THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief Prosecutor for the Provisional Government of the Republic of France, M. Champetier de Ribes.

M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Tribunal:

On presenting the final address of the French Public Prosecutor, I beg the Tribunal to permit me to express the admiration and the gratitude of my country for the objectivity and calm with which these proceedings have been conducted. In the course of the last 9 months the events of more than 15 years of history have been evoked at this bar. Germany's archives, those of them that the Nazis were unable to burn before their defeat, have yielded up their secrets. We have heard numerous witnesses, whose recollections would have been lost to history but for the present Trial.

All the facts have been presented with strict objectivity, leaving no room for passion nor even for sensibility. The Tribunal have excluded from the proceedings everything that, in their opinion, seemed insufficiently proved, everything that might have appeared to be dictated by a-spirit of vengeance. For the chief concern of this Trial is above all that of historical truth.

Thanks to it, the historian of the future, as well as the chronicler of today, will know the truth of the political, diplomatic, and military events of the most tragic period of our history; he will know the crimes of Nazism as well as the irresolution, the weaknesses, the omissions of the peace-loving democracies.

He will know that the work of twenty centuries of a civilization, which believed itself eternal, was almost destroyed by the return of ancient barbarism in a new guise, all the more brutal because more scientific.

He will know that the progress of mechanical science, modern means of propaganda, and the most devilish practices of a police which defied the most elementary rules of humanity, enabled a small minority of criminals within a few years to distort the collective conscience of a great people, and to transform the nation described by Dr. Sauter at the conclusion of his speech in defense of

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Von Schirach, as loyal, upright, and full of virtue, into that of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels-to mention only those of them who are dead. He will know that the real crime of these men was the conception of the gigantic plan of world domination and the attempt to realize it by every possible means. By every possible means, that is of course, by the breaking of pledges and by unleashing the worst of all wars of aggression. but, above all, by the scientific and systematic extermination of millions of human beings and more especially of certain national or religious groups whose existence hampered the hegemony of the Germanic race. This is a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history throughout the Christian era up to the birth of Hitlerism, that the term "genocide" has had to be coined to define it and an accumulation of documents and testimonies has been needed to make it credible.

The perfect collaboration of the four public prosecutors has enabled it to be proved, to the shame of the times we live in, that this crime was possible; and, within the limits of those Counts of the Indictment reserved for herself, France believes that she has done her part in the common task.

While the defendants and their counsels have said a great deal before the Tribunal regarding the protection to which the innocent civilian population is entitled, and have referred to this as to an obvious principle, we have established the fact that the defendants have deliberately violated this principle by treating these civilian populations with the most complete disregard for human life. Is it necessary to recall the terrible words of the Defendant Keitel, "human life is worth less than nothing in the occupied territories."

By reverting to the taking of hostages the defendants revived a tradition which symbolizes the most primitive practices of warfare. They put their signatures to general orders decreeing the capture and execution of thousands of martyrs. In France alone 29,000 hostages were shot. We know that the champions of the resistance movement, whose patriotism is now admired by the defendants, were massacred, tortured, and imprisoned with a view to their slow extermination. We know, too, that, on the pretext of reprisals, in execution of orders or by the cruelty of individuals covered by the complicity of the authorities, civilians were taken at random and executed and that whole villages were burnt down: Oradour-sur-Glane and Maille in France, Putten in Holland have not risen again from their ruins.

The atrocious orders issued in Marshal Kesselring's operational sector for combating partisan activity by terror are in all our minds. There we saw one officer order the execution of fifty or a hundred men or even of the entire male population of a region as a reprisal for isolated acts directed against the German Army. The execution

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of that order was authorized by instructions from the commander of the theater of operations, who was himself acting on more general instructions issued by the Defendant Keitel. This is an example of the perfect collaboration existing between the National Socialist cadre and the State and is an argument, if such be still necessary, for the joint responsibility of the leading personalities of the regime. We know that thousands of men were torn from their homes and forced to make arms to be used against their own country.

The harsh treatment given to soldiers shocked us even more deeply, because Germany, be it the traditional Germany, the Nazi Germany when it was in power, or the Germany which is now presenting the paltry arguments for its defense in the prisoners' dock, has always claimed to uphold the universal rules governing military honor and the respect due to all combatants. In spite of this, we have seen Keitel himself, who championed these ideas to such a degree that he even referred to them again at the conclusion of his testimony in the witness box, urge Wilhelmstrasse and his Codefendant Goering to approve his criminal proposals for the treatment of airmen who fell into their hands.

Documents such as the testimony of Gruner leave no room for doubt that criminal orders to exterminate and lynch airmen were given in the customary way and transmitted to those responsible for their execution. There is no doubt as to the principles which governed the drafting of the order concerning the Commandos, nor as to the execution of this order in the various theaters of operations. The Prosecution have produced a striking collection of evidence on this point.

Our consternation was even greater when it was borne upon us with certainty that cruel decrees had been issued for the execution or imprisonment for the purpose of extermination of men already reduced to a state of helplessness by their internment in prisoner-of-war camps. The sinister affair of Sagan, often evoked in the course of this Trial, is present in our minds. The defendants themselves attempt only to evade personal responsibility without denying the atrocity of the truth of the facts. We have shown how rebellious escaped officers and noncommissioned officers, whose past records and attitude are proof of their moral strength, were exterminated by "Aktion Kugel."

At length, Nazi Germany unveiled her plans for expansion and world domination by organizing the systematic extermination of the peoples whose territories she had occupied. This operation was carried out at first, as we have shown, by the political, economic, and moral destruction of the occupied countries. The methods employed were the brutal or gradual seizure of power, or carefully calculated infiltration of German authority in every sphere, the

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preparation of a program of economic pillage and its pitiless execution so as to lead to the exhaustion of the occupied country and to put it at the absolute mercy of the occupying power; in a word the Nazification of the State and the people, as well as the destruction of cultural and moral values.

But this methodical extermination was carried out also in a concrete way by the systematic massacre of the people. Is it necessary to recall the mass extermination of groups considered impossible of assimilation into the National Socialist world, the vast graveyard of the concentration camps, where 15 million people perished, the abominable achievements of the "Einsatzgruppen" (special purposes groups), described with irrefutable precision by General Ohlendorf?

We consider we have also established proof of those pernicious attempts at extermination, which on examination are seen to be one of the most perfect examples of the defendants' policy. I refer to the deliberate undernourishment to which those non-Germans were subjected who for any reason whatsoever came under Nazi authority-whole nations starved by way of reprisal, civilian rations in occupied territories ruthlessly cut to enable the plan for the pillage of the territory to be carried out. The Tribunal will recall Goering's speech to the Gauleiter which has been submitted under Document Number USSR-170:

"It is absolutely immaterial to me if you say that your people are fainting from hunger. Let them faint, as long as no German starves."

And again, with reference to Holland:

"It is not our mission to feed a nation which turns from us in spirit. If its people are so weak that they cannot even raise a hand where they are not employed to work for us... so much the better."

Famine, bodily misery, and the resulting reduction of the potential of life, are all included, together with the slow exhaustion of political internees and prisoners of war, in the plan for the extermination of populations in order to free German living space.

The same idea is behind the detention in captivity or semicaptivity, as in the case of labor deportees, of healthy young men whose presence at home was of vital importance for the future of their country. All this has been confirmed by the latest census results.

These reveal that all the countries occupied by Germany show a decrease in their population varying from 5 percent to 25 percent, whereas Germany herself is the only country in Europe which

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shows an increase. Gentlemen, we have proved all these crimes. After the submission of our documents, the hearing of the witnesses, the projection of films which the defendants themselves could not see without shuddering with horror, nobody in the world can possibly claim that the extermination camps, the executed prisoners, the slaughtered peoples, the mounds of corpses, the human herds maimed in body and soul, the instruments of torture, the gas chambers and crematories-no one can claim that all these crimes existed only in the imagination of anti-German propagandists.

Indeed, none of the defendants have challenged the truth of the facts we have reported. Unable to deny them, they try only to evade their own responsibility by placing the guilt on those of their accomplices who committed suicide.

"We knew nothing of those horrors," they say, or else: "We did everything we could to prevent them but Hitler, who was all-powerful, gave the orders and allowed no one to disobey or even resign from office." What a poor defense! Who is likely to believe that they alone were ignorant of what the whole world knew and that their monitoring stations never reported to them the solemn warnings which were broadcast repeatedly by the heads of the United Nations?

They could not disobey Hitler's order, they could not even resign from office? Indeed! Hitler might have governed their bodies but not their souls. By disobeying him they might perhaps have lost their liberty or even their lives but they would at least have saved their honor. Cowardice has never been an excuse, nor even an extenuating circumstance.

The truth is that having taken part in its elaboration they all knew perfectly well the doctrine of National Socialism and its will to universal domination. They were very well aware of the monstrous crimes to which it inevitably led its adepts and its exponents and that all accepted the responsibility in the same way that all accepted the material and moral advantages which it lavished upon them.

But they thought themselves sure of impunity because they were certain of victory, and that in the face of force triumphant no questions would be asked about the justice of the cause. They persuaded themselves, as they had done after the war of 1914, that no international jurisdiction could ever indict them. They thought that Pascal's pessimistic judgment on human justice in international relationship would always be true: "Justice can be disputed; force is easily recognizable and cannot be disputed. So, as right cannot be made into might, might has been made into right." They are mistaken. Since Pascal's day, the concepts of

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morality and justice have slowly but surely taken shape and been incorporated in the international customs of civilized nations.

The Tribunal will doubtless remember that at the conclusion of his presentation of the charges made in the Indictment, the French prosecutor stated in precise terms the responsibility of all the defendants who are "guilty of having, in their role as the chief Hitlerian leaders of the German people, conceived, willed, ordained, or merely tolerated by their silence that assassinations or other inhuman acts should be systematically committed, that violent treatment should be systematically imposed on prisoners of war or civilians, that devastations without justification be systematically committed as a deliberate instrument for the accomplishment of their purpose of dominating Europe and the world through terrorism and the extermination of entire populations in order to enlarge the living space of the German people."

All that is left to us now is to demonstrate that the proceedings which have taken place before you have served only to confirm and reinforce the accusations and 'the statements formulated at the beginning of these proceedings against the major criminals who, in execution of the Charter and to satisfy the demands of justice, have been committed by the United Nations for trial by your Tribunal.

I ask the Tribunal to allow M. Dubost, the chief prosecutor, to present his final statement.

M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Such are the facts set forth by the French Delegation. It was necessary to recall them in order to establish our contribution to the Trial. We do not intend, however, to deal with our own work apart from the whole resulting from the presentations of the other three delegations and the general proceedings. It is on the basis of this work as a whole that we shall proceed with our indictment and examine the personal responsibility of the defendants.

Taking one by one the deeds for which they are responsible, there are found to be murder, indictable theft, and other serious offenses against persons and property which are always punishable in civilized countries. M. de Menthon has already shown this in his introductory address.

The defendants did not actually commit the crimes; they were content to decree them. According to our French law, they are therefore accomplices in the technical sense of the term. Allowing for certain differences which are mostly only differences of form, the perpetrators of serious offenses and their accomplices are subject in most countries to capital punishment or to very severe penalties, such as forced labor or solitary confinement.

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That is the Anglo-Saxon practice. This also holds good in France from application of Articles 221 If, 379 If, 59 ff of the French Penal Code. In Germany, Article 211 provides for the punishment of homicide; Article 212 relates to murder; Articles 223 to 226 to torture; Article 229 to poisoning and murder by gas. Article 234 covers slavery, reduction to serfdom, incorporation with a view to military service abroad; Articles 242 and 243 cover theft and pillage; Article 130 deals with the incitement of the populace to violence. The position of accomplices and co-originators is covered by Articles 47 and 49 of German law. Similar provisions exist in Soviet legislation as well as in the legislation of all great civilized countries.

The fact that, as leaders of the Reich and accomplices of the Fuehrer, these men are all responsible for the crimes committed under their regime, and that in the eyes of all men of conscience their responsibility is heavier than that of those who carried out their orders, has been admitted by two of the defendants, Frank and Schirach.

Frank said:

"I have never founded extermination camps for Jews, nor was I ever in favor of the existence of these camps; but if Adolf Hitler placed this terrible responsibility on the shoulders of his people, I, too, share in it; for we conducted a campaign against the Jews for years, we made all kinds of statements against them..."

In his last few words Frank condemns, along with himself, all those who pursued the campaign of incitement against the Jews in Germany and elsewhere. Let us remember Frank's answer to the question put to him by his defense counsel as to the charges brought against him in the Indictment. It is true of all the defendants and still more of those who were closer to Hitler than he himself:

"As to these charges, I have only this to say: I ask the Tribunal to determine the extent of my guilt at the end of these proceedings; but I should like to say on my own account that after all I have seen in the course of these 5 months of the Trial, which have given me a general view of all the atrocities that have been committed, I myself feel thoroughly guilty."

Von Schirach for his part stated:

"This is the crime for which I am answerable, before myself, before God, and before the German people: I trained the youth of our country for the man whom, for years and years, I considered unimpeachable as the head of our country. I trained our youth for him. My crime lies in the fact that

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I trained our youth for a man who was a murderer, who killed millions of people.... Any German who, after Auschwitz, still adheres to the racial policy, is guilty....

"I feel it my duty to say this."

Such cries of conscience were rare in the course of this Trial and more frequently, copying Goering's quibbling vanity, the defendants tried to extricate themselves by invoking a policy of neo-Machiavellism which would free the leaders of the State of all personal responsibility. Let us simply state that no such provisions exist in the laws of any civilized country, and that, on the contrary, arbitrary and aggressive acts aimed at personal liberty, at civic rights or at the constitution, are all the more severely punished in cases where they have been committed by a public functionary or high-ranking government official; and that the most severe penalties are reserved for the ministers themselves (Articles 114 and 115 of the French Penal Code).

But let us limit ourselves on this point. We aim only at recalling that each of the principal deeds charged against the defendants may be considered by itself as violating the criminal laws of one or other of the positive internal laws of every civilized country, or as violating that common international law, which M. de Menthon has already interpreted and which has been submitted here as the root of international custom, and that the punishment of each of these deeds is therefore not without foundation; on the contrary, even if we restrict ourselves to this preliminary analysis, the heaviest penalties have already been incurred.

We must, however, go further; for while it does not omit any culpable fact as such, the analysis of the defendant's guilt in the light of internal law is only a first approximation which would enable us to prosecute the defendants merely as accomplices and ~ not as principal authors. And we are anxious to prove that they

were in reality the principal culprits.

We hope to succeed in this by developing the following three points:

1) The defendants' acts are elements in a criminal political plan.

2) The co-ordination of the various departments headed by these men implies close co-operation between them for the realization of their criminal policy.

3) They must be judged as functioning within the scope of this criminal policy.

The acts of the defendants are the elements of a criminal political plan:

The defendants have been active in widely differing spheres. As politicians, diplomats, soldiers, sailors, economists, financiers, jurists,

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or propagandists, they represent practically every form of liberal activity. We recognize unhesitatingly, however, the tie that binds them together. They have all put the best-or the worst-of themselves at the service of the Hitlerite State. To a certain extent they represent the brains of that State; but they themselves were not the whole brain. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that they were an important part of it. They conceived the policy of that State. They wanted to transform their thoughts into action and all contributed in almost the same degree toward its realization. This is true, no matter whether it applies to Hess or Goering, professional politicians who admit never having practiced any other profession but that of agitator or statesman, or to Ribbentrop, Neurath, Papen, the diplomats of the regime, or to Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz, or Raeder, the fighting men, to Rosenberg, Streicher, Frank, or Frick, the inventors-if that term can be applied to them-of the ideology of the system, to Schacht and Funk, the financiers without whom the system would have gone bankrupt and collapsed in the resulting inflation before it could rearm, to jurists like Frank, to publicists and propagandists like Fritzsche and-again-Streicher, devoted to the dissemination of the common idea, or to technicians like Speer or Sauckel, without whom the idea could never have been translated into action as it has been, to policemen such as Kaltenbrunner who destroyed morale by terror, to ordinary Gauleiters like SeyssInquart, Schirach, or-again-Sauckel, to administrators and high-ranking officials as well as politicians, who gave definite shape to the common policy conceived by the whole state and Party machine.

I know very well that the shadow of those who are absent looms over this machine, and today's defendants are perpetually reminding us of them: "Hitler wanted this, Himmler wanted this, Bormann wanted this." They say: "I only obeyed," and their defense counsels outdid them. Hitler, the monstrous tyrant, the fanatic visionary, imposing his will with an irresistible magnetic power-this is too simple; this is too sweeping. No man is entirely unreceptive to suggestion, insinuation, and influence; and Hitler escaped that law no more than any other man. We have had irrefutable proof of this in all the glimpses afforded us by these proceedings of the struggle for influence which went on in the "great man's" entourage. Malicious, underhand calumnies were circulated; there were intrigues which reminded us at times during the proceedings of the little courts of the Italian Renaissance. All the elements were present, even murder. Did not Goering, before he himself fell into disgrace, rid himself of Rohm and Ernst, who had plotted, not against their master, but against him, as Gisevius told us. So much imagination, such perseverance in evil, but also such efficiency, show us that Hitler was not blind to the actions and intrigues of the men around him. What a pity that these intrigues did not work in the right direction! But

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we have direct evidence of Hitler's responsiveness to influences and it is given us by Schacht who, at the same time apart from these men, raises the question of the German masses, whose good judgment they had contributed to warp and whose worst passions they roused.

Did not Schacht say of Hitler in Court:

"I believe that at first his tendencies were not wholly evil; he undoubtedly believed that his intentions were only good, but little by little he became the victim of the charm he exerted over the masses; for he who begins by seducing the masses is in the end himself seduced by them, so that this relation between leader and follower helped to lead him into the erroneous ways of mob instincts, which every political leader should strive to avoid."

What was then the great idea behind it all? It was indisputably that of the conquest of living space by any and every means, even the most criminal.

At a time when Germany was still disarmed and when discretion was still necessary, Schacht, who was at Hitler's side, asked for colonies. We remember Hirscheid's testimony. He dissembled, however, and in part disguised the master conception of the state machine to which he belonged and we could not denounce this idea so easily were it not for the disconcerting naivete of the "great man" who had laid his entire plan of campaign open to the inspection of the whole world 10 years before.

Indeed we read in Mein Kampf (Excerpt from Page 641), First quotation:

"Hence, the German nation can defend its own future only as a world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our people's interests, as we should designate our more or less successful activity in the field of foreign affairs, was world history. We ourselves were witnesses to this fact: For the gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914-18 was only the struggle of the German people for its existence on the globe, but we designated the type of event itself as a world war.

"The German people entered this struggle as a supposed world power. I say here 'supposed,' for in reality she was none. If the German nation in 1914 had- had a different relation between area and population, Germany would really have been a world power, and the war, aside from all other factors, could have been terminated favorably."

(Excerpt from Page 647) Second quotation:

"I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a

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political absurdity of such proportion and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich's frontiers in 1914 were anything but logical! For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency. They were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance." (Excerpt from Page 649) Third quotation: "The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for the German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past, nor would they contain any strength for the future. Through them the German nation will neither achieve its inner integrity, nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by them, nor do these boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem expedient or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relations in which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers, or, better expressed, the real world powers."

(Excerpt from Page 650) Another quotation:

"As opposed to this we National Socialists must hold un flinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified, before God, since we have been put in this world with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and courage with which they can conquer and defend it; and for German posterity insofar as we have shed its blood out of which a thousand others will rise. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will someday acquit the statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries."

(Excerpt from Page 687) Another quotation:

"A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth."

(Excerpt from Page 135)

"A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd

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fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals in order to replace it by the humanity of nature, which destroys the weak to give place to the strong."

And then the machinery of State and Party gathered force. The Army secretly reorganized, was soon strong enough to allow Germany to rearm openly. Who, at that time, would have dared to interfere with the monstrous growth of this biological materialism? Hitler expounded his theories to a small circle and those who heard his words are by no means all Nazis. Informed of their master's aims, they were still willing to stay by his side, and that condemns them. Is this not the case with Raeder?

"It is not a question of conquering populations but of conquering territories suitable for cultivation...."

Hitler, in conference with Von Blomberg, Von Fritsch, Raeder, 5 November, said: "Expansion cannot be achieved without breaking resistance and without taking risks . . ." (Document Number 386-PS).

After the disgrace of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, Keitel and Jodl, chosen for their servile attitude to the regime, had a solid weapon in their hands. On the eve of the conflict Hitler reiterated his ideas:

"Circumstances must rather be adapted to aims. This is impossible without invasion of foreign states or attacks on foreign property.

"Living space, in proportion to the magnitude of the state, is the basis of all power. One may refuse for a time to face the problem, but finally it is solved one way or the other. The choice is between advancement or decline. In 15 or 20 years' time we shall be compelled to find a solution. No German statesman can evade the question longer than that. We are at present in a state of patriotic fervor, which is shared by two other nations, Italy and Japan.

"The period which lies behind us has indeed been put to good use. All measures have been taken in the correct sequence and in harmony with our aims.

"After 6 years, the situation is today as follows:

"The national-political unity of the Germans has been achieved, apart from minor exceptions. Further successes cannot be attained without the shedding of blood....

"Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies.... The population of non-German areas will perform no military service, and will be available as a source of labor.

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"The Polish problem is inseparable from the conflict with the West."

Extract from minutes of a conference held at the Reich Chancellery on 23 May 1939, in the presence of Hitler, Goering, Raeder, Keitel, and others (Document Number L-79, Exhibit USA-27).

And then came the war; and in a few months' time all Germany was led to believe that her strength was irresistible and that she was on the way to the conquest of the world. All that was implied by Hitler's cruel and monstrous words:

"As opposed to that we National Socialists must keep firmly to the aim of our foreign policy,-namely, to secure for the German people the territory to which it is entitled in this world. And this act is the sole act which, before God and our

German posterity, justifies bloodshed...."

