dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The truth is, of course, that the elimination of Russia as a political opponent and the incorporation of the Soviet territory in the German Lebensraum had been one of the cardinal features of Nazi policy for a very long time, subordinated latterly for what the Defendant Jodl called diplomatic reasons. And so, on the 22d of June, the Nazi armies were flung against the power with which Hitler had so recently sworn friendship, and Germany embarked upon that last act of aggression in Europe, which, after long and bitter fighting, was eventually to result in Germany's own collapse. That, then, is the case against these defendants, as amongst the rulers of Germany, under Count Two of this Indictment. It may be said that many of the documents which have been referred to were in Hitler's name, and that the orders were Hitler's orders, and that these men were mere instruments of Hitler's will. But they were the instruments without which Hitler's will could not be carried out; and they were more than that. These men were no mere willing tools, although they would be guilty enough if that had been their role. They are the men whose support had built Hitler up into the position of power he occupied; these are the men whose initiative and planning often conceived and certainly made possible the acts of aggression done in Hitler's name; and these are the men who enabled Hitler to build up the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the war economy, the political philosophy, by which these treacherous attacks were carried out, and by which he was able to lead his fanatical followers into peaceful countries to murder, to loot, and to destroy. They are the men whose cooperation and support made the Nazi Government of Germany possible. The government of a totalitarian country may be carried on without representatives of the people, but it cannot be carried on without any assistance at all. It is no use having a leader unless there are also people willing and ready to serve their personal greed and ambition by helping and following him.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The dictator who is set up in control of the destinies of his country does not depend on himself alone either in acquiring power or in maintaining it. He depends upon the support and the backing which lesser men, themselves lusting to share in dictatorial power, anxious to bask in the adulation of their leader, are prepared to give. In the criminal courts of our countries, when men are put on their trial for breaches of the municipal laws, it not infrequently happens that of a gang indicted together in the dock, one has the master mind, the leading personality. But it is no excuse for the common thief to say, "I stole because I was told to steal", for the murderer to plead, "I killed because I was asked to kill." And these men are in no different position, for all that it was nations they sought to rob, and whole peoples which they tried to kill. "The warrant of no man excuseth the doing of an illegal act." Political loyalty, military obedience are excellent things, but they neither require nor do they justify the commission of patently wicked acts. There comes a point where a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his conscience. Even the common soldier, serving in the ranks of his army, is not called upon to obey illegal orders. But these men were no common soldiers: They were the men whose skill and cunning, whose labor and activity made it possible for the German Reich to tear up existing treaties, to enter into new ones and to flout them, to reduce international negotiations and diplomacy to a hollow mockery, to destroy all respect for and effect in international law and, finally, to march against the peoples of the world to secure that domination in which, as arrogant members of their self-styled master race, they professed to believe. If these crimes were in one sense the crimes of Nazi Germany, they also are guilty as the individuals who aided, abetted, counselled, procured, and made possible the commission of what was done.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The total sum of the crime these men have committed-so awful in its comprehension-has many aspects. Their lust and sadism, their deliberate slaughter and degradation of so many millions of their fellow creatures that the imagination reels, are but one side of this matter. Now that an end has been put to this nightmare, and we come to consider how the future is to be lived, perhaps their guilt as murderers and robbers is of less importance and of less effect to future generations of mankind than their crime of fraud-the fraud by which they placed themselves in a position to do their murder and their robbery. That is the other aspect of their guilt. The story of their "diplomacy", founded upon cunning, hypocrisy, and bad faith, is a story less gruesome no doubt, but no less evil and deliberate. And should it be taken as a precedent of behavior in the conduct of international relations, its consequences to mankind will no less certainly lead to the end of civilized society. Without trust and confidence between nations, without the faith that what is said is meant and that what is undertaken will be observed, all hope of peace and security is dead. The Governments of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, of the United States of America, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and of France, backed by and on behalf of every other peace-loving nation of the world, have therefore joined to bring the inventors and perpetrators of this Nazi conception of international relationship before the bar of this Tribunal. They do so, so that these defendants may be punished for their crimes. They do so, also, that their conduct may be exposed in all its naked wickedness and they do so in the hope that the conscience and good sense of all the world will see the consequences of such conduct and the end to which inevitably it must always lead. Let us once again restore sanity and with it also the sanctity of our obligations towards each other.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Attorney, would it be convenient to the prosecutors from Great Britain to continue?
