Afternoon Session
THE PRESIDENT: I think, Dr. Nelte, you had really finished with your witnesses, had you not?
DR. NELTE: Yes, I think so. I must only reserve the right on what I may have to state, after the Soviet Prosecution have finished presenting their case—whether I still may wish to call this or that witness. As to the documents I should like to put a few questions which are of particular interest for me—rather for the Defendant Keitel.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.
DR. NELTE: The Tribunal knows my main subject of evidence. In order to prove that in many cases the Prosecution is wrong in assuming the OKW and the Defendant Keitel to be responsible, I can refer to a great many documents which have been presented by the Prosecution.
I take it that these documents are not to be submitted by me as evidential material, as they have already been put in. I ask the Tribunal for examination of these documents and for a ruling that in my pleadings on behalf of the defendant I may refer to such documents without having to submit or quote them.
I should like to add that the Tribunal, having been informed about the structure of the Armed Forces or parts of them and about the competencies of the various commands, will itself be able to judge which of the documents submitted are not suitable for supporting the allegations of the Prosecution regarding the responsibility of the Defendant Keitel.
I am also convinced that the Tribunal, in its findings, will examine carefully any document relevant to the question of guilt, even if the Defense does not submit such documents, and even if the Defense cannot submit a comprehensive presentation in view of the extremely large number of documents—there are thousands relating to the Defendant Keitel—and even if the Defense cannot deal with all these documents in the final speeches.
Furthermore, I should like to submit to the Tribunal another question which is important for the presentation of evidence on behalf of the Defendant Keitel and which is of great importance.
During the session of 1 February 1946, the French Prosecutor made the following statement, and I quote:
“Chapter 4 and the last will bear the heading, ‘The Administrative Organization of Criminal Action’. . . . for the fourth chapter I might point out that the French Delegation examined more than 2,000 documents, counting only the original German documents of which I have kept only about 50.”
According to the opening address of the United States Chief Prosecutor, there can be no doubt that these 50 documents were selected merely from the point of view of incriminating the defendant. On 11 February, if I remember correctly, I addressed myself to the French Prosecution with a request to place at my disposal for examination the remaining 1,950 documents, which the French Prosecution did not use.
To date I have received no answer. The Tribunal will appreciate the difficulties of my position. I know there are documents there which I am sure contain also exonerating facts. Yet I am not able to specify these documents. I beg the Tribunal, therefore, for a ruling in this matter—that the Prosecution should place at my disposal those documents for my perusal.
THE PRESIDENT: With reference to these particular documents that you are asking for, are you going to say anything about them?
DR. NELTE: I do not know the contents of these documents. I know only that the French Prosecution have these 2,000 documents. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Well, if you wish to deal with that now, I will ask the French Prosecutor to answer what you have said.
DR. NELTE: If Your Honor pleases, I leave it to the Tribunal whether they wish to examine this question or whether it can be dealt with now.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we had better hear from the French Prosecutor now.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): A certain number of documents of doubtful origin were in our hands at the time that we were beginning to prepare our prosecution. We have eliminated all documents which could not bear serious critical examination. We undertook a critical task and rejected all those that were considered to be insufficient proof. At the end of this task about fifty documents remained which have been referred to by my colleagues and which appeared relevant. These 50 documents have, moreover, not all been accepted by the Tribunal, which has rejected some, and if I remember rightly, 3 or 4 of whose origin we were not quite sure. In these conditions, it is absolutely incorrect to say that we have kept 1,950 documents from the Defense.
We handed over to the Court, and therefore to the Defense, the 50 documents which in themselves seemed to us to have sufficient probative value.
If I understand this request of the Defense they wish the Court to ask to have handed to them documents of which some have been rejected by the Court itself as not having sufficient probative value or as not being sufficiently authenticated. The Tribunal will decide whether this request should be granted. As far as I am concerned, I must oppose this application with all my might because it would mean taking into account documents which did not offer a sufficiently authentic character for the examination we made, and which the Tribunal itself also made when we submitted to it some of these documents.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but M. Dubost, the position is this: There were a large number of documents which the Counsel for the French Prosecution said that they had examined; and the French Prosecution, in the exercise of their discretion, thought it unnecessary to refer to more than a certain number of them; but it is only the French Prosecution which has exercised their discretion about those documents, and what Dr. Nelte is asking is to see them for the purpose of seeing whether there is anything in the documents which assists his case. Would the French Prosecution have any objection to that? I mean—it may be that some of the documents are no longer in the possession of the French Prosecution, but those that are in their possession, would the French Prosecution object to Dr. Nelte’s seeing those?
M. DUBOST: May I remind the Tribunal that the documents which we rejected were not rejected as useless in the beginning, but as not presenting sufficient guarantee as to their origin, as to the conditions under which we obtained them and as to their probative value.
