The Nuremberg Trial

The Evening Star (January 6, 1946)

Vatican’s documents on Nazis ready for court, Dr. Walsh says

From Nuernberg, Germany, Dr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., has informed Georgetown University associates that the Vatican documents dealing with Nazi religious persecutions, which he has been helping to arrange and translate, are now ready to be offered as evidence to the International Military Tribunal.

Dr. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown and regent of its School of Foreign Service, has been in Nuernberg since last August as an adviser to Justice Robert H. Jackson, the American prosecutor, on geopolitics and religious matters in the prosecution of Nazi criminals. Before Pope Plus XII and the Papal Secretary of State placed the voluminous array of documents at the disposal of the American authorities several weeks ago, the Georgetown priest had conferred with them at the Vatican.

“With charity but with firmness and justice, the Holy See will point out the specific measures adopted by the Nazi government to destroy the Catholic church in Germany and in the occupied countries,” Dr. Walsh said in explaining the evidence may be offered in the next few days. “This Vatican evidence will, I am confident, become part of the history of the war,” he added.

Dr. Walsh’s letter dealt only briefly with his official duties, but described to friends at the university the wreckage of German cities and the difficult living conditions in Nuernberg encountered by attaches to the American War Crimes Commission.

“We live outside the walls of the old city in a reconstructed hotel which still has a huge gaping bomb hole in its very center,” he said. “To get to my billet, it is necessary to pick my way through ruined corridors, over a few planks and run the gantlet of wind and falling plaster.”

In travelling more than 3,000 miles by jeep throughout Europe, the Georgetown priest was saddened, he wrote, by the “panorama of destruction” in the cities he knew so intimately from previous visits to the continent. Dr. Walsh knows his Europe even better than a Cook’s tourist agent.

Since he first went to Russia as director of the Papal Relief Mission in 1922, and also with the American Relief Mission, Dr. Walsh has had a close relationship with Vatican affairs. He has represented the Vatican on missions to the Far East and was its personal representative in dealing with the Mexican government at the time of the religious persecutions of 1932.

Dr. Walsh knew the present pope when the latter served as papal secretary of state, and also when he received a degree from Georgetown University on his visit to Washington some years ago.

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 28

The Evening Star (January 7, 1946)

SS general testifies Nazis aimed to kill 30,000,000 Slavs

NUERNBERG (AP) – Waffen SS Lt. Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski told the International Military Tribunal today that the Nazis attacked Russia with a goal of wiping out 30,000,000 Slavs.

Calmly and without batting an eye, the 46-year-old general, an ardent Nazi, admitted that brutality was directed especially against partisans on the Eastern Front and asserted that the German high command could not help being fully aware of the methods used.

His testimony was against the 22 ranking Nazis on trial as war criminals before the court of the United States, Great Britain, Russia and France. He commanded German units which suppressed the Warsaw uprising in 1944 and was awarded the Knight’s Cross by Hitler for his systematic destruction of the Polish capital in a 61-day siege.

Himmler set figure

Before that, Heinrich Himmler of the Gestapo had designated him chief of all counteractivities against Russian partisans, and he is reputed to have been selected by Himmler to lead the Nazi post-war underground.

Allied officers said Bach-Zelewski probably had witnessed more atrocities than any other German witness who has appeared at the trial.

Bach-Zelewski testified that Himmler, since a suicide, set the figure of 30,000,000 Slavs to be eliminated. He said there were no written orders on how to deal with Partisans, but he declared that the methods used “certainly were known” because full reports were made on every operation.

Standing stiffly erect, he disclosed under questioning by the Russian prosecutor that the Nazis formed a special brigade made up of criminals – murderers and robbers – to combat the Partisans.

He said the brigade was organized presumably with consent of the high command, but asserted that he personally disapproved of using a field unit of “such low characters.”

Fury among defendants

He said the harshness of the methods used against partisans depended to a large extent on individual German Army commanders. He testified, however, that one order was handed down by the German high command that no disciplinary action was to be taken against any German soldier for actions against the civil population in overrun Russian regions.

