The Nuremberg Trial

1022

Die Stimme AMERIKAS

Zum Nürnberger Urteil

Die Presse der Vereinigten Staaten beschäftigt sich in ihren Leitartikeln auch weiterhin mit den Nürnberger Urteilen. Die Kommentare betonen vor allem die Tatsache, daß der Internationale Gerichtshof in Nürnberg zum erstenmal in der Geschichte als einen Völkerrechtsgrundsatz festgestellt hat, daß die Führung eines Angriffskrieges das größte Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit ist. Dieser Grundsatz betrifft nicht nur die nunmehr in Nürnberg Verurteilten, sondern auch alle, die dieses Verbrechen in der Zukunft begehen sollten.

„New York Post“: „Das Gerichtsverfahren an sich war viel bedeutsamer als die Angeklagten, und die Fällung des Urteils ist von größerer Bedeutung als das Urteil an sich.

Die Schaffung des ersten Internationalen Gerichtshofes zur Verurteilung der Verantwortlichen war eine Revolution in der Durchsetzung des Rechtes. Sie war jedoch, und das sei hervorgehoben, keine Revolution des Rechtes, sondern eher seine Wiederbelebung. Aus dem Lippenbekenntnis der Zwanzigerjahre wird nunmehr nach einem Vierteljahrhundert die Wirklichkeit. Was früher nur ein unbestimmtes Streben und ein vager Idealismus war, ist heute sanktioniertes Recht geworden.

„New York Times“: „Das erste und oberste der in Nürnberg verkündeten Prinzipien ist die Tatsache, daß die Führung eines Angriffskrieges als das größte Verbrechen zu werten ist. In der Behandlung dieses Verbrechens ist die nationale Souveränität durch die höhere Souveränität des internationalen Rechtes und der internationalen Organisation ersetzt worden, deren Rechtsprechung sich nicht nur auf die Länder und Nationen erstreckt, sondern auch auf deren Regierungen und politische Absichten.“

„Christian Science Monitor”: „Die Urteile in Nürnberg sollten alle Völker in den anklagenden Staaten wie auch in Deutschland dazu veranlassen, sich an der Erhaltung des Friedens in höherem Maße zu beteiligen. Die Ankläger haben ein Gewissen der Menschheit geschaffen, das über den Ansprüchen der einzelnen Nationen steht und der einzige Richter ihrer Handlungen sein soll. Dieser Prozeß bietet für keinen Angreifer eine Grundlage, seine Opfer zu verurteilen und zu bestrafen. In einem solchen Prozeß würde er sich nur selbst verurteilen.“

„St. Louis Post-Dispatch“: „Die in Nürnberg gewonnenen Beweise bieten die Grundlage für viele neue Anklagen. Laßt uns auch die gleichschuldigen Industriellen anklagen. Führen wir auch die schuldigen Mitglieder des Generalstabes der Bestrafung zu, soweit es die Tatsachen rechtfertigen.“

1023

Letzte Meldung aus Nürnberg:
Schacht und Fritzsche von deutscher Polizei verhaftet

Auf amerikanische Anordnung wieder freigelassen

Nürnberg (UP.) - Im Laufe der vergangenen Nacht wurden Schacht und Fritzsche von der deutschen Polizei verhaftet, in den heutigen Morgenstunden jedoch auf eine Intervention von amerikanischer Seite wieder freigelassen.

Kriminaldirektor Hans Stahl, der die Verhaftungen der Beiden vornahm, erklärte, er könne sich im Augenblick über die Sachlage nicht äußern, müsse aber betonen, daß offenbar ein ungerechtfertigter Eingriff in den Kompetenzbereich der deutschen Polizei vorliegt.

Schacht und Fritzsche haben inzwischen unter amerikanischem Schutz das Nürnberger Gefängnis verlassen und sich in ihre in der Stadt gelegenen Wohnungen begeben, vor deren Haustoren seit heute früh je ein amerikanischer Militärpolizist und ein deutscher Polizist Wache stehen.

1024

The Wilmington Morning Star (October 5, 1946)

Rope nears…
American to place noose around eleven Nazi necks

NUERNBERG, Germany, Oct. 4 (UP) – The 11 condemned Nazi criminals have been isolated in death row and the hangman who will place them on the gallows between now and October 16 already has arrived to begin his work, it was reported Friday.

Army officials kept all details secret, but military policemen confirmed the executioner, believed to be Master Sgt. John C. Woods, 41, San Antonio, Texas, had arrived to make the arrangements for his grim task.

Woods already has executed 37 men in Europe as official Army hangman, bringing his total to 313 in 16 years, and hence said he wished to climax his professional career by placing the rope about the necks of the Nazi criminals who launched World War II.

Appeals had been filed for five of the 11 men condemned to death, for the life sentence imposed on Rudolf Hess and for the criminal conviction imposed on the SS Elite Guard as an organization.

It appeared that the three freed men of Nuernberg – Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche – may be forced to remain in the American Zone in Bavaria.

1025

The Evening Star (October 5, 1946)

Schacht, Fritzsche spirited out of jail and hidden in homes

Two are free pending trial by Munich denazification court, U.S. officials say

NUERNBERG (AP) – Hjalmar Schacht and Hans Fritzsche, acquitted by the International War Crimes Tribunal, were told today that they were free to come and go as they pleased, but there were indications their freedom might be short-lived.

During the night the former Nazi financier and propagandist were spirited out of the Palace of Justice jail and hidden in private residences in downtown Nuernberg.

Capt. Morris Smith of the public safety department of the American Military Government and Leo Stahl, Nuernberg chief of police, told Schacht and Fritzsche that they were free, under orders of Brig. Gen. Walter Muller, military government chief of Bavaria.

But American military government officials in Munich issued a statement saying the two were free “pending trial” by the principal denazification court in Munich.

