Various

“ No government in the world, before the Nazis came to power, could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of mass extermination in the way in which they did, without having a people who would back them and support them and without having a large number of people, men and women, who were prepared to put their hands to their bloody murder. And not even, perhaps, the German people of previous generations would have lent themselves to the crimes about which this Tribunal has heard, the killing of millions and millions of men and women. ”

“ After your judgment, if only we know how to enlighten this people and watch over their first steps on the road to liberty, National Socialism will be inscribed permanently in their history as the crime of crimes which could lead it only to material and moral perdition, as the doctrine which they should forever avoid with horror and scorn in order to remain faithful or rather become once more faithful to the great norms of common civilization. ”

“ Between the Germanic community and the degenerate population of an inferior variety of men there is no longer any common measure. Human brotherhood is rejected, even more than all the other traditional moral values.
How can one explain how Germany, fertilized through the centuries by classic antiquity and Christianity, by the ideals of liberty, equality, and social justice, by the common heritage of western humanism to which she had brought such noble and precious contributions, could have come to this astonishing return to primitive barbarism? ”

“ I propose today to prove to you that all this organized and vast criminality springs from what I may be allowed to call a crime against the spirit, I mean a doctrine which, denying all spiritual, rational, or moral values by which the nations have tried, for thousands of years, to improve human conditions, aims to plunge humanity back into barbarism, no longer the natural and spontaneous barbarism of primitive nations, but into a diabolical barbarism, conscious of itself and utilizing for its ends all material means put at the disposal of mankind by contemporary science. ”

“ After that gigantic struggle where two ideologies, two conceptions of life were at grips, in the name of the people whom we represent here and in the name of the great human hope for which they have so greatly suffered, so greatly fought, we can without fear and with a clean conscience rise as accusers of the leaders of Nazi Germany. ”

“ If we wish that on the morrow of the cataclysm of war the sufferings of martyred countries, the sacrifices of victorious nations, and also the expiation of guilty people will engender a better humanity, justice must strike those guilty of the enterprise of barbarism from which we have just escaped. The reign of justice is the most exact expression of the great human hope. ”

“ Crimes against the physical person—arbitrary imprisonment, ill-treatment, deportations, murder committed by the Germans in the occupied countries—reached proportions beyond imagination, even in the course of a world conflict, and took the most odious forms.
These crimes spring directly from the Nazi doctrine and testify to the Reich leaders’ absolute disregard for the human individual, to the abolition of any sense of justice or even of pity, to a total subordination of any and all human consideration on the part of the German community. ”

“ Sometimes this great hope expresses itself with difficulty or loses its way or deceives itself or knows the dread return to barbarism, but it persists always and finally constitutes the powerful lever which brings about the progress of humanity despite everything. These aspirations always reborn, these concerns constantly awakened, this anguish unceasingly present, this perpetual combat against evil form in a definitive manner the sublime grandeur of man. National Socialism only yesterday imperiled all of this. ”

“ If, however, our fight for freedom slowly took the shape of a popular uprising, at the call of the men of the Resistance, belonging to all social classes, to all creeds and to all political parties, it was because, while our soil and our souls were crushed by the Nazi invader, our people refused not only to submit to wretchedness and slavery, but even more they refused to accept the Hitlerian dogmas which were in absolute contradiction to their traditions, their aspirations, and their human calling. ”

“ The dictatorial regime instituted by Hitler and his companions carries with it for all Germans the “soldier-life,” that is to say, a kind and a system of life entirely different from that of the bourgeois West and the proletarian East. It amounted to a permanent and complete mobilization of individual and collective energies. This integral militarization presupposed complete uniformity of thoughts and actions. It is a militarization which conforms to the Prussian tradition of discipline.
Propaganda instils into the masses faith, drive, and a thirst for the greatness of the community. ”

“ Logically consistent, National Socialism goes to the length of assuming the right, either to exterminate totally races judged hostile or decadent, or to subjugate or put to use individuals and groups capable of resistance, in the nations. Does not the idea of totalitarian war imply the annihilation of any eventual resistance? All those who, in any way, may be capable of opposing the New Order and the German hegemony will be liquidated. ”

“ The systematic War Crimes could not have been carried out by Nazi Germany without these organizations, without the men who composed them. It is they who not only executed but willed this body of crimes on behalf of Germany.
It may have seemed impossible to you that the monstrous barbarity of the National Socialist doctrine could have been imposed upon the German people, the heir, as are our people, of the highest values of civilization. ”

“ France, so many of whose sons were tortured and murdered in the jails of the Gestapo or in concentration camps; France, which was subjected to the still more horrible grip of demoralization and return to barbarism diabolically imposed by Nazi Germany, asks you, above all in the name of the heroic martyrs of the Resistance, who are among the greatest heroes of our national legend, that justice be done. ”

“ A gaping void opens before the human soul, disoriented by the search for new values.
The natural sciences and the sciences of the mind give birth to absolute relativism; to a deep scepticism regarding the lasting quality of values on which Western humanism has been nurtured for centuries. A vulgar Darwinism prevails, bewilders, and befuddles the brain. The Germans cease to see in human groups and races anything but isolated nuclei in perpetual struggle with one another.
It is in the name of decadence that the German spirit condemns humanism. ”

“ This work of justice is equally indispensable for the future of the German people. These people have been for many years intoxicated by Nazism; certain of their eternal and deep seated aspirations, under this regime, have found a monstrous expression; their entire responsibility is involved, not only by their general acceptance but by the effective participation of a great number of them in the crimes committed. Their re-education is indispensable. ”

