"without binding ourselves to any conceptions of warning," and he suggested that as they were going to invade neutral States it really did not matter if they went a little far at sea.
"The intensified measures of the War at sea will in their political effect only play a small part in the general intensification of the war."
You will have noted that these memoranda on the conduct of the war at sea echo the High Command's view on the future war which had been written eiighteen months earlier:
"The normal rules of war towards neutral nations may be considered to apply only on the basis of whether the operation of these rules will create greater advantages or disadvantages for the warring nations."
Was that a mere coincidence: at all events, such was the pattern laid down by Raeder and followed by Doenitz. From the very first the Naval War Staff never had any intention of observing the laws of war at sea.
The Defence that the sinking of Allied merchant ships without warning was justified by Allied, measures is as untenable as the suggestion that the sinking at sight of neutral merchant ships was preceded by warning which complied with the requirements of International Law. You have seen the very vague and general warnings given to the neutrals and the memorandum of the Naval War Staff revealing that these were deliberately given in the most general terms because Raeder know that the action he intended against neutrals was utterly illegal. I need not remind you of the document which suggests that orders should be given by word of month and a false entry made in the log book, the very practice followed in the case of the "Athenia," or of the entrie in Raeder's own war diary revealing that carefully selected neutrals should be sunk wherever the use of electric torpedoes might enable the Germans to maintain that the ship had really struck a mine. You have confirmation in the bland denials prepared, by Raeder to answer the protests of the Norwegian and Greek Governments on the sinking of the "Thomas Walton" and "Garufalia" and the reluctant admission in the case of too "Deptford," all throe ships sunk in December 1939 by the same U-boat.
Nothing reveals more of the cynicism on opportunism with which Raeder and Doenitz treated International Law than the contrast between their attitude towards the sinking of a Spanish ship in 1940 and that in September 1942.
In 1940 Spain did not matter to Germany; in 1942 she did.
Details with regard to the various successive measures taken in the course of putting into effect the policy of sink at sight do not require recapitulation but there are two features of the conduct of naval warfare by these two defendants which I emphasize. First, they continued to put out to the world that they were obeying the London Rules and their own Prize Ordinance. The reason for that appears in Raeder's memorandum of the 30th December 1939 where he says:
"A public announcement of intensified measures for the 27 July M LJG 4-1 war at sea must be urgently advised against in order not to burden the Navy again in the eyes of history with the odium of unrestricted U-beat warfare."
And that, you see, is the cannon plan - the common plan- the very argument put forward by Jodl and Doenitz in February 1945, in favour of simply breaking the regulations of the Geneva Convention rather than announcing Germany's renunciation of it to the world. And here, once again, is the doctrine of military expediency: if it will pay Germany to break a particular law she is entirely justified in breaking it, provided always it can be done in such a way as to avoid detection and the condemnation of world opinion.
It must not be thought that in initiating this policy of sink at sight and in disregarding the fules of the war at sea Raeder was any more drastic than Doenitz. In his defense Deonitz made a great effort to explain away his order of 17th September, 1942. I ask the Tribunal to remember its terms:
"No attempt of any kind must be made at rescuing members of ships sunk.
... Rescue runs counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare for the destruction of enemy ships and crows."
His diary entry of the same date, which confirms that order, starts:
"The attention of all C.C's is again drawn to the fact that all efforts to rescue.
.... run counter to the rudimen tary demands of warfare.
...." Well, the defendant denied that this means that crews were to be destroyed or annihilated. But the previous history makes it abundantly clear that this was an invitation to U-boat commanders to destroy the crews of ship-wrecked merchantmen, while preserving an argument for Deonitz to make, should - as has indeed happened - occasion arise. That, after all, was the pattern laid down by Hitler when on the 3rd January 1942, he bold Oshima that "he must give the order that in case foreign seamen could not be taken prisoner.
... U-boats were to surface after torpedoing and shoot up the lifeboats."
