Even before 1933, the German Supreme Court and scholars have had to deal with the question of the unexpectability of an action and have repeatedly recognized this unexpectability as a basis for excluding guilt. Unexpectability is present "with reference to the situation as a whole" it may not be expected that "the idea of the criminal result and its injurious social effect becomes a decisive counter-motive, thus motivating the perpetrator to act in accordance with the law." (from Liszt-Schmidt,"Manual of Criminal Law" , 26th ed., p. 283). On this basis, the German Supreme Court also made its decision. Thus in the decision of the 1st chamber of the Reich Court (Justizwesen, 32, p. 2280, No. 14). In this case, a witness, committed perjury in a trial against Communists because he was afraid that if he made a true statement, he would be mistreated by the Communists. In the decision of the 1st. chamber, the Reich Supreme Court argues, among other things, that at the basis of Art. 52 and 54 is the idea that as a basis for exclusion of guilt "an abnormal encroachment upon the free will caused by special external circumstances may also be considered," which in "normal" conduct seem "not to be expected." That is, in other words, that a criminal act committed under such circumstances is still objectively illegal for lack of a basis for justification, but owing to the unusual psychical pressure burdening the perpetrator does not appear subjectively contrary to duty and therefore provides no basis for accusation of guilt. The decision of the Reich Supreme Court (3rd chamber) in the decision 66, p. 98 is similar to this. Corresponding decisions are to be found in decisions 58, p. 97 end p. 226. defendant Ohlendorf found himself from these viewpoints. Ohlendorf has described in the witness stand how he loudly and clearly protested against the order when Streckenbach announced it to the assembled officers in Pretsch. The defendant, Dr. Blume, expressly confirmed this description in his statement of 4 November 1947, p. 1915. The presentation of evidence has, furthermore, clearly brought to light the fact that the protest was immediately silenced by the implication that this was a Fuehrer order against which there could be no further objections.
Under these circumstances, could any one expect from the defendant Ohlendorf that he undertake further steps against the order? For a non-German court, this question will be very difficult to decide in any case, because it presupposes the knowledge and the ability to understand the ideas and conceptions of that time of the Germans, as well as the knowledge of the possibilities which the individual holders of various ranks of the National Socialist officers Corps had of influencing Fuehrer Orders. Ohlendorf knew that his direct superiors Heydrich and Himmler had identified themselves with the Fuehrer Order. He knew that his views would find no support of any sort from those quarters. In spite of this, however, he later made a further attempt in Nikolajew and turned to Himmler. The latter, in an insulting and emphatic manner, did not even grant him an answer. The defendant Seibert reported this scene in detail and in so far confirms Ohlendorf's statement. The Commanders-in-Chief and Generals of the German Army, to whom the Einsatzgruppen were assigned and subordinate, were above Ohlendorf, in his capacity as Chief of an Einsatzgruppe and in his rank at that time as Colonel. Apart from Himmler and the heads of the Ministries only they h ad the possibility of contradicting the Fuehrer and to attempt to have him rescind the order. That possibility obviously had been exhausted unsuccessfully, since that order was in force. In addition the situation was especially difficult for Ohlendorf, because already at that time he had incurred the gravest displeasure on the part of Heydrich and Himmler, and because his transfer to Russia must be considered a punishment (see testimony Ohlendorf and affidavit Dr. Hauschke in Document Book No. I, Doc. No. 8 , Exh. No. 31). Thus there remains merely the question, whether or not Ohlendorf had the possibility on the basis of his position to approach the Fuehrer him self and to insist on the order being changed.
Anyone who knows the conditions with National Socialist Germany will have to answer that question in the negative. In this connection I refer to the affidavit of the former Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Dr. Lammers, contained in Document Book I, Doc. No. 3, Exh. No. 24, p. 12 in the German text, to which I have nothing further to add. Because of its special importance in this decisive question I request that the Court take cognizance of it in its entirety. That there can be no expert witness against this affidavit on this question, despite the objections of the prosecution, is proven by the former position and experience of the witness.
In summarizing the following may be said: Ohlendorf had no means at all to change the course of events. He merely was enabled to carry out the execution of that order in such a way as to spare the unfortunate victims of this order and the troops commissioned with the execution as much of the mental anguish as possible and to prevent any possible outrages. I believe that I do not have to describe to what extent the defendant Ohlendorf fulfilled his duty in that respect. His own and the other defendants' testimony has proven that unequivocally without being disproven by the prosecution. Are there any other aspects or possibilities, the disregarding of which could be considered as a legally tenable charge against the defendant? Above all, could he legally be expected to resist actively the orders or to commit insubordination? It certainly requires no special explanation to show that there exists no legal duty for an open rebellion against an order by the Chief of a State. Because otherwise all the laws of obedience of the State, which govern the special life of human beings would be rendered superfluous and would be dependent only on the arbitrary interpretation of the individual. However,even plain insubordination was completely out of the question in the case of the defendant. Ohlendorf was subject to military law. The order was a military order, given in wartime. The consequences of insubordination would plainly have been a trial before the SS and Police court and a subsequent death sentence (see Blume Document No. I, pages 1-13, German, and transcript of the session of 4 November 1947, pages 1899-1902). Nowhere and at no time however has the duty to become a martyr been decreed as a legal duty quite apart from the fact that thereby the entire situation would not have been changed at all.
Someone else would have stepped into Ohlendorf's place and it would have merely raised the question whether or not the other man would have been prepared to mitigate and ease the consequences of this terrible order both for the victims as well as for the men of the Einsatzkommando in whatever way possible out of the same deep sense of responsibility. During the interrogation of the defendant, the question also arose whether or not Ohlendorf could not have evaded his assignment to the East by feigning sickness. Ohlendorf stated in this connection that he had declined to make such an attempt for reasons of his ethics and character and because it would have helped neither the unfortunate victims affected by the Fuehrer Order nor his comrades. abovementioned laws the simulation of an illness would have been considered as undermining the fighting morale and would have been punished with death. Thus there was no escape for Ohlendorf from this dilemma except for one - certain death, and it would have been too much to expect him to choose that. Neither Ohlendorf nor his fellowdefendants were placed in that position through any fault of their own. After all, they did not volunteer for the assignment to the East in full knowledge of the orders to be expected, but they obeyed governmental compulsion. They were drafted for military service and were assigned there. In the case of Ohlendorf it was done even in the way of a penal measure - though it was not discernible as such on the outside - after he twice unsuccessfully resisted Heydrich's plans by which he was menacingly accused of being a coward.
The question of an emergency caused by orders * of unexpectability cannot be disposed of without showing to what an extent the interpreta tions of International Law had become inconsistent in the Europe of former times already during and after the first world War, as well as through the establishment of the Soviet State.
For the uncertainty of the conceptions valid until then, was undoubtedly eO-decisive for the degree of inner or outer resistance shown or not shown by the individual offices or officials of the Third Reich depending on the position which they held in relation to the Fuehrer at any given time. The situation of International law at that time showed the following picture: During the first World War the Rules of Warfare drawn up by the Hague Conferences had become fluid (gas warfare, hunger blockade). In spite of that it had been neglected in the period following to obviate in any way the dangers to the civilian population inherent in the possibility of a total war. Above all it had been neglected to introduce any kind of limitation for aerial bombardment, even though the experts never grew weary of pointing out these dangerous points. An additional proof for the inconsistency of international law is the fact that a plan could be created during the war on the Allied side, which was - in the words of the American Senator Langer - and I quote: "a plan for the systematic annihilation of the German speaking people" , it was the so-called Morgenthay Plan. Not without reason did Langer formulate his opinion as follows: "No matter how cruel England might have been at any time during its history - and I do not exclude even the Black Hell of Calcutta - there has never been a more savage plan than the one proposed by Mr. Morgenthau". a uniform International Law. It overlooks however, intentionally or unintentionally, the fact that the world has been divided both politically and from the standpoint of law into two parts, and that not just since the beginning of the last war, but de facto already since the creation of the Soviet Union in 1917/18. According to the claims of that state which it put forth itself, the Soviet Union cannot be a loyal partner in the community of nations.
That is made conclusively impossible by its irrevocable aim for world revolution. Beyond that it strives to use International Law and its recognized rules as a weapon against the non-Communist environments, as I shall prove yet. Professor Korovin, the well-known Soviet-Russian expert on Internatio nal Law writes in his Manual of International Law, which he has published under the title "An International Law of the Period of Transition": "The Soviet Union represents the world of tomorrow, it does not fit into a world of yesterday."
