dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. PANNENBECKER: In actual effect this involved arrangement also enhanced the tremendous influence of Himmler on Hitler. In keeping with his convictions, and to safeguard a well-ordered state apparatus, Frick repeatedly tried to intervene through general instructions intended to restrain the arbitrary acts of the political police. As late as 25 January 1938 he tried through a decree to curtail the admissibility of protective custody and he forbade it in a number of cases of improper application. I refer to Document 1723-PS, Exhibit Number USA-206, an extract of which under Number 36 appears in the Frick document book. He prohibited protective custody in lieu of, or cumulative to, a legal penalty, forbade its application by police authorities of the intermediate or subordinate levels, and gave orders that the accused should be heard before arrest. He decreed periodical examination of the reasons for the continuance of confinement and on principle forbade the protective custody of foreigners, whom the Police had authority only to expel from the Reich in case of acts endangering the State. An obvious argument is that the Gestapo in practice disregarded all these instructions of Frick and that Himmler and his subordinates maintained an absolute reign of terror and violence. This is correct and has been confirmed in detail by the witness Gisevius. But something else appears of importance to me in the defense of Frick: To show that Frick himself disapproved of such arbitrary acts and that he tried to do all in his power to prevent them. Finally, however, Hitler forbade even this. He informed him through Lammers-as confirmed by the latter as witness-that he was not to concern himself with police matters, that Himmler could manage that better by himself and that the Police was doing well under Himmler.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Thus Himmler finally got complete control of the Police, and he gave outward expression to this by later dropping, with Hitler's consent, from his official title, the words "in the Reich Ministry of the Interior," simply referring to himself as "Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police," which is also shown in the testimony of the witness Lammers. I believe that, in view of the circumstances, the problem of the Defendant Frick's criminal responsibility for the political police and their arbitrary measures is not established by the fact that the entire Police was formally incorporated in the Reich Ministry of the Interior after the year 1936, since it has been proved that Frick himself did not participate in arbitrary acts, but on the contrary tried again and again to intervene against such arbitrary practice with all the power he possessed, which however was no match for the personality of Himmler and his influence with Hitler. In order to insure fair judgment, I request that the actual situation as to power of command and authority, and not the purely superficial circumstances of a formal incorporation of the tasks involved in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, be taken into account. I insert the following here: The Prosecution, during their presentation on 3 July 1946, submitted Document D-181, Exhibit GB-528, and stated in connection with that document that it proved that the political police were not only formally incorporated in the Ministry of the Interior, but that Frick was in fact responsible for the measures of the Police. Actually the document shows only that Frick as Minister of the Interior was officially contacted in the matter of the sterilization of those suffering from so-called hereditary diseases. The document has nothing to do with any measures of the Police, least of all with any measures of the political police. Moreover there is no information in it regarding Himmler's position in the Ministry of the Interior.
DR. PANNENBECKER: Now I will continue with lay plea: In this connection, I must briefly deal with the reference of the Prosecution to the fact that Hitler's decree concerning the appointment of Himmler as Chief of the German Police-Document 2073-PS-had been countersigned by Frick himself. I believe that the relationship between Frick and Himmler, as well as their divergent relations to Hitler, are sufficiently clear to justify the conclusion that the appointment of Himmler simply amounted to an agreement between Hitler and Himmler, to which Frick would have objected in vain. We are confronted with the same problem which applies to so many defendants, namely, that of the formal countersigning of an order issued by Hitler, which was then signed as a matter of form by the head of a department, although that department head had no influence on the order and could not have prevented it, especially as it would have had full constitutional effect as a Fuehrer decree without the minister's additional signature. I now have to deal with several documents which the Prosecution consider to have a bearing on actual activity by the Defendant Frick within the sphere of tasks of the political police. I have already dealt with Document 3304-PS, to which the Prosecution referred in this connection. It concerns an ordinance on the assignment of a Higher Police Leader to the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) in the Eastern territories which were incorporated into the commonwealth of the German Reich, and hence deals with the administrative organization of the Reich Governor's office in a part of the Reich. This decree therefore falls within the scope of the general competence of the Ministry of the Interior, and accordingly does not furnish proof of any specific police activity. Moreover, this decree has nothing to do with any arbitrary acts of the Gestapo.
