dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SEIDL: Like the Indictment itself, the report constitutes an accusation of a general nature; it does not deal in detail with the results of investigations and with evidence which might justify the conclusions drawn in the report. The objections to be raised to the report must appear all the more valid, since, to take only one example, in Appendix (1) of the report directives for cultural policy are appended which obviously purport to represent instructions given by the Governor General or his administration. Actually, however, nothing of the kind is to be found either in the Official Gazette of the Government General or in any other documents. The witness Dr. Buehler stated during his interrogation that the administration of the Government General had never issued such or similar directives. In consideration of this alone, it' would seem at most admissible to attach substantive probative value to this Exhibit USSR-93 only insofar as the statements therein made are confirmed by genuine documents and other unobjectionable evidence. According to the Indictment, and in particular according to the statements in the trial brief presented by the Prosecution, the Defendant Frank is also alleged to be responsible for the undernourishment of the Polish population. Actually, however, the Prosecution is unable to produce any evidence to show that in the area governed by the Defendant Frank either famine occurred or epidemics broke out. The evidence has revealed on the contrary that the efforts of the Defendant Frank in the years 1939 and 1940 were successful in inducing the Reich to deliver no less than 600,000 tons of grain. That made it possible to overcome the food difficulties caused by the war. It is true that in the following years the Government General contributed in no small degree to the war effort by itself delivering grain. But it must not be overlooked that these deliveries were made possible by an extraordinary increase in agricultural production in the Government General.
DR. SEIDL: And this was in its turn made possible by a farseeing economic policy, especially by the distribution of agricultural machinery, seed corn, and so on. Nor should it be forgotten that the deliveries of grain by the Government General from the year 1941 onward also served to feed the Polish workers placed in Reich territory and that in general these grain deliveries were utilized to maintain the internal balance between the European economic systems. In principle, however, the following should be said concerning this question: In a number of points of accusation the Prosecution has leveled reproaches against the administrative activities of the Defendant Frank in his capacity as Governor General without making an attempt to give an even approximately adequate description of the general work of the defendant and without pointing out its inherent difficulties. There can be no question but that such an attitude transgresses the fundamental rules of any criminal procedure. It is a recognized principle derived from the criminal law principles of all civilized states that a uniform natural process must be judged in its entirety and that its evaluation must take into account all the circumstances of the case that are in any way fit for consideration by the court when passing judgment. This would seem to be all the more necessary in the present case, as the Defendant Frank is accused of having pursued a long-term policy of oppression, exploitation, and Germanization. My Lords, if the Defendant Frank had in truth had any such intentions, then he could certainly have attained his goal in far simpler fashion. It would not have been necessary to issue hundreds of decrees every year, decrees which for example for the year 1940 reached the proportions of this volume that I hold here in my hand. The Defendant Frank, from his first day of office, set himself to integrate the entire economic policy in a manner which one can only term constructive.
DR. SEIDL: Certainly he did this partly in order to strengthen the production capacity of the German nation engaged in a struggle of life and death. But at the same time there can be no doubt that the success of these measures also benefited the Polish and Ukrainian peoples. I do not intend to go into this matter in detail. I will only ask the Tribunal in this connection to take notice of the report given by the Chief of Government on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the existence of the Government General on 26 October 1943. I have included this report in the document books I put in evidence. It is in Volume IV, Page 42. The report gives a concise summary of the measures taken and the successes achieved by the administrative acts of the defendant during these 4 years in all fields of industrial economy, in agriculture, commerce, and transport, in the finance and credit system, in the sphere of public health, and so on. Only in consideration of all these facts is it possible to form an approximately correct estimate of the whole position. For the sake of completeness I will add that the defendant by his administration succeeded in reducing the danger of epidemics-in particular typhus and typhoid-to a degree which had been found impossible in this area in the preceding decades. If much of what had been achieved by the Defendant Frank in the Government General was destroyed in the subsequent fighting, that can certainly furnish no grounds for reproach against the general administration, which had nothing to do with military measures. My Lords, I am certainly not going to deny that in the course of the recent war terrible crimes were committed in the territory known as the Government General. Concentration camps had been established in which mass destruction of human beings was carried out. Hostages were shot. Expropriations took place, and so on. The Defendant Frank would be the last to deny this; he himself waged a 5-year struggle against all violent measures.