Court No. II, Case No. IX.
situation, that acts are being condemned in Nuernberg as a crime, which are quite common for a power, which has signed the basis for the indictment - i.e. the Control Council Law. In this connection a collection of documents deserve a special interest, i.e. "The Land of the Dead", study of the deportations from Eastern Germany, Committee against Mass Expulsions. In that book the slave labor by Germans and their expulsion from their home-country are being publicly exposed, as follows: centage of the missing persons (expelled Eastern Germans was put to death by their tormentors, or have perished because of lack of food and housing. According to the Congressional Report of 5 February 1946, Senator Capehart estimated that no fewer than 3 Million human beings had lost their lives in the course of this "resettlement". held as slave-labor in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Balkan countries. The January edition of the Review of World Affairs (London) reports that it is a well known fact that thousands of German women are working as slaves in the mines around Sverdlovsk. Tens of thousands of civilian slaves work in the mine of Upper Silesia; Czechoslovakia still retains about 300,000 Sudeten Germans as slave labor." Slav workers by Germany during the war, the book concludes:
"If we substitute the words 'Slav' for 'German' and 'Millions' for 'Thousands', then we have an accurate description of the occurrences in Eastern Europe under Allied blessing. It is unbelievable that the Government "of the United States should be a party to a policy for which the Nazi Leaders have been put on trial and have been hanged under American suspices."
new International Law, the persons responsible for all the misery described above would have to be on trial now. And how many persons will have been connected with the execution of these horrible decrees, who, like these defendants, base their defense on the fact that they had to obey their national laws? Unlike these defendants they do not even receive comfort from the excuse to have obeyed a military order before the enemy. They could have, at any time as civilians given up their work for the government, which asked them to do such things. Until the present time no case has become known, in which an Allied citizen would have declined co-responsibility for the above mentioned horrible events through a pretest, which would have dissolved his relations to the state as the letter's employee. did not act, while conscious of illegality of his acts and of moral injustice. In addition he acted in a personal emergency caused by orders and he did everything in his power to show that he was not satisfied with the protest raised against the proclamation of the Fuehrer Decree and the attempt towards the Reichsfuehrer in Nikolajev, but beyond that, to do at least everything in order to minimize and to limit the effects of Hitler's order. He could not be expected to do more, as I have shown in detail. selves an exceptional and compulsory situation for Germany and insofar refer to the legal institution of national emergency aid and national emergency. It is not certain whether or not the prerequisites were present objectively.
As I shall explain in detail, the defendants at any rate had to assume them to be present subjectively, due to the special situation according to International Law, into which they, as Germans and soldiers, had been placed. basic question whether and to what degree the legal principle of falsely assumed national emergency aid and falsely assumed national emergency may influence the question of guilt in this case. Due to the fundamental importance of that question it is necessary to discuss it thoroughly. sitated the clarification of a few preliminary questions. its conclusion is Control Council Law No. 10. It deviates from all of the known criminal laws of all legal systems insofar as it does not contain a so-called "general section" and apparently is limited solely to the establishment of criminal facts. Every criminal code of all countries however contains -- either in the form of a specific order by law or in the form of customary law systematized by the courts or by the legal profession -- a large number of detailed rules, which determine the general prerequisites of culpability, which are substantially the same for all criminal acts. They include for example -- to name only a few -- the regulations concerning the connection between cause and effect, premeditation and negligence attempts, statute of limitations, responsibility for one's actions and finally also self-defense and state of emergency, including the falsely assumed self-defense and falsely assumed state of emergency.
Thus, Control Council Law No. 10 does not deal with all of these questions of the general section of a criminal code, and is limited to the definition of a few points.
that all the other fundamental principles of the "general section" of a criminal code which are in part mentioned above, should not be applicable to Control Council Law No. 10. The observance of these general criminal regulations is so completely covered in all nations and their application is so selfevident all over the world also by law or customary law, that on the one hand without them a law could not be imagined, and that on the other hand all legal thinking would be considerably impeded. Individual Military Courts have therefore already stated that these fundamental principles would have to be taken into consideration also in the application of Control Council Law No. 10. It remains only to answer the question as to which legal sources can be considered the source of the problems not regulated by Law No. 10. Law No. 10 is not a national specical law. If that were the case the general regulations of that state which has issued that special law would have to be applied. Law No. 10 however is an inter-national agreement concluded by the four signatory powers for the detailed execution of the Moscow declaration of 30 October 1945 and the London Declaration of 8 August 1945. participated in its creation, of which each one has its own national system of criminal law. four states cannot simply be used as legal foundation and the less so since at present no international tribunal is sitting whose judges could represent the peculiarities of the systems of criminal law of their respective countries.
