Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression Chapter III
International Military Tribunal
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND THE UNION
OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
-- AGAINST --
HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM VON
RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG,
HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR
SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP VON BOHLEN UND HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ, ERICH RAEDER,
BALDUR VON SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ
VON PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN VON NEURATH,
AND HANS FRITZSCHE, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS MEMBERS OF ANY OF THE
FOLLOWING GROUPS OR ORGANISATIONS TO WHICH THEY RESPECTIVELY BELONGED,
NAMELY: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET); DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN
LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP
CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN
DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE "SS" ) AND INCLUDING
DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE "SD"); DIE GEHEIME
STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE "GESTAPO");
DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P. (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE
"SA") AND THE GENERAL STAFF AND HIGH COMMAND OF THE GERMAN ARMED FORCES ALL AS DEFINED IN APPENDIX B.
Defendants
[Page 14]
INDICTMENT
The United States of America, the French Republic, the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the undersigned,
Robert H. Jackson, Francois de Menthon, Hartley Shawcross
and R. A. Rudenko, duly appointed to represent their
respective Governments in the investigation of the charges
against and the prosecution of the major war criminals, pursuant to the
Agreement of London dated 8th August, 1945, and the Charter of this
Tribunal annexed thereto, hereby accuse as guilty, in the
respects hereinafter set forth, of Crimes against Peace, War
Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and of a Common Plan or
Conspiracy to commit those Crimes, all as defined in the
Charter of the Tribunal, and accordingly name as defendants
in this cause and as indicted on the counts hereinafter set
out: HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM VON
RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER,
ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS
STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP VON
BOHLEN UND HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ, ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR VON
SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ
VON PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN VON
NEURATH AND HANS FRITZSCHE, individually and as members of
any of the Groups or Organizations next hereinafter named.
II.
The following are named as Groups or Organizations (since
dissolved) which should be declared criminal by reason of
their aims and the means used for the accomplishment thereof
and in connection with the conviction of such of the named
defendants as were members thereof: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH
CABINET); DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN
LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI
(LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER
NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly
known as the "SS") and including DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST
(commonly known as the "SD"); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI
(SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the "GESTAPO"); DIE
STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P. (com-
[Page 15]
monly known as the "SA"); and the GENERAL STAFF and HIGH
COMMAND of the GERMAN ARMED FORCES. The identity and
membership of the Groups or Organizations referred to in
the foregoing titles are hereinafter in Appendix B more
particularly defined.
COUNT ONE -- THE COMMON PLAN OR CONSPIRACY
(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (a))
III. Statement of the Offense
All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a
period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, participated as leaders,
organizers, instigators or accomplices in the formulation or
execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which
involved the commission of, Crimes against Peace, War
Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, as defined in the
Charter of this Tribunal, and, in accordance with the
provisions of the Charter, are individually responsible for
their own acts and for all acts committed by any persons in
the execution of such plan or conspiracy. The common plan or
conspiracy embraced the commission of Crimes against Peace,
in that the defendants planned, prepared, initiated and
waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in
violation of international treaties, agreements or
assurances.
In the development and course of the common plan
or conspiracy it came to embrace the commission of War
Crimes, in that it contemplated, and the defendants
determined upon and carried out, ruthless wars against
countries and populations, in violation of the rules and
customs of war, including as typical and systematic means by
which the wars were prosecuted, murder, ill-treatment,
deportation for slave labor and for other purposes of
civilian populations of occupied territories, murder
and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of persons on the
high seas, the taking and killing of hostages, the plunder
of public and private property, the wanton destruction of
cities, towns, and villages, and devastation not justified
by military necessity.
The common plan or conspiracy
contemplated and came to embrace as typical and systematic
means, and the defendants determined upon and committed,
Crimes against Humanity, both within Germany and within
occupied territories, including murder, extermination,
enslavement deportation, and other
inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before
and during the war, and persecutions on political, racial or
religious grounds, in execution of the plan for preparing
and prosecuting aggressive or illegal wars,
[Page 16]
many of such acts and persecutions being violations of the
domestic laws of the countries where perpetrated.
IV. Particulars of the nature and development of the common
plan or
conspiracy
(A) NAZI PARTY AS THE CENTRAL CORE OF THE COMMON PLAN OR
CONSPIRACY
In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Fuehrer of
the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National
Socialist German Workers Party), also known as the Nazi
Party, which had been founded in Germany in 1920. He
continued as such throughout the period
covered by this Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with
certain of its subsidiary organizations, became the
instrument of cohesion among the defendants and their co-
conspirators and an instrument for the carrying out of the
aims and purposes of their conspiracy. Each defendant became
a member of the Nazi Party and of the conspiracy, with
knowledge of their aims and purposes, or, with such
knowledge, became an accessory to their aims and purposes at
some stage of the development of the conspiracy.
