THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief Prosecutor for the Provisional Government of the Republic of France, M. Champetier de Ribes.

M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Tribunal:

On presenting the final address of the French Public Prosecutor, I beg the Tribunal to permit me to express the admiration and the gratitude of my country for the objectivity and calm with which these proceedings have been conducted. In the course of the last 9 months the events of more than 15 years of history have been evoked at this bar. Germany's archives, those of them that the Nazis were unable to burn before their defeat, have yielded up their secrets. We have heard numerous witnesses, whose recollections would have been lost to history but for the present Trial.

All the facts have been presented with strict objectivity, leaving no room for passion nor even for sensibility. The Tribunal have excluded from the proceedings everything that, in their opinion, seemed insufficiently proved, everything that might have appeared to be dictated by a-spirit of vengeance. For the chief concern of this Trial is above all that of historical truth.

Thanks to it, the historian of the future, as well as the chronicler of today, will know the truth of the political, diplomatic, and military events of the most tragic period of our history; he will know the crimes of Nazism as well as the irresolution, the weaknesses, the omissions of the peace-loving democracies.

He will know that the work of twenty centuries of a civilization, which believed itself eternal, was almost destroyed by the return of ancient barbarism in a new guise, all the more brutal because more scientific.

He will know that the progress of mechanical science, modern means of propaganda, and the most devilish practices of a police which defied the most elementary rules of humanity, enabled a small minority of criminals within a few years to distort the collective conscience of a great people, and to transform the nation described by Dr. Sauter at the conclusion of his speech in defense of

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Von Schirach, as loyal, upright, and full of virtue, into that of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels-to mention only those of them who are dead. He will know that the real crime of these men was the conception of the gigantic plan of world domination and the attempt to realize it by every possible means. By every possible means, that is of course, by the breaking of pledges and by unleashing the worst of all wars of aggression. but, above all, by the scientific and systematic extermination of millions of human beings and more especially of certain national or religious groups whose existence hampered the hegemony of the Germanic race. This is a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history throughout the Christian era up to the birth of Hitlerism, that the term "genocide" has had to be coined to define it and an accumulation of documents and testimonies has been needed to make it credible.

The perfect collaboration of the four public prosecutors has enabled it to be proved, to the shame of the times we live in, that this crime was possible; and, within the limits of those Counts of the Indictment reserved for herself, France believes that she has done her part in the common task.

While the defendants and their counsels have said a great deal before the Tribunal regarding the protection to which the innocent civilian population is entitled, and have referred to this as to an obvious principle, we have established the fact that the defendants have deliberately violated this principle by treating these civilian populations with the most complete disregard for human life. Is it necessary to recall the terrible words of the Defendant Keitel, "human life is worth less than nothing in the occupied territories."

By reverting to the taking of hostages the defendants revived a tradition which symbolizes the most primitive practices of warfare. They put their signatures to general orders decreeing the capture and execution of thousands of martyrs. In France alone 29,000 hostages were shot. We know that the champions of the resistance movement, whose patriotism is now admired by the defendants, were massacred, tortured, and imprisoned with a view to their slow extermination. We know, too, that, on the pretext of reprisals, in execution of orders or by the cruelty of individuals covered by the complicity of the authorities, civilians were taken at random and executed and that whole villages were burnt down: Oradour-sur-Glane and Maille in France, Putten in Holland have not risen again from their ruins.

The atrocious orders issued in Marshal Kesselring's operational sector for combating partisan activity by terror are in all our minds. There we saw one officer order the execution of fifty or a hundred men or even of the entire male population of a region as a reprisal for isolated acts directed against the German Army. The execution

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of that order was authorized by instructions from the commander of the theater of operations, who was himself acting on more general instructions issued by the Defendant Keitel. This is an example of the perfect collaboration existing between the National Socialist cadre and the State and is an argument, if such be still necessary, for the joint responsibility of the leading personalities of the regime. We know that thousands of men were torn from their homes and forced to make arms to be used against their own country.

The harsh treatment given to soldiers shocked us even more deeply, because Germany, be it the traditional Germany, the Nazi Germany when it was in power, or the Germany which is now presenting the paltry arguments for its defense in the prisoners' dock, has always claimed to uphold the universal rules governing military honor and the respect due to all combatants. In spite of this, we have seen Keitel himself, who championed these ideas to such a degree that he even referred to them again at the conclusion of his testimony in the witness box, urge Wilhelmstrasse and his Codefendant Goering to approve his criminal proposals for the treatment of airmen who fell into their hands.

Documents such as the testimony of Gruner leave no room for doubt that criminal orders to exterminate and lynch airmen were given in the customary way and transmitted to those responsible for their execution. There is no doubt as to the principles which governed the drafting of the order concerning the Commandos, nor as to the execution of this order in the various theaters of operations. The Prosecution have produced a striking collection of evidence on this point.

Our consternation was even greater when it was borne upon us with certainty that cruel decrees had been issued for the execution or imprisonment for the purpose of extermination of men already reduced to a state of helplessness by their internment in prisoner-of-war camps. The sinister affair of Sagan, often evoked in the course of this Trial, is present in our minds. The defendants themselves attempt only to evade personal responsibility without denying the atrocity of the truth of the facts. We have shown how rebellious escaped officers and noncommissioned officers, whose past records and attitude are proof of their moral strength, were exterminated by "Aktion Kugel."

At length, Nazi Germany unveiled her plans for expansion and world domination by organizing the systematic extermination of the peoples whose territories she had occupied. This operation was carried out at first, as we have shown, by the political, economic, and moral destruction of the occupied countries. The methods employed were the brutal or gradual seizure of power, or carefully calculated infiltration of German authority in every sphere, the

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preparation of a program of economic pillage and its pitiless execution so as to lead to the exhaustion of the occupied country and to put it at the absolute mercy of the occupying power; in a word the Nazification of the State and the people, as well as the destruction of cultural and moral values.

But this methodical extermination was carried out also in a concrete way by the systematic massacre of the people. Is it necessary to recall the mass extermination of groups considered impossible of assimilation into the National Socialist world, the vast graveyard of the concentration camps, where 15 million people perished, the abominable achievements of the "Einsatzgruppen" (special purposes groups), described with irrefutable precision by General Ohlendorf?

We consider we have also established proof of those pernicious attempts at extermination, which on examination are seen to be one of the most perfect examples of the defendants' policy. I refer to the deliberate undernourishment to which those non-Germans were subjected who for any reason whatsoever came under Nazi authority-whole nations starved by way of reprisal, civilian rations in occupied territories ruthlessly cut to enable the plan for the pillage of the territory to be carried out. The Tribunal will recall Goering's speech to the Gauleiter which has been submitted under Document Number USSR-170:

"It is absolutely immaterial to me if you say that your people are fainting from hunger. Let them faint, as long as no German starves."

And again, with reference to Holland:

"It is not our mission to feed a nation which turns from us in spirit. If its people are so weak that they cannot even raise a hand where they are not employed to work for us... so much the better."

Famine, bodily misery, and the resulting reduction of the potential of life, are all included, together with the slow exhaustion of political internees and prisoners of war, in the plan for the extermination of populations in order to free German living space.

The same idea is behind the detention in captivity or semicaptivity, as in the case of labor deportees, of healthy young men whose presence at home was of vital importance for the future of their country. All this has been confirmed by the latest census results.

These reveal that all the countries occupied by Germany show a decrease in their population varying from 5 percent to 25 percent, whereas Germany herself is the only country in Europe which

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shows an increase. Gentlemen, we have proved all these crimes. After the submission of our documents, the hearing of the witnesses, the projection of films which the defendants themselves could not see without shuddering with horror, nobody in the world can possibly claim that the extermination camps, the executed prisoners, the slaughtered peoples, the mounds of corpses, the human herds maimed in body and soul, the instruments of torture, the gas chambers and crematories-no one can claim that all these crimes existed only in the imagination of anti-German propagandists.

Indeed, none of the defendants have challenged the truth of the facts we have reported. Unable to deny them, they try only to evade their own responsibility by placing the guilt on those of their accomplices who committed suicide.

"We knew nothing of those horrors," they say, or else: "We did everything we could to prevent them but Hitler, who was all-powerful, gave the orders and allowed no one to disobey or even resign from office." What a poor defense! Who is likely to believe that they alone were ignorant of what the whole world knew and that their monitoring stations never reported to them the solemn warnings which were broadcast repeatedly by the heads of the United Nations?

They could not disobey Hitler's order, they could not even resign from office? Indeed! Hitler might have governed their bodies but not their souls. By disobeying him they might perhaps have lost their liberty or even their lives but they would at least have saved their honor. Cowardice has never been an excuse, nor even an extenuating circumstance.

The truth is that having taken part in its elaboration they all knew perfectly well the doctrine of National Socialism and its will to universal domination. They were very well aware of the monstrous crimes to which it inevitably led its adepts and its exponents and that all accepted the responsibility in the same way that all accepted the material and moral advantages which it lavished upon them.

But they thought themselves sure of impunity because they were certain of victory, and that in the face of force triumphant no questions would be asked about the justice of the cause. They persuaded themselves, as they had done after the war of 1914, that no international jurisdiction could ever indict them. They thought that Pascal's pessimistic judgment on human justice in international relationship would always be true: "Justice can be disputed; force is easily recognizable and cannot be disputed. So, as right cannot be made into might, might has been made into right." They are mistaken. Since Pascal's day, the concepts of

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morality and justice have slowly but surely taken shape and been incorporated in the international customs of civilized nations.

The Tribunal will doubtless remember that at the conclusion of his presentation of the charges made in the Indictment, the French prosecutor stated in precise terms the responsibility of all the defendants who are "guilty of having, in their role as the chief Hitlerian leaders of the German people, conceived, willed, ordained, or merely tolerated by their silence that assassinations or other inhuman acts should be systematically committed, that violent treatment should be systematically imposed on prisoners of war or civilians, that devastations without justification be systematically committed as a deliberate instrument for the accomplishment of their purpose of dominating Europe and the world through terrorism and the extermination of entire populations in order to enlarge the living space of the German people."

All that is left to us now is to demonstrate that the proceedings which have taken place before you have served only to confirm and reinforce the accusations and 'the statements formulated at the beginning of these proceedings against the major criminals who, in execution of the Charter and to satisfy the demands of justice, have been committed by the United Nations for trial by your Tribunal.

I ask the Tribunal to allow M. Dubost, the chief prosecutor, to present his final statement.

M. CHARLES DUBOST (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Such are the facts set forth by the French Delegation. It was necessary to recall them in order to establish our contribution to the Trial. We do not intend, however, to deal with our own work apart from the whole resulting from the presentations of the other three delegations and the general proceedings. It is on the basis of this work as a whole that we shall proceed with our indictment and examine the personal responsibility of the defendants.

Taking one by one the deeds for which they are responsible, there are found to be murder, indictable theft, and other serious offenses against persons and property which are always punishable in civilized countries. M. de Menthon has already shown this in his introductory address.

The defendants did not actually commit the crimes; they were content to decree them. According to our French law, they are therefore accomplices in the technical sense of the term. Allowing for certain differences which are mostly only differences of form, the perpetrators of serious offenses and their accomplices are subject in most countries to capital punishment or to very severe penalties, such as forced labor or solitary confinement.

