which mitigating circumstances would be justified. I am not in agreement with these three prerequisites but I want to draw your attention to one of them. The chief prosecutor spoke about the circumstances or positions, which might have put the defendants in the position to resists, but the chief prosecutor could not give an answer and could not made any statements as to whether the defendants I am representing here actually were able to resist and what they could have done in their positions. Tribunal was to put an end to international anarchy. I agree with this statement of the chief prosecutor as far as anarchy should be done away with, but anarchy cannot be eliminated by building up a huge building, but if you want to do away with anarchy you have to start with the root, and the root for this procedure is the superior order which excludes the punishability.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Gawlik, what you have presented is entirely in the nature of argument. You have already spoken to the issues, and the prosecution has presented its summation. Now you have replied to the prosecution's summation with argument and not with anything dis None the less, we can't help but call attention to your statement about the Yamashita case.
Has it ever come to your attention that in a European court that there has been less than unanimity in a court deciding upon a certain issue? Has a German court or a French court or a British court or any other court in Europe ever endered a decision in which all the judges did not agree? Is it possible to have a decision without unanimity, is that Possible?
DR. GAWLIK: No, not at all, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, perhaps the question wasn't put very clearly. The majority of a court rules, that is true, is it not?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes
THE PRESIDENT: That is true in Europe?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: It is true all over the world?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Why should it be any less true in the Yamashita case? You were quoting from the minority, not the majority opinion.
DR. GAWLIK: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: And you seem to take great objection and you felt it rather sensitively that perhaps the defendants were referred to as cooks. I think you will agree with me that a cook is a very important individual?
DR. GAWLIK: I agree.
THE PRESIDENT: The human race could not exist without cooks, could we?
DR. GAWLIK: I quite agree, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Now you say that only the captain of a ship is responsible; Hitler was the captain of the ship?
DR. GAWLIK: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, if Hitler was the captain, what were Himmler and Heydrich, cooks?
DR. GAWLIK: Not at all, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: What were they?
DR. GAWLIK: I stated, this clearly, they were the deputy captains, if you want to choose this comparison.
THE PRESIDENT: Would you say going right down the line that the defendants were deputy captains? Were are you going to stop with the deputy captains? Where are you going to stop with the deputy captains? How about Goering? Was he a deputy captain?
DR. GAWLIK: One could call him that, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Ribbentrop, was he a deputy captain?
DR. GAWLIK: Well, Ribbentrop has nothing to do with this particular case, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Neither has Himmler nor Heydrich. Do Himmler and Heydrich have anything to do with this case?
DR. GAWLIK: Certainly, yes, very much.
THE PRESIDENT: Does Yamashita have anything to do with this case?
DR. GAWLIK: No, it has nothing to do with this case.
THE PRESIDENT: You brought it in though, didn't you?
DR. GAWLIK: I only cited this case to the Tribunal in order to point out that there a disagreeing opinion. I consider it my duty as a defense counsel to point out that the principles of international law which are laid down in the decision of the Yamashita case are dubious, especially as two judges, two well known judges, the Judges Murphy and Ruthledge, were of another opinion.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, Dr. Gawlik, we understand your point of view.
DR. GAWLIK: I regarded this as my duty, Your Honor, to remind the Tribunal of the different opinion of two judges in the Yamashita case.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, your remarks will be a part of the record.
Does any other defense counsel intend to comment at this time?
(No response).
THE PRESIDENT: The procedure calls for final statements from the individual defendants. We are informed by the translation section that all the statements which were presented have not yet been translated, but we have every reason to believe that they will be translated before the court reconvenes this afternoon so that, therefore, in order to avoid any pause in the proceedings once we get started with the defendants final statements, the Tribunal will now recess until 1:45.
( A recess was taken until 1345 hours.)
(The hearing reconvened at 1345 hours, 13 February 1948)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now hear the final statements of the individual defendants. The page will operate the movable microphone so that each defendant will have an opportunity to speak his statement to the Tribunal. We will begin with the defendant Ohlendorf.
