Morning Session
MR. BRUDNO: May it please the Tribunal, when the Tribunal rose yesterday I had finished the submission of proof as to Rosenberg’s responsibility and authority in the Occupied Eastern Territories and was about to conclude my presentation with four brief examples as to the manner in which his authority was exercised. I was in the middle of the third example, which, Your Honors will recall, dealt with Rosenberg’s participation in the forced labor program. I wish to conclude that illustration with reference to Document 199-PS, which we offer as Exhibit Number USA-606. This document is a letter from Alfred Meyer, Rosenberg’s deputy, and is addressed to Sauckel, dated July 11, 1944. This time, Your Honors will note, it is Rosenberg’s Ministry that is urging action. I wish to quote Item Number 1 of this letter, which reads as follows:
“The War Effort Task Force Command formerly stationed in Minsk must continue, under all circumstances, the calling up of young White Ruthenian and Russian men for military employment in the Reich. In addition the Command has the mission of bringing young boys of 10-14 years of age into the Reich.”
My third illustration deals with Rosenberg’s exercise of his legislative powers, and I ask the Court to take judicial notice of the decree signed by Lohse, who was Reich Commissar for Ostland. This decree is published in the Verordnungsblatt of the Reich Commissar for Ostland, 1942, Number 38, Pages 158 and 159. It provides for the seizure of the entire property of the Jewish population in the Ostland, including the claims of Jews against third parties. The seizure is made retroactive to the day of occupation of the territory by German troops. This sweeping decree was issued and published by Rosenberg’s immediate subordinate, and it must be assumed that Rosenberg knew of it and acquiesced in it.
I now come to my final illustration. This illustration is derived from Document 327-PS, which is already in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-338.
It is a copy of a secret letter from Rosenberg to Bormann dated 17 October 1944. It furnishes a graphic account of Rosenberg’s activities in the economic exploitation of the occupied East. I wish to quote from the first paragraph on Page 1, which has not been read into the Record. I quote:
“In order not to delay the liquidation of companies under my supervision, I beg to point out that the companies concerned are not private firms but business enterprises of the Reich, so that directives with regard to them, just as with regard to Government offices, are reserved to the highest authorities of the Reich. I supervise the following companies. . . .”
There follows a list of nine companies: A trading company, an agricultural development company, a supply company, a pharmaceutical company, and five banking concerns. On Page 3 of the translation at Item 1 (a) the mission of the trading company is stated to be, and I quote:
“Seizure of all agricultural products as well as commercial marketing and transportation thereof. (Delivery to Armed Forces and the Reich).”
I now call your attention to Item 5 of the same page. It describes the activities of the companies as follows:
“During this period, the Z.O.”—that is, the Central Trading Corporation East—“together with its subsidiaries has seized:
“Grain 9,200,000 tons, meat and meat products 622,000 tons, linseed 950,000 tons, butter 208,000 tons, sugar 400,000 tons, fodder 2,500,000 tons, potatoes 3,200,000 tons, seeds 141,000 tons, other agricultural products 1,200,000 tons, and 1,075,000,000 eggs.
“The following was required for transportation: 1,418,000 freight cars and 472,000 tons shipping space.”
In conclusion we submit that the evidence has shown that the Defendant Rosenberg played a leading role in the Nazi Party’s rise to power by moulding German thought so as to promote the conspirators’ ambitions; that he played a leading role in spreading propaganda and intrigue, and in instigating treason in foreign countries, so as to pave the way for the waging of wars of aggression; and that he bears full responsibility for the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity which were perpetrated in the Occupied Eastern Territories and which will be further developed by the prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.
This completes the presentation of the case against the Defendant Rosenberg. The next presentation will be that of the case against the Defendant Frank, which will be presented by Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM H. BALDWIN (Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States): May it please the Tribunal, we wish now to deal with the individual responsibility of the Defendant Frank. In accordance with the expressed desire of the Tribunal, this presentation has been strictly limited; and, of course, I should welcome any direction from the Tribunal as to length or method as I proceed.
First, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Miss Harriet Zetterberg, of our legal staff, and to Dr. Pietrowski, of the Polish Delegation, for their invaluable work—Dr. Pietrowski and the Polish Delegation, naturally, having a special interest in the Defendant Frank.
Aspects of the criminal complicity of the Defendant Hans Frank under Count One of the Indictment have been placed before this Tribunal on several occasions. There remain, however, certain matters for discussion—either novel in presentation or in development—concerning this defendant as an individual, before the United States’ portion of the Prosecution’s case against him is completed. Our Soviet colleagues will carry further the heavy complaint against the Defendant Frank in their treatment of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the East. We wish here merely to touch upon that evidence which, we believe, irrefutably discloses Frank to have been a tremendously important cog in the machine which conceived, promoted, and executed the Nazi Common Plan or Conspiracy. Documents relating to this point have been assembled in a document book bearing the letters “FF.” I am informed that these books, as well as explanatory briefs, have been distributed for the use of the members of the Tribunal.
Reference will be made in the course of this argument to the so-called Frank diary, portions of which have already been brought to the attention of the Tribunal. It seems appropriate that brief mention should here be made of the content and source of this diary. It is a set of some 38 volumes, most of which are on the table at the front of the courtroom, detailing the activities of the Defendant Frank from 1939 to the end of the war in his capacity as Governor General of Occupied Poland. It is a record, in short, of each day’s business, hour by hour, appointment by appointment, conference by conference, speech by speech, and—in truth we believe—crime by crime. Each volume, excepting the last few, is now handsomely bound; and in those volumes, which deal with the conferences of Frank and his underlings in the Government General, the name of each person attending the meeting is inscribed in his own handwriting on a page preceding the minutes of the conference itself. It is incredibly shocking to the normal conscience that such a neat history of murder, starvation, and extermination should have been maintained by the individual responsible for such deeds, but by now the Tribunal is well aware that the Nazi leaders were sentimentally fond of elaborately documenting their exploits, as witness the Rosenberg volumes displaying the looted art treasures and the album reporting on the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. The complete set of the Frank diary was found in Bavaria, at Neuhaus, near Schliersee, on 18 May 1945, by the 7th American Army. It was taken to the 7th Army document center at Heidelberg and on or about 20 September 1945 the collection was sent to the Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel here at Nuremberg. It is here in court in its entirety; and now its tones, we submit, are those of accusation rather than boastful narration.
That the Defendant Frank held a position of leadership in the Nazi Party and in the German Government is undeniable. Even, presumably, it would be unfair to the Defendant Frank to underestimate his importance in the Nazi hierarchy and the Third Reich. Like the other defendants in this case, he was a man of far-reaching influence and position; and his office-holding record is already before this Court. It is an affidavit signed by the Defendant Frank and identified as Exhibit Number USA-7. This document contains a listing of 11 important positions held by Frank in the Party and in the Government and supports the assertion of influence and position which I have just made, especially since this Tribunal has been fully apprised of the criminal activities of the Nazi organizations and formations.
The machinations of Frank divide themselves logically into two periods. In the one, from 1920 to 1939, he was by his own admission the leading Nazi jurist, although parenthetically the word “jurist” loses its reputable content when modified by the word “Nazi”. In the other period, extending from 10 October 1939 until the end of the war, he was Governor General of occupied Poland. While he is most notorious for his persecutions and carrying out of the conspiracy in the latter capacity, it is the opinion of the United States Prosecution that the Defendant Frank’s contributions to the Nazi rise to power as the leading Nazi jurist should not pass without mention. It is with this aspect that I shall first deal—the Defendant Frank’s furtherance of the realization of the conspirators’ program in the field of law, his knowledge of the criminal purpose of the program, and his active participation therein.
The Defendant Frank, himself, described his role in the Nazi struggle for power in the following words, which were remarks he ordered his secretary to place in the Frank diary on 28 August 1942. The remarks appear in the diary and are translated in our Document 2233(x)-PS, which, if the Court please, is at Page 54 in the document book before it.
The numbers of the pages of the document book will be found in the upper right-hand corner in colored pencil, either red or blue. The original of this document I now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-607. In the German text these extracts appear in Part 3 of the 1942 diary volume on Pages 968, 969, and 983. Frank says:
“I have since 1920 continually dedicated my work to the NSDAP. As a National Socialist I was a participant in the events of November 1923, for which I received the Order of the Blood. After the resurrection of the movement in the year 1925, my really greater activity in the movement began, which made me, first gradually, later almost exclusively, the legal adviser of the Führer and of the Reich Party Directorate of the NSDAP. I was thus the representative of the legal interests of the growing Third Reich in a legal-ideological as well as in a practical way.”