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That is the Anglo-Saxon practice. This also holds good in France from application of Articles 221 If, 379 If, 59 ff of the French Penal Code. In Germany, Article 211 provides for the punishment of homicide; Article 212 relates to murder; Articles 223 to 226 to torture; Article 229 to poisoning and murder by gas. Article 234 covers slavery, reduction to serfdom, incorporation with a view to military service abroad; Articles 242 and 243 cover theft and pillage; Article 130 deals with the incitement of the populace to violence. The position of accomplices and co-originators is covered by Articles 47 and 49 of German law. Similar provisions exist in Soviet legislation as well as in the legislation of all great civilized countries.

The fact that, as leaders of the Reich and accomplices of the Fuehrer, these men are all responsible for the crimes committed under their regime, and that in the eyes of all men of conscience their responsibility is heavier than that of those who carried out their orders, has been admitted by two of the defendants, Frank and Schirach.

Frank said:

"I have never founded extermination camps for Jews, nor was I ever in favor of the existence of these camps; but if Adolf Hitler placed this terrible responsibility on the shoulders of his people, I, too, share in it; for we conducted a campaign against the Jews for years, we made all kinds of statements against them..."

In his last few words Frank condemns, along with himself, all those who pursued the campaign of incitement against the Jews in Germany and elsewhere. Let us remember Frank's answer to the question put to him by his defense counsel as to the charges brought against him in the Indictment. It is true of all the defendants and still more of those who were closer to Hitler than he himself:

"As to these charges, I have only this to say: I ask the Tribunal to determine the extent of my guilt at the end of these proceedings; but I should like to say on my own account that after all I have seen in the course of these 5 months of the Trial, which have given me a general view of all the atrocities that have been committed, I myself feel thoroughly guilty."

Von Schirach for his part stated:

"This is the crime for which I am answerable, before myself, before God, and before the German people: I trained the youth of our country for the man whom, for years and years, I considered unimpeachable as the head of our country. I trained our youth for him. My crime lies in the fact that

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I trained our youth for a man who was a murderer, who killed millions of people.... Any German who, after Auschwitz, still adheres to the racial policy, is guilty....

"I feel it my duty to say this."

Such cries of conscience were rare in the course of this Trial and more frequently, copying Goering's quibbling vanity, the defendants tried to extricate themselves by invoking a policy of neo-Machiavellism which would free the leaders of the State of all personal responsibility. Let us simply state that no such provisions exist in the laws of any civilized country, and that, on the contrary, arbitrary and aggressive acts aimed at personal liberty, at civic rights or at the constitution, are all the more severely punished in cases where they have been committed by a public functionary or high-ranking government official; and that the most severe penalties are reserved for the ministers themselves (Articles 114 and 115 of the French Penal Code).

But let us limit ourselves on this point. We aim only at recalling that each of the principal deeds charged against the defendants may be considered by itself as violating the criminal laws of one or other of the positive internal laws of every civilized country, or as violating that common international law, which M. de Menthon has already interpreted and which has been submitted here as the root of international custom, and that the punishment of each of these deeds is therefore not without foundation; on the contrary, even if we restrict ourselves to this preliminary analysis, the heaviest penalties have already been incurred.

We must, however, go further; for while it does not omit any culpable fact as such, the analysis of the defendant's guilt in the light of internal law is only a first approximation which would enable us to prosecute the defendants merely as accomplices and ~ not as principal authors. And we are anxious to prove that they

were in reality the principal culprits.

We hope to succeed in this by developing the following three points:

1) The defendants' acts are elements in a criminal political plan.

2) The co-ordination of the various departments headed by these men implies close co-operation between them for the realization of their criminal policy.

3) They must be judged as functioning within the scope of this criminal policy.

The acts of the defendants are the elements of a criminal political plan:

The defendants have been active in widely differing spheres. As politicians, diplomats, soldiers, sailors, economists, financiers, jurists,

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or propagandists, they represent practically every form of liberal activity. We recognize unhesitatingly, however, the tie that binds them together. They have all put the best-or the worst-of themselves at the service of the Hitlerite State. To a certain extent they represent the brains of that State; but they themselves were not the whole brain. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that they were an important part of it. They conceived the policy of that State. They wanted to transform their thoughts into action and all contributed in almost the same degree toward its realization. This is true, no matter whether it applies to Hess or Goering, professional politicians who admit never having practiced any other profession but that of agitator or statesman, or to Ribbentrop, Neurath, Papen, the diplomats of the regime, or to Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz, or Raeder, the fighting men, to Rosenberg, Streicher, Frank, or Frick, the inventors-if that term can be applied to them-of the ideology of the system, to Schacht and Funk, the financiers without whom the system would have gone bankrupt and collapsed in the resulting inflation before it could rearm, to jurists like Frank, to publicists and propagandists like Fritzsche and-again-Streicher, devoted to the dissemination of the common idea, or to technicians like Speer or Sauckel, without whom the idea could never have been translated into action as it has been, to policemen such as Kaltenbrunner who destroyed morale by terror, to ordinary Gauleiters like SeyssInquart, Schirach, or-again-Sauckel, to administrators and high-ranking officials as well as politicians, who gave definite shape to the common policy conceived by the whole state and Party machine.

I know very well that the shadow of those who are absent looms over this machine, and today's defendants are perpetually reminding us of them: "Hitler wanted this, Himmler wanted this, Bormann wanted this." They say: "I only obeyed," and their defense counsels outdid them. Hitler, the monstrous tyrant, the fanatic visionary, imposing his will with an irresistible magnetic power-this is too simple; this is too sweeping. No man is entirely unreceptive to suggestion, insinuation, and influence; and Hitler escaped that law no more than any other man. We have had irrefutable proof of this in all the glimpses afforded us by these proceedings of the struggle for influence which went on in the "great man's" entourage. Malicious, underhand calumnies were circulated; there were intrigues which reminded us at times during the proceedings of the little courts of the Italian Renaissance. All the elements were present, even murder. Did not Goering, before he himself fell into disgrace, rid himself of Rohm and Ernst, who had plotted, not against their master, but against him, as Gisevius told us. So much imagination, such perseverance in evil, but also such efficiency, show us that Hitler was not blind to the actions and intrigues of the men around him. What a pity that these intrigues did not work in the right direction! But

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we have direct evidence of Hitler's responsiveness to influences and it is given us by Schacht who, at the same time apart from these men, raises the question of the German masses, whose good judgment they had contributed to warp and whose worst passions they roused.

Did not Schacht say of Hitler in Court:

"I believe that at first his tendencies were not wholly evil; he undoubtedly believed that his intentions were only good, but little by little he became the victim of the charm he exerted over the masses; for he who begins by seducing the masses is in the end himself seduced by them, so that this relation between leader and follower helped to lead him into the erroneous ways of mob instincts, which every political leader should strive to avoid."

What was then the great idea behind it all? It was indisputably that of the conquest of living space by any and every means, even the most criminal.

At a time when Germany was still disarmed and when discretion was still necessary, Schacht, who was at Hitler's side, asked for colonies. We remember Hirscheid's testimony. He dissembled, however, and in part disguised the master conception of the state machine to which he belonged and we could not denounce this idea so easily were it not for the disconcerting naivete of the "great man" who had laid his entire plan of campaign open to the inspection of the whole world 10 years before.

Indeed we read in Mein Kampf (Excerpt from Page 641), First quotation:

"Hence, the German nation can defend its own future only as a world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our people's interests, as we should designate our more or less successful activity in the field of foreign affairs, was world history. We ourselves were witnesses to this fact: For the gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914-18 was only the struggle of the German people for its existence on the globe, but we designated the type of event itself as a world war.

"The German people entered this struggle as a supposed world power. I say here 'supposed,' for in reality she was none. If the German nation in 1914 had- had a different relation between area and population, Germany would really have been a world power, and the war, aside from all other factors, could have been terminated favorably."

(Excerpt from Page 647) Second quotation:

"I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a

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political absurdity of such proportion and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich's frontiers in 1914 were anything but logical! For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency. They were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance." (Excerpt from Page 649) Third quotation: "The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for the German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past, nor would they contain any strength for the future. Through them the German nation will neither achieve its inner integrity, nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by them, nor do these boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem expedient or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relations in which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers, or, better expressed, the real world powers."

(Excerpt from Page 650) Another quotation:

"As opposed to this we National Socialists must hold un flinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified, before God, since we have been put in this world with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and courage with which they can conquer and defend it; and for German posterity insofar as we have shed its blood out of which a thousand others will rise. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will someday acquit the statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries."

(Excerpt from Page 687) Another quotation:

"A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth."

(Excerpt from Page 135)

"A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd

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fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals in order to replace it by the humanity of nature, which destroys the weak to give place to the strong."

And then the machinery of State and Party gathered force. The Army secretly reorganized, was soon strong enough to allow Germany to rearm openly. Who, at that time, would have dared to interfere with the monstrous growth of this biological materialism? Hitler expounded his theories to a small circle and those who heard his words are by no means all Nazis. Informed of their master's aims, they were still willing to stay by his side, and that condemns them. Is this not the case with Raeder?

"It is not a question of conquering populations but of conquering territories suitable for cultivation...."

Hitler, in conference with Von Blomberg, Von Fritsch, Raeder, 5 November, said: "Expansion cannot be achieved without breaking resistance and without taking risks . . ." (Document Number 386-PS).

After the disgrace of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, Keitel and Jodl, chosen for their servile attitude to the regime, had a solid weapon in their hands. On the eve of the conflict Hitler reiterated his ideas:

"Circumstances must rather be adapted to aims. This is impossible without invasion of foreign states or attacks on foreign property.

"Living space, in proportion to the magnitude of the state, is the basis of all power. One may refuse for a time to face the problem, but finally it is solved one way or the other. The choice is between advancement or decline. In 15 or 20 years' time we shall be compelled to find a solution. No German statesman can evade the question longer than that. We are at present in a state of patriotic fervor, which is shared by two other nations, Italy and Japan.

"The period which lies behind us has indeed been put to good use. All measures have been taken in the correct sequence and in harmony with our aims.

"After 6 years, the situation is today as follows:

"The national-political unity of the Germans has been achieved, apart from minor exceptions. Further successes cannot be attained without the shedding of blood....

"Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies.... The population of non-German areas will perform no military service, and will be available as a source of labor.

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"The Polish problem is inseparable from the conflict with the West."

Extract from minutes of a conference held at the Reich Chancellery on 23 May 1939, in the presence of Hitler, Goering, Raeder, Keitel, and others (Document Number L-79, Exhibit USA-27).

And then came the war; and in a few months' time all Germany was led to believe that her strength was irresistible and that she was on the way to the conquest of the world. All that was implied by Hitler's cruel and monstrous words:

"As opposed to that we National Socialists must keep firmly to the aim of our foreign policy,-namely, to secure for the German people the territory to which it is entitled in this world. And this act is the sole act which, before God and our

German posterity, justifies bloodshed...."

All the cruel and monstrous implications of these words were elaborated here.

Speech by Hitler on the Eastern Territories 16. 7. 41 (Document Number L-221):

"We shall emphasize again that we were forced to occupy, administer, and secure a certain area.... Nobody shall be able to recognize that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent us taking all necessary measures: shooting, deportation... et cetera."

Further: "Partisan warfare will have one advantage for us; it enables us to eradicate all those who oppose us...."

