This transaction was not immediately realized because Hohberg's successor as auditor of the DwB concern, the CP A Dr. Richard Karoly, whom the defendant had informed fully about the facts concerning the ownership of the DWB in spite of his position as head of the auditing association of Germany, did not draw the conclusion which were selfevident. He preferred, as SS-Fuehrer, not to acquaint the Economic Ministry of the Reich with the facts concerning the ownership of the DWB concern. However, the defendant had already, at an earlier state deposited documents containing facts and figures with the Dresdner Bank in Berlin, to be able to prove the legal necessity for the transfer of the DWB concern to the Reich at the opportune time when such an action would not automatically entail the destruction of the defendant for behavior detrimental to the SS. These documents, which had been deposit at a Berlin bank, were taken away by the Occupation Force.
The statements of the defendant relating to this are proved to be true by the fact that one of the most important documents saved by the defendant was seized in his apartment at the time of his arrest. It is Document Hohberg, NO 78, Exhibit 73, Document Book Hohberg, II page 23.
Regarding the date for the transfer to the Reich, there was no hurry, for the defendant had the material in his hand to start the ball rolling at any time. This is the meaning to be given the statements of the defendant in his own affidavit, where he speaks of being the only man with the power to do something against Pohl.
After Hohberg finally and fortunately was able to determine his activity as auditor of DWB by being drafted to the Air Force, he did not stop his propaganda against the National Socialist system. Too deeply rooted was his conviction that the National Socialist system.
was ripe for destruction. He opened the eyes of his comrades to the inmate emptiness and the true face of the National Socialist state. In a rader unit in France he succeeded in organizing a radical, political unit in France he succeeded in organizing a radical, political and anti-Party circle of friends, whose influence grew daily.
The Prosecution interpreted it as inconsequential that the defendant, being already a soldier, yet signed an adviser's contract with DWB. One purpose of the contract was the establishment of security for the family of Hohberg in case he should be killed in the war. But Hohberg also planned to remain active later on as adviser of the DwB concern but not as an adviser of an SS concern or the WVHA, (SS Main Economic and Administrative Office,) was entirely excluded. Removing the influence of the SS in the DWB concern was, by means of the documentary material deposit in the Dresdner Bank, only a question.
The temporarily discontinued contact of the defendant with Pohl at the turn of 1944-1945 was for the purpose of regaining for Hohberg's friend, Dr. May, some influence in his plant, Butschovitz, from which he had been forcibly removed it cannot be considered as a sign of inconscient behavior by the defendant towards the SS.
CONCLUSION.
This shows the consistent thinking and acting of a man who always, internally as well as externally, remained aloof of National Socialism and the SS. In one point, however, the defendant distinguished himself from the thinking and acting of many a German who also remained aloof from National Socialism. At a time when it was not yet certain that Germany would be defeated the defendant, recognizing the grave dangers imminent by Himmler's plans, took the only feasible way of active interference and did not go in hiding, sulking and waiting. He brought part of a cross section of National Socialist endeavors under his own critical and professional control and did his share to successfully and materially damage and limit the predominance of the SS.
He has done so without hiding or camouflaging his contradictory political and philosophical viewpoint and without regard to personal safety.
And now, Honorables Judges of this Tribunal, write your name under a decision that will be raised as an expression of justice and law. Put your name under a judgment that does justice to the defendant in regard to his deeds, under a verdict that shows appreciation for the uncompromising fight of the defendant against the SS and the National Socialist system. Acquit the defendant Hohberg of any part of the indictment.
THE PRESIDENT: You still have ten minutes. You don't want it? Good!
Counsel for the defendant Pook, please.
DR. RATZ: ( for the defendant Dr. Hermann Pook):
May it please the Tribunal, above this trial is written the words "Concentration Camp." This word is a horrible sounding letmotiv of this trial which is constantly heard in every session and which would like to rise above every word of the defendants, their witnesses, and their defense counsel. There rarely has been a trial in which it was more difficult for the defendant to reach the ear of the judge with his assurance: "I did not know that. I did not take part in such crimes. I am innocent." A special reason for this is that the Prosecution has, to express it in this way, drawn a double circle around every defendant. The defendant Hermann Pook is individually held responsible for the removal of dental gold from the deceased prisoners and for alleged cruel acts, supposed to have been perpetrated in the field of dentistry by the camp dentists, who technically, were subordinate to him. But apparently he is also charged with a kind of joint responsible for the fact that he was active at all in the Economic and Administrative Main Office. In this way he is obviously supposed to be made criminally punishable for the system of concentration camps as such, and for such criminal actions *** ditions in the concentration camps for which a criminal guilt of this defendant cannot be determined according to the tradional rules of criminal law.
