Various

“ Anyone who has even a grain of a sense of truth left in his mind and even a shadow of a feeling of justice left in his heart will have to admit that, in the difficult and eventful years which followed the concordat, every word and every action of ours was ruled by loyalty to the terms of the agreement; but also he will have to recognize with surprise and deep disgust that the unwritten law of the other party has been arbitrary misinterpretation of agreements, circumvention of agreements, weakening of the force of agreements and, finally, more or less open violation of agreements. ”

“ I doubt that any museum in the world, whether the Metropolitan in New York, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, or the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, could present such a catalogue as this; in fact, should they pool their treasures, the result would certainly fall short of the art collection that Germany amassed for itself, at the expense of the other nations of Europe. Never in history has a collection so great been amassed with so little scruple. ”

“ I shall attack France and England at the most favorable and quickest moment. Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is meaningless. No one will question that when we have won. The arguments we will choose for the breach of neutrality shall not be as idiotic as they were in 1914. If we do not break the neutrality, then England and France will. Without attack the war is not to be ended victoriously. I consider it possible to end the war only by means of an attack. The question as to whether the attack will be successful, no one can answer. Everything depends upon favorable providence. ”

“ What we are discussing here is the crime of planning and waging aggressive war. It stands to reason that that crime is committed most consciously and culpably by a nation’s leaders—the leaders in all the major fields of activity which are necessary to and closely involved in the waging of war. It is committed by propagandists and publicists. It is committed by political leaders, by diplomats, by the chief ministers, by the principal industrial and financial leaders. It is no less committed by the military leaders. ”

“ Never again must it be possible to create a military power west of the Urals, even if we have to wage war for a hundred years in order to attain this goal. Every successor of the Führer should know security for the Reich exists only if there are no foreign military forces west of the Urals. It is Germany who undertakes the protection of this area against all possible dangers. Our iron principle is and has to remain: We must never permit anybody but the Germans to carry arms. ”

“ What do you know of the Sauckel organization? Where did it exist?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: I know only what was generally known: namely, that this organization existed for the purpose of bringing manpower into the Reich for work in the armament industry.
DR. SERVATIUS: You spoke of an organization; but you don’t know anything about this organization, do you?
VON DEM BACH-ZELEWSKI: No, I don’t mean it in your sense, a large independent organization; that is not what I mean. But it was obvious that a man who was responsible for the whole of manpower must have an organization at his disposal. ”

“ Reichsleiter Bormann has requested me to give you a review today of the strategic position in the beginning of the fifth year of war. . . . No one—the Führer has ordered—may know more or be told more than he needs for his immediate task; but I have no doubt at all in my mind, gentlemen, that you need a great deal in order to be able to cope with your tasks. It is in your Gaue, after all . . . that all the enemy propaganda, and the demoralization through malicious rumors that try to find themselves a place among our people concentrate . ”

“ The most essential aim of war against the Jewish-Bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of Asiatic influence from the European culture. In this connection the troops are facing tasks which exceed the one-sided routine of soldiering. The soldier in the Eastern Territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war, but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. ”

“ It cannot be executed by an unprepared, weak, or recalcitrant military leadership. It has, of course, been said that war is too important a business to be left to soldiers alone; and this is no doubt true, but it is equally true that an aggressive diplomacy is far too dangerous a business to be conducted without military advice and support, and no doubt some of the German generals had qualms about Hitler’s timing and the boldness of some of his moves. Some of these doubts are rather interestingly reflected in an entry from Jodl’s diary which has not yet been read. ”

“ The most effective preventive measure is, without doubt, deprival of freedom, which is imposed in the form of ‘protective custody’ if it is feared that the free activity of the persons in question might endanger the security of the State in any way. The use of protective custody is so regulated by directives of the Minister of the Interior of the Reich and Prussia and by special arrest examination procedures of the Secret State Police that—as far as preventive action against the enemies of the State permits—ample guarantees against the abuse of protective custody are provided. ”

