dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: The trucks were jammed full with people. My personal view was that it was inhuman to transport people in such a manner. "The people were squashed closely together and they had hardly any room for free movement.... It was enraging to every decent German to see how the people were beaten and kicked and generally maltreated in a brutal manner. In the very beginning, as the first transports arrived, we could see how inhumanly these people were treated. Every wagon was so overfull that it was incredible that such a number could be jammed into one wagon.... The clothing of prisoners of war and civilian workers . . . was catastrophic. It was ragged and ripped and the footwear was the same. In many cases they had to go to work with rags round their feet. Even in the worst weather and bitterest cold I have never seen that any of the wagons were heated" (Document Number D-321). Those men were not destined for concentration camps-that was certain. How much worse the conditions of these who were. Great columns, too, trekked on foot along the highways of the Reich. They walked until they could walk no more; then they died by the side of the road. Ziereis, commandant of Mauthausen, in his dying confession said: "In the presence of Baldur von Schirach and others I received the following order from...Himmler...: "All Jews of localities in the Southeast, working on the so-called fortification commands. . . are to be sent on foot to Mauthausen. "In consequence of this order of Himmler's 60,000 Jews were to come to Mauthausen, but in fact only a small fraction of this number arrived. As an example I mention that out of one convoy of 4,500 Jews which started out from somewhere in the country, only 180 arrived. . . women and children had been without shoes and were in rags and were Very verminous. In that convoy were complete families of which due to weakness an immense number had been shot on the way" (Document Number D-626). Now, whatever may have been hidden from view behind the stockades of the concentration camps, these things were open for all to see.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Every one of these defendants must have seen them and the thousands of concentration camp prisoners working in the fields and factories adorned in their striped pajamas-a uniform that was as familiar as any other in Germany. How possibly could any one of these defendants, had he even a spark of human pity, have continued to take active part in support of a system that was responsible for such suffering? But they had no pity-and by their ideology and teaching they had deprived the German people of pity. Ziereis describes the frightful end that Kaltenbrunner contemplated for the concentration camps and their inmates when the advancing Allied Armies brought with them the danger of capturing those camps and of disclosing the guilt of the Nazi Government. ". . . Prisoners were to be led into the tunnels of the factory Bergkristall. . . the only entrance was to be blown up by the use of explosive and the death of the prisoners was to be effected in this manner" (Document Number 3870-PS). Even Ziereis, murderer of Mauthausen's 65,000 dead, shied, and refused that order. That evidence is corroborated beyond question by the written order issued by the commandant of the Sipo and SD in the Government General, which has been put in as evidence: "Should the situation at the front necessitate it, early preparations are to be made for the total clearance of the prisons. Should the situation develop suddenly, in such a way that it is impossible to evacuate the prisoners the present inmates are to be liquidated and their bodies disposed of as far as possible (burning, blowing up the building, et cetera). If necessary, Jews still employed in the armament industry or on other work are to be dealt with in the same way. The liberation of prisoners or Jews by the enemy, be it the Western enemies or the Red Army, must be avoided under all circumstances. Nor may they fall into their hands alive" (Document Number L-53). And Kaltenbrunner himself saw to it that these orders should be carried out.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: With this evidence before us, there can be only one meaning to that teleprint message which was found among his papers on his arrest: "Please inform the Reichsfuehrer SS and report to the Fuehrer that all arrangements as to Jews, political and concentration camp internees in the Protectorate have been taken care of by me personally today" (Document Number 2519-PS). The proposition which you are asked to accept is that a man who was either a minister or a leading executive in a state which, within the space of 6 years, transported in horrible conditions some 7 million men, women, and children for labor, exterminated 275,000 of its own aged and mentally infirm and annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting what must at the lowest computation be 12,000,000 people, remained ignorant of or irresponsible for these crimes. You are asked to accept that the horrors of the transports, of the conditions of this slave labor, deployed as it was in labor camps throughout the country, the smell of 'the burning bodies, all of which were known to the world, were not known to these 21 men by whose orders such things were done. When they spoke or wrote in support of this horrible policy of genocide you are asked to accept that their utterances were made in ignorance of the facts, as part of their general duty to support the policy of their government, or finally, should be regarded merely as tactical-that is to say, that only by talking or writing in such a way could they divert Hitler from cruelty or aggression. It is for you to decide. Goering, Mess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Doenitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel, Jodl, Von Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann-these are the guilty men. Let me make brief comments upon each one of them, but in particular upon those whose close complicity in the most sordid crimes of all, the bestial murders, has possibly been less manifest. Goering's responsibility in all these matters is scarcely to be denied.