The Nuremberg Trial

41

The Pittsburgh Press (November 29, 1945)

Background of news –
Nuernberg’s ‘Iron Virgin’

By Frank Aston

The war crimes trials at Nuernberg bring to mind the story of the Iron Virgin of Nuernberg.

The Iron Virgin was an engine of torture and punishment. George Ryley Scott in his “History of Torture Throughout the Ages” reported that a Dr. Mayer, keeper of the archives of Nuernberg, said such an apparatus undoubtedly existed in the Castle of Nuernberg,

A specimen was found in a collection of antiquities belonging to a Baron Diedrich who said he bought it from someone who obtained it during the French revolution. Some believe the apparatus was invented in Span in the 16th century and imported into Germany while Charles V reigned over both countries.

A French officer under Gen. Lasalle described one discovered in a vault at Toledo, Spain. The officer said it was a wooden figure representing the Virgin Mary. The fore part of the body was equipped with sharp, narrow blades with their points turned toward the spectator.

For heretics and blasphemers

An attendant told the officer the instrument was devised for use on heretics and blasphemers. The accused was taken into the vault and placed in front of the figure, over which played a weird, flickering light.

Operated by an unseen mechanic, the figure would open its arms to the accused, as if inviting him t seek forgiveness. Overwhelmed with awe and astonishment, the prisoner often would walk into the embrace. If he didn’t, he was pushed.

Almost imperceptibly, the arms enfolded him until the blades slowly began to pierce his body. If he refused to confess, his captors either let the engine squeeze and stab him to death; or they took him off to some other form of torture.

Dr. Mayer said that in Germany the device was different.

Plenty of blades

The Nuernberg machine was made of sheet iron and set on a strong frame. The front formed two folding doors. Inside the swinging right breast of the figure were 13 blades. In the left, there were eight.

The victim was backed into the recess. He was obliged to stand.

The two doors were pressed shut by means of machinery back of the statue. The blades were not necessarily long enough to kill. After the apparatus had closed, it would open again and eject the victim. The body would fall through a trapdoor onto a cradle of swords.

Just how this second contrivance was operated has not been explained. Presumably the impact of the body set it in motion. The sharp blades sliced the body to pieces.

The Nuernberg engine had one accessory not found in Spain. The folding doors contained two long poniards set at the level of the victim’s head.

These were intended for the eyes.

St. Petersburg Times (November 29, 1945)

Lerner: Nuremberg and the dream of law

By Max Lerner

When the Nuremberg trials were first discussed and planned, the atom bomb did not yet exist. What was outlined therefore as a matter of international law has now had added to it the stakes of human survival. For the world will surely go to pieces in an age of atomic warfare unless it is held together by the thongs not only of a rudimentary world government, but of a rudimentary world law, and the Nuremberg trials offer the first instance of such world law in action.

The trials will have many sensational aspects, and the duty of the reporters at Nuremberg is to report the dramatic tidbits about Hess and Goering and Streicher and how they behave: that is the stuff of human interest, and that is what most newspaper readers eat up. But if you are concerned with the long range, you will not be deflected by these personalities, nor by considerations of hatred or pity or revenge for them. Long after they are mold and their memory but a dim stench in history, the real meaning of Nuremberg may still live.

That meaning is best summed up in one of the sentences from the opening statement by the American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson: “I cannot subscribe to the perverted reasoning that society may advance… by the expenditure of morally innocent lives, but that progress in law may never be made at the price of morally guilty lives.”

This drives straight at the heart of Nuremberg’s importance for the world’s future. We have had in the past a few fragments here and there of a body of international law. We have had laws of warfare, more often defied than honored. We have had covenants and treaties for peaceful relations between nations, but the history of diplomacy is also the history of their flouting. There can be no question that the German defendants at Nuremberg violated both the laws of war and the agreements of peace. But what a pitifully trivial way that is of putting the enormity of their acts. We cannot measure how truly monstrous they were unless we measure them not only against the written agreements but against the most elementary conscience of human beings.

Key task at the trial

That is why the task which the American prosecution has taken over – that of presenting the Nazi deeds as crimes against humanity – is the key task of the trial. Its failure or success will determine whether we simply get vengeance out of the trial, or whether we get out of it the big advance in international law since the seventeenth century, when a Dutch lawyer called Hugo Grotius first sought to map out a body of standards of conduct binding on nations.

We must get clear in our minds why we seek to punish the twenty-odd broken and bedraggled men who sit at the bar at Nuremberg.

It is not out of a sadistic desire for revenge or even a measured belief in retribution. Either in terms of personal revenge or historic retribution, their death will be but the paltriest sort of repayment for what they and their fellows have done. It will not wipe out their acts, neither will it add to our own moral stature if we act from such motives.

Nor should we punish them in order to rid the world of them and make sure they will not again commit such crimes. As political forces these men are through. No millions will ever again cheer them; no armies will march at their orders.

Nor do I see much in the idea that the punishment of these men may be a healing and reforming principle for the rest of the German people. Most Germans have been so denuded morally, and are now so sunk in the desperate struggle for sheer physical survival, that one doubts whether the trials will mean very much to them, one way or another.

The idea of punishment as a deterrent is more in point. To establish the precedent that the leaders of armies and states cannot hide behind the screen of being simply the instruments of state policy, may be a big step in warning other states and army leaders who may plan aggressive and inhuman war in the future. It is time to remove the impersonal state as a screen behind which the worst crimes can be committed. It may be a healthy thing to make statesmanship a dangerous profession, and to get the idea across that the leaders of states do not necessarily die in bed.

Yet none of these four conventional theories of punishment – retribution, prevention, reform, deterrent – really gets at the meaning of Nuremberg. You get much closer to it when you see it as an immense and revolutionary effort to give utterance to a collective human conscience, to bring into being a collective standard by which the gross violations of that conscience can be punished.

The conscience and the moral sense

For centuries men have dreamed of the time when crimes could be punished on a world scale as well as between states; when the fact that a criminal had magnified his crimes a millionfold would not make him immune while the petty criminal who took only one human life was punished. Always there stood in the way the fact that there is no clear body of statute law for the world, and that nations recognize only the law they have themselves made.

It is better to punish with a clear statute than without it. But in this case of the Nuremberg trials the act of punishment can, like any great forward-moving act in history, help create a new consciousness which may lead us to set down some day, as clear law the things that are now only part of the human conscience. If we do this at Nuremberg it will be an act so crucial that it could have been produced only by the most violent revulsion of the moral sense of men. It is possible that we needed something as monstrous as Nazism to produce that revulsion.

There are those who will argue, as the German defendants do, that this dream is all very pretty, but that you cannot punish men unless they have violated explicit law by an explicit government; and that this must wait until we have set up a world government which will codify a world law. I do not think that will be the sequence. The statute will be, if at all, the end product. It cannot come into being unless we have a world government; but the world government cannot come into being unless we have a collective conscience and a collective will to punish the violations of it. Thus, the conscience and the moral sense come first. Once we have them, and once we are aware we have them, the rest will follow. That is why the Nuremberg trials may prove a more important prelude to an enduring peace than even the San Francisco Charter.

