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Volume III · Page 1030
purposes. There must be a group bound together and organized for a common purpose. The group must be formed or used in connection with the commission of crimes denounced by the Charter. Since the declaration with respect to the organizations and groups will, as has been pointed out, fix the criminality of its members, that definition should exclude persons who had no knowledge of the criminal purposes or acts of the organization and those who were drafted by the state for membership, unless they were personally implicated in the commission of acts declared criminal by article 6 of the Charter as members of the organization. Membership alone is not enough to come within the scope of these declarations."¹ |
| The Tribunal in that case recommended
uniformity of treatment so far as practicable in the administration of this
law, recognizing, however, that discretion in sentencing is vested in the
courts. Certain groups of the Leadership Corps, the SS, the Gestapo, the SD,
were declared to be criminal organizations by the judgment of the first
International Military Tribunal. The test to be applied in determining the
guilt of individual members of a criminal organization is repeatedly stated in
the opinion of the First International Military Tribunal. The test is as
follows: Those members of an organization which has been declared criminal "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" are declared punishable. Certain categories of the Leadership Corps are defined in the First International Military Tribunal judgment as criminal organizations. We quote: |
"The Gauleiter, the Kreisleiter, and the Ortsgruppenleiter participated, to one degree or another, in these criminal programs. The Reichsleitung as the staff organization of the Party is also responsible for these criminal programs as well as the heads of the various staff organizations of the Gauleiter and Kreisleiter. The decision of the Tribunal on these staff organizations includes only the Amtsleiter who were heads of offices on the staffs of the Reichsleitung, Gauleitung, and Kreisleitung. With respect to other staff officers and Party organizations attached to the Leadership Corps other than the Amtsleiter referred to above, the Tribunal will follow the suggestion of the prosecution in excluding them from the declaration."² |
¹ Ibid., p. 256.
² Ibid. p. 261.
