A, No. He is not obliged to know that. That is why Milch applied to receive this information about international law.
Q. You make a distinction between homicide and slavery?
A. Yes. I make a difference not, perhaps, as in this exact example, but I make a difference between the natural knowledge of law, which everybody has, and special questions and special knowledge not shared by everybody in the state. The point whether you can kill or steal is common knowledge, but the question whether international law permits the employment is not something which everybody knows. This question is one which only specialists and legal experts can decide, and if any man concerned tries to obtain information as to whether it is permissible, and obtains that information from a specialist of a governmental department who says, yes, then it does not become permissible in itself, but we have what is known as an excusable legal error.
Q. Would you take the same position as to enforced civilian labor?
A. Yes, on the whole question whether anyone can employ foreign workers or prisoners of war.
Q. I would like to get this straightened out.
A. There are a number of other difficult legal points which I need not go into here. This is certainly an example of what occupies us here.
Q. That is true. I want to get your position perfectly clear. I think it is—
A. Let’s take, for example, the question whether, in any foreign country which is occupied, the occupier may issue occupation money; let’s assume that this is punishable according to some international regulation which is difficult to interpret and which a layman is not in a position to know. Now, if the Reich Bank, as expert, told the governor of the occupied country that it was permissible, then the chief of this occupied country, the military authority, would have an erroneous opinion for which he could not be held guilty.
Q. Now, that theory of law becomes a very uncertain guide, does it not? It depends upon interpretation of not the lawyers, nor the professors, but of high government officials; they make the law.