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Volume II · Page 137
If there are offenders there are many co-offenders, and one understands Pastor Niemoeller saying: "We are all guilty."
This is a moral or a political guilt, but cannot be shifted to a single person as criminal guilt.
I have thus shown the fundamental lines along which the actions of the defendant Karl Brandt have to be judged.
The primary consideration for the judgment of this Tribunal is that no prisoners of war or foreigners were submitted to euthanasia with the knowledge or the desire of the defendant Karl Brandt.
Thus the defendant Karl Brandt cannot be punished under Law No. 10 on this count either. What happened between Germans is not subject to the decision of this Tribunal.
Finally, the defendant Karl Brandt is also charged with having been a member of the SS, an organization which has been declared criminal. Evidence to show that the defendant Karl Brandt knew of a criminal aim of this organization and approved of it must be brought by the prosecution. A reference to the general assertions in these proceedings is not sufficient proof, for precisely here the prosecution cannot prevail with their assertions in regard to Karl Brandt.
As to the details, I refer to the statements made in my closing brief. The fact that the defendant Karl Brandt was the only member of the SS who at the same time retained his position as a medical officer in the army shows that his honorary rank in the SS was really only a formality, and that he was no true member of this organization.
When the defendant Karl Brandt testified here that he wore the uniform of the SS with pride, this only shows that he, like the majority of the SS men, knew nothing about the criminal aims. In judging the organization of the SS, the International Military Tribunal was aware only of a small part of the whole, looking, so to speak, through a keyhole into a dark corner.
Nor could the defendant Karl Brandt have any personal knowledge of Himmler's secrets, for Himmler rejected him personally, as is shown by a number of affidavits. Since the defendant Karl Brandt could not obtain information even in his own sphere of medicine, how is he to have obtained knowledge of other matters?
I do not want to repeat the affidavits which give information about the basic attitude of the defendant Karl Brandt and show that he adopted an attitude which was incompatible with the mentality supposed to be typical of the SS. In this connection I merely refer to the statements made by Pastor Bodelschwingh,