(B) COMMON OBJECTIVES AND METHODS OF CONSPIRACY
The aims and purposes of the Nazi Party and of the
defendants and divers other persons from time to time
associated as leaders, members, supporters or adherents of
the Nazi Party (hereinafter called collectively the "Nazi
conspirators") were, or came to be, to accomplish the
following by any means deemed opportune, including unlawful
means, and contemplating ultimate resort to threat of force,
force and aggressive war: (i) to abrogate and overthrow the
Treaty of Versailles and its restrictions upon the military
armament and activity of Germany; (ii) to acquire the
territories lost by Germany as the result of the World War
of 1914-1918 and other territories in Europe asserted by the
Nazi conspirators to be occupied principally by so-called
"racial Germans"; (iii) to acquire still further territories
in continental Europe and elsewhere claimed by the Nazi
conspirators to be required by the "racial Germans" as
"Lebensraum," or living space, all at the expense of
neighboring and other countries. The aims and purposes of
the Nazi conspirators were not fixed or static but evolved
and expanded as they acquired progressively greater power
and became able to make more effective application of
threats of force and threats of aggressive war. When their
expanding aims and purposes became finally so great
[Page 17]
as to provoke such strength of resistance as could be
overthrown by armed force and aggressive war, and not simply
by the opportunistic methods theretofore used, such as fraud, deceit,
threats intimidation, fifth column activities and propaganda, the
Nazi conspirators deliberately planned, determined upon and
launched their aggressive wars and wars in violation of
international treaties, agreements and assurances by the
phases and steps hereinafter more particularly described.
(C) DOCTRINAL TECHNIQUES OF THE COMMON PLAN OR CONSPIRACY
To incite others to join in the common plan or conspiracy,
and as a means of securing for the Nazi conspirators the
highest degree of control over the German community, they
put forth, disseminated, and exploited certain doctrines,
among others, as follows:
1. That persons of so-called "German blood" (as specified by
Nazi conspirators) were a "master race" and were accordingly
entitled to subjugate, dominate or exterminate other "races"
and peoples;
2. That the German people should be ruled under the
Fuehrerprinzip (leadership principle) according to which
power was to reside in a Fuehrer from whom sub-leaders were
to derive authority in a hierarchical order, each sub-leader
to owe unconditional obedience to his immediate superior but
to be absolute in his own sphere of jurisdiction; and the
power of the leadership is to be unlimited, extending to all
phases of public and private life;
3. That war vas a noble and necessary activity of Germans;
4. That the leadership of the Nazi Party, as the sole bearer
of the foregoing and other doctrines of the Nazi Party, was
entitled to shape the structure, policies and practices of
the German State and all related institutions, to direct and
supervise the activities of all individuals within the
State, and to destroy all opponents.
(D) THE ACQUIRING OF TOTALITARIAN CONTROL OF GERMANY
1. First steps in acquisition of control of State machinery
In order to accomplish their aims and purposes, the Nazi
conspirators prepared to seize totalitarian control over
Germany to insure that no effective resistance against them
could arise within Germany itself. After the failure of the
Munich Putsch of
[Page 18]
1923 aimed at the overthrow of the Weimar Republic by direct
action, the Nazi conspirators set out through the Nazi Party
to undermine and capture the German Government by "legal"
form supported by terrorism. They created and utilized, as a
Party formation, Die Sturmabteilungen SA), a semi-military,
voluntary organization of young men trained for and
committed to the use of violence, whose mission was to make
the Party the master of the streets.
2. Control acquired
On 30th January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of the German
Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28 February 1933,
clauses of the Weimar constitution guaranteeing personal
liberty, freedom of speech, of the press, of association and
assembly were suspended. The Nazi conspirators secured the
passage by the Reichstag of a "Law for the Protection of the
People and the Reich" giving Hitler and the members of his then
cabinet plenary powers of legislation. The Nazi conspirators
retained such powers after having changed the members of the
cabinet. The conspirators caused all political parties
except the Nazi Party to be prohibited. They caused the Nazi
Party to be established as a para-governmental organization
with extensive and extraordinary privileges.
3. Consolidation of control
Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the
Nazi conspirators set about the consolidation of their
position of power within Germany, the extermination of
potential internal resistance and the placing- of the German
nation on a military footing.
