. NMT06-T0171
Volume VI · Page 171
| from an industrial company of medium size which was owned by his family and which became his sole property later on. Only during the war, in the year 1940, he accepted a position, at the request of his uncle, Dr. Flick, in order to assist him in the sphere of the administrative activity in Berlin, which was necessary for the Flick Konzern. I am convinced that Mr. Weiss, in this position too, has kept above every criminal act in the sense of the indictment, including counts one and two. |
| G. Opening Statement for the Defendant Terberger* |
| DR. PELCKMANN: May it please the Tribunal.
I consider my task as defense counsel for the defendant Dr. Terberger to consist above all in leading the Court out of the sphere of pure emotion into which the prosecution has tried to bring it in various ways, and in leading up to the facts which concern this defendant exclusively, to wit: the employment of foreign workers and prisoners of war in the works of the foundry "Maximilianshuette." In this trial the "psychology of the cause célèbre" holds a stronger position than in all hitherto known criminal proceedings of historical importance. It is necessary to recognize the peculiar laws of this psychology in order to prevent their fateful effects on all parties to the proceedings — and above all on the Tribunal — or, after having recognized them, consciously to correct them. The lurking danger of the unconscious which must be recognized and overcome does not originate in the beginning and the course of these proceedings, but imbibes its greatest strength from the sponge of wartime moods which all belligerent parties kept refilling, according to ancient practice, with method and countermethod, propaganda and counterpropaganda. "Enslavement and deportation to forced labor" — these are terms which designated already during the war, the various methods which were applied by the Third Reich for overcoming the shortage of labor by using foreign workers. The same expressions have been taken over without a change into the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the sentencing of the chief war criminals and into Control Council Law No. 10 which is competent for these defendants here. Up to now there is no legal definition of these concepts. By quoting some statements of the sentences passed by the IMT, by introducing a great number of documents, and by producing only very few witnesses, the prosecution has tried to paint a gloomy picture of the deportation of foreign workers and of their |
* Transcript page- 3975-3980, 18 July 1947.