DR. SEIDL: The Prosecution has put in evidence, as Exhibit Number USA-610 (437-PS), a memorandum which Frank addressed to the Fuehrer on 19 June 1943. In this memorandum, on Page 11, he listed nine points in which he sharply condemned all the evils which had arisen in consequence of the violence practiced by the Security Police and the SD and of the excesses committed by various Reich authorities, against which all his efforts had proved unavailing. These nine points are in the main identical with the points of accusation against Frank. The content of the memorandum of 19 June 1943, however, shows very plainly that the defendant denies responsibility for these abuses. It reveals, on the contrary, quite clearly that neither the defendant nor the general administration of the Government General can be held responsible for the said evils but that the whole responsibility must be borne by the institutions mentioned above, in particular the Security Police and the SD, or the Higher SS and Police Leader, East. If the Defendant Frank had had the instruments of power wherewith to abolish the evils he condemned, it would not have been necessary for him to address that memorandum to Hitler at all. He would then himself have been able to take all necessary steps. In addition to this the evidence has shown that that memorandum of 19 June 1943 was not the only one addressed to the Fuehrer on the matter. It is clear from the testimony of the witnesses Dr. Lammers and Dr. Buehler and the defendant's own statements in the witness box that from the year 1940 onward he sent protests and memoranda at regular intervals of a few months both to Hitler personally and to the Chief of the Reich Chancellery. These written protests were invariably on the subject of the violent measures taken and the excesses committed by the Higher SS and Police Leader and the Security Police, including the SD. But none of the protests met with success.
DR. SEIDL: As can also be said on the basis of the evidence, the Defendant Frank continually made suggestions to Hitler on the subject of improving relations between the administration of the Government General and the population. The memorandum of 19 June 1943 is also cast in the form of a comprehensive political program. It includes, moreover, all the essential points of protest contained in a memorandum presented in February 1943 to the Governor General, at his own desire, by the leader of the Ukrainian Chief Committee. This latter memorandum was put in evidence by the Prosecution as Exhibit Number USA-178 (1526-PS). Such suggestions were also consistently rejected by Hitler. Under these circumstances it is pertinent to ask what else the Defendant Frank could have done. Certainly he should have resigned. But that too he did. He offered his resignation no less than 14 times, the first time as early as 1939. His resignation was rejected by Hitler as often as it was tendered. But the Defendant Frank did more. He approached Field Marshal Keitel with the request that he be allowed to rejoin the Armed Forces as a lieutenant. That was in tine year 1942. Hitler refused his consent to that too. These facts allow of only one conclusion, namely, that Hitler saw in the Defendant Frank a man behind whose back he (with the help of Himmler and the organs of the Security Police and the SD) could carry out the measures he considered requisite for attaining the aims of his power policy. My Lords, when it became more and more obvious that Hitler and Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler were about to abolish the last remnants of a State founded on law; when it became increasingly apparent that the power of the Police knew no bounds and that a police state of the purest water was in process of development, the Defendant Frank came forward and addressed four great speeches to the German public with a last appeal on behalf of the idea of a State founded on law. He did that when Hitler stood at the summit of his power.
DR. SEIDL: He addressed this appeal to the German public at a time when the German forces were marching on Stalingrad and into the Caucasus, when the German Panzer Armies in Africa stood at El Alamein, barely 100 kilometers from Alexandria. In the course of the evidence I read some extracts from these great speeches which the Defendant Frank made in Berlin, Heidelberg, Vienna, and Munich. Those speeches contained a clear repudiation of every form of police state and championed the idea of the State founded on law, of the independence of the judiciary, and of law as such. These speeches found a tremendous echo among lawyers, but unfortunately not in wider circles. Nor in particular were they echoed by the men who alone would have possessed the power to ward off the threatening catastrophe. The consequences of this attempt to avert the extinction of the idea of the State founded on law by a last great effort are well known. The Defendant Frank was deprived of all his Party offices: he was dismissed from his post as President of the Academy for German Law. The leadership of the National Socialist Lawyers Association was conferred on the Reich Minister of Justice, Thierack. Frank himself was forbidden by Hitler to speak in public. Although the Defendant Frank again on this occasion sent in his resignation as Governor General, Hitler refused to accept it, as he had always done before. The reason for this, as given in a letter from the Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery to the Defendant Frank, was that considerations of foreign policy had caused the Fuehrer again to refuse this latest request of Frank to be allowed to resign. According to everything that has emerged from the evidence in this Trial it may be looked upon as certain that it was not only, and probably not even mainly, for such reasons that Hitler refused to accept Frank's resignation.
