E. PARTICIPATION IN THE CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
Hess, as Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, had the task of realizing its “ideological” program (3200-PS).
One of the demands of this conspiratorial program was the destruction of so-called inferior racial stock. Persons who suffered from hereditary insanity or other hereditary diseases were considered useless to the Nazi community. They were therefore to be killed or at least to be prevented from procreating their kind.
In order to carry out this plan Hess established a special Racial Policy Division on his Staff under Dr. Walter Gross, by his order of 17 November 1933. This Division was to “participate with the competent government agencies in all race and population measures” (3322-PS; 3163-PS). In addition, other agencies of the Nazi Party, under Hess, actively cooperated in the administration of this criminal program (D-181; 842-PS; 1969-PS).
In 1937 Hess publicly claimed credit for having used his Party organization in order to gain the nation’s approval for compulsory sterilization (3124-PS; 3067-PS).
More important still in the Nazi program were the persecution and extermination of religious and racial minorities. Hess vigorously propagated the doctrine of the superiority of the German race with which the conspirators sought to justify these persecutions (3124-PS).
The Nurnberg Laws, which constituted the legal basis of this campaign, were the work of the Party. This was solemnly announced by Hitler in the peroration of the address in which he announced these laws to the Reichstag in Nurnberg 15 September 1935:
“I now propose to the Reichstag the acceptance of those laws which Party member Goering will read to you.
“The first and second laws fulfill the program of the National Socialist Party in one important respect, and thereby pay a debt of gratitude to the Movement under whose symbol Germany has regained her freedom.
“The second law constitutes an attempt to solve by legislation a problem, the final solution of which, if it should again fail, will then have to be referred by law to the National Socialist Party. All three laws are backed by the National Socialist Party and with it and behind it by the German Nation.