The same theme was taken up and cynically proclaimed by the spokesmen of the State. This Trial has brought you many echoes thereof. In a speech by Himmler we find these words again:

"What the nations can offer us of good blood we shall take, if necessary by taking their children away from them and bringing them up among us."

From the same speech:

"Whether nations thrive or starve only interests me inasmuch as we can use them as slaves for our civilization."

Still from the same speech:

"That 10,000 Russian women should die of exhaustion in digging an antitank ditch only interests me as to whether or not the antitank ditch has been completed for Germany.

"When somebody comes and says to me, 'I cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them'; then I have to say, 'You are a murderer of your own kin, because if the antitank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die and they are sons of German mothers.' "

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And concerning the extermination of Jews:

"We have exterminated a microbe. We do not wish to be contaminated and die from it. We have fulfilled this duty for the sake of our people. Our spirit and character have not suffered from it" (Document 1919-PS).

The conquest of living space, that is, of territories emptied of their population by every means including extermination-that was the great idea of the Party, the system, the State, and consequently of all those at the head of the main administration of both State and Party.

That is the main idea, in the pursuit of which they united and for which they worked. They stopped at nothing in order to achieve their end: Violation of treaties, invasion, and enslavement in peacetime of weak and peaceful neighbors, wars of aggression, and total warfare, with all the atrocities which these words imply. Goering and Ribbentrop cynically admitted that they took both a spiritual and a material part in it; and the generals and admirals did their utmost to help matters forward.

Speer exploited to the point of exhaustion and death the manpower recruited for him by Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, the NSDAP Gauleiter, and the generals. Kaltenbrunner made use of the gas chambers, the victims for which were furnished by Frick, Schirach, Seyss-Inquart, Frank, Jodl, Keitel, and the rest. But the existence of the gas chambers themselves was only made possible through the development of a political ideology favorable to such things; there, inextricably merged, we find the responsibility of all of them- Goering, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher, Frick, Frank, Fritzsche, down to Schacht himself, the pro-Jewish Schacht. Did he not say to Hirschfeld: "I want Germany to be great; to accomplish this I am prepared to ally myself with the very devil."

He did enter into this alliance with the devil and with hell.

We may include Papen, who saw his secretaries and his friends killed around him and still continued to accept official missions in Ankara and Vienna because he thought he could appease Hitler by serving him.

Some are not present; some are dead, and some still living, as, for example, the industrialists who exploited the workers of the enslaved countries after putting Hitler and his system in power by providing the funds, without which no action could have been possible, and who put them in power as much for reasons of nationalistic fanaticism as because they expected from Nazism the guarantee of their privileges.

Everything kept steady, everything was indissolubly united because totalitarian policy, total war, the preparation and direction of the campaign of extermination of peoples for the conquest of

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living space, implied the closest co-ordination and liaison between all the parts of the machine, between Police and Army; Foreign Affairs and Police and Army; Justice and Police; Economics and Justice; Universities and Propaganda and Police. And now we come to the second point which we have to present to you.

The co-ordination of the various departments at the head of which these men stood, implies close co-operation between them.

The Defense have tried to establish the existence of watertight partitions between the different elements of the German State.

According to them, there is supposed to be a parallel without a horizontal bond between the various State and Party departments, between individual ministerial administrations and between individual National Socialist organizations. The only connecting link would be the person of the chief, at the head. According to the Defense, the dominating principle of the German structure would be a personal union, not co-ordination and co-operation.

This is false. This is contrary to the principles of the Nazi State and requirements of a State in which every force strives toward the same goal and toward the actual reality of German life as revealed by the debates.

According to National Socialist conception, the Party must take the place of democracy. The Party is the political expression of the nation, which materializes in the political action of the State carried out by the activity of its administrations. The 1st of December 1933 Act proclaims, for the purpose of insuring the unity of the Party and State, that the Party is the exclusive support of the State conception, and indissolubly unites the Party and the State.

At the Party Congress in 1931, Hitler says:

"It is not the State that created us. We create the State for ourselves. To some it may appear as the Party, to others as an organization, for yet others as something different, but actually we are what we are."

The aim pursued by the Party was therefore the achievement of an increasingly complete union between the State and the Party. This is the reason of the legislation which makes it compulsory for the head of the Party Chancellery to be consulted on the appointment of high-ranking officials, which incorporates Party chiefs into municipal administration, integrates the SS into the Police, and converts the SS to police officers, makes the direction of the Hitler Youth a State department, brings the direction of Party headquarters abroad under the Foreign Office, and merges the military personnel of the Party to an ever increasing degree with those of the Army. General Von Brodowsky's war diary, which we have submitted to the Tribunal, shows that this merger was a fact at the

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time of the landing in France. Hitler, however, continued to maintain the system of parallel State and Party administration, because they exercised mutual control and supervision. But he insisted on the closest co-operation by both parties in order to be certain that the control was effective.

All the defendants, moreover, with the exception of Hess, are representatives of State departments. They cannot plead the absolute power of the Party as an excuse, since Party and State shared the power. The doctrine preached by the Party must guide the actions of the State, but the actions of the State in turn modify and develop the doctrine of the Party. Many items of the Party Program of-24 February 1920 never came into effect and were completely forgotten when the Party had been in power for some time. For instance, unearned income was not abolished (Item 11); trusts were not nationalized Item 13); land reform was not carried out as provided for in Item 17;* interest on property and speculation id real estate remained. In the end, every aspect of German life was affected by the combined influence of the State and Party forces. All the departments of the State and the Party combined to make the component parts. Examples are plentiful and may be found in every State department.

Let us take the department of Foreign Affairs. Of all the administrational sections of the State, this, according to the orthodox conception, should be The farthest removed from political doctrine. Not so in Nazi Germany. With a view to the extermination of the Jews, headquarters abroad co-operated with the Reich Security Main Of lice through Wilhelmstrasse, as is shown by Documents RF-1206, 1220, 1502, 1210, and Exhibit Number USA-433 Document Number 3219-PS). Wilhelmstrasse officials were called upon to advise the military police and Secret State Police Document Number RF-1061). It was Best, Ribbentrop's representative in Denmark, who transmitted the order for the deportation of the Jews to the Chief of the German Police Mildner Document Number RF-1503). Document Number RF-1501 shows Ribbentrop defending anti-Semitism to Mussolini and- asking for Italian co-operation.

Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are implicated in all the terrorist measures taken against the elite. The SD and Wilhelmstrasse are also involved in the organization of attacks of a provocative nature, such as that made on the broadcasting station at Gleiwitz in order to furnish the pretext of an attack by the Poles. The report made by the German military administration on the pillage of art treasures in France incriminates both the special staff of Rosenberg and the

* This program, known as the 25-point Program, was drawn up by Hitler, Drexler, and Feder and read out on 24 Feb. 1920 at the Hofbrau beer house. It was the program of the German Labor Party.

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German Embassy in Paris (Document Number RF-1505). Wilhelmstrasse and the Army are involved along with the Police in the question of hostages, reprisals, and deportations. Examples could be multiplied. We do not claim to exhaust the subject, but only to give illustrations in support of an opinion.

Let us now examine the activities of Rosenberg's organizations. Rosenberg, by virtue of his function, co-ordinated several branches of the German State. His function in foreign policy was incorporated in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, he was the philosopher of the regime, Minister for the Eastern Territories, and chief of the special staff in charge of art treasures. The SD and the Secret Police worked in liaison with him (Documents Number L-188 and 946-PS).

We note the same liaison and the same co-ordination within the machinery of the State in questions of forced labor. All the ministers and higher functionaries, such as the Gauleiter, were involved, either by planning or preparing the operation, or simply enforcing it, or benefiting by it.

We remember the interministerial meetings in Berlin to discuss this subject and the conference between Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Funk, and the representatives of the OKW which forms the subject of Document Number PS-3819. We remember the meeting in Paris presided over by Sauckel and attended by representatives of the Army, the Police, and the Embassy (Document Number RF-1517).

Neither was economic life any more independent. During the war there existed under Funk a close co-operation between the economic and administrative services of the Army and those of economic affairs (Document Number RF-3 his). The Ministry of Economy appealed to the Police to work out plans for economic Germanization (Documents RF-803 and 814). The Ministry of Finance subsidized the SS to carry out scientific research under abominable conditions using internees as involuntary subjects for experiment (Document Number 002-PS). Under Schacht and long before the war, politics, finance, and economic affairs were linked with the Army, at first secretly, and then publicly, and by bands closer than in any other country in the world. Schacht, in a speech on 29 November 1938, pronounced the following opinion on his achievement:

"It is impossible that any other issuing bank has followed in peacetime a credit policy so audacious as that of the Reichsbank since the assumption of power by National Socialism. With the aid of this policy, however, Germany has created an armament that ranks foremost in the world, and this

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armament has made possible the results of our policy..." (EC-611).

Nor was the judicial system more independent. We find it associated with the Police in highly criminal enterprises. Document Number 654-PS contains an account of a discussion between Thierack, Himmler, and others, at the end of which it was decided that antisocial elements and concentration camp prisoners-Jews, gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles-sentenced to more than 3 years' imprisonment should be turned over by the administration to Himmler to be exterminated through labor, and that in future individuals belonging to these categories should not be judged by ordinary tribunals but handed over immediately to Himmler's department.

Finally, during the war, the terrorist activities of the Army and the German Police and the activities of the State and the Party merged together. On occasion, the Police were subordinated to the Army, though retaining a certain autonomy, on the orders of the Reich Security Main Office. This was the case in Belgium. In France, although separate from the Army, the Police maintained close co-operation-with it. The Army participated with the Sipo (Security Police) and the SD in the persecution of the Jews, the administration of the internment camp at Compiegne and the selection of hostages (Documents RF-1212 and 1212 his) and execution (Document Number RF-1244). As we have seen, the Army and the Police were associated in the terrorist actions against the populations. The Navy and the Police are also associated in the massacre of the Commandos, and the Police were responsible for the murder of certain categories of war prisoners, although all these prisoners without exception came under the authority of the OKW (Document Number 1165-PS). One might multiply instances of the close association of Party machinery and State services and the co-ordination between them, which at times amounted to symbiosis. In one way or another, they all worked for the realization of the common political aim: the conquest of space by all possible means.

The co-operation of the defendants is an obvious consequence. Apart from the definite fact of co-operation alleged by us, all that we know of the general functioning of this totalitarian State, bound to the destiny of the Party, the vigorous measures taken by it against its opponents, for whom it prepared camps and gas chambers-all this leads us to affirm that the defendants, whether ministers, dignitaries or high functionaries with State or Party powers, combined with others who are not present-who are dead or held for Trial in other courts-to form one whole. And this entity was the Government of the Reich, this was the State-Party or Party-State; an entity, perhaps, but a conscious and criminal entity which

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decreed the murder of millions of human beings in order to enlarge the Reich beyond all limits.

The acts of the defendants are not only those particular ones which we analyzed a moment ago in the light of the national penal codes of their own or our countries respectively. They include also these members of the German State for whom they acted, of that German State to which they gave life, conscience, thought, will, and for which they must now assume responsibility and bear the consequences, even the most extreme consequences, because they could not dissociate individually from these crimes. And this brings us to our third point.

The defendants must be judged on the basis of that criminal policy of which they were promoters and instruments.

Was it not Dr. Seidl who, defending Frank, has said (Page 55 of his text):

"This is an acknowledged principle deriving from the penal code of all civilized nations, that a uniform and natural action must be appraised in its entirety, and that all circumstances which can be considered must be examined in order to form a basis for passing judgment."

