Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

[sm type begins]Hitler already regarded the prisoner-of-war problem as a personal domain of his legislation, and the more time passed, the less he regarded it from the points of view of international law and military needs, but rather from a political and economic angle. The problem in the treatment of Soviet Russian prisoners of war from the very beginning was also subject to ideological considerations which for him was the primary motive in the war against the Soviet Union. The fact that the Soviet Union was not a member of the Geneva Convention was exploited by Hitler, in order to obtain a free hand in the treatment of Soviet Russian prisoners of war.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]He stated to the generals that the Soviet Union felt equally free from all stipulations which had been created by the Geneva Convention for the protection of prisoners of war. One must read the decrees of 8 September 1941 (Document Number EC-338, Exhibit Number USSR-356) in order to understand clearly Hitler’s attitude. In the official document of the counterintelligence office (Amt Ausland Abwehr) of 15 September 1941, rules were laid down, which were to be observed according to international law, concerning the treatment of prisoners of war where the Geneva Convention did not apply between belligerents.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]The Defendant Keitel has testified on the witness stand that he had accepted the viewpoints laid down in this document and had presented them to Hitler. The latter strictly refused to rescind the decree of 8 September 1941. He told Keitel:[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]“Your doubts originate from the soldierly
conception of a chivalrous war. Here we are concerned with the
destruction of an ideology.”[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]Keitel noted this passage down word for word and added to his written statement of 15 September 1941: “I therefore approve and countenance these measures.”[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]It was a typical example of Keitel expressing his doubts and Hitler taking his final decision. Keitel stood up for these decisions and did not let his subordinate offices know that he was of a different opinion. Such was his attitude. For this also he is, within the limits of his official position, taking responsibility.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]What Keitel actually thought is revealed in the excerpt submitted as Document Keitel-6, Document Book 1, from the book _Employment Conditions for Eastern Workers and Soviet Russian Prisoners of War_. The Codefendant Speer has testified in cross-examination that he over and over again told the Defendant Keitel that any employment of prisoners of war of any enemy country in enterprises prohibited by the Geneva Convention was out of the question. Speer further testified that Keitel several times rejected any attempt to employ prisoners of war of any western nation in actual war plants.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]The defense counsel for the Defendant Speer will also deal with this question in detail.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]In addition, I just want to submit certain individual cases charged against the Defendant Keitel personally by the Prosecution, that is to say, cases where, in the opinion of the Prosecution, he is supposed to have exceeded the limits of the general responsibility inherent in his position.[sm type ends]

I should not like to omit that case which was repeatedly mentioned—and rightly so—in the course of the evidence, the case of the 50 Royal Air Force officers, the shameful case of Sagan.

It particularly affects us as Germans, because it shows the utter lack of all restraint and proportion in the orders and the character of Hitler, who did not allow himself to be influenced for an instant in his explosive decisions by any thought of the honor of the German Armed Forces.

The cross-examination of the Defendant Keitel by the representative of the British Prosecution has determined how far his name too has been implicated in these abominable facts. Although the evidence clearly establishes the fact that Keitel neither heard nor transmitted Hitler’s murderous order, that he and the Armed Forces had nothing to do with the execution of this order and, finally, that he did everything in his power to prevent the escaped officers from being handed over to Himmler and did at least succeed in saving the officers who were taken back to the camp, he is painfully conscious of his guilt in not realizing at the time the terrible blow which such a measure must inflict on German military prestige throughout the world. In connection with the treatment of the Sagan case the French Prosecution confronted the Defendant Keitel with Document 1650-PS, which deals with the treatment of escaped prisoners of war.

This, Mr. President, is the so-called “Bullet Decree.” Considering the lack of time, I should like to deal shortly with this case, but I must deal with it because it is one of the most significant and gravest accusations against my client; I shall only summarize.

During his cross-examination, Keitel made the following statement:

“This Document 1650-PS emanates from a police agency and
contains a reference to the OKW by the words: ‘The OKW has
decreed the following ...’”

Keitel says:

“I have certainly neither signed this order of the OKW nor seen
it; there is no doubt about that.”

He cannot explain it; he can only assume how this order came to be issued by the Reich Security Main Office.

In his examination he mentions the various possibilities whereby such an order could have reached the office which issued it. Then he refers to another document, 1544-PS, which contains all the orders and directives concerning prisoners of war, but not this order referring to the escaped officers and noncommissioned officers.

The witness Westhoff has confirmed that the concept “Stufe III” and its meaning were unknown to him and to the office of the OKW Prisoners of War Organization. He also stated that on assuming office on 1 April 1944 he found no order of this nature, not even a file note.

The meaning of that Bullet Decree was completely obscure. I believe this obscurity has been cleared up by the evidence given by the Codefendant Kaltenbrunner, who on his part had never before spoken to the Defendant Keitel on the matter.

