The whole territory of Czechoslovakia, in accordance with the territorial structure of the SD in Germany, was, beforehand separated into important (Oberabschnitt) and small (Unterabschnitt) territorial units, and for each of those, special Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommandos were prepared and staffed accordingly. In the text of the document we can read that a system of Oberabschnitte for Prague, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Bachtelle, and others, was prepared and planned. The staffing of the Einsatzgruppe and Einsazkommandos was entirely a matter of the SD. In the text of the document we can read in this connection: "the staffing of the SD agencies could be conducted in consideration of the following: 1. the requirements of the SD itself. 2. the requirements of economy." An entire program for training members of the Einstzgruppe recruited from collaborators in foreign countries and Sudet-Germans was prepared. The utilization of "suitable persons" of German origin living in Czechoslovakia was equally foreseen, and special mention was made of the point that: "one must consider that in spite of all precautionary measures we will not have many such people at our disposal as under certain conditions a considerable number will be arrested, deported or killed." The Einsatzgruppe organized and prepared in German territory were to be concentrated near the German-Czechoslovakian border in order to move into Czechoslovakian territory jointly with the invading armies. In this connection the document says:
"As soon as any district is free from the enemy, that is, when occupied, the allocated groups are immediately sent to the district administration center". with the killing of people in the territories temporarily occupied by the Germans, and that was the immediate function of the SD. attached to the Einsatzgruppe had to establish liaison with the Unite of the armed SS forces. They had to establish these lists, and the collaborators of the SD prepared who were to be eliminated for some reason or other. This was done in conformance with special directives. Appendix number 2 to Operational Order Number 8 of the Chief of the Security Police of the SD, dated 17 July 1941, said: Long before we beginning of the war against the Soviet Union the security service had compiled the "German Research Book", "Lists of the addresses", and a "special Research Book for the USSR", where all the names of "Soviet Russians considered as dangerous" are entered. lerite criminals in the respect to those "dangerous Russians" were. minated by the Sendercommandos in conformity with instructions # 8 and # 14 of the main office of the Reich dated the 17 of July and 29 October 1941. Yugoslavia. The Soviet prosecution presented to the Tribunal a "Research Book" prepared by the so-called German Balkan institute: "Sued-Ostdeutsches Institut", pertaining to the SD. This book contained the names of over 4000 Yugoslav citizens who were to be arrested immediately after the invasion of Yugoslavia, This book, which was prepared by the SD, was transmitted to the executive police, i.e. the Gestapo, which was to operate these arrests. bore the following stamp made by a member of the SD: "The persons mentioned in the text are to be arrested and the RSHA is to be informed immediately about the completion of the assignment".
by preparing the fifth column in Yugoslavia. A member of the SD, the dean of the Graz university, Hermann Ibler, prepared in connection with this a special work entitled "Des Reiches Suedgrenze" which bears the stamp "strictly secret" and includes a list of the fifth column agents in Yugoslavia.
It was the SD who was occasioning political provocation abroad. The former Chief of the Security Police and SD, Kaltenbrunner, had to confess to that when interrogated by the representative of the Soviet prosecution. He couldn't even deny his signature on the letter to Ribbentrop, concerning the allocation by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of one million humans for bribing the voters in Iran. pied territories in the realization of the inhuman plans of the Hitlerites concerning the extermination of the enslaved nations. From this point of view a German document, captured by the units of the Polish Army in the building of the SD, at Mogilno (Poland), and presented to the Tribunal by the Soviet prosecution, is most characteristic. Hauptsturmfuehrer SS informs them of Himmler's speech of 15 March 1940 in which the latter requested the Commanders of the concentration camps situated in Poland to first utilize the qualified polish workers in the militaery industry of the concentration camps, and later to exterminate all those Poles. This Hauptsturmfuehrer SS from Mogilno requested, therefore, all his trusted agents of the SD to prepare the lists of the Poles they considered as dangerous in order to exterminate them later on. of the SS and German Fascism. It was an organization of solving and information spread over the whole territory of the "old Reich", as well as throughout oil of the temporarily occupied areas and countries, certain moments the members of SD initiated the most cruel police measures of the Hitlerites. consider that the whole system of the SD is to be declared criminal.