The statement added that the men could count on German police to protect them from possible violence.

Franz von Papen, also acquitted, remained in jail. His appeal for permission to enter the French occupation zone was denied yesterday, and he asked officials to try to arrange for his entry into the British zone.

British Army officers, however, announced yesterday that they would not allow any of the three to enter their zone.

Three of the 11 former Nazi leaders sentenced to death or prison by the tribunal allowed the deadline to expire without filing appeals for clemency with the Allied Control Council. All the other defendants asked for mercy.

Failing to appeal were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Gestapo chief, sentenced to hang, and Albert Speer, armaments producer, and Baldur von Schirach, Hitler Youth leader, both sentenced to 20 years.

Schacht arrested, but freed

Schacht and his wife went to a house on Frelingstrasse, and the aging financier spent the morning pacing up and down, trying to decide what to do next.

Stahl arrested Schacht sometime after midnight, it was learned, but freed him immediately because a proper warrant had not been prepared.

The chief said police would arrest both “later,” when American guards had been withdrawn.

Military police were instructed to protect the former high Nazis from “mob violence.”

German police were told to keep the pair from wandering around the city, lest they be arrested immediately and taken before a denazification court.

Fritzsche tries to surrender

Fritzsche stayed in the home of his attorney, Heinz Fritz. Early today he tried to give himself up to German police, but American MPs would not let him leave the house.

In Frankfurt, a Third Army public relations officer said, “I was told that the military police guarding the houses where they (Schacht and Fritzsche) spent the night were provided at the request of the military government to keep out Americans and news reporters, over whom the German police have no control.”

In Bremen, Wilhelm Hoegner, minister-president of Bavaria, said yesterday he still intended to order the arrest of the three men and place them before denazification panels should they stay in the American occupation zone.

Hoegner, in the city for an interzonal unification conference, declared in an interview, “Schacht, Von Papen and Fritzsche were found innocent of crimes against the Allies. They have not yet answered for crimes they committed against the German people. They must be judged by denazification panels.”

Lawyers’ ouster threatened

A delayed Frankfurt dispatch reported a threat by the German Bar Association to expel the German lawyers who defended the Nazis in the Nuernberg trial.

An article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich for Thursday said the bar association intended to expel the lawyers as “sympathizers with the Nazi cause,” it was reported in a Third Army public relations announcement from Heidelberg received in Frankfurt.

Such action would prevent them from practicing law in Germany, where all lawyers are required to belong to the bar association.

Hess was surprised that he was not sentenced to die along with 11 other Nazi leaders condemned by the tribunal, but was not much interested in his fate one way or the other, his attorney said.

Nor was Hess interested when he was told an appeal had been filed from his sentence to life imprisonment and that a new sanity test had been asked for him, said the attorney, Alfred Seidl. The erratic former deputy of Hitler quickly switched the subject to books and asked for a new one by a German writer dealing with naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War.

1026

U.S., British zone Germans demand trial of three

BREMEN (AP) – The highest German political officials of the British and American occupation zones proposed formally today that the three defendants acquitted of war crimes in Nuernberg be tried by a German court on a charge of “crimes against the German people.”

The proposal was put forward in a resolution adopted unanimously at a German unification conference attended by minister presidents from the two zones. Officials from the Russian and French zones were invited but did not attend.

The resolution said the conference was of the opinion that the Nuernberg tribunal had tried the defendants on the basis of international but not domestic crimes.

1027

‘On the Other Hand’…
Foresees American opposition to trial of German industrialists

By Lowell Mellett

Notably missing from the list of Nazis convicted by the International Military Tribunal are those German industrialists who worked hand-in-glove with the Hitler government in planning and making aggressive war. The reason for this is that the industrialists had not been put on trial. The British and French delegations at Nuernberg had successfully opposed the American demands for their indictment.

Now it is said that each of the occupying powers is free to take up any cases it may desire, within its own zone. In view of Justice Jackson’s vigorous efforts to bring the industrialists before the four-power court, it is assumed that those located in the American zone will surely have to defend themselves in an American military court. Pressure to prevent this, however, is likely to be terrific.

The pressure, if it occurs, will not all be German. At least, that is not likely to be the case. Much of it may be American.

Americans, important Americans, were up to their ears in German industry for years before the war began, the years in which the industrial basis of the war was being built. They were in the very industries that made Germany strong enough to attempt world conquest. This is no secret. Antitrust prosecutions by the Justice Department, including cases that have been concluded and cases still pending, have brought out the facts. Additional facts have been published by Sen. Kilgore’s subcommittee of the Senate’s War Investigating Committee.

Cartels established

German industrialists can be charged with building war industries, sometimes disguised as peace industries, in direct cooperation with the German military machine. They can be charged also with strangling the industries of other countries, through the development of international cartels – with the cooperation of industrialists in Great Britain, France and America. Products of some of these industries, which in due time proved vitally necessary to the American war effort, were withheld from America, as they were from Britain and France.

The part the German industrialists played in crippling the war potential of her future enemies was made clear when France and England were attacked. Those countries sought to place orders in the United States for essential war materiel, only, in many cases, to be turned away. For example, range finders, periscopes, gun sights and other military optical goods, badly needed, could not be furnished by the leading American manufacturer because of a cartel agreement with a German firm which gave the latter exclusive rights to the European market.

Synthetic rubber

The desperate lengths to which the American government went to build up a synthetic rubber industry is well remembered. A cartel agreement with an American company had given I. G. Farbenindustrie a tight control over the manufacture of buna. Only a few weeks before Pearl Harbor that American company sued an independent American company for alleged patent infringement because it sought to experiment with the production of synthetic rubber.

Similar stories have been told concerning a long list of vital war items – aviation gasoline, aviation glass, aviation instruments, magnesium, chlorate of potash, carboloy, nickel, electrical goods and so on.

