The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Last-Modified: 1999/09/21

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 defence
  against a 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,

                                                   [Page 59]
  
  from the twelfth 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 defence and
  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. To-day there are eighty million Germans
  in Europe. And our foreign policy will be recognised 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 labour 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 behaviour 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 imperilled, but was the expression of a fanatical faith
in force and fraud as the means to Nazi domination 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 civilisation over the
precipice of war.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for ten
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 1 and 2
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 defence counsel concerned, the evidence
against each defendant under Counts 1 and 2 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.

                                                   [Page 60]

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
offences 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 1 and 2. The American
and British delegations will welcome any addition to the
evidence on these parts of the case which such documents may
provide and will 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 (Counsel for defendant Rosenberg): Colonel Wheeler
in his prosecution speech talked about the Church and
persecution in the Eastern Territory, and the Reich Minister
for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the defendant
Rosenberg, was mentioned and held responsible. I have,
however, neither in the speech of the prosecutor nor in the
document book, found proof that such persecution of the
Church also took place in those territories administered by
Rosenberg. I wish rather to direct the attention of the
Tribunal to Document 1517-PS, in which there is a note for
the files signed by Rosenberg in regard to a conversation
dealing with questions of the East. This document contains
the following statement made by Rosenberg: "The Fuehrer
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, if possible, its charge against Rosenberg be
subsequently substantiated.

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 in connection with Hitler's opinion that the
crimes should be cleaned up completely. But in my present
request I am concerned with the fact that the prosecution
stated that just as the Government General and Warthegau and
in the Eastern countries, so in the areas administered by
the defendant Rosenberg, persecution of the Church actually
took place. The prosecution has presented evidence for the
first three points, but as far as the last point is
concerned, I have heard no such evidence 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 document 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 nothing but a statement of fact.

THE PRESIDENT: We will do so, but it is not convenient that
counsel for the defence shall 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

                                                   [Page 61]

to withhold such statements until your time comes to answer
the case for the prosecution.

MR. ALBRECHT: 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 1 and 2 of the
Indictment.

When these defendants chose to abandon everything that had
been recognised 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 programme announced. by the Nazi
Party and they also had knowledge of Nazi methods. The
official N.S.D.A.P. programme with its 25 points was open
and notorious. Announced and published to the world in 1920,
it was published and republished and referred to throughout
the years. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions to
make the Party programme 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 Fuehrer, 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 Goering, 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 characterised 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 could possibly 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, we submit, an advantage in proceeding, as we
propose to, 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 them, a recital of their crimes will relate to
their planning of several of the categories of crimes
described in Counts 1 and 2 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 1
of the Indictment, against the individual conspirators.

Thus, on behalf of the United States, I shall begin by
showing how some of these defendants fit into the broad
stream of the Common Plan or Conspiracy

                                                   [Page 62]

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 labour. 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
labour. But, unlike Sauckel, Speer's criminal activity went
substantially beyond the realm of slave labour. 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 Centre at Kassel
and it is a dossier maintained on the defendant Speer in the
offices of the Reichsfuehrer S.S. I offer this file as
Exhibit USA 575. It is our Document 3568, and I shall read
from the dossier.

I shall read from the letter dated the 25th July, 1942, from
the second paragraph: "Reich Minister Speer was enrolled as
an S.S. man on the personal staff of the Reichsfuehrer S.S.
under S.S. No. 46104, with effect from the 20th July, 1942,
by order of the Reichsfuehrer S.S." - 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 it it is
related that Albert Speer had been in the S.S. since the
autumn of 1932, and his membership number in the Party was
474481.

I next mentioned the defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whose
case has been completely presented in connection with the
presentation on the Gestapo and the S.D. as Criminal
Organisations. 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 Fuehrer himself; the
Nazi who was in some respects even more dangerous than the
Fuehrer 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

                                                   [Page 63]

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 became
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 do not 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 Goering, we shall
offer certain additional documentary evidence which we
believe necessary to demonstrate his connection and
responsibility for certain phases of the conspiracy.

I should have said before, if your Honours 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.



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