He goes on to say:
“The culmination of this work I see in the Leipzig army trial, in which I succeeded in having the Führer admitted to the famous oath of legality, a circumstance which gave the Movement legal grounds to expand on a large scale. The Führer, indeed, recognized this achievement and in 1926 made me leader of the National Socialist Lawyers’ League; in 1929, Reichsleiter of the Reich Legal Office of the NSDAP; in March 1933, Bavarian Minister of Justice; in the same year, Reich Commissioner for Justice; in 1934, President of the Academy of German Law, founded by me; and in December 1934, Reich Minister without Portfolio. And in 1939, I was finally appointed Governor General for the occupied Polish territories.
“So I was, am, and will remain the representative jurist of the struggle period of National Socialism. . . .
“I profess myself now and always, as a National Socialist and a faithful follower of the Führer, Adolf Hitler, whom I have now served since 1919. . . .”
It is indeed significant and worth mentioning to the Court. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Is this an extract from his diary?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Yes, Sir; it is.
THE PRESIDENT: And are the words “Present: Dr. Hans Frank and others” written by him in his diary?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Yes, Sir; they are. Before each of these excerpts, if Your Honor pleases, if it was in conference it was indicated which members of the Government General were present or who made the address.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: It is indeed significant and worth mentioning to the Court that the Defendant Frank assumes responsibility for the so-called oath of legality at the Leipzig army trial. At that trial, in 1930, three army officers were accused of—curiously enough—conspiracy to high treason. The charge was that the defendants in that trial, in their capacity as members of the German Army, tried to form National Socialist cells in the German Army and to influence the German Army to such an extent that, in the case of a Putsch by the National Socialists, the army would not fire at the National Socialists, but would stand at ease instead. All three of the officers were found guilty and sentenced to 18 months’ confinement. At that trial, however, Hitler was a witness; and during the course of the trial, testified under oath that the term “revolution,” used by him, meant only spiritual revolution in Germany and that the expression “heads would roll in the sand” meant only that they would do so as a result of legal procedure through state tribunals, if the National Socialists came to power. This, if the Court please, was the so-called oath of legality, the lie that the Defendant Frank provided his Führer as a facade for the conspiracy and which he, at least in 1942, considered the culmination of his efforts.
As the “representative jurist of the struggle period of National Socialism” and in various juridical capacities listed in his affidavit of positions held, Defendant Frank was, between 1933 and 1939, the most prominent policy-maker in the field of German legal theory. For example, Defendant Frank founded the Academy of German Law in 1934 and he was president of this once potent body until 1942. The statute defining the functions of this Academy conferred upon it wide power to initiate and co-ordinate juridical policies.
This statute appears in the translation at Page 5 in the document book as our Document 1391-PS and appears in the 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt at Page 605. We ask the Court to take judicial notice of it. I now quote briefly from the decree:
“It is the task of the Academy for German Law to further the reorganization of legal procedure in Germany. Closely connected with the agencies competent for legislation, it shall further the realization of the National Socialist program in the realm of the law. This task shall be carried out by approved scientific methods.
“The Academy’s task shall cover primarily:
“1. The formulation, initiation, judging, and preparing of drafts of law; 2. collaboration in rejuvenating and unifying the training in jurisprudence and political science; 3. the editing and supporting of scientific publications; 4. financial assistance for work and research in specific fields of law and political economy.”
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Do you have to read all this? We will take judicial notice of it.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Among the early tasks which Defendant Frank set for himself, as policy-maker in the field of law, were the unification of the German State, the promotion of racial legislation, and the elimination of political organizations other than the Nazi Party. In a radio address given on 20 March 1934 he announced success in these matters. Our partial English translation of this speech appears as Document 2536-PS, at Page 64 in the document book. The official text of this speech appears in Dokumente der Deutschen Politik, Volume II (first edition), Pages 294-298. In the German text the extracts which I shall quote appear at Pages 296 and 298, and I will ask the Court to take judicial notice of these passages:
“The first task was that of uniting all Germans into one State. It was an outstanding historical and legislative accomplishment on the part of our Führer that by boldly grasping historical development he eliminated the sovereignty of the various German states. At last we have now, after 1,000 years, again a unified German State in every respect. It is no longer possible for the world, based on the spirit of resistance inherent in small states, which are set up on an egoistical scale and solely with a view to their individual interest, to make calculations to the detriment of the German people. That is a thing of the past for all times to come.”
I pass on now to the second excerpt:
“The second fundamental law of the Hitler Reich is racial legislation. The National Socialists were the first in the entire history of human law to elevate the concept of race to the status of a legal term. The German Nation, unified racially and nationally, will in the future be legally protected against any further disintegration of the German race stock.”
I pass now to the mention of the sixth law:
“The sixth fundamental law was the legal elimination of those political organizations which within the State, during the period of the regeneration of the people and the reconstruction of the Reich, were once able to place their selfish aims ahead of the common good of the nation. This elimination has taken place entirely legally. It is not the coming to the fore of despotic tendencies, but it was the necessary legal consequence of a clear political result of the 14 years’ struggle of the NSDAP.
“In accordance with these unified legal aims”—Frank continues—“in all spheres, particular efforts have for months now been made regarding the work of the great reform of the entire field of German law.
“As the leader of the German jurists, I am convinced that, together with all strata of the German people, we shall be able to construct the legal state of Adolf Hitler in every respect and to such an extent that no one in the world will at any time be able to dare to attack this constitutional state as regards its laws.”
In his speech on the occasion of the day of the Reich University Professors of the National Socialist Lawyers’ League on 3 October 1936, the Defendant Frank explained to the gathering of professors the elimination of Jews from the legal field, in accordance with the Nazi plan. Our partial translation of this speech appears as Document 2536-PS, at Page 62 of the document book. The official text appears likewise in Dokumente der Deutschen Politik, in Volume IV, Pages 225 to 230. I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this. It deals, to summarize. . .
THE PRESIDENT: I do not think you need it because we have already had documents of the same sort.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: As the leading Nazi jurist, the Defendant Frank accepted, condoned, and promoted the system of concentration camps and of arrest without warrant. He apparently had no hesitancy in subverting his professional ethics, if any he had, while subverting the legal framework of the German State to Nazi ends. He explains the outrageous departure from civilization that were concentration camps in an article on “Legislation and Judiciary in the Third Reich,” published in 1936 in the official journal of the Academy of German Law, of which, of course, he was the editor. The partial translation of this article appears as our Document 2533-PS, at Page 61 of the document book. The official German text of the extract appears in Zeitschrift der Akademie für Deutsches Recht, 1936, at Page 141, and I will ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this. Since the extract is short, I will ask permission to read it. Frank says:
“Before the world we are blamed again and again because of the concentration camps. We are asked: Why do you arrest without a warrant of arrest? I say: Put yourselves into the position of our nation. Don’t forget that the very great and still untouched world of Bolshevism cannot forget that here on our German soil we have made final victory for them impossible in Europe.”
It can be seen, therefore, that just as other defendants mobilized the military, economic, and diplomatic resources for aggressive war, the Defendant Frank, in the field of legal policy, geared the German juridical machine for a war of aggression, which war of aggression, as he explained in 1942 to the NSDAP political leaders of Galicia at a mass meeting in Lvov—and I now quote from the Frank diary, our Document 2233(s)-PS, at Page 50 in the document book, the original of which I offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-607—had for its purpose, and I quote: “. . . to expand the living space for our people in a natural manner.”
The distortions and warpings of German law, which Defendant Frank engineered for the Party, gave him, if not the world, vast satisfaction. He reported this to the powerful Academy for German Law in November 1939, 1 month after becoming Governor General of occupied Poland. This speech is partially translated in our Document 3445-PS, at Page 73 in the document book. The official text of the speech appears in Deutsches Recht, 1939, Volume 2, the week of 23-30 December 1939, beginning at Page 2121; and we ask the Court to take judicial notice of this, but would ask permission to read the excerpt, as it is very short. Frank stated:
“Today we are proud of having formulated our legal principles from the very beginning in such a way that they need not be changed in the case of war. For the maxim—that which serves the Nation is right, and that which harms it is wrong, which stood at the beginning of our legal work and which established this idea of the community of the people as the only standard of the law—this maxim shines out also in the social order of these times.”
