"It is in Eastern Europe, at the expense of Russia and the neighboring countries that Germany must seek new territories.
We arrest the eternal march of the Germans towards the South and the West of Europe and cast our eyes towards the South and the West of Europe and cast our eyes towards the East."
But before anything, declares Hitler, it is necessary to crush France's tendency towards hegemony and to have a "final settlement" with this "mortal enemy". "The annihilation of France will enable Germany to acquire afterwards territories in the East". The "settlement of accounts" in the West is but a prelude. "It can be explained only as the securing of our rear defenses in order to extend our living-space in Europe". territory of a "military power" which might become her rival, and to oppose "by all means" the formation of a state which possibly might acquire sufficient strength to do so, and if that state exists already, to "destroy" it is, for Germans, not only a right but a duty.
"Never permit", recommends Hitler to his compatriots, in a passage which he calls his political testament, "the formation in Europe of two Continental powers. In every attempt to set up a second military power on Germany's borders - even if it were in the shape of a state which might possibly acquire that power -- you must see an attack on Germany. power of France, way to acquire living-space in eastern Europe, war, in fine, against any state which would be or which might become a counter-weight to the hegemony of the Reich, that is the plan of Mein Kampf. from any of the certainties of war entailed by the application of his doctrines. companions devoted themselves to the military and diplomatic preparation of the wars of aggression which they had resolved to wage. ists Germany had already shown her determination to reconstruct her armed forces, notably in 1932 when on the occasion of the Disarmament Conference, she demanded "equality of rights" as regards armament, and Germany had already violated in secret the articles of the Treaty of Versailles regarding disarmament, but after the arrival of Hitler to power, German rearmament was to be carried out at a vastly different rate.
known five days later its decision to withdraw from the League of Nations under the pretext that it was not granted equality of rights in the matter of armament. France had however expressed her readiness to accept equality of rights if Germany would first consent to an international control which would enable the level of existing armaments to be determined. Germany very obviously did not wish to agree to this condition, for an international control would have revealed the extent of the rearmament already carried out in secret by the Reich in violation of the treaties. As a matter of fact, at a cabinet meeting which took place on 12 October 1933, the minutes of which have been found, Hitler had declared that he wished to "torpedo" the Disarmament Conference. In these conditions it is not surprising that the attempts made to resume negotiations with Germany after her withdrawal ended in failure.
When 18 months later Hitler's government decided to reestablish conscription and to create immediately an army which would, on a peace establishment, comprise 36 divisions, as well as to create a military air force, it was breaking the engagements which Germany had undertaken by the Treaty of Versailles. However, on 3 February 1935, France and Great Britain had offered to the Reich to resume its place in the League of Nations and to prepare a general disarmament convention which would have been substituted for the military Articles of the Treaty. At the moment when Hitler was on the point of obtaining, by means of free negotiation, the abolition of the "unilateral burden" which, as he said, the Treaty of Versailles laid on Germany, he preferred to escape any voluntary limitation and any control of armaments by a deliberate violation of a treaty. to reoccupy at once the demilitarized Rhineland area, thereby violating Articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles, the German government alleged that in so doing it was replying to the pact concluded and signed on 2 May 1935 between France and the U.S.S.R. and ratified on 27 February 1936 by the French Chamber of Deputies.
It alleged that this pact was contrary to the Treaty of Locarno. This was a mere pretext which was taken seriously by nobody. The Nazi leaders wanted to start building the Siegfried Line as soon as possible in the demilitarized Rhineland area, in order to thwart a military intervention which France might attempt in order to assist her Eastern allies. The decision of 7 March 1936 was the prelude to the aggressions directed against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. nancial measures which affected every aspect of national life. The entire economic system was directed towards the preparation of war. The members of the government proclaimed priority of armaments manufacture over all other branches of production. Policy passed before economics. The Fuehrer declared: "The people must be resigned for some time to having its butter, fats, and meat rationed in order that rearmament may proceed at the desired rate." The German people did not protest against this order. The State intervened to increase the production of substitute goods which would help to relieve the insufficiency of raw materials, and would enable the Reich, in the event of war, to maintain the level of production necessary for the Army and Air Force, even if imports were to become difficult or impossible. The defendant Goering, in September 1936, inspired the drawing up and directed the application of the Four Years' Plan which put Germany's economic system on a war footing. The expenses entailed by this rearmament were assured thanks to the new system of work treaties. The defendant Schacht, during the three and a half years he was at the head of the Reich Ministry of Economics brought into being this financial machinery and thereby played an outstanding role in military preparations as he himself recalled, .after he left the Ministry, in a speech that he made in November 1938 at the Economic Council of the German Academy.
