NAZI CONSPIRACY

AND AGGRESSION

VOLUME I

Office of United States

Chief of Counsel For Prosecution

of Axis Criminality

United States Government Printing Office

Washington • 1946

For Sale by the

Superintendent of Documents

U. S. Government Printing Office

Washington 25, D. C.

A Collection of Documentary Evidence and Guide Materials Prepared by the American and British Prosecuting Staffs for presentation before the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg, Germany, in the case of

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, and THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

—against—

HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM von RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP von BOHLEN und HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ, ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR von SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ von PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN von NEURATH, and HANS FRITZSCHE, Individually and as Members of Any of the Following Groups or Organizations to which They Respectively Belonged, Namely: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET); DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the “SS”) and including DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the “SD”); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the “GESTAPO”); DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P. (commonly known as the “SA”) and the GENERAL STAFF and HIGH COMMAND of the GERMAN ARMED FORCES all as defined in Appendix B of the Indictment,

Defendants.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I

On the 2d day of May 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9547 appointing Justice Robert H. Jackson as Representative of the United States and as its Chief of Counsel in the preparation and prosecution of the case against the major Axis war criminals. Since that date and up to the present, the staff of the Office of Chief of Counsel, or OCC, has been engaged continuously in the discovery, collection, examination, translation, and marshalling of documentary evidence demonstrating the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich. Since the 20th day of November 1945, a considerable part of this documentary arsenal has been directed against the 22 major Nazi war criminals who are on trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nurnberg. As of this writing the American and British cases-in-chief, on Counts I and II of the Indictment charging, respectively, conspiracy and the waging of wars of aggression, have been completed.

There is perhaps no need to recall in these pages that the Nurnberg trial represents the first time in history that legal proceedings have been instituted against leaders of an enemy nation. It is perhaps equal supererogation to state here that there are no exact precedents for the charges made by the American, British, French, and Russian prosecutors that to plot or wage a war of aggression is a crime for which individuals may be punished. Yet it was because of these very facts that in its indictment the prosecution presented a challenge to itself quite as great as to the defense. A heavy burden was laid on the accusing nations to make sure that their proof measured up to the magnitude of their accusations, and that the daring of their grand conception was matched by the industry of their research, lest the hard-bought opportunity to make International Law a guardian of peace should fail by default.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the American collecting and processing of documentary evidence, under the general direction of Col. Robert G. Storey, gradually developed into an operation of formidable scope. Although some pieces of evidence were secured in Washington and London, by far the greater part was obtained in the land of the enemy. As the American Armies had swept into Germany, military investigating teams had filled document centers with an increasing wealth of materials which were freely made available by the Army to OCC field investigators. Special assistance was given by the Document Section, G-2 Division, SHAEF, and by the Document Sections of the Army Groups and Armies operating in the European Theater. OCC investigators also made valuable discoveries while prospecting on their own. They soon found themselves embarrassed with riches. Perhaps foremost among the prize acquisitions was the neatly crated collection of all the personal and official correspondence of Alfred Rosenberg, together with a great quantity of Nazi Party correspondence. This cache was discovered behind a false wall in an old castle in Eastern Bavaria, where it had been sent for safekeeping. Another outstanding collection consisted of thirty-nine leather-bound volumes containing detailed inventories of the art treasures of Europe which had been looted by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. These catalogues, together with much of the priceless plunder itself, were found hidden deep in an Austrian salt mine. An innocent-appearing castle near Marburg was found to contain some 485 tons of crated papers, which inspection revealed to be the records of the German Foreign Office from 1837 to 1944. Among other outstanding bulk acquisitions were more than 300 crates of German High Command files, 85 notebooks containing minutes of Hitler’s conferences, and the complete files of the German Navy.

The task was to screen thoroughly this abundance of material so as to overlook no relevant item, and yet at the same time to obtain the proof and to translate it in season, so as not to delay preparation of the Indictment or commencement of the trial. The procedures followed in this process are described in the affidavit of Maj. William H. Coogan (001-A-PS), which is listed numerically among the documents. As a result of those procedures, more than 100,000 documents were individually examined in order to segregate those of importance. Of these 100,000 documents, approximately 4,000 were found to be of clear or potential value. This group of 4,000 was further reduced through exacting standards of elimination to a total of some 2,000 documents which it was proposed to offer in evidence, and which make up the bulk of this publication. Thus, the documents presented in these volumes are the fittest survivors of a rigorous sifting. Each of them has met requirements designed to ensure the selection of only the most significant in bearing on the American case. Documents primarily concerned with the report of individual barbarities or perversions were excluded, in conformity with the emphasis placed upon those tending to prove elements in the Nazi Master Plan.

These documents consist, in the main, of official papers found in archives of the German Government and Nazi Party, diaries and letters of prominent Germans, and captured reports and orders. There are included, in addition, excerpts from governmental and Party decrees, from official newspapers and from authoritative German publications. The authenticity of all these materials is established by Maj. Coogan’s affidavit (001-A-PS). Considered together, they reveal a fairly comprehensive view of the inner workings and outward deeds of the German government and of the Nazi Party, which were always concealed from the world, and for which, the world will always hold the Hitler regime in horror and contempt.

II

It is important that it be clearly understood what this collection of documents is not. In the first place, it is neither an official record, nor an unofficial transcript of the trial proceedings. It is not designed to reproduce what has taken place in court. It is merely the documentary evidence prepared by the American and British prosecuting staffs, and is in no wise under the sponsorship of the Tribunal. It is presented in the belief that this collection containing the full text of the documents, classified under appropriate subjects, may be more useful to students of the Nurnberg trial than the official record, when prepared, may be.

The reason for this goes back to the first few days of the trial, when the Tribunal ruled that it would treat no written matter as in evidence unless it was read in full, word by word, in court. The purpose of the ruling was to enable the documentary material which the American and British staffs had translated from German into English to be further translated into Russian and French through the simultaneous interpreting system in the courtroom. The consequence, however, was to enforce upon the American and British prosecution the task of trimming their evidence drastically unless the trial was to be protracted to an unconscionable length. Counsel therefore had to content themselves in most instances with introducing, by reading verbatim, only the most vital parts of the documents relied upon. Only these evidentiary minima appear in the daily transcript, and presumably, since no more is officially in evidence under the Tribunal’s ruling, no more can properly be included in the official record. It has frequently been the case, furthermore, that different parts of certain documents were read in proof of different allegations, and hence are scattered throughout the transcript. American counsel, in several instances, read only sketchy portions of some documents, leaving other portions, at the request of the French and Soviet delegations, to be read later as a part of their case. Still other portions of the same document will undoubtedly be read later on by the defense. It is an unavoidable consequence that the transcript itself will be a thing of shreds and patches, and that any comprehensive and orderly notion of the documentary evidence must be obtained elsewhere. The documentary excerpts, when accompanied by the explanation of trial counsel, are of course sufficient for the trial and for the judgment of the Tribunal. But the purposes of historians and scholars will very likely lead them to wish to examine the documents in their entirety. It is to those long-range interests that these volumes are in the main addressed.

Secondly, this collection of documents is not the American case. It is at once more and less than that. It is less, because it of course cannot include the captured motion picture and still photographic evidence relied upon, and because it contains only a few of the organizational charts and visual presentation exhibits utilized at the trial. It is more, because although it does contain all the evidence introduced either in part or in whole by the American staff in proof of Count I, it also includes many documents not introduced into evidence at all. There were various reasons for not offering this material to the Tribunal: the documents were cumulative in nature, better documents were available on the same point, or the contents did not justify the time required for reading. (The document index at the end of Volume VIII is marked to indicate which documents were introduced, either in whole or in part, in evidence.) Of more than 800 American documents so far introduced in evidence, a small number were received through judicial notice or oral summarization, while some 500 were read, in part or in whole, in court. Approximately 200 more went into evidence in the first few days of the trial, under an earlier ruling of the Tribunal which admitted documents without reading, and merely on filing with the court after proof of authenticity. Of the documents not now in evidence and thus not before the Tribunal for consideration in reaching its decision, many have been turned over to the French and Soviet prosecuting staffs and, by the time these volumes are published, will have been introduced in the course of their cases. Others will have been put before the Tribunal by the American case in rebuttal or utilized in cross-examining witnesses called by the defense.

This publication includes a series of affidavits prepared under the direction of Col. John Harlan Amen, chief of the OCC Interrogation Division. Those which were introduced into evidence are listed among the documents in the PS series. A number of affidavits which were not offered to the Tribunal are printed in a separate section at the end of the document series. Affidavits of the latter type were prepared in an attempt to eliminate surprise by delineating clearly the testimony which the affiant might be expected to give in court, should it be decided to call him as a witness. In the case of the affiants who testified in court, their affidavits represent a substantially accurate outline of their testimony on direct examination. Others of the affiants may, by the time of publication, have been called as rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution. In addition, there are included selected statements of certain defendants and prisoners written to the prosecutors from prison. It should be mentioned in this connection that as a result of many months of exhaustive questioning of the defendants, prisoners of war, and other potential witnesses, the Interrogation Division has harvested approximately 15,000 typewritten pages of valuable and previously unavailable information on a variety of subjects. These extensive transcripts represent approximately 950 individual interrogations and are presently being edited and catalogued in Nurnberg so that the significant materials may be published in a useful form and within a manageable scope, as a supplement to these present volumes.

This collection also includes approximately 200 documents obtained and processed by the British prosecuting staff, known as the British War Crimes Executive, and presented in substantiation of Count II of the Indictment, which the British delegation assumed the responsibility of proving. It seems altogether fitting that these documents should be included in these volumes since, in proving illegal acts of aggression, they naturally supplement the American documents proving the illegal conspiracy to commit aggression. The American prosecuting staff is grateful to Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the British Deputy Chief Prosecutor, from whom and from the goodly company of whose associates there has ever been the most generous cooperation, for consent to the publication of the British documents by the United States Government.

Under the division of the case agreed on by the Chief Prosecutors of the four Allied nations, the French and Soviet delegates are responsible for the presentation of evidence bearing on the proof of Count III (War Crimes) and Count IV (Crimes against Humanity) of the Indictment. The French case will concern itself with these crimes when committed in the West, while the Russian evidence will concern the commission of these crimes in the East. None of the documents obtained by these two prosecuting nations are included in these volumes. The reason is that, at this writing, the French case has just commenced and the Soviet case will not be reached for several weeks. Since one of the objects of this undertaking is to acquaint the American public at the earliest opportunity with the character of the evidence produced by its representatives, there seems no justification in delaying publication until the close of the French and Russian cases, when all the prosecution documents will be available. As is indicated by the title of these present volumes, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, this collection relates only to Counts I and II of the Indictment, or one-half of the prosecution case. It is to be hoped, however, that supplementary volumes containing the French and Soviet documents may be published at a later time.

Finally, this collection, by its nature limited to a part of the prosecution case, does not of course purport to present the whole story of the evidence adduced at Nurnberg. The evidence and arguments of defense counsel will not be presented for some time, and the text of these matters will, if possible, be included in any additional volumes, which it may become possible to publish.

III

On the other hand, it may be useful to indicate what this collection is. The publication is offered in accordance with the conviction which has constantly animated the American prosecution, that only a part of its duty would have been done if it succeeded in persuading the judges of the International Military Tribunal. Its full task will be accomplished only if the world is also convinced of the justness of the cause. There were always some people who, perhaps under the spell of the exposure of the “atrocity propaganda” used in the First World War, felt that the deceptions and the outrages laid to the Nazis were quite possibly untrue and in any event exaggerated. The mission of convincing these skeptics is one that has not been and cannot be discharged by newspaper reports of the Nurnberg proceedings, which by their nature are incomplete and evanescent. But an inspection of the Nazis’ own official records should suffice to banish all honest doubts, and to make it undeniably clear that those things really happened because the Nazis planned it that way. It is the hope of the American prosecution that these volumes may in some measure expose, for the warning of future generations as well as a reminder to the present, the anatomy of National Socialism in all its ugly nakedness. Many of these documents disclose the repressive governmental machinery and intricate Party bureaucracy by which the Nazis stifled initiative and opposition. They reveal also the image of horror which a gang of brigands created in the name of the German state, in order to seize and maintain power for themselves at the expense of the liberties of their own people and the lives of their neighbors. Legal proof has perhaps seldom been so overwhelming, certainly never so self-admitted, as is this proof of the deeds with which the Nazi leadership befouled the earth.

Yet, although these documents naturally are concerned primarily with the guilt of the leaders of the German Reich, they also contain a wealth of information, much of it hitherto unavailable elsewhere, on many other matters of importance. Their pages illuminate many dark corners of recent history. Hence, this collection has an additional purpose. It is offered as a source book, of interest to historians, political scientists, students, universities, libraries, government agencies, private research groups, newspaper editors, and others, so that they may see, from the official papers of the Nazi government and from the words of its own leaders, the things that went on in Germany in the days of that blasphemous regime. These papers, although they include a few legal matters, are not addressed nor are they expected to appeal primarily to lawyers. The satisfaction of these professional interests must perforce be postponed until publication of the official record of the trial.

IV

It is apparent that such a vast collection of documents on a variety of subjects would be useless to any one not thoroughly conversant with the field, without some sort of guide through the maze. That is the reason for the first two volumes, which consist of various explanatory materials included in order to facilitate understanding. The average reader who tries to cope with some of the more pompous of the Nazi titles—such as Beauftragter des Fuehrers fuer die ueberwachung des Gesamten Geistigen und Weltausschaulichers Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP, or Delegate of the Fuehrer for the Total Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Training and Education of the Party (Rosenberg)—is plainly in need of assistance. A Glossary of common German and Nazi titles, designations, and terms has therefore been compiled. For those who are unfamiliar with the difference between a Hauptmann and a Hauptsturmfuehrer, a table of military ranks, with their American equivalents, has been prepared. A brief biographical gazeteer of the more prominent Nazis, together with a listing of the major officials of the Government, Party, and Armed Forces, has also been included for reference purposes. In addition, an index of the Code-Words used by the Nazis to preserve the secrecy of the invasions they plotted has been compiled. Moreover, in order to make clear developments in the proceedings affecting the status of several of the defendants, certain motions of counsel and rulings of the Tribunal, together with factual accounts, are also presented. And finally the international treaties relating to land warfare and prisoners of war are printed in full (3737-PS; 3738-PS).

The principal content of Volumes I and II is composed of what might be called essays, summarizing and connecting up most of the documents relating to particular subjects in the order of their mention in Counts I and II of the Indictment. As an additional aid, at the end of each essay there appears a descriptive list of all documents referred to in the essay, so that the reader may quickly discover which of the published documents bear upon the subject in which he is interested. In many cases these lists include documents not discussed in the essays for the reason that they are cumulative in nature or were discovered subsequent to the preparation of the essays.

Some of these essays are adaptations of factual “trial briefs” prepared by the staff of OCC. Some of these “trial briefs” were handed to the Tribunal for its assistance, while others were used only for the guidance of trial counsel. Others of the essays have been adapted from the oral presentation and summary of counsel in court. Their difference in origin explains their difference in form. It must be borne in mind that each of these essays, which were originally prepared for the purpose of convincing the Tribunal of the legal guilt of the defendants, has been submitted to a process of editing and revision in order to serve a quite different purpose—to give the general reader a general and coherent conception of the subject matter.

These essays bear the marks of haste and are not offered as in any sense definitive or exhaustive. The task of translation from German into English was a formidable one, and in many instances translations of documents could be made available to the brief-writers only a few days before the briefs were scheduled to be presented in court. In other instances it was utterly impossible, with the constantly overburdened translating staff available, to translate in full all the material known to be of value if the prosecution was to be ready on the date set for trial. The diary of Hans Frank, for example (2233-PS) consisted of 42 volumes, of which only a few outstanding excerpts, chosen by German-reading analysts, were translated. Similarly, large portions of the 250 volumes of the Rosenberg correspondence remain still untranslated and unused. Books, decrees, and lengthy reports were not translated, in full, and only salient excerpts were utilized. Approximately 1,500 documents in the possession of OCC have not yet been translated and more are being received daily. It is expected that they will be used for purposes of cross-examination and rebuttal, and may later be published.

It must also be remembered that these documents are, in the main, translations from the original German. The magnitude of the task, coupled with a sense of the hastening on of time, naturally resulted in imperfections. However, an attempt has been made to preserve the format of the original documents in the printed translations. Italics represent underlining in the original documents and editorial additions have been enclosed in brackets. The reader may notice occasional variations between the English wording of documents quoted in the essays, and the full text of the document itself. This divergence is explained by the fact that translations of the same documents were sometimes made by two different persons. Variations in the exact means of expression were of course to be expected in such an event, yet both translations are of equal authenticity. Certain passages of some documents may strike the reader as confused or incomplete, and occasionally this is the result of hasty work. More frequently, however the jumble of language accurately reflects the chaos of the original German, for the language of National Socialists was often merely a turgid and mystical aggregation of words signifying nothing, to which the German language easily lends itself. The accuracy of the translations is attested to in Maj. Coogan’s affidavit (001-A-PS).

If the case had not been set down for trial until 1948, a complete and satisfactory preparation would have been possible. A perfect case could not have been made in less time. But the Allied governments and public opinion were understandably impatient of delay for whatever reason, and they had to be respected. The nature of the difficulties caused by the pressure for speed were stated in Justice Jackson’s address opening the American case:

“In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole Continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events, seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago today the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no Tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render, and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians.”

V

No work in a specialized field would be complete without its own occult paraphernalia, and the curious reader may desire an explanation of the strange wizardry behind the document classification symbols. The documents in the American series are classified under the cryptic categories of “L,” “R,” “PS,” “EC,” “ECH,” “ECR,” and “C.” The letter “L” was used as an abbreviation for “London,” and designates those documents either obtained from American and British sources in London or processed in the London Office of the OCC, under the direction of Col. Murray C. Bernays and Col. Leonard Wheeler, Jr. The letter “R” stands for “Rothschild,” and indicates the documents obtained through the screening activities of Lt. Walter Rothschild of the London branch of OSS. The origins of the “PS” symbol are more mysterious, but the letters are an abbreviation of the amalgam, “Paris-Storey.” The “PS” symbol, accordingly, denotes those documents which, although obtained in Germany, were processed by Col. Storey’s division of the OCC in Paris, as well as those documents later processed by the same division after headquarters were established in Nurnberg. The “EC” symbol stands for “Economic Case” and designates those documents which were obtained and processed by the Economic Section of OCC under Mr. Francis M. Shea, with field headquarters at Frankfurt. The “ECH” variant denotes those which were screened at Heidelberg. The letter “C,” which is an abbreviation for “Crimes,” indicates a collection of German Navy documents which were jointly processed by British and American teams, with Lt. Comdr. John Bracken representing the OCC.

The British documents hence include some in the joint Anglo-American “C” series. The remainder of the British documents are marked with the symbols “TC,” “UK,” “D,” and “M.” The symbol “TC” is an abbreviation of “Treaty Committee” and signifies the documents selected by a Foreign Office Committee which assisted the British prosecution. “UK” is the abbreviation for “United Kingdom” and indicates documents collected from another source. No especial significance lurks in the letters “D” and “M,” which were apparently the result of accident, possibly caprice, rather than design. As a matter of record, however, “M” stands for the first name of the British assistant prosecutor. Finally, “D” is merely an humble filing reference, which may have had some obscure connection with the word “document.”

The reader will note that there are numerous and often lengthy gaps in the numbering of documents within a given series, and the documents are not numbered in any apparent order. This anomaly is accounted for by several different factors. As the documents avalanched into the OCC offices they were catalogued and numbered in the order received without examination. Upon subsequent analysis it was frequently found that an earlier document was superseded in quality by a later acquisition, and the earlier one was accordingly omitted. Others were withdrawn because of lack of proof of their authenticity. Occasionally it was discovered that two copies of the same document had been received from different sources, and one of them was accordingly stricken from the list. In other cases blocks of numbers were assigned to field collecting teams, which failed to exhaust all the numbers allotted. In all these cases no change was made in the original numbers because of the delay and confusion which would accompany renumbering. Nor has renumbering been attempted in this publication, and the original gaps remain. This is because the documents introduced into evidence carried their originally assigned numbers, and students of the trial who use these volumes in conjunction with the official record will therefore be able to refer rapidly from citations in the record of the proceedings to the text of the documents cited.