If this sentiment has a familiar ring to it, it is because it is a restatement of a Party commandment tailored and furnished by the Party lawyer to fit the Party’s concept of law. I allude, of course, to the Party commandment, commented upon at Page 1608 (Volume IV, Page 38) of the official English transcript of these proceedings in the treatment of the Leadership Corps, which commandment stated and I quote, “Right is that which serves the Movement and thus Germany.”
It follows, I think, that the Prosecution conceives the Defendant Frank to be jointly responsible for all those cruel and discriminatory enabling acts and decrees through which the Nazis crushed minorities in Germany and consolidated their control over the German State and prepared it for its early entry upon aggression. It matters not, in our view, that the signature of this lawyer does not appear at the foot of every decree. Enough has been shown, in our submission, to indicate culpability in this regard. There is sufficient, we believe, now in this Record—and I refer to decrees cited by Major Walsh in his treatment of the persecution of the Jews and by Colonel Storey in his treatment of the Reich Cabinet—to demonstrate that type of enactment and the consequences thereof, for which we hold the Defendant Frank liable. In following this theory, may it please the Tribunal, we are only arriving at conclusions already arrived at for us by the Defendant Frank himself.
I now pass to that second and well-known phase of the Defendant Frank’s official life, wherein he for 5 years, as chief Party and Government agent, was bent upon the elimination of a whole people. He was appointed Governor General of the occupied Polish territory by a decree signed by his then Führer on 12 October 1939. The decree defined the scope of Frank’s executive power and is contained in our Document 2537-PS, at Page 66 in the document book. I shall ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this, since it appears in Reichsgesetzblatt, 1939, Part I, Page 2077.
It merely states that Dr. Frank is appointed as Governor General of the occupied Polish territory; that Dr. Seyss-Inquart is appointed as Deputy Governor General, and that “the Governor General shall be directly responsible to me”—meaning Hitler, he having signed the decree.
While some of the outside world was prone in earlier days to wonder at the apparent efficiency of Nazi administration, we now know that it was often riddled with the petty jealousies of small men in positions of some authority and with jurisdictional fractiousness. No such difficulty existed with the Defendant Frank, however, for though he was not without the threat of divided authority, he insisted upon, and was granted, the favor of supreme command within the territorial confines of the Government General. Only two references from his diary, one in 1940 and one in 1942, are necessary to show the all-inclusiveness of his direction and authority.
At a meeting of department heads of the Government General on 8 March 1940 in the Bergakademie, the Defendant Frank clarified his status as Governor General; and these remarks appear in the diary and in our Document 2233(m)-PS, at Page 42 in the document book, the original of which I offer into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-173.
In the German text, the extracts appear in the meetings of department heads, Volume 2 for 1939-1940, at Pages 5, 6, 7, and 8. Frank says:
“One thing is certain. The authority of the Governor General as the representative of the will of the Führer and the will of the Reich in this territory is certainly strong, and I have always emphasized that I would not tolerate misuse of this authority. I have made this known anew at every office in Berlin, especially after Herr Field Marshal Göring on 12. 2. 1940, from Karin Hall, had forbidden all administrative offices of the Reich, including the Police and even the Wehrmacht, to interfere in administrative matters of the Government General. . . .”
He goes on to say:
“There is no authority here in the Government General which is higher as to rank, stronger in influence, and of greater authority than that of the Governor General. Even the Wehrmacht has no governmental or official functions here of any kind; it has only security functions and general military duties—it has no political power whatsoever. The same applies to the Police and the SS. There is here no state within a state, but we are representatives of the Führer and of the Reich.”
Later, in 1942, at a conference of the district political leaders of the NSDAP in Kraków on 18 March, Defendant Frank further explained the relationship between the administration and the Reichsführer SS Himmler. These remarks appear in the diary and in our Document 2233(r)-PS and at Page 48 of the document book, the original of which I offer into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-608. In the German text, the extract to be quoted appears at Pages 185 and 186 of diary Volume 18, 1942, Part I. I quote:
“As you know”—says Frank—“I am a fanatic as to unity in administration. . . . It is therefore clear that the Higher SS and Police Leader is subordinated to me, that the Police is a component of the Government, that the SS and Police Leader in the district is subordinated to the Governor, and that the district chief has the authority of command over the gendarmerie in his district. This the Reichsführer SS has recognized; in the written agreement all these points are mentioned word for word and signed. It is also self-evident that we cannot establish a closed shop here which can be treated in the traditional manner of small states.”
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Do you think all this has to be read?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: It is considered important, Sir, by the United States Prosecution, in view of the fact that this is the later extract from the diary and indicates that 2 years later even Frank considered himself to be the supreme authority in the Government General. This is a point which we conceive to be of importance, Sir. May I proceed?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: “It would, for instance, be ridiculous if we would build up here a security policy of our own against our Poles in the country, while knowing that the Poles in West Prussia, in Posen, in Warthegau, and in Silesia have one and the same movement of resistance. So the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police must be able to carry out, with his agencies, his police measures concerning the interests of the Reich as a whole. This, however, will be done in such a way that the measures to be adopted will first be submitted to me and carried out only when I give my consent. In the Government General the Police are the armed forces. Consequently the leader of the Police will be called by me into the Government of the Government General; he is subordinate to me, or to my deputy, as a state secretary for security.”
At this juncture, it is appropriate to mention that the man who filled the position of State Secretary for Security in the Government General was Frank’s Higher SS and Police Leader, Krüger.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you read the next page?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: May it please the Tribunal; I shall come to that excerpt later.
THE PRESIDENT: In the same document?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Yes, Sir. It seems more appropriate at another point.
The Tribunal may recall that the reports of the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were made in the spring of 1943 by SS Leader Stroop, who immediately supervised the operation, to this same Krüger, who was still at that time one of the two most influential members of Frank’s Cabinet, as State Secretary for Security.
It was inevitable that the grand conspiracy or common plan should have as its component parts a host of small plans each dealing with a particular sphere of activity. These plans, differing from the master plan only in size, are the blueprints for a specific action drawn from the broad policies. Occupied Poland was no exception to this rule. The plan for the administration of Poland was contained in a top secret memorandum of a conference between Hitler and the Chief of the OKW, Defendant Keitel, entitled “Regarding Future Relations of Poland to Germany” and dated 20 October 1939. This report was initialed by General Warlimont. It is our Document 864-PS and may be found at Page 3 of the document book, and I shall offer it into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-609.
I shall quote, if the Court please, only from Paragraphs 1, 3, 4, and 6:
“1) The Armed Forces will welcome it if they can dispose of administrative questions in Poland. On principle, there cannot be two administrations. . . .
“3) It is not the task of the administration to make Poland into a model province or a model state of the German order or to put her economically or financially on a sound basis.
“The Polish intelligentsia must be prevented from forming a ruling class. The standard of living in the country is to remain low; we want only to draw labor forces from there. Poles are also to be used for the administration of the country. However, the forming of national political groups may not be allowed.
“4) The administration has to work on its own responsibility and must not be dependent on Berlin. We do not want to do there what we do in the Reich. The responsibility does not rest with the Berlin Ministries since there is no German administration unit concerned.
“The accomplishment of this task will involve a hard racial struggle which will not allow any legal restrictions. The methods will be incompatible with the principles otherwise adhered to by us.
“The Governor General is to give the Polish nation only bare living conditions and is to maintain the basis for military security. . . .
“6). . . . Any tendencies towards the consolidation of conditions in Poland are to be suppressed. The ‘Polish muddle’ must be allowed to develop. The Government of the territory must make it possible for us to purify the Reich territory from Jews and Poles too. Collaboration with new Reich provinces (Posen and West Prussia) only for resettlements (compare Himmler mission).
“Purpose: Shrewdness and severity must be the maxims in this racial struggle in order to spare us from going to battle on account of this country again.”
