In the statement of the offense in Count Four of the Indictment, it is rightly pointed out that the very plan or conspiracy was organized also for committing Crimes against Humanity. The fascist conspirators started committing Crimes against Humanity from the moment of the formation of the Hitler Party. These crimes attained vast proportions after the coming into power of the Hitlerites.
The concentration camp of Buchenwald, set up in 1938, and the camp at Dachau, established in 1934, turned out to be only the anemic prototypes of Maidanek, Auschwitz, Slavuta, and numerous death camps, set up by the Hitlerites in the territories of Latvia, Bielorussia, and the Ukraine.
The very coming into power of the Hitlerites was marked by many provocations which served as an excuse for committing grave Crimes against Humanity. Inflicting punishments without due process of law by the Hitlerites upon all who did not share the ideology of the fascist clique became widespread.
“We deny the protection of law to the enemies of the people. We National Socialists knowingly take a stand against false soft-heartedness and false humaneness. We do not recognize the sophistry of tricky lawyers and cunning juridical subtleties”—wrote Göring, as early as 1934, in an article published overseas in the Hearst press. (Göring, Hermann, Reden und Aufsätze, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Munich, 1940, Page 159.)
In one of the articles, dated 1933, Göring regarded it as his special merit that he had reorganized the entire management of the Gestapo, having placed the Secret Police under his immediate control and organized concentration camps to be used in fighting political opponents.
“Thus”—spoke Göring—“arose the concentration camps in which we soon had to stick thousands of people belonging to the Communist and Social Democratic Party machines.”
At the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution are the notes of Martin Bormann, found in the archives of the German Foreign Office and captured by the Soviet troops in Berlin, on the conference held by Hitler on 2 October 1940. This document refers to occupied Poland. It will be submitted to the Tribunal. At the moment I shall only quote from it a few points of the Hitlerite leadership program. The conference started with the statement by Frank that his activities as Governor General could be considered very successful: The Jews in Warsaw and other cities were locked up in ghettos. Very soon Kraków would be entirely cleared of Jews.
“There must be no Polish gentry”—the document went on to state—“wherever they may be, they must be exterminated, no matter how brutal this may sound.
“. . . all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia must be exterminated. This sounds brutal, but such is the law of life. . . . Priests will be paid by us and, as a result, they will preach what we want. If we find a priest acting otherwise short work is to be made of him. The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted. This is entirely in our interests. The lowest German workman and the lowest German peasant must always stand above any Pole economically.”
A special place among the unheard-of crimes of the Hitlerites is occupied by the bloody butchery of the Slavic and Jewish peoples. Hitler said to Rauschning: