Seiler was indicted for perjury and was joined with Katzenberger as co-defendant; her sentence of two years was later suspended.
As Hans Groben, Nurnberg District Court Judge for preliminary investigations, describes the case:
"As I had no reason to doubt the truth of Seiler's sworn statement, it was clear to me that I could not keep Katzenberger in custody any longer. Therefore I informed his counsel, Dr. Herz, about the issue of this interrogation and gave him to understand that then was the right time to act against the indictment. Dr. Herz naturally understood this hint, and at once he filed an appeal against the indictment. According to the regulation (paragraph 33, STPO) I put the appeal before the Public Prosecution, adding in my report that I had the intention to comply with this complaint (paragraph 306, Section 2, STPO), i.e., to set Katzenberger free. I thus clearly expressed with this additional remark that I believed Katzenberger not to be guilty .... As was later explained to me, the accusation already filed with the District Court was thereupon withdrawn and replaced by one filed with the Special Court....
"I was shocked when I heard the result of the trial. The fact that Rothaug combined the trial against Seiler, a case of perjury, with the trial against Katzenberger, shows clearly that he took over the case of Katzenberger with definite prejudice and that he was determined to exclude Seiler as a witness for the defendant. According to normal procedures, Seiler should have been a witness in Katzenberger's trial and should have testified for him stating that the accusation against Katzenberger was not true. This normally should have led to the acquittal of Katzenberger as there was nothing decisive against him. Rothaug's verdict, in my opinion, was based solely on blind hatred for Jews. As there were no reasons for Katzenberger's condemnation on the ground of so-called race defilement, there was still less reason to apply paragraph 4 of the "Decree against Public Enemies" (Volksschael ingsvererdnung); because if it were altogether impossible to ascertain when or if Katzenberger and Seiler had the alleged intimate relations, it was still less possible to explain that this had happened in exploitation of war conditions.
To arrive at Katzenberger's condemnation on the grounds of so-called race defilement and to sentence him in connection with Paragraph 4 of the "Decree against Public Enemies", it was necessary to violate all the facts in the case. It has always depressed me that this verdict, which cannot be designated as anything but judicial murder, was pronounced by Rothaug."
One further sampling of the prosecution's evidence will serve to reveal how the protection against double jeopardy, keystone of criminal procedure the world over, was abrogated and used for the murder of civilians of occupied countries.
The Nurnberg Special Court, under the leadership of the defendants Rothaug and Oeschey, used this fiendish practice in the case of Jan Lopata, a Polish youth brought during the war to work on a German farm. The accused was in 1940 sentenced to two years imprisonment by the Neumarkt District Court for indecent assault of his employer's wife. When the case was reviewed by the Reich Supreme Court, a please of nullity against the decision was issued by the prosecution on the grounds that the sentence was too lenient, and the case was referred to the Nurnberg Special Court for retrial. In the court's verdict sentencing Lopata to death, the Presiding Judge (the defendant Roth-aug) observed:
"The total inferiority of the accused lies in his character and is obviously based on the fact that he belongs to the Polish sub-human race."
In reliance upon the decrees "legalizing" nullification and retrial of criminal cases it the prosecution's behest, defendants were deprived of any assurance that a sentence of less than death was their final fate. Ministry of Justice officials, working through the prosecution, joined in this infliction of double jeopardy. For example, in a case involving a non-German the defendant Klemm wrote to the President and attorney General of the Stuttgart District Court of appeal on 5 July 1944, and directed the following:
"for sometime now, the jurisdiction of the criminal senate of the District Court of Appeals in Stuttgart has given me cause for grave thoughts with regard to matters of defeatism. In the majority of cases, the sentences are considered too mild...and are in an incompatible disproportion to the sentences which are in similar cases passed by the People's Court and by other District Courts of Appeal. I refer especially to the following sentences which lately attracted my attention:
"1. Criminal case against Frederick Linder, sentence of the Second Criminal Senate of 7 January, 1944 (President of the Senate Dr. Kiefer)... "You made a report under date 28 April 1944 on this case regarding the sentence. In view of the danger and of the frequency of the statements made by the defendant, I must maintain the interpretation already expressed in my decree of 15 March 1944, IV Secret I 5045B/44 - that the defendant, a foreigner, deserved a serious sentence of penal servitude. I have therefore directed the files to the Chief Reich Prosecutor at the People's Court to examine the question whether the Extraordinary appeal should not be applied against the sentence..."