The Tribunal will no doubt remember that a certain number of these documents were rejected by the Court itself. Those which we did not consider are of the same character as those documents which were rejected. We did not submit them because we could not tell you where, when, and how they had been discovered. For the most part, they are documents that fell into the hands of combat troops in battle, and under the terms of jurisprudence do not offer sufficient guarantee to be retained.
Insofar as they are still in my possession I am ready to communicate them to Defense Counsel, it being clearly understood that they will not attach to them any higher merit, any higher value than I did.
THE PRESIDENT: That may very well be. I think that all Dr. Nelte wants is to see any documents which you have brought to see whether he can find anything in them that he thinks may help the case of the defendant for whom he appears, and I understand you would not have any objection to his doing that.
M. DUBOST: I would only answer the Defense Counsel that some of those documents were rejected by your Tribunal when I presented them.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, of course, it would not apply to documents which have been rejected by the Court. Very well. We will not decide the matter now. We will consider it.
DR. NELTE: Would the Tribunal announce its decision regarding the first question which I brought up, namely, whether it is sufficient that I refer to documents which have been presented by the Prosecution without submitting them myself.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Sir David?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: On that point I would like to support Dr. Nelte’s suggestion. If a document has already been put in, I should have thought it was right and convenient that Counsel for the Defense could comment on it without putting it in again, and should have full right of comment.
THE PRESIDENT: I think that I have said on a variety of occasions that any document which has been put in evidence, or a part of which has been put in evidence, can, of course, be used by the Defense in order to explain or criticize the part that has been put in. It may be that as a matter of informing the Tribunal as to the document, it may be necessary to have part of the document, which has not been put in evidence, put in now in order that it may be translated.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I do not know whether it would be convenient if I indicated to Dr. Nelte the views of the Prosecution on his list of documents, or whether he would like to develop it himself. I can quite shortly do that if it would be convenient.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it would shorten things if you would.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: A considerable number of the documents in the list fall into that category which has just been mentioned. Documents 3 to 9, 17 and 29, 30 and 31 all appear to be in, and therefore Dr. Nelte may comment in accordance with your ruling.
Then there are a number of documents which are affidavits, either of defendants or intended witnesses: Documents 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 28.
The Tribunal may remember that in the case of the witness, Dr. Blaha, my friend, Mr. Dodd, adopted the practice of asking the witness, “Is your affidavit true?” and then reading the affidavit to save time. The Prosecution have no objection to Dr. Nelte’s pursuing that course, should he so desire; but, of course, where a witness is going to be called as a witness, he will have to verify his affidavit on oath, in the submission of the Prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment. You mean that, if the witness is here, you have no objection to Dr. Nelte’s reading the affidavit and the witness being then liable to cross-examination?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The witness will say, “I agree; I verify the facts that are in my affidavit.”
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It might save considerable time in the examination-in-chief, and we should all be prepared to co-operate in that.
THE PRESIDENT: Then, is Dr. Nelte agreeable to that course? Is that what he means?
DR. NELTE: Entirely.
THE PRESIDENT: Possibly, Sir David, if the affidavit were presented to the Prosecution, they might be able to say that they did not wish to cross-examine. That would save the witnesses being here or being brought here.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It might be in the case of Dr. Lehmann. I think all the other cases are either defendants or witnesses with regard to whom there are certain points which the Prosecution would like to ask.
Then there are three documents to which there are no objections to their being used: 18, 26, and 27.
That leaves a number of documents as to whose use I am not quite sure at the moment, but it may be that Dr. Nelte will explain how he wishes to use them, and that may remove the difficulty of the Prosecution. If the Tribunal will be good enough to look at 1 and 2, 1 is an expert’s opinion on state laws concerning the Führer state, and the importance of the Führer order, and Document 2 is an order of the Führer, Number 1.
If it is desired to use these so as to controvert Article 8 of the Charter, the Prosecution will object. That is a question of superior orders.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If they are only used to explain the backgrounds as a matter of history, that may be a different matter. Now, the next one is Document 10—a need for a ministry of rearmament, taken from. . .
THE PRESIDENT: Even so, Sir David, in your submission, ought we to accept the opinion of an expert on such a point?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No, Your Honor. We do not at all. I am afraid that my second remark really applied to the order of the Führer. That might be used as a background or it might be used for purposes of mitigation or explanation of how a thing took place, but I respectfully agree that the expert’s opinion on state laws cannot be used with regard to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. Of course, the law of any other state may be a question of fact as far as the Tribunal is concerned just as it would be a question of fact in an English court: “What is the law of another state?” As I say, I want to reserve emphatically the position of Article 8 with regard to these two documents.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, Documents 10 and 11 deal with rearmament in other countries. I do not want to prevent the Defense using illustrations, but again I reserve the position most emphatically that rearmament in other countries cannot be an excuse for aggressive war and would be irrelevant on that point.
