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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
|
1
| 73
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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-hermann-goring/
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en
|
10 Facts About Hermann Göring
|
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[
"Sophie Gee"
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Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler. Joseph Goebbels. Hermann Göring. His name fits with those synonymous with Nazism.
On 1 October 1946, Hermann Göring...
|
en
|
/app/themes/history/favicon/apple-icon-57x57.png?x24183
|
History Hit
|
https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-hermann-goring/
|
Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler. Joseph Goebbels. Hermann Göring. His name fits with those synonymous with Nazism.
On 1 October 1946, Hermann Göring was found guilty at the Nuremberg for his crimes during the Nazi regime. What do we know about the man who committed these crimes?
1. He was born into an aristocratic family
Hermann Göring was born on 12 January 1893 to Heinrich Göring, a diplomatic consul to German South-West Africa (now Namibia), and his second wife Franziska Tiefenbrunn.
His godfather, Hermann von Epenstein, was of Jewish descendance and also Franziska’s lover. The family lived in von Epenstein’s castles, Burg Veldenstein and Burg Mauterndorf, throughout the year.
2. He was a fighter pilot in the First World War
After a childhood of military interests, and an education at military academy, Göring entered the German Army as an infantry lieutenant in 1912. He transferred to the air force and was an ace.
He reportedly shot down 22 allied aircraft during the war, and received the Pour le Merite and Iron Cross 1st class.
3. He was wounded in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923
Göring became a member of the National Socialists in 1922 after circulating the anti-Weimar and anti-reparations scene. With his military experience, he was placed in command of the SA (‘Sturmabteilung‘ – ‘brownshirts’) in December. This fulfilled his desires for action, comradeship and power.
When the Beer Hall Putsch staged by the party in 1923 was met with police firepower, 14 Nazis were killed alongside 4 policemen, and Göring was hit in the groin and hip.
With a warrant out for his arrest he fled to Austria. He soon became addicted to the morphine prescribed for his pain, leading to his institutionalisation in Sweden in 1925 and 1926. He only returned to Germany in 1927 when a full amnesty was granted.
4. He was Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe
On 1 March 1935 Göring took on the leadership of the Luftwaffe. Without the knowledge or strategic understanding necessary, he overestimated the German force’s potential, and underestimated that of his enemies.
He made a fatal tactical error during the Battle of Britain, when his switch to massive night bombings of London on 7 September 1940 actually gave the British fighter defences time to recover – just when they were reeling from losses in the air and on the ground.
5. His brother worked in opposition to the Nazi regime
Heinrich Göring had 3 children from a previous marriage, and 5 from his marriage to Franziska. The youngest of these, Albert, was born in 1895. He was rumoured to be von Epenstein’s son because of his dark eyes and central European features, as opposed to his brother’s blue eyes and northern profile.
The differences didn’t stop there. Albert was in Vienna pursuing a career in filmmaking at the time of the Anschluss in 1938. When Nazi policies began to threaten many of his friends, he arranged and funded exit visas, sometimes by playing on his older brother’s ego, and reportedly defended Jews who were being bullied in the street.
Albert was the subject of numerous Gestapo reports, 4 arrest warrants and finally a death warrant in 1944, which called for execution on sight. He was often protected from punishment by his name, shared with his powerful brother.
This name would, however, haunt him. Albert was imprisoned for two years after the fall of the Nazi regime. This was despite producing a list of the people who he had saved during the Second World War.
In conversation with an American psychiatrist, Leon Goldensohn, Hermann said of his younger brother, ‘he was always the antithesis of myself.’
6. He quickly became one of the richest men in the country
When the Nazis enacted their Four Year Plan to provide for the rearmament and self-sufficiency of Germany in 1936, Hermann Göring was made plenipotentiary (having the full power of independent action on behalf of the government). In this role he established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, employing 700,000 workers and profiting 400 million marks.
He lived in luxury with a palace in Berlin and a hunting mansion. He decorated both with his art collection, which was bolstered by gifts from those seeking favours and by the spoils of stolen Jewish collections.
7. He had one child
Despite his earlier groin injury, during his second marriage to actress Emmy Sonnemann, Hermann fathered a daughter, Edda. Born in 1938, she was the recipient of many gifts of artwork and jewellery, and was treated like a princess as any of the daughters of Nazi leaders were. Hitler was her godfather.
After her father’s death, she maintained connections with his former colleagues. She remained protective of her father, stating that her ‘only memories of him as such loving ones, I cannot see him any other way.’ She cited Hermann’s loyalty to Hitler as the reason for his downfall, and noted that he had always supported her uncle in his actions.
Edda was subject to a number of court cases regarding the gifts that she had been given, some of which had been acquired illegally. She unsuccessfully petitioned in 2015 for compensation for the money and possessions taken from her father when he was captured.
8. He was expelled from the Nazi party
In April 1945 Göring sent a telegram to Hitler, in anticipation of his likely death, asking permission to take up control over Germany. He had been named as successor in 1941.
Hitler and Martin Bormann condemned Göring as a traitor and rescinded the 1941 decree. Göring was forced to resign from his posts, and was expelled from the party in Hitler’s will.
9. He was convicted as a War Criminal
Göring was captured by the US Seventh Army on 9 May 1945. He was one of the highest ranking Nazi officials to be tried at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the others having committed suicide or escaped.
Having been weaned off his drug addiction, Göring made an attempt to acquit himself. He pleaded that he had not known of many of the crimes that he was accused of and gave excuses for his role in the others.
The prosecutors were able, however, to prove his knowledge and found him guilty of all four counts – crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
10. He committed suicide
On 15 October 1946, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Göring took a cyanide capsule in his cell. His request to be shot rather than hanged had been rejected.
The former Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe’s ashes were thrown to obscurity in a river, rather than being buried in the family plot near his brother.
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 85
|
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/online-collections/war-crimes-trials-at-nuremberg
|
en
|
The War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg
|
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[
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[] |
1945-12-18T12:00:00+00:00
|
en
|
/themes/custom/truman_library/favicon.ico
|
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/online-collections/war-crimes-trials-at-nuremberg
|
Museum Hours
The Truman Library recently completed a massive renovation of the museum and its exhibitions, the first major renovation in more than 20 years and the largest since the museum opened its doors in 1957.
View our museum hours here.
The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum is part of the Presidential Libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency.
|
||||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
0
| 29
|
https://issuu.com/mwalshgla/docs/amber_books_spring_2018_catalogue
|
en
|
Amber Books Spring 2018 Catalogue
|
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[] |
2017-12-05T11:15:20+00:00
|
Read Amber Books Spring 2018 Catalogue by Gunnar Lie & Associates on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Issuu
|
https://issuu.com/mwalshgla/docs/amber_books_spring_2018_catalogue
|
Welcome to Issuu’s blog: home to product news, tips, resources, interviews (and more) related to content marketing and publishing.
Here you'll find an answer to your question.
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 9
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials
|
en
|
Nuremberg trials
|
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials
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Series of military trials at the end of World War II
For the film, see Nuremberg Trials (film).
"International Military Tribunal" redirects here. For the Tokyo Trial, see International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
International Military TribunalIndictmentConspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanityStarted20 November 1945Decided1 October 1946Defendants24 (see list)Witnesses37 prosecution, 83 defenseCase historyRelated actionsSubsequent Nuremberg trials
International Military Tribunal for the Far EastCourt membershipJudges sitting and deputies
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and atrocities against their citizens in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial (the Soviet Union) to summary executions (the United Kingdom). In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, occupied Germany, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 22 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.
The IMT verdict followed the prosecution in declaring the crime of plotting and waging aggressive war "the supreme international crime" because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". Most of the defendants were also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the systematic murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust was significant to the trial. Twelve further trials were conducted by the United States against lower-level perpetrators, which focused more on the Holocaust. Controversial at the time for their retroactive criminalization of aggression, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law is considered "the true beginning of international criminal law".
Origin[edit]
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many European countries, including Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union. German aggression was accompanied by immense brutality in occupied areas; war losses in the Soviet Union alone included 27 million dead, mostly civilians, which was one seventh of the prewar population. The legal reckoning was premised on the extraordinary nature of Nazi criminality, particularly the perceived singularity of the systematic murder of millions of Jews.
In early 1942, representatives of nine governments-in-exile from German-occupied Europe issued a declaration to demand an international court to try the German crimes committed in occupied countries. The United States and United Kingdom refused to endorse this proposal, citing the failure of war crimes prosecutions after World War I. The London-based United Nations War Crimes Commission—without Soviet participation—first met in October 1943 and became bogged down in the scope of its mandate, with Belgian jurist Marcel de Baer and Czech legal scholar Bohuslav Ečer arguing for a broader definition of war crimes that would include "the crime of war". On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States issued the Moscow Declaration, warning the Nazi leadership of the signatories' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth...in order that justice may be done". The declaration stated that those high-ranking Nazis who had committed crimes in several countries would be dealt with jointly, while others would be tried where they had committed their crimes.
Soviet jurist Aron Trainin developed the concept of crimes against peace (waging aggressive war) which would later be central to the proceedings at Nuremberg. Trainin's ideas were reprinted in the West and widely adopted. Of all the Allies, the Soviet Union lobbied most intensely for trying the defeated German leaders for aggression in addition to war crimes. The Soviet Union wanted to hold a trial with a predetermined outcome similar to the 1930s Moscow trials, in order to demonstrate the Nazi leaders' guilt and build a case for war reparations to rebuild the Soviet economy, which had been devastated by the war. The United States insisted on a trial that would be seen as legitimate as a means of reforming Germany and demonstrating the superiority of the Western system. The United States Department of War was drawing up plans for an international tribunal in late 1944 and early 1945. The British government still preferred the summary execution of Nazi leaders, citing the failure of trials after World War I and qualms about retroactive criminality. The form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On 2 May, at the San Francisco Conference, United States president Harry S. Truman announced the formation of an international military tribunal. On 8 May, Germany surrendered unconditionally, bringing an end to the war in Europe.
Establishment[edit]
Nuremberg charter[edit]
At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the form that the trial would take. Until the end of the negotiations, it was not clear that any trial would be held at all.
The offenses that would be prosecuted were crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing customary international law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. Despite misgivings from other Allies, American negotiator and Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson threatened the United States' withdrawal if aggression was not prosecuted because it had been the rationale for American entry into World War II. However, Jackson conceded on defining crimes against peace; the other three Allies were opposed because it would undermine the freedom of action of the United Nations Security Council.
War crimes already existed in international law as criminal violations of the laws and customs of war, but these did not apply to a government's treatment of its own citizens. Legal experts sought a way to try crimes against German citizens, such as the German Jews. A Soviet proposal for a charge of "crimes against civilians" was renamed "crimes against humanity" at Jackson's suggestion after previous uses of the term in the post-World War I Commission of Responsibilities and in failed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The British proposal to define crimes against humanity was largely accepted, with the final wording being "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population". The final version of the charter limited the tribunal's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity to those committed as part of a war of aggression. Both the United States—concerned that its "Jim Crow" system of racial segregation not be labeled a crime against humanity—and the Soviet Union wanted to avoid giving an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens.
The charter upended the traditional view of international law by holding individuals, rather than states, responsible for breaches. The other three Allies' proposal to limit the definition of the crimes to acts committed by the defeated Axis was rejected by Jackson. Instead, the charter limited the jurisdiction of the court to Germany's actions. Article 7 prevented the defendants from claiming sovereign immunity, and the plea of acting under superior orders was left for the judges to decide. The trial was held under modified common law. The negotiators decided that the tribunal's permanent seat would be in Berlin, while the trial would be held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. Located in the American occupation zone, Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site of Nazi rallies. The Palace of Justice was relatively intact but needed to be renovated for the trial due to bomb damage; it had an attached prison where the defendants could be held. On 8 August, the Nuremberg Charter was signed in London.
Judges and prosecutors[edit]
In early 1946, there were a thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two thirds were from the United States. Besides legal professionals, there were many social-science researchers, psychologists, translators, and interpreters, and graphic designers, the last to make the many charts used during the trial. Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being a deputy without voting rights.
Jackson was appointed the United States' chief prosecutor, whom historian Kim Christian Priemel describes as "a versatile politician and a remarkable orator, if not a great legal thinker". The United States prosecution believed that Nazism was the product of a German deviation from the West (the Sonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. As the largest delegation, it would take on the bulk of the prosecutorial effort. At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judges Francis Biddle and John Parker. The British chief prosecutor was Hartley Shawcross, Attorney General for England and Wales, assisted by his predecessor David Maxwell Fyfe. Although the chief British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (Lord Justice of Appeal), was the nominal president of the tribunal, in practice Biddle exercised more authority.
The French prosecutor, François de Menthon, had just overseen trials of the leaders of Vichy France; he resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Auguste Champetier de Ribes. The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and deputy Robert Falco, a judge of the Cour de Cassation who had represented France at the London Conference. The French government tried to appoint staff who were not tainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments, including Champetier de Ribes, were of those who had been in the French resistance. Expecting a show trial, the Soviet Union initially appointed as chief prosecutor Iona Nikitchenko, who had presided over the Moscow trials, but he was made a judge and replaced by Roman Rudenko, a show trial prosecutor chosen for his skill as an orator. The Soviet judges and prosecutors were not permitted to make any major decisions without consulting a commission in Moscow led by Soviet politician Andrei Vyshinsky; the resulting delays hampered the Soviet effort to set the agenda. The influence of the Soviet delegation was also constrained by limited English proficiency, lack of interpreters, and unfamiliarity with diplomacy and international institutions.
Requests by Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization, as well as the Provisional Government of National Unity in Poland, for an active role in the trial justified by their representation of victims of Nazi crimes were rejected. The Soviet Union invited prosecutors from its allies, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia; Denmark and Norway also sent a delegation. Although the Polish delegation was not empowered to intervene in the proceedings, it submitted evidence and an indictment, succeeding at drawing some attention to crimes committed against Polish Jews and non-Jews.
Indictment[edit]
The work of drafting the indictment was divided up by the national delegations. The British worked on aggressive war; the other delegations were assigned the task of covering crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on the Western Front (France) and the Eastern Front (the Soviet Union). The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations. The British and American delegations decided to work jointly in drafting the charges of conspiracy to wage aggressive war. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment.
The charge of conspiracy, absent from the charter, held together the wide array of charges and defendants and was used to charge the top Nazi leaders, as well as bureaucrats who had never killed anyone or perhaps even directly ordered killing. It was also an end run on the charter's limits on charging crimes committed before the beginning of World War II. Conspiracy charges were central to the cases against propagandists and industrialists: the former were charged with providing the ideological justification for war and other crimes, while the latter were accused of enabling Germany's war effort. The charge, a brainchild of War Department lawyer Murray C. Bernays, and perhaps inspired by his previous work prosecuting securities fraud, was spearheaded by the United States and less popular with the other delegations, particularly France.
The problem of translating the indictment and evidence into the three official languages of the tribunal—English, French, and Russian—as well as German was severe due to the scale of the task and difficulty of recruiting interpreters, especially in the Soviet Union. Vyshinsky demanded extensive corrections to the charges of crimes against peace, especially regarding the role of the German–Soviet pact in starting World War II. Jackson also separated out an overall conspiracy charge from the other three charges, aiming that the American prosecution would cover the overall Nazi conspiracy while the other delegations would flesh out the details of Nazi crimes. The division of labor, and the haste with which the indictment was prepared, resulted in duplication, imprecise language, and lack of attribution of specific charges to individual defendants.
Defendants[edit]
Some of the most prominent Nazis—Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels—had committed suicide and therefore could not be tried. The prosecutors wanted to try representative leaders of German politics, economy, and military. Most of the defendants had surrendered to the United States or United Kingdom.
The defendants, who were largely unrepentant, included former cabinet ministers: Franz von Papen (who had brought Hitler to power); Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Konstantin von Neurath (foreign minister). Wilhelm Frick (interior minister), and Alfred Rosenberg (minister for the occupied eastern territories). Also prosecuted were leaders of the German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG), former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, and economic planners Albert Speer and Walther Funk, along with Speer's subordinate and head of the forced labor program, Fritz Sauckel. While the British were skeptical of prosecuting economic leaders, the French had a strong interest in highlighting German economic imperialism. The military leaders were Hermann Göring—the most infamous surviving Nazi —Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Erich Raeder, and Karl Dönitz. Also on trial were propagandists Julius Streicher and Hans Fritzsche; Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy who had flown to Britain in 1941; Hans Frank, governor-general of the General Governorate of Poland; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach; Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the leader of Himmler's Reich Main Security Office. Observers of the trial found the defendants mediocre and contemptible.
Although the list of defendants was finalized on 29 August, as late as October, Jackson demanded the addition of new names, but this was rejected. Of the 24 men indicted, Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, as the Allies were unaware of his death; Krupp was too ill to stand trial; and Robert Ley had committed suicide before the start of the trial. Former Nazis were allowed to serve as counsel and by mid-November all defendants had lawyers. The defendants' lawyers jointly appealed to the court, claiming it did not have jurisdiction against the accused; but this motion was rejected. The defense lawyers saw themselves as acting on behalf of their clients, but also the German nation. Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Gestapo, the SA, the SS and the SD, and the General Staff and High Command of the German military (Wehrmacht). The aim was to have these organizations declared criminal, so that their members could be tried expeditiously for membership in a criminal organization. Senior American officials believed that convicting organizations was a good way of showing that not just the top German leaders were responsible for crimes, without condemning the entire German people.
Evidence[edit]
Over the summer, all of the national delegations struggled to gather evidence for the upcoming trial. The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors. This strategy increased the credibility of their case, since survivor testimony was considered less reliable and more vulnerable to accusations of bias, but reduced public interest in the proceedings. The American prosecution drew on reports of the Office of Strategic Services, an American intelligence agency, and information provided by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the American Jewish Committee, while the French prosecution presented many documents that it had obtained from the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. The prosecution called 37 witnesses compared to the defense's 83, not including 19 defendants who testified on their own behalf. The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents and entered 4,600 into evidence, along with 30 kilometres (19 mi) of film and 25,000 photographs.
The charter allowed the admissibility of any evidence deemed to have probative value, including depositions. Because of the loose evidentiary rules, photographs, charts, maps, and films played an important role in making incredible crimes believable. After the American prosecution submitted many documents at the beginning of the trial, the judges insisted that all of the evidence be read into the record, which slowed the trial. The structure of the charges also caused delays as the same evidence ended up being read out multiple times, when it was relevant to both conspiracy and the other charges.
Course of the trial[edit]
The International Military Tribunal began trial on 20 November 1945, after postponement requests from the Soviet prosecution, who wanted more time to prepare its case, were rejected. All defendants pleaded not guilty. Jackson made it clear that the trial's purpose extended beyond convicting the defendants. Prosecutors wanted to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, establish individual responsibility and the crime of aggression in international law, provide a history lesson to the defeated Germans, delegitimize the traditional German elite, and allow the Allies to distance themselves from appeasement. Jackson maintained that while the United States did "not seek to convict the whole German people of crime", neither did the trial "serve to absolve the whole German people except 21 men in the dock". Nevertheless, defense lawyers (although not most of the defendants) often argued that the prosecution was trying to promote German collective guilt and forcefully countered this strawman. According to Priemel, the conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute, totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the first victims rather than agents, collaborators, and fellow travellers". In contrast, the evidence presented on the Holocaust convinced some observers that Germans must have been aware of this crime while it was ongoing.
American and British prosecution[edit]
On 21 November, Jackson gave the opening speech for the prosecution. He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason". Focusing on aggressive war, which he described as the root of the other crimes, Jackson promoted an intentionalist view of the Nazi state and its overall criminal conspiracy. The speech was favorably received by the prosecution, the tribunal, the audience, historians, and even the defendants.
Much of the American case focused on the development of the Nazi conspiracy before the outbreak of war. The American prosecution became derailed during attempts to provide evidence on the first act of aggression, against Austria. On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps. The film, compiled from footage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, shocked both the defendants and the judges, who adjourned the trial. Indiscriminate selection and disorganized presentation of documentary evidence without tying it to specific defendants hampered the American prosecutors' work on the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. The Americans summoned Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf, who testified about the murder of 80,000 people by those under his command, and SS general Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who admitted that German anti-partisan warfare was little more than a cover for the mass murder of Jews.
The British prosecution covered the charge of crimes against peace, which was largely redundant to the American conspiracy case. On 4 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech, much of which had been written by Cambridge professor Hersch Lauterpacht. Unlike Jackson, Shawcross attempted to minimize the novelty of the aggression charges, elaborating its precursors in the conventions of Hague and Geneva, the League of Nations Covenant, the Locarno Treaty, and the Kellogg–Briand Pact. The British took four days to make their case, with Maxwell Fyfe detailing treaties broken by Germany. In mid-December the Americans switched to presenting the case against the indicted organizations, while in January both the British and Americans presented evidence against individual defendants. Besides the organizations mentioned in the indictment, American, and British prosecutors also mentioned the complicity of the German Foreign Office, army, and navy.
French prosecution[edit]
From 17 January to 7 February 1946, France presented its charges and supporting evidence. In contrast to the other prosecution teams, the French prosecution delved into Germany's development in the nineteenth century, arguing that it had diverged from the West due to pan-Germanism and imperialism. They argued that Nazi ideology, which derived from these earlier ideas, was the mens rea—criminal intent—of the crimes on trial. The French prosecutors, more than their British or American counterparts, emphasized the complicity of many Germans; they barely mentioned the charge of aggressive war and instead focused on forced labor, economic plunder, and massacres. Prosecutor Edgar Faure grouped together various German policies, such as the German annexation of Alsace–Lorraine, under the label of Germanization, which he argued was a crime against humanity. Unlike the British and American prosecution strategies, which focused on using German documents to make their cases, the French prosecutors took the perspective of the victims, submitting postwar police reports. Eleven witnesses, including victims of Nazi persecution, were called; resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier testified about crimes she had witnessed. The French charges of war crimes were accepted by the tribunal, except for the execution of hostages. Due to the narrow definition of crimes against humanity in the charter, the only part of the Germanization charges accepted by the judges was the deportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe.
Soviet prosecution[edit]
On 8 February, the Soviet prosecution opened its case with a speech by Rudenko that covered all four prosecution charges, highlighting a wide variety of crimes committed by the German occupiers as part of their destructive and unprovoked invasion. Rudenko tried to emphasize common ground with the other Allies while rejecting any similarity between Nazi and Soviet rule. The next week, the Soviet prosecution produced Friedrich Paulus— a German field marshal captured after the Battle of Stalingrad—as a witness and questioned him about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Paulus incriminated his former associates, pointing to Keitel, Jodl, and Göring as the defendants most responsible for the war.
More so than other delegations, Soviet prosecutors showed the gruesome details of German atrocities, especially the death by starvation of 3 million Soviet prisoners of war and several hundred thousand residents of Leningrad. Although Soviet prosecutors dealt most extensively with the systematic murder of Jews in eastern Europe, at times they blurred the fate of Jews with that of other Soviet nationalities. Although these aspects had already been covered by the American prosecution, Soviet prosecutors introduced new evidence from Extraordinary State Commission reports and interrogations of senior enemy officers. Lev Smirnov presented evidence on the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia, adding that the German invaders had destroyed thousands of villages and murdered their inhabitants throughout eastern Europe. The Soviet prosecution emphasized the racist aspect of policies such as the deportation of millions of civilians to Germany for forced labor, the murder of children, systematic looting of occupied territories, and theft or destruction of cultural heritage. The Soviet prosecution also attempted to fabricate German responsibility for the Katyn massacre, which had in fact been committed by the NKVD. Although Western prosecutors never publicly rejected the Katyn charge for fear of casting doubt on the entire proceedings, they were skeptical. The defense presented evidence of Soviet responsibility, and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict.
External videos Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders in the USSR, 57 minutes; shown on 19 February 1946 Testimony of Abraham Sutzkever, 27 February 1946
Inspired by the films shown by the American prosecution, the Soviet Union commissioned three films for the trial: The German Fascist Destruction of the Cultural Treasures of the Peoples of the USSR, Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders in the USSR, and The German Fascist Destruction of Soviet Cities, using footage from Soviet filmmakers as well as shots from German newsreels. The second film included footage of the liberation of Majdanek and the liberation of Auschwitz and was considered even more disturbing than the American concentration camp film. Soviet witnesses included several survivors of German crimes, including two civilians who lived through the siege of Leningrad, a peasant whose village was destroyed in anti-partisan warfare, a Red Army doctor who endured several prisoner-of-war camps and two Holocaust survivors—Samuel Rajzman, a survivor of Treblinka extermination camp, and poet Abraham Sutzkever, who described the murder of tens of thousands of Jews from Vilna. The Soviet prosecution case was generally well received and presented compelling evidence about the suffering of the Soviet people and the Soviet contributions to victory.
Defense[edit]
From March to July 1946, the defense presented its counterarguments. Before the prosecution finished, it was clear that their general case was proven, but it remained to determine the individual guilt of each defendant. None of the defendants tried to assert that the Nazis' crimes had not occurred. Some defendants denied involvement in certain crimes or implausibly claimed ignorance of them, especially the Final Solution. A few defense lawyers inverted the arguments of the prosecution to assert that the Germans' authoritarian mindset and obedience to the state exonerated them from any personal guilt. Most rejected that Germany had deviated from Western civilization, arguing that few Germans could have supported Hitler because Germany was a civilized country.
The defendants tried to blame their crimes on Hitler, who was mentioned 1,200 times during the trial—more than the top five defendants combined. Other absent and dead men, including Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, and Bormann, were also blamed. To counter claims that conservative defendants had enabled the Nazi rise to power, defense lawyers blamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany, trade unions, and other countries that maintained diplomatic relations with Germany. In contrast, most defendants avoided incriminating each other. Most defendants argued their own insignificance within the Nazi system, but Göring took the opposite approach, expecting to be executed but vindicated in the eyes of the German people.
The charter did not recognize a tu quoque defense—asking for exoneration on the grounds that the Allies had committed the same crimes with which the defendants were charged. Although defense lawyers repeatedly equated the Nuremberg Laws to legislation found in other countries, Nazi concentration camps to Allied detention facilities, and the deportation of Jews to the expulsion of Germans, the judges rejected their arguments. Alfred Seidl [de] repeatedly tried to disclose the secret protocols of the German–Soviet pact; although he was eventually successful, it was legally irrelevant and the judges rejected his attempt to bring up the Treaty of Versailles. Six defendants were charged with the German invasion of Norway, and their lawyers argued that this invasion was undertaken to prevent a British invasion of that country; a cover-up prevented the defense from capitalizing on this argument. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States Navy had also used unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan in the Pacific; Dönitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that it could not be a crime. The judges barred most evidence on Allied misdeeds from being heard in court.
Many defense lawyers complained about various aspects of the trial procedure and attempted to discredit the entire proceedings. In order to appease them, the defendants were allowed a free hand with their witnesses and a great deal of irrelevant testimony was heard. The defendants' witnesses sometimes managed to exculpate them, but other witnesses—including Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, and Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the German resistance—bolstered the prosecution's case. Over the course of the trial, Western judges allowed the defendants additional leeway to denounce the Soviet Union, which was ultimately revealed to be a co-conspirator in the outbreak of World War II. In the context of the brewing Cold War—for example, in 1947 Winston Churchill delivered the Iron Curtain speech —the trial became a means of condemning not only Germany but also the Soviet Union.
Closing[edit]
On 31 August, closing arguments were presented. Over the course of the trial, crimes against humanity and especially against Jews (who were mentioned as victims of Nazi atrocities far more than any other group) came to upstage the aggressive war charge. In contrast to the opening prosecution statements, all eight closing statements highlighted the Holocaust; and the French and British prosecutors made this the main charge, as opposed to that of aggression. All prosecutors except the Americans mentioned the concept of genocide, which had been recently invented by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin. British prosecutor Shawcross quoted from witness testimony about a murdered Jewish family from Dubno, Ukraine. During the closing statements, most defendants disappointed the judges by their lies and denial. Speer managed to give the impression of apologizing without assuming personal guilt or naming any victims other than the German people. On 2 September, the court recessed; and the judges retreated into seclusion to decide the verdict and sentences, which had been under discussion since June. The verdict was drafted by British deputy judge Norman Birkett. All eight judges participated in the deliberations, but the deputies could not cast a vote.
Verdict[edit]
The International Military Tribunal agreed with the prosecution that aggression was the gravest charge against the accused, stating in its judgment that because "war is essentially an evil thing", "to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". The work of the judges was made more difficult due to the broadness of the crimes listed in the Nuremberg Charter. The judges did not attempt to define the crime of aggression and did not mention the retroactivity of the charges in the verdict. Despite the lingering doubts of some of the judges, the official interpretation of the IMT held that all of the charges had a solid basis in customary international law and that the trial was procedurally fair. The judges were aware that both the Allies and the Axis had planned or committed acts of aggression, writing the verdict carefully to avoid discrediting either the Allied governments or the tribunal.
The judges ruled that there had been a premeditated conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, whose goals were "the disruption of the European order" and "the creation of a Greater Germany beyond the frontiers of 1914". Contrary to Jackson's argument that the conspiracy began with the founding of the Nazi Party in 1920, the verdict dated the planning of aggression to the 1937 Hossbach Memorandum. The conspiracy charge caused significant dissent on the bench; Donnedieu de Vabres wanted to scrap it. Through a compromise proposed by the British judges, the charge of conspiracy was narrowed to a conspiracy to wage aggressive war. Only eight defendants were convicted on that charge; all of whom were also found guilty of crimes against peace. All 22 defendants were charged with crimes against peace, and 12 were convicted. The war crimes and crimes against humanity charges held up the best, with only two defendants charged on those grounds being acquitted. The judges determined that crimes against humanity concerning German Jews before 1939 were not under the court's jurisdiction because the prosecution had not proven a connection to aggressive war.
Four organizations were ruled to be criminal: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD, although some lower ranks and subgroups were excluded. The verdict only allowed for individual criminal responsibility if willing membership and knowledge of the criminal purpose could be proved, complicating denazification efforts. The SA, the Reich Cabinet, and the General Staff and High Command were not ruled to be criminal organizations. Although the Wehrmacht leadership was not considered an organization within the meaning of the charter, misrepresentation of the verdict as an exoneration was one of the foundations of the clean Wehrmacht myth. The trial had nevertheless resulted in the coverage of its systematic criminality in the German press.
Sentences were debated at length by the judges. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann). On 16 October, ten were hanged, with Göring killing himself the day before. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dönitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent to Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on a deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers. Despite being accused of the same crimes, Sauckel was sentenced to death, while Speer was given a prison sentence because the judges considered that he could reform. Nikichenko released a dissent approved by Moscow that rejected all the acquittals, called for a death sentence for Hess, and convicted all the organizations.
Subsequent Nuremberg trials[edit]
Main article: Subsequent Nuremberg trials
Initially, it was planned to hold a second international tribunal for German industrialists, but this was never held because of differences between the Allies. Twelve military trials were convened solely by the United States in the same courtroom that had hosted the International Military Tribunal. Pursuant to Law No. 10 adopted by the Allied Control Council, United States forces arrested almost 100,000 Germans as war criminals. The Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes identified 2,500 major war criminals, of whom 177 were tried. Many of the worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons.
One set of trials focused on the actions of German professionals: the Doctors' trial focused on human experimentation and euthanasia murders, the Judges' trial on the role of the judiciary in Nazi crimes, and the Ministries trial on the culpability of bureaucrats of German government ministries, especially the Foreign Office. Also on trial were industrialists—in the Flick trial, the IG Farben trial, and the Krupp trial—for using forced labor, looting property from Nazi victims, and funding SS atrocities. Members of the SS were tried in the Pohl trial, which focused on members of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that oversaw SS economic activity, including the Nazi concentration camps; the RuSHA trial of Nazi racial policies; and the Einsatzgruppen trial, in which members of the mobile killing squads were tried for the murder of more than one million people behind the Eastern Front. Luftwaffe general Erhard Milch was tried for using slave labor and deporting civilians. In the Hostages case, several generals were tried for executing thousands of hostages and prisoners of war, looting, using forced labor, and deporting civilians in the Balkans. Other generals were tried in the High Command Trial for plotting wars of aggression, issuing criminal orders, deporting civilians, using slave labor, and looting in the Soviet Union.
These trials emphasized the crimes committed during the Holocaust. The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with the judgments totaling 3,828 pages. Of 177 defendants, 142 were convicted and 25 sentenced to death; the severity of sentencing was related to the defendant's proximity to mass murder. Legal historian Kevin Jon Heller argues that the trials' greatest achievement was "their inestimable contribution to the form and substance of international criminal law", which had been left underdeveloped by the IMT.
Contemporary reactions[edit]
In all, 249 journalists were accredited to cover the IMT and 61,854 visitor tickets were issued. In France, the sentence for Rudolf Hess and acquittal of organizations were met with outrage from the media and especially from organizations for deportees and resistance fighters, as they were perceived as too lenient. In the United Kingdom, although a variety of responses were reported, it was difficult to sustain interest in a long trial. Where the prosecution was disappointed by some of the verdicts, the defense could take satisfaction.
Many Germans at the time of the trials focused on finding food and shelter. Despite this, a majority read press reports about the trial. In a 1946 poll, 78 percent of Germans assessed the trial as fair, but four years later that had fallen to 38 percent, with 30 percent considering it unfair. As time went on, more Germans considered the trials illegitimate victor's justice and an imposition of collective guilt, which they rejected—instead considering themselves victims of the war. As the Cold War began, the rapidly changing political environment began to affect the effectiveness of the trials. The educational purpose of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals was a failure, in part because of the resistance to war crimes trials in German society, but also because of the United States Army's refusal to publish the trial record in German for fear it would undermine the fight against communism.
The German churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were vocal proponents of amnesty. The pardon of convicted war criminals also had cross-party support in West Germany, which was established in 1949. The Americans satisfied these wishes to bind West Germany to the Western Bloc, beginning early releases of Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicts in 1949. In 1951, High Commissioner John J. McCloy overturned most of the sentences and the last three prisoners, all convicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial, were released in 1958. The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials. The IMT defendants required Soviet permission for release; Speer was not successful in obtaining early release, and Hess remained in prison until his death in 1987. By the late 1950s, the West German consensus on release began to erode, due to greater openness in political culture and new revelations of Nazi criminality, including the first trials of Nazi perpetrators in West German courts.
Legacy[edit]
The International Military Tribunal, and its charter, "marked the true beginning of international criminal law". The trial has met a mixed reception ranging from glorification to condemnation. The reaction was initially predominantly negative, but has become more positive over time.
The selective prosecution exclusively of the defeated Axis and hypocrisy of all four Allied powers has garnered the most persistent criticism. Such actions as the German–Soviet pact the expulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe, deportation of civilians for forced labor, and violent suppression of anti-colonial uprisings would have been deemed illegal according to the definitions of international crimes in the Nuremberg charter. Another controversy resulted from trying defendants for acts that were not criminal at the time, particularly crimes against peace. Equally novel but less controversial were crimes against humanity, the conspiracy charge, and criminal penalties on individuals for breaches of international law. Besides these criticisms, the trials have been taken to task for the distortion that comes from fitting historical events into legal categories.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial) borrowed many of its ideas from the IMT, including all four charges, and was intended by the Truman Administration to shore up the IMT's legal legacy. On 11 December 1946, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution affirming "the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal". In 1950, the International Law Commission drafted the Nuremberg principles to codify international criminal law, although the Cold War prevented the adoption of these principles until the 1990s. The 1948 Genocide Convention was much more restricted than Lemkin's original concept and its effectiveness was further limited by Cold War politics. In the 1990s, a revival of international criminal law included the establishment of ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), which were widely viewed as part of the legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. A permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), proposed in 1953, was established in 2002.
The trials were the first use of simultaneous interpretation, which stimulated technical advances in translation methods. The Palace of Justice houses a museum on the trial and the courtroom became a tourist attraction, drawing 13,138 visitors in 2005. The IMT is one of the most well-studied trials in history, and it has also been the subject of an abundance of books and scholarly publications, along with motion pictures such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Memory of Justice (1976).
References[edit]
Sources[edit]
Further information: Nuremberg Trials bibliography
[edit]
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 93
|
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-discovery-of-a-little-known-history-of-the-nuremberg-trials
|
en
|
The Discovery of a Forgotten and Banned Nuremberg Film
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[
"nuremberg trials",
"nazis",
"the holocaust",
"war crimes",
"second world war",
"germany",
"documentaries",
"filmmakers"
] | null |
[
"Peter Canby",
"Ian Buruma",
"Michael Schulman",
"Mark Yarm",
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] |
2023-05-24T06:00:00-04:00
|
Peter Canby on the documentary “Filmmakers for the Prosecution,” about a 1945 documentary film about the Nazi atrocities that was banned by the U.S. Army.
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en
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https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
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The New Yorker
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https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-discovery-of-a-little-known-history-of-the-nuremberg-trials
|
There is a point in Jean-Christophe Klotz’s documentary “Filmmakers for the Prosecution” when the producer Sandra Schulberg describes emptying out the New York City loft where her mother, Barbara, lived until 2002. Under a daybed, Schulberg and her siblings found boxes of documents concerning the first Nuremberg trial of prominent Nazis, held after the end of the Second World War, in 1945 and 1946. Looking further, Schulberg discovered a 16-mm. film titled “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today.” The film was on a corner shelf, and people had been using the cannister as a party coaster, she tells Klotz, “putting their wine glasses on it.”
The film was a print of a Nuremberg documentary made by Sandra’s late father, Stuart, which had been commissioned by the War Department and showed Nazi political and military leaders in the full light of the atrocities they’d committed during the war. By the time the film was finished, in 1948, however, its point of view conflicted with the United States’ new Cold War priorities, which included recruiting some of those same Nazis to the Allied cause. The documentary was denied release by Kenneth Royall, the Secretary of the Army. Before Schulberg found the copy in her mother’s loft, her father’s film had never been shown in theatres in the United States.
The discovery of the Nuremberg material became an obsession for Schulberg, who knew little about either Nuremberg or her father’s important role there. “I was tabula rasa,” she told me. She subsequently restored the Nuremberg documentary in partnership with Josh Waletzky, had it translated into thirteen languages, and disseminated it widely. The restored film reached Klotz in France. He had made two acclaimed documentaries about Rwanda; during an early reporting trip, he’d been shot in the hip by Hutu militiamen and almost lost his leg. It took Klotz time to realize that his repeated trips to Rwanda, and his calling to show the horrors of ethnic cleansing, had to do with his family’s Second World War history. Klotz’s grandfather, a Jewish physician from Alsace, was an Auschwitz survivor. As a seventeen-year-old, Klotz’s father, Georges, joined the French Resistance and fought against the Nazis until the end of the war, at which point he decided to work in film. In the early fifties, he attached himself to a Marshall Plan film program based in Paris that was overseen by Stuart Schulberg, who became his mentor.
The Schulberg family is a storied one in Hollywood. B. P. Schulberg—Stuart’s father—had been the chief of production at Paramount in the late twenties and early thirties. He’d produced more than a hundred films and introduced Clara Bow, the original It Girl, to the American moviegoing public. In 1941, B. P.’s son Budd—Stuart’s older brother—saw his novel “What Makes Sammy Run?,” which excoriated Hollywood’s lack of morality, published. He went on to write the screenplays for “On the Waterfront,” “A Face in the Crowd,” and other films. Stuart, after his postwar exploits in Europe, returned to the United States and eventually became the long-running producer of the “Today” show.
Klotz had long wanted to tell Stuart Schulberg’s Nuremberg story, and, after he received a copy of his documentary that his daughter had restored, he approached Sandra about collaborating on a film. Klotz knew that both Stuart (a Marine sergeant) and Budd (a Navy lieutenant) had worked for the Office of Strategic Services’ Field Photographic Branch under the famous director John Ford, who had stacked his O.S.S. film division with Hollywood filmmakers and technicians. At the war’s close, Ford and his O.S.S. boss, William (Wild Bill) Donovan, embarked on a desperate race to collect film and photographic evidence of Nazi atrocities. Donovan, who was a lawyer and helped plan the Nuremberg prosecutions, hoped to use the Nazi film archives as evidence of criminal deeds. But, by the summer of 1945, Nazi sympathizers were destroying evidence as fast as they could locate it.
Recruited to Field Photo, as it came to be known, Stuart arrived in Germany in July of 1945 with a mandate to collect as much visual evidence of Nazi crimes as he could before the opening of the first Nuremberg trial, then scheduled for mid-September. Budd arrived later, at the beginning of August. At twenty-two, Stuart was the youngest member of the Field Photo team and wrote almost daily letters to Barbara back in the United States. These letters were part of the trove that Sandra found in her mother’s apartment. Klotz quotes them extensively in the film. In one letter, Stuart writes, “Sometimes I think the job is a few sizes too big for me. I suppose I’ve never had so much responsibility. There’s so much to do, and so much of it is so important that I grow terrified.” In another, he writes, “The job is so damned important and so many big people are counting on us and expecting us to do our part. Unless something happens quickly, we’re going to foul up the biggest assignment Field Photo ever got.”
Klotz’s film records a race pitting the Schulbergs and the rest of Ford’s Field Photo unit against what seemed like a residual German command structure that was systematically destroying evidence. In one instance, the Field Photo team received a tip about a secret cache of Nazi footage at the bottom of a deep salt mine in Lower Saxony, only to arrive there and find “acres of films—football fields of film,” as Budd put it, still smoldering after it had been burned. Another cache, in a building outside Berlin, had similarly been torched just prior to the arrival of Field Photo.
Finally, the team learned of a collection of Nazi films in the old U.F.A. film studio in the Berlin suburb of Babelsberg, where, before the war, films including “The Blue Angel” had been made. The Babelsberg studio, however, was in the Soviet sector, and the Soviet officer in charge, Major Georgy Avenarius, couldn’t understand what a group of young American officers led by Budd Schulberg wanted with the Nazi films that he was charged with protecting. In an interview late in life, Budd recalls explaining to Avenarius that “it’s a long story, Major, but we are part of Commander John Ford’s—”
Major Avenarius cut him off. “John Ford? You know John Ford?
“He’s our boss,” Budd responded.
Avenarius told Budd he’d written extensively on John Ford.
It turned out, Budd Schulberg recalls, “that this man was the greatest expert on John Ford in the world.”
“Bring a truck,” Avenarius said. “Take anything you want.”
The structure of the Nuremberg trial was the result of complicated postwar negotiations between the Allies. Stalin and Churchill wanted to simply execute leading Nazis, but the American team—led by Robert H. Jackson, a legal visionary on leave from the Supreme Court—wanted to use the trial to create the cornerstone for a new era of international law. Among other important principles, Jackson entered into world jurisprudence the legal concepts of crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg trial also introduced the principle that individual politicians and members of militaries could be held responsible for crimes committed by their states. Jackson hoped that this last principle would be a significant deterrent to future state crimes.
Jackson was adamant that the Nuremberg trial be accessible to the press and the public—both because he wanted to show the world that the defendants had been treated fairly and also because he wanted the German and international publics to know about the atrocities that the Nazis had committed. Jackson asked Field Photo to present two films at the trial. The first was scheduled for November 29, 1945, ten days after the trial’s opening. Titled “Nazi Concentration Camps,” it featured an hour-long compilation of film footage taken when the Americans and the British liberated the camps. The trial defendants were directly and publicly confronted with images of starved inmates, emaciated, lime-covered corpses, charred human remains stacked on crude crematoriums, piles of bodies pushed by bulldozers into trenches. The courtroom impact, shown in Klotz’s film, is stunning. When the lights come up, Wilhelm Keitel, a field marshal and the head of the German Armed Forces High Command, is wiping tears from his eyes. Hans Frank, the governor-general of occupied Poland and a man accused of killing millions of Poles, stares into space—also near tears. Most notably, Rudolf Hess, who had spent the war in British prisons and had been effectively feigning amnesia, came in to court the next day and said he took full responsibility for everything he’d done, stating that his memory was “once more available” and that his amnesia had been “for tactical reasons.”
The second film, “The Nazi Plan,” was shown on December 11th, less than two weeks later. It ran three hours and fourteen minutes—and made the case that both the war and the atrocities committed by the Party were premeditated. To help make the film’s argument, the Schulbergs and the Field Photo unit had tracked down and interrogated both Leni Riefenstahl and Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer, each of whom proved more than willing to rat out their Nazi colleagues.
The Nuremberg trial lasted almost a year. The defendants were convicted on the basis of the reams of evidence collected by Jackson and his team. Ten defendants were condemned to death and hanged in the Nuremberg gymnasium sixteen days after their verdicts were announced. The group included Keitel, Frank, Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and General Alfred Jodl, who had surrendered the German forces to the Allies just seventeen months earlier. Hermann Göring managed to commit suicide the night before his sentence would have been carried out.
The shocked reactions of the defendants to Field Photo’s evidentiary films could have been feigned, Eli Rosenbaum, a long-term Justice Department investigator and prosecutor of human-rights violations who appears in Klotz’s film, told me. But television hadn’t yet been widely adopted, he added, and it’s likely that most of the defendants had never been directly confronted with immediate visual evidence of the horrors that they had perpetrated. Rosenbaum spoke to me about how important the photos and films collected by the O.S.S. team had been in establishing the shared perception of the Holocaust; in the film, he notes that the written word was “absolutely inadequate” to describe the extent of the Nazi reign of terror and that “the only compelling way to do that was through film.”
Stuart Schulberg did not begin work on his documentary—the one that would become “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today”—until the trial was over. The intention of the film was to show how the case against the Nazi leaders had been built and prosecuted. But because the documentary was made under the auspices of the War Department, Stuart had to rely on footage shot by the understaffed and politicized Army Signal Corps. The documentary itself soon became mired in the new politics of the Cold War and was never released in theatres in the United States. At a time when the American military was beginning to recruit former Nazis to help the U.S. in its standoff with the Russians, the Americans did not want to circulate a film that further demonized the Germans—particularly those in the military. “A great opportunity was lost,” Rosenbaum observes in Klotz’s film, “to educate Americans and to remind them of what we fought for.”
Rosenbaum was recently appointed by Merrick Garland to lead the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability team for Ukraine. He characterized Nuremberg to me as “the mother of all modern-day human-rights prosecutions,” and ends the film by noting how tragically prescient Jackson was when he wrote that the Nuremberg defendants were “living symbols of racial hatred, terrorism, and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.” These are, Rosenbaum continues, “the very same problems that we deal with today. The world has not changed as much as the dreamers who brought us the Nuremberg trial thought it would.” ♦
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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2
| 67
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https://apimagesblog.com/historical/2020/11/17/75-years-since-nuremberg-trials-began
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en
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75 years since Nuremberg trials began — AP Photos
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Jonathan Elderfield"
] |
2020-11-17T00:00:00
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Text by David Rising
|
en
|
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57cf18ae6b8f5ba693497e1a/1473190752648-UFLRA4U7WXELT57T8IBC/favicon.ico?format=100w
|
AP Photos
|
https://apimagesblog.com/historical/2020/11/17/75-years-since-nuremberg-trials-began
|
The cell block in the Nuremberg prison, Germany, on Aug. 30, 1945, which will house war criminals awaiting trial. At the end is seen a boarded up section where important prisoners will be housed. (AP Photo)
A general view of the prison, adjoining the courtroom at Nuremberg, Germany on Aug. 31, 1945. Here major war criminals are to be housed during their trial. (AP Photo)
A general view of the courtroom during the first morning session in Nuremberg on Nov. 20, 1945. In foreground, left, sit the defendants with a row of guards behind them and their counsel sitting in front of them. (AP Photo/B.I. Sanders)
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering stands in the prisoner's dock at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in Germany on Nov. 21, 1945. He is entering a plea of not guilty to the International Military Tribunal Indictment. Goering is wearing headphones of the court translating system. (AP Photo)
The Russian assistant prosecutor reads the indictment, (lower left) in Nuremberg, Germany on Nov. 28, 1945. The American prosecutors sit at the center table nearest the camera. Left is Justice Robert Jackson and, right, his assistant. Far, left, are the British prosecutors and far, right, the Russian. (AP Photo)
Former Foreign Minister of the German Reich, Dr. Konstantin von Neurath, right, and Julius Streicher eating their lunches from U.S. American Army mess tins on a bare board table, in the Palace of Justice, in Nuremberg, Germany, November 29, 1945. Both are accused of crimes of war. (AP Photo/Sanders)
Defendant Alfred Jodl, former general and one of Adolf Hitler's close military advisers during World War II, is seen talking with his arms crossed on Nov. 30, 1945. Jodl is at the proceedings at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg, Germany. (AP Photo)
With Hermann Goering, left, getting the biggest laugh out of the proceeding, Nazi war criminals break out into laughter as evidence is introduced at Nuremberg, Germany on Nov. 30, 1945. Even the American guards enjoy the ‘joke.’ In the front row of the prisoners’ box are, left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. In the back row, left to right: Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Baldur Von Schirach and Fritz Sauckel. (AP Photo/Eddie Worth)
Defendants listen to part of the verdict in the Palace of Justice during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg, Germany on Sept. 30, 1946. Seated in the first row in the prisoner's dock are, from left: Hermann Goering, wearing dark glasses; Rudolf Hess; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Wilhelm Keitel; Ernest Kaltenbrunner; Alfred Rosenberg; Erich Raeder, wearing dark glasses; Wilhelm Frick; Julius Streicher;and Walter Funk. In the back row in front of the police guards are, from left: Karl Doenitz; Constantin von Neurath; Baldur von Schirach, wearing dark glasses; Fritz Sauckel; Alfred Jodl; Franz von Papen; Arthur Seyss-Inquart; and Albert Speer. Seated at the tables in front of the defendants are their council. (AP Photo/Eddie Worth)
Former German Nazi SS-Brigadefuehrer and former head of foreign intelligence Walter Schellenberg is seen in the witness box on January 4, 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany during the war crime trials whilst giving evidence. (AP Photo/Eddie Worth)
Rudolf Hess, right, has asked permission of the international military tribunal to be allowed to act as his own attorney “from now until the end of the trial.” He is discussing his application during a recess in the Nuremberg trial, with Goering, Ribbentrop and two lawyers on Jan. 28, 1946. Goering appears to be taking a keen interest in the proceedings. (AP Photo)
Albert Speer, Hitler's former architect and armament minister during WW II, a defendant in the war crimes trial at Nuremberg, Germany is pictured in court in Nuremberg, September 12, 1946. (AP Photo)
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering listens to parts of the verdict given in the courtroom in the Palace of the Justice during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in Germany on Sept. 30, 1946. In the final session on Oct. 1st, the court sentenced Goering to hang for his crimes during World War II. Goering committed suicide before his execution took place. (AP Photo)
German Fieldmarshal Wilhelm Leeb, is pictured during the Nuremberg Trials, Case 12, as he reads the letter of accusations against himself and other high ranking German officers during WW II, in the courthouse in Nuremberg, Germany, November 11, 1947. (AP Photo)
Carl Krauch, the main defendant of case 6 and former chairman of the managing board of directors of the I.G. Farben Cemical Industries, takes the stand to testify in his own defense at the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, January 13, 1948. (AP Photo)
Hermann Schmitz, former chairman of the managing board of directors of the I.G. Farben Chemical Industries gives his final plea at the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, June 11, 1948, concluding his defense with the statement: "My conscience is clear and I feel free from any fault." (AP Photo/Str)
Director of the document section of the Nuremberg Trials, Fred Niebergall, receives a stack of papers from a German file clerk in one of the many rooms full of documents, in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice Building, Germany on June 16, 1948. Mr. Niebergall has been in charge of the trial documents since August 1945 before the trials started. Sixty-thousand documents are on file. (AP Photo)
Otto Ambros, standing, listens to his verdict of eight years in prison by the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, July 30, 1948. Ambros was chief of the chemical warfare Committee of the Ministry for Araments and War Production and manager of several of the I.G. Farben's plants, including the Auschwitz plant. (AP Photo)
Wilhelm Keitel, defendant at the war crimes trials, in his cell in the city jail, Nuremberg, Germany, Nov. 24, 1945. The former German leaders are being held there by the International Military Tribunal. (AP Photo)
Defendant German Fieldmarshal Wilhelm Leeb pleads not guilty during the Nuremberg Trials, Case 12, in the courthouse in Nuremberg, Germany, at the opening of the case against himself and other high ranking German officers during WW II December 30, 1947. (AP Photo)
These coffins contain bodies of Nazis executed at Landsberg, Germany on May 28, 1946, in the first day of a two-day mass execution of 28 persons convicted last December of killing thousands of innocent victims by medical experiments, unleashing of hungry dogs, sadistic tortures, and malnutrition at Dachau concentration camp. Fourteen executions were carried out each day. (AP Photo/Robert Clover)
Simon Kiern, 32, former Nazi censor and block leader convicted at Dachau of kicking to death prisoner who had fallen to ground, is prepared to be hung by U.S. military authorities at Landsberg, Germany on May 28, 1946. (AP Photo/Robert Clover)
U.S. military authorities prepare to hang Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, 74, at Landsberg, Germany on May 28, 1946. In a Dachau war crimes trial he was convicted of using 1,200 concentration camp prisoners for malaria experimentation. Thirty died directly from the inoculations and 300 to 400 died later from complications of the disease. His experiments all with unwilling subjects began in 1942. (AP Photo/Robert Clover)
Hermann Goering, standing in foreground in the dock, makes his final plea during the latter stages of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in the Justice Palace in Germany on Oct. 1, 1946. Each defendant's name and sentences imposed by the International Tribunal is listed on this photograph. Rudolf Hess, who received a life sentence, is hidden behind Goering. The others in the front row, from left, are, Goering; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Wilhelm Keitel; Ernest Kaltenbrunner; Alfred Rosenberg; Frank, wearing dark glasses; Wilhelm Frick; Julius Streicher; and Walter Funk. Second row, from left, are, Karl Doenitz; Erich Raeder; Baldur von Schirach; Fritz Sauckel; Alfred Jodl; Franz von Papen; Arthur Seyss-Inquart; Albert Speer; Constantin von Neurath; Fritzsche; Schacht. (AP Photo)
|
||
correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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0
| 2
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht
|
en
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Hjalmar Schacht
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht
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German politician and economist (1877–1970)
Hjalmar Schacht (born Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht; 22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970, German pronunciation: [ˈjalmaʁ ˈʃaxt]) was a German economist, banker, politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparations obligations. He was also central in helping create the group of German industrialists and landowners that pushed Hindenburg to appoint the first NSDAP-led government.
He served in Adolf Hitler's government as President of the Central Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and as Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937).
While Schacht was for a time feted for his role in the German "economic miracle", he opposed elements of Hitler's policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and (in his view) disrupted the German economy. His views in this regard led Schacht to clash with Hitler and most notably with Hermann Göring.[citation needed] He resigned as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. He remained as a Minister-without-portfolio, and received the same salary, until he left the government in January 1943.[2]
In 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo following the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 because he allegedly had contact with the assassins. Subsequently, he was interned in the concentration camps and later at Flossenbürg. In the final days of the war, he was one of the 139 special and clan prisoners[a] who were transported by the SS from Dachau to South Tyrol. This location is within the area named by Himmler the "Alpine Fortress", and it is speculated that the purpose of the prisoner transport was the intent of holding hostages. They were freed in Niederdorf, South Tyrol, in Italy, on 30 April 1945.[4]
Schacht was tried at Nuremberg, but was acquitted despite Soviet objections. Later, a German denazification tribunal sentenced him to eight years of hard labour, which was also overturned on appeal.
Early life and career[edit]
Schacht was born in Tingleff, Prussia, German Empire (now in Denmark) to William Leonhard Ludwig Maximillian Schacht and Baroness Constanze Justine Sophie von Eggers, a native of Denmark. His parents, who had spent years in the United States, originally decided on the name Horace Greeley Schacht, in honor of the American journalist Horace Greeley. However, they yielded to the insistence of the Schacht family grandmother, who firmly believed the child's given name should be Danish. After completing his Abitur at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, Schacht studied medicine, philology, political science, and finance at the Universities of Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, Paris and Kiel[5] before earning a doctorate at Kiel in 1899 – his thesis was on mercantilism.[6][7]
He joined the Dresdner Bank in 1903. In 1905, while on a business trip to the United States with board members of the Dresdner Bank, Schacht met the famous American banker J. P. Morgan, as well as U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. He became deputy director of the Dresdner Bank from 1908 to 1915. He was then a board member of the German National Bank [de] for the next seven years, until 1922, and after its merger with the Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danatbank), a board member of the Danatbank.
Schacht was a freemason, having joined the lodge Urania zur Unsterblichkeit in 1908.[8]
During the First World War, Schacht was assigned to the staff of General Karl von Lumm (1864–1930), the Banking Commissioner for German-occupied Belgium, to organize the financing of Germany's purchases in Belgium. He was summarily dismissed by General von Lumm when it was discovered that he had used his previous employer, the Dresdner Bank, to channel the note remittances for nearly 500 million francs of Belgian national bonds destined to pay for the requisitions.[9]
After Schacht's dismissal from public service, he had another brief stint at the Dresdner Bank, and then various positions at other banks. In 1923, Schacht applied and was rejected for the position of head of the Reichsbank, largely as a result of his dismissal from Lumm's service.[9]
During the German Revolution of 1918–1919 Schacht became a Vernunftrepublikaner (a supporter of the Republic by reason rather than conviction) who had reservations over the parliamentary democratic system of the new Weimar Republic but supported it anyway for pragmatic reasons. He helped found the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), which took a leading role in the governing Weimar Coalition. However, Schacht later became an ally of Gustav Stresemann, the leader of the center-right German People's Party (DVP).[10]
Rise to President of the Reichsbank[edit]
Despite the blemish on his record from his service with von Lumm, on 12 November 1923,[11] Schacht became currency commissioner for the Weimar Republic and participated in the introduction of the Rentenmark, a new currency the value of which was based on a mortgage on all of the properties in Germany.[12] Germany entered into a brief period where it had two separate currencies: the Reichsmark managed by Rudolf Havenstein, President of the Reichsbank, and the newly created Rentenmark managed by Schacht. Havenstein died on 20 November 1923.
On 22 December 1923, after Schacht's economic policies had helped battle German hyperinflation and stabilize the German Reichsmark (Helfferich Plan), he was appointed President of the Reichsbank at the requests of president Friedrich Ebert and Chancellor Gustav Stresemann.[13]
In 1926, Schacht provided funds for the formation of IG Farben. He collaborated with other prominent economists to form the 1929 Young Plan to modify the way that war reparations were paid after Germany incurred large foreign debts under the Dawes Plan.[14] In December 1929, he caused the fall of the Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding by imposing upon the government his conditions for obtaining a loan.[6] After modifications by Hermann Müller's government to the Young Plan during the Second Conference of The Hague (January 1930), he resigned as Reichsbank president on 7 March 1930. During 1930, Schacht campaigned against the war reparations requirement in the United States.[6]
Schacht became a friend of the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, both men belonging to the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Bank for International Settlements. Norman was so close to the Schacht family that he was godfather to one of Schacht's grandchildren .[15]
Involvement with the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and government[edit]
By 1926, Schacht had left the shrinking DDP and began increasingly lending his support to the Nazi Party (NSDAP). He became disillusioned with Stresemann's policies after he believed that closer relations with the United States were failing to provide economic benefits, and after his efforts to negotiate a rapprochement with the United Kingdom by pegging the Reichsmark to the pound sterling failed. Beginning in 1929 he increasingly criticized German foreign and financial policy since 1924 and demanded the restoration of Germany's former eastern territories and overseas colonies.[10] Schacht became closer to the Nazis between 1930 and 1932. Though never a member of the NSDAP, Schacht helped to raise funds for the party after meeting with Adolf Hitler. Close for a short time to Heinrich Brüning's government, Schacht shifted to the right by entering the Harzburg Front in October 1931.[6]
Schacht's disillusionment with the existing Weimar government did not indicate a particular shift in his overall philosophy, but rather arose primarily out of two issues:
his objection to the inclusion of Social Democratic Party elements in the government, and the effect of their various construction and job-creation projects on public expenditures and borrowings (and the consequent undermining of the government's anti-inflation efforts);[16]
his desire to see Germany retake its place on the international stage, and his recognition that "as the powers became more involved in their own economic problems in 1931 and 1932 ... a strong government based on a broad national movement could use the existing conditions to regain Germany's sovereignty and equality as a world power."[17]
Schacht believed that if the German government was ever to commence a wholesale reindustrialization and rearmament in spite of the restrictions imposed by Germany's treaty obligations, it would have to be during a period lacking clear international consensus among the Great Powers.
After the November 1932 elections, in which the NSDAP saw its vote share fall by four percentage points, Schacht and Wilhelm Keppler organized a petition of industrial and financial leaders, the Industrielleneingabe (Industrial petition), requesting president Paul Von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. After Hitler took power in January 1933, Schacht won re-appointment as Reichsbank president on 17 March.[18]
On 2 August 1934, when Reich and Prussian Minister of Economics Kurt Schmitt went on an extended medical leave of absence, Hitler provisionally appointed Schacht to take over the running of the ministries. The appointment was made permanent on 31 January 1935, after Schmitt formally resigned.[19] Schacht supported public-works programs, most notably the construction of autobahnen (highways) to attempt to alleviate unemployment – policies which had been instituted in Germany by Kurt von Schleicher's government in late 1932, and had in turn influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States. But years later, Roosevelt seemed to "enjoy" recalling how Dr. Schacht was "weeping on his [FDR's] desk about his poor country."[20] He also introduced the "New Plan", Germany's attempt to achieve economic "autarky", in September 1934. Germany had accrued a massive foreign currency deficit during the Great Depression, which continued into the early years of Nazi rule. Schacht negotiated several trade agreements with countries in South America and southeastern Europe, under which Germany would continue to receive raw materials, but would pay in Reichsmarks. This ensured that the deficit would not get any worse, while allowing the German government to deal with the gap which had already developed. Schacht also found an innovative solution to the problem of the government deficit by using mefo bills.
Schacht also was made a member of the Academy for German Law.[21] He was appointed General Plenipotentiary for the War Economy in May 1935 by provision of the Reich Defense Law of 21 May 1935[22] and was awarded honorary membership in the NSDAP and the Golden Party Badge in January 1937.
Schacht disagreed with what he called "unlawful activities" against Germany's Jewish minority and in August 1935 made a speech denouncing Julius Streicher and Streicher's writing in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.[23]
During the economic crisis of 1935–36, Schacht, together with the Price Commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, helped lead the "free-market" faction in the German government. They urged Hitler to reduce military spending, turn away from autarkic and protectionist policies, and reduce state control in the economy. Schacht and Goerdeler were opposed by a faction centering on Hermann Göring.[24] Göring was appointed "Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan" on 18 October 1936, with broad powers that conflicted with Schacht's authority. Schacht objected to continued high military spending, which he believed would cause inflation, thus coming into conflict with Hitler and Göring.
In 1937 Schacht met with Chinese Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung. Schacht told him that "German-Chinese friendship stemmed in good part from the hard struggle of both for independence". Kung said, "China considers Germany its best friend ... I hope and wish that Germany will participate in supporting the further development of China, the opening up of its sources of raw materials, the upbuilding of its industries and means of transportation."[25]
On 26 November 1937, Schacht resigned as Reich and Prussian Minister of Economics and as General Plenipotentiary at both his and Göring's request. He had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Göring's near-total ignorance of economics, and was also concerned that Germany was coming close to bankruptcy. His replacement was to be Walther Funk who would take over in February 1938, with Göring serving as acting minister in the interim. Hitler, however, knew that Schacht's departure would raise eyebrows outside Germany, and insisted that he remain in the cabinet as minister without portfolio and as President of the Reichsbank.[26] Göring also appointed him to the Prussian State Council.[27]
Following the Kristallnacht of November 1938, Schacht publicly declared his repugnance at the events, and suggested to Hitler that he should use other means if he wanted to be rid of the Jews.[28] He put forward a plan in which Jewish property in Germany would be held in trust, and used as security for loans raised abroad, which would also be guaranteed by the German government. Funds would be made available for Jewish emigrants, in order to overcome the objections of countries that were hesitant to accept penniless Jews. Hitler accepted the suggestion, and authorised him to negotiate with his London contacts. Schacht, in his book The Magic of Money (1967), wrote that Montagu Norman and Lord Bearstead, a prominent Jew, had reacted favourably, but Chaim Weizmann, leading spokesman for the British Zionist Federation, opposed the plan.[29] A component of the plan was that emigrating Jews would have taken items such as machinery with them on leaving the country, as a means of boosting German exports.[30] The similar Haavara Agreement allowing German Jews to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine under similar terms had been signed in 1933.
On 20 January 1939, Hitler dismissed Schacht from his post as President of the Reichsbank and replaced him with Funk. Schacht remained a Reichsminister without portfolio, receiving the same salary, but was excluded from participation in the government. He retired to his house in the country, but continued to occasionally voice private criticisms, culminating in a letter to Göring in November 1942. In it, he assailed the government's decision to begin calling up 15-year-olds for service in the airfield defense forces, and cited this as one more item in a litany of factors that he concluded would strengthen the public's "misgivings as to how this war will actually end". The response to the letter was that Hitler dismissed him as a Reichsminister without portfolio on 22 January 1943, and he was also dismissed from the Prussian State Council by Göring who cited his "defeatist letter, calculated to undermine the German people's powers of resistance". Another letter from Martin Bormann demanded that Schacht return the Golden Party Badge that he had received in 1937. When Schacht returned to his Berlin home, he found that it was being watched by the Gestapo.[31]
Resistance activities[edit]
Schacht was said to be in contact with the German resistance to Nazism as early as 1934, though at that time he still believed the Nazi regime would follow his policies. By 1938, he was disillusioned, and was an active participant in the plans for a coup d'état against Hitler if he started a war against Czechoslovakia.[32] Goerdeler, his colleague in 1935–36, was the civilian leader of resistance to Hitler. Schacht talked frequently with Hans Gisevius, another resistance figure; when resistance organizer Theodor Strünck's house (a frequent meeting place) was bombed out, Schacht allowed Strünck and his wife to live in a villa he owned. However, Schacht had remained in the government and, after 1941, Schacht took no active part in any resistance.
Still, at Schacht's denazification trial (subsequent to his acquittal at the Nuremberg trials) it was declared by a judge that "None of the civilians in the resistance did more or could have done more than Schacht actually did."[33]
After the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944, Schacht was arrested on 23 July.[6] He was sent to Ravensbrück, then to Flossenbürg,[6] and finally to Dachau. In late April 1945 he and about 140 other prominent inmates of Dachau were transferred to Tyrol by the SS, which left them there. They were liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on 5 May 1945 in Niederdorf, South Tyrol, Dolomites, Italy.[34]
After the war[edit]
Schacht had supported Hitler's gaining power, and had been an important official of the Nazi regime. Thus he was arrested by the Allies in 1945. He was put on trial at Nuremberg for "conspiracy" and "crimes against peace" (planning and waging wars of aggression), but not war crimes or crimes against humanity.[35]
Schacht pleaded not guilty to these charges. He cited in his defense that he had lost all official power before the war even began, that he had been in contact with Resistance leaders like Hans Gisevius throughout the war, and that he had been arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp himself.[36]
His defenders argued that he was just a patriot, trying to make the German economy strong. Furthermore, Schacht was not a member of the NSDAP and shared very little of their ideology. The British judges favored acquittal, while the Soviet judges wanted to convict and execute.[37] The British prevailed and Schacht was acquitted on 1 October 1946.[38] However, at a West German denazification trial, Schacht was sentenced to eight years of hard labor. He was freed on appeal in 1948.
In 1950, Juan Yarur Lolas, the Palestinian-born founder of the Banco de Crédito e Inversiones and president of the Arab colony in Santiago, Chile, tried to hire Schacht as a "financial adviser" in conjunction with the German-Chilean community.[39] However, the plan fell through when it became news.[39] He served as a hired consultant for Aristotle Onassis, a Greek businessman, during the 1950s.[40] He also advised the Indonesian government in 1951 following the invitation of economic minister Sumitro Djojohadikusumo.[41]
In 1953, Schacht started a bank, Deutsche Außenhandelsbank Schacht & Co., which he led until 1963. He also gave advice on economics and finance to heads of state of developing countries, in particular the Non-Aligned countries; however, some of his suggestions were opposed, one of which was in the Philippines by the former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas head Miguel Cuaderno, who firmly rebuffed Schacht, stating that his monetary schemes were hardly appropriate for an economy needing capital investment in basic industry and infrastructure.
Indirectly resulting from his founding of the bank, Schacht was the plaintiff in a foundational case in German law on the "general right of personality". A magazine published an article criticizing Schacht, containing several incorrect statements. Schacht first requested that the magazine publish a correction, and when the magazine refused, sued the publisher for violation of his personality rights. The district court found the publisher both civilly and criminally liable; on appeal, the appellate court reversed the criminal conviction, but found that the publisher had violated Schacht's general right of personality.[42]
Schacht died in Munich, West Germany, on 3 June 1970.
Works[edit]
Schacht wrote 26 books[43] during his lifetime, of which at least six have been translated into English:
The Stabilisation of the Mark. Translated by Butler, Ralph. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1927.
The Stabilization of the Mark (Reprint). New York: Arno Press. 1979. ISBN 0-405-11246-7 – via Internet Archive.
The End of Reparations. Translated by Gannett, Lewis. New York: J. Cape & H. Smith. 1931 – via Internet Archive.
Account Settled. Translated by Fitzgerald, Edward. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1949 – via Internet Archive. (Originally titled Abrechnung mit Hitler,[44] written during the Nuremberg trials.[45])
Gold for Europe. Translated by Stern-Rubarth, Edgar. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. 1950.
My First Seventy-Six Years: The Autobiography of Hjalmar Schacht. Translated by Pyke, Diana. London: Allan Wingate. 1955 – via Internet Archive. (Freely accessible black-and-white copy at the Internet Archive.)
American edition: Confessions of "The Old Wizard": The Autobiography of Hjamar Horace Greeley Schacht. Translated by Pyke, Diana. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1956 – via Internet Archive.[46]
The Magic of Money. Translated by Erskine, Paul. London: Oldbourne. 1967 – via Internet Archive.
Miscellaneous[edit]
Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, examined the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg. He administered a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test. Schacht scored 143, the highest among the leaders tested, after adjustment upwards to take account of his age.[47]
When he stabilized the mark in 1923, Schacht's office was a former charwoman's cupboard. When his secretary, Fräulein Steffeck, was later asked about his work there, she described it as follows[48]:
What did he do? He sat on his chair and smoked in his little dark room which still smelled of old floor cloths. Did he read letters? No, he read no letters. Did he write letters? No, he wrote no letters. He telephoned a great deal – he telephoned in every direction and to every German or foreign place that had anything to do with money and foreign exchange as well as with the Reichsbank and the Finance Minister. And he smoked. We did not eat much during that time. We usually went home late, often by the last suburban train, travelling third class. Apart from that he did nothing.
Portrayal in popular culture[edit]
Hjalmar Schacht has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theater productions;[49]
Felix Basch in the 1943 United States propaganda film Mission to Moscow
Władysław Hańcza in the 1971 Polish film Epilogue at Nurnberg
James Bradford in the 2000 Canadian/U.S. TV production Nuremberg
Stoyan Aleksiev in the 2006 British television docudrama Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial
Hjalmar Schacht appears in the following works of fiction:
In Nancy Mitford's 'The Pursuit of Love' (1945) Sir Leicester Kroesig is 'taken for a drive in a Mercedes Benz by Doctor Schacht'
Southern Victory Series, an alternate history epic by Harry Turtledove. Schacht cameos in Volume 7: The Victorious Opposition, as German Ambassador to the United States.
Hjalmar Schacht appears in the following works of nonfiction:
In Cathe Mueller Solinin’s book ‘Escape from Dauchau’ (2023)
Hjalmar Schacht appears in the following video games:
In Paradox Interactive's Hearts of Iron IV as a political advisor for the German Reich.[50]
See also[edit]
Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
Further reading[edit]
Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Penguin Books, 2009 ISBN 978-1-59420-182-0
Weitz, John. Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1997. ISBN 0-316-92916-6.
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Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 22
THE PRESIDENT: There is a correction which the Tribunal wishes to make in the Judgment pronounced yesterday at Page 159, with reference to the SD.
The Tribunal's attention has been drawn to the fact that the Prosecution expressly excluded honorary informers who were not members of the SS and members of the Abwehr who were transferred to the SD. In view of that exclusion by the Prosecution, the Tribunal also excludes those persons from the SD, which was declared criminal.
Article 26 of the Charter provides that the Judgment of the Tribunal as to the guilt or innocence of any defendant shall give the reasons on which it is based.
The Tribunal will now state those reasons in declaring its Judgment on such guilt or innocence.
GOERING
Goering is indicted on all four Counts. The evidence shows that after Hitler he was the most prominent man in the Nazi regime. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and had tremendous influence with Hitler, at least until 1943, when their relationship deteriorated, ending in his arrest in 1945. He testified that Hitler kept him informed of all important military and political problems.
Crimes against Peace
From the moment he joined the Party in 1922 and took command of the street-fighting organization, the SA, Goering was the adviser, the active agent of Hitler, and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement. As Hitler's political deputy he was largely instrumental in bringing the National Socialists to power in 1933 and was charged with consolidating this power and expanding German armed might. He developed the Gestapo and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to Himmler in 1934, conducted the Roehm purge
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in that year, and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of Von Blomberg and Von Fritsch from the Army. In 1936 he became Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan and in theory and in practice was the economic dictator of the Reich. Shortly after the Pact of Munich, he announced that he would embark on a five-fold expansion of the Luftwaffe and speed up rearmament with emphasis on offensive weapons.
Goering was one of the five important leaders present at the Hossbach conference of 5 November 1937, and he attended the other important conferences already discussed in this Judgment. In the Austrian Anschluss he was indeed the central figure, the ringleader. He said in court: "I must take 100 percent responsibility... I even overruled objections by the Fuehrer and brought everything to its final development." In the seizure of the Sudetenland, he played his role as Luftwaffe chief by planning an air offensive which proved unnecessary, and his role as a politician by lulling the Czechs with false promises of friendship. The. night before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, at a conference with Hitler and President Hacha, he threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha did not submit. This threat he admitted in his testimony.
Goering attended the Reich Chancellery meeting of 23 May 1939, when Hitler told his military leaders "there is, therefore, no question of sparing Poland," and was present at the Obersalzberg briefing of 22 August 1939. And the evidence shows he was active in the diplomatic maneuvers which followed. With Hitler's connivance, he used the Swedish businessman, Dahlerus, as a go-between to the British, as described by Dahlerus to this Tribunal, to try to prevent the British Government from keeping its guarantee to the Poles.
He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and throughout the aggressive wars which followed.
Even if he opposed Hitler's plans against Norway and the Soviet Union, as he alleged, it is clear that he did so only for strategic reasons; once Hitler had decided the issue, he followed him without hesitation. He made it clear in his testimony that these differences were never ideological or legal. He was "in a rage" about the invasion of Norway, but only because he had not received sufficient warning to prepare the Luftwaffe offensive. He admitted he approved of the attack: "My attitude was perfectly positive." He was active in preparing and executing the Yugoslavian and Greek campaigns and testified that "Plan Marita," the attack on Greece, had been prepared long beforehand. The Soviet Union he regarded as the "most threatening menace to Germany," but said there was no immediate military necessity for the attack. Indeed,
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his only objection to the war of aggression against the U.S.S.R. was its timing; he wished for strategic reasons to delay until Britain, was conquered. He testified: "My point of view was decided by political and military reasons only."
After his own admissions to this Tribunal, from the positions which he held, the conferences he attended, and the public words he uttered, there can remain no doubt that Goering was the moving force for aggressive war second only to Hitler. He was the planner and prime mover in the military and diplomatic preparation for war which Germany pursued.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
The record is filled with Goering's admissions of his complicity in the use of slave labor. "We did use this labor for security reasons so that they would not be active in their own country and would not work against us. On the other hand, they served to help in the economic war." And again: "Workers were forced to come to the Reich. That is something I have not denied." The man who spoke these words was Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan charged with the recruitment and allocation of manpower. As Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief he demanded from Himmler more slave laborers for his underground aircraft factories: "That I requested inmates of concentration camps for the armament of the Luftwaffe is correct and it is to be taken as a matter of course."
As plenipotentiary, Goering signed a directive concerning the treatment of Polish workers in Germany and implemented it by regulations of the SD, including "special treatment." He issued directives to use Soviet and French prisoners of war in the armament industry; he spoke of seizing Poles and Dutch and making them prisoners of war if necessary, and using them for work. He agrees Russian prisoners of war were used to man anti-aircraft batteries.
As plenipotentiary, Goering was the active authority in the spoliation of conquered territory. He made plans for the spoliation of Soviet territory long before the war on the Soviet Union. Two months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler gave Goering the overall direction for the economic administration in the territory. Goering set up an economic staff for this function. As Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, "the orders of the Reich Marshal cover all economic fields, including nutrition and agriculture." His so-called "Green" folder, printed by the Wehrmacht, set up an "Economic Executive Staff East." This directive contemplated plundering and abandonment of all industry in the food deficit regions and, from the food surplus regions, a diversion of food to German needs. Goering claims its purposes have been misunderstood,
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but admits "that as a matter of course and a matter of duty we would have used Russia for our purposes" when conquered.
And he participated in the conference of 16 July when Hitler said the National Socialists had no intention of ever leaving the occupied countries, and that "all necessary measures-shooting, resettling, et cetera--" should be taken.
Goering persecuted the Jews, particularly after the November 1938 riots, and not only in Germany, where he raised the billion-mark fine as stated elsewhere, but in the conquered territories as well. His own utterances then and his testimony now shows this interest was primarily economic-how to get their property and how to force them out of the economic life of Europe. As these countries fell before the German Army, he extended the Reich anti-Jewish laws to them; the Reichsgesetzblatt for 1939, 1940, and 1941 contains several anti-Jewish decrees signed by Goering. Although their extermination was in Himmler's hands, Goering was far from disinterested or inactive, despite his protestations in the witness box. By decree of 31 July 1941 he directed Himmler and Heydrich to "bring about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe."
There is nothing to be said in mitigation. For Goering was often, indeed almost always, the moving force, second only to his leader. He was the leading war aggressor, both as political and as military leader; he was the director of the slave labor program and the creator of the oppressive program against the Jews and other races, at home and abroad. All of these crimes he has frankly admitted.
On some specific cases there may be conflict of testimony, but in terms of the broad outline his own admissions are more than sufficiently wide to be conclusive of his guilt. His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds the Defendant Goering guilty on all four Counts of the Indictment.
HESS
Hess is indicted under all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and participated in the Munich Putsch on 9 November 1923. He was imprisoned with Hitler in the Landsberg fortress in 1924 2nd became Hitler's closest personal confidant, a relationship which lasted until Hess' flight to the British Isles. On 21 April 1933, he was appointed Deputy to the Fuehrer, and on 1 December 1933 was made Reich Minister without Portfolio. He was appointed member of the Secret Cabinet Council on 4 February 1938, and a member of
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the. Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich on 31 August 1939. In September 1939, Hess was officially announced by Hitler as successor designate to the Fuehrer after Goering. On 10 May 1941, he flew from Germany to Scotland.
Crimes against Peace
As Deputy to the Fuehrer, Hess was the top man in the Nazi Party with responsibility for handling all Party matters and authority to make decisions in Hitler's name on all questions of Party leadership. As Reich Minister without Portfolio he had the authority to approve all legislation suggested by the different Reich Ministers before it could be enacted as law. In these positions, Hess was an active supporter of preparations for war. His signature appears on the law of 16 March 1935, establishing compulsory military service. Throughout the years he supported Hitler's policy of vigorous rearmament in many speeches. He told the people that they must sacrifice for armaments, repeating the phrase, "Guns instead of butter." It is true that between 1933 and 1937 Hess made speeches in which he expressed a desire for peace and advocated international economic co-operation. But nothing which they contained can alter the fact that of all the defendants none knew better than Hess how determined Hitler was to realize his ambitions, how fanatical and violent a man he was, and how little likely he was to refrain from resort to force, if this was the only way in which he could achieve his aims.
Hess was an informed and willing participant in German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He was in touch with the illegal Nazi Party in Austria throughout the entire period between the murder of Dollfuss and the Anschluss and gave instructions to it during that period. Hess was in Vienna on 12 March 1938, when the German troops moved in; and 'on 13 March 1938 he signed the law for the reunion of Austria within the German Reich. A law of 10 June 1939 provided for his participation in the administration of Austria. On 24 July 1938, he made a speech in commemoration of the unsuccessful Putsch by Austrian National Socialists which had been attempted 4 years before, praising the steps leading up to the Anschluss and defending the occupation of Austria by Germany.
In the summer of 1938 Hess was in active touch with Henlein, Chief of the Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia. On 27 September 1939, at the time of the Munich crisis, he arranged with Keitel to carry out the instructions of Hitler to make the machinery of the Nazi Party available for a secret mobilization. On 14 April 1939, Hess signed a decree setting up the Government of the Sudetenland as an integral part of the Reich; and an ordinance of 10 June 1939 provided for his participation in the administration of
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the Sudetenland. On 7 November 1938, Hess absorbed Henlein's Sudeten German Party into the Nazi Party and made a speech in which he emphasized that Hitler had been prepared to resort to war if this had been necessary to acquire the Sudetenland.
On 27 August 1939, when the attack on Poland had been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce Great Britain to abandon its guarantee to Poland, Hess publicly praised Hitler's "magnanimous offer" to Poland and attacked Poland for agitating for war and England for being responsible for Poland's attitude. After the invasion of Poland Hess signed decrees incorporating Danzig and certain Polish territories into the Reich and setting up the Government General (Poland).
These specific steps which this defendant took in support of Hitler's plans for aggressive action do not indicate the full extent of his responsibility. Until his flight to England, Hess was Hitler's closest personal confidant. Their relationship was such that Hess must have been informed of Hitler's aggressive plans when they came into existence. And he took action to carry out these plans whenever action was necessary.
With him on his Right to England, Hess carried certain peace proposals which he alleged Hitler was prepared to accept. It is significant to note that this flight took place only 10 days after the date on which Hitler fixed 22 June 1941 as the time for attacking the Soviet Union. In conversations carried on after his arrival in England, Hess wholeheartedly supported all Germany's aggressive actions up to that time and attempted to justify Germany's action in connection with Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He blamed England and France for the war.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
There is evidence showing the participation of the Party Chancellery, under, Hess, in the distribution of orders connected with the commission of War Crimes; that Hess may have had knowledge of, even if he did not participate in, the crimes that were being committed in the East, and proposed laws discriminating against Jews and Poles; and that he signed decrees forcing certain groups of Poles to accept German citizenship. The Tribunal, however, does not find that the evidence sufficiently connects Hess with these crimes to sustain a finding of guilt.
As previously indicated the Tribunal found, after a full medical examination of and report on the condition of this defendant, that he should be tried, without any postponement of his case. Since that time further motions have been made that he should again be
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examined. These the Tribunal denied, after having had a report from the prison psychologist. That Hess acts in an abnormal manner, suffers from loss of memory, and has mentally deteriorated during this Trial, may be true. But there is nothing to show that he does not realize the nature of the charges against him, or is incapable of defending himself. He was ably represented at the Trial by counsel, appointed for that purpose by the Tribunal. There is no suggestion that Hess was not completely sane when the acts charged against him were committed.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds the Defendant Hess guilty on Counts One and Two; and not guilty on Counts Three and Four.
VON RIBBENTROP
Ribbentrop is indicted under all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932. By 1933 he had been made foreign policy adviser to Hitler, and in the same year the representative of the Nazi Party on foreign policy. In 1934 he was appointed Delegate for Disarmament Questions and in 1935 Minister Plenipotentiary at Large, a capacity in which he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935 and the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. On 11 August 1936 he was
appointed Ambassador to England. On 4 February 1938, he succeeded Von Neurath as Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs as part of the general reshuffle which accompanied the dismissal of
Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg.
Crimes against Peace
Ribbentrop, was not present at the Hossbach conference held on 5 November 1937, but on 2 January 1938, while still Ambassador to England, he sent a memorandum to Hitler indicating his opinion that a change in the status quo in the East in the German sense could only be carried out by force and suggesting methods to prevent England and France from intervening in a European war fought to bring about such a change. When Ribbentrop, became Foreign Minister, Hitler told him that Germany still had four problems to solve: Austria, Sudetenland, Memel, and Danzig, and mentioned the possibility of "some sort of a show-down" or "military settlement" for their solution.
On 12 February 1938, Ribbentrop attended the conference between Hitler and Schuschnigg at which Hitler, by threats of invasion, forced Schuschnigg to grant a series of concessions designed to strengthen the Nazis in Austria, including the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Minister of Security and Interior, with control over the Police. Ribbentrop was in London when the occupation of Austria
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was actually carried out and, on the basis of information supplied him by Goering, informed the British Government that Germany had not presented Austria with an ultimatum, but had intervened in Austria only to prevent civil war. On 13 March 1938, Ribbentrop signed the law incorporating Austria into the German Reich.
Ribbentrop participated in the aggressive plans against Czechoslovakia. Beginning in March 1938, he was in close touch with the Sudeten German Party and gave them instructions which had the effect of keeping the Sudeten German question a live issue which might serve as an excuse for the attack which Germany was planning against Czechoslovakia. In August 1938 he participated in a conference for the purpose of obtaining Hungarian support in the event of a war with Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Pact he continued to bring diplomatic pressure with the object of occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia. He was instrumental in inducing the Slovaks to proclaim their independence. He was present at the conference of 14 and 15 March 1939, at which Hitler, by threats of invasion, compelled President Hacha to consent to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. After the German troops had marched in, Ribbentrop signed the law establishing a protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia.