The Defendant Frank was the chosen executor of this program. He knew its aims, approved of them, and actively carried out the scheme. The Tribunal’s attention has already been invited to Exhibit Number USA-297 wherein—this may be found at Page 1512 of the English text of the official transcript—(Volume III, Pages 576, 577) the Defendant Frank expounded the mission which his Führer assigned to him and according to which he intended to administer in Poland. It contemplated, in brief, ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies and workers, reduction of the entire Polish economy to an absolute minimum necessary for bare existence of the population, and the closing of all schools. No more callous statement exists than the one Frank made in this report, wherein he said, “Poland shall be treated as a colony; the Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German world empire.”
In December 1940 Frank submitted to his department heads that the task of administering Poland did truly involve a hard racial struggle which would not allow any legal restrictions. I refer to our Document 2233(o)-PS, which may be found at Page 45 in the document book. It is taken from the Frank diary, and I offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-173. In the German text the extract to be quoted appears in the volume of the diary entitled, “Department Heads Meetings 1939-1940,” on Pages 12 and 13. I now quote:
“In this country the force of a determined leadership must rule. The Pole must feel here that we are not building him a legal state, but that for him there is only one duty, namely, to work and to behave himself. It is clear that this leads sometimes to difficulties; but you must, in your own interest, see that all measures are ruthlessly carried out in order to become master of the situation. You can rely on me absolutely in this.”
As for the Poles and Ukrainians, Defendant Frank’s attitude was clear. They were to be permitted to slave for the German economy as long as the war emergency continued. Once the war was won, even this cynical interest would cease. I refer to a speech before German political leaders at Kraków on 12 January 1944. It appears in the Frank diary and as our Document 2233(bb)-PS at Page 60 in the document book. It is the first passage on that page. I offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-295. In the diary, the German text will be found in the loose-leaf volume covering the period from 1 January to 28 February 1944, at the entry for 14 January 1944, at Page 24. “Once the war is won” Frank tells these leaders—and here we have, may it please the Court, the classic example of the completely brutal statement:
“Once the war is won, then, for all I care, mincemeat can be made of the Poles and the Ukrainians and all the others who run around here; it doesn’t matter what happens.”
In accordance with the racial program of the Nazi conspirators, the Defendant Frank makes it quite clear in his diary that the complete annihilation of Jews was one of his cherished objectives. In Exhibit Number USA-271, Frank stated in late 1940 in his diary that he could not eliminate all lice and Jews in a year’s time. In Exhibit Number USA-281, he notes in his diary in the year 1942 that a program of starvation rations sentencing, in effect, 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger, should be noted only marginally. In Exhibit Number USA-295, he confided to a secret press conference that in the year 1944—and this, too, is from the diary—there were still in the Government General perhaps 100,000 Jews.
These facts, if the Tribunal please, are from the diary of the man himself. We do no more here than to tabulate the results. The supreme authority within a certain geographic area admits that in a period of 4 years’ time up to 3,400,000 persons from that area have been annihilated pursuant to an official policy and for no crime, but only because of having been born a Jew. No words could possibly reveal the inferences of death and suffering which must needs be drawn from these stark facts.
It was a Nazi policy that the population of occupied countries should endure terror, oppression, impoverishment, and starvation. The Defendant Frank succeeded so well in this regard that he was forced to report to his Führer in 1943 that, in effect, Poles did not regard the Government General with affection. This report to Hitler was a summarization of the first 3½ years of the Defendant Frank’s administration. It, better than anything else, can show the conditions as they then existed as a result of the conspiratorial efforts of the defendants.
The report is contained in our Document 437-PS, at Page 2 of the document book, and I now offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-610. In the German text, the extract to be quoted appears at Pages 10 and 11 of this report by Frank to Hitler dated 19 June 1943, regarding the situation in Poland. I now quote. Frank says:
“In the course of time, a series of measures, or of consequences of the German rule, have led to a substantial deterioration of the attitude of the entire Polish people to the Government General. These measures have affected either individual professions or the entire population and frequently also—often with crushing severity—the fate of individuals.”
He goes on:
“Among these are in particular:
“1. The entirely insufficient nourishment of the population, mainly of the working classes in the cities, the majority of which are working for German interests.
“Until the war of 1939 their food supplies, though not varied, were sufficient and were generally assured owing to the agrarian surplus of the former Polish State and in spite of the negligence on the part of their former political leadership.
“2. The confiscation of a great part of the Polish estates, expropriation without compensation, and evacuation of Polish peasants from maneuver areas and from German settlements.
“3. Encroachments and confiscations in the industries, in commerce and trade, and in the field of other private property.
“4. Mass arrests and shootings by the German Police who applied the system of collective responsibility.
“5. The rigorous methods of recruiting workers.
“6. The extensive paralyzing of cultural life.
“7. The closing of high schools, colleges, and universities.
“8. The limitation, indeed the complete elimination, of Polish influence from all spheres of State administration.
“9. Curtailment of the influence of the Catholic Church, limiting its extensive influence—an undoubtedly necessary move—and, in addition, until quite recently, often at the shortest notice, the closing and confiscation of monasteries, schools, and charitable institutions.”
Indeed, the Nazi plan for Poland succeeded all too well.
THE PRESIDENT: This is only an extract here. Was he saying that these measures were inevitable or that he justified them, or what was he saying in the report?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: He was saying, Sir, that the Polish people’s attitude to the Government General had substantially deteriorated. The reasons for that deterioration are the listings I gave to the Court. In other words. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Is that all he said?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: No, Sir; that is just taken from Pages 10 and 11 of the report. The report is an extremely long one.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I suppose you know what the general tenor of the report was.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: The general tenor of the report, Sir, was in the nature of a complaint to Hitler, that he, Frank, was having an extremely difficult time in the Government General because of these measures and because of these happenings in the Government General.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: In order to illustrate how completely the Defendant Frank is identified with the policies. . .
DR. SEIDL: [Interposing.] As the Tribunal has already asked the Prosecution what the purpose of this document is, I would like to point out here that it concerns a document of 40 typewritten pages addressed to Hitler and that Frank condemns the conditions which the Prosecution has brought forward and that in this document he makes far-reaching proposals to remedy the situation which he severely criticizes.
I shall, when my turn comes, read the whole document.
THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. You will have full opportunity, when it is your turn, to explain this document; but it is not your turn at the moment.
DR. SEIDL: I only mention it now because the Tribunal itself drew my attention to this point.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin, I asked you what was the whole content of the document from which you were reading this paragraph. According to counsel for Frank, the document, which is a very long document, shows that Frank was suggesting remedies for the difficulties which he here sets out. Is that so?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: That is so, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the. . .
LT. COL. BALDWIN: May it please the Tribunal, I did not cite this portion of that document, as I will later demonstrate, to show that Frank did or did not suggest remedies for these conditions; but only to explain that these conditions existed as of a certain period.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, when you cite a small part of the document, you should make sure that what you cite is not misleading as compared to the rest of the document.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: I see, Your Honor. I had not considered it to be such, in view of the purpose for which I introduced it, which, as I suggested, was only to indicate a set of conditions which existed at a certain time. I naturally assumed that the Defense, as Dr. Seidl has indicated, will carry on with the rest of the document as a matter of defense.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, of course, that is all very well, but the Defendant Frank’s counsel will speak at some remote date; and it is not a complete answer to say that he will have an opportunity of explaining the document at some future date. It is for Counsel for the Prosecution to make sure that no extracts which they read can reasonably make a misleading impression upon the mind of the Tribunal.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: I shall now state, then, that the extract which was just read was read solely for the purpose of indicating that at a certain period, namely, June 1943, those conditions existed in Poland, as the result of statements by the Governor General of Poland.
Would that be satisfactory to the Tribunal?
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Well, what is not satisfactory to the Tribunal is that you did not give us the real purport of the document.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Well, Sir, I don’t have the complete document before me now. Therefore, I can’t read all of it.
THE PRESIDENT: What we would like, would be, if possible, that when an extract is made from a document, counsel who are presenting that extract should instruct themselves as to the general purport of the document so as to make certain that the part that is read is not misleading.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Yes, Sir.
In order to illustrate how completely the Defendant Frank is identified with the policies, the execution of which is reported in this document, and how thoroughly they were his own policies; and this, if the Tribunal please, regardless of what remedies he may have had in 1943, it is proposed in this last section to take passages from Frank’s own diary in proof of his early espousal and execution of these self-same policies.
