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2. EXTRACTS FROM THE CLOSING STATEMENT
FOR DEFENDANT VON
LEEB* |
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| DR. LATERNSER : May it please the Tribunal. |
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| One of the most brilliant personalities of modern times, the French
poet and statesman Vicomte Francois de Chateaubriand, [1769-1848], after the
close of the Napoleonic era in 1814, coined the following phrase:
|
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“Immortal glory is due to
the allied monarchs, who gave the world such an example of moderation in
victory. What crimes had they to avenge! But they were great enough not to
commit the mistake of confusing the French nation with the tyrant who
suppressed it.” |
It is one of the peculiarities of human history that typical
situations repeat themselves. Again the world is at the end of an era of
warfare which was given its character by the demoniacal personality of a
dictator. Crimes of an extent hitherto unknown – like the murdering of the
Jews - demand requital. Since the man who committed them escaped from the
responsibility, the temptation is greater than ever to avenge them, without
regard to legal responsibility and personal guilt, on those whose fate it was
to have held outstanding positions in the vanquished state.
The
long series of the postwar trials against leading German civil servants,
military commanders, and men of business contains sufficient confirmation of
this human craving for revenge at any cost, and above everything, the speeches
of the American prosecution here in Nuernberg will forever be documentary
evidence of this. In addition there is the obvious endeavour to vilify certain
strata of the vanquished nation, in particular its military leaders.
The trial before the International Military Tribunal, which really was
conceived for the purpose of replacing in international politics the principle
of might with that of right, has obviously inaugurated a development at the end
of which the vanquished party in a war is annihilated in due form of legal
proceedings, solely for the reason of having lost the war. In many quarters the
impression prevails that this point has been already reached. The Chief of the
British General Staff, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, grasped the situation
very clearly and realistically when, on 10 July 1948, during a conference with
French commanders in Paris, he declared: |
| |
“And you know that since the
Nuernberg trials it is a crime |
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* Complete closing statement is recorded
in mimeographed transcript, 10, 11 August 1948,pp.
9621-9697.
362 |
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