Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IIIVarious
History
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume III
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
the object of creating the necessary synthesis between merely codified
law and the actual development of law through the giving of legal
judgments, so also shall I show, in my defense of the defendant Klemm,
in general, that he, too, was concerned, in his measures, with the
preservation of real justice. Reference will therefore inevitably be
made to the background of historical development behind the measures
with which he is charged, to the related points in the German legal
system, and to the actual distribution of power existing during the
Hitler regime. In this connection a great deal will depend on the view
that is taken of his position, his potential influence and the limits
of his authority.
In particular, I shall divide the subject matter of my proof into
sections.
In the first place, it will be necessary to begin with the fact that,
outwardly, the defendant Klemm has to bear a certain amount of odium:
he had joined the NSDAP before it took over power, and he remained
in it until the capitulation; he was at first Oberstaatsanwalt and
Ministerial Councilor in the Reich Ministry of Justice, he was chief of
liaison with the SA and reached high rank in that organization, he was
a group leader in the Party Chancellery, and he was finally to become
Under Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, the last position
he held, and a personal friend of and very close collaborator with
Thierack, the Minister. The indictment evidently intends, by giving
this outward impression, to exhibit Klemm as a man who considered
justice to be a means, and treated it as a means, to exclusively
political ends. I shall prove that this was not the case. In order to
demonstrate the seeming contradiction between outward appearance and
actual private character, I consider it my duty to give the Tribunal a
comprehensive picture of the personality of my client as a jurist and
as a man. It will become evident that he was and remained a simple and
straightforward person, even after he rose higher in his career, that
he was a man of sensitive disposition and refined feeling and always
endeavored to act objectively and above all justly. I shall therefore
have to ask my client to explain in the witness box the ideas he had
conceived as to the aims of the NSDAP, the hopes he had before him in
the legal and political field, and the way in which he believed it
possible that the political intentions of the leadership of the state
could be combined with the idea that law has to prevail. He will have
to explain to the Tribunal how many things he actually did not know in
order to enable us to gain an accurate picture of the situation at that
time and of the developments.
So far as the separate phases of the activity of the defendant Klemm
are concerned, it must be said--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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