Just hang Nazis, Jackson was told, but he wanted record for posterity
By Cmdr. M. A. Musmanno
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of six stories by Judge Michael A. Musmanno of Common Pleas Court, now a Navy commander serving with the U.S. military government in Austria.
When I spent an afternoon with Cmdr. Musmanno in Vienna a month ago he was talking about his observation of the Nuernberg war crimes trial – technically known as the International Military Tribunal.
Because of his long experience as a judge and as an officer in Europe, he is peculiarly well-fitted to write about that historic proceeding and promised to do so. Hence this series.
Cmdr. Musmanno now is presiding over a court almost equally strange – the U.S. Military Board for Forcible Soviet Repatriation. This court hears the cases of Russians in the U.S. Zone of Austria whom the Soviets are trying to send back to Russia against their will.
When Justice Robert H. Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court began preparing for the Nuernberg trials, the difficulties confronting him seemed insurmountable.
How could a trial involving the legal procedures of four nationalities be conducted with order and understanding? How could four different languages be employed at the same time? And if, after each statement in court, proceedings had to halt until the declaration was translated into the other tongues, would not the trial consume years and could the thread of continuity be preserved?
Then there were the obstacles of a score of defendants, with even a larger number of lawyers; witnesses to be transported from all parts of Europe; hundreds of tons of documents to be analyzed, digested and presented.
Justice Jackson was told it could not be done – and would it not be better to dispose of the defendants by official decree, thus summarily and quickly ending the matter?
Had this been done the world would not have the documented record now being methodically, chronologically and judicially compiled.
Further, the world would have been denied juridical proof of things which in out-of-court narrative could not be believed – excesses of such fiendishness and horror that before them the brain and heart refuse to believe and the soul falters in incredulity.
How else, except through the safeguards which courtroom procedure affords, could we believe the story of the German who testified that innocent women and children were taken to an anti-tank ditch, their clothing removed, and there shot by soldiers acting under orders? And that – in the interests of decorum, so this man testified – when the children began to cry they were clubbed into submission so orderly behavior might be maintained?
Depth of depravity
Where, except through evidence produced with all solemnity of court proceedings, could one believe human depravity had reached the nadir where presumed civilized peoples used the skin of human victims as lamp shades?
History may accord to the U.S. an accolade for this trial equivalent to the glory assigned for its triumph in arms. For this tribunal is establishing, for all time, the criminal responsibility of those who lead nations into aggressive wars and to that extent may lighten this curse in man since the days of Cain.
With this for a goal, Justice Jackson and his associates refused to be defeated by physical obstacles. And, lo! it has come to pass that an international court now is sitting in judgment on the men who set out to subjugate the world.
The problem of diverse languages has been overcome completely. The proceedings are conducted in four languages simultaneously, yet there is no delay.
A question is put to a witness in Russian, an objection is made by a lawyer in German, the Chief Justice rules in English and the witness responds in French.
And if you are an English-speaking auditor, you have heard only English; if you are French, you have listened only to French words; if you are Russian, the idiom of the Soviet nation came into your earphones, and so on.
You wear a headset, as in the early radio days, and by means of a dial at your elbow you pick the language you want.
A battery of expert linguists, sitting behind a glass partition to the left of the defendants’ box instantly translates the four tongues into microphones – and the Tower of Babel is leveled.
Speak in low voice
All the speaking is done into microphones and the voice is held low. If a listener removes his headset and looks over the colorful courtroom, he gets the sensation of a movie with the sound track gone mute. Restoring the headset, however, and once more listening to the testimony he is shocked into the grim reality of this show, which is working toward a climax where the gibbet will not be made of celluloid but of sturdy timbers.
And the whole world will be standing by to see not merely these miserable defendants climb the ghastly steps, but to see swinging at the end of the rope the most hideous delinquent of all human chronicle – aggressive war.
When the electricians were working on these microphones and headsets, Hermann Goering was skeptical and said they wouldn’t function.
One of the workmen, approaching Nazi No. 2 during a recess period after the system had proved a mechanical success, asked Goering what he thought of it now.
The bulky former Luftwaffe chief replied: “Yes, I was wrong. It’s a good telephone system all right. But the translation is rotten.”
Goering is amazing
He is an amazing person, this Hermann Wilhelm Goering.
When movies were projected in the courtroom of one of the Nazi Party Congresses, he complained this was not the best nor the largest gathering.
“If they had shown the movies of our demonstration at Nuernberg in 1940,” he commented, “even Justice Jackson would have wanted to join the party.”
In Goering’s presence if one does not think of his crimes one can be impressed with this hulk of apparent amiability.
Confirming the impression that he is free from worry there is not a gray hair on his black head.
Enthusiastic and wearing his feeling on his sleeve, he responds with grimace, pantomime and gesticulation to the evidence as it is presented.
He will lift a fat hand in protest, nod two or three chins in approval, shrug his shoulders to say something just presented has no bearing on his case and then, when profoundly disturbed, will scribble notes furiously and toss them to his lawyer.
Though he is reputed to have said to intimates that he expects a death sentence, this does not seem to preoccupy him – as it does most of the others.
He wears a uniform which scarcely can be called a mourning outfit. Of soft, pale gray material, the jacket stylishly billows about a form considerably reduced from its pre-trial proportions.
Within the collar, which turns down all the way around, he sports a maroon scarf with polka dots. Over the breeches of his uniform he wears high tan boots.
There is no indication of rank on this operatic costume because the military organizations which he led to disaster no longer exist.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel who signed the armistice with France in the famous railroad car and later the unconditional surrender of the German forces in Berlin, and Colonel General Alfred Jodl wear plain green uniforms with black velvet collars, devoid of any show of rank.
Is it unjust?
It has been suggested in some quarters that it is unjust to prosecute military personnel who merely have done their duty as soldiers. But Keitel and Jodl had not been only soldiers.
As late as last August 3, Keitel said: “Today, still, I remain a convinced partisan of Adolf Hitler.”
This partisan of a man, whose insane delinquency toppled half of Europe into irreparable wreckage, issued an official order September 15, 1941, which read: “It must not be forgotten that in the countries in question (Norway, France, Denmark, Belgium) the value of a human life is less than nothing and that effective intimidation can be achieved only by unaccustomed rigor. In reprisal for the death of a German soldier, the penalty is death of 50 to one…”
Col. Gen. Jodl would be a disappointment to a Hollywood director. As Chief of Staff of the German High Command he should be, in accordance with every histrionic standard, tall, blustering and above all, have a thundering voice.
Jodl is thin and sloppy with the veins showing through the parchment crinkliness of his skin. His uniform hangs on him in scarecrow fashion. His nose is small and sharp and as red as a cherry.
But don’t think he is as innocuous as he is significantly ugly.
In those veins courses the venom injected by his chief, of whom he said on November 7, 1942, after five years of total war: “At this moment I should like to certify, not with my lips but from the bottom of my heart, that our confidence and our faith in the Fuehrer are limitless.”
As Monsieur Quatre, of the French prosecution, enumerated the towns which had been destroyed in observance of the orders issued by Jodl, I watched this former German chief of staff in the defendant’s box.
He squirmed, essayed a sickly grin, shuffled his papers noisily and then, as the Frenchman finished, settled back in his seat as relieved as a rodent who looks out again from his hole after the cat has turned the corner.
TOMORROW: Look at them now, jailer
