dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
GEN. RUDENKO: 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 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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? 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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. 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: "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 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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. 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.
GEN. RUDENKO: 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.