had a very good consumer district in south Germany, particularly in Bavaria and in Wuerttemberg. Into this consumer district Mr. Pleiger had advanced and mainly he had come from the east, from Linz. There he had built the Linz foundry. Now, we knew that Pleiger was trying very hard to annex in Lorraine and Luxembourg some large possessions. In other words, there was the danger that the consumer district of Maxhuette would not only be threatened from the east but perhaps to a large extent from the west. In order to keep our fingers in the pie, that is, in the price policies in Lorraine and Luxembourg, we took that as a reason for taking an interest in Rombach.

IX. CLOSING STATEMENTS

A. Introduction

The closing statements for the prosecution and defense are set down in more than 600 pages of transcript (Tr. pp. 10344–10969) and their delivery required 5 trial days. The closing statement for the prosecution, delivered on 24 November 1947, was followed by nearly 4 days of defense closings (25, 26, 28, and 29 Nov. 1947). The rebuttal statement for the prosecution, also delivered on 29 November 1947, occupied approximately 1 hour of trial time. The defense closings were rendered in the following order: Burkart, Terberger, Kaletsch, Steinbrinck, Weiss, and Flick. From this voluminous argumentation the following are reproduced herein: extracts from the closing statement for the prosecution (sec. B); extracts from the closing statement for defendant Burkart (sec. C); extracts from the closing statement for defendant Steinbrinck (sec. D); extracts from the closing statement for defendant Weiss (sec. E); the closing statement for defendant Flick (sec. F); and the rebuttal closing statement for the prosecution (sec. G).

Closing statements for the defendants, Terberger and Kaletsch, no parts of which are reproduced herein, may be found in the mimeographed transcript, pages 10572-10713. The opening statements for the prosecution and for each of the defendants are reproduced in full in section III.

*

B. Extracts from the Closing Statement for the Prosecution PRESIDING JUDGE SEARS: We will hear the argument for the prosecution on each count of the indictment.

INTRODUCTION

GENERAL TAYLOR: On 18 April 1947, over 7 months ago, the prosecution in its opening statement outlined the evidence in support of the indictment which has been brought against these defendants. Since that time the evidence presented in support of the charges has been subjected to months of sustained scrutiny, analysis, attack, and explanation by the defendants and their very able and energetic counsel. Whatever anyone may ever say about this proceeding, no one can ever say truthfully that the defendants had anything but the fullest opportunity to justify their actions in a proceeding conducted with endless patience and judicial detachment.

In summing up this case after 7 months of trial, the prosecution sees no necessity or benefit from a tedious rehearsal of details of the record. We are filing factual briefs, on each count of the indictment, as requested by the Tribunal, on the evidence under each count of the indictment. In this oral statement, we propose to confine ourselves to the most salient items of proof, and to deal principally with the defenses, excuses, and explanations upon which the defendants have chiefly relied.

For in this last analysis, and now that the proof is in, it seems to us that there are relatively few important issues of fact to be resolved. On most of the essential points the record leaves little room for doubt. Millions of civilians from the countries occupied by Germany were brought to the Reich against their will and put to work. Thousands of them did work as forced laborers in plants of the Flick Concern. This constituted enslavement. Upon occasions often the conditions of employment were such that disease and death were bound to and did occur. Flick and the other defendants of the Flick Concern during the war knew that there were many enslaved workers among the employees of their plants. We will outline the proof. The defendants did seek

to acquire and did acquire possession and control of factories and other capital goods in the occupied territories against the will of the true owners. The defendants did seek to acquire and did acquire extensive properties, and in effecting these acquisitions the defendants utilized the anti-Semitic laws and politics of the

* 24 November 1947, Transcript pages 10344-10463.

Nazi government as a lever. The defendants Flick and Steinbrinck did establish relations with Himmler at an early date; they continued to meet regularly with Himmler and other notorious SS leaders right up to the end of the war, and they did contribute substantial sums of money which became part of the financial resources of the SS. All these basic facts charged in the indictment have been conclusively proved and cannot, I believe, now be seriously disputed.

Essentially, therefore, the defense in this case is by way of confession and avoidance, or by way of demurrer. Private persons, as these defendants claim to be, are said to be beyond the reach of international penal law. This court is said to be unlawfully constituted and without jurisdiction. The defendants profess to have been ignorant, at first, that thousands of their employees were brought from distant lands against their will, and to have learned about this shocking circumstance only late in the war. Substandard and dangerous conditions of employment, and mistreatment, they say they know nothing of; anyhow, it wasn't so bad; anyhow, it was bad elsewhere, too; and anyhow they did all they could to ameliorate the situation. The plants and factories which they acquired in the occupied territories were seized by the government originally, and some other German concern would have had them had the defendants not undertaken the responsibility of managing them. As for the seizure of Jewish properties in Germany, that too was really the act of the government, and others might have driven an even harder bargain with the Jewish owners. As for the SS, Himmler was a dangerous man and when he asked for money the defendants thought it best to give it. However, they discussed only cultural matters with him and the other gentlemen of the SS, all of whom were disarmingly polite; and the defendants never suspected that the SS was committing the horrible crimes which have since been proved. Anyhow, say the defendants, we were just businessmen. Life under Hitler was a difficult and dangerous thing, especially for a prominent businessman. Whatever we did that now seems reprehensible was done out of fear.

