Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IIVarious
Philosophy
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume II
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
Therefore, it will be sufficient to emphasize that the alleged
negligence depends on the existence of a duty of supervision and the
right to give orders through other agencies. In every state the spheres
of competence are separated, and it is not possible for everyone to
interfere in everything on the basis that everyone is responsible for
everything.
The prosecution says that the defendant Karl Brandt ought to have used
his influence and availed himself of his intimate relations with Hitler
to stop the experiments. Even presuming that he was aware of the facts
as crimes, his guilt would not be of a legal, but only of a political or
moral nature. Until now nobody has been held criminally responsible for
the conduct of a superior or a friend; the question of criminal law,
however, is the only one the Tribunal has to consider. As a matter of
fact this close relationship did not exist. The defendant Karl Brandt
was the surgeon who had to be in attendance on Hitler; Dr. Morell, the
latter’s personal physician, soon tried to undermine the confidence
placed in Karl Brandt so that he was given commissions which removed him
further and further from the sphere of his medical activity.
The alleged intimate relations were eventually crowned by the dictation
of a death sentence against Karl Brandt without his having been granted
even a hearing on the charges advanced against him.
If one sums up everything relating to the medical experiments and
follows to a large extent the charges of the prosecution, it is an
established fact that it is not shown that the defendant Karl Brandt
participated in any way in experiments on prisoners of war and
foreigners, or that he was cognizant of them. Therefore, no war crime or
crime against humanity has been committed, and consequently punishment
under Law No. 10 is excluded. I refer in this connection to the legal
arguments in my closing brief.
The second problem is euthanasia.
The authorization of 1 September 1939 was issued before the period of
the medical experiments, at a time when the defendant Karl Brandt was
still closely attached to the Fuehrer’s headquarters and to Hitler as an
accompanying physician.
In my closing brief I have explained in detail that the defendant Karl
Brandt did not participate in the Action 14 f 13, with the “special
treatment” of prisoners in concentration camps, occurrences which were
given the name of euthanasia only here in the trial.
Neither did the defendant Karl Brandt take any part in the extermination
of Jews in Auschwitz, which again has nothing in common with the idea of
euthanasia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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