The Nuremberg Trial

1222

The Evening Star (November 10, 1946)

Nazi industrial master-minds moved to Nuernberg tor trial

FRANKFURT, Nov. 9 (AP) – A canvas covered U.S. Army truck rolled up to the pillared, bomb-scarred Reichsbank in Frankfurt yesterday and four Germans – bundled up against the cold in shabby, worn clothes – climbed in. Two GI guards clambered after them.

In this ordinary street scene of present-day Germany, American authorities began transferring to Nuernberg the master-minds of Nazi Germany’s industrial war machine for the forthcoming second war crimes trials.

The oldest of the worried-looking Germans was Friedrich Flick, a phantom German armament maker whose secrecy-cloaked name until recently was unknown abroad and among millions of Germans. The others were his sons and aides.

Power bigger than Krupp

American officials described Flick as the greatest single power behind the Nazi war machine,” a power far bigger than Krupp and one-time possessor of an industrial empire worth $520,000,000.

An official of the U.S. Military Government’s decartelization branch handed out an announcement that said merely:

Friedrich Flick, 64; his son, Otto Ernest, 30; Konrad Kaletsch, 48, and Werner von Hoven, 42, are being turned over to the United States Third Army custody at the request of Nuernberg authorities.”

The GI truck driver said his orders were to proceed to Nuernberg where the trial of leading Nazi doctors, industrialists and militarists begins next month. Nuernberg authorities would not say if all four would be tried, but Flick has been mentioned as an almost certain defendant.

Behind the transfer of the four industrialists – first of a group to be removed from Frankfurt – lie months of exhaustive exhumation of secret records by the decartelization branch, which has had the main job of probing the activities of Nazi industrialists of the American zone.

Worked anonymously

Piles of facts on Flick’s fabulous secret industrial empire will be sent to Nuernberg shortly on the heels of Flick and members of his combine.

These, decartelization officials said, show that Flick worked under a constant cloak of anonymity in his financial jugglings from 1933 to his arrest in June 1945, since which time he has been jailed in Preungesheim Prison outside Frankfurt.

In 12 years of Nazism, he reportedly built up a combine in which he owned outright or almost totally 129 concerns and had minority holdings in at least 55 plants – nearly all turning out armaments for the Nazi war machine.

His son was removed in the summer of 1945 from his job as head of Maxhuette, largest steel plant in the United States zone.

The month of investigation brought out, according to decartelization officers, that Kaletsch as the financial genius of the Flick combine directed the hush-hush operations that built up Flick’s holdings from stolen French, Czechoslovak, Russian and Jewish plants and mines.

Head of slave workers

Von Hoven, according to the investigators, was one of two directors of the “personnel and welfare” section of Maxhuette, a section which employed tens of thousands of slave workers.

The unhappy foursome, their collars up against the bitter wind, were silent as the guards, Pfc. Delbert Staton of Ben Hur, Virginia, and Pvt. Angel Rodrigues of New York, hustled them into the truck.

Fairly soon, decartelization officials said, another truck will remove Heinrich Koppenberg, who headed a German aluminum combine in Berlin and another in Norway, where the Nazi government spent 2,000,000,000 marks in a struggle to obtain the metal.

Three other Germans – August Rohdewald of the Deutsche Bank, Hugo Zinsser of the Dresdener Bank, and Franz Hayler, Hitler’s former undersecretary of state for economics, probably will be summoned to Nuernberg on recovery from illnesses.

1223

The Evening Star (November 12, 1946)

Nazi doctors’ trial to start December 5

NUERNBERG, Germany (AP) – U.S. court officials said today the first of the American-conducted series of Nuernberg war crimes trials – that of 23 German doctors accused of cruelty to concentration camp inmates – would start December 5.

1224

The Wilmington Morning Star (November 14, 1946)

Everyone but Russians helped swell Nuernberg’s flood of crackpot mail

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Cranks from all over the world and almost every country except Russia have sent between 10,000 and 20,000 letters and telegrams in the last year to the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuernberg.

Despite the end of the months-long war guilt trial and the conviction and execution of Nazi Germany’s leaders, hundreds of letters still are arriving in a letter-writing marathon conducted in 12 languages, court attaches said.

The French and Poles, it was said, tied for second place behind the Germans as authors of crackpot letters. The United States was not so productive of crank mail, but Russia drew a complete blank. Not a single letter from Russia has been received in all the time the international tribunal has been established.

All the writers – including Germans – were divided about 50-50 over the culpability of Hermann Goering and other leaders of the Nazi gang.

Delving through the immense piles of letters – most of which never were answered – turned up such examples as these:

Early in October, before the executions, three Germans in the British zone wrote to Nuernberg offering themselves to be hanged in the place of the 11 condemned Nazis. They said “life has lost its meaning.”

On the other hand, at least 50 persons, mostly former inmates of Nazi concentration camps, offered to do the hanging jobs themselves.

One letter, signed “The German Avengers,” and received after the verdicts and sentences were announced, warned “woe unto you if you carry through these death sentences as they have been announced, because the whole German people will rise up and take its one (sic) revenge.”

It was right after the judgment that the Nuernberg mail bag was fullest. A peak of 60 to 70 letters a day was reached then compared to from 15 to 20 daily during the trial. This is about the same rate that they are coming in now.

Letters from the United States were received from the North Central and Midwest states. Some of the letters, written before the 22 Nazi war leaders were sentenced, asked that the defendants not be condemned to death “because there has been enough killing.”

Hundreds of letters, Nuernberg authorities said, were received from religious fanatics. One woman wrote every two weeks for several months explaining her ideas for a new world of peace, harmony and no wars.

Summing up the mixed comment from the German letter-writers, analysts said that although the Germans were split half and half on the judgments of the court, it was “apparent … that not all members of the master race have grasped the full meaning of their defeat.”

This, they said, was vividly illustrated by 40 to 50 German letters asking for an opportunity to vote on the court’s verdict.

1225

The Evening Star (November 15, 1946)

Ribbentrop claimed blackmail by Goering, trial lawyer says

By the Associated Press

A story that Hermann Goering “blackmailed” Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop into subservience for a decade before the Nazi collapse was brought back today from the Nuernberg trials by a member of the American prosecution staff.

Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner said Ribbentrop told him in his death cell that Goering’s weapon was a suppressed suit filed by Ribbentrop’s adopted aunt involving the use of the German aristocratic term “von.”

“In return lor authority to use the ‘von,’ Ribbentrop agreed to pay for her support but welched after the Nazis came to power,” Dr. Kempner told reporters.

“When she filed suit in 1934 in her home town in Thuringia, Goering got possession of the papers and put them in his private safe. Ribbentrop said that because of the threat of scandal he did not dare oppose Goering on major issues.

“That was characteristic of the Nazis. They blackmailed each other in the smallest matters.”

Dr. Kempner, one-time German anti-Nazi official who became an American citizen, served 16 months on Justice Robert H. Jackson’s prosecution staff.

As chief of research and adviser on German affairs, he said, he interrogated all the other Nuernberg defendants as well as Goering and Ribbentrop.

Rudolph Hess, who escaped the noose although sentenced to prison, was “definitely not crazy” as he claimed, Dr. Kempner asserted.

“His attorney gave me as a souvenir some notes in Hess’ handwriting which listed a long string of books he thought might help his defense,” he related. “The notes were dated last spring, just when Hess was claiming he had suffered a complete loss of memory.”

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The Pittsburgh Press (November 17, 1946)

Musmanno heads Nuernberg court

Navy vet jurist to try high Nazis
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON – Naval Cmdr. Michael A. Musmanno, Allegheny County common pleas judge, will return to the bench next month as a U.S. judge in the renewal of the Nuernberg trials of German war criminals.

Cmdr. Musmanno’s newest assignment was revealed today by the War Crimes Branch of the War Department. Just returned to the U.S. from service in Austria, he will go back to Europe in about two weeks.

He will serve as president judge of the Second War Crimes Court, now being staffed by the War Crimes Branch. The first Nuernberg court, an international tribunal, convicted key Nazis and established precedents for later trials.

Goering aide charged

Chief defendant in the new Nuernberg trial will be Nazi Air Field Marshal Erhard Milch, one-time deputy to Hermann Goering, convicted in the first Nuernberg trial, who cheated the gallows by taking poison.

Milch was indicted Wednesday at Nuernberg on charges of crimes against slave laborers from conquered countries and against Germans themselves. The indictment charges he deported slave labor from other countries, mistreated prisoners in work camps and aided medical experiments on helpless persons.

Cmdr. Musmanno, in naval service since December 1942, did propaganda work, served in military government during the Italian campaign and later as judge in Austria of U.S. courts which heard deportation appeals of displaced persons.

