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Volume IV · Page 53
| The fact that any person acted on the order
of his government or of a superior does not free him from responsibility for
crime. It may be considered in mitigation. This is the law we follow here, and is no innovation to the men we charge. Even the German Military Code¹ provides that — |
"If the execution of a military order in the course of duty violates the criminal law, then the superior officer giving the order will bear the sole responsibility therefore. However, the obeying subordinates will share the punishment of the participant — |
| Was it not within the knowledge of the
accused that the mass murder of helpless people constituted crime? Moral
teaching, have not so decayed that reasonable men could think these wrongs were
right. The judgment of the International Military Tribunal declares that 2 million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police.² The defendants in the dock were the cruel executioners, whose terror wrote the blackest page in human history. Death was their tool and life their toy. If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning and man must live in fear. |
¹ Article 47, German Military Code, Reichsgesetzblatt (Reich Law Gazette) 1926, No. 37 p. 278.
² Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. I, p. 292, Nuremberg, 1947.