DR. PANNENBECKER: On the same lines in the decree of 20 September 1936-Document 2245-PS-concerning the appointment of police experts in the Prussian provincial administrations, which were also subordinate to the Reich Ministry of the Interior as offices of the general internal Reich administration, the assignment of a police expert to the office of general administration in the province is a measure of internal Reich administration. This measure, too, had no connection with arbitrary acts of the Gestapo, and more particularly it does not prove that the defendant issued any instructions to the Gestapo. The situation is no different with respect to the documents which have been appraised by the Prosecution as demonstrating the participation of the defendant in the establishment and administration of concentration camps, or as a sign of approval of terror methods used by the Gestapo. In their statement of 22 November 1945, the Prosecution referred to Document 2533-PS as proof of the approval of these arrangements by the Defendant Frick. I need not go further into the contents of the document; it represents an article by the Defendant Frank in the journal of the Academy of German Law, of which Frick has erroneously been called the author by the Prosecution. A further document does not, in the opinion of the Defense, contain sufficient evidentiary value to be utilized in giving legal judgment. I have in mind Document 2513-PS, Exhibit Number 235, which contains an excerpt from a speech which Frick allegedly made in the year 1927. But the excerpt is taken from a provincial Social Democrat newspaper, a small paper opposed to Frick, the reporter thus having no authentic copy of the speech at his disposal-and we all know what mistakes and misunderstandings are apt to be contained in such short reports, the wording of which cannot be checked by the speaker himself. Thus this document, according to which Frick is said to have stated that history is written not only with the ballot, but with blood and iron, is not a reliable source.
DR. PANNENBECKER: The Prosecution refers to dealings concerning the expropriation of land in order to extend the grounds of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The general domestic administration is competent for expropriation matters, and for this reason an official from the Ministry of the Interior was called into negotiations, who stated, however-Page 2 of the English translation of the document-that he was not authorized to dispose of the freehold of the land. Thus one cannot from this document either construe any political police activity on the part of the defendant, or an approval of the concentration camp system. Finally, in this connection the Prosecution states that the Defendant Frick personally visited the Oranienburg and Dachau Concentration Camps. The defendant does not deny the visit to Oranienburg in 1938, about which witness Hoess testified. At that time, as witness Hoess himself testified, the outward aspect of the camps was still generally that of a military training area. In any case, an official visitor to a camp at that time could not observe any indication of murder, ill-treatment, or similar crimes, so that such a visit is not a decisive argument for knowledge of crimes in the Concentration camps. On the other hand, Frick never visited the Dachau Concentration Camp, contrary to the testimony of the witness Blaha. I refer to the testimony of Gillhuber in regard to this, who as the constant companion of Frick must have known about such a visit if it had taken place. I take the liberty of pointing out that the two other constant companions of Frick were also named by me as witnesses, but in agreement with the Prosecution were considered by the Tribunal as unnecessary on the grounds that one of the companions would be sufficient as a witness. Before concluding this chapter, I still have to go into the matter of an allusion made by the Prosecution which described Frick at one time as the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office.
DR. PANNENBECKER: I beg to refer to the testimony of the witness Ohlendorf, who stated to the Court that the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was a creation of Himmler, who combined in this office his state police tasks and his functions as Reichsfuehrer SS, with which Frick had no connection of any kind, much less any powers of command. The sole chief of this of lice was thus Himmler himself.' I must go further into the charges which are made against the Defendant Frick with respect to the persecution of members of the Jewish race. Frick did collaborate in legal measures, particularly the Nuremberg Laws, and in administrative measures which he regarded as an expression of a National Socialist racial policy. On the other hand there is no proof that Frick himself shared in or knew of the measures of physical extermination which, on Hitler's direct orders, were carried out by Himmler and his organizations and kept absolutely secret from those who themselves had no part in these frightful events. Further, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior, the defendant is also accused of collaboration in the killing of the sick and insane. Hitler's basic order is contained in Document 630-PS, Exhibit Number USA-342. This document shows that Hitler did not give an order for this to any government office but to two separate individuals, namely, Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, so that this was quite outside the ministries' authority. Moreover, contrary to all rules, Hitler did not sign this order himself in an official capacity as Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor, but used private stationery with the heading "Adolf Hitler." This shows, a fact that the witness Lammers has confirmed, that Hitler did not give an order for these measures to the Ministry of the Interior or some other government office, but to two of his Party comrades, and the Party emblem is the only sign on this stationery.