Germany thus succeeded in three years' time to recreate a great army and to create on the technical plane an organization entirely devoted to future war. On the 5th of November 1937, when expounding his plan for home policy to his collaborators, Hitler was able to state that rearmament was practically completed.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off? We will adjourn, then, for ten minutes.
(A recess was taken from 1115 to 1130 hours.)
While Hitler's government was giving to the Reich the economic and financial means for a war of aggression he was carrying on simultaneously the diplomatic preparation of that war by endeavoring to reassure the threatened nations during the period which was indispensable to him for rearmament and by endeavoring also to keep apart his eventual adversaries one from the other. obtain by force a revision of the Treaty of Versailles although in that speech he asked for it. He stated that he admitted "the legitimate exigencies of all peoples" and he asserted that he did not want to "Germanize those who are not Germans." He wished to "respect the rights of other nationalities." reassured for a time the Warsaw government and to lull it into a state of false security, but it was principally intended to remove a means of action from French policy. In a work published in 1939 entitled "Deutschlands Aussenpolitik 1933-39," a semi-official writer, Professor Von FreytagLoringhoven wrote that the essential purpose of this pact was to paralyze the action of the Franco-Polish alliance and to "over-throw the entire French system." Treaty of Versailles, Germany started negotiations with Great Britain which were to result in the naval agreement of 18 June 1935, negotiation which were intended to reassure British public opinion by shoving it that while the Reich was desirous of becoming once more a great military power, it was not thinking of reconstituting a powerful fleet. the return of the Saar territory to the Reich, Hitler formally declared "that he would make not further territorial demands whatever on France." He was to use the same tactics towards France until the end of 1938. On 6 December 1938 Ribbentrop came to Paris to sign the Franco-German decla ration which agreed "the frontiers as definite" between the two countries and which stated that the two governments were resolved "under reservation of their particular relations with third powers, to engage in mutual consultation in the event of questions of common interests which might show a risk of leading to international difficulties;" he was then still hoping, to quote the French ambassador in Berlin, to "stabilize peace in the West in order to have a free hand in the East."
Did not Hitler make the same promises to Austria and Czechoslovakia? He signed on 11 July 1936, an agreement with the Vienese government, recognizing the independence of Austria, an independence which he was to destroy twenty months liter. By means of the Munich agreement on 28 September 1938 he promised subsequently to guarantee the integrity of the Czech territory which he invaded less than six months later. at the Reich Chancellory, Hitler had made known to his collaborators that the hour had struck to resolve by force the problem of the living-space required by Germany. The diplomatic situation was favorable to Germany. She had acquired superiority of armaments which ran the risk of being only temporary. Action should be taken without further delay. detailed to this court. It has also been shown to you that these various aggressions have been made in violation of international treaties and of the principles of International Law. As a matter of fact, German propaganda did not challenge this at the time. It merely stated that those treaties and those principles "had lost any reality whatever with the passage of time." In other words, it simply denied that one's pledged word had any value, and that the principles which form the basis of International Law had become obsolete; this is a reasoning which is in line with the National Socialist doctrines which, as we have seen, do not recognize any International Law, and sta te that any means is justifiable if it is of a nature to serve the interests of the German race. propaganda made use of to justify the long-planned aggression.
Germany set forth, first of all, her vital interests. Can she not be excused for neglecting the rules of the rights of peoples when she was engaged in a struggle for the existence of her people? She needed economic expansion. She had the right and the duty to protect the German minorities abroad. She was obliged to ward off the encirclement which the Western powers were directing against the Reich. even to his direct associates, in the secret conferences he held in 1937 and 1939 in the Reichschancellery. "Economic needs," he said, "Are the basis of the policy of expansion of Italy and of Japan. They also guide Germany".
