Afternoon Session
LT. LAMBERT: The Tribunal will recall that at the close of the morning session I had been putting in a series of decrees of the Defendant Bormann in which he called for increasingly harsh and severe treatment of Allied prisoners of war. These instructions issued by the Defendant Bormann culminated in his decree of 30 September 1944. The attention of the Tribunal is invited to Document 058-PS, previously put in as Exhibit Number USA-456. The Tribunal will recall that this decree of the Defendant Bormann removed jurisdiction over all prisoners of war from the Nazi High Command and transferred it to Himmler. The decree also provided that all PW camp commanders should be under the orders of the local SS commanders. By virtue of this order of the Defendant Bormann, Hitler was enabled to proceed with his program of inhuman treatment and even extermination of Allied prisoners of war.
We now proceed to put in what the Prosecution conceive to be extremely important and extremely incriminating evidence against Bormann and the co-conspirators, that is, the responsibility of the Defendant Bormann for the organized lynching of Allied airmen. I offer in evidence Document 062-PS, Exhibit Number USA-696; and I very respectfully request the Tribunal to turn to this document. On its face it is an order dated 13 March 1940 from the Defendant Hess addressed to Reichsleiter, Gauleiter, and other Nazi officials and organizations. In this order these Party officials are instructed by the Defendant Hess to instruct the German civil population to arrest or liquidate all bailed-out Allied fliers. I call the attention of the Tribunal to the third paragraph on the first page of the English translation of Document 062-PS. In the third paragraph Hess directs that these instructions, which I shall soon read, are to be passed out only orally to all—will the Tribunal please mark that—district leaders or Kreisleiter, Ortsgruppenleiter, cell leaders, and even the block leaders; that is to say, this order must be passed out by all the officials of the Leadership Corps to the Hoheitsträger, ranging from Reichsleiter down to, and including, the Blockleiter.
Now turn to Document 062-PS, and the Tribunal will find the instructions which Hess demanded be disseminated by the Leadership Corps orally: The lynching of Allied fliers. These directions are headed: “About behavior in case of landings of enemy planes or parachutists.” The first three instructions I omit as not material to the basic point now being made. Instruction 4 reads, and I quote: “Likewise enemy parachutists are immediately to be arrested or liquidated.”
It speaks for itself and requires no further comment from the Prosecution.
Now, in order to insure the success of this scheme ordered by the Defendant Hess, Bormann issued a secret letter, dated 30 May 1944, to the officials, if the Tribunal will please mark, of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, prohibiting any police measures or criminal proceedings against German civilians who had lynched or murdered Allied airmen. This document, our 057-PS, has been previously put in and received by the Tribunal in connection with the Prosecution’s case against the alleged criminal organization, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party.
Now, may it please the Tribunal, that such lynchings, organized, authorized, and consented to by Defendant Bormann, actually took place has since been fully and indisputably demonstrated by trials by American military commissions which have resulted in the conviction of German civilians for the murder of Allied fliers. I request the Tribunal to take judicial notice of Military Commission Order Number 2, Headquarters 15th U. S. Army, dated 23 June 1945. This order is our Document 2559-PS. This order imposed the sentence of death upon a German civilian for violation of the laws and usages of war in murdering an American airman who had bailed out and landed without any means of defense.
The Tribunal will note from that order of the American Military Commission the 15th of August 1944 as date of crime; Bormann’s order was dated May 1944.
I request the Tribunal to notice judicially Military Commission Order Number 5, Headquarters 3rd U. S. Army and Eastern Military District, dated 18 October 1945. This order is set forth in Document 2560-PS. This order imposed a sentence of death upon a German national for violating the laws and usages of war by murdering, on or about 12 December 1944, an American airman who landed in German territory.
We could cite further orders of American and other Allied military commissions sentencing German civilians to death for the lynching and murdering of Allied airmen who had bailed out and landed without means of defense on German territory. We think our point is made by taking the time of the Tribunal to cite those two orders.