In the name of the Defendant Dr. Hermann Pook I take the following position towards the prosecution:
I.
To modern, liberal, democratic thinking the fact that the prisoners were sent to the concentration camps without previous legal judgment - but on the decision of the police, not only seems morally reprehensible, but also criminal. However, when criticizing this procedure it should not be overlooked that a differentiation must be made between unlawful and, thus, criminal arbitary action by the police and free police decision on a legal basis. Of course, the guarantee of law is greatest when an independent court decides on the deprivation of liberty. If this, however, is carried out by another state authority according to its legally sanctioned judgment, such a procedure does, to a certain degree, deviate more or less from the ideal of the legal state, the procedure can for that reason not yet be designated as criminal.
The legal basis for "protective custody", and thus for the concentration camps, was created by the decree of the Reich president for the Protection of People and State, of 28 February 1933, which invalidated numerous basic rights of the Weimar Constitution, such as the right of personal freedom, the right to freely express an opinion, the right of the freedom of the press, the right of assembly, the secrecy of the mail and telegrams, etc. Thus the police, especially the political police, were enabled to combat so-called endeavors inimical to the state through deprivation of freedom in the form of so-called protective custody and internment in concentration camps.
Through the decree by the Reich Minister of the Interior of 12 to 26 April 1934, directives were issued which were to guarantee the uniform handling of protective custody in the entire territory of the Reich by avoiding abuses and arbitrary acts.
It is neither my assignment nor my intention to defend in any way the system of concentration camps as a policy. But it can probably bot be disputed that this system, in the way it has been presented, had just an or simple as unobjectionable legal basis. The defendants could not only rely with good reason on the legal unobjectionability. They lived with the ideology of the so-called totalitarian states; they had been indoctrinated with untouchability of the power of the state as the highest moral possession, to endanger the existence or the interests of the state was a political crime. Obedience and subordination to the state was the highest duty, and any rebellion appeared to be a guilt intensified to the highest degree by the natioanlistic emotional values. It is my conviction that it cannot be considered a crime of the defendants that they recognized those ideas as correct because it was the idea of the state, and the concept of the state was that the so-called "political enemy" had to be taken into police custody in the interest of the state. In Germany - in the first years of the Hitler regime, one wondered about the legality of the concentration camps. Frequently very conscientious people gave up their last misgivings, when they thought of the fact that no lesser nation than the English had used the institution of the concentration camps already during the Boer War 1900-1902, a long time before National Socialism, and one frequently recalled the words of the Elder Pitt, the British statesman, who already more than one hundred years ago declared : "If justice were strictly preserved the power of no country would outlast the sun of one day."
Thus, serious legal doubts about, the legality of the institution of the concentration camps did, as noted, barely rise to the surface. It was assumed that the authoritarian state which arose again within the authoritarian state could not do without police detention in a modern form for its protection and safety. It was known that, already in ancient Rome, the troublesome disturbers of peace were held in detention in the Tullianum by the Magistrate, not for punishment but for the preservation of general safety and order and that this was the procedure in the police state of absolutism everywhere in Europe.
This retrogression to the methods of antiquity and the Middle Ages did seem doubtful, but did not have to be regarded Ages did seem doubtful, but did not have to be regarded as criminal as long as during the detention the old maxim of the medieval poet Sebastian Brandt was observed: "Only to detain, not to torture."
The question is whether, with regard to the legality of protective custody and the institution of concentration camps, a different concept of judgment has to enter into the question in the case of foreign prisoners, prisoners sent to the concentration camps from countries occupied by Germany. With regard to this following statements of international law are made:
By the occupation bellica Germany received the actual mastery over the occupied countries and had the right of authority as in its own territory. While, according to the former concept of international law, the occupant could rule without control unmindful of right and law, the new development of international law removed the principle of power and aided the principle of humanity and culture to be victorious. Thus the former unlimited power was transformer into the limited right of the occupying force and especially the Hague convention of Land Warfare established the legal duties of the occupying forces. But the convention of Land Warfare does not set individual rights for the occupying force, but it only sets up boundaries of the per se unlimited rightts of the occupying force for the exercise of all authorities arising from the sovereignty to command in the occupied territory.