I pass on to Page 187, where Kaltenbrunner said:

“I had never heard of the Bullet Decree before I assumed the
office. It was an entirely new concept for me. Therefore I asked
what it meant. He answered that it was a Führer order; that was
all he knew. I was not satisfied with this information, and on
the same day I sent a teletype message to Himmler asking for
permission to look up a Führer order known as the Bullet
Decree.... A few days later, Müller came to see me on Himmler’s
orders and submitted to me a decree which, however, did not
originate with Hitler but with Himmler, and in which Himmler
stated that he was transmitting to me a verbal Führer order.”

From this it is safe to assume that, without consulting Keitel and without the latter’s knowledge, Hitler must have given a verbal order to Himmler, as stated in Document 1650-PS which was submitted here.

Now I come to Page 190 of my final plea:

[sm type begins]This confirms the assumption which Keitel expressed in his interrogation, although Kaltenbrunner had not previously informed him that he knew of verbal orders given by the Führer.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]3) In another case also, the one dealing with the branding of Soviet prisoners, Keitel’s statement in the witness box has proved to be the simple truth.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]The witness Roemer has confirmed in her supplementary affidavit that the order to mark Soviet prisoners of war by branding was cancelled immediately after being issued. A further statement of the Defendant Keitel is therefore also credible, according to which this order had been issued without his knowledge, although naturally Keitel’s responsibility for the acts of the party concerned is not thereby contested.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]4) In this connection I refer finally to Document 744-PS dated 8 July 1943, submitted in support of the charge against Keitel. It deals with the increased iron and steel program, for the execution of which the allocation of the necessary miners from among the prisoners of war was ordered. The first two paragraphs of the document read:[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]“For the extension of the iron and steel program
the Führer on 7 July ordered the unqualified promotion of the
necessary coal production and the employment of prisoners of war
to cover the labor requirements. The Führer ordered the
following measures to be taken with all possible dispatch for
the ultimate purpose of assigning 300,000 additional workers to
the coal mining industry.”[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]The last paragraph reads:[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]“In connection with the report to the Führer,
the Chief of Prisoner of War Affairs will advise every 10 days
concerning the progress of the drive. First report on 25 July
1943, reference date: 20 July 1943.”[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]I submit this document, not because of its actual content, which will be taken up by the defense of the Defendant Speer, but because of its symptomatic evidential value for the answer of the Defendant Keitel, when he stated that Hitler was particularly interested in prisoner of war affairs and himself personally issued the principal orders and those he considered important.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]5) The cases also connected with this complex such as: Terror-fliers, lynch law, Commando tasks, combat against partisans, will be dealt with by other defense counsels. The Defendant Keitel has made his statement regarding these individual facts during his interrogation and cross-examination.[sm type ends]

For the subjective facts of the alleged crimes one element is of special importance: the knowledge of them. Not only from the point of view of guilt, but also in view of the conclusions which the Prosecution have drawn, namely, acquiescence, toleration, and omission to take any counteraction. The fact of knowledge comprises: (1) Knowledge of the facts; (2) recognition of the aim; (3) recognition of the methods; (4) conception of, or possibility of conceiving the consequences.

During the discussion of the question of how far the Defendant Keitel could possibly have drawn any conclusion as to the intention of realization by force from knowledge of the text of the National Socialist Party Program and from Hitler’s book, _Mein Kampf_, I have already demonstrated why Keitel did not have this recognition of a realization by force.

Keitel denied any knowledge of the intended wars of aggression up to the time of the war against Poland, and his statement is confirmed by Grossadmiral Raeder. This comment is certainly a subjective truth inasmuch as Keitel did not seriously believe in a war with Poland, not to mention one involving intervention by France and England. This belief, held by Keitel and other high-ranking officers, was based on the fact that the military potential was insufficient, according to past experiences, to wage a war with any chance of victory, especially if it developed into a war on two fronts. This belief was strengthened by the nonaggression pact signed on 23 August 1939 with the U.S.S.R.

However, that is not the core of the problem. The speeches which Hitler delivered before the generals, beginning with the conference of 5 November 1937, at which Keitel was not present, made it increasingly clear that Hitler was determined to attain his goal by any means, that is, if peaceful negotiations did not succeed, he was prepared to fight, or at least to use the Armed Forces as an agent of pressure. There is no doubt about that. It is a debatable point whether the text of Hitler’s speeches, of which no official record is available, is altogether accurately reproduced. There is, however, no doubt at all that they allow Hitler’s intentions to be clearly recognized.

A distinction must be made as to whether it was possible for his hearers merely to gather that a definite plan was to be carried out, or whether they could not but recognize the existence of a general aim of aggression. If they did not recognize this, the only explanation lies in the fact that the generals on principle did not include the question of war or peace in their considerations. From their point of view this was a political question which they did not consider themselves competent to judge since, as has been stated here, they were not acquainted with the reasons for such a decision and, as the Defendant Keitel has testified, the generals were bound to have confidence in the leadership of the State to the extent of believing that the latter would only undertake war for reasons of pressing emergency. That is a consequence of the traditional principle that although the Armed Forces was an instrument of the politicians it should not itself take part in politics—a principle which Hitler adopted in its full stringency. The Court must decide whether this may be accepted as an excuse. Keitel stated on the witness stand that he recognized the orders, directives, and instructions which had such terrible consequences, and that he drew them up and signed them without allowing himself to be deflected by any consequences which they might entail.

