Were any government to install a loudspeaker in every public square, urging and inciting riots against minority elements, or were it to issue, as did the defendant, daily instructions to editors particularly describing the type and set-up of inflammatory material desired, such abuse of power should be condemned with equal vigor.
As one of the rulers of the State, and in the absence of a domestic opposition press which he and his colleagues had carefully abolished, the defendant ordered, and refined these abuses. The audiences addressed by the defendant were not casual groups incited to passion by an occasional eloquent spellbinder. The potential mob here was composed of the entire German people, and the spellbinders - the 3,097 newspapers in the Reich - all were briefed daily by the defendant. When we recall that the newspapers of Germany represented the highest newspaper coverage in the world, exceeding by far the 1,911 journals of the United States, and the approximately 1,500 of France, the power exerted by the defendant becomes apparent.
Dietrich began his intimate association with Hitler in 1929, when, as a young newspaper editor from the Rhineland, he had thrown in his lot with the rising demagogue, He had acted as press manager for the Fuehrer in his early struggle for power; he had introduced him to the steel magnates to whom Hitler had turned for support at the famous Duesseldorf meeting; and he had handled for Hitler all press matters incident to the latter's sensational 30,000 mile aerial election campaign of 1931, during the course of which Hitler spoke to 14,000,000 Germans.
He was essentially "Hitler's man". However, the defendant was no faceless automaton who acted as a mechanical conduit for the wishes of the Fuehrer. Nor, as the evidence will show, did he sit supinely by, as he may ask us to believe, dutifully nodding his approval to Hitler's suggestions. Hitler relied on his Press Chief for information concerning the home and foreign press. It was Dietrich who selected the news items for Hitler's attention. This choice by the defendant was decisive!
The Prosecution has charged that the defendant Dietrich initiated and formulated press campaigns before each aggressive act to weaken the prospective victims, provide spurious justification for aggression, and prepare the German people psychologically for war.
The dissemination of provocative lies and the systematic deception of public opinion were as necessary for the realization of their program as were the production of armaments and the drafting of military plans. The International Military Tribunal found that prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia:
In February 1939, and before the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, for instance, he (Fritzsche) received Dietrich's order to bring to the attention of the press Slovakia's efforts for independence, and the anti-Germ anic policies and politics of the existing Prague govern ment.
During this period, the "Voelkischer Beobachter", the leading party newspaper, carried such headliness as the following:
Terrorization by arrest of ethnic Germans in Czech territory.
Firing on ethnic Germans by rural police. Destruction and damaging of German houses by Czech mob.
Concentration of Czech troops on the borders of the Sudeten land.
Carrying off, deporting, and persecuting of Slovak minorities by the Czechs.
The Czechs must quit Slovakia. Multiply these bafrications by more than 3,000, the total of German newspapers of the Reich, augment this figure further by adding the hundreds of periodicals which likewise reflected Dietrich's directives, and the power and effect of his press control becomes apparent.
After the destruction of Czechoslovakia, Dietrich adjusted his propaganda sights and cleverly formulated a press campaign to waken the next prospective victim, and provide spurious "justification" for aggression by the falsification, distortion, and perversion of news. This time the victim was Poland. The defendant's secret directive to the German press for May 2, 1939, four months before the invasion began, was fearfully prophetic: ----------------------1. Vo. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 337 The individual statements of the Polish press can be further sharply denied by the German press.
There should, however, in all commentaries and reports, be no direct threats to Poland.
...Moreover, it may already be stated that if Poland continued to represent the point of view of the Polish press, which lies beyond the political and geographical hypotheses, the Polish nation is headed for a sad future.
In a directive of May 8, Dietrich became more explicit:
CONFIDENTIAL AND IMPORTANT:For tactical reasons, the German press should exercise some restraint with regard to the numerous communiques from Poland, for the great Polish campaign has not yet been ordered.
The instruction is given that until further notice only German News Agency (DNB) reports are to be published and only on page two.
All sensational composition is to be avoided. Only the eastern German press is allowed, as before, to print reports of this kind on page one.
The eastern press can also pu blish its own reports from its correspondents in Warsaw and Kattowitz.