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Behind his spurious air of bonhomie, he was as great an architect as any in this satanic system. Who, apart from Hitler, had more knowledge of what went on, or greater influence to affect its course? The conduct of government in the Nazi State, the gradual build-up of the organization for war, the calculated aggression, the atrocities-these things do not occur spontaneously or without the closest co-operation between the holders of the various offices of state. Men do not advance into foreign territory, pull the trigger, drop their bombs, build the gas chambers, collect the victims, unless they are organized and ordered' to do it. Crimes on the national and systematic scale which occurred here must involve anyone who forms a part of the necessary chairs, since without that participation, plans for aggression here, mass murder there, would become quite impossible. The Fuehrer Principle by which the Nazis placed their bodies and their very souls at the disposal of their leader was the creation of the Nazi Party, and of these men. When I addressed you at the opening of this Trial, I remarked that there comes a time when a man must choose between his conscience and. his leader. No one who chooses, as these men did, to abdicate their consciences in favor of this monster of their own creation can complain now if they are held responsible for complicity in what their monster did. And least of all, Hess. The role Hess played in the Nazi Party is well established. But not content with creating the monster, he aided it in every aspect of its monstrous work. I mention only one instance. You will recall, in connection with the extermination of the Eastern peoples, his direction to Party officials to support recruitment for the Waffen-SS. He said: ". . . it consists of National Socialists who are more suitable than other armed units for the specific tasks to be solved in the Occupied Eastern Territories, owing to their intensive National Socialist training in regard to questions of race and nationality" (Document Number 3245-PS).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Ribbentrop's part, also, is clear. No one in history has so debauched diplomacy. No one has been guilty of meaner treachery. But he, like the rest of them, is just a common murderer. Ribbentrop it was who, since 1940, had been directing the minions in his Embassy and legations throughout Europe to accelerate the execution of such "political measures," that is, measures of racial extermination (Document Number EC-265). It was not Himmler, but the Reich Foreign Minister who proudly reported to the Duce in February 1943 that, "All Jews had been transported from Germany and from the territories occupied by her to reservations in the East" (Document Number D-734). His bald recommendations to Horthy two months later and the record of the conference called by Steengracht, his permanent Under Secretary of State, betray the meaning of these ghastly euphemisms (Documents D-736, 3319-PS). No one was more insistent on merciless action in the occupied territories than Ribbentrop. You will remember his advice to the Italians on how to deal with strikes: ". . . in such a case only merciless action is any good . . . in the occupied territories where it has proved that we would not get anywhere with soft measures or the endeavor to reach an agreement" (Document Number D-740). Advice which he proceeded to reinforce by referring with pride to the successes of "brutal measures" in Norway, "brutal action" in Greece, and in France and Poland the success of "Draconian measures." Were Keitel and Jodl less involved in murder than their confederates? They cannot deny knowledge or responsibility for the operations of the Einsatzkommandos with whom their own commanders were working in close and cordial co-operation. The attitude of the High Command to the whole question is typified by Jodl's remark about the evacuation of Danish Jews: "I know nothing of this. If a political measure is to be carried out by the military commander in Denmark, the OKW must be notified by the Foreign Office" (Document Number D-547). . .
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: You cannot disguise murder by calling it a political measure. Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, must be guilty. The reports of the Einsatzkommandos were sent to him monthly (Document Number 3876-PS). You will remember the words of Gisevius, a witness for the Defense: "We asked ourselves whether it was possible that an even worse man could possibly be found after such a monster as Heydrich.... Kaltenbrunner came ... and things got worse every day.... We had the experience that perhaps the impulsive actions of a murderer like Heydrich were not as bad as the cold legal logic of a lawyer who was handling such a dangerous instrument as the Gestapo." You will remember his description of those horrible luncheon parties at which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of the technique of mass murder. Rosenberg's guilt as the philosopher and theorist who made the ground fertile for the seeds of Nazi policy is not in doubt, and it is beyond belief that he, as Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories, did not know of and support the destruction of the ghettos and the operations of the Einsatzkommandos. In October 1941, when the operations of those Kommandos were at their height, one of Rosenberg's ministerial departmental chiefs was writing to the Reich Commissioner for the East in Riga informing him that the Reich Security Main Office had complained that he had forbidden the executions of the Jews in Libau and asking for a report upon the matter. On 15 November, the report comes back addressed to the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories: "I have forbidden the wild execution of Jews in Libau because they were not justifiable in the manner in which they were carried out. I should like to be informed whether your inquiry of 31 October is to be regarded as a directive to liquidate all Jews in the East? Shall this take place without regard to age and sex and economic interests...? . . .