attempts on the part of several of the defendants, the defense attorneys, and those witnesses for the defense who were generals in Hitlerite Germany, to represent both the German High Command and the General Staff as organizations whose activities were guided by the sole principle of " fulfilling their soldierly duty." to this concept, far removed from criminal politics of the Hitler government, took no part in political decisions and confined themselves entirely to the fulfillment of orders emanating from the Commander-in-chief and dealing with purely military matters. Staff, in view of the nature of the military structure then existing in Hitler Germany, was no more and no less than an auxiliary organization dealing with purely technical matters. quite understandable, to represent the Army High Command as something quite distinct and not having anything in common with the activity of the German police organization and of the SS. First World War knows that the generals and officers of the Kaiser's army were only too ready to repeat the game that they had once lost. For the German military defeat they blamed everything and everybody -- except themselves. Meanwhile they worked on creating undercover military organizations, dreamed of revenge, and appeared prepared to offer their honor and their swords to any political adventurer who would not stop before starting another world war. It was amidst this type of new " tradition" that there grew up in Germany the present officer generation. And neither was it accident that the future leader of this generation, Adolf Hitler, made his political entrance out of nowhere with the moral and financial support of the Reichswehr.
Hitler support, and when he seized power, rearmament began almost immediately. The haughty Prussian Generals bowed to Hitler, the corporal, because they knew that Hitler meant war. rived here under the Allied guard to give false testimony of their own positions to the International Military Tribunal.
And so we saw a peculiar spectacle. Wolves became sheep. I do not know just what kind of naive people they expected to find here, Brauchitsch particularly, when he presented himself here as a confirmed pacifist. If we allow ourselves to believe him, we would then also have to beliefe that he, the Commanderin-Chief of the German Land Forces, knew nothing whatever of Germany's aggressive plans, nothing of the coming invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, but was persistently and continuously persuading Hitler not to fight. disapproving the ricks and the maneuvers of defense whose main aim has been to masque and diminish the scope of the criminal activity of the high German military organs. Crimes Against Humanity : that both the General Staff and the OKW were fully informed of the criminal intentions for aggression on the part of the Hitlerite Government, that they shared these plans, and participated actively in both their preparation end their realization. became known to every German as soon as Hitler's " Mein Kampf " appeared. These were widely propagandiesed and publicised from day to day and month to month. military leaders who subsequently put both their experience and their knowledge at the service of the Hitlerite state.
of the Hitlerite state end its military machine to prove just when and how the subsequent criminal activity of the leading German military organs began. beginning of the war. place in the new Reich Chancellery, Hitler said to his top military leaders :
" Danzig is not the point. What I am talking about is the expansion of our " Lebensraum " to the East. Thus the question of whether Poland is to be spared automatically disappears and there remains only the decision to attack Poland at the first opportunity. officers and generals at the staff meeting of August 22, 1939, in Obersalzberg, Hitler stated :
" In the first place there is the annihilation of Poland. If there also will be war in the West, then the primary task is to destroy Poland. I shall provide some excuse for beginning the war which will serve propaganda purposes, whether it is true or not is unimportant." place on the 23 of November, 1939, Hitler stated as follows while talking to his closest military adisors :
"Basically I did not organize the armed forced in order not to strike. The decision to strike was always in me. Earlier or later I wanted to solve the problem. The situation is necessarily such that at least for the moment action in the East is out of question." plans, so far as his top military officials were concerned ? of the German Command which quite cynically describe the criminal aims of aggression on the part of the Hitler government.
