dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): And it is a veritable page of honor in the history of German social democracy that it Marie this consciousness, this feeling of solidarity, its rallying cry, inscribed it on its banner, preserved and strengthened it in the great masses of the people and opposed with all its influence the separatism which was once again rising, and so helped to preserve the unity of the Reich and of the nation. Although it still was not enough, because the Treaty of Versailles faced it as a terrible danger. This treaty put the axe to the roots of its material existence, to its economic life, and cast it for generations into an economic bondage which was bound to suffocate it. I do not need to review these stipulations to you in detail, they are history. After a short time they worked to the detriment of the entire world, thus proving themselves untenable. But whom did the German people have to regard as the principal author of this treaty? Franc" alone, who thereby once more believed she could perpetuate the policy applied toward Germany since Richelieu of keeping Germany down, if not of annihilating her for an time. That was the desire and dream of a nation which proclaimed to the world the Rights of Man, the same nation which 130 years before had written on its banners the motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. To an this was added the internal revolution, which had deprived it of any natural and given leadership which might have been able to show it the way to combat threatening chaos. AU by itself, without any help, without any experience of its own, it had to create for the first time a new nation, or rather the foundation stone for such a nation-truly a gigantic task for a people which up to this moment, in its entire past, had always been led, to which a right of set/-determination and therewith a duty of coresponsibility, had only been given 50 years ago and then but- to a modest extent.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Was it astonishing that this task should overtax its strength, that this nation, which had not yet gained a firm political tradition and was torn internally in many directions, soon became the victim and playground of a variety of prophets who promised it salvation in an possible ways? So it came about, as it was bound to come about, that a constitution was given to It in Weimar which did not suit either the actual circumstances or the character of the German people or the requirements of a strong state leadership, a constitution which did not create a real democratic people's state but only a party state, in which not the people but rather the parties were made the supporters of the state, in which merely the mechanical counting of the votes was assured, while it was left to the parties to settle the conflicts resulting from this. The inevitable result was an infinity of parties which fought with every means for the votes of the masses and thereby created an unlimited splitting of the people into a multitude of components, an fighting tooth and nail among each other, which paralyzed any strong and consistent state leadership from the beginning and indeed rendered it impossible. Right here, in the conflict of interests and allegiances of the parties struggling with one another for supremacy in the state, lies one of the tragic causes that explain the birth of National Socialism and the subsequent seizure of power in 1933. For the history, the rise, and the fan of re-emerging nations is, determined by eternal laws which develop and direct events with inexorable logic. Just as without the great French Revolution a Napoleon would never have been possible, so without the basic weakness of the Weimar Constitution there could have been no Hitler. Under such conditions, which became increasingly difficult, the German people took up the fight against the destruction which threatened them.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Who refuses or fails to understand that they had become the football of innumerable parties which fought for their votes, who, out of egotistical interests, destroyed one government after another and thereby made any strong, unified state leadership impossible? With admirable courage and under exertion of their utmost strength, the German people, nevertheless, had taken up and carried on this almost hopeless struggle, had tried to fulfill the reparations, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, which were bleeding them white. They had even accepted the inflation, which had left its imprint on their economic life; and for the sake of the existence, above an, of their middle classes and to avoid the selling out of their properties through foreign capital, had persevered and conquered it. But all their efforts, their labors, their privations were ultimately of no avail. Their standard of living became lower and lower, more and more factories had to close their doors, sales to foreign countries increased more and more, for a piece of bread and butter more and more items of the national wealth passed into foreign hands, unemployment increased more and more, and finally almost lo percent of the entire population were without employment and food. And why ail this? The Western Powers, primarily France, instead of mitigating in their own interests the impossible conditions imposed upon Germany 23 July by the Versailles Treaty, used every opportunity to weaken Germany's situation still more and to make it more difficult, to enslave the German people still more. I would only remind you, above an, of the occupation of the Ruhr territory by France in 1922, which was the reason why, in spite of superhuman efforts, Germany was not in a position to meet the fun amount of the reparations imposed upon her. Already in 1920, French troops had entered the Main province on the doubtful grounds that, while subduing the Communist revolt in the Ruhr area, the Reichswehr had entered demilitarized territory.