The Nuremberg Trial

61

The Evening Star (December 7, 1945)

Weather delayed Nazis’ attack on France 6 months, court told

By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP) – Hitler’s armies were poised for the invasion of the Low Countries and France November 7, 1939, but the attack was postponed week by week for six months because of bad weather, official German records disclosed at the war crimes trial here today.

While the rest of the world spoke sarcastically of “a phony war,” the German military machine was ready and “waiting only for favorable weather,” according to records introduced before the International Military Tribunal.

British prosecutors turned most of their evidence against the German military and naval leaders among the 20 top-ranking Hitlerites accused of being war criminals, pointing out their part in plans for the crushing invasion while Hitler deceitfully told Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg that he had no plans to attack them.

The fifth-column conquest of Norway and Denmark was only a prelude to the invasion a month later of the Low Countries, the evidence showed.

Prosecutors introduced German naval orders revealing that German warships and camouflaged troop transports carried British flags and signals to screen the attack on Norway and Denmark.

Hitler signed his directive for attack “as soon as possible” on the Low Countries on October 9, 1939 – five weeks after the invasion of Poland, it was disclosed.

On November 7, the German armies were massed along the border for the attack on Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, other high command orders showed.

The actual attack did not start until May 10, 1940, because of successive spells of bad weather that might have interfered with operations of the air force and the mechanized units of the German Army, according to the score of military top-secrets made public in the courtroom for the first time.

Another surprise was the disclosure by the prosecution that a large portion of the German Air Force’s plans for parachute troop operations during the Lowlands invasion fell into Allied hands on January 10, 1940 – just four months before the Nazis actually jumped off. The plans were found in a German plane which crashed in Belgium.

‘Assurances’ recalled

More evidence of Hitler’s treachery was entered into the record when Assistant British Prosecutor G. D. Roberts recalled German “assurances” on October 6, 1939, that Hitler would respect the neutrality of Belgium and Holland. Four days later he signed the directive for war against them “as soon as possible.”

Mr. Roberts castigated the military and naval leaders on trial – Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, German Army chief of staff, and Grand Admirals Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder, German Navy leaders.

At one point, Mr. Roberts waxed so sarcastic that he was directed by Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence to confine his remarks to the documents.

The role that Hitler’s much-vaunted “intuition”, played in directing army operations was shown in excerpts from Jodl’s diary in which he described the Fuehrer as wrestling with the problem of whether to invade the Low Countries before the lightning grab for Denmark and Norway.

Turning to Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, 1941, British prosecutors submitted captured documents and secret speeches by Hitler showing the attack on the two countries delayed for four weeks his invasion of Russia – which began June 22, 1941.

Some military experts say they believe these four weeks meant the difference between victory and defeat in the Russian campaign.

Hitler, according to one of his directives, ordered Yugoslavia attacked “without warning and destroyed with lightning speed.”

A letter from Hitler asked Mussolini to postpone the Italian invasion of Greece until after the 1940 elections in the United States, when President Roosevelt was re-elected. Mussolini disregarded the request and attacked October 28, 1940.

Hitler’s condolences to Mussolini for his fiasco in the Greek invasion and tacit promise to fight in the Balkans the following spring were contained in a letter introduced as evidence.

Hitler issued his directive for the invasion of Greece, the evidence disclosed, on November 12, 1940, and the invasion was begun April 6, 1941. The Greeks, who had succeeded in holding Mussolini’s Army, surrendered to the Germans April 23.

Doenitz order read

Read into evidence before the International Military Tribunal was the order of Doenitz to use British flags on German ships which slipped into Scandinavian ports on the eve of invasion.

The detailed story of treachery and intrigue leading to the downfall of Germany’s little neighbors in April 1940 disclosed that the plot to use the fifth column of Vidkun Quisling in obtaining Scandinavian U-boat base was engineered largely by Raeder and Alfred Rosenberg, two of the accused Nazis on trial.

Official German Navy orders introduced as evidence included instructions that “the disguise as British craft must be kept as long as possible.” The German government denied repeatedly in 1940 that their vessels had flown British flags.

All challenges were to be answered with the names of British warships and arrangements were made to illuminate British war flags on the masts of the German vessels, the order disclosed.

“In case of a warning shot (from the enemy) reply ‘Cease firing. British ship, good friend,’” said instructions issued to German ship captains.

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63

The Evening Star (December 8, 1945)

Ribbentrop assured Japs U.S. could not wage war

NUERNBERG (AP) – These predictions by Joachim von Ribbentrop, made to Lt. Gen. Hiroshi Oshima, Japanese ambassador to Berlin, in March 1941, were disclosed yesterday on the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor:

  • The United States “could not wage war militarily at all” because of vast ocean distances.

  • “America would hardly dare to send its fleet beyond Hawaii, as it would then be threatened with destruction by the Japanese fleet,” and “surprise intervention by Japan is bound to keep America out of the war.”

  • If “the Americans should be care less enough” to send their fleet beyond Hawaii, it would give the Axis its biggest chance to end the war quickly.

  • A landing by Americans in Europe “is possible, but Africa is too far removed.”

  • “The war has been won today militarily, economically and politically.”

All this was part of Von Ribbentrop’s own account of what he, as Nazi foreign minister, told the Japanese ambassador nine months before Pearl Harbor. Part of it was read yesterday to the International Military Tribunal.

64

The Evening Star (December 9, 1945)

Hess says he flew to England to halt war of 2 ‘noble races’

Weather prevented several attempted flights, he says
By Louis P. Lochner and West Gallagher, Associated Press foreign correspondents

Rudolf Hess, through his attorney, Gunther von Rohrscheidt, answered a written list of questions submitted by the Associated Press, giving his answers directly in writing. This is the first direct communication from Hess to the press since his sensational flight to England in 1941.

NUERNBERG (AP, Dec. 8) – Rudolf Hess declared today that he flew to England to try to halt the fight between two “noble races” – England and Germany – and not to enlist British aid in the attack on Russia, as widely believed.

Hess asserted he had planned the flight for nearly a year before the invasion of Russia and even had taken off for England several times from June 1940 onward, but each time was forced back by bad weather. The successful attempt came on May 10, 1941.

The former No. 3 Nazi and self-confessed amnesia faker made the statements in written answers to questions submitted to him in his Nuernberg jail cell.

He said he had expected to be called crazy by Hitler and professed undying loyalty to the man he helped write “Mein Kampf.”

The gaunt Nazi sub-chieftain considered the questions for three days before answering them. He indicated that he had no definite plans of operation, once he landed in England and carried only a letter of introduction to the Duke of Hamilton from Prof. Karl Haushofer, his spiritual mentor.

One novel feature of Hess’ statement was his insistence that even Haushofer and Willy Messerschmitt, the German plane builder, knew nothing of his proposed flight. It had been presumed that both of them knew his intentions.

