Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-04/tgmwc-04-29.03
Last-Modified: 1999/09/21


COLONEL 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 Elwyn Jones.

MAJOR ELWYN JONES: 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 1 and 2 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 S.A. and S.S. 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 newly-
weds of Germany and for the purposes of the record it will
be Exhibit GB 128. The Tribunal will see that the dedication
on the fly-leaf of that copy reads: "To the newly-married
couple, Friedrich Rosebroek and Else geborene 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 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."

                                                   [Page 55]

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 S.S. General von dem Bach-Zelewski indicated
yesterday, if you preach for years, as long as ten 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. These 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 the 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 realised if
the Tribunal looks at the German edition of "Mein Kampf."
The Tribunal will observe that Part II was first published
in 1927, that is to say, less than two 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 developed
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 favour 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 high-brow talk about aesthetics, etc., 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 is linked up in Chapter 11 of Book I of "Mein
Kampf," with the doctrine of Aryan

                                                   [Page 56]

superiority over other races and the right of Germans, by
virtue of this superiority, to dominate and use other
peoples as instruments for their own ends. The whole of
Chapter 11 of this book is dedicated to this master race
theory, and, indeed, many of the later speeches of Hitler,
his addresses to his generals, etc., were mainly repetitive
of that chapter.

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 civilisation
   the members of inferior races formed one of the most
   essential prerequisites."

And in a later passage, at Page 344, Hitler applies these
general ideas to Germany:

  "If in its historical development the German people had
  possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other
  people have so much benefited, then the German Reich
  would probably be mistress of the globe to-day. 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 civilisation."

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, a message which appears again and again, is,
first, that the struggle for existence requires the
organisation and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan-
German is superior to other races and has the right to
conquer and rule them; and 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."

                                                   [Page 57]

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 defence. 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 in
  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 to-day. 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 to-day 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 doctrines of nationhood."

                                                   [Page 58]

Now these passages from "Mein Kampf" raise the question:
Where did Hitler expect to find the increased territory
beyond the 1941 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 fulfilment 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 programme 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
  pen 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 to-day 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," 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.

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