The defense to be offered by the German industrialists if these trials come off – will be interesting. Will they say they did not know what they were doing or will they say, “yes, we did it for the Fatherland. For the Fatherland, we made suckers of the British, the French and the Americans.”

Or will they say, as one German industrialist is already reputed to have said to an American investigator, that the idea of an international cartel in his particular industry – one that worked out advantageously for Germany – originated in America?

These are interesting questions, but not as interesting as the primary question: Will the industrialists actually be tried?

1028

The Pittsburgh Press (October 5, 1946)

Yanks halt German arrest of freed Nazi leaders

Schacht, Fritzsche given protection against de-Nazification warrants

NUERNBERG (UP) – The U.S. Military Government ended an 11-hour agreement with German police today by releasing Hjalmar Schacht and Hans Fritzsche from American house arrest and promising them protection from rearrest by German authorities.

Schacht and Fritzsche were told they were free to leave the separate Nuernberg apartments in which they had been barricaded since their secret departure from the Nuernberg Prison last night.

They cannot be arrested by any German authority “until further notice.”

Orders sped by phone

Telephoned orders from Brig. Gen. Walter J. Mueller, American military governor of Bavaria, in early afternoon cancelled the American house arrest. The two acquitted German leaders had been detained while military government authorities weighed the right of German police to re-arrest them on de-Nazification warrants.

Later, Fritzsche conferred with military government officers and the Nuernberg police chief and decided to give himself up to German authorities for de-Nazification proceedings. He will surrender, but will remain at liberty until his case comes up for hearing.

Schacht and Fritzsche were told they would be assigned American Military Police escorts for trips around Nuernberg if they desired.

Until Gen. Mueller’s order arrived, the two men were barricaded in their apartment buildings by American police.

Appeals filed

Meantime, Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and seven other convicted men and appeals to the Control Council shortly before the deadline. This raised the total of appeals to 16.

In Berlin, a British spokesman for Lt. Gen. Sir Brian Robertson said entry applications to the British Zone from Schacht, Fritzsche or Franz von Papen would be denied.

Appeal from pope reported

Dr. Alfred Seidl, attorney for Hans Frank, stated meanwhile that Cardinal Michael Faulhaber of Munich has forwarded to the Allied Council an appeal from Pope Pius XII for mercy for Frank, under a tribunal death sentence.

Dr. Seidl said Cardinal Faulhaber told him he had forwarded the appeal. Frank became a Catholic convert while under arrest.

The others to appeal today were Walther Funk, Karl Doenitz, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Alfred Jodl.

Franz von Papen, the third German leader acquitted by the international tribunal Tuesday, remained in the Nuernberg prison awaiting a formal reply to his request to enter the British zone.

Schacht arrested, freed

The U.S. Third Army announced that Schacht and Fritzsche left the prison as free men 45 minutes before midnight. The announcement said “both men were furnished transportation to the place where they wanted to spend the night.”

German police had gone to Schacht’s apartment several hours after he left prison and arrested him.

It was reported they had taken him most of the way to the nearby police headquarters when an order forbidding his arrest reached them from American authorities.

1029

Vatican is silent on appeal report

VATICAN CITY (UP) – Authoritative sources in the Vatican secretary of state office today carefully avoided confirming or denying reports that Pope Pius XII had appealed for mercy for Hans Frank, but stressed his “necessary role as peacemaker and pacifier of passions in a case like Nuernberg.”

From detailed questioning, it was the personal impression of the United Press reporter that the Holy Father received a specific request for a clemency intervention for Frank and that he communicated in reply a favorable papal disposition toward mercy which was something less than a direct appeal.

BERLIN (UP) – The office of the Allied Control Council Secretariat said today that no clemency appeal for Hans Frank had been received here from Pope Pius “or anyone else.”

1030

The Chicago Star (October 5, 1946)

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

I doubt whether you had thought of it this way, but it seems to me that we are having our own version of the Nuernberg trials. The location is Lawrenceburg, a small town in the great state of Tennessee. And in this Americanized version, positions are reversed.

At Nuernberg, Nazis were on trial for their “superior race” crimes against Jews and other peoples of Europe. At Lawrenceburg, 25 Negroes are on trial for actually defending themselves from Tennessee exponents of the “superior race” theory.

This is, I think, an almost perfect commentary on our prevailing policies, both domestic and international. Abroad, we seem to fight fascism. At home, we tolerate those conditions that can be described by no word but fascism. This is Grade-A hypocrisy and explains why people in other parts of the world look cynically upon the noble sentiments of democracy our guys mouth at Paris and before the United Nations meetings.

But our foreign and home policies are not actually so far apart as they seem. At Nuernberg we have skimmed only the surface, prosecuting merely those Nazi leaders who carried the mail for fascism. World opinion forced this prosecution, yet there are powerful voices who oppose any semblance of a trial. And it seems now that the big industrialists, cash kinsmen of Wall Street, will not face the international court. These industrialists, remember, supplied the money which shoved Hitler into power and would prove mighty handy in revitalizing Germany as part of the anti-Soviet coalition.

So, you see, there’s a bit of similarity between our failure to punish the German industrialists, who were the backbone of German fascism and are now being kept under wraps as potential allies in the contemplated World War III, and the state prosecution of 25 Negroes who resisted Tennessee fascism.

The truth is that our Big Money Boys, who now make our foreign policy and are determined to save their Nazi counterparts, are likewise responsible for those conditions in Tennessee and other parts of our nation resulting in Negro persecution. The Nazis used anti-Semitism as a means of getting and maintaining control; in America Negro-baiting has served a similar purpose. By splitting the white and black masses on racial lines and setting them against each other, the economic rulers maintain their domination.

But of course this basic fact is covered up. You don’t get it in the press or over the radio or in the films, the main organs of thought control. So most of us go happily along, unwitting victims of Propaganda Paralysis, that mental disease caused through visual and auditory contamination by press, radio and screen.

