The Nuremberg Trial

[NormanStewart]

Wiener Kurier (October 21, 1946)

Hitlers Justizminister kommt vor Gericht

Prozeß gegen Dr. Thierack im Dezember in Nürnberg

Nürnberg (WK.) - Wie gestern bekannt wurde, fanden in der letzten Zeit ausführliche Verhöre mit Hitlers Justizminister Dr. Thierack statt. Dieser Mann, der in erster Linie für die Todesurteile gegen mehr als 100 Teilnehmer an der Verschwörung gegen Hitler im Juli 1944 verantwortlich war, wird einer der wichtigsten Angeklagten in dem Verfahren gegen die Volksgerichtshöfe sein. Wahrscheinlich wird die Verhandlung gegen Thierack in Nürnberg im Laufe des Dezembers stattfinden.

Der ehemalige Justizfunktionär, der vollständig unter dem Einfluß der Gestapo stand und ohne Rücksicht auf das vorliegende Beweismaterial auf Hitlers Wunsch bereitwilligst Todesurteile Unterzeichnete, wird als Symbol dieses ganzen Systems abgeurteilt werden.

Die alliierten Anklagevertreter haben die Absicht, in dem Prozeß gegen Thierack die Vorsitzenden mehrerer Gerichtshöfe, den ehemaligen Chef der Reichskanzlei Lammers, den früheren Staatsminister Dr. Meißner und den letzten Außenminister Schwerin-Krosigk als Zeugen einzuvernehmen.

Aufklärung über Görings Selbstmord wird für morgen erwartet

Der Alliierte Kontrollrat gab bekannt, daß die rätselhaften Zusammenhänge um Görings Selbstmord gelöst sind. Oberst Burton Andrus, der Kommandant des Nürnberger Gefängnisses, erklärte, das Ergebnis der Nachforschungen werde bekanntgegeben, sobald die notwendigen Laboratoriumsarbeiten beendet seien. Die Arbeiten würden voraussichtlich morgen abgeschlossen sein.

Oberst Andrus gab noch bekannt, daß sich 174 deutsche Kriegsverbrecher gegenwärtig im Nürnberger Gefängnis befänden, darunter mehrere Generaloberste und andere hohe Führer der ehemaligen deutschen Wehrmacht.

Briten verhaften weitere Naziverbrecher

Herford (UP.) - In einem geheimen Lager irgendwo in der britischen Zone sind zahlreiche deutsche Wehrmacht- und Marineoffiziere sowie V-Waffen-Fachleute hinter Stacheldraht, die diese Woche durch eine Spezialkommission verhört wurden, um festzustellen, welche von ihnen für den bevorstehenden „britischen Nürnberg-Prozeß“ in Frage kommen.

Unter den zuletzt Festgenommenen befinden sich: Heinz Goedecke, Goebbels Hauptkommentator, weiters Dr. Martin und Doktor Schade, die beide an den Gaskammerexperimenten beteiligt waren, ferner Hauptsturmführer Erich Schröck, der Mitarbeiter Rosenbergs und Ribbentrops, SS-Brigadeführer und früherer Chef der Innsbrucker Polizei Schlabitz.

Papen verlangt amerikanischen Schutz

Nürnberg (INS.) - Papen machte gestern dem Kommandanten des Nürnberger Gefängnisses, Oberst Andrus, die Mitteilung, daß er des Lebens im Gefängnis überdrüssig sei und bat, ihm ein Haus in Nürnberg zur Verfügung zu stellen.

In diesem Zusammenhang ersuchte er auch m amerikanische Militärwachen, die ihn vor einer Verhaftung durch die deutschen Behörden schützen sollten.

[NormanStewart]

The Wilmington Morning Star (October 21, 1946)

Board of inquiry reports today on Goering ‘fade-out’

NUERNBERG, Germany, Oct. 20 (UP) – A three-man board of inquiry into the suicide of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering is expected to report Tuesday night to the Allied commission in charge of the execution of the Nuernberg war criminals, it was understood Sunday.

The board of inquiry is now awaiting a laboratory report on evidence connected with Goering’s suicide and is due to receive it Tuesday morning.

The Allied Control Council in Berlin meets Monday and may at that time have a preliminary report on the means by which Goering obtained the poison which enabled him to kill himself and how he did it.

It was expected that the council also would examine official photographs of the 10 executed Nazis, taken after death, and would decide whether they should be published.

[NormanStewart]

The Evening Star (October 21, 1946)

Von Papen refused permit to enter British zone

BERLIN (AP) – An official American spokesman said today the British had refused Franz von Papen a permit to enter the British zone.

Von Papen has been residing in the Nuernberg jail, at which 10 of his associates were hanged last week. The International Military Tribunal acquitted him of war crimes charges.

Hjalmar Schacht and Hans Fritzsche, also acquitted, and Von Papen all have been refused entry into the British and French zones. None has requested entry into the Russian zone. German officials in the American zone have vowed to take denazification proceedings against all if they remain and have, in fact, arrested Schacht.