Questions and answers

The questions, and answers by Hess, follow:

Q. What was the purpose of your flight to England?

A. During the campaign in France I expressed my view to the Fuehrer, in June 1940, that on conclusion of the peace with England (which we then considered imminent), a demand should be made for the return of what had been taken from Germany by the Versailles treaty. For instance, the equivalent of the German merchant fleet.

The Fuehrer disagreed, saying, “You know that already in our talks during our imprisonment at Landsberg, in 1925, and ever since then, I have declared again and again that the basis of my policy upon seizing power must be an understanding with England. Even today I have not given up hope that this understanding can be achieved when a certain period of time has elapsed after this war.

“If, however, one desires an understanding with a people, one must not make demands beforehand which are bound to engender bitterness. I don’t want a Versailles Treaty which sooner or later will lead to a new war. I am striving for a peace which will last, bring reconciliation between peoples, and which will be enduring.

Demands termed modest

“I have to insist on two conditions. First, an exact delineation of the spheres of influence of both powers, and second, a return of some former German colonies. This demand for the return of German property is a very modest one compared with the size of other colonial empires.

“I consider this war, in which for the second time within one generation, peoples of a noble race are decimating each other, and are destroying their very substance, as a terrible tragedy. The sooner this war is ended, the better it will be for humanity. In order to attain this end, however, everything must be avoided that might wound British prestige.”

I said to myself at the time that most likely, reasons of prestige prevented England from entertaining the various proposals for understanding made by the Fuehrer.

Considering the military position then prevailing, England could negotiate without loss of prestige only if a reason visible to the whole world for entering into parleys with Germany could be provided. I therefore decided to supply this reason by going personally to England.

Letter lift for Hitler

I left a letter for the Fuehrer at the moment of my departure, giving my reason for the flight. In it I argued: After contact with me, the British government will be in a position to declare:

“We have become convinced in talks with Herr Hess that proposals of the Fuehrer looking toward an understanding had been made in earnest. Under these circumstances, England does not feel justified in assuming responsibility for prolonging the slaughter without having endeavored to bring the war to a conclusion acceptable to all parties. She therefore declares her willingness to enter upon negotiations looking to this goal.”

What I wrote to the Fuehrer, I repeated to such personages in England as I met there. The attitude which motivated me is perhaps best expressed in what I said during a conversation in England:

“The decision concerning my flight was, without doubt, the hardest I ever made. It was rendered easier, however, when I visualized the endless rows of children’s coffins in both Germany and England, with mothers in dire distress following behind and similar rows of mothers killed by bombs, with crying children following.”

I assume many people will interpret this as misplaced sentimentalism. At the same time, I am convinced that mothers on both sides of the channel will understand me.

Adjutant taken into confidence

Q. Did Hitler or any other top flight Nazi know of the flight beforehand?

A. Neither Adolf Hitler nor anybody else knew of my intention, except for an adjutant whom I took into my confidence.

Q. In which way were Willy Messerschmitt and Prof. Haushofer implicated?

A. Messerschmitt was not informed about my intention. I obtained a plane from him under the pretext I needed the machine for long-range training flights within Germany. As to Haushofer, I merely asked him for a few lines of recommendation to the Duke of Hamilton under the pretext that I, with Hitler’s knowledge, was to meet the duke on neutral soil.

Q. When did you decide to make the flight?

A. I decided to fly shortly after the above-mentioned conversation with the Fuehrer in June 1940. A delay of nearly one year was caused by difficulties in obtaining the machine and long-range equipment, as well as by unfavorable weather conditions. You see, rules in Germany necessitated keeping to altitudes of not more than 500 meters, and this meant that one could not rise above ice-forming clouds and medium-sized mountains.

On the other hand, it was necessary that over the North Sea and over Great Britain there be clouds, without danger of icing, which would afford protection against enemy counterattack, yet not of such nature as to make an occasional sight of land impossible.

As a matter of fact, it took until May 10, 1941, before all necessary preconditions coincided. Moreover, I deliberately postponed my flight for a certain time because our military setback in North Africa caused a danger lest my sudden arrival in England would give rise to a false interpretation of my motives.

Q. Where did you take off?

A. I took off from an airfield of the Messerschmitt plant at Augsburg, from where I had made several short training flights previously, as wen as several takeoffs lor England, which I had to break off because of bad weather.

Q. Were you aware in England, or have you since learned, that it was announced officially in Germany that you were demented? How did you react to this?

A. I wrote in a letter which I left behind for Adolf Hitler, that I had decided to carry out my intention even at the risk of the Fuehrer’s declaring me insane. A news item to that effect was, therefore, no surprise to me. I am convinced that if I had been in Adolf Hitler’s place, and someone else had suddenly, without my permission, committed an act that might be misinterpreted and harm Germany, I would also have declared such a person insane.

Q. Was your loyalty toward the Fuehrer diminished when you learned that Rudolf Hess hospitals, streets and squares were renamed, and that the radio and press were forbidden to mention your name? Do you still retain a feeling of loyalty toward the Fuehrer?

A. The questions are answered automatically by the replies to the foregoing. My loyalty toward the Fuehrer is as great as it ever was.

65

Graf Spee scuttling ordered by Raeder, statement reveals

NUERNBERG (AP, Dec. 8) – Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, one of the 20 Nazi defendants facing the International Military Tribunal, said today it was by his order that the 10,000-ton pocket battleship Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo, Uruguay, December 17, 1939.

The former commander of the German Navy, a little-publicized figure of the war crimes trial, volunteered this statement in answering a series of questions submitted by the Associated Press through his attorney. His answers constituted his first press statement since the end of the war, when he was captured and held by the Russians.

It was officially announced in Berlin in 1939 that Hitler himself, as supreme commander of the German armed forces, ordered the crippled Graf Spee destroyed rather than moved out to meet waiting British cruisers again after Uruguay refused to extend harbor privileges beyond 72 hours.

Asked why the order was given to blow up the Graf Spee instead of ordering her to risk battle, Raeder commented: “The Graf Spee would have had to glide down the Rio de la Plata to reach the open sea. Before reaching deep waters, it would have been seized by superior fighting units and knocked out without the possibility of developing its fighting powers or, after being put out of commission, of proceeding to scuttle.”

He said he was unable to answer from memory inquiries as to the performance of the battleship Bismarck, which was hunted down and destroyed after sinking the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in 1941, or why the Admiral Tirpitz was withheld from action.

He asserted in answer to questions that he constantly wrangled with the “nervous and temperamental” Hitler, particularly in opposing the decision to invade Russia; that he pleaded in favor of peace with France; that he regarded Germany’s naval pact with Britain and the nonaggression pact with Russia as meant seriously; that he repeatedly asked to be relieved because of differences with Hitler and finally obtained discharge in January 1943; that the navy had nothing to do with concentration camp atrocities.

Raeder declined to answer questions about violations of international law which the German Navy is accused of committing during the invasion of Norway.

