Morning Session
COL. WHEELER: The Nazis did not overlook other sects or denominations in their efforts to suppress Christian religion in Germany. They persecuted the Bibelforscher or International Bible Students as well. There has already been introduced and read into evidence Document Number D-84, Exhibit Number USA-236, showing that members of this sect were not only prosecuted in the courts, but also seized and sent to concentration camps, even after serving or remitting of their judicial sentences.
In Document Number 2928-PS, Exhibit Number USA-239, included in U.S. Document Book A, further evidence of persecution of Bibelforscher appears.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you are going a little bit fast. We are not going to refer to D-84?
COL. WHEELER: I am not going to read from it, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you go to 2928-PS?
COL. WHEELER: 2928-PS; it is in the document book, Sir. This document is an affidavit by Matthias Lex, Vice President of the national union of shoemakers. In describing his experience in Dachau Concentration Camp he says, and I quote from the third page of his affidavit:
“I include in the political prisoners the International Bible Students”—Bibelforscher—“whose number I estimate at over 150.”
I want to read further from the last line of that page and the next few lines of the next page:
“The following groups were kept entirely isolated: The members of the so-called ‘punishment companies,’ ”—Strafkompanien—“those who were in a concentration camp for a second time, and after about 1937 also the ‘Bibelforscher’. Members of the ‘punishment companies’ were such prisoners who had committed disciplinary or slight offenses against the camp regulations. The following groups lived separately but could mix with the other groups during the day, either while working or while strolling through the camp:
“Political prisoners, Jews, anti-socials, gypsies, felons, homosexuals, and, before 1937, also the International Bible Students.”
I refer also to Document Number 1531-PS—this is not in the document book—Exhibit Number USA-248, which is already in evidence. This was an order by the RSHA in 1942 authorizing third-degree methods against Jehovah’s Witnesses. That was read by Colonel Storey.
I now turn to acts of suppression in the annexed and occupied territories. In Austria Bishop Rusch of Innsbruck has written an illuminating report on this subject. I offer this sworn statement in evidence, Document 3278-PS, Exhibit Number USA-569. This is a report on the fighting of National Socialism in the Apostolic Administration of Innsbruck-Feldkirch, of Tyrol and Vorarlberg. In this the Bishop declares, and I start on the first page of the English text, and of the German translation:
“After having seized power, National Socialism immediately showed the tendency to exclude the Church from publicity.”
The expression “publicity”—this was written in English by the Bishop—evidently means “public activities.” I continue with the quote:
“At Corpus Christi in 1938 the customary solemn procession was forbidden. In the summer of the same year all ecclesiastical schools and kindergartens were disbanded. Daily newspaper and weekly reviews of Christian thinking were likewise removed. In the same year all kinds of ecclesiastical organizations, especially youth organizations such as Boy Scouts, were disbanded, all activity forbidden.
“The effect of these prohibitions came soon: The clergy took opposition against them, they could not do otherwise. Then a great wave of priest arrests followed. About a fifth of them were eventually arrested. Reasons for arrests were:
“1. The ‘pulpit-paragraph.’ When Party actions were mentioned or criticized even in the humblest manner.
“2. The practice of taking care of young people. A specially heavy prohibition was given in November 1939. Children’s or youth’s mass or services were forbidden. Religion or faith lessons were not allowed to be given in the church except lessons of preparing for first Communion or confirmation. Teaching of religion at school was very often forbidden without any reason.
“The priest, according to his conscience, could not follow this public proscription and this explained the great number of arrests of priests. Finally, the priests were arrested on account of their ‘caritative’ work. It was, for instance, forbidden to give anything to foreigners or prisoners. A priest was arrested because he gave a cup of coffee and bread to two hungry Dutchmen. This ‘caritative’ act was seen to favor elements foreign to the race.
“In 1939 and 1940 a new activity began. Cloisters and abbeys were seized, disbanded, and many churches belonging to them closed. Among these two convents were disbanded: the cloister of the Dominican Sisters of Bludenz and that of the ‘Perpetual Adoration’ of Innsbruck. In the latter the Sisters were dragged, one by one, out of the cloister by the Gestapo. In the same way ecclesiastical property such as association-houses, parish and youth homes were seized. A list of these closed churches, disbanded cloisters, and ecclesiastical institutions is attached.
“Despite all these measures the results were not satisfactory. Then priests were not only arrested, but also deported to concentration camps. Eight priests of Tyrol and Vorarlberg have been imprisoned, among them the Provicar Monseigneur Dr. Charles Lampert. One died there on account of the ill-treatment, the others returned. Provicar Lampert was released but required to remain in Stettin, where later he was re-arrested and executed in November 1944, after having been condemned to death by secret proceedings.”
There is attached to this report a three-and-a-half-page list entitled, “List of churches, convents, monasteries, and ecclesiastical objects of Tyrol and Vorarlberg seized—that is, confiscated—and of the institutions, confessional schools, et cetera, disbanded.” Unless the Tribunal requires it, I shall not read these names.
I offer in evidence Document 3274-PS, Exhibit Number USA-570, received from Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna and authenticated by him. This is the first joint pastoral letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of Austria after liberation, dated October 17, 1945. I quote from Page 1, second paragraph of the English and German texts, which sums up the Nazi conspirators’ campaign in Austria:
“A war which has raged terribly and horribly, like none other in past epochs of the history of humanity is at an end. . . . At an end also is an intellectual battle, the goal of which was the destruction of Christianity and Church among our people; a campaign of lies and treachery against truth and love, against divine and human rights, and against international law.”
I quote further from the fourth and following paragraphs:
“Direct hostility to the Church was revealed in regulations against orders and monasteries, Catholic schools and institutions, against religious foundations and activities, against the ecclesiastical recreation centers and institutions; without the least rights to defend themselves they were declared enemies of both people and state and their existence destroyed.
“Religious instruction and education of children and adolescents were purposely limited, frequently entirely prevented. They encouraged in every manner all efforts hostile to religion and the Church and thus sought to rob the children and youth of our people of the most valuable treasure of holy faith and of true morality born of the Spirit of God. Unfortunately the attempt succeeded in innumerable cases to the permanent detriment of young people.
“Spiritual care of souls in churches and ecclesiastical houses, in hospitals and other institutions was seriously obstructed. It was made ineffectual in the Armed Forces and in the Labor Service, in the transfer of youth to the country and, beyond that, even in individual families and among numerous persons, to say nothing of the prohibition of spiritual ministration to people of another nationality and of other races.
“How often was the divine service as such, also sermons, missions, Communion days, retreats, processions, pilgrimages, restricted for the most impossible reasons and made entirely impossible!
“Catholic literature, newspapers, periodicals, church papers, religious writings were stopped, books and libraries destroyed.
“What an injustice occurred in the dissolution of many Catholic societies, in the destruction of numerous church activities!
“Individual Catholic and Christian believers, whose religious confession was allegedly free, were spied upon, criticized on account of their belief, scorned on account of their Christian activity. How many religious officials, teachers, public and private employees, laborers, businessmen, and artisans, indeed, even peasants were put under pressure and terror! Many lost their jobs, some were pensioned off, others dismissed without pension, demoted, deprived of their real professional activity. Often enough such people who remained loyal to their convictions were discriminated against, condemned to hunger or tortured in concentration camps. Christianity and the Church were continually scorned and exposed to hatred.
“The apostasy movement found every assistance. Every opportunity was used to induce many to withdraw from the Church.”
In assessing responsibility for these acts of suppression in Austria, the Court will recall that the Defendant Von Schirach was Gauleiter of Vienna from 1940 to 1945.
I now come to the acts of suppression in Czechoslovakia, where, the Court will recollect, the Defendant Von Neurath was Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1943 and was succeeded by the Defendant Frick. These acts have been summarized in an official Czech Government report. I refer to Document 998-PS, Exhibit Number USA-91, already in evidence. These are excerpts not previously read or referred to from the “Czech Official Report for the Prosecution and Trial of the German Major War Criminals by the International Military Tribunal Established according to the Agreement of the Four Great Powers, of August 8, 1945.” Since this is an official government document or report of one of the United Nations, I ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice of it under Article 21 of the Charter and I suggest that I be permitted to summarize rather than read it.
It describes the maltreatment of Catholic priests—487 of whom were sent to concentration camps as hostages—dissolution of religious orders, suppression of religious instruction in Czech schools, suppression of Catholic weeklies and monthlies, dissolution of the Catholic gymnastic organization of 800,000 members, and seizure of Catholic Church property. It describes the entire prohibition of the Czechoslovak National Church and confiscation of all its property in Slovakia and its crippling in Bohemia.
The report describes the severe restriction on freedom of preaching by the Protestants and the persecution and imprisonment and execution of ministers and the suppression of Protestant Church youth organizations and theological schools and shows the complete subordination and later dissolution of the Greek Orthodox Church. It states that all Evangelical education was handed over to the civil authorities and many Evangelical teachers lost their employment.
The repressive measures adopted by the Nazi conspirators in Poland against the Christian Church were even more drastic and sweeping.
The Vatican documents now to be introduced describe persecutions of the Catholic Church in Poland in three areas: First, the incorporated territories, especially the Warthegau; second, the Government General; and third, the incorporated Eastern territories.
The Court will recall that the incorporated territories comprised territories adjacent to the old Reich, chiefly the Reich District Wartheland or Warthegau, which included particularly the cities of Poznan and Lodz and the Reich district Danzig-West Prussia.
The occupied Polish territories which were organized into the Government General comprised the remainder of Poland, seized by the German forces in 1939 and extending to the new boundary with the Soviets formed at that time. This included Warsaw and Kraków. After the Nazis attacked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in June 1941, the parts of old Poland lying farther to the east and then overrun were included in the so-called Occupied Eastern Territories.
For the purpose of tying the defendants’ responsibility for the persecutions occurring in their respective areas, the Court will bear in mind that the Defendant Frick was the official chiefly responsible for the reorganization of the Eastern territories. The Defendant Frank was head of the Government General from 1939 to 1945. The Defendant Seyss-Inquart was Deputy Governor General there from 1939 to 1940. And the Defendant Rosenberg was Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories from July 17, 1941 to the end.
I now offer in evidence Document Number 3263-PS, Exhibit Number USA-571, headed, “Memorandum of the Secretariat of State to the German Embassy regarding the religious situation in the ‘Warthegau,’ October 8, 1942.” This document bears a certificate of authenticity from the Vatican signed by the Papal Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs corresponding to that accompanying Document 3261-PS, read in evidence a few minutes ago. Unless the Court requires otherwise, I suggest that it is not necessary to read each of these certificates, which are all similar one to another. I quote from Document 3263-PS, the first paragraph:
“For quite a long time the religious situation in the region called ‘Warthegau’ gives cause for very grave and ever-increasing anxiety. There, in fact, the Episcopate has been little by little almost completely eliminated; the secular and regular clergy have been reduced to proportions that are absolutely inadequate, because they have been in large part deported and exiled; the education of clerics has been forbidden; the Catholic education of youth is meeting with the greatest opposition; the nuns have been dispersed; insurmountable obstacles have been put in the way of affording people the help of religion; very many churches have been closed; Catholic intellectual and charitable institutions have been destroyed; ecclesiastical property has been seized.”
On March 2, 1943 the Cardinal Secretary of State addressed to the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the Reich, a note setting forth in detail the persecution of bishops, priests, and other ecclesiastics and the suppression of the exercise of religion in the occupied Polish provinces. This document is so explicit and so authoritative that it deserves extensive quotation. I accordingly offer it in evidence: Document Number 3264-PS, Exhibit Number USA-572. It is headed, “A Note of His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State to the Foreign Minister of the Reich about the religious situation in the ‘Warthegau’ and in the other Polish provinces subject to Germany.” It bears a Vatican certificate of authenticity like that of Document 3261-PS. It is signed, “L. Card. Maglione,” meaning “Luigi Cardinal Maglione.” I quote from this note, starting with Page 1, the third paragraph of the English mimeographed text and of the German translation:
“The place where, above all, the religious situation, by its unusual gravity, calls for special consideration is the territory called the ‘Reichsgau Wartheland.’
“Six bishops resided in that region in August 1939; now there is left only one. In fact, the Bishop of Lodz and his auxiliary were, in the course of the year 1941, confined first in a small district of the diocese and then expelled and exiled in the ‘Generalgouvernement.’
“Another bishop, Monseigneur Michael Kozal, Auxiliary and Vicar General of Wloclawek, was arrested in the autumn of 1939, detained for some time in a prison in the city and later in a religious house in Lad, and finally was transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau.
“Since His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan and the Bishop of Wloclawek, who had gone away during the period of military operations, were not allowed to return to their Sees, the only bishop who now remains in the ‘Warthegau’ is His Excellency Monseigneur Valentine Dymek, Auxiliary of Poznan; and he, at least up to November 1942, was interned in his own house.”
I pass now to Page 2, fourth paragraph of the English text, the fifth paragraph of the German text:
“If the lot of their Excellencies the Bishops has been a source of anxiety for the Holy See, the condition of an immense number of priests and members of religious orders has caused it, and still causes it, no less grief.