[NormanStewart]

Hess stages comeback after escaping noose

NUERNBERG (AP) – Col. B. C. Andrus, American commandant of Nuernberg Prison, said today that Rudolf Hess, no longer in the shadow of the gallows, has staged a remarkable recovery from the loss of memory of which he complained during his trial.

Hitler’s former deputy fuehrer, now serving a life term for war crimes, “is in a good humor and has a keen, alert memory,” said Col. Andrus.

Hess is listed as “Convict 125.”

[NormanStewart]

Clark sees executions as warning to aggressors

By the Associated Press

Attorney General Clark said yesterday the Nuernberg trial establishes “forever the solemn judgment that the waging of aggressive war is the supreme crime.”

The conviction of top Nazi officials, Mr. Clark said, “lays down the commandment that responsible officers of government accused of the supreme crime are individually responsible and will be held accountable to law.”

He added that the “great achievement of the judgment of Nuernberg” is this: “That the determining nations of this earth have united to proclaim aggressive war as the supreme crime and that in so doing they have repudiated the age-old terror in the hearts of people that resort to war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft.”

[NormanStewart]

Wiener Kurier (October 22, 1946)

Warum Selbstmord Görings verspätet veröffentlicht wurde

Antwort des Alliierten Kontrollrates auf eine Anfrage des USA-Kriegsministeriums

Nürnberg (INS.) - Das Kriegsministerium der Vereinigten Staaten forderte gestern vom Alliierten Kontrollrat für Deutschland eine Erklärung über den Grund der verzögerten Bekanntgabe des Selbstmordes Görings und der erfolgten Hinrichtung der anderen zehn Hauptkriegsverbrecher.

Das Ersuchen des amerikanischen Kriegsministeriums wurde durch den Leiter des amerikanischen Nachrichtendienstes, Oberstleutnant Richard McConnell, bekanntgegeben.

In der Antwortnote an das Kriegsministerium wird als Ursache der verzögerten Bekanntmachung dieser Vorgänge während der letzten Stunden der nazistischen Hauptkriegsverbrecher angegeben, daß sich der Alliierte Kontrollrat aus „Sicherheitsgründen“ entschlossen habe, alle Nachrichten bis 16. Oktober, 6 Uhr, zurückzuhalten.

Das amerikanische Kriegsministerium hatte vor allem gerügt, daß der Selbstmord Görings, der am 15. Oktober um 22,45 Uhr erfolgte, erst nach mehr als sieben Stunden veröffentlicht wurde. Außerdem habe die Erklärung des französischen Generalmajors Morell im Presseraum von Nürnberg, daß alle „elf Kriegsverbrecher hingerichtet wurden“, ohne den Selbstmord Görings zu erwähnen, völlige Verwirrung in der Öffentlichkeit gestiftet.

Hitlers Leibarzt erleidet Schlaganfall und „Bilder-Hoffmann“ kommt vor Gericht

Nürnberg (WK.) - Professor Wilhelm Morrell, Hitlers Leibarzt, erlitt einen Schlaganfall, durch den sein rechter Arm teilweise gelähmt wurde. Morrell soll im Laufe der Verfahren gegen eine Reihe von Ärzten, die in den Konzentrationslagern ihre berüchtigten Experimente durchführten, abgeurteilt werden. Man nimmt an, daß dieser Prozeß eine Reihe von bisher unbekannten Tatsachen aus Hitlers Leben enthüllen wird.

Die Verhandlungen gegen die Ärzte sollen am 15. November beginnen. Vorher kommen die Funktionäre der deutschen Volksgerichtshöfe zur Aburteilung und nachher werden die Prozesse gegen die Rüstungsmagnaten durchgeführt werden.

Der erste Anklagevertreter der deutschen Spruchkammer zur Aburteilung aktiver Nazi, Bernhard Müller, teilte gestern mit, daß die Spruchkammer gegenwärtig die Verhandlungsgrundlagen für den Prozeß gegen Hitlers Leibphotographen Heinrich Hoffmann ausarbeitet.

Holtmann war bisher von dem internationalen Militärgerichtshof beschäftigt und wurde vorgestern abend entlassen. Er befindet sich jetzt gegen Ehrenwort, in Nürnberg zu bleiben, auf freiem Fuß.

Schacht, Papen und Fritzsche dürfen nicht in die britische Zone

Wie die Agentur DANA meldet, haben die britischen Behörden Schacht, von Papen und Fritzsche die Erlaubnis verweigert, sich in die britische Besatzungszone zu begeben.

Der Nürnberger Gefängniskommandant Oberst Andrus gab gestern bekannt, daß er das Ansuchen Papens auf Zuteilung eines Hauses, in dem er bequemer leben könnte, abgewiesen habe.

