LT. LAMBERT: It was not suggested, Sir, that this was confiscation. Our point was that the Hague regulations allow requisitions in return for payment only for the needs of the army of occupation and for the needs of administration of the occupied area. This represents, as it seems to us, a requisitioning program for the needs of the home front. It is on that point that we offer it.
We come now to what the Prosecution considers a most important point against the Defendant Bormann. In the course of the war Bormann issued a series of orders establishing Party jurisdiction over the treatment of prisoners of war, especially when employed as forced labor.
The Tribunal knows that, under the Geneva Convention of 1929 relating to prisoners of war, prisoners of war are the captives, not of the troops who take them or even of the army which captures them, but of the capturing power; and it is the capturing power which has jurisdiction over and responsibility for them.
By the series of decrees now to be put in, Bormann asserts and establishes Nazi Party jurisdiction over Allied prisoners of war. In the exercise of that Party jurisdiction he called for excessively harsh and brutal treatment of Allied prisoners of war.
I now offer in evidence Document 232-PS as Exhibit USA-693. This is a decree of the Defendant Bormann, dated 13 September 1944, addressed—will the Tribunal please note—to all Reichsleiter, Gauleiter, and Kreisleiter, and leaders of the Nazi affiliated organizations—numerous levels, that is, of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party—a decree establishing Nazi Party jurisdiction over the use of prisoners of war for forced labor.
I quote the first three paragraphs of Bormann’s order, set forth on Page 1 of the English translation of Document 232-PS, which reads as follows:
“The regulations valid until now on the treatment of prisoners of war and the tasks of the guard units are no longer justified in view of the demands of the total war effort.”
The Prosecution would intrude to ask the question: Since when do the exigencies of the war effort repeal or modify the provisions of international law?
“Therefore, the OKW, on my suggestion issued the regulation, a copy of which is enclosed.