The evidence shows constant pressure by Hitler from then on for the issue of this order. It is admitted that he demanded it at a meeting with both Doenitz and Raeder on the 14th May and 27 July M LJG 4-2 that he raised the question again on the 5th September.
Doenitz himself referred to pressure by Hitler during the "Laconia" incident. You have confirmation that the order issued on the 17th September was intended to bear the construction put upon it by the Prosecution in the evidence of the witness Heisig and that of Moehle. Is it conceivable that a senior officer would have been allowed to go on from the 17th September 1942 until the end of the war briefing the hundreds of U-boats which set out from Kiel that this was an order to annihilate unless that was what the Naval War Staff intended? You have the evidence that Doenitz himself saw every U-boat commander before and after his cruise, his own admissions with regard to the comments made by his staff officers at the time he drafted the order and his general attitude revealed by the order of October 1939, which he admits was a non-rescue order - an utterly indefensible order in itself in the submission of the prosecution. There is further the coincidence that the very argument which Hitler advanced to Oshima, namely, the importance of preventing the Allies finding the crews for the immense American construction programme, was the argument Doenitz himself admits putting forward on the 14th May, was the argument which Heisig reports hearing, and is the reason given for the subsequent order to give priority in attacking conveys to sinking rescue ships. You have the instances of the "Antonico", the "Noreen Mary", and the "Peleus" whilst the man who expressed horror at the idea that he should issue such an order admittedly saw the log Of the U-boat which sank the "Sheaf Mead" with its brutal entry describing the sufferings of those left in the water. Doenitz' own statement was that "to issue such a directive could only be justified if a decisive military success could be achieved by it." Was it not because, as his own document shows, the percentage of ships being sunk outside conveys in September 1942, was so high that a decisive military success might have been gained that this order was issued, whereas in April 1943, when almost all sink-27 July M LJG 4-3 ings were in convey, it was not necessary to issue a further order yet more explicit in its terms?
The Prosecution firmly and strongly submit that the defendant Doenitz intended by that order to encourage and procure as many submarine commanders as possible to destroy the crews of torpedoed merchant ships but deliverately couched the order in its present language so thathe could argue the contrary if circumstances required it.
On the evidence of Admiral Wagner that the Naval War Staff approved the order of 17th September 1942 with respect to survivors, Raeder cannot escape responsibility and, indeed, since he was present at the meeting with Hitler in May of thatyear and received the Fuehrer order of the 5th September 1942 to issue instructions to kill survivors, therecan be little doubt that he was fully involved in his subordinate's policy.
Although within a few months Allied air power made it impossible for U-boats in most areas to risk surfacing at all after they had discharged their torpedo, and the question became one of less importance, it is interesting to notethat when the order against rescue ships was issued on the 7th of October the following year the same phrase "destruction of ship's crews" recurred.
Despite the denial of Kapitan Leutnant Eck, there can really be no real doubt that, briefed by Hoehle, he did what his superior officers intended him to do. Why should it be supposed that a man, who a month later received Hitler's Commando Order without protest, should shrink from ordering the destruction of seamen on rafts or clinging to wreckage, when Hitler had explained its military necessity.
Eck, who obeyed the orders of Raeder and Doenitz, has paid the supreme penalty. Are they to escape with less?
I turn new to yet another war crime - the use of slave labour. Its importance for theGerman war machine had been appreciated by these Defend ants long before the outbreak of war. Hitler hadmentioned it in "Mein Kampf" and emphasized it at the meeting in May 1939. A few weeks later in June the Reich Defense Council, Goering, Frick, Funk and Raeder and representatives of every otherMinistry of State were planning to employ 20,000 concentration camp inmates and hundreds of thousands of workers from the Protectorate in the coming war.
Hitler's plan for Poland, revealed to Schirach and Frank, was as follows:
"The ideal picture is this - a Pole may possess only small holdings in the Government General which will to a certain extent provide him and his family with food.
The money required by him for clothes, etc., he must earn in Germany by work.
