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Judgment At Nuremberg

That was one of the most striking things about the Nazi leaders rounded up after the war: they seemed such shoddy characters; somehow amateurish and out of scale with the living nightmare they had created. In pursuing their ambitions for a master race, the Nazis had laid waste to nations, killed millions and created despair on an incalculable scale. Yet, when Hitler's henchmen trooped into the dock at Nuremberg they seemed such extraordinary nonentities; balding, elderly men who fussed with their earphones, looking grumpy or worried; or just bored. During the latter years of the war, Allied leaders had discussed what was to be done with the leaders of the Nazi regime and concluded that the raw vengeance of the firing squad was to be rejected in favor of formal judicial retribution. In the summer of 1945, an International Military Tribunal was formed in London and became the body responsible for putting on trial such Nazi leaders as could be found.

Some big names escaped the net. Adolf Hitler himself had committed suicide in his bunker at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 30 April 1945. Dr Josef Goebbels, his chief propagandist, had followed the next day, ordering an SS officer to shoot both him and his wife after he had poisoned his six children. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, had fled to Bavaria in disguise only to be captured at a checkpoint. He was held for some time without being recognized, then after revealing his identity, he bit on a cyanide capsule and died before he could be interrogated.

Few knew what had happened to Heinrich Muller, Gestapo Chief, or to Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, and also to Adolf Eichmann, faceless technician of the ‘Final Solution'. But in the drive to ‘de-nazify' Germany , thousands of suspects had been arrested and, in the first of 13 trials at Nuremberg , 21 major figures were brought to justice. They included party bosses, top military brass, diplomats and administrators. The intention of the tribunal was not just to try individuals but to put the whole Nazi system in the dock.

Unquestionably, the biggest catch for the prosecution was Herman Goering, former chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air force) and one-time successor to Hitler himself. A flying ace during World War 1, and much decorated for his bravery, Goering had been a Nazi since 1922 and reached the pinnacle of his career during the early stages of blitzkrieg (‘lightening') warfare. However, the Luftwaffe's failure to break Britain by bombing led to a gradual fall from grace. Goering sank into pleasure-loving indulgence on his country estate, where he grew enormously fat as he indulged in alcohol and other drugs. During the Nazi collapse Goering was expelled from the party and his arrest was ordered by Bormann. Goering gave himself up to American forces to avoid being assassinated by SS zealots. Under the prison regime, however, Goering shed his drug habit and 20 kilos in weight. By the time of his trial, he was in fighting trim and his mind was razor sharp. Rudolf Hess was a complete contrast. Hitler's one-time deputy had bailed out of his Messerschmitt fighter aircraft over Scotland in May 1941 in an apparent attempt to negotiate peace single-handedly between Britain and Nazi Germany. He had been held in captivity every since. A scarecrow like figure whose sunken eyes glimmered beneath beetle-brows; he was a weird and baffling figure at the trial. He claimed to be suffering from amnesia, and many of his interrogators felt that he was insane.

Hans Frank, civil administrator in Poland , was picked up near Hitler's mountain retreat of Berchtesgaden and handed over his 38-volume diary. It comprised a hideous indictment of Frank himself, recording the deportations, starvations, enslavements and exterminations accomplished under his authority. After attempting suicide, Frank succumbed to religious feelings of intense remorse during his trial. Julius Streicher, anti-Semitic editor of ‘Der Sturmer' was arrested as he tried to escape Bavaria disguised as an artist. The prisoners were tried on four counts: Crimes against Peace (initiating wars of aggression); War Crimes (violating the laws or customs of war); Crimes against Humanity (murder, enslavement and deportation of civilian populations); and Conspiracy (implication in a common plan to commit the other three). The trial opened on 20 November 1945 at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg , where the vast Nazi party rallies had been held. It was to last for 218 days, involving lorry loads of documents and at a cost of over 4 million US dollars. On the second day the prisoners were called to answer the charges, and all pleaded not guilty, though Hess refused to even answer to his name. At Nuremberg much of which is now history of the Nazi period was revealed, and many secrets came to light. A German intelligence officer named Claus Lahousen described how Hitler had engineered a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939. Condemned German criminals had been dressed up in Polish uniforms and sent to their deaths in a fake attack on a German radio station. German troops, rushing to ‘defend' the radio station, had riddled the victims with bullets. Their bodies were then paraded before the world's press as ‘proof' of ‘Polish aggression'. In December, the prosecution showed a film of what the Allies had found when they opened up concentration/extermination camps in Poland and Germany : horrific images of skeletons, both living and dead; charred bits of humanity heaped outside the crematoria; pale awkward shapes in the pits of death. Very few of the defendants in the dock were able to keep their eyes on the screen. Most denied any knowledge that such things had happened. “No power in heaven or earth will erase this shame from my country,” sobbed Hans Fritzsche, former assistant to Dr Goebbels.

