That would wrong Sievers to a high degree, your Honors! Other resistance groups too had the misfortune that they had not more opportunity to act. The witness Hielscher exposed very clearly the reasons why a standstill was inevitable after the failure of the plot on 20 July 1944. As Hielscher and his associates could no longer depend upon the army, they were compelled to start again from the very beginning. What were the intentions and the mission of the defendant Sievers within the Hielscher group? Hielscher himself answers that. Sievers’ tasks were of two kinds: (1) Gathering news from the immediate proximity of Himmler as basis for the disposal of the resistance forces with regard to place, time, and kind of action. (2) Sievers was not only a spy and a scout; at the moment of action he was destined and ready to do away with Himmler. These two tasks require a double legal examination: Were they in themselves permissible, lawful, or even a duty? The answer to this question is to be found in the principles which I evolved in the idea of self-defense in the sphere of political struggle. What measures was he allowed to take? To what extent could he venture to advance into the domain of criminality? To what extent could he involve uninitiated third persons in his plans, even actual victims of Nazism? The rules of “necessity” lead the way for judging and solving this problem. In taking up the first question I can be relatively brief. After all we know today, it is an irrefutable fact that Hitler and his accomplices terrorized the German Nation and the whole world in a criminal way and with criminal means, that from the beginning they were an immediate peril to peace and all civilization and that finally the worst apprehensions turned to ghastly reality. Therefore the first prerequisite for the defense of “necessity” is beyond all doubt a present illegal attack on the highest goods of mankind. To put it in the words of the German Penal Code that was the “necessity” (“not”) which was to be warded off. But we also know that this defense was not to be accomplished with the normal means of a democratic parliamentary system. I described the truly diabolical organization by which it had been rendered impossible to make use of these means. Thence follows that the removal of Hitler and his accomplices was the only possible expedient to break and smash this system. Less hard and violent means were not available. As a matter of course it follows that Hielscher’s plan to do away with Himmler had become legal and compulsory for those in the position to execute it. After the evidence of Hielscher and other trustworthy witnesses, it cannot be denied that Sievers had been charged with this task. If it was justified to do away with Himmler, the accompanying and preparing scouting-activity was justified too.