I pass by two paragraphs:
"Polish Catholics are not allowed to contract marriage in the territory of the Altreich; just as requests for religious instruction or instruction in preparation for Confession and Holy Communion for the children of these workers are, in principle, not accepted." religious affairs in the overrun territories is disclosed in Document 3266-PS, USA Exhibit 573, which I now offer in evidence. This is a letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Breslau to the Papal Secretary of State, dated December 7, 1942. It bears a Vatican authentication similar to those already read. bility for determining the policy and exercising final authority on religious questions in the occupied territories. I quote from page 1, the first paragraph of this letter, and remind the Court that the Defendant Bormann was at that time Chief of the Nazi Party Chancery, and that the defendant Kaltenbrunner was the chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the RSHA. I quote from 3266-PS, beginning with the sixth line:
"About some of the gravest injuries inflicted on the Church I not only protested on each occasion as the individual incident occurred, but I also made a most formal protest about them in globo in a document which, as spokesman of all the Hierarchy, I sent to the supreme Ruler of the State and to the Ministries of the Reich on December 10, 1941. Not a word by way of answer has been sent to us.
"Your Eminence knows very well the greatest difficulty in the way of opening negotiations comes from the overruling authority which the "National Socialist Party Chancery" exercises in relation to the Chancery of the Reich and to the single Reich Ministries.
This Partei-Kanzlei directs the course to be followed by the State, whereas the Ministries and the Chancery of the Reich are obliged and compelled to adjust their decrees to these directions. Besides, there is the fact that the Supreme Office for the Security of the Reich, called the Reichssicherheitshauptamt enjoys an authority which precludes all legal action and all appeals. Under it are the Secret Offices for Public Security, called Geheime Staats-polizei, (a title shortened usually to Gestapo) of which there is one for each Province. Against the decrees of this Central Office and of the Secret Offices there is no appeal through the Courts, and no complaint made to the Ministries has any effect. Not infrequently the Councillors of the Ministries suggest that they have not been able to do as they would wish to, because of the opposition of these Party offices. As far as the executive power is concerned, the organization called the SS, that is Schutzstaffeln der Partei, is in practice supreme.
"On a number of very grave and fundamental issues we have also presented our complaints to the Supreme Leader of the Reich, the Fuehrer. Either no answer is given, or it is apparently edited by the above-mentioned Party Chancery, which does not consider itself bound by the Concordat made with the Holy See."
I now offer in evidence Document Number 3279-PS, USA Exhibit 574. This is an excerpt from Charge Number 17 against the defendant Hans Frank, Governor General of Poland, entitled "Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Western Provinces," submitted by the Polish Government under the terms of Article 21 of the Four-Power Agreement of August 8, 1945. This gives further figures indicating the extent of the persecution of priests. I quote:
"The extract attached hereto and dealing with the "General Conditions and Results of the Persecution", is taken from the text of Charge 17, page 5, paragraph IV, of the Polish Government against the defendants named in the Indictment before the International Military Tribunal, Subject:"Maltreatment and Persecution of the Catholic Clergy in the Incorporated Western Provinces of Poland". It is a true translation into English of the original Polish. accordance with article 21 of the Charter of the Court".
Signed: "Dr. Tadeusz Cyprian, Polish Deputy Representative on the United Nations War Crimes Commission in London, signing on behalf of the Polish Government and of the Main Commission for Investigation of German War Crimes in Poland, whose seal I hereby attach".
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think you need read such certificate as that.
COLONEL WHEELER: This is the only one, sir, that I have.
I now read from this extract:
"General Conditions and Results of the Persecution:
"11. The general situation of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Poznan in the beginning of April 1940 is summarized in the following words of Cardinal Hlond's second report:
"Five priests shot; 27 priests confined in harsh concentration camps at Stutthof and in other camps; 190 priests in prison or in concentration camps at Bruczkow, Chlodowo, Gerusski, Kazimiers, Buskupi, Lad, Lublin and uszczykowe; 35 priests seriously ill in consequence of ill treatment; 122 parishes entirely left without priests."
"12. In the diocese of Chelmno, where about 650 priests were installed before the war, only 3 percent were allowed to stay, the 97 percent of them were imprisoned, executed or put into concentration comps.
"13. By January 1941 about 700 priests were killed, 3,000 were in prison or concentration camps."
