. NMT05-T0277
Volume V · Page 277
| In the IMT trial the prosecution accused
Rosenberg, for instance, of breeding a false ideology in the people by his kind
of philosophy, which had psychologically prepared them for aggressive war.
Therefore the defense wanted to develop all this pseudo-philosophy and
systematically to justify it as neo-romanticism, as a so-called modern sprout
on the tree of knowledge. Lord Justice Lawrence rejected these attempts by
declaring that Rosenberg was not brought before the court for his ideas, but
because of his deeds, not because of his doctrine, but for its practical
application. Thus the judge averted the danger, which was to be found in the reasons for the indictment of the first trial, and which has again become almost more clearly discernible in this trial. This danger lies in the fact that a judgment of history is formed by the prosecution in this particular case versus Pohl and others, a judgment on events which have become historical, pronounced by means of criminal proceeding against individuals. But both trials are on quite a different level and should be kept apart, otherwise the criminal case becomes a showcase, one not in the sense of consciously defeating the ends of the law, but in the sense of a verdict which has jurisdiction over the body and soul of certain persons, but which aims at the impersonal factors, such as the "evil forces", quoted by Robert H. Jackson. The difference between this historical trial and criminal proceedings is the fact that those people thus acting are held responsible to history for the evil forces operating through them; whereas in criminal proceedings, circumstances permitting, such "evil forces" can lessen or even exclude the responsibility. The prosecution endeavors to prove the enormous guilt of the defendants, by presenting for instance all the horror-evoking events, connected with the concentration camps. The task of the defense as opposed to this is summarized in a brief sentence: It must not attempt only to justify these horrible events as such, but merely to discuss to what extent the consciously responsible guilty behavior of the defendants contributed to these events. The extent and the number of the victims is of decisive importance for the historical method of approach. On closer and more penetrating consideration the following apparently strange result ensues for the individual whose particular share in the guilt is to be determined here. The individual guilt does not increase in any mathematical progression with the number of victims mentioned in this trial. One murder suffices to have a person's life legally delivered to the executioner. But if one speaks of the murder of millions of people, forces are set in motion, and conceptions are aroused in us, which suddenly overshadow the indi- […vidual] |