This testimony leaves three questions undecided: (1) The question of the methods used to carry out the orders; (2) the question of the conception of the consequences which actually followed; (3) the question of the _dolus eventualis_.

The Defendant Keitel, in his affidavit (Document Book Number 12), showed with reference to the so-called ideological orders how the SS and Police organizations influenced the conduct of the war, and how the Wehrmacht was drawn into events. The evidence has shown that on their own responsibility numerous Wehrmacht commanders failed to apply such terrible orders, or applied them in a milder form. Keitel, brought up in a certain military tradition, was unfamiliar with SS methods which made the effects of these orders so terrible, and they were therefore inconceivable to him. According to his testimony he did not learn of these effects in their full and terrible extent.

The same is true of the Führer’s Night and Fog Decree which I have just discussed. If he did not allow himself to be deflected by the “possible” results when he transmitted the orders, the _dolus eventualis_ cannot be affirmed in regard to the results which took place. It must be assumed rather that if he had been able to recognize the horrible effects, he would, in spite of the ban on resignations, have drawn a conclusion which would have freed him from the pangs of conscience and would not have drawn him from month to month further and further into the whirlpool of events.

This may be an hypothesis; but there are certain indications in the evidence which confirm it. The five attempts made by Keitel to leave his position, and the fact that he resolved to commit suicide, which General Jodl confirmed in his testimony, enable you to recognize the sincerity of Keitel’s wish.

The fact that he did not succeed must be attributed to the circumstances which I have already presented: The unequivocal and, as Keitel says, unconditional duty of the soldier to do his duty obediently to the bitter end, true to his military oath.

This concept is false when it is exaggerated to the extent of leading to crime. It must be remembered, however, that a soldier is accustomed to measure by other standards in war. When all high-ranking officers, including Field Marshal Paulus, represent the same point of view, the honesty of their convictions cannot be denied, although it may not be understood.

In reply to the questions asked so often during this Trial—why he did not revolt against Hitler or refuse to obey his orders—the Defendant Keitel stated that he did not consider these questions even for a moment. His words and behavior show him to be unconditionally a soldier.

Did he incriminate himself by such conduct? In general terms: May or must a general commit high treason if he realizes that by carrying out an order or measure he will be violating international law or the laws of humanity?

The solution of this problem depends on whether the preliminary question is answered as to who is the “authority” which “permits or orders” such criminal high treason. This question seems to me important because the source of the authority must be established—the authority which can permit or order the general to commit high treason; which can “bind and absolve.”

Since the existing state power, which in this case was represented by the Chief of State, who was identical with the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, can certainly not be this authority, we merely have to decide whether an authority exists above or beyond the authority of the particular state, which could “bind or absolve.” Since the struggle for power between Pope and Emperor, which dominated the Middle Ages, has no longer any significance in regard to constitutional law, such a power can only be impersonal and moral. The German poet Schiller expresses the supreme commandment of the unwritten eternal law in the words: “The tyrant’s power yet one limit hath ...” That is only one of the manifold poetical revelations in world literature, which express the deep yearning for freedom felt by all peoples.

If there is an unwritten law which indisputably expresses the conviction of all men, it is this, that with due consideration for the necessity of maintaining order in the state, there is a limit to the restriction of freedom. Where this is transgressed, a state of war will arise between the national order and the international power of world conscience.

It is important to state that no such statute of international law has hitherto existed. This is understandable, since freedom is a relative conception, and the different conceptions existing in various states and the anxiety of all states for their sovereignty are irreconcilable with recognition of an international authority. The authority which “binds and absolves”—which absolves us of guilt before God and the people—is the universal conscience which becomes alive in every individual. He must act accordingly. The Defendant Keitel did not hear the warning voice of the universal conscience. The principles of his soldierly life were so deeply rooted, and governed his thoughts and actions so exclusively, that he was deaf to all considerations which might deflect him from the path of obedience and faithfulness, as he understood them. This is the really tragic role played by the Defendant Keitel in this most terrible drama of all times.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kauffmann—yes, go on, Dr. Kauffmann.

DR. KURT KAUFFMANN (Counsel for Defendant Kaltenbrunner): Mr. President, may I first say that I have a few changes which I will announce when I come to them. I shall take about two hours altogether, Mr. President.

May it please the Tribunal: The present Trial is world history—world history full of revolutionary tensions. The spirits conjured up by mankind are stronger than the cries of the tortured peoples for justice and peace. Since man was deified and God humiliated, chaos, as an inevitable consequence and punishment, has afflicted mankind with wars, revolutions, famine, and despair. Whatever the guilt borne by my country, it is now enduring—and permanently enduring—the greatest penance ever endured by any people.

The means adopted to restore longed-for prosperity are wrong, because they are second-rate. And none of my listeners can question the truth of my assertion that the present Trial was not begun at the end of a period of wrong, and in order to end it, but is surrounded by the surging waves of a furious torrent bearing on its surface the hopeless wreckage of a civilization guarded through the centuries, and in the demoniacal depths of which lurk those who hate the true God, who are the enemies of the Christian religion, and therefore opposed to all forms of justice.

