They exercised this function until the collapse. They dealt with all death sentences pronounced, within the jurisdiction of the administration of the law, as far as those were not passed for high treason, treason or other delicts to be judged and sentenced by the Peoples's Court, or as offenses against the occupation power, were directed against those persons who were subjected to the Nacht und Nobel decree. For the latter, again, other special Referenten were responsible, not Dr. Joel (Note 31).
Merely to assist the Referent for death sentence cases, Dr. Joel, by way of exception, was summoned in 1940, when Minister Guertner decreed a generous regulation concerning pardons to bo granted Poles who had been sentenced to death for being in possession of arms. All occupying powers threaten the population of the occupied countries with sentences -- even death sentences -- for being in possession of arms. The relevant Military Government Ordinance for Germany also contains this broad penal range in paragraph one, No. 9, Minister Guertner was of the opinion that one, such death sentences should be executed only in special and exceptional cases. The sentences of condemned persons were lessened on principle to penal servitude up to five years; and, further, in Minister Gartner's view, two to three years of penal servitude would suffice. On the other hand, however, ho did not like to lessen the deterring effect of the death sentence by commuting it into inadequate imprisonment. He and after his death, State Secretary Schlegelberger, had therefore commuted the death sentence to five years penal servitude providing for further pardon after two to three years of actual servitude. Herin De.Joel Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel had collaborated as a special adviser in the criminal section When, toward the end of 1942, some convicted persons had served two years of servitude, Dr. Joel submitted the case to the departmental chief for pardon, making reference to Minister Guertner's previous decision.
This man, however, did not like to make the decision himself and that was the reason for the report made to Minister Thierack as mentioned in the list (Note 32). Thierack brusquely refused to carry out Minister Guertner's wishes (Note 33).
The explanation for Dr. Joel's expression of his opinion of 22 April 1940 in Document E-353 (Note 34) is as follows:
Immediately before and after the beginning of the war with Poland, numerous Germans residing in the borderland had been killed. The perpetrators were convicted by German courts which exercised jurisdiction in place of the Polish courts which no longer existed.
No exceptions can be taken against Dr. Joel's basic attitude expressed by his opinion that a participant in unlawful assemblies resulting in the bestial murder of numerous Germans was liable to the death sentence. The pardoning of a foreigner from whom a plea of clemency had been submitted by his home country was generally granted. Dr. Joel's attitude was in accordance with his custom.
Dr. Joel's collaboration in the decisions concerning clemency in cases of forbidden possession of arms or, as here, in cases concerning acts of violence, refers to Poles. These are the only cases in which Dr. Joel came into contact with questions concerning the treatment of foreigners while, during 1940, he was in the Ministry of Justice. We know that the opinion of a Referent in the Ministry carried no Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel decisive force with it but represented merely his suggestion which was not at all binding for the person who had to make the decision.
After the Ministry of Justice had been taken over by Minister Thierack, Dr. Fool was employed on one more occasion in dealing with clemency questions in matters of death sentences, together with the permanent Referenten for death sentences. One list of reports (Note 35) shows him as Referent for death sentences in the "Annexed Eastern Territories". The death sentences recorded in this document, however, do not refer to Poles but to Germans.
Dr. Joel's collaboration refers to the period between 10 September 1942 and 17 March 1943 and only to verdiets in punishment of treason, high treason, or other political offenses. After the reconquering of these territories in 1939 a "repatriation" of the resident German population took place. Numerous Germans from the Altreich had been settled there. The right of pardon in connection with Poles and Jews had been transferred to the Reich governor and senior presidents of these territories by the Reich Ministry of Justice on Hitler's instruction in pursuance of a decree dated 18 May 1942 (Note 36). Only death sentences passed on German citizens, provided they had not been passed for treason or high treason or similar crimes, were dealt with temporarily by Dr. Joel as a Referent.
After March 1943 the defendant Joel was not employed any more in matters concerning death sentences.
My colleaguesKubuschok and Schilf have thoroughly dealt with the routine customary in the Ministry concerning decisions of clemency, and they have also argued whether any viewpoints with regard to the Law of Nations have been Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel disregarded in connection with this treatment of foreigners.
