Part 17

There were only two ways in which Germany could achieve the three main aims above-mentioned, by negotiation, or by force. The 25 points of the NSDAP program do not specifically mention the methods on which the leaders of the Party proposed to rely, but the history of the Nazi regime shows that Hitler and his followers were only prepared to negotiate on the terms that their demands were conceded, and that force would be used if they were not.

On the night of 8 November 1923, an abortive putsch took place in Munich. Hitler and some of his followers burst into a meeting in the Bürgerbräu Cellar, which was being addressed by the Bavarian Prime Minister Kahr, with the intention of obtaining from him a decision to march forthwith on Berlin. On the morning of 9 November, however, no Bavarian support was forthcoming, and Hitler’s demonstration was met by the armed forces of the Reichswehr and the police. Only a few volleys were fired; and after a dozen of his followers had been killed, Hitler fled for his life, and the demonstration was over. The Defendants Streicher, Frick, and Hess all took part in the attempted rising. Hitler was later tried for high treason, and was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. The SA was outlawed. Hitler was released from prison in 1924 and in 1925 the Schutzstaffeln, or SS, was created, nominally to act as his personal bodyguard, but in reality to terrorize political opponents. This was also the year of the publication of _Mein Kampf_, containing the political views and aims of Hitler, which came to be regarded as the authentic source of Nazi doctrine.

_The Seizure of Power_

In the eight years that followed the publication of _Mein Kampf_, the NSDAP greatly extended its activities throughout Germany, paying particular attention to the training of youth in the ideas of National Socialism. The first Nazi youth organization had come into existence in 1922, but it was in 1925 that the Hitler Jugend was officially recognized by the NSDAP. In 1931 Baldur von Schirach, who had joined the NSDAP in 1925, became Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP.

The Party exerted every effort to win political support from the German People. Elections were contested both for the Reichstag and the Landtage. The NSDAP leaders did not make any serious attempt to hide the fact that their only purpose in entering German political life was in order to destroy the democratic structure of the Weimar Republic, and to substitute for it a National Socialist totalitarian regime which would enable them to carry out their avowed policies without opposition. In preparation for the day when he would obtain power in Germany, Hitler in January 1929, appointed Heinrich Himmler as Reichsführer SS with the special task of building the SS into a strong but elite group which would be dependable in all circumstances.

On 30 January 1933 Hitler succeeded in being appointed Chancellor of the Reich by President Von Hindenburg. The Defendants Göring, Schacht, and Von Papen were active in enlisting support to bring this about. Von Papen had been appointed Reich Chancellor on 1 June 1932. On 14 June he rescinded the decree of the Brüning Cabinet of 13 April 1932, which had dissolved the Nazi para-military organizations, including the SA and the SS. This was done by agreement between Hitler and Von Papen, although Von Papen denies that it was agreed as early as 28 May, as Dr. Hans Volz asserts in “Dates from the History of the NSDAP”; but that it was the result of an agreement was admitted in evidence by Von Papen.

The Reichstag elections of 31 July 1932 resulted in a great accession of strength to the NSDAP, and Von Papen offered Hitler the post of Vice Chancellor, which he refused, insisting upon the Chancellorship itself. In November 1932 a petition signed by leading industrialists and financiers was presented to President Hindenburg, calling upon him to entrust the Chancellorship to Hitler; and in the collection of signatures, to the petition Schacht took a prominent part.

The election of 6 November, which followed the defeat of the Government, reduced the number of NSDAP members, but Von Papen made further efforts to gain Hitler’s participation, without success. On 12 November Schacht wrote to Hitler:

“I have no doubt that the present development of things can only lead to your becoming Chancellor. It seems as if our attempt to collect a number of signatures from business circles for this purpose was not altogether in vain . . . .”

After Hitler’s refusal of 16 November, Von Papen resigned, and was succeeded by General Von Schleicher; but Von Papen still continued his activities. He met Hitler at the house of the Cologne banker Von Schröder on 4 January 1933, and attended a meeting at the Defendant Von Ribbentrop’s house on 22 January, with the Defendant Göring and others. He also had an interview with President Hindenburg on 9 January, and from 22 January onwards he discussed officially with Hindenburg the formation of a Hitler Cabinet.