Ribbentrop played a particularly significant role in the diplomatic activity which led up to the attack on Poland. He participated in a conference held on 12 August 1939 for the purpose of obtaining Italian support if the attack should lead to a general European war. Ribbentrop discussed the German demands with respect to Danzig and the Polish Corridor with the British Ambassador in the period from 25 August to 30 August 1939, when he knew that the German plans to attack Poland had merely been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce the British to abandon their guarantee to the Poles. The way in which he carried out these discussions makes it clear that he did not enter into them in good faith in an attempt to reach a settlement of the difficulties between Germany and Poland.
Ribbentrop was advised in advance of the attack on Norway and Denmark and of the attack on the Low Countries and prepared the official Foreign Office memoranda attempting to justify these aggressive actions.
Ribbentrop attended the conference on 20 January 1941, at which Hitler and Mussolini discussed the proposed attack on Greece, and the conference in January 1941, at which Hitler obtained from Antonescu. permission for German troops to go through Romania for this attack. On 25 March 1941, when Yugoslavia adhered to the Axis Tri-Partite Pact, Ribbentrop had assured Yugoslavia that Germany would respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. On 27 March 1941 he attended the meeting, held after the coup d'etat
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in Yugoslavia, at which plans were made to carry out Hitler's announced intention to destroy Yugoslavia.
Von Ribbentrop attended a conference in May 1941 with Hitler and Antonescu. relating to Romanian participation in the attack on the U.S.S.R. He also consulted with Rosenberg in the preliminary planning for the political exploitation of Soviet territories and in July 1941, after the outbreak of war, urged Japan to attack the Soviet Union.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Ribbentrop participated in a meeting of 6 June 1944, at which it was agreed to start a program under which Allied aviators carrying out machine gun attacks should be lynched. In December 1944 Ribbentrop was informed of the plans to murder one of the French generals held as a prisoner of war and directed his subordinates to see that the details were worked out in such a way as to prevent its detection by the protecting powers. Ribbentrop is also, responsible for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity because of his activities with respect to occupied countries and Axis satellites. The top German official in both Denmark and Vichy France was a Foreign Office representative, and Ribbentrop is therefore responsible for the general economic and political policies put into effect in the occupation of these countries. He urged the Italians to adopt a ruthless occupation policy in Yugoslavia and Greece.
He played an important part in Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish question. In September 1942 he ordered the German diplomatic representatives accredited to various Axis satellites to hasten the deportation of Jews to the East. In June 1942 the German Ambassador to Vichy requested Laval to turn over 50,000 Jews for deportation to the East. On 25 February 1943, Ribbentrop protested to Mussolini against Italian slowness in deporting Jews from the Italian occupation zone of France. On 17 April 1943, he took part in a conference between Hitler and Horthy on the deportation of Jews from Hungary and informed Horthy that the "Jews must either be exterminated or taken to concentration camps." At the same conference Hitler had likened the Jews to "tuberculosis bacilli" and said if they did not work they were to be shot.
Ribbentrop's defense to the charges made against him is that Hitler made all the important decisions, and that he was such a great admirer and faithful follower of Hitler that he never questioned Hitler's repeated assertions that he wanted peace or the truth of the reasons that Hitler gave in explaining aggressive action. The Tribunal does not consider this explanation to be true. Ribbentrop participated in all of the Nazi aggressions from the occupation of Austria to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Although he was
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personally concerned with the diplomatic rather than the military aspect of these actions, his diplomatic efforts were so closely connected with war that he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's actions. In the administration of territories over which Germany acquired control by illegal invasion, Ribbentrop also assisted in carrying out criminal policies, particularly those involving the extermination of the Jews. There is abundant evidence, moreover, that Ribbentrop was in complete sympathy with all the main tenets of the National Socialist creed, and that his collaboration with Hitler and with other defendants in the commission of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity was whole-hearted. It was because Hitler's policy and plans coincided with his own ideas that Ribbentrop served him so willingly to the end.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Ribbentrop is guilty on all four Counts.
KEITEL
Keitel is indicted on all four Counts. He was Chief of Staff to the then Minister of War Von Blomberg from 1935 to 4 February 1938; on that day Hitler took command of the Armed Forces, making Keitel Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. Keitel did not have command authority over the three Wehrmacht branches which enjoyed direct access to the Supreme Commander. OKW was in effect Hitler's military staff.
Crimes against Peace
Keitel attended the Schuschnigg conference in February 1938 with two other generals. Their presence, he admitted, was a "military demonstration," but since he had been appointed OKW chief just one week before, he had not known why he had been summoned. Hitler and Keitel then continued to put pressure on Austria with false rumors, broadcasts, and troop maneuvers. Keitel made the military and other arrangements and Jodl's diary noted "the effect is quick and strong." When Schuschnigg called his plebiscite, Keitel that night briefed Hitler and his generals, and Hitler issued "Case Otto" which Keitel initialed.
On 21 April 1938 Hitler and Keitel considered making use of a possible "incident," such as the assassination of the German Minister at Prague, to preface the attack on Czechoslovakia. Keitel signed many directives and memoranda on "Fall Gruen," including the directive of 30 May, containing Hitler's statement: "It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future." After Munich, Keitel initialed Hitler's directive for the
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attack on Czechoslovakia and issued two supplements. The second supplement said the attack should appear to the outside world as "merely an act of pacification, and not a warlike undertaking." The OKW chief attended Hitler's negotiations with Hacha when the latter surrendered.
Keitel was present on 23 May 1939 when Hitler announced his decision "to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity." Already he had signed the directive requiring the Wehrmacht to submit its "Fall Weiss" timetable to OKW by 1 May.
The invasion of Norway and Denmark he discussed on 12 December 1939 with Hitler, Jodl, and Raeder. By directive of 27 January 1940 the Norway plans were placed under Keitel's "direct and personal guidance." Hitler had said on 23 May 1939 he would ignore the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, and Keitel signed orders for these attacks on 15 October, 20 November, and 28 November 1939. Orders postponing this attack 17 times until spring 1940 all were signed by Keitel or Jodl.
Formal planning for attacking Greece and Yugoslavia had begun in November 1940. On 18 March 1941 Keitel heard Hitler tell Raeder that complete occupation of Greece was a prerequisite to settlement, and also heard Hitler decree on 27 March that the destruction, of Yugoslavia should take place with "unmerciful harshness."
Keitel testified that he opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union for military reasons, and also because it would constitute a violation of the Non-Aggression Pact. Nevertheless he initialed "Case Barbarossa," signed by Hitler on 18 December 1940, and attended the OKW discussion with Hitler on 3 February 1941. Keitel's supplement of 13 March established the relationship between the military and political officers. He issued his timetable for the invasion on 6 June 1941 and was present at the briefing of 14 June when the generals gave their final reports before attack. He appointed Jodl and Warlimont as OKW representatives to Rosenberg on matters concerning the Eastern territories. On 16 June he directed all Army units to carry out the economic directives issued by Goering in the so-called "Green Folder" for the exploitation of Russian territory, food, and raw materials.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
On 4 August 1942 Keitel issued a directive that paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. On 18 October Hitler issued the Commando Order, which was carried out in several instances. After the landing in Normandy, Keitel reaffirmed the order, and later extended it to Allied missions fighting with partisans. He admits
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he did not believe the order was legal, but claims he could not stop Hitler.
When, on 8 September 1941, OKW issued its ruthless regulations for Soviet prisoners of war, Canaris wrote to Keitel that under international law the SD should have nothing to do with this. On this memorandum, in Keitel's handwriting, dated 23 September and initialed by him, is the statement: "The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I approve and back the measures." Keitel testified that he really agreed with Canaris and argued with Hitler, but lost. The OKW chief directed the military authorities to cooperate with the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in looting cultural property in occupied territories.
Lahousen testified that Keitel told him on 12 September 1939, while aboard Hitler's headquarters train, that the Polish intelligentsia, nobility, and Jews were to be liquidated. On 20 October, Hitler told Keitel the intelligentsia would be prevented from forming a ruling class. the standard of living would remain low, and Poland would be used only for labor forces. Keitel does not remember the Lahousen conversation, but admits there was such a policy and that he had protested without effect to Hitler about it.
On 16 September 1941, Keitel ordered that attacks on soldiers in the East should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier, with the comment that human life was less than nothing in the East. On 1 October he ordered military commanders always to have hostages to execute when German soldiers were attacked. When Terboven, the Reich Commissioner in Norway, wrote Hitler that Keitel's suggestion that workmen's relatives be held responsible for sabotage, could work only if firing squads were authorized, Keitel wrote on this memorandum in the margin: "Yes, that is the best."
On 12 May 1941, five weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the OKW urged upon Hitler a directive of the OKH that political commissars be liquidated by the Army. Keitel admitted the directive was passed on to field commanders. And on 13 May Keitel signed an order that civilians suspected of offenses against troops should be shot without trial, and that prosecution of German soldiers for offenses against civilians was unnecessary. On 27 July all copies of this directive were ordered destroyed without affecting its validity. Four days previously he had signed another order that legal punishment was inadequate and troops should use terrorism.
On 7 December 1941, as already discussed in this opinion, the so-called "Nacht und Nebel" decree, over Keitel's signature, provided that in occupied territories civilians who had been accused of crimes of resistance against the army of occupation would be
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tried only if a death sentence was likely; otherwise they would be handed over to the Gestapo for transportation to Germany.
Keitel directed that Russian prisoners of war be used in German war industry. On 8 September 1942 he ordered French, Dutch, and Belgian citizens to work on the Atlantic Wall. He was present on 4 January 1944 when Hitler directed Sauckel to obtain 4 million new workers from occupied territories.
In the face of these documents Keitel does not deny his connection with these acts. Rather, his defense relies on the fact that he is a soldier and on the doctrine of "superior orders," prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense.
There is nothing in mitigation. Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes so shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly, and without military excuse or justification.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds Keitel guilty on all four Counts.
KALTENBRUNNER
Kaltenbrunner is indicted under Counts One, Three, and Four. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. In 1935 he became leader of the SS in Austria. After the Anschluss he was appointed Austrian State Secretary for Security and, when this position was abolished in 1941, he was made Higher SS and Police Leader. On 30 January 1943, he was appointed Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA), a position which had been held by Heydrich until his assassination in June 1942. He held the rank of Obergruppenfuehrer in the SS.
Crimes against Peace
As leader of the SS in Austria Kaltenbrunner was active in the Nazi intrigue against the Schuschnigg Government. On the night of 11 March 1938, after Goering had ordered Austrian National Socialists to seize control of the Austrian Government, 500 Austrian SS men under Kaltenbrunner's command surrounded the Federal Chancellery and a special detachment under the command of his adjutant entered the Federal Chancellery while Seyss-Inquart was negotiating with President Miklas. But there is no evidence connecting Kaltenbrunner with plans to wage aggressive war on any other front. The Anschluss, although it was an aggressive act, is not charged as an aggressive war, and the evidence against Kaltenbrunner under Count One does not, in the opinion of the
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Tribunal, show his direct participation in any plan to wage such a war.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
When he became Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the RSHA on 30 January 1943, Kaltenbrunner took charge of an organization which included the main offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police. As Chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner had authority to order protective custody to and release from concentration camps. Orders to this effect were normally sent over his signature. Kaltenbrunner was aware of conditions in concentration camps. He had undoubtedly visited Mauthausen, and witnesses testified that he had seen prisoners killed by the various methods of execution, hanging, shooting in the back of the neck, and gassing, as part of a demonstration. Kaltenbrunner himself ordered the execution of prisoners in those camps and his office was used to transmit to the camps execution orders which originated in Himmler's office. At the end of the war Kaltenbrunner participated in the arrangements for the evacuation of inmates of concentration camps, and the liquidation of many of them, to prevent them from being liberated by the Allied armies.
During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Einsatzkommandos operating under the control of the Gestapo were engaged in the screening of Soviet prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi system were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered. An RSHA order issued during Kaltenbrunner's regime established the "Bullet Decree," under which certain escaped prisoners of war who were recaptured were taken to Mauthausen and shot. The order for the execution of Commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the Police not to interfere with attacks on bailed-out Allied fliers. In December 1944 Kaltenbrunner participated in the murder of one of the French generals held as a prisoner of war.
During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, the Gestapo and SD in occupied territories continued the murder and ill-treatment of the population, using methods which included torture and confinement in concentration camps, usually under orders to which Kaltenbrunner's name was signed.
The Gestapo was responsible for enforcing a rigid labor discipline on the slave laborers and Kaltenbrunner established a series
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of labor reformatory camps for this purpose. When, the SS embarked on a slave labor program of its own, the Gestapo was used to obtain the needed workers by sending laborers to concentration camps.
The RSHA played a leading part in the "final solution" of the Jewish question by the extermination of the Jews. A special section under the Amt IV of the RSHA was established to supervise this program. Under its direction approximately 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 2 million were killed by Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. Kaltenbrunner had been informed of the activities of these Einsatzgruppen when he was a Higher SS and Police Leader, and they continued to function after he had become Chief of the RSHA.
The murder of approximately 4 million Jews in concentration camps has heretofore been described. This part of the program was also under the supervision of the RSHA when Kaltenbrunner was head of that organization, and special missions of the RSHA scoured the occupied territories and the various Axis satellites arranging for the deportation of Jews to these extermination institutions. Kaltenbrunner was informed of these activities. A letter which he wrote on 30 June 1944 described the shipment to Vienna of 12,000 Jews for that purpose and directed that all who could not work would have to be kept in readiness for "special action," which meant murder. Kaltenbrunner denied his signature to this letter, as he did on a very large number of orders on which his name was stamped or typed, and in a few instances, written. It is inconceivable that in matters of such importance his signature could have appeared so many times without his authority.
Kaltenbrunner has claimed that when he took office as Chief of the Security Police and SD and as head of the RSHA he did so pursuant to an understanding with Himmler under which he was to confine his activities to matter involving foreign intelligence and not to assume overall control over the activities of the RSHA. He claims that the criminal program had been started before his assumption of office; that he seldom knew what was going on; and that when he was informed he did what he could to stop them. It is true that he showed a special interest in matters involving foreign intelligence. But he exercised control over the activities of the RSHA, was aware of the crimes it was committing, and was an active participant in many of them.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Kaltenbrunner is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty under Counts Three and Four.
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GEN. NIKITCHENKO:
ROSENBERG
Rosenberg is indicted on all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1919, participated in the Munich Putsch of 9 November 1923, and tried to keep the illegal Nazi Party together while Hitler was in jail. Recognized as the Party's ideologist, he developed and spread Nazi doctrines in the newspapers Voelkischer Beobachter and NS Monatshefte, which he edited, and in the numerous books he wrote. His book Myth of the Twentieth Century had a circulation of over a million copies.
In 1930 Rosenberg was elected to the Reichstag and he became the Party's representative for Foreign Affairs. In April 1933 he was made Reichsleiter and head of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the NSDAP (The APA). Hitler, in January 1934, appointed Rosenberg his deputy for the supervision of the entire spiritual and ideological training of the NSDAP. In January 1940, he was designated to set up the "Hohe Schule," the center of National Socialist ideological and educational research, and he organized the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg" in connection with this task. He was appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941.
Crimes against Peace
As head of the APA, Rosenberg was in charge of an organization whose agents were active in Nazi intrigue in all parts of the world. His own reports, for example, claim that the APA was largely responsible for Romania's joining the Axis. As head of the APA, he played an important role in the preparation and planning of the attack on Norway.
Rosenberg, together with Raeder, was one of the originators of the plan for attacking Norway. Rosenberg had become interested in Norway as early as June 1939, when he conferred with Quisling. Quisling had pointed out the importance of the Norwegian coast in the event of a conflict between Germany and Great Britain and stated his fears that Great Britain might be able to obtain Norwegian assistance. As a result of this conference Rosenberg arranged for Quisling to collaborate closely with the National Socialists and to receive political assistance by the Nazis.
When the war broke out Quisling began to express fear of British intervention in Norway. Rosenberg supported this view and transmitted to Raeder a plan to use Quisling for a coup in Norway. Rosenberg was instrumental in arranging the conferences in December 1939 between Hitler and Quisling which led to the preparation of the 'attack on Norway and at which Hitler promised Quisling financial assistance. After these conferences Hitler assigned to
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Rosenberg the political exploitation of Norway. Two weeks after Norway was occupied, Hitler told Rosenberg that he had based his decision to attack Norway "on the continuous warnings of Quisling as reported to him by Reichsleiter Rosenberg."
Rosenberg bears a major responsibility for the formulation and execution of occupation policies in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was informed by Hitler, on 2 April 1941, of the coming attack against the Soviet Union, and he agreed to help in the capacity of a "Political Adviser." On 20 April 1941 he was appointed Commissioner for the Central Control of Questions Connected with the East European Region. In preparing the plans for the occupation, he had numerous conferences with Keitel, Raeder, Goering, Funk, Ribbentrop, and other high Reich authorities. In April and May 1941 he prepared several drafts of instructions concerning the setting up of the administration in the Occupied Eastern Territories. On 20 June 1941, two days before the attack on the U.S.S.R., he made a speech to his assistants about the problems and policies of occupation. Rosenberg attended, Hitler's conference of 16 July 1941, in which policies of administration and occupation were discussed. On 17 July 1941, Hitler appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and publicly charged him with responsibility for civil administration.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Rosenberg is responsible for a system of organized plunder of both public and private property throughout the invaded countries of Europe. Acting under Hitler's orders of January 1940 to set up the "Hohe Schule," he organized and directed the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg,", which plundered museums and libraries, confiscated art treasures and collections, and pillaged private houses. His own reports show the extent of the confiscations. In "Aktion-M" (Moebel), instituted in December 1941 at Rosenberg's suggestion, 69, 619 Jewish homes were plundered in the West, 38,000 of the in in Paris alone, and it took 26,984 railroad cars to transport the confiscated furnishings to Germany. As of 14 July 1944, more than 21,903 art objects, including famous paintings and museum pieces, had been seized by the Einsatzstab in the West.
With his appointment as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941, Rosenberg became the supreme authority for those areas. He helped to formulate the policies of Germanization, exploitation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of Nazi rule, and he set up the administration which carried them out. He took part in the conference of 16 July 1941, in which Hitler stated that they were faced with the task of "cutting up the giant cake according to our needs in order to be able: first, to
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dominate it, second, to administer it, and third, to exploit it," and he indicated that ruthless action was contemplated. Rosenberg accepted his appointment on the following day.
Rosenberg had knowledge of the brutal treatment and terror to which the Eastern people were subjected. He directed that the Hague Rules of Land Warfare were not applicable in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He had knowledge of and took an active part in stripping the Eastern territories of raw materials and foodstuffs, in which were sent to Germany. He stated that feeding the German people was first on the list of claims on the East, and that the Soviet people would suffer thereby. His directives provided for the segregation of Jews, ultimately in ghettos. His subordinates engaged in mass killings of Jews, and his civil administrators in the East considered that cleansing the Eastern Occupied Territories of Jews was necessary. In December 1941, Rosenberg made the suggestion to Hitler that in a case of shooting 100 hostages, Jews only be used. Rosenberg had knowledge of the deportation of laborers from the East, of the methods of "recruiting" and the transportation horrors, and of the treatment Eastern laborers received in the Reich. He gave his civil administrators quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich, which had to be met by whatever means necessary. His signature of approval appears on the order of 14 June 1944, for the "Heu Aktion," the apprehension of 40,000 to 50,000 youths, aged 10-14, for shipment to the Reich.
Upon occasion Rosenberg objected to the excesses and atrocities committed by his subordinates, notably in the case of Koch, but these excesses continued and he stayed in office until the end.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Rosenberg is guilty on all four Counts.
MR. BIDDLE:
FRANK
Frank is indicted under Counts One, Three, and Four. Frank joined the Nazi Party in 1927. He became a member of the Reichstag in 1930, the Bavarian State Minister of Justice in March 1933, and when this position was incorporated into the Reich Government in 1934, Reich Minister without Portfolio. He was made a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party in charge of legal affairs in 1933, and in the same year President of the Academy of German Law. Frank was also given the honorary rank of Obergruppenfiffirer in the SA. In 1942 Frank became involved in a temporary dispute with Himmler as to the type of legal system which should be in effect in Germany. During the same year he was dismissed as Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party and as President of the Academy of German Law.
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Crimes against Peace
'The evidence has not satisfied the Tribunal that Frank was sufficiently connected with the common plan to wage aggressive war to allow the Tribunal to convict him on Count One.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Frank was appointed Chief Civil Administration Officer for occupied Polish territory and, on 12 October 1939, was made Governor General of the occupied Polish territory. On 3 October 1939, he described the policy which he intended to put into effect by stating: "Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire." The evidence establishes that this occupation policy was based on the complete destruction of Poland as a national entity, and a ruthless exploitation of its human and economic resources for the German war effort. All opposition was crushed with the utmost harshness. A reign of terror was instituted, backed by summary police courts which ordered such actions as the public shootings of groups of 20 to 200 Poles and the widespread shooting of hostages. The concentration camp system was introduced in the Government General by the establishment of the notorious Treblinka and Maidanek camps. As early as 6 February 1940, Frank gave an indication of the extent of this reign of terror by his cynical comment to a newspaper reporter on Von Neurath's poster announcing the execution of the Czech students: "If I wished to order that one should hang up posters about every seven Poles shot, there would not be enough forests in Poland with which to make the paper for these posters." On 30 May 1940, Frank told a police conference that he was taking advantage of the offensive in the West, which diverted the attention of the world from Poland, to liquidate thousands of Poles who would be likely to resist German domination of Poland, including "the leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia." Pursuant to these instructions the brutal AB Action was begun, under which the Security Police and SD carried out these exterminations which were only partially subjected to the restraints of legal procedure. On 2 October 1943, Frank issued a decree under which any non-German hindering German construction in the Government General was to be tried by summary courts of the Security Police and SD and sentenced to death.
The economic demands made on the Government General were far in excess of the needs of the army of occupation and were out of all proportion to the resources of the country. The food raised in Poland was shipped to Germany on such a wide scale that the rations of the population of the occupied territories were reduced to the starvation level, and epidemics were widespread. Some steps
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were taken to provide for the feeding of the agricultural workers who were used to raise the crops, but the requirements of the rest of the population were disregarded. It is undoubtedly true, as argued by counsel for the Defense, that some suffering in the Government General was inevitable as a result of the ravages of war and the economic confusion resulting therefrom. But the suffering was increased by a planned policy of economic exploitation.
Frank introduced the deportation of slave laborers to Germany in the very early stages of his administration. On 25 January 1940, he indicated his intention of deporting a million laborers to Germany, suggesting on 10 May 1940 the use of police raids to meet this quota. On 18 August 1942, Frank reported that he had already supplied 800,000 workers for the Reich and expected to be able to supply 140,000 more before the end of the year.
The persecution of the Jews was immediately begun in the Government General. The area originally contained from 2,500,000 to 3,500,000 Jews. They were forced into ghettos, subjected to discriminatory laws, deprived of the food necessary to avoid starvation, and finally systematically and brutally exterminated. On 16 December 1941, Frank told the Cabinet of the Government General: "We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole." By 25 January 1944, Frank estimated that there were only 100,000 Jews left.
At the beginning of his testimony, Frank stated that he had a feeling of "terrible guilt" for the atrocities committed in the occupied territories. But his defense was largely devoted to an attempt to prove that he was not in fact responsible; that he ordered only the necessary pacification measures; that the excesses were due to the activities of the Police which were not under his control; and that he never even knew of the activities of the concentration
camps. It has also been argued that the starvation was due to the aftermath of the war and policies carried out under the Four Year Plan; that the forced labor program was under the direction of Sauckel; and that the extermination of the Jews was by the Police and SS under direct orders from Himmler.
It is undoubtedly true that most of the criminal program charged against Frank was put into, effect through the Police, that Frank had jurisdictional difficulties with Himmler over the control of the Police, and that Hitler resolved many of these disputes in favor of Himmler. It therefore may well be true that some of the crimes committed in the Government General were committed without the knowledge of Frank, and even occasionally despite his opposition. It may also be true that some of the criminal policies put into effect in the Government General did not originate with Frank but were
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carried out pursuant to orders from Germany. But it is also true that Frank was a willing and knowing participant in the use of terrorism in Poland; in the economic exploitation of Poland in a way which led to the death by starvation of a large number of people; in the deportation to Germany as slave laborers of over a million Poles; and in a program involving the murder of at least 3 million Jews.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Frank is not guilty on Count One but is guilty under Counts Three and Four.
M. DE VABRES:
FRICK
Frick is indicted on all four Counts. Recognized as the chief Nazi administrative specialist and bureaucrat, he was appointed Reich Minister of the Interior in Hitler's first cabinet. He retained this important position until August 1943, when he was appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. In connection with his duties at the center of all internal and domestic administration, he became the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Reich Director of Elections, General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich, and a member of the Reich Defense Council, the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, and the "Three Man College." As the several countries incorporated into the Reich were overrun, he was placed at the head of the central offices for their incorporation.
Though Frick did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1925, he had previously allied himself with Hitler and the National Socialist cause during the Munich Putsch, while he was an official in the Munich Police Department. Elected to the Reichstag in 1924, he became a Reichsleiter as leader of the National Socialist faction in that body.
Crimes against Peace
An avid Nazi, Frick was largely responsible for bringing the German nation under the complete control of the NSDAP. After Hitler became Reich Chancellor, the new Minister of the Interior immediately began to incorporate local governments under the sovereignty of the Reich. The numerous laws he drafted, signed, and administered, abolished all opposition parties and prepared the way for the Gestapo and their concentration camps to extinguish all individual opposition. He was largely, responsible for the legislation which suppressed the trade unions, the Church, the Jews. He performed this task with ruthless efficiency.
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Before the date of the Austrian aggression Frick was concerned only with domestic administration within the Reich. The evidence does not show that he participated in any of the conferences at which Hitler outlined his aggressive intentions. Consequently the Tribunal takes the view that Frick was not a member of the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war as defined in this Judgment.
Six months after the seizure of Austria, under the provisions of the Reich Defense Law of 4 September 1938, Frick became Plenipotentiary, General for the Administration of the Reich. He was made responsible for war administration, except the military and economic, in the event of Hitler's proclaiming a state of defense. The Reich Ministries of Justice, Education, Religion, and the Office of Spatial Planning were made subordinate to him. Performing his allotted duties, Frick devised an administrative organization in accordance with wartime standards. According to his own statement, this was actually put into operation after Germany decided to adopt a policy of war
Frick signed the law of 13 March 1938, which united Austria with the Reich, and he was made responsible for its accomplishment. In setting up German administration in Austria, he issued decrees which introduced German law, the Nuremberg Decrees, the Military Service Law, and he provided for police security by Himmler.
He also signed the laws incorporating into the Reich the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the Eastern territories (West Prussia and Posen), and Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was placed in charge of the actual incorporation and of the establishment of German administration over these territories. He signed the law establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
As the head of the central offices for Bohemia and Moravia, the Government General, and Norway, he was charged with obtaining close co-operation between the German officials in these occupied countries and the supreme authorities of the Reich. He supplied German civil servants for the administrations in all occupied territories, advising Rosenberg as to their assignment in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He signed the laws appointing Terboven Reich Commissioner to Norway and Seyss-Inquart to Holland.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Always rabidly anti-Semitic, Frick drafted, signed, and administered many laws designed to eliminate Jews from German life and economy. His work formed the basis of the Nuremberg Decrees, and he was active in enforcing them. Responsible for prohibiting Jews from following various professions and for confiscating their
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property, he signed a final decree in 1943, after the mass destruction of Jews in the East, which placed them "outside the law" and handed them over to the Gestapo. These laws paved the way for the "final solution," and were extended by Frick to the incorporated territories and to certain of the occupied territories. While he was Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, thousands of Jews were transferred from the Terezin ghetto in Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz, where they were killed. He issued a decree providing for special penal laws against Jews and Poles in the Government General.
The Police officially fell under the jurisdiction of the Reich Minister of the Interior. But Frick actually exercised little control over Himmler and police matters. However, he signed the law appointing Himmler Chief of the German Police, as well as the decrees establishing Gestapo jurisdiction over concentration camps and regulating the execution of orders for protective custody. From the many complaints he received, and from the testimony of, witnesses, the Tribunal concludes that he knew of atrocities committed in these camps. With knowledge of Himmler's methods, Frick signed decrees authorizing him to take necessary security measures in certain of the incorporated territories. What these "security measures" turned out to be has already been dealt with.
As the supreme Reich authority in Bohemia and Moravia, Frick bears general responsibility for the acts of oppression in that territory after 20 August 1943, such as terrorism of the population, slave labor, and the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps for extermination. It is true that Frick's duties as Reich Protector were considerably more limited than those of his predecessor, and that he had no legislative and limited personal executive authority in the Protectorate. Nevertheless, Frick knew full well what the Nazi policies of occupation were in Europe, particularly with respect to Jews, at that time, and by accepting the office of Reich Protector he assumed responsibility for carrying out those policies in Bohemia and Moravia.
German citizenship in the occupied countries as well as in the Reich came under his jurisdiction while he was Minister of the Interior. Having created a racial register of persons of German extraction, Frick conferred German citizenship on certain groups of citizens of foreign countries. He is responsible for Germanization in Austria, Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, Eastern Territories (West Prussia and Posen), and in the territories of Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet. He forced on the citizens of these territories German law, German courts, German education, German police security, and compulsory military service.
During the war nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums in which euthanasia was practiced as described elsewhere in this Judgment,
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came under Frick's jurisdiction. He had knowledge that insane, sick, and aged people, "useless eaters," were being systematically put to death. Complaints of these murders reached him, but he did nothing to stop them. A report of the Czechoslovak War Crimes Commission estimated that 275,000 mentally deficient and aged people, for whose welfare he was responsible, fell victim to it.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Frick is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty on Counts Two, Three and Four.
THE PRESIDENT:
STREICHER
Streicher is indicted on Counts One and Four. One of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1921, he took part in the Munich Putsch. From 1925 to 1940 he was Gauleiter of Franconia. Elected to the Reichstag in 1933, he was an honorary general in the SA. His persecution of the Jews was notorious. He was the publisher of Der Stuermer, an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper, from 1923 to 1945 and was its editor until 1933.
Crimes against Peace
Streicher was a staunch Nazi and supporter of Hitler's main policies. There is no evidence to show that he was ever within Hitler's inner circle of advisers; nor during his career was he closely connected with the formulation of the policies which led to war. He was never present, for example, at any of the important conferences when Hitler explained his decisions to his leaders. Although he was a Gauleiter there is no evidence to prove that he had knowledge of these policies. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the evidence fails to establish his connection with the conspiracy or common plan to wage aggressive war as that conspiracy has been elsewhere defined in this Judgment..
Crimes against Humanity
For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as "Jew-Baiter Number One." In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of Der Stuermer, which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.
Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of 1 April 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on 10 August 1938 of the synagogue in Nuremberg.
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And on 10 November 1938, he spoke publicly in support of the Jewish pogrom which was taking place at that time.
But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. 23 different articles of Der Stuermer between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which extermination "root and branch" was preached. Typical of his teachings was a leading article in September 1938 which termed the Jew a germ and a pest, not a human being, but "a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind." Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved, and predicted that 50 years hence the Jewish graves "will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate." Streicher, in February 1940, published a letter from one of Der Stuermer's readers which compared Jews with swarms of locusts which must be exterminated completely. Such was the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist policy of Jewish persecution and extermination. A leading article of Der Stuermer, in May 1939, shows clearly his aim:
"A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect. Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch."
As the war in the early stages proved successful in acquiring more and more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are 26 articles from Der Stuermer, published between August 1941 and September 1944, 12 by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and extermination in unequivocal terms. He wrote and published on 25 December 1941:
"If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way--the extermination of that people whose father is the devil." And in February 1944 his own article stated:
"Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal. And he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate: annihilation, death."
With knowledge of the. extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death. Testifying in this Trial, he vehemently denied any knowledge of mass executions of Jews. But the
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evidence makes it clear that he continually received current information on the progress of the "final solution." His press photographer was sent to visit the ghettos of the East in the spring of 1943, the time of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish newspaper, Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which Streicher received and read, carried in each issue accounts of Jewish atrocities in the East, and gave figures on the number of Jews who had been deported and killed. For example, issues appearing in the summer and fall of 1942 reported the death of 72,729 Jews in Warsaw, 17,542 in Lodz, 18,000 in Croatia, 125,000 in Romania, 14,000 in Latvia, 85,000 in Yugoslavia, 700,000 in all of Poland. In November 1943 Streicher quoted verbatim an article from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt which stated that the Jews had virtually disappeared from Europe, and commented: "This is not a Jewish lie." In December 1942, referring to an article in the London Times about the atrocities aiming at extermination, Streicher said that Hitler had given warning that the second World War would lead to the destruction of Jewry. In January 1943 he wrote and published an article which said that Hitler's prophecy was being fulfilled, that world Jewry was being extirpated, and that it was wonderful to know that Hitler was freeing the world of its Jewish tormentors.
In the face of the evidence before the Tribunal it is idle for Streicher to suggest that the solution of the Jewish problem which he favored was strictly limited to the classification of Jews as aliens, and the passing of discriminatory legislation such as the Nuremberg Laws, supplemented if possible by international agreement, on the creation of a Jewish state somewhere in the world, to which all Jews should emigrate.
Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with War Crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a Crime against Humanity.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Streicher is not guilty on Count One, but that he is guilty on Count Four.
GEN. NIKITCHENKO:
FUNK
Funk is indicted under all four Counts. Funk, who had previously been a financial journalist, joined the Nazi Party in 1931, and shortly thereafter became one of Hitler's personal economic advisers. On 30 January 1933, he was made Press Chief in the Reich
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Government, and on 11 March 1933 became Under Secretary in the Ministry of Propaganda and shortly thereafter a leading figure in the various Nazi organizations which were used to control the press, films, music, and publishing houses. Funk took office as Minister of Economics and Plenipotentiary General for War Economy in early 1938, and as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. He succeeded Schacht in all three of these positions. He was made a member of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich in August 1939, and a member of the Central Planning Board in September 1943.
Crimes against Peace
Funk became active in the economic field after the Nazi plans to wage aggressive war had been clearly defined. One of his representatives attended a conference on 14 October 1938, at which Goering announced a gigantic increase in armaments and instructed the Ministry of Economics to increase exports to obtain the necessary exchange. On 28 January 1939, one of Funk's subordinates sent a memorandum to the OKW on the use of prisoners of war to make up labor deficiencies which would arise in case of mobilization. On 30 May 1939, the Under Secretary of the Ministry of Economics attended a meeting at which detailed plans were made for the financing of the war.
On 25 August 1939, Funk wrote a letter to Hitler expressing his gratitude that he was able to participate in such world-shaking events; that his plans for the "financing of the war," for the control of wage and price conditions and for the strengthening of the Reichsbank had been completed; and that he had inconspicuously transferred into gold all foreign exchange resources available to Germany. On 14 October 1939, after the war had begun, he made a speech in which he stated that the economic and financial departments of Germany working under the Four Year Plan had been engaged in the secret economic preparation for war for over a year.
Funk participated in the economic planning which preceded the attack on the U.S.S.R. His deputy held daily conferences with Rosenberg on the economic problems which would arise in the occupation of Soviet territory. Funk himself participated in planning for the printing of rouble notes in Germany prior to the attack to serve as occupation currency in the U.S.S.R. After the attack he made a speech in which he described plans he had made for the economic exploitation of the "vast territories of the Soviet Union" which were to be used as a source of raw material for Europe.
Funk was not one of the leading figures in originating the Nazi plans for aggressive war. His activity in the economic sphere was under the supervision of Goering as Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan. He did, however, participate in the economic preparation for
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certain of the aggressive wars, notably those against Poland and the Soviet Union, but his guilt can be adequately dealt with under Count Two of the Indictment.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
In his capacity as Under Secretary in the Ministry of Propaganda and Vice-Chairman of the Reich Chamber of Culture, Funk had participated in the early Nazi program of economic discrimination against the Jews. On 12 November 1938, after the pogroms of November, he attended a meeting held under the chairmanship of Goering to discuss the solution of the Jewish problem and proposed a decree providing for the banning of Jews from all business activities, which Goering issued the same day under the authority of the Four Year Plan. Funk has testified that he was shocked at the outbreaks of 10 November, but on 15 November he made a speech describing these outbreaks as a "violent explosion of the disgust of the German people, because of a criminal Jewish attack against the German people," and saying that the elimination of the Jews from economic life followed logically their elimination from political life.
In 1942 Funk entered into an agreement with Himmler under which the Reichsbank was to receive certain gold and jewels and currency from the SS and instructed his subordinates, who were to work out the details, not to ask too many questions. As a result of this agreement the SS sent to the Reichsbank the personal belongings taken from the victims who had been exterminated in the concentration camps. The Reichsbank kept the coins and bank notes and sent the jewels, watches, and personal belongings to Berlin municipal pawn shops. The gold from the eyeglasses and gold teeth and fillings were stored in the Reichsbank vaults. Funk has protested that he did not know that the Reichsbank was receiving articles of this kind. The Tribunal is of the opinion that he either knew what was being received or was deliberately closing his eyes to what was being done.
As Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, Funk participated in the economic exploitation of occupied territories. He was President of the Continental Oil Company which was charged with the exploitation of the oil resources of occupied territories in the East. He was responsible for the seizure of the gold reserves of the Czechoslovakian National Bank and for the liquidation of the Yugoslavian National Bank. On 6 June 1942, his deputy sent a letter to the OKW requesting that funds from the French occupation cost fund be made available for black market purchases. Funk's knowledge of German occupation policies is shown by his presence at the meeting of 8 August 1942, at which Goering addressed the
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various German occupation chiefs, told them of the products required from their territories, and added: "It makes no difference to me in this connection if you say that your people will starve."
In the fall of 1943, Funk was a member of the Central Planning Board which determined the total number of laborers needed for German industry and required Sauckel to produce them, usually by deportation from occupied territories. Funk did not appear to be particularly interested in this aspect of the forced labor program and usually sent a deputy to, attend the meetings, often SS General Ohlendorf, the former chief of the SD inside of Germany and the former commander of Einsatzgruppe D. But Funk was aware that the board of which he was a member was demanding the importation of slave laborers and allocating them to the various industries under its control.
As President of the Reichsbank, Funk was also indirectly involved in the utilization of concentration camp labor. Under his direction the Reichsbank set up a revolving fund of 12,000,000 Reichsmarks to the credit of the SS for the construction of factories to use concentration camp laborers.
In spite of the fact that he occupied important official positions, Funk was never a dominant figure in the various programs in which he participated. This is a mitigating fact of which the Tribunal takes notice.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Funk is not guilty on Count One but is guilty under Counts Two, Three, and Four.
THE PRESIDENT: The Court will adjourn for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
MR. BIDDLE:
SCHACHT
Schacht is indicted under Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Schacht served as Commissioner of Currency and President of the Reichsbank from 1923 to 1930; was reappointed President of the bank on 17 March 1933; Minister of Economics in August 1934; and Plenipotentiary General for War Economy in May 1935. He resigned from these two positions in November 1937 and was appointed Minister without Portfolio. He was reappointed as President of the Reichsbank for a one-year term on 16 March 1937, and for a four-year term on 9 March 1938, but was dismissed on 20 January 1939. He was dismissed as Minister without Portfolio on 22 January 1943.
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Crimes against Peace
Schacht was an active supporter of the Nazi Party before its accession to power on 30 January 1933 and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. After that date he played an important role in the vigorous rearmament program which was adopted, using the facilities of the Reichsbank to the fullest extent in the German rearmament effort. The Reichsbank, in its traditional capacity as financial agent for the German Government, floated long-term Government loans, the proceeds of which were used for rearmament. He devised a system under which five-year notes, known as "mefo" bills, guaranteed by the Reichsbank and backed, in effect, by nothing more than its position as a bank of issue, were used to obtain large sums for rearmament from the short-term money market. As Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for the War Economy he was active in organizing the German economy for war. He made detailed plans for industrial mobilization and the co-ordination of the Army with industry in the event of war. He was particularly concerned with shortages of raw materials and started a scheme of stock-piling, and a system of exchange control designed to prevent Germany's weak foreign exchange position from hindering the acquisition abroad of raw materials needed for rearmament. On 3 May 1935, he sent a memorandum to Hitler stating that "the accomplishment of the armament program with speed and in quantity is the problem of German politics, that everything else therefore should be subordinated to this purpose."
Schacht, by April 1936, began to lose his influence as the central figure in the German rearmament effort when Goering was appointed co-ordinator for raw materials and foreign exchange. Goering advocated a greatly expanded program for the production of synthetic raw materials, which was opposed by Schacht on the ground that the resulting financial strain might involve inflation. The influence of Schacht suffered further when on 16 October") 1936, Goering was appointed Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan with the task of putting "the entire economy, in a state of readiness for war within 4 years." Schacht had opposed the announcement of this plan and the appointment of Goering to head it, and it is clear that Hitler's action represented a decision that Schacht's economic policies were too conservative for the drastic rearmament policy which Hitler wanted to put into effect.
After Goering's appointment, Schacht and Goering promptly became embroiled in a series of disputes. Although there was an element of personal controversy running through these disputes, Schacht disagreed with Goering on certain basic policy issues. Schacht, on financial grounds,, advocated a retrenchment in the
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rearmament program, opposed as uneconomical much of the proposed expansion of production facilities, particularly for synthetics, urged a drastic tightening on Government credit, and a cautious policy in dealing with Germany's foreign exchange reserves. As a result of this dispute and of a bitter argument in which Hitler accused Schacht of upsetting his plans by his financial methods, Schacht went on leave of absence from the Ministry of Economics on 5 September 1937, and resigned as Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for War Economy on 16 November 1937.
As President of the Reichsbank, Schacht was still involved in disputes. Throughout 1938, the Reichsbank continued to function as the financial agent for the German Government in floating long-term loans to finance armaments. But on 31 March 1938, Schacht discontinued the practice of floating short-term notes guaranteed by the Reichsbank for armament expenditures. At the end of 1938, in an attempt to regain control of fiscal policy through the Reichsbank, Schacht refused an urgent request of the Reichsminister of Finance for a special credit to pay the salaries of civil servants which were not covered by existing funds. On 2 January 1939, Schacht held a conference with Hitler at which he urged him to reduce expenditures for armaments. On 7 January 1939, Schacht submitted to Hitler a report signed by the Directors of the Reichsbank which urged a drastic curtailment of armament expenditures and a balanced budget as the only method of preventing inflation. On 19 January, Hitler dismissed Schacht as President of the Reichsbank. On 22 January 1943, Hitler dismissed Schacht as Reich Minister without Portfolio because of his "whole attitude during the present fateful fight of the German nation." On 23 July 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo and confined in a concentration camp until the end of the war.
It is clear that Schacht was a central figure in Germany's rearmament program, and the steps which he took, particularly in the early days of the Nazi regime, were responsible for Nazi Germany's rapid rise as a military power. But rearmament of itself is not criminal under the Charter. To be a Crime against Peace under Article 6 of the Charter it must be shown that Schacht carried out this rearmament as part of the Nazi plans to wage aggressive wars.
Schacht has contended that he participated in & rearmament program only because he wanted to build up a strong and independent Germany which would carry out a foreign policy which would command respect on an equal basis with, other European countries; that when he discovered that the Nazis were rearming for aggressive purposes he attempted to slow down the speed of rearmament; and that after the dismissal of Von Fritsch and Von
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Blomberg he participated in plans to get rid of Hitler, first by deposing him and later by assassination.
Schacht, as early as 1936, began to advocate a limitation of the rearmament program for financial reasons. Had the policies advocated by him been put into effect, Germany would not have been prepared for a general European war. Insistence on his policies led to his eventual dismissal from all positions of economic significance in Germany. On the other hand, Schacht, with his intimate knowledge of German finance, was in a peculiarly good position to understand the true significance of Hitler's frantic rearmament and to realize that the economic policy adopted was consistent only with war as its object.
Moreover Schacht continued to participate in German economic life and even, in a minor way, in some of the early Nazi aggressions. Prior to the occupation of Austria he set a rate of exchange between the mark and the schilling. After the occupation of Austria he arranged for the incorporation of the Austrian National Bank into the Reichsbank and made a violently pro-Nazi speech in which he stated- that the Reichsbank would always be Nazi as long as he was connected with it, praised Hitler, defended the occupation of Austria, scoffed at objections to the way it was carried out, and ended with "to our Fuehrer, a triple 'Sieg Heil'." He has not contended ' that this speech did not represent his, state of mind at the time. After the occupation of the Sudetenland, he arranged for currency conversion and for the incorporation into the Reichsbank of local Czech banks of issue. On 29 November 1938, he made a speech in which he pointed with pride to his economic policy which had created the high degree of German armament, and added that this armament had made Germany's foreign policy possible.
Schacht was not involved in the planning of any of the specific wars of aggression charged in Count Two. His participation in the occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland (neither of which is charged as aggressive war) was on such a limited basis that it, does not amount to participation in the common plan charged in Count One, He was clearly not one of the inner circle around Hitler which was most closely involved with this common plan. He was regarded by this group with undisguised hostility. The testimony of Speer shows that Schacht's arrest on 23 July 1944 was based as much on Hitler's enmity towards Schacht growing out of his attitude before the war as it was on suspicion of his complicity in the bomb plot. The case against Schacht therefore depends on the inference that Schacht did in fact know of the Nazi aggressive plans.
On this all-important question evidence has been given for the Prosecution, and a considerable volume of evidence for the Defense.
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The Tribunal has considered the whole of this evidence with great care, and comes to the conclusion that this necessary inference has not been established 'beyond a reasonable doubt.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Schacht is not guilty on this Indictment, and directs that he shall. be discharged by the Marshal, when the Tribunal presently adjourns.
M. DE VABRES:
DOENITZ
Doenitz is indicted on Counts One, Two, and Three. In 1935 he took command of the first U-Boat flotilla commissioned since 1918, became in 1936 commander of the submarine arm, was made Vice-Admiral in 1940, Admiral in 1942, and on 30 January 1943 Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State, succeeding Hitler.
Crimes against Peace
Although Doenitz built and trained the German U-Boat arm, the evidence does not show he was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive wars or that he prepared and initiated such wars. He was a line officer performing strictly tactical duties. He was not present at the important conferences when plans for aggressive wars were announced, and there is no evidence he was informed about the decisions reached there. Doenitz did, however, wage aggressive war within the meaning of that word as used by the Charter. Submarine warfare which began immediately upon the outbreak of war, was fully co-ordinated with the other branches of the Wehrmacht. It is clear that his U-boats, few in number at the time, were fully prepared to wage war.
It is true that until his appointment in January 1943 as commander-in-chief he was not an "Oberbofehlshaber." But this statement underestimates the importance of Doenitz' position. He was no mere army or division commander. The U-Boat arm was the principal part of the German fleet and Doenitz was its leader. The high seas fleet made a few minor, if spectacular, raids during the early years of the war, but the real damage to the enemy was done almost exclusively by his submarines, as the millions of tons of allied and neutral shipping sunk will testify. Doenitz was solely in charge of this warfare. The Naval War Command reserved for itself only the decision as to the number of submarines in each area. In the invasion of Norway, for example, he made recommendations in October 1939 as to submarine bases, which he claims were no more
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than a staff study, and in March 1940 he made out the operational orders for the supporting U-boats, as discussed elsewhere in this Judgment.
That his importance to the German war effort was so regarded is eloquently proved by Raeder's recommendation of Doenitz as his successor and his appointment by Hitler on 30 January 1943 as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Hitler too knew that submarine warfare was the essential part of Germany's naval warfare.
From January 1943, Doenitz was consulted almost continuously by Hitler. The evidence was that they conferred on naval problems about 120 times during the course of the war.
As late as April 1945 when he admits he knew the struggle was hopeless, Doenitz as its commander-in-chief urged the Navy to continue its fight. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State and as such ordered the Wehrmacht to continue its war in the East, until capitulation on 9 May 1945. Doenitz explained that his reason for these orders was to insure that the German civilian population might be evacuated and the Army might make an orderly retreat from the East.
In the view of the Tribunal, the evidence shows that Doenitz was active in waging aggressive war.
War Crimes
Doenitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936, to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930.
The Prosecution has submitted that on 3 September 1939 the German U-Boat arm began to wage unrestricted submarine warfare upon all merchant ships, whether enemy or neutral, cynically disregarding the Protocol, and that a calculated effort was made throughout the war to disguise this practice by making hypocritical references to international law and supposed violations by the Allies.
Doenitz insists that at all times the Navy remained within the confines of international law and of the Protocol. He testified that when the war began, the guide to submarine warfare was the German Prize Ordinance, taken almost literally from the Protocol; that pursuant to the German view, he ordered submarines to attack all merchant ships in convoy and all that refused to stop or used their radio upon sighting a submarine. When his reports indicated that British merchant ships were being used to give information by wireless, were being armed and were attacking submarines on sight, he ordered his submarines on 17 October 1939 to attack all enemy
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merchant ships without warning on the ground that resistance was to be expected. Orders already had been issued on 21 September 1939 to attack all ships, including neutrals, sailing at night without lights in the English Channel.
On 24 November 1939, the German Government issued a warning to neutral shipping that, owing to the frequent engagements taking place in the waters around the British Isles and the French coast between U-Boats and Allied merchant ships which were armed and had instructions to use those arms as well as to ram U-Boats, the safety of neutral ships in those waters could no longer be taken for granted. On I January 1940, the German U-Boat command, acting on the instructions of Hitler, ordered U-Boats to attack all Greek merchant ships in the zone surrounding the British Isles which was banned by the United States to its own ships and also merchant ships of every nationality in the limited area of the Bristol Channel. Five days later a further order was given to U-Boats "to make immediately unrestricted use of weapons against all ships" in an area of the North Sea, the limits of which were defined. Finally on 18 January 1940, U-Boats were authorized to sink, without warning, all ships "in those waters near the enemy coast in which the use of mines can be pretended." Exceptions were to be made in the cases of United States, Italian, Japanese, and Soviet ships.
Shortly after the outbreak of war the British Admiralty, in accordance with its Handbook of Instructions of 1938 to the merchant navy, armed its merchant vessels, in many cases convoyed them with armed escort, gave orders to send position reports upon sighting submarines, thus integrating merchant vessels into the warning network of naval intelligence. On 1 October 1939, the British Admiralty announced British merchant ships had been ordered to ram U-Boats if possible.
In the actual circumstances of this case, the Tribunal is not prepared to hold Doenitz guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships.
However, the proclamation of operational zones and the sinking of neutral merchant vessels which enter those zones presents a different question. This practice was employed in the war of 1914-1918 by Germany and adopted in retaliation by Great Britain. The Washington Conference of 1922, the London Naval Agreement of 1930 and the Protocol of 1936 were entered into with full knowledge that such zones had been employed in that war. Yet the Protocol made no exception for operational zones. The order of Doenitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, in the opinion of the Tribunal, therefore a violation of the Protocol.
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It is also asserted that the German U-Boat arm not only did not carry out the warning and rescue provisions of the Protocol but that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of survivors of shipwrecked vessels, whether enemy or neutral. The Prosecution has introduced much evidence surrounding two orders of Doenitz, War Order Number 154, issued in 1939, and the so-called Laconia order of 1942. The Defense argues that these orders and the evidence supporting them do not show such a policy and introduced much evidence to the contrary. The Tribunal is of the opinion that the evidence does not establish with the certainty required that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of shipwrecked survivors. The orders were undoubtedly ambiguous, and deserve the strongest censure.
The evidence further shows that the rescue provisions were not carried out and that the defendant ordered that they should not be carried out. The argument of the Defense is that the security of the submarine is, as the first rule of the sea, paramount to rescue and that the development of aircraft made rescue impossible. This may be so, but the Protocol is explicit. If the commander cannot rescue, then under its terms he cannot sink a merchant vessel and should allow it to pass unharmed before his periscope. These orders, then, prove Doenitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol.
In view of all of the facts proved, and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at night in the Skagerrak, and the answer to interrogatories by Admiral Nimitz that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, the sentence of Doenitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.
Doenitz was also charged with responsibility for Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942. Doenitz admitted he received and knew of the order when he was Flag Officer of U-boats, but disclaimed responsibility. He points out that the order by its express terms excluded men captured in naval warfare, that the Navy had no territorial commands on land, and that submarine commanders would never encounter Commandos.
In one instance, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, in 1943, the members of the crew of an Allied motor torpedo boat were captured by German naval forces. They were interrogated for intelligence purposes on behalf of the local admiral, and then turned over by his order to the SD and shot. Doenitz said that if they were captured by the Navy their execution was a violation of the Commando Order, that the execution was not announced in the Wehrmacht communiqué, and that he was never informed of the incident. He pointed out that the admiral in question was not in
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his chain of command, but was subordinate to the Army general in command of the Norway occupation. But Doenitz permitted the order to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief, and to that extent he is responsible.
Doenitz in a conference of 11 December 1944, said "12,000 concentration camp prisoners will be employed in the shipyards as additional labor."
At this time he had no jurisdiction over shipyard construction and claims that this was merely a suggestion at the meeting that the responsible officials do something about producing ships, that he took no steps to get these workers, since it was not a. matter for his jurisdiction, and that he does not know whether they ever were procured. He admits he knew of concentration camps, A man in his position must necessarily have known that citizens of occupied countries in large numbers were confined in the concentration camps.
In 1945 Hitler requested the opinion of Jodl and Doenitz whether the Geneva Convention should -be denounced. The notes of the meeting between the two military leaders on 20 February 1945 show that Doenitz expressed his view that the disadvantages of such an action outweighed the advantages. The summary of Doenitz' attitude shown in the notes taken by an officer, included the following sentence:
"It would be better to carry out the measures considered necessary without warning, and at all costs"[12]) to save face with the outer world."
The Prosecution insisted that "the measures" referred to meant that the Convention should not be denounced, but should be broken at will. The Defense explanation is that Hitler wanted to break the Convention for two reasons: to take away from German troops the protection of the Convention, thus preventing them from continuing to surrender in large groups to the British and Americans; and also to permit reprisals against Allied prisoners of war because of Allied bombing raids. Doenitz claims that what he meant by "measures" were disciplinary measures against German troops to prevent them from surrendering and had no reference to measures against the Allies; that this was merely a suggestion, and that in any event no such measures were ever taken, either against Allies or Germans. The Tribunal, however, does not believe this explanation. The Geneva Convention was not, however, denounced by Germany. The Defense has introduced several affidavits to prove that British naval prisoners of war in camps under Doenitz' jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, and the Tribunal takes this fact into consideration and regards it as a mitigating circumstance.
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Conclusion
The Tribunal finds Doenitz is not guilty on Count One of the Indictment, and is guilty on Counts Two and Three.
THE PRESIDENT:
RAEDER
Raeder is indicted on Counts One, Two, and Three. In 1928 he became Chief of Naval Command and in 1935 Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine (OKM); in 193.9 Hitler made him Grossadmiral. He was a member of the Reich Defense Council. On 30 January 1943, Doenitz replaced him at his own request, and he became Admiral Inspector of the Navy, a nominal title.
Crimes against Peace
In the 15 years he commanded it, Raeder built and directed the German Navy; he accepts full responsibility until retirement in 1943. He admits the Navy violated the Versailles Treaty, insisting it was "a matter of honor for every man" to do so, and alleges that the violations were for the most part minor, and Germany built less than her allowable strength. These violations, as well-as those of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, have already been discussed elsewhere in this Judgment.
Raeder received the directive of 24 June 1937 from Von Blomberg requiring special preparations for war against Austria. He was one of the five leaders present at the Hossbach conference of 5 November 1937. He claims Hitler merely wished by this conference to spur the Army to faster rearmament, insists he believed the questions of Austria and Czechoslovakia would be settled peacefully, as they were, and points to the new naval treaty with England which had just been signed. He received no orders to speed construction of U-Boats, indicating that Hitler was not planning war.
Raeder received directives on "Fall Gruen" and the directives on "Fall Weiss" beginning with that of 3 April 1939; the latter directed the Navy to support the Army by intervention from the sea. He was also one of the few chief leaders present at the meeting of 23 May 1939. He attended the Obersalzberg briefing of 22 August 1939.
The conception of the invasion of Norway first arose in the mind of Raeder and not that of Hitler. Despite Hitler's desire, as shown by his directive of October 1939, to keep Scandinavia neutral, the Navy examined the advantages of naval bases there as early as October. Admiral Carls originally suggested to Raeder the desirable aspects of bases in Norway. A questionnaire, dated 3 October 1939, which sought comments on the desirability of such bases, was
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circulated within SKL. On 10 October Raeder discussed the matter with Hitler; his war diary entry for that day says Hitler intended "to give the matter consideration." A few months later Hitler talked to Raeder, Quisling, Keitel, and Jodl; OKW began its planning and the Naval War Staff worked with OKW staff officers. Raeder received Keitel's directive for Norway on 27 January 1940 and the subsequent directive of 1 March, signed by Hitler.
Raeder defends his actions on the ground it was a move to foresta
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Document Analyst's Report
During February I analyzed the defense documents for Arthur Seyss-Inquart and went through his defense case in the transcript, and began work on the documents of Franz von Papen. Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi who played a middle-man role in the German occupation of Austria in 1938, briefly assisted Hans Frank in occupied Poland, and then became the governor of the Netherlands from 1940 to the end of the war. The pawn in the game: …
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During January I worked through the documents and corresponding trial transcript for the defense of Alfred Jodl, the head of the military operations staff, and began work on the documents of Artur Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Nazi who played a role in the German takeover in 1938 and served as the German governor of the Netherlands during the war. Strategy, or lack of it: Jodl argued that he had no role in setting military strategy during …
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During December I completed the analysis of the prosecution documents on the "slave labor" program (the prosecution's term for the use of conscripted civilians from occupied territories and POWs in Germany's war economy) and the supplemental prosecution evidence used when Fritz Sauckel and Albert Speer presented their defense cases. Speer apparently made a good impression on several of the IMT judges (and much of the public then and later) as a very intelligent and talented …
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During November I completed the analysis of Fritz Sauckel's defense documents and began work on the prosecution's documents on what it called the "slave labor" program (this falls under the "forced labor" heading in our database list of trial issues). Sauckel's background, as he testified, included a major fact that affected his approach to the use of several million foreign workers in Germany's war economy: During World War I he had been a POW in …
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During October I completed the analysis for Baldur von Schirach's defense documents and worked through the corresponding part of the trial transcript, and started work on the defense documents of Fritz Sauckel, who led the labor procurement operation during the war. Schirach's defense included some surprising material. Fighting words? The prosecution tried to portray Schirach's Hitler Youth program as a premilitary organization preparing boys to fight wars of conquest, which would make Schirach complicit in …
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During August I analyzed the defense documents in five of Admiral Raeder's six document books. In the middle of the month I reached and then passed one round number: 5000 IMT trial documents organized and analyzed. In slightly rounded numbers we now have: 100 pre-trial and administrative documents 3710 prosecution documents 1235 defense documents (so far) The final total for the full trial can't be predicted; we won't know until we're done. Good information, bad …
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During July I finished the analysis of the IMT defense documents for Admiral Doenitz, and most but not all of the corresponding transcript work. The transcript is slow going for Doenitz's material because it went through four steps once the four document books were assembled: the prosecution objected to many of the documents, the defense argued for their inclusion, the tribunal ruled on which documents were rejected or accepted, and finally the defense presented those …
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During June I analyzed the defense documents of Walther Funk and one-third of the documents of Admiral Doentiz. This ended one year's work on the IMT following the COVID related "pause," and also one year with the defense material. During the year I worked through the documents of defendants Frank, Frick, Funk, Goering, Hess, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Schacht, and Streicher, amounting to slightly more than 1000 documents. One discovery was that it takes considerably …
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During May I analyzed the defense documents of Julius Streicher, the antisemitic propagandist, and Hjalmar Schacht, the regime's banker in the 1930s. Streicher was the most repulsive of the defendants and Schacht the most sympathetic. I expected Streicher's material would be difficult to deal with and Schacht's to be dull (considering his role as a banker), but Streicher's documents were dull and Schacht's were surprisingly interesting. Defense of a terrible client: Streicher hoped to argue …
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During April I finished the analysis of Hans Frank's fourth and fifth document books, and then analyzed Wilhelm Frick's defense documents. Frick, the Interior Minister, presented a more compact defense than the other high-level defendants, relying on his record as a bureaucrat who had no role in the planning of the war and no control over the activities of the SS. The occupier as dairy farmer: As governor of occupied Poland, Frank described his strategy …
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During March I began work on the defense documents of Hans Frank, who was prosecuted mostly for his activities as governor of occupied Poland (the Government General). I worked through three of his five document books. Pluribus aut unum (many or one): On 24 April 1946 Frank's attorney formally introduced his exhibits, most notably this one (paraphrased): "Exhibit ten is a set of extracts from Frank's official diary, assigned evidence code number PS 2233 by …
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During February I spent the first third of the month catching up on the transcript work for Keitel's and Kaltenbrunner's defense presentations, noting when new documents were entered and documents presented earlier were discussed. Even though these defendants presented few documents themselves compared to Ribbentrop (1/10th as many for Keitel and 1/20th for Kaltenbrunner), they testified at length and many documents came up for review. Among them were the prosecution exhibits on the killing of …
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During January I worked through the IMT prosecution's rebuttal to Ribbentrop's defense, Keitel's defense documents, and Kaltenbrunner's defense documents. Kaltenbrunner's document book supplement included a bonus of sorts: a set of 15 prosecution documents concerning the killing of captured Allied airmen in mid-1944 (either by the "lynch law" of civilians or by the security police). This is the first time that a group of prosecution documents has turned up in a defense file and not …
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December is a short work-month at HLS, so this is early. During the month I finished analyzing Ribbentrop's last three defense document books, his attorney's final argument, and the affidavit he prepared just before his execution for a Japanese diplomat facing trial at the IMT Far East. His documents covered 1940-41 with a now-familiar theme: how Germany was flanked by enemies (the USSR and America) and had to fight a defensive war on all sides. …
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During November I worked through three of Ribbentrop's nine defense document books, two of them on Poland, to pin the blame for the war on the Poles, and one on the expansion of the war in 1940, blaming the "encirclement" strategy of Britain and France. In a literal sense Poland provided considerable evidence for Ribbentrop's case, as there was no shortage of hostility on both sides. One sign appeared in my geographical dictionary when I …
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During October I worked through Ribbentrop's evidence document books three and four and began the fifth book, placing me roughly at the half-way point in Ribbentrop's defense case. Most of the documents offered were rejected as evidence by the tribunal as being irrelevant to the issues in the trial, but they still provide a sense of how Ribbentrop viewed his case. The exhibit errant: During Hess's defense presentation his attorney wanted to submit evidence from …
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In September I completed analysis of the defense documents for Rudolf Hess and began those for Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister. We now have just over 4000 documents in the system for the IMT, ca 3800 for the prosecution and 200 for the defendants so far. A variety of strategies: Goering, the lead defendant, offered few documents and instead took the stand to argue his case-or at least to secure his reputation as a …
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After a somewhat prolonged pause, document analysis for the International Military Tribunal (IMT, 1945-46) resumed in July. Once the computer system was set up and the trial transcript delivered from storage, I picked up from where I had left off in the transcript and found it had been the perfect place to pause-the completion of the Soviet prosecution case in late February 1946, for which I had analyzed the English language documents in the collection. …
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During February I analyzed the documents of the second half of the prosecution case against Frick, the French presentation on forced labor, and the case against Hans Fritzsche, a senior official in the propaganda ministry. This amounted to 110 documents and 544 pages of material. The political bureaucrat: The first half of the prosecution case on Frick presented his work as an architect of the Nazi legal and institutional regime, as he was a master …
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During January I analyzed the IMT prosecution documents concerning Artur Seyss-Inquart and the first half of the case against Wilhelm Frick. This amounted to 157 documents and 796 pages of material. (I also added a new task, connecting the code numbers for the scanned images of the documents to the corresponding database entries, so that the images will go up on the website connected to the corresponding analysis.) Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi who helped …
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In December 2019, I analyzed the prosecution documents on two of the IMT defendants, Schirach and Bormann, amounting to 137 documents and 774 pages of material. This brought the total for the IMT to 3200 documents so far, in just under two years of analysis work. (Many more to follow.) Bormann was tried in absentia; he had in fact died at the end of the war but this had not been definitely established at the …
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In November I analyzed the prosecution documents against Admiral Raeder, the commander of the navy in the 1930s and the first half of the war; this amounted to 129 documents and 645 pages of material. The initial case against Raeder was compact, as he was primarily charged with violations of the laws of naval warfare, but in his defense he made the tactical mistake of claiming he was only a naval officer and had no …
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During October, I analyzed the IMT prosecution files concerning defendants Funk (the banker) and Admiral Doenitz; this amounted to 119 documents and 693 pages of material. The Funk case extended that of his predecessor, Schacht, with a few marginal additions, while the Doenitz material covered the preparation for the war, which the prosecution considered to be the central crime of the regime, and the details of crimes committed in the war at sea, particularly the …
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During September I analyzed the remaining documents of the prosecution case against Streicher and all of the case against Hjalmar Schacht, the regime's banker; this amounted to 175 documents and 751 pages of material. Extermination declared: In December 1942, the "United Nations" (the Allied nations) issued a declaration on reports that Germans "are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe." Adults were being worked to death, others …
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During August I completed the IMT prosecution documents on Hans Frank, the occupation governor of Poland, and began the documents on Julius Streicher, the Nazi propagandist. This amounted to 174 documents and 551 pages of material. For the IMT as a whole, we passed the 2500-document mark early in the month and now have more than 2600 documents analyzed. The case against Frank was covered in the last report, and the final file did not …
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During July I completed work on the prosecution documents on Goering and began work on the documents on Hans Frank. This amounted to 155 documents and 722 pages of material. One of the document books, for the cross-examination of Frank, was prepared by the USSR; this is the first Soviet file (in the English language) that has appeared in the collection. In terms of the collection, the two sets occur in opposite forms: the Goering …
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During June I analyzed the IMT prosecution documents concerning Alfred Rosenberg and four of the document books on Hermann Goering, the lead defendant. This amounted to 141 documents and 700 pages of material. As it turned out, Rosenberg and Goering form a study in contrast. Labels (problem of): When I began work on the prosecution case against the individual defendants (the third phase of the prosecution), the first file was a presentation on "the lead …
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During May I finished the analysis of the IMT prosecution documents on generals Keitel and Jodl, and began work on the documents about Alfred Rosenberg; this amounted to 128 documents and 873 pages of material. Old concepts and new: In September 1941 Admiral Canaris circulated a commentary on the new policy to treat Soviet POWs as criminals, noting that it violated traditional international law. Keitel commented that "The objections arise from the military concept of …
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During April I began work on the IMT prosecution's case against the individual defendants (the third major phase of the prosecution), including the opening statement, then briefs and documents on Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Jodl. This amounted to 160 documents and 655 pages of material. We also passed the 2000 mark in the number of IMT documents analyzed. Making it personal: When the prosecutor (Ralph Albrecht) opened the argument on the lead defendants, he concentrated …
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During March I analyzed the remaining prosecution document books about Kaltenbrunner, which supplemented the case against the Gestapo, and then the case against the military high command (OKW) and general staff; this amounted to 157 documents and 800 pages of material. This completed my work on the prosecution documents on the six accused "criminal organizations." Transactional loyalty: General Blomberg reviewed the military commanders' allegiance to Hitler as largely a quid-pro-quo. Rearmament and the reunification of …
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During February, I completed the prosecution evidence on the Gestapo and SD and began the documents on Ernst Kaltenbrunner, whose case overlapped because he was chief of the security police; this amounted to 170 documents and 597 pages of material. The final two files on the Gestapo and SD were used to rebut defense arguments at the end of the trial, and the rush to finish is reflected in the documents. While US document files …
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During January I completed the prosecution documents on the SS as a criminal organization and began the documents on the Gestapo and the Security Service (SD), amounting to 136 documents and 903 pages of material. The prosecution's separate treatment of these overlapping organizations was part historical and part functional. The SS (including the SD) was first charged as a multifaceted institution that originated in the party, and then later took over the police system. The …
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During November and December I worked on the prosecution documents concerning four institutions charged as being criminal organization (the party leadership, the cabinet, the SA, and the SS), with the documents on the plundering of artworks added as an illustration. This amounted to 232 documents and 996 pages of material. The totals for the year on the IMT (not including the final work on NMT 9) are 1420 documents and 8439 pages. IMT and NMT …
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During October I covered the IMT prosecution documents on the persecution of the Jews (a phrase that the prosecutors noted was far short of the reality), Germanization, and the first material on the Leadership Corps of the NSDAP, amounting to 157 documents and 663 pages of material. The prosecution detoured from counts 3 and 4 (war crimes and crimes against humanity) to the criminal organizations without any explanation, and will detour back to the plundering …
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During September I worked through the final IMT prosecution documents covering count 2 (aggression), including the war against the US, and began the documents for counts 3 and 4 (war crimes and crimes against humanity, which were presented together), skipping forced labor (those documents are missing from our set), covering the concentration camp system, and the beginning of the persecution and extermination of the Jews (about which, more next month). The document analysis covered 88 …
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During August I continued with the IMT prosecution documents for Crimes against Peace (Count 2), following the expansion of the war after the attack on Poland and the beginning of the war with Britain and France. This covered, in succession, the Nazi attacks on Norway and Denmark; Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg; Yugoslavia and Greece; and the Soviet Union. (The files on the war with the United States will complete the set.) This covered 116 …
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During June and July I worked on the prosecution case under count 2 of the indictment, crimes against peace (or, wars of aggression), amounting to 196 documents and 1584 pages of material. The case includes the British prosecutor's opening address on aggression, a review of the treaties Germany had signed and then violated, the planning (conspiracy) and execution (aggression) of the conquests of Czechoslovakia and Austria, and a detailed record of Germany's conflict with Poland, …
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During May I analyzed the contents of seven IMT prosecution document books, covering 205 documents and 758 pages of material. The documents completed the evidence for count 1 of the indictment, the Nazi leaders' "common plan" or conspiracy to seize power, consolidate control, militarize the society, and prepare for a war of aggression, with the latter subject overlapping with count 2 (crimes against peace). This material was presented in the first ten days of the …
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During April I analyzed the documents in seven IMT prosecution document books, covering 245 documents and 770 pages of material. The subjects covered diverse elements of the "Common plan or conspiracy" charge (count 1), including totalitarian control, education and youth, propaganda, purges and terrorization, labor, and suppression of Christian churches. The material reflects the prosecution's central argument, that the war crimes and crimes against humanity (counts 3 and 4) were derivative of the primary crime-the …
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During March I completed the work on the IMT prosecution notes and memos, then covered the initial trial proceedings, the eleven prosecution briefs on count 1 (the "common plan" or conspiracy of the Nazi leaders), and finally began the document books of evidence for count 1. This covered 104 documents and 1124 pages of material. In order to begin adding the evidence documents, the analysis paused for a week to allow the revision of the …
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After I finished the analysis of the trial documents in the Einsatzgruppen case, NMT 9, in early January, I split my time between two tasks. The first was to scan the last 1500 pages of the trial transcript for any document-related information I had not previously found. My earlier work proved to be sufficient, as no new documents turned up. The transcript did offer some interesting dialogue, however, including an exchange between a judge and …
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In December and early January, I worked through the papers of six Case 9 defendants, covering 169 documents and 895 pages of material. The sixth, Strauch, was the last defendant to present his case, so, subject to some double-checking, all the Case 9 trial documents have now been identified and analyzed-1129 documents and ca. 6700 pages. The remaining task is to finish the review of the transcript, 1800 pages to go, to find additional information …
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During November, I worked through the papers of five defendants, amounting to 157 documents and 724 pages. For those tracking the numbers, the document and page numbers are lower than in previous months, for two reasons: several work days "lost" to holidays, and diseconomies of scale. Some of the defendants offered few documents but spent several days testifying on the stand, so that I had to spend a lot of time skimming through the transcript …
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During October I analyzed 197 documents (1045 pages) spanning five of the NMT Case 9 defendants (it helped that one defendant offered only one document before his case was severed due to illness). Documentary infallibility? When the prosecutor cross-examined Sandberger about a promotion recorded in his SS personnel file, Sandberger claimed that the record was inaccurate in several respects. The prosecutor responded: "The memory of man might fail. Records, if they are not destroyed, stand." …
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During September I analyzed 171 defense documents in the Einsatzgruppen Case (NMT 9), amounting to 1299 pages of material, finishing the papers of one defendant I had started in August, completing three other defendants, and starting the documents of another. The numbers are adding up: with more than 600 documents done, I am now half-way through the NMT 9 trial documents. On a larger scale, given our estimated total of 40,000 trial documents in the …
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During August I completed the analysis of the tribunal judgment and began work on the defendants' documents, amounting to 165 documents and 1063 pages of material. I have now completed the documents of three of the defendants, in the order they presented their cases in the trial. One challenge in the process is that, so far, none of the defendants had their evidence ready to offer as exhibits when they testified (as was usual in …
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During July I completed the analysis of the prosecution documents in the Einsatzgruppen trial (NMT 9), amounting to 155 documents and 1070 pages of material, including document books, briefs against individual defendants, and the closing argument. Some time was spent enriching the analysis of the previous documents (analyzed in June) with information about two trial issues that were not identified in the indictment but that emerged from the evidence: the execution of the mentally ill, …
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In June the trial document analysis work resumed, with NMT 9, the Einsatzgruppen Case, on the agenda. I chose this trial because it presents a subject the other cases have not so far covered: genocide. The Einstazgruppen (groups A, B, C, and D) were created by the SS in the summer of 1941 to proceed into eastern Europe along with the army on the Russian front in order to assist the military, secure territory behind …
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During May I worked through the nine document books of Field Marshal List and the entire defense set of General Rendulic, for a total of 226 documents and 1260 pages of material. General Rendulic takes the case out of the Balkans for charges related to the scorched-earth withdrawal from northern Norway, but the issues and events are like those already presented by other defendants. Since List was the highest-ranking defendant, the stakes were higher, the …
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During April I finished the paper of one defendant (Lanz), covered all the documents of another (von Leyser), and started those of Field Marshal List, the commander in chief in southeastern Europe in 1941. This amounted to 229 documents and 1037 pages of material. Given the number of defendants already covered, not many new subjects appeared, but some vivid examples of familiar points were found. Objection to the court: This was the seventh trial heard …
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During March I completed the final papers for one defendant (Geitner), all of the papers for a second (Kuntze), and roughly half for a third (Lanz). This amounted to 249 documents and 899 pages of material. The Lanz case gets us to the fifth box in the Case 7 set, passing the two-thirds mark. The defense evidence shed some light on the German strategy in Yugoslavia, the complexities of the Nazi system, and the hazards …
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During February I completed the documents for one defendant in the Hostages Case, Foertsch, and most of the documents for another, von Geitner. These amounted to 193 documents and 895 pages of material. Both defendants were staff officers rather than commanding officers, which was a major point for them and a key distinction for the tribunal, but staff officers still had an overview of events and also a major responsibility that was relevant in the …
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The plan for December was to complete the Hostage Case prosecution documents, but I finished those in November, so we had a project's dream come true: free time. I split the time, spending 10 days working through the defense portion of the trial transcript and the final proceedings, and then started the defendants' papers. By the end of January I had finished the documents of two defendants (Dehner and Felmy) and half of the next …
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The task for November was to finish the second box of trial documents, amounting to 150 documents and 973 pages. This completed work on the Hostage Case prosecution documents, a month sooner than planned. The question of what's not there: The collection of prosecution documents includes virtually all of the primary case that was prepared at the beginning of the trial, except, unfortunately, the movies that were shown, and some evidence provided by outside authorities …
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In October I worked through the second half of the records of the German war in Yugoslavia, covering the years 1943-44. This amounted to 214 documents analyzed, with 1256 pages of material. The basic story remained the same as for the early war-the capture and killing of hostages as a deterrent and punishment for guerrilla attacks, hence the name The Hostage Case-but some interesting strategic and tactical shifts occurred. In mid-1943 the focus of the …
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The task for September was to begin the analysis of documents for Case 7, the Hostage Case, which concerns (primarily) the extraordinarily dirty war between the Germans and the partisans in Yugoslavia, with the execution of captured fighters, the arrest and killing of hostages in reprisal measures, and the use of concentration camps and forced labor. Since I began the work in late August after finishing the Justice Case, and the early prosecution files are …
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The task in August was to complete the documents for Franz Schlegelberger, the most important defendant in the trial and the last one in the set. The Justice Case was thus completed, with some clean-up work to follow later, with 2379 documents and 12,190 pages of material analyzed. While the movie version of the trial, Judgment of Nuremberg, has its dramatic climax when the leading defendant (Schlegelberger by another name, played by Burt Lancaster) rises …
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My agenda for July was to complete the analysis of the defense documents for Rothaug and Rothenberger, and begin the documents for Schlegelberger, the final defendant in Case 3. This material covered 20 files, 234 documents, and 1105 pages of text. Blue Grapes, again: Given the suspicion that Judge Rothaug plotted judicial crimes at the Blaue Traube restaurant, one of his colleagues admitted in an affidavit that the place was owned by a Nazi leader …
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The June agenda was the defense case of Petersen and the majority of the case for Rothaug (one of the bulky sets); this covered 13 files, 309 documents, and 997 pages analyzed. These defendants were opposites in their roles, as Petersen was a minor figure as a lay-judge while Oswald Rothaug was notorious as a "blood judge" presiding at the Special Court at Nuremberg, with a reputation as a politically-connected Nazi. Even other defendants claimed …
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The agenda for May was analyzing the defense material for Mettgenberg, Nebelung, and Oeschey; this covered 23 files, 259 documents, and approximately 1200 pages. Compared to recent months, the document count went down but the page count went up, as a number of long documents from Oeschey's court cases gave us economies of scale. Mettgenberg and Nebelung made the now-familiar bureaucratic argument that they simply did office work; Oeschey was a Special Court judge, with …
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The task for April was to analyze the defense documents of Ernst Lautz, who had a lot to answer for as the chief prosecutor of the notorious People's Court. He answered at great length. In April I worked through 17 files, 287 documents, and approximately 900 pages. The document count set a monthly record but the page count was below average as Lautz's attorney submitted many 1 or 2 page exhibits and the economies of …
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During March I finished the Cuhorst files and covered 2 more defendants, Joel and Klemm, so 6 of the 14 have been completed. The work covered 33 files, 286 documents and ca. 1160 pages. For those calculating the numbers, in the defense files the number of documents has gone up while the number of pages has not, as many of them are very short, often 1 or 2 pages. The bureaucratic defense: After Cuhorst's colorful …
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The task for the month was to begin the analysis of the defendants' trial documents, beginning with Altstoetter. I worked through 3.5 defense cases, including 3 small ones and half of one of the biggest (Cuhorst), covering 20 files, 242 documents, and 1076 pages. Transcript work: Finding where each defendant presented his case is difficult, as they did not go in any apparent order. Flipping through the volumes is time-consuming, but most of the defendants …
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Like the mail, project news is subject to storm delays. My task for January was to finish analysis of the Case 3 prosecution material, and I did that, working through 11 files, 144 documents, and 1112 pages. The material covered a wide range of subjects. The Night and Fog program had the most material. In this operation, western European Resistance members were "disappeared" into Germany, prosecuted there, and imprisoned, with no word given to the …
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The December operation was to work through 12 prosecution document books, containing 140 documents and approximately 990 pages of material. The transcript required more attention (and much more time) as the prosecution case began to wind down, with documents being entered almost randomly. I needed to work far ahead in the transcript to find where the evidence came in-and whether it was accepted as exhibits. Beyond that key fact, the transcript-document correlation provides other important …
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The task for November was 12 files of prosecution evidence (document books 2 - 3L), holding 164 items and approximately 1410 pages. The theme of the material is the increasing ferocity of the courts as the war progressed, with expanding jurisdiction of the People's Courts and Special Courts and growing demands for detah sentences to terrorize opponents of the regime. At the end of the war even this was considered inadequate, as political cases were …
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NMT 3, The Justice Case When I began the trial analysis work at the beginning of October, all of the key materials were already in place-the Case 3 trial documents boxes, the trial transcript, and the "Green Set" of NMT trial reports-so I was able to start quickly, re-ordering some of the material, assembling basic information about Case 3 (the defendants, prosecutors, judges, main issues, etc.). I was able to begin document analysis after only …
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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0
| 52
|
http://ports.gnu-darwin.org/textproc/scim-openvanilla/work/openvanilla-0.7.2.20070514/Modules/SharedData/dict-en.txt
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en
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[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null | null | ||||||||||
correct_death_00048
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FactBench
|
2
| 0
|
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hermann-goering
|
en
|
Hermann Göring
|
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Brief overview of the charges against Hermann Göring, highest ranking Nazi official tried during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hermann-goering
|
Hermann Göring (1893–1946) was the highest-ranking Nazi official tried during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. A decorated fighter pilot during World War I, Göring joined the Nazi party in 1922 after hearing a speech by Adolf Hitler. He eventually found his way into the inner circles of Nazi power.
After Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Göring took on many positions of power and leadership within the Nazi state: Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), Director of the Four Year Plan in the German economy, and, at the outbreak of war in Europe, Hitler's acknowledged successor. It was Göring who ordered Security Police chief Reinhard Heydrich to organize and coordinate a "total solution" to the "Jewish question."
The International Military Tribunal charged Göring on all four counts (crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity). He was convicted and sentenced to death. On the eve of his scheduled execution, he committed suicide in his prison cell.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 46
|
https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-most-powerful-man-in-germany/
|
en
|
Hermann Goering: The Second-most Powerful Man in Nazi Germany
|
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2022-07-06T06:10:15
|
He was head of the Luftwaffe and the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany: this is the story of Hermann Goering.
|
en
|
/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
|
TheCollector
|
https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-most-powerful-man-in-germany/
|
Hermann Goering was, without a doubt, one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich. His close friendship with Hitler and his political positions gave him the power to greatly influence not only Germany but the entire course of the war. His power and wealth made him the second-most powerful man in all of Germany, exceeded only by Hitler himself. Goering is perhaps best known as the head of the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s formidable air force, but behind the position was a man with a life checkered by success and failure.
Hermann Goering’s father was a former cavalry officer who served as the first Governor-General of German South West Africa (now Namibia). On January 12, 1893, Hermann was born while his father was serving as consul general in Haiti. Hermann’s mother had returned to Germany to give birth and left soon afterward, only to see her son three years later. Hermann was placed in the care of his mother’s friend in Bavaria. He was the second-youngest of five children by his father’s second marriage. His mother later had an affair with Hermann’s godfather, Hermann Epenstein, a wealthy Jewish physician.
At age 11, Goering was sent to boarding school, which he enjoyed far more than his life at home. At one point, he feigned illness to avoid having to return and, as a result, was allowed to stay at the school. He had an intense interest in the military from a young age and often dressed up in a Boer uniform his father had given him. At 16, Hermann was sent to a military academy, where he graduated with distinction. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Goering was already in the military, stationed with his unit at Mülhausen on the border with France.
The First World War
He flew with various fighter squadrons and suffered an injury in the hip, which put him out of action for almost a year. During his time in the Luftstreitkräfte, he scored 22 air victories and was awarded several medals. Despite his success, he was widely unpopular with his peers and subordinates due to his arrogance.
After the war, he joined many others in believing that Germany had lost the war not due to military defeat but by the civilian betrayal by Marxists and Jews. This was a fundamental belief that helped give rise to Nazism. During his post-war period, Goering worked briefly at Fokker and for a Swedish airline. He also did barnstorming, which is performing tricks as a stunt pilot.
Hermann Goering joined the Nazis in 1922 after hearing one of Hitler’s speeches. Goering’s organizational skills impressed Hitler, and Goering was given command of the Sturmabteilung (SA).
During the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch (the failed Nazi coup), when Hitler was arrested, Goering was shot in the groin. He and his family were smuggled out of Germany, where he received surgery in Innsbruck, Austria. He was given morphine for the pain, which kickstarted a lifelong addiction to the drug for which he twice underwent treatment.
In 1927, Goering returned to Germany and rejoined the Nazi Party, using his contacts to gain prestige. In the 1928 election, the Nazi Party won 12 seats in the Reichstag, and Goering occupied one of them. He was acknowledged as leader of the lower house, and in the 1932 election, when the Nazi Party won 230 seats, Goering was elected President of the Reichstag. With his high status in the Reichstag, Goering had the ear of the 84-year-old president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg. By influencing him, Goering managed to outmaneuver successive chancellors until Hindenburg felt obliged to invite Hitler to become chancellor on January 30, 1933.
As Minister of the Interior of Prussia, Germany’s largest and most influential state, Goering used his power to help Nazism become more potent. He established concentration camps for “opponents” and created the Nazi secret political police, the Gestapo. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, Goering was able to place the blame on communists and other enemies of Nazism to solidify Hitler’s hold on power. Once the opponents of Nazism had been nullified, Goering’s position as the second-most powerful man in Germany was unassailable.
Throughout the rest of the decade, he accrued many offices of state and titles. He became Master of the German Hunt and of the German Forests. He replaced Hjalmar Schacht as the minister for economic affairs and became Hitler’s roving ambassador. During this time, he took a leading part in the Night of the Long Knives, ridding Germany of the Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership, and in the same year, he ceded control of the Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler.
His position of power allowed Goering to enrich himself, attaining a huge forest estate north of Berlin where he was a keen hunter. At this estate, he kept part of his huge art collection, much of which was plundered from territories conquered by the Nazis. After the death of his first wife, he married again to the actress Emmy Sonnemann, and he spent much of his time with her at the estate. In 1938, Emmy bore a daughter, Edda, who was Hermann Goering’s only child.
Despite Goering’s insistence that Germany was not ready for the war, Hitler decided to invade Poland and risk the declarations of war from Britain and France. Goering was named one of the members of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich and was the head of the Four Year Plan, a series of economic measures to control the German economy during the war years. In this position, Goering served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich.
At the beginning of the war, Goering’s Luftwaffe performed admirably on all fronts, sweeping aside the Polish air force in under a week, and decimating Belgian, Dutch, and French resistance the following year. Hitler named Goering his successor and Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches, making him superior in rank to all Field Marshals in the army and the air force.