Now, 15 and 16 refer to books by Major General Fuller and Major General Temperley, who are both ex-officers, who were journalists during this period. As far as any question of fact that is stated in these books, if Dr. Nelte will let us know what the passage is, we shall see whether we could admit it, but the general views of Major General Fuller and Major General Temperley we would submit to be irrelevant.
Then, 19, 20, and 21 are books about Austria. Again the Prosecution reserves the position that the earlier state of opinion in Austria with regard to an Anschluss is irrelevant when considering the question of the aggressive action in breach of the Treaty of 1936 which took place in 1938.
I think, My Lord, that I have now dealt with all the documents and, as I say, they fall into these four groups; with regard to three of which there is nothing really between us in principle, and with regard to the fourth, the Prosecution wants to reserve these various points which I have mentioned. Again I want to make clear that the Prosecution does not object to Dr. Nelte’s obtaining any of these books for the purpose of preparing his case, but we want them to make clear at the earliest opportunity what their position is with regard to their use.
DR. NELTE: With respect to the first three categories, the Prosecution agrees with me that I can confine myself to the last category which begins with Documents 1 and 2. One of the fundamental questions of this Trial, which at first glance appears a purely legal problem, is the question of the so-called Führer state (Führerstaat) and Führer order (Führerbefehl). This question has, however, important actual significance here at this Trial, also of a factual importance. For instance, the Defendant Keitel, as a result of his particular position, was to the utmost degree affected by this Führer state principle and acted accordingly as he was continuously in personal contact with the incarnation of this principle, namely, Hitler. It is not as if Article 8 of the Charter remained unaffected by it. It will, however, so I assume, be possible to prove that Article 8 of the Charter is not applicable here.
As to the Führer Order Number 1, Document Number 2, the Tribunal itself will, upon hearing the order, be able to judge whether it bears any relevance. This order, Führer Order Number 1, from Keitel Document Book Number 1, reads:
“a) No one is to have any knowledge of secret matters which do not fall within his sphere.
“b) No one is to obtain more information than he needs for the fulfillment of the task set him.
“c) No one is to receive information earlier than is necessary for the duties assigned to him.
“d) No one is to pass on to subordinates more secret orders or at an earlier date than is indispensable for the attainment of the purpose.”
Document Number 1, that is, the expert opinion on the Führer state and Führer order, in connection with this Führer Order Number 1, is to serve as proof for the fact that there can be no question of conspiracy in the sense of the Indictment. Therefore, I request the Tribunal to admit those two documents as relevant. Documents Number 10 and Number 11, and also to a certain degree, Number 16, are submitted as proof that the principles which the Defendant Keitel, as a soldier and a German, considered to be important, namely, rearmament up to a point of securing a respectable position for Germany among the council of nations, were not only postulated by the German people, but also appreciated and approved by important persons abroad. This subject is to be proved by submission of articles by a British, a French, and an American author, military men, all of whom hold a high reputation for their writings on military matters. Among these is the article “Total War,” by Major General Fuller, my Document 15, as well as the book by the British Major General Temperley, The Whispering Gallery of Europe. Mr. Fuller, for instance, writes in his article, that:
“It is nonsense to state that he”—Hitler—“wanted war. War could not bring him the rebirth of his nation. What he needed was an honorable, secure peace.”
The point to be proved here is that any aggressive intentions would of themselves be incompatible with the pronouncements of Hitler and the leading Nazis, if one believes in their sincerity. The defendant believed in the sincerity of these pronouncements and to this end he referred to the opinion of important persons abroad.
I think those are the documents to which the Prosecution raised certain objections.
THE PRESIDENT: You have not mentioned 19 to 21, which documents are said to reveal a certain state of opinion in Austria.
DR. NELTE: Yes. Those documents—Number 19, “The Cultural and Political Importance of the Anschluss,” and Document 20, “The Way Toward the Anschluss,” and the third, “The Anschluss in the International Press,” dated 1931—are to prove the defendant could assume, and was justified in so doing, that the overwhelming majority of Austrian people welcomed the Anschluss with Germany. These are articles and memoranda of the Austro-German Peoples Union, the chairman of which was the Social Democrat Reichstag President Loebe.
THE PRESIDENT: That concludes the documents, does it not?
DR. NELTE: I should like to make only one additional application to the Tribunal, which refers to documents which I have been unable to mention earlier since they were not submitted until the sitting of 22 February. I shall now submit this application. It refers to 11 documents, all of which were presented during the Friday sitting in order to prove the complicity of Keitel in the destruction during the retreat and in regard to forced labor of prisoners of war and civilian population. From the contents of these documents submitted by the Prosecution, it becomes apparent that, according to evidence I have already offered, a large number of the accusations of the Prosecution are to be attributed to the fact that every document which dealt in any way with military matters was simply charged to the OKW and Keitel.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Nelte, as I understand it, all these documents have already been put in evidence.