Some may jibe that I am speaking of a “human conscience” and a “moral sense” that are vague and formless, things on which no body of law can be built. I submit they are the only things that a body of law ever rests on. The surest basis of a future world society lies in the sense of our common plight. When a Negro is lynched, all of us are strung up on that rope. When the Jews were burned in the Nazi furnaces, all of us were burned. When Hitler told his generals and his party leaders about his plans for exterminating the Polish people, and when Goering – on hearing the plans – jumped up and down on the table in sadistic glee, he was jumping on the bodies not only of the Poles, but of us all.

If we never saw this clearly before, we must see it now in the age of the atom bomb. Some of our commentators are talking of making the laws against the use of the atom bomb binding directly on individuals, rather than on nations only. I am all for it. But it will be hopeless ever to make the human conscience binding in the future on the men of the atom bomb unless we make its binding now at Nuremberg on the men of the human furnaces.

A new international law will not be made in the courtroom or the council chamber any better than it is made in our own hearts.

42

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 9

43

The Pittsburgh Press (November 30, 1945)

Hess admits insanity hoax

Murder plots by Nazis told to war crimes tribunal by general

NUERNBERG (UP) – Rudolf Hess testified from the war crimes witness stand day that his pretense of amnesia and insanity was a hoax. He said that he was quite competent and ready to go ahead with his own trial.

Earlier, Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, the No. 2 man of the German Counter-Intelligence service, testified that the Nazi war criminals plotted to murder French generals Maxim Weygand and Henri Giraud, and gave orders to kill all captured Russian commissars and Communists. He said the Nazis faked the incidents used as a pretext for the war.

Despite Hess’ melodramatic assertion from the stand that his purported loss of memory was faked, the international tribunal withheld an immediate ruling on his mental condition.

His counsel, preceding Hess in a hearing for which the courtroom was cleared of the other Nazi defendants pleaded that his client’s claim to mental fitness was a part of the quirks of the mind that made him irresponsible.

After sitting through a tedious two and a half hours of the hearing on his case, Hess went to the stand to proclaim his clarity of mind and charge that the tribunal was “not competent” to conduct the war crimes trials.

Hoax lasted three years

The testimony provided a sensational climax to Hess’ claims for more than three years that he remembered nothing of his doings as deputy chief of the Nazi Party and one of the top dogs of the Hitler regime.

After hearing his lawyer, Gunther von Rohrscheidt, plead that the case against Hess be quashed, the defendant himself suddenly indicated he would like to take the stand.

Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, British member of the tribunal, proposed that if von Rohrscheidt deemed it fit, Hess should go to the stand and tell the court how he felt.

When Hess heard those words, he leaped up, grabbed a sheaf of notes from his coat pocket, and stood eagerly awaiting permission to begin.

A courtroom technician rushed a microphone to Hess. He began speaking slowly, in an even, controlled voice.

Planned ‘surprise’

“At the beginning I gave my counsel a note saying I believed the proceedings could be shortened if I were allowed to speak for myself,” he said.

He said he had intended to save the “surprise” until later in the proceedings, but gave no reason why he decided to spring it when he did.

Speaking from scribbled notes, Hess said solemnly: “My memory is again in order.”

He paused for effect and resumed: “The reasons I simulated a loss of memory were tactical.”

He said he had hoodwinked his own counsel, as well as a corps of 10 of the greatest psychiatrists the four Allied nations had to offer.

Takes responsibility

He assumed full responsibility for everything he had said and done in the past – without specifying what that might include – and took a parting shot at the tribunal by challenging its competence.

Earlier he told his counsel that he had no interest in the proceedings because he felt chat the verdict “is already decided and the trials are just an empty show.”

Finished, Hess crumpled his notes, thrust them into his pocket, sat down, crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap, and surveyed the scene of consternation he had wrought. He smiled slightly.

Von Rohrscheidt, who was seated at the defense counsel’s table in the center of the courtroom, burst out laughing when Hess finished. He was understood to have remarked: “That proves he’s crazy.”

The inside picture of the Nazi world was told for the first time by Lahousen, chief assistant to Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Counter-Intelligence Service.

Lahousen’s testimony sent the 20 war crime defendants into panic and rage. At the luncheon recess Hermann Goering snorted that Lahousen ought to be “lynched” and Joachim von Ribbentrop nervously muttered, “What shall I do? What shall I do?”

Lahousen described Canaris as an implacable foe of the Nazis and a man who hated war and did all in his power to obstruct Adolf Hitler’s schemes. Canaris is believed to have been shot by the Gestapo last April when Hitler suspected him – accurately, it appeared – of plotting against him.

Names Keitel

He declared that Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel tried to get the intelligence corps to “eliminate” both Gen. Weygand, at that time in North Africa, and Gen. Giraud, then a prisoner in German hands. Canaris blocked both plans, he said, taking the position that “we won’t commit murder.”

Lahousen testified that Gen. Hermann Reinecke ordered that Russian prisoners be treated entirely differently from other Allied prisoners. Guards at Russian camps were equipped with whips and authorized to kill the Russians at the slightest excuse. Orders were given to brand the Russians.

Lahousen, the first witness to be called by the prosecution, also revealed that a small inner group of the intelligence service plotted to kill Hitler as far back as 1938. He said that many of the men around Canaris were executed or committed suicide after the failure of the July 1944 plot against Hitler.

Voiced concern

Lahousen said that Canaris had expressed serious concern over the bombardment of Warsaw and had warned Keitel that serious repercussions in the world were likely. Keitel told him, Lahousen said, that the measure had already been agreed upon by Hitler and Goering.

He said Canaris had also warned strongly against Nazi plans for exterminating Polish intellectuals, nobility, clergy and Jews, and had said to Keitel “the world at some time will make the armed forces under whose eves these events took place responsible for them.”

Canaris also talked with Ribbentrop, Lahousen said, who told him that a directive had been issued to arrange for Ukrainian groups to rise against the Poles in the Polish Ukraine and exterminate both Poles and Jews.

Ordered Polish uniforms

“Some time in August 1939,” Lahousen said, “the Counter-Intelligence section was ordered to hand over Polish uniforms and identification tags to Heinrich Himmler. I don’t know where the order originated, but I believe it was with Himmler.”

Lahousen said that when the first bulletins about alleged Polish attacks on German villages were published – the pretext Hitler used for war on Poland – “It became clear what the uniforms had been used for.”

“I was told that all members of the SD [security police] who participated in the attack were killed afterward.”

44

The Evening Star (November 30, 1945)

Hess admits feigning amnesia, accepts responsibility for acts and asks to continue on trial

Nazi spy expert led plot to kill Hitler, Nuernberg court told
By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP) – Rudolf Hess told the International Military Tribunal today that he accepted “full responsibility for all I have done, signed or cosigned,” and that he wished to continue on trial with his fellow Nazis.

Hess declared that he had feigned loss of memory, even to his own attorney, for “tactical reasons.”

The court adjourned for the day without announcing a ruling on the mental fitness of the former No. 2 deputy fuehrer, whom Allied psychiatrists have reported sane, but suffering from hysteria.

Hess’ case was brought up after a surprise German witness testified that Germany’s leading spy expert long plotted against Hitler and finally was executed in 1944 after the failure of the bomb plot against the Fuehrer.

Leader of anti-Hitler clique

Adm. Walter Wilhelm Canaris, the mysterious Greek-blooded chief of the German Army’s counterespionage section, was named as a leader of the anti-Hitler military clique by Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, Canaris’ aide. Lahousen was the first witness called by the prosecution to relate the grim inside story of German scheming and aggression.

