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Volume IV · Page 466
partisan warfare everywhere and every place, for blowing up bridges and highways, for destroying telephone and telegraph connections, for burning down forests, supply camps and trains. Unbearable conditions must be created for the enemy and all of his accomplices in the occupied areas, they must be pursued and destroyed at every step and all their measures must be frustrated. One cannot regard the war against Fascist Germany as an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies. It is at the same time the great war of the entire Soviet people against the Fascist German Troops." |
| Scrutiny of this speech fails to reveal
anything which orders the execution of German prisoners of war or the shooting
of wounded persons, or the mass killing of Germans in German territory occupied
by Russia, or anything which would justify the allegedly retaliatory killing of
noncombatant Jews. One of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. Thus, one of the counsel in his summation speech said — |
"However, as was the case in the campaign against Russia, when a large number of the inhabitants of this land, whether young, old, men, women or child, contrary to all acts of humanity and against every provision of international law, cowardly carries on a war from ambush against the occupying army, then certainly one cannot expect that the provisions of international law would be observed to the letter by this army." |
| No comment is here needed on the statement which characterizes the defense of one's country as "cowardly", and the other equally astounding remark that the invader has the right to ignore international law. |
| Death of Noncombatants by Bombing |
| Then it was submitted that the defendants
must be exonerated from the charge of killing civilian populations since every
Allied nation brought about the death of noncombatants through the
instrumentality of bombing. Any person, who, without cause, strikes another may
not later complain if the other in repelling the attack uses sufficient force
to overcome the original adversary. That is fundamental law between nations as
well. It has already been adjudicated by a competent tribunal that Germany under its Nazi rulers started an aggressive war. The bombing of Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, and other German cities followed the bombing of London, Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw, and other Allied cities; the bombing of German cities |