THE DEFENDANT OHLENDORF: May it please the Tribunal, all serious literature published in the last two years on the problems of National Socialism, and particularly, religious literature, is agreed that National Socialism is not the cause, but the effect of a spiritual crisis. That crisis which unfolded itself in the last centuries, and particularly, in the last decardes, is twinfold: it is a religious and a spiritual one, and it is a political and social one. Catholic and Protestant literature, both maintain that at least since the application of Gallican freedoms, Christian religion as the final aim of humanity was increasingly eliminated from the spheres of the state which form the core of historical development. The end of the Christian idea as a binding goal for humanity in its social systems and of the individual turning to the beyond, to life in God, had a double effect.
1. Man lacked absolute and uniform values in his life. In his mind and impulses he no longer found a uniform and firm guiding point which could have supplied him with the motives for his actions. Religious values and laws took an ever smaller space in his emotions, thinking, and acting. The Christian values, if they remained at all important, actually could not prevent man from being split into a "Sunday" and "week-day" individual. Week-day supplied him with different motives to an even temporary meditation on God's will. Life this side of the grave had not only acquired a significance of its own, but indeed ruled him independently with its concepts of autonomy, wealth, social position, and so forth.
2. Society, organized into separate states, found in this development no uniform values either which might have been the constant objective of society or the state. As individuals and majority groups were in a position to make their separate aims the objects of society and politics, the inviolate metaphysical relatedness of politics was lost, and in consequence such social and political order as existed at a given time had to be disputed by the differing concepts of other individuals and other groups. The endeavors to preserve the status quo within the state and the nations was replaced by the will to eliminate the status quo by means of war or revolution. found this spiritual, religious, political, and social decay having a deep effect. There were no values for them which were not immediately attacked and opposed by different groups. Thirty or more parties fought for power in the state. They represented a number of opposing interests. This generation was not given the opportunity of living as humans and nothing else, nor was that idea taught to them as an uncontested concept. Socially their future was without hope. It is understandable that under those conditions this generation did not regard wealth as their aim, for material wealth had become a questionable asset after inflation, financial crisis, and years of economic stress, during which century-old properties, dissolved into nothing. They were longing for spiritual support, for a goal behind the social order into which they were born, a goal which promised them true human dignity, firm human objectives, and a spiritual and religious center for their developing into human beings. This generation had become too realistic in their suffering to believe that by fixing their eyes at the beyond they would find the moral and social basis for their existence as human beings at this period in history, They found denifite daily conditions socially and they were far too clear-cut for anyone to underrate their significance for human existence. Indeed the split into a "Sunday" and "week-day" man appeared as one of the deeper causes for spiritual and material suffering.
Thus, it becomes understandable that this generation searched for new religious values. the constitution and condition of the society, national, and state in which he lived for this generation not to look for ways and means to replace the changing rule of group interests by an order which was based on the conception of totality in relation to every single individual irrespective of his social statutes. We regarded National Socialism in that light and expected it to furnish the basis of a new order. It was not in the spirit of frivolity that we spoke of "The Thousand Years Reich" because we knew that the great development of humanity takes centuries, nay, thousands of years, until it matures and gives rise to yet newer developments. Our minds were not impatient, but we looked at the history of mankind, including their religious history, and that of the ups and downs of states and nations in order to find the guiding ideas in the growing and declining of the peoples in order to find the indications which would make it possible for us to fulfill justly the requirements of our time for the experiences and sufferings of history. From our search in history, we acquired the certainty that always it is the great religious aims, the great moral and ethical issues which flank the actual historical events. repeatedly pointed to the great religious and moral law contained in the Ten Commandments of Moses. Nobody will deny their binding character and no one can escape the sacred earnest of the Commandments, but it would amount to misjudging reality if one would, in the Books of Moses, ignore the descriptions of real history which in all its frightfulness is said to have been ordered by the same God who transmitted the Ten Commandments through Moses. It is not an empty religious phrase to say that to God a thousand years are but a moment. Anyone familiar with history will note that it is the outward customs and means that change in the course of the centuries, but that in 1948 no ideas are conceived or discussed which were not the living contents of Indian religious and philosophical systems, the Persian and Egyptian mysteries, Greek philosophy, the political systems and battles of the Greek city-states, of neo-platonic philosophy, of the large emotions of early Christians, the Roman concepts of law, and the state, of the great impulses of the Catholic Church and of Protestantism.