The European commonwealth of peoples, of which my country, if only because of its geographical position, was the very heart, is seriously afflicted. It suffers from the spirit of negation and humiliation of human dignity. Rousseau would have cursed his own maxims had he lived to see the radical refutation of his theories in this twentieth century. The peoples proclaimed the “liberty” of the great revolution, but in the course of a mere 150 years they have in the name of that same liberty created a monster of bondage, cruel slavery, and ungodliness, which contrived to elude earthly justice, but did not escape the living God.

This Tribunal, conscious of its task and its mission, will some day have to submit to the searching eye of history. I do not doubt that the judges selected are striving to serve justice as they see it. But is not this task indeed impossible of solution? The American chief prosecutor stated that in his country important trials seldom begin until one or two years have elapsed. I do not need to elucidate the profound core of truth contained in this practice. Could human beings, torn between love and hate, justice and revenge, conduct a trial immediately after the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever known—and constantly harassed by the statutory demands for rapid and time-saving proceedings—in such a way as to earn the thanks of mankind when the waters of this second deluge have withdrawn into their old bed?

Would it not have been better to allow for that very lapse of time between crime and atonement with regard to the present proceedings?

Justice can be administered only when the Court possesses that inner liberty and independence which owes allegiance only to conscience and to God himself. Such a sacred activity had largely been forgotten in my country, above all, by the governing class of the nation; Hitler had prostituted the law. But this Tribunal intends to prove to the world that the welfare of the peoples is based on law alone. And no conception could arouse more joy and hope within the heart of people of good will than that of unselfish justice.

I am not criticizing the provisions of the Charter; but I do ask whether any justice has ever been, or ever could be, found on earth if might submitted to reason so far as to grant its enemies regular trial, but could not see fit to crown this tribute to reason by appointing a genuinely international tribunal; for even though 19 nations have approved of the legal basis of the Charter it is far more difficult to administer the laws laid down.

The American chief prosecutor has emphatically declared that he did not propose to hold the entire German nation guilty; but the records of this Tribunal, which history will some day scrutinize attentively, nevertheless contain many things which, to us Germans, appear to be false and, therefore, painful. Unfortunately they also contain numerous explicit questions on the part of the French Prosecution as to the extent to which, for instance, certain Crimes against Humanity committed both inside and outside Germany were known to the German people. Indeed, the French Prosecution have asked explicitly: “Could these atrocities remain, on the whole, unknown to the entire German nation, or were they aware of them?” These and similar questions are not conducive to the solution of such a difficult and tragic problem with even the slightest approach to the truth. Insofar as evil, which always grows and manifests itself organically, reigns supreme in a nation, every individual who has reached the age of reason will bear some guilt for his country’s disasters. Yet even this guilt, which is on the metaphysical plane, could never become the collective guilt of a nation unless every individual member of this nation has incurred a separate guilt. But who would be entitled to establish the existence of such a guilt without examining thousands of individual circumstances?

The problem, however, becomes even more difficult if one should try—and this is the final aim—to establish the so-called national guilt for any past crimes against peace, humanity, and so forth, committed on the part of the omnipotent State, no matter through what agencies. One must bear in mind most carefully the condition of the Reich before 1933. This has been done sufficiently here and I shall not discuss it.

Hitler claimed for himself alone such far-reaching concepts as the powerful German diligence, austerity, family affection, willingness to make sacrifices, aristocracy of labor, and a hundred more. Millions believed in this; millions of others did not. The best of them did not lose hope of being able to avert the tragedy which they foresaw. They flung themselves into the stream of events, assembled the good, and fought, visibly or invisibly, against the evil. Can the man in the street be blamed for not immediately refusing to believe in Hitler, considering the latter’s ability to pass as a seeker after the truth, and the fact that he constantly raised the palm of peace for the benefit of the peace lovers? Who knows whether he himself was not convinced at the outset that he could strengthen the Reich without going to war? After the assumption of power large sectors of the German people probably felt themselves to be at unison with many other peoples on earth. Therefore, it is not astonishing that gradually, and with the approval or tolerance of other countries, Hitler acquired the nimbus of a man unique in his century. Only a German who lived in Germany during the past few years and did not view Germany through a telescope from abroad, is competent to report on the historical facts of an almost impenetrable method of secrecy, the psychosis of fear, and the actual impossibility of changing the regime, and thus to comply with Ranke’s demand of historians to establish “how it was.”

[sm type begins]Ought the artisans, peasants, merchants, or housewives categorically to have asked Hitler or Himmler for a change? I would be quite willing to let the Prosecution answer this, as I am of the opinion that there are living in my country no fewer idealistic and heroic people than in any other country.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]It will never be possible to ascertain how large a number of Germans knew and approved of concentration camps, their terror and such like. Only if one could establish knowledge and approval in the soul of every individual German, considering general and particular conditions prevailing in the Germany of the last 12 years, which it is not now the moment to discuss, these, and only these, could be considered guilty.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]Therefore I do not think it just to put, to a larger or smaller extent, the principle of collective guilt in the place of individual responsibility, as it is held valid in all civilized nations; it was unfortunately similarly applied by the National Socialist regime to a whole people, and almost led to its complete extermination. May there be no repetition of Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, that portentous document of the twentieth century.[sm type ends]

Let me say a few words about that secrecy. This Trial has shown clearly that the State itself managed to suppress such facts as would lower its prestige and betray its real intentions. Even the men indicted here, who have been termed conspirators, have been the victims of that carefully devised system of secrecy, or most of them at least.

