manner, I feel eager to state my opinion at this point concerning the charge of the prosecution that every defendant was filled with boundless contempt for human life, because of National Socialist ideology in which he believed. age, a member of a generation born during the First World War and the majority of them probably witnessed the second one in the front lines. Everywhere we were in the center of events without having ourselves held any responsibility worth mentioning. event in the judgment of persons who were responsible for past happenings. I became a National Socialist and even more so an S.D. member, not because of contempt for human life, but because I always strongly approved of life in a community of human beings. The severe stroke of fate in my young life did not change this either, when, before my Eastern assignment I lost my wife and child as a result of Allied operations during the war. The love for my people always made my duty towards my Fatherland a perfectly natural sentiment. While searching for a real life in a genuine community of people, we found our way to National Socialism. From 1934 to 1945, in the SD, I considered it my noblest duty to serve my people. crossroads of events of decisive importance to the world, not only as far as time is concerned, but also because of the place, in a territory between two worlds. We did not set out to kill, but we set out to defend Western civilization. sphere of the events contained in the indictment, but I was all the closer to the men in those units, who the prosecution asserts were filled with boundless contempt for human life.
assignment. I know the mentality of these men, their surroundings, their troubles, and worries. I saw them when carrying out the hard task they had been given and I saw their struggle between duty and conscience when they were concerned with having to carry out the Fuehrer Order discussed here. I know that there was no one in those units that could have carried out the tasks assigned to him only because he did not respect the sacredness of human life. I know that these men decided to do their duty to a great extent because they realized that the defense against Bolshevism was a question of "to be or not to be" for their people, their wives, and their children. I do not believe that anyone has the right to charge these men with contempt for human life without having been in the same position himself at some time, since these men, as soldiers could only choose between obedience and the dishonorable death of a mutineer. tasks which were given to us in the Einsatz, but I wish that the ones who accuse us today would have once had the opportunity to witness the joy of liberation of the ethnic groups oppressed until that time by Bolshevism and to see the Einsatzgruppen looking after the cultural interests of such ethnic groups and other peaceful tasks. incriminating material my own statements in the preliminary proceedings in the form of affidavits. I did not at any time keep anything secret about my activity from the first day of my captivity, since I was and still am of the opinion that I can be justly judged only if I give a clear picture of myself to the persons who are to pass judgment on me.
I did not give any cause to the prosecution to make any further charges against me beyond my truthful and exhaustive statements. happenings of that time from the perspective of the present time, with the knowledge of connections gained in the meantime, but to imagine themselves in the area and in the situation into which we were placed at that time. Then it will become clear to the Tribunal that we did our duty not in contempt of human life, but in constant struggle between duty and personal feelings. Then I have the hope that the Tribunal will arrive at a just verdict.
THE PRESIDENT: The Defendant Graf.
THE DEFENDANT GRAF: Mr. President, Your Honors, it was not my wish that led me to the SD in 1940. It was fate that I was ordered to the East. In exactly the same way it was fate that I am the only one of approximately 5,000 noncommissioned officers and men in the Einsatzgruppen who came to this defendant's dock. not involve me in the things which have been the object of the indictment here. I have confidence that a similarly benevolent destiny will restore my honor and my freedom to me, thanks to the objective and righteous judges.
THE PRESIDENT: With the termination of the trial proceedings, the Tribunal wishes to express its appreciation to both counsel for the prosecution and for the defense for their courteous cooperation with the Tribunal at all times. We wish particularly to congratulate counsel for the defense for their indefatigable efforts in behalf of their clients.
Entrused with a difficult task, they measured up to the finest traditions of the bar, and they have earned the commendation of the Tribunal. judgment is to be rendered, date of which has not yet been set. However, all counsel will be notified in due time as to the date of the judgment, when it is decided upon by the Tribunal. upon order of the Tribunal.
(The Tribunal adjourned without day.)
THE MARSHAL: The Honorables, the Judges of Military Tribunal II.
Military Tribunal II is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal hands to the Secretary General the Opinion and Judgment in Case No. 9. This document shall be the official opinion and judgment in the case. Any questions regarding translation and transcripts shall be resolved by consultation with this document. saving or for any other reason will not affect the authenticity and authority of the official copy of the opinion and judgment filed with the Secretary General.
Mr. Secretary General.
(The President handed to the Secretary General the Official Opinion and Judgment.)