All the cruel and monstrous implications of these words were elaborated here.

Speech by Hitler on the Eastern Territories 16. 7. 41 (Document Number L-221):

"We shall emphasize again that we were forced to occupy, administer, and secure a certain area.... Nobody shall be able to recognize that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent us taking all necessary measures: shooting, deportation... et cetera."

Further: "Partisan warfare will have one advantage for us; it enables us to eradicate all those who oppose us...."

The same theme was taken up and cynically proclaimed by the spokesmen of the State. This Trial has brought you many echoes thereof. In a speech by Himmler we find these words again:

"What the nations can offer us of good blood we shall take, if necessary by taking their children away from them and bringing them up among us."

From the same speech:

"Whether nations thrive or starve only interests me inasmuch as we can use them as slaves for our civilization."

Still from the same speech:

"That 10,000 Russian women should die of exhaustion in digging an antitank ditch only interests me as to whether or not the antitank ditch has been completed for Germany.

"When somebody comes and says to me, 'I cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them'; then I have to say, 'You are a murderer of your own kin, because if the antitank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die and they are sons of German mothers.' "

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And concerning the extermination of Jews:

"We have exterminated a microbe. We do not wish to be contaminated and die from it. We have fulfilled this duty for the sake of our people. Our spirit and character have not suffered from it" (Document 1919-PS).

The conquest of living space, that is, of territories emptied of their population by every means including extermination-that was the great idea of the Party, the system, the State, and consequently of all those at the head of the main administration of both State and Party.

That is the main idea, in the pursuit of which they united and for which they worked. They stopped at nothing in order to achieve their end: Violation of treaties, invasion, and enslavement in peacetime of weak and peaceful neighbors, wars of aggression, and total warfare, with all the atrocities which these words imply. Goering and Ribbentrop cynically admitted that they took both a spiritual and a material part in it; and the generals and admirals did their utmost to help matters forward.

Speer exploited to the point of exhaustion and death the manpower recruited for him by Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, the NSDAP Gauleiter, and the generals. Kaltenbrunner made use of the gas chambers, the victims for which were furnished by Frick, Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Frank, Jodl, Keitel, and the rest. But the existence of the gas chambers themselves was only made possible through the development of a political ideology favorable to such things; there, inextricably merged, we find the responsibility of all of them- Goering, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher, Frick, Frank, Fritzsche, down to Schacht himself, the pro-Jewish Schacht. Did he not say to Hirschfeld: "I want Germany to be great; to accomplish this I am prepared to ally myself with the very devil."

He did enter into this alliance with the devil and with hell.

We may include Papen, who saw his secretaries and his friends killed around him and still continued to accept official missions in Ankara and Vienna because he thought he could appease Hitler by serving him.

Some are not present; some are dead, and some still living, as, for example, the industrialists who exploited the workers of the enslaved countries after putting Hitler and his system in power by providing the funds, without which no action could have been possible, and who put them in power as much for reasons of nationalistic fanaticism as because they expected from Nazism the guarantee of their privileges.

Everything kept steady, everything was indissolubly united because totalitarian policy, total war, the preparation and direction of the campaign of extermination of peoples for the conquest of

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living space, implied the closest co-ordination and liaison between all the parts of the machine, between Police and Army; Foreign Affairs and Police and Army; Justice and Police; Economics and Justice; Universities and Propaganda and Police. And now we come to the second point which we have to present to you.

The co-ordination of the various departments at the head of which these men stood, implies close co-operation between them.

The Defense have tried to establish the existence of watertight partitions between the different elements of the German State.

According to them, there is supposed to be a parallel without a horizontal bond between the various State and Party departments, between individual ministerial administrations and between individual National Socialist organizations. The only connecting link would be the person of the chief, at the head. According to the Defense, the dominating principle of the German structure would be a personal union, not co-ordination and co-operation.

This is false. This is contrary to the principles of the Nazi State and requirements of a State in which every force strives toward the same goal and toward the actual reality of German life as revealed by the debates.

According to National Socialist conception, the Party must take the place of democracy. The Party is the political expression of the nation, which materializes in the political action of the State carried out by the activity of its administrations. The 1st of December 1933 Act proclaims, for the purpose of insuring the unity of the Party and State, that the Party is the exclusive support of the State conception, and indissolubly unites the Party and the State.

At the Party Congress in 1931, Hitler says:

"It is not the State that created us. We create the State for ourselves. To some it may appear as the Party, to others as an organization, for yet others as something different, but actually we are what we are."

The aim pursued by the Party was therefore the achievement of an increasingly complete union between the State and the Party. This is the reason of the legislation which makes it compulsory for the head of the Party Chancellery to be consulted on the appointment of high-ranking officials, which incorporates Party chiefs into municipal administration, integrates the SS into the Police, and converts the SS to police officers, makes the direction of the Hitler Youth a State department, brings the direction of Party headquarters abroad under the Foreign Office, and merges the military personnel of the Party to an ever increasing degree with those of the Army. General Von Brodowsky's war diary, which we have submitted to the Tribunal, shows that this merger was a fact at the

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time of the landing in France. Hitler, however, continued to maintain the system of parallel State and Party administration, because they exercised mutual control and supervision. But he insisted on the closest co-operation by both parties in order to be certain that the control was effective.

All the defendants, moreover, with the exception of Hess, are representatives of State departments. They cannot plead the absolute power of the Party as an excuse, since Party and State shared the power. The doctrine preached by the Party must guide the actions of the State, but the actions of the State in turn modify and develop the doctrine of the Party. Many items of the Party Program of-24 February 1920 never came into effect and were completely forgotten when the Party had been in power for some time. For instance, unearned income was not abolished (Item 11); trusts were not nationalized Item 13); land reform was not carried out as provided for in Item 17;* interest on property and speculation id real estate remained. In the end, every aspect of German life was affected by the combined influence of the State and Party forces. All the departments of the State and the Party combined to make the component parts. Examples are plentiful and may be found in every State department.

Let us take the department of Foreign Affairs. Of all the administrational sections of the State, this, according to the orthodox conception, should be The farthest removed from political doctrine. Not so in Nazi Germany. With a view to the extermination of the Jews, headquarters abroad co-operated with the Reich Security Main Of lice through Wilhelmstrasse, as is shown by Documents RF-1206, 1220, 1502, 1210, and Exhibit Number USA-433 Document Number 3219-PS). Wilhelmstrasse officials were called upon to advise the military police and Secret State Police Document Number RF-1061). It was Best, Ribbentrop's representative in Denmark, who transmitted the order for the deportation of the Jews to the Chief of the German Police Mildner Document Number RF-1503). Document Number RF-1501 shows Ribbentrop defending anti-Semitism to Mussolini and- asking for Italian co-operation.

Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are implicated in all the terrorist measures taken against the elite. The SD and Wilhelmstrasse are also involved in the organization of attacks of a provocative nature, such as that made on the broadcasting station at Gleiwitz in order to furnish the pretext of an attack by the Poles. The report made by the German military administration on the pillage of art treasures in France incriminates both the special staff of Rosenberg and the

* This program, known as the 25-point Program, was drawn up by Hitler, Drexler, and Feder and read out on 24 Feb. 1920 at the Hofbrau beer house. It was the program of the German Labor Party.

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German Embassy in Paris (Document Number RF-1505). Wilhelmstrasse and the Army are involved along with the Police in the question of hostages, reprisals, and deportations. Examples could be multiplied. We do not claim to exhaust the subject, but only to give illustrations in support of an opinion.

Let us now examine the activities of Rosenberg's organizations. Rosenberg, by virtue of his function, co-ordinated several branches of the German State. His function in foreign policy was incorporated in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, he was the philosopher of the regime, Minister for the Eastern Territories, and chief of the special staff in charge of art treasures. The SD and the Secret Police worked in liaison with him (Documents Number L-188 and 946-PS).

We note the same liaison and the same co-ordination within the machinery of the State in questions of forced labor. All the ministers and higher functionaries, such as the Gauleiter, were involved, either by planning or preparing the operation, or simply enforcing it, or benefiting by it.

We remember the interministerial meetings in Berlin to discuss this subject and the conference between Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Funk, and the representatives of the OKW which forms the subject of Document Number PS-3819. We remember the meeting in Paris presided over by Sauckel and attended by representatives of the Army, the Police, and the Embassy (Document Number RF-1517).

Neither was economic life any more independent. During the war there existed under Funk a close co-operation between the economic and administrative services of the Army and those of economic affairs (Document Number RF-3 his). The Ministry of Economy appealed to the Police to work out plans for economic Germanization (Documents RF-803 and 814). The Ministry of Finance subsidized the SS to carry out scientific research under abominable conditions using internees as involuntary subjects for experiment (Document Number 002-PS). Under Schacht and long before the war, politics, finance, and economic affairs were linked with the Army, at first secretly, and then publicly, and by bands closer than in any other country in the world. Schacht, in a speech on 29 November 1938, pronounced the following opinion on his achievement:

"It is impossible that any other issuing bank has followed in peacetime a credit policy so audacious as that of the Reichsbank since the assumption of power by National Socialism. With the aid of this policy, however, Germany has created an armament that ranks foremost in the world, and this

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armament has made possible the results of our policy..." (EC-611).

Nor was the judicial system more independent. We find it associated with the Police in highly criminal enterprises. Document Number 654-PS contains an account of a discussion between Thierack, Himmler, and others, at the end of which it was decided that antisocial elements and concentration camp prisoners-Jews, gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles-sentenced to more than 3 years' imprisonment should be turned over by the administration to Himmler to be exterminated through labor, and that in future individuals belonging to these categories should not be judged by ordinary tribunals but handed over immediately to Himmler's department.

Finally, during the war, the terrorist activities of the Army and the German Police and the activities of the State and the Party merged together. On occasion, the Police were subordinated to the Army, though retaining a certain autonomy, on the orders of the Reich Security Main Office. This was the case in Belgium. In France, although separate from the Army, the Police maintained close co-operation-with it. The Army participated with the Sipo (Security Police) and the SD in the persecution of the Jews, the administration of the internment camp at Compiegne and the selection of hostages (Documents RF-1212 and 1212 his) and execution (Document Number RF-1244). As we have seen, the Army and the Police were associated in the terrorist actions against the populations. The Navy and the Police are also associated in the massacre of the Commandos, and the Police were responsible for the murder of certain categories of war prisoners, although all these prisoners without exception came under the authority of the OKW (Document Number 1165-PS). One might multiply instances of the close association of Party machinery and State services and the co-ordination between them, which at times amounted to symbiosis. In one way or another, they all worked for the realization of the common political aim: the conquest of space by all possible means.

The co-operation of the defendants is an obvious consequence. Apart from the definite fact of co-operation alleged by us, all that we know of the general functioning of this totalitarian State, bound to the destiny of the Party, the vigorous measures taken by it against its opponents, for whom it prepared camps and gas chambers-all this leads us to affirm that the defendants, whether ministers, dignitaries or high functionaries with State or Party powers, combined with others who are not present-who are dead or held for Trial in other courts-to form one whole. And this entity was the Government of the Reich, this was the State-Party or Party-State; an entity, perhaps, but a conscious and criminal entity which

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decreed the murder of millions of human beings in order to enlarge the Reich beyond all limits.

The acts of the defendants are not only those particular ones which we analyzed a moment ago in the light of the national penal codes of their own or our countries respectively. They include also these members of the German State for whom they acted, of that German State to which they gave life, conscience, thought, will, and for which they must now assume responsibility and bear the consequences, even the most extreme consequences, because they could not dissociate individually from these crimes. And this brings us to our third point.

The defendants must be judged on the basis of that criminal policy of which they were promoters and instruments.

Was it not Dr. Seidl who, defending Frank, has said (Page 55 of his text):

"This is an acknowledged principle deriving from the penal code of all civilized nations, that a uniform and natural action must be appraised in its entirety, and that all circumstances which can be considered must be examined in order to form a basis for passing judgment."

All the crimes of the defendants lie in their political life. They are, as we know, the elements of a criminal State policy. To consider the defendants as offenders against common law, to forget that they have acted in the name of the German State and on account of that State, to apply the same standard to them as that applied to hooligans or to murderers, would narrow the scope of the Trial and misrepresent the character of their crimes. The crimes ordinarily tried by the courts of our countries show the criminal as opposed to the social order. These are individual deeds; their range is limited and their consequences circumscribed. Their crimes never strike more than a very few victims, and there are no examples in the annals of our countries of murder methodically perpetrated by terror organizations whose victims number more than a few hundred people.

That is the highest cost of a criminal plot within our own national communities. Organized as they are, extremely hierarchical, and possessed of armed forces and judicial institutions, our national communities can eliminate delinquents before they can do all the harm of which they are capable.

These defendants, on the contrary, developed their criminal activity within the community of states in an unorganized world which was just beginning to be conscious of its own existence and at that time possessed neither armed power nor judges.

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These defendants seized the German State and turned it into a gangster State, pressing into the service of their criminal plans all the executive power of that State. They acted as chiefs or heads of political, diplomatic, juridical, military, economic, and financial staffs. The activity of these staffs is normally co-ordinated in any country as they serve a common purpose deriving from a common political idea. But in National Socialist Germany, as we know, such co-ordination was reinforced by the overlapping of Party and administrative departments. Individual crimes were crimes of the community when they became the crimes of the State. Indeed, they were fostered by the political conception of each individual: "Conquest of space at any price."

State crimes committed by any one of those who controlled a major department were made possible only because all those who controlled every other major department contributed their share. If some of them and their departments defaulted, it meant the collapse of the State, the annihilation of its criminal power and with it the end of the gas chambers or the technical impossibility of creating them. But none had either the intention or the desire to default, for gas chambers and extermination, for the sake of gaining living space, were the dominant idea of the system-were, indeed, themselves the system.

Is not evidence of this unity in crime furnished by the very statements made by the defendants, the unremitting efforts of themselves and their counsels to prove the autonomy of their departments and throw the responsibility of the Army on to the Police, that of the Foreign Office on to the head of the Government, that of the Labor Department on to the Four Year Plan, that of the Gauleiter on to the generals; in short, by their attempt to persuade us that everything in Germany was organized in watertight compartments, whereas the interdependence of the administration and Party and the multiplicity of connecting and controlling links between the State and Party prove the contrary by their skillful dovetailing. All French people who have lived in occupied France remember having seen on the walls of local Kommandanturs a poster depicting the bricks of a wall with the words Teneo quia teneor printed over the picture. It was the whole motto of the system. It only needed a few bricks to be taken away for the wall to collapse. None of those men did that. On the contrary, they all contributed their own brick to the edifice.

In this way, Gentlemen, by presenting the facts, apart from any legal conception of conspiracy or complicity which might be debatable according to the varying opinions of the jurists, we furnish proof of solidarity and of the equal culpability of all in the crime.

To prove that they perpetrated the crime, it suffices to show that they were chiefs or high-officials of the Party or one of the

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main State departments and that they acted on behalf of the State; that, in order to extend German living space by every means at their command, they conceived, willed, ordered, or merely tolerated by their silence the violation of treaties guaranteeing the independence of other countries; prepared or declared wars of aggression; systematically carried out mass murder and other atrocities; and systematically committed demolition and looting without justification. This is the crime of the German Reich, and ail the defendants have conspired to commit it.

We will prove this in the case of each of the defendants by means of examples taken from the proceedings.

Concerning each of the defendants, the three main points of this presentation will be the following:

1) The defendant occupied within the machinery of the State and the Party a position of eminence which endowed him with authority over one entire office or several.

2) The defendant complied with, if he did not conceive, the doctrine of the regime: Conquest of space by any means.

3) He personally played an active part in the political development of this doctrine.

As to Goering and Hess, the Tribunal will undoubtedly allow me to dispense with developing their case at length. They were the appointed successors of the Fuehrer. They belonged to the Movement from the beginning. Hess assumed responsibility for the racial laws. Both played a part in formulating the political doctrine of the regime, of which they were the embodiment in the eyes of the masses. By their speeches, their lectures, they made this doctrine familiar to all classes. Goering made an active and essential contribution to the military and economic preparations for wars of aggression. Goering is the founder of the Gestapo and the concentration camps where millions of alleged enemies of the regime found their death, and where ultimately genocide was almost totally achieved.

The major part of his criminal activities concerns the putting into practice of the Four Year Plan, the sole object of which, as has been proved, was the preparation for war. In common with others, he is responsible for the deportation and brutal treatment of workers and for their allocation to spheres of production aimed against their own country. Further, he was party to the allocation of prisoners of war and political prisoners to labor directly connected with the war effort of the Reich. He organized the plunder of the occupied countries and the destruction of their economy. Lastly, he organized, with the help of Einsatzstab Rosenberg, the wholesale looting of works of art, often with the object of enriching his own collections.

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Hess, by a decree of the Fuehrer dated 21 April 1933, was given full powers to decide all questions of Party management. He participated in the preparation of laws and decrees in general, and even in the preparation of the Fuehrer's decrees. He took part in the appointment of government officials and the chiefs of labor services. He strengthened the Party's hold on the internal life of Germany. He exerted a direct influence on the Army and on foreign policy. The part which he played in the growth of anti-Semitism implicates him in the criminal consequences of the Movement and condemns him.

Ribbentrop was one of the mainsprings of the Party and State machine. Placed in Wilhelmstrasse by Hitler who distrusted "old-fashioned" diplomats, he worked with all his might to create diplomatic conditions which would favor a war of aggression' the essential means for realizing the conquest of space. We recall the document submitted by our British colleagues establishing the fact that Ribbentrop assured Ciano in August 1939~ that Germany would make war even if Danzig and the Corridor were ceded to her. As has already been shown, he and his office were involved in acts of terrorism and extermination in the occupied countries.

My comments on Keitel are equally brief. The conditions under which he consented to be placed by Hitler at the head of the High Command of the Army in the place of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, and brought into the councils of the Government, his political activities in these posts, as indicated by his presence at the Fuehrer's side in Godesberg and later during the interviews with Petain and Horthy-to say nothing of the orders which he signed, not the least notorious of which was the order for the implementation of the N.N. (Night and Fog) decree-all these facts reveal that we are dealing here not with an ordinary soldier, but with a general who was also a politician, under orders of the regime. The part he played in the arrest and murder of patriots condemns him. There is no doubt whatsoever that he participated in the work of extermination, if only by handing over to the Police for special treatment certain classes of prisoners of war in defiance of military honor. Moreover, we remember connections between his office and the police services and armed forces of the Party.

In the year 1932 Kaltenbrunner became a member of the Party and of the SS in Austria. He became Secretary of State for Security and the Police in Austria and then Chief of Police in Vienna and Chief of RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) from 30 January 1943 up to the capitulation. During this latter period he was responsible for the Gestapo, the Police, the Security Service and the concentration camps.

He was one of the most important factors in the criminal organization which carried out the policy of extermination and genocide.

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His responsibility for these mass murders has been established. Orders for imprisonment and execution were signed by him.

"Detention and protective custody," he said, "were measures justified by the war." At the same time, however, he tried to make us believe that he opposed the introduction of these measures. It is impossible to believe this, for we have proof that he had supreme authority over the camps.

We are aware of Rosenberg's important position in the Third Reich. A department bore his name. Moreover, he was Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and an exponent of the Nazi doctrine. In "Blood and Honor" (Blut und Ehre), in particular, he revived and elaborated the theory of living space to which the so-called German race was entitled. He started with the unfounded statements that "the evolution of humanity owes its entire meaning to the irradiation of Nordism" and that "a decline takes place wherever this Nordic culture, instead of condemning Asiatics and Jews to permanent enslavement, mingles with these impure elements..." He concluded by saying that the continent must be subjected to the German philosophy and race. To restore the racial purity of Germany by any means was the subject of his speech at Nuremberg in 1933. He extolled the extermination of the Jews, and we know today that it was no empty phrase. Furthermore, in a report to the Fuehrer dated 11 August 1942 (Document Number 042-PS) he wrote:

"Decrees not to support an increase in the population of the Ukraine and to render inapplicable Article 218 of the German Penal Code were issued last year on the occasion of an address and were pronounced again on the occasion of a visit made by the Director of the Ministry of Health... In the Ukraine, measures were taken to prevent the spreading of epidemics, not in the interest of other peoples, but exclusively to secure German occupation and keep up the efficiency of the labor in the service of the German war industry."

Finally, he was implicated in the attack on Norway, and thanks to his special staff he conducted the methodical plundering of the artistic wealth of Europe.

Frank was one of the Party's earliest adherents. He was its legal adviser and took part in the elaboration of its program. He was also the Fuehrer's adviser. He was Minister of Justice in Bavaria, then Minister of State charged with the co-ordination of justice in the Reich, and finally Governor General of Poland. It is he who tried to give legal form to the program of persecution and extermination drawn up by the State, and the Party. He defended the establishment of concentration camps in the German

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Legal Gazette in 1936 and he proclaimed that the second fundamental concept of the Hitlerite Reich was racial legislation. His personal activities in Poland contributed to the extermination of numerous Poles. He boasted of these activities in his diary.

Frick was a member of the Party from 1925. He became a Reichsleiter and afterward Reich Director for Elections from 30 January 1933 to 20 August 1943. He was chief of the service for the annexation of Austria by Germany and for the incorporation of the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the Eastern Territories, Eupen-Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was also Director of the Central Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, the Government General, Lower Styria, Upper Carinthia, Norway, Alsace, Lorraine, and all the other occupied countries. He was Protector of Bohemia and Moravia for over a year. He had been Reich Minister of the Interior ever since the assumption of power and a member of the Defense Council. When he was elected to the Reichstag in 1924, he proposed anti-Jewish laws. Strictly obedient, on several occasions he gave expression to the political theories of the Party. In particular he declared:

"In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of an organized community, that is, the National Socialist Party; and as the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy adopted by it, in harmony with the vital interests of the nation, is at the same time the policy adopted by the country" (Document Number 3258-PS).