I refer also to Document No. 3268-A-PS, USA Exhibit No. 356, excerpts from the Allocution of Pope Pius XII to the Sacred College, June 2, 1945, which has already been introduced into evidence and read very extensively. I shall not read from that again. This gives some very revealing figures concerning the priests and lay brothers confined in the concentration camp at Dachau.
imprisonment of 2,800 ecclesiastical and religions in Dachau alone from 1940 to 1945, of whom all but about 800 were dead by April 1945, including an Auxiliary Bishop. Struggle of the Nazi conspirators against the Catholic Church. Court proves that the attempted suppression of the Christian Churches in Germany, Austria, Czechoslevakia, and Poland was an integral part of the Defendants' conspiracy to eliminate internal opposition and otherwise to prepare for and wage aggressive war, and shows the same conspiratorial pattern as their other war crimes against humanity.
COLONEL STOREY: If the Tribunal please, before we present the subject of individual defendants, by agreement with our British colleagues, Mr. Elwyn Jones All now present a brief subject entitled "Aggression as a Basic Nazi Idea". Mr. Elwyn Jones.
Mr. ELWYN JONES: May it please the Tribunal, it is now my duty to draw to the Tribunal's attention a document which became the statement of faith of these defendants. I refer to Hitler's Mein Kampf. It is perhaps appropriate that this should be considered at this stage of the trial just before the Prosecution presents to the Tribunal the evidence against the individual defendants under counts 1 and 2 of the Indictment, for this book, Mein Kampf, we to the defendants adequate foreknowledge of the unlawful aims of the Nazi leadership. It was not only Hitler's political testament; by adoption it became theirs. aggression. Its whole tenor and content enforce the Prosecution's submission that the Nazi pursuit of aggressive designs was no mere accident arising out of the immediate political situation in Europe and the world which existed during the period of Nazi power. serve their aims in foreign policy was part of the very creed of the Nazy Party.
A great German philosopher once said that ideas have hands and feet. It became the deliberate aim of these defendants to see to it that the idea, doctrines, and policies of Mein Kampf should become the active faith and guide for action of the German nation, and particularly of its malleable youth. 1933 to 1939 an extensive indoctrination in the ideas of Main Kampf was pursued in the schools and universities of Germany, as well as in the Hitler Youth, under the direction of the Defendant Baldur von Schirach, and in the SA and SS, and amongst the German population as a whole, by the agency of the Defendant Rosenberg.
newly married couples in Germany, and I now hand to the Tribunal such a wedding present from the Nazis to the newlyweds of Germany, For the purposes of the record it will be Exhibit No. GB-128. The Tribunal will see that the dedication on the fly-leaf of that copy reads: "To the newly married couple, Friedrich Rosebrock and Else Geborene Zum Beck, with best wishes for a happy and blessed marriage. Presented by the Communal Administration on the occasion of their marriage on the 14th of November, 1940. For the Mayor, the Registrar." contents page, that that edition of Mein Kampf, which was the 1945 edition, brought the number of copies of Mein Kampf published to 6,250,000. This was the scale upon which this book was distributed. It was blasphemously called "The Bible of the German people." this book poisoned a generation and distorted the outlook of a whole people. preach for years, as long as ten years, that the Slav peoples are inferior races and that the Jews are subhuman, then it must logically follow that the killing of millions of these human beings is accepted as a natural phenomenon. and the gas chambers of Maidonek. to the Tribunal by quotations from the book, which are set out in the extracts which I trust are now before the Tribunal, and those extracts are set out in the order in which I shall, with the Tribunal's permission, refer to them.
Now, these quotations fall into two main categories. The first category is that of general expression of Hitler's belief in the necessity of force as the means of solving international problems. The second category is that of Hitler's more explicit declarations on the policy which Germany must pursue.
three chapters, 13, 14, and 15, of Part II of Mein Kampf, in which Hitler's views on foreign policy were expounded; and the significance of that fact will be realized if the Tribunal looks at the German edition of Mein Kampf, when the Tribunal will observe that Part II of Mein Kampf-the second part of Mein Kampf--was first published in 1927, that is to say, less than two years after the Locarno Pact and within a few months of Germany's entry into the League of Nations. The date of the publication of these passages, therefore, brands them as a repudiation of the policy of international cooperation embarked upon by Streseman, and as a deliberate defiance of the attempt to establish, through the League of Nations, the rule of law in international affairs. general view held by Hitler and accepted and propagated by the defendants about war and aggression generally. The first quotation, from page 556 of Mein Kampf, reads:
"The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers. But they had to conquer it by risking their lives. So also in the future our people will not obtain territory, and therewith the means of existence, as a favour from any other people, but will have to win it by the power of a triumphant sword." Of the years of peace before 1914 he wrote:
"Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that I had arrived on this terrestrial globe, and I felt chagrined at the iead that my life would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly lines."