[NormanStewart]

Die Stimme AMERIKAS

Neue Welt durch Menschlichkeit

„New York Times“: „Der letzte Akt des Nürnberger Dramas ist zu Ende. Elf Männer, die Millionen ihrer Mitmenschen auf dem Gewissen haben, mußten nun selbst den gleichen Weg gehen, elf Männer, die Europa durch die Ermordung vieler Unschuldiger in Schrecken und Grauen versetzten, sind nun selbst ausgelöscht und ihre Asche ist in alle Winde zerstreut worden. Jeder, der auch nur über geringe Vorstellungskraft verfügt, wird imstande sein, sich die Gefühle ihrer letzten Minuten zu vergegenwärtigen. Laßt uns aber daran denken, daß die Herzen und Seelen dieser Männer schon lange tot waren, lange bevor die Finsternis jenes frühen Mittwochmorgens über sie kam, lange bevor sie verurteilt wurden, lange vor ihrer Niederlage. Was in ihnen menschlich war, starb in den Tagen ihres Triumphes - starb unter dem Marschtritt der großen Paraden, im Donner der „Sieg-Heil“-Rufe, unter den flatternden Fahnen. Alles, was den Menschen über das Tier erhebt, hatten sie in sich abgetötet, das Mitleid, den Glauben, den Gerechtigkeitssinn, Ehre und Wahrheit; aber sie konnten diese Gefühle in der Menschheit nicht ersticken. Aus den Scharen ihrer zu Tode gequälten Opfer erhöben sich die Stimmen und Kräfte, die ihrer Herrschaft schließlich ein Ende bereiteten.

Dem Gesetz ist Genüge geschehen. Die Welt wendet sich von dem letzten. Akt des traurigen Schauspiels ab, in dem die Menschheit diese Verbrecher wider die Menschlichkeit endgültig aus ihren Reihen ausmerzte. Möge sie niemals die Schwäche der zivilisierten menschlichen Natur vergessen, und immer daran danken, wie leicht sie unter gewissen Umständen ausarten und unmenschlich werden kann. Wir müssen unsere ganze Kraft auf die Bildung einer menschlichen Gesellschaft richten, in der solche Elemente rechtzeitig erkannt und in den ersten Anfangsstadien ihrer Entwicklung gehemmt werden können.

Wir können dabei nicht auf Haß aufbauen. Es ist das wesentlichste Merkmal der Freiheit, daß sie im Bannkreis seiner alles zerstörenden Kraft nicht gedeihen kann. Die Gerechtigkeit muß ihren Lauf nehmen, sie wird alle Schuldigen in Deutschland und Japan erreichen. Aufbauen aber können wir nur auf Glauben und Nächstenliebe; wir können des Menschenunwürdigen und Untermenschlichen nur Herr werden, wenn wir humaner, wenn wir menschlicher denken lernen. Und diese große Aufgabe muß das nächste Ziel der Menschheit sein.

In der Asche liegt keine Schuld: Ob sie von Unschuldigen oder Schuldigen, ob sie von unvorstellbar verbrecherischen Menschen stammt, sie besteht aus denselben Elementen, wird von denselben Winden zerstreut und mischt sich mit demselben Wasser. Die wir der Finsternis der Nacht entrinnen wollen, müssen um das Dämmern einer neuen Welt hoffen und beten.“

[NormanStewart]

The Wilmington Morning Star (October 22, 1946)

Theory ridiculed

LONDON, Oct. 21 (UP) – George Bernard Shaw, in a letter Monday to the editor of the London Times, ridiculed the theory that Hermann Goering’s suicidal escape from the hangman’s noose “was a defeat for the Nuernberg tribunal and victorious powers.”

“One would suppose that his evasion of the rope threatens us with a third world war,” Shaw wrote. “This is not how it strikes me. And it is because I believe my feeling is not altogether unrepresentative that I venture to ask you to make it known.

“Had the matter been in my hands I should have supplied all the condemned men with a liberal supply of morphia tablets and given them every opportunity of sparing us the disgusting job of hanging them.”

[NormanStewart]

Wiener Kurier (October 23, 1946)

Milch und Kesselring sollen ihre Verbrechen söhnen

Bevorstehende Prozesse gegen ehemalige Nazigrößen

Nürnberg (INS.) - Gegen zweihundert ehemalige hohe Würdenträger des Dritten Reiches, Generäle, Gauleiter, Ärzte und Industrielle, die sich derzeit in strenger Einzelhaft befinden, erwarten ihre in nächster Zeit bevorstehende gerichtliche Verhandlung wegen begangener Kriegsverbrechen. Unter ihnen befinden sich der ehemalige Stellvertreter Görings, Generalfeldmarschall Milch, der seinen eigenen jüdischen Vater verleugnete, um Hitler gefällig zu sein. Eine weitere ehemalige Größe ist Feldmarschall Albert Kesselring, früherer deutscher Oberbefehlshaber in Italien, wo er sich auch für die ihm vorgeworfenen Kriegsverbrechen wird verantworten müssen. Dem ehemaligen Panzergeneraloberst Guderian werden Völkerrechtsverletzungen während des polnischen und französischen Feldzuges zur Last gelegt.