VI

It only remains to acknowledge the toil and devotion of the members of the OCC staff who were responsible for the original preparation of the materials contained in these volumes. Mention must first be made of Mr. Gordon Dean, who was responsible in large part for the conception of this undertaking, and of Lt. Comdr. Charles A. Horsky, USCGR (T) who set in motion the governmental machinery necessary to publication.

The material in Chapter VI on the Organization of the Nazi Party and State was originally prepared by Mr. Ralph G. Albrecht.

The essays in Chapter VII on the Means Used by the Nazi Conspirators in Gaining Control of the German State were originally prepared by Col. Leonard Wheeler, Jr., Lt. Col. Benjamin Kaplan, Maj. Frank B. Wallis, Dr. Edmund A. Walsh, Maj. Seymour M. Peyser, Maj. J. Hartley Murray, Lt. Paul Johnston, USNR, Lt. Comdr. Morton E. Rome, USNR, Capt. D. A. Sprecher, Lt. Samuel E. Sharp, Lt. (jg) A. R. Martin, USNR, Lt. Henry V. Atherton, and Lt. William E. Miller.

The materials on the Economic Aspects of the Conspiracy, contained in Chapter VIII, on Slave Labor, contained in Chapter X, and on Germanization and Spoliation, contained in Chapter XIII, were prepared by Mr. Francis M. Shea, Mr. Benedict Deinard, Lt. Col. Murray I. Gurfein, Lt. Comdr. W. S. Emmet, USNR, Lt. Thomas L. Karsten, USNR, Capt. Sam Harris, Capt. James H. Mathias, Capt. Melvin Siegel, Capt. Edward H. Kenyon, Lt. (jg) Bernard Meltzer, USNR, Lt. (jg) Brady O. Bryson, USNR, Lt. Raymond Ickes, USMCR, Mr. Jan Charmatz, Mr. Walter Derenberg, Mr. Sidney Jacoby, Mr. Werner Peiser, Mr. Edgar Bodenheimer, and Mr. Leon Frechtel.

The materials contained in Chapter IX on Aggressive War, (except those relating to Aggression as a Basic Nazi Idea, the Violation of Treaties, and Aggression against Poland, Danzig, England and France, Norway and Denmark, the Low Countries, and the Balkans) were prepared by Mr. Sidney S. Alderman, Comdr. Sidney J. Kaplan, USCGR, Lt. Col. Herbert Krucker, Maj. Lacey Hinely, Maj. Joseph Dainow, Lt. Comdr. Harold Leventhal, USCGR, Lt. John M. Woolsey, Jr., USNR, Lt. James A. Gorrell, and Lt. Roy H. Steyer, USNR.

The materials contained in Chapter XII, on Persecution of the Jews, in Chapter XI on Concentration Camps, and in Chapter XIV on Plunder of Art Treasures, were prepared by Col. Hardy Hollers, Maj. William F. Walsh, Mr. Thomas J. Dodd, Capt. Seymour Krieger, Lt. Frederick Felton, USNR, Lt. (jg) Brady O. Bryson, USNR, Mr. Hans Nathan, Mr. Isaac Stone, Lt. Daniel F. Margolies, Capt. Edgar Boedeker, Lt. (jg) Bernard Meltzer, USNR, Lt. Nicholas Doman, and Mr. Walter W. Brudno.

The materials contained in Chapter XVI on the responsibility of the Individual Defendants were prepared by Col. Howard Brundage, Mr. Ralph G. Albrecht, Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, Lt. Col. William H. Baldwin, Maj. Seymour M. Peyser, Maj. Joseph D. Bryan, Capt. D. A. Sprecher, Capt. Norman Stoll, Capt. Robert Clagett, Capt. John Auchincloss, Capt. Seymour Krieger, Lt. Whitney R. Harris, USNR, Lt. Frederick Felton, USNR, Lt. Henry V. Atherton, Lt. Richard Heller, USNR, Mr. Henry Kellerman, Mr. Frank Patton, Mr. Karl Lachmann, Mr. Bert Heilpern, Mr. Walter Menke, Mr. Joseph Michel, Mr. Walter W. Brudno, Mrs. Katherine Walch, Miss Harriet Zetterberg, Lt. (jg) Brady O. Bryson, USNR, and Capt. Sam Harris.

The materials contained in the first six sections of Chapter XV on the Criminal Organizations were prepared by Lt. Col. George E. Seay, Maj. Warren F. Farr, Lt. Comdr. Wm. S. Kaplan, USNR, Lt. Whitney R. Harris, USNR, Miss Katherine Fite, Maj. Robert G. Stephens, Lt. Thomas F. Lambert, Jr., USNR, and Mr. Charles S. Burdell.

The materials contained in Section 7 of Chapter XV on the General Staff and High Command were prepared on behalf of the American delegation by Col. Telford Taylor, Maj. Loftus Becker, Maj. Paul Neuland, Capt. Walter Rapp, Capt. Seymour Krieger, and Mr. Charles Kruszeawski; with the assistance of a British staff made jointly available to both the American and British delegations, consisting of W/Cdr. Peter Calvocoressi, RAFVR, Maj. Oliver Berthoud, IC, Lt. Michael Reade, RNVR, F/Lt. George Sayers, RAFVR, S/O Barbara Pinion, WAAF, W/O Mary Carter, WAAF, and Miss Elizabeth Stewart.

The charts reproduced are among those introduced by the prosecution, and were designed and executed by presentation specialists assigned to OCC by the Office of Strategic Services, and headed by David Zablodousky under the direction of Comdr. James B. Donovan, USNR.

Acknowledgment must also be made of the very effective labors of the British delegation in preparing those materials in Chapter IX on Aggressive War relating to Aggression as a Basic Nazi Idea, the Violation of Treaties, and the Aggressions against Poland, Danzig, England and France, Norway and Denmark, the Low Countries, and the Balkans, as well as the materials in sections on Individual Defendants relating to Streicher, Raeder, Doenitz, Neurath, and Ribbentrop. This share of the common task was borne by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, K.C., M.P., Mr. Geoffrey D. Roberts, K.C., Lt. Col. J. M. G. Griffith-Jones, M.C., Col. Harry J. Phillimore, O.B.E., and Maj. Elwyn Jones, M.P. The British opening address was delivered by the Attorney General and chief of the British delegation, Sir Hartley Shawcross, K.C., M.P.

Recognition is also due to Maj. F. Jay Nimitz, Miss Alma Soller, and Miss Mary Burns, for their loyal and capable assistance in all the harassing details of compiling, editing and indexing these numerous papers.

One final word should be said in recognition of the financial burden assumed by the State and War Departments, which have generously joined in allocating from their budgets the very considerable funds required to make this publication possible.

Roger W. Barrett, Captain, JAGD

William E. Jackson, Lieutenant (jg), USNR

Editors

Approved:

Robert H. Jackson

Chief of Counsel

Nurnberg, 20 January 1946.

Chapter I

WHEREAS the United Nations have from time to time made declarations of their intention that War Criminals shall be brought to justice;

AND WHEREAS the Moscow Declaration of the 30th October 1943 on German atrocities in Occupied Europe stated that those German Officers and men and members of the Nazi Party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in atrocities and crimes will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of these liberated countries and of the free Governments that will be created therein;

AND WHEREAS this Declaration was stated to be without prejudice to the case of major criminals whose offenses have no particular geographic location and who will be punished by the joint decision of the Governments of the Allies;

NOW THEREFORE the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (hereinafter called “the Signatories”) acting in the interests of all the United Nations and by their representatives duly authorized thereto have concluded this Agreement.

Article 1. There shall be established after consultation with the Control Council for Germany an International Military Tribunal for the trial of war criminals whose offenses have no particular geographical location whether they be accused individually or in their capacity as members of organizations or groups or in both capacities.

Article 2. The constitution, jurisdiction and functions of the International Military Tribunal shall be those set out in the Charter annexed to this Agreement, which Charter shall form an integral part of this Agreement.

Article 3. Each of the Signatories shall take the necessary steps to make available for the investigation of the charges and trial the major war criminals detained by them who are to be tried by the International Military Tribunal. The Signatories shall also use their best endeavors to make available for investigation of the charges against and the trial before the International Military Tribunal such of the major war criminals as are not in the territories of any of the Signatories.

Article 4. Nothing in this Agreement shall prejudice the provisions established by the Moscow Declaration concerning the return of war criminals to the countries where they committed their crimes.

Article 5. Any Government of the United Nations may adhere to this Agreement by notice given through the diplomatic channel to the Government of the United Kingdom, who shall inform the other signatory and adhering Governments of each such adherence.

Article 6. Nothing in this Agreement shall prejudice the jurisdiction or the powers of any national or occupation court established or to be established in any allied territory or in Germany for the trial of war criminals.

Article 7. This Agreement shall come into force on the day of signature and shall remain in force for the period of one year and shall continue thereafter, subject to the right of any Signatory to give, through the diplomatic channel, one month’s notice of intention to terminate it. Such termination shall not prejudice any proceedings already taken or any findings already made in pursuance of this Agreement.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF the Undersigned have signed the present Agreement.

DONE in quadruplicate in London this 8th day of August 1945 each in English, French and Russian, and each text to have equal authenticity.

For the Government of the United States of America

[signed] ROBERT H. JACKSON

For the Provisional Government of the French Republic

[signed] ROBERT FALCO

For the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Northern Ireland

[signed] JOWITT C.

For the Government of the Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics

[signed] I. T. NIKITCHENKO

[signed] A. N. TRAININ

Chapter II
CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL

I. CONSTITUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL

Article 1. In pursuance of the Agreement signed on the 8th day of August 1945 by the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, there shall be established an International Military Tribunal (hereinafter called “the Tribunal”) for the just and prompt trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis.

Article 2. The Tribunal shall consist of four members, each with an alternate. One member and one alternate shall be appointed by each of the Signatories. The alternates shall, so far as they are able, be present at all sessions of the Tribunal. In case of illness of any member of the Tribunal or his incapacity for some other reason to fulfill his functions, his alternate shall take his place.

Article 3. Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel. Each Signatory may replace its member of the Tribunal or his alternate for reasons of health or for other good reasons, except that no replacement may take place during a Trial, other than by an alternate.

Article 4.

(a)

The presence of all four members of the Tribunal or the alternate for any absent member shall be necessary to constitute the quorum.

(b)

The members of the Tribunal shall, before any trial begins, agree among themselves upon the selection from their number of a President, and the President shall hold office during that trial, or as may otherwise be agreed by a vote of not less than three members. The principle of rotation of presidency for successive trials is agreed. If, however, a session of the Tribunal takes place on the territory of one of the four Signatories, the representative of that Signatory on the Tribunal shall preside.

(c)

Save as aforesaid the Tribunal shall take decisions by a majority vote and in case the votes are evenly divided, the vote of the President shall be decisive: provided always that convictions and sentences shall only be imposed by affirmative votes of at least three members of the Tribunal.

Article 5. In case of need and depending on the number of the matters to be tried, other Tribunals may be set up; and the establishment, functions, and procedure of each Tribunal shall be identical, and shall be governed by this Charter.

II. JURISDICTION AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Article 6. The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to in Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes.

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a)

CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;

(b)

WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

(c)

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecution on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Article 7. The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.

Article 8. The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determine that justice so requires.

Article 9. At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.

After receipt of the Indictment the Tribunal shall give such notice as it thinks fit that the prosecution intends to ask the Tribunal to make such declaration and any member of the organization will be entitled to apply to the Tribunal for leave to be heard by the Tribunal upon the question of the criminal character of the organization. The Tribunal shall have power to allow or reject the application. If the application is allowed, the Tribunal may direct in what manner the applicants shall be represented and heard.

Article 10. In cases where a group or organization is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts. In any such case the criminal nature of the group or organization is considered proved and shall not be questioned.

Article 11. Any person convicted by the Tribunal may be charged before a national, military or occupation court, referred to in Article 10 of this Charter, with a crime other than of membership in a criminal group or organization and such court may, after convicting him, impose upon him punishment independent of and additional to the punishment imposed by the Tribunal for participation in the criminal activities of such group or organization.

Article 12. The Tribunal shall have the right to take proceedings against a person charged with crimes set out in Article 6 of this Charter in his absence, if he has not been found or if the Tribunal, for any reason, finds it necessary, in the interests of justice, to conduct the hearing in his absence.

Article 13. The Tribunal shall draw up rules for its procedure. These rules shall not be inconsistent with the provisions of this Charter.

III. COMMITTEE FOR THE INVESTIGATION AND,
PROSECUTION OF MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS

Article 14. Each Signatory shall appoint a Chief Prosecutor for the investigation of the charges against and the prosecution of major war criminals.

The Chief Prosecutors shall act as a committee for the following purposes:

(a)

to agree upon a plan of the individual work of each of the Chief Prosecutors and his staff,

(b)

to settle the final designation of major war criminals to be tried by the Tribunal,

(c)

to approve the Indictment and the documents to be submitted therewith,

(d)

to lodge the Indictment and the accompanying documents with the Tribunal,

(e)

to draw up and recommend to the Tribunal for its approval draft rules of procedure, contemplated by Article 13 of this Charter. The Tribunal shall have power to accept, with or without amendments, or to reject, the rules so recommended.

The Committee shall act in all the above matters by a majority vote and shall appoint a Chairman as may be convenient and in accordance with the principle of rotation: provided that if there is an equal division of vote concerning the designation of a Defendant to be tried by the Tribunal, or the crimes with which he shall be charged, that proposal will be adopted which was made by the party which proposed that the particular Defendant be tried, or the particular charges be preferred against him.

Article 15. The Chief Prosecutors shall individually, and acting in collaboration with one another, also undertake the following duties:

(a)

investigation, collection and production before or at the Trial of all necessary evidence,

(b)

the preparation of the Indictment for approval by the Committee in accordance with paragraph (c) of Article 14 hereof,

(c)

the preliminary examination of all necessary witnesses and of the Defendants,

(d)

to act as prosecutor at the Trial,

(e)

to appoint representatives to carry out such duties as may be assigned to them,

(f)

to undertake such other matters as may appear necessary to them for the purposes of the preparation for and conduct of the Trial.

It is understood that no witness or Defendant detained by any Signatory shall be taken out of the possession of that Signatory without its assent.

IV. FAIR TRIAL FOR DEFENDANTS

Article 16. In order to ensure fair trial for the Defendants, the following procedure shall be followed:

(a)

The Indictment shall include full particulars specifying in detail the charges against the Defendants. A copy of the Indictment and of all the documents lodged with the Indictment, translated into a language which he understands, shall be furnished to the Defendant at a reasonable time before the Trial.

(b)

During any preliminary examination or trial of a Defendant he shall have the right to give any explanation relevant to the charges made against him.

(c)

A preliminary examination of a Defendant and his Trial shall be conducted in or translated into, a language which the Defendant understands.

(d)

A defendant shall have the right to conduct his own defense before the Tribunal or to have the assistance of Counsel.

(e)

A defendant shall have the right through himself or through his Counsel to present evidence at the Trial in support of his defense, and to cross-examine any witness called by the Prosecution.

V. POWERS OF THE TRIBUNAL AND
CONDUCT OF THE TRIAL

Article 17. The Tribunal shall have the power

(a)

to summon witnesses to the Trial and to require their attendance and testimony and to put questions to them,

(b)

to interrogate any Defendant,

(c)

to require the production of documents and other evidentiary material,

(d)

to administer oaths to witnesses,

(e)

to appoint officers for the carrying out of any task designated by the Tribunal including the power to have evidence taken on commission.

Article 18. The Tribunal shall

(a)

confine the Trial strictly to an expeditious hearing of the issues raised by the charges,

(b)

take strict measures to prevent any action which will cause unreasonable delay, and rule out irrelevant issues and statements of any kind whatsoever,

(c)

deal summarily with any contumacy, imposing appropriate punishment, including exclusion of any Defendant or his Counsel from some or all further proceedings, but without prejudice to the determination of the charges.

Article 19. The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value.

Article 20. The Tribunal may require to be informed of the nature of any evidence before it is offered so that it may rule upon the relevance thereof.

Article 21. The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United Nations, including the acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military or other Tribunals of any of the United Nations.

Article 22. The permanent seat of the Tribunal shall be in Berlin. The first meetings of the members of the Tribunal and of the Chief Prosecutors shall be held at Berlin in a place to be designated by the Control Council for Germany. The first trial shall be held at Nurnberg, and any subsequent trials shall be held at such places as the Tribunal may decide.

Article 23. One or more of the Chief Prosecutors may take part in the prosecution at each Trial. The function of any Chief Prosecutor may be discharged by him personally, or by any person or persons authorized by him.

The function of Counsel for a Defendant may be discharged at the Defendant’s request by any Counsel professionally qualified to conduct cases before the Courts of his own country, or by any other person who may be specially authorized thereto by the Tribunal.

Article 24. The proceedings at the Trial shall take the following course:

(a)

The Indictment shall be read in court.

(b)

The Tribunal shall ask each Defendant whether he pleads “guilty” or “not guilty”.

(c)

The prosecution shall make an opening statement.

(d)

The Tribunal shall ask the prosecution and the defense what evidence (if any) they wish to submit to the Tribunal, and the Tribunal shall rule upon the admissibility of any such evidence.

(e)

The witnesses for the Prosecution shall be examined and after that the witnesses for the Defense. Thereafter such rebutting evidence as may be held by the Tribunal to be admissible shall be called by either the Prosecution or the Defense.

(f)

The Tribunal may put any question to any witness and to any Defendant, at any time.

(g)

The Prosecution and the Defense shall interrogate and may cross-examine any witnesses and any Defendant who gives testimony.

(h)

The Defense shall address the court.

(i)

The Prosecution shall address the court.

(j)

Each Defendant may make a statement to the Tribunal.

(k)

The Tribunal shall deliver judgment and pronounce sentence.

Article 25. All official documents shall be produced, and all court proceedings conducted, in English, French, and Russian, and in the language of the Defendant. So much of the record and of the proceedings may also be translated into the language of any country in which the Tribunal is sitting, as the Tribunal considers desirable in the interests of justice and public opinion.

VI. JUDGMENT AND SENTENCE

Article 26. The judgment of the Tribunal as to the guilt or the innocence of any Defendant shall give the reasons on which it is based, and shall be final and not subject to review.

Article 27. The Tribunal shall have the right to impose upon a Defendant on conviction, death or such other punishment as shall be determined by it to be just.

Article 28. In addition to any punishment imposed by it, the Tribunal shall have the right to deprive the convicted person of any stolen property and order its delivery to the Control Council for Germany.

Article 29. In case of guilt, sentences shall be carried out in accordance with the orders of the Control Council for Germany, which may at any time reduce or otherwise alter the sentences, but may not increase the severity thereof. If the Control Council for Germany, after any Defendant has been convicted and sentenced, discovers fresh evidence which, in its opinion, would found a fresh charge against him, the Council shall report accordingly to the Committee established under Article 14 hereof, for such action as they may consider proper, having regard to the interests of justice.

VII. EXPENSES

Article 30. The expenses of the Tribunal and of the Trials, shall be charged by the Signatories against the funds allotted for maintenance of the Control Council for Germany.

PROTOCOL

Whereas an Agreement and Charter regarding the Prosecution of War Criminals was signed in London on the 8th August 1945, in the English, French and Russian languages.

And whereas a discrepancy has been found to exist between the originals of Article 6, paragraph (c), of the Charter in the Russian language, on the one hand, and the originals in the English and French languages, on the other, to wit, the semi-colon in Article 6, paragraph (c), of the Charter between the words “war” and “or”, as carried in the English and French texts, is a comma in the Russian text.

And whereas it is desired to rectify this discrepancy:

NOW, THEREFORE, the undersigned, signatories of the said Agreement on behalf of their respective Governments, duly authorized thereto, have agreed that Article 6, paragraph (c), of the Charter in the Russian text is correct, and that the meaning and intention of the Agreement and Charter require that the said semi-colon in the English, text should be changed to a comma, and that the French text should be amended to read as follows:

(c)

LES CRIMES CONTRE L’HUMANITE: c’est à dire l’assassinat, l’extermination, la reduction en esclavage, la deportation, et tout autre acte inhumain commis contre toutes populations civiles, avant ou pendant la guerre, ou bien les persecutions pour des motifs politiques, raciaux, ou religieux, lorsque ces actes ou persecutions, qu’ils aient constitue ou non une violation du droit interne du pays ou ils ont ete perpetres, ont ete commis a la suite de tout crime rentrant dans la competence du Tribunal, ou en liaison avec ce crime.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF the Undersigned have signed the present Protocol.