(a) The Nazi conspirators reduced the Reichstag to a
body of their own nominees and curtailed the freedom of
popular elections throughout the country. They
transformed the several states, provinces and
municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-
autonomous powers, into hardly more than administrative
organs of the central government. They united the
offices of the President and the Chancellor in the
person of Hitler; instituted a widespread purge of
civil servants; and severely restricted the
independence of the judiciary and rendered it
subservient to Nazi ends. The conspirators greatly
enlarged existing State and Party organizations;
established a network
[Page 19]
of new State and Party organizations; and "co-
ordinated" State agencies with the Nazi
Party and its branches and affiliates, with the result
that German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and
practice and progressively mobilized for the
accomplishment of their aims.
(b) In order to make their rule secure from attack and
to instil fear in the hearts of the German people, the
Nazi conspirators established and extended a system of
terror against opponents and supposed or suspected
opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such persons
without judicial process, holding them in "protective
custody" and concentration camps, and subjected them to
persecution, degradation, despoilment enslavement,
torture and murder. These concentration camps were
established early in 1933 under the direction of the
defendant GOERING and expanded as a fixed part of the
terroristic policy and method of the conspirators and
used by them for the commission of the Crimes against
Humanity - hereinafter alleged. Among the principal
agencies utilized in the perpetration of these crimes
were the SS and the GESTAPO, which, together with other
favored branches or agencies of the State and Party,
were permitted to operate without restraint of law.
(c) The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in addition
to the suppression of distinctively political
opposition, it was necessary to suppress or exterminate
certain other movements or groups which they regarded
as obstacles to their retention of total control in
Germany and to the aggressive aims of the conspiracy
abroad. Accordingly:
(1) The Nazi conspirators destroyed the free trade
unions in Germany by confiscating their funds and
properties, persecuting their leaders, prohibiting
their activities, and supplanting them by an
affiliated Party organization. The leadership
principle was introduced into industrial
relations, the entrepreneur becoming the leader
and the workers becoming his followers. Thus any
potential resistance of the workers was frustrated
and the productive labor capacity of the German
nation was brought under the effective control of
the conspirators.
[Page 20]
(2) The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs
and practices incompatible with Christian
teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the
Churches over the people and in particular over
the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to
eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and
sought to substitute therefor Nazi institutions
and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of
persecution of priests, clergy and members of
monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their
purposes and confiscated church property.
(3) The persecution by the Nazi conspirators of
pacifist groups, including eligious movements
dedicated to pacifism, was particularly relentless
and cruel.
(d) Implementing their "master race" policy, the
conspirators joined in a program of relentless
persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them.
Annihilation of the Jews became an official State
policy, carried out both by official action and by
incitements to mob and individual violence. The
conspirators openly avowed their purpose. For example,
the defendant ROSENBERG stated: "Anti-Semitism is the
unifying element of the reconstruction of Germany." On
another occasion he also stated: "Germany will regard
the Jewish question as solved only after the very last
Jew has left the greater German living space . .
.Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after
the very last Jew has left the Continent." The
defendant LEY declared: "We swear we are not going to
abandon the struggle until the last Jew in Europe has
been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not
enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind -- the Jew
has got to be exterminated." On another occasion he
also declared: "The second German secret weapon is anti-
Semitism because if it is consistently pursued by
Germany, it will become a universal problem which all
nations will be forced to consider." The defendant
STREICHER declared: "The sun will not shine on the
nations of the earth until the last Jew is dead." These
avowals and incitements were typical of the declaration
of the Nazi conspirators throughout the course of their
conspiracy. The program of ac-
[Page 21]
tion against the Jews included disfranchisement,
stigmatization, denial of civil rights, subjecting
their persons and property to violence, deportation,
enslavement, enforced labor, starvation, murder and
mass extermination. The extent to which the
conspirators succeeded in their purpose can only be
estimated, but the annihilation was substantially
complete in many localities of Europe. Of the 9,600,000
Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi
domination, it is conservatively estimated that
5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately
put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only remnants of
the Jewish population of Europe remain.
(e) In order to make the German people amenable to
their will, and to prepare them psychologically for
war, the Nazi conspirators reshaped the educational
system and particularly the education and training of
the German youth. The leadership principle was
introduced into the schools and the Party and
affiliated organizations were given wide
supervisory powers over education. The Nazi
conspirators imposed a supervision of all cultural
activities, controlled the dissemination of information
and the expression of opinion within Germany as well as
the movement of intelligence of all kinds from and into
Germany, and created vast propaganda machines.
(f) The Nazi conspirators placed a considerable number
of their dominated organizations on a progressively
militarized footing with a view to the rapid
transformation and use of such organizations whenever
necessary as instruments of war.
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Volume
I Chapter III
The First Indictment
(Part 1 of 6)
Indictment Number 1