MAJOR WILLIAM F. WALSH (Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States): If the Tribunal please, on behalf of the United States Counsel, I now present to this august Tribunal the evidence to establish certain phases of the Indictment alleged in Count One under War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, and by agreement between the prosecutors the allegations in Count Four, Paragraph X(B), Crimes against Humanity. The topical title of this presentation is “The Persecution of the Jews.”
At this time I offer in evidence a Document Book of translations, lettered “T.” These documents contained in the books are arranged according to the D-, L-, PS-, and R-series; and under the series the translations are listed numerically. This title, “The Persecution of the Jews,” is singularly inappropriate when weighed in the light of the evidence to follow. Academically, I am told, to persecute is to afflict, harass, and annoy. The term used does not convey, and indeed I cannot conjure a term that does convey the ultimate aim, the avowed purpose to obliterate the Jewish race.
This presentation is not intended to be a complete recital of all the crimes committed against the Jews. The extent and the scope of the crimes was so great that it permeated the entire German nation, its people and its organizations.
I am informed that others to follow me will offer additional evidence under other phases of the Prosecution’s case. Evidence relating to the Party organizations and state organizations, whose criminality the Prosecution will seek to establish, will disclose and emphasize the part that these organizations played in the pattern and plan for annihilation.
The French and the Soviet Prosecutors, too, have a volume of evidence all related to this subject, which will be submitted in the course of the Trial.
Before I begin a recital of the overt acts leading to the elimination of the Jews, I am prepared to show that these acts and policies within Germany from the year 1933 to the end of the war related to the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of aggressive wars, thus falling within the definition of Crimes against Humanity as defined in Article 6(c) of the Charter.
It had long been a German theory that the first World War ended in Germany’s defeat because of a collapse in the zone of the interior. In planning for future wars it was determined that the home front must be secure to prevent a repetition of this 1918 debacle. Unification of the German people was essential to successful planning and waging of war, and the Nazi political premise must be established—“One race, one state, one Führer.”
Free trade unions must be abolished, political parties (other than the National Socialist Party) must be outlawed, civil liberties must be suspended, and opposition of every kind must be swept away. Loyalty to God, church, and scientific truth was declared to be incompatible with the Nazi regime. The anti-Jewish policy was part of this plan for unification because it was the conviction of the Nazis that the Jews would not contribute to Germany’s military program, but on the contrary would hamper it. The Jew must therefore be eliminated.
This view is clearly borne out by a statement contained in Document 1919-PS, Exhibit USA-170. This document is a transcript of a Himmler speech at a meeting of the SS major generals on 4 October 1943, and from Page 4, Paragraph 3, of the translation before the Court, I read a very short passage:
“We know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves if with the bombing raids, the burdens and deprivations of war, we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators, and trouble mongers; we would now probably have reached the 1916-17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.”