dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
GENERAL RUDENKO: One of the documents submitted by Neurath's counsel and accepted by the Tribunal reads as follows: "There existed at one time in Berlin three sorts of ministries for foreign affairs: Herr Rosenberg's Ministry, Herr Von Ribbentrop's Ministry, and the official ministry on Wilhelmstrasse." And finally, Rosenberg's letter to Hitler of 6 February 1938 stressed his real influence on the foreign policy of Hitlerite Germany and his "merits" in this field, when he applied for membership in the Secret Cabinet Council. I see no need for giving an analysis of all Rosenberg's criminal activities and I only intend to dwell briefly on his activities as "Fuehrer's plenipotentiary" and later as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. In these functions Rosenberg most clearly showed himself as a participant in the criminal conspiracy. Rosenberg declares that he was against war with the U.S.S.R. and that he learned from Hitler about the preparations for an attack against the U.S.S.R. only when all the orders to military channels had already been issued, that he never really had any influence on the foreign policy of Hitlerite Germany. I affirm, Your Honors, that all these declarations of Rosenberg are false. It is a well-known fact that the plan for a German crusade against Soviet Russia was actually the starting point of the National Socialist foreign policy, as set out in the 1921 New Year publication of the Volkischer Beobachter, and that the author of this policy was Alfred Rosenberg. It was Rosenberg who, inspired by Ludendorff and Rechherg, propagated-together with Hitler-a foreign policy directed toward the creation of an anti-Semitic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-British continent of Europe. Rosenberg's speeches, setting out plans for the "exchange" of the Polish Corridor for the Ukraine, his "diplomatic" journeys into certain countries after the seizure of power by the fascists, his clumsy efforts to realize the foreign policy program of the fascists, were widely voiced in the press.
GENERAL RUDENKO: The documents submitted give a clear picture of Rosenberg's feverish activities in April 1941 during the period immediately preceding the attack by Germany on the U.S.S.R., when he was nominated the Fuehrer's plenipotentiary for the central control of the questions connected with the eastern European territories. On 7 April 1941, 2 weeks prior to his nomination, Rosenberg sent his proposals to Hitler for the division of the Soviet Union into Reich Commissariats and for the appointment of fascist governors for the occupied. Byelorussia and the Ukraine, Minsk and Kiev, Rostov and Tiflis, Leningrad and Moscow, were all enumerated in Rosenberg's proposals. For the post of Reich Commissioner of Moscow, Rosenberg recommended the notorious Erich Koch. We have heard about Rosenberg's meetings with Brauchitsch and Raeder and of his conferences with Funk, General Thomas, State Secretary Backe and others, on the questions of economic exploitation of the eastern territories, and about his negotiations with Ribbentrop, the SA chief of staff, and the chief of the German Intelligence Service, Admiral Canaris. Already 6 weeks prior to the attack on the U.S.S.R. he drafted directives for all the Reich Commissioners of the eastern territories to be occupied, in which he provided for a "Reich Commissariat Russia" and a "Reich Commissariat Caucasus," while the Byelorussian Republic was to form a part of the "Reich Commissariat Ostland." Rosenberg attempted to affirm that he did not share in the aggressive and predatory aims of the war against the U.S.S.R. and that on the contrary, in his capacity of Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, he even loaded with benefits the population of these territories. And this he dared to affirm, when the directive to the Reich Commissioner of the Baltic States and Byelorussia described his aims as follows: ". . .
GENERAL RUDENKO: the creation of a German protectorate for the purpose of subsequent inclusion of these regions in the Greater German Reich, by the Germanization of elements suitable from the racial point of view, by the colonization by representatives of the Germanic race, and by the extermination of all undesirable elements." And this is maintained after the following recommendations were made in another of Rosenberg's directives on the subject of the civil administration in the Eastern Occupied Territories: "The main and foremost task... is the furtherance of the interests of the Reich. The regulations of the Hague Convention regarding land warfare are no more valid, since we can consider the U.S.S.R. defeated.... For this reason, all measures which the German administration may consider necessary or convenient are admissible." Rosenberg was too hasty in his assertion that the U.S.S.R. was defeated, he let the cat out of the bag and gave away his most secret plans. But this document is also an irrefutable proof, invalidating all the attempts of the defendant to cast the burden of responsibility for the monstrous crimes perpetrated by the German fascist oppressors throughout the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. from his own shoulders to those of individual officials and policemen, to Koch and Himmler. It was Rosenberg who permitted the repudiation of the Hague Convention and the utilization of all measures which might seem "convenient." When Koch, for his "convenience," exterminated the population of the entire Buman district, he was merely acting in the spirit of this directive of Rosenberg's. Rosenberg described here his dissensions with Koch. He alleged that he followed a humanitarian policy and even imported agricultural machinery. Even if Rosenberg did indeed, from time to times object to Kodh's actions, it was only because he was afraid of premature publicity, and because he was afraid that Koch's unparalleled ill-treatment of the. Ukrainian people would only strengthen the resistance movement.