It is technically true that an extraordinary appeal or plea of nullity could, on the face of the enabling decrees, operate to a defendant's benefit as well as to his detriment; but this possibility was illusory in practice. Dr. Josef Grueb, former judge of the Nurnberg District Court of Appeals, says:
"It was obvious that the Ministry of Justice only admitted a petition for nullity when it was unfavorable to the defendant. Cases in which the Ministry ordered a nullity plea unfavorable to the defendant were, at any rate, very more numerous than cases where the petition for nullity was demanded for the benefit of the condemned man of its own initiative...It was mainly a means employed by the state to cancel sentences which seemed inadequate in the light of the political conceptions of those times."
A terrifying glimpse of the actual extent to which double jeopardy was exploited during the Third Reich's last years, is furnished by the defendant Nebelung:
"If the Chief Reich Prosecutor, Dr. Lautz, was not satisfied with the sentence, he could file an Extraordinary Appeal against it. This was done, in my opinion, mainly as a result of orders by Reich Minister Thierack. After 1943, Extraordinary Appeals became frequent. All cases in which Extraordinary Appeal had to be filed were tried again before the Special Senate of the people's Court. This Special Senate concerned itself exclusively with Extraordinary Appeals. Of all Senates of the People's Court, this Special Senate pronounced the largest percentage of death sentences. According to statistics which I saw myself, 70% of all sentences passed by the Special Senate during 1944 were, as I recall, death sentences."
By the foregoing samples from actual case records and comments thereon by German jurists involved, the prosecution has sought to typify rather than specify the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the defendants. Detailed accounts are unnecessary at the moment to exemplify the judicial murders and legalistic perversions for which these defendants have been indicted; that will be fully developed by the evidence.
Mr. LaFOLLETTE: May it please Your Honors. I will proceed and General Gayler, as Chief Counsel, will follow me and close.
Evidentiary considerations.
We believe it will expedite the trial of this case and be of assistance to the court and evidence a proper attitude of fairness toward the attorneys for these defendants if we discuss now some of the theories of evidence and of the relevancy and materiality of evidence under which we shall present the proof in this case.
Law 10, which is the inter-power act from which this court springs, contains some matter relevant to the issue while Ordnance 7 of necessity, treats the matter very fully. Between them they deal adequately with the matter very fully. Between them they deal adequately with the matter of the competency of proof, intelligently relaxing the rules to the necessities of presenting proof in a country, which has not only been physically destroyed but which has had its government disintegrate and also suffered the demoralization, which follows the defeat of a vicious ideology which has permeated the thinking of far too many of its peoples.
Put relevancy and materiality - the relationship of primary facts to the ultimate fact - involves a cerebral process - the method of finding the existence of an ultimate fact by logical processes from objective proof.
These latter standards lie within the consciousness and the conscience of men. Thus they are not affected by the external consideration which justify the relaxation of the rules regulating the competency of proof. They should not have been and they were not relaxed. We endorse the decision to retain them and welcome the opportunity to work under them.
Article II, paragraphs 4(a) and (b) of Law 10, are the same in substance, although differing slightly in the use of language to express the substance, as Article 7 and 8 of the Charter, respectively.
These paragraphs of Article II of Law 10 read as follows:
"4 (a) The official position of any person, whether as Head of State or as the responsible official in a Government Department, does not free him from responsibility for a crime or entitles him to mitigation of punishment.
"(b) The fact that any person acted pursuant to the order of his Government or of a superior does not free him from responsibility for a crime, but may be considered in mitigation."
Paragraph 4(a) above is a sound role and applies to most if not all of these defendants. Paragraph (b) is likewise sound. We point out.