Lahousen said Canaris, who ran the German spy service disguised as a commercial agency during the days of the German republic, hated Hitler and headed a military clique which plotted against the Nazi leader from the time he rose to power. Canaris was among scores of military leaders executed after Hitler escaped death in the 1944 assassination attempt.

Lahousen said Canaris unsuccess fully protested against mass murder and ill-treatment of Russian prisoners, who were starved until “cannibalism ensued.”

Two generals ordered killed

He said high command orders to assassinate two French generals, Maxim Weygand and Henri Giraud, were thwarted by Canaris.

Lahousen testified that Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, one of the defendants, wanted German secret agents to murder the French military leaders after the fall of France to remove them as possible centers of French resistance.

Gen. Weygand was Allied generalissimo at the time of the fall of France and later was Marshal Petain’s administrator in North Africa. Gen. Giraud for a time was the Allied-recognized French leader in North Africa.

Cannibalism laid to Hitler

The prosecution’s surprise witness declared former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop once asserted that “all farms of Poles must be burned to the ground and all Jews killed” in the invasion of Poland.

“Hitler was responsible for the policy of starvation that led to cannibalism among Russian prisoners,” Lahousen declared. “He said preparations were made to take Russian prisoners to Germany, but this was countermanded, we heard, on Hitler’s personal orders.”

“This meant there was vast congestion at the front,” he commented. "People could not be fed nor clothed and cannibalism ensued… During repeated trips I undertook with Canaris I saw some of this with my own eyes.”

Orders also were issued to brand some Soviet prisoners, he testified.

Pre-war reconnaissance

Lahousen disclosed that the German Air Force made reconnaissance flights over London, Leningrad and Poland in the pre-war period just prior to the invasion of Poland, September 1, 1939.

Discussing Canaris’ refusal to carry out orders to have Gen. Weygand and Gen. Giraud killed, Lahousen said the admiral had to indulge in subterfuge to avoid carrying out the assignment.

Keitel did not press for the slaying of Gen. Weygand, but got orders from Hitler in mid-1942 to carry out the plot against Gen. Giraud, who had escaped from the German fortress at Koenigstein, the witness said. About this time, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the security police, was assassinated in Prague.

Lahousen said Canaris then told Field Marshal Keitel that Heydrich had been commissioned before his death to carry out the assassination of Gen. Giraud and had failed.

“Nothing more happened about Giraud,” Lahousen added. “Hitler was most indignant and said the SD [security police] had failed miserably.”

Gen. Giraud later escaped to North Africa and joined the Allies.

Lt. Gen. R. A. Rudenko, chief Russian prosecutor, cross-examined Lahousen closely on German mistreatment of Russian prisoners.

Rudenko asked time after time about whether Canaris’ “Abwehr” [Counterintelligence Corps] had directed “terroristic acts.”

Lahousen replied: “On our part, never – the military Abwehr [intelligence] avoided political or terror activity.”

Protested mass executions

Lahousen testified that the intelligence division protested against the mass execution of Russian prisoners, declaring it was “having a bad effect on German soldiers and hampering German intelligence work.”

“There was no talk at the time of international law,” Lahousen said, adding that Canaris got only one concession, “that executions should not take place before the eyes of German troops but somewhere aside.”

To Assistant Prosecutor John Harlan Amen’s questions as to the exact manner of selecting victims, Lahousen replied: “Prisoners were selected partially according to racial viewpoints. If one was a Jewish type or other type considered inferior, he was executed.

Under Rudenko’s blunt questioning, Lahousen said an example of abnormal Nazi reasoning was the ruling that all Mohammedan Tartars be considered as “Jews and executed.”

Asked by French prosecutor Charles Dubost about the originator of the execution order, Lahousen said “the idea came from Hitler himself in reorganizing the SD [secret police], but who else helped, I don’t know.”

Orders were given, Lahousen said, to execute captured British Commandos to discourage resistance. Canaris opposed the order, he said, because “we had a section of our own whose work was similar to the commandos… The regiment Brandenburg was similar to the British Commandos.”

Lahousen said be provided anti-Nazi material for the diary of Canaris who kept the record, Lahousen added, to “inform Germany and the world once and for all, how these people were guilty who were guiding the nation at the time.”

Czechoslovakia next subject

American prosecutors were scheduled to open the third week of the trial Monday with presentation of evidence concerning the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

If the schedule is followed, Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor, will begin the presentation Tuesday of Britain’s case concerning aggression in Poland, Norway, the Balkans and the Low Countries.

Following the showing of motion pictures of German concentration camps yesterday, counsel for some time of the Nazi defendants indicated they would plead that their clients had no knowledge of the concentration camp cruelties. Assistant American Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd told the court the prosecution intends “to prove that each end every one of these defendant knew of existing camps” and deliberately used them to crush opposition.

45

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 10

46

The Evening Star (December 1, 1945)

Hess must continue in war crime trial, tribunal declares

Defense at Nuernberg cross-examines Nazi intelligence expert
By the Associated Press

NUERNBERG (AP) – The International Military Tribunal ruled today that Rudolf Hess, who confessed he had been faking amnesia, must continue to stand trial with 19 other Nazi leaders accused of war crimes.

Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, announced that no further mental examinations of Hitler’s former deputy were necessary and that he was capable of standing trial.

Hess, who had read novels and paid scant attention to early portions of the trial, created a sensation yesterday when he told the court he had simulated loss of memory for “tactical” reasons and announced he would stand responsible for all of his actions.

Hess appeared much relieved by his confession and for the first time since the trial began engaged in lively conversation with other prisoners in the box just before the session opened.

Hess had Grand Admirals Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder shaking with laughter when he told them how he pretended loss of memory and partial insanity. All other defendants were absent yesterday when Hess made his sensational confession and most of them found it a great joke when they learned of it for the first time today.

The one-time Nazi glamour boy who became one of the war’s mystery men after he parachuted into Scotland in the early summer of 1941, had hardly left the tribunal’s presence yesterday when he began boasting that he had made psychiatrists of four nations “look ridiculous.”

Hess, aide to Hitler in the writing of “Mein Kampf”, appeared to love the spotlight which switched suddenly to him after his startling announcement.

Maj. Douglas Kelley, a San Francisco psychiatrist who had examined Hess, gave this interpretation of the gaunt defendant’s announcement:

“Hess’ action was a return to the typical hysterical personality he has constantly manifested. His amnesia was a deliberate simulation.

“Undoubtedly, after years of practice in a purposeful forgetting in England, he is unable to recall certain events of the past, but it is obvious he has been using amnesia as a defense.”

Hess confirmed reports that on hit trip to Britain four years ago he had left a note to Hitler telling him he was going to appeal for peace in the hope of what he called saving civilization from Bolshevism. He told Maj. Kelley he wanted to make a direct appeal to Britain’s king.

Maj. Kelley said he had not told any correspondent that Hess had planned to take King George back to Germany.

Maj. Kelley said all Hess told him was that he had hoped to make an appeal to the King of England to help stop the war.

Malignity toward Jackson

Maj. Kelley suggested that Hess’ outburst may have been inspired by the presence of Justice Robert H. Jackson, the American chief prosecutor, throughout yesterday’s session, for Hess is believed suffering from a “conscious malignity” toward Justice Jackson.

