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in Berlin a memorandum requesting that he obtain the utilization of
Belgian labor in order to develop German industry; that he suggested in this
connection that youths of 18 to 25 should be drafted to obligatory work under
German command — which would mean the utilization of approximately 200,000
persons;” that he also “requested that negotiations be started
immediately in order to obtain a considerable number of Russian youths of about
16 years of age for labor in the iron industry;” that he “requested
the taking of a general census of French, Belgian, and Dutch youths in order to
force them to work in war plants or to draft them into the Wehrmacht, together
with the promulgation of a law which would make work obligatory in the occupied
countries;” and that he also “incited the Reich authorities in the
most insidious manner to employ inhabitants of occupied countries and
POW’s in armament work, with complete disregard of human dignity and the
terms of the Hague Convention.” Two defendants were acquitted and two
others convicted by the French Tribunal. The latter — von Gemmingen and
Rodenhauser — were found guilty as co-authors and accomplices to the
above-described illegal employment of prisoners of war and deportees by Hermann
Roechling, and to his encouragement of illegal punishments meted out to said
involuntary laborers. Said illegal punishments were imposed by a summary court
organized, in agreement with the Gestapo, by von Gemmingen and Rodenhauser in
the Roechling plant, of which they were both directors. It is thus made clear
that the defense of necessity could not have been successfully invoked on
behalf of either of said named defendants. Concerning the acquitted defendants,
Ernst Roechling and Albert Maier, the high Tribunal expressly said that the
evidence did not establish that either of them exercised initiative in
connection with the slave-labor program.
It is plain, therefore, that
Hermann Roechling, von Gemmingen, and Rodenhauser, like Weiss and Flick, were
not moved by a lack of moral choice, but, on the contrary, embraced the
opportunity to take full advantage of the slave-labor program. Indeed, it might
be said that they were, to a very substantial degree, responsible for
broadening the scope of that reprehensible system.
From a consideration
of the IMT, Flick, and Roechling judgments, we deduce that an order of a
superior officer or a law or governmental decree will not justify the defense
of necessity unless, in its operation, it is of a character to deprive the one
to whom it is directed of a moral choice as to his course of action. It follows
that the defense of necessity is not available where the party seeking to
invoke it was, himself, responsible for the existence or execution of such
order or decree, or where his participation went beyond the requirements
thereof, or was the result of his own initiative. |
1179 |
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