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Alfred Rosenberg

The International Military Tribunal trials at Nuremberg [Nuernberg] in 1946 charged the defendants with four crimes. Count One charged all of the defendants with being "leaders, organizers, instigators, or accomplices in the formation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity." Count Two charged the defendants with crimes against peace by their participation "in the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression." Count Three charged the defendants with war crimes. Count Four charged the defendants with crimes against humanity. Rosenberg was indicted on all four counts.

Alfred Rosenberg was born to ethnic German parents in Russia in 1893. He received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Moscow, fought for the counter-revolutionaries in the Russian Civil War and migrated to Germany in 1918. Rosenberg developed a hatred for Communism which he has turned to great account. To this he soon added an ardent dislike for Jews, Catholics, Freemasons and others, all of whom he attacked in pamphlets. He maintained that these "enemies " were engaged in a plot against the Nordic Master People and against the Reich.

Alfred Rosenberg joined the Nazi Party in 1919, participated in the Munich Putsch of November 9, 1923, and tried to keep the illegal Nazi Party together while Hitler was in jail. He impressed the Fuehrer with his specious learning and his "great" philosophy - mainly because it fitted in with Hitler's own plans. He was never a member of Hitler's inner circle, and beyond the scope of his editorial work was never influential in party affairs. Rosenberg was one of the top group who made no pretence at being strong or brutal or clever. He taught that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds once the so called Nordic race had seized its rightful place as ruler of the earth. Recognized as the party's ideologist, he developed and spread Nazi doctrines in the newspapers "Voelkischer Beobachter" and "N S Monatshefte," which he edited, and in the numerous books he wrote. His book, "Myth of the Twentieth Century" had a circulation of over a million copies.

In 1930, Rosenberg was elected to the Reichstag and he became the Party's representative for Foreign Affairs. In April 1933 he was made Reichsleiter and head of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the NSDAP (The APA). While on a visit to London in 1933 as representative of Hitler's Government, Rosenberg was sabotaged by members of the German Embassy and Foreign Office. His own efforts were so sad that there was a demand in Parliament that he be deported. To Western observers the London trip seemed to have finished Rosenberg's chances for high political office. But Hitler, in January 1934, appointed Rosenberg his deputy for the supervision of the entire spiritual and ideological training of the NSDAP.

Hitler adopted many of Rosenberg's ideas, and the "great thinker" became Commissioner of the Fuehrer for the Supervision of the Philosophical Education of the National Socialist Movement, and chief of the National Office for the Advancement of German Literature. In the last office Rosenberg had done as much damage as he has anywhere else. He set up a vast censorship bureau and ruled on what books could be published in Germany.

In January 1940, he was designated to set up the "Hohe Schule," the center of National Socialistic ideological and educational research, and he organized the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg" in connection with this task.

As head of the APA, Rosenberg was in charge of an organization whose agents were active in Nazi intrigue in all parts of the world. His own reports, for example, claim that the APA was largely responsible for Roumania's joining the Axis. As head of the APA, he played an important role in the preparation and planning of the attack on Norway. Rosenberg, together with Baeder, was one of the originators of the plan for attacking Norway. Rosenberg had become interested in Norway as early as June 1939, when he conferred with Quisling. Quisling had pointed out the importaizce of the Norwegian coast in the event of a conflict between Germany and Great Britain, and stated his fears that Great Britain might be able to obtain Norwegian assistance. As a result of this conference Bosenherg arranged for Quisling to collaborate closely with the National Socialists and to receive political assistance by the Nazis.

When the war broke out Quisling began to express fear of British intervention in Norway. Rosenberg supported this view, and transmitted to Raeder a plan to use Quisling for a coup in Norway. Rosenberg was instrumental in arranging the conferences in December 1939 between Hitler and Quisling which led to the preparation of the attack on Norway, and at which Hitler promised Quisling financial assistaizce. After these conferences Hitler assigned to Rosenberg the political exploitation of Norway. Two weeks after Norway was occupied, Hitler told Rosenberg that he had based his decision to attack Norway "on the continuous warnings of Quisling as reported to him by Reichsleiter Rosenberg."

