“Many of the prisoners of war were assigned to work directly related to military operations, in violation of Article 31 of the Geneva Convention. They were put to work in munitions factories and even made to load bombers, to carry ammunition and to dig trenches, often under the most hazardous conditions. This condition applied particularly to Soviet prisoners of war. On 16 February 1943, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, * * * Milch said: ‘We have made a request for an order that a certain percentage of men in the Ack-Ack artillery must be Russians; 50,000 will be taken altogether. Thirty thousand are already employed as gunners. This is an amusing thing, that the Russians must work the guns’ ”.
That every aircraft factory in the Reich had antiaircraft batteries to protect it goes without saying. Who would know better than the defendant that such use was made of the Soviet prisoners of war? Further, this type of artillery was a part of the Luftwaffe and not a separate branch in the ground forces, as it is in the U.S. Army. The witness Foerster has testified that Soviet prisoners of war worked at the gun positions. If the number two man in the German air force could not have done anything toward arranging that the prisoners of war did not work in the factories, or work the guns, then no one in the Wehrmacht could have done anything about the situation.
We have heard much of the defendant’s violent temper and the resulting statements which, witnesses assert, were never taken seriously by those who heard them. The explanations offered by the defense are as frivolous as the alleged outbursts were frequent. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for one who occupied the positions held by the defendant, to accomplish anything if his subordinates had to sift all of the strong statements he made, in an effort to determine which of them were seriously said. Further, his strong statements about the procurement and treatment of laborers are closely aligned with the grim reality as we have seen it. We submit that this man of violent temper believed in, and consciously advocated, the ruthless measures he recommended, and that his subordinates, to the best of their ability, complied with his recommendations. It is not reasonable to assume that one with his power could have made statements, of the kind of which we have heard here, and that he would then rely on the good offices of those who were around him to insure that nothing was done as a result of these statements. The Reich was not a country of innocent victims of one tyrant, but rather it was composed of a series of tyrants, each like the master tyrant, each with his own group of subordinates, who carried out the wishes and whims of their respective chiefs. If all men who held positions of authority in the Reich are to be believed when they say that they were personally opposed to criminal excesses, then we have the fantastic conclusion that these crimes were committed in the face of influential and unanimous opposition.
The witnesses produced by the defense left a little to be desired. Without indulging in exhaustive detail, a few statements made by some are worth comment.
The witness Koenig said that he didn’t know Himmler was head of the SS until 1945.
The witness von Brauchitsch did not know families were broken up and sent to concentration camps. It was this man, the aid to Goering, who passed on the Terboven letter of May 1942 to the defendant. The Court will recall that the letter told of the attempted escape and the resulting concentration camp detention of the Norwegians. It was the defendant who said that an attempt to escape by a prisoner of war is an honorable thing. Would not a similar effort on the part of some Norwegians merit something less than a concentration camp? Brauchitsch had said a little earlier that he did not know that foreigners were in concentration camps.
The witness Felmy has stated that some Yugoslav partisans were sent to Germany as laborers.
The witness Schniewind, who was present at the conference of 23 May 1939, did not under any circumstances gain the impression that aggression was announced.
The witness Vorwald, a subordinate of the defendant and hence his concern for these proceedings, may be assumed as being something short of disinterested, was thoroughly glib and exceptionally agreeable. He even agreed with the statement, on cross-examination, that the forces of the Reich were no longer in Africa in 1943. It is a matter of historical record that the invasion of that Continent began in November 1942 and that the campaign was concluded in the spring of the following year.
The witness Koerner, still laboring under the spell of the former leaders, stated that he believed Goering to be the last great man of the Renaissance.