The distortions and warpings of German law, which Defendant Frank engineered for the Party, gave him, if not the world, vast satisfaction. He reported this to the powerful Academy for German Law in November 1939, 1 month after becoming Governor General of occupied Poland. This speech is partially translated in our Document 3445-PS, at Page 73 in the document book. The official text of the speech appears in Deutsches Recht, 1939, Volume 2, the week of 23-30 December 1939, beginning at Page 2121; and we ask the Court to take judicial notice of this, but would ask permission to read the excerpt, as it is very short. Frank stated:
“Today we are proud of having formulated our legal principles from the very beginning in such a way that they need not be changed in the case of war. For the maxim—that which serves the Nation is right, and that which harms it is wrong, which stood at the beginning of our legal work and which established this idea of the community of the people as the only standard of the law—this maxim shines out also in the social order of these times.”
If this sentiment has a familiar ring to it, it is because it is a restatement of a Party commandment tailored and furnished by the Party lawyer to fit the Party’s concept of law. I allude, of course, to the Party commandment, commented upon at Page 1608 (Volume IV, Page 38) of the official English transcript of these proceedings in the treatment of the Leadership Corps, which commandment stated and I quote, “Right is that which serves the Movement and thus Germany.”
It follows, I think, that the Prosecution conceives the Defendant Frank to be jointly responsible for all those cruel and discriminatory enabling acts and decrees through which the Nazis crushed minorities in Germany and consolidated their control over the German State and prepared it for its early entry upon aggression. It matters not, in our view, that the signature of this lawyer does not appear at the foot of every decree. Enough has been shown, in our submission, to indicate culpability in this regard. There is sufficient, we believe, now in this Record—and I refer to decrees cited by Major Walsh in his treatment of the persecution of the Jews and by Colonel Storey in his treatment of the Reich Cabinet—to demonstrate that type of enactment and the consequences thereof, for which we hold the Defendant Frank liable. In following this theory, may it please the Tribunal, we are only arriving at conclusions already arrived at for us by the Defendant Frank himself.
I now pass to that second and well-known phase of the Defendant Frank’s official life, wherein he for 5 years, as chief Party and Government agent, was bent upon the elimination of a whole people. He was appointed Governor General of the occupied Polish territory by a decree signed by his then Führer on 12 October 1939. The decree defined the scope of Frank’s executive power and is contained in our Document 2537-PS, at Page 66 in the document book. I shall ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this, since it appears in Reichsgesetzblatt, 1939, Part I, Page 2077.
It merely states that Dr. Frank is appointed as Governor General of the occupied Polish territory; that Dr. Seyss-Inquart is appointed as Deputy Governor General, and that “the Governor General shall be directly responsible to me”—meaning Hitler, he having signed the decree.
While some of the outside world was prone in earlier days to wonder at the apparent efficiency of Nazi administration, we now know that it was often riddled with the petty jealousies of small men in positions of some authority and with jurisdictional fractiousness. No such difficulty existed with the Defendant Frank, however, for though he was not without the threat of divided authority, he insisted upon, and was granted, the favor of supreme command within the territorial confines of the Government General. Only two references from his diary, one in 1940 and one in 1942, are necessary to show the all-inclusiveness of his direction and authority.
At a meeting of department heads of the Government General on 8 March 1940 in the Bergakademie, the Defendant Frank clarified his status as Governor General; and these remarks appear in the diary and in our Document 2233(m)-PS, at Page 42 in the document book, the original of which I offer into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-173.
In the German text, the extracts appear in the meetings of department heads, Volume 2 for 1939-1940, at Pages 5, 6, 7, and 8. Frank says:
“One thing is certain. The authority of the Governor General as the representative of the will of the Führer and the will of the Reich in this territory is certainly strong, and I have always emphasized that I would not tolerate misuse of this authority. I have made this known anew at every office in Berlin, especially after Herr Field Marshal Göring on 12. 2. 1940, from Karin Hall, had forbidden all administrative offices of the Reich, including the Police and even the Wehrmacht, to interfere in administrative matters of the Government General. . . .”
He goes on to say:
“There is no authority here in the Government General which is higher as to rank, stronger in influence, and of greater authority than that of the Governor General. Even the Wehrmacht has no governmental or official functions here of any kind; it has only security functions and general military duties—it has no political power whatsoever. The same applies to the Police and the SS. There is here no state within a state, but we are representatives of the Führer and of the Reich.”
Later, in 1942, at a conference of the district political leaders of the NSDAP in Kraków on 18 March, Defendant Frank further explained the relationship between the administration and the Reichsführer SS Himmler. These remarks appear in the diary and in our Document 2233(r)-PS and at Page 48 of the document book, the original of which I offer into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-608. In the German text, the extract to be quoted appears at Pages 185 and 186 of diary Volume 18, 1942, Part I. I quote:
“As you know”—says Frank—“I am a fanatic as to unity in administration. . . . It is therefore clear that the Higher SS and Police Leader is subordinated to me, that the Police is a component of the Government, that the SS and Police Leader in the district is subordinated to the Governor, and that the district chief has the authority of command over the gendarmerie in his district. This the Reichsführer SS has recognized; in the written agreement all these points are mentioned word for word and signed. It is also self-evident that we cannot establish a closed shop here which can be treated in the traditional manner of small states.”
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Do you think all this has to be read?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: It is considered important, Sir, by the United States Prosecution, in view of the fact that this is the later extract from the diary and indicates that 2 years later even Frank considered himself to be the supreme authority in the Government General. This is a point which we conceive to be of importance, Sir. May I proceed?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
LT. COL. BALDWIN: “It would, for instance, be ridiculous if we would build up here a security policy of our own against our Poles in the country, while knowing that the Poles in West Prussia, in Posen, in Warthegau, and in Silesia have one and the same movement of resistance. So the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police must be able to carry out, with his agencies, his police measures concerning the interests of the Reich as a whole. This, however, will be done in such a way that the measures to be adopted will first be submitted to me and carried out only when I give my consent. In the Government General the Police are the armed forces. Consequently the leader of the Police will be called by me into the Government of the Government General; he is subordinate to me, or to my deputy, as a state secretary for security.”
At this juncture, it is appropriate to mention that the man who filled the position of State Secretary for Security in the Government General was Frank’s Higher SS and Police Leader, Krüger.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you read the next page?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: May it please the Tribunal; I shall come to that excerpt later.
THE PRESIDENT: In the same document?
LT. COL. BALDWIN: Yes, Sir. It seems more appropriate at another point.
The Tribunal may recall that the reports of the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were made in the spring of 1943 by SS Leader Stroop, who immediately supervised the operation, to this same Krüger, who was still at that time one of the two most influential members of Frank’s Cabinet,