Hess’ counsel, Gunther von Rohrscheidt, disclosed that Hess had prepared a statement for the court and press to be released today, the first time the tribunal has held a Saturday session. Von Rohrscheidt also said Hess made it plain that he “expects to be executed.”

A British prosecutor commented: “Well, Hess has made it quite unsafe for anybody not to try him. Either Hess is completely haywire and off his rocker, or he is completely recovered. The trial ought to show that.”

Counsel flabbergasted

Von Rohrscheidt said he was completely flabbergasted at his client’s sensational action.

“It might quite as well indicate that he is completely irresponsible, as prove he is responsible,” the attorney said.

“Hess merely sent me a note asking that he be heard, but gave no indication what he desired to say. He wrote his brief statement out in court. I still claim he isn’t fit to defend himself. This action confirmed my suspicion.

“This statement proves that Hess can think perfectly logically, but there are lapses in his brain. After all, he has been under observation for years and psychiatrists agree there is something wrong with him.”

Lahousen cross-examined

Defense counsel got their first chance at cross-examination when the court recalled Maj. Gen. Edwin Lahousen, leading German Army intelligence officer whose testimony yesterday placed the blame for mass murder of Polish and Russian prisoners directly on Hitler and the high command’s chief of staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, one of the score of German leaders on trial.

Asked if he and other professed anti-Hitler military leaders knew the attitude of Franz von Papen, former German diplomat and one of the defendants, toward the Nazi war policies, Lahousen replied: “I recall that Canaris said they were negative.”

He referred to Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, German spy expert who was described as leader of a secret anti-Hitler military clique until his execution after the unsuccessful 1944 bomb plot against the Fuehrer.

Lahousen, Austrian-born aide to Canaris, said he had heard indirectly that Von Papen, like Canaris, had secretly opposed Hitler’s war policies.

Parries counsel’s questions

Keitel’s attorney, Otto Nelte, in a long series of questions, made little effort to dispute Lahousen’s damaging testimony yesterday concerning the high command’s war prisoner policy, but sought to gain admissions from the former intelligence officer that he had sabotaged Germany’s war effort and was thus a traitor.

To this the Austrian-born general, who entered the German Army after Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938, replied that he “stood for only what my conscience agreed with.”

Lahousen gesticulated vigorously as he declared that Keitel demanded both military and political obedience from the army. Asked if the high command’s fundamental attitude was military, he answered:

“It should have been, according to our opinion, but according to Keitel, Nazism came first. I don’t know whether he got orders along that line, but he certainly ordered that, above all, our attitude must be National Socialist.”

Acted from political standpoint

Many of the army leaders felt, he added, that “everything was done from a political Nazi viewpoint and not objectively, from a military attitude.”

Nelte declared that Keitel had denied Lahousen’s testimony of yesterday that the high command chief had ordered the assassination in 1940 of French Gen. Maxime Weygand, generalissimo at the time of France’s defeat and later administrator for Marshal Petain in North Africa, and demanded written proof from the witness.

“This order was given verbally by Canaris as coming from Keitel but I was present at a conference where Keitel asked me what happened about it,” Lahousen replied.

Lahousen said orders from Keitel to assassinate Gen. Weygand and Gen. Henri Giraud, who later became the French leader in North Africa, were never carried out by Canaris, Greek-born head of the German Army’s counterintelligence section.

Goering asks to interrogate

A dispute between American prosecutors and defense lawyers broke out when counsel for Goering asked if the Nazi leader could question Lahousen personally. Justice Lawrence said the tribunal would “retire” to determine whether the accused Nazi as well as his lawyer could cross-examine witnesses.

Justice Jackson strongly protested, declaring the trial “would be turned into a show” if the defendants themselves conducted the cross-examination.

“The defendants have the right to conduct their own defense, but if they avail themselves of counsel, we submit that they are not entitled to be heard in person,” Justice Jackson said.

A few minutes later Justice Lawrence denied Goering’s petition to cross-examine witnesses, but said the accused Nazis have the right to take the stand in their own defense and also could make statements at the end of the trial.

The court adjourned until Monday.

47

Neue Steirische Zeitung (December 2, 1945)

Keitel neuerlich schwer belastet

NÜRNBERG, 1. Dezember - Der Vorsitzende im Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozeß, Lordrichter Lawrence, entschied heute, daß Rudolf Heß verhandlungsfähig sei. Heß hatte zugegeben, daß sein Gedächtnisschwund nur vorgetäuscht war. Heß berichtet, er sei 1941 nach Großbritannien geflogen, um König Georg zu überreden, sich nach Deutschland zu begeben, um mit Hitler Friedensverhandlungen zu führen.

Die heutige Verhandlung begann mit der weiteren Vernehmung General Lahousens. Lahousen wurde von dem Verteidiger Keitels über seine gestern gemachten Angaben befragt. Auf die Frage, ob Keitel sich jemals mit dem deutschen Spionageabwehrdienst wegen der Beschäftigung von Nazis in Verbindung gesetzt habe, gab Lahousen folgende vernichtende Antwort: Keitel duldete keinen einzigen Offizier an höherer Stelle, der nicht blindes Vertrauen zum Führer hatte. Er verlangte von ihnen unbedingten blinden Gehorsam.

Er wurde ferner über Keitels Bericht über eine Besprechung, Hitlers mit Keitel am 12. September 1939 befragt: Lahousen antwortete: Keitels Äußerungen ließen sich so auffassen, daß Warschau erst bombardiert werden solle, wenn es sich weigere, zu kapitulieren.

Auf die Frage des Verteidigers von Papens erwiderte Lahousen, er habe von dritter Seite gehört, daß von Papen mit Hitlers Kriegspolitik nicht einverstanden gewesen sei.

48

The Pittsburgh Press (December 2, 1945)

Court upholds Hess in fight to stand trial

Ex-No. 2 Nazi ruled sane at Nuernberg

NUERNBERG (UP, Dec. 1) – Rudolf Hess, smirking at the success of an amnesia hoax that tricked the world for more than four years, today won his strange fight to be adjudged sane and to stand trial for the war crimes of Nazi Germany.

Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding judge of the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal, ruled Hess sane at the opening of today’s session, to the obvious satisfaction of the former No. 2 Nazi and the amazement of his 19 fellow defendants.

Hess put himself voluntarily in the shadow of the gallows by confessing, over the objections of the defense and prosecution alike, that he had been faking insanity since the day he parachuted into Scotland on a “peace mission” in May 1941.

Branded by ex-spy chief

His surprise move came on the blackest day of the trial for the accused Nazi ringleaders, who heard themselves branded by an ex-German spy chief as the men responsible for World War II.

Their accuser, Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, was called back to the witness stand today to face a bitter defense cross-examination on his testimony of Friday.

He refused to be shaken from his story that the men in the prisoners’ dock were directly responsible for the mass killing of Russian captives, had ordered the murder of French generals Henri Giraud and Maxime Weygand, and had faked border “incidents” to provoke war with Poland.

Lahousen, former second in command to the slain Adm. Wilhelm Canaris of the German Counter-Intelligence Service, showed his hatred of the defendants as he told the inside story of their wartime and pre-war plots.

Glare back at Hess

They glared viciously back at him and muttered angrily when the court refused to let them cross-examine him personally. Justice Lawrence ruled, however, that the defendants could ask permission to take the stand themselves and that they would be allowed to make individual statements at the end of the trial.

