the Resistance by every possible means, the Germans arrested, tortured and massacred men of all conditions and of all social classes. conditions laid down by the Hague Conventions, which would qualify them to be considered as regular combat forces. They could be sentenced to death as francs-tirours and executed; but they were assassinated without trial in most cases, often after having been terribly tortured. bodies examined by doctors. They bore obvious traces of extreme brutal treatment. The skin and flesh had been tern from their skulls, the spinal column had been dislocated, the ribs had been so badly fractured that the chest had been entirely crushed and the lungs perforated, hair and nails had been pulled out. atrocities in the struggle for the Resistance. The number is certainly very high. In the department of the Rhone alone, for example, the bodies of 713 victims were discovered after the Liberation. Forces, signed P.O. General Sperrle, laid down for the struggle against the terrorists the immediate reply by fire-arms and the immediate burning down of all houses from which shots had come. "It is of little importance" the text adds, "that innocent people should suffer. It will be the fault of the terrorists. All commanders of troops who show weakness in repressing the terrorists will be severely punished. On the other hand those who go beyond the orders received and are too severe, will incur no penalty." No. 588, at Clermont--Ferrand, gives irrefutable examples of the barbarous forms which the Germans gave to the struggle against the Resistance. The resisters caught were almost all shot in the spot. Others were turned ever to the SD or to the Gestapo to be first subjected to torture. The Diary of Brodowski mentions "The cleaning up of a hospital" or "Liquidation of an infirmary."
in all the occupied territories of the West. by strengthening of the policy of terrorism which multiplied the crimes against the civilian populations. The crimes which we are going to consider were not isolated acts committed from time to time in this or that locality, but were acts perpetrated in the course of extensive operations; the high number of which can only be explained by general orders. the military command shares responsibility for them. In a directive entitled "Fight Against the Partisan Bands," dated 6 May 1944, the defendant Jodl states that "the collective measures to be taken against the inhabitants of entire villages (including the burning down of these villages) are to be ordered exclusively by the division commanders or the heads of the SS troops and of the police."
The War Diary of von Brodowski mentions the following: "It is an understood thing that the leadership of the S.I.P.O. and of the S.V. shall remain subordinate to me." caused by the action of the Resistance; but the necessities of war have never justified the plundering and heedless burning down of towns and villages or the blind massacres of innocent people. The Germans killed, plundered, burned down, very often without any reason whatsoever, whether in the regions and departments of the Ain, in Savoy, Let, Tarn-and-Garonne, in Vorcors, Correze or Dordogne. Entire villages were burned down when at the time the nearest armed groups of the Resistance were tens of kilometres away and the population of these villages had not made a single hostile gesture towards the German troops.
The two most typical examples are those of Maillo (in Indre and Loire) where on 25 August 1944, 52 buildings out of 60 were destroyed and 124 people were killed; and that of Oradour-Sur-Glane (in the Hante-Vienne). The War Diary of von Brodowski makes mention of the latter act in the following manner:
"All the male population of Oradour was shot. The women and children took refuge in the church. The church caught fire. Explosives were stored in the church.
(This assertion has been shown to be flase.) All the women and all the children perished." war by the leaders of National Socialist Germany, we finally meet a category which we have called: Crimes against humanity. Tribunal the meaning of this term. This classical French expression belongs both to the technical vocabulary of law and to the language of philosophy. It designates all of those faculties, the exercising and developing of which rightly constitute the meaning of human life. Each of these faculties finds its corresponding expression in the regulation of the existence of mankind in society. Its belonging to at least two social groups--the nearest and the most extensive--is translated by the right to family life and to nationality. Its relations with the powers constitute a system of obligations and guarantees. Its material life as producer and consumer of goods is expressed by the right to work in the widest meaning of this term. Its spiritual aspect implies a combination of possibilities to give out and to receive the expressions of thought, whether in assemblies or associations, in religious practice, in teachings given or received, by the many means which progress has put at the disposal of intellectual propaganda books, the press, radio, cinema. This is the right of spiritual liberty (la condition humaine). concerning human beings in occupied territories, the German Nazis directed a systematic policy of corruption and perversion. We shall treat this question last because it is the encroachment which presents a character of the utmost gravity and which has assumed the character of the most extensive generality.