Thus, the following basic principle of international law results: Measures taken by the occupational force in the occupied territory are legal insofar as legal maxims of international, law of warfare which can be proved do not oppose them. Thus the assumption speaks for the authority of the occupying force to exercise unlimited all these authorities arising from the sovereignty to give orders. According to the uniform concept of the experts on international law, the occupying force acts in the interest of his own conduct of war, as well as for the protection of the civilian population in the territories occupied by virtue of inmate law only granted by international law and determined by its content. The inhabitants of the occupied territory no longer are obliged to obey the enemy sovereign, but the occupiyng force - the will of the occupying force is the ruling and decisive one in the occupied territory, the occupiyng force is the executor of is own will; for the exercise of its right of sovereignty only its own interests are decisive. Therefore, it is permitted to act against the interests of the enemy state.
According to this, it is my opinion that no doubt can exist that, with regard to its political police authorities in the occupied countries, the German Reich had no loss authority there than in its own country so that also the sentencing to protective of foreigners who were under its power cannot legally be judged ether than the sentencing to protective custody of German citizens.
I would like now to bring up the question whether, and under what presuppositions, protective custody can be adjudged criminal.
Today we are clearly conscious of the fact that any deprivation of freedom, thus also protective custody in concentration camps, can be carried out in various ways. One can differentiate between three steps:
(1) Humane and just from by preserving the human dignity of the prisoner;
(2) Illegality and degradation to the level of slaves especially abandonment to the arbitrary desire of the supervisory official and lack of care for the necessary and even primitive needs of life;
(3) degradation of the prisoner below this low point and making him the object of individual and systematic crimes.
The prosecution maintains that the fate of the prisoners in the Concentration Camps generally and always was on steps 2 and 3, and for this reason alone, the defendants have to be punished for active participation in the system of crime.
In reference to this I would, first of all, like to say the following: The loss of freedom must not necessarily mean a total loss for the prisoner in the sense that, with his arrival in the institution or camp, he must lose every human right of existence and any human dignity. The loss of freedom always means conditions of his civilian life; the loss was partly made up by the government taking care of part of the conditions for life of the prisoner, for instance, it care for shelter, for clothes and food, even if everything was much more primitive than in the civilian life of the prisoner. If, in addition to that, the prisoner was given or granted a number of possibilities and rights, his existence could not simply be considered slavery, his detention cannot be considered a crime against humanity.
The limits of slavery are not passed if the regulations on the legal position of the prisoners recognized by all civilized nations are observed. Here I would like only to mention the German principles for the execution of prison sentences from 7 June 1923.
The assertion of the prosecution that the concentration camp is an "institution of force, mass crimes and human depravity" would be correct if it were certain that, principally and generally, the treatment of the prisoners had been brutal, the shlter miserable, the clothing so little that it was a danger to health, the food miserable and below the minimum necessary for life; - - if, in addition, it were certain that, principally and generally, the prisoners were tortured and killed, that they were worked to death, and that there was practically no escaping death from exhaustion or hunger or the gas chamber.
If, in addition, the Prosecution maintains that all defendants were essentially connected with the concentration camps, the existence and management of which alone necessarily included murder, atrocities, tortures, slavery and other inhuman acts, I must maintain the following in contradiction:
1. The system of the concentration camps did, according to its basic arrangements and form, not oass beyond the framework of the forementioned regulations.
2. The crimes committed in the concentration camps wither on individuals or mass crimes ordered wither by highest authority or committed indendently by lower officials - had perhaps become systematized - but certainly only partially. These crimes, however, had not been identical with the system of concentration camps.
3. As far as the defendant Herrmann Pock is concerned I dare to assert that he himself had absolutely no essential connection with the concentration camp system - that is, with that which is essential and typical for a concentration camp. His dental stations were nothing more than dental stations, and just as one cannot reproach a factory dentist, that he had any essential connection with the factory and is responsible for the methods of production or business management; just as one cannot reproach a school dentist that he is essentially connected with the shool and that he is responsible for what is, and what is not, taught in the school - that is why one cannot reproach the dentist Dr. Pook with the fact that he had essential connection with the concentration camps.
THE PRESIDENT: I want to ask a question, please, to see weather we understood you correctly. Is it your contention that an occupying power has a right, if it wishes, to imprison an entire civil population of the occupied country, in concentration camps if it believes it is necessary for security, and that that would be in accord with international law?
