. NMT05-T0290
Volume V · Page 290
| in 1940 and was transferred toward the end of 1943 to the office D III as leading dental surgeon. In both cases, therefore, he obeyed military orders. The defendant belonged to the Reiter SS [SS cavalry] which was explicitly absolved from criminal guilt by the International Military Tribunal in its verdict. He can only be sentenced if his guilt can be proved in actual and legal respect. It will not be possible for the Tribunal to base a sentence on an assumption, much less on a fiction of criminal culpability. |
| IV. SELECTIONS FROM THE
EVIDENCE ON IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THE CASE |
| A. Development and
Organization of the WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office) |
| I. INTRODUCTION |
| The "SS Economic and Administrative Main
Office (WVHA)" — one of the twelve "Main Offices" of the SS — was
established under that name in early 1942. The defendant Pohl was the chief of
this office, and he had been the chief of similar offices which existed before
under different names. The evolution, organization, personnel, and tasks of
this office are the principal subjects of the materials included in this
section. Evidence of the prosecution on pages 293 to 319 is followed by
evidence of the defense on pages 319 to 348. All the defendants were officials in the WVHA. During the trial questions of the criminal responsibility of the individual defendants were often not separable from the organization of the WVHA and the position of a particular defendant in that organization. Hence, materials related to substantive crimes are contained in the present section on organization of the WVHA, and in turn, materials related to organization again appear in the later section dealing principally with the alleged substantive crimes. Special reference is made to the subsection VI B, "The Defense of Mere Organizational or Administrative Association" on pages 786 to 801. The defense evidence reproduced in that section was calculated to show that there was no criminal responsibility because of the particular type of work performed by individual defendants within the organization framework of the WVHA. |
