These material differences alone would have been sufficient to make it unthinkable that the Defendant Frank could have belonged to the inner circle of Hitler’s collaborators. The differences of outlook in regard to the functions of law were bound to become more pronounced in the course of the war. It could therefore cause no surprise that after the death of the former Reich Minister of Justice, Dr. Gürtner, it was not the Defendant Frank who was appointed his successor, but the President of the Peoples’ Court, Dr. Thierack.
Summing up, it may be said that there is no factual foundation for the assumption that the Defendant Frank participated in a common plan, a common plan which had as its object the waging of an aggressive war and in connection therewith the commission of crimes against the rules of war. Before I turn to the points of accusation brought against the Defendant Frank within the framework of his career as Governor General, I will refer shortly to his responsibility under penal law as a member of the organizations accused of criminality.
So far as Frank’s responsibility as member of the Reich Government is under investigation, I can here in the main refer to the statements which I shall later make in the case of the Defendant Hess. The only difference lies in the fact that whereas Hess, too, was only Reich Minister without Portfolio, he had—as the Führer’s Deputy under the Führer’s decree of 27 July 1934—a considerable influence on the preparation of laws. That, however, was not the case with the Defendant Frank. Frank had hardly any influence at all on the legislation of the Reich. That is why he was cosignatory of so extraordinarily few Reich laws. With the exception of the law of 16 March 1935, by which general conscription was reintroduced, his name is to be found under none of the laws which the Prosecution has presented to the Tribunal as relevant to the proof of the criminal nature of the Reich Government as an organization.
The Defendant Frank, in his capacity as Reichsleiter and Leader of the Reich Law Department, was also a member of the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. An investigation of this point of accusation seems all the less called for since in this respect no act can be attributed to the Defendant Frank which fulfills the requirements of any penal law. For the rest, here too I can refer to my statements in the case of the Defendant Hess.
In Appendix A to the Indictment it is alleged that the Defendant Frank was a general of the SS. The evidence has shown that Frank at no time belonged to the SS and that he did not even have the honorary rank of a general of the SS. On the other hand, he was an Obergruppenführer in the SA. With respect to the application made by the Prosecution to declare that organization as criminal, too, the same may be said as in the case of the application to declare the Leadership Corps criminal. The Charter and the Prosecution here again depart from the principle which hitherto has been considered an indispensable component of any modern criminal law practice, namely, that no punishment is admissible unless guilt has been established in every individual case.
I now pass to the points of accusation in connection with the career of the Defendant Frank as Governor General. When the Polish Government had left the country after Poland’s military collapse, the German occupying forces were faced with the task of building up an administration without the help of any parliamentary, representation or any representatives of the former Polish State. The difficulties arising out of this situation were bound to be all the greater because, in spite of the comparatively short time that the war had lasted, the war damage, especially to the communications system, was not inconsiderable. Above all, however, the establishment of an orderly administration was rendered more difficult by the fact that the homogeneous economic area of the former Polish State was divided into three parts. Of the 388,000 square kilometers which made up the territory of the former Polish State, about 200,000 were taken over by the Soviet Union and 97,000 formed the Government General, while the rest was incorporated in the German Reich. A change came on 1 August 1941. On that date Galicia was annexed to the Government General as a new district, whereby the territory of the Government General was increased to an area of approximately 150,000 square kilometers with about 18 million inhabitants. This frontier delimitation made it all the more difficult for the administration, as the agricultural excess production all went to the Soviet Union, while on the other, hand important industrial cities such as Lodz, and above all the coal fields of Dombrowa, fell to the Reich.
Directly after the military collapse of Poland, a military government was set up to cover the four military districts of East Prussia, Posen, Lodz, and Kraków, Commander Von Rundstedt being placed at the head of that government. The Defendant Frank became Supreme Chief of Administration (Oberverwaltungschef). The military government ended on 26 October 1939 with the coming into force of the decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor concerning the administration of the occupied Polish territories under the date of 12 October 1939. Under this decree the Defendant Frank was appointed Governor General for the occupied Polish territories which were not incorporated in the Reich and which shortly afterward became known as the Government General.
As the time at my disposal is short, I will not go into detail on the question as to whether the administration of the territories of the former Polish State, jointly designated as the Government General, should have conformed to the principle of occupatio bellica (occupation of enemy territory), or whether it should not rather be assumed that the principles of debellatio (complete subjection and incorporation in a foreign state) were applicable in that case.
I come now to the question of the powers vested in the Defendant Frank by virtue of his office of Governor General. According to Article 3 of the Führer’s decree of 12 October 1939 the Governor General was directly subordinate to the Führer. The same provision placed all branches of the administration in the hands of the Governor General. In actual fact, however, the Governor General had by no means such wide powers as it would seem at first sight. The Führer’s decree itself provided in Article 5 that the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich could also make laws for the territory of the Government General.
The Delegate for the Four Year Plan had the same power. Article 6 provided that, moreover, all supreme Reich authorities could issue decrees necessary for planning within the German living space and economic area and that these would be effective also for the Government General.