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for defendant Kugler, pages 15384-15399; and a closing statement
concerning the Farben concern itself, tr. pages 15400-45141.
The
opening statements on behalf of the prosecution and on behalf of each of the
defendants are reproduced above in section III. |
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B. Closing Statement for All Defendants on Fundamental
Issues of Law¹ |
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PROFESSOR WAHL (special counsel for all defendants):²
May it please the Tribunal. In a critical survey of the big Nuernberg
trial, George A. Finch, the Chief Editor of the American Journal of
International Law pointed out, in one of the recent issues; that the
Russian Professor Trainin, a member of the Law Institute of the Moscow Academy
of Science, had had an extraordinarily effective influence on time contents of
the London Charter, which he had signed as the representative of the Soviet
Union. Originally the Allies had not intended to include crimes against peace
in the indictment, and these crimes did not play any part in the warnings which
the Allies addressed to the German Government before the cessation of
hostilities. In London, however, Trainin’s book The Responsibility of
Hitlerism from the Standpoint of Criminal Law³ was influential. In
this book, Professor Trainin states “in meting out punishment to the Axis
war criminals, Russia would not permit herself to be restricted by traditional
legalisms.” The little success attained by previous attempts to create an
international criminal law can be, he claims, explained by the fact that the
purpose pursued by the capitalist countries was in reality not to combat
international crimes, but to create a united criminal front against the Soviet
Union. “This,” he continues, “is by no means accidental. Its
roots can be traced to the general character of international legal relations
during time era of imperialism.”4 These
statements strongly influenced Jackson, who as Finch ascertained, uses almost
the identical words in his report of 6 June 1945, which preceded the signing of
the London Charter: “We must not permit the state of law to become
complicated or obscured by legalisms developed in the era of imperialism for
the purpose of making war respectable.”5 |
__________
¹ Reproduced in the
mimeographed transcript, 2 June 1948.
² Prof. Wahl was approved as a
special counsel for all defendants in the Farben trial with respect to
questions of law. The Tribunal also appointed a general staff of defense
counsel in addition to the principal and associate counsel for each defendant.
See vol. XV, this series, subsection XII G 5.
³ The English
translation of Trainin's book is entitled “Criminal Responsibility of
the Hitlerites.” The Russian-to-German translation was used by defense
counsel and quotation in the text were re-translated into English, which
results in minor variations from the accepted English translation of the book.
4 Criminal Responsibility of the
Hitlerites, page 7.
5 International
conference on Military Trials, Department of State Publication 3080; Division
of Publications, Office of Public Affairs (Washington, D.C,. United States
Government Printing Office 1949), page 51
875 |
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