In case of particularly serious incidents, special communiques will be published.
By the beginning of August, under the sensitive direction of the defendant, the press orchestra was stepping up its crescendo to a fortissimo climax. On 11 August, a directive issued at the daily press conference had strategic overtone:
"From now on, all Polish excesses against ethnic Germans and similar incidents, which reveal the hatred of the Poles of everything German, should be handled as commu niques on the first page and commented on.
Of course, the interpretation should not yet be made in the most severe tone, in order that there will still be a possi bility of making it sharper.
These instructions, pending further orders, will apply to the whole of the next week.
On 19 August, the defendant spoke to his editorial staff on tactics. The directive on that day was:
As regards the treatment of Poland in the German press, the interpretation is to remain the same; that is, the terror acts to the fore.
In formulating the reports, strict attention must be paid that they are put together concisely and briefly, no long-winded feuilletons, but only placard-like communiques, in order that they may have the strongest effort on the German public and arouse in dignation.
It is also advisable to present the reports (of the atrocities) always as independent reports and not to connect them one with another without a break.
The re ports should, however, not publish anything which hints in any way at a self dissolution of the Polish state, for there can be no question of that.
It is also not expedient to speak of the "Polish Mosaic State"; this conception is reserved for later.
The conception "Polish soldiery" is to be avoided.
On 25 August, another directive reminded the press that:
Poland and Danzig continue to occupy the leads. In this connection, the following are to be played up:
- Military preparations of the Poles as offensive mea sures against Germany.
With respect to the construction of fortifications in Poland, avoid any mention of defense positions, but refer only to jumping-off positions for the planned attack.
- The provocative behaviour of Polish military and of ficial organs, which nullified intentions aimed at pre vention.
- The hermetical sealing-off of Danzig with respect to accessibility to food supplies.
- Terroristic activities.
Finally, on 31 August, all the stops were open, in a directive ordering screaming headlines on Polish mobilization, suggesting leads like "Poland, the Distruber of Europe's Peace", "Poland's act of desperation", etc. The intent behind these directives can be seen from one of 30 August, which expressly cautions the press to make no reference to "foreign proposals of mediation in the German-Polish dispute"; as the defendant was well aware, the die had been cast. On 1 September 1939, Warsaw was bombed and the invasion had begun.
The foregoing will suffice to show the methods of Dietrich and his highly important role in assisting Hitler in launching his invasions and aggressive wars. The proof will disclose the same methods employed by Dietrich at the proper time in connection with each succeeding step in the wars of aggression.
Dietrich's work did not end with the completion of each successful aggression. His participation in the occupation of these conquered territories was a vital one. Dietrich insisted on appointing his own press chief in each such territory, responsible only to him. And, it is important to note, the line of press policy had to conform to Dietrich's policy within the Reich.
With respect to the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Dietrich, we shall see that he took advantage of every opportunity to inject the virus of hatred into the bloodstream of the German people.
In keeping with the policy to encourage the civilian population to lynch Allied Fliers forced down by military action, Dietrich's press machinery incited the civilian populace by divers methods. A daily directive of the Reich Press Chief, dated 22 December 1943, illustrates the ghoulish technique:
.....the newspapers are requested to take up once again energetically the subject of England's responsibility for terror methods in the conduct of the war.
In connection with the material already on hand on this subject - among other things, a new congratualtory message of Churchill's for the Anglo-American terror fliers has been published it must be established that the war criminal, Churchill, will one day receive his punishment for his historical guilt.
In commenting, it must furthermore be observed that nothing must be mentioned on the subject of reprisals on our part or of retaliation.
Dietrich incited hatred and conditioned public opinion for mass persecutions on political, racial, and religious grounds. Through his efforts the rationale and justification for the liquidation of Jews was presented to the German people. Dietrich's responsibility in this respect is far more effective than that of Streicher, for Streicher's field was limited to his single paper with a circulation of 600,000, whereas Dietrich had at his disposal, not only Streicher's paper, but more than 3000 other publications with a circulation of better than 30,000,000 to disseminate anti-semitism in a vastly more comprehensive manner. Dietrich instructed all these publications that Jewish themes should not, as he put it, "be seized upon unimaginatively, but used only to incite."