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67

The Evening Star (December 10, 1945)

Japan urged to enter war in spring of 1941, Nazi order discloses

Attack on Singapore, not Pearl Harbor, favored, Nuernberg court told

NUERNBERG (AP) – German military leaders were urging Japan to get into the war in the spring of 1941, but had no idea the Japanese might strike an opening blow at Pearl Harbor, according to a hitherto secret German command order disclosed today at the Nuernberg war crimes trial.

American prosecutors laid before the four-power tribunal a directive signed March 5, 1941, by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the high command, proposing a Japanese attack on Singapore as a means of “forcing England to the ground quickly and thereby keeping the United States out of the war.”

That Keitel was reluctant at that time to fight America was seen in his warning that Japanese attacks be extended to bases “of American naval power only if entry of the United States into the war cannot be prevented.”

Parley records cited

In a court session marked by the plea of innocence by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, once-dreaded No. 2 man in the Gestapo, American prosecutors turned to evidence of collaboration between Japan and Germany in spreading aggression throughout the world.

Records of a conference between German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka in Berlin on March 29, 1941, and April 5, 1941, showed that Ribbentrop disparaged the Japanese fear that American submarines based in the Philippines would endanger any Japanese move against Singapore.

In his directive in which he urged a Japanese attack on Singapore, Keitel wrote: “The common aim of the conduct of the war is to be stressed as forcing England to the ground quickly and thereby keeping the United States out of the war. Beyond this Germany has no political, military or economic interests in the Far East which would give occasion for any reservations with regard to Japanese intentions.”

“Seizure of Singapore as the key British position in the Far East would mean a decisive success for the entire conduct of the war of the three powers.

Promised to attack Russia

“In addition, attacks on other systems of bases of British naval power – extending to those of American naval power only if entry of the United States into the war cannot be prevented – will result in weakening the enemy’s system of power in that region and also, just like the attack on sea communications, in tying down substantial forces of all kinds (from Australia).”

The Ribbentrop-Matsuoka conference records disclosed that Germany promised to attack Russia in case she interfered with Japanese expansion in the Orient – but Germany took care that her ally in the Tripartite Pact was not let in on the secret that an attack on Russia in June already was planned.

In a letter to army commanders, Keitel Instructed that “no allusion to plan ‘Barbarossa’ (Russia invasion) may be made to the Japanese.”

After Germany attacked Russia, real urgency crept into pleas for Japanese entry into the war. A secret cable from Ribbentrop to the German ambassador in Tokyo on July 10, 1941, directed that pressure be brought to bear to persuade Japan to attack Russia.

Joins 20 other Nazis

Kaltenbrunner joined 20 other top Nazi leaders in the prisoners’ dock.

Kaltenbrunner, recovering from a cranial hemorrhage which sent him to the hospital just before the historic trial opened three weeks ago was brought before the four-power tribunal and declared: “I do not believe that I have made myself guilty.”

The tall, scarfaced Gestapo man joined his co-defendants as the Hitlerite leaders heard themselves accused in their own words of launching the invasion of Soviet Russia in 1941 with the coldly calculated determination to starve the Russian people so the Germans themselves might eat.

Wearing a second-hand, double-breasted blue suit and wetting his lips nervously, Kaltenbrunner made a solo entrance at noon and was seated in the front row of the dock between Rosenberg and Keitel.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a defendant and like Kaltenbrunner a renegade Austrian who helped deliver his country to Hitler, smiled at the uncomfortable newcomer.

U.S. Army physicians said they would decide tomorrow whether Kaltenbrunner was strong enough to spend full days in court.

Maj. Douglas Kelley, chief jail psychiatrist, said Kaltenbrunner had been examined and found mentally sound after his recovery from the effects of the cranial hemorrhage.

Goering, Rosenberg targets

Paunchy Hermann Goering and Alfred Rosenberg, official Nazi philosopher and head of the party’s Foreign Affairs Bureau, bore the brunt of the American prosecution’s attack at the opening of the fourth week of the trial.

Disclosing the detailed German plans to strip captured Russian territory of food, industries and raw materials, prosecutors introduced as evidence a speech made by Rosenberg on June 20, 1941 – two days before the invasion – in which the Nazi leader declared “we see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with products of that surplus territory.”

Goering, according to official documents, was the director of the ruthless economic policy which called for “seizing raw materials and taking over all important concerns” – a policy described by Assistant American Prosecutor Sidney S. Alderman as “economic plunder.”

High command records introduced as evidence disclosed that Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of staff for the Army, reported on February 3, 1941, that plans for the capture of Gibraltar would have to be abandoned because the necessary artillery already had been sent to the Russian border area.

Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, announced that each of the 20 Nazi defendants would be permitted to make one speech in his own defense when all the evidence had been submitted.

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Nazis rated Eisenhower ‘great’ and feared Patton, expert says

Intelligence officer tells inside story of sabotage in U.S.
By George Tucker

NUERNBERG (AP) – German Army Intelligence officers regarded Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as a “great military leader,” above even German generals, because of his skillful military planning and his ability to “override feelings and objections on political grounds in the interest of achieving the one thing that was important – the successful accomplishment of military operations.”

The author of that statement is Maj. Gen. Erwin Lahousen, star prosecution witness and German Army intelligence chief who evaluated the fighting qualities of various Allied armies from the German viewpoint in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press.

Gen. George S. Patton Jr. was looked on as the best and most feared of the American field commanders by the Germans, Gen. Lahousen said.

U.S. Army underestimated

The German Army “underestimated” the American Army at the start of the war, looking on American soldiers as “well-fed football players,” the German general said, but soon learned its error. He said that at the end of the war there was little difference, from a German viewpoint, in the American, British or Russian armies, but early in the war the Russians were better at exploiting breakthroughs and more daring in leadership compared with the British-American combination.

“In a tactical or dashing sense in military operations Patton was no doubt the outstanding American general,” Lahousen continued. “In order to be perfectly clear, I mean that Patton was outstanding as a leader of troops in the field. He had the necessary military and tactical ability to carry out operations that had been planned and prepared by Eisenhower, who was the great planner and who had the necessary political insight to carry out those plans, in contrast to the German generals, who were experts on the battlefield but who would have been as helpless as children had they faced a similar situation.”

Lahousen, who said he was in Tunisia during the Allied drive in 1942, declared Gen. Eisenhower had made the best of the political situation there to drive his troops forward, while the German generals “just sat on the sidelines and let the Arabs and Italians wrangle.”

Statement explained

“That is what I meant when I said we considered Gen. Eisenhower a great military leader,” the former intelligence officer said.

Lahousen said his mission in North Africa was to “use the nationalistic elements among the Arabs to cause difficulties and disturbances for the ordinary movement of supplies behind the front lines.”

He declared that if the Allies had been a bit more daring in Tunisia they would have wiped out the German forces before they could have been reinforced, but he added:

“It was our impression, too, that because this was the first military operation they wished to be extremely careful and conservative in order to prevent any unfavorable reaction in politics. By way of self-criticism now, take in comparison the Americans at Avaranches in France, when they were very sure of themselves and military operations took a rapid course.”

Lahousen also told for the first time the behind-the-scenes story of the sabotage attempt made on the United States in 1942 by German agents landed from submarines.

Hitler angered

Lahousen said that when Adolf Hitler heard how his personally ordered sabotage attempt on the United States in 1942 had failed because of action of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he yelled at Germany’s intelligence chiefs: “Why didn’t you take Jews for that?”

As a result of Hitler’s statement, Lahousen added, Jews were given jobs in the German intelligence service for more than a year.

The tall, cadaverous chief of the sabotage section through the critical early years of the war said the code name for the enterprise was “Pastorius,” that the plan called for blowing up of American aluminum factories and that Hitler personally had ordered the enterprise.

German submarines put four men ashore at Amagansett Beach, Long Island, New York, on June 13, 1942, and landed four others near Jacksonville, Florida, three days later. The men quickly were rounded up before they could carry out their plot.

Convicted by a military commission, six of the men were electrocuted in the District of Columbia jail. Ernest P. Burger was left off with a life prison sentence and George Dash with 30 years at hard labor because of their assistance to the American government in the apprehension and conviction of the others.

Suspected Dasch

Lahousen said that while the plot was being hatched, he suspected that Dasch had been planted by the Americans in the group selected for the mission.

The German general pictured Adm. Walter Wilhelm Canaris, Greek-born head of the German Army’s intelligence section, as having taken a disinterested attitude toward the project. Canaris was among those executed by the Nazis following the July 1944 bomb plot on Hitler’s life.

Lahousen said that as far as he knew the 1942 submarine landings constituted the only sabotage attempt against the United States engineered by German Army intelligence during the war, although the Nazi Party may have attempted others. He gave this account of the operation:

“We had no agents in America before the war to do sabotage. This was in contrast to Intelligence Section One, who had people in America to collect information and intelligence. When I say ‘we,’ I mean Intelligence Two as I was responsible for it.

Canaris reluctant

“Canaris was extremely reluctant to send any agents into any of the western countries before the war. What I mean is that he did not wish to send any agents into those countries who might have active missions of sabotage. He was very much in favor of sending agents there to find information and send it back to Germany.

“I am now coming to the affair itself. It took place in the summer of 1942. The military departments that were interested in this, such as the air force or the armament office of the German Army became increasingly worried and approached Canaris repeatedly to take some action to damage American resources.

“He, however, stalled them off for a while by saying he shared their opinion entirely that something would have to be done, but that he had no people in America at the time because the Foreign Office had forbidden him to do that sort of thing. Then – I am not quite sure whether it was in March or April, 1942 – I accompanied Canaris to the headquarters of the Fuehrer, and evidently the people who were interested in this had gotten in touch with the Fuehrer and he called it to Canaris’ attention that something would have to be done. The Fuehrer made a remark about this in an unmistakable manner to Canaris and stated that the greatest activity would be necessary in America.

Mission prepared

“The first contact that we had with this affair was when suddenly one day an SS man by the name of Kappe appeared at our office and said that he had a number of people ready to undertake such a mission, that all of them had lived in America and were quite familiar with the ways of American life and that one of them was even an American citizen.

“They now demanded that something be undertaken so that they could be used. There was nothing that they would rather do than die for the Fuehrer. These people apparently belonged to some kind of German-American group. I do not know whether they came from the association for Germans abroad. I am not quite sure from where they came.

“Canaris already was in a ‘glass house,’” that is he already had been suspected of his secret activity and could not afford to have any more stones thrown at him. He consulted me as an expert in such things, and I told him that because of the great number of persons involved in the enterprise I would have to count on failure. But here were eight fanatical Nazis who were just itching to get to work.

“Canaris replied in his typical manner, ‘Well, we will lose eight good Nazis then.’ Then the affair took the course that I believe is generally well known now. Those people were transported and they were apprehended before they could ever go into action.

“From our point of view, I mean from the point of view of the intelligence service, this was the greatest failure ever. I forgot to mention before that I had at once suspected one of the eight to be an American agent.

“I mentioned that to Canaris when he discussed the thing. When you asked me before about the American counterintelligence service, I said I thought it was good. And here is proof that it was good. This affair had the code name Pastorius. The man’s name who I suspected as being planted by the Americans is Dasch.”

Refers to diary

Lahousen then referred to the official intelligence diary and read:

“The sabotage objectives, apparently from propaganda reasons, were misrepresented and played up sensationally. For instance, it is said that the sabotage action was to be directed against an important railroad bridge in New York and against a powerhouse at Niagara Falls. Both objectives were never given for enterprise Pastorius. According to American news, it must be assumed that all participants in this enterprise will be executed.

“The real objectives,” Lahousen continued, “were some aluminum factories.

“Hitler reproached Canaris next time we went to the Fuehrer’s headquarters in Eastern Prussia.

Hitler critical

“Hitler made some very critical remarks about this entire enterprise which caused a great stir and was exploited for propaganda, too. Canaris told Hitler that these people had not been trained agents, but people from the party which the party had furnished. And then Hitler made the historical remark, ‘Well why didn’t you take Jews for that.’

“I was present when Hitler made this remark. When we left the Fuehrer’s headquarters Canaris said to me, ‘You were a witness when he told me to use Jews.’

“Whereupon he [Canaris] went back to Berlin and said that it was the Fuehrer’s orders that Jews had to be given jobs in the intelligence service.

“Then he was called to Berchtesgaden again and taken to task by the Fuehrer about using Jews, whereupon he discontinued the practice.”

Asked if there were any other sabotage missions which were successful but which the Americans heard nothing about, Lahousen said: “Not as far as I know. Only this. This was the only case.”

69

Ribbentrop asserts he worked for alliance of Britain, Reich

By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP) – Joachim von Ribbentrop, a pale ghost of the gold-braided figure who ruled the Nazi Foreign Office for seven years, declared yesterday he had worked for a German-English alliance and had opposed war with the Soviet Union.

Answering a list of written questions submitted by the Associated Press, Ribbentrop asserted he extended peace feelers to both Hitler and Germany’s enemies during the war.

He indignantly denied that he had misled Hitler in August 1939 with information that Britain would not fight for Poland and that therefore a general war would not follow.

He claimed that the notorious incident of February 1937, when he gave the Nazi salute to King George on being presented as the Nazi ambassador to Britain, was misrepresented by “evil tongues,” but that the king had accepted the salute in a friendly spirit.

Loyal to Hitler

He reiterated loyalty to Hitler.