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OTTO OHLENDORF, HEINZ JOST, ERICH NAUMAN,: OTTO RASCH, Cancelled, ERWIN SCHULZ, FRANZ SIX, PAUL: BLOBEL, WALTER BLUME, MARTIN SANDBERG,: OPINION AND JUDGMENT WILLY SEIBERT, EUGEN STEIMLE, ERNST BIBER-: STEIN, WERNER BRAUNE, WALTER HAENSCH, : GUSTAV NOSSKE, ADOLF OTT, EDUARD STRAUCH,: WOLDEMAR KLINGELHOEFER, LOTHAR FENDLER, : Case No. 9 WALDEMAR VON RADETZKY, FELIX RUEHL, HEINZ: SCHUBERT, and MATHIAS GRAF, Defendants : charged the twenty-four defendants enumerated therein with crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in criminal organizations. The twenty-four defendants were made up of six SS-Generals, five SS-Colonels, six SS-Lieutenant Colonels, four SS-Majors and three SS-junior officers. Since the filing of the indictment the number of the defendants has been reduced to twenty-two. Defendant SS-Major Emil Haussman committed suicide on July 31, 1947, and defendant SS-Brigadier General Otto Rasch was severed from the case on February 5, 1948 because of his inability to testify. Although it is assumed that Rasch's disease (paralysis agitans or Parkinsonism) will become progressively worse, his severance from these proceedings is not to be regarded as any adjudication on the question of guilt or innocence. Indictment are identical in character, but the indictment draws the distinction between acts constituting offenses against civilian populations including German nationals and nationals of other countries, and the same acts committed as violations of the laws and customs of war involving murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and civilian populations of countries under the occupation of Germany. Count III charges the defendants with membership in the SS, SD and Gestapo, organizations declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal and Paragraph I(d) of Article II of Control Council Law No. 10.
commission of atrocities, persecutions, exterminations, imprisonment and other inhumane acts, the principal charge in this case is murder. However, as unequivocal as this charge is, questions have, arisen which must be definitely resolved so that this decision may add its voice in the present solemn re-affirmation and sound development of international precepts binding upon nations and individuals alike, to the end that never again will humanity witness the sad and miserable spectacle it has beheld and suffered during these last years. with which the Tribunal must deal in this Opinion are so beyond the experience of normal man and the range of man-made phenomena that only the most complete judicial inquiry, and the most exhaustive trial, could verify and confirm them. Although the principle accusation is murder and, unhappily, man has been killing man ever since the days of Cain, the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated. slaughtered his brother. He has always had an excuse, criminal and ungodly though it may have been. He has killed to take his brother's property, his wife, his throne, his position; he has slain out of jealousy, revenge, passion, lust, cannibalism. He has murdered as a monarch, a slaveowner, a madman, a robber. But it was left to the twentieth century, to proclaim and to produce so extraordinary a killing that even a new word had to be created to define it.
biggest murder trial in history. Certainly never before have twenty-three men been brought into court to answer to the charge of destroying over one million of their fellow-human beings. There have been other trials imputing to administrators and officials responsibility for mass murder, but in this case the defendants are not simply accused of planning or or directing wholsesale killings through channels. They are not charged with sitting in an office hundreds and thousands of miles away from the slaughter. It is asserted with particularity that these men were in the field actively superintending, controlling, directing, and taking an active part in the bloody harvest. here participation in a crime of such unprecedented brutality and of such inconceivable savagery that the mind rebels against its own thought image and the imagination staggers in the contemplation of a human degradation beyond the power of language to adequately portray. The crime did not exclude the immolation of women and children, heretofor regarded the special object of solicitude even on the part of an implacable and primitive foe. of October 1, 1946 declared that the Einsatzgruppen and the Security Police, to which the defendants belonged, were responsible for the murder of two million defenseless human beings, and the evidence presented in this case has in no way shaken this finding. No human mind can grasp the enormity of two million deaths because life, the supreme essence of consciousness and being, does not lend itself to material or even spiritual appraisement.
It is so beyond finite comprehension that only its destruction offers an infinitesimal suggestion of its worth. The loss of any one person can only begin to be measured in the realization of his survivors that he is gone forever. The extermination, therefore, of two million human beings cannot be felt. Two million is but a figure. The number of deaths resulting from the activities with which these defendants have been connected and which the Prosecution has set at one million, is but an abstract number. One cannot grasp the full cumulative terror of murder one million times repeated. into units capable of mental assimilation that one can understand the monstrousness of the things we are in this trial contemplating. One must visualize not one million people but only ten persons -- men, women, and children, perhaps all of one family -- falling before the executioner's guns. If one million is divided by ten, this scene must happen one hundred thousand times, and as one visualizes the repetitious horror, one begins to understand the meaning of the Prosecution's words: "It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women and children." realization that such things could happen in an age supposedly civilized and mankind may also well cherish the hope that civilization will actually redeem itself, so that, by reflection, cleansing and a real sanctification of the holiness of life, that nothing even faintly resembling such a thing may happen again.
