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.
CRIMES IN THE CONDUCT OF WAR
Even the most warlike of peoples have recognized in the name of humanity
some limitations on the savagery of warfare. Rules to that end have been
embodied in international conventions to which Germany became a party.
This code had prescribed certain restraints as to the treatment of
belligerents. The enemy was entitled to surrender and to receive quarter
and good treatment as a prisoner of war. We will show by German
documents that these rights were denied, that prisoners of war were
given brutal treatment and often murdered. This was particularly true in
the case of captured airmen, often my countrymen.
It was ordered that captured English and American airmen should no
longer be granted the status of prisoners of war. They were to be
treated as criminals and the Army was ordered to refrain from protecting
them against lynching by the populace (R-118). The Nazi Government,
through its police and propaganda agencies, took pains to incite the
civilian population to attack and kill airmen who crash- landed. The
order, given by the Reichsfuehrer SS, Himmler, on August 10th, 1943,
directed that,
"It is not the task of the police to interfere in clashes between German
and English and American fliers who have bailed out."
This order was transmitted on the same day by SS Obersturmbannfuehrer
Brand of Himmler's Personal Staff to all Senior Executive SS and Police
officers, with these directions:
"I am sending you the enclosed order with the request that the Chief of
the Regular Police and of the Security Police be informed. They are to
make this instruction known to their subordinate officers verbally."
(R-110).
Similarly, we will show Hitler's top secret order, dated October 18th,
1942, that commandos, regardless of condition, were "to be slaughtered
to the last man" after capture (498- PS). We will show the circulation
of secret orders, one of which was signed by
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Hess, to be passed orally to civilians, that enemy fliers or
parachutists were to be arrested or liquidated (062-PS). By such means
were murders incited and directed.
This Nazi campaign of ruthless treatment of enemy forces assumed its
greatest proportions in the fight against Russia. Eventually all
prisoners of war were taken out of control of the Army and put in the
hands of Himmler and the SS (058-PS). In the East, the German fury spent
itself. Russian prisoners were ordered to be branded. They were starved.
I shall quote passages from a letter written February 28th, 1942 by
defendant Rosenberg to defendant Keitel:
"The fate of the Soviet prisoners of war in Germany is on the contrary a
tragedy of the greatest extent. Of 3.6 millions of prisoners of war,
only several hundred thousand are still able to work fully. A large part
of them has starved, or died, because of the hazards of the weather.
Thousands also died from spotted fever.
The camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food
at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve
to death.
In many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on the
march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot before the eyes
of the horrified civilian population, and the corpses
In numerous camps, no shelter for the prisoners of war was provided at
all. They lay under the open sky during rain or snow. Even tools were
not made available to dig holes or caves.
Finally, the shooting of prisoners of war must be mentioned. For
instance, in various camps, all the 'Asiatics' were shot." (081-PS).
Civilized usage and conventions to which Germany was a party had
prescribed certain immunities for civilian populations unfortunate
enough to dwell in lands overrun by hostile armies. The German
occupation forces, controlled or commanded by men on trial before you,
committed a long series of outrages against the habitants of occupied
territory that would be incredible except for captured orders and the
captured reports showing the fidelity with which these orders were
executed.
We deal here with a phase of common criminality designed by the
conspirators as part of the common plan. We can appreciate why these
crimes against their European enemies were not of a
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casual character but were planned and disciplined crimes when we get at
the reason for them. Hitler told his officers on August 22nd, 1939 that
"The main objective in Poland is the destruction of the enemy and not
the reaching of a certain geographical line." (1014-PS). The project of
deporting promising youth from occupied territories was approved by
Rosenberg on the theory that "a desired weakening of the biological
force of the conquered people is being achieved." (031-PS). To Germanize
or to destroy was the program. Himmler announced, "Either we win over
any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our
people or, gentlemen -- you may call this cruel, but nature is cruel --
we destroy this blood." As to "racially good types" Himmler further
advised, "Therefore, I think that it is our duty to take their children
with us to remove them from their environment if necessary by robbing or
stealing them." (L-70). He urged deportation of Slavic children to
deprive potential enemies of future soldiers.
The Nazi purpose was to leave Germany's neighbors so weakened that even
if she should eventually lose the war, she would still be the most
powerful nation in Europe. Against this background, we must view the
plan for ruthless warfare, which means a plan for the commission of war
crimes and crimes against humanity.
Hostages in large numbers were demanded and killed. Mass punishments
were inflicted, so savage that whole communities were extinguished.
Rosenberg was advised of the annihilation of three unidentified villages
in Slovakia. In May of 1943, another village of about 40 farms and 220
inhabitants was ordered wiped out. The entire population was ordered
shot, the cattle and property impounded, and the order required that
"the village will be destroyed totally by fire." A secret report from
Rosenberg's Reich Ministry of Eastern territory reveals that:
"Food rations allowed the Russian population are so low that they fail
to secure their existence and provide only for minimum subsistence of
limited duration. The population does not know if they will still live
tomorrow. They are faced with death by starvation.
"The roads are clogged by hundreds of thousands of people, sometime as
many as one million according to the estimate of experts, who wander
around in search of nourishment.
"Sauckel's action has caused great unrest among the civilians. Russian
girls were deloused by men, nude photos in
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forced positions were taken, women doctors were locked into freight cars
for the pleasure of the transport commanders, women in night shirts were
fettered and forced through the Russian towns to the railroad station,
etc. All this material has been sent to the OKH."
Perhaps. the deportation to slave labor was the most horrible and
extensive slaving operation in history. On few other subjects is our
evidence so abundant or so damaging. In a speech made on January 25th,
1944, the defendant Frank, Governor General of Poland, boasted, "I have
sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich." The defendant Sauckel
reported that "out of the five million foreign workers who arrived in
Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily." This fact was reported to
the Fuehrer and defendants Speer, Goering, and Keitel (R-124). Children
of 10 to 14 years were impressed into service by telegraphic order of
Rosenberg's Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories:
"The Command is further charged with the transferring of worthwhile
Russian youth between 10-14 years of age, to the Reich. The authority is
not affected by the changes connected with the evacuation and
transportation to the reception camps of Pialystok, Krajewo, and Olitei.
The Fuehrer wishes that this activity be increased even more." (200-PS).
When enough labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced in
war work in flagrant violation of international conventions (016-PS).
Slave labor came from France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the East.
Methods of recruitment were violent (R-124, 018-PS, 204-PS). The
treatment of these slave laborers wa stated in general terms, not
difficult to translate into concrete deprivations, in a letter to the
defendant Rosenberg from the defendant Sauckel, which stated:
"All prisoners of war, from the territories of the West as well of the
East, actually in Germany, must be completely incorporated into the
German armament and munition industries. Their production must be
brought to the highest possible level."
"The complete employment of all prisoners of war as well as the use of a
gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and women, has
become an undisputable necessity for the solution of the mobilization of
labor program in this war.
"All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such
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a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest
conceivable degrees of expenditure." (016- PS).
In pursuance of the Nazi plan permanently to reduce the living standards
of their neighbors and to weaken them physically and economically, a
long series of crimes were committed. There was extensive destruction,
serving no military purpose, of the property of civilians. Dikes were
thrown open in Holland almost at the close of the war not to achieve
military ends but to destroy the resources and retard-the economy of the
thrifty Netherlanders.
There was carefully planned economic syphoning off of the assets of
occupied countries. An example of the planning is shown by a report on
France dated December 7th, 1942 made by the Economic Research Department
of the Reichsbank. The question arose whether French occupation costs
should be increased from 15 million Reichsmarks per day to 25 million
Reichsmarks per day. The Reichsbank analyzed French economy to determine
whether it could bear the burden. It pointed out that the armistice had
burdened France to that date to the extent of 18 1/2 billion
Reichsmarks, equalling 370 billion Francs. It pointed out that the
burden of these payments within two and a half years equalled the
aggregate French national income in the year 1940, and that the amount
of payments handed over to Germany in the first six months of 1942
corresponded to the estimate for the total French revenue for that whole
year. The report concluded, "In any case, the conclusion is inescapable
that relatively heavier tributes have been imposed on France since - the
armistice in June, 1940 than upon Germany after the World War. In this
connection, it must be noted that the economic powers of France never
equalled those of the German Reich and that vanquished France could not
draw on foreign economic and financial resources in the same degree as
Germany after the last World War."