The questions, transmitted to Ribbentrop by his attorney, Dr. Fritz Sauter, and Ribbentrop’s carefully composed answers follow:

Q. When did you see the Fuehrer for the last time? Where? Are you convinced he is dead or still living?

A. I saw the Fuehrer for the last time April 23 in the Reich Chancellery. I am convinced he is dead.

Q. What were the chief reasons for Germany’s defeat and what is your appraisal today of Hitler?

A. The causes for Germany’s defeat, in my view, were the superiority of the enemy coalition in men and material, and also the internal situation played a role in this. In his time, I swore loyalty to Adolf Hitler and held to it until his end. Would it be nice if now, when the Fuehrer is dead, I spoke otherwise?

Denies assertion

Q. Did you tell the Fuehrer on August 1939 that England would not fight for Poland?

A. The assertion that I told the Fuehrer that England would not fight for Poland is untrue. That was a propaganda invention of our former enemies. In a public speech in 1941 I made that clear. What is true is that the Fuehrer, upon news of the signing of the English-Polish pact August 25, 1939, held up the march of the German Army which had already been ordered. This occurred on my suggestion because I knew England would fight.

Q. Were you in favor of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union?

A. I proposed the policy of balance and friendship with the Soviet Union to the Fuehrer in 1939 and I signed the pact in Moscow that this policy should endure for the longest time. The outbreak of hostilities with the Soviet Union in 1941 caused me the deepest regret and I always did what was in my power to hinder its development. The Fuehrer believed he was forced to his decision because of military measures of the Soviet Union.

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71

The Pittsburgh Press (December 11, 1945)

Ah, for the good old days –
Hess struts at film of Hitler’s rise, but fellow Nazis weep

Propaganda movies shown at Nuernberg trial; Goering elated by his old, bemedalled self

NUERNBERG (UP) – Rudolf Hess today threw out his chest and strutted. Other Nazi leaders wept. It was the showing in the war crimes courtroom of a four-hour film depicting the Nazi rise to power.

The film was pieced together from propaganda films which the Nazis themselves took to record the high spots of Adolf Hitler’s regime in Germany.

The 21 defendants seemed to be stimulated by the scenes of past glory. Hess for the first time regained some of his old swagger.

During a recess in the film he stood with his arms crossed in swaggering manner and arrogantly surveyed the audience. As his picture was shown on the screen he leaned over to Hermann Goering and whispered eagerly, apparently about his former triumphs.

Goering was almost equally stimulated at seeing himself on the screen once again bemedalled and gorgeously uniformed.

He told a guard: “They should have showed the 1938 Nuernberg rally. That was really a good one.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel both wept at the pictures of enthusiastic Nazi crowds.

Hjalmar Schacht, Nazi fiscal wizard, who had turned his back when the films of Nazi atrocities were shown, watched today’s movie and asked: “Do you see anything wrong with that?”

The movie depicted the Nazi story from the days of Munich street fighting in the early twenties until the attempted assassination of Hitler on July 20, 1944.

The film, possibly the longest documentary one ever made, was intended to give graphic proof of prosecution charges that the Nazis had a master plan of world aggression.

Possibly for the last time, Joseph Goebbels’ frenzied shouting, the belligerent strains of the Horst Wessel song, cries of “Sieg Heil” and the massed chanting of slogans and marching songs rang in the defendants’ ears.

Adolf Hitler’s screaming speeches were there to mock them, too.

The film opened with Alfred Rosenberg’s history of early Nazi days. In rapid order it showed Hitler’s Nazi Party card, his speech on coming into power, the first boycott of Jews and the burning of books.

Recruited Soviet boys

German forces in Russia were accused before the War Crimes Tribunal today of rounding up 40,000 to 50,000 Soviet boys 10 to 14 years old for slave labor under Nazi domination.

Assistant Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd made the charges of Nazi use of forced labor from the occupied territories. German documents were introduced to support his case.

A directive approved by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the defendants, said the Nazi Army group in Russia seized youths to be “apprenticed” by the Todt labor organization. This, it pointed out, the Nazis supplied themselves with labor and deprived the Russians of recruits.

72

The Evening Star (December 11, 1945)

Soviet 10-year-olds kidnapped as Nazi slaves, court informed

Gestapo also favored abduction to build up population, prosecution shows
By Daniel De Luce, Associated Press foreign correspondent

NUERNBERG (AP) – Ten-year-old Russian children were kidnapped for slavery in German war factories as part of the Nazi campaign of “extermination through work,” according to evidence submitted today at the war crimes trial of 21 of Hitler’s top leaders.

Producing the Germans’ own records of mass enslavement of conquered peoples to keep the Nazi war machine running. Assistant American Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd said the kidnaping policy was approved by Alfred Rosenberg, the party’s official philosopher and fifth column expert.

Not only were children kidnapped for slave labor, but the abduction also of children of “good blood” was favored by the Gestapo to build up Germany’s war-depleted population, other Nazi records disclosed.

The Nazi leaders on trial before the International Military Tribunal earlier in the day’s session watched with mixed emotions a documentary film of themselves in the decade in which Hitler grabbed power and set Germany on the road to aggression and ruin.

Mr. Dodd described defendant Fritz Sauckel, former SS general and high commissioner of labor, as the kingpin of Germany’s slave labor.

He read from Heinrich Himmler’s speech of October 4, 1943, in which the Gestapo chief told SS leaders: “Our basic principle must be absolute rule for SS men. We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to the Russian and to the Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary, by kidnapping their children and raising them for us.”

The planned policy of enslaving captive peoples for work in German factories and on German farms was “a program of extermination through work,” Mr. Dodd declared.

Naming others on trial, the prosecutor said the former munitions minister, Albert Speer, “bears responsibility for the estimate of the number of foreign slaves needed by the German war machine.”

Others implicated by Mr. Dodd in the forced labor program were Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Nazi who opened the frontier of his country to Hitler, and Hans Frank, the governor of conquered Poland.

Watched familiar scenes

The once-powerful Nazi chieftains watched the old familiar scenes from German films flash across the movie screen – Hitler ranting to enthralled brown-shirted followers, the bonfires of forbidden books, the army goose-stepping down the streets of conquered neighbors.

The documentary film of Nazi aggression, assembled in Berlin by two naval officers from confiscated German movies, was shown as evidence before the tribunal.

Sometimes discomfited and self-conscious as their faces flashed on the screen, the defendants watched intently.

Once or twice, they laughed, particularly at a shot of Goering – looking far younger and harder than he does in the prisoners’ box – rubbing his hands gleefully at the humiliation of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain and France’s Edouard Daladier at Munich, when they signed away the Czech Sudetenland to Hitler.

Hess stares as if hypnotized

As the boots of soldiers pounded out the rhythm of “Horst Wessel,” Keitel nodded his head in time to the march.

Rudolf Hess stared as if hypnotized at the image of himself swearing 52,000 young Nazis to loyalty to Hitler. A picture of the Fuehrer fatuously smiling at his massed devotees stirred the Allied spectators to laughter.