Hitler held his first Cabinet meeting on the day of his appointment as Chancellor, at which the Defendants Göring, Frick, Funk, Von Neurath, and Von Papen were present in their official capacities. On 28 February 1933 the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire. This fire was used by Hitler and his Cabinet as a pretext for passing on the same day a decree suspending the constitutional guarantees of freedom. The decree was signed by President Hindenburg and countersigned by Hitler and the Defendant Frick, who then occupied the post of Reich Minister of the Interior. On 5 March elections were held, in which the NSDAP obtained 288 seats of the total of 647. The Hitler Cabinet was anxious to pass an “Enabling Act” that would give them full legislative powers, including the power to deviate from the Constitution. They were without the necessary majority in the Reichstag to be able to do this constitutionally. They therefore made use of the decree suspending the guarantees of freedom and took into so-called “protective custody” a large number of Communist deputies and Party officials. Having done this, Hitler introduced the “Enabling Act” into the Reichstag, and after he had made it clear that if it was not passed, further forceful measures would be taken, the act was passed on 24 March 1933.

_The Consolidation of Power_

The NSDAP, having achieved power in this way, now proceeded to extend its hold on every phase of German life. Other political parties were persecuted, their property and assets confiscated, and many of their members placed in concentration camps. On 26 April 1933 the Defendant Göring founded in Prussia the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, as a secret police, and confided to the deputy leader of the Gestapo that its main task was to eliminate political opponents of National Socialism and Hitler. On 14 July 1933 a law was passed declaring the NSDAP to be the only political party, and making it criminal to maintain or form any other political party.

In order to place the complete control of the machinery of Government in the hands of the Nazi leaders, a series of laws and decrees were passed which reduced the powers of regional and local governments throughout Germany, transforming them into subordinate divisions of the Government of the Reich. Representative assemblies in the Laender were abolished, and with them all local elections. The Government then proceeded to secure control of the Civil Service. This was achieved by a process of centralization, and by a careful sifting of the whole Civil Service administration. By a law of 7 April it was provided that officials “who were of non-Aryan descent” should be retired; and it was also decreed that “officials who because of their previous political activity do not offer security that they will exert themselves for the national state without reservation shall be discharged.” The law of 11 April 1933 provided for the discharge of “all civil servants who belong to the Communist Party.” Similarly, the judiciary was subjected to control. Judges were removed from the bench for political or racial reasons. They were spied upon and made subject to the strongest pressure to join the Nazi Party as an alternative to being dismissed. When the Supreme Court acquitted three of the four defendants charged with complicity in the Reichstag fire, its jurisdiction in cases of treason was thereafter taken away and given to a newly established “People’s Court” consisting of two judges and five officials of the Party. Special courts were set up to try political crimes and only party members were appointed as judges. Persons were arrested by the SS for political reasons, and detained in prisons and concentration camps; and the judges were without power to intervene in any way. Pardons were granted to members of the Party who had been sentenced by the judges for proved offenses. In 1935 several officials of the Hohenstein concentration camp were convicted of inflicting brutal treatment upon the inmates. High Nazi officials tried to influence the Court, and after the officials had been convicted, Hitler pardoned them all. In 1942 “judges’ letters” were sent to all German judges by the Government, instructing them as to the “general lines” that they must follow.

In their determination to remove all sources of opposition, the NSDAP leaders turned their attention to the trade unions, the churches, and the Jews. In April 1933 Hitler ordered the late Defendant Ley, who was then staff director of the political organization of the NSDAP, “to take over the trade unions.” Most of the trade unions of Germany were joined together in two large federations, the “Free Trade Unions” and the “Christian Trade Unions.” Unions outside these two large federations contained only 15 percent of the total union membership. On 21 April 1933 Ley issued an NSDAP directive announcing a “coordination action” to be carried out on 2 May against the Free Trade Unions. The directive ordered that SA and SS men were to be employed in the planned “occupation of trade union properties and for the taking into protective custody of personalities who come into question.” At the conclusion of the action the official NSDAP press service reported that the National Socialist Factory Cells Organization had “eliminated the old leadership of Free Trade Unions” and taken over the leadership themselves. Similarly, on 3 May 1933 the NSDAP press service announced that the Christian trade unions “have unconditionally subordinated themselves to the leadership of Adolf Hitler.” In place of the trade unions the Nazi Government set up a Deutsche Arbeits Front (DAF), controlled by the NSDAP, and which, in practice, all workers in Germany were compelled to join. The chairmen of the unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-treatment, ranging from assault and battery to murder.

