 |
Now the presentation of evidence by the prosecution, during the
period from 8 December 1947 to 25 February 1948, failed to bring light into the
obscurity of the generalized and intangible charges against my client. Outside
of only timid attempts, the expected substantiation of the charges against Dr.
Janssen did not materialize and to this day it is still unintelligible what
correlation the prosecution desires to establish between the voluminous and
badly arranged evidence and my client. The brief promised by the prosecution
which, according to its statements, was meant to correct this openly admitted
defect has not been made available as yet.
Quite obviously, therefore,
Dr. Janssen was arrested, interrogated and finally, charged by the American
prosecution merely because he was one of the leading functionaries of the firm
of Fried. Krupp. It is the only reproach if it can be such — which the
prosecution pronounced, that Dr. Janssen was on the Vorstand of the Krupp
Aktiengesellschaft and later a director of the enterprise. That it was the aim
of the prosecution to drag the managing officials of this undertaking before
this court for trial becomes equally clear from the fact that at one time it
even boasted of having gathered together in this dock all of the members of the
Vorstand, subsequently directors, of Krupp who were still alive at the time of
Germany's capitulation or who had not committed suicide while under Allied
arrest.
If in the fall of 1945 Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach had
not been unfit to stand his trial, he would have been tried as one of the
defendants of the International Military Tribunal, in the proceedings against
Goering, et. al., as it had been the plan of the prosecution. There is reason
to assume that in that case there would have been no separate proceedings at
all against the defendants here present. The reverse procedure was adopted by
the prosecution in Case 11, before Tribunal IV*, according to which Mr. Rasche,
for example, one of the directors of the Dresdner Bank, was being arraigned in
the case against Weizsaecker, et. al., while the originally planned separate
trial of numerous members of the Vorstand of the Dresdner Bank was abandoned.
This observation does not seem superfluous because in our case the
indictment mentions my client Dr. Janssen altogether only twice in connection
with concrete occurrences (paragraphs 26 and 39 of the indictment of 15 August
1947). Matters are involved in the cases there referred to which merely touch
on the fringes. Even though the prosecution had 2 years and 3 months for
preparation, it did not in the presentation of the evidence itself |
___________
* United States vs.
Ernst von Weizsaecker, et al., case l1, vols. XII, XIII, and XIV.
165 |
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