This law provided, as did the previous Secret Reich Defense Law, for a "Reich Defense Council" as a supreme policy board for war preparations. If the Tribunal will remember that, I have already referred them to Document 2194-PS, U.S. Exhibit 36, showing these facts. Then there came the Munich agreement of 29 September 1938, but in spite of that, on the 14th March 1939, German troops marched into Czechoslovakia; and the Proclamation of Hitler to the German people and the Order to the Wehrmacht is Document TC.50, Exhibit GB-7, which the Tribunal will find at page 124, which has already been referred to and I shan't read it again. was still a member, promulgated the Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor on the Establishment ofthe Protectorate "Bohemia and Moravia". That date is the 16th of March. That is at page 126 of the Document Book, TC.51, Exhibit GB-8. with the setting up of the Protectorate. I will come back in a moment and read Article 5: but taking the events in the order of time, the following week, the defendant von Ribbentrop signed a Treaty with Slovakia, which is at page 129, and the Tribunal may remember Article 2 of that Treaty, which is:
"For the purpose of making effective the protection undertaken by the German Reich, the German armed forces shall have the right at all times to construct military installations and to keep them garrisoned in the strength they deem necessary, in an area delimited on its western side by the frontiers of the State of Slovakia, and on its eastern side by a line formed by the eastern rims of the Lower Carpathians, the White Carpathians, and the Javornik Mountains.
"The Government of Slovakia will take the necessary steps to assure that land required for these installations shall be conveyed to the German armed forces. Furthermore, the Government of Slovakia will agree to grant exemption from custom duties for imports from the Reich for the maintenance of the German troops and the supply of military installations."
The Tribunal will appreciate that the ultimate objective of Hitler's policies disclosed at the meeting at which this Defendant was present on the 5th of November 1937. That is the resumption of the "Drang of lebensraum in the East". It was obvious from the terms of this Treaty, as it has been explicit in Hitler's statement.
Then we come to the fifth of this criminality. By accepting and occupying the position of Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, the Defendant von Neurath personally adhered to the aggression against Czechoslovakia and the world. He further actively participated in the conspiracy of world aggression and he assumed a position of leadership in the execution of policies involving violating the laws of war and the commission of crimes against humanity. ground covered by my colleagues and go into the crimes. I want to show quite clearly to the Tribunal the basis for these crimes which was laid by the legal position which this Defendant assumed.
The first point. The Defendant von Neurath assumed the position of Protector under a sweeping grant of powers. The a ct creating the Protectorate provided: If the Tribunal would be good enough to turn back on page 126 in the Document Book and look at Article V of the Act, it reads as follows:
"1. As trustee of Reich interests the Leader and Chancellor of the Reich, shall nominate a 'Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia.' His seat of office will be Prague.
"2. The Reich Protector, as representative of the Leader and Chancellor of the Reich and as Commissioner of the Reich Government, is charged with duty of seeing to the observance of the political principles laid down by the Leader and Chancellor of the Reich.
"3. The members of the Government of the protectorate shall be confirmed by the Reich Protector, The confirmation may be withdrawn.
"4. The Reich Protector is entitled to inform himself of all measures taken by the Government of the protectorate and to give advice.
He can object to measures calculated to harm the Reich and, in case of danger, issue ordinances required for the common interest.
"5. The promulgation of laws, ordinances and other legal announcements and the execution of administrative measures and legal judgements shall be annulled if the Reich Protector enters an objection."
At the very outset of the Protectorate, the Defendant von Neurath's supreme authority was implemented by a series of basic decrees of which I ask the Tribunal to take Judicial notice. They established the alleged legal foundation for the policy and program which resulted, all aimed towards the systematic destructions of the national integrity of the Czechs.
1. By granting the "Racial Germans" In Czechoslovakia a supreme order of citizenship; and I give the official reference to the Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor concerning the Protectorate to which I just referred; and then, 2. An Act concerning the representation in the Reichstag of Greater Germany of German Nationals Resident in the Protectorate:
13 April 1939.
3. An order concerning the acquisition of German citizenship by former Czechoslovakian citizens of German origin, 20 April 1939.
