“ ‘The restrictions might affect the liberty of action of the belligerents in certain extreme emergencies,’ indicating that for extreme contingencies, therefore, a state of emergency may be pleaded. It is recognized international law that even an aggressor must not be denied the right of pleading a state of emergency in case his existence is directly threatened.”
In connection with the chapter concerning the eastern administration, I should like, without pointing out specifically all that the defendant has said during his testimony concerning accusations of the Soviet Prosecution, in particular the reports of the state commissions and the Molotov reports (Documents USSR-39, 41, 51, 89, and record of 16 April 1946), to express a hope that the factual corrections made by the defendant will be duly evaluated by the Tribunal.
Now I come to a new subject: Contrary to the assumption of the Prosecution, Rosenberg was in no instance the instigator of a persecution of Jews, any more than he was one of the leaders and originators of the policy adopted by the Party and the Reich, as the Prosecution claims (Walsh, on 13 December 1945, Volume III, Page 539). Rosenberg was certainly a convinced anti-Semite and expressed his conviction and the reasons for it both verbally and in writing. However, in his case anti-Semitism was not the most outstanding of his activities. In his book Blood and Honor, speeches and essays between 1919 and 1933, out of 64 speeches, for example, only one had a title referring to Jewry. The same applies to the other two volumes of his speeches. He felt his spiritual ancestors to be the mystic Meister Ekkehart, Goethe, Lagarde, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain; anti-Semitism was for him a negative element, and his chief and most positive efforts were directed toward the proclamation of a new German intellectual attitude, and a new German culture. Because he found this endangered after 1918, he became an opponent of Jewry. Even such different personalities as Von Papen, Von Neurath, and Raeder now confess to their belief that the penetration of the Jewish element into the whole of public life was so great that a change had to be brought about. It strikes me as very important, however, that the nature of Rosenberg’s anti-Semitism was intellectual above all. For example, at the Party Rally of 1933 he explicitly mentioned a “chivalrous solution” of the Jewish question. We never heard Rosenberg use expressions like “We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them; we shall take measures that will insure success. We must abandon all feelings of sympathy.” The Prosecution itself quotes the following as an expression of the program Rosenberg set up for himself (Volume III, Page 529):
“After the Jews have been ousted as a matter of course from all official positions, the Jewish question will find a decisive solution through the setting up of ghettos.”
GENERAL R. A. RUDENKO (Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Mr. President, rather reluctantly I interrupt counsel for the defense, and I do not like to take the time of the Tribunal, but what I just heard is going beyond any permissible limits. When the defendants sitting in the dock tried to express their Fascist views, this was deemed inappropriate and cut short by the Tribunal.
I think that it is absolutely inadmissible that defense counsel should use this place to promote antihuman propaganda; I cannot understand the contention of the lawyer who alleges the existence of a noble, spiritual anti-Semitism which Rosenberg advocates and that Rosenberg’s belief in gathering all Jews in ghettos was chivalrous. Please note that the lawyer is not quoting any Nazi leader but expresses his own opinion, and I protest against the use of the International Military Tribunal for the spreading of Fascist propaganda. I ask the Tribunal to consider this objection of mine and to take appropriate action.
DR. THOMA: May it please the Tribunal—may I make an answer to that?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Thoma, we don’t think it is necessary to trouble you. The Tribunal thinks—there may be, of course, differences of opinion as to the use of words in the course of your argument, but they see no reason for stopping you in the argument that you are presenting to the Tribunal.
DR. THOMA: Thank you, My Lord.
May it please the Tribunal, after what General Rudenko has said, I should like to make one statement. In my speech I have tried to argue upon the statements of the Prosecution and nothing else. I would like to say something else. The words “chivalrous solution of the Jewish question” were not my expression; I just quoted that as a statement made by Rosenberg a long time before he came into this Court. The Prosecution quotes the following as Rosenberg’s statement of a program: “The Jewish question...” and so on; I have already read that.