 |
| [contra…] dictory attitudes adopted by the Control Council
powers. There is the tremendous danger that in spite of the formal and apparent
maintenance of the principle of individual criminal responsibility, such
responsibility may actually be established merely on the basis of the fact that
a person adheres to a certain “system,” and that thus penal justice
may be faced with a task in which in view of its essence it must necessarily
fail. The more powerful and contradictory the political ideologies are, on
which the world powers opposing each other in Germany base their administration
of justice, the greater is the danger of responsibility being based on the fact
that a person belongs to a certain “group“ or “system”
designated by these ideologies, and the more impossible is the task of
establishing criminal discriminations merely on account of a tragic connection
with world development of historical importance which can only be judged by the
future course of history. |
| |
| K. Opening Statement for the Defendant von
Buelow* |
| |
| DR. POHLE: Your Honors. In the opening statements reference is made
more than once to the fact that the defense intends to deal first of all with
the arguments connected with count one, preparation for and participation in
aggressive war. That part of the argument which I have undertaken to deal with
can be summed up in the concept, support given to the National Socialist Party
by industry and the firm of Krupp before and after the seizure of power. This
does not mean that my client, Friedrich von Buelow, had any special part in the
relations between the National Socialist Party and the firm of Krupp, between
national socialism and industry. He played neither a greater nor a smaller part
in shaping or not shaping these connections than did any of the other
defendants here before you. Maybe the prosecution deduces that such connections
did exist from the fact that some of the defendants sat on committees and other
bodies of industrial groups or associations which the prosecution thinks fit to
regard as typically National Socialist organizations. Friedrich von Buelow,
too, was a member of a small number of committees of a district group, a
district subdivision of the Economic Group Iron Producing Industry. He was only
one among the many representatives from other industries, and his main task
consisted in arranging the meetings, and, to some extent in the exchange of
experimental data with the other representatives. The prosecution describes
this activity as extremely risky, |
__________
* Opening statement is
recorded in mimeographed transcript, 23 March 1948, pp. 4821 4836.
208 |
. 
