dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
HERR PELCKMANN: In view of the true background as portrayed above, it could only be the act of a daring trickster -when Hitler answered in reply: "I really must say that had we not had an understanding of what is legal, then we would not be sitting here and you would not be sitting here-Gentlemen, it would not have been necessary for us to embark on this election or summon the Reichstag." (Reichstag Records, 1933, Pages 65 and 66.) But- who, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, among the mass of the people, among the old and new members of the General SS, knew at the time how audaciously Hitler was lying? These men were misled by the cloak of legality under which Hitler concealed his true self. And this speech is not all. Just consider how the Supreme Court, made up of old experienced former Republican judges, with scrupulous precision during many months of the trial until 1934, sought to establish who was guilty of the Reichstag fire. They acquitted the Communists Torgler, Dimitroff, and others, but sentenced the Communist Van der Lubbe and established publicly the complicity of Communist circles who remained unknown. Must not the mass of SS members, as well as the rank and file of the German people, have thought that Hitler had really saved the people and the State from a violent revolution for which the Communists were blamed at that time? Who, at that time, knew-as I knew, being a defense counsel-that the charge which had been prepared for months, even years, against Thalmann had to be withdrawn because of insufficient evidence? These few who then, or soon after, learned or guessed the truth and who, in spite of the ever-increasing danger of being arrested, in discussions with friends and acquaintances expressed doubts regarding the authenticity of the official and popular thesis, these few knew that, as against the semblance of legality supported by unceasing propaganda, they would not be believed by the masses. The masses appreciated that in view of this threat to the State the so-called "enemies of the State" were to be rendered harmless in time.
HERR PELCKMANN: Seen from this angle, even the concentration camps appeared justified. But I shall come back to that later. All these were harsh and in many cases even criminal measures which partly also, incriminate SS members, but not the entire mass of the SS. However, we must not lose sight of one thing. There was no use of force, such as occurs in a revolution, until after Hitler had assumed power. The cunning thing about it was that these excesses, such as arrests and bodily injuries; which were committed by members of Nazi formations-in very few cases by members of the SS-were committed in the belief, created through deceiving the masses, that they were necessary in order to safeguard and def6nd the power, which was legally acquired, against attacks or threats. Coming after the acquisition of power, this revolutionary attitude, created by the deception of the masses regarding the true events, a unique phenomenon in history, is typical of all revolutionary excesses: under cover of factual or alleged idealistic motives, such as love of the Fatherland, love of humanity, crimes were committed. Just consider, Gentlemen of the Tribunal-since we have not yet sufficient perspective of the many revolutions of the modern age-just consider the French Revolution: what crimes were committed under the slogan of "Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity." In the light of the experience of modem psychology it seems to me to be quite out of the question that mass movements can be unleashed or incited by inferior moral aims. The masses cannot consciously be led to crime. Gustave Le Bon also inclines to this opinion. In the shadow of the high ideals of the masses it frequently happens that crimes are committed; but then they are only instigated or perpetrated by the few who deceive the masses about the true reasons and events. This thought seems to me to be a decisive factor when dealing later with the question of concentration camps and the atrocities committed there, and establishing whether the mass of the SS were responsible or not for these.
HERR PELCKMANN: The concept of loyalty, too, belongs to those ideals which inspire the masses. One must be acquainted with the German mentality in order to be able to gauge what immense possibilities this concept afforded the psychopathological seducer of a people, Adolf Hitler, ignominiously to deceive hundreds of thousands. We know how much the word "loyalty" means to a German, educated as he is, and influenced by romantic and retrospective contemplation of history. Even Tacitus praised these qualities in the ancestors of the Germans. Hitler exploited this weakness of the Germans, and in that way was able to cause hundreds of thousands, even millions, to link themselves with him and his destiny. We know that what is permissible and understandable in private life is fundamentally wrong for the State. By that I mean unconditional devotion to a human being. In his work, The Question of Guilt, the Heidelberg philosopher Karl Jaspers says in regard to this question: "The loyalty of followers in narrow circles and in primitive conditions is a feeling which has nothing to do with politics. In a free State all people are subject to control and change." The German Socialist Bebel once expressed it in the following manner: "Mistrust is a virtue of Democracy." These views are taken for granted by the free peoples of the world. But for a people who wanted to create a modern state according to retrospective historical dreams they are a new revelation. Quite justifiably Jaspers sees a twofold guilt. "First, because of the very fact of submitting oneself politicaly and without reservation to a leader, and secondly, the esteem of the leader to whom one subjects oneself. Even the atmosphere created by such subjection is a collective guilt." Actually Jaspers means by that a moral and political, but not a criminal guilt. In certain individual cases, however, this loyalty can render the individual perpetrator criminally guilty.