Then there was a series of decrees that granted "Racial Germans" in Czechoslovakia a preferred status at law and in the courts.
1. An order concerning the Exercise of Criminal Jurisdiction in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 14 April 1939.
2. An order concerning the Exercise of Jurisdiction in Civil Proceedings, 14 April 1939.
3. An order concerning the Exorcise of Military Jurisdiction on the 8th May 1939. by decree the autonomous law of the Protectorate. That is contained in the Ordnance on Legislation in the Protectorate, 7 June 1939. SS and the Chief of the German Police "to take, if necessary, such (police) measures which go beyond the limits usually valid for police measures."
listen and to take judicial notice of this, in the Reichsgesetzblatt we have found inserted that one in the Document book at page 131, which rather staggers the imagination to know what can be police measures even beyond the limits usually valid for police measures when one has seen police measures in Germany between 1933 and 1939, but if such increase was possible, and presumably it was believed to be possible than an increase was given by the defendant von Neurath, and used by him for coercion of the Czechs. the central objective of destroying the identity of the Czechs as a nation and absorbing their territory into the Reich, and, if the Tribunal will be good enough to turn to page 132, they will find in Document No. 862-PS, USA Exhibit No. 313, and I think that has been read to the Tribunal, still the Tribunal might bear with me so that I might indicate the nature of the document to them.
This memorandum is signed by Lt. Gen. of Infantry Friderici. It is headed "The Deputy General of the Armed Forces with the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia". It is marked "Top Secret" dated 15 October 1940. That is practically a year before this defendant von Neurath went on leave, as he puts it, on 27 September 1941, and, it is called the "Basic Political Principles in the Protectorate," and there are four copies. It also had gone to the defendant Keitel and the defendant Jodl, and it begins: "On the 9 October of this year--" that is 1940:
"On 9 October of this year the office of the Reich protector held an official conference in which State Secretary SS Lt. General K. H. Frank."
That is not the defendant Frank. It is the other K. H. Frank. "--spoke about the following:
about the various plans in a memorandum. In this, three ways of solution were indicated:
A) German infiltration of Moravia and reduction of the Czech na
B) Many arguments can be brought up against the most radical solution, namely, the deportation of all Czechs.
Therefore the memorandum comes
C) Assimilation of the Czechs, i.e. absorption of about half of the being valuable from a racial or other standpoint.
This will take place "major part of the intellectual class.
The latter can scarcely be After a discussion, the Fuehrer has chosen Solution C (assimilation) entitled 'The Czech Problem'." and that is signed, as I said, by the Deputy Lt. General of the Armed Forces.
policy. The result was a program of consolidating German control over Bohemia and Moravia by the systematic oppression of the Czechs through the abolishment of civil liberties, and the systematic undermining of the native political, economic, and cultural structure by a regime of terror, which will be dealth with by my Soviet Union colleagues. They will show clearly, I submit, that the only protection given by this defendant was a protection to the perpetrators of innumerable crimes. and rewards which this defendant received as his worth, and it might well be said that Hitler showered more honors on von Neurath than on some of the leading Nazis who had been with the Party since the very beginning. His appointment as President of the newly created Secret Cabinet Council in 1938 was in itself a new and singular distinction. On September 22, 1940, Hitler awarded him the War Merit Cross 1st Class as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. That is in the Deutsches Nachrichten - Buero, (22/9/1940), 22 September 1940, by Hitler personally from the rank of Gruppenfuehrer to Obergruppenfuehrer in the SS, on June 21, 1943. And I also inform the Tribunal that he and Ribbentrop were the only two Germans to be awarded the Adlerorden, a distinction normally reserved for foreigners. On his seventieth birthday, February 2, 1943, it was made the occasion for most of the German newspapers to praise his many years of service to the Nazi regime. This service, as submitted by the prosecution, may be summed up in two ways:
"1) He was an internal fifth columnist among the Conservative political circles in Germany.
