Various

“ We propose to examine the purposes and the role of the concentration camp in the larger Nazi scheme of things. We propose to show that the concentration camp was one of the fundamental institutions of the Nazi regime, that it was a pillar of the system of terror by which the Nazis consolidated their power over Germany and imposed their ideology upon the German people, that it was really a primary weapon in the battle against the Jews, against the Christian church, against labor, against those who wanted peace, against opposition or non-conformity of any kind. ”

“ In the international field the source of law is not the command of a sovereign but the treaty agreement binding upon every state which has adhered to it. And it is indeed true, and the recognition of its truth today by all the great powers of the world is vital to our future peace—it is indeed true that, as M. Litvinov once said, and as Great Britain fully accepts:
“Absolute sovereignty and entire liberty of action only belong to such states as have not undertaken international obligations. Immediately a state accepts international obligations it limits its sovereignty.” ”

“ Now, if it please the Tribunal, that concludes my presentation of what, to me, has always seemed one of the saddest chapters in human history, the rape and destruction of the frail little nation of Czechoslovakia.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom) : May it please the Tribunal, before I tender the evidence which I desire to place before the Tribunal, it might be convenient if I explained how the British case is to be divided up and who will present the different parts. ”

“ History—very recent history—does not warrant the view that a state cannot be a criminal. On the other hand, the immeasurable potentialities for evil, inherent in the state in this age of science and organization would seem to demand, quite imperatively, means of repression of criminal conduct even more drastic and more effective than in the case of individuals. And insofar, therefore, as this Charter has put on record the principle of the criminal responsibility of the state, it must be applauded as a wise and far-seeing measure of international legislation. ”

“ Ambassador, the German Army has just attacked our country. This is the second time in 25 years that Germany has committed a criminal aggression against a neutral and loyal Belgium. What has just happened is perhaps even more odious than the aggression of 1914. No ultimatum, no note, no protest of any kind has ever been placed before the Belgian Government. It is through the attack itself that Belgium has learned that Germany has violated the undertakings given by her on October 13th 1937 and renewed spontaneously at the beginning of the war. ”

“ To have stuck it out and at the same time—apart from exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if—with bombing raids, the burden and deprivations of war—we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators, and trouble-mongers. ”

“ We have traced the progressive limitation of the rights of war, the renunciation and condemnation of wars of aggression, and above all, the total prohibition and condemnation of all wars conceived as an instrument of national policy. What statesman or politician in charge of the affairs of nations could doubt, from 1928 onwards, that aggressive war, or that all war, except in self-defense or for the collective enforcement of the law, or against a state which had itself violated the Pact of Paris, was unlawful and outlawed? ”

“ It set up in the Council of the League, in the Assembly and in the Permanent Court of International Justice, a machine not only for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, but also for the frank ventilation of all international questions by open and free discussion. At that time, in those years after the last war, the hopes of the world stood high. Millions of men in all countries—perhaps even in Germany itself—had laid down their lives in what they hoped and believed was a war to end war. ”

“ When Belgium and the Low Countries were occupied and France collapsed in June of 1940, England—although with the inestimably valuable moral and economic support of the United States of America—was left alone in the field as the sole representative of democracy in the face of the forces of aggression. At that moment only the British Empire stood between Germany and the achievement of her aim to dominate the Western World. Only the British Empire—and England as its citadel. ”

“ What is being presented to the Tribunal today is the inside story, in their own words, underlying the Pact of Munich. We are now able to spread upon the pages of history the truth concerning the fraud and deceit practiced by the Nazi conspirators in achieving for their own ends, the Pact of Munich as a stepping stone towards further aggression. One cannot think back without living again through the dread of war, the fear of war, the fear of world disaster, which seized all peace-loving persons. ”

“ I have regretted greatly this incomprehensible attitude of the Polish Government. But that alone is not the decisive fact. The worst is that now Poland, like Czechoslovakia a year ago, believes under the pressure of a lying international campaign, that it must call up troops although Germany, on her part, has not called up a single man and had not thought of proceeding in any way against Poland. ”

“ Even if the allegations were true—and they were patently false—they would afford no conceivable justification for the action of invading without warning, without declaration of war, without any attempt at mediation or conciliation.
Aggressive war is none the less aggressive war because the state which wages it believes that other states might, in the future, take similar action. The rape of a nation is not justified because it is thought she may be raped by another. ”

“ They are the men whose support had built Hitler up into the position of power he occupied; these are the men whose initiative and planning often conceived and certainly made possible the acts of aggression done in Hitler’s name; and these are the men who enabled Hitler to build up the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the war economy, the political philosophy, by which these treacherous attacks were carried out, and by which he was able to lead his fanatical followers into peaceful countries to murder, to loot, and to destroy. ”

“ This solidarity has never prevented us, and does not prevent us today, from keeping Poland in the same friendly state of mind.
“In so serious an hour I sincerely believe that no high-minded human being could understand it if a war of destruction were started without a last attempt being made to reach a peaceful settlement between Germany and Poland. Your desire for peace could, in all certainty, work for this aim without any prejudice to German honor. ”

“ The justification for that concern on the part of the democratic powers is not difficult to find. With the evidence which we now have of what was happening within the councils of the German Reich and its Armed Forces during these months, it is manifest that the German Government were intent on seizing Poland as a whole, that Danzig—as Hitler himself was to say in time, a month later—“was not the subject of the dispute at all.” The Nazi Government was intent upon aggression and the demands and negotiations in respect to Danzig were merely a cover and excuse for further domination. ”