DR. NELTE: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, then they fall into the category to which Sir David agreed. They could be touched on by you.
DR. NELTE: That is correct.
THE PRESIDENT: There is no need to make any fresh application in connection with them.
DR. NELTE: When I made this additional application I had not yet received Sir David’s consent. Besides this seems to be a particularly singular and convincing case because, on one day, 11 documents were submitted, all of which were used as accusations against Keitel, but which all showed by their contents that they do not apply to him or the OKW.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment. There is only one other thing that I wanted to ask you. You asked at an earlier stage for the evidence from Ambassador Messersmith and Otto Wettberg and in both, cases the Tribunal granted you interrogatories. I do not know whether you are withdrawing your application in respect to those cases or whether you have seen the answers to the interrogatories.
DR. NELTE: I have, in accordance with the suggestion, sent those interrogatories to Ambassador Messersmith as well as to Otto Wettberg. Depending on the reply I shall receive from those two witnesses, I shall or shall not submit them.
THE PRESIDENT: You have submitted the one for Otto Wettberg, have you?
DR. NELTE: Yes, but I have not received it back.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. The Exhibit Number 1, would you explain a little bit more what Number 1 is going to be? It appears to be the opinion of an expert witness on the meaning of the Führer precept. Is that what you intend?
DR. NELTE: Yes. It is an article in the field of constitutional law on the structure and significance of what is known as the Leader State (Führerstaat).
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Yes, Colonel Smirnov.
CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): May it please Your Honors, it is my duty to submit to the Tribunal evidence on the last count of the Indictment. “Crimes against Humanity” are dealt with in Count Four of the Indictment, and by Article 6, and particularly Subparagraph C of Article 6, of the Charter.
I shall submit evidence of crimes which the Hitlerites committed on the territories of the temporarily occupied areas of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Greece.
The Crimes against Humanity—just as the other crimes of the German fascists for which evidence has been submitted to the Tribunal by my colleagues—originated in the criminal nature of fascism, in its endeavors to dominate the world by predatory seizure of whole states in the East and in the West, and by enslavement and mass extermination of people. These crimes were put into effect by adoption of the cannibalistic theories of German fascism.
Elements forming the concept of Crimes against Humanity are to be found in nearly all the criminal acts of the Hitlerites. For instance, a considerable amount of probative facts in corroboration of the gravity of the crimes committed by the German fascists has already been submitted to the Tribunal during the presentation of the Count concerning War Crimes against the civilian population.
The criminal violation by the Hitlerites of the laws and customs of war, as well as the mass extermination of prisoners of war, are some of the gravest Crimes against Humanity. At the same time, the concept Crimes against Humanity is considerably broader in scope than any definition of German fascist crimes, of which proofs have been hitherto submitted to the Tribunal.
Together with the arrival of German forces and the appearance of the swastika on official buildings, life of the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied eastern European countries seemed to stop. The merciless fascist machine tried to force them to be deprived of all that which, as a result of centuries of human development, had become an integral part of humanity.
Thus, death hung over them constantly, but on their way to death they were forced to pass through numerous and agonizing phases, insulting to human dignity, which constitute, in their entirety, the charge entitled in the Indictment “Crimes against Humanity.”
Attempts were made to force them to forget their own names by hanging a number around their necks or by sewing a classification mark on their sleeves. They were deprived of the right to speak or to read in their mother tongue. They were deprived of their homes, their families, their native country, forcibly deported hundreds and thousands of kilometers away. They were deprived of the right to procreate. They were daily scoffed at and insulted. Their feelings and beliefs were jeered at and ridiculed. And, finally, they were deprived of their last right—to live.
The numerous investigations noted not only the state of extreme physical exhaustion of the victims of German fascist atrocities; they also usually mentioned the state of deep moral depression of those who, by the hazards of fate, escaped the fascist hell.
A long period of time was necessary for these victims of German fascism to return once again to a world of normal conceptions and activities and to man’s conventions for human society. All this is very hard to express in legal formula, but, in my opinion, it is very important in the Indictment of the major war criminals.
I ask the Tribunal to refer to the report of the Polish Government which has already been submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number USSR-93 (Document Number USSR-93). The quotation which I should like now to read is on Page 10 of the document book. On Page 70 of the Russian text of this report, there is a quotation from the statement of Jacob Vernik, a carpenter from Warsaw, who spent a year in the extermination camp of Treblinka 2. Sometimes the official German documents refer to “Treblinka 2” as “Treblinka B,” but it is one and the same. This was one of the most terrible centers for mass extermination of people, created by German fascists. In my statement, I shall submit to Your Honors evidence connected with the existence of this camp.
This is what Vernik said in presenting a report on Treblinka to the Polish Government; a report which, as he stressed in his foreword, was his only reason “to continue his pitiful life”:
“Awake or asleep I see terrible visions of thousands of people calling for help, begging for life and mercy.
