dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I want to show quite clearly to the Tribunal the basis for these crimes which was laid by the legal position which this defendant assumed. The first point. The Defendant Von Neurath assumed the position of Protector under a sweeping grant of powers. The act creating the Protectorate provided-if the Tribunal would be good enough to turn back on Page 126 in the document book (TC-51, Exhibit GB- 8) and look at Article V of the Act, it reads as follows: "1. As trustee of Reich interests, the Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich nominates a 'Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia' with Prague as his seat of office. "2. The Reich Protector, as representative of the Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich and as Commissioner of the Reich Government, is charged with the duty of seeing to the observance of the political principles laid down by the Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich. "3. The members of the Government of the Protectorate shall be confirmed by the Reich Protector. The confirmation may be withdrawn. "4. The Reich Protector is entitled to inform himself of all measures taken by the Government of the Protectorate and to give advice. He can object to measures calculated to harm the Reich and, in case of danger in delay, issue ordinances required for the common interest. "5. The promulgation of laws, ordinances, and other legal provisions and the execution of administrative measures and legal judgments shall be deferred if the Reich Protector enters an objection." At the very outset of the Protectorate the Defendant Von Neuratles supreme authority was implemented by a series of basic decrees of which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice. They established the alleged legal foundation for the policy and program which resulted, all aimed towards the systematic destruction of the national integrity of the Czechs: 1. By granting the "racial Germans'' in Czechoslovakia a supreme order of citizenship-and I give the official reference to the Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor concerning the Protectorate to which I just referred-and then; 2.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: An act concerning the representation in the Reichstag of Greater Germany by German nationals resident in the Protectorate, 13 April 1939; 3. An order concerning the acquisition of German citizenship by former Czechoslovakian citizens of German stock, 20 April 1939. Then there was a series of decrees that granted "racial Germans" in Czechoslovakia a preferred status at law and in the courts: 1. An order concerning the Exercise of Criminal Jurisdiction in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 14 April 1939; 2. An order concerning the Exercise of Jurisdiction in Civil Proceedings, 14 April 1939; 3. An order concerning the Exercise of Military Jurisdiction, on 8 May 1939. Then the orders also granted to the Protector broad powers to change by decree the autonomous law of the Protectorate. That is contained in the Ordinance on Legislation in the Protectorate, 7 June 1939. And finally the Protector was authorized to go with the Reich Leader SS and the Chief of the German Police to take, if necessary, such police measures which go beyond the limits usually valid for police measures. In view of the form of the order itself the Tribunal, if it cares to listen and to take judicial notice of this, in the Reichsgesetzblatt we have found inserted that one in the document book at Page 131, which rather staggers the imagination to know what can be police measures even beyond the limits usually valid for police measures when one has seen police measures in Germany between 1933 and 1939. But if such increase was possible, and presumably it was believed to be possible, then an increase was given by the Defendant Von Neurath and used by him for coercion of the Czechs. The declared basic policy of the Protectorate was concentrated upon the central objective of destroying the identity of the Czechs as a nation and absorbing their territory into the Reich; and if the Tribunal will be good enough to turn to Page 132, they will find Document Number 862-PS, Exhibit USA-313, and I think that has been read to the Tribunal.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Still, the Tribunal might bear with me so that I might indicate the nature of the document to them. This memorandum is signed by Lieutenant General of Infantry Friderici. It is headed "The Deputy General of the Armed Forces with the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia." It is marked "Top Secret," dated 15 October 1940. That is practically a year before this Defendant Von Neurath went on leave, as he puts it, on 27 September 1941; and it is called the "Basic Political Principles in the Protectorate," and there are four copies. It also had gone to the Defendant Keitel and the Defendant Jodl, and it begins: "On 9 October of this year"-that is 1940: "On 9 October of this year the Office of the Reich Protector held an official conference in which State Secretary SS Gruppenfuehrer K. H. Frank"-that is not the