One Hundred and Eighty-Ninth Day:
Monday, 29th July, 1946
[Page 9]
This trial has brought you many echoes thereof.
In a speech by Himmler we find these words again:
When somebody comes and says to me, 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch
with women and children; it is inhuman, for it will kill them,' then I
have to say: 'You are a murderer of your own kin, because if the anti-
tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die and they are sons of
German mothers.'" [Page 10]
Speer exploited to the point of exhaustion and death the manpower
recruited for him by Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, the NSDAP Gauleiter and the
Generals. Kaltenbrunner made use of the gas chambers, the victims for
which were furnished by Frick, Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Frank, Jodl,
Keitel and the rest. But the existence of the gas chambers themselves
was only made possible through the development of a political ideology
favourable to such things; there, inextricably merged, we find the
responsibility of all of them - Goering, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher,
Frick, Frank, Fritzsche, down to Schacht himself, the pro-Jewish
Schacht. Did he not say to Hirschfeld:
We may include Papen, who saw his secretaries and his friends killed
around him and still continued to accept official missions in Ankara and
Vienna because he thought he could appease Hitler by serving him.
Some are not present; some are dead and some still living; as, for
example, the industrialists who exploited the workers of the enslaved
countries after putting Hitler and his system in power by providing the
funds, without which no action could have been possible, and who put
them in power as much for reasons of nationalistic fanaticism as because
they expected from Nazism the guarantee of their privileges.
Everything was kept steady, everything was indissolubly united because
totalitarian policy, total war, the preparation and direction of the
campaign of extermination of peoples for the conquest of living-space,
implied the closest co-ordination and liaison between all the parts of
the machine: between police and Army foreign affairs and police and
Army; justice and police; economics and justice universities and
propaganda and police. And now we come to the second point which we have
to present to you:
The co-ordination of the various departments, at the head of which these
men stood, implies close co-operation between them.
The defence has tried to establish the existence of watertight
partitions between the different elements of the German State.
The aim pursued by the Party was therefore the achievement of an
increasingly complete union between the State and the Party. This is the
reason of the legislation which makes it compulsory for the head of the
Party Chancellery to be consulted on the appointment of high-ranking
officials, which incorporates Party chiefs into municipal
administration, integrates the SS into the Folice, and converts the SS
to police officers; makes the direction of the Hitler Youth a State
department, brings the direction of Party headquarters abroad under the
Foreign Office and merges the military personnel of the Party to an ever-
increasing degree with those of the Army. General von Brodowsky's War
Diary, which we have submitted to the Tribunal, shows that this merger
was a fact at the time of the landing in France. Hitler, however,
continued to maintain the system of parallel State and Party
administration, because it exercised mutual control and supervision. But
he insisted on the closest co-operation by both parties in order to be
certain that the control was effective.
All the defendants, moreover, with the exception of Hess, are
representatives of State departments. They cannot plead the absolute
power of the Party as an excuse, since Party and State shared the power.
The doctrine preached by the
[Page 11]
In the end, every aspect of German life was affected by the combined
influence of the State and Party forces. All the departments of the
State and the Party combined to make the component parts.
Examples are plentiful and may be found in every State department.
Let us take the department of Foreign Affairs. Of all the administrative
sections of the State, this, according to the orthodox conception,
should be the farthest removed from political doctrine. Not so in Nazi
Germany. With a view to the extermination of the Jews, headquarters
abroad co-operated with RSHA through the Wilhelmstrasse, as is shown by
Exhibits RF 1206, 1220, 1502, 1210 and USA 433. Wilhelmstrasse officials
were called upon to advise the military police and Secret State Police
(Exhibit RF io6i). It was Best, Ribbentrop's representative in Denmark,
who transmitted the order for the deportation of the Jews to the Chief
of the German Police Mildner (Exhibit RF 1503). Exhibit RF 1501 shows
Ribbentrop defending anti-Semitism to Mussolini and asking for Italian
co-operation.
Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are implicated in all the terrorist
measures taken against the 6lite. The SD and the Wilhelmstrasse are also
involved in the organization of attacks of a provocative nature, such as
that made on the broadcasting station at Gleiwitz in order to furnish
the pretext of an attack by the Poles. The report made by the German
military administration on the pillage of art treasures in France
incriminates both the special staff Rosenberg and the German Embassy in
Paris (Exhibit RF 1505). The Wilhelmstrasse and the Army are involved
along with the police in the question of hostages, reprisals and
deportations. Examples could be multiplied. We do not claim to exhaust
the subject, but only to give illustrations in support of an opinion.