Dr. Reinhard Maurach, professor of criminal law and Eastern European law, has examined this question with a view to the present case (legal opinion of Dr. R. Maurach in Document Book II Ohlendorf p. 4 and following) and subjected the possibilities which might be considered to a scientific scholarly examination. This question was dealt with also in my opening statement so that I may be allowed to refer thereto, in order to save time. tribunal called up to decide in the present case can appraise the defense of the defendant exhaustively only if making a so-called continental "cross-section" of the laws on legitimate self-defense and the state of emergency the basis of its judgment. tain doubts as to the application of this continental "cross-section", the Soviet criminal law in any case must be applied as supplementing Law No. 10 in preference to the lex fori, and that on the following considerations: 1947 concerning the abolition of capital punishment in the beginning of my final plea I have expounded how the American Tribunal is acting by way of trustee of the State which has the primary right to punish, namely the Soviet Union. Consequently, an attorneyship under public law has been established for which according to the prerequisites of international law the law of the State having the primary right to punish must be considered.
should still hesitate before applying the continental "cross section". This would be appropriate especially for this reason that according to this Russian Law legitimate self-defense and the state of emergency as legal conceptions, including the assumed self-defense and the assumed state of emergency, are the subjects of general rules so that the Tribunal could only in this way on a far-reaching scale deal justly with the defense presented by the defendant. permit the application of the aforesaid legal conceptions from the laws on legitimate self-defense. With reference to the expert opinion of Professor Maurach I intend to do this as far as the legal prerequisites are concerned in the form of references to my opening statement and to the expert opinion of Professor Maurach. In the examination whether the se prerequisites can be actually claimed to exist, the problem of the war against the Soviet Union as war not following normal military precepts must be made the first object of consideration. national emergency as legal institutions are considered it appears at once obvious that normal actions of war as such do not in themselves justify the application of these legal conceptions. If that were the case at least one of the billigerent parties could always claim to act in legitimate self-defense, and both parties could plead to be in a state of emergency. Actions of war can therefore lead to the application of these legal conceptions only when they exceed the limit of normal war operations, i.e. if the war aims and war methods to be expected with certainty from the enemy are "extraordinary" to such extent that the traditional ideas and limits of international law are inapplicable.
In this case it would not be possible to refuse the opponent of such a state even for the duration of the war to plead legitimate self-defense and state of emergency. The establishment of this fact must be the cornerstone of the whole consideration of the question whether in view of the nature of the Soviet Russian war methods and altogether the Soviet Russian interpretation of international law and laws of war the Eastern war conducted from 1941 on was a war as defined by existing international law. Therefore the question is: Can the Soviet Union in this respect be considered in a way that will permit her opponent to plead a legitimate self-defense practiced in a time of war which can be recognized by international law? ples and doctrines represented most clearly in the following thesis proposed by Stalin: "The aim of our foreign policy will always remain the same: 'Establishment of communist dictatorship in the whole world'." No particular comments are required to prove that this guiding principle stated by Stalin himself forms a radical contrast to the idea of international law. This idea acknowledges the right to live for every state belonging to the international community of nations. Contrary thereto the Soviet Union will eliminate all non-Soviet, i.e. capitalistic nations. Therefore it cannot on principle acknowledge the law of nations and does not acknowledge it either as I shall explain later. But since the Soviet Union -- even though it be only for a certain "transition period" - has been placed within the community of non-Soviet states, the result must be the necessity of the reluctant and revocable acknowledgement for the duration of this transitory period of certain conventional rules as applicable also to the Soviet Union.