Middle Ages in the belief that in its wars the so-called modern age had become more humane that the Middle Ages, or the distant times, of what is known as barbarism. create martyrs for its ideals, but, independent of these aims and forces, every age has its human history, where individuals and nations engaged in contest for their existence, for great or small aims, for individual or collective objectives, the outward shape of which in its degree of frightfulness essentially depended on inner and outer suffering, and the degree of sincerity in these contests. As subject and object of history man stands in the middle of the development formed by sincere or insincere impulses. Man will take one or the other side or will be driven on by one or the other motive. In meditating on the character of man, he comes perhaps closest to the concept of man who is animated by religious ethic, and moral impulses which he tries to understand in himself in order then to apply them to living history. But as this aim and its practical fulfillment will never coincide, there always will be a tragic tension in the individual life between the religious and moral impulses and their application to real life, not only because individual man is limited in his power, but also because he lives in a worls of powerful groups and social conditions which can wholly ignore his intentions and dispose over him.
That tension, extends and becomes cruder in the history of the nations, both in the living body of the nations themselves, as well as in the relations between the nations. And yet all religions, especially the Christian religion teach that God becomes manifest in history. Experiences in the last years have often shaken that conception, and yet no one with a spark of religion in himself can escape that knowledge.
in God and historic reality as the outward manifestation of human ability and inability, human wisdom and human error, has grown into a general crisis in the human existence as such, since the elements of creations have shown themselves to man, and since human beings were not bound together by common ideals, Bolschevism appeared as the idol, equipped not only with power and force, but even with martyrs. Socialism, the spiritual, religious, political, and social crisis still persists. A link between East and West has been eliminated and this perhaps has made the crisis yet more apparent. In analysing our present time we will always find that ultimate values are still lacking from the feeling, thinking, and acting of human beings and nations. The meta-physical standards are lacking. We must never forget that the basic laws of Christianity in its relatedness to God and individualism with man as its center and its outward expression in the constitutions of states, are diametrically and irreconsilably opposed to one another. To Christianity this will always be true of any social order or political constitution which has made man the sole measure for its moties, the objects of its policies. If the ideas and concepts of democracy, the ideas of human dignity and liberty are to be made the sole yard-stick for the measuring of the recent period in history, it must not be forgotten that the idea of democracy is no substitute for the metaphysical obligation of the Christian or any other religious idea. The democratic idea is a formal one. It lacks all certitude which would comprehend the totality of human life; it assigns duties and privileges to people and social organizations; it grants individual liberties, but it does not give the reason why. Nor is this intended because this would contradict the objectives of democracy. To equip that idea with judicial authority by bestowing on its representatives a legitimacy from a binding religious and moral principle amounts to an entirely unjustified assumption that an idea or a law, which does not exist, is generally binding. As all metaphysical motivation is lacking, this usurpation will always be regarded as an effort by one group to maintain the status quo which will not serve to lessen the tension between the nations.
Nothing can grow from this which would substitute force by an idea binding for all and from which there could come comprehensive motives for a human conception of law and for the shaping of a common history of the nations. period simply because a fight has taken place for moral and ethical principles and, through certain historic conditions, for the survival of nations, even if appearances seem different at a superficial glance. I regard myself as one of those who have become aware of the contrast of those two forces in history. I have myself sensed that tension and endeavored to find a solution. I have said time and again that I was tortured by the fear of the punishment which those in Germany who were responsible for the historic development seemed to invite by their words and deeds. Their frank ignoring of human lives, and of the basic ideas of their own religious and moral conceptions of the people made this fear grow in me, but today my fear of future punishment invited by presentday events is greater still.
I have been now in the Palace of Justice in Nurnberg for 2 1/2 years. What I have seen here of life as a spiritual force in these 2 1/2 years in Nurnberg has increased my fear. Human beings who under normal conditions were decent citizens of their country were deprived of their basis and conception of law, custom, and morals by the power of the victors. The fact that they were deprived of their conceptions which in the place of the lost religious values had given to the majority of human beings moral and ethical support, and the fact that the life which they led justified by those conceptions was now called criminal, made them give up their human dignity, which they should never have done. While they waited for the verdict which was really announced beforehand, when the victorious powers had condemned their basic conception of life, the march of history did not stop, which in its concequences for the peoples concerned put the powers on the judges bench in the wrong before their own verdicts.
