Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

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authorities or does not possess Identity papers, it must be deduced,
pursuant to 5 1 of the Ordinance, that this person is party to an
enterprise hostile to the Reich. Was he in fact party to such an
enterprise, the Special Court has not to examine the question at
all whether the persons who gave him lodging knew of that enter-
prise. That knowledge has, pursuant to the more than daring
assumption of 5 1, to be presupposed and, without admitting or
considering any evidence as to the incorrectness of that assumption,
a death sentence has to be pronounced. .
No provision was applied more often by the Special Courts than
5 4 of the Ordinance against Destructive Elements (Annex 8),
which lays down that "whoever, deliberately abusing the extraor-
dinary conditions created by the war, commits some other
,offence will, in excess of the ordinary maximum penalty, be
sentenced to penal servitude up to 15 years, for life, or to death,
if the sound popular feeling (gesunde Volksemphden) calls for it
because of the particular heinousness of the offence". As "other
crimes" were considered amongst others all, even the slightest,
infringements against the numerous emergency regulations concerning
economic control (Kriegswirtschafts-Verordnungen).A great
part of the sentences passed by the Special Courts are death
sentences against butchers who may have sold but small quantities of
meat "under the counter", against bakers who supplied individual
customers with bread off the ration; death sentences for selling
cloth, cigarettes etc., on the black market, for every-even an
occasional and insignificant overcharge of the controlled ceiling
prices.
These sentences too appear criminal on account of their
excessiveness. Moreover they are not jurisdiction but terrorism.
because the penalties they pronounced were not prescribed by the
law, but decided upon arbitrarily by the judge.
4 of the quoted Ordinance deals as follows from its wording,
only with acts which had been declared punishable before, it does
not, however, in any way restrict the judge with regard to the
penalty - to
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be imposed. 5 4 is mostly concerned with offences which, before
the validity of the Ordinance against destructive elements, were
fined or punished with imprisonment lasting a few days, or weeks
at mast. Now it was up to the judge to examine first of all
whether, in view of the "particular heinousness" of the deed "the