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JUDGE ANDERSON: Yes. Go ahead, proceed. Just one moment, Doctor,
since we have been interrupted in your opening, it is just two or three minutes
until recess time, so, we will take a recess.
DR. VORWERK: I need only
refer here briefly to the fact that the prosecution has no legal basis for its
opinion that any violation of the armament limitations imposed on the Reich by
the Treaty of Versailles constitutes per se a criminal act within the
meaning of Control Council Law No. 10, punishable also if committed by
individuals.
I would consider such an act punishable if it could be
proved that the offense was committed with the intention of preparing and
waging a war of aggression.
The basic theory of the prosecution, that
ever since the first years after the World War of 1914 1918 the aim of the then
leading officials of the firm Krupp was to preserve the plant in disregard of
the Treaty of Versailles, as a future armament potential, can easily be
refuted.
In my opinion, however, the prosecution has not given
individual proof of the fact that any such offenses of any importance occurred
during the time when the armament limitations of the Treaty of Versailles were
in force as far as the tasks of the defendants were concerned, inasmuch as they
were employed by the Krupp firm at the time in question.
With regard to
count two of the indictment, so called spoliation, I am of the opinion that the
prosecution did not assert — much less prove — conclusively, from the
legal or from the factual point of view, that criminal acts were committed.
This was especially true in the case of Pfirsch. I can, therefore, limit my
defense with regard to this count to emphasizing the negative result of the
evidence submitted by the prosecution, in order to point out that in his field
of authority Pfirsch neither had to make nor actually made pertinent decisions,
that he had no part in any decisions of that nature, if such decisions were
made by the firm Krupp, in fact that he was not even informed of them, but
above all had no part in their execution.
The same is true in the case
of count three of the indictment, so called slave labor. The prosecution has
failed to bring any proof that Pfirsch played any important part in the
formulation and execution of the official so-called slave labor program, or
that he knew about the relatively isolated abuses which may have been committed
by subordinate functionaries in the course of the treatment of the foreign
workers whom Krupp rather unwillingly employed. Since the prosecution has thus
far been unable to bring any serious charges against Pfirsch in this respect, I
can limit my defense with regard to this count mainly to pointing out these
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