Afternoon Session
M. DE MENTHON: Crimes against the physical person—arbitrary imprisonment, ill-treatment, deportations, murder committed by the Germans in the occupied countries—reached proportions beyond imagination, even in the course of a world conflict, and took the most odious forms.
These crimes spring directly from the Nazi doctrine and testify to the Reich leaders’ absolute disregard for the human individual, to the abolition of any sense of justice or even of pity, to a total subordination of any and all human consideration on the part of the German community.
All these crimes are linked to a policy of terrorism. Such a policy permits the subjugation of occupied countries without involving a large deployment of troops and their submission to anything that might be demanded of them. Many of these crimes are moreover tied up with the will to exterminate.
We shall examine in succession executions of hostages, police crimes, deportations, crimes involving prisoners of war, terroristic activities against the Resistance, and the massacre of civilian populations.
A. The execution of hostages constitutes in all countries the first act of terrorism on the part of German occupation troops. From 1940 on, the German command, notably in France, carried out numerous executions as reprisals for any crime against the German Army.
These practices, contrary to Article 50 of the Hague Convention which forbids collective sanctions, awaken everywhere a feeling of horror and frequently produce a result contrary to the one sought, by arousing the populations against the occupant.
The occupying authorities then endeavored to legalize such criminal practices, thus seeking to have them recognized by the populations as “the right” of the occupying power. Veritable “codes for hostages” were promulgated by the German military authorities.
Following the general order issued by the Defendant Keitel on 16 September 1941, Stülpnagel published in France his ordinance of 30 September 1941. According to the terms of this ordinance, all Frenchmen held by German authorities for any reason whatsoever were to be considered as hostages, as well as all Frenchmen who were in the custody of the French authorities on behalf of German organizations. The ordinance of Stülpnagel specifies:
“At the time of the burial of the bodies, burial in a common grave of a rather large number of persons in a particular cemetery must be avoided, since this would create a shrine for pilgrims which now or later might become a center for the stimulation of anti-German propaganda.”
In carrying out this ordinance the most infamous executions of hostages were committed.
Following the murder of two German officers, one in Nantes on 2 October 1941 and the other at Bordeaux a few days thereafter, the German authorities had 27 hostages shot at Châteaubriant and 21 at Nantes.
On 15 August 1942, 96 hostages were shot at Mon-Valérien.
In September 1942 an assault had been committed against German soldiers in the Rex motion picture house in Paris. One hundred sixteen hostages were shot.
Forty-six hostages were taken from the hostage depot of the Fortress at Romainville and 70 from Bordeaux.
In reprisal for the murder of a German official of the labor front 50 hostages were shot in Paris at the end of September 1943.
Threats of reprisals on the families of the patriots of the Resistance are related to the same odious policy of hostages. The Kommandantur published the following notice in the Pariser Zeitung of 16 July 1942:
“Near male relatives, brothers-in-law, and cousins of the ‘agitators’ above the age of 18 years will be shot.
“All female family members of the same degree of relationship shall be condemned to forced labor.
“Children less than 18 years of age of all above-mentioned persons shall be sent to a house of correction.”
The executions of hostages continued everywhere until the liberation, but in the last period they were no more than one additional feature in the methods of German terrorism, then grown more sweeping.
B. Among the crimes against persons of which the civilian populations of the occupied countries of the West were victims, those committed by the Nazi police organizations are the most revolting. The intervention of the German police who, in spite of certain appearances, did not belong to the armies of occupation, is in itself contrary to international law. Their crimes, particularly hateful in the complete disregard for human dignity that they imply, were multiplied during 4 years throughout all the territories of the West occupied by the German forces.
True, no definite order, no detailed directive emanating directly from one of the defendants or from one of their immediate subordinates and valid for all the German police or for the police of the occupied territories of the West, has been found. But these crimes were committed by a police that was a direct expression of the National Socialist ideology and the undeniable instrument of National Socialist policy for which all the defendants carry the full and entire responsibility.
Before the considerable mass of acts, their similarity, their simultaneousness, their generalization in time and place, no one would be able to deny that these acts are not only the individual responsibility of those who committed them here or there, but constitute as well the execution of orders from above.
The arrests took place without any of the elementary guarantees recognized in all civilized countries. On a simple, unverified denunciation, without previous investigation, and often on charges brought by persons not qualified to bring them, masses of arbitrary arrests took place in every occupied country.
During the first period of the occupation, the Germans nevertheless simulated a scrupulous respect for “legality” in the matter of arrests. This legality was that introduced by Nazism in the interior of Germany and did not respect any of the traditional guarantees to which the individuals in civilized countries are entitled. But, rapidly, even this pseudo-legality itself was abandoned and the arrests became absolutely arbitrary.
The worst treatments were applied to arrested persons even before the guilt of the accused had been examined. The use of torture in the interrogations was almost a general rule. The tortures usually applied were beating, whipping, chaining for several days without a moment of rest for nourishment or hygienic care, immersion in ice water, drowning in a bathtub, charging the bathwater with electricity, electrification of the most sensitive parts of the body, burns at certain places on the body, and the pulling out of fingernails. But, in addition, those who carried out these measures had every latitude for unleashing their instinct of cruelty and of sadism towards their victims. All those facts, which were of public knowledge in the occupied countries, never led to any punishment whatsoever of their authors on the part of the responsible authorities. It even seems that the torture was more severe when an officer was present.
It is undeniable that the actions of the German police towards the prisoners were part and parcel of a long premeditated system of criminality, ordered by the chiefs of the regime and executed by the most faithful members of the National Socialist organizations.
Aside from the general use of torture on prisoners, the German police perpetrated a considerable number of murders. It is impossible to know the conditions under which many of these murders were carried out. Nevertheless, we have enough information to permit us to discover in them a new expression of the general policy of the National Socialists in the occupied countries. Often the deaths were only the result of the tortures inflicted on the prisoners, but often the murder was deliberately desired and carried out.
C. The crime which will undoubtedly be remembered as the most horrible among those committed by the Germans against the civilian populations of the occupied countries was that of deportation and internment in the concentration camps of Germany.
These deportations had a double aim: To secure additional labor for the benefit of the German war machine; to eliminate from the occupied countries and progressively exterminate the elements most opposed to Germanism. They served likewise to empty prisons overcrowded with patriots and to remove the latter for all time.
The deportations and the methods employed in the concentration camps were a stupefying revelation for the civilized world. Nevertheless, they also are only a natural consequence of the National Socialist doctrine, according to which man, of himself, has no value except when he is of service to the German race.
It is not possible to give exact figures. It is probable that one would make an understatement when speaking of 250,000 for France; 6,000 for Luxembourg; 5,200 for Denmark; 5,400 for Norway; 120,000 for Holland; and 37,000 for Belgium.
The arrests are founded, now under a pretext of a political nature, now on a pretext of a racial nature. In the beginning they were individual; subsequently they took on a collective character, particularly in France since the end of 1941. Sometimes the deportation did not come until after long months of prison, but more often the arrest was made directly with a view to deportation under the system of “protective custody.” Everywhere imprisonment in the country of origin was accompanied by brutality, often by tortures. Before being sent to Germany, the deportees were, in general, concentrated in an assembly camp. The formation of a convoy was often the first stage of extermination. The deportees travelled in cattle cars, 80 to 120 per car, no matter what the season. There were few convoys where no deaths occurred. In certain transports the proportion of deaths was more than 25 percent.
The deportees were sent to Germany, almost always to concentration camps, but sometimes also to prisons.
Admitted to the prisons were those deportees who had been condemned or were awaiting trial. The prisoners there were crowded together under inhumane conditions. Nevertheless, the prison regime was generally less severe than conditions in the camps. The work there was less out of proportion to the strength of the prisoners, and the prison wardens were more humane than the SS in the concentration camps.
It appears to have been the plan, followed by the Nazis in the concentration camps, gradually to do away with the prisoners; but only after their working strength had been used to the advantage of the German war effort.
The Tribunal has been told of the almost inconceivable treatment inflicted by the SS on the prisoners. We shall take the liberty of going into still further detail during the course of the statement of the French Prosecution, for it must be fully known to what extent of horrors the Germans, inspired by National Socialist doctrine, could stoop.
The most terrible aspect was perhaps the desire to create moral degradation and debasement in the prisoner until he lost, if possible, all semblance of a human individual.
