Nuremberg Trials
Opening Address for the United States
Robert Jackson
This document was retrieved from the archives of Nizkor. Source: Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Volume I, Chapter VII, Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.
THE LAWLESS ROAD TO POWER
The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was
the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the
Nazi Party. Some of the defendants were with it from the
beginning. Others joined only after success seemed to have
validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with
immunity from the processes of the law. Adolf Hitler became
its supreme leader or fuehrer in 1921.
On the 24th of February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had
proclaimed its program (170-PS). Some of its purposes would
commend themselves to many good citizens, such as the
demands for "profit-sharing in the great industries,"
"generous development of provision for old age," 'creation
and maintenance of a healthy middle class," "a land reform
suitable to our national requirements," and "raising the
standard of health." It also made a strong appeal to that
sort of nationalism which in ourselves we call patriotism
and in our rivals chauvinism. It demanded
"equality of rights for the German people in its dealing
with other nations and the evolution of the peace treaties
of Versailles and St. Germaine." It demanded the "union of
all
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Germans on the basis of the right of self-determination of
peoples to form a Great Germany." It demanded "land and
territory (colonies) for the enrichment of our people and
the settlement of our surplus population." All these, of
course, were legitimate objectives if they were to be
attained without resort to aggressive warfare.
The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated
war. It demanded "the abolition of mercenary troops and the
formation of a national army." It proclaimed that "In view
of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a
nation by every war, personal
enrichment through war must be regarded a a crime against
the nation. We demand, therefore, the ruthless confiscation
of all war profits." I do not criticize this policy. indeed,
I wish it were universal. I merely point out that in a time
of peace, war was a preoccupation of the Party, and it
started the work of making war less offensive to the masses
of the people. With this it combined a program of physical
training and sports for youth that became, as we shall see,
the cloak for a secret program of military training.
The Nazi Party declaration also committed its members to an
anti-Semitic program. It declared that no Jew or any person
of non-German blood could be a member of the nation. Such
persons were to be disfranchised, disqualified for office,
subject to the alien laws, and entitled to nourishment only
after the German population had first been provided for. All
who had entered Germany after August 2, 1914 were to be
required forthwith to depart, and all non-German immigration
was to be prohibited. The Party also avowed, even in those early days, an
authoritarian and totalitarian program for Germany. It
demanded creation of a strong central power with
unconditional authority, nationalization of all businesses
which had been "amalgamated," and a "reconstruction" of the
national system of education which "must aim
at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the state
(state sociology)." Its hostility to civil liberties and
freedom of the press was distinctly announced in these
words: "It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which do
not conduce the national welfare. We demand the legal
prosecution of all tendencies in art or literature of a kind
likely to disintegrate our life as a nation and the
suppression of institutions which might militate against the
above requirements."
The forecast of religious persecution was clothed in the
language of religious liberty, for the Nazi program stated,
"We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the
State." But, it continues with the limitation, "so far as
they are not a danger
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to it and do not militate against the morality and moral
sense of the German race."
The Party program foreshadowed the campaign of terrorism. It
announced, "We demand ruthless war upon those whose
activities are injurious to the common interests", and it
demanded that such offenses be punished with death.
It is significant that the leaders of this Party interpreted
this program as a belligerent one certain to precipitate
conflict. The Party platform concluded, "The leaders of the
Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences--if necessary,
at the sacrifice of their lives--toward the fulfillment of the
foregoing points." It is this Leadership Corps of the Party, not its entire
membership, that stands accused as a criminal organization.
Let us now see how the leaders of the Party fulfilled their
pledge to proceed regardless of consequences. Obviously,
their foreign objectives, which were nothing less than to
undo international treaties and to wrest territory from
foreign control, as well as most of their
internal program, could be accomplished only by possession
of the machinery of the German State. The first effort,
accordingly, was to subvert the Weimar Republic by violent
revolution. An abortive putsch at Munich in 1923 landed many
of them in jail. The period of meditation
which followed produced Mein Kampf, henceforth the source of
law for the Party workers and a source of considerable
revenue to its supreme leader. The Nazi plans for the
violent overthrow of the feeble Republic then turned to
plans for its capture.
No greater mistake could be made than to think of the Nazi
Party in terms of the loose organizations which we of the
western world call "political parties." In discipline,
structure, and method the Nazi Party was not adapted to the
democratic process of persuasion. It was
an instrument of conspiracy and of coercion. The Party was
not organized to take over power in the German State by
winning support of a majority of the German people. It was
organized to seize power in defiance of the will of the
people.
