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NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume IV · Page 217

Consequently, count three of the indictment encompasses an important part of the charges against the defendants. It, therefore, might be appropriate to analyze the criteria which establish the guilt of an individual for having been a member of a criminal organization.

I. LIABILITY FOR MEMBERSHIP IN CRIMINAL
ORGANIZATIONS

A. General

* * * * * * * * * *

B. The SS

When declaring the SS a criminal organization, the International Military Tribunal ruled —

"In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS [General SS], members of the Waffen SS [Armed SS], members of the SS Totenkopf Verbande ["Death Head" Units], and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS. The Tribunal does not include the so-called SS riding units. Der Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer SS (commonly known as the SD) is dealt with in the Tribunal's judgment on the Gestapo and SD.

"The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph 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, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such crimes."¹ [Emphasis supplied.]

When enumerating the criminal activities of the SS, the Tribunal expressly stated "The Einsatzgruppen engaged in wholesale massacres of the Jews." and —

"It is impossible to single out any one portion of the SS which was not involved in these criminal activities. The Allgemeine SS was an active participant in the persecution of the Jews * * *."²

Thus it is established that only voluntary members of the SS — and it should be noted that SS members who were in the SD and those who were members of the Allgemeine SS are specifically men- […tioned]

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¹ Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 1, p. 273, Nuremberg, 1947.
² Ibid., p. 271.

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