He it was who appointed Himmler. He was responsible for the anti-Jewish legislation and ordered sterilization for the descendants of colored soldiers. Furthermore, he gave orders that the incurably insane should be put to death.

Streicher entered the Party almost as soon as it was formed. He indulged in unbridled propaganda against the Jews, both in his speeches and in his writings and incited the German people to persecute and to exterminate them. He was made Gauleiter. He does not dissociate himself from anything that has been done. He stated:

"When one has known the profound depths of the Fuehrer's character as I have done, and when I later learned from his testament that he deliberately gave the order to execute the Jews, well, I declare that this man had a right to do so."

Funk entered the Party in 1931 and was decorated with the Golden Party Badge. He was Chief of the Reich Press and Secretary of State for Propaganda; eventually he succeeded Schacht in the Ministry of Economics in 1937. He became Plenipotentiary for Economy and President of the Reichsbank in 1941. In 1932 he acted as middleman between the Fuehrer and certain leaders of German

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industry. He attended the meeting of industrialists organized by Goering on 20 February 1933 to obtain the political and financial support of industry for the realization of the Nazi program. He stated on 4 May 1946:

"As State Secretary for Propaganda I have a formal responsibility. I have, of course, favored propaganda, as did all those who found themselves in positions of importance in Germany, for propaganda filled and permeated the nation's intellectual life."

He asked that the Jews be excluded from important positions and issued decrees to that effect He received from the SS deposits of gold and valuables from the victims of mass exterminations. He built up Germany's economy and signed the Secret Law of 4 September 1938.

Doenitz was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. He succeeded Hitler with Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. He was a recipient of the Golden Party Badge. His adherence to the criminal policy of the system is indisputable. He said, among other things (Document Number D-640): "The officer is the representative of the State. This talk about nonpolitical officers is sheer nonsense."

He recommended the use of labor from the extermination camps in order, he said, to increase output by 100 percent. He proclaimed unrestricted submarine warfare and ordered his sailors "to be hard," and not to effect any further rescues. He approved and extolled massacres of Communists.

Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy before Doenitz. He was present at the conferences at which Hitler revealed his plans, notes of which were taken at the time. He put the Navy at the service of the Nazi regime. He conducted clandestine rearmament activities and contributed to the preparation of aggression against Poland and Norway. His contempt for international law is well known. It will suffice to refer to the memorandum of 15 October 1939, Document Number UK-65.

Schirach became a member of the Party at the age of 18. He joined in 1925, was Leader of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940 and Gauleiter of Vienna up to the capitulation. He was one of the essential parts of the Nazi machine. He admits that as Gauleiter of Vienna he united in himself the powers of the State, the city, and the Party. He moulded the youth of Germany according to the ideology of the Party; and he has claimed responsibility for the consequences resulting from this exclusive formation. He allowed Himmler to recruit the SS from among the Hitler Youth.

From 1943 onward, as he himself admits, he was aware of the treatment inflicted on the Jews. Long before that date, however,

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he had taken a very definite stand as to this question and had been active in conducting anti-Semitic propaganda.

Sauckel joined the Party in 1925. Gauleiter of Thuringia, Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor and honorary Obergruppenfuehrer of the SS, he held a highly enviable position in the State and Party machine. A fiery propagandist, he delivered more than five hundred speeches, in all of which he expounded the Nazi ideology. He approved the principle of extermination. He said:

"With regard to the extermination of asocial elements, Dr. Goebbels is of the opinion . . . the method of extermination by work is the best" (Document Number 682-PS).

He also stated:

"The Fuehrer has. . . said that we must revise our habitual conception about the migration of peoples.... It is the Fuehrer's wish that a hundred years from now, 250 million people speaking the German language be settled in Europe" (Document Number 025-PS).

He personally played an active part in preparing the way for the exterminations. On 28 May 1946, he made here the following statement on the subject: "Best results in production can only be obtained by judicious use of manpower."

He forced over 2 million Frenchmen to collaborate in the war effort with their labor-to say nothing of millions of people of other nationalities. They were recruited by force with the help of the Police, the SS, and the Armed Forces (Document Number S-827):

"I have"-he said-"given special authority to a few intelligent men, with a view to procuring labor. They are working under the direction of the Reichsfuehrer SS and Police. I have armed and trained a certain number of them, and I must make application to the Ministry of Armaments for the necessary supplies for these men..." (R-124).

Through this declaration, the insinuation of counsel for Defendant Speer to the effect that the French Government had voluntarily given their assent to sending forced labor to Germany, is reduced to nought.

Alfred Jodl was Chief of the Operations Staff of the OKW. He enjoyed the absolute confidence of the Fuehrer in the same degree as Keitel (Document Number 3798-PS). He took part in drafting the various plans for aggression. Encouraged to serve Hitler by the presence of such conservatives as Neurath, Papen, and Schacht at Hitler's side, he transmitted on 22 March 1943 the decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from Denmark and their internment in Germany. He was also responsible for the execution of

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Hitler's order of 18 October 1942 for the annihilation of Commandos (Document Number 530-PS).

He took part in the discussions on the measures to be taken against airmen who were forced down. He signed the proclamation published by the High Command of the Armed Forces relative to the struggle against guerrilla troops-a proclamation containing regulations which outraged the laws of humanity.

Von Papen paved the way for Hitler's accession to power. The formation of his Cabinet on 30 May 1932 was contrary to the normal parliamentary procedure. On 2 June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag, thereby giving free rein to Hitler's terrorism. With respect to an interview with Hitler in June 1932 he said: "I have agreed to Hitler's demands, the right of the SS and SA to wear uniform."

At the same time Papen for his part was under no illusions as to the consequences of the Hitlerian agitation which he had himself instigated. But he preferred Hitler to democracy. After the elections of 30 July he endeavored to induce Hindenburg to accept Hitler and in the month of November he succeeded. He allowed Nazi functionaries to usurp the public services. Sir David

Maxwell-Fyfe reminded us of Von Papen's vindication of National Socialism in Essen in November 1933. Papen expressed himself very definitely on the racial problem (speech at Gleiwitz in 1934).

"Certainly no objection can be made to racial research and racial hygiene with the aim of preserving as far as possible the national characteristics of the people and awakening the spirit of national community."

We know what these measures were.

Papen served the Party and State administration until the capitulation. Neither the murder nor the imprisonment of his collaborators, of which the State and the Party were guilty, interrupted his activities.

Seyss-Inquart joined the National Socialist Party on 13 March 1938. He occupied various positions within the inner circle of the Party and in the State services, was finally made Assistant Governor of Poland and later Reich Commissar for the Netherlands.

He declared-I quote: "I cling with unchanging tenacity to the aims in which I believe: Greater Germany and the Fuehrer." (Excerpt from a letter of Seyss-Inquart to G5ring on 14 July 1939; Document Number 2219-PS).

"We hold the task of a generation, that is to say of the vital force of a people, to be the creation and the security of Lebensraum for the cultural and economic life of that nation."

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(Speech of Seyss-Inquart of 23 January 1939; Document Number 3640-PS.)

"As the task of a whole generation, the entire Vistula region, and not only the territories now gained in the East, must be settled by Germans . . . the Slovakia of today, the Hungary of today, the Romania of today, must be reorganized. I believe that the time has come for that.... I believe that soon the whole of this territory will be under the sole administration of Germany."

(Letter of Seyss-Inquart to Bormann of 20 July 1940; Document Number 3645-PS.)

Seyss-Inquart endeavored to realize the main political object of the Party: Conquest of space at all costs. He used all his available resources for the annexation of Austria, of which he was a native (He admitted that he had worked for 20 years to bring about the Anschluss). His collusion with Konrad Henlein for the reincorporation of the Sudeten territory in Germany has been proved. In Holland he gave orders for the execution of hostages and forged political and economic links between that country and the Reich. He is further responsible for the systematic pillage inflicted on Holland, for the deportation of the population and for the introduction of measures which led to famine.

Speer joined the Party in 1933. He was appointed personal architect to Hitler, and in this capacity he came into very close contact with the Fuehrer. Chief of the Todt Organization from February 1942, Armaments Chief for the Four Year Plan from March 1942, Minister for Armaments from September 1943, he was one of the high-ranking officials in both the State and the Party. Speer utilized more than a million men in the Todt Organization and more than fifty thousand deported Frenchmen in the Ruhr territory alone in 1943. He is responsible for the ill-treatment of foreign workers in German factories, particularly in the Krupp plants. He employed more than 400,000 war prisoners in the armament industry. His delegates were authorized by the OKW to enter the camps and to select skilled workmen. He exploited the manpower of the concentration camps, affecting a total of more than 32,000 men, as he has himself admitted. He visited Mauthausen and shares the responsibility for the deportation of Jews to special labor camps, where they were exterminated, as well as the deportation of 100,000 Hungarian Jews to aircraft factories.

Von Neurath, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1932, remained in this office when the Nazis seized power in 1933. He continued to occupy this post until 1939 and both he and his departments were gradually absorbed by the growing State and Party machine. As he was a member of the Government from the outset, he cannot

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have been ignorant of the political ideology of the Movement. If he claims to have been shocked when he learned in 1937 that Hitler was planning aggression, he nevertheless remained in office and made no attempt to dissuade Hitler. On the contrary, it was he who by his approval encouraged Hitler to reoccupy the left bank of the Rhine-the first stage in the wars of aggression for the conquest of living space. He remained Minister of the Reich until the end. A conservative himself, his presence encouraged conservative elements in Germany to co-operate with Hitler. Mainspring of the Party and State machine, Von Neurath is closely connected with this machine in the crimes of extermination of which he was fully aware and which he himself decreed.

On 31 August 1940 Von Neurath transmitted to Dr. Lammers two memoranda, one drawn up by himself and the other by his Minister of State Frank, both advocating the total Germanization of Bohemia and Moravia and the elimination of the Czech intelligentsia. One of these reports contains the following lines:

"With regard to the future organization of Bohemia and Moravia, all considerations should be based on the goal set for this territory, from the state political and national political angle. From the state political angle there can be only one goal: Complete incorporation into the Greater German Reich. From the national political angle: Settling these territories completely with Germans. A brief survey of the actual position as it presents itself from observations and experience gained since the annexation with regard to the state political and national political angle, indicates the path to be followed in order to reach the clearly defined and unequivocal goal. If things present themselves in such fashion then a decision must be taken on the fate of the Czech people so that the end in view may be achieved, which is to incorporate the country and populate it with Germans as quickly and as completely as possible" (Document Number 3859-PS).

Fritzsche served the Party before it came to power, but he did not actually become a member of it until 1933 and then he quickly became a remarkably efficient propagandist. In the course of the war he became the head of the radio service. Expounding the doctrine of the regime, he agitated for the massacre of Jews.

By means of repeated addresses he furthermore endeavored to imprint in the German mind the idea that its very life was imperiled by the Jews and democracy, and that it must yield itself unreservedly to the men of destiny who governed it.

Schacht's position is peculiar in itself. I shall deal with his case at greater length. He claims to be a victim of the system and is surprised to find himself here cheek by jowl with Kaltenbrunner,

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his jailer. Schacht told us that the ideals of the Party did not appeal to him. Nonetheless, former Minister Severing stated at the session of 21 May 1946, that in 1931 he had learned from a communication of the Berlin police that Schacht had taken part in discussions with the Nazi chiefs. He added that Schacht's relations with plutocracy and militarism struck him as highly compromising, and that he would not have cared to be a member of the same Cabinet. We know that Schacht had established relations with Hitler in 1930, bringing to him the advantages of his repute in Germany and abroad. National Socialism derived considerable benefit from this.

At the National Front rally at Harzburg in October 1931, Schacht took his seat next to Hitler, Hugenberg, and Seldte. He had already attempted to draw Hitler into the Bruning Government. He was responsible for procuring funds for the decisive elections of March 1933 (USA-874, Document Number EC-440) at a meeting between Goering and the leading industrialists, on which occasion Hitler

delivered a speech. After the seizure of power, Schacht played an outstanding role within the machinery of Party and State. He became President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. On 19 January 1939 he left the Reichsbank, but he became a Minister of State and held that post until 21 January 1943. Clever, subtle, and capable of disguising his real thoughts behind a mask of irony or insolence, he never committed himself completely. It has, however, been proved that he persistently demanded increased living space for Germany. When he tried to mislead his questioners by speaking of colonial claims and it was pointed out that, considering world conditions, the possession of colonies could in no way assist Germany in solving her domestic problems, he failed to reply. He knew how to threaten the democracies and even resorted to a form of extortion through fear. When speaking of a Party success during . a visit to America, he said:

`'I gave the greatest possible warning saying that: If you foreigners do not change your policy toward Germany, there will in a very short time be many more members and adherents of Hitler's Party."

He also said: "It is perfectly clear: We ask for territory in order to feed our people."

What part did he play in the development of the criminal policy? As soon as he was established in the Reichsbank, a vast program for financing public works was launched. All of these works-new railroads, motor highways, et cetera-were of strategic importance. Moreover, a large proportion of the credits was secretly used for purely military purposes. ~

From 1935 onward, rearmament was speeded up under the vigorous impulse of the new financial measures which he devised.

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The academic and upright economist of tradition turned into a sharper in order to realize the great aims of the Party. By means of accommodation drafts-mefo draft the rearmament was financed. Drawn on a drawee who provided no cover, a company created to serve this express purpose, the blank drafts were endorsed by a second and similar company.

When the first draft was drawn, the drawer added extension drafts so calculated that the last fell due in January or March 1942. When we look back, the full significance of the date chosen becomes evident. The year 1942 was the date fixed by Schacht for the full extent of his fraudulent enterprise, in the hope that by that time the war would have solved the problem for him. The original draft was discounted by the Reichsbank. Bills were not subject to fiscal taxes so as to prevent any evaluation of the amount in circulation by means of a control in the yield of the taxes. Operations were conducted with the utmost secrecy. Even as early as 1935, all available Reichsmark credits were utilized by the Reichsbank for these armament drafts. At the end of 1938 there were 6 billion marks in mefo drafts in the assets of the Reichsbank and 6 billion marks worth to discount, of which 3 billion worth were short-dated. When the drafts fell due, Schacht could not but be aware that there were only three possible solutions:

1) Consolidation of the debt by foreign loans, which would not be extended to Nazi Germany, already armed to excess.

2) An inflation comparable to that of 1923, which would mean the end of the regime.

3) War.

The scope of the rearmament operations financed by Schacht up to 31 December 1938 is revealed by calculations made by M. Gerthoffer of our delegation (we attach his report hereto). Let us not forget that Hitler, in his letter to Schacht, dated 19 January 1939, wrote: "Your name will be connected above all and for all time with the first period of national rearmament" (EC-397). We may take note of that-from April 1935 to 31 December 1938, there were spent 345,415 million francs on the rearming of Germany. During the same period France spent only 35,964 million francs. Such a discrepancy shows quite clearly what Schacht's aim was. This was Schacht's doing and his alone. On the battlefields of France in 1940 we find again the same ratio of 10 German armored divisions to

1 French division.

Schacht's retirement from the Reichsbank and the Ministry of Economics can in no way speak in his favor. Difficulties arose between Goering and himself in regard to the realization of the Four Year Plan. Schacht would not admit Goering as his superior. He resigned from the Ministry of Economics on 26 November 1937, but

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remained president of the Reichsbank and Minister without Portfolio. On 7 January 1939 he handed Hitler a memorandum pointing out that the volume of the mefo drafts in circulation through his own fault was threatening the stability of the currency. Technically speaking, his position at the Reichsbank had become untenable. His retirement, therefore, was due to questions of economic organization and not to political reasons. In any case, he retained the functions of Minister without Portfolio, and did not give up this post until January 1943, at the time of the Stalingrad defeat, when both the Party-State machine and the Reich were beginning to break down. Obviously he no longer served any useful purpose, but it is equally obvious that he might again have done so at some later date, in the capacity of negotiator of a peace compromise.

Are his further political troubles due to the intrigue by Hitler's advisers which we can now well imagine, or were they due to Machiavellism on his part, or to sheer bad fortune? What is the significance of the part played by this ill-starred man who succeeded in gathering round him all of the great financiers and industrials with pan-Germanic leanings, who helped Hitler to power, whose presence inspired confidence in Nazi Germany, whose financial wizardry provided Germany with the most powerful war machine of the age, and who did all this to enable the Party-State machine to hurl itself forward to the conquest of living space? This man was among those mainly responsible for the criminal activities of the Party-State machine. His financial genius was that of the Nazi State; and there is no doubt of his participation in its crimes. It is of fundamental importance. The measure of his guilt is full, his responsibility complete.

As for the last of Hitler's confidants, Bormann, we know that he was responsible for the mass extermination of the Jews. There is no need to say more.

I have now reached the end of my demonstration of the guilt of each individual defendant. Not that the subject is exhausted, but the time allowed by the Tribunal for each representative of the Prosecution to address the Court only permits us to sketch the outline of a presentation which deserves more systematic treatment. A multiplicity of examples could be found to illustrate our presentation. All the facts submitted during the last 9 months by all four delegations fit of their own accord into our plan; and this in itself is sufficient to prove that our logic is unimpeachable and that our conclusions are in strict accordance with the truth.

We consider, therefore, that proof has been furnished that all these men have been parties to the crimes of the German State, that all these men were in fact united in pursuit of the same political aim and that all of them have in one way or another participated

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in the greatest crime of all, genocide, the extermination of the races or people at whose expense they intended to conquer the living space they held necessary for the so-called Germanic race.

We have all heard the objections raised by the Counsel for the Defense. It is Dr. Seidl who stated them most forcibly (Page 25 of his speech for Frank).

"The law in force"-he said-"is based on the fundamental principle that international law deals solely with the sovereign state and not with the isolated individual."

In conclusion he denies the right to sentence these men. First let us say that not one of the defendants was an "isolated individual" of whom Dr. Seidl speaks. We think that we have demonstrated their co-operation and solidarity, strengthened by the Party system beyond the usual intercourse between the ministers and principal administrators of any democratic country.

We may observe in addition that it seems intolerable to every sensitive human being that men who put their intelligence and their good will at the disposition of the state entity in order to make use of the power and the material resources of this entity to slaughter, as they have done, millions of human beings in the execution of a criminal policy long since determined, should be assured of immunity. The principle of state sovereignty which might protect these men is only a mask. This mask removed, the man's responsibility reappears. Dr. Seidl knows that as well as we do. But he says, "such is the international law in force." What respect on his part for the law in force, but how surprising in his mouth the words which follow! A few moments later, examining the Hague Conventions of 1907, which, we must remember, have not been denounced by any of the signatories, not even by Germany, he complacently points out that they were inspired by the experiences made during the wars of the nineteenth century and are no longer valid in the twentieth. Modern wars were no longer subject to the restrictions of the Hague Conventions. He states further:

"Under these circumstances one cannot make use of the prescriptions of the Hague Convention with regard to land warfare-even if interpreted in the widest sense and adapted in a suitable manner as a basis for the criminal responsibility of the individual."

Dr. Seidl therefore considers international law as static -when he believes that this will enable him to draw favorable conclusions therefrom; but when this law condemns his client, it must be considered as still in process of evolution.

Dialectics of this kind, which make use of paralogism, are specious. Dr. Seidl is well versed in the art of sophism, but he

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convinces no one. The immunity of the chiefs of state and their associates was hardly conceivable when it was allowed to be subject to the rules and restrictions of custom, convention' and international law. This immunity became intolerable from the moment that they freed themselves from every rule, and pressure from the universal conscience gave rise to new developments in international custom in order to oppose it. I have already shown this at the end of my statement last February; I shall not revert to that point. It should suffice to add that the Charter of 7 August 1945, taking in consideration the work of the various war crimes commissions from 1940 up to the capitulation, upheld the conclusions drawn by a Frenchman, M. de Lapradelle, at the War Guilt Commission 1919. The defendants are arraigned before you on account of the acts they committed on behalf of the German State and if it is necessary that law should reinforce the authority of custom, then the Statute of London, drawn up on the basis of common law in course of formation, still justifies our study of the defendants' responsibility with regard to the crimes of the German State. In fact, Article 6 of the Statute deals only with crimes committed on account of the state.

The impression we draw from the final pleadings is that most of the defense counsels put all their hopes in a concise juridical or pseudo-Juridical process of reasoning. Many questions were debated. Are there just and unjust wars, defensive wars and wars of aggression, is there a world-wide juridical conscience? Are there unequivocal criteria of aggression? This is what worries the Defense; and not the question of the extent to which those who have collaborated in the work of extermination should be punished.

When the defense counsels speak of "law in force" they do so for the purpose of denying this Tribunal the right to condemn, and. Dr. Jahrreiss denied all authority to the law "such as it should be conceived" in the light of morality and progress (Page 3). All of them forget that the law in force is not only the law of the past, the only one to which they themselves appeal, but that the law in force is also that which the judges invoke in a concrete manner from the bench. All of them forget that jurisprudence is subject to the laws of evolution. Where no written law exists one can only speak of the former tendencies and ascertain whether they are still valid and can be invoked. But let us stop here. We would ourselves confuse the issue.

The unique fact of this Trial, the fact that stands out above all others, is that of the methodical, systematic extermination of all those who occupied the living space coveted by Germany.

Other crimes have certainly been committed, but only as means to an end. We are tempted to describe them as secondary and

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accessory to the main crime, so overwhelming is the atrocity of the latter.

We must realize the full magnitude of these atrocious crimes and appreciate the danger to humanity which is constituted by such a precedent, in order to exact adequate punishment.

Atrocity of the State-Committed Crime.

We have already shown that the crime committed by these men is not a simple crime. The common criminal knows his victim; he sees him with his own eyes. He himself strikes and knows the effect of his blow. Even if he is only an accomplice he is never sufficiently dissociated, morally and psychologically speaking, from the chief perpetrator, not to share to a certain extent his apprehensions and reactions when the blow is delivered and the victim falls.