Clark backed him

War Department officials said he was highly recommended for his new assignment by the headquarters of Gen. Mark Clark, commanding general of U.S. forces in Austria, and was approved by the War Department.

The jurist returned to the U.S. Thursday by plane from Vienna. He now is in the naval hospital here for treatment of a foot injury sustained in Italy and a heavy cold contracted when his plane was grounded in Iceland.

He’ll get a furlough of two weeks before leaving for Nuernberg about November 30. The new war crimes trial is scheduled to start December 15.

The new court will be composed of three members, all selected from the U.S. judiciary, and three alternates, and will try major defendants among the key Nazis. The new trials are expected to be shorter in duration than the first war crimes trial, which established responsibility of the Nazis for war crimes.

To set precedent

The new court, however, probably will set a precedent by ruling on charges of crimes against German nationals. The international tribunal excluded such counts and concerned itself only with crimes committed in the war of aggression.

Cmdr. Musmanno took leave of absence from his Allegheny County Court post to serve in the Navy. He was stationed first in Washington, where he broadcast regularly to Italy before the Italian campaign. Later, he was transferred to North Africa and Italy as the campaign was started.

In the meantime, he was re-elected to another ten-year term on the Common Pleas Court while in active service in the Mediterranean in 1943. Due to his continued military service, he has not yet been able to return to the bench.

While his service at Nuernberg will further delay his return to the bench, it was pointed out that his position is the same as that of other judges who have been selected from state and federal courts for special assignment in the war crimes trial.

These include Justice Robert H. Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court, who served as U.S. prosecutor in the first Nuernberg trial. The two associate judges on the second court likely will be selected from state appellate courts.

Cmdr. Musmanno served as observer for the Navy in the first war crimes trial at Nuernberg. For his service in the Italian campaign he was awarded the Purple Heart, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star and Commendation Ribbon, as well as a number of Italian government awards, including the Silver Star and Bronze Star.

1227

The Evening Star (November 21, 1946)

23 Nazi doctors plead not guilty of atrocities

NUERNBERG (AP) – Twenty-three Nazi doctors pleaded innocent today to charges of murdering hundreds of thousands of persons in cruel medical experiments.

Arraigned before an American tribunal in the second Nuernberg war crimes trial, the defendants, headed by Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s former physician, leaped to their feet and without hesitation answered “not guilty” to a 17-page indictment read by Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor.

1228

Biddle defends justice of findings at Nuernberg

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The Nuernberg war crimes trials represent a vital step in the world’s progress toward a rule of law, according to Francis Biddle, American member of the International Military Tribunal.

Mr. Biddle, rejecting a thesis set forth by Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) that the Nuernberg trials were unjust since they had no legal precedent, declared “laws are not found only in books. They are found also in customs and practices, and in the other expressions of civilization.”

“International law in its present inchoate state,” he asserted, “partakes of the character of a court-martial – what might be called the common law of mankind.

“It is the universal doctrine that a victor can apply any law he wishes. This court proceeded not under court-martial rules, however, but under practices comparable with those of an Anglo-Saxon court.”

Mr. Biddle, in his first pronouncement in this country since the trials, listed as one of the most important developments in the trials the “reaffirmation of the responsibility of individuals for the national policies which end in aggressive war.”

“Obviously,” he told the Philadelphia Foreign Policy Association yesterday, “pronouncements such as our judgments at Nuernberg will not do much to stop war. Every step of this kind, however, tends to establish the rule of law in international affairs.”

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The Pittsburgh Press (November 21, 1946)

Nazi doctors tried to find method of mass sterilization

Hoped to use it against Allied nations; 23 face other war crimes charges

CHICAGO (SS) – Add to the horrors of war the possibility of making all the people of a nation barren without their knowing they had been sterilized. This possibility was explored by Nazi physicians, Dr. A. C. Ivy, vice president of the University of Illinois, reports.

Dr. Ivy has just returned from a government mission on which he was the American Medical Association representative to investigate war crimes of a medical nature.

Murder for skeletons

Putting the dried juice of a plant in the food of a population and exposing men and women to a dose of X-rays while they filled out government forms were two methods of secret mass sterilization studied by Nazi physicians.

One series of murders was done to provide skeletons for an anthropological museum.

Operations were done on human beings as part of the procedure in training students in surgery.

Besides the mass sterilization studies, Dr. Ivy lists 15 other experiments in his report to the Secretary of War.

Twenty-three Nazi physicians will be tried in Nuernberg. starting December 5, on charges of having conducted experiments on human beings resulting in innumerable deaths.

