 |
necessity of guarding against
assuming criminality, or even culpable responsibility, solely from the official
titles which the several defendants held. * * * The Tribunal has been
especially careful to discover and analyze the actual power and authority of
the several defendants, and the manner and extent to which they were exercised,
without permitting itself to be unduly impressed by the official designations
on letterheads or office doors." * |
On the basis of these observations, which once more bear out the
contention of the defense that in a criminal trial the actual circumstances
under which the defendant lived and acted and not his position as viewed with
the eyes of a civil lawyer are relevant, we respectfully submit to Your Honors
that IG was such a huge and complex Konzern, that it embraced such a large
number of the numerous fields of modern chemistry, including activities beyond
the scope of chemistry, such as coal mining, film industry, and other
fabricating industries, that it was absolutely unthinkable, in view of this
gigantic scope of business, to assume any fair and expert knowledge of facts by
a Vorstand member which were outside the special field allocated to him within
this vast organization.
We submit that, in fact, the principle of
decentralized centralization was put into effect to a large extent within the
IG; in other words, that in reality the different Sparten and
Verkaufsgemeinschaften were practically independent firms, and that, therefore,
the Vorstand members being in charge of those Sparten and
Verkaufsgemeinschaften actually conducted their current business in a manner
not dependent on the knowledge and consent of the other Vorstand members, who
in their turn had their own special tasks.
We respectfully submit that
within this huge agglomeration of big chemical firms significantly called "IG"
(which derives from the German word "Interessengemeinschaft" meaning, in
English, "community of interests") Paul Haefliger had a limited, purely
commercial task being a member of the staff of "Verkaufsgemeinschaft
Chemikalien," of which he was neither the appointed responsible leader nor the
deputy leader. This task, Your Honors, before the outbreak of the war mainly
consisted of negotiating and supervising international conventions for various
individual products in the heavy chemicals field, which involved numerous and
prolonged visits abroad. These activities coming to an abrupt end at the
outbreak of the war, Paul Haefliger gradually gave up his connection with the
heavy chemicals field, |
__________
* Ibid. page
980.
291 |
. 
