dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 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.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 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.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 shows an increase.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 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.
M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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. 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.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 53G 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....
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): "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.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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, 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.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): 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 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.