dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): The testimony of several army commanders that they had no foreknowledge of the attack is, not surprisingly, a fact, since the OKH and the Army commanders-in-chief were all fully absorbed at the time in planning the much larger attack on the Low Countries and France. Only a few German divisions were used in Norway and Denmark and, since it was a "combined operation," the plans were developed in OKW, not OKH. Dr. Laternser's defense of the Norwegian attack on the basis that it was a preventive move to forestall an English invasion of Norway, might have some superficial plausibility if there were any evidence that the Norwegian invasion was improvised to meet an emergency. But it is totally and wantonly incredible in the fact of documents which show that the Norwegian invasion had been under discussion since October 1939, that active planning began in December that on 14 March Hitler was still hesitant about giving the order for the attack because he was "still looking for some justification," and that all through the weeks preceding the Norwegian attack there was discussion within the General Staff group as to whether it might not be preferable to initiate the general Western offensive against France and the Low Countries before undertaking the Norwegian campaign. As for the major attack in the West, it appears from the testimony of Defense witnesses that Hitler wanted to attack in the fall of 1939, and that Brauchitsch and other generals persuaded him to postpone until the spring of 1940. This postponement indeed shows that the generals had considerable influence with Hitler, but hardly excuses the later attack. When the spring of 1940 arrived, according to Manstein, "the offensive in the West, from the point of view of the soldier, was absolutely inevitable," There is no evidence that a single German commander protested against or opposed the flagrant and ruthless violation of the neutrality of the Low Countries.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): The explanations of the Defense concerning the crimes against peace are labored and implausible, and are in conflict equally with the documents before the Tribunal and with the history of the years in question. Nor is it true that the military leaders were mere puppets without influence on Hitler or the course of events. Naturally there were disagreements not only between Hitler and the Wehrmacht, but within the Wehrmacht itself. If Hitler prevailed at times, so at times did the Wehrmacht, whether it was to postpone the Western offensive or to launch the attack on Denmark and Norway, Despite the attempt to make the contrary appear, Hitler was not so stupid as to act without the benefit of military advice. One need only look at Hitler's directive to the military leaders of 12 November 1940, written after the successful conclusion of the Western offensive, in which Hitler discusses very tentatively his future plans in France, a possible offensive in Spain, whether Madeira and the Azores should be occupied, what assistance should be given the Italians in North Africa, what to do in Greece and the Balkans, what the future might hold with regard to the Soviet Union, and whether to invade England in the spring of 1941. Hitler concluded: "I shall expect the commanders-in-chief to express their opinions on the measures anticipated in this directive. I shall then give orders regarding the method of execution and synchronization of the individual actions" (444-PS). No, the leaders of the Wehrmacht were not puppets. If the generals owed their opportunity to rebuild the Wehrmacht largely to Hitler and the Nazis, it is very true that Hitler was utterly dependent on the generals for carrying out his plans.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): Brauchitsch has pointed out that "the carrying out of the orders that were given to the Army and to the army groups required such a high knowledge of military matters, and such ability and psychological understanding, that there were only a few people who were actually able to carry out such orders." And it is worth noting also that despite the very real and natural friction between the war lords and a former corporal, Hitler never, until July 1944, turned outside the ranks of the Army for his commanders-in-chief. Even during these final desperate months only four outsiders, Himmler himself and three others from the Waffen-SS, achieved the coveted distinction. Nor was the Wehrmacht that swarmed over the continent of Europe led by reluctant men. These aggressive wars were launched and waged by men who worshipped armed might, and wanted to extend the hegemony of Germany. That is, at bottom, why the Nazis and the Wehrmacht leaders gave the Third Reich its unity. I recall the Tribunal's attention to Admiral Fricke's memorandum of June 1940: "It is too well known to need further mention that Germany's present position in the narrows of the Heligoland Bight and in the Baltic--bordered as it is by a whole series of states and under their influence--is an impossible one for the future of Greater Germany. The power of Greater Germany in the strategic areas acquired in this war should result in the existing population of these -areas feeling themselves politically, economically, and militarily to be completely dependent on Germany.