NUERNBERG (AP) – Eleven of the 20 Nazi leaders heard in final pleas today expect to be hanged, defense attorneys said.
Three – Hjalmar Schacht, Constantin von Neurath and Franz von Papen – expect clemency.
Six – Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Alfred Jodl, Baldur von Schirach, Hans Fritzsche and Julius Streicher – still “have hopes.”
The Pittsburgh Press (August 31, 1946)
Ribbentrop warns Allies to watch Russia; Goering defends his actions in war
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
NUERNBERG (UP) – The surviving leaders of the Third Reich which Adolf Hitler promised would endure for 1000 years sang their swansong today in the dock of the Nuernberg war crimes courtroom.
The fate of the 21 leaders lay with eight solemn judges as the last defense pleas closed and the International Military Tribunal adjourned until September 23, when it will render its verdict.
Joachim von Ribbentrop led the chorus with a gratuitous propaganda warning that the Western Allies now stand just where Germany once did with relation to Russia.
The foxy one-time super-salesman of champagne and Nazi diplomacy shuffled to the courtroom microphone today with the other 20 defendants to make his final plea before the tribunal which will determine whether the Nazi leadership is guilty of waging aggressive war and breaching international law.
Goering defends deeds
He followed Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess, whom I had last seen at the height of their Nazi glory when they were shouting threats to launch the legions of the now broken German army and air force against the world.
Goering had little to say. A tired, grey-faced man in a baggy fawn-colored suit he gravely insisted in guttural tons that “I stand by what I have done.”
This was not the swash-buckling, be-medaled Goering I had seen dazzling with his uniforms, his appetite and his fantastic hunting lodges.
Worn and flabby
Nor was it the Goering I had heard just eight years ago howling a Nazi audience into frenzy with his boas that the Siegfried Line was impregnable, that Germany was ready to take on the whole world and that his air force was supreme in the skies.
Today Goering was worn and flabby-skinned, his clothes loose and ill-fitting in the absence of the paunch which a healthy Allied diet and elimination of his daily narcotic doses had cost him.
Goering spoke as though aware there was little he could say to change the verdict of the court and of the world. For the seventh time he protested that he “did not want war, nor did I bring it about.”
He was also certain that he had never waned to “subjugate, murder, rob or enslave foreign peoples, or to commit horror and crime.”
Repeats old refrain
He repeated the familiar refrain of the Nazi defendants that if crimes had been committed, he was not aware of them.
But Ribbentrop, speaking in a fluttering voice as if fearful he might at any moment be interrupted, was more in character with the Nazi regime which I saw preparing the war which turned the world into flames.
Taking a lead from the book of his dead comrade, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Ribbentrop used his final moments before the microphone in an effort to sow more seeds of confusion among the victorious Allies who brought the Nazi structure crumbling down around the heads of its leaders.
Voice quivers
Today, said Ribbentrop, Britain and the United States “stand before the same dilemma as Germany at the time of my negotiations with Russia. For the sake of my people, I hope with all my heart they have more success than I.”
His voice quivering and his hands twitching Ribbentrop insisted that his foreign policy was the essence of sweet reasonableness compared with that of the victorious Allies.
“I only wanted a few bits of land and the (Polish) corridor,” he pleaded. “Today Russia and the United States talk in terms of continents. Britain already has made one-fifth of the world her inferior just as the United States and Russia have brought the largest continents under their hegemony.”
Regrets failure
He said as have most of the Nazi leaders before that the only guilt he felt was guilt of failure – of failure to achieve the ambitious which Hitler and the Nazi regime entertained of winning for Germany her “place in the sun.”
He thought that atrocities were too bad but felt that measuring them by any “Puritanical standards” was unfair since the winning Allies “neither want to nor can halt the most terrible crimes.”
In typical Goebbels manner, Ribbentrop said: “Today the nuclear problem is who will dominate Europe and Asia. Will the influence of Russia be held back at the Elbe and the Dardanelles?”
Talks of ‘glassy-eyed’
Hess’ defense speech was as peculiar as his conduct since his flight to Scotland in the spring of 1941. He appeared bewitched by the phrase “glassy-eyed,” using it a score of times in a rambling address. He wound up with a charge that the British maintained concentration camps in which the prisoners were guarded by “glassy-eyed guards” and fed a diet of ground glass. He described his own speech as “glassy-eyed oratory.”
The last time I had seen Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel he had been the typical figure of an arrogant Prussian general. Today he looked like a tired-out old bookkeeper in plain green unform, nearly pressed but without insignia.
