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state, is the basis of all power- further successes cannot be attained without expanding our living space in the East ***"'92 While a credulous world slumbered, snugly blanketed with perfidious assurances of peaceful intentions, the Nazis prepared not merely as before for a war, but now for the war. The defendants Goering, Keitel, Raeder, Frick, and Funk, with others, met as the Reich Defense Council in June of 1939. The minutes, authenticated by Goering, are revealing evidence of the way in which each step of Nazi planning dovetailed with every other. These five key defendants, three months before the first panzer unit had knifed into Poland, were laying plans for "employment of the population in wartime,” and had gone so far as to classify industry for priority in labor supply "after five million servicemen had been called up." They decided upon measures to avoid "confusion when mobilization takes place," and declared a purpose "to gain and maintain the lead in the decisive initial weeks of a war." They then planned to use in production prisoners of war, criminal prisoners, and concentration camp inmates. They then decided on "compulsory work for women in wartime." They had already passed on applications from 1,172,000 specialist workmen for classification as indispensable, and had approved 727,000 of them. They boasted that orders to workers to report for duty "are ready and tied up in bundles at the labor offices." And they resolved to increase the industrial manpower supply by bringing into Germany "hundreds of thousands of workers" from the Protectorate to be "housed together in hutments."93

It is the minutes of this significant conclave of many key defendants which disclose how the plan to start the war was coupled with the plan to wage the war through the use of illegal sources of labor to maintain production. Hitler, in announcing his plan to attack Poland, had already foreshadowed the slave labor program as one of its corollaries when he cryptically pointed out to defendants Goering, Raeder, Keitel, and others that the Polish population "will be available as a source of labor." This was the part of the plan made good by Frank, who, as Governor General notified Goering that he would supply "at least one million male and female agricultural and industrial workers to the Reich," and by Sauckel, whose impressments throughout occupied territory aggregated numbers equal to the total population of some of the smaller nations of Europe.

Here also comes to the surface the link between war labor and concentration camps, a manpower source that was increasingly used and with increasing cruelty. An agreement between Himmler and the Minister of Justice Thierack in 1942 provided

for "the delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reichs Fuehrer SS to be worked to death."90 An SS directive provided that bedridden prisoners be drafted for work to be performed in bed." The Gestapo ordered 45,000 Jews arrested to increase the "recruitment of manpower into the concentration camps." One hundred thousand Jews were brought from Hungary to augment the camps' manpower."" On the initiative of the defendant Doenitz, concentration camp labor was used in the construction of submarines.100 Concentration camps were thus geared into war production on the one hand, and into the administration of justice and the political aims of the Nazis on the other.

The use of prisoner-of-war labor as here planned also grew with German needs. At a time when every German soldier was needed at the front and forces were not available at home, Russian prisoners of war were forced to man anti-aircraft guns against Allied planes. Field Marshal Milch reflected the Nazi merriment at this flagrant violation of International Law, saying,

"*** This is an amusing thing, that the Russians must work the guns."101

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The orders for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war were so ruthless that Admiral Canaris, pointing out that they would "result in arbitrary mistreatments and killings," protested to the OKW against them as breaches of International Law. The reply of Keitel was unambiguous:

"The objections arise from the military conception of chivalrous warfare! This is the destruction of an ideology! Therefore I approve and back the measures.'

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The Geneva Convention would have been thrown overboard openly except that Jodl objected because he wanted the benefits of Allied observance of it while it was not being allowed to hamper the Germans in any way.103

Other crimes in the conduct of warfare were planned with equal thoroughness as a means of insuring the victory of German arms. In October 1938, almost a year before the start of the war, the large-scale violation of the established rules of warfare was contemplated as a policy, and the Supreme Command circulated a Most Secret list of devious explanations to be given by the Propaganda Minister in such cases.104 Even before this time commanders of the armed forces were instructed to employ any means of warfare so long as it facilitated victory.105 After the war was in progress the orders increased in savagery. A typical Keitel order, demanding use of the "most brutal means," provided that

"*** It is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children so long as it insures success."106

The German naval forces were no more immune from the infection than the land forces. Raeder ordered violations of the accepted rules of warfare wherever necessary to gain strategic successes.107 Doenitz urged his submarine crews not to rescue survivors of torpedoed enemy ships in order to cripple merchant shipping of the Allied nations by decimating their crews.108

Thus, the war crimes against Allied forces and the crimes against humanity committed in occupied territories are incontestably part of the program of making the war because, in the German calculations, they were indispensable to its hope of suc

cess.