DONE in quadruplicate in Berlin this 6th day of October, 1945, each in English, French, and Russian, and each text to have equal authenticity.

For the Government of the United States of America

/s/ ROBERT H. JACKSON

For the Provisional Government of the French Republic

/s/ FRANCOIS de MENTHON

For the Government of the United Kingdom

of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

/s/ HARTLEY SHAWCROSS

For the Government of the Union

of Soviet Socialist Republics

/s/ R. RUDENKO

Chapter III
INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL,
INDICTMENT NUMBER I.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

—AGAINST—

HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM von RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP von BOHLEN und HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ, ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR von SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ von PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN von NEURATH, and HANS FRITZSCHE, Individually and as Members of Any of the Following Groups or Organisations to Which They Respectively Belonged, Namely: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET); DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the “SS”) and including DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the “SD”); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the “GESTAPO”); DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P. (commonly known as the “SA”) AND THE GENERAL STAFF and HIGH COMMAND OF THE GERMAN ARMED FORCES all as defined in Appendix B.

Defendants

INDICTMENT

I.

The United States of America, the French Republic, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the undersigned, Robert H. Jackson, Francois de Menthon, Hartley Shawcross and R. A. Rudenko, duly appointed to represent their respective Governments in the investigation of the charges against and the prosecution of the major war criminals, pursuant to the Agreement of London dated 8th August, 1945, and the Charter of this Tribunal annexed thereto, hereby accuse as guilty, in the respects hereinafter set forth, of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those Crimes, all as defined in the Charter of the Tribunal, and accordingly name as defendants in this cause and as indicted on the counts hereinafter set out: HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM von RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP von BOHLEN und HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ, ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR von SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ von PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN von NEURATH and HANS FRITZSCHE, individually and as members of any of the Groups or Organizations next hereinafter named.

II.

The following are named as Groups or Organizations (since dissolved) which should be declared criminal by reason of their aims and the means used for the accomplishment thereof and in connection with the conviction of such of the named defendants as were members thereof: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET); DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the “SS”) and including DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the “SD”); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the “GESTAPO”); DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P. (commonly known as the “SA”); and the GENERAL STAFF and HIGH COMMAND of the GERMAN ARMED FORCES. The identity and membership of the Groups or Organizations referred to in the foregoing titles are hereinafter in Appendix B more particularly defined.

COUNT ONE—THE COMMON PLAN OR CONSPIRACY

(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (a))

III. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, participated as leaders, organizers, instigators or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, as defined in the Charter of this Tribunal, and, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter, are individually responsible for their own acts and for all acts committed by any persons in the execution of such plan or conspiracy. The common plan or conspiracy embraced the commission of Crimes against Peace, in that the defendants planned, prepared, initiated and waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances. In the development and course of the common plan or conspiracy it came to embrace the commission of War Crimes, in that it contemplated, and the defendants determined upon and carried out, ruthless wars against countries and populations, in violation of the rules and customs of war, including as typical and systematic means by which the wars were prosecuted, murder, ill-treatment, deportation for slave labor and for other purposes of civilian populations of occupied territories, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of persons on the high seas, the taking and killing of hostages, the plunder of public and-private property, the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages, and devastation not justified by military necessity. The common plan or conspiracy contemplated and came to embrace as typical and systematic means, and the defendants determined upon and committed, Crimes against Humanity, both within Germany and within occupied territories, including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before and during the war, and persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, in execution of the plan for preparing and prosecuting aggressive or illegal wars, many of such acts and persecutions being violations of the domestic laws of the countries where perpetrated.

IV. Particulars of the nature and development of the common plan or conspiracy

(A) Nazi Party as the central core of the common plan or conspiracy

In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Fuehrer of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), also known as the Nazi Party, which had been founded in Germany in 1920. He continued as such throughout the period covered by this Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with certain of its subsidiary organizations, became the instrument of cohesion among the defendants and their co-conspirators and an instrument for the carrying out of the aims and purposes of their conspiracy. Each defendant became a member of the Nazi Party and of the conspiracy, with knowledge of their aims and purposes, or, with such knowledge, became an accessory to their aims and purposes at some stage of the development of the conspiracy.

(B) Common objectives and methods of conspiracy

The aims and purposes of the Nazi Party and of the defendants and divers other persons from time to time associated as leaders, members, supporters or adherents of the Nazi Party (hereinafter called collectively the “Nazi conspirators”) were, or came to be, to accomplish the following by any means deemed opportune, including unlawful means, and contemplating ultimate resort to threat of force, force and aggressive war: (i) to abrogate and overthrow the Treaty of Versailles and its restrictions upon the military armament and activity of Germany; (ii) to acquire the territories lost by Germany as the result of the World War of 1914-1918 and other territories in Europe asserted by the Nazi conspirators to be occupied principally by so-called “racial Germans”; (iii) to acquire still further territories in continental Europe and elsewhere claimed by the Nazi conspirators to be required by the “racial Germans” as “Lebensraum,” or living space, all at the expense of neighboring and other countries. The aims and purposes of the Nazi conspirators were not fixed or static but evolved and expanded as they acquired progressively greater power and became able to make more effective application of threats of force and threats of aggressive war. When their expanding aims and purposes became finally so great as to provoke such strength of resistance as could be overthrown only by armed force and aggressive war, and not simply by the opportunistic methods theretofore used, such as fraud, deceit, threats, intimidation, fifth column activities and propaganda, the Nazi conspirators deliberately planned, determined upon and launched their aggressive wars and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances by the phases and steps hereinafter more particularly described.

(C) Doctrinal techniques of the common plan or conspiracy

To incite others to join in the common plan or conspiracy, and as a means of securing for the Nazi conspirators the highest degree of control over the German community, they put forth, disseminated, and exploited certain doctrines, among others, as follows:

1. That persons of so-called “German blood” (as specified by the Nazi conspirators) were a “master race” and were accordingly entitled to subjugate, dominate or exterminate other “races” and peoples;

2. That the German people should be ruled under the Fuehrerprinzip (leadership principle) according to which power was to reside in a Fuehrer from whom sub-leaders were to derive authority in a hierarchical order, each sub-leader to owe unconditional obedience to his immediate superior but to be absolute in his own sphere of jurisdiction; and the power of the leadership was to be unlimited, extending to all phases of public and private life;

3. That war was a noble and necessary activity of Germans;

4. That the leadership of the Nazi Party, as the sole bearer of the foregoing and other doctrines of the Nazi Party, was entitled to shape the structure, policies and practices of the German State and all related institutions, to direct and supervise the activities of all individuals within the State, and to destroy all opponents.

(D) The acquiring of totalitarian control of Germany: Political

1. First steps in acquisition of control of State machinery

In order to accomplish their aims and purposes, the Nazi conspirators prepared to seize totalitarian control over Germany to assure that no effective resistance against them could arise within Germany itself. After the failure of the Munich Putsch of 1923 aimed at the overthrow of the Weimar Republic by direct action, the Nazi conspirators set out through the Nazi Party to undermine and capture the German Government by “legal” forms supported by terrorism. They created and utilized, as a Party formation, Die Sturmabteilungen (SA), a semi-military, voluntary organization of young men trained for and committed to the use of violence, whose mission was to make the Party the master of the streets.

2. Control acquired

On 30th January, 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28th February, 1933, clauses of the Weimar constitution guaranteeing personal liberty, freedom of speech, of the press, of association and assembly were suspended. The Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of a “Law for the Protection of the People and the Reich” giving Hitler and the members of his then cabinet plenary powers of legislation. The Nazi conspirators retained such powers after having changed the members of the cabinet. The conspirators caused all political parties except the Nazi Party to be prohibited. They caused the Nazi Party to be established as a para-governmental organization with extensive and extraordinary privileges.

3. Consolidation of control

Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the Nazi conspirators set about the consolidation of their position of power within Germany, the extermination of potential internal resistance and the placing of the German nation on a military footing.

(a)

The Nazi conspirators reduced the Reichstag to a body of their own nominees and curtailed the freedom of popular elections throughout the country. They transformed the several states, provinces and municipalities, which had formerly exercised semi-autonomous powers, into hardly more than administrative organs of the central government. They united the offices of the President and the Chancellor in the person of Hitler; instituted a widespread purge of civil servants; and severely restricted the independence of the judiciary and rendered it subservient to Nazi ends. The conspirators greatly enlarged existing State and Party organizations; established a network of new State and Party organizations; and “co-ordinated” State agencies with the Nazi Party and its branches and affiliates, with the result that German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and practice and progressively mobilized for the accomplishment of their aims.

(b)

In order to make their rule secure from attack and to instil fear in the hearts of the German people, the Nazi conspirators established and extended a system of terror against opponents and supposed or suspected opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such persons without judicial process, holding them in “protective custody” and concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation, despoilment enslavement, torture and murder. These concentration camps were established early in 1933 under the direction of the defendant GOERING and expanded as a fixed part of the terroristic policy and method of the conspirators and used by them for the commission of the Crimes against Humanity hereinafter alleged. Among the principal agencies utilized in the perpetration of these crimes were the SS and the GESTAPO, which, together with other favored branches or agencies of the State and Party, were permitted to operate without restraint of law.

(c)

The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in addition to the suppression of distinctively political opposition, it was necessary to suppress or exterminate certain other movements or groups which they regarded as obstacles to their retention of total control in Germany and to the aggressive aims of the conspiracy abroad. Accordingly:

(1)

The Nazi conspirators destroyed the free trade unions in Germany by confiscating their funds and properties, persecuting their leaders, prohibiting their activities, and supplanting them by an affiliated Party organization. The leadership principle was introduced into industrial relations, the entrepreneur becoming the leader and the workers becoming his followers. Thus any potential resistance of the workers was frustrated and the productive labor capacity of the German nation was brought under the effective control of the conspirators.

(2)

The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefor Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated church property.

(3)

The persecution by the Nazi conspirators of pacifist groups, including religious movements dedicated to pacifism, was particularly relentless and cruel.

(d)

Implementing their “master race” policy, the conspirators joined in a program of relentless persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them. Annihilation of the Jews became an official State policy, carried out both by official action and by incitements to mob and individual violence. The conspirators openly avowed their purpose. For example, the defendant ROSENBERG stated: “Anti-Semitism is the unifying element of the reconstruction of Germany.” On another occasion he also stated: “Germany will regard, the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space . . . Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the Continent.” The defendant LEY declared: “We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind—the Jew has got to be exterminated.” On another occasion he also declared: “The second German secret weapon is anti-Semitism because if it is consistently pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider.” The defendant STREICHER declared: “The sun will not shine on the nations of the earth until the last Jew is dead.” These avowals and incitements were typical of the declarations of the Nazi conspirators throughout the course of their conspiracy. The program of action against the Jews included disfranchisement, stigmatization, denial of civil rights, subjecting their persons and property to violence, deportation, enslavement, enforced labor, starvation, murder and mass extermination. The extent to which the conspirators succeeded in their purpose can only be estimated, but the annihilation was substantially complete in many localities of Europe. Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only remnants of the Jewish population of Europe remain.

(e)

In order to make the German people amenable to their will, and to prepare them psychologically for war, the Nazi conspirators reshaped the educational system and particularly the education and training of the German youth. The leadership principle was introduced into the schools and the Party and affiliated organizations were given wide supervisory powers over education. The Nazi conspirators imposed a supervision of all cultural activities, controlled the dissemination of information and the expression of opinion within Germany as well as the movement of intelligence of all kinds from and into Germany, and created vast propaganda machines.

(f)

The Nazi conspirators placed a considerable number of their dominated organizations on a progressively militarized footing with a view to the rapid transformation and use of such organizations whenever necessary as instruments of war.

(E) The acquiring of totalitarian control in Germany: Economic; and the economic planning and mobilization for aggressive war

Having gained political power the conspirators organized Germany’s economy to give effect to their political aims.

1. In order to eliminate the possibility of resistance in the economic sphere, they deprived labour of its rights of free industrial and political association as particularized in paragraph (D) 3 (c) (1) herein.

2. They used organizations of German business as instruments of economic mobilization for war.

3. They directed Germany’s economy towards preparation and equipment of the military machine. To this end they directed finance, capital investment, and foreign trade.

4. The Nazi conspirators, and in particular the industrialists among them, embarked upon a huge rearmament programme and set out to produce and develop huge quantities of materials of war and to create a powerful military potential.

5. With the object of carrying through the preparation for war the Nazi conspirators, set up a series of administrative agencies and authorities. For example, in 1936 they established for this purpose the office of the Four Year Plan with the defendant GOERING as Plenipotentiary, vesting it with overriding control over Germany’s economy. Furthermore, on 28th August, 1939, immediately before launching their aggression against Poland, they appointed the defendant FUNK Plenipotentiary for Economics; and on 30th August, 1939, they set up the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich to act as a War Cabinet.

(F) Utilization of Nazi control for foreign aggression

1. Status of the conspiracy by the middle of 1933 and projected plans.

By the middle of the year 1933 the Nazi conspirators, having acquired governmental control over Germany, were in a position to enter upon further and more detailed planning with particular relationship to foreign policy. Their plan was to rearm and to re-occupy and fortify the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, in order to acquire military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations.

2. The Nazi conspirators decided that for their purpose the Treaty of Versailles must definitely be abrogated and specific plans were made by them and put into operation by 7th March, 1936, all of which opened the way for the major aggressive steps to follow, as hereinafter set forth. In the execution of this phase of the conspiracy the Nazi conspirators did the following acts:

(a)

They led Germany to enter upon a course of secret rearmament from 1933 to March, 1935, including the training of military personnel and the production of munitions of war, and the building of an air force.

(b)

On 14th October, 1933, they led Germany to leave the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.

(c)

On 10th March, 1935, the defendant GOERING announced that Germany was building a military air force.

(d)

On 16th March, 1935, the Nazi conspirators promulgated a law for universal military service, in which they stated the peace-time strength of the German Army would be fixed at 500,000 men.

(e)

On 21st May, 1935, they falsely announced to the world, with intent to deceive and allay fears of aggressive intentions, that they would respect the territorial limitations of the Versailles Treaty and comply with the Locarno Pacts.

(f)

On 7th March, 1936, they reoccupied and fortified the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Rhine Pact of Locarno of 16th October, 1925, and falsely announced to the world that “we have no territorial demands to make in Europe.”

3. Aggressive action against Austria and Czechoslovakia

(a)

The 1936-1938 phase of the plan: planning for the assault on Austria and Czechoslovakia

The Nazi conspirators next entered upon the specific planning for the acquisition of Austria and Czechoslovakia, realizing it would be necessary, for military reasons, first to seize Austria before assaulting Czechoslovakia. On 21st May, 1935, in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler stated that: “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss.” On 1st May, 1936, within two months after the reoccupation of the Rhineland, Hitler stated: “The lie goes forth again that Germany tomorrow or the day after will fall upon Austria or Czechoslovakia.” Thereafter, the Nazi conspirators caused a treaty to be entered into between Austria and Germany on 11th July, 1936, Article 1 of which stated that “The German Government recognizes the full sovereignty of the Federated State of Austria in the spirit of the pronouncements of the German Fuehrer and Chancellor of 21st May, 1935.” Meanwhile, plans for aggression in violation of that treaty were being made. By the autumn of 1937, all noteworthy opposition within the Reich had been crushed. Military preparation for the Austrian action was virtually concluded. An influential group of the Nazi conspirators met with Hitler on 5th November, 1937, to review the situation. It was reaffirmed that Nazi Germany must have “Lebensraum” in central Europe. It was recognized that such conquest would probably meet resistance which would have to be crushed by force and that their decision might lead to a general war, but this prospect was discounted as a risk worth taking. There emerged from this meeting three possible plans for the conquest of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Which of the three was to be used was to depend upon the developments in the political and military situation in Europe. It was contemplated that the conquest of Austria and Czechoslovakia would, through compulsory emigration of 2,000,000 persons from Czechoslovakia and 1,000,000 persons from Austria, provide additional food to the Reich for 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people, strengthen it militarily by providing shorter and better frontiers, and make possible the constituting of new armies up to about twelve divisions. Thus, the aim of the plan against Austria and Czechoslovakia was conceived of not as an end to itself but as a preparatory measure toward the next aggressive steps in the Nazi conspiracy.

(b)

The execution of the plan to invade Austria: November, 1937, to March, 1938

Hitler on 8th February, 1938, called Chancellor Schuschnigg to a conference at Berchtesgaden. At the meeting of 12th February, 1938, under threat of invasion, Schuschnigg yielded a promise of amnesty to imprisoned Nazis and appointment of Nazis to ministerial posts. He agreed to remain silent until Hitler’s 20th February speech in which Austria’s independence was to be reaffirmed, but Hitler in his speech, instead of affirming Austrian independence, declared himself protector of all Germans. Meanwhile, subversive activities of Nazis in Austria increased. Schuschnigg on 9th March, 1938, announced a plebiscite for the following Sunday on the question of Austrian independence. On 11th March Hitler sent an ultimatum, demanding that the plebiscite be called off or that Germany would invade Austria. Later the same day a second ultimatum threatened invasion unless Schuschnigg should resign in three hours. Schuschnigg resigned. The defendant SEYSS-INQUART, who was appointed Chancellor, immediately invited Hitler to send German troops into Austria to “preserve order.” The invasion began on 12th March, 1938. On 13th March, Hitler by proclamation assumed office as Chief of State of Austria and took command of its armed forces. By a law of the same date Austria was annexed to Germany.

(c)

The execution of the plan to invade Czechoslovakia: April, 1938, to March, 1939

1. Simultaneously with their annexation of Austria the Nazi conspirators gave false assurances to the Czechoslovak Government that they would not attack that country. But within a month they met to plan specific ways and means of attacking Czechoslovakia, and to revise, in the light of the acquisition of Austria, the previous plans for aggression against Czechoslovakia.

2. On 21st April, 1938, the Nazi conspirators met and prepared to launch an attack on Czechoslovakia not later than 1st October, 1938. They planned specifically to create an “incident” to “justify” the attack. They decided to launch a military attack only after a period of diplomatic squabbling which, growing more serious, would lead to the excuse for war, or, in the alternative, to unleash a lightning attack as a result of an “incident” of their own creation. Consideration was given to assassinating the German Ambassador at Prague to create the requisite incident. From and after 21st April, 1938, the Nazi conspirators caused to be prepared detailed and precise military plans designed to carry out such an attack at any opportune moment and calculated to overcome all Czechoslovak, resistance within four days, thus presenting the world with a fait accompli, and so forestalling outside resistance. Throughout the months of May, June, July, August and September, these plans were made more specific and detailed, and by 3rd September, 1938, it was decided that all troops were to be ready for action on 28th September, 1938.

3. Throughout this same period, the Nazi conspirators were agitating the minorities question in Czechoslovakia, and particularly in the Sudetenland, leading to a diplomatic crisis in August and September, 1938. After the Nazi conspirators threatened war, the United Kingdom and France concluded a pact with Germany and Italy at Munich on 29th September, 1938, involving the cession of the Sudetenland by Czechoslovakia to Germany. Czechoslovakia was required to acquiesce. On 1st October, 1938, German troops occupied the Sudetenland.

4. On 15th March, 1939, contrary to the provisions of the Munich Pact itself, the Nazi conspirators caused the completion of their plan by seizing and occupying the major part of Czechoslovakia not ceded to Germany by the Munich Pact.