Titled “The Nazi Plan,” the film portrayed the rise of National Socialism from political street fighters, led by a frenzied ex-corporal, to a terror that swept over Europe. Its closing scenes showed the trial of Germans who attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb July 20, 1944.

Five ‘stars’ in film

All the footage came from German cameras, including excerpts from an official Nazi Party film directed by Leni Riefenstahl and titled “Triumph of the Will.” This film depicted the Nazi congress held in Nuernberg in September 1934.

Cmdrs. James B. Donovan and E. Ray Kellogg, who edited the celluloid saga of Nazidom, gave the “starring roles” to five of the defendants – Goering, Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Baldur von Schirach and Rosenberg.

But there were also shots of Julius Streicher, Konstantin von Neurath and Franz von Papen making statements. Virtually all of the accused could pick themselves out from party and governmental bigwigs assembled on historic occasions.

Hitler dominated “The Nazi Plan,” in the film as well as in life. Joseph Goebbels clumped through the lie factory of his propaganda ministry and through anti-Semitic outrages. Mussolini, Pierre Laval, Daladier and Chamberlain had their own mixed moments with the Fuehrer.

Assistant American Prosecutor Sidney S. Alderman told the court yesterday that Goering asked the German aircraft industry in 1938 to produce planes capable of carrying a five-ton load to New York to “stop somewhat the mouths of the arrogant people over there.”

As the American prosecution closed the case against the Nazi defendants on the first count – conspiracy to wage aggressive war – documentary evidence piled up showing:

  • That Hitler planned in 1940 to seize Atlantic bases for future attacks on the United States, but that six months later the Germans apparently lost taste for the project and instead strove desperately to avoid embroilment with America while pushing Japan steadily into the war.

  • That Von Ribbentrop and Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka had low opinions of the United States Navy, which the Japanese foreign minister was certain his navy would be able to smash “without trouble.”

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 18

74

The Evening Star (December 12, 1945)

4,000,000 foreigners enslaved in Germany, Nuernberg court told

NUERNBERG (AP) – More than 4,000,000 conquered laborers were forced into virtual slavery in Germany by murder, starvation, arson and kidnapping, American prosecutors disclosed today at the war crimes trial of 21 Nazi war leaders.

The carefully planned slave system to provide workers for German war plants and farms was described as a “wild and ruthless manhunt carried on everywhere” in a Nazi labor commissioner’s own words presented as evidence before the International Military Tribunal.

Pressing the charges of “crimes against humanity” against Adolf Hitler’s top aides, Assistant American Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd disclosed by the Germans’ own records that more than 4,000,000 men, women and children of 14 different nationalities had been shipped to the Reich like cattle to bolster the Nazi war machine by January 1945.

Although Prosecutor Dodd limited his estimate of slave laborers to “more than 4,000,000,” an unofficial tabulation drafted from Nazi and Allied court records placed the total of foreign workers at 6,691,000 by January 1945.

Babies thrown from windows

As details of the Nazi slave labor system were unfolded before the court, even the accused Hitlerites stirred uneasily and some pulled away in their seats from the trio named by Mr. Dodd as chiefly responsible – bull-necked Fritz Sauckel, SS general and Reich labor commissioner; suave Alfred Rosenberg, official Nazi philosopher and administrator of the occupied Ukraine, and Albert Speer, Reich munitions minister.

One report taken from Rosenberg’s files revealed that babies born on slave labor trains were thrown from the windows.

Speer sat with his face in his hands as Prosecutor Dodd declared that “force and brutality as a method of production found a ready adherent in the defendant Speer.”

Hitler ordered forced labor for 2,000,000 Russians and Poles in October 1942 and an additional 1,000,000 in March 1943, the evidence disclosed.

10,000 ordered sent daily

Writing to Rosenberg on March 18, 1943, Sauckel ordered the shipment of captive laborers to be speeded up to 10,000 a day.

Sauckel’s own representative in the Ukraine warned that “the wild and ruthless manhunt carried on everywhere – in towns and country, in streets, squares, stations, even in churches and at night in houses – has badly shaken the feeling of security everywhere.” The comment, sent to Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland, was filed with the court.

Mr. Dodd produced a letter from one of Rosenberg’s agents, in which he protested that “prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies,” and said the mass deportation methods “probably have their origin only in the blackest periods of the slave trade.”

“A regular manhunt was inaugurated,” declared the letter, written by Consul General Dr. B. Braeutigam, a member of Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Areas.

“Without consideration of health or age the people were shipped to Germany, where it turned out immediately that far more than 100,000 had to be sent back because of serious illnesses or other incapabilities for work.”

Rosenberg apparently foresaw the day when he might be called to account for the inhumane treatment of the forced laborers. In a letter to Sauckel December 21, 1942, he protested against the “unusual and hard measures” and expressed the fear that responsibility “will someday be held against me and my collaborators.”

“Arson was used in the Ukraine to enforce conscription,” Mr. Dodd said. He produced a letter to Rosenberg from a field commissioner telling of burning houses to force their occupants to go to the Reich to work.

Security police were ordered to kidnap children, Mr. Dodd charged in disclosing an order of March 19, 1943, during the use of force and adding that “as a rule no more children will be shot.”

Sauckel, another document revealed, had ordered the army to seize all able-bodied youths of 15 and 16 years old in the occupied territories. Other records previously presented to the court disclosed that Rosenberg had dropped the age limit to 10 years for slave laborers.

At a meeting March 1, 1944, according to a document introduced as evidence, Sauckel said, of 5,000,000 foreign laborers in Germany “not more than 200,000 came voluntarily.”

Women unable to march

Another letter from Rosenberg’s files said that on October 7, 1942, one of his agents reported “in some cases women were beaten until they could no longer march.” Similar treatment was accorded forced laborers from France and Holland, was revealed.

A memorandum signed by Sauckel January 4, 1943, reported that Speer had said it was no longer necessary to accord “special consideration” to Frenchmen. The memorandum added: “Recruiting can proceed with emphasis and sharpened measures.”

Describing conditions among forced laborers at a Krupp munitions plant, Mr. Dodd produced a report from the Krupp files which said: “During the last few days we have established that food for Russians employed here is so miserable that people are getting weaker every day.”

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 19

76

The Evening Star (December 13, 1945)

Exhibits of atrocities in Nazi camps shown to Nuernberg court

Streicher alone unmoved by grisly exhibits; other defendants turn Away

NUERNBERG (AP) – A preserved human head and lamp shades made of human skin were presented as evidence of atrocities in Nazi concentration camps at the war crimes trial of 21 top German war leaders today.

The grisly exhibits were added to the Germans’ own records of murder and brutality placed before the four-power International Military Tribunal by Allied prosecutors charging the once-powerful Nazi warlords with “crimes against humanity.”

Relating the already-revealed horrors of the notorious concentration camps at Mauthausen and Buchenwald, American Assistant Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd declared that “we feel no argument is necessary to support our statement that the Nazi conspirators used these concentration camps as places of terror.”

The preserved human head, shrunk to the size of a baseball and resembling the war trophy of an aboriginal headhunter, was that of a Pole who had been caught fraternizing with a German girl.

Selected for tattooing

The three pieces of human skin tanned into parchment for lamp shades for the wife of SS-Standartenfuehrer Koch came from victims at Buchenwald selected because of their “artistic” tattooing, according to an affidavit by a former inmate of the concentration camp.

“In 1939 all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary,” the affidavit said. “No one knew what the purpose was. But after the tattooed prisoners were examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary and then were killed by injections.”

Telling of the shrunken heads, the former inmate was quoted in the affidavit as saying: “I also saw the shrunken heads of two young Poles who had been hanged for having had relations with Jewish girls. The heads were the size of a fist and the hair and marks of the rope were still there.”

Jew-baiter Julius Streicher, alone of all the defendants, remained unmoved. The others averted their eyes but from time to time stole glance at the barbaric trophies.

The “death ledgers” of the Mauthausen camp recorded the deaths of more than 35,000 inmates from 1939 to 1945. On March 19, 1945, 203 persons died in 12 hours, the records showed.

13 parachutists hanged

Mauthausen was the camp where Joseph Morton, Associated Press war correspondent, according to available evidence, was executed last winter on the signed order of Secret Police Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, one of the 21 defendants. An American Army investigator declared that the camp “was conducted with the sole purpose in mind of exterminating any so-called prisoner who entered within its walls.”

Another report said 13 American and British parachutists were hanged at the Flossenbuerg concentration camp after their capture.

A statement from a Budapest Zionist leader disclosed that Hungarian Jews who were too young or too old to serve as slave laborers were automatically consigned to death in concentration camp gas chambers.

American prosecutors introduced the affidavit of Rudolf Kastner, leader of a Hungarian Zionist organization, reporting SS troops seized 475,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944 and transported them to the Reich in “death trains.”

Unfit sent to gas chambers

“Children up to the age of 12 or 14 and older people above 50 as well as the sick or people with criminal records were taken immediately on their arrival [at Oswiecim concentration camp] to the gas chambers,” Kastner declared in his affidavit.

“The others passed before an SS doctor who on sight, indicated who was fit for work and who was not. Those unfit were sent to the gas chambers while the others distributed in various labor camps.”

Disclosing another breach of international law by the Germans, Mr. Dodd produced a secret SS order showing the high command had directed that prisoners of war who escaped and were later recaptured should be transported to the Mauthausen prison camp and their fate kept secret from the International Red Cross.

British and American prisoners were exempted from the treatment by the order. It said inquiries of the Red Cross concerning the fate of recaptured prisoners of other nationalities were to be answered with the reply, “escaped and not captured.”

Brutality in the concentration camps began early, Mr. Dodd declared. He produced orders posted at Dachau in 1933 directing death by hanging for inmates who participated in any kind of agitation or attempted to establish contact with the outside world.

Wilhelm Frick, former Nazi minister of justice, gave the Gestapo power over the concentration camps and decreed that the secret police should provide “protective custody for those deemed enemies of the state,” according to German documents filed as evidence.

POWs used in arms plants

Other evidence submitted today showed Nazis used prisoners of war as munition plants workers in violation of international law.

American prosecutors produced documents showing that defendant Fritz Sauckel, the Nazi slave labor boss, reported in June 1943 that prisoners of war formed a large element of the 800,000 foreign workers drafted for forced labor in armament plants in the previous five months.

Revealing that Hitler’s policy of enslavement of conquered peoples met with resistance, Sauckel declared in the report filed as evidence that “unfortunately quite a number of our officials and employees were victims of murders and attacks by partisans.”

A recommendation by Albert Speer, another defendant and former Nazi munitions minister, that prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured be sent to factories as “convicts” was read to the court.

77

The Pittsburgh Press (December 13, 1945)

Gestapo offered Jews for sale

NUERNBERG (UP) – The Gestapo in 1944 offered to “sell” one million Hungarian Jews for $2 each and said the alternative was their extermination in concentration camps, the War Crimes Tribunal was told today.

The Nazi offer was made by Adolf Eichmann, Gestapo officer sent to Hungary as head of a special “team” charged with deporting all Jews in Hungary to Germany.

An affidavit by Dr. Rezso Kastner, Hungarian Zionist leader now in London, revealed the Nazi offer.

Negotiations broke down

“We have accepted an obligation toward the Hungarians that not a single deported Jew will return alive,” Eichmann was quoted as saying. But he added that for two million dollars he would not carry out the deportation.

Later, however, Eichmann said he would have to send the Jews to Germany before freeing them.

“I can only sell the Hungarian Jews as from Germany,” he said.

The negotiations apparently broke down because Kastner reported that by June 27, 1944, 475,000 Jews had been deported to Nazi concentration camps from Hungary.

29,000 died at camp

Other documents disclosed that at one typical concentration camp, that at Flossenbuerg, 29,000 persons died, including 13 American or British parachutists captured trying to demolish bridges.

A captured Gestapo order of March 1944 disclosed that the Nazi High Command ordered all escaped officer or non-commissioned prisoners of war except British or Americans turned over to the secret police for “Step Three.”

“Step Three” meant that the prisoners were taken in irons to Mauthausen concentration camp for what they called “Aktion Kugel – Operation Bullet.”

American and British prisoners were held until the supreme command had decided on their disposal. The Gestapo was instructed to inform the International Red Cross in “Step Three” cases that the prisoners had escaped but not been recaptured.

Mauthausen was the camp where Joseph Morton, Associated Press correspondent, was executed after parachuting into Slovakia.

The 21 defendants listened to the report after report of brutality and atrocities in glum silence. There was none of the wisecracking, note-passing and whispering which had marked their conduct during earlier phases of the trial.

Speer accused

Evidence was presented that Albert Speer, Nazi munitions director, employed millions of slave laborers in German war factories under brutal conditions.

The American prosecution condemned Speer so thoroughly that the judges of the war crimes tribunal finally told Prosecutor Thomas Dodd to stop, because they had heard enough.

Speer told interrogators that he knew most of his workers had been forced to come to Germany against their will. He also admitted that he had visited the Mauthausen concentration camp and the foreign labor camps at Krupps munitions works, and knew of the bad living conditions there.

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 20

79

The Evening Star (December 14, 1945)

Nazi figures showing 6 million Jews killed presented to court

Estimate is attributed to ‘chief Jew catcher’ of German secret police

NUERNBERG (AP) – Six million European Jews were slaughtered in the Nazi campaign of extermination, according to German secret police estimates placed today before the International Military Tribunal trying 21 of Hitler’s top leaders on war crimes charges.

American prosecutors filed an affidavit by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, right-hand man to Ernst Kaltenbrunner in the secret police, giving the estimate.

“Approximately 4,000,000 Jews had been killed in the various extermination camps while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways, the major part of which were shot by operational squads of security police during the campaign against Russia,” Hoettl said in his affidavit.

