The Times: German War Planning

From Our Special Correspondent NUREMBERG, JULY 29

An American military tribunal to-day acquitted the principal directors of I.G. Farbenindustrie, Germany's vast chemical combine, on charges of having planned and waged aggressive war, after a trial lasting for nearly a year. Similar charges, it will be remarked, were rejected by another court half-way through the Krupp case, in which judgment will be pronounced on Saturday; and so by a double ruling the Gernan armnament rihakers are absolved of criminal respon- sibitity in Hitler's war plans. Thirteen of the Farben directors, including Carl Krauch and Georg Von Schnitzler, the main defendants, were, however, found guiltY of war crimes and crimes against humanity involving plunder in occupied countries and the exploitation of slave labour, and sentence will be passed on them to-morrow. Only one of tbem, Fritz Ter Meer, was convicted under two of the five counts in the indictment, and of the 23 men on trial 10 were completely exonerated. Judging by the hand-waving from the dock. many of the defendants' friends were in court, which, on the entry of the tiibunal, observed a brief silence for the Ludwigshaven disaster, which, by the irony of events, has coincided so grimly with the Farben judgments. 50,000-WORD OPINION In considering the dual counts of preparing aggressive war and having conspired to do so, the Court based much of a 50,000-word opinion on the iudgment of the International Military Tribunal, and was at pains to point out that 13 defendants in the main Nuremberg trial had been acquitted under one or other of these counts. One of its most significant rulings was that the Farben organization as a corporation was not the subiect of prosecution. The tribunal largely accepted the plea of the defence that the accused had no knowledge of Hitler's designs which had been communi- cated to a handful of political and military leaders at secret conferences. The judgment declared: " While it is true that those with an insight into the evil machinations of power politics might have suspected Hitler was play- ing a cunning game of soothing restless Europe, the average citizen of Germany, be he professional man, fartner, or industrialist, could scarcdy be charged with knowledge that the rulers of the Reich were planning to plunge Gernany into a war of aggression. . . . He was the dictator. It was natural that the people of Germany listened to and read his utterances in a belief that he spoke the truth." Quoting the opinion of the international Tribunal that the war conspiracy must be clearly outlined in -its criminal purpose and must not be too far removed from the time of action and decision, the court found that common knowledge of Hitler's plans did not exist in Germany. NO PROOF German industry, the judgment continued, had becn threatened with seizure unless it showed better cooperation with the four-year plan, and the earlier financial support of Hitler by the industrialists arose from the unemploy- ment and chaos of a world-wide depression. Nor had it been proved that Farben (which held interests in about 500 firms abroad) had through its foreign econonic policy helped to weaken Germany's potential enemies or had carried on propaganda and espionage activities for the Reich. The tribunal maintained that neither the Moscow declaration of 1943 nor the London agreement on the prosecution of major war criminals referred to criminal liability for waging aggressive war. To depart from the concept that only major war criminals, those responsible for the formulation and execution of policies, were to be held liable could mean that the entire man-power of Germany mnight at the uncontrolled discretion of the indicting authorities be made to answer for waging war, thus leading to mass punishments against which the International Tribunal had declared itself. In the view of the court the defendants were neither high public officials nor high military officers; their participation was that of followers, and not leaders. GERMAN WAR PLANNING FARBEN DIRECTORS ACQUIITED HITLER'S DESIGNS