dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): Before I consider the Indictment in its individual points, I should like to sketch in a few short words the personality of the defendant. The words in Schiller's tragedy "Wallenstein" apply to him, too: "don der Parteien Hass und Gunst verzerrt, schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte" (Torn by the hatred and favoritism of parties, his character wavers irresolutely in history). The Prosecution in the trial brief call him a cunning, coldly calculating, political opportunist who had a mission before his eyes. It said it is notoriously known that he misused his position as minister in order by his double-dealing to deliver Austria to the conspirators; he has committed atrocities in Poland and in the Netherlands in cold blood, and has trampled upon the rights of small nations to freedom of religious and political thought, regardless of constitutional obligations. George S. Messersmith judges similarly in 1760-PS, when he says that according to reliable information he received, Dr. Seyss-Inquart, with whom he himself had little personal contact (the defendant denies ever having met Messersmith), was completely insincere in his dealings with his friend Chancellor Schuschnigg. Incidentally, the statement that Schuschnigg and Seyss-Inquart were friends is incorrect. Messersmith had left Vienna in the spring of 1937. As all witnesses testify, Dr. Schuschnigg had at that time just become acquainted with Seyss-Inquart. But Messersmith added in his own words that there is only one thing which may be said in favor of Seyss-Inquart at that time: That he may have believed the German protestations which were made to him that Austrian independence would be respected. Mr.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): Gedye who was the Vienna correspondent of English and American newspapers for many years has also mentioned Seyss-Inquart in his book, Austria's Suicide, and has said about him: "He is a well brought up National Socialist, which is twice as disturbing, a young, intelligent lawyer of nice appearance and good manners, who clearly emphasized that he is opposed to the throwing of bombs and to noisy demonstrations, and who preaches in drawing rooms regarding the superiority of intellectual weapons over rough, material methods." Martin Fuchs, the author of the book quoted by me, A Pact with Hitler, says concerning the defendant, "Seyss-Inquart was known to the public as a National Socialist but also as a practicing Catholic and representative of an Austrian Nazi movement which was to keep Austria on the side of the Reich." In Austria they now condemn the defendant because he brought about the German entry by his telegram. Many a friend of mine who has returned from Dachau and Mauthausen has, therefore, reproached me for defending before the Tribunal the man who betrayed our country. Dutchmen whom I questioned concerning the personality of the defendant told me that the Dutch people hated him as Hitler's supreme representative in the country, especially since he had stated at the beginning of the occupation that he came as friend of the Dutch, and that he had deceived them in this respect. I myself knew the defendant in Vienna only as a professional colleague. He was generally considered as an able and decent lawyer, and politically he was in close touch with Nationalist circles, without being outstanding in any particular manner. But in the many discussions which I have had with the defendant in the course of the trials, I have tried to form an exact picture of his personality. We often talked together about our families, our common experience at the front, especially in the Tyrolese mountains, where he was a brave and cautious company leader, and where he was wounded.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): He also liked to talk about daring excursions into the mountains, but he liked best to talk about music, and I have often thought that a man who could speak so sensitively about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruckner cannot be a monster and above all not a cruel cold-blooded criminal, because love of nature and music can find an abode only in the heart of a good person. His political program was the Anschluss idea, and, considering his origin, this is also easy to explain. His real home is the old mining town of Iglau, a German-speaking island in a Slavic sea. At an early age he became aware of the small-scale battle which was being waged by two hostile nations. Deeply moved, he has heard that last year the storm of the times swept over his home town too and that Iglau, which had been German for 800 years, has ceased to be German. Therefore, in judging the defendant, we should not forget that it is the Germanic borderlands that have always experienced the greatest national distress and held more strongly and fervently to the idea of the great German fatherland than the nationals of the rest of the Reich, lulled into self-complacency born of self-confidence. Thus, it is no accident that leading men in the Anschluss movement, whose names stand out in my document book, came from the Sudetenland. Doctor Otto Bauer, the late leader of the Socialists, comes from Untertannowitz in Moravia-that is, from German Sudetenland. The last time I saw the Defendant was in the autumn of 1938, and I did not meet him again until I saw him here in prison. Therefore, I also asked one of his collaborators in Holland, who enjoys the respect of the Dutch, and who was no National Socialist, and who as a senior judge can be relied on, for an impartial opinion on the personality of Dr. Seyss-Inquart. He writes: "In his work, his clear, keen thinking and the systematic manner in which he applied his many-sided talents in carrying out his duties struck me at once as his outstanding qualities.