Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression The Nazi purpose was to leave Germany's neighbors so
weakened that even if she should eventually lose the war,
she would still be the most powerful nation in Europe.
Against this background, we must view the plan for ruthless
warfare, which means a plan for the commission of war crimes
and crimes against humanity.
Hostages in large numbers were demanded and killed. Mass
punishments were inflicted, so savage that whole communities
were extinguished. Rosenberg was advised of the annihilation
of three unidentified villages in Slovakia. In May of 1943,
another village of about 40 farms and 220 inhabitants was
ordered wiped out. The entire population was ordered shot,
the cattle and property impounded, and the order required
that "the village will be destroyed totally by fire." A
secret report from Rosenberg's Reich Ministry of Eastern
territory reveals that:
"Food rations allowed the Russian population are so low
that they fail to secure their existence and provide
only for minimum subsistence of limited duration. The
population does not know if they will still live
tomorrow. They are faced with death by starvation.
"The roads are clogged by hundreds of thousands of
people, sometime as many as one million according to
the estimate of experts, who wander around in search of
nourishment.
"Sauckel's action has caused great unrest among the
civilians. Russian girls were deloused by men, nude
photos in
[Page 157]
forced positions were taken, women doctors were locked
into freight cars for the pleasure of the transport
commanders, women in night shirts were fettered and
forced through the Russian towns to the railroad
station, etc. All this material has been sent to the
OKH."
Perhaps. the deportation to slave labor was the most
horrible and extensive slaving operation in history. On few
other subjects is our evidence so abundant or so damaging.
In a speech made on January 25th, 1944, the defendant Frank,
Governor General of Poland, boasted, "I have sent
1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich." The defendant
Sauckel reported that "out of the five million foreign
workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came
voluntarily." This fact was reported to the Fuehrer and
defendants Speer, Goering, and Keitel (R-124). Children of
10 to 14 years were impressed into service by telegraphic
order of Rosenberg's Ministry for the Occupied Eastern
Territories:
"The Command is further charged with the transferring of worthwhile Russian youth between 10-14 years of age, to the Reich. The authority is not affected by the changes connected with the evacuation and transportation to the reception camps of Pialystok, Krajewo, and Olitei. The Fuehrer wishes that this activity be increased even more." (200-PS).
When enough labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were
forced in war work in flagrant violation of international
conventions (016-PS). Slave labor came from France, Belgium,
Holland, Italy, and the East. Methods of recruitment were
violent (R-124, 018-PS, 204-PS). The treatment of these slave laborers wa stated in general terms, not difficult to translate into concrete deprivations, in a letter to the defendant Rosenberg from the defendant Sauckel, which stated:
"All prisoners of war, from the territories of the West
as well of the East, actually in Germany, must be
completely incorporated into the German armament and
munition industries. Their production must be brought
to the highest possible level."
"The complete employment of all prisoners of war as
well as the use of a gigantic number of new foreign
civilian workers, men and women, has become an
undisputable necessity for the solution of the
mobilization of labor program in this war.
"All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such
[Page 158]
a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent
at the lowest conceivable degrees of expenditure." (016-
PS).
In pursuance of the Nazi plan permanently to reduce the
living standards of their neighbors and to weaken them
physically and economically, a long series of crimes were
committed. There was
extensive destruction, serving no military purpose, of the
property of civilians. Dikes were thrown open in Holland
almost at the close of the war not to achieve military ends
but to destroy the resources and retard-the economy of the
thrifty Netherlanders.
There was carefully planned economic syphoning off of the
assets of occupied countries. An example of the planning is
shown by a report on France dated December 7th, 1942 made by
the Economic Research Department of the Reichsbank. The
question arose whether French occupation costs should be
increased from 15 million Reichsmarks per day to 25 million
Reichsmarks per day. The Reichsbank analyzed French economy
to determine whether it could bear the burden. It pointed
out that the armistice had burdened France to that date to
the extent of 18 1/2 billion Reichsmarks, equalling 370
billion Francs. It pointed out that the burden of these
payments within two and a half years equalled the aggregate
French national income in the year 1940, and that the amount
of payments handed over to Germany in the first six months
of 1942
corresponded to the estimate for the total French revenue
for that whole year. The report concluded, "In any case, the
conclusion is inescapable that relatively heavier tributes
have been imposed on France since - the armistice in June,
1940 than upon Germany after the World War. In this
connection, it must be noted that the economic powers of
France never equalled those of the German Reich and that
vanquished France could not draw on foreign economic and
financial
resources in the same degree as Germany after the last World
War."
