on their conduct?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: In the first place, as I have said, I had no authority to issue orders. Consequently, I could only make suggestions. Secondly, closely organized anti-partisan forces never existed; it was an empty name which they were given. Any kind and number of formations would be assigned for anti-partisan warfare whenever necessary. It is wrong to say that I had troops at my disposal for the sole purpose of fighting the partisans. Moreover—and I should like to emphasize that—the document appointing me Chief of Anti-Partisan Combat Units stated as follows: Anti-partisan operations will be commanded either by the Higher SS and Police Officer, or the competent Wehrmacht commander in their respective areas. According to that directive, my own task was only that of an inspector, in spite of my continuous request for authority to issue orders.
DR. STAHMER: I don’t quite understand . . .
THE PRESIDENT: You must go slowly and you must pause between your sentences.
DR. STAHMER: As general of the Waffen-SS you must have had power to issue orders?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I had authority only to issue orders when I personally conducted an operation.
DR. STAHMER: But you were appointed, as you said, to fight the partisans and you must have had combat units for the purpose?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I had no such units.
DR. STAHMER: Then how did you conduct your fight against the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: In each case, I went to the respective commander, discussed the operation with him and asked for the necessary troops, unless they were put at my disposal, as it often happened, by the OKW or the OKH directly.
DR. STAHMER: You asked for troops, unless they were put at your disposal. But then these troops assigned to you were under your command, were they not?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, only if I personally commanded the operation. Otherwise, as I said, either the competent general of the Wehrmacht or, in the area of the civil government, the higher SS and police Leader commanded the operation. It was expressly noted in the directive containing my appointment as Chief of the Anti-Partisan Combat Units, that I could request authority to command an operation only if the authority of two higher SS and police leaders or of two Wehrmacht commanders overlapped, thus calling for a higher authority to handle the conflicting responsibilities.
DR. STAHMER: Did you never personally command an operation?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, I conducted one operation in 1943.
DR. STAHMER: In what way?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: This undertaking took place in the fall of 1943, in the region of Idrizza Polotsk. I first flew to the Army Group Center and talked the matter over with the then chief, General Krebs. Then I went on to Army Group North and discussed the same matter with Field Marshal Küchler. Küchler organized all the troops of the SS and Police and also the Wehrmacht formations in the rear areas into a so-called corps under the command of Jaeckel. The Army Group Center did the same with its own forces, and also formed a corps under the command of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the area. I myself, with my staff, was in command of both, and Colonel Von Mellenthin of the OKH was assigned to me as liaison officer. Then I conducted the enterprise personally. In the meantime the front had been broken through in foggy weather, and I made the independent decision of turning against the Red Army forces which had broken through; thus my units became the front line.
DR. STAHMER: You said a little while ago that you had been decorated with the Knight’s Cross. Did you receive this decoration for this undertaking alone?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, as I said before, I was already at the front in the year 1941. Again and again I was with the fighting units: In 1941 at Moscow, in 1942 at Velikie-Luki, and later at Koebel, at Warsaw during the uprising in Warsaw; and from 1944 onwards I commanded an SS corps.
DR. STAHMER: Did you not know that you were particularly commended by Hitler and Himmler and decorated mainly for your ruthless and efficient actions in the war against the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No. I received no decoration for the war against the partisans. I received all my decorations, beginning with the clusters to the Iron Cross II, at the front and from the Wehrmacht. I will gladly give you names.
DR. STAHMER: The Brigade Dirlewanger was an SS brigade, wasn’t it?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: The Brigade Dirlewanger did not belong to the Waffen-SS. It was an organization which could possibly be classified as part of the Allgemeine-SS. It was not supplied and kept up by the Waffen-SS, but by the Berger office.
DR. STAHMER: Was the commander of the Brigade Dirlewanger a member of the SS?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. STAHMER: Didn’t you yourself suggest that criminals should be organized and used for fighting the partisans?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
DR. THOMA: Witness, do you know that the civil government in White Ruthenia often protested against the manner in which the anti-partisan activities were carried on?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. THOMA: The civil authority was subordinate to the Reich Commissioner, and he in turn was subordinate to Rosenberg as Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, is that correct?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. THOMA: If I understood you correctly, you disapproved of the manner in which the fighting against partisans was carried on, involving many innocent people; and you disapproved also of the existence of the Dirlewanger Regiment and of the speech of Reichsführer SS Himmler?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes.
DR. THOMA: How could you then reconcile it with your conscience to remain chief or inspector of anti-partisan units and also head of such Einsatzgruppen?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I was never chief of Einsatzgruppen.
THE PRESIDENT: The question had not come through then on the interpreter’s voice before you began to answer. You must give greater pauses between the question and answer.
DR. THOMA: How did you reconcile it with your conscience to remain inspector of the anti-partisan forces in the East?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Not only could I reconcile that with my conscience, but I actually strove to obtain this position because in the years 1941 and 1942 I saw, together with Schenkendorff, that things could not continue as they were. General Schenkendorff, my immediate superior, recommended me for the position.
DR. THOMA: But you knew that you could not achieve anything with these suggestions?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I couldn’t know that. What I realize and acknowledge today, I could not possibly have known then.
DR. THOMA: At any rate, you achieved nothing?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I don’t think that; my opinion is rather that if someone else had been in my position, the disaster would have been greater.
DR. THOMA: Do you believe that Himmler’s speech, in which he demanded the extermination of 30 million Slavs, expressed only his personal opinion; or do you consider that it corresponded to the National Socialist ideology?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Today I believe that it was the logical consequence of our ideology.
DR. THOMA: Today?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Today.
DR. THOMA: What was your own opinion at that time?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: It is difficult for a German to fight through to this conviction. It took me a long time.
DR. THOMA: Then how is it that a few days ago a witness, namely, the Witness Ohlendorf, appeared here and admitted that through the Einsatzgruppen he had killed 90,000 people, but told the Tribunal that this did not harmonize with the National Socialist ideology?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I am of a different opinion. If for years, for decades, a doctrine is preached to the effect that the Slav race is an inferior race, that the Jews are not even human beings, then an explosion of this sort is inevitable.
DR. THOMA: Nevertheless the fact remains that, together with whatever attitude towards life you had at that time, you also had a conscience?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: And today, too—for that reason I am here.
[Dr. Exner approached the lectern.]
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Exner, are you cross-examining on behalf of some other defendant, or what?
DR. EXNER: I should like to ask two or three questions which my client put to me as important during the recess.
THE PRESIDENT: You have already cross-examined, have you not?
DR. EXNER: Yes, but I now have three new questions. We were not able to prepare ourselves for this cross-examination.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Go on.
DR. EXNER: Witness, you said an order was issued in the year 1944 regarding anti-partisan warfare. During the recess, I found in the document book of the Prosecution, under 1786-PS, mention of a combat directive on partisan warfare, dated 27 November 1942. Do you know of this?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
DR. EXNER: But it must exist, since it is mentioned here.
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I don’t know it.
DR. EXNER: Do you know of a Russian directive for partisan warfare?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Yes, that existed.
DR. EXNER: Could you give us information on the contents of this directive? What were the combat methods prescribed?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I no longer remember it.
DR. EXNER: Do you know where this directive is available?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No.
DR. EXNER: Thank you.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): One moment. Do you know how many members of the Wehrmacht were used at any one time in this anti-partisan activity? What was the largest number of the troops?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: Large-scale undertakings were those carried out with one division or more. I believe the largest number of troops for a single operation might have been three divisions.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): I mean all the troops on the Eastern Front at any one time used in these anti-partisan activities?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I cannot answer that, because these troops were never together under my direction. Operations were conducted simultaneously, large-, small-, and medium-scale operations were being carried out everywhere at the same time. Reports of such operations came in every day.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Do you know how many Einsatzgruppen were used?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I know of three, one for each army group.
THE PRESIDENT: [To Colonel Taylor.] You don’t want to re-examine?
COL. TAYLOR: No, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness may go.
[The witness left the stand.]
COL. TAYLOR: Your Lordship, that concludes the evidence under Counts Three and Four of the Indictment and I have only a few more words by way of general conclusion.
I ask the Tribunal to bear in mind that the German High Command is not an evanescent thing, the creature of a decade of unrest, or a school of thought or tradition which is shattered and utterly discredited. The German High Command and military tradition have in the past achieved victory and survived defeat. They have met with triumph and disaster, and they have survived through a singular durability.
An eminent American statesman and diplomat, Mr. Sumner Welles, has written, and I quote from his book The Time for Decision, Page 261:
“. . . that the authority to which the German people have so often and so disastrously responded was not in reality the German Emperor of yesterday, or the Hitler of today, but the German General Staff. Whether their ostensible ruler is the Kaiser, or Hindenburg, or Adolf Hitler, the continuing loyalty of the bulk of the population is given to that military force controlled and guided by the German General Staff.”
I think that this emphasizes the historical importance of the decision which this Tribunal is called on to make. But we are not now indicting the German General Staff at the bar of history, but on specific charges of crimes against international law and the dictates of the conscience of mankind, as embodied in the Charter which governs this Court.
The picture we have seen is that of a group of men with great power for good or evil, who chose the latter, who deliberately set out to arm Germany to the point where the German will could be imposed on the rest of the world, and who gladly joined forces with the most evil forces at work in Germany. “Hitler produced the results which all of us warmly desired,” we are told by Blomberg and Blaskowitz, and that is obviously the truth. The converse is no less clear; the military leaders furnished Hitler with the means and the might which were necessary to his survival, to say nothing of the accomplishment of those purposes which seemed to us so ludicrously impossible in 1932 and so fearfully imminent in 1942.
I have said that the German militarists were inept as well as persistent. Helpless as Hitler would have been without them, he succeeded in mastering them. The generals and the Nazis were allies in 1933. But it was not enough that the generals should be his voluntary allies; Hitler wanted them permanently and completely under his control. Devoid of political skill and principle, the generals lacked the mentality or morality to resist. On the day of the death of President Hindenburg, in August 1934, the German officers swore a new oath. Their previous oath had been to the Fatherland; now it was to a man—Adolf Hitler. Later the Nazi emblem became part of their uniform, the Nazi flag their standard. By a clever process of infiltration into key positions, Hitler seized control of the entire military machine.
We will no doubt hear the generals ask what they could have done about it. We will hear that they were helpless, and that to protect their jobs and families and lives, they had to follow Hitler’s decisions. No doubt this became true, but the generals were a key factor in Hitler’s rise to complete power and a partner in his criminal aggressive designs. It is always difficult and dangerous to withdraw from a criminal conspiracy. Never has it been suggested that a conspirator may claim mercy on the ground that his fellow conspirators threatened him with harm, should he withdraw from the plot.
In many respects the spectacle which the German General Staff and High Command group presents today is the most degrading of all the groups and organizations before this Court. They are the bearers of a tradition not devoid of valor and honor; but they emerge from this war stained both by criminality and ineptitude. Attracted by the militaristic and aggressive Nazi policies, the German generals found themselves drawn into adventures of a scope they had not foreseen. From crimes in which almost all of them participated willingly and approvingly were born others in which they participated partly because they were too ineffective to alter the governing Nazi policies and partly because they had to continue collaboration to save their own skins.
Having joined the partnership, the General Staff and High Command group planned and carried through manifold acts of aggression which turned Europe into a charnel house and caused the Armed Forces to be used for foul practices, foully executed, of terror, pillage, and wholesale slaughter. Let no one be heard to say that the military uniform shall be a cloak, or that they may find sanctuary by pleading membership in the profession to which their actions were a disgrace.
COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal pleases, the next subject will be the presentation of supplemental evidence concerning the persecution of the churches as presented by Colonel Wheeler.
COLONEL LEONARD WHEELER, JR. (Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States): Your Honors, the material now to be submitted comprises, first, supplemental proof on the suppression of the churches within Germany: the Evangelical churches, the Catholic Church, and the Bibelforscher (or Bible students); and second, acts of suppression in the annexed and occupied territories, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. A large part of this proof will be from the official files of the Vatican.
I now submit to the Court United States Trial Brief H (supplemental), on “Suppression of the Christian Churches in Germany and in the Occupied Territories,” and Document Book H (supplemental), containing English translations of all the documents referred to in the supplemental brief, or to be referred to in my oral presentation. I shall take up first the supplemental proof on the suppression of the churches in Germany.
Hitler announced in March 1933 a distinction in his policy toward politics and morals on the one hand and religion on the other. I offer in evidence Document Number 3387-PS, Exhibit Number USA-566. This is a speech by Hitler to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933, quoted in the Völkischer Beobachter, for March 24, 1933, Page 1, Column 5 of the German newspaper. I quote from this speech:
“While the Government is determined to carry through a political and moral purging of our public life, it is creating and insuring the requisites of a truly religious life. The Government sees in both Christian confessions the factors most important for the maintenance of our Volkstum. It will respect agreements concluded between them and the Länder. However, it expects that its work will meet with like appreciation. The Government will treat all other denominations with objective justice. However, it can never condone that belonging to a certain denomination or to a certain race should be regarded as a license for the commission or toleration of crime. The Government will devote its care to harmony between Church and State.”
Toward the Evangelical churches, the Nazi conspirators proceeded at first with caution, and an appearance of legality. They set up a new constitution of the German Evangelical Church, which introduced the innovation of a single Lutheran Reich Bishop, who assumed all the administrative functions of the old agencies of the churches. I refer to Document Number 3433-PS, the Decree concerning the Constitution of the German Evangelical Church, dated July 14, 1933, appearing in the Reichsgesetzblatt, 1933, Part I, Page 471, and request that the Court take judicial notice of it.
It is too well known to require documentation that the new Reich Bishop, Bishop Müller, heeded the voice of his Nazi masters. One of his first steps was to maneuver the Evangelical Youth Association into the Hitler Jugend under the Defendant Von Schirach in December 1933. In proof of this I refer to Document Number 1458 (a)-PS, already in evidence as part of Document Book D. This is an excerpt from Von Schirach’s book, The Hitler Youth—Idea and Formation.
By 1935 it had become evident that more than persuasion by the Reich Bishop was necessary. Consequently the Nazi conspirators promulgated a number of public laws which, under innocent sounding titles, gradually wove a tight net of state control over all the affairs of the Evangelical churches. We ask that the Court take judicial notice of these laws published in the Reichsgesetzblatt. These may be briefly summarized as follows:
3434-PS, “Law concerning Procedure for Decisions in Legal Affairs of the Evangelical Church,” dated 26 June 1935, signed by Hitler and Frick, appearing in 1935 in Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 774. This gave the Reich Minister of the Interior, the Defendant Frick, when question was raised in a civil lawsuit, sole authority to determine the validity of measures taken in the Evangelical state churches, or in the German Evangelical Church since May 1, 1933.
3435-PS, “First Ordinance for Execution of the Law concerning Procedure for Decisions in Legal Affairs of the Evangelical Church,” dated July 3, 1935, appearing in 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 851. This implemented the earlier law, by setting up an Office for Decisions with three members appointed by the Reich Minister of the Interior.
3466-PS, “Decree to Unite the Competences of Reich and Prussia in Church Affairs,” dated July 16, 1935, signed by Hitler, published in 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1029. This transferred to Reich Minister without Portfolio Kerrl the Church Affairs hitherto handled by the Reich and Prussian Ministries of the Interior and for Science, Education, and Training of the Population.
3436-PS, “Law for the Safeguarding of the German Evangelical Church,” dated 24 September 1935, published in the 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1178, signed by Hitler and the Minister for Church Affairs, Dr. Kerrl. This empowered the Reich Minister of Church Affairs to issue ordinances with binding legal force.
3437-PS, “Fifth Decree for Execution of the Law for the Safeguarding of the German Evangelical Church,” dated 2 December 1935, published in 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1370. This prohibited “Organs of Church Leadership” in the Evangelical churches from filling pastorates, engaging clerical assistants, examining and ordaining candidates of the state churches, visitation, publishing of the banns, and collection and administration of church dues and assessments.
This series of laws culminated on June 26, 1937, in Document Number 3439-PS, the “Fifteenth Decree for the Execution of the Law for Security of the German Evangelical Church,” dated June 25, 1937, published in 1937 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 697. By this, the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, Kerrl, established a finance department for the churches to supervise the administration of all church property, the budget, and the use of budget funds and to regulate salaries and allowances of officials, clergy, and employees. Thus, before the outbreak of the war, the Nazi conspirators had the Evangelical churches tied hand and foot physically and administratively, if not spiritually.
Against the Catholic Church with its international organization the Nazi conspirators launched a most vigorous and drastic attack—again at first, however, cloaked under a mantle of co-operation and legality. A concordat signed by the Defendant Von Papen, one of the foremost Catholic laymen in Germany, was concluded between the Reich Government and the Vatican on July 20, 1933. It is printed in the 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part II, Page 679 to Page 690, and contained in Document Number 3280 (a)-PS. I ask the Court to take judicial notice of it. I quote Article 1:
“The German Reich guarantees freedom of profession and public practice of the Catholic religion.
“It acknowledges the right of the Catholic Church, within the limit of those laws which are applicable to all, to manage and regulate its own affairs independently and, within the framework of its own competence, to publish laws and ordinances binding on its members.”
Other articles which, being matters of common knowledge, I assume need not be read into the record, formulated basic principles such as freedom of the Catholic press, of Catholic education, and of Catholic charitable, professional, and other organizations.
The proposal for the concordat came from the Reich, and not from the Vatican. I refer to Document Number 3268-PS, Exhibit Number USA-356, excerpts from the Allocution of Pope Pius XII to the Sacred College on June 2, 1945, already read into evidence. I quote from Page 1 of the English mimeographed excerpts, Page 1 of the German translation, third paragraph, which has not previously been read, “In the spring of 1933 the German Government asked the Holy See to conclude a concordat with the Reich.”
The present Pope, Pope Pius XII, then Cardinal Pacelli, negotiated and signed the concordat on behalf of the Vatican. As Archbishop Pacelli he had previously been Papal Nuncio in Germany for 12 years.
Relying upon the Nazis’ assurances, particularly Hitler’s speech of March 23, 1933 above quoted (3387-PS), the Catholic hierarchy revoked its previous opposition against Catholics becoming members of the National Socialist Party. I offer in evidence Document Number 3389-PS, Exhibit USA-566, a pastoral letter, dated March 23, 1933, from the Bishop of Cologne, and I quote from the Völkischer Beobachter for March 29, 1933 Page 2 Columns 2 and 3:
“The Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Schulte, announces to the Archdiocese of Cologne a declaration of the Bishops’ Conference at Fulda, which states:
“The bishops of the diocese of Germany, in their dutiful solicitude to keep the Catholic faith pure and to protect the inviolable aims and rights of the Catholic Church, have adopted, for weighty reasons during the last years, an attitude of opposition toward the National Socialist movement, through prohibitions and warnings, which were to remain in effect as long and as far as those reasons remained valid.
“It should now be recognized that there are public and solemn declarations issued by the highest representative of the Reich Government—who at the same time is the authoritarian leader of that movement—which acknowledge the inviolability of the teachings of the Catholic faith and the unswerving mission and rights of the Church and which expressly guarantee the full validity of the legal pacts concluded between the several German Länder and the Church.
“Without lifting the condemnation, implied in our previous measures, of certain religious and ethical errors, the Episcopate now believes it can be confident that those general prohibitions and warnings prescribed need no longer be regarded as necessary.”
