In a contemporary report of this meeting some of Goering's remarks were summarized as follows:
"The Sudetenland has to be exploited with all means.
General Field Marshal Goering counts upon a complete industrial assimilation of Slovakia.
Bohemia and Slovakia would become German dominions.
Everything possible must be taken out.
The Oder Danube Canal has to be speeded up.
Searches for oil and ore have to be conducted in Slovakia, notably by State Sec retary Keppler."
Goering's prophecy might have continued, as the proof will disclose, that the Hermann Goering Works would greatly augment its potency as a producer of armament by absorbing the bulk of the Czech mining, smelting, and steel industry, including the Skoda Works, with the assistance of the defendants Kehrl and Rasche.
The economic policy of Germany in its territories as carried out by the Four Year Plan was both the foundation and result of its aggressions. The systematic exploitation of occupied territory was a premeditated aim of each aggression, and following each invasion the execution of this policy became a springboard for further aggressions. Thus these economic policies and the acts carried out pursuant thereto were not only criminal violations of the laws of land warfare; they were also steps in the commission of crimes against peace as an indispensable means of waging aggressive wars and as preparation for launching still further wars of aggression.
For example, less than two months after the invasion of Poland. Goering set forth the policy for exploitation of its resources by special agencies under the Four Year Plan as follows:
"..there must be removed from the territories of the Government General all raw materials, scrap materials, machines etc.
which are of use for the German war economy.
"For this purpose, I have formed a Main Trustee Of fice East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost)...."We have already referred to the activities of Koerner, Keppler.
Pleiger and Kehrl in several of the leading, agencies established to exploit Russian resources in complete disregard of the rules of war, and the details of their success in these enterprises on a huge scale can await the proof.
We may pause only to note that here, even more clearly perhaps than elsewhere, the plans for spoliation were an integral part of the planning of the illegal invasion itself. Months before the invasion of Russia, plans for its economic exploitation were laid out. In March 1941, Koerner joined the operation staff for Case Barbarossa, the code term for the attack upon Russia, which in fact took place three months later. On the 2nd of May 1941, in a conference of State Secretaries on Case Barbarossa, it was stated:
"1. The war can only be continued if all armed forces are fed by Russia in the third year of war.
"2. There is no doubt that as a result many millions of people will starve to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us."
The Decree of April 1942 established the Central Planning Board, and its overall authority in the economic field necessarily involved the Board in continuous activity with respect to the general direction of the slave labor program. In the decisions and deliberations of the Board, important figures included not only the defendant Koerner, who was a member of the Board, but also the defendants Kehrl and Pleiger. Kehrl was in practice virtually a member of the Board. He was chief of the Planning Office, which prepared the material for the conferences of the Board and saw to the execution of its decisions and usually he participated in the deliberations of the Board. Pleiger also took part in many of the Central Planning Board meetings, at which he forcefully urged the labor demands of the German coal industry, which was always considered a most vital sector of the industrial war machine and was one of the largest users of foreign slave labor.
A few of the many statements made by these defendants at meetings of the Board amply illustrate their responsibility for decisions affecting literally millions of foreign workers under conditions which they knew meant slavery on a vast scale and which they also knew would inevitably exact a heavy toll of sickness, semi-starvation and death. At a meeting in the spring of 1943, in which both Kehrl and Koerner took part, Kehrl referred to Pleiger's need for labor in the coal industry as follows:
"What we are losing on coal is definitely lost for this war.
Therefore we cannot enforce enough the allocation of labor minine.
..We live on foreign men who are in Germany."
Later in the meeting Kehrl continued:
"I am of the opinion that Sauckel should receive orders to send 70,000 under all circumstances to coal mining."
Another meeting of the Board led to the following formal decision:
"It is considered necessary that not too high demands should be placed on the choice of PW's. The miners' doctors are to be instructed that a different stan dard is to be laid down for the PW's than for German miners."
The obvious consequence of such a policy was reflected in a colloquy in another meeting of the Board between Milch and Pleiger. Pleiger stated regarding Russian PW labor,.......
"....If one sees those people one must realize that they are not even able to pass a brick from one to the other.