DR. SEIDL: The decisive factor was obviously the consideration that it was better policy not to let the Security Police and Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler's other organs fulfill their appointed task openly, but rather to let them continue their work under cover while maintaining a general civil administration under the Governor General. Naturally this open breach between the Defendant Frank, on the one hand, and Hitler and the State Police system represented by Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler and the Higher SS and Police Leader, East, on the other, could not fail to have repercussions on the position of the defendant in his capacity as Governor General. Still more than before the various Reich authorities now began to interfere in the administration of the Government General. Above all, 'however, it was quite clear from the summer of 1942 onward that the Higher SS and Police Leader, East, together with the organs of the Security Police and SD subordinated to him, took no more notice at all of any instructions issued by the Governor General and the general administration. Both in the Government General and in the Reich itself legal institutions receded more and more into the background. The State was transformed into an unadulterated police state, and developments took the inevitable course which the Defendant Frank had foreseen and feared-the course which on 19 November 1941 he had outlined at a congress of the principal section chiefs and Reich group leaders of the National Socialist Lawyers Association in the following words: "Law cannot be degraded to a position where it becomes an object of bargaining. Law cannot be sold. It is either there or it is not there. Law cannot be marketed on the stock exchange. If the law finds no support, then the State too loses its moral stay and sinks into the depths of night and horror."
THE PRESIDENT: We will begin again at 10 minutes past 2. [The Tribunal recessed until 1410 hours.] Afternoon Session
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pannenbecker.
DR. OTTO PANNENBECKER (Counsel for Defendant Frick): Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Tribunal: The American Prosecution, through Dr.Kempner, has charged Defendant Frick with criminal actions according to Article 6, Items a, b, and c of the Charter. I should like first to examine the question as to whether Article 6 of the Charter, with its list of criminal acts, is to be considered as the authoritative expression of material penal law which would lay down, in a manner irrevocably binding on, and not subject to revision by the Tribunal, what actions are to be regarded as punishable; or whether Article 6 of the Charter concerns a rule of procedure defining the competence of this Tribunal for specific subject matters. THE PRESIDENT [Interposing7: Perhaps it will be for the convenience of the interpreters if I say that we might, as it is now nearly half past 2, sit without a break until 4 o'clock, when we rise.
DR. PANNENBECKER: The latter interpretation was implied in the Prosecution's presentation of the case by Sir Hartley Shawcross' remark that although Article 6 of the Charter fills a gap in international penal procedure, the material penal law to be applied to the defendants has already been previously standardized by positive laws. Part II of the Charter, beginning with Article 6, is accordingly entitled: "Jurisdiction and General Principles," and it may be inferred therefrom that Article 6 is intended to establish a ruling as to the competence of this Tribunal as to procedure in specific groups of crimes. Sir Hartley Shawcross' statements were directed against the objection that it is inadmissible and in contradiction with a basic legal principle to punish someone for an act which had not vet been forbidden at the time it was committed; an objection which has as a basis the conception that the Charter has created new material penal law with retroactive effect. It should be examined whether the prohibition of retroaction of penal laws is a legal principle of such importance that it should not be infringed. I need not state to this Court the reasons why this legal principle found general recognition in all civilized countries as a prerequisite and basic precept of justice. In contrast to this, the Prosecution has in its speech charged the defendants with the fact that they themselves had continuously disregarded law and justice, and inferred from this that the defendants in this Trial could not appeal to such a legal principle. I do not believe, however, that such an argument can be decisive in this Trial. The Prosecution has replied in the negative to the further question of whether it would not have been right to pay back in the same coin and not allow the defendants of this Trial any possibility at all to defend themselves in a proper legal procedure. Such a course of simply exercising the power of the victor over the defendants has purposely not been assumed by the signatory powers for reasons presented in detail by the Prosecution.
