The Nuremberg Trial

81

The Evening Star (December 15, 1945)

Disagrees with Justice Jackson concerning Nuernberg

To the editor: Too little attention has been given to the serious setback threatening our entire framework of law by the star chamber procedure of the Nuernberg trial. It is a foregone conclusion that all who stand accused will be found guilty by a court which arrogates to itself a jurisdiction it does not have and enforces laws which do not exist.

Let us examine in some detail the “judicial” bases of this trial. Justice Jackson, the spokesman for the American representation on the court, has told us in his original report to the President and in his recent address to the war crimes court that he is resting his case on the common sense of justice. Admitting the paucity of precedents in the early concepts of international law, he makes the point, that although this branch of law has been hampered in its development, it has grown by adopting settled principles to new situations. In support of this reasoning he invokes the doctrines of Grotius of the just and unjust war – the war of defense and the war of aggression. He makes the statement that “a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in legitimate business.” This statement he supports by the authority of the Geneva protocol, the Kellogg-Briand pact and a resolution of the Sixth International Conference of American States. A careful reading of all three of these instruments fails to reveal how they can be held to apply to individuals. Furthermore, only the Geneva protocol makes any provision with respect to a court competent to determine the existence of such transgressions. The other two documents simply condemn aggression as such but provide no procedure or punishment.

One of the basic principles of all established legal systems is the competency of the court trying the accused. Another equally important factor is a body or system of law which has been legally constituted and instituted. Both are lacking in the Nuernberg trial. These principles were carefully considered by the Institute of International Law and the Interparliamentary Union, which in the days following the First World War, worked out drafts for an international crimes court. It was during the discussion of Baron Descamps’ draft for a court that the late Elihu Root pointed out that before an international tribunal is competent to try individuals for international offenses can be established, states must create the law and procedure applicable in such a court. The old legal maxim: Nulla poena sine lege is called to mind.

Returning to the validity of the instruments on which the Nuernberg court is leaning so heavily, the Geneva protocol, signed on October 2, 1924, never has been ratified. It therefore is difficult to see how such a document, which by its very terms call for ratification. carries any weight in a legal procedure. The Kellogg-Briand pact, August 27, 1928, by its provisions simply condemns recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounces it as an instrument of national policy, and provides, in article 2, for settlement of disputes of whatever nature by pacific means. But these statements are not implemented in any way. Just how are the principles of this pact to be applied to individuals, and where is the provision for a court competent to determine guilt or mete out punishment?

Finally, we come to the resolution of the Sixth International Conference of American States cited by Justice Jackson, which says: “Considering that war of aggression constitutes an international crime against human species, the Conference resolves: That all aggression is considered illicit and as such declared prohibited.” Resolutions of international conference, are at best of an ephemeral nature. They usually are simply rather idealistic and laudatory expressions which the representatives of the countries present at the particular conference know fully well never will be ratified in treaty form, hence they are expressed in terms of resolutions, decrees or motions. Likewise, in this case, there has been no formal ratification, no enabling legislation and no court set up which is competent to determine guilt or innocence.

In conclusion, it seems to me that it would have been wiser to turn all German violators of the established rules of war over to strictly military courts rather than risk setting back international law by vigilante procedure.

WALTER H. ZEYDEL

82

The Pittsburgh Press (December 16, 1945)

Trial recessed

NUERNBERG (Dec. 15) – The trial of 21 Nazi leaders was in weekend recess today.

83

Arizona Daily Star (December 16, 1945)

New word, new crime

WASHINGTON – The Nuernberg war crimes trial is to take up this week the charge of attempted “genocide,” meaning destruction of a race or nation, like the Jews or Poles.

Raphael Lemkin, Duke University professor, is author of both the new word and the idea that mass murder should be made an international crime. He has been adviser to the American prosecuting staff at Nuernberg.

84

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (December 16, 1945)

Nazi SS guards devised sadistic pastimes to amuse themselves

By Edward P. Morgan, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service

NUERNBERG (Dec. 15) – SS guards at Nazi concentration camps devised exquisitely sadistic pasties to amuse themselves and torture their victims.

Here, gathered from affidavits sworn to by ex-inmates of such places as Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, is a partial list of their “games.”

Inmates were thrown into lavatory pits. SS men laughed as they struggled to get out.

Men in one unit had to climb telephone poles with their bare hands three times in succession as discipline.

