Source: http://www.nizkor.com/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-02/tgmwc-02-17-01.shtml
Timestamp: 2020-08-06 13:53:31
Document Index: 265839252

Matched Legal Cases: ['arts 1', 'art 3', 'art 4', 'arts 1', 'arts 1', 'art 3']

Seventeenth Day: Tuesday, 11th December, 1945
COLONEL STOREY: If the Tribunal please, the United States next offers in evidence some captured moving pictures, through Commander Donovan, who had charge of taking them.
COMMANDER DONOVAN: May it please the Tribunal, the United States now offers in evidence Document 3054-PS, Exhibit USA 167, the motion picture entitled "The Nazi Plan". This document contains several affidavits with exhibits, copies of which have been furnished to defence counsel. I ask the Tribunal whether it believes it to be necessary for us formally to read the affidavits at this time. Since the motion pictures themselves will be presented to the Tribunal, and, therefore, will be a permanent record, I respectfully submit that the reading be waived.
In the past three weeks the prosecution has presented to this Tribunal a vast amount of evidence concerning the nature of the Nazi conspiracy and what we contend to be its deliberate planning, launching, and waging of wars of aggression. That evidence has consisted of documentary and some oral proof, but the Nazi conspirators did more than leave behind such normal kinds of evidence. German proficiency in photography has been traditional. Its use as a propaganda instrument was especially well known to these defendants, and as a result the United States in 1945 captured an almost complete chronicle of the rise and fall of National Socialism as documented in films made by the Nazis themselves. It is from excerpts of this chronicle that we have compiled the motion picture now to be presented, entitled "The Nazi Plan", which, in broad outline, sums up the case thus far presented under Counts i1 and 2 of the Indictment.
The motion picture has been divided into four parts. This morning we first offer to the Tribunal Parts 1 and 2, which are especially entitled "Rise of the N.S.D.A.P., 1921 to 1933", and "Acquiring Totalitarian Control of Germany, 1933 to 1935". This will be concluded by 11.20, at which time we assume the Tribunal will order its customary morning adjournment. At 11.30 we shall present Part 3, entitled "Preparation for Wars of Aggression, 1935 to 1939". This will be concluded shortly before 1 o'clock. At 2 o'clock we will offer Part 4, entitled "Wars of Aggression, 1939 to 1944", and this will be concluded by 3 o'clock.
Parts 1 and 2, now to be presented, enable us to re-live those years in which the Nazis fought for and obtained the power to rule all life in Germany. We see the early days of terrorism and propaganda, bearing final fruit in Hitler's accession to the Chancellery in 1933; then the consolidation of power within Germany, climaxed by the Parteitag in 1934, in which the Nazis proclaimed to the nation their plans for totalitarian control. It is in simple and dramatic form the story of how a nation forsook its liberty.
I wish again to emphasise that all film now presented to the Tribunal, including, for example, pictures of early Nazi newspapers, is original German film, to which we have added only the title in English. And now, if it please the Tribunal, we shall present Parts 1 and 2 of "The Nazi Plan".
THE PRESIDENT: It may be convenient for the United States Prosecutor to know that the Tribunal proposes to rise this afternoon at 4 o'clock instead of 5 o'clock.
(The film "The Nazi Plan" was thus shown in the Court Room until 1125 hours, when a recess was taken.)
COMMANDER DONOVAN: May it please the Tribunal, in the films which have just been shown to the Tribunal, we have watched the Nazi rise to power. In Part 3 of our documentary motion picture now to be presented, we see the use they made of that power, and how the German Nation was led by militaristic regimentation to preparation for aggressive war as an instrument of national policy.
(The showing of the film then continued; at the end a recess was taken until 1400 hours.)
COMMANDER DONOVAN: This morning we presented photographic evidence of the history of National Socialism from 1921 to September, 1939. We saw the dignity of the individual in Germany destroyed by men dedicated to perverted nationalism, men who set forth certain objectives and then preached to a regimented people the accomplishment of those objectives by any means, including aggressive war.
In September, 1939, the Nazis launched the first of a series of catastrophic wars, terminated only by the military collapse of Germany. It is the final chapter in the history of National Socialism that the prosecution now presents.
May I again remind the Tribunal that all film presented and all German narration heard is in the original form as filmed by the Nazis.
(The showing of the film then continued.)
COMMANDER DONOVAN: The prosecution has concluded its presentation of the photographic summation entitled "The Nazi Plan". We shall deliver for the permanent records of the Tribunal, as soon as possible, the original films projected today.
COLONEL STOREY: If the Tribunal please, just a brief announcement about the presentation that will follow. The rest of the week will be consumed in the presentation of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, starting with exploitation of forced labour, concentration camps, persecution of the Jews, and Germanisation and spoliation in occupied countries. We should like to call the Tribunal's attention to the fact that many of these crimes will be crimes attributed to the criminal organisations. The programme following will be the criminal organisations, beginning with the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Reich Cabinet, the S.A., the S.S., and, finally, the S.D. and Gestapo.
Mr. Dodd will now present "Exploitation of Forced Labour".