The usual living conditions imposed on the deportees in the camps were sufficient to ensure slow extermination through inadequate feeding, bad sanitation, cruelty of the guards, severity of discipline, strain of work out of proportion to the strength of the prisoner, and haphazard medical service. Moreover, you already know that many did not die a natural death, but were put to death by injections, gas chambers, or inoculations of fatal diseases. But more speedy extermination was often the case; it was often brought about by ill-treatment: communal ice-cold showers in winter in the open air, prisoners left naked in the snow, cudgelling, dog bites, hanging by the wrists.
Some figures will illustrate the result of these various methods of extermination. At Buchenwald, during the first 3 months of 1945, there were 13,000 deaths out of 40,000 internees. At Dachau, 13,000 to 15,000 died in the 3 months preceding the liberation. At Auschwitz, a camp of systematic extermination, the number of murdered persons came to several millions.
As to the total number of those deported from France, the official figure is as follows: Of 250,000 deported only 35,000 returned.
The deportees served as guinea pigs for numerous medical, surgical, or other experiments which generally led to their death. At Auschwitz, at Struthof, in the prison at Cologne, at Ravensbrück, at Neuengamme, numerous men, women, and children were sterilized. At Auschwitz the most beautiful women were set apart, artificially fertilized, and then gassed. At Struthof a special barrack, isolated from the others by barbed wire, was used to inoculate men in groups of 40 with fatal illnesses. In the same camp women were gassed while German doctors observed their reactions through a peephole arranged for this purpose. Extermination was often directly effected by means of individual or collective executions. These were carried out by shooting, by hanging, by injections, by gas vans, or gas chamber.
I should not wish to stress further the facts, already so numerous, submitted to Your High Tribunal during the preceding days by the American Prosecution, but the representative of France, so many of his people having died in these camps after horrible sufferings, could not pass in silence over this tragic example of complete inhumanity. This would have been inconceivable in the 20th century, if a doctrine of return to barbarism had not been established in the very heart of Europe.
D. Crimes committed against prisoners of war, although less known, bear ample testimony to the degree of inhumanity which Nazi Germany had attained.
To begin with, the violations of international conventions committed against prisoners of war are numerous. Many were forced to travel on foot, almost without food, for very long distances. Many camps had no respect for even the most elementary rules of hygiene. Food was very often insufficient; thus a report from the WFSt of the OKW dated 11 April 1945 and annotated by the Defendant Keitel, shows that 82,000 prisoners of war interned in Norway received the food strictly indispensable to the maintenance of life on the assumption that they were not working, whereas 30,000 of them were really employed on heavy work.
In agreement with the Defendant Keitel, acting at the request of the Defendant Göring, camps for prisoners belonging to the British and American Air Forces were established in towns which were exposed to air raids.
In violation of the text of the Geneva Convention, it was decided, at a conference held at the Führer’s headquarters on 27 January 1945, in the presence of the Defendant Göring, to punish by death all attempts to escape made by prisoners of war when in convoy.
Besides all these violations of the Geneva Convention, numerous crimes were committed by the German authorities against prisoners of war: Execution of captured allied airmen, murder of commando troops, collective extermination of certain prisoners of war for no reason whatsoever—for example the matter of 120 American soldiers at Malmédy on 27 January 1945. Parallel with “Nacht und Nebel,” an expression for the inhumane treatment inflicted on civilians, can be put down the “Sonderbehandlung,” a “special treatment” of prisoners of war, in which these disappeared in great numbers.
E. The same barbarism is found in the terroristic activity carried out by the German Army and Police against the Resistance.
The order of the Defendant Keitel of 16 September 1941, which may be considered as a basic document, certainly has as a purpose the fight against the Communist movements; but it anticipates that resistance to the army of occupation can come from other than Communist sources and decides that every case of resistance is to be interpreted as having a Communist origin.
As a matter of fact, in carrying out this general order to annihilate the Resistance by every possible means, the Germans arrested, tortured, and massacred men of all ranks and all classes. To be sure, the members of the Resistance rarely complied with the conditions laid down by the Hague Conventions, which would qualify them to be considered as regular combat forces; they could be sentenced to death as francs-tireurs and executed. But they were assassinated without trial in most cases, often after having been terribly tortured.
After the liberation, numerous charnel-houses were discovered and the bodies examined by doctors: They bore obvious traces of extreme brutal treatment, cranial tissue was pulled out, the spinal column had been dislocated, the ribs had been so badly fractured that the chest had been entirely crushed and the lungs perforated, hair and nails had been pulled out. It is impossible to determine the total number of the victims of German atrocities in the fight against the Resistance. It is certainly very high. In the department of the Rhône alone, for example, the bodies of 713 victims were discovered after the liberation.
An order of 3 February 1944 of the Commander-in-Chief of the forces in the West, signed “By order General Sperrle,” laid down for the fight against the terrorists immediate reply by fire-arms and the immediate burning down of all houses from which shots had come:
“It is of little importance”—the text adds—“that innocent people should suffer. It will be the fault of the terrorists. All commanders of troops who show weakness in repressing the terrorists will be severely punished. On the other hand, those who go beyond the orders received and are too severe will incur no penalty.”
The war diary of Von Brodowski, commanding Liaison Headquarters Number 588, at Clermont-Ferrand, gives irrefutable examples of the barbarous forms which the Germans gave to the struggle against the Resistance. The resisters caught were almost all shot on the spot. Others were turned over to the SD or the Gestapo to be subjected first to torture. The diary of Brodowski mentions “the cleaning up of a hospital” or “liquidation of an infirmary.”
The struggle against the Resistance had the same atrocious character in all the occupied territories of the West.
F. The last months of the German occupation were characterized in France by a strengthening of the policy of terrorism which multiplied the crimes against the civilian population. The crimes which we are going to consider were not isolated acts committed from time to time in this or that locality, but were acts perpetrated in the course of extensive operations, the high number of which can be explained only by general orders.
The perpetrators of these crimes were frequently members of the SS, but the military command shares responsibility for them. In a directive entitled “Fight against the Partisan Bands,” dated 6 May 1944, the Defendant Jodl states that:
“. . . the collective measures to be taken against the inhabitants of entire villages (including the burning down of these villages) are to be ordered exclusively by the division commanders or the heads of the SS and of the police.”
The war diary of Von Brodowski mentions the following: “It is understood that the leadership of the Sipo and of the SD shall be subordinate to me.”
These operations are supposedly measures of reprisal which were caused by the action of the Resistance. But the necessities of war have never justified the plundering and heedless burning down of towns and villages nor the blind massacres of innocent people. The Germans killed, plundered, burned down, very often without any reason whatsoever, whether in Ain, in Savoie, Lot, or Tarn-and-Garonne, in Vercors, Corréze, in Dordogne. Entire villages were burned down at a time when the nearest armed groups of the Resistance were tens of kilometers away and the population of these villages had not made a single hostile gesture towards the German troops.
The two most typical examples are those of Maillé (in Indre-et-Loire) where on 25 August 1944, 52 buildings out of 60 were destroyed and 124 people were killed; and that of Oradour-sur-Glane (in the Haute-Vienne). The war diary of Von Brodowski makes mention of the latter act in the following manner:
“All the male population of Oradour was shot. The women and children took refuge in the church. The church caught fire. Explosives were stored in the church. (This assertion has been shown to be false.) Also women and children perished.”
In the scale of criminal undertakings, perpetrated in the course of the war by the leaders of National Socialist Germany, we finally meet a category which we have called crimes against human status (la condition humaine).
First of all it is important that I should define clearly for the Tribunal the meaning of this term. This classical French expression belongs both to the technical vocabulary of law and to the language of philosophy. It signifies all those faculties, the exercising and developing of which rightly constitute the meaning of human life. Each of these faculties finds its corresponding expression in the order of man’s existence in society. His belonging to at least two social groups—the nearest and the most extensive—is translated by the right to family life and to nationality. His relations with the powers constitute a system of obligations and guarantees. His material life, as producer and consumer of goods, is expressed by the right to work in the widest meaning of this term. Its spiritual aspect implies a combination of possibilities to give out and to receive the expressions of thought, whether in assemblies or associations, in religious practice, in teachings given or received, by the many means which progress has put at the disposal for the dissemination of intellectual value: Books, press, radio, cinema. This is the right of spiritual liberty.
