dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR.MERKEL: As to the question whether the crimes, as far as they were committed by men of the Gestapo, have to be imputed to the Gestapo as a whole, I finally come to the following conclusion, so far as it has not been arrived at before when dealing with the individual crimes: The Gestapo was a public Reich authority bound in its aims and activity to the existing laws. The fact that the Gestapo officials, during the 12 years of the existence of that institution, essentially carried out quite normal police work is not sufficiently taken into consideration. The working day of most of the Gestapo officials was occupied with official business which had no connection with the crimes alleged here. Third-degree interrogations were only carried out by a small fraction of the officials; the decree concerning that was in the safe of the office chief and marked "Top Secret." However, sections of the Gestapo officials, by the exploitation of the traditional duty of obedience, were used by the highest government offices for measures which went beyond the actual aims of the Gestapo. And here it is of decisive importance that only a small part of the Gestapo officials participated in these tasks, which were alien to their police duties. As the most serious charges against the Gestapo are in connection with its activity in the occupied territories, it follows that only a comparatively small percentage, at most 15 percent, of the executive officials can be accused, but not the Gestapo as a whole. Regarding this question, according to the general consensus of opinion it is of special importance to know whether the aims, tasks, and methods of the organization or group were public knowledge. Publicity, or in other words, general knowledge, must include two things: knowledge of the objective facts of the criminal action and knowledge of the illegal and criminal character. Judgment as to whether this dual knowledge existed must be based on common sense. What can be assumed if the individual members of the organization were told nothing of the criminal incidents?
DR.MERKEL: I wish to make a few fundamental additions to what I have already said about the individual crimes. The reason why the Gestapo as a whole had no knowledge of the capital crimes committed lies in the following: Hitler from the beginning knew how to surround himself with a veil of secrecy, to conceal his true intentions, to see to it that no minister and no department and no official learned too much from any other. The well-known Fuehrer Order Number 1, which was submitted as Document Number Gestapo-25, is only the actual confirmation of a long-established practice. Taking into consideration the demonic influence which emanated from Hitler, the feeling of inviolability of all his orders explainable only by the demonic aspect of his character-and the fear of the serious consequences to life and limb in the event of failure to carry out a so-called Fuehrer Order, is there any wonder that this secrecy order was scrupulously observed? Thus, it is really not incredible that almost all defendants and witnesses examined here have actually only now learned of all these heinous crimes. It is significant that, for example, the driver of a special vehicle was condemned to death by the SS and Police Court in Minsk because in an intoxicated condition he had spoken about the purpose of the vehicle against his orders (Affidavit Gestapo-47). Even Dr. Gisevius had to admit that Heydrich endeavored to keep his actions secret, and the Defendant Jodl characterized the system of secrecy in the most striking manner when he said that secrecy was a masterpiece of Hitler's art of concealment and a masterpiece of deception by Himmler. It is a recognized legal principle that ignorance through negligence is not sufficient in case of crime; therefore, in order to declare an organization criminal, it is necessary for the members of the organization actually to have known of and approved the criminal aims and methods.
DR.MERKEL: That, however, is not proved in our case, and cannot be assumed from all the facts established during the Trial, no matter how strange an assumption to the contrary may seem in retrospect today to one who cannot appreciate conditions in Germany. With regard to the question of whether the terrible crimes which actually were committed are to be imputed to the Gestapo as a whole, the further fact must not be disregarded that the members of this organization did not - act on their own initiative but on orders. Those, concerned contend, and can prove by witnesses, that if they had refused to carry out orders received, they would have been threatened not only with disciplinary proceedings, loss of civil service rights, and so forth, but also with concentration camps, and, in case of war assignments, with court-martial and execution. Do they thereby invoke a reason for exemption from guilt? This question must be examined with regard to the so-called "duress induced by official duties," which is -not recognized in written law. On the other hand, it represents a concept which cannot be dispensed with in legal life. Where the written law is not adequate, as when a state of emergency exists, sensible and practical considerations must fill the gaps. Public opinion approves this, and legal administration and jurisprudence have recognized the so-called extra-legal -state of emergency as a reason for exemption from guilt. It is true that cowardice is not a virtue; but it is equally true that heroism and martyrdom in the world of human beings are the exception. Should the Gestapo members form this exception? Could one, from a purely human point of view, really expect them to take upon themselves loss of livelihood, finally suffering, concentration camp, and perhaps even a shameful death? Besides, the members of the resistance movement in the occupied territories, in their killing of members of the German occupation forces, again and again referred to orders from their superiors and to the duress imposed on the terrorists who came under these orders.
