THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has had an application from Dr. Steinbauer for permission to put in an affidavit on behalf of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart. Have the Prosecution had an opportunity of seeing that affidavit yet, and have they any objection to it?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I do not think that all my colleagues have had an opportunity of looking through the affidavit yet. They got it late last night. So if Your Lordship could allow us an hour or two, we would be glad to report later in the day.

THE PRESIDENT: If you would do that, yes.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If Your Lordship please.

DR. LATERNSER: Mr. President, may I just take up a few moments of the Tribunal's time? On the basis of a letter which I received last night, I am now in a position to prove that a written order existed forbidding all preparations for active bacteriological warfare.

I have already discussed this matter with Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe; the letter will be translated, and then the question of whether it should be admitted as evidence can be taken up.

I just wanted to mention this, Mr. President, so that the letter should not then be refused as coming too late.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Laternser, you mean that the letter will be translated and submitted to the Prosecution, and then they will let us know whether they are prepared to agree to the letter going in for what it is worth? But it must be done today.

DR. LATERNSER: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

General Telford Taylor.

BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR (Associate Trial Counsel for the United States): Mr. President and Members of the Tribunal:

Under the Indictment, the Prosecution seeks a declaration of criminality against six groups or organizations. For purposes of

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clarity in marshalling the evidence and specifying the charges, this division into six parts is appropriate, since it accurately reflects the formal structure of the Third Reich.

In a deeper sense, however, the Third Reich was not sextuple. It was simpler than that. The Third Reich was a political machine and a military machine. It was embodied in, and sought its ends through, the Nazi Party and the Armed Forces. Its successes at home and abroad were achieved by these two instruments. The Wehrmacht owed its resurgence largely to the Nazi Party; the Party, in turn, would have been helpless and impotent without the Wehrmacht. As General Reinecke put it, the two pillars of the Third Reich are the Party and the Armed Forces, and each is thrown back on the success or downfall of the other.

Appendix B of the Indictment specifies the leaders and principal instrumentalities of the Party and the Armed Forces. From the Party, the Indictment specifies, for instance, the Corps of Political Leaders, and also the members of the SS, a principal executive arm of the Party. From the Armed Forces, the Indictment specifies the leading generals, to use the language of the Indictment, who had the principal authority for plans and operations.

The composition of this group of military leaders was described by the Prosecution during the case-in-chief, and little more needs be said by way of exposition. The Defense has taken the view that these military leaders do not constitute a group within the meaning of the Indictment. The arguments in support of this technical objection are, I believe, insubstantial, but I want to meet them directly and clearly.

A number of the points made by the Defense are based either on misunderstanding, or a deliberate misreading of the Indictment's definitions. Thus, several witnesses have told us that the "General Staff" consisted of young officers of relatively junior rank who acted as assistants to the commanders-in-chief. This involves a confusion with what is known to military people as the "General Staff Corps" of War Academy graduates. The Indictment does not include these officers, and the Prosecution made this clear at the outset. Insofar as this, or similar testimony, is an attack on the name which the Indictment applies to the military leadership group, this is an utterly insignificant point. There is no stock phrase in German or English for all the military leaders of the Wehrmacht; the Indictment combines a phrase "General Staff" and "High Command" as most descriptive of the chiefs of the four staffs of OKW, OKM, OKH, and OKL, all of whom were key figures in military planning, and the commanders-in-chief who directed operations. Together, they adequately comprehend the military leadership.

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Several other minor and technical points merit only brief mention. It has been objected that the chart which was attached to the affidavits of Halder, Brauchitsch, and Blaskowitz does not accurately depict the chain of command. That is true; the chart was not intended to show the chain of command. The affidavits to which the chart is attached say nothing about chains of command and the Prosecution has not suggested anything of the kind. Equally irrelevant is the question of whether Keitel might have been shown in the same box with Hitler, instead of having a box to himself. None of these points about the chart involves the addition or subtraction of a single member of the group, or affects the Indictment's definition of the military leadership. Equally irrelevant is the contention that the list of members of the group includes some generals who held only temporary appointments as commander-in-chief and were never formally designated as such. This might later be relevant in the trial of these individuals, if they can show that they never really had the status and responsibility of a commander-in-chief, but is not important in contemplating the group as a whole.

Several affidavits submitted by the Defense point out that a few generals were members of the group for less than 6 months; that a number of them died or were removed or retired from their positions before the end of the war, and that the younger ones were not generals when the war started. This is all quite natural. We are concerned here with a seven-year period, during most of which there was a war, which is a hazardous and wearing occupation. During these years some generals died, others failed, still others fell out of favor; new faces appeared as replacements; the great increase in the number of German army groups and armies brought still other officers into the status of commander-in-chief. To the extent that in war the hazards were sharper and the failures more costly in the Wehrmacht than in politics, this turnover may have been correspondingly greater in the Wehrmacht than in the Party. But again, these questions are relevant only on the degree of responsibility of individual members, and not on the responsibility of the group itself.

A special point has been made of the fact that many members of the group did not become such until after 1942. The argument drawn from this circumstance is, I take it, that the generals who joined the group only after 1942 could not have taken part in the planning and launching of aggressive wars. It is true that by the end of 1942 the Wehrmacht, led by the accused group, had invaded or overrun all or a large part of every neighboring country except Switzerland and Sweden, so that further wars of aggression had become impracticable. I suppose that it might be urged with equal, if any, force that many Germans joined or rose to high rank, in the

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SS or the Party Leadership group after 1942. Certainly the argument ignores that the military leadership group, long after 1942, was a group whose official orders were to murder commandos and commissars and to achieve "pacification" by spreading terror. Many of the atrocities committed by the German Armed Forces occurred late in the war. Once again, this point has substance only in that individual late-comers to the group may show in other proceedings that they never learned of, and did not join in, the criminal activities. The group itself cannot escape responsibility by pleading that it continued to grow after the Third Reich's capacity to initiate aggressive wars had been exhausted.

The Defense tells us that the military leaders were not a "group," because they merely occupied official positions without any "unifying element." This is a factual question. Its solution is not advanced by nice linguistic points, such as whether the German word "Gruppe" means "group" or "number." I suppose that "group" means a number of persons chosen because of some likeness. Or, as Mr. Justice Jackson puts it, the members must have an "identifiable relationship" and a "collective general purpose." I suppose also that the "likeness" or "relationship" and the purpose must be meaningful under the London Agreement.

The generals who held the positions listed in the Indictment constituted the military leadership of the Third Reich. That is their "likeness," their "identifiable relationship," or their "unifying element." Their "collective general purpose" was to build up and train the Wehrmacht, and to make its plans and direct its operations.

The evidence to this effect is, I submit, conclusive and uncontradicted. Leading German generals--Brauchitsch and Halder--have said in sworn statements, that those who held the positions listed in the Indictment had the "actual direction of the Armed Forces" and "were in effect the General Staff and High Command." The technical objections made later by the Defense with respect to the chart are quite irrelevant to this essential point.

The testimony of numerous generals, assuming its credibility, that the military leaders did not have any formal organization or any secret advisory council, is quite wide of the mark. The Prosecution has not charged this; nor has it charged that the military leaders were a political party, or that they had a set or uniform view on internal political matters.

Nor are we surprised to hear from some Defense witnesses that the Germans, like ourselves, found co-ordination within a single service easier to achieve than co-ordination between the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The mere existence of the OKW is sufficient proof of the importance which the Germans attached to inter-service collaboration, and numerous documents show that constant and

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detailed planning and discussion took place between the three services. In any event, it is quite unnecessary to look behind the actual course of events. Surely no one would have suggested in 1941, after witnessing the co-ordinated use of tanks and stukas in Africa, and the team-play of all three services during the Norwegian invasion, that the German war effort lacked co-ordination.

From the standpoint of military planning, we are told by Halder that the most important part of the OKW was the Armed Forces Operations Staff, of which Jodl and Warlimont were the chief and deputy chief respectively. The field commanders, too, participated in planning. We know from Brauchitsch and Blaskowitz that the military plans for the- attacks on Poland and other countries were submitted in advance to the commanders-in-chief of army groups and armies, so that OKH would have the benefit of their recommendations. Brauchitsch and Blaskowitz have also told us that, during operations, the OKH and the commanders-in-chief of army groups and armies were in continual consultation, and that the commanders-in-chief were repeatedly consulted by Hitler himself. The testimony of General Reinhardt is to the same effect. Contemporary documents clearly show the participation of the field commanders-in-chief in planning for the Polish campaign.

The commanders-in-chief of army groups and armies in occupied territories had executive power (Vollziehende Gewalt) within the areas under their command. Within those areas they were supreme, and had the power of life and death over the inhabitants. They had the responsibility for determining such questions as whether the Commissar and Commando Orders should be distributed, and if so, how widely and with what instructions.

To summarize, these generals were an aggregation of persons who directed the German Armed Forces, and whose collective purpose was to prepare it for and lead it in military operations. From time to time, when all the members met together, it was a congregation. The purpose and spirit of the London Agreement clearly bring such a body, of men within the scope of Article 9 thereof. The Agreement established this Tribunal to try such offenses in the planning and waging of aggressive wars, and

violations of the laws and customs of war. The German military leaders are charged, among other things, with developing the plans under which aggressive and illegal wars were initiated, and with directing the Armed Forces in the launching and waging of these wars. They are charged with circulating throughout the Wehrmacht orders directing the murder of certain types of prisoners, and with aiding, abetting, and joining in the murder and ill-treatment of the civilian population, all in violation of the laws and customs of war.

The argument of the Defense that the military leaders are not a "group" and are therefore immune to a declaration under Article 9

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is, we submit, utterly unfounded, and flatly contrary to the plain purposes of the London Agreement. That agreement cannot be reasonably construed to exclude from the purview of Article 9 the leaders of one of the two chief instrumentalities of the Third Reich.

The Defense appears to contend that membership in this group was not voluntary. I say "appears to," because in one breath we are told that the generals could not withdraw from the positions they occupied, and in the next, that many of them resigned because of disagreements with Hitler.

The question is, I think, a simple one. We are not concerned here with the ordinary German conscript who made up the bulk of the Wehrmacht. We are concerned entirely with professional soldiers, and with the most zealous, ambitious, and able German officers in the business. Most of them chose a military career because it was in their blood; as Manstein put it, "they considered the glory of war as something great." They slaved at it and were devoted to their profession, and if they reached the status of commander-in-chief, they were, like Manstein, proud that an army had been entrusted to them. No one became a German commander-in-chief unless he wanted to.

It is true that in time of war a professional soldier cannot resign his commission or his post at his own free will. But this does not turn the professional officer into a conscript or make his status an involuntary one. No one becomes a professional officer without knowing in advance the obligations that will bind him in time of war. The fanatical Nazis who rushed to volunteer for the early Waffen-SS divisions or who voluntarily joined other para-military sections of, the Party could not thereafter resign at will, but I have not heard it urged that they were conscripts or involuntary members. The members of the General Staff and High Command Group were keen professional warriors, who competed with others like themselves for the responsibilities and honors of being commanders-in-chief. They rose within the Wehrmacht just as an ambitious Party member might rise to be a Kreisleiter or Gauleiter.

In fact, retirement was easier for the commander-in-chief than anyone else in the Wehrmacht. The junior officer who protested against what was going on around him, might lose advancement or be moved to a less desirable assignment, or be court-martialed and disgraced. He was not given the option of retiring, and he was usually too young to plead illness plausibly. The commanders-in-chief were in a far better position. No War Office or War Department wants a field commander-in-chief who is in constant and fundamental disagreement with his instructions. Such a commander-in-chief must be removed. Yet often he has sufficient seniority, prestige, and acknowledged ability so that his demotion or disgrace

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would be embarrassing, and retirement or acceptance of resignation is the best solution for all concerned.