information and guidance of the legal profession, but the Nuremberg judgments are of interest to a much larger segment of the earth's population. It would not be too much to say that the entire world itself is concerned with the adjudications being handed down in Nuremberg. Thus it is not enough in these pronouncements to cite specific laws, sections and paragraphs. The decisions must be understood in the light of the circumstances which brought them about. What is the exact nature of the facts on which the judgments are based? A Tribunal may not avert its head from the ghastly deeds whose legal import it is called upon to adjudicate. What type of reasoning or lack of reasoning was it that brought about the events which are to be here related? What type of morality or lack of it was it that for years bathed the world in blood and tears? Why is is that Germany, whose rulers thought to make it the wealthiest and the most powerful nation of all time, an empire which would overshadow the Rome of Caesar -why is it that this Germany is now a shattered shell? Why is it that Europe, the cradle of modern civilization, is devastated and the whole world is out of joint? Einsatzgruppen trial in particular makes no little contribution to that enlightenment. crossed the Polish frontier and smashed into Russia, there moved with and behind them a unique organization known as the Einsatzgruppen. As an instrument of terror in the museum of horror, it would be difficult to find an entry to surpass the Einsatzgruppen in its blood-freezing potentialities. No writer of murder fiction, no dramatist steeped in macabre lore, can ever expect to conjure up from his imagination a plot which will shock sensibilities as much as will the stark drama of these sinister bands.
RSHA (Reich Security Main Office), the OKW (Armed Forces High Command), and the OKH (Army High Command). The agreement specified that a representative of the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service would be assigned to the respective army groups or armies, and that this official would have at his disposal mobile units in the form of an Einsatzgruppe, sub-divided into Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos. The Kommandos in turn were divided into smaller groups known als Teilkommandos. Only for the purpose of comparison as to size and organization, an Einsatzgruppe could roughly be compared to an Infantry Battalion, an Einsatz- or Sonderkommando to an Infantry Company and a Teilkommando to a Platoon. (lettered A to D) were formed, equipped and fully ready to march before the attack on Russia began. Einsatzgruppe A was led by Stahlecker and later the defendant Jost, operated from central Latvia, Luthuania and Esthonia towards the East. Einsatzgruppe B, whose chief was Nebe, succeeded by the defendant Naumann, operated in the direction of Moskow in the area adjoining Einsatzgruppe A to the South. Einsatzgruppe C, led by Rasch and later Thomas, operated in the Ukraine, except for the part occupied by Einsatzgruppe D, which last organization, first under the defendant Ohlendorf and then Bierkamp, controlled the Ukraine south of a certain line, which area also included the Crimean peninsula. Later, Einsatzgruppe D took over the Caucasus area.
800 to 1,200 men, were formed under the leadership of Reinhardt Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and SD. The officers were generally drawn from the Gestapo, SD, SS, and the Criminal Police. The men were recruited from the WaffenSS, the Gestapo, the Order Police and locally recruited police. In the field, the Einsatzgruppen were authorized to ask for personnel assistance from the Wehrmacht which, upon request, invariably supplied the needed men. Saxony, in May 1941, the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando leaders were instructed by Heydrich, Chief of Security Police and SD, and Streckenbach, Chief of Personnel of RSHA, as to their mission, and they were introduced to the notorious Fuehrer-Order around which this extraordinary case has risen. Under the guise of insuring the political security of the conquered territories, both in the occupational and rear areas of the Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppen were to liquidate ruthlessly all opposition to National Socialism -- not only the opposition of the present, but that of the past and future as well. Whole categories of people were to be killed without truce, without investigation, without pity, tears or remorse. Women were to be slain with the men, and the children also were to be executed because, otherwise, they would grow up to oppose National Socialism and might even nurture a desire to avenge themselves on the slayers of their parents. Later, in Berlin, Heydrich re-emphasized this point to some of the Einsatz leaders.
One of the principal categories was "Jews". No precise definition was furnished the Einsatz leaders as to those who fell within this fatal designation.