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): If the following results are achieved-that expansion is undertaken (on a scale I shall describe later) by means of the military measures for occupation taken during the war, that French powers of resistance (popular unity, mineral resources, industry, and armed forces) will be so broken that a revival must be considered out of the question, that the smaller states such as the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway are forced into a dependence on us which will enable us in any circumstances and at any time easily to occupy these countries again--then in practice the same, but psychologically much more, will be achieved. "The solution, therefore, appears to be to crush France, to occupy Belgium, part of Northern and Eastern France, to allow the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway to exist on the basis indicated above" (C-41). In the face of documents such as this one, we-have nevertheless heard the generals say over and over again that they were never told about what was going on and heard about events for the first time over the radio. Over and over again they have protested that they never heard about certain things until they were lodged in the jail at Nuremberg. Military figures, like so many others in this case, have not hesitated to put the responsibility for things which they cannot deny or avoid on the shoulders of one or two people whom they seek to portray as peculiar and unrepresentative of the group. The common denominator of these scapegoats is that they are all dead. The dead Reichenau is made to share the blame with the other dead who cannot speak--Hitler, Himmler, Dr. Rasche, and the rest. These defenses are mean and they are utterly incredible, The world will never believe them. No group of men was more intimately concerned than were the military leaders with what was going on in and around Germany in the years before the war. The military leaders now tell us that they neither knew, nor cared to know, nor ought to have known, about these things.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): If what they say is true, then they are utterly unique, for nearly all the world had heard something about these things. One of the most remarkable things about this Trial has been that, instead of a series of startling revelations, the documents assembled here and the labor devoted to them have served to confirm what was already known or suspected throughout the world many years ago. I cannot suppose that anybody will ever subscribe to the view which the military leaders gave been forced by circumstances to put forward here in order to try and clear themselves from a stain which is far too dark to be effaced. The crimes against peace in which the General Staff and High Command group participated led inevitably to the war crimes which followed. Without the participation of this group in the crimes against peace, there would not have been any war crimes. It is not a change from one subject to another, but only the inevitable chain of causation, which leads us now to consider the methods by which the Wehrmacht waged the wars it had launched. We do not, of course, suggest that the hands of every German soldier were plunged into innocent blood, or that the rules of war and the laws of decency were disregarded by every German commander. But we do say that the nature and extent of the atrocities ordered by the leaders of the Wehrmacht and thereafter perpetrated by it in many countries of Europe, reveal and prove a calculated indifference on the part of the military leaders to the commission of crimes. The uncontested fact is that the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, under instructions from Hitler as its Supreme Commander, issued various orders which flagrantly contravened the rules of war. These included the orders for the shooting of commandos and political commissars, the orders to "pacify" the occupied territories of the Soviet Union by spreading terror, and others. The Defense does not dispute the issuance of these orders, and it does not and cannot contest their criminality.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): Rather are we told that the German commanders were honorable soldiers, that they disapproved of these orders, that they tacitly agreed not to execute the orders, and that the orders were not executed. Let us test this defense against the facts in the case of the Commando Order. The original order and the other relevant documents are all in evidence. In October 1942, Hitler ordered that enemy commandos were to be slaughtered to the last man; that even if they surrendered, they were none the less to be shot immediately, unless interrogation were necessary, in which case they were to be shot thereafter. The order was not a purposeless piece of criminality; Allied commando operations were doing serious harm to the German war effort, and Hitler thought this order would act as a deterrent. The order was issued from the OKW and distributed to all three branches of the service, Army, Navy, and Air Force. There is ample evidence that it was widely distributed and well known within the Wehrmacht. Rundstedt, commander-in-chief in the West, reported on 23 June 1944 that "the treatment of enemy commando groups has so far been carried out according to the Hitler order." Two years later, under different circumstances, Rundstedt testified that he "evaded" and "sabotaged" the order, and that it was not carried out. But we know from the documents that it was carried out. Pursuant to this order, British and Norwegian commandos were executed in Norway in 1942 and 1943; American commandos were shot in Italy in 1944; Allied soldiers were executed in Slovakia in 1945. And, in the nature of things, the order must have been carried out in other instances of which, unhappily, no trace now remains. In the light of these documents, what remains of the defense? Stated most favorably, merely that, because some of the military leaders disapproved the order, it was not executed as often as it might otherwise have been. But this defense is worse than worthless; it is shameful. We must not forget that to kill a defenseless prisoner of war is not only a violation of the rules of war.