ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIFTH DAY
Wednesday, 10 July 1946
DR. THOMA: … I wanted to present to the Tribunal a selection of Jewish literary attacks on the national feeling at that time, but the Tribunal ruled that my application was irrelevant; as these writings were not introduced as evidence I cannot speak about them. It is, however, an injustice to Rosenberg to assert that blind hatred of the Jewish race had goaded him into that controversy. He had before his eyes concrete factual evidence
of the disintegrating activities of Jews.
It appeared as if the Party program of placing Jews under a generous law of aliens would be realized. It is true that Goebbels at that time arranged a one-day boycotting of Jewish stores. Rosenberg, however, in his speech of 28 June 1933, the anniversary of the Versailles Treaty, in the assembly hall of the Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, declared that it was no longer necessary that in the capital of the Reich 74 percent of all lawyers should be Jews, and that 80 to 90 percent of the physicians in Berlin hospitals should be Jewish; about 30 percent of Jewish lawyers in Berlin would suffice amply. In his speech at the Party Rally in September 1933 Rosenberg stated in addition, and I quote:
"In the most chivalrous way, the German Government has excluded from the percentage stipulations those Jews who have fought for Germany at the front, or who have lost a son or a father in the war" (Document Book 1, Page 153a).
In his speech at the Kroll Opera House Rosenberg gave the reason for this measure, saying that there was no intention thereby to discriminate against a whole people, but that it was necessary for our younger German generation, who for years had had to starve or beg, now to be able to obtain bread and work too. But despite his strong opposition to the Jews he did not want the "extermination" of Jewry, but advocated as the nearest aim the political aliens and giving them protection as such. In addition, he granted to the Jews a percentage access to nonpolitical professions, which still by far exceeded the actual percentage of Jews in the German population. Of course, his final aim was the total migration of the Jews from Aryan nations. He had no understanding and appreciation of how great a loss to the Aryan nations themselves such an emigration would be in cultural, economic, and political respects. But one will have to admit that he believed that such an emigration would prove useful for the Jews themselves, first, because they would be set free from all anti-Semitic attacks, and also; because in their own settlement area they might live unhampered and according to their own ways.
...The most difficult problem, the greatest task, and the most tremendous responsibility for the Tribunal lies concentrated in this single point: What is justice in this Trial?
We have no code of laws, we have, however astonishing it may sound, not even any fixed moral concepts for the relations of nations among each other in peace and war. Therefore the Prosecution had to be satisfied with the general terms "civilized conception of justice," "traditional conception of legality," "conception of legality built on sound common sense with regard to justice"; they have spoken of "human and divine laws" (Volume VII, Page 78); the Hague Land Warfare Rules refer in their preamble to the "laws of humanity" and to the "demands of the public conscience."
The basis of justice is without any doubt a morality, the moral law; thus if we wish to determine what injustice among nations is, what is contrary to the idea of justice among nations according to international law, then we must broach the question of morality. The answer will be: everything is moral which our conscience accepts as being moral.
But what Is the original cause of moral discrimination: desire and happiness of the individual; or progress, improvement, preservation of the life of an individual, of a people, of humanity; or virtue; or duty?