However, that those defendants are lawyers who are charged fundamentally with perverting or converting a system of justice into an instrument for committing crimes under international law. Since this paragraph affords them the right to offer evidence in mitigation and to plead for mitigation from that evidence, the prosecution is entitled to answer that pleasby two arguments. First, that a lawyer has especial knowledge of the perverting effect upon the dispensation of justice not only of his own acts but of the acts of others of which he has knowledge - knowledge as an ultimate fact. Second, that a lawyer entrusted by his very calling with a sacred duty, must of necessity offer strong proof indeed in mitigation of the prostitution of that duty.
We shall introduce proof on this issue, from which knowledge, as an ultimate fact will arise and also proof, from which the plea of mitigation will be shown to be faniciful and hypocritical.
Again, upon the subject of relevancy and materiality - probative value, - we shall offer evidence of other acts of these defendants and also acts of persons other than these defendants, knowledge of which, as an ultimate fact, can be inferred to the defendants. These acts shall include these which constitute evidence of other crimes, committed both by these defendants and by others. We are convinced that this evidence is relevant and material, and therefore admissible under accepted rules of evidence supported, by Wigmore, an acknowledged authority.
Certainly, a brief exposition of cur position will expedite the trial by enabling the court to rule expeditiously, but at the same time judiciously, and it is also our hope that by furnishing defense counsel with an understanding of the legality of the rules under which this evidence will be offered, they will not find it necessary to resort too frequently to empty objections.
We can afford to be candid with court and counsel. It is only the lazy, the uniformed or inherently dishonest and therefore unethical lawyer who socks recourse to silence or obtusion. We refuse to follow a course of conduct from which either of the forgoing can be charged to the prose cution of cases before this Tribunal and its sister tribunals.
Evidence of acts, including other crimes not only of the defendants but of others, is permissible, and most often offered to show Knowledge, Intent or Design. They are also relevant upon the issue of Motive. Because of the nature of the crimes charged in this indictment, each of the foreign-, Knowledge, Intent or Design and Motive, is an essential ultimate element or ingredient of these crimes. Therefore, the rules with authorize the introduction of such proof are of concern to this court.
Before treating the subject affirmatively, we shall prepare the way by eliminating the supposed objection of Unfair Surprise. We offer the following quote:
"Of the other objections (other than Undue Prejudice) from the point of view of that auxiliary policy which creates the Character rule, the objection of Unfair Surprise is the only one that could be supposed to be here applicable. But it has never been treated by the Courts as of consequence. Evidence tending to show, not the defendant's entire career, but his specific knowledge, motive, design, and the other immediate matters leading up to and succeeding the crime, is of a class always to be anticipated and is in such given instance rarely a surprise; moreover, the kernel of the objection of unfair surprise; namely, the impossibility of exposing fabricated evidence, is wanting where the evidence deals with matters so closely connected with a crime as design, motive, and the like."
The above quote, referred to the further objection of Undue Prejudice. That objection does not arise here. This is a trial by the Court - by judges. It is a trial by judges, who by training and character rely only upon objective standards in determining guilt or innocence. The rule was never considered in America as a necessary protection to a defendant in trials by court.
In fact - the very contrast between the system and standards of judicial conduct by which these defendants are being tried and the subjective personality yardsticks which they, particularly the judicial defendants, will be proven to have acted under and used, it is to be hoped, will have some effect in serving the declared purpose of Potsdam.
"To prepare for the eventual reconstruction, of a German political life on a democratic basis."
In treating with the subject under discussion, we must refrain, because of time limitation, from presenting Wigmore's excellent philosophical discussion of the basic principles which overn the proof of Knowledge, Intent and Design. Therefore we limit ourselves, from necessity, to an exposition of those statements which are applicable to the crime which most, if not all, of these defendants have committed - murder.
We shall offer the type of evidence, under discussion, first under the Knowledge principle:
"The Knowledge principle has practically little application here, though it would be available to show a knowledge of the nature and injurious effect of a lethal weapon."
We point out that in this case "knowledge of the nature and injurious effect of a lethal weapon" is of first importance. The defendants had full knowledge of the character of this lethal weapon, -- a judicial system deliberately fashioned into a headman's axe. In fact, most of them directly and actively fashioned it. Consequently, under each of the categories of the substantive law of murder, which we have heretofore expounded, and particularly under the second, proof of prior acts, including crimes, of those defendants and of others of which they had knowledge, are clearly relevant.