From September 1940 to May 1941, however, the Luftwaffe suffered significant losses during the Battle of Britain. Although Goering was confident about Germany’s ability to control the skies over Britain in order to pave a way for the invasion of the island, the Royal Air Force and British resilience forced the Luftwaffe to defeat and inflicted heavy losses. The Luftwaffe lost almost 2000 aircraft and many more pilots. As a result, Operation Sea Lion – the planned invasion of Britain – was postponed indefinitely.
In July 1941, during the first month of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe performed exceptionally well, eliminating virtually the entire Soviet Air Force. Still, by the second month, the Luftwaffe had only 1000 planes operational. The simple truth is that the Luftwaffe did not have enough aircraft to hit all the targets it needed to hit. With overstretched supply lines and exhausted pilots, the contribution to the German effort on the ground could not achieve what Hitler wanted or expected. Furthermore, strategic errors allowed the Soviets to regroup and stop the Germans from taking Moscow. As the war dragged through 1942, long past Hitler’s predictions for a quick victory, attrition took its toll on the Germans, including the Luftwaffe.
During the disastrous encirclement of the German 6th army at Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe wasn’t even capable of providing half the required supplies to the trapped Germans. Three hundred tons of equipment and food were needed per day. On the best day, the Luftwaffe only managed 120 tons. This was despite Goering’s complete confidence that supplying the 6th Army would be no problem.
On the Western Front, Allied bombing runs were now possible with the extended fuel tanks of the American P51-Mustangs flying escort. The Luftwaffe was only capable of defending German skies piecemeal. Goering quickly lost favor with both Hitler and the German people and began to spend more time at his estate. On D-Day (June 6th, 1944), the Germans only had 300 fighters and a handful of bombers in the area to counter the Allies’ fleet of 11,000 aircraft.
As the war drove to its final conclusion, and with his estate destroyed, Goering moved, with his family, to his home in Obersalzburg. On the same day, April 22, 1945, Hitler announced to his generals in his bunker that he would commit suicide. Upon hearing this, Goering wrote a letter asking Hitler for the right to take over Hitler’s position upon his death. Goering’s rival, Martin Bormann, convinced Hitler that this was a move by Goering to usurp power, and Hitler, branding Goering as a traitor, stripped him of all his titles and removed him from the Nazi Party.
Goering was now hunted by the Germans as well as the Allies. He was picked up by a passing Luftwaffe unit but managed to make his way to the US lines. On May 5, he was taken into custody by US forces.
At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty on numerous charges, including waging a war of aggression, the torture of prisoners of war, and plundering works of art and other property. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but the night before his sentence was to be carried out, he committed suicide by taking a cyanide capsule.
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
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3
| 31
|
https://en.nuremberg.media/affiants/20211016/279215/Herman-Gring-Never-Taken-Alive.html
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en
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Herman Göring, Never Taken Alive
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On 15 October 1946, the world received the sensational news – Hermann Göring who was sentenced to death by hanging, had committed suicide on the eve of his execution. He had escaped the disgrace of the “rope” and left this world on his terms. The defendant, known in the Third Reich as “Nazi No 2”, aspired to be “Number One” at the Nuremberg Trials. He was the only defendant who openly fought the International Military Tribunal, giving no quarter and never repenting for a moment. Göring was strikingly different from the other defendants, whom he despised for their "softness", "betrayal of ideals", "cowardice" and "treason against the fatherland". He was indeed a true Enemy, a personified Evil - and the prosecution had to fight him in a long, exhausting battle. Göring was a unique opponent. Despite his hatred, everyone around the proud “Nazi No 2” at Nuremberg 1945-46 recognised his bravery, steadfastness, and tough uncompromising character as a combat officer, an ace pilot. His behaviour at the trials was a chronicle of a diving bomber, right down to the ramming in the final act.
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Nuremberg. Casus pacis
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https://en.nuremberg.media/affiants/20211016/279215/Herman-Gring-Never-Taken-Alive.html
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‘Martyr’
In his final statement at the trials, Hermann Göring said: “The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused… I do not recognise the judgment of this court... I am glad that I have been sentenced to execution... because those who are sentenced to life imprisonment never become martyrs.”
His conduct at the process at first had the understandable purpose of getting off with prison. Then he realised that he would certainly not get away with it. He greeted the verdict with bravado: “Capital punishment means nothing to me. I stopped being afraid of punishment when I was twelve years old.”
In a suicide letter from 10 October 1946 to Churchill, he wrote:
“You think that you have arranged things cleverly by throwing this historical truth on the dissecting table for the legal sophistries of a handful of ambitious juridical subordinates, and allowing it to be turned into a dialectal treatise of paragraph-quibbling, although you as a Briton and a statesman know all too well that, by such means, the vital problems of the peoples could not in the past be solved or judged, and that they will not be so solved in the future. I have a too-well-founded opinion of your strength and of the cunning of your intelligence for me to think you capable of believing the vulgar catchwords which you sustain the war against us and seek to glorify your victory over us in a circus-like spectacle.”
Göring was worried but still felt fit.
Failed Hope
Most likely, he was driven by...ambition. Once he and no one else could be called "Nazi No 2". Then Reichsminister Hess, Reichsführer Himmler, Reichsleiter Bormann, even Reichspropagandist Goebbels began to claim this accolade... Now three of them were dead, and Hess had lost face before, due to his ill-fated solo trip to the UK. But most importantly, there was no more Hitler. Which meant...
...It meant that at the historic International Military Tribunal, at the main Nuremberg Trials, he, Reichsmarshal Göring, was finally no longer Number 2. He was automatically elevated to Nazi Number One.
As the trials went on, Göring's tactics were perhaps the most fascinating spectacle. He would mock the charges, then outright lie, then provoke the participants in the session. He was playing his part on the great stage of history - so it seemed to him. However, the end was simple and mundane. On the day of the announcement of the verdict, they spoke first about the others, and after the lunch break, at 2:50 p.m., they finally said: “The International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.” The judge added: “The guilt of this man is unprecedented and the crimes are so monstrous that there can be no justification.”
The last words were delivered, the letters written. Churchill did not reply.
All that was left was to become a martyr. Göring would have had the guts to go to the gallows for such a prospect. But perhaps he was indeed morally broken. He had ceased to believe in his impending martyrdom. Or perhaps his pride prompted him to take a different path - to get there first and do it his own way, not to fall into the hands of the victors.
The “Nuremberg: Casus Pacis” project has previously published a biographical sketch of Nazi No 2 (link). Let us recall the main milestones of Göring's journey – from a brave heroic aviator to a “downed pilot”.
Young Veteran
In 1914, the twenty-year-old infantryman Hermann Göring demanded to be transferred to aviation.
In the air squadron he became a mechanic, an observer, and within a year was promoted to reconnaissance pilot, then a bomber pilot and finally a fighter pilot. He was a truly fearless young man. He shot down 22 enemy planes. The holder of three orders, he rose to the rank of a commander of a fighter squadron and became a captain. After the war, he stayed on as an aviator, performing demonstration flights, went to university and married Carin von Kantzow, whom he took by storm from her Swedish husband.
He was tall (178 cm was considered tall at the time), unquestionably handsome, charming, courageous and ambitious... His life could have turned out very differently.
Brother-in-Arms
In 1922, he met Hitler in Munich, and immediately believed in him. But there was another circumstance - Karin believed in Hitler. She became almost more of a Nazi than Göring.
The Führer badly needed war heroes in his party. Göring was the most brilliant of them all. Hitler immediately appointed him the supreme leader of the Storm Units – Ernst Röhm and Göring would hate each other forever. And it was Göring who turned these gangs into a semblance of an army and imposed discipline. On 9 November 1923, he took part in the “Beer Hall Putsch”, marched hand in hand with Hitler, and was seriously wounded. His wife took him abroad for treatment. He recovered, but after that, he began to gain weight rapidly... He was eager to go to Germany, but the flustered Führer asked him to refrain and “keep himself for National Socialism”. While Hitler was in prison, Carin visited him and received confirmation – Göring remained his main and closest brother-in-arms.
No. 2
In 1927, he returned to Germany. His party career went like clockwork. As a war hero and ace pilot, he was a standard-bearer, even if his outward attractiveness suffered from the extra kilos. It was he who became President of the Reichstag and dismissed von Papen's government, clearing Hitler's path to power. It was he who created the secret state police, the Gestapo, and was the first to head it.
It was he who initiated the Night of the Long Knives and rid Hitler of the Storm Units and himself of Röhm. In 1935, he achieved a unique position in the Reich: he was declared a hero and Hitler's closest ally on several occasions and was given immunity and unlimited rights. He wanted to become the Reichsforstermeister – the country's forester – and so he did.
He wanted to be a general – and jumped to the rank of captain. He became a field marshal of aviation and headed the Luftwaffe. And in June 1941, he was officially appointed Hitler's successor in case of his death or other misfortune. On 30 July 1941 Göring signed a document on the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, providing for the extermination of some 20 million people.
And then Hitler began to doubt Göring: the latter was increasingly showing his second nature.
‘Pocket Money’
A curious excerpt from Goering's interrogation:
Where did you get the cash money from?
I was the second man in the country and always provided with money in abundance. I signed the allowance myself.
And this is the same way you received foreign funds, foreign exchange?
Yes. I myself was the final authority on this.
Did it have any correct procedure or were there any records made about it at all?
All that was needed – permission, but in my case, that was not even a question.
If you were travelling abroad and needed a large amount of currency, how did you get it?
I have never needed for too much money. If I was planning a trip abroad, I would calculate how much money I would need and then ask for the currency.
How did you get money before the war?
Like any private person who went abroad. I carried the cash needed in the first few days in my pocket, and for the rest, I got a letter of credit.
How did you pay for the purchase of the paintings?
Always in cash.
What is your yearly income?
As Reichsmarshal I received 20,000 marks a month, as Commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe I received 3,600 marks a month, tax deducted. As President of the Reichstag – 1600 marks. Furthermore, there were royalties for my literary works. The income from my books is about 1 million marks.
Did your lifestyle cost more than these sums?
Some of my expenses were covered by other funds; my residences in Berlin and Carinhall were financed by the state.
A Lifestyle and Its Cost
Göring's “executive flat” was built 60 km from Berlin by two architects: Werner March, who also designed Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, and Friedrich Hetzelt, who designed the Gestapo building in Prinz-Albert-Straße. The main country residence of Nazi No 2 was called “Carinhall”, in honour of his wife (when Carin died in 1931, her ashes were buried in a magnificent mausoleum on the grounds of the manor). The result was somewhere between a palace and a castle. Located nearby, there were hunting grounds in the Schorfheide Forest and two lakes, the Grossdöllner and Wuckersee. There were magnificent seven-metre high gates made of expensive stone, a gym, a menagerie, even a Russian bath. And in the attic and basement – a toy railway. After the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, Göring celebrated his birthday by playing “trains” with his guests.
On a whim, he would fly to Paris - often alone. Of course, a squadron of fighter jets accompanied him.
He also had his own museum. He did not buy paintings: masterpieces of world art were seized as “trophies” from conquered cities. Most of all Göring liked statues, especially lions. In 1945, he attempted to hide his collection in a mine or in tunnels near Hitler's residence, where he also had another "house", but failed. Those responsible for the delivery stole the valuable cargo, and individual works of art would “resurface” over the decades.
Did the purchases of paintings not exceed your income?
I had other sources of income...
Not only did the Göring family enjoy lions in the form of statues, but they also kept seven domesticated 'feline' carnivores, and the pets would occasionally roam freely in the house. A lioness named Bubi escaped from the estate in May 1945 and continued to scare people in the forest where she lived and hunted for a long time.
In short, Hitler said it best... about Carinhall. “My Berghof (the Führer's not-at-all small or cheap estate in the Bavarian Alps - author's note) certainly can't be compared with this. Perhaps, it could become a garden lodge here?”
The Führer began to ponder, as he looked at all this luxury.
Other Sources of Income
If one were to ask any German at the time which company in Germany was the most important, the richest and the most powerful, he would answer without a doubt: Reichswerke Hermann Göring. This gigantic financial-industrial corporation was created at Göring’s initiative. It was established using state funds; the goal was to merge into a single cycle the production of steel, from iron ore mining to military production. German bankers and industrial bosses tried to resist, but Göring had an effective tool readily available for resolving economic disputes – the Gestapo. After a week of telephone tapping, the author of the “German economic miracle”, Hjalmar Schacht, resigned and the steel tycoons were nailed. Incidentally, the organisation that technically controlled the radio and telephone networks in the Reich was called the “Hermann Göring Research Institute”.
Once industrialists and financiers had trusted Schacht's entreaties, Hitler's speeches, Göring's charms and invested in Nazism in the hope of consolidating the position of their enterprises and assets. Now they were subjected to the planned economy, their profits were limited to a maximum of 6 percent, and the Anschluss of Austria added another interesting detail: German banks and private investors owned many Austrian enterprises, but now it all went to the Reichswerke Hermann Göring. The same thing happened with the industrial property in other occupied countries – Skoda factories in Czechoslovakia, Renault in France... By the end of 1941, Reichswerke Hermann Göring had a capitalisation of 2.4 billion marks and it was the largest industrial conglomerate in Europe.
However, Göring did not own this corporation. He chose the status of “trustee for the German state”, receiving dividends as manager and observer. Naturally, the corporation exploited the slave labour of concentration camp prisoners and “displaced persons” deported from all over Europe. The Stahlwerke Braunschweig plant employed 10,000 slaves and the mining operation – 47,000. Göring's corporation kept growing, devouring new shipbuilding, construction, steel, iron-cast and transport facilities.
The most accurate definition of Hermann Göring's position under the Nazi regime is that of the chief beneficiary. And the chief corruptor.
The Untouchable
The cooling on Hitler's part towards the favourite coincided with the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union. In 1941, sensible strategists and economists had the darkest forebodings about the outcome and consequences of the campaign; in 1942, Hitler began to push Göring away from real power. The influence and power of Nazi No 2 narrowed considerably with the appointment of the architect Albert Speer as Reichsminister of Armaments and War Production. Göring took a sharp dislike to Speer and actively opposed him, and it was to this staunch opponent that he said at the end of 1942: “We shall yet rejoice if after this war Germany maintains its 1933 borders.”
At the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, Göring had to give Hitler his word that he would provide provisions, ammunition and medical supplies to the surrounded units by air. However, this was no longer possible. Soviet soldiers won the field war; the war on the home front was lost by the German economy. And the Soviet Pokryshkins and Kozhedubs became the masters of the air.
It was still impossible to touch Göring, although he was clearly losing ground and gradually stopped even appearing in Berlin. At his pompous estate, he divided his leisure time between hunting, bathing, toy trains, a wine cellar and... Morphine in unlimited quantities. In order to bring Göring before the International Military Tribunal, the Allies had to treat him for this drug addiction. It resulted in polarised mood swings, outbursts of rage and prolonged apathy. He became addicted to morphine after the “Beer Hall Putsch”, when he was seriously wounded, resulting in inflammation in the groin and other unpleasant consequences. Since then, he always had a supply of pills and ampoules with him.
He progressed to the point of an almost complete breakdown of his personality, accompanied by eccentric provocations. He painted his nails and lips. He ordered new outfits from tailors almost every day, such as red boots with gold spurs, blue trousers with stripes, overcoats with fox and beaver collars, white coats with blue and red lapels... Albert Speer recalled: “I still remember being struck by his red, polished nails and powdered face. By then I had gotten used to the fact that his green brocade gown always had a huge brooch on it.” The Third Reich's claim to have inherited Ancient Rome was also evident at this almost-caricature level: Göring fully embodied the image of a debauched Roman patrician during the decline of the empire.
A curious detail: albeit ruthless and indifferent to the outside world, Nazi No 2 was an excellent family man. His marriage to his second wife was certainly a happy one. He married the actress Emmy Sonnemann in 1935, and she unofficially became First Lady of the Third Reich. His daughter Edda idolised her father. Not only that, he saved his brother Albert from arrest many times - who in turn saved several dozen Jews from death, which was no secret to Nazi No 2.
He was almost forgotten. And suddenly, on 23 April 1945, Hitler, who had just called everybody around him cowards and traitors and who had decided to remain in Berlin to the very end, received a radiogram: “My Führer! In view of your decision to remain in Berlin, do you agree that I should immediately assume as your successor according to the law of 29 June 1941; the general leadership of the Reich with full freedom of action at home and abroad? If I do not receive a reply by 10 p.m., I shall take it as confirmation that you have no freedom of action and that the conditions demanded in your decree are in place, and I shall act for the good of our country and our people. You know how I feel about you in this most difficult hour of my life. I am unable to put it into words. May God protect you and bring you here quickly, no matter what. Your ever devoted Göring”.
Hitler regarded this defiant ultimatum as proof of his treacherous intention to seize power. On the same day, Göring was arrested on charges of high treason and on 29 April Hitler stripped him of his ranks, decorations and posts and expelled him from the party. He was on the way to being put before a firing squad.
However, Göring’s personal pilots freed him, and a week later, he was in Allied hands, and they had to take care of his health. However, in the end, he had time to give the final order to blow up Carinhall. On 8 May, he proudly went to meet an American lieutenant and identified himself. He introduced himself: “Lieutenant Shapiro”. Göring sighed heavily: “Of course, a Jew”.
The Final Battle
The prison psychologist Gustave Gilbert and the psychiatrist Douglas Kelley recorded in detail Göring's behaviour at the Nuremberg trials, his reactions, and communication patterns with other defendants. Kelley, as it later became clear, was unable to resist the charisma of his patient. He became the messenger between Göring and his wife and daughter, delivering their letters, and was staggered by the contrast: the deep tenderness of the family man Göring, and the utter callousness and lack of remorse of Goring the Reichsmarschall. Subsequently, Kelley was never freed from the charms of his chief patient, and would commit suicide.
Gustave Gilbert, in The Nuremberg Diary, recorded his regular conversations with Göring as well as his observations. According to him, Nazi Number 2 differed significantly from the other figures: he was characterised by consistency and an integrity of views, which he was adamantly unwilling to reconsider. His IQ was an impressive 138.
“He reacted with keen interest to the challenge of an intelligence test, and by the end of the first subtest (memory-span), he was acting like a bright and egotistical schoolboy, anxious to show off before the teacher. He chuckled with glee as I showed surprise at his accomplishment in the increasingly difficult digit series. He slapped his thighs and pounded his bed impatiently when he failed on 9 forward and 7 backward, and pleaded for a third and a fourth try at it. ‘Oh, come on, give me another crack at it; I can do it!’ When he finally succeeded, to my expressed amazement, he could hardly contain his joy, and swelled with pride. This pattern of rapport was maintained throughout the entire test, the examiner encouraging him with remarks of how few people are able to do the next problem, and Göring responding like a show-off schoolboy. Göring was given to understand that he had the highest rating so far. He decided the American psychologists really had something there. ‘The method is good—much better than the stuff our psychologists were fooling around with’.”
He considered the films shown at the trial about Nazi atrocities to be propaganda forgeries. He defiantly took off his headphones so as not to listen to the testimony. In prison, he tried to take a leadership position over the rest of the defendants, scheming on walks and at dinner, creating small situational coalitions, and in the end, turned even the most loyal ones against him – it came down to a boycott. He used remnants of influence, down to intimidation, to create a general line of opposition to the court. He provoked the judges with defiant, cynical “gallows humour” and impertinent remarks from the bench. He became enraged at sessions, accusing those confessed of criminal acts of complicity in treason. Paradoxically he remained loyal to Hitler, stating that his suicide was not an act of cowardice and weakness but of fortitude and heroism (“I do not exonerate him, but the oath I swore to him will endure both bad and good times. (...) After all, he was the Führer of the German Reich. And it is absolutely inconceivable to me to imagine Hitler in a prison cell like this, awaiting his trial as a war criminal, to be judged by foreign judges. Even if he hated me just before the end, it does not change anything. He was a symbol of Germany. No matter how hard it may be for me, I am prepared to take it all on myself just to avoid seeing a living Hitler on trial, no, no, such a thing is completely unthinkable to me.”) Commenting on the potential outcome of the process and the behaviour of his "colleagues", he boasted of the bravery of a doomed man: “How could one do such a cowardly thing just to save his own rotten neck from the noose! To think a German would do such a cowardly thing for a few years of miserable life, for the sake of spending a few more years eating bread to make shit, pardon my frankness! Do you think I would do such a thing to prolong my life? I don't give a shit whether I'm going to be hanged, drowned, die in a plane crash, or drink myself to death! But there must be some idea of honour in this bloody world! (...) I don't give a damn what the enemy does to us, but I do feel bad when I see how the Germans betray each other!” Göring pushed his agenda to the very end, refusing to give in, even to the smallest detail, and refusing to accept the irrefutable facts.
Gustave Gilbert wrote: “In our conversations in his cell, Göring tried to give the impression of a jovial realist who had played for big stakes and lost, and was taking it all like a good sport. Any question of guilt was adequately covered by his cynical attitude toward the ‘justice of the victors’. He had abundant rationalisations for the conduct of the war, his alleged ignorance of the atrocities, the ‘guilt’ of the Allies, and a ready humour which was always calculated to give the impression that such an amiable character could have meant no harm. Nevertheless, he could not conceal a pathological egotism and inability to stand anything but flattery and admiration for his leadership, while freely expressing scorn for other Nazi leaders”.
“The night before the executions, Göring asked the chaplain for the rites of the Last Supper and the blessing of the Lutheran Church. Chaplain Gerecke, sensing another theatrical gesture, declined to administer the rites, telling Göring that since he had never shown the slightest sign of repentance, he would not put on a show for someone who did not usually mean it. The next night, when Goering showed that he had intended to make a mockery of the Last Supper by committing suicide right after it, the chaplain realised how right he was about Göring.
So did I. – For Göring died as he had lived, a psychopath trying to make a mockery of all human values and to distract attention from his guilt by a dramatic gesture.”
The Last Night
The date and time of the execution were kept a closely guarded secret from everyone, including those sentenced. However, apparently, someone in the know was talkative.
The execution was scheduled for 2:00 a.m. on 16 October 1946.
On 15 October, Commandant of the Nuremberg Prison Colonel Burton C. Andrus informed the sentenced prisoners that their petitions for clemency had been rejected. At 9:30 pm, the prison doctor, Dr. Ludwig Pflücker, accompanied by Lieutenant McLinden, a member of the prison guard, came to see Göring, who was held in cell number 5. McLinden did not understand what Pflücker and Goering were talking about, as he did not speak German. Pflücker handed the prisoner a sleeping pill, which he took in the presence of McLinden and the doctor.
After the announcement of the judgment, all the prisoners were monitored with great care and constant checks were carried out. The observers recorded that Göring was lying on his back, not moving, with his hands over the blanket (prisoners were required to exercise discipline in this matter as well). In the records of the military investigation, the guard Bingham testified: “When I looked into the cell I saw that Göring was lying in bed on his back, wearing boots, trousers and a jacket and holding a book. He had been lying motionless for about fifteen minutes, and then he began to move his hands restlessly and put his right hand to his forehead, rubbing it.” The guard Johnson replaced him on the duty: “It was precisely 22 hours and 44 minutes, as I looked at my watch at that moment. After about two or three minutes he (Göring) seemed to go numb and a strangled sigh escaped his lips.”
When the doctor and an officer arrived, Göring was already dead. They found shards of glass in his mouth and an envelope by his bedside. It contained a letter to his second wife, Emma, an address to the German people, and a note to Commandant Andrus.
“Nuremberg, 11 October 1946
To the Commandant
Since my imprisonment, I have always kept the poison capsule on my person. I had three capsules when I was committed to prison in Mondorf. The first one I left in my clothing, so that it would be found in the search. The second I left under the coatstand while undressing and took it again when I dressed. I hid this in Mondorf and here in the cell so well that, in spite of the frequent and very thorough searches, it could not be found. During the trial, I kept it in my high riding boots. The third capsule is still in my little toilet case in the round container of skin cream (hidden in the cream). I had two opportunities to take the capsule in Mondorf, had I needed it. No one in charge of the searches was at fault, since it was almost impossible to find the capsule. It would have been purely by chance.
Hermann Göring
PS: Doctor Gilbert told me that the Control Council rejected the change in the manner of execution to death by firing squad”.
It is still unknown whether Göring wrote the truth or not. From time to time, sensational new information would break the world, such as that Lieutenant Jack Willis, who had the keys to the prison storage room, had allowed Göring to enter and take the poison stored there, in return for his watch and other items.
In February 2005, Herbert Lee Stivers, a 78-year-old former American guard, said that he had met a German girl named Mona while serving in Nuremberg prison, twice handed notes from her to Göring and on the third time he passed ’medicine’, and that she hid all of the “deliveries” in a fountain pen.
The corpse of Göring was cremated along with the bodies of the other executed, and the ashes were scattered in the wind. The letter was, of course, given to his wife. “An appeal to the German people” lies somewhere in the American archives.
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The Nuremberg Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (1945–1948)
Following World War II, the victorious Allied governments established the first international criminal tribunals to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime atrocities. The four major Allied powers—France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—set up the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute and punish “the major war criminals of the European Axis.” The IMT presided over a combined trial of senior Nazi political and military leaders, as well as several Nazi organizations. The lesser-known International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was created in Tokyo, Japan, pursuant to a 1946 proclamation by U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in occupied Japan. The IMTFE presided over a series of trials of senior Japanese political and military leaders pursuant to its authority “to try and punish Far Eastern war criminals.”
The origins, composition, and jurisdiction of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals differed in several important respects beyond their geographical differences and personalities. Plans to prosecute German political and military leaders were announced in the 1942 St. James Declaration. In the declaration, the United States joined Australia, Canada, China, India, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Soviet Union, and nine exiled governments of German-occupied countries to condemn Germany’s “policy of aggression.” The Declaration stated that these governments “placed among their principal war aims the punishment, through the channel of organized justice, of those guilty of or responsible for these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them or participated in them.”
In August 1945, the four major Allied powers therefore signed the 1945 London Agreement, which established the IMT. The following additional countries subsequently “adhered” to the agreement to show their support: Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Greece, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia.
The Charter of the International Military Tribunal (or Nuremberg Charter) was annexed to the 1945 London Agreement and outlined the tribunal’s constitution, functions, and jurisdiction. The Nuremberg tribunal consisted of one judge from each of the Allied powers, which each also supplied a prosecution team. The Nuremberg Charter also provided that the IMT had the authority to try and punish persons who “committed any of the following crimes:”
(a) Crimes Against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
(c) Crimes Against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The IMT prosecutors indicted twenty-two senior German political and military leaders, including Hermann Goering, Rudolph Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, and Albert Speer. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was not indicted because he had committed suicide in April 1945, in the final days before Germany’s surrender. Seven Nazi organizations also were indicted. The prosecutors sought to have the tribunal declare that these organizations were “criminal organizations” in order to facilitate the later prosecution of their members by other tribunals or courts.
The Nuremberg Trial lasted from November 1945 to October 1946. The tribunal found nineteen individual defendants guilty and sentenced them to punishments that ranged from death by hanging to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Three defendants were found not guilty, one committed suicide prior to trial, and one did not stand trial due to physical or mental illness. The Nuremberg Tribunal also concluded that three of the seven indicted Nazi organizations were “criminal organizations” under the terms of the Charter: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi party; the elite “SS” unit, which carried out the forced transfer, enslavement, and extermination of millions of persons in concentration camps; and the Nazi security police and the Nazi secret police, commonly known as the ‘SD’ and ‘Gestapo,’ respectively, which had instituted slave labor programs and deported Jews, political opponents, and other civilians to concentration camps.
Unlike the IMT, the IMTFE was not created by an international agreement, but it nonetheless emerged from international agreements to try Japanese war criminals. In July 1945, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the Potsdam Declaration, in which they demanded Japan’s “unconditional surrender” and stated that “stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals.” At the time that the Potsdam Declaration was signed, the war in Europe had ended but the war with Japan was continuing. The Soviet Union did not sign the declaration because it did not declare war on Japan until weeks later, on the same day that the United States dropped the second atomic bomb at Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days later, on August 14, 1945.
At the subsequent Moscow Conference, held in December 1945, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States (with concurrence from China) agreed to a basic structure for the occupation of Japan. General MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, was granted authority to “issue all orders for the implementation of the Terms of Surrender, the occupation and control of Japan, and all directives supplementary thereto.”
In January 1946, acting pursuant to this authority, General MacArthur issued a special proclamation that established the IMTFE. The Charter for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was annexed to the proclamation. Like the Nuremberg Charter, it laid out the composition, jurisdiction, and functions of the tribunal.
The Charter provided for MacArthur to appoint judges to the IMTFE from the countries that had signed Japan’s instrument of surrender: Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of these countries also had a prosecution team.
As with the IMT, the IMTFE had jurisdiction to try individuals for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity, and the definitions were nearly verbatim to those contained in the Nuremberg Charter. The IMTFE nonetheless had jurisdiction over crimes that occurred over a greater period of time, from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria to Japan’s 1945 surrender.
The IMTFE presided over the prosecution of nine senior Japanese political leaders and eighteen military leaders. A Japanese scholar also was indicted, but charges against him were dropped during the trial because he was declared unfit due to mental illness. Japanese Emperor Hirohito and other members of the imperial family were not indicted. In fact, the Allied powers permitted Hirohito to retain his position on the throne, albeit with diminished status.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trials took place from May 1946 to November 1948. The IMTFE found all remaining defendants guilty and sentenced them to punishments ranging from death to seven years’ imprisonment; two defendants died during the trial.
After the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes trials, additional trials were held to try “minor” war criminals. These subsequent trials, however, were not held by international tribunals but instead by domestic courts or by tribunals operated by a single Allied power, such as military commissions. In Germany, for example, each of the Allied powers held trials for alleged war criminals found within their respective zones of occupation. The United States held twelve such trials from 1945 to 1949, each of which combined defendants who were accused of similar acts or had participated in related events. These trials also were held in Nuremberg and thus became known informally as the “subsequent Nuremberg trials.” In Japan, several additional trials were held in cities outside Tokyo.
The Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals contributed significantly to the development of international criminal law, then in its infancy. For several decades, these tribunals stood as the only examples of international war crimes tribunals, but they ultimately served as models for a new series of international criminal tribunals that were established beginning in the 1990s. In addition, the Nuremberg Charter’s reference to “crimes against peace,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against humanity” represented the first time these terms were used and defined in an adopted international instrument. These terms and definitions were adopted nearly verbatim in the Charter of the IMTFE, but have been replicated and expanded in a succession of international legal instruments since that time.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
2
| 92
|
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hermann-goring-and-his-final-judgment-at-nuremberg/
|
en
|
Hermann Göring and His Final Judgment at Nuremberg
|
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2024-03-28T15:00:25+00:00
|
Hermann Göring began his military career as a WWI flying ace and ended his days as a convicted war criminal at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
|
en
|
Warfare History Network
|
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hermann-goring-and-his-final-judgment-at-nuremberg/
|
By Blaine Taylor
The Allied indictment against Hermann Wilhelm Göring (1893-1946) at Nuremberg as issued by the International Military Tribunal in 1945 reads as follows:
“The defendant Göring between 1932-45 was: member of the Nazi Party, Supreme Leader of the SA (Brownshirts), General in the SS, a member and President of the Reichstag, Minister of the Interior of Prussia, Chief of the Prussian Police and Prussian Secret Police, Chief of the Prussian State Council, Trustee of the Four Year Plan; “Reich Minister for Air, Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, President of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, head of the Hermann Göring Industrial Combine, and Successor Designate to Hitler. The defendant Göring used the foregoing positions, his personal influence, and his intimate connection with the Führer in such a manner that: he promoted the accession to power of the Nazi conspirators and the consolidation of their control over Germany set forth in Count One;
“He promoted the military and economic preparation for war set forth in Count One, he participated in the planning and preparations of the Nazi conspirators for wars of aggression and wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances set forth in Counts One and Two, and he authorized, directed and participated in the war crimes set forth in Count Three;
“And the crimes against humanity set forth in Count Four, including a wide variety of crimes against persons and property.”
Guilt ‘Unique in its Enormity’
On September 30, 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal’s Chief Justice, Lord Geoffrey Lawrence, said of Göring—defendant number one at Nuremberg:
“There is nothing to be said in mitigation. For Göring was often, indeed almost always, the moving force, second only to his Leader. He was the leading war aggressor, both as political and as military leader; he was the director of the slave labor program and the creator of the oppressive program against the Jews and other races, at home and abroad. All these crimes he frankly admitted. On some specific cases there may be conflict in testimony, but in terms of the broad outline his own admissions are more than sufficiently wide to be conclusive of his guilt. His guilt is unique in its enormity.
“The record discloses no excuses for this man.”
Thus, Hermann Wilhelm Göring was pronounced guilty on all four counts of the indictment and sentenced to hang. On the evening of October 15, 1946, he was secretly scheduled to be hanged. However, he took a cyanide capsule he had evidently managed to keep hidden. It killed him in five minutes. He received the last rites of his Lutheran faith and died at 10:50 pm.
A Legacy of Impressive Accomplishment… and Extreme Evil
The indictment failed to mention that Göring was both a German field marshal and the ranking officer of all the armed forces of World War II as the reich marshal appointed by Adolf Hitler, his Führer, a sort of six-star general—a title that still stands, by the way. It also failed to mention that he was a morphine addict for many years of his adult life, and had once been put into a straight jacket and committed by his first wife to an asylum for the insane in Sweden. Just a few short years later, Hermann Göring was one of the mightiest men on Earth, and also one of the richest. He created one of the globe’s greatest air forces, yet did all he could to prevent the outbreak of World War II.
Truly his life and career are like no other in modern times. The photographs shown here come from his 47 personal photo albums in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, as well as other public and private sources discovered since. This is Hermann Göring as he saw himself.
Blaine Taylor of Towson, Md. is the author of a trio of books on World War II, and is at work on a multivolumed illustrated biography of Hermann Göring.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 66
|
https://deadline.com/2024/05/nuremberg-rami-malek-russell-crowe-rami-malek-movie-interview-1235905328/
|
en
|
‘Nuremberg’ Set Report: Inside James Vanderbilt’s Nazi Thriller Starring Russell Crowe And Rami Malek + Exclusive First-Look Images
|
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"Joe Utichi"
] |
2024-05-13T14:00:00+00:00
|
'Nuremberg' from writer-director James Vanderbilt tells the untold story of the Nazi trials with Russell Crowe and Rami Malek in starring roles.
|
en
|
Deadline
|
https://deadline.com/2024/05/nuremberg-rami-malek-russell-crowe-rami-malek-movie-interview-1235905328/
|
In the fuselage of a C-47 transport plane, a group of high-ranking Nazis in uniforms stripped of their insignia are facing their captors. Among them, Hermann Göring strikes up a conversation with a U.S. military psychiatrist, Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley. “Howie here tells me you do magic,” Göring says to Kelley. Kelley nods and shows him a quick coin trick. “Very good,” Göring responds. “But I am going to show you a real magic trick someday. I am going to escape the hangman’s noose.”
It is then that Robert Ley, the Nazi head of the German Labour Front, spots something out of the window. “Nürnberg,” he announces. As the rest of the group takes in the sight of the bombed city, their destination is clear. The Palace of Justice is one of the few buildings that remain standing. Their trial will soon begin.
It is an uncanny scene to watch play out on a soundstage in Budapest in 2024. There’s anticipation from both sides in this plane, as each tries to work out whether the Allies’ gamble, to try the defeated Nazi regime for its war crimes, will pay off. And that electricity never leaves the air in the two days Deadline spends on the set of James Vanderbilt’s new thriller Nuremberg, which comes to the Cannes market as surely one of the year’s hottest acquisition titles.
Based on Jack El-Hai’s book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg tells the story of Kelley’s interactions with the group of Nazi criminals tried at the end of the war. As well as Göring and Ley, Kelley was the first Allied psychiatrist to evaluate Nazi leaders like Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Karl Dönitz. And while the trials themselves have been adapted to film before — notably in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 epic Judgment at Nuremberg — Kelley’s particular take on what he witnessed has been largely ignored.
Kelley was young and eager to prove himself, but as he faced the men that had brought the world into its deadliest war, he came to understand the ease with which evil can pervade society. He returned from the trials determined to sound a warning that such a malignant slide would be possible again if it weren’t properly guarded against. But in the immediate relief of the war’s end, few were prepared to listen.
The Nuremberg trials exposed the dark secrets of the Nazi regime, but they also reassured people that the monsters had been dealt with. Kelley’s book about his experiences, and the warnings it contained, failed; overshadowed by the work of Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist brought in to reevaluate his findings. Kelley ultimately died by suicide in 1958 having taken potassium cyanide, the very same drug that Göring had indeed used to “escape the hangman’s noose” after his conviction.
Vanderbilt had started thinking about this story even before El-Hai’s book had been published in 2013. “I read his book proposal, which was about the relationship between Kelley and Göring,” the writer and director tells Deadline during a break in shooting. “I learned about the Nuremberg trials in school, so I knew the basic facts. But as soon as I read about the relationship between these two men, I was really attracted to the idea of telling a personal story between them and how they collided at this crossroads in history.”
What also fascinated Vanderbilt was a generational shift he saw in understanding about the events of World War II. “I took it all on faith, that of course the Nuremberg trials had happened, that justice was done. Both my grandfathers fought in the war. I had many friends whose grandparents were in the camps. But when I talked to my kids about World War II, it was like talking to them about the American Revolution. It is so much further removed from their generation. It felt like a great opportunity to tell a story that brings these events back to life and says, ‘This wasn’t at all a fait accompli.’”
Though Vanderbilt’s work may have started more than a decade ago, the lessons Kelley tried to teach seem as pertinent now as they’ve ever been. “Unfortunately, the film has become timelier rather than less timely,” says Vanderbilt. “But the thing I always loved about this story is that it’s actually timeless. It’s the old adage that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The easiest way to for us to do harm to other people is to look at them as other; as different from us. We assume they’ll dress like Nazis and announce themselves as bad guys, but that’s not the way the world works. That’s not how terrible things can happen.”
Vanderbilt did research of his own, too, into the machinations that went into building the unprecedented trials, in which justices from the Soviet Union, the UK, the U.S. and France sat in judgment. It was at Nuremberg, where proceedings were diligently recorded and dispersed in newsreels, that the world first saw footage from inside the Nazi concentration camps; irrefutable evidence of the horror of the Holocaust. Into his script for Nuremberg, Vanderbilt weaved the story of U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson, who along with his British counterpart Sir David Maxwell Fyfe questioned Hermann Göring on the stand.
While other actors had attached themselves to Nuremberg’s vision of Göring over the years, when the script landed on Russell Crowe’s desk, he couldn’t resist the prospect. “For the most part, the things that attract me are the things that terrify me,” Crowe tells Deadline. “I responded to the script straight away, but in a funny way I was also emotionally exhausted by it. How would you even attempt to play that guy? When that kind of question comes up, that’s usually what I’m attracted to.”
He laughs. “It’s also why you haven’t seen me do 15 variations on Gladiator. And to this day, I still haven’t done a sequel, which I consider a rare badge of honor.”
Crowe, too, responded to how prescient the story was. “Kelley wouldn’t acquiesce to the common story of Nazism at the time, which was the story that the Allies wanted to push, that this was a group of madmen. These people were involved in some very dark things that came out of situations that shouldn’t have directed them in that way. We see a lot of this type of politics of circumstance going on now, where in order to hold power, people are willing to go beyond established rules. Göring was willing to get into bed with people he ordinarily might not have, because of the circumstances he was in.”
He adds: “We were brought up to believe that the guy talking to us has a passion, and that he’s chosen public life to serve people. The time period we’re living through now, over the last 10 years maybe, we’ve seen a completely different kind of animal coming out of the jungle: a person that just wants to be in power. They’ll say anything, do anything, if it keeps them in that privileged position. It’s very, very dangerous. Here we are again with the same kind of tubs being thumped and drums being banged that could lead us to incredible darkness.”
Crowe’s clarion call, and Vanderbilt’s gripping script, attracted the attention of producer Richard Saperstein, whose Bluestone Entertainment has teamed with Walden Media and Széchenyi Funds to finance the production. He’d read the script for Nuremberg in 2016 when it was in other hands, and when it came back around, the company leapt at the chance to make it.
In short order, an all-star cast assembled including Rami Malek as Kelley, Michael Shannon as Jackson, Richard E. Grant as Fyfe, and Colin Hanks as Gilbert. John Slattery plays Colonel Andrus, who kept the Nazi prisoners, and Leo Woodall plays Sgt. Howie Triest, a German Jew who had fled to New York at the outbreak of the war, and who was drafted by Andrus to translate.
There are heavyweights behind the camera too, including cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Eve Stewart, and hair and makeup designer Jan Sewell. “Everybody here is a top person,” says Saperstein, “and it’s because there’s something about this script and subject matter that brings passion out in them.”
“It was one of those rare scripts where you don’t want to touch a single beat; there’s not one word out of place,” says Malek. “James has got such a good sense of rhythm and pacing, and you feel there’s a motor to the script — some driving force behind it — and it propels you from scene to scene.”
In addition to reading El-Hai’s book, Malek was able to unearth a copy of Kelley’s 22 Cells in Nuremberg, the long out-of-print book he had written about his time with the prisoners. He also shared the books and the script with a psychiatrist, who was able to help him home in on Kelley’s obsessive nature. “I always find myself drawn to characters who are still tethered to events in their life, who are acting now in an attempt to reconcile their past,” Malek explains. “So, for Kelley, he has this need, an obsessive need, to prove his worth, to do something ‘great’.”
In Göring, Kelley found a subject who could be as charming, humorous and devoted to his family as he was ruthlessly unrepentant about the having conspired to commit the greatest atrocities in history. “He couldn’t help but empathize with [Göring],” Malek says. “For Kelley to be so convinced that he was there to ‘dissect evil,’ as he explains in his book, and then to discover there’s nothing uniquely evil about Göring; in fact there’s humanity in there. He realized that anyone at any moment in any political landscape could be capable of an atrocity like that. How jarring, and how absolutely terrifying that must have been.”
In numerous moments throughout the film, Kelley and Göring spar as the young American comes to grips with this larger-than-life tyrant. As Malek and Crowe bring their interplay to life in the cramped jail-cell set Stewart and her team meticulously re-created to match the real location the Nazi criminals were held, the dynamic between them is charged.
“To say the hair stands up on the back of my neck doesn’t quite cover it,” says Walden Media’s Cherilyn Hawrysh. “This is what it’s like to watch two Academy Award-winning actors at their fullest.”
“It has been an incredible learning experience for me, watching these two titans go toe-to-toe,” says Woodall, who has found himself in the room for numerous scenes between the two ready to translate, although Göring spoke good English. He recalls a scene in which the two of them extended the dialogue past the point the take should have cut; just kept their back-and-forth going. “At one point Rami turned to me and said, ‘Howie, what do you think?’ And I just said, ‘What?’” He laughs. “I nearly responded in my British accent, because I was so immersed, and I’d completely come out of character.”
But it’s not as though the degree of difficulty hasn’t been there for Woodall too. Howie isn’t just a German speaker, but a native German speaker, and Woodall … isn’t. “I didn’t speak a lick of German, and in the first scene I shot I was translating heavily between Rami and Russell. I was thrown in at the deep end, but Howie is such a complex, fascinating person. I think you want to feel like the work you do matters, and with this, it really does.”
Can art change the world? It’s a lofty question to put on any piece of work. Nuremberg has clearly assembled a cast and crew hellbent on keeping this story alive, and Vanderbilt’s script has been the glue holding them here. As for that bigger question … “Well, it might be a slim hope, but it’s the only one I’ve got,” says Crowe. “This has been a great shoot and I’ve really enjoyed it, purely from an acting perspective. But it has been a mentally pressurized shoot just because of the subject matter. The reminder that these are human beings, and they made these decisions as a collective because it’s what they could get away with. It’s a very scary thing.”
Says Malek, “I was apprehensive about whether I could have the conviction on who this guy was to go toe-to-toe with Russell, and Michael, and the rest of the cast. But, in this particular case, the legend happens to be the film, and it isn’t legend; it’s truth. There’s a reason everyone has been drawn to this, and we’re all reaching to do our best work. When you find a gem like this that not only entertains, but also reveals something about humanity, reminds us of our faults, and perhaps allows us to question how we walk through the world, that’s powerful.”
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 90
|
https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-art-collector-or-nazi-looter/
|
en
|
Hermann Goering: Art Collector or Nazi Looter?
|
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2021-04-22T11:40:13
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One of the Nazi Party’s most powerful military commanders, Hermann Goering positioned himself as a major art collector, once boasting of having the largest private art collection in Europe.
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en
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/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
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TheCollector
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https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-art-collector-or-nazi-looter/
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The organized looting of art and other works from conquered European territory was a strategy deployed by the Nazi party, of which Hermann Goering was a chief proponent of. In fact, at the height of Nazi power in the early 1940s, a genuine power tussle between Hitler and Goering developed. Read on to learn more about the art looting done by the Nazis.
It is known that Hitler himself was denied admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts early in his life, but saw himself as a connoisseur of the arts. He viciously attacked modern art and its dominant trends of the time – Cubism, Dadaism and Futurism, in his book Mein Kampf. Degenerate art was the term used by the Nazis to describe many artworks created by modern artists. In 1940, under the aegis of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce was formed, headed by Alfred Rosenberg, a chief ideologue of the Nazi Party.
The ERR (as it was abbreviated in German) operated in much of Western Europe, Poland, and the Baltic States. Its chief purpose was the cultural appropriation of property – innumerable works of art were either irretrievably lost or burnt in public, though the Allies were able to return many of these pieces to their rightful owners.
Goering Was A Man of Expensive Pursuits
Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man that was looted by the Nazis from the Czartoryski Museum is regarded by many historians as the most important painting missing since World War II. Raphael was not the only famous artist sought by Hitler’s second in command. Hermann Goering zealously guarded and treasured masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh.
When the Nazis were defeated, Goering attempted to load all of the booty at Carinhall into trains towards Bavaria, blowing Carinhall behind him. Though a lot has been permanently lost or destroyed, Goering’s handwritten catalog listing almost 1,400 works was stored in his country home near Berlin. A conservative estimate pegs Hermann Goering to be acquiring at least 3 paintings a week. In 1945, the New York Times estimated the worth of these works to be two hundred million dollars, a whopping 2.9 billion dollars in today’s money!
In general, Hermann Goering lived a life of extreme luxury and opulence. He was fond of the ‘finer things’ – from jewels to zoo animals, and a heavy morphine addiction. Every year on his birthday, the 12th of January, Hitler, along with the Nazi top brass, would shower him with art (and other expensive items). Such was the scale of his collection, that they lay around carelessly in his hunting lodge without regard for presentation or origin or appreciation. They had been acquired from the museums and private collections of Western European nations, particularly those owned by the Jewish community.
Upon his cross-examination at Nuremberg, Hermann Goering claimed to be acting as a cultural agent of the German state, rather than for personal gain. He also admitted to his passion for collection, adding that he wanted a small part, at least, of what was being confiscated (a mild way of putting it). His own expansion in tastes is a marker of the simultaneously expanding power of the Nazis. A study of the Hermann Goering ‘art catalogue’ points to a dominant interest in European Romanticism, and the nude female form, which soon paved way for hungry acquisitions of the artworks. It is worth noting that two other people in his life were strong forces behind his artistic zeal – his wife Emmy (who was obsessed with French Impressionists like Monet), and the art dealer, Bruno Lohse.
Lohse has acquired the notorious distinction of being one of history’s chief art looters. Swiss born Lohse was a strapping young SS officer, fluent in French, and had obtained a doctorate in art history. He was a confident trickster, a manipulator, and schemer, who caught Hermann Goering’s attention upon the latter’s visit to the Jeu de Pume art gallery in Paris in 1937-38. Here, they developed a mechanism wherein the Reichmarschall would select those artworks looted from the French Jewish community. Goering’s private trains would take these paintings back to his country estate outside Berlin. Hitler, who thought that modern art and its dominant forms were ‘degenerate’, would have the best artwork kept aside for himself by Lohse, while several artworks by artists like Dali, Picasso, and Braques were burnt or destroyed.
The Jeu de Paume became Lohse’s hunting ground (Goering himself personally visited the museum some 20 times between 1937 and 1941). Van Gogh’s ‘Langlois Bridge at Arles’ (1888) was one of the several priceless artworks sent by Lohse, from the Jeu de Paume in Paris, via private train to Goering’s country home.
Though Lohse spent a brief period arrested after the defeat of the Nazis, he was released from prison in 1950, and became a part of a shadow network of former Nazis who continued to deal stolen artworks with brazen impunity. These included masterpieces of dubious origins, that were lapped up by American museums. Hermann Goering was so eager to have a Vermeer, that he traded 137 looted paintings in exchange
After Lohse’s death in 1997, dozens of paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Pisarro were found in his bank vault in Zurich, and in his Munich home, worth many, many, millions.
The manifold effects of the Nazi plunder cannot be underestimated. To start with, the cultural appropriation and the urgency of acquisition and destruction serve as a reminder that forces like the Nazis seek to conquer the realm of art and culture. This cultural appropriation is also an attempt at owning history and possessing the elusive through war and violence.
Secondly, a chronological documentation, like Hermann Goering’s written art catalog, points to the changing shift in Nazi power on the outside. The acquisitions became increasingly associated with the ‘great’ artists of Western Europe, especially the art that was developed during and after the European Renaissance between the 14th and 17th centuries. It also sheds an interesting light on the private opulence and excesses of the Nazis, especially the elite.
Third, the effects on contemporary art and scholars, especially Jewish academic art historians like Erwin Panofsky, Aby Warburg, Walter Friedlaender, to name a few, were profound. This led to a ‘brain-drain’, with some of the most prominent Jewish scholars and intellectuals fleeing to foreign institutions. In this process, the US and the UK were the biggest beneficiaries, as their universities offered generous gestures of welcome in the form of grants, aids, scholarships, and visas. Financiers too fled across the Atlantic, and the birth of bigger movements in the visual world, like Hollywood, commenced as a result in the 1940s.
Finally, it would be fair to argue that Hermann Goering was a plunderer and looter, rather than an art collector. As second-in-command to Adolf Hitler, he oversaw innumerable horrific campaigns on the cultural wealth of Europe, and the pillage of entire facets of crucial and irretrievable history. This, of course, is in addition to the bloodshed under his leadership waged across the expanse of Western Europe, and the millions of lives lost as a consequence.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.historycrunch.com/hermann-goering.html
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en
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Hermann Goering
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Hermann Goering was born in Rosenheim, Upper Bavaria, on the 12th of January in 1893. His father was a cavalry officer who had a significant diplomatic career. As a young man Goering attended the...
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en
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HISTORY CRUNCH - History Articles, Biographies, Infographics, Resources and More
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https://www.historycrunch.com/hermann-goering.html
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Hermann Goering was born in Rosenheim, Upper Bavaria, on the 12th of January in 1893. His father was a cavalry officer who had a significant diplomatic career. As a young man Goering attended the cadet college at Karlsruhe. As soon as the First World War started, he served as an infantry lieutenant in Alsace-Lorraine, but was soon transferred to the Air Force as a fighter pilot. As a pilot Goering gained great fame, received numerous awards, and was a member of the combat group of pilots led by Baron Manfred von Richthofen, better known by the nickname Red Baron. The name of this combat group was Jagdgeschwader but it was often called The Richthofen’s Flying Circus. After the death of the Red Baron, Goering took over leadership of the group and remained on that position until the end of World War I.
Like many German officers, Goering struggled to get used to civilian life and he felt betrayed and disappointed by the outcome of the war, especially the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. For some time after the war he worked as a commercial pilot for Svenska Lufttraffik in Sweden, where he met his first wife Carin von Kantzow. After Carin divorced her previous husband, she married Goering in Munich. Thanks to Carin’s connections Goering met Adolf Hitler in the fall of 1922 and decided to join him and the Nazi Party. Hitler was particularly pleased with this since Goering was considered as a military hero and was quite wealthy. Hitler appointed him as a commander of the SA and Goering was with Hitler during the Beer-Hall Putsch in Munich when he was wounded. Although he was arrested, he escaped to Austria, and then traveled to Sweden and Italy. Goering returned to Germany in 1926 to rejoin the Nazi Party following Hitler's release from prison. Throughout the remaining years, Goering became an integral part of Nazi Germany.
After his return to Germany he renewed his contacts with Hitler and was one of the first Nazis who were elected in 1928 as the members of the Reichstag, the German parliament. After the victory of the Nazis in the elections of 1932 he became the president of the Reichstag and had a significant role in the rise of Hitler to power in 1933. After Hitler became Chancellor, Goering held various high level government positions. While he was Prussian Minister of the Interior, he founded the political police of Prussia that would later become part of the Gestapo and founded the first concentration camp at Oranienburg. In March of 1935 he became commander in chief of the Air Force and quickly organized a large production of aircrafts and pilot training. At that time he was, next to Hitler, the most important figure in Nazi Germany. He lived in Berlin in great luxury and after the death of his first wife he married for the second time with the actress Emmy Sonnemann.
As the Second World War approached, Goering took care of arming of Germany which he significantly accelerated. At the same time began to grow his personal wealth and art collection, which later was extended with robberies in the occupied countries that Germany invaded. He had a significant role in the unification of Germany and Austria in 1938 and up to the beginning of the Second World War organized persecution of Jews in Germany. Two days before the start of the Second World War, on the 30th of August in 1939, Hitler declared Goering as the Chairman of the Reich Council for National Defense and declared him as his successor in case he dies in the war. Goering was commander of the Luftwaffe, the German air force during the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) when Germans conquered Poland and France. Due to his great success in the field of aviation, in 1940 Goering received the title of Reichsmarschall.
Goering's luck changed during the Battle of Britain and its failure to establish complete air dominance over Britain influenced Hitler to abandon the land conquest of Britain. As the forces of allied aviation grew stronger, Goering's relationship with Hitler became worse and he began to lose influence in the Nazi Party. In his place, other prominent Nazi officials gained the trust of Hitler, including: Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, and Henrich Himmler. After it became clear that the war was lost, on the 23rd of April in 1945 Goering demanded Hitler to hand him power. Hitler declared him as a traitor and placed him under house arrest in Obersalzberg. Bormann, because of Goering's huge popularity, on the radio issued a statement that Goering was pulled from all his positions due to the health reasons.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
| 86
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/28/fact-check-doctors-trial-one-13-nuremberg-trials/8086792002/
|
en
|
Fact check: Doctors' Trial was one of 13 Nuremberg Trials
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2021-07-28T00:00:00
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The Nuremberg Trials were made up of 13 proceedings against Nazi officials and military officers, German lawyers, industrialists, and, yes, doctors.
|
en
|
USA TODAY
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/28/fact-check-doctors-trial-one-13-nuremberg-trials/8086792002/
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The claim: ‘It was the doctors on trial in Nuremberg’
As misinformation about COVID-19 and the doctors fighting against it continues to spread online, social media users are claiming today’s practitioners bear similarity to doctors who criminally abused their positions in the past.
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it was the doctors on trial in Nuremberg. Kind of a big deal. #donoharm #checkyourself,” reads a July 16 post which has amassed nearly 9,000 likes.
In response to USA TODAY's request for comment, the user who made the post alleged that at a previous job as a nurse, doctors committed "hideous acts" against COVID-19 patients.
"What these present day doctors did/continue to do is the same thing the doctors on trial in Nuremberg did," the user said. "The NAZI doctors were jailed and hanged for what they did to people during the Holocaust. For the crimes against humanity that they committed by 'following orders.' This is history repeating itself."
Fact check: Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip not involved in disappearance of Canadian children
It’s true that several doctors were put on trial in the aftermath of World War II, but the claim excludes the context of the other 12 trials that also took place.
The Doctors’ Trial was one of 13 proceedings
Following the end of World War II, trials aimed at holding Nazi war criminals accountable were held in Nuremberg, Germany.
The Nuremberg Trials, which took place between 1945 and 1949, were made up of 13 proceedings against Nazi Party officials and military officers, German lawyers, industrialists, and, yes, doctors.
The first of the 13 trials was the Major War Criminals’ Trial, which began in November 1945 and was held before a global court. Six groups – the Nazi leadership corps, the Reich Cabinet, the German General Staff and High Command, the SA (Sturmabteilung), the SS (Schutzstaffel-including the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), and the Gestapo (Secret Police) – and 24 individuals were put on trial, according to the U.S. National Archives. High-ranking Nazis Hermann Goering and Martin Bormann were among the 24 people. Twenty-one individuals were sentenced to death or extensive time in prison, and three were acquitted. Three of the six groups were also acquitted.
After the Major War Criminals’ Trial, the rest of the proceedings were conducted before U.S. military tribunals instead of an international tribunal due to “growing differences” among the Allied powers, according to History.com.
In December 1946, the next trial began: the Doctors’ Trial. Twenty-three doctors and administrators were charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for engaging in medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and in euthanasia and other killings, according to Harvard Law School’s Nuremberg Trials Project.
More: Jewish artifacts taken by Nazis in Holocaust seized at New York auction house, feds say
"The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science,” said Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, chief of counsel during the Doctors’ Trial, during the prosecution’s opening statement. “The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals."
Fact check: Hoover labeled Black Panthers biggest threat among Black extremist groups in 1969
Seven defendants – including Karl Brandt, senior medical official of the German government at the time and the case’s lead defendant – were sentenced to death, nine were sentenced to prison time and seven were acquitted.
The other 11 Nuremberg Trials are listed here in Harvard Law’s Nuremberg Trials Project.
Our rating: Missing context
The claim that "It was the doctors on trial in Nuremberg" is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research, because without additional information it is misleading. While it’s true that multiple doctors were put on trial after performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates during World War II, euthanasia and other killings, they were not the only group of individuals tried for such Nazi atrocities.
Our fact-check sources:
User erin_bsn2//, July 16, Instagram post
Harvard Law School's Nuremberg Trials Project, accessed July 26, The Thirteen Nuremberg Trials
Harvard Law School's Nuremberg Trials Project, accessed July 26, U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.: The Doctors' Trial
History.com, June 7, 2019, Nuremberg Trials
U.S. National Archives, Aug. 15, 2016, The Trial of the Major War Criminals
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia, accessed July 26, THE DOCTORS TRIAL: THE MEDICAL CASE OF THE SUBSEQUENT NUREMBERG PROCEEDINGS
Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.
Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 5
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hermann-Goring
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en
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Hermann Goring | Biography, History, Death, & Facts
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2000-01-12T00:00:00+00:00
|
Hermann Goring, a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg in 1946 but took poison instead and died the night his execution was ordered.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hermann-Goring
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Hermann Göring (born January 12, 1893, Rosenheim, Germany—died October 15, 1946, Nürnberg) was a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg in 1946 but took poison instead and died the night his execution was ordered.
Göring was born in Bavaria, the second son by the second wife of Heinrich Ernst Göring, at the time German consul general in Haiti. The family was reunited in Germany on the father’s retirement in 1896. Göring was brought up near Nürnberg, in the small castle of Veldenstein, whose owner was Hermann, Ritter (knight) von Epenstein, a Jew who was until 1913 the lover of Göring’s mother and the godfather of her children. Trained for an army career, Göring received his commission in 1912 and served with distinction during World War I, joining the embryonic air force. In 1918 he became commander of the celebrated squadron in which the great German aviator Manfred, Freiherr (baron) von Richthofen, had served. Göring so deeply resented the treatment given army officers by the civilian population during the troubled period after Germany’s capitulation that he left the country. After a period as a commercial pilot in Denmark and Sweden, he met the Swedish baroness Carin von Kantzow, who divorced her husband and married Göring in Munich on February 3, 1923.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II
Göring had met Adolf Hitler in 1921 and joined the small National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party late in 1922. As a former officer, he was given command of Hitler’s Storm Troopers (the SA, Sturmabteilung). Göring took part in the abortive Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, in which Hitler tried to seize power prematurely. During the putsch, Göring was badly wounded in the groin. His arrest was ordered, but he escaped with his wife into Austria. Given morphine to deaden the pain from his wounds, he became so severely addicted that he twice underwent treatment in 1925–26 at the Långbro mental hospital in Sweden.
In 1927 he returned to Germany, where his contacts in German industry proved useful, and he was taken back into the party leadership. He occupied 1 of the 12 Reichstag seats that the Nazi Party won in the 1928 election. Thereafter Göring became the acknowledged party leader in the lower house, and, when the Nazis won 230 seats in the election of July 1932, he was elected president of the Reichstag.
Göring’s sole concern in the Reichstag was to stultify the democratic system, which the Reichstag ostensibly represented up to March 1933. He had the ear of the 84-year-old president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, and used his position to outmaneuver the successive chancellors, particularly Kurt von Schleicher and Franz von Papen, until Hindenburg was finally forced to invite Hitler to become chancellor on January 30, 1933. The battle for dictatorial power, however, was still not won; between January 30 and March 23, when an enabling bill giving Hitler his dictatorial powers was passed, Göring was tirelessly active. He used his new position as minister of the interior in Prussia, Germany’s largest and most influential state, to Nazify the Prussian police and establish the Gestapo, or secret political police. He also established concentration camps for the “corrective treatment” of difficult opponents. The Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, which the Nazis most probably instigated, made it possible for Göring to accuse the Communist Party of intending a coup d’état. The wholesale arrest of Communist and even some Social Democrat deputies succeeded in removing any effective opposition to the passage the following month of the Enabling Act.
Göring’s position as Hitler’s most loyal supporter remained unassailable for the rest of the decade. He collected offices of state almost at will. He was Reich commissioner for aviation and head of the newly developed Luftwaffe, the German air force, which was disguised as a civilian enterprise until March 1935. In 1933 he became Master of the German Hunt and of the German Forests. In June 1934 he took a leading part in the party’s purge of the SA leader Ernst Röhm but in the same year ceded his position as security chief to Heinrich Himmler, thus ridding himself of responsibility for the Gestapo and the concentration camps. In 1937 he displaced Hjalmar Schacht, who after 1934 had been Hitler’s minister for economic affairs; in 1936, without consulting Schacht, Hitler had made Göring commissioner for his Four-Year Plan for the war economy. Göring was also constantly employed as Hitler’s roving ambassador.
Göring was the most popular of the Nazi leaders, not only with the German people but also with the ambassadors and diplomats of foreign powers. He used his impregnable position to enrich himself. The more ruthless aspect of his nature was shown in the recorded telephone conversation by means of which he blackmailed the surrender of Austria before the Anschluss (political union) with Germany in 1938. It was Göring who led the economic despoliation of the Jews in Germany and in the various territories that fell under Hitler’s power.
Göring’s first wife had died in 1931, and on April 10, 1935, he married the actress Emmy Sonnemann. Göring was devoted in turn to each of his wives. His hunting interests enabled him to obtain a vast forest estate in the Schorfheide, north of Berlin, where from 1933 he developed a great baronial establishment on a scale commensurate with his ambitions. This he called Carinhall in honour of his first wife. It was at Carinhall that he kept the greater part of his enormous art collection. On June 2, 1938, Emmy bore him a daughter, his only child, Edda.
Although Göring was probably sincere in his desire to avert or postpone war—as his abortive negotiations in 1939 with the Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus indicate—it was his Luftwaffe that helped conduct the blitzkrieg that smashed Polish resistance and weakened country after country as Hitler’s campaigns progressed. But Göring’s self-indulgent nature was too weak to sustain the rigours of war or to oppose Hitler’s blind prejudice in favour of the production of bombers rather than fighter planes. The Luftwaffe’s capacity for defense declined as Hitler’s battlefronts extended from northern Europe to the Mediterranean and North Africa, and Göring lost face when the Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain or to prevent the Allied bombing of Germany. On the plea of ill health, Göring retired as much as Hitler would let him into private life among the luxuries of Carinhall, where he continued to amass his art collection (further enriched with spoils from the Jewish collections in the occupied countries) and to receive many gifts from those who sought his favour. His colossal girth was more the result of glandular defect than of gluttony, but his excessive resort to paracodeine tablets (a mild derivative from morphine) poisoned his system and made recurrent treatment for drug addiction necessary. His addiction helped to make him alternately elated and depressed; he was egocentric and bombastic, delighting in flamboyant clothes and uniforms, decorations, and exhibitionist jewelry.
Hitler was blind to Göring’s faults and maintained a close association with him. In 1939 Hitler declared him his successor and in 1940 gave him the special rank of Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches (“Marshal of the Empire”). The other Nazi leaders both resented his favoured position and despised his self-indulgence, but Hitler did not displace him until the last days of the war, when, in accordance with the decrees of 1939, Göring attempted to assume the Führer’s powers, believing him to be encircled and helpless in Berlin. Nevertheless, Göring expected to be treated as a plenipotentiary when, after Hitler’s suicide, he surrendered himself to the Americans.
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https://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
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Herman Goering
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Another timely quote in the vein of the apocryphal Julius Caesar warning about political leaders who can all too easily send the citizenry marching eagerly off to war by manufacturing crises that purportedly threaten national security and making popular appeals to patriotism. In this case the sentiment expressed is even more disturbing because it comes not from a venerated figure of antiquity, but supposedly from a reviled twentieth-century figure associated with the most chilling example of genocide in human history: Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief. We may be made somewhat uneasy by the idea that the head of a classic civilization recognized 2,000 years ago that the populace could be manipulated into sacrificing themselves in wars at the whims of their leaders, but we're outraged (and maybe even scared) at the thought of a fat Nazi fascist flunky's recognizing and telling us the same thing.
The notable difference here is that although the Caesar quote is a latter-day fabrication, the words attributed to Hermann Goering are real. Goering was one of the highest-ranking Nazis who survived to be captured and put on trial for war crimes in the city of Nuremberg by the Allies after the end of World War II . He was found guilty on charges of "war crimes," "crimes against peace," and "crimes against humanity" by the Nuremberg tribunal and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence could not be carried out, however, because Goering committed suicide with smuggled cyanide capsules hours before his execution, scheduled for 15 October 1946.
The quote cited above does not appear in transcripts of the Nuremberg trials because although Goering spoke these words during the course of the proceedings, he did not offer them at his trial. His comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary . The quote offered above was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Goering in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess:
Sweating in his cell in the evening, Goering was defensive and deflated and not very happy over the turn the trial was taking. He said that he had no control over the actions or the defense of the others, and that he had never been anti-Semitic himself, had not believed these atrocities, and that several Jews had offered to testify in his behalf. If [Hans] Frank [Governor-General of occupied Poland] had known about atrocities in 1943, he should have come to him and he would have tried to do something about it. He might not have had enough power to change things in 1943, but if somebody had come to him in 1941 or 1942 he could have forced a showdown. (I still did not have the desire at this point to tell him what [SS General Otto] Ohlendorf had said to this: that Goering had been written off as an effective "moderating" influence, because of his drug addiction and corruption.) I pointed out that with his "temperamental utterances," such as preferring the killing of 200 Jews to the destruction of property, he had hardly set himself up as champion of minority rights. Goering protested that too much weight was being put on these temperamental utterances. Furthermore, he made it clear that he was not defending or glorifying Hitler.
Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
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https://dokumen.pub/deportations-in-the-nazi-era-sources-and-research-9783110746464-9783110742305-f-1064423.html
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en
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Deportations in the Nazi Era: Sources and Research 9783110746464, 9783110742305
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Open Access During the Nazi era, about three million Jews – half the victims of the Holocaust – were deported from the...
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en
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dokumen.pub
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https://dokumen.pub/deportations-in-the-nazi-era-sources-and-research-9783110746464-9783110742305-f-1064423.html
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Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Foreword by Floriane Azoulay
Foreword by Sigmount A. Königsberg
Foreword by Petra Rosenberg
Deportations in the Nazi Era – Introduction
Archival Sources, Online Portals and Approaches
Sources on Deportations
An Overview of Sources on Deportations of Jews and Sinti and Roma in the Arolsen Archives
Potential of Databases for Research and Culture of Remembrance Using the Deportation of Jews under the Nazi Regime as an Example
Deutsche Reichsbahn and Deportation
Interaction, Confusion and Potential
Discussing Visual Sources of Deportations from Germany
A Deceptive Panorama
Deportations from the Perspective of the Remaining Jews and the Surrounding Population
Racial Registrations, Forced Housing, and Local Deportation Dynamics
The ‘Prevention Department’ within the Criminal Police
‘Gypsies’ in the Police Eye
Forced Accommodation for Jews in the Context of the Deportations at the Düsseldorf Abattoir (1939–1944)
Gerlachstraße Assembly Camp in Berlin, 1942 to 1943
The Fate of ‘Protected’ Groups during the Last Years of the War
“Put My Mother on the List Too!” – Reconstructing the Deportation Lists of the Szeged Jewish Community
Trajectories of Deportation and Subsequent Persecution
The Deportation of Sinti and Roma from Hamburg and Northern Germany to the Belzec Forced Labour Camp in the ‘Generalgouvernement’ of 1940
Deportation Train ‘Da 32’ from Nuremberg and its 1,012 Occupants
Mapping Jewish Slave Laborers’ Trajectories Through Concentration Camps
Escaping the Death Train
The DEGOB Protocols and the Deportations of Jewish Prisoners to the Dachau Camp Complex
After the Arrival in Ghettos and other Deportation Destinations
Deportations of Jews to the Ghetto of Litzmannstadt (Łódź)
Looking for the Money
Preparations for and Organization of the Transports from Terezín to Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1943
The Petitions of Roma Deportees as a Source for the Study of the Deportation Sites in Transnistria
‘Aktion Zamosc’ and its Entanglements with the Holocaust
Contributors
Citation preview
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FactBench
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https://deadline.com/2024/05/nuremberg-rami-malek-russell-crowe-rami-malek-movie-interview-1235905328/
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‘Nuremberg’ Set Report: Inside James Vanderbilt’s Nazi Thriller Starring Russell Crowe And Rami Malek + Exclusive First-Look Images
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"Joe Utichi"
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2024-05-13T14:00:00+00:00
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'Nuremberg' from writer-director James Vanderbilt tells the untold story of the Nazi trials with Russell Crowe and Rami Malek in starring roles.
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Deadline
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https://deadline.com/2024/05/nuremberg-rami-malek-russell-crowe-rami-malek-movie-interview-1235905328/
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In the fuselage of a C-47 transport plane, a group of high-ranking Nazis in uniforms stripped of their insignia are facing their captors. Among them, Hermann Göring strikes up a conversation with a U.S. military psychiatrist, Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley. “Howie here tells me you do magic,” Göring says to Kelley. Kelley nods and shows him a quick coin trick. “Very good,” Göring responds. “But I am going to show you a real magic trick someday. I am going to escape the hangman’s noose.”
It is then that Robert Ley, the Nazi head of the German Labour Front, spots something out of the window. “Nürnberg,” he announces. As the rest of the group takes in the sight of the bombed city, their destination is clear. The Palace of Justice is one of the few buildings that remain standing. Their trial will soon begin.
It is an uncanny scene to watch play out on a soundstage in Budapest in 2024. There’s anticipation from both sides in this plane, as each tries to work out whether the Allies’ gamble, to try the defeated Nazi regime for its war crimes, will pay off. And that electricity never leaves the air in the two days Deadline spends on the set of James Vanderbilt’s new thriller Nuremberg, which comes to the Cannes market as surely one of the year’s hottest acquisition titles.
Based on Jack El-Hai’s book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg tells the story of Kelley’s interactions with the group of Nazi criminals tried at the end of the war. As well as Göring and Ley, Kelley was the first Allied psychiatrist to evaluate Nazi leaders like Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Karl Dönitz. And while the trials themselves have been adapted to film before — notably in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 epic Judgment at Nuremberg — Kelley’s particular take on what he witnessed has been largely ignored.
Kelley was young and eager to prove himself, but as he faced the men that had brought the world into its deadliest war, he came to understand the ease with which evil can pervade society. He returned from the trials determined to sound a warning that such a malignant slide would be possible again if it weren’t properly guarded against. But in the immediate relief of the war’s end, few were prepared to listen.
The Nuremberg trials exposed the dark secrets of the Nazi regime, but they also reassured people that the monsters had been dealt with. Kelley’s book about his experiences, and the warnings it contained, failed; overshadowed by the work of Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist brought in to reevaluate his findings. Kelley ultimately died by suicide in 1958 having taken potassium cyanide, the very same drug that Göring had indeed used to “escape the hangman’s noose” after his conviction.
Vanderbilt had started thinking about this story even before El-Hai’s book had been published in 2013. “I read his book proposal, which was about the relationship between Kelley and Göring,” the writer and director tells Deadline during a break in shooting. “I learned about the Nuremberg trials in school, so I knew the basic facts. But as soon as I read about the relationship between these two men, I was really attracted to the idea of telling a personal story between them and how they collided at this crossroads in history.”
What also fascinated Vanderbilt was a generational shift he saw in understanding about the events of World War II. “I took it all on faith, that of course the Nuremberg trials had happened, that justice was done. Both my grandfathers fought in the war. I had many friends whose grandparents were in the camps. But when I talked to my kids about World War II, it was like talking to them about the American Revolution. It is so much further removed from their generation. It felt like a great opportunity to tell a story that brings these events back to life and says, ‘This wasn’t at all a fait accompli.’”
Though Vanderbilt’s work may have started more than a decade ago, the lessons Kelley tried to teach seem as pertinent now as they’ve ever been. “Unfortunately, the film has become timelier rather than less timely,” says Vanderbilt. “But the thing I always loved about this story is that it’s actually timeless. It’s the old adage that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The easiest way to for us to do harm to other people is to look at them as other; as different from us. We assume they’ll dress like Nazis and announce themselves as bad guys, but that’s not the way the world works. That’s not how terrible things can happen.”
Vanderbilt did research of his own, too, into the machinations that went into building the unprecedented trials, in which justices from the Soviet Union, the UK, the U.S. and France sat in judgment. It was at Nuremberg, where proceedings were diligently recorded and dispersed in newsreels, that the world first saw footage from inside the Nazi concentration camps; irrefutable evidence of the horror of the Holocaust. Into his script for Nuremberg, Vanderbilt weaved the story of U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson, who along with his British counterpart Sir David Maxwell Fyfe questioned Hermann Göring on the stand.
While other actors had attached themselves to Nuremberg’s vision of Göring over the years, when the script landed on Russell Crowe’s desk, he couldn’t resist the prospect. “For the most part, the things that attract me are the things that terrify me,” Crowe tells Deadline. “I responded to the script straight away, but in a funny way I was also emotionally exhausted by it. How would you even attempt to play that guy? When that kind of question comes up, that’s usually what I’m attracted to.”
He laughs. “It’s also why you haven’t seen me do 15 variations on Gladiator. And to this day, I still haven’t done a sequel, which I consider a rare badge of honor.”
Crowe, too, responded to how prescient the story was. “Kelley wouldn’t acquiesce to the common story of Nazism at the time, which was the story that the Allies wanted to push, that this was a group of madmen. These people were involved in some very dark things that came out of situations that shouldn’t have directed them in that way. We see a lot of this type of politics of circumstance going on now, where in order to hold power, people are willing to go beyond established rules. Göring was willing to get into bed with people he ordinarily might not have, because of the circumstances he was in.”
He adds: “We were brought up to believe that the guy talking to us has a passion, and that he’s chosen public life to serve people. The time period we’re living through now, over the last 10 years maybe, we’ve seen a completely different kind of animal coming out of the jungle: a person that just wants to be in power. They’ll say anything, do anything, if it keeps them in that privileged position. It’s very, very dangerous. Here we are again with the same kind of tubs being thumped and drums being banged that could lead us to incredible darkness.”
Crowe’s clarion call, and Vanderbilt’s gripping script, attracted the attention of producer Richard Saperstein, whose Bluestone Entertainment has teamed with Walden Media and Széchenyi Funds to finance the production. He’d read the script for Nuremberg in 2016 when it was in other hands, and when it came back around, the company leapt at the chance to make it.
In short order, an all-star cast assembled including Rami Malek as Kelley, Michael Shannon as Jackson, Richard E. Grant as Fyfe, and Colin Hanks as Gilbert. John Slattery plays Colonel Andrus, who kept the Nazi prisoners, and Leo Woodall plays Sgt. Howie Triest, a German Jew who had fled to New York at the outbreak of the war, and who was drafted by Andrus to translate.
There are heavyweights behind the camera too, including cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Eve Stewart, and hair and makeup designer Jan Sewell. “Everybody here is a top person,” says Saperstein, “and it’s because there’s something about this script and subject matter that brings passion out in them.”
“It was one of those rare scripts where you don’t want to touch a single beat; there’s not one word out of place,” says Malek. “James has got such a good sense of rhythm and pacing, and you feel there’s a motor to the script — some driving force behind it — and it propels you from scene to scene.”
In addition to reading El-Hai’s book, Malek was able to unearth a copy of Kelley’s 22 Cells in Nuremberg, the long out-of-print book he had written about his time with the prisoners. He also shared the books and the script with a psychiatrist, who was able to help him home in on Kelley’s obsessive nature. “I always find myself drawn to characters who are still tethered to events in their life, who are acting now in an attempt to reconcile their past,” Malek explains. “So, for Kelley, he has this need, an obsessive need, to prove his worth, to do something ‘great’.”
In Göring, Kelley found a subject who could be as charming, humorous and devoted to his family as he was ruthlessly unrepentant about the having conspired to commit the greatest atrocities in history. “He couldn’t help but empathize with [Göring],” Malek says. “For Kelley to be so convinced that he was there to ‘dissect evil,’ as he explains in his book, and then to discover there’s nothing uniquely evil about Göring; in fact there’s humanity in there. He realized that anyone at any moment in any political landscape could be capable of an atrocity like that. How jarring, and how absolutely terrifying that must have been.”
In numerous moments throughout the film, Kelley and Göring spar as the young American comes to grips with this larger-than-life tyrant. As Malek and Crowe bring their interplay to life in the cramped jail-cell set Stewart and her team meticulously re-created to match the real location the Nazi criminals were held, the dynamic between them is charged.
“To say the hair stands up on the back of my neck doesn’t quite cover it,” says Walden Media’s Cherilyn Hawrysh. “This is what it’s like to watch two Academy Award-winning actors at their fullest.”
“It has been an incredible learning experience for me, watching these two titans go toe-to-toe,” says Woodall, who has found himself in the room for numerous scenes between the two ready to translate, although Göring spoke good English. He recalls a scene in which the two of them extended the dialogue past the point the take should have cut; just kept their back-and-forth going. “At one point Rami turned to me and said, ‘Howie, what do you think?’ And I just said, ‘What?’” He laughs. “I nearly responded in my British accent, because I was so immersed, and I’d completely come out of character.”
But it’s not as though the degree of difficulty hasn’t been there for Woodall too. Howie isn’t just a German speaker, but a native German speaker, and Woodall … isn’t. “I didn’t speak a lick of German, and in the first scene I shot I was translating heavily between Rami and Russell. I was thrown in at the deep end, but Howie is such a complex, fascinating person. I think you want to feel like the work you do matters, and with this, it really does.”
Can art change the world? It’s a lofty question to put on any piece of work. Nuremberg has clearly assembled a cast and crew hellbent on keeping this story alive, and Vanderbilt’s script has been the glue holding them here. As for that bigger question … “Well, it might be a slim hope, but it’s the only one I’ve got,” says Crowe. “This has been a great shoot and I’ve really enjoyed it, purely from an acting perspective. But it has been a mentally pressurized shoot just because of the subject matter. The reminder that these are human beings, and they made these decisions as a collective because it’s what they could get away with. It’s a very scary thing.”
Says Malek, “I was apprehensive about whether I could have the conviction on who this guy was to go toe-to-toe with Russell, and Michael, and the rest of the cast. But, in this particular case, the legend happens to be the film, and it isn’t legend; it’s truth. There’s a reason everyone has been drawn to this, and we’re all reaching to do our best work. When you find a gem like this that not only entertains, but also reveals something about humanity, reminds us of our faults, and perhaps allows us to question how we walk through the world, that’s powerful.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/obituaries/edda-goering-dies.html
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Edda Goering, Unrepentant Daughter of Hermann, Dies at 80
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[
"Daniel E. Slotnik"
] |
2019-03-13T00:00:00
|
The only daughter of the leader of the Luftwaffe and Hitler’s potential successor, she defended her father’s legacy after his death.
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/obituaries/edda-goering-dies.html
|
Edda Goering was practically a princess of the Third Reich. As the only daughter of Hermann Goering, the leader of the Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man and potential successor, Ms. Goering was a national celebrity from the day she was born.
Her early childhood resembled a fairy tale. She grew up in Carinhall, an estate in the countryside replete with priceless works of art and a child-size play palace. Hitler was her godfather, and her birthday inspired national celebrations.
Her youthful idyll ended when the Allies defeated Germany in 1945. Goering, who had been convicted of war crimes and other charges at Nuremberg, committed suicide with a cyanide capsule in his cell hours before he was to be executed in 1946. Edda was 8 at the time.
Ms. Goering, who defended her father’s legacy for the rest of her life, died on Dec. 21 in Munich. She was 80. A spokesman for the municipal administrative authority for the City of Munich confirmed the death only this week. He provided no other details. German news reports said that only a few close associates had been informed of her death.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
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FactBench
|
1
| 12
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https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-nuremberg-trials
|
en
|
10 Things You May Not Know About the Nuremberg Trials
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Christopher Klein"
] |
2016-10-03T20:57:06+00:00
|
The post-World War II trials marked the first-ever prosecutions for genocide and crimes against humanity.
|
en
|
HISTORY
|
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-nuremberg-trials
|
Held directly after World War II, the Nuremberg Trials were a series of 13 military tribunals in which nearly 200 German government, military, medical and business leaders were tried for war crimes. In the first and most famous of these trials—the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal—24 high-ranking Nazi Party officials including Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Frick were tried for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. (Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and two of his top associates committed suicide at the war's end; many other party leaders escaped prosecution.)
In addition to bringing some of Nazi Germany's most monstrous figures to justice, the Nuremberg Trials broke new ground in international law and helped lead to the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War (1949). Below are facts about what has been called the greatest trial in history.
1. Nuremberg was chosen as the location for the trials because of its symbolic value.
The Bavarian city that spawned the rise of the Third Reich by hosting massive Nazi Party propaganda rallies in the 1920s and 1930s was deemed by the victorious Allies to be a fitting place to stage its symbolic death. Although World War II had left much of the city in rubble, the Palace of Justice—which included a sizable prison capable of holding 1,200 detainees—remained largely undamaged and was chosen to host the trials once German prisoners completed the work of enlarging its courtroom.
2. It was the first trial of its kind with judges from four countries.
The Nuremberg Trials marked a milestone in the establishment of international law. While there had been prior prosecutions of war crimes in history, such as that of Confederate army officer Henry Wirz, those had been conducted according to the laws of a single country. Until the Nuremberg Trials, there had been no precedent for an international trial of war criminals. Rather than use a single judge and jury, the trial of high-ranking Nazi leaders was conducted by a panel of four judges. The United States, Soviet Union, France and Great Britain each supplied a main judge and an alternate, and Britain’s Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence presided.
The Nuremberg Trials served as a precedent for the subsequent prosecution of war crimes in Japan and led to the establishment of the United Nations Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as well as the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War in 1949.
3. The Nuremberg Trials marked the first prosecutions for crimes against humanity.
The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which set the laws and procedures for the conduct of the Nuremberg Trials, defined three categories of crimes: crimes against the peace, war crimes and, for the first time, crimes against humanity, which included murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds.
4. The trials marked the introduction of simultaneous translation.
With the defendants, judges and lawyers speaking a mix of German, French, English and Russian, a language barrier threatened to bog down the proceedings. However, the development of a new instantaneous translation system by IBM allowed every trial participant to listen via headsets to real-time translations of the proceedings. Yellow lights at microphones warned speakers to slow down for the benefit of the translators, while red lights signaled the need to stop and repeat statements. The simultaneous translation system allowed the trial to be conducted four times faster than if consecutive translation was used.
5. A Supreme Court justice led the American team of prosecutors.
President Harry Truman asked Robert Jackson, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, to serve as the chief American prosecutor at the international tribunal. Jackson accepted the offer but was adamant that the proceedings not be a show trial. “If we want to shoot Germans as a matter of policy, let it be done as such, but don’t hide the deed behind a court,” he wrote. Jackson’s colleague, Chief Justice Harlan Stone, did not think highly of the proceedings. “Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” he wrote privately to a friend in 1945. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”
6. A prosecutorial advisor originated the term 'genocide.'
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who served as an advisor to Jackson, is credited with coining the term “genocide” in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ planned extermination of Jews. The word is an amalgam of “genos,” the Greek word for “tribe” or “race,” and “-cide,” Latin for “killings.” Lemkin, who lost nearly 50 relatives in the Holocaust, defined genocide as “a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” The Nuremberg Trials marked the first-ever prosecutions for genocide.
7. Not all the defendants were found guilty.
Of the 24 high-ranking Nazis who stood trial for war crimes before the international tribunal, 12 were sentenced to death by hanging, including Martin Bormann, the personal secretary to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler who is now believed to have committed suicide in May 1945, in absentia. Seven others, including Hitler’s former deputy Rudolf Hess, received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, but three were acquitted.
8. Hermann Goering committed suicide on the eve of his scheduled execution.
The highest-ranking Nazi to survive the war, Gestapo founder and Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Goering took his own life on the night of October 15, 1946, just hours before his scheduled execution. Dressed in silk pajamas, the man instrumental in ordering the Holocaust cheated the noose by ingesting a small glass capsule of potassium cyanide that he had smuggled into prison. In a suicide note to his wife, Hitler’s heir apparent wrote that he would be willing to die by firing squad but not in such an undignified manner as hanging. “I have decided to take my own life, lest I be executed in so terrible a fashion by my enemies,” Goering wrote.
9. The executioner reportedly botched the hangings.
After Goering’s suicide, the Allies immediately ordered the remaining 10 condemned men to be handcuffed to guards and dispatched clergymen to administer last rites. In the early morning hours of October 16, 1946, the Nazi war criminals were hanged one by one from a scaffolding erected in a prison gymnasium. “I hope that this execution will be the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War,” said Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the last of the 10 men to be hanged, as he was led to the gallows.
