Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation
to be prosecuted in the name of the law, they are also the
first to be given a chance to plead for their lives in the name of
the law. Realistically, the Charter of this Tribunal, which gives
them a hearing, is also the source of their only hope. It
may be that these men of troubled conscience, whose only
wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as
a favor. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend
themselves a favor which these men, when in power, rarely
extended to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that
public opinion already condemns their acts, we agree that
here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we
accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the
responsibility of these defendants for their commission.
When I say that we do not ask for convictions unless we
prove crime, I do not mean mere technical or incidental
transgression of international conventions. We charge guilt
on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well
as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural
and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many
of us might well have committed had we been in the
defendants positions. It is not because they yielded to the
normal frailties of human beings that we ac-
[Page 118]
cuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which
brings them to this bar.
We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of
their foes. There is no count of the Indictment that cannot
be proved by books and records. The Germans were always
meticulous record keepers, and these defendants had their
share of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting
things on paper. Nor were they without vanity. They arranged
frequently to be photographed in action. We will show you
their own films. You will see their own conduct and hear
their own voices as these defendants reenact for you, from
the screen, some of the events in the course of the
conspiracy.
We would also make clear that we have no purpose to
incriminate the whole German people. We know that the Nazi
Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote.
We know it came to power by an evil alliance between the
most extreme of the Nazi revolutionists, the most
unrestrained of the German reactionaries, and the most
aggressive of the German militarists. If the German populace
had willingly accepted the Nazi program, no Stormtroopers
would have been needed in the early days of the Party and
there would have been no need for concentration
camps or the Gestapo, both of which institutions were
inaugurated as soon as the Nazis gained control of the
German state. Only after these lawless innovations proved
successful at home were they taken abroad.
The German people should know by now that the people of the
United States hold them in no fear, and in no hate. It is
true that the Germans have taught us the horrors of modern
warfare, but the ruin that lies from the Rhine to the Danube
shows that we, like our Allies, have not been dull pupils.
If we are not awed by German fortitude and proficiency in
war, and if we are not persuaded of their political
maturity, we do respect their skill in the arts of peace, their
technical competence, and the sober, industrious and self-
disciplined character of the masses of the German people. In
1933, we saw the German people recovering prestige in the
commercial, industrial and artistic world after the set-back
of the last war. We beheld their progress neither with envy
nor malice. The Nazi regime interrupted this advance. The
recoil of the Nazi aggression has left Germany in ruins. The
Nazi readiness to pledge the German word without hesitation
and to break it without shame has fastened upon German diplomacy a
reputation for duplicity that will handicap it for years. Nazi
arrogance has made the boast of the "master race" a taunt
that will be thrown at Germans the world over for
generations. The Nazi nightmare has given the German name a
new and sinister significance throughout the world which will
retard Germany a century. The German, no less than the non-
German world, has accounts to settle with these defendants.
The fact of the war and the course of the war, which is the
central theme of our case, is history. From September 1,
1939, when the German armies crossed the Polish frontiers,
until September, 1942, when they met epic resistance at
Stalingrad, German arms seemed invincible.
Denmark and Norway, The Netherlands and France, Belgium and
Luxembourg, the Balkans and Africa, Poland and the Baltic
States, and parts of Russia, all had been overrun and
conquered by swift, powerful, well-aimed blows. That attack
upon the peace of the world is the crime against
international society which brings into international
cognizance crimes in its aid and preparation which otherwise
might be only internal concerns. It was aggressive war,
which the nations of the
world had renounced. It was war in violation of treaties, by
which the peace of the world was sought to be safeguarded.
This war did not just happen -- it was planned and prepared
for over a long period of time and with no small skill and
cunning. The world has perhaps never seen such a
concentration and stimulation of the energies of any people
as that which enabled Germany twenty years after it was
defeated, disarmed, and dismembered to come so near carrying
out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of
those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a
stupendous work in organization, and our first task is to
examine the means by which these
defendants and their fellow conspirators prepared and
incited Germany to go to war.
In general, our case will disclose these defendants all
uniting at some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which
they well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of
war in Europe. Their seizure of the German state, their
subjugation of the German people, their terrorism and
extermination of dissident elements, their planning and
waging of war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in
the conduct of warfare, their deliberate and planned
criminality toward conquered peoples, all these are ends for
which they acted in concert; and all these are phases of the
conspiracy, a conspiracy which reached one goal only to set
out for another and more ambitious one. We shall also trace
for you the intricate web of organizations which these men
formed and utilized to accomplish these ends. We will show
how the entire structure of offices and officials was
dedicated to the
[Page120]
criminal purposes and committed to use of the criminal
methods planned by these defendants and their co-
conspirators, many of whom war and suicide have put beyond
reach.
It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count
One of the Indictment, and to deal with the common plan or
conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to crimes
against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. My
emphasis will not be on individual barbarities and
perversions which may have occurred independently of any
central plan. One of the dangers ever present is that this
trial may be protracted by details of particular wrongs and
that we will become lost in a "wilderness of single
instances." Nor will I now dwell on the activity of
individual defendants except as it may contribute to
exposition of the common plan.
The case as presented by the United States will be concerned
with the brains and authority back of all the crimes. These
defendants were men of a station and rank which does not
soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to
use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and
designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil
architecture the world would not have been for so long
scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with
the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.
THE LAWLESS ROAD TO POWER
The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was
the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the
Nazi Party. Some of the defendants were with it from the
beginning. Others joined only after success seemed to have
validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with
immunity from the processes of the law. Adolf Hitler became
its supreme leader or fuehrer in 1921.
On the 24th of February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had
proclaimed its program (170-PS). Some of its purposes would
commend themselves to many good citizens, such as the
demands for "profit-sharing in the great industries,"
"generous development of provision for old age," 'creation
and maintenance of a healthy middle class," "a land reform
suitable to our national requirements," and "raising the
standard of health." It also made a strong appeal to that
sort of nationalism which in ourselves we call patriotism
and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded
"equality of rights for the German people in its dealing
with other nations and the evolution of the peace treaties
of Versailles and St. Germaine." It demanded the "union of
all
[Page 121]
Germans on the basis of the right of self-determination of
peoples to form a Great Germany." It demanded "land and
territory (colonies) for the enrichment of our people and
the settlement of our surplus population." All these, of
course, were legitimate objectives if they were to be
attained without resort to aggressive warfare.
The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated
war. It demanded "the abolition of mercenary troops and the
formation of a national army." It proclaimed that "In view
of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a
nation by every war, personal
enrichment through war must be regarded a a crime against
the nation. We demand, therefore, the ruthless confiscation
of all war profits." I do not criticize this policy. indeed,
I wish it were universal. I merely point out that in a time
of peace, war was a preoccupation of the Party, and it
started the work of making war less offensive to the masses
of the people. With this it combined a program of physical
training and sports for youth that became, as we shall see,
the cloak for a secret program of military training.
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Volume
I Chapter V
Justice Jackson's Opening Address for the United States of America
(Part 2 of 17)