The same type of evidence shall be offered under the following rule relating to the Intent principle:
"The Intent principle receives constant application; for the intent to kill is in homicide practically always in issue, and is to be proved by the prosecution, and the recurrence of other acts of the sort became a tend to negative inadvertence, defensive purpose, or any other form of innocent intent. For this purpose, therefore, the evidence is receivable irrespective of whether the act charged is itself conceded or not."
Also the rule of anonymous Intent authorizes the introduction of proof of such other crimes and of the crimes of others:
"The principle of Anonymous Intent finds occasional application, particularly in poison cases. Other instances of death by poison under somewhat similar circumstances serve to negative the supposition of inadvertant taking or of mistaken administration, even though the person responsible for the other poisoning is not identified; and thus, a criminal intent having been shown for the act charged, by whomsoever done, the defendant may be then shown to be its doer."
This court shall be called upon to determine whether a so-called judicial execution was a true judicial decision or poison handed the defendant in a disguised chalice having the exterior appearance of judicial purity. When we produce innumerable cases of such acts can a defendant be heard to say he did not know his monstrous chalice was lethal and intended it so to be?
Also the Principle of Design or System is applicable for identical reasons:
"The principle of Design or System finds here frequent application. It supposes that a design or plan in the defendant is to be shown, as making it probable that the defendant carried out the design or plan and committed the act; and it receives former similar acts so far as through common features they naturally indicate the existence of such a plan, design, or system, of which they are the partial fulfillment, or means. This principle is fully recognized in the precedents."
And finally prior acts of violence, including crimes, are evidence of motive as well as of Design:
"Prior acts of violence by the defendant against the same persons, besides evidencing, intent, may also evidence emotion or motive, i,e., a hostility showing him likely to do further violence;
"Threats of violence are in themselves expressions of a design to injure, and are accordingly dealt with elsewhere."
Certainly, when we shall offer so many cases of deaths of Poles and Jews, no one of these defendants will have the temerity to say we cannot show proof of their own prior utterances, as well as those of others, of which they had knowledge, as a clearly inferred ultimate fact, demanding deaths to Poles and Jews and also that haste and more haste must be made to turn the Nazi Judicial system into a headman's axe, for the purpose of showin their motive, when these Poles and Jews, with their so-called "judicial" system and processes.
It would be a strange law, indeed, which would say that if a man killed one Pole or one Jew, his prior threats to and assaults upon that Pole or Jew, were relevant evidence of the Motive with which he acted, but would deny the same proof, when the same man, or in this case men, killed millions of Poles and Jews.
Of course, the law is neither so blind nor so callous ...
The accepted rules of proof in an objective system of law justify every offer of proof of prior statements, acts, and crimes of these defendants, and of those others of which they had knowledge, as an ultimate fact which we should make in this case.
We need not, nor shall we attempt, to evade or circumevent those salutary rules.
These defendants can, and should be convicted, but only under law. Because we believe that, we have not been afraid to pre-declare our understanding both of the substantive law and the rules of evidence under which just convictions shall be asked and which we believe will be rightfully rendered, under the proof adduced.
Although the matter is not related to the theories under which evidence will be offered by the prosecution, there is one other matter relating to the evidence which the prosecution feels it is entitled to discuss at the opening of this case.
During the introduction of the evidence, certain names of important officials recur: Otto Thierack, Roland Freisler, Vollmer, Westphal, Crohne, Laemmle, Haffner, and others. Since these men are not in the defendants doc** the court is entitled to know why. Thierack committed suicide on the 26 October 1946. Freisler was killed in an air raid which demolished the People Court Building in Berlin, early in 1945. Vollmer forsook the Ministry of Justice for the Luftwaffe during the last days of the battle for Berlin in 1945, and was reported to have died in action.
Westphal died in the Nurnberg prison following service of the present indictment upon him. Crohne, Laemmle and Haffner cannot be located, despite all efforts.
We now present a consideration of the German Legal Profession under the Third Reicl.
We have sketched the steps by which the judicial organization of Germany was turned into a more agent of the criminal policies of the Third Reich, and have outlined some of the crimes which the defendants committed by means of the perverted judicial machiner. Before taking up the fourth and final count of the Indictment, which rests upon a somewhat different footing than the first three counts, it is appropriate to examine very briefly the German legal profession and its degradation under the Third Reich. This brief survey, we think, will help to explain why these atrocities came to pass.
