dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Thus he cannot be made responsible for the fixing of the rate of exchange between the Reichsmark and the Czech crown, because this rate had already been fixed when he took over office; neither had he any hand in fixing it, nor had he the power or right to change the rate of exchange-quite apart from the question, which we need not discuses here, of whether, as the Prosecution maintain without producing proofs, the rate of exchange really was detrimental to the Czech people or not. Incidentally, I need hardly say that even if this had been the case, it would not be a crime according to the Charter, and only as such would it be punishable. Nor can he be made responsible for the setting up of the customs union and putting it into practice. This had already been laid down in Article 9 of the decree of 16 March 1939, which reads, "The Protectorate belongs to the customs area of the German Reich and is subject to its customs sovereignty." This regulation was a natural consequence of the fact, which I have already stressed, that the Protectorate was a part of the territory of the German Reich. However, I would like to draw special attention here to the fact that the defendant, because he regarded the inclusion of the Protectorate into the customs area-the customs sovereignty of the Reich-as detrimental and harmful to Czech economy, managed to prevent this inclusion for a year and a half, until October 1940, in spite of all the pressure exerted by the Reich Finance Minister, which is clear proof that the defendant put the interests of the Czech people, who had been entrusted to him, above the interests of the German Reich. He had absolutely nothing to do with the economic measures for the alleged transfer of Czech banks and industrial undertakings nor with filling the key positions with Germans. Those measures were taken by other offices-especially by the Reichsbank and the Delegate for the Four Year Plan- behind his back and without his collaboration.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: These were merely the natural consequences of the fact that already in earlier days a very large amount of German capital had been invested in these banks and undertakings, and this capital increased after the occupation because the credits given by the other countries were withdrawn by them and were now granted by German firms. Lastly, he had nothing whatever to do with the judiciary. This was exclusively under the control of the Reich Ministry of Justice. This alone set up the German courts, including summary courtsmartial, and the prosecuting authority; it alone appointed judges and prosecutors. Herr Von Neurath himself had nothing to do with these appointments and still less with the jurisdiction of the courts, as is clearly shown by the ordinances and decrees by which they were set up, especially the decree concerning the practice of criminal jurisdiction, of 14 April 1939,-Document Book 5, Document Neurath-147. Here again I must draw attention to the fact that neither the economic measures nor the setting up of German courts in the Protectorate, which was a part of the German Reich, can even remotely fall under the category of crimes enumerated by this Charter. And this applies equally to the alleged intrusions into the Czech educational system, the appointment of German school inspectors, measures with which the defendant has been charged in the Czech indictment. These measures also were not taken by him, but by the German Reich Ministry for Education. And the closing of a larger number of Czech secondary schools was not ordered by the defendant, nor by order of the German Reich Ministry, but by the Czech Government itself even if it did so at the suggestion of the defendant. This measure turned out to be a useful one, and was in the interests of the Czech youth and, therefore, of the Czech intelligentsia and people because it obviated the danger of the formation and growth of a large well-educated proletariat.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: After the incorporation of the Sudeten German territory into the German Reich in the autumn of 1938 this danger had become acute, for a very large number of Czech officials and members of the free professions had streamed into the territory of the Protectorate, with the result that because of the overcrowding of all professions and the diminution of the Protectorate territory owing to the separation of the Sudeten territory and Slovakia, the chances of finding employment for the pupils leaving the secondary schools were still further diminished. In addition to this came the closing of universities in the middle of November 1939 upon personal order of Hitler. The Czech Government could not shut its eyes to the truth of these considerations of the defendant, and itself decreed the closing of quite a number of schools. The defendant did not exercise any pressure on the Czech Government. This has been proved by the evidence. The dissolution of Czech gymnastic and sport clubs and similar organizations, however, as well as the confiscation and the use of their assets, was ordered, without knowledge or participation of the defendant, by the Police, which was not under his jurisdiction. It is not even certain, by the way, whether this dissolution took place while the defendant was holding office or only after his departure. The dissolution of the Sokol, it must be said, was a real necessity for the protection of German interests, and moreover it was a measure which was taken to appease and reconcile the Czech nation, too; for the Sokol was, beyond doubt, the focus of all anti-German efforts and of the incitement of the Czech people toward an active resistance against everything which was German. The preceding arguments show how manifold were the encroachments of other administrations and offices on the administration of the Protectorate,- and, accordingly, the difficulties and resistance which arose against a uniform policy of the defendant.