dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. FRANCIS BIDDLE (Member of the Tribunal for the United States): The "seizure of power" by the Nazis, the use of terror, the destruction of trade unions, the attack on Christian teaching and on Churches, the persecution of Jews, the regimentation of youth--all these are said to be steps deliberately taken to carry out the common plan. It found expression, so it is alleged, in secret rearmament, the withdrawal by Germany from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, universal military service, and seizure of the Rhineland. Finally, according to the Indictment, aggressive action was planned and carried out against Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1936-1938, followed by the planning and waging of war against Poland, and, successively, against 10 other countries. The Prosecution says, in effect, that any significant participation in the affairs of the Nazi Party or Government is evidence of a participation in a conspiracy that is in itself criminal. Conspiracy is not defined in the Charter. But in the opinion of the Tribunal the conspiracy must be clearly outlined in its criminal purpose. It must not be too far removed from the time of decision and of action. The planning, to be criminal, must not rest merely on-the declarations of a party program, such as are found in the 25 points of the Nazi Party, announced in 1920, or the political affirmations expressed in Mein Kampf in later years. The Tribunal must examine whether a concrete plan to wage war existed, and determine the participants in that concrete plan. It is not necessary to decide whether a single master conspiracy between the defendants has been established by the evidence. The seizure of power by the Nazi Party, and the subsequent domination by the Nazi State of all spheres of economic and social life must of course be remembered when the later plans for waging war are examined. That plans were made to wage war as early as 5 November 1937, and probably before that, is apparent. And thereafter, such preparations continued in many directions, and against the peace of many countries.
MR. FRANCIS BIDDLE (Member of the Tribunal for the United States): Indeed the threat of war--and war itself if necessary--was an integral part of the Nazi policy. But the evidence establishes with certainty the existence of many separate plans rather than a single conspiracy embracing them all. That Germany was rapidly moving to complete dictatorship from the moment that the Nazis seized power, and progressively in the direction of war, has been overwhelmingly shown in the ordered sequence of aggressive acts and wars already set out in this Judgment. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the evidence establishes the common planning to prepare and wage war by certain of the defendants. It is immaterial to consider whether a single conspiracy to the extent and over the time set out in the Indictment has been conclusively proved. Continued planning, with aggressive war as the objective, has been established beyond doubt. The truth of the situation was well stated by Paul Schmidt, official interpreter of the German Foreign Office, as follows: "The general objectives of the Nazi leadership were apparent from the start, namely the domination of the European continent, to be achieved first by the incorporation of all German-speaking groups in the Reich, and secondly, by territorial expansion under the slogan 'Lebensraum.' The execution of these basic objectives, however, seemed to be characterized by improvisation. Each succeeding step was apparently carried out as each new situation arose, but all consistent with the ultimate objectives mentioned above." The argument that such common planning cannot exist where there is complete dictatorship is unsound. A plan in the execution of which a number of persons participate is still a plan, even though conceived by only one of them; and those who execute the plan do not avoid responsibility by showing that they acted under the direction of the man who conceived it. Hitler could not make aggressive war by himself. He had to have the co-operation of statesmen, military leaders, diplomats, and business men.
MR. FRANCIS BIDDLE (Member of the Tribunal for the United States): When they, with knowledge of his aims, gave him their co-operation, they made themselves parties to the plan he had initiated. They are not to be deemed innocent because Hitler made use of them, if they knew what they were doing. That they were assigned to their tasks by a dictator does not absolve them from responsibility for their acts. The relation of leader and follower does not preclude responsibility here any more than it does in the comparable tyranny of organized domestic crime. Count One, however, charges not only the conspiracy to commit aggressive war, but also to commit War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. But the Charter does not define as a separate crime any conspiracy except the one to commit acts of aggressive war. Article 6 of the Charter provides: "Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." In the opinion of the Tribunal these words do not add a new and separate crime to those already listed. The words are designed to establish the responsibility of persons participating in a common plan. The Tribunal will therefore disregard the charges in Count One that the defendants conspired to commit War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, and will consider only the common plan to prepare, initiate and wage aggressive war.
