 |
| [Tri…] bunal. When declaring specific organizations as criminal,
the IMT clearly stressed a point that mere membership is not sufficient, and
that guilt under criminal law is always individual guilt. Consequently the
prosecution must also in this instance prove not only the fact of position and
membership, but also furnish proof of guilt; that is, individual participation,
quite apart from the fact that IG as a corporation is not to be regarded as an
organization within the meaning of the Control Council Law. Moreover, in order
not to take up the time of the Tribunal unduly, I have already submitted an
opinion in the Flick trial on these matters; a detailed, expert opinion by
Attorney Klefisch. In addition, I shall limit myself for the time being to
merely quoting the words spoken by the American Military Tribunal II in Case
IV. I quote: |
| |
"Again, the Tribunal is impelled
to ask, what should he have done? Unless it is willing to resort to the
principle of group responsibility and to charge the whole German nation with
these war crimes and crimes against humanity, there is a line somewhere at
which indictable criminality must stop. In the opinion of the Tribunal, Vogt
stands beyond that line." * |
And thus I am of the opinion that this trial will prove that von
Schnitzler stands beyond that line, and that in his case, too, the question is
to be asked, what should he have done? I believe on the whole — and this
brings me to my conclusion — that the prosecution, in judging the conduct
of all the defendants, is thinking too much of the democratic liberty which
they themselves enjoy in America, and repeatedly forgets that a National
Socialist State represented a dictatorship of a particularly extreme type, a
fact which cannot be pointed out often enough and which is apparently
understood only by those who have spent the entire last 12 years in Germany.
The prosecution which is so apt at quoting the International Military
Tribunal, overlooks the judgment of the International Military Tribunal in this
instance and ignores the statement of its own colleague, the French prosecutor
at the big trial, who aptly remarked in February 1946, "Hitler was indeed the
incarnation of all will." Then, the strength and power resulting from this led
Hitler, as stressed in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal, to
dictatorship, with all its methods of terror and its cynical and open denial of
the rules of law. I quote further from the International Military Tribunal
judgment: |
__________
* United States vs.
Oswald Pohl, et al., volume V, this
series.
233 |
. 