The Nazi Party, under the Fuehrerprinzip, was bound by an
iron discipline into a pyramid, with the Fuehrer, Adolf
Hitler, at the top and broadening into a numerous Leadership
Corps, composed of overlords of a very extensive Party
membership at the base. By no means all of
those who may have supported the movement in one way or
another were actual Party members. The membership took the
Party oath which in effect, amounted to an abdication of
personal intelligence and moral responsibility. This was the
oath: "I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I
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vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he
designates for me." The membership in daily practice
followed its leaders with an idolatry and self-surrender
more Oriental than Western.
We will not be obliged to guess as to the motives or goal of
the Nazi Party. The immediate aim was to undermine the
Weimar Republic. The order to all Party members to work to
that end was given in a letter from Hitler of August 24,
1931 to Rosenberg, of which we will produce the original.
Hitler wrote,
"I am just reading in the VOELKISCHER BEOBACHTER,
edition 235/236, page 1, an article entitled "Does
Wirth intend to come over?" The tendency of the article
is to prevent on our part a crumbling away from the
present form of government. I myself am travelling all
over Germany to achieve exactly the opposite. May I
therefore ask that my own paper will not stab me in the
back with tactically unwise articles *********" (047-PS).
Captured film enables us to present the defendant, Alfred
Rosenberg, who from the screen will himself tell you the
story. The SA practiced violent interference with elections.
We have the reports of the SD describing in detail how its
members later violated the secrecy of elections in order to
identify those who opposed them. One of the reports makes
this explanation:
"The control was effected in the following way: some
members of the election-committee marked all the ballot
papers with numbers. During the ballot itself, a
voters' list was made up. The ballot-papers were handed
out in numerical order, therefore it was possible
afterwards with the aid of this list to find out the
persons who cast no-votes or invalid votes. One sample of
these marked ballot-papers is enclosed. The marking was
done on the back of the ballot-papers with skimmed milk *********" (R142).
The Party activity, in addition to all the familiar forms of
political contest, took on the aspect of a rehearsal for
warfare. It utilized a Party formation, DIE
STURMABTEILUNGEN. commonly known as the SA. This was a
voluntary organization of youthful and fanatical Nazis
trained for the use of violence under semi-military
discipline. Its members began by acting as bodyguards for
the Nazi leaders and rapidly expanded from defensive to
offensive tactics. They became disciplined ruffians for he
breaking up of opposition meetings and the terrorization of
adversaries. They boasted that their task was to make the
Nazi
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Party "master of the streets." The SA was the parent
organization of a number of others. Its offspring include
DIE SCHUTZSTAFFELN, commonly known as the SS, formed in 1925
and distinguished for the fanaticism and cruelty of its
members; DER SICHERHEITSDIENST, known as the SD; and DIE
GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI, the Secret State Police, the infamous
Gestapo formed in 1934 after Nazi accession to power.
A glance at a chart of the Party organization (Chart No. 1)
is enough to show how completely it differed from the
political parties we know. It had its own source of law in
the fuehrer and sub-fuehrers. It had its own courts and its
own police. The conspirators set up a government within the
Party to exercise outside the law every sanction that any
legitimate state could exercise and many that it could not.
Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial in
name as well as in function. They were composed of
battalions set up to bear arms under military discipline,
motorized corps, flying corps, and the infamous "Death Head
Corps", which was not misnamed.
The Party had its own secret
police, its security units, its intelligence and
espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth
forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms
to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage
concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to finance the whole movement.
Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party, as
its leadership later boasted, eventually organized and
dominated every phase of German life but not until they had
waged a bitter internal struggle characterized by brutal
criminality. In preparation for this phase of their
struggle, they created a party police system. This became
the pattern and the instrument of the police state, which
was the first goal in their plan.
The Party formations, including the Leadership Corps of the
Party, the SD, the SS, the SA and the infamous Secret State
Police, or Gestapo--all these stand accused before you as
criminal organizations; organizations which, as we will
prove from their own documents, were' recruited only from
recklessly devoted Nazis, ready in conviction and
temperament to do the most violent of deeds to advance the
common program. They terrorized and silenced democratic
opposition and were able at length to combine with political
opportunists, militarists, industrialists, monarchists, and
political reactionaries.
On January 30,1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the
German Republic. An evil combination, represented in the
prisoners' dock by its most eminent survivors, had succeeded
in possessing itself of the machinery of the German
Government, a facade be-
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hind which they thenceforth would operate to make a reality
of the war of conquest they so long had plotted. The conspiracy had
passed into its second phase.
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