That is why, I think, we don’t generally realize the kinship between Nuernberg and Lawrenceburg’ and our sham of sounding off for democracy abroad and letting our racists keep control at home.

Paul Robeson told President Truman about it when he went to the White House to ask action on the 41 American lynchings since V-J Day. Truman, you will recall, insisted on divorcing Nuernberg from the anti-Negro terrorism on the ground that there was no connection. I don’t know whether our pitiful President sought by this to serve his Wall Street masters or is actually our No. One victim of Propaganda Paralysis.

But there’s no reason for the rest of us sharing this stupidity. Nuernberg and Lawrenceburg are farther apart on the map than they are ideologically. Organized labor and all liberals and progressives must learn the lessons of both trials and then be guided.

The immediate step is to get registered and vote – right. The ballot is a weapon to whip the congressional servants of the Big Money Boys who block changes which would do away with the conditions that created the Lawrenceburg trials. Sending enough of the right congressmen to Washington would force a change in our foreign policy which today has no intention of putting the financiers of fascism on trial at Nuernberg.

Like everything else, it boils down to a job for all thinking Americans. So let’s do it.

1031

Neues Österreich (October 6, 1946)

Papen, Schacht, Fritzsche:
Sie kommen vor ein deutsches Gericht

Nürnberg, 5. Oktober. Auf Befehl der amerikanischen Militärbehörde wurde die von der bayrischen Regierung erhobene Anklage auf Hochverrat gegen Papen, Schacht und Fritzsche zurückgezogen. Alle drei werden jedoch vor ein deutsches Entnazifizierungsgericht kommen, das allerdings nur eine Höchststrafe von zehn Jahren Kerker verhängen kann.

Gestern waren Schacht und Fritzsche vorübergehend von der deutschen Polizei verhaftet worden, nachdem sie in der Dunkelheit den Gerichtshof verlassen hatten und in einem Hotel abgestiegen waren. Sie wurden bald darauf auf Grund einer Intervention von amerikanischer Seite wieder auf freien Fuß gesetzt. Heute früh wurden die deutschen Polizisten, die die Häuser umzingelt hatten, in denen sich Schacht und Fritzsche aufhalten (um sie bei günstiger Gelegenheit wieder zu verhaften), auf Anordnung des amerikanischen Militärgouverneurs wieder zurückgezogen Seither stehen beide unter dem Schutz der amerikanischen Militärregierung.

Gnadengesuche, Gnadengesuche

Nürnberg, 5. Oktober. Heute haben auch Sauckel, Keitel, Heß, Streicher und Hans Frank Gnadengesuche eingereicht.

Die einzigen Verurteilten, die nicht um Gnade gebeten haben, sind Kaltenbrunner, Schirach und Speer. (BBC)

Auch die SS!

Der Amerikanische Nachrichtendienst in Deutschland meldete heute, daß die Verteidiger der angeklagten Organisationen SS, Gestapo und SD um Gnadengesuche eingereicht haben.

Göring und Keitel haben angesucht, daß das Todesurteil „durch den Strang“ in ein Urteil „Tod durch Erschießen“ umgewandelt werde.

Der Verteidiger Baldur von Schirachs hat erklärt, von einem Gnadengesuch Abstand zu nehmen, weil er das Urteil für seinen Klienten als gerecht und maßvoll ansehe.

Papen in eine Privatwohnung übersiedelt

Nürnberg, 5. Oktober. Papen hat heute nachmittag das Gerichtsgebäude verlassen und sich in eine Privatwohnung in der Stadt begeben.

Fritzsche hat den Nürnberger Polizeipräsidenten gebeten, ihm einen Monat Ruhe zu gönnen und ihm dann Gelegenheit zu gehen, vor einem deutschen Gericht über seine nationalsozialistische Propagandatätigkeit Rechenschaft abzulegen. (BBC)

1032

The Evening Star (October 6, 1946)

German pleas mount for trial of 3 Nazis freed at Nuernberg

NUERNBERG, Oct. 5 (AP) – Two of the three acquitted top Nazi leaders were spirited out of jail and given final freedom today by U.S. military authorities amid a growing uproar among Germans that the three be tried in German courts for crimes against their own people.

Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s banker, and Hans Fritzsche, propagandist, were released from prison and installed in downtown apartments. Franz von Papen, the diplomat, remained in jail waiting formal word on whether he could enter the British zone. A British spokesman in the zone said entry was barred to all three.

The U.S. Army made it clear that Schacht and Fritzsche were free to come and go as they please “pending trial” by German de-Nazification courts, but reports from all over Germany told of demands that all three be brought before German tribunals on charges of crimes against their own people.

Crowd demand trial

In Berlin, 5,000 persons, jamming a variety theater in the Soviet sector of the city, gave thunderous approval to a resolution that not only the three acquitted Nazis, but also the seven who received prison sentences, be delivered “to a German court here immediately.”

“Give us Von Papen to try in the shattered Reich Chancellery, Schacht in the battered Reichsbank and Fritzsche under the radio tower!” shouted one speaker.

In Bremen highest German political officials of the British and American zones adopted unanimously a formal resolution that the three Nazis acquitted by the International Military Tribunal Tuesday be tried by a German court on a charge of “crimes against the German people.”

In Munich, Dr. Anton Pfeiffer, chief denazification officer for Bavaria, appealed anew to American Military Government officials to turn over the three for trial by a denazification court. If convicted, they could be sentenced to hard labor.

Convicted Nazis appeal

Meanwhile, all but three of the high Nazis convicted by the tribunal filed appeals for clemency with the Allied Control Council before the 3:45 p.m. deadline. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Gestapo chief, sentenced to hang; Albert Speer and the Hitler Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach, given 20 years each, disdained appeals.