The Catholic Center Party, yielding to these assurances and to pressure, was dissolved on July 5, 1933. I refer to Document Number 2403-PS, already in evidence as part of U.S. Document Book B, an excerpt from Documents of German Politics, the official Nazi publication, a document of which the Court can take judicial notice; and I quote from the last five lines of Page 1 of the English translation, appearing on Page 55 of the original German text, which states:
“Also the parties of German Catholicism which were supposed to be most deeply rooted, had to bow to the law of the New Order. On July 4, 1933, the Bavarian People’s Party (Document 27), and on July 5, 1933, the Center Party (Document 29), published an announcement of their dissolution.”
In spite of these evidences of confidence and co-operation or submission on the part of the Catholics, the Nazi conspirators almost immediately commenced a series of violations of the concordat. I offer in evidence Document Number 3476-PS, Exhibit USA-567, being the Papal Encyclical, “Mit brennender Sorge”—in German—by Pope Pius XI on March 14, 1937, and also ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of all of it. I quote from, the one-page English excerpt . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Did you say 3476 or 3466?
COL. WHEELER: 3476.
THE PRESIDENT: We don’t seem to have that.
COL. WHEELER: That may be a mistake, Sir, for 3563; the number was changed. The part of it which is in English in the Document Book, Sir, is under 3280-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: 3280?
COL. WHEELER: The difficulty is that the German original came in after the translation had been made from another source.
THE PRESIDENT: 3280(a)-PS?
COL. WHEELER: 3280 without the (a). It’s just a couple of paragraphs.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes; I see.
COL. WHEELER: These are found on Page 2, Paragraph 2, of the German original, which is in evidence now, which was secretly reproduced at Fulda from copies smuggled into Germany from Rome, and read definitely from pulpits all over Germany. I quote:
“It discloses intrigues which from the beginning had no other aim than a war of extermination. In the furrows in which we had labored to sow the seeds of true peace, others, like the enemy in Holy Scripture (Matt. xiii, 25), sowed the tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church, fed from a thousand different sources and making use of every available means. On them and on them alone and on their silent and vocal protectors rests the responsibility for the fact that now, on the horizon of Germany, there is to be seen, not the rainbow of peace, but the threatening storm clouds of destructive religious strife.
“Anyone who has even a grain of a sense of truth left in his mind and even a shadow of a feeling of justice left in his heart will have to admit that, in the difficult and eventful years which followed the concordat, every word and every action of ours was ruled by loyalty to the terms of the agreement; but also he will have to recognize with surprise and deep disgust that the unwritten law of the other party has been arbitrary misinterpretation of agreements, circumvention of agreements, weakening of the force of agreements and, finally, more or less open violation of agreements.
“Only 10 days after the Concordat was signed. . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: None of this is in our book.
COL. WHEELER: That’s not in your book?
THE PRESIDENT: Not what you’ve been reading. The first paragraph, down to the words “destructive religious wars” is in our book. The rest isn’t in it.
COL. WHEELER: I think there must have been an error today then, Sir. There was a second edition of that 3280, which contains the second paragraph. I’ll have that substituted as soon as this is over.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
DR. ALFRED SEIDL (Counsel for Defendant Frank): The United States Prosecution said earlier in the proceedings that a certain part of the material now being presented as evidence in the question of the opposition to the churches was made available by the Vatican. The Defendant Hans Frank has just sent me some questions which I do not want to withhold from the Tribunal. The questions are these:
1. Is the Vatican a Signatory to the Charter of the International Military Tribunal?
2. Did the Vatican deliver the material in an accusatory capacity?
3. Has the Vatican, acting as a co-prosecutor, identified itself with the principles of these proceedings?
The Defendant Hans Frank adds by way of explanation that his continued membership in the Roman Catholic Church depends on the reply to these questions.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it desirable that the Tribunal understand your objections. The first question that you ask is: Is the Vatican a Signatory to the Charter? Is that right?
DR. SEIDL: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Your second question was what? What was your second question?
DR. SEIDL: The second question is: Whether the Vatican submitted the material which is now being presented, acting as co-prosecutor?
THE PRESIDENT: And your third?
DR. SEIDL: The third question is—and it is addressed directly to the Prosecution—whether the Vatican, as prosecutor, has identified itself with the principles upon which this Trial is being conducted?
[There was a pause in the proceedings while the Judges conferred.]
THE PRESIDENT: In the opinion of the Tribunal the observations which have just been made by counsel on behalf of the Defendant Frank are entirely irrelevant, and any motion which they were intended to support is denied. The Prosecution will therefore continue.
COL. WHEELER: I now offer in evidence the first of a number of documents which the Vatican has supplied to the Prosecution in this case from its own files and which authoritatively state the acts of suppression of the Church by the Nazi conspirators. This first Vatican document, which deals in part with acts of suppression within Germany, is Document Number 3261-PS, Exhibit Number USA-568, a verbal note of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness the Pope to the German Embassy, dated January 18, 1942. I read the certificate accompanying this document:
“The Vatican, November 13th, 1945.
“I, Domenico Tardini, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, hereby certify that the attached document, consisting of nine printed pages and entitled, ‘Verbal note of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness to the German Embassy,’ January 18th, 1942, Pages 3-11, is a true and correct translation into the English language from the Italian language of a carbon copy of a document now in the possession of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness, the original of which was dispatched to the German Embassy.”—Signed—“Domenico Tardini.”
The paper in the document book, Your Honors, is a mimeographed copy of the same printed document which we received from the Vatican. We did not have enough printed documents to make them in the document books.
On Page 2 of the English mimeographed text of this verbal note, Paragraphs 3 and 4—appearing on Page 2 of the German translation, Paragraphs 3 and 4—the Papal Secretary of State describes, I quote:
“Measures and acts which gravely violate the rights of the Church, being contrary not only to the existing concordats but to the principles of international law ratified by the Second Hague Conference . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: Did you say you were reading the third paragraph?
COL. WHEELER: Yes, Your Honor. It is the third full paragraph on Page 2. It starts in the middle of the paragraph with the last word on the seventh line of the third paragraph.
THE PRESIDENT: It is very difficult for us to find it if you don’t tell us it begins in the middle of the paragraph.
COL. WHEELER: The last word of that line is “measures”. It’s the seventh line of the paragraph beginning “Yet, despite this keen desire,” Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I see.
COL. WHEELER: “. . . but often—and this is much more grave—to the very fundamental principles of Divine Law both natural and positive.”
The next paragraph specifies these measures. I quote:
“Let it suffice to recall in this connection, among other things, the changing of the Catholic state elementary schools into undenominational schools; the permanent or temporary closing of many minor seminaries, of not a few major seminaries, and of some theological faculties; the suppression of almost all the private schools and of numerous Catholic boarding schools and colleges; the repudiation, decided upon unilaterally, of financial obligations which the State, municipalities, and so forth, had towards the Church; the increasing difficulties put in the way of the activity of the religious orders and congregations in the spiritual, cultural, and social field, and above all the suppression of abbeys, monasteries, convents, and religious houses in such great numbers that one is led to infer a deliberate intention of rendering impossible the very existence of the orders and congregations in Germany.”
The Nazis did not overlook other sects or denominations in their efforts to suppress Christian religion in Germany. They persecuted the “Bibelforscher” or Bible students . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps, if you are going on to another church, it would be better to break off until tomorrow morning.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 8 January 1946 at 1000 hours.]
TWENTY-NINTH DAY Tuesday, 8 January 1946
Morning Session
COL. WHEELER: The Nazis did not overlook other sects or denominations in their efforts to suppress Christian religion in Germany. They persecuted the Bibelforscher or International Bible Students as well. There has already been introduced and read into evidence Document Number D-84, Exhibit Number USA-236, showing that members of this sect were not only prosecuted in the courts, but also seized and sent to concentration camps, even after serving or remitting of their judicial sentences.
In Document Number 2928-PS, Exhibit Number USA-239, included in U.S. Document Book A, further evidence of persecution of Bibelforscher appears.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you are going a little bit fast. We are not going to refer to D-84?
COL. WHEELER: I am not going to read from it, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you go to 2928-PS?
COL. WHEELER: 2928-PS; it is in the document book, Sir. This document is an affidavit by Matthias Lex, Vice President of the national union of shoemakers. In describing his experience in Dachau Concentration Camp he says, and I quote from the third page of his affidavit:
“I include in the political prisoners the International Bible Students”—Bibelforscher—“whose number I estimate at over 150.”
I want to read further from the last line of that page and the next few lines of the next page:
“The following groups were kept entirely isolated: The members of the so-called ‘punishment companies,’”—Strafkompanien—“those who were in a concentration camp for a second time, and after about 1937 also the ‘Bibelforscher’. Members of the ‘punishment companies’ were such prisoners who had committed disciplinary or slight offenses against the camp regulations. The following groups lived separately but could mix with the other groups during the day, either while working or while strolling through the camp:
“Political prisoners, Jews, anti-socials, gypsies, felons, homosexuals, and, before 1937, also the International Bible Students.”
I refer also to Document Number 1531-PS—this is not in the document book—Exhibit Number USA-248, which is already in evidence. This was an order by the RSHA in 1942 authorizing third-degree methods against Jehovah’s Witnesses. That was read by Colonel Storey.
I now turn to acts of suppression in the annexed and occupied territories. In Austria Bishop Rusch of Innsbruck has written an illuminating report on this subject. I offer this sworn statement in evidence, Document 3278-PS, Exhibit Number USA-569. This is a report on the fighting of National Socialism in the Apostolic Administration of Innsbruck-Feldkirch, of Tyrol and Vorarlberg. In this the Bishop declares, and I start on the first page of the English text, and of the German translation:
“After having seized power, National Socialism immediately showed the tendency to exclude the Church from publicity.”
The expression “publicity”—this was written in English by the Bishop—evidently means “public activities.” I continue with the quote:
“At Corpus Christi in 1938 the customary solemn procession was forbidden. In the summer of the same year all ecclesiastical schools and kindergartens were disbanded. Daily newspaper and weekly reviews of Christian thinking were likewise removed. In the same year all kinds of ecclesiastical organizations, especially youth organizations such as Boy Scouts, were disbanded, all activity forbidden.
“The effect of these prohibitions came soon: The clergy took opposition against them, they could not do otherwise. Then a great wave of priest arrests followed. About a fifth of them were eventually arrested. Reasons for arrests were:
“1. The ‘pulpit-paragraph.’ When Party actions were mentioned or criticized even in the humblest manner.
“2. The practice of taking care of young people. A specially heavy prohibition was given in November 1939. Children’s or youth’s mass or services were forbidden. Religion or faith lessons were not allowed to be given in the church except lessons of preparing for first Communion or confirmation. Teaching of religion at school was very often forbidden without any reason.
“The priest, according to his conscience, could not follow this public proscription and this explained the great number of arrests of priests. Finally, the priests were arrested on account of their ‘caritative’ work. It was, for instance, forbidden to give anything to foreigners or prisoners. A priest was arrested because he gave a cup of coffee and bread to two hungry Dutchmen. This ‘caritative’ act was seen to favor elements foreign to the race.
“In 1939 and 1940 a new activity began. Cloisters and abbeys were seized, disbanded, and many churches belonging to them closed. Among these two convents were disbanded: the cloister of the Dominican Sisters of Bludenz and that of the ‘Perpetual Adoration’ of Innsbruck. In the latter the Sisters were dragged, one by one, out of the cloister by the Gestapo. In the same way ecclesiastical property such as association-houses, parish and youth homes were seized. A list of these closed churches, disbanded cloisters, and ecclesiastical institutions is attached.
“Despite all these measures the results were not satisfactory. Then priests were not only arrested, but also deported to concentration camps. Eight priests of Tyrol and Vorarlberg have been imprisoned, among them the Provicar Monseigneur Dr. Charles Lampert. One died there on account of the ill-treatment, the others returned. Provicar Lampert was released but required to remain in Stettin, where later he was re-arrested and executed in November 1944, after having been condemned to death by secret proceedings.”
There is attached to this report a three-and-a-half-page list entitled, “List of churches, convents, monasteries, and ecclesiastical objects of Tyrol and Vorarlberg seized—that is, confiscated—and of the institutions, confessional schools, et cetera, disbanded.” Unless the Tribunal requires it, I shall not read these names.
I offer in evidence Document 3274-PS, Exhibit Number USA-570, received from Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna and authenticated by him. This is the first joint pastoral letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of Austria after liberation, dated October 17, 1945. I quote from Page 1, second paragraph of the English and German texts, which sums up the Nazi conspirators’ campaign in Austria:
“A war which has raged terribly and horribly, like none other in past epochs of the history of humanity is at an end. . . . At an end also is an intellectual battle, the goal of which was the destruction of Christianity and Church among our people; a campaign of lies and treachery against truth and love, against divine and human rights, and against international law.”
I quote further from the fourth and following paragraphs:
“Direct hostility to the Church was revealed in regulations against orders and monasteries, Catholic schools and institutions, against religious foundations and activities, against the ecclesiastical recreation centers and institutions; without the least rights to defend themselves they were declared enemies of both people and state and their existence destroyed.
“Religious instruction and education of children and adolescents were purposely limited, frequently entirely prevented. They encouraged in every manner all efforts hostile to religion and the Church and thus sought to rob the children and youth of our people of the most valuable treasure of holy faith and of true morality born of the Spirit of God. Unfortunately the attempt succeeded in innumerable cases to the permanent detriment of young people.
“Spiritual care of souls in churches and ecclesiastical houses, in hospitals and other institutions was seriously obstructed. It was made ineffectual in the Armed Forces and in the Labor Service, in the transfer of youth to the country and, beyond that, even in individual families and among numerous persons, to say nothing of the prohibition of spiritual ministration to people of another nationality and of other races.
“How often was the divine service as such, also sermons, missions, Communion days, retreats, processions, pilgrimages, restricted for the most impossible reasons and made entirely impossible!
“Catholic literature, newspapers, periodicals, church papers, religious writings were stopped, books and libraries destroyed.
“What an injustice occurred in the dissolution of many Catholic societies, in the destruction of numerous church activities!
“Individual Catholic and Christian believers, whose religious confession was allegedly free, were spied upon, criticized on account of their belief, scorned on account of their Christian activity. How many religious officials, teachers, public and private employees, laborers, businessmen, and artisans, indeed, even peasants were put under pressure and terror! Many lost their jobs, some were pensioned off, others dismissed without pension, demoted, deprived of their real professional activity. Often enough such people who remained loyal to their convictions were discriminated against, condemned to hunger or tortured in concentration camps. Christianity and the Church were continually scorned and exposed to hatred.
“The apostasy movement found every assistance. Every opportunity was used to induce many to withdraw from the Church.”
In assessing responsibility for these acts of suppression in Austria, the Court will recall that the Defendant Von Schirach was Gauleiter of Vienna from 1940 to 1945.
I now come to the acts of suppression in Czechoslovakia, where, the Court will recollect, the Defendant Von Neurath was Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1943 and was succeeded by the Defendant Frick. These acts have been summarized in an official Czech Government report. I refer to Document 998-PS, Exhibit Number USA-91, already in evidence. These are excerpts not previously read or referred to from the “Czech Official Report for the Prosecution and Trial of the German Major War Criminals by the International Military Tribunal Established according to the Agreement of the Four Great Powers, of August 8, 1945.” Since this is an official government document or report of one of the United Nations, I ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice of it under Article 21 of the Charter and I suggest that I be permitted to summarize rather than read it.
It describes the maltreatment of Catholic priests—487 of whom were sent to concentration camps as hostages—dissolution of religious orders, suppression of religious instruction in Czech schools, suppression of Catholic weeklies and monthlies, dissolution of the Catholic gymnastic organization of 800,000 members, and seizure of Catholic Church property. It describes the entire prohibition of the Czechoslovak National Church and confiscation of all its property in Slovakia and its crippling in Bohemia.
The report describes the severe restriction on freedom of preaching by the Protestants and the persecution and imprisonment and execution of ministers and the suppression of Protestant Church youth organizations and theological schools and shows the complete subordination and later dissolution of the Greek Orthodox Church. It states that all Evangelical education was handed over to the civil authorities and many Evangelical teachers lost their employment.
The repressive measures adopted by the Nazi conspirators in Poland against the Christian Church were even more drastic and sweeping.
The Vatican documents now to be introduced describe persecutions of the Catholic Church in Poland in three areas: First, the incorporated territories, especially the Warthegau; second, the Government General; and third, the incorporated Eastern territories.
The Court will recall that the incorporated territories comprised territories adjacent to the old Reich, chiefly the Reich District Wartheland or Warthegau, which included particularly the cities of Poznan and Lodz and the Reich district Danzig-West Prussia.
The occupied Polish territories which were organized into the Government General comprised the remainder of Poland, seized by the German forces in 1939 and extending to the new boundary with the Soviets formed at that time. This included Warsaw and Kraków. After the Nazis attacked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in June 1941, the parts of old Poland lying farther to the east and then overrun were included in the so-called Occupied Eastern Territories.
For the purpose of tying the defendants’ responsibility for the persecutions occurring in their respective areas, the Court will bear in mind that the Defendant Frick was the official chiefly responsible for the reorganization of the Eastern territories. The Defendant Frank was head of the Government General from 1939 to 1945. The Defendant Seyss-Inquart was Deputy Governor General there from 1939 to 1940. And the Defendant Rosenberg was Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories from July 17, 1941 to the end.
I now offer in evidence Document Number 3263-PS, Exhibit Number USA-571, headed, “Memorandum of the Secretariat of State to the German Embassy regarding the religious situation in the ‘Warthegau,’ October 8, 1942.” This document bears a certificate of authenticity from the Vatican signed by the Papal Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs corresponding to that accompanying Document 3261-PS, read in evidence a few minutes ago. Unless the Court requires otherwise, I suggest that it is not necessary to read each of these certificates, which are all similar one to another. I quote from Document 3263-PS, the first paragraph:
“For quite a long time the religious situation in the region called ‘Warthegau’ gives cause for very grave and ever-increasing anxiety. There, in fact, the Episcopate has been little by little almost completely eliminated; the secular and regular clergy have been reduced to proportions that are absolutely inadequate, because they have been in large part deported and exiled; the education of clerics has been forbidden; the Catholic education of youth is meeting with the greatest opposition; the nuns have been dispersed; insurmountable obstacles have been put in the way of affording people the help of religion; very many churches have been closed; Catholic intellectual and charitable institutions have been destroyed; ecclesiastical property has been seized.”
On March 2, 1943 the Cardinal Secretary of State addressed to the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the Reich, a note setting forth in detail the persecution of bishops, priests, and other ecclesiastics and the suppression of the exercise of religion in the occupied Polish provinces. This document is so explicit and so authoritative that it deserves extensive quotation. I accordingly offer it in evidence: Document Number 3264-PS, Exhibit Number USA-572. It is headed, “A Note of His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State to the Foreign Minister of the Reich about the religious situation in the ‘Warthegau’ and in the other Polish provinces subject to Germany.” It bears a Vatican certificate of authenticity like that of Document 3261-PS. It is signed, “L. Card. Maglione,” meaning “Luigi Cardinal Maglione.” I quote from this note, starting with Page 1, the third paragraph of the English mimeographed text and of the German translation:
“The place where, above all, the religious situation, by its unusual gravity, calls for special consideration is the territory called the ‘Reichsgau Wartheland.’