A special place in that system of secrecy is reserved to the plan—ordered by Hitler and executed by Himmler, Eichmann, and a circle of the initiated—for the biological destruction of the Jewish people, the ghastly aim of which was for years concealed by the term “final solution”—a term not immediately self-explicable. The problem of the Jewish question ...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kauffmann, it seems to the Tribunal a very long preamble to the defense of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner, who has not been named at all yet in what you have said. Is it not time that you came to the case of the defendant whom you represent? We are not trying a charge against the German people. We are trying the charges against the defendant. That is all we are trying.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Mr. President, in the next few sentences I would have concluded that; but I ask you to appreciate that the important word “humanity” forms the core of my case. I believe that I am the only defense counsel who intends to go more deeply into that subject; and I request permission to make these few statements. I shall come to the case of Kaltenbrunner very soon.

THE PRESIDENT: On Page 8 you have a headline which is, “The Development of the History of the Intellectual Pursuit in Europe.” That seems rather far from the matters which the Tribunal have got to consider.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Mr. President, may I remind you that this question was discussed by the Prosecution, and especially by M. de Menthon. I do not believe that I can carry out my task if I take these tremendous crimes only as facts. Some German must have an opportunity of giving a short description of the development—and it is very short. At the end of a few pages I return to the case of Kaltenbrunner; and my plea will in any case be the shortest one presented here.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kauffmann, the Tribunal proposes, as far as it can, to decide the cases which it has got to decide in accordance with law and not with the sort of very general, very vague and misty philosophical doctrine with which you appear to be dealing in the first 12 pages of your speech, and, therefore, they would very much prefer that you should not read these passages. If you insist upon doing so, there it is; but the Tribunal, as I say, do not think that they are relevant to the case of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner. They would much prefer that you would begin at Page 13, where you really come to the defendant’s case.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Mr. President, it is, of course, extremely difficult for me to present a plea which is already very much condensed, and now to disrupt it even more. It is really difficult. I hope that the Tribunal will appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Kauffmann; there has been nothing condensed in what you have read up to the present. It has been all of the most general type.

DR. KAUFFMANN: In that case may I at least read a few sentences below the headline with regard to the defense? It starts ...

THE PRESIDENT: Can you not summarize the general nature of what you wish to say before you come to the Defendant Kaltenbrunner?

DR. KAUFFMANN: Yes, I shall try. I shall read only a few sentences, for the sake of better understanding, from the short chapter dealing with the task of the Defense. I say there that the defense has been established by the Charter and ask how in the face of such excesses a defense can still identify its task. I then go on to say:

In this Trial, error and truth are mysteriously mixed, probably more so than ever before in any great trial. To try to find the truth raises the counsel for the defense to the dignity of an assistant of the Court. Not only does it entitle the Defense to doubt the credibility of the witnesses but also that of the documents, in particular of the Government reports. It entitles the counsel for the defense to state that such reports, although they may be admitted by the Charter in evidence, can only be accepted under protest, because none of the defendants, defendants’ counsel, or neutral observers could have any influence on the way in which they originated.

These testimonies were certainly made within the framework of the law, but also within the framework of power.

The people, or a large part of the people, in their aspirations toward peace and happiness elevated the representative of a heretical doctrine to the position of their Führer, and this Führer abused the faith of his followers so that the people, no longer possessing the strength to offer a timely and open resistance, were engulfed in the gigantic abyss of the annihilation of their entire racial, political, spiritual, and economic existence. All of this is tragic in the truest sense of the word. Had the individual man in the street, the mother at home, and her sons and daughters, been asked to choose between peace or war, they would never voluntarily have chosen war. The unsatisfactory element in this Trial is the absence of the man ...

THE PRESIDENT: Are you reading now from some part of your document?

DR. KAUFFMANN: I am reading a few sentences, Mr. President. This is at Page 7 of the German text.

THE PRESIDENT: Can you not summarize the argument you are presenting?

DR. KAUFFMANN: Mr. President, I would appreciate it if I could be told once more whether the Tribunal does not wish me to throw any light at all on the ideological background in the interests of an understanding of these crimes against humanity and peace. If the Tribunal states that it does not desire me to make any such statements, then of course I shall follow the wishes of the Tribunal. But such a phenomenon ...

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Kauffmann, if you think it is necessary for you to read this passage you can do so; but, as I have indicated to you, the Tribunal think it is very remote indeed from any question which they have to consider.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Thank you very much. Then I shall skip a few pages and shall present only 4 or 5 pages, which will be very condensed, on the subject which I have just mentioned. That begins with the heading, “Outline of Intellectual Development.”

