Various

“ If we had lied on a thousand small things, the enemy would have been able to deal with us more easily than was the case. But decisive for such a news machine is not the detail but the final fundamental basis on which propaganda is built. Decisive is the belief in the incorruptibility of the leaders of the state, on which every journalist must rely and this basis is shaken by what has become known today of mass murders, of senseless atrocities, and it is shaken by the doubt in the honesty of Hitler’s protestations for peace, the factual details of which I am not in a position to judge. ”

“ For this reason I can limit the defense to the following statements:
We are in a transitory period of history of the greatest significance. An age is coming to an end which has been known less for its concept of order than for its concept of liberty. This striving for liberty released tremendous forces—so gigantic that in the end it was impossible to master them. The tremendous progress this era has unquestionably made in scientific and technical spheres we have dearly paid for with the shattering of all human order and the loss of peace in the entire world. ”

“ Hitler’s orders were his own orders and only his own orders. He was much too fanatical a champion of the one-man doctrine, that is, of the principle that every decision must be made by one and only one man even to consider anything else, especially in the case of his own decisions. We will leave his high opinion of himself entirely aside in this connection. Whatever the more or less decorative significance of such countersigning may have been, there was never any doubt that the Führer’s orders represented nothing but his own decision. ”

“ No country has been willing to submit vital and decisive questions to the judgment of others, no matter to how great a majority or to however independent a tribunal. And now every individual citizen of such a sovereign state was to have had not only the right but even the duty toward the other nations or humanity to rebel against the legal system of his own country because it violated the rights of man and humanity? Such an imposition, made retroactively, pronounces its own sentence. It would place the autonomy of the individual above state sovereignty. ”

“ The circumstances in a state can be such that the man who is legally the only one competent for the decision on war and peace, may have, in practice, no—or not the sole—authority. If, however, both the sole legal competence and the sole authority in actual practice have ever been coincidental in any state, then such was the case in Hitler Germany. And if, in any question, Hitler did ever go as far as to accept the advice of a third party, then that was certainly not the case in the question of war or peace. He was the arbiter of war and peace between the Reich and other nations—he alone. ”

“ Its existence was in part due to the recognition from abroad and to its effectiveness, which caused a British Prime Minister to make the now world-famous statement at a critical period, that democracies need two years longer than totalitarian governments to attain a certain goal. Only one who has lived in the outer cold and as though outcast among his own people amidst blindly believing masses, who idolized this man as infallible, can tell how firmly Hitler’s power was anchored in the nameless and numberless following who held him capable of doing only what was good and right. ”

“ If the German people had learned of these mass murders, they would certainly no longer have supported Hitler. They would probably have sacrificed 5 million for a victory, but never would the German people have wished to bring about victory by the murder of 5 million people.
I should like to state further that this murder decree of Hitler’s seems to me the end of every race theory, every race philosophy, every kind of race propaganda, for after this catastrophe any further advocacy of race theory would be equivalent to approval in theory of further murder. ”

“ The idea of a conspiracy is being used as a basis for this common liability. If the logical inferences were to be drawn from this unlimited accusation, then each defense counsel would have to deal with all the details presented by the Prosecution. The obvious impossibility of taking up so much of the Tribunal’s time shows how questionable the basis of the accusation is. Therefore I have to confine myself to examining the participation in the conspiracy only from the viewpoint of the actual and legal position of the Foreign Minister in the Third Reich. ”

“ If such a conspiracy had existed, then Hitler would have been—nobody can doubt it—the leader of these conspirators. But it has already been emphasized that a conspiracy headed by a dictator is a contradiction in itself. Hitler would have ridiculed the suggestion that he had made an agreement with his Ministers, Party leaders, and generals to wage this or that war, or to conduct the war by such or such means. He was an autocrat. He was not concerned with the approval of these men, but merely with having his decisions executed, whether they agreed with these decisions or not. ”

