The Nuremberg Trial

1082

Parker permitted to quit military tribunal post

President Truman today accepted the resignation of Federal Judge John J. Parker as alternate American member of the International Military Tribunal, which tried the Nazi war criminals.

“I feel that you have discharged your duties with distinction,” the president said. “You have served faithfully and well the cause of civilization and of world peace and can safely leave the results of your labors at Nuernberg to the verdict of history.”

Judge Parker, who serves on the Fifth Federal Circuit, told the president that he will join Francis Biddle, who was the American judge on the tribunal, in submitting a report on the work of this international court as soon as Mr. Biddle returns from Europe.

The Parker resignation will be effective Monday.

1083

Neue Zeit (October 13, 1946)

Vorbereitung auf den Tod

NÜRNBERG, 12. Oktober (Reuter.)
Hermann Göring und die anderen zehn zum Tod Verurteilten erwarten mit Verzweiflung ihre Hinrichtung, die nächsten Mittwoch stattfindet. Joachim Ribbentrop, der gestern weinte, als er sich von seiner Frau verabschiedete, ist von allen am meisten niedergedrückt.

Auch Jodl hat bereits Abschied genommen. „In seinen Augen war keine Träne zu sehen“, erklärte ein Gefängnisbeamter, „aber seine Frau weinte still vor sich hin.“ Alfred Rosenberg schreitet vor sich hinbrütend in seiner Zelle auf und ab und weist allen religiösen Trost zurück. Hans Frank, der sich im Gefängnis zum Katholizismus bekehrte, ist im Gebet versunken. Göring liegt rauchend in seiner Zelle und starrt in die Luft, aber manchmal, z. B. während eines Gespräches, leuchten seine Augen auf und er prophezeit, daß ihm die Nachwelt Statuen errichten wird. Sauckel war heute besonders reizbar und aufgeregt und machte überhaupt einen gehetzten Eindruck.

Rudolf Heß wurde heute dabei beobachtet, daß er geschäftig Pläne eines neuen Deutschlands zeichnete. Er erklärte einem Gefängnispsychologen, daß Deutschland in zwanzig Jahren wieder eine Großmacht sein werde.

1084

The Sunday Star (October 13, 1946)

Jail at Nuernberg lacks signs of preparations to hang Nazis

NUERNBERG, Oct. 12 (AP) – Although Hermann Goering and 10 other Hitler disciples are scheduled to be executed four days from now, not a single move has been taken within the Nuernberg jail to prepare for the hangings Wednesday morning.

U.S. Army officers, who run the jail, said tonight that no scaffold had been built and no materials for a scaffold had been received or ordered; the name of the hangman had not been divulged, and no official notice had been received that the Allied Control Council had denied clemency appeals.

“We don’t know anything about arrangements,” the security officers said, “the Allied Control Council in Berlin is in charge.”

The 11 hangings are expected to take place, one after the other, starting at dawn Wednesday. Goering probably will be the first to mount the gallows. Presumably, the hangings will be within the canopied and shielded courtyard of the prison.

Albert Pierrepont, Britain’s famed executioner, and U.S. Master Sgt. John C. Woods have been mentioned in speculation about the possible hangman.

Although the official notification of the denial of clemency pleas has not been received, the condemned men have learned through their wives or other sources that the appeals were rejected by the Control Council last Thursday.

Representatives of the council are expected to arrive here over the weekend to discuss arrangements for the executions.

Goering, no longer the blustering personality who dominated the other war crimes defendants, is spending many of his final hours lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling.

The former Reichsmarshal has been reading “With the Passage of Birds to Africa.” Fritz Sauckel, former labor bully, is reading “Happy Island,” and Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the Nazi army, is reading “The Traveler.”

Jodl, as cold and impassive as ever, bade his wife a tearless farewell today after she visited for an hour in his tiny cell.

Strain is showing on all the Hitler henchmen. Rudolph Hess, unpredictable as ever, talks about forming another Reich government. The former Deputy Fuehrer, sentenced to life imprisonment, complained today that he was getting too much meat to eat, and would like to swap some of it for prunes.

Capt. Sam Binder of the American security detail said, “I assure you he isn’t getting too much meat.”

Julius Streicher, Hitler’s No. 1 Jew-baiter, has asked a prison psychologist to tell him how all the other condemned men are bearing up.

Hans Frank, former governor general of Poland, who recently has become deeply religious, always greets the prison doctor with the same query, “How are you feeling?”

Wilhelm Frick, former interior minister, says, “All is finished and there isn’t much use waiting around.” Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German high command, sleeps well. Alfred Rosenberg, official philosopher of the Nazi Party, is constantly pacing his cell.

No word will be sent from Nuernberg on next Wednesday’s executions until the 11th man has been hanged, under regulations announced by the four-power commission in charge of the executions.

The commission ruled that only official U.S. Army photographers will be allowed to photograph the executions, and unless the commission changes its decision all pictures will be for “record and historical purposes” and not for publication.

The commission issued this statement:

“The only pictures will be official pictures taken by official United States Army photographers.

“This is, in part, some answer to questions propounded by members of the press to the quadripartite commission. The quadripartite commission is anxious in every way to cooperate fully with the press within the limits set for them by the Allied Control Council.

“There will be no release of the names of or home addresses of any person on duty in connection with carrying out of the sentences of the International Military Tribunal. Any such release of names or home addresses will come from the Allied Control Council.

“The quadripartite commission has designated Col. B. C. Andrus or, in his absence, Col. Selby E. Little, to act as liaison with the public relations officer to furnish press releases from time to time. There will be one or two every day but these officers are not authorized to answer questions of individual correspondents; therefore, any release concerning the executions will be made at the regularly scheduled press conference except when something special happens.

“Executions will be carried out under the control of the Quadripartite Commission.

“The maximum facilities will be afforded the press at the executions but there will be no telephone line to the outside and no departures permitted until authorized by the Quadripartite Commission.

“All press representatives will be returned to the press room in a group.

“Col. Andrus will brief the authorized correspondents at a later date.”

Two correspondents from each of the four nations represented – the United States, Britain, Russia and France – will attend the executions.

1085

Uniform denazification rules adopted by powers

BERLIN, Oct. 12 (AP) – The Allied Control Authority Coordinating Committee, composed of the four deputy military governors of Germany, today adopted a directive establishing uniform rules for all four zones of occupation for denazification and the arrest and punishment of German war criminals.

The basis of this directive, whose text is to be made public Monday, is understood to be the denazification law of the American zone.

The adoption of a similar code for all four zones would have the effect of setting up uniform procedure throughout Germany for future war crimes trials even on a zonal basis. It would mean also that in any future prosecution of the three defendants acquitted at Nuernberg – Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche – uniform rules would apply in all four zones, depriving them of a choice of any “lenient” zone.

The American zone’s denazification law provides maximum penalties of 10 years confinement, confiscation of all property and permanent disbarment from public office of persons judged “major offenders.”

The coordinating committee also adopted another directive establishing rules for the German press and politicians designed to “stop destructive criticism against the occupying powers.”

1086

Editorial: Not yet safe

Although acquitted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuernberg, Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche will be lucky indeed if they escape being heavily punished by the German people acting through German courts under German law.

The nature of the final charges to be filed is not yet entirely clear, but German officials in the American zone have announced that they would like to try Papen as a traitor and that Schacht and Fritzsche will be tried at least for having been “leading Nazis.” All three thus face the prospect of severe penalties – possibly even death, should the Allied Control Council permit the restoration of Germany’s old treason laws.

There appears to be no legal doubt about the right of the German authorities to try these men on certain charges other than those involved in their acquittal at Nuernberg – common conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. If their own people now try them on different grounds, the question of double jeopardy would seem to be irrelevant. In any case, American occupation authorities apparently have taken the view that the future of the three is a matter to be settled by the Germans themselves, as long as they settle it in an orderly fashion under their present laws.

In the proceedings to date, the only step that has been challenged is the arrest of Schacht, the objection to this being that it violates Germany’s denazification law, which provides – by precedent at least – that the accused are not to be taken into custody until convicted after fair trial. Otherwise, there appears to be no serious opposition, among either the Allied occupation authorities or the Germans themselves, to instituting action against the three men.

Accordingly, irrespective of their good fortune at Nuernberg, Schacht, Papen and Fritzsche cannot yet feel safe. One or another of them conceivably may have to pay a traitor’s penalty, or if they are convicted as “leading Nazis” they may be imprisoned for as long as ten years and lose all their property and other rights. Their own countrymen will decide their fate; at the moment it is a fate that promises to be anything but bright.

1087

Sunday Chicago Bee (October 13, 1946)

Editorial: The Nuernberg verdict

The people of the world are now pondering the decision handed down by the International Tribunal at Nuernberg, at which many of Hitler’s gang were sentenced to hang.

We have been told that a lasting precedent has been established in erecting a new cornerstone in international law, namely, that responsible aggressors will be forever held guilty for their maniacal incitations to war.

Many persons who hold that the Nazis were guilty of fomenting the recent World War II, nevertheless are wondering if the power nation victors were on solid moral grounds in holding the visible Nazi leaders, alone, culpable.

Their contention centered on the fact that elements both in England and the United States colluded in aiding Hitler and his dastardly gangsters to power.

Of course Hitler was aided, and, of course the Nuernberg trial was not wholly a moral issue of right on one side and wrong on the other. This fact is too widely known and too obvious to necessitate a restatement here. For the analogy is the same as when applied to public responsibility for murderers in our own society.

What is of greatest significance is that a precedent in international law has been established in which a nation or its leaders of aggressive war can legally be brought to justice for the crime of war.

In a few specific respects the Nuernberg trial verdict left much to be desired. It was not enough to punish the visible leaders, vandals and known enemies of mankind that they were.

Why was Von Papen, the uncanny diplomat behind-the-scenes, who was a known expansionist advocate, not also given the death penalty? Rather, he was allowed to go free.

Also, why was Hjalmar Schacht, who was recognized by every literate person throughout the world as the financial wizard of Nazi Germany, likewise permitted to go free?

For all of his maniacal gesturing and pathological thinking, Hitler would not have gotten to first base without the expert financing set into motion by Schacht and other invisible collusionists.

The international banking fraternity highly regarded Schacht, and doubtless admired his skillful economic juggling. Worthless marks suddenly became animated with value.

The Nuernberg trial is only a beginning. All active collusionists in promoting aggressive war both within or without guilty nations, ought be brought to justice also. For failure to do so simply would be like eradicating external symptoms of the war disease without doing anything also about wiping out the causative or sparking sources.

The Nuernberg trial, however, must be regarded as a beginning toward applying a moral basis to international law specifically dealing with war. With all of its imperfections, that beginning is therefore of monumental significance.

1088

Wiener Kurier (October 14, 1946)

Präsident Truman: „Die Menschheit wird sich lange an Nürnberg erinnern“

Washington (AND.) - Als das „Aufspüren einer neuen frischen Fährte in der internationalen Justiz“ bezeichnete Präsident Truman am Samstag den jetzt abgeschlossenen Kriegsverbrecherprozeß in Nürnberg, der lange in der Erinnerung der Menschheit wach bleiben werde.

Der Präsident machte diese Feststellung in einem an Richter John J. Parker gerichteten Brief, mit dem er dessen Rücktritt als amerikanischer Richter beim Internationalen Militärgerichtshof annahm. Parker wird auf seinen Posten im amerikanischen Justizdienst zurückkehren.

In dem erwähnten Schreiben stellte Präsident Truman unter anderem fest: „Der Nürnberger Prozeß wird lange in der Erinnerung wach bleiben. Bei dem Aufspüren dieser neuen frischen Fährte in der internationalen Justiz hatten Sie einen hervorragenden Anteil.“

Hauptkriegsverbrecher über Ablehnung der Gnadengesuche nicht überrascht

Nürnberg (WK.) - Göring und die anderen verurteilten Nürnberger Angeklagten nahmen die Mitteilung über die Ablehnung ihrer Gnadengesuche durch den Alliierten Kontrollrat mit der „üblichen stoischen Ruhe“ auf, wie ein Sprecher des Nürnberger Gefängnisses erklärte. Die Entscheidung des Alliierten Kontrollrates hat die Verurteilten in keiner Weise überrascht, da ihnen bereits vorher inoffiziell mitgeteilt wurde, daß der Kontrollrat eine Änderung der Urteile nicht beabsichtige.

Der Alliierte Kontrollrat machte gestern die letzten Hoffnungen der Nazikriegsverbrecher zunichte, die darin bestanden, bei der Hinrichtung photographiert zu werden und so dem Volk den Eindruck von Märtyrern zu vermitteln. Die Exekution wird zwar gefilmt, doch dienen die Aufnahmen lediglich für „historische und statistische Zwecke“, sie werden der Öffentlichkeit nicht zugänglich sein.

Ribbentrop ist am stärksten niedergedrückt

Die Kriegsverbrecher, deren Schicksal sich übermorgen erfüllt, verbringen ihre letzten Tage hauptsächlich mit Lektüre von Büchern. Joachim von Ribbentrop, der gestern weinte, als er sich von seiner Frau verabschiedete, ist von allen am meisten niedergedrückt. Auch Jodl hat bereits Abschied genommen. „In seinen Augen war keine Träne zu sehen“, erklärte ein Gefängnisbeamter, „aber Frau Jodl weinte schweigend vor sich hin.“

Alfred Rosenberg schreitet, vor sich hinbrütend, in seiner Zelle auf und ab und weist allen religiösen Trost zurück. Hans Frank, der sich im Gefängnis zum Katholizismus bekehrte, ist im Gebet versunken.

1089

Papen: „Die Österreicher muß man mit Weihrauch kirre machen!“

Frühere deutsche Gesandtschaft in Wien war getarnte Nazizentrale

Wien (Eigenbericht) - Ein ehemaliger Angestellter der deutschen Gesandtschaft in Wien, der während der Zeit der Amtstätigkeit Franz von Papens in der Metternichgasse beschäftigt war, berichtete einem Vertreter des „Wiener Kurier“ über seine persönlichen Erfahrungen, die er mit jenem berüchtigten Diplomaten machte, dessen Auslieferung bekanntlich von der österreichischen Regierung verlangt wird.

Unmittelbar nach seinem Amtsantritt legte Papen den größten Wert darauf, möglichst oft in der Kirche gesehen zu werden und veranlaßte auch seine Umgebung, soweit sie Katholiken waren, das gleiche zu tun. „Die Österreicher muß man mit Weihrauch kirre machen“, war eine Äußerung, die er in engste Kreise machte und die damals in der Gesandtschaft vielbesprochen wurde.

Heuchelei auf allen Gebieten

Aber auch sonst zeigte sich Papen gegenüber seinen Angestellten und allem, die mit ihm je zu tun hatten, als Meister der Heuchelei. Besonders gegenüber den Österreichern bemühte er sich, möglichst zuvorkommend und liebenswürdig zu sein, aber jeden Augenblick wurde eine abfällige Äußerung bekannt, die er zu seiner reichsdeutschen Umgebung über die Österreicher machte.

Unter seiner Amtsführung wurde die deutsche Gesandtschaft zu einer, wenn auch sorgfältig getarnten Unterstützungszentrale für die österreichischen Nationalsozialisten. Die Paßstelle sah es als vordringlichste Aufgabe an, von der Polizei gesuchte Nationalsozialisten mit falschen Papieren zu versorgen und ihre Flucht nach Deutschland zu bewerkstelligen.

Zur besseren Tarnung hatte die Gesandtschaft mehrere „Außenstellen“, von denen eine der geldlichen Unterstützung von Nationalsozialisten, eine andere der Versorgung mit Propagandamaterial, eine dritte der zur Verfügungstellung von Waffen und Sprengstoffen diente. Papen vermied es freilich ängstlich, mit den in jenen Stellen tätigen Männern in persönlichen Kontakt zu kommen, doch wußte jedermann in der Gesandtschaft, daß alle Fäden in seiner Hand zusammenliefen.

Papen war stets über alle kommenden Aktionen der Nationalsozialisten bestens orientiert. Am Vortage des bekannten Besuches Neuraths in Wien, der bekanntlich stürmische Nazidemonstrationen auslöste, sagte Papen zu seiner Sekretärin: „Morgen müssen Sie sich Watte in die Ohren stopfen, denn bei Neuraths Empfang wird es ein bißchen laut zugehen!“

Papen begrüßte die Dollfuß-Mörder

Unmittelbar nach dem Zusammenbruch machten die aus der Haft entlassenen Juliputschisten unter. Führung Hudels einen Besuch auf der deutschen Gesandtschaft. Papen empfing sie feierlich vor der Freitreppe und geleitete sie in sein Arbeitskabinett. Aus der Tatsache, daß er fast jeden von ihnen erkannte und namentlich ansprach, mußte der Schluß gezogen werden, daß er schon früher mit ihnen in Kontakt gestanden war. Bald nachher verließ er sang- und klanglos Wien. Die Saat, die er durch seine tückische Minierarbeit gestreut hatte, war aufgegangen.