The rise of Hitler, and his downfall, unique in its extent and consequences, may be viewed from any side—from the perspective of the historical spectacle afforded by the course of German history, the course of economic forces supposedly governed by irresistible laws, the sociological divisions of the nation, the peculiarities of race and character of the German people, or the mistakes committed in the political sphere by the other brothers and sisters of the family of nations living in the same house.

All this certainly completes the picture of the analysis, but it brings to light only partial knowledge and partial truth. The deepest, and the fatal, reason for the Hitler phenomenon lies in the metaphysical domain.

In the final analysis the second World War was unavoidable. Anyone, however, who regards the world and its phenomena only from the standpoint of economics may arrive at the conclusion that both world wars could have been avoided if the resources of the earth had been reasonably distributed. Economic factors alone can never change the face of the earth; therefore, the change in the German people’s standard of living, and the demoralization of the national soul by the Treaty of Versailles, inflation, serious unemployment, and other factors formed a foundation for the advent of Hitler. It is possible that catastrophes may be delayed for years or decades, if certain external living conditions make the relationship between different nations and peoples ostensibly happier. At no time, however, can a misguided idea be destroyed through economic measures alone, and deprived of its power to injure the individual and the nation, unless mankind can overcome such ideas and replace them by better ones.

“In the way in which the name of God is used by the peoples and nations,” says the famous Donoso Cortes, “lies the solution of the most-feared problems.” Here we have the explanation of the providential mission of the separate nations and races, the great changes in history, the rise and fall of empires, conquests and wars, the different characteristics of the nations, and even their changing fortunes.

M. de Menthon has tried to make an intellectual analysis of National Socialism. He speaks of the “sin against the spirit,” and sees the deeper causes of this system in estrangement from Christianity.

I wish to add a few words. Hitler was not a meteor, the fall of which was incalculable and unpredictable. He was the exponent of an ideology which was in the last resort atheistic and materialistic.

There is every reason to reflect that, although National Socialism is eliminated through the complete defeat of Germany, and although the world is now free of the German threat as proclaimed by all nations, there has been no decisive change for the better. No peace has filled our hearts, no rest has come to any corner of human existence. It is true that the collapse of a powerful state with all its physical and spiritual forces will be felt for a long time, just as the sea is stirred into motion when a rock is thrown into calm water. But something much more is happening at present in Europe and in the world—something quite different from the mere ebbing away of such a wave of events.

To retain the comparison, the waves rise anew from the deep; they are fed by mysterious forces which constantly emerge anew. They are those restless ideas, aiming at the disaster of nations, of which I spoke. And nothing can disprove the truth of my words when I maintain that victor and vanquished alike live in the midst of a crisis which disturbs the conscience of individuals and of nations like a monstrous and apparently inevitable nightmare, and which causes us to look beyond the punishment of guilty individuals toward those ways and means which can spare humanity an even greater catastrophe.

In the _Confessions of a Revolutionary_ the clear-sighted socialist Proudhon wrote the memorable words: “Every great political problem contains within itself a theological one.” He coined this phrase one hundred years ago. It is most timely that the American General MacArthur, at the signing of the Japanese capitulation, is said to have repeated the essential meaning of these profound words by saying: “If we do not create a better and greater system, death will be at our door. The problem is, fundamentally speaking, a religious one.”

History is made by changes in religious values. They constitute the strongest motive power in the cultural progress of humanity. Permit me to show you in a few bold outlines the intellectual and historical forebears of National Socialism.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kauffmann, it is 1 o’clock, and I must say that the last two pages which you have read seem to me to have absolutely nothing to do with Crimes against Humanity, or with any case with which we have got to deal. I suggest to you that the next pages, headed “Renaissance, Subjectivism, French Revolution, Liberalism, National Socialism” are equally completely unlikely to have any influence at all upon the minds of the Tribunal.

The Tribunal will now adjourn.

[_The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

DR. KAUFFMANN: Mr. President, I am going to leave out the section headed “Renaissance, Subjectivism, French Revolution, Liberalism, National Socialism.” The gist of those remarks can be summarized in two or three sentences and I merely beg you to take cognizance of them. I have pointed out that the course of all these disastrous movements is the spiritual attitude which Jacques Maritain described as anthropocentric humanism.