Auch Lammers, Bodenschatz und Backe sind dabei

Die übrigen Angeklagten in den bevorstehenden Prozessen sind: Generaloberst Bach-Zelewsky, der angebliche Leiter der Werwolf-Untergrundbewegung, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Ohlendorf, SS-Gruppenführer Breithaupt, der Chef der SS-Gerichte in Europa, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Dr. Lammers, der Leiter der Reichskanzlei und einer der engsten Mitarbeiter Hitlers, Feldmarschall Bodenschatz, Görings Stabschef, ferner SS-Obergruppenführer Backe, ehemaliger Landwirtschaft«- und Ernährungsminister, Professor Dr. Handloser, der Generalinspekteur des gesamten Wehrmachtsanitätskorps war, dann Dr. Hermann von Siemens, Direktor der großen Elektrizitätswerke.

Unter den Verhafteten befindet sich auch eine Anzahl von Ärzten, die beschuldigt werden, Experimente an Opfern des Nationalsozialismus in den Konzentrationslagern durchgeführt zu haben. Alle Gefangenen dürfen lesen und schreiben soviel sie wollen, aber jede Fühlungnahme untereinander ist ihnen unmöglich gemacht.

Es scheint wahrscheinlich, daß diese Angeklagten gruppenweise in den verschiedenen alliierten Besatzungszonen vor Gericht gestellt werden, an Stelle einer gemeinsamen Behandlung vor einem interalliierten Gerichtshof.

Debatte über Görings Selbstmord verschoben

Berlin (INS.) - Bei seinen gestrigen Erklärungen beschäftigte sich General McNarney auch mit den Ereignissen anläßlich der Hinrichtungen in Nürnberg und teilte mit, daß der Alliierte Kontrollrat beschlossen habe, die Debatte über den Selbstmord Görings bis zur nächsten Tagung, die für 30. Oktober festgesetzt wurde, zurückzustellen.

[NormanStewart]

The Evening Star (October 23, 1946)

Von Papen quits jail to live in Nuernberg after British bar him

NUERNBERG (AP) – Franz von Papen left the Nuernberg jail this afternoon to take up residence within the city in which he was acquitted of war crimes charges.

The former diplomat had the assurance of German authorities that he would not be arrested as a Nazi if he remained in Nuernberg until his case was prepared for a denazification court.

Hjalmar Schacht, the acquitted former Reichsbank president, now is in jail near Stuttgart, awaiting action under denazification procedure, and Hans Fritzsche, the third man freed by the International Military Tribunal three weeks ago, is living in a small Nuernberg apartment.

Final rejection of Von Papen’s request for entry into the British zone was announced today. He had been turned down previously by the French zone.

Goering statement held up

Prison authorities decided today to withhold overnight, at least, any statement on the report of the Army board which investigated Hermann Goering’s suicide last week.

Two members of the four-power commission in charge of the Nazi executions met several times with the prison commandant, Col. B. C. Andrus, and Col. Andrus announced at 5:30 p.m. that there would be no disclosures before tomorrow or later.

Col. Andrus said he believed the communique on the suicide inquiry would be made public here rather than in Berlin, the seat of the Allied Control Council. He had said earlier that the Goering mystery might be cleared up today.

Notes may be disclosed

The board was said to be ready to disclose the contents of the three notes Goering left behind when he swallowed a capsule of cyanide only two hours before he was scheduled to be hanged.

One of these notes, addressed to Col. Andrus, was said to contain clues as to where the boasting Reichsmarshal got the poison vial, how he hid it until the right time and how he managed to slip it into his mouth without being caught by a watchful sentry.

The other two notes, it was reported, were addressed to Frau Emmy Goering and to the German people.

[NormanStewart]

Man to Man…
Officials more interested in ‘press’ than in execution of Nazi criminals

By Harold L. Ickes

There were executed on October 15 some of the most relentless, colossal and most cruel criminals that have ever walked the earth. Certain this is true if their crimes are measured not only by their ruthlessness, but by the number of those whom they killed. Hermann Goering took the cowardly way out of suicide. Unfortunately, ill of the guilty have not yet suffered the doom that they so richly deserve.

Sen. Taft has made the point that the men who were executed were done to death under an ex post facto law, something that Is abhorrent to our jurisprudence. However, it seems to me that when he advocated life imprisonment instead of the death penalty he met his own argument head-on, since life imprisonment, if imposed, would also have been under an ex post facto law. Tor my part, I am not disturbed by the fact that the Allied governments wrote their law and organized their tribunal after Germany had been defeated. Obviously, if Germany had won, the Nuernberg trials would not have been held, at least with the same prisoners in the dock.

A victorious Hitler and a screaming Goebbels might, as an attempted self-justification before the bar of history, have put to trial some of the Allied leaders, although the presumption is that they, and their fellow gangsters, would have decimated their prisoners and decimated them again, by summary executions, by confinement in concentration camps, and by continued satanic extermination en masse in lethal gas chambers which would have killed quickly without destroying the value of the hair, the fat, the skin and other salvageable portions of their victims’ bodies that could be put to obscene uses.

