Twenty-Ninth Day:
Tuesday, January 8th, 1946
[Page 54]
MAJOR ELWYN JONES: May it please the Tribunal, it is now my
duty to draw to the Tribunal's attention a document which
became the statement of faith of these defendants. I refer
to Hitler's "Mein Kampf." It is perhaps appropriate that
this should be considered at this stage of the trial just
before the prosecution presents to the Tribunal the evidence
against the individual defendants under Counts 1 and 2 of
the Indictment, for this book, "Mein Kampf," gave to the
defendants adequate foreknowledge of the unlawful aims of
the Nazi leadership. It was not only Hitler's political
testament; by adoption it became theirs.
This book "Mein Kampf" might be described as the blueprint
of Nazi aggression. Its whole tenor and content enforce the
prosecution's submission that the Nazi pursuit of aggressive
designs was no mere accident arising out of the immediate
political situation in Europe and the world which existed
during the period of Nazi power. "Mein Kampf" establishes
unequivocally that the use of aggressive war to serve their
aims in foreign policy was part of the very creed of the
Nazi Party.
A great German philosopher has said that "ideas have hands
and feet." It became the deliberate aim of these defendants
to see to it that the ideas, doctrines and policies of "Mein
Kampf" should become the active faith and guide for action
of the German nation, and particularly of its malleable
youth.
As my American colleagues have already submitted to the
Tribunal, from 1933 to 1939 an extensive indoctrination in
the ideas of "Mein Kampf" was pursued in the schools and
universities of Germany, as well as in the Hitler Youth
under the direction of the defendant Baldur von Schirach and
in the S.A. and S.S. and amongst the German population as a
whole by the agency of the defendant Rosenberg.
A copy of this book "Mein Kampf" was officially presented to
all newly-married couples in Germany, and I now hand to the
Tribunal such a wedding present from the Nazis to the newly-
weds of Germany and for the purposes of the record it will
be Exhibit GB 128. The Tribunal will see that the dedication
on the fly-leaf of that copy reads: "To the newly-married
couple, Friedrich Rosebroek and Else geborene Zum Beck, with
best wishes for a happy and blessed marriage. Presented by
the Communal Administration on the occasion of their
marriage on the 14th of November, 1940, for the Mayor, the
Registrar."
The Tribunal will see, at the bottom of the page opposite to
the contents page, that that edition of "Mein Kampf," which
was the 1940 edition, brought the number of copies published
to 6,250,000. This was the scale upon which this book was
distributed. It was blasphemously called "The Bible of the
German people."
[Page 55]
As the S.S. General von dem Bach-Zelewski indicated
yesterday, if you preach for years, as long as ten years,
that the Slav peoples are inferior races and that the Jews
are subhuman, then it must logically follow that the killing
of millions of these human beings is accepted as a natural
phenomenon.
From "Mein Kampf" the way leads directly to the furnaces of
Auschwitz and the gas chambers of Maidanek.
What the commandments of "Mein Kampf " were I shall seek to
indicate to the Tribunal by quotations from the book, which
are set out in the extracts which I trust are now before the
Tribunal. These extracts are set out in the order in which I
shall, with the Tribunal's permission, refer to them.
Now these quotations fall into two main categories. The
first category is that of the general expression of Hitler's
belief in the necessity of force as the means of solving
international problems. The second category is that of
Hitler's more explicit declarations on the policy which
Germany must pursue.
Most of the quotations in the second category come from the
last three chapters, 13, 14, and 15 of Part II of "Mein
Kampf," in which Hitler's views on foreign policy were
expounded. The significance of that fact will be realised if
the Tribunal looks at the German edition of "Mein Kampf."
The Tribunal will observe that Part II was first published
in 1927, that is to say, less than two years after the
Locarno Pact and within a few months of Germany's entry into
the League of Nations. The date of the publication of these
passages, therefore, brands them as a repudiation of the
policy of international co-operation embarked upon by
Stresemann, and as a deliberate defiance of the attempt to
establish, through the League of Nations, the rule of law in
international affairs.
