Morning Session (continued 2)

And Kaltenbrunner himself saw to it that these orders should be carried out. With this evidence before us, there can be only one meaning to that teleprint message which was found among his papers on his arrest:

“Please inform the Reichsführer SS and report to the Führer that all arrangements as to Jews, political and concentration camp internees in the Protectorate have been taken care of by me personally today” (Document Number 2519-PS).

The proposition which you are asked to accept is that a man who was either a minister or a leading executive in a state which, within the space of 6 years, transported in horrible conditions some 7 million men, women, and children for labor, exterminated 275,000 of its own aged and mentally infirm and annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting what must at the lowest computation be 12,000,000 people, remained ignorant of or irresponsible for these crimes. You are asked to accept that the horrors of the transports, of the conditions of this slave labor, deployed as it was in labor camps throughout the country, the smell of the burning bodies, all of which were known to the world, were not known to these 21 men by whose orders such things were done. When they spoke or wrote in support of this horrible policy of genocide you are asked to accept that their utterances were made in ignorance of the facts, as part of their general duty to support the policy of their government, or finally, should be regarded merely as, tactical—that is to say, that only by talking or writing in such a way could they divert Hitler from cruelty or aggression. It is for you to decide.

Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel, Jodl, Von Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann—these are the guilty men.

Let me make brief comments upon each one of them, but in particular upon those whose close complicity in the most sordid crimes of all, the bestial murders, has possibly been less manifest.

Göring’s responsibility in all these matters is scarcely to be denied. Behind his spurious air of bonhomie, he was as great an architect as any in this satanic system. Who, apart from Hitler, had more knowledge of what went on, or greater influence to affect its course? The conduct of government in the Nazi State, the gradual build-up of the organization for war, the calculated aggression, the atrocities—these things do not occur spontaneously or without the closest co-operation between the holders of the various offices of state. Men do not advance into foreign territory, pull the trigger, drop their bombs, build the gas chambers, collect the victims, unless they are organized and ordered to do it. Crimes on the national and systematic scale which occurred here must involve anyone who forms a part of the necessary chain, since without that participation, plans for aggression here, mass murder there, would become quite impossible. The Führer Principle by which the Nazis placed their bodies and their very souls at the disposal of their leader was the creation of the Nazi Party, and of these men. When I addressed you at the opening of this Trial, I remarked that there comes a time when a man must choose between his conscience and his leader. No one who chooses, as these men did, to abdicate their consciences in favor of this monster of their own creation can complain now if they are held responsible for complicity in what their monster did.

And least of all, Hess. The role Hess played in the Nazi Party is well established. But not content with creating the monster, he aided it in every aspect of its monstrous work.

I mention only one instance. You will recall, in connection with the extermination of the Eastern peoples, his direction to Party officials to support recruitment for the Waffen-SS. He said:

“... it consists of National Socialists who are more suitable than other armed units for the specific tasks to be solved in the Occupied Eastern Territories, owing to their intensive National Socialist training in regard to questions of race and nationality” (Document Number 3245-PS).

Ribbentrop’s part, also, is clear. No one in history has so debauched diplomacy. No one has been guilty of meaner treachery. But he, like the rest of them, is just a common murderer. Ribbentrop it was who, since 1940, had been directing the minions in his Embassy and legations throughout Europe to accelerate the execution of such “political measures,” that is, measures of racial extermination (Document Number EC-265). It was not Himmler, but the Reich Foreign Minister who proudly reported to the Duce in February 1943 that, “All Jews had been transported from Germany and from the territories occupied by her to reservations in the East” (Document Number D-734).

His bald recommendations to Horthy two months later and the record of the conference called by Steengracht, his permanent Under Secretary of State, betray the meaning of these ghastly euphemisms (Documents D-736, 3319-PS).