The Government General must become a centre for supplying unskilled labour, particularly agricultural labour.
The subsistence of these workmen will be fully guaranteed because they can always be made use of for cheap labor.
That policy, was, of course, a short-term policy, the real aim being the elimination of the Eastern peoples. Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary with the task of replacing two million German workers who had been called to service with the Wehrmacht, and he, himself says that after Hitler hademphasized that it was a war necessity he had no scruples and within a month of his appointment he had sent his first labour mobilization programme to Rosenberg.
"Should we not succeed in obtaining the necessary labour on a voluntary basis we must immediately institute conscription of forced labour ....a gigantic number of new foreign slave workers ...men and women.
.. an indisputable necessity.
This programme he was to carry out "with every possible pressure and a ruthless commitment of all our resources.
It is unnecessary to refer to the voluminous evidence of the execution of this policy for the recruitment of workers. It issufficientto quote Sauckel again addressing the Central Planning Board in March of 1944:
"Trained male and female agents who shanghaied men for labour in Germany ... Out of five million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily."
The methods employed in their forced deportations are hideous in their brutality and must have been known to every one of these defendants. In April of 1941 Himmler was addressing the officers of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler:
"Very frequently a member of the Waffen SS thinks about the deportation of this people, here.
These thoughts come to me today watching the very difficult work per formed by the Security Police and supported by your men who help them a great deal.
Exactly the same thing happened in Poland in weather 40 degrees below zero where we had to haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands."
And again:
"Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.
...When somebody comes to me and says, 'I can't dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them, then I have to say that you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die and they are the sons of German mothers.
.. We must realize that we have 6-7 million foreigners in Germany .... Perhaps it is even eight million now we have prisoners in Germany.
They are none of them dangerous so long as we take severe measures at the merest trifle."
By August 1943 the need for workers was even greater. Himmler ordered "That all young female persons capable of work are to be sent to Germany for work through the agency of Reich Commissioner Sauckel.
Children, old women and men are to be collected and employed in women's and children's camps."
The orders issued to Group Leaders of the SD, active in the Ukraine, showed the same urgency.
"The activity of the labour Office .... is to be sup ported to the greatest extent possible.
It will not be possible always to refrain from using force.
. .
When searching villages, especially when it has become necessary to burn down a village, the whole population will be put at the disposal of the Commissioner by force.
As a rule, no more children will be shot....If we limit our harsh measures through the above orders for the time being, it is only done for the following reason.
The most important thing is the recruitment of workers."
Speer admitted - how could he deny it - the knowledge and approval of the way the workers were enrolled and brought to Germany against their will; therewas Kaltenbrunner's letter to his friend Blaschke:
"For special reasons I have in the meantime given orders to ship several evacuation transports to Vienna, at present four shipments with approximately 12,000 Jews are pending.
They should reach Vienna within the next few days .... Women unable to work and children of those Jews who are all kpet in readiness for special action and therefore one day will be removed again, have to stay in the guarded camp also during the day."
That sinister phrase again - the meaning of which they all knew so well - "special treatment", "special action". Murder remains murder by whatever euphemism murderers may seek to describe it.
The need for labour became so urgent that not only were even Jews spared the gas chambers so long as they were fit for employment but children were seized and put to work.
So much for their deportation to Germany. What was to be their lot on their arrival? As early as March 1941 instructions had been issued to the Kreis Farmers Association on the treatment Polish farm workers were to receive. They were to have no rights to complain. They were forbidden this religious people, to visit churches: all forms of entertainment, public transport were barred. Their employers were given the right to inflict corporal punishment and were "not to be held accountable in any case by any official agency."
And lastly, it was ordered:
"Farm workers of Polish nationality should if possible be removed from the community of the home, they can be quartered in stables, etc.
No remorse whatever should restrict such action."
The treatment of those employed in industry was even worse. You will rememberthe affidavit of the Polish doctor in Essen who did his best to attend to the Russian prisoners of war:
"The men were thrown together in such a catastrophic manner that no medical treatment was possible.