Hoettl attributed his figure to Adolf Eichmann, chief “Jew catcher” in the secret police. He said Eichmann confessed it to him in August 1944 in expressing the conviction that he would have to pay for “the millions of Jewish lives on his conscience.”

Himmler uncertain

Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler thought Eichmann’s total was too low, Hoettl’s affidavit revealed. But Hoettl added that Eichmann was the best-informed official on Jewish executions.

Thousands were killed when SS troops wiped out the Warsaw Ghetto in a 29-day massacre in 1943, according to records submitted by Maj. Frank Walsh of New York City, assistant American prosecutor.

Details of the mass murder in Warsaw were read from the reports of the SS police chief of the city, who wrote that he ordered troops “to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire.”

Boasts of killings

The reports showed that the SS chief, a Maj. Gen. Stroop, directed the annihilation campaign from April 17 to May 16, 1943, and that he boasted he had killed 7,000 Jews in battle, 5,000 to 6,000 by explosions and fires and collected 49,000 others “whose extermination in camps can be proved.” The cost to the Germans was 15 dead.

No attempt by Allied officials to write an account of the mass murder in the ghetto has yet equaled the shocking clarity of the SS reports themselves.

Established at German insistence and over the protests of Polish city officials, the ghetto housed 400,000 Jews behind guarded walls until “resettlement” – transfer to Majdame or elsewhere – reduced the population to less than one-fourth by the spring of 1943.

Stroop was entrusted by Himmler with the forced evacuation of the remainder, described as a “cleansing operation” to “preserve the health of the German forces.”

Attacks with tanks

He started by attacking with tanks and armored cars what the Nazis called “Polish bandits” reinforcing the Jews. Sweatshop arms plants, which had been producing inside the ghetto for the Wehrmacht, provided the victims with the means of resistance.

Flamethrowers and artillery were called into action by the Germans and Wehrmacht engineers were detailed to blow up hideouts with TNT. Chemical smoke was used to flush fugitives from sewers. Systematically block after block of buildings were set ablaze.

“The former ghetto is completely destroyed,” Stroop finally advised his superiors proudly, “but the ruins still contain a vast amount of stones and scrap material which could be used.”

Describing gas chamber executions at Oswiecim, the prosecutor read the official report of the War Refugee Board of Washington estimating that 1,165,000 Jews had been killed at the one concentration camp.

Polish government reports, read as evidence, estimated that 12,000 Hungarian Jews were executed daily at Oswiecim in July 1944.

80

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (December 15, 1945)

6,000,000 Jews slain by Nazis, court is told

By Daniel De Luce

NUERNBERG (AP, Dec. 14) – Six million European Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered in the Nazi campaign of extermination, said German secret police estimates placed Friday before the International Military Tribunal trying 21 of Hitler’s top leaders on war crimes charges.

American prosecutors filed an affidavit by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, right-hand man to defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner in the secret police giving the estimate.

“Approximately 4,000,000 Jews had been killed in the various extermination camps while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways, the major part of which were shot by operational squads of security police during the campaign against Russia,” Hoettl said in his affidavit.

Hoettl attributed his figure to Adolf Eichmann, chief “Jew catcher” in the secret police. He said Eichmann confessed it to him in August 1944 in expressing the conviction that he would have to pay for “the millions of Jewish lives on his conscience.”

29-day massacre

Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler thought Eichmann’s total was too low, Hoettl’s affidavit revealed. But Hoettl added that Eichmann was the best-informed official on Jewish executions.

Thousands were killed when SS troops wiped out the Warsaw Ghetto in a 29-day massacre in 1943, according to records submitted by Maj. Frank Walsh of New York City, assistant U.S. prosecutor.

Details of the mass murder in Warsaw were read from the reports of the SS police chief of the city, who wrote that he ordered troops “to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire.”

The reports showed that the SS chief, a Maj. Gen. Stroop, directed the annihilation campaign from April 17 to May 16, 1943, and that he boasted he had killed 7,000 Jews in battle, 5,000 to 6,000 by explosions and fires and collected 49,000 others “whose extermination in camps can be proved.” The cost to the Germans was 15 dead.

He started by attacking with tanks and armored cars what the Nazis called “Polish bandits” reinforcing the Jews. Sweatshop arms plants, which had been producing inside the ghetto for the Wehrmacht, provided the victims with the means of resistance.

Flamethrowers used

Flamethrowers and artillery were called into action by the Germans and Wehrmacht engineers were detailed to blow up hideouts with TNT. Chemical smoke was used to flush fugitives from sewers. Systematically block after block of buildings was set ablaze.

“The former ghetto is completely destroyed,” Stroop finally advised his superiors proudly, “but the ruins still contain a vast amount of stones and scrap material which could be used.”

Among sample excerpts from daily operation reports teletyped to higher SS headquarters were the following:

“April 22, 1943: 1,100 Jews caught for evacuation, 203 bandits and Jews killed. When engineers blew up dugouts a considerable number of Jews and bandits were buried under the ruins. When we found it necessary to execute some bandits they collapsed shouting ‘long live Poland.’”

“April 24, 1943: Despite burned the danger of being alive, Jews and bandits preferred to return into the flames rather than risk being caught by us. Over and over again the Jews kept up their firing almost to the end of the action.”

Buildings burned

“April 26, 1943: During today’s operation several blocks of buildings were burned down. This is the only and final method which forces this trash and subhumanity to the surface. The result of today’s operation: 30 Jews evacuated, 1,330 Jews pulled out of dugouts and immediately destroyed, and 362 Jews killed in battle.”

“April 27, 1943: Jews who were leaders of the entire resistance movement… jumped from burning windows and balconies abusing Germany and the Fuehrer and cursing German soldiers.”

“May 3, 1943: We discovered several times today that Jewesses had pistols concealed in their bloomers. Every Jew and bandit will from today on strip completely for search.”

“May 15, 1943: The chapel, mortuary and all other buildings in the Jewish cemetery… were destroyed.”

“May 16, 1943: A large-scale action was terminated by blowing up the Warsaw synagogue.”

Gas chamber executions

Describing gas chamber executions at Oswiecim, the prosecutor read the official report of the War Refugee Board of Washington, estimating that 1,165,000 Jews had been killed at the one concentration camp.

Polish government report, read as evidence, estimated that 12,000 Hungarian Jews were executed daily at Oswiecim in July 1944.

Another report described the extermination camp at Treblinka, to which two railroad trains a day moved Jews to be suffocated in steam chambers.

“All the victims had stripped off their clothes,” the report said in describing the executions. “Women and children first were driven into the death chambers. Those too slow or too weak to move quickly were driven on by rifle butts, by whipping and kicking…. Small children were simply thrown inside.

“After being filled up to capacity the chambers were hermetically closed and the steam was let in. In a few minutes it was all over.”