Genocide, murder, or any other crime becomes anonymous when it is committed by the State. Nobody bears the thief responsibility. Everybody shares it-those who by their presence maintain and support the administration, those who conceived the crime and those who ordained it, as well as he who issued the order. As for the executioner, he says to himself, "Befohl ist Befehl," "An order is an order," and carries out his hangman's task.

Those who make the decision do so without shuddering. It is possible that they have no accurate and concrete picture in their minds of the consequences of their orders. The stupefaction of some of the accused immediately after the showing of the film about the camps is understandable in the light of this reflection. As for those who promote the execution of the crime by their general cooperation in the work of Party and State, they feel that they are passive spectators of a scene which does not concern them. They have, in any case, no punishment to fear. In the German sphere the State and the Party are strong, and determined to remain so for a thousand years. They have destroyed justice. In the international sphere, the prevailing code insures-or, at least, is believed to insure-immunity. Moreover there is no permanent international jurisdiction capable of opposing the gangster states. The possibility of a military defeat is not taken into consideration, since the precautions taken are apparently so thorough. It is a remarkable fact that, allowance made for the delay necessary for the installation of gas chambers, the peak of the murders coincides with the period in which the State and regime believe in certain victory, or have not yet taken seriously the omens of defeat. It is really the perfect anonymous crime imagined by the French moralist when he propounded the case of the mandarin as a test of moral conscience. And an the conditions favor the absence of a reaction. The facts

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have demonstrated that none of those men have experienced 'tine decisive revulsion in those circumstances.

Most of them did feel that they had played a part in the tragedy. They have, I think, been more intent on relieving their consciences than on attempting to deceive their judges by shelving guilt onto their neighbors. Few of them have had the courage to acknowledge, as did Schirach and Frank, that they were component parts of the whole system, and as such could not evade responsibility. The others deny it at the risk of letting the guilt fall upon the German people who were incapable of throwing off the yoke of their evil masters. They attempt, in the exposition of their case, to minimize their responsibility in the hope of conjuring it away,. but since Severing's statement and those made previously by the mayor of Oranienburg and the mayor of Buchenwald and confirmed by Frank, are true, namely, that there were rumors all over Germany that people died in these camps, as everybody now knows, do they expect to make us believe that they alone were in ignorance thereof?

The less guilty among them, if one can establish different categories of "major criminals," did not dare to object, but their criminal cowardice had such appalling consequences that they cannot possibly justify any lessening of the penalty.

As we now see, crime committed by the state in a regime in which state and party are one, and in which popular control is prevented by the absence of freedom of thought, freedom of expression and free elections, is, from the point of view of the criminal, the easiest to commit. Moreover, technical progress all over the world has harnessed almost every natural force in the service of mankind. His capacity to work evil has been considerably increased thereby. Moral restraint has at the same time been relaxed by the pursuit of materialistic gratification which is also the corrupt fruit of material progress not controlled by intellect.

Generally speaking, crime seems to be on the increase in every state, in spite of highly improved methods of repression. In the international scheme of things, the process is similar. The only difference is that it is on a larger scale, because as yet there is no international means of repression. The industrial revolution and the development of . natural sciences have multiplied the virtual power of states. If the state keeps in its own hands natural wealth and its exploitation, accentuates its grip on credit by monetary operations, increase in taxation, the levying of additional loans, whether voluntary or forced, if it binds its people even more firmly to it by developing public welfare institutions, and influences their mental life by means of radio propaganda, employing with this end in view eloquent propagandists capable of arousing the blind passions of the mob within men most peacefully disposed and most

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widely scattered-if this state at the same time takes away from its opponents every possibility of expressing their views, prevents any control by the people and every form even of private criticism, it becomes an absolute ruler possessed of tremendous means of action for better or worse. Every criminal technique is within its reach and it can make unrestrained use of it unless, Gentlemen, you introduce the element of sanctions in international law. It must be possible henceforth to put an end to the criminal activities of a gangster state through the power of a superstate organization directed by a legal institution of the same kind, otherwise the freedom of nations is doomed. The weapons of revolt fell from their hands as soon as states-and states alone-could possess methods of destruction against which the courage of individual citizens was unavailing. Operated by a small number of men devoted to the criminal regime, those arms which are the property of the state can drown in blood the slightest attempts at resistance, and although revolt against tyranny is still the most sacred of duties, such revolt is now hopeless. This is the danger, and Germany succumbed to it. It is true that every favorable condition was present at the same time. Under the impulse of the industrial revolution which from 1850 onward was more violent in this country than in any other, social standards have changed enormously; and at the same time the population itself has changed from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. This has resulted in a lowering of its mental level which has brought with it disastrous consequences, since the bourgeoisie had received no political education under the Empire.

Deliberately kept at a distance from public affairs by their former rulers, the German masses, with regard to the industrialist upper class and proletariat, were interested only in the economic development of the Reich, and, with regard to the middle class, only in the Army and the future Reich. When, after the first World War, the Germans had to endure the disappointment of defeat; when to shabby and commonplace surroundings were added all the rancor and resentment described by the Defendant Goering at the beginning of his testimony, in addition to the bitter consciousness of social and material downfall; when youth in particular strove to make its hopes a concrete reality, Pan-Germanism awoke, was disseminated and brought down to the level of the mob and then came within reach of all the discontented elements. At the same time, the old antithesis between vital force and intellectualism, culture and civilization, healthy eagerness and decadent lassitude, the cult of life and the cult of intellect was brought to life and given definite shape for the use of simple and puerile minds in the form of the dynamic antithesis between the Nordic Aryan and the Semitic Jew. With the help of appropriate education this biological materialism was easily imposed. The ground had long

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been prepared. The German is particularly attracted by inculcated doctrine because it alone can supply the lack of personal, independent discipline which is characteristic of him on the intellectual and moral plane. He loves anything that can be recited as a universally acknowledged creed, a stereotyped phrase suitable for use on all occasions. For this reason, young Germans learned for their Abitur examination the six races admitted by Guenther just as they learned grammar, and no more dreamed of doubting the former than they doubted the latter. And when the German mentality accused nations as much alive and as strongly attached to their land, their traditions, and their flexible and varied human culture, as England and France, of being content to possess only a puny and artificial intellectual life, when it accused them with the crime against life-and Dr. Stahmer echoed this-the German mind created for itself, by reason of the coarse and facile creed which it claimed to impose upon all alike, an intellectualism differing from ours in its danger and its artificiality. The result of these so-called ethics of life was a practice and a doctrine of pure opportunism-collective or social, pseudoscientific, biological, materialistic-which resulted in the sterilization, the physiological observations made in the camps, and 12 million dead. The reflection of the old French philosopher comes irresistibly to our minds when we are confronted with this result: "Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul." A neo-Machiavellism, an example of which was afforded us by Goering in his statement, took root.

I read lately somewhere in a final pleading that right in itself does not exist, and that efforts to establish a dividing line between right and wrong are guided by historical and national standards (Dr. Nelte). Hitler had already said: "Right is what is profitable to the nation" and, according to his defense counsel, Frank paraphrased this statement as follows: "What is profitable for the people is right. Collective interests take precedence over individual interests." On reading this, I thought of the answer which would have been given by the absolutist, Bossuet, who knew how to determine human standards. The Defense Counsel compared French absolutism with Nazism. Here is my answer:

"Politics sacrifice the individual to the common good, and this is right to a certain extent; it is good that one man should die for the people. By that, Caiaphas understood that an innocent person could be sentenced to the supreme penalty for the sake of the common good, which is never allowed, for, on the contrary, innocent blood cries for vengeance against those who shed it."

We know what consequences the Nazi precepts could produce. The witness Roser reported the words of this young German soldier

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who, after describing a massacre in a ghetto, concluded: "Ah, my dear friend, it was horrible, but. . . an order is an order." The Tribunal will find Kramer's terrible words at the end of Document Number F-655, which is in one of the document books submitted by the French. Before he was made commandant of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Kramer commanded the Nataweiler Camp in Alsace, where he himself asphyxiated 80 persons by gas. This has been proved. In answer to the question: "What would you have done if they had not all been dead?" he said:

"I should again have tried to asphyxiate them by letting a second dose of gas into the room. I did not feel any emotion while carrying out these acts, for I had received orders to execute the 80 internees in the way I told you. After all I have been trained in that way."

What a terrible charge against the system! Before becoming a murderer by order, this man had been a bookkeeper in Augsburg. How many peaceful bookkeepers so trained are still in Germany today? And now "innocent blood cries for vengeance."

Conclusion:

You know the crime! You know why and by what means it was perpetrated! This heinous and unprecedented crime is that of the National Socialist Party-State, but the defendants in their capacity as chiefs of the National Socialist Party and high State officials have all accepted major responsibility in the conception and perpetration of this crime. Their participation in the crime of the Party-State is their own personal fault and brings with it no claim whatsoever to immunity! Proof has now been brought against them!

They must be punished; you know also the dangers to which the world is exposed by their crime and the misery and misfortune it has brought to mankind. You must hit hard without pity. It is enough that the verdict be just! To be sure, there are degrees in their guilt. Does it follow that there must be degrees in the penalties themselves, when those whom we consider the least guilty merit the death penalty! Tomorrow, this International Trial over and the principal war criminals sentenced, we shall go back to our own countries where we may have to prosecute before our own tribunals those who merely carried out the orders of the National Socialist State, who only played the part of hangman.

How could we demand the death penalty for another Kramer, or another Hoess, or for the camp commandants who have on their conscience the deaths of millions of human creatures whom they killed by order, if we hesitated today to demand the supreme

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penalty for those who were the driving force of the criminal State which gave the orders.

The fate of these men lies entirely with your conscience! It is now out of our hands, our task is finished. Now, it is for you in the silence of your deliberations to heed the voice of innocent blood crying for justice.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]

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Afternoon Session

THE PRESIDENT: I call on the chief prosecutor for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

GEN. RUDENKO: Your Lordship, Your Honors.

We are summing up the results of the/legal proceedings against the major German war criminals. In the course of 9 months all the aspects of the case and all the evidence presented to the Tribunal by the Prosecution and by the Defense have been subjected to a careful and detailed scrutiny. Not a single deed of which the defendants have been accused has been left without verification, not a single significant circumstance has been overlooked during the investigation of the present case.

For the first time in the history of mankind criminals against humanity are being held responsible for their crimes before an international criminal tribunal; for the first time nations are trying those who have soaked large areas of the earth with blood, who have annihilated millions of innocent people, destroyed cultural treasures, instituted a systematic massacre and torture, exterminated old people, women, and children, and who in their mad desire for world domination have hurled the universe into an abyss of unprecedented misery.

This Trial, to be sure, is the first of its kind in legal history. A tribunal is sitting in judgment, a tribunal created by the peaceloving free countries, who represent the desire of mankind for progress and to prevent the recurrence of calamities suffered, determined not to permit a gang of criminals to carry out with impunity their preparations for the enslavement of nations and the extermination of peoples in the realization of their fanatic plans. Mankind has called the criminals to account and we, the prosecutors, on behalf of all mankind, are the accusers at this Trial.

And how pitiful are the efforts to dispute the right of mankind to judge its enemies, how vain the efforts to deprive nations of the right to punish those who made enslavement and genocide their aim, and who for many years strove to realize this criminal aim by criminal methods. The present Trial is being so conducted that the defendants, who are accused of the most heinous crimes, are given every possibility to defend themselves and are offered all the necessary legal guarantees. In their own country the defendants who stood at the helm of the Government destroyed all legal forms of justice, and discarded all the principles of legal procedure accepted by civilized mankind. But they themselves are being tried by an international court with legal guarantees to assure all the rights of defense.

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We are now summing up the results of the legal proceedings, we are drawing conclusions from the evidence examined before the Court, we are considering all the data upon which the accusation is based. We now ask: Were the charges levied against the defendants proved before the Court, has their guilt been established? There is only one answer to this question: The legal proceedings fully confirm the charges.

We charge the defendants only with those facts which have been fully established and proved beyond all doubt in the course of the proceedings in which monstrous crimes have been proved, crimes which were prepared over a period of many years by a band of bragging criminals who had seized power in Germany, and who perpetrated these crimes over a period of many years, without regard for the principles of law or the most elementary standards of human morality. These crimes have been proved, the defendants' testimony and the arguments of the Defense have been powerless to refute the charges-they cannot be refuted because it is impossible to refute the truth, and truth is the enduring result of this Trial, the consequence of our long and stubborn efforts. The accusation has been proved in every detail. It has been proved that there existed a Common Plan or Conspiracy in which the defendants participated for the preparation of aggressive wars, in violation of international law and for the enslavement and extermination of peoples. There can be no doubt as to the existence of such a plan just as there is no doubt about the leading part played in it by the defendants. This point of the accusation is confirmed by all the data introduced during the legal proceedings by irrefutable documents, and by the testimonies of witnesses and of the defendants themselves.

All the activities of the defendants were directed toward the preparation and the launching of aggressive wars. All their so-called "ideological work" consisted in the cultivation of bestial instincts, in the installation of the absurd idea of racial superiority in the conscience of the German people, and in the practical realization of their plans for the extermination and enslavement of peoples of "inferior" races, who were supposed only to serve for fertilizing the growth of the "master race." Their "ideological work" consisted in a call to murder, to plunder, to the destruction of culture, and to the extermination of human beings.

The defendants prepared these crimes a long time in advance and then committed them by attacking other countries, seizing foreign territories and exterminating the population. When was this plan or conspiracy conceived? Of course, it is scarcely possible to give an exact date, day and hour on which the defendants conspired to commit their crimes. We cannot and shall not establish our conclusions and assertions on guesses and suppositions. But it

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must be considered as established beyond any possible doubt that from the moment when the fascists seized power in Germany they embarked on their criminal aims and utilized this power for the preparation of aggressive war. All the activity of the defendants was directed toward the preparation of Germany for war. The rearmament and reconversion of economy for war purposes is an irrefutable fact-it has been proved by documents and admitted by the defendants themselves.

We may ask, what was this war for which the defendants began to~ prepare immediately after the seizure of power? Could this possibly be a defensive war? But then nobody intended attacking Germany; nobody had any idea of the kind, and-in my opinion- such an idea could not even have existed. Since Germany was not preparing for a defensive war and inasmuch as the very fact that she did prepare for war has been established-it is evident that she was preparing for a war of aggression. That is the logic of the facts and such are the facts themselves. Germany initiated and waged this very war which she had been preparing, and in 1937-39 occurred precisely that for what she had been preparing since 1933. Hence the conclusion: The plan or the conspiracy existed at least since 1933, that is, from the moment when the fascists seized power and used it for their criminal purposes. These are the facts which are confirmed by the words of the defendants themselves uttered at a time when they did not expect that they would ever be defendants. It is enough to mention the speeches of Schacht, Krupp and others in which they describe how the fascist Government was preparing for war and how all fields of political and economic life were subjected to this one purpose.

I consider as fully proved the charges against the defendants to the effect that in 1933, when the Hitlerites seized power in Germany, they created a plan or conspiracy for the perpetration of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The legal proceedings have unequivocally proved the crimes against peace committed by the defendants, which consisted in planning, preparing, initiating and waging aggressive wars, in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances. Here the facts speak for themselves-wars which involved innumerable victims and destruction, wars whose aggressive nature has been undoubtedly established. The guilt of the defendants in the perpetration of crimes against peace has therefore been fully proved.

The charge of perpetrating war crimes, in waging war by methods contrary to all laws and customs of war, has also been fully proved. Neither the defendants themselves, nor their defense counsel could raise any objections to the very fact of their having committed these crimes.

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All that they could say to this was that the defendants themselves had not committed these atrocities, as for instance the extermination of people in "murder vans" and concentration camps; they had not destroyed the Jews with their own hands, and some of them had not even known about such particular facts. But that such facts really did exist the defendants themselves do not deny. The defendants admit these facts. A fruitless method of defense!

Certainly, the defendants occupying high leading posts in Hitler's Germany were in no need of personally shooting, hanging, smothering, freezing live people to death by way of an experiment, and so on. Their subordinates did that according to their instructions, their henchmen did the dirty work, so to speak, while the defendants only had to give orders which were obeyed without a murmur. Therefore, the attempts of the defendants to deny their connection with these henchmen, to detach themselves from them, were hopeless.

This connection is evident and indisputable. If the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, extracted the gold teeth of the dead, we may say that the Reich Minister, Walter Funk, opened special vaults in the cellars of the Reichsbank in which to keep these gold teeth. If Kaltenbrunner's subordinates exterminated people in "murder vans," the vans themselves were built at the works of Saner, Daimler and Benz, who again were the subordinates of the Defendant Speer. If the prisoners of war were destroyed by professional henchmen of the Death's-Head unit and by the camp guards, the orders to exterminate were signed by Keitel, Generalfeldmarschall of the German Armed Forces. That is to say, it is the defendants who gave the sign for extermination, issued the orders to create a special murder technique, and explained! the ideological reasons for the right of the master races to exterminate "inferior races." It was they who calmly and ruthlessly watched the tortured victims and, as Hans Frank, delivered solemn speeches about "one more step forward" taken by German fascism toward ridding "the living space" of "the inferior races."

The defendants are responsible for every murder, for every drop of innocent blood shed by Hitler's hangmen, for between them and the direct perpetrators of the crimes, murders, tortures, there is a difference only in rank and scope of action. Those are the direct hangmen, and these are the principal hangmen, hangmen of a higher rank. They are far more dangerous than those they trained, in the spirit of hatred toward humanity and cruelty, and whom they nosh, repudiate in order to save themselves.

The criminality of the defendants in the perpetration of war crimes has been fully proved in the sense that they initiated a system of exterminating prisoners of war, peaceful inhabitants,

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women, old men, and children. It is their fault that wherever the German soldier stepped there lay the heaps of murdered and tortured people, ruins and places left barren by fire, devastated towns and villages and the land desecrated and soaked in blood.

The crimes committed against humanity have been completely proved. We cannot omit the crimes committed by the defendants in Germany during their domination: The extermination of all those who in any way expressed their discontent with the Nazi regime, the slave labor and the extermination of human beings in concentration camps, mass extermination of Jews, and the same slave labor and extermination of people in the occupied territories-all this has been proved and the charges are irrefutable. What means of defense have the counsels used, what kind of proofs and arguments could they give to refute the charges?

The arguments of the defendants may be divided into two main groups. First, a number of witnesses summoned by the Defense Counsel. These witnesses were to extenuate the guilt of the defendants by their evidence, to play down the part taken by them in committing the crimes, and to rehabilitate them by all possible means.

These witnesses themselves were, in most cases, defendants in other trials. How can we discuss the objectivity and authenticity of the evidence given by such witnesses of the Defense, if the innocence of the Defendant Funk should be confirmed by his deputy and accomplice, a member of the SS since 1931, Hayler, bearing the rank of SS Gruppenfuehrer; if the criminal Rainer, member of the fascist Party since 1930, and Gauleiter of Salzburg and then of Karnten, was summoned to give evidence on behalf of Seyss-Inquart.

Those so-called "witnesses"-such as for instance Buhler-the right-hand man of the Defendant Frank and accomplice in all his crimes, or Bohle, one of the principal leaders . of the Hitlerite espionage and counterespionage activities and chief of the Auslands-Organisation of the fascist party, came here in order to commit perjury to try to protect their former "bosses" and to save their own lives.

And yet most of the "witnesses" for the Defense in the course of the interrogation became witnesses for the Prosecution. They were convicted by the "mute witnesses documents, mostly of German origin; they themselves were forced to expose those whom they intended to protect.

Another type of the means used by the Defense is legal arguments and considerations.

a) Some legal' aspects of the Trial.

The accusation in the present Trial is based on an enormous quantity of irrefutable facts and is firmly established on the

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principles of law and justice. Therefore, in the opening speeches for the Prosecution, so much attention has already been paid to the legal justification of the responsibility of the defendants.

In the speeches of the Defense a number of legal questions was again raised:

a) On the importance of the principle Nullum crimen sine loge;

b) on the importance of the order;

c) on the responsibility of the state and individuals; d) on the concept of conspiracy.

I therefore consider it necessary to return again to some legal questions in order to answer the attempts of the Defense to confuse clear and simple statements and to change the legal argumentation into a kind of "smoke screen" in an effort to conceal from the Tribunal the gruesome reality of the fascist crimes.

a) Principle Nullum crimen sine lege.

The Defense attempted to deny the accusation by proving that at the time the defendants were perpetrating the offenses with which they were charged, the latter had not been foreseen by existing laws, and that therefore the defendants cannot bear criminal responsibility for them.

I could simply pass over the principle Nullum crimen sine loge, as the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which is an immutable law and is unconditionally to be carried out, provides that this Tribunal "shall have the power to try and punish all persons, who acting in the interest of European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organization or group," committed any of the crimes enumerated in Article 6 of the Charter.

Therefore, from the legal point of view, sentence can be pronounced and carried out without requiring that the deeds which incriminate the defendants be foreseen by the criminal law at the time of their perpetration. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the deeds of the defendants, at the time when they were being committed, were actual criminal acts from the standpoint of the then existing criminal law.

The principles of criminal law contained in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal are the expression of the principles contained in a number of international agreements, enumerated in my opening statement of 8 February 1946 and in the criminal law of all civilized countries. The law of all civilized countries provides criminal responsibility for murder, torture, violence, plunder, et cetera. The fact that those crimes have been initiated by the defendants on a scale surpassing all human imagination and bear the marks of unheard-of sadistic cruelty does not, of course, exclude but rather increases the responsibility of the defendants. If the

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defendants had committed the crimes on the territory and against the citizens of any one country, then in accordance with the declaration of the heads of the Governments of the U.S.S.R., of Great Britain and the United States of America, published on 2 November 1943, and in full agreement with the universally accepted principles of criminal law, they would be tried in that country and according to that country's laws.

This declaration set forth that "the German officers, soldiers, and members of the Nazi Party who were responsible for the aforementioned cruelties, murders and executions, or who voluntarily took part in them, would be deported to the countries where those gruesome crimes had been committed, in order to be tried and punished according to the law of those liberated countries and free governments which would be established there."