They had been anti-Nazi but were
2) His previous reputation as a diplomat made public opinion which did not stand by its words and assurances.
It was most purpose he found in the defendant von Neurath his handiest tool."
THE PRESIDENT: In view of the motion which was made yesterday by counsel for the defendant Hess, the Tribunal will postpone presentation of the individual case against Hess, and will proceed with the presentation of the case by Counsel for France.
M. DUBOST (Counsel for France): If the Tribunal please, in the development of the exposure of charges which now weigh upon the defendants, my associates, the British and American Colleagues, brought the evidence that these men formed and executed a plan and plot for the domination of Europe. They have shown you what crimes against peace these men have committed themselves and made themselves guilty of in the launching of unjust wars. They have shown you that all this time the Nazi-Germany had premeditated unjust wars, and had participated in the conspiracy. mitted documents establishing that the defendant chiefs in various degrees of Nazi-Germany are responsible for repeated violations of laws and customs of war committed by men of the Reich in the course of military operations. Their treatment, however, is for us to present the atrocities of which men, women, and children of the occupied countries of the West have been victims. as chief of Hitler's Germany have systematically practised a policy of extermination, whose cruelty grew from day to day to the final defeat of Germany. That these atrocities were conceived and were prescribed by the Defendants as part and parcel of a system which was to permit them to accomplish and carry out a political design. we shall present to you, the crimes against persons and property as presented thus far by my colleagues of the French prosecution who were closely connected with the war.
Therefore, added to that very clear character of war crimes in this sense were those that I shall present to you, that is, by their meaning and by their scope. the war itself. Thus, Hitler himself gave the definition of this policy in one of his speeches on 16 May 1926. He deceived his listeners on that day as to the dangers of France, and the Ruhr country of no more than forty million inhabitants. As to the danger that France could constitute for Germany, a country highly industrialized and having a population of seventy million men, on that day Hitler said, "There is only one way for Germany to escape this encirclement, that is, the destruction of the State, and that is to destroy its mortal enemy, namely, France. When the people see this entirely distinct menace of the enemy, it must have only one aim; namely, annihilation of their enemy." to have abandoned their plan of annihilation, but this was only a tactic. They hoped to drag into their way England, then again the Union of the Soviet Republic, or nations of the West, which they had enslaved. Combining also future violations, they attempted to bring these nations of the West into the path of collaboration, but the people resisted. project, the annihilation of districts of conquered people, in order to create in Europe a place necessary for two-hundred million Germans, whom they hoped to establish there in the course of generations to come.
This destruction, this annihilation -- I repeat the very words of Hitler in his speech -- was undertaken on various projects, the elimination of inferior, or Mongoloid races, and the extermination of Bolshevism; the destruction of Judeo-Masonic influences hostile to a new pseudo-European order, in reality, of its destruction. This elimination, this extermination, turned out to be the liquidation of the allied sons, or living forces that were conflicting with Nazism. They attended to the reduction of fellow nations of people. All of this was done, as I shall demonstrate to you, in the execution of a deliberate plan, whose existence was crude, among others, by the repetition of the constancy of the things in all the occupied countries. Before this repetition, and this constancy, it is no longer possible to claim that only the one who executed the crime was guilty. This repetition and constancy proved the same criminal will, put together by the members of the German Government and by the defendants of the German Reich. It is out of this common will that was born the official policy of terrorism, and the extermination which directly places the executioners themselves for having participated in the formation of this common will that each one of the defendants here present has been placed in the rank of major war criminals. I shall return to this when having finished my presentation I shall have to remark about the juridical traditions of my country in giving a juridical classification of their crimes. your authorization, I intend to continue my presentation. The facts are, I must prove to you the result from many kinds of testimony. We might have brought innumerable witnesses to the stand. Their declarations have been gathered by the French Office of Research of War Crimes. It seems to us that it would be, to simplify the session, to abbreviate this, to summarize them, and to give you only extracts from the testimony that we have received in writing. passages of the written testimony gathered in France by official organizations empowered to investigate the war crimes. However, if in the course of the presentation it appears necessary to call certain number of witnesses, we shall proceed to do so.