Dr. Egon Kuboschok, counsel for Franz von Papen, was the only man to score for his client. He asked whether the witness was aware that his superior, Canaris, knew that Papen was opposed to the more violent Nazi policies.

“According to my memory of the Canaris-Papen conversation held at Berlin,” Lahousen replied, “Papen reproved Hitler’s violent methods.”

49

The Evening Star (December 2, 1945)

Goering still a Nazi, would back Hitler again, he tells newsmen

By Wes Gallagher and Louis F. Lochner

The Associated Press submitted a list of written questions to Hermann Goering through his attorney, Otto Stahmer, who transmitted them orally to Goering and received oral replies which he copied and turned over to the Associated Press. These questions and answers are included in the following story.

NUERNBERG, Germany (AP, Dec. 1) – Rotund Hermann Goering, on trial for his life before the International Military Tribunal, said flatly today that he was still a Nazi and that if he had a chance to try again he would “again support the Fuehrer” as he knew him in 1933.

“As a representative of the system of government inaugurated by Adolf Hitler, I stand ready to be judged,” the former Reichsmarshal said in reply to written questions presented through his attorney, Otto Stahmer, who also transmitted the reply.

“I consider myself a true paladin of my Fuehrer. I was a disciple and a follower.”

Stahmer indicated that Goering viewed with disapproval high placed German officials who sought refuge in the claim that they never were really Nazis.

To the question – “Did you have any flashes with Hitler? If so, on what matters and when?” – Goering replied:

“From 1942 on, radicals represented by Himmler and Bormann got the upper hand more and more and I receded into the background. It was not a question of my having any dash, but of losing the place I used to hold.”

Goering in a subsequent statement elaborating on his relations with Hitler added this: “During the years before the war we had few differences and these were purely minor matters, affecting details not principles. During the war, in the nature of things, differences ensued more frequently. After 1943 my influence with Hitler decreased and by 1944-45 practically disappeared. Our differences then were over foreign political, domestic and military matters.”

Backs leader principle

“If you could start over again,” he was asked, “would you support the Fuehrer, the Fuehrerprinzip [leadership principle] and National Socialism as postulated in Hitler’s 26 points?”

He replied: “Naturally, nobody ever stops learning. If I had to do it all over again, naturally, there are some things I would do differently. Fundamentally I would say the leadership principle and National Socialism were the only possible solution for Germany at the time. We had to get away from the multiparty system. In America, you have two parties. The British have two major parties. We, however, before 1933, had 20-odd parties. It just wouldn’t work.”

In a supplementary statement, he expanded on this:

“I should again support the Fuehrer as I knew him when he took over reigning Germany,” he asserted. “As to the leadership principle, I should of course not want it repeated with excesses but in its original moderate conception. Above all I should want to see incorporated an independent system of courts to which every citizen might take his troubles and where justice would be done him. As to the 26 points of the Nazi program, there is no party with principles to which every member subscribes in full. I, too, did not by any means subscribe to all. I am still a National Socialist. I desire the elimination of multipartisanship in politics. I am for community of our people [Volksgemeinschaft].”

Moderates attitude on court

Goering’s present attitude on the tribunal’s authority to try him was more mild than when, on the first day of the trial, he attempted to read a statement challenging its authority.

“Do you think the conduct of the trial has been fair thus far?” he was asked. “It is understood that you contested the authority of this court to try you. What kind of court do you think should handle this case and why?”

Goering: “I have the fullest and unreserved confidence in the members of the high tribunal as such. The president has conducted the proceedings in an exemplary manner and has shown that he stands objectively above all parties. This does not obviate the fact, however, that the court as constituted is one-sided, consisting as it does of members of the victorious nations only. I should have deemed truly international a court in which some neutrals and the loser were represented. It would be more equitable. But now that the court has spoken on this point, I bow to its decision.”

In answering another question, Goering claimed he did everything he could to prevent the war. The question was: “Do you intend to summon defense witnesses? If so, whom?”

Goering: “Naturally I intend to request that certain witnesses be called, but it is too early now to indicate who they are to be. That depends on what the prosecution does and what turn the trial takes. One thing is certain however, there are witnesses who can testify that I never desired aggressive warfare and, in fact, did everything possible to prevent the outbreak of this war.”

Explains meaning of nod

In the courtroom, Goering has been the center of attention, nodding, laughing, grimacing and shaking his head at various points of evidence. He was asked: “It has been noted that from time to time, as a document is presented, you nod in apparent agreement. Does this mean that you agree as to the accuracy of the documents? That you agree with their contents?”

Goering: “When I nod it means that, of course, I agree, say, to the fact stated in a given document that I approved of or participated in rearmament. Why should I deny it? The cannon, the airplanes, the guns were there weren’t they? But I don’t agree in the sense of the indictment, namely that I prepared for aggressive war.

“We have all learned the old Latin adage in school, ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’ (If you want peace prepare for war). That’s all I was after. Your President Truman, too, has stated that the United States must become strong militarily. But he denies all aggressive intent. We, too, armed only for the sake of a strong Germany. We realized people can be strong only if they have a strong armed force. That’s what I deduct from those documents.”

The last two questions dealt with the showing of horror films on Germany’s concentration camps. Goering was asked, “What was your reaction to the atrocity film shown in court Thursday?”

He replied: “As every other human being. I was horrified. It is true that I started concentrations. But my purpose was a different one – I wanted to reeducate political recalcitrants and hold them until they became Imbued with the concepts of national socialism. From 1934 on, Himmler ran them. He carefully kept all of us away from them. I can truthfully assert that I had no idea such horrible things were happening there.”

The last question was: “Your policy in reference to Jews seems vacillating. You delivered strong anti-Semitic speeches, yet you and your wife are credited with having helped individual Jews. Just where do you stand in reference to anti-Semitism?”

Goering: “I was never in harmony with the manner and extent to which anti-Semitism was put into practice in Germany. I, therefore, helped where I could to prevent the worst injustices. I need but refer to Leo Blech to illustrate my point. [Blech had been conductor of the state opera under the Kaiser as well as under the Weimar Republic, and Goering continued him in office until Blech decided to emigrate to Sweden.] As to the economic measures taken against Jews after November 1938, it was not my intention that Jews should be dispossessed altogether.”

50

Hess listens intently to trial after court rules he must stay

By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP, Dec. 1) – Rudolf Hess, self-confessed amnesia faker, was ruled fit to stand trial today, and then listened intently as defense attorneys failed to break down a German spy chieftain’s testimony linking some of his codefendants with the worst horrors of Nazism.

British Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence announced the International Military Tribunal’s decision that Hess was “capable of standing trial,” with no further medical examination necessary. Before the court opened, Hess had regaled his fellow defendants with the story of his lost-memory hoax.

Hess follows proceedings

Grand Admirals Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder shook with laughter, and most of the others chuckled as Hess related the story to them.

When the session opened, Hess laid aside the novel he had been reading during the opening days of the trial, and followed the proceedings closely.

To Maj. Douglas Kelley, American Army psychiatrist, Hess had boasted of his skilled navigation on his astounding flight to Scotland in May 1941. Hess confirmed reports that he had left a note for Hitler saying he was going to try to appeal for peace in the hope of what he termed saving the world from Bolshevism. He said he planned a direct appeal to the King of England.

