It goes without saying that the member of a resistance movement can only refer to his resistance, if this resistance is lawful. This will not always be the case; for, political crime and similar actions committed for political motives are crimes and will remain such. He who removes a political adversary only to take his position or to open the way for his partisans acts unlawfully and is liable to punishment. The situation, however, becomes different if not only a political discussion is interrupted by murder, but where a tyrant whose government is inscribed with bloody letters in the annals of mankind is at last felled to the ground. In this case the perpetrator is supported by an acknowledged excuse. This excuse is self-defense. According to the German Penal Code, Article 53, an action is not punishable if it is committed in self-defense. And self-defense is such defense as is necessary to ward off from oneself or another person an imminent unlawful attack. These principles are, however, not only German legal stipulations. They are legal values of all nations and all times. To a large extent they tally with human sentiments and are termed “the great law of defense.” They are already found in Roman law in the formulation “vim vi expellere [repellere] licet”—force may be driven out by force—and have been enthusiastically taken over by English common law and by American law, as stated by Wharton, “Criminal Law”, paragraph 613. They authorize every individual to ward off injury from himself or another person with all necessary means at his command. From this point of view too the struggle against a criminal government threatening the peace of the world, preparing aggressive wars, ready without any purpose or need to plunge the whole world into immeasurable misery from sheer striving for power, from presumption and conceit; struggle and resistance against such a government and such guidance are lawful and permissible, no matter by what means they may be carried on. Since the end of the war even, the opinion has been maintained more and more that such a struggle is not only lawful and permissible but is even the duty of every individual. Is not the collective guilt of the whole German nation substantiated by the charge that it witnessed the doings of the Nazi government without interfering at least with a secretly clenched fist in its pocket? Murder and manslaughter, bodily injury and restriction of liberty inflicted upon the potentates and responsible men of such a system are acts of self-defense for the benefit of peace and mankind. They are lawful and exempt from punishment; they are a duty if there is no help possible in any other way.