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without even attempting to adduce any proof of the risk he ran by
attending these meetings and discussions.
The exposition of these
relations between industry and Party which I have undertaken to make hardly
concerns any of the defendants. It could confidently have been left to
historical research to adduce the facts; and the necessity of burdening this
trial could thus have been avoided.
The program of the Nazi Party, so
the prosecution claims, coincided with the endeavors of the firm of Krupp to
build up again a mighty Germany, with Krupp as the focal point of the armaments
industry. The main points of that program are alleged to have been
reprehensible. In this connection the prosecution choose to attack above all
the doctrine of “living space” although that word does not occur in
the Party program, but they pass over in silence the fact that points one and
two of the Party program postulate self determination and equal rights for all
nations, postulates which had figured prominently during the First World War in
the 14 Points of President Wilson. In its stead the prosecution mentions as a
special point in the program of the NSDAP, a statement which I have been unable
to discover therein to the effect that war was a noble and necessary activity
of Germans, and goes on to state that “the name, prestige, and financial
support of Krupp was used to bring the NSDAP into power over Germany and to put
into effect its announced program.” *
This statement of the
prosecution represents a certain advance compared with the allegations made in
earlier industrial trials. In other trials the prosecution went so far as to
claim I quote from various of the indictments “Krupp, Flick, Thyssen, and
a few others had persuaded the industrialists in 1938 to support them; Beck,
Fritsch, Rundstedt, and other typical militarists dominated the military
clique. Supported by these groups Hitler seized power, and having seized power
he embarked on conquest.” In this trial the prosecution have refrained
from invoking that unholy trinity, because, apparently, they were incapable of
taking it seriously themselves. Small wonder, since they made the fatal mistake
of conjuring up as Mephistophelean powers, apart from the naughty
industrialists, the Generals Beck and Freiherr von Fritsch, who were alleged to
have put Hitler in the saddle. The prosecution should have known then, and do,
it may be surmised, know today, that Beck was cold shouldered as a staunch
opponent of Hitlerism long before the war broke out and that he was shot on 20
July, and that Fritsch who had become involved in the disgusting machinations
directed against him by |
__________
* Indictment. p.
12
9034320 — 51 — 15.
209 |
. 