...It seemed to me unworthy of human beings that people should find themselves in such a position.
... Every day at least ten men were brought to me whose bodies were covered with bruises on account of the continual beatings with rubber tubes, steel switches or sticks.
The people were often writhing with agony and it was impossible for me to give them even a little medical aid.
...It was diffi cult for me to watch now such suffering people could be directed to do heavy work.
.. Dead people often lay for two or three days on the palliasses until their bodies stank so badly that fellow prisoners took them outside and buried them somewhere.
.... I was a witness during a conversation with some Russian women, who told me personally that they were employed in Krupps factory and that they were beaten daily in a most bestial manner.
... Beating was the order of the day."
By the end of 1943 more than five million men, women and children were working in the Reich and if we include prisoners of war the total of those working in Germany was at this datejust under 7,000,000. To these must be added the hundreds of thousands brought in during 1944. Millions of men and women taken from their homes by the most brutal methods, transported in all weathers in cattle-trucks from every quarter of Europe, employed on farms and in factories throughtout the Reich, frequently under abominable conditions. Children taken from their parents, many to remain for their lives, orphans, not knowing their identity or true names; taken away before they were old enough to remember the place from which they came. What is themeasure of this crime? No man in that dock can dispute his knowledge or his complicity. The minutesof the Central Planning Board must have been read in every department of the State. You have seen the mass of evidence connecting the military leaders and every otherbranch of the Government with this colossal programme of slavery. None of these men can be acquitted of this crime. None of them can have been ignorant of the scale and brutality with which it was perpetrated.
I pass now to a connected matter, but one even more terrible. The general manner in which the Defendants conducted the belligerent occupation of the territories which they had overrun.
The evidence that these territories were thescene of murder, slavery, terrorism and spoliation on a scale without precedent in history, in breach of the elementary rules as to belligerent occupation has not really been seriously challenged. These crimes were in no sense sporadic or isolated depending on the sadism of a Koch here or cruelty by a Frank there. They were part and parcel of a deliberate and systematic plan of which their action in regard to slave labour was a lust symptom. In order to establish the "1,000-year Reich", they set out to accomplish the extermination or permanent weakening of the racial and national groups of Europe or of those sections, such as the intelligentsia, on which the survival of those groups must largely depend.
The origin of this terrible attempt upon the existence of free and ancient nations goes back to the whole Nazi doctrine of total war which rejected war as being merely against States and their armies, as international law provides. Nazi total war was also a war against civilian populations, against whole peoples.
Hitler told Keitel at the end of the Polish campaign:
"Shrewdness and severity must be the maxims in this racial struggle in order to spare us from going to battle on account of Poland again."
The aims of genocide were formulated by Hitler in the following words in his conversation with Hermann Rauschning:
"The French complained after the war that there were twenty million Germans too many.
We accept the criticism. We favour the planned control of population movements.
But our friends will have to excuse us if we subtract the twenty millions elsewhere.
After all these centuries of whining about the protection of the poor and lowly, it is about time we decided to protect the strong against the inferior.
It will be one of the chief tasks of German statesmanship for all time to prevent, by every means in our power, the increase of the Slav races.
Natural instincts bid all living beings not merely to conquer their enemies, but also destroy them.
In former days, it was the victor's prerogative to destroy entire tribes, entire peoples.
By doing this gradually and without bloodshed, we demonstrate our humanity."
Himmler's vision was similar:
"For us the end of this War will mean an open road to the East, the creation of the Germanic Reich in this way or that.
... the fetching home of 30 million human beings of our blood, so that still during our lifetime we shall be a people of 120 million Germanic souls.
That means that we shall be the sole decisive power in Europe. That means that we shall then be able to tackle the peace, during which we shall be willing for the first twenty years to re-build and spread out our villages and towns, and that we shall push the borders of our German race 500 kilometers further out to the East."