DR. RATZ: Your Honor, by quoting international law literature on this subject, I only stated that the occupant in an occupied territory has the same right towards the population of the occupied territory as he has towards his own citizens in his own country; and I have also stated that for this reason to impose protective custody on citizens of the occupied territory is not contrary to law, and that it is to be considered the same as protective custody of a German citizen. It is far from me to claim that the occupying power has the right to commit all citizens of an occupied country to concentration camps without any reason.
THE PRESIDENT: Suppose that the reason given is for security?
DR. RATZ:If the police according to their opinion in an individual case, consider protective custody necessary, then I believe that the protective custody towards a foreigner cannot be judged differently than towards a citizen of Germany.
THE PRESIDENT: I asked the question whether that right as affecting an individual could include the whole civilian population.
DR. RATZ: It probably depends on the individual case.
THE PRESIDENT: No, let me put a case to you. Germany goes into we'll say, Albania and Germany decides that for security it is necessary to confine all the civilian population of Albania in concentration camps, and she gives the reason that it is necessary for security. If she acting within the principles of international law?
DR. RATZ: I believe that in this example Germany is acting contrary to international law because the question of whether this is done for security reasons and whether certain police are taken for security reasons can be debated. After all, we must use a reasonable measure in considering this question. In this example it isn't reasonable or objective to assume that the whole population of a country should be simultaneously committed to protective custody.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, let's change it and say all the male population.
DR. RATZ: In this case I must use the same judgment as in the first case.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what's the answer?
DR. RATZ: My answer is that this measure is also contrary to international law because there is no objective and reasonable cause why a measure of that extent should be taken.
THE PRESIDENT: Then Germany's decision wouldn't be final; it could be examined and perhaps reversed?
DR. RATZ: I haven't quite understood your question, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Is Germany's decision as to the need for security final? Is the question clear?
DR. RATZ: Yes, your Honor. The decision is final if the sovereignty of Germany is not removed.
THE PRESIDENT: No, the sovereignty of Germany is there. I mean Germany is in full occupation. She can do anything that she chooses. We are trying to find out what she can do without violating international law. What is your answer as to whether she could confine all the male civilian population?
DR. RATZ: My answer is that this general measure is a violation of international law. However, if Germany continued to exercise her sovereignty, it would not be necessary to punish her for this measure from an international point of view because here the limits of power and right have been exceeded so far that they must be considered as falling into the scope of sovereignty. In other words, without any doubt here we have a violation of international law; but as long as Germany continues to exercise her sovereignty, there wouldn't be any court which would rule about it.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not talking about enforcing rights; I'm talking about complying with or violating international law. Perhaps nothing could be done about it; but would it be right or wrong according to international law?
DR. RATZ: A measure of such a general nature would be wrong in my opinion.
THE PRESIDENT: That goes too far?
DR. RATZ: In my own opinion it goes too far because Germany never would her entire male population into confinement without differentiation.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, let's change it once more, and I won't interrupt you again. Suppose Germany in Albania said, "For security it is necessary to confine all Jews in concentration camps, male and female." Just give me a short answer, if you can--does that violate international law or not?
DR. RATZ: My answer remains what it was before because according to any reasonable appraisal of the state of afairs we must describe this measure as being unjust.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, then that is a violation of international law in Albania?
DR. RATZ: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: We're in Albania, you know, at the moment.
DR. RATZ: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT. You think it would make any difference whether we were in Albania or the Ukraine?
DR. RATZ: That doesn't make any difference at all.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, I'll drop it at that point.
DR. RATZ: I shall continue with my statement now. The concentration camp system was only the frame within Dr. Pook practiced his medical speciality. There existed just as little technical or logical connection between his activity as a dentist and the administration and management of the concentration camps as vice versa between the commandant of the concentration camps, on the one hand, and the dentists and their sphere of activity and the dental stations on the other. That is why it is all the more impossible to construe a criminal responsibility in this case.
However, I should like to do an additional thing and deal in more detail with the sphere of Dr. Pook's activity and specifical ly with the concentration camps. I must do this because I want to present and prove that Dr. Pook's assertion that he had had nothing to do with and knew nothing about the crimes committed in the concent ration camp is credible and correct.