DR. PANNENBECKER: On the other hand, the documents submitted by the Prosecution prove that complaints were made which also reached the Ministry of the Interior, but they do not prove that, in contradiction to Document 630-PS, Frick personally was contacted on the subject of measures for the killings, or that he could have prevented them. After his dismissal as Minister of the Interior on 20 August 1943 Frick was appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Here he was given a task which from the start was definitely limited in its competence. I refer to Document 3443-PS, which is also included as USSR-60 and under Number 29 in the Frick document book, and to 1366-PS, submitted by me as Exhibit Number Frick-5a. Furthermore, I refer to the testimony of the witness Lammers. The office of the Reich. Protector was originally the unified representation of Reich authority in the Protectorate. In actual practice, however, its authority passed more and more to Frank, the Reich Protector's State Secretary at that time. With the appointment of Frick in August 1943 through a Fuehrer decree which was not made public, the executive authority was now formally transferred to Frank, who from that date received the official title of "The German Minister of State in Bohemia and Moravia." From that time on the Reich Protector retained essentially the right of representation and the right of pardon, improper use of which by Frick has been neither maintained nor proved by the Prosecution. On the other hand Frank, as "German Minister of State" according to the above-mentioned Fuehrer decree, derived his executive authority directly from Hitler by whom he had been directly appointed, and from whom he received his instructions without Frick's interpolation, Frick being in no way competent to exercise any influence thereon. Considering this state of affairs, the Defendant Frick cannot be incriminated by Document 3589-PS, Exhibit Number USA-720. I now come to the Prosecution's charge that Frick, by his membership in certain organizations, is responsible for certain criminal actions.
DR. PANNENBECKER: The SS was one of these organizations mentioned by the Prosecution, to which, however, Frick never belonged. Thus he was never a general in the SS, as stated by the Prosecution. I would assume this to be merely an error on the par's of the Prosecution. In any case, the Prosecution did not submit any form of proof. Frick was likewise never a member of the SA, as shown- probably by mistake-in the chart indicating the defendants' membership in various organizations. For this too, there is no proof. The Prosecution has further charged Frick with being the supreme head of the Gestapo, and therefore designated him as a member of this organization, with the argument that since the appointment of Himmler in 1936 as Chief of the German Police the Gestapo has been formally incorporated into the Reich Ministry of the Interior. But the Gestapo had its own chief in the person of Himmler, from whom alone it took orders, and Himmler's formal subordination to the Minister of the Interior does not make the latter a member of that organization, which was exclusively under Himmler's orders. The Defendant Frick is further charged, in his capacity as Reichsleiter, with membership in the Political Leadership Corps. My colleague, charged with the defense of this organization, will in his turn deal with the character of this organization. As to the Defendant Frick, I have only to point out that he held the formal position of a Reichsleiter in his role as chairman of the Reichstag faction of the NSDAP. The Reichstag itself having lost all political importance after 1933, which requires no further explanation, this position of Frick's was in practice equally unimportant and could not be compared with the position of a Reichsleiter who administered important political departments. Finally Frick, as Reich Minister, was a member of the Reich Cabinet. With regard to the character and the authority of this organization I also refer first of all to the statements, which are yet to follow, of my colleague who has been appointed defense counsel for this organization.
DR. PANNENBECKER: I refer here only to the testimony of Lammers and Gisevius, and further to the excerpt from the book of this latter witness, which I have submitted as Exhibit Number Frick-13 as evidence of the position and authority which the Reich Cabinet had with respect to the dictatorial practices-of Hitler. From all this, the Defendant Frick appears as a person who certainly took action politically to bring Hitler to power, and who temporarily exercised a decisive influence on internal policy after his goal had been achieved. All his measures, however, had inner political aims; they were not intended to have anything to do with the foreign political aims of a war of aggression, much less with Crimes against Peace or against the rules of warfare-and, as also specified by Article 6 of the Charter, only in such cases would this Court have jurisdiction, as stated by the Prosecution itself. When Frick realized later that the policy was taking a course of which he could no longer approve, he tried to exert all his influence to bring about a change. But he had perforce to find out more and more clearly that Hitler would not listen to his remonstrances and complaints. On the contrary, he was forced to realize that these complaints destroyed Hitler's confidence in him, and that he preferred to be advised by Himmler and similarly minded persons, so that finally, after the year 1937, Frick was no longer received by Hitler when he wanted to present complaints. Frick then gave up such hopeless attempts to bring about a change in the situation. Things would not have been altered by his resignation either, which the evidence has shown he repeatedly tendered in vain. Thus his tragedy lies in his entanglement in a system, in the first steps of which he had participated enthusiastically and the development of which he had imagined would be quite different.