They are completely deteriorated." Milch later asked Pleiger:
"How do you explain the disappearances of PW's?" Pleiger answered:
"Through sickness and unsuitability, partly also through self-mutilation.
... " Pleiger's special responsibility under the slave labor program extends beyond his numerous appearances at the meetings of the Central Planning Board, which were undertaken in his capacity as the leading official of the Reich Coal Association, usually referred to as the RVK.
The proof will disclose that the RVK was an official quasi-governmental association for the "self administration of the coal industry", which was established in the spring of 1941 with Pleiger as chairman of the governing board or praesidium. From that time until the end of the war, Pleiger was the leading figure in the management of the German coal industry. During this time the industry made widespread use of foreign slave laborers and prisoners of war in the course of which this human raw material was not only enslaved but also mistreated and in many cases worked to death, with the result that on several occasions even agencies of the Nazi Government raised their voices in protest.
Thus, for example, in one report of the Ruhr district Group for Hard Coal Mining, in March 1944, it was stated as follows:
"The losses of Soviet POW's were especially great in March because by order of the Army High Command all TB cases should have been extricated from the mining industries.
On the basis of mass X-ray examinations it was established that this action would entail the loss of ten percent of the POW's employed.
As such a loss would have had a very bad influence on the production, in future, only POW's suffering from open TB or active TB.
..that would involve about five percent of the total of POW's employed, will be re leased."
Pleiger, though engaged in the regulation of the entire German coal industry, continued to the end of the war as a leading official of the mining and smelting properties of the Hermann Goering Works. Koerner continued to be highly influential and responsible in supervising the combine and, together with Pleiger, bears responsibility for the exploitation of slave labor by the tens and even hundreds of thousands in its various plants and mines. At the original plant of the Goering Works at Salzgitter, in the year 1941, over half the workers were foreign, and in some of the plants it ran as high as 90%.
In the mad scramble for manpower, the Goering Works sought out every conceivable source of labor regardless of the basic dictates of humanity and was thus able to obtain the services of a large number of concentration camp inmates. These efforts were facilitated by the excellent political connections of Pleiger, Koerner and Kehrl, and their friendship with such key officials as Keppler, Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler and SS Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl. In fact, Pleiger even entered into joint enterprises with the SS for the purpose of exploiting the labor potential of these victims of oppression. This was handled in a manner which Pleiger, Himmler and Pohl no doubt considered very businesslike and profits were divided as they said, on a fifty-fifty basis, With your permission Mr. Fitzpatrick will continue.
Mr. FITZPATRICK: If the Tribunal please, we would now like to discuss the subject of banking and the defendants Rasche and Puhl.
As might be expected, the banking industry was thoroughly coordinated with and tied into the war economy of the Third Reich. We will find close relations and full measure of collaboration between the defendants Rasche and Puhl, with whom we are about to deal, and the four defendants more closely concerned with industrial matters whose activities have just been described.
First of all I would like to discuss Karl Rasche.
Had the Nazis succeeded in winning World War II, there is reason to believe that there would be no more important banker in Europe today than Karl Rasche. His ability and willingness to swing the second largest commercial bank in Germany, the Dresdner Bank, squarely behind the programs of the Nazi and SS leadership, assured him his preeminent position. In the eight years from 1934 to 1942, the defendant Rasche rose from a little-known provincial banker to become a dominant figure in the great Dresdner Bank.
When, at the end of 1934, the Party sought to install a theroughly trustworthy and enthusiastic Nazi in the Dresdner Bank, Rasche, sponsored by Keppler, was moved into the Vorstand to coordinate bank policy with National Socialist plants. Rasche's record in the Dresdner Bank thereafter was one of continually expanding personal power.
There were bankers who joined the Nazi Party earlier, but there were few who joined with better sponsorship. Rasche, as a member of the group known as the Circle of Friends of Himmler, had already been Himmler's guest at Party rallies at Nurnberg, at SS ceremonies at Munich, and on a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp. In July 1937 Fritz Kranefuss of the Circle wrote Rasche that Himmler would like to have Rasche apply for party membership and that Himmler was prepared to sponsor his application. One of Rasche's associates wrote Kranefuss in reply and I quote:
"Dr. Rasche's own wish is as stated in your letter.
