dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
THE PRESIDENT: What you mean is that Dr. Boehm. was representing a certain point of view, and, of course, as counsel he does not represent his own point of view; he merely represents the point of view of the case which he is presenting. Is that what you meant?
GEN. RUDENKO: Yes, of course, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on.
GEN. RUDENKO: The "Sturinabteilungen" or "SA" were the first striking force in the hands of the conspirators, the first military "terror" organization founded by them. They were organized by Hitler in 1921, with the full support of the Reichswehr, who were hoping for revenge. The nucleus of the "SA" was made up of men such as Streicher and Roehm, rabid anti-Semites, chauvinists, supporters of the idea of the conquest of "living space," of officers who left the Army, and soldiers of the defeated Kaiser's army. The shock units were composed of the most reactionary elements seeking revenge, and adventurers joined the SA tempted by the decorative side of this criminal organization and seeing in it a possibility of participating in pogroms and plunder. From the very beginning the SA was strictly a voluntary organization. This principle remained in force during the whole process of development of the shock units (SA). From the Munich Putsch in 1923 until the seizure of power by the Hitlerites in 1933, the SA remained a faithful weapon in the hands of the Hitlerite Fascist clique, securing for it the "mastery of the streets" and the elimination of political opponents. Together with the SS, the shock units were an integral part of the Hitlerite Party. This fact was officially declared in the ordinance of March 1935 ( Reichsgesetzblatt , 1935, Part I, Page 502), and the same was to be found in the organizational charter of the Hitlerite Party. In his pamphlet The SA , SA Sturmfiffirer Bauer wrote: "The public would never have learned of the stirring speeches and the propaganda of our small faction in the Reichstag or of the aspirations and aims of the Party, had it not been hearing the footsteps of the marching SA units and their battle songs." But the "footsteps of the marching SA and their battle songs" were not the only thing heard by the German public. They were far more aware of the blows of rubber truncheons, the shots fired at political opponents, and the pogroms in the working-class quarters.
GEN. RUDENKO: For the chief Fascist conspirators, the main value of the SA lay precisely in their function as a weapon to be used for pogroms and terror. During the period of the struggle for power and afterwards, the SA were first of all an instrument of brute force, a means for the elimination and extermination of political opponents. This situation was very frankly depicted by Goebbels in a speech delivered. by him in 1935. He then stated: "The internal political opponents did not just disappear for some unknown secret reason. No, they disappeared because our movement had at its disposal the strongest weapon in the country, and this strongest weapon was the SA units." The Tribunal will remember the evidence given by the witness Gisevius, of the terror caused by the SA in the streets of Gennan towns, of the "pogrom-makers" in SA uniforms, who beat, killed, scoffed at human dignity, and transformed the headquarters of the SA into houses of torture. It is true that when the Hitlerites came to power, another terroristic organization was actually formed, 'which became the principal executor of their plan, and, with the SA formed the reserve of that great police machinery which was set up by German Fascism. These were the SS, and the "brown shirt" men surrounding Hitler had to stand aside and give way to the "Black Corps" of the SS as head of the Hitlerite Party organization. Goering's official biographer speaks of the wide use of the SS as a political police reserve. He notes that when forming the Gestapo, Goering admitted into the ranks of this organization--one of the most dangerous criminal organizations of German Fascism-many members of the SA, "they being the most reliable from the political point of view." Evidence has already been presented to the Tribunal, showing that after the Fascists came to power, members of the SA together with the SS formed detachments for guarding the concentration camps.
GEN. RUDENKO: Describing the concentration camp of Oranienburg, the SA Sturmbannfuehrer Schaefer states: "The most reliable and daring members of the SA were chosen for work in the camp, that is, they were the permanent camp guards. In this way we formed a nucleus of experienced guards, who were always ready for action." It seems unnecessary for me to dwell on the way the prisoners were treated in those camps and the behavior in the concentration camps of the men of the SA in their role of executioners. The men of the SA directly organized the first anti-Semitic pogroms. This is proved by the documents submitted by the Prosecution and by the original reports of the SA commanders of units and detachments. As with the SS, the SA were imbued with the same spirit of ferocious anti-Semitism, which finally led to the establishment of the Treblinka and Chelmno camps. However, in analyzing the criminal character of the SA organization, another of its important functions in the execution of the general plan of development of the Hitlerite conspiracy must not be omitted. The SA was the organization under whose cover the mass training of the military personnel for the Wehrmacht was carried out. This personnel was later on called upon to carry out the Hitlerite plans of aggression. This criminal activity was carried out with a maximum degree of secrecy with regard to the outer world. "In addition to my instructions ... dated 11 July 1933, 1 am compelled to ask all SA authorities to exercise the greatest caution with regard to any publicity given to the SA service, not only in the press, but also in the information and news sheets of the individual SA units.