A. Before 1933 During the pre-Hitler decades, the professional life of German jurists flourished.
Independent societies were formed which published law reviews of high calibre, and participated in international conferences of jurists and in international legal institutions, such as the international arbitration courts.
Originally, the judges of the various German States had separate professional organizations, but in 1908 these were combined into the Association of German Judges (Deutscher Richterbund). This organization sponsored lectures on now legal problems, on comparative law, on modernizing penal law, and similar subjects. The association edited the "German Judge's Times" (Deutsche Richterzeitung), which published court decisions and articles by learned jurists. Another organization of German judges was the Association of Republican Judges (Republikanischer Richterbund), founded in 1926. Its members were primarily interested in the reformation of the German court system and in bringing German legal instit utions into line with the democratic principles of the new Weimar Constitution.
They published the periodical "German Justice" (Deutsche Justiz).
Most practicing German attorneys-at-law belonged to the Association of German Attorneys-at-Law, the largest professional organization of jurists. This association, founded in 1871 comprised about 15,000 members in 1933. It published the Juridical Weekly, which had thousands of subscribers inside Germany and abroad.
Before the Nazis came to power, all organizations of jurists consisted of members of all political parties and creeds. Their officers were the eminent scholars or jurists and many of them had a high international reputation. Their yearly meetings acted according to democratic principles without interference from the executive branch of the government.
Legal education and training in Germany maintained high standards. After studying law for three or four years at a law school of one of the State universities, the candidate served a law apprenticeship, lasting another three or four years, at various courts and law firms. Only then was he admitted to the Great State Examination, known as the Assessor examination which might be compared with our bar examination. The successful completion of this examination was the local prerequisite for any appointment as judge, public prosecutor, or higher civil servant, or for admittance to the bar. The men and woman who had passed this examination were highly respected by the German populace.
B. The Impact of Nazism In the years immediately preceding the establishment of the Third Reich, the National Socialist Party started a nationwide campaign directed against the legal profession.
The Nazi leadership realized that they could not gain absolute dictatorship by the seizure of the government alone but that they must also completely subjegate German legal life.
As an affiliate of the Nazi Party, a National Socialist German Lawyers League known henceforth BNSDJ; was formed in 1928 by the late Hans Frank, In 1931, the members of this organization, then about 700 in number, or less than one percent of all German jurists, were instructed to report on the political attitude and behavior of judges and lawyers. The general attitude of the Nazi Party toward independent judges was reflected in the statement. One day, we will forget the independence of the judges which has no significance in itself." There were many other occasions when Hitler and his henchmen expressed their distaste for law and the legal profession.
Immediately after the Nazis came to power, they started to pervert German legal life and so develop it as a tool of the totalitarian machine. This was accomplished in part by measures which have already been described, such as the dismissal of judges, prosecutors, and Ministry officials considered politically unreliable, and by depriving judges of the guaranties of independence and immunity from removal from office.
But these measures were not confined to the governmental judicial organization. They extended into all branches of the legal profession. The first step was the subjugation, and later the complete elimination, of the old professional associations, such as the Deutscher Richterbund, and the Republikanischer Richterbund, and tho Deutscher Anwaltsverein. Their destruction was accomplished by the same sort of maneuvers that effected the dissolution of the pre-Nazi medical and other professional societies at about the same time.
In the early spring of 1933, the former officers were ousted under duress, and now officers, all of them members of the Nazi Party, were appointed according to the newly proclaimed leadership principle.
This procedure also became known under the term "coordination". At the same time, the membership of all well-known anti-Nazi or Jewish jurists was cancelled in all these professional organizations Many of them were threatened and forced to emigrate.
Shortly afterwards in May 1933 the old organizations were completely dissolved. All organizational professional activity was centered in the National Socialist German Lawyers' League, which became one of the most important tools in the Nazi penal program.