“ The man who murdered Wilhelm Gustloff must have come from the Jewish people, because the Jewish textbooks teach that every Jew has the right to kill a non-Jew; and indeed, that it is pleasing to the Jewish God to kill as many non-Jews as possible.
“Look at the road the Jewish people have been following for thousands of years past; everywhere murder, everywhere mass murder! Neither must we forget that behind present-day wars there stands the Jewish financier who pursues his aims and interests. The Jew always lives on the blood of other nations; he needs such murder and such victims. ”

“ Lastly, we have a letter from Baldur von Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader, published in Der Stürmer of March 1938 (Document M-45, Exhibit USA-260) :
“It is the historical merit of Der Stürmer to have enlightened the broad masses of our people in a popular way as to the Jewish world danger. Der Stürmer is right in not carrying out its task in a purely aesthetic manner, for Jewry has shown no regard for the German people. We have, therefore, no reason for being considerate toward our worst enemy. What we fail to do today, the youth of tomorrow will have to suffer for bitterly.” ”

“ For every decision which you have to make, ask yourself: Is this decision in accordance with the National Socialist conscience of the German people? Thus you will have a firm basis of conscience which will also bear for all time, in your own sphere of decisions, the authority of the Third Reich, based on the popular National Socialist unity and on the recognition of the will of the Führer Adolf Hitler. ”

“ The expression “blood” which appears so often in the writings of the Nazi theorists denotes this stream of real life, of red sap which flows through the circulatory system of every race and of all genuine culture as it flows through the human body. To be Aryan is to feel this current passing through oneself, this current which galvanizes and vivifies the whole nation. Blood is this region of spontaneous and unconscious life which reveals to each individual the tendencies of the race. ”

“ But we can examine our conscience fearlessly in the face of the Nazi culprits; we find no common measure between them and ourselves.
If this criminality had been accidental; if Germany had been forced into war, if crimes had been committed only in the excitement of combat, we might question ourselves in the light of the Scriptures. But the war was prepared and deliberated upon long in advance, and upon the very last day it would have been easy to avoid it without sacrificing any of the legitimate interests of the German people. ”

“ Material loss can be made up through labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the peoples’ conscience. The spirit of Versailles has perpetuated the fury of war; and there will not be a true peace, progress, or reconstruction until the world desists from this spirit. The German people will not tire of pronouncing this warning. ”

“ The crimes are monstrous. The crimes and the responsibility for them have definitely been established. There is no possible doubt. Nevertheless throughout these tranquil sessions of this Trial, extraordinary in the history of the world, in view of the exceptional nature of the justice which your High Tribunal is called upon to render before the United Nations and the German people and before all mankind a few objections may arise in our minds. ”

“ It is an extract from a speech:
“I beg you and particularly those of you who carry the cross throughout the land, to become somewhat more serious when I speak of the enemy of the German people, namely, the Jew. Not out of irresponsibility or for fun do I fight against the Jewish enemy, but because I bear within me the knowledge that the whole misfortune was brought to Germany by the Jews alone.
“. . . I ask you once more, what is at stake today? The Jew seeks domination not only among the German people but among all peoples. The Communists pave the way for him. ”

“ The young Nazis in the Gestapo and the SS knew that their acts, no matter how cruel or how inhumane they might be, would always be judged legitimate by the regime, in the name of the racial community, of its needs, and of its triumphs. The Nazi Party, thanks to the young men of the SS, of the SD, and of the Gestapo, had thus become capable of accomplishing in the field of criminality what no other person or nation could have committed. ”

“ This is, in fact, what is brought into being by the Paris Pact, which regulates “the right of declaration of war.” Since 1928 the international law of war has emerged from its framework of regulations. It has gone beyond the empiricism of the Hague Convention to qualify the legal foundation of recourse to force. Every war of aggression is illegal, and the men who bear the responsibility for bringing it about place themselves by their own will beyond the law. ”

“ On 25 October 1941 Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, announced that the war criminals would not escape just punishment:
“The massacres of France”—said Churchill—“are an example of what Hitler’s Nazis are doing in many other countries under their yoke. The atrocities committed in Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and particularly behind the German front in Russia, exceed anything that has been known since the darkest and most bestial ages of humanity. ”

“ This is actually the link between the force of the victors and the guilt of the vanquished leaders who appear before Your High Tribunal.
But this link signifies nothing else but the revelation of the wisdom of nations that justice, in order to impose itself effectively and constantly upon individuals and upon nations, must have force at its disposal. The common will to put force in the service of justice inspires our nations and commands our whole civilization. ”

“ It will thus become possible to assure an absolute domination over a neighboring people that has been reduced to impotence and to utilize, for the benefit of the Reich, the resources and the human material of those people reduced to slavery.
All the moral conceptions which tended to make war more humane are obviously outdated, and the more so, all international conventions which had undertaken to bring some extenuation of the evils of war.
The conquered peoples must concur, willingly or by force, in the German victory by their material resources, as well as by their labor potential. ”

“ National Socialism is in reality one of the peaks of the moral and spiritual crisis of modern humanity, convulsed by industrialization and technical progress. Germany experienced this metamorphosis of economic and social life not only with an extraordinary brutality but at a time when she did not yet possess the political equilibrium and the cultural unity which the other countries of western Europe had achieved. ”