Schacht and Fritzsche were released secretly last night. An official announcement was not made until nine hours later because a public relations officer held up the statement on his own initiative, despite authority given him to release the news.

Military and German police guarded the apartments of the two with orders to keep visitors and especially newsmen out unless the former defendants wanted to see them.

Capt. Morris Smith of the military government of Bavaria notified Schacht and Fritzsche at midafternoon that they were no longer under house arrest and that they could have police protection against possible mob violence if they wanted it.

Both deny being afraid

Both Schacht and Fritzsche said they were not afraid to face such trial. Schacht asserted he was innocent and that if he was not neither were 15,000,000 Germans who voted for Hitler.

Prison authorities refused to permit Kaltenbrunner’s mistress, who has borne him twins, to see him for the last time. She tried again in vain today to have a talk with Kaltenbrunner on what to do with the children.

Pope Pius XII has asked the Allied Control Council to be merciful to Hans Frank, Dr. Alfred Seidl, Frank’s attorney, said tonight.

Frank, who was converted to Catholicism after his arrest, pleaded guilty to war crimes charges. His attorney entered an appeal with the Control Council after he personally refused to do so.

The appeal by the Pope was similar to a last-minute plea made in behalf of Arthur Greiser, former Nazi gauleiter in Poznan Province in Poland, who was hanged in Poznan on July 22 for sending thousands of Poles to Nazi death camps. He had been convicted of waging aggressive war against Poland.

1033

Taft deplores Nuernberg trial; British liberal calls it necessity

GAMBIER, Ohio, Oct. 5 (AP) – The Nuernberg trials, wherein 11 high Nazis were sentenced to hang for war crimes, were called “an outrage on justice” by Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) today and defended as “a necessary institution” by a British liberal, Prof. Harold J. Laski.

Sen. Taft, a possible 1948 presidential candidate, told a panel discussion at the Kenyon College Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples:

“I believe that most Americans view with discomfort the war trials which have just been concluded in Germany and are proceeding in Japan. They violate that fundamental principle of American law that a man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute. The hanging of the 11 men convicted at Nuernberg will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret.

“The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice.

“In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trials, government policy and not justice, having little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage.

“I pray that we do not repeat the procedure in Japan.”

Sen. Taft’s views were sharply challenged by Prof. Laski, professor of political science at the University of London, in a spirited evening session. Prof. Laski later also engaged Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Studebaker Corp. who headed the panel, in a discussion of free enterprise.

“The (Nuernberg) trials were a necessary institution,” Prof. Laski contended. “I think and hope it becomes the business of the United Nations to legislate that any person found guilty of aggressive war be hanged or imprisoned, depending upon the degree of guilt.”

Prof. Laski told the conference in his academic address: “Nepotism is creeping into your (American) industry as it did in ours (British). You must take care against the development of a caste system.”

“We are reaching a stage where the capitalist democracy no longer can satisfy. Either capitalism will destroy democracy or democracy will transform capitalism.”

Prof. Laski said he believed in congresses and in parliaments, adding that “the alternative of these talking shops is the concentration camps.” He asserted, however, that neither democratic government nor constitutional government would continue in the presence of mass unemployment.

At one point the British Labor Party spokesman addressed his remarks to Mr. Hoffman: “You, Mr. Chairman, represent the type produced by the Italian renaissance. He toiled not, neither did he spin, but lived by inherited income.”

Mr. Hoffman later smilingly replied to Prof. Laski’s charge of nepotism in industry.

“No private industry can survive with nepotism,” he said.

The conference, sponsored by Kenyon College here, was called to “state discoveries and achievements of these peoples (English speaking) in the arts, letters, science, education, religion, politics, the common law and journalism, and to consider the special responsibility they place on Britain and America in working toward lasting world peace.”

1034

German opinion reported changed by acquittals

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 5 (AP) – Three acquittals in the Nuernberg war crimes trials are responsible for a popular upheaval in German opinion that is the first solid expression of an anti-Nazi democratic view, Dr. Albert M. W. Kempner said today upon his return home.

Dr. Kempner, who was chief of investigation and research for American Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, also told an interviewer the convicted Nazi war lords played the role of tough men throughout the 10-month trials on orders of Hermann Goering but their front has now crumbled.

The German-born criminologist and lawyer, said there has developed “a tremendous upheaval in Germany against the acquittal of Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche. There are demonstrations and public gatherings in opposition to the acquittals.

‘‘They are the first signs of expression of a sound political view on the part of the German people. The lengthy trial had an educational effect on the German people and the line of thinking is as follows:

“That men like these three who initiated and financed the Nazi business are no less guilty than those who later executed the preparation for war and crimes against humanity. The little man in the street does not understand the legal aspect of the acquittals.”

1035

The Pittsburgh Press (October 6, 1946)

Taft attacks Nuernberg war trials

Verdicts score as ‘blotch on record’

GAMBIER, Ohio, Oct. 5 (UP) – Sen. Robert A. Taft, R-Ohio, asserted today that the Nuernberg war crimes trials “violated the fundamental principles of American law,” that a man cannot be tried for breaking a law which did not exist at the time of the “crime.”

Sen. Taft told a Kenyon College conference that the conviction of the 11 men at Nuernberg “will be a blotch on the American record that we shall long regret.”

“I question whether the hanging of those who, however despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he hopes to win.”

Vengeance charged

“About this whole (Nuernberg) judgment there is the spirit of a vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice.”

Sen. Taft charged that at the war crimes trials “we accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trial – government policy and not justice – having little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage.”

“I pray that we do not repeat the procedure in Japan where the justification on grounds of vengeance is much less then in Germany,” he said.

Laski cites New Deal

Harold J. Laski, professor of economics at the University of London and British Labor Party spokesman, called for a world “renaissance,” asserting that “our problem is a new one of remaking foundations which have not, for over a century, been called into question.”

