Defending Nazis in Postwar Czechoslovakia by Jakub Drápal

Author:Jakub Drápal [Drápal, Jakub]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788024637310
Google: zxj_twEACAAJ
Publisher: Karolinum Press
Published: 2017-01-15T03:37:45+00:00

THE CLOSING DEFENCE SPEECH258

At the end of the trial, Resler delivered his closing speech, in which he once again called into question the objectivity of the proceedings as a whole and pointed out the generally unfriendly atmosphere in society and among those present at the trial, who had turned themselves into additional prosecutors. “It was after all extremely clear throughout the proceedings that there were not only two public prosecutors here, authorized by the requisite office to carry out that role, but also numerous witnesses – largely from the educated classes, alas – who stepped over the line when giving evidence and engaged in evident prosecution.

Similarly, with the exception of the two university professors, the esteemed experts did not refrain from allowing their personal feelings to infiltrate the professional matter of their findings and reports, referring to the accused’s actions directly as crimes, in one case unprecedented crimes in terms of their number and the baseness of their criminal traits and so on, or including in their reports judgements of the actions reported from the perspective of criminal law, specifying the basis of that judgement according to the criminal code, and thus anticipating the court’s judgement and condemning the accused before the verdict was given by the only qualified court. (…) It is therefore impossible for any court in the Czechoslovak Republic to judge the accused, in view of section 67 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and others, and the accused requests that the court draw its conclusions based on this directive.”

That is also why Resler repeatedly reminded the court that it was acting on behalf of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which had delegated its powers to the Czech court. He did so in an attempt to call on the judges’ honour, in particular the lay judges, and to persuade them to judge based on actual fault and not on their own feelings.

After this, Resler reacted to the individual elements of the prosecution.

On the preparation of the Munich Agreement and 15 March 1939, Resler stated: “The law on the protection of the Republic only considers the preparatory negotiations and attempts to achieve such results to constitute a crime. (…) The law does not consider at all the possibility of such acts could being successful; it works on the assumption that if such plots were to be successful, and thus the constitution changed, independence lost, the democratic-republican state model altered, then the resulting circumstances would be such that it would no longer be possible to prosecute for the act committed, and courts would no longer be able to try according to Czechoslovak law (…) which means that the outcome itself (…) as such, is not punishable.”

Frank’s defence partially acknowledged his membership in criminal organisations, in as far as Frank himself admitted his membership in the SdP, NSDAP and SS, but not in the Freiwilliger Schutzdienst. He also protested the German government’s criminality. His defence rested on the fact that at the beginning of the war Hitler had formally dissolved the government, and had then directly commanded the individual ministers.

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