MR. DODD: We propose to submit during the next several days evidence, as Colonel Storey has said a moment ago, concerning the conspirators' criminal deportation and enslavement of foreign labour, their illegal use of prisoners of war, their infamous concentration camps and their relentless persecution of the Jews. We will present evidence regarding the general [Page 288] aspects of these programmes, and our French and Soviet colleagues will present evidence of the specific application of these programmes in the West and the East, respectively.
These crimes were committed both before and after Nazi Germany had launched its series of aggressions. They were committed within Germany and in foreign countries as well. Although separated in time and space, these crimes had, of course, an inter-relationship which resulted from their having a common source in Nazi ideology; for within Germany the conspirators had made hatred and destruction of the Jew an official philosophy and a public duty; they had preached the concept of the master race with its corollary of slavery for others, they had denied and destroyed the dignity and the rights of the individual human being. They had organised force, brutality and terror into instruments of political power and had made them commonplaces of daily existence. We propose to prove that they had placed the concentration camp and a vast apparatus of force behind their racial and political myths, their laws and their policies. As every German Cabinet Minister or high official knew, behind the laws and decrees in the Reichsgesetzblatt was not the agreement of the people or their representatives, but the terror of the concentration camps and the Police State. The conspirators had preached that war was a noble activity and that force was the appropriate means of resolving international differences and, having mobilised all aspects of German life for war, they plunged Germany and the world into war.
We say that this system of hatred, savagery, and denial of individual rights, which the conspirators erected into a philosophy of government within Germany, into what we may call the Nazi Constitution, followed the Nazi armies as they swept over Europe. For the Jews of the occupied countries suffered the same fate as the Jews of Germany, and foreign labourers became the serfs of the master race - they were deported and enslaved by the millions. Many deported and enslaved labourers joined the victims of the concentration camps where they were literally worked to death in the course of the Nazi programme of extermination through work. We propose to show that this Nazi combination of the assembly line, the torture chamber and the executioner's rack in a single institution has a horrible repugnance to the twentieth century mind.
We say that it is plain that the programme of the concentration camp, the anti-Jewish programme, the forced labour programme, are all parts of a larger pattern, and this will become even more plain as we examine the evidence regarding these programmes and then test their legality by applying the relevant principles of International Law.
The evidence relating to the Nazi Slave Labour Programme has been assembled in a document book bearing the letter "R", and, in addition, there is an appendix to the document book consisting of certain photographs contained in a manila folder. Your Honours will observe that on some of the books we have placed some tabs, so that it will be easier for the Tribunal to locate the documents. Unfortunately, we did not have a sufficient number of tabs to do the work completely, and that will account for tabs missing on some of the document books.
It may illuminate the specific items of evidence which will be offered later if we first describe in rather general terms the elements of the Nazi foreign labour policy. It was a policy of mass deportation and mass enslavement, as I said a moment ago, and it was also carried out by force, by fraud, by
terror, by arson, by means unrestrained by the laws of war, and laws of humanity, or the considerations of mercy. This labour policy was a policy as well of underfeeding and overworking foreign labourers, of subjecting them to every form of degradation, brutality and inhumanity. It was a policy which compelled foreign workers and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments and to engage in other operations of war directed against their own countries. It was a policy, as we propose to establish, which constituted a flagrant violation of the laws of war and the laws of humanity.
We shall show that defendants Sauckel and Speer are principally responsible for the formulation of the policy and for its execution, that defendant Sauckel, the Nazi Plenipotentiary General for Manpower, directed the recruitment, deportation and allocation of foreign civilian labour, that he sanctioned and directed the use of force as the instrument of recruitment, and that he was responsible for the care and treatment of the enslaved millions; that the defendant Speer, as Reich Minister for Armament and Munitions, Director of the Organisation Todt and member of the Central Planning Board, bears responsibility for the determination of the numbers of foreign slaves required by the German war machine responsible for the decision to recruit by force, and for the use under brutal, inhuman and degrading conditions, of foreign civilians and prisoners of war in the manufacture of armaments and munitions, the construction of fortifications, and in active military operations.
We shall also show in this presentation that the defendant Goering, as Plenipotentiary General for the Four Year Plan, is responsible for all of the crimes involved in the Nazi Slave Labour Programme. Finally, we propose to show that the defendant Rosenberg, as Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, and the defendant Frank, as Governor of the Government General of Poland, and the defendant Seyss- Inquart, as Reich Commissar for the Occupied Netherlands, and the defendant Keitel, as Chief of the O.K.W., share responsibility for the recruitment by force and terror and for the deportation to Germany of the citizens of the areas overrun or subjugated by the Wehrmacht.
The use of vast numbers of foreign workers was planned before Germany went to war and was an integral part of the conspiracy for waging aggressive war. On 23rd May, 1939, a meeting was held in Hitler's study at the Reich Chancellery. Present were the defendants Goering , Raeder and Keitel.
I now refer to Document L-79 which has already been introduced in evidence as Exhibit USA 27. The document presents the minutes of this meeting, at which Hitler stated, as your Honours will recall, that he intended to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity; but I wish to quote from Page 2 of the English text starting with Paragraph 13. In the German text the passage, by the way, appears at Page 4, Paragraphs 6 and 7. Quoting directly from the English text:
"If fate brings us into conflict with the West, the possession of extensive areas in the East will be advantageous. We shall be able to rely upon record harvests even less in time of war than in peace.