American prosecutors were attempting to prove that the German high command and general staff were as guilty of war atrocities as were the most fanatical Nazis.

Bach-Zelewski’s testimony caused noticeable fury among the defend ants when he told the court he was making this “confession because I have found my conscience.”

Leaving the courtroom, he passed within a few feet of former Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering who sneered and uttered a curse which could be heard 30 feet away.

Commando slaughter ordered

Secret Nazi documents, introduced at the trial, disclosed that orders were issued for the immediate execution to the last man of Allied Commando units landed in Normandy.

The orders contained a frank admission that the “terror and sabotage” units – especially British Commandos – had seriously hampered the German war machine.

The German command was charged directly with ordering the liquidation of all members of British, American and Russian military missions captured in the southeast.

Four defendants – Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German high command; Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the army; Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz, commander in chief of the navy, and Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, former Nazi navy commander – were accused of having issued the liquidation orders offered in evidence.

Executions were carried out without trials, the documents indicated, and in some cases the executions came so speedily that commanders were reprimanded for falling to interrogate prisoners before shooting them.

Long trial expected

Seeking to break down the contention that the generals were merely professional soldiers obeying orders, Col. Telford Taylor of Chevy Chase, Maryland, one of the American prosecutors, presented a document signed by Keitel instructing wholesale slaughter in Russia.

Despite attempts to speed up the trial, considerable doubt was expressed in some quarters that a verdict would be returned by May, the first anniversary of the war’s end.

American prosecutors hope to finish their case this week, but the French and Russian prosecutors probably will require at least a month to present their evidence. The defense may take two and a half to three months for its case, after which closing statements will be made.

The military tribunal then will tackle the long job of reviewing the evidence and writing its findings.

Yugoslavia to name Horthy as war criminal

NUERNBERG (AP) – Yugoslavia will submit the name of Adm. Nicholas Horthy, former regent of Hungary, to the Allied War Crimes Commission in London Wednesday and demand his transfer from American to Yugoslav custody. Dr. Radomir Zivkovic, commission delegate, announced today.

Horthy was released from the witness wing of the Nuernberg jail last month after Allied prosecutors passed up an opportunity to use his testimony in the war crimes trial. Horthy now is reported living comfortably with his family at the Weilheim estate near Munich. This has been described sis house arrest by American authorities.

Although no charges yet have been brought against the former regent by Marshal Tito’s government, Dr Zivkovic indicated two counts were under consideration – a conspiracy to wage aggressive war against Yugoslavia and war crimes against the population of the border town of Novi Sad.

The Pittsburgh Press (January 7, 1946)

Germans aimed to ‘liquidate’ Slav millions

SS general heard at war guilt trial

NUERNBERG (UP) – SS Gen. Erich von den Bach-Zelewski, commander of Nazi “anti-partisan” operations on the Eastern Front, testified at the war crimes trial today that Germany’s objective in the war against Russia was to reduce the Slavic population by 30 million persons.

Zelewski said that this purpose was stated by Heinrich Himmler in a speech before the war against Russia was launched.

Zelewski, 46, a thin-lipped, dark-haired man, was an SS “career” officer. He had been a member of Nationalist strongarm groups and joined the German Army in 1924, becoming a Nazi and winning election to the Reichstag in 1932.

Headed extermination group

He testified that he headed all the einsatz or extermination groups which were sent into Russia.

“The principal task of the einsatz group,” he testified, “was to eliminate Jews, Gypsies and political commissars.”

Zelewski said that when needed he was given reserve troops by the Wehrmacht to carry out his assignments.

Execute 100 for one

Zelewski testified after evidence was presented that Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered the German Army in September 1941 to execute 50 to 100 “Communists” for every German soldier killed by partisans on the Eastern Front.

An order by Keitel for mass reprisals against Soviet civilians for the work of the partisans was introduced today at the trial of the Nazi leaders. Keitel, former chief of the High Command, is one of the defendants.

“We should remember that human life in unsettled countries frequently counts for nothing, and a deterrent effect can be attained only by unusual severity,” Keitel’s order, dated September 16, 1941, said.

Called ‘suitable atonement’

“The death penalty for 50 to 100 Communists should generally be regarded in these cases as a suitable atonement for one German soldier’s life.”

Col. Telford Taylor, of the prosecution staff, introduced the Keitel order.

Col. Taylor charged that “anti-partisan activity” became the catchword for extermination of Jews.

He also presented High Command reports of the execution of 14 British Commandos near Egersund, Norway, in November 1942 and of the execution of three others near Stavanger.

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 29

The Evening Star (January 8, 1946)

Court hears Goering described as greater danger than Hitler

NUERNBERG (AP) – An American prosecutor told the International Military Tribunal today that Hermann Goering was “more dangerous in some respects” that his master, Adolf Hitler.

The former Reichsmarshal sat defiantly in the prisoners’ box as Ralph H. Albrecht, international lawyer from New York, started building the case to show his individual responsibility for the Nazi war crimes. Goering is the leading defendant among the 22 on trial.

Albrecht opened a new phase of the trial with Nazi documents, many of them written by Goering himself, showing the part the former air force chief played in German aggression.

Goering, orally chastised by his American chief jailer, Col. Burton C. Andrus, for cursing a prosecution witness yesterday, nearly upset the courtroom at the opening of the morning session by writing a note which convulsed Rudolf Hess with giggles, while a British assistant prosecutor was reading from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Goering surprised

Elwyn Jones, a member of Parliament, was dealing with the Fuehrer’s long-range plans for German expansion. “In accepting and propagating the jungle philosophy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ he declared, “the Nazi confederates indicated here deliberately pushed our civilization over the precipice of war.”

Goering registered surprise when Albrecht recalled his statement to air force commanders in 1936 that “Russia wants the war,” but Germany needed peace until 1941. The prosecutor was reading captured enemy documents.

Albrecht presented a new exhibit, just received from the United States intelligence center at Kassel, in which Goering’s chief of staff noted the arrival of 5,000 German “volunteers” in Spain during that country’s civil war in the late ‘30s. Goering’s subordinate, Gen. Bodenschatz, quoted the reichsmarshal as remarking: “The general situation is very serious. Russia wants the war. England rearms speedily. The command therefore is: ‘Beginning today, the highest state of preparedness – regardless of financial difficulties.’

Ready for war

“Goering takes over full responsibility. Complete quiet until 1941 is desirable. However, we cannot know whether there will be implications before. We are already in a state of war, it is only that no shot is being fired.”

Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the Briton who is presiding judge, mildly corrected Albrecht when he opened his statement against Goering with a detailed criticism of the German’s histrionics in the court.

The plump defendant obviously reveled in the spotlight. His moods varied from paunchy dignity with his arms clasped to a nervous sneer while wriggling in his chair.

Julius Streicher, the anti-Semitic publisher, stopped chewing American gum long enough to glance at his old personal enemy.

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 30

The Pittsburgh Press (January 9, 1946)

Nazi pledged aid to Japan, tribunal told

Charges against Ribbentrop outlined

NUERNBERG (UP) – Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1941 promised Japan aid against the United States and urged Japan to attack Russia, the War Crimes Tribunal was told today.

The charge was made by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, British prosecutor. He asserted the Nazi foreign minister told Jap Ambassador Hiroshi Oshima that it was essential “that Japan effect her new order in the East without losing this opportunity.”

Oshima asked Ribbentrop in November 1941 whether a German-American war was imminent, Sir David said. The foreign minister replied: “Roosevelt is a fanatic so it is impossible to tell what he will do.”

One hour after Germany learned of the Pearl Harbor attack, Ribbentrop advised Oshima that the German Navy had been ordered to attack American shipping – four days before the formal declaration of war.

Drafted occupation laws

Ribbentrop was described as having drafted the laws for the occupation of Czechoslovakia and Holland and therefore responsible for the conduct of German administrators in the two countries.

British Attorney Gordon D. Roberts presented the case against Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, charging they used their position and influence to promote plans for the violation of treaties.

Issued directive

Keitel in April 1938, Mr. Roberts said, issued a directive on “the war of the future,” in which the violation of neutrality was justified.