The defendant Funk was the Reichs Minister of Economics and President of
the Reichsbank; the defendant Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister; the
defendant Goering was Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, and all of
them participated in the exchange of views of which this captured
document is a part (219-PS). Notwithstanding this analysis by the
Reichsbank, they proceeded to increase the imposition on France from 15
million Reichsmarks daily to 25 million daily.
It is small wonder that the bottom has been knocked out of French
economy. The plan and purpose of the thing appears in
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a letter from General Stulpnagle, head of the German Armistice
Commission to the defendant Jodl as early as September 14th, 1940 when
he wrote, "The slogan 'Systematic weakening of France' has already been
surpassed by far in reality."
Not only was there a purpose to debilitate and demoralize the economy of
Germany's neighbors for the purpose of destroying their competitive
position, but there was looting and pilfering on an unprecedented scale.
We need not be hypocritical about this business of looting. I recognize
that no army moves through occupied territory without some pilfering as
it goes. Usually the amount of pilfering increases as discipline wanes.
If the evidence in this case showed no looting except of that sort, I
certainly would ask no conviction of these defendants for it.
But we will show you that looting was not due to the lack of discipline
or to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature. The German organized
plundering, planned it, disciplined it, and made it official just as he
organized everything else, and then he compiled the most meticulous
records to show that he had done the best job of looting that was
possible under the circumstances. And we have those records.
The defendant Rosenberg was put in charge of a systematic plundering of
the art objects of Europe by direct order of Hitler dated January 29th,
1940 (136-PS). On April 16th, 1943 Rosenberg reported that up to the 7th
of April, 92; railway cars with 2,775 cases containing art objects had
been sent to Germany; and that 53 pieces of art had been shipped to
Hitler direct, and 594 to the defendant Goering. The report mentioned
something like 20,000 pieces of seized art and the main locations where
they were stored (015-PS).
Moreover, this looting was glorified by Rosenberg. Here we have 39
leather-bound tabulated volumes of his inventory, which in due time we
will offer in evidence. One cannot but admire the artistry of this
Rosenberg report. The Nazi taste was cosmopolitan. Of the 9,455 articles
inventoried, there were included 5,255 paintings, 297 sculptures, 1,372
pieces of antique furniture, 307 textiles, and 2,224 small objects of
art. Rosenberg observed that there were approximately 10,000 more
objects still to be inventoried (015-PS). Rosenberg himself estimated
that the values involved would come close to a billion dollars (090-PS).
I shall not go into further details of the war crimes and crimes against
humanity committed by the Nazi gangster ring whose leaders are before
you. It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the in-
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dividual crimes. I am dealing with e common plan or design for crime and
will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is only to show the
scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men
who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and
design which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the
plan was actually executed by others.
At length, this reckless and lawless course outraged the world. It
recovered from the demoralization of surprise attack, assembled its
forces, and stopped these men in their tracks. Once success deserted
their banners, one by one the Nazi satellites fell away. Sawdust Caesar
collapsed. Resistance forces in every occupied country arose to harry
the invader. Even at home, Germans saw that Germany was being led to
ruin by these mad men, and the attempt on July 20th, 1944 to assassinate
Hitler, an attempt fostered by men of highest station, was a desperate
effort by internal forces to stop short of ruin. Quarrels broke out
among the failing conspirators, and the decline of the Nazi power was
more swift than its ascendancy. German armed forces surrendered, its
government disintegrated, its leaders committed suicide by the dozen,
and by the fortunes of war these defendants fell into our hands.
Although they are not by any means all the guilty ones, they are
survivors among the most responsible. Their names appear over and over
in the documents and their faces grace the photographic evidence. We have here the surviving top politicians, militarists, financiers, diplomats, administrators, and propagandists of the Nazi movement. Who was responsible for these crimes if they were not?
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 2005.