The executions, which took nearly two hours to complete, were administered by the U.S. Army’s official hangman, Master Sergeant John C. Woods. “I wasn’t nervous,” the chief executioner told Time magazine. “A fellow can’t afford to have nerves in this business.” The magazine reported, however, that witnesses said “the executions had been cruelly bungled” with the ropes too short and the trap doors too small, resulting in deaths of slow strangulation. The U.S. Army denied the report.
10. A dozen subsequent trials of Nazi war criminals were held at Nuremberg.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
2
| 47
|
https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-most-powerful-man-in-germany/
|
en
|
Hermann Goering: The Second-most Powerful Man in Nazi Germany
|
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Greg Beyer"
] |
2022-07-06T06:10:15
|
He was head of the Luftwaffe and the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany: this is the story of Hermann Goering.
|
en
|
/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
|
TheCollector
|
https://www.thecollector.com/hermann-goering-most-powerful-man-in-germany/
|
Hermann Goering was, without a doubt, one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich. His close friendship with Hitler and his political positions gave him the power to greatly influence not only Germany but the entire course of the war. His power and wealth made him the second-most powerful man in all of Germany, exceeded only by Hitler himself. Goering is perhaps best known as the head of the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s formidable air force, but behind the position was a man with a life checkered by success and failure.
Hermann Goering’s father was a former cavalry officer who served as the first Governor-General of German South West Africa (now Namibia). On January 12, 1893, Hermann was born while his father was serving as consul general in Haiti. Hermann’s mother had returned to Germany to give birth and left soon afterward, only to see her son three years later. Hermann was placed in the care of his mother’s friend in Bavaria. He was the second-youngest of five children by his father’s second marriage. His mother later had an affair with Hermann’s godfather, Hermann Epenstein, a wealthy Jewish physician.
At age 11, Goering was sent to boarding school, which he enjoyed far more than his life at home. At one point, he feigned illness to avoid having to return and, as a result, was allowed to stay at the school. He had an intense interest in the military from a young age and often dressed up in a Boer uniform his father had given him. At 16, Hermann was sent to a military academy, where he graduated with distinction. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Goering was already in the military, stationed with his unit at Mülhausen on the border with France.
The First World War
He flew with various fighter squadrons and suffered an injury in the hip, which put him out of action for almost a year. During his time in the Luftstreitkräfte, he scored 22 air victories and was awarded several medals. Despite his success, he was widely unpopular with his peers and subordinates due to his arrogance.
After the war, he joined many others in believing that Germany had lost the war not due to military defeat but by the civilian betrayal by Marxists and Jews. This was a fundamental belief that helped give rise to Nazism. During his post-war period, Goering worked briefly at Fokker and for a Swedish airline. He also did barnstorming, which is performing tricks as a stunt pilot.
Hermann Goering joined the Nazis in 1922 after hearing one of Hitler’s speeches. Goering’s organizational skills impressed Hitler, and Goering was given command of the Sturmabteilung (SA).
During the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch (the failed Nazi coup), when Hitler was arrested, Goering was shot in the groin. He and his family were smuggled out of Germany, where he received surgery in Innsbruck, Austria. He was given morphine for the pain, which kickstarted a lifelong addiction to the drug for which he twice underwent treatment.
In 1927, Goering returned to Germany and rejoined the Nazi Party, using his contacts to gain prestige. In the 1928 election, the Nazi Party won 12 seats in the Reichstag, and Goering occupied one of them. He was acknowledged as leader of the lower house, and in the 1932 election, when the Nazi Party won 230 seats, Goering was elected President of the Reichstag. With his high status in the Reichstag, Goering had the ear of the 84-year-old president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg. By influencing him, Goering managed to outmaneuver successive chancellors until Hindenburg felt obliged to invite Hitler to become chancellor on January 30, 1933.
As Minister of the Interior of Prussia, Germany’s largest and most influential state, Goering used his power to help Nazism become more potent. He established concentration camps for “opponents” and created the Nazi secret political police, the Gestapo. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, Goering was able to place the blame on communists and other enemies of Nazism to solidify Hitler’s hold on power. Once the opponents of Nazism had been nullified, Goering’s position as the second-most powerful man in Germany was unassailable.
Throughout the rest of the decade, he accrued many offices of state and titles. He became Master of the German Hunt and of the German Forests. He replaced Hjalmar Schacht as the minister for economic affairs and became Hitler’s roving ambassador. During this time, he took a leading part in the Night of the Long Knives, ridding Germany of the Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership, and in the same year, he ceded control of the Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler.
His position of power allowed Goering to enrich himself, attaining a huge forest estate north of Berlin where he was a keen hunter. At this estate, he kept part of his huge art collection, much of which was plundered from territories conquered by the Nazis. After the death of his first wife, he married again to the actress Emmy Sonnemann, and he spent much of his time with her at the estate. In 1938, Emmy bore a daughter, Edda, who was Hermann Goering’s only child.
Despite Goering’s insistence that Germany was not ready for the war, Hitler decided to invade Poland and risk the declarations of war from Britain and France. Goering was named one of the members of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich and was the head of the Four Year Plan, a series of economic measures to control the German economy during the war years. In this position, Goering served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich.
At the beginning of the war, Goering’s Luftwaffe performed admirably on all fronts, sweeping aside the Polish air force in under a week, and decimating Belgian, Dutch, and French resistance the following year. Hitler named Goering his successor and Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches, making him superior in rank to all Field Marshals in the army and the air force.
From September 1940 to May 1941, however, the Luftwaffe suffered significant losses during the Battle of Britain. Although Goering was confident about Germany’s ability to control the skies over Britain in order to pave a way for the invasion of the island, the Royal Air Force and British resilience forced the Luftwaffe to defeat and inflicted heavy losses. The Luftwaffe lost almost 2000 aircraft and many more pilots. As a result, Operation Sea Lion – the planned invasion of Britain – was postponed indefinitely.
In July 1941, during the first month of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe performed exceptionally well, eliminating virtually the entire Soviet Air Force. Still, by the second month, the Luftwaffe had only 1000 planes operational. The simple truth is that the Luftwaffe did not have enough aircraft to hit all the targets it needed to hit. With overstretched supply lines and exhausted pilots, the contribution to the German effort on the ground could not achieve what Hitler wanted or expected. Furthermore, strategic errors allowed the Soviets to regroup and stop the Germans from taking Moscow. As the war dragged through 1942, long past Hitler’s predictions for a quick victory, attrition took its toll on the Germans, including the Luftwaffe.
During the disastrous encirclement of the German 6th army at Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe wasn’t even capable of providing half the required supplies to the trapped Germans. Three hundred tons of equipment and food were needed per day. On the best day, the Luftwaffe only managed 120 tons. This was despite Goering’s complete confidence that supplying the 6th Army would be no problem.
On the Western Front, Allied bombing runs were now possible with the extended fuel tanks of the American P51-Mustangs flying escort. The Luftwaffe was only capable of defending German skies piecemeal. Goering quickly lost favor with both Hitler and the German people and began to spend more time at his estate. On D-Day (June 6th, 1944), the Germans only had 300 fighters and a handful of bombers in the area to counter the Allies’ fleet of 11,000 aircraft.
As the war drove to its final conclusion, and with his estate destroyed, Goering moved, with his family, to his home in Obersalzburg. On the same day, April 22, 1945, Hitler announced to his generals in his bunker that he would commit suicide. Upon hearing this, Goering wrote a letter asking Hitler for the right to take over Hitler’s position upon his death. Goering’s rival, Martin Bormann, convinced Hitler that this was a move by Goering to usurp power, and Hitler, branding Goering as a traitor, stripped him of all his titles and removed him from the Nazi Party.
Goering was now hunted by the Germans as well as the Allies. He was picked up by a passing Luftwaffe unit but managed to make his way to the US lines. On May 5, he was taken into custody by US forces.
At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty on numerous charges, including waging a war of aggression, the torture of prisoners of war, and plundering works of art and other property. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but the night before his sentence was to be carried out, he committed suicide by taking a cyanide capsule.
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Joseph Goebbels: Birthday & Death (1897
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Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister (1897–1945) – Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt (Subdivision of Mönchengladbach, Germany) on October 29th, 1897 and died in Berlin (Federated state, capital and largest city of Germany) on May 1st, 1945 at the age of 47. Today Joseph Goebbels would be 126 years old.
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en
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Happy Happy Birthday
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https://happyhappybirthday.net/en/age/joseph-goebbels-person_seusl
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Joseph Goebbels
(1897-1945)
Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister (1897–1945) – Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt (Subdivision of Mönchengladbach, Germany) on October 29th, 1897 and died in Berlin (Federated state, capital and largest city of Germany) on May 1st, 1945 at the age of 47. Today Joseph Goebbels would be 126 years old.
Other personalities born on October 29
Also born in 1897
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correct_death_00048
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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/an-interview-with-nazi-leader-hermann-goering-s-great-niece/280579/
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en
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An Interview With Nazi Leader Hermann Goering's Great-Niece
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[
"Bettina",
"Goering",
"Hermann Goering",
"Bettina Goering",
"Goering insignia ring",
"heavy German accent",
"modern two-story home",
"persistently barren land",
"dark little joke",
"family"
] | null |
[
"Roc Morin"
] |
2013-10-16T13:00:00+00:00
|
How do you cope with evil ancestry?
|
en
|
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/_next/static/images/favicon-3888b0e329526a975703e3059a02b92d.ico
|
The Atlantic
|
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/an-interview-with-nazi-leader-hermann-goering-s-great-niece/280579/
|
"After the last right turn," Bettina's directions read, "you will see a driveway on the left about 50 feet from the corner. The number 290 is placed on a fence post. (Many people can't seem to see this sign and go to the end of the road where they get shot, game lost!)"
It was a dark little joke, the kind of gallows humor I got used to hearing as an EMT and war correspondent--professions overly preoccupied with mortality. The attitude fit Bettina Goering well. As great-niece of Nazi Germany's second in command, Hermann Goering, death is her family legacy.
I tracked the 56 year-old down in Santa Fe at the office where she works as an acupuncturist living under the surname of her ex-husband, which she didn't want named in this story. Bettina invited me to her home outside the city for a formal interview. The last eight miles of the drive took nearly an hour as I bounded and jerked over a tangle of third-world roads, trailing a comet tail of dust. It had rained hard the week before, forcing the persistently barren land to yield lush displays of green, with only cows and horses around to enjoy it.
Bettina met me at the door of her modern two-story home. "You found it!" she exclaimed in her heavy German accent.
"No one's more surprised than me!" I replied with a laugh. "This place seems to want to stay lost."
She led me to her kitchen where her husband of 23 years, Adi Pieper, sat behind a table. We shook hands. The house was nearly empty: no clutter, no personal items. It seemed to be a place without memory. I later learned that the couple was in the process of selling their property and had purposefully made it neutral.
"So," I began, "you had the name Goering when you were growing up in Germany. Was there a stigma?"
"Not really," Bettina replied. "That is the weird thing. Because I grew up in the 50s and early 60s, there was this time of utter denial. Germany had just dug itself out of its past and they were starting to get wealthy again. Later, there were a few people who would make me cringe by saying Hermann was a good guy."
"My mother said that," Adi added, "'Oh, we all loved him,' she said, when she found out Bettina and I were starting a relationship. He was the most liked one, the most popular Nazi. He appeared so royal, so nice."
"Like a big child," Bettina added.
"You've met with the children of Holocaust survivors and have spoken publicly about your family history. Why do you feel that you have to embrace this Goering identity?" I asked.
"It was never a choice," she replied. " That's how I choose to deal with conflicts."
"What about the rest of your family, growing up?"
"I had trouble at home. That's the gist of the matter. My parents were always a bit rocky together, their relationship. But, when I was about 10 or 11 my grandmother from my father's side--the Goering side--moved in because she was very sick. That created so much more drama. She was the Nazi in the family and she was very difficult to deal with. She was in the last stages of syphilis, and that makes you very stuck in your ways. Your pupils don't move anymore, for example. They just stay in one stage. I think it literally eats up your brain. So, she made whatever trouble was there before even worse. I left home at the age of 13 after a fight with my dad."
"What kind of things did she believe?"
"It's hard to just put it in a few words. She had always this upper-class demeanor, that you think you're better than everyone."
"Not to mention that the Holocaust never happened," Adi interjected. "'All lies! All lies!'"
"It came up," Bettina continued. "because we watched a documentary on TV. It was about Auschwitz."
"Was that your first knowledge of the Holocaust?"
"That was one of them for sure."
"How did you feel?"
"I felt horrible! I felt even more horrible she'd deny it. And she was part of it. If anyone was part of it, she was."
"How so?"
"Well, she was very close to Hermann and she was in charge of the Red Cross. She should have known, you would think. I mean, they made Theresienstadt for the Red Cross. They built it in such a way with false walls and everything so that it looked like a nice working camp where they had theater groups and all kinds of stuff."
"Right," I added, "that was their showpiece concentration camp to demonstrate that the Nazis were humanitarians. Of course, they shipped off half the prisoners to Auschwitz before visitors came so it wouldn't look overcrowded."
"Maybe she believed the fantasy. At the same time, we found out later that she did some very shady deals with Jewish people who paid their way out of Germany. Hermann Goering did a bunch of deals for art or land."
"Did your grandmother have a good side?"
"I really judged this family as negative, almost all of them. That's something that I've been now working to change, and I'm seeing a much more complex picture even of my grandmother. It's very illuminating."
"What changed?"
"I did research. My grandmother was brought up in a family where all the men died all the time. They were all military. Her father died when she was five. There were so many wars back then."
"Yes, you can imagine that with so much loss in her life, she had to convince herself it was for something worthwhile."
"Exactly."
"Do you see any goodness in Hermann?"
"That's hard to say. Is somebody ever totally bad or good? I hope not. I think certain circumstances happen that might turn somebody into a psychopath. When I see Hermann as a family person, I think he's really nice, and charming, and incredibly caretaking, and it's hard for me to see flaws. But then you see what he does in politics and how he killed people, including his so-called friends."
"What do you mean?"
"Are you familiar with the Röhm Putsch?"
"You mean when the Nazis purged the army?"
"That shocked me almost more than some of his later actions, because they were his friends. He had no qualms to shoot just anybody."
"Are you afraid that you inherited some of his traits?"
"Yes and no. I met a cousin that I hadn't seen in nearly 50 years and we both have big qualms to do anything too big--to be in a position of any power because there is something in the background that you could do something bad."
"And you have the desire for power?"
"No, not even. But, it's happened. I'm somebody who naturally takes charge, who can easily be in charge of people, but it scares me at the same time that I could abuse the power as he did. It's a collective consciousness thing. It might be in my DNA. I think they're starting to prove that all the experiences of your ancestors manifest themselves in the DNA."
"Interesting," I said. "I have Jewish friends who have dreams of being in the Holocaust."
"That's what I mean. It's in your DNA somewhere. Sometimes I get feelings that I cannot explain. I experience also the Holocaust. Do we have past lives? How come I have visions of that too?"
"Can you describe that experience?"
"We were in Weimar a few years ago, next to Buchenwald, one of the concentration camps. It was like these ghosts had attached themselves to me. Afterwards I couldn't eat."
"What did it feel like?"
"Like I wasn't myself. I was really depressed, afraid. I had a vision of being in a small attic room, it could have been in Germany, afraid for my life. I personally think there are past lives for sure."
"So, the implication is that you were a Jew in another life?"
"Or somebody who was persecuted, or a member of the resistance."
"Getting back to the issue of DNA, I wanted to ask you about your decision to sterilize yourself. Were you worried about continuing Hermann's legacy?"
"It's complex. I was about 30 when I did it. I was living in a commune with Osho in Pune, India and a lot of people did it in that commune. There are too many kids in the world, so I won't have any. My brother did it too."
"So, it wasn't specifically the Goering genes?"
"No. However, when my brother did it he said, 'I cut the line.' He's dramatic like that. And when he said that, it became clear to me that that must have influenced me too. I had a fear about my own power to maybe pass something on."
"What was it like living in the Osho commune?"
"There were a lot of Germans, Jews, and Japanese there. It was the 70s and it was like the kids of World War II all came together in a friendly way. And some of it was in encounter groups where you lived out some of these old experiences."
"What kind of experiences?"
Bettina glanced at her husband.
"For example," Adi offered, "I'm from Berlin, so I'm Prussian. They had me stand up and march and they all threw pillows at me, yelling 'You fucking Nazi!' They called me Obersturmbannführer and I had to just take that all in. They asked, 'How do you feel about that? That's what your parents did and that's what you are because you are their child.' And I felt a big collective guilt inside that I wasn't aware of. Nobody in my family did anything, but I still have this guilt. I didn't know I had it. I was so surprised."
"Were you able to get past it?"
"It's never totally past. You just put awareness to it so that it has no more power over you."
"Is that part of what coming to America represents--a clean start?"
"Part of it."
"So, having left Germany, do you still participate in German culture?"
"For sure," replied Adi. "We go to the opera..."
"Wagner?" I queried.
"No."
"When you say no, is that a reaction against the music or the composer?"
"No, I think it's nice music. It's really good. But, he was an anti-Semite."
"So, even musical notes can accumulate guilt?"
"Quite amazing."
"What else do you have from Germany?" I asked, turning back to Bettina. "Any heirlooms from Hermann?"
"Just photographs of him with my father and grandmother. I have a Goering insignia ring, which I actually wear. I inherited it from my mom when she died."
When I asked to see the photographs, Bettina pulled out an album and began to flip through.
"What do you see when you look at these photographs?" I asked.
"Different things. These are a bunch of my uncles--the brothers of my father who died so young. I've developed almost a relationship to them. It's funny. I got to know them or something. I feel like they are asking me to remember them."
"You got to know them through the photographs?"
"Yes, though sometimes I wonder if I should get rid of this album. I'm the only one who has any relation to these guys. Nobody else does. My brother doesn't and we're the last of the line."
"Can you talk more about the relationship you've developed with these images?"
"So, I had an illumination about the boy," she said, pointing at a photograph of her uncle, Peter Goering. "He was only a boy. He was 19. As I got to know more about them, I felt really bad. I felt the grief of losing them so young--of my father and my grandmother--I felt that."
"And what do you see when you look at the pictures of them with Hermann?"
"He's very proud of them, and they are proud of him. You can tell."
"You can see in the picture how much they love each other?"
"Yeah, yeah, for sure."
"Do you see a resemblance between Hermann and yourself?'
"Sure--cheekbones, nose, even the mouth. I was a teenager when I first saw a photograph of him before he got fat, back when he was young, and I took a deep breath."
"How did you feel?"
"I was shocked. I ripped it up. I was like, 'Fuck, is that me?'"
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.whastingsburke.com/hermann-goering/
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en
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Biography, Death & Unknown Facts
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2023-11-07T14:25:22+00:00
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Hermann Göring (aka Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, leading Nazi official, Hitler's successor and convicted war criminal.
|
en
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William Hastings Burke
|
https://www.whastingsburke.com/hermann-goering/
|
Hermann Göring
(aka Hermann Goering)
GÖRINGopedia
Hermann Göring (also spelt Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, key Nazi official, military leader and convicted war criminal.
He was Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany and authorised the Final Solution.
The spelling of the family name varies across the English-language literature. For the most part, this biography uses the German spelling of ‘Göring’, except in areas with stronger associations with the English spelling of ‘Goering’, such as around the Nuremberg trials and FAQs circulating in the English-speaking world.
Origins
Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born on the 12th of January 1893 at Marienbad Sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria (Germany).1 He was the fourth child of Heinrich Ernst Göring (1839 – 1913) and Franziska Göring, née Tiefenbrunn (1859 – 1923). His mother was known to the family as Fanny. Her family were yeoman land holders situated between Tyrol (Austria) and Southern Bavaria (Germany). Hermann’s father came from a long line of Prussian statesmen and bureaucrats.
At the time of Hermann’s birth, Heinrich Ernst Göring was the German Consul General to Haiti. Before which, he served as a circuit judge in Germany and the Reichskommissar (Imperial Commissioner) of German South-West Africa.2
Hermann’s first name comes from his godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein (more below) and his middle name was either a tribute to Kaiser Wilhelm I or his grandfather Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann was the second youngest of a large family. He had five half-siblings through his father’s earlier marriage to Ida Remd and four full brothers and sisters, including Karl Ernst (b. 3 August 1885), Olga Sofie Therese (b. 16 January 1889), Paula Rosa Elisabeth (b. 13 May 1890) and Albert Günther Göring (b. 9 March 1895), a humanitarian and Nazi opponent.
Heinrich Ernst Göring
Source: Koloniales Bildarchiv | Date: 1906
Troubled
Hermann was just six weeks old when his mother Fanny left him to be by her husband’s side in Haiti. He was placed in the care of Frau Graff, a close family friend living in the town of Fürth near Nuremberg. She acted as Hermann’s surrogate mother until the Görings returned some three years later.3
Upon the birth of Hermann’s younger brother Albert, the Göring family was invited to live in Burg Veldenstein, a Franconian castle owned by the Göring children’s godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein. The family spent their summers in Epenstein’s other castle, Burg Mauterndorf, in the Tauern mountains of Austria.
The future Reichsmarschall had a troubled school life. He first attended a local kindergarten in Fürth but was pulled out for behavioural issues. He was educated by a private tutor for the next four years and then shipped off to a boarding school in Ansbach. Hermann immediately disliked his new environment. He detested his music classes and the school’s cuisine. At one stage, he led a student protest against the school conditions. When the revolt failed, he reportedly sent his bedding ahead, sold his violin for ten marks for his train fare and absconded home to Burg Veldenstein.4
Outside of school, young Hermann was said to be a confident and athletic young boy. By the age of ten, he had scaled the cliffs of Burg Veldenstein, and by thirteen he had reached the peak of Austria’s highest mountain, the 3798m Großglockner.5
Did you know that Hermann’s godfather and idol was half-Jewish?
Dr Hermann Epenstein was a wealthy physician and Austrian aristocrat with the title Ritter von Mauternburg. He inherited most of his wealth from his father, who was a physician at the court of King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia and a real estate speculator. He was also Jewish. He converted to Catholicism when he married Epenstein Jr’s mother.6
Though born and raised Catholic, Dr Hermann Epenstein would have been deemed half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Race Laws. This set of laws was, of course, enacted by the Nazi regime spearheaded by his godson, Hermann.
Hermann was Epenstein’s favourite godson, according to older sister Olga Rigele. The feeling was mutual. While in boarding school, Hermann wrote an essay about his hero, Epenstein. He was reprimanded by the principal and forced to write a hundred lines of: ‘I shall not write essays in praise of Jews.’ He was then bullied by his peers and forced to walk around the schoolyard with a sign attached to his neck stating: ‘My godfather is a Jew’.7
Many years later during the 1938 pogrom Kristallnacht, the Jewish victims of Hermann’s Nazi regime were forced to wear similar signs around their necks.
Cadet
After a series of altercations in boarding school, Epenstein stepped in and enrolled Hermann in a military academy in Karlsruhe.
Hermann flourished in his new environment. In March 1911, he attained a ‘quite good’ in Latin, English and French, a ‘good’ in cartography and comprehension, a ‘very good’ in history, maths and physics and an ‘excellent’ in geography. His report card read: ‘Goering has been an exemplary pupil and he has developed a quality that should take him far: he is not afraid to take a risk.’8 With such a report card, Hermann was offered a place at the renowned cadet college in Lichterfelde, near Berlin. This was the breeding ground for Germany’s future officers.
In December 1913, Hermann was awarded the title of officer after achieving magna cum laude in each subject. A month later, he was assigned a commission in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 in Mülhausen (now Mulhouse), located then in the south-west of Germany, on the French/German border.9
Cadet Hermann Göring
Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R25668 | Date: 1907
Oberleutnant Göring
Author: Nicola Perscheid | Date: 1918
Fighter Ace
At the outbreak of WWI, Hermann’s Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 was initially held back on the other side of the Rhine. Once the signal for attack was finally granted, he saw action over only a few skirmishes before being invalided with an acute case of rheumatoid arthritis.
In a sanatorium in Freiburg, Hermann met Bruno Lörzer, a young air force aspirant. Lörzer invited him on board his plane as an observer. During one reconnaissance flight over Verdun, he took vivid and invaluable pictures of the French battery at Côte de Talon. These crucial photos won him the Iron Cross First Class on the 25th of March 1915 and the chance to train as a pilot.10
In 1916, Hermann’s plane was shot down, consigning him to a year of idleness. In February 1917, he was able to join the Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron). By June 1918 he had notched up twenty-one hits. For this, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite.11
Hermann all of a sudden burst into the realm of German celebrity. His face was all over the front pages of newspapers and on magazine covers. His portrait was passed between the sticky fingers of children trading World War I fighter ace cards.
Did you know that Hermann took over the Red Baron’s squadron?
On the 21st of April 1918, the hitherto untouchable Red Baron was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Richthofen was succeeded by Hauptmann Wilhelm Reinhard, but he would not lead the squadron for long. While flight-testing a new Zeppelin-Lindau D.I on 3 July 1918, he plunged to his death after a strut connected to the upper wing broke. It was the same plane that Hermann had tested only minutes before.
And so another twist of fate saw the appointment of ‘No. 178.654, 8. 7. 18 Oberlt. Hermann Göring’ as the commander of the Red Baron squadron on 8 July 1918.12 He led the squadron until the end of the war.
Vagabond
After the war, there came a period of political and social unrest in Germany. The streets were flooded with disenfranchised war veterans like Hermann. In Berlin, Hermann joined the ranks of the Freikorps, a group of paramilitary units formed in the wake of WWI. Here, he took an active role as a leader, marking his first step into politics. However, his political aspirations fizzled out ultimately with the Freikorps’ failed 1920 Kapp Putsch.
After working as a consultant with Anthony Fokker for a stint, Hermann formed a flying circus in the summer of 1920 with four of his old fighter-pilot comrades. Together, they entertained the crowds of Scandinavia with aerobatic stunts.
He later found work at the Swedish airline Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm as a pilot. While transporting a wealthy passenger, Count Eric von Rosen, to Rockelstad Slott, he met Carin von Kantzow.13 Love struck, Carin divorced her officer husband Nils von Kantzow in December 1922. Hermann and Carin married on 3 February 1923 in Stockholm before moving to Munich.14
In November 1922, Hermann heard Adolf Hitler speak for the first time in a beer hall in Munich. Hitler struck a chord with Hermann when he denounced the Treaty of Versailles and spoke of restoring German pride. Hermann soon joined the Nazi Party and within a year, he was commanding the party paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA). At this stage, Hitler and his party were not taken seriously by the military, the industrialists and the established order in Germany. Hermann’s big name and clout provided the party the legitimacy that Hitler craved.
Carin Göring
Source: Henry B. Goodwin | Date: December 1927
Hermann & Hitler
Source: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized | Date: 1929
Outlaw
Exactly one year on from their first meeting, the budding partnership between Hermann and Hitler nearly came to a fatal end after the failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November 1923. In a clash with the Bavarian state police, Hermann was shot in the groin.15 With a warrant out for his arrest, Hermann fled to Austria and ultimately Sweden. The morphine that he was given for the pain led to an addiction that he would maintain right up until his arrest after WWII. Swinging between comatose and lunatic rage, he was admitted to multiple Swedish mental institutions.16 His only saviour was his loyal wife Carin.
The Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial for treason elevated the small Bavarian Nazi party onto the national stage. Hitler served only nine months in jail before his release in December 1924. Hermann returned to Germany in 1927 after receiving amnesty. The following year in the German Federal Election, Hermann won a seat in the Reichstag, alongside eleven other party colleagues.17
In the July 1932 federal election in Germany, the Nazi party capitalised on the turmoil of the Great Depression to win 230 seats. This made them the largest party in the Reichstag.18 It also allowed Hermann to be elected the President of the Reichstag. It was bitter-sweet for Hermann as a year before he had lost his dear wife Carin. Having long suffered from a chronic heart condition, she died in Stockholm at 4:00am on 17 October 1931.19
The Nazi party won less seats (196) in the following federal election in November 1932.21 But after months of political manoeuvring, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
Did you know that Hermann was not initially impressed with Hitler?
While awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Hermann Goering described his first encounters with Hitler to the American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn:
‘I was against the Versailles Treaty and I was against the democratic state, which failed to solve the problem of unemployment and which instead of making Germany a powerful nation was turning it into a small, minor state. I am a German nationalist and have high ideals for Germany. … I met Hitler in 1922 at a meeting and was not too impressed with him at first. Like myself, he said very little at this first meeting. A few days afterward I heard Hitler give an address in a Munich beer hall where he spoke about a greater Germany, the abolition of the Versailles Treaty, arms for Germany, and a future glory of the German people. So I joined forces with him and became a member of the National Socialist Party.’20
Heir apparent
Hermann and the party used the Reichstag Fire of 27 February 1933 to eliminate their Communist rivals, who were blamed for the fire. The Reichstag Fire Decree was passed the next day and around 4,000 Communist party members were arrested.22 As the Interior Minister of Prussia, Hermann oversaw the formation of the first concentration camps in Germany, which initially arose to accommodate these mass arrests.
Around the same time, he created the Gestapo before passing the leadership to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, along with control of the concentration camps. This period saw Hermann expand his power in Germany. In 1933, he was appointed the Minister of Aviation, the Minister-President of Prussia and the Chief of the Prussian Police.23
In October 1936, he was appointed the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan to lead the German rearmament programme. This was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
In July 1937, Hermann established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring industrial conglomerate. With a nominal capital of 2.4 billion Reichsmarks and a labour force of 500 million, it would become the largest company in Europe between 1941 and 1945.24
On his way to becoming the second most powerful man in the Third Reich, Hermann found love again in the actress Emmy Sonnemann. The pair married on 10 April 1935 in Berlin.25 Three years later, their daughter Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring was born on 2 June 1938.
President of the Reichstag
Source: La BnF | Date: 1937
Blitzkrieger
On 12 March 1938, Austria was annexed by Germany in what was known as the Anschluss. On 26 March 1938, Hermann triumphantly rolled into Vienna to deliver a bellicose speech before heading to his hometown of Mauterndorf where he was warmly greeted by the townsfolk.
At the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, Hermann’s Luftwaffe (air force) played a crucial role in Germany’s blitzkrieg and battlefield success. The major cities of Poland were bombed and the Polish Air Force was decimated within a week.26 The Luftwaffe achieved similar success in the subsequent invasions of Norway (8 April – 10 June 1940), the Netherlands (10–17 May 1940), Belgium (10–28 May 1940 and France (10 May – 25 June 1940).
In the Field Marshal Ceremony of 19 July 1940, Hitler awarded Hermann the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross and promoted him to the highest military office with the title of Reichsmarschall.27 Meanwhile, Hermann began to amass a collection of artwork and treasures that were commandeered in each vanquished country.
Hermann and the Luftwaffe could not repeat their feats against the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain. The strategic bombing campaign and the terror bombing over London failed to pressure Britain into peace negotiations or facilitate the planned land invasion Operation Sea Lion.
Cracks began to appear in Hermann’s political standing in the Nazi Party.
Did you know that Hermann had an anti-Nazi brother?
It is little known that Hermann had a younger brother who fought against the Nazi regime. Albert Göring (1895-1966) was a German-Austrian engineer, businessman, prominent Nazi opponent and humanitarian. Prior and throughout World War II, he either aided, protected or saved Jews, members of the Czech Resistance and other victims of his brother’s regime.
There are many cases documented where Hermann intervened at the request of a family member and wielded his power to assist the very people his regime persecuted. The first case involved a request by his wife Emmy Sonnemann to help a fellow actress Henny Porten whose husband was Jewish. Through the petitioning of Albert and sometimes their older sister Olga, Hermann provided assistance to other prominent individuals, including Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria, Austrian Chancellor Dr Kurt von Schuschnigg and the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár.
Hermann also came to the aid of his brother on numerous occasions when he fell in trouble with the Gestapo. This protection enabled Albert to continue his work in helping victims of Nazi persecution.28
Call me Meyer
Hermann, the Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe, once famously declared: “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You can call me Meyer.”29 Meyer was a very common surname in Germany. With this reference, Hermann seemed to suggest that he would reduce himself to a commoner should an Ally bomb land on the Ruhr – the industrial hub of Germany at the time.
As History shows, the Allies‘ bombs not only reigned over the Ruhr but all of Germany. By the end of World War II, the RAF estimated that 19 German cities were ‘virtually destroyed’, including Hamburg, Cologne and Hannover, as well as 19 ‘seriously damaged’, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich.30
As further failures in the East built up, Göring and the General Staff of the Luftwaffe placed all their hopes on the development of Wunderwaffe (wonder weapons) to sway the war in their favour. Despite the deployment of the V-1 and V-2 ballistic missiles, jet-engine aircraft and some other projects, the wonder weapons could not be produced in scale and time to deliver the decisive blow.31
By the end of the war, Hermann’s status in the Third Reich was at rock bottom.
Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe
Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe | Date: September 1940
Goering, Hermann - wanted
Source: U.S. Air Force | Date: 11 May 1945
Downfall
On 20th of April 1945, Hermann attended Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday at the Führerbunker with other top Nazi officials. He then hurried down south to his residence in Berchtesgaden.
Three days later, with Berlin about to fall to the Red Army, he sent a telegram to Hitler’s bunker. He requested permission to implement the Führer’s succession decree of the 29th of June 1941. This decree stated that Göring would succeed the leadership of the Third Reich if Hitler was to be ever incapacitated. He ended the telegram with a final condition: if he did not receive a reply by ten o’clock that evening, he would assume that Hitler was in fact incapacitated and would therefore actualise the edict.
Hitler decried it as a treasonous act, calling Hermann a ‘morphine addict’ before weeping ‘like a child’. He then authorised a radio broadcast composed by Martin Bormann, his private secretary. It accused Hermann of high treason, an act warranting the death penalty. Though in Hermann’s case, it would be downgraded to a dismissal of all offices.32 On 29 April 1945, Hitler expelled Hermann from the party.
On 7 May 1945, Hermann surrendered to the US Brigadier General Robert Stack of the 36th Infantry Division outside the Austrian town of Radstadt.33
Charge sheet and role in Nazi crimes against humanity
March 1933: As the Interior Minister of Prussia, Hermann oversaw the formation of the first concentration camps in Germany in response to The Reichstag Fire Decree and the mass arrests of Communist party members.34
26 April 1933: Hermann created the Gestapo before transferring control to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, along with the management of the concentration camps.35
15 September 1935: On the day the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, Hermann declared to the Reichstag: “God has created the races. He did not want equality and therefore we energetically reject any attempt to falsify the concept of race purity by making it equivalent with racial equality. … This equality does not exist. We have never accepted such an idea and therefore we must reject it in our laws likewise and must accept that purity of race which nature and providence have destined for us.”36
26 March 1938: In a speech in annexed Vienna, Hermann announced: “Today Vienna cannot rightly claim to be a German City. One cannot speak of a German City in which 300,000 Jews live. This city has an important German mission in the field of culture as well as in economics. For neither of these can we make use of the Jews.”37
12 November 1938: After the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht, Hermann ordered the Jewish community to pay one billion Reichsmarks as compensation to the German people, despite the majority of the damage having occurred a Jewish-owned premises.38
31 July 1941: Hermann authorised Reinhard Heydrich to initiate the Final Solution by submitting ‘an overall plan that shows the preliminary organizational, practical and material measures requisite for the implementation of the projected final solution of the Jewish question [Endlösung der Judenfrage].’39
1942-1945: Hermann’s industrial conglomerate Reichswerke Hermann Göring employed slave labour in a collection of industrial plants, including forced ammunition plant workers from concentration camps in Drütte (from 1942), Watenstedt/Leinde (from 1944) and Salzgitter-Bad (from 1944).40
Criminal
After being temporarily interred in Augsburg (Bavaria), ‘Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering’ was flown to Camp Ashcan in Luxembourg and held with other Nazi prisoners of war. He lost around 80 pounds (36kg) after being weaned off his morphine addiction and receiving a strict diet.41 He was tested to have an IQ of 138.42
On paper, Hermann was the second highest-ranking Nazi official to be tried during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. But that was only on account of Hitler’s last minute decree to make Admiral Karl Dönitz the Reich President. Hermann was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’43
In a trial lasting 218 days, Hermann’s cross-examination and defence lasted over two weeks. Hermann pleaded not guilty and remained defiant during his famous court battle with Robert H. Jackson. He was found guilty on all four counts and was sentenced to death by hanging on 30 September 1946.44
Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering
Source: U.S. Army | Date: 8 March 1946
Cheating the hangman
On the 15th of October 1946, Hermann was found dead in his Nuremberg cell after taking potassium cyanide. It was the morning of his scheduled execution. When Hermann was sentenced to death, he requested a soldier’s death by firing squad. This was denied. Faced with a common criminal’s hanging, he chose to cheat the hangman.
Speculation continues to this day as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream.
Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served as a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain pen.45
Hermann’s body, one eye open in a frozen wink, was taken to the execution hall and displayed in front of witnesses. Just after midnight, Hermann’s corpse was dispatched, along with the corpses of his ten former Nazi colleagues, to a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Wentzbach creek.46 There is no gravestone or official marking for Hermann Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann Goering Q&A
Who was Hermann Goering?
Hermann Göring (AKA Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, politician, military leader, convicted war criminal and Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party. He was the most important Nazi official to be tried and sentenced to death at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. On the night before his execution, he committed suicide by cyanide poisoning.
What did Goering do?
Goering was the second most powerful figure in the Nazi regime. He held numerous civil and military positions in the Third Reich, including the President of the Reichstag, the Interior Minister of Prussia, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany leading up to World War II and authorised the Final Solution.
How did Goering die?
On the night before he was to be hanged on 15 October 1946, Goering committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule. To this day, speculation continues as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream or that a young woman had passed him the capsule. Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain.
Where is Hermann Goering buried?
The convicted war criminal was not buried in a cemetery. His corpse was cremated, along with ten other condemned Nazi colleagues, in a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Wenzbach creek in Munich. There is no gravestone or physical marking for Göring and his Nazi co-conspirators.
What was Goering charged with?
Goering was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’47
Notes
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 21.
Singer, K. (1940) Göring: Germany’s most dangerous man, (Melbourne, Australia: Hutchinson & C0. LTD), p. 17.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.4.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.9.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp 6-8.
Ibid, p.9.
Ibid, p.10.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 28-29.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 31-32.
Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), p. 28.
Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), pp. 36-37.
Dungern, O. (1936) ‘Uhnentafel des Ministerpräsisdenten und Reichsluftfahrtministers Generalobersten Hermann Göring’ IN: Ahnentafeln berühmter Deutscher: Herausgegeben von der Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte, (Leipzig: Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte).
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 56.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 60-61.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 66.
Evans, R. J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 297.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.166.
Goldensohn, L. (2004) The Nuremberg Interviews. Ed. R. Gellately, 19th ed., (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), p. 132.
Gonschior.de
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 11.
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
Neumann, K. (2000) Shifting memories: the Nazi past in the new Germany, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 20-21; Overy, R. J. (1994) War and economy in the Third Reich, (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 159.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 139.
Hooton, E. (1999) Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe, (London : Brockhampton Press), p. 179.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 245.
Burke, W. H. (2009) Thirty Four, (London: Wolfgeist Ltd.).
Fleming, N. (1979), August 1939: The Last Days of Peace, (London: Peter Davies), p. 171.
Frankland, N. (1951) The Planning of the Bombing Offensive and its Contribution to German Collapse, UK Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Neufeld, M. (2020) The Myth of the German “Wonder-Weapons”, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Fest, J. (2002) Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches; Eine historische Skizze, (Berlin: Alexander Fest Verlag), p. 102.
Brigadier General Robert I. Stack (Assistant Division Commander) Eyewitness Account, Capture of Goering, The 36th Infantry Division Association Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 108-109.
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality United States, Department of State, United States War Department and the International Military Tribunal (1946) Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol VI, (Washington: United States Government Printing Office), pp. 158-159. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Hermann Göring speech in Vienna, 26th March 1938, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
German Jews are Fined, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Authorisation letter of Goering to Heydrich, July 31, 1941, House of the Wannsee Conference: Memorial and Educational Site. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
The Memorial Place KZ Drütte, Gedenk- und Dokumentationsstätte KZ Drütte. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Kelley D. M. (1961) 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines the Nazi Criminals, (New York: MacFadden Publications), p. 44.
Gilbert, G. (1961) Nuremberg Diary, (New York: the New American Library), p. 34.
First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 337.
Borger, J. (2005), US guard tells how Nazi girlfriend duped him into helping Goering evade hangman, The Guardian. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Maser, W. (2000) Hermann Göring: Hitlers janusköpfiger Paladin; die politische Biographie, (Berlin: Quintessenz Verlags-GmbH), pp. 466-467.
First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
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Nuremberg Is Not Enough
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Nazis are still being prosecuted in Germany; however, many have never been tried due to political considerations and society’s reluctance to come to terms with the past.
It is difficult to imagine a greater turning point in the life of a nation than that experienced by Germany after the end of the Second World War. Unconditional surrender, occupation and the rule of foreign powers went hand in hand with the breakdown of German notions of their superiority and power. However, society could not dissociate itself from a closed historical chapter, since it faced the colossal problem of coming to terms with the ideology and crimes of National Socialism. 7.5 million members of the Nazi Party, 850,000 members of the SS, newsreels across the world showing heaps of corpses in liberated concentration camps, perpetrators of crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust, blending into the crowd and keeping a low profile, doctors killing en masse the disabled and the terminally ill, a corrupt judiciary, youth brainwashed by Nazism – this was only a fraction of the burden under which German society began to build its future. At the same time relatively few people in Germany were aware of the scale of the problem and for certain no-one had any idea of how to solve it.
Nuremberg Known and Unknown
Aware of the immense support that Hitler’s regime had enjoyed in German society, the Allies doubted the Germans’ ability to cleanse themselves. Therefore, as early as in 1942 they took on the responsibility of punishing those charged with war crimes, and ordered the relevant documentation to be drafted. In November 1943, it was decided that those charged with war crimes were to be extradited to the countries where they had committed their atrocities, and those whose deeds concerned multiple countries – belonging to the category of main perpetrators – were to be brought before an international court. Thus in August 1945, the Allies signed a treaty establishing the International Military Tribunal. It operated during the Nuremberg Trials, where from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946, twenty-two principal war criminals from the highest levels of the Third Reich were tried. They were selected in a manner assuring a representation of the Nazi system’s main areas of activity (including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann – Nazi Party leaders; Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg –ideologists of Nazism; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Konstantin von Neurath – foreign policy; Ernst Kaltenbrunner – the SS and police; Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, Erich Raeder, Karl Dönitz – armed forces; Hans Fritzsche – propaganda; Baldur von Schirach – Hitler Youth; Albert Speer and Hjalmar Schacht – the economy, Hans Frank and Artur Seyss-Inquart – the occupation policy). During the trial, 19 convictions were handed down, including 12 death sentences.
However, an often overshadowed fact is that from 1946 to 1949 twelve other large trials were held in Nuremberg, such as the Ministries Trial (management of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs); the trial of concentration camps doctors (the Doctors’ Trial); Einsatzgruppen; the management of the Kruppa and I. G. Farben companies; the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, and the SS Main Economic and Administrative Department. Oswald Pohl, the head of this key unit tasked with operations including organisation of the concentration camps, was sentenced to death and executed on 8 June 1951 at the American military prison in Landsberg, Bavaria. This was the last execution carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany, since the death penalty had been abolished with the founding of the country in 1949.
Further trials between 1946 and 1951 were made possible due to Law No. 10 of the Allied Control Council, enacted as early as 1945, which expanded the powers of the military governors of individual occupation zones. This law was rescinded in 1951, when West Germany received many attributes of a sovereign state. Hence over several years, the Allied system of courts and prisons across Germany was eliminated. It should be noted that as early as 1950, the USSR had closed down its ‘special camps’ where Nazi prisoners were interned, and completed its prosecution of war criminals in East Germany. The last relict of the post-war period of Nazi war crimes trials was the joint military prison in Spandau, maintained and operated by the Allies, where prisoners sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials were detained. In existence as long as the last prisoner was alive, it was closed in 1987 after the suicide of Rudolf Hess.
In the initial post-war period, a great majority of Germans felt an aversion to the trials of war criminals. Even the Nuremberg Trials failed to exert the psychological effect expected by the occupying powers. It was generally viewed as a form of revenge on the defeated and the belief was that the verdicts of the victors could not be just. Besides, the nascent Cold War meant that friendly relations with the Germans were important to both sides. Thus the enthusiasm of the occupying powers to prosecute the Nazis quickly dampened. Extradition to East European countries was abandoned as early as 1947, and soon the practice of early release for convicts from Allied prisons spread.
In his first address to the opening of parliament in 1949, West Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer already spoke about a blank slate when coming to terms with the recent past. Most probably he was convinced that the rebuilding of West Germany would not be possible without the advocates of National Socialism. They were too numerous and too many belonged to the country’s professional elite. For this reason, in the West Germany of Adenauer’s era an unwritten agreement was reached between the new authorities and the advocates of Nazism, under which the authorities guaranteed them impunity (with the exception of a very small group of people charged with the most severe crimes) and freedom of professional development; while they, in turn, renounced their public anti-system and racist activity. The first amnesty act was passed as early as 1949, which freed from responsibility thousands of Nazis convicted for lesser crimes. In 1951, the West German Parliament passed another act, under which they regained public posts (including in the police) in a short period of time. It is therefore no surprise that in the 1950s the number of Nazi war criminals tried by West German courts dropped dramatically.
The Guilt of the Fathers
However, the situation in West Germany changed with the coming of age of the younger generation, who opposed concealing the guilt of their parents’ generation. Gradually, thanks to researchers, knowledge about Nazi Germany and the crimes committed during the period improved. Now and again, wishing to discredit West Germany, the East German security services revealed compromising facts about the Nazi past of West German politicians and high-ranking officials. In an atmosphere of gradually mounting interest in bringing Nazis to justice, the trial of ten members of Einsatzkommando Tilsit (Einsatzgruppe A), who were charged with murdering many thousands of Jews in Lithuania in 1941, gained wide publicity. Despite the fact that each defendant’s personal responsibility for executing at least several hundred Jews by firing squad had been proved, the sentences handed down during the trial, held in Ulm in 1958, ran contrary to the fundamental sense of justice (between 3 and 15 years’ imprisonment).
This scandal provided an impetus for the creation in November 1958 of a West German institution specialising in prosecuting Nazi crimes, i.e. the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, popularly called the Central Office in Ludwigsburg. Its operations were restricted in numerous ways, the most important of which was that the prosecutors only had the right to prepare indictments, without the possibility of independently filing these with a court. Despite this, the Central Office established a new quality in the German court system and greatly enhanced the prosecution of Nazi crimes in West Germany. To date it has drafted around 7,500 indictments.
Successive breaches in the wall of silence behind which the Germans were hiding came from the exhibition Ungesühnte Nazijustitz, shown for the first time in Karlsruhe in 1959. It proved that tens of highly-placed West German lawyers were guilty of severe judicial crimes perpetrated during the war. While the West German judiciary unshakeably stood and still stands for the principle of judicial immunity, after several years (1962), over 160 judges and prosecutors with Nazi pasts went into voluntary, albeit early, retirement. Regular TV broadcasts from the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem had an even greater impact in Germany. On the rising tide of these West German transformations, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials commenced in December 1963, at which 20 members of camp staff were indicted. It is worthy of note that during the preparation for the trial, the files of around 800 people were studied, although only the best documented cases were selected. The fact that such a mass trial took place and that a huge body of evidence was gathered, enabling 17 out of 20 defendants to be convicted in December 1965, was by no doubt down to the success of the Central Office of Ludwigsburg and the Attorney General of Hessen, Fritz Bauer. He was the unofficial leader of a group of West German lawyers who understood the need to prosecute Nazi crimes.
Criminals Behind Desks
On the other hand, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial again exposed the courts’ weakness in bringing Nazism to justice. Contrary to the prosecution’s intentions, the prevailing practice was that of detailed investigation into the individual guilt of the defendants, while the fact that membership of the Auschwitz staff itself made the defendants accomplices to all crimes committed at the camp was ignored. Moreover, the court was very broad in applying the classification of accessory. Under this interpretation, the ‘true’ perpetrators of the crimes were only high-level commanders (e.g. Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heidrich) and those who personally murdered the victims. Thus during the trial, the longest sentences (life imprisonment) were pronounced almost exclusively on lower-ranking personnel and prisoner functionaries (Kapos), while SS officers whose duties included carrying out the selection process on arrival of the transports, thereby sending thousands of victims to their deaths in the gas chambers, were sentenced to several years in prison. Moreover, the court in Frankfurt could not prevent the scandalous behaviour of lawyers, a great many of whom were former Nazis. While acting for the defence, they did not hesitate to mentally torture and insult the former Auschwitz prisoners who had decided to serve as witnesses for the prosecution.
As can be seen, progress in prosecuting Nazi crimes in West Germany after the establishment of the Central Office in Ludwigsburg did not mean at all that those opposed to bringing Nazi criminals to justice gave up. On the contrary, they still enjoyed the support of the majority of the population and also had some major successes. The most important of these was the West German Parliament’s effortless enactment in 1960 of a statute of limitations on all Nazi crimes except murder. From this point, no-one could be prosecuted for the use of torture, medical experiments, theft of fine art or, for example, the destruction of Warsaw. Besides, the acquittal of judge Hans-Joachim Rehse in 1968 emerged as an important precedent. Next to Roland Freisler, he was the most active member of the notorious People’s Court, which during the war sentenced many, including German opposition activists, to death. Thus in practice, the door had been closed to prosecuting former members of the Nazi justice system, even those guilty of the most drastic judicial crimes. In that same year, under circumstances that still remain unclear, ‘someone’ from the Federal Ministry of Justice, unnoticed by legislators, added an article that again broadened the interpretation of ‘accessory’ to the text of an act that had nothing to do with the prosecution of Nazi crimes. From then on, West German courts definitively lost the ability to convict a very important, although specific category of ‘criminals behind desks’.
No Statute of Limitations
Another battle over the prosecution of Nazi crimes centred on the statute of limitations for qualified murders committed during the Nazi era. This took place as early as in 1965, precisely on the 20th anniversary of the end of Second World War. Shortly before that date and following a heated debate, the West German Parliament decided to extend the statute of limitations until the end of 1969. In 1969, a decision to extent the statute further turned out to be easier than before, since a year earlier, following a proposal by Poland, the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. For this reason, the statute of limitations on crimes which led to a sentence of life imprisonment was extended from 20 to 30 years, i.e. until the end of 1979. Only then did the parliament pass an act on non-applicability of the statute of limitations for qualified murder. Importantly, during the debates held in 1965 and 1969, public opinion surveys showed that the majority of West German society opted for statutes of limitations. These proportions did not change until 1979.
According to observers, a change in Germans public attitudes was possible due to the last great trial of Nazi murderers, that of the staff of the Majdanek concentration camp, alongside the American TV series The Holocaust (January 1979). While there is no ambiguity as to the psychological impact of TV images, which for the first time clearly showed the persecution and extermination of Jews from the perspective of a particular family, the way in which the trial of Majdanek personnel influenced German public opinion requires an explanation. The trial of the 16 camp personnel in Düsseldorf in 1975 became a show of excesses to an even greater extent than the Frankfurt trial had been. The public gallery in the courtroom was dominated by neo- Nazis, who demonstrated their hostility towards the prosecutors and witnesses. The defence again exerted brutal psychological pressure on former prisoners. After the above series had been broadcast and had so moved public opinion, times had changed when in 1979 the court released four defendants due to the fact that the witnesses who were due to testify against them had died during the trial. The alleged helplessness of the court and the falsely perceived faithfulness to procedures were severely criticised. From then on, the trial was carried out peacefully and with all due solemnity; however, as far as justification and length are concerned, the sentences of 1981 were very similar to those handed down by the Frankfurt court 16 years earlier.
Although the Düsseldorf trial was the last of this magnitude, it was by no means the last of this type. Nazis are still being convicted in Germany. In 2009, a Munich court sentenced former Wehrmacht officer Josef Scheungraber (born 1918) to life in prison for commanding troops who murdered the villagers of Falzano di Cortona in Italy. In May 2011, also in Munich, the widely publicised trial of John Demjanjuk (born 1920), a former guard at Sobibor, resulted in a six-year prison sentence. On that occasion the media used the term ‘the last Nazi trial’. This year, however, the German prosecutor’s office unexpectedly announced that it was preparing to indict several dozen other perpetrators. A trial is being held in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, of a certain Siert Bruins (born 1921 in the Netherlands), charged with participating in the execution by firing squad of Dutch resistance members. Despite the judiciary’s unexpected surge of activity, these actually will be the last trials of Nazi criminals, since in five years’ time none of them will be capable of standing in front of a court. Critics of the German justice system call attention to the advanced age of the defendants and the fact that during the war they were almost exclusively lower-ranking members of organisations involved in war crimes. At the same time, as a general rule their commanders, holding an immeasurably greater responsibility for the crimes, escaped punishment and are no longer alive. Despite these reservations, the fact that war crimes and crimes against humanity are prosecuted, so long as the suspects are physically able to stand in front of a court, is of great significance. It is a unique phenomenon in modern history.
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Göring, Hermann
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Hermann Göring was a highly decorated and well-known fighter pilot of the First World War and later a high-ranking National Socialist leader.
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1914-1918-Online (WW1) Encyclopedia
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https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/goring-hermann/
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Version 1.0
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Last updated 24th November 2017
Göring, Hermann
By Jan-Philipp Pomplun
Hermann Göring was a highly decorated and well-known fighter pilot of the First World War and later a high-ranking National Socialist leader.
Military Education
Hermann Göring (1893-1946) started his military career as student at the cadet school in Karlsruhe and was promoted to the Prussian main cadet school in Groß-Lichterfelde near Berlin in 1909. Two years later, he graduated with honors and received his commission as 2nd lieutenant in June 1912.
First World War
Göring first saw action in Mulhouse/Alsace, where he served as battalion adjutant in the regimental staff of the 4th Baden Infantry Regiment Nr. 112 “Prinz Wilhelm”. After the first battles with French troops, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross 2st Class, he was taken to a military hospital in Freiburg for his rheumatoid arthritis. While in Freiburg, his friend Bruno Loerzer (1891-1960), who had taken part in pilot training, left Göring enthusiastic about becoming a pilot. Although his application for a transfer to the Imperial German Army Air Service was rejected, he managed to enlist as an air observer and took part in reconnaissance missions targeting among other things the fortifications of Verdun, for which he was decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class in March 1915. Finally, between June and September 1915 Göring received his pilot training in Freiburg.
Following service at “Feldfliegerabteilungen” 203 and 25 where he obtained his pilot’s badge in October 1915, Göring was transferred to “Kampfstaffel Metz” in September 1916 and later to “Jagdstaffel 7”. In November 1916, while Göring was a member of “Jagdstaffel 5”, he was heavily injured in a dogfight. After his recovery, he was transferred to “Jagdstaffel 26” in mid-February 1917, but spent the next weeks again in a military hospital suffering from tonsillitis. In May that year, Göring became Commander of “Jagdstaffel 27” and in August was promoted to 1st lieutenant. In summer 1918, he was awarded Imperial Germany’s highest military honour, the “Pour le Mérite” for aerial victories and gallantry in action.
By mid-June he reached his 22nd air combat victory. More important than these honors and successes was his appointment as commander of the famous fighter wing “Freiherr von Richthofen” named after the “Red Baron”, Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918), on 6 June 1918, by which joining the ranks of the most notable flying aces of the First World War. In April that year, the “Red Baron” was killed in combat and his successor, Wilhelm Reinhard (1891-1918), was also killed a few weeks later. After the Armistice of Compiègne the fighter wing was disbanded and Göring was released from the army in the rank of a captain. Göring saw many battlefields of the Western Front including the Vosges and Lorraine in 1915, Verdun and the Somme in 1916, Arras and Flanders in 1917 and the area between Marne, Oise and Ainse in 1918.
Post-war Era and National Socialism
Back in Munich in winter 1918/19 and deeply convinced of the , Göring possibly got in contact Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp (1868-1947). But instead of joining the counter-revolutionary troops of this Freikorps leader, he went to Copenhagen in early 1919 as a sales representative of Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. Göring earned his living first in Denmark and later in Sweden with acrobatic flying and as sales man for automatic parachutes before he was employed as a pilot for the Swedish airline Svensk Lufttrafik. In Sweden he met his wife, Carin von Kantzow (1888-1931), née Baroness von Fock.
In summer 1921, Göring returned to Germany and began to study political sciences in Munich, in autumn 1922, he met Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and joined the NSDAP. Early 1923, he became leader of the National Socialist “Sturmabteilung” (SA), because Hitler wanted to benefit from the fame of the highly decorated flying ace for the recruitment of new members for the “brownshirts”. In the same year, some short autobiographical wartime memoirs of Göring were published in the edited volume “In der Luft unbesiegt. Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg erzählt von Luftkämpfern”. As a member of the NSDAP, he was elected to parliament in 1928 and became president of the Reichstag in August 1932. Holding numerous high political offices at the same time during the Third Reich, Göring was one of the most powerful men beside Adolf Hitler. After the Second World War, Göring was the most prominent representative of the National Socialist state on trial at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to death as a war criminal but committed suicide before he was to be hanged.
Jan-Philipp Pomplun, Technische Universität Berlin
Section Editor: Mark Jones
Citation
Jan-Philipp Pomplun: Göring, Hermann, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2017-11-24. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.11187
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This section outlines the organizations and leading individuals in four overlapping spheres of Nazi Germany: the Reich ministries (the government); the Nazi party; the SS; and the Wehrmacht (the armed forces). Adolf Hitler was the head of all four of these sectors, and they became increasingly interconnected over time. Reich ministries were often matched by parallel party organizations, with the same person in charge of both. The SS began as a party organization but took over governmental functions (police and security) and created a military branch, the Waffen SS. The Wehrmacht was relatively self-contained as a Reich organization, but it held jurisdiction over the Waffen SS in military operations. These different institutions frequently competed for jurisdictional power and resources; for example, in addition to the Reich economic ministries, the SS took over economic enterprises in order to control resources and generate income. Much of the information in this section is drawn from the encyclopedias compiled by L. L. Snyder and C. Zentner, and from Anatomy of the SS State, editied by E. Wiskemann.
For details on the organization and leaders of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA, 1942-45), see the introduction to NMT Case 4, USA v. Oswald Pohl et al. For more information on the medical officials, see the introduction to NMT Case 1, USA v. Karl Brandt et al. (the Medical Case).
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https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/law/international-and-humanitarian-law/nuremberg-trials/
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Nuremberg Trials: Purpose & Outcomes in Germany History
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Nuremberg Trials: ✓ Purpose ✓ Summary ✓ Outcomes ✓ Defining US history ✓ Trials in Germany ✓ Background
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https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/law/international-and-humanitarian-law/nuremberg-trials/
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Understanding the Nuremberg Trials
You may have come across the phrase 'Nuremberg Trials' while learning about world history or legal studies. These trials were pivotal events in the aftermath of World War II and continue to resonate in international law more than half a century later.
The Nuremberg trials were legal proceedings held by the Allies after World War II, which prosecuted prominent leaders of Nazi Germany for their roles in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials are notable for establishing the precedent for dealing with crimes against humanity and for their impact on international law.
The Nuremberg Trials: An Overview
The Nuremberg Trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants were high-ranking officials of Hitler's regime, accused of heinous crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
For instance, respected military and political figures like Hermann Göring, the founder of the Gestapo and Hitler's designated successor; and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party, were among those prosecuted.
Here's a table summarizing the trial's key components:
Duration1945-1949 LocationNuremberg, Germany Main AccusationsCrimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity Main OutcomesMany high-ranking Nazis convicted and sentenced, establishment of historic precedents in international law
Deep Dive into Nuremberg Trials in Germany
The site chosen for these trials was the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. Nuremberg had symbolic significance as it was where the notorious Nazi Party rallies had been held and the stringent Nuremberg Laws–restricting the rights of Jews–were enacted.
The trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. The first and most famous of these trials—commonly referred to as the Major War Criminals Trial—consisted of 24 leading Nazis.
Twelve defendants were sentenced to death.
Seven received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life.
Three were acquitted.
US History Definition of the Nuremberg Trials
In the realm of US history and law, the Nuremberg Trials have held a critical role as a template for subsequent international trials of war crimes and human rights abuses.
In the US interpretation, the Nuremberg Trials signalled a shift in global consensus towards accountability and justice in the face of grave human rights violations, promoting the idea of "rule of law" over the "law of rule".
The verdicts delivered at Nuremberg, and the legal reasoning behind them, have influenced many subsequent international courts, including the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Moreover, they set a historical precedent for dealing with later instances of genocide and war crimes, such as those committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s.
The Purpose and Impact of the Nuremberg Trials
Breaking new ground in the pursuit of international justice, the Nuremberg Trials had a profound purpose and remarkable impact that continues to influence global statutes today. They were more than a series of court cases; they represented a significant shift in how the world addresses war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
What Was the Purpose of the Nuremberg Trials?
The inception of the Nuremberg Trials was fuelled by an urgent need for justice following the shocking revelations of the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by the Nazi regime during World War II.
The purpose of these trials was twofold: to hold those responsible accountable for their actions and to deter future acts of genocide and crimes against humanity by setting a legal precedent.
The trials put the spotlight on Hitler's leading associates, war chiefs, and influential policy-makers, exposing the harrowing scale and systematic nature of their war crimes. They provided a platform for the victims' stories to be heard and the merciless brutality of the Nazi regime to be officially recorded.
For example, during the trials, crucial evidence such as films from concentration camps and personal testimonies from survivors unveiled the horrifying reality of the Holocaust to the world, imprinted a chilling narrative into historical record.
Outcomes and Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials
As definitive milestones in the birth of modern international law, the outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials have deeply influenced global attitudes towards the enforcement of human rights and the accountability of state actors.
Strong Precedent: Legitimised the pursuit of juridical accountability for international crimes.
Development of Human Rights Charter: Inspired the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Inspiration for Subsequent Tribunals: Paved the way for the creation of the International Criminal Court.
Fascinatingly, the trials also catalysed the growth and acceptance of legal interpretation services, as multiple languages were spoken during the trials, leading to the routine use of simultaneous translation in international courts.
To sum up, the repercussions of the Nuremberg Trials continue to echo throughout our legal and moral landscape today, underscoring the principles of humanity, the rule of law, and the inalienable human rights that no one, not even a sovereign state, can undermine or erase.
Unpacking the Outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials
Delving into the outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials helps to understand their profound and lasting impact on the course of international justice. The verdicts announced by the International Military Tribunal not only had immediate effects but also instigated long-term changes in the prosecution and prevention of war crimes.
Nuremberg Trials Outcomes: Long-Term Effects
Imagine a world in which horrific crimes perpetuated by state actors went unpunished, with no platform to hold them accountable. Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was the harsh reality. However, the trials pioneered a new course in international law and diplomacy.
The obligations and liabilities of state officials were clearly established.
A legal framework for prosecuting international crimes was created.
In essence, the trials, for the first time, held individuals accountable for their actions during times of war and occupation, irrespective of their official capacity. This was a significant departure from prevailing norms that typically shielded state officials from prosecution.
Consider the Trial of Erich Raeder, the Grand Admiral of the Nazi Navy. Despite his capacity as a navy official, he was held personally accountable for the unrestricted submarine warfare that was responsible for many civilian deaths.
Moreover, the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials rippled through the halls of legal institutions, inspiring the creation of international tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, representing an ongoing commitment to the ideas established at Nuremberg.
With the Nuremberg Trials' conclusion, the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' was informally recognised, validating that some crimes are so grave that they can be prosecuted anywhere, regardless of where they occurred.
Verdicts and Sentencing: Dissecting the Results of the Nuremberg Trials
Now let's dissect the verdicts and sentencing at the Nuremberg Trials. A comprehensive understanding of these outcomes highlights the trials' momentous significance in history and law.
The ‘verdict’ refers to the conclusion reached by the judgement, while 'sentencing' pertains to the penalty imposed on the defendant if they've been found guilty. For the Nuremberg Trials, the sentences ranged from acquittal to death.
Here's a concise breakdown of the sentencing outcomes from the primary trial:
AcquittedThree ImprisonedSeven Sentenced to DeathTwelve
Notably, Hermann Göring, a prominent figure in Hitler's regime and among the major war criminals tried at Nuremberg, was sentenced to death. However, he committed suicide a few hours before his execution was scheduled.
It's worth noting that each defendant was tried not only for their individual crimes but also for their part in the collective atrocities committed by the Nazis. This was a novel approach at that time
The sentencing at the Nuremberg Trials was not without controversy, with critics arguing they were driven more by vengeance than justice. However, their overall effect on shaping the future of international law is undeniable.
In conclusion, the verdicts and sentencing of the Nuremberg Trials underscore the trials' core premise – no one, regardless of their rank or position, is above the law when it comes to crimes against humanity. The resounding message delivered in Nuremberg was heard around the world, leading to substantial shifts in international judicial and legal landscapes.
Nuremberg Trials - Key takeaways
The Nuremberg Trials were legal proceedings held by the Allies after World War II to prosecute leaders of Nazi Germany for their roles in the Holocaust and other war crimes.
The trials, which took place in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949, established a precedent for dealing with crimes against humanity and significantly influenced international law.
The trials had symbolic significance being held in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, the site of the notorious Nazi Party rallies and the enactment of the restrictive Nuremberg Laws.
The purpose of the Nuremberg Trials was to hold those responsible for the Holocaust and other atrocities accountable for their actions and to deter future acts of genocide and crimes against humanity by setting a legal precedent.
Among the lasting impacts of the Nuremberg Trials include the legitimisation of the pursuit of juridical accountability for international crimes, contributing to the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and paving the way for the creation of the International Criminal Court.
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Hermann Göring
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(1893–1946). A leader of the Nazi Party, Hermann Göring became one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany during World War II. He was tried and…
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https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Hermann-Göring/311445
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(1893–1946). A leader of the Nazi Party, Hermann Göring became one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany during World War II. He was tried and condemned to death as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1946; before the sentence was carried out, however, he committed suicide.
Göring (also spelled Goering) was born on January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Germany, to the German consul general in Haiti. He was brought up near Nuremberg, in the small castle of Veldenstein. The castle’s owner was a Jew who was until 1913 the lover of Göring’s mother and the godfather of her children. Trained for an army career, Göring received his commission in 1912 and served with distinction during World War I, where he joined the fledgling German air force. In 1918 he became commander of the celebrated squadron in which the great German aviator Manfred, Baron von Richthofen, had served. After World War I ended, Göring spent time as a commercial pilot in Denmark and Sweden.
Göring met Adolf Hitler in 1921 and joined the small Nazi Party late in 1922. As a former officer, Göring was given command of Hitler’s Storm Troopers (the SA), a paramilitary organization whose methods included violent intimidation. Göring took part in the abortive Beer Hall (Munich) Putsch of November 1923, in which Hitler tried to seize power prematurely. During the putsch, Göring was badly wounded in the groin. His arrest was ordered, but he escaped into Austria. Given morphine to deaden the pain from his wounds, he became so severely addicted that he had to undergo treatment in 1925–26 at a mental hospital in Sweden.
In 1927 Göring returned to Germany and was taken back into the party leadership. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1928, becoming the president in 1932. As president of the Reichstag he helped bring Hitler to power as chancellor. During the rest of the decade, Göring held a series of other offices that he used to establish such elements of the Nazi state as the Gestapo (secret police) and the concentration camps for the “corrective treatment” of difficult opponents. He also became the commissioner for aviation and the head of the newly developed German air force, the Luftwaffe. In 1934 Göring ceded his position as security chief to Heinrich Himmler, thus ridding himself of responsibility for the Gestapo and the concentration camps.
It was Göring’s Luftwaffe that helped conduct the blitzkrieg that smashed Polish resistance and weakened country after country as Hitler’s campaigns progressed. But Göring was not capable of influencing Hitler’s preference for the production of bombers rather than fighter planes. As a result, the Luftwaffe’s capacity for defense declined as Hitler’s battlefronts extended from northern Europe to the Mediterranean and North Africa, and Göring lost face when the Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain or to prevent the Allied bombing of Germany. On the plea of ill health, Göring retired—as much as Hitler would let him—to a luxurious private life. He also underwent recurrent treatment for drug addiction.
Hitler was blind to Göring’s faults and maintained a close association with him. In 1939 Hitler declared him his successor and in 1940 gave him the special rank of Marshal of the Empire. The other Nazi leaders both resented Göring’s favored position and despised his self-indulgence. Hitler, however, did not displace him until the last days of the war, when, in accordance with the decrees of 1939, Göring attempted to assume the Führer’s powers, believing him to be encircled and helpless in Berlin. After Hitler’s suicide, Göring surrendered himself to the Americans.
Cured finally of his drug addiction during his period of captivity awaiting trial as a war criminal, Göring defended himself ably before the International Military Tribunal. He denied any complicity in the more hideous activities of the regime, which he claimed to be the secret work of Himmler. After Göring was sentenced to death, he asked to be shot instead of hanged. His request was denied, and on October 15, 1946, the night his execution was ordered, he took poison and died in his cell at Nuremberg.
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An interactive timeline of the Nuremberg Trials
|
en
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Robert H Jackson Center
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https://www.roberthjackson.org/nuremberg-timeline/
|
The President released on May 2nd a statement that I would undertake the task. It received considerable publicity and I was immediately deluged with applications for jobs. The executive order defined my authority.
I was designated to act as representative of the United States and as its chief counsel “in preparing and prosecuting charges of atrocities and war crimes against such leaders of the European Axis … as the United States may agree with any of the United Nations to bring to trial….” I was to receive no additional compensation, but should receive my expenses.
I was given broad authority by the executive order. One reason probably was that the other authorities were willing to get rid of the problem by delegating responsibility to me. In the second place, it was a totally unploughed field
We then went to work with might and main to get out a report to the President on a plan for conducting the trials. The staff devoted itself to it almost constantly. The President revealed the report at a press conference, gave copies of it to the press, and said that he had completely approved it as expressing the American position. Many men had been very skeptical about a trial because they could see no plan for it, felt that the project hadn’t been thought through, that it was carelessly entered upon and that it was likely to run amuck. On reading this report they had a new confidence in our enterprise
The conference at London was planned for June 25, 1945. We arrived and were ready for it, as were all of the other delegations but the Russian delegation did not appear until June 26th, when the conference finally got under way. Criticism of my appointment, upon the grounds that the President should not have called upon a member of the Supreme Court, would have to be weighted in the light of its affect on the choice of representatives of the other countries. There was no doubt that the position of justice of the Supreme Court carried with it great weight with foreign delegations in two ways. In the first place, the representative who held that life position of the independence and power had among the legal profession a good deal of prestige by reason of the office
On August 8, 1945 we signed the agreement, as I was authorized to do on behalf of the United States, and it was announced to the world. Up to that time there had been some press rumors that we were having difficulties in arriving at it. We had frankly admitted we had, but there had been no exploitation of our differences.
I may say that the chief critics of it were a few international lawyers who simply could not adjust themselves to the idea that the world had moved since the time of the Hague Conventions and that the treaties outlawing war and renouncing it as an instrument of policy had made a change in the old doctrine that it always is legal for a country to go to war for aggressive ends if it pleased its interests to do so.
The Reminiscences of Robert H. Jackson Columbia Univ. Oral History Research Office, 1955
So the task that immediately fell to me was to prepare the opening speech which I would deliver, and to get the evidence arranged for presentation in the following week to support my opening remarks. The speech seemed an important task to me because up to that time no one had disclosed to the world what the case really amounted to, what the evidence was and what law we were contending for.
The speech also seemed to have important public consequences because it would be the first full disclosure of the materials that we had captured and had at hand, and of the use we attempted to make of them. I had a rather strong sense of responsibility about the speech and recognized that it was probably the most important task of my life.
The Reminiscences of Robert H. Jackson Columbia Univ. Oral History Research Office, 1955, Pages 1390-1392
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 11
|
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/death-hanging-nuremberg-trials/
|
en
|
'Death by hanging': the Nuremberg Trials
|
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"The National Archives"
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2015-11-20T08:00:58+00:00
|
‘Nicht schuldig.’ (Not guilty.) These two German words pronounced somewhat defiantly, and almost flippantly, by 21 Nazi leaders, echoed through a very silent room of the Nuremberg Court on 21 November 1945, the second day of what the world would come to know as the Nuremberg Trials. Establishing the International Military Tribunal had not been […]
|
en
|
/wp-content/themes/tna-base/img/favicon.png
|
The National Archives blog
|
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/death-hanging-nuremberg-trials/
|
‘Nicht schuldig.’ (Not guilty.)
These two German words pronounced somewhat defiantly, and almost flippantly, by 21 Nazi leaders, echoed through a very silent room of the Nuremberg Court on 21 November 1945, the second day of what the world would come to know as the Nuremberg Trials.
Establishing the International Military Tribunal had not been an easy task. The London Charter of 8 August 1945 (FO 93/1/266) had defined its principles and procedures but, in practice, it was a judicial nightmare. There was no precedent for such an international tribunal combining different legal traditions. These crimes were of such atrocity and on such a scale that they went beyond the scope of any existing legal system. How could they be judged? Who should be judged? Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union all had their own list. After difficult negotiations, they settled on 24 men (FO 371/51402).
In the meantime, the British delegation was going through a crisis of its own. On 25 October 1945, Sinclair, the British prosecutor’s secretary, wrote to the Chief of Staff of the Control Commission to discuss ‘a matter that has been causing us here a bad headache’. Although the Court had been largely spared, Nuremberg was a ruined city and there was ‘no source of outside entertainment’. Yet the outcome of the negotiations also depended on the delegation’s capacity to display lavish hospitality. At the beginning of November, the prosecutor himself wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reiterating the request for ‘sufficient tobacco and liquor to smooth the way of these negotiations with our Allied colleagues’. In the end, spirits were provided by the Government Hospitality Fund, and Sinclair was able to write, just after the opening of the trials, that he was ‘hoping that soon a more frequent resort to the cup that cheers may serve to illume the sojourn of colleagues in a strange land’ (TS 26/171).
All being well on the liquor front, and the Allies having come to an agreement, the trial could begin. There were only 21 men sitting in the dock, as Robert Ley had committed suicide in prison, Martin Bormann was never found, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was deemed to ill to stand trial. They were:
Hermann Goering (Hitler’s number two)
Rudolf Hess (Hitler’s official successor until he flew to Scotland in 1941 to negotiate a separate peace)
Joachim von Ribbentrop (Minister for Foreign Affairs)
Wilhelm Keitel (Chief of the High Command of Armed Forces)
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Chief of the Security Police)
Alfred Rosenberg (the party’s ideologist)
Hans Frank (Governor of Poland)
Wilhelm Frick (Protector of Bohemia and Moravia)
Julius Streicher (Gauleiter of Franconia and ‘Jew-Baiter Number One’)
Walter Funk (Minister of Finance)
Hjalmar Schacht (former president of the Reichsbank)
Karl Dönitz (Commander in Chief of the German Navy and Head of State from 1 May 1945)
Erick Raeder (Admiral Inspector of the Navy)
Baldur von Schirach (Head of the Hitler Youth)
Fritz Sauckel (in charge of slave labour)
Alfred Jodl (Chief of the Operation Staff of the High Command of Armed Forces)
Franz von Papen (Ambassador to Turkey)
Artur Seyss-Inquart (Reichskommissar for the Occupied Dutch Territories and Chancellor of Austria for two days)
Albert Speer (Minister for Armament and Munitions)
Konstantin von Neurath (former Minister for Foreign Affairs)
Hans Fritzsche (Head of the Radio Division of the Ministry of Propaganda)
All these men had held senior positions and now stood before eight judges, two for each victorious nation, in what had been the Holy City of Nazism. The trial opened on 20 November 1945, presided over by British judge Lord Justice Lawrence, and was going to last four months and hold 403 open sessions in four languages (German, English, French and Russian) with simultaneous translation (FO 371/57435-57517). The defendants were indicted on four counts: ‘common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against humanity’, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity – all of which had been defined by Article 6 of the London Charter.
Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, was afraid the trial might be hampered by lack of evidence. The judges and their staff, however, were absolutely swamped with evidence. Witnesses gave oral evidence, which had a substantial impact, and the Tribunal received thousands of letters from the German public, volunteering information and submitting pictures and press cuttings. One of them insisted that it should be forbidden to use the title ‘Führer’ when referring to Hitler (FO 1019/55).
He also included a picture showing the entrance of a Hitler Youth camp – the inscription reads: ‘We were born to die for Germany’ (FO 1019/55).
An anonymous sender provided photographs of excellent (technical) quality, with captions in strikingly poor German, depicting ‘the victims and work of destruction by the SS’. Most of them are extremely shocking, others merely highly unpleasant and disturbing. One shows a very pale, bespectacled, black-clad woman standing threateningly in front of a cupboard. The inscription above her reads ‘everyone in this room must act and speak courteously’ (although English doesn’t really do justice to the chilling tone of command of the German phrase), and the poster on the wall advertises rules for parents. The caption on the back of the photograph states: ‘I am not guilty’ (FO 1019/55).
The final statements made by the defendants on 31 August 1946 show how dangerous these men still were, and how necessary a public trial was. Goering denied having anything to do with murder, Hess claimed to have acted out of his ‘ardent love for [his] people,’ and Seyss-Inquart reasserted his loyalty to Hitler (FO 371/57517).
The sentences were finally read in the afternoon of 1 October 1946: ‘Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering, on the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging’. The other sentences were:
Rudolf Hess – imprisonment for life
Joachim von Ribbentrop – death by hanging
Wilhelm Keitel – death by hanging
Ernst Kaltenbrunner – death by hanging
Alfred Rosenberg – death by hanging
Hans Frank – death by hanging
Wilhelm Frick – death by hanging
Julius Streicher – death by hanging
Walter Funk – imprisonment for life
Karl Doenitz – 10 years’ imprisonment
Erick Raeder – imprisonment for life
Baldur von Schirach – 20 years’ imprisonment
Fritz Sauckel – death by hanging
Alfred Jodl – death by hanging
Artur Seyss-Inquart – death by hanging
Albert Speer – 20 years’ imprisonment
Konstantin von Neurath – 15 years’ imprisonment
Despite the ‘dissenting opinion’ of Soviet judge Nikitchenko regarding Schacht, von Papen and Fritzsche, the three of them were acquitted. Martin Bormann, judged in abstentia, was sentenced to death by hanging (FO 371/57517).
The executions of those defendants condemned to death were an additional problem. The Americans wanted to carry them out in Berlin, but it was deemed preferable to remain in Nuremberg for security reasons, but also because it was imperative that their bodies ‘shouldn’t become objects of cult at a later date’ (FO 945/346).
All were executed on 16 October 1946 in the gymnasium of the prison, except Goering who committed suicide in his prison cell the day before. The Daily Express correspondent reported from Nuremberg: ‘I fear that in the bomb-blasted gymanasium of the Nuremberg prison a new legend of heroic militant Teutonism may have been born’ and quoted their last words. ‘Consider,’ he wrote, ‘the theme of “God save Germany and make her great once more”, which was the gist of all the hanged men’s last words. And, above all, consider Goering’s final defiance’(TS 26/172). To prevent this legend from growing, the bodies were incinerated in Munich and the ashes scattered over the river Isar.
This trial which opened 70 years ago was only the first and best known of the Nuremberg Trials. It was followed by 12 others, lasting until December 1949. It was at the time, and still is today, criticised for being the ‘victors’ justice administered over the losers’ and its moral legitimacy had been questioned – some had pointed out that the Soviets had committed Crimes against Humanity at Katyn and Crimes against Peace when they had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany (FO 371/56474).
However imperfect the Tribunal may have been, it led to the definition of international law, and of the very new notion of crime against humanity. It established the principle of individual responsibility. It was a civilised alternative to mob justice. Germany, its former allies and its former enemies could take the first step on the long road to reconciliation and recovery.
Let’s finally remember some of Justice Jackson’s opening words:
‘The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.’
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
| 4
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https://www.biography.com/political-figures/hermann-goring
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en
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Death, Nazi & Hitler
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"Life Events/Experience: Served in the Military",
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2014-04-02T04:38:09
|
Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal in 1946 but took his own life instead.
|
en
|
/_assets/design-tokens/biography/static/images/favicon.3635572.ico
|
Biography
|
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/hermann-goring
|
(1893-1946)
Who Was Hermann Göring?
Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He played a prominent role in organizing the Nazi police state in Germany and established concentration camps for the "corrective treatment" of individuals. Indicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, Göring was condemned to hang as a war criminal, but he took cyanide the night he was to be executed.
Early Life, Nazi Party and World War I
Hermann Göring was born in Rosenheim, Germany, on January 12, 1893. He was trained for a career in the military and received his commission in 1912, serving Germany as a pilot during World War I. After the war, Göring worked as a commercial pilot in Denmark and Sweden, where he met Swedish baroness Carin von Kantzow, who promptly divorced her husband and married Göring in February 1923.
Two years earlier, Göring had met Adolf Hitler and had joined the emerging National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party, and as a former military officer, he was given command of Hitler's stormtroopers (the "SA"). In November 1923, Göring took part in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, during which Hitler attempted to seize control of the German government by spearheading a revolution with the help of the SA.
During the putsch, Göring was severely wounded in the groin and, after his escape into Austria, was given morphine for the pain. As a result, Göring developed a severe drug addiction that would follow him for his entire life and twice lead him into a treatment center. After the putsch failed, Hitler was imprisoned (and released in 1924), and Göring remained in exile until he was granted amnesty in 1927. He then returned to Germany and was readmitted to the Nazi Party.
Göring's wife died in 1931, and the following year Göring rose to the presidency of the Reichstag (parliament) when the Nazi Party won the majority of seats in the July election. Hitler was named German chancellor on January 30, 1933, and before long a bill giving him dictatorial powers was passed. Hitler allowed Göring to create the Gestapo, or secret political police, and to establish concentration camps in which to imprison the Nazis' political opponents. He married his second wife Emma “Emmy” Sonnemann in 1935 with whom he had a daughter.
World War II
In 1934, Göring's Gestapo and the Nazis' parliamentary regiments, also known as "Schutzstaffel" or the "SS," carried out what has become known as the "Night of the Long Knives," in which 85 members of the political opposition were assassinated, thus consolidating Nazi power and quieting any further dissent. Göring's association with Hitler helped him rise to power alongside the Führer and, in 1935, he took command of the German air force—a position he held until the end of World War II.
In 1939, Hitler declared Göring his successor. The following year, he bestowed upon Göring the special rank of marshal of the empire. By April 1945, however, with the Allies moving in, Göring attempted to assume Hitler's powers in accordance with the pronouncements of 1939, as he considered Hitler to be pinned down and virtually helpless in Berlin. Convinced that this was an act of treason, Hitler stripped Göring of his offices and titles, and placed him under house arrest. By April 1945, the situation for the Nazis had become dire, and on April 30, 1945, Hitler and wife Eva Braun committed suicide. Göring was freed from prison, and he immediately sought out American troops and surrendered.
Trial and Death
While awaiting trial as a war criminal, Göring finally was able to break his morphine addiction, and he defended himself before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg. Göring denied any involvement in the regime's more monstrous activities but was condemned to death nonetheless. He pleaded to be shot instead of hanged, but the tribunal refused his request.
On October 15, 1946, the night that his execution was ordered — and a year and a half after Hitler had committed suicide in his own bunker — Göring took a cyanide capsule and died in his cell.
QUICK FACTS
Name: Hermann Wilhelm Goring
Birth Year: 1893
Birth date: January 12, 1893
Birth City: Rosenheim
Birth Country: Germany
Gender: Male
Best Known For: Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal in 1946 but took his own life instead.
Industries
World War I
Crime and Terrorism
World War II
Politics and Government
Astrological Sign: Capricorn
Nacionalities
German
Death Year: 1946
Death date: October 15, 1946
Death City: Nuremberg
Death Country: Germany
Fact Check
We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us!
CITATION INFORMATION
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 49
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/08/usa.secondworldwar
|
en
|
US guard tells how Nazi girlfriend duped him into helping Goering evade hangman
|
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2005-02-08T00:00:00
|
Enduring mystery of the 1946 Nuremberg trials apparently solved.
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/08/usa.secondworldwar
|
An enduring mystery of the 1946 Nuremberg trials was apparently solved yesterday when an American former prison guard claimed it was he who, as an unwitting accomplice, passed to Hermann Goering the cyanide capsule with which the Nazi number two cheated the noose.
Herbert Lee Stivers told the Los Angeles Times that a German girl called Mona had fooled him into smuggling a vial of liquid to Goering’s cell hidden in a fountain pen, telling him it was medicine.
Mr Stivers, now 78, said he had been persuaded to tell his story after nearly 60 years of silence by his daughter, and by the fact that the statute of limitations on his crime had expired. His telephone had been disconnected yesterday.
Historians reacted cautiously to Mr Stiver’s confession.
Most said it was plausible, but warned that it might now be impossible to determine the truth of what had happened.
Defiance
Goering, Hitler’s appointed deputy and heir, and head of the Luftwaffe, was sentenced to death for war crimes in October 1946 after a flamboyantly defiant performance in the dock, where he questioned the legitimacy of the Nuremberg tribunal, and defended the Third Reich.
On October 15, the eve of his execution, a guard saw him put his hand to his mouth and then choke. By the time a medic arrived, Goering was dead. Glass shards and traces of cyanide were found in his mouth.
He left a note addressed to the allied occupation authorities, declaring: “I would have had no objection to being shot. However, I will not facilitate execution of Germany’s Reichsmarschall by hanging! For the sake of Germany, I cannot permit this.
“Moreover, I feel no moral obligation to submit to my enemies’ punishment.
“For this reason, I have chosen to die like the great Hannibal.”
The question of how he got the poison has vexed historians.