“In the territory now called ‘Warthegau’ more than 2,000 priests exercised their ministry before the war; they are now reduced to a very small number.
“According to accounts received from various quarters by the Holy See, in the first months of the military occupation not a few members of the secular clergy were shot or otherwise put to death, while others—some hundreds—were imprisoned or treated in an unseemly manner, being forced into employments unbecoming their state and exposed to scorn and derision.
“Then, while numbers of ecclesiastics were exiled or constrained in some other way to take refuge in the ‘Generalgouvernement,’ many others were transferred to concentration camps. At the beginning of October 1941 the priests from the dioceses of the ‘Warthegau’ detained in Dachau already numbered several hundreds; but their number increased considerably in that month following a sharp intensification of police measures which culminated in the imprisonment and deportation of further hundreds of ecclesiastics. Entire ‘Kreise’ (districts) remained thus completely deprived of clergy. In the city of Poznan itself the spiritual care of some 200,000 Catholics remained in the hands of not more than four priests.
“No less painful was the fate reserved for the regular clergy. Many religious were shot or otherwise killed; the great majority of the others were imprisoned, deported, or expelled.
“In the same way far-reaching measures were taken against the institutions preparing candidates for the ecclesiastical state. The diocesan seminaries of Gniezno and Poznan, of Wloclawek, and of Lodz were closed. The seminary in Poznan for the training of priests destined to work among Polish Catholics abroad was also closed.
“The novitiates and houses of formation of the religious orders and congregations were closed.
“Not even the nuns were able to continue their charitable activities without molestation. For them was set up a special concentration camp at Bojanowo, where towards the middle of 1941 about 400 sisters were interned and employed in manual labor. To a representation of the Holy See made through the Apostolic Nunciature in Berlin (Memorandum N. 40.348 of June 11th, 1941) your Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs replied in the Memorandum Pol. III 1886 of September 28 of the same year that it was only a question of a temporary measure, taken with the consent of the Reich lieutenant for Wartheland, in order to supply the lack of housing for Polish Catholic sisters. In the same memorandum it was admitted that as a result of reorganization of charitable institutions many Catholic sisters were without employment.
“But, in spite of the fact that this measure was declared to be temporary, it is certain that towards the end of 1942 some hundreds of nuns were still interned at Bojanowo. It is established that for some time the religious were deprived even of spiritual help.
“Likewise in the matter of education and religious instruction of youth no attention was paid in the ‘Warthegau’ to the rights of the Catholic Church.
“All the Catholic schools were suppressed.”
THE PRESIDENT: Who was the Foreign Minister of the Reich at the time that document was sent?
COL. WHEELER: It was the Defendant Von Ribbentrop.
I turn to Page 4, the 10th paragraph of the English text, Page 5, 4th paragraph of the German text:
“The use of the Polish language in sacred functions, and even in the Sacrament of Penance, was forbidden. Moreover—and this is a matter worthy of special mention and is at variance with the natural law and with the dispositions accepted by the legal systems of all nations—for the celebration of marriage between Poles the minimum age limit was fixed at 28 years for men and 25 years for women.
“Catholic Action was so badly hit as to be completely destroyed. The National Institute, which was at the head of the whole Catholic Action movement in Poland, was suppressed; as a result all the associations belonging to it, which were flourishing, as well as all Catholic cultural, charity, and social service institutions, were abolished.
“In the whole of the ‘Warthegau’ there is no longer any Catholic press and not even a Catholic bookshop.
“Grave measures were repeatedly taken with regard to ecclesiastical property.
“Many of the churches closed to public worship were turned over to profane uses. From such an insult not even the Cathedrals of Gniezno, Poznan, Wloclawek, and Lodz were spared. Episcopal residences were confiscated, the real estate belonging to the seminaries, convents, diocesan museums, libraries, and church funds were confiscated or sequestered.”
I pass now to the third full paragraph on Page 5, a two-line paragraph:
“Even before ecclesiastical property was affected, the allowances to the clergy had been abolished.”
Now, reading from Page 6, the fourth full paragraph of the English text:
“The administrative regulations published by the lieutenant’s office for the application of the ordinance of September 13th, 1941 made the situation of the Catholics in that region, still more difficult.
“For example, on November 19, 1941 came a decree of the Reich lieutenant by which among other things it was set forth that, as from the previous September 13th, the property of the former juridical persons of the Roman Catholic Church should pass over to the ‘Römisch-katholische Kirche deutscher Nationalität im Reichsgau Wartheland’ insofar as, on the request of the above-mentioned ‘Religionsgesellschaft’ such property shall be recognized by the Reich lieutenant as non-Polish property.’ In virtue of this decree practically all the goods of the Catholic Church in the ‘Warthegau’ were lost.”
Now I pass to Page 7, the second full paragraph:
“If we pass from the ‘Warthegau’ to the other territories in the East, we unfortunately find there, too, acts and measures against the rights of the Church and of the Catholic faithful, though they vary in gravity and extension from one place to another.
“In the provinces which were declared annexed to the German Reich and joined up with the Gaue of East Prussia, of Danzig West Prussia and of Upper Silesia, the situation is very like that described above in regard to seminaries, the use of the Polish mother-tongue in sacred functions, charitable works, associations of Catholic Action, the separation of the faithful according to nationality. There, too, one must deplore the closing of churches to public worship, the exile, deportation, the violent death of not a few of the clergy (reduced by two-thirds in the diocese of Culma and by at least a third in the diocese of Katowice), the suppression of religious instruction in the schools, and above all the complete suppression in fact of the Episcopate. Actually, after the Bishop of Culma, who had left during the military operations, had been refused permission to return to his diocese, there followed in February 1941 the expulsion of the Bishop of Plock and his auxiliary, who both died later in captivity; the Bishop, the venerable octogenarian Monseigneur Julian Anthony Nowowiejski, died at Dzialdowo on May 28th, 1941, and the auxiliary, Monseigneur Leo Wetmanski, ‘in a transit camp’ on October 10th of the same year.
“In the territory called the ‘Generalgouvernement,’ as in the Polish provinces which had been occupied by Soviet troops in the period between September 1939 and June 1941, the religious situation is such as to cause the Holy See lively apprehension and serious preoccupation. Without pausing to describe the treatment meted out in many cases to the clergy (priests imprisoned, deported, and even put to death), the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the closing of churches, the suppression even of associations and publications of simply and exclusively religious character, the closing of the Catholic secondary and higher schools and of the Catholic University of Lublin, let it suffice to recall two series of specially grave measures: those which affect the seminaries and those which weigh on the Episcopate.