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): And in February 1921, at a London conference, new payment conditions were laid down for Germany as the result of a delivery of reparation coal to not quite the full amount, due to a Communist revolt in the Ruhr area. When again these simply could not be met by Germany to the full extent, Allied troops crossed the lower Rhine and occupied the bridgeheads on the left bank of the Rhine. When on 3 May 1921 the ultimatum, which had been prepared in London, was delivered in Berlin by the victor nations, whereby the payment of 132,000 million marks in 37 years, and a quarter of the German export to England and France was imposed on Germany, French and British troops already stood prepared to march in in order to enforce this ultimatum. In view of the coming plebiscite concerning the d vision of the Upper Silesian industrial sector, the German Government had no choice but to accept this ultimatum at a time when 30,000 minion marks were required to produce a 1,000 million in foreign gold currency. And as, after the division of Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland to Germany's disadvantage, the year 1921 came to a close, Germany came under the domination of the so-called Reparations Commission, which not only dictated to Germany a number of new taxes but, moreover, also demanded at once a payment of 280 million gold marks. From the Economic Conference which met at Genoa on 10 April 1922, Germany hoped in vain for deliverance. From the start France rejected any discussion of reparations and an other economic problems. It was soon to become clear to the whole world what France was aiming at by this uncompromising attitude. Weakened by the measures of the Western Powers, the loss of the Upper Silesian industrial area, and the vertiginous devaluation of the German mark, the German Government in 1922 saw itself twice forced to request delay in the payments.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): It had, however, to pay for this delay by the acceptance of a financial control by the Western Powers and by impotently standing by as the Germans were evacuated and driven away from Alsace-Lorraine by France, their property being confiscated by France. And when on 15 August 1922 the German term policy finally collapsed, the German Reich could no longer meet fully even deliveries in kind, so that in December 1922 the Reparations Commission believed it could establish the fact that during the year Germany, due to insufficient deliveries of lumber and telegraph poles, had been guilty of a deliberate misdemeanor. France seized the opportunity of this ostensibly deliberate misdemeanor to introduce the fight to impose sanctions. In contrast to England and Italy, who did not insist on territorial pledges she permitted her troops to cross the Rhine and occupied the Ruhr area. Her dream had come true. Germany, completely without rights, had collapsed and was at her mercy. How does this open desire for destruction, which no flower of rhetoric can deny, compare with the community spirit, so strongly emphasized today by the French Prosecution, with humanity and the teachings of the Christian faith? Your Honors, I was forced to bring an these historical events once more into the open in order to show you how the soil was prepared in which grew the seed of National Socialism. Indeed, that seed had inevitably to grow, and was only recognized as dragon's seed when it was already too late. Almost simultaneously with the establishment of the Stahlheim in northern Germany, the German Labor Patty was established in southern Germany, which Hitler joined as its seventh member during 1919, immediately assuming leadership. Both were derived from the war experiences of a million soldiers and the comradeship which had been carried to the highest level during the war, both had inscribed on their banner the national idea, the re-establishment of a new national state.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): While the Stahlhelm was satisfied in the main with the promotion of national and socialist tradition amongst its members, which soon numbered hundreds of thousands, and did not aim at party-political goals, the German Labor Party under Hitler's leadership soon extended its aim very much further, thus making itself the political exponent and mouthpiece of a national as well as a socialist aim, - namely, that of bringing about an internal regeneration of the entire nation by blending the national idea with the social idea in approaching the problems of the day. This aim was based on the conviction that at some time, as a result of Germany's collapse, there would gradually change in the social structure of the German people and, further, that a re-establishment of the Reich would only be possible ff a really uniform racial community necessary for this were created on a national and social basis. According to Hitler's conviction, this was only possible ff socialism were based on racial community and vice versa and both were welded into one unity. He therefore gave the German Labor Party the program which is only too wed known, while at the same time changing its name to National Socialist German Labor Party. This program was national in its demands for liberation from the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles and for the establishment of a new unified German Reich, socialist in those demands which, with special emphasis on the value of labor, included above an the discontinuance of an income without work or effort, nationalization of certain industries and the resources of the soil, as well as abolition of the so-called servitude of interest. As soon as this program had been set up, there red??ated unmistakably from it the desire and win, slumbering in millions of Germans, for a rebirth of Germany out of an her misery, for a new national and social freedom. And in connection with this program there is something which I must strictly and definitely establish once and for all before the whole world.