In conclusion, I shall permit myself to quote one of the many German depositions which are quoted in the document, namely paragraph 4 on Page 14. Your Honors will find this deposition I am quoting on Page 84 of the document book. I quote:
“Sergeant Fritz Köpke, commanding Number 2 gun of the 2d battery of the 2d Detachment of the 910th Artillery Regiment stated:
“ ‘For the bombardment of Leningrad, there was in the batteries a special stock of munitions supplied over and above the limit to an unlimited amount. . . .
“ ‘All the gun crews know that the bombardments of Leningrad were aimed at ruining the town and annihilating its civilian population. They therefore regarded with irony the bulletins of the German Supreme Command which spoke of shelling the “military objectives” of Leningrad.’ ”
The Hitlerite conspirators aimed at the complete destruction of the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade.
I remind you of Document Number 1746-PS, presented to the Tribunal on 7 December 1945; it is an order by Hitler, dated 27 March 1941, dealing with the attack on Yugoslavia. It is known that this order, entitled “Instruction Number 25,” gives in detail the military strategy for the attack and, besides, decrees that all the Yugoslav Air Force ground installations and the city of Belgrade shall be destroyed by means of continuous day and night air raids.
I omit the first paragraph of Page 18 of my report, inasmuch as the facts which are mentioned in this paragraph have been read into the record on 11 February. I shall read a few excerpts from Pages 22 and 23 of the official report of the Yugoslav Government. This corresponds to Pages 111 and 112 in your document book. I read:
“The planned and systematic execution of these crimes, based on the orders of the Government of the Reich and of the OKW, is confirmed by the fact that the destruction of inhabited localities and of the population did not cease even at the time of the retreat of the German troops from Yugoslavia.
“Typical for thousands of such cases is the destruction of Belgrade and extermination of its citizens in October 1944.
“The fights for the liberation of Belgrade lasted from 15 to 20 October 1944. Even before the fighting started, the Germans prepared a plan for the systematic destruction of the city. They sent into the city a large number of specially trained units whose duties consisted of mining houses and killing the population. Though, because of the swift advance of the Red Army and of the Yugoslav National Liberation Forces, they failed to carry out their task as ordered by the German commanders, they succeeded in destroying a large number of houses in the southern part of the city and in killing a considerable number of its inhabitants.