4. Formulation of the plan to attack Poland: preparation and initiation of aggressive war: March, 1939, to September, 1939

(a)

With these aggressions successfully consummated, the conspirators had obtained much desired resources and bases and were ready to undertake further aggressions by means of war. Following assurances to the world of peaceful intentions, an influential group of the conspirators met on 23rd May, 1939, to consider the further implementation of their plan. The situation was reviewed and it was observed that “the past six years have been put to good use and all measures have been taken in correct sequence and in accordance with our aims”; that the national-political unity of the Germans had been substantially achieved; and that further successes could not be achieved without war and bloodshed. It was decided nevertheless next to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity. It was admitted that the questions concerning Danzig which they had agitated with Poland were not true questions, but rather that the question was one of aggressive expansion for food and “Lebensraum.” It was recognized that Poland would fight if attacked and that a repetition of the Nazi success against Czechoslovakia without war could not be expected. Accordingly, it was determined that the problem was to isolate Poland and, if possible, prevent a simultaneous conflict with the Western Powers. Nevertheless, it was agreed that England was an enemy to their aspirations, and that war with England and her ally France must eventually result, and therefore that in that war every attempt must be made to overwhelm England with a “Blitzkrieg.” It was thereupon determined immediately to prepare detailed plans for an attack on Poland at the first suitable opportunity and thereafter for an attack on England and France, together with plans for the simultaneous occupation by armed force of air bases in the Netherlands and Belgium.

(b)

Accordingly, after having denounced the German-Polish Pact of 1934 on false grounds, the Nazi conspirators proceeded to stir up the Danzig issue to prepare frontier “incidents” to “justify” the attack, and to make demands for the cession of Polish territory. Upon refusal by Poland to yield, they caused German armed forces to invade Poland on 1st September, 1939, thus precipitating war also with the United Kingdom and France.

5. Expansion of the war into a general war of aggression: planning and execution of attacks on Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece: 1939 to April, 1941

Thus the aggressive war prepared for by the Nazi conspirators through their attacks on Austria and Czechoslovakia was actively launched by their attack on Poland, in violation of the terms of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, 1928. After the total defeat of Poland, in order to facilitate the carrying out of their military operations against France and the United Kingdom, the Nazi conspirators made active preparations for an extension of the war in Europe. In accordance with those plans, they caused the German armed forces to invade Denmark and Norway on 9th April, 1940; Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg on 10th May, 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece on 6th April, 1941. All these invasions had been specifically planned in advance.

6. German invasion on June 22nd, 1941, of the U.S.S.R. territory in violation of Non-Aggression Pact of 23rd August, 1939

On June 22nd, 1941, the Nazi conspirators deceitfully denounced the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the U.S.S.R. and without any declaration of war invaded Soviet territory thereby beginning a War of Aggression against the U.S.S.R.

From the first day of launching their attack on Soviet territory the Nazi conspirators, in accordance with their detailed plans, began to carry out the destruction of cities, towns and villages, the demolition of factories, collective farms, electric stations and railroads, the robbery and barbaric devastation of the natural cultural institutions of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., the devastation of museums, churches, historic monuments. The mass deportation of the Soviet citizens for slave labor to Germany, as well as the annihilation of old people, women and children, especially Belo-Russians and Ukrainians. The extermination of Jews committed throughout the territory of the Soviet Union.

The above-mentioned criminal offenses were perpetrated by the German troops in accordance with the orders of the Nazi Government and the General Staff and High Command of the German armed forces.

7. Collaboration with Italy and Japan and aggressive war against the United States: November, 1936, to December, 1941

After the initiation of the Nazi wars of aggression the Nazi conspirators brought about a German-Italian-Japanese ten-year military-economic alliance signed at Berlin on 27th September, 1940. This agreement, representing a strengthening of the bonds among those three nations established by the earlier but more limited pact of 25th November, 1936, stated: “The Governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, considering it as a condition precedent of any lasting peace that all nations of the world be given each its own proper place, have decided to stand by and co-operate with one another in regard of their efforts in Greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned.” The Nazi conspirators conceived that Japanese aggression would weaken and handicap those nations with whom they were at war, and those with whom they contemplated war. Accordingly, the Nazi conspirators exhorted Japan to seek “a new order of things.” Taking advantage of the wars of aggression then being waged by the Nazi conspirators, Japan commenced an attack on 7th December, 1941, against the United States of America at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, and against the British Commonwealth of Nations, French Indo-China and the Netherlands in the southwest Pacific. Germany declared war against the United States on 11th December, 1941.

(G) War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity committed in the course of executing the conspiracy for which the conspirators are responsible

1. Beginning with the initiation of the aggressive war on 1st September, 1939, and throughout its extension into wars involving almost the entire world, the Nazi conspirators carried out their common plan or conspiracy to wage war in ruthless and complete disregard and violation of the laws and customs of war. In the course of executing the common plan or conspiracy there were committed the War Crimes detailed hereinafter in Count Three of this Indictment.

2. Beginning with the initiation of their plan to seize and retain total control of the German State, and thereafter throughout their utilization of that control for foreign aggression, the Nazi conspirators carried out their common plan or conspiracy in ruthless and complete disregard and violation of the laws of humanity. In the course of executing the common plan or conspiracy there were committed the Crimes against Humanity detailed hereinafter in Count Four of this Indictment.

3. By reason of all the foregoing, the defendants with divers other persons are guilty of a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of Crimes against Peace; of a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity in the course of preparation for war and in the course of prosecution of war; and of a conspiracy to commit War Crimes not only against the armed forces of their enemies but also against non-belligerent civilian populations.

(H) Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count One

Reference is hereby, made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility, of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count One of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count One of the Indictment.

COUNT TWO—CRIMES AGAINST PEACE

(Charter, Article 6 (a))

V. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances.

VI. Particulars of the wars planned, prepared, initiated and waged

(A) The wars referred to in the Statement of Offense in this Count Two of the Indictment and the dates of their initiation were the following: against Poland, 1st September, 1939; against the United Kingdom and France, 3rd September, 1939; against Denmark and Norway, 9th April, 1940; against Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 10th May, 1940; against Yugoslavia and Greece, 6th April, 1941; against the U.S.S.R., 22nd June, 1941; and against the United States of America, 11th December, 1941.

(B) Reference is hereby made to Count One of the Indictment for the allegations charging that these wars were wars of aggression on the part of the defendants.

(C) Reference is hereby made to Appendix C annexed to this Indictment for a statement of particulars of the charges of violations of international treaties, agreements and assurances caused by the defendants in the course of planning, preparing and initiating these wars.

VII. Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count Two

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count Two of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count Two of the Indictment.

COUNT THREE—WAR CRIMES

(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (b)).

VIII. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1st September, 1939, and 8th May, 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied by the German armed forces since 1st September, 1939, and in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, and on the High Seas.

All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a common plan or conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of “total war” including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies, and against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories against the civilian population of such territories.

The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations, and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct.

(A) Murder and Ill-treatment of Civilian Populations of or in Occupied Territory and on the High Seas

Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and ill-treated them, and imprisoned them without legal process.

The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered with religious services, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others.

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to “protective arrests” whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified “Nacht und Nebel”. These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to International Conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and ill-treatment of civilians.

1. In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the “Western Countries”) and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called “Western Germany”).

Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the defendants and particularly in the concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Vught and Amersfoort, and in numerous cities, towns and villages, including Oradour sur Glane, Trondheim and Oslo.

Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following forms:—

Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts; they were both individual and collective; notably in Paris (round-up of the 18th Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in August, 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals in December, 1941, round-up in July, 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand, (round-up of professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermon-Ferrand[Clermont-Ferrand?] on 25th November, 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January, 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24th December, 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24th December, 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May, 1944); at Saint Pol de Leon (round-up in July, 1944); at Locminé (round-up on 3rd July, 1944); at Eyzieux (round-up in May, 1944) and at Moussey (round-up in September, 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and practised in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Bethune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes and Caen, and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centres.

In the concentration camps, the health regime, and the labour regime, were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:—

1.

Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from Compiegne to Auschwitz in January, 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the end of four months.

2.

143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23rd March and 6th May, 1943, in Block 8 at Dachau.

3.

1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21st November, 1943, and 15th March, 1945, in the Block at Dora.

4.

465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November, 1944, at Dora.

5.

22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1st January, 1943, and 15th April, 1945.

6.

11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and infirm) between 1st January and 15th April, 1945.

7.

780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.

8.

Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg Camp, 1,600 died from supposedly natural causes.

Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps were:—bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbruck, study of the evolution of cancer of the womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at Natzweiller, heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular excisions at Ravensbruck, etc.), gas-chambers, gas-wagons and crematory ovens. Of 228,000 French political and racial deportees in concentration camps, only 28,000 survived.

In France also systematic extermination was practised, notably at Asq on 1st April, 1944, at Colpo on 22nd July, 1944, at Buzet sur Tarn on 6th July, 1944 and on 17th August, 1944, at Pluvignier on 8th July, 1944, at Rennes on 8th June, 1944, at Grenoble on 8th July, 1944, at Saint Flour on 10th June, 1944, at Ruisnes on 10th July, 1944, at Nimes, at Tulle, and at Nice, where, in July, 1944, the victims of torture were exposed to the population, and at Oradour sur Glane where the entire village population was shot or burned alive in the church.

The many charnel pits give proof of anonymous massacres. Most notable of these are the charnel pits of Paris (Cascade du Bois de Boulogne), Lyons, Saint Genies Laval, Besancon, Petit Saint Bernard, Aulnat, Caen, Port Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, L’hermitage, Lorges, Morlaas, Bordelongue, Signe.

In the course of a premeditated campaign of terrorism, initiated in Denmark by the Germans in the latter part of 1943, 600 Danish subjects were murdered and, in addition, throughout the German occupation of Denmark, large numbers of Danish subjects were subjected to torture and ill-treatment of all sorts. In addition, approximately 500 Danish subjects were murdered, by torture and otherwise, in German prisons and concentration camps.

In Belgium between 1940 and 1944 tortures by various means, but identical in each place, were carried out at Brussels, Liege, Mons, Ghent, Namur, Antwerp, Tournai, Arlon, Charleroi and Dinant.

At Vught, in Holland, when the camp was evacuated about 400 persons were murdered by shooting.

In Luxembourg, during the German occupation, 500 persons were murdered and, in addition, another 521 were illegally executed, by order of such special tribunals as the so-called “Sondergericht”. Many more persons in Luxembourg were subjected to torture and mistreatment by the Gestapo. Not less than 4,000 Luxembourg nationals were imprisoned during the period of German occupation, and of these at least 400 were murdered.

Between March, 1944, and April, 1945, in Italy, at least 7,500 men, women and children, ranging in years from infancy to extreme old age were murdered by the German soldiery at Civitella, in the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, and at other places.

2. In the U.S.S.R., i.e., in the Bielorussian, Ukrainian, Esthonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republics, in 19 regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Balkans (hereinafter called “the Eastern Countries”) and in that part of Germany which lies East of a line drawn North and South through the centre of Berlin (hereinafter called “Eastern Germany”).

From the 1st September, 1939, when the German armed forces invaded Poland, and from the 22nd June, 1941, when they invaded the U.S.S.R., the German Government and the German High Command adopted a systematic policy of murder and ill-treatment of the civilian populations of and in the Eastern Countries as they were successively occupied by the German armed forces. These murders and ill-treatments were carried on continuously until the German Armed Forces were driven out of the said countries.

Such murders and ill-treatments included:—

(a) Murders and ill-treatments at concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the Germans in the Eastern Countries and in Eastern Germany including those set up at Maidanek and Auschwitz.

The said murders and ill-treatments were carried out by divers means including all those set out above, as follows:

About 1,500,000 persons were exterminated in Maidanek and about 4,000,000 persons were exterminated in Auschwitz, among whom were citizens of Poland, the U.S.S.R., the United States of America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France and other countries.

In the Lwow region and in the city of Lwow the Germans exterminated about 700,000 Soviet people, including 70 persons in the field of the arts, science and technology, and also citizens of the U. S. A., Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Holland, brought to this region from other concentration camps.

In the Jewish ghetto from 7th September, 1941, to 6th July, 1943, over 133,000 persons were tortured and shot.

Mass shooting of the population occurred in the suburbs of the city and in the Livenitz forest.

In the Ganov camp 200,000 peaceful citizens were exterminated. The most refined methods of cruelty were employed in this extermination, such as disembowelling and the freezing of human beings in tubs of water. Mass shootings took place to the accompaniment of the music of an orchestra recruited from the persons interned.

Beginning with June, 1943, the Germans carried out measures to hide the evidence of their crimes. They exhumed and burned corpses, and they crushed the bones with machines and used them for fertilizer.

At the beginning of 1944 in the Ozarichi region of the Bielorussian S.S.R., before liberation by the Red Army, the Germans established three concentration camps without shelters, to which they committed tens of thousands of persons from the neighbouring territories. They brought many people to these camps from typhus hospitals intentionally, for the purpose of infecting the other persons interned and for spreading the disease in territories from which the Germans were being driven by the Red Army. In these camps there were many murders and crimes.

In the Esthonian S.S.R. they shot tens of thousands of persons and in one day alone, 19th September, 1944, in Camp Kloga, the Germans shot 2,000 peaceful citizens. They burned the bodies on bonfires.

In the Lithuanian S.S.R. there were mass killings of Soviet citizens, namely: in Panerai at least 100,000; in Kaunas more than 70,000; in Alitus about 60,000; at Prenai more than 3,000; in Villiampol about 8,000; in Mariampol about 7,000; in Trakai and neighbouring towns 37,640.

In the Latvian S.S.R. 577,000 persons were murdered.

As a result of the whole system of internal order maintained in all camps, the interned persons were doomed to die.

In a secret instruction entitled “the internal regime in concentration camps”, signed personally by Himmler in 1941 severe measures of punishment were set forth for the internees. Masses of prisoners of war were shot, or died from the cold and torture.

(b) Murders and ill-treatments at places in the Eastern Countries and in the Soviet Union, other than in the camps referred to in (a) above, included, on various dates during the occupation by the German Armed Forces:

The destruction in the Smolenck region of over 135,000 Soviet citizens.

Among these, near the village of Kholmetz of the Sychev region, when the military authorities were required to remove the mines from an area, on the order of the Commander of the 101st German Infantry Division, Major-General Fisler, the German soldiers gathered the inhabitants of the village of Kholmetz and forced them to remove mines from the road. All of these people lost their lives as a result of exploding mines.

In the Leningrad region there were shot and tortured over 172,000 persons, including over 20,000 persons who were killed in the city of Leningrad by the barbarous artillery barrage and the bombings.

In the Stavropol region in an anti-tank trench close to the station of Mineralny Vody, and in other cities, tens of thousands of persons were exterminated.

In Pyatigorsk many were subjected to torture and criminal treatment, including suspension from the ceiling and other methods. Many of the victims of these tortures were then shot.

In Krasnodar some 6,700 civilians were murdered by poison gas in gas vans, or were shot and tortured.

In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were killed and tortured. After the Germans were expelled from Stalingrad, more than a thousand mutilated bodies of local inhabitants were found with marks of torture. One hundred and thirty-nine women had their arms painfully bent backward and held by wires. From some their breasts had been cut off and their ears, fingers and toes had been amputated. The bodies bore the marks of burns. On the bodies of the men the five pointed star was burned with an iron or cut with a knife. Some were disembowelled.

In Orel over 5,000 persons were murdered.

In Novgorod and in the Novgorod region many thousands of Soviet citizens were killed by shooting, starvation and torture. In Minsk tens of thousands of citizens were similarly killed.

In the Crimea peaceful citizens were gathered on barges, taken out to sea and drowned, over 144,000 persons being exterminated in this manner.

In the Soviet Ukraine there were monstrous criminal acts of the Nazi conspirators. In Babi Yar, near Kiev, they shot over 100,000 men, women, children and old people. In this city in January, 1941, after the explosion in German Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street the Germans arrested as hostages 1,250 persons—old men, minors, women with nursing infants. In Kiev they killed over 195,000 persons.

In Rovno and the Rovno region they killed and tortured over 100,000 peaceful citizens.

In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot or threw alive into a great ravine 11,000 women, old men and children.

In Kamenetz-Podolsk Region 31,000 Jews were shot and exterminated, including 13,000 persons brought there from Hungary.

In the Odessa Region at least 200,000 Soviet citizens were killed.

In Kharkov about 195,000 persons were either tortured to death, shot or gassed in gas vans.

In Gomel the Germans rounded up the population in prison, and tortured and tormented them, and then took them to the centre of the city and shot them in public.

In the city of Lyda in the Grodenen region on 8th May, 1942, 5,670 persons were completely undressed, driven into pens in groups of 100 and then shot by machine guns. Many were thrown in the graves while they were still alive.

Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly destroyed even children. They killed them with their parents, in groups and alone. They killed them in children’s homes and hospitals, burying the living in the graves, throwing them into flames, stabbing them with bayonets, poisoning them, conducting experiments upon them, extracting their blood for the use of the German Army, throwing them into prison and Gestapo torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children died from hunger, torture and epidemic diseases.

From 6th September to 24th November, 1942, in the region of Brest, Pinsk, Kobren, Dyvina, Malority and Berezy-Kartuzsky about 400 children were shot by German punitive units.

In the Yanov camp in the city of Lwow the Germans killed 8,000 children in two months.

In the resort of Tiberda the Germans annihilated 500 children suffering from tuberculosis of the bone, who were in the sanatorium for the cure.

On the territory of the Latvian S.S.R. the German usurpers killed thousands of children, which they had brought there with their parents from the Bielorussian S.S.R., and from the Kalinin, Kaluga and other regions of the R.S.F.S.R.

In Czechoslovakia as a result of torture, beating, hanging, and shootings, there were annihilated in Gestapo prisons in Brno, Seim and other places over 20,000 persons. Moreover many thousands of internees were subjected to criminal treatment, beatings and torture.

Both before the war, as well as during the war, thousands of Czech patriots, in particular catholics and protestants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., were arrested as hostages and imprisoned. A large number of these hostages were killed by the Germans.

In Greece in October, 1941, the male populations between 16 and 60 years of age of the Greek villages Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia Mesovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion and Kato-Kerzilion were shot—in all 416 persons.

In Yugoslavia many thousands of civilians were murdered. Other examples are given under paragraph (D), “Killing of Hostages”, below.

(B) Deportation for Slave Labour and for other purposes of the Civilian Populations of and in Occupied Territories

During the whole period of the occupation by Germany of both the Western and the Eastern Countries it was the policy of the German Government and of the German High Command to deport able bodied citizens from such occupied countries to Germany and to other occupied countries for the purpose of slave labour upon defence works, in factories and in other tasks connected with the German War effort.

In pursuance of such policy there were mass deportations from all the Western and Eastern countries for such purposes during the whole period of the occupation.

Such deportations were contrary to international Conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars of deportations, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows:

1. From the Western Countries:

From France the following deportations of persons for political and racial reasons took place—each of which consisted of from 1,500-2,500 deportees:

Such deportees were subjected to the most barbarous conditions of overcrowding; they were provided with wholly insufficient clothing and were given little or no food for several days.

The conditions of transport were such that many deportees died in the course of the voyage, for example:

In one of the wagons of the train which left Compiegne for Buchenwald, on the 17th September, 1943, 80 men died out of 130;

On 4th June, 1944, 484 bodies were taken out of the train at Sarrebourg;

In a train which left Compiegne on the 2nd July, 1944, for Dachau, more than 600 dead were found on arrival, i.e., one-third of the total number;

In a train which left Compiegne on the 16th January, 1944, for Buchenwald more than 100 men were confined in each wagon, the dead and the wounded being heaped in the last wagon during the voyage;

In April, 1945, of 12,000 internees evacuated from Buchenwald, 4,000 only were still alive when the marching column arrived near Regensburg.

During the German occupation of Denmark, 5,200 Danish subjects were deported to Germany and there imprisoned in concentration camps and other places.

In 1942 and thereafter 6,000 nationals of Luxembourg were departed from their country under deplorable conditions as a result of which many of them perished.

From Belgium between 1940 and 1941 at least 190,000 civilians were deported to Germany and used as slave labour. Such deportees were subjected to ill-treatment and many of them were compelled to work in armament factories.

From Holland, between 1940 and 1944 nearly half a million civilians were deported to Germany and to other occupied countries.

2. From the Eastern Countries:

The German occupying authorities deported from the Soviet Union to slavery about 4,978,000 Soviet citizens.

750,000 Czechoslovakian citizens were taken away for forced labor outside the Czechoslovak frontiers in the interior of the German war machine.

On June 4, 1941, in the city of Zagreb (Yugoslavia) a meeting of German representatives was called with the Councillor Von Troll presiding. The purpose was to set up the means of deporting the Yugoslav population from Slovenia. Tens of thousands of persons were deported in carrying out this plan.