In the case of my client I should like -- supplementing these legal explanations -- to make the following observation: Responsibility under the Law of Nations extends according to recognized doctrines of the Law of Nations -- only to persons who act directly for the State, because they alone are able to valuate the justification of the measures adopted. Only loading and responsible men can be prosecuted in pursuance of the Law of Nations (Note 37). The judgment of the International Military Tribunal also dealt with this problem and gave as the reason for convicting the chief war criminals who had been the defendants in these proceedings that in view of the positions they had been holding in the German government, they were bound to have cognizance of the treaties signed by Germany. Dr. Joel was, at the beginning of the war, Senior Public Prosecutor. He was a Referent in the Ministry, one of more than 200 other Deferenten. Above him was the Deputy Ministerial Director; next came the Ministerial Director, the State Secretary, and the Minister. And not even the Minister was subordinated, directly to Hitler as the supreme leader of the regime but between the Minister and Hitler there stood yet the Reich Defense Council. Dr. Joel was therefore one of the lowest members of this hierarchy. About matters concerning the Law of Nations ho did not know any more than what the regime thought necessary to lot out for the information of its subjects. It was not Joel's duty to investigate if the annexation of the reconquered former Prussian Eastern provinces announced by Hitler was justifiable from the point of view of tho Law of Nations; he only had to stand by the opinions of the regime as expressed in their laws.
Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel Poland was conquered; the Polish army, the Polish administration, and the Polish courts had disappeared.
The debellatio as defined by the Law of Nations seemed to him an established fact and consequently he saw nothing extraordinary in the replacement of Polish courts by German courts. His views were supported by the German-Russian Border and Amnity Treaty of 23 September 1939, published in the Reich Legal Gazette II, of 1940, page three. It stated in its preamble that the Polish State had "disintegrated" and it defined in paragraph III that the "Now State Order" in the former Poland to the West of the demarcation line was a matter for Germany and Hast of the lino for the U.S.S.R. to establish.
Offenses tried besides possession of arms were atrocities committed up to the 17th of September 1939 (Note 38). Verdicts were given in such cases in pursuance of the laws valid for Germans and would have been given in a like manner according to the criminal laws of all cultural nations.
Even if the execution of jurisdiction in these cases by German courts was to be regarded as contrary to the Law of Nations, no deliberate participation in war crimes can bo charged against Dr. Joel.
Dr. Joel was sent by State Secretary Freisler to Prague on 30 September 1941 (Note 39) with the object of handing over to the Acting Reich Protector Heydrich, on his request, investigation documents and other documents concerning public prosecution. Upon his taking over the office of Reich Protector from Freiherr v. Neurath, Heydrich had declared martial law in agreement with Hitler, and it had been his intention to have all pending criminal cases settled Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel by police courts martial.
Such a measure appeared unjustified to Dr. Joel and to involve great danger for the people concerned. Contrary to his instructions ho contacted Heydrich personally and he succeeded that all investigation documents were handed back to the Reich prosecution authorities with the exception of those connected with the criminal cases against Prime Minister Elias and the former Lord Mayor Klapke of Prague, about which Thierack and Heydyich had already arrived at a binding understanding before Dr. Joel had arrived in Prague. Most of the documents of the public prosecution authorities also went back to the administration of Justice (Note 40).
In these cases Dr. Joel stood up courageously and successfully for the restoration of justice in general and ho has thus saved many of the Czech defendants from a death sentence which they would have had to expect in court martial under martial law.
(d) Discussion of Further Documents of the Reich Ministry of Justice Pertaining Dr. Joel According to the afore-mentioned list of reports (Dote 41), Dr. Joel has initialled a clemency document concerning two convicted persons who had shot a Catholic priest in poznan in 1940.
The clemency decision itself was submitted by the Prosecution. This decision was made by Minister Thierack, on Himmler's demand, against the protest of the Chief of the Criminal Branch and of Dr. Joel. A colleague of Dr. Joel, Hoeller, confirms his statements (Note 43).
A report from the Senior Public Prosecutor of Stuttgart of 3 May 1941 is addressed to the "Reich Minister of Justice, c/o Senior Public Prosecutor Dr. Joel" (Note 44). It refers Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel to a case of fatal maltreatment of a prison superintendent committed by prisoners whom the public prosecution intended to accuse under the decree concerning violent criminals of 5 September 1939 (Note 45), pleading for a death sentence.
Dr. Joel had no reasons for any objection and submitted the report to this section chief and afterwards to the Referenten responsible for dealing with the expected death sentence (Note 46).