GEN. RUDENKO: Just these last few days the Reich Ministry of the Interior, at the request of the Foreign Office, has given strict instructions to all Reich authorities, whereby the strictest control is to be exercised on all publications which might lead other countries to impute German infringements of the terms of the Versailles Treaty." This secret order of the SA Chief of Staff fully refutes the assertion of the Defense relative to the "Peaceful character" of the SA and the "purely sporting" character of their activities. The organization structure of the SA with its brigades and regiments had a purely military character. From the moment of their inception the SA units, under the guidance of the most 30 Aug. -16 reactionary officers of the Reichswehr, who had joined the Hitlerites, began the preparation of cadres for future war. Later, after the seizure of power by the Hitlerites, the SA became an organ for mass military training, and officers of the Wehrmacht in SA uniforms carried out in these units a purely military training of SA men. The leaders of the SA well understood the position they occupied after the seizure of power in the realization of the Hitlerite plans of aggression. In this connection it is pertinent to present again to the Tribunal a short excerpt from an article published in the organ of the SA, Der SA-Mann , of 6 January 1934: "...the SA man, according to the will of the Fuehrer, stands as the defender of the National Socialist revolution before the gates of power, and will remain there forever. There are still gigantic missions awaiting fulfilment, which would be unthinkable without the presence and the active cooperation of the SA. "What has been accomplished up until now, the seizure of power in the State and the elimination of those elements who are responsible for the pernicious developments of the postwar years as the bearers of Marxism, liberalism, and capitalism, are only the preliminaries, the springboard for the real aims of National Socialism" In the entire subsequent development of Hitlerism.
GEN. RUDENKO: the SA men were a loyal weapon in the hands of the criminal Hitlerite clique. During the war, through a special directive, the members of the SA were entrusted with the guarding of the prisoners of war and of the "workers from the East," not being allowed to alleviate in any way the brutal man-exterminating regime established for them. Members of the SA acted as guards in several "worker camps." The SA was one of the most criminal mass organizations of the Hitler Party. The criminal activity of its members, with the exception of the Veterans' Union and persons belonging to the SA sports clubs, has been fully proved in the course of this Trial. The SA of the German Fascist Party, whose activity comprises a greater part of the crimes of the Hitler regime, must undoubtedly be declared a criminal organization by the Tribunal. The Gestapo was founded by the Defendant Goering on 26 April 1933 at the time when he was Prime Minister of Prussia, and during the early period of its existence it was directed by him personally. Gradually, however, the Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler took over all control of the Political Police of the Reich territory into his own hands. The law of 10 February 1936 declared the Gestapo to be a special police organ for the whole Reich. By his decree of 17 July 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler the Chief of the German Police, thus legitimizing the "personal unity" already achieved by the SS and the Police on the whole. In harmony with this principle of "personal unity," that is, unity of leadership, Himmler in- his very first decree on the structure of the German Police dated 25 June 1936, appointed Reinhard Heydrich as Chief of the Sipo (Security Police), which already comprised within the same system both the Gestapo and the Criminal Police. Heydrich's successor, after his death, was the Defendant Kaltenbrunner.
GEN. RUDENKO: In 1939, in consequence of the consolidation of the leading role of the SD in the general security scheme of the Nazi State, and for purposes of the further unification of the Police under one single control, a reorganization of the central security organizations took place. This resulted in the fusion of the SS Main Office with the Main Office of the Security Police into a single SS semi-governmental, semi-Party organization--"Reich Security Main Office," or the RSHA. Thus the Secret State Police, then briefly known as "Gestapo," and up to then existing as part of the Main Office of the Security Police, became Amt IV of the RSHA. .The functions of the Gestapo in the general system of the security organs of the Third Reich were clearly defined by the same Heydrich in an article published in the German periodical The German Police. He defined the role of the SD as that of political intelligence within both the Nazi Party and the Nazi State, whose task included the study and analysis of the political atmosphere and of the political trends and tendencies, both inside and outside the bounds of the Reich, for the purpose of keeping the Nazi leaders informed. The function of the Secret State Police, as Heydrich saw it, was to reveal and render harmless those political elements within the Nazi regime which were hostile and unreliable. The whole of the Gestapo with its system of central, regional, penal, and other special branches and formations, had as its object the accomplishment of this cardinal point of its program. For its fulfilment, this function required the most careful individual selection of the Gestapo personnel. These were selected from amongst the most qualified personnel of the general Police and, of the administration, who had already proved to be fanatical adherents of the Hitlerite regime, and also from amongst the regular employees of the SD. The latter were usually given supervisory positions in the Gestapo.