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): It is murder. And murder is not the less murder whether there is one victim, or 55 (which is the number of slaughtered commandos shown by the documents), or Ohlendorf's. 99,000. Crime has been piled upon crime in this case until we are in danger of losing our sense of proportion. We have heard so much 'of mass-extermination that we are likely to forget that simple murder is a capital offense. The laws of all civilized nations require that a man go to some lengths to avoid associating himself with murder, whether as an accomplice or accessory or co-conspirator. And these requirements can reasonably be applied to the German military leaders. Before this Tribunal they have made much of their traditions of honor, decency, courage, and chivalry. Under German military law, a subordinate is liable to punishment for obeying the order of a superior if the subordinate knows that the order requires the commission of a general or a military crime. The Commando Order required the commission of murder, and every German officer who handled the order knew that perfectly well. When Hitler directed the issuance of this order, the leaders of the Wehrmacht knew that it required the commission of murder. The responsibility for handling this question lay squarely on the group defined in the Indictment. The chiefs at OKW, OKH, OKL, and OKM had to decide whether to refuse to issue a criminal order or whether to pass it on to the commanders-in-chief in the field. The commanders in the field, Army, Navy and Air Force, had to decide whether to execute it or refuse to execute it, and whether to distribute it to their subordinates. One can imagine that there were many meetings and telephone conversations among various members of the group to discuss this matter. There is no evidence that a single member of the group openly protested or announced his refusal to execute it. The general result was that the order was distributed throughout a large part of the Wehrmacht. This put the subordinate commanders in the same position as their superiors.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): We are told that some of the generals tacitly agreed not to carry out the order. If so, it was a miserable and worthless compromise. By distributing the order with "secret" or "tacit" understandings, the commanders-in-chief merely spread the responsibility and deprived themselves of any effective control over the situation. A tacit agreement to disobey cannot be so widely circulated. The inevitable result, and the result proved by the documents, was that the order was carried out and innocent men were murdered. Because he was responsible for enforcing the Commando Order, General Dostler was tried, convicted, and shot to death. For the same crime, General Falkenhorst now stands condemned to die. But the responsibility for these murders is shared by Falkenhorst and Dostler with every German commander-in-chief at home or in the field who allowed this order to become the official law of the Wehrmacht and participated in its distribution. On this charge alone, I submit, the General Staff and High Command group is proved to have participated directly, effectively, and knowingly in the commission of war crimes. On the Eastern Front, the callous indifference of the German war lords to violations of the laws of war and to mass-suffering and death produced results equally criminal and, because on a grander scale, far more horrible. The atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht and other agencies of the Third Reich in the East were of such staggering enormity that they rather tax the power of comprehension. Why did all these things happen? Analysis will show, I believe, that this was not simply madness and bloodlust. On the contrary, there was both method and purpose. These atrocities occurred as the result of carefully calculated orders and directives, issued prior to or at the time of the attack on the Soviet Union, which form a coherent, logical pattern. One need not here consider the reasons why Hitler, in the fall of 1940, began to consider seriously making an attack on the Soviet Union.
BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): We do know that, beginning in September of 1940, he was constantly discussing this possibility with the military leaders, who had ample opportunity to express their views to him. We know that there was a division of opinion among the generals and admirals; none of them appear to have been much governed by moral scruples, but some thought the attack unnecessary, and others were dubious that a quick victory could be achieved. However, still others agreed with Hitler that the attack should be launched. When Hitler, in consultation with and with the support of part of the military leadership, decided to make the attack, there is no indication that any leading generals stood out decisively against the decision, and they embarked on the war with the utmost determination to carry it through to a successful conclusion. Whatever may have been the reasons which prompted the attack, there was one factor which, once the decision had been made, became a vitally important object and purpose. of the attack. That was to seize large areas of the Soviet Union and to exploit these areas for the material benefit of Germany. To accomplish this, it was desired to "pacify" and crush all opposition in the occupied territory as rapidly as possible and with a minimum expenditure of manpower and material, to obliterate the Soviet political system and set up new German-supported regional political administrations, and to revise and expand the productive resources of these areas and convert them to the uses of the Third Reich.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn. [A recess was taken.]