According to Document E-366 of the Prosecution (Note 47), the defendant Dr. Joel telephoned the Chief of the State police and of the ordinary police by request of the respective Referent in order to remind them of their duty to bury persons executed in Poznan. A letter sent subsequently by Ministerial Councillor Westphal to the Chief of the German police on the same matter was submitted to Dr. Joel for his information as customary in the routine of the Reich Ministry of Justice. This is a typical example of the support which a Referent enjoyed from the hands of a liaison official to the police. This part of Dr. Joel's duties was established by Dr. Guertner's decree of 17 December 1937 (Note 49). The sectional Referent General was Ministerial Councillor Westphal (Note 50).
Two letters from the Reich Ministry of Justice were submitted to Dr. Joel for his information. One is a ministerial decree of 20 January 1939 regulating the execution of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor in the Sudeten-German Area of 15 September 1935 (Note 51). In the second letter of 11 December 1939, the Chief public Prosecutor of Poznan airs the question of to what extent illegitimate sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans in the annexed Eastern territories would be punishable (Note 52).
Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel All of the 64 higher officials employed in the criminal section of the Reich Ministry of Justice took notice of the first mentioned decree, and the second letter was also submitted to Dr. Joel and other officials for their information Such documents submitted to Dr. Joel for his information were not obligatory to him for taking action, and he has not actually acted in connection with these documents either.
The dealing with general questions concerning the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German. Honor fell under the jurisdiction of the law-making section. Individual cases of this kind were handled in the criminal section by a special Referent.
Since Dr. Joel never had to deal with criminal cases concerning race pollution, ho never got to know of the criminal case against Schaps in Cologne, as offered in the rebuttal dealing with reports addressed "To the Reich Minister of Justice, c/o Ministerial Councillor Dr. Joel." His address had boon used by mistake (Note 53).
Finally Dr. Joel's name appears in a document (Note 54) referring to the official working channels within the criminal section and between the criminal section and the public prosecution, Considering this and other individual documents I am unable to discover any proof of Dr. Joel's connection with any sort of criminal relevant activity.
2.
Survey of Dr. Joel's General Activity in the Reich Ministry of Justice One of the most interesting documents on Hitler's ascent and the reasons for his fascinating the German peoples is offered by the publication of the present United States Chief Prosecutor, professor Dr. Kempner, written by him in Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel 1930 when he was Senior Government Councillor in the Ministry of the Interior (Note 55). Dr. Kempner at that time was of the opinion that the NSDAP was a Party guilty of high treason because it wanted to overthrow the State.
It was a secret memorandum which was accessible to only a few officials in the highest brackets. But more interesting than the content of the memorandum is the fact that nobody believed it. If the high officials had only had the slightest idea of all that Hitler caused later on they would have eliminated him at that time. A simple order of expulsion would have sufficed. But nobody believed in the danger but, on the contrary, the people, ensnared by chaotic confusion hoped of Hitler that ho would restore order. If you want to understand clearly the difference between the American and German basic attitude toward the State, and you must do that if you want to pronounce a just verdict, you can best do that if you compare the following quotation from the Bible: "Everybody be subject to the authority which has power over him." "Obey the Lord more than men." The first phrase was the key word of Martin Luther which ho imprinted on the Germans and by which he recognized the sovereignty of their rulers. The second CORRECTION SHEET MORNING SESSION 18 October, 1947 The following pages 10524a to 10524-uu, inclusive are to be incorporated in the transcript following page 10524.
Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel phrase was placed by Calvin of Geneva in the center of his idea of the State and this was applied later in practice by the Puritans.
The American reporter Knickerbocker, with whom I spent much time in the thirties before Hitler's assumption of power, told in one of his reports, he had observed at the looting of a food store how the looters, men and women, had stood two by two before the door of the store in order to take out gradually the cabbages from the store.
In my book, soon to be published, about the IMT trial, I describe a small episode which took place at the interrogation of Goering. According to this, Goering called out at a difficult question when he was handed a pile of documents for identification: "I'll first put order in this!" The court replied with hilarity but the Germans took this key word of Hitler and Goering seriously.
Goering used it also when he justified the events of 30 June 1934, and the German people accepted this and still much more only because it believed that at last there would bo order, order in contrast to chaos which had arisen in economics and administration since the lost First World War.