.....Herr Dr. Rasche conveys his best thanks to the Reichsfuehrer SS as well as to you for your kind mediation."
Himmler's "mediation" of course was successful and Rasche was approved for Party membership.
With the backing of Himmler and the defendant Keppler, RASCHE (who had observed the functions of the SS at Dachau, the Gestapo offices and the Main Security Office) likewise had no difficulty in becoming an officer in the SS in November 1938. Well before this time Rasche, jointly with his colleague Meyer, had been instrumental in providing financial support for the SS by annual contributions of Dresdner Bank funds through the Circle of Friends of Himmler. These subsidies by the bank, which were continued to the end of the war and totalled over 400,000 Reichsmarks, were made under the same circumstances as those of such other Circle members as Flick and Steinbrinck, who were found guilty by Tribunal IV of aiding and abetting in this manner the criminal activities of the SS.
Rasche served the financial needs of the SS in even more substantial ways and thus earned the gratitude of Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl. When Rasche's second promotion in the SS (and a promotion for Emil Meyer) were pending in 1943, the matter was referred to Pohl, who replied, and I quote:
"I would be very glad if SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Emil Meyer and SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Karl Rasche of the Dresdner Bank would be promoted to the next high grade at the next term.
I work together very well with both comrades and both endeavor to help.
..
in a correct way when it is possible."
Rasche and Meyer earned this endorsement by using the resources of the Dresdner Bank to support Pohl's concentration camp enterprises. These enterprises ware created to exploit the otherwise "wasted" manpower of inmates of concentration camps run by the SS, a fact well known to the defendant Rasche as a result of his tours of concentration camps with other members of the Circle of Friends of Himmler. For example, in 1939 Rasche supported the loan by the Dresdner Bank of 5,000,000 Reichsmarks to Oswald Pohl's Deutsche Erd-und Steinwerka, usually referred to as DEST and during later years Rasche supported a number of other loans by the Dresdner Bank to this and other such SS enterprises.
In its judgment, Military Tribunal II found that, and I quote: "The DEST enterprises were strictly concentration camp enterprises" and that "The evidence in this case reveals that there was perhaps no industry which permitted such constant mal-treatment of prisoners as the DEST enterprises".
We find support by Rasche and his Dresdner Bank for still another program carried to ruthless extremes by the SS, the program commonly known as aryanization, which called for dismissal of Jews from employment and coercive transfer of their property to others. When the defendant Keppler in July 1937 wrote Carl Goetz that it was "imperative to aryanize" the Merkurbank in Austria and asked that he -- and I quote: "designate a gentleman from your institution" -- that is the Dresdner Bank -- "to cooperate with my office in the above matter", Goetz obligingly replied to Keppler as follows, and I quote:
"After the decision of the Fuehrer as a result of your report to aryanize the Merkurbank in order to expand it as a German stronghold in Austria we must find new ways to attain this goal.
I have assigned Dr. Meyer and Dr. Rasche from our Vorstand to get in touch with your office immediately."
In the aryanization of Jewish-owned property, under the general pressure against Jews and frequently also in connection with special additional coercive measures, Rasche and his subordinates achieved striking success. For example, in Czechoslovakia, the Boehmische Escomptebank (usually referred to as BEB) guided and supervised by Rasche, operated a model and successful aryanization department. The defendants interest and role in the program is indicated in a letter which he received from an assistant in March 1939, promptly after the German occupation of Bohemia-Moravia:
"Enclosed I am sending you a memorandum concerning various conferences and affairs which will interest you.
Tonight a mating of the German banks takes place at President Kehrl's office,"--that is the defendant Kehrl--"where directives will be given regarding Aryanization in this territory."
A report of the BEB for the period from March 1939 to April 1941 observed:
"When on the 15th of March 1939 the Protectorate, Bohemia and Moravia, was established and, at this time, the Aryanization of the economy of Bohemia and Moravia began, our institution was governed by two considerations:
First, we were concerned to transfer our own Jew ish business connections into non-Jewish hands and not to allow them to be 'aryanized away' through our competitors;Second, we were concerned to make use of this unique opportunity of promoting our business in a grand style and to gain as many new clients as possible through aryanizations."
.....Today we can say that we have in general at tained the goal set forth."
The proof will disclose that the aryanizations accomplished by the Dresdner Bank were not isolated and ordinary business transactions, but, instead, were an integral part of a governmental program which was calculated to employ the services of Rasche and his agencies to make racial persecution effective. In addition, in territory outside the pre-1938 corders of Germany, they frequently involved violations of rights protected by the rules of land warfare.
Spoliation and plunder on an even more extensive and general scale prompted the director of a Dresdner Bank branch to write to Rasche in 1943: "We have just heard this jocular verse, Very flatterint to you, from one of our clients:
Who marches behind the leading tank?
It is Dr. Rasche of the Dresdner Bank." This light jingle accurately describes Rasche's zeal in dispossessing the citizens of countries occupied by German armies. Before the invasion of the Sudetan region of Czechoslovakia and during the "war of nerves" of the summer of 1938, subordinates of Rasche were already preparing for the acquisition of Czech bank branches in the Sudetan region. The defendant reviewed and approved these plans. When Kehrl was appointed governmental supervisor for German acquisitions in the Sudetenland, the close association between Rasche and Kehrl, acquaintances through Keppler since 1935, began. Rasche had no difficulty in securing Kehrl's approval to the taking over of twenty-six branches of the BEB and four branches of the Zivnostenska Bank, under circumstances involving coercion upon the former proprietors.
Thereafter Rasche directed the planning for the acquisition of the BEB itself. Rasche's project was approved at a conference for the division of Czech banking institutions among the German "Great Banks", at which Kehrl presided. When German forces invaded Prague in March 1939, representatives of the Dresdner Bank marched at their heals and took over the BEB in an informal but effective manner, and transfer was afterwards formalized. With the BEB established as an affiliate of the Dresdner Bank, Rasche became Chairman of the Verwaltungsrat.
Next Kehrl and Rasche received a much broader assignment from Goering. It was no less than bringing about the transfer of the most important heavy industries of Czechoslovakia into German central and ownership. This task was part of the program for Czechoslovakia which, in the short term, sought to utilize Czech industry for waging war and, in the long run, intended to Germanize both the population and economy. As Rasche himself described the mission in a letter toGritzbach, Goering's adjutant, in 1943:
"Already at the time when the Sudentenland re turned home to the Reich in 1938 and when the BEB transferred its Sudeten branches to the Dresdner Bank, and future developments could not be foreseen, we tried at the request of German governmental authorities to establish German influence over the industries of the Protectorate.
In this we were successful...
In the further course of events a more com prehensive and special authority was given to Kehrl and myself by the Reichsmarshall in order to acquire and reorganize such industrial concerns, and I believe that we have gotten good results in discharging this task."
Through a variety of techniques, which included "purchases" by artificially-valued Reichsmark under German-made economic conditions, aryanization, registration, sequestration, and confiscation, outright or through "trusteeships", and the use of threats, open or veiled, these "good results" were indeed achieved. Steel works, rolling mills, coal and iron ore mines, and machine tool and armament factories passed into the trusteeship of Kehrl and Rasche, the shares being paid for in part by by credits from the Dresdner Bank and the BEB.
Rasche handled most of the direct negotiations, and Kehrl also took a forceful hand, using the services of the Gestapo where advisable. In August 1959, Rasche wrote the following note to Himmler's adjutant, Karl Wolff:
"You will remember that I pointed out how valuable the support **red by the SD Special Departments Prague and Bruenn was to me and my staff from the very beginning of the negotia tions.
Thatnot only helped me considerably in attacking the many problems we had to face, but also led to the reduction of the basis of the purchase price by a substantial amount of for eign exchange on the ground of arguments which even the opposite side recognized.
...."
The activities of Rasche and his agents were by no means confined to Czech Slovakia, but covered the whole of Europe, as the proof will abundantly show. In themselves and taken singly, often these activities consisted of seemingly ordinary banking transactions -- advancing credits and purchasing securities. But in their context, purpose, and design, these "innocuous" acts emerge as part of a long range course of conduct which was carefully and fully integrated into schemes of enormous criminality. Loans per se may not be criminal, but loans to the DEST purposely to enable the enslavement, torture, and murder of thousands of persons, with full knowledge that the loans had such a result, do constitute a serious crime.
The isolated acquisition of a single piece of Jewish property in Germany or the occupied territories might appear insignificant, but the German program of racial and religious persecution rested upon the eagerly offered services of wholesale "aryanizers" like Rasche in the Dresdner Bank. Rasche deliberately supported and participated in these criminal plans, using the resources of the Dresdner Bank as necessary, and his criminal responsibility is clear.
With the court's permission, I will now discuss the defendant, Emil Puhl.
The defendant Emil Puhl was the servant of the German Reichsbank, of the SS upon several important occasions, and of the National Socialist Party. Almost his entire working life was spent in the Reichsbank, Germany's central bank and a public institution. He began in 1913 as a clerk and advanced steadily to "Director" in 1933, to the Reichsbank President's Acting Deputy in 1939, and to Vice-President in 1940.
Reichsbank President Schacht on 7 January 1939 submitted to Hitler a report signed by the Directors of the Reichsbank which urged a curtailment of armament expenditures and a balanced budget to prevent inflation. On 19 January Hitler dismissed Schacht as President and most of his Directors left and were replaced by men more acceptable to the Nazi Party leaders. Puhl however remained. Walter Funk was appointed President to replace Schacht, and on 11 February 1939 Puhl became his Acting Deputy, presided over the meetings of the Reichsbank Directorium and dominated the affairs of both the Reichsbank and its subsidiary, the Golddiskontbank. Funk, lacking banking experience, seldom interfered in the management of either institution.
In the early fall of 1939, Oswald Pohl's industry, the DEST, which has already been described, was pressed for funds. The 5,000,000 Reichsmark loan granted by the Dresdner Bank was insufficient for the full expansion of "economic activities" as planned by the SS. Oswald Pohl, whom Military Tribunal II found was "an admitted slave driver on a scale never before known", approached the defendant Puhl and asked for financial support from the Reichs Bank.
A subordinate of Puhl wrote to him in August 1939 describing the request and I quote:
The SS has established various economic enter prises in order to use prisoners of concentra tion camps (mainly persons held in protective custody) as labor for tasks of the Four Year Plan.
.....The most important enterprise, for which credit is sought, is the Deutsche Erd und Steinwerke GmbH, Berlin.
...The expense for labor.
...is slight, because the labor force consists in the main of prisoners, most of them people who are being held in protective custody (at present approximately 4,000). Puhl made an exhaustive personal investigation of the SS project, ineluding a tour of such concentration camps as Oranienburg, and careful inspection of the DEST books and records.
Because both the Reichsbank and the Golddiskontbank were legally barred from advancing funds in such a case the defendant Puhl urged and approved the device of ostensibly utilizing funds of the Reich Economic Ministry which were on deposit at the Golddiskontbank, and secured the approval of the Golddiskontbank and Reichsbank to this plan. As Puhl described the transaction, in a letter to Lange and the Vorstand of the Golddiskontbank in September, 1939 and I quote:
In the course of the conversation with the Reich Economic Minister and President of the Deutsche Reichsbank, we agreed that from our side financial assistance will be given according to the wishes of the Reichsfuehrer SS.
I have reported to the Minister about the set up of the Deutsche Erdund Steinwerke GmbH as per enclosed statement and .... told him about my personal impression.
....
We agree that the credit in question cannot be considered from the viewpoint of ordinary business.
........ As a result, the Golddiskontbank advanced RM 8,000, 000, an amount 400 times the base capital of the DEST, at an extremely low rate of interest. Thereafter the defendant Puhl aided the DEST to secure reductions in the rate of interest and deferred the time of repayment.
