In the opinion of the Prosecution, engaged in seeking the elements constituting the crime, it would appear that this suffices to prove what we call the consilium fraudis and to enable us to verify the causal link between this will to evil, on the one hand, and the criminal deed, on the other, and to make it possible to retain the criminal character of the understanding between the conspirators, which is also the criminal character of their individual acts.
Could the chief of the Four Year Plan, when he ordered the Plenipotentiary for Labor Allocation to recruit 1 million foreign workers for the Reich, forget that this act was contrary to international conventions and leave out of consideration the tragic consequences which the execution of this murderous action would entail, and has in fact entailed, for these people and for their families?
Could the Minister for Armaments and War Production who set up, in agreement with or by order of the Chief of the Air Force, underground aircraft factories in the internment camps—could he, I say, fail to be aware that under such conditions to use prisoners who were already exhausted was equivalent to causing their premature death?
Could the diplomat who, on various pretexts, treated diplomatic instruments intended to assure the stability and the peace of the world as scraps of paper—could he lose sight of the fact that these acts would plunge the civilized world into catastrophe?
Whether their conscience was at that moment disturbed by the feeling, more or less obscure, that they were infringing human and divine laws is a question which need not be asked on the juridical plane on which you will be working. But even assuming that we should consider it our duty to put this question to ourselves on the psychological plane as a result of scruples, we should then have to remember two essential concepts. The first is that the German, as a French writer puts it, at times combines in himself the identity of contraries. Consequently, it is possible that in certain cases he may consciously do evil while remaining convinced that his act is irreproachable from the moral point of view. The second concept is that, according to the law of National Socialist ethics sometimes put into words by certain National Socialist leaders, that which promotes the interests of the Party is good; that which does not promote the interests is evil.
And yet, our personal impression on the occasion of the masterly speech given by M. François de Menthon was that some of his words, striking in their accent of deep humanity, had stirred some consciences. Even today, after so many accumulated proofs, we may wonder whether the defendants admit their responsibility as chiefs, as men, as representatives of the incriminated organizations. This will perhaps be revealed in the course of the proceedings.
Mr. President, Your Honors, with the permission of the Tribunal we shall now take up the question of the Defendant Alfred Rosenberg.
Gentlemen, the young French student who in 1910 had the joy of spending his vacation in Bavaria, then one of the happiest of the German provinces, could hardly suspect that thirty-five years later he would be called upon to apply international law against the masters of that country. When, after stopping at the Bratwurstglöcklein, he climbed up to the ramparts to look at the sunset from the heights of the Burg, while the lines of a ballad by Uhland rang in his memory, he did not think that evil masters and false prophets would twice in a quarter of a century unchain the lightning over Europe and the rest of the world, and that through them so many treasures of art and beauty would be destroyed, so many human lives sacrificed, so much suffering piled up. Indeed, when one studies the genesis of this unheard-of drama there can be no question of romanticism; what we have to deal with rather is a perverted romanticism, a morbid perversion of the sense of greatness, and the mind is baffled by the true significance of the ideas of National Socialism—ideas which I shall touch upon only in passing to show how they led the Defendant Rosenberg, since it is he of whom I am speaking, and his codefendants to commit the crimes which are held against them:
The concept of race, to begin with, which we see arising in a country which in other respects resembles any other but where the intermingling of ethnic types of every variety took place through the centuries on a gigantic scale; this anti-scientific confusion which mixes the physiological features of man with the concept of nations; this neo-paganism which aims at abolishing the moral code, the justice, and security which 20 centuries of Christianity have brought to the world; this myth of blood which attempts to justify racial discrimination and its consequences: slavery, massacre, looting, and the mutilation of living beings!
I shall not dwell, Mr. President, on what we consider a jumble of nonsense which claims to be philosophy and in which may be found to be the most heterogeneous fragments of all kinds taken from every source, from the megalomaniac concepts of Mussolini, Hindu legends, and the Japan of the samurai, the cradle of fascism, which swept over the world like a tidal wave. The previous presentations have already adequately dealt with these conceptions. I shall simply stress today that these pseudo-philosophic conceptions tended solely to set back humanity thousands of years by reviving the clan conception, which assumes the law of might as the supreme law—the Faustrecht already formulated by the Iron Chancellor, the right to cheat others, the right to take the property of others, the right to reduce man to slavery, the right to kill, the right to torture.
But homo sapiens refuses to return to the state of homo lupus. International law is not morality without obligation or sanction. The Charter of 8 August has recalled and specified the obligation; it is for you, Gentlemen, to apply the sanction.
One of the consequences of these theories of the superiority of the race or of the so-called “Germanic Race” was to lead certain of the conspirators, particularly the Defendant Rosenberg, of whom we are speaking, to become plunderers; and it is this aspect of the activities of the Defendant Rosenberg which I should like very briefly to stress, for it concerns France and the occupied countries of the West and had deeply harmful consequences for their artistic, intellectual, or merely utilitarian heritage.
I wish to speak of all the measures decreed or applied by Rosenberg with the aim of removing from France and the western countries cultural treasures, works of art, and property belonging to groups or individuals, and transferring to Germany all these riches.
Gentlemen, owing to the limited time which we have at our disposal, I shall limit myself today to recalling how certain organisms were made to collaborate in this pillaging through orders from higher quarters. I shall indicate, first of all, the part played by the Gestapo, which was ordained by a decree issued by the Defendant Keitel, dated 5 July 1940, which bears the Document Number 137-PS and which was submitted by the American Delegation, under Exhibit Number USA-379, on 18 December 1945 (Exhibit Number RF-1400). I refer likewise to a second order dated 30 October 1940, which reinforced and detailed the orders given in regard to pillaging by what was known as the Einsatzstab Rosenberg. This is Exhibit Number RF-1304 (Document Number 140-PS), which was quoted by the Economic Section of the French Prosecution.
Thus, Keitel and Rosenberg went back to the conception of a booty exacted by the triumphant German people from the Jewish people with regard to whom it was not bound by the conditions of the Compiègne Armistice. This intervention by the chief of the army, as indicated by the orders to which I have just referred, suffices in my opinion to prove the important part played by the German Army in this looting; and the Tribunal will not fail to remember that when it makes its decisions as to the guilt of the Defendant Keitel and the Defendant Göring.
If I mention the Defendant Göring, it is because a third document proves that this defendant gave the operation his full support, inviting all the organizations of the Party, the State, and the Army to afford the fullest possible support and assistance to Reichsleiter Rosenberg and his collaborator Utikal, whom Rosenberg himself had appointed Chief of the Einsatzstab on 1 April 1941. This is the order of 1 May 1941, which we produced under our Exhibit Number RF-1406 (Document Number 1614-PS). If we examine the text of this decree carefully we cannot fail to be struck by the first paragraph. The Tribunal will surely allow me to reread it rapidly:
“The struggle against the Jews, the Freemasons, and other ideologically opposed forces allied to them, is a most urgent task of National Socialism