THE PRESIDENT: I now ask Judge Parker to continue the reading of the Judgment.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity The evidence relating to war crimes has been overwhelming in its volume and its detail. It is impossible for this Judgment adequately to review it, or to record -the mass of documentary and oral evidence that has been presented. The truth remains that war crimes were committed on a vast scale, never before seen in the history of war. They were perpetrated in all the countries occupied by Germany, and on the high seas, and were attended by every conceivable circumstance of cruelty and horror. There can be no doubt that the majority of them arose from the Nazi conception of "total war," with which the aggressive wars were waged. For in this conception of "total war," the moral ideas underlying the conventions which seek to make war more humane are no longer regarded as having force or validity. Everything is made subordinate to the overmastering dictates of war. Rules, regulations, assurances, and treaties, all alike, are of no moment; and so, freed from the restraining influence of international law, the aggressive war is conducted by the Nazi leaders in the most barbaric way. Accordingly, war crimes were committed when and wherever the Fuehrer and his close associates thought them to be advantageous. They were for the most part the result of cold and criminal calculation. On some occasions, war crimes were deliberately planned long in advance. In the case of the Soviet Union, the plunder of the territories to be occupied, and the ill-treatment of the civilian population, were settled in minute detail before the attack was begun. As early as the autumn of 1940, the invasion of the territories of the Soviet Union was being considered. From that date onwards, the methods to be employed in destroying all possible opposition were continuously under discussion.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): Similarly, when planning to exploit the inhabitants of the occupied countries for slave labor on the very greatest scale, the German Government conceived it as an integral part of the war economy, and planned and organized this particular war crime down to the last elaborate detail. Other war crimes, such as the murder of prisoners of war who had escaped and been recaptured, or the murder of Commandos or captured airmen, or the destruction of the Soviet commissars, were the result of direct orders circulated through the highest official channels. The Tribunal proposes, therefore, to deal quite generally with the question of war crimes, and to refer to them later when examining the responsibility of the individual defendants in relation to them. Prisoners of war were ill-treated and tortured and murdered, not only in defiance of the well-established rules of international law, but in complete disregard of the elementary dictates of humanity. Civilian populations in occupied territories suffered the same fate. Mole populations were deported to Germany for the purposes of slave labor upon defense works, armament production and similar tasks connected with the war effort. Hostages were taken in very large numbers from the civilian populations in all the occupied countries and were shot as suited the German purposes. Public and private property was systematically plundered and pillaged in order to enlarge the resources of Germany at the expense of the rest of Europe. Cities and towns and villages were wantonly destroyed without military justification or necessity. Murder and Ill-Treatment of Prisoners of War Article 6(b) of the Charter defines War Crimes in these words: "War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing, of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." In the course of the war, many Allied soldiers who had surrendered to the Germans were shot immediately, I often as a matter of deliberate, calculated policy. On 18 October 1942, the Defendant Keitel circulated a directive authorized by Hitler, which ordered that all members of Allied "Commando" units, often when in uniform and whether armed or not, were to be "slaughtered to the last man," even if they attempted to surrender. It was further provided that if such Allied troops came into the hands of the military authorities after being first captured by the local Police, or in any other way, they should be handed over immediately to the SD. This order was supplemented from time to time, and was effective throughout the remainder of the war, although after the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944 it was made clear that the order did not apply to "Commandos" captured within the immediate battle area. Under the provisions of this order, Allied "Commando" troops, and other military units operating independently, lost their lives in Norway, France, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. Many of them were killed on the spot, and in no case were those who were executed later in concentration camps ever given a trial of any kind. For example, an American military mission which landed behind the German front in the Balkans in January 1945, numbering about 12 to 15 men and wearing uniform, were taken to Mauthausen under the authority of this order, and according to the affidavit of Adolf Zutte, the adjutant of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, all of them were shot.