In May 1941, the DEST, its labor force swollen by the addition of slave workers from the occupied territories, found itself in need of additional funds, and remembering past pleasant relations with Puhl, wrote again to the Golddiskontbank and I quote:
In our brief report to Reichbank Director Dr. Dauer on the progress made in our plants it was also mentioned that the Reichsfuehrer SS had ordered (us) to expand our enterprises, in which prisoners of concentration camps are used for work, considerably beyond their original size.
...and we apply now to you....
to kindly examine the possibility of granting an additional RM 8,000,000.
Again, the defendant Puhl provided support to the request, so that within a week's time the new loan was granted.
But Puhl was to make himself even more useful to Heinrich Himmler and to Oswald Pohl. The extermination and deportation of the Jews in the East produced a vast amount of valuable property which the SS seized. To marshal these resources, the so-called "Action Reinhardt" was instituted. Military Tribunal II, in its judgment in the Pohl case, found, and I quote:
The fact that Pohl himself did not actually transport the stolen goods to the Reich or did not himself remove the gold from the teeth of dead inmates does not exculpate him.
This was a broad criminal program re quiring the cooperation of many persons and Pohl's part was to conserve and account for the loot."
Emil Puhl's part was to receive this loot, including the gold teeth from Oswald Pohl, to safeguard and conserve it, and to dispose of part of it and account for the proceeds.
Himmler had contacted Funk and had reached an agreement with him whereby the Reichsbank would handle this loot which would be transported to the Reichsbank by the SS. The defendant Emil Puhl was entrusted with the execution of the agreement and he worked out the details in his own office in the Reichsbank with Oswald Pohl. Pohl entrusted the deliveries of the gold teeth and other loot to an SS man named Melmar. Subsequently, the delivery of these valuables to the Reichsbank was discussed on the telephone between Pohl and Puhl's assistant at the Reichsbank, a man named Thoms. The fact that these valuables had been taken from the bodies of concentration camp inmates was quite plain from the fact that many of the items were stamped "Lublin" or Auschwitz", which were well-known to be the sites of concentration camps, and from the very unusual amount of dental gold.
By the end of the war, the Reichsbank had accepted 76 shipments of this bloodstained SS loot, and the total value of these shipments exceeded 60,000,000 Reichsmarks.
With Your Honor's permission, I would now like he move to the subject of the Government Ministries.
Between the economic ministers and bankers, on the one hand, and the government ministers on the other, there is of course no sharp line of division. The activities of several of the Reich Ministries lay partly in the economic field, and this is particularly true of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, with which we will begin.
And with that, I would like to discuss the defendant, Walter Darre.
Like Hitler and Hess, Richard Walther Darre was born outside of Germany. Born in Argentina of German parentage, he went in his early youth to Germany where he received most of his education. Like Rosenberg, he was one of the mystic pseudo-intellectuals who furnished a large part of Hitler's program and the ideology underlying it. His book entitled, "Peasantry As The Life Spring of the Nordic Race," attracted Hitler's attention in 1930, and led to their close acquaintance. Shortly afterwards, Darre was commissioned as one of the original seventeen Reichsleiters of the Nazi Party to organize the office of Agrarian policy within the Party. He became one of the small circle at the very top of the Nazi Party and, as the senior Lieutenant-General, Darre ranked sixth in the entire SS.
Darre's mystic preachings stated that the bases of the State were "blood and soil, that is blood," the human beings who give it life and character, and the "soil,"the space available for its existence. Germans, he said, were "people without space." To solve the problem, Germany must obtain space in the East.
But Darre was no mere theorist. As Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 onward, he early recognized that the expansion of Germany by aggressive means could be only achieved by providing the nutritional basis for the marching armies.
As early as the summer of 1934, he proclaimed the so-called "Battle of Production" which was the first of many steps taken by Darre to make every possible preparation for war within his jurisdiction. A huge program for stockpiling of grain was developed. In a secret report of 31 December 1937, and I quote: "The Preparation of the Economic Mobilization by the Plenipotentiary General for the War Economy", we find reference to drafts by Darre of an overall organization for the war food economy. In a circular prepared jointly by Darre and Frick on 8 September 1938 for the eventuality that Czechoslovakia would have to be taken by force, it was said, and I quote:
The Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture has now finished a draft of a series of decrees which contain the necessary provi sions for the introduction of a war food economy in the case of war and are to be put in force with the order of mobilization.