Against this human status, against the status of public and civil rights of the human beings in occupied territories, the German Nazis directed a systematic policy of corruption and demoralization. We shall treat this question last because it is this undertaking which presents a character of the utmost gravity and which has assumed the most widespread prevalence. Man is more attached to his physical integrity and to life than to his property. But in all high conceptions of life, man is even less attached to life than to that which makes for his dignity and quality, according to the great Latin maxim, “Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas.” On the other hand, if, in the territories occupied by them, the Germans did not, in spite of the importance and extent of their crimes, plunder all the property and goods and if they did not kill all the people, there remains not a single man whose essential rights they did not change or abolish and whose condition as a human being they did not violate in some way.
We can even say that in the entire world and as regards all people, even those to whom they reserved the privileges belonging to the superior race and even as regards themselves, their agents, and accomplices, the Nazi leaders committed a major offense against the conscience which mankind has today evolved from his status as a human being. The execution of the enterprise was preceded by its plan. This is manifest in the entire Nazi doctrine and we shall content ourselves by recalling a few of its dominant features. The human status expresses itself, we say, in major statutes, every one of which comprises a complex apparatus of very different provisions. But these statutes are inspired in the laws of civilized countries by a conception essential to the nature of man. This conception is defined in two complementary ideas: The dignity of the human being considered in each and every person individually, on the one hand; and on the other hand, the permanence of the human being considered within the whole of humanity. Every juridical organization of the human being in a state of civilization proceeds from this essential, two-fold conception of the individual, in each and in all, the individual and the universal.
Without doubt, to Occidentals this conception usually appears connected with the Christian doctrine; but, if it is exact that Christianity is bound up with its affirmation and diffusion, it would be a mistake to see in it only the teachings of one or even of certain religions. It is a general conception which imposes itself quite naturally on the spirit; It was professed since ancient pre-Christian times; and, in more recent times, the great German philosopher Kant expressed it in one of his most forceful formulas, by saying that a human being should always be considered as an end and never a means.
The role, as we have already exposed, of the zealots of the Hitlerian myth was to protest against the spontaneous affirmation of the genius of mankind and to pretend to break at this point the continuous progress of moral intelligence. The Tribunal is already acquainted with the abundant literature of this sect. Without a doubt, nobody expressed himself more clearly than the Defendant Rosenberg when he declared in the Myth of the 20th Century, Page 539:
“Peoples whose health is dependent on their blood do not know individualism as a criterion of values any more than they recognize universalism. Individualism and universalism in the absolute sense and historically speaking, are the ideological concepts of decadence.”
Nazism professes, moreover, that:
“The distance between the lowest human being still worthy of this name, and our higher races, is greater than that between the lowest type of mankind and the best educated monkey.” (Die Reden Hitlers, Reichsparteitag 1933, Page 33).
Thus, it is not only a question of abolishing the truly divine conception which religion sets forth as regards man, but even of setting aside all purely human conceptions and substituting for it an animalistic conception.
As a consequence of such a doctrine, the upsetting of the human status appears not only to be a means to which one has recourse in the presence of temporary opportunities, such as those arising from war, but also as an aim both necessary and desirable. The Nazis propose to classify mankind in three main categories: That of their adversaries, or persons whom they consider inadaptable to their peculiar constructions—this category can be bullied in all sorts of ways and even destroyed; that of superior men which they claim is distinguishable by their blood or by some arbitrary means; that of inferior men, who do not deserve destruction and whose vital power should be used in a regime of slavery for the well-being of the “overlords.”
The Nazi leaders proposed to apply this conception everywhere they could in territories more and more extended, to populations ever more numerous; and in addition they demonstrated the frightful ambition to succeed in imposing it on intelligent people, to convince their victims and to demand from them, in addition to so many sacrifices, an act of faith. The Nazi war is a war of fanatic religion in which one can exterminate infidels and equally as well impose conversion upon them. It should further be noted that the Nazis aggravated the excesses of those horrible times, for in a religious war converted adversaries were received like brothers, whereas the Nazis never gave their pitiable victims the chance of saving themselves, even by the most complete recantation.
It is by virtue of these conceptions that the Germans undertook the Germanization of occupied territories and had, without doubt, the intention of undertaking to germanize the whole world. This Germanization can be distinguished from the ancient theories of Pan-Germanism insofar as it is both a Nazification and an actual return to barbarism.
Racialism classifies occupied nations into two main categories; Germanization means for some a National Socialist assimilation, and for others disappearance or slavery. For human beings of the so-called “higher race,” the favored condition assigned to them comprises the falling-in with the new concepts of the Germanic community. For human beings of the so-called “inferior race” it was proposed either to abolish all rights while waiting or preparing their physical destruction, or to assign them to servitude. For both, racialism means acceptance of the Nazi myths.
This two-fold program of absolute Germanization was not carried out in its entirety nor in all the occupied countries. The Germans had conceived it as a lengthy piece of work which they intended to carry out gradually, by a series of successive measures. This progressive approach is always characteristic of the Nazi method. It fits in, apparently, with the variety of obstacles encountered, with the hypocritical desire of sparing public opinion, and with a horrid lust for experimenting and scientific ostentation.
When the countries were liberated, the state of the Germanization varied a great deal according to the different countries, and in each country according to such and such category of the population. At times the method was driven on to its extreme consequences; elsewhere, one only discovers signs of preparatory arrangements. But it is easy to note everywhere the trend of the same evil, interrupted at different moments in its development, but everywhere directed by the same inexorable movement.
As regards national status, the Germans proceeded to an annexation, pure and simple, in Luxembourg, in the Belgian cantons of Eupen and of Malmédy, and in the French departments of Alsace and of Lorraine. Here the criminal undertaking consisted both in the abolition of the sovereignty of the state, natural protector of its nationals, and in the abolition for those nationals of the status they had as citizens of this state, a status recognized by domestic and international law.
The inhabitants of these territories thereby lost their original nationality, ceasing to be Luxembourgers, Belgians, or French. They did not acquire, however, full German nationality; they were admitted only gradually to this singular favor, on the further condition that they furnish certain justifications therefor.
The Germans sought to efface in them even the memory of their former country. In Alsace and in Moselle the French language was banned; names of places and of people were germanized.
New citizens or mere subjects were equally subjected to the obligations relating to the Nazi regime: To forced labor, as a matter of course, and soon to military conscription. In case of resistance to these unjust and abominable orders, since it was a matter of arming the French against their allies and in reality against their own country, sanctions were brought to bear, not only against the parties concerned, but even against the members of their families, following the theses of Nazi law, which brush aside the fundamental principles of law against repression.
Persons who appeared recalcitrant to Nazification, or even those who seemed of little use to Nazi enterprises, became victims of large-scale expulsions, driven from their homes in a few short hours with their most scanty baggage, and despoiled of their property.
Yet this inhuman evacuation of entire populations, which will remain one of the horrors of our century, appears as favorable treatment when compared to the deportations which were to fill the concentration camps, in particular the Struthof Camp in Alsace.
At the same time that they oppressed the population by force and in contravention of all law, the Nazis undertook, according to their method, to convince the people of the excellence of their regime. The young people especially were to be educated in the spirit of National Socialism.
The Germans did not proceed to the annexation, properly speaking, of other areas than those we have named. It is beyond doubt, however, and confirmed by numerous indications, that they proposed to annex territories much more important by applying to them the same regime, if the war had ended in a German victory. But everywhere they prepared for the abolition or the weakening of the national status by debarring or damaging the sovereignty of the state involved and by forcing the destruction of patriotic feelings.
In all the occupied countries, whether or not there existed an apparent governmental authority, the Germans systematically disregarded the laws of occupation. They legislated, regulated, administered. Besides the territories annexed outright, the other occupied territories also were in a state that might be defined as a state of pre-annexation.
This leads to a second aspect which is the attack on spiritual security. Everywhere, although with variation in time and space, the Germans applied themselves to abolishing the public freedoms, notably the freedom of association, the freedom of the press; and they endeavored to trammel the essential freedoms of the spirit.
The German authorities subordinated the press to the strictest censorship, even in matters devoid of military character; a press, many of whose representatives, moreover, were inspired by them. Manifold restrictions were imposed on industry and on the moving picture business. Numerous works altogether without political character were banned, even textbooks. Religious authorities themselves saw their clerical realm invaded and words of truth could not be heard. After having curtailed freedom of expression even beyond the degree that a state of war and occupation justified, the Germans developed their National Socialist propaganda systematically through the press, radio, films, meetings, books, and posters. All these efforts achieved so little result that one might attempt today to minimize their importance. Nevertheless, the propaganda conducted by means most contrary to the respect due human intelligence and on behalf of a criminal doctrine, must go down in history as one of the disgraces of the National Socialist regime.
