dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: A fortnight after issuing that order, Keitel, whose only defense was that he had pressed for 5 to 10 hostages for one German in place of 50 to 100, had had a further idea, and on the 1st of October 1941 he suggested that it is advisable that military commanders should always have at their disposal a number of hostages of different political tendencies, nationalist, democratic-bourgeois, or Communist, adding: "It is important that among them shall be well-known leading personalities or members of their families whose names are to be made public. Depending on the membership of the culprit, hostages of the corresponding group are to be shot in case of attacks" (Document Number 1590-PS). The original document bears the ominous note: "Complied with in France and Belgium." The effect of these orders throughout the German Army is well seen from three instances of the action taken by a local commander. In Yugoslavia, a month after Keitel's original order a station commander reported that in revenge for the killing of 10 German soldiers and the wounding of another 26, a total of 2,300 people had been shot, 100 for each killed and 50 for each wounded German soldier (Document Number USSR-74). On the 11th of July 1944 the commander of the district of Covolo in Italy was, in a public poster, threatening to kill 50 men for every member of the German Armed Forces whether military or civilian, who was wounded, and a hundred if a German was killed. In the event of more than one soldier or civilian being killed or wounded, all the men of the district would be shot, the houses set on fire, the women interned, and the cattle confiscated immediately. In June of the same year 560 persons, including 250 men, were reported by Kesselring as having been taken into custody under threat of shooting within 48 hours, some German colonel having been captured by bandits (Document Number D-39).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The men directly implicated in these brutalities are Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl, and Kaltenbrunner, but who can doubt that every man in that dock knew of the orders and of the way in which the German Armed Forces were being taught to murder men, women, and children, and were doing so throughout the length and breadth of Europe? Raeder, who says he disapproved of this sort of policy in Norway, states that he tried to dissuade Hitler, yet he continued to hold his post and to lend his name to the regime under which these things were being done. I pass on to matters for which he and Doenitz were more immediately responsible. The conduct of the war at sea reveals exactly the same pattern of utter disregard for law and for decency. There can seldom have been an occasion when the minds of two naval commanders have been so clearly read from their documents as those of the Defendants Raeder and Doenitz that can be read in the present case. As early as the ad of September 1939 the German Navy, in a memorandum to the Foreign Office, were seeking agreement to a policy of sinking without warning both enemy and neutral merchant ships in disregard of the London Submarine Rules, their own Prize Ordinance and of course the international law. A series of documents during the following 6 weeks reveals constant pressure on the Foreign Office by Raeder to consent to this policy. On the 16th of October 1939 Raeder produced a memorandum on the intensification of naval warfare against England.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: In this document, having proclaimed the "utmost ruthlessness" as necessary and the intention to destroy Britain's fighting spirit within the shortest possible time, Raeder went on to say-I quote: "The principal target of naval warfare is the merchant ship, not only the enemy's but in general every-merchant ship which sails the seas in order to supply the enemy's war industry both for imports and exports." It is that document which contains the infamous passage: "It is desirable to base all military measures taken on existing international law; however, measures which are considered necessary from a military point of view, provided a decisive success can be expected from them, will have to be carried out even if they are not covered by existing international law. In principle, therefore, any means of war which is effective in breaking enemy resistance should be supported by a legal conception, even if this entails the creation of a new code of naval warfare." In another memorandum on the 30th of December he went on to urge further intensification, particularly with regard to neutrals- I quote: ". . . without binding ourselves to any conceptions such as the declaration of barred zones..."-and he suggested that as they were going to invade neutral states it really did not matter if they went a little far at sea: ". . . the 'intensified measures of the war at sea will, in their political effect, only play a small part in the general intensification of the war" (Document Number C-100). You will have noted that these memoranda on the conduct of the war at sea echo the High Command's view on the future war which had been written 18 months earlier: "According to whether the application of normal rules of war will create greater advantages or disadvantages for them, the warring nations will consider themselves as being at war or not being at war with the neutral states" (Document Number L-211). Was that a mere coincidence? At all events, such was the pattern laid down by Raeder and followed by Doenitz.