As one of the white-helmeted guards at the Nuremberg trials, Mr Stivers was allowed to chat with the famous Nazi prisoners.
“Goering was a very pleasant guy. He spoke pretty good English. We’d talk about sports, ballgames. He was a flier, and we talked about Lindbergh,” he told the Los Angeles Times. Before the war Goering had awarded a medal to Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic.
One day, Mr Stivers was approached outside an officers’ club by a pretty, dark-haired girl who told him her name was Mona.
She teased him when he told her he was a guard, saying he did not look like one. To prove it, he said, “the next day I guarded Goering and got his autograph and handed that to her”. The following day he and Mona went to a house, and he was introduced to two men who called themselves Erich and Mathias.
They told him that Goering was “a very sick man” who was not being given the medicine he needed.
Mr Stivers said that twice he took notes hidden in a pen to Goering before taking in to him the glass vial that he had been told was medicine.
When he looked for his new-found girlfriend to return the pen, she had disappeared.”I never saw Mona again. I guess she used me,” Mr Stivers said.
“I wasn’t thinking of suicide when I took it to Goering. He was never in a bad frame of mind. He didn’t seem suicidal.
Gallows
“I would have never knowingly taken something in that I thought was going to be used to help someone cheat the gallows.”
“I felt very bad after his suicide,” he added. “ I had a funny feeling; I didn’t think there was any way he could have hidden it on his body.”
Fifteen years ago, Mr Stivers admitted his suspicions to his daughter who convinced him to tell his story for posterity’s sake.
“The issue has been a puzzle that no one has really solved,” said Michael Marrus, a University of Toronto professor who has written a documentary history of the Nuremberg trials.
“Is this story plausible? Well, just barely it is. Will we ever know for sure? Almost certainly not.”
Along with his death note, Goering left another to the prison’s commander saying that none of the guards was to blame for failing to find his cyanide ampule; he had arrived at the prison with it hidden in a jar of hair cream.
Another vial, standard issue for Nazi leaders, was subsequently found in the jar.
An official investigation ultimately accepted Goering’s explanation, and concluded that, after taking the capsule from his jar, he secreted it at different times in “his alimentary tract” and behind the rim of his cell toilet. However, this explanation has since been treated with scepticism.
“It was obviously a very light inquiry. There is no way of knowing if there was a deliberate cover-up. I doubt it was a cover-up but the investigation was very lax indeed,” Prof Marrus said.
In his 1984 book, The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide, another historian, Ben Swearingen, speculated that a US army lieutenant, Jack Wheelis, who had got on well with the Luftwaffe chief, may have allowed Goering to visit a prison storeroom where his luggage was held and retrieve the cyanide from his personal effects.
But that would have been a huge breach of security which would have been hard to carry out. Mr Wheelis and Mr Swearingen are now both dead.
Mr Stivers is not the first American soldier to come forward claiming to have helped Goering kill himself.
In 2003, Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt reported a conversation with a man living in Florida called Ned Putzell, a veteran of the US Office of Strategic Services (wartime precursor to the CIA).
He claimed to have given Goering one of the cyanide pills issued to OSS agents behind the lines. The trouble with this story is that description of a pill does not match the evidence that Goering bit down on a glass ampoule, and Mr Stiver’s account better fits the known facts.
Fighter ace and addict
· Hermann Goering, army officer’s son, born in 1893 at Rosenheim, Bavaria
· A first world war flying ace, taking over Red Baron’s squadron and winning the Iron Cross
· In 1923 joined Hitler’s Nazi party and made head of SA or brownshirts. In failed Munich putsch was injured in the groin and fled to Sweden; became obese and addicted to morphine due to injury
· Elected to Reichstag in 1928. Once Nazis took power in 1933, became interior minister and set up Gestapo
· When war began in 1939, made Hitler’s deputy and heir
· As Luftwaffe commander made mistake of switching to Blitz allowing RAF to win Battle of Britain in 1940; made Hitler furious by failed promise to supply Stalingrad army by air in 1942
· In 1941 gave order to SS chief to plan “final solution of the Jewish question”
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Hermann Göring (aka Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, leading Nazi official, Hitler's successor and convicted war criminal.
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William Hastings Burke
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https://www.whastingsburke.com/hermann-goering/
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Hermann Göring
(aka Hermann Goering)
GÖRINGopedia
Hermann Göring (also spelt Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, key Nazi official, military leader and convicted war criminal.
He was Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany and authorised the Final Solution.
The spelling of the family name varies across the English-language literature. For the most part, this biography uses the German spelling of ‘Göring’, except in areas with stronger associations with the English spelling of ‘Goering’, such as around the Nuremberg trials and FAQs circulating in the English-speaking world.
Origins
Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born on the 12th of January 1893 at Marienbad Sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria (Germany).1 He was the fourth child of Heinrich Ernst Göring (1839 – 1913) and Franziska Göring, née Tiefenbrunn (1859 – 1923). His mother was known to the family as Fanny. Her family were yeoman land holders situated between Tyrol (Austria) and Southern Bavaria (Germany). Hermann’s father came from a long line of Prussian statesmen and bureaucrats.
At the time of Hermann’s birth, Heinrich Ernst Göring was the German Consul General to Haiti. Before which, he served as a circuit judge in Germany and the Reichskommissar (Imperial Commissioner) of German South-West Africa.2
Hermann’s first name comes from his godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein (more below) and his middle name was either a tribute to Kaiser Wilhelm I or his grandfather Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann was the second youngest of a large family. He had five half-siblings through his father’s earlier marriage to Ida Remd and four full brothers and sisters, including Karl Ernst (b. 3 August 1885), Olga Sofie Therese (b. 16 January 1889), Paula Rosa Elisabeth (b. 13 May 1890) and Albert Günther Göring (b. 9 March 1895), a humanitarian and Nazi opponent.
Heinrich Ernst Göring
Source: Koloniales Bildarchiv | Date: 1906
Troubled
Hermann was just six weeks old when his mother Fanny left him to be by her husband’s side in Haiti. He was placed in the care of Frau Graff, a close family friend living in the town of Fürth near Nuremberg. She acted as Hermann’s surrogate mother until the Görings returned some three years later.3
Upon the birth of Hermann’s younger brother Albert, the Göring family was invited to live in Burg Veldenstein, a Franconian castle owned by the Göring children’s godfather Dr Hermann Epenstein. The family spent their summers in Epenstein’s other castle, Burg Mauterndorf, in the Tauern mountains of Austria.
The future Reichsmarschall had a troubled school life. He first attended a local kindergarten in Fürth but was pulled out for behavioural issues. He was educated by a private tutor for the next four years and then shipped off to a boarding school in Ansbach. Hermann immediately disliked his new environment. He detested his music classes and the school’s cuisine. At one stage, he led a student protest against the school conditions. When the revolt failed, he reportedly sent his bedding ahead, sold his violin for ten marks for his train fare and absconded home to Burg Veldenstein.4
Outside of school, young Hermann was said to be a confident and athletic young boy. By the age of ten, he had scaled the cliffs of Burg Veldenstein, and by thirteen he had reached the peak of Austria’s highest mountain, the 3798m Großglockner.5
Did you know that Hermann’s godfather and idol was half-Jewish?
Dr Hermann Epenstein was a wealthy physician and Austrian aristocrat with the title Ritter von Mauternburg. He inherited most of his wealth from his father, who was a physician at the court of King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia and a real estate speculator. He was also Jewish. He converted to Catholicism when he married Epenstein Jr’s mother.6
Though born and raised Catholic, Dr Hermann Epenstein would have been deemed half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Race Laws. This set of laws was, of course, enacted by the Nazi regime spearheaded by his godson, Hermann.
Hermann was Epenstein’s favourite godson, according to older sister Olga Rigele. The feeling was mutual. While in boarding school, Hermann wrote an essay about his hero, Epenstein. He was reprimanded by the principal and forced to write a hundred lines of: ‘I shall not write essays in praise of Jews.’ He was then bullied by his peers and forced to walk around the schoolyard with a sign attached to his neck stating: ‘My godfather is a Jew’.7
Many years later during the 1938 pogrom Kristallnacht, the Jewish victims of Hermann’s Nazi regime were forced to wear similar signs around their necks.
Cadet
After a series of altercations in boarding school, Epenstein stepped in and enrolled Hermann in a military academy in Karlsruhe.
Hermann flourished in his new environment. In March 1911, he attained a ‘quite good’ in Latin, English and French, a ‘good’ in cartography and comprehension, a ‘very good’ in history, maths and physics and an ‘excellent’ in geography. His report card read: ‘Goering has been an exemplary pupil and he has developed a quality that should take him far: he is not afraid to take a risk.’8 With such a report card, Hermann was offered a place at the renowned cadet college in Lichterfelde, near Berlin. This was the breeding ground for Germany’s future officers.
In December 1913, Hermann was awarded the title of officer after achieving magna cum laude in each subject. A month later, he was assigned a commission in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 in Mülhausen (now Mulhouse), located then in the south-west of Germany, on the French/German border.9
Cadet Hermann Göring
Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R25668 | Date: 1907
Oberleutnant Göring
Author: Nicola Perscheid | Date: 1918
Fighter Ace
At the outbreak of WWI, Hermann’s Prinz Wilhelm Regiment No. 112 was initially held back on the other side of the Rhine. Once the signal for attack was finally granted, he saw action over only a few skirmishes before being invalided with an acute case of rheumatoid arthritis.
In a sanatorium in Freiburg, Hermann met Bruno Lörzer, a young air force aspirant. Lörzer invited him on board his plane as an observer. During one reconnaissance flight over Verdun, he took vivid and invaluable pictures of the French battery at Côte de Talon. These crucial photos won him the Iron Cross First Class on the 25th of March 1915 and the chance to train as a pilot.10
In 1916, Hermann’s plane was shot down, consigning him to a year of idleness. In February 1917, he was able to join the Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron). By June 1918 he had notched up twenty-one hits. For this, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite.11
Hermann all of a sudden burst into the realm of German celebrity. His face was all over the front pages of newspapers and on magazine covers. His portrait was passed between the sticky fingers of children trading World War I fighter ace cards.
Did you know that Hermann took over the Red Baron’s squadron?
On the 21st of April 1918, the hitherto untouchable Red Baron was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Richthofen was succeeded by Hauptmann Wilhelm Reinhard, but he would not lead the squadron for long. While flight-testing a new Zeppelin-Lindau D.I on 3 July 1918, he plunged to his death after a strut connected to the upper wing broke. It was the same plane that Hermann had tested only minutes before.
And so another twist of fate saw the appointment of ‘No. 178.654, 8. 7. 18 Oberlt. Hermann Göring’ as the commander of the Red Baron squadron on 8 July 1918.12 He led the squadron until the end of the war.
Vagabond
After the war, there came a period of political and social unrest in Germany. The streets were flooded with disenfranchised war veterans like Hermann. In Berlin, Hermann joined the ranks of the Freikorps, a group of paramilitary units formed in the wake of WWI. Here, he took an active role as a leader, marking his first step into politics. However, his political aspirations fizzled out ultimately with the Freikorps’ failed 1920 Kapp Putsch.
After working as a consultant with Anthony Fokker for a stint, Hermann formed a flying circus in the summer of 1920 with four of his old fighter-pilot comrades. Together, they entertained the crowds of Scandinavia with aerobatic stunts.
He later found work at the Swedish airline Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm as a pilot. While transporting a wealthy passenger, Count Eric von Rosen, to Rockelstad Slott, he met Carin von Kantzow.13 Love struck, Carin divorced her officer husband Nils von Kantzow in December 1922. Hermann and Carin married on 3 February 1923 in Stockholm before moving to Munich.14
In November 1922, Hermann heard Adolf Hitler speak for the first time in a beer hall in Munich. Hitler struck a chord with Hermann when he denounced the Treaty of Versailles and spoke of restoring German pride. Hermann soon joined the Nazi Party and within a year, he was commanding the party paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA). At this stage, Hitler and his party were not taken seriously by the military, the industrialists and the established order in Germany. Hermann’s big name and clout provided the party the legitimacy that Hitler craved.
Carin Göring
Source: Henry B. Goodwin | Date: December 1927
Hermann & Hitler
Source: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized | Date: 1929
Outlaw
Exactly one year on from their first meeting, the budding partnership between Hermann and Hitler nearly came to a fatal end after the failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November 1923. In a clash with the Bavarian state police, Hermann was shot in the groin.15 With a warrant out for his arrest, Hermann fled to Austria and ultimately Sweden. The morphine that he was given for the pain led to an addiction that he would maintain right up until his arrest after WWII. Swinging between comatose and lunatic rage, he was admitted to multiple Swedish mental institutions.16 His only saviour was his loyal wife Carin.
The Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial for treason elevated the small Bavarian Nazi party onto the national stage. Hitler served only nine months in jail before his release in December 1924. Hermann returned to Germany in 1927 after receiving amnesty. The following year in the German Federal Election, Hermann won a seat in the Reichstag, alongside eleven other party colleagues.17
In the July 1932 federal election in Germany, the Nazi party capitalised on the turmoil of the Great Depression to win 230 seats. This made them the largest party in the Reichstag.18 It also allowed Hermann to be elected the President of the Reichstag. It was bitter-sweet for Hermann as a year before he had lost his dear wife Carin. Having long suffered from a chronic heart condition, she died in Stockholm at 4:00am on 17 October 1931.19
The Nazi party won less seats (196) in the following federal election in November 1932.21 But after months of political manoeuvring, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
Did you know that Hermann was not initially impressed with Hitler?
While awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Hermann Goering described his first encounters with Hitler to the American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn:
‘I was against the Versailles Treaty and I was against the democratic state, which failed to solve the problem of unemployment and which instead of making Germany a powerful nation was turning it into a small, minor state. I am a German nationalist and have high ideals for Germany. … I met Hitler in 1922 at a meeting and was not too impressed with him at first. Like myself, he said very little at this first meeting. A few days afterward I heard Hitler give an address in a Munich beer hall where he spoke about a greater Germany, the abolition of the Versailles Treaty, arms for Germany, and a future glory of the German people. So I joined forces with him and became a member of the National Socialist Party.’20
Heir apparent
Hermann and the party used the Reichstag Fire of 27 February 1933 to eliminate their Communist rivals, who were blamed for the fire. The Reichstag Fire Decree was passed the next day and around 4,000 Communist party members were arrested.22 As the Interior Minister of Prussia, Hermann oversaw the formation of the first concentration camps in Germany, which initially arose to accommodate these mass arrests.
Around the same time, he created the Gestapo before passing the leadership to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, along with control of the concentration camps. This period saw Hermann expand his power in Germany. In 1933, he was appointed the Minister of Aviation, the Minister-President of Prussia and the Chief of the Prussian Police.23
In October 1936, he was appointed the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan to lead the German rearmament programme. This was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
In July 1937, Hermann established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring industrial conglomerate. With a nominal capital of 2.4 billion Reichsmarks and a labour force of 500 million, it would become the largest company in Europe between 1941 and 1945.24
On his way to becoming the second most powerful man in the Third Reich, Hermann found love again in the actress Emmy Sonnemann. The pair married on 10 April 1935 in Berlin.25 Three years later, their daughter Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring was born on 2 June 1938.
President of the Reichstag
Source: La BnF | Date: 1937
Blitzkrieger
On 12 March 1938, Austria was annexed by Germany in what was known as the Anschluss. On 26 March 1938, Hermann triumphantly rolled into Vienna to deliver a bellicose speech before heading to his hometown of Mauterndorf where he was warmly greeted by the townsfolk.
At the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, Hermann’s Luftwaffe (air force) played a crucial role in Germany’s blitzkrieg and battlefield success. The major cities of Poland were bombed and the Polish Air Force was decimated within a week.26 The Luftwaffe achieved similar success in the subsequent invasions of Norway (8 April – 10 June 1940), the Netherlands (10–17 May 1940), Belgium (10–28 May 1940 and France (10 May – 25 June 1940).
In the Field Marshal Ceremony of 19 July 1940, Hitler awarded Hermann the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross and promoted him to the highest military office with the title of Reichsmarschall.27 Meanwhile, Hermann began to amass a collection of artwork and treasures that were commandeered in each vanquished country.
Hermann and the Luftwaffe could not repeat their feats against the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain. The strategic bombing campaign and the terror bombing over London failed to pressure Britain into peace negotiations or facilitate the planned land invasion Operation Sea Lion.
Cracks began to appear in Hermann’s political standing in the Nazi Party.
Did you know that Hermann had an anti-Nazi brother?
It is little known that Hermann had a younger brother who fought against the Nazi regime. Albert Göring (1895-1966) was a German-Austrian engineer, businessman, prominent Nazi opponent and humanitarian. Prior and throughout World War II, he either aided, protected or saved Jews, members of the Czech Resistance and other victims of his brother’s regime.
There are many cases documented where Hermann intervened at the request of a family member and wielded his power to assist the very people his regime persecuted. The first case involved a request by his wife Emmy Sonnemann to help a fellow actress Henny Porten whose husband was Jewish. Through the petitioning of Albert and sometimes their older sister Olga, Hermann provided assistance to other prominent individuals, including Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria, Austrian Chancellor Dr Kurt von Schuschnigg and the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár.
Hermann also came to the aid of his brother on numerous occasions when he fell in trouble with the Gestapo. This protection enabled Albert to continue his work in helping victims of Nazi persecution.28
Call me Meyer
Hermann, the Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe, once famously declared: “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You can call me Meyer.”29 Meyer was a very common surname in Germany. With this reference, Hermann seemed to suggest that he would reduce himself to a commoner should an Ally bomb land on the Ruhr – the industrial hub of Germany at the time.
As History shows, the Allies‘ bombs not only reigned over the Ruhr but all of Germany. By the end of World War II, the RAF estimated that 19 German cities were ‘virtually destroyed’, including Hamburg, Cologne and Hannover, as well as 19 ‘seriously damaged’, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich.30
As further failures in the East built up, Göring and the General Staff of the Luftwaffe placed all their hopes on the development of Wunderwaffe (wonder weapons) to sway the war in their favour. Despite the deployment of the V-1 and V-2 ballistic missiles, jet-engine aircraft and some other projects, the wonder weapons could not be produced in scale and time to deliver the decisive blow.31
By the end of the war, Hermann’s status in the Third Reich was at rock bottom.
Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe
Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe | Date: September 1940
Goering, Hermann - wanted
Source: U.S. Air Force | Date: 11 May 1945
Downfall
On 20th of April 1945, Hermann attended Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday at the Führerbunker with other top Nazi officials. He then hurried down south to his residence in Berchtesgaden.
Three days later, with Berlin about to fall to the Red Army, he sent a telegram to Hitler’s bunker. He requested permission to implement the Führer’s succession decree of the 29th of June 1941. This decree stated that Göring would succeed the leadership of the Third Reich if Hitler was to be ever incapacitated. He ended the telegram with a final condition: if he did not receive a reply by ten o’clock that evening, he would assume that Hitler was in fact incapacitated and would therefore actualise the edict.
Hitler decried it as a treasonous act, calling Hermann a ‘morphine addict’ before weeping ‘like a child’. He then authorised a radio broadcast composed by Martin Bormann, his private secretary. It accused Hermann of high treason, an act warranting the death penalty. Though in Hermann’s case, it would be downgraded to a dismissal of all offices.32 On 29 April 1945, Hitler expelled Hermann from the party.
On 7 May 1945, Hermann surrendered to the US Brigadier General Robert Stack of the 36th Infantry Division outside the Austrian town of Radstadt.33
Charge sheet and role in Nazi crimes against humanity
March 1933: As the Interior Minister of Prussia, Hermann oversaw the formation of the first concentration camps in Germany in response to The Reichstag Fire Decree and the mass arrests of Communist party members.34
26 April 1933: Hermann created the Gestapo before transferring control to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934, along with the management of the concentration camps.35
15 September 1935: On the day the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, Hermann declared to the Reichstag: “God has created the races. He did not want equality and therefore we energetically reject any attempt to falsify the concept of race purity by making it equivalent with racial equality. … This equality does not exist. We have never accepted such an idea and therefore we must reject it in our laws likewise and must accept that purity of race which nature and providence have destined for us.”36
26 March 1938: In a speech in annexed Vienna, Hermann announced: “Today Vienna cannot rightly claim to be a German City. One cannot speak of a German City in which 300,000 Jews live. This city has an important German mission in the field of culture as well as in economics. For neither of these can we make use of the Jews.”37
12 November 1938: After the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht, Hermann ordered the Jewish community to pay one billion Reichsmarks as compensation to the German people, despite the majority of the damage having occurred a Jewish-owned premises.38
31 July 1941: Hermann authorised Reinhard Heydrich to initiate the Final Solution by submitting ‘an overall plan that shows the preliminary organizational, practical and material measures requisite for the implementation of the projected final solution of the Jewish question [Endlösung der Judenfrage].’39
1942-1945: Hermann’s industrial conglomerate Reichswerke Hermann Göring employed slave labour in a collection of industrial plants, including forced ammunition plant workers from concentration camps in Drütte (from 1942), Watenstedt/Leinde (from 1944) and Salzgitter-Bad (from 1944).40
Criminal
After being temporarily interred in Augsburg (Bavaria), ‘Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering’ was flown to Camp Ashcan in Luxembourg and held with other Nazi prisoners of war. He lost around 80 pounds (36kg) after being weaned off his morphine addiction and receiving a strict diet.41 He was tested to have an IQ of 138.42
On paper, Hermann was the second highest-ranking Nazi official to be tried during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. But that was only on account of Hitler’s last minute decree to make Admiral Karl Dönitz the Reich President. Hermann was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’43
In a trial lasting 218 days, Hermann’s cross-examination and defence lasted over two weeks. Hermann pleaded not guilty and remained defiant during his famous court battle with Robert H. Jackson. He was found guilty on all four counts and was sentenced to death by hanging on 30 September 1946.44
Prisoner Number One: Hermann Goering
Source: U.S. Army | Date: 8 March 1946
Cheating the hangman
On the 15th of October 1946, Hermann was found dead in his Nuremberg cell after taking potassium cyanide. It was the morning of his scheduled execution. When Hermann was sentenced to death, he requested a soldier’s death by firing squad. This was denied. Faced with a common criminal’s hanging, he chose to cheat the hangman.
Speculation continues to this day as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream.
Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served as a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain pen.45
Hermann’s body, one eye open in a frozen wink, was taken to the execution hall and displayed in front of witnesses. Just after midnight, Hermann’s corpse was dispatched, along with the corpses of his ten former Nazi colleagues, to a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Wentzbach creek.46 There is no gravestone or official marking for Hermann Wilhelm Göring.
Hermann Goering Q&A
Who was Hermann Goering?
Hermann Göring (AKA Hermann Goering) was a German WWI fighter ace, politician, military leader, convicted war criminal and Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi Party. He was the most important Nazi official to be tried and sentenced to death at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. On the night before his execution, he committed suicide by cyanide poisoning.
What did Goering do?
Goering was the second most powerful figure in the Nazi regime. He held numerous civil and military positions in the Third Reich, including the President of the Reichstag, the Interior Minister of Prussia, the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, the Commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and Reichsmarschall, the highest military office. He established the first concentration camps, oversaw the rearmament of Germany leading up to World War II and authorised the Final Solution.
How did Goering die?
On the night before he was to be hanged on 15 October 1946, Goering committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule. To this day, speculation continues as to how the capsule was smuggled into his jail cell. Initially, it was thought that he had hidden it himself in a jar of skin cream or that a young woman had passed him the capsule. Herbert Lee Stivers, a former US Army who served a guard during the trials, came forward in 2005. He claimed that he was approached by a young German woman and unwittingly passed on what he thought was medicine to Goering. It was alleged to be hidden inside a fountain.
Where is Hermann Goering buried?
The convicted war criminal was not buried in a cemetery. His corpse was cremated, along with ten other condemned Nazi colleagues, in a US crematorium in Munich. His ashes were tossed later that day into the barely three-metre-wide Wenzbach creek in Munich. There is no gravestone or physical marking for Göring and his Nazi co-conspirators.
What was Goering charged with?
Goering was indicted on four counts: (1.) Common Plan or Conspiracy, (2.) Crimes against Peace – ‘waging of a war of aggression’, (3.) War Crimes and (4.) Crimes against Humanity – the ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population’. In regards to the latter, Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated at the time: ‘Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.’47
Notes
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 21.
Singer, K. (1940) Göring: Germany’s most dangerous man, (Melbourne, Australia: Hutchinson & C0. LTD), p. 17.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.4.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.9.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 22-24.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp 6-8.
Ibid, p.9.
Ibid, p.10.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 28-29.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 31-32.
Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), p. 28.
Frischauer, W. (1951) Ein Marschallstab Zerbrach: eine Göring-Biographie, (Ulm: Münster Verlag), pp. 36-37.
Dungern, O. (1936) ‘Uhnentafel des Ministerpräsisdenten und Reichsluftfahrtministers Generalobersten Hermann Göring’ IN: Ahnentafeln berühmter Deutscher: Herausgegeben von der Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte, (Leipzig: Zentralstelle für Deutsche Personen und Familiengeschichte).
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 56.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 60-61.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 66.
Evans, R. J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 297.
Mosley, L. (1974) The Reich Marshal: a biography of Hermann Goering, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p.166.
Goldensohn, L. (2004) The Nuremberg Interviews. Ed. R. Gellately, 19th ed., (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), p. 132.
Gonschior.de
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 11.
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
Neumann, K. (2000) Shifting memories: the Nazi past in the new Germany, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 20-21; Overy, R. J. (1994) War and economy in the Third Reich, (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 159.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 139.
Hooton, E. (1999) Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe, (London : Brockhampton Press), p. 179.
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 245.
Burke, W. H. (2009) Thirty Four, (London: Wolfgeist Ltd.).
Fleming, N. (1979), August 1939: The Last Days of Peace, (London: Peter Davies), p. 171.
Frankland, N. (1951) The Planning of the Bombing Offensive and its Contribution to German Collapse, UK Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Neufeld, M. (2020) The Myth of the German “Wonder-Weapons”, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Fest, J. (2002) Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches; Eine historische Skizze, (Berlin: Alexander Fest Verlag), p. 102.
Brigadier General Robert I. Stack (Assistant Division Commander) Eyewitness Account, Capture of Goering, The 36th Infantry Division Association Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), pp. 108-109.
Evans, R. J. (2005) The Coming of the Third Reich, (New York: Penguin), p. 29.
United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality United States, Department of State, United States War Department and the International Military Tribunal (1946) Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol VI, (Washington: United States Government Printing Office), pp. 158-159. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Hermann Göring speech in Vienna, 26th March 1938, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
German Jews are Fined, The Jewish Virtual Library. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Authorisation letter of Goering to Heydrich, July 31, 1941, House of the Wannsee Conference: Memorial and Educational Site. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
The Memorial Place KZ Drütte, Gedenk- und Dokumentationsstätte KZ Drütte. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Kelley D. M. (1961) 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines the Nazi Criminals, (New York: MacFadden Publications), p. 44.
Gilbert, G. (1961) Nuremberg Diary, (New York: the New American Library), p. 34.
First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Manvell, R. & Fraenkel, H. (2011) Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader, (London: Skyhorse), p. 337.
Borger, J. (2005), US guard tells how Nazi girlfriend duped him into helping Goering evade hangman, The Guardian. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
Maser, W. (2000) Hermann Göring: Hitlers janusköpfiger Paladin; die politische Biographie, (Berlin: Quintessenz Verlags-GmbH), pp. 466-467.
First Day, Reading of the Indictment, 20 November 1945, Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 2, pp. 29 – 94. [Accessed 24 October 2023]
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| 72
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/goering-hermann-1893-1946
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en
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Goering, Hermann (1893–1946)
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GOERING, HERMANN (1893–1946)BIBLIOGRAPHYOne of the most important leaders of Nazi Germany. Source for information on Goering, Hermann (1893–1946): Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction dictionary.
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/sites/default/files/favicon.ico
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/goering-hermann-1893-1946
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
One of the most important leaders of Nazi Germany.
Hermann Goering was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria, into a well-connected, Protestant, upper-middle-class family. His father, a lawyer and diplomat, served in the Reich Consular Service and was the first resident minister plenipotentiary in German Southwest Africa. After graduating with distinction from military cadet college in Berlin, Goering fought in the First World War, first in the German army as an infantry lieutenant and then in the air force, where he was the last commander, in 1918, of the famous Richthofen Fighter Squadron. His courageous exploits as a combat pilot earned him the Iron Cross (First Class) and the much coveted Pour le Mérite.
After Germany's defeat in 1918, Goering, the war hero, worked as a show flier at home and abroad and, as an avowed anti-Semite and anticommunist, became involved in right-wing nationalist political and paramilitary circles whose aim was to destroy the democratic Weimar Republic. Having settled in Munich and married Baroness Karin von Fock-Kantzow in 1922, he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) the same year and assumed command of the party's paramilitary organization, the Storm Troopers (SA), until the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. Seriously wounded during this escapade, he fled abroad, finally to Sweden, where he became a morphine addict during his medical recovery program. When a general amnesty by the German government allowed him to return to Germany in 1927, Goering rejoined the NSDAP, took a sales job with Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) in Berlin, and was elected one of the party's Reichstag deputies in 1928. Henceforth, his significance for the party grew substantially, for although he did not hold formal office, he became Adolf Hitler's roving ambassador in conservative, upper-class social, business, military, and political circles, soliciting financial support and sympathy for the Nazi cause. Goering became the respectable, almost debonair face of Nazism, an image boosted by his election as president of the Reichstag in late 1932. He emerged as an influential figure in the political intrigues that culminated in Hitler's appointment as Reich chancellor in January 1933.
Goering played a conspicuous role in consolidating the Third Reich. As Prussian minister of the interior and chief of police and of the Gestapo in Prussia, he attacked political rivals, especially those on the Left, consigning many of them to concentration camps. In June 1934 he was also the mastermind of the Roehm Purge, the murder of putative "socialist" elements in the SA and other suspected opponents. Thereafter, his power base extended rapidly. In 1935 he was appointed head of the Luftwaffe and in 1936 was given overall control of the Four-Year Economic Plan, which was designed to promote autarky and establish Nazi domination over the economy. The establishment in 1937 of the state-owned Hermann-Goering-Works, a huge industrial complex employing some 700,000 workers, allowed him to quickly amass a substantial personal fortune. His antiSemitism was fully displayed during and after the infamous "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) in November 1938, when the Nazis attacked Jews throughout Germany. It was Goering who fined the Jewish community a billion marks and who confiscated and "Aryanized" their businesses and property. A determined supporter of the Third Reich's expansionist foreign policy, he continued to accumulate offices and titles, including chairman of the Reich Council for National Defense in August 1939, Hitler's heir apparent in September 1939, and field marshal in June 1940.
As the war progressed, however, his ostentatiously lavish lifestyle, which included ownership of a palace in Berlin, a country residence, and valuable (if often stolen) works of art, began to cloud his political and military judgment, while the failures of the Luftwaffe, in the Battle of Britain and on the eastern front, and of the war economy caused Hitler not only to sideline him from 1942 onward but also, shortly before the end of the war, to strip him of all offices and membership in the party. Despite a bravura performance before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1946, Goering was condemned to death for crimes against peace and humanity, but before being hanged he committed suicide on 15 October 1946.
Goering played an integral role in the rise and development of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich. His ruthless ambition, militant nationalism, and loyalty to Nazism made him an invaluable ally of Hitler, until his personal and political weaknesses eventually caused his downfall. A multifaceted personality who enjoyed a public persona as the jovial, almost avuncular face of the Nazi regime, Goering was incontrovertibly, nonetheless, one of its most significant, amoral exponents.
See alsoAnti-Semitism; Germany; Kristallnacht; Nazism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frischauer, Willi. The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. Boston, 1951.
Goering, Emmy. My Life with Goering. London, 1972.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris. New York, 1999.
——. Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. New York, 2000.
Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. Hermann Göring. London, 1968.
Mosley, Leonard. The Reich Marshal. Garden City, N.Y., 1974.
Overy, R. J. Goering: The "Iron Man." London, 1984.
Peter D. Stachura
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FactBench
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1
| 27
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https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/20/i-knew-my-father-would-be-hanged-remembering-nuremberg
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en
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‘I knew my father would be hanged’: Remembering Nuremberg
|
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2020-11-20T00:00:00
|
The son of a senior Nazi sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials on growing up in the shadow of his father’s crimes.
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en
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/favicon_aje.ico
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Al Jazeera
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https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/20/i-knew-my-father-would-be-hanged-remembering-nuremberg
|
On November 20, 1945, several months after the end of World War II, a series of military tribunals began in the German city of Nuremberg.
The first of the trials was the Major War Crimes Trial, in which 22 high-ranking Nazis stood trial in the Palace of Justice. Twelve of the defendants would be sentenced to death.
A further 12 trials – known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings – were held at Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949.
Seventy-five years after the Nuremberg trials began, we hear from three people upon whose lives the trials and the events that proceeded them cast a long shadow: the son of one of those on trial, the son of one of the prosecutors and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
Niklas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, the governor-general of German-occupied Poland during World War II. Known as the “Butcher of Poland”, Hans Frank was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials for his role in the deaths of millions of Jews and Poles, and executed.
Here, Niklas, who was born in 1939, describes what it was like to grow up with a father who was a high-ranking Nazi:
I remember visiting my father in the prison in Nuremberg when I was seven years old.
On the other side of the door was Hermann Goring, a very senior member of the Nazi party who was also on trial at Nuremberg (he was sentenced to death but committed suicide hours before he was due to be executed), talking to his wife, Emmy, and their little daughter, Edda.
I sat on my mother’s lap and my father was on the other side of a large window with small holes at the bottom of it, through which we could hear each other talk.
“We will soon celebrate Christmas happily in our house at Schliersee [in Upper Bavaria],” he told me, and I knew he was lying. His lie tore into my heart.
That was my last visit to my father.
There hadn’t yet been a verdict, but his lawyer had visited my mother many times over the summer of 1946 and prepared her for what would happen. It had been a summer full of adventures for me. The American soldiers were friendly and I would run behind them collecting the remains of their cigarettes to take to my mother.
The year before, in the autumn of 1945, I had first seen the pictures in the newspapers – photographs of corpses piled high. Among them were children my own age.
I had known that my father was someone important; we lived in castles, had servants and I thought of Poland as our private property. Then suddenly I learned that my father was somehow connected to these photographs.
I remember my oldest brother Norman, who was born in 1928, going to our mother and saying, “If these pictures are true, our father will have no chance to survive.”
I did not understand what had been going on, but the fact my father was connected to those photographs was deeply disturbing to me.
I had known that we were privileged, that we were not “normal” people, but the war was not that real to me. I recall one time, when I was four or five, sitting in my father’s black Mercedes and seeing a German tank that had been burned. Our chauffeur said “oh that’s a Tiger Tank” and I was thrilled. But I never experienced any bad things, any war things. There was only one time, towards the end of the war, when we were sitting at Schliersee lake and saw an armada of planes on their way to bomb Munich.
The ‘stranger’
One of my most significant memories of my father is from when I was about three years old and we were in Belvedere Palace, where we stayed sometimes.
I was running around a large round table, trying to run into my father’s arms, but he was always just out of reach. My father mocked me: “What do you want Niki [this was what my family called me]? You do not belong to our family. You are a fremdi.” He meant a fremder, a stranger. The implication was that I was illegitimate, that I was not his child.
When you are rejected in this way by your father, you only have two options: You can become a psychological wreck or you can keep a healthy distance from your father, which, subconsciously or by chance, is what I did.
According to a rumour in the family, my presumed biological father was Karl Lasch, the governor of Galicia and one of my father’s closest friends.
Heinrich Himmler, who was the head of the SS, did not like my father and wanted him replaced. But because he could not get Adolf Hitler’s permission for this, he tried instead to hurt people close to my father. Lasch’s father would drive a truck full of stolen goods from Poland to Germany and when Himmler discovered this, he arrested Lasch, knowing that he was my father’s friend. Himmler had Lasch killed in the prison of Breslau.
When my father learned of this, he told my mother, “Now Niki’s father is dead.”
My mother was deeply upset at the accusation and made it clear to my father that it was not true.
My mother had many affairs, but she always aborted those children who were not fathered by Frank. I later learned that she’d had two or three abortions. She would let nothing get in the way of her becoming the “queen of Poland”.
Shopping in the Krakow ghetto
My mother would go to the Krakow ghetto to buy fur and expensive cloth that her personal tailor would make into clothes.
I recall one occasion when I was about four when I was sitting in the back of the car with my nanny, Hilde, during one of my mother’s shopping trips to the ghetto.
Near the car was a boy of between eight and 10, looking at me in a very sad way. I stuck out my tongue at him. He didn’t respond; he just walked away. I felt triumphant towards him, but Hilde pulled me back. I didn’t understand where we were.
My mother was very cold. Like my father, she didn’t care about the death and misery of others. She just enjoyed her life – the dinners with guests, the shopping trips.
My mother was the one with the strong personality. We all feared her. My father was weak in comparison. When I later interviewed the American priest, Father O’Connor, who baptised my father into the Catholic Church during his imprisonment in Nuremberg, he told me, “Niklas, I have to tell you one thing: even in prison your father was still afraid of your mother.”
At one point during the war, my father, who had reconnected with the great love of his life from his youth, wanted to divorce my mother. He asked Hitler for permission, as was, I think, required of senior party members, but Hitler forbade it until the war was over. My mother, learning of my father’s wish, wrote to Hitler, sending him a photo of her and her five children, and asking why would a husband leave such a beautiful family?
‘You poor boy’
After my father was arrested in May 1945, our circumstances changed dramatically. The Americans moved us into a two-room flat. We didn’t have any servants or any money. It was a long fall from grace. But for me it was a great adventure. I had freedom, I could fish and there were deadly weapons left behind by fleeing SS soldiers to play with.
My mother tried hard to feed us. She was always making deals, exchanging everything – particularly stolen jewellery – for bread. It was the toughest time of her life, but she never gave up, complaining only in letters she wrote to my father in prison.
For me, being the son of a mass murderer brought many advantages. “Oh you poor poor little boy,” people would say. “What happened to your poor innocent father? What do you want to eat and do you have enough money?” At that time, there were only advantages in Germany if your father was hanged as a high-ranking Nazi.
I oppose capital punishment, but I am happy that my father got to experience the fear of death that he himself had inflicted upon so many innocent people.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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2
| 25
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https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
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en
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The Nuremberg Laws
|
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2016-08-15T17:40:20-04:00
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Archives Receives Original Nazi Documents That “Legalized” Persecution of Jews Winter 2010, Vol. 42, No. 4 By Greg Bradsher Enlarge Law for the Safeguard of German Blood and German Honor barred marriage between Jews and other Germans.
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en
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National Archives
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https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
|
Archives Receives Original Nazi Documents That “Legalized” Persecution of Jews
Winter 2010, Vol. 42, No. 4
By Greg Bradsher
It was in Nuremberg, officially designated as the "City of the Reich Party Rallies," in the province of Bavaria, where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party in 1935 changed the status of German Jews to that of Jews in Germany, thus "legally" establishing the framework that eventually led to the Holocaust.
Ten years later, it would also be in Nuremberg, now nearly destroyed by British and American heavy bombing, where surviving prominent Nazi leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and soon the attention of the Allies turned to prosecuting those Third Reich leaders who had been responsible for, among other things, the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust.
The trials began November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, which had somehow survived the intense Allied bombings of 1944 and 1945.
The next day, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, named by President Harry S. Truman as the U.S. chief counsel for the prosecution of Axis criminality, made his opening statement to the International Military Tribunal.
"The most serious actions against Jews were outside of any law, but the law itself was employed to some extent. They were the infamous Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935," Jackson said.
The so-called "Nuremberg Laws"— a crucial step in Nazi racial laws that led to the marginalization of German Jews and ultimately to their segregation, confinement, and extermination—were key pieces of evidence in the trials, which resulted in 12 death sentences and life or long sentences for other Third Reich leaders.
But the prosecution was forced to use images of the laws from the official printed version, for the original copies were nowhere to be found.
However, they had been found earlier, by U.S. counter-intelligence troops, who passed them up the line until they came to the Third Army's commander, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. The general took them home to California. There, they remained for decades, their existence not revealed until 1999.
Finally, this past summer, the original copies of the laws, signed by Hitler and other Nazi leaders, were transferred to the National Archives.
Third Reich Began Persecutions
Years Before Laws Enacted in 1935
The Nuremberg Laws made official the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but the “legal” attack on the Jews actually began two years earlier.
After the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, they became increasingly engaged in activities involving the persecution of the Jewish and other minority populations. They did it under the color of law, using official decrees as a weapon against the Jews.
In 1933 Jews were denied the right to hold public office or civil service positions; Jewish immigrants were denaturalized; Jews were denied employment by the press and radio; and Jews were excluded from farming. The following year, Jews were excluded from stock exchanges and stock brokerage.
During these years, when the Nazi regime was still rather shaky and the Nazis feared opposition from within and resistance from without, they did nothing drastic, and the first measures appeared, in relative terms, rather mild.
After Germany publicly announced in May 1935 its rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty, Nazi party radicals began more forcibly demanding that Hitler, the party, and the government take more drastic measures against the Jews. They wanted to completely segregate them from the social, political, and economic life of Germany. These demands increased as the summer progressed.
On August 20, 1935, the U.S. embassy in Berlin reported to the secretary of state:
To sum up the Jewish situation at the moment, it may be said that the whole movement of the Party is one of preparing itself and the people for general drastic and so-called legal action to be announced in the near future probably following the Party Congress to be held in Nuremberg beginning on September 10th. One has only to review the statements made by important leaders since the end of the Party's summer solstice to realize the trend of affairs.
James G. McDonald, high commissioner for refugees under the League of Nations, then in Berlin, wrote in his diary August 22 that "New legislation is imminent, but it is difficult to tell exactly what the provisions will be. Certainly, they will tend further to differentiate the Jews from the mass of Germans and to disadvantage them in new ways."
William E. Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany, on September 7 sent a long dispatch to the secretary of state regarding current development in the "Jewish Situation." He reported "it appears that even now discussions are still continuing in the highest circles respecting the policy to be evolved at the Nuremberg party Congress." He added:
It is believed that a declaration respecting the Jews will be made at Nuremberg which will be followed by the announcement at the Congress itself, or shortly thereafter, or a body of legislation whose ultimate character will depend upon the result of the discussions now in progress. Either one or the other will probably contain drastic features to appease the radicals but may be offset by certain appearances of moderation to be emphasized later to facilitate such dealing abroad. . . . An idea that may influence policy at Nuremberg, and in any case now seems to be uppermost in the minds of Party extremists, is that, however drastic the measures adopted, they will be formally rooted in law, and that the sanctity with which law is regarded, and the discipline with which it is observed in Germany, may impress foreign opinion favorably.
On September 9, McDonald wrote Felix Warburg, a major American Jewish leader, that he was unable to get a clear picture what may be expected in the threatened new legislation, but "One can only be certain that the result will be to penalize the Jews in various ways and on the basis of pseudo-legality, which causes grim forebodings."
Nazi Rally in Nuremberg
Hailed Passage of the Laws
At their annual rally held in Nuremberg on September 15, Nazi party leaders announced, after the Reichstag had adopted them, new laws that institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology.
The so-called Nuremberg Laws, signed by Hitler and several other Nazi officials, were the cornerstone of the legalized persecution of Jews in Germany. They stripped German Jews of their German citizenship, barred marriage and "extramarital sexual intercourse" between Jews and other Germans, and barred Jews from flying the German flag, which would now be the swastika.
On September 16, Ambassador Dodd sent a cable to the secretary of state about the Nuremberg Laws. He wrote:
So far it is only possible to say that main trend of Nuremberg congress was to cater to radical sentiment within the Party. The laws passed last night concerning citizenship, the swastika as national flag and for protection of German blood and honor (by means of preventing marriage and sexual intercourse between Aryan and Jews and flying of the German flag by the latter) obviously need further definition and Foreign Office advised waiting for executive supplementary regulations. [These, issued on November 14, provided specific definitions of who a Jew was.]
Dodd followed up the next day with a dispatch to the secretary of state regarding the Nuremberg Party Congress: "Race propaganda and psychology ran through practically all the speeches like a scarlet thread, obviously in preparation for the laws that were to be adopted by the Reichstag."
He added: "The new laws against the Jews deceive very few people that the last word has been said on that question or that new discriminatory measures will not eventually follow within the limit of what is possible without bringing about too great a disturbance in business."
On September 19, Dodd sent the secretary of state two copies of the Reichsgestzblatt [Reich Law Gazette] of September 16, which contained the Nuremberg Laws and also included translations of them.
In transmitting them, Dodd wrote: "The anti-Jewish legislation should be sufficiently severe to please Party extremists for some time."
They were not. More persecutions followed in the years before World War II began in 1939. The extermination of the Jews and others followed, not only in Germany, but through most of Europe.
Original Nuremberg Documents
Are Found, But Then Disappear
The Moscow Declaration of 1943, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Marshal Josef Stalin, took note of the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans and laid down the policy that the major criminals would “be punished by the joint decision of the Governments of the Allies."
But first the war had to be concluded before the Moscow Declaration could be implemented.
As the Allied forces overran Germany in April 1945, on April 20 (Hitler's birthday), elements of the Third and 45th Infantry divisions of the U.S. Seventh Army entered Nuremberg and after hard fighting effectively secured the town. A week later, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin, and the week after that, the Germans surrendered.
Now the Moscow Declaration could be put into effect.
Meanwhile, in late April 1945, M.Sgt. Martin Dannenberg, leading the 203rd U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment, working with the U.S. Third Army, was roaming through Bavaria with two other men, carrying out various CIC assignments.
An informant led him and his team to a bank vault in the town of Eichstaett, about 45 miles due south of Nuremberg. There, a German financial official who had a key opened the vault, then handed over to the American soldiers some documents in a yellow envelope, sealed with red wax swastikas.
Dannenberg slit the top of the envelope and pulled the documents out. The first thing he saw was the signature "Adolf Hitler."
Sgt. Frank Perls, a German-born Jew (though baptized as a Protestant) who joined the U.S. Army in 1943 after fleeing his homeland in 1933, was one of two men accompanying Dannenberg. Translating the documents, Perls quickly realized they were the infamous Nuremberg Laws.
Dannenberg turned them over to his commanding officer, who ordered Dannenberg and Perls to deliver them to the U.S. Third Army commander, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
War Crimes Trials Begin
—Without Original Copies
On May 2, less than a week after the CIC special agents found the Nuremberg Laws and a few days before the war in Europe ended, Truman appointed Associate Justice Jackson as chief of counsel for the United States in its prosecution of the Allied case against the major Axis war criminals.
During the next three months, Jackson spent most of the time in London negotiating with the British, French, and Soviet representatives over an agreement to prosecute the major Nazi war criminals before an international tribunal. They would reach agreement on August 8.
Meanwhile, immediately after Jackson's appointment, the staff of the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, which grew to more than 600 personnel, started collecting documentary evidence that could be used by the prosecutors.
Among the evidence gathered were volumes of the Reichsgestzblatt, which contained various German laws, decrees, and regulations, including those relating to the persecution of the Jews.
In the September 16, 1935, edition were the Nuremberg Laws, which had been adopted by the Reichstag the previous day and promulgated by its president, Hermann Goering. Photostats and translations of them were placed in the U.S. evidence file and eventually made available to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
The prosecutors may have wished they had the original laws themselves, as they would have made for dramatic evidence since two of the defendants, Wilhelm Frick and Rudolf Hess, had signed them. But, unfortunately, they did not. General Patton had them.
Patton Ignores Orders,Takes
Original Copies To California
Patton, like so many of his soldiers, was a souvenir hunter.
Rather than ensuring the copies of the Nuremberg Laws that he received from Dannenberg and Perls were delivered to the appropriate authorities, he took them home to California after the war in Europe was over.
In doing so, Patton was violating Supreme Headquarters Allied Expedition Forces (SHAEF) and 12th Army Group directives of November 9 and 23, 1944, issued by Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar N. Bradley, respectively, regarding seizing and holding Nazi party and German government records.
Six months after Patton took the Nuremberg Laws to California, the trial began. Justice Jackson, in his opening statement to the court on November 21, as noted earlier, referenced the Nuremberg Laws, citing the version published in the Reichsgestzblatt of 1935.
During the tribunal's December 13 session, an assistant trial counsel for the United States addressed the court about the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In making his presentation, he said: "When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, a new and terrible weapon against the Jews was placed within their grasp, the power to apply the force of the state against them. This was done by the issuance of decrees."
He then proceeded to list them, including the Nuremberg Laws as published in the 1935 Reichsgestzblatt. After discussing them, he asked the court to take judicial notice of the published decrees. From a legal perspective, theReichsgestzblatt was certainly authoritative and acceptable to the tribunal under its charter regarding rules of evidence, but it certainly would have been more dramatic and effective to have confronted the defendants with the originals, as the prosecutors did with other documents.
The trial would go on another 10 months, with references often made to the Nuremberg Laws. On September 30 and October 1, 1946, the tribunal rendered judgment. Of the three defendants most closely associated with the Nuremberg Laws, Herman Goering and Wilhelm Frick were sentenced to death, and Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Missing Documents Reemerge.
Now in the National Archives
A week later, with his work over, Justice Jackson sent President Truman a final report about his activities and noted that the war crimes documentation, including captured records, was the property of the United States and that an agency should take custody of it on behalf of the United States.
"The matter," he wrote, "is of such importance as to warrant calling it to your attention."
Two months later, the records of the U.S. Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality were offered to the National Archives, and in 1947 the National Archives accessioned them. Within the records are photostatic and translated copies of the Nuremberg Laws as published in the Reichsgestzblatt and referred to during the trial.
General Patton had deposited the original Nuremberg Laws at the Huntington Library, near his home in the Los Angeles area in June 1945; Patton died as a result of injuries received in an auto accident in Germany in December 1945 and had left no instructions regarding the laws.
Their existence at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens was not revealed until 1999, when they went on display for 10 years at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles until late 2009.
In the summer of 2010, the National Archives accepted donation from the Huntington Library of the original Nuremberg Laws—63 years later than they would have if Patton had turned them over to the appropriate authorities.
Greg Bradsher, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, specializes in World War II intelligence, looted assets, and war crimes. His previous contributions to Prologue have included articles the discovery of Nazi gold in the Merkers Mine (Spring 1999); the story of Fritz Kolbe, 1900–1943 (Spring 2002); Japan's secret "Z Plan" in 1944 (Fall 2005); Founding Father Elbridge Gerry (Spring 2006); the third Archivist of the United States, Wayne Grover (Winter 2009); and Operation Blissful, a World War II diversionary attack on an island in the Pacific (Fall 2010).
Note on Sources
Published in 42 volumes, the Trial of the Major War Criminals before The International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg 14 November 1945–1 October 1946 (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1947–1949), contains the day-to-day proceedings of the tribunal and documents offered in evidence by the prosecution and defense.
Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. I, Chapter 12, contains information about documents, including those not introduced as evidence during the International Military Tribunal, relating to the persecution of the Jews in Germany.
The State Department's Central Decimal File, 1930–1939 (General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59), under decimals 862.00 and 862.4016, contains reports on political developments in Germany and the persecution of German Jews. Also useful regarding the persecution of the Jews in Germany beginning in 1935 is Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg, eds., Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1935–1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 2009).
Useful for understanding the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws, their discovery by the Counterintelligence Corps team in 1945, General Patton's acquisition and disposition of them in 1945, their custody by the Huntington Library (1945–1999), and their subsequent exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center is Anthony M. Platt with Cecilia E. O'Leary, Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler's Nuremberg Laws, From Patton's Trophy to Public Memorial (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
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https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/first-trial-nuremberg
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en
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The First Trial at Nuremberg
|
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2016-08-02T12:00:00+00:00
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Learn about the international tribunal that tried and sentenced German leaders at the end of World War II.
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en
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/favicon.ico
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Facing History & Ourselves
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https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/first-trial-nuremberg
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What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. . . . They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds toward those who were marked as “scapegoats.” Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality and annihilation as the world has never witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited the German ambition to be a “master race,” which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbors. To sustain the “master race” in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as “displaced persons.”
Jackson went on to say,
Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished forces. The worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. . . . We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.
Of the 22 men brought to trial, five were military leaders and the rest were prominent German government or Nazi Party officials. The following is a list of the defendants and their positions in the Third Reich.
Defendants in the First Nuremberg Trial Name Title/position Martin Bormann (tried in absentia) Head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary Karl Dönitz Supreme Commander of the Navy (1943) and German Chancellor after Hitler’s suicide Hans Frank Governor General of Occupied Poland Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior Hans Fritzsche Head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Ministry Walther Funk President of the Reichsbank (1939) and Reich Minister for Economic Affairs Hermann Göring Reich Marshall and Hitler’s chosen successor Rudolf Hess Deputy Führer Alfred Jodl Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces Ernst Kaltenbrunner Chief of the Security Police and the Reich Security Main Office Wilhelm Keitel Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces Konstantin von Neurath Minister of Foreign Affairs (1932–1938) and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia [regions of Czechoslovakia controlled by Germany] (1939–1943) Franz von Papen
Chancellor of Germany (1932)
Erich Raeder Supreme Commander of the Navy (1928–1943) Joachim von Ribbentrop Reich Foreign Minister (1938–1945) Alfred Rosenberg Party Philosopher and Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Area Fritz Sauckel Plenipotentiary [Ambassador] for Labor Allocation Hjalmar Schacht Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank (1933–1939) Baldur von Schirach Führer [Leader] of the Hitler Youth Arthur Seyss-Inquart Minister of the Interior and Reich Governor of Austria Albert Speer Minister of Armaments and War Production Julius Streicher A Nazi Party leader and the founder of Der Stürmer, an antisemitic newspaper
The Nuremberg trials addressed all German crimes associated with World War II together, not the Holocaust in particular. In fact, at the time, the concept of the Holocaust as we now know it did not yet exist. The targeting for annihilation of specific groups, such as Jews, Sinti, and Roma, was not yet recognized as the specific crime of genocide (see reading, Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention in Chapter 11); therefore, what we now understand as the Holocaust was addressed at Nuremberg more broadly under the category of “crimes against humanity,” which included inhumane acts against any civilians.
As the trials proceeded, much of the evidence of the defendants’ crimes was provided by the Germans themselves, who had kept careful records of the war and the mass murders of Jews and others in reports, which were read in court. The final transcript of the proceedings was about 17,000 pages long. In addition, films of the killing centers and camps made by their Allied liberators were shown to the defendants and the tribunal judges.
All of the defendants, however, submitted pleas of not guilty, and throughout the trial, they vehemently denied responsibility for the crimes. They argued either that they had simply followed orders (although that defense had already been rejected in Article 8 of the tribunal’s charter) or that whatever actions they had carried out were done with no knowledge or awareness that they were contributing to the mass killings.
On October 1, 1946, after months of testimony, examination and cross examination of the defendants, and deliberation by the judges from the four Allied powers who presided over the trials, the verdicts were announced. Twelve defendants received the death sentence (Bormann, Frank, Frick, Göring, Jodl, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, and Streicher). Three were sentenced to life in prison (Hess, Funk, and Raeder). Four received prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years (Dönitz, von Neurath, Schirach, and Speer). In general, the decisions for prison sentences rather than execution were made because the judges felt either that certain circumstances surrounding a defendant’s actions warranted a more lenient punishment or that the evidence was not strong enough to support a death penalty. The sentences were carried out with two exceptions: Göring died by suicide shortly before he could be executed, and Bormann remained missing.
Three of the defendants were acquitted—Schacht, von Papen, and Fritzsche. Schacht, who had been minister of economics, had played an important role in German rearmament in the 1930s, but there was no evidence that he had done so with the specific intention of waging war. There was no proof that von Papen, who had been the German chancellor before Hitler came to power, knew of Hitler’s intentions and his plans to wage aggressive wars. Fritzsche, who had worked under Goebbels in the propaganda ministry, had helped arouse popular sentiment in support of Hitler and the war, but that in itself was not considered to be a war crime. All three were released when the trials ended.
The conviction and death sentence for Julius Streicher was particularly noteworthy. Streicher was convicted neither of planning the war nor of war crimes but only on the charge of crimes against humanity. In issuing the verdict, the president of the tribunal explained how he and the other judges had determined Streicher’s guilt:
For his twenty-five years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as “Jew-Baiter Number One.” In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of antisemitism and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of Der Stürmer [the newspaper Streicher edited], which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.
. . . As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different articles of Der Stürmer between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which the extermination [of Jews] “root and branch” was preached. . . . Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved, and predicted that fifty years hence the Jewish graves “will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate.” . . .
As the war in the early stages proved successful [in] acquiring more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are twenty-six articles from Der Stürmer, published between August, 1941 and September, 1944, twelve by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and extermination in unequivocal terms. . . .
Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.
The pronouncement of the sentences ended the trial. Twelve more trials, involving 190 defendants, were held at Nuremberg. But the first trial and the principles of international law that it established remained the most important. Judge Charles Wyzanski (see reading, Establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal), writing immediately after the trial ended, concluded:
[T]he outstanding accomplishment of the trial which never could have been achieved by any more executive action, is that it has crystallized the concept that there is inherent in the international community a machinery both for the expression of international criminal law and for its enforcement.
Connection Questions
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
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https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/88071/student-old/
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en
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Statewide Dual Credit World History, The Catastrophe of the Modern Era: 1919-Present CE, Chapter 14: The World Afire: World War II, War Crimes Trials: Nuremberg and the Pacific
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OER Commons
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In the postwar period, people realized the essentiality of holding people accountable for their wartime actions if future humanity were to be protected. Although the Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo War Crimes Trials were far from perfect, they demonstrated to the world that individual actions matter and international justice would be meted out to those who crimes against humanity.
Learning Objectives
Evaluate the significance of the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials
Key Terms / Key Concepts
The Nuremberg Trials: most famous set of international war crimes trials of top Nazi officials
Tokyo War Crime Trials: most famous set of war crimes trials of top Japanese officials
The Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces of World War II, most notably for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. In 1945 and 1946, the trials were held at the Palace of Justice in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. The choice of locations was not coincidental. Nuremberg had been the home of the Nazi party. Holding the trials in Nuremberg held symbolic importance for the Allies who had defeated the Nazis.
The first and best-known of these trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Held between November 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946, the IMT tried 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. One of the defendants, Martin Bormann, was tried in absentia, while another, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial’s commencement. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels were not included in the trials because all three committed suicide several months before the indictment was signed. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among the second set of trials were the Doctors Trial and the Judges Trial.
Creation of the Courts
In 1945, all three major wartime powers—the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union—agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal.
Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939.
The Nuremberg Trials Begin
The IMT opened on November 19, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations: the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA), and the “General Staff and High Command,” comprising several categories of senior military officers. These organizations were to be declared “criminal” if found guilty.
The indictments were for participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity.
The accusers successfully unveiled the background of developments leading to the outbreak of World War II, which cost at least 40 million lives in Europe alone, as well as the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences (ranging from 10 years to life in prison), three were acquitted, and two were not charged.
Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants were edited into book form and published in 2004.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trial
Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the global community began to investigate allegations of Japanese war crimes. These investigations culminated in a series of war crimes trials, most famous of which was the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. The international community accused Japan of crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. Accusations and evidence circulated to show that beginning with the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, the Japanese forces regularly abused prisoners of war, employed forced labor, destroyed towns and cities, slaughtered civilians, raped, looted, and tortured civilians. Tens of thousands of testimonies, documents, and eyewitness accounts were investigated. Among the most heinous charges were the Japanese involvement in human experimentation, such as with the infamous unit 731, the Bataan Death March, and the destruction of the Chinese city of Nanking. Using the IMT in Nuremberg as a model, courts began to assemble in Tokyo in the spring of 1946. In April 1946, the trials of many top-ranking Japanese officials began.
The primary target of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was the former Japanese prime minister Tojo Hideki. He was accused of, and later convicted of being instrumental in many of Japan’s most heinous behaviors during World War II.
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 69
|
https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/postwar-trials-and-denazification/subsequent-nuremberg-trials/
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en
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The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools
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1933-07-14T00:00:00
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en
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https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/postwar-trials-and-denazification/subsequent-nuremberg-trials/
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Denazification is the term used to describe the process of removing Nazis and Nazism from public life in Germany and across occupied Europe following the fall of the Third Reich.
After the war, Germany was split into four zones of Allied occupation. These were: North East Germany (controlled by the Soviet Union), South East Germany (controlled by the United States), South West Germany (controlled by France) and North West Germany (controlled by Great Britain). Each zone of occupation carried out the denazification process differently.
In October 1946, the Allied Control Council announced five categories of Nazis, each of which were dealt with separately:
Major offenders (to be sentenced to life imprisonment/death)
Activists, militarists and profiteers (up to ten years imprisonment)
Lesser offenders (probation for up to three years)
Nazi followers and supporters (surveillance and fine)
Exonerated individuals (no punishment)
Denazification took place within all layers of German society, government and administration, including in the economic sphere, culture, judiciary and government. For example, libraries were purged of Nazi publications and some former Nazis were removed from public positions.
Denazification was difficult and complex, and never fully completed. The developing Cold War meant that Britain and America felt that West Germany was a useful ally against communism and the Soviet Union, and therefore the Nazis that remained in their positions in society were viewed as less of a threat than communism. On top of this, even the process of establishing who was and who was not a Nazi was challenging and often relied on citizens providing information about themselves.
The first German chancellor of the new republic, Konrad Adenauer, who came to power in 1949, was opposed to the process of denazification. Adenauer instead opted for a strategy of integration – integrating old Nazis into the new republic in order to move forward.
Ultimately, many of those involved in Nazi activities were not punished and retained their personal and professional positions, and much of the wealth plundered by the Nazis was not immediately returned to its rightful owners.
In the summer of 1945, legal representatives from the four Allied nations met in London to establish a charter for an International Military Tribunal. The Tribunal was in charge of prosecuting the major Nazi war criminals for their crimes throughout the Second World War, including the Holocaust. The Tribunal decided on four charges: conspiracy against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the waging of aggressive war. The crimes of the Holocaust were included under crimes against humanity.
The first trial took place between October and November 1946 in the German city of Nuremberg. The twenty-one defendants were primarily high-ranking Nazis who had been captured by the Allies at the end of the war, such as Hermann Göring , Wilhelm Frick , Hans Frank , Joachim von Ribbentrop , Albert Speer and Julius Streicher .
The trial covered the crimes and failures of the Third Reich as a whole, and there was no specific part which focused solely on the persecution and mass murder of Jews. The genocide was revealed bit by bit throughout the trial, in witness statements from extermination camp inmates, in clips from Nazi films, or the account of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, who described the camp’s function and activities.
The verdicts were announced on the 1 October 1946. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, including Hermann Göring and Julius Streicher, three received life imprisonment, four received prison terms, and three were found innocent and acquitted of all charges. The death sentences were carried out ten days later on 16 October 1946. On 15 October, Hermann Göring took his own life.
Adolf Eichmann (19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a leading member of the Nazi Party in charge of organising mass deportations of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps, and extermination camps.
At the end of the war, Eichmann was captured by the United States (although his identity remained unknown as he used a false name) and placed in a camp for SS officials in Germany. However, in 1946, after US officials discovered his identity, Eichmann fled the camp using false papers and went into hiding. In 1950, made his way to Argentina.
In 1960, Eichmann’s hiding place was discovered by the Israeli Secret Service. He was kidnapped and brought to Israel to stand trial.
On 11 April 1961, the trial against Eichmann began in Jerusalem. It drew attention from around the world. Eichmann was charged with crimes against the Jewish people, the first time a high-ranking Nazi had been charged with this crime, crimes against humanity and membership of criminal organisations. 112 witnesses were called to provide evidence.
Throughout the trial, Eichmann proclaimed his innocence. He asserted that, as a bureaucrat , he had no responsibility for his actions, and was simply obeying orders from Hitler. In December 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people and sentenced to death.
The Eichmann Trial had a significant impact in raising public awareness of the Holocaust. Although the Nazis crimes against the Jewish people were known about, they were often discussed as part of the larger tragedies of wartime, and not noted for their specificity. Eichmann’s trial and the publicity it received changed this.
The Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trials were the trials of twenty-two Nazi personnel who served at the Auschwitz Camp Complex between 1940 and 1945. The trials primarily took place in Frankfurt am Main between 20 December 1963 and 20 August 1965.
First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Although some of the more high-profile Nazis who had served at Auschwitz, such as Rudolf Höss or Arthur Liebehenschel , had been convicted at trials such as 1947 Auschwitz Trial in Krakow, most of the approximately 8200 camp personnel who survived the war were not tried in the immediate post-war period.
In 1958, an inquiry into Auschwitz was launched by the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes (ZS) and the German Supreme Court. The sheer amount of evidence meant that the trial took five years to prepare. In this period, over eight hundred people were investigated, although just twenty-two were officially brought to court and accused.
Of these people, two died before the trial began. The trials were based on German state law, rather than the International Law used in the 1945 Nuremberg Proceedings and each of the accused were therefore charged with either murder or accomplice to murder, rather than crimes against humanity (which included genocide ). Two of the twenty defendants were acquitted , twelve received sentences between three and ten years and six received life imprisonment.
Most of the trials to punish Nazi perpetrators and collaborators took place as not as large group trials, such as the Nuremberg or Auschwitz trials, but as individual trials. In total, courts across Europe sentenced approximately 100,000 Germans and Austrians for their crimes in wartime. On top of this, Soviet courts convicted approximately 26,000 Germans and Austrians for their actions during the Third Reich.
One example of an individual trial was that of Klaus Barbie. Barbie was a German SS and Gestapo officer stationed in France during the war. He was known as ‘The Butcher of Lyon’ for his role in deporting Jews and dismantling the French Resistance. Following the war, he escaped to Bolivia. In 1981, he was extradited to France to face trial. In 1987, he was charged with crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. He maintained his innocence throughout.
In addition to the trials of Germans and Austrians, courts across Europe and the Soviet Union extensively prosecuted local collaborators. For many countries, the prosecution of collaborators was a significant and symbolic task. In Hungary, approximately 26,000 people were convicted for treason , war crimes, or crimes against humanity during the Second World War. Similarly, in Czechoslovakia around 32,000 people were brought to court for their role in collaborating with the Nazis.
As a result of the scale of collaboration throughout Europe, it was difficult to punish all collaborators. In the Netherlands, for example, it was calculated that as many as 500,000 people (5% of the population) actively collaborated with the Nazis.
Trials for both Nazis and Nazi collaborators have continued to occur in the twenty-first century, albeit in a very small numbers.
In 2011, the trial of 91-year-old John (Ivan) Demjanjuk set a new precedent in Germany. Until Demjanjuk’s 2011 trial, former Nazis were charged with individual murders, rather than genocide or mass murder. As a result of this, to convict a former Nazi or collaborator of murder, the courts had to find direct evidence of their role in a specific crime, meaning that it was extremely difficult to charge.
However, at Demjanjuk’s 2011 trial, he was, charged and found responsible for the mass murder of 28,060 people at Sobibor, where he served as a camp guard. The prosecution were successful in arguing that Demjanjuk was essential (if replaceable) to the smooth running of the camp, and without people like Demjanjuk, the camp would not have been able to operate.
Following the Demjanjuk case, several other former Nazis have been brought to court on accounts of mass murder. In 2015, Oskar Gröning, a former SS officer at Auschwitz, was charged as an accessory to murder of 300,000 people. He was found guilty and sentenced to four years imprisonment. In 2019, Bruno Day, who served as a SS camp guard at the Stutthof Concentration Camp, was brought to trial accused of contributing to the murder of 5230 people at the camp. In July 2020, Dey was found guilty and given a two-year suspended sentence.
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correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 66
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https://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivors-receive-german-reparations-day
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en
|
Holocaust survivors receive German reparations to this day
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2021-02-18T00:00:00
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(Crossposted with permission from Healing Minnesota Stories blog) Part of an ongoing series exploring reparationsBy Vic Rosenthal and Scott RussellJewish men in the Radom ghetto March, 1941. They were forced to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David to mark them as outsiders. Photo: Brenner/Wikimedia Commons Sarah (not her real name) was a teenager in Radom, Poland when
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Minnesota Council of Churches
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https://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivors-receive-german-reparations-day
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(Crossposted with permission from Healing Minnesota Stories blog)
Part of an ongoing series exploring reparations
By Vic Rosenthal and Scott Russell
Sarah (not her real name) was a teenager in Radom, Poland when Germany invaded her country in September, 1939, the start of World War II.
Now a U.S. citizen in her 90s, she remembers living in extreme poverty and constant hunger in the Radom ghetto. Many men were taken away and never seen again. Sarah was forced into slave labor, her brother taken away. She and her mother were sent on a death march to Auschwitz and later Bergen Belsen.
“More than five years in ghettos with poverty and starvation and two death marches, but I survived,” she said. “I don’t know how.”
Germany started making reparations payments to Holocaust survivors back in the 1950s, and continues making payments today. Some 400,000 Jews who survived the Nazis were still alive in 2019. That year, Germany paid $564 million to the Claims Conference, which handles the payments.
Screen grab from Claims Conference webpage.
In Germany, the reparations program is called the Wiedergutmachung (literally “making the good again”), according to the 2006 book “The Handbook of Reparations. In Israel, it’s simply called Shilumim (the payments). The book called Germany’s effort “the largest, most comprehensive reparations program ever implemented.”
Germany’s reparations work went beyond money; it included a commitment to ongoing truth telling and outlawing the Nazi Party.
Sarah asked her real name not be used. Her story gives a small window into reparation’s complexities. For many, the money helped them out of poverty. For Sarah, the money offered was minimal; the decision to accept it anything but straight forward.
She was a Polish citizen, not German. German reparations didn’t cover her family’s stolen Polish property. When eventually offered reparations for her forced labor, she refused at first. The payment was minimal, the conditions demeaning; they wanted to see her U.S. tax returns.
“I worked as a slave laborer for five years, eight months, and two weeks and all they were providing was a few thousand dollars,” she said.
Sarah finally accepted the funds around 2004 to help one of her grandchildren with college expenses.
“I didn’t take the money as reparations but rather as compensation for my labor,” she said. “I didn’t want anything from the German government.”
Even before World War II ended, discussions were underway to hold Third Reich leaders accountable for concentration camp horrors and the murder of millions. There was no international forum for accountability; the United Nations and World Court had yet to be created.
The United States, Russia, Great Britain, and France together prosecuted the worst offenders in what came to be called the Nuremberg Trials, a series of 13 trials that ran from 1945-1949. (An international tribunal conducted the first trial, a U.S. military court conducted the others.)
These trials’ extensive testimony brought the Nazi’s utter cruelty into the light of day. It was a form of truth telling and public education, though not on par with more recent truth and reconciliation efforts.
The trials resulted in many death sentences, including Nazi leader Hermann Göring. Other defendants received prison sentences for a variety of crimes. Prosecutors convicted doctors who committed war atrocities. They convicted industrial leaders for using forced labor and war profiteering.
Just months after World War II ended, Jewish leaders pressed for reparations. The West German government negotiated with them and the new State of Israel and proposed a reparations plan.
Accepting reparations was hotly contested in Israel. In the Knesset, Menachem Begin and the Herut Party opposed the payments, considering them “blood money.” In a 61-50 vote, Israel agreed to negotiated with West Germany on reparations.
U.S. Army staffers organize Nuremberg Trial evidence. Photo: U.S. federal government.
Under the agreement, West Germany would pay $100 million for individual reparations administered by the Claims Conference, paid over 14 years, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Israel would receive $745 million: 30 percent to buy United Kingdom crude oil and 70 percent to buy metals, steel, and other products from Germany.
After the initial agreement, reparations work expanded. For instance, in 1988, Germany approved money so Holocaust survivors would get $290 a month for the rest of their lives.
In the 1990s, “Jews began making claims for property stolen in Eastern Europe,” according to the Shoah Resource Center. “Various groups also began investigating what happened to money deposited in Swiss banks by Jews outside of Switzerland who were later murdered in the Holocaust, and what happened to money deposited by various Nazis in Swiss banks.”
Survivor groups also pressed claims against companies that profited from wartime forced labor, including Deutsche Bank, Siemens, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, and Opel, the Center said. In early 1999, the German government announced a program to help Holocaust survivors, funded by these companies.
Last year, the German government committed $662 million to Holocaust survivors struggling because of the pandemic, persecution, and their age.
As part of reparations, Germany has gone to great lengths to make sure its citizens won’t ever forget what happened. It’s established memorials and landmarks across the country marking where Jewish people were rounded up or synagogues destroyed.
There’s the Holocaust Memorial near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the Buchenwald Memorial, the site of a concentration camp near Weimar, and the Topf and Sons building in Erfurt, which made the crematorium ovens for concentration camps, the only memorial to highlight civilian collaboration in the Holocaust.
The “‘Dejudaization Institute’ Memorial” in Eisenach. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In 1994, eight Protestant regional churches erected the Dejudaization Institute Memorial.
The memorial remembers the churches’ responsibility for promoting anti semitism during the Nazi regime, and the “Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” they founded.
In English, the inscription means “We went astray,” a quote from a 1947 Protestant confession of guilt, Wikipedia said. The memorial’s cut-out spaces symbolize efforts at the time to eliminate references to Judaism from the Christian Bible and Protestant hymnals.
Germany has no memorials to Nazis.
Most of Sarah’s family perished during the war. Her mother, father and brother survived. Her mother died in Germany shortly after the war. After time in displaced persons camps, her father and brother emigrated to the United States in 1949; Sarah and her husband joined them in 1950.
As a Holocaust survivor, she has reflected on reparations for the descendants of former slaves and their families. Again, she focuses more on compensation than reparations. She believes the U.S. government has a lot to do to “tell the truth” about slavery, Jim Crow, and all of the indignities suffered by Black people and Native Americans.
For her, truth telling or acknowledgement is even more important than the money. But, she adds, it’s something that all individuals have to decide for themselves.
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FactBench
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1
| 89
|
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-of-a-nazi-art-catalogue
|
en
|
The Revelations of a Nazi Art Catalogue
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[
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[
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"Rachel Arons",
"Elizabeth Kolbert",
"Adam Gopnik",
"Rebecca Mead",
"Condé Nast"
] |
2016-02-12T02:00:34-05:00
|
Sarah Wildman on a new book detailing Hermann Göring’s extensive plundered art collection, and why Nazi scholarship matters.
|
en
|
https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
|
The New Yorker
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https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-of-a-nazi-art-catalogue
|
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The folder is, at first glance, unremarkable: gray, archival, tied with a small, neat ecru ribbon. Jotted in pencil is a notation: “Collection GOERING, inventaire des peintures.” Inside is a ledger, brittle with age but well preserved, its handwritten notations spanning two-hundred-odd pages and eleven years. The first is from April 1933: a listing for a Venus painted in oil on wood by Jacopo de’ Barbari, purchased in Rome for twelve thousand lira, displayed in a private office of Carinhall, the hunting estate outside Berlin belonging to the Nazi second in command, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. One thousand three hundred and seventy-five paintings follow this Venus, all of them carefully recorded: date of receipt, title of painting, painter, description, collection of origin, and destination. Tintoretto, Renoir, Rubens, Monet, Corot, van Gogh, Botticelli, a large group of Cranach; it goes on. After 1940, the pace of acquisition becomes frantic, obsessive, and the names of the European masters are often matched in provenance with names of some of the greatest art-collecting families and dealers of the early twentieth century: Goudstikker, Rothschild, Rosenberg, Wildenstein. It all stops abruptly in the spring of 1944.
Hermann Göring’s personal art log is a twisted treasure map, a guide to looting and pillaging and gift-giving among the Nazi brass, and a tracking mechanism for the Nazi occupation of Europe. It has long been known that Göring was among the most zealous of Nazi art collectors: at the end of the war, he packed the booty stored at Carinhall into trains and fled south toward Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria; he blew up Carinhall behind him. The collection was discovered by Allied soldiers, and, in 1945, the New York Times pegged the worth of the works at two hundred million dollars (part of a slew of breathless American coverage, according to Nancy Yeide, the author of “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection”). The catalogue of Göring’s art provides a perversely fascinating yardstick for the changing taste of a man known for personal eccentricities as well as horrifying brutality. The emphasis, at first, is on northern European Romanticism, along with the nude female form. But the collection shifts, becomes more expansive, and, occasionally, eschews the Nazi laws on so-called degenerate art to scoop up some of the modern greats. “I fully admit I had a passion for collection,” Göring said on the witness stand at Nuremberg, with a “vulpine” smile, according to Janet Flanner, who reported from the trial for The New Yorker. “And if they were to be confiscated, I wanted my small part.” He was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang; he killed himself with a purloined cyanide capsule before the sentence could be carried out.
In October, “Le Catalogue Goering” was published, in French, by Flammarion, in conjunction with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a flurry of almost universally enthusiastic French press. On the television station France 3, Isabelle Richefort, the deputy archives director, explained the fascination: “For many people, wartime looting is a rather abstract concept,” she said. “Here we can see how it happened, day by day.” Only Le Monde was unimpressed, complaining that stories of Göring’s collection were not truly new (though this catalogue had not previously been examined), and that it was not printed like an art book (the images provided are roughly postage-stamp size, for the most part).
It is true that “Le Catalogue Goering” is not a coffee-table book. The publication of the catalogue reflects a new sort of scholarly interest in Nazi writing, which walks a difficult line: explaining Nazi ideology and sustaining historical interest in the period without turning its documents and relics into fetishes. The recent German reissue of “Mein Kampf,” published with extensive commentary, falls into the same category, as does the translation, a few years ago, of the Alfred Rosenberg diaries, published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and also bracketed by analysis. In the case of “Le Catalogue Goering,” it can seem perilously titillating to peer over the edge of propriety into the eccentric private life of a monster. Göring’s world was one of tremendous luxury, with access to everything from jewels to zoo animals to morphine (he was an addict). It was all acquired, of course, at a horrific price. And the catalogue provides a fuller picture of how spoliation itself was an integral, early part of the Nazi effort to degrade, dehumanize, and expel the Jews, setting the stage, ultimately, for mass murder.
The original catalogue is still held at the French diplomatic archives, a crisply anonymous high-security building in the suburb of La Courneuve, about five miles outside Paris. I visited in October, accompanied by Frédéric Du Laurens, a career diplomat, now retired—he was the ambassador to Argentina in the nineteen-eighties—whose last job was director of the archives. Du Laurens pointed out to me that from 1940 to 1944 Göring acquired what amounts to roughly “three paintings each week.” Frau Emmy Göring had a particular liking for French Impressionists, he explained, and many of the paintings were given to her as gifts. (Christmas always brought a fresh collection.) Every January 12th, Göring’s birthday, the Nazi brass, including Hitler, showered him with art. With the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, there was almost entirely unfiltered access to some of the most important Western art in the world. Nancy Yeide, who carefully assessed the goût of Göring in her book, notes that his haul was hung carelessly in his enormous hunting lodge: layered on the walls, without regard for presentation, origin, or appreciation.
For nearly half a century after the war, the Göring catalogue lived in the home of Rose Valland, who, in 1932, had become a volunteer at the Jeu de Paume museum and, during the occupation, was made the museum’s overseer. Valland was a self-created success among Paris’s art-world élite: a lesbian who had grown up in a small town, the daughter of a blacksmith. She was also a purposefully quiet woman who used her position—and her knowledge of German—to record Nazi efforts to strip France of its artistic patrimony. The Jeu de Paume became a warehouse, and a transit station, for the systematic sluicing of French art into the Reich, particularly work that had been in private—and Jewish—hands. Göring visited the museum some twenty times to select items for himself, his wife, his homes. He was not alone in his greed: the best of the best was supposed to be kept for Hitler; the next tier of Nazis would then select for themselves. Valland kept a careful log, night after night. Some of the "degenerate" art, she wrote, was burned—including, it is believed, pieces by Dalí, Picasso, and Braques. In 1944, as the war neared its end, Valland alerted members of the resistance to the last train bound for Germany carrying French art. Her name now graces the lobby of the French diplomatic archives.
Hermann Göring’s personal art log is a twisted treasure map and a tracking mechanism for the Nazi occupation of Europe. *PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY SARAH WILDMAN *{: .credit}|||
In the first years after the war, there was a flurry of activity to repatriate the art despoiled from France and scattered throughout Germany and Austria. Teams of “Monuments Men” (Valland among them, representing France) set out to search for the places where Nazis had hidden Europe’s treasures. As the Cold War kicked in and the Korean War began, the verve for restitution waned. But Valland never let go. She spent her life searching for pieces that had not been restored to their rightful owners, travelling to Eastern Europe and searching museums for pieces. (Cate Blanchett plays a character loosely modelled upon Valland in the 2014 movie “The Monuments Men,” based on the book of the same name by Robert Edsel.) She seems to have come across Göring’s catalogue sometime in the immediate post-war period—and she held on to it, perhaps to use for a second book, about lost art. (Her first, “Le Front de L’art,” from 1961, was the basis for the Burt Lancaster film “The Train.”) The ledger was in one of a thousand boxes turned over to the French Ministry of Culture just before her death, in 1980. There it moldered. Then, in the early nineties, her collection was turned over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which finally began to take an inventory. Soon, the world returned to where Rose Valland had always been. After the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, in 1998, global interest in the art stolen by the Nazis was renewed.
I asked Ambassador Du Laurens if the archive had an obligation, in some way, to report that they owned such a document. Was that why they chose to publish it? Did the archive owe something to the victims? The question seemed strange to him. The hope, he said, was to advance the return of art. Later, I asked the same question of Jean-Marc Dreyfus, a professor in Holocaust studies at the University of Manchester, who edited the book. I have known Dreyfus for years; I first followed him around Paris for a story in 2004, after he co-wrote a book, “Des Camps Dans Paris,” on the elaborate Nazi-era looting of French Jews. I turned to him often for advice when I was writing my own book, about a search, through archives and cities, for the lover my grandfather left behind when he fled Vienna. “You should know after your research that archives do not exist per se,” he replied, via e-mail. “They are ‘invented’ by the way people look for them and read them.”
The Flammarion book is a peculiar item. Several introductory texts preface the translated catalogue. One senses that we, the readers, are being discouraged from enjoying the art in this context, and are meant instead to be overwhelmed by the extent of the looting, by the mechanisms for this form of Nazi domination, the sheer scale of greed. (The book is six hundred pages.) The first of the introductions, by the former French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, describes the Göring collection as “an odious hunting trophy, the fruit of the villainous plundering of jewels of European art.” In the center of the book, along with black-and-white images of Carinhall at the height of Göring’s power, there are three gorgeously rendered full-color photographs of four pages of the catalogue itself, with Talmudic explanations of the handwriting, the categories used, and the process by which the art was inventoried. In conversation, Dreyfus described the catalogue as “the shopkeeper of both terror and the most brilliant European tradition.” “It is also,” he noted, “a document reflecting and implementing Nazi ideology.” The majority of art included was “suitable” art, and the catalogue offers a narrative of whose lives were considered worthy of such art, and whose lives were deemed expendable.
“For me, the most important thing is to keep [alive the] memory of what happened,” Corinne Herschovitz told me, in Paris, in October. We were sitting in a bistro in the Fifth Arrondissement. Herschovitz is an art-restitution lawyer. In 1999, she won a major case restoring several paintings that had been hung on the walls of the Louvre to their rightful owners. Like others I spoke to—including Simon Goodman, the author of “The Orpheus Clock,” about the search for his own family’s vast looted holdings, and Lynn Nicholas, the author of “The Rape of Europa”—Herschovitz is frustrated that the book is not indexed, that it was not written or set up to be used specifically as an aid in restitution efforts. Still, she said, its very presence is ballast against the drift toward amnesia. The catalogue, with its quotidian brutality, will serve as one of what French historians call the lieux de memoire, places of memory, she told me. As we lose eyewitnesses, the theory goes, we will turn to letters and locations—and art catalogues—to bear witness to the horrors of the past.
It may be that the most important aspect of “Le Catalogue Goering” is not anything new that it offers, exactly; in fact, what it tells us is about how much is still to be known—the questions we have not yet learned to ask. After I returned from France to this country, I spoke with Lucian Simmons, the senior provenance expert at Sotheby’s. For two decades, Simmons’s work has focussed not only on insuring the legality of a sale but also on reminding buyers of the world of art and luxury these pieces once inhabited. “I’m delighted it is published,” Simmons said. “You can never have too many sources when you are trying to build a provenance. Is it going to move the dial hugely? Probably not. But it may provide an answer in due course to a question we hadn’t had before. You are rekindling memories, and you are bringing back the memory of patronage, and experience, which the Nazis tried to wipe out.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bormann
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Martin Bormann
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bormann
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German Nazi leader and Hitler's secretary (1900–1945)
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and a war criminal. After the war, he was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity. Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. He used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself as much as possible in the decision making.
Bormann joined a paramilitary Freikorps organisation in 1922 while working as manager of a large estate. He served nearly a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss (later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp) in the murder of Walther Kadow. Bormann joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1937. He initially worked in the party's insurance service, and transferred in July 1933 to the office of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, where he served as chief of staff.
Bormann gained acceptance into Hitler's inner circle and accompanied him everywhere, providing briefings and summaries of events and requests. He was appointed as Hitler's personal secretary on 12 April 1943. After Hess's solo flight to Britain on 10 May 1941 to seek peace negotiations with the British government, Bormann assumed Hess's former duties, with the title of Head of the Parteikanzlei (Party Chancellery). He had final approval over civil service appointments, reviewed and approved legislation, and by 1943 had de facto control over all domestic matters. Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches and favoured harsh treatment of Jews and Slavs in the areas conquered by Germany during World War II.
Bormann returned with Hitler to the Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945 as the Red Army approached the city. After Hitler committed suicide, Bormann and others attempted to flee Berlin on 2 May to avoid capture by the Soviets. Bormann probably committed suicide on a bridge near Lehrter station. His body was buried nearby on 8 May 1945, but was not found and confirmed as Bormann's until 1973; the identification was reaffirmed in 1998 by DNA tests. The missing Bormann was tried in absentia by the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg trials of 1945 and 1946. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.