Professor Korovin, today considered the leading specialist of international law and the spokesman of the views of the Kremlin says hereto: "Since other state organizations are still in existance in addition to the Soviet Russua the relations of Soviet Russia to these states must unevitably be based on this or that legal foundation of the 'transitory period'. Only the nature of this foundation is questionable." The nature, however, is disclosed by Soviet attitudes and publications proving that the Soviets use international law and its rules as weapons in the service of the class war against the non-communist world. In his "International Law of the Transitory Period" and in other essays some of which have appeared also later than 1945, Professor Korovin has expressed opinions, to this effect. From these publications the following overall picture can be deduced as regards the laws of war: sovereignty since it is itself -- even after 1945 -- in an isolated position and for reasons of self-preservation cannot impose any chains of convention on its own sovereignty. This reasoning is the basis of its extensive use of the veto power in the UN and also of the aspect under which the entire law of treaties is viewed. On the strength of this attitude the Soviet Union accents obligations to concluded treaties only so far as they do not "delay" the world revolution. This applies in particular to the case of war, in which the Soviet Union believes to be right in simply stripping off such obligations because it expects nothing else from the bourgeois states. On this professor Korovin says: "On one hand we know better than anybody else that the loyalty towards accepted obligations is not "being observed either generally or towards Socialistic states by virtue of the signature of a bourgeois government or by the motives deduced from normal scholasticism.
.. however... the relative value (of such war conventions) must be acknowledged also for Soviet Russia, but with the 'unavoidable improvement with reference to the social revolution in the form of the clausula rebus sic stantibus'." In the opinion of the Soviet Union every war is fighting a defensive war because it is fought only for the sake of "class self-defense". The same basic attitude is found again in the laws on prisoners of war. It is true that official Russian authorities have not disclosed any opinion on the question as to whether the USSR is bound by the rules established by the laws on prisoners of war and Korovin, too, has left that question open. However, it is emphasized that even in the treatment of prisoners a considerable discrimination must be practiced according to "whether the prisoners are politicians or class enemies (officers and other responsible leaders); in the interest of the propaganda for the world revolution it would be attempted to influence the former "in a friendly way" whereas the latter category could hardly be "re-educated" (Korovin p. 124); but then the Soviet doctrine is prepared to accept the discriminatory treatment of the members of its own army as unavoidable retaliation.
The political events of recent years (repatriation of the Soviet prisoners of war from Finland 1940) have made it clear that the USSR considered these prisoners who had breathed the "air" of a bourgeois state to be actually lost to the political community and provided for their elimination. The same treatment is also applied to civilian prisoners. According to Soviet views the arrest and deportation from occupied territories will always be permissible if such parts of the population constitute groups which are a danger to the Red Army.
In such cases a general display a hostile attitude towards the USSR. In all such cases it is imperative according to Soviet ideology to render them harmless. The system of hostages, it is true, is repudiated "in principle" (Korovin p. 129), but it is here stressed that the particular circumstances under which the Red Army must fight justify also the arrest of innocent persons according to the hostage principle "even though it is in pursuance not of legal ethics but of actual expediency". It is also mentioned that certain groups will be preferably considered in the selection of hostages (such as mayors, notories, public teachers, ecclesiastics) who as "spiritual supporters" of the enemy are particularly tied up with the ruling (capitalist) class of the enemy state. bound by conventions under international law as little does it regard the principles of the administration of occupied enemy territories as binding with respect to itself. The official opinion of the Soviet Union does not leave any doubt as to this official opinion. Korovin writes: ("In this connection . . . ) the question arises whether the fact can be considered unlawful that the Soviet Power does not in the least feel itself obligated to protect the inviolability of exploitation and the impertubability of the capitalistic order within the borders of the occupied territory, but, on the contrary, fighting for its socialist existence it lends any possible assistance (Finland, Poland, Esthonia, Latvia) to the efforts of the local working masses towards organizing the society on a socialist basis.