Blames Hitler
He said he couldn’t have been guilty of any crime because the High Command had nothing to do with operations in Russia. The Russian front, he said, was all Hitler’s responsibility and even the army commanders there didn’t report back to him.
Hjalmar Schacht, the Nazi fiscal wizard who often sought to impress me and other foreigners with his “reasonableness” and “restraining influence” on the Nazis, told the court he had finally discovered that Hitler was a criminal, but that the discovery came “too late.”
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who took over the role of chief hatchet-man for the late Heinrich Himmler after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, protested that he took office only in 1943 and that when he found out what was going on in the concentration camps he made a complaint.
Beggs for mercy
Kaltenbrunner said he didn’t agree with Hitler’s anti-Semitic policy because he knew it was “barbarism.”
Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi philosopher, begged for mercy and assured the judges that it would be a big step toward “mutual understanding of nations” if none of the defendants were convicted.
Hans Frank, Hitler’s boss for Poland where more mass murders were conducted than anywhere else except Russia, leavened his plea with frequent religious references. He said all German guilt for any possible war crimes had been removed by news he had just received of “gigantic mass crimes of a ghastly sort by the Russians, Poles and Czechs against the German people.”
Streicher speaks
Wilhelm Frick, one-time Nazi interior minister, said he wasn’t any more guilty “than thousands of civil servants in Germany yesterday or today.
The notorious Jew-baiter Julius Streicher, who used to swagger around Nuernberg with a riding whip and parade Jews naked through the streets, was just a wizened little man with thin fuzzy hair when he made his halting statement that “without exception mass murders were ordered by Hitler and carried out by Himmler.”
In a calm reflective voice, he denied that he ever had ordered or participated in any anti-Jewish action.
Blames Goebbels
Streicher claimed the 1938 anti-Jewish demonstrations were ordered by Goebbels. He argued that he himself in his newspaper Der Stuermer printed a demand for a Jewish state as a natural solution to the Jewish problem.
Economics Minister Walther Funk denied responsibility for any phase of Hitler’s policy or for “the terrible crimes involving my subordinates.”
Wilhelm Frick, “protector” of Bohemia and Moravia, denied his guilt in a curt statement.
Fritz Sauckel, SS and SA general, termed himself a “hopeless Utopist” and said many foreign workers worked voluntarily.
Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl pledged he would “leave this courtroom with head as high as when I entered it. Duty to one’s people and the fatherland is above any other.”
Adm. Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s submarine genius, defended the U-boat campaign as “necessary and legal.”
Papen defends self
Franz von Papen claimed a clear conscience and said he served the Nazis “because I hoped the maintenance of Christian principles would be the best safeguard against political and ideological radicalism.”
Arthur Seyss-Inquart proclaimed his fealty to Hitler, when he said “I am not capable of shouting ‘crucify him’ today when yesterday I shouted ‘hosanna’.”
Adm. Erich Raeder followed Doenitz and expressed regret that the indictment had tried to “defame the German navy.”
Constantin von Neurath, former foreign minister, said he had “a clear conscience, not only before myself but before history and the German people.”
Hans Fritzsche, the last defendant to speak, asked for a separation of Nazi war crimes from the guilt of the German people.
The Evening Star (September 1, 1946)
NUERNBERG, August 31 (AP) – Twenty-one henchmen of Adolph Hitler will learn their fate September 23, the International Military Tribunal announced today after hearing them rant defiantly or plead for mercy in their last gestures to escape the gallows.
Hollow-eyed Walther Funk, former Reichsbank head and economics minister, wept as he pleaded he did not know of Nazi crimes. But Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering shouted his innocence, asserting he was “standing back of everything I have done.”
These two were among the 12 who told their attorneys they expected death. Hjalmar Schacht, Constantin von Neurath and Franz von Papen expect clemency, the attorneys said, while Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Alfred Jodl, Baldur von Schirach, Hans Fritzsche and Julius Streicher still hold out hope. Goering looked pleased as gaunt, ashen-faced Rudolf Hess, onetime deputy to Hitler, stormed and ranted and protested that some defendants acted “very strangely and made shameful utterances about the Fuehrer.” But for the most part Hess’ tirade was rambling bewildered and at times unintelligible.
Defense attorneys said 12 of the defendants expected to be hanged, three thought they would escape, and six still “have hopes.”
Some in their final statements turned savagely on Hitler, branding him the only real criminal; others reaffirmed belief in the Fuehrer. One wept. Some with bravado declared they were not afraid to die. Others professed ignorance of Nazi excesses, or pleaded “duty” to the state.
Some asked that even if they were not spared, the German people be acquitted so that Germany might again rise as a nation. The 21 tired and mostly frightened men used 30,000 words in final excuses for executing orders that brought misery or death to 25,000,000 persons. Their statements concluded a trial which began November 20, 1945, before British, French, Russian and American judges constituting the first International Military Tribunal in history.
When the parade of 21 defendants – Deputy Fuehrer Martin Bormann, the 22nd, was tried in absentia – finished their statements, Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, announced an immediate recess until 10 a.m. September 23, when the judges will announce their verdicts. The tribunal’s word is final, but will be subject to review of the Allied control authority in Berlin.
Justice Lawrence praised counsel for both the prosecution and the defense. He said some Germans had written to German defense counsel protesting defense lawyers’ conduct, and added that the attorneys would be given the protection both of the tribunal and the Allied Control Council.
Goering protests innocence
Each defendant had been allotted 10 minutes to make the final statement. Only Hess ran overtime.
Goering, his sharp, peering eyes averted from the tribunal, contended the prosecution failed to show he could have known “everything that happened under Hitler.” Protesting his innocence, he declared he never decreed “the murder of a single individual.”
“The only motive which guided me was my ardent love for my people,” the Reichsmarshal, now thin and wan, declared. “I call on the Almighty and the German people as my witness.”
Hess, who flew to England during the war in a futile attempt to arrange a German-dictated peace, remained seated as he spoke, pleading ill health. He unleashed a storm of abuse against some co-defendants and attacked the whole court procedure. As he talked, Goering laughed and made penciled notes.
Hess rambled for a full half hour, until the court lost patience. He devoted much time to his flight to Britain. “There,” he said, “people surrounded me from time to time. They changed from time to time. They had glassy eyes – dreamy eyes. Then they changed and gave the impression of sanity. In the spring of 1942 I had a visitor, quite obviously nice to me. He had strange eyes with a dreamy cast.”
Hess no longer read from notes, and the presiding justice lost patience. Hess was warned, but he rambled on about his duty as a “faithful follower of my Fuehrer,” stating he would act the same “if I had the same opportunity, even if I knew I would meet death in a bonfire.”
Recalls Stalin meeting
Joachim von Ribbentrop, champagne salesman who became German foreign minister, declared the only respect in which he considered himself guilty was “that my foreign political wishes did not meet with success.” Pale and lacking his former suavity, Von Ribbentrop said he sought only what the other nations did.
“In 1939 I met Stalin in Moscow and he didn’t seek peaceful settlement,” he said. “The conduct of the man in 1939 was not considered a crime against peace.”
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German high command, blamed Hitler as the real instigator of the army’s orders, but said he “acted according to my duty as I saw it.” Ignoring attempts by Hess to heckle him, Keitel said:
“I claim to have told the truth in all things, even if they incriminate me.”
Keitel declared the German Army should have had less discipline, implying that relaxation of the traditional Prussian attitude would have allowed the generals to refuse Hitler’s bidding.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former chief of the dread Nazi Sicherheitsdienst, the Security Police, pleaded he knew nothing about the anti-Semitic excesses of the Nazis, which he admitted were barbaric. He said his conscience was clear.
Alfred Rosenberg, one-time philosopher of Nazism, cast the blame on Hitler for drawing about him people “who were not my comrades but my enemies.”
Frank accuses Hitler
Hans Frank, governor general of Poland who was known as the “butcher of Warsaw,” bitterly accused Hitler as the "main defendant,” berated Hitler’s suicide as “cowardice,” and said Germany lost the war because “God had spoken his judgement over Hitler.” He said he had heard crimes “committed by the Russians and Poles and Czechs” since the war’s end and these “more than balance the crimes Germany is charged with.”
Wilhelm Frick, former interior minister, said he was only a civil servant and had a “clear conscience.”
Streicher, anti-Semitic publisher, defended himself against the charge of being the No. 1 Jew-baiter, saying the prosecution failed to prove his writings influenced Hitler’s extermination policy.
Schacht, finance wizard and former Reichsbank president, said he had broken with Hitler, and his feelings of justice were “deeply wounded” because he was ranked as a conspirator.
Doenitz, who became Germany’s Fuehrer in the last days of the war, said German naval warfare was conducted legally and he would do it the same way all over again. He said the Fuehrer principle worked well in military matters and that he thought, mistakenly, it would work also in politics.
Raeder, commander-in-chief of Nazi submarine warfare, said he had done his duty as a soldier and “I am prepared to die at any moment.”
Von Schirach, Hitler youth leader, castigated Hitler and pleaded for the Hitler Jugend.
Fritz Sauckel, Nazi boss of foreign labor, admitted he was “shaken by the atrocities revealed” at the trial, and said his great veneration for Hitler had been his chief error.
Jodl, chief of the German General Staff, said he and his army generals had the task “of conducting a war they did not want under a chief who did not trust them.”
Von Papen finds no guilt
Dapper diplomat Von Papen said that “when I examine my conscience, I cannot find any guilt where the prosecution sought to place it.”
Von Neurath, former protector of Czechoslovakia, said he had a “clean conscience,” and that if the verdict were guilty, “I will bear even this and take it upon myself as a last sacrifice to my people.”
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Nazi commissioner for Austria and the Netherlands, said he remained loyal to Hitler “who made a greater Germany a fact in German history. He added that “today I cannot crucify him to whom yesterday I cried Hosannah.”
Albert Speer, Nazi production minister, said after this trial the German people would condemn Hitler and dictatorships based on fear. He referred to atomic weapons and warned against future wars.
Fritzsche, deputy propaganda minister, displayed the best spirits of all the defendants. However, his guards reported that he spends much of his time in his cell weeping.
All 21 are found sane
War Department psychiatric tests of the 21 Nazis have pronounced all of them sane, it was learned. But the rambling final statement of Hess once again raised doubts about him.
Lt. Col. Robert N. Dunn, a professional psychiatrist, spent three weeks in the Nuernberg prison observing the defendants, and now is on his way back to Washington with his findings. His report will say, it was learned, that the tests showed each defendant was fully aware of his actions during the Nazi regime. Some were found to have psychopathic reactions, the report will say, but that did not mean they were insane.
American officers were interested particularly in the mental makeup of such hard-bitten militarists as Keitel, Jodl, Doenitz and Raeder.
The psychiatrist’s report listed Hess as sane at the time he examined him. But Hess put up a show as somewhat of a lunatic with his final speech today, much of it devoted to a discussion of the “dreamy, glassy eyes” which surrounded him during his captivity in England.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 1, 1946)
They mix poisonous propaganda in talks at Nuernberg, hoping future Nazis will hear
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
NUERNBERG, Aug. 31 (UP) – Twenty-one leaders of Adolf Hitler’s once glittering Third Reich straggled to the witness chair today. They made their final pleas to the judges whose verdict will determine whether they pay with their lives for plunging the world into the greatest war of its history.
Amid the ruins of the city which saw the greatest spectacles of Nazism, the one-time great of the Nazi world spoke their last words.
They were careful to lard them with propaganda designed either to sow ill will among the victorious Allies or provide the excuses for any future generation of Nazis to wash away responsibility for World War II, and Germany’s utter defeat.
Before the crowds had emptied from the courtroom the 21 men were being led back through the covered wooden walk into the grim stone prison which they will leave only to hear their sentences, for their execution or, possibly in some cases, for long imprisonment.
There seemed no chance that when the judges of the United States, Britain, France and Russia render the verdict of September 23, any of the Nazis would be found innocent of complicity in the crimes of Hitler.
Some of the Nazis, perhaps most of them, will be taken to Berlin’s famous Ploetzensee Prison. Some will be executed in the same place where in Hitler’s day those found guilty of treason found a meeting at dawn with the headsman’s block.
Some arrogant
The once great of the Nazi world were, in turn, humble, arrogant, soldierly, defiant and confused. Some stood stolidly on their records as servants, military or civil, of the Fatherland. Most disavowed Hitler. All disavowed atrocities. They blamed those on Hitler or on the notorious Heinrich Himmler.
Only one, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the puppet in Austria and the Nazi leader for Holland, renewed his faith in Hitler.
“I served him,” exclaimed the man who brought down independent Austria and ruled subjugated Holland with a ruthless hand. “I am not capable of shouting ‘crucify him’ today when yesterday I shouted ‘Hosanna’.”
Goering first to talk
First to speak was Hermann Goering, gaunt and baggy-trousered, but still trying to leave a legacy of Nazi propaganda for the German people.
He was followed by Rudolph Hess, man of mystery since his famed flight to Scotland and seemingly more befuddled than ever. Next was Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was promoted from selling champagne to selling Hitlerian diplomacy and who today put the needle into the Western Allies and their relations with Russia.
The others followed – a strange, tattered procession of generals, admirals, economists, Nazi Party leaders, police and security chiefs – the remnants of the once proud Nazi leadership.
