The Mazal Library

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NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume IV · Page 531

Soviet Russia played an important part, and still does play an important part, and it has the especial support of Bolshevistic dictatorship, and still is."

While tarrying in the town of Vilnyus with his Kommando, Blume instructed the local commander to arrest all Jews and confine them to a ghetto. Since the local commander of Vilnyus was not Blume's subordinate, Blume was not called upon to issue the order for the incarceration of the Jews which only brought them one step closer to execution under the Fuehrer Order. Blume's explanation that he hoped the Fuehrer Order might be recalled is scarcely adequate. He could have done nothing. Duty did not require him to incarcerate these Jews.

When the defendant stated that he had ordered the execution of three men charged with having asked the farmers not to bring in the harvest, he was asked whether such an execution was not contrary to the rules of war.

"Q. Are you familiar with the rules of war?

"A. In this case I acted by carrying out the Fuehrer Order which decreed that saboteurs and functionaries were to be shot.

"Q. Did you regard a person who told a farmer not to assist the Nazi invaders as a saboteur, because he refused to help the Nazis and that was worthy of the death sentence which you invoked?

"A. Yes.

"Q. Are you familiar with the rules of war?

"A. I already stated that for me the directive was the Fuehrer Order. That was my war law."

The defendant stated several times that he was aware of the fact that he was shooting innocent people and admitted the shooting of 200 people by his Kommando.

Blume is a man of education. He is a graduate lawyer. He joined the NSDAP voluntarily, swore allegiance to Hitler voluntarily, and became director of a section of the Gestapo voluntarily. He states that he admired, adored, and worshipped Hitler because Hitler was successful not only in the domestic rehabilitation of Germany, as Blume interpreted it, but successful in defeating Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Luxembourg, and other countries. To Blume these successes were evidence of great virtue in Hitler. Blume is of the notion that Adolf Hitler "had a great mission for the German people."

In spite of his declared reluctance to approve the Fuehrer Order he would not go so far as to say that this order which brought about the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children, constituted murder and the reason for the explanation was that Hitler had issued the order and Hitler, of course, could not commit a

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