Hans Frank reported to Hitler in May, 1933, that all existing professional organizations and associations of lawyers had joined the BNSDJ. The cooperative entry of these organizations into the BNSDJ did not, however, imply individual membership of its members in the BNSDJ. This required an individual application. Actually by the end of 1934, there, was hardly a lawyer left who had not joined the BNSDJ. These very few who had the courage to stay out laid themselves open as opponents of the regime with the grave risks which this implied. One of the conditions of membership in the BNSDJ was membership in the Nazi Party, but non-Party members could be admitted as so-called "supporting members".
The constitution of the BNSDJ lates from 4 May, 1933. It declares as its program the realization of the National Socialist Program in the legal field. According to Hitler's order of 30 May, 1933, the BNSDJ was the sole representative of the Germen Law Front and the exclusive professional organization of all lawyers. The seat of the BNSDJ was Munich, its leader Hans Frank, and its executive secretary Dr. Wilhelm Heuber. Regionally, it was divided into 26 regions. Leader of the Gau "Hanseatic Cities" was the defend ant Rothenberger.
At the end of 1934, the Nazi organizations of jurists had approximately 80,000 individual members and its executive secretary could boast that it was the biggest lawyers' organization in the world. In 1936, the name was changed to "Nationalsozialistischer Rechtswahrerbund" (NSRB). Through the disciplinary boards of this organization, the legal chieftans of the Nazis held the lawyers under close politic surveillance.
C. Under the Third Reich.
Within a short time after the advent of the Nazis, the editorship of all legal journals was taken over by newly-appointed Nazi editors, such as Hans Frank and his accomplices of the BNSDJ. A number of the scientific legal journals, whose editors were known as anti-Nazis, suck as "Die Justiz" were suppressed. The new editors perverted the legal journals by turning them into more propaganda instruments of the Nazi government. In these journals, the jurists were informed that they were to be nothing but the legal soldiers of the fuehrer. Tho legal journals were flooded with such material. The Deutsche Justiz, the mouthpiece of the Ministry of Justice frequently printed directives of which the following by the late Under Secretary Freisler is typical. But we will march as an Army Corps of the Fuehrer and as such, no one shall outdo us in the willingness to self-sacrificed. We are alone responsible to the Fuehrer and that is our wish."
While, on the hand, the legal thinking of the older generation of jurists was perverted, on the other hand the future Nazi jurists received a thorough indectrination at the law schools of the universities where they were instructed by Nazi lawyers or by opportunities who had sold their legal reputation for promotion within the Nazi hierarchy. Respected professors, who were suspected of so-called "Roman-Jewish individualistic" legal ideas were discharged, and references to such ideas were eliminated from the textbooks. The standard of legal education was considerable lowered. The students had to spend a considerable part of the time which was once devoted to the study of law, on compulsory labor and military service, and exercises in the student cadres of the SA stormtroopers and the SS elite guards. During the period of their law clerkship, Nazi indectrination and exercises in military formation were substituted for the once thorough legal training. Eventually, no young lawyer was admitted to the bar whom the examination heard did not consider a reliable legal soldier of the Nazi fuehrer. In analyzing the new Nazi examination decree for lawyers, Freisler stated:
The experience of the candidate within the (Nazi) movement and its evaluation (by the same movement) is fundamental in any evaluation of the candidate's qualification. If such experience does not exist, he will be disqualified.
In the early stages of this prostitution of German legal education, the Prussian Ministry of Justice took a leading part. The Prussian Minister of Justice was a Nazi zealot named Hanns Kerrl, a budger clerk without legal education, who attained this high position under the Nazis and who became the Reich Minister for Churches after the Prussian Ministry of Justice was absorbed by the Reich Government. In April, 1933, Kerrl issued a decree concerning the selection of candidates for positions as judges, public prosecutors, and attorneys in the State of Prussia, which provided in part that:
The applicant for appointment as a Junior Judge admission as Attorney, or appointment as Public Notary will in future have to prove in a special hearing that his consciousness of being a member of the national community, his social understanding, and his understanding of the entire race development of the German people in the present and the future, constitute the basis of his personality.
.........for this purpose applicants will have to undergo a special most-examination, which has the aim to convey an impression of his being rooted in to the national community.
The result of this post-examination will be evaluated in my decision about the appointment or qualifications of the candidate equally with the other statutory requirements.