Russian war prisoners often had to stand rigidly at attention from 8 o’clock in the morning to 5 o’clock at night.

Forced to breed lice

One group was forced to breed lice on their own bodies. They were making experiments with us. Each of us had about 300 lice. Each morning we had… to count them.”

At Breendonck, SS guards drowned Jews in a ditch around the camp fortress and then made others, including parents of victims, pull them out and carry them away singing gay marches.

One refined punishment was to hoist the victims by their arms to the ceiling and then drop them onto a horizontal wooden stake, smashing their genitals.

In one place, prisoners were suspended by the wrists from the arcs of an underpass. Sand trucks would then roar through the underpass at full speed, hitting their dangling feet and giving them a pendulum movement which was incessantly renewed.

One SS lieutenant emptied buckets of human excrement on the heads of the prisoners and would force them to scrape excrement from the floor with their hands before meals. Some inmates ate wooden slivers, chipped from their bunks, to keep from starving.

At Buchenwald, for stealing vegetables, a man was tied to a pillar by a thin wire binding his tongue. Another was forced to stand on tiptoe as long as five hours.

For prisoners “quarantined” in Auschwitz for three and a half weeks, the only water permitted for washing hands was their urine.

Buchenwald guards daily used to hang 30 to 40 prisoners by their arms from tree branches, leaving their feet about 12 inches above the ground. Many of the victims were old men. As they cried out in pain, or called for their wives and children in anguish and prayed, SS men would walk about making fun of them and then would smash their faces with clubs.

Axle-grease soup

Another custom was to force two persons to strip naked and then climb into a coffin-like box full of protruding nails and barbed wire. They stayed there until they died, while other prisoners were forced to watch.

Once four Russians who stole half a dozen potatoes were model to do strenuous exercise for an hour and then were given soup made of axle grease, soap and water. Two refused to eat it and were beaten to death. Two others ate it and died a few days later.

One Buchenwald guard devised the following novel method for disposing of Jews: The victims were obliged to shovel off the top of a manure pile in a pigsty and then lie down on it. “Other prisoners were then compelled to shovel the manure back on top of their comrades, after which they were forced to do exercises on top of the completed pile while the victims underneath choked to death.”

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 21

86

The Pittsburgh Press (December 17, 1945)

Hitler ordered Goering executed

NUERNBERG (UP) – Adolf Hitler ordered Hermann Goering arrested and shot April 22, 1945. The fat Luftwaffe leader was rescued at the last minute by a band of his own paratroopers, the United Press learned today.

Allied investigators are unravelling the strange story of Hitler, in his last hysterical days, who turned against the man he had appointed to succeed him.

Goering’s fall from favor began with the mob-killing of Benito Mussolini in Northern Italy. The pictures of his ex-partner hanging by his heels from the roof of a Milan gasoline station shook the Nazi Fuehrer.

He apparently made up his mind then to commit suicide and have his body destroyed to avoid a similar fate.

Hitler planned to kill himself April 22, 1945. He issued orders that Goering, then at Berchtesgaden, was to succeed him.

On the appointment day, Hitler’s confused mind led him to believe the Battle of Berlin was swinging in Germany’s favor, and he postponed his suicide.

However, Goering received the expected telegram that day authorizing him to assume command. Convinced the war was lost and willing to surrender to the Allies, Goering telegraphed Berlin for verification of Hitler’s death.

Hitler flew into a rage. Believing that Goering was trying to seize power and force Germany’s surrender, he ordered the Luftwaffe chief arrested and executed.

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 22

88

The Pittsburgh Press (December 18, 1945)

Nazis tried to replace Bible with Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’

War crimes trial hears of plot to wipe out Christianity, instill racial cult

NUERNBERG (UP) – The Nazi leadership corps was accused in court today of trying to replace the Bible with “Mein Kampf,” the cross with the swastika, and the appeal of Christianity with a savage racial pride in “Aryanism.”

Col. Robert C. Storey of Dallas, Texas, assistant U.S. prosecutor, stung Hermann Goering into wildly signaled protests as he sketched the Nazi aim to wipe out Christianity. Goering pounded the rim of the cock with a pencil, ripped off his earphones and glared at the War Crimes Tribunal.

Col. Storey took up today where he left off yesterday, amidst a documentary indictment of the Nazi leadership corps. He asked that the court hold the entire corps, comprising hundreds of thousands of Nazis, guilty of war crimes.

