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program were also sent to the eastern occupied countries to assist in the mass extermination of Jews."Counts two and three of the indictment conclude with the averment that the crimes and atrocities which have been delineated "constitute violations of international conventions the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and of Article II of Control Council Law No. 10."
COUNT FOUR Membership in Criminal Organization: The fourth count of the indictment alleges that the defendants Karl Brandt, Genzken, Gebhardt, Rudolf Brandt, Mrugowsky, Poppendick, Sievers, Brack, Hoven, and Fischer are guilty of membership in an organization declared to be criminal by the International Military Tribunal, in that each of these named defendants was a member of the SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONAL SOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the SS) after 1 September 1939, in violation of paragraph 1 (d) Article II of Control Council Law No. 10. Before turning our attention to the evidence in the case we shall state the law announced by the International Military Tribunal with reference to membership in an organization declared criminal by the Tribunal:
"In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen SS, members of the SS Totenkopf Verbaende, and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS.
The Tribunal does not include the so-called riding units * * *. "The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter and who had committed no such crimes. The basis of this finding is the participation of the organization in war crimes and crimes against humanity connected with the war; this group declared criminal cannot include, therefore, persons who