Two months later, Kerri issued another decree which required that all candidates for the final state legal examination had to attend a special community camp for six weeks before they would be admitted to the final examination. This Prussian decree provided, in part, as fallows:
The National Socialist State must know that above all the man whom the State as a severing, intends to entrust with the execution of the most important tasks of judge or prosecutor, must have the character and be a typical German. One cannot get an idea of this from an examination as it has been conducted up to now......
I therefore decree that: In the course of the final legal State examination, each candidate, during the period following the written and preceding the oral examination, that is for about six weeks, is to live together with other candidates under the direction of the civil servants of the Prussian Administration of Justice, appointed by me.........
This preposterous institution for the perversion of young lawyers was established, and given the name "Gemeinschaftslager Hanns Kerrl", after its creator. It was located at Juteroog, near Berlin. An illustrated pamphlet describing the activities in this lawyer's madhouse will be introduced in evidence. According to the basic statute of the camp, the inmates were to become familiar with the leadership principle and would experience the ideas of the Fuehrer. The commandment of the camp was a lawyer named Spieler, who had become favorably known to the Nazis through his activities as defense counsel in their behalf. He was an old party member and a colonel in the storm troopers. He was assisted in supervision of the young lawyers by a metley group of storm troopers and Army officers. Two extracts from this pamphlet will bear quotation:
A further training and examination of the candidate is accomplished through ideological indoctrination. The camp directors are aware, of course, that National Socialism can neither be learned, nor taught. National Socialism must completely determine an individual's attitude; when this is not the case, the individual can never become a real National Socialist. There are many people, however, who in their social relations or in their way of living have not become acquainted with or in their way of living have not become acquainted with National Socialism or were even opposed to it, yet in these people exists an unconscious National Socialist sentiment which only needs stimulation to develop. The appropriate method for this is the ideological indectrination. The latter is therefore particularly used in the camp, not only for this purpose but also for training purposes, to strengthen and develop the national socialist ideology.
The day of Horst Wessel's death was also a remarkable day. This was commemorated in a particular manner. At 4 O'clock a trumpeter blew revelry. At 4:07 all the camp inmates were already assembled in the courtyard. A brief order: "Column right, forward march." Then the various platoons of the school took different routes across the drilling field and marched on into the country.
After the dissolution of the Prussian Ministry of Justice in 1934, the Gemeinschaftslager Hanns Kerrl was brought under the supervision of the Reich Ministry of Justice.
The illustrated pamphlet to which I have just referred contains photographs of Reich Minister Guertner. Under-secretary Freisler, and others visiting the camp. The photographs also show a gallows from which was suspended a symbol of German statutory law, the sign, for the paragraphing of legal codes. Guertner and Kerrl are both photographed standing under the gallows. It would be hard to conceive a more appropriate symbol for the degradation of the legal profession under the Third Reich.
GENERAL TAYLOR. There is not more than twenty minutes to complete the statement.
THE PRESIDENT: In as much as there was an interruption this morning, if you need more time it will be granted to you.
GENERAL TAYLOR: That will be ample Before I continue, may I call the Tribunal's attention that the written version of this statement, which is now available, contains various sub-headings and footnotes which have not been read and it might be convenient if those were incorporated in the record, even though they have not been read.
The fourth and final count in the Indictment contains the charge that seven of the defendants are guilty of membership in organizations declared to be criminal in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal. Four of the defendants -- Alstötter, Cuherst, Engert, and Joel -- are accused of membership in the SS. The defendant Joel is also accused of membership in the Sicherheitsdient (commonly known as the SD). The defendant Cuhorst is also accused, together with three others -- Oeschey, Neblung, and Rothaug -- of membership in the Leadership Corps of the Nazi party. All three of these organizations were declared criminal in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal.
The legal basis of the charges in Count 4 is quite distinct from that of the first 3 counts in the Indictment. The charge derives from Article 9 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which authorized that Tribunal, under specified circumstances, to declare that certain "groups" or "organizations" were "criminal organizations." The Prosecution before the International Military Tribunal sought such declarations in the case of each of the three organizations involved in Count 4 of this Indictment, and the International Military Tribunal rendered such declarations.