“When the buildings of the various seminaries had been completely or in part occupied, the intention for some time (November 1940-February 1941) was to reduce these institutions for the training of priests to two—those of Kraków and Sandomierz; then the others were permitted to reopen, but only on condition that no new students were admitted, which in practice inevitably means that all these institutions will soon be closed.”
I skip one paragraph here.
“Mention has several times been made of ecclesiastics deported or confined in concentration camps. The majority of them were transferred to the Altreich, where their number already exceeds a thousand.”
THE PRESIDENT: What was the “Altreich”?
COL. WHEELER: The Altreich is the Old Reich of Germany.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COL. WHEELER: “When the Holy See asked that they should be liberated and be permitted to emigrate to neutral countries of Europe or America (1940), the petition was refused; it was only promised that they should all be collected in the concentration camp at Dachau, that they should be dispensed from too hard labor, and that some should be permitted to say Mass, which the others could hear.
“The treatment of the ecclesiastics interned at Dachau, which, for a certain time in 1941 was in fact somewhat mitigated, worsened again at the end of that year. Particularly sorrowful were the announcements which for many months in 1942 came from that camp of the frequent deaths of priests, even of some young priests among them.”
I pass by two paragraphs.
“Polish Catholics are not allowed to contract marriage in the territory of the Altreich; just as requests for religious instruction or instruction in preparation for confession and Holy Communion for the children of these workers are, in principle, not accepted.”
What happened to complaints—even from the Vatican—as to religious affairs in the overrun territories is disclosed in Document Number 3266-PS, Exhibit Number USA-573, which I now offer in evidence. This is a letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Breslau to the Papal Secretary of State, dated December 7, 1942. It bears a Vatican authentication similar to those already read.
This letter lays at the door of the Party Chancellery the responsibility for determining the policy and exercising final authority on religious questions in the occupied territories. I quote from Page 1, the first paragraph of this letter, and remind the Court that the Defendant Bormann was at that time Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery and that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner was the Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the RSHA. I quote from Document 3266-PS, beginning with the sixth line:
“About some of the gravest injuries inflicted on the Church, I not only protested on each occasion as the individual incident occurred, but I also made a most formal protest about them in globo in a document which, as spokesman of the Hierarchy, I sent to the supreme ruler of the State and to the ministries of the Reich on December 10th, 1941. Not a word by way of answer has been sent to us.
“Your Eminence knows very well the greatest difficulty in the way of opening negotiations comes from the overruling authority which the ‘National Socialist Party Chancery’ exercises in relation to the Chancery of the Reich and to the single Reich ministries. This ‘Parteikanzlei’ directs the course to be followed by the State, whereas the ministries and the Chancellery of the Reich are obliged and compelled to adjust their decrees to these directions. Besides, there is the fact that the ‘supreme office for the security of the Reich,’ called the ‘Reichssicherheitshauptamt’ enjoys an authority which precludes all legal action and all appeals. Under it are the ‘secret offices for public security,’ called ‘Geheime Staatspolizei’ (a title shortened usually to Gestapo), of which there is one for each province. Against the decrees of this central office and of the secret offices there is no appeal through the courts, and no complaint made to the ministries has any effect. Not infrequently the councillors of the ministries suggest that they have not been able to do as they would wish to because of the opposition of these Party offices. As far as the executive power is concerned, the organization called the SS, that is, ‘The Schutzstaffeln der Partei,’ is in practice supreme. . . .
“On a number of very grave and fundamental issues we have also presented our complaints to the supreme leader of the Reich, the Führer. Either no answer is given, or it is apparently edited by the above-mentioned Party Chancery, which does not consider itself bound by the Concordat made with the Holy See.”
I now offer in evidence Document Number 3279-PS, Exhibit Number USA-574. This is an excerpt from Charge Number 17 against the Defendant Hans Frank, Governor General of Poland, entitled, “Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Western Provinces,” submitted by the Polish Government under the terms of Article 21 of the Four-Power-Agreement of August 8, 1945. This gives further figures indicating the extent of the persecution of priests. I quote:
“The extract attached hereto and dealing with the ‘General Conditions and Results of the Persecution’ is taken from the text of Charge 17, Page 5, Paragraph IV, of the Polish Government against the defendants named in the Indictment before the International Military Tribunal, subject: ‘Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Incorporated Western Provinces of Poland.’ It is a true translation into English of the original Polish.
“It is submitted herewith to the International Military Tribunal in accordance with Article 21 of the Charter of the Court.”
Signed: “Dr. Tadeusz Cyprian, Polish Deputy Representative on the United Nations War Crimes Commission in London, signing on behalf of the Polish Government and of the Main Commission for Investigation of German War Crimes in Poland, whose seal I hereby attach.”
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you need read such certificates as that.
COL. WHEELER: This is the only one, Sir, that I have. I now read from this extract:
“General Conditions and Results of the Persecution:
“11. The general situation of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Poznan in the beginning of April 1940 is summarized in the following words of Cardinal Hlond’s second report:
“Five priests shot; 27 priests confined in harsh concentration camps at Stutthof and in other camps; 190 priests in prison or in concentration camps at Bruczkow, Chludowo, Goruszki, Kazimierz, Biskupi, Lad, Lubin, and Puszczykowo; 35 priests seriously ill in consequence of ill-treatment; 122 parishes entirely left without priests.
“12. In the Diocese of Chelmno, where about 650 priests were installed before the war, only 3 percent were allowed to stay, the 97 percent of them were imprisoned, executed, or put into concentration camps.
“13. By January 1941 about 700 priests were killed, 3,000 were in prison or concentration camps.”
I refer also to Document Number 3268(a)-PS, Exhibit Number USA-356, excerpts from the allocution of Pope Pius XII to the Sacred College June 2, 1945, which has already been introduced into evidence and read from extensively. I shall not read from that again. This gives some very revealing figures concerning the priests and lay brothers confined in the concentration camp at Dachau.
The Tribunal will recall, from the previous reading of this document, the imprisonment of 2,800 priests and lay brothers in Dachau alone from 1940 to 1945, of whom all but about 800 were dead by April 1945, including an auxiliary bishop.
This document presents a forceful summary of the principal steps in the struggle of the Nazi conspirators against the Catholic Church.
In summation the Prosecution submits that the evidence presented to the Court proves that the attempted suppression of the Christian churches in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland was an integral part of the defendants’ conspiracy to eliminate internal opposition and otherwise to prepare for and wage aggressive war and shows the same conspiratorial pattern as their other War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.
COL. STOREY: If the Tribunal please, before we present the subject of individual defendants, by agreement with our British colleagues, Major Elwyn Jones will now present a brief subject entitled, “Aggression as a Basic Nazi Idea.”
