2 Jan. 46

With that I should like to conclude, with just these remarks:

The evidence shows that the Gestapo was created by the Defendant Göring in Prussia in April 1933 for the specific purpose of serving as a police agency to strike down the actual and ideological enemies of the Nazi regime and that henceforward the Gestapo in Prussia and in the other states of the Reich carried out a program of terror against all who were thought to be dangerous to the domination of the conspirators over the people of Germany. Its methods were utterly ruthless. It operated outside the law and sent its victims to the concentration camps. The term "Gestapo" became the symbol of the Nazi regime of force and terror.

Behind the scenes operating secretly, the SD, through its vast network of informants, spied upon the German people in their daily lives, on the streets, in the shops, and even within the sanctity of the churches.

The most casual remark of the German citizen might bring him before the Gestapo where his fate and freedom were decided without recourse to law. In this government, in which the rule of law was replaced by a tyrannical rule of men, the Gestapo was the primary instrumentality of oppression.

The Gestapo and the SD played an important part in almost every criminal act of the conspiracy. The category of these crimes, apart from the thousands of specific instances of torture and cruelty in policing Germany for the benefit of the conspirators, reads like a page from the devil's notebook:

They fabricated the border incidents which Hitler used as an excuse for attacking Poland.

They murdered hundreds of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children by the infamous Einsatz groups.

They removed Jews, political leaders, and scientists from prisoner-of-war camps and murdered them.

They took recaptured prisoners of war to, concentration camps and murdered them.

They established and classified the concentration camps and sent thousands of people into them for extermination and slave labor.

They cleared Europe of the Jews and were responsible for sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths in annihilation camps.

They rounded up hundreds of thousands of citizens of occupied countries and shipped them to Germany for forced labor and sent slave laborers to labor reformatory camps.

They executed captured commandos and paratroopers and protected civilians who lynched allied fliers.

They took civilians of occupied countries to Germany for secret trial and punishment.