[sm type begins]The clamor of the great struggle between the Middle Ages and modern times has filled the last centuries until this very hour. Its victims include since 1914, for the first time, the women; since 1939, for the first time, the children. The apocalyptic battle is in full progress for the 2,000-year-old meaning of the Occident, the motherland of the material as well as the personal culture of humanity. Its object is the steadily growing anthropocentric humanism which makes the human being the measure of all things, the secularization of religion. It announces itself in the Renaissance, becomes completely clear in the enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in the intellectual movements of the nineteenth century. However good the reasons and motives were, the way over the Renaissance and the schism of the sixteenth century proved to be wrong. At its very end stands, for the present, the ideology of National Socialism. In the heads of its most extreme champions National Socialism culminated in the radical demand for the fight unto death against Christianity. Therefore this ideology was in its last analysis a philosophy without love; and because of this, it extinguished the light of reason in those addicted to it. To that extent the head himself of this heresy proclaimed a truth.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]Goethe expressed this problem by saying: “World history is the struggle between belief and unbelief.” And I maintain, based on the declarations of the greatest minds in all camps of religious faiths, that the history of the nations, just as previously it was a struggle for the natural divine right of man, for 2,000 years has been a striving of human intellect for the Christian soul in man. These precepts are in fact such that one may not doubt them even for a short moment without the mind beginning to reel and vacillate helplessly between truth and error. It is cause for reflection that Hitler rejected the wonderful characteristic of a truly kind man that we call humility because he had decided in favor of Machiavelli and Nietzsche and that now the fate of the Germans is humiliation without precedent. One may also reflect upon the fact that Hitler denied the virtues of pity and mercy and that now millions of women and children wail with sorrow, while the law, seemingly extinct, again assumes enormous proportions, whereas Hitler surrounded himself with lawlessness. The real and last root of these calamitous modern movements which threaten state, society, and Christianity, is rootless liberalism in the meaning of that anthropocentric humanism, as Maritain calls it. Man and his autonomous reason become the criterion of everything. The question should impose itself upon every thinking person, why from the turn of the nineteenth century until the present such catastrophes of humanity have occurred which in history, I should almost like to say, find their parallel only in cosmic catastrophes. Two world wars, with revolutions in their wake, are never an accidental development but rather a predetermined evolution of the human race founded on some intellectual-religious error. Coming from England, rationalism found its way to France and on arrival there changed its physiognomy. I believe that the paganism of the ancient times knew hardly anything like Voltaire. No sooner had rationalism become the state religion of France, when the French Revolution burst into flames and wrote the idea of the emancipated human rights with flaming letters into the sky of Europe. In spite of the proclamation of the human rights, mankind waded through blood as if this was the way to freedom. Sarcastic and scornful laughter at everything sacred went through the raving masses. When the French Revolution had put into practice its state founded on reason, the new institutions did not prove quite so reasonable. The “brotherhood” was, compared with the glamorous promises of the rationalists, a bitterly disappointing caricature. Soon these ideas also conquered Germany; for Germany looked with amazement and awe toward France in this century. The manifestation of religion became a religion of pure humanity. The last step was taken by Kant; he drew the last consequence from the principle of free science. Hegel abolished the personal God and replaced him by the absolute reason. The state is everything; it is God, its will is God’s will, in all relations to it there are no natural rights; it creates religion, law, and morality by virtue of its own sovereignty. Hitler once more placed the sovereignty in the people as a race. Hegel’s disciples destroyed the last vestige of the moral fundaments of society, state, and law. Only the genius of a man like Leibnitz, in whom the intellect of the German nation seemed to concentrate for the last time, stood alone in a sea of the rational ideology. Voltaire ridiculed the German thinker, not only in France, but also in Berlin. The last stages are connected with the names of Nietzsche and others. Nietzsche has, as no other modern man, reasoned modern ideologies out to the end and proclaimed with dauntless logic whither the present development would inevitably lead. Thus the road leads from Caligula and Julian Apostate through many a genius, glorified by the whole world but truly destructive in their effects, directly to Hitler.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]Ancient paganism or modern paganism, which of them is worse? As Donoso Cortes so wisely puts it, there will be no more hope for a society which has exchanged the stern cult of Christian quest of truth for the idolatry of reason. After the sophisms come the revolutions, and behind the sophist walk the executioners.[sm type ends]

[sm type begins]When Hitler, returning from the first World War, decided, as he said, to become a politician, he declared that he had found the powers which could free Germany with its national and social elements from its misery. But fundamentally his ideology was only another step along the well-worn road to complete autonomy of so-called natural common sense, to which he so often referred. Naturally he had his teachers. The apotheosis of his own people traces back to Fichte, the ideal of the master-man to Nietzsche, the relativity of morals and right to Machiavelli, the cult of race to Darwin. We have witnessed their practical effect; for this road leads straight into the concentration camps, to the destruction of other races, to the persecution of Christians. But the outside enemies of National Socialism succumbed to the same ominous idea of “natural common sense” by killing with their bombs millions of noncombatant women and children and destroying so many dwellings in German villages and cities. The victor, even in a defensive war, must not try to excuse these events with “military necessities” in the meaning of the Charter. The cultural values of this very city in which this Tribunal is sitting, or of Dresden, Frankfurt, and many other cities, were the cultural property of the entire Occident. All this, and the terrible misery of the flood of refugees from the East, and the fate of the prisoners of war, is part of the theme of the intellectual and cultural analysis of National Socialism.[sm type ends]

In the midst of this whole spiritual situation stands the figure of the Defendant Dr. Kaltenbrunner. The fatherland was already bleeding from a thousand wounds dealt at its sensitive soul and its gigantic power. Is this man guilty? He has denied his guilt and yet admitted it. Let us see what the truth is.