First I place before the Tribunal some quotations showing
the general views held by Hitler and accepted and developed
by the defendants about war and aggression generally. The
first quotation, from Page 556 of "Mein Kampf," reads:
As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts
to make me so proved futile."
Hitler's assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for
survival is linked up in Chapter 11 of Book 1 of "Mein
Kampf," with the doctrine of Aryan
[Page 56]
If the Court will look at the extract from Page 256, it
reads as follows:
For the establishment of superior types of civilisation
the members of inferior races formed one of the most
essential prerequisites."
Implicit in the whole of the argument is a fundamental and
arrogant denial of the possibility of any rule of law in
international affairs.
It is in the light of the general doctrines of "Mein Kampf"
that I invite the Tribunal to consider the more definite
passages in which Hitler deals with specific problems of
German foreign policy.
The very first page of the book contains a remarkable
forecast of Nazi policy. It reads - Page 1, column 1:
[Page 57]
In the next quotation, from Page 554, the first sentence
reads: "For the future of the German nation the 1914
frontiers are of no significance." And in the third
paragraph the Court sees:
And this justification must be established also before
our German posterity, on the grounds that for each one
who has shed his blood the life of a thousand others will
be guaranteed to posterity. The territory on which one
day our German peasants will be able to bring forth and
nourish their sturdy sons will justify the blood of the
sons of the peasants that has to be shed to-day. And the
statesmen who have decreed this sacrifice may be
persecuted by their contemporaries, but posterity will
absolve them from all guilt for having demanded this
offering from their people." [Page 58]
Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation's
undivided energies should be devoted to it. A policy of
that kind, which requires for its fulfilment every ounce
of available energy on the part of everybody concerned,
cannot be carried into effect by half measures or in a
hesitant manner. The political leadership of the German
Empire should then have been directed exclusively to this
goal. No political step should have been taken in
response to considerations other than this task and the
means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive
to the fact that such a goal could have been reached only
by war, and the prospect of war should have been faced
with calm and collected determination.
The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged
and valued from that standpoint."
But when we speak of new territory in Europe to-day we
must principally think of Russia and the border states
subject to her." [
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(Part 3 of 10)
"The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed
by Heaven on our forefathers. But they had to conquer it
by risking their lives. So also in the future our people
will not obtain territory and therewith the means of
existence as a favour from any other people, but will
have to win it by the power of a triumphant sword."
On Page 145 Hitler revealed his own personal attitude to
war. Of the years of peace before 1914 he wrote:
"Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad
luck that I had arrived too late on this terrestrial
globe, and I felt chagrined at the idea that my life
would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly
lines.
Generally Hitler wrote of war in this way. On Page 162 we
find:
"In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke
stated that in time of war the essential thing is to get
a decision as quickly as possible and that the most
ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the
most humane. When people attempt to answer this
reasoning by high-brow talk about aesthetics, etc., only
one answer can be given. It is that the vital questions
involved in the struggle of a nation for its existence
must not be subordinated to any aesthetic
consideration."
How faithfully these precepts of ruthlessness were followed
by the defendants, the prosecution will prove in the course
of this trial.
"Had it not been possible for them to employ members of
the inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would
never have been in a position to take the first steps on
the road which led them to a later type of culture; just
as, without the help of certain suitable animals which
they were able to tame, they would never have come to
the invention of mechanical power, which has
subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts.
And in a later passage, at Page 344, Hitler applies these
general ideas to Germany:
"If in its historical development the German people had
possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other
people have so much benefited, then the German Reich
would probably be mistress of the globe to-day. World
history would have taken another course, and in this case
no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to
attain by petitioning, whining and crying may not have
been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not
be based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful
misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that
would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people
endowed with the power to master the world and administer
it in the service of a higher civilisation."