1090

The Wilmington Morning Star (October 14, 1946)

As Pegler Sees It

By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK, Oct. 13 – The quick, nasty response to Senator Taft’s comment on the Nuernberg sentences by members of his own Republican Party, among others, is an example of the punishment that honest men must be brave enough to face when they express unpopular opinions on sensitive subjects. Mr. Taft is a strict constitutionalist. He said we would not teach the German people respect for American principles of justice “by trying men for crimes which were not crimes when they were committed, contrary to all the principles of our law which outlaws ex post facto condemnation.” A few days later he erred in remarking that it were better to have sentenced to life imprisonment the men who were condemned to death but that seems to have been an off-hand response in a debate. It was not a fatal error, however, for often in our justice we reduce the death sentence to life so that the convicted person may live to enjoy the benefit of a doubt or complete vindication.

Senator Taft expressed no sympathy for the convicted Nazis. He expressed only a strong devotion to the American system of justice. He did not even yield to the temptation to point out that if the improvised Nuernberg legal principles and processes were correct, then Stalin, Molotov and the rest of the Soviet rulers should have been placed on trial in the same dock with the Nazis for their unprovoked wars of aggression and conquest against Finland and Poland, the latter invasion and partition committed in concert with Hitler.

Taft took his stand on the American constitution and American law against a departure which, once adopted in our internal justice, would expose every citizen to the peril of punishment, even unto death, for thinking unkindly of the President.

Yet, in New York, Governor Dewey and Irving M. Ives, Republican candidates for governor and United States senator, immediately repudiated Taft, who is Dewey’s principal rival at this moment for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948.

They issued a joint statement in which they said: “No one can have any sympathy for these Nazi leaders who brought such agony upon the world.”

That was campaign stuff, addressed to the New York vote and no compliment to intelligent voters who discriminate between emotional propaganda and reason. It took no courage in Dewey and Ives to say this but Taft showed courage for he knew he would be falsely accused of pleading for the Nazis and condoning their acts.

Without mentioning Taft or his remarks, this statement by inuendo, accused him of sympathizing with the convicted men.

In the manner of Senator Bilbo, of Mississippi, the Democratic state campaign manager in New York challenged Taft “to come into this state and repeat his plea for the lives of the Nazi war criminals.”

The suggestion here is that Taft might be denied a fair hearing or even mobbed if he were to present to a New York audience a reasoned argument against a group execution which he regards as a lynching. Again he is accused of pleading for the lives of the condemned nazis when he has expressed no concern whatever for these individuals but has stood out, conspicuous and momentarily, almost alone, for law and justice according to the American way.

By a freak of the new journalism which elaborately favors those who speak for groups hospitable to Stalinism, Jack Kroll, the director of the political action committee of the CIO, was given space to say that Taft had defended the “Nazi murderers.” This was so outrageously false that any desk would have been justified in spiking the story even if Kroll had been sufficiently important politically to deserve a voice in the chorus.

Herbert H. Lehman, the candidate of the Democrats and the Communists, said all right thinking and fair-minded Americans would repudiate Taft’s views. So they might, but in doing so they might also abandon their own right to trial before impartial courts and the protection of their liberties which lies behind the principle that only those acts are criminal which are forbidden by law at the time of their commission. Mr. Lehman did not advocate this change in our system of justice, but it would be as fair to say that he did as it was on Lehman’s own part to say that Taft and all who agree with him think wrong and are unfair. He takes great virtue to himself here.

Mass murder by sovereign governments within their own boundaries is not a crime by any mundane law. There never was any body of law whereby one government or group of nations had authority to try the government of another for acts of internal administration. Even in our own country until recently in some states, a man had a right to beat his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb. Government has violated the privacy of the home to abolish this administrative right, still highly regarded by some, but the husband was immune from punishment as long as the legal right existed, whatever the neighbors may have thought of the practice. But if mass murder by a government is recognized by other governments as a crime, did that recognition occur after or before the slaughter of the moderate Russians by the Bolsheviks and the massacres of millions by managed famine?

Taft surely will lose his appeal for observance of American legal principles. Those Nazis are doomed and the American concept comes out of the experience cut and bruised, at best. He may lose the nomination and the presidency. But it would have been better for the American people if those who attacked him had had the honesty and moral courage to meet him on the issue, resisting the temptation to cultivate votes by imputing to him a personal sympathy for individuals whom he detests no less ardently than they.

1091

The Evening Star (October 14, 1946)

Streicher urges doomed Nazis to be brave in last 48 hours

NUERNBERG (AP) – Julius Streicher, Jew-baiter No. 1 of the Nazi regime, today urged his condemned associates to be “brave and strong” in their last 48 hours of life.

Streicher, once gauleiter of this Nuernberg area, will hang, too, on Wednesday, but he is seemingly untouched by impending doom.

This morning the little man, who openly advocated extermination of Jews, told a prison psychologist to be sure to import his message to the other 10 who will die with him: “They must not be low, but must be brave and strong.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop’s mind reverted to his wartime experiences as Hitler’s foreign minister as he bent under the strain of waiting for death.

Now gray and tired, the once dapper Ribbentrop in conversations with doctors and other prison officials recalled the time he read to British Ambassador Neville Henderson the declaration that Germany was at war and had moved into Poland. He read it at lightning speed, a factor the British complained about at the time and later brought out during the trial Ribbentrop said he would do the same thing again but did not elaborate.

He also talks frequently now about Germany quitting the League of Nations and said he struggled with Hitler about that, but could not convince the Fuehrer it was wrong to quit the Geneva body.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel’s spirits picked up over the week end after he received two letters from his wife, who lives in the British zone.

None of the condemned has been told as yet exactly when he will hang.

Religious solace was administered by chaplains yesterday in the death cells of nine of the condemned Nazis who face execution Wednesday, but was refused by Streicher and Alfred Rosenberg, who preferred to spend their final Sabbath reading books.

Confessions from the Catholic members of the condemned group were heard by the Rev. Sixtus O’Connor. The remainder of the 18 Germans sentenced to hang or to serve prison terms were visited by the Rev. H. P. Gerecke, German Lutheran clergyman, who read prayers to them.

The convicted Nazis were told officially yesterday that the Allied Control Council, their last court of resort, had denied their appeals for clemency, or – in some cases – for death by the firing squad instead of hanging. The prisoners, most of whom had heard the news previously from their wives, took it stoically.

Capt. Sam Binder, a prison security officer, said that as yet no gallows had been erected within the prison confines for the execution of Streicher, Rosenberg, Hermann Goering, Von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Fritz Sauckel, Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.

Capt. Binder said prison medical authorities had certified to the good health of all the condemned men.

1092

lawrence

Lawrence: Security still depends on military strength

Patterson speech explained peril of U.S. disarming now
By David Lawrence

American cabinet officers are beginning to call a spade a spade in world affairs. Perhaps the most forthright speech since the Nuernberg trial that has come from any source is that which has just been delivered by Secretary of War Patterson before the American Federation of Labor.

The address follows somewhat the same reasoning as that of Justice Jackson. While there is not a single mention of the Soviets, the reader is able to see plainly the thesis – that as long as totalitarianism and suppression of civil liberties is a national policy anywhere in the world among powerful nations, America cannot effort to demobilize completely.

“This country,” said Mr. Patterson, “cannot safely disarm while other nations maintain powerful forces. Military weakness has never led to peace. Running away in the face of aggression has never prevented involvement in war. We have tried weakness; we have tried appeasement; and we have been thrust into war after war.”

The secretary then referred to that “lasting significance in the punishment of the leaders who launched a powerful nation on a war of aggression.” He added that the Nuernberg trial “marks the end of the doctrine that in cases of war guilt, the higher-ups, the people who have set in motion the machinery to plunge the world into war, should not be touched.”

Nazis suppressed liberty

Nothing could be plainer than the implications of that statement to all other countries where the seeds of aggressive war may be sown by totalitarian governments. On this point, Mr. Patterson, again without mentioning any country, says:

“There is a deeper significance. It was clearly brought out at the trial that those Nazi leaders could not have carried their plan forward if they had not first suppressed liberty in their own land. Their first step was to put down freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which meant that Germans received only such information as the conspirators saw fit to let them have. They knew full well that only by control of information or misinformation could they bring their people to support a war program. In no nation, not even in Germany, do the mass of the people want war, unless they have been persuaded that someone has done them a great injury or is about to attack them. The Nazi leaders were able to sell the German people on war by tall tales of the Czechs attacking Germans, the Poles attacking Germans – lies that would not have been believed if there had been a free press in Germany.

“In the long run, the greatest measure in prevention of war will be the spread of free speech and free press throughout the world. When men are at liberty to give and receive information and to take part in discussion, without the hand of the secret police on their shoulders, and without dread of the knock on the door in the night that means the start of the journey to the concentration camp, it will do more than anything else to prevent a ruling group at the top from throwing the manpower and the resources of a great nation into aggressive warfare.

Must rely on readiness

“When that time comes, and I am confident that it will come, we need have no great concern about involvement in war. It is not yet at hand, however, and in the meantime we must rely on our own readiness and resources.

“The United Nations, which means a world organized for peace, offers us a concrete program for relief from recurrence of war. If it is firmly supported by the great powers, the chances are bright that we will see no more wholesale slaughter. But until we can be sure that the necessary support will be forthcoming, it stands to reason that we must look to our own defenses for our security. When all is said and done, it is our ability to protect ourselves that counts in a world that still talks in terms of planes, tanks and guns.

“I cannot lay. too much stress on the importance of showing to the world, friend or foe, the readiness of the United States to defend itself. In the present day and age, that readiness is the most effective guaranty of peace that can be devised. No foreign power, no combination of powers, will go to war with the United States or will follow policies that involve the risk of war with us, if they look us over and conclude that their prospects of success in a fight with us are not good.”

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The Nome Nugget (October 14, 1946)

Editorial: The Nuernberg verdict is a beginning

(The Denver Post)

There was no surprise, only sober satisfaction, in the death sentences awarded the fallen masters of Europe. Nor could pity be felt for these craven and haggard men who once sloshed a continent with the blood of innocents. In their lifetimes they have sought to extinguish the commonest principles of humanity; on the gallows they will be dedicated to a strengthening of those principles.

We have not forgotten Warsaw, Lidice and Belsen – but this riddance aims beyond mere retribution. If it were simple punishment of individuals we sought in the war crimes trial, it could have been had swiftly and with no loss of justice. It would not have required ten months and all the elaborate, full-dress procedure of Nuernberg.

Nuernberg was planned not for us of the generation which brought these monsters to justice; it was planned for history. It was designed as an effort to fix firmly the laws of mankind the criminal nature of planning and waging aggressive war.

It is widely argued that such a principle is not sound – that there is no precedent for holding individuals responsible for the crimes of government; that, indeed, there is no substantial basis in international law for holding aggressive war a crime; that the victor will always judge the vanquished regardless of rights and wrongs (thus the “crime” will be weakness, rather than aggression); that, facing the certainty of punishment if defeated, belligerents will go to any lengths of inhumanity to conquer, etc.

There is a weighty measure of truth to this. As basis for judgment, the tribunal noted that Germany was a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928, which promised outlawry of war as an instrument of national policy in the settlement of controversies – but which did not make war a crime. A general body of opinion holds that aggressive war should be considered a crime, but this principle is not to be found in any ratified treaty. The Kellogg-Briand treaty itself, it could be pointed out, has been flouted so repeatedly as to have lost its binding power, if it ever had any.

Justice Robert H. Jackson in a foreword to the book, “The Nuernberg Trial and Aggressive War,” by Sheldon Glueck, argues that even though there may be no legal or customary basis for punishing an aggressor, “our own day has its right to institute customs.” That is a remarkable departure from our traditional principle of law condemning ex post facto punishments.