Similarly, the whole group of pre-war crimes, including the persecutions within Germany, fall into place around the plan for aggressive war like stones in a finely wrought mosaic. Nowhere is the whole catalogue of crimes of Nazi oppression and terrorism within Germany so well integrated with the crime of war as in that strange mixture of wind and wisdom which makes up the testimony of Hermann Goering. In describing the aims of the Nazi program before the seizure of power, Goering said:

"The first question was to achieve and establish a different political structure for Germany which would enable Germany to obtain against the Dictate (of Versailles), and not only a protest, but an objection of such a nature that it would actually be considered."109

With these purposes, Goering admitted that the plan was made to overthrow the Weimar Republic, to seize power, and to carry out the Nazi program by whatever means were necessary, whether legal or illegal.110

From Goering's cross-examination we learn how necessarily the whole program of crime followed. Because they considered a strong state necessary to get rid of the Versailles Treaty, they adopted the Fuehrerprinzip. Having seized power, the Nazis thought it necessary to protect it by abolishing parliamentary government and suppressing all organized opposition from political parties.112 This was reflected in the philosophy of Goering that the opera was more important than the Reichstag.113 Even the "opposition of each individual person was not tolerated unless it was a matter of unimportance." To insure the suppression of opposition a secret political police was necessary. In order to eliminate incorrigible opponents, it was necessary to establish

concentration camps and to resort to the device of protective custody. Protective custody, Goering testified, meant that

"people were arrested and taken into protective custody who had committed no crime but who one might expect, if they remained in freedom, would do all sorts of things to damage the German State." 114

The same purpose was dominant in the persecution of the Jews. In the beginning, fanaticism and political opportunism played a principal part, for anti-semitism and its allied scapegoat mythology was a vehicle on which the Nazis rode to power. It was for this reason that the filthy Streicher and the blasphemous Rosenberg were welcomed to a place at Party rallies and made leaders and officials of the State or Party. But the Nazis soon regard the Jews as foremost amongst the opposition to the police state with which they planned to put forward their plans of military aggression. Fear of their pacifism and their opposition to strident nationalism was given as the reason that the Jews had to be driven from the political and economic life of Germany.115 Accordingly, they were transported like cattle to the concentration camps, where they were utilized as a source of forced labor for war purposes.

At a meeting held on 12 November 1938, two days after the violent anti-Jewish pogroms instigated by Goebbels and carried out by the Party Leadership Corps and the SA, the program for the elimination of the Jews from the German economy was mapped out by Goering, Funk, Heydrich, Goebbels, and other top Nazis. The measures adopted included confinement of the Jews in ghettos, cutting off their food supply, "aryanizing" their shops, and restricting their freedom of movement.11 Here another purpose behind the Jewish persecutions crept in, for it was the wholesale confiscation of their property which helped finance German rearmament. Although Schacht's plan to have foreign money ransom the entire race within Germany was not adopted, the Jews were stripped to the point where Goering was able to advise the Reich Defense Council that the critical situation of the Reich exchequer, due to rearmament, had been relieved "through the billion Reichsmark fine imposed on Jewry, and through profits accrued to the Reich in the aryanization of Jewish enterprises."117

A glance over the dock will show that, despite quarrels among themselves, each defendant played a part which fitted in with every other, and that all advanced the common plan. It contradicts experience that men of such diverse backgrounds and talents should so forward each other's aims by coincidence.

The large and varied role of Goering was half militarist and

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half gangster. He stuck a pudgy finger in every pie. He used his SA muscle-men to help bring the gang into power. In order to entrench that power he contrived to have the Reichstag burned, established the Gestapo, and created the concentration camps. He was equally adept at massacring opponents and at framing scandals to get rid of stubborn generals. He built up the Luftwaffe and hurled it at his defenseless neighbors. He was among the foremost in harrying the Jews out of the land. By mobilizing the total economic resources of Germany he made possible the waging of the war which he had taken a large part in planning. He was, next to Hitler, the man who tied the activities of all the defendants together in a common effort.

The parts played by the other defendants, although less comprehensive and less spectacular than that of the Reichsmarshal, were nevertheless integral and necessary contributions to the joint undertaking, without any one of which the success of the common enterprise would have been in jeopardy. There are many specific deeds of which these men have been proven guilty. No purpose would be served nor indeed is time available to review all the crimes which the evidence has charged up to their names. Nevertheless, in viewing the conspiracy as a whole and as an operating mechanism it may be well to recall briefly the outstanding services which each of the men in the dock rendered to the common cause.

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The zealot HESS, before succumbing to wanderlust, was the engineer tending the Party machinery, passing orders and propaganda down to the Leadership Corps, supervising every aspect of Party activities, and maintaining the organization as a loyal and ready instrument of power. When apprehensions abroad threatened the success of the Nazi scheme for conquest, it was the duplicitous RIBBENTROP, the salesman of deception, who was detailed to pour wine on the troubled waters of suspicion by preaching the gospel of limited and peaceful intentions. KEITEL, weak and willing tool, delivered the armed forces, the instrument of aggression, over to the Party and directed them in executing its felonous designs.

KALTENBRUNNER, the grand inquisitor, took up the bloody mantle of Heydrich to stifle opposition and terrorize compliance, and buttressed the power of National Socialism on a foundation of guiltless corpses. It was ROSENBERG, the intellectual high priest of the "master race," who provided the doctrine of hatred which gave the impetus for the annihilation of Jewry, and put his infidel theories into practice against the eastern occupied territories. His wooly philosophy also added boredom to the long list

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