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: They were, however, by no means removed, but, on the contrary, aggravated by the decree of 1 September 1939 concerning the organization of administration and the German Security Polite-Document Book 5, Document Neurath-149. This decree was issued, without previous consultation with the defendant, by the Ministerial Council for the Reich Defense. Its first part especially is obscure and misleading. True, it placed all German administration offices and their officials in the Protectorate under the control of the Reich Protector, but this subordination was a formal one only, that is, simply on paper and not an actual one in view of the administrative duties which were actually performed. In this respect, things remained unchanged, as had already been indicated from the authority of the supreme Reich offices, according to Article 11 of the decree of 16 March 1939 and of the ordinance of 22 March 1939. The difference was only that from now on all administrations and offices, established or to be established by other offices, were formally attached to the Reich Protector's office and took up their functions under the official designation of "The Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia." However, this by no means insured that such attached departments were put, in fact, under control of the Reich Protector himself-that is, the defendant-and that they had to receive from him their factual directives and orders to work according to his views and his directives. On the contrary, they received their instructions, just as before, from their original Reich offices, and had to observe and obey them. For instance, the so-called transportation department under the Reich Protector which had to deal with the transportation system-already taken out of the Reich Protector's jurisdiction by ordinance of 16 March 1939- was controlled just as before by the Reich Ministry of Transportation and not by the Reich Protector, and received instructions not from him but from the Ministry in Berlin.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: And the same applied to other sectors, also including the purely internal administration. According to this ordinance of 1 September 1939 of the Ministerial Council for the Reich Defense-and not, as the Czech prosecutor erroneously contends, by a decree of the defendant-a new plan was undertaken for the Protectorate territory with Oberlandratsbezirke and the Oberlandrat at their head, which official is, according to Paragraph 6 of the ordinance, the competent administrator for all administration branches of the internal administration and subordinate to the Reich Protector in an administrative sense. As such, he was invested with far-reaching authority, and also supervised the Czech authorities in the Protectorate, and this, to be sure, not by the order of the Reich Protector, but of the pertinent Reich Ministry in Berlin. This, too, was bound to result in very serious differences between the measures taken by those Oberlandrate on the basis of the directives issued to them by the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin and the policy pursued by the defendant. To what extent the latter affected and influenced the Czech administrative offices does not have to be taken into consideration, since this decree, too, and its result, the control of the activities of the Czech administrative authorities by Reich German officials, is not a crime punishable according to the Charter of this Tribunal. This decree, too, is only a result of the fact that the Protectorate belonged to the German Reich. On the other hand, this decree clarified the question of the position of the Police within the Protectorate territory, the political as well as the Security Police. This question was quite unsettled until the decree came into force and from the very first day of his activity had led to differences and difficulties between Herr Von Neurath and his State Secretary Frank.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: At the time when Hitler charged the defendant with the office of the Reich Protector he had, according to the defendant's testimony, assured him of far-reaching power, especially for protecting and fully supporting the defendant's intended policy of conciliation and compromise in opposition to radical aims of the Party and other chauvinistic circles. The defendant deduced from this that as the representative of the Fuhrer in the Protectorate he must and would have a decisive influence on the activity of the Police also. According to his own testimony he could not visualize at that time that a large part of the sphere of activity accepted by him became illusory from the start, since the Police had not been from the outset expressly subordinated to him. However, due to the fact that Frank-who had been made Higher SS and Police Fuhrer in the Protectorate-was at the same time appointed to the position of State Secretary, and as such was subordinated to him, the defendant felt entitled to assume that Hitler's intention was to centralize the police authority, if not in his own hands, at least under his jurisdiction-that is, in the hands of his State Secretary. In practice, however, this relation worked out entirely differently, since State Secretary Frank had not the slightest intention of letting his official chief, the defendant, have any authority whatsoever over the Police, and recognized only the jurisdiction and authority of Himmler, his superior, as SS and Police Leader, or of his Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). This actual state of affairs was established by law in the decree of 1 September 1939. For this decree unequivocally states that the German Security Police, and thereby also the Gestapo, was not subordinated to the Reich Protector.