. NMT04-T0461
Volume IV · Page 461
| [public…] cations made frequent reference to these international pledges. The 1942 edition of the military manual [Recht der Landkriegsfuehrung] edited by a military judge of the Luftwaffe, Dr. Waltzog, carried the following preface: |
"Officers and noncoms have, before taking military measures, to examine whether their project agrees with international law. Every troop leader has been confronted, at one time or another, with questions such as the following: Am I entitled to take hostages; how do 1 have to behave if bearing a flag of truce; what do 1 have to do with a spy, what with a franc-tireur; what may I do as a permitted ruse of war; what may I requisition; what is, in turn, already looting and, therefore, forbidden; what do I do with an enemy soldier who lays down his arms; how should enemy paratroopers be treated in the air and after they have landed?" |
| An authoritative collection of German Military Law ("Das gesamte Deutsche Wehrrecht"), published since 1936 by two high government officials, with an introduction by Field Marshal von Blomberg, then Reich War Minister and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, carried in a 1940 supplement this important statement — |
"The present war has shown, even more than wars of the past, the importance of disputes on international law * * * In this connection, the enemy propaganda especially publicizes questions concerning the right to make war and concerning the war guilt, and thereby tries to cause confusion; this is another reason why it appears necessary fully to clarify and to make widely known the principles of international law which are binding on the German conduct of war." |
| Every German soldier had his attention called to restrictions imposed by international law in his very paybook which carried on the first page what was known as "The Ten Commandments for Warfare of the German Soldier". Article 7 of these rules provided specifically: |
"The civilian populations should not be injured. |
| Further arguing the proposition of individual nonresponsibility for their clients, several defense counsel have submitted that this trial in effect represents a trial of the victors over the vanquished. This objection dissolves so quickly under a serious glance that one wonders if it was presented reflectively. In the first place, the defendants are not being tried in any sense as "vanquished individuals" any more than it is to be assumed that a person taken into custody by police authorities is to be regarded as a "vanquished person". Wars are fought between nations as such and |
