D. Without judicial process, the Nazi conspirators imprisoned, held in protective custody and sent to concentration camps opponents and suspected opponents.

They authorized the Gestapo to arrest and detain without recourse to any legal proceeding. Officially, this power was described as follows:

"The Secret State Police takes the necessary police preventive measures against the enemies of the State on the basis of the results of the observation. The most effective preventive measure is without doubt the withdrawal of freedom which is covered in the form of protective custody. ******* While protective arrests of short duration are carried out in police and court prisons, the concentration camps under the Secret State Police admit those taken into protective custody who have to be withdrawn from public life for a longer time." (1956-PS)

The Nazi conspirators issued their own orders for the taking of people into protective custody and these orders set forth no further details concerning the reasons therefore, except a statement such as "Suspicion of activities inimical to the State." (2499-PS)

The Defendant Frank stated:

"To the world we are blamed again and again because of the concentration camps. We are asked, "Why do you arrest without a warrant of arrest? I say, put yourselves into the position of our nation. Dont forget that the very great and still untouched world of Bolshevism cannot forget that we have made final victory for them impossible in Europe, right here on German soil." (2533-PS)

[Page 246]

The defendant Goering said in 1934:

"Against the enemies of the State, we must proceed ruthlessly. It cannot be forgotten that at the moment of our rise to power, according to the official election figures of March 1933, six million people still confess their sympathy for Communism and eight million for Marxism. *******Therefore, the concentration camps have been created, where we have first confined thousands of Communists and Social Democrat functionaries. *******" (2344-PS)

US Ambassador George S. Messersmith, former Counsel General in Berlin, Germany, 1930-34, and Raymond H. Geist, former American Counsel and First Secretary of the Embassy in Berlin, Germany, 1929-1939, have recently stated:

"Independent of individual criminal acts committed by high functionaries of the German government or the Nazi Party, such as the murders ordered by Hitler, Himmler and Goering, all high functionaries of the German government and of the Nazi Party *******are guilty in the highest degree of complicity in and furtherance of the cardinal crimes of oppression against the German people, persecution and destruction of the Jews and all of their political opponents." (2386-PS)

Commenting further on the Nazi conspirators' use of concentration camps to destroy political opposition, Raymond H. Geist stated:

"The German people were well acquainted with the goings on in concentration camps and it was well known that the fate of anyone too actively opposed to any part of the Nazi program was liable to be one of great suffering. Indeed, before the Hitler regime was many months old, almost every family in Germany had had first hand accounts of the brutalities inflicted in the concentration camps from someone either in the relationship or in the circle of friends who had served a sentence there; consequently the fear of such camps was a very effective brake on any possible opposition." (1759-PS)

The Nazi conspirators confined, under the guise of "protective custody" Reichstag members, Social Democrats, Communists, and other opponents or suspected opponents. (2544-PS; L-73; L-83; 1430-PS.)

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The original plaintext version of part one or part two of this file is available via ftp.

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