Sir David said Ribbentrop had planned to sign a secret protocol with Serano Suner, then Spanish foreign minister, covering the Spanish entry into the war and an attack on Gibraltar.

Centering his attack on Ribbentrop, Sir David accused him of advocating a bloodthirsty death policy against captured Allied fliers. He said Ribbentrop proposed that the fliers should never reach prisoner of war cages, and that their fate should not be published. He wanted to permit lynching of airmen who strafed German civilians, parachuting German fliers, passenger trains or hospitals.

1 Like

The Evening Star (January 9, 1946)

Ribbentrop advocated lynching of all Allied fliers, court is told

NUERNBERG, Germany (AP) – Evidence was presented to the International Military Tribunal today to show that Joachim von Ribbentrop, former Nazi foreign minister, advocated the lynching of all captured Allied fliers who participated in the bombing of German cities.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, British prosecutor, closing his case against the one-time champagne salesman on trial for his life with other high-ranking Nazis, introduced documents showing the German high command turned down Von Ribbentrop’s proposal as too drastic.

Instead, the army and air force defined as “terror action justifying lynch law” only low-level attacks on civilians, shooting of parachuting German airmen in the air, strafing of civilian trains and attacks on civilian trains which were marked with a Red Cross.

Urged Jap war on U.S.

Sir David also introduced documents showing:

  • That Von Ribbentrop urged Japan, through Ambassador Hiroshi Oshima, to declare war on the United States.

  • That he informed Mussolini in 1940 that Spain had agreed to enter the war as soon as preparations were completed and indicated that Germany planned to send troops, special weapons and planes to assist in an attack on Gibraltar.

  • That Von Ribbentrop promised the Japanese ambassador Germany would liquidate the British Empire and completely wipe out Soviet Russia.

The British prosecutor introduced a secret message to Tokyo, intercepted by the Allies, showing that Von Ribbentrop had assured Japan a week before Pearl Harbor that British lands “throughout the world will probably be divided three ways by Germany, the United States and Japan.”

Roosevelt termed fanatic

He gave no indication why he believed the United States might share in dividing up Britain’s Empire, but he presumably believed that the Americans would move into British areas in the Western Hemisphere.

When Oshima asked him if Germany actually meant to go to war with the United States, Von Ribbentrop responded: “Roosevelt is a fanatic, so it is impossible to tell what he would do.”

In his summary, Sir David described Von Ribbentrop as a well-known “Jew baiter.”

The prosecution, turning next to the Army High Command, began the presentation of evidence against Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl.

Secret Nazi documents were introduced to show that the high command in 1938 adopted a premise that a declaration of war was unnecessary to start hostilities and that the rights of neutral nations should be considered only from the standpoint of advantage to combatant powers.

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 31

The Pittsburgh Press (January 10, 1946)

War crime trial –
Slaughter Poles, diary suggests

Nazi governor’s case before tribunal

NUERNBERG (UP) – Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland, carried out a calculated policy designed to wipe out the whole Polish people, the War Crimes Tribunal was told today.

Lt. Col. William H. Baldwin of Detroit, assistant prosecutor, presented the case against Frank.

He read extracts from Frank’s diary in which the Nazi declared, “Once we have won the war, then for all I care, mincemeat can be made of the Poles and Ukrainian and all others who run around here.”

‘Keep living standard low’

An entry from Frank’s diary in October 1939 disclosed that at a conference of Frank, Adolf Hitler and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, it was decided that “it is not the task of the administration to make Poland a model province or to put it on a sound economic and financial basis.

“The standard of living is to remain low. We only want to draw labor forces from there. The accomplishment of this task will involve a hard racial struggle which will not permit legal restrictions. The Government-General will give to the Polish nation only bare living conditions and maintain a basis of military security.”

Gives staff a pep talk

Frank issued orders in August 1942 that still larger shipments of food must be made from Poland to Germany despite extreme undernourishment of the Poles.

In a pep talk to his staff in January 1943, Frank said: “We are now in duty-bound to hold together. We must remember we who are gathered here figure on Mr. Roosevelt’s list of war criminals. I have the honor of being No. 1.”