GEN. TAYLOR: Mr. President, at our recess I was describing the program for the exploitation and pacification of the Occupied Eastern Territories. Hitler had very definite ideas as to how this program should be carried out, and these ideas were partially embodied in the series of directives and orders with which the Tribunal is now familiar. Some of these orders were to be executed directly by the Wehrmacht, some of them by other agencies of the Reich, but in co-ordination with and supported by the Wehrmacht. For the rapid and economical "pacification" of occupied territories, after Hitler had consulted Brauchitsch, the OKW issued the order of 22 July 1941, which ordered the commanders-in-chief to establish security, not by sentencing the guilty in courts of law, but by spreading "such terror as is likely, by its mere existence, to crush every will to resist amongst the population." For the same purpose, the OKW issued the order of 13 May 1941, which suspended the use of military courts for punishing offenses by enemy civilians, and directed that the troops themselves should accomplish pacification by "ruthless action," the most extreme methods, and "collective despotic measures" against localities. In furtherance of these abominable policies, it was further ordered that the German troops who committed offenses against Soviet civilians were not to be punished at all, unless punishment were necessary to maintain discipline and security or prevent waste of food or material. Every commissioned officer on the Eastern Front was to be instructed promptly and emphatically to behave in accordance with these principles. The language of the order was calculated to incite officers and men alike to the most despicable behavior. In these two orders we can see the basic composition of this revolting picture. In more detail, Hitler expected particularly bitter opposition to his new Russian policies and regimes from officers and agents of the Soviet Government and from all Jews.
GEN. TAYLOR: These elements he decided to exterminate utterly, as they would otherwise remain a constant focal point of resistance within the occupied areas. In furtherance of these policies of mass murder, the OKW issued the order for the killing of all political commissars who might be captured. This, like the Commando Order, required the murder of defenseless prisoners of war. And in this case, the military leaders behaved in precisely the same fashion. Not one commander-in-chief openly protested or openly announced his, refusal to execute the order. A few commanders may have refused to distribute it down to the troops, but it was distributed and became well known over the entire Eastern Front. As in the case of the Commando Order, we are told that by tacit agreement among the commanders it was not carried out. The evidence in support of this is that particular commanders or other officers never personally knew of an instance where a captured commissar was shot. We may assume the truth of some of these statements, but it is none the less totally incredible, in view of the order's wide distribution, and the deliberate brutalizing of the German soldier by such orders as these, and such directives as Reichenau and Manstein issued to their troops, that the Commissar Order was not carried out in many cases. It must have been. The campaign of mass-extermination was extended from commissars to all Communists by the OKW order of 16 September 1941, which directed that all cases of resistance to the Wehrmacht, no matter what the circumstances, should be attributed to Communists and that "the death penalty for 50 to 100 Communists should generally be regarded as suitable atonement for one German soldier's life." Terrorization and exploitation of the Russian countryside and extermination of undesired elements obviously could not be carried out by the Wehrmacht alone. Many other agencies of the Third Reich had an important share in this far-flung, evil program.
GEN. TAYLOR: Among these other agencies, perhaps the most unspeakable were the special task forces of Himmler, known as Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos. The mission of these units was to assist in "pacification" and pave the way for the new political regime by stamping out opposition, and particularly by slaughtering Communists and Jews. We know, both from contemporary documents and from the confession of the leader of one of these units, with what terrible fidelity that mission was performed. The particular missions of the Einsatzgruppen were assigned by Himmler, but these units could not simply be turned loose in the operational and rear areas of a conquered territory without administration, supply, communication facilities, and sufficient control by the military to ensure that their tasks would be co-ordinated with, and at least would not obstruct, military operations. The Defense has made every effort to conceal this plain fact, but any soldier, and indeed anyone who gives the matter thought, must know that it is true. And this is quite clear from the documents. The OKW Directive for Special Areas of 13 March 1941 provided that Himmler could send these units into operational areas in order to perform "special tasks for the preparation of the political administration, tasks which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing political systems." But the order carefully specified that the execution of Himmler's tasks should not disturb military operations, and that the units were subject to the supreme authority of the commander-in-chief of the army in the operational area. The billeting and feeding of Himmler's units was to be furnished by the Army. It was directed that further details should be arranged between the OKH and Himmler. Brauchitsch has confirmed that subsequently the details were settled at a conference between Heydrich and General Wagner of OKH, and Schellenberg, who drafted the agreement, has described its contents.