Legal implications

I am not disturbed by the determination that preceded Nuernberg or the legal implications that may flow from it. During the World War, some of the leaders of the Allied nations declared that at its end the German Kaiser and many of his fellow criminals would be brought to trial. The later fiasco at least served notice of what might be the result if such a catastrophe as a second world war should be inflicted upon mankind.

Germany certainly had ample warning that a new concept of international morality was in process of gestation. The United States, prior to the outbreak of the late war, could hardly have collaborated with Great Britain, Russia, China and the other nations that were to become its allies to declare solemnly in advance that there would be swift and fitting justice meted out for such atrocities as were, in fact, committed on the greatest scale in history. They were not certain that there would be a war, least of all did they know to what bestialities and inhumanities the Nazis would descend. And yet I wish that I was as sure in my own mind that the result will be as helpful as I am that the proceeding was morally, and, considering the extraordinary circumstances, legally justifiable.

During the course of the trial I frequently wondered whether the effect would not have been better if these criminals and many of their equally guilty fellows had been arrested, tried before a summary court-martial and shot without all of the dramatic stage setting that Nuernberg afforded.

If the real object was not only to do justice but to cause another potentially criminal nation to think twice before embarking upon such a career as brought Von Ribbentrop and his fellows to the rope’s end, then it must be conceded that the swiftness of the punishment might have been an ingredient of greater value than anything else.

Heroes to Nazis

Moreover, although they sat huddled in the criminal dock at Nuernberg, these gross murderers must have been regarded as heroes by every Nazi in Germany and, despite what results may have been obtained in the direction of the denazification of that country, I am persuaded that the overwhelming numbers of the Germans, particularly the youth who were brought up under the perverted moral propaganda at which Goebbels was so expert, have been Nazis at heart.

Some newspapers had devoted an unwarranted amount of space to Goering’s cowardly suicide and the execution of his fellows whom he deserted in the end. A bare, grim recital of the facts was all that was called for. The broadcast to this country of the last act of the tragedy should not have been done in words casting outstanding criminals in the role of hero-martyrs. These men were not entitled to have their last self-serving words poison the air of the world.

It would seem that the Allied officials were more interested in filling newspaper columns with melodramatic details than in lowering a sharp and inexorable curtain upon lives that were debased and distorted and a disgrace to humankind.

[NormanStewart]

Jackson presents Nazi trial recordings to National Archives

Justice Jackson said today in his chambers at the Supreme Court that the trial of the 11 top Nazis at Nuernberg was scientifically recorded, so that no myths or legends can spring up about the German conspirators.

He declared that “every word spoken in the courtroom was recorded” for posterity.

Justice Jackson made this statement as he presented to the Archives of the United States 22 records of the defendants’ last statements. Justice Jackson, who was chief American prosecutor, also presented 24 records of his opening speech at the trial, summing up the case.

These were officially received by Dr. Solon J. Buck, archivist of the United States.

Radio broadcast recorded

At the same time Charter Heslep, Washington representative of the Mutual Broadcasting System, presented to Dr. Buck two records of the broadcast of Arthur Gaeth, Mutual commentator, representing the combined American networks. This was an account of the execution of the 10 Nazi defendants.

Mr. Heslep gave another set of the records to Justice Jackson.

Justice Jackson said: “As you are well aware, one of the most important things about the Nuernberg trial was that an accurate record be preserved, so that the future can judge the proceeding in its fairness and the sufficiency of the evidence of the Nazi uprising against modern civilization.”

The jurist said Allied authorities made an effort to make use of the latest scientific knowledge, so that an accurate record of the trial could be preserved.

‘Model of reporting’

Mr. Gaeth’s recording was a “model of reporting,” Justice Jackson said, because it avoided sensationalism or sentimentality. It let the world know exactly what took place, he declared.

“We wanted no legends or myths to spring up about the Nazi aggression against modern civilization,” said Justice Jackson.

In accepting the records Dr. Buck said that they would be preserved in the Archives for all time along with other records of American participation in the war. These, he said, would show posterity what part the Americans played in these important events.

Hanging in Justice Jackson’s chamber are American, French, Russian arid English flags – the same that hung in the Nuernberg tribunal at the opening of the court. The jurist said they were made by German women, out of parachute silk and other available material. A painting of the Palace of Justice at Nuernberg, made by a German prisoner of war, is suspended beneath the flags.

The jurist has in his chambers three boxes of mementos from Nuernberg that have not as yet been unpacked. His collection includes numerous photographs.

[NormanStewart]

On the Record…
Historians will find gaps in the Nuernberg trials

By Dorothy Thompson

Attorney General Tom Clark declared on Monday that the Nuernberg trial “established forever the solemn judgment that the waging of aggressive war is a crime,” and repudiated that “resort to war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft.”