“Six bishops resided in that region in August 1939; now there is left only one. In fact, the Bishop of Lodz and his auxiliary were, in the course of the year 1941, confined first in a small district of the diocese and then expelled and exiled in the ‘Generalgouvernement.’
“Another bishop, Monseigneur Michael Kozal, Auxiliary and Vicar General of Wloclawek, was arrested in the autumn of 1939, detained for some time in a prison in the city and later in a religious house in Lad, and finally was transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau.
“Since His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan and the Bishop of Wloclawek, who had gone away during the period of military operations, were not allowed to return to their Sees, the only bishop who now remains in the ‘Warthegau’ is His Excellency Monseigneur Valentine Dymek, Auxiliary of Poznan; and he, at least up to November 1942, was interned in his own house.”
I pass now to Page 2, fourth paragraph of the English text, the fifth paragraph of the German text:
“If the lot of their Excellencies the Bishops has been a source of anxiety for the Holy See, the condition of an immense number of priests and members of religious orders has caused it, and still causes it, no less grief.
“In the territory now called ‘Warthegau’ more than 2,000 priests exercised their ministry before the war; they are now reduced to a very small number.
“According to accounts received from various quarters by the Holy See, in the first months of the military occupation not a few members of the secular clergy were shot or otherwise put to death, while others—some hundreds—were imprisoned or treated in an unseemly manner, being forced into employments unbecoming their state and exposed to scorn and derision.
“Then, while numbers of ecclesiastics were exiled or constrained in some other way to take refuge in the ‘Generalgouvernement,’ many others were transferred to concentration camps. At the beginning of October 1941 the priests from the dioceses of the ‘Warthegau’ detained in Dachau already numbered several hundreds; but their number increased considerably in that month following a sharp intensification of police measures which culminated in the imprisonment and deportation of further hundreds of ecclesiastics. Entire ‘Kreise’ (districts) remained thus completely deprived of clergy. In the city of Poznan itself the spiritual care of some 200,000 Catholics remained in the hands of not more than four priests.
“No less painful was the fate reserved for the regular clergy. Many religious were shot or otherwise killed; the great majority of the others were imprisoned, deported, or expelled.
“In the same way far-reaching measures were taken against the institutions preparing candidates for the ecclesiastical state. The diocesan seminaries of Gniezno and Poznan, of Wloclawek, and of Lodz were closed. The seminary in Poznan for the training of priests destined to work among Polish Catholics abroad was also closed.
“The novitiates and houses of formation of the religious orders and congregations were closed.
“Not even the nuns were able to continue their charitable activities without molestation. For them was set up a special concentration camp at Bojanowo, where towards the middle of 1941 about 400 sisters were interned and employed in manual labor. To a representation of the Holy See made through the Apostolic Nunciature in Berlin (Memorandum N. 40.348 of June 11th, 1941) your Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs replied in the Memorandum Pol. III 1886 of September 28 of the same year that it was only a question of a temporary measure, taken with the consent of the Reich lieutenant for Wartheland, in order to supply the lack of housing for Polish Catholic sisters. In the same memorandum it was admitted that as a result of reorganization of charitable institutions many Catholic sisters were without employment.
“But, in spite of the fact that this measure was declared to be temporary, it is certain that towards the end of 1942 some hundreds of nuns were still interned at Bojanowo. It is established that for some time the religious were deprived even of spiritual help.
“Likewise in the matter of education and religious instruction of youth no attention was paid in the ‘Warthegau’ to the rights of the Catholic Church.
“All the Catholic schools were suppressed.”
THE PRESIDENT: Who was the Foreign Minister of the Reich at the time that document was sent?
COL. WHEELER: It was the Defendant Von Ribbentrop.
I turn to Page 4, the 10th paragraph of the English text, Page 5, 4th paragraph of the German text:
“The use of the Polish language in sacred functions, and even in the Sacrament of Penance, was forbidden. Moreover—and this is a matter worthy of special mention and is at variance with the natural law and with the dispositions accepted by the legal systems of all nations—for the celebration of marriage between Poles the minimum age limit was fixed at 28 years for men and 25 years for women.
“Catholic Action was so badly hit as to be completely destroyed. The National Institute, which was at the head of the whole Catholic Action movement in Poland, was suppressed; as a result all the associations belonging to it, which were flourishing, as well as all Catholic cultural, charity, and social service institutions, were abolished.
“In the whole of the ‘Warthegau’ there is no longer any Catholic press and not even a Catholic bookshop.
“Grave measures were repeatedly taken with regard to ecclesiastical property.
“Many of the churches closed to public worship were turned over to profane uses. From such an insult not even the Cathedrals of Gniezno, Poznan, Wloclawek, and Lodz were spared. Episcopal residences were confiscated, the real estate belonging to the seminaries, convents, diocesan museums, libraries, and church funds were confiscated or sequestered.”
I pass now to the third full paragraph on Page 5, a two-line paragraph:
“Even before ecclesiastical property was affected, the allowances to the clergy had been abolished.”
Now, reading from Page 6, the fourth full paragraph of the English text:
“The administrative regulations published by the lieutenant’s office for the application of the ordinance of September 13th, 1941 made the situation of the Catholics in that region, still more difficult.
“For example, on November 19, 1941 came a decree of the Reich lieutenant by which among other things it was set forth that, as from the previous September 13th, the property of the former juridical persons of the Roman Catholic Church should pass over to the ‘Römisch-katholische Kirche deutscher Nationalität im Reichsgau Wartheland’ insofar as, on the request of the above-mentioned ‘Religionsgesellschaft’ such property shall be recognized by the Reich lieutenant as non-Polish property.’ In virtue of this decree practically all the goods of the Catholic Church in the ‘Warthegau’ were lost.”
Now I pass to Page 7, the second full paragraph:
“If we pass from the ‘Warthegau’ to the other territories in the East, we unfortunately find there, too, acts and measures against the rights of the Church and of the Catholic faithful, though they vary in gravity and extension from one place to another.
“In the provinces which were declared annexed to the German Reich and joined up with the Gaue of East Prussia, of Danzig West Prussia and of Upper Silesia, the situation is very like that described above in regard to seminaries, the use of the Polish mother-tongue in sacred functions, charitable works, associations of Catholic Action, the separation of the faithful according to nationality. There, too, one must deplore the closing of churches to public worship, the exile, deportation, the violent death of not a few of the clergy (reduced by two-thirds in the diocese of Culma and by at least a third in the diocese of Katowice), the suppression of religious instruction in the schools, and above all the complete suppression in fact of the Episcopate. Actually, after the Bishop of Culma, who had left during the military operations, had been refused permission to return to his diocese, there followed in February 1941 the expulsion of the Bishop of Plock and his auxiliary, who both died later in captivity; the Bishop, the venerable octogenarian Monseigneur Julian Anthony Nowowiejski, died at Dzialdowo on May 28th, 1941, and the auxiliary, Monseigneur Leo Wetmanski, ‘in a transit camp’ on October 10th of the same year.
“In the territory called the ‘Generalgouvernement,’ as in the Polish provinces which had been occupied by Soviet troops in the period between September 1939 and June 1941, the religious situation is such as to cause the Holy See lively apprehension and serious preoccupation. Without pausing to describe the treatment meted out in many cases to the clergy (priests imprisoned, deported, and even put to death), the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the closing of churches, the suppression even of associations and publications of simply and exclusively religious character, the closing of the Catholic secondary and higher schools and of the Catholic University of Lublin, let it suffice to recall two series of specially grave measures: those which affect the seminaries and those which weigh on the Episcopate.
“When the buildings of the various seminaries had been completely or in part occupied, the intention for some time (November 1940-February 1941) was to reduce these institutions for the training of priests to two—those of Kraków and Sandomierz; then the others were permitted to reopen, but only on condition that no new students were admitted, which in practice inevitably means that all these institutions will soon be closed.”
I skip one paragraph here.
“Mention has several times been made of ecclesiastics deported or confined in concentration camps. The majority of them were transferred to the Altreich, where their number already exceeds a thousand.”
THE PRESIDENT: What was the “Altreich”?
COL. WHEELER: The Altreich is the Old Reich of Germany.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COL. WHEELER: “When the Holy See asked that they should be liberated and be permitted to emigrate to neutral countries of Europe or America (1940), the petition was refused; it was only promised that they should all be collected in the concentration camp at Dachau, that they should be dispensed from too hard labor, and that some should be permitted to say Mass, which the others could hear.
“The treatment of the ecclesiastics interned at Dachau, which, for a certain time in 1941 was in fact somewhat mitigated, worsened again at the end of that year. Particularly sorrowful were the announcements which for many months in 1942 came from that camp of the frequent deaths of priests, even of some young priests among them.”
I pass by two paragraphs.
“Polish Catholics are not allowed to contract marriage in the territory of the Altreich; just as requests for religious instruction or instruction in preparation for confession and Holy Communion for the children of these workers are, in principle, not accepted.”
What happened to complaints—even from the Vatican—as to religious affairs in the overrun territories is disclosed in Document Number 3266-PS, Exhibit Number USA-573, which I now offer in evidence. This is a letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Breslau to the Papal Secretary of State, dated December 7, 1942. It bears a Vatican authentication similar to those already read.
This letter lays at the door of the Party Chancellery the responsibility for determining the policy and exercising final authority on religious questions in the occupied territories. I quote from Page 1, the first paragraph of this letter, and remind the Court that the Defendant Bormann was at that time Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery and that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner was the Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the RSHA. I quote from Document 3266-PS, beginning with the sixth line:
“About some of the gravest injuries inflicted on the Church, I not only protested on each occasion as the individual incident occurred, but I also made a most formal protest about them in globo in a document which, as spokesman of the Hierarchy, I sent to the supreme ruler of the State and to the ministries of the Reich on December 10th, 1941. Not a word by way of answer has been sent to us.
“Your Eminence knows very well the greatest difficulty in the way of opening negotiations comes from the overruling authority which the ‘National Socialist Party Chancery’ exercises in relation to the Chancery of the Reich and to the single Reich ministries. This ‘Parteikanzlei’ directs the course to be followed by the State, whereas the ministries and the Chancellery of the Reich are obliged and compelled to adjust their decrees to these directions. Besides, there is the fact that the ‘supreme office for the security of the Reich,’ called the ‘Reichssicherheitshauptamt’ enjoys an authority which precludes all legal action and all appeals. Under it are the ‘secret offices for public security,’ called ‘Geheime Staatspolizei’ (a title shortened usually to Gestapo), of which there is one for each province. Against the decrees of this central office and of the secret offices there is no appeal through the courts, and no complaint made to the ministries has any effect. Not infrequently the councillors of the ministries suggest that they have not been able to do as they would wish to because of the opposition of these Party offices. As far as the executive power is concerned, the organization called the SS, that is, ‘The Schutzstaffeln der Partei,’ is in practice supreme. . . .
“On a number of very grave and fundamental issues we have also presented our complaints to the supreme leader of the Reich, the Führer. Either no answer is given, or it is apparently edited by the above-mentioned Party Chancery, which does not consider itself bound by the Concordat made with the Holy See.”
I now offer in evidence Document Number 3279-PS, Exhibit Number USA-574. This is an excerpt from Charge Number 17 against the Defendant Hans Frank, Governor General of Poland, entitled, “Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Western Provinces,” submitted by the Polish Government under the terms of Article 21 of the Four-Power-Agreement of August 8, 1945. This gives further figures indicating the extent of the persecution of priests. I quote:
“The extract attached hereto and dealing with the ‘General Conditions and Results of the Persecution’ is taken from the text of Charge 17, Page 5, Paragraph IV, of the Polish Government against the defendants named in the Indictment before the International Military Tribunal, subject: ‘Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Incorporated Western Provinces of Poland.’ It is a true translation into English of the original Polish.
“It is submitted herewith to the International Military Tribunal in accordance with Article 21 of the Charter of the Court.”
Signed: “Dr. Tadeusz Cyprian, Polish Deputy Representative on the United Nations War Crimes Commission in London, signing on behalf of the Polish Government and of the Main Commission for Investigation of German War Crimes in Poland, whose seal I hereby attach.”
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you need read such certificates as that.
COL. WHEELER: This is the only one, Sir, that I have. I now read from this extract:
“General Conditions and Results of the Persecution:
“11. The general situation of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Poznan in the beginning of April 1940 is summarized in the following words of Cardinal Hlond’s second report:
“Five priests shot; 27 priests confined in harsh concentration camps at Stutthof and in other camps; 190 priests in prison or in concentration camps at Bruczkow, Chludowo, Goruszki, Kazimierz, Biskupi, Lad, Lubin, and Puszczykowo; 35 priests seriously ill in consequence of ill-treatment; 122 parishes entirely left without priests.
“12. In the Diocese of Chelmno, where about 650 priests were installed before the war, only 3 percent were allowed to stay, the 97 percent of them were imprisoned, executed, or put into concentration camps.
“13. By January 1941 about 700 priests were killed, 3,000 were in prison or concentration camps.”
I refer also to Document Number 3268(a)-PS, Exhibit Number USA-356, excerpts from the allocution of Pope Pius XII to the Sacred College June 2, 1945, which has already been introduced into evidence and read from extensively. I shall not read from that again. This gives some very revealing figures concerning the priests and lay brothers confined in the concentration camp at Dachau.
The Tribunal will recall, from the previous reading of this document, the imprisonment of 2,800 priests and lay brothers in Dachau alone from 1940 to 1945, of whom all but about 800 were dead by April 1945, including an auxiliary bishop.
This document presents a forceful summary of the principal steps in the struggle of the Nazi conspirators against the Catholic Church.
In summation the Prosecution submits that the evidence presented to the Court proves that the attempted suppression of the Christian churches in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland was an integral part of the defendants’ conspiracy to eliminate internal opposition and otherwise to prepare for and wage aggressive war and shows the same conspiratorial pattern as their other War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.
COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal please, before we present the subject of individual defendants, by agreement with our British colleagues, Major Elwyn Jones will now present a brief subject entitled, “Aggression as a Basic Nazi Idea.”
MAJOR F. ELWYN JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): May it please the Tribunal, it is now my duty to draw to the Tribunal’s attention a document which became the statement of faith of these defendants. I refer to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It is perhaps appropriate that this should be considered at this stage of the Trial just before the Prosecution presents to the Tribunal the evidence against the individual defendants under Counts One and Two of the Indictment, for this book, Mein Kampf, gave to the defendants adequate foreknowledge of the unlawful aims of the Nazi leadership. It was not only Hitler’s political testament; by adoption it became theirs.
This book, Mein Kampf, might be described as the blueprint of Nazi aggression. Its whole tenor and content enforce the Prosecution’s submission that the Nazi pursuit of aggressive designs was no mere accident arising out of the immediate political situation in Europe and the world which existed during the period of Nazi power. Mein Kampf establishes unequivocally that the use of aggressive war to serve their aims in foreign policy was part of the very creed of the Nazi Party.
A great German philosopher has said that “ideas have hands and feet.” It became the deliberate aim of these defendants to see to it that the ideas, doctrines, and policies of Mein Kampf should become the active faith and guide for action of the German nation, and particularly of its malleable youth.
As my American colleagues have already submitted to the Tribunal, from 1933 to 1939 an extensive indoctrination in the ideas of Mein Kampf was pursued in the schools and universities of Germany, as well as in the Hitler Youth under the direction of the Defendant Baldur von Schirach and in the SA and SS and amongst the German population as a whole by the agency of the Defendant Rosenberg.
A copy of this book Mein Kampf was officially presented to all newly married couples in Germany, and I now hand to the Tribunal such a wedding present from the Nazis to the newlyweds of Germany and for the purposes of the record it will be Exhibit GB-128 (Document Number D-660). The Tribunal will see that the dedication on the flyleaf of that copy reads:
“To the newly-married couple, Friedrich Rosebrock and Else née zum Beck, with best wishes for a happy and blessed marriage. Presented by the Communal Administration on the occasion of their marriage on the 14th of November 1940. For the Mayor, the Registrar.”
The Tribunal will see, at the bottom of the page opposite to the contents page, that that edition of Mein Kampf, which was the 1940 edition, brought the number of copies of Mein Kampf published to 6,250,000. This was the scale upon which this book was distributed. It was blasphemously called “the bible of the German people”.
As a result of the efforts of the defendants and their confederates, this book poisoned a generation and distorted the outlook of a whole people.
As the SS General Von dem Bach-Zelewski indicated yesterday, if you preach for years, as long as 10 years, that the Slav peoples are inferior races and that the Jews are subhuman, then it must logically follow that the killing of millions of these human beings is accepted as a natural phenomenon.
From Mein Kampf the way leads directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz and the gas chambers of Maidanek.
What the commandments of Mein Kampf were I shall seek to indicate to the Tribunal by quotations from the book, which are set out in the extracts which I trust are now before the Tribunal. Those extracts are set out in the order in which I shall, with the Tribunal’s permission, refer to them.
Now these quotations fall into two main categories. The first category is that of general expression of Hitler’s belief in the necessity of force as the means of solving international problems. The second category is that of Hitler’s more explicit declarations on the policy which Germany must pursue.
Most of the quotations in the second category come from the last three Chapters, 13, 14, and 15 of Part II of Mein Kampf, in which Hitler’s views on foreign policy were expounded. The significance of that fact will be realized if the Tribunal looks at the German edition of Mein Kampf. The Tribunal will observe that Part II of Mein Kampf was first published in 1927, that is to say, less than 2 years after the Locarno Pact and within a few months of Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. The date of the publication of these passages, therefore, brands them as a repudiation of the policy of international co-operation embarked upon by Stresemann and as a deliberate defiance of the attempt to establish, through the League of Nations, the rule of law in international affairs.
First I place before the Tribunal some quotations showing the general views held by Hitler and accepted and propagated by the defendants about war and aggression generally. The first quotation, from Page 556 of Mein Kampf, reads:
“The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers. But they had to conquer it by risking their lives. So also in the future our people will not obtain territory and therewith the means of existence as a favor from any other people, but will have to win it by the power of a triumphant sword.”
On Page 145 Hitler revealed his own personal attitude to war. Of the years of peace before 1914 he wrote:
“Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that I had arrived too late on this terrestrial globe, and I felt chagrined at the idea that my life would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly lines. As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so proved futile.”
Generally, Hitler wrote of war in this way. On Page 162 we find:
“In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke stated that in time of war the essential thing is to get a decision as quickly as possible and that the most ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the most humane. When people attempt to answer this reasoning by ‘highfalutin’ talk about aesthetics, et cetera, only one answer can be given. It is that the vital questions involved in the struggle of a nation for its existence must not be subordinated to any aesthetic consideration.”
How faithfully these precepts of ruthlessness were followed by the defendants the Prosecution will prove in the course of this Trial.
Hitler’s assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for survival linked up in Chapter 11 of Book I of Mein Kampf, with the doctrine of Aryan superiority over other races and the right of Germans, in virtue of this superiority, to dominate and use other peoples as instruments for their own ends. The whole of Chapter 11 of Mein Kampf is dedicated to this master race theory, and, indeed, many of the later speeches of Hitler, his addresses to his generals and so forth, were mainly repetitive of Chapter 11.
If the Court will look at the extract from Page 256, it reads as follows:
“Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led them to a later type of culture; just as, without the help of certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they would never have come to the invention of mechanical power, which has subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts. . . .