“The labor victory in Britain, the New Deal in America, showed that we need a new economic setup for a new world,” he said.

Redvers Opie, United Kingdom delegate to the Bretton Woods conference, said Russia has shown no willingness to cooperate in any international economic agreements but efforts will be made to accommodate her.

He said that if all countries were organized like Russia, “none of the British-American financial and trade proposals in the international sphere would make much sense.”

1036

3 of 19 convicted Nazis spurn last chance to appeal

Kaltenbrunner accepts hanging verdict; Goering changes mind, asks mercy

NUERNBERG, Germany, Oct. 5 (UP) --Three of the 19 Nazi bigwigs convicted by the International Military Tribunal – Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach – today spurned their last chance to ask the Allied Control Council for mercy.

In Kaltenbrunner’s case, it was his only opportunity, withal the slimmest one, to escape being hanged. Speer and Von Schirach were under 20-year prison sentences.

The other 16 convicted Nazis all appealed. Appeals for Fritz Sauckel (death), Grand Adm. Erich Raeder (life imprisonment) and Constantin von Neurath (15 years) were filed five minutes before the 3:45 p.m. deadline.

An appeal for big, blustering Hermann Goering who had said with trembling hands that his death sentence was the “best of all,” came in an hour before the deadline, with four others.

Goering appeals

It was learned that Goering’s attorney did not appeal the verdict as such, but raised legal objections to certain points of the judgment. The other 14, on their own initiative, or at the insistence of their relatives or lawyers, asked that the sentences be set aside or softened.

The Allied Control Council, which may lessen the punishment but not change the verdicts of guilty against the prisoners, will consider the appeals in Berlin early next week. The executions will be carried out in Nuernberg prison probably on October 16.

The appeals were filed here, and the appeals from the verdicts of guilty against the SS, SD and Gestapo organizations and membership had been transmitted to the Control Council in Berlin.

But the first appeal from an individual defendant did not actually reach the Control Council in Berlin until this afternoon, and paradoxically it was that for Martin Bormann, who had never faced the tribunal.

Martin Bormann’s appeal was scheduled to have reached Berlin yesterday, but bad weather grounded planes flying to Berlin and delayed it. Bormann was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.

Hans Frank’s attorney said Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich had asked Pope Pius XII to intervene in his client’s behalf. Frank, who, as governor-general of Poland, administered that country’s death factories, has become a Catholic.

Vatican silent

Authoritative Vatican sources carefully avoided denying or confirming that the Pope had appealed for mercy for Frank, but stressed the Pope’s “necessary role as peacemaker and pacifier of passions in cases like Nuernberg.

Frau Luise Jodl’s lawyer said she had special permission from army authorities to appeal to President Truman for mercy for her husband, Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl. Frau Jodl previously had appealed to Winston Churchill and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The three “freed men” – Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche – learned that they will have to face their fellow Germans for “legal de-Nazification,” a process by which they could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison and lose their property and personal rights.

1037

Wiener Kurier (October 7, 1946)

Sumner Welles über Nürnberg:
Freispruch des Generalstabes ist nachteilig für den Weltfrieden

Washington (AP.) - Der frühere Staatssekretär im amerikanischen Außenministerium Sumner Welles erklärte gestern, der Freispruch des deutschen Generalstabes durch den Nürnberger Gerichtshof werde sich in den nächsten Jahren nachteilig auf den Weltfrieden auswirken.

In seiner wöchentlichen Rundfunksendung gab Welles der Überzeugung Ausdruck, daß die deutschen Offiziere, denen die militärischen Doktrinen aus Deutschlands Vergangenheit eingeimpft wurden, weiterhin Wege zu einem neuen Krieg planen und vorbereiten würden. Den Freispruch Papens nannte Welles „den befremdendsten Zug“ an dem Urteilsspruch.

Bedrohung für das deutsche Volk

Berlin (UP.) - Einer der leitenden Funktionäre der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Walter Ulbricht, wandte sich in einer Rede gegen das zu mildes Nürnberger Urteil und forderte die Todesstrafe für alle Industriellen, Militaristen und Finanzleute, die Hitler vor und nach der Machtübernahme unterstützt hatten. „Die Freilassung Papens, Schachts und Fritzsches“, erklärte Ulbricht, „stellt eine direkte Bedrohung des deutschen Volkes dar, da niemand weiß, ob diese Leute nicht einen neuen Putsch vorbereiten.'“

Julius Mayer, der Chef der jüdischen Gemeinde in Berlin, protestierte ebenfalls gegen den Nürnberger Urteilsspruch, da er „die Faschisten zu neuen Verbrechen ermutige.“

Papen noch im Nürnberger Gefängnis

Nürnberg (WK.) - Obwohl Papen offiziell bereits als „frei“ gilt, befindet er sich als einziger Freigesprochener nach immer als „Gast“ im Nürnberger Gefängnis. Seine Zelle ist nicht mehr verschlossen, es hat aber reicht den Anschein, als ob Papen bald das Gefängnis verlassen würde.

Gattin Görings wird angeklagt

Nach einer Entscheidung der bayrischen Entnazifizierungskommission wird gegen die Gattin des Hauptkriegsverbrechers Nr. 1, Frau Emmy Göring, die Anklage erhoben, daß sie aus ihrer Zugehörigkeit zur Partei „übermäßige Vorteile“ gezogen habe. Frau Göring ward sich vor einem deutschen Entnazifizierungsgericht zu verantworten haben.

Raeder beantragt Todesstrafe für sich

Der ehemalige Oberkommandierende der deutschen Marine, Erich Raeder, der durch den internationalen Militärgerichtshof zu lebenslänglichem Kerker verurteilt wurde, hat an den Alliierten Kontrollrat ein Gesuch gerichtet, das Urteil in ein Todesurteil umzuwandeln.