over-simplified and over-generalized formulas of the post-war period and contemplate the events of this period from the point of view of the two basic forces which have always decided the flow of events. Not one nation alone is guilty, but ideas and the weight of concrete conditions among the nations fighting for their survival and future find human representatives who are capable of unloosening the pent up tension. The concrete situation facing the nations after this war shows that the tension which still persists and grows daily goes deep back into the past and far beyond the German people and its intentions. take into consideration that these defendants here were thrown into a historic development which they did not cause and which went on independant of their will. None of them has himself selected his place in that development as a result of which he now sits in this dock. They were the target of impulses which made them act as they did independently of their own aim in life. They entered on their task convinced that they were backed by a genuine and justified moral force. They felt that their work was necessary even if it opposed their own inner tendencies and interest, because the existence of their people was in deadly peril. They were the same good average citizens as you find them by the million in all countries. They never thought of criminal activities or criminal aims. They felt that they had been put into an inevitable, awful, and gigantic war which was to decide not only on the survival of their nation, their families and themselves, but where they were also the shield against a unique enemy also for other nations. They were in no position to judge the necessity and methods of this war. They were not responsible for this. They could not be responsible for this. Any other attitude would have been in contradiction to the customs of the states in force for centuries, and the existing responsibility of the highest leaders of the nations. They had to accept the methods and the orders in this war as did all soldiers in all countries, and those who looked at history and who from the things history taught them concluded that the future would be the result of inexorable moral laws ever faced by the tension between the two basic forces in history; in their longing for the realization of ethic and moral ideas and the power of actual history with its overwhelming strength.
They also felt the natural human urge for peace and a normal life with their fellow beings. But the passion of their moral existence included the metaphysical stipulation that the existence of their people must be preserved.
I never lost faith that God is manifest in history; even though we may not understand his ways, no situation will deprive me of my faith that life and death in this world has a reason and must be regarded affirmatively. Never in one moment of my life have I failed to offset the overwhelming forces of practical history with religious, moral, and ethical impulses, whenever life demanded something of me. I always regarded history as the realization of ideas for which human beings were both subject and object and which yet seemed to point to something beyond them. I am of the opinion that this Tribunal will use the historic facts which have become known in the last two years on the background of the past period, facts which not only threaten the existence of the German people, but are a menace to the whole world, in order to truly understand the realities of history in their broad ideological and material implications. The fact that the victorious powers declared the German people guilty and the statement that its legal moral and ethical basis of the past had been unlawful, immoral, and unethical have confused and uprooted the German people as well as the individuals who were heard here in Nurnberg as the representatives of that people. Thus, this legal, moral, and ethical suffering of the German people became greater than the material one which threatens its physical existence. May the verdict of this court take into account the reality of historic conditions and developments and give the Germans, individually and collectively the opportunity of true selfrealization. lest they be kept in the grip of despair because their existence is held to take place outside historic reality and their future fate is based, not on the firmness of law, but on power and force.
without expressing my gratitude for the very generous way in which you have dealt with the problems which we have regarded as important to these proceedings.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Jost will now make his statement.
DEFENDANT HEINZ JOST: Your Honor, having grown up in the years of need of the German people, I decided in 1928 to enter the NSDAP, because I believed that I found in this Party the movement which alone was suited to be able to prohibit the fall of Germany, and was in the position to be able to offer resistance to the ever increasing 1/2ressire pf Bolshevism within Germany, and also abroad. I believed that I would best be able to fulfill my duty toward my people and my Fatherland by taking this path. This point of view also caused me to enter the SD in 1934, an organization which I considered a just and necessary arrangement, an instrument capable of representing particularly in an authoritarian state a constructive rehabilization agency connected with necessary criticism. considerations which I have submitted at length. satzgruppe A, and Chief of the Security Police and SD Eastland in late March of 1942. with this assignment, and in connection with known orders then at hand, and other orders which were given to me later by my superior, I was charged with a singular responsibility, a responsibility which fortunately only few men have had to bear in the long course of history. The execution of the orders given me meant the death of 10,000 people. The knowledge and acqaintance with the fate of these victims, and, in addition, about the inevitable fateful result of this order for the German people brought me to a state of conflict regarding my duties which can not be described today with mere words. I decided in the course of this conflict to undertake everything in my power to render a further execution of these orders impossible, and to commit myself to the revocation of the orders. I myself gave no order, and I did not pass on the order which I received from Heydrich, and I did not carry out the instruction from the Reichs kommissar to render Eastland free of Jews.