“For the establishment of superior types of civilization the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites . . . .”
And in a later passage in Mein Kampf, at Page 344, Hitler applies these general ideas to Germany:
“If in its historical development the German people had possessed the unity of the herd by which other people have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe today. World history would have taken another course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining, and crying may not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization.”
In these passages which I have quoted, the Tribunal will have noticed Hitler’s love of war and scorn of those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of the whole of this book, which appears again and again, is: Firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of international problems represent a disastrous weakness in the nation that adopts them.
Implicit in the whole of the argument is a fundamental and arrogant denial of the possibility of any rule of law in international affairs.
It is in the light of the general doctrines of Mein Kampf that I invite the Tribunal to consider the more definite passages in which Hitler deals with specific problems of German foreign policy.
The very first page of the book contains a remarkable forecast of Nazi policy. It reads—Page 1, Column 1:
“German Austria must be restored to the great German motherland; and not, indeed, on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same Reich. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in one state. When the territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise from the need of the people, to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.”
Hitler in this book also roundly declares that the mere restoration of Germany’s frontiers as they were in 1914 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes. At Page 553 he writes:
“In regard to this point I should like to make the following statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers should be restored is a glaring political absurdity that is fraught with such consequences as to make the claim itself appear criminal. The confines of the Reich as they existed in 1914 were thoroughly illogical because they were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation. Nor were they reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of military defense. They were not the consequences of a political plan which had been well considered and carried out, but they were temporary frontiers established in virtue of a political struggle that had not been brought to a finish; and indeed, they were partly the chance result of circumstances.”
In further elaboration of Nazi policy, Hitler does not merely denounce the Treaty of Versailles; he desires to see a Germany which is a world power with territory sufficient for a future German people, of a magnitude which he does not define.
In the next quotation, from Page 554, the first sentence reads:
“For the future of the German nation the 1914 frontiers are of no significance.”
And in the third paragraph the Court sees:
“We National Socialists must stick firmly to the aim that we have set for our foreign policy, namely, that the German people must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it to exist on this earth. And only for such action as is undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to be shed once again; before God, because we are sent into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread, as creatures to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win and hold their position as lords of the earth only through their own intelligence and courage.
“And this justification must be established also before our German posterity, on the grounds that for each one who has shed his blood the life of a thousand others will be guaranteed to posterity. The territory on which one day our German peasants will be able to bring forth and nourish their sturdy sons will justify the blood of the sons of the peasants that has to be shed today. And the statesmen who have decreed this sacrifice may be persecuted by their contemporaries, but posterity will absolve them from all guilt for having demanded this offering from their people.”
Then, the next quotation; Hitler writes at Page 557:
“Germany will either become a world power or will not continue to exist at all. But, in order to become a world power, it needs that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary importance today and assures the existence of its citizens.”
And, finally, he writes:
“. . . we must take our stand on the principles already mentioned in regard to foreign policy, namely, the necessity of bringing our territorial area into just proportion with the number of our population. From the past we can learn only one lesson, and this is that the aim which is to be pursued in our political conduct must be twofold, namely: (1) The acquisition of territory as the objective of our foreign policy, and (2) the establishment of a new and uniform foundation as the objective of our political activities at home, in accordance with our doctrine of nationhood.”
Now these passages from Mein Kampf raise the question: Where did Hitler expect to find the increased territory beyond the 1914 boundaries of Germany? To this Hitler’s answer is sufficiently explicit. Reviewing the history of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, he wrote in an early passage of Mein Kampf, at Page 132:
“Therefore, the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose so long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore, any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle. Consequently, it would have been more practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory in Europe rather than to wage war for the acquisition of possessions abroad.
“Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation’s undivided energies should be devoted to it. A policy of that kind, which requires for its fulfillment every ounce of available energy on the part of everybody concerned, cannot be carried into effect by half measures or in a hesitant manner. The political leadership of the German Empire should then have been directed exclusively to this goal. No political step should have been taken in response to considerations other than this task and the means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive to the fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and collected determination.
“The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged and valued from that standpoint.”
And then this is the vital sentence:
“If new territory were to be acquired in Europe, it must have been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.”
To this program of expansion in the East, Hitler returned again at the end of Mein Kampf. After discussing the insufficiency of Germany’s pre-war frontiers, he again points the path to the East and declares that the ‘Drang nach Osten’ (the drive to the East) must be resumed; and he writes:
“Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line of conduct followed by pre-war Germany in foreign policy . . . . We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the south and west of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-war times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future.
“But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her.”
Now Hitler was shrewd enough to see that his aggressive designs in the East might be endangered by a defensive alliance between Russia, France, and England. His foreign policy, as outlined in Mein Kampf, therefore was to detach England and Italy from France and Russia and to change the attitude of Germany towards France from the defensive to the offensive.
The final quotation from Mein Kampf comes from Page 570:
“As long as the eternal conflict between France and Germany is waged only in the form of a German defense against the French attack, that conflict can never be decided, and from century to century Germany will lose one position after another. If we study the changes that have taken place, from the 12th century up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German language is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to result from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct which has hitherto been so detrimental for us.
“Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account will they cease allowing the national will-to-live to wear itself out in merely passive defense and will rally together for a last decisive contest with France. And in this contest the essential objective of the German nation will be fought for. Only then will it be possible to put an end to the eternal Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved so sterile.
“Of course it is here presumed that Germany sees in the suppression of France nothing more than a means which will make it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter. Today there are 80 million Germans in Europe. And our foreign policy will be recognized as rightly conducted only when, after barely a hundred years, there will be 250 million Germans living on this continent, not packed together as the coolies in the factories of another continent, but as tillers of the soil and workers whose labor will be a mutual assurance for their existence.”
I submit, therefore, that, quite apart from the evidence already submitted to the Tribunal, the evidence of Mein Kampf, taken in conjunction with the facts of Nazi Germany’s subsequent behavior towards other countries, goes to show that from the very first moment that they attained power, and indeed long before that time, Hitler and his confederates, the defendants, were engaged in planning and preparing aggressive war as is alleged against them in this Indictment.
Events have proved in the blood and misery of millions of men, women, and children that Mein Kampf was no mere literary exercise to be treated with easy indifference, as unfortunately it was treated before the war by those who were imperiled, but was the expression of a fanatical faith in force and fraud as the means to Nazi dominance in Europe, if not in the whole world. The Prosecution’s submission is that, accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of Mein Kampf, the Nazi confederates who are indicted here deliberately pushed our civilization over the precipice of war.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, the next stage of the Prosecution is the presentation of the cases against the individual defendants under the Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Before that is begun the chief prosecutors for the United States and Great Britain wish, with the permission of the Tribunal, to make four points perfectly clear:
The object of this part of the case is to collect for the benefit, first, of the members of the Tribunal and, secondly, of the Defense Counsel concerned, the evidence against each defendant under Counts One and Two which has been presented by the American and British Delegations. Otherwise it would be easy among the many documents already before the Court to miss relevant pieces of evidence which the Tribunal might wish to consider and to which the defendants may wish to make a reply.
This does not mean that the case against these defendants has in any way ended. Vital and important parts of the case remain concerning the actual atrocities, both War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. The evidence in regard to these will shortly be presented by the French Delegation and the Delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and when the massive documentation of these crimes is placed before the Court, the French and Soviet Delegations will have the opportunity of relating them to the individual defendants in the dock.
It has been the desire of all the chief prosecutors to delimit as clearly as possible the evidence under the respective Counts of the Indictment. The documents in evidence, however, were not written with a view to this Trial, and therefore many of them inevitably deal with offenses under more than one Count. It is by reason of this alone that some overlapping and repetition necessarily exists.
Similarly it may occur that as the French and Soviet cases are developed documents may come to light which bear on the common plan or the initiation of wars of aggression or on other material connected with Counts One and Two. The American and British Delegations will welcome any addition to the evidence on these parts of the case which such documents may provide and gladly receive such reinforcement from their French and Soviet colleagues.
With this explanation, and I am very grateful to the Tribunal for allowing me to make it, I call on my friend Mr. Albrecht to commence this part of the case.
DR. THOMA: Colonel Wheeler in his accusation concerning the oppression of the Christian churches in the Eastern territory also named the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Defendant Rosenberg, and held him responsible. I have, however, neither in the speech of the Prosecution nor in the document book, found any proof that such persecution of the Church also took place in the territories administered by Rosenberg. I wish rather to direct the attention of the Tribunal to Document 1517-PS, in which there is a note signed by Rosenberg concerning a discussion on questions of the East. This document contains the following statement made by Rosenberg, “The Führer agrees with Rosenberg’s Edict of Tolerance.”
THE PRESIDENT: Am I to understand that you are making a motion at this stage?
DR. THOMA: I have a request to make to the Prosecution: that it should, if possible, subsequently substantiate its charge against Rosenberg.
THE PRESIDENT: Is your point that this Document 1517-PS has not yet been in, or what is your point?
DR. THOMA: To my knowledge this document has already been submitted, and that was in connection with Hitler’s opinion that the Crimea question should be cleared up completely. But in my present request I am concerned with the fact that the Prosecution stated that in the Government General and likewise in Warthegau and in the Eastern countries, and in the areas administered by the Defendant Rosenberg as well, persecution of the Church took place. The Prosecution has produced documents concerning the first three territories, but as far as the latter territory is concerned, I have learned of no such documents being either in the document book or in the personal presentation made by the Prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you must understand that the Tribunal are not at this stage accepting everything that has been said by the Prosecution. You will have full opportunity when you present the case on behalf of the Defendant Rosenberg to present any documents which may be relevant and to comment upon any documents which have been cited by the Prosecution and to make any argument that you think right; but this is not the appropriate time to make any such argument. We are still considering the case for the Prosecution, and you will have full opportunity hereafter. Do you understand?
DR. THOMA: Then I ask the High Tribunal to consider my present explanation as a statement.
THE PRESIDENT: We will do so, but it is not convenient for Counsel for the Defense to intervene with statements of this sort; otherwise each one of the defendants’ counsel might be doing it all the time. We must ask you therefore to withhold such statements until your time comes to answer the case for the Prosecution.
MR. RALPH G. ALBRECHT (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, I have been charged by the Chief of Counsel for the United States with the duty of pointing out, on the basis of evidence already admitted and of additional evidence that will be offered, the individual responsibility of some of these defendants for the crimes specified in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.
When these defendants chose to abandon everything that had been recognized as good in German life and affirmatively participated in the work of achieving the objectives of the Party, we submit that they well knew what National Socialism stood for. They knew of the program announced by the Nazi Party and they also had knowledge of Nazi methods. The official NSDAP program with its 25 points was open and notorious. Announced and published to the world in 1920, it was published and republished and adverted to throughout the years. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions to make the Party program the fundamental law of the German State. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions generally. For all to read there was Mein Kampf, the product of the warped brain of the Führer, and there were the prolific writings and utterances of many other leaders who rose to prominence, some of whom are not sitting in the defendants’ box. And Hitler himself had announced, that the Nazis would use force if necessary to achieve their purposes.
Among these conspirators there were those who, like the Defendants Hess, Rosenberg, and Göring, were associated with Hitler since the very inception of the conspiracy. These men were among the original planners. They were the men who subsequently set the pace and cast the mould for the future. But there were also other conspirators (the balance of the defendants in the dock fit into this category), who voluntarily joined the conspiracy later.
While these men may be characterized perhaps as cruel, callous, or inhuman, they certainly may not be called dull or stupid. They knew, and had had the opportunity to observe, the manifestations of Nazi violence and Nazi methods as the pattern of the swastika developed. They knew the nature of what they were getting into. Therefore they must be presumed to have had the desire to participate—and participate they did—voluntarily, and so we submit that it may not validly be inferred that they did not join the stream of the conspiracy with their eyes open, scienter, as the conspiracy gathered momentum and developed into a rushing torrent.
Much evidence has already been admitted by the Tribunal of the overt acts of these defendants, as well as of their fellow conspirators. We shall make no effort at this time to present an exhaustive recital of all crimes planned or initiated by these defendants for which they must bear full responsibility beyond peradventure. The world already knows more of the evil deeds of these men and of their co-conspirators than the Prosecution possibly could hope to establish within the reasonable limits of time and of men’s patience. At this point we shall attempt to focus attention merely to illustrative criminal conduct of the individual conspirators.
There is an advantage to proceeding, we submit, as we propose to do, with the permission of the Tribunal, to show in outline the extent to which these defendants have become implicated in the serious charges against them. In the case of many of these conspirators, a recital of their crimes will relate to their planning of several of the categories of crimes described in Counts One and Two of the Indictment. We shall draw these various threads together and show, as I have said, the outline of the completed proof, as it were, within Count One of the Indictment, against the individual conspirators.
Thus, on behalf of the United States, I shall commence to show how some of these defendants fit into the broad stream of the Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and the extent of their individual responsibility for their acts in pursuance of that conspiracy.
First of all, we mention the late Defendant Robert Ley who, by recourse to self-destruction, has escaped all punishment for his participation in the conspiracy.
Next we mention Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the action against whom has been severed from this proceeding.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that documentary proof has been offered and will be offered in support of the allegations of the Indictment that implicate both Ley and Krupp as co-conspirators, for whose crimes the remaining defendants also must accept responsibility.
Next we consider the Defendant Fritz Sauckel. The case against Sauckel has been completely stated and supported by a wealth of damning evidence by my learned colleague Mr. Dodd in his presentation of the case on slave labor. We submit that it is unnecessary to add anything further to the case against Sauckel to demonstrate how completely he filled his place in the stream of the conspiracy.
The next defendant to be considered is Albert Speer. Like his fellow-conspirator Sauckel, Speer is deeply implicated as a member of the conspiracy and much of the case against him has been presented by Mr. Dodd in the case on slave labor. But, unlike Sauckel, Speer’s criminal activity went substantially beyond the realm of slave labor. His was one of the master minds in the plan for the systematic robbery and spoliation of the lands overrun by the German war machine. Documentary proof of Speer’s participation in the spoliation practices in the countries of Western Europe, as well as in the Occupied Eastern Territories, will be presented subsequently by our learned colleagues, the Chief Prosecutor representing the Soviet Union and the Chief French Prosecutor, under the remaining Counts of the Indictment. This is essentially the case that proves Speer to have been a member of the conspiracy.
There is, however, one additional exhibit that I would like to offer into evidence at this time. It was received only a few days ago from the Ministerial Document Center at Kassel and it is a dossier maintained on the Defendant Speer in the offices of the Reichsführer SS. I offer this file as Exhibit Number USA-575. It is our Document 3568-PS and I shall read from the dossier. I shall read from the letter dated the 25th of July 1942, from the second paragraph:
“Reich Minister Speer was enrolled as an SS man on the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS under SS Number 46104, with effect from the 20th of July 1942, by order of the Reichsführer SS.”
And I think that is all I need to read from that letter. But I should like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the annexed document, which is a questionnaire, and right at the beginning of the same it is related that Albert Speer was in the SS since the autumn of 1932, and his membership number in the Party was 474481.
I next mention the Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whose case has been completely presented in connection with the presentation on the Gestapo and the SD as criminal organizations. We submit that further proof is not needed to prove how completely this enemy of his own fatherland, Austria, had been carried along in the stream of the conspiracy.
We pass then to the case of perhaps the most important conspirator on trial before this Tribunal—the Number Two Nazi, the Nazi who stood next to the Führer himself, the Nazi who was in some respects even more dangerous than the Führer and other leading Party leaders.
We say that he was more dangerous because, unlike many leading Nazis, including Hitler, who were morally and socially on the fringes of society before the Nazi Party rode to success in 1933, this conspirator was known to come of substantial family which had furnished officers to the army and important civil servants to the country, in the past. Moreover, he was possessed of substantial appearance, an ingratiating manner, a certain affability. But all of these facets of character were but deceptions, because they helped to conceal the man’s core of steel, his vindictiveness, his cruelty, his lust for self-adornment, self-glorification, and power.
This man was most dangerous, furthermore, because the outward characteristics to which I have called attention and which he has to some extent demonstrated here in the presence of the Tribunal were useful in deceiving the representatives of foreign states who, in their concern, sought to learn from him the true intentions of the Nazi State which, by its repeated floutings of its international commitments, had so seriously disturbed the tranquillity of the world since 1933.
And I think that the record should show how throughout the earlier stages of this Trial, that is, before the nature of the documentary evidence offered by the Prosecution—too grim and almost implausible—much of the benevolence of this conspirator, his ever-ready smile and ingratiating manner, were daily in evidence in this chamber. His ready affirmation, by a pleasant nod for all to see, of the correctness of statements made or the contents of documents offered by counsel, his chiding shake of the head when he disagreed with such facts were commonplace.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think the Tribunal is interested in this, Mr. Albrecht.
MR. ALBRECHT: I shall pass on, then, with the presentation, with the permission of the Tribunal, and I shall give an account of certain facts already established by the documents in evidence; and with the permission of the Tribunal I shall not, unless it is so wished, refer to the exhibit numbers or citations of most of the old evidence that I shall allude to. These are all set forth in the trial brief that has already been distributed.
Against the background of this factual account, into which we have drawn the main threads of the case already presented that show the complicity of the Defendant Göring, we shall offer certain additional documentary evidence which we believe necessary to demonstrate Göring’s connection and responsibility for certain phases of the conspiracy.
I should have said before, if Your Honors please, that there have been distributed and are now before you three volumes of document books bearing the letters “DD,” which contain substantially all the documents, new as well as old, bearing on the individual responsibility of this defendant.
We shall first deal with the individual responsibility of this conspirator for Crimes against Peace. These crimes include Göring’s participation in the acquisition and consolidation of power in Germany, the economic and military preparations for war, and the waging of aggressive war.
For more than two decades Göring’s activities extended over nearly every phase of the conspiracy. He was one of the conspirators associated with Hitler from the very beginning. A member of the Party since 1922, he participated in the Munich Putsch of November 1923 at the head of the SA, a Nazi organization shown to have been committed to the use of violence.
Göring fled the country after the Putsch in order to escape arrest. After his return he became more than a commander of street fighters. He was designated Hitler’s first political assistant. A measure of the man may be gleaned from an exhibit already in evidence, namely, Gritzbach’s official biography of Göring, in which are recorded his dealings with the Brüning Government, his attempts to break down the barrier around President Von Hindenburg, and his coup as Reichstag President in September 1932 in procuring a vote of no confidence against the Von Papen Government just before the Reichstag was dissolved.
Göring’s writings show him not to be backward in taking credit for his efforts to advance the cause of the Party. Full credit has also been accorded him by Hitler, and Göring has boasted that no title and no decoration could make him so proud as the designation given to him by the German people, and I quote, “the most faithful paladin of our Führer.” That short quotation, may it please the Court, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, our Document 2324-PS.
With the advent of the Nazis to power in January 1933 Göring became acting Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of Prussia. In these capacities he proceeded promptly to establish a regime of terror in Prussia designed to suppress all opposition to the Nazi program.
His chief tool in that connection was the Prussian Police, which remained under his jurisdiction until 1936. As early as February 1933, he directed the entire police force to render unqualified assistance to the para-military organizations supporting the new government, such as the SA and the SS, and to crush all political opponents with firearms, if necessary, and regardless of the consequences. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of the directives of the 10th and 17th of February 1933, which are cited on Page 7 of our brief and which appear in that collection of decrees known as the Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung of 1933.