(C) Murder and Ill-treatment of Prisoners of War, and of other members of the Armed Forces of the countries with whom Germany was at war, and of persons on the high seas

The Defendants murdered and ill-treated prisoners of war by denying them adequate food, shelter, clothing and medical care and attention; by forcing them to labor in inhumane conditions; by torturing them and subjecting them to inhuman indignities and by killing them. The German Government and the German High Command imprisoned prisoners of war in various concentration camps, where they were killed and subjected to inhuman treatment by the various methods set forth in paragraph VIII (A). Members of the armed forces of the countries with whom Germany was at war were frequently murdered while in the act of surrendering. These murders and ill-treatment were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, and to Articles 2, 3, 4 and 6 of the Prisoners of War Convention (Geneva 1929) the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars by way of examples and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:

1. In the Western Countries:

French officers who escaped from Oflag X C were handed over to the Gestapo and disappeared; others were murdered by their guards; others sent to concentration camps and exterminated. Among others, the men of Stalag VI C were sent to Buchenwald.

Frequently prisoners captured on the Western Front were obliged to march to the camps until they completely collapsed. Some of them walked more than 600 kilometers with hardly any food; they marched on for 48 hours running, without being fed; among them a certain number died of exhaustion or of hunger; stragglers were systematically murdered.

The same crimes have been committed in 1943, 1944 and 1945 when the occupants of the camps were withdrawn before the Allied advance; particularly during the withdrawal of the prisoners of Sagan on February 8th, 1945.

Bodily punishments were inflicted upon non-commissioned officers and cadets who refused to work. On December 24th, 1943, three French N.C.O’s were murdered for that motive in Stalag IV A. Many ill-treatments were inflicted without motive on other ranks: stabbing with bayonets, striking with rifle-butts and whipping; in Stalag XX B the sick themselves were beaten many times by sentries; in Stalag III B and Stalag III C, worn-out prisoners were murdered or grievously wounded. In military gaols in Graudenz for instance, in reprisal camps as in Rava-Ruska, the food was so insufficient that the men lost more than 15 kilograms in a few weeks. In May, 1942, 1 loaf of bread only was distributed in Rava-Ruska to each group of 35 men.

Orders were given to transfer French officers in chains to the camp of Mauthausen after they had tried to escape. At their arrival in camp they were murdered, either by shooting, or by gas and their bodies destroyed in the crematorium.

American prisoners, officers and men, were murdered in Normandy during the summer of 1944 and in the Ardennes in December, 1944. American prisoners were starved, beaten and otherwise mistreated in numerous Stalag in Germany and in the occupied countries, particularly in 1943, 1944 and 1945.

2. In the Eastern Countries:

At Orel prisoners of war were exterminated by starvation, shooting, exposure, and poisoning.

Soviet prisoners of war were murdered en masse on orders from the High Command and the Headquarters of the SIPO and SD. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were tortured and murdered at the “Gross Lazaret” at Slavuta.

In addition, many thousands of the persons referred to in paragraph VIII (A) 2, above, were Soviet prisoners of war.

Prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured were handed over to SIPO and SD for shooting.

Frenchmen fighting with the Soviet Army who were captured were handed over to the Vichy Government for “proceedings”.

In March, 1944, 50 R.A.F. officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan, when recaptured, were murdered.

In September, 1941, 11,000 Polish officers, who were prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.

In Yugoslavia the German Command and the occupying authorities in the person of the chief officials of the Police, the SS troops (Police Lieutenant General Rosener) and the Divisional Group Command (General Kuebler and others) in the period 1941-43 ordered the shooting of prisoners of war.

(D) Killing of Hostages

Throughout the territories occupied by the German armed forces in the course of waging aggressive wars, the defendants adopted and put into effect on a wide scale the practice of taking, and of killing, hostages from the civilian population. These acts were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Article 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:

1. In the Western Countries:

In France hostages were executed either individually or collectively; these executions took place in all the big cities of France, among others in Paris, Bordeaux and Nantes, as well as at Chateabriant.

In Holland many hundreds of hostages were shot at the following among other places—Rotterdam, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Benschop and Haarlem.

In Belgium many hundreds of hostages were shot during the period 1940 to 1944.

2. In the Eastern Countries:

At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in October, 1941.

At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.

(E) Plunder of Public and Private Property

The defendants ruthlessly exploited the people and the material resources of the countries they occupied, in order to strengthen the Nazi war machine, to depopulate and impoverish the rest of Europe, to enrich themselves and their adherents, and to promote German economic supremacy over Europe.

The Defendants engaged in the following acts and practices, among others:

1. They degraded the standard of life of the people of occupied countries and caused starvation, by stripping occupied countries of foodstuffs for removal to Germany.

2. They seized raw materials and industrial machinery in all of the occupied countries, removed them to Germany and used them in the interest of the German war effort and the German economy.

3. In all the occupied countries, in varying degrees, they confiscated businesses, plants and other property.

4. In an attempt to give color of legality to illegal acquisitions of property, they forced owners of property to go through the forms of “voluntary” and “legal” transfers.

5. They established comprehensive controls over the economies of all of the occupied countries and directed their resources, their production and their labor in the interests of the German war economy, depriving the local populations of the products of essential industries.

6. By a variety of financial mechanisms, they despoiled all of the occupied countries of essential commodities and accumulated wealth, debased the local currency systems and disrupted the local economies. They financed extensive purchases in occupied countries through clearing arrangements by which they exacted loans from the occupied countries. They imposed occupation levies, exacted financial contributions, and issued occupation currency, far in excess of occupation costs. They used these excess funds to finance the purchase of business properties and supplies in the occupied countries.

7. They abrogated the rights of the local populations in the occupied portions of the USSR and in Poland and in other countries to develop or manage agricultural and industrial properties, and reserved this area for exclusive settlement, development, and ownership by Germans and their so-called racial brethren.

8. In further development of their plan of criminal exploitation, they destroyed industrial cities, cultural monuments, scientific institutions, and property of all types in the occupied territories to eliminate the possibility of competition with Germany.

9. From their program of terror, slavery, spoliation and organized outrage, the Nazi conspirators created an instrument for the personal profit and aggrandizement of themselves and their adherents. They secured for themselves and their adherents

(a)

Positions in administration of business involving power, influence and lucrative perquisites.

(b)

The use of cheap forced labor.

(c)

The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign properties, business interests, and raw materials.

(d)

The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany.

These acts were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 46 to 56 inclusive of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars (by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are as follows:

1. Western Countries:

There was plundered from the Western Countries from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, textiles, antique pieces and similar articles of enormous value to the number of 21,903.

In France statistics show the following:

and various other products to a total value of 79,961,423,000 francs.

Removal of Industrial Equipment

Total: 9,759,861,000 Francs, of which 2,626,479,000 Francs of Machine Tools.

Removal of Agricultural Produce

Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i.e., for the principal

Removal of Manufactured Products

to a total of 184,640,000 francs.

Plundering

Francs: 257,020,024,000 from private enterprise.

Francs: 55,000,100,000 from the State.

Financial Exploitation

From June 1940 to September 1944 the French Treasury was compelled to pay to Germany 631,866,000,000 francs.

Looting and Destruction of Works of Art

The museums of Nantes, Nancy, Old-Marseilles were looted.

Private collections of great value were stolen. In this way Raphaels, Vermeers, Van Dycks and works of Rubens, Holbein, Rembrandt, Watteau, Boucher disappeared. Germany compelled France to deliver up “The Mystic Lamb” by Van Eyck, which Belgium had entrusted to her.

In Norway and other occupied countries decrees were made by which the property of many civilians, societies, etc., was confiscated. An immense amount of property of every kind was plundered from France, Belgium, Norway, Holland and Luxembourg.

As a result of the economic plundering of Belgium between 1940 and 1944 the damage suffered amounted to 175 billions of Belgian francs.

2. Eastern Countries:

During the occupation of the Eastern Countries the German Government and the German High Command carried out, as a systematic policy, a continuous course of plunder and destruction including:—

On the territory of the Soviet Union the Nazi conspirators destroyed or severely damaged 1,710 cities and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, more than 6,000,000 buildings and made homeless about 25,000,000 persons.

Among the cities which suffered most destruction are Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Stalino and Leningrad.

As is evident from an official memorandum of the German command, the Nazi conspirators planned the complete annihilation of entire Soviet cities. In completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No. 1601/41, dated 29, IX, 1941), addressed only to Staff officers, it was said:

“The Fuehrer has decided to erase from the face of the earth St. Petersburgh. The existence of this large city will have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed. Finland has also said that the existence of this city on her new border is not desirable from her point of view. The original request of the Navy that docks, harbor, etc. necessary for the fleet be preserved—is known to the Supreme Commander of the Military Forces, but the basic principles of carrying out operations against St. Petersburgh do not make it possible to satisfy this request.

It is proposed to approach near to the city and to destroy it with the aid of an artillery barrage from weapons of different calibres and with long air attacks.

The problem of the life of the population and the provisioning of them is a problem which cannot and must not be decided by us.

In this war * * * we are not interested in preserving even a part of the population of this large city.”

The Germans destroyed 427 museums, among them the wealthy museums of Leningrad, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Novgorod, Poltava and others.

In Pyatigorsk the art objects brought there from the Rostov museum were seized.

The losses suffered by the coal mining industry alone in the Stalin Region amount to 2,000,000,000 rubles. There was colossal destruction of industrial establishments in Makerevka, Carlovka, Yenakievo, Konstantinovka, Mariupol, from which most of the machinery and factories were removed.

Stealing of huge dimensions and the destruction of industrial, cultural and other property was typified in Kiev. More than 4,000,000 books, magazines and manuscripts (many of which were very valuable and even unique) and a large number of artistic productions and valuables of different kinds were stolen and carried away.

Many valuable art productions were taken away from Riga.

The extent of the plunder of cultural valuables is evidenced by the fact that 100,000 valuable volumes and 70 cases of ancient periodicals and precious monographs were carried away by Rosenberg’s staff alone.

Among further examples of these crimes are:

Wanton devastation of the city of Novgorod and of many historical and artistic monuments there. Wanton devastation and plunder of the city of Rovno and of its province. The destruction of the industrial, cultural and other property in Odessa. The destruction of cities and villages in Soviet Karelia. The destruction in Estonia of cultural, industrial and other buildings.

The destruction of medical and prophylactic institutes, the destruction of agriculture and industry in Lithuania, the destruction of cities in Latvia.

The Germans approached monuments of culture, dear to the Soviet people, with special hatred. They broke up the estate of the poet Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, desecrating his grave, and destroying the neighboring villages and the Svyatogor monastery.

They destroyed the estate and museum of Lev Tolstoy, “Yasnaya Polyana” and desecrated the grave of the great writer. They destroyed in Klin the museum of Tsaikovsky and in Penaty, the museum of the painter Repin and many others.

The Nazi conspirators destroyed 1,670 Greek Orthodox Churches, 237 Roman Catholic Churches, 67 Chapels, 532 Synagogues, etc.

They broke up, desecrated and senselessly destroyed also the most valuable monuments of the Christian Church, such as Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Novy Jerusalem in the Istrin region, and the most ancient monasteries and churches.

Destruction in Esthonia of cultural industrial and other premises: burning down of many thousands of residential buildings: removal of 10,000 works of art: destruction of medical and prophylactic institutions. Plunder and removal to Germany of immense quantities of agricultural stock including horses, cows, pigs, poultry, beehives and agricultural machines of all kinds.

Destruction of agriculture, enslavement of peasants and looting of stock and produce in Lithuania.

In the Latvian Republic destruction of the agriculture by the looting of all stock, machinery and produce.

The result of this policy of plunder and destruction was to lay waste the land and cause utter desolation.

The overall value of the material loss which the U.S.S.R. has borne, is computed to be 679,000,000,000 rubles, in state prices of 1941.

Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 the defendants seized and stole large stocks of raw materials, copper, tin, iron, cotton, and food; caused to be taken to Germany large amounts of railway rolling stock, and many engines, carriages, steam vessels and trolley buses; plundered libraries, laboratories, and art museums of books, pictures, objects of art, scientific apparatus and furniture; stole all gold reserves and foreign exchange of Czechoslovakia, including 23,000 kilograms of gold of a nominal value of £5,265,000; fraudulently acquired control and thereafter looted the Czech banks and many Czech industrial enterprises; and otherwise stole, looted and misappropriated Czechoslovak public and private property. The total sum of defendants’ economic spoliation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945 is estimated at 200,000,000,000 Czechoslovak crowns.

(F) The exaction of Collective Penalties

The Germans pursued a systematic policy of inflicting, in all the occupied countries, collective penalties, pecuniary and otherwise, upon the population for acts of individuals for which it could not be regarded as collectively responsible; this was done at many places, including Oslo, Stavanger, Trondheim and Rogaland.

Similar instances occurred in France, among others in Dijon, Nantes and as regards the Jewish population in the occupied territories. The total amount of fines imposed on French communities add up to 1,157,179,484 francs made up as follows—

These acts violated Article 50, Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

(G) Wanton Destruction of Cities, Towns and Villages and Devastation Not Justified by Military Necessity

The Defendants wantonly destroyed cities, towns and villages and committed other acts of devastation without military justification or necessity. These acts violated Articles 46 and 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows:

1. Western Countries:

In March, 1941, part of Lofoten in Norway was destroyed.

In April, 1942, the town of Telerag in Norway was destroyed.

Entire villages were destroyed in France, among others Oradour-sur-Glane, Saint-Nizier and, in the Vercors, La Mure, Vassieux, La Chapelle en Vercors. The town of Saint Dié was burnt down and destroyed. The Old Port District of Marseilles was dynamited in the beginning of 1943 and resorts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts, particularly the town of Sanary, were demolished.

In Holland there was most widespread and extensive destruction, not justified by military necessity, including the destruction of harbours, locks, dykes and bridges: immense devastation was also caused by inundations which equally were not justified by military necessity.

2. Eastern Countries:

In the Eastern Countries the Defendants pursued a policy of wanton destruction and devastation: some particulars of this (without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are set out above under the heading—“Plunder of Public and Private Property”.

In Greece in 1941, the villages of Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia, Messovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion and Kato-Kerzilion were utterly destroyed.

In Yugoslavia on 15 August, 1941, the German military command officially announced that the village of Skela was burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed on the order of the command.

On the order of the Field Commander Hoersterberg a punitive expedition from the SS troops and the field police destroyed the villages of Machkovats, and Kriva Reka in Serbia and all the inhabitants were killed.

General Fritz Neidhold (369 Infantry Division) on 11 September, 1944, gave an order to destroy the villages of Zagniezde and Udora, hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children.

In Czechoslovakia the Nazi conspirators also practised the senseless destruction of populated places. Lezaky and Lidice were burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed.

(H) Conscription of Civilian Labour

Throughout the occupied territories the defendants conscripted and forced the inhabitants to labour and requisitioned their services for purposes other than meeting the needs of the armies of occupation and to an extent far out of proportion to the resources of the countries involved. All the civilians so conscripted were forced to work for the German war effort. Civilians were required to register and many of those who registered were forced to join the Todt Organization and the Speer Legion, both of which were semi-military organizations involving some military training. These acts violated Articles 46 and 52 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

Particulars, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:

1. Western Countries:

In France, from 1942 to 1944, 963,813 persons were compelled to work in Germany and 737,000 to work in France for the German Army.

In Luxembourg in 1944 alone, 2,500 men and 500 girls were conscripted for forced labor.

2. Eastern Countries:

Of the large number of citizens of the Soviet Union and of Czechoslovakia referred to under Count Three VIII (B) 2 above many were so conscripted for forced labor.

(I) Forcing Civilians of Occupied Territories to Swear Allegiance to a Hostile Power

Civilians who joined the Speer Legion, as set forth in paragraph (H) above, were required under threat of depriving them of food, money and identity papers, to swear a solemn oath acknowledging unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of Germany, which was to them a hostile power.

In Lorraine, Civil Servants were obliged, in order to retain their positions, to sign a declaration by which they acknowledged the “return of their Country to the Reich”, pledged themselves to obey without reservation the orders of their Chiefs and put themselves “at the active service of the Fuehrer and the Great National Socialist Germany”.

A similar pledge was imposed on Alsatian Civil Servants by threat of deportation or internment.

These acts violated Article 45 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of international law and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

(J) Germanization of occupied territories

In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavoured to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavoured to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavours, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and introduced thousands of German colonists.

This plan included economic domination, physical conquest, installation of puppet Governments, purported de jure annexation and enforced conscription into the German Armed Forces.

This was carried out in most of the Occupied Countries including: Norway, France (particularly in the departments of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle), Luxembourg, the Soviet Union, Denmark, Belgium, Holland.

In France in the Departments of the Aisne, the Nord, the Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of the Ardennes, rural properties were seized by a German state organization which tried to have them exploited under German direction; the landowners of these exploitations were dispossessed and turned into agricultural labourers.

In the Department of the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine and the Moselle, the methods of Germanization were those of annexation followed by conscription.

1. From the month of August, 1940, officials who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Reich were expelled. On September 21st expulsions and deportation of populations began and on November 22nd, 1940, more than 70,000 Lorrainers or Alsacians were driven into the South zone of France. From July 31, 1941, onwards, more than 100,000 persons were deported into the Eastern regions of the Reich or to Poland. All the property of the deportees or expelled persons was confiscated. At the same time, 80,000 Germans coming from the Saar or from Westphalia, were installed in Lorraine and 2,000 farms belonging to French people were transferred to Germans.

2. From 2nd January, 1942, all the young people of the Departments of the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine, aged from 10 to 18 years, were incorporated in the Hitler Youth. The same thing was done in the Moselle from 4th August, 1942. From 1940 all the French schools were closed, their staffs expelled, and the German school system was introduced in the three departments.

3. On the 28th September, 1940, an order applicable to the Department of the Moselle ordained the Germanization of all the surnames and christian names which were French in form. The same thing was done from the 15th January, 1943, in the Departments of the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine.

4. Two orders from the 23rd to 24th August, 1942, imposed by force German nationality on French citizens.

5. On the 8th May, 1941, for the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine, the 23rd April, 1941, for the Moselle, orders were promulgated enforcing compulsory labour service on all French citizens of either sex aged from 17 to 25 years. From the 1st January, 1942, for young men and from the 26th January, 1942, for young girls, national labour service was effectively organized in the Moselle. It was from the 27th August, 1942, in the Upper-Rhine and in the Lower Rhine for young men only. The classes 1940, 1941, 1942 were called up.

6. These classes were retained in the Wehrmacht on the expiration of their time and labour service. On the 19th August, 1942, an order instituted compulsory military service in the Moselle. On the 25th August, 1942, the classes 1940-44 were called up in three Departments. Conscription was enforced by the German authorities in conformity with the provisions of German legislation. The first revision boards took place from the 3rd September, 1942. Later in the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine new levies were effected everywhere on classes 1928 to 1939 inclusive. The French people who refused to obey these laws were considered as deserters and their families were deported, while their property was confiscated.

These acts violated Articles 43, 46, 55 and 56 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

IX. Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count Three

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count Three of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups, and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count Three of the Indictment.

COUNT FOUR—CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (c).)

X. Statement of the Offense

All the defendants committed Crimes against Humanity during a period of years preceding 8th May, 1945 in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied by the German armed forces since 1st September, 1939 and in Austria and Czechoslovakia and in Italy and on the High Seas.

All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a common plan or conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity as defined in Article 6(c) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the murder and persecution of all who were or who were suspected of being hostile to the Nazi Party and all who were or who were suspected of being opposed to the common plan alleged in Count One.

The said Crimes against Humanity were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons, when committing the said War Crimes, performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices.

These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws, of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct. The said acts were contrary to Article 6 of the Charter.

The prosecution will rely upon the facts pleaded under Count Three as also constituting Crimes against Humanity.

(A) Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before and during the war

For the purposes set out above, the defendants adopted a policy of persecution, repression, and extermination of all civilians in Germany who were, or who were believed to, or who were believed likely to become, hostile to the Nazi Government and the common plan or conspiracy described in Count One. They imprisoned such persons without judicial process, holding them in “protective custody” and concentration camps, and subjected them to persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement, torture and murder.