But would not Hitler's Germany have been able to seek to satisfy these needs by peaceful means? Did she think of obtaining new possibilities for her foreign commerce through commercial negotiations? Hitler did not stop at such solutuions. To solve the German economic problems, he saw only one way--the acquisition of agricultural territories--undoubtedly because he was incapable of conceiving of these problems under any other form than that of "war economy". If he affirmed the necessity of obtaining this "agricultural space"--to use his own phrase--it was because he saw therein the means of obtaining for the German population the food resources which would protect it against the consequences of a blockade.
The duty of protecting "the German minorities abroad" was the favorite theme which Germany's diplomacy made use of from 1937 to 1939. It could obviously not serve as an excuse for the destruction of the Czechoslovakian State or for the establishment of the "German Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia". The fate of the "Sudeten Germans", that of the "Danzig Germans" was the leitmotif of the German press, of the Fuehrer's speeches and of Ribbentrop's propaganda speeches. Now, it is necessary to recall that in the secret conference of 5 November 1937, one word about the "Sudeten Germans," and to recall that in the "principal point" of the German-Polish controversy?
The "right of nationalities" was, therefore, in his mind only a propaganda "living space."
with Great Britain. This thesis occupied a great deal of space in the German-Polish diplomatic conflict.
Had not the British Prime that British policy had only two aims:
to prevent Germany from dominating Europe and "to oppose a method which, by the threat of force, obliged the weak States to renounce their independence?"
What Hitler Germany called "encirclement" was simply a fence, But German propaganda did not limit itself to this.
Did we the previous year on Czechoslovakia?
A strange argument, which to make war if all the Powers had yielded to her will.
The excuse Hitler's declarations, may have believed that the designs of minorities; it may have hoped that there was a limit to German scope of the German plans clear to the Allies.
How can one be peace could have been "bought" in August 1939 by concessions, been "deeply disappointed" if she had yielded and that he wished a general war?
National Socialists. Their doctrine inevitably led to it.
which Germany is one of the signatories. This Pact continues to May I re-read Article I of this Treaty?
"The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare, in the name instrument of national policy in their reciprocal relations."
European order. The Paris Pact, which remains the fundamental evolution of the relations between States.
The Hague Conventions had regulated the "law of the conduct of war."
They had instituted conflict.
They had, essentially, established a distinction between and those which it prohibits.
The Hague Convention had not reached the very principle of war placed beyond the juridical domain.
This regulates "the right of declaration of war."
framework of regulations. It has gone beyond the empiricism of the force.
Every war of aggression is illegal, and the men who bear of war?
May I quote this well-known passage from Pascal?
"Why do you kill me?" "Don't you live on the other side of the water?
My friend, if you lived on this side, I would be an is just."
sanctions in all legislations. The state of war could make them legitimate only if the war itself was legitimate.
Inasmuch as acts become purely and simply common law crimes.
As Justice Jackson This is the whole spirit of the Briand-Kellogg Pact.
It was of nationals of a foreign power.
Given this formal commitment, really possesses the juridical character of a war.
It is truly an responsibility of all the perpetrators of acts of violence.
It of the sovereignty of State from being reduced to impotence.
It of the principle of recourse to force by Germany, the other states have admitted that war existed and speak of the application of international law in time of war.
It must in fact, be noted that, even in the case of civil war, the parties have often invoked these rules which, to a certain extent, canalize the use of force. This in no wise involves or implied acquiesence in the principle of Its use and, indeed, when Great Britain and France communicated to the League of Nations the fact that a state of war existed between them and Germany as of 3 September 1939, they also declared that in committing an act of aggression against Poland, Germany had violated its obligations, assumed not only with regard to Poland but also with regard to the other signatories of the Paris Pact.
