. NMT04-T0369
Volume IV · Page 369
| IX. CLOSING STATEMENT OF THE
PROSECUTION, 13 FEBRUARY 1948, BY BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR* |
| On 29 September, 137 days ago, the
prosecution outlined the evidence in support of the indictment which has been
brought against these defendants. On 30 September, 136 days ago, the
prosecution rested its case. In view of the nature of the crimes charged here,
and the conclusive documentary proof in support thereof, the desperate nonsense
which has been chattered during the twenty-one intervening weeks may jar the
ear but it can hardly surprise the mind. In summing up this case after four and a half months — nearly a week for each defendant — the prosecution sees not the slightest necessity for or benefit from a tedious rehearsal of the details of the record. We are filing briefs summarizing the evidence against each individual defendant. In this oral statement, we will confine ourselves to the very few general matters raised by the defense which warrant a few words. At the risk of wearying the Tribunal, I will first summarize very briefly what the prosecution's evidence showed with respect to the organized program of murder of which these men are the chief surviving executors. It is only too well known that anti-Semitism was a cardinal point of Nazi ideology. Throughout the early years of the Third Reich, the Jews of Germany were subjected to ever more severe restrictions, persecutions, and barbarities, and by 1939 life in Germany was all but intolerable for them. The war presented Himmler and Heydrich with what, to them, was a golden opportunity to carry these doctrines to their logical and terrible conclusion — the extermination of all Jews in Germany and in the countries overrun by the Wehrmacht. But practical problems soon cropped up. No one, at least for centuries, had ever tried to eradicate an entire national and racial group, and it rapidly became apparent that such a project, was an ambitious undertaking which required time and money and manpower and planning. With the invasion of the Soviet Union, the project was put on a really systematic footing. The trigger men in this gigantic program of slaughter were, for the most part, the approximately 3,000 members of the four so-called "Einsatzgruppen" of the SS, whose leading members are |
* Tr. pp. 6577-6595.
