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 submitted records of individual proceedings provide plenty of
opportunity to form an opinion on all individual questions thrown up
by this trial especially on the aim of judicial activity, the sentence
in its relationship to the requirements of the proceedings and its
assailability in the interest of legal security, from which it will
clearly emerge that the sentence, even that of the Special Court, was
only an intermediate and by no means the final stage of the work of
ascertaining justice either when finding the defendant guilty or when
pronouncing the sentence. Thereby it may be possible too, to clear up
the linguistically unfortunate term of “psychological producing of
evidence” which has found its way into this trial. Thus, the legal and
psychological task of the presiding judge in accordance with German
criminal law will have to be explained, and it will have to be shown
how Rothaug confronted his task, solved it in the practical legal
procedure, and which objections he had to face in connection with the
results of his work by departments which in the course of their own
duties had to examine, control and, if necessary, correct.
Furthermore, it will be my task to prove that in Rothaug’s official
working sphere without exception all defendants without consideration
of nationality, national origin, or race, were granted the same legal
guaranties as any German according to German criminal law, thus that
no case was treated as an exception to the general rule, that this
was also done in all proceedings against Poles, who apart from one
outstanding case bearing a special character, were the only foreigners
against whom Rothaug proceeded.
This, generally and in particular, touches upon the problem which
determines the judge’s and the prosecutor’s position to the legislation
for Poles from an objective legal point of view, of which have to be
discussed the actual and legal basis and aspects from and through which
the German judge and prosecutor whether in the North, South, East, or
West, had to view matters under the spell of the German legal doctrine.
Here the greatest importance has to be attached to the kind of offense
in question, the place of the crime and last, but not least, the
question whether these Poles had really been deported and had not
voluntarily, accepting certain conditions, placed themselves at the
disposal of the German war power.
In this context, we cannot omit to discuss the principles which the
highest judicial authorities have pronounced in connection with this
whole complex. Here I must leave the justification of the legislation
as such to others who are responsible for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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