And this is just what happened with some of the commanders-in-chief. The record is replete with testimony by or about commanders-in-chief who openly, disagreed with Hitler on tactical matters and as a result of such disagreements were retired or allowed to resign. I note in passing that the record is notably barren of evidence that any commander-in-chief openly disagreed with Hitler--

decisively on the issuance of orders which violated the laws of war, or who forced his retirement on account of these orders. At all events, it is quite clear that a commander-in-chief who wanted to retire could contrive to do so; whether by pleading illness or by honest blunt behavior. If he had the will, there was a way out. And it is worth noting that the three Field Marshals who testified before this Tribunal had all found or fallen into the way out, and the record shows that many others were equally successful and that few of them thereafter suffered serious harm on this account.

I pass now to the criminal activities. The Prosecution submits that the evidence before the Tribunal conclusively established the participation of the General Staff and High Command Group in accomplishing the criminal ends of the conspiracy, and in the commission of crimes under all parts of Article 6 of the Charter and under all Counts of the Indictment. We also submit that the criminal aims, methods, and activities of the group were of such a nature that the members may properly be charged with knowledge of them, and that, for the most part, they had actual knowledge.

I will speak first of the prewar period, or, more accurately, of the period ending in the spring of 1939, when detailed planning for the attack on Poland got under way. It is worth noting that during this early period the group defined in the Indictment never exceeded eight in number, and that four are defendants in this Trial.

I do not want to spend time retreading much-travelled roads. We know that during these years the military leaders built up the Wehrmacht and made it into a formidable military machine which struck terror into neighboring countries and later succeeded in overrunning most of them. There is not a shred of evidence to contradict the charge that members of the General Staff and High Command Group directed the building and assembling of this machine. Some witnesses have testified that the rearmament was for defensive purposes only, but the Wehrmacht's new strength was promptly used to support Hitler's aggressive diplomatic policy. Austria and Czechoslovakia were conquered by the Wehrmacht, even though there was no war. The events of 1939 to 1942 and the terrible offensive power of the Wehrmacht are a further and sufficient

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answer, even without referring to Blomberg's official written statement in June 1937 that there was no need to fear an attack on Germany from any quarter.

Witnesses for the Defense have made much of the fact that the generals had little or no foreknowledge of the absorption of Austria. Many of these witnesses were not at the time members of the group, but the point is in any event not helpful, since the Anschluss was not timed in advance by the Germans, but was precipitated by Schuschnigg's surprise order for a plebiscite. That is why, as Manstein testified, plans for the march into Austria had to be quickly improvised. But the plans were drawn up by Manstein under the supervision of Beck (Chief of the General Staff of the Army, and a member of the group), and other members of the group were closely involved in the Anschluss, as were other generals who later became members.

As to the participation of the generals in the Munich crisis and occupation of the Sudetenland, the Defense's main point seems to be that Brauchitsch, Beck, and other generals opposed risking a war at that time. The record makes it quite clear that the generals' attitude was not based on any disagreement with the objective of smashing Czechoslovakia, or on any opposition to a diplomatic policy supported by military threats. Rather was it their attitude that the Wehrmacht was not as yet (in 1938) strong enough to face a war with major powers. The Defendant Jodl expressed it very clearly in his diary in drawing a contrast between "the Fuehrer's intuition that we must do it this year and the opinion of- the Army that we cannot do it as yet, since most certainly the Western Powers will interfere and we are not as yet equal to them."

The further contention of the Defense that there were no military preparations for the occupation of Czechoslovakia, and that the Commander-in-Chief of the Army gave no instructions in this regard, is completely incredible when weighed against contemporary documents of unquestioned authenticity, which have long bee n in evidence before the Tribunal and which the Defense cannot and did not attempt to explain away. The military directives and planning memoranda contained in the so-called "Fall Gruen" file demolish any such contention, and fully reveal the extensive preparations being made by the Wehrmacht under the leadership of Keitel, Jodl, Brauchitsch, Halder, and others. Jodl's diary gives us further details about such matters as co-ordination of the air and ground offensives, timing of the D-day order, collaboration with the Hungarian Army, and order of battle. It also shows the personal participation of other members of the group and of other generals who later became members. Military preparation for absorption of the remainder of Czechoslovakia is also adequately shown by documents in evidence before the Tribunal.

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One other point about this prewar period should be noted. The military leaders not only participated in the plans; they were delighted with the results. They were afraid of getting into a war before they were adequately prepared, but they wanted a big army, and they wanted the strategic and military advantages which Germany derived from Hitler's Austrian and Czechoslovakian successes. That is, in fact, why the Party leaders -and the military leaders worked together; that is why the generals supported Hitler; that is why the Third Reich, through the Party and the Wehrmacht, was able to achieve what it did achieve. Leading German generals have told the Tribunal this in so many words. Blomberg tells us that before 1938-1939 the German generals were not opposed to Hitler. Blaskowitz says that all officers in the Army welcomed rearmament and therefore had no reason to oppose Hitler. Both of them tell us that Hitler produced the results that all the generals desired.

The testimony of Blomberg and Blaskowitz is in no way weakened by the statements of various Defense witnesses that many army officers disliked some of Hitler's internal policies and distrusted some of the Nazi politicians. It is too much to ask that all partners in crime should like and trust each other. That, in spite of these differences, the Third Reich came so close to imposing its dominion and evil theories on the world merely emphasizes the deep agreement between the Party and the military leaders on the most essential objectives--national unity and armed might--in order to accomplish territorial aggrandizement. This cannot be doubted, and for confirmation we need only look at the testimony of a witness called by the Defense (Colonel General Reinhardt, who was Chief (f the Army Training Section before the war and later commanded a Panzer army and army group on the Eastern Front). When asked what was the attitude of the officers' corps toward Hitler, he replied: "I do not believe there was a single officer who did not back up Hitler in his extraordinary successes. Hitler had led Germany out of its utmost misery, both politically and in its foreign politics, and economically."

So we turn to the war itself. The group of military leaders specified in the Indictment becomes much larger; we are no longer concerned only with the generals in Berlin, but also with the war lords who commanded the Wehrmacht in the field-names far more familiar to and feared by the peoples of the territories overrun by the Germans. Names such as Blaskowitz, Von Bock, Von Kluge, Kesselring, Von Reichenau, Von Rundstedt, Sperrle, and Von Weichs. What do the generals say in defense of the attack on Poland? Some of their statements, like Manstein's explanation that the Poles might "carelessly" attack Germany, are merely laughable. About the best they can say is that they expected that Poland would give in without a struggle. Were this a defense, its credibility is dubious.

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Hitler himself had made it clear to the military leaders that it was not a question of Danzig and the Corridor, but of living space and increasing the food supply under German exploitation. The generals could have hardly expected the Poles to give themselves up entirely without a struggle, and Hitler had said that there would be war and no repetition of the Czech affair.

But in any event it is not claimed by the Defense that the generals hoped for a "Blumenkrieg." The witnesses for the Defense have agreed that the Germain demands on Poland were to be enforced by military threats and armed might. There is no evidence that the generals opposed this policy of sheer hold-up. In fact, it is clear that they heartily endorsed it, since the Polish Corridor was regarded by them as a "desecration" and the regaining from Poland of former German territory as a "point of honor." And it has never been a defense that a robber is surprised by the resistance of his victim, and has to commit murder in order to get the money.

There is no controversy concerning the knowing participation of the members of the General Staff and High Command group in the planning and launching of the attack itself. Brauchitsch has described how the plans were evolved, and then passed to the field commanders-in-chief for their recommendations. We know, both from his own testimony and from contemporary documents, that Blaskowitz, one of the field commanders-in-chief, received the plans for the attack in June and thereafter perfected them in consultation with the army group and OKH. Rundstedt's chief of staff received the plans, and there can be no doubt that all the other commanders-in-chief did also. A week before the attack, all the members of the group met at the Obersalzberg for the final briefing.

As the war spread to other countries, and eventually over the entire continent of Europe, the Wehrmacht grew and many more army groups, armies, air fleets, and naval commands were created and the membership in the group was correspondingly enlarged. All three branches of the Wehrmacht participated in the invasion of Norway and Denmark, which was an excellent demonstration of "combined operations," involving the closest joint planning and co-ordination between the three services. The documents before the Tribunal show that this operation was a brain-child of the German admirals; the proposal originated with Raeder and other naval members of the group and, after Hitler's approval had been obtained, the plans were developed at the OKW. Numerous members of the group participated in its planning and execution. The testimony of several army commanders that they had no foreknowledge of the attack is, not surprisingly, a fact, since the OKH and the Army commanders-in-chief were all fully absorbed at the time in planning the much larger attack on the Low Countries and France. Only a few German divisions were used in Norway and

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Denmark and, since it was a "combined operation," the plans were developed in OKW, not OKH.

Dr. Laternser's defense of the Norwegian attack on the basis that it was a preventive move to forestall an English invasion of Norway, might have some superficial plausibility if there were any evidence that the Norwegian invasion was improvised to meet an emergency. But it is totally and wantonly incredible in the fact of documents which show that the Norwegian invasion had been under discussion since October 1939, that active planning began in December that on 14 March Hitler was still hesitant about giving the order for the attack because he was "still looking for some justification," and that all through the weeks preceding the Norwegian attack there was discussion within the General Staff group as to whether it might not be preferable to initiate the general Western offensive against France and the Low Countries before undertaking the Norwegian campaign.

As for the major attack in the West, it appears from the testimony of Defense witnesses that Hitler wanted to attack in the fall of 1939, and that Brauchitsch and other generals persuaded him to postpone until the spring of 1940. This postponement indeed shows that the generals had considerable influence with Hitler, but hardly excuses the later attack. When the spring of 1940 arrived, according to Manstein, "the offensive in the West, from the point of view of the soldier, was absolutely inevitable," There is no evidence that a single German commander protested against or opposed the flagrant and ruthless violation of the neutrality of the Low Countries.

The explanations of the Defense concerning the crimes against peace are labored and implausible, and are in conflict equally with the documents before the Tribunal and with the history of the years in question. Nor is it true that the military leaders were mere puppets without influence on Hitler or the course of events. Naturally there were disagreements not only between Hitler and the Wehrmacht, but within the Wehrmacht itself. If Hitler prevailed at times, so at times did the Wehrmacht, whether it was to postpone the Western offensive or to launch the attack on Denmark and Norway, Despite the attempt to make the contrary appear, Hitler was not so stupid as to act without the benefit of military advice. One need only look at Hitler's directive to the military leaders of 12 November 1940, written after the successful conclusion of the Western offensive, in which Hitler discusses very tentatively his future plans in France, a possible offensive in Spain, whether Madeira and the Azores should be occupied, what assistance should be given the Italians in North Africa, what to do in Greece and the Balkans, what the future might hold with regard to the Soviet

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Union, and whether to invade England in the spring of 1941. Hitler concluded:

"I shall expect the commanders-in-chief to express their opinions on the measures anticipated in this directive. I shall then give orders regarding the method of execution and synchronization of the individual actions" (444-PS).

No, the leaders of the Wehrmacht were not puppets. If the generals owed their opportunity to rebuild the Wehrmacht largely to Hitler and the Nazis, it is very true that Hitler was utterly dependent on the generals for carrying out his plans. Brauchitsch has pointed out that "the carrying out of the orders that were given to the Army and to the army groups required such a high knowledge of military matters, and such ability and psychological understanding, that there were only a few people who were actually able to carry out such orders." And it is worth noting also that despite the very real and natural friction between the war lords and a former corporal, Hitler never, until July 1944, turned outside the ranks of the Army for his commanders-in-chief. Even during these final desperate months only four outsiders, Himmler himself and three others from the Waffen-SS, achieved the coveted distinction. Nor was the Wehrmacht that swarmed over the continent of Europe led by reluctant men. These aggressive wars were launched and waged by men who worshipped armed might, and wanted to extend the hegemony of Germany. That is, at bottom, why the Nazis and the Wehrmacht leaders gave the Third Reich its unity. I recall the Tribunal's attention to Admiral Fricke's memorandum of June 1940:

"It is too well known to need further mention that Germany's present position in the narrows of the Heligoland Bight and in the Baltic--bordered as it is by a whole series of states and under their influence--is an impossible one for the future of Greater Germany. The power of Greater Germany in the strategic areas acquired in this war should result in the existing population of these -areas feeling themselves politically, economically, and militarily to be completely dependent on Germany. If the following results are achieved-that expansion is undertaken (on a scale I shall describe later) by means of the military measures for occupation taken during the war, that French powers of resistance (popular unity, mineral resources, industry, and armed forces) will be so broken that a revival must be considered out of the question, that the smaller states such as the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway are forced into a dependence on us which will enable us in any circumstances and at any time easily to occupy these countries again--then in practice the same, but psychologically much more, will be achieved.

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"The solution, therefore, appears to be to crush France, to occupy Belgium, part of Northern and Eastern France, to allow the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway to exist on the basis indicated above" (C-41).

In the face of documents such as this one, we-have nevertheless heard the generals say over and over again that they were never told about what was going on and heard about events for the first time over the radio. Over and over again they have protested that they never heard about certain things until they were lodged in the jail at Nuremberg. Military figures, like so many others in this case, have not hesitated to put the responsibility for things which they cannot deny or avoid on the shoulders of one or two people whom they seek to portray as peculiar and unrepresentative of the group. The common denominator of these scapegoats is that they are all dead. The dead Reichenau is made to share the blame with the other dead who cannot speak--Hitler, Himmler, Dr. Rasche, and the rest. These defenses are mean and they are utterly incredible, The world will never believe them.

No group of men was more intimately concerned than were the military leaders with what was going on in and around Germany in the years before the war. The military leaders now tell us that they neither knew, nor cared to know, nor ought to have known, about these things. If what they say is true, then they are utterly unique, for nearly all the world had heard something about these things. One of the most remarkable things about this Trial has been that, instead of a series of startling revelations, the documents assembled here and the labor devoted to them have served to confirm what was already known or suspected throughout the world many years ago. I cannot suppose that anybody will ever subscribe to the view which the military leaders gave been forced by circumstances to put forward here in order to try and clear themselves from a stain which is far too dark to be effaced.

The crimes against peace in which the General Staff and High Command group participated led inevitably to the war crimes which followed. Without the participation of this group in the crimes against peace, there would not have been any war crimes. It is not a change from one subject to another, but only the inevitable chain of causation, which leads us now to consider the methods by which the Wehrmacht waged the wars it had launched.

We do not, of course, suggest that the hands of every German soldier were plunged into innocent blood, or that the rules of war and the laws of decency were disregarded by every German commander. But we do say that the nature and extent of the atrocities ordered by the leaders of the Wehrmacht and thereafter perpetrated by it in many countries of Europe, reveal and prove a calculated

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indifference on the part of the military leaders to the commission of crimes.

The uncontested fact is that the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, under instructions from Hitler as its Supreme Commander, issued various orders which flagrantly contravened the rules of war. These included the orders for the shooting of commandos and political commissars, the orders to "pacify" the occupied territories of the Soviet Union by spreading terror, and others. The Defense does not dispute the issuance of these orders, and it does not and cannot contest their criminality. Rather are we told that the German commanders were honorable soldiers, that they disapproved of these orders, that they tacitly agreed not to execute the orders, and that the orders were not executed.

Let us test this defense against the facts in the case of the Commando Order. The original order and the other relevant documents are all in evidence. In October 1942, Hitler ordered that enemy commandos were to be slaughtered to the last man; that even if they surrendered, they were none the less to be shot immediately, unless interrogation were necessary, in which case they were to be shot thereafter. The order was not a purposeless piece of criminality; Allied commando operations were doing serious harm to the German war effort, and Hitler thought this order would act as a deterrent.

The order was issued from the OKW and distributed to all three branches of the service, Army, Navy, and Air Force. There is ample evidence that it was widely distributed and well known within the Wehrmacht. Rundstedt, commander-in-chief in the West, reported on 23 June 1944 that "the treatment of enemy commando groups has so far been carried out according to the Hitler order." Two years later, under different circumstances, Rundstedt testified that he "evaded" and "sabotaged" the order, and that it was not carried out. But we know from the documents that it was carried out. Pursuant to this order, British and Norwegian commandos were executed in Norway in 1942 and 1943; American commandos were shot in Italy in 1944; Allied soldiers were executed in Slovakia in 1945. And, in the nature of things, the order must have been carried out in other instances of which, unhappily, no trace now remains.

In the light of these documents, what remains of the defense? Stated most favorably, merely that, because some of the military leaders disapproved the order, it was not executed as often as it might otherwise have been. But this defense is worse than worthless; it is shameful.

We must not forget that to kill a defenseless prisoner of war is not only a violation of the rules of war. It is murder. And murder is not the less murder whether there is one victim, or 55 (which is the number of slaughtered commandos shown by the documents),

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or Ohlendorf's. 99,000. Crime has been piled upon crime in this case until we are in danger of losing our sense of proportion. We have heard so much 'of mass-extermination that we are likely to forget that simple murder is a capital offense.

The laws of all civilized nations require that a man go to some lengths to avoid associating himself with murder, whether as an accomplice or accessory or co-conspirator. And these requirements can reasonably be applied to the German military leaders. Before this Tribunal they have made much of their traditions of honor, decency, courage, and chivalry.

Under German military law, a subordinate is liable to punishment for obeying the order of a superior if the subordinate knows that the order requires the commission of a general or a military crime. The Commando Order required the commission of murder, and every German officer who handled the order knew that perfectly well.

When Hitler directed the issuance of this order, the leaders of the Wehrmacht knew that it required the commission of murder. The responsibility for handling this question lay squarely on the group defined in the Indictment. The chiefs at OKW, OKH, OKL, and OKM had to decide whether to refuse to issue a criminal order or whether to pass it on to the commanders-in-chief in the field. The commanders in the field, Army, Navy and Air Force, had to decide whether to execute it or refuse to execute it, and whether to distribute it to their subordinates.

One can imagine that there were many meetings and telephone conversations among various members of the group to discuss this matter. There is no evidence that a single member of the group openly protested or announced his refusal to execute it. The general result was that the order was distributed throughout a large part of the Wehrmacht. This put the subordinate commanders in the same position as their superiors. We are told that some of the generals tacitly agreed not to carry out the order. If so, it was a miserable and worthless compromise. By distributing the order with "secret" or "tacit" understandings, the commanders-in-chief merely spread the responsibility and deprived themselves of any effective control over the situation. A tacit agreement to disobey cannot be so widely circulated. The inevitable result, and the result proved by the documents, was that the order was carried out and innocent men were murdered.

Because he was responsible for enforcing the Commando Order, General Dostler was tried, convicted, and shot to death. For the same crime, General Falkenhorst now stands condemned to die. But the responsibility for these murders is shared by Falkenhorst and Dostler with every German commander-in-chief at home or in the

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field who allowed this order to become the official law of the Wehrmacht and participated in its distribution. On this charge alone, I submit, the General Staff and High Command group is proved to have participated directly, effectively, and knowingly in the commission of war crimes.

On the Eastern Front, the callous indifference of the German war lords to violations of the laws of war and to mass-suffering and death produced results equally criminal and, because on a grander scale, far more horrible. The atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht and other agencies of the Third Reich in the East were of such staggering enormity that they rather tax the power of comprehension. Why did all these things happen? Analysis will show, I believe, that this was not simply madness and bloodlust. On the contrary, there was both method and purpose. These atrocities occurred as the result of carefully calculated orders and directives, issued prior to or at the time of the attack on the Soviet Union, which form a coherent, logical pattern.

One need not here consider the reasons why Hitler, in the fall of 1940, began to consider seriously making an attack on the Soviet Union. We do know that, beginning in September of 1940, he was constantly discussing this possibility with the military leaders, who had ample opportunity to express their views to him. We know that there was a division of opinion among the generals and admirals; none of them appear to have been much governed by moral scruples, but some thought the attack unnecessary, and others were dubious that a quick victory could be achieved. However, still others agreed with Hitler that the attack should be launched. When Hitler, in consultation with and with the support of part of the military leadership, decided to make the attack, there is no indication that any leading generals stood out decisively against the decision, and they embarked on the war with the utmost determination to carry it through to a successful conclusion.

Whatever may have been the reasons which prompted the attack, there was one factor which, once the decision had been made, became a vitally important object and purpose. of the attack. That was to seize large areas of the Soviet Union and to exploit these areas for the material benefit of Germany. To accomplish this, it was desired to "pacify" and crush all opposition in the occupied territory as rapidly as possible and with a minimum expenditure of manpower and material, to obliterate the Soviet political system and set up new German-supported regional political administrations, and to revise and expand the productive resources of these areas and convert them to the uses of the Third Reich.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[A recess was taken.]

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GEN. TAYLOR: Mr. President, at our recess I was describing the program for the exploitation and pacification of the Occupied Eastern Territories. Hitler had very definite ideas as to how this program should be carried out, and these ideas were partially embodied in the series of directives and orders with which the Tribunal is now familiar. Some of these orders were to be executed directly by the Wehrmacht, some of them by other agencies of the Reich, but in co-ordination with and supported by the Wehrmacht.

For the rapid and economical "pacification" of occupied territories, after Hitler had consulted Brauchitsch, the OKW issued the order of 22 July 1941, which ordered the commanders-in-chief to establish security, not by sentencing the guilty in courts of law, but by spreading "such terror as is likely, by its mere existence, to crush every will to resist amongst the population." For the same purpose, the OKW issued the order of 13 May 1941, which suspended the use of military courts for punishing offenses by enemy civilians, and directed that the troops themselves should accomplish pacification by "ruthless action," the most extreme methods, and "collective despotic measures" against localities. In furtherance of these abominable policies, it was further ordered that the German troops who committed offenses against Soviet civilians were not to be punished at all, unless punishment were necessary to maintain discipline and security or prevent waste of food or material. Every commissioned officer on the Eastern Front was to be instructed promptly and emphatically to behave in accordance with these principles. The language of the order was calculated to incite officers and men alike to the most despicable behavior.

In these two orders we can see the basic composition of this revolting picture. In more detail, Hitler expected particularly bitter opposition to his new Russian policies and regimes from officers and agents of the Soviet Government and from all Jews. These elements he decided to exterminate utterly, as they would otherwise remain a constant focal point of resistance within the occupied areas.

