 |
[Greater-] Hesse and Wurttemberg-Baden, fixes a maximum penalty of
internment in a labor camp for a period of not less than 2 nor more than 10
years in order to perform reparations and reconstruction work, against which
political internment after S May 1945 may be taken into account. There are also
provisions for confiscation of property and deprivation of civil rights.
In its Preliminary Brief the prosecution says that “it seems
totally unnecessary to anticipate any contention that intelligent Germans, and
in particular persons who were SS members for a long period of years, did not
know that the SS was being used for the commission of acts ‘amounting to
war crimes and crimes against humanity * * *’” This assumption is
not, in our judgment, a sound basis for shifting the burden of proof to a
defendant or for relieving the prosecution from the obligation of establishing
all of the essential ingredients of the crime. Proof of the requisite knowledge
need not, of course, be direct, but may be inferred from circumstances duly
established.
Tribunal II in passing upon the question of the guilt of
the defendant Scheide on a charge of membership in the SS in the case of the
United States v. Pohl, et al (Case 4), said: |
| |
“The defendant admits
membership in the SS, an organization declared to be criminal by the judgment
of the International Military Tribunal, but the prosecution has offered no
evidence that the defendant had knowledge of the criminal activities of the SS,
or that he remained in the organization after September 1939 with such
knowledge, or that he engaged in criminal activities while a member of such
organization.
“Therefore, the Tribunal finds and adjudges that the
defendant Rudolf Scheide is not guilty as charged in count four of the
indictment.”¹ |
The defendant Schneider was a sponsoring member of the SS from 1933
until 1945. As such member his only direct contact with said organization arose
out of the payment of dues.
After quoting from that part of the IMT
judgment in which the matter of criminal responsibility for membership in the
SS was discussed, Tribunal III in the case of the United States v.
Altstoetter, et al., (Case 3), transcript page 10906, in the course of
its opinion said: “It is not believed by this Tribunal that a sponsoring
membership is included in this definition.”² We are not disposed to
disagree with that conclusion.
The membership records of the SS show
that the defendant Buetefisch became an Ehrenfuehrer (honorary leader) of that
organization |
__________
1 U.S. vs Pohl,
et al., volume V, this series, page
1018.
2 Cf. volume
III, this series, page 1158.
1198 |
. 
