Such were the beginnings. I shall not examine that period, grave as are the lessons which democratic peoples ought to learn from it, for it may not be easy to say exactly at what date each of these defendants must have realised, if, indeed, he had not known and gloried in it all from the beginning - that Hitler's apparently hysterical outpourings in Mein Kampf were intended in all seriousness and that they formed the very basis of the German plan. Some, no doubt, such as Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Streicher, Frick, Frank, Schacht, Schirach and Fritzsche realised it very early. In the case of one or two, such as Donitz and Speer, it may have been comparatively late. When one remembers the apprehension caused abroad during that period there can be no doubt, in our submission, that these men, almost all of whom were the rulers of Germany from 1933 onwards, Hitler's intimate associates, admitted to his secret meetings, with full knowledge of plans and events, not only acquiesced in what was taking place but were active and willing participants.
Totalitarian government brooks no opposition.
Any means justifies the end, and the immediate end was ruthlessly to gain complete control of the German State and to brutalise and train its people for war. It is perhaps worth considering from the evidence a few examples of how this policy developed during these six years. First, then, the elimination of political opponents. The fate of many of these men was described by Severing, who estimated that at least 1,500 Social Democrats and a similar number of Communists were murdered in concentration camps recently established by Goering as Chief of the Gestapo. These camps, controlled by the Party organizations, were deliberately so run as to strike terror throughout the country.