Let us now examine the activities of Rosenberg's organizations.
Rosenberg, by virtue of his function, co-ordinated several branches of
the German State. His function in foreign policy was incorporated in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, he was the philosopher of the
regime, Minister for the Eastern Territories and chief of the Special
Staff in charge of art treasures. The SD and the Secret Police worked in
liaison with him (Documents L 188 and 945-PS).
We note the same liaison and the same co-ordination within the machinery
of the State in questions of forced labour. All the Ministers and higher
functionaries, such as the Gauleiter, were involved, either by planning
or preparing the operation, or simply enforcing it, or benefiting by it.
We remember the inter-ministerial meetings in Berlin to discuss this
subject and the conference between Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Funk
and the representatives of the OKW which forms the subject of Document
PS-3819. We remember. the meeting in Paris presided over by Sauckel and
attended by representatives of the Army, the police and the Embassy
(Exhibit RF 1517).
Neither was economic life any more independent. During the war there
existed under Funk a close co-operation between the economic and
administrative services of the Army and those of economic affairs.
(Exhibit RF 3 bis.) The Ministry of Economics appealed to the police to
work out plans for economic Germanization. (Exhibits RF 803 and 84) The
Ministry of Finance subsidized the SS to carry out scientific research
under abominable conditions, using internees as involuntary subjects for
experiment. (Document 002-PS.) Under Schacht and long before the war,
politics, finance and economic affairs were linked with the Army, at
first secretly, and then publicly, and by bands closer than in any
[Page 12]
Finally, during the war, the terrorist activities of the Army and the
German police and the activities of the State and the Party merged
together. On occasion, the police were subordinated to the Army, though
retaining a certain autonomy, on the orders of the RSHA. This was the
case in Belgium. In France, although separate from the Army, the police
maintained close co-operation with it. The Army participated with the
Sipo (Security Police) and the SD in the persecution of the Jews, the
administration of the internment camp of Compiegne and the selection of
hostages (RF 1212 and 1212 his) and execution (RF 1244). As we have
seen, the Army and the police were associated in the terrorist actions
against the populations. The Navy and the police were also associated in
the massacre of the commandos, and the police were responsible for the
murder of certain categories of war prisoners, although all these
prisoners without exception came under the authority of the OKW (PS-
1165).
One might multiply instances of the close association of Party machinery
and State services and the co-ordination between them, which at times
amounted to symbiosis. In one way or another, they all worked for the
realization of the common political aim: the conquest of space by all
possible means.
The co-operation of the defendants is an obvious consequence. Apart from
the definite fact of co-operation alleged by us, all that we know of the
general functioning of this totalitarian State, bound to the destiny of
the Party, the vigorous measures taken by it against its opponents, for
whom it prepared camps and gas chambers -- all this leads us to affirm
that the defendants, whether ministers, dignitaries or high
functionaries with State or Party powers, combined with others who are
not present -- who are dead or held for trial in other Courts -- to form
one whole. And this entity was the Government of the Reich, this was the
State-Party or Party-State; an entity, perhaps, but a conscious and
criminal entity which decreed the murder of inillions of human' beings
in order to enlarge the Reich beyond all limits.
The acts of the defendants are not only those particular ones which we
analysed a moment ago in the light of the national penal codes of their
own or our countries respectively. They include also those members of
the German State for whom they acted, of that German State to which they
gave life, conscience, thought, will, and for which they must now assume
responsibility and bear the consequences, even the most extreme
consequences, because they could not dissociate individually from these
crimes. And this brings us to our third point:
The defendants must be judged on the basis of that criminal policy of
which they were promoters and instruments.
Was it not Dr. Seidl who, defending Frank, said (Page 55 of his text):
[Page 13]
That is the highest cost of a criminal plot within our own national
communities.
Organized as they are, extremely hierarchical, and possessed of armed
forces and judicial institutions, our national communities can eliminate
delinquents before they can do all the harm of which they are capable.