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: of course, the cleansing of the East of Jews is a necessary task; its solution, however, must be harmonized with the necessities of war production" (Document Number 3663-PS). Frank-if it is not sufficient to convict him that he was responsible for the administration of the Government General and for one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters in Nazi history-has himself stated: "One cannot kill all lice and all Jews in one year" (Document Number 2233-C-PS). It is no coincidence that that was exactly Hitler's language. And again: "As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with in one way or another.... Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible in order to maintain the structure of the Reich as a whole.... We cannot shoot or poison these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures which will lead to their annihilation in some way" (Document Number 2233-D-PS). Can Frick, as Minister of Interior, have been unaware of the policy to exterminate the Jews? In 1941 one of his subordinates, Heydrich, was writing to another-the Minister of Justice: ". . . it may safely be assumed that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed Eastern Territories" (Document Number R-96). Can he, as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, deny responsibility for the deportations of thousands of Jews from his territory to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only a few miles across the frontier? Of Streicher, one need say nothing. Here is a man more responsible, perhaps, than any, for the most frightful crime the world has ever known. For 25 years the extermination of the Jews had been his terrible ambition. For 25 years he had educated the German people in the philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He had incited and prepared them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal persecution and slaughter of millions of his fellow men.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: Without him these things could not have been. It is long since he forfeited all right to live. The fact that the Defendants Schacht and Funk dealt chiefly with economics ought not blind the Tribunal to their important part in the general plan. Schacht says that he had clean hands in this matter. It is for you to say. Schacht played his part in bringing Hitler to power. He says he thought that Hitler was "a man with whom one could co-operate," and assured Hitler that he could always count on him "as your reliable assistant" (Document Number EC-457). He helped to consolidate the Nazi position and he was the main figure in collecting election funds from the industrialists. It then became his task to provide the economic plan and machinery necessary to launch and maintain aggression. He knew the policy about the Jews,. he knew the methods Hitler was using to build up his power, he knew the ultimate aim was aggression. But he continued to play his part. Messersmith has summed up his work: "...yet by Schacht's resourcefulness, his complete financial ruthlessness and his absolute cynicism, Schacht was able to maintain and to establish the situation for the Nazis. Unquestionably, without this complete lending of his capacities to the Nazi Government and all of its ambitions, it would have been impossible for Hitler and the Nazis to develop an armed force sufficient to permit Germany to launch an aggressive war" (Document Number EC-451). The fact that that was in Schacht's mind was shown at a very early date most clearly in a secret report issued by his Ministry of Economics on 30 September 1934 (Document Number EC-128). I have already referred to his deputy's report showing the amazing detail in which plans and preparations for the management of German economy in time of war had been worked out before Schacht resigned in 1937 (Document Number EC-258).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: It is not surprising that on Schacht's sixtieth birthday the then German Minister of War, Von Blomberg, said to him: "Without your help, my dear Schacht, none of this armament could have taken place." In the witness box Schacht says that as early as the second half of 1934 and the first half of 1935 he found he was "wrong in thinking" that Hitler would bring the "revolutionary forces" of Nazism into the regular atmosphere and he discovered that Hitler did nothing to stop the excesses of individual Party members or Party groups. He was pursuing a "policy of terror." That accords very closely with Schacht's statement to the American Ambassador in September 1934: ". . . the Hitler Party is absolutely committed to war and the people too are ready and willing. Only a few government officials are aware of the danger and are opposed" (Document Number EC-461). Schacht's further suggestions that his purpose in the Government was to be critical and was to act as a brake are, as we submit, impossible to reconcile with his own actions. He need not have become Minister of Economics according to his own account, but he did so nonetheless. In May 1935, the month in which he undertook his task as' General Plenipotentiary for War Economy, "to put all economic forces in the service of carrying on war and to secure the life of the German people economically," he wrote to Hitler: ". . . all expenditures which are not urgently needed in other matters must stop and the entire, in itself small, financial power of Germany must be concentrated toward the one goal -the financing of the armament" (Document Number 1168-PS). In May 1936 he told a secret meeting of Nazi ministers that his program of financing armaments had meant "the commitment of the last reserve from the beginning" (Document Number 1301-PS).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: He said he would continue to work since he stood "with unswerving loyalty to the Fuehrer because he fully recognizes the basic idea of National Socialism." In 1937, when Hitler bestowed the Golden Party Badge upon him, Schacht appealed to all his colleagues: "...further to devote with all their hearts their entire strength to the Fuehrer and the Reich. The German future lies in the hands of our Fuehrer" (Document Number EC-500). The mercy killings; the persecution of the Jews. These things must have been known at that time. Were his hands so clean? In the light of these quotations it is not unexpected to find Ambassador Dodd, whom Schacht counted among his friends, recalling in his diary on 21 December 1937: "Much as he dislikes Hitler's dictatorship, he (Schacht), as most other eminent Germans, wishes annexation-without war if possible, with war, if the United States will keep hands off" (Document Number 2832-PS). These quotations, in our submission, make it clear that Schacht knew well that Hitler's aim was war very much earlier than he himself admits. He does admit, however, that he knew that the plot to discredit General Von Fritsch meant war. Despite that knowledge, on 9 March 1938, he accepted the appointment as Reichsbank president for an additional 4 years. He joyously took part in the acquisition of the former Austrian National Bank on 21 March 1938 ' and on 7 June 1939 wrote to Hitler: "From the beginning the Reichsbank has been aware of the fact that a successful foreign policy could be attained only by the reconstruction of the German Armed Forces. It therefore assumed to a very great extent the responsibility to finance the rearmament in spite of the inherent dangers to the currency. The justification thereof was the necessity-which pushed all other considerations into the background-to carry 	through the armament at once, out of nothing and further more under camouflage in the beginning, which made a foreign policy commanding respect possible" (Document Number EC-369).