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): In March 1944 the OKH issued the "Kugel," or "Bullet," decree, which directed that every escaped officer and NCO prisoner of war who had not been put to work, with the exception of British and American prisoners of war, should on recapture be handed over to the Sipo and SD. This order was distributed by the Sipo, and SD to their regional offices. These escaped officers and NCO's were to be sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, to be executed upon arrival by means of a bullet shot in the neck. In March 1944 50 officers of the British Royal Air Force, who escaped from the camp at Sagan where they were confined as prisoners, were shot on recapture, on the direct orders of Hitler. Their bodies were immediately cremated, and the urns containing their ashes were returned to the camp. It was not contended by the defendants that this was other than plain murder, in complete violation of international law. When Allied airmen were forced to land in Germany, they were sometimes killed at once by the civilian population. The Police were instructed not to interfere with these killings, and the Ministry of Justice was informed that no one should be prosecuted for taking part in them. The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was characterized by particular inhumanity. The death of so many of them was not due merely to the action of individual guards, or to the exigencies of life in the camps. It was the result of systematic plans to murder. More than a month before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the OKW were making special plans for dealing with political representatives serving with the Soviet Armed Forces who might be captured. One proposal was that "political commissars of the Army are not recognized as prisoners of war, and are to be liquidated, at the latest in the transient prisoners-of-war camps." The Defendant Keitel gave evidence that instructions incorporating this proposal were issued to the German Army.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): On 8 September 1941, regulations for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war in all prisoner-of-war camps were issued, signed by General Reinecke, the head of the prisoner-of-war department of the High Command. These orders stated: "The Bolshevist soldier has therefore lost all claim to treatment as an honorable opponent, in accordance with the Geneva Convention.... The order for ruthless and energetic action must be given at the slightest indication of insubordination, especially in the case of Bolshevist fanatics. Insubordination, active or passive resistance, must be broken immediately by force of arms (bayonets, butts, and firearms).... Anyone carrying out the order who does not use his weapons, or does so with insufficient energy, is punishable.... Prisoners of war attempting escape are to be fired on without previous challenge. No warning shot must ever be fired.... The use of arms against prisoners of war is as a rule legal." The Soviet prisoners of war were left without suitable clothing; the wounded without medical care; they were starved, and in many cases left to die. On 17 July 1941, the Gestapo issued an order providing for the killing of all Soviet prisoners of war who were or might be dangerous to National Socialism. The order recited: "The mission of the commanders of the Sipo and SD stationed in Stalags is the political investigation of all camp inmates, the elimination and further treatment[4]) (a) of all political, criminal, or in some other way unbearable elements among them, (b) of those persons who could be used for the reconstruction of the occupied territories.... Further, the commanders[5]) must make efforts from the beginning to seek out among the prisoners elements which appear reliable, regardless of whether there are Communists concerned or not, in order to use them for intelligence purposes inside of the camp, and if advisable, later in the occupied territories also.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): By use of such informers, and by use of all other existing possibilities, the discovery of all elements to be eliminated among the prisoners must proceed step by step at once.... "Above all, the following must be discovered: all important functionaries of State and Party, especially professional revolutionaries... all Political Commissars in the Red Army, leading personalities of the State ... leading personalities of the business world, members of the Soviet Russian Intelligence, [6] ) all Jews, all persons who are found to be agitators or fanatical Communists.... Executions are not to be held in the camp or in the immediate vicinity of the camp.... The prisoners are to be taken for special treatment if possible into the former Soviet Russian territory." The affidavit of Warlimont, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, and the testimony of Ohlendorf, former Chief of Amt III of the RSHA, and of Lahousen, the head of one of the sections of the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht's intelligence service, all indicate the thoroughness with which this order was carried out. The affidavit of Kurt Lindow, a former Gestapo official, states: "...There existed in the prisoner-of-war camps on the Eastern Front small screening teams (Einsatzkommandos), headed by lower-ranking members of the Secret Police (Gestapo). These teams were assigned to the camp commanders and had the job to segregate the prisoners of war who were candidates for execution according to the orders that had been given, and to report them to the office of the Secret Police." On 23 October 1941 the camp commander of the Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp reported to Mueller, Chief of the Gestapo, a list of the Soviet prisoners of war who had been executed there on the previous day.