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Volume III · Page 1118
| half-Jews, and occasionally publicly aided
them, yet he was instrumental in denying them the rights to which every
litigant is entitled. He fulminated publicly against the "Schwarze Korps" for
attacking the courts, yet he reproached judges for administering justice
against Party officials and unquestionably used his influence toward achieving
discriminatory action favorable to high Party officials and unfavorable to
Poles and Jews. He wrote learnedly in favor of an independent judiciary, yet he
ruled the judges of Hamburg with an iron hand. He protested vehemently against
the practice of Party officials and Gestapo officers who interfered with the
judges in pending cases, but he made arrangements with the Gestapo, the SS, and
the SD whereby they were to come to him with their political affairs and then
he instituted "preview and review" of sentences with the judges who were his
inferiors. He thought concentration camps wrong but concluded that they were
not objectionable if third degree methods did not become a habit.
Rothenberger was not happy with his work in Berlin. In his farewell speech on leaving Hamburg, he exuberantly exclaimed that he had been "an uncrowned king" in Hamburg, but he would have us believe that he received a crown of thorns in Berlin. Soon he learned of the utter brutality of the Nazi system and the cynical wickedness of Thierack and Himmler, whom he considered his personal enemies. He could not stomach what he saw, and they could not stomach him. The evidence satisfies us that Rothenberger was deceived and abused by his superiors; that evidence was "framed" against him; and that he was ultimately removed, in part at least, because he was not sufficiently brutal to satisfy the demands of the hour. He was retired to the apparently quiet life of a notary in Hamburg, but even then we find that he was receiving some pay as an Under Secretary and was assisting Gauleiter Kauffmann in political matters in that city. The defendant Rothenberger is guilty of taking a minor but consenting part in the Night and Fog program. He aided and abetted in the program of racial persecution, and notwithstanding his many protestations to the contrary he materially contributed toward the prostitution of the Ministry of Justice and the courts and their subordination to the arbitrary will of Hitler, the Party minions, and the police. He participated in the corruption and perversion of the judicial system. The defendant Rothenberger is guilty under counts two and three of the indictment. |
| THE DEFENDANT LAUTZ |
| The defendant Lautz from 20 September 1939 until the end of the war served as Chief Public Prosecutor at the People's Court in |