And this young assistant judge Joel believed in a better order when he was called to Berlin in the year 1933* In order not to bo on the outside he and all of his associated, upon the advice of bus chief, signed the declaration to join the Party. None of these people read the Party program, even loss Hitler's book "My Struggle". There was one thing that men like Joel were impressed with about Hitler: the way he reached power. In this the former Oberregierungsrat (senior councillor of State) Kempner was mistaken when he prophesied that Hitler was to overthrow the State by force.
10524A Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel Hitler swore in September 1930 when those young Reichswehr officers faced the Reich Supreme Court for having instituted National Socialist cells in the Reichswehr that he would get the power by legal means.
And he kept his oath. Far be it from me to protect those people who put him in the saddle. But from the viewpoint of a German man desiring an orderly State organization, Hitler proved by the fact that after 1930, in spite of all his successes at the election, he did not bring about the violent overthrow, that he was serious about the order.
In Germany the number of unemployed had risen from three million in the year 1930 to five million in the year 1931 and seven million in the year 1932. In the time from 1924- to 1932, 7,692 square kilometers of land, a surface equal to the entire Grand Duchy of Hessen, had been subject to forced sale whereby 100,000 farmers willing to work became proletarians. Again and again the phrase was heard in Germany: "That cannot go on." It is interesting to look at the printed matter of the Reichstag and, removed from the wavering pictures which appear in the facts, as one poet Schiller says: "confused by Party hatred and favor", to convince oneself with one's own eyes what the political opponents of Hitler said at that time in the Reichstag debates. Also, Mr. Wells of the Social Democrats. The basic mood of all these men, as well as of the people, was that it could not go on this way and that they would bestow to the strongest opposition group the right to try a new method for once.
It is psychologically interesting question but not more than that, whether this man Hitler of 1933, surrounded by the cheering crowd, considered already committing all the crimes later which culminated in Auschwitz. But I do not believe that supports can be found for the assertion that 10524B Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel the German people and an assistant judge of the German people could assume this, for the words spoken by Hitler and his promises pointed exactly to the opposite.
He wanted to bring order and a sound legal system, the sound sentiment of the people. It is dangerous to use this word because in the meantime it has been much abused. But it is not uninteresting to point to the almost unknown fact that it was not coined by Hitler but originates with the German draft of a new penal code from the year 1909, when Hitler was 20 years old and vegetated in a Viennese flophouse.
The maxim is valid "By their deeds ye shall know them." Now what was Joel doing in the Department of Justice in 1933? It is the secret of earthly happenings that things happen quite differently from what we imagine. One must admit that the order in the German State system before Hitler's assumption of power left much to be desired, but what came now was a real revolutionary shock, a dissolution of this little and attacked order and a setting up of new principles which in their large conception such as leader principle, responsibility of the individual, offered wide loopholes through which the villainous criminal could slip. Wherever such things happen in the world the evil sadistic elements gather together and for the time being gain the upper hand by their unsrupulousness. As far as we could at that time read forbidden book3 and could keep up our foreign relations, we were shocked by the presentation of a Duesseldorf play called "The Soldiers of the Moor" which described the conditions at the Esterwege concentration camp. A wild horde of uniformed National Socialists, feeling their power, had been assigned to this camp set up for accommodating workers and had had the idea to collect political opponents and people they did not like, to lock them up and to treat 10524C Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel them badly.
This system was entirely new to us at that time. Joel, an official at the Department of Justice, learned of this affair. The Senior District Attorney with jurisdiction in Osnabrueck had received an anonymous report, but was unable to do anything about it because the police in Osnabrueck was powerless against the armed mob. At that time Dr. Joel, together with a colleague, was a specialist of the Central Prosecuting Office, which Guertner had set up in order to give support to the local prosecution authorities which, alone and left to themselves, could not do anything against the local Party officers and their favorites.
Dr. Joel went to the Department of Interior and discussed the affair with Secretary Gawert. Then, because the local police could not be entrusted with such a difficult task, he drove with a detail of fifty men of the State police, with arms and ammunition to Osnabrueck and took up positions before Camp Esterwegen. Before the first shots with live ammunition were fired, the gang surrendered and the camp inmates were liberated (Note 56).
