GEN. RUDENKO: I ask you, did you write this?
ROSENBERG: I did not, in fact, write it, but it was a circular letter which was issued by the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories, and, therefore, I am officially responsible for this Brown Folder. But I would like to say a few words of explanation in regard to this—the explanation about the status of international law in the East I received from the Führer’s headquarters. It stated that, in accordance with the attitude of the Soviet Union toward certain conventions, as far as the Hague Convention was concerned, it did not apply to the Soviet Union in this instance. Furthermore, as this document contains many pages, I was not able to read it in its entirety at the time; but on the second page I have already found a paragraph which shows very obviously what lines the wording followed. It states as follows...
GEN. RUDENKO: Defendant Rosenberg, one minute, please.
ROSENBERG: But I must be allowed to read from the document.
THE PRESIDENT: We must try and conduct this cross-examination in an orderly fashion. Now, what is the question?
[Turning to General Rudenko.] What is your question?
GEN. RUDENKO: I put to him the question, whether he admitted that he knew of the tasks put before the civilian administration in the occupied territories as they are set forth in the quotation which I just read. He said that he did know. I have exhausted my questions in this particular sphere. The document is in possession of the Defense and the Defense will be able to quote other parts of this document which have not yet been read into the record. This is a very long document. If I had tried to quote it to the Tribunal in its entirety it would have taken too much time.
THE PRESIDENT: [To the defendant.] You answered the question. I understood what the question was, and that you were told that the Hague Convention did not apply to Russia.
ROSENBERG: Yes. May I quote this one paragraph on Page 40, the next to the last paragraph:
“The most important prerequisite for this”—that is, for the development of the East—“is the treatment of the country and of the people in a corresponding manner. The war against the Soviet Union is—with all necessary regard to the securing of foodstuffs—a political campaign with the establishment of lasting order as its objective. The conquered territory as a whole is, therefore, not to be considered an object of exploitation, even if the German food and war economy must lay claim to considerable areas on a large scale.”