THE PRESIDENT: A little bit slower, please.
MR. ELWYN JONES: I beg your Lordship's pardon.
"As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so turned out futile."
Generally, Hitler wrote of war in this way. On page 162 we find:
"In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke stated that in time of war the essential thing is to get a decision as quickly as possible and that the most ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the most humane.
When people attempt to answer this reasoning by highfalutin talk about aesthetics, etc., only one answer can be given. It is that the vital questions involved in the struggle of a nation for its existence must not be subordinated to any aesthetic considerations." defendants the Prosecution will prove in the course of this trial.
Hitler's assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for survival is linked up in Chapter II of Book I of Mein Kampf, with the doctrine of Aryan superiority over other races and the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends. The whole of Chapter II of Mein Kampf is dedicated to this master race theory, and, indeed, many of the later speeches of Hitler, his addresses to his generals, etc., were mainly repetitive of Chapter II.
If the Court will look at the extract from page 256, it reads as follows:
"Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led them to a later type of culture; just as, without the help of certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they would never have come to the invention of mechanical power, which has subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts.
"For the establishment of superior types of civilization the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites." general ideas to Germany:
"If in its historical development", he writes, "the German people had possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other people have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe to-day. World history would have taken another course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining and crying may not have been reached in this way; namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches and tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization." Hitler's love of war and scorn of those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of the whole of this book, which appears again and again, is, firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan-German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of inter-national problems represent a disastrous weakness in a nation that adopts them. of the possibility of any rule of law in international affairs. Tribunal to consider the more definite passages in which Hitler deals with specific problems of German foreign policy.
policy. It reads -- page 1, column 1:
"German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not, indeed, on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same Reich. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in one State. When the territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people, to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the gernations to come." of Germany's frontiers as they were in 1941 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes. At page 553 he writes:
"In regard to this point I should like to make the following statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers should be restored is a glaring political absurdity that is fraught with such consequences as to make the claim itself appear criminal. The confines of the Reich as they existed in 1941 were thoroughly illogical; because they were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation.
Nor were they reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of military defence.
They were not the finish; and indeed, they were partly the chance result of circumstances."
reads, "For the future of the German nation the 1914 frontiers are of no significance."
And in the third paragraph the Court sees:
"We National Socialists must stick firmly to the aim that for it to exist on this earth.
And only for such action as is shed once again.
Before God, because we are sent into this world "And this justification must be established also before our posterity.
The territory on which one day our German peasants today.
And the statesmen who will have decreed this sacrifice may people."
Then, the next quotation. Hitler writes, at page 557:
"Germany will either become a world power or will not continue to exist at all.
But in order to become a world power, importance today and assures the existence of its citizens."
And finally, he writes:
"We must take our stand on the principles already mentioned population.
From the past we can learn only one lesson, and conduct must be twofold, namely:
(1) the acquisition of territory as the objective of our foreign policy and (2) the establishment activities at home, in accordance with our doctrine of nationhood."
Now, these passages from "Mein Kampf" raise the question, the 1941 boundaries of Germany?
To this Hitler's answer is sufficiently explicit.
Reviewing the history of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, he wrote, in an early passage of "Mein Kampf," at page 132:
"Therefore, the only possibility which Germany had of acquiring new territory in Europe itself.
Colonies cannot serve Europeans on a large scale.
In the nineteenth century it was no meant an enormous military struggle.
Consequently it would have "Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation's A policy of that kind, which requires for its fulfilment every ounce of available energy on the part of everybody concerned, cannot be carried into effect by half measures or in a hesitant manner.
The political leadership of the German Empire should then have been directed exclusively to this goal. No political step should have been taken in response to other considerations than this task and the means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive to the fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and collected determination.
"The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged and valued from that standpoint."
