dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Ail nations on earth, as long as they harbored a spark of the will to live and strength of life within themselves, have always in days of the deepest need and dishonor produced men who, chosen by history, have risen to be leaders out of such misery by their very personality and by their ability to carry away the masses. The great tragedy of the German people lies in the fact that here was a man who did not spring from the authentic and genuine German race, did not incorporate in himself the true character, the true disposition of the German people, but was a stranger whose origin and descent is still wrapped in mystery. But at that time, in those fateful days, he must have appeared as the only one who could lead the German people from chaos to a new life, and who through the circumstances and the will of the people obtained the force and power to do so. The power of attraction of Hitler on the masses was all the greater since behind him stood the towering shape and nimbus of Reich President Von Hindenburg, who had already almost become a myth. But it must be pointed out with emphasis, in the interest of truth and for the honor of the German people, that at the first new elections after the assumption of power by Hitler the Party did not succeed in obtaining the absolute majority in the Reichstag, rather that about half the electors still followed the democratic spirit of their old parties, which proves how deeply rooted the democratic idea already was in the German people. Hindenburg's authority also backed up Hitler's governmental actions which now followed, which from his point of view aimed logically and consistently at helping his state leadership to lend the maximum vigor and strength to his fight against the forces of decomposition still in the country, as wed as in the struggle for economic and poetical freedom. Without such strong and uniform state stewardship this struggle was not feasible. This was proved by the experiences of the postwar period.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): It was therefore not only a consequence resulting from the personality of Hitler, even though he did endeavor to collect for his state stewardship an the forces inherent in the people for the approaching fight for their existence and then to agree, with the consent of the President of the Reich through the democratic Constitution of a freely elected Reichstag, to the so-called Enabling Act of 23 March 1933, whereby he obtained the sanction of the Cabinet to the so-called Conformity Act of 7 April 1933. Both laws served Hitler s ambition to enable the Government to enlist all the necessary national strength in the coming fight for existence. The law concerning the unity of State and Party, as well as the dissolution of an other parties, served the same purpose. As a result of existing conditions all this was due to the demands to eliminate all internal disturbances and thereby give the Reich Government a free hand in its fight against economic distress, and at the same time to regain for Germany a fitting place in the council of nations. This demand explains also the establishment of the Secret State Police to deal with the combating and ruminating of underground Communist agitation. The majority of the German people, above an the youth, lacked, besides any experience whatsoever, also the faculty to judge at that time the future extent and possible development of these measures. Above all it was the youth which in its distress rejoiced in Hitler as the longed-for leader and followed him with blind confidence as the man who was to deliver it from an unnatural shackles and all shame. Gerhart Hauptmann, the well-known German poet and great authority on national traits, who died recently, wrote a sentence in what is perhaps his profoundest psychological book Der Narrin Christo (The Foolin Christ): "Nature's greatest social unifier is always a common image of phantasy as is wed known to those who wish to establish an orderly unit out of a multitude of people.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Such state-building oppressors and dominating types make use of those men who, endowed with a fanatical imagination, believe in, further, and carry out their dreams, and thereby erect for the masses a common shrine for which, for long periods of time, no sacrifice is too costly." How much more must the truth of this quotation hold good with a nation which, as I have attempted to show, throughout its entire history has always been accustomed to be led, which practically never directed its own fate, which for 15 years had again and again been disappointed and had had to lose an hope that the other states would come to its aid. All the more did it approve this strength of the state leadership since it was tired of the constant party connects and, undisturbed by further internal fights and upsets, only desired to devote itself to the re-establishment of its economic existence: In its blind confidence, it had as yet not recognized that through government measures it could in future itself be placed in shackles, that it could itself be deprived of the possibility of taking a stand against a state leadership which was repugnant to its innermost feeling. At first confidence in Hitler was still confirmed and strengthened by the undeniable fact that Hitler succeeded in restarting the economy and banishing the specter of unemployment, for in the short span of one year Hitler had already succeeded in giving work and bread again to almost 2 mutton unemployed. And if these successes were partly made possible by recommencing armament and other public works, he did not promote any of the formerly somewhat belligerent desires and impulses of the German people, but met only a craving for military spectacles which had been present in the German people since olden times, together with a certain inferiority complex.