I took this position because I had to take it. I did not act in this way in order to derive thanks from some person; neither did any opportunistic considerations influence me. And, moreover, I certainly did not act in this way in order to have an alibi for a prosecutor one day, because in the Summer of 1942 such thoughts would have been absurd. It was possible for me to prevent a further execution of this order for five months so that all Jews who lived in this area at the beginning of my activity there were still living at the end of my activity there. Three-hundred deaths in an area larger than Germany, and in a span of five months are proved by the Prosecution, and these are exclusively concerned with partisans, or such people who had forfeited their lives because of offenses against the laws of war. If I expressed in an appeal that Jews, too, stood under the protection of the laws with their life and property, that was the expression of my conviction that even the Jewish people have their right as a portion of the Godly creation in exactly the way that the German people, too, have this right to live. of a certain Roman Loos, and this statement is supposed to be a standard for the activity of a commander when confronted with orders like the Fuehrer Order. I can only say that in my position I fulfilled all these conditions. I expressed to all my superiors my opinion and my point of view. I did not leave my subordinated in any doubt about my ideas. If the Prosecution introduced documents of this nature, then they would have to be permitted to work favorably for the defendants who acted in accordance with the conditions therein contained. I personally was completely aware of the results which could follow from my actions. It was in the hands of my superiors to act in accordance with them, and finally they did so. Mr. Wartenberg stated in the course of an excited interrogation in May 1947, "We know that you acted very decently in Riga.
We know, too, that you have done everything humanly possible in opposition". This statement admits the compelling conclusion that they were aware of this material which mitigating for me. But they did not submit it. believe as a German and as a man that I acted justly. I can *---* my actions to myself and to any Tribunal in the world with a pure conscience.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Naumann will now make his statement.
DEFENDANT ERICH NAUMANN: Ill conditions within the German people, patriotism and conscientiousness were the reasons which, in 1939, caused me to join the NSDAP. Inspired by the very same patriotism, and the same conscientiousness, I chose the opportunity from 1928 to take part in the brief courses which were held in those days by the then Reichswehr, the predecessor of the later German Army, and, part from exercising my profession, to train myself as a soldier in order to be able to defend my country, should the necessity arise. Thus I received my basic training and visited the NCO officers' courses. to let me join the Army until I achieved my aim, and was able to join the Army in April of 1940. However, this condition did not last for long. As early as December of the same year, I was to return to my former office. Owing to my personal acquaintance with General Juettner of the Waffen-SS, who held then the corresponding rank of Chief of General Staff in the Waffen-SS, I managed to remain with the Army. But through a decree of Himmler I was recalled to my office in March 1941. At the end of November 1941 I took over Einsatzgruppe B by personal order of Heydrich, and thus became acqainted with the Fuehrer Order, which is being dealt with in this trial. Apart from this instinctive attitude against this order, there was the fact that this order had been given by the Supreme Commander, and the Chief of State during the war.
Apart from the wish not to have to comply with this order, there were the considerations that the oath rendered to the Chief of State left no possibility to evade it, and the realization that it was a legal order, as it was given by the Chief of State. In this inner conflict of emotions, in this enormous collision between duty and conscience, I conducted myself as has been described by my counsel in his plea. his assistants for his labors he underwent in my behalf. Psychologically, I rejected this order. On the witness stand I have attempted to give as true a picture as possible of this inner conflict. The testimony of my comrades Steimle and Ott equally show how strong and how serious our objections were against this order. Steimle's and Ott's testimony supported my inner attitude, but we clearly recognized that we had neither the possibility nor the power to take any steps against the order. The Fuehrer Order was also subject of discussions with my military superiors in Russia, the Commanderin-Chief of Army Group Center, Field Marshal von Kluge, and the Commander of the Rear Army Territory, General von Schenkendorf. Also Field Marshal von Kluge, who exercized the entire executive power in Central Russia, and who was the only man in this area who had immediate access to the Fuehrer, stated, that there was no possibility to evade the Fuehrer Order. On many occasions I discussed this with General von Schenkendorf and the result was the same. I would like to say here that friendly relationship developed between von Schenkendorf and myself in spite of the high position and high rank, and his ago; von Schenkendorf was then 68 years old.
he became my fatherly friend. According to information that I had access to I believed that Germany had anticipated the immediate impending attack on the part of the Soviet Union. I was furthermore convinced that Bolshevism was a tremendous danger for Germany and Europe, and that all forces must be mobilized to avert this danger. How right this attitude was has been proved not only by the subsequent period. The causes which led to the cooling off of the Allied relationship between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. prove, I believe, the accuracy of my original point of view.