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): It is not true that the much discussed Point 2 of this program, which demands the setting aside of the Treaty of Versailles, contains or contemplates a threat of force. The assertion of the Prosecution to that effect lacks all justification. Nowhere in this program was a single word said regarding force. Or does the Prosecution recognize a threat of force in the reference to the principle of a nation's fight of self-determination. No wonder that this program, which, more than an other Party programs, embodied the wishes and demands of the time, gradually met with approval and exercised a greater and greater attraction. And it was the ever-recurring burdens and reverses imposed on the German people by the Western Powers, above an the occupation of the Suer area, which more and more enhanced this attraction. For particularly the occupation of the Ruhr territory, which the entire German nation regarded as oppression and which had brought forth this courageous opposition, permitted the awareness of national unity to flare up in all its brilliance for the first time since 1918. A great tragedy Yes in the fact that the Western Powers did not recognize this first flaring up of a new German national consciousness, did not understand this symptomatic sign, and showed no interest at an. Who knows if, by a gradual loosening of Germany's economic and political shackles on the part of the Western Powers, the development of things would not have taken an altogether different course; and the world might have been spared the bloodiest of all wars! But instead of loosening their grip, the Powers tightened it more and more during the following years.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Under the pressure of the Western Powers the well known Dawes Plan was drawn up in 1924, which changed the German reparation obligations into negotiable papers and thus compelled Germany to contract enormous loans abroad against the possibility that the Reichsbank might be emancipated from the Reich and placed under the supervision of a special commission against the transformation of the Reichsbahn into a joint stock company and the mortgaging of debts, taxes, and other securities, in order to be able to comply with her reparation obligations. This, however, in face of the impoverishment of Germany due to inflation and to the enormous sewing of German national property to foreign countries, together with the necessity of having to pay interest on these loans abroad, meant a still greater enslavement and subjection of German economy, of German activity in all spheres, under the rule of foreign countries and foreign capital. And the Ruhr area remained occupied. In 1925 the Dawes Plan was followed by the Locarno Pact. The latter, which was in the first place a political insurance scheme of international finance against the risk contained in the granting of loans to Germany, indeed in a certain sense connected the interests of the Western Powers with Germany's economic payment obligations and compelled them to extend a respite to Germany and also gave her, through her more or less compulsory admission to the League of Nations, the basis for her eventual struggle for the recognition of equal fights; it meant how ever, on the other hand, the repetition of the discrimination against Germany by the repeated recognition of all military and political obligations imposed upon her at Versailles. Meanwhile German economy indeed appeared to flourish as a consequence of the capital pouring into Germany under the Dawes Plan, this economic prosperity, however, turned out after a short time to be sham prosperity.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Another period of tremendous unemployment set in, one factory after another was forced to close down again, the standard of living constantly decreased, poverty became worse and worse. The distress of wide circles of the population and the impossibility of complying with the German payment obligations became constantly more obvious. Instead of helping Germany, however, the Western Powers submitted a new plan at this moment of extreme distress, the so-called Young Plan, which indeed brought with it the evacuation of the Ruhr, although no alteration of the discriminating conditions of the Versailles Treaty, but the imposition of Immense yearly reparation payments up to the year 1966. In order to protect Germany from a catastrophe, the German Government was compelled to accept this plan. Not only a complete revolution of the economic structure, but also a revolution of the sociologic structure was taking place within the German people under pressure of all these events attended by their difficulties. What had already been proclaimed in World War I, and had found a definite shape during the years of the inflation, now became conspicuous and grew into a decisive factor of further development. The majority among the independent middle class and the larger part of the bourgeoisie were gradually becoming proletarian while the working classes partly sank more and more to the bottom of the social order because of increasing unemployment; property was held only by a small and dwindling part of the people. Through this revolution in social conditions and class contrasts the difference between the bourgeoisie and the working class was practically eliminated and a large community with a common destiny grew out of the distress of the times, in which all parts of the people found themselves united.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): This fusion of the upper and lower classes, which had hitherto been separated from one another, produced a state of mind in which the concept of racial community was innate and the inner contrasts and distinctions of which were conditioned more by participation in politics than attitude to the latter. These contrasts, this contrasting attitude toward pot/tics culminated in two ideas, that of nationalism and that of international Communism. And here Hitler, and the NSDAP with him, began that struggle for the soul of the German people in which he took a resolute and purposeful stand in the struggle for the national idea against the international communist idea. In this struggle, which was started by him immediately after the occupation of the Ruhr with an propagandistic possibilities and by fully exploiting his indisputably extraordinary, suggestive influence on the masses, it was precisely the Western Powers, with their policy of confining the German people in ever closer bondage and driving it into ever greater distress, who furnished him his keenest weapon. With this weapon he succeeded in rekindling the national idea in more and more circles of the German people, so that in the Reichstag elections of 14 September 1930 the NSDAP was already able to figure in the Reichstag as the second strongest party. These elections showed two things of singular significance: First of all, the will of constantly expanding circles of the German people to re-establish its honor and equality in the council of the nations, the will to live of a people who for 12 years had been suppressed and humiliated in its most elementary feelings and had been gagged and threatened in its existence. However, they also showed that a large part of the people had become tired of the eternal party strife in the Reichstag and the Government and were longing for a leader to lead them out of the threatening chaos, and that this large part of the people regarded Hitler as the leader. However once again the Western Powers faded to recognize this signal.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): They forgot, or did not want to acknowledge, that the fundamental physical law that every living force is subjected to pressure without an outlet, will explode the shell around it, also applies to the life of the nations, because the nations also represent a living force. They forgot this, although in their own history they had excellent examples for the correctness of this thesis: the French people in their great Revolution, the English in Cromwell. Instead of obeying this law, they continued without change in their previous policy. They replied to the elections of 14 September 1930 by withdrawing the credits granted to Germany, and France obstructed all attempts of the German Government obtain any kind of mitigation in the economic and political fields. In view of the limitation of time for their final pleas, to which the Defense have been subjected, I must desist from describing the results of this policy more closely; and I must limit myself to the statement that the need of Germany became constantly greater, while conditions in Germany were gradually becoming intolerable. No one who has not personally lived through it can quite imagine what conditions were like inside Germany at that time, and what appalling distress what atrocious pressure assayed her. Germany at that time was literally suspended over the abyss because, in addition to the struggle for her very existence, there was the struggle for the inner change of form of the people, the struggle over the question whether the majority of the German people was waling to surrender itself to socialism on a national basis or a millennial international Communism. To this question the German people first of all replied by reselecting Reich President Van Hindenburg on 13 March 1932 and finally, when even a man like Braning no longer succeeded in forming a capable government majority from the parties of the Reichstag, by the Reichstag elections of 6 November 1932, from which the NSDAP emerged by far the strongest party of the Reich.
DR. OTTO FREIHERR VON LUDINGHAUSEN (Counsel for Defendant Von Neurath): Almost one-half of the nation had thereby uniformly expressed that it was tired of eternal party disunity, that it longed for a strong leader who was to save the German people from an Its want, to tear it away from the abyss, and to lead it toward a new future. Since on the other hand, however, the Communists also had achieved a great success in the elections and prepared for an open battle for power, Hindenburg saw himself confronted by the choice of either appointing Hitler Reich Chancellor as leader of the strongest party or of proclaiming military dictatorship. The latter, however, would have meant civil war. After a severe inner struggle, Hindenburg, in accordance with the democratic basic principles to which he was pledged, decided to appoint Hitler Reich Chancellor and thereby saved the German people from a civil war. Thus, and in no other way, did the seizure of power in the German Reich through Hitler and the NSDAP take place. History in its logical development was uncompromising as always. The reason for Hitler's appearance and his rise to power lies after all in the Versailles Treaty, which put the German people into intolerable chains which no people on earth could endure in the long run. It was the tragedy of Germany and of an Europe that the victor powers of Versailles refused to consider this, and instead of recognizing the unnatural condition which had been established in Versailles with its unavoidable results, proceeded to aggravate them more and more in the course of the years. Let it be said here in all frankness that it is not only the German people who bear the guilt for Hitler's appearance but, if in history one can refer to any guilt at an, to an equal extent the effects of the Versailles Treaty.