As to the insufficient nourishment of the Polish population, there was no need for the Defendant Frank to have waited until June 1943 to have reported this fact to Hitler. In September 1941 Defendant Frank’s own chief medical officer reported to him the appalling Polish health conditions. This appears in Frank’s diary and in our Document 2233(p)-PS, at Page 46 in the document book, which I now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-611. The German text is to be found in the 1941 diary volume at Page 830. I quote:
“Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Walbaum expresses his opinion of the health condition of the Polish population. Investigations which were carried out by his department proved that the majority of Poles had only about 600 calories allotted to them, whereas the normal requirement for a human being was 2,200 calories. The Polish population was weakened to such an extent that it would fall an easy prey to spotted fever.”—Parenthetically, I think we know that as typhus.
“The number of diseased Poles has amounted to date to 40 percent. During the last week alone, 1,000 new spotted fever cases were officially recorded. That is so far the highest figure. This health situation represents a serious danger for the Reich and for the soldiers coming into the Government General. A spreading of that pestilence into the Reich is very possible. The increase in tuberculosis, too, is causing anxiety. If the food rations were to be diminished again, an enormous increase of the number of illnesses could be predicted.”
While it was crystal-clear from this report that in September 1941 disease affected 40 percent of the Polish population, nevertheless the Defendant Frank approved, in August 1942, a new plan which called for a much larger contribution of foodstuffs to Germany at the expense of the non-German population of the Government General. Methods of meeting the new quotas out of the grossly inadequate rations of the Government General and the impact of the new quotas on the economy of the country were discussed at a cabinet meeting of the Government General on 24 August 1942 in terms which leave no possible doubt that not only was the proposed requisition beyond the resources of the country, but its force was to be distributed on a grossly discriminatory basis. This appears from Frank’s diary and in our Document 2233(e)-PS, which is at Page 30 in the document book, which I now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-283. The German text appears in the 1942 conference volume at the conference entry for 24 August 1942. I quote the following extract:
“Before the German people”—said Frank—“suffer starvation, the occupied territories and their people shall be exposed to starvation. In this moment, therefore, we here in the Government General must have the iron determination to help the great German people, that is our fatherland.
“The Government General, therefore, must do the following: The Government General has undertaken to send 500,000 tons of bread grain to the fatherland in addition to the foodstuffs already being delivered for the relief of Germany or consumed here by troops of the Armed Forces, Police, or SS. If you compare this with our contributions of last year you can see that this means a six-fold increase over that of last year’s contribution by the Government General.
“The new demand will be fulfilled exclusively at the expense of the foreign population. It must be done cold-bloodedly and without pity.”
Defendant Frank was not only responsible for reducing the Government General to starvation level, but was proud of the contribution he thereby made to the Reich. I refer to a statement made to the political leaders of the NSDAP on 14 December 1942 at Kraków. It is contained in the Frank diary and is our Document 2233(z)-PS, at Page 57 in the document book; and I now offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-612. In the German text the extract appears in the 1942 diary volume, Part IV, at Page 1331. Defendant Frank is speaking:
“I will endeavor to get out of the reservoir of this territory everything that is yet to be had out of it.”
He continues:
“When you consider that it was possible for me to deliver to the Reich 600,000 tons of bread grain and in addition 180,000 tons to the Armed Forces stationed here; further, an abundance amounting to many thousands of tons of other commodities, such as seed, fats, vegetables, besides the delivery to the Reich of 300 million eggs, et cetera, you can estimate how important the work in this territory is for the Reich. In order to make clear to you the significance of the consignment from the Government General of 600,000 tons of bread grain, you are referred to the fact that the Government General, by this achievement alone, covers the raising of the bread ration in the Greater German Reich by two-thirds for the present rationing period. This enormous achievement can rightfully be claimed by us.”
Now, as to the resettlement of Polish peasants which Defendant Frank mentions secondly in the report to Hitler—although Himmler was given general authority in connection with the conspirators’ project to resettle various districts in the conquered Eastern territories with racial Germans, the projects relating to resettling districts in the Government General were submitted to and approved by the Defendant Frank. The plan to resettle Zamosc and Lublin, for example, was reported to him at a meeting to discuss special problems of the district Lublin by his infamous State Secretary for Security, Higher SS and Police Leader, Krüger, on 4 August 1942. It is contained in Frank’s diary and in our Document 2233(t)-PS, at Page 51 in the document book, which I now offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-607. The German text appears in the 1942 volume of the diary, Part III, Pages 830, 831, and 832.
I now quote from the report of the conference:
“State Secretary Krüger then continues, saying that the Reichsführer’s next immediate plan until the end of the following year would be to settle the following German racial groups in the two districts”—Zamosc and Lublin—“1,000 peasant homes (1 homestead per family of about 6) for Bosnian Germans; 1,200 other kinds of homes; 1,000 homesteads for Bessarabian Germans; 200 for Serbian Germans; 2,000 for Leningrad Germans; 4,000 for Baltic Germans; 500 for Wolhynia Germans; and 200 homes for Flemish, Danish, and Dutch Germans; in all 10,000 homes for 50,000 to 60,000 persons.”
Upon hearing this, the Defendant Frank directed that—and I quote:
“. . . the resettlement plan is to be discussed co-operatively by the competent authorities and he declares his willingness to approve the final plan by the end of September after satisfactory arrangements had been made concerning all the questions appertaining thereto—in particular the guaranteeing of peace and order—so that by the middle of November, as the most favorable time, the resettlement can begin.”
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
LT. COL. BALDWIN: May it please the Tribunal, the way in which the resettlement at Zamosc was carried out was described to Defendant Frank by Krüger at a meeting at Warsaw on January 25, 1943. The report is contained in the Frank diary and is our Document 2233(aa)-PS, and appears at Page 58 in the document book. I offer the original of it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-613. The German text appears in the labor conference volume for 1943, at Pages 16, 17, and 19. Krüger in this excerpt reports that they had settled the first 4,000 in the Kreis Zamosc shortly before Christmas; that, understandably, friends were not made of the Poles in the resettlement program; and that the Poles had to be chased out. He then stated to Frank, and I quote:
“We are removing those who constitute a burden in this new colonization territory. Actually, they are the asocial and inferior elements. They are being deported; first brought to a concentration camp and then sent as labor to the Reich. From a Polish propaganda standpoint, this entire first action has an unfavorable effect. For the Poles say: ‘After the Jews have been destroyed, then they will employ the same methods to get the Poles out of this territory and liquidate them just like the Jews.’ ”
Krüger went on to mention that there was a great deal of unrest in the territory as a result; and Frank informed him, that is, Krüger, that each individual case of resettlement would be discussed in the future exactly as that one of Zamosc had been.
Although the illegality of this dispossession of Poles to make room for Germans was evident and although the fact that the Poles who were not only being dispossessed but sent off to concentration camps became increasingly difficult to handle, the resettlement projects continued in the Government General.
The third item mentioned by Frank—the encroachments and confiscations of industry and private property—was again an early Frank policy. He explained this to his department heads in December 1939. The report is from his diary and is our Document 2233(k)-PS, and it appears at Page 40 in the document book. I now offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-173. The German text appears in the department heads conference volume for 1939-40 at the entry for 2 December 1939 at Pages 2 and 3. Dr. Frank states:
“Principally it can be said regarding the administration of the Government General: This territory in its entirety is booty for the German Reich, and thus it will not do for this territory to be exploited in separate individual parts; but the territory in its entirety shall be economically used and its entire economic worth redound to the benefit of the German people.”
Reference is made to Exhibit Number USA-297, if any further support of an early policy of ruthless exploitation is deemed necessary by the Tribunal. In addition, the decree permitting sequestration in the Government General heretofore pointed out to the Tribunal (Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement, Number 6, 27 January 1940, Page 23), which decree was signed by the Defendant Frank, permitted and empowered the Nazi officials to engage in wholesale seizure of property. This was made the easier by the undefined criteria of the decree. The looting of the Government General under this and other decrees has already been presented to the Tribunal on 14 December 1945, under the subject heading, “Germanization and spoliation of occupied territories,” and the Tribunal is respectfully referred to that portion of the record and in particular to that segment dealing with the Government General.
