. NMT05-T1088
Volume VI · Page 1088
| [govern…] ment. If the individual citizen were to be held
responsible as a participant in the policy of the government, because he had
pursued his trade within the limits of that policy and because he had observed
the laws of the government, then the prosecution would find itself in a
boundless maze. When the IMT judgment stated that Goering had borne complete
responsibility for the exploitation of the occupied territories, and Sauckel
that for the foreign workers, that could be understood, for they were persons
whose names and duties in these fields were known to everyone. People said to
themselves that if anyone at all could be held responsible, then these were the
right people. Now, however, the prosecution suddenly decides that Dr. Burkart
is responsible with them, a man whose name was known to no one, not to you,
Your Honors, and not to me either. Tomorrow this, or some other indictment,
will state that John Doe is responsible for the annexation of Alsace because he
opened a milk shop at Strasbourg, or that Frau X participated in the
slave-labor program by employing a Dutch cook. The collective guilt of the
German people, which in contrast to this prosecution, was rejected by the IMT
by insisting on proof of individual guilt, this collective guilt is now
introduced once more. If what Dr. Burkart did is a crime, then everyone who
lived and did his duty during the war in Germany would be a criminal.
Until the present time it has been common in the administration of justice to hold a person responsible for something only if he himself had caused it, and the acid test for the determination of such a causality was made by disregarding the individual and then determining whether the course of events would have been different in that case. I beg you to apply that test. If you imagine that Goering or Sauckel had not been there, then many things probably would have been different. If you disregard Dr. Burkart, it would have had no influence whatsoever on the course of the events which have been dealt with here. Not one foreigner less would have been brought to Germany, and the German economic policy in the East and West would not have been different by one iota. The possibility of participation in the government's policy is thus brought to nothing by the absence of any causality. And what about guilt? Remember my introductory remarks. "The essence of war is violence; moderation during war is nonsense." Dr. Burkart did not coin this phrase, but rather an English admiral. And not he, but the statesmen and commanders in chief on both sides acted in accordance with that principle. Winston Churchill said that he was tired of thinking about the rights of neutral countries. And it was President Roosevelt who gave the order to the fleet to fire on German ships, despite |