GENERAL RUDENKO: Rosenberg was influenced by fear and not by any humanitarian considerations. Rosenberg's true policy is set out in numerous documents which have now become known to the public opinion of the world and which are in the files of the Tribunal. In an official note for the Fuehrer dated 16 March 1942, Rosenberg set out the aims of the German policy in the occupied territories of the U.S.S.R. and, primarily, in the Ukraine: ". . .the utilization of minerals, the creation of a German colony in certain regions, no artificial intellectual development of the population, but its preservation as a source of manpower." In his report on the reorganization of the Caucasus Rosenberg wrote that: "The problem of the Ostland consists in the transplanting of the Baltic nations to the soil of German culture and in the preparation for an adequate German strategic frontier. The task of the Ukraine is to secure necessary food supplies for' Germany and Europe, and raw materials for the continent. The problem of the Caucasus is primarily a political problem and it will lead to the expansion of continental Europe, headed by Germany, from the isthmus of the Caucasus to the Near East." And finally, I would like to point out that it was Rosenberg who had made the following statement in a speech before the German Labor Front, on the policy adopted in the occupied U.S.S.R. territories: "It seems that if these peoples are left to themselves, arbitrary justice and tyranny will be the most suitable form of government." The Defense affirm that Rosenberg and his Einsatzstab were not concerned with the plunder of cultural treasures, but with their preservation. This statement is also entirely false. Numerous documents read into the record at this Trial have proved that as early as April 1941, that is, more than 2 months prior to the attack on the U.S.S.R., Rosenberg was organizing special units and staffs and was elaborating plans for the removal of the cultural treasures of the Soviet Union.
GENERAL RUDENKO: On 16 October 1941 Rosenberg wrote to Hitler as follows: "I have issued an order to the same Einsatzstab of my organization now to carry out in a more comprehensive manner in the Eastern Occupied Territories the work already accomplished in the West.... having the whole picture before our eyes, we can satisfy all the just wishes and demands of the agencies of the Greater German Reich. On this basis I would also be willing personally to guarantee that all the art treasures for Linz and other museums which can be utilized for your own plans, my Fuehrer, were factually used for this purpose." On 17 October 1944 Rosenberg wrote to Lammers that for the transport of goods "listed" by his organization, it was necessary to use 1,418,000 railroad cars, while 427,000 further tons were shipped by water. In this same letter Rosenberg mentioned that among the confiscated goods removed to Germany, there were 9,000 cars with agricultural and other machinery. And after this he dares to speak about some machines which he has allegedly imported into the Ukraine! And finally I shall speak about the ridiculous theory of the so-called Rosenberg's "noble anti-Semitism." It is absurd to argue with Rosenberg's counsel who affirms that such a thing as a "noble anti-Semitism" really exists' and it is an the more absurd to argue with Rosenberg. In my statement to the Tribunal I threw some light on the fascist propaganda contained in the speech of the Defense. I would now like to recall to the Tribunal the text of two of Rosenberg's documents: In his directive of 29 April 1941 he wrote: "The Jewish problem requires a general settlement; temporary measures are to be decided upon.
GENERAL RUDENKO: (Compulsory labor for Jews, the creation of ghettos, et cetera).'' Even more cynical and frank is the statement made by Rosenberg in November 1942 when he, in his capacity of Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, addressed a conference of the German Labor Front: "We must not be satisfied"-said Rosenberg-"with the deportation of Jews from one country to another and with the existence, here or there, of a large Jewish ghetto; no, our object must always remain the same. The Jewish problem in Europe and in Germany will be solved only when there are no more Jews left on the European continent." And all the operations "Cottbus" for the extermination of Jews in the Baltic towns, in the Ukraine and Byelorussia-all these were carried out in conformity with Rosenberg's theories and with his agreement. In 1937 Rosenberg received the German National Prize. Commenting on this event, the fascist press wrote as follows: "Alfred Rosenberg has brilliantly succeeded with his books in building up the scientific and spiritual foundations and in consolidating and strengthening the philosophy of National Socialism.... Only future generations will be able fully to appreciate the profound influence of this man on the philosophical foundations of the National Socialist Reich." But the future has now become the present. And I am sure that the Tribunal will be able duly to appreciate not only the influence exercised by Rosenberg on the "philosophical foundations of the National Socialist Reich," but also his active participation in all the crimes against peace and humanity perpetrated by the Hitlerites. Frank. A lawyer by training, the Defendant Hans Frank was one of those who liked to tank about the reception of the "ancient German" law for Germans, about "principles of justice" for the "select," about the "right of the chosen people" to annihilate nations and countries. In 1939 he was the man who for a long time past had been corrupting the German legal concept, to whom Hitler entrusted the fate of subjugated Poland.