The defendant Funk was the Reichs Minister of Economics and
President of the Reichsbank; the defendant Ribbentrop was
Foreign Minister; the defendant Goering was Plenipotentiary
for the Four-Year Plan, and all of them participated in the
exchange of views of which this captured
document is a part (219-PS). Notwithstanding this analysis
by the Reichsbank, they proceeded to increase the imposition
on France from 15 million Reichsmarks daily to 25 million
daily.
It is small wonder that the bottom has been knocked out of
French economy. The plan and purpose of the thing appears in
[Page 159]
a letter from General Stulpnagle, head of the German
Armistice Commission to the defendant Jodl as early as
September 14th, 1940 when he wrote, "The slogan 'Systematic
weakening of France' has already been surpassed by far in
reality."
Not only was there a purpose to debilitate and demoralize
the economy of Germany's neighbors for the purpose of
destroying their competitive position, but there was looting
and pilfering on an
unprecedented scale. We need not be hypocritical about this
business of looting. I recognize that no army moves through
occupied territory without some pilfering as it goes.
Usually the amount of pilfering increases as discipline
wanes. If the evidence in this case showed no looting except
of that sort, I certainly would ask no conviction of these
defendants for it.
But we will show you that looting was not due to the lack of
discipline or to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature.
The German organized plundering, planned it, disciplined it,
and made it official just as he organized everything else,
and then he compiled the most meticulous
records to show that he had done the best job of looting
that was possible under the circumstances. And we have those
records.
The defendant Rosenberg was put in charge of a systematic
plundering of the art objects of Europe by direct order of
Hitler dated January 29th, 1940 (136-PS). On April 16th,
1943 Rosenberg reported that up to the 7th of April, 92;
railway cars with 2,775 cases containing art objects had
been sent to Germany; and that 53 pieces of art had been
shipped to Hitler
direct, and 594 to the defendant Goering. The report
mentioned something like 20,000 pieces of seized art and the
main locations where they were stored (015-PS).
Moreover, this looting was glorified by Rosenberg. Here we
have 39 leather-bound tabulated volumes of his inventory,
which in due time we will offer in evidence. One cannot but
admire the artistry of this Rosenberg report. The Nazi taste
was cosmopolitan. Of the 9,455 articles inventoried, there
were included 5,255 paintings, 297 sculptures, 1,372 pieces
of antique furniture, 307 textiles, and 2,224 small objects
of art. Rosenberg observed that there were approximately
10,000 more objects still to be inventoried (015-PS).
Rosenberg himself estimated that the values involved would come close to a
billion dollars (090-PS).
I shall not go into further details of the war crimes and
crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi gangster ring
whose leaders are before you. It is not the purpose in my
part of this case to deal with the in-
[Page 160]
dividual crimes. I am dealing with e common plan or design
for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My
task is only to show the scale on which these crimes
occurred, and to show that these are the men who were in the
responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design
which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that
the plan was actually executed by others.
At length, this reckless and lawless course outraged the
world. It recovered from the demoralization of surprise
attack, assembled its forces, and stopped these men in their
tracks. Once success deserted their banners, one by one the
Nazi satellites fell away. Sawdust Caesar
collapsed. Resistance forces in every occupied country arose
to harry the invader. Even at home, Germans saw that Germany
was being led to ruin by these mad men, and the attempt on
July 20th, 1944 to assassinate Hitler, an attempt fostered
by men of highest station, was a desperate effort by
internal forces to stop short of ruin. Quarrels broke out
among the failing conspirators, and the decline of the Nazi
power was more swift than its ascendancy. German armed
forces surrendered, its government disintegrated, its
leaders committed suicide by the dozen, and by the fortunes
of war these defendants fell into our hands. Although they
are not by any means all the guilty ones, they are survivors
among the most responsible. Their names appear over and over
in the documents and their faces grace the photographic
evidence. We have here the surviving top politicians, militarists,
financiers, diplomats, administrators, and propagandists of
the Nazi movement. Who was responsible for these crimes if
they were not?
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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Volume
I Chapter V
Justice Jackson's Opening Address for the United States of America
(Part 13 of 17)