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Volume VI · Page 1044
| C. Extracts From the Closing Statement for Defendant Burkart* |
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| DR. KRANZBUEHLER (counsel for defendant Burkart) : Your Honors.
"The essence of war is violence; moderation during war is nonsense." These words of English Admiral Lord Fisher in his memorandum to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, dated May 1914 † might seem cynical at a time when, in reaction to the horrors of war, the use of violence is abhorred and when some forms of violence are only too easily called "criminal." I nevertheless quote these words of the English Admiral, as they contain in the briefest form the basic principle which governs the actual practices of war. † Quoted from Der Handelskrieg mit U-Booten [The Commercial War with Submarines], published by the Marine Record Office, Mittler and Son, Berlin, volume I, page 157. Even in international law this theory hardly undergoes a perceptible weakening. To prove this I should like to refer to one authoritative source, that is, to Oppenheim. He expressed the above-mentioned principle of the English admiral in the following words: |
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"Victory is necessary in order to overpower the enemy: and it is this necessity which justifies all the indescribable horrors of war, the enormous sacrifice of human life and health, and the unavoidable destruction of property and devastation of territory. Apart from restrictions imposed by the Law of Nations upon belligerents, all kinds and degrees of force may be, and eventually must be, used in war, in order that its purpose may be achieved, in spite of their cruelty and the utter misery they entail. As war is a struggle for existence between states, no amount of individual suffering and misery can be taken into consideration, however great it may be. The national existence and independence of the struggling state is a higher consideration than any individual well-being." † † Oppenheim-McNair, International Law, (4th Ed., London, 1926), volume II, page 123 [not an exact quotation]. |
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| The perception of the essence of war should make one thing quite clear: If it is a matter of establishing whether a certain form or concomitant of the waging of war violates international law, the question whether an individual suffered to a small or great |
* Transcript pages 10470-10571, 25 November 1947.
