dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
HERR BOEHM: If the Tribunal are seeking objectively to find the ones guilty of the unspeakable disaster which has befallen the whole world, then let them proceed from the individual point of view. We find this attitude expressed in a speech of Pope Pius XII, which he made on 20 February 1946. I quote: "Erroneous ideas are circulating in the world, which declare a man guilty and responsible solely because he was a member of, or belonged to, a specific community, without making any effort to examine or to investigate whether there really exists a personal responsibility on his part for such acts of commission or omission. "That implies the arrogation of the rights of God, the Creator and Redeemer, who alone, in the mysterious planning of His ever-loving providence is the absolute Master of events, and as such, when He so decides in His eternal wisdom, links together the destinies of the guilty and the innocent, the responsible and the not responsible."
HERR HORST PELCKMANN (Counsel for the SS): May I have the attention of the Court for just a few minutes. In my plea on Monday I omitted important statements, for example, those concerning Germanization, the Einsatzgruppen, the concentration camps, and mass exterminations. Instead of discussing these I referred to my written plea. The President has repeatedly declared that the Court is willing to study the written statements of all -the defense counsel. Yesterday the Tribunal ...
THE PRESIDENT: When did they receive them? I said, we will study them when we receive them; we have not yet received them.
HERR PELCKMANN: That is just what I meant, Your Lordship. Today I learned through the General Secretary and the translation section that an English translation will not be prepared for the judges. I do not know whether there is a Russian or French translation available for the judges. Without the parts I omitted my final speech is incomplete and cannot be understood. Therefore I shall give the Tribunal a complete copy of my plea in German and respectfully ask for a translation.
THE PRESIDENT: That will be done in every case. Dr. Gawlik?
DR. HANS GAWLIK (Counsel for the SD): Your Lordship, I also ask permission to submit a complete copy of my plea for translation, as I have omitted important parts, too.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, certainly. Would the Prosecution like to begin today?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal. In 1938 Hitler spoke in the Reichstag, and I quote his words: "National Socialism has given the German people that leadership which, as a party, not only mobilizes the nation but also organizes it. National Socialism possesses Germany entirely and completely.... There is no institution in this State which is not National Socialist." We know now the kind of leadership that National Socialism did give the German people. We know how and for what purposes the Nazi Party mobilized and organized the German nation-for world dominion at the cost of war and murder. The entire and complete possession of Germany by National Socialism meant the possession of the people, body and soul, by the organizations of the National Socialist Party and Government. For what purpose were the Nazis seeking this possession of the people? Their aims were to have a controlled but fanatical police state geared for military aggression. If one imagines an "Ersatz" Machiavelli presenting what this required, he well might have considered necessary: (1) A quick method of registering your laws and decrees. For this you need a pliant and complacent Cabinet with full legislative powers -- the Reichsregierung; (2) quick suppression of any signs of opposition or freedom of thought. Here you want an espionage service and a police which will strike at once-the SD and the Gestapo; (3) a complete check and control, of public opinion. This is provided by the pressure of a fanatical Corps of Political Leaders on a propaganda-soaked public; (4) a Praetorian guard who will rid you not only of any "turbulent priest" but of any person with a creed of his own, and so you have the SS; (5) a spreading executive hand which will grasp the population in its clutch of physical training and mental preparation for war; which will thrust that population forward and downward when general violence is necessary; which will hold it firm in the ideologies of terror at home and abroad. What could be more suitable than the SA who had just won "the battle of the streets"?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: (6) an instrument to turn your existing military forces to your purposes; to make them ready to commit any act, even if it is contrary to military tradition and repugnant to soldier-like qualities; to give unquestioning assent to the enslavement of other nations, to co-operate and hold the ring for the agencies of oppression to destroy national life and the dignity of the human spirit. This was the function which the General Staff and High Command must perform. Speed of government, denunciation, absence of free thought and speech, internal suppression, external trained and calculated force. These are the eternal interlocked weapons without which tyranny cannot flourish. These are but other names for the organizations which we have indicted as criminal, and by which these defendants and their colleagues were able to lead and organize and possess a nation. When Mr. Justice Jackson addressed this Tribunal on 28 February he emphasized that it was not our purpose to convict the whole German people of crime. I say again that we do not seek to convict the people of Germany. Our purpose now is to protect them and to give them an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves in the esteem and friendship of the world. But how can this be done if we leave amongst them unpunished and uncondemned those elements of Nazidom which were most responsible for the Nazi tyranny and crimes and which, as this Tribunal may well believe, are beyond conversion to the ways of freedom and righteousness? Nor is it only the German people that we seek to protect. All Europe needs protection. Consider the position of Europe today. Among the Germans who were Hitler's there are many thousands of men and women who with their own hands have done murder -- murder not perhaps of a single person, but of many. Hundreds of thousands, nay, millions more, became disciples of their Fuehrer's creed of hate and cruelty.