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: These words, and others like them, are merely putting into fine phrases Schacht's knowledge that, if the proposed victims resisted, Hitler was prepared and would be able to plunge into war conditions to achieve his aims. Schacht's intellect and international position only increased the cynical immorality of his crimes. Moreover Schacht must face these facts. The Tribunal has seen the evidence of the film which showed his sycophantic trotting beside Hitler and swarming over him in 1940. Long before 1943 he must have known of the treatment of the Jews and the reign of terror in occupied countries. Yet until 1943 Schacht remained a Minister without Portfolio and at all events lent his name and weight to this regime of horror. Should anyone be left to boast that he did this with impunity? Funk carried on Schacht's work. He had already rendered invaluable service to the conspirators by his organization of the Ministry of Propaganda. From 1938 on he was Minister of Economics, president of the Reichsbank and chief Plenipotentiary for Economics, mobilizing economy for aggressive war, well knowing the Nazi plans for aggression. We find him in every field; attending Goering's conference on 12 November 1938, the meeting of the Reich Defense Council in June 1939, advising on decrees to be issued against the Jews at the former and the employment of concentration camp and slave labor at the latter. The final proof of the welcome with which he viewed aggression is found in his letter to Hitler on the 25th of August 1939, the day before the invasion of Poland had been said to begin; he said: "How happy and how grateful we must be to you to be favored to experience these colossal and world-moving times, and that we can contribute to the tremendous events of those days. ". . . Generalfeldmarschall Goering informed me last night that you-my Fuehrer-have approved in principle the measures prepared by me for financing a war, for setting up the wage and price system and for carrying out the plan for an emergency contribution....
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: "With the proposals worked out by me regarding a ruthless restriction of any unessential consumption and any public expenditure and project not necessary for war, we will be able to meet all financial and economic demands without any serious reverberations" (Document Number 699-PS). His part during the war needs no further mention than reference to the minutes of the Central Planning Board and to his arrangement with Himmler for the exploitation of the SS loot which as he knew, came in truckloads from Auschwitz and the other concentration camps to the vaults of the Reichsbank. The Tribunal will also remember the document which shows that his Ministry of Economics received enormous quantities of civilian clothing from these unhappy victims (Document Number 1166-PS). Was Doenitz ignorant, when he addressed to a Navy of some 600,000 men, a speech on the "spreading poison of Jewry" (Document Number 2878-PS)? Doenitz, who thought fit to circulate to the Naval War Staff Hitler's directive for dealing with the general strike at Copenhagen-"terror should be met by terror"-and asked for 12,000 concentration camp workers for the shipyards, recommending collective reprisals for Scandinavian workers in view of the efficacy of similar methods in France (Documents C-171, C-195). Are Raeder's hands unstained with the blood. of murder? As early as 1933, to use his own words: ". . . Hitler had made the clear political request to build up . . . by 1 April 1938 armed forces which he could put in the balance as an instrument of political power" (Document Number C-135). When, therefore, he received successive orders to fight if war resulted from Hitler's foreign policy, he knew very well that war was a certain risk if that policy went awry. Again and again he had this warning, first when Germany left the Disarmament Conference, again at the time of the negotiations for the Naval Agreement in 1935, at the time of the Rhineland, and later when he attended the famous Hossbach conference.