Nuremberg Trial Proceedings - Indictment: Count Three
COUNT THREE - WAR CRIMES
VIII. Statement of the Offence
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.
(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT
OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH
SEAS
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.
In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg,
Italy, and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the "Western
Countries") and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line
drawn due north and south through the center of Berlin (hereinafter
called "Western Germany").
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.
Crimes committed in France or against French citizens
took the following forms:
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:
1. Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from
Compiegne to Auschwitz in January 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the
end of four months.
2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23 March
and 6 May 1943, in Block 8 at Dachau.
3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21 November
1943, and 15 March 1945, in the Block at Dora.
4. 465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November
1944, at Dora.
5. 22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald
between 1 January 1943, and 15 April 1945.
6. 11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp
(most of them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and the infirm) between
1 January and 15 April 1945.
7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.
8. Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg
Camp, 1,600 died from supposedly natural causes.
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.
In the U.S.S.R., i. e., in the Bielorussian, Ukrainian,
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian Soviet
Socialist Republics, in 19 regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic, and in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the
Balkans (hereinafter called "the Eastern Countries") and in
that part of Germany which lies east of a line drawn north and south
through the center of Berlin (herein-after called "Eastern Germany").
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.
Such murders and ill-treatments included:
(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.
(B) DEPORTATION FOR SLAVE LABOR
AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF AND IN OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES
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:
1. From the Western Countries:
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:
1940 3 Transports
1941 14 Transports
1942 104 Transports
1943 257 Transports
1944 326 Transports
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.
2. From the Eastern 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.
(C) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT
OF PRISONERS OF WAR, AND OF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE
COUNTRIES WITH WHOM GERMANY WAS AT WAR, AND OF PERSONS ON THE HIGH SEAS
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:
1. In the Western Countries:
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.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
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.
(D) KILLING OF HOSTAGES
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:
1. In the Western Countries:
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.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot
in October 1941.
At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.
(E) PLUNDER OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
PROPERTY
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.
The defendants engaged in the following acts and practices,
among others:
1. They degraded the standard of life of the people
of occupied countries and caused starvation, by stripping occupied countries
of foodstuffs for removal to Germany.
2. They seized raw materials and industrial machinery
in all of the occupied countries, removed them to Germany and used them
in the interest of the German war effort and the German economy.
3. In all the occupied countries, in varying degrees,
they confiscated businesses, plants, and other property.
4. In an attempt to give color of legality to illegal
acquisitions of property, they forced owners of property to go through
the forms of "voluntary" and "legal" transfers.
5. They established comprehensive controls over the
economies of all of the occupied countries and directed their resources,
their production and their labor in the interests of the German war
economy, depriving the local populations of the products of essential
industries.
6. By a variety of financial mechanisms, they despoiled
all of the occupied countries of essential commodities and accumulated
wealth, debased the local currency systems and disrupted the local economies.
They financed extensive purchases in occupied countries through clearing
arrangements by which they exacted loans from the occupied countries.
They imposed occupation levies, exacted financial contributions, and
issued occupation currency, far in excess of occupation costs. They
used these excess funds to finance the purchase of business properties
and supplies in the occupied countries.
7. They abrogated the rights of the local populations
in the occupied portions of the U.S.S.R. and in Poland and in other
countries to develop or manage agricultural and industrial properties,
and reserved this area for exclusive settlement, development, and ownership
by Germans and their so-called racial brethren.
8. In further development of their plan of criminal
exploitation, they destroyed industrial cities, cultural monuments,
scientific institutions, and property of all types in the occupied territories
to eliminate the possibility of competition with Germany.
9. 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:
(a) Positions in administration of business involving
power, influence, and lucrative perquisites.
(b) The use of cheap forced labor.
(c) The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign
properties, business interests, and raw materials.
(d) The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany.
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:
1. Western Countries:
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.