No one was more insistent on merciless action in the occupied territories than Ribbentrop. You will remember his advice to the Italians on how to deal with strikes: “... in such a case only merciless action is any good ... in the occupied territories where it has proved that we would not get anywhere with soft measures or the endeavor to reach an agreement” (Document Number D-740).

Advice which he proceeded to reinforce by referring with pride to the successes of “brutal measures” in Norway, “brutal action” in Greece, and in France and Poland the success of “Draconian measures.”

Were Keitel and Jodl less involved in murder than their confederates? They cannot deny knowledge or responsibility for the operations of the Einsatzkommandos with whom their own commanders were working in close and cordial co-operation. The attitude of the High Command to the whole question is typified by Jodl’s remark about the evacuation of Danish Jews: “I know nothing of this. If a political measure is to be carried out by the military commander in Denmark, the OKW must be notified by the Foreign Office” (Document Number D-547).

You cannot disguise murder by calling it a political measure.

Kaltenbrunner, as chief of the RSHA, must be guilty. The reports of the Einsatzkommandos were sent to him monthly (Document Number 3876-PS). You will remember the words of Gisevius, a witness for the Defense:

“We asked ourselves whether it was possible that an even worse man could possibly be found after such a monster as Heydrich.... Kaltenbrunner came ... and things got worse every day.... We had the experience that perhaps the impulsive actions of a murderer like Heydrich were not as bad as the cold legal logic of a lawyer who was handling such a dangerous instrument as the Gestapo.”

You will remember his description of those horrible luncheon parties at which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of the technique of mass murder.

Rosenberg’s guilt as the philosopher and theorist who made the ground fertile for the seeds of Nazi policy is not in doubt, and it is beyond belief that he, as Reich Minister for Eastern Occupied Territories, did not know of and support the destruction of the ghettos and the operations of the Einsatzkommandos. In October 1941, when the operations of those Kommandos were at their height, one of Rosenberg’s ministerial departmental chiefs was writing to the Reich Commissioner for the East in Riga informing him that the Reich Security Main Office had complained that he had forbidden the executions of the Jews in Libau and asking for a report upon the matter. On 15 November, the report comes back addressed to the Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories:

“I have forbidden the wild execution of Jews in Libau because they were not justifiable in the manner in which they were carried out. I should like to be informed whether your inquiry of 31 October is to be regarded as a directive to liquidate all Jews in the East? Shall this take place without regard to age and sex and economic interests...? ... of course, the cleansing of the East of Jews is a necessary task; its solution, however, must be harmonized with the necessities of war production” (Document Number 3663-PS).

Frank—if it is not sufficient to convict him that he was responsible for the administration of the Government General and for one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters in Nazi history—has himself stated: “One cannot kill all lice and all Jews in one year” (Document Number 2233-C-PS).

It is no coincidence that that was exactly Hitler’s language. And again:

“As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with in one way or another.... Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible in order to maintain the structure of the Reich as a whole.... We cannot shoot or poison these 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures which will lead to their annihilation in some way” (Document Number 2233-D-PS).

Can Frick, as Minister of Interior, have been unaware of the policy to exterminate the Jews? In 1941 one of his subordinates, Heydrich, was writing to another—the Minister of Justice: “... it may safely be assumed that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed Eastern Territories” (Document Number R-96).

Can he, as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, deny responsibility for the deportations of thousands of Jews from his territory to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only a few miles across the frontier?

Of Streicher, one need say nothing. Here is a man more responsible, perhaps, than any, for the most frightful crime the world has ever known. For 25 years the extermination of the Jews had been his terrible ambition. For 25 years he had educated the German people in the philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He had incited and prepared them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal persecution and slaughter of millions of his fellow men. Without him these things could not have been. It is long since he forfeited all right to live.

The fact that the Defendants Schacht and Funk dealt chiefly with economics ought not blind the Tribunal to their important part in the general plan. Schacht says that he had clean hands in this matter. It is for you to say. Schacht played his part in bringing Hitler to power. He says he thought that Hitler was “a man with whom one could co-operate,” and assured Hitler that he could always count on him “as your reliable assistant” (Document Number EC-457). He helped to consolidate the Nazi position and he was the main figure in collecting election funds from the industrialists.

It then became his task to provide the economic plan and machinery necessary to launch and maintain aggression. He knew the policy about the Jews, he knew the methods Hitler was using to build up his power, he knew the ultimate aim was aggression. But he continued to play his part. Messersmith has summed up his work:

“... yet by Schacht’s resourcefulness, his complete financial ruthlessness and his absolute cynicism, Schacht was able to maintain and to establish the situation for the Nazis. Unquestionably, without this complete lending of his capacities to the Nazi Government and all of its ambitions, it would have been impossible for Hitler and the Nazis to develop an armed force sufficient to permit Germany to launch an aggressive war” (Document Number EC-451).

The fact that that was in Schacht’s mind was shown at a very early date most clearly in a secret report issued by his Ministry of Economics on 30 September 1934 (Document Number EC-128). I have already referred to his deputy’s report showing the amazing detail in which plans and preparations for the management of German economy in time of war had been worked out before Schacht resigned in 1937 (Document Number EC-258).

It is not surprising that on Schacht’s sixtieth birthday the then German Minister of War, Von Blomberg, said to him: “Without your help, my dear Schacht, none of this armament could have taken place.”

In the witness box Schacht says that as early as the second half of 1934 and the first half of 1935 he found he was “wrong in thinking” that Hitler would bring the “revolutionary forces” of Nazism into the regular atmosphere and he discovered that Hitler did nothing to stop the excesses of individual Party members or Party groups. He was pursuing a “policy of terror.”

That accords very closely with Schacht’s statement to the American Ambassador in September 1934: “... the Hitler Party is absolutely committed to war and the people too are ready and willing. Only a few government officials are aware of the danger and are opposed” (Document Number EC-461).

Schacht’s further suggestions that his purpose in the Government was to be critical and was to act as a brake are, as we submit, impossible to reconcile with his own actions. He need not have become Minister of Economics according to his own account, but he did so nonetheless. In May 1935, the month in which he undertook his task as General Plenipotentiary for War Economy, “to put all economic forces in the service of carrying on war and to secure the life of the German people economically,” he wrote to Hitler:

“... all expenditures which are not urgently needed in other matters must stop and the entire, in itself small, financial power of Germany must be concentrated toward the one goal—the financing of the armament” (Document Number 1168-PS).

In May 1936 he told a secret meeting of Nazi ministers that his program of financing armaments had meant “the commitment of the last reserve from the beginning” (Document Number 1301-PS). He said he would continue to work since he stood “with unswerving loyalty to the Führer because he fully recognizes the basic idea of National Socialism.”

In 1937, when Hitler bestowed the Golden Party Badge upon him, Schacht appealed to all his colleagues: “... further to devote with all their hearts their entire strength to the Führer and the Reich. The German future lies in the hands of our Führer” (Document Number EC-500).

The mercy killings; the persecution of the Jews. These things must have been known at that time. Were his hands so clean?

In the light of these quotations it is not unexpected to find Ambassador Dodd, whom Schacht counted among his friends, recalling in his diary on 21 December 1937:

“Much as he dislikes Hitler’s dictatorship, he (Schacht), as most other eminent Germans, wishes annexation—without war if possible, with war, if the United States will keep hands off” (Document Number 2832-PS).

