Archive/File: imt/ tgmwc/judgment/j-regime-consolidation
Last-Modified: 1997/09/11

                          Judgment
                           of the
               International Military Tribunal
                           For The
             Trial of German Major War Criminals

                           London
               His Majesty's Stationery Office
                            1951
                                                            

                                                    [Page 7]

                 THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

The NSDAP, having achieved power in this way, now proceeded
to extend its hold on every phase of German life. Other
political parties were persecuted, their property and assets
confiscated, and many of their members placed in
concentration camps. On 26th April, 1933, the Defendant
Goering founded in Prussia the Geheime Staatspolizei, or
Gestapo, as a secret police, and confided to the deputy
leader of the Gestapo that its main task was to eliminate
political opponents of National Socialism and Hitler. On
14th July, 1933, a law was passed declaring the NSDAP to be
the only political party, and making it criminal to maintain
or form any other political party.

In order to place the complete control of the machinery of
Government in the hands of the Nazi leaders, a series of
laws and decrees were passed which reduced the powers of
regional and local governments throughout Germany,
transforming them into subordinate divisions of the
Government of the Reich. Representative assemblies in the
Laender were abolished, and with them all local elections.
The Government then proceeded to secure control of the Civil
Service. This was achieved by a process of centralization,
and by a careful sifting of the whole Civil Service
administration. By a law of 7 April it was provided that
officials "who were of non-Aryan descent" should be retired;
and it was also decreed that "officials who because of their
previous political activity do not offer security that they
will exert themselves for the national state without
reservation shall be discharged." The law of 11th April,
1933, provided for the discharge of "all civil servants who
belong to the Communist Party." Similarly, the judiciary was
subjected to control. Judges were removed from the bench for
political or racial reasons. They were spied upon and made
subject to the strongest pressure to join the Nazi Party as
an alternative to being dismissed. When the Supreme Court
acquitted three of the four defendants charged with
complicity in the Reichstag fire, its jurisdiction in cases
of treason was thereafter taken away and given to a newly
established "People's Court" consisting of two judges and
five officials of the Party. Special courts were set up to
try political crimes and only party members were appointed
as judges. Persons were arrested by the SS for political
reasons, and detained in prisons and concentration camps;
and the judges were without power to intervene in any way.
Pardons were granted to members of the Party who had been
sentenced by the judges for proved offenses. In 1935 several
officials of the Hohenstein concentration camp were
convicted of inflicting brutal treatment upon the inmates.
High Nazi officials tried to influence the Court, and after
the officials had been convicted, Hitler pardoned them all.
In 1942 "judges' letters" were sent to all German judges by
the Government, instructing them as to the "general lines"
that they must follow.

In their determination to remove all sources of opposition,
the NSDAP leaders turned their attention to the trade
unions, the churches, and the Jews. In April, 1933,  Hitler
ordered the late Defendant Ley, who was then staff director
of the political organisation of the NSDAP, "to take over
the trade unions." Most of the trade unions of Germany were
joined together in two large federations, the "Free Trade
Unions" and the "Christian Trade Unions." Unions outside
these two large federations contained only 15% of the total
union membership. On 21st April, 1933, Ley issued an NSDAP
directive announcing a "coordination action" to be carried
out on

                                                    [Page 8]

2ND May, against the Free Trade Unions. The directive
ordered that SA and SS men were to be employed in the
planned "occupation of trade union properties and for the
taking into protective custody of personalities who come
into question." At the conclusion of the action the official
NSDAP press service reported that the National Socialist
Factory Cells Organisation had "eliminated the old
leadership of Free Trade Unions" and taken over the
leadership themselves. Similarly, on 3rd May, 1933, the
NSDAP press service announced that the Christian trade
unions "have unconditionally subordinated themselves to the
leadership of Adolf Hitler." In place of the trade unions
the Nazi Government set up a German Labour Front (DAF),
controlled by the NSDAP, and which, in practice, all workers
in Germany were compelled to join. The chairmen of the
unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-
treatment, ranging from assault and battery to murder.

In their effort to combat the influence of the Christian
churches, whose doctrines were fundamentally at variance
with National Socialist philosophy and practice, the Nazi
Government proceeded more slowly. The extreme step of
banning the practice of the Christian religion was not
taken, but year by year efforts were made to limit the
influence of Christianity on the German people, since, in
the words used by the Defendant Bormann to the Defendant
Rosenberg in an official letter, "the Christian religion and
National Socialist doctrines are not compatible." In the
month of June, 1941 the Defendant Bormann issued a secret
decree on the relation of Christianity and National
Socialism. The decree stated that:

     "For the first time in German history the Fuehrer
     consciously and completely has the leadership in
     his own hand. With the Party, its components and
     attached units, the Fuehrer has created for
     himself and thereby the German Reich Leadership,
     an instrument which makes him independent of the
     Treaty .. More and more the people must be
     separated from the churches and their organs, the
     pastor .. Never again must an influence on
     leadership of the people be yielded to the
     churches. This influence must be broken completely
     and finally. Only the Reich Government and by its
     direction the Party, its components and attached
     0units, have a right to leadership of the people."