These defendants, on the contrary, developed their criminal activity
within the community of world States, unorganized, just beginning to be
conscious of their own existence and at that time possessing neither
armed power nor judges .
These defendants seized the German State and turned it into a gangster
State, pressing into the service of their criminal plans all the
executive power of that State. They acted as chiefs or heads of
political, diplomatic, juridical, military, economic and financial
staffs. The activity of these staffs is normally co-ordinated in any
country as they serve a common purpose deriving from a common political
idea. But in National Socialist Germany, as we know, such co-ordination
was reinforced by the overlapping of party and administrative
departments. Individual crimes were crimes of the community when they
became the crimes of the State. Indeed, they were fostered by the
political conception of each individual:
Is not evidence of this unity in crime furnished by the very statements
made by the defendants, the unremitting efforts of themselves and their
counsel to prove the autonomy of their departments and throw the
responsibility of the Army on to the police, that of the Foreign Office
on to the head of the Government, that of the Labour Department on t(y
the Four-Year Plan, that of the Gauleiter on to the Generals; in short,
by their attempt to persuade us that everything in Germany was organized
in watertight compartments; whereas the interdependence of the
administration and Party and the multiplicity of connecting and
controlling links between the State and Party prove the contrary by
their skilful dovetailing? All French people who have lived in occupied
France remember having seen on the walls of local Kornmandanturs a
poster depicting the bricks of a wall with the words " Teneo quia teneor
" printed over the picture. It was the whole motto of the system. It
only needed a few bricks to be taken away for the wall to collapse. None
of those men did that. On the contrary, they all contributed their own
brick to the edifice.
In this way, gentlemen, by presenting the facts, apart from any legal
conception Of conspiracy or complicity which might be debatable
according to the varying
[Page 14]
To prove that they perpetrated the crime, it suffices to show that they
were chiefs or high officials of the Party or one of the main State
departments and that they acted on behalf of the State; that, in order
to extend German living-space by every means at their command, they
conceived, willed, ordered or merely tolerated by their silence the
violation of treaties guaranteeing the independence of other countries;
prepared or declared wars of aggression; systematically carried out mass
murder and other atrocities; and systematically committed demolition and
looting without justification.
This is the crime of the German Reich, and all the defendants have
conspired to commit it.
We will prove this in the case of each of the defendants by means of
examples taken from the proceedings.
Concerning each of the defendants, the three main points of this
presentation will be the following:
1. The defendant occupied within the machinery of the State and the
Party a position of eminence which endowed him with authority over one
entire office or several.
2. The defendant complied with, if he did not conceive, the doctrine of
the regime: "Conquest of space by any means."
3. He personally played an active part in the political development of
this doctrine.
As to Goering and Hess, the Tribunal will undoubtedly allow me to
dispense with developing their case at length. They were the appointed
successors of the Fuehrer. They belonged to the movement from the
beginning. Hess assumed responsibility for the racial laws. Both played
a part in formulating the political doctrine of the regime, of which
they were the embodiment in the eyes of the masses. By their speeches,
their lectures, they made this doctrine familiar to all classes.
Goering made an active and essential contribution to the military and
economic preparations for wars of aggression.
Goering is the founder of the Gestapo and the concentration camps where
millions of alleged enemies of the regime found their death, and where
ultimately genocide was almost totally achieved.
The major part of his criminal activities concerns the putting into
practice of the Four Year Plan, the sole' object of which, as has been
proved, was the preparation for war. In common with others, he is
responsible for the depurtation and brutal treatment of workers and for
their allocation to spheres of production aimed against their own
country. Further, he was party to the allocation of prisoners of war and
political prisoners to labour directly connected with the war effort of
the Reich. He organized the plunder of the occupied countries and the
destruction of their economy.
Lastly, he organized, with the help of Einsatzstab, Rosenberg, the
wholesale looting of works of art, often with the object of enrichirfg
his own collections.
Hess, by a decree of the Fuehrer dated 21st April, 1933, was given full
powers to decide all questions of Party management. He participated in
the preparation of laws and decrees in general, and even in the
preparation of the Fillirer's decrees. He took part in the appointment
of Government officials and the chiefs of labour services. He
strengthened the Party's hold on the internal life of Germany. He
exerted a direct influence on the Army and on foreign policy, The part
which he played in the growth of anti-Semitism implicates him in the
criminal consequences of the movement and condemns him.