The Defendant Frank mentioned mass arrests and mass shooting and the application of collective responsibility as the fourth reason for the apparent deterioration of the attitude of the entire Polish people. In this, too, he is to blame, for it was no part of Defendant Frank’s policy that reprisal should be commensurate with the gravity of the offense. He was, on the contrary, an advocate of the most drastic measures. At a conference of district political leaders at Kraków, on 18 March 1942, Frank stated his policy. This extract is from the diary and is our Document 2233(r)-PS and will be found at Page 49 in the document book. I offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-608. The German text may be found in the diary volume for 1942, Part I, Pages 195 and 196. I quote Frank’s statement:
“Incidentally, the struggle for the achievement of our aims will be pursued cold-bloodedly. You see how the state agencies work. You see that we do not hesitate at anything, and stand dozens of people up against the wall. This is necessary because a simple reflection tells me that it cannot be our task at this period, when the best German blood is being sacrificed, to show regard for the blood of another race; for out of this, one of the greatest dangers may arise. One already hears today in Germany that prisoners of war, for instance, in Bavaria or Thuringia, are administering large estates entirely independently, while all the men in a village fit for service are at the front. If this state of affairs continues, then a gradual retrogression of Germanism will result. One should not underestimate this danger. Therefore, everything revealing itself as a Polish power of leadership must be destroyed again and again with ruthless energy. This does not have to be shouted abroad; it will happen silently.”
And on 15 January 1944 Defendant Frank assured the political leaders of the NSDAP that reprisals would be made for German deaths. These remarks are to be found in the Frank diary, in our Document 2233(bb)-PS at Page 60 in the document book, the second quote on that page, the original of which I offer in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-295. The German text appears in the loose-leaf volume of the diary covering the period from 1 January 1944 to 28 February 1944, and appears at Page 13. Frank says quite simply—“I have not hesitated to declare that when a German is shot, up to 100 Poles shall be shot too.”
The whole tragic history of slave-labor and recruitment of workers has been placed before this Tribunal in great detail. When the Defendant Frank refers to these methods as his fifth reason for disaffection in Poland in his report to Hitler, he once more cites policies which he executed. Force, violence, and economic duress were all supported by him as means for recruiting laborers for deportation to slavery in Germany. This was an announced policy, and I have already alluded to Exhibit Number USA-297, which contains verification of this fact.
While in the very beginning recruitment of laborers in the Government General may have been voluntary, these methods soon proved inadequate. In the spring of 1940 the question of utilizing force came up and the matter was discussed at an official meeting at which the Defendant Seyss-Inquart was also present. I refer to the Frank diary and our Document 2233(n)-PS, which the Tribunal will find at Page 43 in the document book. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-614. The German text appears in the diary volume for 1940, Part II, at Page 333. I quote the conference report:
“The Governor General stated that all means in the form of proclamations, et cetera, not having succeeded, one is led to the conclusion that the Poles, out of malevolence and with the intention of harming Germany by not putting themselves at its disposal, refuse to enlist for labor service. Therefore, he asks Dr. Frauendorfer if there are any other measures not as yet employed to win the Poles on a voluntary basis.
“Reichshauptamtsleiter Dr. Frauendorfer answered the question in the negative.
“The Governor General emphasized the fact that he will now be asked to take a definite attitude towards this question. Therefore, the question will arise whether any form of coercive measures should now be employed.
“The question put by the Governor General to SS Lieutenant General Krüger as to whether he sees possibilities of calling Polish workers by coercive means, is answered in the affirmative by SS Lieutenant General Krüger.”
In May 1940, at an official conference—and this record is already before the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USA-173—Defendant Frank stated that compulsion in recruitment of labor could be exercised, that Poles could be snatched from the streets and that the best method would be organized raids.
As in the case of persecution of the Jews, the forced labor program in the Government General is almost beyond belief. I refer to the Frank diary and to our Document 2233(w)-PS, which will be found at Page 53 in the document book, the original of which I offer into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-607. This excerpt is a record, if the Court please, of a discussion between the Defendant Sauckel and the Defendant Frank at Kraków on 18 August 1942; and it appears in the diary volume for 1942, Part III, at Pages 918 and 920. Dr. Frank speaks:
“I am pleased to report to you officially, Party Comrade Sauckel, that we have up to now supplied 800,000 workers for the Reich. . . .”
He continues:
“Recently you have requested us to supply a further 140,000. I have pleasure in informing you officially that in accordance with our agreement of yesterday, 60 percent of the newly requested workers will be supplied to the Reich by the end of October and the balance of 40 percent by the end of the year.”
Dr. Frank continues:
“Beyond the present figure of 140,000 you can, however, next year reckon upon a higher number of workers from the Government General, for we shall employ the Police to conscript them.”
How this recruitment was carried out—by wild and ruthless manhunts—is clearly shown in Exhibit Number USA-178, which is in evidence before the Tribunal. Starvation, violence, and death, which characterized the entire slave-labor program of the conspirators, was thus faithfully reflected in the administration of the Defendant Frank.
There were, of course, other grounds for uneasiness in occupied Poland which the Defendant Frank did not mention in his report to Hitler. He does not mention the concentration camps, perhaps because as a representative jurist of National Socialism, the Defendant Frank had himself defended the system in Germany. As Governor General the Defendant Frank, we feel, must be held responsible for all concentration camps within the boundaries of the Government General. These include, among others, the notorious camp at Maidanek and the one at Lublin and at Treblinka outside of Warsaw. As indicated previously, the Defendant Frank knew and approved that Poles were taken to concentration camps in connection with resettlement projects. He had certain jurisdiction as well in relation to the extermination camp Auschwitz, to which Poles from the Government General were committed by his administration. In February 1944 Embassy Counsellor Dr. Schumberg suggested a possible amnesty of Poles who had been taken to Auschwitz for trivial offenses and kept there for several months. This conference, if the Court please, is reported in the Frank diary and is contained in our Document 2233(bb)-PS, at Page 60 in the document book. It is the third quote on that page. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-295.
THE PRESIDENT: You go too fast. Did you say Page 70?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Page 60, Sir. The German text appears in the loose-leaf volume covering the period 1 January 1944 to 28 February 1944, at the conference on 8 February 1944, on Page 7. I quote:
“The Governor General will take under consideration an amnesty probably for 1 May of this year. Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the fact that the German leadership of the Government General must not now show any sign of weakness.”
This, then, was and is the conspirator Hans Frank. The evidence is by no means exhausted, but it is our belief that sufficient proof has been given to this Tribunal to establish his liability under Count One of the Indictment.
As legal adviser of Hitler and the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, Defendant Frank promoted the conspirators’ rise to power. In his various juridical capacities, both in the NSDAP and in the German Government, Defendant Frank certainly advocated and promoted the political monopoly of the NSDAP, the racial program of the conspirators, and the terror system of the concentration camps and of arrest without warrant. His role, early in the Common Plan, was to realize “the National Socialist program in the realm of the law” and to give the outward form of legality to this program of terror, persecution, and oppression which had as its ultimate purpose mobilization for aggressive war.
As a loyal adherent of Hitler and the NSDAP, Defendant Frank was appointed Governor General in 1939 of that area of Poland known as the Government General. Defendant Frank had defined justice as that which benefited the German nation. His 5 years’ administration of the Government General illustrates the most extreme extension of that principle.
It has been shown that Defendant Frank took the office of Governor General under a program which constituted in itself a criminal plan or conspiracy, as Defendant Frank well knew and approved, to exploit the territory ruthlessly for the benefit of Nazi Germany, to conscript its nationals for labor in Germany, to close its schools and colleges, to prevent the rise of a Polish intelligentsia, and to administer the territory as a colonial possession of the Third Reich in total disregard of the duties of an occupying power towards the inhabitants of occupied territory.
Under Defendant Frank’s administration this criminal plan was consummated, but the execution went even beyond the plan. Food contributions to Germany increased to the point where the bare subsistence reserved for the Government General under the plan was reduced to a level of mass starvation. The savage program of exterminating Jews was relentlessly executed. Resettlement projects were carried out with reckless disregard of the rights of the local population and the terror of the concentration camp followed in the wake of the Nazi invaders.
This statement of evidence has been compiled in large part from statements by the Defendant Frank himself, from the admission found in his diary, official reports, reports of conferences with his colleagues and subordinates, and his speeches. It is therefore appropriate that a passage from his diary should be quoted in conclusion. It is our Document 2233(aa)-PS. It appears at Page 59 in the document book. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-613. The German text appears in the 1943 volume of labor conference meetings at the 25 January 1943 entry on Page 53. In his address Defendant Frank, prophetically enough, told his colleagues in the Government General that their task would grow more difficult. “Hitler”, he said, “could help them only as a kind of ‘administrative pill box.’ ” They must depend on themselves.