From the earliest days of the NSDAP, anti-Semitism had
occupied a prominent place in National Socialist thought and
propaganda. The Jews, who were considered to have no right
to German citizenship, were held to have been largely
responsible for the troubles with which the Nation was
afflicted following on the war of l914 to 18. Furthermore,
the antipathy to the Jews was intensified by the insistence
which was laid upon the superiority of the Germanic race and
blood. The second chapter of Book 1 of Mein Kampf is
dedicated to what may be called the "Master Race" theory,
the doctrine of Aryan superiority over all other races, and
the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to
dominate and use other peoples for their own ends. With the
coming of the Nazis into power in 1933, persecution of the
Jews became official state policy. On 1st April, 1933, a
boycott of Jewish enterprises was approved by the Nazi Reich
Cabinet, and during the following years a series of anti-
Semitic laws was passed, restricting the activities of Jews
in the civil service, in the legal profession, in journalism
and in the armed forces. In 9/1935, the so-called Nuremberg
Laws were passed, the most important effect of which was to
deprive Jews of German citizenship. In this way the
influence of Jewish elements on the affairs of Germany was
extinguished, and one more potential source of opposition to
Nazi policy was rendered powerless.

In any consideration of the crushing of opposition, the
massacre of 30th June, 1934 must not be forgotten. It has
become known as the "Roehm Purge" or "the blood bath", and
revealed the methods which Hitler and

                                                    [Page 9]
                                                            
his immediate associates, including the Defendant Goering,
were ready to employ to strike down all opposition and
consolidate their power. On that day Roehm, the Chief of
Staff of the SA since 1931, was murdered by Hitler's orders,
and the "Old Guard" of the SA was massacred without trial
and without warning. The opportunity was taken to murder a
large number of people who at one time or another had
opposed Hitler.

The ostensible ground for the murder of Roehm was that he
was plotting to overthrow Hitler, and the Defendant Goering
gave evidence that knowledge of such a plot had come to his
ears. Whether this was so or not it is not necessary to
determine.

On 3 July the Cabinet approved Hitler's action and described
it as "legitimate self-defense by the State."

Shortly afterwards Hindenburg died, and Hitler became both
Reich President and Chancellor. At the Nazi-dominated
plebiscite, which followed, 38 million Germans expressed
their approval, and with the Reichswehr taking the oath of
allegiance to the Fuehrer, full power was now in Hitler's
hands.

Germany had accepted the dictatorship with all its methods
of terror, and its cynical and open denial of the rule of
law.

Apart from the policy of crushing the potential opponents of
their regime, the Nazi Government took active steps to
increase its power over the German population. In the field
of education, everything was done to ensure that the youth
of Germany was brought up in the atmosphere of National
Socialism and accepted National Socialist teachings. As
early as 7th April, 1933, the law reorganizing the civil
service had made it possible for the Nazi Government to
remove all "subversive and unreliable teachers"; and this
was followed by numerous other measures to make sure that
the schools were staffed by teachers who could be trusted to
teach their pupils the full meaning of the National
Socialist creed. Apart from the influence of National
Socialist teaching in the schools, the Hitler Youth
Organisation was also relied upon by the Nazi Leaders for
obtaining fanatical support from the younger generation. The
Defendant Von Schirach, who had been Reich Youth Leader of
the NSDAP since 1931, was appointed Youth Leader of the
German Reich in June, 1933. Soon all the youth organisations
had been either dissolved or absorbed by the Hitler Youth,
with the exception of the Catholic Youth. The Hitler Youth
was organized on strict military lines, and as early as
1933, the Wehrmacht was cooperating in providing pre-
military training for the Reich Youth.

The Nazi Government endeavored to unite the Nation in
support of their policies through the extensive use of
propaganda. A number of agencies was set up, whose duty was
to control and influence the press, the radio, films,
publishing firms, etc., in Germany, and to supervise
entertainment and cultural and artistic activities. All
these agencies came under Goebbels' Ministry of the People's
Enlightenment and Propaganda, which together with a
corresponding organisation in the NSDAP and the Reich
Chamber of Culture, was ultimately responsible for
exercising this supervision. The Defendant Rosenberg played
a leading part in disseminating the National Socialist
doctrines on behalf of the Party, and the Defendant
Fritzsche, in conjunction with Goebbels, performed the same
task for the State.

The greatest emphasis was laid on the supreme mission of the
German People to lead and dominate by virtue of their Nordic
blood and racial purity; and the ground was thus being
prepared for the acceptance of the idea of German world
supremacy.

                                                   [Page 10]
                                                            
Through the effective control of the radio and the press,
the German People, during the years which followed 1933,
were subjected to the most intensive propaganda in
furtherance of the regime. Hostile criticism, indeed
criticism of any kind, was forbidden, and the severest
penalties were imposed on those who indulged in it.

Independent judgment, based on freedom of thought, was
rendered quite impossible.

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