Ribbentrop was one of the mainsprings of the Party and State machine.
Placed in the Wilhelmstrasse by Hitler, who distrusted "old-fashioned"
diplomats, he worked with all his might to create diplomatic conditions
which would favour a war of aggression, the essential means for
realizing the conquest of space.
[Page 15]
My comments on Keitel are equally brief. The conditions under which he
consented to be placed by Hitler at the head of the High Command of the
Army in the place of von Fritsch and von Blomberg, and brought into the
councils of the Government, his political activities in these posts, as
indicated by his presence at the Fuehrer's side in Godesberg and later
during the interviews with Petain and Horthy - to say nothing of the
orders which he signed, not the least notorious of which was the order
for the implementation of the N.N. decree - all these facts reveal that
we are dealing here not with an ordinary soldier, but with a general who
was also a politician, under orders of the regime. The part he played in
the arrest and murder of patriots condemns him. There is no doubt
whatsoever that he participated in the work of extermination, if only by
handing over to the police for special treatment certain classes of
prisoners of war in defiance of military honour. Moreover, we remember
connections between his office and the police services and armed forces
of the Party.
(A recess was taken.)
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(Part 3 of 12)
[M. CHAMPETIER DE RIBES continues.] "What the nations of good blood can offer us we shall take, if necessary
by taking their children away from them and bringing them up among us."
From the same speech:
"Whether nations thrive or starve only interests me inasmuch as we can
use them as slaves for our civilization."
Still from the same speech:
"That 10,000 Russian women should die of exhaustion in digging an anti-
tank ditch only interests me as to whether or not the anti-tank ditch
has been completed for Germany.
And concerning the extermination of Jews:
"We have exterminated a microbe. We do not wish to be contaminated and
die from it. We have fulfilled this duty for the sake of our people. Our
spirit and character have not suffered from it."
The conquest of living-space, i.e., of territories emptied of their
population by every means including extermination - that was the great
idea of, the Party, the system, the State, and consequently of all those
at the head of the main administration of both State and Party.
"I want Germany to be great; to accomplish this I am prepared to ally
myself with the very devil."
He did enter into this alliance with the devil and with hell....
"It is possible that no other issuing bank has followed in peace time a
credit policy so audacious as that of the Reiclisbank since the
assumption of power by National Socialism. With the aid of this policy,
however, Germany has created the finest armament in the world, and this
armament has made possible the results of our policy ......"
Nor was the judicial system more independent. We find it associated with
the police in highly criminal enterprises. Document PS-654 contains an
account of a discussion between Thierack, Hiramler and others, at the
end of which it was decided that anti-social elements and concentration
camp prisoners-Jews, gipsies, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles-sentenced to
more than three years' imprisonment should be turned over by the
administration to Hiramler to be exterminated by hard labour, and that,
in future, individuals belonging to these categories should not be
judged by ordinary tribunals but handed over immediately to Himmler's
department.
"This is an acknowledged principle, deriving from the penal code of all
civilized nations, that a uniform and natural action must be appraised
in its
entirety, and that all circumstances which can be considered must be
examined in order to form a basis for passing judgment."
All the crimes of the defendants lie in their political life. They are,
as we know, the elements of a criminal State policy. To consider the
defendants as offenders against common law, to forget that they have
acted in the name of the German State and, on account of that State, to
apply the same standard to them as that applied to hooligans or to
murderers, would narrow the scope of the Trial and misrepresent the
character of their crimes. The crimes ordinarily tried by the courts of
our countries show the criminal as opposed to the social order. These
are individual deeds; their range is limited and their consequences
circumscribed. Their crimes never strike more than a very few victims,
and there are no examples in the annals of our countries of murder
methodically perpetrated by terror organizations whose victims number
more than a few hundred people....
"Conquest of space at any price."
State crimes committed by any one of those who controlled a major
department were made possible only because all those who controlled
every other major department contributed their share. If some of them
and their departments defaulted, it meant the collapse of the State, the
annihilation of its criminal power and with it the end of the gas
chambers or the technical impossibility of creating them. But none had
either the intention or the desire to default, for gas chambers and
extermination, for the sake of gaining living-space, were the dominant
idea of the system; were, indeed, themselves the system.