We will advert briefly to the numerous directives given by Dietrich to the newspaper and periodical press prescribing the treatment of the Jewish problem. On 21 August, 1941, he ordered:
It is to our interests that all Jewish statements against Germany or the authoritarian states should be well noted.
The reason for this wish is that measures of an inner poli tical nature may be expected.
Another press instruction on 26 September 1941 read:
With reference to the marking (armbands, etc.) for Jewry, the opportunity is offered to handled this theme in the most varied ways, in order to make clear to the German people the necessity for these measures, and especially to in dicate the obnexiousness of the Jews.
From tomorrow on, the special delivery service will provide material to be used as proof of the injuries which Jewry has inflicted upon Germany, and the destiny it has envisaged for her, past and present.
This material must be utilized with caution.
The German Weekly Service, controlled by Dietrich, in a "Special Anti-Jewish Issue" to periodicals of 23 May 1943, issued the following directives:
The duty of all periodicals is to work up attacks on the destructive influence of the Jews with respect to the cultures of peoples.
The effect desired is the elimination of any vestige of popular sentimentality for the "poor Jews."
Every individual Jew, wherever he is and whatever he does, is to blame.
There are no "decent Jews", but rather only these with greater or lesser camouflage.
The Jew is a no torious criminal.
The defendant's directives to the newspapers often contained rebukes for previous moderation and explicit instructions for the use and techniques calculated to incite their readers to applaud the outrages then under way; the directive of 29 April 1943 was a manual of the technique of anti-Semitism in practice:
In Yesterday's and today's Tagesparole we have addressed ourselves to the subject of Jewry frequently.
... In head lines and text material, the Jewish Bolshevist murder and arson ring must always be referred to, not only today or tomorrow, but continuously must the world's mortal enemy be unmasked and grappled with.
The press is receiv ing the appropriate DNB yellow Jewish material which must be worked up accordingly.
In this connection, from now on it is the future duty of the press to apply itself with greater intensity to the Jewish question as its permanent duty.
... From now on the main question is the building up of anti-Semitism.
It is clear that one cannot pull anti Semitism out of a vacuum, but that one must have a certain basis for it, any kind of theme to which everything else can be adapted.
With this in mind, the newspapers will re ceive a Jewish theme daily, one that should not be seized upon unimaginatively, but used only to incite.
The news papers here have a wide field and there are countless sen sational stories wherein the Jew is depioted as the author of crime, which can be used.
First of all, American internal politics offers an inexhaustible reservoir.
If the news papers put their assistants to work here, we will have the opportunity to see the true face, true behaviour, and true desires of the Jew depicted daily in ever new and varied forms.
For the rest, the Jew must naturally be brought into the Ger man press politically as well.
In everything it must be esta blished that the Jews are to blame! The Jews wanted the war!Everywhere throughout the world, the Jews prepared the war against Germany! The Jew intensifies the war! The Jew profits by the War! Always and everywhere the Jew is to blame! Na turally, those reports which do not lend themselves to anti semitic treatment must be adapted for use as anti-Semitic propaganda.
...The possibility of playing up the true charac ter of the Jew is infinite.
...It is the duty of the entire German press to join in the above depicted anti-Semitic ope ration.
It was stated in part in an explanation of the defendant's Tagesparole of 15 February 1944 that:
The instigator, supportor, and leader of this war is, and will remain, the international Jew - that criminal race which now, as in the centuries past, is to blame for the fact that the nations of the earth are arrayed against one another in war.
An understanding among the peoples of the earth can be hoped for only when this worldpest once and for all is stamped out.
Let us face the issue squarely. The defendant Dietrich is charged with an attack on the human mind and spirit.
THE PRESIDENT:Just a moment, Mr. Hardy. I understand that a new film has to be inserted; so we'll have to take our recess here.
The Tribunal will take a fifteen-minute recess.
(A recess was taken.)
Court No. IV, Case No. XI.
THE MARSHAL:The Tribunal is again in session.
THEPRESIDENT; Mr. Hardy, you may continue where you left off.
MR. HARDY:In summation let us face the issue squarely The defendant Dietrich is charged with an attack on the human mind and spirit. He is charged with the responsibility for warping the collective mind and spirit of millions of people, not in the pursuit of a civilizing mission, but for the uses of war and annihilation. He was a Frankenstein who produced a monstrous mass hypnosis, and who, as much as any man alive or dead, bears guilt for the cataclysm of war and the extermination of millions.
Then I will proceed to the defendant, Wilhelm Stuckart.
The defendant Stuckart, State Secretay in the Ministry of the Interior from 1935 to 1945, was the administrative and legislative specialist serving successively under Minister Frick and then Himmler, who succeeded Frick in 1943. Stuckart's Department I in the Interior Ministry was the central agency which had final authority on constitutional questions; jurisdiction over government administration and civil defense; authority over the civil service, responsibility for drafting pertinent legislation, and was the final arbiter of questions concerning citizenship and race. The Nazi method of passing laws through personal decrees and edicts required a central organization to maintain consistency and uniformity in the legislative and administrative practices of the Government, otherwise the Third Reich would have disintegrated by virtue of its own incoherency.
Stuckart looms into prominence in the incorporation of the conquered territories into the Third Reich. He headed the central offices for the civil administration of Austria, Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg, Norway, and the occupied southeastern territories.
As Frick's deputy, he shares in the guilt, summarized in the judgment of the IMT as follows:1 "Frick signed the law of March 13, 1938, which united Austria with the Reich, and he was made responsible for its accomplishment.
In setting up German administration in Austria, he issued decrees which introduced German law, the Nurnberg decrees, the military service law, and he provided for police security by Himmler....
"He also signed the laws incorporating into the Reich the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the eastern territories, (West Prussia and Posen), and Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was placed in charge of the actual incorporation, and of the establishment of German administration over these territories. He signed the law establishing the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
"As the head of the central offices for Bohemia and Moravia, the government General, and Norway, he was charged with obtaining close cooperation between the German officials in these occupied countries and the supreme authorities of the Reich. He supplied German civil servants for the administration in all occupied territories, advising Rosenberg as to their assignment in the occupied eastern territories....."
Stuckart participated in drafting the secret Reich Defense law of 4 September 1938. In a conference in which he presided as Chief of Staff of the Plenipotentiary General for administration (GBV), Frick, he explained the purposes of the law as follows:
"In case of war, it will be the task of the GBV to issue legal decrees, within the jurisdiction of these above named ministries (Reich Ministries of Justice, of Education, and of Ecclesiastical Affairs) which continue to conduct ---------------1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, pp. 299-300.
their affairs on their own responsibility, and in general to direct and guide the public administration."
These tasks have to be prepared already in time of peach. He was present at a meeting of the Reich Defense Council on 25 June 1939. According to the minutes of this meeting:
"Ministerpraesident General Field Marshal Goering emphasized, in a preamble that, according to the Fuehrer's wishes, the Reich Defense Council was the determining body in the Reich for all questions of preparation for war. It is to discuss only the most important questions of Reich Defense. They will be worked out by the Reich Defense Committee." Stuckart was appointed President of this committee, which in the words of Goering:
"was an important section of the preparation of war." Stuckart's close cooperation with the agencies engaged in the preparation for war continued, and in 1959 he was appointed by Goering to the General Council for the Four Year Plan which acted as a clearing house for the synchronizing off all agencies engaged in the planning and preparation for war.
Stuckart's anti-semetic crimes ran the gamut. In 1936, he became President of a committee organized within his department in the Interior of Ministry "For the Protection of German Blood". He wrote, lectured and preached on the superiority of the master race. He emphasized the duty of safe-guarding "pure German Blood" and the importance of preventing marriages between Germans and Jews. He put his theories into effect by drafting the notorious Nurnberg laws and supplemental decrees by which, successively, political, civil, religious, and economic rights were denied to persons of Jewish extraction. Later, he helped to extend these laws to the incorporated and occupied countries.
