Morning Session
THE PRESIDENT: At the conclusion of the argument on the organizations, which the Tribunal anticipates will finish before the end of today’s session, the Tribunal will adjourn into closed session. Tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock the Tribunal will sit in open session for consideration of the applications for witnesses and documents by the second four defendants. Will the defendant’s counsel who was in the middle of his argument now continue? Dr. Merkel, had you finished?
DR. MERKEL: Yes, Sir.
DR. MARTIN LÖFFLER (Counsel for the SA): May it please the Tribunal: The objections and misgivings expressed yesterday by the Defense regarding the criminal proceedings against the six accused organizations are particularly applicable when judging the SA.
No other organization is so much exposed to the danger of a sentence contrary to our sense of justice as is the SA. I ask the Tribunal’s permission to submit the reasons for this fact.
The demand of the Prosecution that the SA should be declared a criminal organization affects at least 4 million people at a conservative estimate. The limitation according to groups approved yesterday by Justice Jackson was gratifying and welcome; but it will have no appreciable effect on the numbers since the groups eliminated yesterday, the armed SA units and the bearers of the SA Sports Badge, were not full members of the SA. The only persons so far eliminated, therefore, are the SA Reserves. As no limitation according to time was made, these criminal proceedings will include everyone who ever belonged to the SA, even for a very short time, during the 24 years between its establishment in 1921 and its dissolution in 1945, that is to say, during a period of almost a quarter of a century.
We heard yesterday from the Prosecution that the criminal acts charged to the organizations are the same as those charged to the main defendants, namely, Crimes against Peace, crimes against the laws or customs of war, and Crimes against Humanity, as well as participation in the common conspiracy.
If we now contemplate the possible participation of these 4 million former SA men in these four important categories of crime, we get the following picture:
Crimes against the laws or customs of war are not charged to the SA. It is true that the Prosecution presented an affidavit saying that the SA also took part in guarding concentration camps and prisoner-of-war camps and in supervising forced labor; but, according to the presentation of the Prosecution, this did not occur until 1944 within the framework of the total war raging at that time, and it has not been charged that this activity of the SA involved any excesses or ill-treatment.
In none of the atrocities reported here by witnesses and documents did the SA with its 4 million members participate. The few offenses against humanity charged to the SA by the Prosecution and committed by individual members in the course of almost a quarter of a century can in no way be compared with the serious crimes against humanity of which we have heard here.