Former S.S. Lieut. Gen. Oswald Pohl, who is one of 18 Nazi concentration camp chiefs being tried here by a United States war crimes court, told the tribunal, which heard final defense pleas today, that his views on the Jewish question had been influenced by writings on the subject by the late Henry Ford, who wrote and published a considerable amount of anti-Semitic literature after World War I. (Ford subsequently disavowed his anti-Jewish writings.)
Pohl, who is charged with complicity in the imprisonment of 10,000,000 persons by the Nazis, and the murder of several million of them, denied that he had committed any crimes, and challenged the legality of the laws under which he is being tried. He said that he was solely responsible for all the crimes charged against the 18 defendants, since the other 17 carried out his orders.
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