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Amongst them are those whose profession and training was to command and lead, militarily and politically, men who are still as fanatical and ruthless in their lust for power as at any time during the last 25 years. You remember the words, I quote: "Fight? Why do you always talk of fighting? You have conquered the State and if something does not please you then just make a law and regulate it differently! Why must you always talk of fighting? For you have every power! For what are you still fighting? Foreign policy? You have the Wehrmacht -- it will fight the battle if it is required. Domestic policy? You have the law and the police, which can change everything which does not agree with you." Such were the precepts of the "Hoheitstraeger" -- bearers of National Socialist sovereignty. They are not forgotten in a day. Should these men be let loose amongst the German people and amongst the people of Europe? Already the difficulties of this unhappy continent are overwhelming. Apart from those who come within the definition of these organizations, vast numbers of fanatical adherents of Nazidom must in any event remain at large. We have a whole generation of the German people who know no other ways than those prescribed for them by their Nazi rulers -- young men and women whose first lessons were taught by Nazi teachers, whose education was had in Nazi schools, and whose sport and recreation were found in the military exercises of the SA. Are the leaders of Nazi Germany -- in the shape of the members of these organizations-to be let loose to work their influence upon such fertile ground? The law is a living thing. It is not rigid and unalterable. Its purpose is to serve mankind, and it must grow and change to meet the changing needs of society. The needs of Europe today have no parallel in history. Never before has the society of Europe faced the problem or the danger of having in their midst millions of ruthless, fanatical men, trained and educated in murder and racial hatred -- and in war.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It is a situation which, were there or were there not precedents from the past, would justify, and indeed compel, unusual legal provision. In fact, as the Tribunal will remember from the speech of Mr. Justice Jackson, there are ample precedents for the proceedings which we are asking you to institute. If you are satisfied that these organizations as a whole are criminal, that the great majority of the members of these organizations knowingly and voluntarily supported the criminal policies and participated in the criminal activities of the leaders of the Nazi Party, then it is your duty under the Charter to declare them criminal. You may well think that your duty under the Charter is only commensurate with your duty to Germany, to Europe, and to the world. The principle on which their condemnation is asked for is clear. It is a practical application of the sound theory of punishment which we learnt in our youth-from, among others, that great German thinker, Kant. If men use society merely as a means to their own ends, then society is justified in putting them outside society. The immensity of the problem does not excuse its nonsolution. The failure to perform this legal duty may well spell terror and racial persecution throughout a continent and, for the third time in our adult lives, world war. The Court and the Prosecution have had the advantage of reading what is, if you will allow me to say so, a careful and learned argument from Dr. Klefisch. The criticism, however, which I should venture to make is that it is remote from the essential fact-finding function of this stage of the Trial. The first 30 pages are in reality an attack on Articles 9 and 10 of the Charter, and the conclusion which is drawn, that the Tribunal should use the word "may" in Article 9 as a basis for saying on a purely a priori reasoning that no organization can be criminal is, in our submission, to make nonsense of Articles 9 and 10, and to fly in the face of their connotation as well as their intent. In the succeeding parts. of the argument Dr.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Klefisch makes certain particular submissions to which attention might be drawn. The question is posed by him to what extent in number, how, and by whom must crimes be committed in order to be imputed to the organization. To this we say that the practical answer presents no difficulties. No one can lay down categorically how many grains make a heap, but equally, no one can deny that he knows a heap when he sees one. Again, it is easy to decide on sensible grounds what crimes are within the general aims of the organization. The Prosecution not only accept but adopt the proposition that in the case of each organization certain crimes can be said to be typical and repetitive, and they draw attention to the number of such typical and repetitive crimes which occur in the evidence. Similarly, no difficulty is found in the words "in connection with an individual defendant." To say that, if an individual defendant committed his crime in a capacity other than that of a member of the organization, Article 9 is not complied with, is to view this case in a nonexistent vacuum. It is the whole burden of the Prosecution's case that individuals and organizations are so interlocked that the common end of internal and external domination is omnipresent. Equally, we strongly contest the suggestion that a number of members were not aware of the criminal purpose of the organizations. Let us once and for all tear down the artificial suggestion that large sections of the adherents to the Nazi Party were going about in blinkers. It is a travesty of the facts and an insult to their intelligence. We agree with Dr. Klefisch that nonparticipation in crimes under Article 6 of the Charter and a lack of will to support the policies and activities of the organization are the preconditions of innocence. It is the basis of our whole submission that, to use Dr. Klefisch's own words, "The members were subordinate to, and worked continually for, the aims of the organizations and the Nazis."
