Hitler, in 1934, addressing the Party Congress at Nuremberg, stated the duties of Party members in the following terms:
“Only a part of the people will consist of really active fighters. It is they who were fighters of the National Socialist revolution. Of them, more is demanded than of the millions among the rest of the population. For them it is not sufficient to confess, ‘I believe’, but to swear, ‘I fight’.”
In proof of the fact that the Party was committed to the use of any means, whether or not legal or honorable, it is only necessary to remind the Court that the Party virtually opened its public career by staging a revolution—the Munich Putsch of 1923.
Now let us consider for a moment the doctrinal techniques of the Common Plan or Conspiracy which are alleged in the Indictment.
To incite others to join in the Common Plan, or Conspiracy and as a means of securing for the Nazi conspirators the highest degree of control over the German community, they disseminated and exploited certain doctrines.
The first of these was the “master race” doctrine—that persons of so-called “German blood” were a master race. This doctrine of racial supremacy was incorporated as Point 4 in the Party program, which provided:
“Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood without consideration of confession. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.”
They outlined this master race doctrine as a new religion—the faith of the blood—superseding in individual allegiance all other religions and institutions. The Defendant Rosenberg and the Defendant Streicher were particularly prominent in disseminating this doctrine. Much of the evidence to be offered in this case will illustrate the Nazi conspirators’ continued espousal and exploitation of this master race doctrine.
This doctrine had an eliminatory purpose. Call anything “non-German” or Jewish, and you have a clear right, indeed a duty, to cast it out. In fact purges did not stop at so-called racial lines, but went far beyond.
The second important doctrine which permeates the entire conspiracy and is one of the important links in establishing the guilt of each of these defendants is the doctrine or concept of the Führerprinzip, or leadership principle.