TERRIBLE INDICTMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26216, 29 July 1946, Page 5

TERRIBLE INDICTMENT

TWELVE MILLION VICTIMS INERADICABLE SHAME NUREMBERG, July 26. In his closing speech for the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials, Sir Hartley Shawcross denounced the accused as responsible for 12,000,000 murders. Two-thirds of the Jews in Europe were exterminated and more than 6,000,000 of them were on the killers’ own figures. The murder was conducted like some mass-production industry in the gas chambers and oven of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Maidenek, and Orienburg. The defendants participated in and were morally guilty of crimes so frightful that the imagination reeled at their very contemplation. “ Let the words of the defendant Frank be well remembered: ‘Thousands of years will pass, and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.’ ”

Worst Record in History

“Evidence from this trial will reach out far beyond the punishment of a score or so of guilty men. The issues at stake here are far greater than their fate, although on their fate those issues depend. Within a year evidence far exceeding that presented in any previous tribunal in history has been collected. This evidence has not been refuted, and will remain forever to confront those who may hereafter seek to excuse or mitigate what has been done.”

Dealing with the conspiracy charge, Sir Hartley Shawcross said that in the years in the world in which war itself had been declared a crime, the German State organised for war. These men fostered the Hitler legend and helped to build up the Nazi power and ideology and to direct its activities. Like a great octopus, Nazism spread its slime over Europe and extended its tentacles throughout the world. These men who participated in Government conducted themselves regardless of human decency or established law. Not one had bloodless hands.

Dealing with the next count —crimes against the peace—Sir Hartley Shawcross said that superficial thinkers, questioning the court’s validity, made much of the argument that there was no such crime. “ But let it be said plainly that these defendants are charged also as common murderers. It is the crime of war which is at once the object and parent of other crimes responsible for the deaths of 10,000,000 persons in battle, for bringing to the edge of ruin the whole moral and material structure of our civilisation. “The Nazi method followed a sequence of treachery, intimidation, and murder. In every case of aggression the victim was at first deceived by open promises, then while assurances of friendship were redoubled military preparations were hastened, until at last the cause for starting war was devised.” Common Murderers

Sir Hartley dealt with the cases of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Norway, and added that not one of the defendants turned against the regime until the first directive was issued for the attack against Russia. Here some of the defendants objected, but purely on military grounds. “In what respect does the guilt of these men differ frorh the common murderer creeping stealthily on to his victim? ” Sir Hartley emphasised that the defendants were charged as common murderers. “ That charge alone merits the imposition of the supreme penalty. Murder—wholesale, planned, and systematic—became part and parcel of a firmly-entrenched and apparently secure belligerent occupation.” Referring to the indictment of crimes against humanity, Sir Hartley Shawcross said: “The charter of the tribunal gives warning for the future of dictators and tyrants masquerading as a State, that if, in order to strengthen their crimes, they debase the sanctity of man, they act on their peril, for they affront the international law of mankind.” After outlining the evidence of the Nazis’ treatment of prisoners of war. he said the order relating to the shooting of escapees from Stalag Luft 111. directly involved Goering and Keitel, also probably Ribbentrop.