and the movement of Jews was restricted by
regulations to certain specified districts and hours. The creation of
ghettos was carried out on an extensive scale, and by an order of the
Security Police Jews were compelled to wear a yellow star to be worn
on the breast and back.
It was contended for the Prosecution that certain aspects of this
anti-Semitic policy were connected with the plans for aggressive war.
The violent measures taken against the Jews in November 1938 were
nominally in retaliation for the killing of an official of the German
Embassy in Paris. But the decision to seize Austria and
Czechoslovakia had been made a year before. The imposition of a fine
of one billion marks was made, and the confiscation of the financial
holdings of the Jews was decreed, at a time when German armament
expenditure had put the German treasury in difficulties, and when the
reduction of expenditure on armaments was being considered. These
steps were taken, moreover, with the approval of the Defendant
Göring, who had been given responsibility for economic matters
of this kind, and who was the strongest advocate of an extensive
rearmament program notwithstanding the financial difficulties.
It was further said that the connection of the anti-Semitic
policy with aggressive war was not limited to economic matters. The
German Foreign Office circular, in an article of 25 January 1939,
entitled "Jewish Question as a Factor in German Foreign Policy
in the Year 1938", described the new phase in the Nazi
anti-Semitic policy in these words:
"It is certainly no coincidence
that the fateful year 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the
Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of
Greater Germany, since the Jewish policy was both the basis and
consequence of the year 1938. The advance made by Jewish influence
and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy, and culture,
paralyzed the power and the will of the German People to rise again,
more perhaps even than the power policy opposition of the former
enemy Allied Powers of the first World War. The healing of this
sickness among the people was therefore certainly one of the most
important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year
1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance
of the world."
The Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany before the
war, severe and repressive as it was, cannot compare, however, with
the policy pursued during the war in the occupied territories.
Originally the policy was similar to that which had been in force
inside Germany. Jews were required to register, were forced to live
in ghettos, to