In Hitler's directive of 30 May 1933, dealing with the execution of the plan "Gruen" for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, it is stated:
"It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future. course is a lightning-swift action as the result of an incident through which Germany is provoked in an unbearable way and for which at least part of the world opinion will rant the moral justification of military action." the invasion of Yugoslavia which provides that:
"Even if Yugoslavia will declare its loyalty to us, we should still consider her an enemy and subsequently beat her down at the first opportunity." material dealing with plans for attacking the Soviet Union.
"special regions" long before the attack on the Soviet Union, it was stated.
"The Russian territory which is to be occupied shall be divided up into individual states with governments of their own, according to special orders, as soon as military operations are concluded."
In the "instructions on the use of propaganda in the Barbarossa region" published by the OKW in June 1941, it was foreseen that "for the time being it is not suitable that the aims of our propaganda should be the dismemberment of the Soviet Union."
Finally, document Nr.21 dated 18 December 1940, known under the code "Plan Barbarossa", stated:
"The final aim of the operation is to fence oneself off from Asiatic Russia following a gereral line Archangelsk-Volga." the Tribunal an exhaustive explanation of this "final aim" prsued by Hitlerite Germany in its war against the Soviet Union, and which was know to the entire High Command of the German armed forces. Tribunal by my American colleague, who presented an order of Fieldmarsha von Manstein, former commander of the XI German army. In this order, von Manstein, giving an account on the politicial aims of the war against the Soviet Union in accordance with Hitler's instructions, informs his subordinates in a non-equivocalmanner that the aim of the attack on the Soviet Unionis the destruction of the political system of its government. General von Manstein that he was only a soldier, who was not informed of the policy of the Hitler government. the political aims of the war but also that they approved them.
And it could not be otherwise. What could Hitler and his clique have done if the military specialists, the generals of the German army did not approve his plans.
B. The direct participation of the German General Staff in this crime. Germany. Simultaneously with the OKW functioned the General Staff of the land forces, as well as staffs of the air forces and naval forces. aggressive plans of Hitlerite Germany, which were in the sphere of their competence, and the OKW coordinated and. combined this work. lay upon the land forces, with their numerous and powerful armored forces, the outstanding position in the preparation of aggressive measures of the Hitlerit Government was naturally held by the German General Staff. no means excluded, but on the contrary foresaw in the elaboration, preparation and execution of the criminal aggressive plans of the Hitlerite Government, a most active role of the General Staff. the elaboration and preparation of the aggressive plans bf Germany, I shall refer to some facts: which he confirmed in this Tribunal.
Paulus stated: "When on September 3, 1940 I took office in the OKH, among other plane, I found there a still incompleted preliminary plan of the attack on the Soviet Union, known under the conventional name of "Barbarossa".
The working out of the preliminary "Barbarossa" plan began in August 1940 and ended by the carrying out of two military maneuvers (Kriegsspiele) at the Headquarters of the OKH at Zessen. the OKW, were the creators of the criminal "Barbarossa" plan.
and von Manstein, tried to establish here, did not remain only on paper. They were enforced with German punctuality. Major General of the listened Service of the German army, Walter Schreiber. Schreiber, who is a bacteriological specialist told us of the plans of the Hitlerite conspirators to use as a weapon, the death dealing plague bacilla as a weapon in the war. He informed us how this crime inspired by the German High Command, the General Staff and by the defendants Hermann Goering and Wilhelm Keitel was conceived and realized. prevented this criminal plan of the Hitlerite clique, the realization of which would have threatened the whole of Europe with new and dire calamities and devastation." establishment of a connection between the military apparatus Hitlerite Germany and other German State organizations. officers, and at the same time many ministries had their representatives in the OKW. military and civil authorities in the occupied territories. obliged to acknowledge their connection, for instance with the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of the Occupied Territories in the Mast, they flatly refuse to admit their connection with the German State police and the SS.
This is easy to conceive. The fact alone of such a connection would disclose their participation, in numerous, crimes in the occupied territories. connection of the German military command and the German Secret State Police with other police agencies.
Hitlerite Germany, was that of the German General Staff. plans, the German General Staff, as well as the OKW, played a decisive role.