All the crimes of the defendants lie in their political life. They are, as we know, the elements of a criminal State policy. To consider the defendants as offenders against common law, to forget that they have acted in the name of the German State and on account of that State, to apply the same standard to them as that applied to hooligans or to murderers, would narrow the scope of the Trial and misrepresent the character of their crimes. The crimes ordinarily tried by the courts of our countries show the criminal as opposed to the social order. These are individual deeds; their range is limited and their consequences circumscribed. Their crimes never strike more than a very few victims, and there are no examples in the annals of our countries of murder methodically perpetrated by terror organizations whose victims number more than a few hundred people.

That is the highest cost of a criminal plot within our own national communities. Organized as they are, extremely hierarchical, and possessed of armed forces and judicial institutions, our national communities can eliminate delinquents before they can do all the harm of which they are capable.

These defendants, on the contrary, developed their criminal activity within the community of states in an unorganized world which was just beginning to be conscious of its own existence and at that time possessed neither armed power nor judges.

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These defendants seized the German State and turned it into a gangster State, pressing into the service of their criminal plans all the executive power of that State. They acted as chiefs or heads of political, diplomatic, juridical, military, economic, and financial staffs. The activity of these staffs is normally co-ordinated in any country as they serve a common purpose deriving from a common political idea. But in National Socialist Germany, as we know, such co-ordination was reinforced by the overlapping of Party and administrative departments. Individual crimes were crimes of the community when they became the crimes of the State. Indeed, they were fostered by the political conception of each individual: "Conquest of space at any price."

State crimes committed by any one of those who controlled a major department were made possible only because all those who controlled every other major department contributed their share. If some of them and their departments defaulted, it meant the collapse of the State, the annihilation of its criminal power and with it the end of the gas chambers or the technical impossibility of creating them. But none had either the intention or the desire to default, for gas chambers and extermination, for the sake of gaining living space, were the dominant idea of the system-were, indeed, themselves the system.

Is not evidence of this unity in crime furnished by the very statements made by the defendants, the unremitting efforts of themselves and their counsels to prove the autonomy of their departments and throw the responsibility of the Army on to the Police, that of the Foreign Office on to the head of the Government, that of the Labor Department on to the Four Year Plan, that of the Gauleiter on to the generals; in short, by their attempt to persuade us that everything in Germany was organized in watertight compartments, whereas the interdependence of the administration and Party and the multiplicity of connecting and controlling links between the State and Party prove the contrary by their skillful dovetailing. All French people who have lived in occupied France remember having seen on the walls of local Kommandanturs a poster depicting the bricks of a wall with the words Teneo quia teneor printed over the picture. It was the whole motto of the system. It only needed a few bricks to be taken away for the wall to collapse. None of those men did that. On the contrary, they all contributed their own brick to the edifice.

In this way, Gentlemen, by presenting the facts, apart from any legal conception of conspiracy or complicity which might be debatable according to the varying opinions of the jurists, we furnish proof of solidarity and of the equal culpability of all in the crime.

To prove that they perpetrated the crime, it suffices to show that they were chiefs or high-officials of the Party or one of the

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main State departments and that they acted on behalf of the State; that, in order to extend German living space by every means at their command, they conceived, willed, ordered, or merely tolerated by their silence the violation of treaties guaranteeing the independence of other countries; prepared or declared wars of aggression; systematically carried out mass murder and other atrocities; and systematically committed demolition and looting without justification. This is the crime of the German Reich, and ail the defendants have conspired to commit it.

We will prove this in the case of each of the defendants by means of examples taken from the proceedings.

Concerning each of the defendants, the three main points of this presentation will be the following:

1) The defendant occupied within the machinery of the State and the Party a position of eminence which endowed him with authority over one entire office or several.

2) The defendant complied with, if he did not conceive, the doctrine of the regime: Conquest of space by any means.

3) He personally played an active part in the political development of this doctrine.

As to Goering and Hess, the Tribunal will undoubtedly allow me to dispense with developing their case at length. They were the appointed successors of the Fuehrer. They belonged to the Movement from the beginning. Hess assumed responsibility for the racial laws. Both played a part in formulating the political doctrine of the regime, of which they were the embodiment in the eyes of the masses. By their speeches, their lectures, they made this doctrine familiar to all classes. Goering made an active and essential contribution to the military and economic preparations for wars of aggression. Goering is the founder of the Gestapo and the concentration camps where millions of alleged enemies of the regime found their death, and where ultimately genocide was almost totally achieved.

The major part of his criminal activities concerns the putting into practice of the Four Year Plan, the sole object of which, as has been proved, was the preparation for war. In common with others, he is responsible for the deportation and brutal treatment of workers and for their allocation to spheres of production aimed against their own country. Further, he was party to the allocation of prisoners of war and political prisoners to labor directly connected with the war effort of the Reich. He organized the plunder of the occupied countries and the destruction of their economy. Lastly, he organized, with the help of Einsatzstab Rosenberg, the wholesale looting of works of art, often with the object of enriching his own collections.

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Hess, by a decree of the Fuehrer dated 21 April 1933, was given full powers to decide all questions of Party management. He participated in the preparation of laws and decrees in general, and even in the preparation of the Fuehrer's decrees. He took part in the appointment of government officials and the chiefs of labor services. He strengthened the Party's hold on the internal life of Germany. He exerted a direct influence on the Army and on foreign policy. The part which he played in the growth of anti-Semitism implicates him in the criminal consequences of the Movement and condemns him.

Ribbentrop was one of the mainsprings of the Party and State machine. Placed in Wilhelmstrasse by Hitler who distrusted "old-fashioned" diplomats, he worked with all his might to create diplomatic conditions which would favor a war of aggression' the essential means for realizing the conquest of space. We recall the document submitted by our British colleagues establishing the fact that Ribbentrop assured Ciano in August 1939~ that Germany would make war even if Danzig and the Corridor were ceded to her. As has already been shown, he and his office were involved in acts of terrorism and extermination in the occupied countries.

My comments on Keitel are equally brief. The conditions under which he consented to be placed by Hitler at the head of the High Command of the Army in the place of Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg, and brought into the councils of the Government, his political activities in these posts, as indicated by his presence at the Fuehrer's side in Godesberg and later during the interviews with Petain and Horthy-to say nothing of the orders which he signed, not the least notorious of which was the order for the implementation of the N.N. (Night and Fog) decree-all these facts reveal that we are dealing here not with an ordinary soldier, but with a general who was also a politician, under orders of the regime. The part he played in the arrest and murder of patriots condemns him. There is no doubt whatsoever that he participated in the work of extermination, if only by handing over to the Police for special treatment certain classes of prisoners of war in defiance of military honor. Moreover, we remember connections between his office and the police services and armed forces of the Party.

In the year 1932 Kaltenbrunner became a member of the Party and of the SS in Austria. He became Secretary of State for Security and the Police in Austria and then Chief of Police in Vienna and Chief of RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) from 30 January 1943 up to the capitulation. During this latter period he was responsible for the Gestapo, the Police, the Security Service and the concentration camps.

He was one of the most important factors in the criminal organization which carried out the policy of extermination and genocide.

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His responsibility for these mass murders has been established. Orders for imprisonment and execution were signed by him.

"Detention and protective custody," he said, "were measures justified by the war." At the same time, however, he tried to make us believe that he opposed the introduction of these measures. It is impossible to believe this, for we have proof that he had supreme authority over the camps.

We are aware of Rosenberg's important position in the Third Reich. A department bore his name. Moreover, he was Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and an exponent of the Nazi doctrine. In "Blood and Honor" (Blut und Ehre), in particular, he revived and elaborated the theory of living space to which the so-called German race was entitled. He started with the unfounded statements that "the evolution of humanity owes its entire meaning to the irradiation of Nordism" and that "a decline takes place wherever this Nordic culture, instead of condemning Asiatics and Jews to permanent enslavement, mingles with these impure elements..." He concluded by saying that the continent must be subjected to the German philosophy and race. To restore the racial purity of Germany by any means was the subject of his speech at Nuremberg in 1933. He extolled the extermination of the Jews, and we know today that it was no empty phrase. Furthermore, in a report to the Fuehrer dated 11 August 1942 (Document Number 042-PS) he wrote:

"Decrees not to support an increase in the population of the Ukraine and to render inapplicable Article 218 of the German Penal Code were issued last year on the occasion of an address and were pronounced again on the occasion of a visit made by the Director of the Ministry of Health... In the Ukraine, measures were taken to prevent the spreading of epidemics, not in the interest of other peoples, but exclusively to secure German occupation and keep up the efficiency of the labor in the service of the German war industry."

Finally, he was implicated in the attack on Norway, and thanks to his special staff he conducted the methodical plundering of the artistic wealth of Europe.

Frank was one of the Party's earliest adherents. He was its legal adviser and took part in the elaboration of its program. He was also the Fuehrer's adviser. He was Minister of Justice in Bavaria, then Minister of State charged with the co-ordination of justice in the Reich, and finally Governor General of Poland. It is he who tried to give legal form to the program of persecution and extermination drawn up by the State, and the Party. He defended the establishment of concentration camps in the German

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Legal Gazette in 1936 and he proclaimed that the second fundamental concept of the Hitlerite Reich was racial legislation. His personal activities in Poland contributed to the extermination of numerous Poles. He boasted of these activities in his diary.

Frick was a member of the Party from 1925. He became a Reichsleiter and afterward Reich Director for Elections from 30 January 1933 to 20 August 1943. He was chief of the service for the annexation of Austria by Germany and for the incorporation of the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the Eastern Territories, Eupen-Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was also Director of the Central Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, the Government General, Lower Styria, Upper Carinthia, Norway, Alsace, Lorraine, and all the other occupied countries. He was Protector of Bohemia and Moravia for over a year. He had been Reich Minister of the Interior ever since the assumption of power and a member of the Defense Council. When he was elected to the Reichstag in 1924, he proposed anti-Jewish laws. Strictly obedient, on several occasions he gave expression to the political theories of the Party. In particular he declared:

"In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of an organized community, that is, the National Socialist Party; and as the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy adopted by it, in harmony with the vital interests of the nation, is at the same time the policy adopted by the country" (Document Number 3258-PS).

He it was who appointed Himmler. He was responsible for the anti-Jewish legislation and ordered sterilization for the descendants of colored soldiers. Furthermore, he gave orders that the incurably insane should be put to death.

Streicher entered the Party almost as soon as it was formed. He indulged in unbridled propaganda against the Jews, both in his speeches and in his writings and incited the German people to persecute and to exterminate them. He was made Gauleiter. He does not dissociate himself from anything that has been done. He stated:

"When one has known the profound depths of the Fuehrer's character as I have done, and when I later learned from his testament that he deliberately gave the order to execute the Jews, well, I declare that this man had a right to do so."

Funk entered the Party in 1931 and was decorated with the Golden Party Badge. He was Chief of the Reich Press and Secretary of State for Propaganda; eventually he succeeded Schacht in the Ministry of Economics in 1937. He became Plenipotentiary for Economy and President of the Reichsbank in 1941. In 1932 he acted as middleman between the Fuehrer and certain leaders of German

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industry. He attended the meeting of industrialists organized by Goering on 20 February 1933 to obtain the political and financial support of industry for the realization of the Nazi program. He stated on 4 May 1946:

"As State Secretary for Propaganda I have a formal responsibility. I have, of course, favored propaganda, as did all those who found themselves in positions of importance in Germany, for propaganda filled and permeated the nation's intellectual life."

He asked that the Jews be excluded from important positions and issued decrees to that effect He received from the SS deposits of gold and valuables from the victims of mass exterminations. He built up Germany's economy and signed the Secret Law of 4 September 1938.

Doenitz was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. He succeeded Hitler with Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. He was a recipient of the Golden Party Badge. His adherence to the criminal policy of the system is indisputable. He said, among other things (Document Number D-640): "The officer is the representative of the State. This talk about nonpolitical officers is sheer nonsense."

He recommended the use of labor from the extermination camps in order, he said, to increase output by 100 percent. He proclaimed unrestricted submarine warfare and ordered his sailors "to be hard," and not to effect any further rescues. He approved and extolled massacres of Communists.

Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy before Doenitz. He was present at the conferences at which Hitler revealed his plans, notes of which were taken at the time. He put the Navy at the service of the Nazi regime. He conducted clandestine rearmament activities and contributed to the preparation of aggression against Poland and Norway. His contempt for international law is well known. It will suffice to refer to the memorandum of 15 October 1939, Document Number UK-65.

Schirach became a member of the Party at the age of 18. He joined in 1925, was Leader of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940 and Gauleiter of Vienna up to the capitulation. He was one of the essential parts of the Nazi machine. He admits that as Gauleiter of Vienna he united in himself the powers of the State, the city, and the Party. He moulded the youth of Germany according to the ideology of the Party; and he has claimed responsibility for the consequences resulting from this exclusive formation. He allowed Himmler to recruit the SS from among the Hitler Youth.

From 1943 onward, as he himself admits, he was aware of the treatment inflicted on the Jews. Long before that date, however,

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he had taken a very definite stand as to this question and had been active in conducting anti-Semitic propaganda.

Sauckel joined the Party in 1925. Gauleiter of Thuringia, Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor and honorary Obergruppenfuehrer of the SS, he held a highly enviable position in the State and Party machine. A fiery propagandist, he delivered more than five hundred speeches, in all of which he expounded the Nazi ideology. He approved the principle of extermination. He said:

"With regard to the extermination of asocial elements, Dr. Goebbels is of the opinion . . . the method of extermination by work is the best" (Document Number 682-PS).

He also stated:

"The Fuehrer has. . . said that we must revise our habitual conception about the migration of peoples.... It is the Fuehrer's wish that a hundred years from now, 250 million people speaking the German language be settled in Europe" (Document Number 025-PS).

He personally played an active part in preparing the way for the exterminations. On 28 May 1946, he made here the following statement on the subject: "Best results in production can only be obtained by judicious use of manpower."

He forced over 2 million Frenchmen to collaborate in the war effort with their labor-to say nothing of millions of people of other nationalities. They were recruited by force with the help of the Police, the SS, and the Armed Forces (Document Number S-827):

"I have"-he said-"given special authority to a few intelligent men, with a view to procuring labor. They are working under the direction of the Reichsfuehrer SS and Police. I have armed and trained a certain number of them, and I must make application to the Ministry of Armaments for the necessary supplies for these men..." (R-124).

Through this declaration, the insinuation of counsel for Defendant Speer to the effect that the French Government had voluntarily given their assent to sending forced labor to Germany, is reduced to nought.

Alfred Jodl was Chief of the Operations Staff of the OKW. He enjoyed the absolute confidence of the Fuehrer in the same degree as Keitel (Document Number 3798-PS). He took part in drafting the various plans for aggression. Encouraged to serve Hitler by the presence of such conservatives as Neurath, Papen, and Schacht at Hitler's side, he transmitted on 22 March 1943 the decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from Denmark and their internment in Germany. He was also responsible for the execution of

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Hitler's order of 18 October 1942 for the annihilation of Commandos (Document Number 530-PS).

He took part in the discussions on the measures to be taken against airmen who were forced down. He signed the proclamation published by the High Command of the Armed Forces relative to the struggle against guerrilla troops-a proclamation containing regulations which outraged the laws of humanity.

Von Papen paved the way for Hitler's accession to power. The formation of his Cabinet on 30 May 1932 was contrary to the normal parliamentary procedure. On 2 June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag, thereby giving free rein to Hitler's terrorism. With respect to an interview with Hitler in June 1932 he said: "I have agreed to Hitler's demands, the right of the SS and SA to wear uniform."

At the same time Papen for his part was under no illusions as to the consequences of the Hitlerian agitation which he had himself instigated. But he preferred Hitler to democracy. After the elections of 30 July he endeavored to induce Hindenburg to accept Hitler and in the month of November he succeeded. He allowed Nazi functionaries to usurp the public services. Sir David

Maxwell-Fyfe reminded us of Von Papen's vindication of National Socialism in Essen in November 1933. Papen expressed himself very definitely on the racial problem (speech at Gleiwitz in 1934).

"Certainly no objection can be made to racial research and racial hygiene with the aim of preserving as far as possible the national characteristics of the people and awakening the spirit of national community."

We know what these measures were.

Papen served the Party and State administration until the capitulation. Neither the murder nor the imprisonment of his collaborators, of which the State and the Party were guilty, interrupted his activities.

Seyss-Inquart joined the National Socialist Party on 13 March 1938. He occupied various positions within the inner circle of the Party and in the State services, was finally made Assistant Governor of Poland and later Reich Commissar for the Netherlands.

He declared-I quote: "I cling with unchanging tenacity to the aims in which I believe: Greater Germany and the Fuehrer." (Excerpt from a letter of Seyss-Inquart to G5ring on 14 July 1939; Document Number 2219-PS).

"We hold the task of a generation, that is to say of the vital force of a people, to be the creation and the security of Lebensraum for the cultural and economic life of that nation."

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(Speech of Seyss-Inquart of 23 January 1939; Document Number 3640-PS.)

"As the task of a whole generation, the entire Vistula region, and not only the territories now gained in the East, must be settled by Germans . . . the Slovakia of today, the Hungary of today, the Romania of today, must be reorganized. I believe that the time has come for that.... I believe that soon the whole of this territory will be under the sole administration of Germany."

(Letter of Seyss-Inquart to Bormann of 20 July 1940; Document Number 3645-PS.)

Seyss-Inquart endeavored to realize the main political object of the Party: Conquest of space at all costs. He used all his available resources for the annexation of Austria, of which he was a native (He admitted that he had worked for 20 years to bring about the Anschluss). His collusion with Konrad Henlein for the reincorporation of the Sudeten territory in Germany has been proved. In Holland he gave orders for the execution of hostages and forged political and economic links between that country and the Reich. He is further responsible for the systematic pillage inflicted on Holland, for the deportation of the population and for the introduction of measures which led to famine.

Speer joined the Party in 1933. He was appointed personal architect to Hitler, and in this capacity he came into very close contact with the Fuehrer. Chief of the Todt Organization from February 1942, Armaments Chief for the Four Year Plan from March 1942, Minister for Armaments from September 1943, he was one of the high-ranking officials in both the State and the Party. Speer utilized more than a million men in the Todt Organization and more than fifty thousand deported Frenchmen in the Ruhr territory alone in 1943. He is responsible for the ill-treatment of foreign workers in German factories, particularly in the Krupp plants. He employed more than 400,000 war prisoners in the armament industry. His delegates were authorized by the OKW to enter the camps and to select skilled workmen. He exploited the manpower of the concentration camps, affecting a total of more than 32,000 men, as he has himself admitted. He visited Mauthausen and shares the responsibility for the deportation of Jews to special labor camps, where they were exterminated, as well as the deportation of 100,000 Hungarian Jews to aircraft factories.

Von Neurath, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1932, remained in this office when the Nazis seized power in 1933. He continued to occupy this post until 1939 and both he and his departments were gradually absorbed by the growing State and Party machine. As he was a member of the Government from the outset, he cannot

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have been ignorant of the political ideology of the Movement. If he claims to have been shocked when he learned in 1937 that Hitler was planning aggression, he nevertheless remained in office and made no attempt to dissuade Hitler. On the contrary, it was he who by his approval encouraged Hitler to reoccupy the left bank of the Rhine-the first stage in the wars of aggression for the conquest of living space. He remained Minister of the Reich until the end. A conservative himself, his presence encouraged conservative elements in Germany to co-operate with Hitler. Mainspring of the Party and State machine, Von Neurath is closely connected with this machine in the crimes of extermination of which he was fully aware and which he himself decreed.

On 31 August 1940 Von Neurath transmitted to Dr. Lammers two memoranda, one drawn up by himself and the other by his Minister of State Frank, both advocating the total Germanization of Bohemia and Moravia and the elimination of the Czech intelligentsia. One of these reports contains the following lines:

"With regard to the future organization of Bohemia and Moravia, all considerations should be based on the goal set for this territory, from the state political and national political angle. From the state political angle there can be only one goal: Complete incorporation into the Greater German Reich. From the national political angle: Settling these territories completely with Germans. A brief survey of the actual position as it presents itself from observations and experience gained since the annexation with regard to the state political and national political angle, indicates the path to be followed in order to reach the clearly defined and unequivocal goal. If things present themselves in such fashion then a decision must be taken on the fate of the Czech people so that the end in view may be achieved, which is to incorporate the country and populate it with Germans as quickly and as completely as possible" (Document Number 3859-PS).

Fritzsche served the Party before it came to power, but he did not actually become a member of it until 1933 and then he quickly became a remarkably efficient propagandist. In the course of the war he became the head of the radio service. Expounding the doctrine of the regime, he agitated for the massacre of Jews.

By means of repeated addresses he furthermore endeavored to imprint in the German mind the idea that its very life was imperiled by the Jews and democracy, and that it must yield itself unreservedly to the men of destiny who governed it.

Schacht's position is peculiar in itself. I shall deal with his case at greater length. He claims to be a victim of the system and is surprised to find himself here cheek by jowl with Kaltenbrunner,

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his jailer. Schacht told us that the ideals of the Party did not appeal to him. Nonetheless, former Minister Severing stated at the session of 21 May 1946, that in 1931 he had learned from a communication of the Berlin police that Schacht had taken part in discussions with the Nazi chiefs. He added that Schacht's relations with plutocracy and militarism struck him as highly compromising, and that he would not have cared to be a member of the same Cabinet. We know that Schacht had established relations with Hitler in 1930, bringing to him the advantages of his repute in Germany and abroad. National Socialism derived considerable benefit from this.

At the National Front rally at Harzburg in October 1931, Schacht took his seat next to Hitler, Hugenberg, and Seldte. He had already attempted to draw Hitler into the Bruning Government. He was responsible for procuring funds for the decisive elections of March 1933 (USA-874, Document Number EC-440) at a meeting between Goering and the leading industrialists, on which occasion Hitler

delivered a speech. After the seizure of power, Schacht played an outstanding role within the machinery of Party and State. He became President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. On 19 January 1939 he left the Reichsbank, but he became a Minister of State and held that post until 21 January 1943. Clever, subtle, and capable of disguising his real thoughts behind a mask of irony or insolence, he never committed himself completely. It has, however, been proved that he persistently demanded increased living space for Germany. When he tried to mislead his questioners by speaking of colonial claims and it was pointed out that, considering world conditions, the possession of colonies could in no way assist Germany in solving her domestic problems, he failed to reply. He knew how to threaten the democracies and even resorted to a form of extortion through fear. When speaking of a Party success during . a visit to America, he said:

`'I gave the greatest possible warning saying that: If you foreigners do not change your policy toward Germany, there will in a very short time be many more members and adherents of Hitler's Party."