These quotations, in our submission, make it clear that Schacht knew well that Hitler’s aim was war very much earlier than he himself admits. He does admit, however, that he knew that the plot to discredit General Von Fritsch meant war. Despite that knowledge, on 9 March 1938, he accepted the appointment as Reichsbank president for an additional 4 years. He joyously took part in the acquisition of the former Austrian National Bank on 21 March 1938 and on 7 June 1939 wrote to Hitler:

“From the beginning the Reichsbank has been aware of the fact that a successful foreign policy could be attained only by the reconstruction of the German Armed Forces. It therefore assumed to a very great extent the responsibility to finance the rearmament in spite of the inherent dangers to the currency. The justification thereof was the necessity—which pushed all other considerations into the background—to carry through the armament at once, out of nothing and furthermore under camouflage in the beginning, which made a foreign policy commanding respect possible” (Document Number EC-369).

These words, and others like them, are merely putting into fine phrases Schacht’s knowledge that, if the proposed victims resisted, Hitler was prepared and would be able to plunge into war conditions to achieve his aims. Schacht’s intellect and international position only increased the cynical immorality of his crimes.

Moreover Schacht must face these facts. The Tribunal has seen the evidence of the film which showed his sycophantic trotting beside Hitler and swarming over him in 1940. Long before 1943 he must have known of the treatment of the Jews and the reign of terror in occupied countries. Yet until 1943 Schacht remained a Minister without Portfolio and at all events lent his name and weight to this regime of horror. Should anyone be left to boast that he did this with impunity?

Funk carried on Schacht’s work. He had already rendered invaluable service to the conspirators by his organization of the Ministry of Propaganda. From 1938 on he was Minister of Economics, president of the Reichsbank and chief Plenipotentiary for Economics, mobilizing economy for aggressive war, well knowing the Nazi plans for aggression. We find him in every field; attending Göring’s conference on 12 November 1938, the meeting of the Reich Defense Council in June 1939, advising on decrees to be issued against the Jews at the former and the employment of concentration camp and slave labor at the latter. The final proof of the welcome with which he viewed aggression is found in his letter to Hitler on the 25th of August 1939, the day before the invasion of Poland had been said to begin; he said:

“How happy and how grateful we must be to you to be favored to experience these colossal and world-moving times, and that we can contribute to the tremendous events of those days.

“... Generalfeldmarschall Göring informed me last night that you—my Führer—have approved in principle the measures prepared by me for financing a war, for setting up the wage and price system and for carrying out the plan for an emergency contribution....

“With the proposals worked out by me regarding a ruthless restriction of any unessential consumption and any public expenditure and project not necessary for war, we will be able to meet all financial and economic demands without any serious reverberations” (Document Number 699-PS).

His part during the war needs no further mention than reference to the minutes of the Central Planning Board and to his arrangement with Himmler for the exploitation of the SS loot which, as he knew, came in truckloads from Auschwitz and the other concentration camps to the vaults of the Reichsbank. The Tribunal will also remember the document which shows that his Ministry of Economics received enormous quantities of civilian clothing from these unhappy victims (Document Number 1166-PS).

Was Dönitz ignorant, when he addressed to a Navy of some 600,000 men, a speech on the “spreading poison of Jewry” (Document Number 2878-PS)? Dönitz, who thought fit to circulate to the Naval War Staff Hitler’s directive for dealing with the general strike at Copenhagen—“terror should be met by terror”—and asked for 12,000 concentration camp workers for the shipyards, recommending collective reprisals for Scandinavian workers in view of the efficacy of similar methods in France (Documents C-171, C-195).

Are Raeder’s hands unstained with the blood of murder? As early as 1933, to use his own words: “... Hitler had made the clear political request to build up ... by 1 April 1938 armed forces which he could put in the balance as an instrument of political power” (Document Number C-135).

When, therefore, he received successive orders to fight if war resulted from Hitler’s foreign policy, he knew very well that war was a certain risk if that policy went awry. Again and again he had this warning, first when Germany left the Disarmament Conference, again at the time of the negotiations for the Naval Agreement in 1935, at the time of the Rhineland, and later when he attended the famous Hossbach conference. He has tried to persuade this Tribunal that he regarded Hitler’s speeches at these meetings as mere talk, yet we know that they gave Neurath a heart attack. His old service comrades, Von Blomberg and Von Fritsch, who were unwise enough to object at the conference which sealed the fate of Austria and Czechoslovakia, were dealt with in a manner which, in his own words, shook his confidence not only in Göring, but in Hitler as well.