At Nuernberg, Frank is listed as No. 6 instead of No. 1.

The Evening Star (January 10, 1946)

Goering probe found Streicher was sadist and thief, court told

NUERNBERG (AP) – Hermann Goering’s own secret investigation of Julius Streicher in 1939 showed the notorious Nazi Jew baiter as a sadist and thief, according to a document introduced before the International Military Tribunal today.

Both men listened intently from opposite sides of the dock in the war crimes trials of 22 leading Nazis. They did not glance at each other.

Earlier the judges of the United States, Russia, Great Britain and France heard in the words of another defendant, Hans Frank, how the Nazis hoped to make the Poles “slaves of the greater German empire.”

Likes to whip people

Goering’s investigation, made while he was still the second most powerful man in Germany, said: “Gauleiter Streicher likes to beat people with a riding whip, but only if he is in company with several persons assisting him. Usually the beatings are carried out with sadistic brutality.”

Streicher, through his attorney, protested vehemently against admission of the report as evidence, but was overruled.

Shortly after Goering made the report in 1939. Streicher was removed as gauleiter for Franconia. He retained his place as the principal anti-Semitic among the Nazis as editor of Der Stuermer.

The report said that under Streicher’s Aryanization program Jews in the region were forced to sell their property at 10 percent of its value. Goering’s investigating commission charged that Streicher himself obtained control of a big Jewish-owned publishing house through a “forced sale.”

Reads from Frank’s diary

Frank, who attempted to take his own life at the time of his arrest, sat stiffly in the prisoners’ box as Assistant American Prosecutor Lt. Col. William H. Baldwin of Detroit, Michigan, read from his diary a list of brutalities reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

“Once we have won the war,” read an entry in Frank’s diary on January 14, 1944, “then for all I care mincemeat can be made of the Poles.”

Over and over again, Frank called on his aides to be brutal and ruthless in carrying out Hitler’s program for Poland – a program that specified a low standard of living, elimination of the power of the Roman Catholic Church and a ban preventing the intelligentsia from forming into a ruling class.

Gibraltar attack planned

Meanwhile, as the prosecution continued to present its case against the 22 Nazi leaders, to show their individual responsibility, it appeared unlikely that the American and British attorneys would finish by the end of the week.

In yesterday’s session the court was informed that Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Mussolini during a 1940 conference that Spain was preparing to attack Gibraltar and that the attack was to be Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s declaration of war on the Allies.

Notes from the conference were introduced by the British prosecution. Concentrating its fire on the former German foreign minister, the British prosecution offered in evidence a document which showed Von Ribbentrop told the Italian leader Hitler was convinced conquest of Gibraltar was “absolutely possible, but only if the Spaniards were to be given assistance.”

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 32

The Evening Star (January 11, 1946)

Five top Nazis visited Dachau, survivor tells court at Nuernberg

NUERNBERG (AP) – A Czech victim of the Dachau camp testified today that five of the 22 top Nazi defendants on trial visited the camp at a time when many of the most horrifying experiments on human beings were in progress.

The witness, Dr. Franz Blaha, pointed directly at Wilhelm Frick, former minister of the interior; Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi Party philosopher; Walther Funk, former Reichsbank president, and Fritz Sauckel, who was in charge of slave labor, as four of the visitors. The fifth man he accused was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, absent because of a cranial hemorrhage.

Before Blaha testified, the International Military Tribunal heard the American prosecution charge that German military successes were made possible only by the resourcefulness, financial ruthlessness and “absolute cynicism” of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, another of the defendants.

Shock for defendants

Blaha said many high government and military figures frequently visited the extermination camp near Munich. His appearance in the witness box produced a kind of emotional shock among the defendants. Many of them bolted upright, with their hands clinching the rails before them.

Under questioning of American Assistant Prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd, Blaha described how some murder victims were selected because of their perfect teeth and smooth skins.

Blaha was arrested for assisting Czechoslovakia at the time of the Sudetenland crisis. As part of his punishment, his wrist tendons were cut so he could no longer follow his career as a surgeon.

Memorandum cited

Schacht listened intently while his prosecution proceeded.

The one-time wizard of German finances heard an assistant American prosecutor, Naval Lt. Brady O. Bryson, cite a memorandum which Schacht wrote Hitler in 1939 as evidence of Schacht’s complicity in the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The memorandum hailed Germany’s foreign policy as successful and pointed out to Hitler that Schacht’s financial talents had rearmed German forces to the point which made the Nazi foreign policy possible.

As the prosecution built its case against the financier, bits of testimony showed that Schacht, although aiding in Germany’s war effort, often declared himself out of sympathy with Nazi policies.

This was the first instance since the trial began in which any defendant has been pictured as anything but a completely ruthless criminal.

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.

1 Like

The Evening Star (January 12, 1946)

Editorial: Dull discovery

Considering the diabolical nuisance that Adolf Hitler had made of himself in the world, it might have seemed that his recently published last political will and testament would have been an interesting document. However, it turned out to be oppressively dull and repetitious as far as any real news was concerned.

At the same time, it was revealing. It showed that the Nazis were deficient, among other things, in adaptability and imagination. Anyone who was at all familiar with Hitler’s philosophy, as revealed in his numerous bombastic speeches, could have taken a couple of lines from his political will and recited the essence of the whole thing by heart.

It seems clear that much of Hitler’s rabblerousing cant about “international Jewry” was intended merely to stir up the poor dopes who followed him. Certainly his unctuous insistence on innocence of any war guilt was, in the face of the evidence at the Nuernberg trials, the most bald and hypocritical window-dressing.

But the incredible conclusion, after reading the Hitler will, is that Der Fuehrer in his final madness actually succumbed to his own cynical deception. Faced with imminent death, he could only parrot the lies which he and Goebbels and the rest had told for so long that he finally believed them himself.

If any clinching proof is needed of the hollowness and insanity of the whole Nazi movement, the dull and windy final opus of Adolf Hitler should provide it.

Henderson Daily Dispatch (January 12, 1946)

Witnesses taken from Nuernberg

NUERNBERG (AP) – Allied prosecutors disclosed today that 23 prospective witnesses, including one of Adolf Hitler’s former secretaries and the widow and daughter of his Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler, were removed recently from the jail here.

All those removed have been turned over to the U.S. Third Army and there was no immediate information on whether they would be freed. The prosecutors decided evidently none was needed to testify before the International Tribunal.

nuremberg.tribunal

Day 33

The Pittsburgh Press (January 14, 1946)

War crimes trial –
Axis ordered slaughter of U.S. seamen

Doenitz blamed for carrying out order

NUERNBERG (UP) – The War Crimes Tribunal heard evidence today that Germany and Japan agreed early in the war to sink U.S. merchant ships without warning to kill as many crewmen as possible, since a shortage of trained personnel would be a major American problem.

Documents were presented from Nazi naval files showing that Adolf Hitler outlined the U-boat campaign against the United States in a talk with Japanese Ambassador Hiroshi Oshima soon after the outbreak of the war.

An official memorandum said Hitler “hopes to put 20 to 24 U-boats into operation along the coast of the United States” in short order.

Ordered to kill crews

“The Fuehrer pointed out that however many ships the United States built, one of the main problems would be lack of personnel,” the memorandum said. “For that reason, even merchant ships would be sunk without warning with the intention of killing as many of the crew as possible.

“We are fighting for our existence, and our attitude cannot be ruled by any human feelings. For this reason, we must give an order that in no case should foreign seamen be taken prisoner.”

Oshima “heartily agreed” and said Japan would be forced to follow the same methods.

Aimed at Doenitz

Col. H. J. Phillimore, secretary of the British prosecution staff, presented the evidence, aiming it specifically at Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz, one of the defendants and former commander-in-chief of the German Navy. Col. Phillimore charged that by the orders he issued to his U-boat fleet, Doenitz committed crimes against humanity.

A naval order was introduced showing that Doenitz on March 30, 1940, told German invasion ships to fly the British flag until they had landed Nazi troops in Norway and Denmark.