MAJOR F. ELWYN JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): 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 One and Two 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 SA and SS 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 newlyweds of Germany and for the purposes of the record it will be Exhibit GB-128 (Document Number D-660). The Tribunal will see that the dedication on the flyleaf of that copy reads:
“To the newly-married couple, Friedrich Rosebrock and Else née 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 of Mein Kampf 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”.
As a result of the efforts of the defendants and their confederates, this book poisoned a generation and distorted the outlook of a whole people.
As the SS General Von dem Bach-Zelewski indicated yesterday, if you preach for years, as long as 10 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. Those 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 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 realized if the Tribunal looks at the German edition of Mein Kampf. The Tribunal will observe that Part II of Mein Kampf was first published in 1927, that is to say, less than 2 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 propagated by the defendants about war and aggression generally. The first quotation, from Page 556 of Mein Kampf, reads:
“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 favor 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. As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so proved futile.”
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 ‘highfalutin’ talk about aesthetics, et cetera, 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.
Hitler’s assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for survival linked up in Chapter 11 of Book I of Mein Kampf, with the doctrine of Aryan superiority over other races and the right of Germans, in virtue of this superiority, to dominate and use other peoples as instruments for their own ends. The whole of Chapter 11 of Mein Kampf is dedicated to this master race theory, and, indeed, many of the later speeches of Hitler, his addresses to his generals and so forth, were mainly repetitive of Chapter 11.
If the Court will look at the extract from Page 256, it reads as follows:
“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. . . .
“For the establishment of superior types of civilization the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites . . . .”
And in a later passage in Mein Kampf, at Page 344, Hitler applies these general ideas to Germany:
“If in its historical development the German people had possessed the unity of the herd by which other people have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe today. 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 civilization.”
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, which appears again and again, is: Firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of international problems represent a disastrous weakness in the nation that adopts them.
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:
“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.”
Hitler in this book also roundly declares that the mere restoration of Germany’s frontiers as they were in 1914 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes. At Page 553 he writes:
“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 defense. 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.
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:
“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 for 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.
“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 today. 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.”
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 today 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 doctrine of nationhood.”
Now these passages from Mein Kampf raise the question: Where did Hitler expect to find the increased territory beyond the 1914 boundaries of Germany? To this Hitler’s answer is sufficiently explicit. Reviewing the history of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, he wrote in an early passage of Mein Kampf, at Page 132:
“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.
“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 fulfillment 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.”
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 program 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 line 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.
“But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her.”
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, therefore 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.
The final quotation from Mein Kampf comes from Page 570:
“As long as the eternal conflict between France and Germany is waged only in the form of a German defense against the French attack, that conflict can never be decided, and from century to century Germany will lose one position after another. If we study the changes that have taken place, from the 12th century up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German language is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to result from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct which has hitherto been so detrimental for us.
“Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account will they cease allowing the national will-to-live to wear itself out in merely passive defense and will rally together for a last decisive contest with France. And in this contest the essential objective of the German nation will be fought for. Only then will it be possible to put an end to the eternal Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved so sterile.
“Of course it is here presumed that Germany sees in the suppression of France nothing more than a means which will make it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter. Today there are 80 million Germans in Europe. And our foreign policy will be recognized as rightly conducted only when, after barely a hundred years, there will be 250 million Germans living on this continent, not packed together as the coolies in the factories of another continent, but as tillers of the soil and workers whose labor will be a mutual assurance for their existence.”
I submit, therefore, that, quite apart from the evidence already submitted to the Tribunal, the evidence of Mein Kampf, taken in conjunction with the facts of Nazi Germany’s subsequent behavior towards other countries, goes to show that from the very first moment that they attained power, and indeed long before that time, Hitler and his confederates, the defendants, were engaged in planning and preparing aggressive war as is alleged against them in this Indictment.
Events have proved in the blood and misery of millions of men, women, and children that Mein Kampf was no mere literary exercise to be treated with easy indifference, as unfortunately it was treated before the war by those who were imperiled, but was the expression of a fanatical faith in force and fraud as the means to Nazi dominance in Europe, if not in the whole world. The Prosecution’s submission is that, accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of Mein Kampf, the Nazi confederates who are indicted here deliberately pushed our civilization over the precipice of war.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, the next stage of the Prosecution is the presentation of the cases against the individual defendants under the Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Before that is begun the chief prosecutors for the United States and Great Britain wish, with the permission of the Tribunal, to make four points perfectly clear:
The object of this part of the case is to collect for the benefit, first, of the members of the Tribunal and, secondly, of the Defense Counsel concerned, the evidence against each defendant under Counts One and Two which has been presented by the American and British Delegations. Otherwise it would be easy among the many documents already before the Court to miss relevant pieces of evidence which the Tribunal might wish to consider and to which the defendants may wish to make a reply.
This does not mean that the case against these defendants has in any way ended. Vital and important parts of the case remain concerning the actual atrocities, both War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. The evidence in regard to these will shortly be presented by the French Delegation and the Delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and when the massive documentation of these crimes is placed before the Court, the French and Soviet Delegations will have the opportunity of relating them to the individual defendants in the dock.
It has been the desire of all the chief prosecutors to delimit as clearly as possible the evidence under the respective Counts of the Indictment. The documents in evidence, however, were not written with a view to this Trial, and therefore many of them inevitably deal with offenses under more than one Count. It is by reason of this alone that some overlapping and repetition necessarily exists.
Similarly it may occur that as the French and Soviet cases are developed documents may come to light which bear on the common plan or the initiation of wars of aggression or on other material connected with Counts One and Two. The American and British Delegations will welcome any addition to the evidence on these parts of the case which such documents may provide and gladly receive such reinforcement from their French and Soviet colleagues.
With this explanation, and I am very grateful to the Tribunal for allowing me to make it, I call on my friend Mr. Albrecht to commence this part of the case.
DR. THOMA: Colonel Wheeler in his accusation concerning the oppression of the Christian churches in the Eastern territory also named the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Defendant Rosenberg, and held him responsible. I have, however, neither in the speech of the Prosecution nor in the document book, found any proof that such persecution of the Church also took place in the territories administered by Rosenberg. I wish rather to direct the attention of the Tribunal to Document 1517-PS, in which there is a note signed by Rosenberg concerning a discussion on questions of the East. This document contains the following statement made by Rosenberg, “The Führer agrees with Rosenberg’s Edict of Tolerance.”
THE PRESIDENT: Am I to understand that you are making a motion at this stage?
DR. THOMA: I have a request to make to the Prosecution: that it should, if possible, subsequently substantiate its charge against Rosenberg.