Maj. Kelley also denied that he had told anyone that Hess said he intended to take King George VI to Germany.

Lahousen story attacked

Attorneys for Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hermann Goering and Joachim von Ribbentrop sought in vain to upset the story told by Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, former officer of the German counterintelligence, and first prosecution witness. Lahousen had not mentioned Hess, and Hess’ attorney put no questions to Lahousen today.

But eight other German lawyers for three hours grilled Lahousen, who yesterday declared that Hitler and the entire German high command were to blame for atrocities on the Eastern Front.

The attorney for Franz von Papen, wily diplomat in the days of Nazi power politics, extracted from Lahousen an expression of belief that Von Papen “stayed on in a political capacity in order to exercise a mitigating influence” on Nazi policy.

Keitel’s attorney, Otto Nelte, declared Keitel had denied Lahousen’s testimony that his client had ordered the assassination in 1940 of the French Gen. Maxime Weygand, and demanded written proof from Lahousen.

Lahousen replied that the order was given verbally, but that he had been present “at a conference where Keitel asked me what happened about it.”

Assassination orders ignored

The witness said Keitel’s orders to assassinate both Gen. Weygand and Gen. Henri Giraud never were carried out by Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, Greek-born head of the German Army’s counterintelligence section to which the witness was attached.

Keitel’s attorney let slip an admission that orders for branding Soviet war prisoners were the “result of a terrible misunderstanding” at the Fuehrer’s headquarters. The attorney asked Lahousen if such was the case, and Lahousen replied that he did not know.

To Von Ribbentrop’s counsel Lahousen only reaffirmed that the former foreign minister said in September 1939 that Polish farms must be burned and Jews killed.

Goering’s attorney diverged far from preceding testimony to inquire if Lahousen had failed to report promptly the American landings in North Africa.

“Please don’t make me responsible for my whole department,” Lahousen retorted. “This was not my affair.”

Fears Goering will ‘explode’

The tribunal denied a request by the defendants that they be given the right to conduct their own examination of witnesses.

The tribunal decreed that only defendants who lacked counsel could participate in the questioning. All 20 defendants in the prisoners’ dock have their own attorneys, as do two others being tried in absentia. The ruling came after American Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson said that permitting the prisoners to examine witnesses would convert the trial into a “performance.”

Dr. Otto Stahmer, attorney for Goering, explained afterwards that he made the request for cross-examination on behalf of his client because “as temperamental a man as Goering finds it nearly unbearable to sit there day after day without being able to open his mouth. He will explode if he doesn’t get a chance soon to unburden himself.”

Stahmer said that in many respects Goering was like a big boy relatively easy to guide, but with “occasional great outbursts of temperament.”

51

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Day 11

52

The Evening Star (December 3, 1945)

Hitler not plotting at Munich, Nazi war plans show at trial

NUERNBERG (AP) – Hitler was not bluffing when his threats of war in 1938 led England and France to sign the Munich pact, secret German war plans introduced at the war crimes trial of 20 leading Nazis disclosed today.

Documents laid before the International Military Tribunal showed that the Munich pact – by which the Czech Sudetenland was handed over to the Nazis – was signed only two days before the date set by the German high command for four armies, and the air force to be prepared for a blitz invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Not only were plans complete for the invasion of Czechoslovakia – with the help of Hungary – but the German Air Force expected France to join the fight and had prepared detailed plans for attack in the West, the evidence introduced by American prosecutors made plain.

Relaying Hitler’s “unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action” to commanders of the German Army, Navy and Air Forces, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the high command, was quoted in an official directive as ordering that “its execution must be assured as from October 1, 1938, at the latest,” an indication that the Munich pact may have prevented the actual outbreak of general warfare for a year.

Detailed plans for the blitz invasion and an agreement that Hungary would join in the attack left little doubt at the trial that the cold-blooded invasion would have been carried out if England and France had not signed the Munich pact on September 29, 1938 – two days before the deadline set by the high command.

Plans for the bombing of Prague without warning were made by Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, German Army chief of staff, while Sudeten Germans were ordered to stir up unrest and Hungary had promised to be ready to “take part in the conflict by October 1,” official German documents disclosed.

Keitel, according to another German document introduced as evidence, was ordered on September 26, 1938, to move his assault forces up to the jumping off places for the Czechoslovak invasion. Next day Britain mobilized her fleet and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain joined French Premier Edouard Daladier at Munich, where they finally gave in before Hitler’s threat of war and signed the Munich pact of September 29.

Citing the growth of the Nazi Party into a powerful fifth column among the Sudeten Germans, an official Czechoslovak report filed with the court asserted that “few people knew that Heinlein [Konrad Heinlein, Nazi leader in Czechoslovakia] went on Hitler’s payroll… in 1933.”

Declaring that the evidence tells the “inside story” of the Munich pact, Assistant American Prosecutor Sidney S. Alderman said the mobilizing of Germany’s armed might was “a trap set by these people who are here on trial.”

SS raided across border

Disclosure that two SS “Death’s Head” battalions actually were engaged in raids across the Czechoslovak border before the Munich meeting came in the reading of another order signed by Jodl.

The SS battalions were operating under the command of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and all secret police, but were to change to regular army control if war broke out, the order said. Sudeten Free Corps units also were to come under army control at the start of hostilities.

Further evidence that Heinlein’s Nazi fifth column stirred up trouble in Czechoslovakia as part of Hitler’s terror campaign was seen in records of a secret meeting on March 29, 1938, in which the Sudeten Nazi chief was ordered by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to avoid reaching any agreement with the Prague government that might settle the coldly calculated “crisis.”

Heinlein requested in August 1938 that secret German Nazi subsidies to the Sudeten movement be increased from 15,000 marks (nominally $6,000 at pre-war rates) a month to 17,500 marks ($7,000).

As the third week of the trial opened, American prosecutors presented German high command orders revealing that conquest of Czechoslovakia was planned in 1937 – two years before the actual invasion and at a time when Hitler was assuring the world he had no desires for additional territory.

Mr. Alderman said the Nazi plotting was carried on under a pretext of “friendship” through the Locarno pact and other treaties. Hermann Goering nodded in agreement as Mr. Alderman quoted the former No. 2 Nazi as assuring the Czechs that “I give you my word of honor” that Germany had no aggressive intentions toward their country.

The German high command plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, drawn June 24, 1937, declared that “the necessary condition to justify such action politically and in the eyes of international law must be created beforehand.”

One month after the Austrian Anschluss in March 1938, Mr. Alderman said, Hitler met with Keitel and discussed the previously disclosed plot to assassinate the German envoy to Prague as a pretext for invasion of the neighboring country. This plan, he added, was abandoned.

Hitler’s May 1938 directive for the Czech invasion declared that “it is the job of political leaders to await or bring about the politically or militarily suitable moment.”

Another order entitled “Case Red” and dated June 2, 1938, was the air force staff plan for war on France and showed that the Germans expected France to fight when Czechoslovakia was attacked. The document added:

“Regardless whether France enters the war as a result of Case Green (attack on Czechoslovakia) …The mass of German offensive formations will in conjunction, with the army first, deliver the decisive blow against Czechoslovakia.”

Also disclosed were plans to eliminate opposition to the invasion in Hungary and Poland by dismembering Czechoslovakia among the three countries. Poland got the Teschen-Bohumin area and Hungary took over the province of Ruthenia after Hitler finally moved in.