DR. PANNENBECKER: On the contrary, Sir Hartlev Shawcross has appealed to the Tribunal to apply in this procedure-I quote-"the undisputed principles of international custom." If, however, it is intended to proceed in such a manner, then an examination must take place in keeping with the same principles of law, to determine the question whether the deeds with which the defendants are charged can be regarded as criminal acts for which punishment is possible according to the recognized principles of international custom. It is not, according to these principles, an argument if the use of a legal principle as fundamental as the prohibition of retroaction in penal law is in actual application to be made dependent on whether or not the defendants concerned themselves with law and justice. The decision of the signatory powers to subject, on the basis of considerations which have been seriously weighed, the conduct of the defendants to a proper trial recognizing all legal principles of international custom, therefore signifies not only the observance of legal procedure with all assurances of fair trial, but such a decision by the signatory powers also signifies adherence to the fundamental principles of a material guarantee of justice, of which the prohibition of retroactive penal laws is one. In this connection I should like to point out that the decreeing of the retroactive validity of penal laws, when so ordered by the National Socialist Government for certain individual cases, to which Dr. Stahmer has already referred, shocked the entire civilized world. At that time, the violation of such a principle of law was generally condemned as a deplorable retrogression in civilization. I also ask the Tribunal to recall that one of the first measures taken by the occupation powers for deliverance from the National Socialist abuse of the law was to declare void any laws which had a retroactive effect on the material penal legislation.
DR. PANNENBECKER: In view of this situation there exist valid reasons, I believe, why Article 6 of the Charter should, in accordance with its heading, be regarded as a ruling on the jurisdiction of this Tribunal, all the more so as the signatory powers have already and with so grouch emphasis insisted on a renewed strict and uniform observance of the prohibition against retroactive penal laws. On the basis of such an interpretation, whereby Article 6 establishes the jurisdiction of this Tribunal, it would be for the Tribunal by its own examination not only to determine whether the charges on which the Indictment is based are proved, but also to rule on the legal question as to whether, for the facts established in each case by the Prosecution, there exists a criminal law which makes punishment possible. To revert in this way to provisions of material criminal law in existence at the time the act was committed does not mean that it would be impossible for this Tribunal to call the accused to account for offenses which are punishable under all circumstances. There are, however, a number of restrictions resulting from this which in the opinion of the Defense it would be better to accept rather than violate a principle so essential to just procedure as is the prohibition of retroaction in criminal laws. I am therefore of the opinion that it is entirely possible, and not incompatible with the necessity for just expiation for war crimes, to interpret Article 6 in accordance with its heading as a ruling on the jurisdiction of this Court, but not as new material criminal law. The next remarks concern themselves with the conspiracy, a matter which has been dealt with by Dr. Stahmer to such an extent that I can omit these pages. I continue now on Page 7 with the summary. The Charter does not impose the interpretation that a defendant is responsible also for such acts of commission as exceed the measure of his participation in the common plan.
DR. PANNENBECKER: The wording of the Charter, "in the execution of a common plan," does not contradict the interpretation that the Charter establishes liability for acts of commission which remained within the scope of the said plan. To that extent the assumption of liability for the actions of others complies with a demand of justice, but beyond that it would * Proceeding from this interpretation of the Charter there arises the need for a discussion on how the Indictment is to be construed with respect to the conspiracy charged therein. This construction is based on the legal concept of Anglo-American law which determines the responsibility of a plurality of persons differently and in a more far-reaching way than the German penal code, which contains the principles of law to which the accused were subject at the time when they committed the deed. The German penal code also provides that a person can be held responsible for offenses committed by others provided he participated in a common plan which was later carried out by others. But the German penal code places decisive weight on determining the extent to which the acts committed at a latter date correspond to the common plan. Since in the serious crimes which are being prosecuted before this Court the determination of the form of guilt in the original plan is necessary in order to permit punishment, later acts of commission by others can be charged against a defendant only to the extent to which they corresponded to arrangements to which the defendant deliberately agreed. A defendant who participated in certain plans cannot be held responsible for subsequent plans of a wider scope, or for acts of commission which far exceeded the original plans without his co-operation. Responsibility for subsequent plans and acts of commission can be established according to German law only if it can be proved that the defendant, without participating in those subsequent plans and actions, at the time of his original violate essential legal principles.