According to Western assessments, by late in the War, had retained only nominal status in the political arena. In fact, Rosenberg bad a major responsibility for the formulation and execution of occupation policies in the occupied eastern territories. He was appointed Reich Minister for the occupied eastern territories on July 17, 1941. He was informed by Hitler on April 2, 1941, of the coming attack against the Soviet Union, and he agreed to help in the capacity of a "Political adviser." On April 20, 1941, he was appointed commissioiler for the central control of questions connected with the east-European region. In preparing the plans for the occupation, he had numerous conferences with Keitel, Rieder, Goering, Funk, von Ribbentrop, and other high Reich authorities. In April and May 1941 he prepared several drafts of instructions concerning the setting up of the administration in the occupied eastern territories. On June 20, 1941, two days before the attack on the USSR, he made a speech to his assistants about the problems and policies of occupation. Rosenberg attended Hitler's conference of July 16, 1941, in which policies of administration and occupation were discussed. On July 17, 1941, Hitler appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister for the occupied eastern territories, and publicly charged him with responsibilty for civil administration.

Eosenberg was responsible for a system of organized plunder of both public and private property throughout the invaded countries of Europe. Acting under Hitler's orders of January 1940, he organized and directed the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg," which plundered museums and libraries, confiscated art treasures and collections, and pillaged private houses. His own reports show the extent of the confiscations. In "Action-M" (Moebel), instituted in December 1941 at Rosenberg's suggestion, 69,619 Jewish homes were plundered in the west, 35,000 of them in Paris alone, and it took 26,984 railroad cars to transport the confiscated furnishings to Germany. As of July 14, 1944, more than 21,903 art objects, including famous paintings and museum pieces, had been seized by the Einsatzstab in the west.

With his appointment as Reich Minister for occupied eastern territories on July 17, 1941, Rosenberg became the supreme authority for those areas. The majority of his staff comprised personal enemies, obnoxious meddlers and incompetent chair warmers expelled from their former jobs within the various civil ministries when the call came to supply civil servants for the East. Overall, the Leadership Corps East (Führerkorps Ost) as it became known was a hopelessly incompetent group of malcontents. He helped to formulate the policies of Germanization, exploitation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of Nazi rule, and he set up the administration which carried them out. He took part in the conference of July 16, 1941, in which Hitler stated that they were faced with the task of "cutting up the giant cake according to our needs, in order to be able first, to dominate it, second, to administer it, and third, to exploit it," and he indicated that ruthless action was contemplated. Rosenberg accepted his appointment on the following day.

Rosenberg had knowledge of the brutal treatment and terror to which the eastern people were subjected. He directed that the Hague Rules of Land Warfare were not applicable in the occupied eastern territories. He had knowledge of and took an active part in strip- ping the eastern territories of raw materials and foodstuffs, which mere all sent to Germany. He stated that feeding the German people xras first on the list of claims on the east, and that the Soviet people would suffer thereby. His directives provided for the segregation of Jews, ultimately in ghettos. His subordinates engaged in mass killings of Jews, and his civil administrators in the east considered that cleansing the eastern occupied territories of Jews was necessary. In December 1941, he made the suggestion to Hitler that in a case of shooting 100 hostages, Jews only be used. Rosenberg had knowledge of the deportation of laborers from the east, of the methods of "recruiting" and the transportation horrors, and of the treatment eastern laborers received in the Reich. He gave his civil administrators quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich, which had to be met by whatever means necessary. His signature of approval appeared on the order of June 14, 1944, for "Heu Aktion," the apprehension of 40,000 to 50,000 youths, aged 10-14, for shipment to the Reich.

The Nazi Party, the Army, the State, the SS, and certain ministries actively and successfully fought Alfred Rosenberg's Ministry for Occupied East, the only organization that made an attempt to plan a political solution for Russia, a solution fully favoring the Reich but also aiming at enlisting a degree of cooperation from at least the non-Russian Soviet populace. Rosenberg had his misgivings about the exploitation of these territories, fearing the political reaction in Russia when the extent of German economic intentions became known. Upon occasion Rosenberg objected to the excesses and atrocities committed by his subordinates, notably in the case of Koch, but these excesses continued and he stayed in office until the end.

The policy they set for the occupation, which was to take over in the wake of the Wehrmacht and continue on after the cessation of hostilities, was almost wholly one of repression and served to accentuate the deficiencies of the military planning. The Soviet Union was first to be dominated, then administered and exploited, and finally broken up and placed under tight Nazi control to the greater profit and glory of the German Reich. There was to be no real attempt to win the Russian natives over to collaboration. What they thought or felt was not to matter in the least. Force was to be used "in its most brutal form." Whether the people starved as a result of the exploitation was of no moment.

The Tribunal fond that Rosenberg was guilty on all four counts.