HERR PELCKMANN: That becomes clear when we listen to the secret speech of Himmler at Posen, when he addressed SS Obergruppenfuehrer of the home country and of the rear army area. That was late in the war-October 1943 (1919-PS, Document SS-98). After various statements concerning obedience and the possibility of refusing to execute orders, he says quite clearly: "But he who proves unfaithful, be it only in his thoughts, will be thrown out of the SS and I, Himmler, would see to it that he disappears from among the living." This, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, is an important fact when considering the question of guilt in the individual case and the question as to the extent to which coercion and obedience to order during the war eliminate the guilt and thereby the criminality of certain individual persons or subordinated groups. This is supplementary to the question of refusal of military service and its consequences according to military law. The supernatural, and I can even say devilish, power of this bond of loyalty was exemplified by Himmler himself in his relations to Hitler during the last days of the war. The Swede, Count Bernadotte, describes, from his own experience, in his book, The Curtain Falls, how Himmler could not make the decision to save the German people from destruction by calling a halt to hostilities, in spite of his very clear realization of the consequences, because-and Bernadotte admits this-even in this hopeless situation he dared not violate his loyalty to Hitler. We also know how in all times and with all peoples it has always been this loyalty that made soldiers fight to the last drop of blood in the gravest battles, just as the Waffen-SS did, and in so doing won the respect of their opponents in this war. And from these two examples we see how this hypnotic word, "loyalty," embraces alike criminal madness and the highest virtue of the soldier.
HERR PELCKMANN: So much for the question of how far the SS man had knowledge of the points of the Party Program-if indeed he knew them sufficiently, which from the affidavits of 136,000 SS men is doubtful and how he viewed the ideals of his organization. But did not the Nazi leaders plot war from the very beginning? Mr. Justice Jackson asserts this, and I answer: According to the knowledge that we have today, I admit it, yes. But how could the SS man know it? The Prosecution does not say why the conversion of an army of professional soldiers into a people's army should signify the planning of an aggressive war. Switzerland, the best example of a country with a people's army, has not been engaged in a war for a long time. Was the sponsoring of physical training and sports activities of youth a camouflaged plan for military training? In my opinion Mr. Justice Jackson failed to give us the proof for that assertion. The training of the General SS was nonmilitary. Field sports as practiced by the SA were completely lacking, and a typical example-the cavalry units of the SS which were numerically smaller than those of the SA, did not even give their members the right to hold a horsemanship certificate, as was the case with the SA. (Compare the testimony of Weikowsky-Biedau before the Commission.) We know today that Hitler wanted war; it is particularly clear from the intimate conversations with Rauschning and when we consider the events as a whole. But, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, please note: it is ex post. It would have been a fruitless undertaking, especially in view of the position in which the German people found themselves after the first World War, to present a new war as less shocking or bad, or even as a noble and necessary undertaking, to use Justice Jackson's own expression. Hitler, whom one can accuse of anything else, but certainly not of not knowing the facts of mass psychology, stressed again and again before and after 1933 that he wanted peace, peace, and nothing but peace.
HERR PELCKMANN: He pointed out that he had experienced the horrors of war on his own body, that war always meant a selection detrimental to the most valuable elements in any nation. And only by these means was he able to win over ever-increasing numbers of the German people to himself and to his ideas. With propaganda for war, however carefully conducted, he would never have achieved it. Rearmament was represented to the German people as being merely a confirmation of the will for peace, as a defensive measure against the nondisarmament of other nations, and to, counter any attempts to interfere with the peaceful rebuilding of Germany. The building of the West Wall confirms it, and so do many utterances of foreign military experts. The high-ranking major defendants and many witnesses, including such a reliable witness as Gisevius, have confirmed that not even in the leading circles was any planning of aggressive war discussed. This applies to the SS to an even greater degree. The entire training with the organizations always centered around the idea that the Party Program would be carried through in a legal and peaceful manner, that peace was absolutely necessary and should be preserved at all costs. Not only was there no psychological preparation for war in all the SS organizations, but on the contrary, the peaceful aims of the Reich were continually stressed. In this connection, I would like to ask the High Tribunal to read Documents SS-70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 from the years 1933 to 1935, particularly an article from the Schwarzes Korps entitled "The SS Does Not Like War," written in 1937, and other documents which I am not quoting. That psychological preparations for war were lacking among the German people, and also among the SS, was never more clearly demonstrated to observers at home and abroad than by the reaction of the masses to the Munich Pact in 1938.
HERR PELCKMANN: The jubilation of the masses, including the SS who formed the cordons, was not meant for the Adolf Hitler who had enforced the cession of the Sudetenland, but rather the Hitler, and to an even greater degree those foreign statesmen, who had saved the peace. For the German people and the soldiers did not want war and this must be stated in this historical place for the sake of historical truth-when war came in 1939 they accepted this fate not with loud rejoicing as in 1914, but in solemn silence, most of them in the erroneous belief that their leaders did not desire this war, that it was not a war of aggression. However, it would be unworthy of me and I should lose face if I attempted to deny that the young Germans, particularly in the SS, saw their ideals in the manly virtues, those same virtues of self-assertion and refusal to take it lying down as are cherished by other nations too. It may be that the SS men overemphasized those virtues in a manner which was not always good or wise. But none of the old soldiers, students, and farmers who had joined the SS imagined that war was for a purpose even remotely akin to what Hitler had in mind. If Hitler had ever dared to speak to those men of attacks on other peoples with whom he had just concluded solemn pacts of friendship, or of Einsatzkommandos in -foreign lands, he. would never have found any followers, apart from a handful of desperadoes, The war which the tall, blond, and perhaps intellectually not always very alert, typical SS man imagined-and I must admit that he did not shrink from it-was the kind of war which his ancestors before him had waged during many centuries and which, in the last resort, always amounted to an appeal to destiny, the great gamble of the gods. It is true that we have to wean the Germans, and particularly the younger Germans, from this atavistic longing-and in this respect I am now more optimistic for my fellow countrymen than for many other peoples.
HERR PELCKMANN: But war, which at present it does not appear possible to extirpate-the Kellogg Pact and modern international law do not ban war as a means of defense and self-preservation-is essentially different from that high treason, that betrayal of world peace, that attack and robbery for the purpose of extermination, which was invented by Hitler. In addition to its general aims and tendencies with which the Prosecution charges the SS since the very beginning of its activities, and on the basis of Which it seeks to declare it to be a criminal organization, there is one outstanding event which, it is alleged, -discloses its criminal character in a striking manner-the killings which took place on 30 June 1934. Owing to lack of time, Your Lordship, I shall have to skip three pages dealing with the evidence in connection with these events. In regard to the happenings which took place in Germany on June 30, 1934, and the following days, the taking of evidence has rounded out the following picture (witnesses Hinderfeld, Grauert, Johnk, Reinecke, Eberstein; Affidavit SS-70, Kampp-Franz, Affidavit SS-3, Schmalfeld, and Affidavits SS-119 to 122; summary of the mass declarations): In the morning of 30 June, the General SS was alerted practically everywhere in the Reich. Wherever there were Police or army barracks they were assembled there or in other buildings such as schools, et cetera, on 30 June, and sometimes even I July. In most cases, they remained entirely inactive; only in some places the Police used them to assist in the confiscation of arms in SA offices. In Berlin this task was carried through by the Police Division for Special Purposes Wecke by itself, while the majority of the General SS, which was concentrated in the barracks of the Leibstandarte at Lichterfelde, was used during the course of 3o June to form cordons at the Tempelhof Airfield. For that purpose, the General SS, which as a rule was unarmed, was furnished weapons by the Police or Army.
HERR PELCKMANN: After Hitler's arrival by plane from Munich the units of the General SS marched back to the barracks and immediately had to surrender their arms (Affidavit SS-3, Schmalfeld). Nowhere were arrests or executions carried out by units of the General SS (witness Eberstein). In Munich, one of the hot spots of the so-called Rohm-Putsch, Hitler himself arrested the participating SA leaders. In the same manner he arrested R61un and his inner circle at Wiessee on the Tegernsee. Rohm and the other SA leaders subsequently were transferred to the Stadelheim, Prison and were executed there the same day by members of the Leibstandarte (witness J6hnk). The arrests in Berlin, the other center of the revolt, were carried out in accordance with orders given by G6ring through the Gestapo. To sentence the arrestees there was formed a court martial in which the Reichswehr was also represented through the Wehrkreisbefehlshaber or the Stadtkommandant. Before the execution was performed through a Kommando of the Leibstandarte, the verdict of the court martial was rendered. The executions were performed on the grounds of the barracks of the Leibstandarte at Lichterfelde. From the apartments on the Finckensteinallee one could view the execution ground. Not all members of the SA who came before the court martial were executed. However, 2 number of SS members who had maltreated arrestees were shot (witness.161ink, Affidavit SS-3 by Schmalfeld). The members of the General SS were only subsequently acquainted with the reasons for their being called out. The same applied to the members of the Leibstandarte. During the days before 30 -June, however, there were various rumors circulating which largely dealt with the attitude of the SA. But the mass of the SS was only informed through the announcements of the press and radio on 30 June. They thereby received the same official picture as the German people and the whole world (witness Hinderfeld). Doubt as to the accuracy of this description could not arise in the General SS then or in the following years.
HERR PELCKMANN: Even highly placed SS leaders, as the testimony under oath of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Von Eberstein and of SS Brigadefuehrer Grauert proved, were informed by Himmler or Goering himself to the effect that R6hm had made an attempt of a putsch with the SA. The just mentioned manner of the commitment of the General SS on 30 June further excludes the possibility that the SS participated in the violations which were carried through outside the judicial framework. As to the forming of opinion of the mass of members of the SS, apart from their knowledge regarding the complete insignificance of their own commitment, the telegram of thanks of Reich President Von Hindenburg (Document SS-74), and Hitler's statement before the Reichstag on 13 July 1934, were of decisive importance. There the Chancellor of the German Reich gave a justification for the declaration of the state of emergency and determined numerically the circle of conspirators executed. In particular, it is essential to point out Hitler's statement where he says that the excesses committed, going beyond the necessary measures for the squashing of the revolt, would be sentenced by regular courts. No misgivings regarding the legality of the executions could arise with the members of the SS and the men of the Leibstandarte, nor any doubts about the seriousness of the announcement that illegal violations were to be punished by the courts. The details which Hitler issued regarding this alleged high and state treason, especially the description of the conspirators' connection with foreign countries and the attempts against his own life, were absolutely astonishing (Document SS-106). They were not senseless at all, since it Is a historical fact, even valid in modem times, that new governments before their consolidation are often vitally threatened, especially by opponents and counterrevolutionaries who might even come from the rank of their old friends; and therefore have to safeguard themselves by brutal action.
HERR PELCKMANN: The fact that as little as possible was talked among the SS regarding the events of 30 June, as Himmler stated in Posen, cannot be considered as a sign of bad conscience. It was a question of tact that one did not unnecessarily speak of happenings in one's own house, that is, quarrels between Party formations-which might have a defamatory effect on one part-so as not to break open an old wound. Finally, as far as the gaining of independence of the SS and their separation from the SA is concerned, one can only see therein an appreciation of the loyal attitude of the SS and their uncompromising rejection of Rohm's plans, and, at the same time, an intended weakening of the position of power to be given to the Chief of Staff of the SA. The events of 30 June, according to my presentation of the facts, are by no means as significant as the Prosecution would seek to assert. The members of the SS did not see in them the beginnings of a criminal development. I have reached a point in my review of the ideas held by the SS and its activities where we should pause to consider what the other factors were which led to the holding of these opinions. We must look the true facts in the face. The SS man, unlike an opponent or an intellectual of our kind, so ridiculed at that time, did not examine with a critical eye everything that was said about his Fi1hrer, about his country. He felt the need to believe in something-I will give proof of this-his belief was not shaken by what was being said in the world around him. Unfortunately, the world around him did nothing to shake his belief. Your Lordship, I have just come to the end of a chapter. Would it be in order to adjourn now? [A recess was taken until 1400 hours.] Afternoon Session
HERR PELCKMANN: I have said, Your Honor, that the surrounding world, unfortunately, did nothing to shake this belief in Hitler. What I shall now discuss shall not serve to declare others guilty, or to detract from personal guilt if it exists. No; these statements are intended to clarify how we all, the whole world-in part likewise deceived about the true danger, in part hoping thus to avert this danger-did something which, in its effects on the whole German people, on Hitler's followers, and on his SS men, had to be interpreted as confirmation of the correctness and legality of his intentions and deeds. I can understand that this evidence was declared irrelevant for the defense of the individual defendants, for they are being4charged precisely with having consciously deceived the world. In that case one cannot take the conduct of the world as an index for its credulity. In the case of the organizations this problem is different. The Prosecution will not seriously charge the bulk of their members, even the bulk of their leaders, with having known of the criminal aims and intentions of Hitler; still less will they be able to prove it. I have just shown how the events up to about 1934-35 had to appear to the SS man. Thus the objection of the Prosecution that they could not have become confirmed in their error, which is worthy of consideration in the case of the principal defendants, does not apply to the organization which I am defending. What was the situation at that time? I shall quote essentially from Jasper's The Question of Guilt, Pages 82-83. In the early summer of 19.33 the Vatican concluded a Concordat with Hitler. Papen conducted the negotiations. It was the first great confirmation of the Hitler regime; a mighty gain in prestige for Hitler. All states recognized the Hitler regime. Voices of admiration were heard. In 1935 Britain concluded the Naval Agreement with Hitler through Ribbentrop. In 1936 the Olympic Games were held in Berlin. The whole world flocked there. In 1936 the Rhineland was occupied by Hitler. France tolerated it.