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State. To a certain extent they represent the brains of that state. By themselves alone they did not represent it entirely. Nevertheless, nobody can doubt that they were an important part of it. They conceived the policy of that state. They wanted their thought to become action and all in scarcely differing degrees have contributed toward its realization. This is true whether it applies to Hess, to Goering, professional politicians who admit never having practised any other profession than that of agitator or statesman, or to Ribbentrop, to Neurath, to Papen, the diplomats of the regimes, or to Keitel, to Jodl or Doenitz or Raeder the military men to Rosenberg, to Streicher, to Frank, to Frick, the thinkers (if that term can be applied to them) of the ideology of the system; to Schacht, to Funk, the financiers without whom the system would have failed and collapsed before it was able to rearm, to jurists like Frank, to publicists and propagandists like Fritzsche, and, again, Streicher, devoted to the diffusion of the common idea or again to technicians like Speer or Sauckel, without whom the idea never could have been developed into action as it has been, to policemen such as Kaltenbrunner who subdued minds by terror, or simply Gauleiters like Seyss-Inquart, Schirach or, again, Sauckel, administrators, officials of high authority as well as politicians, who shaped into a concrete whole the common policy conceived for the sum-total of the State and of party machinery. I know full well that the shadow of the absent ones towers over this machine, and today's defendants are always reminding us: "Hitler wanted this, Himmler wanted this, Bormann wanted this", they say. "I only obeyed", and their defense counsels stress the point. Hitler the prodigious tryant, the fanatic visionary imposing his will with an irresistible magnetic power. This is too simple. This is too sketchy. No man is entirely non-receptive to suggestions, to insinuations, to influence, and Hitler could escape that law no more than any other man. We have had irrefutable proof of this in all that these proceedings have permitted us-to guess concerning the struggle for influence which was waged in the "great man's" entourage. The treacherous, underhanded slanders were unrolled, the intrigues which reminded us at certain times during the proceedings of the small courts of the Italian Renaissance. Everything was included, even up to murder. Is it not true that Goering, before he himself fell into disgrace, got rid of Roehm and Ernst, who had not plotted against their master, but against him, as Gisevius told us. So much imagination, such perseverance in evil, but also such efficiency, show us that Hitler was not insensible to the actions and intrigues of the men around him. What a pity that these intrigues were not trained in the right direction! But of Hitler's receptiveness to influences we have direct evidence, and it is given us by Schacht who thereby

apart from these men involves the German masses, the good sense of which these men had contributed to warp and in which they roused the worst of passions.

Did not Schacht say of Hitler in Court:

"I believe that in the beginning he did not have only evil tendencies without a doubt he believed he wished only good, but little by little he became the victim of the charm he exerted over the masses, for he who begins by seducing the masses is in the end seduced by them, so that this relation between chief and disciple helped to lead him into the erroneous ways of mass instincts, which any political chief should strive to avoid."

What was then the great idea of them all?

Incontestably it was that of the conquest of vital space by any and all means, even the most criminal.

At a time when Germany is still disarmed, when prudence is still required, Schacht, who is on Hitler's side, asks for colonies; we remember Hirschfeld's testimony, but he dissembles, he partly disguises the great idea of the State machine to which he belongs, and this idea we would be less easy in our mind in denouncing it without the disconcerting artlessness of "the great man”, who ten years previously had revealed the whole of his plans of battle for all the world to see.

"MEIN KAMPF" (French text)

"The German people cannot consider its future otherwise than as that of a world power. During nearly two thousand years the stewardship of our people's interest, as we must call our more or less successful foreign political activity was an integral part of world history. We have even witnessed it; for the gigantic conflict between nations from 1914 to 1918 was nothing else than the struggle of the German people for its existence on the terrestrial globe and we even call that event the World War. The German people went in the fight as a so-called world power. I say 'so-called' for in reality it was not. If in 1914 there had been a different proportion between its superficial area and the number of its population, Germany would have been a world power and apart from the other factors might have found a successful issue" ** This is the next quotation:

"I would rather say this: The claim for the reestablishment of the frontiers of 1914 is a political insanity through its proportions and its consequences, which reveal it to be an actual crime, this without taking into account that the frontiers of the Reich were anything but logical. In reality they did not

include all the men of German nationality and neither were they more rational from a strategic point of view. They were not the result of a calculated political plan, but rather temporary frontiers; in the course of a struggle by no means ended, they were even partly the result of a gamble."