Relating a conference between Hitler and Adm. Nicholas Horthy, regent of Hungary, in mid-summer of 1938, one document showed that Horthy favored the dismemberment of the little country but a fellow minister opposed it.

“Whoever wants to join the eating must help in the cooking,” Hitler was reported as saying.

Intentions clear to Italy

Italy, also, was aware of the conspiracy, according to a German Foreign Office memorandum, which declared that “Attolico [Italian Ambassador Bernardo Attolico] added that we had made it unmistakably clear to Italians what our intentions are regarding Czechoslovakia.”

Goering upset by Lahousen

Goering, No. 1 defendant in the trial, was reported to be considerably upset over the damaging testimony given Friday and Saturday by Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, German counterintelligence officer plucked from the prison camp jungles of Austria as a star witness for the prosecution.

Goering was reported to have turned to Keitel during Lahousen’s testimony and to have said: “My God! We overlooked that dog on July 20.”

Goering’s reference was to the wholesale execution of German officers and others which followed the attempt to assassinate Hitler on that date in 1944.

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Day 12

54

The Evening Star (December 4, 1945)

Trial facts distorted in service journal’s blast, Jackson says

Not trying militarists as soldiers, but as authors of war, he declares

NUERNBERG (AP) – Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuernberg war crimes trial, charged today that an Army-Navy Journal article criticizing the prosecution was a “distortion of the course of action we are pursuing.”

“The author… has quite obviously never taken the pains to read my opening statement in this trial,” Justice Jackson said in a statement.

“I pointed out that we were not prosecuting these militarists for serving their country, but for mastering it and driving it.to war; not for fighting a war, but for ‘promoting it.’

“He (the author) obviously is not acquainted with the evidence which has been so far adduced against those defendants who belonged to the military.

Being tried for crimes

“In the prisoners’ dock are represented several professions, including the law. These professional men are not being indicted or tried because they belonged to a ‘profession’ but for crimes, among others of planning an aggressive war which bathed the world in blood.

“One cannot defend his criminal acts on the ground that he is a soldier or a lawyer.

“I should have thought by now that no American could espouse immunity for the persons we have brought to trial. The G.I.’s I know in Germany certainly do not feel that way.

“The position of the author and those for whom he speaks so inaccurately seems to be that it is all right to punish somebody for illegal war-making, shooting American prisoners of war and murdering and enslaving civilians – so long as you don’t get the men who actually did it. This makes nonsense to me.”

Lt. Gen. Murray Gurfein, who was named with Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan and Col. Howard Brundage in the Army-Navy Journal article as having left Jackson’s staff in a disagreement over prosecution of the trial, issued a statement denying the Journal’s article. Gen. Donovan and Col. Brundage were not available for comment.

Story declared unfounded

“The story of the Army-Navy Journal about the reason for my withdrawal is utterly unfounded,” Col. Gurfein commented from Paris by telephone. “It was understood well before the opening of the trial that I would return to the United States December 1 and that I would have finished my assigned task in Germany by that date.

“Nobody is being tried as a professional soldier. The issue is whether crimes against peace and humanity have been committed by politicians, statesmen or people in uniform, regardless of profession. The trial is too important to mankind to permit false rumors of the opinion of the staff to go unchallenged.”

A statement from Justice Jackson’s office said Col. Brundage had asked for discharge from the Army on October 6 to return to private law practice and the request was approved October 18. Col. Brundage and Gen. Donovan never met during their stay in Nuernberg, the statement added.

The Army-Navy Journal, a non-official publication issued in Washington, said in an editorial:

“Proper resentment is being manifested in the Senate at the attempt of Associate Justice Jackson to establish in the Nuernberg trials a principle of international law under which professional soldiers, sailors and airmen shall be convicted as criminals on the mere ground of membership in high commands or general staffs.

“Doubtless this kind of blatherskite is due to Mr. Jackson’s desire to let no guilty German escape, which accords with American, as well as world, wishes, but it is obvious that blanket condemnation such as he is seeking to obtain is violative of the very essence of justice.

Cites Wherry resolution

“Moreover, it does not conform with civilized practice nor with the provisions set forth in the Hague Convention of the 1907 and the Geneva Prisoners of War Treaty of 1929…

“Outraged by the Jackson policy, Sen. Wherry of Nebraska, in his resolution for inquiry into our entire foreign policy, called for examination of any conflict between policies being pursued by the Department of State and those pursued by our Army and Navy in any territory now occupied by our military forces…

“It ill behooves Justice Jackson therefore to attempt to discredit it by misguided zeal and by lack of regard for fundamental principles, which, as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, he should deem it his duty to uphold. He should be given instructions by the president to abandon a course that has no basis of justice, or the War and Navy Departments should condemn it, else gentlemen of ability and experience will not be disposed to hold or seek commissions.”

55

Nazis are castigated as killers, robbers by Britain’s prosecutor

By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP) – The 20 once-mighty Nazi leaders on trial for their lives before an international tribunal were excoriated in the name of the British Commonwealth today as “murderers and robbers” personally and individually accountable for breaking the world’s peace.

Opening the British case against Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop and their fellow members of the fallen clique, Sir Hartley Shawcross, attorney general of the United Kingdom, declared that the defendants had piloted Germany into “aggression, naked and unashamed,” and plunged the world into an appallingly costly war.

“These men were no mere willing tools,” Shawcross said. “They are the men whose support had built Hitler up into the position of power he occupied. They are the men whose initiation and planning perhaps conceived and certainly made possible the acts of aggression made in Hitler’s name.”

U.S. presentation finished

The attorney general’s 30,000-word address introduced the British citation of proof that the accused were guilty of crimes against the peace. The United States has concluded its presentation on the first of three other counts in the indictment – that the Nazis engaged in a conspiracy to wage a war of aggression. Two remaining counts, charging war crimes and crimes against humanity, are to be prosecuted jointly by Russia and France.

Shawcross first sought to show that the Hitler gang violated firmly established international law through aggression and preparation for aggression.

Then, step by step, from the long-concealed words of the Nazis themselves. he traced the German course of broken treaties, violated frontiers and ultimate carnage and misery.

“Their lust and sadism,” he said, “their deliberate slaughter and the degradation of so many millions of their fellow creatures that the imagination reels incomprehensively, are but one side only of this matter.

Crime of fraud

“Perhaps their guilt as murderers and robbers is of less importance and less effect to future generations of mankind than their crime of fraud – the fraud by which they placed themselves in a position to do their murder and their robbery…

“Should it be taken as a precedent of behavior in the conduct of international relations, its consequences to mankind will no less certainly lead to the end of civilized society.”

Shawcross declared the chief nations, forced to defend themselves against an outlaw Germany, therefore have established a tribunal so that the conduct of the Nazi leaders “may be exposed in its naked wickedness” and “in the hope that the conscience and good sense of all the world will see the consequences of such conduct.”

He said the British Empire was determined to prove “that the waging of an aggressive war is not only a dangerous venture but a criminal one,” and that “persons who, in violation of this law, plunge their own and other countries into an aggressive war, do so with a halter around their necks.”

Agreements cited

It is Britain’s view, Shawcross said, that this tribunal shall apply “not the law of the victor but the accepted principles of international usage,” and shall finish “what the law of nations itself constituted an international crime before this tribunal was established.”

