. NMT03-T0311
Volume III · Page 311
| V. EVIDENCE CONCERNING
PRINCIPAL ISSUES IN THE CASE |
| A. Introduction |
| This major section of the volume contains
selections from the evidence concerning leading questions or issues of the
trial. The evidence selected for publication herein constitutes only about
one-twentieth of the total mimeographed record. Hence, all issues of the trial
are not covered, and numerous items of evidence mentioned in the printed
materials are not reproduced herein. Where extracts from testimony have been
reproduced, a footnote indicates the pages of the official mimeographed
transcript where the entire testimony can be found. Both prosecution and defense evidence is contained in each of the sections into which the evidence selected has been organized. The prosecution evidence consists in the main of contemporaneous documents of the Nazi era, most of them discovered in German archives by Allied investigators after Germany's unconditional surrender. The defense evidence consists principally of extracts from the testimony of defendants. A substantial number of the contemporaneous documents offered by the defense have also been selected for publication. With one or two exceptions, the contemporaneous documents been reproduced within the various sections in chronological order, regardless of whether they were offered by the prosecution or the defense. In selecting defense testimony under the various topical sections, considerable emphasis has been given to the testimony of the three defendants Schlegelberger, Rothenberger, and Klemm who were appointed Under Secretaries in the Reich Ministry of Justice, and to the Nuernberg Special defendant Rothaug, presiding judge of the Nuernberg Special Court. The defendants were charged with participation in various types of criminal conduct "by distortion and denial of judicial and penal process." The selections from the evidence below have been grouped into five main sections (see. V B through VF) treating of various types of conduct by which it was alleged that the defendants engaged in criminal acts principals or accessories. In Hitler's Third Reich many persons were placed entirely outside the judicial process. Therefore the first section (B) is concerned with measures under which persons were committed to |
