I now pass to the sixth and last group or organization, the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces. As in this case the Prosecution has drawn an arbitrary line, I may perhaps be allowed to recall briefly its constitution.
If the Tribunal will be good enough to look at Appendix B of the Indictment, under this heading, Page 37 of the English text (Volume I, Page 84), they will see that the first nine positions enumerated are special command or chief-of-staff positions. There were 22 holders of these positions between February 1938 and May 1945, of whom 18 are living. The 10th position, of Oberbefehlshaber, includes 110 individual officers who held it. The whole group varied from a membership of 20 at the beginning of the war to about 50 in 1944 or 1945—that is, at any one time.
I remind the Tribunal, however, that the conjoining of these positions is not artificial in reality, because on Page 2115 (Volume IV, Page 399) and the following pages of Colonel Telford Taylor’s presentation—and I refer especially to Pages 2125 and 2126 (Volume IV, Pages 407, 408)—it will be seen how the holders of the positions enumerated met in fact and in the flesh. This, in our submission, clearly comes within the interpretation of “group” in the Charter which, as Mr. Justice Jackson pointed out, has a wider connotation than “organization”; and we submit that you cannot hold men in the top command against their will. It would be impossible for them to carry on such work on such a condition.
Under Section F of my Appendix A, read with the first addendum, there will be found not only the references in the transcript but the references to the captured documents which prove, out of the mouths of the members of this group, the criminality alleged against them under each part of Article 6 of the Charter. These documents also show their actual knowledge and therefore, a priori, their constructive knowledge of the nature of the act.
In my Appendix B the five defendants involved are set out; and in the latter part of that appendix the connection of the group, and especially of the Defendants Keitel and Jodl, is emphasized. It is submitted that these facts prevent any difficulty being encountered with regard to this group on any of the five criteria which we say should guide the Tribunal.
Finally, may I repeat that, in our respectful submission, the facts contained in Appendices A and B, which are before the Tribunal in writing, clearly indicate the findings of fact for which the Prosecution ask.
My friend, M. Champetier de Ribes, will address the Tribunal.
M. CHAMPETIER DE RIBES: May it please the Tribunal, Mr. President and Gentlemen, I shall be careful not to add anything to the very complete statements of Mr. Justice Jackson and Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe.
In agreement with my fellow prosecutors, I should like respectfully to draw the Tribunal’s attention only to two clauses of French domestic law which deal with questions comparable to those which we are considering today—and in connection with which I believe the French legislature has had to solve some of the problems with which the Tribunal is concerned—and especially to reply to the question put by the Tribunal, namely, the definition of the criminal organizations.
I shall merely mention Article 265 of the French Penal Code which lays down the general principle of the association of criminals by enacting that: