It was inevitable that the grand conspiracy or common plan should have as its component parts a host of small plans each dealing with a particular sphere of activity. These plans, differing from the master plan only in size, are the blueprints for a specific action drawn from the broad policies. Occupied Poland was no exception to this rule. The plan for the administration of Poland was contained in a top secret memorandum of a conference between Hitler and the Chief of the OKW, Defendant Keitel, entitled “Regarding Future Relations of Poland to Germany” and dated 20 October 1939. This report was initialed by General Warlimont. It is our Document 864-PS and may be found at Page 3 of the document book, and I shall offer it into evidence as Exhibit Number USA-609.
I shall quote, if the Court please, only from Paragraphs 1, 3, 4, and 6:
“1) The Armed Forces will welcome it if they can dispose of administrative questions in Poland. On principle, there cannot be two administrations. . . .
“3) It is not the task of the administration to make Poland into a model province or a model state of the German order or to put her economically or financially on a sound basis.
“The Polish intelligentsia must be prevented from forming a ruling class. The standard of living in the country is to remain low; we want only to draw labor forces from there. Poles are also to be used for the administration of the country. However, the forming of national political groups may not be allowed.
“4) The administration has to work on its own responsibility and must not be dependent on Berlin. We do not want to do there what we do in the Reich. The responsibility does not rest with the Berlin Ministries since there is no German administration unit concerned.
“The accomplishment of this task will involve a hard racial struggle which will not allow any legal restrictions. The methods will be incompatible with the principles otherwise adhered to by us.
“The Governor General is to give the Polish nation only bare living conditions and is to maintain the basis for military security. . . .
“6). . . . Any tendencies towards the consolidation of conditions in Poland are to be suppressed. The ‘Polish muddle’ must be allowed to develop. The Government of the territory must make it possible for us to purify the Reich territory from Jews and Poles too. Collaboration with new Reich provinces (Posen and West Prussia) only for resettlements (compare Himmler mission).
“Purpose: Shrewdness and severity must be the maxims in this racial struggle in order to spare us from going to battle on account of this country again.”
The Defendant Frank was the chosen executor of this program. He knew its aims, approved of them, and actively carried out the scheme. The Tribunal’s attention has already been invited to Exhibit Number USA-297 wherein—this may be found at Page 1512 of the English text of the official transcript—(Volume III, Pages 576, 577) the Defendant Frank expounded the mission which his Führer assigned to him and according to which he intended to administer in Poland. It contemplated, in brief, ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies and workers, reduction of the entire Polish economy to an absolute minimum necessary for bare existence of the population, and the closing of all schools. No more callous statement exists than the one Frank made in this report, wherein he said, “Poland shall be treated as a colony; the Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German world empire.”
In December 1940 Frank submitted to his department heads that the task of administering Poland did truly involve a hard racial struggle which would not allow any legal restrictions. I refer to our Document 2233(o)-PS, which may be found at Page 45 in the document book. It is taken from the Frank diary, and I offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-173. In the German text the extract to be quoted appears in the volume of the diary entitled, “Department Heads Meetings 1939-1940,” on Pages 12 and 13. I now quote:
“In this country the force of a determined leadership must rule. The Pole must feel here that we are not building him a legal state, but that for him there is only one duty, namely, to work and to behave himself. It is clear that this leads sometimes to difficulties; but you must, in your own interest, see that all measures are ruthlessly carried out in order to become master of the situation. You can rely on me absolutely in this.”
As for the Poles and Ukrainians, Defendant Frank’s attitude was clear. They were to be permitted to slave for the German economy as long as the war emergency continued. Once the war was won, even this cynical interest would cease. I refer to a speech before German political leaders at Kraków on 12 January 1944. It appears in the Frank diary and as our Document 2233(bb)-PS at Page 60 in the document book. It is the first passage on that page. I offer it in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-295. In the diary, the German text will be found in the loose-leaf volume covering the period from 1 January to 28 February 1944, at the entry for 14 January 1944, at Page 24. “Once the war is won” Frank tells these leaders—and here we have, may it please the Court, the classic example of the completely brutal statement:
“Once the war is won, then, for all I care, mincemeat can be made of the Poles and the Ukrainians and all the others who run around here; it doesn’t matter what happens.”
In accordance with the racial program of the Nazi conspirators, the Defendant Frank makes it quite clear in his diary that the complete annihilation of Jews was one of his cherished objectives. In Exhibit Number USA-271, Frank stated in late 1940 in his diary that he could not eliminate all lice and Jews in a year’s time. In Exhibit Number USA-281, he notes in his diary in the year 1942 that a program of starvation rations sentencing, in effect, 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger, should be noted only marginally. In Exhibit Number USA-295, he confided to a secret press conference that in the year 1944—and this, too, is from the diary—there were still in the Government General perhaps 100,000 Jews.
These facts, if the Tribunal please, are from the diary of the man himself. We do no more here than to tabulate the results. The supreme authority within a certain geographic area admits that in a period of 4 years’ time up to 3,400,000 persons from that area have been annihilated pursuant to an official policy and for no crime, but only because of having been born a Jew. No words could possibly reveal the inferences of death and suffering which must needs be drawn from these stark facts.
It was a Nazi policy that the population of occupied countries should endure terror, oppression, impoverishment, and starvation. The Defendant Frank succeeded so well in this regard that he was forced to report to his Führer in 1943 that, in effect, Poles did not regard the Government General with affection. This report to Hitler was a summarization of the first 3½ years of the Defendant Frank’s administration. It, better than anything else, can show the conditions as they then existed as a result of the conspiratorial efforts of the defendants.
The report is contained in our Document 437-PS, at Page 2 of the document book, and I now offer the original in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-610. In the German text, the extract to be quoted appears at Pages 10 and 11 of this report by Frank to Hitler dated 19 June 1943, regarding the situation in Poland. I now quote. Frank says:
“In the course of time, a series of measures, or of consequences of the German rule, have led to a substantial deterioration of the attitude of the entire Polish people to the Government General. These measures have affected either individual professions or the entire population and frequently also—often with crushing severity—the fate of individuals.”
He goes on:
“Among these are in particular:
“1. The entirely insufficient nourishment of the population, mainly of the working classes in the cities, the majority of which are working for German interests.
“Until the war of 1939 their food supplies, though not varied, were sufficient and were generally assured owing to the agrarian surplus of the former Polish State and in spite of the negligence on the part of their former political leadership.
“2. The confiscation of a great part of the Polish estates, expropriation without compensation,