No less did the Germanization program compromise human rights in the other broad aspects that we have defined: Right of the family, right of professional and economic activity, juridical guarantees. These rights were attacked; these guarantees were curtailed. The forced labor and the deportations infringed the rights of the family, as well as the rights of labor. The arbitrary arrests suppressed the most elementary legal guarantees. In addition, the Germans tried to impose their own methods on the administrative authorities of the occupied countries and sometimes unfortunately succeeded in their attempts.
It is also known that racial discriminations were provoked against citizens of the occupied countries who were catalogued as Jews, measures particularly hateful, damaging to their personal rights and to their human dignity.
All these criminal acts were committed in violation of the rules of international law, and in particular the Hague Convention, which limits the rights of armies occupying a territory.
The fight of the Nazis against the human status completes the tragic and monstrous totality of war criminality of Nazi Germany, by placing her under the banner of the abasement of man, deliberately brought about by the National Socialist doctrine. This gives it its true character of a systematic undertaking of a return to barbarism.
Such are the crimes which National Socialist Germany committed while waging the war of aggression that she launched. The martyred peoples appeal to the justice of civilized nations and request Your High Tribunal to condemn the National Socialist Reich in the person of its surviving chiefs.
Let the defendants not be astonished at the charges brought against them and let them not dispute at all this principle of retroactivity, the permanence of which was guaranteed, against their wishes, by democratic legislation. War Crimes are defined by international law and by the national law of all modern civilizations. The defendants knew that acts of violence against the persons and property and human status of enemy nationals were crimes for which they would have to answer before international justice.
The Governments of the United Nations have addressed many a warning to them since the beginning of the hostilities.
On 25 October 1941 Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, announced that the war criminals would not escape just punishment:
“The massacres of France”—said Churchill—“are an example of what Hitler’s Nazis are doing in many other countries under their yoke. The atrocities committed in Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and particularly behind the German front in Russia, exceed anything that has been known since the darkest and most bestial ages of humanity. The punishment of these crimes should now be counted among the major goals of the war.”
During autumn 1941 the representatives of the governments of the occupied countries met in London upon the initiative of the Polish and Czech Governments. They worked out an inter-Allied declaration which was signed on 13 January 1942. May I remind the Tribunal of its terms:
“The undersigned, representing the Governments of Belgium, of Czechoslovakia, the National Committee of Free France, the Governments of Greece, of Luxembourg, of the Netherlands, of Poland, and of Yugoslavia,
“Whereas Germany, from the beginning of the present conflict, which was provoked by her policy of aggression, set up in the occupied countries a regime of terror characterized, among other things, by imprisonment, mass expulsions, massacres, and execution of hostages;
“Whereas these acts of violence are committed equally by the allies and associates of the Reich, and in certain countries by citizens collaborating with the occupying power;
“Whereas international solidarity is necessary in order to prevent these deeds of violence from giving rise to acts of individual or collective violence, and finally in order to satisfy the spirit of justice in the civilized world;
“Recalling to mind that international law and, in particular, the Hague Convention signed in 1907, concerning the laws and customs of land warfare, do not permit belligerents to commit acts of violence against civilians in occupied countries, or to violate laws which are in force or to overthrow national institutions;
“1. Affirming that acts of violence thus committed against civilian populations have nothing in common with the conceptions of an act of war or a political crime as this is understood by civilized nations;
“2. Taking note of the declarations made in this respect on 25 October 1941, by the President of the United States of America and the British Prime Minister;
“3. Placing among their chief war aims, the punishment by means of organized justice of those guilty of, or responsible for, these crimes, whether they ordered, perpetrated, or shared in them;
“4. Having decided to see to it in a spirit of international solidarity that: a) Those guilty or responsible, whatever their responsibility, shall be sought out, brought to justice, and be judged; b) that the sentences pronounced shall be executed.
“In faith whereof, the undersigned, being duly authorized, to this effect have signed this declaration.”
The leaders of National Socialist Germany received other warnings. I refer to the speech of General De Gaulle of 13 January 1942; that of Churchill of 8 September 1942; the note of Molotov, Commissar of the People for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, of 14 October 1942; and the second inter-Allied declaration of 17 December 1942. The latter was made simultaneously in London, Moscow, and Washington after receipt of information according to which the German authorities were engaged in exterminating the Jewish minorities in Europe. In this declaration, the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee which represented the continuation of France, solemnly reaffirmed their will to punish the war criminals who are responsible for this extermination.
THE PRESIDENT: Would this be a convenient time to break off for 10 minutes?
[A recess was taken.]
M. DE MENTHON: The premises for a just punishment are thus fulfilled. The defendants, at the time when they committed their crimes, knew the will of the United Nations to bring about their punishment. The warnings which were given to them contain a definition which precedes the punishment.
The defendants, moreover, could not be ignorant of the criminal nature of their activities. The warnings of these Allied governments in effect translated in a political form the fundamental principles of international and of national law which permit the punishment of war criminals to be established on positive precedents and positive rules.
The founders of international law had a presentiment of the concept of war crime, particularly Grotius who elucidated the criminal character of needless acts of war. The Hague Conventions, after the lapse of several centuries, established the first generally binding standards for laws of war. They regulated the conduct of hostilities and occupation procedures; they formulated positive rules in order to limit recourse to force and to bring the necessities of war into agreement with the requirements of human conscience. War Crimes thus received the first definition under which they may be considered; they became a violation of laws and customs of war as codified by the Hague Convention.
Then came the war of 1914. Imperial Germany waged the first World War with a brutality perhaps less systematic and frenzied than that of the National Socialist Reich, but just as deliberate. The deportation of workers, looting of public and private property, the taking and killing of hostages, the demoralization of the occupied territories constituted, in 1914 as in 1939, the political methods of German warfare.
The Treaty of Versailles was based on the Hague Convention in order to establish the suppression of War Crimes. Under the title “Sanctions” Chapter VII of the Treaty of Versailles discusses criminal responsibility incurred in the launching and waging of the conflict which was then the Great War. Article 227 accused William of Hohenzollern, previously Emperor of Germany, of a supreme offense against international morality and against the sacred character of treaties. Article 228 acknowledged the right of the Allied and Associated Powers to bring persons guilty of acts contrary to the laws and customs of war before military tribunals. Article 229 provided that criminals whose acts were not of precise geographical location were to be referred to inter-Allied jurisdiction.
The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were repeated in the conventions which were signed in 1919 and 1920 with the powers allied with Germany, in particular in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and in that of Neuilly. That is how the idea of war crime was affirmed in international law. The peace treaties of 1919 not only defined the concept of infraction, they formulated the terms of its repression. The defendants were aware of this, just as they were aware of the warnings of the governments of the United Nations. They no doubt hoped that the repetition of the factual circumstances, which hampered the punishment of the criminals in 1914, would permit them to escape their just punishment. Their presence before this Tribunal is the symbol of the constant progress which international law is making in spite of all obstacles.
International law had given a still more precise definition of the term “war crime.” This definition was formulated by the commission which the preliminary peace conference appointed on 25 January 1919 to disentangle the various responsibilities incurred in the course of the war. The report of the Commission of Fifteen of 29 March 1919 constitutes the historical basis of Articles 227 and following of the Treaty of Versailles. The Commission of Fifteen based its investigation of criminal responsibilities on an analysis of the crimes liable to involve them. A material element enters into the juridical settlement of any infraction. Its definition is, therefore, the more precise as it includes an enumeration of the facts which it encompasses. That is why the Commission of Fifteen set up a list of War Crimes. This list includes 32 infractions. These are particularly:
1. Murders, massacres, systematic terrorism; 2. killing of hostages; 3. torture of civilians; 8. confinement of civilians in inhuman conditions; 9. forced labor of civilians in connection with military operations of the enemy; 10. usurpation of sovereignty during the occupation of occupied territories; 11. forced conscription of soldiers among the inhabitants of the occupied territories; 12. attempts to denationalize the inhabitants of occupied territories; 13. looting; 14. confiscation of property; 17. imposition of collective fines; 18. wilful devastation and destruction of property; 25. violation of other rules concerning the Red Cross; 29. ill-treatment of wounded and prisoners of war; and 30. use of prisoners of war for unauthorized work.
