6 Jan. 46
for its existence must not be subordinated to any
aesthetic consideration." How faithfully these precepts of
ruthlessness were followed by the defendants the Prosecution will prove
in the course of this Trial.
Hitler's assumption of an inevitable law of struggle for survival
linked up in Chapter 11 Of Book I of Mein Kampf, with the
doctrine of Aryan superiority over other races and the right of Germans,
in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples as
instruments for their own ends. The whole of Chapter 11 of Mein
Kampf is dedicated to this master race theory, and, indeed, many of
the later speeches of Hitler, his addresses to his generals and so
forth, were mainly repetitive of Chapter 11.
If the Court will look at the extract from Page 256, it reads as
follows:
"Had it not been possible for them to
employ members of the inferior race which they conquered the Aryans
would never have been in a position to take the first steps on the
road which led them to a later type of culture; just as, without the
help of certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they
would never have came to the invention of mechanical power, which has
subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts ...
"For the establishment of superior types of civilization the
members of inferior races formed one of the most essential
prerequisites ... "
And in a
later passage in Mein Kampf, at Page 344, Hitler applies these
general ideas to Germany:
"If in its historical development the
German people had possessed the unity of the herd by which other
people have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be
mistress of the globe today. World history would have taken another
course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded
pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining, and crying may not
have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be
based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful misery-mongering of
pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the
triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the
world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization."
In these passages which I have
quoted, the Tribunal will have noticed Hitler's love of war and scorn of
those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of the
whole of this book, which appears again and again, is: Firstly, that the
struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force;
secondly, that