Born in Wegeleben (now in Saxony-Anhalt) in the Kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, Bormann was the son of Theodor Bormann (1862–1903), a post office employee, and his second wife, Antonie Bernhardine Mennong. The family was Lutheran. He had two half-siblings (Else and Walter Bormann) from his father's earlier marriage to Louise Grobler, who died in 1898. Antonie Bormann gave birth to three sons, one of whom died in infancy. Martin and Albert (1902–89) survived to adulthood. Theodor died when Bormann was three, and his mother soon remarried.
Bormann's studies at an agricultural trade high school were interrupted when he joined the 55th Field Artillery Regiment as a gunner in June 1918, in the final months of World War I. He never saw action, but served garrison duty until February 1919. After working a short time in a cattle feed mill, Bormann became estate manager of a large farm in Mecklenburg. Shortly after starting work at the estate, Bormann joined an antisemitic landowners association. While hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic meant that money was worthless, foodstuffs stored on farms and estates became ever more valuable. Many estates, including Bormann's, had Freikorps units stationed on site to guard the crops from pillaging. Bormann joined the Freikorps organisation headed by Gerhard Roßbach in 1922, acting as section leader and treasurer.
On 17 March 1924 Bormann was sentenced to a year in Elisabethstrasse Prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss in the murder of Walther Kadow. The perpetrators believed Kadow had tipped off the French occupation authorities in the Ruhr District that fellow Freikorps member Albert Leo Schlageter was carrying out sabotage operations against French industries. Schlageter was arrested and was executed on 26 May 1923. On the night of 31 May, Höss, Bormann and several others took Kadow into a meadow out of town, where he was beaten and had his throat cut. After one of the perpetrators confessed, police dug up the body and laid charges in July. Bormann was released from prison in February 1925.[a] He joined the Frontbann, a short-lived Nazi Party paramilitary organisation created to replace the Sturmabteilung (SA; storm detachment or assault division), which had been banned in the aftermath of the failed Munich Putsch. Bormann returned to his job at Mecklenburg and remained there until May 1926, when he moved in with his mother in Oberweimar.
In 1927, Bormann joined the Nazi Party. His membership number was 60,508. He joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) on 1 January 1937 with number 278,267. By special order of Heinrich Himmler in 1938, Bormann was granted SS number 555 to reflect his Alter Kämpfer (Old Fighter) status.
Bormann took a job with Der Nationalsozialist, a weekly paper edited by Nazi Party member Hans Severus Ziegler, who was deputy Gauleiter (party leader) for Thuringia. After joining the Nazi Party in 1927, Bormann began duties as regional press officer, but his lack of public-speaking skills made him ill-suited to this position. He soon put his organisational skills to use as business manager for the Gau (region). He moved to Munich in October 1928, where he worked in the SA insurance office. Initially the Nazi Party provided coverage through insurance companies for members who were hurt or killed in the frequent violent skirmishes with members of other political parties. As insurance companies were unwilling to pay out claims for such activities, in 1930 Bormann set up the Hilfskasse der NSDAP (Nazi Party Auxiliary Fund), a benefits and relief fund directly administered by the party. Each party member was required to pay premiums and might receive compensation for injuries sustained while conducting party business. Payments out of the fund were made solely at Bormann's discretion. He began to gain a reputation as a financial expert, and many party members felt personally indebted to him after receiving benefits from the fund. In addition to its stated purpose, the fund was used as a last-resort source of funding for the Nazi Party, which was chronically short of money at that time. After the Nazi Party's success in the 1930 general election, where they won 107 seats, party membership grew dramatically. By 1932 the fund was collecting 3 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ per year.
Bormann also worked on the staff of the SA from 1928 to 1930, and while there he founded the National Socialist Automobile Corps, precursor to the National Socialist Motor Corps. The organisation was responsible for co-ordinating the donated use of motor vehicles belonging to party members, and later expanded to training members in automotive skills.
After the Machtergreifung (Nazi Party seizure of power) in January 1933, the relief fund was repurposed to provide general accident and property insurance, so Bormann resigned from its administration. He applied for a transfer and was accepted as chief of staff in the office of Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, on 1 July 1933. Bormann also served as personal secretary to Hess from July 1933 until 12 May 1941. Hess's department was responsible for settling disputes within the party and acted as an intermediary between the party and the state regarding policy decisions and legislation.[b] Bormann used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself in as much of the decision-making as possible. On 10 October 1933 Hitler named Bormann Reichsleiter (national leader – the second highest political rank) of the Nazi Party, and in November he was named Reichstag deputy. By June 1934, Bormann was gaining acceptance into Hitler's inner circle and accompanied him everywhere, providing briefings and summaries of events and requests.
In 1935, Bormann was appointed as overseer of renovations at the Berghof, Hitler's property at Obersalzberg. In the early 1930s, Hitler bought the property, which he had been renting since 1925 as a vacation retreat. After he became chancellor, Hitler drew up plans for expansion and remodelling of the main house and put Bormann in charge of construction. Bormann commissioned the construction of barracks for the SS guards, roads and footpaths, garages for motor vehicles, a guesthouse, accommodation for staff, and other amenities. Retaining title in his own name, Bormann bought up adjacent farms until the entire complex covered 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi). Members of the inner circle built houses within the perimeter, beginning with Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, and Bormann himself.[c] Bormann commissioned the building of the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), a tea house high above the Berghof, as a gift to Hitler on his fiftieth birthday (20 April 1939). Hitler seldom used the building, but Bormann liked to impress guests by taking them there.
While Hitler was in residence at the Berghof, Bormann was constantly in attendance and acted as Hitler's personal secretary. In this capacity, he began to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. During this period, Hitler gave Bormann control of his personal finances. In addition to salaries as chancellor and president, Hitler's income included money raised through royalties collected on his book Mein Kampf and the use of his image on postage stamps. Bormann set up the Adolf Hitler Fund of German Trade and Industry, which collected money from German industrialists on Hitler's behalf. Some of the funds received through this programme were disbursed to various party leaders, but Bormann retained most of it for Hitler's personal use. Bormann and others took notes of Hitler's thoughts expressed over dinner and in monologues late into the night and preserved them. The material was published after the war as Hitler's Table Talk.
The office of the Deputy Führer had final approval over civil service appointments, and Bormann reviewed the personnel files and made the decisions regarding appointments. This power impinged on the purview of Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, and was an example of the overlapping responsibilities typical of the Nazi regime. Bormann travelled everywhere with Hitler, including trips to Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany), and to the Sudetenland after the signing of the Munich Agreement later that year. Bormann was placed in charge of organising the 1938 Nuremberg Rally, a major annual party event.
Hitler intentionally played top party members against one another and the Nazi Party against the civil service. In this way, he fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. He typically did not give written orders; instead he communicated with them verbally or had them conveyed through Bormann. Falling out of favour with Bormann meant that access to Hitler was cut off. Bormann proved to be a master of intricate political infighting. Along with his ability to control access to Hitler, this enabled him to curtail the power of Joseph Goebbels, Göring, Himmler, Alfred Rosenberg, Robert Ley, Hans Frank, Speer, and other high-ranking officials, many of whom became his enemies. This ruthless and continuous infighting for power, influence, and Hitler's favour came to characterise the inner workings of the Third Reich.
As World War II progressed, Hitler's attention became focused on foreign affairs and the conduct of the war to the exclusion of all else. Hess, not directly engaged in either of these endeavours, became increasingly sidelined from the affairs of the nation and from Hitler's attention; Bormann had successfully supplanted Hess in many of his duties and usurped his position at Hitler's side. Hess was concerned that Germany would face a war on two fronts as plans progressed for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union scheduled to take place later that year. He flew solo to Britain on 10 May 1941 to seek peace negotiations with the British government. He was arrested on arrival and spent the rest of the war as a British prisoner, eventually receiving a life sentence – for crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes – at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. Speer later said Hitler described Hess's departure as one of the worst blows of his life, as he considered it a personal betrayal. Hitler ordered Hess to be shot should he return to Germany and abolished the post of Deputy Führer on 12 May 1941, assigning Hess's former duties to Bormann, with the title of Head of the Parteikanzlei (Party Chancellery). In this position he was responsible for all Nazi Party appointments, and was answerable only to Hitler. By a Führer decree (Führererlass) on 29 May, Bormann also succeeded Hess on the six-member Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, which operated as a war cabinet. He simultaneously was awarded cabinet rank equivalent to a Reichsminister without portfolio. Associates began to refer to him as the "Brown Eminence", although never to his face.[d]
Bormann's power and effective reach broadened considerably during the war. By early 1943, the war produced a labour crisis for the regime. Hitler created a three-man committee with representatives of the State, the army, and the Party in an attempt to centralise control of the war economy. The committee members were Hans Lammers (head of the Reich Chancellery), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command; OKW), and Bormann, who controlled the Party. The committee was intended to independently propose measures regardless of the wishes of various ministries, with Hitler reserving most final decisions to himself. The committee, soon known as the Dreierausschuß (Committee of Three), met eleven times between January and August 1943. However, they ran up against resistance from Hitler's cabinet ministers, who headed deeply entrenched spheres of influence and were excluded from the committee. Seeing it as a threat to their power, Goebbels, Göring, and Speer worked together to bring it down. The result was that nothing changed, and the Committee of Three declined into irrelevance.
While Article 24 of the National Socialist Program called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and a Reichskonkordat (Reich Concordat) treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, purporting to guarantee religious freedom for Catholics, Hitler believed that Christianity was fundamentally incompatible with Nazism. Bormann, who was strongly anti-Christian, agreed; he stated publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." Out of political expediency, Hitler intended to postpone the elimination of the Christian churches until after the war. However, his repeated hostile statements against the church indicated to his subordinates that a continuation of the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) would be tolerated and even encouraged.
Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches. In February 1937, he decreed that members of the clergy should not be admitted to the Nazi Party. The following year he ruled that any members of the clergy who were holding party offices should be dismissed, and that any party member who was considering entering the clergy had to give up his party membership. While Bormann's push to force the closure of theological departments at Reich universities was unsuccessful, he was able to reduce the amount of religious instruction provided in public schools to two hours per week and mandated the removal of crucifixes from classrooms.[e] Speer notes in his memoirs that while drafting plans for Welthauptstadt Germania, the planned rebuilding of Berlin, he was told by Bormann that churches were not to be allocated any building sites.
As part of the campaign against the Catholic Church, hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria were confiscated by the Gestapo and their occupants were expelled. In 1941 the Catholic Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, publicly protested against this persecution and against Action T4, the Nazi involuntary euthanasia programme under which the mentally ill, physically deformed, and incurably sick were to be killed. In a series of sermons that received international attention, he criticised the programme as illegal and immoral. His sermons led to a widespread protest movement among church leaders, the strongest protest against a Nazi policy up until that point. Bormann and others called for Galen to be hanged, but Hitler and Goebbels concluded that Galen's death would only be viewed as a martyrdom and lead to further unrest. Hitler decided to deal with the issue when the war was over.
George Mosse wrote of Bormann's beliefs:
[He believed that] God is present, but as a world-force which presides over the laws of life which the Nazis alone have understood. This non-Christian theism, tied to Nordic blood, was current in Germany long before Bormann wrote down his own thoughts on the matter. It must now be restored, and the catastrophic mistakes of the past centuries, which had put the power of the state into the hands of the Church, must be avoided. The Gauleiters are advised to conquer the influence of the Christian Churches by keeping them divided, encouraging particularism among them...
Richard Overy describes Bormann as an atheist.
Preoccupied with military matters and spending most of his time at his military headquarters on the eastern front, Hitler came to rely more and more on Bormann to handle the domestic policies of the country. On 12 April 1943, Hitler officially appointed Bormann as Personal Secretary to the Führer. By this time Bormann had de facto control over all domestic matters, and this new appointment gave him the power to act in an official capacity in any matter.
Bormann was invariably the advocate of extremely harsh, radical measures when it came to the treatment of Jews, the conquered eastern peoples, and prisoners of war. He signed the decree of 31 May 1941 extending the 1935 Nuremberg Laws to the annexed territories of the East. Thereafter, he signed the decree of 9 October 1942 prescribing that the permanent Final Solution in Greater Germany could no longer be solved by emigration, but only by the use of "ruthless force in the special camps of the East", that is, extermination in Nazi death camps. A further decree, signed by Bormann on 1 July 1943, gave Adolf Eichmann absolute powers over Jews, who now came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Gestapo. Historian Richard J. Evans estimates that 5.5 to 6 million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were exterminated by the Nazi regime in the course of The Holocaust.
Knowing Hitler viewed the Slavs as inferior, Bormann opposed the introduction of German criminal law into the conquered eastern territories. He lobbied for and eventually achieved a strict separate penal code that implemented martial law for the Polish and Jewish inhabitants of these areas. The "Edict on Criminal Law Practices against Poles and Jews in the Incorporated Eastern Territories", promulgated 4 December 1941, permitted corporal punishment and death sentences for even the most trivial of offences.
Bormann supported the hard-line approach of Erich Koch, Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in his brutal treatment of Slavic people. Alfred Rosenberg, serving as head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, favoured a more moderate policy. After touring collective farms around Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Bormann was concerned about the health and good physical constitution of the population, as he was concerned that they could constitute a danger to the regime. After discussion with Hitler, he issued a policy directive to Rosenberg that read in part:
The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don't need them, they may die. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. As to food, they are to not get more than necessary. We are the masters; we come first.
Bormann and Himmler shared responsibility[f] for the Volkssturm (people's militia), which drafted all remaining able-bodied men aged 16 to 60 into a last-ditch militia founded on 18 October 1944. Poorly equipped and trained, the men were sent to fight on the eastern front, where nearly 175,000 of them were killed without having any discernible impact on the Soviet advance.
In early 1945, Bormann edited the Bormann dictations of supposed remarks made by Hitler to Bormann; the authenticity as well as the degree of editing applied by Bormann to Hitler's original remarks are disputed among historians.
Hitler transferred his headquarters to the Führerbunker ("Leader's bunker") in Berlin on 16 January 1945, where he (along with Bormann, Bormann's secretary Else Krüger, and others) remained until the end of April. The Führerbunker was located under the Reich Chancellery garden in the government district of the city centre. The Battle of Berlin, the final major Soviet offensive of the war, began on 16 April 1945. By 19 April, the Red Army started to encircle the city. On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Hitler made his last trip above ground. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. That afternoon, Berlin was bombarded by Soviet artillery for the first time. On 23 April, Albert Bormann left the bunker complex and flew to the Obersalzberg. He and several others had been ordered by Hitler to leave Berlin.
In the early morning hours of 29 April 1945, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Goebbels, Hans Krebs, and Bormann witnessed and signed Hitler's last will and testament. In the will, Hitler described Bormann as "my most faithful Party comrade" and named him executor of the estate. That same night, Hitler married Eva Braun in a civil ceremony.
As Soviet forces continued to fight their way into the centre of Berlin, Hitler and Braun committed suicide on the afternoon of 30 April. Braun took cyanide and Hitler shot himself. Pursuant to Hitler's instructions, their bodies were carried up to the Reich Chancellery garden and burned. In accordance with Hitler's last wishes, Bormann was named as Party Minister, thus officially confirming that he held the top position in the Party. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was appointed as the new Reichspräsident (President of Germany) and Goebbels became head of government and Chancellor of Germany. Hitler did not name any successor as Führer or as leader of the Nazi Party. Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide the next day.
On 2 May, the Battle in Berlin ended when General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army.
At around 11:00 pm on 1 May, Bormann left the Führerbunker with SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur, part of one of the groups attempting to break out of the Soviet encirclement. Bormann carried with him a copy of Hitler's last will and testament. The group left the Führerbunker and travelled on foot via an U-Bahn subway tunnel to the Friedrichstraße station, where they surfaced. Several members of the party attempted to cross the Spree River at the Weidendammer Bridge while crouching behind a Tiger tank. The tank was hit by an anti-tank round and Bormann and Stumpfegger were knocked to the ground. Bormann, Stumpfegger, and several others eventually crossed the river on their third attempt. Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann walked along the railway tracks to Lehrter station, where Axmann decided to leave the others and go in the opposite direction. When he encountered a Red Army patrol, Axmann doubled back. He saw two bodies, which he later identified as Bormann and Stumpfegger, on a bridge near the railway shunting yard. He did not have time to check thoroughly, so he did not know how they died. Since the Soviets never admitted to finding Bormann's body, his fate remained in doubt for many years.
During the chaotic days after the war, contradictory reports arose as to Bormann's whereabouts. Sightings were reported in Argentina, Spain, and elsewhere. Bormann's wife was placed under surveillance in case he tried to contact her. Jakob Glas, Bormann's long-time chauffeur, insisted that he saw Bormann in Munich in July 1946. In case Bormann was still alive, multiple public notices about the upcoming Nuremberg trials were placed in newspapers and on the radio in October and November 1945 to notify him of the proceedings against him.
The trial got under way on 20 November 1945. Lacking evidence confirming Bormann's death, the International Military Tribunal tried him in absentia, as permitted under article 12 of their charter. He was charged with three counts: conspiracy to wage a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. His prosecution was assigned to Lieutenant Thomas F. Lambert Jr. and his defence to Friedrich Bergold. The prosecution stated that Bormann participated in planning and co-signed virtually all of the antisemitic legislation put forward by the regime. Bergold unsuccessfully proposed that the court could not convict Bormann because he was already dead. Due to the shadowy nature of Bormann's activities, Bergold was unable to refute the prosecution's assertions as to the extent of his involvement in decision making. Bormann was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and acquitted of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression. On 15 October 1946, he was sentenced to death by hanging, with the provision that if he were later found alive, any new facts brought to light by that time could be taken into consideration to reduce or overturn the sentence.
Over the following decades, several organisations, including the CIA and West German government, attempted to locate Bormann without success. In 1964, the West German government offered a reward of 100,000 Deutsche Marks (~€248,000 or ~US$270,000 in 2023 terms[112]) for information leading to Bormann's capture. Sightings were reported all over the world, including Australia, Denmark, Italy, and South America. In his autobiography, Nazi intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen claimed that Bormann had been a Soviet spy and had escaped to Moscow. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal believed that Bormann was living in South America. The West German government declared that its hunt for Bormann was over in 1971.
In 1963, a retired postal worker named Albert Krumnow told police that around 8 May 1945, the Soviets had ordered him and his colleagues to bury two bodies found near a railway bridge near Lehrter station (now Berlin Hauptbahnhof). One was dressed in a Wehrmacht uniform and the other was clad only in his underwear. On the second body, Krumnow's colleague, a man named Wagenpfohl, found an SS doctor's paybook identifying him as Ludwig Stumpfegger. Wagenpfohl gave the paybook to his boss, postal chief Berndt, who turned it over to the Soviets. They in turn destroyed it. Wagenpfohl wrote to Stumpfegger's wife on 14 August 1945, informing her that her husband's body was "interred with the bodies of several other dead soldiers in the grounds of the Alpendorf in Berlin NW 40, Invalidenstrasse 63."
Excavations on 20–21 July 1965 at the site specified by Axmann and Krumnow failed to locate the bodies. However, on 7 December 1972, construction workers uncovered human remains near Lehrter station in West Berlin, only 12 m (39 ft) from the spot where Krumnow claimed to have buried them. At the subsequent autopsies, fragments of glass were found in the jaws of both skeletons, suggesting that the men had committed suicide by biting cyanide capsules to avoid capture. Dental records reconstructed from memory in 1945 by Hugo Blaschke identified one skeleton as Bormann's, and damage to the collarbone was consistent with injuries that Bormann's sons reported he had sustained in a riding accident in 1939. Forensic examiners determined that the size of the skeleton and shape of the skull were identical to Bormann's. Likewise, the second skeleton was deemed to be Stumpfegger's, since it was of similar height to his last known proportions. Composite photographs, in which images of the skulls were overlaid on photographs of the men's faces, were completely congruent. Facial reconstruction was undertaken in early 1973 on both skulls to confirm the identities of the bodies. Soon afterward, the West German government declared Bormann dead. Bormann's family was not permitted to cremate the body, in case further forensic examination later proved necessary. The family refused burial and refused to take possession of the remains. The bones were placed in a vault at the Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe, which was at the time being shared with the Federal Court of Justice.
The remains were conclusively identified as Bormann's in 1998 when German authorities ordered genetic testing on fragments of the skull. The testing was led by Wolfgang Eisenmenger, Professor of Forensic Science at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Tests using DNA from one of his relatives identified the skull as that of Bormann.
After being released to his family, Bormann's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Baltic Sea on 16 August 1999.
On 2 September 1929, Bormann married 19-year-old Gerda Buch [de] (23 October 1909 – 23 March 1946), whose father, Major Walter Buch, served as a chairman of the Untersuchung und Schlichtungs-Ausschuss (USCHLA; Investigation and Settlement Committee), which was responsible for settling disputes within the party. Hitler was a frequent visitor to the Buch house, and it was here that Bormann met him. Hess and Hitler served as witnesses at his wedding. Bormann also had a series of mistresses, including Manja Behrens, an actress.
Martin and Gerda Bormann had ten children:
Martin Adolf Bormann (14 April 1930 – 11 March 2013); called Krönzi (short for Kronprinz, "crown prince"); born "Adolf Martin Bormann", named after Hitler, his godfather.
Ilse Bormann (9 July 1931 – 1958); Her twin sister, Ehrengard, died shortly after birth. Since Ilse was named after her godmother, Ilse Hess, her name was changed to "Eike" after Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain in 1941.
Irmgard Bormann (born 25 or 28 July 1933)
Rudolf Gerhard Bormann (born 31 August 1934); named after his godfather Rudolf Hess. His name was changed to "Helmut" after Hess's flight to Scotland.
Heinrich Hugo Bormann (born 13 June 1936); named after his godfather Heinrich Himmler.
Eva Ute Bormann (born 4 May 1938)
Gerda Bormann (born 4 August 1940)
Fritz Hartmut Bormann (born 3 April 1942)
Volker Bormann (18 September 1943 – 1946)
Gerda Bormann and the children fled Obersalzberg for Italy on 25 April 1945 after an Allied air attack. She died of cancer on 23 March 1946, in Merano, Italy. Bormann's nine remaining children survived the war and were cared for in foster homes. The eldest son Martin was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and worked in Africa as a missionary. He later left the priesthood and married.
Frontbann Badge (1932)
Golden Party Badge (1934)
Olympic Games Decoration First Class (1936)
Honour Chevron for the Old Guard
SS-Honour Ring (1937)
Honour Sword of the Reichsführer-SS (1937)
Blood Order (1938)
Nazi Party Long Service Award in Bronze and Silver
Grand Officer and Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy
Glossary of Nazi Germany
List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
List SS-Obergruppenführer
SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander, Bormann's adjutant
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Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-303790-3.
Evans, Richard J. (2008). The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4.
Fest, Joachim C. (1970). The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-394-73407-1.
Hamilton, Charles (1984). Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1. San Jose, CA: R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 0-912138-27-0.
"Hitler's last days: Preparations for death". Security Service (MI5) .
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Karacs, Imre (4 May 1998). "DNA test closes book on mystery of Martin Bormann". The Independent. London: Independent Print Limited .
Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
Kershaw, Ian (2016). To Hell and Back: Europe 1914–1949. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-310992-1.
Lang, Jochen von (1979). The Secretary. Martin Bormann: The Man Who Manipulated Hitler. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-50321-9.
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Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
McGovern, James (1968). Martin Bormann. New York: William Morrow & Company. OCLC 441132.
Miller, Michael (2006). Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1. San Jose, CA: R. James Bender. ISBN 978-93-297-0037-2.
Moll, Martin (2016). Spencer C. Tucker (ed.). World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection [5 volumes]. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara; Denver: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-4593-2.
Mosse, George (2003). Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19304-1.
Overy, Richard (2005) [2004]. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-191224-0.
Rees, Laurence (writer, director) Kershaw, Ian (writer, consultant) (2012). The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler (television documentary). UK: BBC .
Schirrmacher, Thomas (2007). Hitlers Kriegsreligion. Die Verankerung der Weltanschauung Hitlers in seiner religiösen Begrifflichkeit und seinem Gottesbild.
Sereny, Gitta (1996) [1995]. Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. New York: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-679-76812-8.
Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-62420-0.
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Williams, Max (2015). SS Elite: The Senior Leaders of Hitler's Praetorian Guard. Vol. I. Fonthill Media LLC. ISBN 978-1-78155-433-3.
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Martin Bormann: "The Brown Eminence" by the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Information about Martin Bormann in the Reichstag database
Newspaper clippings about Martin Bormann in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
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Death, Nazi & Hitler
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2014-04-02T04:38:09
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Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal in 1946 but took his own life instead.
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en
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/_assets/design-tokens/biography/static/images/favicon.3635572.ico
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Biography
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https://www.biography.com/political-figures/hermann-goring
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(1893-1946)
Who Was Hermann Göring?
Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He played a prominent role in organizing the Nazi police state in Germany and established concentration camps for the "corrective treatment" of individuals. Indicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, Göring was condemned to hang as a war criminal, but he took cyanide the night he was to be executed.
Early Life, Nazi Party and World War I
Hermann Göring was born in Rosenheim, Germany, on January 12, 1893. He was trained for a career in the military and received his commission in 1912, serving Germany as a pilot during World War I. After the war, Göring worked as a commercial pilot in Denmark and Sweden, where he met Swedish baroness Carin von Kantzow, who promptly divorced her husband and married Göring in February 1923.
Two years earlier, Göring had met Adolf Hitler and had joined the emerging National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party, and as a former military officer, he was given command of Hitler's stormtroopers (the "SA"). In November 1923, Göring took part in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, during which Hitler attempted to seize control of the German government by spearheading a revolution with the help of the SA.
During the putsch, Göring was severely wounded in the groin and, after his escape into Austria, was given morphine for the pain. As a result, Göring developed a severe drug addiction that would follow him for his entire life and twice lead him into a treatment center. After the putsch failed, Hitler was imprisoned (and released in 1924), and Göring remained in exile until he was granted amnesty in 1927. He then returned to Germany and was readmitted to the Nazi Party.
Göring's wife died in 1931, and the following year Göring rose to the presidency of the Reichstag (parliament) when the Nazi Party won the majority of seats in the July election. Hitler was named German chancellor on January 30, 1933, and before long a bill giving him dictatorial powers was passed. Hitler allowed Göring to create the Gestapo, or secret political police, and to establish concentration camps in which to imprison the Nazis' political opponents. He married his second wife Emma “Emmy” Sonnemann in 1935 with whom he had a daughter.
World War II
In 1934, Göring's Gestapo and the Nazis' parliamentary regiments, also known as "Schutzstaffel" or the "SS," carried out what has become known as the "Night of the Long Knives," in which 85 members of the political opposition were assassinated, thus consolidating Nazi power and quieting any further dissent. Göring's association with Hitler helped him rise to power alongside the Führer and, in 1935, he took command of the German air force—a position he held until the end of World War II.
In 1939, Hitler declared Göring his successor. The following year, he bestowed upon Göring the special rank of marshal of the empire. By April 1945, however, with the Allies moving in, Göring attempted to assume Hitler's powers in accordance with the pronouncements of 1939, as he considered Hitler to be pinned down and virtually helpless in Berlin. Convinced that this was an act of treason, Hitler stripped Göring of his offices and titles, and placed him under house arrest. By April 1945, the situation for the Nazis had become dire, and on April 30, 1945, Hitler and wife Eva Braun committed suicide. Göring was freed from prison, and he immediately sought out American troops and surrendered.
Trial and Death
While awaiting trial as a war criminal, Göring finally was able to break his morphine addiction, and he defended himself before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg. Göring denied any involvement in the regime's more monstrous activities but was condemned to death nonetheless. He pleaded to be shot instead of hanged, but the tribunal refused his request.
On October 15, 1946, the night that his execution was ordered — and a year and a half after Hitler had committed suicide in his own bunker — Göring took a cyanide capsule and died in his cell.
QUICK FACTS
Name: Hermann Wilhelm Goring
Birth Year: 1893
Birth date: January 12, 1893
Birth City: Rosenheim
Birth Country: Germany
Gender: Male
Best Known For: Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal in 1946 but took his own life instead.
Industries
World War I
Crime and Terrorism
World War II
Politics and Government
Astrological Sign: Capricorn
Nacionalities
German
Death Year: 1946
Death date: October 15, 1946
Death City: Nuremberg
Death Country: Germany
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Adolf Hitler: Myth, Legend, Truth...
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As a youth, Adolf Hitler [1889-1945] fled Austria, and went to Germany to escape the draft. He was arrested, and in February 1914, a report was put in his file, which read in part:
"Unfit for military or auxiliary service; too weak; incapable of bearing arms".
This was the man that the Illuminati would choose to further their goals. As a puppet of the Illuminati, he was used to set the stage for the conflict which would eventually lead to the establishment of the United Nations, a major step towards one-world government; and to shame the world into allowing the State of Israel to be established.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73], a graduate of Cambridge University, and a Mason, who became a member of the British Parliament, wrote a novel in 1871 called "Vril: The Power of the Coming Race", about a super-race of white Aryans that took control of the world. Researchers consider him responsible for the birth of the Nazi movement, because Hitler was said to have been influenced by this book, and another novel, "Rienzi: The Last of the Roman Tribunes", which was adapted into a major opera by German composer Richard Wagner. After seeing "Rienzi" for the first time in November, 1906, Hitler talked about a mandate which, one day, he would receive from the people, to lead them out of servitude to the heights of freedom. He believed that he would be entrusted with a special mission. He later told Frau Wagner, the composer's widow: "In that hour it began" [the Nazi movement known as National Socialism].
History shows that Hitler ordered the death of six million Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. Why he did, has become a mystery, since it really hasn't been established that he had an intense hatred for Jews.
A U.S. Office of Strategic Services psychological report by Walter C. Langer, later published as "The Mind of Adolf Hitler", says that the young Hitler was befriended by Jewish art dealers who paid generously for his mediocre watercolors. Because of his financial situation, a Jewish landlady charged him only a nominal rent, and even moved out of her apartment on one occasion so that Hitler and a friend could have more room. A Jewish used-clothing dealer gave him a long black overcoat, which he wore constantly. When he was a lance-corporal during World War I, Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross [First and Second Class], a rare honor for a soldier of such low rank, who hadn't really done anything to deserve such a distinction. He learned later, that the commendation was the result of the efforts of the regimental adjutant, Hugo Gutmann, a Jew.
When he became F�hrer, Hitler hired a Jewish maid to do his cooking. On one occasion, when it was suggested that he get rid of her, he became furious. Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jewish physician, had been the Hitler family doctor since Hitler was a child. Bloch had treated Hitler's mother when she was dying of cancer. After her funeral, Hitler accompanied his sisters to thank him, and said: "I shall be grateful to you forever". He sent the doctor two postcards, one that he hand painted. Both of them said: "From your ever grateful patient, Adolf Hitler".
Hitler had even wondered if he himself was Jewish. This idea stemmed from the fact that Hitler's father, Alois, was illegitimate, and the identity of his grandfather had never been established. During Hitler's rise to power, his half-brother's son threatened to reveal that Hitler was of Jewish ancestry. One investigation discovered that Hitler's grandfather had been the son of a Jewish family called Frankenburger, in Graz, who employed Hitler's grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, as a maid. She had become pregnant by their son, while she was working in their home. The family sent her money for a year and a half to help support the child. Another investigation said that Alois was conceived in Vienna, where Hitler's grandfather was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. Maria was sent home to Spital, where Hitler's father was born.
In "Hitler's War", written in 1977 by British author and historical revisionist, David Irving, he revealed that Hitler didn't order the Jewish massacres, and didn't find out about it until late in the war. There is no record of Hitler ever visiting a concentration camp, although he did watch films and see photographs.
So what turned Hitler against the Jews, if indeed he was; or was there someone else making decisions for him?
As early as 1919, he spoke of removing Jews altogether; and in his book "Mein Kampf", written while he was in prison in 1924, for the "Beer Hall Putsch", spoke of the overthrow of "World Jewry":
"I believe that I am today acting according to the purposes of the almighty Creator. In resisting the Jew, I am fighting the Lord's battle".
On 30 January 1939, he said in a speech to the Reichstag:
"Today I want to be a prophet once more: if international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
In a public speech in Munich, on 8 November 1942, he said that "International Jewry will be recognized in its full demonic peril; we National Socialists would see to that".
Hitler had read the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", and in 1942, was told by Himmler, that they were forged, however, Hitler disregarded that fact and said: "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew". He attributed the weakness of the German economy to the Jews, and considered the Treaty of Versailles, a Jewish document. He even accused the Jews of spreading communism; yet in a speech on 5 February 1941, said that "basically, National Socialism [Naziism] and Communism are the same".
Why does the life of Hitler seem to be a series of contradictions? One clue was revealed in "The Secret Diaries of Hitler's Doctor", written in 1983 by David Irving, which revealed that Hitler had taken 75 different medications. He was given strychnine and belladonna [for gas], cocaine and adrenalin [for conjunctivitis], amphetamines, painkillers, and sedatives, including Eukodal, a synthetic morphine derivative. One has to wonder if Hitler was even aware of what he was being given. Were they being given to him for the sole purpose of making him mentally unstable, so he could be controlled by advisors, who were acting on behalf of the forces that Hitler wrongly identified as the Jewish bankers.
There may also be a more sinister reason which contributed to Hitler's state of mind. Hitler and some of his officers had been linked to various occult groups and the use of the swastika gave evidence of that. In its normal usage, it is a sign of the power of light; but in its reverse form, as used by the Nazis, it represents the power of darkness. According to writer Joseph Carr:
"We know that Hitler and his top luminaries were either dabblers in the occult, or, outright Satanists".
As a youth, Hitler had been influenced by George Lanz von Liebenfels, an Austrian magician who in 1907 founded "The Order of the New Templars", which used the Swastika as its emblem. He wrote in a 1932 letter that Hitler was one of his pupils and that one day he would "develop a movement that will make the world tremble".
Hitler joined a secret group in 1919, called the Thule Society, which practiced black magic and worshipped Satan. They wanted to form a political party to rally the people against communism. Its members were drawn from the upper echelon of Society. The founder, Dietrich Eckart, was one of the seven founding members of the Nazi Party, and said on his deathbed:
"Follow Hitler. He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centres in vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: I shall have influenced history more than any other German".
Hitler grew to fear those around him who practiced the black arts, and it was discovered that along with the Jews, Masons and occult practitioners were also killed and imprisoned in the concentration camps.
Some of the reported book burnings were actually the confiscation and destruction of Masonic libraries.
Karl Ernst Haushofer [who created the Vril Society, which made up the inner circle of the Nazi Party], also of the Thule Society, was the University professor who schooled Hitler on geopolitics. Hitler was also influenced by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1943, Hitler's birthday gift to Mussolini, was "The Collected Works of Nietzche".
In the fall of 1919, Hitler joined the German Workers Party, and soon became one of its leaders. In the summer of 1920, it was renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party, and then in 1923, it became known as the Nazi Party.
Because of Hitler's failed November revolt, he was jailed on 1 April 1924, sentenced to five years, but was released after eight months, so he could be built up to national prominence. Though "Mein Kampf" was published as a work of Adolf Hitler while he was in prison, it was discovered later that it was actually written by Nazi politicians Rudolf Hess and Hermann Wilhelm G�ring [and possibly Haushofer], as a follow-up to the Karl Marx book "A World Without Jews". The Illuminati made sure the book was well circulated, and it became the springboard for Hitler's political career.
In 1925, Dr. Carl Duisberg, I. G. Farben's first Chairman, and founder of the Bayer Co. in the United States, said:
"Be united, united, united. This should be the uninterrupted call to the parties of the Reichstag. We hope that our words of today will work, and will find the strong man who will finally bring everyone under one umbrella ... for he is always necessary for us Germans, as we have seen in the case of Bismarck".
The depressive economic situation in Germany at the time, created by the Versailles Treaty, made it possible for Hitler's leadership to take root, and he became Chancellor in January 1933.
Since 1924, the Dawes Plan flooded Germany with a tremendous amount of American capital, which enabled Germany to build its war machine. The three largest loans went into the development of industries, such as I. G. Farben Co. (the German company which became the largest corporation in Europe, and the largest chemical company in the world, after a $30 million loan from the Rockefeller's National City Bank after World War I, and who created a process of making high grade fuel from low quality coals) and Vereinigte Stahlwerke [who produced about 95% of Germany's explosives]. In 1939, Standard Oil of New Jersey sold I. G. Farben $20,000 worth of high quality aviation fuel. I. G. Farben's assets in the United States were controlled by a holding company called American I. G. Farben Chemical Corp. On the Board of Directors of this corporation was Edsel Ford [President of the Ford Motor Co.], Charles E. Mitchell [President of National City Bank in New York City], Walter C. Teagle [President of Standard Oil of New York], Paul Warburg [Chairman of the Federal Reserve], and Herman Metz [Director of the Warburg's Bank of Manhattan]. Several Germans on this Board were found guilty of war crimes at Nuremburg. A U.S. War Department investigation revealed that without Farben's support, "Germany's prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible".
Hitler received support and financing from the aristocracy and elite of Germany, including Gustav Krupp [industrialist], Carl Duisberg [founder of I.G. Farben], Ernst Tengelmann [director of the Ruhr coal mining operation], Dr. Hjalmar Schacht [prominent banker], and Fritz Thyssen [Chairman of the Board of United Steel Works, Germany's largest company]. Hitler maintained that the Nazi Party would continue "only until the German people had been freed from the threat of Marxism and could reach a decision as to whether the final form of government would be a republic or a monarchy". Thyssen told the Kaiser that Hitler was made Chancellor only as "a transitional stage leading to the reintroduction of the German monarchy".
America's Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, reported to President Roosevelt in August 1936:
"At the present moment, more than a hundred American corporations have subsidiaries here or co-operative understandings. The DuPonts have their allies in Germany that are aiding in the armament business. Their chief ally is the I. G. Farben Company [the primary supporter of Hitler] ... Standard Oil Company [of New York] sent $2,000,000 here in December, 1933, and has made $500,000 a year helping Germans make Ersatz gas for war purposes; but Standard Oil cannot take any of its earnings out of the country except in goods ... The International Harvester Company President told me their business here rose 33% a year but they could take nothing out. Even our airplane people have secret arrangements with Krupps. General Motors Company and Ford do enormous business here through subsidiaries and take no profits out. I mention these facts because they complicate things and add to war dangers".
Germany's two largest tank producers were Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors [controlled by J. P. Morgan and the du Ponts], and Ford A. G., a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company. International Telephone and Telegraph [ITT] held a substantial interest in Focke-Wolfe, an airplane manufacturer who produced German fighter aircraft.
Prior to World War II, the Round Table organization, through various means, made sure Hitler wasn't stopped in Austria, the Rhineland, or Sudentenland. His financing was done through the Warburg-controlled Mendelsohn Bank of Amsterdam; and the J. Henry Shroeder Bank [financial agent for the Nazi government], which had branches in Frankfurt, London, and New York. The Chief Legal Counsel for the Shroeder Bank, was the firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, whose senior partners included CFR members John Foster Dulles (who was the top policy-making director for the International Nickel Co. who helped negotiate an agreement with Farben which helped the Nazis to stockpile nickel for war purposes) and his brother Allen Dulles [who was a Director on the Board of the J. Henry Shroeder Bank, and later became the head of the CIA]. They were cousins to the Rockefellers [who later got a controlling interest in Farben].
Hitler indirectly received financing from the Krupps, Kennedys, and the Rothschilds. The liaison between Hitler and Wall Street was Hjalmar Horace Greely Schacht, the President of Reichsbank, who aided in the rebuilding of Germany. His father worked in the Berlin office of the Morgan-controlled Equitable Trust Co. of New York. Without a shadow of a doubt, Hitler was controlled by the Illuminati.
The Holocaust had begun with the Jews being stripped of their German citizenship; and from 1939-45, Hitler's death camps claimed the lives of six million Jews, or about 1/3 of the entire Jewish race. The world turned against him, and his actions instigated World War II, which had actually been planned years before.
Another reason for World War II, was to make it possible for Russia, our ally at the time, to gain strength and receive recognition as a world power. Although they were our ally, they were still a Communist nation, with growing designs on world domination. There is an incredible amount of evidence that indicates the willingness of our government to allow the spread of Communism, because of the efforts of Communists who had been employed and were acting on behalf of the Illuminati.
In May 1943 the Allies had pushed the Germans out of Africa, invading Sicily in June, and in September, pushed their way through Italy, on the way to Southern Germany, their weakest point. However, the U.S. withdrew troops from the invasion force so they could be used in a later invasion of France. In his 1950 book "Calculated Risk", Gen. Mark Clark said that this decision was "made at high level and for reasons beyond my field and knowledge". Churchill had wanted the attack to "bring the Central European and Balkan countries under Allied control, before they were allowed to slip into Red slavery". But instead, under the leadership of Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, the German advance was spread out, which allowed the Russian forces to advance. Was this an intentional move on the part of the United States to allow the Russians an opportunity to pursue their ulterior motives. It certainly seems so.
In the spring of 1943, a faction within the German Secret Service was prepared to assassinate Hitler, and surrender, on one condition that the Soviets would not be allowed to advance into Central Europe. Roosevelt refused to accept, and postponed a planned European invasion, in order to give the Russians more time to advance, and occupy more land. According to military documents released in 1970, Gen. Eisenhower allowed the Russians to get to Berlin first, before the Americans, which eventually allowed part of the city to fall under Communist control.
Russia was able to come away from 1945 Conference in Yalta with so much, because Roosevelt believed that the Russians were perfectly friendly:
"They aren't trying to gobble up the rest of Europe. These fears that have been expressed by a lot of people here that the Russians are going to try and dominate Europe, I personally don't think there is anything do it ... I have just a hunch that Stalin ... doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can, and ask nothing in return, he won't try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace".
Russia walked away from the bargaining table with Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, east and central Europe, N. Korea, the Kuril Islands, and the northern part of Sakhalin.
An American General, Albert C. Wedemeyer, was convinced that Russia was the only winner of World War II.
He said:
"Stalin was intent on creating favorable conditions for the realization of Communist aims throughout the Balkans and Western Europe. He emerged as the only winner of the War. We insured the emergence of a more hostile, menacing predatory power than Nazi Germany, one which has enslaved more people than we liberated".
Gen. George S. Patton wanted to retire because he planned on being able to speak his mind about America being 'soft on Communism'. However, before resigning his Commission, he died after an automobile accident forced him to be hospitalized. In 1979, Douglas Bazata, a former Secret Service agent for the Office of Strategic Services [OSS, the predecessor of the CIA] revealed that he was ordered by the Director "Wild Bill" Donovan to kill Patton in 1944. Although he didn't, he knows who did, and said that Patton was killed with cyanide at the hospital he was taken to after the accident.
Frank Murphy, appointed by Roosevelt to the post of Attorney General in 1938, and later, as a Supreme Court Justice, told Congressman Martin Dies:
"We're doomed! The United States is doomed! The Communists have control completely ... They've got control of Roosevelt and his wife as well".
In 1949, upon waiting to be released from a Detroit hospital, he "died" of a heart attack.
James Forrestal, a partner and President of Dillon, Read and Company, was appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1944, then the Secretary of Defense in 1947, till Truman asked him to resign in 1949. After the War, he became dedicated to destroying Communism, because it seemed as though the United States was constantly yielding to them. Truman believed Forrestal was under a lot of mental stress, and had him admitted to the U.S. Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland.
His personal diaries, consisting of 15 loose-leaf binders, about 3,000 pages, were removed from his office at the Pentagon, and held at the White House. Forrestal had told a friend that he was being followed, and that his phone was tapped. He noticed the beginnings of the Korean War, fifteen months before it actually started.
Once he was in the hospital, he was allowed no visitors. On 22 May 1949, his brother, Henry Forrestal, decided to take his brother for a ride into the country. That same day, James Forrestal, allegedly jumped from the 16th floor of the hospital. Found on a third floor projection, the cord of his bathrobe was tied around his neck, and the hospital released a statement that he committed suicide, even though there was not enough evidence to prove that he had.
In 1951, his diaries were published by Viking Press, but they were heavily censored by the White House, the Pentagon, and Walter Millis, of the "New York Tribune", so the full story could never be known. His family priest, Monsignor Maurice S. Sheehy said:
"Many, many times in his letters to me, Jim Forrestal wrote anxiously and fearfully and bitterly of the enormous harm that had been; and was unceasingly being done, by men in high office in the United States government, who he was convinced were Communists or under the influence of Communists, and who he said were shaping the policies of the United States government to aid Soviet Russia and harm the United States".
To this day, Forrestal continues to be labeled as being insane, and the cause of his death remains unknown.
Towards the end of 1949, three men visited the office of Sen. Joseph McCarthy to show him an FBI report detailing the Communist penetration of the State Department and other government spy networks. On 9 February 1950, in a speech before the Ohio County Women's Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, he said:
"I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy".
A Special Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was established to investigate where there were disloyal people employed at the State Department. However, instead of investigating the accusations, they investigated McCarthy, and a wave of anti-McCarthy sentiment swept the country. On 23 September1950, McCarthy revealed what would happen because of the Yalta Conference in 1945:
"Here was signed the death warrant of the young men who were dying today in the hills and valleys of Korea. Here was signed the death warrant of the young men who will die tomorrow in the jungles of Indochina. [Vietnam]".
McCarthy was accused of smearing the reputation of innocent people, and on 30 July 1954, Sen. Ralph Flanders introduced a resolution condemning him for "conduct unbecoming a member". The speech by Flanders was written by the National Committee for an Effective Congress, which had been created by Arthur Goldsmith, who compiled the charges against McCarthy. He was originally charged with 46 counts, but after the hearings, only two remained, and the Senate voted only to 'censure' him, which is a milder punishment than "condemning" him.
McCarthy died on 2 May 1957 at the Bethesda Naval Hospital of "acute hepatic failure". No autopsy was ever performed, leading many to believe that he was killed because he was closer to the truth the most people ever dreamed. Of the 81 security risks that McCarthy said was in the State Department, by November, 1954, they had all been removed, either by dismissal or resignation. Over a year later, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee revealed that they had a list of 847 security risks in the State Department.
Louis Budenz, a former Communist, said:
"The destruction of Joe McCarthy leaves the way open to intimidate any person of consequence who moves against the Conspiracy. The Communists made him their chief target because they wanted him a symbol to remind political leaders in America not to harm the Conspiracy or its world conquest designs".
All of this information should proves the contention, that the invisible forces at work within our government used World War II as a means of promoting the Russian goal of conquest, and allowed the spread of Communist propaganda.
The Deception of Pearl Harbor
In the Pacific Theater, the stirrings of World War II actually began years before. China had allowed Japan to drill for oil in several provinces, because Standard Oil's price for kerosene was too high. Through contacts in the Chinese government, Standard Oil had been able to keep anyone from drilling, until the Japanese came and developed huge fields. Standard Oil pushed them out, but the Japanese vowed to return, even going as far as saying that they would seize China to recover their oil investments.
When the Japanese invaded China in the 1930's, one of their first acts was to destroy Standard Oil property, because they had been responsible for their ouster.
In 1931, Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of State [a Rockefeller lawyer and agent], met with President Herbert Hoover, on behalf of the Illuminati, to make a deal. The international bankers promised to end the Depression if Hoover would declare war on Japan, and send in the military to protect Standard Oil property. Even though Hoover accommodated the bankers in many cases, this was one deal that he refused.
So Stimson pitched the idea to Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt [who has a dozen U. S. Presidents in his family tree], who was indebted to them because of his philanthropic operation at Georgia's Warm Springs.
Roosevelt was born at Hyde Park, New York, in 1882. He graduated from Harvard, received a law degree from Columbia Law School, and in 1910, was elected to the New York State Senate [re-elected in 1912]. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by Wilson in 1913, on orders from Col. House. According to House biographer Arthur D. Howden Smith, Col. House "picked Roosevelt as a natural candidate for the Presidency long before any other responsible politician". In the 1920 Presidential election, Roosevelt was James Cox' running mate, but the Democratic team suffered from the mistakes of the Wilson Administration, and lost miserably to the Harding-Coolidge ticket. Roosevelt later became a two-term governor of New York. After the 1932 Democratic convention in Chicago, where Roosevelt became the Party's nominee, he met with Col. House at his Massachusetts home. House told another biographer, Charles Seymour, in 1938:
"I was close to the movement that nominated Roosevelt ... He has given me a free hand in advising [Secretary of State, Cordell] Hull. All the Ambassadors have reported to me frequently".
The Illuminati put all their political power behind Roosevelt to get him elected, and in 1940, Roosevelt appointed Stimson [a CFR member] to the post of Secretary of War, even though he was a Republican. House, who was 75 years old, didn't become Roosevelt's "alter ego". That role was filled by another Wilson advisor, Bernard Baruch, who became the liaison between Roosevelt and the bankers. FDR's uncle, Frederic Delano, was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and in 1925, became the Chairman of the League of Nations Committee. In 1934, he was appointed as Chairman of the National Resources Planning Board, and in 1936, became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia.
Roosevelt was a 32nd degree Mason, a Knight Templar, and a member of the Shrine. He is a direct descendent of socialist Clinton B. Roosevelt, the New York assemblyman who wrote "The Science of Government Founded in Natural Law", where he revealed a plan for world government. Clinton Roosevelt and Horace Greeley [founder and owner of the "New York Tribune" and "New Yorker Magazine"] were the pioneers of social engineering research. In the February, 1953 edition of the "Empire State Mason", the official publication of the Grand Lodge of New York, the claim was made that if one-world government ever came about, FDR should get much of the credit.
In 1932, Major General Smedley Butler of the U. S. Marine Corps was approached by Grayson Mallet-Provost Murphy (a director of Guaranty Trust), Robert S. Clark [a banker who inherited a fortune from the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Co.], and John W. Davis [a 1924 Presidential candidate, who was an attorney for J. P. Morgan], with a plan to lead a revolution to overthrow the government and establish a Fascist dictatorship, Butler was to "seize the White House with a private army [of 500,000 veterans], hold Franklin Roosevelt prisoner, and get rid of him if he refused to serve as their puppet in a dictatorship they planned to impose and control". Butler chose to expose the plot, rather than lead it, supposedly because of his patriotism. Or was it because he recognized their true aim, which was for Roosevelt to impose a dictatorship during a national emergency, so the government could take complete control. Butler is on record as having said: "War was largely a matter of money. Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot repay, the President sends Marines to get it".
When the planned revolt didn't materialize, other plans were developed. Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, reported:
"At the first meeting of the Cabinet after the President took office in 1933, the financier and advisor to Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch, and Baruch's friend, General Hugh Johnson, who was to become the head of the National Recovery Administration, came in with a copy of a book by Gentile, the Italian Fascist theoretician, for each member of the Cabinet, and we all read it with care".
Future plans called for the government to be moved towards Fascism, and government control without a revolution. They decided that the best method was through war, and Jim Farley, Roosevelt's Postmaster General, said that during the second Cabinet meeting in 1933: "The new President again turned to the possibility of war in Japan". Gen. Johnson wrote: "I know of no well informed Washington observer who isn't convinced that, if Mr. Roosevelt is elected [in 1940], he will drag us into war at the first opportunity, and that, if none presents itself, he will make one".
Roosevelt wanted Japan to withdraw, not only from Indo-China, but also China [Manchuria]. To enforce his demands, he froze all Japanese assets in this country, and cancelled a 1911 commercial treaty. He had their fuel supplies cut and placed an embargo on 11 raw materials which were necessary for their military. In December 1939, this was extended to light steel. In England, Winston Churchill, and later the Dutch government, followed suit. Former President Herbert Hoover observed the various political manipulations, and said in August, 1941:
"The American people should insistently demand that Congress put a stop to step-by-step projection of the United States into undeclared war..."
On 28 September 1940, Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite Treaty, which declared that if any of the three were attacked, all three had to respond. So if Japan attacked the U.S., and the U.S. would declare war against Japan, they would also be at war with Germany and Italy.
In October, 1940, part of FDR's strategy to push Japan into committing an overt act of war, was to move America's Pacific fleet out of California, and have it anchored at Pearl Harbor. Admiral James Richardson, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, expressed to Roosevelt his strong opposition to putting the fleet in harm's way. He was relieved of his command. Richardson later quoted Roosevelt as saying:
"Sooner or later the Japanese will commit an overt act against the United States and the nation will be willing to enter the war".
Roosevelt and Churchill had already been working on a plan to get America to enter the war in Europe. After the German ship Bismarck sank the British ship, known as the 'Hood', Churchill suggested in April, 1941, 'that an American warship should find the 'Prinz Eugen' [the Bismarck's escort ship] then draw her fire, "thus providing the incident for which the United States would be so thankful" i.e., bring her into war. While Roosevelt planned for such a provocation in the Atlantic, Hitler told his naval commanders in July 1941, to avoid confrontation with the United States while his Russian campaign was in progress.
Joseph C. Grew used his post as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan to encourage the Japanese to enter a state of military preparedness. They were shipped steel scrap from the entire 6th Avenue Elevator Railroad of New York. The Institute of Pacific Relations, through a $2 million grant, funded communist spies who were to help induce the Japanese to strike back at the United States.
Since then, it has become common knowledge that the attack was not the surprise it was claimed to be. On 27 January 1941, Grew sent a telegram to the Secretary of State to report the following:
"The Peruvian minister has informed a member of my staff that he heard from many sources, including a Japanese source, that, in the event of trouble breaking out between the United States and Japan, the Japanese intended to make a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor".
-- U.S., Department of State, Publication 1983, 'Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941, Washington, D.C.: U.S.', Government Printing Office, 1943
In August 1941, Congressman Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, collected evidence that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor. The Committee was in possession of a strategic map, prepared by the Japanese Imperial Military Intelligence Department that clearly indicated their plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Dies was told not to go public with his information. An Army Intelligence officer in the Far East discovered the plan for the Pearl Harbor attack, and prior to the attack, sent three separate messages to Washington detailing the plan.
Soviet agent Richard Sorge told the Russian Government in October 1941 that 'the Japanese intend to attack Pearl Harbor in the next 60 days', and received a response from his superiors that the information had been passed onto President Roosevelt. Dusko Popov, a British double agent, received information from Germany about Japan's plans, and passed the information onto Washington. It was never acted on.
As early as 1944, Presidential candidate, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, said that Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor, before it happened. In documents declassified by the National Security Agency in 1981, America had broken the Blue [diplomatic] and Purple [naval] secret codes of the Japanese, knew all the details of the attack, and the whereabouts of the Japanese fleet. From September, 1941, until the attack itself, all Japanese communications had been intercepted and decoded by American Intelligence, and indicated an impending attack on Pearl Harbor.
One transmission, from a fake weather report broadcast on a Japanese short-wave station contained the words 'higashi no kaze ame', which means 'east wind, rain', which the Americans already knew was the Japanese code for war with the United States. Top military officials denied that the "winds" message existed and attempted to destroy all traces of its receipt.
Late in November 1941, the following order was sent out to all U.S. military commanders:
"The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act".
According to Secretary of War Stimson, this order came directly from Roosevelt. According to Stimson's diary, 9 people in the war cabinet, all the military people, knew about FDR's plan of provocation.
The State Department knew on 20 November, that a naval force, which included four of the largest Japanese aircraft carriers were heading towards Hawaii, and this information was passed on to Pearl Harbor on 27 November. However, the American base in Hawaii was not given this information. Three days before the attack, Australian Intelligence spotted the Japanese fleet heading for Hawaii. They sent a warning to Washington, but it was dismissed by Roosevelt who said it was a politically motivated rumor circulated by the Republicans.
On 1 December 1941, the head of the Far East Division of U.S. Naval Intelligence wrote in his report to head of the Pacific Fleet:
"War between the United States and Japan will begin in the nearest future".
The Report never made it to the commander's desk, because it had been "accidentally" detained by his superiors. Early in December, Army Intelligence knew that the diplomats at the Japanese Embassy in Washington had been ordered to destroy all codes, and to return to Japan. Washington also knew that Japan had ordered all of its merchant ships home, because they would be needed to transport soldiers and supplies for the war. On December 5, Col. Sadtler from U.S. Military Communications transmitted the following telegram to his superiors, based on information he had received:
"War with Japan will begin immediately; exclude all possibility of a second Port Arthur".
This telegram never got to its destination.
In 1932, the U.S. Navy had conducted tests at Pearl Harbor which indicated that it was vulnerable to an attack from sixty miles away without being able to detect it. Admiral J. O. Richardson, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific fleet, wanted the fleet withdrawn to the west coast of the United States, because they were inadequately manned for war, and because the area was too exposed. It was not done. In January, 1941, Richardson was relieved of his command. It was later revealed that Roosevelt wanted him to create a naval blockade around Japan, to provoke them into a response, so the United States could declare war. He refused to do it, saying it was an act of war.
Besides knowing about the security weaknesses at the base in Pearl Harbor, and having previous knowledge about the impending attack, Roosevelt guaranteed a slaughter by ordering that the planes be grouped in circles, with their propellers facing inward, because he claimed that he wanted to protect them against 'acts of sabotage'. Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobold, USN, Retired, author of "The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor", and Col. Curtis B. Dall, the son-in-law of FDR, in an interview with Anthony Hilder for his book "Warlords of Washington", admitted that they knew about the Pearl Harbor attack before it occurred. Theobold, the Commander of all the destroyers at Pearl Harbor, said in his book, that Roosevelt knew about the attack 21 hours before it happened. So the result of this positioning of the aircraft, made it difficult for them to get out of the circle, and up in the air, because they didn't have a reverse gear. Theobold wrote:
"An incontestable fact in the true history of Pearl Harbor is the repeated withholding from Admiral Kimmel and General Walter C. Short [Navy and Army Command in Pearl Harbor] of supremely important military information ... There's never been a case in history when a commander was not informed that his country will be at war within a few hours and that his forces will most likely become the first object of attack at sunrise".
Theobold also cited the testimony of Admiral Harold Stark [head of Navy Headquarters in Washington] who did not reveal Japan's de facto declaration of war to Admiral Kimmel, and said he was acting on orders from a 'higher authority', referring to Roosevelt, because Marshall did not outrank Stark. Marshall merely passed on the Roosevelt directive of 4 December, which said that no communications could be sent to Pearl Harbor, unless it was cleared by Marshall. On 26 November 1941, Roosevelt had sent an ultimatum, insisting that the Japanese withdraw all their troops. He refused any negotiations with Prince Konoye, the Japanese Prime Minister, even though Joseph Grew [CFR member, and Rockefeller agent], the Ambassador to Japan, said that such a meeting would prevent war with the Japanese. The Japanese response from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy, encrypted in the "purple code", was intercepted by the Navy, decoded, and given to Roosevelt on the evening of December 6th. The thirteen-point communique revealed, that because of the intense pressure of the economic sanctions, diplomatic relations with the United States were being terminated at 1:00 PM Eastern time on Sunday, 7 December. For all intents and purposes, this was a declaration of war, and upon reading it, Roosevelt said: 'This means war'. It was not passed onto Pearl Harbor command, and it was at that time that the attack began.
While FDR was pushing Japan into drawing first blood, he told the American public in his famous campaign statement of 1940:
"While I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, and I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars".
Then he said later that he wouldn't send our boys to war unless we were attacked.
Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum worked for Naval Intelligence in Washington and was the communications routing officer for FDR. All the intercepted Japanese messages would go to McCollum, who would then route them to Roosevelt. In October, 1940, he wrote a memo which contained the basis for FDR's plan for provoking the Japanese into attacking at Pearl Harbor. It was given to two of Roosevelt's closest advisors. The memorandum revealed his sentiments that it was inevitable that Japan and America were going to war, and that Germany was going to be a threat to America's security. He said that American had to go to war, but he also understood that public opinion was against that. So public opinion had to be swayed, and Japan had to be provoked into attacking America. He named eight specific suggestions for things that America should do to make Japan more hostile towards us, ultimately pushing them into attacking us. That would rally the country behind the war effort. Because he was born and raised in Japan, he said that he understood the Japanese mentality, and knew how they would react. This included moving the Pacific fleet to Hawaii, and decimating Japan's economy with an embargo. McCollum said:
"If you adopt these policies the Japan will commit an overt act of war".
Although there is no proof that FDR actually saw this memo, he ended up implementing all eight of McCollum's points.
The Administration discovered that in 1941 a Japanese naval officer was working at the Japanese consulate in Honolulu under an assumed name. They followed him, and began to intercept his messages to Japan, which enabled the Japanese to develop a timetable for the attack, and even bomb plots. They never stopped him, and it enabled the Japanese to prepare themselves for an attack against us.
Fleet Admiral Halsey wrote:
"Our intelligence data spoke of a likely attack by Japan on the Philippines or the Dutch East Indies. Although Pearl Harbor wasn't excluded from discussion, everything relayed to us pointed to other objects of attack. If we had known that the Japanese were continually collecting detailed information about the exact location and movements of our warships in Pearl Harbor [which is made clear by intercepted reports], we naturally would have concentrated our efforts on preparations to repel an attack on Pearl Harbor".
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, after meeting with the Roosevelt administration on 25 November 1941, wrote in his diary:
"The discussion was about how we should maneuver to force the Japanese to fire the first shot, while not exposing ourselves to too great a danger; this will be a difficult task".
Admiral Husband E. Kimmel wrote in his memoirs:
"It was part of Roosevelt's plan that no warning be sent to the Hawaiian Islands. Our leaders in Washington, who deliberately didn't inform our forces in Pearl Harbor, cannot be justified in any way. The Pearl Harbor Command wasn't informed at all about ... the American note of 26 November1941, delivered to the Japanese ambassador, which practically excluded further negotiations and made war in the Pacific inevitable. The Army and Navy Command in the Hawaiian Islands received not even a hint about intercepted and deciphered Japanese telegrams which were forwarded to concerned parties in Washington on 6 and 7 December, 1941".
The Pacific fleet had consisted of nine battleships, three aircraft cruisers, and some smaller ships. The aircraft carriers, and the smaller, more mobile ships, were moved prior to the attack, because Roosevelt knew they would be needed for a war at sea. On 28 November, Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey (under Kimmel's' command) sailed to Wake Island with the carrier 'Enterprise', three heavy destroyers and nine small destroyers; and on 5 December, the 'Lexington', three heavy cruisers and five destroyers were sent to Midway, and the 'Saratoga' went to the Pacific Coast. The other battleships were considered dispensable, because they had been produced during and prior to World War I, and were viewed as old and obsolete. They were to be sacrificed. [And the sailors were expendable].
On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, instead of attacking Russia, as they originally intended to do. The 'sneak attack' gave Roosevelt a reason to direct the full force of America's military might against Japan. The next day, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan:
"We don't like it, and we didn't want to get in it, but we are in it and we're going to fight it with everything we've got".
On 1 January the 25 allied nations who went to war against Germany and Japan, signed a 'Declaration by the United Nations', which indicated that no one nation would sign a separate armistice, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur was appointed as the 'United Nations Commander of the South Pacific', becoming the Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces in the Pacific Theater.
The attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in the deaths of 2,341 American soldiers, and 2,233 more were injured or missing. Eighteen ships, including eight battleships, two destroyers, two squadron minesweepers, were sunk or heavily damaged; and 177 planes were destroyed. All of this, just to create an anti-Japanese sentiment in the country, and justify American action against Japan.
General George C. Marshall [Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army], and Admiral Harold R. Stark [Supreme Commander of the U.S. Navy] in Washington, testified that the message about the attack was not forwarded to Kimmel and Short because the Hawaiian base had received so many intercepted Japanese messages that another one would have confused them. In truth, Marshall sat on the information for 15 hours because he didn't want anything to interfere with attack. The message was sent after the attack started. Internal Army and Navy inquiries in 1944 found Kimmel and Short derelict of duty, but the truth was not revealed to the public.
Two weeks before the attack, on 23 November, Kimmel had sent nearly 100 warships from the Pacific fleet to, what turned out to be, the exact location where Japan planned to launch their attack. Unquestionably, he was looking to prevent the possibility of a sneak attack. When the Administration learned of his actions, he was criticized for 'complicating the situation'.
Eleven days after the attack, the Roberts Commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, made scapegoats of Kimmel and Short, who were denied open hearings, publicly ruined, and forced to retire. Short died in 1949, and Kimmel died in 1968.
The most incredible of the eight investigations was a joint House-Senate investigation that echoed the Roberts Commission. Both Marshall and Stark testified that they couldn't remember where they were the night the declaration of war had come in. A close friend of Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, later said that Knox, Stark, and Marshall spent most of that night with Roosevelt in the White House, waiting for the bombing to begin, so they could enter the war.
According to historian John Toland, Marshall told his top officers:
"Gentlemen, this goes to the grave with us".
In 1995, a Department of Defense study concluded that "Army and Navy officials in Washington were privy to intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications ... which provided crucial confirmation of the imminence of war".
The full extent of the deception came to the forefront with the publishing of the book "Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert B. Stinnett, a retired "Oakland Tribune" photographer who served in the Pacific during World War II. After retirement, he began his investigation by interviewing former American military communications personnel, and filing Freedom of Information requests with the National Security Agency. For 17 years he gleaned through volumes of previously classified messages which had been intercepted from the Japanese.
Stinnett discovered that on 25 November 1941, Japan's Admiral Yamamoto dispatched a radio message to the group of warships that would be used to attack Pearl Harbor. It read, in part:
"...the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow".
From 17-25 November, the U.S. Navy intercepted 83 messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers.
This Pearl Harbor scenario was a repeat of the American battleship 'Maine', which was 'sunk' by a Spanish mine in the port of Havana in 1898. The rallying cry of "Remember the Maine", was used to stir up anti-Spanish hysteria in America to justify us declaring war on Spain. Years later, when the ship was examined, it was established that the hull had been blown out by an explosion from inside the ship.
So what did World War II accomplish for the Illuminati? With the Japanese prepared to surrender in February 1945, the war was prolonged in order to destroy much of the industrial areas of Japan with a devastating air attack of incendiary atomic bombs. This allowed the ground to be cleared for the Illuminati to rebuild Japan with new industries so they could use cheap labor to flood the American market with cheaply manufactured goods. This would turn the United States into a nation that consumed more than it produced, creating unemployment and financial instability.
As stated previously, on the European front, the War enabled the Russians to gain control of Eastern Europe, promote Communism, paved the way for the United Nations, and the creation of the nation of Israel.
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| 8
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/nazis-nuremberg-executed-hermann-goring
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en
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Final moments of Nazis executed at Nuremberg
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2009-09-11T00:00:00
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<p>A prison psychologist remembers Hermann Göring, and the last words of the executed war criminals</p>
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en
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the Guardian
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/nazis-nuremberg-executed-hermann-goring
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Inside the cells: The prison psychologist remembers
On 3 January 1946, Albert Speer disrupted Göring's united front by announcing that he had attempted to assassinate Hitler in February, and planned to deliver Himmler to the allies. Gustave Gilbert interviewed Göring and Speer in their cells soon afterwards.
Göring's cell
Tonight Göring looked tired and depressed. "This was a bad day," he said. "Damn that stupid fool, Speer! Did you see how he disgraced himself in court today? How could he stoop so low as to do such a rotten thing to save his lousy neck? I nearly died with shame! To think that Germans will be so rotten to prolong this filthy life. Do you think I give that much of a damn about this lousy life?" He faced me squarely with blazing eyes. "For myself, I don't give a damn if I get executed, or drown, or crash in a plane, or drink myself to death! But there is still a matter of honour in this damn life! Assassination attempt on Hitler! Ugh! I could have sunk through the floor. And do you think I would have handed Himmler over to the enemy, guilty as he was? Dammit, I would have liquidated the bastard myself! Or if there was to have been any trial, a German court should have sentenced him! Would Americans think of handing over their criminals to us to sentence?"
He was called to see his attorney, and as we left the cell he reverted to his usually pose of jocularity for the benefit of the guards and any prisoners who might be listening.
Edited extract from Nuremberg Diary by Gustave Gilbert (Da Capo Press)
End of the trial: Guardian report on the executions, 16 October 1946
Hermann Göring last night died by his own hand. Two and a quarter hours before he was to be executed he took poison under the eyes of the American security guard watching him every moment through the grating in the door of his cell.
Without the guard noticing any unusual movement, Göring – who asked for a soldier's death before a firing squad and was refused – slipped a phial of cyanide of potassium into his mouth and crushed it with his teeth. He thus used the same type of poison and phial adopted by Heinrich Himmler, who committed suicide 17 months ago.
While Göring was lying in the prison morgue, the 10 other Nazi leaders sentenced to death with him were hanged in the bomb-blasted gymnasium of the prison, its dirty walls lit up by 10 blazing lights in the ceiling. The 10 Nazis were hanged one after the other in one hour and 34 minutes.
It was 1.11am when Ribbentrop, the first to be hanged in Göring's place, walked through the gymnasium door, his face white but set, his grey hair ruffled. It was 2.45 when Seyss-Inquart – shouting "I believe in Germany!" – fell to his death.
Not one of them broke down. Each was given a chance to say a last word, and only Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi party philosopher and most prolific writer of them all, could find no word except a murmured "nein" to leave to history.
Ribbentrop said firmly "God protect Germany", and then: "My last wish is that German unity should remain and that an understanding between the east and west will come about and peace for the world."
Julius Streicher, the Jew-baiter, unrepentant to the end, shouted "Heil Hitler" as he was led up the steps. From the top of the scaffold he shouted: "The Bolsheviks will hang you all next. Jewish holiday! Jewish holiday, 1946! Now it goes to God."
Kaltenbrunner, asked if he had any last words, said in a mild voice: "I have loved my German people and my Fatherland from the bottom of my heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my country. I regret that my people were not led by soldiers only and that crimes were committed in which I had no share. I fought honourably. Germany – good luck."
Hans Frank, the "butcher of Poland", said in a low voice: "I beg the Lord to receive me mercifully. I am grateful for the good treatment I have received in prison."
Seyss-Inquart, in a quiet voice, said: "I hope this execution will be the last act in the tragedy of a second world war and that its lessons will be learned, so that peace and understanding will follow." Then he shouted: "I believe in Germany."
Manchester Guardian, 17 Oct 1946
Chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson's closing statement
It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilisation from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronisingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be progress. The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an enviable position unless the second half is to redeem its first.
They stand before the record of this tribunal as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied: "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are."
If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, that there are no slain, that there has been no crime.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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0
| 47
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https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/11128739/the-satanic-jewish-holocaust-thehouseoftroy
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en
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The Satanic Jewish Holocaust - thehouseoftroy
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The Satanic Jewish Holocaust - thehouseoftroy
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yumpu.com
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https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/11128739/the-satanic-jewish-holocaust-thehouseoftroy
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Satanic</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> <strong>Holocaust</strong> Table of Contents: THE SATANIC JEWISH HOLOCAUST ........................................................... 1 <strong>The</strong> “jews” drop their “Genocide” Bomb over Germany ............................... 3 “<strong>Jewish</strong>”-Amerika’s “Genocidal” Slander becomes Official ................................. 7 <strong>The</strong> “jewish” Book that Launched the “jewish” Genocide of the Germans ... 8 Note no Documentary Proof Whatsoever for Lemkin’s Alleged “Genocide”.......... 9 Historical Writing verses Hysterical Hate Propaganda ..................................... 14 Orchestrated Press Applause for Lemkin and “Carnegie’s” Genocidal Book ..... 19 On this Lemkin as the “jewish” point of a concealed “jewish” spear (aimed at the heart of the Gentile and Christian world):................................................................ 23 <strong>The</strong> Genocidal Aftermath ................................................................................ 26 <strong>The</strong> “jewish” Minority Waging Ceaseless Secret Wars against all Gentle Majorities ............................................................................................................. 28 More on this Totally Undocumented, Unbelievably Atrocious “<strong>Holocaust</strong>” Slander of Gentiles by “jews”: ........................................................................... 30 No German Order was ever Found to Gas Anyone at Any Time ....................... 32 No Real Evidence Whatsoever of Anyone, Anywhere or Anytime Being Gassed by Germans ................................................................................................................. 35 “Bring [or Show Us] the Body” (Habeus Corpus) ........................................... 36 Truth Banishes the “<strong>Holocaust</strong>” out of Germany: <strong>The</strong> Incredible Shrinking Hollowhoax ............................................................................................................. 37 Spotlight Shines a Light upon this Stinking, Shrinking “jewish” Hollowhoax 43 Harwood Knocks “jew” Lies and Slanders out of the Ball Park...................... 45 A Besieged Professor Shines a Light in Benighted France................................ 47 As Does a Researcher in Sweden (and environs)........................................... 49 Truth Banishes the “<strong>Holocaust</strong>” out of Poland (Soviet Union): <strong>The</strong> Genocidal, <strong>Holocaust</strong>ic Rise and Fall of Auschwitz.................................................................... 50 Harwood on Auschwitz................................................................................. 51 Early and Later International Red Cross Mortality Statistics ........................ 53 German Concentration Camp Hygiene ......................................................... 57 “If the Walls at Auschwitz Could Speak”....................................................... 61 “<strong>Holocaust</strong>”: Fun With Numbers ............................................................... 71
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https://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/projects/nurembg/GoeringNbg.htm
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Hermann Goering's Hearing at Nuremberg
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https://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/33dWImages/favicon33d.ico
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In this section written by Steffi Gascon and edited by Karen Phinney there is an in depth breakdown of the individual Nuremberg trial of Herman Goering. He was considered second in line to Hitler and was the first Nuremberg trial which set precedence for the following trials, which is why I used this case as an excellent example to portray the format of the Nuremberg trials. The book I used was Nuremberg Diary by G.M. Gilbert which was a very credible source; Gilbert was a prisoner psychologist at the prison where all the accused were being held. His book contained interviews with all the indicted along with running commentary and summary of all the trials.
The trial and condemnation of Goering, second in line to Hitler, is perhaps the most significant of the Nuremberg trials. Goering had great persuasion and power during the Nazi Regime. Despite his attempts to deny responsibility during his trial, there is no mistaking his decrees and the concrete evidence of his association in many of the Holocaust events. Even though his actions alone damned him, masterful prosecution techniques were used to turn the defenses witness's against Goering himself, which added to his prosecution. Goering's total involvement during the Hitler regime was enough to condemn him on all four accounts: Conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other accounts, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity. The case lasted many months and examined the twenty-one other cases being tried while bringing the first account to the world about what really happened during Hitler's cruel rein. Goering's defense and explanations for his actions were inadequate; regardless of any justification Goering was guilty.
Goering's first witness, Bodenschatz, worked hard to prove that Goering was a peace loving man that did not premeditate war and actually was taking lengths to avoid it. According to Bodenschatz, in 1939 Goering attempted to negotiate with England in order to stop war behind Hitler's and Ribbentrop's back. Bodenschatz also said that Goering had taken many of his friends out of concentration camps showing he was not in favor of many of the Nazi actions. However, when cross-examined by Jackson it was shown that Goering had knowledge about unjustified arrests and plans for war, which brought this witness defense down considerably. After this section of the trial Goering was quoted as saying
I still cannot see how Hitler could have known about all those ugly details. Now that I know what I know, I wish I could just have Himmler here for ten minutes to ask him what he thought he was pulling off there. If only some of the SS generals had protested (Goering, March 9, 1945)
This quote shows that he was against the "Final Solution" yet he did nothing to stop it. Also, the rest of his actions contradict the ideals from this quote (Glibert 185-191).
The next witness Paul Koerner, Goering's state secretary in Prussia, testified. Then Goering took the stand in his own defense. He told of how he took over the SA troops and got them into shape, participated in the beer-hall putsch, and became a member of the Reichstag in 1928. In 1933 he became President and helped Hitler become Chancellor. He was also responsible for setting up concentration camps, allegedly for the communists. Next he discussed how the Nazis built up their political and military power. The Nazis had tried to keep the church out of political business but Goering admitted that some clergy had been taken to camps. The Nazis started with anti Jewish antics because of hostility from the Jews towards the new regime; according to Goering they were trying to build a powerful government for Germany. In his argument, the regime was helpful because the party provided more jobs for the unemployed, and rearmed and annexed Austria, all during a time when Germany needed rebuilding. Goering also brought up the fact that independent opinion was not allowed in the military and that if opinion had been taken from every soldier and general, many wars in the world probably would not have happened. Goering tried to reiterate the fact that in the military, one does as a commanding officer tells him, not what he chooses. He explained the attacks such as the bombing of Warsaw, Rotterdam, and Coventry, as military tactics, but also admitted to having premeditated the plan to attack Russia (Gilbert 191-202).
After Goering, Dahlerus, a Swedish engineer, testified for the defense. He had been a mediator in Goering's attempts to prevent war with England, but his testimony only proved that Hitler obviously planned on war. If Germany really wanted to avoid war the Foreign Minister would have negotiated as well. Dahlerus' testimony was soon disheveled with the cross-examination by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. He proved that Ribbentrop had tried to sabotage the negotiations between England and Germany and that Hitler had been planning war the entire time. From a book that Dahlerus had written he showed that Hitler had been rushing to make U-boats, and airplanes, which displayed his ruthless intent for war. Dahlerus also pointed out on a map the areas in Poland and nearby countries where Goering had shown interest in annexing. This entire testimony backfired and turned from a defense into a prosecution, digging Goering further in the hole.
In Goering's cross-examination he admitted to more association with the Nazi's anti-Semitic movements. He claimed to be a moderating force that restrained many events during the regime. However, this could not have been true as he was responsible for many of the decrees such as taking Jewish-owned businesses and property, declaring the Nuremberg laws, charging a fine to the Jewish population for damage, and trying to eliminate Jews completely from the German economy. Goering's harsh behavior after the Kristallnacht riots in November of 1938 and the charging of the Jews for the damage to boost the German economy, showed his definite involvement in the anti-Semitic actions of the Nazi regime. Also, when accused of stealing fine art and property from Jews, Goering defended his actions by saying he was building an art collection for the cultural interest of the German state. When accused of slave labor of Jews and prisoners of war Goering said that everything was done in the hopes of building a stronger Germany. When questioned about the murders of prisoners of war and his handing them over to Gestapo rather than changing the system, he gave evasive answers and claimed he only knew about a few instances and that neither Hitler nor he knew about many of the exterminations in camps. Despite previous claims made by Hitler and others, Goering stated that he had remained loyal to the Furhrer and was trying to enhance the German government and society. Through his whole defense Goering maintained that he was a peace loving man and was unaware of many of the killings; the prosecution was able to turn his defense around on him every time. As second in line after Hitler, Goering carried a lot of the guilt because he had the power to stop orders. His outlandish claims of being unaware and only working for the state and the economy could not mask the destruction and cruelty he imposed on millions of people (Gilbert 202-216).
Goering's defense was not enough to diminish his responsibility. Throughout the whole regime he was Hitler's wing man and an active part of the entire Nazi movement. Goering was also responsible for the creation of the cruel Gestapo and the concentration camps, even though he claimed in his defense that they were instated to regulate the communists. He was also the ringleader in the Austrian Anschluss, responsible for getting Blomberg and Fritsch removed from the army, for conducting the Roehm purge and much more. Goering used threats and force to get other leaders to coincide with the Nazis actions, and was intense on his use of slave laborers everywhere (Gilbert 437). Such actions were considered Crimes against Humanity. The way Goering treated the Jews, and his obsession with the German economy, his primary concern, were completely inhumane. He is even quoted as saying, "I wish you had killed 200 Jews and not destroyed such valuable property" (Goering November 1938) right after the Kristallnacht riots November 9-10 1938. It was after this that he began the mass executions of Jews in Germany and in all conquered territories.
Even though there were many others carrying out the laws, he wasn't first in command, and Himmler was most responsible for actual executions, Goering had much influence and was an active member in all German affairs. Thus the court found him guilty without a doubt: "his guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man" (Gilbert 437). Goering was condemned of all four counts of indictment: Conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other accounts, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and then sentenced to death by hanging.
The Goering case is an excellent example of the Nuremberg trials and of the general Nazi defense. The theme of assigning responsibility of the events during the Nazi regime onto everyone but oneself was practiced by all the Nazis and Germans involved, which made it difficult to assess blame until the final ruling. The trials focused on assessing the blame for the Holocaust on individuals, rather than the country, which made it difficult to weed out the perpetrators. However, it was a necessity to charge the guilty as to bring justice but also to ensure that nobody would try this "final solution" again. The Nuremberg trials represent the coming together of people to convict against the justly wrong, but this meeting of the minds was too late. The Nuremberg trials can never bring back the millions of people who were victimized by the Nazis. The 22 trials were minute in comparison to the people who took the cruel actions against humanity and should have been convicted, as well as compared to the high death toll as a result of the perpetrators.
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The Avalon Project : Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 22
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Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 22
THE PRESIDENT: There is a correction which the Tribunal wishes to make in the Judgment pronounced yesterday at Page 159, with reference to the SD.
The Tribunal's attention has been drawn to the fact that the Prosecution expressly excluded honorary informers who were not members of the SS and members of the Abwehr who were transferred to the SD. In view of that exclusion by the Prosecution, the Tribunal also excludes those persons from the SD, which was declared criminal.
Article 26 of the Charter provides that the Judgment of the Tribunal as to the guilt or innocence of any defendant shall give the reasons on which it is based.
The Tribunal will now state those reasons in declaring its Judgment on such guilt or innocence.
GOERING
Goering is indicted on all four Counts. The evidence shows that after Hitler he was the most prominent man in the Nazi regime. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and had tremendous influence with Hitler, at least until 1943, when their relationship deteriorated, ending in his arrest in 1945. He testified that Hitler kept him informed of all important military and political problems.
Crimes against Peace
From the moment he joined the Party in 1922 and took command of the street-fighting organization, the SA, Goering was the adviser, the active agent of Hitler, and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement. As Hitler's political deputy he was largely instrumental in bringing the National Socialists to power in 1933 and was charged with consolidating this power and expanding German armed might. He developed the Gestapo and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to Himmler in 1934, conducted the Roehm purge
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in that year, and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of Von Blomberg and Von Fritsch from the Army. In 1936 he became Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan and in theory and in practice was the economic dictator of the Reich. Shortly after the Pact of Munich, he announced that he would embark on a five-fold expansion of the Luftwaffe and speed up rearmament with emphasis on offensive weapons.
Goering was one of the five important leaders present at the Hossbach conference of 5 November 1937, and he attended the other important conferences already discussed in this Judgment. In the Austrian Anschluss he was indeed the central figure, the ringleader. He said in court: "I must take 100 percent responsibility... I even overruled objections by the Fuehrer and brought everything to its final development." In the seizure of the Sudetenland, he played his role as Luftwaffe chief by planning an air offensive which proved unnecessary, and his role as a politician by lulling the Czechs with false promises of friendship. The. night before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, at a conference with Hitler and President Hacha, he threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha did not submit. This threat he admitted in his testimony.
Goering attended the Reich Chancellery meeting of 23 May 1939, when Hitler told his military leaders "there is, therefore, no question of sparing Poland," and was present at the Obersalzberg briefing of 22 August 1939. And the evidence shows he was active in the diplomatic maneuvers which followed. With Hitler's connivance, he used the Swedish businessman, Dahlerus, as a go-between to the British, as described by Dahlerus to this Tribunal, to try to prevent the British Government from keeping its guarantee to the Poles.
He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and throughout the aggressive wars which followed.
Even if he opposed Hitler's plans against Norway and the Soviet Union, as he alleged, it is clear that he did so only for strategic reasons; once Hitler had decided the issue, he followed him without hesitation. He made it clear in his testimony that these differences were never ideological or legal. He was "in a rage" about the invasion of Norway, but only because he had not received sufficient warning to prepare the Luftwaffe offensive. He admitted he approved of the attack: "My attitude was perfectly positive." He was active in preparing and executing the Yugoslavian and Greek campaigns and testified that "Plan Marita," the attack on Greece, had been prepared long beforehand. The Soviet Union he regarded as the "most threatening menace to Germany," but said there was no immediate military necessity for the attack. Indeed,
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his only objection to the war of aggression against the U.S.S.R. was its timing; he wished for strategic reasons to delay until Britain, was conquered. He testified: "My point of view was decided by political and military reasons only."
After his own admissions to this Tribunal, from the positions which he held, the conferences he attended, and the public words he uttered, there can remain no doubt that Goering was the moving force for aggressive war second only to Hitler. He was the planner and prime mover in the military and diplomatic preparation for war which Germany pursued.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
The record is filled with Goering's admissions of his complicity in the use of slave labor. "We did use this labor for security reasons so that they would not be active in their own country and would not work against us. On the other hand, they served to help in the economic war." And again: "Workers were forced to come to the Reich. That is something I have not denied." The man who spoke these words was Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan charged with the recruitment and allocation of manpower. As Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief he demanded from Himmler more slave laborers for his underground aircraft factories: "That I requested inmates of concentration camps for the armament of the Luftwaffe is correct and it is to be taken as a matter of course."
As plenipotentiary, Goering signed a directive concerning the treatment of Polish workers in Germany and implemented it by regulations of the SD, including "special treatment." He issued directives to use Soviet and French prisoners of war in the armament industry; he spoke of seizing Poles and Dutch and making them prisoners of war if necessary, and using them for work. He agrees Russian prisoners of war were used to man anti-aircraft batteries.
As plenipotentiary, Goering was the active authority in the spoliation of conquered territory. He made plans for the spoliation of Soviet territory long before the war on the Soviet Union. Two months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler gave Goering the overall direction for the economic administration in the territory. Goering set up an economic staff for this function. As Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, "the orders of the Reich Marshal cover all economic fields, including nutrition and agriculture." His so-called "Green" folder, printed by the Wehrmacht, set up an "Economic Executive Staff East." This directive contemplated plundering and abandonment of all industry in the food deficit regions and, from the food surplus regions, a diversion of food to German needs. Goering claims its purposes have been misunderstood,
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but admits "that as a matter of course and a matter of duty we would have used Russia for our purposes" when conquered.
And he participated in the conference of 16 July when Hitler said the National Socialists had no intention of ever leaving the occupied countries, and that "all necessary measures-shooting, resettling, et cetera--" should be taken.
Goering persecuted the Jews, particularly after the November 1938 riots, and not only in Germany, where he raised the billion-mark fine as stated elsewhere, but in the conquered territories as well. His own utterances then and his testimony now shows this interest was primarily economic-how to get their property and how to force them out of the economic life of Europe. As these countries fell before the German Army, he extended the Reich anti-Jewish laws to them; the Reichsgesetzblatt for 1939, 1940, and 1941 contains several anti-Jewish decrees signed by Goering. Although their extermination was in Himmler's hands, Goering was far from disinterested or inactive, despite his protestations in the witness box. By decree of 31 July 1941 he directed Himmler and Heydrich to "bring about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe."
There is nothing to be said in mitigation. For Goering was often, indeed almost always, the moving force, second only to his leader. He was the leading war aggressor, both as political and as military leader; he was the director of the slave labor program and the creator of the oppressive program against the Jews and other races, at home and abroad. All of these crimes he has frankly admitted.
On some specific cases there may be conflict of testimony, but in terms of the broad outline his own admissions are more than sufficiently wide to be conclusive of his guilt. His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds the Defendant Goering guilty on all four Counts of the Indictment.
HESS
Hess is indicted under all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and participated in the Munich Putsch on 9 November 1923. He was imprisoned with Hitler in the Landsberg fortress in 1924 2nd became Hitler's closest personal confidant, a relationship which lasted until Hess' flight to the British Isles. On 21 April 1933, he was appointed Deputy to the Fuehrer, and on 1 December 1933 was made Reich Minister without Portfolio. He was appointed member of the Secret Cabinet Council on 4 February 1938, and a member of
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the. Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich on 31 August 1939. In September 1939, Hess was officially announced by Hitler as successor designate to the Fuehrer after Goering. On 10 May 1941, he flew from Germany to Scotland.
Crimes against Peace
As Deputy to the Fuehrer, Hess was the top man in the Nazi Party with responsibility for handling all Party matters and authority to make decisions in Hitler's name on all questions of Party leadership. As Reich Minister without Portfolio he had the authority to approve all legislation suggested by the different Reich Ministers before it could be enacted as law. In these positions, Hess was an active supporter of preparations for war. His signature appears on the law of 16 March 1935, establishing compulsory military service. Throughout the years he supported Hitler's policy of vigorous rearmament in many speeches. He told the people that they must sacrifice for armaments, repeating the phrase, "Guns instead of butter." It is true that between 1933 and 1937 Hess made speeches in which he expressed a desire for peace and advocated international economic co-operation. But nothing which they contained can alter the fact that of all the defendants none knew better than Hess how determined Hitler was to realize his ambitions, how fanatical and violent a man he was, and how little likely he was to refrain from resort to force, if this was the only way in which he could achieve his aims.
Hess was an informed and willing participant in German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He was in touch with the illegal Nazi Party in Austria throughout the entire period between the murder of Dollfuss and the Anschluss and gave instructions to it during that period. Hess was in Vienna on 12 March 1938, when the German troops moved in; and 'on 13 March 1938 he signed the law for the reunion of Austria within the German Reich. A law of 10 June 1939 provided for his participation in the administration of Austria. On 24 July 1938, he made a speech in commemoration of the unsuccessful Putsch by Austrian National Socialists which had been attempted 4 years before, praising the steps leading up to the Anschluss and defending the occupation of Austria by Germany.
In the summer of 1938 Hess was in active touch with Henlein, Chief of the Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia. On 27 September 1939, at the time of the Munich crisis, he arranged with Keitel to carry out the instructions of Hitler to make the machinery of the Nazi Party available for a secret mobilization. On 14 April 1939, Hess signed a decree setting up the Government of the Sudetenland as an integral part of the Reich; and an ordinance of 10 June 1939 provided for his participation in the administration of
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the Sudetenland. On 7 November 1938, Hess absorbed Henlein's Sudeten German Party into the Nazi Party and made a speech in which he emphasized that Hitler had been prepared to resort to war if this had been necessary to acquire the Sudetenland.
On 27 August 1939, when the attack on Poland had been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce Great Britain to abandon its guarantee to Poland, Hess publicly praised Hitler's "magnanimous offer" to Poland and attacked Poland for agitating for war and England for being responsible for Poland's attitude. After the invasion of Poland Hess signed decrees incorporating Danzig and certain Polish territories into the Reich and setting up the Government General (Poland).
These specific steps which this defendant took in support of Hitler's plans for aggressive action do not indicate the full extent of his responsibility. Until his flight to England, Hess was Hitler's closest personal confidant. Their relationship was such that Hess must have been informed of Hitler's aggressive plans when they came into existence. And he took action to carry out these plans whenever action was necessary.
With him on his Right to England, Hess carried certain peace proposals which he alleged Hitler was prepared to accept. It is significant to note that this flight took place only 10 days after the date on which Hitler fixed 22 June 1941 as the time for attacking the Soviet Union. In conversations carried on after his arrival in England, Hess wholeheartedly supported all Germany's aggressive actions up to that time and attempted to justify Germany's action in connection with Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He blamed England and France for the war.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
There is evidence showing the participation of the Party Chancellery, under, Hess, in the distribution of orders connected with the commission of War Crimes; that Hess may have had knowledge of, even if he did not participate in, the crimes that were being committed in the East, and proposed laws discriminating against Jews and Poles; and that he signed decrees forcing certain groups of Poles to accept German citizenship. The Tribunal, however, does not find that the evidence sufficiently connects Hess with these crimes to sustain a finding of guilt.
As previously indicated the Tribunal found, after a full medical examination of and report on the condition of this defendant, that he should be tried, without any postponement of his case. Since that time further motions have been made that he should again be
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examined. These the Tribunal denied, after having had a report from the prison psychologist. That Hess acts in an abnormal manner, suffers from loss of memory, and has mentally deteriorated during this Trial, may be true. But there is nothing to show that he does not realize the nature of the charges against him, or is incapable of defending himself. He was ably represented at the Trial by counsel, appointed for that purpose by the Tribunal. There is no suggestion that Hess was not completely sane when the acts charged against him were committed.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds the Defendant Hess guilty on Counts One and Two; and not guilty on Counts Three and Four.
VON RIBBENTROP
Ribbentrop is indicted under all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932. By 1933 he had been made foreign policy adviser to Hitler, and in the same year the representative of the Nazi Party on foreign policy. In 1934 he was appointed Delegate for Disarmament Questions and in 1935 Minister Plenipotentiary at Large, a capacity in which he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935 and the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. On 11 August 1936 he was
appointed Ambassador to England. On 4 February 1938, he succeeded Von Neurath as Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs as part of the general reshuffle which accompanied the dismissal of
Von Fritsch and Von Blomberg.
Crimes against Peace
Ribbentrop, was not present at the Hossbach conference held on 5 November 1937, but on 2 January 1938, while still Ambassador to England, he sent a memorandum to Hitler indicating his opinion that a change in the status quo in the East in the German sense could only be carried out by force and suggesting methods to prevent England and France from intervening in a European war fought to bring about such a change. When Ribbentrop, became Foreign Minister, Hitler told him that Germany still had four problems to solve: Austria, Sudetenland, Memel, and Danzig, and mentioned the possibility of "some sort of a show-down" or "military settlement" for their solution.
On 12 February 1938, Ribbentrop attended the conference between Hitler and Schuschnigg at which Hitler, by threats of invasion, forced Schuschnigg to grant a series of concessions designed to strengthen the Nazis in Austria, including the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Minister of Security and Interior, with control over the Police. Ribbentrop was in London when the occupation of Austria
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was actually carried out and, on the basis of information supplied him by Goering, informed the British Government that Germany had not presented Austria with an ultimatum, but had intervened in Austria only to prevent civil war. On 13 March 1938, Ribbentrop signed the law incorporating Austria into the German Reich.
Ribbentrop participated in the aggressive plans against Czechoslovakia. Beginning in March 1938, he was in close touch with the Sudeten German Party and gave them instructions which had the effect of keeping the Sudeten German question a live issue which might serve as an excuse for the attack which Germany was planning against Czechoslovakia. In August 1938 he participated in a conference for the purpose of obtaining Hungarian support in the event of a war with Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Pact he continued to bring diplomatic pressure with the object of occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia. He was instrumental in inducing the Slovaks to proclaim their independence. He was present at the conference of 14 and 15 March 1939, at which Hitler, by threats of invasion, compelled President Hacha to consent to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. After the German troops had marched in, Ribbentrop signed the law establishing a protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia.
Ribbentrop played a particularly significant role in the diplomatic activity which led up to the attack on Poland. He participated in a conference held on 12 August 1939 for the purpose of obtaining Italian support if the attack should lead to a general European war. Ribbentrop discussed the German demands with respect to Danzig and the Polish Corridor with the British Ambassador in the period from 25 August to 30 August 1939, when he knew that the German plans to attack Poland had merely been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce the British to abandon their guarantee to the Poles. The way in which he carried out these discussions makes it clear that he did not enter into them in good faith in an attempt to reach a settlement of the difficulties between Germany and Poland.
Ribbentrop was advised in advance of the attack on Norway and Denmark and of the attack on the Low Countries and prepared the official Foreign Office memoranda attempting to justify these aggressive actions.
Ribbentrop attended the conference on 20 January 1941, at which Hitler and Mussolini discussed the proposed attack on Greece, and the conference in January 1941, at which Hitler obtained from Antonescu. permission for German troops to go through Romania for this attack. On 25 March 1941, when Yugoslavia adhered to the Axis Tri-Partite Pact, Ribbentrop had assured Yugoslavia that Germany would respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. On 27 March 1941 he attended the meeting, held after the coup d'etat
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in Yugoslavia, at which plans were made to carry out Hitler's announced intention to destroy Yugoslavia.
Von Ribbentrop attended a conference in May 1941 with Hitler and Antonescu. relating to Romanian participation in the attack on the U.S.S.R. He also consulted with Rosenberg in the preliminary planning for the political exploitation of Soviet territories and in July 1941, after the outbreak of war, urged Japan to attack the Soviet Union.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Ribbentrop participated in a meeting of 6 June 1944, at which it was agreed to start a program under which Allied aviators carrying out machine gun attacks should be lynched. In December 1944 Ribbentrop was informed of the plans to murder one of the French generals held as a prisoner of war and directed his subordinates to see that the details were worked out in such a way as to prevent its detection by the protecting powers. Ribbentrop is also, responsible for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity because of his activities with respect to occupied countries and Axis satellites. The top German official in both Denmark and Vichy France was a Foreign Office representative, and Ribbentrop is therefore responsible for the general economic and political policies put into effect in the occupation of these countries. He urged the Italians to adopt a ruthless occupation policy in Yugoslavia and Greece.
He played an important part in Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish question. In September 1942 he ordered the German diplomatic representatives accredited to various Axis satellites to hasten the deportation of Jews to the East. In June 1942 the German Ambassador to Vichy requested Laval to turn over 50,000 Jews for deportation to the East. On 25 February 1943, Ribbentrop protested to Mussolini against Italian slowness in deporting Jews from the Italian occupation zone of France. On 17 April 1943, he took part in a conference between Hitler and Horthy on the deportation of Jews from Hungary and informed Horthy that the "Jews must either be exterminated or taken to concentration camps." At the same conference Hitler had likened the Jews to "tuberculosis bacilli" and said if they did not work they were to be shot.
Ribbentrop's defense to the charges made against him is that Hitler made all the important decisions, and that he was such a great admirer and faithful follower of Hitler that he never questioned Hitler's repeated assertions that he wanted peace or the truth of the reasons that Hitler gave in explaining aggressive action. The Tribunal does not consider this explanation to be true. Ribbentrop participated in all of the Nazi aggressions from the occupation of Austria to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Although he was
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personally concerned with the diplomatic rather than the military aspect of these actions, his diplomatic efforts were so closely connected with war that he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's actions. In the administration of territories over which Germany acquired control by illegal invasion, Ribbentrop also assisted in carrying out criminal policies, particularly those involving the extermination of the Jews. There is abundant evidence, moreover, that Ribbentrop was in complete sympathy with all the main tenets of the National Socialist creed, and that his collaboration with Hitler and with other defendants in the commission of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity was whole-hearted. It was because Hitler's policy and plans coincided with his own ideas that Ribbentrop served him so willingly to the end.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Ribbentrop is guilty on all four Counts.
KEITEL
Keitel is indicted on all four Counts. He was Chief of Staff to the then Minister of War Von Blomberg from 1935 to 4 February 1938; on that day Hitler took command of the Armed Forces, making Keitel Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. Keitel did not have command authority over the three Wehrmacht branches which enjoyed direct access to the Supreme Commander. OKW was in effect Hitler's military staff.
Crimes against Peace
Keitel attended the Schuschnigg conference in February 1938 with two other generals. Their presence, he admitted, was a "military demonstration," but since he had been appointed OKW chief just one week before, he had not known why he had been summoned. Hitler and Keitel then continued to put pressure on Austria with false rumors, broadcasts, and troop maneuvers. Keitel made the military and other arrangements and Jodl's diary noted "the effect is quick and strong." When Schuschnigg called his plebiscite, Keitel that night briefed Hitler and his generals, and Hitler issued "Case Otto" which Keitel initialed.
On 21 April 1938 Hitler and Keitel considered making use of a possible "incident," such as the assassination of the German Minister at Prague, to preface the attack on Czechoslovakia. Keitel signed many directives and memoranda on "Fall Gruen," including the directive of 30 May, containing Hitler's statement: "It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future." After Munich, Keitel initialed Hitler's directive for the
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attack on Czechoslovakia and issued two supplements. The second supplement said the attack should appear to the outside world as "merely an act of pacification, and not a warlike undertaking." The OKW chief attended Hitler's negotiations with Hacha when the latter surrendered.
Keitel was present on 23 May 1939 when Hitler announced his decision "to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity." Already he had signed the directive requiring the Wehrmacht to submit its "Fall Weiss" timetable to OKW by 1 May.
The invasion of Norway and Denmark he discussed on 12 December 1939 with Hitler, Jodl, and Raeder. By directive of 27 January 1940 the Norway plans were placed under Keitel's "direct and personal guidance." Hitler had said on 23 May 1939 he would ignore the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, and Keitel signed orders for these attacks on 15 October, 20 November, and 28 November 1939. Orders postponing this attack 17 times until spring 1940 all were signed by Keitel or Jodl.
Formal planning for attacking Greece and Yugoslavia had begun in November 1940. On 18 March 1941 Keitel heard Hitler tell Raeder that complete occupation of Greece was a prerequisite to settlement, and also heard Hitler decree on 27 March that the destruction, of Yugoslavia should take place with "unmerciful harshness."
Keitel testified that he opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union for military reasons, and also because it would constitute a violation of the Non-Aggression Pact. Nevertheless he initialed "Case Barbarossa," signed by Hitler on 18 December 1940, and attended the OKW discussion with Hitler on 3 February 1941. Keitel's supplement of 13 March established the relationship between the military and political officers. He issued his timetable for the invasion on 6 June 1941 and was present at the briefing of 14 June when the generals gave their final reports before attack. He appointed Jodl and Warlimont as OKW representatives to Rosenberg on matters concerning the Eastern territories. On 16 June he directed all Army units to carry out the economic directives issued by Goering in the so-called "Green Folder" for the exploitation of Russian territory, food, and raw materials.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
On 4 August 1942 Keitel issued a directive that paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. On 18 October Hitler issued the Commando Order, which was carried out in several instances. After the landing in Normandy, Keitel reaffirmed the order, and later extended it to Allied missions fighting with partisans. He admits
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he did not believe the order was legal, but claims he could not stop Hitler.
When, on 8 September 1941, OKW issued its ruthless regulations for Soviet prisoners of war, Canaris wrote to Keitel that under international law the SD should have nothing to do with this. On this memorandum, in Keitel's handwriting, dated 23 September and initialed by him, is the statement: "The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I approve and back the measures." Keitel testified that he really agreed with Canaris and argued with Hitler, but lost. The OKW chief directed the military authorities to cooperate with the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in looting cultural property in occupied territories.
Lahousen testified that Keitel told him on 12 September 1939, while aboard Hitler's headquarters train, that the Polish intelligentsia, nobility, and Jews were to be liquidated. On 20 October, Hitler told Keitel the intelligentsia would be prevented from forming a ruling class. the standard of living would remain low, and Poland would be used only for labor forces. Keitel does not remember the Lahousen conversation, but admits there was such a policy and that he had protested without effect to Hitler about it.
On 16 September 1941, Keitel ordered that attacks on soldiers in the East should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier, with the comment that human life was less than nothing in the East. On 1 October he ordered military commanders always to have hostages to execute when German soldiers were attacked. When Terboven, the Reich Commissioner in Norway, wrote Hitler that Keitel's suggestion that workmen's relatives be held responsible for sabotage, could work only if firing squads were authorized, Keitel wrote on this memorandum in the margin: "Yes, that is the best."
On 12 May 1941, five weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the OKW urged upon Hitler a directive of the OKH that political commissars be liquidated by the Army. Keitel admitted the directive was passed on to field commanders. And on 13 May Keitel signed an order that civilians suspected of offenses against troops should be shot without trial, and that prosecution of German soldiers for offenses against civilians was unnecessary. On 27 July all copies of this directive were ordered destroyed without affecting its validity. Four days previously he had signed another order that legal punishment was inadequate and troops should use terrorism.
On 7 December 1941, as already discussed in this opinion, the so-called "Nacht und Nebel" decree, over Keitel's signature, provided that in occupied territories civilians who had been accused of crimes of resistance against the army of occupation would be
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tried only if a death sentence was likely; otherwise they would be handed over to the Gestapo for transportation to Germany.
Keitel directed that Russian prisoners of war be used in German war industry. On 8 September 1942 he ordered French, Dutch, and Belgian citizens to work on the Atlantic Wall. He was present on 4 January 1944 when Hitler directed Sauckel to obtain 4 million new workers from occupied territories.
In the face of these documents Keitel does not deny his connection with these acts. Rather, his defense relies on the fact that he is a soldier and on the doctrine of "superior orders," prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense.
There is nothing in mitigation. Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes so shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly, and without military excuse or justification.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds Keitel guilty on all four Counts.
KALTENBRUNNER
Kaltenbrunner is indicted under Counts One, Three, and Four. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. In 1935 he became leader of the SS in Austria. After the Anschluss he was appointed Austrian State Secretary for Security and, when this position was abolished in 1941, he was made Higher SS and Police Leader. On 30 January 1943, he was appointed Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA), a position which had been held by Heydrich until his assassination in June 1942. He held the rank of Obergruppenfuehrer in the SS.
Crimes against Peace
As leader of the SS in Austria Kaltenbrunner was active in the Nazi intrigue against the Schuschnigg Government. On the night of 11 March 1938, after Goering had ordered Austrian National Socialists to seize control of the Austrian Government, 500 Austrian SS men under Kaltenbrunner's command surrounded the Federal Chancellery and a special detachment under the command of his adjutant entered the Federal Chancellery while Seyss-Inquart was negotiating with President Miklas. But there is no evidence connecting Kaltenbrunner with plans to wage aggressive war on any other front. The Anschluss, although it was an aggressive act, is not charged as an aggressive war, and the evidence against Kaltenbrunner under Count One does not, in the opinion of the
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Tribunal, show his direct participation in any plan to wage such a war.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
When he became Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the RSHA on 30 January 1943, Kaltenbrunner took charge of an organization which included the main offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police. As Chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner had authority to order protective custody to and release from concentration camps. Orders to this effect were normally sent over his signature. Kaltenbrunner was aware of conditions in concentration camps. He had undoubtedly visited Mauthausen, and witnesses testified that he had seen prisoners killed by the various methods of execution, hanging, shooting in the back of the neck, and gassing, as part of a demonstration. Kaltenbrunner himself ordered the execution of prisoners in those camps and his office was used to transmit to the camps execution orders which originated in Himmler's office. At the end of the war Kaltenbrunner participated in the arrangements for the evacuation of inmates of concentration camps, and the liquidation of many of them, to prevent them from being liberated by the Allied armies.
During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Einsatzkommandos operating under the control of the Gestapo were engaged in the screening of Soviet prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi system were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered. An RSHA order issued during Kaltenbrunner's regime established the "Bullet Decree," under which certain escaped prisoners of war who were recaptured were taken to Mauthausen and shot. The order for the execution of Commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the Police not to interfere with attacks on bailed-out Allied fliers. In December 1944 Kaltenbrunner participated in the murder of one of the French generals held as a prisoner of war.
During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, the Gestapo and SD in occupied territories continued the murder and ill-treatment of the population, using methods which included torture and confinement in concentration camps, usually under orders to which Kaltenbrunner's name was signed.
The Gestapo was responsible for enforcing a rigid labor discipline on the slave laborers and Kaltenbrunner established a series
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of labor reformatory camps for this purpose. When, the SS embarked on a slave labor program of its own, the Gestapo was used to obtain the needed workers by sending laborers to concentration camps.
The RSHA played a leading part in the "final solution" of the Jewish question by the extermination of the Jews. A special section under the Amt IV of the RSHA was established to supervise this program. Under its direction approximately 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 2 million were killed by Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. Kaltenbrunner had been informed of the activities of these Einsatzgruppen when he was a Higher SS and Police Leader, and they continued to function after he had become Chief of the RSHA.
The murder of approximately 4 million Jews in concentration camps has heretofore been described. This part of the program was also under the supervision of the RSHA when Kaltenbrunner was head of that organization, and special missions of the RSHA scoured the occupied territories and the various Axis satellites arranging for the deportation of Jews to these extermination institutions. Kaltenbrunner was informed of these activities. A letter which he wrote on 30 June 1944 described the shipment to Vienna of 12,000 Jews for that purpose and directed that all who could not work would have to be kept in readiness for "special action," which meant murder. Kaltenbrunner denied his signature to this letter, as he did on a very large number of orders on which his name was stamped or typed, and in a few instances, written. It is inconceivable that in matters of such importance his signature could have appeared so many times without his authority.
Kaltenbrunner has claimed that when he took office as Chief of the Security Police and SD and as head of the RSHA he did so pursuant to an understanding with Himmler under which he was to confine his activities to matter involving foreign intelligence and not to assume overall control over the activities of the RSHA. He claims that the criminal program had been started before his assumption of office; that he seldom knew what was going on; and that when he was informed he did what he could to stop them. It is true that he showed a special interest in matters involving foreign intelligence. But he exercised control over the activities of the RSHA, was aware of the crimes it was committing, and was an active participant in many of them.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Kaltenbrunner is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty under Counts Three and Four.
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GEN. NIKITCHENKO:
ROSENBERG
Rosenberg is indicted on all four Counts. He joined the Nazi Party in 1919, participated in the Munich Putsch of 9 November 1923, and tried to keep the illegal Nazi Party together while Hitler was in jail. Recognized as the Party's ideologist, he developed and spread Nazi doctrines in the newspapers Voelkischer Beobachter and NS Monatshefte, which he edited, and in the numerous books he wrote. His book Myth of the Twentieth Century had a circulation of over a million copies.
In 1930 Rosenberg was elected to the Reichstag and he became the Party's representative for Foreign Affairs. In April 1933 he was made Reichsleiter and head of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the NSDAP (The APA). Hitler, in January 1934, appointed Rosenberg his deputy for the supervision of the entire spiritual and ideological training of the NSDAP. In January 1940, he was designated to set up the "Hohe Schule," the center of National Socialist ideological and educational research, and he organized the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg" in connection with this task. He was appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941.
Crimes against Peace
As head of the APA, Rosenberg was in charge of an organization whose agents were active in Nazi intrigue in all parts of the world. His own reports, for example, claim that the APA was largely responsible for Romania's joining the Axis. As head of the APA, he played an important role in the preparation and planning of the attack on Norway.
Rosenberg, together with Raeder, was one of the originators of the plan for attacking Norway. Rosenberg had become interested in Norway as early as June 1939, when he conferred with Quisling. Quisling had pointed out the importance of the Norwegian coast in the event of a conflict between Germany and Great Britain and stated his fears that Great Britain might be able to obtain Norwegian assistance. As a result of this conference Rosenberg arranged for Quisling to collaborate closely with the National Socialists and to receive political assistance by the Nazis.
When the war broke out Quisling began to express fear of British intervention in Norway. Rosenberg supported this view and transmitted to Raeder a plan to use Quisling for a coup in Norway. Rosenberg was instrumental in arranging the conferences in December 1939 between Hitler and Quisling which led to the preparation of the 'attack on Norway and at which Hitler promised Quisling financial assistance. After these conferences Hitler assigned to
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Rosenberg the political exploitation of Norway. Two weeks after Norway was occupied, Hitler told Rosenberg that he had based his decision to attack Norway "on the continuous warnings of Quisling as reported to him by Reichsleiter Rosenberg."
Rosenberg bears a major responsibility for the formulation and execution of occupation policies in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was informed by Hitler, on 2 April 1941, of the coming attack against the Soviet Union, and he agreed to help in the capacity of a "Political Adviser." On 20 April 1941 he was appointed Commissioner for the Central Control of Questions Connected with the East European Region. In preparing the plans for the occupation, he had numerous conferences with Keitel, Raeder, Goering, Funk, Ribbentrop, and other high Reich authorities. In April and May 1941 he prepared several drafts of instructions concerning the setting up of the administration in the Occupied Eastern Territories. On 20 June 1941, two days before the attack on the U.S.S.R., he made a speech to his assistants about the problems and policies of occupation. Rosenberg attended, Hitler's conference of 16 July 1941, in which policies of administration and occupation were discussed. On 17 July 1941, Hitler appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and publicly charged him with responsibility for civil administration.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Rosenberg is responsible for a system of organized plunder of both public and private property throughout the invaded countries of Europe. Acting under Hitler's orders of January 1940 to set up the "Hohe Schule," he organized and directed the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg,", which plundered museums and libraries, confiscated art treasures and collections, and pillaged private houses. His own reports show the extent of the confiscations. In "Aktion-M" (Moebel), instituted in December 1941 at Rosenberg's suggestion, 69, 619 Jewish homes were plundered in the West, 38,000 of the in in Paris alone, and it took 26,984 railroad cars to transport the confiscated furnishings to Germany. As of 14 July 1944, more than 21,903 art objects, including famous paintings and museum pieces, had been seized by the Einsatzstab in the West.
With his appointment as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941, Rosenberg became the supreme authority for those areas. He helped to formulate the policies of Germanization, exploitation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of Nazi rule, and he set up the administration which carried them out. He took part in the conference of 16 July 1941, in which Hitler stated that they were faced with the task of "cutting up the giant cake according to our needs in order to be able: first, to
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dominate it, second, to administer it, and third, to exploit it," and he indicated that ruthless action was contemplated. Rosenberg accepted his appointment on the following day.
Rosenberg had knowledge of the brutal treatment and terror to which the Eastern people were subjected. He directed that the Hague Rules of Land Warfare were not applicable in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He had knowledge of and took an active part in stripping the Eastern territories of raw materials and foodstuffs, in which were sent to Germany. He stated that feeding the German people was first on the list of claims on the East, and that the Soviet people would suffer thereby. His directives provided for the segregation of Jews, ultimately in ghettos. His subordinates engaged in mass killings of Jews, and his civil administrators in the East considered that cleansing the Eastern Occupied Territories of Jews was necessary. In December 1941, Rosenberg made the suggestion to Hitler that in a case of shooting 100 hostages, Jews only be used. Rosenberg had knowledge of the deportation of laborers from the East, of the methods of "recruiting" and the transportation horrors, and of the treatment Eastern laborers received in the Reich. He gave his civil administrators quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich, which had to be met by whatever means necessary. His signature of approval appears on the order of 14 June 1944, for the "Heu Aktion," the apprehension of 40,000 to 50,000 youths, aged 10-14, for shipment to the Reich.
Upon occasion Rosenberg objected to the excesses and atrocities committed by his subordinates, notably in the case of Koch, but these excesses continued and he stayed in office until the end.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Rosenberg is guilty on all four Counts.
MR. BIDDLE:
FRANK
Frank is indicted under Counts One, Three, and Four. Frank joined the Nazi Party in 1927. He became a member of the Reichstag in 1930, the Bavarian State Minister of Justice in March 1933, and when this position was incorporated into the Reich Government in 1934, Reich Minister without Portfolio. He was made a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party in charge of legal affairs in 1933, and in the same year President of the Academy of German Law. Frank was also given the honorary rank of Obergruppenfiffirer in the SA. In 1942 Frank became involved in a temporary dispute with Himmler as to the type of legal system which should be in effect in Germany. During the same year he was dismissed as Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party and as President of the Academy of German Law.
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Crimes against Peace
'The evidence has not satisfied the Tribunal that Frank was sufficiently connected with the common plan to wage aggressive war to allow the Tribunal to convict him on Count One.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Frank was appointed Chief Civil Administration Officer for occupied Polish territory and, on 12 October 1939, was made Governor General of the occupied Polish territory. On 3 October 1939, he described the policy which he intended to put into effect by stating: "Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire." The evidence establishes that this occupation policy was based on the complete destruction of Poland as a national entity, and a ruthless exploitation of its human and economic resources for the German war effort. All opposition was crushed with the utmost harshness. A reign of terror was instituted, backed by summary police courts which ordered such actions as the public shootings of groups of 20 to 200 Poles and the widespread shooting of hostages. The concentration camp system was introduced in the Government General by the establishment of the notorious Treblinka and Maidanek camps. As early as 6 February 1940, Frank gave an indication of the extent of this reign of terror by his cynical comment to a newspaper reporter on Von Neurath's poster announcing the execution of the Czech students: "If I wished to order that one should hang up posters about every seven Poles shot, there would not be enough forests in Poland with which to make the paper for these posters." On 30 May 1940, Frank told a police conference that he was taking advantage of the offensive in the West, which diverted the attention of the world from Poland, to liquidate thousands of Poles who would be likely to resist German domination of Poland, including "the leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia." Pursuant to these instructions the brutal AB Action was begun, under which the Security Police and SD carried out these exterminations which were only partially subjected to the restraints of legal procedure. On 2 October 1943, Frank issued a decree under which any non-German hindering German construction in the Government General was to be tried by summary courts of the Security Police and SD and sentenced to death.
The economic demands made on the Government General were far in excess of the needs of the army of occupation and were out of all proportion to the resources of the country. The food raised in Poland was shipped to Germany on such a wide scale that the rations of the population of the occupied territories were reduced to the starvation level, and epidemics were widespread. Some steps
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were taken to provide for the feeding of the agricultural workers who were used to raise the crops, but the requirements of the rest of the population were disregarded. It is undoubtedly true, as argued by counsel for the Defense, that some suffering in the Government General was inevitable as a result of the ravages of war and the economic confusion resulting therefrom. But the suffering was increased by a planned policy of economic exploitation.
Frank introduced the deportation of slave laborers to Germany in the very early stages of his administration. On 25 January 1940, he indicated his intention of deporting a million laborers to Germany, suggesting on 10 May 1940 the use of police raids to meet this quota. On 18 August 1942, Frank reported that he had already supplied 800,000 workers for the Reich and expected to be able to supply 140,000 more before the end of the year.
The persecution of the Jews was immediately begun in the Government General. The area originally contained from 2,500,000 to 3,500,000 Jews. They were forced into ghettos, subjected to discriminatory laws, deprived of the food necessary to avoid starvation, and finally systematically and brutally exterminated. On 16 December 1941, Frank told the Cabinet of the Government General: "We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole." By 25 January 1944, Frank estimated that there were only 100,000 Jews left.
At the beginning of his testimony, Frank stated that he had a feeling of "terrible guilt" for the atrocities committed in the occupied territories. But his defense was largely devoted to an attempt to prove that he was not in fact responsible; that he ordered only the necessary pacification measures; that the excesses were due to the activities of the Police which were not under his control; and that he never even knew of the activities of the concentration
camps. It has also been argued that the starvation was due to the aftermath of the war and policies carried out under the Four Year Plan; that the forced labor program was under the direction of Sauckel; and that the extermination of the Jews was by the Police and SS under direct orders from Himmler.
It is undoubtedly true that most of the criminal program charged against Frank was put into, effect through the Police, that Frank had jurisdictional difficulties with Himmler over the control of the Police, and that Hitler resolved many of these disputes in favor of Himmler. It therefore may well be true that some of the crimes committed in the Government General were committed without the knowledge of Frank, and even occasionally despite his opposition. It may also be true that some of the criminal policies put into effect in the Government General did not originate with Frank but were
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carried out pursuant to orders from Germany. But it is also true that Frank was a willing and knowing participant in the use of terrorism in Poland; in the economic exploitation of Poland in a way which led to the death by starvation of a large number of people; in the deportation to Germany as slave laborers of over a million Poles; and in a program involving the murder of at least 3 million Jews.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Frank is not guilty on Count One but is guilty under Counts Three and Four.
M. DE VABRES:
FRICK
Frick is indicted on all four Counts. Recognized as the chief Nazi administrative specialist and bureaucrat, he was appointed Reich Minister of the Interior in Hitler's first cabinet. He retained this important position until August 1943, when he was appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. In connection with his duties at the center of all internal and domestic administration, he became the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Reich Director of Elections, General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich, and a member of the Reich Defense Council, the Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, and the "Three Man College." As the several countries incorporated into the Reich were overrun, he was placed at the head of the central offices for their incorporation.
Though Frick did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1925, he had previously allied himself with Hitler and the National Socialist cause during the Munich Putsch, while he was an official in the Munich Police Department. Elected to the Reichstag in 1924, he became a Reichsleiter as leader of the National Socialist faction in that body.
Crimes against Peace
An avid Nazi, Frick was largely responsible for bringing the German nation under the complete control of the NSDAP. After Hitler became Reich Chancellor, the new Minister of the Interior immediately began to incorporate local governments under the sovereignty of the Reich. The numerous laws he drafted, signed, and administered, abolished all opposition parties and prepared the way for the Gestapo and their concentration camps to extinguish all individual opposition. He was largely, responsible for the legislation which suppressed the trade unions, the Church, the Jews. He performed this task with ruthless efficiency.
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Before the date of the Austrian aggression Frick was concerned only with domestic administration within the Reich. The evidence does not show that he participated in any of the conferences at which Hitler outlined his aggressive intentions. Consequently the Tribunal takes the view that Frick was not a member of the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war as defined in this Judgment.
Six months after the seizure of Austria, under the provisions of the Reich Defense Law of 4 September 1938, Frick became Plenipotentiary, General for the Administration of the Reich. He was made responsible for war administration, except the military and economic, in the event of Hitler's proclaiming a state of defense. The Reich Ministries of Justice, Education, Religion, and the Office of Spatial Planning were made subordinate to him. Performing his allotted duties, Frick devised an administrative organization in accordance with wartime standards. According to his own statement, this was actually put into operation after Germany decided to adopt a policy of war
Frick signed the law of 13 March 1938, which united Austria with the Reich, and he was made responsible for its accomplishment. In setting up German administration in Austria, he issued decrees which introduced German law, the Nuremberg Decrees, the Military Service Law, and he provided for police security by Himmler.
He also signed the laws incorporating into the Reich the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the Eastern territories (West Prussia and Posen), and Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet. He was placed in charge of the actual incorporation and of the establishment of German administration over these territories. He signed the law establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
As the head of the central offices for Bohemia and Moravia, the Government General, and Norway, he was charged with obtaining close co-operation between the German officials in these occupied countries and the supreme authorities of the Reich. He supplied German civil servants for the administrations in all occupied territories, advising Rosenberg as to their assignment in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He signed the laws appointing Terboven Reich Commissioner to Norway and Seyss-Inquart to Holland.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Always rabidly anti-Semitic, Frick drafted, signed, and administered many laws designed to eliminate Jews from German life and economy. His work formed the basis of the Nuremberg Decrees, and he was active in enforcing them. Responsible for prohibiting Jews from following various professions and for confiscating their
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property, he signed a final decree in 1943, after the mass destruction of Jews in the East, which placed them "outside the law" and handed them over to the Gestapo. These laws paved the way for the "final solution," and were extended by Frick to the incorporated territories and to certain of the occupied territories. While he was Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, thousands of Jews were transferred from the Terezin ghetto in Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz, where they were killed. He issued a decree providing for special penal laws against Jews and Poles in the Government General.
The Police officially fell under the jurisdiction of the Reich Minister of the Interior. But Frick actually exercised little control over Himmler and police matters. However, he signed the law appointing Himmler Chief of the German Police, as well as the decrees establishing Gestapo jurisdiction over concentration camps and regulating the execution of orders for protective custody. From the many complaints he received, and from the testimony of, witnesses, the Tribunal concludes that he knew of atrocities committed in these camps. With knowledge of Himmler's methods, Frick signed decrees authorizing him to take necessary security measures in certain of the incorporated territories. What these "security measures" turned out to be has already been dealt with.
As the supreme Reich authority in Bohemia and Moravia, Frick bears general responsibility for the acts of oppression in that territory after 20 August 1943, such as terrorism of the population, slave labor, and the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps for extermination. It is true that Frick's duties as Reich Protector were considerably more limited than those of his predecessor, and that he had no legislative and limited personal executive authority in the Protectorate. Nevertheless, Frick knew full well what the Nazi policies of occupation were in Europe, particularly with respect to Jews, at that time, and by accepting the office of Reich Protector he assumed responsibility for carrying out those policies in Bohemia and Moravia.
German citizenship in the occupied countries as well as in the Reich came under his jurisdiction while he was Minister of the Interior. Having created a racial register of persons of German extraction, Frick conferred German citizenship on certain groups of citizens of foreign countries. He is responsible for Germanization in Austria, Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, Eastern Territories (West Prussia and Posen), and in the territories of Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet. He forced on the citizens of these territories German law, German courts, German education, German police security, and compulsory military service.
During the war nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums in which euthanasia was practiced as described elsewhere in this Judgment,
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came under Frick's jurisdiction. He had knowledge that insane, sick, and aged people, "useless eaters," were being systematically put to death. Complaints of these murders reached him, but he did nothing to stop them. A report of the Czechoslovak War Crimes Commission estimated that 275,000 mentally deficient and aged people, for whose welfare he was responsible, fell victim to it.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Frick is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty on Counts Two, Three and Four.
THE PRESIDENT:
STREICHER
Streicher is indicted on Counts One and Four. One of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1921, he took part in the Munich Putsch. From 1925 to 1940 he was Gauleiter of Franconia. Elected to the Reichstag in 1933, he was an honorary general in the SA. His persecution of the Jews was notorious. He was the publisher of Der Stuermer, an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper, from 1923 to 1945 and was its editor until 1933.
Crimes against Peace
Streicher was a staunch Nazi and supporter of Hitler's main policies. There is no evidence to show that he was ever within Hitler's inner circle of advisers; nor during his career was he closely connected with the formulation of the policies which led to war. He was never present, for example, at any of the important conferences when Hitler explained his decisions to his leaders. Although he was a Gauleiter there is no evidence to prove that he had knowledge of these policies. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the evidence fails to establish his connection with the conspiracy or common plan to wage aggressive war as that conspiracy has been elsewhere defined in this Judgment..
Crimes against Humanity
For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as "Jew-Baiter Number One." In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of Der Stuermer, which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.
Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of 1 April 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on 10 August 1938 of the synagogue in Nuremberg.
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And on 10 November 1938, he spoke publicly in support of the Jewish pogrom which was taking place at that time.
But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. 23 different articles of Der Stuermer between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which extermination "root and branch" was preached. Typical of his teachings was a leading article in September 1938 which termed the Jew a germ and a pest, not a human being, but "a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind." Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved, and predicted that 50 years hence the Jewish graves "will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate." Streicher, in February 1940, published a letter from one of Der Stuermer's readers which compared Jews with swarms of locusts which must be exterminated completely. Such was the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist policy of Jewish persecution and extermination. A leading article of Der Stuermer, in May 1939, shows clearly his aim:
"A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect. Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch."
As the war in the early stages proved successful in acquiring more and more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are 26 articles from Der Stuermer, published between August 1941 and September 1944, 12 by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and extermination in unequivocal terms. He wrote and published on 25 December 1941:
"If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way--the extermination of that people whose father is the devil." And in February 1944 his own article stated:
"Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal. And he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate: annihilation, death."
With knowledge of the. extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death. Testifying in this Trial, he vehemently denied any knowledge of mass executions of Jews. But the
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evidence makes it clear that he continually received current information on the progress of the "final solution." His press photographer was sent to visit the ghettos of the East in the spring of 1943, the time of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish newspaper, Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which Streicher received and read, carried in each issue accounts of Jewish atrocities in the East, and gave figures on the number of Jews who had been deported and killed. For example, issues appearing in the summer and fall of 1942 reported the death of 72,729 Jews in Warsaw, 17,542 in Lodz, 18,000 in Croatia, 125,000 in Romania, 14,000 in Latvia, 85,000 in Yugoslavia, 700,000 in all of Poland. In November 1943 Streicher quoted verbatim an article from the Israelitisches Wochenblatt which stated that the Jews had virtually disappeared from Europe, and commented: "This is not a Jewish lie." In December 1942, referring to an article in the London Times about the atrocities aiming at extermination, Streicher said that Hitler had given warning that the second World War would lead to the destruction of Jewry. In January 1943 he wrote and published an article which said that Hitler's prophecy was being fulfilled, that world Jewry was being extirpated, and that it was wonderful to know that Hitler was freeing the world of its Jewish tormentors.
In the face of the evidence before the Tribunal it is idle for Streicher to suggest that the solution of the Jewish problem which he favored was strictly limited to the classification of Jews as aliens, and the passing of discriminatory legislation such as the Nuremberg Laws, supplemented if possible by international agreement, on the creation of a Jewish state somewhere in the world, to which all Jews should emigrate.
Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with War Crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a Crime against Humanity.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Streicher is not guilty on Count One, but that he is guilty on Count Four.
GEN. NIKITCHENKO:
FUNK
Funk is indicted under all four Counts. Funk, who had previously been a financial journalist, joined the Nazi Party in 1931, and shortly thereafter became one of Hitler's personal economic advisers. On 30 January 1933, he was made Press Chief in the Reich
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Government, and on 11 March 1933 became Under Secretary in the Ministry of Propaganda and shortly thereafter a leading figure in the various Nazi organizations which were used to control the press, films, music, and publishing houses. Funk took office as Minister of Economics and Plenipotentiary General for War Economy in early 1938, and as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. He succeeded Schacht in all three of these positions. He was made a member of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich in August 1939, and a member of the Central Planning Board in September 1943.
Crimes against Peace
Funk became active in the economic field after the Nazi plans to wage aggressive war had been clearly defined. One of his representatives attended a conference on 14 October 1938, at which Goering announced a gigantic increase in armaments and instructed the Ministry of Economics to increase exports to obtain the necessary exchange. On 28 January 1939, one of Funk's subordinates sent a memorandum to the OKW on the use of prisoners of war to make up labor deficiencies which would arise in case of mobilization. On 30 May 1939, the Under Secretary of the Ministry of Economics attended a meeting at which detailed plans were made for the financing of the war.
On 25 August 1939, Funk wrote a letter to Hitler expressing his gratitude that he was able to participate in such world-shaking events; that his plans for the "financing of the war," for the control of wage and price conditions and for the strengthening of the Reichsbank had been completed; and that he had inconspicuously transferred into gold all foreign exchange resources available to Germany. On 14 October 1939, after the war had begun, he made a speech in which he stated that the economic and financial departments of Germany working under the Four Year Plan had been engaged in the secret economic preparation for war for over a year.
Funk participated in the economic planning which preceded the attack on the U.S.S.R. His deputy held daily conferences with Rosenberg on the economic problems which would arise in the occupation of Soviet territory. Funk himself participated in planning for the printing of rouble notes in Germany prior to the attack to serve as occupation currency in the U.S.S.R. After the attack he made a speech in which he described plans he had made for the economic exploitation of the "vast territories of the Soviet Union" which were to be used as a source of raw material for Europe.
Funk was not one of the leading figures in originating the Nazi plans for aggressive war. His activity in the economic sphere was under the supervision of Goering as Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan. He did, however, participate in the economic preparation for
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certain of the aggressive wars, notably those against Poland and the Soviet Union, but his guilt can be adequately dealt with under Count Two of the Indictment.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
In his capacity as Under Secretary in the Ministry of Propaganda and Vice-Chairman of the Reich Chamber of Culture, Funk had participated in the early Nazi program of economic discrimination against the Jews. On 12 November 1938, after the pogroms of November, he attended a meeting held under the chairmanship of Goering to discuss the solution of the Jewish problem and proposed a decree providing for the banning of Jews from all business activities, which Goering issued the same day under the authority of the Four Year Plan. Funk has testified that he was shocked at the outbreaks of 10 November, but on 15 November he made a speech describing these outbreaks as a "violent explosion of the disgust of the German people, because of a criminal Jewish attack against the German people," and saying that the elimination of the Jews from economic life followed logically their elimination from political life.
In 1942 Funk entered into an agreement with Himmler under which the Reichsbank was to receive certain gold and jewels and currency from the SS and instructed his subordinates, who were to work out the details, not to ask too many questions. As a result of this agreement the SS sent to the Reichsbank the personal belongings taken from the victims who had been exterminated in the concentration camps. The Reichsbank kept the coins and bank notes and sent the jewels, watches, and personal belongings to Berlin municipal pawn shops. The gold from the eyeglasses and gold teeth and fillings were stored in the Reichsbank vaults. Funk has protested that he did not know that the Reichsbank was receiving articles of this kind. The Tribunal is of the opinion that he either knew what was being received or was deliberately closing his eyes to what was being done.
As Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, Funk participated in the economic exploitation of occupied territories. He was President of the Continental Oil Company which was charged with the exploitation of the oil resources of occupied territories in the East. He was responsible for the seizure of the gold reserves of the Czechoslovakian National Bank and for the liquidation of the Yugoslavian National Bank. On 6 June 1942, his deputy sent a letter to the OKW requesting that funds from the French occupation cost fund be made available for black market purchases. Funk's knowledge of German occupation policies is shown by his presence at the meeting of 8 August 1942, at which Goering addressed the
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various German occupation chiefs, told them of the products required from their territories, and added: "It makes no difference to me in this connection if you say that your people will starve."
In the fall of 1943, Funk was a member of the Central Planning Board which determined the total number of laborers needed for German industry and required Sauckel to produce them, usually by deportation from occupied territories. Funk did not appear to be particularly interested in this aspect of the forced labor program and usually sent a deputy to, attend the meetings, often SS General Ohlendorf, the former chief of the SD inside of Germany and the former commander of Einsatzgruppe D. But Funk was aware that the board of which he was a member was demanding the importation of slave laborers and allocating them to the various industries under its control.
As President of the Reichsbank, Funk was also indirectly involved in the utilization of concentration camp labor. Under his direction the Reichsbank set up a revolving fund of 12,000,000 Reichsmarks to the credit of the SS for the construction of factories to use concentration camp laborers.
In spite of the fact that he occupied important official positions, Funk was never a dominant figure in the various programs in which he participated. This is a mitigating fact of which the Tribunal takes notice.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Funk is not guilty on Count One but is guilty under Counts Two, Three, and Four.
THE PRESIDENT: The Court will adjourn for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
MR. BIDDLE:
SCHACHT
Schacht is indicted under Counts One and Two of the Indictment. Schacht served as Commissioner of Currency and President of the Reichsbank from 1923 to 1930; was reappointed President of the bank on 17 March 1933; Minister of Economics in August 1934; and Plenipotentiary General for War Economy in May 1935. He resigned from these two positions in November 1937 and was appointed Minister without Portfolio. He was reappointed as President of the Reichsbank for a one-year term on 16 March 1937, and for a four-year term on 9 March 1938, but was dismissed on 20 January 1939. He was dismissed as Minister without Portfolio on 22 January 1943.
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Crimes against Peace
Schacht was an active supporter of the Nazi Party before its accession to power on 30 January 1933 and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. After that date he played an important role in the vigorous rearmament program which was adopted, using the facilities of the Reichsbank to the fullest extent in the German rearmament effort. The Reichsbank, in its traditional capacity as financial agent for the German Government, floated long-term Government loans, the proceeds of which were used for rearmament. He devised a system under which five-year notes, known as "mefo" bills, guaranteed by the Reichsbank and backed, in effect, by nothing more than its position as a bank of issue, were used to obtain large sums for rearmament from the short-term money market. As Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for the War Economy he was active in organizing the German economy for war. He made detailed plans for industrial mobilization and the co-ordination of the Army with industry in the event of war. He was particularly concerned with shortages of raw materials and started a scheme of stock-piling, and a system of exchange control designed to prevent Germany's weak foreign exchange position from hindering the acquisition abroad of raw materials needed for rearmament. On 3 May 1935, he sent a memorandum to Hitler stating that "the accomplishment of the armament program with speed and in quantity is the problem of German politics, that everything else therefore should be subordinated to this purpose."
Schacht, by April 1936, began to lose his influence as the central figure in the German rearmament effort when Goering was appointed co-ordinator for raw materials and foreign exchange. Goering advocated a greatly expanded program for the production of synthetic raw materials, which was opposed by Schacht on the ground that the resulting financial strain might involve inflation. The influence of Schacht suffered further when on 16 October") 1936, Goering was appointed Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan with the task of putting "the entire economy, in a state of readiness for war within 4 years." Schacht had opposed the announcement of this plan and the appointment of Goering to head it, and it is clear that Hitler's action represented a decision that Schacht's economic policies were too conservative for the drastic rearmament policy which Hitler wanted to put into effect.
After Goering's appointment, Schacht and Goering promptly became embroiled in a series of disputes. Although there was an element of personal controversy running through these disputes, Schacht disagreed with Goering on certain basic policy issues. Schacht, on financial grounds,, advocated a retrenchment in the
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rearmament program, opposed as uneconomical much of the proposed expansion of production facilities, particularly for synthetics, urged a drastic tightening on Government credit, and a cautious policy in dealing with Germany's foreign exchange reserves. As a result of this dispute and of a bitter argument in which Hitler accused Schacht of upsetting his plans by his financial methods, Schacht went on leave of absence from the Ministry of Economics on 5 September 1937, and resigned as Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for War Economy on 16 November 1937.
As President of the Reichsbank, Schacht was still involved in disputes. Throughout 1938, the Reichsbank continued to function as the financial agent for the German Government in floating long-term loans to finance armaments. But on 31 March 1938, Schacht discontinued the practice of floating short-term notes guaranteed by the Reichsbank for armament expenditures. At the end of 1938, in an attempt to regain control of fiscal policy through the Reichsbank, Schacht refused an urgent request of the Reichsminister of Finance for a special credit to pay the salaries of civil servants which were not covered by existing funds. On 2 January 1939, Schacht held a conference with Hitler at which he urged him to reduce expenditures for armaments. On 7 January 1939, Schacht submitted to Hitler a report signed by the Directors of the Reichsbank which urged a drastic curtailment of armament expenditures and a balanced budget as the only method of preventing inflation. On 19 January, Hitler dismissed Schacht as President of the Reichsbank. On 22 January 1943, Hitler dismissed Schacht as Reich Minister without Portfolio because of his "whole attitude during the present fateful fight of the German nation." On 23 July 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo and confined in a concentration camp until the end of the war.
It is clear that Schacht was a central figure in Germany's rearmament program, and the steps which he took, particularly in the early days of the Nazi regime, were responsible for Nazi Germany's rapid rise as a military power. But rearmament of itself is not criminal under the Charter. To be a Crime against Peace under Article 6 of the Charter it must be shown that Schacht carried out this rearmament as part of the Nazi plans to wage aggressive wars.
Schacht has contended that he participated in & rearmament program only because he wanted to build up a strong and independent Germany which would carry out a foreign policy which would command respect on an equal basis with, other European countries; that when he discovered that the Nazis were rearming for aggressive purposes he attempted to slow down the speed of rearmament; and that after the dismissal of Von Fritsch and Von
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Blomberg he participated in plans to get rid of Hitler, first by deposing him and later by assassination.
Schacht, as early as 1936, began to advocate a limitation of the rearmament program for financial reasons. Had the policies advocated by him been put into effect, Germany would not have been prepared for a general European war. Insistence on his policies led to his eventual dismissal from all positions of economic significance in Germany. On the other hand, Schacht, with his intimate knowledge of German finance, was in a peculiarly good position to understand the true significance of Hitler's frantic rearmament and to realize that the economic policy adopted was consistent only with war as its object.
Moreover Schacht continued to participate in German economic life and even, in a minor way, in some of the early Nazi aggressions. Prior to the occupation of Austria he set a rate of exchange between the mark and the schilling. After the occupation of Austria he arranged for the incorporation of the Austrian National Bank into the Reichsbank and made a violently pro-Nazi speech in which he stated- that the Reichsbank would always be Nazi as long as he was connected with it, praised Hitler, defended the occupation of Austria, scoffed at objections to the way it was carried out, and ended with "to our Fuehrer, a triple 'Sieg Heil'." He has not contended ' that this speech did not represent his, state of mind at the time. After the occupation of the Sudetenland, he arranged for currency conversion and for the incorporation into the Reichsbank of local Czech banks of issue. On 29 November 1938, he made a speech in which he pointed with pride to his economic policy which had created the high degree of German armament, and added that this armament had made Germany's foreign policy possible.
Schacht was not involved in the planning of any of the specific wars of aggression charged in Count Two. His participation in the occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland (neither of which is charged as aggressive war) was on such a limited basis that it, does not amount to participation in the common plan charged in Count One, He was clearly not one of the inner circle around Hitler which was most closely involved with this common plan. He was regarded by this group with undisguised hostility. The testimony of Speer shows that Schacht's arrest on 23 July 1944 was based as much on Hitler's enmity towards Schacht growing out of his attitude before the war as it was on suspicion of his complicity in the bomb plot. The case against Schacht therefore depends on the inference that Schacht did in fact know of the Nazi aggressive plans.
On this all-important question evidence has been given for the Prosecution, and a considerable volume of evidence for the Defense.
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The Tribunal has considered the whole of this evidence with great care, and comes to the conclusion that this necessary inference has not been established 'beyond a reasonable doubt.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Schacht is not guilty on this Indictment, and directs that he shall. be discharged by the Marshal, when the Tribunal presently adjourns.
M. DE VABRES:
DOENITZ
Doenitz is indicted on Counts One, Two, and Three. In 1935 he took command of the first U-Boat flotilla commissioned since 1918, became in 1936 commander of the submarine arm, was made Vice-Admiral in 1940, Admiral in 1942, and on 30 January 1943 Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State, succeeding Hitler.
Crimes against Peace
Although Doenitz built and trained the German U-Boat arm, the evidence does not show he was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive wars or that he prepared and initiated such wars. He was a line officer performing strictly tactical duties. He was not present at the important conferences when plans for aggressive wars were announced, and there is no evidence he was informed about the decisions reached there. Doenitz did, however, wage aggressive war within the meaning of that word as used by the Charter. Submarine warfare which began immediately upon the outbreak of war, was fully co-ordinated with the other branches of the Wehrmacht. It is clear that his U-boats, few in number at the time, were fully prepared to wage war.
It is true that until his appointment in January 1943 as commander-in-chief he was not an "Oberbofehlshaber." But this statement underestimates the importance of Doenitz' position. He was no mere army or division commander. The U-Boat arm was the principal part of the German fleet and Doenitz was its leader. The high seas fleet made a few minor, if spectacular, raids during the early years of the war, but the real damage to the enemy was done almost exclusively by his submarines, as the millions of tons of allied and neutral shipping sunk will testify. Doenitz was solely in charge of this warfare. The Naval War Command reserved for itself only the decision as to the number of submarines in each area. In the invasion of Norway, for example, he made recommendations in October 1939 as to submarine bases, which he claims were no more
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than a staff study, and in March 1940 he made out the operational orders for the supporting U-boats, as discussed elsewhere in this Judgment.
That his importance to the German war effort was so regarded is eloquently proved by Raeder's recommendation of Doenitz as his successor and his appointment by Hitler on 30 January 1943 as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Hitler too knew that submarine warfare was the essential part of Germany's naval warfare.
From January 1943, Doenitz was consulted almost continuously by Hitler. The evidence was that they conferred on naval problems about 120 times during the course of the war.
As late as April 1945 when he admits he knew the struggle was hopeless, Doenitz as its commander-in-chief urged the Navy to continue its fight. On 1 May 1945 he became the Head of State and as such ordered the Wehrmacht to continue its war in the East, until capitulation on 9 May 1945. Doenitz explained that his reason for these orders was to insure that the German civilian population might be evacuated and the Army might make an orderly retreat from the East.
In the view of the Tribunal, the evidence shows that Doenitz was active in waging aggressive war.
War Crimes
Doenitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936, to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930.
The Prosecution has submitted that on 3 September 1939 the German U-Boat arm began to wage unrestricted submarine warfare upon all merchant ships, whether enemy or neutral, cynically disregarding the Protocol, and that a calculated effort was made throughout the war to disguise this practice by making hypocritical references to international law and supposed violations by the Allies.
Doenitz insists that at all times the Navy remained within the confines of international law and of the Protocol. He testified that when the war began, the guide to submarine warfare was the German Prize Ordinance, taken almost literally from the Protocol; that pursuant to the German view, he ordered submarines to attack all merchant ships in convoy and all that refused to stop or used their radio upon sighting a submarine. When his reports indicated that British merchant ships were being used to give information by wireless, were being armed and were attacking submarines on sight, he ordered his submarines on 17 October 1939 to attack all enemy
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merchant ships without warning on the ground that resistance was to be expected. Orders already had been issued on 21 September 1939 to attack all ships, including neutrals, sailing at night without lights in the English Channel.
On 24 November 1939, the German Government issued a warning to neutral shipping that, owing to the frequent engagements taking place in the waters around the British Isles and the French coast between U-Boats and Allied merchant ships which were armed and had instructions to use those arms as well as to ram U-Boats, the safety of neutral ships in those waters could no longer be taken for granted. On I January 1940, the German U-Boat command, acting on the instructions of Hitler, ordered U-Boats to attack all Greek merchant ships in the zone surrounding the British Isles which was banned by the United States to its own ships and also merchant ships of every nationality in the limited area of the Bristol Channel. Five days later a further order was given to U-Boats "to make immediately unrestricted use of weapons against all ships" in an area of the North Sea, the limits of which were defined. Finally on 18 January 1940, U-Boats were authorized to sink, without warning, all ships "in those waters near the enemy coast in which the use of mines can be pretended." Exceptions were to be made in the cases of United States, Italian, Japanese, and Soviet ships.
Shortly after the outbreak of war the British Admiralty, in accordance with its Handbook of Instructions of 1938 to the merchant navy, armed its merchant vessels, in many cases convoyed them with armed escort, gave orders to send position reports upon sighting submarines, thus integrating merchant vessels into the warning network of naval intelligence. On 1 October 1939, the British Admiralty announced British merchant ships had been ordered to ram U-Boats if possible.
In the actual circumstances of this case, the Tribunal is not prepared to hold Doenitz guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships.
However, the proclamation of operational zones and the sinking of neutral merchant vessels which enter those zones presents a different question. This practice was employed in the war of 1914-1918 by Germany and adopted in retaliation by Great Britain. The Washington Conference of 1922, the London Naval Agreement of 1930 and the Protocol of 1936 were entered into with full knowledge that such zones had been employed in that war. Yet the Protocol made no exception for operational zones. The order of Doenitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, in the opinion of the Tribunal, therefore a violation of the Protocol.
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It is also asserted that the German U-Boat arm not only did not carry out the warning and rescue provisions of the Protocol but that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of survivors of shipwrecked vessels, whether enemy or neutral. The Prosecution has introduced much evidence surrounding two orders of Doenitz, War Order Number 154, issued in 1939, and the so-called Laconia order of 1942. The Defense argues that these orders and the evidence supporting them do not show such a policy and introduced much evidence to the contrary. The Tribunal is of the opinion that the evidence does not establish with the certainty required that Doenitz deliberately ordered the killing of shipwrecked survivors. The orders were undoubtedly ambiguous, and deserve the strongest censure.
The evidence further shows that the rescue provisions were not carried out and that the defendant ordered that they should not be carried out. The argument of the Defense is that the security of the submarine is, as the first rule of the sea, paramount to rescue and that the development of aircraft made rescue impossible. This may be so, but the Protocol is explicit. If the commander cannot rescue, then under its terms he cannot sink a merchant vessel and should allow it to pass unharmed before his periscope. These orders, then, prove Doenitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol.
In view of all of the facts proved, and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at night in the Skagerrak, and the answer to interrogatories by Admiral Nimitz that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, the sentence of Doenitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.
Doenitz was also charged with responsibility for Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942. Doenitz admitted he received and knew of the order when he was Flag Officer of U-boats, but disclaimed responsibility. He points out that the order by its express terms excluded men captured in naval warfare, that the Navy had no territorial commands on land, and that submarine commanders would never encounter Commandos.
In one instance, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, in 1943, the members of the crew of an Allied motor torpedo boat were captured by German naval forces. They were interrogated for intelligence purposes on behalf of the local admiral, and then turned over by his order to the SD and shot. Doenitz said that if they were captured by the Navy their execution was a violation of the Commando Order, that the execution was not announced in the Wehrmacht communiqué, and that he was never informed of the incident. He pointed out that the admiral in question was not in
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his chain of command, but was subordinate to the Army general in command of the Norway occupation. But Doenitz permitted the order to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief, and to that extent he is responsible.
Doenitz in a conference of 11 December 1944, said "12,000 concentration camp prisoners will be employed in the shipyards as additional labor."
At this time he had no jurisdiction over shipyard construction and claims that this was merely a suggestion at the meeting that the responsible officials do something about producing ships, that he took no steps to get these workers, since it was not a. matter for his jurisdiction, and that he does not know whether they ever were procured. He admits he knew of concentration camps, A man in his position must necessarily have known that citizens of occupied countries in large numbers were confined in the concentration camps.
In 1945 Hitler requested the opinion of Jodl and Doenitz whether the Geneva Convention should -be denounced. The notes of the meeting between the two military leaders on 20 February 1945 show that Doenitz expressed his view that the disadvantages of such an action outweighed the advantages. The summary of Doenitz' attitude shown in the notes taken by an officer, included the following sentence:
"It would be better to carry out the measures considered necessary without warning, and at all costs"[12]) to save face with the outer world."
The Prosecution insisted that "the measures" referred to meant that the Convention should not be denounced, but should be broken at will. The Defense explanation is that Hitler wanted to break the Convention for two reasons: to take away from German troops the protection of the Convention, thus preventing them from continuing to surrender in large groups to the British and Americans; and also to permit reprisals against Allied prisoners of war because of Allied bombing raids. Doenitz claims that what he meant by "measures" were disciplinary measures against German troops to prevent them from surrendering and had no reference to measures against the Allies; that this was merely a suggestion, and that in any event no such measures were ever taken, either against Allies or Germans. The Tribunal, however, does not believe this explanation. The Geneva Convention was not, however, denounced by Germany. The Defense has introduced several affidavits to prove that British naval prisoners of war in camps under Doenitz' jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, and the Tribunal takes this fact into consideration and regards it as a mitigating circumstance.
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Conclusion
The Tribunal finds Doenitz is not guilty on Count One of the Indictment, and is guilty on Counts Two and Three.
THE PRESIDENT:
RAEDER
Raeder is indicted on Counts One, Two, and Three. In 1928 he became Chief of Naval Command and in 1935 Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine (OKM); in 193.9 Hitler made him Grossadmiral. He was a member of the Reich Defense Council. On 30 January 1943, Doenitz replaced him at his own request, and he became Admiral Inspector of the Navy, a nominal title.
Crimes against Peace
In the 15 years he commanded it, Raeder built and directed the German Navy; he accepts full responsibility until retirement in 1943. He admits the Navy violated the Versailles Treaty, insisting it was "a matter of honor for every man" to do so, and alleges that the violations were for the most part minor, and Germany built less than her allowable strength. These violations, as well-as those of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, have already been discussed elsewhere in this Judgment.
Raeder received the directive of 24 June 1937 from Von Blomberg requiring special preparations for war against Austria. He was one of the five leaders present at the Hossbach conference of 5 November 1937. He claims Hitler merely wished by this conference to spur the Army to faster rearmament, insists he believed the questions of Austria and Czechoslovakia would be settled peacefully, as they were, and points to the new naval treaty with England which had just been signed. He received no orders to speed construction of U-Boats, indicating that Hitler was not planning war.
Raeder received directives on "Fall Gruen" and the directives on "Fall Weiss" beginning with that of 3 April 1939; the latter directed the Navy to support the Army by intervention from the sea. He was also one of the few chief leaders present at the meeting of 23 May 1939. He attended the Obersalzberg briefing of 22 August 1939.
The conception of the invasion of Norway first arose in the mind of Raeder and not that of Hitler. Despite Hitler's desire, as shown by his directive of October 1939, to keep Scandinavia neutral, the Navy examined the advantages of naval bases there as early as October. Admiral Carls originally suggested to Raeder the desirable aspects of bases in Norway. A questionnaire, dated 3 October 1939, which sought comments on the desirability of such bases, was
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circulated within SKL. On 10 October Raeder discussed the matter with Hitler; his war diary entry for that day says Hitler intended "to give the matter consideration." A few months later Hitler talked to Raeder, Quisling, Keitel, and Jodl; OKW began its planning and the Naval War Staff worked with OKW staff officers. Raeder received Keitel's directive for Norway on 27 January 1940 and the subsequent directive of 1 March, signed by Hitler.
Raeder defends his actions on the ground it was a move to foresta
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2016-10-03T20:57:06+00:00
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The post-World War II trials marked the first-ever prosecutions for genocide and crimes against humanity.
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en
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HISTORY
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https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-nuremberg-trials
|
Held directly after World War II, the Nuremberg Trials were a series of 13 military tribunals in which nearly 200 German government, military, medical and business leaders were tried for war crimes. In the first and most famous of these trials—the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal—24 high-ranking Nazi Party officials including Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Frick were tried for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. (Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and two of his top associates committed suicide at the war's end; many other party leaders escaped prosecution.)
In addition to bringing some of Nazi Germany's most monstrous figures to justice, the Nuremberg Trials broke new ground in international law and helped lead to the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War (1949). Below are facts about what has been called the greatest trial in history.
1. Nuremberg was chosen as the location for the trials because of its symbolic value.
The Bavarian city that spawned the rise of the Third Reich by hosting massive Nazi Party propaganda rallies in the 1920s and 1930s was deemed by the victorious Allies to be a fitting place to stage its symbolic death. Although World War II had left much of the city in rubble, the Palace of Justice—which included a sizable prison capable of holding 1,200 detainees—remained largely undamaged and was chosen to host the trials once German prisoners completed the work of enlarging its courtroom.
2. It was the first trial of its kind with judges from four countries.
The Nuremberg Trials marked a milestone in the establishment of international law. While there had been prior prosecutions of war crimes in history, such as that of Confederate army officer Henry Wirz, those had been conducted according to the laws of a single country. Until the Nuremberg Trials, there had been no precedent for an international trial of war criminals. Rather than use a single judge and jury, the trial of high-ranking Nazi leaders was conducted by a panel of four judges. The United States, Soviet Union, France and Great Britain each supplied a main judge and an alternate, and Britain’s Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence presided.
The Nuremberg Trials served as a precedent for the subsequent prosecution of war crimes in Japan and led to the establishment of the United Nations Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as well as the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War in 1949.
3. The Nuremberg Trials marked the first prosecutions for crimes against humanity.
The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which set the laws and procedures for the conduct of the Nuremberg Trials, defined three categories of crimes: crimes against the peace, war crimes and, for the first time, crimes against humanity, which included murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds.
4. The trials marked the introduction of simultaneous translation.
With the defendants, judges and lawyers speaking a mix of German, French, English and Russian, a language barrier threatened to bog down the proceedings. However, the development of a new instantaneous translation system by IBM allowed every trial participant to listen via headsets to real-time translations of the proceedings. Yellow lights at microphones warned speakers to slow down for the benefit of the translators, while red lights signaled the need to stop and repeat statements. The simultaneous translation system allowed the trial to be conducted four times faster than if consecutive translation was used.
5. A Supreme Court justice led the American team of prosecutors.
President Harry Truman asked Robert Jackson, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, to serve as the chief American prosecutor at the international tribunal. Jackson accepted the offer but was adamant that the proceedings not be a show trial. “If we want to shoot Germans as a matter of policy, let it be done as such, but don’t hide the deed behind a court,” he wrote. Jackson’s colleague, Chief Justice Harlan Stone, did not think highly of the proceedings. “Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” he wrote privately to a friend in 1945. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”
6. A prosecutorial advisor originated the term 'genocide.'
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who served as an advisor to Jackson, is credited with coining the term “genocide” in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ planned extermination of Jews. The word is an amalgam of “genos,” the Greek word for “tribe” or “race,” and “-cide,” Latin for “killings.” Lemkin, who lost nearly 50 relatives in the Holocaust, defined genocide as “a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” The Nuremberg Trials marked the first-ever prosecutions for genocide.
7. Not all the defendants were found guilty.
Of the 24 high-ranking Nazis who stood trial for war crimes before the international tribunal, 12 were sentenced to death by hanging, including Martin Bormann, the personal secretary to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler who is now believed to have committed suicide in May 1945, in absentia. Seven others, including Hitler’s former deputy Rudolf Hess, received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, but three were acquitted.
8. Hermann Goering committed suicide on the eve of his scheduled execution.
The highest-ranking Nazi to survive the war, Gestapo founder and Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Goering took his own life on the night of October 15, 1946, just hours before his scheduled execution. Dressed in silk pajamas, the man instrumental in ordering the Holocaust cheated the noose by ingesting a small glass capsule of potassium cyanide that he had smuggled into prison. In a suicide note to his wife, Hitler’s heir apparent wrote that he would be willing to die by firing squad but not in such an undignified manner as hanging. “I have decided to take my own life, lest I be executed in so terrible a fashion by my enemies,” Goering wrote.
9. The executioner reportedly botched the hangings.
After Goering’s suicide, the Allies immediately ordered the remaining 10 condemned men to be handcuffed to guards and dispatched clergymen to administer last rites. In the early morning hours of October 16, 1946, the Nazi war criminals were hanged one by one from a scaffolding erected in a prison gymnasium. “I hope that this execution will be the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War,” said Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the last of the 10 men to be hanged, as he was led to the gallows.
The executions, which took nearly two hours to complete, were administered by the U.S. Army’s official hangman, Master Sergeant John C. Woods. “I wasn’t nervous,” the chief executioner told Time magazine. “A fellow can’t afford to have nerves in this business.” The magazine reported, however, that witnesses said “the executions had been cruelly bungled” with the ropes too short and the trap doors too small, resulting in deaths of slow strangulation. The U.S. Army denied the report.
10. A dozen subsequent trials of Nazi war criminals were held at Nuremberg.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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0
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https://holocaustsurvivors.org/survivor-stories/Isak-Borenstein/
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en
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Holocaust Survivors
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Isak Borenstein’s Survivor Story
I went to see Schindler’s List. I was physically broken. Schindler protected. Ninety-nine percent did not have protection. How can you see taking children and throwing them down from the top floor? I cannot imagine it. I have no answer to it. Yet, now you have professors who denyHolocaust Denial: the attempt to “disprove” that the Holocaust actually happened by means of spurious evidence and historical analysis, often by neo-fascists posing as academics or experts.
A notable group is The Institute for Historical Review and notable figures include Arthur Butz, Ernst Zundel and Fred Leuchter. Source: Binyomin Kaplan the HolocaustHolocaust: is derived from the Greek word "holokauston" which originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. In the 1950's the term came to be applied to the destruction of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi German state.
"Holocaust" is also used to describe the annihilation of other groups during World War II.
The Hebrew word "Shoah" meaning catastrophe or destruction also denotes the attempt to destroy European Jewry during WWII. "Shoah" first appeared in this context in a booklet concerned with aid for the Jews of Poland published in Jerusalem in 1940.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . I am asking you how can they deny what everybody knows is true?
I come from RadomRadom: a city in central Poland of about 100,000 population before World War II, approximately one-third Jewish.
After Radom was seized by the German army on September 8, 1939 it was incorporated within the Generalgouvernement. The Generalgouvernement was a German administrative unit which was organized in occupied central and southern Poland but not directly incorporated into the German Reich.
Anti-Jewish persecutions and abductions to forced labor preceded the establishment in March, 1941 of the Radom ghetto. Allotted rations in the ghetto were 100 grams (3.5 oz) of bread daily per person. Hundreds were shot attempting to smuggle food in from the outside. Eventually, most of the ghetto residents were deported to Treblinka extermination camp. A few hundred Jewish survivors returned after the war to settle in Radom, but soon left the city. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. , Poland. We were a big family, 3 sisters and 3 brothers. My father was a livestock dealer. He would buy cattle and take them to another farmer to be fattened up. When the animals were fat, we sold them to Jewish butchers. I would walk the cattle from the country to our house where we had big yard with a stable.
If the animal was for our own food, then we butchered it at home. This was technically against the law because butchering was supposed to be done in a slaughterhouse. When the ShochetShochet: the authorized slaughterer of animals according to the laws of kashrut (kosher-ness).
The shochet is not a butcher. His job is to kill the animal and examine the carcass, not to render it into food. Jewish law generally discourages cruelty to animals, and the kosher method of slaughter is extremely quick and humane when its guidelines are followed strictly. The carcass must be free of disease and major blemishes. The work of the shochet is authorized and supervised by rabbis. Source: Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish. came to our house, I would carry his knife. It was over a foot long and razor sharp. To be kosherKosher: a system of rules and laws (the laws of kashrut) which for Jews govern the preparation and consumption of food.
Eating and drinking are for Jews religious acts where man takes from the bounty of God. Certain items are forbidden as food including blood, pork and fish without scales (e.g. shellfish). Other foods can be eaten separately but not together at the same meal. For example, milk cannot be eaten with meat, but each is a permissible food to be eaten separately within its own family of foods. The rules of kashrut are complex and in cases of doubt a Rabbi is consulted to make a decision according to the law.Source: Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish. the shochet had to cut the animal’s throat with a quick one-two motion. The animals suffered little. Then the shochet would open up the chest and take out the lungs. He would blow them up and examine them. If the lungs were damaged, then the meat could not be kosher and we would sell it to the gentiles. I would pull out the veins by the light of a candle. Before it was cooked the meat would be soaked in water for an hour. Then it would be salted on all sides and washed. All of this was done because there could be no blood left in the meat. Jews cannot eat blood.
So many things happened to me during the war. When the Germans came into Poland, I ran away to Russia. I ran as far as KrasnodarKrasnodar: a city in the Ukraine located near the Black Sea. By the time of its occupation on August 9, 1942, thousands of refugees had fled to Krasnodar to escape the advancing German army. During its occupation Sonderkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D operated in the city murdering thousands of Jews. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . There I worked as a carpenter. In 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia, I joined the Russian army. We were sent to a place near KremenchugKremenchug: a city in the Ukraine. It was occupied by the German army on September 9, 1941, and liberated by the Soviet army on November 29, 1942. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . Before we could fight we were caught in a pocket and were surrounded by the Germans. I am sorry that I did not get a chance to fight.
When we surrendered, I was with 35 other Jews. Only two survived the shootings. The rest were picked out by the Germans and killed. So I decided to change my name from Borenstein, which was a Jewish name, to Broniewski, which was a Polish name.
As we were marching with thousands of other men into a prisoners-of-war camp, I escaped. We were being marched around a corner, and I jumped out of the line onto the sidewalk. A Russian woman took me aside and hid me. She repaired my shoes. I ran to a little town whose name I can’t remember now, but translated it meant “five houses”.
At a hospital nearby I worked for bread and soup. I joined the partisansPartisans: guerrilla forces operating in enemy occupied territory. In World War II there were partisan groups of various political, national and religious complexions operating mainly in eastern Europe and the Balkans. The major areas of activity in eastern Europe were in Belorussia, in Lithuania and in the Ukraine. There were also Jewish underground movements that functioned within the ghettos and camps of Poland. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . However, before we got a chance to fight, a Russian teacher, a good friend of mine named Romanoff, got drunk. When he was drunk, he talked too much. The Germans squeezed him, and he gave up the names of 60 people. I was arrested in the forest and taken to a prison in DnepropetrovskDnepropetrovsk: the district capital of the Ukraine in the former Soviet Socialist Republic. On the eve of World War II it had a Jewish population of some 80,000 out of a total population of 500,000.
During WWII the northern Ukraine with its wide expanses of forests and swamps became an area of extensive Soviet partisan activity. The forest areas provided refuge to Jews who fled extermination and to escaped Jewish prisoners-of-war. Jewish partisan groups in the Ukraine were not able to maintain a separate Jewish identity but were required to be incorporated within the Soviet units.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. .
In jail somebody told them I looked like a Jew. They brought me down into the death chamber of the jail. There in the basement of the jail was a dark room. It was maybe 6 feet wide and 25 feet long. Just one brick was taken out for air. They kept me down there for ten days. During this time they brought in three Jewish transports and then took them out to shoot them.
In the jail there was a young girl named Ira Pogorelskaja -- I will never forget her. She was about nineteen. She had blonde hair and was very beautiful. How did I know this? I saw her face in the light when they took us to the toilet. She nursed me when I could not move because of the beatings. They used to throw bread down there for us. I was so weak I could not get any. Ira held me in her arms and protected me from the other prisoners. She saved my bread and fed me. She was half- Jewish and a member of the Communist youth organization. They took her out of the jail and she never returned.
I tried to find Ira Pogorelskaja after the war. One time I was in a train station, and an old lady asked me if she could get a ride to Ira’s home town, Dnepropetrovsk. I asked her if she knew her. She said she was Ira Pogorelskaja’s grandmother. I told her what I knew. She said Ira was never heard from again.
In the death chamber I was tortured. I given cold showers. I was beaten with leather straps until my skin turned the color of wood. They looked to see if I was circumcised. If I was circumcised they would know I was a Jew. I made up a story: I told them that I was a bed wetter. I had put a tight string around my penis and it had cut me. A VolksdeutscherVolksdeutscher: a Nazi term for a person of German ancestry living outside of Germany.
They did not have German or Austrian citizenship as defined by the Nazi term Reichsdeutscher. Nazi Germany made great efforts to enlist the support of the Volksdeutshe, who constituted minorites in several countries.
Nazi Germany received support from the Volksdeutsche; hundreds of thousands joined the German armed forces,including the SS. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. said, “This guy has been beaten so much that if he was a Jew he would already have confessed.” They believed me that I was a Russian soldier, so they put me back in a regular cell. There in the cell a Polish officer recognized me as being a Jew. He started yelling, “Jew, Jew, Jew.” The Russian prisoners beat that officer so much that he did not say anything. It was pure luck that I survived.
I was put into a labor camp near Dnepropetrovsk. In 1943 a Jewish fellow told me the story of his life. He did not know I was a Jew. He said, “I know I am not going to be alive, but you, a Russian, may be alive.” Later, they took him to the washroom with 49 other Jews, 25 men and 24 women. They undressed them, but left their socks on. They put potato sacks over their heads. They put them on trucks, and we never saw them again. You think I don’t dream about that fellow?
The Russian army was coming near us, so they put us on a train. We were taken to Auschwitz, where our train stopped for half a day, but there was no room in Auschwitz for us. So they took us to MauthausenMauthausen: the main concentration camp for Austria located near an abandoned stone quarry.
It was created shortly after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 to handle criminal and “asocial elements.” It later became a penal camp and was known for its harsh treatment of prisoners. Inmates were forced as punishment to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. This stairway became known as the “Stairway of Death.” Mauthausen had over 60 sub-camps. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . At Mauthausen there was a checkpoint: Good, you went to work; Bad, you went to the ovens; Half-bad, you went to the hospital. I was lucky. I had typhoid. They put me in the camp hospital, which was a place for moderately sick people to recover.
In the hospital a Pole recognized that I was Jewish and wanted to help me. He knew I wouldn’t survive if I stayed in the hospital, so he sent me out on the next transport to a sub-camp of Mauthausen called Schlier-Redl-ZipfSchlier-Redl-Zipf: a sub-camp of Mauthausen created in October 1943. It held a maximum of 1,488 prisoners. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . There we were put to work building a factory inside of a mountain. I never knew what the factory was for. One day the mountain exploded. No more factory. From there I was sent to another sub-camp of Mauthausen called Linz III. I was put to work for the Hermann Goring Works (Reichswerke Hermann Goring) cutting out tank wheels with a torch.
How many hangings were there? In Linz III, they hung 6 Russian boys. The SS put us out to watch. You cannot see anything. You do not feel anything. They make you feel like an animal. It was a slaughterhouse. Absolutely not describable! How can you forget?
While we were working, I heard this guard say, “I am going to kill one of them so the other men will work harder.” His gun was pointed at me. I understood German, but I could not let on that I knew it. I just kept on working. Then the other guard said, “He is a soldier just like you, a soldier who wants to go home to his family.”
Once my block official got mad at me because I got some extra soup. He said, “I’ll fix you up, I’ll put you on the transport with the dead.” While we were waiting for the transport an SSSS: (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad), originally Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard, it became the elite guard of the Nazi state and its main tool of terror. The SS maintained control over the concentration camp system and was instrumental in the mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen.
Led by Heinrich Himmler, its members had to submit with complete obedience to the authority of the supreme master, Hitler and himself. SS officers had to prove their own and their wives’ racial purity back to the year 1700, and membership was conditional on Aryan appearance.
In the charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (commonly known as the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials) the SS was held to be a criminal organization. Its members were considered war criminals involved in brutalities and killings in the concentration camps, mass shootings in the occupied countries, involvement in the slave labor program and the murder of prisoners-of-war. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. man with a dog came by. He saw my low number, which was 37,200 something, I can’t remember it exactly now. The low number meant that I had been in the camp for a long time. It was an unwritten law of the camp that you got some respect with a low number. The SS man said, “You have time to die; get back on the block.” Again I was saved.
They put me in a Kommando, a Bomb Kommando. This meant we dug out the unexploded bombs which the English and the Americans threw down. In six months we dug out 64 bombs. We had one explosion. We were about 150 feet away. I was saved.
They had a crane about 200 feet high, which brought coal to the factory. The planes tried to bomb the crane. One bomb hit the railing of the crane sideways on its stomach. It was chipped up a little bit, and this slowed down the speed of the bomb. It fell down on the coals, but could not dig in too deep. They came to get us to go defuse this bomb. There was no way we could unscrew the fuse. So I asked them to bring me a metal chisel and a hammer. I sat down on the bomb and tried to knock it loose. I kept hammering until the fuse broke off. At this everybody started running away. I just got up and looked at it, like it was nothing. Dead today or dead tomorrow. I don’t know if I was so stupid. I did not care if I was alive. I was so lucky.
We were working on a barge during the last days of the war before the American army came in. We filled up sacks of oats or wheat (these were two hundred pound sacks), and we carried them from the barge to a train.
There at the last minute I was a lucky man again. While we were sleeping on one side of the barge, our SS guards were sleeping on the other side. On this, the last night, we heard an officer come onto the barge. He told the guards to get rid of us. Then they would have to go and fight to defend Germany. We knew what this meant, that to get rid of us meant to kill us. All night we could hear the officer and the guards arguing back and forth about what to do with us.
The guards were older men; they did not want to fight. They argued that since they had taken us from Linz III, they had to account for us by returning us to the same camp. At about 4:00 or 5:00 o’clock in the morning, the officer finally gave in.
The guards marched us to a train. The train stopped in a little town called Wels. Around noon an American soldier came by. He looked to us to be about six foot six. He was a colored man. He ordered us to gather up the rifles, to break all of them except for 4 and to take the SS prisoners back to Linz III. I could not go into the camp. My emotions. I went inside a store where I found a ten pound sack of sugar. I took a pot and made a fire out in a field. I put the sugar in some water and I fed myself sugar and water for three days. After three days I said to myself, it was time to go home.
On the way home to Poland I came to a little bridge over the Elbe River. On the other side was a Russian soldier. He asked me where I was going? I told him I was going home. He said, “No you are not going home. You are going into the Russian army.” So I looked at him like I am crazy. I asked him, “Who is going to carry whom, me the rifle, or the rifle me?” I weighed just ninety pounds. He said, “Don’t worry. You have bones, the meat will grow.” Then he took me to the army.
I was in the Russian army for fourteen months. I worked on a train taking back Russians prisoners-of-war from Germany to Russia. After I got out of the army, I went back to our house in Radom. At our home everything looked exactly as if I had left yesterday, even the furniture, everything in the house the same. There were just strange people were there. I could not stay. I passed through the whole town. Out of 34,000 Jewish people I could not even find ten Jewish people left.
Our neighbor had a letter from my older brother, Abe, who was the only other Borenstein to survive the war. He had survived BuchenwaldBuchenwald: one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. It was constructed in 1937 in Weimar, Germany. Originally a camp for political prisoners, 10,000 Jews were imprisoned there after Kristallnacht.
At that time the Jews were subjected to extraordinarily hard treatment then released to their families. The object was to get them to emigrate from Germany. With the outbreak of WWII thousands of Poles were housed there in a tent camp. Armament factories were established nearby and the camp's population grew.
In January 1945, as Soviet forces swept through Poland, thousands of concentration camp prisoners were marched in death marches to Buchenwald. On April 11, 1945, the camp was liberated by American forces. Some 21,000 prisoners were liberated including 4,000 Jews, and including 1,000 children. In 1947, 31 members of the camp staff were tried by an American court. Two were sentenced to death and four to life imprisonment. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. concentration camp and was sick. He was recovering in a sanatorium in Germany. When I went to see him, I told the people there that I wanted to surprise him. When he came down, I saw a broken man. It was hard. I did not recognize him. He was just a broken-down man.
My brother told me that after I left Radom for Russia at the beginning of the war, the Germans had come looking for me. When they couldn’t find me, they looked up another Jewish boy who lived near us who had the same name as I did-- Borenstein. We were not exactly friends, but we knew each other. The Germans came to my house looking for me, but since they could not find me, they looked him up. They took him out and shot him by the door of his house. A Borenstein is a Borenstein. Can you imagine? I do not know if I feel guilty. It is hard to talk about this. It hurts.