In furtherance of these policies of mass murder, the OKW issued the order for the killing of all political commissars who might be captured. This, like the Commando Order, required the murder of defenseless prisoners of war. And in this case, the military leaders behaved in precisely the same fashion. Not one commander-in-chief openly protested or openly announced his, refusal to execute the order. A few commanders may have refused to distribute it down to the troops, but it was distributed and became well known over the entire Eastern Front. As in the case of the Commando Order, we are told that by tacit agreement among the commanders it was not carried out. The evidence in support of this is that particular commanders or other officers never personally knew of an instance where a captured commissar was shot. We may assume the truth of

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some of these statements, but it is none the less totally incredible, in view of the order's wide distribution, and the deliberate brutalizing of the German soldier by such orders as these, and such directives as Reichenau and Manstein issued to their troops, that the Commissar Order was not carried out in many cases. It must have been.

The campaign of mass-extermination was extended from commissars to all Communists by the OKW order of 16 September 1941, which directed that all cases of resistance to the Wehrmacht, no matter what the circumstances, should be attributed to Communists and that "the death penalty for 50 to 100 Communists should generally be regarded as suitable atonement for one German soldier's life."

Terrorization and exploitation of the Russian countryside and extermination of undesired elements obviously could not be carried out by the Wehrmacht alone. Many other agencies of the Third Reich had an important share in this far-flung, evil program. Among these other agencies, perhaps the most unspeakable were the special task forces of Himmler, known as Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos. The mission of these units was to assist in "pacification" and pave the way for the new political regime by stamping out opposition, and particularly by slaughtering Communists and Jews. We know, both from contemporary documents and from the confession of the leader of one of these units, with what terrible fidelity that mission was performed.

The particular missions of the Einsatzgruppen were assigned by Himmler, but these units could not simply be turned loose in the operational and rear areas of a conquered territory without administration, supply, communication facilities, and sufficient control by the military to ensure that their tasks would be co-ordinated with, and at least would not obstruct, military operations. The Defense has made every effort to conceal this plain fact, but any soldier, and indeed anyone who gives the matter thought, must know that it is true.

And this is quite clear from the documents. The OKW Directive for Special Areas of 13 March 1941 provided that Himmler could send these units into operational areas in order to perform "special tasks for the preparation of the political administration, tasks which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing political systems." But the order carefully specified that the execution of Himmler's tasks should not disturb military operations, and that the units were subject to the supreme authority of the commander-in-chief of the army in the operational area. The billeting and feeding of Himmler's units was to be furnished by the Army. It was directed that further details should be arranged between the OKH and Himmler. Brauchitsch has confirmed that

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subsequently the details were settled at a conference between Heydrich and General Wagner of OKH, and Schellenberg, who drafted the agreement, has described its contents.

These infamous gangs of murderers, in short, were fed and housed by the Army and would have been helpless, without the Army's support. The testimony of some of the German generals that these killings of thousands upon thousands took place without their knowledge would make one smile, were not the truth so black and sickening. A military area, even far behind the front, is not a desert where one can wander to and fro unchallenged. It is a veritable maze of rear headquarters, trucking companies, ammunition dumps, supply depots, signal installations, hospitals, gasoline dumps, railway guards, prisoner-of-war stockades, anti-aircraft batteries, airfields, engineers, ordnance units, motor pools-a thousand and one other troops that furnish the base of operations and the line of communications for an army in the field. The smooth functioning of this vast and complicated train is vital to the success of the combat troops. The enemy knows this, and is eager both to disrupt it and to extract intelligence from it through sabotage groups, agents, and partisans. Therefore the occupying forces guard their installations, patrol the roads and railways, and garrison the centers of population. Travellers, no matter what uniform they wear, are stopped and questioned and asked for identification. These troops in the rear come in close contact with the civilian population, and know what is going on among them. Military Police and counterintelligence troops police the area and report on its condition to higher headquarters.

Furthermore, a commander in the field dislikes to have autonomous units under special orders from home at large in his area. This is particularly true when, as here, the units came as servants of Himmler, whom the German generals say they thought to be their enemy, intent on usurping their powers and functions. The idea that Himmler's extermination squads flitted through Russia, murdering Jews and Communists on a large scale, but secretly and unbeknown to the Army, is utterly preposterous--the desperate sparring of men who have no recourse but to say what is not true.

Let us look again at the pattern as a whole. Most of it was written down in plain German before the attack on Russia was launched. Terrorize the populace, let acts of violence and brutality on the part of German troops go unpunished, kill the commissars, kill 100 Communists whenever you can find an excuse, make way for and feed and house Himmler's squads performing "tasks which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing. political systems." And the political system for which the

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commanders-in-chief were fighting had already been exterminating Communists and Jews and boasting about it for years.

The German generals were bright enough to understand this pattern. In any event, it had been explained to them. The OKW directive suspending the courts-martial ended with a directive to the military leaders to inform their legal advisers about the verbal information in which the political intentions of the High Command were explained to the commanders-in-chief. The Defendant Rosenberg, at the time of or before' the invasion, advised Keitel, Jodl, Warlimont, Brauchitsch, and Raeder about his "political and historical conception of the Eastern problem." According to Brauchitsch, Hitler had explained the ideological nature of the war to all the commanders-in-chief in conference at the time the Commissar Order was issued. The affidavits of Generals Roettiger, Rode, and Heusinger further confirm the obvious conclusion that the whole pattern of "pacification" was well understood throughout the German military leadership.

An army demoralized and brutalized by criminal orders and evil doctrines will behave in a brutal way in circumstances where they have no explicit orders. I have not, for instance, seen a written order that Soviet prisoners who could not march should be shot. I am prepared to believe that some German generals treated prisoners as well as they could, but I also find convincing the complaint of the young German lieutenant that efforts to pacify and exploit the Ukraine were being frustrated because:

"... prisoners were shot when they could not, march any more, right in the middle of villages and some of the bigger hamlets, and the corpses were left lying about, and the population saw in these facts what they did not understand and which confirmed the worst distortions of enemy propaganda."

For the same reasons, the anti-partisan warfare was carried out brutally, and with enormous loss of life among innocent civilians. As the divisions of the German Army were transferred between the Eastern and Western Fronts, the practices on each front spread to the other. Slaughter at Kherson and Kovno was reflected in massacre at Malmedy and Oradour. The German Army

had been demoralized by its leaders. I recall to the Tribunal that a high German military judge, as early as 1939, granted "extenuating circumstances" to an SS officer who, without any reasons, shot 50 Jews in a Polish synagogue because:

"... as an SS man, particularly sensitive to the sight of Jews, and to the hostile attitude of Jewry to the Germans, he therefore acted quite thoughtlessly in youthful rashness."

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One must remember the observation before this Tribunal of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Von Aem Bach-Zelewski, who pointed out that:

"... when for years, for decades, the doctrines are preached that the Slav race is an- inferior race and Jews not even human, then such an explosion is inevitable."

The defense of these charges is the same as in the case of the Commando Order. A mass of affidavits have been submitted by individual commanders-in-chief and subordinate officers in which they express their abhorrence of these orders and profess that they did not execute them. Again we hear of tacit understandings, even in the face of evidence as to the slaughter which the orders caused. It makes one gasp that such a defense can be put forward at all, apparently without shame.

Again I say that the responsibility lies squarely on the group specified in the Indictment. Keitel, Jodl, Brauchitsch, Goering, and their colleagues at the center -of affairs circulated these malignant

orders, the criminality of which a child could see. Kleist, Kluge, Rundstedt, Reichenau, Schobert, Manstein, and the other field commanders-in-chief distributed them to their subordinate officers. No secret agreements could forestall the terrible result which followed inevitably.

Is it really too much to ask that the commanders-in-chief should have refused to distribute these orders? As soldiers they were bound to obey their Supreme Commander, but their own law and code says that it is the duty of every soldier to refuse to obey orders which he knows to be criminal. This is hard for the ordinary soldier acting under pistol-point orders from his lieutenant. It is far less difficult for the commander-in-chief; he is expected to be mature, educated, accustomed to responsibility, and disciplined to be steady and unflinching when put to a test. Under their own law and under the traditions they are so shameless as still to vaunt, the leaders were in duty bound to reject these orders. Their failure caused suffering and death to hundreds of thousands; their failure resulted directly in countless murders and other brutal crimes; and

they, far more than the soldiers whom these orders led into crime, are the real criminals.

Hitler needed the commanders-in-chief; he needed them desperately and would have been helpless without them. They could have held securely and firmly to the standards which every soldier, and indeed every man, is expected to meet. And it was not, in most cases, fear of Hitler that caused them to betray these standards. They were ready enough to disagree with Hitler on other matters which they regarded as more important. They did not want to risk a breach with Hitler over what they callously regarded as a minor matter. They were intent on "larger" things--

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the conquest of Europe--on which they and Hitler were in agreement.

Some of the military leaders, we cannot tell how many were willing to go much further and to stand sponsor for Nazi ideology. Reichenau and Manstein lent their names and prestige shamelessly in order to advance these vile doctrines. We cannot capture all the orders; we cannot tell how many German commanders-in-chief there are who, like Manstein, unctuously protesting their disapproval of Nazi doctrine, could be confronted with their own nauseating manifestoes.

We may assume, for the sake of argument, that many German commanders-in-chief disliked the pattern of orders and doctrines which the evidence here has unfolded. He who touches filth is not excused because he holds his nose. For reasons which appeared to them sufficient, the German military leaders helped to weave this pattern. It is just this calculated indifference to crime which makes their conduct so unspeakable. Those individual commanders-in-chief, if any, who can show clean hands may come forth and clear themselves. But the military leaders as a group, E submit, are proved beyond doubt to have participated directly, effectively, and knowingly in numerous and widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Under Articles 9 and 10 of the London Agreement for the Trial of Major War Criminals, Keitel and Raeder and the other military defendants are on trial not only as individuals, but as representatives of the German military leadership. The military defendants committed their crimes as military leaders and hand-in-hand with others. It is in their representative capacity that the military leaders in the dock are truly important.

The evidence against this group is so complete and compelling that their attempts at defense must be desperately and inconsistently contrived. When called to account as a group for their

crimes the famous German General Staff disintegrates, like a child's puzzle thrown on the floor, into 130 separate pieces. We are told that there is nothing there. Called upon to state their views on Hitler, aggressive war, or other unpleasant subjects, the pieces reassemble themselves into pattern instantly and magically. With true German discipline, the same words come from every mouth. When the question is the participation of the Wehrmacht in killing Jews, they indignantly deny that their soldiers would do such things. When the question is the enforcement of law and discipline within the Wehrmacht, we are met by affidavits saying that German soldiers who killed Jews were court-martialed and shot. Charged with responsibility as a group, they plead immunity on the ground that they could not resign and that their status was therefore

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involuntary. Seeking to establish that they disapproved the policies of Hitler, they boast that many of their number who expressed their opposition were allowed or requested to resign. The inconsistency of their appeal to the soldier's oath of obedience is particularly shameless. Charged with launching aggressive wars against neighboring countries, they plead the oath in their defense. Accused of crimes committed during the war, they take credit to themselves for refusing to obey criminal orders. And so it is represented that the soldier who in time of peace was completely bound by his oath to give unquestioning obedience, regardless of consequences, to a perjured head of state, could nevertheless, when his country was at war and obedience supposedly far more necessary, dabble in secret disobedience and thereby shift the blame and responsibility for the murder of commandos and commissars onto other shoulders.

Let us look once more at these military leaders whose actions we have just examined. They are a group in more ways than one. They are more than a group; they are a class, almost a caste. They have a course of thought and a way of life. They have distinctive qualities of mind, which have been noted and commented on by the rest of the world for many decades, and which have their roots in centuries. They have been a historical force, and are still to be reckoned with. They are proud of it.