Die letzten Gnadengesuche

Im Verlaufe des Samstags haben die Angeklagten Keitel, Sauckel und von Neurath Gnadengesuche eingereicht, denen sich auch der Verteidiger Ribbentrops angeschlossen hat. Es haben nunmehr alle Verurteilten mit Ausnahme Ernst Kaltenbrunners, Speers und Schirachs um Milderung ihres Strafausmaßes ersucht.

1038

Die Stimme AMERIKAS

Nürnberg legt Rechtsnormen fest

„Christian Science Monitor“: Der Nürnberger Prozeß kann am besten nach seinen Auswirkungen in Richtung auf zwei bestimmte Ziele gewürdigt werden. Seine unmittelbare Wirkung liegt darin, daß die Verantwortung der Naziverbrechen festgelegt wird. Auf lange Sicht gesehen werden durch die Nürnberger Entscheidungen erstmalig Rechtsnormen festgelegt, auf Grund deren die Anwendung von Druckmitteln und Terror bestraft werden kann.

Die Diktatur in Deutschland kam nicht von ungefähr. Sie stellte kein den Deutschen irgendwie aufgezwungenes System dar. Es zeigt sich dagegen, und zwar geht dies aus den Zeugenaussagen der Baumeister dieses Systems hervor, daß es in sonderbarer Art. mit vielem verflochten war, was im politischen Denken der Deutschen bereits vorherrschte.

So ergeben sich zum Beispiel aus der Zeugenaussage Görings ebenso wie aus den Aussagen anderer Angeklagter drei besondere Tatsachen: Das Nazisystem war auf der Entziehung der persönlichen Rechte des Einzelmenschen begründet. Es verfolgte konsequent die Politik, das Volk in Unwissenheit zu lassen. Es machte in gewissenloser Weise Gebrauch von der Gewalt.

Nur ein Volk, das die Disziplin höher einschätzte als die Gerechtigkeit und das die Unterwürfigkeit der Aufklärung vorzog, konnte sich dazu verführen lassen, die schrittweise Aufzwingung einer verbrecherischen Führung hinzunehmen deren Charakter durch die offiziellen Feststellungen des Gerichts jetzt offen dargelegt wird.

Hier handelt es sich um das eigentliche und große Problem Deutschlands. Es ist ein Problem, das viele Deutsche selbst nicht, genug verstehen. Sie müssen in sich- erst ein höheres öffentliches Bewußtsein für den Begriff einer „rechtschaffenen Regierung“ entwickeln.

Das Ausmaß, in dem sich dieses Bewußtsein entwickelt, wird den einzigen sicheren Maßstab dafür abgeben, wie lange Deutschland noch besetzt bleiben soll. Dieses Bewußtsein wird auch das endgültige Kriterium für den Erfolg oder das Scheitern der Okkupationspolitik bilden.

1039

USA-Hauptankläger Jackson stellt fest:
Nürnberger Rechtsgrundsätze müssen Kluft Ost-West überbrücken helfen

Buffalo (AND.) - Der amerikanische Hauptankläger in Nürnberg, Oberrichter Jackson, sprach nach seiner Ernennung zum Ehrendoktor der hiesigen Universität über die Auswirkungen des Nürnberger Prozesses auf lange Sicht und er erklärte, daß die in diesem Verfahren festgelegten Rechtsgrundsätze nur dann erhalten bleiben können, wenn die zwischen dem Westen und Osten jetzt noch bestehende Kluft überbrückt wird. Der bedeutendste dieser neuen Grundsätze bestehe in der Auffassung, daß ein Angriffskrieg ungesetzlich ist und daß diejenigen, die ihn beginnen, vor ein Gericht gestellt werden können.

Auch die Massenverfolgung von Minderheiten, die in Europa eine neue Kriegsgefahr darstellt, widerspreche dem Londoner Abkommen vom August 1945, das die Grundlage für den Nürnberger Prozeß bildete. Wenn in manchen Ländern Europas die Tendenz zu einer Diktatur des Proletariats bestehe, so sei eine solche ebenso zu verwerfen wie jede andere Diktatur. Keiner der Staaten, die in Nürnberg die Anklage vertraten, könne auf die Dauer von der neuen Auffassung des Völkerrechtes abweichen, ohne eine Bestrafung herauszufordern.

Jackson führt im einzelnen aus: „Schon oft wurden Beschlüsse gefaßt, um die internationale Politik zur Erhaltung des Friedens in irgendeiner Form neu zu gestalten. Dies war auch eines der Ziele des Völkerbundes. Aber die Leitung aller dieser Vorhaben lag in den Händen von Männern, die in der völkerrechtlichen Auffassung erzogen waren, daß Kriege gesetzlich sind. Nach dem letzten Krieg versuchten nun die Politiker, das weltpolitische System auf die völkerrechtliche Festlegung zu stützen, daß jeder Angriffskrieg ungesetzlich ist. Das Ergebnis davon war der Nürnberger Prozeß. Seine Bedeutung auf weite Sicht liegt in dem Bemühen, die Geltung des Rechtes über rechtlose und verheerende Mächte wie Krieg und Verfolgung durchzusetzen und die praktischen Grundlagen für die Aburteilung solcher Rechtsbrecher zu schaffen.

Minderheitenverfolgung kann zum Krieg führen

Zu den Verbrechen, die das Londoner Abkommen zu Verletzungen des Völkerrechtes stempelt, gehört die Verfolgung von Minderheiten wegen ihrer politischen, rassischen oder religiösen Zugehörigkeit. Ich glaube, daß alle, welche die Entwicklung in Europa genau verfolgt haben, mit mir übereinstimmen werden, daß, solange Massenverfolgungen von Minderheiten in Europa Vorkommen, auch eine Herausforderung zum Krieg oder eine Ausrede beziehungsweise die Vorbereitung für einen neuen Krieg gegeben sind. Gerade die Minderheitenfrage ist es, welche die endgültige Gestaltung der europäischen Landkarte so heißumstritten und jede Entscheidung darüber so grausam macht.