Defendant Frank, it is the other K. H. Frank---"spoke about the following: "Since creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, party agencies, industrial circles, as well as agencies of the central authorities of Berlin have been considering the solution of the Czech problem. "After careful deliberation, the Reich Protector expressed his view about the various plans in a memorandum. In this, three possibilities of solution were indicated: "a. German infiltration of Moravia and withdrawal of the Czech part of the people to a remainder of Bohemia. This solution is considered as unsatisfactory, because the Czech problem, even if in a diminished form, will continue to exist. "b. Many arguments can be brought up against the most radical solution, namely, the deportation of all Czechs. Therefore the memorandum comes to the conclusion that it cannot be carried out within a reasonable space of time. "c. Assimilation of the Czechs, that is, absorption of about half of the Czech people by the Germans, to the extent that it is of importance from a racial or other standpoint.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: This will be brought about, among other things, also by increasing the Arbeitseinsatz of the Czechs in the Reich territory, with the exception of the Sudeten German border districts-in other words, by dispersing the block of Czech people. The other half of the Czech nationality must by all possible ways be deprived of its power, eliminated, and shipped out of the country. This applies particularly to the racially mongoloid parts and to the major part of the intellectual class. The latter can scarcely be converted ideologically and would represent a burden by constantly making claims for the leadership over the other Czech classes and thus interfering with a rapid assimilation. "Elements which counteract the planned Germanization are to be handled roughly and should be eliminated. "The above development naturally presupposes an increased influx of Germans from the Reich territory into the Protectorate. "After a report, the Fuehrer has chosen solution c (assimilation) as a directive for the solution of the Czech problem and decided that, while keeping up the autonomy of the Protectorate outwardly, Germanization will have to be carried out uniformly by the Office of the Reich Protector for years to come. "From the above no specific conclusions are drawn by the Armed Forces. It is the way that has always been followed. In this connection, I refer to my memorandum which was sent to the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, dated 12 July 1939, entitled 'The Czech Problem."' And that is signed, as I said, by the Deputy Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces. That view of the Reich Protector was accepted and formed a basis of his policy. The result was a program of consolidating German control over Bohemia and Moravia by the systematic oppression of the Czechs through the abolition of civil liberties and the systematic undermining of the native political, economic, and cultural structure by a regime of terror, which will be dealt with by my Soviet Union colleagues.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: They will show clearly, I submit, that the only protection given by this defendant was a protection to the perpetrators of innumerable crimes. I have already drawn the attention of the Tribunal to the many honors and rewards which this defendant received as his worth, and it might well be said that Hitler showered more honors on Von Neurath than on some of the leading Nazis who had been with the Party since the very beginning. His appointment as President of the newly created Secret Cabinet Council in 1938 was in itself a new and. singular distinction. On 22 September 1940 Hitler awarded him the War Merit Cross 1st Class as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. That is in the Deutsches Nachrichtenbuero, 22 September 1940. He was also awarded the Golden Badge of the Party and was promoted by Hitler, personally, from the rank of Gruppenfuehrer to Obergruppenfuehrer in the SS on 21 June 1943. And I also inform the Tribunal that he and Ribbentrop were the only two Germans to be awarded the Adlerorden, a distinction normally reserved for foreigners. On his seventieth birthday, 2 February 1943, it was made the occasion for most of the German newspapers to praise his many years of service to the Nazi regime. This service, as submitted by the Prosecution, may be summed up in two ways: 1) He was an internal Fifth Columnist among the Conservative political circles in Germany. They had been anti-Nazi but were converted in part by seeing one of themselves, in the person of this defendant, wholeheartedly with the Nazis; 2) His previous reputation as a diplomat made public opinion abroad slow to believe that he would be a member of a cabinet which did not stand by its words and assurances. It was most important for Hitler that his own readiness to break every treaty or commitment should be concealed as long as possible, and for this purpose he found in the Defendant Von Neurath his handiest tool. That concludes the presentation against the Defendant Von Neurath.