The population of non-German areas will perform no military service, and will be available as a source of labour."
We say the Slave Labour Programme of the Nazi conspirators was designed to achieve two purposes, both of which were criminal. The primary purpose, of course, was to satisfy the labour requirements of the Nazi war machine by compelling these foreign workers, in effect, to make war against their own
countries and their allies. The secondary purpose was to destroy or weaken peoples deemed inferior by the Nazi racialists, or deemed potentially hostile by the Nazi planners of world supremacy.
These purposes were expressed by the conspirators themselves.
I wish to refer at this point and to offer in evidence Document 016-PS, which is Exhibit USA 168. This document was sent by the defendant Sauckel to the defendant Rosenberg on 20th April, 1942, and it describes Sauckel's Labour Mobilisation Programme. I wish to quote now from Page 2 of the English text, starting with the sixth paragraph, and in the German text, again, it appears at Page 2 of the second paragraph. Quoting from the text directly:
"The aim of this new, gigantic labour mobilisation is to use all the rich and tremendous sources, conquered and secured for us by our fighting Armed Forces under the Leadership of Adolf Hitler, for the armament of the Armed Forces and also for the nutrition of the Homeland. The raw materials as well as the fertility of the conquered territories and their human labour power are to be used completely and conscientiously to the profit of Germany and her allies."
The theory of the master race underlay the conspirators' labour policy in the East.
I now refer to Document 1130-PS, which is marked Exhibit USA 16q. This document consists of a statement made by one Erich Koch, Reich Commissar for the Ukraine, on 5th March, 1943, at a meeting of the National Socialist Party in Kiev. I quote from the first page of the English text, starting with the first paragraph, and in the German text it appears at Page 2, Paragraph 1. Quoting directly again from the English text, Koch said:-
"We are the master race and must govern hardly but justly..I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss. I have come to help the Fuehrer. The population must work, work, and work again. for some people are getting excited, that the population may not get enough to eat. The population cannot demand that, one has only to remember what our heroes were deprived of in Stalingrad .. We definitely did not come here to give out manna. We have come here to create the basis for victory. We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here."
At this point I should like to offer in evidence Document 1919-PS, which is Exhibit USA 170. This is a document which contains a speech delivered by Himmler, the Reichsfuehrer S.S., to a group of S.S. Generals on 4th October, 1943, at Posen, and I am referring to the first page of the English text, starting with the third paragraph. For the benefit of the interpreters, in the German text it appears at Page 23 in the first paragraph. Quoting direct from this document, starting with the third paragraph:-
"What happens to a Russian, or to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur: otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian
females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished--."
THE PRESIDENT: Who is the author of that document?
MR. DODD: The author of that quotation was the Reichsfuehrer S.S., Heinrich Himmler.
The next document to which I make reference is 031-PS, which is Exhibit USA 171. This document is a top secret memorandum prepared for the Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories on 12th June, 1944, and approved by the defendant Rosenberg; and from it I wish to quote from the English text, starting with the first paragraph, and in the German text the passage appears at Page 2 in the first paragraph. Quoting directly:-
"The Army Group Centre has the intention to apprehend 40,000 - 50,000 youths of the ages of 10 to 14 who are in the Army area, and to transport them to the Reich..."
I wish to pass now to line 21 of Paragraph 1, and quoting directly I read as follows:-
"It is intended to allot these juveniles primarily to the German trades as apprentices, to be used as skilled workers after 2 years' training. This is to be arranged through the Organisation Todt, which is especially equipped for such a task through its technical and other set-ups. This action is being greatly welcomed by the German trade since it represents a decisive measure for the alleviation of the shortage of apprentices."
Passing a little further on in that document, I wish to call to the attention of the Tribunal Paragraph 1 on Page 2, and to quote it directly:-
"This action is aimed not only at preventing a direct reinforcement of the enemy's military strength, but also at a reduction of his biological potentialities as viewed from the perspective of the future. These ideas have been voiced not only by the Reichsfuehrer of the S.S. but also by the Fuehrer. Corresponding orders were given during last year's withdrawals in the Southern Sector."
I call to your Honour's attention particularly, that the approval of the defendant Rosenberg is noted on Page 3 of the document. It is a note in ink in the original, and I quote it-:
"Regarding the above Obergruppenfuehrer Berger received the memorandum on 14th June. Consequently the Reich Minister has approved the action."
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, did you mean to leave out the sentence at the bottom of Page 1?
MR. DODD: No, your Honour, I did not, but I did not want to refer to it at this time. I will refer to it a little later on.
THE PRESIDENT Is not it really a part of what follows at the top of Page 2, the words "Following are the arguments - ."
MR. DODD: I did omit that. I thought you were referring to the sentence above. I am sorry. "Following are the arguments against this decision of the minister"; and then, quoting:-
"This action is not only aimed at preventing direct reinforcement of any military - "