The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression
Volume I Chapter III
The First Indictment
(Part 3 of 6)


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G) WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY COMMITTED IN THE COURSE OF EXECUTING THE CONSPIRACY FOR WHICH THE CONSPIRATORS ARE RESPONSIBLE

1. Beginning with the initiation of the aggressive war on 1 September 1939, and throughout its extension into wars involving almost the entire world, the Nazi conspirators carried out their common plan or conspiracy to wage war in ruthless and complete disregard and violation of the laws and customs of war. In the course of executing the common plan or conspiracy there were committed the War Crimes detailed hereinafter in Count Three of this Indictment.

2. Beginning with the initiation of their plan to seize and retain total control of the German State, and thereafter throughout their utilization of that control for foreign aggression, the Nazi conspirators carried out their common plan or conspiracy in ruthless and complete disregard and violation of the laws of humanity. In the course of executing the common plan or conspiracy there were committed the Crimes against Humanity detailed hereinafter in Count Four of this indictment.

3. By reason of all the foregoing, the defendants with divers other persons are guilty of a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of Crimes against Peace; of a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity in the course of preparation for war and in the course of prosecution of war; and of a conspiracy to commit War Crimes not only against the armed forces of their enemies but also against non-belligerent civilian populations.

(H) INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND ORGANIZATION RESPONSIBILITY THE OFFENSE STATED IN COUNT ONE

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count One of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count One of the Indictment

COUNT TWO -- CRIMES AGAINST PEACE

(Charter, Article 6 (a) )

V. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8th May 1945, participated in the planning,

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preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances.

VI. Particulars of the wars planned, prepared, initialed and waged

(A) The wars referred to in the Statement of Offense in this Count Two of the Indictment and the dates of their initiation were the following: against Poland, 1 September 1939; against the United Kingdom and France, 3rd September 1939; against Denmark and Norway, 9th April 1940; against Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 10th May 1940; against Yugoslavia and Greece, 6th April 1941; against the USSR, 22nd June 1941; and against the United States of America, 11th December 1941.

(B) Reference is hereby made to Count One of the Indictment for the allegations charging that these wars were wars of aggression on the part of the defendants.

(C) Reference is hereby made to Appendix C annexed to this Indictment for a statement of particulars of the charges of violations of international treaties, agreements and assurances caused by the defendants in the course of planning, preparing and initiating these wars.

VII. Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count Two

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count Two of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count Two of the Indictment.

COUNT THREE -- WAR CRIMES

(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (b) )

VIII. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1st September 1939, and 8th May 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied by the German armed forces since 1st September 1939, and in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, and on the High Seas.

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All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a common plan or conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of "total war" including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with he laws and customs of war, and the commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies, nd against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories against the civilian population of such territories.

The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations, and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct.

(A) MURDER AND ILLTREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH SEAS

Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and illtreated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.

The murders and illtreatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor-tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of finger nails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered with religious services, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial' and national groups, against the civilian

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populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others.

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to "protective arrests" whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified "Nacht und Nebel". These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. The disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and illtreatment were contrary to International Conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and ill treatment of civilians.

1. In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxemburg, Italy and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the "Western Countries") and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called "Western Germany").

Such murder and illtreatment took place in concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the defendants and particularly in the concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Vught and Amersfoort, and in numerous-cities, towns and villages, including Oradour sur Glane, Trondheim and Oslo.

Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following forms:

Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts; they were both individual and collective; notably in Paris (round-up of the 18th Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie,

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round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in August, 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals in December, 1941, round-up in July, 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand (round-up of professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermon-Ferrand on November 25th, 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40000 persons in January, 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on December 24th, 1943); at Cluny (round-up on December 24th, 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May, 1944); at Saint Pol de Leon (round-up in July, 1944); at Locmine (round-up on July 3rd, 1944); at Eyzieux (round-up in May, 1944) and at Moussey (round-up in September, 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and practised in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, GrenobIe, Annecy, Arras, Bethune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes and Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centres.

In the concentration camps, the health regime, and the labour regime, were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:

1. Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from Compiegne to Auschwitz in January, 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the end of four months.

2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23rd March 1943 and 6th May 1943, in Block 8 at Dachau.

3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21st November 1943, and 15th March 1945, in the Block at Dora.

4. 465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November, 1944, at Dora.

5. 22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1 January 1943, and 15th April 1945

6. 11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and infirm) between 1 January 1945 and 5th April 1945.

7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.

8. Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg Camp, 1,600 died from supposedly natural causes.

Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps were:bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbruck, study of

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the evolution of cancer of the womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at Natzweiller, heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular excisions at Ravensbruck, etc.), gas chambers, gas wagons and crematory ovens. Of 228,000 French political and racial deportees in concentration camps, only 28,000 survived.

In France also systematic extermination was practised, notably at Asq on 1st April 1944, at Colpo on 22nd July 1944, at Buzet sur Tarn on 6th July 1944 and on 17th August 1944, at Pluvignier on 8th July 1944, at Rennes on 8th June 1944, at Grenoble on 8th July 1944, at Saint Flour on 10th June 1944, at Ruisnes on 10th July 1944, at Nimes, at Tulle, and at Nice, where, in July, 1944, the victims of torture were exposed to the population, and at Oradour sur Glane where the entire village population was shot or burned alive in the church.

The many charnel pits give proof of anonymous massacres. Most notable of these are the charnel pits of Paris (Cascade du Bois de Boulogne), Lyons, Saint Genies Laval, Besancon, Petit Saint Bernard, Aulnat, Caen, Port Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, L'hermitage, Lorges, Morlaas, Bordelongue, Signe.

In the course of a premeditated campaign of terrorism, initiated in Denmark by the Germans in the latter part of 1943, 600 Danish subjects were murdered and, in addition, throughout the German occupation of Denmark, large numbers of Danish subjects were subjected to torture and ill treatment of all sorts. In addition, approximately 500 Danish subjects were murdered, by torture and otherwise, in German prisons and concentration camps.

In Belgium between 1940 and 1944 tortures by various means, but identical in each place, were carried out at Brussels, Liege, Mons, Ghent, Namur, Antwerp, Tournai, Arlon, Charleroi and Dinant.

At Vught, in Holland, when the camp was evacuated about 400 persons were murdered by shooting.

In Luxembourg, during the German occupation, 500 persons were murdered and, in addition, another 521 were illegally executed, by order of such special tribunals as the so- called "Sondergericht". Many more persons in Luxembourg were subjected to torture and mistreatment by the Gestapo. Not less than 4,000 Luxembourg nationals were imprisoned during the period of German occupation, and of these at least 400 were murdered.

Between March, 1944, and April, 1945, in Italy, at least 7,500 men, women and children, ranging in years from infancy to ex-

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treme old age were murdered by the German soldiery at Civitella, in the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, and at other places.

2. In the USSR, i.e., in the Bielorussian, Ukranian, Esthonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavum Soviet Socialist Republics, in 19 regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Balkans (hereinafter called "the Eastern Countries") and in that part of German which lies East of a line drawn North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called "Eastern Germany").

From the 1st September 1939, when the German armed forces invaded Poland, and from the 22nd June 1941, when they invaded the USSR, the German Government and the German High Command adopted a systematic policy of murder and illtreatment of the civilian populations of and in the Eastern Countries as they were successively occupied by the German armed forces. These murders and ill-treatments were carried on continuously until the German Armed Forces were driven out of the said countries.

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