THE PRESIDENT: In view of the motion which was made yesterday by Counsel for the Defendant Hess, the Tribunal will postpone the presentation of the individual case against Hess, and will proceed with the presentation of the case by counsel for France.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): When stating the charges which now weigh upon the defendants, my British and American colleagues showed evidence that these men conceived and executed a plan and plot for the domination of Europe. They have shown you of what crimes against peace these men became guilty by launching unjust wars. They have shown you that, as leaders of Nazi Germany, they had all premeditated unjust wars, and had participated in the conspiracy against peace. Then my friends and colleagues of the French Delegation, M. Herzog, M. Faure and M. Gerthoffer, submitted documents establishing that the defendants, who all in various positions counted among the leaders of Nazi Germany, are responsible for the repeated violations of the laws and 'customs of war committed by men of the Reich in the course of military operations. However, it still remains for us to expose the atrocities of which men, women, and children of the occupied countries of the west were victims. We intend at this point to prove that the defendants, in their capacity as leaders of Hitlerite Germany, systematically pursued a policy of extermination, the cruelty of which increased from day to day until the final defeat of Germany; that the defendants planned, conceived, willed, and prescribed these atrocities as part of a system which was to enable them to accomplish a political aim. It is this political aim which closely binds all the facts we intend to present to you. The crimes perpetrated against people and property, as presented so far by my colleagues of the French Prosecution, were in close connection with the war. They had the distinct character of war crimes stricto sensu. Those which I shall present to you surpass them both in meaning and extent. They form part of the plans of a policy of domination, of expansion, beyond war itself. It is Hitler himself who gave the best definition of this policy in one of his speeches in Munich on 16 May 1927.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): He was deceiving his listeners about the danger that France, an agricultural country of only 40 million inhabitants, might represent for Germany, which was already a highly-industrialized country with a population of nearly 70 million. That day Hitler said: "There is only one way for Germany to escape encirclement; and it is the destruction of the state which, by the natural order of things, will always be her mortal enemy: that is France. When a nation is aware that its whole existence is endangered by an enemy, it must aim at one thing only: the annihilation of that enemy." During the first months that followed their victory, the Germans seemed to have abandoned their plan of annihilation; but this was only a tactical pretense. They hoped to draw into their war against England and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics the western nations they had enslaved. By doses of treachery and violence, they attempted to make these western nations take the road of collaboration. The latter resisted; and the defendants then abandoned their tactics and came back to their big scheme, the annihilation of conquered peoples in order to secure in Europe the space necessary for the 250 million Germans whom they hoped to settle there in generations to come. This destruction, this annihilation-I repeat the very words used by Hitler in his speech-was undertaken under various pretenses; the elimination of inferior, or negroid races; the extermination of bolshevism; the destruction of Jewish-Masonic influences hostile to the founding of the pseudo "New European Order." In fact, this destruction, this elimination, conduced to the assassination of the elite and vital forces opposed to the Nazis; it also led to the reduction of the means of livelihood of the enslaved nations. All of this was done, as I shall prove to you, in execution of a deliberate plan, the existence of which is confirmed, among other things, by the repetition and the immutability of the same facts in all the occupied countries.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Faced with this repetition and this immutability, it is no longer possible to claim that only the one who performed the crime was guilty. This repetition and this immutability prove that the same criminal will united all the members of the German Government all the leaders of the German Reich. It is from this common will that the official policy of terrorism and extermination, which directed the strokes of the executioners, was born; and it is for having participated in the creation of this common will that each of the defendants here present has been placed in the ranks of major war criminals. I shall come back to this point when, having finished my presentation of the facts, I shall have to qualify the crime, in accordance with the legal tradition of my country. Allow me to give you some indications as to how, with your kind permission, I intend to make my presentation. The facts I am to prove here are the results of many testimonies. We could have called innumerable witnesses to this stand. Their statements have been collected by the French Office for Inquiry into War Crimes. It seemed to us that it would simplify and shorten the procedure if we were to give you extracts only from the testimony that we have received in writing. With your authorization, therefore, I shall limit myself to reading excerpts from the written testimonies collected in France by official organizations qualified to investigate War Crimes. However, if in the course of this presentation it appears necessary to call certain witnesses, we shall proceed to do so but with constant care not to slow down the sessions in any way and to bring them with all speed to the only possible conclusion, the one our peoples expect. The whole question of atrocities is dominated by the German terrorist policy. Under this aspect it is not without precedent in the Germanic practice of war. We all remember the execution of hostages at Dinant during the war of 1914, the execution of hostages in the citadel of Laon, or the hostages of Senlis.