The organizational basis was ready for the expected attack upon Czechoslovakia and only the Munich agreement temporarily postponed war. However, just prior to the invasion of Poland, on 31 august 1939, the war food economy program was introduced by decrees which had already been drafted by Darre's Ministry in 1938.
The importance of Darre's contributions to the preparation for aggressive war is aptly summarized in his own words. In November 1939, Darre, with great pride, submitted to Goering a report on his achievements, which stated, and I quote: "The whole work of agrarian policy since the seizure of power was already dominated by the preparation for a possible war," and 1942 Darre wrote that, and I quote:
In a gigantic struggle before 1939 I created the prerequisites which made it possible for the Fuehrer to wage this war as far as food is concerned.
When Darre wrote and made speeches about "Soil", he meant not only the mobilization of German soil for war; he also meant that Germany had the right to seize the soil and its products of other countries. This precept too he put into practice. As country after country was over-run by Germany, their agricultural resources were in turn ruthlessly exploited for the benefit of Germany, with Darre and officials under his direction playing a large part.
Why did Darre make himself an important and enthusiastic participant in wars of aggression and schemes for the economic ruination of other countries? The answer is found in the first half of the phrase "Blood and Soil." Darre vigorously preached the doctrine of German racial superiority. He vied with Streicher, Dietrich, and Goebbels in inciting and leading Germans to persecution of Jews inside Germany and later of other unfortunate peoples in occupied countries who were deemed racially inferior under Nazi ideology, which Darre himself had helped to foster.
In books and speeches Darre repeatedly urged, as he put it, that "Germany should he freed from each and every Jew". His incitement to persecution of Jews took such forms, for example, as these few of his many statements, and I quote:
The difference between Fascism and National Socialism was that the Fascist dies, not realize enough the importance of race, of blood and soil and that though the Fascists knew of the "Jewish Danger", they did not take the necessary steps.
Jewish democracy is the consequence of Liberalism - the peasantry will be ruined by democracy, since democracy is Jewish.
The peasantry has only two possibilities, either the elimination of Jewry, or complete ruin brought about by the Jews.
Darre again demonstrated by his actions that he meant what he said. He carried the campaign be the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture and to the Reich Food Estate where, through the medium of laws and decrees, he expelled all Jews from every phase of German agriculture and discriminated, against Jews in the distribution of food. The Reich Food Estate was given the task of "combatting the Foes of the Peasantry: the Jew, the Jesuit, the Free Mason". All such anti-Semitic measures were extended to the occupied territories and particularly they affected the Polish Jews.
But Darre's active promotion of racial persecution went still further. From 1931 to 1938 he served as the first head of the notorious SS Race and Settlement Office, and again he was able to put his program into practice. Resettling of German farmers in Polish territory was advocated by Darre as early as 1930. Final execution of the program was assigned to Himmler as the Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germanism, supported by Darre as the Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. After the conquest of Poland, under the guise of creating a New Peasantry, Germans of acceptable racial and political background were early settled in the east where they were assigned, the property of Polish nationals, most of whom had been shipped to Germany and elsewhere for slave labor.
Special sections were set up by Darre in the Reich. Ministry of Food and Agriculture to facilitate its active participation in the resettlement program.
To complete his work in effectuating his own aid Hitler's doctrines, he played his part in the German slave labor program. In fact, it was in Darre's Ministry that the first large impetus for enslavement of conquered peoples took form. As early as 19 December 1939, Darre's demands for 1,500,000 Polish farm laborers for German agriculture were presented to the General Council of the Four Year Plan. Not satisfied with the results of this request, Darre arranged a conference in Berlin with Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland, at which Darre's urgent demand for 1,000,000 Poles from the Governor General was communicated to Frank. At a later date, a representative of Darre was present at a conference held by Frank in Poland during which Darre's demands were again presented, whereupon Frank reviewed the attempts to enlist voluntary workers for assignment in the Reich and inquired whether "Polish workers could be recruited by coercive measures." The reply being in the affirmative, Frank further stated, "that the path had now been indicated. Where the labor department could not achieve results, the police must step in."