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: From the very first the Naval War Staff never had any intention of observing the laws of war at sea. The defense that the sinking of Allied merchant ships without warning was justified by Allied measures is as untenable as the suggestion that the sinking at sight of neutral merchant ships was preceded by warning which complied with the requirements of international law. You have seen the very vague and general warnings given to the neutrals and the memorandum of the Naval War Staff revealing that these were deliberately given in the most general terms because Raeder knew that the action he intended against neutrals was utterly illegal. I need! not remind you of the `£87 document which suggests that orders should be given by word of mouth and a false entry made in the log book, the very practice followed in the case of the Athenia, or of the entries in Raeder's own war diary revealing that carefully selected neutrals should be sunk wherever the use of electric torpedoes might enable the Germans to maintain that the ship had really struck a mine. You have confirmation in the bland denials prepared by Raeder to answer the protests of the Norwegian and Greek Governments on the sinking of the Thomas Walton and the Garufalia and the reluctant admission in the case of the Deptford, all three ships sunk in December 1939 by the same U-boat. Nothing reveals more of the cynicism or opportunism with which Raeder and Doenitz treated international law than the contrast between their attitude toward the sinking of a Spanish ship in 1940 and that in September 1942. In 1940 Spain did not matter to Germany; in 1942 she did. Details with regard to the various successive measures taken in the course of putting into effect the policy of sink at sight do not require recapitulation but there are two features of the conduct of naval warfare by these two defendants which I must emphasize. First, they continued to put out to the world that they were obeying the London Rules and their Prize Ordinance.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The reason for that appears in Raeder's memorandum of the 30th of December 1939 where he says-I quote: " . . . a public announcement of intensified measures for the war at sea must be urgently advised against in order not to burden the Navy again in the eyes of history with the odium of unrestricted U-boat warfare" (Document Number C-100). And that, you see, is the common plan-the common plan-the very argument put forward by Jodl and Doenitz in February 1945, in favor of simply breaking the regulations of the Geneva Convention rather than announcing Germany's renunciation of it to the world. And here, once again, is the doctrine of military expediency; if it will pay Germany to break a particular law she is entirely justified in breaking it, provided always it can be done in such a way as to avoid detection and the condemnation of world opinion. It must not be thought that in initiating this policy of sink at sight and in disregarding the rules of war at sea Raeder was any more drastic than Doenitz. In his defense Doenitz made a great effort to explain away his order of 17 September 1942. I ask the Tribunal to remember its terms: '`No attempt of any kind must be made at rescuing members of ships sunk.... Rescue runs counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare aimed at the destruction of enemy ship and crews" (Document Number D-630). His diary entry of the same date, which confirms that order, starts-I quote: "The attention of all commanding officers is again drawn to the fact that all efforts to rescue run counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare..." Well, the defendant denied that this means that crews were to be destroyed or annihilated But the previous history makes it abundantly clear that this was an invitation to U-boat commanders to destroy the crews of shipwrecked merchantmen, while preserving an argument for Doenitz to make, should-as has indeed happened- occasion arise. That, after all, was the pattern laid down by Hitler when on the ad of January 1942, he told Oshima that-I quote: ". . .
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: he must give the order that in case foreign seamen could not be taken prisoner. . . U-boats were to surface after torpedoing and shoot up the lifeboats" (Document Number D-423). The evidence shows constant pressure by Hitler from then on for the issue of this order. It is admitted that he demanded it at a meeting with both Doenitz and Raeder on the 14th of May 1942 and that he raised the question again on the 5th of September 1942. Doenitz himself referred to pressure by Hitler during the Laconia incident. You have confirmation that the order issued on the 17th of September was intended to bear the construction put upon it by the Prosecution in the evidence of the witness Heisig and in that of Mohle. Is it conceivable that a senior officer would have been allowed to go on from the 17th of September 1942 until the end of the war briefing the hundreds of U-boats which set out from Kiel that this was an order to annihilate unless that was what the Naval War Staff intended? You have the evidence that Doenitz himself saw every U-boat commander before and after his cruise, his own admissions with regard to the comments made by his staff officers at the time he drafted the order and his general attitude revealed by the order of October 1939, which he admits was a nonrescue order-an utterly indefensible order in itself in the submission of the Prosecution. There is further the coincidence that the very argument which Hitler advanced to Oshima, namely, the importance of preventing the Allies finding the crews for the immense American construction program, was the argument Doenitz himself admits putting forward on the 14th of May, was the argument which Heisig reports hearing, and is the reason given for the subsequent order to give priority in attacking convoys to sinking rescue ships.