Nuremberg Page #4

also without declaration of war.

Japanese bombs rained

on Pearl Harbor

spreading war finally

to the Pacific.

The new order was on the march.

World War II flamed

around the globe.

[NARRATOR] In the

name of the Union

of Soviet Socialist

Republics, General Rudenko

presents counts three and four

charging that all the

defendants committed war crimes

in Germany and in all those

countries occupied by Germany.

(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

[NARRATOR] The Nazi

conspirators committed crimes

against enemy armies,

against prisoners of war,

against the civilians

of occupied lands.

They believed in the barbaric

doctrine of total war

and considered themselves

freed from the restraints

of international law or the

established customs of war.

Their ruthless policies

were ordered in directives

like this one from

General Reinecke

of the Wehrmacht High Command.

The Bolsheviks soldier

has lost all claim

to treatment as an

honorable opponent.

Active or passive resistance

must be broken immediately

by force of arms.

Prisoners of war

attempting to escape

are to be fired on without

previous challenge.

No warning shot must be fired.

More proof of this

savage Nazi policy

comes from the affidavit

of Kurt Lindow,

former Gestapo officer.

[NARRATOR] There existed

in the prisoner of war camps

on the Eastern Front,

small screening teams

headed by lower ranking

members of the Gestapo.

It was the duty of

these teams to segregate

the prisoners of war who were

candidates for execution,

according to the orders

that had been given

and to report them to the

office of the Gestapo.

[NARRATOR] And a letter

from defendant Rosenberg

to defendant Keitel in

1942 stated clearly:

[NARRATOR] A large part of

the Soviet prisoners of war

has starved or died because

of the hazards of the weather.

In many cases, prisoners of

war could no longer keep up

in the march because of

hunger and exhaustion.

In numerous camps, no shelter

for the prisoners

was provided at all.

Even tools were not made

available to dig holes or caves.

[NARRATOR] Yet when some

objected that this treatment

violated the Geneva

Convention, defendant Keitel

answered with this memorandum:

[NARRATOR] We are concerned

with the destruction

of an ideology, therefore, I

approve and back the measures.

[NARRATOR] This is

proved by the testimony

of General Lahousen who worked

under Admiral Canaris

in the Abwehr.

General Lahousen attended

conferences where crimes

against whole

populations were plotted

in advance by the

Nazi conspirators.

Will you please explain

exactly what took place

at this conference in

the Fuhrer's train.

(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

[NARRATOR] First of all,

Canaris had a short talk

with von Ribbentrop,

particularly as regards

the Polish region.

Secondly, Canaris spoke

vehemently against the measures

that he, Canaris, had

found out about to wit

the projected shooting

and extermination measures

that were being directed against

the Polish intelligentsia,

nobility and clergy as

well as all elements

that could be regarded

as embodiments

of the national

resistance movement.

(ENGINE RUMBLING)

Canaris said at the time,

more or less verbatim,

that the world will, at some

time, make the Armed Forces

under whose eye as these

events have occurred

also responsible

for these events.

(FIRE ROARING)

[NARRATOR] Defendant Frank,

Nazi governor of Poland,

was another of the

conspirators guilty

of directing mass murder.

In his diary, he speaks of:

[NARRATOR] Taking advantage

of the focus of attention

on the Western Front

by carrying out

wholesale liquidation

of thousands of Poles.

[NARRATOR] These atrocities

were not restricted

to the east.

Here is the proof in the village

of Oradour-sur-Glane, France.

(SOMBER MUSIC)

Here is the proof in the

town of Bande, Belgium.

(SOMBER MUSIC)

Here is the proof in the

San Callisto Caves, Italy

where 350 hostages

were carefully listed

and systematically murdered.

(SOMBER MUSIC)

And here is Lidice

in Czechoslovakia.

In blind retaliation

for the assassination

of SS Man Heydrich, the Nazis

murdered all Lidice's men

and sent their women and children

into slavery in Germany.

But this was not enough.

Boys of the Arbeiten were

moved into the ruins of Lidice

and ordered to level the

village to the ground.

(EXPLOSION BOOMING)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Lidice was to be the Nazi's

example to all occupied peoples.

But more terrible still

were the concentration camps

which, from the

beginning, had been

the conspirators' chief weapon

against opposition

of every kind.

German anti-Nazis were

the first victims,

but with the war their

numbers swelled to include

citizens of all the

nations of Europe.

Their fate is described

by witness Rudolf Hoess.

[NARRATOR] I

commanded Auschwitz

until the 1st of December

1943 and estimate

that at least two and a half

million victims were executed

and exterminated there

by gassing and burning.

At least another half million

succumbed to starvation

and disease, making a total

dead of about three million.

Included among the

executed and burned

were approximately 20,000

Russian prisoners of war,

who were delivered at Auschwitz

in Wehrmacht transports.

The remainder of

the total number

included about a hundred

thousand German Jews

and great numbers of

citizens from Holland,

France, Belgium,

Poland, Hungary,

Czechoslovakia, Greece

and other countries.

[NARRATOR] Medical experiments

too were standard procedure

at many concentration camps.

These included lowering

the body temperature

to 28 degrees centigrade,

high-altitude tests

and pressure chambers,

experiments with poison bullets

and contagious diseases and

even sterilization experiments.

- This was genocide

- the premeditated

destruction of entire peoples.

Genocide, the direct

result of the Nazi's claim

that they had the right to

destroy the party's opposition.

Tomorrow the world,

dead or alive.

[NARRATOR] In the name

of the French Republic,

Monsieur de Menthon closes

count three and four

the final charges

of the indictment.

(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

[NARRATOR] All the

defendants committed crimes

against humanity including

the murder and persecution

of all people opposed to the

Nazi Party and the enslavement,

exploitation and deportation

of civilian populations.

The slave labor policy

was the responsibility

of defendant Sauckel

who admitted in 1944:

[NARRATOR] Out of the

five million workers

who arrived in Germany not

even 200,000 came voluntarily.

[NARRATOR] Forced

labor often meant

brutal and degrading treatment.

For Sauckel himself suggested:

[NARRATOR] All the men

must be fed, sheltered,

and treated in such a

way as to exploit them

to the highest possible extent

at the lowest

possible expenditure.

[NARRATOR] And

defendant Bormann added:

[NARRATOR] The slaves

are to work for us.

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