DR.MERKEL: Therefore in our case, too, I would consider without hesitation that there was actual danger to life and limb for the perpetrator within the meaning of Article 54 of the German Criminal Code. Here there existed what Mr. Justice Jackson called "physical compulsion." Moreover, in Germany every civil servant was and is trained in the conception of the strictest obedience to orders and instructions from higher authority. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world the civil servant in Germany is imbued with the spirit of authority. He was trained in the attitude, correct in itself, that a state will break down if the orders issued by it are no longer obeyed, and that the denial of governmental authority has its logical result in anarchy. Added to this deep-rooted attitude was the devilish atmosphere which by hypnotic power turned particularly the small officials into tools without a will of their own. All of these motives were added to the threat emanating from the very nature of the occupation and they all combined to create a duress so oppressive that the Gestapo official no longer retained the freedom of will to examine a criminal order as to its legal and moral value and to refuse obedience. Taking these considerations into account these proved crimes cannot be charged to the whole of the Gestapo in such a manner as to declare the Gestapo criminal. The prosecutors state-and this is the very basis and aim of the Indictment-that the crimes were not isolated acts committed independently of each other, but rather parts or aspects of a criminal policy, either as part of a common plan or as a means of carrying out that ' common plan. The contention is that this very plan was directed towards the unleashing and waging of -an aggressive war which in its beginning had no definite aim, whereas later the aim of that war became the enslavement of Europe and the peoples of Europe in order to gain living space.
DR.MERKEL: Everything important that was carried on within that conspiracy, characterized as such by the Indictment, is described as having had only one aim and purpose, to secure for the Nazi State a place in the sun and to push all internal and external adversaries into the outer darkness. The essential point of the individual crimes was the intentional participation in the planning and carrying out of the plan. The crime of the individual consisted in his having joined the common plan of the conspiracy. It was claimed that plan and purpose of the conspiracy were generally known. Therefore, no one could claim that he acted without knowledge of the conspiracy. These contentions of the Indictment aim above all at the individual- defendants, but presumably they are also valid for the indicted organizations. It is claimed that the role played by the Gestapo within the conspiracy consisted in' aiding the Nazi conspirators to create a police state set up to break all resistance and to exterminate Jews and faithful Christians, as well as politically undesirable persons, as the main elements of the resistance movement; furthermore, to enslave the employable inhabitants of foreign countries and to eliminate and suppress by cruelty and horror all those who might resist the German lust of conquest within the Reich or in the conquered territories. If we examine again the individual crimes as to whether they are to be considered as having assisted the crime of conspiracy against world peace, it is desirable that the activity of the Gestapo before the war and during the war be studied concerning the characteristics mentioned. Without repeating myself unnecessarily, I believe I can state that the duties and methods of the Gestapo before the war were a manifestation of a State institution existing in all civilized countries which cannot be imagined apart from the State; its existence, therefore, in no way infers the planning of an aggressive war or any other conspiracy against world peace.
DR.MERKEL: The individual Gestapo official fulfilled his duty as he had learned to do as a civil servant. Equally,- in the upper strata of the political police it is unlikely that any other thought would have prevailed than to guarantee peace and security within the State. One must not identify the Gestapo with such superiors as Himmler and Heydrich, whose knowledge and actions were alien to the Police. If these men acted only from the political point of view their subordinates cannot be blamed for it. Taking into account the well-known system of secrecy, the individual Gestapo official and the overwhelming majority of all Gestapo members could not have had the least idea that their work was aimed at preparing a war of aggression and helping to create the basis for it. I believe that no Gestapo official hearing that contention or asked whether he had knowledge of the attack on world peace would even understand the question. The Gestapo as a whole can only be charged with responsibility for the crimes committed by members of the Gestapo during the war when those crimes-apart from the general knowledge of them-were committed with the knowledge that they formed part of a plan to bring the war of aggression to a victorious end at all costs, and by using means which were criminal in themselves and which conflicted with international law. That cannot be proved either. The preliminary condition would again be that the Gestapo officials who participated in the crimes knew that the war which we waged was a war of aggression. Now, we all know that a perfectly-organized propaganda which reached even the remotest hamlets never spoke of the war except as something forced upon us criminally, and that Hitler himself always spoke of the war which others wanted and not we ourselves.