As I have already emphasized, up to the year 1943 Kaltenbrunner was, by comparison with the other defendants at this Trial, hardly known in Germany; at any rate, he had hardly any associations with either the German public or the high officials of the regime. In those days, when the military, economic, and political fate of the German people was already swinging with great velocity toward the abyss, hate and abhorrence of the executive powers were at their peak, the more so as the paralyzing sensation of the hopelessness of any resistance against the terror of the regime began to disappear, for people had by then finally turned away from the legend of invincibility preached by propaganda. Up to that point Kaltenbrunner had led a retired life and, in spite of the Austrian Anschluss, his record was clear of offenses against international law. I should like to say here that he was an Austrian—I might almost say, a bona fide Austrian. Suddenly, so to speak, and not on account of any special aptitude, much less through any efforts of his own, he was drawn into the net of the greatest accomplices of the greatest murderer. Not of his own free will; on the contrary, he repeatedly attempted to resist and to have himself transferred to the fighting front.

I can well understand that I might be told that I should, in view of the sea of blood and tears, refrain from illuminating the physiognomy of this man’s soul and character. But deep in my heart—and I beg you not to misunderstand me—while exercising my profession as counsel, even of such a man, I am moved by the universal thesis of the great Augustine, which is hardly intelligible to the present generation: “Hate error, but love man.” Love? Indeed, insofar as it should pervade justice; because justice without this virtue becomes simple revenge, which the Prosecution explicitly disavows. Therefore, for the sake of justice, I must show you that Kaltenbrunner is not the type of man repeatedly described by the Prosecution, namely, the “little Himmler,” his “confidant,” the “second Heydrich.”

I do not believe that he is the cold-hearted being which the witness Gisevius described in such unfavorable terms, although only from hearsay. The Defendant Jodl has testified before you that Kaltenbrunner was not among those of Hitler’s confidants who always gathered around him after the daily situation conferences in the Führer’s headquarters. The witness Dr. Mildner, on the basis of direct observation, made the following statement, which was not shaken by the Prosecution:

“From my own observation I can confirm this: I know the
Defendant Kaltenbrunner personally. His private life was
irreproachable. In my opinion he was promoted from Higher SS and
Police Leader to Chief of the Security Police and of the SD
because Himmler, after the death of his principal rival Heydrich
in June 1942, did not want any man near him or under him who
might have endangered his own position. The Defendant
Kaltenbrunner was no doubt the least dangerous man for Himmler.
Kaltenbrunner had no ambition to bring his influence to bear
through special deeds and ultimately to push Himmler aside. He
was not hungry for power. It is wrong to call him the ‘little
Himmler.’”

The witnesses Von Eberstein, Wanneck, and Dr. Hoettl have expressed themselves in a similar manner.

And yet this man took over the Reich Security Main Office; indeed, he took it over to the fullest extent, despite his agreement with Himmler. I know that today this man is suffering a great deal in thinking of the catastrophe that has overtaken his people and from the uneasiness of his conscience; nothing is more understandable than that Dr. Kaltenbrunner, knowingly, can no longer face the fact that he actually was in charge of an office under the burden of which the very stones would have cried out if that had been possible. The personality and character of this man must be judged differently from the way the Prosecution has judged it.

For the psychologist the question arises how a man, with, let us say, a normal citizen’s virtues, could take under his control an office which became the very symbol of human enslavement in the twentieth century, as far as Germany is concerned. Yet there may have been two reasons for taking over this office, nevertheless. One is based on the fact that Dr. Kaltenbrunner, although closely connected with the political and cultural interests of his Austrian homeland, supported National Socialism in its larger sense. For before he turned into the side path with its secrets, he marched with thousands and hundreds of thousands of other Germans, who desired nothing else than delivery from the unstable conditions prevailing at that time, on that wide road into which the eyes of the entire world had insight. Therefore, for example, he was without a doubt a disciple of anti-Semitism, however, only in the sense of the necessity of putting an end to the flooding of the German race with alien elements; but he condemned just as emphatically the mad crime of the physical annihilation of the Jewish race, as Dr. Hoettl definitely assures us.

Certainly Kaltenbrunner also admired Hitler’s personality as long as it did not, little by little, give expression to its absolutely misanthropic and therefore un-German nature. Also, he approved in principle, as he himself admitted during his interrogation, of measures which implied more or less severe compulsion, for example, the organization of labor training camps. For this reason no sensible person will want to question the fact that he deemed the establishment of concentration camps fundamentally quite proper, at least as a provisional measure during the war, as had been the case for a long time beyond the German borders. _Sine ira et studio._

The establishment of concentration camps, or whatever one wishes to call those places at the mention of which the listener involuntarily is reminded of the words of Dante, is unfortunately not unknown in many states. History knows of their existence in South Africa some decades ago, in Russia, England, and America during this war, for the admission, among others, of persons who for reasons of conscience do not want to serve with arms. In Bavaria, in the land in which the Tribunal at present sits, this sort of camp is also known; also known is the so-called “automatic arrest” category for certain groups of Germans. Under the heading “Political Principles,” in Point B-5 of the text of the mutual declaration of the three leading statesmen on the Potsdam Conference of 17 July 1945, the statement is contained that, among others, all persons who are a threat to the occupation or its aims shall be arrested or interned.