Nevertheless, the defendants are war criminals "whose offenses have no particular geographical location" (Article 1 of the Agreement of the Four Powers of 8 August 1945) and, therefore, the International Military Tribunal, acting in accordance with the Charter, is competent to try their crimes. The counsel for the Defendant Hess took the liberty to affirm that, "there can be no doubt that the Crimes against Peace, as they are stated in Article 6, Paragraph 2a, of the Charter, do not exist."

There is no need here to refer to the international agreements as I have already mentioned them in my opening statement on 8 February 1946, in which aggressive war was declared an international crime. Therefore the attempts of the defendants and their counsels to hide behind the principle Nullum crimen sine lege have failed. They are charged with deeds which civilized humanity had long ago recognized as criminal.

b) Execution of an orders

Some of the defendants, in their depositions before the Tribunal, attempted to present themselves as pitiful dwarfs, blind and obedient executors of another's will-the will of Hitler.

In his search for a legal basis for this assertion, counsel for the defense, Jahrreiss, spoke at great length about the importance of Hitler's orders. In the opinion of the counsel Jahrreiss, an order of Hitler's was something quite different" from the order of any other leader, that a Hitler order was an act "legally immutable." Therefore, Professor Jahrreiss questions whether, whatever the Charter may mean by the orders which it rejects as a factor excluding criminal responsibility, it would be possible to adopt the same attitude toward an order of Hitler's. He asks: Could such an order be looked upon as an "order" within the meaning of the Charter?

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The right to interpret law is the irrefutable right of every lawyer, including the counsels for the Defense. Nevertheless, it is quite incomprehensible what logical or other methods have led' him to assert that the provisions of the Charter, specially drafted for the trial of major war criminals of fascist Germany, did not factually imply the very conditions themselves of the activities of these criminals. What orders then issued by whom and in what country are meant by the Charter of the Tribunal?

On the contrary it is indisputable that the authors of the Charter were fully aware of the specific conditions existing in Hitlerite Germany, were thoroughly familiar-from the material of the Kharkov and other trials-with the attempts of the defendants to hide behind Hitler's orders, and it is for this very reason that they made a special proviso to the effect that the execution of an obviously criminal order does not exonerate one from criminal responsibility.

c) Responsibility of countries and individuals.

We think that the very authors of this attempt to conceal a large group of ministers, Gauleiter, and military commanders behind Hitler's back doubted to a certain extent the efficacy of a similar defensive maneuver since a new line of defense was introduced to support the maneuver in question.

"If the German Reich launched an attack in spite of a still existent nonaggression pact"-said counsel Jahrreiss-"then Germany committed an international offense and must answer for it according to the principles of international law- the Reich alone, but not the individual person."

We cannot help noticing that the above point of view is not exactly a brand new one: Even before the beginning of the official Defense at this Trial, certain unofficial advocates of war criminals propagated a version to the effect that it was the German Government and the German nation who were to bear responsibility for the criminal aggression and war crimes and not individual persons. When one who is subject to international law, that is the state, violates its principles, certain consequences of an international character are entailed, but in no case does it entail the criminal responsibility of the state. Any action on the part of the state in the sphere of international relations is committed by individual persons, by officials, and by the agents of that state. In carrying out such acts, these individuals may be guilty of the most varied offenses in violation of either the common or the criminal law. In the latter case, that is, when their individual criminal responsibility is involved they have to bear this legal responsibility before the court, in conformity with the laws of their own country, as well as-if such is the case-in conformity with the laws and before the courts of a foreign state.

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In the present case, not only did the Hitlerite State violate the principles of international law, as a result of which measures were taken against the states; but also some particular individuals, in committing those acts, have personally committed criminal offenses for which they bear the criminal responsibility in accordance with the Charter before the International Military Tribunal

d) Concerning the concept of conspiracy.

The Defense Counsel is unanimous in trying, although in different forms and versions, to contest the charges of criminal conspiracy directed against the defendants. Extracting from various sources one-sided and tendentiously selected definitions of conspiracy, the Defense Counsel have endeavored to prove that Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, and others cannot be considered as participants in the conspiracy. I should like to quote here several arguments proving the lack of basis for the statements of the Defense.

Conspiracy implies the existence of a criminal society created for and working toward the achievement of a common criminal purpose. Such a society undeniably existed. It stands to reason that in this case the threads and levers uniting the members of this conspiratory criminal society are extremely complicated, since the conspirators had seized the government of the state.

In any criminal society and particularly in a highly complicated society like this, individual participants commit criminal acts included in the general plan of the conspiracy but they can practically remain unknown to a number of the members of this society. Nevertheless, as these crimes result from a single criminal plan, common to the entire society, the participants who have not personally committed these separate criminal actions and were not practically informed of them, still bear the responsibility for them.

In this particular case the existence of the conspiracy is not precluded by the circumstance that, for instance, Schirach could be unaware of some of the measures of the slave trader Sauckel, or the "pogrom maker" Streicher; neither is the existence of the conspiracy precluded by the differences of opinion among individual participants in the conspiracy concerning particular questions, the intrigues of Goering against Bormann, et cetera. Such dissensions may occur in any gang of robbers and thieves, but the gang does not cease to exist on this account.

In nearly every society there exists a certain hierarchy among its members. Very often the head of a criminal gang usurps unlimited power over the other members, even the right of life and death, but it never occurred to any lawyer in the world to deny the existence of a criminal society merely because its participants were not equal among themselves and one of them had power over the others.

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It is, at any rate, strange to deny the existence of the conspiracy in the present case because of the fact that enormous personal power was vested in the hands of the leader Hitler. In the same way the existence of the conspiracy does not preclude but, per contra, implies a definite distribution of the parts played by the participants of the criminal group in pursuance of the common criminal aim: One directs all the criminal activities, the other is in charge of questions of ideological training, the third prepares the army, the fourth organizes the war industry, the fifth carries on diplomatic preparations, et cetera. Therefore, the fascist conspiracy does not cease to be a conspiracy, but is one which presents special danger, since the entire machinery of the government and enormous resources of men and material are in the hands of the conspirators. In the hands of the international criminals, in the hands of Goering, Keitel, and the other defendants countless people became instruments of most grievous crimes. This is the reason why specific features which distinguish the conspirators of fascist Germany from any other gang only lend it a specially dangerous character without changing in any way the legal nature of the conspiracy. This completes the analysis of the legal arguments of the Defense, which were examined in detail by my honorable colleagues. As you have seen, Your Honors, the arguments of the Defense were found to be inconsistent and incapable of rebutting the charges. I shall now consider the question concerning the guilt of the individual defendants.

Goering.

In Hitlerite Germany the Defendant Goering was next in importance to Hitler himself, he stood next in the line of succession. He assumed enormous powers, and seized the most responsible posts. He was the president of the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, he was the dictator of German economy-the Delegate for the Four Year Plan-and the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. The main point was that he utilized this extensive field and dedicated all his forces to the organization and perpetration of the crimes set out in the Indictment.

As we already know, the aim of this conspiracy consisted first of all in the conquest of Europe and then in the world supremacy of Hitlerite Germany, regardless of any methods, however criminal and inhuman. To realize this aim, the way had to be cleared since Hitler had already declared in February 1933 at a conference with prominent German industrialists that the parliamentary system must be destroyed.

Goering undertook this task. He began energetically to exterminate the political opponents of fascism, and for this purpose carried out mass arrests of members of political parties unfavorable

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to Nazism. He organized concentration camps where he interned, without trial, all those who disagreed with fascism. He created the Gestapo which, from the day of its birth, established a regime of bloody terror. He demanded of all the officials, in the camps, and of the Gestapo to stop at nothing-and savage punishments of human beings, tortures and massacres became under his guidance fundamental procedures. It is he, Goering, who declared: "Every bullet fired from the pistol of a policeman is my bullet, and if anyone calls it murder, this means that I have committed murder..." (From Goering's book, Turban einer Nation, published by him in 1934). Thus he cleared the way for fascism and paved the path for the unhampered progress and the realization of the fascist conspiracy. Goering was tireless in his efforts to annihilate everybody and everything which hampered this conspiracy. And Hitler praised him for this. For example, on 13 July 1934 he declared to the Reichstag that Goering, ". . .with his iron fist smashed the attack against the National Socialist State before this attack could become effective.""

All these terroristic activities of Goering were calculated to clear the way for the realization of the fundamental idea of the fascist conspiracy, that is, the conquest of Europe and, later, to achieve world supremacy of Hitlerite Germany. The legal proceedings have established Goering's guilt in the planning and preparation of all aggressive wars by Hitlerite Germany.

Numerous documents have been presented to the Tribunal, testifying to the active part played by Goering in launching aggressive wars. I shall remind you of Goering's declaration in 1935 at a meeting of Air Force officers. At that conference he declared that it was his intention "to create an air force which shall strike the enemy an avenging blow. Even before the attack, the enemy must feel that his cause is lost"; and this intention, as we know, he realized by preparing for war from day to day.

At the conference of the leaders of the German air industry on 8 July 1938 Goering hinted that war was near, and that if Germany emerged victorious from this war she would be the most powerful state in the world, dominating the world markets, and she would become a wealthy nation. "But one must risk, one must stake all." Such was the slogan which Goering coined on that occasion.

On 14 October 1938, not long before he presented demands to Czechoslovakia, Goering declared that he had begun to carry out a gigantic program in comparison with which all previous undertakings were insignificant.

"In the shortest possible time, the Air Force must be increased fivefold; the Navy must be rearmed at a much greater speed, and the Army has to procure more speedily

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large numbers of weapons of attack, especially heavy artillery and heavy tanks. This must be accompanied by the production of war materials and particularly explosives."

The active participation of Goering in the preparation for aggression against the U.S.S.R. has been established beyond all possible doubt. The Tribunal will find proof of Goering's active participation as far back as November 1940 in the development of a plan for the attack against the U.S.S.R., contained in the record of the conference of 29 April 1941 on the organization of the economic staff: "Oldenburg" and in the minutes of the conference held on 23 February 1941 at the house of General Thomas, as well as in the testimony of Goering himself during the session of 21 March 1946.

It was Goering who, together with Rosenberg, Keitel and Bormann, at the conference with Hitler on 16 July 1941, gave concrete form to the plans for the dismemberment the Soviet Union, the enslavement of her population and the despoliation of her riches. The plan to ". . . raze Leningrad to the ground and hand it over to the Finns" was conceived with his participation. It was he who recommended the hangman, Koch, for the post of Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, as the "personality with the greatest initiative and the best training." Therefore, it can be considered that Goering's guilt in the planning and preparation of aggressive wars by Hitlerite Germany has been fully established, and for this he must bear responsibility.

My colleagues have already invited the attention of the Tribunal to the criminal treatment of prisoners of war. I shall just remind the Tribunal of the testimony given by the witness Maurice Lampe during the afternoon session of 25 January 1946 concerning the execution of Soviet, British, French, and other officers in Camp Mauthausen, in the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Maidanek; of the notes issued by the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., Molotov, dated 25 November 1941 and 27 April 1942, presented to the Court in connection with the monstrous ill-treatment Inflicted by the German military authorities on Soviet prisoners of war, for which Goering is personally greatly responsible. I would also remind you of the depositions of the witness Halder, on 31 October 1945, describing a conference held at Hitler's headquarters, on the nonapplication of the Hague Convention with respect to the treatment of Russian prisoners of war, and of the order issued from Hitler's headquarters on 12 May 1941 on the treatment of captured Russian commanding officers and political workers.

All these crimes, established beyond any doubt before the Court, need not be further clarified, since the Defense in their pleas were unable to advance any arguments in rebuttal.

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In the "12 Commandments for the Behavior of the Germans in the East" of 1 June 1941, the sixth commandment reads as follows:

"You must clearly understand that you for centuries to come are the representatives of Greater Germany and the standard bearers of National Socialism in the new Europe. You must, therefore, coolly carry out the most ruthless and the most cruel measures which will be demanded of you by the necessities of the State."

The beginning of the systematic persecution and extermination of the Jewish population is connected with the name of Goering. It was he who signed the odious Nuremberg Laws, the decrees for the expropriation of Jewish property' for the imposition on the Jews of a penalty of one billion, and other decrees; such activities were in full keeping with the whole of Goering's savage world outlook.

At the Trial Goering denied that he was an adherent of the racial theory, while in 1935 he made a speech before the Reichstag in defense of the Nuremberg racial instigators. On that occasion he loudly declared: "God has created races. He did not will equality and for this reason we reject energetically every attempt to pervert the idea of race purity..."

Numerous documents presented to the Court by the Prosecution expose the criminal actions of Goering in respect to other nations. Goering's order issued on 19 October 1939 clearly demonstrated the attitude of the defendant toward the Polish people and the Polish State. In an order relating to the economic policy in the East, issued on 23 May 1941 just before the attack on the U.S.S.R., Goering wrote as follows on the attitude toward the Russians:

"Germany is not interested in maintaining productivity in this territory. She will supply only the troops stationed there... The population in those regions, and especially the urban population, is doomed to starvation. It will be necessary to deport this population to Siberia."

In his capacity of Delegate for the Four Year Plan Goering is responsible for the plunder and spoliation of state property and personal property of the citizens, carried out by the Nazis in the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R., in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and other countries. It was precisely Goering who headed the activities of the Nazi conspirators directed toward the economic plunder of the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R.

A conference in connection with the elaboration of economic measures according to Case Barbarossa was held on 29 April 1941 prior to the treacherous attack against the U.S.S.R. As a result of this conference there was created a special economic staff "Oldenburg" which was subordinated to Goering. The creation of special economic inspectorates and units in the largest centers of the

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U.SS.R. was planned; they were to handle important tasks for the exploitation and plunder of Soviet industry and agriculture.

The file of a district agricultural leader contained instructions to agricultural officials who were given full freedom in the choice of methods for the achievement of their criminal purposes. The demand for ruthless treatment of the Soviet peoples, the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians was expressly-put forward. The report of the U.S.S.R. Extraordinary State Commission on the crimes committed by the Hitlerites in Kiev, in the region of Stalino and other places, states that these criminal plans of the Defendant Goering and his accomplices were for the greater part realized.

To secure the necessary manpower for the German war industry and agriculture, and at the same time for the purpose of the physical extermination and economic weakening of the enslaved peoples, the Defendant Goering and his accomplices in the Nazi conspiracy exploited the foreign workers as slaves. The exploitation of forced labor had been planned by the Nazis even before the war. It is sufficient to remind you of the conference at Hitler's headquarters which took place on 23 May 1939 and in which the Defendant Goering also participated.. At the conference of 7 November 1941 and in his order issued on 10 January 1942 Goering demanded of all the departments subordinated to him the necessary manpower for the German industries at the expense of the population of the occupied Soviet territories.

On 6 August 1942 Goering held a conference with the Reich Commissioners for the occupied territories and the representatives of the High Command. Addressing himself to the participants in this conference, Goering said:

"You are being sent there not to work for the well-being of the peoples entrusted to you, but for the purpose of extracting everything available.... You must be like bloodhounds, wherever there is still something left.... I intend to plunder and to do it efficiently...."

These intentions were carried out. Goering plundered, the Reich Ministers and Reich Commissioners for the occupied territories plundered, the representatives of the High Command, from the generals to the ordinary soldiers, also plundered. Such were the activities of Defendant Goering.

There is not a single measure executed by the fascist party, not a single step taken by the Hitlerite Government in which Goering did not participate. He participated actively in all the crimes of the fascist gang and for all his deeds he must be duly punished.

Hess.

The Defendant Rudolf Hess occupied a leading position among the Nazi conspirators from the very beginnings of the fascist state.

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It was Hess who had been the leader of the fascist organization of the University of Munich. It was he who had participated in the Munich Putsch. It was he who, together with Hitler, had worked at the fascist bible Mein Kampf, assuming the duties of Hitler's private secretary. It was he who had been president of the Central Political Commission of the fascist party, and it was he who had carried into effect the bestial policy of the fascist cutthroats as Deputy of the Fuehrer after the seizure of power. It was precisely Hess to whom, according to Hitler's decree of 21 April 1933, "full rights were granted to take decisions on Hitler's behalf in all questions concerning the leadership of the Party."

Immediately afterward Hess continued to seize one new post after the other in Hitler's Government. As from 1 December 1933 he was Reich Minister without Portfolio "to insure close collaboration of the Party and the SA with the civil authorities"; on 4 February 1938 he was appointed member of the Secret Council; on 30 August 1939, member of the Reich Defense Council; and on 1 September 1939 Hitler declared Hess his successor after Goering. Hess was also appointed Obergruppenfuehrer SS and SA.

By a decree of 27 July 1934 Hitler compelled the leaders of all the departments and ministries in Germany to present all drafts of laws to Hess for preliminary approval. Hess had to select and allocate the leading staff of the fascist cadres. This is proved by Hitler's decree of 24 September 1935 and by other documents submitted to the Tribunal by the Prosecution.

Special note should be taken of the active part played by Hess in planning and carrying out aggressive wars. All the aggressive actions of Hitler's Germany had been planned and prepared with the direct assistance of Hess and the Party machinery of the Nazis subordinated to him. Already on 12 October 1936, in his speeches in Bavaria, Hess appealed to the Germans:

". . . at times to use a little less fat, a little less pork, fewer eggs....We know"-said Hess-"that the foreign currency that is saved in this way goes for armaments. And the slogan of the day is: 'Cannons instead of butter."'

Hess spoke about this on the eve of his flight to England on 1 May 1941, speaking at the Messerschmitt factory where he made an appeal for the continuation of the aggressive war.

Together with Hitler, Goering, and other leaders of the Nazi conspiracy, Hess signed the decrees concerning the annexation of the territories seized by the Germans.

The man-hating Nuremberg Laws, for the publishing of which this defendant is also responsible, contain a special proviso authorizing Frick and Hess to issue the necessary decrees for carrying these laws into effect. Hess signed the law on the "Protection of

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Race and Honor," the decree of 14 September 1935, depriving the Jews of their right to vote and of their right to employment in government offices; and also the decree of 20 May 1938 extending the Nuremberg Laws to Austria. The question of the part played by Hess in organizing a network for espionage and terroristic units abroad, as well as in creating the SD (Security Service) and in the recruitment of SS units, has been sufficiently elucidated at this Trial. ,'

The very position occupied by Hess in the fascist party and Hitler's Government shows the active and leading participation of the defendant in the preparation and realization of the common criminal plan of the fascist conspirators, and consequently the enormous share of his guilt and responsibility for the crimes against peace, for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity.

Your Honors, in order to evaluate more correctly the importance of the criminal activity of the Defendant Hess as one of the most notorious leaders of the Nazi Party and Hitler's Government, I shall remind you of the article in the newspaper Nationalzeitung of 24 April 1941, dedicated to Hess.

"Many years ago-it was before the beginning of this war- Rudolf Hess was called the 'Conscience of the Party.' It is not difficult to answer the question why this honorable name was given to the Fuehrer's Deputy. There is not an event in our public life that is not connected with the name of the Deputy Fuehrer. He is so versatile and original in his work and in his sphere of activity, that they cannot be described in a few words . . . many measures carried out by the Government, especially in the field of war economy and in the Party, which at their publication are so readily welcomed by the public because they answer to a high degree the real feeling of the people, originate in the personal initiative of the Deputy of the Fuehrer."

Hess refused to offer explanations to the Tribunal. His counsel, Seidl, declared with false pathos that Hess considered the present Tribunal incompetent to judge the German war criminals, and immediately afterward, without a pause, he presented proofs in his defense. Hess even tried to declare himself insane to avoid punishment deserved. But when he was convinced that such a maneuver would not help him, he was forced to tell the Tribunal that he had simulated loss of memory, that it had been a trick on his part, and he had to admit that he bore full responsibility for all that he had done and signed together with the others.

Thus, this clumsy attempt of Hess to avoid responsibility was fully exposed at the Trial and he should suffer the full extent of

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his punishment for his participation in the Common Plan or Conspiracy for committing crimes against peace, war crimes and the most grievous crimes against the world and humanity, crimes perpetrated by him together with the other defendants.

Bormann.

The name of Martin Bormann is closely connected with the creation of Hitler's regime. He was one of those who committed the most outrageous crimes, directed at the annihilation of many hundreds of thousands. Together with the Defendant Rosenberg, Bormann carried on with cruel perseverance a propaganda of racial theories together with the persecutions of the Jews. He issued numerous instructions aiming at discrimination against the Jews in Hitler's Germany, which discrimination later on had such fatal effects and resulted in the annihilation of millions of Jews. By this activity he won Hitler's confidence. He was "authorized to represent the Party in the sphere of government activities" (Verordnungen and Befehle der Parteikanzlei, Volume II, Page 228) and did so. Thus, as chief of the Party Chancellery, he directly participated in the annihilation of Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Czechoslovaks.

Under his leadership the NSDAP became a police organization, closely co-operating with the German Secret Police and the SS. Bormann not only knew of all the aggressive plans of Hitler's Government but he also took an active part in their realization. He made full use of the entire Party machinery of the NSDAP to realize the aggressive plans of Hitler's Government, and he appointed the Party Gauleiter Reich Defense Commissioners in the regions where they operated.

The NTSDAP Party machinery and Bormann personally participated actively in all measures taken by. the German military and civil authorities for the inhuman exploitation of prisoners of war. This is proved by the numerous instructions and directives issued by Bormann. The evidence of the Prosecution and the legal proceedings have now established the extent of mass annihilation resulting from the savage ill-treatment of the prisoners of war.

The Party machinery and the Defendant Bormann personally participated directly in the measures adopted by Hitler's Government in connection with the deportation of the peoples of the occupied territories for slave labor. The secret deportation of Ukrainian girls to Germany for enforced Germanization was carried out with Bormann's approval. By Hitler's order of 18 October 1944, Bormann and Himmler were entrusted with the leadership of the Volkssturm, consisting of all men from 16 to 60 years of age, capable of carrying arms. On the eve of the collapse of Hitler's Germany,

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Bormann headed the Werewolf underground organization for diversion and subversive activities behind the Allied lines. Bormann participated directly in the plunder of historical and cultural treasures and works of art in the occupied territories. In 1943 he made suggestions for the intensification of the economic plunder in the occupied territories.