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The proposal was that my friend, Mr. Sidney Alderman, should continue with the presentation of the case with regard to the final acts of aggression against Czechoslovakia and that that being done, my British colleagues would continue with the presentation of the British case. As the Tribunal will appreciate, Counts One and Two are in many respects complementary, and my American colleagues and ourselves are working in closest cooperation in presenting the evidence affecting those counts.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Alderman, would it be convenient for you to go on until 5 o'clock?
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes. May it please the Tribunal, it is quite convenient for me to proceed. I can but feel that it will be quite anticlimactic after the address which you just heard. When the Tribunal rose yesterday afternoon, I had just completed an outline of the plans laid by the Nazi conspirators in the weeks immediately following the Munich Agreement . These plans called for what the German officials called "the liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia." You will recall that 3 weeks after Munich, on 21 October, the same day on which the administration of the Sudetenland was handed over to the civilian authorities, Hitler and Keitel had issued an order to the Armed Forces. This document is C-136, Exhibit USA-104. In this order Hitler and Keitel ordered the beginning of preparations by the Armed Forces for the conquest of the remainder of Czechoslovakia. You will also recall that 2 months later, on 17 December, the Defendant Keitel issued an appendix to the original order directing the continuation of these preparations. This document is C-138, Exhibit USA-105, and both these documents have already been introduced. Proceeding on the assumption that no resistance worth mentioning was to be expected, this order emphasized that the attack on Czechoslovakia was to be well camouflaged so that it would not appear to be a warlike action. "To the outside world," it said, and I quote, "it must appear obvious that it is merely an action of pacification and not a warlike undertaking." Thus, in the beginning of 1939 the basic planning for military action against the mutilated Czechoslovak Republic had already been carried out by the German High Command. I turn now to the underhand and criminal methods used by the Nazi conspirators to ensure that no resistance worth mentioning would, in fact, be met by the German Army. As in the case of Austria and the Sudetenland, the Nazi conspirators did not intend to rely on the Wehrmacht alone to accomplish their calculated objective of liquidating Czechoslovakia.
MR. ALDERMAN: With the German minority separated from Czechoslovakia, they could no longer use the cry, "Home to the Reich." One sizable minority, the Slovaks, still remained within the Czechoslovak state. I should mention at this point that the Czechoslovak Government had made every effort to conciliate Slovak extremists in the months after the cession of the Sudetenland. Autonomy had been granted to Slovakia, with an autonomous Cabinet and Parliament at Bratislava. Nevertheless, despite these concessions, it was in Slovakia that the Nazi conspirators found fertile ground for their tactics. The picture which I shall now draw of Nazi operations in Slovakia is based on the Czechoslovak official Government Report, Document Number 998-PS, already admitted in evidence as Exhibit USA-91, and of which the Court has already taken judicial notice. Nazi propaganda and research groups had long been interested in maintaining close connection with the Slovak autonomist opposition. When Bela Tuka, who later became Prime Minister of the puppet state of Slovakia, was tried for espionage and treason in 1929, the evidence established that he had already established connections with Nazi groups within Germany. Prior to 1938 Nazi aides were in close contact with the Slovak traitors living in exile and were attempting to establish more profitable contacts in the semi-fascist Slovak Catholic People's Party of Monsignor Andrew Hlinka. In February and July 1938 the leaders of the Henlein movement conferred with top men of Father Hlinka's party and agreed to furnish one another with mutual assistance in pressing their respective claims to autonomy. This understanding proved useful in the September agitation when at the proper moment the Foreign Office in Berlin wired the Henlein leader, Kundt, in Prague to tell the Slovaks to start their demands for autonomy. This telegram, our Document Number 2858-PS, Exhibit USA-97, has already been introduced in evidence and read.