Recourse to war assumes preparations and decision; it would be futile to prohibit it if it was intended to inflict no chastisement upon those who knowingly have recourse to it and have the power of choosing a different path. They must, indeed, be considered the direct instigators of the acts qualified as crimes. established a jurisdiction making it possible to judge what was already an international crime, not only before the conscience of humanity but before the rights of people even before the Tribunal was established. possible to contest the competence of the International Tribunal to judge it? 1928 had engaged their international responsibilities in regard to the co-signatories, should they act in a way contrary to the agreements undertaken. such without in principle involving the individuals who have been perpetrators of an illegal act. It is within the framework of the state that there may be invoked an international responsibility and that, as a general rule the conduct of the men who are responsible for this violation of international law may be appraised. They are subject, as the case may be, to political responsibility or to penal responsibility before the competent jurisdictions.
comprises the nationals: the order of the state assumes the exercise of justice over a given territory and with regard to the individuals whom it includes, and the failure of the state in the exercise of this essential mission is followed by the reaction and the protests of third powers, notably when their own nationals are involved. government shall have been established by the agreement of the Four Occupying powers, there will be no organ representing the German State. Under these conditions, it can not be considered that there exists a German State juridical order capable of drawing the consequences of a recognition of the responsibility of the Reich for the violation of the Briand-Kellogg Pact with regard to individuals who are, in fact, the perpetrators of this violation in their capacity as organs of the Reich. territory in regard to the whole of German population by the Four Powers acting jointly. It must, therefore, be allowed that the states which exercise the supreme authority over the territory and population of Germany can bring the guilty before a jurisdiction. Otherwise, the proclamation that Germany has violated the solemn covenant which it has undertaken becomes meaningless. acts, qualified as crimes committed in respect of the nationals of the United Nations. These acts, which are not juridically acts of war but which have been committed as such upon the instigation of those who bear the responsibility for the unleashing of the so-called war, who have committed aggression upon the lives and the property of nationals of the United Nations, may, by virtue of the territorial principle and as we have argued above, be brought before a jurisdiction constituted to this effect by the United Nations, even as war crimes, properly speaking, are now being brought before the tribunals of each country whose nationals have been their victims. aggression itself, will be, as Mr. Justice Jackson has demonstrated to you, the manifestation of a concerted and methodically executed plan.
Socialist doctrine. This doctrine is indifferent to the moral choice of means to attain a final success, and for this doctrine the aim of war is pillage, destruction and extermination. the primacy of the German race and the nogation of any other value. The Nazi conception maintains selection as a natural principle. The man who does not belong to the superior race counts for nothing. Human life and liberty, personality, the dignity of man even less, have no importance when an adversary of the German community is involved. It is truly "the return to barbarism" with all its consequences. Logically consistent, National Socialism goes to the length of assuming the right totally to exterminate either races regarded as hostile or decadent, or individuals and groups capable of resistance in the nations to be subjugated and put to use. Does not the idea of totalitarian war imply the annihilation of any eventual resistance? All those who in any way may be capable of opposing the New Order hegemony will be liquidated. It thus becomes possible to assure an absolute domination over a neighboring people reduced to impotence and to utilize, for the benefit of the Reich, the resources and the human material of those people reduced to slavery. outdated; more than this, all international conventions which had undertaken to bring some extenuation of the evils of war. victory by their material resources, as well as by their labor potential. Means will be found to subject them. likewise related to this war end. As one could read in Doutscho Volkstraft of 13 June 1935:
"The totalitarian war will end in a totalitarian victory. 'Totalitarian' signifies the entire destruction of the conquered nation and its complete and final disappearance from the historic scene." whether the National Socialists consider them as belonging or not belonging to the Master Race. For the first, an effort is made to integrate them into the German Reich in spite of themselves.