He also said: "It is perfectly clear: We ask for territory in order to feed our people."

What part did he play in the development of the criminal policy? As soon as he was established in the Reichsbank, a vast program for financing public works was launched. All of these works-new railroads, motor highways, et cetera-were of strategic importance. Moreover, a large proportion of the credits was secretly used for purely military purposes. ~

From 1935 onward, rearmament was speeded up under the vigorous impulse of the new financial measures which he devised.

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The academic and upright economist of tradition turned into a sharper in order to realize the great aims of the Party. By means of accommodation drafts-mefo draft the rearmament was financed. Drawn on a drawee who provided no cover, a company created to serve this express purpose, the blank drafts were endorsed by a second and similar company.

When the first draft was drawn, the drawer added extension drafts so calculated that the last fell due in January or March 1942. When we look back, the full significance of the date chosen becomes evident. The year 1942 was the date fixed by Schacht for the full extent of his fraudulent enterprise, in the hope that by that time the war would have solved the problem for him. The original draft was discounted by the Reichsbank. Bills were not subject to fiscal taxes so as to prevent any evaluation of the amount in circulation by means of a control in the yield of the taxes. Operations were conducted with the utmost secrecy. Even as early as 1935, all available Reichsmark credits were utilized by the Reichsbank for these armament drafts. At the end of 1938 there were 6 billion marks in mefo drafts in the assets of the Reichsbank and 6 billion marks worth to discount, of which 3 billion worth were short-dated. When the drafts fell due, Schacht could not but be aware that there were only three possible solutions:

1) Consolidation of the debt by foreign loans, which would not be extended to Nazi Germany, already armed to excess.

2) An inflation comparable to that of 1923, which would mean the end of the regime.

3) War.

The scope of the rearmament operations financed by Schacht up to 31 December 1938 is revealed by calculations made by M. Gerthoffer of our delegation (we attach his report hereto). Let us not forget that Hitler, in his letter to Schacht, dated 19 January 1939, wrote: "Your name will be connected above all and for all time with the first period of national rearmament" (EC-397). We may take note of that-from April 1935 to 31 December 1938, there were spent 345,415 million francs on the rearming of Germany. During the same period France spent only 35,964 million francs. Such a discrepancy shows quite clearly what Schacht's aim was. This was Schacht's doing and his alone. On the battlefields of France in 1940 we find again the same ratio of 10 German armored divisions to

1 French division.

Schacht's retirement from the Reichsbank and the Ministry of Economics can in no way speak in his favor. Difficulties arose between Goering and himself in regard to the realization of the Four Year Plan. Schacht would not admit Goering as his superior. He resigned from the Ministry of Economics on 26 November 1937, but

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remained president of the Reichsbank and Minister without Portfolio. On 7 January 1939 he handed Hitler a memorandum pointing out that the volume of the mefo drafts in circulation through his own fault was threatening the stability of the currency. Technically speaking, his position at the Reichsbank had become untenable. His retirement, therefore, was due to questions of economic organization and not to political reasons. In any case, he retained the functions of Minister without Portfolio, and did not give up this post until January 1943, at the time of the Stalingrad defeat, when both the Party-State machine and the Reich were beginning to break down. Obviously he no longer served any useful purpose, but it is equally obvious that he might again have done so at some later date, in the capacity of negotiator of a peace compromise.

Are his further political troubles due to the intrigue by Hitler's advisers which we can now well imagine, or were they due to Machiavellism on his part, or to sheer bad fortune? What is the significance of the part played by this ill-starred man who succeeded in gathering round him all of the great financiers and industrials with pan-Germanic leanings, who helped Hitler to power, whose presence inspired confidence in Nazi Germany, whose financial wizardry provided Germany with the most powerful war machine of the age, and who did all this to enable the Party-State machine to hurl itself forward to the conquest of living space? This man was among those mainly responsible for the criminal activities of the Party-State machine. His financial genius was that of the Nazi State; and there is no doubt of his participation in its crimes. It is of fundamental importance. The measure of his guilt is full, his responsibility complete.

As for the last of Hitler's confidants, Bormann, we know that he was responsible for the mass extermination of the Jews. There is no need to say more.

I have now reached the end of my demonstration of the guilt of each individual defendant. Not that the subject is exhausted, but the time allowed by the Tribunal for each representative of the Prosecution to address the Court only permits us to sketch the outline of a presentation which deserves more systematic treatment. A multiplicity of examples could be found to illustrate our presentation. All the facts submitted during the last 9 months by all four delegations fit of their own accord into our plan; and this in itself is sufficient to prove that our logic is unimpeachable and that our conclusions are in strict accordance with the truth.

We consider, therefore, that proof has been furnished that all these men have been parties to the crimes of the German State, that all these men were in fact united in pursuit of the same political aim and that all of them have in one way or another participated

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in the greatest crime of all, genocide, the extermination of the races or people at whose expense they intended to conquer the living space they held necessary for the so-called Germanic race.

We have all heard the objections raised by the Counsel for the Defense. It is Dr. Seidl who stated them most forcibly (Page 25 of his speech for Frank).

"The law in force"-he said-"is based on the fundamental principle that international law deals solely with the sovereign state and not with the isolated individual."

In conclusion he denies the right to sentence these men. First let us say that not one of the defendants was an "isolated individual" of whom Dr. Seidl speaks. We think that we have demonstrated their co-operation and solidarity, strengthened by the Party system beyond the usual intercourse between the ministers and principal administrators of any democratic country.

We may observe in addition that it seems intolerable to every sensitive human being that men who put their intelligence and their good will at the disposition of the state entity in order to make use of the power and the material resources of this entity to slaughter, as they have done, millions of human beings in the execution of a criminal policy long since determined, should be assured of immunity. The principle of state sovereignty which might protect these men is only a mask. This mask removed, the man's responsibility reappears. Dr. Seidl knows that as well as we do. But he says, "such is the international law in force." What respect on his part for the law in force, but how surprising in his mouth the words which follow! A few moments later, examining the Hague Conventions of 1907, which, we must remember, have not been denounced by any of the signatories, not even by Germany, he complacently points out that they were inspired by the experiences made during the wars of the nineteenth century and are no longer valid in the twentieth. Modern wars were no longer subject to the restrictions of the Hague Conventions. He states further:

"Under these circumstances one cannot make use of the prescriptions of the Hague Convention with regard to land warfare-even if interpreted in the widest sense and adapted in a suitable manner as a basis for the criminal responsibility of the individual."

Dr. Seidl therefore considers international law as static -when he believes that this will enable him to draw favorable conclusions therefrom; but when this law condemns his client, it must be considered as still in process of evolution.

Dialectics of this kind, which make use of paralogism, are specious. Dr. Seidl is well versed in the art of sophism, but he

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convinces no one. The immunity of the chiefs of state and their associates was hardly conceivable when it was allowed to be subject to the rules and restrictions of custom, convention' and international law. This immunity became intolerable from the moment that they freed themselves from every rule, and pressure from the universal conscience gave rise to new developments in international custom in order to oppose it. I have already shown this at the end of my statement last February; I shall not revert to that point. It should suffice to add that the Charter of 7 August 1945, taking in consideration the work of the various war crimes commissions from 1940 up to the capitulation, upheld the conclusions drawn by a Frenchman, M. de Lapradelle, at the War Guilt Commission 1919. The defendants are arraigned before you on account of the acts they committed on behalf of the German State and if it is necessary that law should reinforce the authority of custom, then the Statute of London, drawn up on the basis of common law in course of formation, still justifies our study of the defendants' responsibility with regard to the crimes of the German State. In fact, Article 6 of the Statute deals only with crimes committed on account of the state.

The impression we draw from the final pleadings is that most of the defense counsels put all their hopes in a concise juridical or pseudo-Juridical process of reasoning. Many questions were debated. Are there just and unjust wars, defensive wars and wars of aggression, is there a world-wide juridical conscience? Are there unequivocal criteria of aggression? This is what worries the Defense; and not the question of the extent to which those who have collaborated in the work of extermination should be punished.

When the defense counsels speak of "law in force" they do so for the purpose of denying this Tribunal the right to condemn, and. Dr. Jahrreiss denied all authority to the law "such as it should be conceived" in the light of morality and progress (Page 3). All of them forget that the law in force is not only the law of the past, the only one to which they themselves appeal, but that the law in force is also that which the judges invoke in a concrete manner from the bench. All of them forget that jurisprudence is subject to the laws of evolution. Where no written law exists one can only speak of the former tendencies and ascertain whether they are still valid and can be invoked. But let us stop here. We would ourselves confuse the issue.

The unique fact of this Trial, the fact that stands out above all others, is that of the methodical, systematic extermination of all those who occupied the living space coveted by Germany.

Other crimes have certainly been committed, but only as means to an end. We are tempted to describe them as secondary and

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accessory to the main crime, so overwhelming is the atrocity of the latter.

We must realize the full magnitude of these atrocious crimes and appreciate the danger to humanity which is constituted by such a precedent, in order to exact adequate punishment.

Atrocity of the State-Committed Crime.

We have already shown that the crime committed by these men is not a simple crime. The common criminal knows his victim; he sees him with his own eyes. He himself strikes and knows the effect of his blow. Even if he is only an accomplice he is never sufficiently dissociated, morally and psychologically speaking, from the chief perpetrator, not to share to a certain extent his apprehensions and reactions when the blow is delivered and the victim falls.

Genocide, murder, or any other crime becomes anonymous when it is committed by the State. Nobody bears the thief responsibility. Everybody shares it-those who by their presence maintain and support the administration, those who conceived the crime and those who ordained it, as well as he who issued the order. As for the executioner, he says to himself, "Befohl ist Befehl," "An order is an order," and carries out his hangman's task.

Those who make the decision do so without shuddering. It is possible that they have no accurate and concrete picture in their minds of the consequences of their orders. The stupefaction of some of the accused immediately after the showing of the film about the camps is understandable in the light of this reflection. As for those who promote the execution of the crime by their general cooperation in the work of Party and State, they feel that they are passive spectators of a scene which does not concern them. They have, in any case, no punishment to fear. In the German sphere the State and the Party are strong, and determined to remain so for a thousand years. They have destroyed justice. In the international sphere, the prevailing code insures-or, at least, is believed to insure-immunity. Moreover there is no permanent international jurisdiction capable of opposing the gangster states. The possibility of a military defeat is not taken into consideration, since the precautions taken are apparently so thorough. It is a remarkable fact that, allowance made for the delay necessary for the installation of gas chambers, the peak of the murders coincides with the period in which the State and regime believe in certain victory, or have not yet taken seriously the omens of defeat. It is really the perfect anonymous crime imagined by the French moralist when he propounded the case of the mandarin as a test of moral conscience. And an the conditions favor the absence of a reaction. The facts

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have demonstrated that none of those men have experienced 'tine decisive revulsion in those circumstances.