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: This is already evident, in itself, from the fact that the decree completely separates the two departmental spheres-administration and Police-by dealing in Part 1 with the building up of a German administration in the Protectorate subordinated to the Reich Protector, and then dealing separately in Part II with the German Security Police. This Security Police is not under the jurisdiction of the Reich Protector, but, as was already reserved in Article V, Paragraph 5, of the decree of 16 March 1939, is taken over by the administration of the Reich itself-that is to say, it receives its orders directly from the Chief of Police in Berlin-that is, Himmler-and in part also from the Higher SS and Police Leader in Prague. The second sentence of Paragraph 2 describes the relationship of the Police toward the Reich Protector. Its wording is as follows: '`The organs of the German Security Police are to collect and make use of the results of their investigations, in order to notify the Reich Protector and his subordinated offices about important events, and to keep him informed and offer suggestions." This signifies that the Reich Protector legally could not actually influence the activities of the Police in any form whatsoever. He could not oppose their orders, emanating from Berlin, prior to their execution; quite apart from the fact that he never got to see them, he had no authority whatsoever to oppose them. He had but one claim and that was to be subsequently informed by the Police about measures already taken by them and even that happened-as was proved by the evidence-only in the rarest cases. He himself did not have any right or any possibility whatsoever of issuing orders to the Police. In consequence of this separation of powers, and in view of the totally different attitude of Frank toward the Czech people in contrast with Herr Von Neurath, the sharpest differences and contradictions were inevitably bound to crop up from the very beginning.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: For Frank, as a Sudeten German and one of the leaders of the Sudeten Germans, was filled with hatred and revenge against anything that was Czech. He did not want to hear of a reconciliation or an understanding between the German and the Czech peoples, and gave free rein to this anti-Czech attitude from the first day of his activity. At first-that is to say, up to the time of the outbreak of the war-the activity of the Police was actually slight, so that these opposing viewpoints did not become so apparent. Herr Von Neurath could consequently assume that this opposition would gradually diminish, and that Frank would conform to his wishes and aims, and would show himself to be accommodating; and he, the defendant, did not yet recognize the necessity of exerting influence upon the Police. When, however, he finally realized-from the gradually increasing activity of the Police and their excesses-that his expectations were not being fulfilled, he protested to Hitler orally and by letter, time And time again-as confirmed by the testimony of the witnesses Dr. Volckers and Von Holleben-and implored him to alter this ominous state of affairs, and to subordinate the Police to him, and to him only. However, all of Hitler's promises and assurances proved to be false, and the subordination of the Police to Herr Von Neurath did not take place. Yet, he did not want to relinquish the fight so soon, nor despair of the task he had undertaken. Now, more than ever, he wanted to try to impose his ideas and policy and, should he not be successful in major as well as in minor issues, at least try to soften the measures taken by the Police. For this purpose he had the most detailed accounts given to him personally in all cases of measures and action taken by the Police, such as arrests and other excesses, insofar as he received information about them mostly from Czech sources. Wherever he could, he exerted his influence for the release of arrested persons.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: This is evident from the testimony of all witnesses produced by me, above all, from the testimony of Dr. Volckers who, as head of the defendant's office, was continually engaged in receiving such complaints. This is moreover evident from documents submitted by the Prosecution themselves, such as the notes of the defendant about his conference with President Hacha of 26 March 1940-Appendix 5 to Supplement Number 1, USSR-60-and even from the testimony of Bienert-who himself was arrested by the Police but released in a very short time upon the intervention of the defendant. With the one exception of the testimony of Frank of 7 March 1946, submitted during the hearing of evidence, the testimony of all witnesses corresponds on the question of responsibility of the defendant for the measures taken by the Police. Frank's testimony, however, is in direct contradiction to his own earlier testimony. At his interrogation on 30 May 1945-Document Book 5, Document Neurath-153-Frank said the following, and I quote: "The Police, however, was not under the control of the offices of the Reich Protector.... Both Gestapo and Security Police received their directions and orders directly from the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin." Frank's statement of 5 May 1945 concerning the student riots- Document Book 5, Document Neurath-152-is also typical of the manner in which the Police received its instructions directly from Berlin, over the head of the Reich Protector. Frank speaks therein of the report on the first demonstrations, which he had sent to Berlin, and in which he had asked for instructions; he had received them by return mail from the Fuhrer's headquarters through the Security Police in Prague, to which office they had been sent by Berlin directly and he, Frank, received them from there. There is no mention whatever of the person or even of the office of the Reich Protector during the entire proceedings; it is an internal affair of the Police involving the Higher SS and Police Leader Frank.