JUDGE PROTESTS AT CONVICTIONS OF MOST OF NAZI DEFENDANTS

Wanganui Chronicle, 16 April 1949, Page 5

JUDGE PROTESTS AT CONVICTIONS OF MOST OF NAZI DEFENDANTS

LONDON, April 13.—United States Judge Leon Powers publicly protested tonight against most of the convictions handed down against Germans by the United States War Crimes Court, of which he is a member, says the Associated Press Nuremberg correspondent. Judge Powers filed a dissenting opinion, complaining that ‘‘a strange doctrine” of “mass or corruptive guilt” was applied in the majority opinions of the other two judges. He refused to concur in convictions on five of the seven charges against the defendants. Judge Powers contended that the personal guilt of defendants for crimes committed by the Nazis had not been proved, and he suggested that the defendants were being made scapegoats for Nazi crimes in general. “STRANGE DOCTRINE.” “The theory is that if a defendant knew of crime anywhere in the Government and remained at his post, he thereby approved the crime and became guilty. It is a strange doctrine and reasoning to be advanced by lawyers representing American justice,” said Judge Powers. The today finished the reading of its 832-page judgment on the 21 defendants of the “Wilhelmstrasse trial.” The tribunal will pronounce the sentences tomorrow. The tribunal found 19 of Hitler’s former administrators and diplomats guilty of counts ranging from membership in the S.S. to crimes against humanity, involving the extermination of millions of Jews.

The guilty men are Ernst von Weizsaecker, former State Secretary of the German Foreign Office; Gustav Steengracht von Moyiand, former State Secretary of the German Foreign Office; Wilhelm Keppler, Hitler’s special economic adviser; Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the British-born chief of the Nazi Party’s foreign organisation; Ernst Woermann, ex-Ministerial Director of the German Foreign Office political division; Karl Ritter, Ambassador for Special Assignments; Edmund Veesenmayer, Reich Minister Plenipotentiary; Hans Lammers, former chief of the Reich Chancellery and an S.S. lieutenant-general; Wilhelm Stuckart, former State Secretary of the Interior Ministry; Richard Darre, former German Food ani Agriculture Minister; Otto Dietrich, former State Secretary of the Propaganda Ministry.