Most of them did feel that they had played a part in the tragedy. They have, I think, been more intent on relieving their consciences than on attempting to deceive their judges by shelving guilt onto their neighbors. Few of them have had the courage to acknowledge, as did Schirach and Frank, that they were component parts of the whole system, and as such could not evade responsibility. The others deny it at the risk of letting the guilt fall upon the German people who were incapable of throwing off the yoke of their evil masters. They attempt, in the exposition of their case, to minimize their responsibility in the hope of conjuring it away,. but since Severing's statement and those made previously by the mayor of Oranienburg and the mayor of Buchenwald and confirmed by Frank, are true, namely, that there were rumors all over Germany that people died in these camps, as everybody now knows, do they expect to make us believe that they alone were in ignorance thereof?

The less guilty among them, if one can establish different categories of "major criminals," did not dare to object, but their criminal cowardice had such appalling consequences that they cannot possibly justify any lessening of the penalty.

As we now see, crime committed by the state in a regime in which state and party are one, and in which popular control is prevented by the absence of freedom of thought, freedom of expression and free elections, is, from the point of view of the criminal, the easiest to commit. Moreover, technical progress all over the world has harnessed almost every natural force in the service of mankind. His capacity to work evil has been considerably increased thereby. Moral restraint has at the same time been relaxed by the pursuit of materialistic gratification which is also the corrupt fruit of material progress not controlled by intellect.

Generally speaking, crime seems to be on the increase in every state, in spite of highly improved methods of repression. In the international scheme of things, the process is similar. The only difference is that it is on a larger scale, because as yet there is no international means of repression. The industrial revolution and the development of . natural sciences have multiplied the virtual power of states. If the state keeps in its own hands natural wealth and its exploitation, accentuates its grip on credit by monetary operations, increase in taxation, the levying of additional loans, whether voluntary or forced, if it binds its people even more firmly to it by developing public welfare institutions, and influences their mental life by means of radio propaganda, employing with this end in view eloquent propagandists capable of arousing the blind passions of the mob within men most peacefully disposed and most

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widely scattered-if this state at the same time takes away from its opponents every possibility of expressing their views, prevents any control by the people and every form even of private criticism, it becomes an absolute ruler possessed of tremendous means of action for better or worse. Every criminal technique is within its reach and it can make unrestrained use of it unless, Gentlemen, you introduce the element of sanctions in international law. It must be possible henceforth to put an end to the criminal activities of a gangster state through the power of a superstate organization directed by a legal institution of the same kind, otherwise the freedom of nations is doomed. The weapons of revolt fell from their hands as soon as states-and states alone-could possess methods of destruction against which the courage of individual citizens was unavailing. Operated by a small number of men devoted to the criminal regime, those arms which are the property of the state can drown in blood the slightest attempts at resistance, and although revolt against tyranny is still the most sacred of duties, such revolt is now hopeless. This is the danger, and Germany succumbed to it. It is true that every favorable condition was present at the same time. Under the impulse of the industrial revolution which from 1850 onward was more violent in this country than in any other, social standards have changed enormously; and at the same time the population itself has changed from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial. This has resulted in a lowering of its mental level which has brought with it disastrous consequences, since the bourgeoisie had received no political education under the Empire.

Deliberately kept at a distance from public affairs by their former rulers, the German masses, with regard to the industrialist upper class and proletariat, were interested only in the economic development of the Reich, and, with regard to the middle class, only in the Army and the future Reich. When, after the first World War, the Germans had to endure the disappointment of defeat; when to shabby and commonplace surroundings were added all the rancor and resentment described by the Defendant Goering at the beginning of his testimony, in addition to the bitter consciousness of social and material downfall; when youth in particular strove to make its hopes a concrete reality, Pan-Germanism awoke, was disseminated and brought down to the level of the mob and then came within reach of all the discontented elements. At the same time, the old antithesis between vital force and intellectualism, culture and civilization, healthy eagerness and decadent lassitude, the cult of life and the cult of intellect was brought to life and given definite shape for the use of simple and puerile minds in the form of the dynamic antithesis between the Nordic Aryan and the Semitic Jew. With the help of appropriate education this biological materialism was easily imposed. The ground had long

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been prepared. The German is particularly attracted by inculcated doctrine because it alone can supply the lack of personal, independent discipline which is characteristic of him on the intellectual and moral plane. He loves anything that can be recited as a universally acknowledged creed, a stereotyped phrase suitable for use on all occasions. For this reason, young Germans learned for their Abitur examination the six races admitted by Guenther just as they learned grammar, and no more dreamed of doubting the former than they doubted the latter. And when the German mentality accused nations as much alive and as strongly attached to their land, their traditions, and their flexible and varied human culture, as England and France, of being content to possess only a puny and artificial intellectual life, when it accused them with the crime against life-and Dr. Stahmer echoed this-the German mind created for itself, by reason of the coarse and facile creed which it claimed to impose upon all alike, an intellectualism differing from ours in its danger and its artificiality. The result of these so-called ethics of life was a practice and a doctrine of pure opportunism-collective or social, pseudoscientific, biological, materialistic-which resulted in the sterilization, the physiological observations made in the camps, and 12 million dead. The reflection of the old French philosopher comes irresistibly to our minds when we are confronted with this result: "Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul." A neo-Machiavellism, an example of which was afforded us by Goering in his statement, took root.

I read lately somewhere in a final pleading that right in itself does not exist, and that efforts to establish a dividing line between right and wrong are guided by historical and national standards (Dr. Nelte). Hitler had already said: "Right is what is profitable to the nation" and, according to his defense counsel, Frank paraphrased this statement as follows: "What is profitable for the people is right. Collective interests take precedence over individual interests." On reading this, I thought of the answer which would have been given by the absolutist, Bossuet, who knew how to determine human standards. The Defense Counsel compared French absolutism with Nazism. Here is my answer:

"Politics sacrifice the individual to the common good, and this is right to a certain extent; it is good that one man should die for the people. By that, Caiaphas understood that an innocent person could be sentenced to the supreme penalty for the sake of the common good, which is never allowed, for, on the contrary, innocent blood cries for vengeance against those who shed it."

We know what consequences the Nazi precepts could produce. The witness Roser reported the words of this young German soldier

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who, after describing a massacre in a ghetto, concluded: "Ah, my dear friend, it was horrible, but. . . an order is an order." The Tribunal will find Kramer's terrible words at the end of Document Number F-655, which is in one of the document books submitted by the French. Before he was made commandant of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Kramer commanded the Nataweiler Camp in Alsace, where he himself asphyxiated 80 persons by gas. This has been proved. In answer to the question: "What would you have done if they had not all been dead?" he said:

"I should again have tried to asphyxiate them by letting a second dose of gas into the room. I did not feel any emotion while carrying out these acts, for I had received orders to execute the 80 internees in the way I told you. After all I have been trained in that way."

What a terrible charge against the system! Before becoming a murderer by order, this man had been a bookkeeper in Augsburg. How many peaceful bookkeepers so trained are still in Germany today? And now "innocent blood cries for vengeance."

Conclusion:

You know the crime! You know why and by what means it was perpetrated! This heinous and unprecedented crime is that of the National Socialist Party-State, but the defendants in their capacity as chiefs of the National Socialist Party and high State officials have all accepted major responsibility in the conception and perpetration of this crime. Their participation in the crime of the Party-State is their own personal fault and brings with it no claim whatsoever to immunity! Proof has now been brought against them!

They must be punished; you know also the dangers to which the world is exposed by their crime and the misery and misfortune it has brought to mankind. You must hit hard without pity. It is enough that the verdict be just! To be sure, there are degrees in their guilt. Does it follow that there must be degrees in the penalties themselves, when those whom we consider the least guilty merit the death penalty! Tomorrow, this International Trial over and the principal war criminals sentenced, we shall go back to our own countries where we may have to prosecute before our own tribunals those who merely carried out the orders of the National Socialist State, who only played the part of hangman.

How could we demand the death penalty for another Kramer, or another Hoess, or for the camp commandants who have on their conscience the deaths of millions of human creatures whom they killed by order, if we hesitated today to demand the supreme

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penalty for those who were the driving force of the criminal State which gave the orders.

The fate of these men lies entirely with your conscience! It is now out of our hands, our task is finished. Now, it is for you in the silence of your deliberations to heed the voice of innocent blood crying for justice.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]

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Afternoon Session

THE PRESIDENT: I call on the chief prosecutor for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

GEN. RUDENKO: Your Lordship, Your Honors.

We are summing up the results of the/legal proceedings against the major German war criminals. In the course of 9 months all the aspects of the case and all the evidence presented to the Tribunal by the Prosecution and by the Defense have been subjected to a careful and detailed scrutiny. Not a single deed of which the defendants have been accused has been left without verification, not a single significant circumstance has been overlooked during the investigation of the present case.

For the first time in the history of mankind criminals against humanity are being held responsible for their crimes before an international criminal tribunal; for the first time nations are trying those who have soaked large areas of the earth with blood, who have annihilated millions of innocent people, destroyed cultural treasures, instituted a systematic massacre and torture, exterminated old people, women, and children, and who in their mad desire for world domination have hurled the universe into an abyss of unprecedented misery.

This Trial, to be sure, is the first of its kind in legal history. A tribunal is sitting in judgment, a tribunal created by the peaceloving free countries, who represent the desire of mankind for progress and to prevent the recurrence of calamities suffered, determined not to permit a gang of criminals to carry out with impunity their preparations for the enslavement of nations and the extermination of peoples in the realization of their fanatic plans. Mankind has called the criminals to account and we, the prosecutors, on behalf of all mankind, are the accusers at this Trial.

And how pitiful are the efforts to dispute the right of mankind to judge its enemies, how vain the efforts to deprive nations of the right to punish those who made enslavement and genocide their aim, and who for many years strove to realize this criminal aim by criminal methods. The present Trial is being so conducted that the defendants, who are accused of the most heinous crimes, are given every possibility to defend themselves and are offered all the necessary legal guarantees. In their own country the defendants who stood at the helm of the Government destroyed all legal forms of justice, and discarded all the principles of legal procedure accepted by civilized mankind. But they themselves are being tried by an international court with legal guarantees to assure all the rights of defense.

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We are now summing up the results of the legal proceedings, we are drawing conclusions from the evidence examined before the Court, we are considering all the data upon which the accusation is based. We now ask: Were the charges levied against the defendants proved before the Court, has their guilt been established? There is only one answer to this question: The legal proceedings fully confirm the charges.

We charge the defendants only with those facts which have been fully established and proved beyond all doubt in the course of the proceedings in which monstrous crimes have been proved, crimes which were prepared over a period of many years by a band of bragging criminals who had seized power in Germany, and who perpetrated these crimes over a period of many years, without regard for the principles of law or the most elementary standards of human morality. These crimes have been proved, the defendants' testimony and the arguments of the Defense have been powerless to refute the charges-they cannot be refuted because it is impossible to refute the truth, and truth is the enduring result of this Trial, the consequence of our long and stubborn efforts. The accusation has been proved in every detail. It has been proved that there existed a Common Plan or Conspiracy in which the defendants participated for the preparation of aggressive wars, in violation of international law and for the enslavement and extermination of peoples. There can be no doubt as to the existence of such a plan just as there is no doubt about the leading part played in it by the defendants. This point of the accusation is confirmed by all the data introduced during the legal proceedings by irrefutable documents, and by the testimonies of witnesses and of the defendants themselves.