MR. ALDERMAN: By this time-midsummer 1938-the Nazis were in direct contact with figures in the Slovak autonomist movement and had paid agents among the higher staff of Father Hlinka's party. These agents undertook to render impossible any understanding between the Slovak autonomists and the Slovak parties in the government at Prague. Hans Karmasin, later to become Volksgruppenfuehrer, had been appointed Nazi leader in Slovakia and professed to be serving the cause of Slovak autonomy while actually on the Nazi payroll. On 22 November the Nazis indiscreetly wired Karmasin to collect his money at the German Legation in Prague, and I offer in evidence Document 2859-PS as Exhibit USA-107, captured from the German Foreign Office files. I read this telegram which was sent from the German Legation at Prague to Pressburg: "Delegate Kundt asks to notify State Secretary Karmasin he would appreciate it if he could personally draw the sum which is being kept for him at the treasury of the Embassy." -signed- "Hencke" Karmasin proved to be extremely useful to the Nazi cause. Although it is out of its chronological place in my discussion, I should like now to offer in evidence Document 2794-PS, a captured memorandum of the German Foreign Office which I offer as Exhibit USA-108, dated Berlin, 29 November 1939. This document, dated 8 months after the conquest of Czechoslovakia, throws a revealing light both on Karmasin and on the German Foreign Office, and I now read from this memorandum: "On the question of payments to Karmasin. "Karmasin receives 30,000 marks monthly from the VDA "Peoples' League for Germans Abroad- "until 1 April 1940; from then on 15,000 marks monthly. "Furthermore, the Central Office for Racial Germans" -Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle- "has deposited 300,000 marks for Karmasin with the German Mission in Bratislava" -Pressburg- "on which he could fall back in an emergency.
MR. ALDERMAN: "Furthermore, Karmasin has received money from Reich Minister Seyss-Inquart; for the present it has been impossible to determine what amounts had been involved, and whether the payments still continue. "Therefore, it appears that Karmasin has been provided with sufficient money; thus one could wait to determine whether he would put up new demands himself. "Herewith presented to the Reich Foreign Minister." -signed- "Woermann." This document shows the complicity of the German Foreign Office in the subsidization of illegal organizations abroad. More important, it shows that the Germans still considered it necessary to supply their undercover representatives in Pressburg with substantial funds, even after the declaration of the so-called Independent State of Slovakia. Sometime in the winter of 1938-39, the Defendant Goering conferred with Durkansky and Mach, two leaders in the Slovak extremist group, who were accompanied by Karmasin. The Slovaks told Goering of their desire for what they called independence, with strong political, economic, and military ties to Germany. They promised that the Jewish problem would be solved as it had been solved in Germany; that the Communist Party would be prohibited. The notes of the meeting report that Goering considered that the Slovak efforts towards independence were to be supported, but as the document will show, his motives were scarcely altruistic. I now offer in evidence Document 2301-PS as Exhibit USA-109, undated minutes of a conversation between Goering and Durkansky. This document was captured among the files of the German Foreign Office. I now read these minutes, which are jotted down in somewhat telegraphic style. To begin with: "Durkansky (Deputy Prime Minister) reads out declaration. Contents: 'Friendship for the Fuehrer; gratitude, that through the Fuehrer, autonomy has become possible for the Slovaks: The Slovaks never want to belong to Hungary. The Slovaks want full independence with strongest political, economic, and military ties to Germany. Bratislava to be the capital.
MR. ALDERMAN: The execution of the plan only possible if the army and police are Slovak. "An independent Slovakia to be proclaimed at the meeting of the first Slovak Diet. In the case of a plebiscite the majority would favor a separation from Prague. Jews will vote for Hungary. The area of the plebiscite to be up to the March, where a large Slovak population lives. "The Jewish problem will be solved similarly to that in Germany. The Communist Party to be prohibited. "The Germans in Slovakia do not want to belong to Hungary but wish to stay in Slovakia. "The German influence with the Slovak Government considerable; the appointment of a German Minister (member of the Cabinet) has been promised. "At present negotiations with Hungary are being conducted by the Slovaks. The Czechs are more yielding towards the Hungarians than the Slovaks. "The Field Marshal" -that is Field Marshal Goering- "considers that the Slovak negotiations towards independence are to be supported in a suitable manner. Czechoslovakia without Slovakia is still more at our mercy. "Air bases in Slovakia are of great importance for the German Air Force for use against the East." On 12 February a Slovak delegation journeyed to Berlin. It consisted of Tuka, one of the Slovaks with whom the Germans had been in contact, and Karmasin, the paid representative of the Nazi conspirators in Slovakia. They conferred with Hitler and the Defendant Ribbentrop in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on Sunday, 12 February 1939. I now offer in evidence Document 2790-PS as Exhibit USA-110, the captured German Foreign Office minutes of that meeting: "After a brief welcome Tuka thanks the Fuehrer for granting this meeting. He addresses the Fuehrer with 'My Fuehrer' and he voices the opinion that he, though only a modest man himself, might well claim to speak for the Slovak nation. The Czech courts and prison gave him the right to make such a statement. He states that the Fuehrer had not only opened the Slovak question but that he had been also the first one to acknowledge the dignity of the Slovak nation.