Col. Storey read documents showing that Martin Bormann, deputy Fuehrer, and the Nazi Party chancellery ordered Alfred Rosenberg to muzzle a general who wrote on the spiritual needs of soldiers.

The Nazis directed the party press leaders to cut off the supply of newsprint for 3,000 religious publications. Rosenberg was asked to abolish 18 theological faculties. A suggestion was advanced that theological positions in German high schools be vacated in favor of racial, biological and like sciences.

Col. Storey traced correspondence between Bormann and Rosenberg in 1940 and 1941 on the confiscation of church properties, particularly convents and monasteries.

Col. Storey, taking up the looting of Europe’s art treasures, said Nazi “plunder Commandos” roamed the continent, ransacking museums for famous paintings to swell the private collections of Adolf Hitler and Goering.

He accused Goering, Rosenberg, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the High Command, the Gestapo and the SS Storm Troops of responsibility for the art looting.

By March 1942, Col. Storey charged, Rosenberg was able to establish a library of more than 500,000 books in Frankfurt, admittedly looted from Jews throughout Europe.

Col. Storey said 22,000 works of art, including 5,281 paintings, were recovered by the U.S. Army, mainly in Bavarian caverns. They now are being returned to the owners, he said.

The Evening Star (December 18, 1945)

Nazi plot to destroy all Jews and churches disclosed at trial

NUERNBERG (AP) – Seeking conviction of thousands of minor Nasi Party officials as war criminals, along with Hitler’s top leaders, American prosecutors today outlined details of an alleged Nazi plot to exterminate the Jews and wipe out the influence of Christian churches in Germany and the rest of Europe.

Orders for Jewish pogroms and confiscation of Christian church properties were carried out through the 600,000 members of the Nazi Leadership Corps who spread Hitler’s anti-religious doctrines throughout Germany, according to evidence laid before the International Military Tribunal.

The score of top Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes listened intently as American prosecutors also demanded the conviction of members of the Leadership Corps and five other Nazi organizations for carrying out the orders of Hitler’s inner circle.

Pogroms inspired

Relating how Nazi Party leaders secretly inspired Jewish pogroms, Col. Robert G. Storey, assistant American prosecutor, read a directive from party headquarters at the Munich Brown House that “the party should not appear outwardly as the originator of the demonstrations but in reality should organize and execute them.”

Answering questions of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, as to how the low-ranking Nazi block leaders could have been responsible for orders from high party leaders, Col. Storey declared that the block leaders, who numbered more than 450,000, received their orders verbally and thus there were few documents linking them directly with Nazi policy.

The tribunal indicated some doubt that minor Nazi officials shared in war guilt responsibility with their leaders. Justice Lawrence yesterday questioning the prosecution’s evidence that Heinrich Himmler’s Gestapo was ordered to cooperate with gauleiters in staging anti-Jewish demonstrations.

Justice Lawrence remarked that this seemed to him to be a police rather than a party affair.

Justices are critical

As the prosecution’s evidence unfolded, Justice Lawrence and Justice Francis Biddle, American representatives on the tribunal, became increasingly critical of the presentation, complaining that evidence was “cumulative” and declaring that minute proving of known fact was unnecessary.

Later, the court again expressed impatience with the prosecution’s detailed submission of evidence. When Col. Storey presented photographs of Hitler, Goering and others in SA (Storm Troop) uniforms, Justice Lawrence Interrupted to ask with what seemed a note of incredulity: “Is there any doubt that Hitler and Goering were members of the SA?”

Heeding the tribunal’s admonition to expedite the presentation. Col. Storey skipped portions of his prepared brief and cited anti-Semitic decrees, rearmament measures, withdrawal from the League of Nations and other acts which he contended demonstrated a criminal intent on the part of the Reich Cabinet.

Nuernberg defense counsel told not to aid interviews

NUERNBERG (AP) – The International Military Tribunal ruled yesterday that German defense lawyers must not act as intermediaries in press interviews with 21 Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes.

Upholding the court’s security section rule against permitting defense counsel to relay questions and answers between their clients and newspapermen, Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, declared that “this is a procedure which cannot and will not be countenanced.”

The warning to defense lawyers followed Soviet radio broadcasts in London reporting that Lt. Gen. R. A. Rudenko, chief Russian prosecutor, had protested to the tribunal after publication of Interviews with Hermann Goering and other Nazi defendants obtained by the Associated Press by submitting questions through defense counsel.

