The Nuremberg Trials (Vol.2). International Military Tribunal
The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in addition to the suppression of distinctively political opposition, it was necessary to suppress or exterminate certain other movements or groups which they regarded as obstacles to their retention of total control in Germany and to the aggressive aims of the conspiracy abroad. Accordingly:
(1) The Nazi conspirators destroyed the free trade unions in Germany by confiscating their funds and properties, persecuting their leaders, prohibiting their activities, and supplanting them by an affiliated Party organization. The Leadership Principle was introduced into industrial relations, the entrepreneur becoming the leader and the workers becoming his followers. Thus any potential resistance of the workers was frustrated and the productive labor capacity of the German nation was brought under the effective control of the conspirators.
(2) The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a program of persecution of priests, clergy, and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes, and confiscated church property.
(3) The persecution by the Nazi conspirators of pacifist groups, including religious movements dedicated to pacifism, was particularly relentless and cruel.
(d) Implementing their “master race” policy, the conspirators joined in a program of relentless persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them. Annihilation of the Jews became an official State policy, carried out both by official action and by incitements to mob and individual violence. The conspirators openly avowed their purpose. For example, the Defendant Rosenberg stated: “Anti-Semitism is the unifying element of the reconstruction of Germany.” On another occasion he also stated:
“Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space. . . . Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.”
The Defendant Ley declared:
“We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind—the Jew has got to be exterminated.”
On another occasion he also declared:
“The second German secret weapon is anti-Semitism, because if it is consistently pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider.”
The Defendant Streicher declared:
“The sun will not shine on the nations of the earth until the last Jew is dead.”
These avowals and incitements were typical of the declarations of the Nazi conspirators throughout the course of their conspiracy. The program of action against the Jews included disfranchisement, stigmatization, denial of civil liberties, subjecting their persons and property to violence, deportation, enslavement, enforced labor, starvation, murder and mass extermination. The extent to which the conspirators succeeded in their purpose can only be estimated, but the annihilation was substantially complete in many localities of Europe. Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only remnants of the Jewish population of Europe remain.
(e) In order to make the German people amenable to their will, and to prepare them psychologically for war, the Nazi conspirators reshaped the educational system and particularly the education and training of the German youth. The Leadership Principle was introduced into the schools, and the Party and affiliated organizations were given wide supervisory powers over education. The Nazi conspirators imposed a supervision of all cultural activities, controlled the dissemination of information and the expression of opinion within Germany as well as the movement of intelligence of all kinds from and into Germany, and created a vast propaganda machine.
(f) The Nazi conspirators placed a considerable number of their dominated organizations on a progressively militarized footing with a view to the rapid transformation and use of such organizations whenever necessary as instruments of war.
(E) The acquiring of totalitarian control in Germany: economic; and the economic planning and mobilization for aggressive war.
Having gained political power, the conspirators organized Germany’s economy to give effect to their political aims.
1. In order to eliminate the possibility of resistance in the economic sphere, they deprived labor of its rights of free industrial and political association as particularized in paragraph (D) 3 (c) (1) herein.
2. They used organizations of German business as instruments of economic mobilization for war.
3. They directed Germany’s economy towards preparation and equipment of the military machine. To this end they directed finance, capital investment, and foreign trade.
4. The Nazi conspirators, and in particular the industrialists among them, embarked upon a huge re-armament program and set out to produce and develop huge quantities of materials of war and to create a powerful military potential.
5. With the object of carrying through the preparation for war the Nazi conspirators set up a series of administrative agencies and authorities. For example, in 1936 they established for this purpose the office of the Four Year Plan with the Defendant Göring as Plenipotentiary, vesting it with overriding control over Germany’s economy. Furthermore, on 28 August 1939, immediately before launching their aggression against Poland, they appointed the Defendant Funk Plenipotentiary for Economics; and on 30 August 1939 they set up the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich to act as a War Cabinet.
(F) Utilization of Nazi control for foreign aggression.
1. Status of the conspiracy by the middle of 1933 and projected plans.
By the middle of the year 1933 the Nazi conspirators, having acquired governmental control over Germany, were in a position to enter upon further and more detailed planning with particular relationship to foreign policy. Their plan was to re-arm and to reoccupy and fortify the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, in order to acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations.
2. The Nazi conspirators decided that for their purpose the Treaty of Versailles must definitely be abrogated and specific plans were made by them and put into operation by 7 March 1936, all of which opened the way for the major aggressive steps to follow, as hereinafter set forth. In the execution of this phase of the conspiracy the Nazi conspirators did the following acts:
(a) They led Germany to enter upon a course of secret rearmament from 1933 to March 1935, including the training of military personnel and the production of munitions of war, and the building of an air force.
(b) On 14 October 1933 they led Germany to leave the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.
(c) On 10 March 1935 the Defendant Göring announced that Germany was building a military air force.
(d) On 16 March 1935 the Nazi conspirators promulgated a law for universal military service, in which they stated the peace time strength of the German Army would be fixed at 500,000 men.
(e) On 21 May 1935 they falsely announced to the world, with intent to deceive and allay fears of aggressive intentions, that they would respect the territorial limitations of the Versailles Treaty and comply with the Locarno Pacts.
(f) On 7 March 1936 they reoccupied and fortified the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Rhine Pact of Locarno of 16 October 1925, and falsely announced to the world that “we have no territorial demands to make in Europe.”
3. Aggressive action against Austria and Czechoslovakia.
(a) The 1936-38 phase of the plan: