The Harlem News (January 11, 1946)
Try Nazis in ruins of their handiwork
Scene of historic trial 91 percent destroyed by bombings; case sets precedent for outlawing war
by Baukhage, news analyst and commentator
Back in Germany, Baukhage reports the war crimes trial of 21 top Nazis with the same vividness with which he narrated their rise to power in the pre-war years when he was stationed in the Reich. Below is the first of a series of articles written from Nuernberg.
NUERNBERG, Germany – I have just left the courtroom where, as I write, the trial of Germany’s war criminals is still in progress. The courtroom is just above me in this great stone courthouse which was almost untouched by the bombing which reduced this most beautiful and famous city to the point that it was declared “91 percent dead” by the experts who followed the occupation by American troops on April 20, 1945.
I am writing in the press room with reporters from more than a dozen nations about me. Most of us are in uniform, the majority being the uniform of the United States Army, which all war correspondents in our theater wore. Up until recently correspondents had a simulated rank of captain. Now we are simply uniformed civilians operating under military orders.
As I look back over the beginnings of this trial – the earliest discussions before the tribunal itself was formed – I have the feeling that we are now looking at something very real – actual and factual, rather than theoretical and vague. At the first gathering, the appalling condition of this city produced the feeling that all about it and in it must be chaos too. Nuernberg dates back to the 11th century and it grew into such favor and beauty that it bore the name of Germany’s “treasure chest.” It was a chest of treasures of art, song and culture as well as of the gold that poured into the coffers of the merchants. Now it is a shell, and one of Europe’s best examples of the atmosphere and charm of the Middle Ages is gone.
How the nearly 300,000 people who are said to be living in these ruins exist it is hard to say. The streets are cleared, some street cars are running, some shops are opening, a city government is operating. But few houses are livable. In some cases, parts of great office buildings have been restored. Such cellars as can be cleared of rubble and roofed are crowded. A huge air raid shelter 280 steps below the ground contains a small village in itself.
Milestone in man’s progress
It may be that what is accomplished will be washed out by subsequent stupidities; but I believe, whether we go forward immediately from this point or not, it will remain a milestone in man’s effort to accomplish the outlawry of war, that it will be a landmark from which others may set their course anew. Grotius, father of international law, held to the principle that aggressive wars were illegal. As Justice Jackson pointed out, it was because of the greed for land which characterized the 18th and 19th centuries that this concept was thrust aside and the world came to accept the tenet that war in itself was not illegal. And it seems to me that all attempts to stop war must be futile so long as such a concept exists in international thinking. No one who saw the spontaneous reaction to Justice Jackson’s opening address to the court could feel that the tremendous effort which has gone into the creation and operation of this court can be completely lost.
For those who have witnessed these proceedings there is a striking symbolism in the rise and fall of a nation which built a vicious culture in less than a decade with one final objective (aggressive war), which very ideology destroyed it as no nation has been wrecked before.
Here we see before us in the flesh (in some cases considerably less flesh than they were adorned with in their heyday), the men who conceived and carried out this plan, which is the distillation of the philosophy that might is right, and which negates the whole basis of the moral law which has been established by civilization.
Step by step, with the epitome of tons of written evidence, with moving pictures, with plans and charts, the growth of the Nazi plan is being set forth factually, coldly and logically. A new chapter is being written in every session of the court.
We watched Nazidom unfold before us step by step – first, in the removal of the physical ability of the German people to resist; then in the gradual substitution of Nazi concepts for the normal human concepts produced by the Christian philosophy.
One of the American attorneys quoted a comment of Dr. Schacht on the effect of the destruction of the freedom of the press. Schacht was quoted as having said, at a time before he knuckled under to Hitler, that thousands of Germans had been killed or imprisoned and not one word was allowed to be printed about it. Of what use is martyrdom, he asked, when it is so concealed that it has no value as an example to others? Therein lies one of the answers to the moral failure of German resistance.
By the time the Nazis were ready to fill their concentration camps with their foreign victims, they had learned well the art of handling the resistance of their own people and smothering it behind a wall of utter silence. As the court pointed out, the first purpose of the concentration camps, the persecution, suppression and propaganda, was “the conquest of the German masses.”
Each successive step was traced by the prosecution with the same meticulous detail, detail that kept even the prisoners with their ears glued to the headphones and their eyes following the speaker or the exhibits.
Accused make brave show
However, for us in the courtroom, more impressive than the things that were done were the men in the prisoners’ dock who actually did them. Goering was no longer a name, he was a person, now leaning back and grinning, now with his arms on the edge of the rail of the dock, his chin resting on them. There was Rosenberg, whose task was to twist the minds of the people with his absurd story of a super-race, of anti-Semitism. There he sat, looking down, his fingers nervously toying with the telephone cords.
There was Keitel, stiff, cold, proud, arrogant, all Prussian in his uniform, stripped though it was of every badge, ribbon and insignia. He maintains himself with dignity, but not for a moment does he forget his pose. At this writing the psychiatric analysis of the prisoners has not been completed and Keitel has not been reported upon, but I dare say his I.Q. will be high, though perhaps not equal to that of Goering, who, surprisingly enough, stands right at the top. Goering is tacitly acknowledged as leader by the others. To the observers he appeared still the silly poseur, although he seemed more reasonable appearing than the fat and grinning mannikin I saw as he presided over the Reichstag in his comic opera uniform.
Admiral Doenitz, who looks like a pale shadow, is also at the top of the I.Q. list. He remains almost motionless, only occasionally consulting his attorney, who appears in a German naval uniform as he is on duty with a part of the fleet used in minesweeping and was released especially for the trial.
Down at the bottom of the list so far as intelligence goes is Julius Streicher. Although of far lesser stature than the rest, this miserable character is a symbol of the fall of Nazidom because he is meeting his fate in the city in which he rose to power – a fate at which he himself hinted.
Streicher conducted the last class in Nazi indoctrination for lawyers held in this very courtroom where he had been tried by the pre-Nazi authorities for various misdemeanors and perhaps other crimes. As he concluded his last lecture, he pointed to the prisoners’ dock and said: “We used to sit over there. Now we are standing up here. But there may be a day when we are sitting down there again.”
He IS sitting down there today. In a brand-new dock, to be sure, but with the same great iron eagle over the high marble frame of the doorway looking down on his cringing head.