Special courts were established to carry out the will of the conspirators; favoured branches or agencies of the State and Party were permitted to operate outside the range even of nazified law and to crush all tendencies and elements which were considered “undesirable”. The various concentration camps included Buchenwald, which was established in 1933 and Dachau, which was established in 1934. At these and other camps the civilians were put to slave labour, and murdered and ill-treated by divers means, including those set out in Count Three above, and these acts and policies were continued and extended to the occupied countries after the 1st September, 1939, and until 8th May, 1945.

(B) Persecution on Political, Racial and Religious Grounds in execution of and in connection with the common plan mentioned in Count One

As above stated, in execution of and in connection with the common plan mentioned in Count One, opponents of the German Government were exterminated and persecuted. These persecutions were directed against Jews. They were also directed against persons whose political belief or spiritual aspirations were deemed to be in conflict with the aims of the Nazis.

Jews were systematically persecuted since 1933; they were deprived of their liberty, thrown into concentration camps where they were murdered and ill-treated. Their property was confiscated. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were so treated before the 1st September, 1939.

Since the 1st September, 1939, the persecution of the Jews was redoubled: millions of Jews from Germany and from the occupied Western Countries were sent to the Eastern Countries for extermination.

Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows:

The Nazis murdered amongst others Chancellor Dollfuss, the Social Democrat Breitscheid and the Communist Thaelmann. They imprisoned in concentration camps numerous political and religious personages, for example Chancellor Schuschnigg and Pastor Niemoeller.

In November, 1938 by orders of the Chief of the Gestapo, anti-Jewish demonstrations all over Germany took place. Jewish property was destroyed, 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps and their property confiscated.

Under paragraph VIII (A), above, millions of the persons there mentioned as having been murdered and ill-treated were Jews.

Among other mass murders of Jews were the following:

At Kislovdosk all Jews were made to give up their property: 2,000 were shot in an anti-tank ditch at Mineraliye Vodi: 4,300 other Jews were shot in the same ditch.

Thousands of Jews were gassed weekly by means of gas-wagons which broke down from overwork.

As the Germans retreated before the Soviet Army they exterminated Jews rather than allow them to be liberated. Many concentration camps and ghettos were set up in which Jews were incarcerated and tortured, starved, subjected to merciless atrocities and finally exterminated.

About 70,000 Jews were exterminated in Yugoslavia.

XI. Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count Four

Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count Four of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count Four of the Indictment.

Wherefore, this Indictment is lodged with the Tribunal in English, French and Russian, each text having equal authenticity, and the charges herein made against the above-named defendants are hereby presented to the Tribunal.

ROBERT H. JACKSON.

Acting on Behalf of the United States of America.

FRANCOIS de MENTHON.

Acting on Behalf of the French Republic.

HARTLEY SHAWCROSS.

Acting on Behalf of the United Kingdom of Great

Britain and Northern Ireland.

R. RUDENKO.

Acting on Behalf of the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics.

Berlin, 6th October, 1945.

APPENDIX A

Statement of Individual Responsibility for Crimes Set Out in Counts One, Two, Three and Four

The statements hereinafter set forth following the name of each individual defendant constitute matters upon which the prosecution will rely inter alia as establishing the individual responsibility of the defendant:

GOERING:

The defendant GOERING between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Supreme Leader of the SA, General in the SS, a member and President of the Reichstag, Minister of the Interior of Prussia, Chief of the Prussian Police and Prussian Secret State Police, Chief of the Prussian State Council, Trustee of the Four Year Plan, Reich Minister for Air, Commander in Chief of the Air Force, President of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, head of the Hermann Goering Industrial Combine, and Successor Designate to Hitler. The defendant GOERING used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the military and economic preparation for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment, and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.

RIBBENTROP:

The defendant RIBBENTROP between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Nazi Reichstag, Advisor to the Fuehrer on matters of foreign policy, representative of the Nazi Party for matters of foreign policy, special German delegate for disarmament questions, Ambassador extraordinary, Ambassador in London, organizer and director of Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, member of the Fuehrer’s political staff at general headquarters, and General in the SS. The defendant RIBBENTROP used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators as set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances as set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; in accordance with the Fuehrer Principle he executed and assumed responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy plans of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including more particularly the crimes against persons and property in occupied territories.

HESS:

The defendant HESS between 1921 and 1941 was a member of the Nazi Party, Deputy to the Fuehrer, Reich Minister without Portfolio, member of the Reichstag, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, Successor Designate to the Fuehrer after the defendant Goering, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. The defendant Hess used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the military, economic and psychological preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment: he participated in the preparation and planning of foreign policy plans of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.

KALTENBRUNNER:

The defendant KALTENBRUNNER between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, a General of the Police, State Secretary for Security in Austria in charge of the Austrian Police, Police Leader of Vienna, Lower and Upper Austria, Head of the Reich Main Security Office and Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. The defendant KALTENBRUNNER used the foregoing positions and his personal influence in such a manner that: he promoted the consolidation of control over Austria seized by the Nazi conspirators as set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the Crimes against Humanity involved in the system of concentration camps.

ROSENBERG:

The defendant ROSENBERG between 1920 and 1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Nazi member of the Reichstag, Reichsleiter in the Nazi Party for Ideology and Foreign Policy, the Editor of the Nazi newspaper “Voelkischer Beobachter”, and of the “NS Monatshefte”, head of the Foreign Political Office of the Nazi Party, Special Delegate for the entire Spiritual and Ideological Training of the Nazi Party, Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, organizer of the “Einsatzstab Rosenberg”, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. The defendant ROSENBERG used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he developed, disseminated and exploited the doctrinal techniques of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the psychological preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation for Wars of Aggression and Wars, in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.

FRANK:

The defendant FRANK between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister without Portfolio, Reich Commissar for the Coordination of Justice, President of the International Chamber of Law and Academy of German Law, Chief of the Civil Administration of Lodz, Supreme Administrative Chief of the military district of West Prussia, Poznan, Odz and Krakow and Governor General of the Occupied Polish territories. The defendant FRANK used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity involved in the administration of occupied territories.

BORMANN:

The defendant BORMANN between 1925 and 1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, member of the Reichstag, a member of the Staff of the Supreme Command of the SA, founder and head of “Hilfskasse der NSDAP”, Reichsleiter, Chief of Staff Office of the Fuehrer’s Deputy, head of the Party Chancery, Secretary of the Fuehrer, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich, organizer and head of the Volkssturm, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. The defendant BORMANN used the foregoing position, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.

FRICK:

The defendant FRICK between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Reichsleiter, General in the SS, member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister of the Interior, Prussian Minister of the Interior, Reich Director of Elections, General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich, head of the Central Office for the Reunification of Austria and the German Reich, Director of the Central Office for the Incorporation of Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the eastern incorporated territories, Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnot, Director of the Central Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia, Moravia, the Government General, Lower Styria, Upper Carinthia, Norway, Alsace, Lorraine and all other occupied territories and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. The defendant FRICK used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Count One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including more particularly the crimes against persons and property in occupied territories.

LEY:

The defendant LEY between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Reichsleiter, Nazi Party Organization Manager, member of the Reichstag, leader of the German Labor Front, a General in the SA, and Joint Organizer of the Central Inspection for the Care of Foreign Workers. The defendant LEY used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany as set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparation for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment, and in the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity relating to the abuse of human beings for labor in the conduct of the aggressive wars.

SAUCKEL:

The defendant SAUCKEL between 1921 and 1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Thuringia, a member of the Reichstag, General Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Labour under the Four Year Plan, Joint Organizer with the defendant Ley of the Central Inspection for the Care of Foreign Workers, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. The defendant SAUCKEL used the foregoing positions and his personal influence in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the indictment; he participated in the economic preparations for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth, in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity involved in forcing the inhabitants of occupied countries to work, as slave laborers in occupied countries and in Germany.

SPEER:

The defendant SPEER between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Reichsleiter, member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister for Armament and Munitions, Chief of the Organization Todt, General Plenipotentiary for Armaments in the Office of the Four Year Plan, and Chairman of the Armaments Council. The defendant SPEER used the foregoing positions and his personal influence in such a manner that: he participated in the military and economic planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including more particularly the abuse and exploitation of human beings for forced labor in the conduct of aggressive war.

FUNK:

The defendant FUNK between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Economic Adviser of Hitler, National Socialist Deputy to the Reichstag, Press Chief of the Reich Government, State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Reich Minister of Economics, Prussian Minister of Economics, President of the German Reichsbank, Plenipotentiary for Economy and member of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich. The defendant FUNK used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the military and economic planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including more particularly crimes against persons and property in connection with the economic exploitation of occupied territories.

SCHACHT:

The defendant SCHACHT between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister of Economics, Reich Minister without Portfolio and President of the German Reichsbank. The defendant SCHACHT used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he participated in the military and economic plans and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression, and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.

PAPEN:

The defendant PAPEN between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor under Hitler, special Plenipotentiary for the Saar, negotiator of the Concordat with the Vatican, Ambassador in Vienna and Ambassador in Turkey. The defendant PAPEN used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and participated in the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment.

KRUPP:

The defendant KRUPP was between 1932-1945: head of Friedrich KRUPP A.G., a member of the General Economic Council, President of the Reich Union of German Industry, and head of the Group for Mining and Production of Iron and Metals under the Reich Ministry of Economics. The defendant KRUPP used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparation for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the military and economic planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including more particularly the exploitation and abuse of human beings for labor in the conduct of aggressive wars.

NEURATH:

The defendant NEURATH between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister, Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, President of the Secret Cabinet Council, and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. The defendant NEURATH used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; in accordance with the Fuehrer Principle he executed, and assumed responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy plans of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the crimes against persons and property in the occupied territories.

SCHIRACH:

The defendant SCHIRACH between 1924 and 1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Youth Leader on the Staff of the SA Supreme Command, Reichsleiter in the Nazi Party for Youth Education, Leader of Youth of the German Reich, head of the Hitler Jugend, Reich Defence Commissioner and Reichstatthalter and Gauleiter of Vienna. The defendant SCHIRACH used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the psychological and educational preparations for war and the militarization of Nazi-dominated organizations set forth in Count One of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including, particularly, anti-Jewish measures.

SEYSS-INQUART:

The defendant SEYSS-INQUART between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, State Councillor of Austria, Minister of the Interior and Security of Austria, Chancellor of Austria, a member of the Reichstag, a member of the Reich Cabinet, Reich Minister without Portfolio, Chief of the Civil Administration in South Poland, Deputy Governor-General of the Polish Occupied Territory, and Reich Commissar for the Occupied Netherlands. The defendant SEYSS-INQUART used the foregoing positions and his personal influence in such a manner that: he prompted the seizure and the consolidation of control over Austria by the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.

STREICHER:

The defendant STREICHER between 1932-1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, a General in the SA, Gauleiter of Franconia, Editor in Chief of the anti-Semitic newspaper “Der Stuermer”. The defendant STREICHER used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment: he authorized, directed and participated in the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the incitement of the persecution of the Jews set forth in Count One and Count Four of the Indictment.

KEITEL:

The defendant KEITEL between 1938 and 1945 was: Chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich, and Field Marshal. The defendant KEITEL used the foregoing positions, his personal influence and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the military preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violations of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; he executed and assumed responsibility for the execution of the plans of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including particularly the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity involved in the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of the civilian population of occupied territories.

JODL:

The defendant JODL between 1932 and 1945 was: Lt. Colonel, Army Operations Department of the Wehrmacht, Colonel, Chief of OKW Operations Department, Major-General and Chief of Staff OKW and Colonel-General. The defendant JODL used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his close connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the military planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property:

RAEDER:

The defendant RAEDER between 1928 and 1945 was: Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, Generaladmiral, Grossadmiral, Admiralinspekteur of the German Navy, and a member of the Secret Cabinet Council. The defendant RAEDER used the foregoing positions and his personal influence in such a manner that: he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the political planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; he executed, and assumed responsibility for the execution of the plans of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed, and participated in the war crimes, set forth in Count Three of the Indictment, including particularly war crimes arising out of sea warfare.

DOENITZ:

The defendant DOENITZ between 1932 and 1945 was: Commanding Officer of the Weddigen U-boat flotilla, Commander-in-Chief of the U-boat arm, Vice-Admiral, Admiral, Grossadmiral and Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, Advisor to Hitler, and Successor to Hitler as head of the German Government. The defendant DOENITZ used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Fuehrer in such a manner that: he promoted the preparations for war set forth in Count One of the Indictment; he participated in the military planning and preparation of the Nazi conspirators for Wars of Aggression and Wars in Violation of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment; and he authorized, directed and participated in the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment, including particularly the crimes against persons and property on the high seas.

FRITZSCHE:

The defendant FRITZSCHE between 1933 and 1945 was: a member of the Nazi Party, Editor-in-Chief of the official German news agency, “Deutsche Nachrichten Bureo”, Head of the Wireless News Service and of the Home Press Division of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, Ministerialdirektor of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Department of the Nazi Party, and Plenipotentiary for the Political Organization of the Greater German Radio. The defendant FRITZSCHE used the foregoing positions and his personal influence to disseminate and exploit the principal doctrines of the Nazi conspirators set forth in Count One of the Indictment, and to advocate, encourage and incite the commission of the War Crimes set forth in Count Three of the Indictment and the Crimes against Humanity set forth in Count Four of the Indictment including, particularly, anti-Jewish measures and the ruthless exploitation of occupied territories.

APPENDIX B

Statement of Criminality of Groups and Organizations

The statements hereinafter set forth, following the name of each Group or Organization named in the Indictment as one which should be declared criminal, constitute matters upon which the prosecution will rely inter alia as establishing the criminality of the Group or Organization:

DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET)

“Die Reichsregierung (Reich Cabinet)” referred to in the Indictment consists of persons who were:

(i)

Members of the ordinary cabinet after 30 January 1933, the date on which Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic. The term “ordinary cabinet” as used herein means the Reich Ministers, i.e., heads of departments of the central government; Reich Ministers without portfolio; State ministers acting as Reich Ministers; and other officials entitled to take part in meetings of this cabinet.

(ii)

Members of der Ministerrat fuer die Reichsverteidigung (Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich).

(iii)

Members of der Geheimer Kabinettsrat (Secret Cabinet Council).

Under the Fuehrer, these persons functioning in the foregoing capacities and in association as a group, possessed and exercised legislative, executive, administrative and political powers and functions of a very high order in the system of German government. Accordingly, they are charged with responsibility for the policies adopted and put into effect by the government including those which comprehended and involved the commission of the crimes referred to in Counts, One, Two, Three and Four of the Indictment.

DAS KORPS DER POLITISCHEN LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY)

“Das Korps der Politischen Leiter der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party)” referred to in the Indictment consists of persons who were at any time, according to common Nazi terminology, “Politischer Leiter” (Political Leaders) of any grade or rank.

The Politischen Leiter comprised the leaders of the various functional offices of the Party (for example, the Reichsleitung, or Party Reich Directorate, and the Gauleitung, or Party Gau Directorate), as well as the territorial leaders of the Party (for example, the Gauleiter).

The Politischen Leiter were a distinctive and elite group within the Nazi Party proper and as such were vested with special prerogatives. They were organized according to the leadership principle and were charged with planning, developing and imposing upon their followers the policies of the Nazi Party. Thus the territorial leaders among them were called Hoheitstraeger, or bearers of sovereignty, and were entitled to call upon and utilize the various Party formations when necessary for the execution of Party policies.

Reference is hereby made to the allegations in Count One of the Indictment showing that the Nazi Party was the central core of the common plan or conspiracy therein set forth. The Politischen Leiter, as a major power within the Nazi Party proper, and functioning in the capacities above-described and in association as a group, joined in the common plan or conspiracy, and accordingly share responsibility for the crimes set forth in Counts One, Two, Three and Four of the Indictment.

The prosecution expressly reserves the right to request, at any time before sentence is pronounced, that Politischer Leiter of subordinate grades or ranks or of other types or classes, to be specified by the prosecution, be excepted from further proceedings in this Case No. 1, but without prejudice to other proceedings or actions against them.

DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE SS) INCLUDING DIE SICHERHEITSDIENST (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE SD)

“Die Schutzstaffeln der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (commonly known as the SS) including Die Sicherheitsdienst (commonly known as the SD)” referred to in the Indictment consists of the entire corps of the SS and all offices, departments, services, agencies, branches, formations, organizations and groups of which it was at any time comprised or which were at any time integrated in it, including but not limited to, the Allgemeine SS, the Waffen SS, the SS Totenkopf Verbaende, SS Polizei Regimente and the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrers-SS (commonly known as the SD).

The SS, originally established by Hitler in 1925 as an élite section of the SA to furnish a protective guard for the Fuehrer and Nazi Party leaders, became an independent formation of the Nazi Party in 1934 under the leadership of the Reichsfuehrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. It was composed of voluntary members, selected in accordance with Nazi biological, racial and political theories, completely indoctrinated in Nazi ideology and pledged to uncompromising obedience to the Fuehrer. After the accession of the Nazi conspirators to power, it developed many departments, agencies, formations and branches and extended its influence and control over numerous fields of governmental and Party activity. Through Heinrich Himmler, as Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police, agencies and units of the SS and of the Reich were joined in operation to form a unified repressive police force. The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrers-SS (commonly known as the SD), a department of the SS, was developed into a vast espionage and counter-intelligence system which operated in conjunction with the Gestapo and criminal police in detecting, suppressing and eliminating tendencies, groups and individuals deemed hostile or potentially hostile to the Nazi Party, its leaders, principles and objectives, and eventually was combined with the Gestapo and criminal police in a single security police department, the Reich Main Security Office.

Other branches of the SS developed into an armed force and served in the wars of aggression referred to in Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Through other departments and branches the SS controlled the administration of concentration camps and the execution of Nazi racial, biological and resettlement policies. Through its numerous functions and activities it served as the instrument for insuring the domination of Nazi ideology and protecting and extending the Nazi regime over Germany and occupied territories. It thus participated in and is responsible for the crimes referred to in Counts One, Two, Three and Four of the Indictment.

DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE GESTAPO)

“Die Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, commonly known as the Gestapo)” referred to in the Indictment consists of the headquarters, departments, offices, branches and all the forces and personnel of the Geheime Staatspolizei organized or existing at any time after 30 January 1933, including the Geheime Staatspolizei of Prussia and equivalent secret or political police forces of the Reich and the components thereof.

The Gestapo was created by the Nazi conspirators immediately after their accession to power, first in Prussia by the defendant GOERING and shortly thereafter in all other states in the Reich. These separate secret and political police forces were developed into a centralized, uniform organization operating through a central headquarters and through a network of regional offices in Germany and in occupied territories. Its officials and operatives were selected on the basis of unconditional acceptance of Nazi ideology, were largely drawn from members of the SS, and were trained in SS and SD schools. It acted to suppress and eliminate tendencies, groups and individuals deemed hostile or potentially hostile to the Nazi Party, its leaders, principles and objectives, and to repress resistance and potential resistance to German control in occupied territories. In performing these functions it operated free from legal control, taking any measures it deemed necessary for the accomplishment of its missions.

Through its purposes, activities and the means it used, it participated in and is responsible for the commission of the crimes set forth in Counts One, Two, Three and Four of the Indictment.

DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE SA)

“Die Sturmabteilungen der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (commonly known as the SA)” referred to in the Indictment was a formation of the Nazi Party under the immediate jurisdiction of the Fuehrer, organized on military lines, whose membership was composed of volunteers serving as political soldiers of the Party. It was one of the earliest formations of the Nazi Party and the original guardian of the National Socialist movement. Founded in 1921 as a voluntary militant formation, it was developed by the Nazi conspirators before their accession to power into a vast private army and utilized for the purpose of creating disorder, and terrorizing and eliminating political opponents. It continued to serve as an instrument for the physical, ideological and military training of Party members and as a reserve for the German armed forces. After the launching of the wars of aggression, referred to in Counts One and Two of the Indictment, the SA not only operated as an organization for military training but provided auxiliary police and security forces in occupied territories, guarded prisoner-of-war camps and concentration camps and supervised and controlled persons forced to labour in Germany and occupied territories.

Through its purposes and activities and the means it used, it participated in and is responsible for the commission of the crimes set forth in Counts One, Two, Three and Four of the Indictment.