“We are now duty bound to hold together”—and I quote Frank—“We must remember that we who are gathered together here figure on Mr. Roosevelt’s list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number One. We have, so to speak, become accomplices in the world historic sense.”
This concludes the presentation on the Defendant Frank.
May it please the Tribunal, Lieutenant Colonel Griffith-Jones of the British Delegation will now deal with the individual responsibility of the Defendant Streicher.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL M. C. GRIFFITH-JONES (Junior Counsel for the United Kingdom): If the Tribunal please, it is my duty to present the case against the Defendant Julius Streicher.
Appendix A of the Indictment, that paragraph of the Appendix relating to Streicher, sets out the positions which he held and which I shall prove. It then goes on to allege that he used those positions and his personal influence and his close connection with the Führer in such a manner that he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany, as set forth in Count One of the Indictment; that he authorized, directed, and participated in the Crimes against Humanity, set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the incitement of the persecution of the Jews, set forth in Count One and Count Four of the Indictment.
My Lord, the case against this defendant can be, perhaps, described by the unofficial title that he assumed for himself as “Jew-baiter Number One.” It is the Prosecution’s case that for the course of some 25 years this man educated the whole of the German people in hatred and that he incited them to the persecution and to the extermination of the Jewish race. He was an accessory to murder, perhaps on a scale never attained before.
With the Tribunal’s permission I propose to prove quite shortly the position and influence that he held and then to refer the Tribunal to several short extracts from his newspapers and from his speeches and then to outline the part that he played in the particular persecutions that occurred against the Jews between the years 1933 and 1945.
My Lord, perhaps before I start, I might say that the document book before the members of the Tribunal is arranged in the order in which I intend to refer to the documents. They are paged and there is an index at the beginning of the book and if the Tribunal have got what is called the trial brief, it is in effect a note of the evidence to which I shall refer and again in the order in which I shall refer to it, which may be of some assistance.
My Lord, this defendant was born in 1885. He became a school teacher in Nuremberg and formed a party of his own, which he called the German Socialist Party. The chief policy of that party, again, was anti-Semitism. In 1922 he handed over his party to Hitler; and there is a glowing account of his generosity which appears in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which I do not think it worth occupying the time of the Tribunal in reading. It appears as Document M-3, and is the first document in the Tribunal’s document book. The copy of Mein Kampf is already before the Tribunal as Exhibit GB-128.
The appointments that he held in the Party and State were few. From 1921 until 1945 he was a member of the Nazi Party. In 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of Franconia, and he remained as such until about February of 1940; and from the time that the Nazi Government came into power in 1933 until 1945, he was a member of the Reichstag. In addition to that he held the title of Obergruppenführer in the SA. All that information appears in Document 2975-PS, which is already exhibited as Exhibit Number USA-9, and is the affidavit that he made himself.
The propaganda that he carried out throughout those years was chiefly done through the medium of his newspapers. He was the editor and publisher of the paper called Der Stürmer, which was a weekly journal, from 1922 until 1933; and thereafter the publisher and owner of the paper.
In 1933 he also founded and thereafter, I think, published—certainly was responsible for—the daily newspaper called the Fränkische Tageszeitung.
There were, in addition to that and particularly later, several others, mostly local journals, that he published from Nuremberg.
Those are the positions that he held; and now if I may, I shall quite briefly trace the course of his incitement and propaganda more or less in chronological order by referring the Tribunal to the short extracts. I would say this: These extracts are really selected at random. They are selected with a view to showing the Tribunal the various methods that he employed to incite the people against the Jewish race; but his newspapers are crowded with them, week after week, day after day. It is impossible to pick up any copy without finding the same kind of stuff in the headlines and in the articles.
If I might quote from four speeches and articles showing his early activities from 1922 until 1933—at Page 3 of the Tribunal’s document book, Document M-11—that is an extract from a speech that he made in 1922 in Nuremberg, and—after abusing the Jews in the first paragraph—I refer only to the last two lines: “We know that Germany will be free when the Jew has been excluded from the life of the German people.”
I pass to the next document, which is M-12, on Page 4. The first document was Exhibit GB-165. That is the book, I understand, that is being given that number, so that the next document, which is taken from the same book, will be the same. Perhaps I might be allowed to read that short extract. It is an extract from a speech:
“I beg you and particularly those of you who carry the cross throughout the land, to become somewhat more serious when I speak of the enemy of the German people, namely, the Jew. Not out of irresponsibility or for fun do I fight against the Jewish enemy, but because I bear within me the knowledge that the whole misfortune was brought to Germany by the Jews alone.
“. . . I ask you once more, what is at stake today? The Jew seeks domination not only among the German people but among all peoples. The Communists pave the way for him. . . . Do you not know that the God of the Old Testament ordered the Jews to devour and enslave the peoples of the earth? . . .
“The Government allows the Jew to do as he pleases. The people expect action to be taken. . . . You may think about Adolf Hitler as you please, but one thing you must admit. He possessed the courage to attempt to free the German people from the Jew by a national revolution. That was a great deed.”
The next short extract appearing on the next page is taken from a speech in April of 1925:
“You must realize that the Jew wants our people to perish. . . . That is why you must join us and leave those who have brought you nothing but war and inflation and discord. For thousands of years the Jew has been destroying the nations.”
I ask the Tribunal to note now these last few words:
“Let us start today, so that we can annihilate the Jews.”
My Lord, so far as I have been able to find, that is the earliest expression of annihilation of the Jewish race. Perhaps it gave birth to what was 14 years later to become the official policy of the Nazi Government.
And one further passage from this period. This is in April 1932, Document M-14, taken from the same book. He starts by saying, “For 13 years I have fought against Jewry.” I quote the last paragraph only:
“We know that the Jew, whether he is baptized as a Protestant or as a Catholic, remains a Jew. Why can you not realize this, you Protestant clergymen, you Catholic priests! You are blinded and serve the God of the Jews who is not the God of love but the God of hate. Why do you not listen to Christ, who said to the Jews, ‘You are the children of the Devil.’ ”
That, then, was the kind of performance he was putting up during those early years. When the Nazi Party came to power, they officially started their campaign against the Jews by the boycott of 1 April 1933. Now, of that boycott the Tribunal have already had evidence; and I would do no more now than to remind the Tribunal in a word what happened.
The boycott was agreed on and approved of by the whole Government, as was shown in a document which is already before you, Document 2409-PS, Exhibit Number USA-262, which was Goebbels’ diary.
Streicher was appointed the chairman of the central committee for the organization of that boycott, which appears in Document 2156-PS, Exhibit Number USA-263. It was then said that he started his work on Wednesday, the 29th.
On that same day the central committee issued a proclamation in which they said that the boycott would start on Saturday at 10:00 a. m. sharp. “Jewry will realize whom it has challenged.” That short quotation appears in Document 3389-PS, which is USA-566, which is a volume—in actual fact, it is a copy of Der Stürmer which is already before the Court.
I would refer the Tribunal to one short passage from an article in the Nationalsozialistische Partei Korrespondenz which the defendant wrote on the 30th of March, before the boycott was due to start. It is Document 2153-PS and appears on Page 12 of the Tribunal’s book, which becomes Exhibit GB-166. There he writes, under the title, “Defeat the enemy of the world!—by Julius Streicher, official leader of the central committee to combat the Jewish atrocity and boycott campaign.”:
“Jewry wanted this battle. It shall have it until it realizes that the Germany of the brown battalions is not a country of cowardice and surrender. Jewry will have to fight until we have won victory.
“National Socialists! Defeat the enemy of the world. Even if the world is full of devils, we shall succeed in the end.”
As head of the central committee for that boycott, Streicher outlined in detail the organization of the boycott in orders which the committee published on the 31st of March 1933, which is the next document in the book, Document 2154-PS, Exhibit GB-167. I can summarize those.
The committee stressed that no violence is to be employed against the Jews on the occasion of that boycott, but not perhaps for humane reasons; it is because, if there is no violence employed, then Jewish employers will have no grounds for discharging their employees without notice; and they will have no ground for refusing to pay them any wages.
The Jews were also reported apparently to be transferring businesses to German figureheads in order to alleviate the results of this persecution, and the committee laid it down that any property to be transferred was to be considered as Jewish for the purpose of the boycott.