DR. PANNENBECKER: In any case, it appears important to me, in judging his personality and his actions, that even this presentation of evidence, which has gone on for months, has not given any proof of the personal participation of the defendant in any crime. It is not without reason that John Gunther in his book Inside Europe, which I have presented to the Tribunal as evidence, describes precisely the Defendant Frick as "the only honest Nazi." At the same place Gunther goes on to call him a "bureaucrat through and through." Hitler himself kept calling him the "pen pusher" ("Paragraphenschuster",1 because Frick-which was typical of him- did not become acquainted with him at some public meeting, but in his office in the police department in Munich in the year 1923. This man felt enthusiasm for Hitler's suggestive power, so lacking in himself, a Hitler who with big words appealed to his heart, his honor, and his patriotism. It was Hitler who made him proud of being able to participate in the reconstruction of a German nation which, through powerful armed forces, was to be in a position to play a peaceful yet active role in world politics. And it was again Hitler who knew how to make his program appear to the bourgeois official Frick as the only way to forestall Bolshevik rule in Germany-this and many more superficial truths, twisted statements, and devices of propaganda which fooled so many people who fell for the suggestive power of Hitler, not realizing in time that they had subordinated themselves to the hypnotic will of a criminal, who was prepared to overthrow the pillars of civilization for his aims and who finally would leave Germany a monstrous spiritual and material field of rubble, for the removal of which I pray that this Trial may also contribute through a sentence in accordance with law and justice.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Marx.
DR. HANNS MARX (Counsel for Defendant Streicher): Gentlemen of the Tribunal, Mr. President. I begin the speech for the defense of Julius Streicher. When in May of the past year the final battles of the greatest and most horrible war of all time came to an end, the Germans were slow to rise again from the stupor in which they had, for the most part, spent the last months of the war. Like all the peoples of Europe they had suffered unspeakably for years. The last months in particular, with their hail of bombs, had brought so much misery to both the country and the people that it almost surpassed human endurance. This terror was increased by the knowledge that the war was lost, and by the fear of the uncertain fate which the occupation period would bring. And when finally the periods of first anxiety had passed, when the German people were slowly beginning to breathe again, paralyzing horror spread once more. Through the press and radio, through newspapers and motion pictures, knowledge was spread of the atrocities which had taken place in the East, on the steppes and in the concentration camps. Germany learned that people, men of its own blood, had slaughtered millions upon millions of innocent Jewish people. Most people felt instinctively that these deeds would necessarily be the greatest of all the accusations the world had to level against Germany. The question of whether the German people in its totality had known and approved of these actions was, and is, the truly fateful question. It is the touchstone by which the decision must be made as to whether or not Germany will ever be able to return again as a nation with equal rights into the common cultural and spiritual sphere of the world. As in every case of guilt, there immediately arose here also the question as to who was responsible, and the search for that individual. Who had ordered these atrocities, who had carried them out, and how could such inconceivable things have happened at all, the like of which cannot be found in history even in the earliest days?
DR. HANNS MARX (Counsel for Defendant Streicher): During all this asking and guessing, the news arrived that the former Gauleiter of Franconia and publisher of Der Sturmer, the present Defendant Julius Streicher, had fallen into the hands of the American troops. From the echo this news aroused in the press, which was exclusively directed and published by the occupying power, as well as in the radio news, it was to be gathered that the world was of the opinion that in the person of Julius Streicher not only had one of the numerous anti-Semitic propaganda agents of the Third Reich been taken prisoner, but in short Enemy Number One of the Jews. Throughout the rest of the world the opinion evidently prevailed that in the person of Julius Streicher not only the most active propaganda agent for the persecution and extermination of the Jews had been seized, but that he had also participated to the highest degree in carrying out these acts of extermination. He was said to have been, as one heard, not only the greatest hater of the Jews and the greatest preacher of extermination of the Jews, but also the person to whose direct influence one could trace back the extermination of European Jewry. N is only from this angle that it can be explained why the Defendant Streicher should sit here in the dock, together with the other defendants, among those chiefly responsible for the National Socialist system. For neither by virtue of his personality nor measured by his offices and positions does he belong to the circle of leaders of the NSDAP or to the Party's decisive personalities. This view was probably also held in the beginning by the Prosecution, but was abandoned by them at an early stage, for the written Indictment already no longer charged the Defendant Streicher with any personal and direct part in the abominable mass murders. Rather did it state that there was less guilt with which he would be charged than in the case of any of the other defendants; only his propaganda, his activities by the written and spoken word, were made the subject of the accusation against him.