Man is more attached to his physical integrity and to life than to his property.
But in all high conceptions off life, man is even less attached to life than to that which makes for his dignity and quality, according to the great Latin maxim: "Et propter vitam vitandi perdere causas." On the other hand, if in the territories occupied by them, the Germans did not, in spite of the importance and extent of their crimes, plunder all the property and goods and if they did not kill all the people, there remains not a single man whose essential rights they did not change or abolish and whose condition as a human being they did not violate in some way. We can even say that in the entire world and as regards all people, even those to whom they reserved the privileges belonging to the superior race and even as regards themselves, their agents and accomplices, the Nazi leaders committed a major offense against the conscience which mankind has evolved today from his condition as a human being.
The execution of the enterprise was preceded by its plan. This is manifest in the entire Nazi doctrine and we shall content ourselves by recalling a few of its dominant traits. Humanity, the human condition, expresses itself, we say, in major statutes, every one of which comprises a complex apparatus of various provisions. But these statutes are inspired in the laws of civilized countries by an essential conception of the nature of mankind. This conception is defined in two complementary ideas: The dignity of the human person considered in each and every person individually on one hand, and on the other hand, the permanancy of the human person considered within the whole of humanity. zation proceeds from this essential twofold conception of the individual, in each and in all, the individual and the universal. Without doubt, to Occidentals this conception usually appears as bound up with the Christian doctrine; but if it is exact that Christianity asserted and spread this conception, it would be a mistake to see in it only the more teachings of one or even of certain religions. It is a general conception which comes quite naturally to one's mind. It was professed in ancient pre-Christian times and, in more recent times, the great Germanic philospher Kant expressed it in one of his most forceful formulas "The human being must always be it in one of his most forceful formulas "The human being must always be considered as an end and never as a means". faith was to protest against spontaneous affirmation of the genius of manking and to claim breaking at this point the continuous progress of moral intelligence.
The tribunal is already acquainted with the abundant literature of thes sect. Without a doubt nobody expressed himself more clearly than the defendant Rosenberg when he declared in the "Myth of the 20th Century", page 539: "Peoples whose health is dependent on their blood do not know individualism as a criterion of values, any more than they recognize universalism. Individualism and universalism in the absolute sense and historically speaking are the most metaphysics of decadence". Nazism professes, moreover, that "The distance between the lowest human being still worthy of this name and our higher races is greater than that between the lowest type of mankind and the best educated monkey". Thus it is not only a question of abolishing the truly divine conception which religion sets forth as regards man, but even of setting aside all purely human conceptions and substituting for it an animalistic conception. does not only appear to be a means to which one has recourse in the presence of contrary opportunities such as those arising from war, but also it appears as an aim both necessary and desirable. The Nazi propose to classify mankind into 3 main categories. That of their adversaries or persons whom they consider inadaptable to their strange constructions: this category can be bullied in all sorts of ways and even destroyed. That of higher mankind which they claim is distinguishable by its blood or by some arbitrary means. That of inferior mankind, which does not deserve destruction and whose vital power should be used in a regime of slavery for the well-being of the "overlords", the masters. The Nazi leaders proposed to apply this conception everywhere where they could do so to territories more and more expansive; to populations becoming ever greater; and in addition they demonstrated the frightful ambition of succeeding in imposing it on intelligent people, of convincing their victims and of demanding from them, in addition to so many sacrifices, an act of faith.
The Nazi war is a war of fanatical religion in which one can exterminate infidels and equally well force them to conversion.
It should further be noted that the Nazis aggravated the excesses of those horrible times, for in a religious war converted adversaries were received like brothers, whereas the Nazis never gave their pitiable victims the chance of saving themselves even by the most complete recanting. germanization of occupied territories, and had without doubt the intention of undertaking to germanize the whole world. This germanization can be distinguished from the ancient theories of pan-germanism in as far as it is both a Nazification and an actual return to barbarism.
