The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Second Day: Wednesday, 21st November, 1945
(Part 7 of 8)


[MR. JUSTICE JACKSON continues]

4. CRIMES IN THE CONDUCT OF WAR

Even the most warlike of peoples have recognised in the name of humanity some limitations on the savagery of warfare. Rules to that end have been embodied in international conventions to which Germany became a party. This code had prescribed certain restraints as to the treatment of belligerents. The enemy was entitled to surrender and to receive quarter and good treatment as a prisoner of war. We will show by German documents that these rights were denied, that prisoners of war were given brutal treatment and often murdered. This was particularly true in the case of captured airmen, often my countrymen.

It was ordered that captured English and American airmen should no longer be granted the status of prisoners of war. They were to be treated as criminals and the Army was ordered to refrain from protecting them against lynching by the populace (R-118). The Nazi Government, through its police and propaganda agencies, took pains to incite the civilian population to attack and kill airmen who crash- landed. The order, given by the Reichsfuehrer S.S., Himmler, on 10th August, 1943, directed that:

"It is not the task of the police to interfere in clashes between German and English and American fliers who have bailed out."
This order was transmitted on the same day by S.S. Obersturmbannfuehrer Brandof, Himmler's Personal Staff to all Senior Executive S.S. and Police Officers, with these directions:
"I am sending you the enclosed order with the request that the Chief of the Regular Police and of the Security Police be informed. They are to make this instruction known to their subordinate officers verbally." (R-110)
Similarly, we will show Hitler's top secret order, dated 18th October, 1942, that Commandos, regardless of condition, were "to be slaughtered to the last man" after capture. (498- PS) We will show the circulation of secret orders, one of which was signed by Hess, to be passed orally to civilians, that enemy fliers or parachutists were to be arrested or liquidated. (062-PS). By such means were murders incited and directed.

This Nazi campaign of ruthless treatment of enemy forces assumed its greatest proportions in the fight against Russia. Eventually all prisoners of war were taken out of control of the Army and put in the hands of Himmler and the S.S. (058-PS.) In the East, the German fury spent itself. Russian prisoners of war were ordered

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to be branded. They were starved. I shall quote passages from a letter written 28th February, 1942, by defendant Rosenberg to defendant Keitel:
"The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is, on the contrary, a tragedy of the greatest extent. Of 3,600,000 prisoners of war, only several hundred thousand are still able to work fully. A large part of them has starved, or died, because of the hazards of the weather. Thousands also died from spotted fever.

The camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death.

In many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on the march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot before the eyes of the horrified population, and the corpses were left.

In numerous camps, no shelter for the prisoners of war was provided at all.

They lay under the open sky during rain or snow. Even tools were not made available to dig holes or caves.

Finally, the shooting of prisoners of war must be mentioned; for instance, in various camps, all the 'Asiatics' were shot." (081-PS.)

Civilised usage and conventions, to which Germany was a party, had prescribed certain immunities for civilian populations unfortunate enough to dwell in lands overrun by hostile armies. The German occupation forces, controlled or commanded by men on trial before you, committed a long series of outrages against the inhabitants of occupied territory that would be incredible except for captured orders and captured reports which show the fidelity with which those orders were executed.

We deal here with a phase of common criminality designed by the conspirators as part of the Common Plan. We can appreciate why these crimes against their European enemies were not of a casual character but were planned and disciplined crimes when we get at the reason for them. Hitler told his officers on 22nd August, 1939, that "The main objective in Poland is the destruction of the enemy and not the reaching of a certain geographical line." (1014-PS.) Those words were quoted. The project of deporting promising youth from occupied territories was approved by Rosenberg on the theory that "a desired weakening of the biological force of the conquered people is being achieved." (03I-PS) To Germanise or to destroy was the programme. Himmler announced, "Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people, or, gentlemen - you may call this cruel, but nature is cruel - we destroy this blood." As to "racially good types" Himmler further advised, "Therefore, I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them." (L- 90.) He urged deportation of Slavic children to deprive potential enemies of future soldiers.

The Nazi purpose was to leave Germany's neighbours 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 to be wiped out. The entire population was ordered to be 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, where he was responsible reveals that:

"Food rations allowed to the Russian population are so low that they fail to secure their existence and provide only for minimum subsistence of limited

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duration. The population does not know if they will still live. They are faced with death by starvation.

The roads are clogged by hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes 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 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-labour was the most horrible and extensive slaving operation in history. On few other subjects is our evidence so abundant and so damaging. In a speech made on 25th January, 1944, the defendant Frank, Governor-General of Poland, boasted: "I have sent 1,200,000 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 to the 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 Bialystok, Krajewo, and Olitei, The Fuehrer wishes that this activity be increased even more. (200-PS.)
When enough labour was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced into war work in flagrant violation of international conventions. (016-PS.) Slave labour 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 labourers was 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 as 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 prisoners of war as well as the use of a gigantic number of new civilian workers, men and women, has become an undisputable necessity for the solution of the mobilisation of labour programme in this war.

All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such 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 neighbours 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 siphoning off of the assets of occupied countries. An example of the planning is shown by a report on France dated 7th December, 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 analysed 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 1/4 billion Reichsmarks, equalling 370 billion Francs. It pointed

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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 First World War. In this connection, it must be noted that the economic powers of France never equalled those of the German Reich, and that the vanquished France could not draw on foreign economic and financial resources in the same degree as Germany after the First World War."

The defendant Funk was the Reich Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank; the defendant Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister; the defendant Goering was Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan; all of them participated in the exchange of views of which this captured document is a part (2149-PS) Notwithstanding this analysis by the Reichsbank, they proceeded to increase the imposition on France from 15 million Reichsmarks to daily to 25 million per day.

It is small wonder that the bottom had been knocked out of French economy. The plan and purpose of the thing appears in a letter from General Stupnagel, head of the German Armistice Commission, to the defendant Jodl as early as 14th September, 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 demoralise the economy of Germany's neighbours 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 recognise 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 organised plundering, planned it, disciplined it, and made it official just as he organised 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 objet d'art of Europe by direct order of Hitler dated 29th January 1940. (136-PS) On the 16th April, 1943, Rosenberg reported that up to the 7th April, ninety- two railway cars with 2,775 cases containing objets d'art had been sent to Germany; and that fifty-three pieces of art had been shipped to Hitler direct and 594 to the defendant Goering. (015-PS) The report mentioned something like 20,000 pieces of seized art and the main locations where they were stored.

Moreover, this looting was glorified by Rosenberg. Here we have thirty-nine 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 inventories, 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 individual crimes. I am dealing with the Common Plan or design for crime and will not dwell on individual offences. My task is to show the scale on which those crimes occurred,

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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 demoralisation 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 those mad men, and the attempt on 20th July, 1944, to assassinate Hitler, an attempt fostered by men of highest station, was a desperate effort by internal forces in Germany 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 again 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 end of the war and capture of these prisoners presented the victorious Allies with the question whether there is any legal responsibility on high-ranking men for acts which I have described. Must such wrongs either be ignored or redressed in hot blood? Is there no standard in the law for a deliberate and reasoned judgement on such conduct?

The Charter of this Tribunal evidences a faith that the law is not only to govern the conduct of little men, but that even rulers are, as Lord Chief Justice Coke it to King James, "under God and the law." The United States believed that the law has long afforded standards by which a juridical hearing could be conducted to make sure that we punish only the right men and for the right reasons. Following the instructions of the late President Roosevelt and the decision of the Yalta Conference, President Truman directed representatives of the United States to formulate a proposed International Agreement, which was submitted during the San Francisco Conference to the Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the Provisional Government of France. With many modifications, that proposal has become the Charter of this Tribunal.

But the Agreement which sets up the standards by which these prisoners are to be judged does not express the views of the signatory nations alone. Other nations with diverse but highly respected systems of jurisprudence also have signified adherence to it. These are Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Australia, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, New Zealand, Venezuela and India. You judge, therefore, under an organic act which represents the wisdom, the sense of justice, and the will of twenty-one governments, representing an overwhelming majority of all civilised people.

The Charter by which this Tribunal has its being, embodies certain legal concepts which are inseparable from its jurisdiction and which must govern its decision. These, as I have said, also are conditions attached to the grant of any hearing to defendants. The validity of the provisions of the Charter is conclusive upon us all, whether we have accepted the duty of judging or of prosecuting under it, as well as upon the defendants, who can point to no other law which gives them a right to be heard at all. My able and experienced colleagues believe, as do I, that it will contribute to the expedition and clarity of this trial if I expound briefly the application of the legal philosophy of the Charter to the facts I have recited.

While this declaration of the law by the Charter is final, it may be contended

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that the prisoners on trial are entitled to have it applied to their conduct only most charitably if at all. It may be said that this is new law, not authoritatively declared at the time they did the acts it condemns, and that this declaration of the law has taken them by surprise.