And then, this is the vital sentence:
"If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have been mainly at Russia's cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation with its daily bread." at the end of Mein Kampf. After discussing the insufficiency of Germany's pre-war frontiers, he again points the path to the East and declares that the Drang nach Osten, the drive to the East, must be resumed; and he writes:
"Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line of conduct followed by pre-war Germany in foreign policy. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-war times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future.
"But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to her." in the East might be endangered by a defensive alliance between Russia, France and perhaps England. His foreign policy, as outlined in MEIN KAMPF, was to detach England and Italy from France and Russia and to change the attitude of Germany towards France from the defensive to the offensive.
And the final quotation from Mein Kampf comes from page 570:
"As long as the eternal conflict between France and Germany is waged only in the form of a German defence against the French attack, that conflict can never be decided, and from century to century Germany will lose one position after another. If we study the changes that have taken place, from the twelfth century up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German language is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to result from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct which has hitherto been so detrimental for us. they cease from allowing the national will-to-live to wear itself out in merely passive defence; but they will rally together for a last decisive contest with France. And in this contest the essential objective of the German nation will be fought for. Only then will it be possible to put an end to the eternal Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved so sterile. of France nothing more than a means which will make it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter. Today there are eighty million Germans in Europe. And our foreign policy will be recognized as rightly conducted only when, after barely a hundred years, there will be 250 million Germans living on this Continent, not packed together as the coolies in the factories of another Continent but as tillers of the soil and workers whose labour will be a mutual assurance for their existence."
to the Tribunal, the evidence of MEIN KAMPF, taken in conjunction with the facts of Nazi Germany's subsequent behaviour towards other countries, goes to show that from the very first moment that they attained power, and indeed long before that time, Hitler and his confederates the defendants were engaged in planning and preparing aggressive war as is alleged against them in this Indictment. and children, that MEIN KAMPF was no mere literary exercise to be treated with easy indifference, as unfortunately it was treated before the war by these who were imperilled, but was the expression of a fanatical faith in force and fraud as the means to Nazi dominance in Europe, if not in the whole world. The Prosecution's submission is that, accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of Mein Kampf, the Nazi confederates who are indicted here deliberately pushed our civilization over the precipice of war.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now adjourn for ten minutes.
(A recess was taken from 1135 hours to 1150 hours.)
SIR DAVID MAXWELL FIFE: May it please the Tribunal, the next stage of the Prosecution is the presentation of the cases against the individual defendants under Counts 1 and 2 of the Indictment. Before that is begun the Chief Prosecutors for the United States and Great Britain wish, with the permission of the Tribunal, to make four points perfectly clear:of the members of the Tribunal, and secondly, of the Defense Counsel concerned, the evidence against each defendant under Counts 1 and 2 which has been presented by the British and American delegations. Otherwise it would be easy among the many documents already before the Court to miss relevant pieces of evidence which the Tribunal might wish to consider and to which the defendants may wish to make a reply. ended. Vital and important parts of the case remain concerning the actual atrocities, both war crimes and crimes against humanity. The evidence in regard to these will shortly be presented by the French Delegation and the Delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and when the massive documentation of these crimes is placed before the Court, the French and Soviet Delegations will have the opportunity of relating them to the individual defendants in the Dock.
as possible the evidence under the respective counts of the Indictment. The documents in evidence, however, were not written with a view to this trial, and therefore many of them inevitably deal with offenses under more than one count. It is by reason of this alone that some over-lapping and repetition necessarily exists. developed, documents may come to light which bear on the common plan of conspiracy, or the initiation of wars of aggression or other material connected with Counts 1 and 2. The American and British Delegations will welcome any addition to the evidence on those parts of the case, which such documents may provide, and gladly receive such reinforcement from their French and Soviet colleagues. me to make it, I call on my friend Mr. Albrecht to commence this part of the case.
DR. THOMA (Counsel for Rosenberg): Colonel Wheeler in his prosecution speech talked about churches and the persecution in the Eastern Provinces, and the Reichminister for the Occupied Countries, the defendant Rosenberg, was mentioned and made responsible. I have neither from the speech of the Prosecutor nor from the documents seen proof that, as to the affairs administered by Rosenberg, the persecutions in the charges actually took place I ask to direct the attention of the Tribunal to Document 1517, in which there is an official notice signed by Rosenberg covering a conversation dealing with the Eastern question, and this document contains a statement by Rosenberg that the Fuehrer agrees with the tolerant edict of Rosenberg,
THE PRESIDENT: Do I understand that you are making a motion at this stage?
