8 Jan. 46
aggressive war to serve their aims in foreign policy
was part of the very creed of the Nazi Party.
A great German philosopher has said that "ideas have hands and
feet." It became the deliberate aim of these defendants to see to
it that the ideas, doctrines, and policies of Mein Kampf should
become the active faith and guide for action of the German nation, and
particularly of its malleable youth.
As my American colleagues have already submitted to the Tribunal, from
1933 to 1939 an extensive indoctrination in the ideas of Mein Kampf
was pursued in the schools and universities of Germany, as well as
in the Hitler Youth under the direction of the Defendant Baldur von
Schirach and in the SA and SS and amongst the German population as a
whole by the agency of the Defendant Rosenberg.
A copy of this book Mein Kampf was officially presented to all newly
married couples in Germany, and I now hand to the Tribunal such a
wedding present from the Nazis to the newlyweds of Germany and for the
purposes of the record it will be Exhibit GB-128 (Document Number
D-660). The Tribunal will see that the dedication on the flyleaf of that
copy reads:
"To the newly-married couple,
Friedrich Rosebrock and Else née zum Beek, with best wishes for
a happy and blessed marriage. Presented by the Communal Administration
on the occasion of their marriage on the 14th of November 1940. For
the Mayor, the Registrar."
The Tribunal will see, at the bottom of the page opposite to the
contents page, that that edition of Mein Kampf which was the
1940 edition, brought the number of copies of Mein Kampf
published to 6,250,000. This was the scale upon which this book was
distributed. It was blasphemously called "the bible of the German
people".
As a result of the efforts of the defendants and their confederates,
this book poisoned a generation and distorted the outlook of a whole
people.
As the SS General Von dem Bach-Zelewski indicated yesterday, if you
preach for years, as long as 10 years, that the Slav peoples are
inferior races and that the Jews are subhuman, then it must logically
follow that the killing of millions of these human beings is accepted as
a natural phenomenon.
From Mein Kampf the way leads directly to the furnaces of
Auschwitz and the gas chambers of Maidanek.
What the commandments of Mein Kampf were I shall seek to
indicate to the Tribunal by quotations from the book, which are set out
in the extracts which I trust are now before the Tribunal.