This list, which already includes the grievances against the defendants enumerated in the Indictment and from which we have just quoted a few facts, is significant because the War Crimes which it encompasses all present a composite character. They are crimes against both international law and national law. Some of these crimes constitute attacks on the fundamental liberties and constitutional rights of peoples and of individuals; they consist in the violation of public guarantees which are recognized by the constitutional Charter of the Nations whose territories were occupied; violation of the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity which France proclaimed in 1789 and which the civilized states guarantee in perpetuity. These War Crimes are violations of public international law, since they represent a systematic refusal of acknowledgment of all respective rights of both occupying and occupied power; but they also may be analyzed as violations of public national law, since they mean forcibly transforming the constitutional institutions of the occupied territories and the juridical statute of their inhabitants.
More numerous are crimes which constitute attacks on the integrity of the physical person and of property. They are allied with war law regulations and include violations of international law and customs.
But the international conventions, it should be noticed, determine the elements constituting an infraction more than they actually establish that infraction itself. The latter existed before in all national legislatures; it was to some extent a part of the juridical inheritance common to all nations; governments agreed to affirm its international character and to define its contents. International penal law is thus superimposed on national law, which preserves its repressive basis because the war crime remains, after all, a crime of common law. National penal law gives the definition of this. All the acts referred to in Article 6 of the Charter of 8 August 1945, all the facts encompassed by the third Count of the Indictment of 18 October 1945 correspond to the infractions of common law provided for and punished by national penal legislation. The killing of prisoners of war, of hostages, and of inhabitants of occupied territories falls, in French law, under Articles 295 and following of the Penal Code, which define murder and assassination. The mistreatment to which the Indictment refers would come under the heading of bodily injuries caused intentionally or through negligence which are defined by Articles 309 and following. Deportation is analyzed, independently of the murders which accompany it, as arbitrary sequestration, which is defined by Articles 341 and 344. Pillage of public and private property and imposition of collective fines are penalized by Articles 221 and the following of our Military Code of Justice. Article 434 of the Penal Code punishes voluntary destruction, and the deportation of civilian workers may be compared with the forced conscription provided for by Article 92. The oath of allegiance is equivalent to the exaction of a false oath in Article 366, and the Germanization of occupied territories may be applied to a number of crimes, the most obvious of which is forced incorporation in the Wehrmacht in violation of Article 92. The same equivalents can be found in all modern legislative systems and particularly in German law.
The crimes against persons and property of which the defendants are guilty are provided for by all national laws. They present an international character because they were committed in several different countries; from this there arises a problem of jurisdiction, which the Charter of 8 August 1945 has solved, as we have previously explained; but this leaves intact the rule of definition.
A crime of common law, the war crime is, nevertheless, not an ordinary infraction. It has a character peculiarly intrinsic—it is a crime committed on the occasion or under the pretext of war. It must be punished because, even in time of war, attacks on the integrity of the physical person and or property are crimes if they are not justified by the laws and customs of war. The soldier who on the battlefield kills an enemy combatant commits a crime, but this crime is justified by the law of war. International law therefore intervenes in the definition of a war crime, not in order to give it essential qualification but in order to fix its outer limits. In other words, every infraction committed on the occasion or under the pretext of hostilities is criminal unless justified by the laws and customs of war. International law here applies the national theory of legitimate defense which is common to all codes of criminal law. The combatant is engaged in legitimate defense on the battlefield; his homicidal action is therefore covered by a justifying fact. But if this justifying fact is taken away the infraction, whether ordinary crime or war crime, remains in its entirety. To establish the justifying fact, the criminal action must be necessary and proportional to the threat to which it responds. The defendants, against whom justice is demanded of you, can plead no such justification.
Nor can they escape their responsibility by arguing that they were not the physical authors of the crimes. The war crime involves two responsibilities, distinct and complementary: that of the physical author and that of the instigator. There is nothing heterodox in this conception. It is the faithful representation of the criminal theory of complicity through instructions. The responsibility of the accomplice, whether independent or complementary to that of the principal author, is incontestable. The defendants bear the entire responsibility for the crimes which were committed upon their instructions or under their control.
Finally, these crimes cannot be justified by the pretext that an order from above was given by Hitler to the defendants. The theory of the justifying fact of an order from above has, in national law, definite fixed limits; it does not cover the execution of orders whose illegality is manifest. German law, moreover, assigns only a limited rule to the concept of justification by orders from above. Article 47 of the German Military Code of Justice of 1940, although maintaining in principle that a criminal order from a superior removes the responsibility of the agent, punishes the latter as an accomplice, when he exceeded the orders received or when he acted with knowledge of the criminal character of the act which had been ordered. Goebbels once made this juridical concept the theme of his propaganda. On 28 May 1944 he wrote in an article in the Völkischer Beobachter, which was submitted to you by the American Prosecution, an article intended to justify the murder of Allied pilots by German mobs:
“The pilots cannot validly claim that as soldiers they obeyed orders. No law of war provides that a soldier will remain unpunished for a hateful crime by referring to the orders of his superiors, if their orders are in striking opposition to all human ethics, to all international customs in the conduct of war.”
Orders from a superior do not exonerate the agent of a manifest crime from responsibility. Any other solution would, moreover, be unacceptable, for it would testify to the impotence of all repressive policy.
All the more reason why orders from above cannot be the justifying fact for the crimes of the defendants. Sir Hartley Shawcross told you with eloquence that the accused cannot claim that the Crimes against Peace were the doing of Hitler alone and that they limited themselves to transmitting the general directives. War Crimes may be compared to the will for aggression; they are the common work of the defendants; the defendants bear a joint responsibility for the criminal policy which resulted from the National Socialist doctrine.
The responsibility, for German war criminality, because it constituted a systematic policy, planned and prepared before the opening of hostilities, and perpetrated without interruption from 1940 to 1945, rests with all the defendants, political or military leaders, high officials of National Socialist Germany, and leaders of the Nazi Party.
Nevertheless, some among them appear more directly responsible for the acts taken as a whole, particularly those facts connected with the French charges, that is to say, crimes committed in the Western occupied territories or against the nationals of those countries. We shall cite:
The Defendant Göring as Director of the Four Year Plan and President of the Cabinet of Ministers for Reich Defense; the Defendant Ribbentrop in his capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of the administration of occupied countries; the Defendant Frick in his capacity as Director of the Central Office for occupied territories; the Defendant Funk in his capacity as Minister of Reich Economy; the Defendant Keitel, inasmuch as he had command over the occupation armies; the Defendant Jodl, associated in all the responsibilities of the preceding defendant; the Defendant Seyss-Inquart in his capacity as Reich Commissioner for the occupied Dutch territory from 13 May 1940 to the end of the hostilities.
We will examine more particularly among these defendants, or among others, those responsible for each category of acts, it being understood that this enumeration is in no wise restrictive.
The Defendant Sauckel bears the chief responsibility for compulsory labor in its various forms. As Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor, he carried out the intensive recruiting of workers by every possible means. He is in particular the signer of the decree of 22 August 1942, which constitutes the charter for compulsory labor in all occupied countries. He worked in liaison with the Defendant Speer, Chief of the Todt Organization and Plenipotentiary General for Armament in the office of the Four Year Plan; as well as with the Defendant Funk, Minister of Reich Economy; and with the Defendant Göring, Chief of the Four Year Plan.
The Defendant Göring participated directly in economic looting in the same capacity. He appears often to have sought and derived a personal profit from it.
The Defendant Ribbentrop in his capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs was no stranger to these acts.
The Defendant Rosenberg, organizer and Chief of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, is particularly guilty of the looting of works of art in the occupied countries.
The chief responsibility for the murders of hostages lies with the Defendant Keitel, the drafter notably of the general order of 16 September 1941, with his assistant, the Defendant Jodl, and with the Defendant Göring who agreed to the order in question.
The Defendant Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s direct associate and chief of all the foreign police and security offices, is directly responsible for the monstrous devices to which the Gestapo had recourse in all occupied countries, devices which are only the continuation of the methods originated in the Gestapo by its founder, in Prussia, the Defendant Göring. The Defendant Kaltenbrunner is likewise directly responsible for the crimes committed in deportation camps. Moreover, he visited these camps of deportation, as will be proved by the French Delegation in the case of the Mauthausen Camp. The Defendant Göring knew of and gave his approval to the medical experiments made on prisoners. The Defendant Sauckel forced prisoners by every possible means to work under conditions, which were often inhuman, for the German war production.
The Defendant Keitel and his assistant, the Defendant Jodl, are responsible for treatment contrary to the laws of war inflicted upon war prisoners, for murders and killings to which they were subjected, as well as for handing over great numbers of them to the Gestapo. The Defendant Göring shares their responsibility for the execution of Allied aviators and soldiers belonging to the commando groups. The Defendant Sauckel directed the work of war prisoners for the German war production in violation of international law.
The Defendant Keitel and the Defendant Kaltenbrunner both bear the chief responsibility for the terrorist actions carried out jointly by the German Army and the police forces in the various occupied countries and notably in France against the Resistance, as well as for the devastations and massacres carried out against the civilian population of several French departments. The Defendant Jodl shares in this responsibility, most particularly through his initial order, “Fight against Partisan Bands,” dated 6 May 1944, which provides for “collective measures against the inhabitants of entire villages.” These blows against mankind are the result of racial theories of which the Defendant Hess, the Defendant Rosenberg, and the Defendant Streicher are among the instigators or propagandists. The Defendant Hess participated notably in the elaboration of this subject, which is found in Mein Kampf.
The Defendant Rosenberg, one of the principal theorists of racial doctrine, exercised the function of special delegate for the spiritual and ideological training of the Nazi Party. The Defendant Streicher showed himself to be one of the most violent anti-Semitic agitators. In the execution of the policy of Germanization and Nazification responsibility is shared between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that is to say, the Defendant Ribbentrop; the General Staff, that is, the Defendants Keitel and Jodl; the Central Office for all the occupied territories, that is, the Defendant Frick.
The major National Socialist culprits had their orders carried out in the divers Nazi organizations, which we ask you to declare criminal, in order that each of their members may be then apprehended and punished.
The Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the General Staff, the High Command of the German Armed Forces represent only a small number of persons whose guilt and punishment must ultimately result from the evidence, since they participated personally and directly in the decisions, or ensured their execution through some eminent person in the political or military hierarchy, and without being able to ignore their criminal nature.
The leaders of the Nazi Party are unquestionably in the forefront of those who participated in the criminal enterprise, and around the Defendants Keitel and Jodl the military High Command directed the Army to the execution of hostages, to pillage, to wanton destruction, and to massacres.
But perhaps it will seem to you that the punishment of hundreds of thousands of men who belonged to the SS, to the SD, to the Gestapo, to the SA, will give rise to some objection. I should like to try, should this be the case, to do away with that objection by showing you the dreadful responsibilities of these men. Without the existence of these organizations, without the spirit which animated them, one could not understand how so many atrocities could have been perpetrated. The systematic War Crimes could not have been carried out by Nazi Germany without these organizations, without the men who composed them. It is they who not only executed but willed this body of crimes on behalf of Germany.
It may have seemed impossible to you that the monstrous barbarity of the National Socialist doctrine could have been imposed upon the German people, the heir, as are our people, of the highest values of civilization. The education by the Nazi Party of the young men who formed the SS, the SD, and the Gestapo, explains the hold Nazism exercised over all Germany. They incarnated National Socialism, and permitted it to accomplish, thanks to the guilty passiveness of the whole German population, a part of its purpose. This youth, those who carried out the tenets of the regime, were trained in a veritable doctrine of immoralism, which results from the ideology that inspired the regime. The myth of the race removed from war in the eyes of these disciples of Nazism its criminal character.
If it is proved that a superior race is to annihilate races and peoples that are considered inferior and decadent, incapable of living a life as it should be lived, before what means of extermination will they recoil? This is the ethics of immorality, the result of the most authentic Nietzscheism, which considers that the destruction of all conventional ethics is the supreme duty of man. The crime against race is punished without pity. The crime on behalf of race is exalted without limit. The regime truly creates a logic of crime which obeys its own laws, which has no connection whatsoever with what we consider ethical. With such a point of view, all horrors could have been justified and authorized. So many acts which appear incomprehensible to us, so greatly do they clash with our customary notions, were explained, were formulated in advance in the name of the racial community.
Add that these atrocities and these cruelties were perpetrated within the rigid framework created by the “esprit de corps,” by the soldierly solidarity which bound individuals and insured the legitimacy of the crime an unlimited field of action. The individuals who committed them would not only be covered by the regime itself, but spurred on by the discipline and the “camaraderie” of these corps, imbued with Nazi criminality.
The Nazi youth was invited to go through an extraordinary adventure. Having unlimited power at its disposal, thanks to the Party and its massive grip, it was first of all called upon to implement the grandiose dreams of National Socialist Pan-Germanism.
The Party exercised a rigid selection of its youth, and neglected no incentive. It solicited from its youth the desire to distinguish itself, to accomplish exploits beyond the common order and beyond nature. The young Nazis in the Gestapo and the SS knew that their acts, no matter how cruel or how inhumane they might be, would always be judged legitimate by the regime, in the name of the racial community, of its needs, and of its triumphs. The Nazi Party, thanks to the young men of the SS, of the SD, and of the Gestapo, had thus become capable of accomplishing in the field of criminality what no other person or nation could have committed.
The members of these organizations became voluntarily the authors of these innumerable crimes of all kinds, often executed with disconcerting cynicism and with artful sadism in the concentration camps of Germany as well as in the various occupied countries, and especially in those of Western Europe.
The crimes are monstrous. The crimes and the responsibility for them have definitely been established. There is no possible doubt. Nevertheless throughout these tranquil sessions of this Trial, extraordinary in the history of the world, in view of the exceptional nature of the justice which your High Tribunal is called upon to render before the United Nations and the German people and before all mankind a few objections may arise in our minds.
It is our duty to discuss this exhaustively, even if it is only sub-conscious in us, for soon a pseudo-patriotic propaganda may take hold of Germany, and even may echo in some of our countries.
“Who can say: I have a clean conscience, I am without fault? To use different weights and measures is abhorred by God.” This text from the Holy Scriptures (Proverbs XX, 9-10) has already been mentioned here and there; it will serve tomorrow as a theme of propaganda, but above all, it is profoundly written in our souls. Rising in the name of our martyred people as accusers of Nazi Germany, we have never for a moment repressed it as a distasteful reminder.
Yes, no nation is without reproach in its history, just as no individual is faultless in his life. Yes, every war in itself brings forth iniquitous evils and entails almost necessarily individual and collective crimes, because it easily unleashes in man the evil passions which always slumber there.
But we can examine our conscience fearlessly in the face of the Nazi culprits; we find no common measure between them and ourselves.
If this criminality had been accidental; if Germany had been forced into war, if crimes had been committed only in the excitement of combat, we might question ourselves in the light of the Scriptures. But the war was prepared and deliberated upon long in advance, and upon the very last day it would have been easy to avoid it without sacrificing any of the legitimate interests of the German people. And the atrocities were perpetrated during the war, not under the influence of a mad passion nor of a war-like anger nor of an avenging resentment, but as a result of cold calculation, of perfectly conscious methods, of a pre-existing doctrine.
The truly diabolical enterprise of Hitler and of his companions was to assemble in a body of dogmas formed around the concept of race, all the instincts of barbarism, repressed by centuries of civilization, but always present in men’s innermost nature, all the negations of the traditional values of humanity, on which nations, as well as individuals, question their conscience in the troubled hours of their development and of their life; to construct and to propagate a doctrine which organizes, regulates, and aspires to command crime.
The diabolical enterprise of Hitler and of his companions was also to appeal to the forces of evil in order to establish his domination over the German people and subsequently the domination of Germany over Europe and perhaps over the world. It planned to incorporate organized criminality into a system of government, into a system of international relations, and into a system of warfare, by unleashing within a whole nation the most savage passions.
Nationalism and serving their people and their country will perhaps be their explanation. Far from constituting an excuse, if any excuse were possible in view of the enormity of their crime, these explanations would make it still more serious. They have profaned the sacred idea of the fatherland by linking it to a willed return to barbarism. In its name they obtained—half by force, half by persuasion—the adherence of a whole country, formerly among the greatest in the order of spiritual values, and have lowered it to the lowest level. The moral confusion, the economic difficulties, the obsession with the defeat of 1918 and with the loss of might and the Pan-Germanic tradition are the basis of the empire of Hitler and of his companions over a people thrown off its balance; to abandon oneself to force, to renounce moral concern, to satisfy a love of collectivity, to revel in lack of restraint are the natural temptations strongly implanted in the German, which the Nazi leaders exploited with cynicism. The intoxication of success and the madness of greatness completed the picture and put practically all Germans, some without doubt unconsciously, in the service of the National Socialist doctrine by associating them with the diabolical enterprise of their Führer and his companions.