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): An account of the general conditions and treatment of Soviet prisoners of war during the first 8 months after the German attack upon Russia was given in a letter which the Defendant Rosenberg sent to the Defendant Keitel on 28 February 1942: "The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is on the contrary a tragedy of the greatest extent.... A large part of them has starved, or died because of the hazards of the weather. Thousands also died from spotted fever ... [7]) "...the camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death.... "..An many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on the march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot before the eyes of the horrified population, and the corpses were left. "In numerous camps no shelter for the prisoners of war was provided at all. They lay under the open sky during rain or snow. Even tools were not made available to dig holes or caves." In some cases Soviet prisoners of war were branded with a special permanent mark. There was put in evidence the OKW order dated 20 July 1942 which laid down that: "The brand is to take the shape of an acute angle of about .45 degrees, with the long side to be 1 cm. in length, pointing upwards and burnt on the left buttock ... This brand is made with the aid of a lancet available in any military unit. The coloring used is Chinese ink." The carryng-out of this order was the responsibility of the military authorities, though it was widely circulated by the Chief of the Sipo and the SD to German police officials for information. Soviet prisoners of war were also made the subject of medical experiments of the most cruel and inhuman kind. In July 1943 experimental work was begun in preparation for a campaign of bacteriological warfare; Soviet prisoners of war were used in these medical experiments, which more often than not proved fatal.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): In connection with this campaign for bacteriological warfare, preparations were also made for the spreading of bacterial emulsions from planes, with the object of producing widespread failures of crops and consequent starvation. These measures were never applied, possibly because of the rapid deterioration of Germany's military position. The argument in defense of the charge with regard to the murder and ill-treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, that the U.S.S.R. was not a party to the Geneva Convention, is quite without foundation. On 15 September 1941 Admiral Canaris protested against the regulations for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war signed by General Reinecke on 8 September 1941. He then stated: "The Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war is not binding in the relationship between Germany and the U.S.S.R. Therefore only the principles of general international law on the treatment of prisoners of war apply. Since the 18th century these have gradually been established along the lines that war captivity is neither revenge nor punishment, but solely protective custody, the only purpose of which is to prevent the prisoners of war from further participation in the war. This principle was developed in accordance with the view held by all armies that it is contrary to military tradition to kill or injure helpless people.... The decrees for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war enclosed are based on a fundamentally different viewpoint." This protest, which correctly stated the legal position, was ignored. The Defendant Keitel made a note on this memorandum: "The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I approve and back the measures." Murder and Ill-Treatment of Civilian Population Article 6 (b) of the Charter provides that "ill-treatment of civilian population of or in occupied territory ... killing of hostages ... wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages..." shall be a War Crime.
JUDGE JOHN. J. PARKER (Alternate Member of the Tribunal for the United States): In the main, these provisions are merely declaratory of the existing laws of war as expressed by the Hague Convention, Article 46, which stated: "Family honor and rights, the lives of persons and private property, as well as religious convictions and practices, must be respected." The territories occupied by Germany were administered in violation of the laws of war. The evidence is quite overwhelming of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terror. On 7 December 1941 Hitler issued the directive since known as the "Nacht und Nebel Erlass" (Night and Fog Decree), under which persons who committed offenses against the Reich or the German forces in occupied territories, except where the death sentence was certain, were to be taken secretly to Germany and handed over to the Sipo and SD for trial or punishment in Germany. This decree was signed by the Defendant Keitel. After these civilians arrived in Germany, no word of them was permitted to reach the country from which they came, or their relatives; even in cases when they died awaiting trial the families were not informed, the purpose being to create anxiety in the minds of the family of the arrested person. Hitler's purpose in issuing this decree was stated by the Defendant Keitel in a covering letter, dated 12 December 1941, to be as follows: "Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know the fate of the criminal. This aim is achieved when the criminal is transferred to Germany." Even persons who were only suspected of opposing any of the policies of the German occupation authorities were arrested, and on arrest were interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most shameful manner.