Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression [Page 29]
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,
[Page 30]
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.
[Page 31]
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
[Page 32]
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,
[Page 33]
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
[Page 34]
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-
[Page 35]
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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Volume
I Chapter III
The First Indictment
(Part 3 of 6)