GENERAL STAFF AND HIGH COMMAND OF THE GERMAN ARMED FORCES

The “General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces” referred to in the Indictment consist of those individuals who between February 1938 and May 1945 were the highest commanders of the Wehrmacht, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Forces. The individuals comprising this group are the persons who held the following appointments:

Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine (Commander in Chief of the Navy)

Chef (and, formerly, Chef des Stabes) der Seekriegsleitung (Chief of Naval War Staff)

Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres (Commander in Chief of the Army)

Chef des Generalstabes des Heeres (Chief of the General Staff of the Army)

Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Commander in Chief of the Air Force)

Chef des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force)

Chef des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces)

Chef des Fuehrungstabes des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces)

Stellvertretender Chef des Fuehrungstabes des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces)

Commanders-in-Chief in the field, with the status of Oberbefehlshaber, of the Wehrmacht, Navy, Army, Air Force.

Functioning in such capacities and in association as a group at the highest level in the German Armed Forces Organization, these persons had a major responsibility for the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of illegal wars as set forth in Counts One and Two of the Indictment and for the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity involved in the execution of the common plan or conspiracy set forth in Counts Three and Four of the Indictment.

APPENDIX C

Charges and Particulars of Violations of International Treaties, Agreements and Assurances Caused by the Defendants in the Course of Planning, Preparing and Initiating the Wars

I

CHARGE: Violation of the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes signed at The Hague, 29 July, 1899.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, by force and arms, on the dates specified in Column 1, invade the territory of the sovereigns specified in Column 2, respectively, without first having attempted to settle its disputes with said sovereigns by pacific means.

II

CHARGE: Violation of the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes signed at The Hague, 18 October 1907.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about the dates specified in Column 1, by force of arms invade the territory of the sovereigns specified in Column 2, respectively, without having first attempted to settle its dispute with said sovereigns by pacific means.

III

CHARGE: Violation of Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, signed 18 October 1907.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about the dates specified in Column 1, commence hostilities against the countries specified in Column 2, respectively, without previous warning in the form of a reasoned declaration of war or an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war.

IV

CHARGE: Violation of Hague Convention V Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about the dates specified in Column 1, by force and arms of its military forces, cross into, invade, and occupy the territories of the sovereigns specified in, Column 2, respectively, then and thereby violating the neutrality of said sovereigns.

V

CHARGE: Violation of the Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, signed at Versailles, 28 June 1919, known as the Versailles Treaty.

PARTICULARS: (1) In that Germany did, on and after 7 March 1936, maintain and assemble armed forces and maintain and construct military fortifications in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland in violation of the provisions of Articles 42 to 44 of the Treaty of Versailles.

(2) In that Germany did, on or about 13 March 1938, annex Austria into the German Reich in violation of the provisions of Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles.

(3) In that Germany did, on or about 22 March 1939, incorporate the district of Memel into the German Reich in violation of the provisions of Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles.

(4) In that Germany did, on or about 1 September 1939, incorporate the Free City of Danzig into the German Reich in violation of the provisions of Article 100 of the Treaty of Versailles.

(5) In that Germany did, on or about 16 March 1939, incorporate the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia, into the German Reich in violation of the provisions of Article 81 of the Treaty of Versailles.

(6) In that Germany did, at various times in March 1935 and thereafter, repudiate various parts of Part V, Military, Naval and Air Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, by creating an air force, by use of compulsory military service, by increasing the size of the army beyond treaty limits, and by increasing the size of the navy beyond treaty limits,

VI

CHARGE: Violation of the Treaty between the United States and Germany Restoring Friendly Relations, signed at Berlin, 25 August 1921.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, at various times in March 1935 and thereafter, repudiate various parts of Part V, Military, Naval and Air Clauses of the Treaty Between the United States and Germany Restoring Friendly Relations by creating an air force, by use of compulsory military service, by increasing the size of the army beyond treaty limits, and by increasing the size of the navy beyond treaty limits.

VII

CHARGE: Violation of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy, done at Locarno, 16 October 1925.

PARTICULARS: (1) In that Germany did, on or about 7 March 1936, unlawfully send armed forces into the Rhineland demilitarized zone of Germany, in violation of Article 1 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.

(2) In that Germany did, on or about March 1936, and thereafter, unlawfully maintain armed forces in the Rhineland demilitarized zone of Germany, in violation of Article 1 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.

(3) In that Germany did, on or about 7 March 1936, and thereafter, unlawfully construct and maintain fortifications in the Rhineland demilitarized zone of Germany, in violation of Article 1 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.

(4) In that Germany did, on or about 10 May 1940, unlawfully attack and invade Belgium, in violation of Article 2 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.

(5) In that Germany did, on or about 10 May 1940, unlawfully attack and invade Belgium, without first having attempted to settle its dispute with Belgium by peaceful means, in violation of Article 3 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee.

VIII

CHARGE: Violation of the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia, done at Locarno, 16 October 1925.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about 15 March 1939, unlawfully by duress and threats of military might force Czechoslovakia to deliver the destiny of Czechoslovakia and its inhabitants into the hands of the Fuehrer and Reichschancellor of Germany without having attempted to settle its dispute with Czechoslovakia by peaceful means.

IX

CHARGE: Violation of the Arbitration Convention between Germany and Belgium, done at Locarno, 16 October 1925.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about 10 May 1940, unlawfully attack and invade Belgium without first having attempted to settle its dispute with Belgium by peaceful means.

X

CHARGE: Violation of the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Poland, done at Locarno, 16 October 1925.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about 1 September 1939, unlawfully attack and invade Poland without first having attempted to settle its dispute with Poland by peaceful means.

XI

CHARGE: Violation of Convention of Arbitration and Conciliation entered into between Germany and the Netherlands on 20 May 1926.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning and notwithstanding its solemn covenant to settle by peaceful means all disputes of any nature whatever which might arise between it and the Netherlands which were not capable of settlement by diplomacy and which had not been referred by mutual agreement to the Permanent Court of International Justice, did, on or about 10 May 1940, with a Military force, attack, invade, and occupy the Netherlands, thereby violating its neutrality and territorial integrity and destroying its sovereign independence.

XII

CHARGE: Violation of Convention of Arbitration and Conciliation entered into between Germany and Denmark on 2 June 1926.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning, and notwithstanding its solemn covenant to settle by peaceful means all disputes of any nature whatever which might arise between it and Denmark which were not capable of settlement by diplomacy and which had not been referred by mutual agreement to the Permanent Court of International Justice, did, on or about 9 April, 1940, with a Military Force, attack, invade, and occupy Denmark, thereby violating its neutrality and territorial integrity and destroying its sovereign independence.

XIII

CHARGE: Violation of Treaty between Germany and other Powers providing for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, signed at Paris 27 August 1928, known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about the dates specified in Column 1, with a military force, attack the sovereigns specified in Column 2, respectively, and resort to war against such sovereigns, in violation of its solemn declaration condemning recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, its solemn renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in its relations with such sovereigns, and its solemn covenant that settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or origin arising between it and such sovereigns should never be sought except by pacific means.

XIV

CHARGE: Violation of Treaty of Arbitration and Conciliation entered into between Germany and Luxembourg on 11 September 1929.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning, and notwithstanding its solemn covenant to settle by peaceful means all disputes which might arise between it and Luxembourg which were not capable of settlement by diplomacy, did, on or about 10 May 1940, with a military force, attack, invade, and occupy Luxembourg, thereby violating its neutrality and territorial integrity and destroying its sovereign independence.

XV

CHARGE: Violation of the Declaration of Non-Aggression entered into between Germany and Poland on 26 January 1934.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany proceeding to the application of force for the purpose of reaching a decision did, on or about 1 September 1939, at various places along the German-Polish frontier employ military forces to attack, invade and commit other acts of aggression against Poland.

XVI

CHARGE: Violation of German Assurance given on 21 May 1935 that the Inviolability and Integrity of the Federal State of Austria would be Recognized.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany did, on or about 12 March 1938, at various points and places along the German-Austrian frontier, with a military force and in violation of its solemn declaration and assurance, invade and annex to Germany the territory of the Federal State of Austria.

XVII

CHARGE: Violation of Austro-German Agreement of 11 July 1936.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany during the period from 12 February 1938 to 13 March 1938 did by duress and various aggressive acts, including the use of military force, cause the Federal State of Austria to yield up its sovereignty to the German State in violation of Germany’s agreement to recognize the full sovereignty of the Federal State of Austria.

XVIII

CHARGE: Violation of German Assurances given on 30 January 1937, 28 April 1939, 26 August 1939 and 6 October 1939 to Respect the Neutrality and Territorial Inviolability of the Netherlands.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning, and without recourse to peaceful means of settling any considered differences did, on or about 10 May 1940, with a military force and in violation of its solemn assurances, invade, occupy, and attempt to subjugate the sovereign territory of the Netherlands.

XIX

CHARGE: Violation of German Assurances given on 30 January 1937, 13 October 1937, 28 April 1939, 26 August 1939 and 6 October 1939 to Respect the Neutrality and Territorial Integrity and Inviolability of Belgium.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning, did on or about 10 May 1940, with a military force and in violation of its solemn assurances and declarations, attack, invade, and occupy the sovereign territory of Belgium.

XX

CHARGE: Violation of Assurances given on 11 March 1938 and 26 September 1938 to Czechoslovakia.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, on or about 15 March 1939 did, by establishing a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, under duress and by the threat of force, violate the assurance given on 11 March 1938 to respect the territorial integrity of the Czechoslovak Republic and the assurance given on 26 September 1938 that, if the so-called Sudeten territories were ceded to Germany, no further German territorial claims on Czechoslovakia would be made.

XXI

CHARGE: Violation of the Munich Agreement and Annexes of 29 September 1938.

PARTICULARS: (1) In that Germany on or about 15 March 1939, did by duress and the threat of military intervention force the Republic of Czechoslovakia to deliver the destiny of the Czech people and country into the hands of the Fuehrer of the German Reich.

(2) In that Germany refused and failed to join in an international guarantee of the new boundaries of the Czechoslovakia state as provided for in Annex No. 1 to the Munich Agreement.

XXII

CHARGE: Violation of the Solemn Assurance of Germany given on 3 September 1939, 28 April 1939 and 6 October 1939 that they would not violate the Independence or Sovereignty of the Kingdom of Norway.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning did, on or about 9 April 1940, with its military and naval forces attack, invade and commit other acts of aggression against the Kingdom of Norway.

XXIII

CHARGE: Violation of German Assurances given on 28 April 1939 and 26 August 1939 to Respect the Neutrality and Territorial Inviolability of Luxembourg.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without warning, and without recourse to peaceful means of settling any considered differences, did, on or about 10 May 1940, with a military force and in violation of the solemn assurances, invade, occupy, and absorb into Germany the sovereign territory of Luxembourg.

XXIV

CHARGE: Violation of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and Denmark signed at Berlin 31 May 1939.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without prior warning did, on or about 9 April 1940, with its military forces attack, invade and commit other acts of aggression against the Kingdom of Denmark.

XXV

CHARGE: Violation of Treaty of Non-Aggression entered into between Germany and U.S.S.R. on 23 August 1939.

PARTICULARS: (1) In that Germany did, on or about 22 June 1941, employ military forces to attack and commit acts of aggression against the U.S.S.R.

(2) In that Germany without warning or recourse to a friendly exchange of views or arbitration did, on or about 22 June 1941, employ military forces to attack and commit acts of aggression against the U.S.S.R.

XXVI

CHARGE: Violation of German Assurance given on 6 October 1939 to Respect the Neutrality and Territorial Integrity of Yugoslavia.

PARTICULARS: In that Germany, without prior warning did, on or about 6 April 1941, with its military forces attack, invade and commit other acts of aggression against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

STATEMENT OF RESERVATION TO THE INDICTMENT

Upon the signing of the Indictment in Berlin on 6 October 1945, Justice Jackson, on behalf of the United States, filed the following statement of reservation with the Tribunal and with the Chief Prosecutors of France, Great Britain, and Soviet Russia:

Berlin

6 October 1945

M. Francois de Menthon,

Sir Hartley Shawcross,

General R. A. Rudenko.

Dear Sirs:

In the Indictment of German War Criminals signed today, reference is made to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and certain other territories as being within the area of the USSR. This language is proposed by Russia and is accepted to avoid the delay which would be occasioned by insistence on an alteration in the text. The Indictment is signed subject to this reservation and understanding.

I have no authority either to admit or to challenge, on behalf of the United States of America, Soviet claims to sovereignty over such territories. Nothing, therefore, in this Indictment is to be construed as a recognition by the United States of such sovereignty or as indicating any attitude, either on the part of the United States or on the part of the undersigned, toward any claim to recognition of such sovereignty.

Respectfully submitted,

[signed] Robert H. Jackson

ROBERT H. JACKSON

Chief of Counsel for the United States

To the Clerk or Recording Officer,

International Military Tribunal:

The representative of the United States has found it necessary to make certain reservations as to the possible bearing of certain language in the Indictment upon political questions which are considered to be irrelevant to the proceedings before this Tribunal. However, it is considered appropriate to disclose such reservations that they may not be unknown to the Tribunal in the event they should at any time be considered relevant. For that purpose, the foregoing copy is filed.

Chapter IV
MOTIONS, RULINGS, AND EXPLANATORY MATERIAL
RELATING TO CERTAIN OF THE DEFENDANTS

Although 24 individuals were named as defendants in the Indictment signed in Berlin on 6 October 1945, only 22 remained as defendants when the trial commenced on 20 November. The number had been reduced by the suicide of Robert Ley and by the Tribunal’s severance of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach from the proceedings. Of the 22 surviving defendants only 20 appeared in the prisoners’ dock at the opening of court. Martin Bormann, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, was presumed to be alive and at large. Ernst Kaltenbrunner had been hospitalized by a cranial hemorrhage, and as a consequence was unable to be present at the trial save for one period of a few days.

Defense counsel for two of the twenty men in the prisoners’ dock, Hess and Streicher, sought to have the proceedings against their clients dismissed on the grounds of their mental incapacity to stand trial. Expert medical examiners concluded that both defendants were fit to defend themselves, and the proceedings against them were resumed. One of them, Hess, who had claimed to be a victim of amnesia, created something of a sensation by confessing in open court that he had only been pretending to suffer from amnesia and that his memory was actually in good repair.

Fuller explanatory notes concerning the positions taken by the prosecution and the defense and the actions of the Tribunal in the cases of each of these six defendants, together with significant papers bearing on these matters, are printed hereinafter.

1. ROBERT LEY

Pending the opening of the trial on 20 November 1945 the defendants were held in the prison at the Palace of Justice in Nurnberg, under the custody of the United States Army. In the evening of October 25 the guard on watch before the cell of Robert Ley noticed that the prisoner had maintained the same position for some time without moving. The guard entered the cell to find that although the prison officials had taken every known precaution, Ley had succeeded in committing suicide. Ley had ripped the hemmed edge from a towel, twisted it, soaked it in water, and fashioned it into a crude noose which he fastened to an overhead toilet flush pipe. He had then stuffed his mouth with rags, apparently torn from his own underwear. When he seated himself, strangulation was produced, and Robert Ley had succeeded in accomplishing his exit from the court of judgment, and from the world of living men. A farewell message written by Ley, together with other statements made by him during imprisonment, may be found at the end of the last volume (Statements XI-XIII).

2. GUSTAV KRUPP von BOHLEN und HALBACH

The name of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach stood thirteenth on the list of twenty-four defendants accused in the Indictment signed in Berlin on 6 October 1945. On 4 November counsel for Krupp filed a motion requesting that the Tribunal defer proceedings against the defendant until his health permitted him to stand trial, and that he should not be tried in his absence. The Tribunal on 5 November appointed a medical commission consisting of representatives of the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and the United States, to examine Krupp and determine whether he was fit to stand trial. On 12 November the Chief of Counsel for the United States filed an answer opposing the motion of defense counsel and proposing that Gustav Krupp should not be dismissed from the proceedings unless Alfried Krupp, the son and sole owner of the Krupp Works, were substituted as a defendant. On 14 November, before the opening of the trial itself, the Tribunal heard oral argument by the prosecution and defense, in which substantially the same views were presented as had been previously expressed in the written motions.

The Tribunal on 15 November announced its ruling postponing the proceedings against Gustav Krupp, but retaining the Indictment charges against him on the docket for later trial if his physical and mental condition should permit. The ruling stated that the question of adding another name to the Indictment would be considered later. Thereupon, on 16 November, the American Chief of Counsel filed a memorandum with the Tribunal stating as a matter of record that the United States was not committed to participate in any subsequent four-power trial. On the same day the Soviet and French Chief Prosecutors joined the United States Chief of Counsel in a motion formally designating Alfried Krupp a defendant. On the following day the Tribunal announced its ruling rejecting the motion to add the name of Alfried Krupp as a defendant.

The significant papers pertaining to these questions are set forth below.

A. MOTION BY DEFENSE COUNSEL FOR POSTPONEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS AGAINST GUSTAV KRUPP VON BOHLEN UND HALBACH

Nurnberg, 4 November 1945

THEODOR KLEFISCH

LAWYER

COLOGNE, 43, BLUMENTHALSTRASSE

To: The International Military Tribunal Nurnberg.

As defending counsel to the accused Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach I beg to state that the proceedings against this accused be deferred until he is again fit for trial.

At any rate I request that the accused be not tried in his absence.

Reasons

By Article 12 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal this court has the right to try an accused in his absence if he cannot be found, or if the court deem this necessary for other reasons in the interest of justice.

The 75 year old accused Krupp von Bohlen has for a long time been incapable of trial or examination owing to his severe physical and mental infirmities. He is not in a position to be in contact with the outside world nor to make or receive statements. The indictment was served on him on the 19th October 1945 by a representative of the International Military Tribunal by placing the document on his bed. The accused had no knowledge of this event. Consequently he is not aware of the existence of an indictment. Naturally therefore he is not capable of communicating either with his defense counsel nor with other persons on the subject of his defense.

To prove the above, 2 medical certificates are enclosed viz. that of the court medical expert Doctor Karl Gersdorf of Werfen Salzburg of 9th September 1945 and that of the Professor Doctor Otto Gerke of Bedgnstein of 13th September.

Latterly Herr Krupp von Bohlen has been examined several times by American military doctors. As far as it is possible I should like to request for another complete medical examination. If the accused is unable to appear before the court, then according to article 12 of the statute he could only be tried if the court deemed it necessary in the interests of justice.

Whatever may be understood by the phrase “in the interests of justice” it would hardly be objective justice to try a defendant accused of such serious crimes, if he were not informed of the contents of the accusations or if he were not given the chance to conduct his own defense or instruct a defense counsel. Particularly is he in no condition to comprehend the following rights of an accused set out in the statute:

1. By article 16 Section (a) of the statute a copy of the indictment in a language which he understands will be served on the accused at a suitably appointed time. In the first place this concerns the statement which the accused has to render on inquiry as to whether he admits his guilt or not, a statement which is of particular importance for the course of the trial and for the decision of the tribunal. This is all the more important as this statement regarding guilt or innocence can only be made exclusively by the accused himself according to his own judgment and after examining his conscience. So far as the procedure is admissible at all, the defense counsel could not at the request of the court express himself on the question of guilt as such a declaration presupposes the possibility of communication and understanding with the accused.

Also the defendant could not exercise the right to the last word to which he is entitled according to Article 24 Section f.

The legislators who set up these guarantees for the defense, cannot wish to deny them undeservedly to an accused who cannot make use of them owing to illness. If by Article 12 of the statute the trial of an absent defendant is allowed then this exception to the rule can only be applied to a defendant who is unwilling to appear though able to do so. As is the case with the criminal procedure rules of nearly all countries, it is on this principle that the rules and regulations concerning the trial of absent defendants are based.

[signed] Klefisch

Lawyer

B. ANSWER FOR THE UNITED STATES TO THE MOTION FILED IN BEHALF OF KRUPP VON BOHLEN

To the International Military Tribunal:

The United States respectfully opposes the application on behalf of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach that his trial be “deferred until he is again fit for trial.”

If the Tribunal should grant this application, the practical effect would be to quash all proceedings, for all time, against Krupp von Bohlen.