Göring has frequently and proudly acknowledged his personal responsibility for the crimes committed pursuant to orders of this character, and I recall his words which he uttered before thousands of his fellow Germans:
“Each bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol now is my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered; I ordered all this, I back it up. I assume the responsibility and I am not afraid to do so.”
That quotation, may it please the Tribunal, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, already in evidence, our Document 2324-PS.
Soon after he became Prime Minister of Prussia, in pursuance of the conspiracy, Göring began to develop the Gestapo or Secret State Police, the details of which organization of terror were presented to the Court by my learned colleague, Colonel Storey. As early as the 26th of April 1933, he signed the first law officially establishing the Gestapo in Prussia; and, pursuant to a decree which he signed, he named himself Prime Minister, Chief of the Prussian Secret State Police.
Göring was undoubtedly an efficient conspirator. He was impatient to consolidate the power of the Party at home. Already in spring 1933 the concentration camps were established in Prussia. Men and women, so-called “Marxists” and other political opponents, taken into custody by the Gestapo were thrown into concentration camps without trial. Göring said, “Against the enemies of the state we must proceed ruthlessly.” That statement appears in our Document 2324-PS, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-233.
The range of political terrorism under his leadership was almost limitless. A glance at a few of his police directives in those early days will indicate the extent and thoroughness with which every dissident voice was silenced. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of some of these decrees in the same collection I mentioned a short while ago, entitled the Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung, and we have cited these decrees on Pages 9 and 10 of our brief. These include:
A directive of the 22d of June 1933, which required all officials to watch the statements of civil servants and to denounce to the Defendant Göring those who made critical remarks. The failure to make such reports was to be regarded as proof of hostile attitude. Then there was the directive of the 23rd of June 1933, which suppressed all activities of the Social Democratic Party, including meetings and the party press, and ordered the confiscation of its property. There was the directive of the 30th of June 1933, which directed the Gestapo authorities to report to the Labor Trustees on the political attitude of the workers. There was the directive of the 15th of January 1934, which ordered the Gestapo and the frontier police to keep track of émigrés, particularly political émigrés and Jews residing in neighboring countries, and to arrest them and to put them in concentration camps if they returned to Germany.
The essential ruthlessness of Göring is further illustrated by a well-known bloody episode. After the elimination of the forces of the opposition, the Nazis felt it necessary to dispose of non-conformists within their own ranks. This they accomplished in what has become known as the Röhm Purge of the 30th of June 1934. The Defendant Frick, a chief conspirator in his own right, stated in that connection, in an affidavit, that many people were murdered who had nothing to do with the internal SA revolt, but who were “just not liked very well.”
Göring’s role in this sordid affair was related less than 2 weeks after the event by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag, and I would like to offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-576 our Document 3442-PS, in which is contained the speech of Hitler made on the 13th of July 1934 in the Reichstag. It is published in Das Archiv, Volume 4, at Page 505. I quote:
“Meanwhile Minister President Göring, had already received my instructions that in case of a purge he was to take analogous measures at once in Berlin and in Prussia. With an iron fist he beat down the attack on the National Socialist State before it could develop.”
With the accession of the Nazis to power Göring at once assumed a number of the highest and most influential positions also in the Reich. The proof already presented on the composition and functions of the Reich Cabinet and of the offices held by Göring shows him to have been, in fact, the most important executive of the Nazi State.
A member of the Reichstag since 1928 and its President since 1932, he was a member of the Cabinet from the beginning as Reich Minister without Portfolio. Shortly thereafter he received the portfolio as Reich Minister for Air. When, in an early meeting, the Cabinet discussed the pending Enabling Act, which gave the Cabinet plenary powers of legislation, he offered the suggestion that the required two-thirds majority might be obtained simply by refusing admittance to Social Democratic delegates. I offer in evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-578, our Document 2962-PS, which contains the minutes of that meeting. If Your Honors will note, that meeting was held on the 15th of March 1933, and there were present, besides the Defendant Göring, the Defendants Von Papen, Von Neurath, Frick, and Funk. I read from Page 6 of that document:
“Reich Minister Göring expressed his conviction that the Enabling Act would be passed with the necessary two-thirds majority. Possibly a majority could be obtained by banishing several Social Democrats from the hall. Possibly the Social Democrats would even refrain from voting on the Enabling Act. . . .”
In 1935, with the unmasking of a secret Luftwaffe, Göring became its Commander-in-Chief. He sat as a member and the Führer’s Deputy on the Reich Defense Council, established by the secret law of the 21st of May 1933. The purpose of that Council was, as stated by the Defendant Frick in an affidavit that is in evidence—and I quote:
“To plan preparations and decrees in case of war, which later on were published by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich.”
His assumption of ever greater responsibility seemed limitless. In 1936 Göring was made Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, whereby he acquired plenary legislative and administrative powers over all German economic life. In 1938 he became a member of the Secret Cabinet Council, which had been established to act as “an advisory board in the direction of foreign policy.”
The Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, created in 1939, took over, in effect, all of the legislative powers of the Cabinet which had not been reserved otherwise, and Göring became its chairman.
His efficient and ruthless services were recognized by Hitler in 1939, when he designated Göring as his successor, as heir apparent to the “New Order.”
In April 1936 Göring was appointed Coordinator for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange and empowered to supervise all State and Party activities in these fields. I offer in support of that fact, as Exhibit Number USA-577, our Document 2827-PS, which is an excerpt from Rühle, Das Dritte Reich. I read from the fourth paragraph of the excerpt, if Your Honor pleases, which is an excerpt from a decree signed by Hitler, and it reads as follows:
“Minister President, Colonel General Göring will take the measures necessary for the accomplishment of the tasks given to him and has the authority to issue decrees and general administrative directives. He, for this purpose, is authorized to question and issue directives to all authorities, including the highest Reich authorities, and all agencies of the Party, its formations and attached organizations.”
In this capacity Göring convened the War Minister, the Defendant Schacht as Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, and the Finance Minister for the Reich and the State of Prussia to discuss inter-agency problems connected with war mobilization. At a meeting of this group on the 12th of May 1936, when the question of the prohibitive cost of synthetic raw material substitutes arose, Göring decided:
“If we have war tomorrow we must help ourselves by substitutes. Then money will not play any role at all. If that is the case, then we must be ready to create the prerequisites for that in peacetime.”
A few days later, on the 27th of May 1936, at a meeting of the same group Göring opposed any limitations dictated by orthodox financial policies. He said that “all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war.”
The well-known Four Year Plan was proclaimed by Hitler at the 1936 Nuremberg Party Day. Göring was appointed Plenipotentiary in charge of the program, which was intended to achieve national self-sufficiency. Furthermore, Göring commented in 1936 that his chief task as Plenipotentiary was “to put the whole economy on a war footing within 4 years.” I would like to offer into evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-579, our Document EC-408, so that I may direct the Tribunal’s attention to a memorandum, dated the 30th of December 1936, of the Defense Division of the Wehrmacht, entitled, “Memorandum on the Four Year Plan and Preparation of the War Economy”; and in the third paragraph of the translation, or at Page 2, in the middle of Paragraph Number 3 in the German original, there is the statement registered in the protocol, in the memorandum, that:
“Minister President General Göring, as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan, by authority of the Führer and Reich Chancellor, granted 18 of October 1936.
“As regards the war economy, Minister President, Colonel General Göring sees it as his task ‘within 4 years to put the entire economy in a state of readiness for war.’”
The exhibit from which I have just read is of interest because of another document that has just been brought to the attention of the Prosecution. It is a note for the files, dated December 2, 1936, written in longhand on the letterhead of “Minister President General Göring,” and is in the handwriting of Colonel Bodenschatz, Göring’s Chief of Staff. I offer this memorandum as Exhibit Number USA-580. It is our Document 3474-PS, and I direct the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that the date of this document is the 2d of December 1936. That was a conference, apparently, at which all the chief officers and generals of the Air Force, the German Air Force, met. Besides the Defendant Göring, there were General Milch, General Kesselring, Rüdel, Stumpff, Christiansen, and all the top commanders of the Air Force, and I read:
“World press excited about the landing of 5,000 German volunteers in Spain. Official complaint by Great Britain; she gets in touch with France.
“Italy suggests that Germany and Italy send, each, one division ground troops to Spain. It is, however, necessary that Italy, as interested Mediterranean power, issue a political declaration first. A decision can be expected only within a few days.
“The general situation is very serious. Russia wants the war. England rearms speedily. Command therefore: Beginning today ‘höchste Einsatzbereitschaft’”—apparently the translator did not see fit to translate those words, which mean the “highest degree of readiness”—“regardless of financial difficulties. Göring takes over full responsibility.”
“Peace until 1941 is desirable. However, we cannot know whether there will be implications before. We are already in a state of war. It is only that no shot is being fired so far.”
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps that would be a convenient time to break off.
[A recess was taken until 1400 hours.]
Afternoon Session
MR. ALBRECHT: May it please the Tribunal, two important conferences which have already been adverted to by the Prosecution show clearly how the Defendant Göring inspired and directed the preparation of the German economy for aggressive war. On the 8th of July 1938 he addressed a number of the leading German aircraft manufacturers and laid the groundwork for a vast increase in aircraft production. He stated that war with Czechoslovakia was imminent and boasted that the German Air Force was already superior in quality and quantity to the English. He said that:
“. . . if Germany wins the war. Then she will be the greatest power in the world, dominating the world market, and Germany will be a rich nation. For this goal, risks must be taken. . . .”
That quotation, may it please the Court, is taken from Document R-140, Exhibit Number USA-160.
A few weeks after the Munich Agreement, on the 14th of October 1938, at another conference held in Göring’s office, he made the statement that Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He indicated that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force five times as large, to increase the speed of army and navy rearmament, and to concentrate on offensive weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks; and at that meeting he proposed a specific program designed to accomplish those ends. That is a short summary of facts which appear from Exhibit Number USA-123 already in evidence, our Document 1301-PS.
In his dual role as Reich Air Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force it was Göring’s function to develop the Luftwaffe to practical war strength. As early as the 10th of March 1935, in an interview with the correspondent of the London Daily Mail, the mask of hypocrisy was removed and Göring frankly announced to the world that he was in the process of building a true military air force.
Two months later, in a speech to 1,000 Air Force officers, Göring spoke in a still bolder vein. I offer in evidence from Exhibit Number USA-437, our Document 3441-PS—which is Göring’s Reden und Aufsätze—another excerpt that has not yet been read in evidence, from Page 242. Göring said:
“I repeat: I intend to create a Luftwaffe which, if the hour should strike, shall burst upon the foe like a chorus of revenge. The enemy must have the feeling of being lost already before having fought.”
In the same year, on the 16th of March 1935, he signed his name to the conscription law which provided for compulsory military service and constituted an act of defiance on the part of Nazi Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of that decree, which is our Document 1654-PS, from which I shall not read, with the permission of the Tribunal—the Law for the Organization of the Armed Forces; it is cited in 1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 369.
As is demonstrated by the affidavit of Ambassador Messersmith already in evidence, Göring’s statements during this period left no doubt in the minds of Allied diplomats that Germany was engaged in full mobilization of air power for an impending war.
Göring was in fact the central figure in German preparation for military aggression. In German economic development, too, he held the key positions throughout the pre-war period. Although he held no official position in the field of foreign affairs, as the Number Two Nazi, history records that he was prominent in all major phases of Nazi aggression between 1937 and 1941.
In the Austrian affair Göring was the prompter and director of the diplomatic “tragicomedy” enacted before a shocked but silent world.
The Tribunal is familiar with Göring’s complicity in the aggression against Austria. However, some additional documents have just come to our notice which show that Göring not only participated actively, but may even have been in direct charge of the German plan to bring about the Austrian Anschluss. I will offer the first of these documents, our Document 3473-PS, as Exhibit Number USA-581. I shall not read from that exhibit, if Your Honors please, but I would like to call the attention of the Tribunal to the letter from Keppler, who was one of Göring’s agents, addressed to the Defendant Göring. It is dated the 6th of January 1938. From its context it would seem that a valid inference can be drawn that Göring was already active in the Austrian matter in 1937. Our prior evidence brought him into the picture much later. The Prosecution believes this document to be of great significance, as it shows that the Defendant Seyss-Inquart actually had Göring’s mandate to carry out the orders of the Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The document itself will be read and discussed in the presentation of the case showing the individual responsibility of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart; and I shall not take the time of the Tribunal at this time.
The second document I wish to introduce is Exhibit Number USA-582, our Document 3472-PS. This exhibit would seem to show that the conspirators attempted to create the impression that the Anschluss, when it took place, was achieved by “legal” means. The command apparently was given the members of the NSDAP in Austria to keep “hands off” in order to permit the deviltry to be worked out by the official Reich agencies, that is, through the Defendant Göring and, presumably, the Defendant Von Papen, by direct contact with the Austrian officials.
I read from that document:
“Yesterday information reached me to the effect that Landesleiter Leopold”—and may I interrupt for a moment to point out that the word “Landesleiter” is the title of the leader of the Nazi community in Austria—“also on his part has started negotiations with Chancellor Schuschnigg. Thereupon I have asked the Foreign Office to investigate the truth of this information and, in case it is true, to take care that such negotiations are not held because they would merely disturb the proceedings of the other negotiations.
“Just now I got word from the Foreign Office that they received a report from the embassy in Vienna confirming the facts. I therefore would like to know whether it would not be more appropriate to forbid Landesleiter Leopold and the other members of the country’s leadership to negotiate with Chancellor Schuschnigg as well as with any Austrian Government authorities as to the execution of the pact of the 11th of July 1936, unless it is done after contacting and in agreement with the authorities in charge in the Reich.”
Now below, if I may call the attention of the Tribunal to the note that appears in this letter. It is written in blue pencil, and, while the translator has not indicated the initial below that note, it is a large “G”; and I have no doubt that that note was written by the Defendant Göring. It reads:
“Agreed, Minister Hess or Herr Bormann can give this order best! Keppler ought to ask therefore by telephone!”
If I may direct your attention to the upper right corner, there is another note in pencil, “Transmitted to Herr Keppler on the 11th of February 1938 by Fräulein Ernst;” and it is signed with initial “G,” which in this case, however, we are quite sure is the initial of Miss Grundmann, who was one of Göring’s secretaries.
The third document I offer as Exhibit Number USA-583, our Document 3471-PS. The first letter of this exhibit is written by the same Keppler to the same Bodenschatz mentioned a short while ago, but who is now a general. I shall not read from this exhibit, with the permission of the Tribunal, but I shall briefly summarize it. This letter and the annexes show that Leopold, the Nazi Landesleiter in Austria, was apparently not completely amenable to the orders given by Berlin and pursued his own methods for accomplishing an Anschluss. The second annex to this letter, addressed to Keppler, who appears from this letter to have been an SS Gruppenführer, shows that prominent Nazis had declared themselves in favor of a Major Klausner to succeed Leopold as Landesleiter; and I would like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that in the left margin of the covering letter appear some red crayon marks in the characteristic color employed on several occasions, to our knowledge, by Göring; and they would seem to show that Göring personally had seen these documents and that General Bodenschatz had brought them to his attention. In any event these letters again demonstrate that Göring was one of the principal conspirators in the Austrian affair.
When the time finally came, on 11 March 1938, to consummate the Anschluss, Göring was in complete command. Throughout the afternoon and evening of that day he directed by telephone the activities of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart and of the other Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The pertinent portions of these telephone conversations, it will be remembered, were read into the record.
It will be recalled that early on the same evening of 11 March he dictated to the Defendant Seyss-Inquart the telegram which the latter was to send to Berlin, requesting the Nazi Government to send German troops to “prevent bloodshed.” Two days later he was able to call the Defendant Ribbentrop in London and gleefully relate to him of his success and that “this story that we had given an ultimatum is just foolish gossip.”
If I may interrupt for a moment, that passage I just alluded to was read into the record at Page 581 (Volume II, Page 424).
Similarly, Göring played an important role in the attack on Czechoslovakia. In March of 1938, at the time of the Anschluss, he had given a solemn assurance to the Czechoslovakian Minister in Berlin that the developments in Austria would in no way have a detrimental influence on the relations between Germany and Czechoslovakia and he had emphasized the continued earnest endeavor on the part of Germany to improve these relations. In this connection Göring had used the expression, “Ich gebe Ihnen mein Ehrenwort” (“I give you my word of honor”).
That expression was read previously into the record at Page 962 (Volume III, Page 192).
On the other hand, in his address to German airplane manufacturers on the 8th of July 1938, which I have already mentioned, he made his private views on this subject, which were hardly consistent with his solemn official statements, abundantly clear.
On the 14th of October 1938, shortly after the Munich Agreement, at a conference in the Air Ministry, Göring stated that the Sudetenland had to be exploited with all means and that he counted upon a complete industrial assimilation of Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, as proof before the Tribunal shows, he was deceiving the representatives of the puppet Slovakian Government to the same end.
In the following year, with the rape of Czechoslovakia complete, Göring frankly stated what Germany’s purpose had been throughout the whole affair. He explained that the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia into the German economy had taken place, among other reasons, in order to increase the German war potential by exploitation of the industry there.
Göring was also a moving force in the later crimes against the peace. As the successor designate to Hitler, chief of the air forces and economic czar of Greater Germany, he was a party to all the planning for military operations of the Nazi forces in the East and in the West.
In the Polish affair, for example, it was Göring who, on the 31st of January 1935, gave assurances to the Polish Government through Count Czembek, as revealed in the Polish White Book, of which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice, that “there should be not the slightest fear in Poland that on the German side it”—meaning the German-Polish alliance—“would not be continued in the future.” Yet, 4 years later, Göring helped to formulate plans for the ruthless invasion of Polish territory.
In respect to the attack upon the Soviet Union, the documents already introduced prove that plans for the ruthless exploitation of Soviet territory were made months in advance of the opening of hostilities. Göring was placed in charge of this army of spoliation, whose mission was that of “seizing raw materials and taking over all important concerns.”
But these specific instances cited are merely illustrative of Göring’s activities in the field of aggressive war. On Pages 20, 21, and 22 of our brief there appears a list of documents—by no means exhaustive—previously offered by the Prosecution, which demonstrate Göring’s knowledge of and continued participation in the Nazi war program.
We turn now to Göring’s responsibility for planning and his participation in the procurement of forced labor, the deportation and enslavement of residents of occupied territories, the employment of prisoners of war in war industry, the looting of works of art, and the Germanization and spoliation of countries overrun by the Nazis.
Evidence previously introduced has detailed the slave labor program of the Nazi conspirators and has shown its two purposes, both of them criminal. The first was to satisfy the labor requirements of the Nazi war machine by forcing residents of occupied countries to work in Germany. The second purpose was to destroy or weaken the peoples of the occupied territories. It has been shown that millions of foreign workers were taken to Germany, for the most part under pressure and generally by physical force; that these workers were forced to labor under conditions of indescribable brutality and degradation; and that often they were used in factories and industries devoted exclusively to the production of munitions of war.
