“The Governor General will take under consideration an amnesty probably for 1 May of this year. Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the fact that the German leadership of the Government General must not now show any sign of weakness.”
This, then, was and is the conspirator Hans Frank. The evidence is by no means exhausted, but it is our belief that sufficient proof has been given to this Tribunal to establish his liability under Count One of the Indictment.
As legal adviser of Hitler and the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, Defendant Frank promoted the conspirators’ rise to power. In his various juridical capacities, both in the NSDAP and in the German Government, Defendant Frank certainly advocated and promoted the political monopoly of the NSDAP, the racial program of the conspirators, and the terror system of the concentration camps and of arrest without warrant. His role, early in the Common Plan, was to realize “the National Socialist program in the realm of the law” and to give the outward form of legality to this program of terror, persecution, and oppression which had as its ultimate purpose mobilization for aggressive war.
As a loyal adherent of Hitler and the NSDAP, Defendant Frank was appointed Governor General in 1939 of that area of Poland known as the Government General. Defendant Frank had defined justice as that which benefited the German nation. His 5 years’ administration of the Government General illustrates the most extreme extension of that principle.
It has been shown that Defendant Frank took the office of Governor General under a program which constituted in itself a criminal plan or conspiracy, as Defendant Frank well knew and approved, to exploit the territory ruthlessly for the benefit of Nazi Germany, to conscript its nationals for labor in Germany, to close its schools and colleges, to prevent the rise of a Polish intelligentsia, and to administer the territory as a colonial possession of the Third Reich in total disregard of the duties of an occupying power towards the inhabitants of occupied territory.
Under Defendant Frank’s administration this criminal plan was consummated, but the execution went even beyond the plan. Food contributions to Germany increased to the point where the bare subsistence reserved for the Government General under the plan was reduced to a level of mass starvation. The savage program of exterminating Jews was relentlessly executed. Resettlement projects were carried out with reckless disregard of the rights of the local population and the terror of the concentration camp followed in the wake of the Nazi invaders.
This statement of evidence has been compiled in large part from statements by the Defendant Frank himself, from the admission found in his diary, official reports, reports of conferences with his colleagues and subordinates, and his speeches. It is therefore appropriate that a passage from his diary should be quoted in conclusion. It is our Document 2233(aa)-PS. It appears at Page 59 in the document book. I offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-613. The German text appears in the 1943 volume of labor conference meetings at the 25 January 1943 entry on Page 53. In his address Defendant Frank, prophetically enough, told his colleagues in the Government General that their task would grow more difficult. “Hitler”, he said, “could help them only as a kind of ‘administrative pill box.’ ” They must depend on themselves.
“We are now duty bound to hold together”—and I quote Frank—“We must remember that we who are gathered together here figure on Mr. Roosevelt’s list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number One. We have, so to speak, become accomplices in the world historic sense.”
This concludes the presentation on the Defendant Frank.
May it please the Tribunal, Lieutenant Colonel Griffith-Jones of the British Delegation will now deal with the individual responsibility of the Defendant Streicher.