Racialism classifies occupied nations into two main categories; germanization means for some a national socialist assimilisation and for the others disappearance or slavery. For human beings classified as of higher races the most favoured condition assigned to them comprises the fallingin with the new concepts of the Germanic community. For human beings of the so-called "inferior race" it was proposed either to abolish all rights whilst awaiting and preparing their physical classification, or to assign them to servitude. totality not in all the occupied countries. The Germans had conceived it as a lengthy piece of labor, which they intended to carry out gradually, by a series of successive measures. This progressive approach is always characteristic of the Nazi method. It fits in, apparently, both with the variety of obstacles encountered, the hypocritical desire of sparing public opinion, and with a horrid lust for experimenting and scientific ostentation. a great deal according to the different countries, and in each country according to such and such a category of the population. At times the method was forced on to its extreme consequences; elsewhere one only discovers the appearance of preparatory arrangements.
at different moments in its development, but everywhere directed by the same inexorable movement. annexation basis in Luxembourg, in the Belgian cantons of Eupen and of Malmedy, and in the French departments of Alsace and of Lorraine. Here the criminal undertaking consisted in both the abolition of the sovereignty of the State, natural protector of its nationals, and the abolition for those nationals of the status they had as citizens of this State, a status recognized by domestic and international law. nationality, ceasing to be Luxembourgers, Belgians, or French. They did not acquire, however, full German nationality; they were admitted only gradually to this singular favor, on the further condition that they furnish certain justifications therefor. country. In Alsace and in Moselle the French language was banned, names of places and of people were Germanized. relating to the Nazi regime; to forced labor naturally, and soon to military conscription. In case of resistance to these orders -- unjust and abominable though they were, since it was a matter of arming the French against their allies and in reality against their own country -- sanctions were brought to bear, not only against the parties concerned, but even against the members of their families, following the theses of Nazi law, which brushes aside the fundamental principles of the law against repression. seemed of little use to Nazi enterprises, became the victims of large-scale expulsions, driven from their homes in a few short hours with their most scanty baggage, and despoiled of their property. one of the horrors of our century, appears as favor able treatment when compared to the deportations which were to fill the concentration camps, in particular the Stuthof camp in Alsace.
travention of all law, the Nazis undertook, according to their method, to convince the people of the excellence of their regime. The young people especially were to be educated in the spirit of National Socialism. areas than those we have named; it is beyond doubt, however, and confirmed by numerous indications, that they proposed to annex territories much more important by applying to them the same regime if the war had ended in victory. al position by debarring or damaging the sovereignty of the state involved, and by forcing the destructiion of patriotic feeling. governmental authority, the Germans systematically disregarded the laws of occupation. They legislated, regulated, administered. Besides the territories actually annexed, the other occupied territories also found themselves in a state that might be defined as a state of pre-annexation. Everywhere, although with variation in time and space, the Germans applied themselves to abolishing the public freedoms, notably the freedom of association, the freedom of the press; and they endeavored to trammel the essential freedoms of the spirit. matters devoid of military character, a press, many of whose representatives, moreover, were inspired by them. Manifold restrictions were imposed on the moving picture industry and commerce. Numerous works altogether without political character were banned, even textbooks. Religious authorities themselves saw their clerical province invaded and words of truth could not be heard. a state of war and of occupation could have justified, the Germans developed their National Socialist propaganda systematically through the press, radio, film, meeting, book, poster.
day to minimize their importance. Nevertheless, the propaganda conducted by means most contrary to the respect due human intelligence, and on behalf of a criminal doctrine, must go down in history as one of the shames of the National Socialist regime. other broad areas that we have defined: right of the family, right of professional and economic activity, juridical guarantees. These rights were attacked, these guarantees were curtailed. as well as the rights of lablr. The arbitrary arrests suppressed the most elementary legal guarantees. In addition, the Germans tried to impose their own methods on the administrative authorities of the occupied countries and sometimes unfortunately succeeded in their attempts. citizens of the occupied countries who were catalogued as Jews, measures particularly hateful, damaging to their personal rights, and to their human dignity. national law, and of the Hague Convention in particular, which limits the rights of armies occupying a territory. monstrous picture of the war criminality of Nazi Germany, which advanced under the banner of the abasement of man -- a deliberate requirement of the National Socialist doctrine. This gives it its true character of a systematic attempt to return to barbarism. waging the war of aggression that she launched. The martyred peoples appeal to the justice of civilized nations and request your high Tribunal to condemn the National Socialist Reich in the person of its surviving chiefs. let them not dispute at all this principle of retroactivity, the permanence of which was guaranteed, against their wishes, by democratic legislation.
