22 Nov. 45
MAJOR WALLIS: Having acquired full political control, the Nazi
conspirators now proceeded to consolidate their power, and at this
point I would like to impress upon the Tribunal once again that with
the exception of a very few documents, the subject matter of my
remarks is within the purview of judicial notice of the Court, a
matter of history well known to these defendants and their counsel.
Their first step in the consolidation of power was ruthlessly to
purge their political opponents by confining them to concentration
camps or by murder. Concentration camps made their first appearance
in 1933 and were first used as means of putting political opponents
out of circulation by confining them to a so-called "protective
custody." This system of concentration camps grew and expanded
within Germany. At a subsequent stage in these proceedings full and
complete evidence of the concentration camp system and the atrocities
committed therein will be presented to the Court, both by documents
and films.
Illustrative documentary evidence of the arrest, mistreatment,
and murder by the Nazi conspirators of their political opponents is
contained in the documentary evidence offered by the United States.
As an illustration, affidavit of Raymond H. Geist, former
American Consul and First Secretary of the Embassy in Berlin from
1929 to 1938, states (which will be offered):
"Immediately in 1933, the
concentration camps were established and put under charge of the
Gestapo. Only political prisoners were held in concentration camps.
"The first wave of terroristic acts began in March 1933,
more particularly from March 6 to 13, 1933, accompanied by unusual
mob violence. When the Nazi Party won the elections in March 1933,
the accumulated passion blew off in wholesale attacks on the
Communists, Jews, and others suspected of being either. Mobs of SA
men roamed the streets, beating up, looting and even killing persons.
"For Germans taken into custody by the Gestapo there was a
regular pattern of brutality and terror. All over Germany victims
were numbered by the hundred thousand.
On the 30th of June and 1 and 2 July 1934 the
conspirators proceeded to destroy opposition within their own ranks
by wholesale murder. In discussing this purge, the Defendant Frick
stated, in an affidavit under oath, signed on the 19th day of
November 1945, in the presence of his Defense Counsel, as follows.
This is document number 2950-PS. It has not yet been introduced in
evidence, Sir: