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NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume IV · Page 473

have to shoot at this village. This is the only way in which I can imagine this order, but never — it is inhuman — to ask a son to shoot his parents.

"Q. So, therefore, if you received such an order coming down the line, you would disincline to obey it? You would not obey it?

"A. I would not have obeyed such an order.

"Q. Suppose the order came down for you to shoot the parents of someone else, let us say, a Jew and his wife. And in your view you saw the children of these parents. Now it is established beyond any doubt that this Jewish father and Jewish mother have not committed any crime — absolutely guiltless, blemishless. The only thing that is established is that they are Jews. And you have this order coming down the line to shoot them. The children are standing by and they implore you not to shoot their parents. Would you shoot the parents?

"A. I would not shoot these parents."

Then, in summing up, the witness was asked —

"And, therefore, as a German officer, you now tell the Tribunal that if an order were submitted to you, coming down the line militarily to execute two innocent parents only because they were Jews, you would refuse to obey that order?"

And the answer was —

"I answered your example affirmatively, I said ‘Yes, I could not have obeyed’."

Although defense counsel's query intended to establish the utter helplessness of a German soldier in the face of a superior command, the inquiry finally resulted in the defendant's declaring that he would not only ignore the order of the supreme war lord to shoot his own parents, but also to shoot anybody else's parents. He thus demonstrated that under his own interpretation of German Military Law, he did have some choice in the matter of obeying superior orders. Why then did he participate in the execution of the parents of other people? Why did other defendants do the same if they had a choice, as the defendant Seibert indicated ?

Superior Orders Defense Must Establish
Ignorance of Illegality

To plead superior orders one must show an excusable ignorance of their illegality. The sailor who voluntarily ships on a pirate craft may not be heard to answer that he was ignorant of the probability he would be called upon to help in the robbing and sinking of other vessels. He who willingly joins an illegal enterprise is charged with the natural development of that unlawful undertaking. What SS man could say that he was unaware of the attitude of Hitler toward Jewry?

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