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: You have the instances of the Antonice, the Noreen Mary, and the Peleus whilst the man who expressed horror at the idea that he should issue such an order admittedly saw the log book of the U-boat which sank the Sheaf Mead with its brutal entry describing the sufferings of those left in the water. Doenitz' own statement was that-I quote: ". . .to issue such a directive could only be justified if a decisive military success could be achieved by it." Was it not because, as his own document shows, the percentage of ships being sunk outside convoys in September 1942 was so high that a decisive military success might have been gained that this order was issued, whereas in April 1943, when almost all sinkings were in convoy, it was not necessary to issue a further order in more explicit terms? The Prosecution firmly and strongly submit that the Defendant Doenitz intended by that order to encourage and to procure as many submarine commanders as possible to destroy the crews of merchant ships but deliberately couched the order in its present language so that he could argue the contrary if circumstances required it. On the evidence of Admiral Wagner that the Naval War Staff approved the order of 17 September 1942 with respect to survivors, Raeder cannot escape responsibility and, indeed, since he was present at the meeting with Hitler in May of that year and received the Fuehrer order of the 5th of September 1942 (Documents Doenitz-16 and 39) to issue instructions to kill survivors, there can be little doubt that he was fully involved in his subordinate's policy. Although within a few months Allied air power made it impossible for U-boats in most areas to risk surfacing at all after they had discharged their torpedo, and the question became one of less importance, it is interesting to note that when the order against rescue ships was issued on the 7th of October the following year the same phrase "destruction of ships' crews" (Document Number D-663) recurred.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Despite the denial of Kapitanleutnant Eck, (Document Number D5nitz-36) there can really be no real doubt that, briefed by Mohle, he did what his superior of fleers intended him to do. Why should it be supposed that a man, who a month later received Hitler's Commando Order without protest, should shrink from ordering the destruction of seamen on rafts or clinging to wreckage, when Hitler had explained its military necessity. Eck, who obeyed the orders of Raeder and Doenitz, has paid the supreme penalty. Are they to escape with less? I turn now to yet another war crime-the use of slave labor. Its importance for the German war machine had been appreciated by these defendants long before the outbreak of war. -Hitler had mentioned it in Mein Kampf and emphasized it at the meeting in May 1939. A few weeks later in June the Reich Defense Council, Goering, Frick, Funk, and Raeder, and representatives of every other ministry of state were planning to employ 20,000 concentration camp inmates and hundreds of thousands of workers from the Protectorate in the coming war. Hitler's plan for Poland, revealed to Schirach and Frank, was as follows-I quote: "The ideal picture is this: A Pole may- possess only small holdings in the Government General which will to a certain extent provide him and his family with food. The money required by him for clothes, . . . et cetera! he must earn in Germany by work. The Government General must become a center for supplying unskilled labor, particularly agricultural labor. The subsistence of these workmen will be fully guaranteed because they can always be made use of as cheap labor" (Document Number USSR-172). That policy, of course, was a short-term policy, the real aim being- the elimination of the Eastern peoples.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Sauckel was appointed plenipotentiary with the task of replacing 2 million German workers who had been called to service with the Wehrmacht, and he himself says that after Hitler had emphasized that it was a war necessity he had no scruples and within a month of his appointment he had sent his first labor mobilization program to Rosenberg. "Should we not succeed in obtaining the necessary labor on a voluntary basis we must immediately institute conscription of forced labor. . . a gigantic number of new foreign workers . . . men and women. . . an indisputable necessity" (Document Number 016-PS). This program he was to carry out "with every possible energy and a ruthless commitment of all our resources..." (Document Number 017-PS). It is unnecessary to refer to the voluminous evidence of the execution of this policy for the recruitment of workers. It is sufficient to quote Sauckel again addressing the Central Planning Board in March of 1944: ". . . to train male and female agents . . . who shanghaied . . . men for labor in Germany.... Out of 5 million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily" (Document Number R-124). The methods employed in their forced deportations are hideous in their brutality and must have been known to every one of these defendants. In April of 1941 Himmler was addressing the of fleers of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. I quote: ~ "Very frequently a member of the Waffen-SS thinks about the deportation of this people here. These thoughts come to me today watching the very difficult work performed by the Security Police and supported by your men who help them a great deal. Exactly the same thing happened in Poland in weather 40 degrees below zero where we had to haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands..." (Document Number 1918-PS). And again: "Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only insofar as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished...