Their aims wont beyond mere Germanisation, the imposing of the German cultural pattern upon other peoples. Hitler was resolved to expel non-Germans from the soil he required, but that they owned, and colonize it by Germans. This is plainly stated in "Mein Kampf".
"... The Polish policy in the sense of a Germanisation of the East, demanded by so many, was rooted unfortunately almost always in the same wrong conclusion.
Here too it was believed that one could bring about a Germanisation of the Polish element by a purely linguistic integration into the German nationality.
Here too the result would have been an unfortunate one; people of an alien race, expressing its alien thought in the German language, compromising the height and dignity of our own nationality by its own inferiority."
Himmler put it even more clearly:
"It is not our task to Germanise the East in the old sense, that is to teach the people there the German language and the German law, but to see to it that only people of purely Germanic blood live in the East."
The defendants were careful to conceal their true aims from their victims. In January 1940 a captured report reads:
"In order to relieve the living space of Poles in the Government General as well as in the liberated East, one should remove cheap labour temporarily by hundreds of thousands, employ them for a few years in the old Reich, and thereby hamper their native biological propagation," and it concludes "Strictest care is to be taken that secret circulars, memoranda and official correspondence which contain instructions detrimental to the Poles are kept rigidly under lock and key so that they will not some day fill the White Books printed in Paris or the U.S.A. Again, the day before the appointment of Rosenberg as Minister for the East, Hitler told him in the presence of Keitel, Goering and Bormann:
"We ought to act here in exactly the same way as we did in the case of Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium.
In these cases too we did not publish our aims and it is onlu sensible to continue in the same Way.
Therefore we shall emphasize again that we were forced to occupy, administer or secure a certain area.
It was in the interests of the inhabitants that we provided order, food, communications, etc.
Hence our measures.
Nobody shall be able to recognise that it initiates a final settlement.
This need not prevent our taking all necessary measures - shooting at sight, etc.
, and we shall take them."
Having given these words of caution to his confederates, you will remember how Hitler went on to elaborate his plans for the destruction of the Soviet peoples.
The Crimea, he said, must be evacuated of all foreigners and settled by Germans only.
"We now have to face the task of cutting up the giant cake according to our needs in order to be able Firstly, to dominate it, secondly, to administer it, thirdly, to exploit it," The pattern was exemplified in the infamous plan of Neurath and Frank for Bohemia and Moravia -- the same Neurath whose Counsel the day before yesterday asked you to respect the holiness of the individual.
The pattern, I say, was exemplified in their plan for Bohemia and Moravia. No more terrible document has been put in evidence in this trial nor one which more completely exposes the falsity of the slogan "Lebensraum", which constituted the excuse for the cape of Czechoslovakia. That plan required the elimination of the intelligentsia, the bears of Czechoslovakia history and tradition, and since the long term solution of evacuating all Czechs completely from the country and replacing them by Germans could not be effected immediatelu because of shortage of Germans, a short term solution of Germanising the remainder of the population. This was to be dine by rendering their language a dialect, by abolition of higher education, by instituting a stringent marriage policy after previous racial examination. You will remember Frank's summary:
"Apart from the continuance of the propaganda for Germanization and the granting of advantages as an inducement, severest police methods with exile and special treatment for all saboteurs.
Principle:
"Pastry and Whip".
You will remember too the plan for Poland discussed in Hitler's train on 12th September 1939 by Ribbentrop, Keitel and Jodl as described in the evidence of the witness Lahausen and the discussion between Hitler, Schirach and Frank three weeks later after dinner in the Fuehrer's apartment.
"There shouldbe one master only for the Poles -- the Ferman: two masters side by side cannot and must not exist and therefore all all representatives of Polish intelligentsia are to be exterminated.
This sounds cruel but such is the law of life," Such were the plans for the Soveit Union, for Poland and for Czechsslovakia.
Genocide was not restricted to extermination of the Jewish people or of the gypsies. It was applied in different forms to Yugoslavia, to the non-German inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, to the people of the Low Countries and of Norway. The technique varied from nation to nation, from people to people. The long term aim was the same in all cases.
