. NMT05-T1225
Volume V · Page 1225
| awarded a pension of 2,000 marks
a month. He did his job so well that even after he had left he was called back
for consultation. He worked well with Oswald Pohl, the primary criminal of WVHA
and concentration camp administration. Karoli testifed: |
"I think the fact that Hohberg was an expert--and was regarded as such--made him, in Pohl's eyes and those of the other office chiefs, indubitably more important when he was consulted in matters of general economic importance to give his opinion." (Tr. p. 4753) |
| Hohberg may have later repented for the
dynamic part he played in the operation of a machine which crushed human beings
spiritually and physically, and the Tribunal has given him generous credit for
such reformation, but nothing can wipe out the history of his complicity in the
nefarious WVHA which operated a human factory of misery, known as the
concentration camps. After a thorough review of all the evidence in the case, the Tribunal finds that the original judgment and sentence should he confirmed and it is hereby confirmed. |
| LEO VOLK |
| Dr. Klinnert in his able brief of fifty
pages in behalf of his client Leo Volk covers many subjects, but practically
they are all related to his main argument, namely, that Volk is not guilty of
crime because he was only a soldier doing his duty and that the guilty ones, if
there is guilt, were the superiors who issued orders to him. Since, in every
military, or civil organization either for that matter, everyone has a superior
except the man at the very peak of the pyramid, Dr. Klinnert's argument, if
carried to its logical extreme, would acquit everyone in the Nazi State but
Hitler and possibly Himmler. But it is obvious that Hitler and Himmler could
never have achieved alone the great destruction they inspired unless they had
many coadjutors, helpers, and executants. Control Council Law No. 10, under
which this Tribunal operates, specifically states that superior orders are no
defense although they may be pleaded in mitigation of punishment. Leo Volk may have been in himself a rather unimportant figure, so far as the Nazi supreme hierarchy is concerned, but the evidence establishes that he was an essential, integral member of the organization which accomplished crimes, atrocities, and inhumanities unparalleled in the history of the human race. The crime of the concentration camps of the Third Reich is a |
