21 Nov. 45
time we will offer in evidence. One cannot but admire the
artistry of this Rosenberg report. The Nazi taste was cosmopolitan.
Of the 9,455 articles inventoried, there were included 5,255
paintings, 297 sculptures, 1,372 pieces of antique furniture, 307
textiles, and 2,224 small objects of art. Rosenberg observed that
there were approximately 10,000 more objects still to be inventoried.
(015-PS) Rosenberg himself estimated that the values involved would
come close to a billion dollars (090-PS).
I shall not go into further details of the War Crimes and Crimes
against Humanity committed by the gangster ring whose leaders are
before you. It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal
with the individual crimes. I am dealing with the Common Plan or
design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task
is to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that
these are the men who were in the responsible positions and who
conceived the plan and design which renders them answerable,
regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others.
At length, this reckless and lawless course outraged the world.
It recovered from the demoralization of surprise attack, assembled
its forces and stopped these men in their tracks. Once success
deserted their banners, one by one the Nazi satellites fell away.
Sawdust Caesar collapsed. Resistance forces in every occupied country
arose to harry the invader. Even at home, Germans saw that Germany
was being led to ruin by these mad men, and the attempt on July 20,
1944 to assassinate Hitler, an attempt fostered by men of highest
station, was a desperate effort by internal forces in Germany to stop
short of ruin. Quarrels broke out among the failing conspirators, and
the decline of the Nazi power was more swift than its ascendancy.
German Armed Forces surrendered, its Government disintegrated, its
leaders committed suicide by the dozen, and by the fortunes of war
these defendants fell into our hands. Although they are not, by any
means, all the guilty ones, they are survivors among the most
responsible. Their names appear over and over in the documents and
their faces grace the photographic evidence. We have here the
surviving top politicians, militarists, financiers, diplomats,
administrators, and propagandists, of the Nazi movement. Who was
responsible for these crimes if they were not?
The Law of the Case:
The end of the war and capture of these prisoners
presented the victorious Allies with the question whether there is
any legal responsibility on high-ranking men for acts which I have
described. Must such wrongs either be ignored or redressed in hot