“I have lost my family, I have myself led them to death; I have myself built the death chambers in which they were murdered.
“I am afraid of everything, I fear that everything I have seen is written on my face. An old and broken life is a heavy burden, but I must carry on and live to tell the world what German crimes and barbarism I saw.”
The persons who came to Treblinka entered, as I said, the ante-chamber of death. But were they the only victims of this fate? An analysis of probative facts connected with the crimes of the German fascists irrefutably testifies to the fact that the same fate was shared not only by those who were sent to special extermination camps, but also all those who became the victims of these criminals in the temporarily occupied countries of Eastern Europe.
I ask the Tribunal’s permission to bring in evidence a short quotation from a document already submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-46—the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union on the crimes committed in the city and region of Orel. In the text of this document there is a special communication of a famed Russian scientist, a doctor, the President of the Academy of Medical Science and member of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, Academician Burdenko. The Tribunal will find this communication on Page 14 of the document book, Paragraph 6:
“The scenes I had to witness”—says Burdenko—“surpassed the wildest imagination. Our joy at the sight of the delivered people was dimmed by the expression of stupor on their faces.
“This led one to reflect—what was the matter? Evidently the sufferings they had undergone had stamped upon them equality of life and death. I observed these people during 3 days. I bandaged them, I evacuated them, but their physical stupor did not change. Something similar could be noticed during the first days on the faces of the doctors.”
I shall not, Your Honors, waste time in drawing attention to the long and well-known extracts from Mein Kampf or the Myth of the Twentieth Century. We are interested, in the first place, in the criminal practices of the German fascist fiends.
I have already said above, that death constantly hung over the people who became the victims of fascism. Death could come unexpectedly, together with the appearance in one or another place of a Sonderkommando; but at the same time, a death sentence would be pronounced for any act in these special decisions so mockingly called German fascist “laws.”
I and other members of the Soviet Prosecution already have given numerous examples of these terroristic laws, directives, and decrees of the German fascist authorities. I do not wish to repeat myself, but I beg the Tribunal’s permission to quote one of these documents as it concerns all the temporarily seized eastern territories.
The only justification for the publication of this document for its author, the Defendant Alfred Rosenberg, is that these temporarily occupied districts were populated by non-Germans. This document is a characteristic evidence of the persecution of people for racial, national, or political motives. I beg the Tribunal to enter in the record, as Exhibit Number USSR-395 (Document Number USSR-395), the photostat of the so-called third decree supplementing the penal directives for the Eastern territories which was issued by Alfred Rosenberg on 17 February 1942. Your Honors will find this document on Pages 19 and 20 of the document book. I shall read in full, beginning with Paragraph 1:
“The death penalty, or, in lesser cases, penal servitude will be inflicted upon: Those who undertake to use violence against the German Reich or against the high authority established in the occupied territories; those who undertake to commit violence against a Reich citizen or a person of German nationality for his or her belonging to this German nationality; those who undertake to use violence against a member of the Wehrmacht or its followers, the German police including its auxiliary forces, the Reich Labor Service, a German authority or institution, or the organizations of the NSDAP; those who appeal or incite to disobedience of orders or directives issued by the German authorities; those who with premeditation damage the furniture of German authorities and institutions or things used by the latter for their work or in the public interest; those who undertake to assist anti-German movements or to maintain the organizational connection of groups prohibited by the German authorities; those who participate in or incite hostile activity and thus reveal anti-German mentality or who by their behavior lower or injure the authority or the welfare of the German State and people; those who premeditatively commit arson and thereby damage German interests in general or the property . . .”
THE PRESIDENT: Have you read this before?
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I checked the transcript, and I do not think that this has been read into the record.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: It may be that similar orders were read; maybe those of Frank or some other orders. They are all alike. In any case I could not find any mention of this document in the transcript.
I continue:
“. . . damage German interests in general or the property of a Reich citizen or persons of German nationality.”
Paragraph 2 is very characteristic:
“Furthermore, the death penalty and, in lesser cases, penal servitude is to be inflicted upon: Those who agree to commit any punishable action as foreseen by Paragraph 1; those who enter into serious negotiations on that subject; those who offer their services to commit such an action or accept such an offer; or those who possess credible information on such an action or its intention at a moment when the danger can still be averted, and willfully refrain from warning the German authorities or the menaced person in due time.
“Paragraph 3. An offense not coming under Paragraphs 1 and 2 is to be punished by death, even if this penalty is not provided for by the general German criminal laws and by decrees of German authorities, if the offense is of a particularly base type or for other reasons is particularly serious. In such cases the death penalty is also permissible for juvenile hard criminals.
“Paragraph 4. (1) If there is insufficient justification for turning the case over to competent courts-martial, the special courts are competent. (2) The special instructions issued for the Armed Forces are not hereby affected.”
I skip Paragraph 5.