Eine gerechte Behandlung dieses Problems ist unmöglich, wenn man auf dem Standpunkt steht, daß es sich eben lediglich um eine Minderheit handelt. Anderseits ist dabei freilich zu bedenken, daß auch das Verhalten der Minderheit verabscheuenswert, unduldsam und herausfordernd sein kann. Auch die Nazi waren einmal eine Minderheit.

Der Pendelschlag in Europa hat begonnen. In manchen Ländern haben wir bereits einen unbeschränkten Absolutismus im Namen der Diktatur des Proletariats. Alle jene, die in den Geist unserer Verfassung eingedrungen sind, sehen heute als entmutigende Erscheinung die Schwäche jeder wirklich liberalen Tradition oder Bewegung in Mittel- und Osteuropa an. Wenn auch die Vereinigten Staaten nicht behaupten können, ihr innerpolitisches Minderheitenproblem vollkommen gelöst zu haben, glaube ich doch, daß unser System der verfassungsmäßigen Beschränkung der Regierungsgewalt einen bedeutsamen Beitrag zur Lösung dieser Frage darstellt.“

Politiker müssen das Erbe der Juristen antreten

Jackson kam abschließend nochmals auf den Nürnberger Prozeß zu sprechen und erklärte: „Die Anklagevertretung verlangte eine hohe Norm im Verhalten anderen Völkern gegen über, eine Norm, nach der das Verhalten der Völker in Hinkunft selbst ausgerichtet werden wird. Es ist aber unbedingt notwendig, daß die Politiker dort fortsetzen, wo in Nürnberg die Juristen geendet haben.“

1040

The Evening Star (October 7, 1946)

Secret graves are planned for 11 high Nazi war criminals

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, chief of investigation and research for the American prosecutor at the Nuernberg trials, say the “court is bound there will be no recovery of the bodies” of the 11 Nazi war criminals sentenced to be hanged.

Dr. Kempner said in an interview yesterday at his Philadelphia home that secret unmarked graves will be allotted to each of the doomed men to “avoid fanatical pilgrimages by still ardent Nazis” or recovery of the bodies “such as followed Mussolini’s death.”

These war criminals are going to be hanged instead of shot, Dr. Kempner explained, because the court is “most anxious to show the world that these war lords are just ordinary criminals.”

GAMBIER, Ohio (AP) – Justice of the war criminal trials at Nuernberg, a question raised here by Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) was affirmed yesterday by the Right Rev. Philip Carrington, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Quebec.

He described the court’s decision as “a horrible action, but necessary and a just action,” in religious services conducted in Kenyon College’s Episcopal Chapel for delegates to the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibility.

The archbishop, in an interview later, made it clear that he spoke only for himself, and that his remarks were not the result of a conference address Saturday by Sen. Taft, who asserted the hanging of the 11 Nazis sentenced at Nuernberg would be “a blot on the American record we shall long regret.” The high church official said his sermon was reported a week ago.

1041

Editorial: Peace and man

The excellent address delivered the other day by Justice Jackson at the University of Buffalo should be required reading not merely for Sen. Taft and others of like mind on the Nuernberg judgment, but also for any thinking adult who looks with anxiety on the upended character of our time.

“When we seek to identify the sources of catastrophe in modern life,” says Mr. Jackson, “we find that the chief source is war, another is tyranny – the oppression of individuals and minorities by governments in power.” The two evils, feeding upon each other, are as ancient as the human race itself, and there is no guarantee that they will not cause another global upheaval.

Seeing things as they are, Mr. Jackson takes note of the grim fact that a large part of the world is still ruled by dictatorships. In many of their aspects, he observes, the oppressive acts committed by such governments constitute an internal affair, but their effect can be so disruptive externally and so conducive to war “that tyranny on a sizable scale anywhere is a matter of international concern.” Indeed, for his own part, he is “convinced that little progress can be made toward permanent peace without solving the problem of protecting the elementary rights of minorities.”

Mr. Jackson, however, is not altogether gloomy. He has hopes that statesmen will pick up where the lawyers have left off at Nuernberg, that they will build on the principle of nonaggression, that they will adopt “at least a minimum of civil rights for peoples everywhere,” and that they will make international law really effective by henceforth applying to their own countries the standards and rules of conduct they have applied to Germany in the great precedent setting judgment handed down through the four-power court at Nuernberg.

But the problem of ending war and tyranny goes even deeper than this. It involves the mental attitude of man, his measurement of his own worth and meaning, his own purpose and ultimate destiny. Since Darwin’s day we have been living in a super-materialistic age, with the belief common that our beginning and our end are here, that we are no higher than the lower animals, that we are born – like a beast of the field – for nothing more significant than to exist for a time, and to satisfy our flesh as much as we can during that time, and then to die and be merely empty negation again in an eternity of empty negation.

In strict logic, it is not many steps from such a belief to the conclusion that the law of the jungle – the might-makes-right philosophy, war, tyranny – is perfectly valid, assuming that there is indeed nothing beyond the grave. Many an “educated man” in our time has assumed this. The Godless “educated men” among the Nazis assumed it and carried it to its logical extremes. It is why Mr. Jackson feels impelled to say that about the only thing modern society needs to fear is the “educated man” – the “educated man” whose nihilism, plus his atom bombs, can be the finish of all of us.

This is a fact that constitutes a challenge to all educators: If this world is to enjoy a lasting peace there must be more than mere learning; there must be commensurate wisdom as well – a wisdom under which there will be a greater spiritual content to existence and a greater awareness by human beings of their own peculiar worth and of the solemn possibility that not everything ends for them here.