To escape the consequences of their actions, these men now deny all this. But in their very denial, the truth is apparent. Their group spirit and unity of outlook and purpose is so deep that, it drops from their lips willy-nilly. Read their testimony; always they refer to themselves as "we" or "we old soldiers," and they are forever stating "our" attitude on this or that subject. Rundstedt's testimony is full of such expressions of the attitude of the German military leaders as a group on a great variety of questions. Manstein told us that "we soldiers mistrusted all parties"; "we all considered ourselves the trustees of the unity of Germany"; and "the National Socialist aim of unification was according to our attitude, though not the National Socialist methods."

What are the characteristics of the German military leaders? They have been familiar to students of history for a long time; books have been written by them and about them. They are manifest in the documents and testimony before the Tribunal.

They are careful observers of Germany's internal politics, but their tradition and policy is not to identify themselves with parties or internal political movements. This is the only true note in the refrain, which has been sung so often at this Trial, that "we were soldiers and not politicians." They regard themselves as above politics and politicians. They are concerned only with what they

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consider to be the deeper, unchanging interests of Germany as a nation. As Manstein put it:

"We soldiers mistrusted all parties, because every party in Germany placed its own interests above the interests of Germany. We all considered ourselves the trustees of the unity of Germany in this respect...."

The German military leaders are deeply interested in foreign politics and diplomacy. Any intelligent professional officer must be. Training is conducted, equipment is built, and plans are evolved in the light of what is known about the military potential and intentions of other countries. No officers in the world were more aware of this than the Germans; none studied the international scene as closely or with such cold calculation. It was their mentor, Clausewitz, who described war as an instrument of politics.

The German military leaders want Germany to be free from political fluctuations, and a government which will mobilize German resources behind the Wehrmacht and inculcate in the German public the spirit and purposes of militarism. This is what Rundstedt meant when he said that: "The National Socialist ideas which were good were usually ideas which were carried over from old Prussian times and which we had known already without the National Socialists." That is what Manstein meant by the "unity" of Germany.

The German military leaders believe in war. They regard it as part of a normal, well-rounded life. Manstein told us from the witness box that they "naturally considered the glory of war as something great." The "considered, opinion" of OKW in 1938 recited that:

"Despite all attempts to outlaw it, war is still a law of nature which may be challenged but not eliminated. It serves the survival of the race and state or the assurance of its historical future.

"This high moral purpose gives war its total character and its ethical justification."

These characteristics of the German military leaders are deep and permanent. They have bean bad for the world, and bad for Germany too. Their philosophy is so perverse that they regard a lost war, and a defeated and prostrate Germany, as a glorious opportunity to start again on the same terrible cycle. Their attitude of mind is nowhere better set forth than in a speech delivered by General Beck before the German War Academy in 1935. The

audience of young officers was told that "the hour of death of our old magnificent Army" in 1919 "led to the new life of the young Reichswehr," and that the German Army returned from the first World War "crowned with the laurels of immortality." Later on

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they were told that if the military leaders have displayed intelligence and courage, then losing a war "is ennobled by the pride of a glorious fall." In conclusion, they are reminded that Germany is a "military-minded nation" and are exhorted to remember "the duty which they owe to the man who recreated and made strong again the German Wehrmacht."

In 1935, that man was Hitler. In previous years it was other men. The German militarist will join forces with any man or government that offers fair prospect of effective support for military exploits. Men who believe in war as a way of life learn nothing from the experience of losing one.

I have painted this picture of the German military leaders not because it is an unfamiliar one, but because it is so familiar that it may be in danger of being overlooked. We must not become preoccupied with the niceties of a chart or details of military organization at the expense of far more important things which are matters of common knowledge. The whole world has long known about and suffered at the hands of the German military leadership. Its qualities and conduct are open and notorious. Is the world now to be told that there is no such group? Is it to hear that the German war lords cannot be judged because they were a bunch of conscripts? We have had to deal seriously with such arguments only because there are no others.

That the case against the German militarists is clear does not make it the less important. We are at grips here with something big and evil and durable; something that was not born in 1933, or even 1921; something much older than anyone here; something far more important than any individual in the dock; something that is not yet dead and that cannot be killed by a rifle or a hangman's noose.

For 9 months this courtroom has been a world of gas chambers, mountains of corpses, human-skin lampshades, shrunken skulls, freezing experiments, and bank vaults filled with gold teeth. It is vital to the conscience of the world that all the participants in these enormities shall be brought to justice. But these exhibits, gruesome as they are, do not lie at the heart of this case. Little will be accomplished by shaking the poisoned fruit from the tree. It is much harder to dig the tree up by the roots, but only this will in the long run do much good.

The tree which bore this fruit is German militarism. Militarism is as much the core of the Nazi Party as of the Wehrmacht itself. Militarism is not the profession of arms. Militarism is embodied in the "military-minded nation" whose leaders preach and practice conquest by force of arms, and relish war as something desirable

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in itself. Militarism inevitably leads to cynical and wicked disregard of the rights of others and of the very elements of civilization. Militarism destroys the moral character of the nation that practises it and, because it can be overthrown only by its own weapons, undermines the character of nations that are forced to combat it.

The wellspring of-German militarism through the years had been the group of professional military leaders who have become known to the world as the "German General Staff." That is why the exposure and discrediting of this group through the declaration of criminality is far more important than the fate of the ,uniformed individuals in the box, or of other members of this group as individuals. Keitel and Raeder and Rundstedt and Kesselring and Manstein have shot their bolt. They will not lead the legions of the Wehrmacht again.

What is really at stake now is not the lives of these particular men, but the future influence of the German General Staff within Germany, and, consequently, on the lives of people in all countries. That is why it was declared at Yalta:

"It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and Nazism, and to ensure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world. We are determined to disarm and disband all German armed forces; break up for all time the German General Staff that has repeatedly contrived the resurgence of German militarism."

The first steps toward the revival of German militarism have been taken right here in this courtroom. The German General Staff has had plenty of time to think since the spring of 1945, and it well knows what is at stake here. The German militarists know that their future strength depends on re-establishing the faith of the German people in their military powers and in disassociating themselves from the atrocities which they committed in the service of the Third Reich. Why did the Wehrmacht meet with defeat? Hitler interfered too much in military affairs, says Manstein. What about the atrocities? The Wehrmacht committed none. Hitler's criminal orders were discarded and disregarded by the generals. Any atrocities which did occur were committed by other men, such as Himmler, and other agencies, such as the SS. Could not the generals have taken any steps to prevent Germany's engulfment in war and eventual destruction? No; the generals were bound by their oath of obedience to the Chief of State. Did not an SS general say that the Field Marshals could have prevented many of the excesses and atrocities? The reaction is one of superiority and scorn: "I think it is impertinent for an SS man to make such statements about a Field Marshal," says

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Rundstedt. The documents and testimony show that these are transparent fabrications. But here, in embryo, are the myths and legends which the German militarists will seek to propagate in the German mind. These lies must be stamped and labeled for what they are now while the proof is fresh.

This is as important within our own countries as it is here in Germany. Militarism has flourished far more widely and obstinately in Germany than elsewhere, but it is a plant which knows no national boundaries; it grows everywhere. It lifts its voice to say that war between East and West, or Left and Right, or White and Yellow, is inevitable. It whispers that newly devised weapons are so terrible that they should be hurled now lest some other country use them first. It makes the whole world walk under the shadow of death.

German militarism, if it comes again, will not necessarily reappear under the aegis of Nazism. The German militarists will tie themselves to any man or party that offers expectation of a revival of German armed might. They will calculate deliberately and coldly. They will not be deterred by fanatical ideologies or hideous practices; they will take crime in their stride to reach the goal of German power and terror. We have seen them do it before.

The truth is spread on the record before us, and all we have to do is state the truth plainly. The German militarists joined forces with Hitler and with him created the Third Reich; with him they deliberately made a world in which might was all that mattered; with him they plunged the world into war, and spread terror and devastation over the continent of Europe. They dealt a blow at all mankind; a blow so savage and foul that the conscience of the world will reel for years to come. This was not war; it was crime. This was not soldiering; it was savagery. These things need to be said. We cannot here make history over again, but we can see that it is written true.

M. AUGUSTE CHAMPETIER DE RIBES (Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President, Your Honors:

We have asked you to condemn the leaders responsible for the drama which has bathed the world in blood. Today, when we ask you to declare as criminal the organizations which served as instruments for their designs, we seek from your justice the moral condemnation of an entire coherent system, which has brought civilization into the gravest danger it has known since the collapse of the Roman world.

And we attach as much importance to the sentence which we are asking for today as to the one which we requested yesterday.

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For, if we believe it necessary that the guilty should be punished, we think it no less salutary solemnly to remind those in power today, and who will be in power tomorrow, of the dictates of a moral law without which neither order nor peace can rule in the universe.

Who does not see, in fact, that in the times in which we are living, when man's folly has made use of the prodigious progress of science and technology for the work of death, and when, as a philosopher has said "our civilization has equipped itself for suicide," the problems confronting the agony of the world are above all moral problems?

"Humanity," says our great Bergson, "groans, half crushed by the weight of the progress it has made.... The increased body awaits the addition of a soul, and the machine requires a mystic faith."

We know what it is, this mystic faith of which Bergson was thinking. It was there at the zenith of the Graeco-Roman civilization, when Cato the Elder, the wisest of the wise, wrote in his treatise on political economy: "One must know the right time to sell one's old oxen and one's old slaves," and introduced these two ideas of the individual person and human brotherhood into the world, which sufficed to convulse it.

The person, that is to say, the spiritualized individual, no longer an isolated human being, a mere cipher in the political order, a cog in the economic gear, but man as a whole, body and soul-soul incarnate, no doubt, but, above all, a soul for the flowering of which society has been fashioned; social man, who finds his full development only in fraternal communion with his neighbor, man whose mission confers a dignity upon him which gives him the right to escape from every attempt at bondage or monopoly.

It is this mystic faith which in the realm of politics has inspired all the written or traditional constitutions of all civilized nations ever since Great Britain, the mother of democracies, guaranteed to every free man, by virtue of Magna Charta and the Act of Habeas Corpus, that he should be "neither arrested nor imprisoned, except by the judgment of his peers delivered by the due process of the law."

It is this faith which inspired the American Declaration of 1776:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

It is that which inspired the French Declaration of 1791:

"The representatives of the French people, constituting a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt for the rights of man are the sole causes of common

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misfortunes and the corruption of governments, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man. Consequently, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the protection of the Supreme Being, the following rights of the man, of the citizen."

Does not the idea of the high dignity of the human individuality also inspire the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which, in Chapter X, proclaims "the fundamental rights and duties of citizens of the U.S.S.R.... without distinction as to nationality or race"?

Finally, does not the' Charter of the United Nations, signed on 26 June 1945 at San Francisco by 51 nations, begin with this solemn declaration:

"We, the Peoples of the United Nations, are resolved to preserve future generations from the scourge of war, which twice within the span of human life has inflicted indescribable sufferings on humanity, and to proclaim our faith in the fundamental rights of man, in the dignity and value of the human individual, in the equality of rights of men and women, as well as of nations, large and small...."

Certain ones among us have been able to secularize this mystic faith as much as they desired. All of us recognize that it is Christianity's chief contribution to the world and that, extending its conquests slowly in the course of centuries, it has laid the foundations of world-wide civilization.