The methods followed a similar pattern: first a deliberate programme of murder, of outright annihilation. This was the method applied to the polish intelligentsia, to gypsies and to Jews. The killing of millions, even by the gas chambers and mass shootings, employed was no easy matter. The defendants and their confederates also used methods of protracted annihilation, the favourite being to work their victims to death, hence Himmler's bond with the Minister of Justice in September 1942 under which anti-social elements were handed over to the SS "to be worked to death. On the 14th of the same month Goebbels was recommending this method in terms:
"With regard to the destruction of social life Dr. Goebbels has the opinion thatthe following groups should be exterminated:
Jews and gypsies unconditionally, Poles who have to serve 3-4 years of penal servitude, and Czechs and Germans who are sentenced to death or penal servitude for life or to security custody for life.
The idea of exterminating them by labour is the best."
Another favourite technique of extermination was by starvation Rosenberg, the great architect of this policy of national murder, told his collaborators in June 1941:
"The object of feeding the German people stands this year without a count at the top of the list of German's claims on the East, and there the southern territories and the Norther Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the German people.
We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory.
We know that this is a harsh necessity bare of any feelings. A very extensive evacuation will be necessary without any doubt and it is sure that the future will held very hard years in store for the Russians."
The method applied in Alsace was deportation. A captured report reads:
"The first expulsion action was carried out in Alsace in the period from July to December, 1940:
in the course of it, 105,000 persons were either expelled or prevented from returning.
They were in the main Jews, gypsies and other foreign racial elements, criminals, anti-social and incurably insane persons, and in addition Frenchmen, and Francophiles.
The Patois-speaking population was combed out by these series of deportations in the same way as the other Alsations."
The report goes on to state that new deportations are being prepared and after reciting the categories affected, sums up the measures being taken:
"The problem of race will be given first consideration and this in such a manner that persons of racial value will be deported to Germany proper and racially inferior persons to France."
The Nazis also used various biological devices, as they have been called to achieve genocide. They deliberately decreased the birthrate in the occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and man from women and obstructing marriage.
"We are obliged to depopulate", said Hitler to Rauschning, "as part of our mission of preserving the German population.
We shall have to develope a technique of depopulation.
If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the removal of entire racial units.
And that is what I intend to carry out - that, roughtly, is my task, Nature is cruel; therefore, we, too, must be cruel.
If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the spilling of previous German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin."
You have seen Neurath's use of this biological device in his plan for Czechoslovakia. Listen to Bormann's directives for the Eastern Territory summarized by one of Rosenberg's subordinates:
"The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don't need them, they may die.
Therefore, compulsory vaccination and German Health Services are superfluous.
The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practise abortion; the more the better.
Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to a hundred.
At best an education which produces useful stooges for us is admissible".
Himmler speaks with the same voices:
"We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood, to nobody else.
What happens to a Russian, a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest.
That the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take.
If necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us.
whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise it is of no interest to me," The converse to methods designed to decrease the birthrate in occupied territories was the artificial increase in the birthrate of Germans.
In February, 1941, the defendant Seyss-Inquart organised a system of giving away Dutch girls to German soldiers. In violation of Article 43 of the Hague Convention, he ordered changes in the Law of the Netherland so that he could assume parental and guardianship rights over girls, substituting himself for their parents if the parents regused their daughters permission to marry German soldiers.
This policy of Seyss-Inquart's was later confirmed by the supreme authorities of the German Reich, Hitler, Keitel and Lammers on July 28th, 1942. A decree was issued granting subsidies and employment privileges for Dutch and Norwegian women bearing children to members of the German Armed Forces. And they have the impudence to talk now about the holiness of the individual. This was simply a plan to transfer, as if it were some mercantile commodity, the biological resources of Holland and Norway to the use of the German people. Himmler was one of the advocates of stealing children: as he said on the 14th October 1943:
"Obviously in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types.
Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us to remove them from their environment, if necessary by robbing or stealing them... Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people or .... we destroy this blood."
In the case of Russia, Keitel who had learned the phrase "Shrewdness and severity" as the maxim for the exploitation of Poland, paved the way by his orders of the 13th May and 23rd July, 1941.
I quote from the latter, drafted on his own admission by Jodl:
"In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is pu nished bet by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the armed forces as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population.
Commanders must find the means of keeping order. .. not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable draconic methods."
The immediate needs of the war machine no doubt saved the Western Territories from similar destruction but the Tribunal have ample evidence of the plunder of France, the Low Countries and the other territories which these men exploited to the utmost possible extent. In view of the nature of their murderous policy, it is not surprising that the men charged by the defendants to carry it out were brutes. In Rosenberg's domain, for instance, there was Koch, who was recommended by Rosenberg for the post of Commissar in Moscow because of the very fact of his "absolute ruthlessness." It was Koch who caused the slaughter of several hundred innocent human beings in the Zuman wood area so that he could have a private hunting reserve. Another of Rosenber's agents was Kube, who wrote:
"We have liquidated in the last ten weeks about 55,000 Jews in White Ruthenia.
In the territory Minskland, Jewry has been eliminated without endangering the manpower demands:
in the pre-eminently Polish territory Lida 16,000 Jews, in Klin 8,000 Jews and so forth have been liquidated," As to Poland, the orders given to Frank were as follows:
"Ruthless expansion.... reduction of entire Polish economy to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence.
.. The Poles shall be the slaves of the greater German World Empire."
And we know how he carried it out. In January 1940 he records:
"Cheap labour must be removed from the General Government by hundreds of thousands.
This will hamper the native biological propagation." In May he speaks of:
"taking advantage of the focussing of world interest on the Western Front by wholesale liquidations of thousands of the Poles, first the leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia". and in December:
"Poles must feel they have only one duty; to work and to behave. We must carry out all measures ruthlessly:
rely on me We who try to understand the problems of Eastern Europe must try to understand this:
The details of the martyrdom of Poland cannot be described: A third of the people murdered; millions left impoverished, sick, maimed and helpless; liberation was just in time to save this ancient people from the terrible fulfilment of the programme which these men had plotted.
Would that be a convenient moment to --
THE PRESIDENT:Certainly.
(A recess was taken.)
There is onegroup to which the method of annihilation was applied on a scale so immense that it is my duty to refer separately to the evidence.
I mean the extermination of the Jews. If there were no other crime against these men, this one alone, in which all of them were implicated, would suffi History holds no parallel to these horrors.
As soon as the prospect of a Second World War became a certainty, Streicher, who had preached this infamous doctrine as far back as 1925, bega in earnest to advocate annihilation. As he, on his own admission, had been instrumental in effecting the Nurnberg Decrees by years of propaganda in favour of racial laws, so now, in January 1939, anticipatin the war which was to come, he began, in articles published in the Sturmer with "the full Support of the highest Reich authority", to demand with all vehemence the physical extinction of the Jewish race. Unless words have completely lost their meanin, what do these mean but murder :
"They must be exterminated root and branch" "Then will the criminal race be forever eradicated" "Then will they slay the Jews in masses" "Prepare a rave from which there can be no resurrection" Almost immediately after the war had started the organised extermination on the Jewish race began : Hoess has told you :"The final solution of the Jewish question means the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe.
I was ordered to establish extermination facilities in Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the General Government 3 other extermination camps, Belsek, Treblinka and Welzek." Already the Jews in Germany and Poland had been concentrated in the ghettos of the Government General. Over dinner in the fuehrer's apartment in October 1940, Frank had explained and I quote :
"The activities in the Government General could be termed very successful. The Jews in Warsaw and other cities were now locked up in ghettos, Krakow would very shortly be cleared of them. Reichslieter von Schirach remarked that he still had more than 50,000 Jews in Vienna when Dr. Frank would have to take over from him."