Decrees which Stuckart drafted deprived Jews of the right to vote or hold public office; excluded them from the practice of law, medicine, and dentistry; required registration of their property without any process of law; and, finally, denied them any semblance of legal right by placing them under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo. In 1943, Stuckart wrote:
"One can consider the aims of the racial legislation as already achieved, and the racial legislation therefore as mainly concluded. As stressed above, it has brought about a preliminary solution of the Jewish problem, and at the same time substantially prepared the final solution. Many of the provisions will lose their practical importance to the same extent as Germany is getting close to the final goal of the Jewish problem."
The proof will clearly show Stuckart's participation in the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". According to the minutes of the conference held on 20 January 1942:
"The practical execution of the possibilities just discussed for settling the mixed marriage and the Mischling problems in this way would entail an endless administrative task. On the other hand, in order also to take into account in every event the biological actualities, State Secretary Dr. Stuckart suggested that compulsory sterilization be undertaken." At this meeting it was concluded that;
"The emigration program has now been replaced by the evacuation of the Jews to the East as a further solution possibility.
"With proper direction, the Jews should now, in the course of the final solution, be brought to the East in a suitable way for use as labor. In big labor contingents, with separation of the sexes, the Jews capable of work are brought to these areas and employed in roadbuilding, in which task undoubtedly a great part will fall out through natural diminution."
"The remaining surviving all mischance to the end -since with these it is doubtless a question of the part with the strongest resistance -- must be given treatment accordingly, since these people, representing a natural selection, are to be regarded as the germ cell of a new Jewish development, should they be allowed to go free. (See the experience of history.)" Stuckart was also deeply involved in the crimes committed under the euphemistic name of Germanization.
Himmler, in his position as "Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanism" had set the task of political, cultural, social and economic assimilation of the conquered territories, and the extermination of all irreconcilable elements. Kidnapping as well as murder, was utilized as a method to implement the program. In February 1942, Himmler sent to Stuckart's department a letter containing the following:
"The Higher SS and Police Leaders are to pay particular attention that the re-Germanization of children does not suffer as a result of detrimental influence by the parent Should such detrimental influence be determined to exist, and should it be impossible to eliminate them through coercive measures by the State Police, accommodations are to be found for the children with families who are politically and ideologically above reproach...."
Stuckart had the jurisdiction over the racial register and questions relating to eligibility for citizenship, and signed numerous decrees which constituted the basis for the imposition of citizenship and deportation of these who were found unqualified.
I now turn to the defendant Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk The Trench King Louis XII once asked his Fieldmarshal Trivulgio what kind of armaments and supplies he required for the conquest of the city of Milan.
Tribulgio tersely replied "We need three things -- money, money, and more money." Throughout the era of the Third Reich--from its birth, through its conquest, and up to its final collapse--the purse strings of the Third Reich were entrusted to the defendant Schwerin von Krosigk, Hitler's Finance Minister from 1933 to 1945.
Von Krosigk well knew that, in order to organize Germany into a military machine for aggressive war, the concentration of absolute power in the hands of the state was imperative. As a member of the cabinet at the time of Hitler's accession to power, his signature appears on the Enabling Act of 1933, which abolished democratic government and transferred legislative power to the cabinet. He signed the law depriving labor of its bargaining power and rights and the decrees which consolidated all power in Hitler after Hindenburg's death.
In recognition of the important part played by finance in war mobilization, Krosigk was made a member of the Reich Defense Council. He participated in the promulgation and enactment of the secret Reich Defense Law of September 1938, and was a member of the Reich Defense Commission described by Goering as "an important section of the preparaion for war." In these capacities and as Reich Minister for Finance, Krosigk directed the financial mobilization of the German Reich for agression through financual measures which insured the financing of Germany's rearmament program, employing such techniques as the floating of long and short term loans and the honoring of "Mefo bills". Naturally. he participated in many conferences where the mobilization of the German economy for aggressive war was discussed. He was, for example, present at the session of the ministerial council on 27 May 1936, when Goering exclaimed "all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war." And, as Walter Funk stated in his speech of 14 October 1939:
"One can evaluate correctly what the Four Year Plan means for the oconomic preparation of war, only when one considered that the Four Year Plan does not include only the food and raw material econmy, only the entire industrial economic life, but that it also includes foreign commerce, money, and foriegn exchange economy and finance...."