War crimes are defined by international law and by the national law of all modern civilizations. The accused knew that acts of violence against the persons and property and human rights of enemy nationals were crimes for which they would have to answer before international justice. them since the beginning of the hostilities. America, and Winston CHURCHILL, Prime Minister of Great Britain, announced that the war criminals would not escape just punishment. "The massacres of France", said Churchill, "are an example of what Hitler's Nazis are doing in many other countries under their yoke. The atrocities committed in Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and particularly behind the German front in Russia, exceed anything that has been known since the darkest and most bestial ages of humanity. The punishment of these crimes should now be counted among the major goals of the war." countries met at London upon the initiative of the Polish and Czech governments. They worked out an inter-allied declaration which was signed the 13th of January 1942. May I remind the Tribunal of its terms.
"The undersigned, representing the Governments of Belgium, of Czechoslovakia, the National Committee of Free France, the Governments of Greece, of Luxembourg, of the Netherlands, of Poland and of Yugoslavia, "Whereas Germany, from the beginning of the present conflict, which was provoked by her policy of aggression, set up in the occupied countries a regime of terror characterized, among other things, by imprisonment, mass deportations, massacres, and execution of hostages;"Whereas these acts of violence are committed equally by the allies and and associates of the Reich, and in certain countries by citizens collaborating with the occupying power;"Whereas international solidarity is necessary in order to prevent these deeds of violence from giving rise to acts of individual or collective violence, and finally in order to satisfy the spirit of justice in the civilized world; "Recalling to mind that international law and, in particular, the Hague Convention signed in 1907, concerning the laws and customs of land war, do not permit belligerents to commit acts of violence against civilians in occupied countries, or to violate laws which are in force or to overthrow national institutions;
1) Affirming that acts of violence thus committed against civilian populations have nothing in common with the conceptions of an act of war or a political crime as this is understood by civilized nations,
2) They take note of the declarations made in this respect on 25 October 1941, by the President of the United States of America and the British Prime Minister,
3) They place among their chief war aims, the punishment by means of organized justice of those guilty of or responsible for these crimes, whether they ordered, or perpetrated, or shared in them,
4) They have decided to see to it in a spirit of international solidarity that: a) those guilty or responsible, whatever their responsibility, shall be sought out, brought to justice, and be judged. b) that the sentences pronounced shall be executed. have signed this declaration". I refer to the speech of General de GAULLE of 13 January 1942; that of CHURCHILL on 8 September 1942, the note of Mr. Molotov, Commissar of the People for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, of 14 October 1942 and the second inter-allied declaration of 17 December 1942. The latter was made simultaneously at London, Moscow and Washington after receipt of information according to which the German authorities were engaged in exterminating the Jewish minorities in Europe. In this declaration, the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norawy, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Jugoslavia, and the French National Committee which represented the permanence of France, solemnly reaffirmed their will to punish the war criminals who are responsible for this extermination.
THE PRESIDENT: Would this be a convenient time to break off?
(A recess was taken from 1315 to 1325 hours.)
M. MENTHON: The elements of a just repression are thus found to be joined together. The accused, at the time when they committed their crimes knew the will of the United Nations to bring about the punishment for them. to repression. their activities. The warnings of these allied governments translated, in effect, in a political form, the fundamental principles of international and of national law which permit the punishment of war criminals to be established on positive precedents and rules. crime, particularly Grotius who elucidated the criminal character of needless acts of war. The Hague Conventions, after the lapse of several centuries, established the first norms imperative for the laws of war. They regulated the conduct of hostilities and occupation procedures; they formulated positive rules in order to limit recourse to force and to bring the necessities of war into agreement with the requirements of human conscience. War crimes thus received the first definition under which it may be considered; it became a violation of laws and customs of war as codified by the Hague Convention.