GEN. RUDENKO: The affidavit submitted by the former chief of Amt VI of the RSHA, Walter Schellenberg, establishes that 75 percent of the Gestapo employees were also members of the SS. They had either been members of the SS prior to entering the Gestapo or else they became members as soon as they started their careers in this criminal and terroristic organization. The number of Gestapo employees in the period of 1934 to 1945 reached between 40 and 50,000. Such a staff, to quote Fouche, allowed the Gestapo, "to have eyes to look everywhere and hands to seize anyone." The criminal activity of the Gestapo did not confine itself merely to the territory of the Reich. During the period of preparation for aggression, it was the Gestapo to whom was entrusted the task, jointly with the SD, of organizing one of the first operational groups or Einsatzgruppen intended to function in the territory of the Czechoslovakian Republic. With the beginning of hostilities and in conformity with the plan already prepared and approved, the Gestapo placed at the disposal of the Armed Forces a certain percentage of its experienced workers to organize the so-called "Secret Field Police," the GFP. The GFP units in the Army exercised the functions of both the Gestapo and the Sipo in the Reich and were also empowered with ,vide police and punitive powers directed against the civilian population and the guerilla fighters in theaters of military operations. From the very beginning of its existence the Gestapo, had wide powers in connection with extra-judicial measures of reprisal directed against elements threatening the Nazi State or the Nazi Party. One of the main types of reprisal used against such elements was the utilization of the right of "preventive arrest" and "preventive imprisonment," which the Gestapo used widely both in the territory of the Reich and in the areas afterwards annexed or occupied by Germany. The places of preventive arrest were the widely-known and notoriously terrible German concentration camps.
GEN. RUDENKO: Confinement in a concentration camp could be effected through a simple written order signed by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Heydrich, by Kaltenbrunner, who later on replaced him, or on the order of the chief of Amt IV of the RSHA, Miller. Frequently the order of confinement in a concentration camp was issued personally by the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police, Heinrich Himmler. Never did the victim of preventive arrest know for just how long he would have to undergo a period of torture and suffering; the length of confinement depended entirely on the arbitrary will of the Gestapo. Even when the Gestapo knew the length of time that it planned to keep the man in prison, it still was strictly forbidden to disclose this either to the prisoner or to his relatives. These concentration camps were the prototype of the extermination camps which materialized in the subsequent period of aggressive operations and which generations to come are bound to remember with horror, namely, Maidanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and many others. As the punitive executive organization of the Nazi State, the Gestapo had close connections with the Nazi Party. In the appendix to the decree issued by the Reich and Prussian Minister, dated 20 September 1936, it states without any ambiguity that "the special functions of the Security Police demand the closest and fullest mutual understanding and collaboration ... also with the Gauleiter of the NSDAP. In studying the decree of 14 December 1938 concerning the collaboration of the Party organs with the Gestapo it is easy to see that there existed the closest contact between the various organizations of the Fascist conspirators, especially between the Gestapo and the Party leaders. Defendants Hess and Bormann were always careful to maintain close contact between the Party and the Gestapo. As I have already stated, together with other criminal Fascist organizations, the Gestapo, actively participated in the preparation of plans for the seizure of territory belonging to other states.
GEN. RUDENKO: The list of 4,000 Yugoslav citizens, compiled in 1938 and seized in May 1945 in the Gestapo headquarters in Maribor, proves beyond doubt that the Gestapo participated in the plans for the invasion of Yugoslavia in its own special way. We also see from the testimony of Dragomir Jovanovich, one of the Yugoslav Quislings, who was chief of the Serbian police during the German occupation, that the Gestapo organizations for Yugoslavia were planned in advance. In accordance with a preconceived plan, the police posts were distributed among the German residents of Yugoslavia. Exhibit Number USSR-509, submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution, likewise shows that for Czechoslovakia also the agencies of the Reich Security Main Office planned the functions of the SD and the Gestapo long before the actual occupation of the country. The report of the Czechoslovakian Government points out still another type of participation by the Gestapo in planned aggression. The Reich Security Main Office also placed in Czechoslovakia agents for assassinating, or for kidnapping and carrying off to Germany, known anti-Fascists. The fact that the Gestapo participated in carrying out Germany's aggressive plans is also confirmed by a series of documents which show that even before the actual perpetration of the treacherous attack on Russia the Hitlerite blackguards had compiled lists of persons, personnel files, and other data regarding "important officials of the government organs and the community leaders of the Soviet Union to be annihilated." For instance, together with the/ SD and the Criminal Police, the Gestapo prepared the "special intelligence guide for the U.S.S.R." "The German Intelligence Guide," "Lists of persons whose residence must be determined," and other similar intelligence reference books and lists of persons. The criminal activity of the Gestapo connected with plans for aggression, both within the Reich itself and in the West, has already been dealt with by my respected colleagues.