I cannot, of course, deny that these men are surprised that this is the law; they really are surprised that there is any such thing as law. These defendants did not rely on any law at all. Their programme ignored and defied all law. That this is so will appear from many acts and statements, of which I cite but a few. In the Fuehrer's speech to all military commanders on 23rd November, 1939, he reminded them that at the moment Germany had a pact with Russia, but declared "Agreements are to be kept only as long as they serve a certain purpose." Later in the same speech he announced "A violation of the neutrality of Holland and Belgium will be of no importance." (789-PS.) A Top Secret document, entitled " Warfare as a Problem of Organisation," dispatched by the Chief of the High Command to all Commanders on 19th April, 1938, declared that "the normal rules of war toward neutrals must be considered to apply on the basis whether operation of these rules will create greater advantages or disadvantages for the belligerents. (L- 211.) And from the files of the German Navy Staff, we have a "Memorandum on Intensified Naval War," dated 15th October, 1939, which begins by stating a desire to comply with International Law. "However," it continues, "if decisive successes are expected from any measure considered as a war necessity, it must be carried through even if it is not in agreement with International Law." (L-184) International Law, Natural Law, German Law, any law at all was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do. That men may be protected in relying upon the law at the time they act is the reason we find laws of retrospective operation unjust. But these men cannot bring themselves within the reason of the rule which in some systems of jurisprudence prohibits ex post facto laws. They cannot show that they ever relied upon International Law in any state or paid it the slightest regard.

The Third Count of the Indictment is based on the definition of War Crimes contained in the Charter. I have outlined to you the systematic course of conduct toward civilian populations and combat forces which violates international conventions to which Germany was a party. Of the criminal nature of these acts at least, the defendants had, as we shall show, knowledge. Accordingly, they took pains to conceal their violations. It will appear that the defendants Keitel and Jodl were informed by official legal advisers that the orders to brand Russian prisoners of war, to shackle British prisoners of war, and to execute Commando prisoners were clear violations of International Law. Nevertheless, these orders were put into effect. The same is true of orders issued for the assassination of General Giraud and General Weygand, which failed to be executed only because of a ruse on the part of Admiral Canaris, who was himself later executed for his part in the plot to take Hitler's life on 20th July, 1944.

The Fourth Count of the Indictment is based on Crimes against Humanity. Chief among these are mass killings of countless human beings in cold blood. Does it take these men by surprise that murder is treated as a crime ?

The First and Second Counts of the Indictment add to these crimes the crime of plotting and waging wars of aggression and wars in violation of nine treaties to which Germany was a party. There was a time, in fact, I think, the time of the first World War, when it could not have been said that war inciting or war making was a crime in law, however reprehensible in morals.

Of course, it was, under the law of all civilised peoples, a crime for one man with his bare knuckles to assault another. How did it come about that multiplying this crime by a million, and adding fire-arms to bare knuckles, made it a legally innocent act ? The doctrine was that one could not be regarded as criminal for committing the usual violent acts in the conduct of legitimate warfare. The age of

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imperialistic expansion during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries added the foul doctrine, contrary to the teachings of early Christian and International Law scholars such as Grotius, that all wars are to be regarded as legitimate wars. The sum of these two doctrines was to give war-making a complete immunity from accountability to law.

This was intolerable for an age that called itself civilised. Plain people, with their earthy common sense, revolted at such fictions and legalisms so contrary to ethical principles and demanded checks on war immunities. Statesmen and international lawyers at first cautiously responded by adopting rules of warfare designed to make the conduct of war more civilised. The effort was to set legal limits to the violence that could be done to civilian populations and to combatants as well.

The common sense of men after the First World War demanded, however, that the law's condemnation of war reach deeper, and that the law condemn not merely uncivilised ways of waging war, but also the waging in any way of uncivilised wars - wars of aggression. The world's statesmen again, went only as far as they were forced to go. Their efforts were timid and cautious and often less explicit than we might have hoped. But the 1920's did outlaw aggressive war.

The re-establishment of the principle that there are unjust wars and that unjust wars are illegal is traceable in many steps. One of the most significant is the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, by which Germany, Italy and Japan, in common with practically all nations of the world, renounced war as an instrument national policy, bound themselves to seek the settlement of disputes only by pacific means, and condemned recourse to war for the solution of international controversies. This pact altered the legal status of a war of aggression. As Mr. Stimson, the United States Secretary of State put it in 1932, such a war "is no longer to be the source and subject of rights. It is no longer to be the principle around which the duties, the conduct, and the rights of nations revolve. It is an illegal thing.. By that very act, we have made obsolete many legal precedents and have given the legal profession the task of re-examining many of its codes and treaties."


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