Such are the crimes of the Defendant Bormann, Hitler's closest collaborator, sharing the full responsibility for the numerous crimes of Hitler's Government and the Nazi Party.

Ribbentrop.

Joachim van Ribbentrop was not only one of the principal instigators and leaders of the foreign policy of Hitlerite Germany, but he was also one of the most active participants in the criminal conspiracy. Having officially entered the Nazi Party in 1932, the defendant, however, contributed actively to the seizure of power by the Nazis long before this actually occurred, and he rapidly became the official adviser of the Party, inasmuch as he was the "collaborator of the Fuehrer on matters of foreign policy."

Ribbentrop's promotion is indissolubly connected with the development of the activities of the Nazi conspirators, activities directed against the interests of peace. In his testimony Ribbentrop declared: "He (Hitler) knew that I was his loyal collaborator." That is why on 4 February 1938 Hitler appointed the convinced and faithful Nazi, Ribbentrop, as official leader of foreign policy, a post which was one of the most important forces in the realization of the entire Nazi conspiracy.

Ribbentrop, however, did not limit his activities to the scope of foreign policy. As member of the Hitlerite Government, the Reich Defense Council, and the Secret Council, he participated in the solution of all the innumerable problems connected with the preparation of aggressive wars. That is why he, Ribbentrop, although he was Minister for Foreign Affairs, participated in the solution and realization of problems only faintly relevant to foreign policy, such as the exploitation of manpower in wartime, the organization of the concentration camps, and so forth. In this connection it should be noted that Ribbentrop signed a special, far-reaching agreement with Himmler on the organization of joint intelligence service.

Ribbentrop became Reich Foreign Minister exactly at the beginning of the realization of the plans of aggression, which counted on the submission of Europe to Germany. This coincidence is no accident. Ribbentrop was considered, not without reason: as the most qualified person for the realization of this criminal conspiracy. He was preferred even to such an expert on international provocation as Rosenberg, which induced the latter to lodge an official

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complaint, not without reason. And Hitler was not mistaken in his choice, for Ribbentrop fully justified his confidence.

As early as 12 February 1938, a week after his appointment, Ribbentrop together with Hitler and the Defendant Papen, who for a long time before this date had been directing the diversionist activities of the Nazi agents in Austria, participated in a conference at the Obersalzberg. At this meeting he addressed an ultimatum, punctuated by threats, to the Austrian Federal Chancellor Schuschnigg and the latter's Foreign Minister, Schmidt, demanding their agreement to the sacrifice of Austria's independence and this object was attained.

As Minister, Ribbentrop was present at the conference of 28 May 1938, during which a decision was made for the execution of Case Green-the plan for aggression against Czechoslovakia. In conformity with the Nazi tactics of weakening their future victim from inside, Ribbentrop constantly kept a close contact with and gave material assistance first to the German Sudeten Party, and then to the Slovak National Socialists, with the object of attaining an internal split and Matricidal war in Czechoslovakia.

Having seized Czechoslovakia, the Nazi conspirators, and Ribbentrop among them, began to prepare for the next aggressive act, which had already been outlined by them in their criminal plan against peace-the attack on Poland.

Being forced by reason of the recently realized annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia to temporarily conceal Germany's further intentions, Ribbentrop personally and through his agents and his diplomats endeavored to allay the vigilance of the European states by hypocritical declarations to the effect that Germany had no further territorial demands.

On 26 January 1939, in Warsaw, the Foreign Minister of fascist Germany, Ribbentrop, declared:

". . . that the consolidation of friendly relations between Germany and Poland on the basis of our agreement constituted the most important factor of Germany's foreign policy."

A very short time elapsed and Poland experienced the full value of these assurances of Ribbentrop.

I will not dwell here on the perfidious part played by the Defendant Ribbentrop in the German aggression against Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, for my colleagues have already dealt with this matter convincingly enough. The Defendant Ribbentrop personally and actively participated in carrying out the aggression against Yugoslavia and Greece.

Reverting to his favorite method of giving false guarantees in order to conceal future aggressions, Defendant Ribbentrop assured

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Yugoslavia, on 20 April 1938, that after the Anschluss Germany's frontiers with Yugoslavia were considered both "final and unalterable."

At the same time manifold preparations for aggression were carried out with the assistance of the Defendant Ribbentrop. On 12 and 13 August 1939, at the conferences held by Hitler and Ribbentrop with Ciano on the Obersalzberg, an agreement was reached concerning the liquidation of the neutrals one by one.

With the direct and immediate assistance of the Defendant Ribbentrop, the Nazi conspirators planned, prepared) and executed the treacherous attack on the U.S.S.R. of 22 June 1941.

The Defendant Ribbentrop himself admitted in the courtroom, that at the end of August and the beginning of September 1940, that is, at the time when the work on Case Barbarossa was being carried out-as is evident from the depositions of General Warlimont, General Muller and Field Marshal Paulus-the Defendant Keitel was discussing with him the question of attacking the U.S.S.R. The activities of the defendant, and the Ministry directed by him, played a primary part in the organization of war against the U.S.S.R. with the participation of Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

After the beginning of the aggression of Germany against the Soviet Union, the Defendant Ribbentrop continued to apply his efforts to lure new accomplices to the side of Germany. Thus in a telegram to the German Ambassador in Tokio on 10 June 1941 he said:

"I beg you to try all the means at your disposal to influence Matsuoka in order to force Japan to enter into war with Russia as soon as possible. The sooner, the better. The aim, of course, should be that Japan and Germany shake hands on the Siberian railway before winter comes..."

As has been established at the Trial, Ribbentrop, together with the other defendants, was preparing a policy of extermination and plunder, planned by the Hitlerites and then carried out in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The Defendant Rosenberg, who was elaborating the plans for the exploitation of the occupied territories in eastern Europe, held a conference on this question with the OKW, the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In his "Report on Preparatory Work on the Eastern European Questions" he wrote: "As a result of negotiations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the latter appointed Consul General Brautigam as their representative to Rosenberg."

It is therefore indisputable that Ribbentrop not only knew about the preparations for the military attack on the U.S.S.R., but that he, together with the other conspirators, had planned beforehand the

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colonization of the territory of the Soviet Union and the enslavement of the Soviet citizens.

The defendant was compelled to admit that he had known of the notes issued by the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. M. Molotov concerning the atrocities of the Hitlerites in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union. He, as well as the other conspirators, had also known the other declarations of the chiefs of the Allied Governments concerning the responsibility imposed upon the Nazi Government for the perpetration of the monstrous atrocities by the Hitlerites in the occupied countries.

Ribbentrop, as the witness for the Defense, Steengracht, former Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has confirmed, had been one of the initial organizers and was to be appointed honorary member of the International Anti-Jewish Congress which the Germans hoped to convene in July 1944, in Krakow.

Ribbentrop himself admitted at the Trial that he had negotiated with the governments of European countries concerning the banishment of the Jews.

According to the record of Ribbentrop's conversation with Horthy: "The Minister of Foreign Affairs declared to Horthy that the Jews should either be exterminated or sent to concentration camps. There can be no other decision."

This statement amply confirms the fact that Ribbentrop was aware of the existence of the concentration camps although he tried hard to prove the reverse here. Ribbentrop lent his support to other Nazi leaders and above all to the Defendant Sauckel in deporting the population of the occupied countries for forced labor in Germany. Moreover, the Defendant Ribbentrop when carrying out the common plan of conspiracy which included the destruction of the national culture of the peoples of the occupied territories, took a most active part in plundering cultural treasures which are the common property of all nations.

To carry out this task, a "Special Service Battalion" had been created on Ribbentrop's instructions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which, during the entire war, followed the advance units, requisitioned, and deported to Germany all kinds of cultural treasures from the occupied territories in the East, in accordance with Ribbentrop's directions.

Thus the Defendant Ribbentrop had participated in the seizure of power by the Nazis, playing a leading role in planning, preparing, and waging aggressive and predatory wars; together with the other conspirators he participated, in pursuance of the fascist plans, in the leadership, committing most grievous crimes against the nations

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whose territories had been temporarily occupied by the Hitlerite invaders.

The military group.

Several of the defendants in the dock at this Trial of the major war criminals may be said to form a military group. Excluding Goering-who is quite a peculiar figure, uniting in his person the politician, administrator, and soldier-there remain Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz and Raeder. In the course of these proceedings not only have all the Counts of the Indictment against them been sustained, but even more incriminating evidence has been brought to light.

The documentary evidence, the testimony of witnesses, including those called by the Defense, helped tip the scales in favor of the Prosecution.

The Defense Counsel tried to convince the Tribunal that their clients were the pawns of destiny, involved in this sinister tragedy in spite of themselves.

The defendants-Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz, and Raeder endeavor to appear in the role of noble-minded simpletons. To do the Defense justice, they did the best they could to help them in this attempt.

We have heard a great deal about the honor of the soldier-of military discipline, fidelity to duty and oaths of allegiance-and the consequent obligation to fulfill Hitler's orders, even those which in their hearts aroused both doubt and direct protest. Such a presentation of their position completely distorts the actual state of affairs. Before passing to the question of the guilt of Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz, and Raeder, I consider it necessary to ask the following four questions:

1) Did these defendants know that Hitlerite Germany, in violation of her international obligations, had prepared a series of aggressive and predatory wars?

2) Did they take an active part in the planning, preparing, launching and waging of these wars?

3) Are they guilty of cynically trampling on the laws and customs of warfare?

4) Are they responsible for the atrocities and for the extermination of the peaceful population, for the sinking of passenger and hospital ships, for the towns and villages destroyed by the military machine of the Hitlerite Reich?

It seems to me that after this investigation which has so carefully gone into all the details of this case it would be impossible, unless we remain blind to the facts, to give any but an affirmative answer to these questions.

The evidence submitted to the Tribunal has fully proved that the military group of criminals is guilty of the most appalling crimes

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and that they have actively participated in the planning and execution of the common criminal conspiracy.

The very fact that these crimes were committed by men in uniform not only does not mitigate their responsibility, it seems to me, but on the contrary, merely serves to heighten it.

How can they attempt to whitewash themselves by referring to the "duty of a soldier," "the honor of an officer," and the "obligation of fulfilling orders"? Since when has "the duty of a soldier" and "the honor of an officer" been compatible with shooting prisoners without trial or exterminating women, children, and old people?

The only true and correct explanation of the amazing fact that these generals and admirals did commit what, in effect, were ignoble crimes, lies in the fact that they were actually generals and admirals of Hitler's making. These are men of a special brand. They are fascists in military uniform bound in body and soul to the Nazi regime. This is the only reason why Hitler gathered these men around him and collaborated with them for so long a period of time. This is the only way to explain why they collaborated with Hitler in perpetrating crimes unprecedented in history. They fitted together and understood one another to perfection.

Keitel.

It is only natural that, when speaking of the military group, I begin with Defendant Keitel. Keitel held the leading post in Hitler's military machine from the very first years of its conception. Keitel's counsel admits that "the decree"-of 4 February 1938-"gave Keitel the marvelous title: 'Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces.' " Further he goes on to say:

". . .the factual significance of Keitel's activities . . .was immense... It was an extremely ungrateful job and its miserly remuneration was a brilliant position in the immediate proximity to the head of the State."

In the light of all subsequent events it may be taken for granted that the primary stage of all the future wars of aggression included everything connected with the secret rearmament of Germany after the Versailles Treaty.

It is difficult to minimize the significance of all that was done at the time by the then Colonel Keitel in the committee of experts which painstakingly and consecutively sought and found means of circumventing and even violating the treaty.

It was none other than Keitel in particular who gave instructions to the effect that in Geneva it was possible to say what one pleased, but care must be taken not to leave anything behind on paper. This cynical statement fully tallies with the role played

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by Keitel in the subsequent preparation and waging of aggressive wars. During the negotiations between Hitler and Schuschnigg, Keitel in person was the living reminder of Germany's preparedness to resort to arms. Keitel issued orders for troops to cross into Czechoslovakia at the time when President Hacha was so treacherously called to Berlin "for continuing negotiations." It was the OKW, and none other, which was fully prepared through the Department of the Abwehr to provoke an incident with Czechoslovakia in order to justify the invasion by the German hordes, ready to fall upon Czechoslovakia. In his strictly confidential memorandum Keitel demanded that Hess and Himmler advise the OKW in advance of all measures taken by Party organizations or Police which were not included in Case Green.

The declarations alleging that after the seizure of Czechoslovakia Germany had no more territorial aspirations in Europe were downright lies. This seizure was but a link in the chain of aggressive wars.

I wish to emphasize the leading role of the OKW in the preparation and carrying out of aggression. The directive regarding the waging of war and the invasion of Poland is known to us as Keitel's and Hitler's directive of 10 May 1939. It was forwarded to the High Command of the Air Force, Navy, and Army. How is it possible, after this, to maintain that the OKW was not the driving power behind all the branches of the Armed Forces of the fascist Reich?

If we once more peruse the documents pertaining to German aggression against Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece, we will again come across the name of Keitel. He appears either as a participant in the most important events, or as the author of secret orders addressed to Raeder, Goering and the General Staff. We find the initials of Keitel and Jodl entered in their own hand on the secret directive signed by Hitler regarding "Operation Marital"

Much has been said here of Case Barbarossa and its authors. At present it is important to stress that this document took shape in the innermost depths of the OKW, and on its initiative, and that the methods planned prior to a treacherous attack on the U.S.S.R. were likewise the work of the OKW. The significance of a military specialist's visa on a document is clear to everybody.

Some of the defendants in their untruthfulness attempted to portray the attack on the U.S.S.R. as a preventive war. This contention is to such a degree unconvincing and contradictory to the irrefutable evidence presented in court-German documents-that I see no need for wasting the Tribunal's time.

Keitel's counsel stated that his defense is based on the point of view that Keitel "is fighting not for his head but to save his face."

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I should like to help the Tribunal to unveil Keitel's true face. For this I should have to remind you of a number of Keitel's directives which may well lay claim to being among the foremost of all the infamous documents pointing to the barbarity of the German military clique, to its baseness and foul and unlimited contempt for every concept of the rules and customs of warfare.

Let us consider the documents dealing with the shooting of political officers. Keitel, the soldier, as he likes to call himself, ignoring his oath, shamelessly lied to the representatives of the American Prosecution at the preliminary investigation by avowing that, to begin with, this order was in the nature of a reprisal and that the political officers were separated from the other prisoners of war at the request of the prisoners of war themselves. At the Trial he was unmasked. Exhibit Number USSR-351, Document Number 884-PS proved that this directive had been issued before the war had broken out. We also submitted a document under Document Number USSR-62, the text of a letter from German prisoners of war. This document makes it clear that even before the attack on the U.S.S.R. the armies in the field had been instructed absolutely to exterminate Soviet women in military service as well as political officers.

And what can be said of the following statement, appalling in its boundless cynicism: "...human life in the countries concerned is not of value at all. . . a terrifying influence can only be achieved by unheard-of brutality." And what can we say of the directive of 13 May 1941 introducing courts-martial in the "Barbarossa" region? And of the order of 16 October 1941 calling for the execution of 80 to 100 Communists for each German killed? What could Keitel say about the document known as "Nacht und Nebel"?

These are documents stained in blood. No one can compute how many thousands of prisoners of war, soldiers and officers of the Red Army, had been killed and tortured to death in the camps of fascist Germany. You remember how on 21 January 1946 at the afternoon session the witness Lampe testified that for Himmler's amusement the shooting of 50 Soviet officers was organized in Mauthausen Camp. You remember the witness Blaha testifying that in the spring of 1944, 94 Soviet senior military officers were tortured and then killed for refusing to impart military information. I should like to mention the testimony of the SS man, Paul Waldmann, regarding the slaughter of 840 Russian prisoners of war. You remember the testimony of the witness Kivelisha regarding the endless chain of scoffing and suffering to which all Russians captured by the Germans were subjected?

It is impossible to overlook Keitel's directive calling for the branding of Soviet prisoners of war. One cannot forget the Keitel directive of 16 December 1942. It is entitled "Measures to be adopted

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against bands." Under the word "bands" Defendant Keitel understood any resistance movement and demanded that his troops revert to harshest methods, stopping at nothing, even with regard to women and children.

The Soviet Prosecution submitted Le Court's testimony as Document Number USSR-162. Le Court states that he shot and burned Soviet citizens and razed their houses. He alone had shot over 1,200 persons and for this achievement was prematurely promoted to the rank of Obergefreiter and awarded the medal for service in the East. He acted in accordance with Keitel's directives.

The directive of Keitel's instituting courts-martial in the "Barbarossa" region freed such persons of all responsibility for their crimes. Keitel's hands are stained with the blood of the victims of Le Court and his kind. It was in carrying out Keitel's directive to the effect that "life in the eastern regions was of no value at all," that the soldiers and officers of Hitlerite Germany committed their atrocities.

Document Number USSR-51, submitted by the Prosecution, shows how, on 28 August 1941, attacking German troops drove a group of women, children, and old men in front of their combat units. In the village of Kolpino the fascists forced the peasants to dig trenches and build bridges for them. Then they shot all the peasants.

In Yugoslavia the mass shooting of hostages was a daily practice of the Armed Forces and military administration. In a secret report of 15 February 1940, addressed to Goering, the OKW justifies the practice of seizing hostages.

I wish to conclude with Exhibit Number USSR-356, Document Number EC-338, which Your Honors will, of course, remember. In this document Admiral Canaris informs Keitel of the club law prevalent in the prisoner-of-war camps, of the hunger, and of the mass shootings of Soviet prisoners of war. Even that hardened fascist spy, Canaris, fearing eventual responsibility, could not ignore a cruelty which cried to High Heaven and a flagrant violation of all accepted laws and customs of warfare.

You will remember Keitel's note on this report: "I approve and support these measures."

On 7 April 1946 in the course of the cross-examination, I put the following question to Keitel:

"You, Defendant Keitel, called a Field Marshal, repeatedly referred to yourself as a soldier before this Tribunal, and you, by your bloodthirsty resolution of September 1941 approved and sanctioned the murder, in cold blood, of thousands of unarmed captured soldiers. Do you confirm this?"

Keitel was forced to admit this fact.

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This resolution alone unveils the true, the authentic face of Field Marshal Keitel. The highly involved arguments of the defense cannot absolve him of his responsibility for the bloodshed and for the innumerable human lives cut short by the fascist military clique acting on orders and directives signed by Keitel's hand.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will recess now.

[A recess was taken.]

GENERAL RUDENKO: Jodl.

The Defendant Alfred Jodl shares equal responsibility with Defendant Keitel as his assistant and as Hitler's closest military adviser. Everything connected with the preparation and execution of the aggressive plans of Hitlerite Germany is inseparably linked to the name of Jodl, as well as to Keitel's. There is no need to repeat all the aggressive acts of Hitler's Germany which had been individually planned and executed with the direct connivance of Defendant Jodl. They are already facts of common knowledge.

As the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I should like to emphasize once again that the criminal plan for the perfidious attack on the Soviet Union, coded by the Hitler clique under the name of the ill-fated Conqueror, Friedrich Barbarossa, is signed not only by Hitler and Keitel, but by Jodl as well. But this is more than a mere signature.

As far back as the summer of 1940, in Reichenhall, Jodl held the first conference with his staff officers at which the question of a possible attack by Hitler Germany on Soviet Russia was discussed. It was the Defendant Jodl alone who, even before the attack against the U.S.S.R., issued his well-known "Instructions on the Use of Propaganda in the 'Barbarossa' Region." In these instructions it is definitely stated that "propaganda directed at the partition of the Soviet Union should not, as yet, be carried out."

Thus, Defendant Jodl knew beforehand of the actual aims of Germany's attack on the U.S.S.R. and knew of the predatory, violent nature of a war which called for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. It was Jodl who participated in the preparation and organization of a provocative incident staged on the Czechoslovak border intended to justify the aggressive act of Hitler's Germany against this peace-loving nation. It was Jodl who signed the directive of 28 September 1938 regarding the order in which the so-called Henlein Corps was to be used should Case Green be realized. How full of derision are the words of the Defendant Jodl about the "honor of the soldier" when we read his order for the destruction of Leningrad,

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Moscow, and other cities of the Soviet Union. It was this selfsame Jodl who with inimitable cynicism declared at a conference with Hitler on 1 December 1941 that German troops could with impunity "hang by the feet and quarter" the Soviet patriots.

As Hitler's closest military adviser, who had personally participated in the preparation and execution of all the bloodthirsty and aggressive plans of Hitlerite Germany, Defendant Jodl has been justly included in the ranks of the major German war criminals.

Doenitz and Raeder.

My British colleague has proved the guilt of Defendants Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder so convincingly and thoroughly that I see no need to dwell particularly on these Grossadmirals of Hitlerite Germany, who have stained their admirals' uniforms by such infamous crimes.

In the course of his cross-examination Doenitz told the Soviet prosecutor that he was unaware of the reasons for which Hitler had appointed him as his successor. I do not believe that Doenitz was quite sincere in making this statement. One has only to refer to the transcripts of the sessions of 8 May in order to understand without any confession on his part why he became Hitler's successor when the Hitlerite Reich collapsed to the ground. The important point is not the fact that an admiral was needed at a moment like this, but the fact that in the opinion of Hitler, who so soon was to fade from the picture, only the Nazi Grossadmiral Doenitz could do anything to save the sinking ship.

Under Hitler Doenitz commanded the submarine arm of the German Reich. We know the role which the German U-boats played in this war. In this connection it is worth emphasizing that Doenitz prided himself on being the author of the so-called "wolf-pack tactics." The people of the Soviet have not forgotten how Doenitz' submarines, in the Baltic and Black Seas, sank both hospital ships and steamers evacuating peaceful citizens-women and children.