Krosigk appeared to have been a cautious man, and at time differed with Hitler concerning the tempo at which the Nazi program should be carried out. But there is no evidence of any disagreement as to underlying purposes; on the contrary, Krosigk expressed full agreement with the goals which German armed might was intended to achieve. Thus, at the time of the Munich Pact, Krosigk advised Hitler not to start a war before Germany's strength was equal to the test and went on to point out: quoting from Krosigk's letter:
"We therefore can only gain by waiting. For this reason, the fanatical desire of the Communists, Jews, and Czechs, is to involve us now in a war because they see in the present situation the last possibility to cause a world war out of the Czech problem and consequently the possibility to destroy the hated Third Reich. I am firmly convinced that, if Germany awaits her hour with the calmness of the strong against all provocations and completes her armaments in the meantime and especially creates a balance between the military and economic preparations which now does not exist...the day will not be far off when the final death thrust can be dealt to the Czechs.
Passing to the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the evidence will clearly show that, from the very first restrictive measures until the receipt of the very last trinket and personal effect of Jews in the concentration carps, the Reich Finance Ministry participated in that very highly profitable enterprise of the Third Reich anti-Somitism. In 1938, immediately after the infamous pogrom on the 9th and 10th of November, Schwerin Krosigk attended the meeting presided over by Goering at which a collective fine of one billion Reichsmarks was levied against the Jews of Germany -- a fine to compensate for damages done, not by Jewel but by "Aryan" Naxis to Jewish property.
Schwerin Kresgk took charge of collecting this fine through agents of the Ministry of Finance, and in cases where the Jews had insufficient funds to meet the fine, his agencies forced the liquidation of Jewish property to meet this brutal demand.
In the "final solution of the Jewish question" we again find Schwerin Krosigk and his Ministry in the forefront and Krosigk signed the infamous decree of July, 1943 under which Jews were deprived of all, judicial process and left at the mercy of Himmler's police. The Reich Finance Ministry was fully informed about the character of the proceeds received into the Reich Treasury from concentration camps, as is shown in an exhange of letters between the Finance Ministry and Oswald Pohl's WVHA, dated 27 July, 1944:
We are here concerned with Jewish valuables, which have been cfedited to the Reich, namely Reichsmark packages, RKKnotes Foreign exchange in coins and notes, Stocks, bonds, and mortage papers, and Ornaments and articles made of gold and silver of all kinds.
The attachment of an invoice list is not possible due to the extensive quantity.
The valuables accrue from con centration camps.
.....The proceeds will be delivered to the Reich Main Treasury, credited to the Reich Finance Ministry.
..... Trhough Krosigk provided ingenious cloaks whenever they were desired for Germany's vast spoliation schemes, he was no more averse on principle to simple larceny than such notorious plunderers as Goering and Rosennerg. A memorandum prepared by one of Krosigk's subordinates in 1941, reports a scheme for division of loot agreed on between Krosigk and Hermann Goering as follows:
The Foreign Exchange Protection Command France has con fiscated the fortune of the Rothschilds in Paris.
To the confiscated fortune belong, among other things, paintings and six large chests.
The Reich Marshal has placed the paintings and five of the six large chests at the disposal of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg and has allocated one large chest for the Reich Finance Ministry.
for the national treasury. The Reich Marshal has, in addition, had articles taken out of the five large chests and packed in a small chest.
This small chest also is allocated to the Reich Finance Ministry.
The contents of both chests is not yet known.
They are supposed to contain gold and jewels.
The Reich Marshal has discussed the matter with the Reich Minister of Finance personally.
