“The Führer laughed then and remarked that apparently I felt extremely well in this condition.
“It was very difficult for us all. Today we laugh about it . . .”
The plan of the Nazi conspirators to eliminate the free trade unions was advanced by the enactment, on 19th May 1933, of a law which abolished collective bargaining between workers and employers and replaced it with a regulation of working conditions by labor trustees appointed by Hitler. I refer to Document 405-PS, which is the text of the law, 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt I, Page 285. After providing in Section 1 for the appointment by Hitler of trustees of labor, this law provides, and I quote from Section 2 of the English translation of Document 405-PS:
“Until a new revision of the social constitution, the labor trustees are to regulate the conditions for the conclusion of labor contracts. This practice is to be legally binding for all persons and replaces the system founded on combinations of workers, of individual employers, or of combinations of employers. . . .”
Having destroyed the independent unions and collective bargaining, the next step of the Nazi conspirators was to secure the Nazification in the field of industrial relations. I refer to Document Number 1861-PS, which is the text of the law of 20 January 1934, 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt I, Page 45. This law was entitled the “Law Regulating National Labor”; and it imposed the leadership principle upon industrial enterprisers and provided, in Section I, Paragraph 1, that the enterpriser should be the leader of the plant and the workers would constitute his followers. I now quote from Section I, Paragraph 2, of the first page of Document Number 1861-PS:
“The leader of the plant has full authority over the employees in all matters concerning the enterprise, as far as they are covered by this law.
“He is responsible for the well-being of the employees. The employees owe him loyalty in keeping with the principles of factory solidarity.”
The trade unions having been dissolved and the leadership principle superimposed upon the relationship of management and labor, the members of the Leadership Corps joined in and directed measures designed to replace the independent unions by the German Labor Front, the DAF, an affiliated Party organization. On the very day the Nazi conspirators seized and dissolved the free trade unions, the 2d of May 1933, they publicly proclaimed that a “United Front of German Workers” would be formed with Hitler as honorary patron at a workers’ congress on the 10th of May 1933. I quote from the next to the last paragraph of Page 2 of Document 2224-PS, which was a release of the Nazi Party Press Agency:
“The National Socialist Party Press Agency is informed that a great Workers’ Congress will take place on Wednesday, 10 May, in the Prussian House of Lords in Berlin. The United Front of German Workers will be formed there. Adolf Hitler will be asked to assume the position of honorary patron.”
The Nazi conspirators employed the German Labor Front, the DAF, as an instrument for propagandizing its millions of compulsory members with Nazi ideology. The control of the Leadership Corps over the German Labor Front was assured not only by the designation of Reichsleiter of the Party Organization Ley as head of the DAF, but by the employment of a large number of Politische Leiter, or political leaders, charged with disseminating and imposing Nazi ideology upon the large membership of the DAF. I now cite Document 2271-PS, Exhibit Number USA-328, which is the Party Organization Book referred to yesterday, Pages 185-187; and I quote from the first page of the English translation, the first paragraph:
“The NSBO is a union of the political leaders of the NSDAP in the German Labor Front.
“The NSBO is to undertake the organization of the German Labor Front.
“The duties and responsibilities of the NSBO have passed over to the German Labor Front.
“The political leaders who have been transferred from the NSBO to the German Labor Front guarantee the ideological education of the DAF in the spirit of the National Socialistic idea.”
Now, if Your Honors please, in addition to the evidence heretofore presented, the Prosecution submits that it is another evidence of crime that the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP was responsible for the plundering of art treasures by the Defendant Reichsleiter Rosenberg’s “Einsatzstab Rosenberg.” The definition of “Einsatzstab” is a “special staff,” and I am told that the word “Einsatz” means “to give action to.” In other words, it was a task force, a special staff.
This subject, diverting from the text, had been prepared in connection with the general subject of “Plundering of Art Treasures”; and I shall now turn to the document books of the “Plundering of Art Treasures,” because the citations now will be in this small book.
I now pass to Your Honors Document Book W; and, may I say, diverting from the text, that the trial address, which is very brief, has, as I have been told by the Translating Division, been translated into all four languages; and, as I understand, Colonel Dostert will distribute it to all parties in their native languages.
Also by way of explanation, in the beginning there is one reference here to the plundering of art treasures in the occupied portion of Poland which does not bear directly upon this subject but does on the general conspiracy; and I thought, in the interest of time, that we might follow the presentation, because it is very brief.
May it please the Tribunal, the sections of the Indictment which are to be proved at this point are those dealing with the plunder of public and private property under Count One, the Common Plan or Conspiracy. It is not my purpose to explore all phases of the ordinary plunder in which the Germans engaged. However, I would bring to the attention of the Tribunal and of the world the defendants’ vast, organized, systematic program for the cultural impoverishment of virtually every community of Europe and for the enrichment of Germany thereby.
Special emphasis will be placed on the activities of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg; and the responsibility of the Leadership Corps in this regard is a responsibility that is shared by the Defendants Rosenberg, Göring, and Keitel, and by the defendant organizations; the General Staff, High Command, Gestapo, the Security Service, and the SS.
Before I deal with the plunder of the cultural treasures by the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, I wish to reveal briefly the independent plundering operations conducted in the Government General of Occupied Poland by authority of the Defendant Göring and under the supervision of the Defendant Frank, the Governor General.
In October 1939 Göring issued a verbal order to a Dr. Mühlmann asking him to undertake the immediate securing of all Polish art treasures. Dr. Mühlmann himself gives evidence of this order in Document Number 3042-PS found in the document book last introduced as Exhibit USA-375.
THE PRESIDENT: Are the documents in Book W?
COL. STOREY: Book W; yes, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: I was asking whether the documents in Book W are placed in order of number in PS?
COL. STOREY: They are; yes, Sir; and the first one is found on the first page. I beg your pardon; 3042 would be in numerical order toward the end, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: I have it. I was merely asking for general information.
COL. STOREY: These are consecutive. I would like to offer this affidavit and to read it in full. In short, it was obtained in Austria. Kajetan Mühlmann states under oath:
“I have been a member of the NSDAP since 1 April 1938. I was Brigadier General”—Oberführer—“in the SS.
“I was never an illegal Nazi.
“I was the special deputy of the Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank, for the safeguarding of art treasures in the Government General, October 1939 to September 1943.
“Göring, in his function as chairman of the Reich Defense Committee, had commissioned me with this duty.