For the latter, there is applied a policy of weakening them and bringing about their extinction by every means from that of appropriation of their property to that of extermination of their persons. In regard to both groups, the Nazi rulers assault not only the property and physical persons, but also the spirits and souls. They seek to allign the populations according to the Nazi dogma and behavior when they wish to integrate them in the German community; they apply themselves at least to rooting out whatever conceptions are irreconcilable with the Nazi universe; they aim to reduce to a mentality and status of slaves those men whose nationality they wish to eradicate for the benefit of the German race. occupied countries, the defendants gave special orders or general directives or deliberately associated themselves with these. Their responsibility is that of perpetrators, co-perpetrators or accomplices in the war crimes systematically committed between 1 September 1939 and 8 May 1945 by Germany at war. They deliberately willed, premeditated and ordered these crimes, or knowingly associated themselves with this policy of organized criminality. pursued in the occupied countries of Western Europe by dealing successively with forced labor, economic looting crimes against persons, and crimes against humankind. to be perpetrated by the Nazi Germans in the occupied countries, was at the basis of the forced labor service. Through this institution, Germany proposed to utilize to the maximum the labor potential of the enslaved populations in order to maintaim the German war production at the necessary level. Moreover, there can be no doubt that this institution was linked with the German plan of "extermination through labor" of the populations adjoining Germany which she regarded as dangerous or inferior.
dated 1 October 1938, provided for the forced employment of prisoners and civilians for war labor. Hitler in his speech of 9 November 1941 "did not doubt for a moment that in the occupied territories which we control at present, we shall make the last man work for us." Sauckel, acting together with the defendant Speer, under the control of the defendant Goering, General Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, that obligatory foreign labor for the benefit of the war conducted by Germany received its whole development. or successively:
First: Requisition of services under conditions incompatible with Article 52 of the Hague Convention.
Second: So-called voluntary labor, which consisted of bringing a worker under pressure to sign a contract to work in Germany.
Third: Conscription for obligatory labor.
Fourth: The forcing of war prisoners to work for the German war production and their transformation in certain cases into so-called free Bakers.
Fifth: The enrolling of certain foreign workers, notably French (Alsatians, Lorrainians) and Luxemburgers in the German Labor Front. and in violation of Article 52 of the Hague Convention.
These service requisitions were made under threat of death. Voluntary labor recruiting was accompanied by individual measures of constraint, obliging the workers of occupied territories to sign contracts. The duration of these pseudo-contracts was subsequently prolonged unilaterally and illegally by the German authorities. of labor led the German authorities everywhere to have recourse to conscription. Hitler declared on 19 August 1942 in a conference on the Four Year Plan which was reported by the defendant Speer, that Germany "had to proceed to forced recruiting if sufficient labor was not obtained on a voluntary basis."
On 7 November 1943 the defendant Jodl declared in the course of a speech given in Munich before the Gauleiters, "In my opinion the time has come to take vigorous, resolute, unscrupulous measures in Denmark, in Holland, in France and in Belgium in order to force thousands of idle men to carry out the all-important work of fortification." complementary methods: legal constraint, consisting of promulgating laws regulating obligatory labor; and restraint in fact, consisting of taking necessary measures to oblige workers under penalty of grave sanctions to conform to the announced legislation. 22 August 1942 of the defendant Sauckel, who formulated the charter of forced recruiting in all the occupied countries. the law of 4 September 1942. This law effected the freezing of all manpower in industries and anticipated the possibility of a requisition of all Frenchmen who might be employed in any work useful to the enemy. All Frenchmen from eighteen to fifty years of age who did not have a job which occupied them more than thirty hours a week had to prove that they were usefully employed to meet the needs of the country. A decree of 19 September 1942 and an enabling directive of 22 September provided regulation for the various provisions of this decree. The law of 4 September 1942 had been published by the so-called Government of Vichy, following strong pressure exercised by the occupation authorities. Specifically, Dr. Michel, Chief of the Administrative Staff of the German Military Command in France, wrote on 26 August 1942 a threatening letter to the delegate General for FrancoGerman Economic Relations, requesting him to see that the law was published. under date of 2 February stipulating a census of all male Frenchmen born between 1 January 1912 and 31 December 1921. He also obtained the passing of the law of 16 February, establishing the Bureau of compulsory Labor for all young men from twenty to twenty-two years of age.
