. NMT06-T0173
Volume VI · Page 173
| and Laermann mentioned in it have been
available in prison for the last 10 days. Over and beyond commenting on the documents I shall try, by means of witnesses and affidavits, to develop a really complete picture, describing the Maxhuette plants only, of the actual conditions under which the foreign workers lived there. Only very few of the documents presented by the prosecution are signed by Dr. Terberger. The distribution of the spheres of duty within the Maxhuette Vorstand accounts for this. Thus I come now to the second essential point of my defense — to the question of the responsibility under criminal law, to the question of the guilt of the defendant Dr. Terberger. The concepts under Control Council Law No. 10 have been immensely extended; in my introduction I have already mentioned the concepts of enslavement and deportation to forced labor. I continue to quote from this law, Article II, paragraph 1(c) "other inhumane acts," and point out in particular that the law emphasizes that these examples of punishable acts are not comprehensive. This gives ample opportunity for the formation of analogies which is so strongly criticized before another tribunal in this building. In addition, the law creates in Article II, paragraph 2, entirely new concepts of complicity which are also being applied by the prosecution when charging the defendants with having participated in the afore-mentioned crimes by their consent, by having been connected with their planning or perpetration, and finally by their having belonged to an organization or association which was connected with the perpetration of the crimes. In view of this boundlessness, a bridge leading to justice can only be built by restricting subjective concepts in an especially narrow sense, by an all the more strict investigation of all facts as to whether and in what the guilt of the accused can be seen, as to whether and why he can be charged in every given situation, taking into consideration all circumstances which have influenced his mental state, his actions, or his commissions. And finally it must be investigated whether — in case the defendant had acted as is now being required of him — really different results would have followed, i.e., whether the actual consequence would have been avoided. All this can naturally only be decided upon after the evidence has been adduced. But I shall collect the elements of my case-in-chief according to these guiding principles. Up to now the prosecution has tried to produce only certain external indications for the alleged guilt of the defendant Terberger. The fact that Dr. Terberger was a member of the Vorstand seems to me, according to the opinion of the prosecution |
