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consideration the fact that appointment to the management of a
company demands as a prerequisite a certain amount of knowledge, certain
achievements and experiences, and that the selection was made from these points
of view. The assumption that all these people simultaneously combined to carry
out a plan of a different nature is so unnatural that it would have required
direct proof, and this was not offered.
I beg to point out that it was
possible to keep IG's Vorstand free from any representatives of the Third
Reich. Why was that the case, if it is true that all Vorstand members were
agreed on working for a war of aggression? In that case, it would have been
sensible to have a representative of the Nazi system act as Verbindungsmann
among their own ranks.
If I may now be permitted to say something about
my client's personal responsibility for his own field of activity, it is the
following: I shall prove to the Court that in the business policy for which he
was responsible, my client was guided by his desire for understanding. He acted
accordingly in his dealings with the partners of the Stickstoff-Syndikat. This
spirit also prevailed in negotiations with the foreign partners with whom
agreement existed, particularly in the field of nitrogen, for 10 years before
the beginning of the war. Even after the war broke out, Dr. Oster was guided by
these points of view, and especially after the occupation of various countries
by the German Armies, he immediately established contact with the partners
there in order to resume relations as they were before the war. It was his
desire to cooperate in the field of nitrogen on a plan which was to facilitate
reconstruction after the end of the war wherever the ties of understanding had
been cut in 1939. This attitude will be shown by the evidence I am going to
present. It proves that my client's attitude stood in direct opposition to the
facts alleged by the prosecution, and that he had no knowledge of activities
aiming at a war of aggression.
The prosecution did not offer any direct
evidence of my client's guilt. Apart from the facts just mentioned, I may refer
in this connection to the verdict of the IMT which acquitted several persons
charged with planning, preparing, and conducting a war of aggression, who were
members of the Government of the German Reich, and thus of the very agency
responsible for the formation of the political policy of the Reich, and were,
therefore, in considerably closer contact with the Government of the Reich than
my client, Dr. Oster. Thus it cannot be assumed that Dr. Oster had any more or
better knowledge than these persons.
With respect to count two of the
indictment, the prosecution |
342 |
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