THE PRESIDENT: Sir David, would it be convenient to break off there or do you want to go on a little further? [ The Tribunal adjourned until 29 August 1946 at 1000 hours. ]
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If Your Lordship pleases, when the Court adjourned, I was dealing with some points in the memorandum of Dr. Klefisch, and I continue to deal with that document. Much emphasis has been laid by Dr. Klefisch and by all defense counsel on the serious consequences which will accrue to the persons affected by a declaration of guilt, not only to those against whom subsequent proceedings may be taken, but to the others besides. It is said "that the stigma inflicted upon members of organizations declared criminal would...prove indelible.... Millions of members of organizations declared criminal would remain branded for the rest of their lives. One would point at them, saying, 'Look, there goes an SA criminal!'" But if they are guilty, if they have supported and assisted in a system which entailed throwing the world into war, reviving the horrors of slavery, persecution, and mass murder, ought they not to be so branded? This can be no injustice: It is less--far less--than their deserts. It is the only hope for Germany and the world that her people realize and repent their responsibility for what has happened. Dr. Servatius has asked you to excuse Ortsgruppenleiter because they are members of the lower middle class who lacked political experience. Can it really be that only the upper classes of the German people are able to recognize aggressive war for world domination, slavery, murder, and persecution, as crimes? Yet there may be more truth in this than any dare to think. You have now seen and heard many witnesses who, some on their own admission, were themselves deeply involved in hideous crime. Have you been able to discern a sense of guilt or shame or repentance? Always it is someone who gave the orders that is to blame; never he who puts these orders into execution. Always it is some other agency of the State who was responsible; to support that State and co-operate with those other agencies is without criticism. If this is the mind of these people today, there can be no more pressing need nor greater justification for branding the guilty as criminal.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: It is my intention to discuss the evidence in respect of these three organizations for which the British Delegation has taken particular responsibility and which, in the considered submission of all the four prosecuting powers, are criminal. But before dealing with that evidence I trust the Tribunal will bear with me if I make one or two general observations upon the defense which has been put forward on behalf of all these organizations. In view of the words of Dr. Boehm, I desire to submit that no one can say hereafter that every opportunity has not been afforded them for their defense. An elaborate procedure has been evolved to obtain and place before you their evidence. 102 witnesses have been heard before your Commissioners--witnesses selected by Defense Counsel from the many thousands of members of the organizations available. You have the transcripts of their evidence. Of these witnesses Defense Counsel have selected 20, who have given evidence in this Court and whom you have seen and heard yourselves. In addition to this oral testimony, you have also had submitted to you the substance of no less than 136,213 affidavits, for the SS, 155,000 for the Political Leaders, 2,000 for the Gestapo, 10,000 for the SA and 7,000 for the SD, a total of 310,213. And you have also had presented before your Commissioners another 1,809 affidavits either in substance or in whole, the majority of which are now contained in the transcript of the Commissioners' proceedings. On the face of it, the evidence which has been given by almost all the witnesses called before your Commissioners is untrue. You yourselves have seen and heard some of these witnesses, selected by Defense Counsel presumably because they were thought to be the most reliable and the ones most likely to impress you. Their evidence is no better. You will remember Sievers, called for the SS, who denied knowledge of and participation in the experiments on human beings and was presented with a file of his own incriminating correspondence.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The witness Morgen described the variety theater, the cinema, the bookstalls, and the other amenities of Buchenwald. Dachau, he said, was a recreation camp. Brill, who had served as an Obersturmbannfuehrer in the SS Division Leibstandarte from June until August 1941 on the Eastern Front, knew nothing of the Einsatzgruppen, the slaughter of Jews in the Eastern territories, or of the treatment of the peoples of Poland and Russia taken into captivity for forced labor. Had the conditions in June become so changed from what they had been 2 months before, when Himmler had said to all the officers of that division: "Very frequently the members of the Waffen-SS think about the deportation of this people here. These thoughts come to me today when watching the very difficult work out