“ For the first time in history we have to fight only on one front; the other front is at present free. But no one can know how long that will remain so. I have doubted for a long time whether I should strike first in the East and then in the West. In principle I did not organize the Armed Forces in order not to strike. The decision to strike was always in me. Sooner or later I wanted to solve the problem. Inevitably it was decided that the East was to be annihilated first. If the Polish war was won so quickly, it was due to the superiority of our Armed Forces. ”

“ And only for such action as is undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to be shed once again; before God, because we are sent into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread, as creatures to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win and hold their position as lords of the earth only through their own intelligence and courage. ”

“ It is the duty of the Reich Directorate to see that there is leadership in all phases of life, a leadership which is firmly tied to National Socialist ideology and which promotes its dissemination with all of its energy . . . .
“It is the supreme task of the Reich Organization Leader to preserve the Party as a well-sharpened sword for the Führer.” ”

“ At an end also is an intellectual battle, the goal of which was the destruction of Christianity and Church among our people; a campaign of lies and treachery against truth and love, against divine and human rights, and against international law. ”

“ About a week or 10 days ago there appeared in a newspaper circulated in Nuremberg, an account of a visit by that paper’s correspondent to a camp in which SS prisoners of war were confined. The thing which particularly struck the correspondent was the one question asked by the SS prisoners. Why are we charged as war criminals? What have we done except our normal duty?
The evidence now to be presented to the Tribunal will, we expect, answer that question. It will show that just as the Nazi Party was the very heart—the core—of the conspiracy, so the SS was the very essence of Nazism. ”

“ World history would have taken another course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining, and crying may not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization. ”

“ The feeding of the natives and of prisoners of war who are not working for the Armed Forces from army kitchens is an equally misunderstood humanitarian act, as is the giving of cigarettes and bread. Things which the people at home can spare under great sacrifices and things which are being brought by the command to the front under great difficulties should not be given to the enemy by the soldier, not even if they originate from booty. ”

“ As, since the National Socialist revolution, all open struggle and all open opposition to the State and to the leadership of the State is forbidden, a Secret State Police as a preventive instrument in the struggle against all dangers threatening the State is indissolubly bound up with the National Socialist Führer State. The opponents of National Socialism were not eliminated by the prohibition of their organizations and their newspapers, but have withdrawn to other forms of opposition to the state. ”

“ I want to pass now to the Eastern Front, where there was large-scale land fighting in Poland and the Soviet Union, from 1941 on. Here the German forces were fighting among a hostile population and had to face extensive partisan activities behind their lines. I propose to show here that the activities of the German Armed Forces against partisans and against other elements of the population became a vehicle for carrying out Nazi political and racial policies and a vehicle for the massacre of Jews and numerous segments of the Slav population which were regarded by the Nazis as undesirable. ”

“ Mein Kampf establishes unequivocally that the use of aggressive war to serve their aims in foreign policy was part of the very creed of the Nazi Party.
A great German philosopher has said that “ideas have hands and feet.” It became the deliberate aim of these defendants to see to it that the ideas, doctrines, and policies of Mein Kampf should become the active faith and guide for action of the German nation, and particularly of its malleable youth. ”

“ Witness, do you believe that this intention of the plotters of the 20th of July was due to the fact that the Defendant Speer, in view of his activities, was considered not only in these circles but even elsewhere merely as an expert and not as a politician?
OHLENDORF: The question is very hard to answer. It is very difficult not to be considered a politician if one has been so closely connected with those authorities of the Reich who made the final political decisions and has perhaps been an essential contributor to the suggestions and proposals from which the decisions evolved. ”

“ Hitler writes at Page 557:
“Germany will either become a world power or will not continue to exist at all. But, in order to become a world power, it needs that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary importance today and assures the existence of its citizens.”
And, finally, he writes:
“. . . we must take our stand on the principles already mentioned in regard to foreign policy, namely, the necessity of bringing our territorial area into just proportion with the number of our population. ”

“ On them and on them alone and on their silent and vocal protectors rests the responsibility for the fact that now, on the horizon of Germany, there is to be seen, not the rainbow of peace, but the threatening storm clouds of destructive religious strife. ”