All the defendants were present but one, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy who was never found after the Nazi collapse and probably long since dead.
Goering told the emotionless judges that the German people were not guilty before the bar of world justice.
Repeats old plea
He told the nations which have placed him on trial that “if they are to bring to justice and judge individuals, our Fuehrer among the first, good. But then they cannot at the same time punish the German people.”
In his own defense Goering reiterated the familiar Nazi plea:
“I did not want war nor did I bring it about. I did all I could by negotiation to avoid it. I reject most emphatically the idea that my actions were dictated by a will to subjugate, murder, rob or enslave foreign peoples or to commit horror and crime.”
Wiener Kurier (September 2, 1946)
Die letzten Worte der Angeklagten
Nürnberg (WK.) - Sämtliche 21 Angeklagten machten am Samstag von ihrem Recht Gebrauch, ein letztes Mal das Wort zu ihrer Rechtfertigung und Verteidigung zu ergreifen. Die große Sensation war, daß auch Heß, als die Reihe an ihn kam, redete. Zum größten Teil versuchten die Angeklagten alle Schuld von sich abzuwälzen.
Als erster ergriff Göring das Wort und betonte, daß er die begangenen Massenmorde des Nationalsozialismus auf das schärfste verurteile. Er unterstrich, daß er für seine Handlungen in jeder Hinsicht einstehe und die Verantwortung trage, wies aber darauf hin, daß sie nicht von dem Willen diktiert waren, fremde Völker zu unterjochen. Rudolf Heß zeigte in seinen Ausführungen, die häufig abschweifend und unklar waren, nicht die geringste Reue. Nach ihnen bemühten sich die militärischen Angeklagten, wie Raeder, Dönitz, Keitel und Jodl, die Schuldlosigkeit ihres persönlichen Verhaltens zu dokumentieren.
„Anschluß Österreichs angeblich nur aus Furcht vor Aufruhr“
Seyß-Inquart nahm zum „Anschluß“ Österreichs Stellung und sagte: „Den Anschluß sehe ich als eine ausschließlich innerdeutsche Angelegenheit an. Daß ich am 11. März 1938, etwa ab 8 Uhr abends, nach dem völligen Zusammenbruch jeder anderen politischen und staatlichen Autorität den von Berlin eingeschlagenen Weg mitmachte, hat folgenden Grund: der ungerechtfertigte Widerstand gegen die Durchführung geordneter Wahlen hatte einem radikalen Vorgehen praktisch, aber auch psychologisch die Tore geöffnet.
Ich fragte mich, ob ich das Recht habe, gegen diese Methode zu sein, nachdem offenbar mein Weg nicht gangbar war. Schien das Vorgehen aber gerechtfertigt, dann fühlte ich mich verpflichtet, den Beitrag zu feisten, den ich nach der Sachlage leisten konnte. Ich bin sicher, daß es vor allem diesem Beitrag zu danken ist, daß dieser grundlegende Umschwung, insbesondere die Nacht zum 12. März, in solcher Ruhe und ohne Blutvergießen vor sich gegangen ist, obwohl in den österreichischen Nationalsozialisten ein sehr großer Haß aufgespeichert war. Ich war für den Zusammenschluß der Deutschen, gleichgültig welche Regierungsform Deutschland hatte.“
Kaltenbrunner brüstet sich, angeblich Einstellung der Judenvernichtung erreicht zu haben
Der Angeklagte Kaltenbrunner sagte: „Richtig ist, daß ich das Reichssicherheitshauptamt übernommen habe. Darin liegt aber keine Schuld, solche Ämter bestehen in vielen anderen Staaten, besonders auch in der Sowjetunion. In der Judenfrage wurde ich ebenso lange getäuscht, wie die meisten anderen hohen Funktionäre. Der Antisemitismus Hitlers war Notwehr und Barbarei zugleich. Ich behaupte aber, daß die Einstellung der Judenvernichtung nicht zuletzt auf mein Einwirken auf Hitler zurückzuführen ist. Der grundlegende Fehler Hitlers war, daß er zu der größten geistigen Ordnungsmacht der Erde, zur Weltkirche, in Widerspruch stand. An der Negation ihrer ewigen Prinzipien ist er gescheitert.“
Die Welt soll Deutschlands Jugend helfen
Schirach gab dem Wunsche nach Hilfe für die deutsche Jugend Ausdruck. Er betonte abschließend: „Die Jugend ist die Hoffnung unseres Volkes. Wenn ich im letzten Augenblick eine Bitte ausspreche, so ist es die: Helfen Sie als Richter mit, das Zerrbild zu beseitigen, das sich die Welt von der deutschen Jugend macht. Helfen Sie, daß die Jugendorganisationen der Welt die Zusammenarbeit mit der deutschen Jugend da wiederaufnehmen, wo diese 1939 ohne Schuld der jungen Generation unterbrochen wurde.“
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 2, 1946)
The Nuernberg war-guilt trials which have just ended have set the precedent for holding governing officials of a nation responsible for aggression.
The final arguments of most of the Nazis in the dock at Nuernberg was that Germany itself was not guilty, for the German people had been deprived of authority in, and therefore of responsibility for the acts of their government. The crimes of Hitler seem to have been so conclusively demonstrated that even those on trial no longer profess to doubt them. Their only defense appears to be that they were ignorant of what was going on under their eyes; a contention which, in view of the positions they held in the Nazi hierarchy, is wholly unacceptable.
As for the German people, their basic crime lies in docility in permitting the government, which was theirs in principle at least under the Weimar Republic, to fall into the hands of the Nazis. For that they are suffering now, and will continue to suffer no matter what the opinion may be about a nation’s collective guilt. Even had Hitler been successful in his wildest dreams of world domination, the German people would have had only a share of material prosperity, for they would still have lost the personal rights which are possible only when government remains responsive to the will of those who are governed. The Gestapo, above all law, would have continued to haunt the minds of those who could not wholly subordinate themselves to the Nazi state.
In the five million words of testimony taken during the nine-month trial lies the record of what can happen to a nation that yields its right to object to the course of its leaders. It is a record that will furnish enlightenment to other peoples who may be tempted to the same course.
Wiener Kurier (September 5, 1945)
Nürnberg (Reuter) - Die vier Richter des Internationalen Gerichtshofes sowie deren Stellvertreter traten gestern in Nürnberg zusammen, um das Urteil über Hermann Göring und seine 20 Mitangeklagten sowie die Naziorganisationen, deren Anklage vorige Woche abgeschlossen worden war, zu beraten.
Unter dem Vorsitz von Lordrichter Lawrence fanden die Besprechungen in einem kleinen Vorraum des großen Gerichtssaales statt. Die Gerichtsärzte untersuchen täglich den ehemaligen Stellvertreter Hitlers, Rudolf Heß, der ständig einzelne Stellen der weitschweifenden Rede, die er vor dem Gerichtshof hielt, wiederholen soll.
Die Richter beabsichtigen, täglich Sitzungen abzuhalten.
The Waterbury Democrat (September 5, 1946)
Ribbentrop says he was friendly
Nuernberg (UP) – Former Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop believed the Duke of Windsor had to abdicate the throne of England because he was too friendly to Nazi Germany, a document just made available by the War Crimes Tribunal indicated today.
Ribbentrop’s statement was made in a report to Adolf Hitler in January 1938. It was captured by the Allies and was made available to Ribbentrop’s defense by the British Foreign Office.
Von Ribbentrop said he despaired of reaching an agreement with England “but in view of Edward VII a last attempt seemed indicated,” according to the document.
“Today, I no longer believe in an understanding. England does not wish an overpowerful Germany as a neighbor offering a steady threat to her islands. She will fight for it. But National Socialism is believed capable of doing tremendous things.”
He said the then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin “already recognized that Edward VIII had to abdicate because he was not sure whether in view of his convictions he would cooperate in a policy of inimical to Germany.”
Springfield Weekly Republican (September 5, 1946)
With the German war crimes trial finally ended, so far as the taking of evidence and the arguments of counsel are concerned, the world awaits the judgments of the international military tribunal on the 21 defendants, to be announced on the 23rd of this month.
The trial became so much of a bore because of its duration for nine months that the procession of more absorbing events has eclipsed it in the interest and attention of the public. Yet the more recent developments in the relations between “the East and the West,” or between Russia and the “western democracies,” have “invested the judgments of the war crimes tribunal with a possible political importance that was not anticipated in the early months of the trial.
There is a real danger of making martyrs of these Nazi war leaders or criminals, in the eyes of the German people and their posterity, if they are to be condemned to death and executed; or if any considerable number of them are to be executed. It is futile to urge that the collective German mind would not be rationally justified in taking that view. If, in fact, that would be the emotional reaction in Germany to the executions, it necessarily becomes a political consideration to be given its due weight.