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): General Smuts recognized this absolutely correctly in his speech before the Royal Institute of International Affairs on 12 November 1934, when he said: "We are continuously told what is going on on the opposite side of the Rhine, on the subject of the secret armaments. It probably is nothing else but the consequence of an inferiority complex. It is not real militarism, but these are military stimulants for the masses. This wild behavior creates a blessed feeling of satisfaction and relief in those who consider themselves inferior or humiliated by their neighbors across the Rhine." So the German people enjoyed the military rights offered to them, not out of the belligerent impulses attributed to them by the Prosecution or even from a wad for aggression dormant in them, but simply because of joy in the spectacle and out of an instinctive feeling which the founder of modern historical research has expressed as follows: "The national consciousness of a great people demands a suitable position in the world. Conditions abroad do not form an empire of convenience, but of essential power. The respect of a state  will always correspond to the development of its interior powers, and each nation  will resent not seeing itself in the place befitting it." And now these people, who had languished under this instinctive feeling of inferiority up to the seizure of power by Hitler, saw how suddenly, as if by magic forces, one discriminating chain of the Treaty of Versailles after the other dropped under Hitler's leadership, and how Germany was about to regain her place in the family of nations, which she had had to forego for such a long time.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Does it not actually almost resemble a miracle how the foreign policy conducted by my client succeeded in cleverly exploiting the foreign poetical constellations and incidents which occurred in the period of the following years, and how it succeeded by peaceful ways and means in removing, one after the other, an the regulations of the Versailles Treaty which gagged Germany in her foreign poetical position; the Western Powers who had up to that time insisted upon exact compliance with the most unimportant regulations of the Treaty of Versailles, now tolerated everything quietly and could not rise above protests on paper. Is it not actually almost grotesque that from 1933 on the same people who in former years had retaliated against the slightest nonfulfillment of the obligations of the reparations by a democratically governed Germany with military means, like the occupation of the bridgeheads on the right side of the Whine and the occupation of the Ruhr area, suddenly reacted only by meaningless protests to measures on the part of Germany which they presumably considered violations of the most important treaties, like armaments and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and that they did not even think of offering serious resistance? But did this not also necessarily tend to increase Hitler's national popularity his respect among the large masses, their readiness to follow him and their faith in him, and to make the people blind toward the measures applied within the country, which were gradually becoming more and more severe, toward the gradual throttling of cultural, artistic, and intellectual liberty, the free expression of opinion, and criticism, and toward the anti-Semitic measures. Even the bloody incidents of 30 June i934 were hardly able to affect this attitude, and in some respects resulted in the contrary.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): For after the extremely clever explanation which Hitler gave them, these things could not but appear to the people as a purely internal affair of the Party which served to purge the Party from impure elements, and were not only bound to strengthen confidence in him, but also to remove any doubts and misgivings about him and his authoritarian state leadership, which had already arisen here and there. And the fact that the murder of high-ranking generals did not arouse any reaction whatsoever in the people actually only proves how little the attitude of the people was militaristic. Although in this Trial the Prosecution reproaches the entire German people with such emphatic indignation for not having revolted and risen up unanimously against this restraint and enslavement, the excesses and frightfulness of the concentration camps, against the persecution of the Jews, the following must be made clear with all emphasis: The gagging of cultural and intellectual liberty primarily and chiefly affected the upper class intelligentsia, which were relatively weak in number in relation to the entire population, and it was therefore hardly felt by the total sum of the people, because on the other hand Hitler took care to a very great extent to satisfy the needs of the masses by popular and inexpensive, in many cases free, theaters and movie performances and concerts, by the presentation of public dramas, and by other arrangements. What consequences the gagging of the intellectual upper class Was bound to have, was not and could not be readily realized by the great masses, because they were kept completely busy with their work and the manifold other diversions. But with respect to the concentration camps and the cruelties committed in them, I consider it my duty to state once and for all, for the honor of the German people: It is not true that the great majority of the German people, up to the last period of the war, had any knowledge about what was going on in the concentration camps.