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): "Unlike many of his equals he never dulled his sense of reality by fanatically preconceived notions but, as is fitting for a conscientious politician, always strove to approach things soberly and without prejudice and to see them as they really were. That also is why he developed the ability and inner composure to listen calmly to other people, including his subordinates, to deliberate with them and to yield to their opinion. . . Social life in his house was on a dignified and unusually high level. The atmosphere of the house revealed at once that the host was a man of culture. He knew no hate, and whenever he thought he saw hate approaching, he never answered with hate or revenge, but only with measures deemed appropriate for the prevailing situation. "It is the great tragedy of his life and work that in the person of Hitler and several persons among those who were his closest co-workers, elements crossed his path which were stronger than he. . . "As an intellectual, spiritually cultivated person he became immediately suspect to the main forces in the Party bureaucracy surrounding Hitler-Bormann and, in the SS administration, Himmler-although he wore the Golden Party Badge of Honor and occupied a high honorary rank in the SS. He continued to be the young Party member who came from the ranks of the intellectuals, who were always regarded with mistrust. For those elements he was too 'soft.' He nevertheless hoped that he might succeed in preventing independent sections in the Reich from working their way into his sphere of action, as he himself was gradually winning the Fuehrer's confidence. As I have already said, his relation to the Fuehrer was to be his fate. "The Fuehrer's amazing knowledge, his never-yielding, all-conquering energy and his outstanding successes in the field of domestic as well as foreign policy during the first years after the so called seizure of power, drew Seyss-Inquart-as also happened to outstanding men in foreign countries-under Hitler's influence.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): He became a loyal follower of Hitler and sincerely believed that in the latter love for the German people was the prime motive of his actions. He also believed-in any case for some time and during the extreme distress of the German people-that he must continue to cling to Hitler even though the recognition of his weaknesses and faults dawned upon him... "However, I am firmly convinced that he, like so many of our people, was more an unwitting victim than a willing tool of the demoniacal power of Hitler..." This is the opinion of an upright German judge. The Prosecution base the Trial on the concept of conspiracy, in an endeavor thus to forge a chain around the defendants to link them all together in one common responsibility. My learned colleagues have already spoken extensively of the concept of conspiracy and its consequences in this Trial. To repeat these statements would be to carry coals to Newcastle. But because this is the leading theme of the Trial, and because it seeks to shift the responsibility for the world-shaking events to my client in particular, I should like to submit to the Court a few additional ideas on this subject. When turning over the pages of history we often come across stories about men who combined to overthrow a ruler who was disliked, or a system that was hated, and to seize power for themselves. All these cases are lumped together under the general, all-embracing term "plots." In the book published in Paris, entitled The Technique of the State Plot, Malaparte, an Italian, attempted to describe the technical methods applied in plots and revolutions, from Catiline to Hitler and Mussolini. Even this survey of technique will be sufficient to show how unjustified it is to dub all these undertakings "plots," if it is intended to encompass within this term a definite concept such as is known in penal law. In any case it is not possible to classify all these things which in popular terminology are called "plots" under the heading of "conspiracy," as is done by the Prosecution.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): When Guy Fawkes and his companions at the time of James I tried to blow up the English Parliament in the socalled "Gunpowder Plot," perhaps this was a real conspiracy. To the present day the English people on the 5th of November of every year celebrate with fireworks and bonfires and the burning of a straw dummy the anniversary of the day which saw the fortunate prevention of the plot. It would be a mistake, however, to term any kind of co-operation for political aims a conspiracy, because-and it is particularly important to repeat and stress this- the vagueness of colloquial usage has always made it possible to use the word "conspiracy" when talking of political struggle, and thereby justify, because of the lack of adequate legal grounds, the destruction of political opponents. Because in this Trial Holland is of particular interest to me, I wish to cite two illustrations from her history. The one is to recall Holland's fight for liberty against Philipp II, which two of our greatest poets-Goethe in Egmont and Schiller in his Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinigten Niederlande -- chose as subjects for their dramatic representations. Schiller writes about the heroic death of the two brave Dutchmen, Egmont and Horn. The insulted ruler had pronounced both counts guilty, because they had encouraged and assisted in the outrageous conspiracy of the Prince of Orange and because they had protected the confederate noblemen and had badly served the king and the Church in their governorships and other offices. Both were to be beheaded in public, their heads were to be mounted on spears and were not to be removed until so ordered by the Duke. All their possessions, feudal tenures and rights were confiscated by the Royal Treasury. The verdict was signed by the Duke alone and his secretary Franz, and nobody took the trouble to obtain the consent of the rest of the criminal counsellors...