He cited agreements beginning with the Hague Convention of 1899 and down through the years to the Locarno and other treaties signed by Germany – treaties outlawing war as an instrument of national policy.

Mentioning particularly the Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed at Paris in 1928, Shawcross said it “has in no way been modified or replaced by the charter of the United Nations.”

“The Pact of Paris is the law of nations. This tribunal will enforce it,” he declared.

“The victorious powers,” he added, “in thus interpreting, declaring and supplementing the existing law, are content to be judged by the verdict of history.”

56

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Day 13

57

The Evening Star (December 5, 1945)

Details of Goering’s threats to shatter Prague given court

NUERNBERG (AP) – Hermann Goering shattered Czechoslovakia’s last will to resist Hitler’s war machine with the ultimatum that “half of Prague would lie in ruins from aerial bombardment within two hours,” the International Military Tribunal was told today.

American prosecutors at the trial of Goering and 19 other Nazi leaders accused of war crimes laid before the court official German records and French and British diplomatic reports disclosing the Hitler pattern of threats, treachery and broken promises that crushed the Czechs only five months after the Munich pact led British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to proclaim “peace in our time.”

In cold detail, the prosecution disclosed the ordeal of Czechoslovakian President Emil Hacha when he was imperiously summoned to Berlin the day before German troops marched across the border on March 14, 1939, and was told that Prague would be bombed if the Czechs fired on the Nazi invaders.

Goering bullied Hacha

Goering bullied Hacha with the bombing threat if he did not immediately “invite” German troops into his country, according to the report of French Ambassador Robert Coulondre read into the evidence.

The prosecution then read British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson’s report that Goering in an interview later did not deny the threat, but gave as his alibi that he intended only to unleash the Luftwaffe “if German lives were lost.”

Under the pressure. German records showed, President Hacha finally gave in, and the next morning the Germans poured over the border without opposition.

Banditry charged

Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia was described as “pure international banditry” by Assistant American Prosecutor Sidney S. Alderman, who introduced documents showing how the Fuehrer called Czech and Slovak leaders to Berlin.

Hungary’s part in the partition of the little country was shown by a letter to Hitler from Adm. Nicholas Horthy, regent of Hungary, in which he told of plans to manufacture a “frontier incident” on March 16, 1939, as a pretext for the invasion of Ruthenia, one of the Czechoslovak provinces.

Horthy, however, did not need to fake an “incident.” Hitler’s troops moved into Czechoslovakia on March 14, 1939, and Hungary took the opportunity to seize Ruthenia with negligible opposition.

Stage set in March 1939

The stage for invasion was set on March 13, 1939, prosecution documents disclosed, when Hitler ordered Slovak Premier Joseph Tiso to the Wilhelmstrasse and threatened to let Hungary invade Slovakia unless Tiso renounced union with the Czechs immediately. Two of the trial defendants. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop were present at the meeting. Tiso gave in.

Resuming for the British prosecution staff, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe listed Germany’s violation of 69 treaties, agreements and assurances since Hitler came into power in 1933.

Obviously bored as the Briton started reading the dates and provisions of German promises to refrain from war, Field Marshal Keitel munched on pieces of cracker. Von Ribbentrop, who negotiated many of the agreements, scribbled notes.

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Day 14

59

The Evening Star (December 6, 1945)

Goering: British pledge of aid to Poles delayed war 7 days

NUERNBERG (AP) – Britain’s pledge to aid Poland in the event of hostilities delayed start of World War II seven days as Hitler unsuccessfully tried to keep the British neutral, according to a statement by Hermann Goering filed at the war crimes trial today.

Allied prosecutors filed the statement with the International Military Tribunal. Goering, one of the 20 Nazi leaders on trial, said Hitler originally had planned to invade Poland August 25, 1939, but held up his attack until September 1 while his diplomats sparred to try to “eliminate British intervention.”

The Goering statement said Britain’s signing of the Polish assistance pact on August 25 made Hitler pause. The Reichsmarshal added that he had been in secret contact with Lord Halifax, then British foreign minister, “to do everything to stop war with England.”

Bogus offer to negotiate

Describing Hitler’s last-minute efforts to keep Britain out of the war, Col. Merwyn Griffith-Jones, assistant British prosecutor, described the diplomatic maneuvering as “a bogus offer of negotiations intended simply to bribe or otherwise keep England from assisting Poland.”

After seven days of behind-the-scenes activity, the records introduced as evidence revealed, Hitler unleashed his war machine and invaded Poland on September 1. On September 3, Britain and France declared war in support of Poland.

“On the day when England gave her official guarantee to Poland the Fuehrer called me on the telephone and told me he had stopped the planned invasion of Poland,” Goering said in his statement, which was given to Col. John H. Amen of New York, an assistant American prosecutor.

“I asked him then whether this was just temporary or for good,” the Goering statement continued. “He said, ‘No, I will have to see whether we can eliminate British intervention.’

“So then I asked him: ‘Do you think it will be any different within four or five days?’”

Earlier in the statement Goering said he was “in connection with Lord Halifax by special courier outside regular diplomatic channels to do everything to stop war with England.”

Giving the full story of Hitler’s decision to go to war, the prosecution submitted the texts of pleas from President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Eduard Daladier and Pope Pius which the Fuehrer rejected in the three weeks before he launched the attack on Poland.

Planned five months earlier

Hitler’s decision to strike in the fall of 1939 was made five months earlier when he ordered the army to be ready to strike by September 1, 1939 (The Goering statement indicated that Hitler had advanced the date a week in the interval).

Proving the lies of Hitler’s diplomatic double talk with the Fuehrer’s own official records, British prosecutors revealed that a Wehrmacht directive dated April 3, 1939, ordered the army to be ready for the Polish invasion “at any time from September 1, 1939, onwards.”

Three weeks after Hitler had set “Der Tag,” he made a speech to the Reichstag on April 28 in which he shouted that he “had no thought of proceeding in any way against Poland,” according to other documents introduced at evidence at the trial of 20 top Nazis accused of war crimes.

Italy not in on plan

Hitler’s public proclamation, contrasted with his cold-blooded plans for launching World War II, “shows how completely dishonest was the German government at that time,” commented Col. Griffith-Jones.

Germany’s Axis partner, Italy, was not let in on the plan to invade Poland until August 12, 1939, and Mussolini made an urgent but fruitless request for Hitler to postpone the war for two or three years to permit Italian rearmament to progress, other documents showed.

At the request of counsel for the Nazis, Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, announced that the trial would recess over the Christmas holidays, from December 20 to January 2. Chief American Prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson entered a formal objection to the recess after it was announced.

All of the German defendants listened intently at the reading of the minutes of the August meeting between Hitler and Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian foreign minister, and it was apparent that details of the Italian plea to defer the start of the war were new to most of them.

Ciano presented Mussolini’s view that the war should be deferred and pleaded that Italy was ill-prepared. It was not until June 10, 1940, that Italy finally declared war on England and France, soon after the British withdrawal at Dunkerque.

For the first time, former Reichsbank President Walther Funk, one of the defendants, was named in the evidence. The prosecution produced a letter from Funk to Hitler in which the economist told of ways in which the Reichsbank had prepared for the war.

One of the spectators at the trial was Gen. Joseph McNarney, newly appointed commander of American forces in the European theater.

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