But this incident is not isolated. In Bredow near Stettin evil elements, with the approval of the Gauleiter and the chief of police, had set up a similar camp in which members of the Mecklenburg and Pomeranian nobility and other political opponents were maltreated. The senior prosecution attorney and the government district president were unable to do anything Dr. Joel and his associate, von Haacke, took up the matter and Dr. Joel succeeded, with the help of the then-Chief of the Prussian Police, to get through to Goering. Here again a scene of liberation took place; the black guards surrendered, the main culprit, a certain Hoffmann, got fifteen years of hard labor and afterwards Goering was so angry that he had him shot in short shrift on 30 June 1934. Dr. Joel was not 10524D Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel angry, but it casts a bright light on his conception of the dignity of judge and justice that he too protested sharply against this interference in the execution of the judgment.
The court will probably remember the testimony of the witness Schulz, the last witness who was interrogated in these proceedings (Note 57).
A certain irony is not lacking if the indictment discloses that it had been Dr. Joel, of all people, who had recommended to Hitler the pardoning of the guard details of Camp Kemna near Wuppertal (Note 58). The activities of Dr. Joel in Esterwegen and Bredow having been proven, it is not difficult to believe in the evidence about Kemna which again shows that Joel overcame the resistance of the local authorities and urged judicial punishment of these people. He succeeded also in effecting the dissolution of the camp and liberating the inmates and to achieve the removal of the Wuppertal chief of police. But the once started criminal procedure was quashed after a long struggle by Hitler, due to the influence of Party officers. I refer to the evidence presented in my Note 59. There is only one of the documents of the Prosecution which I should like to mention with a few words because this document is important for establishing a starting point for understanding the mode of expression used at that time in the correspondence not only of Joel but also of the other defendants. The report to Hitler of 19 February 1936 (Note 60) was initialled by Joel. It ends with the request to quash the proceedings. But when this report was written in the Central Prosecution Office, the battle of Kemna had already been fought, the camp had been dissolved; however, the Party offices had succeeded in saving their Party members from judicial punishment. The 10524E Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel formal report to Hitler was merely the last stage.
If one reads this report one finds that its description of the facts contains only arguments for the punishment and none for quashing. This goes even so far that this very report was used already in the IMT proceedings as a document for the concentration camp atrocities. If, therefore, the authors of this report seriously wanted to present the quashing to Hitler, they should have had to edit it completely differently in content and wording. This way they put everything in this report that was against the quashing and then voted, one can only say with a certain disdain for the quashing because they had no other choice.
This consideration presents also the conclusions for the correct understanding of the files which accumulated in relation to the punishment of the SA guard details of Camp Hohenstein. Here sentences were meted out by a court, but the Party later succeeded in getting pardons after partial prison terms had been served. The files, the letters of Secretary Guertner to Gauleiter Mutschmann, Reich Minister Hess, Chief of SA Staff Lutze, and to Hitler, submitted in the IMT proceedings and which were written in the Central Prosecution Office, show unequivocally the perfectly correct attitude of not only Joel but also of the judge (Note 61).
The office administered by Joel and his already-mentioned colleague von Haacke in the Central Prosecution Office, also had a struggle with those police officials who maltreated prisoners while interrogating them. As a proof of this activity I had demanded the criminal files, for instance against detectives Winzer, Dunst et al in Berlin and against the detectives Heinemann and Sohnellenberg in Dussseldorf for committing assault and battery while on duty, which according 10524F Court III Case III Final Plea Guenther Joel to Article 340 of the penal code is punishable by not less than three months.
Unfortunately I never received those files. I refer to the evidence in Note 62.
I still should like to point out the letter of Secretary Guertner of 14 May 1935 (Note 63). In this letter any maltreatment or obtaining a statement under duress was rejected and the most severe prosecution of guilty officials was considered proper. This letter was written in Joel's Central Prosecution Office; it boars its file number and indubitably added much in removing bad conditions until later the Gestapo used the concentration camp for its own purpose, against which not only Joel but the entire Department of Justice and the reluctant German people were powerless.
10524G l80ct.
47-M-l-la-GJ- Dr. Carl Haensel Court 3 case 3 Final Plea Guenther Joel The administration of justice received a heavy blow on 30 June 1934, when Hitler for the first time openly arrpgated to himself the powers of a "supreme authority of the law."
Thanks to Goebbels' propagandistic skill, this event came to be known as "Roehm-putsch" (Roehm's coup de main); after the historical clarification through the IHT proceedings - in this connection I refer in particular to the testimony and the book of Dr. Bernd Gisevius whose Swiss affidavit in behalf of Joel was unfortunately repudiated because of a defect in form- one cannot but call it the Go ring-Himmler "putsch", for it was at that juncture that Himmler's political ascendancy beside Go-ring began, Both of them agreed that the opportunity should be seized, not only to liquidate Roehm and his friends, but moreover a number if persons who stood in their way for other reasons.