Thus do the defendants seek to cloak their motives and justify or apologize for their actions. Many of these purported defenses submitted are untrue, others are irrelevant and ephemeral. The whole pattern disintegrates under analysis of the law and the facts, like a cobweb on a housewife's broom.

Much more insidious, I believe, is the deadening effect on the mind of endless weeks spent with these defendants and their witnesses and documents. The trial has unfolded in this courtroom a cross section of life in Germany under the Third Reich. During these long months we have lived in a world where all the normal moral standards and human values are inverted. War is a whole

some state of affairs, and peace is a fitful, restless, tense period of preparation for war. Love for one's country is a crime, unless the country be Germany; Frenchmen, Poles, Czechs, and Russians must work for the glory of the German fatherland and render unquestioning obedience. Human slavery is commonplace and a necessary part of the scheme of things. The police, so far from being the guardians of law and order, are dangerous and malevolent malefactors. This was a bad and brutal world. But, just

as the ear gradually accommodates itself to a badly tuned piano, or as the eye adjusts to the Lilliputian scale of a puppet show, so do our minds tend to accept a morally topsy-turvy world if we focus on it too long and without an occasional side glance at a normal world. This, indeed, is the prime function of criminal law and law enforcement. By judgment and sentence, the universal standards of conduct embodied in civilized law are confirmed again and again. And it was the collapse of law enforcement in Germany, and the abdication of moral and legal responsibility by just such men as these defendants, which brought about and, indeed, constituted, the disastrous disintegration of German society, and led to the cataclysm from which we have hardly yet started to recover. Most fundamentally, the defendants have sought refuge in this case by dividing the perverted world of the Third Reich into "we" and "they". "They" are the bad men, a cast of characters which constantly shifts according to the charge at issue. Sometimes "they" are less fearsome figures like Pleiger or Kranefuss; upon occasion "they" speak through the ghostly but hardly ghastly voice of a Finnish masseur. Whoever "they" are, "they" are the root and branch of all the evil of the Third 'Reich. "We," on the other hand, were quite innocent of evil intent, but "we" did fear "them." To placate "them," "we" had to be on the best terms with "them." "We" gave Goering large sums of money and acted as his agent; "we" housed Himmler, gave him pocket money, and masqueraded as members of his "Circle of Friends"; "we" regretfully acquired properties which Goering and Pleiger seized from unfortunate Jews and Frenchmen; "we" were shocked to discover that "we" had been obliged to use thousands of foreigners whom "they" had enslaved to keep our businesses going. It was most regrettable, but what could "we" have done about it?

The prosecution submits not only that these matters are legally insufficient to constitute a defense, but also that the record shows this entire line of defense to be utterly spurious and meretricious. The leading defendants, Flick and Steinbrinck, were not reluctant dragons. All the defendants are uncommonly able to take care of themselves, and have been phenomenally successful at accomplishing what they set out to do. To suggest that these men, whose

enterprises flourished like the green bay tree under Hitler and who occupied the most powerful and privileged positions in the German industrial fabric, spent 12 years skulking about in fear and doing what they did not want to do, is ridiculous.

This whole line of argument would never have been made, I am sure, except for one circumstance. These crimes were connected with the war; and the war is something that everyone would like to forget. The eyes of the world are focused now on other things. For this reason defense counsel have told us-and no doubt will tell us again-that the trial of these defendants is a mere anachronism. But the reconstruction which the world needs is not merely material but also moral reconstruction. And one means toward this end is the reaffirmation of fundamental standards of law. We cannot permit wholesale violations of these standards to go unpunished and, even worse, unremembered. To say that they were part of the war and part of an effort to win a war is no excuse for inaction. The framers of the Hague Conventions recognized the danger that just such crimes would be committed, and especially in wartime. It has never been a principle of law and enforcement that transgressions will go unpunished in areas where they occur most often, and no such principle must govern our actions here.

Now, if it please the Tribunal, the prosecution proposes to sum up the evidence under each count and then to deal with some of the general defenses which have been raised, such as fear and coercion.

Mr. Ragland will handle the presentation under count one, I will handle the presentation under count two, Mr. Lyon will deal with counts three and four, and I will conclude with the discussion of general defenses.

Mr. Ragland will handle count one.

COUNT ONE

MR. RAGLAND: May it please the Tribunal. The basic facts as to the slave-labor program of the Third Reich and the criminal nature of that program have been determined by the International Military Tribunal, and are so well known as to require no restatement here. These determinations have been ratified and confirmed by the United States Military Tribunals in the Milch case and the Pohl case. Efforts to attack some minor parts of the determinations of the International Military Tribunal have been made by the defense. It is asserted by the defense that the determination that less than 200,000 of the 5,000,000 workers who arrived in Germany came voluntarily involves somewhat too low a figure and also that the Tribunal has painted somewhat too black a picture