GENERAL RUDENKO: Frank arrived in Poland to realize practically his entire program for the enslavement and extermination of the people on the territory of a country with an age-old history and with its own culture of high standing. I should like to remind the Tribunal of some of Frank's views expressed during the first months of his stay in Poland, taken from his so-called "diary." It is hardly worth while to discuss with the counsel the probative value of this document. Frank himself declared to the Court that "this document was of historical importance" and to the question, "whether all his statements contained in the diary were true," he replied "they fully correspond to what I know." On 19 January 1940 Frank declared with cynical frankness, at a conference of the departmental leaders: "On 15 September 1939 I was entrusted with the task of governing the conquered Eastern Territories and received a special order to ruin this territory ruthlessly as a war territory and a war trophy, and to turn it into a heap of rubble from the viewpoint of the social, economic, cultural, and political structure." On 31 October 1939, in the presence of Goebbels, at a conference uniting the leading officials of the Government General, he declared: "A perfectly clear differentiation must be made between the German people-the master race-and the Poles." He then remembered that Polish culture which Frank, as counsel Dr. Seidl has said here, cared for so greatly. He stated: "The Poles can be allowed only those possibilities for educating themselves which would prove the hopelessness of the destiny of their nation. Bad films alone or films demonstrating the might and greatness of the Germans can be taken into consideration for this purpose." One of Frank's first instructions was the order to shoot hostages. Later on similar orders were to be counted by the hundreds and by the thousands until they finally culminated in the edition of the regulation dated 2 October 1943.
GENERAL RUDENKO: On 10 November 1939 Frank was informed that the day of Polish independence was approaching and that posters were to be hung up on certain houses to remind the Poles of their national holiday. The following entry then appeared in Frank's diary: ". . . the Governor General decreed that one inhabitant of the male sex is to be taken from every house on which an affixed poster of this kind is not removed and is to be shot. "The Pole must feel that we do not intend building a constitutional state for him." The short extract we are quoting from the speech Frank made at the conference of the chiefs of departments of the Government General characterizes this Hitlerite "lawyer" far better than any lengthy excerpts taken from his full-dress speeches which we were obliged to listen to here. Frank's criminal activities in Poland were so very manifold that there is no possibility, in a short speech' to reconstruct to the Tribunal the innumerable proofs of his guilt which have been submitted in this courtroom and which are evidently still fresh in the memory of the judges. But from Frank's criminal activities in Poland vice must isolate that predominant trait which is Frank's criminal activity as the murderer of millions of people. Of course he looted; he was Goering's plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan and he looted, so to say, "in the course of his duties." He sent over 2 million Poles to Germany for forced labor. The attempt of the defense to represent Frank as "the enemy of coercive methods of recruitment" can be based only on the assumption that nobody excepting counsel had studied Frank's diaries. For Frank never can escape documents such as the minutes of the meeting of the departmental leaders, dated 12 April 1940, or the notes of Gauleiter Sauckel of 18 August 1942, or the transcript of the meeting with Buhler, Kruger, and others of 21 April 1940. But he sent people to forced labor in order to wring them dry in the interests of the Reich before sending them to their doom.
GENERAL RUDENKO: The regime, established by Hans Frank throughout Poland during all the stages of the temporary German domination in this country, was a regime for the inhuman destruction of millions of people by varied, but invariably criminal, methods. It is not merely incidental that the German fascist assassins who annihilated 11,000 Polish prisoner-of-war officers in Katyn forest should refer to the regime which Frank instituted in Poland as an example for their own activities-as the Tribunal has been able to ascertain not so very long ago in this courtroom from the evidence presented by the former deputy mayor of Smolensk- Professor Bazilevsky. I consider it to be particularly important, at this point, to emphasize the concept Frank had of the relations with the Polish population after the war: "I insistently draw your attention"-said Frank-"to the fact that, should peace be concluded, nothing would change in this respect. This peace will signify that we, as a world power, will conduct more firmly than hitherto our general line of policy. This peace would signify that we will have to carry out colonization on a still far greater scale, but the principle will not have changed." This was stated in 1940 when Frank was contemplating the first mass murder of the Polish "intelligentsia," the so-called "AB Action." In 1944, at the meeting of the agricultural leaders at Zakopane Frank said: "If we win the war, then, as far as I care, we could make mincemeat of the Poles and Ukrainians and of all those who are idling around... then come what may." It was not Frank's fault that as far back as 1944, dreaming to make "mincemeat" of Poles and Ukrainians, he was compelled to add "if we win the war." At this time he could not be so emphatic in his utterings as on 2 August 1943, when at the reception of the Party speakers in the Royal Palace of the Krakow Castle he spoke about the exterminated Polish Jews: "Here we started out with 3,500,000 Jews, now but a few workers' companies remain of this number.
GENERAL RUDENKO: All the others have-let us say-emigrated." Both Frank and his counsel attempted to prove that the defendant had known nothing about the happenings in the concentration camps of the Government General. However, in these secret reports addressed by Frank to Hitler, which counsel tried to utilize on Frank's behalf, we may find a confirmation of the fact that Frank was well informed about what was occurring in the camps. It is said there: "The majority of the Polish intellectuals have not reacted to the news from Katyn and quote in answer similar atrocities in Auschwitz." Frank then quotes a highly characteristic passage describing the reaction of the Polish workers to the provocative communications of the Germans about Katyn. "There are concentration camps in Auschwitz and Maidanek where mass murder of the Poles was carried out on assembly lines." And further: "Today, unfortunately, Polish public opinion, and not the intellectuals alone, compares Katyn to the mass death rate in the German concentration camps, as well as to the shooting of men, women, and even of children and old people, during the infliction of collective punishment in the districts." After the secret report addressed to Hitler no other new course was adopted by Frank. On the contrary, Frank published his regulation of 2 October 1943 which the defendant himself termed as "dreadful" when questioned by his counsel. After this regulation had been carried into effect, many thousands of innocent people became the victims of this decision. The number of executions increased steadily till it amounted to 200 persons executed at one time in Warsaw. The same happened in the streets of all the Polish towns where the so-called "police courts" carried out executions, as stated in the text of the regulation itself, immediately following the verdict. The people doomed to die were brought to the execution grounds, wearing paper clothing, their lips glued together with adhesive tape, or their mouths stuffed with plaster.
GENERAL RUDENKO: After their imprisonment they seemed to have been drained of the last drop of blood. At the state conference held in Krakow on 16 December 1943, where Frank stated with satisfaction that the executions had had "favorable consequences," another question was simultaneously discussed. In the records of this conference it is stated: "One must perhaps also consider whether special places of execution should not be created for this, for it had been ascertained that the Polish population streamed to places of execution which were accessible to all, in order to put the blood-soaked earth into containers and take these to the church." The defense counsel tried to speak here about the interminable dissensions of Frank with the Police; he had allegedly disagreed with their action. Let us see what kind of dissensions these were. The first special action carried out in Poland, namely, the AB Action-the extermination of several thousands of Polish intellectuals-had not been initiated by the Police, but by Frank himself. According to Hitler's decree of 2 May 1942, the chief of Police was subordinated to the Governor General. When some dissensions between Frank and the chief of Police did arise, it was Kruger who had to leave his post of Police chief, whereas Frank remained Governor General of Poland. As for Obergruppenfuehrer Koppe, who took over from Kruger, who else but Frank expressed his thanks to him on I6 December 1943 for shooting the hostages, his "gratitude for his fruitful work" and noted with satisfaction, "One of the greatest specialists is at the head of the Police in the Government General." It is incomprehensible what dissensions with the Police counsel Seidl was talking about. The defense even tried to represent Frank as "a kind of peaceful anti-Semite," who, while entertaining a negative attitude toward the Jewish people, never initiated massacres of the Jews or even instigated them. It is incomprehensible in this case how the following words of Frank would be interpreted by the counsel: "The Jews are a race that should be exterminated.
GENERAL RUDENKO: Wherever we catch even one, we shall do away with him." Or his declaration at the government session of 24 August 1942, when he said: "The fact that we have condemned 1.2 million Jews to starvation may only be mentioned by the way. It stands to reason that if these Jews do not die of starvation, it will precipitate active measures against the Jews." The criminal activity of this hangman of the Polish nation led to the extermination of millions. "You see how the state organs are working, you see that they do not shrink before anything and people by the dozen are put up against the wall." This is the manner in which Frank himself, at a conference of the Standartenfuehrer held on 18 March 1942, characterized the bloody regime of terror set up throughout Poland. "I did not hesitate to declare that for one German killed, up to a hundred Poles would be shot"-these words were pronounced by Frank on 15 January 1944, at a meeting of the Political Leaders of the NSDAP. "Had I gone to the Fuehrer and told him: 'My Fuehrer, I report that I have destroyed another 150,000 Poles,' he would have said: 'Fine, if it was necessary"'-Frank stated this on 18 March 1944 while making a speech at the Reichshof, that same Frank who now tries to convince the Tribunal that he had some "differences of opinion on matters of principle" with Hitler and Himmler. Those declarations that Frank made during the first months of his stay in Poland constituted a genuine murder program, perpetrated by the defendant methodically, ruthlessly, and according to plan. Frank, of course, was fully aware of the fact that should war not lead to victory he would have to bear the full responsibility for the crimes committed in Poland, as well as for his participation in the fascist conspiracy. As far back as 1943 Frank spoke about this at a meeting with his accomplices.