That, with the constant presentation, will in no way cause the slowing of the sessions of the trial, and the bringing of the evidence to the trial as quickly as possible. It is what our people expect. policy. In this aspect it is not with precedent in the Germanic practice of war. We have only to remember the execution of hostages during the war of 1914, the execution of hostages of Salnice. But not from within have they perfected this terrorist policy; for Nazism, terror is a means of subjugating. We all remember the film that was shown, the propaganda film that was shown on Austria, and particularly at the time of the invasion of Norway. subject them to the end of their policy. The first vision of this terroristic policy during the invasion is vivid in the memory of all Frenchmen. They saw this terrorism appearing within the smallest period, only a few months after the signing of the Armistice, red-black edged posters announcing the first killing of hostages.
We know mothers who have witnessed the execution of their sons. These executions were carried out by the occupant after anti-German incidents. These incidents were the response of the French people to the official policy of collaboration. This resistance, the resistance against this policy, stiffened, became organized, and with it the repressive measures grew in intensit until 1944, the culminating point of German terrorism in France and in the countries of the west. executions of hostages; they organized veritable reprisal expeditions organized in the course of which entire villages were put to flame; thousands of civilians were killed or arrested and deported. But before reaching this stage, the Germans tried to justify their criminal exactions in the eyes of public opinion, and they published, as we shall show, a real code of hostages, and pretended merely to impose respect for their law each time they proceeded to carry out reprisal executions.
the Hague Convention. I shall read this text to you. It is to be found in the fourth convention. Article 50.
"No collective, pecuniary, or other penalty may be decreed against populations by reason of individual acts for which they could not be considered responsible as a whole." themselves to making this a dead letter, and erecting as a right, as law, the systematic violation of the Hague Convention. I shall describe to you how the General Staff formed its pseudo-law on hostages; a pseudo-law which in France found its definitive expression in the hostage code of Stuelpnagel. I shall show in passing which are the Defendants who are chiefly responsible for these crimes. Defendant Goering, the OKW justifies the taking of hostages, as is proved by the extract of Document No. 1585-PS, which I propose to read to you. This document is dated Berlin, 15 February 1940. It bears the mention, "Supreme Command of the Army, Secret, To the Minister of the Reich of Aviation; Supreme Command of the Air Army. Subject: Arrest of Hostages.
"According to the opinion of the OKW, the arrest of hostages is justified in all cases in which the security of the troops requires it for the execution of orders received. In most cases it will be necessary to have recourse to it in the case of resistance or hostility on the part of the populations of the occupied regions, with the qualification nevertheless that the troops shall be in combat or in a situation such that there exists no other way of assuring security."
The fourth paragraph: "As to the choice of hostages, their arrest shall take place only if hostile factions of the population have an interest in their not being executed. The hostages shall then be chosen in groups of the population from which a hostile attitude may be expected. The arrest of hostages shall be carried out among persons whose fate may influence the leaders."
This document is submitted by the French Delegation under No.267.
Here is, furthermore, a paragraph from an instruction, F-508, from the Commander-in-Chief of the land Army in France, administrative section, signed "Stroccius," 12 September 1940, three months after the beginning of the occupation. The hostages are defined therein in the following manner. I quote page two, number fours:
"Hostages are inhabitants of the country who guarantee with their lives the faultless attitude of the population. The responsibility for their fate is thus placed into the hands of their compatriots. Hereafter the population must be solely threatened with seeing the hostages made responsible for unfriendly acts of any individual. Only French citizens may be taken as hostages. The hostages can be made responsible only for actions committed after their arrest and after the public proclamation." of 26 March 1941, signed Stuelpnagel. This ordinance annuls five previous ordinances of the 12th of September 1914. This has been discussed in numerous texts, and two General Staff orders, whose dates are indicated at the head of the document, 2 November and 13 February, page two, "General occasions. If acts of violence are committed by the inhabitants of the country against the members of the occupation army.
