Nazi conspiracy and aggression, Volume 03 (of 11) — Story, Setting & Ideas

Documentary Structure and Scope

The volume's contents list shows documents numbered sequentially, but the excerpts indicate that the documents themselves are not merely numbered exhibits—they are translations of original German records. The transcriber's note warns that the volume contains translations from original German documents and may contain translation or spelling errors. Asterisks denote missing or illegible words. This volume is one of eleven, with links to Volumes I and II provided. The catalog subjects list the Nuremberg Trial, war crime trials, World War II atrocities, and German politics, but the excerpts focus on specific administrative procedures rather than broad historical narrative.

Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War

A lengthy excerpt from a document on Soviet POWs outlines a tiered system: deserters were to receive certificates promising special treatment, then be segregated from other prisoners. Politically undesirable persons, officers, politically harmless persons, and politically especially reliable persons were to be separated. The Reichsführer SS made special details of security police and security service available to segregate by political attitude. These details were directly under the chief of the security police and had been specially trained. They were instructed to work in closest cooperation with camp commandants. The document also permits delivering musical instruments, supplying well-heated rooms, and providing appropriate literature for certain minorities, and allows half-hour prayer sessions for Mohammedan prisoners.

Jewish Possessions and Religious Restrictions

Document 001-PS, a secret memorandum for the Führer, concerns Jewish possessions in France. It notes that many Jewish dwellings remained unguarded, leading to consequences not fully shown in the excerpt. Another document restricts religious practices for prisoners of war: it forbids bringing in clergy who are not prisoners of war and prohibits distributing religious writings. However, it permits a captured priest or lay-priest at burials. These details illustrate how the prosecution selected documents that reveal both the seizure of property and the control of religious life under Nazi policy.

Readers should approach this volume as a curated selection of evidence, not a continuous history. The documents are arranged numerically, not chronologically or thematically, so cross-referencing with other volumes may be necessary. The original spelling is retained, and translations may contain errors. The asterisks marking illegible words remind us that these are fragments of a larger bureaucratic apparatus.

People forget the Nuremberg documents were just paper—orders about property, about prisoners—yet they carry a weight no shelf can hold. Strange, then, how often I think of Up The Slot: Marines in the Central Solomons — Themes and Context beside them. Both are records of men doing terrible, necessary things in places far from home, and both whisper the same old truth: war is never tidy, and the ink outlives the shouting.