The Tribunal will observe, in the second place, that neither the Penal Code nor the law of 10 January 1936 is concerned with giving an exact definition of the association nor with the question as to whether the incriminated association constitutes a moral entity or a legal entity having a legal existence. Article 265 of the Penal Code includes in its condemnation not only any association, which means a legal entity, but also condemns any agreement entered into with the object of preparing or committing crimes. And the law of 10 January also mentions any association, or any de facto group. Thus the law of 10 January in the same way as Article 265 of the Penal Code, speaking of agreements entered into or de facto groups, does not seek to define criminal organizations by law and refers to the commonly accepted meaning and implication of the words “group” or “organization” as we today ask you to define them.
In the same way, after the liberation of our country, the French Government concerned itself with pursuing and punishing bad citizens who, even without offending against an existing penal statute, had been guilty of definite antinational activity; and issued the decree of 26 August 1944, promulgated in the Official Gazette of 28 August. This decree, after having given a very general definition of the offense, defined its extent by enumerating the essential facts which it comprises.
Thus, Article I of the decree of 26 August 1944 states that the crime of national unworthiness is constituted by the fact of having participated in a collaborationist organization of any kind, and more especially one of the following: le Service d’Ordre Legionnaire (Legion of Order), la Milice (Militia), the group called “Collaboration,” la Phalange Africaine (African Phalanx), and so on.
The decree of 26 August 1944 is much less concerned with defining the punishable offense than with enumerating the criminal organizations to which the fact of having adhered voluntarily constitutes the crime of national unworthiness; and whether these organizations or these groups are legally constituted organizations or simply agreements entered into, as mentioned in Article 265 of the Penal Code, or merely de facto groups, as stated in the law of 1936, the decree does not define, it enumerates, the organizations which are considered to be criminal. That is what we are asking you to do with respect to the German organizations mentioned in the Indictment.
We are not asking you to condemn without having heard these men who, on the contrary, will be able to put forward their personal means of defense before a competent tribunal. We are asking you only to declare criminal, as was allowed by the French laws of 1936 and 1944, de facto groups without which it would have been impossible for one man in a few years to cause a great civilized nation to sink to the lowest depths of barbarity, the more hateful because it was scientific. It is the shame of our time that the mastery of technique should have placed new methods at the disposal of ancient barbarity, so true is it that technical progress is of no avail unless accompanied by moral progress.
Your sentence will signify for all nations in the world, and for the good of Germany herself, that above human liberties there exists a moral law which imposes itself upon nations just as well as upon individuals whether they be isolated or in groups and that it is criminal to violate that moral law.
GEN. RUDENKO: Your Honors, let me tell you first of all that I accept the principle which has been expressed by my respected colleagues Justice Jackson and Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the principle with regard to the criminality of the organizations. It seems to me that to clarify this question it is necessary to distinguish clearly two interwoven problems: First, the problem of the material law, just what organizations and what individual members or groups of individual members can be considered criminal; and also the problem of objective law, what evidence, what documents, what witnesses, and in what order these can be presented to agree, to declare, or to deny the criminality of this or that organization.
First of all, as to the question of material law, it is necessary to emphasize that the question of the criminal responsibility of an organization does not stand before the Tribunal and never did; neither does the question of the individual responsibility of the various members of an organization, except those who are among the defendants today or the various groups of these organizations, stand before the Tribunal. The Charter of the Tribunal provides as follows: According to Article 9, the examination or the trial of any individual member of this or that group or of any organization is within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. It is within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to declare this or that organization criminal if one of the defendants belongs to the organization.
Thus, we speak here about declaring an organization criminal, and the Charter definitely provides the legal consequences of declaring an organization criminal. As the Tribunal declares this or that group or organization criminal, then the competent national authorities of the signatory powers have a right to bring to trial before the national military tribunals and occupational tribunals members of organizations. In this case the criminal nature of the organizations is considered clear and cannot be contradicted. (Article 10 of the Charter.)
Consequently the Charter provides two legal results of declaring an organization criminal: First, the right, but not the obligation, of the various national tribunals to bring to trial members or organizations which the Tribunal declared criminal; and second, the obligation of the national tribunals to consider an organization criminal if such an organization was so declared by the International Military Tribunal.