The defendants knew that cynical mockery of the laws and customs of war constituted the gravest of crimes. They knew it, but they hoped that total war, by securing victory, would also secure their impunity. But victory did not arrive on the heels of the crimes. Instead came the complete and unconditional surrender of Germany, and with it came an hour of grim reckoning for all the outrages they had committed.
I myself, speaking on behalf of the Soviet Union, and my honored colleagues, the chief prosecutors of the United States of America, England, and France, we all accuse the defendants of having ruled over the entire German State and war machine through a criminal conspiracy and of turning the machinery of the German State into a mechanism for the preparation and prosecution of criminal aggression, into a mechanism for the extermination of millions of innocent people.
When several criminals conspire to commit a murder, every one of them plays a definite part. One works out the plan of murder, another waits in the car, and the third actually fires at the victim. But whatever may be the part played by any individual participant, they all are murderers and any court of law in any country will reject any attempts to assert that the first two should not be considered murderers, since they themselves had not fired the bullet.
The more complicated and hazardous the conceived crime, the more complicated and less tangible the links connecting the individual participants. When a gang of bandits commits an assault, responsibility for the raid is also shared by those members of the gang who did not actually take part in the assault. But when the size of the gang attains extraordinary proportions, when the gang happens to be at the helm of the ship of state, when the gang commits numerous and very grave international crimes, then of course, the ties and mutual relations among the members of the gang become entangled to the utmost. A highly ramified mechanism is here at work. It consisted of a whole system of links and blocks, (Zellenleiter, Blockleiter, Gauleiter, Reichsleiter, et cetera) extending from ministerial chairs to the hands of the executioners.
This is a consolidated and powerful mechanism, yet it is powerless to conceal the basic and decisive fact that at the core of the entire system operated a gang of conspirators who were setting in motion the whole organization which they had created.
When entire regions of flourishing countryside were turned into desert areas, and the soil was drenched with the blood of those executed, it was the work of their hands, of their organization, their instigation, their leadership. And just because the masses of the German people were made to participate in these outrages, because, prior to setting packs of dogs and executioners on millions of innocent people, the defendants for years had poisoned the conscience and the mind of an entire generation of Germans by developing in them the conceit of “the chosen,” the morals of cannibals, and the greed of burglars, can it be said on account of these facts that the guilt of the Hitlerite conspirators is any less great or any less grave?
Expressing the will of nations, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal has settled this question:
“Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy”—against peace, against the laws and customs of warfare, or against humanity—“to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan.” (Article 6)
For the purpose of successful execution of their criminal plans these conspirators—Göring, Hess, Rosenberg, Fritzsche, Schirach, and the other defendants—developed a fiendish theory of the superior or master race. By means of this so-called theory they had in mind to justify the claims of German fascism for the domination of other nations which were declared by their theory to be nations of inferior race.
It followed from this theory that Germans, since they belonged to the “master race,” have the “right” to build their own welfare on the bones of other races and nations. This theory proclaimed that German fascist usurpers are not bound by any laws or commonly accepted rules of human morality. The “master race” is permitted to do anything. No matter how revolting and shameless, cruel, and monstrous were the actions of those individuals, they were based on the idea of the superiority of this race.