In these passages which I have quoted, the Tribunal will
have noticed Hitler's love of war and scorn of those whom he
described as pacifists. The underlying message of the whole
of this book, a message which appears again and again, is,
first, that the struggle for existence requires the
organisation and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan-
German is superior to other races and has the right to
conquer and rule them; and thirdly, that all doctrines which
preach peaceable solutions of international problems
represent a disastrous weakness in the nation that adopts
them.
"German-Austria must be restored to the great German
Motherland; and not, indeed, on any grounds of economic
calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a
matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to
be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it
ought to take place. People of the same blood should be
in the same Reich. The German people will have no right
to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have
brought all their children together in one State. When
the territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and
finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only
then can the moral right arise from the need of the
people, to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then
the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily
bread for the generations to come."
"In regard to this point I should like to make the
following statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers
should be restored, is a glaring political absurdity,
that is fraught with such consequences as to make the
claim itself appear criminal. The confines of the Reich
as they existed in 1914 were thoroughly illogical because
they were not really complete, in the sense of including
all the members of the German nation. Nor were they
reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of
military defence. They were not the consequences of a
political plan which had been well considered and carried
out, but they were temporary frontiers established in
virtue of a political struggle that had not been brought
to a finish; and, indeed, they were partly the chance
result of circumstances."
In further elaboration of Nazi policy Hitler does not merely
denounce the Treaty of Versailles; he desires to see a
Germany which is a world Power with territory sufficient for
a future German people, of a magnitude which he does not
define.
"We National Socialists must stick firmly to the aim that
we have set for our foreign policy, namely, that the
German people must be assured the territorial area which
is necessary for it to exist on this earth. And only in
such action as is, undertaken to secure those ends can it
be lawful, in the eyes of God and our German posterity,
to allow the blood of our people to be shed once again;
before God, because we are sent into this world with the
commission to struggle for our daily bread, as creatures
to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win
and hold their position as lords of the earth only
through their own intelligence and courage.
Then, the next quotation; Hitler writes, at Page 557:
"Germany will either become a world power or will not
continue to exist at all. But, in order to become a world
power, it needs that territorial magnitude which gives it
the necessary importance to-day and assures the existence
of its citizens."
And, finally, he writes:
"We must take our stand on the principles already
mentioned in regard to foreign policy, namely, the
necessity of bringing our territorial area into just
proportion with the number of our population. From the
past we can learn only one lesson, and this is that the
aim which is to be pursued in our political conduct must
be twofold, namely: (1) the acquisition of territory as
the objective of our foreign policy; and (2) the
establishment of a new and uniform foundation as the
objective of our political activities at home, in
accordance with our doctrines of nationhood."
"Therefore, the only possibility which Germany had of
carrying a sound territorial policy into effect was that
of acquiring new territory in Europe itself. Colonies
cannot serve this purpose so long as they are not suited
for settlement by Europeans on a large scale. In the
nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire
such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore, any attempt
at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous
military struggle. Consequently it would have been more
practical to undertake that military struggle for new
territory in Europe rather than to wage war for the
acquisition of possessions abroad.
And, then, this is the vital sentence:
"If new territory were to be acquired in Europe, it must
have been mainly at Russia's cost, and once again the new
German Empire should have set out on its march along the
same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic
Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough
by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation
with its daily bread."
To this programme of expansion in the East Hitler returned
again at the end of "Mein Kampf." After discussing the
insufficiency of Germany's pre-war frontiers, he again
points the path to the East and declares that the "Drang
nach Osten," the drive to the East, must be resumed; and he
writes:
"Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a
pen through the line of conduct followed by pre-war
Germany in foreign policy. We put an end to the perpetual
Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and
turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally
put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-war
times and pass over to the territorial policy of the
future.
Now Hitler was shrewd enough to see that his aggressive
designs in the East might be endangered by a defensive
alliance between Russia, France and England. His foreign
policy, as outlined in "Mein Kampf," was to detach England
and Italy from France and Russia, and to change the attitude
of Germany towards France, from the defensive to the
offensive.