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consolidation of that power, and, as the IMT stated, Hitler, although
not alone guilty of all those things, had only a very small number of
accomplices.
“How Could It Happen?” is the striking title of
the book by a certain Stechert, a Socialist, working-class author. Stechert
describes with that expert knowledge and lack of prejudice in political,
sociological and psychological matters which is so rarely found in politicians,
cramped as they are by ideologies and party politics, the chain of cause and
effect which led to the victory of the Nazis in Germany and to their abuse of
that victory - a victory which the last French ambassador in Germany,
André Francois-Poncet, who was a man of very lively intelligence, has
called “la victoire des boches sur les Allemands.” Well, my client
always has been, and still is, an “Allemand” of the best type, which
has rightly enjoyed, at all times, the esteem of the discerning people among
the nations of the world; he is anything but a “boche.” How did he
come to be a defendant, sharing the fate of technologists, scientists, and
businessmen, who by bringing about a praiseworthy alliance between scientific
research and its practical exploitation, both scientifically and commercially,
led a company, which must, a priori and prima vista, appear to
the keen observer to be a benefactor of mankind rather than a criminal plague
afflicting it. It is an old story that a criminal government can deprive of
their splendor the achievements of science — destined to serve mankind
— and can make them the instruments of crime, or at least of disaster. The
fear lest such scientific achievements which might have brightened the lives of
millions should be turned to such evil purposes has always been a nightmare to
those scientists and to those others who financed them or who had something to
do with financing them, as did my client. This fear in the person of Bosch, is
described in a very moving manner by the witness Buecher in his affidavit,
Schmitz Document 6, Schmitz Defense Exhibit 6. That your own atomic research
scientists also entertain such fears, your honors, is shown in a report with
which I presume the Court is familiar, namely the Stimson report on the
developments which preceded the decision to use the atom bomb against Japan.
One would therefore imagine that we and all the defendants are in very good
company, and experience should further teach us, that, in the words of Hamlet,
the royal philosopher, there is always “something rotten in the State of
Denmark” when the prisons and the docks of the criminal courts are crowded
with those who are usually numbered among the best of their nation. Thus it
was, for example, a symptom of the destruction of justice and of the life of
society in the Third Reich that the physiognomy of the average prisoner and the
average defendant changed; that the criminal type receded into the background
and his opposite came to the fore; that the number of prisoners, detained
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