It appears that Krupp should not be arrested and brought to the court room for trial. But the plea is that the Tribunal also excuse him from being tried in absentia. This form of trial admittedly is authorized by Article 12 of the Charter of the Tribunal. Of course, trial in absentia in the circumstances of the case is an unsatisfactory proceeding either for prosecution or for defense. But the request that Krupp von Bohlen be neither brought to court nor tried in his absence is based on the contention that “the interest of justice” requires that he be thus excused from any form of trial. Public interests, which transcend all private considerations, require that Krupp von Bohlen shall not be dismissed unless some other representative of the Krupp armament and munitions interests be substituted. These public interests are as follows:

Four generations of the Krupp family have owned and operated the great armament and munitions plants which have been the chief source of Germany’s war supplies. For over 130 years this family has been the focus, the symbol, and the beneficiary of the most sinister forces engaged in menacing the peace of Europe. During the period between the two World Wars the management of these enterprises was chiefly in defendant Krupp von Bohlen. It was at all times, however, a Krupp family enterprise. Krupp von Bohlen was only a nominal owner himself; his wife, Bertha Krupp, owned the bulk of the stock. About 1937 their son, Alfried Krupp, became plant manager and was actively associated in policy-making and executive management thereafter. In 1940, Krupp von Bohlen, getting on in years, became Chairman of the Board of the concerns, thus making way for Alfried, who became President. In 1943, Alfried became sole owner of the Krupp enterprises by agreement between the family and the Nazi government, for the purpose of perpetuating this business in Krupp family control. It is evident that the future menace of this concern lies in continuance of the tradition under Alfried, now reported to be an internee of the British Army of the Rhine.

To drop Krupp von Bohlen from this case without substitution of Alfried, drops from the case the entire Krupp family, and defeats any effective judgment against the German armament makers. Whether this would be “in the interests of justice” will appear from the following recital of only the most significant items of evidence now in possession of the United States as to the activities of Krupp von Bohlen, in which his son Alfried at all times aided, as did other associates in the vast armament enterprises, all plotting to bring about the second World War, and to aid in its ruthless and illegal conduct.

After the first World War, the Krupp family and their associates failed to comply with Germany’s disarmament agreements, but all secretly and knowingly conspired to evade them.

In the March 1, 1940 issue of the Krupp Magazine, the defendant Krupp stated:

“I wanted and had to maintain Krupp in spite of all opposition, as an armament plant for the later future, even if in camouflaged form. I could only speak in the smallest, most intimate circles, about the real reasons which made me undertake the changeover of the plants for certain lines of production. * * * Even the Allied snoop commissioners were duped. * * * After the accession to power of Adolf Hitler, I had the satisfaction of reporting to the Fuehrer that Krupp stood ready, after a short warming-up period, to begin rearmament of the German people without any gaps of experience * * *”

Krupp von Bohlen (and Alfried Krupp as well) lent his name, prestige, and financial support to bring the Nazi Party, with an avowed program of renewing the war, into power over the German State. On April 25, 1931 von Bohlen acted as chairman of the Association of German Industry to bring it into line with Nazi policies. On May 30, 1933 he wrote to Schacht that “it is proposed to initiate a collection in the most far-reaching circles of German industry, including agriculture and the banking world, which is to be put at the disposal of the Fuehrer of the NSDAP in the name of ‘The Hitler Fund’ * * * I have accepted the chairmanship of the management council.” Krupp contributed from the treasury of the main Krupp company 4,738,446 Marks to the Nazi Party fund. In June, 1935 he contributed 100,000 Marks to the Nazi Party out of his personal account.

The Nazi Party did not succeed in obtaining control of Germany until it obtained support of the industrial interests, largely through the influence of Krupp. Alfried first became a Nazi Party member and later von Bohlen did also. The Krupp influence was powerful in promoting the Nazi plan to incite aggressive warfare in Europe.

Krupp von Bohlen strongly advocated and supported Germany’s withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference and from the League of Nations. He personally made repeated public speeches approving and inciting Hitler’s program of aggression; on April 6th and 7th, 1938 two speeches approved annexation of Austria; on October 13, 1938 he publicly approved Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland; on September 4, 1939 he approved the invasion of Poland; on May 6, 1941 he spoke commemorating the success of Nazi arms in the West. Alfried Krupp also made speeches to the same general effect. The Krupps were thus one of the most persistent and influential forces that made this war.

The Krupps also were the chief factor in getting ready for the war. In January, 1944 in a speech at the University of Berlin, von Bohlen boasted, “Through years of secret work, scientific and basic groundwork was laid in order to be ready again to work for the German Armed Forces at the appointed hour without loss of time or experience.” In 1937, before Germany went to war, the Krupps booked orders to equip satellite governments on approval of the German High Command. Krupp contributed 20,000 Marks to the defendant Rosenberg for the purpose of spreading Nazi propaganda abroad. In a memorandum of October 12, 1939, a Krupp official wrote offering to mail propaganda pamphlets abroad at Krupp expense.

Once the war was on, Krupps, both von Bohlen and Alfried being directly responsible therefor, led German industry in violating treaties and International Law by employing enslaved laborers, impressed and imported from nearly every country occupied by Germany, and by compelling prisoners of war to make arms and munitions for use against their own countries. There is ample evidence that in Krupp’s custody and service they were underfed and overworked, misused and inhumanly treated. Captured records show that in September, 1944, Krupp concerns were working 54,990 foreign workers and 18,902 prisoners of war.

Moreover, the Krupp companies profited greatly from destroying the peace of the world through support of the Nazi program. The rearmament of Germany gave Krupp huge orders and corresponding profits. Before this Nazi menace to the peace began, the Krupps were operating at a substantial loss. But the net profits after taxes, gifts and reserves steadily rose with rise of Nazi rearmament, being as follows:

The book value of the Krupp concerns mounted from 75,962,000 Marks on October 1, 1933 to 237,316,093 Marks on October 1, 1943. Even this included many going concerns in occupied countries carried at a book value of only 1 Mark each. These figures are subject to the adjustments and controversies usual with financial statements of each vast enterprise but approximately reflect the facts about property and operations.

The services of Alfried Krupp and of von Bohlen and their family to the war aims of the Nazi Party were so outstanding that the Krupp enterprises were made a special exception to the policy of nationalization of industries. Hitler said that he would be “prepared to arrange for any possible safeguarding for the continued existence of the works as a family enterprise; it would be simplest to issue ‘lex Krupp’ to start with.” After short negotiations, this was done. A decree of November 12, 1943 preserves the Krupp works as a family enterprise in Alfried Krupp’s control and recites that it is done in recognition of the fact that “for 132 years the firm of Fried. Krupp, as a family enterprise has achieved outstanding and unique merits for the armed strength of the German people.”

It has at all times been the position of the United States that the great industrialists of Germany were guilty of the crimes charged in this Indictment quite as much as its politicians, diplomats, and soldiers. Its Chief of Counsel on June 7, 1945, in a report to President Truman, released by him and with his approval, stated that the accusations of crimes include individuals in authority in the financial, industrial, and economic life of Germany, as well as others.

Pursuant thereto, the United States, with approval of the Secretary of State, proposed to indict Alfried Krupp, son of Krupp von Bohlen, and President and owner of the Krupp concern. The Prosecutors representing the Soviet Union, the French Republic, and the United Kingdom unanimously opposed inclusion of Alfried Krupp. This is not said in criticism of them or their judgment. The necessity of limiting the number of defendants was considered by representatives of the other three nations to preclude the addition of Alfried Krupp. Learning the serious condition of Krupp von Bohlen, immediately upon service of the Indictment, the United States again called a meeting of Prosecutors and proposed an amendment to include Alfried Krupp. Again the proposal of the United States was defeated by a vote of three-to-one. If now the Tribunal shall exercise its discretion to excuse from trial the one indicted member of the Krupp family, one of the chief purposes of the United States will be defeated, and it is submitted that such a result is not “in the interests of justice.”

The United States respectfully submits that no greater disservice to the future peace of the world could be done than to excuse the entire Krupp family and the armament enterprise from this trial in which aggressive war-making is sought to be condemned. The “interests of justice” cannot be determined without taking into account justice to the men of four generations whose lives have been taken or menaced by Krupp munitions and Krupp armament, and those of the future who can feel no safety if such persons as this escape all condemnation in proceedings such as this.

While of course the United States can not, without the concurrence of one other power, indict a new defendant, it can under the Charter alone oppose this Motion. The United States respectfully urges that if the favor now sought by Krupp von Bohlen is to be granted, it be upon the condition that Alfried Krupp be substituted or added as a defendant so that there may be a representative of the Krupp interests before the Tribunal.

It may be suggested that bringing in a new defendant would result in delay. Admitting, however, that a delay which cannot exceed a few days may be occasioned, it is respectfully suggested that the precise day that this trial will start is a less important consideration than whether it is to fail of one of its principal purposes. The American Prosecution Staff has been by long odds the longest and farthest away from home in this endeavor. On personal, as well as public interest considerations, it deplores delay. But we think the future, as well as the contemporary world, cannot fail to be shocked if, in a trial in which it is sought to condemn aggressive war-making, the Krupp industrial empire is completely saved from condemnation.

The complete trial brief of the United States on Krupp von Bohlen, with copies of the documents on which his culpability is asserted, will be made available to the Tribunal if it is desired as evidence concerning him and Alfried Krupp and the Krupp concerns.

Respectfully submitted:

[signed] Robert H. Jackson

ROBERT H. JACKSON,

Chief of Counsel for the United States of America.

12 November 1945.

C. RULING OF THE TRIBUNAL ON 15 NOVEMBER 1945

IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF COUNSEL FOR KRUPP VON BOHLEN FOR POSTPONEMENT OF THE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THIS DEFENDANT

Council for Gustav Krupp von Bohlen has applied to the Tribunal for postponement of the proceedings against this defendant on the ground that his physical and mental condition are such that he is incapable of understanding the proceedings against him and of presenting any defence that he may have.

On November 5, the Tribunal appointed a medical commission composed of the following physicians: R. E. Tunbridge, Brigadier, O.B.E., M.D., M.Sc., F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician, British Army of the Rhine; Rene Piedelievre, M.D., professor a la Faculte de Medicine de Paris; Expert pres les Tribuneaux; Nicolas Kurshakov, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Medical Institute of Moscow; Chief Internist, Commissariat of Public Health, U.S.S.R.; Eugene Sepp, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Neurology, Medical Institute of Moscow; Member, Academy of Sciences, U.S.S.R.; Eugene Krasnushkin, M.D.; Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Institute of Moscow; Bertram Schaffner, Major, Medical Corps, Neuropsychiatrist, Army of the United States.

The Commission has reported to the Tribunal that it is unanimously of the opinion that Krupp von Bohlen suffers from senile softening of the brain; that his mental condition is such that he is incapable of understanding court procedure and of understanding or cooperating in interrogations; that his physical state is such that he cannot be moved without endangering his life; and that his condition is unlikely to improve but rather will deteriorate further.

The Tribunal accepts the findings of the medical commission to which exception is taken neither by the Prosecution nor by the Defense.

Article 12 of the Charter authorizes the trial of a defendant in absentia if found by the Tribunal to be “necessary in the interests of justice”. It is contended on behalf of the Chief Prosecutors that in the interests of justice Krupp von Bohlen should be tried in absentia, despite his physical and mental condition.

It is the decision of the Tribunal that upon the facts presented the interests of justice do not require that Krupp von Bohlen be tried in absentia. The Charter of the Tribunal envisages a fair trial in which the Chief Prosecutors may present the evidence in support of an indictment and the defendants may present such defence as they may believe themselves to have. Where nature rather than flight or contumacy has rendered such a trial impossible, it is not in accordance with justice that the case should proceed in the absence of a defendant.

For the foregoing reasons, the Tribunal Orders that:

1. The application for postponement of the proceeding against Gustav Krupp von Bohlen is granted.

2. The charges in the indictment against Gustav Krupp von Bohlen shall be retained upon the docket of the Tribunal for trial hereafter, if the physical and mental condition of the Defendant should permit.

Further questions raised by the Chief Prosecutors, including the question of adding another name to the Indictment, will be considered later.

D. MEMORANDUM FILED BY THE UNITED STATES CHIEF OF COUNSEL

TO THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL

The United States, by its Chief of Counsel, respectfully shows:

The order of the Tribunal, that “The charges in the indictment against Gustav Krupp von Bohlen shall be retained upon the docket of the Tribunal for trial hereafter, if the physical and mental condition of the Defendant should permit,” requires the United States to make clear its attitude toward subsequent trials, which may have been misapprehended by the Tribunal, in order that no inference be drawn from its silence.

The United States never has committed itself to participate in any Four Power trial except the one now pending. The purpose of accusing organizations and groups as criminal was to reach, through subsequent and more expeditious trials before Military Government or military courts, a large number of persons. According to estimates of the United States Army, a finding that the organizations presently accused are criminal organizations would result in the trial of approximately 130,000 persons now held in the custody of the United States Army; and I am uninformed as to those held by others. It has been the great purpose of the United States from the beginning to bring into this one trial all that is necessary by way of defendants and evidence to reach the large number of persons responsible for the crimes charged without going over the entire evidence again. We, therefore, desire that it be a matter of record that the United States has not been, and is not by this order, committed to participate in any subsequent Four Power trial. It reserves freedom to determine that question after the capacity to handle one trial under difficult conditions has been tested.

Respectfully submitted:

[signed] Robert H. Jackson

ROBERT H. JACKSON,

Chief of Counsel for the United States

16 November 1945

E. MOTION BY THE SOVIET, FRENCH, AND AMERICAN CHIEF PROSECUTORS TO DESIGNATE ALFRIED KRUPP AS A DEFENDANT

TO THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL:

Upon the Indictment, the motion of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and the answers thereto, and all proceedings had thereunder, the Committee of Prosecutors created under the Charter hereby designates Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach as a defendant and respectfully moves that the Indictment be amended by adding the name of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach as a defendant, and by the addition of appropriate allegations in reference to him in the Appendix A thereof. It also moves that the time of Alfried Krupp be shortened from thirty days to December 2, 1945. For this purpose, the Committee of Prosecutors adopts and ratifies the Answer filed on behalf of the United States on November 12, 1945 in response to the Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach motion, and the motion made by Robert H. Jackson in open Court on behalf of the United States of America, The Soviet Union, and The Provisional Government of France. This motion is authorized by a resolution adopted at a meeting of the Committee of Prosecutors held on November 16, 1945.

[signed] Pokrovsky

For the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

[signed] Francois de Menthon

For the Provisional Government of France

[signed] Robert H. Jackson

For the United States of America.

16 November 1945.

F. RULING OF THE TRIBUNAL REJECTING THE PROSECUTION’S MOTION TO NAME ALFRIED KRUPP AS A DEFENDANT

INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL

Sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 17 November 1945,

In session 1500 hours

THE PRESIDENT: The motion to amend the indictment by adding the name of Alfried Krupp has been considered by the Tribunal in all its aspects and the application is rejected.

The Tribunal will now adjourn.

(Whereupon at 1505 the Tribunal adjourned.)

3. MARTIN BORMANN

As the day of the trial approached, Martin Bormann, although named as a defendant in the Indictment, had not yet been apprehended despite the efforts of numerous special investigators. On 17 November 1945 the Tribunal requested the views of the prosecution on the question of trial in absentia. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, Deputy Chief Prosecutor of Great Britain, reviewed the information available and, on behalf of the United States and France as well as Great Britain, stated that: “The prosecution cannot say that the matter is beyond a probability that Bormann is dead. There is still the clear possibility that he is alive.” Notice had been publicly given, in the manner prescribed by the Tribunal, that Bormann had been named a defendant, and it was therefore suggested that the case fell within Article 12 of the Charter authorizing trial in absentia. The Soviet representative expressed concurrence; whereupon Lord Justice Lawrence, presiding, orally announced the Tribunal’s ruling, on the same date:

“The Tribunal has decided that, in pursuance of Article 12 of the Charter, it will try the Defendant Bormann in his absence, and it announces that counsel for the Defendant Bormann will be appointed to defend him.”

Thereafter, the counsel named to defend Bormann moved for postponement of the proceedings against the defendant. The Tribunal announced on 22 November through Lord Justice Lawrence, presiding, that:

“* * * in view of the fact that the provisions of the Charter and the Tribunal’s rule of procedure have been strictly carried out in the notices which have been given, and the fact that counsel for Bormann will have ample time before they are called upon to present defense on his behalf, the motion is denied.”

4. ERNST KALTENBRUNNER

On 18 November 1945, two days before the opening of the trial, Kaltenbrunner suffered a spontaneous subarachanoid hemorrhage and was taken to the hospital for treatment. He remained there until 6 December, when he was returned to the jail. He attended the 10 December session of the Tribunal and was in court for several days thereafter, but his condition deteriorated so that it was necessary to return him to the hospital for further treatment. Medical opinion expects at this writing (23 January), that he will be required to remain under hospital care for a considerable period.

On 2 January Kaltenbrunner’s counsel, Dr. Kauffmann, requested the Tribunal to postpone the case against his client because of his illness. The Tribunal ruled (1) that the prosecution should proceed with any evidence which it proposed to direct against the criminality of organizations with which Kaltenbrunner was connected, (2) that any prosecution evidence directed against Kaltenbrunner as an individual should be withheld until the prosecution reached that part of its case in which it had planned to trace the responsibility of individual defendants, and (3) that Kaltenbrunner’s case should properly be left until the end of this section of the evidence. If at that time the defendant should be still unable to be present in court, the Tribunal ruled that “the evidence will have to be given in his absence.”

A closed session followed at which the Tribunal heard both the prosecution and defense counsel, as a result of which the Tribunal modified its ruling. Since the prosecution’s evidence was so inextricably mingled that it was impossible to divide it between that which bore against Kaltenbrunner as an individual and that which bore against the organizations which he headed, the Tribunal ruled that it would hear the prosecution’s evidence in its entirety. Counsel for Kaltenbrunner, however, was given the privilege of cross-examining at a later date any witnesses which the prosecution might call against Kaltenbrunner. The Tribunal pointed out that defense counsel would also, of course, have an opportunity to deal with any documentary evidence against Kaltenbrunner when the time came for the presentation of the defense case.

5. JULIUS STREICHER

Counsel for Streicher orally requested the Tribunal, on 15 November 1945, to appoint a commission to make a psychiatric examination of the defendant. This was requested for the Defense Counsel’s “own protection”, although the defendant thought himself normal and did not wish an examination. The Tribunal directed the Defense Counsel to make his motion in writing. The Soviet prosecutor suggested to the Tribunal the desirability of having such an examination, if it were necessary at all, while medical experts from the Soviet Union remained in Nurnberg. Subsequently a panel of three medical experts examined Streicher and reported that he was fit to stand trial. The Tribunal thereupon ruled, Lord Justice Lawrence making the announcement orally in court on 22 November, that

“* * * the Tribunal wishes me to announce the decision on the application made on behalf of the Defendant Julius Streicher by his counsel that his condition should be examined. It has been examined by three medical experts on behalf of the Tribunal and their report has been submitted to and considered by the Tribunal; and it is as follows:

“ ‘1. The Defendant Julius Streicher is sane.

“ ‘2. The Defendant Julius Streicher is fit to appear before the Tribunal, and to present his defense.

“ ‘3. It being the unanimous conclusion of the examiners that Julius Streicher is sane, he is for that reason capable of understanding the nature and policy of his acts during the period of time covered by the indictment.’

“The Tribunal accepts the report of the medical experts and the trial against Julius Streicher will, therefore, proceed.”

6. RUDOLF HESS

Through his pre-trial confinement in the Nurnberg prison, Hess had consistently maintained that he was suffering from amnesia and therefore could not remember facts concerning his previous activities. In order to determine Hess’ mental state the Tribunal appointed a commission of psychiatric experts from the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and France, to examine the defendant and furnish a report. After receiving the medical report the Tribunal directed that oral argument by the prosecution and defense counsel should be heard on 30 November 1945 concerning the issues raised by the medical report. Prior to the oral argument, both the prosecution and defense filed written motions which outlined substantially the positions later taken in court.

At the conclusion of the oral arguments, the Tribunal called upon Hess for a statement. Hess thereupon announced that he had simulated loss of memory for tactical reasons and that his memory was “again in order.” On the following day the Tribunal ruled that Hess was capable of standing trial and that his case would proceed.

The papers pertaining to these matters are set out below.

A. RULING OF THE TRIBUNAL ORDERING ARGUMENT ON THE ISSUES PRESENTED BY THE MEDICAL REPORTS