Doctors’ verdict

The American Medical Association through an editorial in its Journal today gives as its verdict that such experiments certainly are “contrary to the laws of humanity and the ethical practices of the medical profession which have prevailed for more than 20 centuries.

“Not the slightest good to mankind has resulted from these experiments. The basic sciences and medicine languished in Germany during the period of the war more than in any other country.

“Perhaps most serious of all is the failure of German medical organizations and societies to express in any manner their disapproval of these widely known experiments.”

1230

Nazi doctors deny war guilt

NUERNBERG (UP) – Twenty-three Nazi doctors and scientists pleaded innocent today to United States charges that they committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The 23 suspected war criminals were arraigned before a four-man American military court. They were charged with responsibility for the torture deaths of hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates during the Hitler regime.

American officials said the trial would begin December 9 in the same courtroom where Hermann Goering and 11 other top Nazis were sentenced to death.

Hitler’s personal physician, 42-year-old Dr. Karl Brandt, was the first to deny his guilt. Brandt occupied Goering’s seat in the prisoners’ box.

Next to Brandt, in Rudolf Hess’ old seat, was Siegfried Handloser, 61, the oldest of the 23 defendants. Handloser was the medical chief of the German armed forces.

Herta Oberhauser, comely 35-year-old woman doctor, was the only feminine defendant. She formerly worked at the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

1231

Henderson Daily Dispatch (November 22, 1946)

Editorial: Cry of innocence

Those twenty-three Nazi doctors who have just gone on trial in Nuernberg, on charges of murdering hundreds of thousands of helpless citizens of conquered European nations upon whom they practiced cruel medical experiments, quickly leaped to their feet to shout their innocence when indictments were read in their hearing. The gang of conspirators recently hanged and those who went to prison on similar charges of murder did the same thing when first they faced the international court of justice.

It is conceivable that they were honest in their pleas, in that they had no consciousness of wrongdoing. Their minds were warped and distorted by the strange paganistic philosophy they had been taught, and which they accepted: hence they were in a measure incapable of comprehending the seriousness of their heinous deeds. But that does not justify them in the eyes of civilization.

The evidence is even stronger, if anything, against the doctors who killed their victims piecemeal in the medical experiments they carried out. All the world yearns for progress in the science of healthful living, but- fortunately. few crave the knowledge thus gained to the extent of making guinea pigs of humans in the most cruel fashion imaginable, which is what the Germans did. As to whether or not those twenty-three defendants now on trial actually did the dastardly work themselves individually the evidence should reveal. But discoveries during and since the war offered abundant testimony that the thing was done, and that someone is responsible and should be brought to justice in atonement of one kind or another for their acts.

Hitler and his Nazi followers liked to boast of their so-called advanced civilization. But their cunning achievements were only progress backwards. They were worse even than cavemen customs. If retribution is essential in order to arrest the movement, then it must be that way. The Goering gang protested their guilt of charges brought against them, and persisted in that arrogant attitude all through their trial. But at the last they regained some of their former bluff and bluster, as if to defy, international justice to the bitter end. Whether hanging was or was not the best solution, the fact remains for all history to read and to know that they plunged the world into a global conflict of misery and suffering and death. And these Nazi doctors had their part in the overall scheme of cruel, heartless treatment meted cut to their helpless dying victims. For them, as for the dozen or so who have gone on before, the day of judgment has arrived.

1232

The Evening Star (November 23, 1946)

Nuernberg principles cited by Shawcross

International law gained three new vital principles as a result of the Nuernberg trials, Sir Hartley Shawcross, attorney general of England, believes.

Addressing a conference of the United Nations League of Lawyers at the National Archives Auditorium last night, Sir Hartley, chief British prosecutor at Nuernberg, outlined the three new tenants as:

  • To start a war of aggression is an international crime.

  • Personal responsibility of individuals leading their countries into wars of aggression.

  • International duties of individuals transcend national obedience where such obedience would constitute a crime against the law of nations.

Sir Hartley, who is in the United States as a British delegate to the United Nations Assembly, was elected president of the organization. More than 300 lawyers from 28 nations participated.

Howard S. Le Roy of Washington, of the Committee of International and Comparative Law of the American Bar Association, was named secretary general of the league; Miss Mary M. Connelly of Washington, deputy assistant solicitor of the Veterans’ Administration, treasurer, and Dr. Ivan Kemo of Czechoslovakia, assistant secretary general of the United Nations, international vice president.