Legal arguments on these points may go on and on – but little sympathy will be lost on the convicted Nazis. Their lives and freedom are already forfeit on other counts. The severest penalties are theirs on common criminal grounds and do not depend on the aggressive war indictment. Each of the condemned men – with the exception of Rudolf Hess, who escaped with his miserable life – is convicted either of crimes against humanity or of violations of the laws or customs of war. Almost all, in fact, are convicted of both these charges.

And, even though there will be long and learned argument on the legality of the aggressive war convictions, the Nuernberg verdict stands as a starting point for a new conception in the law of nations.

“Planning, preparing, initiating or waging an aggressive war” henceforth is a crime for which a nation and, more important, its individual leaders, may be held answerable. The rulers of the world no longer face only the judgment of the hereafter.

1094

The Waterbury Democrat (October 14, 1946)

Execution plans nil

Nuernberg (UP) – Army authorities intensified the secrecy surrounding the condemned war criminals today, blacking out completely the preparations that presumably were going on for the mass hanging Wednesday.

A battery of public relations officers for the U.S. Army faced a corps of reporters today, less than 48 hours before the scheduled execution, and told them nothing of the plans.

“I don’t know” was the standard answer to the flood of questions.

An especially adamant “spokesman” said no gallows had been erected or was being prepared, that the condemned men had not been notified of the execution date, and that he was not even aware that date had been set.

1095

Wiener Kurier (October 15, 1946)

Morgen in Nürnberg:
Hinrichtungen werden in völliger Abgeschlossenheit vollzogen

Nürnberg (WK.) - Die außerordentlich strengen Geheimhaltungsmaßnahmen, die im Zusammenhang mit den für morgen angesetzten Hinrichtungen in Nürnberg getroffen wurden, sind nur mit denen vergleichbar, die die wichtigsten Geheimsitzungen hoher Politiker während des Krieges umgaben.

Die Korrespondenten sind die einzigen nichtoffiziellen Augenzeugen der Hinrichtungen. Sie werden das Gefängnis in Nürnberg heute abend betreten und erst nach den Exekutionen wieder verlassen.

Die Identität der Augenzeugen der Hinrichtungen darf - mit Ausnahme der der Korrespondenten - nicht bekanntgegeben werden, es sei denn, daß der Alliierte Kontrollrat später die Genehmigung dazu erteilt.

Nach Äußerungen des amerikanischen Gefängnisbeamten Captain Binder ist der Gemütszustand der Verurteilten verhältnismäßig ruhig. Göring und Ribbentrop scheinen recht gut zu schlafen und Keitel, der einen Brief seiner Frau erhielt, war durchaus gefaßt. Auch Sauckel scheint sich etwas beruhigt zu haben und Streicher zeigt ein krankhaftes Interesse dafür, wie sich die anderen zum Tode verurteilten Naziführer in den letzten Tagen verhielten.

Vollkommen resigniert verhält sich Frick, der unbedingt auf den Tag der Hinrichtung wartet. Wie Captain Binder erklärt, ist noch nicht darüber entschieden worden, ob den Gefangenen vor der Hinrichtung besondere Wünsche erfüllt werden können.

Schacht bittet USA-General Clay um Entlassung aus dem Gefängnis

Frankfurt (Reuter) - Wie der amerikanische Nachrichtendienst aus Deutschland meldet, hat der ehemalige Nazi-Finanzsachverständige, Hjalmar Schacht, den stellvertretenden Militärgouverneur der amerikanischen Zone Deutschlands, Generalleutnant Lucius Clay, um seine Entlassung aus dem Stuttgarter Gefängnis ersucht.

1096

The Wilmington Morning Star (October 15, 1946)

Nazis will hang early tomorrow

Army prison officials refuse to divulge execution time or place

NUERNBERG, Germany, Oct. 14 (AP) – Prison officials responsible for the 11 condemned German war leaders said Monday the hangings would take place Wednesday morning, but beyond that refused to confirm or deny that the executions would be in Nuernberg jail.

The condemned men, prison officials said, did not yet know the time of their death. They have been officially informed that their appeals for clemency have been denied by the Allied Control Council.

As was the case with newsmen picked to accompany Allied invasions during the war, the eight correspondents selected to represent the press of the four occupying powers in pooled news coverage of the event were told to be ready to disappear into seclusion some time Tuesday, perhaps in the evening.

They were given no hint as to where they would be taken. Once en route they will not be allowed to contact the outer world until all the eleven condemned are dead. They will be shown the scene of the hangings before they take place, but must await the last death before filing their stories.

Capt. Samuel Binder, spokesman for the United States Security guard said that all the condemned are still in the same cells at Nuernberg jail they have occupied since they were brought here nearly a year ago for trial.

The only photographer at the execution will be a U.S. Army man, who will probably take only stills. His pictures must be approved by the Allied Control Council in Berlin before they are released. The next scheduled meeting of the council is October 21, so far as is known here.

1097

The Evening Star (October 15, 1946)

Condemned Nazis bear up well, eat slim last supper in jail

No announcement of hangings will be made before 11 o’clock tonight, newsmen are told

NUERNBERG, Germany (AP) – The 11 condemned top Nazis, with only hours to live before they meet the hangman, ate their last supper at 5:30 p.m. tonight, a slim meal of cooked porridge, bread and coffee.

Prison authorities said all were bearing up well.

The Nazis are to be hanged sometime tomorrow at a time variously reported, unofficially as anywhere from 12:01 a.m. to dawn at 6:36 a.m. (6:01 p.m. today to 12:36 a.m. tomorrow EST).

Lt. Col. Richard McConnell, press relations officer at the Nuernberg Prison, said there would be no announcement of the execution of Hermann Goering and his 10 companions before 5 a.m. (11 p.m. today EST).

Most prisoners wrote letters during the day. Julius Stretcher’s output of six was the largest. All but Fritz Sauckel received mail.