All the activities of the defendants were directed toward the preparation and the launching of aggressive wars. All their so-called "ideological work" consisted in the cultivation of bestial instincts, in the installation of the absurd idea of racial superiority in the conscience of the German people, and in the practical realization of their plans for the extermination and enslavement of peoples of "inferior" races, who were supposed only to serve for fertilizing the growth of the "master race." Their "ideological work" consisted in a call to murder, to plunder, to the destruction of culture, and to the extermination of human beings.

The defendants prepared these crimes a long time in advance and then committed them by attacking other countries, seizing foreign territories and exterminating the population. When was this plan or conspiracy conceived? Of course, it is scarcely possible to give an exact date, day and hour on which the defendants conspired to commit their crimes. We cannot and shall not establish our conclusions and assertions on guesses and suppositions. But it

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must be considered as established beyond any possible doubt that from the moment when the fascists seized power in Germany they embarked on their criminal aims and utilized this power for the preparation of aggressive war. All the activity of the defendants was directed toward the preparation of Germany for war. The rearmament and reconversion of economy for war purposes is an irrefutable fact-it has been proved by documents and admitted by the defendants themselves.

We may ask, what was this war for which the defendants began to~ prepare immediately after the seizure of power? Could this possibly be a defensive war? But then nobody intended attacking Germany; nobody had any idea of the kind, and-in my opinion- such an idea could not even have existed. Since Germany was not preparing for a defensive war and inasmuch as the very fact that she did prepare for war has been established-it is evident that she was preparing for a war of aggression. That is the logic of the facts and such are the facts themselves. Germany initiated and waged this very war which she had been preparing, and in 1937-39 occurred precisely that for what she had been preparing since 1933. Hence the conclusion: The plan or the conspiracy existed at least since 1933, that is, from the moment when the fascists seized power and used it for their criminal purposes. These are the facts which are confirmed by the words of the defendants themselves uttered at a time when they did not expect that they would ever be defendants. It is enough to mention the speeches of Schacht, Krupp and others in which they describe how the fascist Government was preparing for war and how all fields of political and economic life were subjected to this one purpose.

I consider as fully proved the charges against the defendants to the effect that in 1933, when the Hitlerites seized power in Germany, they created a plan or conspiracy for the perpetration of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The legal proceedings have unequivocally proved the crimes against peace committed by the defendants, which consisted in planning, preparing, initiating and waging aggressive wars, in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances. Here the facts speak for themselves-wars which involved innumerable victims and destruction, wars whose aggressive nature has been undoubtedly established. The guilt of the defendants in the perpetration of crimes against peace has therefore been fully proved.

The charge of perpetrating war crimes, in waging war by methods contrary to all laws and customs of war, has also been fully proved. Neither the defendants themselves, nor their defense counsel could raise any objections to the very fact of their having committed these crimes.

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All that they could say to this was that the defendants themselves had not committed these atrocities, as for instance the extermination of people in "murder vans" and concentration camps; they had not destroyed the Jews with their own hands, and some of them had not even known about such particular facts. But that such facts really did exist the defendants themselves do not deny. The defendants admit these facts. A fruitless method of defense!

Certainly, the defendants occupying high leading posts in Hitler's Germany were in no need of personally shooting, hanging, smothering, freezing live people to death by way of an experiment, and so on. Their subordinates did that according to their instructions, their henchmen did the dirty work, so to speak, while the defendants only had to give orders which were obeyed without a murmur. Therefore, the attempts of the defendants to deny their connection with these henchmen, to detach themselves from them, were hopeless.

This connection is evident and indisputable. If the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, extracted the gold teeth of the dead, we may say that the Reich Minister, Walter Funk, opened special vaults in the cellars of the Reichsbank in which to keep these gold teeth. If Kaltenbrunner's subordinates exterminated people in "murder vans," the vans themselves were built at the works of Saner, Daimler and Benz, who again were the subordinates of the Defendant Speer. If the prisoners of war were destroyed by professional henchmen of the Death's-Head unit and by the camp guards, the orders to exterminate were signed by Keitel, Generalfeldmarschall of the German Armed Forces. That is to say, it is the defendants who gave the sign for extermination, issued the orders to create a special murder technique, and explained! the ideological reasons for the right of the master races to exterminate "inferior races." It was they who calmly and ruthlessly watched the tortured victims and, as Hans Frank, delivered solemn speeches about "one more step forward" taken by German fascism toward ridding "the living space" of "the inferior races."

The defendants are responsible for every murder, for every drop of innocent blood shed by Hitler's hangmen, for between them and the direct perpetrators of the crimes, murders, tortures, there is a difference only in rank and scope of action. Those are the direct hangmen, and these are the principal hangmen, hangmen of a higher rank. They are far more dangerous than those they trained, in the spirit of hatred toward humanity and cruelty, and whom they nosh, repudiate in order to save themselves.

The criminality of the defendants in the perpetration of war crimes has been fully proved in the sense that they initiated a system of exterminating prisoners of war, peaceful inhabitants,

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women, old men, and children. It is their fault that wherever the German soldier stepped there lay the heaps of murdered and tortured people, ruins and places left barren by fire, devastated towns and villages and the land desecrated and soaked in blood.

The crimes committed against humanity have been completely proved. We cannot omit the crimes committed by the defendants in Germany during their domination: The extermination of all those who in any way expressed their discontent with the Nazi regime, the slave labor and the extermination of human beings in concentration camps, mass extermination of Jews, and the same slave labor and extermination of people in the occupied territories-all this has been proved and the charges are irrefutable. What means of defense have the counsels used, what kind of proofs and arguments could they give to refute the charges?

The arguments of the defendants may be divided into two main groups. First, a number of witnesses summoned by the Defense Counsel. These witnesses were to extenuate the guilt of the defendants by their evidence, to play down the part taken by them in committing the crimes, and to rehabilitate them by all possible means.

These witnesses themselves were, in most cases, defendants in other trials. How can we discuss the objectivity and authenticity of the evidence given by such witnesses of the Defense, if the innocence of the Defendant Funk should be confirmed by his deputy and accomplice, a member of the SS since 1931, Hayler, bearing the rank of SS Gruppenfuehrer; if the criminal Rainer, member of the fascist Party since 1930, and Gauleiter of Salzburg and then of Karnten, was summoned to give evidence on behalf of Seyss-Inquart.

Those so-called "witnesses"-such as for instance Buhler-the right-hand man of the Defendant Frank and accomplice in all his crimes, or Bohle, one of the principal leaders . of the Hitlerite espionage and counterespionage activities and chief of the Auslands-Organisation of the fascist party, came here in order to commit perjury to try to protect their former "bosses" and to save their own lives.

And yet most of the "witnesses" for the Defense in the course of the interrogation became witnesses for the Prosecution. They were convicted by the "mute witnesses documents, mostly of German origin; they themselves were forced to expose those whom they intended to protect.

Another type of the means used by the Defense is legal arguments and considerations.

a) Some legal' aspects of the Trial.

The accusation in the present Trial is based on an enormous quantity of irrefutable facts and is firmly established on the

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principles of law and justice. Therefore, in the opening speeches for the Prosecution, so much attention has already been paid to the legal justification of the responsibility of the defendants.

In the speeches of the Defense a number of legal questions was again raised:

a) On the importance of the principle Nullum crimen sine loge;

b) on the importance of the order;

c) on the responsibility of the state and individuals; d) on the concept of conspiracy.

I therefore consider it necessary to return again to some legal questions in order to answer the attempts of the Defense to confuse clear and simple statements and to change the legal argumentation into a kind of "smoke screen" in an effort to conceal from the Tribunal the gruesome reality of the fascist crimes.

a) Principle Nullum crimen sine lege.

The Defense attempted to deny the accusation by proving that at the time the defendants were perpetrating the offenses with which they were charged, the latter had not been foreseen by existing laws, and that therefore the defendants cannot bear criminal responsibility for them.

I could simply pass over the principle Nullum crimen sine loge, as the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which is an immutable law and is unconditionally to be carried out, provides that this Tribunal "shall have the power to try and punish all persons, who acting in the interest of European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organization or group," committed any of the crimes enumerated in Article 6 of the Charter.

Therefore, from the legal point of view, sentence can be pronounced and carried out without requiring that the deeds which incriminate the defendants be foreseen by the criminal law at the time of their perpetration. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the deeds of the defendants, at the time when they were being committed, were actual criminal acts from the standpoint of the then existing criminal law.

The principles of criminal law contained in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal are the expression of the principles contained in a number of international agreements, enumerated in my opening statement of 8 February 1946 and in the criminal law of all civilized countries. The law of all civilized countries provides criminal responsibility for murder, torture, violence, plunder, et cetera. The fact that those crimes have been initiated by the defendants on a scale surpassing all human imagination and bear the marks of unheard-of sadistic cruelty does not, of course, exclude but rather increases the responsibility of the defendants. If the

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defendants had committed the crimes on the territory and against the citizens of any one country, then in accordance with the declaration of the heads of the Governments of the U.S.S.R., of Great Britain and the United States of America, published on 2 November 1943, and in full agreement with the universally accepted principles of criminal law, they would be tried in that country and according to that country's laws.

This declaration set forth that "the German officers, soldiers, and members of the Nazi Party who were responsible for the aforementioned cruelties, murders and executions, or who voluntarily took part in them, would be deported to the countries where those gruesome crimes had been committed, in order to be tried and punished according to the law of those liberated countries and free governments which would be established there."

Nevertheless, the defendants are war criminals "whose offenses have no particular geographical location" (Article 1 of the Agreement of the Four Powers of 8 August 1945) and, therefore, the International Military Tribunal, acting in accordance with the Charter, is competent to try their crimes. The counsel for the Defendant Hess took the liberty to affirm that, "there can be no doubt that the Crimes against Peace, as they are stated in Article 6, Paragraph 2a, of the Charter, do not exist."

There is no need here to refer to the international agreements as I have already mentioned them in my opening statement on 8 February 1946, in which aggressive war was declared an international crime. Therefore the attempts of the defendants and their counsels to hide behind the principle Nullum crimen sine lege have failed. They are charged with deeds which civilized humanity had long ago recognized as criminal.

b) Execution of an orders

Some of the defendants, in their depositions before the Tribunal, attempted to present themselves as pitiful dwarfs, blind and obedient executors of another's will-the will of Hitler.

In his search for a legal basis for this assertion, counsel for the defense, Jahrreiss, spoke at great length about the importance of Hitler's orders. In the opinion of the counsel Jahrreiss, an order of Hitler's was something quite different" from the order of any other leader, that a Hitler order was an act "legally immutable." Therefore, Professor Jahrreiss questions whether, whatever the Charter may mean by the orders which it rejects as a factor excluding criminal responsibility, it would be possible to adopt the same attitude toward an order of Hitler's. He asks: Could such an order be looked upon as an "order" within the meaning of the Charter?

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The right to interpret law is the irrefutable right of every lawyer, including the counsels for the Defense. Nevertheless, it is quite incomprehensible what logical or other methods have led' him to assert that the provisions of the Charter, specially drafted for the trial of major war criminals of fascist Germany, did not factually imply the very conditions themselves of the activities of these criminals. What orders then issued by whom and in what country are meant by the Charter of the Tribunal?

On the contrary it is indisputable that the authors of the Charter were fully aware of the specific conditions existing in Hitlerite Germany, were thoroughly familiar-from the material of the Kharkov and other trials-with the attempts of the defendants to hide behind Hitler's orders, and it is for this very reason that they made a special proviso to the effect tha