“ I am thankful to the High Tribunal for permitting the accused to portray matters to the total extent to which he saw, felt, and experienced them, for only such direct personal portrayal can afford good insight into the attitude of the accused, thus making it possible to obtain a reliable opinion of his personality. This knowledge is absolutely necessary if the Tribunal is to come to a decision which is not only in harmony with objective law, but which also renders the maximum of justice to the individuality of the perpetrator. ”

“ Every state has had the experience of seeing its ultimate orders, its supreme orders, which must be binding on the hierarchy if the authority of the state is to subsist at all, on occasion coming into conflict with rules not imposed by the state—to divine law, to natural law, and to the laws of reason. Good governments take pains to avoid such conflicts. To the great sorrow—indeed, to the despair—of many Germans, Hitler frequently brought about such conflicts. ”

“ Perhaps we shall reach a point where the unleashing of a war deserving moral and also legal condemnation will, for the general legal conscience, constitute high treason against the world community. Perhaps we shall reach a point where it will be permissible, or even compulsory, to betray a government starting such a war to foreign countries without this being termed high treason toward one’s own. ”

“ Rather is it true that the real position of Keitel, however important it may have seemed to outsiders, was neither decisive nor of importance either for the total sum of events or for the basic and important decisions of Hitler. Justice can be done to the actual importance of this activity if one says that it was tremendous, because physically and spiritually it went beyond human strength; because it placed the defendant perpetually in a dilemma between his military point of view and the unbending will of Hitler to whom he was faithfully, far too faithfully, devoted. ”

“ FRITZSCHE: I know very well that international law places no restrictions on propaganda, especially propaganda during war. I also know very well that only in a very few individual treaties between states are there regulations about the use of propaganda; for example in the German-Polish treaty and in the German-Soviet Union treaty. But in all my life as a journalist I have emphasized that the lack of international regulations as to propaganda is no excuse for lies. I always emphasized the moral responsibility of the journalist and newsman. ”

“ If Justice Jackson really wishes to forego straightforward decision by force and is prepared to become a party to and submit to a legal procedure, although not bound to do so, then he will have to forego presenting arguments which do not belong in a legal procedure. A hybrid, which is neither a clear act of violence nor a trial in the usual sense—however much one may try to place it in a halfway position under the name of a political trial—is an absurdity. ”

“ On the one hand he wants the Trial to appear to future generations as the fulfillment of the human yearning for justice; on the other, in the face of objections to the Charter, he invokes the power of the victorious, who really could have made short work of the defendants.
It seems to me that he speaks too much as an accuser, the sole role he really wants to assume according to his own words. For the prosecutor—especially in Anglo-American procedure—the word “justice” has a different meaning than for the judge, let alone the defendant. ”

“ Witness, who was responsible for the definitely false or exaggerated news in the German press during the Sudeten crisis?
VON SCHIRMEISTER: That was Alfred Ingemar Berndt, the head of the department. At that time he spent whole nights pouring over General Staff maps, directories, and lists of names, using them to fabricate atrocity reports from the Sudetenland. Herr Fritzsche watched this with anxiety. He came to me once and asked me, “What are we drifting into? Are we not drifting into war? If only we knew what they really want at the top and what is behind it all.” ”

“ That is just where the confidence of a nation as a whole expresses itself, namely, by leaving leadership to the prevailing majority. National Socialism undoubtedly aimed at and succeeded in rousing the belief in wide circles of the German people that its endeavors were supported by the majority of the people. It thereby procured for itself the alibi of legality.
Far from all political considerations, as all the generals and admirals have testified here, the leaders of the Armed Forces believed in the legitimacy of Hitler’s Government. ”

“ The misery, the misfortune that has fallen on the entire human race is so great that words do not suffice to express it. The German people, especially after having learned the catastrophe that has befallen the nations in the West and East and the Jews, is shaken by horror and pity for the victims. ”