This decree of Rosenberg’s was only one link in the chain of crimes committed by the leaders of the German fascism directed toward exterminating the Slav peoples.
I pass on to the first part of my statement, which is entitled, “Extermination of Slav Peoples.” In this part I shall show how this criminal purpose of the Hitlerites to exterminate the Slav peoples was carried out. I shall quote data from the report of the Yugoslav Government, which is to be found on Page 56 of the Russian text or on Page 76, Paragraph 3, document book:
“Apart from the thousands of Yugoslavs who died in battle, the occupants exterminated at least one and a half to two million people, mostly women, children, and aged persons. Of the 15 million prewar Yugoslav population, in the relatively short period of 4 years, almost 14 percent of the entire population was exterminated.”
In the report of the Czechoslovak Government, on Pages 36 and 37 of the Russian text, there is proof of a plan conceived by the Hitlerite criminals for the forceful expulsion of all Czechs and the settling of German colonists in Czechoslovakia. The report quotes an excerpt from a statement of Karl Hermann Frank, who admitted the existence of this plan and declared that he, Frank, had compiled a memorandum in which he objected to a similar plan. I quote the excerpt from the statement of Karl Hermann Frank, which the Tribunal can find on Page 37 in the document book, fourth paragraph.
“I considered this plan senseless as, in my opinion, the vacuum created by these measures would have seriously upset the vital functioning of Bohemia and Moravia for various reasons of geopolitical, traffic, industrial, and other character; and the immediate filling of this vacuum with new German settlers was impossible.”
In Poland a regime of extermination of the Slav population was put into effect by diverse criminal methods, among which driving people to an extreme state of exhaustion by excessive labor and subsequent death from hunger, was most prevalent. The criminals quite consciously embarked upon the extermination of millions of people by hunger, which is attested by a number of documents already quoted by me and my colleagues in part, namely, the diary of Hans Frank.
I shall quote a few short extracts from this document. Here is an excerpt concerning the minutes of a conference held by the Governor General on 7 December 1942 in Kraków. The Tribunal will find the passage I wish to quote on Page 89 of the document book, in the first column of the text, last paragraph:
“Should the new food supply plan be put into effect, it means that for the city of Warsaw and its surroundings alone 500,000 people will no longer receive food relief.”
And here is another short excerpt from the minutes of a governmental conference held on 24 August 1942. The Tribunal will find it on Page 90 of the document book, first paragraph of the text. Dr. Frank states:
“With all the difficulties which arise from the illness of workers, or the breaking down of your co-operatives, you must always bear in mind that it is much better if a Pole collapses than if the Germans are defeated. The fact that we shall be condemning 1,200,000 Jews to death by starvation should be mentioned incidentally. Of course, if the Jews do not die from starvation, it is to be hoped that anti-Jewish measures will be expedited in the future.”
The third short quotation is an excerpt from the minutes of a labor conference held by the political leaders of the Labor Front of the NSDAP in the Government General, on 14 December 1942. The Tribunal will find it on the reverse of Page 89 of the document book, second column, second paragraph:
“. . . we are faced with the following problem: Shall we be able, as from February, to exclude from general food supply 2 million persons of non-German nationality or not?”
In his preliminary speech, the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R., while speaking of Crimes against Humanity, referred to the notes of Martin Bormann. The notes of Martin Bormann were presented to the Court under Exhibit Number USSR-172 (Document Number USSR-172) in particular. The Chief Prosecutor of the U.S.S.R. quoted the following lines, which the Tribunal can find on Page 97 of the document book, last paragraph:
“In summing up, the Führer once more stated: The least German workman and the least German peasant must always stand economically 10 percent higher than any Pole.”
How were things in reality? I should like to show that, with full approval, the Defendant Frank put these Hitler orders into effect in Polish territory. I beg the Tribunal to take for evidence an original German document.
Among the other fascist institutions carrying out various pseudo-scientific experiments, the German criminals created a special institute for economic research. This institute issued a document entitled, “What the Polish Problem Means for War Economy of Upper Silesia.”
The fascist “scientific” institute decided to make such investigations in order to clarify the reason why the output of Polish workers became considerably reduced.
Two short excerpts will testify to the aims of this investigation better than anything else. On Page 39 of this original document we read—the Tribunal will find the passage I wish to quote on Page 101, of the document book, second paragraph. I submit this document as Exhibit Number USSR-282 (Document Number USSR-282). I begin the quotation which is on Page 101 of the document book, second paragraph.
“This investigation is in no way to be construed as propaganda to arouse pity.”
On Page 149 of the quoted document—the Tribunal will find this on Page 101, third paragraph, of the document book—it is said:
“We raise our voices not to defend the Poles, but to protect the war production for the Armed Forces.”
Quoting these two short excerpts characterizing the aims and nature of this investigation, I further quote a few excerpts which show the status of the Polish worker and the practical realization by the Defendant Frank of the above-mentioned directives of Hitler. I quote on Page 38 of the original of the document, which corresponds to Page 101, Paragraph 7 of the document book:
“Information concerning the situation of the Polish population and considerations as to which measures would be the most suitable in this connection disagree on many points; but there is general agreement on one point, which can be summed up here in three words: The Poles are starving! Already some passing observations corroborate these conclusions. One of our investigators visited a war production plant during the lunch recess. The workers are standing or sitting apathetically, warming themselves in the sun, and here and there smoking. The investigator reports that of 80 persons, only one has a piece of bread for lunch. The others, although all working 10 to 12 hours a day, have nothing.”
I pass to Page 72 of the original, which corresponds to Page 102 of the document book; there is this quotation.
“Observations made in the factories prove that the present rations of the Polish workers do not allow them enough food to take with them to work. In many cases, the workers do not even have a piece of bread. When some do bring breakfast, it is only coffee and one or two pieces of dry bread or raw potatoes; at the worst time, they did not even have this, but raw carrots, which were then roasted on a stove during work.”
I continue my quotation on Page 150 of the same document:
“In this connection it could be stated that on visiting the mines, it appeared that nearly 10 percent of the Polish workers went to work underground with only dry bread, or raw potatoes cut in slices which they warmed afterwards on a stove.”
The institute began its “scientific calculations” with a comparison of the calories received by the Poles in Upper Silesia and the calories received by the German population.
I shall not quote large excerpts from the document, but will limit myself to short facts only. I start on Page 63 of this report, which corresponds to Page 102, last paragraph of the document book:
“Comparison of the number of calories received by the Poles in Upper Silesia with the number of calories allocated to the German population indicates that the Poles receive 24 percent less than the Germans. This difference reaches 26 percent on food ration cards of nonworking Poles. For youths from 14 to 20, the difference in rations allocated to Germans and to Poles reached almost 33 percent. However, it must be stressed that this only applies to working youths over 14.
“The difference between what Polish and German children from 10 to 14 receive is even more striking. The difference here is not less than 65 percent. The looks of these underfed youths already testify to this. In a similar way Polish children under 10 receive up to 60 percent less than German children.
“If on the other hand the doctors state that the food conditions of the babies are not so unfavorable, it is only an imaginary contradiction. As long as a mother nurses her child, the child gets everything from that source. The consequences of the underfeeding are felt in this period not by the child but by the mother. Her health and working capacity are impaired considerably from the undernourishment.”
I continue on Page 178 of the original which corresponds to Page 103, Paragraph 2 in the second document book:
“In all categories the Polish youth in comparison with the German is more wretched. The difference in rations of the Poles and Germans reaches 60 percent.”
Extracts from the report of the German Labor Front cited in this investigation also offer some interest. Particularly on Page 76 are quoted excerpts from the report of the German Labor Front, dated 10 October 1941, after a visit to one of the coal mines in Poland:
“It was established that daily in various villages Polish miners fall from exhaustion. . . . As the workers constantly complained of stomach pains, doctors were consulted, who answered that this was a symptom of undernourishment.”
I would conclude the description of the Polish workers’ physical condition drawn by the German criminals themselves, and, what is more, by the “learned” criminals, by a short quotation from the same report which the Tribunal will find on Page 106, Paragraph 6 of the document book:
“The management of the factories constantly stresses that it is no longer possible by threats of deportation to concentration camps to incite to work underfed people incapable of physical effort. Sooner or later there comes a day when the weakened body can no longer work.”
There is also in this document a descriptive sketch of the legal status of the Polish worker during the German occupation which bears no possibility of double interpretation. This descriptive sketch is all the more valuable because, as was already stressed above, the authors of the investigation report expressly emphasized that “all humanitarian tendencies whatsoever were alien to them.”
I begin the quotation of the produced document on Page 127 which corresponds to Page 110, second paragraph of the document book:
“The law does not recognize any legal claim of any member of the Polish nation in any sphere of life. Whatever is granted a Pole is done voluntarily by the German masters. This legal situation is perhaps most clearly mirrored in ‘the Pole’s lack of possession in the eyes of the law.’ In the administration of justice Poles are not permitted to conduct their cases before a court. In criminal procedure the viewpoint of obedience dominates. The execution of legal regulations is in the first place the task of the police, who can decide at their discretion or refer individual cases to the courts.”
According to an order, dated 26 August 1942 Polish as well as German workers were obliged to take out insurance against illness, accidents, and disability. The deductions from the wages for this purpose were larger for the Poles than for the German. However, the German workers profited by this insurance, whereas, in actuality, the Poles were deprived of it.
As proof of this I shall present to the Tribunal two short excerpts from the same investigation report which Your Honors will find on Page 111 in the document book, Paragraph 4. It corresponds to Page 134 of the original text of the investigation report quoted above:
“Insurance against accidents, which is incumbent on the trade unions, involved particularly stringent measures for the Poles. The recognition of disability caused by an accident is much more limited than in the case of Germans. Disability for the loss of an eye is 30 percent for a German and 25 percent for a Pole. The payment of a subvention depends on 33⅓ percent disability.”