THE PRESIDENT: Is your point that this Document 1517-PS has not yet been in, or what is your point?
DR. THOMA: To my knowledge this document has already been submitted, and that was in connection with Hitler’s opinion that the Crimea question should be cleared up completely. But in my present request I am concerned with the fact that the Prosecution stated that in the Government General and likewise in Warthegau and in the Eastern countries, and in the areas administered by the Defendant Rosenberg as well, persecution of the Church took place. The Prosecution has produced documents concerning the first three territories, but as far as the latter territory is concerned, I have learned of no such documents being either in the document book or in the personal presentation made by the Prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you must understand that the Tribunal are not at this stage accepting everything that has been said by the Prosecution. You will have full opportunity when you present the case on behalf of the Defendant Rosenberg to present any documents which may be relevant and to comment upon any documents which have been cited by the Prosecution and to make any argument that you think right; but this is not the appropriate time to make any such argument. We are still considering the case for the Prosecution, and you will have full opportunity hereafter. Do you understand?
DR. THOMA: Then I ask the High Tribunal to consider my present explanation as a statement.
THE PRESIDENT: We will do so, but it is not convenient for Counsel for the Defense to intervene with statements of this sort; otherwise each one of the defendants’ counsel might be doing it all the time. We must ask you therefore to withhold such statements until your time comes to answer the case for the Prosecution.
MR. RALPH G. ALBRECHT (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, I have been charged by the Chief of Counsel for the United States with the duty of pointing out, on the basis of evidence already admitted and of additional evidence that will be offered, the individual responsibility of some of these defendants for the crimes specified in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.
When these defendants chose to abandon everything that had been recognized as good in German life and affirmatively participated in the work of achieving the objectives of the Party, we submit that they well knew what National Socialism stood for. They knew of the program announced by the Nazi Party and they also had knowledge of Nazi methods. The official NSDAP program with its 25 points was open and notorious. Announced and published to the world in 1920, it was published and republished and adverted to throughout the years. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions to make the Party program the fundamental law of the German State. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions generally. For all to read there was Mein Kampf, the product of the warped brain of the Führer, and there were the prolific writings and utterances of many other leaders who rose to prominence, some of whom are not sitting in the defendants’ box. And Hitler himself had announced, that the Nazis would use force if necessary to achieve their purposes.
Among these conspirators there were those who, like the Defendants Hess, Rosenberg, and Göring, were associated with Hitler since the very inception of the conspiracy. These men were among the original planners. They were the men who subsequently set the pace and cast the mould for the future. But there were also other conspirators (the balance of the defendants in the dock fit into this category), who voluntarily joined the conspiracy later.
While these men may be characterized perhaps as cruel, callous, or inhuman, they certainly may not be called dull or stupid. They knew, and had had the opportunity to observe, the manifestations of Nazi violence and Nazi methods as the pattern of the swastika developed. They knew the nature of what they were getting into. Therefore they must be presumed to have had the desire to participate—and participate they did—voluntarily, and so we submit that it may not validly be inferred that they did not join the stream of the conspiracy with their eyes open, scienter, as the conspiracy gathered momentum and developed into a rushing torrent.
Much evidence has already been admitted by the Tribunal of the overt acts of these defendants, as well as of their fellow conspirators. We shall make no effort at this time to present an exhaustive recital of all crimes planned or initiated by these defendants for which they must bear full responsibility beyond peradventure. The world already knows more of the evil deeds of these men and of their co-conspirators than the Prosecution possibly could hope to establish within the reasonable limits of time and of men’s patience. At this point we shall attempt to focus attention merely to illustrative criminal conduct of the individual conspirators.
There is an advantage to proceeding, we submit, as we propose to do, with the permission of the Tribunal, to show in outline the extent to which these defendants have become implicated in the serious charges against them. In the case of many of these conspirators, a recital of their crimes will relate to their planning of several of the categories of crimes described in Counts One and Two of the Indictment. We shall draw these various threads together and show, as I have said, the outline of the completed proof, as it were, within Count One of the Indictment, against the individual conspirators.
Thus, on behalf of the United States, I shall commence to show how some of these defendants fit into the broad stream of the Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and the extent of their individual responsibility for their acts in pursuance of that conspiracy.
First of all, we mention the late Defendant Robert Ley who, by recourse to self-destruction, has escaped all punishment for his participation in the conspiracy.
Next we mention Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the action against whom has been severed from this proceeding.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that documentary proof has been offered and will be offered in support of the allegations of the Indictment that implicate both Ley and Krupp as co-conspirators, for whose crimes the remaining defendants also must accept responsibility.
Next we consider the Defendant Fritz Sauckel. The case against Sauckel has been completely stated and supported by a wealth of damning evidence by my learned colleague Mr. Dodd in his presentation of the case on slave labor. We submit that it is unnecessary to add anything further to the case against Sauckel to demonstrate how completely he filled his place in the stream of the conspiracy.
The next defendant to be considered is Albert Speer. Like his fellow-conspirator Sauckel, Speer is deeply implicated as a member of the conspiracy and much of the case against him has been presented by Mr. Dodd in the case on slave labor. But, unlike Sauckel, Speer’s criminal activity went substantially beyond the realm of slave labor. His was one of the master minds in the plan for the systematic robbery and spoliation of the lands overrun by the German war machine. Documentary proof of Speer’s participation in the spoliation practices in the countries of Western Europe, as well as in the Occupied Eastern Territories, will be presented subsequently by our learned colleagues, the Chief Prosecutor representing the Soviet Union and the Chief French Prosecutor, under the remaining Counts of the Indictment. This is essentially the case that proves Speer to have been a member of the conspiracy.
There is, however, one additional exhibit that I would like to offer into evidence at this time. It was received only a few days ago from the Ministerial Document Center at Kassel and it is a dossier maintained on the Defendant Speer in the offices of the Reichsführer SS. I offer this file as Exhibit Number USA-575. It is our Document 3568-PS and I shall read from the dossier. I shall read from the letter dated the 25th of July 1942, from the second paragraph:
“Reich Minister Speer was enrolled as an SS man on the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS under SS Number 46104, with effect from the 20th of July 1942, by order of the Reichsführer SS.”
And I think that is all I need to read from that letter. But I should like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the annexed document, which is a questionnaire, and right at the beginning of the same it is related that Albert Speer was in the SS since the autumn of 1932, and his membership number in the Party was 474481.
I next mention the Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whose case has been completely presented in connection with the presentation on the Gestapo and the SD as criminal organizations. We submit that further proof is not needed to prove how completely this enemy of his own fatherland, Austria, had been carried along in the stream of the conspiracy.
We pass then to the case of perhaps the most important conspirator on trial before this Tribunal—the Number Two Nazi, the Nazi who stood next to the Führer himself, the Nazi who was in some respects even more dangerous than the Führer and other leading Party leaders.
We say that he was more dangerous because, unlike many leading Nazis, including Hitler, who were morally and socially on the fringes of society before the Nazi Party rode to success in 1933, this conspirator was known to come of substantial family which had furnished officers to the army and important civil servants to the country, in the past. Moreover, he was possessed of substantial appearance, an ingratiating manner, a certain affability. But all of these facets of character were but deceptions, because they helped to conceal the man’s core of steel, his vindictiveness, his cruelty, his lust for self-adornment, self-glorification, and power.
This man was most dangerous, furthermore, because the outward characteristics to which I have called attention and which he has to some extent demonstrated here in the presence of the Tribunal were useful in deceiving the representatives of foreign states who, in their concern, sought to learn from him the true intentions of the Nazi State which, by its repeated floutings of its international commitments, had so seriously disturbed the tranquillity of the world since 1933.
And I think that the record should show how throughout the earlier stages of this Trial, that is, before the nature of the documentary evidence offered by the Prosecution—too grim and almost implausible—much of the benevolence of this conspirator, his ever-ready smile and ingratiating manner, were daily in evidence in this chamber. His ready affirmation, by a pleasant nod for all to see, of the correctness of statements made or the contents of documents offered by counsel, his chiding shake of the head when he disagreed with such facts were commonplace.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think the Tribunal is interested in this, Mr. Albrecht.
MR. ALBRECHT: I shall pass on, then, with the presentation, with the permission of the Tribunal, and I shall give an account of certain facts already established by the documents in evidence; and with the permission of the Tribunal I shall not, unless it is so wished, refer to the exhibit numbers or citations of most of the old evidence that I shall allude to. These are all set forth in the trial brief that has already been distributed.
Against the background of this factual account, into which we have drawn the main threads of the case already presented that show the complicity of the Defendant Göring, we shall offer certain additional documentary evidence which we believe necessary to demonstrate Göring’s connection and responsibility for certain phases of the conspiracy.
I should have said before, if Your Honors please, that there have been distributed and are now before you three volumes of document books bearing the letters “DD,” which contain substantially all the documents, new as well as old, bearing on the individual responsibility of this defendant.
We shall first deal with the individual responsibility of this conspirator for Crimes against Peace. These crimes include Göring’s participation in the acquisition and consolidation of power in Germany, the economic and military preparations for war, and the waging of aggressive war.
For more than two decades Göring’s activities extended over nearly every phase of the conspiracy. He was one of the conspirators associated with Hitler from the very beginning. A member of the Party since 1922, he participated in the Munich Putsch of November 1923 at the head of the SA, a Nazi organization shown to have been committed to the use of violence.
Göring fled the country after the Putsch in order to escape arrest. After his return he became more than a commander of street fighters. He was designated Hitler’s first political assistant. A measure of the man may be gleaned from an exhibit already in evidence, namely, Gritzbach’s official biography of Göring, in which are recorded his dealings with the Brüning Government, his attempts to break down the barrier around President Von Hindenburg, and his coup as Reichstag President in September 1932 in procuring a vote of no confidence against the Von Papen Government just before the Reichstag was dissolved.
Göring’s writings show him not to be backward in taking credit for his efforts to advance the cause of the Party. Full credit has also been accorded him by Hitler, and Göring has boasted that no title and no decoration could make him so proud as the designation given to him by the German people, and I quote, “the most faithful paladin of our Führer.” That short quotation, may it please the Court, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, our Document 2324-PS.
With the advent of the Nazis to power in January 1933 Göring became acting Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of Prussia. In these capacities he proceeded promptly to establish a regime of terror in Prussia designed to suppress all opposition to the Nazi program.
His chief tool in that connection was the Prussian Police, which remained under his jurisdiction until 1936. As early as February 1933, he directed the entire police force to render unqualified assistance to the para-military organizations supporting the new government, such as the SA and the SS, and to crush all political opponents with firearms, if necessary, and regardless of the consequences. The Tribunal will take judicial notice of the directives of the 10th and 17th of February 1933, which are cited on Page 7 of our brief and which appear in that collection of decrees known as the Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung of 1933.
Göring has frequently and proudly acknowledged his personal responsibility for the crimes committed pursuant to orders of this character, and I recall his words which he uttered before thousands of his fellow Germans:
“Each bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol now is my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered; I ordered all this, I back it up. I assume the responsibility and I am not afraid to do so.”
That quotation, may it please the Tribunal, comes from our Exhibit Number USA-233, already in evidence, our Document 2324-PS.
Soon after he became Prime Minister of Prussia, in pursuance of the conspiracy, Göring began to develop the Gestapo or Secret State Police, the details of which organization of terror were presented to the Court by my learned colleague, Colonel Storey. As early as the 26th of April 1933, he signed the first law officially establishing the Gestapo in Prussia; and, pursuant to a decree which he signed, he named himself Prime Minister, Chief of the Prussian Secret State Police.
Göring was undoubtedly an efficient conspirator. He was impatient to consolidate the power of the Party at home. Already in spring 1933 the concentration camps were established in Prussia. Men and women, so-called “Marxists” and other political opponents, taken into custody by the Gestapo were thrown into concentration camps without trial. Göring said, “Against the enemies of the state we must proceed ruthlessly.” That statement appears in our Document 2324-PS, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-233.
The range of political terrorism under his leadership was almost limitless. A glance at a few of his police directives in those early days will indicate the extent and thoroughness with which every dissident voice was silenced. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of some of these decrees in the same collection I mentioned a short while ago, entitled the Ministerialblatt für die Preussische Innere Verwaltung, and we have cited these decrees on Pages 9 and 10 of our brief. These include:
A directive of the 22d of June 1933, which required all officials to watch the statements of civil servants and to denounce to the Defendant Göring those who made critical remarks. The failure to make such reports was to be regarded as proof of hostile attitude. Then there was the directive of the 23rd of June 1933, which suppressed all activities of the Social Democratic Party, including meetings and the party press, and ordered the confiscation of its property. There was the directive of the 30th of June 1933, which directed the Gestapo authorities to report to the Labor Trustees on the political attitude of the workers. There was the directive of the 15th of January 1934, which ordered the Gestapo and the frontier police to keep track of émigrés, particularly political émigrés and Jews residing in neighboring countries, and to arrest them and to put them in concentration camps if they returned to Germany.