Opposing this enterprise men of various countries and different classes rose, all of them animated by the common bond of their human lot. France and Great Britain entered the war only to remain faithful to their given word. The peoples of the occupied countries, tortured in body and soul, never renounced their liberty nor their cultural values, and it was a magnificent epic of clandestine opposition and of Resistance which through a splendid heroism testifies to the spontaneous refusal of the populations to accept the Nazi myths. Millions and millions of men of the Soviet Union fell to defend not only the soil and independence of their country, but also their humanitarian universalism. The millions of British and American soldiers who landed on our unhappy continent carried in their hearts the ideal of freeing from Nazi oppression both the occupied countries and the peoples who willingly or by force had become the satellites of the Axis and the German people.
They were all of them together, whether in uniform or not, fighters for the great hope which throughout the centuries has been nourished by the suffering of the peoples, the great hope for a better future for mankind.
Sometimes this great hope expresses itself with difficulty or loses its way or deceives itself or knows the dread return to barbarism, but it persists always and finally constitutes the powerful lever which brings about the progress of humanity despite everything. These aspirations always reborn, these concerns constantly awakened, this anguish unceasingly present, this perpetual combat against evil form in a definitive manner the sublime grandeur of man. National Socialism only yesterday imperiled all of this.
After that gigantic struggle where two ideologies, two conceptions of life were at grips, in the name of the people whom we represent here and in the name of the great human hope for which they have so greatly suffered, so greatly fought, we can without fear and with a clean conscience rise as accusers of the leaders of Nazi Germany.
As Mr. Justice Jackson said so eloquently at the opening of this Trial, “Civilization could not survive if these crimes were to be committed again,” and he added, “The true plaintiff in this Court is civilization.”
Civilization requires from you after this unleashing of barbarism a verdict which will also be a sort of supreme warning at the hour when humanity appears still at times to enter the path of the organization of peace only with apprehension and hesitation.
If we wish that on the morrow of the cataclysm of war the sufferings of martyred countries, the sacrifices of victorious nations, and also the expiation of guilty people will engender a better humanity, justice must strike those guilty of the enterprise of barbarism from which we have just escaped. The reign of justice is the most exact expression of the great human hope. Your decision can mark a decisive stage in its difficult pursuit.
Undoubtedly even today, this justice and this punishment have become possible only because, as a first condition, free peoples emerged victorious from the conflict. This is actually the link between the force of the victors and the guilt of the vanquished leaders who appear before Your High Tribunal.
But this link signifies nothing else but the revelation of the wisdom of nations that justice, in order to impose itself effectively and constantly upon individuals and upon nations, must have force at its disposal. The common will to put force in the service of justice inspires our nations and commands our whole civilization.
This resolution is brilliantly confirmed today in a judicial case where the facts are examined scrupulously in all their aspects, the penal nature of the offense rigorously established, the competency of the Tribunal incontestable, the rights of the defense intact, total publicity insured.
Your judgment pronounced under these conditions can serve as a foundation for the moral uplift of the German people, first stage in its integration into the community of free countries. Without your judgment, history might incur the risk of repeating itself, crime would become epic, and the National Socialist enterprise a last Wagnerian tragedy; and new Pan-Germanists would soon say to the Germans:
“Hitler and his companions were wrong because they finally failed, but we must begin again some day, on other foundations, the extraordinary adventure of Germanism.”
After your judgment, if only we know how to enlighten this people and watch over their first steps on the road to liberty, National Socialism will be inscribed permanently in their history as the crime of crimes which could lead it only to material and moral perdition, as the doctrine which they should forever avoid with horror and scorn in order to remain faithful or rather become once more faithful to the great norms of common civilization.
The eminent international jurist and noble European, Politis, in his posthumous book entitled International Ethics reminds us that, like all ethical rules, those which should govern international relations will never be definitely established unless all peoples succeed in convincing themselves that there is definitely a greater profit to be gained by observing them than by transgressing them. That is why your judgment can contribute to the enlightenment of the German people and of all peoples.
Your judgment must be inscribed as a decisive act in the history of international law in order to prepare the establishment of a true international society excluding recourse to war and enlisting force permanently in the service of the justice of nations; it will be one of the foundations of this peaceful order to which nations aspire on the morrow of this frightful torment. The need for justice of the martyred peoples will be satisfied, and their sufferings will not have been useless to the progress of mankind.
THE PRESIDENT: M. De Menthon, would you prefer to continue the case on behalf of France this afternoon, or would you prefer to adjourn?
M. DE MENTHON: We are at the disposal of the Court.
THE PRESIDENT: Well then, if that is so, then I think we better go on until 5 o’clock.
M. DE MENTHON: It might be preferable to adjourn, because M. Faure’s brief which is going to be presented will last at least an hour. Perhaps it is better to adjourn until tomorrow morning. However, we will remain at the disposal of the Court.
THE PRESIDENT: When you said that the proof which will now be presented would take an hour, do you mean by that that it is an introductory statement or is it a part of the main case which you are presenting?
M. DE MENTHON: Your Honor, it is part of the general case.
THE PRESIDENT: Would it not be possible then to go on until 5 o’clock?
M. DE MENTHON: Yes, quite so.
M. EDGAR FAURE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President and Your Honor, I propose to submit to the Tribunal an introduction dealing with the first and the second part of the French case.
The first part relates to forced labor; the second part to economic looting. These two over-all questions are complementary to each other and form a whole. Manpower on the one hand and material property on the other constitute the two aspects of the riches of a country and the living conditions in that country. Measures taken with regard to the one necessarily react on the other, and it is understandable that in the occupied countries German policy with regard to manpower and economic property was inspired from the very beginning by common directing principles.
For this reason the French Prosecution has deemed it logical to submit successively to the Tribunal those two briefs corresponding to the letters “H” and “E” of the third Count of the Indictment. My present purpose is to define these initial directives covering the German procedure in regard to manpower and to material in the occupied territories.
When the Germans occupied the territories of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of continental France, they thereby assumed a material power of constraint with regard to the inhabitants and a material power of acquisition with regard to its property. They thus had in fact the possibility of utilizing these dual resources on behalf of the war effort.
On the other hand, legally they were confronted with precise rules of international law relating to the occupation of territories by the military forces of a belligerent state. These rules very strictly limit the rights of the occupant, who may requisition property and services solely for the needs of the army of occupation. I here allude to the regulation annexed to the Convention concerning the Laws and Customs of War signed at The Hague on 18 October 1907, Section III, and in particular to the Articles 46, 47, 49, 52, and 53. If it please the Tribunal, I shall merely cite the paragraph of Article 52 which defines in a perfectly exact manner the lawful conditions of requisition of persons and property:
“Requisitions in kind and of services may be demanded of communities or of inhabitants only for the needs of the army of occupation. They will be proportionate to the resources of the country and of such a nature that they do not imply for the population the obligation of taking part in war operations against their native country.”
These various articles must, moreover, be considered in the general spirit defined in the preamble of the Convention, from which I take the liberty of reading the last paragraph to the Tribunal:
“Until such time as a more complete code of the laws of war can be enacted, the High Contracting Parties deem it opportune to state that in cases not included in the regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the safeguard and direction of the principles of the law of nations derived from the established usages among civilized nations, the laws of humanity, and the requirements of public conscience.”
From this point of view it is very evident that the total exploitation of the resources of occupied countries for the benefit of the enemy’s war economy is absolutely contrary to the law of nations and to the requirements of public conscience.
Germany signed the Hague Convention and it must be pointed out that she made no reservations at that time except with regard to Article 44, which relates to the supply of information to the belligerents. She made no reservation with regard to the articles which we have cited nor with regard to the preamble. These articles and the preamble, moreover, reiterate the corresponding text of the previous Hague Convention of 28 July 1899.
German official ratifications of the Conventions were given on 4 September 1900 and 27 November 1909. I have purposely recalled these well-known facts in order to emphasize that the Germans could not fail to recognize the constant principles of international law to which they subscribed on two occasions, long before their defeat in 1918 and consequently outside the alleged pressure to which they referred in regard to the Treaty of Versailles.
While on this subject of juridical theory, may I point out that in the arrangement signed at Versailles on 28 June 1919 in connection with the military occupation of the territories of the Rhine, reference is made in Article 6 to the Hague Convention in the following terms:
“The right of requisition in kind and in services as formulated by the Hague Convention of 1907 will be exercised by the allied and associate armies of occupation.”
