The final order of the Ministry of Justice committing all NN prisoners on hand to the Gestapo and the concentration camps was one of extreme cruelty.
The foregoing documents and the undisputed facts show that Hitler and the high ranking officials of the armed forces and of the Nazi Party, including several Reich Ministers of Justice and other high officials in the Ministry of Justice, judges of the Nazi regime’s courts, the public prosecutors at such courts, either agreed upon, consented to, took a consenting part in, ordered, or abetted, were connected with the Hitler NN plan, scheme, or enterprise involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the waging of the recent war against the Allied nations and other neighboring nations of Germany.
The foregoing documents and facts show without dispute that several of the defendants participated to one degree or another either as a principal; or ordered, or abetted, took a consenting part in, or were connected with the execution or carrying out of the Hitler NN scheme or plan. The defendants so participating will be later discussed in the summation of the evidence.
The Night and Fog decree originated with Hitler as a plan or scheme to combat alleged resistance movements against the German occupation forces but it was early extended by the Ministry of Justice to include offenses against the German Reich. Often the offenses had nothing to do with the security of the armed forces in the occupied territories. Many of them occurred after military operations had ceased and in areas where there were no military operations. The first secret decree of the Ministry of Justice for the execution or carrying out of the NN decree provided for:
“1. The prosecution of criminal offenses against the Reich or, ”2. The occupation troops in occupied areas.”
It declared that the directive will be as a rule applicable to the seven above listed general types of offenses or crimes, including “Communist activity”. The term “Communist activity” is general and political in nature. The evidence shows that political prisoners in occupied territories were tried and sentenced to death under the NN proceedings. Pertinent here with respect to the so-called resistance activities is the finding of the IMT that:
“The local units of the Security Police and SD continued their work in the occupied territories after they had ceased to be an area of operations. The Security Police and SD engaged in widespread arrests of the civilian population of these occupied countries, imprisoned many of them under inhumane conditions, subjected them to brutal third degree methods, and sent many of them to concentration camps. Local units of the Security Police and SD were also involved in the shooting of hostages, the imprisonment of relatives, the execution of persons charged as terrorists, [and saboteurs without a trial], and the enforcement of the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ decrees under which persons charged with a type of offense believed to endanger the security of the occupying forces were either executed within a week or secretly removed to Germany without being permitted to communicate with their family and friends.”[656]
Defendant Schlegelberger explained the fundamental purpose of the NN decree to be a deterrent “through cutting off of the prisoners from every contact with the outside world”. He further explained “that the NN prisoners were expected and were to be tried materially according to the same regulations which would have been applied to them by the courts martial in the occupied territories” and that accordingly, “the rules of procedure had been curtailed to the utmost extent.”
The enforcement of the directives under the Hitler NN plan or scheme became a means of instrumentality by which the most complete control and coercion of a lot of the people of occupied territories were affected and under which thousands of the civilian population of occupied areas were imprisoned, terrorized, and murdered. The enforcement and administration of the NN directives resulted in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in violation of the international law of war and international common law relating to recognized human rights, and of article II, paragraphs 1(b) and (c) of Control Council Law No. 10.
During the war, in addition to deporting millions of inhabitants of occupied territories for slave labor and other purposes, Hitler’s Night and Fog program was instituted for the deportation to Germany of many thousands of inhabitants of occupied territories for the purpose of making them disappear without trace and so that their subsequent fate remain secret. This practice created an atmosphere of constant fear and anxiety among their relatives, friends, and the population of the occupied territories.