there performed by the Security Police, 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; where we had to have the toughness--you should hear this but also forget it again immediately-to shoot thousands of leading Poles" (1918-PS, US-304). General Hauser, one time Commander of the SS Division "Das Reich," and subsequently commander of a corps, army, and army group, knew nothing of SS atrocities. He had never heard of the massacre of Lidice. Gauleiter Hoffmann, who gave evidence before your Commission to explain away his order of 25 February 1945, encouraging the lynching of Allied pilots, said that the order "slipped out" from his command post after he had refused to issue the draft submitted to him by his staff officer. Hupfauer, of the German Labor Front, supervising the work of that organization in Essen during the latter part of the war, and himself responsible for circulating Himmler's orders to ensure "the discipline and output of foreign workers," denied all knowledge of the brutal treatment of slave labor.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Rathcke, called for the SA, before your Commissioner described how "in the spring of 1933, the SA in all German localities streamed into the churches." Schneider, another Political Leader called before your Commission, aged 55, denied having ever heard of the boycott of April 1933. Best, the enslaver of Denmark, gave evidence before you for the Gestapo. Having seen the documents that were presented to him in cross-examination, can you believe one word of what he said? Examples of evidence of this kind could be quoted from the transcript of almost every witness that has been called to defend these organizations. Consider this evidence from another angle. We know that so-called "demonstrations" were organized and carried out throughout the whole Reich against the Jews on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, during the course of which 35 Jews were murdered, 20,000 seized and incarcerated for no other offense than that they were Jews; we know that 177 synagogues were destroyed by fire or demolished, that 7,500 stores were destroyed, and that the cost of damage to glass windows alone amounted to 6 million Reichsmark. Even the Supreme Party Court reported: "The public, down to the last man, realizes that political drives like those of 9 November were organized and directed by the Party, whether this is admitted or not. When all the synagogues burn down in the night, it must have been organized by the Party" (3063-PS, US-332). "Whether this is admitted or not!" Can you find one single man among the 102 witnesses that have been called on behalf of the Party organizations who is prepared to admit it--or anything like it? Can you find one word of admission from among the affidavits that have been submitted by over 312,000 members of these Party organizations? If it was not the Political Leaders, if it was not the SA or the SS, if it was not the Gestapo or SD--what in the name of all common sense was it that organized and directed these demonstrations? We know that slave labor was employed and brutally maltreated throughout Germany.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: We know that in 1943, it even became necessary--necessary only in order to increase production and for no reasons of humanity--to alter, I quote, "the hitherto prevailing treatment of Eastern Workers," and for the Party Chancellery and the RSHA to issue orders to all Political Leaders down to Ortsgruppenleiter, and presumably to all stations of the SD and Gestapo that "injustices, insults, trickery, mistreatments, et cetera must be discontinued. Punishment by beating is forbidden" (205-PS, GB-538). But can you find one single one from all the 102 witnesses and the persons who have sworn affidavits on oath, who has ever seen or heard of the mistreatment of foreign laborers, save only in one or two exceptional instances? The evidence of all of them is the same. They are asked if they knew of the persecution and annihilation of the Jews, of the dread work of the Gestapo, of the atrocities within the concentration camps, of the ill-treatment of slave labor, of the intention and preparation to wage aggressive war, of the murder of brave soldiers, sailors, and airmen. And they reply with "the everlasting No." You may be reminded of the words of a great Irishman: "Falsehood has a perennial spring." Let me turn to consider these three organizations for which I am responsible--the Corps of Political Leaders, the SA, and the SS. With regard to the Corps of Political Leaders, certain general points have been made by counsel and witnesses for the Defense, which it is convenient to mention before dealing with the evidence. It is said that the Zellen- and Blockleiter ought not to be included as Political Leaders; that they were never regarded as such, and had no authority or political tasks; that they were subordinate to the staff officers in the Ortsgruppe whom the Prosecution has agreed to exclude; that they were completely unimportant and in practice little more than the messenger boys of their Ortsgruppenleiter. We submit that there is overwhelming evidence that this was not so.