 |
because it was not to be seen from the indictment itself which
charges were to be brought against which defendants. Counsel for the defense
had to object at the very beginning of the trial on the grounds that the
indictment was totally without substantiation. Even during the presentation of
their case, the prosecution was not in a position to remedy this lack. A
written exposition of the charges, suggested by the Tribunal and promised by
the prosecution, has as yet not been received. I leave open the question of the
reasons for this failing.
The defense is forced, therefore, to refute
charges which are totally ambiguous. This is particularly true for my client
who publicly is being held responsible for things which occurred before his
birth, before his entry into the firm, and before the acceptance of the
chairmanship in the Vorstand of the Krupp firm.
It is not necessary for
me to recall for the Tribunal the many further difficulties which have rendered
the work of the defense more arduous and which we have brought to the attention
of the Tribunal in repeated motions for adjournment. I should like only to
mention in passing that we were granted access to considerably more than three
thousand documents, previously unknown to us, only after the conclusion of the
prosecution’s case, that is, only 4 weeks before the beginning of our
defense. Even today we are still lacking a great many documents. We know that
many of them were in this building at one time because the prosecution files
show that they were removed by Allied personnel. Apparently, however, they are
no longer available since they are not contained in the list which is being
prepared under the auspices of the prosecution. Among those files which are
shown as available in the list, many are completely empty. Others bear the
prosecution notation, “taken out.” Therefore, while the prosecution
had more than two years to appraise this great bulk of material, only a portion
of it has remained for the defense. In my opinion no one can take it amiss if I
believe that source material which could have been of valuable service to the
defense was among the missing documents.
With regard to evidence I need
not say anything more specific about the difficulties borne by the defense in
causing German witnesses to testify truthfully in favor of the defendants. It
throws a revealing light and is certainly no accident that a member of the
prosecution staff, as he admitted here, was present at the denazification
proceedings against one witness. The peculiar situation, moreover, regarding
foreign witnesses in a war crimes trial against Germans requires no particular
exposition; I simply |
134 |
. 