The criminal system which undoubtedly did spread in the concentration camps as far reaching degree is, as has been noted, not indentical with the concentration camp system. The criminal system is a part of Himmler's system of annihilation. To a certain extent Himmler used the concentration camps for this; but also had other tools which he, unlike the concentration camps, party created for this purpose; for example, the Einsatzgruppen of the SD.
Himmler's system of annihilation was camouflaged by a double protective cloak; by a system of deception and confusion and a system of secrecy. Himmler deceived and confused the minds of his adherents and of the entire German public through promises of indealistics aims were based on illusions, which no doubt held much appeal, such as obedience, honor, loyalty, readiness to make sacrifices for people and fatherland. At the same time go deceived them by knowing how to keep strictly secret his true intentions and the crimes committed while he was pursuing his true aims.
He welcomed the concentration camps as tools because here he already found an external facade at the same time a system of secrecy. One cannot identify the concentration camps with Himmler's system of annihilation, just as one cannot identify the Germany Wehrmacht with the crimes which have been committed under the cloak of military necessity.
The defendant Pook stated in his interrogation that to be sure he had several times inspected the dental station in concentration camps at the order of Lolling. On these occasions, however, he never saw any atrocities. The actual protective custody camp of the concentration camp in question he only entered accompanied by a member of the staff; and then he was only allowed to go to the dental station. Then he expressed his impressions and views concerning the concentration camps and repeatedly protested that he knew absolutely nothing of the criminal happenings or conditions in the concentration camps and therefore he was not conscious of any criminal guilt because he was active in Office D/III.
Your Honor, I have stated that the concentration camp system and Himmler's system of annihulation may not be identified with each other. In order to emphasize the credibility of Dr. Pook's assertions that he knew nothing of concentration camps crimes of a criminal system, it is my duty to prove:
(1) that actually such a non-criminal concentration camp system did exist and (2) that Dr. Pook during his activity as directing dentist in Office D/III of the WVHA actually must have had this system in mind.
In order to present this evidence, I have submitted in my document book, Number II, a number of affidavits and transcripts from the trial before the IMT.
I take the liberty of concentrating all this voluminous material in short description which is substantiated in every detail by documents and which should show that picture of the concentration camp system as it as a rule actually existed; as the uninitiated into the concentration camp crimes saw it; and also as the defendant Pook saw it in his activity as directing dentist. Dr. Pook was not a partner to this but a victim of Himmler's system of deception and secrecy.
May it please the Tribunal, unfortunately I am unable to give any short description because otherwise my statement would exceed the prescribed time limits. I regret this because upon presentation of my document book I was also limited with regard to the extent of the documents and the size of the document book. At that time I was unable to give you an index about the documents which I submitted. I there must ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of the full contents of my statements.
THE PRESIDENT: You have only two minutes. Perhaps you'd like to start at page 27 tomorrow morning.
DR. RATZ: Could I perhaps utilize these two minutes? I shall then have reached the end of a paragraph, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: All right. I thought you were at the end of a paragraph.
DR. RATZ: May it please the Tribunal, I now have reached the end of the first part of my statements, and I should like to sum up the following. First of all, the defendant Dr. Hermann Pook cannot be charged with the total responsibility for the criminal acts of others. This is in view of the fact that in Office D-III of the WVHA he was active as a leading dentist. We are shocked and rightly by the guilt of persons who were arrested. In order to reach the persons who are really guilty of the crimes committed, we should construct a case. It is already clear from the prosecution that the defendant Pook had the misfortune to have a job in Office Group D of the WVHA.
The establishment of the concentration camps as such was not contrary to law. The practical execution of protective custody was not criminal in its customary sense. In view of the existence of a secrecy system, the defendant Pook must be believed when he says that he did not have any knowledge of the crimes which were committed in the concentration camps, spontaneously or systematically or singly or en masse. A criminal guilt of the defendant because of his activity in the concentration camp system alone is out of the question also because no international law existed against that. Concentration camps existed a long time before 1933; and under other names they still exist today.
We must also consider that we cannot proclaim the defendant guilty and sentence him on the basis of a retroactive law, as I have already pointed out to the Tribunal in my opening speech. Therefore, for the defendant Pook in examining the fact of whether he has rendered himself criminal, there can only be an individual guilt on the basis of the German penal laws which existed at the time when the crimes are alleged to have been committed. This individual guilt and the determination of that guilt is the subject of the second part of my exposition.
THE PRESIDENT: We will recess until 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess until 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 19 September 1947 at 0900 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 19 September 1947, 0900-1730, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Take your seats, please.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II.