The essential ruthlessness of Göring is further illustrated by a well-known bloody episode. After the elimination of the forces of the opposition, the Nazis felt it necessary to dispose of non-conformists within their own ranks. This they accomplished in what has become known as the Röhm Purge of the 30th of June 1934. The Defendant Frick, a chief conspirator in his own right, stated in that connection, in an affidavit, that many people were murdered who had nothing to do with the internal SA revolt, but who were “just not liked very well.”
Göring’s role in this sordid affair was related less than 2 weeks after the event by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag, and I would like to offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-576 our Document 3442-PS, in which is contained the speech of Hitler made on the 13th of July 1934 in the Reichstag. It is published in Das Archiv, Volume 4, at Page 505. I quote:
“Meanwhile Minister President Göring, had already received my instructions that in case of a purge he was to take analogous measures at once in Berlin and in Prussia. With an iron fist he beat down the attack on the National Socialist State before it could develop.”
With the accession of the Nazis to power Göring at once assumed a number of the highest and most influential positions also in the Reich. The proof already presented on the composition and functions of the Reich Cabinet and of the offices held by Göring shows him to have been, in fact, the most important executive of the Nazi State.
A member of the Reichstag since 1928 and its President since 1932, he was a member of the Cabinet from the beginning as Reich Minister without Portfolio. Shortly thereafter he received the portfolio as Reich Minister for Air. When, in an early meeting, the Cabinet discussed the pending Enabling Act, which gave the Cabinet plenary powers of legislation, he offered the suggestion that the required two-thirds majority might be obtained simply by refusing admittance to Social Democratic delegates. I offer in evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-578, our Document 2962-PS, which contains the minutes of that meeting. If Your Honors will note, that meeting was held on the 15th of March 1933, and there were present, besides the Defendant Göring, the Defendants Von Papen, Von Neurath, Frick, and Funk. I read from Page 6 of that document:
“Reich Minister Göring expressed his conviction that the Enabling Act would be passed with the necessary two-thirds majority. Possibly a majority could be obtained by banishing several Social Democrats from the hall. Possibly the Social Democrats would even refrain from voting on the Enabling Act. . . .”
In 1935, with the unmasking of a secret Luftwaffe, Göring became its Commander-in-Chief. He sat as a member and the Führer’s Deputy on the Reich Defense Council, established by the secret law of the 21st of May 1933. The purpose of that Council was, as stated by the Defendant Frick in an affidavit that is in evidence—and I quote:
“To plan preparations and decrees in case of war, which later on were published by the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich.”
His assumption of ever greater responsibility seemed limitless. In 1936 Göring was made Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, whereby he acquired plenary legislative and administrative powers over all German economic life. In 1938 he became a member of the Secret Cabinet Council, which had been established to act as “an advisory board in the direction of foreign policy.”
The Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich, created in 1939, took over, in effect, all of the legislative powers of the Cabinet which had not been reserved otherwise, and Göring became its chairman.
His efficient and ruthless services were recognized by Hitler in 1939, when he designated Göring as his successor, as heir apparent to the “New Order.”
In April 1936 Göring was appointed Coordinator for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange and empowered to supervise all State and Party activities in these fields. I offer in support of that fact, as Exhibit Number USA-577, our Document 2827-PS, which is an excerpt from Rühle, Das Dritte Reich. I read from the fourth paragraph of the excerpt, if Your Honor pleases, which is an excerpt from a decree signed by Hitler, and it reads as follows:
“Minister President, Colonel General Göring will take the measures necessary for the accomplishment of the tasks given to him and has the authority to issue decrees and general administrative directives. He, for this purpose, is authorized to question and issue directives to all authorities, including the highest Reich authorities, and all agencies of the Party, its formations and attached organizations.”
In this capacity Göring convened the War Minister, the Defendant Schacht as Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, and the Finance Minister for the Reich and the State of Prussia to discuss inter-agency problems connected with war mobilization. At a meeting of this group on the 12th of May 1936, when the question of the prohibitive cost of synthetic raw material substitutes arose, Göring decided:
“If we have war tomorrow we must help ourselves by substitutes. Then money will not play any role at all. If that is the case, then we must be ready to create the prerequisites for that in peacetime.”
A few days later, on the 27th of May 1936, at a meeting of the same group Göring opposed any limitations dictated by orthodox financial policies. He said that “all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war.”
The well-known Four Year Plan was proclaimed by Hitler at the 1936 Nuremberg Party Day. Göring was appointed Plenipotentiary in charge of the program, which was intended to achieve national self-sufficiency. Furthermore, Göring commented in 1936 that his chief task as Plenipotentiary was “to put the whole economy on a war footing within 4 years.” I would like to offer into evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-579, our Document EC-408, so that I may direct the Tribunal’s attention to a memorandum, dated the 30th of December 1936, of the Defense Division of the Wehrmacht, entitled, “Memorandum on the Four Year Plan and Preparation of the War Economy”; and in the third paragraph of the translation, or at Page 2, in the middle of Paragraph Number 3 in the German original, there is the statement registered in the protocol, in the memorandum, that:
“Minister President General Göring, as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan, by authority of the Führer and Reich Chancellor, granted 18 of October 1936.
“As regards the war economy, Minister President, Colonel General Göring sees it as his task ‘within 4 years to put the entire economy in a state of readiness for war.’ ”
The exhibit from which I have just read is of interest because of another document that has just been brought to the attention of the Prosecution. It is a note for the files, dated December 2, 1936, written in longhand on the letterhead of “Minister President General Göring,” and is in the handwriting of Colonel Bodenschatz, Göring’s Chief of Staff. I offer this memorandum as Exhibit Number USA-580. It is our Document 3474-PS, and I direct the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that the date of this document is the 2d of December 1936. That was a conference, apparently, at which all the chief officers and generals of the Air Force, the German Air Force, met. Besides the Defendant Göring, there were General Milch, General Kesselring, Rüdel, Stumpff, Christiansen, and all the top commanders of the Air Force, and I read:
“World press excited about the landing of 5,000 German volunteers in Spain. Official complaint by Great Britain; she gets in touch with France.
“Italy suggests that Germany and Italy send, each, one division ground troops to Spain. It is, however, necessary that Italy, as interested Mediterranean power, issue a political declaration first. A decision can be expected only within a few days.
“The general situation is very serious. Russia wants the war. England rearms speedily. Command therefore: Beginning today ‘höchste Einsatzbereitschaft’ ”—apparently the translator did not see fit to translate those words, which mean the “highest degree of readiness”—“regardless of financial difficulties. Göring takes over full responsibility.”
“Peace until 1941 is desirable. However, we cannot know whether there will be implications before. We are already in a state of war. It is only that no shot is being fired so far.”
THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps that would be a convenient time to break off.