Göring was at all times implicated in the slave labor program. Recruitment and allocation of manpower and determination of working conditions were included in his jurisdiction as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and from its beginning a part of the Four Year Plan Office was devoted to such work. I ask the Tribunal in this connection to take judicial notice of our Document 1862-PS, Ordinance for the Execution of the Four Year Plan, dated 18 October 1936, which appears in 1936, Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 887, and with the permission of the Tribunal I shall not read the same.
Soon after the fall of Poland Göring began the enslavement of large numbers of Poles. On 25 January 1940 the Defendant Frank, the Governor General of Poland, reported to Göring on his directive for the:
“Supply and transportation of at least 1 million male and female agricultural and industrial workers to the Reich—among them at least 750,000 agricultural workers of which at least 50 percent must be women in order to guarantee agricultural production in the Reich and as a replacement for industrial workers lacking in the Reich.”
This is taken from our Exhibit Number USA-172, our Document Number 1375-PS.
That orders for this enormous number of workers originated with the Defendant Göring is clear from statements in the Defendant Frank’s diary for 10 May 1940, already introduced in evidence.
For the harsh treatment given those workers when they reached Germany the Defendant Göring is also responsible. On 8 March 1940, as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan and as Chairman of the Cabinet Council for the Defense of the Reich, he issued a directive entitled, “Treatment of Male and Female Civilian Workers of Polish Nationality in the Reich.” I refer to our Document R-148 as proof of that fact. I shall not introduce it at this time into evidence, with the permission of the Tribunal, as it will be introduced by the Soviet prosecution at a later date.
On 29 January 1942 the division for the employment of labor in the Four Year Plan office issued a circular, signed by Dr. Mansfeld, the general delegate for labor employed in the Four Year Plan office, addressed to various civilian and military authorities in the occupied territories, explaining that, and I quote, “any and all . . . methods . . . must be adopted” to force workers to go to Germany. I shall not read from our exhibit, if the Tribunal please, but I would like to offer in evidence Document 1183-PS as our Exhibit Number USA-585. This is a circular letter dated the 29th of January 1942 of the Commissioner for the Four Year Plan.
It has been shown previously that on 21 March 1942 Hitler promulgated a decree appointing the Defendant Sauckel Plenipotentiary General for manpower, directing him to carry out his tasks within the framework of the Four Year Plan, and making him directly responsible to Göring as head of the Four Year Plan.
On 27 March 1942 the Defendant Göring issued his important enabling decree in pursuance of the decree of the Führer of 21 March 1942. The Tribunal has already judicially noted this decree, which is our Document 1666-PS.
Since the Defendant Sauckel was an authority under the Four Year Plan, the Defendant Göring retains full responsibility for the enormous war crimes committed by Sauckel as Plenipotentiary General for manpower. These crimes have been the subject of our presentations on slave labor and on the illegal use of prisoners of war.
It was also proven during those presentations that the Nazi conspirators ordered prisoners of war to work under dangerous conditions and in the manufacturing and transportation of arms and munitions of war, in violation of the laws of war and of Articles 31 and 32 of the Geneva Convention of 27 July 1929 on prisoners of war. The Defendant Göring had a part in all these crimes.
At a conference on 7 November 1941, the subject of which was the employment of citizens of the Soviet Union, including prisoners of war, it appears from a memorandum signed by Körner, who was State Secretary to the Defendant Göring as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, that Göring gave certain ruthless directives for the use of Soviet citizens, both prisoners of war and free Soviet workers, as laborers. I refer to our Document 1193-PS which, with the permission of the Tribunal, I shall not offer in evidence at this time and which will be offered by the Soviet Prosecution.
In a set of top-secret notes of outlines laid down by Göring in what was apparently the same conference of 7 November 1941, which are already in evidence, the following facts appear:
1) That, of a total of 5 million prisoners of war, 2 million were employed in war industries;
2) That it was better to employ PW’s than unsuitable foreign workers;
3) That Poles, Dutchmen, et cetera, should be seized if necessary as PW’s and employed as such, if work through free contract cannot be obtained.
These facts, if Your Honors please, appear in our Document 1206-PS, which was submitted in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-215.
In a secret letter from the Reich Minister of Labor to the presidents of the regional labor exchange offices, already in evidence, it is furthermore recorded that upon the personal order of the Reich Marshal, the Defendant Göring, 100,000 men are to be taken from among the French PW’s not yet employed in the armament industry and assigned to the airplane armament industry and that gaps in manpower supply resulting therefrom are to be filled by Soviet PW’s.
Evidence has also been introduced showing the organized, systematic program of the Nazi conspirators for the cultural impoverishment of every country in Europe. The continuous connection of the Defendant Göring with these activities has been substantiated.
In October 1939 the Defendant Göring requested Dr. Mühlmann to undertake immediately the “securing” of all Polish art treasures. In his affidavit, already offered, Dr. Mühlmann states that he was the special deputy of the Governor General of Poland, the Defendant Frank, for the safeguarding of art treasures in the Government General from October 1939 to September 1943, and that the Defendant Göring, in his capacity as Chairman of the Reich Defense Council, had commissioned him with this duty.
Mühlmann also confirms that it was the official policy of the Defendant Frank to take into custody all important art treasures which belonged to Polish public institutions, private collections, and the Church, and that such art treasures were actually confiscated.
It appears also from a report made by Dr. Mühlmann on 16 July 1943 on his operations that at one time 31 valuable sketches by the artist Albrecht Dürer were taken from the Polish collection and personally handed to the Defendant Göring who took them to the Führer’s headquarters.
The part played by Göring in the looting of art by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg has been shown. We refer to Exhibit Number USA-368, which is our Document Number 141-PS, which is an order dated 5 November 1940, already read in evidence, in which Göring directs the chief of the Military Administration in Paris and the Einsatzstab Rosenberg to dispose of the art objects brought to the Louvre in the following priority:
“1) Those art objects as to the use of which the Führer has reserved the decision for himself;
“2) Those art objects which serve to complete the Reich Marshal’s collection;
“3) Those art objects and library stocks, which seem of use for the establishment of the Hohe Schule and for Rosenberg’s sphere of activities;
“4) Those art objects suitable for German museums . . . .”
In view of the high priority afforded by the foregoing order to the completion of the defendant’s own collection, it is not surprising to find that Göring continued to aid the operations of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. It has been established that on 1 May 1941 Göring issued an order under his own signature to all Party, State, and Wehrmacht services, requesting them to give all possible support and assistance to the chief of staff of Reichsleiter Rosenberg.
By May 1942 the Defendant Göring was able to boast of the assistance which he had rendered to the work of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. In our Document 1015(i)-PS which has been read in evidence on Page 1678 of the record (Volume IV, Page 87), he is shown writing to the Defendant Rosenberg that he personally supports the work of the Einsatzstab wherever he can do so and that accounted for the seizure of such a large number of art objects because he was able to render assistance to the Einsatzstab.
Thus, the Defendant Göring’s responsibility for the planning of the looting of art, which was actually accomplished by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, would seem clear.
Details of the execution of both the Germanization and spoliation policies in both the Western and Eastern countries occupied by the German armies will be presented subsequently by the French and Soviet Delegations. The responsibility of the Defendant Göring, in his capacity as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, as President of the Cabinet Council for the Defense of the Reich, and in other capacities, will be further demonstrated by that evidence.
The plans of the Nazi conspirators with respect to Poland have been shown by evidence already offered. The Nazis purported to incorporate the four western provinces of Poland into the German Reich. In the remaining portions occupied by them they set up the Government General. It has been shown that the Nazis planned to germanize the so-called incorporated territories ruthlessly, by deporting the Polish intelligentsia, Jews, and dissident elements to the Government General for eventual elimination, by confiscating Polish property, by sending those so deprived of their property to Germany as laborers, and by importing German settlers. It was specifically planned to exploit the people and material resources of the territory within the Government General by taking whatever was needed to strengthen the Nazi war machine, thus impoverishing this region and reducing it to a vassal state.
The Defendant Göring, together with Hitler and Lammers and with the Defendants Frick and Hess, on 8 October 1939 signed the decree by which certain parts of Polish territory were incorporated into the Reich.
Purporting to act by virtue of the foregoing decree, Göring, as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, signed an order on 30 October 1939 concerning the introduction of the Four Year Plan in the Eastern territories.
In his directive dated 19 October 1939 (Document Number EC-410, Exhibit Number USA-298) Göring stated that the task for the economic treatment of the various administrative regions would differ, depending on whether a country was to be incorporated politically into the German Reich or whether the Government General was involved, which, in all probability, would not be made a part of Germany. He went on to say:
“In the first mentioned territories the reconstruction and expansion of the economy, the safeguarding of all their production facilities and supplies must be aimed at, as well as a complete incorporation into the Greater German economic system at the earliest possible time. On the other hand there must be removed from the territories of the Government General all raw materials, scrap materials, machines, et cetera, which are of use for the German war economy. Enterprises which are not absolutely necessary for the meager maintenance of the bare existence of the population must be transferred to Germany, unless such transfer would require an unreasonably long period of time and would make it more practical to exploit those enterprises by giving them German orders to be executed at their present location.”
From the foregoing documents the complicity of the Defendant Göring in the plans for the ruthless exploitation of Poland appears clear. But his fine hand also may be found behind the remainder of the Nazi plans for Poland. As an illustration, it was the Defendant Göring who signed, with Hitler and the Defendant Keitel, the secret decree of 7 October 1939 which entrusted Himmler with the task of executing the Germanization program. That secret decree was read into evidence at Pages 1522-23 (Volume III, Page 583).
Evidence already introduced has shown from the mouths of Himmler, the Defendant Frank, and others just what this appointment involved in human suffering and degradation.
Similarly, it was the Defendant Göring who, by virtue of his powers as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, issued a decree on 17 September 1940 concerning confiscation in the incorporated Eastern territories. This decree applied to “property of citizens of the former Polish State within the territory of the Greater German Reich including the incorporated Eastern territories.” I ask the Court to take judicial notice of our Document 1665-PS, which is an “Order concerning Treatment of Property of Nationals of the Former Polish State,” cited in 1940 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1270. I shall read from this document:
“Article I.
“1) Property of nationals of the former Polish State within the area of the Greater German Reich, including annexed Eastern territories, is subject to confiscation, administration by commissioner and sequestration in accordance with the following regulations.”
I now skip to Article II.
“1) Confiscation will be applied in case of property belonging to: a) Jews; b) persons who have fled or who have absented themselves for longer than a temporary period.
“2) Confiscation may be applied: a) If the property is needed for the public good, especially for purposes of national defense or the strengthening of German folkdom; b) if the owners or other persons entitled to it immigrated into the area of the German Reich after 1 October 1918.”
I skip now to Article IX, the first part:
“1) Sequestered property can be confiscated in favor of the Reich by the competent office . . . if the public weal, particularly the defense of the Reich or the consolidation of the German nationality, requires it.”
Evidence has also been introduced by the United States showing the extent to which the spoliation of Soviet territory and resources and the barbarous treatment inflicted on Soviet citizens were the result of plans long made and carefully drawn up by the Nazis before they launched their aggressive war on the Soviet Union. The Nazis planned to destroy the industrial potential of the northern regions occupied by their armies and so to administer the production of food in the south and southeast, which normally produced a surplus of food, that the population of the northern region would inevitably be reduced to starvation because of diversion of such surplus food to the German Reich. It has been shown also that the Nazis planned to incorporate Galicia and all of the Baltic countries into Germany and to convert the Crimea, an area north of the Crimea, the Volga territory, and the district around Baku into German colonies.
By 29 April 1941, almost 2 months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, it appears that Hitler had entrusted the Defendant Göring with the over-all direction of the economic administration in the area of operations and in the areas under political administration. It further appears that Göring had set up an economic staff and subsidiary authorities to carry out this function.
The form of this organization created by Göring and the duties of its various sections appear more clearly in a set of directives “for the operation of the economy in the newly occupied Eastern territories” issued by Göring, as Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, in June 1941. These directives are contained in the important Green Portfolio which, curiously enough, was printed by the Wehrmacht. By the terms of these directives it is stated that:
“The orders of the Reich Marshal cover all economic fields, including nutrition and agriculture. They are to be executed by the subordinate economic offices. . . .”
An Economic Staff East was charged with the execution of orders transmitted to it from higher authority. One subdivision of this staff, the agricultural section, was charged with the following functions:
“Nutrition and agriculture, the economy of all agricultural products, provision of supplies for the Army in co-operation with the army groups concerned.”
Excerpts from the Green Portfolio have already been admitted as Exhibit Number USA-315, but I will offer at this time without reading some additional excerpts in support of the facts that have just been related. I would like to offer, as Exhibit Number USA-587, our Document 1743-PS. This is another copy of the Green Portfolio, and I want to offer this portfolio to show to the Tribunal that these directives were originally published in June 1941. Document EC-472, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-315, was a revised edition published in July 1941. In other words, the economic plan for the invasion was ready when the Wehrmacht actually marched into the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
As appears from the foregoing directives, it was a subdivision of the economic organization set up by the Defendant Göring, the agricultural section of the Economic Staff East, which rendered a report on 23 May 1941, containing a set of policy directives for the exploitation of Soviet agriculture. It will be recalled that these directives contemplated abandonment of all industry in the food deficit regions, with certain exceptions, and the diversion of food from the food surplus regions to German needs, even though millions of people would inevitably die of starvation as a result. Those directives have already been read into evidence at Page 1558 (Volume IV, Page 5).
Minutes of a meeting at Hitler’s headquarters on 16 July 1941, kept by the Defendant Bormann, have also been read in part in evidence. It was at this meeting that Hitler stated that the Nazis never intended to leave the countries then being occupied by their armies, that although the rest of the world was to be deceived on this point, nevertheless, “this need not prevent us from taking all necessary measures—shooting, desettling, et cetera—and we shall take them.” That quotation, may it please the Tribunal, was taken from our Exhibit USA-317, our Document L-221. Then Hitler discussed making the Crimea and other parts of the Soviet Union into German colonies. The Defendant Göring was present and participated in this conference.
As a final illustration it appears from a memorandum dated 16 September 1941, which is our Exhibit Number USA-318, that Göring presided over a meeting of German military officials concerned with the better exploitation of the occupied territories for the German food economy. In discussing this topic, the Defendant Göring said:
“In the occupied territories on principle only those people are to be supplied with an adequate amount of food who work for us. Even if one wanted to feed all the other inhabitants, one could not do it in the newly occupied Eastern areas. It is, therefore, wrong to funnel off food supplies for this purpose if it is done at the expense of the Army and necessitates increased supplies from home.”
From the foregoing documents participation of the Defendant Göring in the Nazi plans for committing wholesale War Crimes in occupied territories is, we submit, clear.
I turn now to Göring’s planning and his participation in inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before and during the war. It has been shown that shortly after becoming Prime Minister of Prussia in 1933, Göring created the Gestapo in Prussia, which became a model for that instrument of terror as it was extended to the rest of Germany. Concentration camps were established in Prussia in the spring of 1933 under his administration, and these camps were then placed in the charge of the Gestapo, of which he was chief.
The extent to which Göring and the other Nazi conspirators employed these institutions as agencies for the commission of their crimes already appears from the evidence. In 1936 Himmler became chief of the German Police. Thereafter Göring was able to devote his attention chiefly to the task of creating the German Air Force and to the task of preparing the nation economically for aggressive war. However, he continued to be concerned with these institutions of his creation. An example of this is shown in our Document 1584(I)-PS, already introduced as Exhibit Number USA-221, which is a teletype sent by Göring to Himmler in which he requested the latter to place at his disposal as great a number of concentration camp inmates as possible, as the situation of air warfare made the subterranean transfer of industry necessary.
In his reply Himmler advised Göring by teletype that a survey on the employment of prisoners in the aviation industry showed that 36,000 were being employed for the purposes of the Air Forces and that an increase to a total of 90,000 prisoners was being contemplated.
Evidence has been introduced as to medical experiments performed on human beings at the concentration camp at Dachau and the part played by Field Marshal Milch, State Secretary and deputy to the Defendant Göring as Air Minister, for whose acts the latter must bear full responsibility. It is abundantly clear from letters written by Milch to General Wolff on 20 May 1942 and to Himmler in August 1942, both of which have been read in evidence at Page 1850 of the record (Volume IV, Page 204, 205), our Document 343-PS.
Finally, I turn to Göring’s participation in and planning for elimination of all members of the Jewish race from the economic life of Germany and in the planned extermination of all Jews from the continent of Europe.
In 1935 the Defendant Göring, as President of the Reichstag, made a speech urging that body to pass the infamous Nuremberg race laws. I offer, as Exhibit Number USA-588, our Document 3458-PS, which is an excerpt from Rühle, Das Dritte Reich, Page 257. Göring said:
“God has created the races. He did not want equality and therefore we energetically reject any attempt to falsify the concept of race purity by making it equivalent with racial equality. We have experienced what it means when a people has to live in accordance with the laws of an equality that is alien to its kind and contrary to nature. For this equality does not exist. We have never acknowledged such an idea and therefore must reject it also, as a matter of principle, in our laws, and we must acknowledge that purity of race which nature and providence have destined.”
Again, to show his official attitude, as revealed on 26 March 1938 in a speech in Vienna, I offer, as Exhibit Number USA-437, our Document 3460-PS, starting with Page 348. Göring said:
“I must address myself with a serious word to the city of Vienna. The city of Vienna can no longer rightfully be called a German city. So many Jews live in this city. Where there are 300,000 Jews, you cannot speak of a German city.
“Vienna must once more become a German city, because it must perform important tasks for Germany in Germany’s Ostmark. These tasks lie in the sphere of culture as well as in the sphere of economics. In neither of them can we, in the long run, put up with the Jew.
“This, however, should not be attempted by inappropriate interference and stupid measures but must be done systematically and carefully. As Delegate for the Four Year Plan, I commission the Reichsstatthalter in Austria jointly with the Plenipotentiary of the Reich to consider and take any steps necessary for the redirection of Jewish commerce, i.e., for the Aryanization of business and economic life, and to execute this process in accordance with our laws, legally but inexorably.”
Acting within the framework of economic preparation for aggressive war, the Nazi conspirators then began the complete elimination of Jews from economic life preparatory to their physical annihilation. The Defendant Göring, as head of the Four Year Plan, was in active charge of this phase of the persecution.
The first step in his campaign was the decree of 26 April 1938, requiring registration of all Jewish-owned property. Both Göring and the Defendant Frick signed that law. It is already in evidence.
I beg the Tribunal’s pardon. I would like the Tribunal to take judicial notice of that decree, which is our Document 1406-PS and cited as 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 414.
Now, armed with the information thus secured, the Nazi conspirators were fully prepared to take the next step. The killing of Vom Rath, a German Legation secretary in Paris on 9 November 1938, was made the pretext for widespread “spontaneous” riots, which included the looting and burning of many Jewish synagogues, homes, and shops, all carefully organized and supervised by the Nazi conspirators. The Defendant Göring was fully informed of the measures taken. The teletype orders of 10 November 1938 given by Heydrich are already in evidence and were read at Page 1405 of the record (Volume III, Page 500). A letter which Heydrich wrote to Göring on the following day has also been read. It is our Document 3058-PS, Exhibit Number USA-508. In it Himmler summarizes the so-called “spontaneous” riots that had taken place. He reported the day after the riot that insofar as the official reports from the district police were concerned he was able to state that 815 shops were destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed, and that all this indicates only a fraction of the actual damage caused, as far as arson is concerned. He also said that:
“Due to the urgency of the reporting, the reports received to date are entirely limited to general statements, such as ‘numerous’ or ‘most shops destroyed’. Therefore”—says Heydrich—“the figures given will be considerably augmented.