MR. ALDERMAN: The Slovakian people will gladly fight under the leadership of the Fuehrer for the maintenance of European civilization. Obviously future association with the Czechs had become an impossibility for the Slovaks from a moral as well as an economic point of view." Then skipping to the last sentence: " 'I entrust the fate of my people to your care." -addressing that to the Fuehrer! During the meeting the Nazi conspirators apparently were successful in planting the idea of insurrection with the Slovak delegation. I refer to the final sentence of the document, which I have just read, the sentence spoken by Tuka, "I entrust the fate of my people to your care." It is apparent from these documents that in mid-February 1939 the Nazis had a well-disciplined group of Slovaks at their service, many of them drawn from the ranks of Father Hlinka's party. Flattered by the personal attention of such men as Hitler and the Defendant Ribbentrop and subsidized by German representatives, these Slovaks proved willing tools in the hands of the Nazi conspirators. In addition to Slovaks, the conspirators made use of the few Germans still remaining within the mutilated Czechoslovak Republic. Kundt, Henlein's deputy who had been appointed leader of this German minority, created as many artificial "focal points of German culture" as possible. Germans from the districts handed over to Germany were ordered from Berlin to continue their studies at the German University in Prague and to make it a center of aggressive Nazism. With the assistance of German civil servants, a deliberate campaign of Nazi infiltration into Czech public and private institutions was carried out, and the Henleindists gave full co-operation to Gestapo agents from the Reich who appeared on Czech soil. The Nazi political activity was designed to undermine and to weaken Czech resistance to the commands from Germany.
MR. ALDERMAN: In the face of continued threats and duress on both diplomatic and propaganda levels, the Czech Government was unable to take adequate measures against these trespassers upon its sovereignty. I am using as the basis of my remarks the Czechoslovak official Government report, Document Number 998-PS. In early March, with the date for the final march into Czechoslovakia already close at hand, Fifth Column activity moved into its final phase. In Bohemia and Moravia the FS, Henlein's equivalent of the SS, were in touch with the Nazi conspirators in the Reich and laid the groundwork of the events of 14 and 15 March. I now offer in evidence Document 2826-PS as Exhibit USA-lll. This is an article by SS Group Leader Karl Hermann Frank, published in the publication Boehmen and Maehren, the official periodical of the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, edition May 1941, Page 179. This is an article written by one of the Nazi leaders in Czechoslovakia at the moment of Germany's greatest military successes. It is a boastful article and reveals with a frankness rarely found in the Nazi press both the functions which the FS and the SS served and the pride the Nazi conspirators took in the activities of these organizations. It is a long quotation.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you going on with this tomorrow, Mr. Alderman?
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you take the whole day?
MR. ALDERMAN: No, not more than an hour and a half.
THE PRESIDENT: And after that the British prosecutors will go on?
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes. [The Tribunal adjourned until 5 December 1945 at 1000 hours.] NOTES Added by the Avalon Project 1. See Alderman's presentation on waging aggressive war against Czechoslovalia . Return to the Text
MR. ALDERMAN: May it please the Tribunal, when the Tribunal rose yesterday afternoon, I had just offered in evidence Document 2826-PS, Exhibit USA-lll. This was an article by SS Group Leader Karl Hermann Frank, published in Boehmen und Maehren (or Bohemia and Moravia), the official periodical of the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, the issue of March 1941, at Page 79. It is an article which reveals with considerable frankness the functions which the FS and SS had, and shows the pride which the Nazi conspirators took in the activities of these organizations. I read from that article, under the heading "The SS on March 15, 1939": "A modern people and a modern state are today unthinkable without political troops. To these are allotted the special task of being the advance guard of the political will and the guarantor of its unity. This is especially true of the German folk-groups, which have their home in some other people's state. Accordingly the Sudeten German Party had formerly also organized its political troop, the Voluntary Vigilantes"- or, in German, "Freiwilliger Selbstschutz", called FS for short.- "This troop was trained especially in accordance with the principles of the SS, so far as these could be used in this region at that time. The troop was likewise assigned here the special task of protecting the homeland actively, if necessary. It stood up well in its first test in this connection, wherever in the fall crisis of 1938 it had to assume the protection of the homeland, arms in hand. "After the annexation of the Sudeten Gau the tasks of the FS were transferred essentially to the German student organizations as compact troop formations in Prague and Brunn, aside from the isolated German communities which remained in the Second Republic. This was also natural because many active students from the Sudeten Gau were already members of the SS. The student organizations then had to endure this test, in common with other Germans, during the crisis of March 1939 ....