In their effort to combat the influence of the Christian churches, whose doctrines were fundamentally at variance with National Socialist philosophy and practice, the Nazi Government proceeded more slowly. The extreme step of banning the practice of the Christian religion was not taken, but year by year efforts were made to limit the influence of Christianity on the German people, since, in the words used by the Defendant Bormann to the Defendant Rosenberg in an official letter, “the Christian religion and National Socialist doctrines are not compatible.” In the month of June 1941 the Defendant Bormann issued a secret decree on the relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree stated that:

“For the first time in German history the Führer consciously and completely has the leadership in his own hand. With the Party, its components and attached units, the Führer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich Leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the Treaty . . . . More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastor . . . . Never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich Government and by its direction the Party, its components and attached units, have a right to leadership of the people.”

From the earliest days of the NSDAP, anti-Semitism had occupied a prominent place in National Socialist thought and propaganda. The Jews, who were considered to have no right to German citizenship, were held to have been largely responsible for the troubles with which the Nation was afflicted following on the war of 1914-18. Furthermore, the antipathy to the Jews was intensified by the insistence which was laid upon the superiority of the Germanic race and blood. The second chapter of Book 1 of _Mein Kampf_ is dedicated to what may be called the “Master Race” theory, the doctrine of Aryan superiority over all other races, and the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends. With the coming of the Nazis into power in 1933, persecution of the Jews became official state policy. On 1 April 1933, a boycott of Jewish enterprises was approved by the Nazi Reich Cabinet, and during the following years a series of anti-Semitic laws was passed, restricting the activities of Jews in the civil service, in the legal profession, in journalism and in the armed forces. In September 1935, the so-called Nuremberg Laws were passed, the most important effect of which was to deprive Jews of German citizenship. In this way the influence of Jewish elements on the affairs of Germany was extinguished, and one more potential source of opposition to Nazi policy was rendered powerless.

In any consideration of the crushing of opposition, the massacre of 30 June 1934 must not be forgotten. It has become known as the “Röhm Purge” or “the blood bath”, and revealed the methods which Hitler and his immediate associates, including the Defendant Göring, were ready to employ to strike down all opposition and consolidate their power. On that day Röhm, the Chief of Staff of the SA since 1931, was murdered by Hitler’s orders, and the “Old Guard” of the SA was massacred without trial and without warning. The opportunity was taken to murder a large number of people who at one time or another had opposed Hitler.

The ostensible ground for the murder of Röhm was that he was plotting to overthrow Hitler, and the Defendant Göring gave evidence that knowledge of such a plot had come to his ears. Whether this was so or not it is not necessary to determine.

On 3 July the Cabinet approved Hitler’s action and described it as “legitimate self-defense by the State.”

Shortly afterwards Hindenburg died, and Hitler became both Reich President and Chancellor. At the Nazi-dominated plebiscite, which followed, 38 million Germans expressed their approval, and with the Reichswehr taking the oath of allegiance to the Führer, full power was now in Hitler’s hands.

Germany had accepted the dictatorship with all its methods of terror, and its cynical and open denial of the rule of law.

Apart from the policy of crushing the potential opponents of their regime, the Nazi Government took active steps to increase its power over the German population. In the field of education, everything was done to ensure that the youth of Germany was brought up in the atmosphere of National Socialism and accepted National Socialist teachings. As early as 7 April 1933 the law reorganizing the civil service had made it possible for the Nazi Government to remove all “subversive and unreliable teachers”; and this was followed by numerous other measures to make sure that the schools were staffed by teachers who could be trusted to teach their pupils the full meaning of the National Socialist creed. Apart from the influence of National Socialist teaching in the schools, the Hitler Youth Organization was also relied upon by the Nazi Leaders for obtaining fanatical support from the younger generation. The Defendant Von Schirach, who had been Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP since 1931, was appointed Youth Leader of the German Reich in June 1933. Soon all the youth organizations had been either dissolved or absorbed by the Hitler Youth, with the exception of the “Catholic Youth”. The Hitler Youth was organized on strict military lines, and as early as 1933 the Wehrmacht was cooperating in providing pre-military training for the Reich Youth.

The Nazi Government endeavored to unite the Nation in support of their policies through the extensive use of propaganda. A number of agencies was set up, whose duty was to control and influence the press, the radio, films, publishing firms, etc., in Germany, and to supervise entertainment and cultural and artistic activities. All these agencies came under Goebbels’ Ministry of the People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda, which together with a corresponding organization in the NSDAP and the Reich Chamber of Culture, was ultimately responsible for exercising this supervision. The Defendant Rosenberg played a leading part in disseminating the National Socialist doctrines on behalf of the Party, and the Defendant Fritzsche, in conjunction with Goebbels, performed the same task for the State.

The greatest emphasis was laid on the supreme mission of the German People to lead and dominate by virtue of their Nordic blood and racial purity; and the ground was thus being prepared for the acceptance of the idea of German world supremacy.