Hitler justified the events as emergency measures for reasons of state. On 13 July he declared in the Reichstag that he had had to excise an ulcer and the German nation deluded itself with the belief that the longed-for order had come at last and that the legal instability of the period of revolutionary transition was over. Roehm was branded publicly as a criminal on account of his depravity and his sexual aberrations and the German people understood from Hitler's announcements that he had wanted to "purge", and that it was only for reasons of emergency in regard to the state that he liquidated men who would have been condemned anyhow in due process of law. Despite the law of 3 July 1934, minister Guertner had the events clarified. Dr. Joel and Haacke did it on their own initiative, since neither the policy nor any other authority assisted them. Guertner is dead. His personal adviser, Senior Governmental Councillor Dohanyi drew the lesson from those days that the most relentless fight must be waged against Hitlerism and he paid with his life on 20 July 1944, in the sequels of that day. Even Freisler was incensed about these measures and the fourth man who did what he could, 10524H who roused Guertner into action, went with him to Goering, entreated Guertner to use his influence with hitler and actually prevailed on him to do so, is Joel.
In the most emphatic terms minister Guertner demanded the prosecution of those who had committed crimes against persons who were politically troublesome. Only in few cases did Hitler a free to a prosecution on. If at that time Dr. Joel did not give up the fight but attempted, with what means his humble position afforded him, to save the authority of the law it is not, to use the language of Law 10, to be classed as "taking consenting part." He was neither minister nor under secretary, he was only public prosecutor. Nothing can illustrate more strikingly the contrast between "consenting" and "dissenting" than does Dr. Joel's attitude. He actually attempted to institute criminal proceedings according to the law, but the amnesty enforced by Hitler through a law, and the quashing of individual proceedings by Hitler frustrated his efforts (Note 64.)
The evidence proved that Dr. Joel opposed the obstruction of the criminal proceedings not only by derisive and protesting comments, but by deeds. To simplify this, I mention his demand for punishment of the offenses committed against clergymen or members of the Caritas in Munich, against clergymen in State and in the Rhineland. I have made a compilation of exhibits. (Note 65). By courtesy of the public prosecutor in State I obtained several decrees and a section of an indictment signed by Dr. Joel dealing with the diffamation of a clergyman as "Jew mercenary". I could have increased' these exhibits by numerous records of criminal trials, but did not receive them.
As regards his attitude to the Jewish problem I would refer to the Marienburg case as an example (Note 66), and the prosecution for unlawful aryianization of the Jewish businesses in Berlin.
10524-1 At Joel's order the Jewish principles were released from Gestapo detention and high'ranking party officials of the Berlin Gau and a government councillor sentenced to several years of penal servitude.
(Note 67). Joel's attitude is clearly shown, furthermore, by his efforts to bring the persons who had taken part in the excesses against the Jewish population on 9 and 10 November 1938 to trial before the proper judges. Exhibit 557 submitted by the prosecution (Note 68) only confirms Joel's statements which he made during his endeavours and his success in restoring the jurisdiction of the law courts. Those documents show that while the investigations of the policy had first to be submitted to the Supreme Party Court for disciplinary action the courts could make the decision afterwards. Very many criminal proceedings were carried out in this way. In many cases Joel even endeavored locally to see these proceedings through in order to overcome resistance. During the IMT trial, ample evidence to this effect was produced in the committee interrogations. Endeavours to obtain it for the present trial were without result. As Guertner's deputy, Joel can claim credit for having preserved the jurisdiction of criminal jurispridence.
In connection therewith is Joel's activity in Nuremberg aimed at the revocation of the special measures taken by the Gau administration of Franken against Jewish landowners. Joel was member of a commission inquiring into Stretcher's misdeeds, and thanks to its activity it was possible to overthrow this Hitler minion who was all-powerful in Frankonia (Note 70). The material excerpted from the real estate register and the registry of deeds in Nuremberg and presented by the prosecuting authority in the rebuttal (Note 71) could not shake these statements. Some 500 properties were made over to Holz as trustee of the Gau Franken by notarial deed of 4 December 1938.
10524J After the above mentioned commission had determined its activity Holz had to revoke this transfer on 28 April 1980.