. NMT05-T0074
Volume V · Page 74
| DEFENDANT RUDOLF CREUTZ : Your
Honors: Against the charge of the prosecution that the events recounted in these proceedings were the result of a systematic, consistent, and criminal plan, I wish to state the following: The events discussed here constitute only a minor part of the total tasks of the Staff Main Office. These tasks of the Staff Main Office — namely, to accommodate the ethnic German immigrants as far as possible in the same way as they had lived in their former surroundings — were extensive and most difficult. In contradiction to the opinion of the prosecution, it is not easy to judge the importance of those tasks, and little has been said about it during these proceedings in order not to complicate the material presented even more. The difficulties standing in the way of the final solution of this task could, for the most, not be overcome as long as Germany was at war. But never could this task he called criminal, and none of the many workers in the Staff Main Office regarded it as such. If international law, existing or still to be established, had been violated in any way by the measures taken by other persons in higher positions or by official authorities, I was in no position to know it at that time. I have never acted against any written law, and in cases where my own legal conscience fought against measures coming from above, I was only able to change the course of events within the sphere of my insignificant influence. My legal conscience is all the more opposed to the fact that the prosecution will now burden me with the responsibility for those events, and with the fact that I am being charged with having instigated them and carried them out by means of a program of planned annihilation. During the war I could no more relinquish my post at the Staff Main Office, which I had not chosen, than any soldier of any army could have relinquished. It was my belief that I must forego any wish, any desire, and any opinion of my own, as long as millions of German soldiers were offering their very lives. However, if the Tribunal should see a guilt in that, then I will take this guilt upon myself without fear. DEFENDANT KONRAD MEYER-HETLING : If your Honor please, I have only little to add to the plea of my defense counsel in a factual and in a personal way. The witnesses called by the defense and the documents submitted by the defense and also the witnesses of the prosecution here have clearly shown my activities. The additions necessary to that, I had the possibility to give myself in the witness stand. I have not withheld anything and 1 had nothing to withhold. What I was as a man and as a German |