DR.MERKEL: It may have happened that some intelligent individuals who, had not entirely lost their soundness of judgment did have their doubts and may have thought vaguely that our Government was not altogether blameless in regard to this war which had been forced upon us; but since the opposite is more likely, it is impossible to assume the existence of this suspicion or certainty to any appreciable degree in the minds of all the members of the Gestapo. The Prosecution assumes-quite unjustly, in my opinion-that every activity of the Party, above all its fight against the Jews, against its political opponents, and against the Churches, arose out of the intention and plan to eliminate all tendencies standing in the way of the war of aggression it proposed to wage. The National Socialist struggle against Jewry sprang from the doctrine of anti-Semitism which had become part of the Party program and which saw in all Jews an element destructive to the State. Because this fight was an immoral one .. the Christian Churches rightly protested against it. This again explains to a great extent the fight between Party and Church. The steps taken by the Party against its political opponents-especially against the Communists-were, in all probability, taken in the first place for the purpose of maintaining and protecting the State; mi any case, that was the way in which the German people-and therefore the Gestapo officials-regarded the state of tension which existed. It did not occur to anyone to see in this the influence of a conspiracy against world peace. One last point, however-perhaps the most profound-must not be overlooked in this connection. The German soldier, the, German civil servant, the German working man, and every German man knew that the world had placed us in a situation which meant a life-and-death struggle. In the course of the war it gradually became appallingly clear that it was a question of existence or extermination.
DR.MERKEL: Indeed, you would be misjudging the soul of the German people if you overlooked the fact that every decent German, when he realized this horrible truth, felt himself under an obligation to do everything which was expected of him in order to save his country. And when we judge the behavior of the German people and its political police we must take these factors into consideration in order to do them justice. The Prosecution have stated that the Court is in a position to restrict its decision with regard to the collective guilt of the organizations-both in regard to certain subgroups and in regard to time. The organizational structure, the variety of the groups of individuals active within the Gestapo, and the results of the evidence presented in reply to the Prosecution's assertions concerning the criminal activities of the Gestapo, form the basis for a possible limitation in regard either to persons or to time-which I should like to have taken into account, should the High Tribunal arrive at a verdict of "guilty." Criminal participation in the crimes listed under Article 6 of the Charter can certainly not be imputed to the following groups of persons, for they neither committed crimes themselves nor did they plan to commit them, much less. actually commit them collectively, nor could they have had knowledge of criminal plans and activities-and they certainly never did have such knowledge. (1) Administrative Officials. They did not receive their practical instructions from the office of the Secret State Police or from. Amt IV of the RS11A, but from Amter I and II of the RSH& whose members are not affected by the charges raised against the Gestapo. The rooms occupied by the administrative offices were never in the same place as those of the executive officials. Administrative.
DR.MERKEL: officials had no insight into the activities of executive officials partly because of the secrecy obligation which has been mentioned many times and which was observed particularly strictly in the Gestapo, partly because the administrative officials were looked upon by the executive officials as merely nominal members of the, Gestapo and were treated with marked reserve. (2) The difference in designation, such as Police Inspector for police administrative officials and Criminal Inspector in the case of the executive service, must be pointed out in order to stress the fundamental difference between these two categories of officials. When the Prosecution argues that the activities of the administrative officials constituted the prerequisite for the activities of the executive, this argument is as ineffective as though I were to argue that the activities of the officials of the Reich Finance Ministry, which secured funds for the salaries and other expenses of the Gestapo, was the cause of the activities of the executive officials. (2) Employees and wage earners. Mr. Justice Jackson, in his speech of I March 1946 ' excepted two groups of persons from the Indictment against the organizations; firstly, the SA Reserve and, secondly, the office employees, stenographers and servants of the Gestapo. A section of the groups of persons which I have dealt. with are thereby already excepted from the Indictment, but I deem it nevertheless my duty to point out that this group of persons, both on account of their subordinate positions and the consequent impossibility of their acquiring detailed knowledge of the Gestapo's activities, has been very justly excepted in its entirety from the Indictment.
