The Nuremberg Trials (Vol.2). International Military Tribunal
for slave labor and for other purposes of civilian populations of occupied territories, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of persons on the High Seas, the taking and killing of hostages, the plunder of public and private property, the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages, and devastation not justified by military necessity. The Common Plan or Conspiracy contemplated and came to embrace as typical and systematic means, and the defendants determined upon and committed, Crimes against Humanity, both within Germany and within occupied territories, including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before and during the war, and persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, in execution of the plan for preparing and prosecuting aggressive or illegal wars, many of such acts and persecutions being violations of the domestic laws of the countries where perpetrated.
IV. Particulars of the Nature and Development of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
(A) The Nazi Party as the central core of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Führer of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), also known as the Nazi Party, which had been founded in Germany in 1920. He continued as such throughout the period covered by this Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with certain of its subsidiary organizations, became the instrument of cohesion among the defendants and their co-conspirators and an instrument for the carrying out of the aims and purposes of their conspiracy. Each defendant became a member of the Nazi Party and of the conspiracy, with knowledge of their aims and purposes, or, with such knowledge, became an accessory to their aims and purposes at some stage of the development of the conspiracy.
(B) Common objectives and methods of conspiracy.
The aims and purposes of the Nazi Party and of the defendants and divers other persons from time to time associated as leaders, members, supporters, or adherents of the Nazi Party (hereinafter called collectively the “Nazi conspirators”) were, or came to be, to accomplish the following by any means deemed opportune, including unlawful means, and contemplating ultimate resort to threat of force, force, and aggressive war: (1) to abrogate and overthrow the Treaty of Versailles and its restrictions upon the military armament and activity of Germany; (2) to acquire the territories lost by Germany as the result of the World War of 1914-18 and other territories in Europe asserted by the Nazi conspirators to be occupied principally by so-called “racial Germans”; (3) to acquire still further territories in continental Europe and elsewhere claimed by the Nazi conspirators to be required by the “racial Germans” as “Lebensraum,” or living space, all at the expense of neighboring and other countries. The aims and purposes of the Nazi conspirators were not fixed or static, but evolved and expanded as they acquired progressively greater power and became able to make more effective application of threats of force and threats of aggressive war. When their expanding aims and purposes became finally so great as to provoke such strength of resistance as could be overthrown only by armed force and aggressive war, and not simply by the opportunistic methods theretofore used, such as fraud, deceit, threats, intimidation, fifth-column activities, and propaganda, the Nazi conspirators deliberately planned, determined upon and launched their aggressive wars and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances by the phases and steps hereinafter more particularly described.
(C) Doctrinal techniques of the Common Plan or Conspiracy.
To incite others to join in the Common Plan or Conspiracy, and as a means of securing for the Nazi conspirators their highest degree of control over the German community, they put forth, disseminated, and exploited certain doctrines, among others, as follows:
1. That persons of so-called “German blood” (as specified by the Nazi conspirators) were a “master race” and were accordingly entitled to subjugate, dominate, or exterminate other “races” and peoples;
2. That the German people should be ruled under the Führerprinzip (Leadership Principle) according to which power was to reside in a Führer from whom sub-leaders were to derive authority in a hierarchical order, each sub-leader to owe unconditional obedience to his immediate superior but to be absolute in his own sphere of jurisdiction; and the power of the leadership was to be unlimited, extending to all phases of public and private life;
3. That war was a noble and necessary activity of Germans;
4. That the leadership of the Nazi Party, as the sole bearer of the foregoing and other doctrines of the Nazi Party, was entitled to shape the structure, policies, and practices of the German State and all related institutions, to direct and supervise the activities of all individuals within the State, and to destroy all opponents.
(D) The acquiring of totalitarian control of Germany: political.
1. First steps in acquisition of control of State machinery:
In order to accomplish their aims and purposes, the Nazi conspirators prepared to seize totalitarian control over Germany to assure that no effective resistance against them could arise within Germany itself. After the failure of the Munich Putsch of 1923 aimed at the overthrow of the Weimar Republic by direct action, the Nazi conspirators set out through the Nazi Party to undermine and capture the German Government by “legal” forms supported by terrorism. They created and utilized, as a Party formation, Die Sturmabteilungen (SA), a semi-military, voluntary organization of young men trained for and committed to the use of violence, whose mission was to make the Party the master of the streets.
2. Control acquired:
On 30 January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28 February 1933, clauses of the Weimar constitution guaranteeing personal liberty, freedom of speech, of the press, of association, and assembly were suspended. The Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of a “Law for the Protection of the People and the Reich” giving Hitler and the members of his then cabinet plenary powers of legislation. The Nazi conspirators retained such powers after having changed the members of the cabinet. The conspirators caused all political parties except the Nazi Party to be prohibited. They caused the Nazi Party to be established as a para-governmental organization with extensive and extraordinary privileges.
3. Consolidation of control:
Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the Nazi conspirators set about the consolidation of their position of power within Germany, the extermination of potential internal resistance, and the placing of the German nation on a military footing,
(a) The Nazi conspirators reduced the Reichstag to a body of their own nominees and curtailed the freedom of popular elections throughout the country. They transformed the several states, provinces, and municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers, into hardly more than administrative organs of the central Government. They united the offices of the President and the Chancellor in the person of Hitler, instituted a widespread purge of civil servants, and severely restricted the independence of the judiciary and rendered it subservient to Nazi ends. The conspirators greatly enlarged existing State and Party organizations, established a network of new State and Party organizations, and “co-ordinated” State agencies with the Nazi Party and its branches and affiliates, with the result that German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and practice and progressively mobilized for the accomplishment of their aims.
(b) In order to make their rule secure from attack and to instill fear in the hearts of the German people, the Nazi conspirators established and extended a system of terror against opponents and supposed or suspected opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such persons without judicial process, holding them in “protective custody” and concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement, torture, and murder. These concentration camps were established early in 1933 under the direction of the Defendant Göring and expanded as a fixed part of the terroristic policy and method of the conspirators and used by them for the commission of the Crimes against Humanity hereinafter alleged. Among the principal agencies utilized in the perpetration of these crimes were the SS and the Gestapo, which, together with other favored branches or agencies of the State and Party, were permitted to operate without restraint