Coal 63,000,000 tons
Electric energy 20,976 Mkwh
Petrol and fuel 1,943,750 tons
Iron ore 74,848,000 tons
Siderurgical products 3,822,000 tons
Bauxite 1,211,800 tons
Cement 5,984,000 tons
Lime 1,888,000 tons
Quarry products 25,872,000 tons
and various other products to a total value of 79,961,423,000 francs.
Removal of Industrial Equipment.
Total: 9,759,861,000 francs, of which 2,626,479,000
francs of machine tools.
Removal of Agricultural Produce.
Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i. e., for the principal
products.
Wheat 2,947,337 tons
Oats 2,354,080 tons
Milk 790,000 hectolitres
(concentrated and in powder) 460,000 hectolitres
Butter 76,000 tons
Cheese 49,000 tons
Potatoes 725,975 tons
Various vegetables 575,000 tons
Wine 7,647,000 hectolitres
Champagne 87,000,000 bottles
Beer 3,821,520 hectolitres
Various kinds of alcohol 1,830,000 hectolitres
Removal of Manufactured Products.
To a total of 184,640,000,000 francs.
Plundering.
Francs: 257,020,024,000 from private enterprise.
Francs: 55,000,100,000 from the State.
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.
2. Eastern Countries:
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.
(F) THE EXACTION OF COLLECTIVE
PENALTIES
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.
(G) WANTON DESTRUCTION OF CITIES,
TOWNS, AND VILLAGES AND DEVASTATION NOT JUSTIFIED BY MILITARY NECESSITY
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
1. Western Countries:
In March 1941, part of Lofoten in Norway was destroyed.
In April 1942, the town of Telerag in Norway was destroyed.
Entire villages were destroyed in France, among others
Oradour-sur-Glane, Saint-Nizier and, in the Vercors, La Mure, Vassieux,
La Chapelle en Vercors. The town of Saint Die was burnt down and destroyed.
The Old Port District of Marseilles was dynamited in the beginning of
1943 and resorts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts, particularly
the town of Sanary, were demolished
In Holland there was most widespread and extensive
destruction, not justified by military necessity, including the destruction
of harbors, locks, dikes, and bridges: immense devastation was also
caused by inundations which equally were not justified by military necessity.
2. Eastern Countries:
In the Eastern Countries the defendants' pursued a
policy of wanton destruction and devastation: some particulars of this
(without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are
set out above under the heading "Plunder of Public and Private
Property
In Greece in 1941, the villages of Amelofito, Kliston,
Kizonia, Messovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion, and Kato-Kerzilion were utterly
destroyed.
In Yugoslavia on 15 August 1941, the German military
command officially announced that the village of Skela was burned to
the ground and the inhabitants killed on the order of the command.
On the order of the Field Commander Hoersterberg a
punitive expedition from the SS troops and the field police destroyed
the villages of Machkovats, and Kriva Reka in Serbia and all the inhabitants
were killed.
General Fritz Neidhold (369 Infantry Division) on 11
September 1944, gave an order to destroy the villages of Zagniezde and
Udora, hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children.
In Czechoslovakia the Nazi conspirators also practiced
the senseless destruction of populated places. Lezaky and Lidice were
burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed.
(H) CONSCRIPTION OF CIVILIAN
LABOR
Throughout the occupied territories the defendants
conscripted and forced the inhabitants to labor and requisitioned their
services for purposes other than meeting the needs of the armies of
occupation and to an extent far out of proportion to the resources of
the countries involved. All the civilians so conscripted were forced
to work for the German war effort. Civilians were required to register
and many of those who registered were forced to join the Todt Organization
and the Speer Legion, both of which were semi-military organizations
involving some military training. These acts violated Articles 46 and
52 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:
1. Western Countries:
In France, from 1942 to 1944, 963,813 persons were
compelled to work in Germany and 737,000 to work in France for the German
Army.
In Luxembourg in l944 alone, 2,500 men and 500 girls
were conscripted for forced labor.
2. Eastern Countries:
Of the large number of citizens of the Soviet Union
and of Czechoslovakia referred to under Count Three VIII (B) 2 above
many were so conscripted for forced labor.
