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late Mr. Ivy Lee in the U.S.A. is unobjectionable, and did not in the
least have the tendency and the scope the prosecution want us to believe.
Like many millions of men at home and also abroad, Dr. Ilgner thought
that when national socialism came to power, the excesses and blunders of the
Third Reich would be exposed as such as time went on. He cherished the hope
that the economic relations with foreign countries could be maintained and
continued in the old form, and thought at first that he could counsel
indulgence. In subsequent years, however, he realized the true nature of the
unfolding Nazi dictatorship, and assisted political and racial persecutees in
deliberate opposition to national socialism. This attitude of my client at home
and abroad has nothing whatever to do with the planning or preparation of a war
of aggression.
In indicating to Your Honors the broad outlines of the
most essential subjects of my argumentation in regard to count one of the
indictment, I am well aware that the prosecution likewise will attempt to
support its assertions by reasoning that it was just camouflage when the IG, at
considerable expense, endeavored to maintain close connection with the world
markets in order to step up its exports. It will explain to you, Your Honors,
that it is in the very nature of espionage to give everything the outward
appearance of harmlessness and lawfulness, whereas, in truth, all organizations
and intentions of my client were directed at espionage and, therefore, at
waging and planning a war of aggression. Against that I wish to state here and
now that I am not going to produce any arguments of the type called probatio
diabolica. It was entirely up to the prosecution to prove its statements;
it failed to do so.
I now proceed to count two, comprising the alleged
cases of plunder and spoliation. In part II of the trial brief, under B, the
prosecution enumerates the cases of spoliation which allegedly occurred in
Austria, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and France, giving this section of its
representation the more guarded heading "Spoliation cases apparently legal in
form."
I need not expatiate on this point. Insofar as my client is
involved at all, I shall prove, just as will my colleagues of the defense, that
these transactions are not only "apparently legal," as the prosecution puts it,
but actually unobjectionable. For instance, the negotiations with the
Skoda-Wetzler plants in Austria were carried on for several years. Their start
goes back to a time long before Austria's Anschluss to the Reich. Any pressure
or coercion on the part of the defendants is out of the question.
In my
argumentation, I shall submit counterevidence for each |
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