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Volume VI · Page 31
| III. OPENING STATEMENTS |
| A. Opening Statement for the Prosecution* |
| PRESIDING JUDGE SEARS: The Tribunal is ready
to hear the opening statement on behalf of the prosecution. BRIGADIER GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR: If it please the Tribunal. The responsibility of opening the first trial of industrialists for capital transgressions of the law of nations imposes on the prosecution, above all things, the obligation of clarity. The defendants owned and exploited enormous natural and man-made resources and became very wealthy, but these things are not declared as crimes by the law under which this Tribunal renders judgment. The law of nations does not say that it is criminal to be rich, or contemptible to be poor. The law of nations arises out of the standards of common decency and humanity that all civilized nations accept. All civilized men, no matter what their rank or station, are subject to that law and are bound to observe those standards. These obligations are the very fabric of society; to deny [them] is to obliterate the quality and dignity of humanity itself. At the threshold of this case, and because of its unusual character, it is vital that those principles be clearly understood. The defendants were powerful and wealthy men of industry, but that is not their crime. We do not seek here to reform the economic structure of the world or to raise the standard of living. We seek, rather, to confirm and revitalize the ordinary standards of human behavior embodied in the law of nations. We charge that the defendants violated that law and shamelessly dishonored the image of mankind in the full sight of all men. We charge that they set at naught the freedom of other men, and denied their very right to exist, by joining in the enslavement of millions of unfortunate men and women all over Europe, who were uprooted from their homes and families and imprisoned in Germany to dig in mines and labor in factories under appalling and unspeakable circumstances which spread death, disease, and misery. We charge that they greedily plundered the resources of neighboring countries overrun by the Wehrmacht. We accuse them, finally, of supporting, joining in, and profiting by the foulest and most murderous policies and programs of the Third Reich, in the course of which the Jewish people were driven from Germany and all but exterminated throughout Europe, and millions belonging to other groups and nations were imprisoned, tortured, and massacred. |
* Transcript pages 34-149, 19 April 1947.