Can Raeder have been ignorant of the murder of thousands of Jews at Libau in the Baltic? You will remember the evidence that many of them were killed in the naval port and the facts reported by his naval officers at the local headquarters to Kiel (Documents D-841, L-180). We now know from the report of the Kommando which dealt with the Jews of Libau that at the end of January 1942 they had accounted for 11,860 in that district alone. Raeder, on Heroes Day 1939, spoke of the clear and inspiring summons to fight international Jewry (Document Number D-653). Do you really believe, when he was always helping individual Jews, he had never heard of the horrors of concentration camps or the murder of millions? Yet he still went on.

Von Schirach. What need one say of him? That it were better that a millstone had been placed round his neck...? It was this wretched man who perverted millions of innocent German children so that they might grow up and become what they did become—the blind instruments of that policy of murder and domination which these men carried out.

The infamous “Heu Aktion” by which between 40,000 and 50,000 Soviet children were kidnapped into slavery was a product of his work (Document Number 031-PS). You will remember the weekly SS reports on the extermination of the Jews found in his office (Document Number 345-PS).

What is the crime of Sauckel whose Gau contained the infamous camp of Buchenwald? Sauckel may now seek to put a gloss on his order to shanghai Frenchmen, to deny that he advocated the hanging of a prefect or a mayor to crush opposition, to say that references to ruthless action referred to interdepartmental disputes and that reformatory labor camps were purely educational institutions. You who have seen the documents which attest the horrors perpetrated in what we are now told was the product of an emergency—the urgent need for workers to feed the Nazi war machine, you who have heard and read of the conditions in which 7 million men, women, and children torn from their homes were dragged into slavery at his orders can need no further proof of his guilt.

Papen and, if mercy can survive his record in Czechoslovakia, Neurath, are in like case with Raeder. Like him they professed old family and professional integrity, facts which carry with them a great responsibility from which men like Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner are free.

Within 18 months of putting Hitler in power Papen knew that Hitler’s Government meant oppression of opponents, ill-treatment of the Jews, and persecution of the churches including his own. His recent political friends had been sent to concentration camps or killed, including men like Von Schleicher, and Von Bredow. He had himself been arrested, two members of his staff killed and another compelled to witness killing. None of these things were hidden from Von Neurath, yet he remained in office.

In 1934 Papen was writing sycophantic letters to Hitler and shortly afterward we find him in Austria working for a man he knows to be a murderer, undermining a regime for which he professed outward friendship. Even after the Anschluss he was still working for a regime which he knew used murder as an instrument of policy and after losing yet another secretary by murder he was ready to accept a post in Turkey. The Concordat with his own Church which he had himself negotiated is treated as “a scrap of paper” to use his own words, and Catholics from archbishops to simple believers were outraged. He has said: “Hitler was the greatest crook that ever lived.” The case for the Prosecution in a sentence is that, knowing this only too well, Von Papen gave Hitler his support and co-operation because his greed for power and office made it “better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”

Defense Counsel have sought to portray Papen as an advocate of peace. If he preferred to attain the objects of the conspiracy by the methods of assassination, bullying, and blackmail rather than open war, the reason may be that provided by him in his own evidence, namely that he feared that: “If a world war were to break out, Germany’s situation would be hopeless.”

As to Seyss-Inquart, you will remember Göring’s instructions to him on the 26th of March 1938, to institute anti-Semitic measures in Austria, followed by the progress report on 12 November by one of his officials (Documents 3460-PS, 1816-PS). As far as concerns the Jews in the Netherlands, he admits that he knew they were being deported, but says he was powerless to stop it as it was ordered from Berlin. He has further said that he knew they went to Auschwitz but he says he sent there to inquire about them, was told they were well off, and arranged for them to send mail from Auschwitz to Holland. It is likely that Seyss-Inquart who admits knowledge of large-scale crimes against the Jews in the Netherlands, for example “a drive to force the Jews to be sterilized,” who admits that many and grave excesses occurred in the Netherlands concentration camps and indeed that in wartime he “considered that almost inevitable,” who pleads that in comparison with camps elsewhere “it was perhaps not quite so bad in the Netherlands,”—is it possible that he was really deceived as he says into thinking the people in Auschwitz were “comparatively well off”?

One comes next to the Defendants Speer and Fritzsche who have appeared in this Trial as experts. Speer has admitted that his responsibility for conscription of labor helped to bring up the total number of workers under him to 14 million. He stated that when he took over office in February 1942 all the perpetrations or violations of international law of which he could be accused had already been realized. Nevertheless he went on to say:

“the workers were ... brought into Germany against their will. I had no objection to their being brought to Germany against their will. On the contrary during the first period until autumn of 1942 I certainly used all my energy, that as many workers as possible should be brought to Germany.”

Further, workers were placed at his disposal by Sauckel and he was responsible for their allocation priorities.

He acknowledged the receipt of 1 million Soviet laborers in August 1942 (Document Number R-124). On 4 January 1944 he demanded 1,300,000 workers for the coming year. Speer produced no defense of this conscription of labor but he did assert that from 1943 he had supported the retention of French workers in France, which is a mere matter of mitigation (Document Number 1202-PS). The moderation of Speer’s manner ought not to hide the fact that this policy, which he cheerfully adopted and applied, was one that meant the most appalling misery and suffering for millions of Soviet and other families.

It displays once again the complete disregard for the fate of other people which runs like a sordid thread through the evidence in this Trial, and no moral awakening regarding the interest of the German people—I repeat “the German people”—at the end of the war, can offset the participation in this horrible action.

With regard to the treatment of foreign workers Speer’s general point was that the evidence for the Prosecution is simply that of individual bad instances and should not be taken as the general condition. If it were the general condition he would accept responsibility. The Prosecution submit that their evidence, viewed as a whole, is conclusive evidence of general bad conditions.

Neurath, who has told the Tribunal that he joined Hitler’s Government to keep it peace-loving and respectable, knew within a few weeks that the Jews were being persecuted, that reputable foreign papers and reputable German papers too for that matter were quoting official figures of 10,000 to 20,000 internees. He knew that the opposition, the Communists, the trade unionists and Social Democrats were being destroyed as political forces. The blood purge followed, yet he went on and seconded Hitler in his breaches of the Treaty of Versailles. We have the evidence of Paul Schmidt that the murder of Dollfuss and the attempted Putsch in Austria seriously disturbed the career personnel of the Foreign Office whilst they regarded the Mutual Assistance Pact between France and the Soviet Union as a further very serious warning as to the potential consequences of German foreign policy.

“At this time the career officials at least expressed their reservation to the Foreign Minister Neurath. I do not know whether or not Neurath in turn related these expressions of concern to Hitler” (Document Number 3308-PS).

Yet when Raeder was issuing orders about the danger of showing “enthusiasm for war,” Von Neurath would have you believe that he had failed to realize its growth. He, as much as Raeder, saw and took part in the events which followed, the secret meetings, the treatment of Von Blomberg and Von Fritsch; he it was at the time of the Anschluss who, though no longer Foreign Minister gave the support of a name, not yet notably tarnished, to Hitler’s action by transmitting untruths in denial of the British note and by reassuring the Czechs (Document Number C-194). That reassurance ought never to be forgotten—there can be few things more grimly cynical than Von Neurath who had listened to the Hossbach meeting solemnly telling M. Mastny that Hitler would stand by the Arbitration Treaty with Czechoslovakia. As soon as Hitler had marched into Prague, he it was who became Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. You have heard his admission that he applied all decrees for the treatment of the Jews which had appeared in Germany between 1933 and 1939.

Fritzsche’s work was to organize the entire German press so that it became “a permanent instrument of the Propaganda Ministry” (Document Number 3469-PS). Propaganda was the most potent factor in all Nazi strategy. Here in turn that factor made all the press its most potent weapon. The fact that he knew and participated in the use of his organization is shown by his attempt to whitewash the successive propaganda actions which led up to each of the various aggressions mentioned in his affidavit. As he said: “All news checked by me was full of tendency while not invented” (Document Number 3469-PS).

It is incredible that when he was called upon time after time to conduct what was specifically referred to as actions and when each time he saw the practical results he did not realize the dishonesty with which the German policy was being conducted or that the aim of the Nazi Government was aggressive war. His personal ability as a broadcaster caused him to become virtually an official commentator. To quote his own words: “May I add that it is even known to me that in remote front sectors, for instance, or in German colonies abroad my radio speeches were considered, shall we say, the political guide.”

He has emphasized that in these comments he had a free hand. Is it to be doubted that this was because he was prepared to broadcast whatever lie Goebbels wanted? He himself says, in dealing with the uses to which his influence was put: “... again and again I was requested to awaken hatred against individuals and against systems.”

You have seen a sample in his broadcast on the Athenia (Document Number D-912). As early as 1940 he broke far enough away from the restraint which he tried to picture in the witness box to call the Poles “underpeople” and “beasts in human form” (Document Number USSR-492).

On the 18th of December 1941 he referred to the fate of European Jews in the following words:

“The fate of Jewry in Europe has turned out to be as unpleasant as the Führer predicted it would be in the event of a European war. After the extension of the war instigated by the Jews, this unpleasant fate may also spread to the New World, for you can hardly assume that the nations of the New World will pardon the Jews for the misery of which the Old World did not absolve them” (Document Number 3064-PS).

There were few more dreadful or hate-provoking accusations among the whole miasma of Nazi lies against the Jews, than that of instigating the war which brought such misery to humanity, yet this educated and thoughtful defendant deliberately made it.

It is difficult to imagine any more fulsome or callous adulation of Hitler’s aggression than his speech on 9 October 1941 which contained the words:

“... and we are particularly grateful for these lightning victories because—as the Führer emphasized last Friday—they gave us the possibility of embarking on the organization of Europe and of lifting the treasures of this old continent even now in the middle of a war, without having to keep millions and millions of German soldiers on guard ...” (Document Number 3064-PS).

Perhaps the key to Fritzsche’s readiness to conceal the war crimes of his masters is revealed by the basic principle of his propaganda. I quote:

“But decisive for such a news machine is not the detail but the final fundamental basis on which propaganda is built. Decisive is the belief in the purity of the leader’s of the state on which in some way every journalist must rely.”

Fritzsche maintained until practically the very end the most excellent relations with Dr. Goebbels. When the Tribunal consider the picture of total extremism and violent anti-Semitism which the other defendants have painted of Goebbels it is difficult to imagine that the worship of his closest collaborator could have been based on innocent ignorance.

The Prosecution submit that it is laughable that such a man should try and persuade you that it was in ignorance of these horrors that he went on exhorting and persuading the German people to tread the path to their doom. Fritzsche shares with Streicher, Rosenberg, and Schirach the responsibility for the utter degradation of the German people so that “they shut the gates of mercy on mankind.” It was because of them that such scenes as that in the Jewish cemetery at Schwetz on that Sunday morning in October 1939 occurred, when 200 of Keitel’s decent Wehrmacht soldiers watched without a murmur the murder of that lorry-load of women and children. You will remember the story as three of them have told it:

“On Saturday ... I heard ... from conversations among my comrades that a large number of Poles had been shot at the Jewish cemetery of Schwetz in the morning.... Talk about the imminent shootings was common among the soldiers stationed in Schwetz. For this reason I went to the Jewish cemetery on Sunday morning together with most of the comrades of my company. We waited there in vain until 9 o’clock.

