. NMT04-T0218
Volume IV · Page 218
| [men...] tioned in the judgment — who
had no knowledge of criminal activities and "those who were drafted into
membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice and who had
committed no such crimes," are exempted from criminal liability. None of the defendants has contended having ever been a member of the Waffen SS. All of them had joined the SS prior to 1940 with the exception of the defendant Graf, who joined the SS in that year on the basis of a voluntary application made by him. (Tr. pp. 4825, 4835-6.) The decision of the International Military Tribunal in this respect reads— |
"Until 1940 the SS was an entirely voluntary organization. After the formation of the Waffen SS in 1940 there was a gradually increasing number of conscripts into the Waffen SS."* [Emphasis supplied.] |
| It is clear from this judgment that the
Allgemeine SS and the SS organization SD remained entirely voluntary
organizations up to the time when Germany collapsed. Consequently the eventual
attempts of the defendants to prove that they were "involuntary" members of the
SS are in contradiction to the binding provisions of Law No. 10 and of
Ordinance No. 7. The proof has shown that all of the defendants were officially accepted as members of the SS and had been members of the Allgemeine SS and SD. The proof has further shown that they became or remained members of the SS with knowledge that this organization "was being used for commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter," and that they had been in various positions, personally implicated as members of the SS in the commission of such crimes. None of the defendants has proved that he was drafted into the SS in such a way as to be given no choice in the matter (compare the prosecution's briefs against the individual defendants). It is clear that membership in a criminal organization is not made involuntary by the fact that it was good business or good politics to identify oneself with the Nazi movement. Only draft into the SS by the State is recognized as compulsion; threats of political and economic retaliation would be of no consequence. Nor does the fact that some of the defendants allegedly may have been prevented from leaving the organization at a later date, for example, during the war, change the voluntary quality of their membership. The consent to enter this organization was given voluntarily whatever the reasons of such decision might have been. If the contention of some of the defendants, that they became involuntary members of a criminal organization as they — while |
* Ibid., p. 270.
