20 Nov. 45
Humanity hereinafter alleged. Among the principal
agencies utilized in the perpetration of these crimes were the SS and
the Gestapo, which, together with other favored branches or agencies
of the State and Party, were permitted to operate without restraint
of law.
(c) The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in
addition to the suppression of distinctively political opposition, it
was necessary to suppress or exterminate certain other movements or
groups which they regarded as obstacles to their retention of total
control in Germany and to the aggressive aims of the conspiracy
abroad. Accordingly:
(1) The Nazi conspirators destroyed the free
trade unions in Germany by confiscating their funds and properties,
persecuting their leaders, prohibiting their activities, and
supplanting them by an affiliated Party organization. The Leadership
Principle woo introduced into industrial relations, the entrepreneur
becoming the leader and the workers becoming his followers. Thus any
potential resistance of the workers was frustrated and the productive
labor capacity of the German nation was brought under the effective
control of the conspirators.
(2) The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs
and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert
the influence of the churches over the people and in particular over
the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the
Christian churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi
institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a program of persecution of
priests, clergy, and members of monastic orders whom they deemed
opposed to their purposes, and confiscated church property. (3)
The persecution by the Nazi conspirators of
pacifist groups, including religious movements dedicated to pacifism,
was particularly relentless and cruel.
(d) Implementing their "master race"
policy, the conspirators joined in a program of relentless
persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them. Annihilation
of the Jews became an official State policy, carried out both by
official action and by incitements to mob and individual violence.
The conspirators openly avowed their purpose. For example, the
Defendant Rosenberg stated:
"Anti-Semitism is the unifying element of
the reconstruction of Germany." On another occasion he also
stated:
"Germany will regard the Jewish
question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater
German living space .... Europe will. have its Jewish question solved
only after the very last Jew has left the continent."