More was to come from the sworn testimony of survivors who had endured torture, slave labor and grisly experimentation by Nazi ‘doctors'. From Maidenek came film of naked female prisoners lying down in pits to be shot by SS guards who grinned to camera. From Buchenwald came evidence of skins flayed from inmates' bodies and used for lampshades by the camp commandant and his wife. Did the defendants really know nothing of these atrocities? “Of course not!” snapped Goering. “The higher you stand the less you see of what is going on below.” And that was the essence of their defense, at Nuremberg and at trials that followed. The men in charge did not know, and those below them were simply “following orders”. And who had given those orders? Men who were not in the dock, of course!

Most agreed that Hitler and Himmler were directly responsible. “Himmler had his chosen psychopaths to carry out these acts and it was kept secret from the rest of us,” declared Goering who mounted a powerful defense and kept up the collective morale of the defendants by sheer force of his personality. At one point he reduced the chief American prosecutor, Mr Justice Jackson, to a helpless rage by his cleverly evasive answers to direct questions. But his guilt could not be concealed. It was he who had created the Gestapo, the dreaded Nazi police force, and participated in the formation of the concentration camp system, originally devised by the British in South Africa during the Boer War. He had personally looted over 20 million pounds sterling in art treasures from captured cities in Europe, and been active in the persecution of Jewish people, including the infamous ‘Kristallancht' (Night of Glass), a campaign of mass rioting in November 1938 when many Jews were murdered by mobs raging throughout major cities in Germany. It was Goering who had published the decree by which all damage done was to be paid for by the Jews themselves; and by which a collective fine of one billion marks was to be raised from Jewish authorities as atonement for the murder of a German diplomat at the German Embassy in Paris .

Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of the death camp at Auschwitz 1940-1943, spoke with professional pride of the 2.5 million people he had liquidated, recalling with regret that another 500,000 had died ‘accidentally' from starvation and disease. Dr Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former head of the Reich Main Security Office denied that he had taken part in the extermination programme and had ordered the final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. When documents were produced which had his signature on them authorizing these actions, he declared them to be “blatant forgeries!”

But not all the defendants were guilty of mass murder of civilians. In the dock also sat German army generals Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl and admirals Karl Donitz and Erich Raeder. Granted that all war is ugly and cruel, had they really behaved more criminally that their Allied counterparts? As professional military men they had merely carried out their duties. None of them had ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , as President Harry Truman had done in August 1945. Truman was praised for ending the war in the Pacific by months, and he never faced a war crimes tribunal to justify his executive decisions whilst president. And during his 34-year reign of terror in the Soviet Union , Joseph Stalin had millions liquidated without having to answer to anyone for his actions. He spent many hours signing death warrants sometimes up to 6,000 a day!

Members of the German High Command were arraigned for initiating ‘wars of aggression', yet nobody arraigned Russian generals for attacking Finland in 1939; or conspiring to permit the invasion of Poland under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused,” Goering observed cynically.

The most controversial case was that of Hjalmar Schacht, a brilliant financier who had raised funds for the Nazi Party during the 1930's. He had been president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics under Hitler, and since the Allies wanted to put the whole Nazi hierarchy in the dock, he seemed the obvious man to represent high finance.