Thus, when one of the Einsatzgruppen reached the Crimea, its leaders did not know what standards to apply in determining whether the Krimtschaks they found there should be killed or not. Very little was known of these people, except that they mad migrated into the Crimea from a southern Mediterranean country, and it was noted they spoke the Turkish language. It was rumored,however, that somewhere along the arterial line which ran back into the dim past some Jewish blood had entered the strain of these strange Krimtschaks. If this were so, should they be regarded as Jews and should they be shot? An inquiry went off to Berlin. In due time the reply came back that the Krimtschaks were Jews and should be shot. They were shot. shoot Gypsies. No explanation was offered as to why these unoffending people, who through the centuries have contributed their share of music and song, were to be hunted down like wild game. Colorful in garb and habit, they have amused, diverted and baffled society with their wanderings, and occasionally annoyed with their indolence, but no one has condemned them as a mortal menace to organized society. That is, no one but National Socialism which, through Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich ordered their liquidation. Accordingly, these simple, innocuous people were taken in trucks, perhaps in their own wagons, to the anti-tank ditches and there slaughtered with the Jews and the Krimtschaks.
The insane also were to be killed. Not because they were a threat to the Reich, nor because someone may have believed they were formidable rivals of the Nazi chieftains. No more excuse was offered for sentencing the insane than was advanced for condemning the Gypsies and the Krimtschaks.
However, there was an historical basis for the decrees against the insane. That is, a history going back two years. On September 1, 1939, Hitler had issued his Euthanasia decree which ordered the killing of all insane and incurably ill people. It was demonstrated in other trials that this decree was made a convenient excuse for killing off those who were racially undesirable to the Nazis, and who were unable to work. These victims were grouped together under the title of "useless eaters". Since all invaded territories were expected to become Reich territory, the same policies which controlled in Germany itself were apparently introduced and put into effect in the occupied lands. But a very extensive interpretation was given to even this heartless decree. Insane asylums were often emptied and the inmates liquidated because the invaders desired to use the asylum buildings.
"Asiatic inferiors" was another category destined for liquidation. This kind of designation allowed a wide discretion in homicide. Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando leaders were authorized to take executive measures on their own responsibility. There was no one to dispute with them as to the people they branded "Asiatic inferiors". And even less was there a curb on homicidal operations when they were authorized to shoot "Asocial people, politically tainted persons, and racially and mentally inferior elements." Again it was never made quite clear how broad was this classification. Thus, in recapitulation, the Fuehrer-Order, and throughout this Opinion it will be so referred to, called for the summary killing of Jews, Gypsies, insane people, Asiatic inferiors, communist functionaries, and asocials.
is not something pieced together years after their crimson deeds were accomplished. The story was written as the events it narrates occurred, and it was authored by the doers of the deeds. It was written in the terse, exact language which military discipline requires, and which precision of reporting dictates. the planning of future operations demands cold factuality in reports, which requirement was rudimentary knowledge to all members of the German Armed Forces. Thus, every subkommando leader was instructed to inform his kommando leader of developments and activities in his field of operations, every kommando leader in turn accounted to the Einsatzgruppe leader, and the Einsatzgruppe leader by wireless and by mail reported to the RSHA in Berlin. These accounts were veiled in secrecy but they were not so covert that they did not come to the attention of the top ranking military and political officials of the regime. In fact, at the capital, they were compiled, classified, mimeographed and distributed to a selected list. These are the reports which have been submitted in evidence. these official accounts prepared by the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando leaders. The Tribunal will quote rather copiously from these reports because only by the very language of the actual performers can a shocked world believe that these things could come to pass in the twentieth century. A few brief excerpts at the outset will reveal graphically the business of the Einsatzgruppen. A report on Einsatzgruppe B, dated December 19, 1941, speaks of an action in Mogilew and points out:
"During the controls of the roads radiating from apprehended.
.... 127 persons were shot."
The report also declares:
"In agreement with the commander, the transient officials.
126 persons were found and shot."
"A special action was executed, during which 1,013 Jews and Jewesses were shot."
In Rudnja:
"835 Jews of both sexes were shot." reported that on October 23, 1941, 116 Jews were shot; on the following day 144 were shot. Poltawa, reported as of 23 November 1941:
"Altogether 1,538 Jews were shot." (NO-3405) Einsatzgruppe D operating near Simferopol communicated:
"During the period covered by the re port 2,010 people were shot."
(NO-3235) that in Rakow:
"1,500 Jews were shot." (3876-PS) A report on activities in Minsk in March 1942 reads:
"In the course of the greater action against Jews, 3,412 Jews were shot."
(NO-2662) that on October 13, 1941:
"Of the remaining 30,000 approximately 10,000 were shot."
(NO-2832) Einsatzkommando 2, stated that in Riga on 30 November 1941:
"10,000 Jews were shot." (NO-3405) shot so, within the narrow compass of expression allowed in a military report, some variety was added. A report originating in Latvia read:
"The Higher SS and Police leader in Riga, embarked on a shooting action (Erschiessungsaktion) transport from the Reich were disposed of."