“... when a large truck loaded with women and children entered the cemetery. We saw how a group of one woman and three children ... were led to a ready-dug grave. The woman had to get down into the grave, holding her youngest child in her arms. The two other children were handed to her by two men of the execution squad. The woman had to lie face downward in the grave; her three children on her left in the same way. After that four men of the squad got down into the grave, raised their rifles and, aiming the muzzles at the woman and the children about one foot from their necks, shot them. In all, about nine or ten groups of women and children were shot in this mass grave in groups of four. When three or four groups had been shot, two more comrades were ordered to fill in the graves. Two hundred soldiers of the Wehrmacht witnessed these shootings from a distance of about 100 feet.

“Somewhat later a second bus arrived at the cemetery, loaded with men; one woman was among them. These men were separated into groups of four and made to get down into the grave. The corpses there were only barely covered with sand. They had to lie face downward and were executed by the four men of the squad, who shot them in the back of the neck.”

You are asked to believe that these 21 ministers and leading officers of state did not know about those matters—were not responsible. It is for you to decide.

Years ago Goethe said of the German people that some day fate would strike them ...

“... would strike them because they betrayed themselves and did not want to be what they are. It is sad that they do not know the charm of truth, that mist, smoke, and berserk immoderation are so dear to them, pathetic that they ingenuously submit to any mad scoundrel who appeals to their lowest instincts, who confirms them in their vices and teaches them to conceive nationalism as isolation and brutality.”

With what a voice of prophecy he spoke—for these are the mad scoundrels who did those very things.

Some it may be are more guilty than others; some played a more direct and active part than others in these frightful crimes. But when those crimes are such as you have to deal with here—slavery, mass murder and world war, when the consequences of the crimes are the deaths of over 20 million of our fellow men, the devastation of a continent, the spread of untold tragedy and suffering throughout the world, what mitigation is it that some took less part than others, that some were principals and others mere accessories. What matters it if some forfeited their lives only a thousand times whilst others deserved a million deaths?

In one way the fate of these men means little: Their personal power for evil lies forever broken; they have convicted and discredited each other and finally destroyed the legend they created round the figure of their leader. But on their fate great issues must still depend, for the ways of truth and righteousness between the nations of the world, the hope of future international co-operation in the administration of law and justice are in your hands. This Trial must form a milestone in the history of civilization, not only bringing retribution to these guilty men, not only marking that right shall in the end triumph over evil, but also that the ordinary people of the world—and I make no distinction now between friend or foe—are not determined that the individual must transcend the state. The state and the law are made for men, that through them he may achieve a fuller life, a higher purpose, and a greater dignity. States may be great and powerful. Ultimately the rights of men, made as all men are made in the image of God, are fundamental. When the state, either because as here its leaders have lusted for power and place, or under some specious pretext that the end may justify the means, affronts these things, they may for a time become obscured and submerged. But they are immanent and ultimately they will assert themselves more strongly still, their immanence more manifest. And so, after this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself—struggling now to re-establish in all the countries of the world the common simple things—liberty, love, understanding—comes to this Court and cries: “These are our laws—let them prevail!”

Then shall those other words of Goethe be translated into fact, not only, as we must hope, of the German people but of the whole community of man:

“... thus ought the German people to behave—giving and receiving from the world, their hearts open to every fruitful source of wonder, great through understanding and love, through mediation and the spirit—thus ought they to be; that is their destiny.”

You will remember when you come to give your decision the story of Gräbe, but not in vengeance—in a determination that these things shall not occur again.

“The father”—do you remember?—“pointed to the sky, and seemed to say something to his boy.”

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[The Tribunal adjourned until 29 July 1946 at 1000 hours.]