. NMT03-T1126
Volume III · Page 1126
| a Pole for acts committed before the war
while Poland was in the exercise of its sovereign powers throughout its
territory. The question could not well have related to acts done after Poland
had been overrun and part of it purportedly annexed, for, at that time Polish
authorities would have been in no position to prosecute racial Germans.
Furthermore, in discussing the problem, Lautz mentions a case against the Pole
Golek which had recently come into his hands on preliminary proceedings. He
states that Golek in the years 1938 and 1939 in Poland had turned over to the
police authorities a racial German of Polish nationality and had accused him of
high treason committed in favor of the Reich. Himmler, as quoted by Lautz, expressed the view that considerations of foreign policy would be opposed to the enactment of any German statute under which a Pole could be prosecuted by German authorities on account of acts of the kind indicated, but he added: |
"I see here a task for the courts, an opportunity to fill a gap in the law, a gap caused by political reasons of state by creating a law in the appropriate cases." |
| Himmler quoted from an opinion by the People's Court in which it was said that the National Socialist State "feels it incumbent on itself, even in case of a conspiracy by a foreign government against one single Reich citizen, to give the threatened person its protection in accordance with penal law as far as this is possible from the home country." It will be observed that this quotation relates to the protection of Reich citizens, not Polish citizens, who are only racial Germans. Himmler continued, however: |
"The Reich made no secret of the fact that with regard to the protection of Germans, it does not only claim the right to protect Reich Germans but also racial Germans living on its borders." |
| The defendant Lautz frankly expressed the view that the German statute defining treason did not cover the case under discussion. In this he was clearly correct. The German statute on treason had been extended to provide that "whoever with the intention of causing * * * any other serious detriment to the Reich, establishes relations with a foreign government, shall be punished by death." This section was not applicable to the case under discussion because the charge to be preferred against the Pole was one of treason against an individual and not against the Reich. By the law of 24 April 1934 the concept of treason was also expanded to cover certain cases of causing serious detriment to a German national, but that law also was inapplicable to the case under discussion because the serious detriment had not been |
