. NMT05-T0211
Volume V · Page 211
| III. OPENING STATEMENTS OF THE
PROSECUTION AND DEFENSE |
| A. Extracts from Opening Statement of the Prosecution |
| MR. McHANEY : May it please the Tribunal,
today marks the opening of the first proceeding in Nuernberg devoted
exclusively to the trial of persons active in the SS. On 30 September 1946, the
International Military Tribunal found the SS to have been a criminal
organization.* Since that date, four indictments, other than the one in this
case, have been filed with the Military Tribunals by the Chief of Counsel for
War Crimes acting on behalf of the United States of America. The defendants
range from doctors and officials in the German medical services to a field
marshal in the Luftwaffe, from officials of the judicial system of the Third
Reich to the directors of an industrial combine. Yet without exception each of
these cases deal in large measure with crimes to which the SS was a party. In
all but one of these cases, the SS is represented among the defendants. Indeed,
in the trial before the International Military Tribunal no less than eleven of
the defendants were members of the SS. This points up the tremendous power and influence wielded by the SS in the Third Reich. Even now, nearly two years after the termination of hostilities, the SS is too often regarded as a mere collection of racial fanatics, well-drilled fighting men, or concentration camp thugs. Let there be no mistake about that — Himmler was eminently successful in making the SS an all-powerful elite. Its members were represented in the personal entourage of Hitler in the Reich ministries, in the Wehrmacht, in the provincial and municipal governments, in industry and finance, in the press, in occupied territories, and in the spheres of education and culture. It has been said with considerable truth that the SS was a state within a state. It is therefore a matter of importance to investigate the workings of this SS state and to fix the responsibility for its manifold crimes on those men in high positions who kept the monstrous machinery running. Justice could not tolerate the trial of sadistic concentration camp commanders and guards, or even industrialists who ran their factories with slave labor, without bringing to account those men of the SS who made such things possible. In this dock sit the principal surviving leaders of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS Wirtschafts- und |
* Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 1, p. 273, Nuremberg, 1947.
887136 — 50 — 15