But Schacht argued his corner powerfully at the trial: he had never been a member of the Nazi Party, he claimed. He had opposed Nazi policies and complained personally to Hitler about the systematic persecution of Jews. His only motive in helping the Nazis had been to save Germany from financial ruin. In 1939, when it became clear that Hitler's ruthless ambition was leading to war, Schacht had resigned from the Reichsbank. He claimed to have conspired against Hitler, camp system, originally devised by the British in South Africa during the Boer War. He had personally looted over 20 million pounds sterling in art treasures from captured cities in Europe, and been active in the persecution of Jewish people, including the infamous ‘Kristallancht' (Night of BrokenGlass), a campaign of mass rioting in November 1938 when many Jews were murdered by mobs raging throughout major cities in Germany. It was Goering who had published the decree by which all damage done was to be paid for by the Jews themselves; and by which a collective fine of one billion marks was to be raised from Jewish authorities as atonement for the murder of a German diplomat at the German Embassy in Paris .

Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of the death camp at Auschwitz 1940-1943, spoke with professional pride of the 2.5 million people he had liquidated, recalling with regret that another 500,000 had died ‘accidentally' from starvation and disease. Dr Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former head of the Reich Main Security Office denied that he had taken part in the extermination programme and had ordered the final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. When documents were produced which had his signature on them authorizing these actions, he declared them to be “blatant forgeries!”

But not all the defendants were guilty of mass murder of civilians. In the dock also sat German army generals Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl and admirals Karl Donitz and Erich Raeder. Granted that all war is ugly and cruel, had they really behaved more criminally that their Allied counterparts? As professional military men they had merely carried out their duties. None of them had ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , as President Harry Truman had done in August 1945. Truman was praised for ending the war in the Pacific by months, and he never faced a war crimes tribunal to justify his executive decisions whilst president. And during his 34-year reign of terror in the Soviet Union , Joseph Stalin had millions liquidated without having to answer to anyone for his actions. He spent many hours signing death warrants sometimes up to 6,000 a day!

Members of the German High Command were arraigned for initiating ‘wars of aggression', yet nobody arraigned Russian generals for attacking Finland in 1939; or conspiring to permit the invasion of Poland under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused,” Goering observed cynically.

The most controversial case was that of Hjalmar Schacht, a brilliant financier who had raised funds for the Nazi Party during the 1930's. He had been president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics under Hitler, and since the Allies wanted to put the whole Nazi hierarchy in the dock, he seemed the obvious man to represent high finance.

But Schacht argued his corner powerfully at the trial: he had never been a member

of the Nazi Party, he claimed. He had opposed Nazi policies and complained

personally to Hitler about the systematic persecution of Jews. His only motive

in helping the Nazis had been to save Germany from financial ruin. In 1939,

when it became clear that Hitler's ruthless ambition was leading to war, Schacht

had resigned from the Reichsbank. He claimed to have conspired against Hitler, and certainly was arrested after the failed bomb plot on 20 July 1944. In a weird irony, Schacht was taken from captivity in Dachau to face trial at Nuremberg . He claimed that he did not understand what he was doing in the dock “alongside these criminals.”

The international panel of judges carefully considered each case. Judgment for all the defendants was reached on 30 September 1946, and sentence was passed the following day. Schacht was one of the three men acquitted and freed by the court. The others were the diplomat Papen and the propagandist Fritzsche. Admiral Donitz received ten years, Konstantin von Neurath, diplomat and administrator, was given fifteen years, and Albert Speer, architect and a key figure in war production, was awarded twenty years in custody. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment as was the economist Funk and admiral Erich Raeder. The others were all sentenced to death by hanging, along with Martin Bormann, tried and sentenced in absentia.

The executions were scheduled to take place in the prison gymnasium on 16 October 1946. But Herman Goering managed to cheat the hangman by taking a capsule of cyanide that he had mysteriously managed to conceal about his cell or person despite extensive searches by his guards. He was found, blue-faced and frothing at the mouth, and died before a doctor arrived to possibly revive him. The next day the executions went ahead as planned on a black painted gallows in the gymnasium. The bodies, including Goering's, were then driven away for cremation at a secret location. Some have suggested that they may have been cremated in the ovens at Dachau , the former concentration camp, which is not far from Nuremberg . If so, there is some poetic justice in that. The victorious Allies had seen to it that what remained of the Nazi terror machine had been put on trial, found guilty, and perhaps some measure of justice had been served.

(Research: ‘Shadows of War' by Tim Healey, Hamlyn Books, 1986; ‘Nuremberg' crime_library.com).

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