I wish I agreed with the attorney general, but I am afraid I do not. And if I harp upon this theme it is because it is the most important for the human future.

The Nuernberg trials did not establish that it was, is, or shall be, a crime to conspire to wage, or participate in waging “aggressive” war. It only established that it was a crime for the German Third Reich. It actually established that under certain circumstances, which could be interpreted by the attacking party as threatening their own security, unprovoked attacks without declaration of war are justifiable.

The defendants were charged with and convicted of planning or participating in a conspiracy to wage aggressive war. But the extent of the conspiracy was not revealed, nor whether the conspiracy involved other states than the German. Mr. Ribbentrop, who. Following the conclusion of the Russo-German pact, received the Order of Lenin from Stalin, was not permitted to call Mr. Molotov as a witness. Nor did the tribunal receive or pass on – as far as newspaper reports reveal – the minutes of either the Munich Conference or of the meetings resulting in the agreements made between the Russians and the Germans in 1939. This despite the fact that at the time of Munich the Russians and Communists throughout the world charged that Munich was an international Fascist conspiracy to wage war against the Soviet Union.

The record of the Nuernberg trials will, therefore, be a rich source of future material for historians seeking to analyze the events leading to, and the causes of, the late war. But they will find serious lacunae.

It is a matter of Incontrovertible record, however, that from August 1939 to June 1941, when the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, the Kremlin denied that the Nazis were waging “aggressive” war; instructed the Communist parties in France, Britain, Canada and the United States to denounce the war; publicly defended and participated in the attacks on Poland; were, in turn, publicly defended by Hitler for attacking Finland; mutually, with the Germans, attacked and partitioned the Baltic States and negotiated with the Germans for further collaboration in the war in the Balkans and the Middle East. With each of the countries attacked, the USSR had a non-aggression pact.

When Russia was attacked, the Soviet government justified these previous moves on the ground that, distrusting Hitler and foreseeing his aggressive designs against Russia, the Soviets had only been putting themselves in a more favorable position for defense. In the face of the attack this argument was plausible enough to win acceptance. But the acceptance – and this is the kernel of the matter – amounted to an admission that under certain circumstances unprovoked attacks on states in anticipation of the designs of a “potential” enemy are justified as acts of defense, and may not be branded as aggression even when carried out in collaboration with the “potential” enemy!

Had the USSR, after having defeated the Germans together with the western powers, and with the aid of some of the countries she had previously attacked, restored intact the territories she had incorporated while collaborating with the Germans, the previous defense argument would have been strengthened.

But this did not happen. Russia absorbed the German conquests in the Baltic and added them to her own. And retained most of that part of Poland taken in mutual conquest with the Germans.

Since the USSR sat as prosecutor and judge in the Nuernberg tribunal and her behavior in 1939 was never called into question, no definition of conspiracy or aggression has been established, either as of the past, the present or the future, and the Nuernberg trial does not contribute an iota to dissipating the “age-old terror that resort to war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft.”

That terror will only be assuaged when specifically defined behaviors are banned by enforceable international law and peaceable but compulsory means of judgment and adjustment of grievances are established, for, as it is, war remains the only ultimate means of justice, as well as of conquest.

And in the atomic age, those willing to interpret preventive war as legitimate defense – which is what the Soviet Union has actually succeeded in doing at the Nuernberg trial, as far as her own actions are concerned – may in the future hold some new Nuernberg trials to establish in “international law” that the victim was, in fact, the “potential” aggressor.

In respect to Finland, Poland and the Baltic States, that concept has already been established, in fact, if not in law, and, precisely, at Nuernberg. Why it should give any one cause to abandon fear is beyond my comprehension, especially as in a systematic campaign of verbal attacks, supported by some elements within our own country, the United States is already being branded as a “potential,” “conspiring” aggressor.

[NormanStewart]

Hanging of ten Nazis by Allies was error, Niemoeller believes

BUEDINGEN, Germany (AP) – The Allies made a “psychological error” in hanging the 10 top Nazi war criminals in Nuernberg, in the opinion of Germany’s fighting parson, Dr. Martin Niemoeller.

“Hitler brought Germany the gallows,” Dr. Niemoeller told an Associated Press correspondent as he was beginning preparations for his two-and-a-half months trip to the United States where he is expected to arrive December 3.

“It’s perfectly all right,” he said, “that the Nuernberg International Military Tribunal sentenced the chief Nazis to hang. But for psychological reasons they should have ended the era of the gallows by commuting their sentences to ‘death by shooting or decapitation.’”

The preacher, who keeps in daily touch with his countrymen of all classes, said of Hermann Goering’s escape from the hangman’s noose: “It is a bad thing to hear. For example, 12-year-old school kids talk about how he outsmarted his executioner.”

“The Americans especially,” he continued, “have always been master-psychologists in literature. Yet, practical psychology seems to be different. There will always remain a tendency within the German people to exonerate the 10 Nazi culprits from the disgrace of hanging, even though the majority of the common people are convinced that death was the only just punishment.