"If offices and installations of the army are damaged or destroyed, or if any other attack is directed against the security of German services or units, and according to circumstances, the population of the locality of the crime or the neighboring region can be considered as responsible or coresponsible for its acts of sabotage, and measures of prevention and of repression may be ordered, by which the civil population is to be terrorized in the future, and it will be prevented from committing or provoking or allowing similar acts. The population is to be treated as co-responsible in actions of sabotage of individuals if as a result of its general attitude toward the German armed forces it has favored hostile or unfriendly acts of any individuals; if by its passive resistance in the course of investigation of previous acts of sabotage it has encouraged ill-intentioned elements to similar acts; or, furthermore, if it has created a favorable atmosphere for opposition to the German occupation.
All measures must be taken in such a way as to make their execution possible. Threats without execution give the effect of weakness." I submit these two documents under Nos. 268 and 269 in the French document book.
Until now we don't find any trace in these German texts of affirmation which led one to think that the taking of hostages constitutes a right for the occupying forces; but here is a German text which in an explicit manner formulates this idea. It is cited in your book of documents F-507, dated Brussels, 18 April 1944. It comes from the Chief Judge with the military Commander-in-Chief in Belgium and in the North of France, and it is addressed to the German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden.
Its subject is the execution of eight terrorists in Lille, the 22nd of September, 1943. The reference - Document of Lille. I shall read to you from the middle of the second paragraph of the text:
"I maintain my point of view, namely, that the measures 1944" -- there is a typographical error; it is '43 -- "rest Commission.
The Armistice Commission is in a position to regarding hostages."
Innocent pepple become hostages. They answer with their lives for the attitude of their fellow-citizens in regard to the German Army. If a violation is committed to which they are completely strangers, they are subject to a collective penalty which may entail the death penalty. This is the awful rule imposed by the German High Command in spite of the protests of the German Armistice Commission. I say this was the thesis imposed by the German command, and I here wish to give the proof of this. already been read, which has been submitted by my American colleagues under Mo. 389-PS, which I shall merely comment on. This order applies to all the regions of the West and the Northwest, as the list of addressees indicates; all the military commanders of the countries then occupied by Germany -France, Belgium, Norway, Holland, Denmark, Eastern Territories, Ukraine, Serbia, Salonica, southern part of Greece, Crete. This order was applied during the whole duration of the war. e have a text of 1944 which refer to it. This order of Keitel's, Chief of the OKW, is dictated by a violent spirit of anti-Communist repression. It is aimed at all kinds of repression with regard to the civilian population. This order which applies even to commanders, whose troops are stationed in the West, indicates to them, points out to them, that in all cases in which assaults are committed against the German Army it is necessary to establish -- I read the second paragraph of the text -- it must be established that it is a mass movement which is involved, directed by Moscow, according to a total plan, to which may also be imputed the isolated actions of minor importance which may occur in regions which have remained quiet until then.
fifty to one hundred Communists for each German soldier killed. This is a political idea which we shall meet again constantly in all the manifestations of German terrorism. inspiration, if not of Communist essence. The Germans thereby hoped to eliminate from the resistance the nationalists considered hostile to Communism but the Nazis also pursued another aim: they still hoped, and especially did they hope, to divide France and the other conquered countries of the West into two hostile factions, and to put one of these factions at their service under the pretext of anti-Communism,
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off for ten minutes:
(A recess was taken from 1120 to 1130 hours.)
M. DUBOST: We had reached the order of the 16th Of September, 1941, signed by the Defendant Keitel, which germinates, as I explained to you, through the question of hostages. The order of the 24th of September, 1941, of Keitel confirmed this. We submit it as No. 271, as you will find it in your document book, RS 554. I shall read to you the first paragraph: Wehrmacht, there was published September 16 1941, a regulation relative to the revolutionary movements in occupied countries. The regulation was addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, directed to the attention of Ambassador Ritter. The regulation also treats the question of capital punishment in military tribunals. The result is that henceforth the most severe measures must be taken in occupied territories.
prior to the aggression of Germany against Russia. It is necessary to remind the Tribunal of this document again, because it shows premeditation of the German Command and the Nazi Government to divide the occupied countries, to withdraw the patriotic characteristics from the partisans, and to substitute a political characteristic which it never had. You will find on page 2, 4th paragraph of the document, the following sentence: who habitually fought against our troops, this time we must add an element of the civilian population, particularly dangerous, destroying all established order and carrying out the judeo-bolshevistic propaganda. There is no doubt that everywhere where they are able they utilize against the German Army in combat and while pacifying the country, the weapon of disintegration and of traps." End of the quotation. the German High Command. It expresses the general doctrine of all German headquarters staffs. Now, it is Keitel who presided over the formation of these Party doctrines. It is he who ordered this policy. He is not only then a man of war under the orders of his government; he is also a Nazi politician whose acts or whose actions arethose of a war leader and also the actions of a politician who serves the policy of the Nazi Party. This is proved by the document which I have just read to you -- a general who is also a politician, where both politics and the direction of the war mingle together into one preoccupation. That does not seem surprising for those who know the German line of thought, who never separated war and politics.
This is doubly important. This constitutes a direct charge which is overwhelming against Keitel. It is he who made the General Staff of the German Army. You will see this in this document -- that the indictment of Keitel is justified, for the German General Staff dipped into criminal politics of the German Cabinet. in his order of September 30, 1941, better known in France under the code name for hostages, which specifies and recapitulates previous orders, notably that of the 23rd of August, 1941, This order of September 30, 1941, is of major importance.
In order to present the circumstances under which the French hostages were subject, I shall be obliged to give you large extracts. It defines, in paragraph 3, the category of Frenchmen who will be considered as hostages. I shall read this document, which I submit before this Tribunal under the No. 274. The first paragraph, after the heading "Seizure of Hostages":
"August 22, 1941:
"I have had the following communication published: The morning of August 21, 1941, a member of the German Army was a victim in Paris of attempted murder and he died thereof. I decided, consequently, first, that all Frenchmen actually in custody for whatever cause he may be, in a German office or in behalf of a German office, will be considered from August 23 on as hostages. Among these hostages a certain number will be shot subsequently, relative to the seriousness of the act committed.
"Secondly, September 19, 1941, I ordered by a memorandum to the Ambassador of the French Government attached to the military commander-inchief inFrance that after September 19, 1941, all Frenchmen of male sex who were in custody for communistic or anarchistic activity, whether in custody by the French offices or who will be found in the future, must be put by these French authorities in custody.
According to my note or memorandum of August 22, 1941, and according to my order of September 19.
1941, the following persons are consequently hostages:
"(a) All Frenchmen who are presently in custody of the German authorities for any reason whatsoever; for instance, arrested by the police, protective custody, andpunitive custody;
"(b) All Frenchmen who are in custody of the French authorities in France for the German authorities. To this group belong -
"(aa) All Frenchmen who have been arrested by the French authorities for anarchistic or communistic activities;
"(bb) All Frenchmen who must fulfill a penalty which deprives them of liberty under the control of the French authorities at the request of German military tribunals;
"(cc) All Frenchmen who, upon the request of the German authorities, were arrested by the French authorities or will be kept in custody or who shall be handed over to French authorities by the German authorities with the mission to keep them imprisoned.