The tribunal at Nuernberg is avowedly a military court, not a judicial court of justice in the civil sense. The bench is occupied by judges selected by the governments of the victorious powers in the war. There is not a single judge among them drawn from a neutral country. This fact will have an effect hereafter on the German mind; it will be used in support of the thesis that the trial was not an impartial one, that it was a court not of justice but of vengeance.
There are other points of disputed jurisprudence, raised months ago by critical American and British lawyers, which provide the material for future controversy over the sanctions of international law, as hitherto accepted, and the validity of the prosecution’s theory of the criminality of a war of aggression. Suffice it to say that if any or many of the defendants at the trial are put to death – except for clearly proved war atrocities – the Nuernberg trial will be quarreled over for centuries to come, while the German mind is altogether likely to be tightly closed against the view that the death penalty sentences were legally or even morally justified.
It has seemed to The Republican that death sentences would be justified in the cases of certain individuals associated in a responsible way with the unspeakable extermination camps and other paraphernalia of calculated mass massacre. Those crimes were unmistakably wanton violations of the accepted law of war. But executions based on contentious theories of personal accountability for initiating a war of aggression are in a different category which, in the present state of international law, cannot be divested of political implications and consequences. Because of this fact, the coming judgments of the military court at Nuernberg will doubtless have political repercussions – perhaps far-reaching repercussions – in the world of the coming century.
Those who fear most a future conflict between the Soviet Union and the western democracies have reason to wish that the German people could be mobilized on the side of the West in case the worst should happen. Germany’s collapse created a vacuum of power in central Europe into which the Soviet Union moved as inevitably as water flows downhill. If, now, there is an increasing prospect of an East-West conflict, as our incipient war mongers seem to believe, the political bearing of the Nuernberg judgments cannot be ignored.
Indeed, they will be evaluated not alone in terms of criminal justice but in terms of what so many writers in Britain and America are calling the diplomatic and political struggle between rival blocs for the mastery of central and western Europe.
(September 3)
Wiener Kurier (September 6, 1946)
Erklärung des Präsidenten Truman
Washington (AND.) - Präsident Truman hielt gestern seine erste Pressekonferenz nach Rückkehr von seiner Urlaubsreise ab, in deren Verlauf er unter anderem erklärte, daß gegenwärtig Pläne für einen internationalen Prozeß gegen Naziindustrielle ausgearbeitet werden. Es sei allerdings bisher noch keine Entscheidung über den Zeitpunkt und Ort dieses Prozesses getroffen worden. Eine Entscheidung werde voraussichtlich erst dann erfolgen, wenn die gegenwärtigen Prozesse gegen die politischen Naziführer abgeschlossen sind.
The Waterbury Democrat (September 6, 1946)
Washington (UP) – President Truman said today that the United States is working on plans for bringing Nazi industrialists to trial after the current Nazi war crimes trial at Nuernberg ends.
He told a news conference he could not say now whether the trials would be international in scope or be conducted by individual nations.
Mr. Truman said this question would be decided when the war crimes trial ends.
Wiener Kurier (September 7, 1946)
Nürnberg (Reuter) - Für Hermann Göring und die übrigen 20 Naziführer, die im Nürnberger Gefängnis das Urteil des Internationalen Militärgerichtshofes erwarten, wurden tägliche Gottesdienste eingeführt, die jeweils nach der letzten Mahlzeit stattfinden und nur einige Minuten dauern werden. Die Gottesdienste werden von Kaplanen abgehalten, die den Gefangenen auch täglich zu Aussprachen in ihren Zellen zur Verfugung sehen. Desgleichen dürfen die Verteidiger die Gefangenen besuchen.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 7, 1946)
(Fitzpatrick in The St. Louis Dispatch)
The Sunday Star (September 8, 1946)
From the London Times
It would be an unreal affectation of impartiality to pretend that the main lines of the ghastly picture of German crimes were ever disputable. It is still, however, necessary to remember that the guilt or innocence of each individual in the dock, on each count with which he is charged, remains in doubt until the judges have pronounced upon his case. This final stage may be postponed to enable the judges to reconsider and, assess the vast accumulation of evidence and argument that has been laid before them. They in their turn can hardly be expected to pass upon so many and various charges in a few sentences. It is, moreover, to be expected that, as in other tribunals of exalted jurisdiction so in this tribunal, representative of four nations, more than one member will wish to pronounce upon the great matters that have been submitted to the court. At the same time it is much to be desired, upon grounds that will affect the future of world peace, justice and civilization, that the main judgment will be delivered by one of their number authorized to speak in terms representative of them all.