Justice Lawrence also acted to “prevent unnecessary prolonging of the trial” by easing restrictions on introduction of documentary evidence and limiting defense witnesses to those giving only “material and relevant” testimony.

89

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 23

90

The Evening Star (December 19, 1945)

35 synagogues razed in 2 days by SA unit, Nuernberg court told

Storm troopers are third group to come under prosecution’s fire

NUERNBERG (AP) – One brigade of Hitler’s brown-shirted Storm Troopers alone blew up or burned 35 synagogues in a two-day outbreak of anti-Jewish terrorism, American prosecutors told the International Military Tribunal today.

Evidence of violence and terror from the Storm Troopers’ own records was presented to the tribunal in the prosecution’s effort to place war crimes convictions against thousands of lesser Nazis, as well as the score of Hitler’s top henchmen sitting in the courtroom prisoners box.

Col. Robert G. Storey, assistant American prosecutor, said the brown-shirted storm troopers, also known as the SA, were organized before Hitler’s rise to power “to beat up and terrorize all political opponents.”

The SA is the third Nazi organization to have its secrets laid bare, before the court. The prosecution, led by Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme Court, contends that six organizations groups and that their members should automatically be held guilty of war crimes in varying degrees.

Evidence already has been presented against the Nazi Leadership Corps and the Reich Cabinet. Still remaining to have their day in court are the Elite Guard (SS), the German high command and the Gestapo.

Col. Storey said German records proved that the SA, with the knowledge and consent of its members, was used (1) to spread Nazi fanaticism, (2) to beat down political opposition by force, (3) to lead the campaign against the church, trade unions and Jews, and (4) to build up the armed forces of Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

The prosecution’s contention that hundreds of thousands of minor Nazis should be automatically convicted of war crimes at the Nuernberg trial confronted the tribunal with the necessity of making a ruling on whether the proceedings will be dragged out by hearing from any member of the accused organizations, who wants to speak.

Already filed with the court are more than 30,000 applications from individual Nazis belonging to the accused organizations who are asking for permission to appear to defend themselves.

When the indictments were returned, the court held that any member of the indicted organizations could testify on the question of the criminal character of the group.

For the third straight day, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former chief of the German security police, was missing from the prisoners’ box because of a second cerebral hemorrhage that placed him under a doctor’s care.

91

Judges at Nuernberg heckle prosecution on trial evidence

NUERNBERG (AP) – Openly irritated judges on the International Military Tribunal heckled American prosecutors yesterday over the abundance of documentary evidence, and cast doubts on parts of the United States case against lower-level Nazi groups which the prosecution seeks to convict along with the 21 top Nazi leaders.

Justice Robert H. Jackson’s staff completed the case against the Nazi Party Leadership Corps. But numerous questions from the bench indicated that the judges thought knowledge of the overall Nazi program of domination and extermination did not filter down into lower elements of the corps as the prosecution charged.

As Assistant American Prosecutor Robert G. Storey took up the case against the Nazi Cabinet, Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding, complained that the bulk of the evidence Col. Storey offered was cumulative.

When Col. Storey started reading a list of those who participated in Nazi Cabinet defense council meetings, Justice Francis Biddle inquired caustically: “What will that show?”

The prosecution said it would show the roles of the accused in issuing decrees. Mr. Biddle queried again: “And what will that show?’’

Two more sharp interruptions came from Justice Lawrence, who said the prosecution was laboring to prove obvious facts, and that the question was: “What is the criminality of Reich Cabinet acts?”

Col. Storey discarded part of his script and plunged into the process of Nazi lawmaking, only to be interrupted by Lawrence, who demanded: “And what does that have to do with the criminality of the Reich Cabinet? … I think the tribunal can take it as evidence that the Cabinet, before passing laws, consulted somebody.”

The present phase of the trial – that of presenting evidence against the principal Nazi organizations – has been one of the hottest legal problems of the trial, with the Americans standing alone in an effort to punish a half-million or more Nazi underlings for their part in the vast party program of persecution and extermination.

92

Nazis request 167 witnesses; many world figures in list

NUERNBERG (AP) – The 21 ranking Nazis on trial as war criminals have requested 167 witnesses, many of them world figures, the International Military Tribunal said today.

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, former Reichsbank president, who had been maintaining through his lawyer that he alone would be his only witness, has suddenly changed his mind and requested 22 witnesses. Among them are Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt and Col. Gen. Franz Halder, all former top-ranking German militarists. The court summoned all three.

Prominent among the defendants who have requested no witnesses are Franz von Papen and Konstantin von Neurath.

Hans Frank, who ruled Poland for the Nazis, requested George S. Messersmith, American ambassador to Mexico and once consul general in Berlin.

One of the strangest requests was made by Wilhelm Keitel for the shadowy Adm. Walter Canaris, once chief of German intelligence. The court granted the request, although it had heard several days of testimony to the effect that Canaris was hanged for taking part in the 1944 Hitler bomb plot.

93

The Waterbury Democrat (December 19, 1945)

SA actions told court

Criminal work given in detail

NUERNBERG (UP) – Camps of young German girls were placed near men’s labor service camps in an organized effort by Nazi leaders to increase the birth rate of illegitimate children, the War Crimes Tribunal was told today.

An affidavit by Raymond H. Geist, formerly American consul in Berlin and now counsellor of the Mexico City Embassy, said the Deutsch Maedel Camps were located with illegal sexual purposes in mind. The government-sponsored organization had a nominal health building program.

“The resultant illegitimate children were definitely planned as the result of the program,” Geist’s affidavit said.

Tell story of SA

Robert G. Storey, assistant American prosecutor, gave a detailed account of SA Storm Troop actions under the Nazis to show the organization’s criminal purposes.

He introduced an affidavit by William F. Sollmon of Pendle Hill School, Wallingford, Pennsylvania, who was a member of the Reichstag and a prominent German publisher until March 1933. Sollmon described how the SA tortured him and vandalized his home that month. He fled Germany two days later.

Storey charged that the SA was used to round up the Nazis’ political enemies and guard concentration camps in the regime’s early days. He outlined anti-Semitic articles in the organization’s magazine, “SA Man.” One of these, in February 1939, was entitled “friends of world Jewry – Roosevelt and Ickes.”

The condition of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Nazi Security Police chief who had to leave the trial yesterday after a second hemorrhage, was understood to be dangerous. Prison officials said he was suffering a severe headache, and was running a low temperature.

35 synagogues burned

Storey’s evidence included reports that 35 synagogues were burned down or blown up by the SA in the Darmstadt region in November 1938.

He said the SA was prepared as a secret military organization while supposedly having only a sports program.

Boys between the ages of six and 10 threw dummy hand grenades and held terrain maneuvers as part of the “sports” program, Geist’s affidavit said.

His role of the SA as an auxiliary Army was shown in 1935, Storey said, when the conscription law listed SA service as military service. In 1938, SA units were among the first to enter Austria.

Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief American prosecutor, will leave Nuernberg with some of his staff Friday for Palestine, where he hopes to spend Christmas. He will visit Rome, Athens and Cairo.

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nuremberg.tribunal

Day 24

95

The Evening Star (December 20, 1945)

Story of spark that began war told first time at Nuernberg

NUERNBERG (AP) – The first full story of the spark that set off World War II – a fake attack on a German radio station staged by Gestapo agents dressed in Polish Army uniforms – was unfolded today before the International Military Tribunal.

As the war crimes trial was recessed for the Christmas holidays, American prosecutors submitted a Gestapo official’s story of the raid, naming the assassinated hangman, Reinhard Heydrich, as the man who engineered the coup which Hitler used as the excuse for the Polish invasion – crying to the world that Germany had been attacked first.

The story was told in the affidavit of Alfred Naujocks, who said he led a company of Gestapo agents dressed in Polish uniforms in a raid on the German radio station at Gleiwitz on August 31, 1939, the day before the invasion. The raiders broadcast incendiary remarks in Polish and then left behind the bullet-riddled bodies of drugged German concentration camp prisoners, also dressed in Polish uniforms, as “evidence,” Naujocks said.

The affidavit was presented near the end of the session, when the tribunal recessed the trial until January 2 over the protest of Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief American prosecutor, who said another week will be needed after the holiday to complete the American case against the 22 Nazi leaders and six organizations on trial.

Naujocks, in his affidavit, said the fake attack with a company of disguised Gestapo men “should make it appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops.”

Nazi Elite Guard (SS) surgeons fired poisoned bullets into concentration camp prisoners and carefully recorded the symptoms accompanying slow death for the victims, according to German documents disclosed earlier at the trial.