I do not think I need go into that any further. It does show that at that date he was taking a leading part, and a leading part as appointed by the Government, in the persecution of the Jews.
I would now refer the Court again to a few further extracts to show the form that this propaganda developed as the years went on. At Page 18 of the document book, Document M-20, we have an article in the New Year’s issue of a new paper that he had just founded. It was a semi-medical paper called German People’s Health Through Blood and Soil, edited by himself; and it is an example of the really remarkable lengths to which he went in putting over this propaganda against the Jews. I quote:
“For the initiated it is established for all time: ‘alien albumen’ is the sperm of a man of alien race. The male sperm in cohabitation is partially or completely absorbed by the female, and thus enters her bloodstream. One single cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever. Together with the ‘alien albumen’ she has absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she be able to bear purely Aryan children, even when married to an Aryan. They will all be bastards, with a dual soul and a body of a mixed breed. Their children, too, will be crossbreeds; that means, ugly people of unsteady character and with a tendency to illnesses. . . .
“Now we know why the Jew uses every artifice of seduction in order to ravish German girls at as early an age as possible; why the Jewish doctor rapes his female patients while they are under anaesthesia. . . . He wants the German girl and the German woman to absorb the alien sperm of the Jew. She is never again to bear German children!
“But the blood products of all animal organisms right down to bacteria, thus serum, lymph, extracts from internal organs, et cetera, are also ‘alien albumen.’ They have a poisonous effect if directly introduced into the bloodstream either by vaccination or by injection.
“The worst is that by these products of sick animals the blood is defiled, the Aryan is impregnated with an alien species.
“The author and abettor of such action is the Jew. He has been aware of the secrets of the race question for centuries, and therefore plans systematically the annihilation of the nations which are superior to him. Science and ‘authorities’ are his instruments for the enforcing of pseudoscience and the concealment of truth.”
That becomes, My Lord, Exhibit GB-168.
The next document, also at the beginning of 1935, an extract from his own paper Der Stürmer, is entitled “The Chosen People of the Criminals”:
“And all the same, or let us say, just because of this, the history book of the Jews, which is usually called the Holy Scriptures, impresses us as a horrible criminal romance, which makes the 150 shilling-shockers of the British Jew, Edgar Wallace, grow pale with envy. This ‘holy’ book abounds in murder, incest, fraud, theft, and indecency.”
On the 4th of October 1935—and the Tribunal will remember that that was the month after the Nuremberg Decrees had been made—he made a speech which is reported in the Völkischer Beobachter and is entitled in that newspaper, “Safeguard of German Blood and German Honor.” I read the report in that article: “Gauleiter Streicher speaks at a German Labor Front mass demonstration for the Nuremberg laws.” Then the first line of the actual article says that he spoke for the second time within a few weeks. I quote only the last two lines of that first large paragraph: “. . . we have therefore to unmask the Jew, and that is what I have been doing for the past 15 years.” That remark apparently was met with tempestuous applause. That document, M-34, becomes Exhibit GB-169.
And, My Lord, I think it unnecessary to quote from the next document in the Tribunal’s book. It is very much the same type of thing. On Page 22 of the document book, Document M-6, there is a leading article by Streicher in his Der Stürmer of which I would refer only to the last half of the last paragraph where again he emphasizes the part that he himself has taken in this campaign.
“The Stürmer’s 15 years of work of enlightenment has already led an army of initiated—millions strong—to National Socialism. The continued work of Der Stürmer will help to ensure that every German down to the last man will, with heart and hand, join the ranks of those whose aim it is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-Juda beneath their heels. He who helps to bring this about helps to eliminate the devil, and this devil is the Jew.”
That document becomes Exhibit GB-170.
The next document—I include it in the document book again only to show the extraordinary length to which he went in his propaganda; and it consists of a photograph of the burning hull of the airship Hindenburg when it went on fire in June 1937 in America. Underneath it the caption includes the comment:
“The first radio picture from the United States of America shows quite clearly that a Jew stands behind the explosion of our airship Hindenburg. Nature has depicted quite clearly and quite correctly that devil in human guise.”
And although it is not at all clear from that photograph, I think the meaning of that comment is that the cloud of smoke in the air is in the shape of a Jewish face.
On the next page Document M-4 is a speech he made in September 1937 at the opening of a bridge in Nuremberg. I will quote only the last paragraph on Page 24. The bridge in question is called the Wilhelm Gustloff bridge, and he says:
“The man who murdered Wilhelm Gustloff must have come from the Jewish people, because the Jewish textbooks teach that every Jew has the right to kill a non-Jew; and indeed, that it is pleasing to the Jewish God to kill as many non-Jews as possible.
“Look at the road the Jewish people have been following for thousands of years past; everywhere murder, everywhere mass murder! Neither must we forget that behind present-day wars there stands the Jewish financier who pursues his aims and interests. The Jew always lives on the blood of other nations; he needs such murder and such victims. For us who know, the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff is the same as ritual murder.”
And then on the next page:
“It is our duty to tell the children at school and the bigger ones what this memorial means. . . .”
I go to the next paragraph:
“The Jew no longer shows himself among us openly as he used to. But it would be wrong to say that victory is ours. Full and final victory will have been achieved only when the whole world is rid of Jews.”
That becomes Exhibit GB-171.
Now the next two documents in your document books are simply extracts from the correspondence columns of his Der Stürmer, showing again one of the methods he employed in this propaganda. I do not need to read them. The correspondence columns of all his issues are full of letters coming in from Germans saying that some German has been buying her shoes from a Jewish shop and so on, and in that way assisting in the general boycott of the Jews. In other words, they really are a weekly column of libels against the Jews all over Germany.
I pass then to another and particular form of propaganda that he employed and which he called “ritual murder.” The Tribunal may well remember that some years ago—I think it started in 1934—this Der Stürmer began publishing accounts of Jewish ritual murder which horrified the whole world to such an extent that even the Archbishop of Canterbury eventually wrote to the Times protesting, as indeed did people from every country in the world, protesting that any Government should allow matter like this to be published in their national newspapers.
He takes his ritual murder, I understand, from a medieval belief that during their Eastertide celebrations the Jews were in the habit of murdering Christian children; and he enlarges upon this and misrepresents this belief, this medieval belief, to show that not only did they do it in the Middle Ages, but that they are still doing it and still want to do it. And if I might just quote one or two passages from his newspapers and show one or two pictures which he published in connection with his campaign of ritual murder, it will illustrate to the Court the type of teaching and propaganda that he was putting up. On Page 29 of the Tribunal’s document book, I will quote from the third but last paragraph:
“This the French front-line soldier should take with him to France: The German people have taken a new lease on life. They want peace, but if anybody should attack them, if anyone should try to torture them again, to throw them back into the past, then the world would witness another heroic epic; then may Heaven decide where righteousness lies—here with us, or where the Jew has the whiphand and where he instigates massacres, one could almost say the biggest ritual murders of all times. If the German people are to be slaughtered according to the Jewish rites, the whole world will be thus slaughtered at the same time.”
And the last paragraph:
“Just as you have drummed morning and evening prayers into your children’s heads, so now drum this into their heads, so that the German people may gain the spiritual power to convince the rest of the world which the Jews desire to lead against us.”
That Document is M-2, Exhibit GB-172.
And on the following page of the document book there is a reproduction of a photograph taken from Der Stürmer of April 1937 which illustrates three Jews ritually murdering a girl by cutting her throat and shows the blood pouring out into a bucket on the ground. The caption underneath that photograph is as follows:
“Ritual Murder at Polna. Ritual murder of Agnes Hruza by the Jews Hilsner, Erdmann, and Wassermann (taken from a contemporary postcard.)”
That is Exhibit Number USA-258. It is already in a copy of Der Stürmer, which has been put in.
There appears on the next page of the document book an extract from that same Der Stürmer, April 1937. I will not read it now, because it has been put in and has all been read to the Court. It describes what happens when ritual murder takes place, and the blood is mixed with the bread and drunk by the Jews having their feast. The Tribunal will remember that during the feast the head of the family exclaims, “May all gentiles perish—as the child whose blood is contained in the bread and wine.”
That is already Exhibit Number USA-258, and it has been read in the transcript at Page 1437 (Volume III, Pages 522, 523).
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a good time to break off?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If My Lordship pleases.