C. Military crimes and crimes against humanity. independently or in cooperation with the German police agencies, innumerable crimes in the occupied territories. by the German-Fascist usurpers in the occupied territories would need too much time. military crimes and crimes against humanity were systematically perpetrated by the German armed forces on a mass scale, and were organized beforehand and involved all ranks of the German war machine -- from field-marshal to private. of May 13, 1941, "of the application of military cognizance in the 'Barbarossa' region and the special actions of the troops", which received orders to apply "the most drastic measures", in view of which the German officers had the right to execute without trial, and by which an impunity was established for crimes committed by German military personnel against the peaceful population. by which he ordered the German troops "to have in view that in the countries which are concerned, human life has absolutely no value and that an intimidating action is only possible by use of unusual cruelty". extermination of Soviet commissars taken also prisoners of war, of the branding of Soviet prisoners of war, as well as the orders of the defendant Goering on the extermination of captured allied pilots, of the plundering of occupied territories and the slave deportation of peaceful population to Germany, the order of the defendant Doenitz forbidding to save men from sinking vessels, the order of the former Field-Marshal Reichenau "On the conduct of troops in the Hast" and many ethers.
Hitlerite Germany.
In the instruction on "special regions", issued by the, OKW on March 13, 1941 and signed by the defendant Keitel, the necessity was foreseen of coordinating the activities of the SS Reichsfuehrer and the army command in the occupied territories. The witness Walter Schellenberg and Otto Ohlendorf, former chiefs of the Reich Security Head Office stated in their evidence at this Trial, that already in Lay 1941 an agreement was concluded between quartermaster "General Wagner, representative of the OKH, and Heydrich chief of the Security Police and of Who SD, for the execution of instructions of the OKW, which foresaw in the German armed forces the organization and form of activity of Special Security Police "action-groups" and SD.
During the cross-examination at the trial of the 'witness von Brauchitsch, the latter confirmed that he knew of such appropriate talks between Wagner and Heydrich. groups and SD in the German armed forces is confirmed by several documental evidences. it is stated:
"Our task was to establish personal contact with the commanders of the Armies and with the commander of the army of the rear area.
It must under Col.
Gen.Hoeppner, it was very close, almost cordial." And further:
"At the start of the Eastern Campaign it became obvious with regard to the rear areas, but also in the areas of the front."
the henchman Kube, in which even he expresses indignation against the criminal activities of the police in the town of Sloutsk, it is apparent that the second police battalion, which shot masses of Jews in the town, was directly subordinated to the military command.
Keitel, from the criminal agreements of Wagner and Heydrich, from the orders of Reichenau and Manstein, to the innumerable crimes of the German troops and the action-groups of the Security Police in the occupied territories. the German soldier Knittel and Obergefreiter Kurt but also those of tie FieldMarshals of the German army. Forces and the German General Staff, was the decisive force, with the aid of which were plotted and carried out ail the criminal aggressive plans of the Hitlerite Government, all the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. of the most important organizations for the execution of the criminal conspiracy of the Hitlerite clique, and "die higher military authorities of the German armed forces were active participants of this conspiracy. character of this military organization is fully proved.
Government/Reich Cabinet Reichscabinet which occupied a particularly prominent position in the system of the fascist dictatorship.
