The next listed defendant who is a member of the group is Keitel. He and the remaining three defendants who are members of the group are all four in this case primarily or solely in their military capacities, and all four of them were professional soldiers or sailors. Keitel was made the chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW) when the OKW was first set up in 1938, and remained in that capacity throughout the period in question. He held the rank of Field Marshall throughout most of this period, and in addition to being the Chief of OKW, he was a member of the Secret Cabinet Council and of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich. Keitel is charged with crimes under all four counts of the Indictment.
The defendant Jodl was a career soldier; he was an Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel) when the Nazis came to power, and ultimately attained the rank of Generaloberst (Colonel General). He became the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, and continued in that capacity throughout the war. He also is charged with crimes under all four counts of the Indictment.
The defendant Raeder is in a sense the senior member of the entire group, having been Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy as early as 1928. He attained the highest rank in the German Navy, Grossadmiral, and in addition to being Commander-in-Chief of the Navy he was a member of the Secret Cabinet Council. He retired from Supreme Command of the Navy in January 1943, and was replaced by Doenitz. Raeder is charged with crimes under counts 1, 2, and 3 of the Indictment.
The last of these five defendants, Doenitz, was a relatively junior officer when the Nazis came to power. During the early years of the Nazi regime he specialized in submarine activities and was in command of the U-boat arm when the war broke out. He rose steadily in the Navy and was chosen to succeed Raeder when the latter retired in 1943. Doenitz then became Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and attained the rank of Grossadmiral. When the German Armed Forces collapsed near the end of the war, Doenitz succeeded Hitler as head of the German government. He is charged with crimes under counts 1, 2, and 3 of the Indictment.
Four of these five defendants are reasonably typical of the group as a whole. Goering is an exception: he is primarily a Nazi party politician nourishing a hobby for aviation as a result of his career in 1914-18. But the others made soldiering or sailoring their life work. They collaborated with and joined in the most important adventures of the Nazis, but they were not among the early party members. They differ in no essential respect from the other 125 odd members of the group. They are, no doubt, abler men in certain respects than some of the other members, as they rose to the highest positions in the German Armed Forces, and all but Jodl attained the highest rank. But they are generally representative of the group, and their expressed ideas and actions are fairly characteristic of those of the other group members.
It is not, of course, the prosecution’s position, and it is not essential to its case, that all 130 members of this group, (or all the members of any other organization or group named in the Indictment), actually committed crimes, under Article 6 of the Charter. It is the prosecution’s position that the leadership of the group and the purposes to which the group was committed by the leaders were criminal under Article 6. The individual defendants were among the leaders of the General Staff and High Command group, and, acting in the official capacities which made them members of the group, they performed and participated in acts which are criminal under Article 6 of the Charter. Other members of the group performed such acts. The German Armed Forces were so completely under the group’s control as to make the group responsible for their activities under the last sentence of Article 6 of the Charter.
(1) The Planning and Launching of Wars of Aggression. It is, of course, the normal function of a military staff to prepare military plans. In peacetime, military staffs customarily concern themselves with the preparation of plans of attack or defense based on hypothetical contingencies. There is nothing criminal about carrying on such exercises or preparing such plans. That is not what these defendants and this group are charged with.
This group agreed with the Nazi objective of aggrandizing Germany by force or threat of force. They joined knowingly and enthusiastically in developing German armed might for this criminal purpose. They joined knowingly and willfully in initiating and waging aggressive wars. They were advised in advance of the Nazi plans to launch aggressive wars. They laid the military plans and directed the initiation and carrying on of the wars. These things are criminal under article 6 of the Charter.
Aggressive war cannot be prepared and waged without intense activity on the part of all branches of the Armed Forces and particularly by the high-ranking officers who control such forces. To the extent, therefore, that German preparations for and waging of aggressive war are historical facts of common knowledge, or are proved, it necessarily follows that the General Staff and High Command group, and the German Armed Forces, participated therein.
This is so notwithstanding the effort on the part of certain military leaders of Germany, after defeat, to insist that until the troops marched they lived in an ivory tower of military technicalities, unable or unwilling to observe the end to which their work led. The documentary evidence which follows fully refutes any such contentions.