_VI. General aspects of criminality_ To understand the line of reasoning on which this presentation of evidence is based, attention is called to the following general criminalistic points of view which in themselves of course are known to the Tribunal. If, nevertheless, they are emphasized here, it is because the Tribunal is confronted with the extraordinarily difficult task of having to form a judgment of events, people, and mental processes from a world of thought which is alien to it. 1. _Limited sphere of activity of individuals under a dictatorial regime_--Undoubtedly it is a characteristic of a dictatorial regime that the great majority of the population sinks into more than average passivity and paralysis of responsibility, in contrast to a democracy where the average citizens, too, the majority of the population, display a far greater initiative out of the practical experience of their liberty and their own sense of responsibility. However, it is a certainty that the few, who, under such a regime stand in opposition to the rulers, thereby doing something which in a democracy would carry no risk worth mentioning, thus risk their lives and liberty. Consequently, it is not possible to do justice to the circumstances involved, if one minimizes the courageous actions of individuals in a dictatorial system by inept comparisons with conditions obtaining in a democracy. It is obvious, that the question to which degree an individual had the power and opportunity in a police-state system to call a halt to developments felt by him to be wrong, must in all fairness be judged by other standards. 2. _Necessity of individual method of observation_--A dictatorship blurs, especially to the foreign observer in a completely inconclusive manner the actually existing, great individual and basic differences, on account of the “coordination” which to begin with was effected in the exterior sphere. Thus, for example a German or Frenchman will hardly succeed in picking out one Chinese face out of a crowd of Chinese. One looks just like another. For that reason it is the more imperative to take into consideration the individual personality and its historic as well as geographical background, like that which binds Dr. Rothenberger to the Hanseatic tradition of the old trading and harbor city of Hamburg; the more inapplicable generalization and standardization may lead to misjudging the specific importance of a personality and the particular nature of his work.