Appendix "C" to the Indictment includes a detailed enumeration of the personalities who made up the government and who, for this reason, are held responsible for the perpetration of the Hitlerite crimes which are specified in counts one, two, three and four of the Indictment. monstrous crimes of the Nazis. We have heard here of the crimes of the police and of the Wehrmacht, of the SS and of the Gestapo, of the ReichsGauleiters and of the Reichs-Commissars in the occupied territories, of various Fuehrers and Leiters. And we can most categorically declare that the homogeneity and systematic organization of the crimes, the uniformity of the means and measures used to commit them testify to the fact that these crimes were directed by and carried out on the directives of a single issuing center. These innumerable and varied crimes are traced back to the gang of fascist conspirators and to the criminal Hitlerite government. of the defendants to the effect that, under Hitler, the Council of Ministers was a more technical apparatus deprived of any real power, are completely unconvincing. Actually not only did the ministers decide themselves all questions earning within their jurisdiction, but they were at the same time the executors of Hitler's will. It is also true that it was Hitler who made the final decision pertaining to all official and unofficial discussions and meetings. At the same time, however, one cannot forget the fact that not a single minister in any other government enjoyed such independence in deciding questions coming within his jurisdiction as did the ministers of the Hitlerite government. Every single one of them was a fuehrer in his particular field, and by his advise, by the material presented, by drafts of laws and directives wielded a most tangible influence over all decisions taken by Hitler in connection with questions concerning the activity of several departments. Then again, one cannot discount the fact that Hitler's will fully corresponded to the personal points of view and convictions of his ministers.
They were necessary to Hitler just as much as he was necessary to them. Goering, Frick, Rosenberg, Neurath, Speer, Funk and others are inconceivable without Hitler just was Hitler is inconceivable without them. Under Hitler's leadership the actively participated in the planning of the fascist conspiracy, and every one of them, enacting the role allotted to him in the general criminal plan which defined the activity of literally all the departments, wittingly and actively carried out that plan. of Hitlerite Germany - of Finance, Economics, Justice, Communications, etc. administrative and political powers. And they used this power in order to put into effect the criminal plans for seizing foreign territories, for anni ilating races and peoples and for establishing a world domination. And in order to facilitate this execution of these criminal plans they first of all seized the power over the German people and the German State, and supported this power by draconic measures. Hitler's accession to power and stiffened conspicuously after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and when the Defendants Frick, Papen and Von Neurath became ministers in the Reich's Government. Taking advantage of their presence in the government, these fascist ministers fully legalized the terror wrought by the shock units of the Nazi Party and prepared the coming seizure of power, using to achieve this aim the burning down of the Reichstag, which had been organized by the Defendant Goering. March 1933 a law was issued "on the Defense of the People and the State", giving legislative power to the Reich Government in addition to the Reichstag. fiscation of property of the communist organization, and starting from June 14 of the same year the property of the social-democratic organization is confiscated as well. On December 1, 1933, the criminal Reich Government published, the law "on safeguarding the unity off the Party and the Government" which bore the signature of Hitler and of the Defendant Frick.
Government by virtue of the law "upon the Reconstruction of the Reich" of 1933 cancelled all democratic elections in all central and local representative institutions. The Reichstag is changed by the fascist into an institution devoid of any real meaning. servants, amongst them judges, who had been at any time, noticed as having anti-fascist inclinations or who belonged to leftist organizations as well as all Jews, were dismissed from their offices and replaced by fascists. Pursuantly to the "basic principle of German law on Civil Officials" of 26 January 1937 "the bond between a civil servant and the party should be the executor of the will of the national-socialist government, led by the NSDAP." the Hitlerite conspirators to utilize it at a later period as an obedient tool for the perpetration of their criminal plans.
30 Aug A LJG 24-1 Ninabuck designed to implant fascist ideology and mislead the people of Germany. Its function was to educate youth in the spirit of militarism and racial hatred and to make the German youth conceive reality from the distorted viewpoint of fuse 1st dreams. to these organizations which were subordinated to him. the press and of the speech were abolished. confiscated, and the majority of their loaders jailed. Government founded the Gestapo and the concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands were arrested and destroyed without any trial or concrete evidence, merely on the suspicion of having anti-fascist tendencies. did not participate in the issuance of the shameful Nurnberg laws and in the racial discrimination against the Jews. Nevertheless there were special instructions to two members of the Reichsregierung in the Nurnberg Laws, namely Hess and Prick, to elaborate and promulgate additional decrees implementing the laws. And such decrees were elaborated and promulgated by Hess and Frick.
The same Frick, together with Funk, and acting on Goering's instructions, issued on the 3rd of December, 1936, a decree concerning "the liquidation of Jewish property" as well as a series of others. all the laws promulgated during the period when this particular government was in power.