Although, during the course of the war Darre retired from active leadership of the Reich's agricultural agencies during the war he was a major pillar of the Third Reich and a major criminal against humanity and civilization. Darre, like Dietrich, Rosenberg, Goebbels, and Streicher, was one of the master builders of the ideology from which followed quite logically all the major crimes of the Third Reich. These crimes fulfilled the hopes and the plans of Darre himself; and he played a leading role in their execution.
If it please the Tribunal Mr. Hardy will now continue the reading.
MR. HARDY:May it please the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT:Mr. Hardy.
MR. HARDY:I will now proceed to the individual responsibility of the defendant Otto Dietrich.
Press and Propaganda, as an indispensable instrumentality of the totalitarian state, experienced an extraordinary measure of exploitation at the hands of Hitler, Goebbels and the defendant Otto Dietrich. This was accomplished to a degree never before dreamed of, in terms of technical efficiency, range, depth and intensity, nuance of expression, and timing. Hitler said in "Mein Kampf":
With the help of a clever persistent propaganda, even heaven can be represented to the people as hell, and the most wretched life as paradise.
....
This "clever persistent propaganda" consisted largely of generous doses of poison which flowed night and day from presses throughout the Third Reich into the veins of German and world, thought.
This venom was prepared and distilled by the defendant Otto Dietrich from the time of his appointment by Hitler as Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP in August 1931 until shortly before the end of the war. His power and responsibility over the party press in the Third Reich were defined in February 1934 when Hitler decreed:
He (Dietrich) directs in my name the guiding principles for the entire editorial work of the party press.
In addition, as my press chief, he is the highest authority for all press publica tions of the party and all its agencies.
....
All the press divisions, press offices, etc., within the party or its affiliated and subsidiary organizations (political organiza tions, SD and SS, Hitler Youth, German Labor Front) are, irrespective of their particular administrative affiliation, sub ordinate and responsible in their publicity work to the Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP.
This supreme authority over the party press was further extended to include all the newspapers and periodicals within Germany, in November 1937, when Dietrich was appointed by the Fuehrer to the position of Reich Press Chief of the government and State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry. -----------------------------------------
1. "Mein Kampf", German Edition - 1941, p. 302 With the advent of the Nazis, a complete remodelling of press and propaganda apparatus of government took place.
By a Hitler decree of 13 March 1933, a Ministry of Public Enlightenment raid Propaganda was created. In October 1933, an Editorial Control Law, formulated by the defendant Dietrich, was enacted which placed all editors under the yoke. An organization euphemistically entitled the Reich Chamber of Culture was established in September 1933 which insured complete control over every cultural worker in Germany. Thus, as the IMT concluded, "independent judgment, based on freedom of thought, was rendered quite impossible."
As the government Press Chief, Dietrich directed and controlled the press division of the Reich government in the Propaganda Ministry. This division was composed of three sections; the German press, the foreign press, and the periodical press. The German press section directed all press and journalistic activities of the Third Reich, thereby bringing the independent German newspapers "into line" with the party press machine. This was ingeniously accomplished by setting up a technique of political control through day-by-day directives, binding upon all editors. This control of the German or home press section was carried out through compulsory press conferences wherein these confidential and secret directives were given to the newspapermen. The subsequent destruction of these directives was mandatory. Failure to comply with them meant severe punishment. The murky twilight which had settled over the German press with the advent of Hitler had now deepened into night. The blackout of freedom of the press was complete.
In charging the defendant Dietrich under this Indictment, we do not cast any aspersions upon the concepts of press and propaganda as living forces for national health and well-being. The tools used by the defendant Dietrich boast a noble origin and history. It is to their prostitution and subversion that the world solemnly objects. It is to ---------------------------------------1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 182 their demoniac perversion of tie possibilities and potentialities of these instruments for good - to the hysterical fomenting of public sentiment for aggression, to the agitation for widespread anti-Semitism, and pseudo-scientific support of racist philosophiesthat the Prosecution points an accusing finder.