“Generally one gathered from this conference that the questions concerning the recruitment and mobilization, as well as the treatment of female domestic workers from the east, are being handled by the Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor, the Reichsführer SS, and the Chief of the German Police and the Party Chancellery, and that the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories is in these questions considered as having no, or only limited, competence.”
The Party Chancellery is here mentioned in terms, and Bormann was the leader of the Party Chancellery, as the Tribunal knows.
Now the defendant imposed his will on the administration of the German-occupied areas and insisted on the ruthless exploitation of the inhabitants of the occupied East. The attention of the Tribunal is respectfully invited to Document R-36, previously put in as Exhibit Number USA-344. The Tribunal is well acquainted with this document, for it has been referred to several times in these proceedings, and knows that this is an official memorandum of the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories, dated 19 August 1942, which states that the repressive views of the Defendant Bormann with respect to the inhabitants of the Eastern areas actually determined German occupational policies in the East. The Tribunal recalls the now almost notorious quotation from this Document R-36, which purports to paraphrase and constitute the essence of Bormann’s views with respect to German occupational policy in the East. So often has it been quoted that I shall resist the temptation to repeat it, but in essence it comes to this. Bormann in effect says:
“The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die. They should not receive the benefits of the German public health system. We do not care about their fertility. They may practice abortion and use contraceptives; the more the better. We don’t want them educated; it is enough if they can count up to 100. Such stooges will be the more useful to us. Religion we leave to them as a diversion. As to food, they will not get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters; we come first.”
We respectfully submit this as an accurate paraphrase and summary of the text of that document, Document R-36.
The attention of the Tribunal is next respectfully invited to Document 654-PS, previously put in as Exhibit Number USA-218. The Tribunal will recall that this is a conference report, dated 18 November 1942, embodying an agreement between the Minister of Justice and Himmler entered into by Bormann’s suggestion under which all inhabitants of the Eastern occupied areas are subjected to a brutal police regime in the place of an ordinary judicial system. And the agreement refers all disputes between the Party, Reich Minister for Justice, and Himmler to Bormann for settlement.
Now, because Bormann issued these and related orders, we submit that he bears a large share of the responsibility for the discriminatory treatment and the extermination of great numbers of persons in German-occupied areas of the East.
With the indulgence of the Tribunal, I put the substance of what I have been privileged to present in a few words. We have shown that Bormann, only 45 years old at the time of Germany’s defeat, contributed his entire adult life to the furtherance of the conspiracy. His crucial contribution to the conspiracy lay in his direction of the vast powers of the Nazi Party in advancing the multiple objectives of the conspiracy. First, as Chief of Staff to the Defendant Hess and then, as leader, in his own name, of the Party Chancellery, subject only to Hitler’s supreme authority, he applied and directed the total power of the Party and its agencies to carry into execution the plans of the conspirators. He used his great powers to persecute the Christian Church and clergy and was an unrepentant foe of the fundamentals of the Christianity with which he warred.
He actively authorized and participated in measures designed to persecute the Jews, and his was a strong hand in pressing down the crown of thorns of misery on the brow of the Jewish people, both in Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
As Chief of the Party Chancellery and secretary to the Führer, Bormann authorized, directed, and participated in a wide variety of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, including, without limitation, the lynching of Allied airmen, the enslavement and inhuman treatment of the inhabitants of German-occupied Europe, the cruelty of impressed labor, the breaking up of homes contrary to the clear provisions of the Hague regulations, and the planned persecution and extermination of the civil population of Eastern Europe.