[Note.—Because citations were not required by the Tribunal for documents quoted in the opening address of the Russian Prosecution it has been impossible to verify the wording against the text of the original documents. In the presentation of 8 February many of the quotations from documents originally in the German and English languages have been translated into Russian and then translated again into English for the record of the Trial. For this publication these retranslations have been used in some instances.]
THE PRESIDENT: I call on General Rudenko for the Soviet Union.
GENERAL R. A. RUDENKO (Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): May it please Your Honors, on delivering my opening statement, the last to be made at this Trial by the chief prosecutors, I am fully conscious of the supreme historical importance of these proceedings.
For the first time in the history of mankind is justice confronted with crimes committed on so vast a scale, with crimes which have entailed such grave consequences. It is for the first time that criminals who have seized an entire state and made this state an instrument of their monstrous crimes appear before a court of justice.
It is also for the first time that, by judging these defendants, we sit in judgment not only on the defendants themselves, but also on the criminal institutions and organizations which they created and on the inhuman theories and ideas which they promulgated with a view to committing crimes against peace and humanity, crimes which were designed by them far in advance of their perpetration.
Nine months ago, after having tortured for a number of years of bloody warfare the freedom-loving nations of Europe, Hitlerite Germany collapsed under the hammer blows of the combined armed forces of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition. On 8 May 1945 Hitlerite Germany was compelled to lay down her arms, having suffered a military and political defeat hitherto unequalled in history.
Hitlerism imposed upon the world a war which caused the freedom-loving nations innumerable privations and endless sufferings. Millions of people fell victims of the war initiated by the Hitlerite brigands who embarked on a dream of conquering the free peoples of the democratic countries and of establishing the rule of Hitlerite tyranny in Europe and in the entire world.
The day has come when the peoples of the world demand a just retribution and a severe punishment of the Hitlerite hangmen, when they demand severe punishment of the criminals.
All the outrages individually or jointly committed by the major Hitlerite war criminals, all together and each one individually, will be considered by you, Your Honors, with all the thoroughness and attention which the law, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, justice, and our conscience require.
We charge the defendants with the initiation, instigation, and direct execution, individually and through their agents, of the criminal plan of conspiracy. To the execution of this plan was committed the entire machinery of the Hitlerite State with all its governmental agencies and institutions, with its army, police, the so-called public agencies, as set out in the Indictment and particularly in Appendix B.