It was against this mystic faith that Hitler, in the middle of the 20th century, attempted a violent reaction, by opposing' to it his barbarous ideology of race distinction, his primitive conception of social life regulated by biological laws alone.

For he not only envisaged establishing the military domination of Germany in Europe, but his ambition was to impose on the world his "culture," which overthrows all the moral and intellectual foundations upon which the civilized world has rested ever since the dawn of the Christian era. For him the biological laws which govern animal communities are equally applicable to human communities, and first of all those of natural selection and the struggle for existence.

So there could be no question of the autonomy of the human individual. Like the ant in the ant-heap, the individual exists only by and for the whole. The State is not made for the individual, but the individual for the State.

So, also, there could be no question of pity, nor of brotherly love. Christianity, the religion of the degenerate and the sick, would be

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replaced by the new religion which recognizes no law but that of might, no duty but that of domination.

This animal conception of human life, this "culture," this religion, is not the work of a philosopher propounding a new theory in the field of intellectual speculation, it is the work of a realist who puts it into practice. In the sphere of domestic policy it would order the purging of the German people of the elements which contaminate

it, and the improvement of the race of blond Aryans. And so Jews would be driven out or exterminated. The abnormal, the sick, the weak, would be eliminated or at least sterilized. Youth, snatched at an early age from family life, would be trained by the State for its mission, which is "to make the world tremble." "I want," Hitler said to Rauschning, "I want to see in its eyes the gleam which one sees in the eyes of a stag." But by this he slanders the stag, which kills, no doubt, because it is hungry, because it is afraid, or because it is in rut, but which is not versed in the sadism of refined tortures.

This conception of life is applied by Hitler to international relations.

"A stronger race"--he writes in Mein Kampf--"will drive out the weaker ones, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will break down the absurd barriers of the so-called humanity of individuals, to make way for the humanity of Nature, which destroys the weak to give their place to the strong."

And we know what crimes have been committed in the name of this new religion, how many dead the realization of this sham doctrine of life has cost: the concentration camps, the gas chambers, and the crematory ovens; the inoculations with viruses, the sterilizations, the vivisection practised on prisoners and deportees, the enslavement of peoples considered assimilable, and above all the methodical extermination of those alleged to be inferior, and, in short, "genocide"--all this is the monstrous fruit of the Hitlerite ideology.

M. de Menthon was right when he said that the sin against the spirit is the fundamental vice of National Socialism, and the source of all the crimes committed in its name. And did not Louis Veuillot have the gift of prophecy when he wrote in his Parfums de Rome in 1871:

"Germany, Germany, to whom heaven had-given so much! When thou shalt see the ghost of an emperor reappear, who will not wield the sword to protect justice and defend the ancient law, but who will call himself the emperor of the

people and the sword of the new law.... then will be the hour of great expiation."

We have shown who those were who were principally guilty of all the crimes of National Socialism. But to realize their diabolical

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plan of universal domination, not only of territories but of men's consciences, they needed collaborators inspired with the same faith, trained in the same school, and that is why the leaders, the "Fuehrer," conceived and brought into being, little by little, this complicated and coherent system of leadership, coercion, and control, which constitutes the whole of the organizations of the State and of the National Socialist Party.

Executive bodies were necessary, from which emanated, by virtue of the "Fuehrerprinzip," general orders and directives; and they were the Reich Cabinet and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party.

Instruments were needed for control, for propaganda, for Police and for the execution of orders, and they were the Gestapo, the SA, the SD, and the SS.

Finally, it was necessary for the Army to be at the service of Party policy, and this was the work of the General Staff and the High Command, purged of all elements which were insufficiently nazified.

It is possible that the members of these organizations, these groups or these services were more or less the fanatics of the regime, and the Tribunal will recall the plausible distinction made in the course of Ribbentrop's examination between the "pure Nazis" and those who were so only halfway.

All had at least accepted the doctrine and the material advantages which the regime lavished upon them. Because certain of them made mental reservations are they less contemptible and less guilty?

That all these organizations, these groups or these services contributed to the work of universal domination by every means has been abundantly proved in the course of these proceedings. Have not the defense counsel of the organizations constantly intervened during the interrogations of the individual defendants, and were not all of these defendants, in various capacities, members of one, and often of several, of these organizations, so that the close cooperation between the collective organizations and the men who are now in the dock has been indisputably established?

After-these proceedings, which have been so thorough, and after the presentations of my eminent colleagues of the American and British Prosecution, I shall refrain from recalling once more the innumerable atrocities in which the groups or organizations enumerated in the Indictment have participated by ordering them, by committing them, or by permitting them. I should only like to reply, briefly to two of the arguments to which the Defense Counsel, and particularly those for the Gestapo, the SD and the High Command, appear to attach the greatest importance.

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It is possible, they say at first, that abuses were committed in the heat of the struggle, which had become pitiless in the course of the war which had become total, but, it was never a question of anything but individual crimes, which might involve the responsibility of the persons who committed them, but not that of the groups which censured them.

Watertight compartments, says the Defense in the second place, separated the various organizations of the Reich. For this reason the activity of each organization should be examined separately and this examination does not reveal a criminal intention or activity in any of them.

First argument: In order to determine whether or not an organization is criminal, it is necessary, says the Defense, to examine the essential principles of its structure. Now, there is nothing criminal in these. So that the crimes, should any have been committed, can only be attributed to individuals, and do not permit the conclusion to be drawn that the character of the group as a whole is criminal.

Thus the Gestapo, according to the terms of its constitution, was a State Police, charged, like the police of all civilized states, with aiding in the work of justice and protecting the community against individuals who might threaten its security. It is possible that it may sometimes have received and carried out orders from above which were not directly relevant to its essential mission of protection, such as mass arrests of Jews, the extermination' of Russian prisoners of war, the murder of recaptured prisoners who had escaped. But such accidental activities did not fall within its competence as an institution. They would not alter the essential character of the organization which had nothing criminal about it.

Thus the SD is constitutionally simply a service for obtaining information and sounding public opinion, a sort of Gallup poll, harmless in itself.

It is possible that members of the SD accidentally collaborated in the repressive measures of the Gestapo. It is true that members of the SD held a number of high positions and indulged in a number of questionable activities, but they were not acting then as functionaries of the SD and could not compromise the organization, the institutional character of which had nothing criminal about it.

Thus the High Command was charged institutionally only with the defense of the Reich, and solely with that defense. It did not deal with politics and had nothing to do with the Police. It is possible that it may sometimes have overstepped its mission. It is true that it signed orders to deport to an unknown destination those who resisted, to hand over to the Police for extermination the commandos and escaped prisoners, which was contrary to military honor, but it acted then merely as an intermediary for Hitler's or

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Himmler's orders. This accidental activity outside its own province could not change its essential character, which was not criminal in any way.

Thus the Defense always tries to distinguish between the institutional character of the organization, which it believes it has shown to be non-criminal, and the practical activity of the group which, it admits, is open to criticism, a distinction which is understandable

in a democratic regime, where pre-established institutions limit the arbitrary nature of governments, and the autonomy of the individual and the liberty of the citizen are protected from the misuse of power, but which is incomprehensible in the Hitler regime.

Did Best, the police theorist, trouble himself about respecting a principle when he wrote that the methods of the Police are prescribed by the enemy? Does the decree of 28 February 1933 trouble itself about principle, when it allows the all-powerful state to ignore all legal restraints?

Did Hitler make any distinction between principle and practice, when, at the conference of 23 May 1939 held in the Chancellery and attended by the members of the High Command, he stated:

"The principle of avoiding the solution of problems by adaptation to circumstances must be banished. Rather must circumstances be adapted to necessities.... It is no longer a question of justice or injustice, but of the existence or nonexistence of 80 million people."

In reality, under the Hitler regime no pre-established institutions, no legality, no limitation to arbitrariness, no excesses of power were possible. There is no other principle than the "Fuehrerprinzip," no other legality than the good pleasure of the chief, whose orders must be executed without any possible dissension all the way down the scale.

The concept of a so-called institution which was supposed to have presided over the constitution of the collective organizations and given them a certain character, is merely an a posteriori construction originating in Defense Counsel's ingenuity.

The concrete activity of the collective organizations is the only thing which counts, and we have proved that it was criminal.

Moreover, the Defense seeks grounds for the exculpation of the collective organizations in the fact that the members of the Gestapo, the SS, or the SD who indulged in these criminal acts did not perform them in the name of their original organization, but were temporarily detached from them.

Has it not been proved, on the contrary, that in the general organization of the National Socialist system these groups played the role of reserves and preparatory schools from which the leaders,

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for their work of domination, drew executives who were perfectly prepared for the criminal deeds entrusted to them?

And is not the fact that Hitler often conferred on his accomplices the dignity of honorary membership in one of these organizations also proof of the importance which he attached to the evidence of orthodoxy implied by membership of one or other of these groups?

Thus, whatever point of view one may take, the first argument of the Defense cannot be maintained.

THE PRESIDENT: M. Champetier de Ribes, I think you can hardly finish your speech before the adjournment; I think perhaps we had better adjourn now.

M. CHAMPETIER DE RIBES: Yes, Sir.

[A recess was taken until 1400 hours.]

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Afternoon Session

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has had an application from Dr. Stahmer on behalf of the Defendant Goering that certain affidavits offered in evidence by Dr. Laternser on behalf of the General Staff and High Command should be considered on behalf of the Defendant Goering. And the Tribunal, of course, will consider those affidavits on behalf of the Defendant Goering as it would consider all the rest of the record.

Yes, M. Champetier de Ribes.

M. CHAMPETIER DE RIBES: Mr. President and Gentlemen, the Defense submits a second argument.

The organizations, it says, were independent and did not know each other. Some were subject to the State, others to the Party; and State and Party were active in different domains. The various sections within the organizations themselves were watertight compartments and acted quite independently. And at the risk of sacrificing the most compromised cells, Defense Counsel are trying to clear from responsibility the greatest possible number of these supposedly isolated groups.

But this argument is contradicted by all we know of the general organization of the Reich's administrative services. In establishing the personal responsibility of each individual defendant, M. Dubost showed that the close interlocking of the organizations and the services is beyond discussion.

The National Socialist State is totalitarian. Its officials, as well as its services, derive their inspiration from a common ideology and pursue common aims. Unity of action is ensured by the penetration of the Party, the expression of the political will of the people, throughout the whole State machine.

This unification of State and Party was effected by the law of 1 December 1933: "The National Socialist Party has become the representative of the conception of the German State and is indissolubly bound to the State." (Article 1.) Public services must cooperate with the Party services. In fact, this interpenetration and unification of State and Party was effected by the concentration into the same hands of the powers emanating from both. Hitler was simultaneously head of the State, the Army, and the Party. Himmler, as Chief of the SS, which is subject to the Party, was simultaneously head of the Police, which was subject to the State. The Gauleiter, Party functionaries, in most cases also represented the State in their capacity of Reich Governors or Chief Administrators of Prussia. The Chief of the Party Chancellery had a part in the elaboration of important laws and in appointing higher State

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officials. The law of 7 April 1933 provides for the purging of State officials suspected of insufficient devotion to the Party, and we know with what brutality this purging was carried out in the High Command.

Thus, in their acts as in their writings, the interdependence of State, Party, and Army is realized to the fullest extent, and in the sum total of their activity it is impossible to distinguish what share of responsibility belongs to the one or to the other.

Is it necessary to give examples of this? We have already furnished many and fear to weary the Tribunal.