Regardless of what was taking place within the jail, there was no apparent increase in the number of guards nor any extraordinary display of constabulary power.

The 11 men scheduled to die:

  • Goering, Adolf Hitler’s No. 2 man.
  • Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi foreign minister.
  • Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the high command.
  • Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, German Army chief of staff.
  • Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Nazi security police.
  • Alfred Rosenberg, philosopher of the Nazi Party.
  • Hans Frank, governor general of Poland.
  • Sauckel, Nazi labor boss.
  • Arthur Seyss-Inquart, gauleiter of the Netherlands.
  • Stretcher, the Jew baiter.
  • Wilhelm Frick, “protector” of Bohemia and Moravia.

Col. B. C. Andrus, prison commandant, adhered to an Allied Control Council directive and refuted even to meet reporters, after first promising a briefing of some kind. The eight correspondents representing the United States, Britain, Russia and France who were chosen by lot to be eyewitnesses to the executions were taken into a private conference with several officers.

Unofficial reports circulated that the hangings would start at 12:01 a.m. in the Nuernberg Prison yard.

8 newsmen in conference

During the day 18 letters arrived for Goering. Guards said 15 were “crank” messages, a type of letter withheld from the prisoners.

Keitel asked his guards to give him a short notice before he walks to the gallows so he could “straighten up the cell and leave it neat.” The field marshal has had the neatest cell of all the war criminals throughout his confinement.

All the condemned men except Goering took the regular 10-to-20-minute exercise walks, manacled to prison guards, in the narrow corridor along the cell block.

Goering, one the second ranking German, slumped back in his cell and was alone throughout the day except for his watchful guard. He flatly refused the exercise period.

Reports that the hangings will begin at one minute past midnight tonight were given credence by an American officer, a Russian colonel and several prison employees.

There has been no information given out concerning the arrangements for the hangings, but if they are to be completed within three hours this probably will mean that more than one scaffold and more than one hangman will be employed.

Briefing officers told correspond ents at the regular morning news conference that they had been forbidden to answer any questions concerning the time of the execution or the details of any arrangements for burial.

The only information they would disclose concerned the reactions of the convicted men.

With their last hours of life swiftly running out, 10 of the condemned men – their last appeals having been denied – turned to religion today for solace.

Only Rosenberg refused to see a chaplain or study the Bible. All the others talked at length about theft faith in God. Kaltenbrunner received communion this morning and the others were expected to receive it later in the day.

Goering scorns death

Goering told prison doctors he had no fear of death and said he intended to try and show dignity until the very last moment. Jodl, one of five Catholics in the group, said it was fundamental that every religion must be based on love.

Frank talked at length about a visit he made to Rome with Hitler and Rudolf Hess and of how he tried in vain to get Hitler and Hess to visit St. Peter’s. Seyss-Inquart was said to be very serious and calm, since he had expected the death penalty all along.

Sauckel was reported quieter than he had been earlier and more resigned to his fate, although he still expressed belief there had been errors in the finding of the International Military Tribunal which found him guilty.

Keitel, who has displayed stoic calm since he was sentenced, remained quiet and serious. He spoke at great length about the courage of his wife and of how she was taking his fate.

Capt. Sam Binder of the prison security detail said the doomed men had not yet been informed of the time they were to die. He said there would be no previous announcement to the press on the place and time of the executions, on the details of the burials or on the time of departure and arrival at destination of the seven men given prison terms.

Capt. Binder said none of the men had made any major complaints about the treatment accorded them, although Frick and Rosenberg protested the regulation which required them to sleep with their hands outside their blankets.

Ribbentrop was the only one reported to have had a bad night last night. He was said to be suffering a headache as the result of lack of sleep.

Capt. Binder said none of the condemned had made any last-minute requests – such as for a special meal or for final visits with their wives or families.

1098

Uniform denazification law is promulgated

BERLIN (AP) – Uniform law to punish war crimes and root out Nazism, decreeing death for some offenders, will blanket all Germany under a new directive of the Allied Control Council’s Coordinating Committee.

The directive, promulgated yesterday, sets up a common policy for “the punishment of war criminals, Nazis, militarists” and pro-Nazi industrialists: “The complete and lasting destruction of Naziism and militarism,” and the internment or surveillance of Germans considered dangerous to Allied purposes.

Rules follow earlier law

The military commanders of the respective occupation zones – American, British, French and Russian – who themselves make up the Control Council, are to put the directive into effect.

The rules follow generally the principles of the denazification law effective in the American zone since last June. Their promulgation was held up till after the International Military Tribunal handed down its Nuernberg judgment.

The number of Germans who might be penalized under the directive was uncertain. Nazi Party members in all Germany, subject to fines, have been estimated at 7.500,000. Theodore E. Hall of Wilmette, Illinois, deputy chief of public safety in the American military government, said 300,000 Germans, excluding such “followers,” probably were chargeable in the American zone.

Under the directive, the five main classes of war criminals and potentially dangerous persons and possible sanctions are:

  • Major offenders: If guilty of a war crime, imprisonment for from five to 15 years or for life, or the death penalty; otherwise, imprisonment up to 10 years; other possible sanctions include confiscation of property a bar to officeholding and blacklisting from any work but common labor.

  • Offenders (“Nazi activists, militarists and profiteers”): Imprisonment up to 10 years and other sanctions.

  • Lesser offenders: Two years’ probation or longer .and other sanctions.

  • Followers (Nazi Party members): Fines, periodical reports to police and a bar, to officeholding without loss of the vote.

  • Suspects whom a tribunal finds innocent.

Mr. Hall said the 403 German denazification tribunals in the American zone had handled 54,000 cases, but that unless a fourth more courts were set up nearly two years might be needed for total denazification.

1099

Nuernberg sentence protest by Taft hit in G.W. radio forum

Sen. Brewster (R-Maine) said last night that Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) has more courage “than any one in Washington and less political sense than anyone except President Truman.”