"The frontiers of the year 1914 have absolutely no value for the future of the German nation. They constituted neither a safeguard for the past nor a power for the future. They will not enable the German people to maintain its inner unity nor to assure its subsistence. Regarded from the military point of view, these boundaries appear neither well chosen nor reassuring and, finally, they cannot improve the situation in which we actually find ourselves in relation to the other world powers or to be more correct, in relation to the real world powers." Here is another quotation:

"But we, we other National-Socialists, must hold immovably to the goal of our foreign policy: to secure for the German people the territory to which it is entitled in this world. And this is the only action which before God and before Germany's future generations justifies the shedding of blood before God, because we were placed upon this earth to gain our daily bread through perpetual striving, as creatures to whom nothing has been given without an equivalent, and who owe their position as masters of the earth to their intelligence only, and to the courage with which they know how to conquer it and to conserve it for our German posterity, provided that the blood of a single German citizen will not be shed unless this should give to future Germany thousands of new citizens. The territory upon which the robust children of generations of German peasants will some day be able to multiply, will justify the sacrifice of our children and will absolve the statesmen who by their generation are being held responsible, even persecuted because of the blood and the sacrifice imposed upon our people."

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A further quotation:

"A State which in an age of racial contamination keeps jealous watch over the conservation of its best elements, is bound some day to become the master of the earth ***"

"A stronger race will drive away the weaker races, since the final rush towards life will break the ridiculous restraints of a so-called individualistic humanity to replace it by a humanity true to the nature which annihilated the feeble in order to give their place to the strong ***" *" (page 135).

And then the strength of the State machinery and of the Party grow. The recognized army was soon powerful enough to permit Germany to arm openly. Who, at that time, would dare to interrupt the monstrous development of this biological materialism? Hitler specified his ideas in a smaller circle, and those who heard his words were not all Nazis. Enlightened as to the master's purposes, they will yet stay by his side, and that is what condemns them. Is it not so Raeder?

"The question is not of conquering populations, but of conquering territories suitable for cultivation ***"

Hitler said in conference with von Blomberg, von Fritsch, and Raeder on 5 November 1937,

"Expansion cannot be made a reality except by breaking existences to pieces and running the risks ***.”

That comes from the same speech.

After von Fritsch and von Blomberg had fallen into disfavor, Keitel and Jodl, picked because of their servility to the system, had a solid war-tool in their hands. On the evening before the outbreak of the conflict, Hitler recalled his thoughts (L-79, USA 27):

"Circumstances must be adapted to goals which are to be attained. This is impossible without invasion of foreign States, or attack against foreign property.

"Vital space proportionate to the greatness of the State is the basis of all power. For a time one can refuse to face the problem, but in the end it must be solved, one way or another. The choice is between progress or decline. Fifteen or twenty years hence we will be forced to find a solution. No German statesman could evade that question any longer. We are; at this moment, filled with a patriotic fervor which is shared by two other nations, Italy and Japan.

"The period which is behind us was well utilized. All measures were taken concretely and in harmony without aims.

"After six years, the situation today is as follows: National political unity of the Germans has been accomplished except for a few details. The ultimate success cannot be obtained without the shedding of blood.

"Danzig is in no case a subject of dispute. It is a question of expansion in the East, of space needed for our existence (Lebensraum) and of assuring our food supplies.

"The peoples of non-German territories will not be called for military service, but will be available as a labor reserve.

"The Polish problem is inseparable froin a conflict in the West."

And the war came, which in a few months time made all Germany believe that her force was irresistable and that she could proceed to conquer the world. All that was meant by this cruel, monstrous phrase of Hitler:

"We must keep firmly to the aim of our foreign policy: secure for the German people the territory to which it is entitled in this world. And this act is the sole act which, before God and our German posterity, justifies bloodshed

* * ""

All this monstrous phrase was thus developed:

"We claim to have been compelled to carry out occupation, administration etc. *** Nobody will realize it is the question of a permanent settlement. It will not prevent us from taking the necessary measures: executions, deportations *** * etc." And further on:

"Partisan warfare will have one advantage for us. enable us to exterminate all those who oppose us.

It will

*** "

The same theme was taken up and cynically proclaimed by the spokesman of the State.

This Trial has brought you echoes thereof. And in a speech by Himmler (1919–PS):

"Whatever the nations of category A blood can offer us we shall take, if necessary by taking their children away from them and bringing them up among us".

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"Whether nations thrive or starve only interests me in the measure that we use them as slaves for our civilization".

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"That 10,000 Russian women should die of exhaustion in digging an anti-tank ditch only interests me to the extent whether the anti-tank ditch has been completed for Germany”.

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"When somebody comes and says to me: 'I cannot have the anti-tank ditch dug by women and children because it is inhuman and would kill them', I reply: You are a murderer of your own kin, for if the ditch is not finished German soldiers will fall and they are the sons of German mothers."

And from the same speech, and concerning the extermination of the Jews (1919-PS):

"We have exterminated microbes. We did not wish to be con

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