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: When somebody comes to me and says, 'I cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them', then I have to say: 'You are a murderer of your own blood because if the antitank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die and they are the sons of German mothers.' We must realize that we have 6-7 million foreigners in Germany . . . Perhaps it is even 8 million now. We have prisoners in Germany. They are none of them dangerous so long as we take severe measures at the merest trifle" (Document Number 1919-PS). By August 1943 the need for workers was even greater. Himmler ordered: ". . . that all young female prisoners capable of work are to be sent to Germany for work through the agency of Reich Commissioner Sauckel. Children, old women and old men are to be collected and employed in women's and children's camps. .." (Document Number 744-PS). The orders issued to group leaders of the SD, active in the Ukraine, showed the same urgency. I quote: "The activity of the Labor Of lice . . . is to be supported to the greatest extent possible. It will not be possible always to refrain from using force....When searching villages, or when it has become necessary to burn down a village, the whole population will be put at the disposal of the commissioner by force. As a rule, no more children will be shot.... If we limit our harsh Security Police measures through the above orders for the time being, it is only done for the following reason. The most important thing is the recruitment of workers" (Document Number 3012-PS). Speer admitted-how could he deny it the knowledge and approval of the way the workers were enrolled and brought to Germany against their will; there was Kaltenbrunner's letter to his friend Blaschke: "For. . . special reasons I have in the meantime given orders to ship several evacuation transports to Vienna; at present four shipments with approximately 12,000 Jews are pending. ... They should reach Vienna within the next few days....
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Women unable to work and children of those Jews who are all kept in readiness for special action and therefore one day will be removed again, have to stay in the guarded camp also during the day" (Document Number 3803-PS). That sinister phrase again-the meaning of which they all knew so well-"special treatment," "special action." Murder remains murder by whatever euphemism murderers may seek to describe it. The need for labor became so urgent that not only were even Jews spared the gas chambers so long as they were fit for employment but children were seized and put to work. So much for their deportation to Germany. What was to be their lot on their arrival? As early as March 1941 instructions had been issued to the Kreis Farmers Association on the treatment Polish farm workers were to receive (Document Number EC-68). They were to have no rights to complain. They were forbidden-this religious people-to visit churches; all forms of entertainment, public transport were barred. Their employers were given the right to inflict corporal punishment and were "not to be held accountable in any case by any official agency." And lastly, it was ordered: "Farm workers of Polish nationality should if possible be removed from the community of the home; they can be quartered in stables, et cetera. No remorse whatever should restrict such action." The treatment of those employed in industry was even worse. You will remember the affidavit of the Polish doctor in Essen who did his best to attend to the Russian prisoners of war. ". . . men were thrown together in such a catastrophic manner that no medical treatment was possible. . . it seemed to me. . . unworthy of human beings that people should find themselves in such a position.... Every day at least 10 men were brought to me whose bodies were covered with bruises because of the continual beatings with rubber tubes, steel switches, or sticks. The people were often writhing with agony and it was impossible for me to give them even a little medical aid....
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: It was difficult for me to watch how such suffering people could be directed to do heavy work. . . Dead people often lay for 2 or 3 days on the palliasses until their bodies stank so badly that fellow prisoners took them outside and buried them somewhere . . .I was a witness during a conversation with some Russian women, who told me personally that they were employed in Krupp's factory and that they were beaten daily in a bestial manner....Beating was the order of the day" (Document Number D-313). By the end of 1943 more than 5 million men, women, and children were working in the Reich and if we include prisoners of war the total of those working in Germany was at this date just under 7 million (Document Number D-524). To these must be added the hundreds of thousands brought in during 1944-millions of men and women taken from their homes by the most brutal methods, transported in all weather in cattle-trucks from every quarter of Europe, employed on farms and in factories throughout the Reich, frequently under abominable conditions; children taken from their parents, many to remain for their lives orphans, not knowing their identity or true names, taken away before they were old enough to remember the place from which they came. What is the measure of this crime? No man in that dock can dispute his knowledge or his complicity. The minutes of the Central Planning Board must have been read in every department of the State. You have seen the mass of evidence connecting the military leaders and every other branch of the Government with this colossal program of slavery. None of these men can be acquitted of this crime. None of them can have been ignorant of the scale and brutality with which it was perpetrated. I pass now to a connected matter, but one even more terrible- the general manner in which the defendants conducted the belligerent occupation of the territories which they had overrun.