30 Aug A MK 24-2 Ninabuck activity of the Hitlerite Government directed at the preparation and the initiation of aggression. It is not necessary to mention again the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938-39 the attacks on Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. Numerous documents submitted to the Tribunal confirm the fact that the Hitlerite Government did everything possible to retain the invaded territories of Prance, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Norway, Poland, Belgium, and other countries as well as the territories of the USSR. It Is only because of the powerful blows of the Red Army and the Armies of the Allies that it was impossible for the Fascist conspirators to realize their predatory plans. The activities of the Hitlerite Government had brought on the war which took millions of human lives and caused inestimatable losses and immeasurable suffering to other nations. crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by the German troops and the German authorities during the war. The great amount of evidence submitted to the Tribunal proved clearly that Hitlerite Germany prepared itself for the conduct of the most ruthless war in full contempt of the laws and customs of war. not only agaist the armed forces of the peace loving nations united against fascist aggressors but also against the innocent civilian population. Long before the treacherous aggression against the Soviet Union took place, the Government of Hitlerite Germany carefully laid plans for the monstrous extermination of the most developed regions of the Soviet Union. concerning the German Fascist Atrocities in Novgrad, Stevrepol, Orel, Stalino, Smolensk, Kiev, and other towns, has proved the existance of a carefully planned and intentional program of mass extermination conducted by the German Invaders against Soviet prisoners of war and Soviet civilians.
30 Aug A LJG 24-3 Nenabuck hypocritically claimed never, until the present trial, to have heard of the monstrous atrocities of the Hitlerites in the concentration camps, or of the savage behavior of the SS men and of the German authorities in the temporarily occupied territories. These claims are thoroughly false.
Every German know something of those facts. The radio stations of the whole world had broadcast them. against the Soviet prisoners-of-war and the peaceful Soviet citizen were brought to the attention of the whole world in the official notes of the people's Commissar for foreign Affairs of the USSR, W. M. Molotov, on the 25 November 1941 and 27 April 1942. But in spite of the fact that the violation of the most elementary principles of international law and of human morality committed by the German Army and the German authorities were made known to the Reich Government by the above mentioned documents, this criminal violation of the laws and customs of war continued also in 1943 and 1945. It Is clear therefore, that all those crimes were committed with full knowledge and on the direct Instructions of the Hitlerite Government. ing that the convention of Geneva is not valid for Soviet prisoners-of-war of war? ant Bormann and including instructions on the cruel treatment and mockery to be reserved for the Soviet prisoners of war not distributed to the ministers? Office, the Gestapo, the prisons and the concentration camps, not offices and organizations of the German Government? atrocities committed by these fascist governmental organizations.
The members of Hitler's government tried by every possible 30 Aug A LJG 24-4 Ninabuck exposed, every one presented new versions - one more mendacious than the other.
were generals of the SS, and that this was no mere formality, can be seen from the letter of the defendant Ribbentrop to *---* dated 22 July 1940, Which was presented to the Tribunal by the Soviet prosecution. that he did not know anything about the bestial orders of the Minister Himmler. the Fuehrers of the SS and SD to carry out, jointly with the Military Command, the complete destruction of the areas in Ukraine, when he proposed that, and I quete:
"not a human being, not a single head of cattle, not a hundredweight of grain and not a railway line remain behind; that not a house remains standing, not a mine is available which is not destroyed for years to come, that there is not a well which is not poisoned," and recommended that special care he taken to inform the Reich Minister of the occupied territories in the East, Rosenberg, of this order.
On 8 March 1940, the Minister Goering sent to the "highest authorities of the Reich" a criminal directive concerning "the treatment of civilian workers of Polish nationality in the Reich." received instructions from Goering to send hundreds of thousands of Poles for slavery into Germany. Inquart and others have been exposed during the trial as having given directives and prepared measures for forced labor of prisoner of war and peaceful inhabitants of the territories seized by the Germans.