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powerful National Socialistic State was demanding from the works a
production output never before imagined and the total war from every single
German a physical and psychological effort hitherto never even considered
possible, and when, moreover, the shadow of a pitiless air war was beginning to
stretch over the whole of Germany. Without their will or any contributory act
of their own, these defendants, and among them Friedrich von Buelow, were drawn
into the vortex of this historical event, for which not any one of the
defendants, but the National Socialist State administration, was responsible.
The maintenance of calm, security, and order among such heterogeneous
elements, as were represented by the home and foreign workers of a great works
in Germany in the war, was an indispensable condition for the maintenance and
increase of the production demanded by the State. I will show in my final
statement the extent to which the State and the authorities therefore
intervened by means of laws, ordinances, and decrees in the maintenance of
order, security, and discipline in the works. By regulations of every kind they
restricted the freedom of judgment of the undertaking more and more, and
finally cut it away altogether. Through a subtle system of secret organizations
of security services and police and through the many–branched Party and
its numerous affiliations they watched over the carrying out of the dictatorial
will of the State in the works. Rebellion against it meant detriment,
dismissal, loss of freedom, the concentration camp, or death.
My final
statement will show how the men of the Krupp firm endeavored to deal with the
entire problem of this system, while maintaining the widest consideration
traditional in this firm for the welfare of the people employed in it. This
will be the point to which we will devote our attention in considering the
activity of the defendant, Friedrich von Buelow, in particular. In this
connection, I will describe to the Tribunal the duties of the military and
political police Abwehr [counterintelligence] officers and discuss the tasks
which the Plant Security Police (Werkschutz), the factory guard (Werkschar) and
the Auxiliary Plant Security Police (Erweiterter Werksschutz) of the Krupp firm
had to fulfill. We shall have to learn to distinguish clearly between the terms
and functions of these various institutions and to put them under minute
examination. Only in this way will it be possible to form a clear outline of
the sphere of work of each defendant. This again is an indispensable condition
for the establishment of criminal responsibility and criminal guilt, and this
question of individual criminal responsibility and criminal guilt, and this
question only, is the point at issue in this trial. |
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