. NMT03-T0152
Volume III · Page 152
sentences of the People's Court and their execution did not constitute any violation of international law, of the general principles of penal law, or of article II of Control Council Law No. 10. I furthermore shall prove that defendant Lautz had nothing to do with penal administration. It will be proved that the institutes for penal administration were not subordinated to him and that he had no possibility of influencing them or penal administration in any way.
DR. Kubuschok: May it please the Tribunal. The prosecution has submitted no evidence connecting the defendant von Ammon with paragraphs 10, 16, 22, and 28 of the indictment. The defense will therefore deal only with the count concerning the NN matters while disputing the legal admissibility of the accusation of conspiracy. The defense will explain the origin and the legal basis of the NN regulations. It will be shown that the legal authorities participated in the work on the NN matters only to such an extent and so long as they were delegated to do so by the competent Wehrmacht authorities.
As regards the participation of the defendant von Ammon in this department which has been allocated to him in the course of the allocation of duties in the Ministry, the following will be dealt with: von Ammon's position as an expert, who was subordinated to the subsection chief, Ministerialdirigent Mettgenberg; section chief at first Ministerialdirektor Crohne, later Ministerialdirektor Vollmer; Under Secretary, at first, Freisler and later Klemm; and lastly the Minister himself. If, therefore, von Ammon only ranked fifth in seniority, then this fact determines also his authority to sign and his actual responsibility. All important matters required the signature of, at least, the subsection chief, in most cases that of the section chief. We therefore find that none of the letters from the Reich Ministry to another office, which have been submitted by the prosecution, were signed by von Ammon.
I shall prove that von Ammon did not participate in drawing up the basic legal regulations. Thus, the legal argument arises whether a person who has merely to carry out administrative tasks without thereby causing a wrong to be done in the sense of sufficient causality by this activity itself, bears a criminal responsibility for this.
I shall describe how the NN proceedings were carried out and shall show that no special regulations were issued restricting the
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Tr. pp. 4138-4140.
