別動隊審判

案件

别动队是亲卫队下属的特别组织，专门执行法外处决与强迫失踪等非法任务；第二次世界大战期间，别动队广泛地活跃于纳粹德国占领下的东欧地区。仅自1941年起至1943年止，别动队便已杀害逾一百万名犹太人以及数以万计的“游击队员”、罗姆人、身障人士、苏联政委、斯拉夫人与其他人种。于该次审判程序遭起诉的24名被告均是别动队军官，检方指控他们对平民实行大规模屠杀。军事法庭在判决要旨内指出：
... 本案被告非仅以策划或指挥大规模屠杀之罪名应诉。身处距离屠杀现场数百甚至数千英哩外之办公室内要非伊等之罪。本庭尚须强调：本件之在案被告确有亲临屠杀现场，并有监督、控制、指挥乃至于积极参与屠杀之情事。
本次审判由来自宾夕法尼亚州的麦可·穆斯马诺法官主审，并由来自阿拉巴马州的约翰·斯贝特（John J. Speight）法官、来自北卡罗来纳州的理查·狄克森法官共同审理（Richard D. Dixon）。检方的首席法律顾问为美国律师泰尔福特·泰勒；首席检察官为美国律师本杰明·佛伦茨。检方于1947年7月29日正式提起公诉；审判程序则自同年1947年9月29日开始持续至翌年4月10日止。

判决要旨

纽伦堡军事法庭在判决理由中指出：
本案事实大幅超越一般人的经验知识与人造场景所能造出之情状；仅有最为完善的司法程序与最为周延之审理，始能厘清并确认其真相。虽然检方对各被告之主要指控为谋杀，（略）然规划如此缜密的屠杀行为，使案件可信度须由数百次确认证词支撑之。
（略）如此一件凶残程度空前绝后、残暴行为令人不可置信之犯罪，使见此罪状者无不极力抗拒对犯罪现场之想像；更动摇了对人类超乎任何语言所能表现的堕落之期望。 因各被告所从事之行为所致之死亡人数，经检方勘定为一百万人，然此仅系一抽象数字。无人能完全体会重复一百万次之谋杀所带来的恐惧。

仅当此数字经解构后，世人方得以了解本庭所审之案何其丑陋。观者必须明白，死于刽子手枪下者并非一百万人，而仅有十人：男人、女人、小孩，他们可能同属一个家庭。一百万以十除之，则此谋杀场景必已重复十万次；自此观之，观者始能感受重复的恐惧，并理解检方的诉词：“我们以悲伤、同时怀抱希望的心情，在此揭露被告对百万名无辜男女老幼的蓄意谋杀行为。”
其原文如下：
[The facts] are so beyond the experience of normal man and the range of man-made phenomena that only the most complete judicial inquiry, and the most exhaustive trial, could verify and confirm them. Although the principal accusation is murder, [...] the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated.
...a crime of such unprecedented brutality and of such inconceivable savagery that the mind rebels against its own thought image and the imagination staggers in the contemplation of a human degradation beyond the power of language to adequately portray.

The number of deaths resulting from the activities with which these defendants have been connected and which the prosecution has set at one million is but an abstract number. One cannot grasp the full cumulative terror of murder one million times repeated.

It is only when this grotesque total is broken down into units capable of mental assimilation that one can understand the monstrousness of the things we are in this trial contemplating. One must visualize not one million people but only ten persons — men, women, and children, perhaps all of one family — falling before the executioner's guns. If one million is divided by ten, this scene must happen one hundred thousand times, and as one visualizes the repetitious horror, one begins to understand the meaning of the prosecution's words, 'It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children.'