“ GEN. RUDENKO: That is to say, in 1942 you knew already that Hitler’s order to murder existed and yet you followed him?
FRITZSCHE: You are comparing two things which are not comparable. There is quite a difference, not treating commissars as prisoners of war and giving an order for the killing of 5 million Jews.
GEN. RUDENKO: Then, if I understand you correctly, the fact that you did not go against Hitler, meant that you considered such an order to be permissible in the conduct of the war by the German Army? ”

“ The Führer’s orders became the central element of the German state edifice.
In the public hierarchy, this development was attended by an increase rather than a decrease in Hitler’s power. The great majority of German civil servants and officers had seen nothing behind the organized leadership but a machinery of domination invested with a new label and, if possible, an even more bureaucratic nature functioning side by side with the inherited state machinery. When Hitler’s orders became the Alpha and Omega, they felt themselves, so to speak, returned to the old familiar path. ”

“ At that time I believed I saw in Hitler’s doctrine also certain elements for a new type of mutual understanding among peoples. It was particularly the constantly repeated thesis that only the nationalism of one people can understand the nationalism of another people.
Only today have I realized ideologically—but particularly, of course materially—through the further development of arms, that the time of nationalism is past, if mankind does not want to commit suicide, and that the period of internationalism has come, for good or evil. ”

“ And in fact, they had been reached without a shot or a stroke with the one exception of Danzig, which would have been managed in the same peaceful way if the Führer had had a shred of patience and the Poles a shred of good will.
But they neither wanted nor believed in a war. Hitler was thought capable of large-scale bluffing, but not of launching the catastrophe of a war. I cannot, therefore, believe in a conspiracy to commit crimes against peace and the usages of war. ”

“ Created in an atmosphere of fervent belief in human progress, it was quickly transformed into a tool of the satisfied states. Every effort to strengthen the League of Nations meant a new bulwark for the maintenance of the status quo. Under cover of the elegant diction of juridical formalities power politics continued. Besides, the obsession by the idea of sécurité soon deprived the newly-created body of any breath of freshness and life.
In this fashion, naturally, a solution of the problems created by the end of the first World War could never be found. ”

“ Now if Canaris enjoyed such great confidence with Hitler and Keitel, but at the same time also worked authoritatively in Gisevius’ group, his character must not only be considered dual, but unreliable and untrustworthy as well. It is understandable that a person might temporarily display such a dual nature, if it is done for the sake of a higher aim, to serve one’s country, to liberate it from a tyrant. ”

“ The same is true, as far as I know, of all my fellow workers, but I do not by any means want to deny that I and my fellow workers selected news and quotations following a certain tendency. It is the curse of propaganda during war that one works only with black and white. Only a few great minds remain independent. ”

“ According to a principle embodied by nature into every system of criminal law on earth, a defendant is punishable for an omission only if he was actually in a position, and legally liable, to act. I shall demonstrate at length, within the compass of my arguments concerning the conspiracy, how small in fact Herr Von Ribbentrop’s possibilities of influence were. The decisive point at issue is the fact that he was not legally in a position to make any declarations to foreign powers binding the German Reich other than those he was empowered to by the head of the State. ”

“ The Weimar democracy could not have tolerated, any more than any other nation, a state of affairs in which military leaders as such could examine the decision to wage war taken by the political leaders, in the sense that they could refuse obedience if they saw fit. The military means of power must remain at the disposal of the political leaders of a state. Otherwise they are not means of power at all. That has always been so. And it will have to be so all the more if the duty to give assistance against aggression is really to apply among the nations. ”

“ FRITZSCHE: Not directly, but perhaps indirectly. I demanded the disarmament of the others, and then equality of armament; and I advocated the arming (Wehrhaftmachung) of the German people. The expression “Wehrhaftmachung” is liable to be misunderstood, at any rate, to be easily misinterpreted. I should like to define it expressly as the ability to fight in self-defense. The German people were promised again and again, often by me, that the restoration of military sovereignty would be for defensive purposes only. ”