Since the existing state power, which in this case was represented by the Chief of State, who was identical with the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, can certainly not be this authority, we merely have to decide whether an authority exists above or beyond the authority of the particular state, which could “bind or absolve.” Since the struggle for power between Pope and Emperor, which dominated the Middle Ages, has no longer any significance in regard to constitutional law, such a power can only be impersonal and moral. The German poet Schiller expresses the supreme commandment of the unwritten eternal law in the words: “The tyrant’s power yet one limit hath ...” That is only one of the manifold poetical revelations in world literature, which express the deep yearning for freedom felt by all peoples.
If there is an unwritten law which indisputably expresses the conviction of all men, it is this, that with due consideration for the necessity of maintaining order in the state, there is a limit to the restriction of freedom. Where this is transgressed, a state of war will arise between the national order and the international power of world conscience.
It is important to state that no such statute of international law has hitherto existed. This is understandable, since freedom is a relative conception, and the different conceptions existing in various states and the anxiety of all states for their sovereignty are irreconcilable with recognition of an international authority. The authority which “binds and absolves”—which absolves us of guilt before God and the people—is the universal conscience which becomes alive in every individual. He must act accordingly. The Defendant Keitel did not hear the warning voice of the universal conscience. The principles of his soldierly life were so deeply rooted, and governed his thoughts and actions so exclusively, that he was deaf to all considerations which might deflect him from the path of obedience and faithfulness, as he understood them. This is the really tragic role played by the Defendant Keitel in this most terrible drama of all times.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kauffmann—yes, go on, Dr. Kauffmann.
DR. KURT KAUFFMANN (Counsel for Defendant Kaltenbrunner): Mr. President, may I first say that I have a few changes which I will announce when I come to them. I shall take about two hours altogether, Mr. President.
May it please the Tribunal: The present Trial is world history—world history full of revolutionary tensions. The spirits conjured up by mankind are stronger than the cries of the tortured peoples for justice and peace. Since man was deified and God humiliated, chaos, as an inevitable consequence and punishment, has afflicted mankind with wars, revolutions, famine, and despair. Whatever the guilt borne by my country, it is now enduring—and permanently enduring—the greatest penance ever endured by any people.
The means adopted to restore longed-for prosperity are wrong, because they are second-rate. And none of my listeners can question the truth of my assertion that the present Trial was not begun at the end of a period of wrong, and in order to end it, but is surrounded by the surging waves of a furious torrent bearing on its surface the hopeless wreckage of a civilization guarded through the centuries, and in the demoniacal depths of which lurk those who hate the true God, who are the enemies of the Christian religion, and therefore opposed to all forms of justice.
The European commonwealth of peoples, of which my country, if only because of its geographical position, was the very heart, is seriously afflicted. It suffers from the spirit of negation and humiliation of human dignity. Rousseau would have cursed his own maxims had he lived to see the radical refutation of his theories in this twentieth century. The peoples proclaimed the “liberty” of the great revolution, but in the course of a mere 150 years they have in the name of that same liberty created a monster of bondage, cruel slavery, and ungodliness, which contrived to elude earthly justice, but did not escape the living God.
This Tribunal, conscious of its task and its mission, will some day have to submit to the searching eye of history. I do not doubt that the judges selected are striving to serve justice as they see it. But is not this task indeed impossible of solution? The American chief prosecutor stated that in his country important trials seldom begin until one or two years have elapsed. I do not need to elucidate the profound core of truth contained in this practice. Could human beings, torn between love and hate, justice and revenge, conduct a trial immediately after the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever known—and constantly harassed by the statutory demands for rapid and time-saving proceedings—in such a way as to earn the thanks of mankind when the waters of this second deluge have withdrawn into their old bed?
Would it not have been better to allow for that very lapse of time between crime and atonement with regard to the present proceedings?