Details of the notorious activities of the black-shirted elite guard were unfolded before the tribunal by American prosecutors to support their charges that the SS and five other once-powerful Nazi organizations should be convicted as criminal groups.

The poisoned bullet experiments resulted in the deaths of three out of five prisoners selected, SS records disclosed.

Human beings used in the experiments by the SS should be selected from the “mentally sick,” according to an order of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and Gestapo, read the court. “Bedridden prisoners are to be drafted for desirable work which they can perform in bed,” Himmler decreed.

By Himmler’s command, women prisoners were used to beat other women’s camp inmates and similar policy was followed in men’s camps.

Kaltenbrunner still in danger

The prosecution also recounted the experiments, previously reported at the Dachau war crimes trial, in which women prisoners were used to rewarm frozen men with the heat of their naked bodies.

The scientists eventually reported that the experiments, conducted for the air force and navy, disclosed that the practice of rewarming with women’s bodies was inferior to “rapid rewarming” by artificial means.

Only 20 of the 22 accused Nazi leaders were in the prisoners’ box today.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, suffering from a recurrence of a cranial hemorrhage, was reported in somewhat improved condition, but Army hospital physicians were still concerned for his life. The 22nd defendant, Martin Bormann, is still missing and is being tried in absentia.

Women chosen for brothels

Another Himmler letter, only part of which was read in court, disclosed that the SS chose women from concentration camp inmates for camp brothels.

“Some madmen in the women’s concentration camp had told the feminine prisoners that those who volunteered for the brothel would be released after half a year,” complained Himmler. He added: “The money they earn in the camp brothel shall be an old age security for them.”

The SS was trained to prepare all Germany for brutal warfare, and at the same time was used as a vast breeding organization to beget a new generation of warriors, the American prosecution told the tribunal yesterday.

96

Enakopravnost (December 21, 1945)

Nemci so nameravali rabiti strupene krogle

NUERNBERG, 20. dec. – Danes so bili tu predloženi dokazi, da so naciji tekom zadnjih mesecev vojne nameravali rabiti strupene krogle proti zaveznikom in da so take krogle preizkušali na vojnih ujetnikih, katerih smrt so hladnokrvno opazovali.

97

The Evening Star (December 21, 1945)

Prosecution prepares to end case against Nazis by February 1

NUERNBERG (AP) – Members of the Allied prosecution staff expressed hope today that war crimes evidence against 21 leading Nazis and six Nazi organizations may be finished by the end of January, enabling the defense to begin its case early in February.

The International Military Tribunal trying the Nazis adjourned yesterday for a 13-day holiday recess.

In the month since the tribunal convened, American and British prosecutors have almost completed their share of presentation of the evidence under general terms of the indictment.

When the court reconvenes January 2, American Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson’s staff will first finish its case against the Gestapo and the Nazi security police and then proceed with evidence against the last of the six unindicted organizations: the German high command and the general staff.

With completion of cases against the organizations, the prosecution is scheduled to swing immediately to submission of briefs and evidence intended to show individual responsibility of the 21 defendants. That is slated to be followed by Russian and French evidence of war crimes against humanity, which constitute the final phase of the prosecution’s case.

The attempt to have the tribunal brand the Nazi Leadership Corps, the SA (Storm Troopers), SS (Elite Guard), including its affiliated SD; the Gestapo, Reich Cabinet and German armed forces command and general staff as criminal groups has been strictly a U.S. affair so far.

The other prosecutors have shown a lack of interest in this phase of the case, and in some instances the idea of condemning entire organizations as criminal has drawn caustic criticism.

Members of the tribunal and prosecution staffs scattered to all parts of Europe, and a few returned to the United States for the holidays.

The defendants were returned to their cells to spend the Christmas season, which will be marked by special opportunities for them to participate in religious services.

98

21 Nazi defendants will be invited to sing Christmas carols

NUERNBERG (UP) – Hermann Goering and the other 20 Nazi defendants in the war crimes trials will be invited to sing carols on Christmas Day.

There will be no special Christmas dinner, no gift boxes and no concessions for the accused Nazis, however.

Chaplain Capt. Henry F. Gerecke of St. Louis will conduct a special service in a double cell for Lutherans. An organ will be brought in for the caroling. Chaplain Capt. Sixtus R. O’Connor of Oxford, New York, will sing mass for Catholic prisoners.