Came the war of 1914. Imperial Germany waged the first World war with a brutality perhaps less systematic and frenzied than that of the National Socialist Reich, but just as deliberate. The deportation of workers, looting of public and private property, the taking and killing of hostages, the demoralization of the occupied territories constituted, in 1914 as in 1939, the political methods of German warfare. ganization of the repression of war crimes. Under the title "Sanctions", chapter VII of the Treaty of Versailles discusses criminal responsibility incurred in the launching and waging of the conflict which was then the Great War. Article 227 accused William of Hohenzollern, previously emperor of Germany of a supreme offense against international morality and against the sacred character of treaties.
Article 228 acknowledged the right of the Allied and Associated Powers to bring persons guilty of acts contrary to the laws and customs of war before military tribunals. geographical location were to be referred to inter-allied jurisdiction. The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were repeated in the conventions which were signed in 1919 and 1920 with the powers allied with Germany, in particular in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and in that of Neuilly. That is how the idea of war crime was affirmed in international law. The peace treaties of 1919 not only defined the concept of infringement; they formulated the term of its repression. The defendants were aware of this, just as they were aware of the warnings of the governments of the United Nations. They no doubt hoped that the renewal of the circumstances of fact which hampered the repression of the criminals in 1914 would permit them to escape their just punishment. Their presence before this Tribunal is the symbol of the constant progress which international law is making in spite of all obstacles. "war crime." This definition was formulated by the Commission which the preliminary peace conference appointed on 25 January 1919 to disentangle the various responsibilities incurred in the course of the war. The report of the Commission of Fifteen of 29 March 1919 constitutes the historical basis of Article 227 and following of the Treaty of Versailles. The Commission of fifteen based its investigation of penal responsibilities on an analysis of the crimes suitable to engage their attention.
A material element enters into the juridical settlement of any infraction. Its definition is therefore, the more precise as it includes an enumeration of the facts which it encompasses. That is why the Commission of Fifteen set up a list of war crimes. This list includes 32 infractions. These are particularly: of the enemy. tories. territories. looting. defendants enumerated in the indictment, is significant because the war crimes which it encompasses all present a composite character. They are crimes against both international law and national law. Some of these crimes constitute attacks on the fundamental liberties and constitutional rights of peoples and of individuals; they consist of the violation of public guarantees which are recognized by the constitutional Charter of the Nations whose territories were occupied; violation of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which France proclaimed in 1789 and which the civilized States guarantee in in perpetuity.
These war crimes are violations of public national law, since they forcibly transform the constitutional institutions of the occupied territories and the juridical statute of their inhabitants. of the physical person and of property. violations of international law and customs. the elements constituting an infraction more than they actually create that infraction itself. The latter existed before in all national legislatures; it was to some extent a part of the juridical inheritance common to all nations; governments agreed to affirm its international character and to define its contents. International penal law is thus superimposed on national law, which preserves its repressive basis because the war crime remains, in the analysis, a crime of common law. National penal law gives the definition of this. All the acts referred to in article 6 of the Charter of 8 August 1945, all the facts encompassed by the third heading of the indictment of 18 October 1945 correspond to the infractions of common law provided for and punished by national penal legislation. The killing of prisoners of war; of hostages; and of inhabitants of occupied territories, falls, in French law, under Article 295 and following of the Penal Code, which define them as murder and assassination. The mistreatment to which the indictment refers would come under the heading of wounds and voluntary blows which are defined by articles 309 and following. Deportation is analyzed, independently of the murders which accompany it as arbitrary illegal restraint, which is defined by articles 341 and 344 Pillage of public and private property and imposition of collective fines are penalized by articles 221 and the following of the Military Code of Justice, Article 434 of the Penal Code punishes voluntary destruction, and the deportation of civilian workers may be compared with the forced conscription provided for by article 92, The oath of allegiance is equivalent to the obligation to a false oath article 366, and the Germanization of occupied territories may be applied to a number of crimes, the most obvious of which is forced incorporation in the Wehrmacht in violation of article 92.