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: Because of the importance of this point, I would like to refer explicitly to the statements, made by the witnesses Von Burgsdorff and Volckers, both of whom were, on the basis of their official position, thoroughly conversant with this question during the entire time the defendant was in office. Burgsdorff testified that the Police was under Frank, who received his orders directly from Himmler. Volckers said that the defendant had no influence on Frank's activities, and thereby on the Police. In practice, from the very start, the Police and, therefore, also State Secretary Frank took their measures independently of the defendant. This was legally confirmed later through the ordinance of 1 September 1939. All witnesses, also in their written testimonies, testify that the relations between the defendant and Frank had been as bad as can be imagined. It is entirely impossible in such a state of affairs that the Chief of the SD and the Security Police should have been active as political adviser to the defendant. The defendant cannot at all remember a decree of May 1939 about the appointment of this man, to which reference is made in the document by the Chief of Security Police-Document Number USSR-487. In any case, according to his definite statement, he never performed any duties. The document, USSR-487, therefore, does not appear to be conclusive as evidence. lithe copy handed to me by the Prosecution is dated 21 July 1943. That alone proves that the appointment of the SD leader, if it occurred at all, did not take place during the defendant's entire time in office. Aside from the date, however, the "reference" of the latter shows that this appointment does not at all concern a political adviser to the Reich Protector himself, but to the State Secretary for Security Matters-that is, Frank. The address "Der Herr Reichsprotektor" is not to be understood to mean the person, but rather the office.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: In German official circles it was customary to speak of the "Herr" Reichsminister, et cetera, even though he was not meant personally, but some department of his office. It is entirely credible and probable that the SD leader was appointed political adviser to the State Secretary, who at the same time was State Secretary to the office of the defendant and independent State Secretary for Security Matters. Precisely from the so-called "warning," given at the end of August 1939, with which the Prosecution charged my client, it can be seen how he himself felt about the ways and means of easing the minds of the population and of preventing acts of violence and insubordination on their part. According to his sworn testimony, the defendant thereby intended to discourage the population from committing acts of violence and especially to prevent acts of sabotage-which were to be expected in this time of high political tension before the war-thus preventing harsh police or legal measures which would only serve to embitter the population even more. It is doubtless more humane to issue such a warning, and thereby prevent such crimes, rather than allow crimes to be committed without previous warning and afterward mete out severe punishment. The fact that acts of sabotage, if it was impossible to prevent them, had to be severely punished in those times would certainly have been acknowledged also in any other country and taken for granted. As the defendant testified, the warning fulfilled its purpose. No special punishments were threatened or fixed; it contained no special threats of punishment whatever, but referred, as the wording proves, to criminal law already in force. The sentence, that the responsibility for all acts of sabotage affected not only the culprit but the entire Czech population, is, of course, concerned only with the moral responsibility and not the penal one, as was also confirmed by the defendant.
DR. VON LUDINGHAUSEN: It means that in the case of repeated serious acts of sabotage, general measures would be taken in the respective territories, as for example, earlier curfew, ban on going out, or general stoppage of traffic or electric current, under which the entire population would have to suffer. A responsibility in the penal sense would have had to be formulated much more concretely. It was expressly mentioned at the beginning of the proclamation that anyone who committed the cited crimes thereby proved himself to be an enemy of the Reich and had to be punished accordingly. This sentence especially shows that the penal treatment of such sabotage acts was to be applied individually. At that time, nobody in Prague, not even the Chief of Police, would have thought of the idea of decreeing collective punishments or even, as the Prosecution asserted without any evidence whatever, of introducing the hostage system. In this connection, I also wish to refer to the statement made by the witness Von Holleben, Document Book 5, Document Neurath-158, in which he states, "Neurath, therefore, always refused to make a person responsible for acts committed by somebody else." From all that has been said previously, we see that the Defendant Von Neurath cannot be made responsible for the arrests made at the time of the occupation of the Czech territory, nor for the arrests made at the outbreak of the war of, as the Prosecution assert, 8,000 prominent Czechs sent to concentration camps or executed as hostages. These arrests, according to the defendant's testimony, with which Frank's testimony agrees, were made on direct order from Berlin without knowledge of the defendant nor even of Frank himself. Bienert's contradictory testimony presented by the Prosecution is factually incorrect, and is based on completely illogical and false deductions. His deduction that this entire action was under the defendant's direction because his order for Bienert's release had been issued only 4 hours after his arrest is without any logic and is objectively wrong.