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): An assertion to the contrary can only be made by someone who has no idea of the actual conditions in Germany, about the cunningly devised system of keeping conditions in the concentration camps, and even the existence of most of them, a secret. After all, how could it have been possible for larger groups of the people to have learned about the conditions in the camps? The Prosecution itself has tried to prove here that only a very small percentage of concentration camp prisoners were set free again, and those who were set free had to bind themselves in writing, under threat of capital punishment, to keep absolutely spent about their experiences during their imprisonment. They knew that if they violated these obligations and the Gestapo became informed of the fact they would forfeit their lives. I have myself been faced in my practice with a number of liberated concentration camp prisoners, but I have not been able to induce any one of them to speak and it was the same with many others. And if one or other of them- did ten anything, his audience was careful not to repeat it, because they knew that they incurred inevitable arrest and internment in a concentration camp if the Gestapo should become informed of the fact. When in the course of the war particulars concerning concentration camps slowly transpired, most German cities were already under the hand of guided bombs. It is admittedly only too human that faced with the horror of daily air raids the populace should have harbored no thoughts for the fate of concentration camp internees, but rather for their own fate and that of their kinsfolk, and for sheer life, for existence. And lastly, let me ask you, Gentlemen, who should have revolted, who should have risen up with violence against the domination of Hitler and the Party? Since the outbreak of war, since the autumn of 1939, the flower of the male population was under arms and fighting a hard battle at the front. A revolution cannot be made by children, women, old people, and more or less disabled or feeble men.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): And who was going to take the initiative, who was going to lead it? No revolution has ever yet been carried out by leaderless masses. Always and everywhere there must be leadership to guide and lead the masses and manage them. A levee en masse, especially when undertaken by an unarmed populace against an armed and organized power, is as doomed to remain a hopeless issue in the internal sphere as it is in war. The hopelessness of a popular rising or revolt is clearly conveyed by the fact that the conspiracy of 20 July 1944 faded, long prepared as it was with every conceivable precautionary measure, by real leaders enjoying wide popular support. The fact of this conspiracy alone, however, proves one thing: that the French prosecutor, M. De Menthon, is not right when, in his very brilliant and interesting address on 11 January 1946, he represented the abhorred National Socialist ideology and its glorification of race and German racial superiority over every other nation on earth as the expression and supreme product of the German mind and of its true nature, and names Fichte and Hegel as heralds of this development: Fichte, one of the greatest and noblest champions of Christianity, Christian ethics, and morals, is worlds removed from this National Socialist ideology. And how can anyone so much as name such an ideology in the same breath with Beget, whose philosophical system was perhaps the most idealistic of all systems, who saw in the state the union of every moral force and purpose, to whom the state appeared as the materialization of the notion of morality in a manner reminiscent of the antique ideal, as something divine on earth. And the French prosecutor forgets that it was the German nation which produced a Kant, whose imperishable doctrine of the categorical imperative, except for Christian ethics, is probably the profoundest and most august expression of the moral principle of all times.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): And he is mistaken when he brings Nietzsche, the unique thinker who stands alone in the whole German spiritual universe, and his longed-for superman, into any relation whatsoever to the ideology of the National Socialist leaders. He also is worlds removed from them. No, Gentlemen, these spiritual heroes of the German nation have nothing in common with Nazi ideology. The latter stands, in truth, in the sharpest contradiction to real, genuine German thought and sentiment, the real character and dispositions of the German nation and, most of all, its attitude toward the other nations of the world. For this nation has never assumed itself to be better or more august than other nations. Neither was it ever possessed by a desire to destroy other nations. It is, above an, ignorant of hatred and revenge. The great tragedy of the relations between the German and the French nations is precisely that the latter has always refused to understand that the German nation has not, like France from the war of 1870 to the World War, been possessed by the thought of revenge, nor obsessed, even after Versailles, by the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine. The idea of Pan-Germanism, of the Greater German Empire, has never, even in the period of greatest enthusiasm for Hitler, stirred any echo in the German nation despite the undeniably kindred example offered by the Pan-Slavic doctrine and its enthusiastic reception by the Slav populations And these very ideologies, preached by the spiritual leaders of the Party, immediately determined and fortified the opposition, first in the intellectual circles and classes of the German nation and then in other classes and in the very ranks of the Party, as a result of further constraints and limitations of personal freedom. For those reasons the nation in its overwhelming majority was by no means inflamed by the war initiated by Hitler in the summer of 1939.