Thus, the governing principles of the rights of requisition by the occupiers is confirmed by a third international agreement subscribed to by Germany, who in regard to the occupation of her own territory is here the beneficiary of this limitation.
What, then, will the conduct of the Germans be like, in view of this factual situation, which involves power and temptation, and in view of this legal situation which involves a limitation?
The Tribunal is already aware, by virtue of the general presentation of the American Prosecution, that the conduct of the Germans was to profit by the fact and to ignore the law.
The Germans systematically violated international rules and the law of nations, as far as we are concerned, both by forced labor and by spoliation. Detailed illustrations of these acts in the Western countries will be laid before you in the briefs which will follow my own. For my part I propose to concentrate for a moment on the actual concepts which the Germans had from the outset. In this connection I shall submit to the Tribunal three complementary propositions.
First Proposition: From the very beginning of the occupation, the Germans decided, in the interests of their war effort, to seize in any way possible all the resources, both material and human, of the occupied countries. Their plan was not to take any account of legal limitations. It is not under the spur of occasional necessity that they subsequently perpetrated their illicit acts, but in pursuance of a deliberate intention.
Second Proposition: However, the Germans took pains to mask their real intentions; they did not make known that they rejected international juridical rules. On the contrary, they gave assurance that they would respect them. The reasons for this camouflage are easy to understand. The Germans were anxious from the beginning to spare public opinion in the occupied territory. Brutal proceedings would have aroused immediate resistance which would have hampered their actions. They also wished to deceive world opinion, and more particularly American public opinion, since the United States of America had at that time not yet entered the war.
The third proposition which I lay before the Tribunal results from the first two. As the Germans contemplated achieving their aims and masking their intentions, they were of necessity bound to organize a system of irregular means, while maintaining an appearance of legality. The complexity and the technical character of the proceedings they used enabled them easily to conceal the real state of affairs from the uninitiated or the merely uninformed. These disguised means proved, in fact, just as efficient and perhaps even more so than would have been brutal seizure. They moreover enabled the Germans to have recourse to such brutal action the day they deemed that this would yield them more advantages than inconvenience.
We are of the opinion that this analysis of the German intentions is of interest to the Tribunal for, on the one hand, it demonstrates that the illicit acts were premeditated and that their authors were aware of their reprehensible character; and on the other hand, it enables one to understand the scope and extent of these acts, despite the precautions taken to mask them.
The evidence which the Prosecution will submit to the Tribunal refers chiefly to the second and third propositions, for as regards the first, that is to say, the criminal intention and premeditation, it is demonstrated by the discrepancy between the facade and reality.
I say in the first place that the Germans at the time of the occupation made a pretense of observing the rules of international law. Here is, by way of example, a proclamation to the French population, signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. This is a public document which is reproduced in the Official Journal, containing the decrees issued by the military governor for French occupied territories, Number 1 dated 4 July 1940. I submit to the Tribunal this document, which will bear Number RF-1 of the French documentation; and from it I cite merely the following sentence:
“The troops have received the order to treat the population with regard and to respect private property provided the population remains calm.”
The Germans proceeded in identical manner in all the occupied countries. I also submit to the Tribunal the text of the same proclamation, dated 10 May 1940, which was published in the Official Journal of the Commander-in-Chief in Belgium and in the north of France, Number 1, Page 1, under the title “Proclamation to the Population of Belgium.” The German text, as well as the Flemish text, bear the more complete title, “Proclamation to the Population of Holland and Belgium.” In view of the identical nature of these texts, this copy may be considered as Document Number RF-1 (bis) of the French documentation.
I now submit another proclamation entitled, “To the Inhabitants of Occupied Countries!” dated 10 May 1940, and signed “The Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group.” This is likewise published in the Official Journal of German ordinances. This will be Document Number RF-2 of the French documentation. I will cite the first two paragraphs:
“The Commander-in-Chief of the German Army has given me authority to announce the following:
“I. The German Army guarantees the inhabitants full personal security and the safeguard of their property. Those who behave peacefully and quietly have nothing to fear.”
I also quote passages from Paragraphs V, VI, and VII:
“V. The administrative authorities of the state, communities, the police, and schools shall continue their activities. They therefore remain at the service of their own population. . . .
“VI. All enterprises, businesses, and banks will continue their work in the interest of the population. . . .
“VII. Producers of goods of prime necessity, as well as merchants, shall continue their activities and place their goods at the disposal of the public.”
The passages which I have just quoted are not the literal reproduction of international conventions, but they reflect their spirit. Repetition of the terms, “at the service of the population,” “in the interest of the population,” “at the disposal of the public” must necessarily be construed as an especially firm assurance that the resources of the country and its manpower will be preserved for that country and not diverted in favor of the German war effort.
We pass now Document under Number RF-2 (bis) to the next of the same proclamations signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group and published in the Official Journal of the Commander-in-Chief in Belgium, numbered as above, Page 3.
Finally, on 22 June 1940, an armistice convention was signed between the representatives of the German Government and the representatives of the de facto authority which was at that time assuming the Government of France. This convention is likewise a public document. It will be submitted to the Tribunal at a later stage as the first document of the economic case. At this stage I merely wish to cite a sentence of Paragraph 3, which reads as follows: “In the occupied districts of France the German Reich exercises all the rights of an occupying power.”
This constitutes then a very definite reference to international law. Moreover, the German plenipotentiaries gave in this respect complementary oral assurances. On this matter I submit to the Tribunal, in the form of French Exhibit Number RF-3 (Document RF-3), an extract from the deposition made by Ambassador Leon Noel in the course of proceedings before the French High Court of Justice. This extract is reproduced from a book entitled Transcript in extenso of the Sessions of the Trial of Marshal Pétain, printed in Paris in 1945 at the printing office of the official journals and constitutes a document admissible as evidence in accordance with the Charter of the Tribunal, Article 21. This is the statement of M. Leon Noel, which I desire to cite to the Tribunal. M. Leon Noel was a member of the French Armistice Delegation.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you going to present this document to us?
M. FAURE: This document is presented to the Tribunal. We have given to the Tribunal the transcript of the proceedings, and in the book of documents the Tribunal will find the excerpt I am now quoting.
THE PRESIDENT: We are not in possession of it at present. I do not know where it is.
M. FAURE: I think that possibly this document was handed to the Secretariat of the Tribunal rather late, but it will be here immediately. May it please the Tribunal, I merely intend to read a short extract from this document today.
THE PRESIDENT: We will have it tomorrow, I hope?
M. FAURE: Certainly, Mr. President.
[Quoting.] “I have also obtained a certain number of replies from German generals which I believe could have been subsequently used—from General Jodl, who in the month of May last signed at Reims the unconditional surrender of Germany and from General (subsequently Marshal) Keitel, who a few weeks later was to sign in Berlin the ratification of this surrender. In this way I led them to declare in the most categorical manner that in no event would they interfere with administration, that the rights which they claimed for themselves under the convention were purely and simply those which in similar circumstances international law and international usage concede to occupation armies, that is to say, those indispensable for the maintenance of security, transportation, and the food supply needs of these armies.”
These assertions and promises on the part of the Germans were therefore formal. Now, even at that time, they were not sincere. Indeed, not only did the Germans subsequently violate them, but from the very beginning they organized a system whereby they were enabled to accomplish these violations in the most efficacious manner and at the same time in a manner which enabled them to some extent to mask them.
As far as economy and labor are concerned, this German system comes from a very simple idea. It consisted in supervising production at its beginning and its end. On the one hand, the Germans embarked immediately upon the general requisitioning of all raw materials and all goods in the occupied countries. Thenceforth, it would depend upon them to supply, or not to supply, raw material to the national industry. They were thus in a position to develop one branch of production rather than another, to favor certain undertakings, and, inversely, to oblige other undertakings to close down. As events and opportunities demanded, they organized this appropriation of raw materials, principally with a view to facilitating their distribution in their own interest but the principle was continuously maintained. They thus held, as it were, the key of entrance to production. On the other hand, they also held the exit key, that is to say, of finance. By securing the financial means in the form of the money of an occupied country, the Germans were able to purchase products and to acquire, under the pretense of legality, the output of the economic activity of the country. In point of fact, the Germans obtained for themselves from the outset such considerable financial means that they were easily able to absorb the entire productive capacity of each country.
If the Tribunal finds it suitable, I will interrupt at this point.