The Maine senator was referring to the recent protest of his colleague against the Nuernberg trial death sentences, an item which had just been tossed into the discussion at a radio forum on the coming congressional elections in George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium.

Others in the forum panel were Rep. Priest (D-Tennessee); John O’Donnell, columnist of the Washington Times Herald and the New York Daily News, and Clark Foreman, secretary of the National Citizens’ Political Action Committee (PAC).

Robert Nathan, chairman of the American Veterans’ Committee, Washington chapter, was interlocutor.

Sen. Brewster countered a charge by Mr. Foreman that the Republicans were responsible for the kind of price control legislation passed by Congress by saying: “If the Republicans are responsible for the present conditions, let’s elect the Democrats to the minority and make them responsible.”

Mr. Priest quoted Hamlet to advise the students to “rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”

When Mr. Priest said the Democratic Party was big enough to contain Henry Wallace, Mr. O’Donnell countered that “you are making the party a Mother Hubbard, covering everything and canceling nothing.”

Students filed up to ask questions at the end of the panel discussion. Irving Rosensweig asked what was the basic difference between conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats. Mary McCue asked what the Democratic Party was going to do about the veto in the United Nations “which we feel is making it unworkable.”

1100

The Waterbury Democrat (October 15, 1946)

11 Nazis to go to gallows tonight

Hitler’s henchmen may be hanged at midnight

Nuernberg (UP) – Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop and nine more of Nazidom’s top war criminals neared the end of the road today, and by all signs will begin their march to the gallows at midnight (6 p.m. EST).

All of the condemned Nazis save one – Alfred Rosenberg, the chief Nazi ideologist – were reported reading the Bible and seeking spiritual solace as their last hours ticked away.

The twilight of the self-aggrandized Nazi “gods” found them obscured by a curtain of military secrecy comparable to that flung over the greatest events of the war.

May last three hours

Glimmers of information through the official fog indicated that the execution of Adolf Hitler’s 11 henchmen would begin at midnight and last three hours, and that the bodies would be buried secretly or perhaps cremated – how, when or where no one would say.

Officials said that the Nazis did not know officially that this was their last day before they were to pay on the scaffold for the millions of deaths they were convicted of causing in their ruthless quest for world domination.

But they must have known that the time was near when the judgment of the four-power tribunal was to be executed.

A prison spokesman said Goering, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank and Arthur Seyss-Inquart all spoke of religion when the German prison doctor saw them this morning.

Seek religious solace

To a man they were reading the Bible, the doctor said, except for Rosenberg.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, hatchet man in the Gestapo for Heinrich Himmler, had communion in his cell. Frank told the doctor how he remembered the beauty of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, and how he once tried without success to get Hitler and Rudolph Hess to visit it with him.

Goering had his own thoughts on his mind, and said he was trying to keep what he called his dignity until the end. He didn’t sleep well last night.

Jodl remarked that basically religion must be love. Frick said “I hope we won’t have to wait long.” Seyss-Inquart’s thoughts were on deep, complicated theological matters.

Keitel firm to end

Wilhelm Keitel, the military man to the last, said the execution was harder on his family than himself. Fritz Sauckel, boss of the Nazi slave labor, was reported reading fairy tales along with his biblical research. Frank was engrossed in a long poem called “Holy Night” by Ludwig Thoma.

Rosenberg, scorning the Bible and reiterating his convictions of atheism, was reading a German novel called “The Violin.”

Both Rosenberg and Frick, irritable and pettish, complained about prison regulations requiring them to keep their hands outside the blankets when they slept. It is colder here this week.

Silent on gallows report

For the last week a spokesman at the prison has been telling correspondents that there was no gallows erected in the jail. Today he refused to answer whether there was or was not.

The report that the executions would be completed in about three hours gave rise to speculation that two separate gallows might be used. That would give about 15 minutes to each hanging.

According to this unconfirmed speculation, one of the gallows would be made ready while the other was in use, thus speeding up the overall process.

Reports persisted, although officials would not confirm them, that Master Sgt. John C. Woods of San Antonio, Tex., a hangman with wide experience in and out of the Army, was here to do the job to which he once was reported to have said he looked forward as the crowning event of a long career.

Used mobile gallows

Woods was in Landsberg, near Munich, Monday morning. But a check there failed to turn up any word about him today. He and two helpers hanged 38 Dachau war criminals recently at Landsberg, using two prefabricated mobile gallows.

A prison spokesman listened today to correspondents’ questions, and to most of them said that he could not answer because the Allied Control Council in Berlin had sealed his lips just like they would if the occasion were a big invasion operation or secret mission against an enemy likely to strike back if he knows your plans.

A press conference with Col. Burton C. Andrus, prison commandant, was scheduled for later today.

Some correspondents expected him at that time to tell the eight correspondents covering the executions for the world press to get ready.

The eight will be briefed before the executions. They will disappear from public circulation, even as correspondents did during the war when they were assigned to secret operations, and will be heard from no more until the last Nazi is hanged.

Forbidden to inspect prison

Prison officials blocked all efforts by correspondents to inspect the prison, even with a military escort. But today atop the Palace of Justice roof where they could look down into the prison courtyard were several German workmen busy at jobs.

What they see could not be told yet. They were not allowed to say. For this event, Nuernberg was overlaid with the drabbest kind of atmosphere. Correspondents were tense and on edge, but early scrutiny failed to show anyone else in a like condition. The Germans to be seen on the streets were blank of face.

About 1,000 persons still were attached to the Palace of Justice, mostly Americans, but the booted Russians, the elegant British lawyers, the serious Americans of the trial’s officialdom were gone.

About 50 American correspondents were in the ugly castle used as press headquarters. The walls of the Nuernberg courtroom were being peeled, cleaned and whitewashed.

1101

Hermann Goering dead

nuernberg,goering.dead