The Evening Star (September 10, 1946)
NEW YORK (AP) – The British radio quoted George Bernard Shaw in a letter published in the London Daily Express today as stating the opinion the Allies have no right to ask the death penalty for Nazis on trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuernberg.
“After dropping atomic bombs on helpless civilians without warning we are hardly in a moral position to hang anyone, no matter how logical a case we have built up against them as war criminals,” BBC quoted Shaw’s letter as saying. The broadcast was heard by NBC.
Henderson Daily Dispatch (September 10, 1946)
Very soon now, unless there shall be a further hitch, the Nuernberg war trials of former Nazi leaders will come to a close and these men, all of whom had a hand in plunging the world into war and chaos, will know their fate. This does not mean that all of them will be either hanged or shot. It is very doubtful if any of them will be executed any time soon.
In direct contrast to the type of justice common to their former dictatorial regime, judgments will not be immediately carried out. Allied justice, or at least the American brand, is not as swift as that. Whatever the verdict at Nuernberg, it is not unlikely that there will be reviews of the cases elsewhere than by the high tribunal now sitting and which has been hearing testimony for months.
There are those who hold to the theory, however, that most of these twenty-odd bigshots will be “liquidated.” Their theory is that the trial was mere formality; that it was staged for history’s sake, and that the fate of these men was sealed in advance. Well, we doubt that. The farther removed we become from those horrible days during and just before Hitler plunged the world into a blood bath, the less keen is the thirst for retribution. Western people are a forgiving lot, even if they do not so easily forget.
It will be intensely interesting to watch for the verdict, and to view the proceedings that are sure to follow. A few of the bunch may be disposed of; others will likely draw long prison sentences. This does not mean that, in our judgment at least, these fellows are not guilty. Definitely they are; all of them had a hand in the crimes perpetrated upon innocent peoples. Certainly, under any code that might be applied, they are due severe punishment of some kind for their heinous offenses against humanity.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 11, 1946)
The final statements by the 21 defendants in the Nuernberg war crimes trial were not encouraging. But they were entirely in key with the defendants’ personalities and with the world in which they still remain alive.
Twenty of the 21 proclaimed their innocence of any crime. Not one renounced his allegiance to National Socialism. To a man they remained convinced and – for all their other lies – apparently sincere Nazis, thwarted in their aims but incapable of realizing the foulness of their methods which aroused and enraged civilization and spelled their ruin.
But if the Nuernberg defendants cannot comprehend the basic cause of their downfall, it seems equally true that the statesmen in Paris cannot comprehend the basic objective of their victory. Those who were to be the architects of a new world built on new foundations sit quarreling and bickering, dotting the same old i’s and crossing the same t’s, thinking the same old thoughts as if the war never had been fought.
The immediate horrors of that war are past. Its lingering sorrows are abating. But the utter futility of all war – not only in settling problems but even in altering the thinking of the men who help direct it – grows more evident with each new day.
Wiener Kurier (September 12, 1946)
Bekanntgabe in drei Sprachen
Nürnberg (FND.) - Der Internationale Gerichtshof von Nürnberg hat ein Ansuchen um die Bildübertragung der Schlußsitzung des Prozesses am 23. September mit Rücksicht auf die Wahrung der Würde des Gerichtes abgelehnt.
Dagegen hat der Gerichtshof gestattet, daß in den verschiedenen Sälen des Justizpalastes und selbst außerhalb desselben Lautsprecher aufgestellt werden würden, wodurch den zahlreichen Besuchern, die in dem Sitzungssaal keinen Platz finden, können das Anhören der Verlesung des Urteils ermöglicht werde, das in drei Sprachen, Englisch, Französisch und Russisch, verkündet werden wird.
Wiener Kurier (September 13, 1946)
Nürnberg (INS.) - Militärische Kreise geben aus Nürnberg bekannt, daß General Eisenhower, bei der Urteilsverkündung im Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozeß anwesend sein wird. Es wurde gestern der Befehl erteilt, Quartier für einen dreitägigen Besuch General Eisenhowers vorzubereiten.
The Evening Star (September 13, 1946)
NUERNBERG (AP) – Mrs. Hermann Goering visited her husband in the Nuernberg prison yesterday, the first time she had seen the former Reichsmarshal since he surrendered 18 months ago.
She was the first wife of the 21 defendants, awaiting a verdict in the war crimes trial, to be allowed a visit under relaxed rules. Mrs. Alfred Jodl, wife of the former German chief of staff, talked to her husband for half an hour through a grilled window later in the day.