The revolutionary committees, the support of the rise of national Soviet republics, and other working principles of the so-called "Sovietizing" are the consequences thereof." recess.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. The Tribunal will be in recess fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
C urt II, Case 9 5 Feb 1948_M_MSD_8_1_Arminger (Hildesheimer)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. ASCHENAUER: The principles which I have here quoted must be considered the quintessence of the Soviet theory of international law. They have been published by the only spokesman of this doctrine in the USSR and, finally, were approved of by the Soviet federal censorship. It must be beyond doubt that these proclamations coincide with the official opinions of the Kremlin. The conjectures inferred from these doctrines of the Soviet Union as to the conduct to be expected in a possible war were on a considerable scale confirmed by the experiences of the Finnish winter war (Blue-White Book of the Finnish Government I). Also in taking over the Baltic States the Soviet Union displayed towards the civilian population of the occupied countries the aforesaid principles contrary to international law as it is generally known and besides was explained in detail e.g. by the witness Dr. Maw in the Sandberger case. Indeed even in 1913 the Soviet Union officially notified the German Reich Government through its diplomatic representatives at that time that the Russian Government denounced all treaties formerly concluded by the Russian State among which also the Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention. That means that already when the war with Germany started the Soviet basic thesis had received corroboration that the USSR would acknowledge the rules of international law in a certain sense only for the so-called "transitory period" during which it actually decisive clash with another power it would on principle reserve for itself the right to free action. In the eyes of the Soviet Union, however, international law is just not the modus vivendi between states for mutual restriction of their respective rights to existence but a diplomatic weapon to be used for realization of its world-revolutionary aims. Therefore the Soviet Union was also prepared to acknowledge certain theses of international law only if they did not run contrary to its revolutionary plans. The entire development of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union discloses the tactics of openly sacrificing the rules of international law if this will be in accordance with the alleged "dialectic evolution" i.e. the interests of the "coming unavoidable" world revolution.
In all such cases international law must he superseded by the requirements of class warfare. During the time of existence of the Soviet Union - as already mentioned - this was proved unmistakably in particular by the numerous Soviet interventions. These interventions in themselves made it clear that the war going on from 1941 had to be fought by Germany not only against the Stte of the USSR but against world Bolshevism as such, in other words against the entire political Communist movement threatening the non-Soviet world. The part played by the Comintern - or Cominform as it is called at present - is so well-known throughout the world and in consideration of the political development of recent years so undisputed also by Americans that I may be allowed to abstain from dealing with this question in detail. Therefore many psychological conditions which are not relevant as far as other wars are concerned namely the imperative idea based on factual knowledge that under the circumstances collective security measures might not be avoidable even though they were reprehensible from an ethical point of view, became rightly a subject of discussion among the defendants. should like to invite the attention also to the selection of war conventions to which the Soviet Union has acceded. These are most significantly the Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925 concerning prohibition of chemical and bacteriological warfare (with a few qualifications) and the London Protocol of 6 November 1936 concerning the rules of submarines warfare. hesitation because its incomplete preparations in the field of chemical and submarine warfare made restrictions expedient whereas the far more essential treaties, the Hague Convention, and the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, threatened to restrict the totality of the war which by the Soviet Union would be carried on according to principles of civil war.
of civil war.
Therefore such rules must be eliminated for a war against "capitalistic states". This applied in particular to the incitement of partisan warfare for which valuable strategical experience had already been gained through the civil war from 1917 to 1920. All this is no theoretical discussion, on the contrary this rather led perforce to the expected behavior of the Soviet Union in a war with a "capitalistic power", which then also materialized in the war with Germany. In accordance with the views it had repeatedly announced, the USSR in this war in which it did not consider itself bound by the rules of the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of Landwarfare, disregarded also the unwritten basic rules of generally acknowledge customs of war although to the observation of which it would also have been bound. The leaders of the German State who, because of the National Socialist ideology and the geographic position of the Reich had concerned themselves with the Communist world of ideas more than the rest of Europe anticipated this behavior with certainty. The defendants were of the same opinion by virtue of their political and professional experience. All these circumstances must be taken into account when examining the charge of the Prosecution that the defendants are responsible of the elamination of "politically undesirable elements for ideologica reasons". I have already eleborately expounded my view that the Defendant Ohlendorf could not and was not entitled either to undertake an examination of the question whether these groups of persons were rightly designated to be included in the extermination action. These persons were by the official authorities of the German State described as an actual and potential danger to military operations and the planned permanent occupation of Soviet territory. For the danger rose from their ideology which they were bound to annihilate all opponents in order to realize the Bolshevist world revolution. From this it appears that obviously it was a question of forestalling or defeating a typically Soviet method. of carrying on war in Soviet partisan warfare. This partisan war is contrary to all principles of martial law, as already mentioned.