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INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
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, ARTHUR 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 REICHS REGIERUNG (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 DER SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the "SD"); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the "GESTAPO"); DIE STURM ABTEILUNGEN DER NSDAP (commonly known as the "SA"); and the GENERAL STAFF and HIGH COMMAND of the GERMAN ARMED FORCES, all as defined in Appendix B,
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 8 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, ARTHUR 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 DER SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the "SD"); DIE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE, commonly known as the "GESTAPO"); DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER NSDAP (commonly known as the "SA"); and the GENERAL STAFF of the 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.
All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8 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 indiscriminate 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.
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.
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 1914-18 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.
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:
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 overthrow 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
1. On 30 January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28 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 paragovernmental organization with extensive and extraordinary privileges.
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 instill 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 program 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 labor 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 re-armament program 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 28 August 1939, immediately before launching their aggression against Poland, they appointed the Defendant FUNK Plenipotentiary for Economics; and on 30 August 1939, they set up the Ministerial Council for the Defense 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 re-arm 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 7 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 14 October 1933, they led Germany to leave the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.
(c) On 10 March 1935, the Defendant Goering announced that Germany was building a military air force.
(d) On 16 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 21 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 7 March 1936, they reoccupied and fortified the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Rhine Pact of Locarno of 16 October 1925, and falsely announced to the world that "we have no territorial demands to make on 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 21 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 1 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 11 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 21 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 5 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 in 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 8 February 1938, called Chancellor Schuschnigg to a conference at Berchtesgaden. At the meeting of 12 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 20 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, underground activities of Nazis in Austria increased. Schuschnigg, on 9 March 1938, announced a plebiscite on the question of Austrian independence. On 11 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 12 March 1938. On 13 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 21 April 1938, the Nazi conspirators met and prepared to launch an attack on Czechoslovakia not later than 1 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 21 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 3 September 1938, it was decided that all troops were to be ready for action on 28 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 29 September 1938, involving the cession of the Sudetenland by Czechoslovakia to Germany. Czechoslovakia was required to acquiesce. On 1 October 1938, German troops occupied the Sudetenland.
4 On 15 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 23 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 1 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. 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 9 April 1940; Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April 1941. All these invasions had been specifically planned in advance, in violation of the terms of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.
6. German invasion on 22 June 1941, of the U.S.S.R. territory in violation of Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939.
On 22 June 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, schools, hospitals, churches, and historic monuments, the mass deportation of the Soviet citizens for slave labor to Germany, as well as the annihilation of adults, old people, women and children, especially Beilorussians and Ukrainians, and the extermination of Jews committed throughout the occupied 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 10-year military-economic alliance signed at Berlin on 27 September 1940. This agreement, representing a strengthening of the bonds among those three nations established by the earlier but more limited pact of 25 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 to 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 7 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 11 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 1 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 conspira1ors 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.
All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8 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.
Vl. 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, 1 September 1939; against the United Kingdom and France, 3 September 1939; against Denmark and Norway, 9 April 1940; against Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, 10 May 1940; against Yugoslavia and Greece, 6 April 1941; against the U.S.S.R., 22 June 1941; and against the United States of America, 11 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 Offence 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.
All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1 September 1939 and 8 May 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories occupied by the German Armed Forces since 1 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.
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 in religious matters, 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.
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.
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 Clermont-Ferrand on 25 November 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24 December 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24 December 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May 1944); at Saint Pol de Leon (round-up in July 1944); at Locmine (round-up on 3 July 1944); at Eysieux (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 practiced 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 centers.
In the concentration camps, the health regime and the labor regime were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:
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 systematic extermination was practiced also, notably at Asq on 1 April 1944, at Colpo on 22 July 1944, at Buzet-sur-Tarn on 6 July 1944 and on 17 August 1944, at Pluvignier on 8 July 1944, at Rennes on 8 June 1944, at Grenoble on 8 July 1944, at Saint Flour on 10 June 1944, at Ruisnes on 10 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-Genis-Laval, Besancon, Petit-Saint-Bernard, Aulnat, Caen, Port-Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, Lhermitage 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.
From 1 September 1939, when the German Armed Forces invaded Poland, and from 22 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.
(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 United States of America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Holland, brought to this region from other concentration camps.
In the Jewish ghetto from 7 September 1941 to 6 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 neighboring 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 Estonian S.S.R. they shot tens of thousands of persons and in one day alone, 19 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 neighboring 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 Smolensk 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 tortured and shot.
In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were tortured and killed. 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 1942, 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 center of the city and shot them in public.
In the city of Lyda in the Grodnen region on 8 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 6 September to 24 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, whom 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.
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 labor upon defense 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:
From France the following deportations of persons for political and racial reasons took place-each of which consisted of from 1,500 to 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 journey, for example:
In one of the wagons of the train which left Compiegne for Buchenwald, on 17 September 1943, 80 men died out of 130;
On 4 June 1944, 484 bodies were taken out of the train at Sarrebourg;
In a train which left Compiegne on 2 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 16 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 journey;
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 deported from their country under deplorable conditions as a result of which many of them perished.
From Belgium between 1940 and 1944 at least 190,000 civilians were deported to Germany and used as slave labor. 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.
The German occupying authorities deported from the Soviet Union to slavery about 4,978,000 Soviet citizens.
Seven hundred and fifty thousand Czechoslovakian citizens were taken away from Czechoslovakia and forced to work in the German war machine in the interior of Germany.
On 4 June 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.
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 example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:
French officers who escaped from Stalag 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 4-8 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 8 February 1945.
Bodily punishments were inflicted upon non-commissioned officers and cadets who refused to work. On 24 December 1943, three French non-commissioned officers were murdered for that motive in Stalag IV A. Many ill-treatments were inflicted without motive on other ranks: stabbing with bayonets, striking with riflebutts, 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 jails 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, one 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 Stalags in Germany and in the occupied countries, particularly in 1943, 1944, and 1945.
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 Kubler and others) in the period 1941-43 ordered the shooting of prisoners of war.
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:
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 Chateaubriant.
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.
At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in October 1941.
At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.
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.
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:
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:
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:
Removal of Raw Materials.
Removal of Industrial Equipment.
Removal of Agricultural Produce.
Plundering.
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.
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, Voronexh, 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 a completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No; 1501/41, 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 Petersburg. 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. Petersburg 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 calibers 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, Marinpol, 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 Leo Tolstoy, "Yasnaya Polyana," and desecrated the grave of the great writer. They destroyed in Klin the museum of Tchaikovsky 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 Estonia 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 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 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 2,000,000,003,000 Czechoslovak crowns.
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:
A fine on the Jewish population 1,000,000,000
Various fines 157,179,484
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.
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.
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