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): What the nation's frame of mind was like as early as the autumn of 1938, I take the liberty of Illustrating for you, Gentlemen, by a minor personal experience on 25 or 26 September 1938. I happened, on this day, to have my car held up in a street leading to one of the large thoroughfares running south out of Berlin, because the whole street was jammed with vehicles. When I asked a common woman of the people, who happened to pass by, the reason for the traffic jam, she answered, "They are going to war down there," with such an expression of abysmal despair and horror that I was chilled. Such was the attitude of the population toward war, an attitude likewise evidenced by the fact that the departing troops were by no means hayed and cheered by enthusiastic crowds, but were gazed at with dull, frightened eyes. And if you ask me why the nation did not then rise up and revolt, you  will find the explanation in what ~ have said before. As a nation accustomed to be led and to centuries of abed Once, the German nation followed once again the order of the leader which it had raised to power. As a nation slowly but surely fettered by this leadership, it had likewise no possibility of a spontaneous, unprepared and unguided uprising against its leaders. Such a contingency could only occur as the pressure of war became ever more stringent, and when conscientious men in leading positions concurred in the attempt by slow end determined work, in order to put an end to the folly of Nazi domination and resulting war, and to save the German nation from an otherwise certain catastrophe. Nevertheless, Providence denied success to the attempt. But, I repeat, the very fact of the attempt, its support by wide circles of the nation and even of the Party, definitely proves that the Nazi ideology, which clearly governed pot/tics since 1938, was neither in keeping with the real character of the German people nor with their nature, talents, soul, and mentality; neither was it engendered by them, but rather it was foreign and naturally opposed to them.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): But there were not only the men connected with 20 July 1944 who had striven to do away with Hitler and the whole National Socialist domination. There were other men who were determined to reach the same goal, ff by different methods, and had already taken the first steps to that end. As you heard in witness Strohlin's testimony, the Defendant Van Neurath was one of them. How could it have been otherwise with this offspring of an old family which has given many a trustworthy civil servant to its Wurttemberg home; whose whole life, inspired by the spirit prevailing m his family home, has been filled with the most ardent patriotism and devotion to his nation, whose entire aspirations were directed toward the exclusive purpose of placing all his strength and an his power, all his talents and capacities, at the service of his nation's welfare, and to subject and, indeed, sacrifice his personal interests to it. [A recess was taken.] ??DEVON LUDINGHAUSEN: Born as a scion of an old family which gave its small home state Wurttemberg so many loyal high government officials, the Defendant Von Neurath grew up with a simple and strict education in a parental home filled not only with a real Christian spirit and true love for mankind, but also with an ardent, devoted love for his German people and fatherland. From his tenderest age and during his entire life his thoughts and actions had implanted in him the desire and will, the holy-duty, to place all his powers, all his ability, all his gifts and capacities at the service of the welfare of his people, to subordinate and even sacrifice all his personal interests to this.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): But, and this must certainly be emphasized in this place, aside from this aspiration there was alive in him and woven into his being in an equally strong degree a deep religious feeling, love of the truth and love of mankind that made him from the beginning adverse to the use of any form of violence against his fellow men not only in his private life, in his relations with his fellow men, but which ruled rather to the same extent his entire official activity, even after the Treaty of Versailles. His acts bore the stamp of this feeling and it became the law governing his official dealings as a representative of the Reich in other countries, as well as Foreign Minister and lastly as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Not only by his conciliatory amiability, his skill and demeanor, so understandable in a man of his origin and education' but also primarily through the love of peace and sincerity which permeated all his actions as a diplomat and statesman, he won the unlimited and sincere respect and sympathy of all people with whom he came into contact the world over, even of his political opponents. As unequivocal proof of this fact, the truth of which, Your Honors, may be confirmed by your own diplomats, it will suffice to refer to the fact that, as you know from the sworn affidavit of my client, King George V and King Edward VIII of England received the defendant in private audiences on the occasions of his presence in London in 1933 and 1935; that the British Government in the summer of 1937 and again in 1938, when he was no longer Foreign Minister, invited him to visit England for political discussions, and finally, that on his sixty-fifth birthday on 2 February 1938 the entire diplomatic corps called on him to congratulate him and to express through Monsignore Orsenigo, who at that time was doyen, its thanks and its appreciation for the reasonable and understanding manner in which he always discharged all his duties.