"(c) The inhabitants of the countries which belong 'to no state and who have been living for a long time in France shall be considered as Frenchmen according to my proclamation of August 22, 1941.
"Thirdly, the freeing of prisoners: Persons who were not in custody August 22, 1941, and September 19, 1941, but who were arrested later or who will be arrested, in the measure that the preceding documentations do not concern them, will not be considered as hostages. The freeing of prisoners who are imprisoned after the fulfillment of the penalty, by an order for freeing them or for any other reason, will not be affected by my proclamation of August 22, 1941. Those persons who are released cannot be considered as hostages in the measure in which these persons are imprisoned by the French authorities for communistic and anarchistic activity, their liberation is possible, as I have informed the French Government, only with my approval."
At the end of this paragraph you will read this sentence;
"Among these groups of Frenchmen who may be exploited by the German military command, we may, if an incident happens, make a list of those hostages who are to be executed immediately.
THE PRESIDENT: Which paragraph are you reading?
M. DUBOST: I shall read all the text, if you will permit me to do it, sir.
Paragraph 4.: "If an event takes place which renders necessary, in accordance with my proclamation of August 22, 1941"--
THE PRESIDENT: You are still reading which paragraph?
M. DUBOST: Paragraph 6, page 4:
"If an event takes place which makes it necessary, according to my proclamation of August 22, 1941 to shoot hostages, the execution must immediately follow the order. The leaders in the various districts, must, consequently, select within their district, among all the prisoners, those who particularly may be selected for execution and place them on a list of hostages. These lists of hostages serve as a basis for proposals which must be made in the case of execution.
"According to observations made up to now, we admit that those who commit crimes come from terroristic circles and communistic or anarchistic circles. The leaders of the various districts, have, consequently, to choose immediately among those in custody the persons who, because of their prior communistic or anarchistic attitude or because of their functions in similar organizations must be considered first of all as suitable for execution.
"In the selection we must take account of the fact that the repressive efficacy of the execution of hostages is all the greater, as the authors of the crime, upon the persons who, in France and in foreign countries, bear the spiritual responsibility of those who issue orders or who are propagandists for action of sabotage and terrorism; that such persons who are known shall be executed.
"Experience proves that those who issue orders, and political circles which have an interest in such crimes, scorn the life of the petty accomplices. But, on the other hand, they protect to the maximum degree the life of the former officials who are known. Consequently, we must place at the head of the list: (a) Former deputies and officials of Communist or Anarchist organizations."
Permit me to make a commentary, gentlemen. There never were any anarchistic organizations among the parliamentary personages, and this paragraph (a) could only mean former deputies and officials of the Communist Party.
We know, moreover, that some were executed by the Germans as hostages.
"(b) Persons -- intellectuals -- who had made an effort to disseminate Communistic thought by word of mouth or by writing.
"(c) Persons who, because of their attitude, have shown their dangerous activity.
"(d) Persons who collaborated in the distribution of pamphlets.
One idea is dominant in this selections "We must punish the elite." In conformity with paragraph (b), we shall see that the Germans shot, in 1941 and 1942, in Paris and in the provincial cities, numerous intellectuals. I shall come back to these executions later, and I shall give you examples of German atrocities committed in relation to the German policy of executing hostages in France.
I return to the text now:
"Secondly, a list of hostages taken amojg deGaullist prisoners is to be established according to the same directives.
"Thirdly, Germans 'of the blood' having French nationality, who are imprisoned because of their communistic activies may be included in the list. Their German origin must be pointed out in the form which is joined to this directive.
"Persons who have been condemned to death but who have been pardoned, may be placed on these lists.
"Fifth, in the list for each district 150 persons, and for the commander of greater Paris from 300 to 400 persons, must be put on the list. As far as possible, we must find, among the people living in the district where the crimes were committed, the leaders of the districts. There must then be put upon the list persons whose last residence or domicile was in their district."
Last paragraph of the fifth section:
"We must take account especially of new arrests and new freeing of prisoners or hostages.