“One hundred and ninety-one synagogues were set on fire and another 76 completely destroyed. In addition 11 parish halls, cemetery chapels, and similar buildings were set on fire. . . .
“Twenty thousand Jews were arrested. . . .
“Thirty-six deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36.”
Immediately after these so-called “spontaneous” riots of 9 November, Göring acted as chairman of a meeting at the Reich Ministry of Air devoted to the Jewish question, which also was attended by the Defendant Funk and other conspirators. The stenographic report on that meeting is an extraordinary document, and it does not make pretty reading. It is our Document 1816-PS, which has already been offered as Exhibit Number USA-261. I should like to read certain passages that have not as yet been read into the record. I read from the top of first page, the first two paragraphs of Page 1 of the German original; Göring speaks:
“Gentlemen, today’s meeting is of a decisive nature. I have received a letter written on the Führer’s order by the Stabsleiter of the Führer’s deputy, Bormann, requesting that the Jewish question be now uniformly comprehended and solved one way or another. And yesterday once again the Führer requested me by phone to take co-ordinated action, in the matter.
“Since the problem is mainly an economic one, it is from the economic angle that it will have to be tackled. Naturally a number of legal measures will have to be taken which fall into the sphere of the Minister for Justice and into that of the Minister of the Interior; then certain resulting propaganda measures shall be taken care of by the office of the Minister for Propaganda. The Minister of Finance and the Minister for Economic Affairs shall take care of problems falling into their respective departments.”
Specific measures to effect the Aryanization of Jewish business were then discussed. A representative of German insurance companies was called in to assist in the solving of the difficulties created by the fact that most of the Jewish stores and other property destroyed in the rioting were, in fact, insured, in some cases, ultimately by foreign insurance companies. All present were agreed that it would be unfortunate to pass a law which would have the effect of allowing foreign insurance companies to escape liability. The Defendant Göring then suggested a characteristic solution, and I pass to Page 10. In German it is the third full paragraph on Page 3/11. Göring said:
“No, I don’t even dream of refunding the insurance companies the money. The companies are liable. No, the money belongs to the State. That’s quite clear. That would indeed be a present for the insurance companies. You made a wonderful Petitum there. You’ll fulfill your obligations; you may count on that.”
It is superfluous to quote further from the extensive discussion of all phases of persecution of the Jews that took place at this meeting. It is sufficient to point out that on the same day the Defendant Göring, over his own signature, promulgated three decrees putting into effect the most important matters decided at this meeting. In the first of these decrees a collective fine of 1 billion Reichsmarks was placed on all German Jews. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of that decree, which is our Document 1412-PS and appears in 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1579.
The second decree entitled, “A Decree on Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life” barred Jews from trades and crafts. I ask the Tribunal to notice judicially that decree, which is our Document 2875-PS, cited in 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1580.
The third decree entitled, “Decree for the Restoration of the Appearance of the Streets of Jewish Economic Enterprises” took care of the insurance question raised in the morning’s meeting by providing that insurance due to the Jews for various losses sustained by them was to be collected by the State. I ask the Court to notice judicially that decree also. It is our Document 2694-PS and appears in 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1581.
THE PRESIDENT: Shall we break off for 10 minutes there?
[A recess was taken.]
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Albrecht, the Tribunal thinks that these methods, which are really methods which we have already had under consideration, might be presented in a more summary way than you have been dealing with them, and if you can possibly shorten the matters with which you are dealing now by summarizing more than you are, it will be more useful to the Tribunal and will save time.
MR. ALBRECHT: My Lord, I think I am practically through with this point. At any event I think I shall not have to take more than 5 or 10 minutes.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, but I may say that the same observation will apply to those who follow.
MR. ALBRECHT: May it please the Tribunal, the material I alluded to before the recess, we feel, is merely illustrative of the energetic manner in which the Defendant Göring took part in driving the Jews from economic life at this period. Two other documents would seem to be pertinent on this point.
I would like to offer our Document 069-PS as Exhibit Number USA-589, which is a circular letter dated 17 January 1939 signed by the Defendant Bormann, distributing a directive of the Defendant Göring with respect to certain discriminations to be applied in the housing of the Jews. I will be content with that summarization, if the Court please, and I do not intend to read further from that document.
The second document I desire to offer is our Document 1208-PS, which I offer as Exhibit Number USA-590. That is an order of the Defendant Göring as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan, dated 10 December 1938, prescribing the manner in which exploitation of Jewish property is to be undertaken and warning that any profit resulting from the elimination of Jews from economic activity is to go to the Reich.
There is no need, I believe, to read excerpts from the document, except that I do wish to call the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that Göring’s letter is addressed to all the chief agencies of the Reich, to all the political leaders and leaders of the affiliated organizations of the Party, to all Gauleiter, to all Reichsstatthalter (or governors), and to the various local heads of the German Länder and subdivisions thereof.
As the German armies moved into other countries, the anti-Jewish laws were extended, often in a more stringent form, to the occupied territories. Many of the decrees were not signed by the Defendant Göring himself, but were issued on the basis of decrees signed by him.
Nevertheless, in his capacity as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan or as Chairman of the Ministerial Council for National Defense, the Defendant Göring himself signed a number of anti-Jewish decrees for occupied territories, including the decrees enumerated on Pages 47 and 48 of our brief, of which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice.
During the later years of the war the program of the Nazi conspirators for the complete physical annihilation of all Jews in Europe achieved its full fury. While the execution of this anti-Jewish program was for the most part handled by the SS and the Security Police, the Defendant Göring remains implicated to the last in the final efforts to achieve a Nazi “solution” of the Jewish problem.
On 31 July 1941 he wrote a letter to the conspirator Heydrich, which is the final document to which I wish to draw the Tribunal’s attention. It is a fitting climax to our presentation on this defendant. The reason why it was addressed to the notorious Heydrich, the predecessor of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner, need not strain our imagination. This document is our Document Number 710-PS, which has already been admitted as Exhibit Number USA-509, in connection with the case on the Gestapo. While it has already been read into evidence, with permission of the Court, I would like to close my presentation with the reading of that letter. Göring writes to Heydrich:
“Complementing the task that was assigned to you on 24 January 1939, which dealt with arriving at thorough furtherance of emigration and evacuation solution of the Jewish problem, as advantageous as possible, I hereby charge you to make all necessary organizational and practical preparations for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.
“Wherever other governmental agencies are involved, these are to co-operate with you.
“I charge you furthermore to send me, before long, an over-all plan concerning the organizational, factual, and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the desired final solution of the Jewish question.”
The presentation made to the Tribunal on the individual responsibility of the Defendant Göring has been intended to be merely illustrative of the mass of documentary evidence which reveals the leading part played by this conspirator in every phase of the Nazi conspiracy. Thus, we submit that the responsibility of Göring for the crimes with which he has been charged under Count One and Count Two of the Indictment has been established.
May it please the Tribunal, this completes the presentation on the individual responsibility of the Defendant Göring. We will now proceed with the arrangement made with the British Delegation on the presentation showing the individual responsibility of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, if the Tribunal would be good enough to look at Appendix A of the Indictment on Page 28 of the English text (Volume I, Page 69) they will find the particulars relating to this defendant, and they will find that the allegations regarding him fall into three divisions.
After reciting the offices which he held, the appendix of the Indictment goes on to say that the Defendant Ribbentrop used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Führer in such a manner that he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators as set forth in Count One of the Indictment and permitted the preparation for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment.
In the second section he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for wars of aggression and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances as set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.
In accordance with the Führer Principle, he executed and assumed responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy plans of the Nazi conspirators, as set forth in Count One of the Indictment.
Then the third section: He authorized, directed, and participated in War Crimes, as set forth in Count Three of the Indictment, and the Crimes against Humanity, set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including, more particularly crimes against persons and property in occupied territories. I hope that it might be useful to the Tribunal if I follow the order of these allegations in the Indictment as we collected the evidence for each of these in turn; I therefore proceed to deal first with the allegation that this defendant promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators.
The Tribunal knows already that the defendant held various offices and these are usefully collected in his own certified statement, which has already been put in as Exhibit Number USA-5, Document 2829-PS. And I think it would be convenient if I very briefly explained the different activities and offices of the defendant which are dealt with in that list. It will be seen from that list that he became a member of the Nazi Party in 1932, but, according to the semi-official statement in Das Archiv, he had begun to work for the Party before that time. That semi-official statement goes on to say that he succeeded in extending his business connections to political circles, having joined in 1930 the service of the Party. At the time of the final struggle for power in the Reich, Ribbentrop played an important, if not strikingly obvious part in the bringing about of the decisive meetings between the representatives of the President of the Reich and the heads of the Party, who had prepared the entry of the Nazis into power on 30 January 1933. Those meetings, as well as those between Hitler and Von Papen, took place in Ribbentrop’s house in Berlin-Dahlem.
This defendant was therefore present and active at the inception of the Nazi securing of power. After that, for a short period, he was adviser to the Party on questions of foreign affairs. His title was first “Adviser to the Führer on matters of foreign policy” and he later became representative in matters of foreign policy on the staff of the deputy. This was followed by membership in the Reichstag in November 1933 and in the Party organizations he became an Oberführer in the SS and was subsequently promoted to Gruppenführer and to Obergruppenführer. Thereafter he attained official government positions.
On the 24th of April 1934 he was appointed delegate of the Reich Government on matters of disarmament. That was after Germany had left the disarmament conference. In this capacity he visited foreign capitals. He was then given a more important and certainly a more resounding title: the German Minister Plenipotentiary at Large; and it was in that capacity that he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935.
In 1936, after the Nazi Government had re-occupied the Rhineland contrary to the treaties of Versailles and Locarno, the matter was brought before the Council of the League of Nations, and the defendant addressed the Council in defense of the action of Germany. His next position began on 11 August 1936, when he was appointed Ambassador in London. He occupied that position for a period of some 18 months, and his activities there, while having their own interest, are not highly relevant to the matters now before the Tribunal. But during that period, in the capacity which he still had as German Minister Plenipotentiary at Large, he signed the original Anticomintern Pact with Japan in November 1936 and also the additional pact by which Italy joined it in 1937.
Finally, so far as this part of the case is concerned, on 4 February 1938 this defendant was appointed Foreign Minister in place of the Defendant Von Neurath and simultaneously was made a member of the Secret Cabinet Council (Geheimer Kabinettsrat) established by decree of Hitler of that date. That takes us up to the period of his holding the office of Foreign Minister, and his actions in that capacity will be dealt with in detail later on.
I refer the Tribunal without reading further, because I have already summarized it, to the extract from Das Archiv, which is Document D-472, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-130; also to the membership extract of the SS, which consists in the examination of the descent of SS leaders and which I insert as Exhibit GB-131. Again I shall not trouble the Tribunal with the details. It shows his rank, which I have already mentioned. There is no question of any honorary rank. It is simply stated to be the rank of Gruppenführer, and of course, it gives his ancestry in detail, in order to deal with the laws which related to that subject. It also deals with his adoption in order to secure the prefix of “von,” but the defendant has now to deal with much more serious things than barren controversies with the Almanach de Gotha.
The only new document which I put before the Tribunal in this part of the case is Exhibit GB-129, Document 1337-PS, which shows the establishment of the Secret Cabinet Council and the membership of the Foreign Minister. These are the activities of this defendant in the earlier part of his career, and in the submission of the Prosecution they show quite clearly that he assisted willingly, deliberately, intentionally, and keenly in bringing the Nazis into power and into the earlier stage of their obtaining control of the German State.
I now come to the second allegation in the Indictment, that this defendant participated in political planning and preparation with the Nazi conspirators for wars of aggression and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances; and again it might help the Tribunal if I took these quite shortly, in order of aggression, and stated briefly the constituent allegations that we make and the references to matters before the Tribunal, referring the Tribunal only to any new document which shall come along.
The first is the Anschluss with Austria, and there the Tribunal will remember that the Defendant Ribbentrop was present at a meeting at Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938, at which Hitler and Von Papen met the Austrian Chancellor Von Schuschnigg and his Foreign Minister, Guido Schmidt. The Tribunal will find the official account of that interview in Document 2461-PS, which I put in as Exhibit GB-132. What the Tribunal will find, I submit, is the truthful account of the interview in Exhibit Number USA-72, Document Number 1780-PS, which is the diary of the Defendant Jodl; and the relevant entries are those for 11 and 12 February 1938. They are extremely short, and I shall read—if the Tribunal will be kind enough to allow me, they do show quite clearly the case for the Prosecution—about the pressure that was used in Chancellor Schuschnigg’s interview. It is at the foot of the first page in the Document Book; Document 1780-PS is the number.
And on the 11th of February the Defendant Jodl writes:
“In the evening and on 12 February General K”—Keitel—“with General Von Reichenau and Sperrle at Obersalzberg. Schuschnigg, together with G. Schmidt are being put under the heaviest political and military pressure. At 2300 hours Schuschnigg signs protocol.
“13 February: In the afternoon General K”—Keitel—“asks Admiral C”—Canaris—“and myself to come to his apartment. He tells us that the Führer’s order is to the effect that military pressure, by shamming military action, should be kept up until the 15th. Proposals for these deceptive maneuvers are drafted and submitted to the Führer by telephone for approval.
“14 February: At 2:40 o’clock the agreement of the Führer arrives. Canaris went to Munich to the Counter-Intelligence Office VII and initiates the different measures.
“The effect is quick and strong. In Austria the impression is created that Germany is undertaking serious military preparations.”
It is rather interesting, after reading the frank statement of the Defendant Jodl, to look at the pale words of the official statement which I have also put in. That is the view of the meeting with Schuschnigg, which the Prosecution placed before this Court.
Will the Tribunal be good enough to ignore an allegation that appears in the trial brief that this defendant visited Mussolini before the Anschluss, as is stated by a member of his staff at that time. It was disputed by another member. Therefore, I would rather the Tribunal ruled it out.
The next point on which there is no dispute is the telephone conversation which took place between the Defendant Göring and the Defendant Ribbentrop on the 13th of March 1938, when this defendant was still in London. The Tribunal will remember that that was dealt with fully by my friend, Mr. Alderman. It was passing on what the Prosecution submits is a completely false statement: that there was no ultimatum. The facts of the ultimatum were explained by the earlier telephone conversations with the Defendant Göring in Vienna. Defendant Göring then passed that on to the Defendant Ribbentrop in London in order that he might propagate the story of there being no ultimatum, in political circles in London. That appears in the telephone conversation, which is Exhibit Number USA-76, Document 2949-PS, and, as I say, it is fully dealt with in the transcript on Page 582 (Volume II, Page 425).
The third action which this defendant took occurred after his return from London. Although he had been appointed Foreign Minister in February, he had gone back to London to clear up his business at the embassy and he was still in London until after the Anschluss had actually occurred, but his name appears as a signatory of the law making Austria a province of the German Reich. That is Document 2307-PS, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-133. And there is a reference in the Reichsgesetzblatt, which is given. These were the actions of the defendant with regard to Austria.
Then we come to Czechoslovakia, and there you have an almost perfect example of aggression at work in its various ways. Again I simply remind the Tribunal of the outstanding points with the greatest brevity. First, there is the question of stirring up trouble inside the country against which aggression is going to be set forth.
This Defendant, as Foreign Minister, was concerned with the stirring up of the Sudeten Germans under Henlein, and the contacts between the Foreign Office and Henlein are shown in Exhibit Numbers USA-93, 94, 95, and 96. These are Documents 3060-PS, 2789-PS, 2788-PS, and 3059-PS. They have all been read by my friend, Mr. Alderman, but I simply give to the Tribunal their effect on them, which is the stirring up of the Sudeten German movement in order to act with the Government of the Reich.
Then, after that, the Defendant Ribbentrop was present on the 28th of May 1938 at the conference with Hitler, at which the latter gave the necessary instructions to prepare the attack on Czechoslovakia. That was dealt with previously on Page 742 of the transcript (Volume III, Page 42). And I want to put before the Tribunal Document 2360-PS, which is a report of a speech of Hitler’s in the Völkischer Beobachter; and, if the Tribunal would be good enough to look at it, it is a useful date to fix with regard to the aggression against Czechoslovakia, because that was the day on which Hitler, on his own proclamation, had decided that aggression was to take place against Czechoslovakia. The extract which I have taken is quite short and—if the Tribunal would look at the extract which is on Page 1, columns 5 and 6, bottom—the important passage is:
“On the basis of this unbearable provocation, which was still further emphasized by a truly infamous persecution and terrorizing of our Germans there, I have now decided to solve the Sudeten-German question in a final and radical manner.”
This was in January 1939. Then he goes on to say:
“On 28 May . . . I gave the order for the preparation of military steps against this state, to be concluded by 2 October. . . .”
The important point is that the 28th of May was the date when the Fall Grün for Czechoslovakia was the subject of orders and it was thereafter put into effect to come to fruition at the beginning of October. That is the second stage: To lay well in advance your plans of aggression. The third stage is to see that the neighboring states are not likely to cause you trouble.
So we find that on the 18th of July 1938 this defendant had a conversation with the Italian Ambassador Attolico, at which the attack on Czechoslovakia was discussed. That is Exhibit Number USA-85, Document 2800-PS. And there were further discussions which are contained in Exhibits USA-86 and 87, which are Documents 2791-PS and 2792-PS.
I think it is sufficient for me to say to the Tribunal that the effect of these documents is that it was made clear to the Italian Government that the German Government was going to move against Czechoslovakia.
The other country which was interested was Hungary, because Hungary had certain territorial ideas with regard to parts of the Czechoslovakian Republic.
So, on the 23rd and 25th of August, this defendant was present at the discussions and had discussions himself with the Hungarian politicians Imredy and Kania, and these are found in Exhibit Numbers USA-88 and 89, Documents 2796-PS and 2797-PS.
This defendant endeavored to get assurances of Hungarian help, and the Hungarian Government at the time was not too ready to commit itself to action, although it was ready enough with sympathy. These are to be found in the documents which I have mentioned. And, again, unless the Tribunal desires, I shall not read any document that I summarize that way.
Now I have already mentioned that there had been contact with the Sudeten Germans. That was the long-term grievance that had to be exploited. But the next stage was to have a short-term grievance and to stir up trouble, preferably at the fountainhead. And so, between the 16th and 24th of September, we find the German Foreign Office, of which this defendant was at the head, stirring up trouble in Prague; and that is shown very clearly in Exhibits Numbers USA-97 to 101, which are Documents 2858-PS, 2855-PS, 2854-PS, 2853-PS, and 2856-PS. I have read them in order of date. And it would be interesting for the Tribunal to look at these. They ought to follow quite shortly the document they have just been looking at, beginning with Document PS-2858. You will see the sort of thing of which I am reminding the Tribunal. Here you have the document of the 19th of September coming from the Foreign Office to the German Embassy in Prague:
“Please inform Deputy Kundt at Conrad Henlein’s request to get in touch with the Slovaks at once and induce them to start their demands for autonomy during the next day.”
And the others deal with questions of arrest and the action that would be taken against any Czechs in Germany in order to make the position more difficult.
