. NMT02-T0263
Volume II · Page 263
acted entirely pursuant to orders. True, the basic policies or projects which he carried through were decided upon by his superiors, but in the execution of the details Sievers had an unlimited power of discretion. The defendant says that in his position he could not have refused an assignment. The fact remains that the record shows the case of several men who did, and who have lived to tell about it.
Sievers' second matter of defense is equally untenable. In support of the defense, Sievers offered evidence by which he hoped to prove that as early as 1933 he became a member of a secret resistance movement which plotted to overthrow the Nazi Government and to assassinate Hitler and Himmler; that as a leading member of the group, Sievers obtained the appointment as Reich Business Manager of the Ahnenerbe so that he could be close to Himmler and observe his movements; that in this position he became enmeshed in the revolting crimes, the subject matter of this indictment; that he remained as business manager upon advice of his resistance leader to gain vital information which would hasten the day of the overthrow of the Nazi Government and the liberation of the helpless peoples coming under its domination.
Assuming all these things to be true, we cannot see how they may be used as a defense for Sievers. The fact remains that murders were committed with cooperation of the Ahnenerbe upon countless thousands of wretched concentration camp inmates who had not the slightest means of resistance. Sievers directed the program by which these murders were committed.
It certainly is not the law that a resistance worker can commit no crime, and least of all, against the very people he is supposed to be protecting.
MEMBERSHIP IN A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION
Under count four of the indictment, Wolfram Sievers is charged with being a member of an organization declared criminal by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal, namely, the SS. The evidence shows that Wolfram Sievers became a member of the SS in 1935 and remained a member of that organization to the end of the war. As a member of the SS he was criminally implicated in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as charged under counts two and three of the indictment.
CONCLUSION
Military Tribunal I finds and adjudges the defendant Wolfram Sievers guilty under counts two, three and four of the indictment.