The last head of the Hitlerite Government should also be one of the first to pay the penalty for all those crimes which have led to the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal.

The name of Raeder is linked to the impious directive for the destruction of Leningrad. At the Trial Raeder tried to act the part of an "honest soldier." But the mere fact that it was he, together with Hitler and Keitel, who conspired to "wipe Leningrad off the face of the earth" and to exterminate more than 3 million of the population of that great city, whose very name is indissolubly connected with the development of -the culture and history of mankind, makes Raeder one of the major war criminals.

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Raeder participated in drafting all the most important plans of aggression of German fascism. This participant in the criminal fascist conspiracy must, therefore, bear the punishment meted out to his associates.

Kaltenbrunner.

The Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner was considered by Himmler as the most deserving successor to that hangman, Heydrich, executed by Czech patriots. On 30 January 1943, he was appointed head of the Reich Security Main Office and chief of the SD.

Numerous documents and especially directives signed by Kaltenbrunner for the mass deportation of people to the concentration camps, the testimonies of his subordinates, including the depositions of Walter Schellenberg, former chief of foreign intelligence (Amt VI), and of Otto Ohlendorf, chief of the security within Germany (Amt III or SD), fully convict Kaltenbrunner of the most heinous crimes.

At the session of 12 April 1946, in the course of Kaltenbrunner's examination, the testimonies of Johann Kandutor, ex-prisoner of Mauthausen, were read into the record. In his depositions Kandutor described as follows the manner in which Kaltenbrunner passed his time on one of his visits to the camp:

"Laughing, Kaltenbrunner entered the gas chamber; then the prisoners were led from the barracks to execution and all three methods of execution were demonstrated-hanging, shooting in the neck, and gassing"

I shall not dwell upon the numerous proofs available, since they have been sufficiently clarified before the Tribunal. There is only one point of the accusation against Kaltenbrunner on which I consider it necessary to dwell.

Together with the other RSHA organizations, Kaltenbrunner took over from Heydrich five Einsatzgruppen. The citizens of the Soviet Union well remember these cruel organizations of German fascism, headed by Kaltenbrunner. Einsatzgruppe A reached the approaches to Leningrad. It created the "Fort of Death Number 9" near Kaunas and the secret center for the mass extermination of human beings in Panarai; it carried out executions by shooting in the woods of Salaspilsk and Bikerneksk near Riga; it erected gallows in the parks of Pushkino one of Leningrad's suburbs.

Einsatzgruppe B settled down in the vicinity of Smolensk. It burned alive the peasants of Byelorussia; it shot down the victims of the awful Pinsk action; it drowned thousands of Byelorussian women and children in the Masurian Lakes; it operated with "murder vans" in Minsk; it liquidated the ghetto in the Verchnye Sadka district of Smolensk.

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Einsatzgruppe C was billeted in Kiev. This group carried out the mass action in Babij Jar near Kiev, an execution unmatched in cruelty, when 100,000 Soviet citizens perished on a single day.

Einsatzgruppe D operated in the southern regions of the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union. This group was the first to experiment with the "murder vans" on Soviet citizens in the district of Stavropol and in Krasnodar.

And when Kaltenbrunner's fate will be decided, all the victims asphyxiated in the "murder vans" near Stavropol, buried alive in the graves near Kiev and Riga, burnt alive in the Byelorussian villages, must never be forgotten. All these innocent victims are on his unclean conscience.

Successor to a hangman, and himself a hangman, Kaltenbrunner carried out the most revolting function in the common criminal plan of the Hitlerite clique.

Rosenberg.

I shall now summarize the evidence relevant to the guilt and responsibility of the Defendant Rosenberg.

In spite of Rosenberg's efforts to minimize both his role and his importance, in spite of his efforts to juggle with historical facts and events, he cannot deny that he was the official ideologist of the Nazi Party; that already a quarter of a century ago, he had laid the "theoretical" foundations of the fascist Hitlerite State, which during this whole period morally corrupted millions of Germans, preparing them "ideologically" for the monstrous crimes committed by the Hitlerites-crimes unprecedented in history, and which are the subject of this Trial.

When, at the Trial, Rosenberg was asked: "Were you not one of Hitler's closest collaborators?" he did not even speak-he shouted in reply: "That is not true, I never was." But however hard Rosenberg tried to deny his "Fuehrer," he has not succeeded in washing away the stigma of being "one of the oldest and the most faithful of Hitler's comrades-in-arms." For 25 years Rosenberg, first acting as Hitler's collaborator and afterward under his direction, worked out and assisted in the realization of the fantastic plan for world supremacy, having chosen, for the justification of this criminal plan, the misanthropic theory of racism.

The fact that Rosenberg utilized for his purposes garbled science and borrowed theories from Karl Lueger and Paul Lagarde, Count Gobineau, Oswald Spengler, and Arthur Moeller cannot affect the question of Rosenberg's guilt and responsibility. The important fact is that Rosenberg, having assembled all these "scientific excrete," raised the racial theories to a degree of racial fanaticism and

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educated in this spirit the members of the Nazi Party and the youth of Germany. And when the representatives of the "master race" elaborated and committed acts of aggression, when the German occupation troops enslaved and exterminated nations and peoples, when the factories of death were created at Maidanek and Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno, Rosenberg's share in all these crimes was not insignificant. All this was the outcome of the fascist racial ideology, the essence of which consists in the idea that the 'Aryan, North Germanic" race is a "master race," and that all other races and nations belong to "lower strata."

Rosenberg's counsel said: "The Tribunal must judge crimes and not theories." In Rosenberg's case such an argument is clearly unconvincing. For Rosenberg not only confessed the fascist racial theory, but knowingly propagated it and instilled it into the conscience of the German people, this very theory which became a direct menace to the existence of the democratic European states. The person who carries microbes must be isolated, but the person who willingly disseminates microbes must be tried.

Rosenberg's criminal activities were not limited to the ideological preparation for aggression and to the propagation of man-hating theories. His activities had many facets. The criminal activities of the foreign policy department of the NSDAP have already been sufficiently elucidated at this Trial; this department, which for many years was subordinated to the Defendant Rosenberg, was in charge of a network of semilegal Nazi agencies abroad. The influence of this organization on the measures of foreign policy undertaken by Hitlerite Germany and in the initiation of aggressive wars was very great indeed.

One of the documents submitted by Neurath's counsel and accepted by the Tribunal reads as follows:

"There existed at one time in Berlin three sorts of ministries for foreign affairs: Herr Rosenberg's Ministry, Herr Von Ribbentrop's Ministry, and the official ministry on Wilhelmstrasse."

And finally, Rosenberg's letter to Hitler of 6 February 1938

stressed his real influence on the foreign policy of Hitlerite Germany and his "merits" in this field, when he applied for membership in the Secret Cabinet Council.

I see no need for giving an analysis of all Rosenberg's criminal activities and I only intend to dwell briefly on his activities as "Fuehrer's plenipotentiary" and later as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. In these functions Rosenberg most clearly showed himself as a participant in the criminal conspiracy.

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Rosenberg declares that he was against war with the U.S.S.R. and that he learned from Hitler about the preparations for an attack against the U.S.S.R. only when all the orders to military channels had already been issued, that he never really had any influence on the foreign policy of Hitlerite Germany. I affirm, Your Honors, that all these declarations of Rosenberg are false.

It is a well-known fact that the plan for a German crusade against Soviet Russia was actually the starting point of the National Socialist foreign policy, as set out in the 1921 New Year publication of the Volkischer Beobachter, and that the author of this policy was Alfred Rosenberg. It was Rosenberg who, inspired by Ludendorff and Rechherg, propagated-together with Hitler-a foreign policy directed toward the creation of an anti-Semitic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-British continent of Europe.

Rosenberg's speeches, setting out plans for the "exchange" of the Polish Corridor for the Ukraine, his "diplomatic" journeys into certain countries after the seizure of power by the fascists, his clumsy efforts to realize the foreign policy program of the fascists, were widely voiced in the press.

The documents submitted give a clear picture of Rosenberg's feverish activities in April 1941 during the period immediately preceding the attack by Germany on the U.S.S.R., when he was nominated the Fuehrer's plenipotentiary for the central control of the questions connected with the eastern European territories.

On 7 April 1941, 2 weeks prior to his nomination, Rosenberg sent his proposals to Hitler for the division of the Soviet Union into Reich Commissariats and for the appointment of fascist governors for the occupied. Byelorussia and the Ukraine, Minsk and Kiev, Rostov and Tiflis, Leningrad and Moscow, were all enumerated in Rosenberg's proposals. For the post of Reich Commissioner of Moscow, Rosenberg recommended the notorious Erich Koch.

We have heard about Rosenberg's meetings with Brauchitsch and Raeder and of his conferences with Funk, General Thomas, State Secretary Backe and others, on the questions of economic exploitation of the eastern territories, and about his negotiations with Ribbentrop, the SA chief of staff, and the chief of the German Intelligence Service, Admiral Canaris. Already 6 weeks prior to the attack on the U.S.S.R. he drafted directives for all the Reich Commissioners of the eastern territories to be occupied, in which he provided for a "Reich Commissariat Russia" and a "Reich Commissariat Caucasus," while the Byelorussian Republic was to form a part of the "Reich Commissariat Ostland."

Rosenberg attempted to affirm that he did not share in the aggressive and predatory aims of the war against the U.S.S.R. and

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that on the contrary, in his capacity of Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, he even loaded with benefits the population of these territories. And this he dared to affirm, when the directive to the Reich Commissioner of the Baltic States and Byelorussia described his aims as follows:

". . . the creation of a German protectorate for the purpose of subsequent inclusion of these regions in the Greater German Reich, by the Germanization of elements suitable from the racial point of view, by the colonization by representatives of the Germanic race, and by the extermination of all undesirable elements."

And this is maintained after the following recommendations were made in another of Rosenberg's directives on the subject of the civil administration in the Eastern Occupied Territories:

"The main and foremost task... is the furtherance of the interests of the Reich. The regulations of the Hague Convention regarding land warfare are no more valid, since we can consider the U.S.S.R. defeated.... For this reason, all measures which the German administration may consider necessary or convenient are admissible."

Rosenberg was too hasty in his assertion that the U.S.S.R. was defeated, he let the cat out of the bag and gave away his most secret plans. But this document is also an irrefutable proof, invalidating all the attempts of the defendant to cast the burden of responsibility for the monstrous crimes perpetrated by the German fascist oppressors throughout the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. from his own shoulders to those of individual officials and policemen, to Koch and Himmler.

It was Rosenberg who permitted the repudiation of the Hague Convention and the utilization of all measures which might seem "convenient." When Koch, for his "convenience," exterminated the population of the entire Buman district, he was merely acting in the spirit of this directive of Rosenberg's.

Rosenberg described here his dissensions with Koch. He alleged that he followed a humanitarian policy and even imported agricultural machinery. Even if Rosenberg did indeed, from time to times object to Kodh's actions, it was only because he was afraid of premature publicity, and because he was afraid that Koch's unparalleled ill-treatment of the. Ukrainian people would only strengthen the resistance movement. Rosenberg was influenced by fear and not by any humanitarian considerations. Rosenberg's true policy is set out in numerous documents which have now become known to the public opinion of the world and which are in the files of the Tribunal.

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In an official note for the Fuehrer dated 16 March 1942, Rosenberg set out the aims of the German policy in the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. and, primarily, in the Ukraine:

". . .the utilization of minerals, the creation of a German colony in certain regions, no artificial intellectual development of the population, but its preservation as a source of manpower."

In his report on the reorganization of the Caucasus Rosenberg wrote that:

"The problem of the Ostland consists in the transplanting of the Baltic nations to the soil of German culture and in the preparation for an adequate German strategic frontier. The task of the Ukraine is to secure necessary food supplies for' Germany and Europe, and raw materials for the continent. The problem of the Caucasus is primarily a political problem and it will lead to the expansion of continental Europe, headed by Germany, from the isthmus of the Caucasus to the Near East."

And finally, I would like to point out that it was Rosenberg who had made the following statement in a speech before the German Labor Front, on the policy adopted in the occupied U.S.S.R. territories: "It seems that if these peoples are left to themselves, arbitrary justice and tyranny will be the most suitable form of government." The Defense affirm that Rosenberg and his Einsatzstab were not concerned with the plunder of cultural treasures, but with their preservation. This statement is also entirely false. Numerous documents read into the record at this Trial have proved that as early as April 1941, that is, more than 2 months prior to the attack on the U.S.S.R., Rosenberg was organizing special units and staffs and was elaborating plans for the removal of the cultural treasures of the Soviet Union.

On 16 October 1941 Rosenberg wrote to Hitler as follows:

"I have issued an order to the same Einsatzstab of my organization now to carry out in a more comprehensive manner in the Eastern Occupied Territories the work already accomplished in the West.... having the whole picture before our eyes, we can satisfy all the just wishes and demands of the agencies of the Greater German Reich. On this basis I would also be willing personally to guarantee that all the art treasures for Linz and other museums which can be utilized for your own plans, my Fuehrer, were factually used for this purpose."

On 17 October 1944 Rosenberg wrote to Lammers that for the transport of goods "listed" by his organization, it was necessary to use 1,418,000 railroad cars, while 427,000 further tons were shipped

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by water. In this same letter Rosenberg mentioned that among the confiscated goods removed to Germany, there were 9,000 cars with agricultural and other machinery. And after this he dares to speak about some machines which he has allegedly imported into the Ukraine!

And finally I shall speak about the ridiculous theory of the so-called Rosenberg's "noble anti-Semitism." It is absurd to argue with Rosenberg's counsel who affirms that such a thing as a "noble anti-Semitism" really exists' and it is an the more absurd to argue with Rosenberg. In my statement to the Tribunal I threw some light on the fascist propaganda contained in the speech of the Defense. I would now like to recall to the Tribunal the text of two of Rosenberg's documents:

In his directive of 29 April 1941 he wrote:

"The Jewish problem requires a general settlement; temporary measures are to be decided upon. (Compulsory labor for Jews, the creation of ghettos, et cetera).''

Even more cynical and frank is the statement made by Rosenberg in November 1942 when he, in his capacity of Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, addressed a conference of the German Labor Front:

"We must not be satisfied"-said Rosenberg-"with the deportation of Jews from one country to another and with the existence, here or there, of a large Jewish ghetto; no, our object must always remain the same. The Jewish problem in Europe and in Germany will be solved only when there are no more Jews left on the European continent."

And all the operations "Cottbus" for the extermination of Jews in the Baltic towns, in the Ukraine and Byelorussia-all these were carried out in conformity with Rosenberg's theories and with his agreement.

In 1937 Rosenberg received the German National Prize. Commenting on this event, the fascist press wrote as follows:

"Alfred Rosenberg has brilliantly succeeded with his books in building up the scientific and spiritual foundations and in consolidating and strengthening the philosophy of National Socialism.... Only future generations will be able fully to appreciate the profound influence of this man on the philosophical foundations of the National Socialist Reich."

But the future has now become the present. And I am sure that the Tribunal will be able duly to appreciate not only the influence exercised by Rosenberg on the "philosophical foundations of the National Socialist Reich," but also his active participation in all the crimes against peace and humanity perpetrated by the Hitlerites.

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Frank.

A lawyer by training, the Defendant Hans Frank was one of those who liked to tank about the reception of the "ancient German" law for Germans, about "principles of justice" for the "select," about the "right of the chosen people" to annihilate nations and countries.

In 1939 he was the man who for a long time past had been corrupting the German legal concept, to whom Hitler entrusted the fate of subjugated Poland. Frank arrived in Poland to realize practically his entire program for the enslavement and extermination of the people on the territory of a country with an age-old history and with its own culture of high standing.

I should like to remind the Tribunal of some of Frank's views expressed during the first months of his stay in Poland, taken from his so-called "diary." It is hardly worth while to discuss with the counsel the probative value of this document. Frank himself declared to the Court that "this document was of historical importance" and to the question, "whether all his statements contained in the diary were true," he replied "they fully correspond to what I know."

On 19 January 1940 Frank declared with cynical frankness, at a conference of the departmental leaders:

"On 15 September 1939 I was entrusted with the task of governing the conquered Eastern Territories and received a special order to ruin this territory ruthlessly as a war territory and a war trophy, and to turn it into a heap of rubble from the viewpoint of the social, economic, cultural, and political structure."

On 31 October 1939, in the presence of Goebbels, at a conference uniting the leading officials of the Government General, he declared: "A perfectly clear differentiation must be made between the German people-the master race-and the Poles."

He then remembered that Polish culture which Frank, as counsel Dr. Seidl has said here, cared for so greatly. He stated:

"The Poles can be allowed only those possibilities for educating themselves which would prove the hopelessness of the destiny of their nation. Bad films alone or films demonstrating the might and greatness of the Germans can be taken into consideration for this purpose."

One of Frank's first instructions was the order to shoot hostages. Later on similar orders were to be counted by the hundreds and by the thousands until they finally culminated in the edition of the regulation dated 2 October 1943.

On 10 November 1939 Frank was informed that the day of Polish independence was approaching and that posters were to be

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hung up on certain houses to remind the Poles of their national holiday. The following entry then appeared in Frank's diary:

". . . the Governor General decreed that one inhabitant of the male sex is to be taken from every house on which an affixed poster of this kind is not removed and is to be shot.

"The Pole must feel that we do not intend building a constitutional state for him."

The short extract we are quoting from the speech Frank made at the conference of the chiefs of departments of the Government General characterizes this Hitlerite "lawyer" far better than any lengthy excerpts taken from his full-dress speeches which we were obliged to listen to here.

Frank's criminal activities in Poland were so very manifold that there is no possibility, in a short speech' to reconstruct to the Tribunal the innumerable proofs of his guilt which have been submitted in this courtroom and which are evidently still fresh in the memory of the judges.

But from Frank's criminal activities in Poland vice must isolate that predominant trait which is Frank's criminal activity as the murderer of millions of people. Of course he looted; he was Goering's plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan and he looted, so to say, "in the course of his duties."

He sent over 2 million Poles to Germany for forced labor. The attempt of the defense to represent Frank as "the enemy of coercive methods of recruitment" can be based only on the assumption that nobody excepting counsel had studied Frank's diaries. For Frank never can escape documents such as the minutes of the meeting of the departmental leaders, dated 12 April 1940, or the notes of Gauleiter Sauckel of 18 August 1942, or the transcript of the meeting with Buhler, Kruger, and others of 21 April 1940.

But he sent people to forced labor in order to wring them dry in the interests of the Reich before sending them to their doom. The regime, established by Hans Frank throughout Poland during all the stages of the temporary German domination in this country, was a regime for the inhuman destruction of millions of people by varied, but invariably criminal, methods.

It is not merely incidental that the German fascist assassins who annihilated 11,000 Polish prisoner-of-war officers in Katyn forest should refer to the regime which Frank instituted in Poland as an example for their own activities-as the Tribunal has been able to ascertain not so very long ago in this courtroom from the evidence presented by the former deputy mayor of Smolensk- Professor Bazilevsky.

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I consider it to be particularly important, at this point, to emphasize the concept Frank had of the relations with the Polish population after the war:

"I insistently draw your attention"-said Frank-"to the fact that, should peace be concluded, nothing would change in this respect. This peace will signify that we, as a world power, will conduct more firmly than hitherto our general line of policy. This peace would signify that we will have to carry out colonization on a still far greater scale, but the principle will not have changed."

This was stated in 1940 when Frank was contemplating the first mass murder of the Polish "intelligentsia," the so-called "AB Action."

In 1944, at the meeting of the agricultural leaders at Zakopane Frank said:

"If we win the war, then, as far as I care, we could make mincemeat of the Poles and Ukrainians and of all those who are idling around... then come what may."

It was not Frank's fault that as far back as 1944, dreaming to make "mincemeat" of Poles and Ukrainians, he was compelled to add "if we win the war." At this time he could not be so emphatic

in his utterings as on 2 August 1943, when at the reception of the Party speakers in the Royal Palace of the Krakow Castle he spoke about the exterminated Polish Jews: "Here we started out with 3,500,000 Jews, now but a few workers' companies remain of this number. All the others have-let us say-emigrated."

Both Frank and his counsel attempted to prove that the defendant had known nothing about the happenings in the concentration camps of the Government General. However, in these secret reports addressed by Frank to Hitler, which counsel tried to utilize on Frank's behalf, we may find a confirmation of the fact that Frank was well informed about what was occurring in the camps. It is said there: "The majority of the Polish intellectuals have not reacted to the news from Katyn and quote in answer similar atrocities in Auschwitz."

Frank then quotes a highly characteristic passage describing the reaction of the Polish workers to the provocative communications of the Germans about Katyn. "There are concentration camps in Auschwitz and Maidanek where mass murder of the Poles was carried out on assembly lines." And further:

"Today, unfortunately, Polish public opinion, and not the intellectuals alone, compares Katyn to the mass death rate in the German concentration camps, as well as to the shooting of men, women, and even of children and old people, during the infliction of collective punishment in the districts."

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After the secret report addressed to Hitler no other new course was adopted by Frank. On the contrary, Frank published his regulation of 2 October 1943 which the defendant himself termed as "dreadful" when questioned by his counsel. After this regulation had been carried into effect, many thousands of innocent people became the victims of this decision. The number of executions increased steadily till it amounted to 200 persons executed at one time in Warsaw.

The same happened in the streets of all the Polish towns where the so-called "police courts" carried out executions, as stated in the text of the regulation itself, immediately following the verdict. The people doomed to die were brought to the execution grounds, wearing paper clothing, their lips glued together with adhesive tape, or their mouths stuffed with plaster. After their imprisonment they seemed to have been drained of the last drop of blood. At the state conference held in Krakow on 16 December 1943, where Frank stated with satisfaction that the executions had had "favorable consequences," another question was simultaneously discussed. In the records of this conference it is stated:

"One must perhaps also consider whether special places of execution should not be created for this, for it had been ascertained that the Polish population streamed to places of execution which were accessible to all, in order to put the blood-soaked earth into containers and take these to the church."