“Everybody would have been satisfied had they been shot, and that’s where the Allies made the mistake, I believe.”

Although the entire Niemoeller family is busy with preparations for the trip to America, the indefatigable pastor and his white-haired wife welcome visits of friends, American or German, to their three-room apartment at medieval Ysenburg Castle.

Dr. Niemoeller said he hoped to visit South America while abroad, adding that “all depended on the negotiations in America and on what may be happening in Germany in the meantime.”

If he is allowed to go to South America, he said, he plans to travel to Brazil to visit the German evangelical church communities at Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Argentina also would be on his itinerary.

After his return from the American continent, Dr. Niemoeller plans to move his family to Berlin and take over his old parish at Dahlem where he preached until he was arrested by the Nazis in 1937.

[NormanStewart]

Wiener Kurier (October 24, 1946)

Kurt Daluege hingerichtet

Prag (Reuter) - Der frühere Naziprotektor für Böhmen und Mähren Kurt Daluege wurde gestern gehenkt, nachdem ihn ein tschechisches Volksgericht wegen Kriegsverbrechen zum Tode verurteilt hatte. Kurz vor seiner Hinrichtung versuchte Daluege durch Aufschneiden der Pulsader am rechten Handgelenk sich selbst das Leben zu nehmen.

Nürnberger Hinrichtungsbilder in den USA veröffentlicht

New York (INS.) - In New York wurden die Aufnahmen von der Hinrichtung der zehn Hauptkriegsverbrecher und der Leiche Görings in den amerikanischen Zeitungen veröffentlicht.

Papen hat Nürnberger Gefängnis verlassen

Nürnberg (UP.) - Franz von Papen, der sich nach seinem Freispruch 23 Tage im Nürnberger Gefängnis in freiwilliger Haft, befand, hat dieses gestern nachmittag verlassen.

Papen befand sich bei Verlassen des Gefängnisses in Begleitung seines Sohnes und wurde von einer Militäreskorte nach dem Heim eines Kriegskameraden aus dem ersten Weltkrieg namens Adam nach Maxfeld gebracht.

Wie bereits berichtet, hat der Sicherheitsoffizier des Nürnberger Gefängnisses, Oberst Burton Andrus, die offizielle Verständigung erhalten, daß Papens Ansuchen um Einreise in die britische Zone abschlägig beschieden worden ist.

Camillo Sachs, der Vorsitzende des Nürnberger Entnazifizierungsgerichtshofes, erklärte, daß Papen, im Falle er in Nürnberg bleiben würde, sich vor einem Nürnberger Entnazifizierungsgerichtshof zu verantworten haben wird.

[NormanStewart]

St. Louis Dispatch (October 24, 1946)

End of prime planner of aggressive war

The pajama-clad body of Hermann Goering lying on a bare coffin in Nuernberg prison October 16, a few hours after the No. 2 Nazi ended his life with poison to avoid being hanged as ordered in a verdict of the International Military Tribunal. (AP wirephoto)

[NormanStewart]

Rope’s end for Nazi plotters of world misery

Joachim von Ribbentrop

Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl

Wilhelm Frick

Julius Streicher

Fritz Sauckel

Pictures show bodies on bare, black coffins

Shown on this page are the official pictures, released today, of the 10 major Nazi war criminals who were hanged October 16 at Nuernberg in accordance with the judgment of the International Military Tribunal. The eleventh, Hermann Goering, cheated the hangman by swallowing poison. The bodies, with nooses visible about the necks of five of the ten, re pictured lying atop their bare, black coffins, with the printed name across the chest of each. The pictures were distributed by the Associated Press in America. They were not released, however, to British services on the ruling to that effect by Gen. Sir Brian Robertson, Britain’s representative on the Allied Control Council in Berlin. Most Germans will not get a chance to view the grisly evidence that the 11 are actually dead. German newspapers are forbidden to publish them. Sars and Stripes, Army newspaper published for Americans in the European theater, has decided as a matter of editorial policy not to run them.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel

Alfred Rosenberg

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Hans Frank

Arthur Seyss-Inquart

[NormanStewart]

The Evening Star (October 24, 1946)

Denazification system full of Nazis, Von Papen says

NUERNBERG (AP) – Franz von Papen left the Nuernberg jail today for the first time in 18 months, challenged the right of a Bavarian court to try him as a Nazi and charged that the whole Spruchkammer (denazification) system was shot through with former Nazis.

The former German diplomat – taking up residence in a small Nuernberg apartment – said in an interview he believed Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) was correct when he asserted the German leaders were tried at Nuernberg for acts which were not considered crimes when committed.

“Ex post facto legislation may be all right in international law, but in domestic law it is incredible and unworkable,” Von Papen said.