Through the effective control of the radio and the press, the German People, during the years which followed 1933, were subjected to the most intensive propaganda in furtherance of the regime. Hostile criticism, indeed criticism of any kind, was forbidden, and the severest penalties were imposed on those who indulged in it.

Independent judgment, based on freedom of thought, was rendered quite impossible.

_Measures of Rearmament_

During the years immediately following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the Nazi Government set about reorganizing the economic life of Germany, and in particular the armament industry. This was done on a vast scale and with extreme thoroughness.

It was necessary to lay a secure financial foundation for the building of armaments, and in April 1936 the Defendant Göring was appointed coordinator for raw materials and foreign exchange, and empowered to supervise all State and Party activities in these fields. In this capacity he brought together the War Minister, the Minister of Economics, the Reich Finance Minister, the President of the Reichsbank and the Prussian Finance Minister to discuss problems connected with war mobilization, and on 27 May 1936, in addressing these men, Göring opposed any financial limitation of war production and added that “all measures are to be considered from the standpoint of an assured waging of war.” At the Party Rally in Nuremberg in 1936, Hitler announced the establishment of the Four Year Plan and the appointment of Göring as the Plenipotentiary in charge. Göring was already engaged in building a strong air force and on 8 July 1938 he announced to a number of leading German aircraft manufacturers that the German Air Force was already superior in quality and quantity to the English. On 14 October 1938, at another conference, Göring announced that Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program, which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He said that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force five times as large as originally planned, to increase the speed of the rearmament of the navy and army, and to concentrate on offensive weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks. He then laid down a specific program designed to accomplish these ends. The extent to which rearmament had been accomplished was stated by Hitler in his memorandum of 9 October 1939, after the campaign in Poland. He said:

“The military application of our people’s strength has been carried through to such an extent that within a short time at any rate it cannot be markedly improved upon by any manner of effort . . . .

“The warlike equipment of the German people is at present larger in quantity and better in quality for a greater number of German divisions than in the year 1914. The weapons themselves, taking a substantial cross-section, are more modern than is the case of any other country in the world at this time. They have just proved their supreme war worthiness in their victorious campaign . . . . There is no evidence available to show that any country in the world disposes of a better total ammunition stock than the Reich . . . . The A. A. artillery is not equalled by any country in the world.”

In this reorganization of the economic life of Germany for military purposes, the Nazi Government found the German armament industry quite willing to cooperate, and to play its part in the rearmament program. In April 1933 Gustav Krupp von Bohlen submitted to Hitler on behalf of the Reich Association of German Industry a plan for the reorganization of German industry, which he stated was characterized by the desire to coordinate economic measures and political necessity. In the plan itself Krupp stated that “the turn of political events is in line with the wishes which I myself and the board of directors have cherished for a long time.” What Krupp meant by this statement is fully shown by the draft text of a speech which he planned to deliver in the University of Berlin in January 1944, though the speech was in fact never delivered. Referring to the years 1919 to 1933, Krupp wrote:

“It is the one great merit of the entire German war economy that it did not remain idle during those bad years, even though its activity could not be brought to light, for obvious reasons. Through years of secret work, scientific and basic groundwork was laid in order to be ready again to work for the German armed forces at the appointed hour, without loss of time or experience . . . . Only through the secret activity of German enterprise together with the experience gained meanwhile through the production of peace time goods was it possible after 1933 to fall into step with the new tasks arrived at, restoring Germany’s military power.”

In October 1933 Germany withdrew from the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. In 1935 the Nazi Government decided to take the first open steps to free itself from its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles. On 10 March 1935 the Defendant Göring announced that Germany was building a military air force. Six days later, on 16 March 1935, a law was passed bearing the signatures, among others, of the Defendants Göring, Hess, Frank, Frick, Schacht, and Von Neurath, instituting compulsory military service and fixing the establishment of the German Army at a peace time strength of 500,000 men. In an endeavor to reassure public opinion in other countries, the Government announced on 21 May 1935 that Germany would, though renouncing the disarmament clauses, still respect the territorial limitations of the Versailles Treaty, and would comply with the Locarno Pacts. Nevertheless, on the very day of this announcement, the secret Reich Defense Law was passed and its publication forbidden by Hitler. In this law, the powers and duties of the Chancellor and other Ministers were defined, should Germany become involved in war. It is clear from this law that by May of 1935 Hitler and his Government had arrived at the stage in the carrying out of their policies when it was necessary for them to have in existence the requisite machinery for the administration and government of Germany in the event of their policy leading to war.