(NO-3257) "Disposed of", the word "killed" was added in parentheses.
A report originating from the Crimea stated laconically:
"In the Crimea 1,000 Jews and Gypsies were executed."
(NO-2662) in Lithuania were placed in concentration camps for special treatment, and then the report explains:
"This work was now begun and thus about liquidated daily."
(NO-2937) A kommando, operating in Lachoisk, reported:
"A large-scale anti-Jewish action was carried out in the village of Lachoisk.
In the course support of a kommando of the SS Division 'Reich'.The village may now be described as 'free of Jews'. (No-3143) on one of its operations in October:
"In Mogilew the Jews tried also to sabotage in masses.
The Einsatzkommando No. 8, with 113 Jews."
(NO-3160) This same organization also reported:
"Two large-scale actions were carried out by the platoon in Krupka and Sholopanitsche;822 in the latter place."
(NO-3160) of October 4, 1941, reported:
"Altogether, 537 Jews (men, women, and adolescents) were apprehended and liquidated."
(NO-3404) monotonous, so the report-writers broke another bond of literary restraint and began describing the murder of Jews with varying verbiage. One particularly favored phrase announced that so many Jews were "rendered harmless". Still another declared that so many Jews had been "got rid of." One more pronounced that a given number of Jews had been "done away with". However, it really mattered little what phraseology was employed. Once the word "Jew" appeared in a report, it was known that this invariably meant that he had been killed. Thus, when one particularly original reportwriter wrote, "At present, the Jewish problem is being solved at Nikolajew and Cherson. About 5,000 Jews were processed at either place." it required no lucubration on the part of the RSHA officials in Berlin to comprehend that 5,000 Jews had been killed at Nikolajew and 5,000 had been killed at Cherson. (NO-3148)
THE PRESIDENT: Judge Speight will continue with the reading of the Judgment.
JUDGE SPEIGHT: Death was simple routine with these earthy organizations. In the Reich Security Main Office, Einsatzgruppen could well be synonymous with homicide. One report, after stating that certain towns were freed of Jews, ends up with the abundantly clear remark that "the remaining officials were appropriately treated." (NO-3137) groups had been "taken care of". (NO-3151) When an Einsatzkommando "took care" of anybody only one person could be of service to the person taken care of, and that was the grave digger. "Special treatment" was still one more contemptuous characterization of the solemn act of death when, of course, it applied to others.
Then some report-writers airily recorded that certain areas "had been purged of Jews." definitive. It in no way called up the grim things connected with shooting defenseless human beings in the back of the neck, and then burying them, sometimes partially alive, into shallow graves. This piece of rhetoric proclaimed that in certain areas "the Jewish question was solved." And when that wording was used one knew finally and completely that the Jews in that particular territory had been removed from the land of the living.
Einsatzgruppe C, reporting on more than 51,000 executions, declared:
"These were the motives for the executions carried out by the kommandos:
juveniles, - " and then came the all-inclusive phrase:
"Jews in general." (NO-3155) The summary cutting down of such groups as "drifting juveniles" and such vague generalizations as "undesirable elements" shows that there was no limit whatsoever to the sweep of the executioner's scythe.
And the reference to individual categories of Jews is only macabre window dressing because under the phrase "Jews in general", all Jews were killed regardless of antecedents. conscientious than the others. They refused to kill a Jew simply because he was a Jew. They demanded a reason before ordering out the firing squad. Thus, in White Ruthenia, a kommando leader reported: "There has been frequent evidence of Jewish women displaying a particularly disobedient attitude." The kommando leader's conscience now having been satisfied, he went on in his report:
"For this reason, 28 Jewesses had to be shot at Krugloje and 337 in Mogilew."
(NO-2656) and returned to their homes. The scrupulous kommando leader here reported the serious offense committed by the Jews in taking up living in their own domiciles. He accordingly executed all the male Jews in the town as well as three Jewesses. (NO-2656) Further:
"At Mogilew, too, the Jews tried to pre were liquidated."
(NO-2656) Operation Report No. 88, dated September 19, 1941, states that, on September 1 and 2, leaflets and pamphlets were distributed by Jews, but that "the perpetrators could not be found."
With this declaration that the guilty ones could not be located, the leader of the execution unit involved tranquilized his moral scruples and, accordingly, as his report facturally declares, he executed 1,303 Jews, among them 875 Jewesses over 12 years of age. (NO-3149) in Monastyrschtschina and Choslawitschi displayed an "impudent and provocative attitude". The kommando accordingly shot the existing Jewish Council and 20 other Jews.