Military Tribunal II is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
DR. RAUSCHENBACH (For Defendant Hans Loerner): If the Tribunal please, I shall not read my final plea on behalf of Hans Loerner. I assume, of course, that the final plea will be translated into English in due time for the Court to read it before it considers its verdict.
I would like to refer to one point which arose from a discussion yesterday on the occasion of the plea by my colleague von Stackelberg on behalf of Fanslau. It seems to me that an error occurred about the beginning of what was described as the open budget of the SS. He said, on behalf of August Frank, which is also contained in my plea for Loerner, that the open budget with the Waffen-SS existed since the beginning of the war. I believe that was the time concerned.
DR. VON STEIN (For Defendant Eirenschmalz): May it please the Tribunal, I should also like to say that I shall not read my final plea orally for the reason that I am not in a position of reading everything in the brief period of time allocated to me. I should appreciate it, however, if the Court would read my plea carefully. There are a number of technical expressions about construction matters, and this makes the plea somewhat complicated terminologically. I need not reply to the final statement by the Prosecution, and that is all I have to say this morning.
DR. RATZ (For Defendant Hermann Pook): May it please the Court, before I continue reading my final plea, I would like to make quite sure about the correctness of my calculation as to time, I read yesterday from five to half-past five, and therefore I should have a full hour at my disposal today.
May it please the Court, about the personality of the defendant, Dr. Pook, I do not think it is very difficult to determine Pook's character, his ideas, his motives, and his attitude toward human beings. The personality of a defendant is difficult to ascertain if his active political work for National Socialism or his voluntary membership for many years with the SS should incriminate him. No political idealism or fanaticism became fatal to Defendant Hermann Pook, only, although, this might sound absurd, his passion for horseback riding. The Rider's Association of Berlin-Lichterfeld of which he was a member, was, in the year 1933, transformed into the SS-Mounted Unit almost from one day to the next. The dentist, Dr. Pook, was not only an enthusiastic motorist, but also an enthusiastic rider, and had become thus an SS-man almost without knowning how it happened.
The testimony of the witness, Von Woikowsky-Bideau, given before the trial of the I.M.T. I have included in my Document Book No. II, page 165 to make it quite clear to the High Tribunal why the SS cavalry was expressly exempted when the IMT declared the SS a criminal organization. The witness testified that in the years 1933 and 1934 the riders' associations were transferred bodily either to the SS or to the SA the location of each individual association being decisive for the choice of either one of them. No coercion was exerted to enforce such membership of the SS, that is true, but everybody declining to join the SS together with his association would have been excluded from all sports activity; he would have suffered no loss, but would have been forced to renounce his passion for riding. The aims of the SS cavalry did pertain exclusively to sportsmanship, the SS riders were not active National Socialist, but pronounced sports fans.
At the wedding of Prince Bernard of Lippe, afterwards Prince Consort of the Netherlands, a delegation of the Berlin SS horse unit, of which the prince was a member, was present, undoubtedly no invitation to this wedding would have been sent out if the SS cavalry had been looked upon as being anything but harmless sportsmen.
Thus the Defendant Hermann Pook, though entirely without initiative on his own part had mounted the political horse so to speak. But by no means did he consider it his ambition to ride this horse for any political purpose. After a period of only two months he was assigned to duty as a dentist within the Mounted SS and had to carry out successive dental examinations of the members first of the company and later on of the regiment. Apart from that, he devoted himself to his extensive private practice as a dentist, having no interest and cherishing no ambition in the political field.
His membership in the SS, even only limited to the Mounted SS, however, was to produce further fatal conseauences for him. As a member of the SS following the outbreak of the War, he was drafted and assigned not to the Wehrmacht but to the Waffen-SS. That means: his joining the "Waffen-SS was consequently an involuntary act enforced by the State, so that by virtue of the verdict of the IMT the Defendant Pook is exempt from conviction of membership in a criminal organization.
Regarding exemption of the Mounted SS and the forced draftees for the Waffen-SS, the records of the SS, Document NO-2460, Document Book III, are relevant. After completion of a short military training Dr. Pook was detailed in the medical office of the Waffen-SS. He appeared particularly qualified for duty to the central office because of his maturity of age, his professional skill, and his successful practice as an independent dentist for many years.
One might say it seems rather likely, or it might be that the de fendant, because he was a fanatical National Socialist, was used in the medical office of the Waffen-SS.