GEN. RUDENKO: For that reason I shall pass on to the subject of the Gestapo crimes in the temporarily occupied territories of the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko, what is the reference to "The German Intelligence Guide," "List of persons whose residence must be determined," and other similar intelligence reference books and lists of persons? USSR-3 is what I have got. Is that the right document?
GEN. RUDENKO: Yes, USSR-3, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
GEN. RUIDENKO: The crimes which the Hitlerites had committed with the help of the police organization in the temporarily occupied territories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland are of the same pattern. The various Gestapo organs were the executive machinery which carried out most of these crimes. The very first mass operation for annihilating the Polish intelligentsia, the so-called "Operation AB," was conceived by Frank, approved by Hitler, and perpetrated by men of the Gestapo. It was the agents of the Gestapo who, with the aid of several SS units and under the direction of the SS and Police Leader for Poland, Obergruppenfuehrer Krueger, as well as Brigadefuehrer Streckenbach, succeeded in exterminating several thousand Polish intellectuals when carrying out this atrocious mass operation. In accordance with Frank's decree of 9 October 1943, the notorious "Standgerichte" (Summary Courts), created "to suppress attacks on the work of German reconstruction in the Government General," also consisted of Gestapo, agents. Again it was the Gestapo which carried out the terrible reprisals against the clergy which resulted in the murder of about 700 priests and the imprisonment of about 3000 priests in concentration camps as early as January 1941. As is thoroughly proven by the documents submitted by the Soviet Prosecution, the Gestapo established special mass extermination centers for the Jewish population of Poland. In contrast to such extermination camps as Maidanek and Auschwitz, which were under the jurisdiction of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, the secret extermination camp in Chelmno, where over 340,000 Jews were done away with by means of murder vans, was both founded and directly administered by the Gestapo, which created for the purpose a special unit "Sonderkommando Kulmhof" This Gestapo Sonderkommando was under the administrative supervision of the Gestapo chief in the city of Lodz, Braunfisch. It was also the Gestapo which founded Treblinka, the prototype of all subsequent extermination camps.
GEN. RUIDENKO: Eichmann's plan for the extermination of the Jews in Europe, with the help of special extermination camps created for the purpose by the "D" Section of the SS, originated in the Gestapo, where Eichmann worked as subordinate of the Gestapo official Mueller. It was the Gestapo that was responsible for the annihilation of 3,200,000 Jews in Poland, 112,000 in Czechoslovakia, and 65,000 in Yugoslavia. It was the Gestapo that introduced and practised in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe the criminal system of hostages and the principle of collective responsibility, thus arbitrarily and constantly widening the number of persons liable to reprisals. For example, it was the Gestapo that together with the Defendant Frank issued the notorious decree of mass reprisals with regard to the "families of saboteurs," the decree which stated that: "... not only should the seized saboteurs be executed on the spot but also all the male kin of offenders should be immediately shot, while all female relatives over 16 years of age should be confined in concentration camps." What went on in Poland is typical of Gestapo behavior not only in Poland, but applies also to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. 200,000 persons passed through the Gestapo prison in Brno, Czechoslovakia, during the period of occupation alone. Only 50,000 of these were freed. Others were killed or sent to slow death in a concentration camp. The order of 9 March 1942 gave the Gestapo the right to use "preventive confinement" and "protective custody." Thousands of Czech patriots, particularly physicians, teachers, lawyers, and clergy were arrested even prior to the war. In addition lists were compiled in each region of persons liable to be arrested as hostages at the first sign of disturbance of public order or security. Karl Hermann Frank, addressing leaders of the "movement for national unity" announced in 1940 that 2,000 Czech hostages, then in concentration camps, would be shot unless Czech leaders signed a declaration of loyalty.