“ Any hope that now, at the end of the term of the agreement, a new Russo-German tension could arise is childish. Germany has taken no step which would lead her outside her sphere of interest, nor has Russia. But England’s hope to achieve an amelioration of her own position through the engineering of some new European crisis, is, insofar as it is concerned with Russo-German relations, an illusion. ”

“ I wish to turn now from the exploitation of foreign labor in general to a rather special point of the Nazi program which appears to us to have combined the brutality and the purposes of the slave labor program with those of the concentration camp. The Nazis placed all Allied nationals in concentration camps and forced them, along with the other inmates of the concentration camps, to work under conditions which were set actually to exterminate them. This was what we call the Nazi program of extermination through work. ”

“ And previously, in 1928, the 6th Pan-American Conference had adopted a resolution declaring that, as “war of aggression constitutes a crime against the human species . . . all aggression is illicit and as such is declared prohibited.” A year earlier, as long ago as September 1927, the Assembly of the League of Nations adopted a resolution affirming the conviction that “a war of aggression can never serve as a means of settling international disputes and is, in consequence, an international crime” and going on to declare that “all wars of aggression are, and shall always be prohibited.” ”

“ On Pages 724-725, Hitler, in this book, speaking of the Jew, said that if the National Socialist movement was to fulfill its task—and I quote:
“It must open the eyes of the people with regard to foreign nations and must remind them again and again of the true enemy of our present-day world. In the place of hate against Aryans—from whom we may be separated by almost everything but to whom, however, we are tied by common blood or the great tie of a common culture—it must dedicate to the general anger the evil enemy of mankind as the true cause of all suffering. ”

“ Its actions are the actions of men. It is a salutary principle, a principle of law, that politicians who embark upon a particular policy—as here—of aggressive war should not be able to seek immunity behind the intangible personality of the state. It is a salutary legal rule that persons who, in violation of the law, plunge their own and other countries into an aggressive war should do so with a halter around their necks.
To say that those who aid and abet, who counsel and procure a crime are themselves criminals, is a commonplace in our own municipal law. ”

“ MR. DODD: “I myself report to you that the workers belonging to all foreign nations are treated humanely, and correctly, and cleanly; are fed and housed well and are even clothed. On the basis of my own services with foreign nations I go as far as to state that never before in the world were foreign workers treated as correctly as they are now, in the hardest of all wars, by the German people.” ”

“ When we speak of plans to germanize, we mean plans to assimilate conquered territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. Germanization, we shall demonstrate, meant the obliteration of the former national character of the conquered territories and the extermination of all elements which could not be reconciled with the Nazi ideology. By spoliation, we mean the plunder of public and private property and, in general, the exploitation of the people and the natural resources of occupied countries. ”

“ Under these circumstances I thought that, in spite of everything, the present moment was better for resistance. At present the superiority of the German Armed Forces in Poland is so overwhelming in all the fields that the Polish Army will collapse in a very short time. I doubt whether this fast success could have been achieved in 1 or 2 years. England and France would have armed their allies to such an extent that the crushing technical superiority of the German Armed Forces could not have become so apparent any more. I am aware, Duce, that the fight which I enter is one for life and death. ”

“ There must be acknowledged not only, as in the Charter of the United Nations, fundamental human rights, but also, as in the Charter of this Tribunal, fundamental human duties, and of these none is more vital, none is more fundamental, than the duty not to vex the peace of nations in violation of the clearest legal prohibitions and undertakings. If this be an innovation, it is an innovation which we are prepared to defend and to justify, but it is not an innovation which creates a new crime. ”

“ To the message which I sent you last April I have received no reply, but because my confident belief that the cause of world peace—which is the cause of humanity itself—rises above all other considerations, I am again addressing myself to you, with the hope that the war which impends, and the consequent disaster to all peoples, may yet be averted. ”

“ This spirit of truth is certainly contained in and governs Article 19; and the objections I raised to the testimony of this witness seem to me justified to such a degree that the important principle of speeding up the Trial should give way to the principle of truth. Humanity itself is in question here. We want to establish the truth for our own generation and for that of our children. But if such testimony remains untold for months, then a part of mankind might well despair of all humanity and the German people, in particular, would suffer. ”

“ General Oshima expresses his thanks for the great honor and emphasizes how glad he is that this brotherhood of arms has now come about between Germany and Japan.
“The Führer continues: ‘You gave the right declaration of war.’ This method is the only proper one. Japan pursued it formerly and it corresponds with his own system, that is, to negotiate as long as possible. But if one sees the other is interested only in putting one off, in shamming and humiliating one, and is not willing to come to an agreement, then one should strike as hard as possible, indeed, and not waste time declaring war. ”

“ I merely recall an agreement with Poland which has worked out to the advantage of both sides . . . . True statesmanship will not overlook realities, but consider them. The Italian nation and the new Italian State are realities. The German nation and the German Reich are equally realities. And to my own fellow citizens I would say that the Polish nation and the Polish State have also become a reality. ”

“ Humanity and justice will find means of mitigating any injustice in collective punishment. Above all, much hardship can be obviated by making the punishment fall upon the individuals who were themselves directly responsible for the criminal conduct of their state. It is here that the powers who framed this Charter took a step which justice, sound legal sense, and an enlightened appreciation of the good of mankind must acclaim without cavil or reserve. ”