[NormanStewart]

Wiener Kurier (October 25, 1946)

USA-General Taylor erklärt:
Hitlers Rüstungsmagnaten wird der Prozeß gemacht

Nürnberg (UP.) - Der amerikanische Brigadegeneral Telford Taylor, einer der Hauptanklagevertreter im Prozeß gegen Göring und die anderen 21 Hauptkriegsverbrecher, erklärte, daß der Prozeß gegen Hitlers Rüstungsindustrielle in zwei bis drei Monaten stattfinden wird. Unter den Angeklagten befinden sich vor allem die führenden Männer der I.G. Farbenindustrie, der Dresdner Bank, der Alfred-Krupp-Rüstungswerke so wie Friedrich Flick und andere.

General McNarney hatte in diesem Zusammenhang früher bereits erklärt, daß der Prozeß bereits im November stattfinden sollte und daß 23 führende Naziärzte als erste vor Gericht gestellt werden, die an den Versuchen mit Insassen der Konzentrationslager beteiligt waren und das Euthanasieprogramm der Nazi durchführten. Als bedeutendster Mann dieser Kategorie gilt Hitlers Leibarzt Dr. Karl Brandt.

[NormanStewart]

The Evening Star (October 25, 1946)

23 Nazi doctors are indicted for wartime medical killings

Hitler’s personal physician one of those accused of experiments on living humans

NUERNBERG (AP) – Twenty-three Nazi doctors were indicted today on charges that they “murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings” in Germany’s wartime program of medical killings and brutal experiments with living prisoners.

A woman, Herta Oberhauser, and Dr. Karl Brandt, one of Hitter’s personal physicians, were among the 23, who will be tried next month in the first of a series of war crimes trials by special American military courts.

Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, chief counsel for the courts, said between 250 and 500 former Nazi military, industrial, financial and governmental leaders would be arraigned during the trials, which are expected to last through 1947.

The doctors were charged on three counts – conspiracy to commit atrocities, participation in war crimes against enemy nationals, participation in crimes against humanity involving German civilians and the nationals of occupied countries.

Ten also are accused of membership in the SS (Elite Guard) which the International Military Tribunal declared was a criminal organization.

An 18-page indictment describes such experiments performed by the Nazi physicians as:

• Deliberately inflicting wounds and infecting them, then forcing ground glass or wood shavings into the wounds to aggravate the infection in order to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide.

• Immersing the victims in ice water or making them stand naked outdoors, then experimenting with various means of reviving them.

• Transplanting bones, muscles and nerves from one living victim to another to study regeneration.

• Infection with such diseases as malaria, spotted fever or epidemic jaundice to test remedies.

• Mass sterilization by X-ray, surgery or drugs.

• Burning with incendiary bombs or mustard gas.

• Administration of experimental poisons, including shooting prisoners with poison bullets.

The euthanasia program Involved systematic and secret execution of aged, insane, incurably ill patients, deformed children and other persons by gas, lethal injections and “divers other means in nursing homes, hospitals and asylums,” the indictment charged.

“Such persons,” the indictment continued, “were regarded as useless eaters and a burden to the German war machine. Relatives of these victims were informed they died from natural causes.”

Farben officials included

Gen. Taylor told a news conference the defendants in the coming trials would include top officials of the I.G. Farben, giant chemical and industrial combine, and “someone” from the Krupp munitions works.

Friedrich (Fritz) Thyssen, prewar head of big armaments and steel works, is “under study like anyone else,” Gen. Taylor said. However, other official sources indicated that Thyssen would not be tried, saying he was not in Germany during the war.

A staff of 700 persons has been assembled already and personnel is expected to approximate the 1,500 employed by the International Military Tribunal before the trials are over.

Probable defendants named

Gen. Taylor named a dozen well-known Germans as “probable defendants”:

• Field Marshal Gen. Erhard Milch, former Air Ministry official and air force inspector general, who Gen. Taylor said was believed responsible for the Luftwaffe’s medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and for use of slave labor.

• Gen. Hermann Reinecke, former member of the high command, who was chief of Nazi “political guidance” for the Army and was involved in the handling of war prisoners.

• SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl, former chief of the administration and economics division of the SS (Elite Guard) with responsibility for constructing and administering concentration camps.

• Dr. Otto Georg Thierack, former minister of justice, held responsible for delivering the German system of justice into the Nazis’ hands through the infamous People’s Courts.

• Col. Gen. Heinz Guderian, Hitler’s tank warfare ace.

• Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer who headed the central office for Norway in the Interior Ministry.

• Walter Darre and Herbert Backe, former ministers of food and agriculture who are facing probable slave labor charges.

• Hermann Schmitz, chairman of the I.G. Farben board.

• Georg von Schnitzler, also an I.G. Farben official.

• Friedrich Flick, steel and mining magnate.

• Lt. Gen. Eberhard Warlimont, former chief of staff of the high command.

Gen. Taylor said negotiations were under way with the British holding Alfred Krupp to determine whether he should be tried by the Americans or British, or jointly. His father, Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach Krupp, once slated for trial by the International Military Tribunal, escaped arraignment because of illness.