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): Two decades later during the well-known period of 1588 to 1598, the young Dutch State had been given its final safeguard, thanks to the joint leadership of the Republic by the Raadspensionaris Johann van Oldenbarnevelt as statesman and through Maurits van Oranje Nassau as Field Marshal. But the opposition between these two men was to lead to a tragic result. Both, the highly respected, aged Raadspensionaris Oldenbarnevelt, as well as his friend Hugo Grotius-the father of international law-were imprisoned because of conspiracy. While Grotius saved his life by escaping from his prison cell in a bookcase, Oldenbarnevelt's head fell because-so the verdict said-he had deeply afflicted the Church of God. The trinity of the State, however, hand been saved. Spain's dominion over the seas passed to the small Republic of Holland. For the French prosecutor I should like to cite from the history of his country, France, an example of an obviously unjustified accusation of conspiracy. Louis XVI was accused of conspiring against the nation and was found guilty. Citizen De Sèze, on 26 December 1792, in the first year of the Republic, conducted his defense at the bar of the National Convention. His plea was probably one of the most moving ever delivered, a discourse in which the defense counsel had to deal at the same time with another danger of criminal jurisdiction arising from political causes or political passions- namely, against a violation of the legal principle nullum crimen et nulla poena sine lege. Undaunted and unafraid, he declared: "Where there is no law which can serve as a precept, and where there is no judge to pronounce the sentence, one should not have recourse to the general will. The general will as such cannot speak either about a man or about a fact. But if there is no law according to which one can judge, then it is also not possible to give judgment, and there can be no sentence." We still find today this principle nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege firmly rooted in almost all law books.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): We find it in the German and in the Austrian Penal Code; and we also find it in French law, in Article 4 of the code penal, which states: "Nulle contravention, nul délit, nul crime, ne peuvent être punis de peines qui n'etaient pas prononcées par la loi avant qu'ils fussent commis." The American weekly Time wrote with justice in its 22d Number, 26 November 1945, in an article: "Whatever laws the Allies attempt to establish for the purpose of the Nuremberg Trial mostly did not yet exist at the time when these acts were committed. Since the days of Cicero, a punishment ex post facto has been damned by the jurists." That this principle has not lost any of its significance even today while this Trial is still going on, but on the contrary has kept its full meaning, is shown by the fact, and I should like to remind the French prosecutor again, that the French Constitution which was submitted to the National Assembly on 19 April 1946, establishes specifically as a statute of the Rights of Man in Article 10: "The law has no retroactive force. No one can be convicted and punished, except according to the law which has been promulgated and made public before the deed which is to be punished. Every person accused is considered under reservation as innocent until he is declared guilty. No one can be punished twice for the same deed." What is the Right of Man for the French, must necessarily be the Right of Man for the German. This principle is not only rooted firmly in national law, but also in international law. When after the first World War the Allies demanded from the Netherlands the extradition of Emperor Wilhelm II who had found sanctuary there, the Dutch Government refused the surrender of the emperor with the following words: "Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles has come into force on 10 January 1920, and it does not appear on the list of punishable acts which are considered in Holland's laws or in the treaties which Holland concluded.