There I was, a soldier and officer in the East. It was in accordance with my inclination as a soldier, that I regarded my assignment as a purely military one and that I complied with it accordingly. The situation in the Army sector, and the very imminent partisan danger provided the opportunity for this. Therefore, I mobilized the Forces of Einsatzgruppe-B to a large degree for Partisans' reconnaissance and combat, which was made a reason by my superiors later on to reprimand me. bined a battalion of Russians who voluntarily fought on the German side, and had put themselves at our disposal with the Police Company of the Einsatzgruppe-B, a unit of many of the Waffen-SS who were part of Einsatzgruppe-B, and a number of voluntary Ukrainians into one combat unit, and reported voluntarily for combat against partisans as commander of this newly formed unit. This was approved by my superiors. In the course of this combat, I was decorated with the Iron Cross Third Class for bravery before the enemy. I merely mention this fact because the Prosecution in their trial brief, have mentioned this decoration as a reproach. I would like to tell the Prosecution here that I am still proud of this decoration which I have earned for bravery before the enemy.
a unit commander during the whole period of war, because, first, the battalion of Russians, and, later, the mixed battalion were withdrawn from the territory of the Army Unit, and thus I had to dedicate myself entirely to the leadership of Einsatzgruppe-B. I was a German soldier and officer in the truest sense of the word. Whenever I had to order, or to act anywhere, and anyhow on my own initiative, I have always acted in a humane manner. If I was confronted with an order by the Supreme Commander, or the Chief of State, I saw just because I was an obedient soldier no possibility to disobey this order, even though my inner attitude resisted it. When I was in Russia, it so happened that I took over Einsatzgruppe-B only five months after the beginning of the war, and, therefore, I did not have to comply with the Fuehrer Order, because the Fuehrer Order had been given to the Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen and the Commando Leaders at the very beginning. To reject the order I had neither the power nor the possibility. The fact that obedience is the supreme duty of a soldier is shown in the well known speech of the British Field Marshall Montgomery of 1946, in which he says:
"No matter how intelligent the soldier is, the Army would leave the nation in a lurch if she (that is the Army) was not used to obey orders immediately.
It is ing which the Army, i.e., the nation, gives him."
soldier receives and executes severe and severest orders. How could it be possible otherwise that my home town of Dresden, which housed no factories nor any installations of war importance within her boundaries, should be destroyed within 36 hours, and, thus more than two-hundredthousand defenseless human beings, mostly old people, women and children were killed, buried, or cruelty wounded. How would it otherwise have been possible that the old city of my last garrison, old Nuernberg, had been turned into a rubble heap.
How would it have been possible that the first atom-bombs were thrown on Japan, and thousands and thousands of defenseless people had been killed, that through the very consequences of the atom-bomb even the unborn generation will have to suffer? superiors, even if it was not in accordance with their conscience, when they had received the orders, with the reason that they were necessary in order to reach the war aim. my inner attitude have given me the confidence so that I was able to answer the question of the President of this Tribunal which he put to me on 15 September 1947, with a clear conscience and deep conviction by "NOT GUILTY".
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant Naumann, you made reference to a military decoration. The Tribunal will indicate to you that you do not need to make any apologies for a decoration received as a soldier in honorable combat. Any such decoration is respected by all mankind. The Defendant Schulz will now make his statement.
DEFENDANT ERWIN SCHULZ: May it please the Tribunal. To the charges made against me in this trial I have expressed myself on the witness stand. That which had to be said by way of summary was put forth by my defense attorney Dr. Durchholz in his final plea. I have nothing to add to these statements because they corresponded with the truth. Thus, and in no other way, the events unfolded before me. charges of the Prosecution; my statements are impeached. On the day of capitulation I made myself available without qualification for myself, and for the thing which I have to represent not in order to lie but to serve the truth.