It will suffice to recall the close co-operation between the Gestapo, the SD, the SS, and the Army in the common elaboration of general instructions and in the execution of operations against resistance forces, reprisals against civil population, and the extermination of the Jews.

Do we not find convincing proof of it in Hitler's instruction of 30 July 1944, which has frequently been quoted:

"All acts of violence committed by non-German civilians in the occupied territories, against the Wehrmacht, the SS and the Police, and against the installations which they use, must, as acts of terror or sabotage, be fought in the following way:

"a) The troops and each individual member of the Wehrmacht, SS, and Police must kill on the spot terrorists and saboteurs caught in the act.

"b) Anyone caught afterwards must be transferred to the nearest local station of the Security Police and the Security Service..." (F-673).

By mentioning the Wehrmacht, the SS, and the, Police three times, side by side, does not Hitler stress the close co-operation existing between these organizations?

Is it necessary to recall once more Keitel's numerous instructions, Marshal Kesselring's order of 14 January - 1944, and General Von Brodowski's diary of operations, which place the Army at the disposal of the Police, or the Police at the disposal of the Army, for the savage repression of the resistance forces? Is it necessary to recall Keitel's orders to the commanding generals in France, Holland, and Belgium that the Army should participate in the pillage of art treasures organized and directed by Rosenberg?

Did not, the witness Hoffmann--quoted by the Gestapo--declare to the Court on 1 August that the "Nacht und Nebel" decree was the work of collaboration between the High Command and the Ministry of Justice?

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The Defense therefore tries in vain to lessen these responsibilities by dividing them between the State and the Party agencies, between the so-called independent organizations.

It is no more successful when it tries to establish the existence of watertight compartments separating within the same organization the various sections composing it. For example, whom does it expect to believe that the administrative officials of the SD (Security Service) and of the Gestapo were unaware of the vast scale of the deportations, when they had to solve the difficult problem of arranging the convoys; or that the maintenance offices could fail to know of the exterminations carried out by chemical means, when they had to repair the gas vans?

In fact, all the departments of the Gestapo, the SD, the SS, and the High Command are jointly responsible for the crimes committed in common; and what is true of these organizations is true also of the Reich Cabinet and the Political Leaders, as has been shown by my honorable colleagues of the Prosecution.

Are organizers less guilty than those who committed the deeds; is the brain less responsible than the arm? We therefore consider we have proved the joint culpability of all those organizations which we request you to declare as criminal.

Does that mean that our purpose is to obtain from the competent tribunals the most severe sentences against all members of these organizations? Certainly not. In requesting of your justice the moral condemnation of the organizations, without which the crimes of National Socialism could not have been perpetrated, we are not asking you to condemn without hearing men who can indeed plead their cases in person before the competent tribunals

Moreover, although the Charter of your Tribunal decrees that "in cases where a group or organization is declared criminal lay the Tribunal.... such criminal nature is considered proved and shall not be questioned," it does not say anywhere that all members of such groups or organizations must be arraigned before competent authorities, and in our opinion only those should be prosecuted who, having knowledge of the criminal activity of the group or organization, deliberately joined it, thus participating personally in the crimes committed by all collectively.

We think, on the other hand, that in the interest of serene justice and in the hope of universal pacification, the penalties must be made proportionate to the gravity of the offences charged, and that if the most severe penalties are justly attendant upon the crimes of which a member of an organization is found personally guilty, mere affiliation, even voluntary, to- one of these groups should only be punished by penalties involving loss of freedom or even only by loss of all or some civil or political rights.

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And if the Tribunal share this opinion, nothing in the Charter prohibits them from saying so in whatever form they deem most fitting. Your verdict therefore will not be, as Dr. Steinbauer seemed to fear in his final pleading for Seyss-Inquart, the conclusion of a "trial of the vanquished by the victor." It will be the solemn and serene manifestation of eternal justice.

In this same final pleading, trying to contrast the words of M. de Menthon with the attitude of one of the most heroic chiefs of the French Resistance, who has since become President of the Government of the Republic, Dr. Steinbauer recalled M. Georges Bidault's words while visiting severely wounded Germans after the liberation. "Comrades," he said to them, "I wish you a speedy recovery and a happy return to your country."

Seyss-Inquart's counsel was wrong. There is no contradiction between the words of Frangois de Menthon and those of Georges Bidault; and the French people, just as, I am sure, the free citizens of the United Nations, can all reconcile the severity necessary for the culprits with pity for those who perhaps were only the victims.

In declaring the collective organizations criminal in order to enable the competent authorities to punish the guilty, but only the guilty, in solemnly reminding the world that before the arbitrary rule of men and governments a moral law existed, incumbent on public figures as well as on private persons, on nations as well as on individuals, a law which cannot be broken with impunity, your sentence will contribute greatly to the great work of universal peace which is being undertaken in the organization of the United Nations as well as at the Peace Conference, in New York as in Paris, by the representatives of the free peoples, "anxiously awaited by sincere men of upright heart."

GENERAL R. A. RUDENKO (Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Your Lordship! Your Honors!

We have now come to the final stage of the Trial which has been conducted with exceptional care and with the greatest skill. The Prosecution has presented exhaustive proofs for the individual cases of the major war criminals now in the dock. We fully support also the charges against the criminal organizations-the Government of Fascist Germany, the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces, the Leadership Corps of the German National Socialist Party, the State Secret Police (Gestapo), the Security Detachments of the German National Socialist Party (SS), Security Service (SD), and Detachments of SA.

As it has been established by the legal proceedings, Hitlerized Germany was headed by a gang of conspirators who seized the power of the State and the administration of the whole country. A group of conspirators of this kind, operating in a state with a

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population of many millions, at the centre of a huge State machinery, could not exist without a whole system of subsidiary criminal organizations connecting the conspirators with the remote districts, the leaders of the main thoroughfares with the leaders of the streets and byways. Therefore in Hitler's Germany there was a network of organizations possessed of great power: the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, Gestapo, SS, SD, et cetera, which functioned under the constant and direct leadership of the conspirators. The law of 1933, according to which the machinery of the Fascist Party was merged into the State machinery of Hitler's Germany, was an open legal recognition of the fact.

To strengthen the union between the governing body and the organizations, each of the conspirators acted in several capacities and held several offices, representing many persons: Goering, for example-Reich Minister, Commander of the Air Force, Delegate for the Four Year Plan, Reichsleiter, Supreme Commander of SA and SS; Hess-Cabinet Minister, Hitler's Deputy for the Party, General of SS and SA; Rosenberg-Reichsleiter of 'the National Socialist Party for questions of ideology and foreign policy, as well as Cabinet Minister and Obergruppenfuehrer of SA and SS, et cetera. Just as Goering the Minister is inseparable from Goering the Obergruppenfuehrer of SS, so are the Gestapo and the other criminal organizations inseparable from the State in Hitler's Germany. It is possible to imagine Hitler's Germany without libraries, without schools, even without hospitals, but Hitler's Germany without SS and Gestapo could not exist.

Reflecting this political reality, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal provides for two kinds of participation in the criminal associations of Hitler: Article 6 of the Charter refers to participation in the criminal conspiracy, and Articles 9 and 10 refer to the participation in the criminal organizations. Both of these conceptions are organically and indissolubly connected, for they express in legal terms the correlation and the connection which actually existed in real life between the conspiracy and the organizations in Hitler's Germany.

After having closely connected these two kinds of participation of the Hitlerites in international crimes, that is, participation in the conspiracy and participation in the organizations, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal has established with full reason different criminal and legal consequences for two kinds of participation.

Participation in the conspiracy can by its very nature only refer to a limited number of persons, and is provided for by the Charter as an independent criminal action. The question of responsibility for participation in the criminal organizations, comprising hundreds

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of thousands of members, on the other hand, is differently defined by the Charter. Based entirely upon the principles of law and justice, the Charter of the Tribunal leaves it to the competence of the national tribunals to determine the individual responsibility of the members of the organization, which is closely connected with the determination of the guilt and of the criminality of a great number of individual persons.

According to Article 10 of the Charter, "if the Tribunal considers one or another organization as criminal, the national courts have a right to prosecute separate individuals for belonging to criminal organizations." Therefore the Tribunal has the right to consider an organization as criminal, not for the purpose of punishing this organization as a whole or all of its members, but thus to enable the national courts to prosecute individuals for belonging to such organizations as have been declared criminal.

In accordance with the instructions of Article 10 of the Charter the tribunals of the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A., Great Britain, and France, and of 18 states which joined the London Agreement, may certainly condemn, but they have the right also to come to a conclusion that the defendant was not a member of the organization at all, or belonged to it only formally and was in fact far removed from it, and according to such a conclusion they may acquit him. All these questions, as well as related -questions, were and remain within the competence of the national courts. These courts are limited only in one theoretically important respect, which is in principle of profound importance: if the International Tribunal considers the organization as criminal, the national tribunals cannot deny or, even discuss the criminal character of such an organization; here for the first time in legal history the sovereignty of individual countries is limited by the enforcing power of the verdict of the international legal authority--the Tribunal.

This definition of the competence of the International Tribunal and the national courts is very essential in order to understand the regulations of the Charter of the Tribunal concerning criminal organizations. And, indeed, just because the Tribunal will have to decide only the general question concerning the criminality of the organization, and not separate questions about the individual responsibility of these various organizations, the Charter does not indicate any particular criterion of the concept "organization," and in this case does not bind the Tribunal by any formal requirement. The absence in the Charter of a detailed definition of a criminal organization is not, therefore, an omission in the Charter but a theoretical position on principle, which follows from the above-mentioned fact, namely, relegating the elucidation of the question of facts to the, agencies of national justice. Therefore, attempts to

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require some kind of factual signs (voluntary membership, mutual information) in order to consider the organization as criminal do not find any support in the Charter but differ from its entire structure. The main and only task presenting itself to the Tribunal is not such investigations with which national courts deal and will have to deal, but the establishing of one decisive fact, namely, whether by its criminal actions the organization participated in the realization of the plan of Hitler's conspirators. Complying with this task the Charter established the order of the proceedings for the prosecution of organizations.

In fact, the Charter of the Tribunal provides that for the decision on the question concerning the criminal organizations it is necessary to consider the case of the definite representative of such an organization sitting in the defendants' dock. The defendants at this Trial were at the same time participants of the conspiracy and leading members of the organizations, the criminal character of which the Tribunal has to decide. Consequently the evidence submitted that has been used for the individual cases of the defendants is at the same time the essential evidence for the organizations which they represent. The documents submitted by the Prosecution have quite clearly proved that the organizations mentioned in the Indictment served as a constant and direct instrument for realizing the criminal plans of the conspirators. Thus the criminal character of these organizations has been fully and comprehensively proved through the present proceedings. The Tribunal has endeavored to secure the most comprehensive investigation of the case of the organizations. By means of broadcasts, through the Press, and by special announcements, the members of the accused organizations have been invited to submit their explanations to the Tribunal. The Tribunal is aware of the number of persons now in internment camps who wish to avail themselves of this possibility. The formation of an auxiliary commission has made it possible for the Tribunal to interrogate the greatest possible number of members of the organizations who will later be examined and dealt with by competent national courts. Thus, as a result of complicated preliminary work, a group of witnesses selected by the Defense appeared before the Tribunal. Not being able to deny the irrefutable force of the documentary evidence submitted by the Prosecution, the Defense decided to summon its own witnesses in opposition.