DR. THOMA: I have a request as to the Prosecution: Perhaps the effect of the accusation against Rosenberg has been to validate and substantiate it subsequently.
THE PRESIDENT: Is your point that this Document 1517-PS has not yet been in, or what is your point?
DR. THOMA: To my knowledge this document has been submitted in connection with the opinion by Hitler that the Crimea was to be cleaned up completely; but in my present request I am concerned with the fact the Prosecution affirmed that in the General Government of Poland, in the Corridor, and in the Eastern countries, and in the areas administered by Rosenberg church persecution actually took place. The Prosecution had its proof for the first three points, but as far as the last point is concerned, I have no proof either in the document book or in the personal speeches made by the prosecution.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you must understand that the Tribunal are not at this stage accepting everything that has been said by the Prosecution. You will have full opportunity when you present the case on behalf of the defendant Rosenberg to present any documents which may be relevant, and to comment upon any documents which have been cited by the Prosecution, and to make any argument that you think right; but this is not the appropriate time to make any such argument. We are still considering the case for the Prosecution, and you mil have full opportunity hereafter. Do you understand?
DR. THOMA: I ask the High Tribunal to consider my present statement as nothing but a statement.
THE PRESIDENT: We will do so, but it is not convenient for counsel for the defense to intervene with statements of this sort; otherwise they might be doing it all the time, each one of the defendants counsel. We must ask you therefore to withhold such statements until your time comes to answer the case for the Prosecution.
MR. ALBRECHT: May it please the Tribunal, I have been charged by the Chief of Counsel for the United States with the duty of pointing out, on the basis of evidence already admitted and of additional evidence that will be offered, the individual responsibility of these defendants for the crimes specified in counts I and II of the Indictment. recognized as good in German life, and affirmatively participated in the work of achieving the objectives of the arty, we submit that they well knew what National Socialism stood for. They knew of the Program announced by the Nazi Party and they also had knowledge of Nazi methods. The official NSDAP program with its 25 points was open and notorious. Announced and published to the world in 1920, it was published and republished and adverted to throughout the years. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions to make the Party program the fundamental law of the German State. The Nazis made no secret of their intentions generally. For all to road, there was "Mein Kampf", the product of the warped brain of the Fuehrer, and there were the prolific writings and utterances of many other leaders who rose to prominence, some of whom are now sitting in the defendants' box. And Hitler himself had announced that the Nazis would use force if necessary to achieve their purposes. Hess, Rosenberg and Goering, were associated with Hitler since the very inception of the conspiracy. These men were among the original planners. They were the men who subsequently set the pace and cast the mold for the future. But there were also other conspirators, (the balance of the defendants in the dock fit into this category), who voluntarily - joined the conspiracy later. inhuman, they certainly may not be called dull or stupid. They knew, and had had the opportunity to observe, the manifestations of Nazi violence and Nazi methods as the pattern of the Swastika developed. They knew the nature of what they were getting into. Therefore they must be presumed to have had the desire to participate (and participate they did) voluntarily, and so we submit that it may not validly be inferred that they did not join the stream of the conspiracy with their eyes open, with scienter, as the conspiracy gathered momentum and developed into a rushing torrent.
overt acts of these defendants, as well as of their fellow conspirators. We shall make no effort at this time to present an exhaustive recital of all crimes. Planned or initiated by these defendants, for which they must bear full responsibility beyond peradventure of doubt. The world already knows more of the evil deeds of these men and of their coconspirators than the prosecution possibly could hope to establish within the reasonable limits of time and of men's patience. At this point we shall attempt to focus attention merely to illustrative criminal conduct of the individual conspirators. do, with the permission of the Tribunal, to show in outline the extent to which these defendants have become implicated in the serious charges against them. In the case of many of these conspirators, a recital of all their crimes will relate to several of the categories of crimes described in Counts I and II of the Indictment. We shall draw these various threads together and show, as I have said, the outline of the completed proof, as it were, within Counts I of the Indictment, against the individual conspirators. some of these defendants fit into the broad, stream of the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and the extent of their individual responsibility for their acts in pursuance of that conspiracy. self We next consider the defendant FRITZ SAUCKEL.