On 9 April 1943, Gauleiter Sauckel requested the deportation of 120,000 workers for the month of May and another 100,000 for the month of June. To accomplish this, the so-called Government of Vichy put into force the total mobilization of the military conscription class of 1942. On 15 January 1944, Sauckel requested the de facto French authorities to deliver one million men for the first six months of theyear and he caused the adoption of the regulation designated as the Law of 1 February 1944, which extended the possibility of impressing all men from sixteen to sixty years of age and women from the age of eighteen to forty-five for forced labor. of Quisling the publication of a law dated 3 February 1943, which established the compulsory registration of Norwegian citizens and prescribed their forced enrollment. In Belgium and in Holland, the Bureau of compulsory Labor was organized directly by ordinances of the occupying power. In Belgium the ordinances were promulgated by the military command, and in Holland by the defendant Seyss-Inquart, who was Reich Commissar for the occupied Netherland territories. In both of these countries the development of compulsory labor policy followed the same pattern. compulsory labor was at first instituted only within the occupied territories. It was soon extended in order to permit the deportation of workers to Germany. This was achieved, in the case of Holland, by the ordinance of 28 February 1941, and in Belgium by the ordinance of 6 March 1942 which established the principle of forced labor. The principle of deportation was formulated in Belgium by means of the ordinance of 6 October 1942, and in Holland by the ordinance of 23 March 1942. compulsion was exercised in all countries, numerous roundups in all large cities. For example, 50,000 persons were arrested in Rotterdam on 10 and 11 November 1944. incorporation of laborers from occupied countries in the labor service of the Reich.
This incorporation was not merely the conscription of laborers buy meant in fact the application of German legislation to the nationals of occupied countries. occupied countries, the important results which the German Labor Office had anticipated were far from being fulfilled. However, a large number of workers from the occupied countries were forced to work for the German war effort. the West in the construction of the Atlantic Wall totalled 248,000 at the end of March 191.3. In the year 1942, 3,300,000 workers from occupied countries worked for Germany in their own country. 300,000 of these were in Norway, 249,000 in Holland, 650,000 in France. The number of workers deported to Germany and coming from the occupied territories in the West increased in 1942 to the figure of 130,000 Belgians, 135,000 Frenchmen, 154,000 Hollanders. On 30 April 1943, 1,293,000 workmen, of whom 269,000 were women, coming from the occupied territories in the West were working for the German War Economy. On 7 July 1944, Sauckel stated that the number reached a total of 537,000 of which 33,000 were Frenchmen. On the 1st of March 1944 he acknowledged during a conference, held by the Central Office of the Four Year Plan that there were in Germany 5,000,000 foreign workers, of whom 200,000 were actually volunteers. refugees, gives the figure of 715,000 for the total number of men and women who had been deported.
were transported to Germany, had to work under working conditions of existence that were incompatible with the most rudimentary regard for human dignity. The defendant Sauckel has himself stated that foreign workers, who could achieve substantial production should be fed so that they could be exploited as completely as possible with the minimum of expense, adding that they should receive less food the moment their production began to decrease and that no concern should be given to the fate of those whose production level no longer presented any interest. Special reprisal camps were organized for those who sought to avoid the compulsion imposed on them. An order of 21 December 1942 stipulated that unwilling workers should be sent without trial to such camps. In 1943, Sauckel, during an inter-ministerial conference, stated that the cooperation of the SS was essential to him in order to fulfill the task with which he had been entrusted. Thus, the crime of forced labor and of deportation gave rise to a whole series of additional crimes against persons. authorized by International Law any more than did that of the civilian laborers. National Socialist Germany obliged prisoners of war to work for the German war production, in violation of Articles 31 and 32 of the Geneva Convention. the war effort prisoners of war as well as workers from occupied territories, against all international conventions, was at the same time seizing, by every possible means, the wealth of these countries. German authorities applied systematic pillage in these countries. By economic pillage we mean both the taking away of goods of every type and the exploitation on the spot of the natural resources for the benefit of Germany's war. all countries the necessary means for payment. Thus, they insured that they could seize, with the appearance of legality, the wealth which they coveted. After freezing the existing purchasing power, they required enormous payments under the pretext of indemnity for the maintenance of occupation troops.