. NMT04-T0528
Volume IV · Page 528
| [mean...] while increased to 55,432." Report
No. 156 declares that, as of 30 November 1941, Sonderkommando 4a had shot
59,018 persons. In his final plea for the defendant, defense counsel offers the explanation why Blobel became involved in the business just related. He said that in 1924 Blobel began the practice of his profession, that of a free lance architect. By untiring efforts he became successful, and at last he realized his dream of owning his own home. Then came the economic crisis of 1928-29. "The solid existence for which he had fought and worked untiringly was smashed by the general economic collapse." He could get no new orders, his savings disappeared, he could not pay the mortgage on his house, which he had previously stated he owned. Paul Blobel was, as his counsel tells us, "down to his last shirt". The defendant was seized by the force of the quarrels between major political parties, and his counsel sums it up — |
"This situation alone makes the subsequent behavior of the defendant Blobel comprehensible." |
| But this hardly explains to law and humanity
why a general economic depression which affected the whole world justified the
defendant's going into Russia to slay tens of thousands of human beings and
then blowing up their bodies with dynamite. The defendant joined the SA, SS, and NSDAP, not, he explains, because he believed in the ideology of National Socialism, but to improve his economic condition. In 1935 he received an order as architect to furnish the office of the SS in Duesseldorf. Despite the miraculous prosperity promised by National Socialism, the defendant in 1935 still found himself in distress and so he thus decided to take up Nazi work seriously and become clothed again. He would give his entire time to National Socialism. He was now working for the SD collecting news from all spheres of life in ascertaining public opinion. Defense counsel states that Blobel tried to withdraw from the SD prior to the outbreak of World War II, but later contradicts this with the statement that "up to 1939 there was no reason for him to withdraw from his activities with the SD and to turn his back upon this organization." In June 1941, Blobel was called from Duesseldorf to Berlin, took charge of Sonderkommando 4a and marched into Russia. In one operation his Kommando killed so many people that it could collect 137 trucks full of clothes. Blobel's attitude on murder in general was well exemplified by his reaction to the question as to whether he believed that the killing of 1,160 Jews in the retaliation for the killing of 10 German soldiers was justified. His words follow: |
"116 Jews for one German? I don't know. I am not a militarist, you see. One can only judge it from a sort of public senti- [...ment] |