(I) FORCING CIVILIANS OF OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES TO SWEAR ALLEGIANCE TO A HOSTILE POWER
Civilians who joined the Speer Legion, as set forth
in paragraph (H) above, were required, under threat of depriving them
of food, money, and identity papers, to swear a solemn oath acknowledging
unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of Germany, which
was to them a hostile power.
In Lorraine, civil servants were obliged, in order
to retain their positions, to sign a declaration by which they acknowledged
the "return of their country to the Reich", pledged themselves
to obey without reservation the orders of their chiefs and put themselves
"at the active service of the Fuehrer and the Great National Socialist
Germany".
A similar pledge was imposed on Alsatian civil servants
by threat of deportation or internment.
These acts violated Article 45 of the Hague Regulations,
1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of international
law, and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
(J) GERMANIZATION OF OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES
In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed
to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored
to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially, and
economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavored to obliterate
the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of
these plans and endeavors, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants
who were predominantly non-German and introduced thousands of German
colonists.
This Plan included economic domination, physical conquest,
installation of puppet governments, purported de jure annexation and
enforced conscription into the German Armed Forces.
This was carried out in most of the occupied countries
including: Norway, France (particularly in the Departments of Upper
Rhine, Lower Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle),
Luxembourg, the Soviet Union; Denmark, Belgium, and Holland.
In France in the Departments of Aisne, The Nord, Meurthe
and Moselle, and especially in that of Ardertnes, rural properties were
seized by a German state organization which tried to have them exploited
under German direction; the landowners of these exploitations were dispossessed
and turned into agricultural laborers.
In the Department of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and
Moselle, the methods of Germanization were those of annexation followed
by conscription.
1. From the month of August 1940, officials who refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the Reich were expelled. On 21 September
expulsions and deportation of populations began and on 22 November 1940,
more than 70,000 Lorrainers or Alsatians were driven into the south
zone of France. From 31 July 1941 onwards, more than 100,000 persons
were deported into the eastern regions of the Reich or to Poland. All
the property of the deportees or expelled persons was confiscated. At
the same time, 80,000 Germans coming from the Saar or from Westphalia
were installed in Lorraine and 2,000 farms belonging to French people
were transferred to Germans.
2. From 2 January 1942, all the young people of the
Departments of Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, aged from 10 to 18 years,
were incorporated in the Hitler Youth. The same thing was done in Moselle
from 4 August 1942. From 1940 all the French schools were closed, their
staffs expelled, and the German school system was introduced in the
three Departments.
3. On the 28 September 1940, an order applicable to
the Department of Moselle ordained the Germanization of all the surnames
and Christian names which were French in form. The same thing was done
from 15 January 1943, in the Departments of Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine.
4. Two orders from 23 to 24 August 1942 imposed by
force German nationality on French citizens.
5. On 8 May 1941, for Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine,
23 April 1941, for Moselle, orders were promulgated enforcing compulsory
labor service on all French citizens of either sex aged from 17 to 25
years. From 1 January 1942 for young men and from 26 January 1942 for
young girls, national labor service was effectively organized in Moselle.
It was from 27 August 1942 in Upper Rhine and in Lower Rhine for young
men only. The classes 1940, 1941, 1942 were called up.
6. These classes were retained in the Wehrmacht on
the expiration of their time and labor service. On 19 August I942, an
order instituted compulsory military service in Moselle. On 25 August
1942, the classes 1940-44 were called up in three departments. Conscription
was enforced by the German authorities in conformity with the provisions
of German legislation. The first revision boards took place from 3 September
1942. Later in Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine new levies were effected
everywhere on classes 1928 to 1939 inclusive. The French people who
refused to obey these laws were considered as deserters and their families
were deported, while their property was confiscated.
These acts violated Articles 43, 46, 55, and 56 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.
IX. Individual, group and organization responsibility
for the offense stated in Count Three
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 Three 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 Three
of the Indictment.
Source: The
Avalon Project
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