According to well-considered opinions, we must start from the premise that the defendants, both in principle and in procedure, are to be tried according to German criminal law. They lived under it during the period in question and were subject thereto. For this reason I wish to approach one more viewpoint which should be considered independently, and in addition to the legal excuses already mentioned, when judging the conduct of the defendants. For many years the legal provisions for emergency cases have proved inadequate. For a long time an endeavor was made to fill the gaps with theoretical explanations of a general nature, and finally the Reich Supreme Court handed down basic decisions expressly recognizing an “extra legal emergency”. The considerations on which they were based are known as the “objective principle of the evaluation of conflicting rights and interests.” In the legal administration of the Reich Supreme Court and in further discussions this principle, to be sure, is combined with subjective considerations of courses of action taken by the perpetrator in the line of duty. Therefore it is necessary to discuss both considerations, that of evaluating conflicting rights and interests and that of compulsion by duty together, even if we must and shall keep them distinctly separated for the time being. The consideration of an evaluation of conflicting rights and interests as legal excuse is generally formulated as follows: “Whoever violates or jeopardizes a legally protected right or interest of lesser value in order to save thereby a legally protected right or interest of greater value does not act in violation of the law.” The lesser value must yield to the greater one. The act, when regarded from this point of view, is justified, its unlawfulness—and not merely the guilt or the perpetrator—is cancelled out. This so-called principle of evaluating conflicting rights and interests is first of all a formal principle which establishes the precedence of the more valuable right or interest as such. This formal evaluation principle requires on its part a further material evaluation of the rights or interests comparatively considered. This evaluation again requires the adoption of the law and its purport to the general attitude of a civilization and, finally, to the conception of law itself.