DR.MERKEL: It is my opinion that all employees and wage-earners, including, for instance, drivers, as far as they were not civil servants, teletypists, telephone operators, draftsmen, and interpreters, should be included in this excepted group, no matter whether their membership in the Gestapo was based on a free labor contract, or whether the labor office directives allowed them the choice of a different place of work. (3) The witness Hedel has made a detailed statement on the activities of the staff which dealt with technical communications. These statements make it clear that they had nothing at all to do with executive work; that they were not in a position to have any knowledge of the activities of the executive staff, and that on the basis of their own activities, they did not necessarily realize that they belonged to an organization whose activities might be criminal. This group of persons, too, might justly be treated as exceptions. (4) The same applies to groups of persons who in the years 1942 to 1945 were collectively transferred to the Secret State Police on orders from higher quarters. They are the 51 groups of the Secret Field Police and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service, including Foreign Censorship and Telegraph Censorship Offices, which were subordinated to the Gestapo by the Wehrmacht, and the Customs Frontier Service, which was subordinated to the Gestapo by the Reich Ministry of Finance.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Merkel, were you referring just now to 51 groups? Can you tell the Tribunal where those 51 groups are specified? In what document?
DR. MERKEL: The testimony of Krichbaum, who was examined, before the Commission. With reference to these groups there cannot be the slightest doubt that neither the fact of voluntary membership,, nor the knowledge of criminal aims as alleged by the Prosecution, nor the fact of an alliance applies. The individual, no matter what rank or office he held, was powerless against collective transfer on the basis of an order emanating from the highest offices of the Wehrmacht and the State. Disobedience to this order would have been punished by death on the charge of desertion or military disobedience. (5) There still remains the group consisting of the executive officials. The executive officials originated in the political department staffs of the police commissioners' offices prior to 1933. Those officials, who had been employed in part even before 1914 and currently up to the year 1933 in combating the various political opponents of the various governmental systems, and the governments which came into power through them, were almost without exception absorbed by the political police of the new regime. The only exceptions were those officials who had been particularly active as opponents of National Socialism. But even those were only dismissed in rare cases. For the most part they were transferred to the Criminal Police. The staff of the Secret State Police was filled up by transferring officials and candidates to the Gestapo from other police departments without consulting them beforehand, except, of course, when they themselves made an application to that effect. In the same way municipal police officials with a long record of efficiency and who wished to remain in the police service, were transferred after 9 years' service to the Criminal or State Police. They had no influence as to which department they were employed in.
DR. MERKEL: With reference to the Counter-Intelligence and Frontier Police, I can demonstrate that the members of these groups of persons who were included as officials of the Secret State Police executive could have had no part whatever in the crimes of which the Prosecution accuse the Gestapo. The Counter-Intelligence Police exercised their police activities in a manner common to every civilized state, as one of the most noble tasks of -the Police or their affiliated institutions. It is clearly established through the testimony of Best and through Affidavits Number Gestapo-39, 56, and 89 that the staff of the Counter-Intelligence Police did not change very much; and in view of the special obligation to secrecy, and for the sake of the defense of the country, a transfer to other Gestapo or police departments was not permissible as a rule. The Counter-Intelligence Police was mostly isolated within the Gestapo offices and had no official contact with other departments. The cases handled by the Counter-Intelligence Police were always submitted to the regular courts for decision. The functions of the Frontier Police from- 1933 to 1945 were the same as in the preceding period, and the same as those carried out today by the officers of the new Frontier Police. The officers of the Frontier Police did not carry out third-degree interrogations, nor did they submit applications for commitment to a concentration camp, nor did they-and most of them had served for a long period in the Frontier Police-participate in any persecution of the Jews; nor could they on account of the nature of their employment have participated in any other crime with which the Gestapo is charged. These two groups of the Gestapo numbered 5 or 6 thousand individuals. On the basis of the figures which I have previously submitted for the strength of the separate groups of the Gestapo, I estimate the number of its staff, during the period when it was numerically strongest, at approximately 75,000.