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): This new crime was also not contemplated by the penal legislation of the countries which demand the extradition of the emperor." A. Morignhac and E. Lemonon, Droit des gens et la guerre de 1914 - 18, Volume II, Page 572 express themselves similarly: "Nul ne peut être puni autrement qu'en vertu d'une loi auparavant adoptée et publiée, pour cette  raison, ce qu'on exige de la Hollande c'est de collaborer à un procès contraire à l'idée même de la justice." When in the year 1935, the idea of analogy found its way, into German criminal law, this innovation met with severe criticism in juristic circles also outside Germany. The second International Congress for Comparative Jurisprudence held in The Hague in the year 1937 formulated a resolution against analogy in criminal law. In this resolution, the congress expressed itself in favor of the principle nulla poena sine lege. (See: Voeux et Résolutions du Deuxième Congrès International de Droit Comparé, La Haye, 4-11 Août 1937.) From the afore-mentioned statements it follows that it is legally inadmissible to apply principles in this Trial which lack a legal basis. Continental law does not know the concept of conspiracy. Austrian law, which could come into question as the national law for my client, does not know this concept either. There are at best very small similarities if we point out that the Explosives Law of 27 May 1885, Article 5, already declares the concerting together for the execution of a crime with explosives as punishable. Article 174, IC of the Penal Code makes theft a major crime if the thief commits theft as a member of a gang which has banded together for the common commission of robbery. German law recognized the responsibility under the Penal Code for the act of another only as accomplice, instigator, and helper. Conditions in French law are similar, and to save time I refer to Articles 59, 60, 89, and Article 265 of the Code Pénal. That this fact is not clear and at least dubious is also admitted by the reputed Russian teacher of international law, Professor A. N.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): Trainin in his book, La responsibilité pénale des Hitlériens. He states on Page 13: "The problems of international penal law have unfortunately been studied very little. There is lacking a theoretical, clear definition of the fundamental concept of 'international crime,' and a well-ordered system of this law still remains to be created." According to the Prosecution, the aim or the means of the conspiracy are crimes against peace, against the rules of war, and against humanity. Professor Jahrreiss has already spoken extensively about the liability for punishment of individuals for the violation of international peace, and has described and given due recognition to the status of non-German international jurisprudence. But since jurists of German tongue have also concerned themselves with this question, I would like to make an additional remark. The well-known Austrian scholar of international law, Alfred von Verdross, has established in his book International Law: "According to prevailing opinion, subjects of a crime under international law can only be states as well as other legal communities immediately subject to international law, but not individual persons..." There would be only an international obligation of an individual person when international law itself would connect and order a state of facts with a consequence of injustice that these standards are applied immediately to the state of facts established by a person. Only by that will persons, who according to valid law are only subject to national civil and penal law, be bound as an exception by international law itself. After these short supplementary statements of the legal bases of the Trial I turn to the Indictment, which accuses my client of having participated in the seizure and control in Austria as a conspirator, and of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Poland and in the Netherlands. Thus the first act takes place in Austria and the second in the Netherlands, after a short interlude in Poland.
DR. GUSTAV STEINBAUER (Counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart): East of Berchtesgaden lies Obersalzberg, at an altitude of 1,000 meters, a mountain at the northern base of the Hohen Goell, covered with meadows and forests, with scattered farm houses and with a wonderful view. Above the old road is the impressive Berghof which resulted from the reconstruction of the Wachenfeld House in 1936. It is here, not on the Rhine, not in the Teutoburg Forest or on the shores of the North Sea, that Adolf Hitler established his residence when he desired relaxation far away from the Reich Chancellery. Hidden by a small hill, the house of General Field Marshal Goering lies behind the corner of the house. Adolf Hitler stands at the window of his country house, in deep thought, and gazes on the snow-covered mountains. The country which is protected by these mountains is Austria, his homeland. It is a German land, free and independent, and not subject to his will as is the Reich, whose absolute Fuehrer he has become. When he wrote his lifework in the fortress of Landsberg, he wrote on the first page of his book: "German Austria must return to the great German fatherland." The shades of night rise slowly from the deep valleys and his thoughts glide over the mountains to the old imperial city on the Danube, Vienna, which he both loves and hates. It is the city of his joyless youth, a memory filled with want and misery. In his book Mein Kampf, he compares this city with Munich, and says about the latter: "Munich, a German city, how different from Vienna, I feel sick when I think of this racial Babylon." And still, this city is the goal of his longing and he calls this same city in the March days of 1938 a pearl to which he will give the setting which its beauty deserves. On his table lies a book: The History of the Germans in Austria. Hitler read this book again and again; it is the history of his homeland, and we also will glance through it, as far as time permits. We read: Austria was throughout many centuries one of the strongest pillars of German life.