That was the contribution which this defendant made to the pre-Munich crisis. After, as the Tribunal will remember, on the 29th of September 1938, the Munich Agreement was signed. That is GB-23, Document TC-23, which I have already read to the Tribunal.
And, after that—I just remind the Tribunal of an interesting document which shows the sort of action which the Wehrmacht expected and the advice that the Wehrmacht expected from the Foreign Office.
You have, on the 1st of October, Document C-2, which is Exhibit Number USA-90, and that is a long document putting forward an almost infinite variety of breaches of international law, which were likely to arise or might have arisen from the action in regard to Czechoslovakia; and on all these points the opinion of the Foreign Office is sought. That, of course, remained a hypothetical question at that time because no war resulted.
Then, if the Tribunal please, we come to the second stage in the acquiring of Czechoslovakia: That is, having obtained the Sudetenland, arranging so that there would be a crisis in Czechoslovakia which would give an excuse for taking the rest. The Tribunal will remember the importance of this because it is the first time that the German Government went outside its own statement about not going beyond German blood.
On that point, again, this defendant was active. On the 13th of March, as events were moving to a climax, he sent a telegram to the German Minister in Prague, who was under him, telling him to “make a point of not being available if the Government there wants to get in touch with you in the next few days.” That is Exhibit Number USA-116, Document 2815-PS.
At the same time this defendant saw a delegation of pro-Nazi Slovaks in Berlin. At a conference with Hitler, at which this defendant was present, Tiso, one of the heads of the pro-Nazi Slovaks, was directed to declare an independent Slovak State, in order to assist in the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. That is Exhibit Number USA-117, Document 2802-PS, and the Tribunal might care to compare it with a previous meeting with another Slovak, Tuka, a month before, which is shown in Document 2790-PS, Exhibit Number USA-110. So that this defendant was assisting in the task, again, of supporting internal trouble.
Then on the 14th of March 1939, the next day, Hacha, the President of Czechoslovakia, was called to Berlin. This defendant was present at the meeting and the Tribunal will remember the usual pressure and threats which resulted in the aged President’s purposing to hand over the Czechoslovak State to Hitler. The Tribunal will find that subject dealt with on Page 911 of the transcript (Volume III, from Page 158), and the relevant exhibit is Exhibit Number USA-118, Document 2798-PS, which is the minutes of the meeting between Hitler and Hacha that this defendant attended. You will also find it dealt with in Exhibit Number USA-126, Document 3061-PS, which is the Czechoslovakian Government report.
That was the end of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia. The following week this defendant signed a treaty with Slovakia which I now put in. It is Document 1439-PS, and I put it in as Exhibit GB-135, and the important part is Article 2, under which the German Government was given the right to construct military posts and installations and keep them garrisoned within Czechoslovakia. Again, I am not going to read it at length, but I hope the Tribunal will stop me if there are any of these documents which they would like read instead of summarized.
In that way this defendant by the terms of that treaty, after completely finishing Bohemia and Moravia as an independent state, had got military control in Slovakia.
Before I pass to Poland, there is one interesting little point on the Northern Baltic which I put before the Tribunal to show how this defendant could hardly keep his hands out of the internal affairs of other countries, even when it did not seem a very important matter. The Tribunal will remember that on the 3rd of April 1939, as shown in GB-4, TC-53(a), Germany had occupied the Memelland. It would have appeared, as far as the Baltic States were concerned, that the position was satisfactory; but if the Tribunal will look at Document 2953-PS, which I put in as Exhibit GB-136, and Document 2952-PS, which I put in as GB-137, they will find that this defendant acted in close concert with the conspirator Heydrich, who is dead, in stirring up trouble in Lithuania with a group of pro-Nazi people called the “Woldemaras supporters.” Document 2953-PS shows that Heydrich was passing to the Defendant Ribbentrop the request for financial support for the . . .
THE PRESIDENT: You are going to read 2953?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord, that is the one I was going to read. That is a letter from Heydrich to the Defendant Ribbentrop and it says:
“Dear Party Comrade Von Ribbentrop:
“Enclosed please find a further report about the ‘Woldemaras supporters.’ As already mentioned in the previous report the ‘Woldemaras supporters’ are still asking for help from the Reich. I therefore ask you to examine the question of financial support brought up again by the ‘Woldemaras supporters’ set forth on Page 4, Paragraph 2, of the enclosed report and to make a definite decision.
“The request of the ‘Woldemaras supporters’ for financial support could, in my opinion, be granted. Deliveries of arms should not, however, be made under any circumstances.”
Then, 2952-PS, the next document, is a fuller report, and at the end of that there is added in handwriting, “I support small regular payments, e.g., 2,000 to 3,000 marks quarterly.” It is signed “W,” who I understand to be the Secretary of State.
I merely quoted that to show the extraordinary interference, even with comparatively unimportant countries.
Then we pass to the aggression against Poland, and again the Tribunal has had that fully dealt with by my friend Colonel Griffith-Jones; but again it might be useful if I just separated the various periods so that the Tribunal would have these in mind. The first was what one might call the Munich period, up to the end of September 1938; and at that time no language was too good for Poland. The Tribunal will remember the point.
The important documents showing that aspect of the case are GB-30, which is Document 2357-PS, Hitler’s Reichstag speech on the 20th of February 1938, and then GB-31, Document TC-76, which is the secret Foreign Office memorandum of the 26th of August 1938, and GB-27, Document TC-73, Number 40. TC-73 is the Polish White Book and 40 is the number of the document in the book. That is a conversation between M. Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, and this defendant.
Finally in this group is TC-73, Number 42, Hitler’s speech at the Sportpalast on the 26th of September 1938, in which he said that this was the end of his territorial problems in Europe and expressed an almost violent affection for the Poles.
Now the next stage was between Munich and the rape of Prague, and then in the next stage—part of the German aggressions in Czechoslovakia having been accomplished and parts still remaining to be done—there is a slight change but still a friendly atmosphere. That begins with a conversation between this defendant and M. Lipski, which is contained in Exhibit GB-27, Document TC-73, Number 44.
There this defendant put forward very peaceful suggestions for the settlement of the Danzig issue. The Polish reply is in GB-28, TC-73.
THE PRESIDENT: You did not give the date of those, did you?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord: The first one is 25 October 1938; the Polish reply which says that it is unacceptable that Danzig should return to the Reich, but making suggestions for a bilateral agreement, is the 31st of October 1938. Between these dates, the Tribunal will remember according to Document C-137, Exhibit GB-33, dated the 21st of October the German Government had made its preparation to occupy Danzig by surprise. But although these preparations were made, still some 2 months later, on the 5th of January 1939, while the rape of Prague had not taken place, Hitler was suggesting to M. Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, a new solution. That is contained in Document TC-73, Number-48, Exhibit GB-34, the interview of Hitler and Beck on the 5th of January 1939.
Then this defendant saw M. Beck on the next day and said there was no violent solution of Danzig, but a further building up of friendly relations. That is contained in GB-35, Document TC-73, Number 49. Not content with that, this defendant went to Warsaw on the 25th of January and, according to the report of his speech contained in Document 2530-PS, GB-36, talked of the continued progress and consolidation of friendly relations; and that was capped by Hitler’s Reichstag speech on the 30th of January 1939, in the same sort of tone, contained in GB-37, TC-73, Number 57. That was the second stage—the mention of Danzig in honeyed words, because, of course, the rape of Prague had not been attained.
Then one has to remember, as one comes to the summer, the meeting at the Reich Chancellery on the 23rd of May 1939, which is reported in Document L-79, Exhibit Number USA-27. It has been read many times to the Tribunal, and I remind them of only this point: That that is the document where Hitler makes it quite clear, and states in his own words, that Danzig has nothing to do with the real Polish question. He had to deal with Poland because he wanted Lebensraum in the East. That is the effect of that portion of the document which has been read so often to the Tribunal—that Danzig was merely an excuse.
It is important to have in mind, if I may respectfully suggest it, that that meeting was on the 23rd of May 1939, because there is an interesting corroboration of the attitude of mind—in showing how clearly this Defendant Ribbentrop had adopted the attitude of mind of Hitler—in the introduction to Count Ciano’s diary, which was put in as Exhibit Number USA-166, Document 2987-PS; but I do not think this part of the diary, the introduction, has been read before to the Court. It is Document 2897-PS, and it comes two after L-79, which is the “Little Schmundt” file, just after the Obersalzberg document. It is set out in the trial brief, if the Tribunal will care to follow it there. Count Ciano says:
“In the summer of 1939 Germany advanced her claims against Poland, naturally without our knowledge; indeed, Ribbentrop had several times denied to our Ambassador that Germany had any intention of carrying the controversy to extremes. Despite these denials I remained unconvinced; I wanted to make sure for myself, and on August 11th I went to Salzburg. It was in his residence at Fuschl that Ribbentrop informed me, while we were waiting to eat, of the decision to start the fireworks, just as he might have told me about the most unimportant and commonplace administrative matter. ‘Well, Ribbentrop,’ I asked him, while we were walking in the garden, ‘What do you want? The Corridor or Danzig?’ ‘Not any more, . . .’ and he stared at me through those cold Musée Grevin eyes, ‘We want war.’”
I remind the Tribunal how closely that corroborates the statement that Hitler had made at his Chancellery conference on the 23rd of May: That it was no longer a question of Danzig or the Corridor, it was a question of war to achieve Lebensraum in the East.
Then I remind the Tribunal, without citing it, that the Fall Weiss for operation against Poland is dated the 3rd and 11th of April 1939, which certainly shows that preparations were already in hand.
And then there is another reference in Count Ciano’s diary which also has not been read and which makes this point quite clear. Again, if the Tribunal will take it as set out in the trial brief, I will read it, as it has not been read before:
“I have collected the conference records of verbal transcripts of my conversations with Ribbentrop and Hitler. Here I shall note only some impressions of a general nature. Ribbentrop is evasive every time I ask him for particulars of the forthcoming German action. He has a guilty conscience. He has lied too many times about German intentions towards Poland not to feel embarrassment now over what he must tell me and what he is preparing to do.
“The will to fight is unalterable. He rejects any solution which might satisfy Germany and prevent the struggle. I am certain that even if the Germans were given everything they demanded they would attack just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction.
“Our conversation sometimes takes a dramatic turn. I do not hesitate to speak my mind in the most brutal manner. But this doesn’t shake him in the least. I realize how little weight this view carries in German opinion.
“The atmosphere is icy. And the cold feeling between us is reflected in our followers. During dinner we do not exchange a word. We distrust each other. But I at least have a clear conscience. He has not.”
Whatever other defects there may have been about Count Ciano, there cannot be an appreciation of the situation which is more heavily corroborated by supporting documents than his diagnosis of the situation in the summer of 1939.
Then we come to the next stage in the German plan, which was sharp pressure on the claim for Danzig shown immediately after Czechoslovakia had been finally dealt with on the 15th of March. It is shown how closely it followed the completion of the rape of Prague. The first sharp raising of the claim was on the 21st of March, as shown in Exhibit GB-38, Document TC-73, Number 61. And that developed, as the Tribunal has heard from Colonel Griffith-Jones.
Then we come to the last days before the war, and one interesting side light is that Herr Von Dirksen, the German Ambassador at the Court of St. James, returned from London on the 18th of August 1939; and I put in the extract from the interrogation of the Defendant Ribbentrop, which is Document D-490. I put that in as GB-138.
I do not intend to read it to the Tribunal because it can be summarized in this way: That the Defendant Ribbentrop has certainly no recollection of ever having seen the German Ambassador to the Court of St. James after his return. He thinks he would have remembered him if he had seen him and he accepts the probability that he did not see him. And there is the point, when it was well-known that war with Poland would involve England and France, that either he was not sufficiently interested in opinion in London to take the trouble to see his ambassador or else, as he rather suggests, that he had appointed so weak and ordinary a career diplomat to London that his opinion was not taken into account, either by himself or by Hitler. In either case, he was completely uninterested in anything which his ambassador might have to tell him of opinion in London or the possibility of war. And I conceive myself speaking with great moderation in putting it this way. That in the last days before the 1st of September 1939 this defendant did whatever he could to avoid peace with Poland and to avoid anything which might hinder the incursion of the war which we know he wanted. He did that, well knowing that war with Poland would involve Great Britain and France. These details were given in full by Colonel Griffith-Jones; I am not going through them again. But I have, for the convenience of the Tribunal, referred to the transcript at Pages 1000 to 1059 (Volume III, Pages 219 to 261), and M. Lipski summarized all that took place in his report of the 10th of October 1939, which is Document TC-73, Number 147, which is Exhibit GB-27.
Now these are the actions of this defendant in the Polish matter. I am glad to inform the Tribunal that with regard to the other countries they are very much shorter than with regard to Poland.
I now come to Norway and Denmark. I remind the Tribunal of the fact, if it cares to take cognizance thereof, that on the 31st of May 1939 the Defendant Ribbentrop, on behalf of Germany, signed a non-aggression pact with Denmark which provided that “the German Reich and the Kingdom of Denmark will under no circumstances go to war or employ force of any other kind against one another.” This is Exhibit GB-77, Document TC-24. And just to fix the date, the Tribunal will remember that on the 9th of April 1940 the German Armed Forces invaded Denmark and at the same time they invaded Norway.
With regard to Norway there are three documents which show that this defendant was fully informed of the earlier preparations for that act of aggression. The Tribunal will remember that my friend, Major Elwyn Jones, did indicate with some particularity the relations between Quisling and the Defendant Rosenberg. But Rosenberg in this case also required the help of the Defendant Ribbentrop and, if the Tribunal would be good enough to turn to Document 957-PS, which I am putting in as GB-139, they will see the first of the documents which connect this defendant with the earlier Quisling activities.
The first one, Document 957-PS, is a letter from Defendant Rosenberg to this defendant and it begins:
“Dear Party Comrade Von Ribbentrop:
“Party Comrade Scheidt has returned and has made a detailed report to Geheimrat Von Grundherr, who will address you on this subject. We agreed the other day that 200,000 to 300,000 Reichsmarks would be made immediately available for the said purpose. Now it turns out that . . . Grundherr states that the second instalment can be made available only after 8 days. But as it is necessary for Scheidt to go back immediately, I request you to make it possible that this second instalment be given to him at once. With a longer absence . . . the connection with your representatives would also be broken up, which just now, under certain circumstances, could be very unfavorable.
“Therefore I think it is in everybody’s interest, if Party Comrade Scheidt goes back immediately.”
That was the 24th of February.
Now the next document, 004-PS, is a report from Rosenberg to Hitler, and if the Tribunal will be good enough to turn to Page 4—this is on the Quisling activities—they will find that that passage is sufficient to show how this defendant was connected with it. This is a report from Rosenberg to Hitler:
“Next to a financial support which was paid by the Reich in foreign currency, Quisling, as further help, was at the same time promised deliveries of goods which were urgently needed by Norway, such as coal and sugar. The shipments were to be conducted under cover of a new trade company, to be established in Germany, or through specially selected existing firms while Hagelin was to act as consignee in Norway. Hagelin had already conferred with the respective Ministers of the Nygaardsvold Government, as, for instance, the Minister of Supply and Commerce, and had been assured permission for the import of coal. At the same time the coal transports were to serve possibly to supply the technical means necessary to launch Quisling’s political action in Oslo with German help. It was Quisling’s plan to send a number of selected, particularly reliable men to Germany for a brief military training course in a completely isolated camp. They were then to be detailed as area and language specialists to German special troops, who were to be taken to Oslo on the coal barges to accomplish a political action. Thus Quisling planned to get hold of his leading opponents in Norway, including the King, and to prevent all military resistance from the very beginning. Immediately following this political action and upon an official request of Quisling to the Government of the German Reich, the military occupation of Norway was to take place. All military preparations were to be completed previously. Though this plan contained the great advantage of surprise, it also contained a great number of dangers which could possibly cause its failure. For this reason it received a quite dilatory treatment, while at the same time it was not disapproved as far as the Norwegians were concerned.
“In February, after a conference with General Field Marshal Göring, Reichsleiter Rosenberg informed the Ministerial Director in the office of the Four Year Plan, Wohlthat, only of the intention to prepare coal shipments to Norway to the named confidant Hagelin. Further details were discussed in a conference between Wohlthat, Staff Director Schickedanz, and Hagelin. Since Wohlthat received no further instructions from the General Field Marshal, Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop—after a consultation with Reichsleiter Rosenberg—consented to expedite these shipments through his office. Based on a report of Reichsleiter Rosenberg to the Führer it was also arranged at this conference to pay Quisling through Scheidt as liaison 10,000 English pounds per month for the next 3 months, commencing on the 15th of March, to support his work.”
This was paid through Scheidt, the man who was mentioned before.
Now the other document, D-629, is a letter from Defendant Keitel to the Defendant Ribbentrop, dated the 3rd of April 1940. I need trouble the Tribunal only with the first paragraph. The Defendant Keitel says:
“Dear Herr Von Ribbentrop:
“The military occupation of Denmark and Norway has been, by command of the Führer, long in preparation by the High Command of the Wehrmacht. The High Command of the Wehrmacht has therefore had ample time to occupy itself with all the questions connected with the carrying out of this operation. The time at your disposal for the political preparation of this operation is, on the contrary, very much shorter. I believe myself, therefore, to be acting in accordance with your ideas in transmitting to you herewith, not only these wishes of the Wehrmacht which would have to be fulfilled by the Governments in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm for purely military reasons, but also I include a series of requests which certainly concern the Wehrmacht only indirectly but which are, however, of the greatest importance for the fulfillment of its task.”
Then he proceeds to ask that the Foreign Office get in touch with certain commanders. The important point for which I read it to the Tribunal—as far as I know, for the first time—is that there we have the Defendant Keitel saying quite clearly that the military occupation of Denmark and Norway has been long in preparation. And it is interesting when one looks back to the official life of Ribbentrop, which, is contained in the archives and is Document D-472. I am quoting a sentence only because of the interesting contrast:
“With the occupation of Denmark and Norway on the 9th of April 1940 only a few hours before the landing of British troops in these territories, the battle began against the Western Powers.”
Then it goes on to Holland and Belgium.
It is quite clear that, whoever else had knowledge or whoever else was ignorant, this Defendant Ribbentrop had been up to his neck in the Quisling plottings, and it is made clear to him well a week before the invasion started, that the Wehrmacht and the Defendant Keitel had long been preparing this particular act of aggression.
I think, My Lord, that is really all the evidence on the aggression against Norway because, again, the story was put forward fully by my friend, Major Elwyn Jones.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 9 January 1946 at 1000 hours.]
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Punctuation and spelling has been maintained except where obvious printer errors have occurred such as missing periods or commas for periods. English and American spellings occur throughout the document; however, American spellings are the rule, hence, 'Defense' versus 'Defence'. Unlike prior Blue Series volumes I and II, all German and eastern European names and terms include accents and umlauts: hence Führer and Göring, etc. throughout; and Himmler's speech in 'Weselsburg' has been corrected to the town's name of 'Wezelsburg'.
Although some sentences may appear to have incorrect spellings or verb tenses, the original text has been maintained as it represents what the tribunal read into the record and reflects the actual translations between the German, English, Russian and French documents presented in the trial.
An attempt has been made to produce this eBook in a format as close as possible to the original document's presentation and layout.
[The end of Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal: Nuremberg 14 November 1945- 1 October 1946 (Vol. 4), by Various.]