Through the entire era of the Third Reich, Krosigk never wavered in his faith in Hitler and the Nazi government. As late as 14 April 1945, we find him blindly snatching at the death of President Roosevelt as a harbinger of German victory, and writing to Joseph Goebbels that "Roosevelt's death is God's gift to Germany." Nor did Hitler ever lose faith in von Krosigk; it need not surprise us that von Krosigk was one of the few survivors of his original cabinet whom Hitler designated in his last will as one of his political heirs, as a result of which Krosigk turned up again in the so-called Doenitz cabinet at the end of the war. May it please the Tribunal, Mr. Lewis of the prosecution will continue the opening statement.
MR. LEWIS:May it please this Honorable Tribunal, the Prosecution continues now with individual responsibility aganst the defendant Otto Meissner.
As the death bells tolled for Reich President von Hindenburg in 1934 Chancellor Hitler seized the opportunity to seize Hindenburg's fallen baton and centralize all authority in his person. On this occasion, in order to clothe his rule with some appurtenances of respectability he appointed the defendant of both former Reich presidents, as chief of his Presidential Chancellery. The easily corrupted Meissner was to function as Hitler's sole counsellor in the many affairs that the Fuehrer in his capacity as the German sovereign was obliged to resolve. So well did he play his role that in 1937 Hitler awarded Meissner the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP and elevated him to the position of State Minister with Cabinet rank. Hitler fully realized and intended that the appointment of one of the highest ranking civil servants of the prostrate Weimar Republic to one of the foremost positions in his regime would be excellent camouflage to cloak his preparations for aggression.
Meissner participated in some of the most important conferences which were steps in Hitler's march of conquest. Meissner frequently conferred with the foreign statesman summoned to Hitler's presence and lulled them into the belief that the pending conference was directed toward peaceful settlement of the disputed issues. He then led the lambs to the slaughter. It was he who ushered Tiso into the presence of Hitler, and he remained present when the Fuehrer laid down his ultimatum regarding the declaration of independence of Slovkia on 13 March 1939. Meissner was again present when two days later President Hacha was compelled to surrender the last vestiges of Czech liberty. On July 7 1940 Meissner, Hitler and Ribbentrop conferred with Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, and discussed prospective measures of aggression that would be required when their legions were launched against the Balkan nations. It was Meissner who in May 1941 informed the Rumanian minister, Bossi, that Germany would reward his country with former Serbian territory for their support of Naxi aggression in the Balkans.
As chief of the Presidential Chancellery Meissner contirbuted for many years to the stamping out of political opposition and the persecution of oppressed peoples at home and abroad by exercising one of the most important judicial prerogatives of a chief of state; the power to grant clemency and pardons to those convicted by the corrupted Nazi judiciary. In this capacity he continually recommended to the Fuehrer condonation of the Heinous crimes of Nazi minions. Meissner, in the exercise of Hitler's power of commutation of death sentences, actively participated in the Nazi reign of judicial terror.
The Prosecution comes now to Hans Heinrich Lammers:
In years to come, historians and criminologists thumbing through the bloody pages which record the crimes committed in the name of the Third Reich will readily note the constant appearance of the bold signature of the defendant Lammers, all powerful Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery. Next to Hitler himself, no man hold the reins of the Third Reich more tightly in his hands than did the defendant Lammers. From 1933 till the very denouncement, he was Hitler's supreme legislator and the de facto Chancellor of Germany. His was the responsibility of coordinating all the functions of Party and State, and all matters grave enough to require the Fuehrer's attention had first to be submitted to Lammers for his consideration. It was he who resolved most affairs and served as the bridge between the various Reich supreme authorities and their exalted leader. His sweeping powers were clearly defined from the earliest days:
....to inform the Fuehrer ... about the current ques tions of policy and to prepare the directives.
It Is of the utmost significance that throughout the years Lammers enjoyed Hitler's complete confidence and trust.
Hitler placed upon Lammers' shoulders his own mantle of authority and never once during their infamous association was it torn away, for Hitler always considered him his most loyal partner in crime and spoke of him as "...my excellent collaborator and councillor." So great was his reliance upon Lammers that Hitler required that Lammers examine and cosign all his decrees and directives before they became Nazi law. In no other instance did the Fuehrer delegate so much of his dictatorial power to any one man, and as a consequence thereof, Lammers, was deeply involved in an responsible for almost every criminal policy and program formulated and executed by the Third Reich.