I continue my quotation on Page 135 of the original document, that is to say, on Page 111, last paragraph of the document book:
“The most stringent measures are provided for the dependents of fatally injured persons. The maximum a widow can receive is half of that granted by the insurance to Germans—and this only in case she has to support four children under 15 years of age, or is herself an invalid.
“The restriction on the rights of Poles is illustrated by an example: A German widow with three children receives 80 percent of the yearly salary of her fatally injured husband; from an annual income of 2,000 marks she receives 1,600 marks per year, but a Pole in a similar situation would receive nothing.”
The major German fascist war criminals not only sent into the temporarily occupied Eastern territories soldiers and the SS, but specially appointed fascist “scientists,” “consultants in economic problems,” and all sorts of “investigators” followed after. Some of them were detached from Ribbentrop’s office; some others were sent by Rosenberg.
I beg the Tribunal to enter into the record as evidence one of these documents. I submit it under Document Number USSR-218. I mean the report of the representative attached by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the command of the 17th Army, Captain Pfleiderer, and addressed to his colleague Von Rantzau from the information service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These documents were discovered by units of the Red Army on the Dirksen estate in Upper Silesia.
On the basis of a reading of these documents, it can be concluded that in 1941-42 Pfleiderer made a trip covering the following route through the occupied territories on the route Yaroslavl in the Ukraine, Lvov, Tarnopol, Proskurov, Vinnitza, Uman, Kirovograd, Alexandria, and Krementshoug on the Dnieper.
The purpose of this trip was to study economic and political conditions in the occupied territories of the Ukraine. That the author of this document was also completely free of so-called humanitarian tendencies, can be seen from the short excerpt from his report dated 28 October 1941, where Pfleiderer writes—the Tribunal will find this quotation on Page 113, second paragraph of the document book. I quote only one line:
“. . . there is the urgent necessity to press out of the country everything to secure the food supply of Germany.”
But even with such proclivity to cruelty and rapacity, Pfleiderer evidently was abashed by the conduct of his compatriots to the extent that he deemed it necessary to bring it to the attention of the highest authorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I quote the report of Pfleiderer which is entitled:
“Conditions for the Guarantee of Supply and for Producing the Largest Possible Food Surplus in the Ukraine.
“. . . 3) Frame of mind and living conditions of the population by the end of October 1941.”
The Tribunal will find this part on Page 114, third paragraph of the document book:
“The frame of mind of the population generally became worse a few weeks after the occupation of the territory by our troops. The reason for it? We display . . . inner hostility and even hatred toward this country, and arrogance toward the people. . . . The third year of war and the necessity of wintering in an unfriendly country causes many difficulties, but they must be surmounted with courage and self-discipline. We must not work off our discontent over this country on the population. . . . How often it happened that, acting against the rules of psychology and committing mistakes that we could easily have avoided, we lost all sympathy of the population. The people cannot understand the shooting of exhausted prisoners of war in villages and larger localities and the leaving of their bodies there. As the troops are entrusted with a broad authority for self-provisioning, the kolkhozes along the main roads and near the larger towns for the most part lack pedigree cattle, seeds, seed potatoes (Poltava). Evidently, the supplying of our own troops stands first; however, the system of supply in itself is not immaterial: Psychologically, requisitioning the last hen is as unreasonable as it is economically unreasonable to kill the last pig or the last calf.”
I continue my quotation, Paragraph 3, Page 115 of the document book:
“The population . . . is without leadership. It stands apart and feels that we look down on it, that we see sabotage in their tempo and methods of work, that we do not take any steps to find a way to an understanding.”
A similar document is the document submitted as Exhibit Number USSR-439, which was graciously given to us by our United States colleagues. It was registered by the American Prosecution as Document Number 303-PS, but was not filed. It is a political report of the German professor, Doctor Paul W. Thomsen, written on the forms of the State University of Posen Biological Paleontological Institute and was indexed by the author himself, “Not for publication.” Your Honors will find this document on Page 116 of the document book. This document also introduces us into this field of complete lawlessness and tyrannical arbitrariness toward the local population of the temporarily occupied districts of the Soviet Union. These observations were made by this fascist professor during his trip through the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union “from Minsk to the Crimea.”
I refer to two short excerpts from this document. The quotation which I have read into the record testifies to the absence of any humanitarian tendencies on the part of that author and if Paul Thomsen brought back from his trip only “the most depressing impression” that is only further proof of the depths of cruelty and brutality to which the German fascists were willing to go. The Tribunal will find these excerpts on Page 116 of the document book. I begin the quotation. . .
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.
[The Tribunal adjourned until 26 February 1946 at 1000 hours.]