Your Honors, we remember these witnesses and their, testimonies. If more evidence is required to prove that falsehood is a constant and invariable companion of crime among the Hitlerites, the false testimonies of Kaufmann, Sievers, Von Manstein, Reinecke, Best, and others can serve as convincing illustrations. These "witnesses," in their effort to whitewash the criminal organizations, of

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which they were the leading members, reached the heights of absurdity. The SS and the Gestapo are found to be a society of the elect, a club of noble men, an Order of Knights. It is not without reason that the Defense included Rosenberg among the Knights. All of them sparkle with moral purity and all of them are filled with pity towards their neighbors. The Obergruppenfuehrer of the professional tormentors of the SS hastened to save Jews from the pogroms, while General Von Brauchitsch was a zealous pacifist. It is instructive to find that without any exception, all the organizations, which are considered as criminal by the Indictment, are pure and immaculate according to the testimonies of the witnesses. But who then murdered the 12 million peaceful citizens? Who tortured the prisoners of war and deported millions of people for slave labor in Germany from the occupied territories? No defendants are to be found! Lies-cynical, blasphemous lies, from the lips of men whose -conscience did not hesitate before murder, whose honor did not prevent them from committing perjury-do not deserve to be refuted.

While examining the case concerning the criminal organizations, the Prosecution submitted striking supplementary documents testifying to new atrocities of the Hitlerite criminal organizations. Facts, irrefutable facts have been established. The inflexible will of the law is clear. The time has come to draw conclusions.

At the congress of the Nazi Party in 1934 Hitler declared:

"It is not the State that has created us, but we who have created the State: it is possible that we are considered by some as a party, by others as an organization, by yet others as something else; but in reality we are what we are."

The present Trial gives a comprehensive and exact answer to the question of who the Hitlerites were. The Fuehrer at the head of a criminal gang of conspirators, appearing in different roles and having various titles (Ministers, Gauleiter, Obergruppenfuehrer, and so forth), surrounded by a network of criminal organizations created by him, who had seized in their grip millions of German citizens--this was the outline of the political structure of Hitler's Germany.

The recognition of the criminal character of the organizations mentioned in the Indictment, as well as the recognition of the existence of the conspiracy, are therefore the necessary conditions for the triumph of justice, the triumph longed for by all freedom-loving nations.

With regard to the separate organizations which the Prosecution deemed indispensable to designate as criminal, I find it necessary to

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mention the following, in addition to the convincing arguments expressed by my honorable colleagues:

In Count One, Paragraph IV, Article "A" of the Indictment, entitled "The Nazi Party as the Central Core of the Common Plan or Conspiracy," it says:

"In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Fuehrer of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), known as the Nazi Party, which had been founded in Germany in 1920. He continued as such throughout the period covered by this Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with certain of its subsidiary organizations, became the instrument of cohesion among the defendants and their co-conspirators and an instrument for the carrying out of the aims and purposes of their conspiracy."

The legal investigation has fully confirmed this conclusion.

The numerous crimes of Hitler's clique were inspired and directed by the Nazi Party-the motive power of the Fascist conspiracy.

Many of the defendants and the so-called witnesses for the Defense said that they were National Socialists who wanted to protect Germany against attack from other countries. This is an evident falsehood. Only impostors could assert that Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and other freedom-loving countries wanted to strike a blow against the integrity and independence of Germany. In reality the German Fascists are not nationalists but imperialists, whose main and decisive aim was the seizure of foreign land so as to further the expansion of militant German capitalism. They shamelessly called themselves Socialists. Only insolent demagogues can assert that the German Fascists--who eliminated all democratic freedom from the people, replacing it by concentration camps, who introduced slave labor at works and factories and restored serfdom in the villages of Germany and in the countries occupied by them--are the defenders of the interests of the workers and peasants. And if these imperialists and reactionaries disguised themselves in the garb of "nationalists" and "socialists," they did it exclusively to deceive the nation. The program of the Nazi Party itself contained the principles of the plan for domination, involving the seizure of foreign territories and establishing the principles of human hatred. In one of the annuals of the NSDAP, published under the direction of Ley, it was said:

"The Program ... is the political foundation of the NSDAP and, consequently, the fundamental political law of the State. All legal principles should be applied in the spirit of the Party Program. After seizing power the Fuehrer has managed

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to realize the fundamental parts of the Party Program, beginning with the basic principles up to the details."

Hitler's Party is inseparable from Hitler's Government, from the SS, Gestapo, and other criminal organizations of Hitler's regime, as the Nazi leaders in the dock are inseparable from the tormentors of Auschwitz and Maidanek, Babye-Yar and Treblinka.

"What I have achieved,"--said Hitler--"is known to the Party, thanks to which I became great, and which was in turn glorified by me."

Indeed, soon after the Hitlerites seized power the decree of 14 July 1933 forbade the creation of any other political parties besides the Nazi Party. The NSDAP became the only political party in Germany. A little later, on 1 December 1944, the law was issued "Concerning the Unity of the Party and State," in which it was mentioned:

"After the victory of the' National Socialist revolution, the NSDAP is the standard-bearer of German statesmanship and is inseparably connected with the State.

"To ensure close collaboration of the Party organizations with the offices of the State, the Deputy of the Fuehrer is appointed member of the Government of the Reich."

Paragraph 3 of this law proclaimed the members of the NSDAP and the SA (including the organizations subordinated to them) as "the leaders and motive power of the National Socialist Government."

The law of 1 December 1933 was the fundamental measure which provided the leaders of the criminal Nazi Party with full political power in Germany, as this law established the Nazi Party

as the embodiment of the State.

In order to attract the masses of the population to the Fascist regime, the Hitlerites introduced the most shameless social bribery, besides exploiting the national feelings and the unheard-of social demagogy. Major organizations were created: the Hitler Youth, Labor Front, the SA, the SS, et cetera. The numerous members of these organizations were bound to the Fascist regime not only through various privileges and material, advantages, but also, by mutual responsibility for committing common crimes. The overwhelming terror machine, with its ramified network of detection, provocation, perfidy, concentration camps, summary justice, operated against all who were discontented with the regime.

The system of combining the leading posts of the Nazi Party with the leading posts of the terroristic organizations--SS, SD, Gestapo--and of the Government helped in promoting the realization of the plans of the Fascist conspirators and rendered easier

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the realization of the plans for the subordination and control of the German nation and the German State.

The Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler was simultaneously Reichsleiter of the NSDAP. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ribbentrop, was a general of the SS, and, the Deputy of the Fuehrer, Hess, was simultaneously a Reichsminister. The President of the Secret Cabinet Council, Neurath, was a general of the SS, and one of the leaders of the Gestapo, Best, was Kreisleiter of the Nazi Party, and so on.

After having secured, with the assistance of the Party, full control over Germany, Hitler's conspirators went on with the realization of their aggressive plans. In his speech before the Reichstag on 20 February 1938, Hitler said:

"The greatest guarantee of the National Socialist revolution consists in complete external as well as internal domination by the National Socialist Party over all offices and organizations of Germany.... All offices are under control of the supreme political leadership."

I have already mentioned in my final statement that the Party changed, under the leadership of Bormann, into a police organization, which was in close co-operation with the Gestapo and the SS; that the entire Party machinery was drawn upon for the realization of the aggressive plans of the leaders of Hitlerite Germany; that the Party machinery took an active part in the measures of the German military and civil authorities for the inhuman exploitation of prisoners of war, and participated in the deportation into slavery of the population of the territories occupied by the Germans.

When we speak here at the Trial about Goebbels' lies, Himmler's terror, and Ribbentrop's perfidy, this refers also to the Nazi Party. When the Prosecution submitted proofs of the criminal activity of Goering and Hess, Rosenberg and Streicher, Von Schirach and Frank, Speer and Sauckel, these were simultaneous proofs of charges against the Party, at the head of which were the defendants. These proofs were quite sufficient to consider the entire Nazi Party as a criminal organization, as understood in Article 9 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. However, the Prosecution does not raise the question of the responsibility of the rank-and-file members of the Party, many of whom became the victims of their faith.

In full conformity with the Indictment, we raise the question of declaring it as a criminal organization only as far as it concerns the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, which was the brain, the backbone, and the driving power of the. Party, without which the

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Hitlerite conspirators would not have been able to carry out their

criminal plans.

The Leadership Corps was a specially selected group, within the Nazi Party itself, and as such was endowed with extraordinary prerogatives. Political Leaders were 'organized according to the "Fuehrerprinzip," which was applied not only to Hitler, but to the entire Leadership Corps. "The basis of the Party organization is the principle of the Fuehrer idea"--is written in the statute of the Nazi Party. Each Political Leader was sworn in. According to the Party statute the wording of the oath was as follows: "I pledge eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler; I pledge unconditional obedience to him and to the leaders appointed by him."

All Political Leaders were appointed by special selection. The only difference was that some of them, such as Reichsleiter, Gauleitef, and Kreisleiter, were appointed by Hitler himself, whereas the others, heads of departments and division chiefs in Gau and Kreis, as well as Ortsgruppenleiter, were appointed by the Gauleiter. Such Political Leaders as Block- and Zellenleiter were appointed by the Kreisleiter.

Many of these Reichsleiter and Gauleiter have appeared here before Your Honors. In the defendants' dock are Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Schirach, Frick; together with the missing Reichsleiter Bormann, Himmler, Ley, and Goebbels they represented the leading group of the Nazi Party, and they were leaders of the Fascist conspiracy as well.

Here is the Gauleiter of Franconia, Streicher, and the slave trader Sauckel, the Gauleiter of Thuringia. You have heard of Erich Koch's devilish activity in Ukraine. Erich Koch was a Gauleiter too. The Gauleiter of Lower Styria, Uiberreither, carried out the mass shooting and executions in Yugoslavia. I will quote some short extracts concerning his activity:

"20 June 1942. Within the period covered by this report, 105 people were shot in the district of Celje, and 362 arrested.... The chief of the Security Police will Empty the prison in two weeks' time. Part of the imprisoned people will be transferred to other prisons and the others shot. Thus we shall prepare enough room for the next large-scale action.

"30 June 1942. Sixty-seven persons were shot in Celje. Among them six women ......

Gauleiter Wagner terrorized people in Alsace, Gauleiter Terboven in Norway. Gauleiter Bohle, Leader of the Auslands-Organisation, set up and directed a widely ramified terroristic network for espionage and diversionist activities abroad and created the socalled "Fifth Columns" in different countries.

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According to the decree of I September 1939, 16 Gauleiter were appointed Reich Defense Commissioners. Later, in connection with the mobilization of the military resources, the Gauleiter carried out even more important tasks.

Each district was proclaimed a Reich Defense Area, and the Gauleiter became commissioners of these areas. According to the Cabinet Council decree of 16 November 1942, it was laid down that in wartime the Gauleiter were entrusted with extraordinary tasks. During the war, the Gauleiter were in charge of billeting; they were entrusted with important military duties, and all branches of German war economy were co-ordinated by them. And at the end of the war the Gauleiter were the commanders of the Volkssturm in their respective areas.

We should remember that when in March 1945 Speer was appointed Hitler's plenipotentiary for the total destruction of industrial objectives, bridges, railways, and other means of communications, he sent his telegraph-order to the Gauleiter, for they were personally supervising the carrying out of the destruction of important objectives on the spot.

And now, after all this, the Defense is trying to present Hitler's party as a kind of welfare society, and its leaders as lady patronesses; it is trying to confuse a very clear case by a heap of written documentary evidence collected in various prisons and camps where the arrested Fascists are being held.

Counsel Servatius understands that the probative value of this mass of written evidence is highly dubious, and he resorts to the last argument, saying that "the Defense was unable to visit the camps in Austri