The same equivalents can be found in all modern legislative systems and particularly in German law. guilty are provided for by all national laws. They present an international character because they were committed in several different countries from this there arises a problem of jurisdiction which the Charter of 8 August 1945 has solved, as we have previously explained; but this leaves intact the rule of defining them. infraction; it has a character peculiarly intrinsic - it is a crime committed on the occasion or under the pretext of war. It must be punished because, even in time of war, attacks on the integrity of the physical person and of property are crimes when they are not justified by the laws and customs of war. The soldier who on the battlefield kills an enemy combatant commits a crime, but this crime is justified by the law of war. International law therefore intervenes in the definition of a war crime, not in order to give it its essential qualification but in order to fix its outer limits. In other words, every infraction committed on the occasion or under the pretext of hostilities is criminal unless justified by the laws and customs of war. International law applies the national theory of legitimate defense which is common to all codes of criminal law. The combatant is engaged in legitimate defense on the battlefield; his homicidal action is therefore covered by a justifying fact. But if this justifying fact is taken away and the infraction, whether ordinary crime or war crime, remains in its entirety such, in order for the justifying fact to be constituted, the criminal action must be necessary and proportional to the threat to which it responds. The defendants, against whom justice is demanded of you, can plead no such justification. not the physical authors of the crimes. The war crime involves two responsibilities, distinct and complementary that of the physical author and that of the instigator.
There is nothing heterodox in this conception. It is the faithful translation of the criminal theory of complicity through instructions. The responsibility of the accomplice, whether independent or of complementary to that of the principal author is incontestable. The defendants bear the entire responsibility of the crimes which were committed upon their instructions or under their control. above was given by Hitler to the defendants. The theory of the justifying fact of an order from above has, in national law, definite fixed limits; it does not cover the execution of orders whos illegality is manifest, German law, moreover, assigs only a limited rule to the concept of justification by orders from above. Article 47 of the German Military Code of Justice of 1940, although maintaining in principle that a criminal order from a superior removes the responsibility of the agent, punishes the latter as an accomplice when he exceeded the orders received or when he acted with knowledge of the criminal character of the act which had been ordered. Goebbels once formulated this juridical concept and made it the theme of his propaganda. On 28 May 1944 he wrote in an article in the Voelkischer Beobachter, which was submitted to you by the American public prosecutor, an article intended to justify the murder of allied pilots by the German population. "The pilots cannot validly claim that as soldiers they obeyed orders. No law of war provides that a soldier will remain unpunished for a heinous crime by referring to the orders of his superior, if their orders are in opposition to all human ethics, to all international customs in the conduct of war." from responsibility. Any other solution would, moreover, be unacceptable, for it would testify to the impotence of all repressive policy. fact for the crimes of the defendant. Sir Hartley Shawcross told you with eloquence that the accused cannot claim that the crime against the peace was the doing of Hitler alone and that they limited themselves to transmitting the general directives.
War crimes may be compared to the will for aggression; they are the common work of the defendants; the defendants bear a joint responsibility for the criminal policy which resulted from the National Socialist doctrine.
1) The responsibility for German war criminality, because it countries.
We shall cite: the Defendant Goering as Director of Seyss-Inquart in his capacity as Reich's Commissar for the compulsory labor in its various forms.
As Plenipotentiary for possible means.
He is in particular the signer of the decree of labor in all occupied countries.
He worked in liaison with the looting in the same capacity.
He appears to have often sought and derived a personal profit from it.
The Defendant Ribbentrop in these acts.
The Defendant Rosenberg, organizer and Chief of the "Einsatastab Rosenberg," is particularly guilty of the the Defendant Jodl; to the Defendant Goering--both of whom agreed The Defendant Kaltenbrunner, Himmler's direct associate and for the crimes committed in deportation.
Moreover, he visited Mauthausen camp.
The Defendant Goering knew of and gave his approval to the medical experiments made on prisoners.
The Gestapo.