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): But Nazism perfected this terrorist policy; for Nazism, terror is a means of subjugation. We all remember the propaganda picture about the war in Poland, shown in Oslo in particular on the eve of the invasion of Norway. For Nazism, terror is a means of subjugating all enslaved people in order to submit them to the aims of its policy. The first signs of this terrorist policy during the occupation are fresh in the memory of all Frenchmen. Only a few months after the signing of the armistice they saw red posters edged with black appear on the walls of Paris, as well as in the smallest villages of France, proclaiming the first execution of 'hostages. We know mothers who were informed of the execution of their sons in this way. These executions were carried out by. the occupiers after anti-German incidents. These incidents were the answer of the French people to the official policy of collaboration. Resistance to this policy stiffened, became organized, and with it the repressive measures increased in intensity until 1944-the climax of German terrorism in France and in the countries of the West. At that time ,the Army and the SS Police no longer spoke of the execution of hostages; they organized real reprisal expeditions during which whole villages were set on fire, and thousands of civilians killed, or arrested and deported. But before reaching this stage, the Germans attempted to justify their criminal exactions in the eyes of a susceptible public opinion. They promulgated, as we shall prove, a real code of hostages, and pretended they were merely complying with law every time they proceeded to carry out reprisal executions. The taking of hostages, as you know, is prohibited by Article 50 of the Hague Convention . I shall read this text to you. It is to be found in the Fourth Convention, Article 50: "No collective penalty, pecuniary or other, can be decreed against populations for individual acts for which they cannot be held jointly responsible." (Document Number RF-265). And yet, supreme perfidy!
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): The German an General Staff, the German Government, will endeavor to turn this regulation into a dead letter and to set up as law the systematic violation of the Hague Convention . I shall describe to you how the General Staff formed its pseudo law on hostages, a pseudo-law which in France found its final expression in what Stuelpnagel and the German administration called the "hostages code." I shall show you, in passing, which of these defendants are the most guilty of this crime. On the 15th of February 1940 in a secret report addressed to the Defendant Goering, the OKW justifies the taking of hostages, as proved by the excerpt from Document Number 1585-PS which I propose to read to you. This document is dated Berlin, 15 February 1940. It bears the heading: "Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. Secret. To the Reich Minister for Aviation and Supreme Commander of the Air Force." "Subject: Arrest of Hostages. "According to the opinion of the OKW, the arrest of hostages is justified in all cases in which the security of the troops and the carrying out of their orders demand it. In most cases it will be necessary to, have recourse to it in case of resistance or an untrustworthy attitude on the part of the population of an occupied territory, provided that the troops are in combat or that a situation exists which renders other means of restoring security insufficient.... "In selecting hostages it must be borne in mind that their arrest shall take place only if the refractory sections of the population are anxious for the hostages to remain alive. The hostages shall therefore be chosen from sections of the population from which a hostile attitude may be expected. The arrest of hostages shall be carried out among persons whose fate, we may suppose, will influence the insurgents." This document is filed by the French Delegation as Exhibit Number RF-267. To my knowledge, Goering, never raised any objection to this thesis.
M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Here is one more paragraph from an order, Document Number F-508 (Exhibit Number RF-268), from the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in France, administrative section, signed "Stroccius," 12 September 1940. Three months after the beginning of the occupation, the hostages are defined therein as follows: "Hostages are inhabitants of a country who guarantee with their lives the impeccable attitude of the population. The responsibility for their fate is thus placed in the hands of their compatriots. Therefore, the population must be publicly threatened that the hostages will be held responsible for hostile acts of individuals. Only French citizens may be taken as hostages. The hostages can be held responsible only for actions committed after their arrest and after the public proclamation." This ordinance cancels 5 directives prior to 12 September 1940. This question was the subject of numerous texts, and two General Staff ordinances, dated, as indicated at the head of the Document Number F-510 (Exhibit Number RF-269), 2 November 1940 and 13 February 1941: "If acts of violence are committed by the inhabitants of the country against members of the occupation forces, if offices and installations of the Armed Forces are damaged or destroyed, or if any other attacks are directed against the security of German units and service establishments, and if, under the circumstances, the population of the place of the crime or of the immediate neighborhood can be considered as jointly responsible for those acts of sabotage, measures of prevention and expiation may be ordered by which the civil population is to be deterred in future from committing, encouraging, or tolerating acts of that kind.