The defense counsel tried to speak here about the interminable dissensions of Frank with the Police; he had allegedly disagreed with their action. Let us see what kind of dissensions these were.

The first special action carried out in Poland, namely, the AB Action-the extermination of several thousands of Polish intellectuals-had not been initiated by the Police, but by Frank himself. According to Hitler's decree of 2 May 1942, the chief of Police was subordinated to the Governor General. When some dissensions between Frank and the chief of Police did arise, it was Kruger who had to leave his post of Police chief, whereas Frank remained Governor General of Poland. As for Obergruppenfuehrer Koppe, who took over from Kruger, who else but Frank expressed his thanks to him on I6 December 1943 for shooting the hostages, his "gratitude for his fruitful work" and noted with satisfaction, "One of the greatest specialists is at the head of the Police in the Government General." It is incomprehensible what dissensions with the Police counsel Seidl was talking about.

The defense even tried to represent Frank as "a kind of peaceful anti-Semite," who, while entertaining a negative attitude toward the Jewish people, never initiated massacres of the Jews or even

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instigated them. It is incomprehensible in this case how the following words of Frank would be interpreted by the counsel: "The Jews are a race that should be exterminated. Wherever we catch even one, we shall do away with him."

Or his declaration at the government session of 24 August 1942, when he said:

"The fact that we have condemned 1.2 million Jews to starvation may only be mentioned by the way. It stands to reason that if these Jews do not die of starvation, it will precipitate active measures against the Jews."

The criminal activity of this hangman of the Polish nation led to the extermination of millions.

"You see how the state organs are working, you see that they do not shrink before anything and people by the dozen are put up against the wall." This is the manner in which Frank himself, at a conference of the Standartenfuehrer held on 18 March 1942, characterized the bloody regime of terror set up throughout Poland.

"I did not hesitate to declare that for one German killed, up to a hundred Poles would be shot"-these words were pronounced by Frank on 15 January 1944, at a meeting of the Political Leaders of the NSDAP. "Had I gone to the Fuehrer and told him: 'My Fuehrer, I report that I have destroyed another 150,000 Poles,' he would have said: 'Fine, if it was necessary"'-Frank stated this on 18 March 1944 while making a speech at the Reichshof, that same Frank who now tries to convince the Tribunal that he had some "differences of opinion on matters of principle" with Hitler and Himmler.

Those declarations that Frank made during the first months of his stay in Poland constituted a genuine murder program, perpetrated by the defendant methodically, ruthlessly, and according to plan. Frank, of course, was fully aware of the fact that should war not lead to victory he would have to bear the full responsibility for the crimes committed in Poland, as well as for his participation in the fascist conspiracy. As far back as 1943 Frank spoke about this at a meeting with his accomplices. We must give credit where it is due: As a lawyer he was far more correct in his depiction and formulation of the concepts of a criminal conspiracy than certain lawyers at this Trial who, basing themselves on obsolete ideas, endeavor to dispute the foundation for a conspiracy put forward by the Prosecution. It was at this government meeting, held jointly with the Police on 25 January 1943, that the then Governor General declared to Himmler's hyenas:

". . . I should like to state one thing: We must not be squeamish when we learn that a total of 17,000 people have been shot.

After all, these people who were shot are also war victims . . . We must remember that all of us who are gathered together

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here figure on Mr. Roosevelt's list of war criminals. I have the honor of being Number One. We have therefore become, so to speak, accomplices in the sense of world history. For this very reason we must get together, we must feel together, and it would be ridiculous if we were to let ourselves get involved in any squabbles over methods."

This appeal to murder is very far from the "interminable quarrels with the Police" which Frank's counsel has mentioned here.

The defendant made a mistake about one thing: He was incorrect in defining his place in the dock. But he was not mistaken about the fundamental facts: He took his place in the dock as a "criminal in the sense of world history."

Frick.

The history of the development of the Nazi movement in Germany and the numerous crimes of the Hitlerites is indissolubly connected with the name of the Defendant Wilhelm Frick. As Minister of the Interior of the Hitlerite Government, Frick participated in the promulgation of numerous laws, decrees and other acts directed at the destruction of democracy in Germany, the persecution of the Church, the discrimination against the Jews, et cetera. Ida this capacity the Defendant Frick contributed actively to the creation in Germany of the Hitlerite totalitarian State.

Over a period of many years the German Secret State Police- Gestapo-which was to acquire a grim and ill-famed reputation was subordinated to the Defendant Frick. The directive concerning the extermination of old people and of the insane was issued in 1940 by none other than the Defendant Frick. In his function of Minister of the Interior in Hitlerite Germany, as testified by the witness Gisevius in this Court, Frick was fully cognizant of the vast system of concentration camps spread throughout the Reich, as well as of the existence in these camps of an inhuman regime.

The part played by the Defendant Frick in the preparation and realization of the Hitlerite Government's aggressive plans was very considerable. He was a member of the Reich Defense Council as well as Plenipotentiary General for Administration. All the documents by which the Hitlerite conspirators legalized the incorporation by Germany of the territories seized were signed, among the other Hitlerite ringleaders, also by the Defendant Frick.

In his capacity of Protector of Bohemia and Moravia the Defendant Frick bears personal responsibility for all the crimes committed on that territory by the Hitlerites.

After the treacherous attack of Hitlerite Germany on the Soviet

Union, the Defendant Frick's Ministry of the Interior participated. actively in creating the administration of the territories seized in

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the U.S.S.R. The administrative machinery of the German occupational authorities in the East was mainly staffed by officials of the Ministry of the Interior.

There is no need to dwell once again on the part played by this administrative machinery, which had been created with the most active co-operation of the Defendant Frick, for the extermination, enslavement and the other inhuman actions carried out against the civilian population of the occupied territories.

Frick bears full and direct responsibility for all these crimes, inasmuch as he was an active participant in the Nazi conspiracy.

Streicher.

Notwithstanding the fact that during the war years the Defendant Julius Streicher did not formally hold functions directly connected with the perpetration of murders and mass executions, it is hard to overestimate the crimes committed by this man. Together with Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Pohl, and those who conceived, constructed and brought into action the gas chambers and gas wagons; together with those who personally committed mass actions, Streicher must bear responsibility for the "monstrous crimes of German fascism. The incitement to national and racial dissension, the cultivation of perverted cruelty and the call to murder-all these not only represented the Party duties of this man for many years, they were also the source of his income.

And it is not by accident that in his greeting to Streicher of April 1937, which is already known to the Tribunal, Himmler expressed his high esteem for the merits of the Sturmer and of its editor-in-chief.

One can consider Streicher as the actual "spiritual father" of those who quartered the children of Treblinka. Had it not been for the Sturmer and its editor German fascism would not have been able to educate, at such short notice, those mass murder gangs who put into effect the criminal plans of Hitler and his thugs by murdering over 6 million European Jews. Over a period of many years Streicher spiritually corrupted the children and the youth of Germany. The detestable "children's editions" of Der Sturmer have been submitted to the Tribunal.

And therefore, together with Baldur van Schirach, Streicher must bear responsibility for the selection of Jewish children from the Lvov ghetto for target practice by the morally perverted Hitlerjugend. It is not by accident that Von Schirach held Streicher's "historical merits" in so high esteem.

The fanatical Nuremberg Laws were only the "beginning of the struggle" for this "Judophobe Number 1," as he called himself, who was also the organizer of the first anti-Jewish pogroms. As the Tribunal will recall, after these laws were issued, Streicher called

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for the actual extermination of the Jews in Europe and wrote: "This problem will only be solved when world Jewry is exterminated."

I will not dwell on the shameless and mendacious "ritual murder numbers" of Der Sturmer, intended to incite the SS men to the killing of millions of innocent persons and to justify any atrocity directed against the Jews. These proofs of Streicher's guilt, which were inter alia submitted to the Tribunal, are indisputable and of common knowledge. In 1939 he anticipated Maidanek and Treblinka and wrote that "perhaps graves alone will testify to the previous existence of Jews in Europe." In 1943, when the gas chambers of Treblinka and Auschwitz were already engulfing millions of victims, Der Sturmer published articles inciting to the liquidation of the "ghetto," articles full of lies and malice; and finally Der Sturmer could state with sadistical satisfaction, that "the Jews of Europe have disappeared."

Streicher lied all his life. He attempted to lie here in Court. I do not know whether he believed he would be able to deceive anybody by these lies, or whether he lied from habit or from fear. But it seems to me that it must be apparent, even to the defendant himself, that his last lie will not deceive anybody and will never bring him salvation.

Schacht.

In carrying out a vast and complicated task, the Defendant Hjalmar Schacht played a prominent part in the preparation and realization of the criminal plans of the Nazi conspirators. Schacht's position, where his defense is concerned, is extremely simple.

If he is to be believed, purely patriotic motives attracted him to Hitlerism. He was against aggressive wars but in favor of rearmament for Germany in order to maintain peace. He was all for the return. of Germany's colonies in view of establishing economic stability in Europe. Having come to the conviction that the policy of the Nazi Government was directed toward excessive armament and thereby threatened with another world war, Schacht went over to the opposition. He sabotaged the measures taken by the Hitlerite Government and, as a result, he was persecuted as a participant in the plot against Hitler. Defendant Schacht now strives to depict the enthusiastic letters, full of expressions of loyalty, which he addressed to Hitler, as a method of camouflaging his true feeling of opposition toward the Hitlerite regime.

Actually, Schacht's connection with the Nazi movement dates back to 1930. Schacht gravitated toward National Socialism, and both Hitler and Goering sought Schacht's support. Indeed the latter, with his vast connections in Germany's industrial and financial spheres, could, better than anyone else, render invaluable services

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to the Nazi movement. And this he did. As far back as 29 August 1932, in a letter addressed to Hitler, Schacht assured the latter of his loyalty.

These were not mere words, for more than anybody Defendant Schacht played a decisive part in Hitler's advent to power. It was he, Schacht, who organized the demand formulated by the German industrialists for Hitler to be appointed Reich Chancellor. As early as 1932 he, Schacht, advised Von Papen, then Reich Chancellor of Germany, to hand over his post to Hitler. It was Schacht again who in 1933 on the eve of the Reichstag elections called a conference of industrialists who collected an election fund of several million marks for the Nazi Party.

Hitler's closest follower, Goebbels, thus characterized the part played by Schacht and his importance in the creation of Nazi Germany. On 21 November 1932 he wrote down in his diary: "In a talk with Dr. Schacht I came to the conviction that he fully shares our point of view. He is one of the few who absolutely agrees with the position of the Fuehrer."

In his Leipzig spring fair speech on 4 March 1935 the Defendant Schacht himself defined his part in the Nazi State:

"I can assure you that all that I do and say is in full agreement with the F0hrer and that I will do and say nothing that would not be approved by the Fuehrer. That is why it is with the Fuehrer, and not with me, that all decisions rest in economic matters."

As expected by Schacht, Hitler appreciated his merits at their full value. On his advent to power in 1933 Hitler first appointed Schacht to the post of president of the Reichsbank then to that of Reich Minister of Economics and finally to the post of Plenipotentiary for War Economy.

The Prosecution and the proceedings have clearly proved the extraordinary part played by Schacht in the preparation of Germany's armaments and, consequently, in the launching of aggressive wars. The former War Minister, Von Blomberg, testified that in 1937 the plans of the Armed Forces were nearing completion and that Schacht was informed of these plans and of their financing.

Schacht was one of the most consistent supporters of the Nazi criminal plans. In a talk with the United States Ambassador Fuller on 23 September 1936 Schacht stated that: "Germany absolutely needs colonies. If it is possible, we shall acquire them by peaceful negotiations. If not we shall seize them."

Speaking in Vienna in March 1938 Schacht declared:

"Thank God, this could not hinder the great German people in its forward march because Adolf Hitler unified German will and German thought. He strengthened it with reborn

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armed forces and in the end he gave an outer shape to the inner unity of Germany and Austria."

Defendant Schacht was entrusted with extraordinary powers in the sphere of war economy.

Over a period of many years Schacht cumulated the functions of president of the Reichsbank, Minister of Economics and Plenipotentiary for War Economy. If only as a result of these important functions, the Defendant Schacht played an enormous and decisive part in the creation and resurrection of Nazi Germany's war economy and Armed Forces. This part of the Defendant Schacht is clearly described in the numerous laudatory letters which he received from Hitler. The Defendant Schacht, and no other, was the creator of the adventurous method of issuing so-called mefo bills, by which 12 billion Reichsmark were allotted, apart from budget allocations, to Germany's economy for purposes of rearmament. As mentioned before, the Defendant Schacht attempted, at various periods of his activities, to stress his alleged and everincreasing dissension with the Nazi regime. In reality Schacht was playing a double game. On the one hand he shielded himself from the responsibility for the criminal policy of the Nazi Government by flirting with persons who actually did strive to overthrow this regime; on the other hand he remained loyal to the regime to all intents and purposes.

It was only in 1943, when the downfall of Nazi Germany became completely apparent to such a hard-boiled politician as Schacht, that he contacted more closely the circle of the opposition. However, true to himself, he took precautions for any event and did not actually do anything personally to overthrow the Nazi regime. That is why Hitler spared him.

This is the portrait of the Defendant Schacht, and this is the part he played in Hitler's conspiracy and war crimes. It is the part of the creator of Nazi Germany's war economy and of an instigator of the second World War launched by the criminal Nazi Government.

Funk.

Walter Funk became a Nazi long before his official admission in 1931 into the membership of the NSDAP, and he remained a Nazi to the end. His economic knowledge, his experience as a journalist, and his extensive connections with the leaders of the German industry, trade, and finance were placed by him at the service of the Hitlerite conspirators. An article published in the newspaper Das Reich on 13 August 1940, under the heading "Walter Funk-A Pioneer of National Socialist Economic Reasoning," read as follows:

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"Walter Funk remained true to his principles because he was, is, and always will be a true National Socialist, a champion devoting all his labors to the victory of the Fuehrer's ideals."

The Fuehrer's ideals are only too well known. Funk devoted 15 years of his life to these "ideals." Funk declared that he had nothing in common with the SS but it was he, Funk, who transformed the vaults of the Reichsbank into depositories for the treasures plundered by the SS men in the eastern and other occupied territories. Funk personally gave the orders, after his negotiations with Himmler, to take into the Reichsbank the gold teeth and plates, the spectacle frames and other valuables belonging to the victims tortured to death in numerous concentration camps.

The SS Gruppenfuehrer Hayler was Funk's deputy. Also under Funk's direction operated Ohlendorf, the murderer, with the death of 90,000 persons on his conscience.

Funk, in supplement of Schacht's measures, placed the whole of Germany's economy at the service of Hitlerite plans for aggression and later on, the economy of the territories occupied by Germany.

As early as May 1939 Funk, together with his deputy, Landfried, elaborated plans for financing the war and the utilizing of all economic resources of Germany and of occupied Czechoslovakia. On 23 June 1939, Funk took part in the conference of the Reich Defense Council which adopted detailed plans for the placing of all national economy on a war footing.

Already at that time, Funk was not only informed of Germany's impending attack on Poland, was not only co-operating in the realization of this aggressive plan, but was also economically preparing new war and the seizure of new territories. These were the "Fuehrer's great political aims" which were set out by Funk a few months later in his article entitled "Economic and financial mobilization."

I shall mention one more document; on 25 August 1939, Funk wrote to Hitler: '

"Generalfeldmarschall Goering told me that you, my Fuehrer, yesterday evening approved the main points of the measures conceived by me for the financing of a war, stabilization of prices, fixation of wages, and the organization of an obligatory war contribution; this news made me profoundly happy."

A long time before the treacherous attack of Germany against the U.S.S.R., Funk participated in the elaboration of plans for the spoliation of the riches of the Soviet Union. Funk attached his collaborators to Rosenberg's Ministry and to that predatory organization Economic Staff East. Funk's agents participated also in the plunder of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and other occupied countries. Funk was the president of the "Continental Oil Company," created

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for the exploitation by the Germans of the crude oil wells in the Occupied Eastern Territories, and especially, the oil fields of Grozny and Baku.

Funk was in full agreement with the predatory aims of the war launched by Germany against the U.S.S.R. He made a speech on 17 December 1941 in Prague, to the erect that the East was the future German colony. Funk participated at the conference held on 6 August 1942 at Goering's office for the discussion of the most effective measures for the economic plunder of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, France, Norway and other countries.

At this conference, as well as at the conference of the Central Planning Board, Funk participated in the drafting of plans for the deportation to slavery of millions of people from the occupied territories.

Such are the fundamental stages in the criminal activities of that Hitlerite conspirator, the Defendant Funk-Hitler's personal adviser on economic questions since 1931, Reich Minister and Plenipotentiary for Economy, president of the Reichsbank and member of the Reich Defense Council-during the period of the preparation and the realization of the criminal plan, the conspiracy.

The guilt of Funk-this active participant of fascist conspiracy, for the crimes against individuals, for war crimes and crimes against humanity-has been fully proved and he must bear full responsibility for the evil deeds perpetrated by him.

Schirach.

Since 1931 and until the end of the war the Defendant Baldur van Schirach was at the head of the Nazi youth movement. After the publication on 1 December 1936 of a decree concerning the Hitler Youth, Von Schirach was, in his capacity as the Reich Youth Leader, directly subordinated to Hitler.

In his deposition before the Court the Defendant Schirach, in his efforts to evade the responsibility for the education of German youth in the spirit of National Socialist ideas, made frequent references to the fact that the Hitlerjugend was a youth organization independent of the Nazi Party and the Hitlerite Government. To defend himself, the Defendant Schirach considered it both possible and relevant to refer to the great Goethe whose words-"youth itself educates young people"-he quoted with open cynicism.

Goethe was, of course, right when he said that "youth itself educates young people." But he meant the healthy, normal, joyful youth, and not youth morally corrupted with the obscurantism of the Hitlerites, so clearly described by Hitler's words addressed to Rauschning:

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"We shall educate a youth before which the whole world shall tremble, rough, exacting, cruel youth. That is what I want. Our youth must possess all these qualities. It must be pitiless before the sight of suffering. It must be without weakness or softness. I want to see the glint of the wild animal in their eyes."

And the Defendant Schirach instilled systematically the ideas of Hitlerism in the conscience of German youth and educated the German youth in the spirit of Hitler's wishes, modeling them after the image of the arrant leaders of the Hitlerite gang.

During cross-examination, the Defendant Schirach was finally forced to admit that the youth of Germany was brought up in the spirit of the National Socialist idea; that members of the SA, officers of the German Armed Forces and the SS participated in their education; and that intense military training of the youth was being carried out in Germany. For this purpose special agreements were made between the Reich leaders of Hitlerjugend and the OKW, as represented by the Defendant Keitel and the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, which provided for the education of youth in the spirit of aggressive militarism, and appropriate recruitment and the preparation of youth for the Armed Forces and the units of the SS.

The part played by the Defendant Von Schirach and his participation in the common conspiracy, in war crimes and crimes against humanity, are characterized best of all by the behavior of German youth brought up in Hitlerjugend during the war.

The Soviet Prosecution have presented to the Tribunal under Document Number USSR-6, in conformity with Article 21 of the Charter, a report of the Extraordinary State Commission about the crimes of the Germans on the territory of Lvov. This report records the declaration of the French citizen, Ida Vasseau, about the inhuman cruelty of the members of the Hitlerjugend against young children, whom they used as targets for shooting practice. In her written deposition of 16 May 1946, and also in her answers to the questionnaire of counsel for the Defendant Schirach, Ida Vasseau has fully confirmed this declaration.

Conclusive testimony about the actions of the members of the Hitlerjugend within the cadre of the Armed Forces was given by a German soldier, prisoner of war, Gert Knittel, himself a former member of the Hitlerjugend since 1938 on, who in 1942 at the age of 18 enlisted in German Army.

Describing his participation in numerous crimes, Gert Knittel declared:

"In the locality of Lishjask in June 1943 our company set fire to a house with a number of people in it. . . All who tried to

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jump out of the house, we shot down, excepting one old woman whom we did not shoot, as she lost her mind under our very eyes..."

For all these crimes the Defendant Von Schirach bears full responsibility together with this Gert Knittel and tens of thousands of others.

Schirach himself did not, of course, shoot, did not set on fire; but he did arm the German youth, morally corrupted them and prepared them for the perpetration of every atrocity.

But the activities of the Hitlerjugend during the war and of the Defendant Schirach were not limited only to these crimes. The Hitlerjugend actively participated in the preparation of the war of aggression by creating fifth columns in Poland and Yugoslavia; the official reports of the Polish and the Yugoslav Governments testify to this fact. The Hitlerjugend organization took an active part in the execution of all the measures undertaken by the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and this is proved by the report of the Defendant Rosenberg, presented to the Tribunal as Document Number 1039-PS; it also actively participated in the deportation for slavery, from the occupied territories, of children between the ages of 10 and 14, which fact is proved by a document presented to the Tribunal under Document Number 031-PS.

In his capacity of Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter of Vienna, Schirach personally directed the eviction from Vienna of 60,000 Jews, who subsequently were exterminated in the concentration camps of Poland. The documents presented by the Prosecution-weekly reports addressed to Schirach-prove the fact that he was informed of all the numerous crimes perpetrated by the German Armed Forces and the occupational authorities in the East and, in particular, about the tragic fate of the tens of thousands of Jews deported from Vienna.

In 1940, the Defendant Schirach sent a telegram to Bormann, in which he demanded the destruction from the air of one of the cultural towns of Great Britain, as a reprisal for the murder of Heydrich, hangman of Bohemia and Moravia. This telegram is in itself a sufficiently vivid and convincing description of the moral aspect of Von Schirach's character. Faithful to the Hitlerite clique right until the end, aware of all its criminal deeds,' in which he himself had actively participated-the Defendant Von Schirach is one of the most sinister figures of the Third Reich.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now.

[The Tribunal adjourned until 30 July at 1000 hours.]

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