Abe and I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for a few years. I met my wife there. She is also a survivor from Radom. We came to New Orleans in 1951. Abe and I started a woodworking shop. We bought rental apartments. Abe wrote a testament about what happened to our family during the war, but I still have not read it. Abe died in 1974.
Today, when we get together with friends, we talk of happiness. But before you know it we are right back there. There is no way to get away from it.
How do I deal with it? By just going praying. I get up at 5:30 a.m. I go to work. I make myself busy. If not busy, I might go crazy. Busy night and day. I remember nothing. Cut it off.
In 1968, a group of survivors called the New Americans Social Club started to celebrate the Yizkor memorial service for the Holocaust survivors. I got the idea to build a big wooden menorah to hold the memorial candles. I would donate it to the Jewish Community Center in memory of my parents and my wife’s parents. I started to build it quite a few times, but it did not work out. In 1988 I thought up the plans I wanted. The menorah is lit each year in the spring. The 6 candles stand for the 6 million Jews who perished. The Star of David stands for the State of Israel. The olive branch is for the new generation rising from the ashes.
Sometimes I try to go back to my past, and it is unbelievable for me. Sometimes I think I am just dreaming.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hermann-goering-dies
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en
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High-ranking Nazi leader Hermann Göring dies
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Matt Mullen"
] |
2009-11-05T11:34:18+00:00
|
On October 15, 1946, Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, chief forester of the Reich, chief liquidator of sequestered estates, supreme head of the National Weather Bureau, and Hitler’s designated successor dies by his own hand. Göring was an early member of […]
|
en
|
HISTORY
|
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hermann-goering-dies
|
On October 15, 1946, Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, chief forester of the Reich, chief liquidator of sequestered estates, supreme head of the National Weather Bureau, and Hitler’s designated successor dies by his own hand.
Göring was an early member of the Nazi Party and was wounded in the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. That wound would have long-term effects, as Göring became increasingly addicted to painkillers. Not long after Hitler’s accession to power, Göring was instrumental in creating concentration camps for political enemies. Ostentatious and self-indulgent, he changed his uniform five times a day and was notorious for flaunting his decorations, jewelry, and stolen artwork. It was Göring who ordered the purging of German Jews from the economy following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, initiating an “Aryanization” policy that confiscated Jewish property and businesses.
Göring's failure to win the Battle of Britain and prevent the Allied bombing of Germany led to his loss of stature within the Party, aggravated by the low esteem with which he was always held by fellow officers because of his egocentrism and position as Hitler’s right-hand man. As the war progressed, he dropped into depressions and continued to battle drug addiction.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 9
|
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-goring/
|
en
|
Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
|
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"American Experience"
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2019-04-01T15:39:39.407261-04:00
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A member of the aristocracy, Göring used his social contacts to convince conservative industrialists that Nazism was the only way to save Germany from communism.
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en
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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-goring/
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During World War I, Hermann Göring commanded the famous "Flying Circus" fighter squadron and became a highly decorated flying ace credited with shooting down 22 Allied aircraft. After the war, he met Adolf Hitler, joined the Nazi Party, and became a leader of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop), abbreviated SA. A member of the aristocracy, Göring used his social contacts to convince conservative industrialists that Nazism was the only way to save Germany from communism.
Addiction and Intrigues
In 1923 Göring took part in the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party's failed grab for power in Munich. He was seriously wounded and fled to Austria, Italy and then Sweden, where he was admitted to a mental hospital and then an asylum where he became a morphine addict. When general amnesty for the Putsch was declared in 1927, Göring returned to Germany, where he used his contacts with big business and army officers to smooth Hitler's road to power. In 1933 Göring became Minister of the Interior for Prussia, the largest German state, and controlled most of the police forces in Germany. In 1934 Göring gave control of the Gestapo, the German secret police, to Heinrich Himmler, as thanks for his assistance in the Night of the Long Knives coup that had eliminated Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA and Göring's arch rival. Göring and Himmler also worked together to set up early concentration camps for Jews and other Nazi opponents.
Lavish Lifestyle
In 1936 Hitler gave Göring control over the German economy. He created the state-owned Hermann Göring Works, which prepared Germany for war and created 700,000 jobs, but also lined his own pockets. Göring built a hunting mansion where he organized feasts and state hunts, and displayed art plundered from European museums. He changed uniforms and suits five times a day and flaunted his medals and jewelry. He remained genuinely popular with the German masses, who regarded him as more accessible than Hitler.
Holocaust Orders
After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938, orchestrated by his colleague Joseph Goebbels, Göring fined the Jewish community a billion marks and ordered the elimination of Jews from the German economy, the repossession of their property, and businesses, and their exclusion from schools, resorts, and parks. Three days later, he warned of a "final reckoning with the Jews." In 1941 he gave the order to "carry out all preparations with regard to ... a general solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence. ..." In recognition of Göring's accomplishments with the air force and the economy, Hitler designated Göring as his successor on September 1,1939.
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FactBench
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2
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https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/nurem.htm
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en
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World War II in Europe Timeline: November 20, 1945
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The Nuremberg Trial was conducted by a joint United States-British-French-Soviet military tribunal, with each nation supplying two judges. The four counts in the indictment were:
Count 1 - CONSPIRACY to commit crimes alleged in the next three counts.
Count 2 - CRIMES AGAINST PEACE including planning, preparing, starting, or waging aggressive war.
Count 3 - WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war.
Count 4 - CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY including murder, extermination, enslavement, persecution on political or racial grounds, involuntary deportment, and inhumane acts against civilian populations.
The majority of the defendants claimed they were unknowing pawns of Adolf Hitler or were simply following orders. Evidence used against the defendants included Nazi propaganda films and extensive Nazi paperwork documenting mass murder and other crimes. Also shown were films taken by the Allies after the liberation of extermination camps. Evidence in the court room included the shrunken head of a concentration camp inmate and tattooed human skin from concentration camp inmates used to make lampshades and other household articles.
Front Row Left to Right
Hermann Göring - Considered to be the number two man in Nazi Germany after Hitler, Göring waged a vigorous defense on his own behalf. Guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by swallowing poison on October 16, 1946 just two hours before his scheduled hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Göring as it was pronounced.
"From the moment he joined the Party in 1922 and took command of the street fighting organization, the SA, Göring was the adviser, the active agent of Hitler and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement. As Hitler's political deputy he was largely instrumental in bringing the National Socialists to power in 1933, and was charged with consolidating this power and expanding German armed might. He developed the Gestapo and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to Himmler 1934; conducted the Röhm purge in that year and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of von Blomberg and von Fritsch from the army... In the Austrian Anschluss he was, indeed, the central figure, the ringleader... The night before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, at a conference with Hitler and President Hacha he threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha did not submit... He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and throughout the aggressive wars which followed... The record is filled with Göring's admissions of his complicity in the use of slave labor... He made plans for the spoliation of Soviet territory long before the war on the Soviet Union... Göring persecuted the Jews, particularly after the November, 1938, riots and not only in Germany, where be raised the billion-mark fine as stated elsewhere, but in the conquered territories as well. His own utterances, then and in his testimony, show his interest was primarily economic-how to get their property and how to force them out of the economic life of Europe. ...Although their extermination was in Himmler's hands, Göring was far from disinterested or inactive despite his protestations from the witness box... There is nothing to be said in mitigation... His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man."
Rudolf Hess - Formerly the number three man in Hitler's Germany until his flight to England on May 10, 1941, in which he attempted to negotiate peace with the British, who promptly imprisoned him for the duration of the war. Found guilty on counts 1 and 2. Sentenced to life imprisonment. Hess was the sole surviving Nazi in Spandau prison until 1987 when he committed suicide at age 92.
Read a biography of Rudolf Hess
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Hess as it was pronounced.
"... As deputy to the Führer, Hess was the top man in the Nazi Party with responsibility for handling all Party matters and authority to make decisions in Hitler's name on all questions of Party leadership... Hess was an informed and willing participant in German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland... On September 27, 1938, at the time of the Munich crisis, he arranged with Keitel to carry out the instructions of Hitler to make the machinery of the Nazi Party available for a secret mobilization... With him on his flight to England, Hess carried certain peace proposals which he alleged Hitler was prepared to accept. It is significant to note that this flight took place only 10 days after the date on which Hitler fixed the time for attacking the Soviet Union... That Hess acts in an abnormal manner, suffers from loss of memory, and has mentally deteriorated during this trial, may be true. But there is nothing to show that he does not realize the nature of the charges against him, or is incapable of defending himself... There is no suggestion that Hess was not completely sane when the acts charged against him were committed."
Joachim von Ribbentrop - Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1945, who signed the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression Pact of 1939 that paved the way for Hitler to attack Poland. Ribbentrop later involved himself in the Final Solution by pressuring the Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Danish governments to evacuate Jews. Found guilty on all four counts. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Ribbentrop as it was pronounced.
"Ribbentrop was not present at the Hossbach Conference held on November 5, 1937 (at which Hitler revealed his war plans), but on January 2, 1938, while Ambassador to England, he sent a memorandum to Hitler indicating his opinion that a change in the status quo in the East in the German sense could only be carried out by force and suggesting methods to prevent England and France from intervening in a European war fought to bring about such a change... Ribbentrop participated in the aggressive plans against Czechoslovakia. Beginning in March 1938, he was in close touch with the Sudeten German Party and gave them instructions which had the effect of keeping the Sudeten German question a live issue which might serve as an excuse for the attack which Germany was planning against Czechoslovakia... After the Munich Pact he continued to bring diplomatic pressure with the object of occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia... Ribbentrop played a particularly significant role in the diplomatic activity which led up to the attack on Poland. He participated in a conference held on August 12, 1939, for the purpose of obtaining Italian support if the attack should lead to a general European war. Ribbentrop discussed the German demands with respect to Danzig and the Polish Corridor with the British Ambassador in the period from August 25 to August 30, 1939, when he knew that the German plans to attack Poland had merely been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce the British to abandon their guarantee to the Poles... He played an important part in Hitler's 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question. In September, 1942, be ordered the German diplomatic representatives accredited to various satellites to hasten the deportation of the Jews to the East... Ribbentrop participated in all the Nazi aggressions from the occupation of Austria to the invasion of the Soviet Union... It was because Hitler's policy and plans coincided with his own ideas that Ribbentrop served him so willingly to the end."
Wilhelm Keitel - General Field Marshal and Chief of Staff of the German High Command of the Armed Forces who condoned mass murder by the SS. Keitel also issued orders regarding the Night and Fog (Nacht und Nebel) decree. Found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Keitel as it was pronounced.
"...Keitel was present on May 23, 1939, when Hitler announced his decision 'to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.' Already he had signed the directive requiring the Wehrmacht to submit its 'Fall Weiss' timetable (for the attack on Poland) to OKW (Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht - Armed Forces High Command) on May 1... Hitler had said, on May 23, 1939, that he would ignore the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, and Keitel signed orders for the attacks on October 15, November 20, and November 28, 1939... Keitel testified that be opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union for military reasons, and also because it would constitute a violation of the Non-Aggression Pact. Nevertheless, he initialed 'Case Barbarossa' (for the attack on Russia) signed by Hitler on December 18, 1940, and attended the OKW discussion with Hitler on February 3, 1941.. On Aug. 4, 1942, Keitel issued a directive that paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. On September 16, 1941, Keitel ordered that attacks on soldiers in the East should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier, with the comment that human life was less than nothing in the East... Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes as shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly."
Ernst Kaltenbrunner - Successor in 1943 to Heydrich in the SS organization, in charge of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) with responsibilities including the Gestapo and the systematic evacuation of Jews to extermination camps. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Kaltenbrunner as it was pronounced.
"...When he became Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the RSHA on January 30, 1943, Kaltenbrunner took charge of an organization which included the main offices of the Gestapo, the SD and the Criminal Police... During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi regime were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered... The order for the execution of commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the police not to interfere with attacks on bailed out Allied fliers... The RSHA played a leading part in the 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question by the extermination of the Jews. A special section under the Amt IV of the RSHA was established to supervise this program. Under its direction approximately 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 2 million were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. Kaltenbrunner had been informed of the activities of these Einsatzgruppen when be was a Higher SS and Police leader, and they continued to function after he had become Chief of the RSHA. The murder of a approximately 4 million Jews in concentration camps...was also under the supervision of the RSHA when Kaltenbrunner was bead of that organization..."
Alfred Rosenberg - Nazi Party racial 'philosopher,' appointed Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories in 1941, who aided Göring and Hitler in plundering art treasures. Found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Rosenberg as it was pronounced.
"... Recognized as the Party's ideologist, he developed and spread Nazi doctrines in the newspapers Völkischer Beobachter and NS Monatshefte, which he edited, and in the numerous books he wrote... As head of the APA (Aussenpolitisches Amt - the Nazi foreign policy office), Rosenberg was in charge of an organization whose agents were active in Nazi intrigue in all parts of the world. His own reports, for example, claim that the APA was largely responsible for Rumania's joining the Axis. As head of the APA, he played an important part in the preparation and planning of the attack on Norway. Rosenberg bears a major responsibility for the formulation and execution of occupation policies in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was informed by Hitler on April 2, 1941, of the coming attack against the Soviet Union, and he agreed to help in the capacity of 'Political Adviser' ... On July 17, 1941, Hitler appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, and publicly charged him with responsibility for civil administration... He helped to formulate the policies of Germanization, exploitation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of Nazi rule, and be set up an administration which carried them out... Rosenberg had knowledge of the brutal treatment and terror to which the Eastern people were subjected. He directed that the Hague Rules of Land Warfare were not applicable in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He had knowledge of and took an active part in stripping the Eastern Territories of raw materials and foodstuffs, which were all sent to Germany. He stated that feeding the German people was first on the list of claims on the East, and the Soviet people would suffer thereby. His directives provided for the segregation of Jews, ultimately in Ghettos. His subordinates engaged in mass killings of Jews, and his civil administrators considered that cleansing the Eastern Occupied Territories of Jews was necessary... He gave his civil administrators quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich, which had to be met by whatever means necessary. His signature of approval appears on the order of June 14, 1941, for the Heu Aktion, the apprehension of 40,000 to 50,000 youths, aged 10-14, for shipment to the Reich..."
Hans Frank - Nazi lawyer and Gauleiter of occupied Poland who stated in 1941 "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear." Amid the ruthless extermination of Poland's Jews, Frank earned the nickname the "Jew Butcher of Cracow." Under his rule, the nation of Poland disappeared as a national entity and became a slave state, with the murder of Poland's leaders, educated elite and clergy, and the extermination of nearly all Poland's Jews. At the Nuremberg trial he declared "... a thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Frank as it was pronounced.
"... Frank was appointed Chief Civil Administration Officer for occupied Polish territory and, on October 12, 1939, was made Governor-General of the occupied Polish territory. On October 3, 1939, he described the policy which he intended to put into effect by stating: 'Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire.' The evidence establishes that this occupation policy was based on the complete destruction of Poland as a national entity, and a ruthless exploitation of its human and economic resources for the German war effort... Frank was a willing and knowing participant in the use of terrorism in Poland; in the economic exploitation of Poland in a way which led to the death by starvation of a large number of people; in the deportation to Germany as slave laborers of over a million Poles; and in a program involving the murder of at least 3 million Jews."
Wilhelm Frick - Nazi Minister of the Interior from 1933 to 1943, who originated the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 which deprived German Jews of their rights as citizens. Found guilty on counts 2, 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Frick as it was pronounced.
"...An avid Nazi, Frick was largely responsible for bringing the German nation under the complete control of the NSDAP... The numerous laws he drafted, signed, and administered abolished all opposition parties and prepared the way for the Gestapo and their concentration camps to extinguish all individual opposition. He was largely responsible for the legislation which suppressed the Trade Unions, the Church, the Jews. He performed this task with ruthless efficiency... Always rabidly anti-Semitic, Frick drafted, signed, and administered many laws destined to eliminate Jews from German life and economy. His work formed the basis of the Nuremberg Decrees, and he was active in enforcing them... He bad knowledge that insane, sick and aged people, 'useless eaters.' were being systematically put to death. Complaints of these murders reached him, but he did nothing to stop them..."
Julius Streicher - Gauleiter of the section of Germany known as Franconia with headquarters in Nuremberg. Streicher was a notorious anti-Semite who published a popular semi-pornographic anti-Semitic paper, Der Stürmer, which advocated violent persecution of the Jews. Found guilty on count 4 and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Streicher as it was pronounced.
"...For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as 'Jew-Baiter Number One.' In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution... Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on August 10, 1938, of the synagogue in Nuremberg. And on November 10, 1938, he spoke publicly in support of the Jewish pogroms which were taking place at that time. But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race... With knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death... Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity."
Walther Funk - Minister of Economic Affairs from 1937 to 1945, Funk headed the Reichsbank which received gold, jewels, and other valuables taken by Himmler's SS from Jews destined for extermination. Found guilty on counts 2, 3, and 4. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Funk was released in 1957 for health reasons and died in 1960.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Funk as it was pronounced.
"...Funk became active in the economic field after the Nazi plans to wage aggressive war bad been clearly defined... On October 14, 1939, after the war had begun, Funk made a speech in which he stated that the economic and financial departments of Germany working under the Four Year Plan had been engaged in the secret economic preparation for war for over a year... In 1942 Funk entered into an agreement with Himmler under which the Reichsbank was to receive certain gold and jewels and currency from the SS and instructed his subordinates, who were to work out the details, not to ask too many questions. As a result of this agreement the SS sent to the Reichsbank the personal belongings taken from the victims who bad been exterminated in the concentration camps. The Reichsbank kept the coins and banknotes and sent the jewels, watches, and personal belongings to Berlin Municipal Pawn Shops. The gold from the eye-glasses and gold teeth and fillings was stored in the Reichsbank vaults. Funk has protested that he did not know that the Reichsbank was receiving articles of this kind. The Tribunal is of the opinion that Funk either knew what was being received or was deliberately closing his eyes to what was being done..."
Hjalmar Schacht - The financial wizard who helped Hitler re-arm Germany, but eventually fell out of favor and was arrested in 1944 with many others after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler and sent to a concentration camp. Found not guilty. Schacht went on to have a successful postwar business career in international banking and died in 1970.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for Schacht as it was pronounced.
"Schacht was an active supporter of the Nazi Party before its accession to power on January 30, 1933, and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. After that he played an important role in the vigorous rearmament program which was adopted, using the facilities of the Reichsbank to the fullest extent in the German rearmament effort... As Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for War Economy he was active in organizing the German economy for war... But rearmament of itself is not criminal under the Charter. To be a crime against peace under Article 6 of the Charter it must be shown that Schacht carried out this rearmament as part of the Nazi plan to wage aggressive wars... The Tribunal has considered the whole of this evidence with great care, and comes to the conclusion that this necessary inference has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt."
Back Row Left to Right
Karl Dönitz - Grand Admiral who became Commander in Chief of the German Navy in 1943 and at the end of the war was designated to succeed Hitler. Dönitz directed the Battle of the Atlantic against Allied shipping using the wolf pack technique of submarine warfare. Found guilty on counts 2 and 3. Sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Dönitz as it was pronounced.
"Although Dönitz built and trained the German U-boat arm, the evidence does not show he was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive wars or that he prepared and initiated such wars... The Tribunal is of the opinion that the evidence does not establish with the certainty required that Dönitz deliberately ordered the killing of shipwrecked survivors... The evidence further shows that the rescue provisions were not carried out and that the defendant ordered that they should not be carried out... Dönitz was also charged with responsibility for Hitler's Commando order of October 18,1942...[by which] the members of an Allied motor torpedo boat were...turned over to the SD and shot..."
Erich Raeder - Grand Admiral and Commander in chief of the German Navy until he was succeeded by Dönitz in 1943. Found guilty on counts 1, 2, and 3. Sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1955.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Raeder as it was pronounced.
"In the 15 years he commanded it, Raeder built and directed the German Navy; he accepts full responsibility until retirement in 1943. He admits the navy violated the Versailles Treaty, insisting it was 'a matter of honor for every man' to do so... He was one of the 5 leaders present at the Hossbach Conference of November 5, 1937... The conception of the invasion of Norway first arose in the mind of Raeder and not that of Hitler... Raeder endeavored to dissuade Hitler from embarking upon the invasion of the USSR... But once the decision bad been made, he gave permission six days before the invasion of the Soviet Union to attack Russian submarines in the Baltic Sea... It is clear from this evidence that Raeder participated in the planning and waging of aggressive war..."
Baldur von Schirach - Hitler Youth leader of part American origin who helped lead millions of young Germans into Nazi fanaticism, he became Gauleiter of Vienna in 1940. At Nuremberg he denounced Hitler. Found guilty on count 4 and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against von Schirach as it was pronounced.
"...Von Schirach used the Hitler Youth to educate German Youth 'in the spirit of National Socialism' and subjected them to an extensive program of Nazi propaganda... When von Schirach became Gauleiter of Vienna the deportation of the Jews had already begun... On September 15, 1942, von Schirach made a speech in which he defended his action in having driven 'tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of Jews into the Ghetto of the East' as 'contributing to European culture'... The Tribunal finds that von Schirach, while he did not originate the policy of deporting Jews from Vienna, participated in this deportation after he had become Gauleiter of Vienna. He knew that the best the Jews could hope for was a miserable existence in the Ghettos of the East. Bulletins describing the Jewish extermination were in his office..."
Fritz Sauckel - Headed the Nazi slave labor program and was responsible for the forced deportation of five million persons from occupied territories into Germany. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Sauckel as it was pronounced.
"...Shortly after Sauckel had taken office, he had the governing authorities in the various occupied territories issue decrees, establishing compulsory labor service in Germany... That real voluntary recruiting was the exception rather than the rule is shown by Sauckel's statement on March 1, 1944 that 'out of 5 million workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily.' ...His attitude was thus expressed in a regulation: 'All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.' The evidence shows that Sauckel was in charge of a program which involved deportation for slave labor of more than 5 million human beings, many of, them under terrible conditions of cruelty and suffering."
Alfred Jodl - Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the German Armed Forces. At Nuremberg he claimed it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander." Found guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Jodl as it was pronounced.
"...Jodl discussed the Norway invasion with Hitler, Keitel, and Raeder on December 12, 1939; his diary is replete with late entries on his activities in preparing this attack... He was active in the planning against Greece and Yugoslavia... Jodl testified that Hitler feared an attack by Russia and so attacked first. This preparation began almost a year before the invasion. Jodl told Warlimont as early as July 29, 1940 to prepare the plans since Hitler had decided to attack... A plan to eliminate Soviet commissars was in the directive for 'Case Barbarossa.' The decision whether they should be killed without trial was to be made by an officer... His defense, in brief, is the doctrine of 'superior orders,' prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense... Participation in such crimes as these has never been required of any soldier and be cannot now shield himself behind a mythical requirement of soldierly obedience at all costs as his excuse for commission of these crimes."
Franz von Papen - Chancellor of Germany in 1932 who aided Hitler and the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 and was involved in the Nazi Anschluss (union) with Austria in 1938. Found not guilty.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for von Papen as it was pronounced.
"Von Papen was active in 1932 and 1933 in helping Hitler to form the Coalition Cabinet and aided in his appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. As Vice-Chancellor in that Cabinet be participated in the Nazi consolidation of control in 1933... Notwithstanding the murder of his associates, von Papen accepted the position of Minister to Austria on July 26, 1934, the day after Dollfuss had been assassinated... The evidence leaves no doubt that von Papen's primary purpose as Minister to Austria was to undermine the Schhuschnigg regime and strengthen the Austrian Nazis for the purpose of bringing about the Anschluss. To carry through this plan he engaged in both intrigue and bullying. But the Charter does not make criminal such offenses against political morality, however bad these may be... Under the Charter, von Papen can be held guilty only if he was party to the planning of aggressive war...but it is not established beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the purpose of his activity..."
Arthur Seyss-Inquart - Gauleiter of Austria and then Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands, and the man who betrayed Austria to the Nazis during the Anschluss. Found guilty on counts 2, 3, and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Seyss-Inquart as it was pronounced.
"...Seyss-Inquart participated in the last stages of the Nazi intrigue which preceded the German occupation of Austria... As Reich Commissioner for Occupied Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart was ruthless in applying terrorism to suppress all opposition to the German occupation, a program which he described as 'annihilating' his opponents. In collaboration with the Higher SS and Police leaders he was involved in the shooting of hostages for offenses against the occupation authorities and sending to concentration camps all suspected opponents of occupation policies including priests and educators... Seyss-Inquart contends that he was not responsible for many of the crimes committed in the occupation of the Netherlands... But the fact remains that Seyss-Inquart was a knowing and voluntary participant in War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity which were committed in the occupation of the Netherlands."
Albert Speer - Architect, close friend of Hitler, and Minister of Armaments and War Production from 1942 to 1945, Speer coordinated the entire German industrial war production effort. At Nuremberg, Speer acknowledged the guilt of the Nazi regime and admitted responsibility for the slave labor in factories under his control. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to twenty years. On his release from Spandau prison in 1966, Speer became a best selling author with his book, Inside the Third Reich. He died in 1981, and maintained until the end he had known little about the extermination of the Jews.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Speer as it was pronounced.
"The evidence introduced against Speer under counts 3 and 4 relates entirely to his participation in the slave labor program... As Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions and General Plenipotentiary for Armaments under the Four Year Plan, Speer had extensive authority over production... The practice was developed under which Speer transmitted to Sauckel an estimate of the total number of workers needed, Sauckel obtained the labor and allocated it to the various industries in accordance with instructions supplied by Speer. Speer knew when he made his demands on Sauckel that they would be supplied by foreign laborers serving under compulsion... Sauckel continually informed Speer and his representative that foreign laborers were being obtained by force... (However) It must be recognized that...in the closing stages of the war he was one of the few men who had the courage to tell Hitler that the war was lost and to take steps to prevent the senseless destruction of production facilities..."
Konstantin von Neurath - Nazi Foreign Minister from 1932 to 1938, then Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, responsible for the Nazi crackdown on Czechoslovakia after the German invasion. Found guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, but was released after eight years in 1954 for health reasons.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against von Neurath as it was pronounced.
"...As Minister of Foreign Affairs, von Neurath advised Hitler in connection with the withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations on October 14, 1933, the institution of rearmament... Von Neurath took part in the Hossbach Conference of November 5, 1937. He has testified that he was so shocked by Hitler's statements that he had a heart attack. Shortly thereafter he offered to resign, and his resignation was accepted on February 4, 1938, at the same time that von Fritsch and von Blomberg were dismissed. Yet with knowledge of Hitler's aggressive plans he retained a formal relationship with the Nazi regime as Reich Minister Without Portfolio... Von Neurath was appointed Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia on March 18, 1939... The free press, political parties, and trade unions were abolished. All groups which might serve as opposition were outlawed... He served as the chief German official in the Protectorate when the administration of this territory played an important role in the wars of aggression which Germany was waging in the East, knowing that War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity were being committed under his authority..."
Hans Fritzsche - Responsible for controlling the German Press, then head of Radio Broadcasting in the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Notable for a voice that sounded like Goebbels on the radio, Fritzsche broadcast Nazi political commentary. Found not guilty.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for Fritzsche as it was pronounced.
"...The Radio Division, of which Fritzsche became the head in November 1942, was one of the twelve divisions of the Propaganda Ministry . . . It appears that Fritzscbe sometimes made strong statements of a propagandistic nature in his broadcasts. But the Tribunal is not prepared to hold that they were intended to incite the German people to commit atrocities on conquered peoples, and he cannot be said to have been a participant in the crimes charged..."
On October 16, 1946, Ribbentrop was the first one taken into the execution chamber of the Nuremberg prison and mounted the gallows to be hanged. He was followed in quick succession by Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Seyss-Inquart, Sauckel, and Jodl. The bodies were then taken to the crematorium at Dachau concentration camp and burned. The ashes were scattered into a brook in Munich.
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3
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http://warontherocks.com/2020/06/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-soviets-at-nuremberg/
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en
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Setting the Record Straight on the Soviets at Nuremberg
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2020-06-17T07:55:45+00:00
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Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press,
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War on the Rocks
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http://warontherocks.com/2020/06/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-soviets-at-nuremberg/
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Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Even before the collapse of the Axis powers at the end World War II, the soon-to-be-victorious Allies began contemplating how to address the enormity of the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, including the Holocaust, following Germany’s launch of the second aggressive war to ravage Europe that century. Various powers contemplated a number of proposals, ranging from summary executions to the de-industrialization of the German state. Ultimately, but not without intense debate, the Allies made a collective decision to hold individual perpetrators criminally accountable before an international tribunal, on the theory that, in the words of the Nuremberg Judgment,
Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.
International law would never be the same.
The International Military Tribunal was the product of the London Agreement of 1945, a quadripartite accord between the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. The treaty envisioned that individuals “whose offenses [had] no particular geographic location” would be tried by a tribunal sitting in Nuremberg, Germany, for war crimes, crimes against the peace, and crimes against humanity. Although the Allied Control Council was headquartered in Berlin, in part to appease the Soviets, the city of Nuremberg was chosen for the trials because it had a courtroom equipped with adjacent prison facilities that survived Allied bombing. The city’s association with the odious Nuremberg Race Laws, which deprived Jewish citizens of many citizenship rights, and Nazi party rallies added a symbolic touch to this choice. It was anticipated that those in the dock would include key government ministers, members of the military, and industrialists who had helped Germany to rearm after World War I.
In the end, the only man of business indicted by the Nuremberg prosecutors was Gustav Krupp, whose firm — the Krupp Group — produced essential war materiel with slave labor. He was, however, deemed medically incapacitated and so was dropped from the indictment. An American proposal to substitute his son Alfried was rejected. Under the agreed-upon scheme, lesser war criminals were to be prosecuted in occupation courts nearer to where their alleged crimes were committed. This is how Alfried, alongside his managing board and other colleagues, was eventually convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, the allies held hundreds of other trials around the European and Pacific theaters in the postwar period. But none was as consequential as the Nuremberg Tribunal.
The story of the Nuremberg trial — hailed as “the most significant tribute that power has ever paid to reason” — has already been well told. There are dozens of memoirs by key protagonists, exhaustively researched historical treatises, and even Hollywood films portraying these monumental events. One unique contribution comes from Sen. Christopher Dodd, whose father served on the American prosecutorial team. Dodd published his father’s correspondence, which offer behind-the-scenes anecdotes embedded within poignant love letters to his wife.
In all these accounts, the Soviet contingent often appears as little more than a caricature — “beasts and worse” in the words of Dodd père. Even as a professor of international law, I must admit that I have succumbed to this over-simplification. In my genesis story of international justice, I tell three anecdotes involving our erstwhile ally to my students. Firstly, I make mention of the fact that Joseph Stalin — the dictator who, true to his nom de guerre, ruled the Soviet Union with a stal (“steel”) fist from 1929 to 1953 — wanted to execute all Nazi officers (not entirely accurate, as it turns out, and a position once favored by Winston Churchill, to be fair). Secondly, the Soviets make an appearance in connection with my discussion of how the American concept of conspiracy entered international law. That doctrine, considered the darling of the prosecutor’s nursery, allows all members of a criminal conspiracy to be prosecuted solely for entering into a criminal agreement as well as for any criminal acts committed in furtherance thereof. In this narrative, I quote from the essential Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg by Bradley F. Smith, who describes the reception of this expansive prosecutorial tool by our postwar allies as follows:
The French viewed [the U.S. conspiracy doctrine] entirely as a barbarous legal mechanism unworthy of modern law, while the Soviets seemed to have shaken their head in wonderment — a reaction, some cynics may believe, prompted by envy.
Finally, I discuss the pointed dissent of the Soviet judge to the acquittals of two indicted organizations — the Reich Cabinet and the General Staff/High Command — and three Nazi defendants, and the leniency accorded a fourth. Judge Iona Nikitchenko was particularly incensed at the acquittal of Hans Fritzsche, whom the Soviets had captured and who had worked under Joseph Goebbels (who committed suicide in the waning days of the war) as the director of radio propaganda. The other judges determined that Fritzsche was too junior to be a part of the conspiracy to wage war and did not himself incite genocide. In his dissent, Nikitchenko explained:
The dissemination of provocative lies and the systematic deception of public opinion were as necessary to the Hitlerites for the realisation of their plans as were the production of armaments and the drafting of military plans. Without propaganda, founded on the total eclipse of the freedom of press and of speech, it would not have been possible for German Fascism to realise its aggressive intentions, to lay the groundwork and then to put to practice the war crimes and the crimes against humanity.
Leave it to the Soviet judge to recognize the central role that propaganda plays in any military enterprise. (Fritzsche, incidentally, was later convicted by a German denazification court). Although not as famous as that penned by India’s Judge Radhabinod Pal, who served on the International Military Tribunal of the Far East in Tokyo, the Soviet dissent at Nuremberg tapped into popular sentiments of those watching the trial and reflected the prevailing media opinion of the press corps.
Beyond these three anecdotes, most standard Western accounts of the Nuremberg proceedings fixate on the brilliant Justice Robert H. Jackson, the U.S. chief prosecutor on loan from the Supreme Court, as well as the instrumental role of the United States in launching the field of international criminal law. While such accounts satisfy American national pride, they are both inaccurate and incomplete.
Professor and historian Francine Hirsch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks to set the record straight in a wonderful new book, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II. Drawing upon original research from newly available and under-studied Soviet archives, Hirsch offers a rich narrative account of the convening, proceedings, and aftermath of the Nuremberg Tribunal that challenges several of the central myths that many, myself included, have accepted. Most importantly, the book surfaces the foundational role played by Soviet jurists in the convocation of the first truly international war crimes tribunal and the inauguration of the international criminal law canon.
Although focused on the so-called “trial to end all wars,” the book also covers the inauguration of the Cold War through the vehicle of a courtroom drama. Hirsch reveals that the Nuremberg trial was, in many respects, “the last hurrah of wartime cooperation for the Allied powers” and “an early front of the Cold War.” This is not mere hindsight. Rather, these seismic geopolitical shifts were palpable to all involved in the trial. Indeed, they prompted Hermann Göring — arguably the highest-ranking defendant tried at Nuremberg — to quip that, “the only allies who are still allied are the four prosecutors, and they are only allied against the defendants.” In other words, it was apparent to all that by the time of the trial, the allies were no longer allied, except in their desire to convict the defendants.
Many of the western protagonists at Nuremberg are household names (at least within the households of scholars of international law): Jackson, of course, his fellow American Francis Biddle, France’s Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Britain’s Sir Hartley Shawcross and Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. In her book, Hirsch introduces us to key, lesser-known Soviet characters, including the creative, brilliant, and largely unknown Aron Trainin. A Russian Jew and legal contemporary of Raphael Lemkin (who coined the term ’genocide’) and Hersch Lauterpacht, Trainin is credited with pushing for the establishment of an international court following the war in his academic writing and well before the allies were on board with the idea, introducing the concept of crimes against the peace (or ‘crime of aggression’ in today’s lexicon), and advocating for the creation of a permanent international criminal court to try future war criminals.
Trainin was compelled by a genuine belief that international law could be a force for peace and that the Soviet Union could play a progressive role in its development. He also championed the concept of complicity (having written a book on the topic), critiqued the defense of superior orders, and supported an expanded reach for the charge of crimes against humanity. Although the Soviets did not participate in the work of the U.N. War Crimes Commission, which hammered out the postwar justice agenda, many of Trainin’s ideas were presented thereby a Czech envoy, Bohuslav Ečer, who was familiar with Trainin’s academic work. As a result, many of Trainin’s ideas were eventually picked up by key justice architects among the allies — often without attribution.
Equally as influential was Andrey Vyshinsky who, in his youth, bonded with Stalin over revolutionary theory while they were both imprisoned in Baku and who was entrusted with prosecuting Stalin’s first major show trials, including the Moscow Trials of 1936 to 1938 following the Great Purge. Together, Trainin and Vyshinsky crafted the Soviet Union’s approach to postwar justice. Other Soviet figures included the Soviet chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko and the aforementioned Nikitchenko, who was originally pegged to lead the prosecution, but who ended up on the bench after a quick game of musical chairs. Rudenko and Nikitchenko were career Soviet bureaucrats who were clearly in over their heads in the company of the legal luminaries who had been dispatched to Nuremberg. Through meticulous research, Hirsch demonstrates that there were no firewalls between the Soviet negotiators, judges, or prosecutors (or with members of the Soviet press corps for that matter). All were operating according to common instructions (and under intense surveillance) while in Nuremberg. As Hirsch describes it, by the time they all got to Nuremberg as members of the Soviet delegation, “while Jackson was calling his own shots, Nikitchenko and Trainin had marching orders.”
It is well known that the Americans and the British originally leaned towards punishing Nazi leaders by ‘executive decree’ (i.e., without legal process). Although Stalin would have executed upwards of 50,000 German officers, he was keen on holding a didactic trial of the Nazi masterminds. He recognized the value of such a proceeding to expose the enormity of the Nazi enterprise, foster Soviet unity, highlight the immense sacrifices made by the Soviets to defeat the Nazis, vindicate the national suffering, establish a legal claim to “reparations in kind” from Germany (a troubling euphemism for forced labor), and position the Soviet Union as a postwar international power (even as it was still reeling from wartime devastation at home). While the allies were debating the various juridical and extra-juridical options, the Soviets had already put such ideas into action, having hosted the first national trials of Russian and Ukrainian members of the dreaded Einsatzgruppen death squads, who murdered more than 7,000 Soviet citizens, most of them Jewish, as well as the first domestic trials of German nationals held by any allied power (the “Kharkov Trial”). The other allies finally came around to the idea of a two-tiered penal process: international trials for the Nazi big fish as envisioned by Trainin and prosecutions of lower-level defendants in the allies’ respective occupation zones. However, Stalin’s vision of a propagandistic show trial with pre-determined outcomes was fundamentally at odds with the legalistic traditions of the other allies, who were operating under the deeply ingrained assumption that, if the captured Nazis were to be put on trial, the defendants were entitled to present a defense and enjoy strict due process. This marks just one of many legal and cultural clashes within the quadripartite alliance, both in and outside the courtroom.
As the book unfolds, it is fascinating to see the Soviet delegation gradually come to the realization that they are entirely unprepared for the daunting task that had been put to them. Stalin insisted on exercising centralized control of the proceedings from his perch in Moscow, which included ideological wordsmithing, masking Soviet abuses and other inconvenient truths, and highlighting “the capitalist underpinnings of fascism.” This, coupled with the Soviet team’s relative lack of experience in multilateral settings and a dearth of vetted translators and interpreters, left the delegation repeatedly outmaneuvered as events rapidly unfolded around them. Indeed, Hirsch demonstrates that the Soviet delegation frequently found themselves without instructions (or with instructions that were utterly unattainable), out of the loop, “living a logistical nightmare,” or otherwise incapable of effectively advancing the outsized Soviet agenda. Needless-to-say, the Soviet delegation recognized that there might be devastating consequences were they to freelance in the way Jackson and others from the west were relatively free to do.
Nonetheless, the Soviet participants eventually hit a certain stride. For one, they contributed a number of key documents outlining the Nazi plan for lebensraum (“greater living space”) and the mass slaughter of civilians. This was consistent with Jackson’s controversial strategy of relying heavily on captured documents rather than potentially unreliable witnesses in order to “prove incredible events by credible evidence.” This necessitated upwards of three tons of text to be read into the record. Midway through this process, Rebecca West, who covered the trials for the New Yorker, described the proceedings as “a citadel of boredom” whose inhabitants were in “the grip of extreme tedium.” These observations foreshadowed the famous turn of phrase coined by Hannah Arendt — “the banality of evil” — as she later observed the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. By contrast, Rudenko offered the moving testimony of percipient witnesses (including the poet Avraham Sutzkever, the first Jewish witness) and also surprised all in attendance by calling to the stand several highly-placed German prisoners of war who had turned “state’s witness” while in custody. (Query what “incentives” might have been employed in this regard). Allowing these survivors and insiders to bear witness brought the Nazi enterprise alive for the judges, the press, and the public at large.
Notwithstanding the Soviets’ many legal and evidentiary contributions, there is no question that their involvement in the proceedings presented a “threat to the legitimacy of Nuremberg and to its legacy.” Although none of the allies arrived in Nuremberg with entirely clean hands (allied firebombing and the chilling parallels between colonialism and lebensraum come immediately to mind), the Soviets’ were particularly soiled. Germany and the Soviet Union had jointly invaded Poland with the intent of carving up Eastern Europe pursuant to secret protocols of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The Soviet Union was engaged in deportations in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere even as the tribunal was hearing evidence of the Nazi deportation program. Soviet-occupied Berlin was being contemporaneously plundered following the city’s surrender. Prisoners of war in Soviet custody were mistreated and an untold number of German women (estimates range from 80,000 to 130,000) were raped by their supposed Soviet liberators.
In addition, the Soviets recklessly insisted on trying to pin the Katyn Forest Massacre—which left at least 11,000 Polish officers dead — on the Germans in the indictment. History has proven that the massacre was actually the work of Soviet operatives, who planted evidence and then falsified subsequent investigations in order to shift the blame to the Germans. It was only through targeted (some would say complicitous) interventions by the British and American participants that the evidence of Soviet responsibility did not come to light during the Nuremberg proceedings. In the end, the judgment was silent about the Katyn massacre, leaving it to another day for the truth to emerge. All told, opportunities abounded for the accused Germans to raise the defense of tu quoque (“you also”). Remarkably, evidence uncovered by Hirsch suggests that many members of the Soviet delegation were unaware of the truth of these matters and so were essentially flying blind in Nuremberg.
A lamentable casualty of the deteriorating four-powers alliance was the proposal for a second international military tribunal to bring to justice the German financiers and industrialists who had bankrolled and profited from the Nazi enterprise — another key Soviet aim. The Americans refused to participate in a second international tribunal in the European theater, largely scuttling the Soviets’ plan to expose the connections between American and German industrialist circles and indelibly link capitalism and fascism. Although the Americans eventually prosecuted a number of industrialists in their zone of occupation under Control Council Number 10 — including principals of the Flick Concern, IG Farben, and the Krupp Works — the West soon saw German industry as a critical bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism and later rehabilitated a number of defendants, including Alfried Krupp. The Soviet concept of corporate responsibility in some respects presaged the newest front of today’s human rights litigation: cases seeking to hold corporate actors liable for enabling, profiting from, and being complicit in human rights abuses around the world.
The book ends in the immediate post-trial period with the halting efforts to make permanent some of the principles expressed at Nuremberg, including the creation of a permanent international criminal court that would offer an antidote to the victors’ justice critique that dogged the postwar proceedings then and now. Notwithstanding steadfast efforts by Trainin, Stalin soured on his cosmopolitan ideas about multilateralism as ideology eclipsed law. By now, Trainin had fallen out of favor with Moscow, but managed to avoid a worse fate. In 1950, the Soviet representative walked out of deliberations before the U.N. International Law Commission, which ended up concretizing many of Trainin’s ideas, including when it came to rectifying some of the shortcomings of the Nuremberg Charter and judgment. Decades later, in 2000, Moscow signed the International Criminal Court Statute, but later “unsigned” it in 2016 when the court’s Office of the Prosecutor concluded that the situation in Ukraine constituted an international armed conflict. For its part, the United States — which came to the idea of international justice late in the postwar period — retained until very recently a leadership role in international justice efforts, supporting institutions established to hold accountable those who would commit the worst crimes known to humankind, whether it be in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, or Myanmar.
Hirsch’s book is particularly thought-provoking and timely at this moment in history, given the evolving relationship between the United States and Russia and the unfortunate reality that many powerful members of the international community have retreated from the project of international justice first launched at Nuremberg. The International Criminal Court is now poised to investigate crimes by several of World War II’s victorious allies — alleged custodial abuses by British personnel in Iraq and American personnel in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russians in Ukraine and Georgia — potentially signaling a new kind of victor’s justice. The focus on U.S. personnel has provoked an unprecedented backlash from the Trump administration, first launched by former National Security Advisor John Bolton — who suffers from a congenital antipathy toward the court — in a 2018 speech at the Federalist Society. After Bolton’s ouster, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued this assault, most recently supporting the imposition of sanctions on international civil servants working at the court. This illiberal approach puts America squarely in the camp of authoritarian states that would prefer impunity to accountability, and that would undermine the independence of prosecutors and judges — values that all Americans hold dear and that constitute essential democratic principles. It also soils the U.S. legacy at Nuremberg, of which we have heretofore been deservedly proud.
Hirsch’s book reveals that the Russians should likewise embrace, rather than forsake, their contributions — at once consequential and controversial — to the establishment of a global system of international justice. Indeed, Hirsch brilliantly accomplishes her central aim: “putting the Soviet Union back into the history of the Nuremberg trials.” In so doing, the book offers a valuable new addition to the Nuremberg canon, filling a gap in the literature with new research, an engaging narrative style, a dose of intrigue, and delightful details (such as the appearance of the bikini within the Nuremberg fashion scene). The book will be most appealing to experts, who will be fascinated by this fresh and distinctive perspective on well-known events, but the engrossing style will rivet more casual World War II enthusiasts. All told, Hirsch’s gift to the Nuremberg literature leaves us with the distinct impression that: “the full story [of Nuremberg] is far messier than the myth — but it is no less heroic.”
Beth Van Schaack is the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School where she teaches human rights, international criminal law, and transitional justice. Prior to returning to academia, she was deputy to the ambassador-at-large for war crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department under Secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. She is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A.), Yale Law School (J.D.), and Leiden University (Ph.D.).
Image: Wikicommons (Photo by United States Army Signal Corps)
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Avraham Novershtern was a trial witness at the Nuremberg trials. The witness was acclaimed Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever, while Avraham Novershtern is a scholar of Yiddish literature that wrote an article about Sutzkever.
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-games/
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en
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Did a Nazi Leader Say Convincing People to Support War is 'Simple'?
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2002-10-03T17:00:00+00:00
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Rumor: Hermann Goering proclaimed that although 'the people don't want war,' they 'can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders.'
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Snopes
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-games/
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Claim:
Nazi Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering proclaimed that although "the people don't want war," they "can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders."
Rating:
True
About this rating
Another quote in the vein of the apocryphal Julius Caesar warning about political leaders who can all too easily send the citizenry marching eagerly off to war by manufacturing crises that purportedly threaten national security and making popular appeals to patriotism. In this case the sentiment expressed is even more disturbing because it comes not from a venerated figure of antiquity, but supposedly from a reviled twentieth-century figure associated with the most chilling example of genocide in human history: Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief:
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
We may be made somewhat uneasy by the idea that the head of a classic civilization recognized 2,000 years ago that the populace could be manipulated into sacrificing themselves in wars at the whims of their leaders, but perhaps we're more outraged (and maybe even scared) at the thought of a fat Nazi fascist flunky's recognizing and telling us the same thing.
The notable difference here is that although the Caesar quote is a latter-day fabrication, the words attributed to Hermann Goering are real. Goering was one of the highest-ranking Nazis who survived to be captured and put on trial for war crimes in the city of Nuremberg by the Allies after the end of World War II. He was found guilty on charges of "war crimes," "crimes against peace," and "crimes against humanity" by the Nuremberg tribunal and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence could not be carried out, however, because Goering committed suicide with smuggled cyanide capsules hours before his execution, scheduled for 15 October 1946.
The quote cited above does not appear in transcripts of the Nuremberg trials because although Goering spoke these words during the course of the proceedings, he did not offer them at his trial. His comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking American intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary. The quote offered above was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Goering in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess:
Sweating in his cell in the evening, Goering was defensive and deflated and not very happy over the turn the trial was taking. He said that he had no control over the actions or the defense of the others, and that he had never been anti-Semitic himself, had not believed these atrocities, and that several Jews had offered to testify in his behalf. If [Hans] Frank [Governor-General of occupied Poland] had known about atrocities in 1943, he should have come to him and he would have tried to do something about it. He might not have had enough power to change things in 1943, but if somebody had come to him in 1941 or 1942 he could have forced a showdown. (I still did not have the desire at this point to tell him what [SS General Otto] Ohlendorf had said to this: that Goering had been written off as an effective "moderating" influence, because of his drug addiction and corruption.) I pointed out that with his "temperamental utterances," such as preferring the killing of 200 Jews to the destruction of property, he had hardly set himself up as champion of minority rights. Goering protested that too much weight was being put on these temperamental utterances. Furthermore, he made it clear that he was not defending or glorifying Hitler.
Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/educational-magazines/goring-hermann
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Encyclopedia.com
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Hermann GöringBorn January 12, 1893 Rosenheim, Germany Died October 15, 1946 Nuremberg, Germany Nazi political leader and commander of the Luftwaffe, the German air force; second in command to Adolf Hitler Source for information on Göring, Hermann: World War II Reference Library dictionary.
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Hermann Göring
Born January 12, 1893
Rosenheim, Germany
Died October 15, 1946
Nuremberg, Germany
Nazi political leader and commander of the
Luftwaffe, the German air force; second in
command to Adolf Hitler
In the years leading up to World War II, Hermann Göring achieved a position of great power in Germany because of his relationship with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; see entry), Germany's dictator from 1933 through 1945. Hitler put Göring in charge of such important matters as the organization of the police force and rebuilding Germany's air power. Although he had held fairly liberal beliefs as a young man, Göring adopted Hitler's views on the superiority of the German people and the need to eliminate their enemies. He played an active role in carrying out the horrors of the Holocaust (the period between 1933 and 1945 when Nazi Germany systematically murdered millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and other innocent people).
Dreams of greatness
Born in Rosenheim, Bavaria (a state in the southeastern part of Germany), a little town located south of Munich, Göring was the son of a German government official. He was the youngest of four children born to his father's second wife (he had five siblings from his father's first marriage). When Göring was three months old, his parents went to live in Haiti, where his father was to serve as consul general. They left their new baby in the care of family friends for three years, a period that was very difficult and unhappy for him.
As a young boy Göring was sent to live with his godfather, an Austrian physician named Hermann von Epstein, who had been born Jewish but had converted to Christianity. When Göring wrote a school essay praising his godfather, his teacher scolded him because it was not considered proper to think well of Jewish people. This disturbed Göring so much that he left the school.
Next Göring attended two military academies where he proved an excellent student and a self-confident, athletic boy who enjoyed mountain climbing and horseback riding. One day he hoped to become a great German hero. He graduated at the top of his class in 1912.
A World War I hero
Göring joined the military after graduation. During World War I (1914-18; a war that started as a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and escalated into a global war involving thirty-two nations) he proved to be an exceptionally brave pilot who won his country's highest military honor, the Pour le Merite or "Blue Max." In July 1918 he was made commander of the Richthofen Squadron, a famous and daring group of aviators that was also known as the "Flying Circus."
Discouraged after the war
When World War I ended, many Germans resented the outcome of the war and its aftermath. They had been led to believe that their country would win, but they had lost. Now the German people were being punished by the victorious Allies (including Great Britain, the United States, France, and Russia), who insisted Germany pay reparations (huge sums of money) for the damages incurred during the war.
Germany also faced a terrible depression (an economic downturn that causes many businesses to close and people to lose their jobs) that started around 1930. Although this depression began in the United States, it soon spread to all of the industrial countries in Europe. Germany was hit harder than any other major European country. Germany relied heavily on exports and the countries that had been buying its goods could no longer buy them. There were few jobs available—one out of every three Germans was out of work—which led to widespread poverty and dissatisfaction with the government.
Like many former soldiers, Göring felt that he had no future in Germany. He went to Sweden and became a pilot and salesman for a Swedish airline. There he met a Swedish baroness, Carin von Lock-Kantzoa, a delicate beauty with an interest in mysticism. Even though she was already married, Carin and Göring fell in love. Carin soon divorced her husband. She married Göring in 1923, and the couple returned to Germany.
Becoming Hitler's follower
Meanwhile, an ambitious politician named Adolf Hitler took advantage of the widespread dissatisfaction in Germany. He formed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazis. Hitler's party was based on the belief that the Germans were a superior race whose purity was threatened by the harmful presence of Jews and other people they considered undesirable. In particular, the Nazis blamed Jews for their country's defeat in World War I.
Even though Göring had not previously been anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish), he was so impressed by Hitler that he became a devoted follower, gradually dropping all of his more liberal views and adopting the Nazi philosophy. Recognizing his potential, Hitler put Göring in charge of the SA or Sturmabteilung —also called Storm Troopers and Brown Shirts— an organized group of men who terrorized anyone who opposed the Nazis. And it was in Göring's hometown— Munich—where the Nazis planned to take over the German government. Their attempt, called the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (1923), failed and led to the arrest and imprisonment of Hitler and other Nazi leaders.
Göring was badly wounded but managed to escape to Austria, finally making his way to Switzerland. In severe pain, he was given morphine (a strong pain medication related to opium) and quickly became addicted, a condition that led to stints in several psychiatric institutions. He was off drugs by 1926, but his addiction would continue to plague him throughout the rest of his life. Göring had also become obese, and over the next two decades his enemies would often make fun of him, nicknaming him "der Dicke" (the fat one).
Returning to success in Germany
In 1927, Germany's president pardoned all political prisoners, including Hitler and the other Nazi leaders arrested after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Göring no longer had to fear being arrested and punished for his involvement in the Putsch and returned to his country. He and his wife settled in Berlin, where Göring became successful selling BMW cars. He again got involved with Hitler, who realized that Göring's many social, business, and military connections could be helpful to the Nazi party.
Running on the Nazi ticket, Göring was elected to the Reichstag (Germany's legislative or law-making body) in 1928 and became its president in 1932 (the top office in the Reichstag, but not the same as president of a country). Hitler was also gaining power during this period, and in January 1933 he was made chancellor (chief executive or top leader) of Germany. In only a few months, Hitler took control of the government and outlawed all political parties except the Nazis. He made himself not only Germany's head of state but also its military commander. In other words, Hitler had become a dictator (a ruler with absolute authority).
A prominent role in Hitler's government
Hitler gave Göring the job of interior minister to Prussia (a large state within Germany that ceased to exist after July 1945). Later that year, acting as commandant of police, Göring replaced the regular police force with the Secret State Police. This ruthless group became known as the Gestapo and quickly gained a reputation for brutality. They carried on a reign of terror against Jews and Catholics and members of other minority groups as well as anyone who disagreed with Hitler. So many arrests were made that the jails overflowed, so Göring constructed concentration camps where large numbers of these so-called "enemies of the state" could be confined. Ironically, Göring did not have the stomach for violence and soon turned his Gestapo and concentration camp duties over to others.
In 1931, Göring's beloved wife Carin died. Now verywealthy (due to income from his various political offices, investments, and business interests), he built a grand estate that he named Carin Hall in his dead wife's memory. He furnished this home with fine art and spent much of his time there. In 1935 Göring married a German actress, Emmy Sonnemann, and the couple's daughter Edda was born three years later. Over the next few years the Görings entertained many famous visitors from all over the world at their lavish estate.
The Luftwaffe leads the war effort
The terms of the treaty signed at the end of World War I prohibited Germany from having an air force, but Göring— who had been named reichminster of aviation in 1933—built one anyway, in secret. By 1936, his Luftwaffe (the name by which the German air force was known) was ready, just as Hitler's plans to wage war began to take shape. Hitler's stated goal at this time was to make sure that all of the German-speaking people in the world were under Nazi rule; later it would become clear that he also wanted to acquire more territory for Germany. At the same time, he was restricting the freedom of ordinary Germans while totally eliminating that of the Jews who lived in Germany.
Germany launched World War II in September 1939 by invading Poland. Much of the credit for this successful attack was given to the air force, and as head of the Luftwaffe Göring became a hero. When Holland, Belgium, and France also surrendered to the Germans he received even more attention and praise. In these first few years of the war, the German air force was considered the best in the world. Pleased with his second-in-command and with the progress of the war, Hitler made Göring a field marshal—the highest rank in the German army—and even spoke of him as his successor (the person who would take over his position when he left office).
Out of favor with "der Führer"
As the war continued, though, Göring fell out of favor with Hitler even though he never stopped idolizing "der Führer" (the leader). The main cause for Hitler's displeasure was the failure of the air force on three occasions. The first was the Battle of Britain, at which the Germans were defeated. On the second occasion, the Luftwaffe was unable to defend Germany against air raids by the Allies. The third was when the air force could not rescue the German Sixth Army when they were stranded in Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Hitler blamed Göring for these disasters and began treating him with scorn, and leaving him out of important military decisions.
Disillusioned with the way things were going, Göring began taking drugs again. He retreated into the fantasy world he had created for himself, neglecting his official duties while traveling around Europe in his private train. He was notorious for stealing priceless works of art from the countries Germany had conquered and decorating his various homes with them.
As the war drew to a close, Soviet troops invaded Germany and made their way toward Berlin, where Hitler had gone into hiding in an underground bunker. Having fled (and destroyed) Carin Hall, Göring was convinced—quite logically—that Hitler might soon be captured. He sent his leader a message that he was prepared to take over: "If I should receive no reply by 10 P. M., I shall assume that you have been deprived of your freedom of action and shall act in the best interests of our country and people."
Hitler was enraged by Göring's assumption, and on April 23 he ordered him charged with treason and arrested. By April 30, Hitler knew that the war was lost, and he committed suicide in his bunker.
On May 9, having been freed by his Nazi captors, Göring surrendered to the American troops who had occupied Germany. He was pleased with the special treatment he received at first, when he was given good food and wine. But this had just been a trick to make him offer up information about the Nazis, and he soon became an ordinary prisoner of war.
Tried and convicted at Nuremberg
The Allies (the countries that had joined together to fight Germany) tried the surviving Nazi leaders for their war crimes in a series of famous trials held in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1946. This well-publicized event exposed the full horror of Nazi Germany, in particular the Holocaust. After months in prison, Göring was drug-free and much slimmer. Observers agreed that he gave a brilliant performance at the trial, speaking with intelligence and confidence as he tried to justify what he and others had done. He argued that government officials could not be judged by the same standards as ordinary citizens.
Nevertheless, Göring was found guilty of conspiracy to wage war, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and his request to be executed by firing squad, in the military tradition, was denied. Just two hours before he was to be executed, Göring took poison (it is still not known how he got it) and died. The next day, his body was cremated and the ashes thrown away, along with those of others who had been executed that night.
Where to Learn More
Books
Butler, Ewan, and Gordon Young. The Life and Death of Hermann Göring.San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1990.
Hoyt, Edwin P. Angels of Death: Göring's Luftwaffe. New York: Forge, 1994.
Irving, David. Göring: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1989.
Mosley, Leonard. The Reich Marshal: A Biography of Hermann Göring. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.
Skipper, G.C. Göring and the Luftwaffe. Chicago: Children's Press, 1980.
Web Sites
Sauer, Wolfgang. "Hermann W. Goering." [Online] Available http:/www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_goering.html (January 21, 1999).
The Chief of the SS
Members of the SS—which stood for Schutzstaffel or security squad—served as Hitler's bodyguards and also worked as guards in the various concentration camps. They were involved in many cruel acts against those in the camps, and they murdered millions of innocent victims. The man who commanded the SS was Heinrich Himmler, a weak, dull person who had once dreamed of becoming a soldier.
Born in Munich, Germany, in 1900, Himmler was the son of a poor soldier who taught his children to develop ties to the upper classes; he also advised his son to keep a daily diary, in which Himmler would later record all of his murderous activities.
Himmler wanted very much to serve in Germany's army during World War I but he had only just completed officer training when the war ended. He spent a brief period as a farmer, then entered the University of Munich. Giving up his dream of military glory, Himmler studied agriculture. It was during his years at college that he became an anti-semite (person who hates Jews) and was drawn toward politics.
Graduating from college in 1922, Himmler got a job with a fertilizer company. The next year, he joined Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; see entry) National Socialist German Workers' Party (the Nazis). Later he moved with his new wife Marga to a chicken farm. He continued to work for the Nazis and proved himself efficient and alert to details, even if he did have a very dull personality. In 1929, Himmler was promoted to the rank of Reichsfuhrer (equivalent to a general in the U.S. Army) of the SS.
Himmler remained in charge of the SS for the next 16 years. Although the organization had originally been intended to provide protection for Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, Himmler expanded it to include 50,000 soldiers who could carry out anything Hitler ordered, including the punishment and murder of those the Nazis considered "enemies of the state."
The Nazi idea of "racial purity" made Germans the highest form of humanity, and the ideal German was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed. Those considered racially impure included Roma (commonly known as Gypsies), handicapped people, homosexuals, and others but especially Jews, who were blamed for all of Germany's troubles. Since the SS was to provide the leaders of a new German race, Himmler ruled that SS soldiers who wanted to marry had to prove that their fiancees were of pure blood and not "contaminated" by that of other, lesser races. At the SS Bride School, women were taught how to be good Nazi wives.
Much more alarmingly, though, Himmler began to set up concentration camps where those arrested by the Nazis were sent to be imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, and often murdered. Himmler himself stayed in the background while gangs of crisply uniformed SS soldiers in shiny black boots terrorized the Jewish population, rounding up and killing thousands of people.
In May 1945, several weeks after Germany had surrendered to the Allies, Himmler was caught by British soldiers while—disguised as a low-ranking soldier— he was trying to flee the country. Several days later, Himmler realized that he was not going to receive any special treatment from the Allies, and he bit into a cyanide capsule he had managed to conceal in his mouth. He died almost immediately.
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Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12. ledna 1893 sanatorium Marienbad v Rosenheimu, Bavorsko – 15. října 1946 Norimberk, sebevražda) byl německý nacistický politik a válečný zločinec. Původně letec, pak poslanec a předseda říšského sněmu. Zakladatel gestapa, ministr letectví, vrchní velitel Luftwaffe, říšský maršál, zástupce Hitlera po většinu druhé světové války.
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dbo:abstract
هيرمان غورينغ (12 يناير 1893 إلى 15 أكتوبر 1946) (بالألمانية: Hermann Göring سماع: (؟·معلومات)): قائد عسكري نازي، ومؤسس الجهاز السري (الجستابو)، وقائد قوات الطيران الألمانية، خلال الحرب العالمية الثانية. ولد غورينغ في مدينة روزنهايم البفارية لعائلة غنية، وخدم في الحرب العالمية الأولى كطيار في سلاح الطيران، وقد نال عدة ميداليات لشجاعته في القتال. التحق بالحزب النازي في عام 1922، بعد لقاءه بهتلر، وسرعان ما تم تعيينه قائدًا لقوات الصاعقة النازية، وهي عبارة عن قوات خاصة لحماية أعضاء الحزب. شارك غورينغ هتلر في محاولة الانقلاب الفاشلة على النظام. بحكم صلات غورينغ بالطبقة الأرستقراطية في الحكومة البافارية، أُرسل لبرلين ممثلًا عن الحزب النازي لجلب تمويل مالي للحزب، وقد أقنع هتلر بعد ذلك بالانضمام للبرلمان، وبالفعل أصبح غورينغ المتحدث باسم البرلمان الألماني (الرايخستاغ) عام 1932. بعد أن أصبح هتلر مستشارًا لألمانيا عام 1933، عُين غورينغ في عدة مناصب، كان أهمها تأسيس نواة الجهاز السري الألماني (غستابو)، كما عُين قائدًا لسلاح الطيران الألماني عام 1935. في عام 1936، وضع غورينغ خطة اقتصادية لأربع سنوات، ضمن برنامج هتلر الانتخابي، يتم بموجبها إعادة تنشيط الجيش، والاقتصاد، استعدادًا لدخول ألمانيا في حروب مستقبلية. في عام 1941، قاد غورينغ وخطط لعملية الوضع النهائي، والتي أعطت أوامر لوزير الداخلية فيلهلم فريك آنذاك لحل المسألة اليهودية، وتم بالفعل إرسال الآلاف من اليهود إلى معسكرات الاعتقال، وقضى العديد منهم ضمن ما يُسمى المحرقة اليهودية. في أواخر الحرب العالمية الثانية، فشل سلاح الجو الألماني في صد الهجمات المتكررة لسلاح الجو الملكي البريطاني، حاول غورينغ ثني هتلر عن مواصلة الحرب، إلا أن الأخير رفض طلباته المتكررة، مما حدا بغورينغ في أواخر الحرب، أن يُعلن نفسه الفوهرر الجديد لألمانيا النازية، واعتبر هتلر ذلك انقلابًا عليه، فجرّده من ألقابه، ورتبه العسكرية، وأوصى بإعدامه فيما بعد. بعد انتهاء الحرب العالمية الثانية، والتي انتهت باستسلام ألمانيا النازية، أُدين غورينغ كمجرم حرب في محاكم نورمبرغ، وحُكم عليه بالإعدام، إلا أنه قام بالانتحار قبل تنفيذ الحكم، وذلك بتسميم نفسه. يعتبر غورينغ أبرز مهندسي الألمانية النازية. تم الاستشهاد بأقواله مراراً وتكراراً في كتاب «يوميات نورمبرغ» الذي يتناول أحداث محاكم نورمبرغ الشهيرة بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية. كما يُعتبر أكبر مسؤول نازي يخضع للمحاكمة في محاكم نورمبرغ. (ar)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (o Goering; (?·pàg.) - Rosenheim, Baviera, 12 de gener de 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 d'octubre de 1946) fou un polític alemany, heroi de l'aviació a la Primera Guerra Mundial i un líder destacat del NSDAP. Va participar en el fallit cop d'estat del 8 de novembre de 1923. Es convertí durant el Tercer Reich en el segon home més important després d'Adolf Hitler, amb els títols de ministre plenipotenciari del Reich per a Prússia, ministre de l'Economia, coordinador del pla quadriennal i mariscal del Reich amb el comandament de Luftwaffe, les forces aèries del Reich. Formalment nomenat per Hitler com el seu successor, fou condemnat el 1946 als Judicis de Nuremberg per crims de guerra i crims contra la humanitat durant la Segona Guerra Mundial i sentenciat a mort, per bé que se suïcidà amb una càpsula de cianur hores abans de la seva execució. Va ser el darrer comandant del famós esquadró aeri de Manfred von Richtofen, i un heroi de guerra de la Primera Guerra Mundial amb 22 victòries confirmades i per un continu coratge en acció, que li va ser recompensat amb la insígnia Pour le Mérite. (ca)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12. ledna 1893 sanatorium Marienbad v Rosenheimu, Bavorsko – 15. října 1946 Norimberk, sebevražda) byl německý nacistický politik a válečný zločinec. Původně letec, pak poslanec a předseda říšského sněmu. Zakladatel gestapa, ministr letectví, vrchní velitel Luftwaffe, říšský maršál, zástupce Hitlera po většinu druhé světové války. (cs)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (* 12. Januar 1893 in Rosenheim; † 15. Oktober 1946 in Nürnberg) war ein führender deutscher nationalsozialistischer Politiker und Kriegsverbrecher. Ab Mai 1935 war er Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe. Ab 1936/1937 übernahm er die Führung der deutschen Wirtschaft und des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums. Göring hatte im Ersten Weltkrieg als mit dem Pour le Mérite dekorierter Jagdflieger einige Bekanntheit erlangt. Er nahm im November 1923 in München am Hitlerputsch teil und trug maßgeblich zum Aufstieg der NSDAP bei. Im August 1932 wurde er zum Reichstagspräsidenten gewählt. Am Tag der Machtergreifung ernannte Adolf Hitler ihn zum Reichsminister ohne Geschäftsbereich, zum Reichskommissar für den Luftverkehr und zum Reichskommissar für das preußische Innenministerium. Am 11. April 1933 wurde Göring auch Ministerpräsident Preußens. In den beiden letzten Positionen war Göring maßgeblich an der Gleichschaltung und der Verfolgung der Opposition beteiligt, die er mit äußerster Brutalität betreiben ließ. Er war für die Gründung der Gestapo sowie die Einrichtung der ersten Konzentrationslager ab 1933 verantwortlich. Ab Oktober 1936 betrieb er als Beauftragter für den Vierjahresplan die weitere Aufrüstung der Wehrmacht zur Vorbereitung eines Angriffskrieges. Er leitete Maßnahmen im Zusammenhang mit dem „Anschluss“ Österreichs, mit denen österreichische und deutsche Nationalsozialisten im März 1938 die Eingliederung Österreichs in den NS-Staat veranlassten. In der Nacht auf den 12. März 1938 lösten – nach telefonischen Drohungen von ihm, noch vor dem Einmarsch deutscher Einheiten – österreichische Nationalsozialisten das austrofaschistische Ständestaatsregime ab. Er organisierte systematisch Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen gegen Juden und erließ am 12. November 1938 die Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben. Im Juli 1940 – nach dem schnellen Ende des Westfeldzuges – ernannte Hitler Göring zum Reichsmarschall. In der Öffentlichkeit des In- und Auslands galt Göring bis zum Kriegsende als einer der einflussreichsten NS-Politiker. Tatsächlich verlor er, wie die historische Forschung später zeigte, vor und während des Krieges trotz einer Häufung von Ämtern und Titeln Schlüsselbefugnisse an konkurrierende NS-Funktionäre wie Heinrich Himmler und Joseph Goebbels. Als Chef der Luftwaffe geriet Göring wegen der Niederlage in der Luftschlacht um England (Mitte 1940 bis Anfang 1941), der beginnenden verheerenden Bombardierung des Reichsgebiets durch die Alliierten und des Scheiterns einer Luftbrücke bei der Schlacht von Stalingrad (Ende 1942) in Misskredit. Am 31. Juli 1941 beauftragte er Reinhard Heydrich mit der Organisation des Völkermordes an den europäischen Juden (Holocaust), in der Sprache des Nationalsozialismus euphemistisch „Endlösung der Judenfrage“ genannt. Ab 1942/43 (Zeit der Kriegswende) zog sich Göring – auf parteiinternen Druck hin wie auch aus eigenem Antrieb – zunehmend ins Privatleben zurück und pflegte einen dekadent-luxuriösen Lebensstil. Viele Ämter führte er seitdem – wenn überhaupt – nur noch in repräsentativer Weise aus. Göring war einer der 24 im Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Angeklagten. Er wurde am 1. Oktober 1946 in allen vier Anklagepunkten (Verschwörung gegen den Weltfrieden; Planung, Entfesselung und Durchführung eines Angriffskrieges; Verbrechen gegen das Kriegsrecht; Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit) schuldig gesprochen und zum Tod durch den Strang verurteilt. Durch Suizid am Vorabend der Hinrichtung entzog er sich der Vollstreckung des Urteils. (de)
Ο Χέρμαν Βίλχελμ Γκέρινγκ (Hermann Wilhelm Göring), (Ρόζενχαϊμ, 12 Ιανουαρίου 1893 - Νυρεμβέργη, 15 Οκτωβρίου 1946) ήταν από τους γνωστότερους Γερμανούς πιλότους του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, εξέχον μέλος της κυβέρνησης του Αδόλφου Χίτλερ και καταδικασμένος εγκληματίας πολέμου.Κατά τη διάρκεια της εξουσίας του Ναζιστικού κόμματος, ο Γκέρινγκ υπήρξε ο δεύτερος σημαντικός πολιτικός του κράτους, μετά τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ. Το πρώτο του αξίωμα στην κυβέρνηση ήταν αυτό του «Υπουργού άνευ Χαρτοφυλακίου», χάρη στο οποίο ίδρυσε την Γκεστάπο, ενώ αργότερα ως «Υπουργός Αεροπορίας» τέθηκε επικεφαλής της επανιδρυθείσας γερμανικής αεροπορίας, της Λούφτβαφφε. Επίσης υπηρέτησε ως «Υπουργός Οικονομικών» τα έτη 1937-1938. Υπήρξε επίσης υπεύθυνος του «Τετραετούς πλάνου επανεξοπλισμού» από το 1936 και από τους κύριους ιθύνοντες της εκκαθάρισης των SA και των αναίμακτων προσαρτήσεων της Αυστρίας και της Σουδητίας το 1938. Στις 19 Ιουλίου 1940 και μετά την νικηφόρα προέλαση στη Γαλλία, ο Χίτλερ του απένειμε τον τίτλο του «Στρατάρχης του Ράιχ» (Reichsmarschall) της Βέρμαχτ. Κατά τη διάρκεια του Δευτέρου Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου οι αποτυχίες της Λούφτβαφφε καθώς και οι εσωκομματικές αντιπαλότητες οδήγησαν στη σταδιακή μείωση της δύναμής του, ιδιαίτερα προς όφελος των SS. Μετά το τέλος του Β΄ παγκοσμίου πολέμου και την ήττα της Γερμανίας συνελήφθη από τους Αγγλοαμερικανούς. Αυτοκτόνησε στη φυλακή της Νυρεμβέργης τον Οκτώβριο του 1946, λίγες ώρες πριν από την εκτέλεση του, έχοντας καταδικαστεί σε θάνατο. (el)
Hermann GÖRING (12-a de januaro 1893 – 15-a de oktobro 1946) estis germana nazia politikisto, militestro, estra membro de la nazia partio, antaŭoficiro en la Nazia Germanio kaj estro de la germana milita aviadilaro Luftwaffe. Li estis akuzita pri krimoj dum milito kaj krimoj kontraŭ homeco ĉe la Proceso de Nürnberg en 1945-1946 kaj kondamnita al mortopuno per pendumo, sed du horojn antaŭ la ekzekuto li memmortigis sin pere de kalia cianido. Li havis aristokratan heredon kaj estis heroo de la Unua Mondmilito pro la gajno de la . (eo)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (también escrito Goering; pronunciación, [ˈɡøː.ʁɪŋ]; Rosenheim, 12 de enero de 1893-Núremberg, 15 de octubre de 1946) fue un político, comandante de la Luftwaffe y criminal de guerra nazi. Fue miembro prominente del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán (NSDAP) y uno de los líderes del régimen de Adolf Hitler. As de la aviación durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, fue galardonado con la codiciada medalla Pour le Mérite. Asimismo, fue el último comandante de la Jagdgeschwader I, la unidad de cazas de combate que había liderado Manfred von Richthofen, el Barón Rojo. Miembro del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán desde sus primeros tiempos, resultó herido en 1923 durante el fallido golpe de Estado conocido como el Putsch de la cervecería. Mientras recibía tratamiento por sus heridas, desarrolló una adicción a la morfina que persistió hasta el final de sus días. Después de que Hitler se convirtió en canciller de Alemania en 1933, fue nombrado ministro sin cartera en el nuevo gobierno. Fundó la Gestapo ese mismo año y puso al frente a Heinrich Himmler. Tras el establecimiento del régimen nazi, Göring acumuló poder y capital político para convertirse en el segundo hombre más poderoso del Tercer Reich. Fue nombrado comandante en jefe de la Luftwaffe, la fuerza aérea, cargo que ostentó hasta el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Antes de la campaña de bombardeos sistemáticos sobre Alemania por parte de los Aliados, disfrutó de gran popularidad entre el pueblo alemán. En 1940 se encontraba en el cenit de su poder e influencia y como ministro al frente del Plan Cuatrienal (Vierjahresplan), en el que tenía la tarea de movilizar a todos los sectores de la economía para la guerra, por lo que puso a numerosas agencias gubernamentales bajo su control, que lo ayudaron a convertirse en uno de los hombres más ricos del país. En 1938, Hitler lo designó sucesor y representante suyo en todas las instituciones. Después de la caída de Francia en 1940, le concedió el rango de Reichsmarschall, un cargo superior al del resto de comandantes de la Wehrmacht. A medida que avanzaba la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la posición de Göring ante Hitler y el público alemán disminuyó después de que la Luftwaffe demostrase ser incapaz de evitar el bombardeo aliado de las ciudades alemanas y el reabastecimiento de las fuerzas del Eje rodeadas en la batalla de Stalingrado. Por ello, se retiró cada vez más de los asuntos militares y políticos para dedicar su atención a la adquisición de propiedades y obras de arte, muchas de las cuales fueron robadas a víctimas judías del Holocausto. Informado el 22 de abril de 1945 de la intención de Hitler de suicidarse, decidió enviarle un telegrama en el que le pedía permiso para asumir el control del Reich. Considerándolo un acto de traición, el Führer le retiró todos sus cargos, lo expulsaría del partido y ordenó su arresto. Acabada la guerra, fue procesado en los juicios de Núremberg y declarado culpable de conspiración, crímenes contra la paz, crímenes de guerra y crímenes contra la humanidad. Fue sentenciado a morir en la horca, pero se suicidó la noche anterior a su ejecución con la ingesta de una cápsula de cianuro. (es)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 1893ko urtarrilaren 12a - Nurenberg, 1946ko urriaren 15a) alemaniar politikari eta militarra izan zen, Hitlerren ordezkaria eta Luftwafferen komandante gorena izandakoa. (eu)
Hermann Göring, ou Goering (Rosenheim, 12 janvier 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 octobre 1946), est un militaire, homme politique et criminel de guerre allemand, dirigeant de premier plan du parti nazi et du gouvernement du Troisième Reich. Décoré comme as de l'aviation pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, il rejoint le parti nazi en 1922. Blessé lors du putsch de la Brasserie en 1923, il développe peu de temps après une dépendance à la morphine dont il ne se débarrassera qu'à la fin de sa vie. Nommé ministre sans portefeuille dans le premier cabinet Hitler en 1933, il est responsable de la création de la Gestapo, organisation dont il cédera le contrôle à Heinrich Himmler en 1934. Il est ensuite nommé commandant en chef de la Luftwaffe en 1935 et ministre de l'Aviation. Il cumule ces titres avec d'autres fonctions dont notamment responsable du Plan de quatre ans, ministre de l'Intérieur de Prusse, chef de la chasse du Reich, Reichsmarschall (plus haut grade de toute la Wehrmacht), etc. Pendant la durée du régime, il amasse une fortune gigantesque à coups de pressions, rackets internes au régime et spoliation des biens juifs. Il est connu pour son goût du luxe, des diamants ou des châteaux, dont il ordonne la construction en pleine guerre. Condamné à mort par pendaison à l'issue du procès de Nuremberg en raison de ses responsabilités écrasantes tout au long du régime, il se suicide en avalant une capsule de cyanure juste avant son exécution. (fr)
Ba pholaiteoir Naitsíoch agus ceannaire míleata Gearmánach é Hermann Wilhelm Göring (nó Goering, mar a litrítear é freisin) (12 Eanáir 1893 – 15 Deireadh Fómhair 1946), duine de na ceannairí ba thábhachtaí i bPáirtí Náisiúnta Sóisialach Lucht Oibre na Gearmáine (na Naitsithe). Bhí sé ina cheannasaí ar an Luftwaffe, aerfhórsa na Gearmáine, agus an duine a bhí roghnaithe ag Adolf Hitler chun teacht i gcomharbacht air. (ga)
Herman Wilhelm Göring (12 Januari 1893 – 15 Oktober 1946) merupakan tokoh Nazi Jerman dan seorang politikus. (in)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (a volte reso Hermann Goering) (Rosenheim, 12 gennaio 1893 – Norimberga, 15 ottobre 1946) è stato un politico, generale e criminale di guerra tedesco.Abile pilota da caccia delle forze aeree tedesche durante la prima guerra mondiale, nel dopoguerra entrò nel Partito nazista, diventando rapidamente il principale luogotenente di Adolf Hitler. Dotato di grande energia e determinazione, fu accanto ad Hitler con una responsabilità spesso decisiva in tutte le fasi iniziali del nazismo fino alla presa del potere e alla costituzione del Terzo Reich. Dopo la presa del potere, Göring accumulò un gran numero di titoli, cariche, riconoscimenti e beni materiali, seguendo uno stile di vita stravagante e dissoluto. Svolse una importantissima attività politica all'interno del Reich dirigendo, con il titolo supremo di Maresciallo del Reich, la creazione della Luftwaffe, la costituzione della polizia segreta, le attività repressive e il sistema concentrazionario e di sterminio. Con l'inizio della seconda guerra mondiale, Göring, pur mantenendo il ruolo e il titolo di "numero due" del regime, perse progressivamente potere e credibilità di fronte a Hitler, a causa soprattutto delle voci riguardanti la sua possibile ascesa a Führer e della crescente paura di Hitler che questo potesse accadere, nondimeno a causa delle sconfitte della Luftwaffe, non in grado di impedire la distruzione delle città tedesche, né di ostacolare la crescente superiorità aerea del nemico. Si ritirò allora nella sua residenza di Carinhall, da lui fatta costruire in onore della prima moglie, abbandonandosi ad eccessi di vario genere che ne destabilizzarono la salute sia fisica sia mentale. Nel 1945, dopo un fallimentare tentativo di succedere a Hitler e intavolare trattative con i nemici occidentali, venne arrestato dalle SS; una volta rilasciato (dopo la morte di Hitler), si consegnò agli Alleati per poi essere condannato a morte nel processo di Norimberga. Si suicidò alla vigilia dell'esecuzione. Personalità complessa e contraddittoria, dall'intelligenza superiore alla media, Göring dimostrò con le sue azioni una brutale carica di violenza e condivise sostanzialmente, con un ruolo direttivo, tutti i crimini del nazismo. (it)
ヘルマン・ヴィルヘルム・ゲーリング（ドイツ語 : Hermann Wilhelm Göring 、1893年1月12日 ‐ 1946年10月15日）は、ナチス・ドイツの政治家、軍人。ナチ党の最高幹部で総統アドルフ・ヒトラーの後継者であった。ドイツ空軍総司令官であり、軍における最終階級は全ドイツ軍で最高位の国家元帥 (Reichsmarschall)。 第一次世界大戦でエース・パイロットとして名声を得る。戦後の1922年にアドルフ・ヒトラーに惹かれて国家社会主義ドイツ労働者党（ナチ党）に入党。ミュンヘン一揆の失敗で一時亡命生活を送るも、1928年に国会議員に当選し、1932年の選挙でナチ党が第一党となると国会議長に選出された。ナチ党と上流階級の橋渡し役を務めてナチ党の党勢拡大と政権獲得に貢献した。1933年のナチ党政権誕生後にはプロイセン州首相、航空相、ドイツ空軍総司令官、四ヵ年計画全権責任者、ドイツ経済相、森林長官、狩猟長官など要職を歴任し、ヒトラーの後継者に指名されるなど高い政治的地位を占めた。しかし政権内では対外穏健派だったため、対外強硬派のヒトラーと徐々に距離ができ、1930年代終わり頃から政治的影響力を低下させはじめた。第二次世界大戦中にドイツ空軍の劣勢が目立つようになると一層存在感を落とした。しかし戦後のニュルンベルク裁判では最も主要な被告人としてヒトラーとナチ党を弁護し、検察と徹底対決して注目を浴びた。死刑判決を受けた後、執行方法を絞首刑から銃殺刑に変更するよう嘆願したが拒否されたため、それを不服として刑執行前に独房内で服毒自殺した。 (ja)
헤르만 빌헬름 괴링(독일어: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, 문화어: 헤르만 게링그, 1893년 1월 12일 ~ 1946년 10월 15일)은 독일의 군인, 정치인이다. 국가사회주의 독일 노동자당(나치당)의 초기 당원이자, 초기 나치 돌격대(Sturmabteilung/SA)의 지휘관을 지냈고, 게슈타포를 창설했다. 1935년 재군비 선언 이후에는 나치 공군의 총사령관(제국원수)으로 공군을 창설하고 육성했다. 그 자신이 제1차 세계 대전 당시 전투기 에이스였다. 제2차 세계 대전 종전 이후에 뉘른베르크 재판에서 사형을 선고받았지만, 독일로부터 나라가 5년이나 박살나고 2000만명이 사망, 1000만이 부상당한 소련 수석 판사인 이오나 니키첸코가 길길이 날뛰며 군인들 총살형에 대해 반대해 군인의 사형 방법인 총살형이 아닌 교수형으로 결정되자 절망하다 사형이 집행되기 전날에 자신이 수감된 감방에서 자살했다. (ko)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 12 januari 1893 – Neurenberg, 15 oktober 1946) was een Duits politicus, militair leider en een vooraanstaand lid van de NSDAP. (nl)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ou Goering); (Rosenheim, 12 de janeiro de 1893 — Nuremberga, 15 de outubro de 1946) foi um militar alemão, político e líder do Partido Nacional-Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães (NSDAP). Veterano da Primeira Guerra Mundial, em que participou como piloto de aeronaves, atingindo o estatuto de Ás da aviação, recebeu a cobiçada condecoração Pour le Mérite. Foi o último comandante da unidade Jagdgeschwader 1, anteriormente comandada por Manfred von Richthofen, "o Barão Vermelho". Membro do Partido Nazi, NSDAP, desde os primeiros dias, Göring ficou ferido, em 1923, durante o golpe falhado que ficou conhecido como Putsch de Munique. Devido aos seus ferimentos, desenvolveu dependência de morfina até ao fim da sua vida. Em 1933, fundou a Gestapo. Göring foi nomeado para comandante-chefe da Luftwaffe, a força aérea alemã, em 1935, uma posição que manteve até ao final da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em 1940, Göring encontrava-se no auge do seu poder e influência; como ministro encarregado pelo Plano Quadrienal, ele era responsável por uma grande parte do funcionamento da economia alemã na preparação para a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Adolf Hitler promoveu-o ao posto de Reichsmarschall, o mais elevado em relação aos outros comandantes da Wehrmacht e, em 1941, Hitler nomeou-o como seu sucessor e assessor em todos os gabinetes. A posição de Göring perante Hitler ficou substancialmente enfraquecida a partir de 1942, devido à incapacidade da Luftwaffe de proteger as cidades alemãs dos bombardeamentos dos Aliados, e de reabastecer as forças do Eixo cercadas em Estalinegrado. Göring retirou-se, quase por completo, da cena política e militar e concentrou-se na compra de propriedades e de arte, grande parte das quais roubadas às vítimas judaicas do Holocausto. Informado a 22 de abril de 1945 de que Hitler tencionava cometer suicídio, Göring enviou um telegrama a Hitler solicitando assumir o controlo do Reich. Hitler decidiu, então, retirar Göring de todas suas funções, expulsá-lo do partido e ordenar a sua prisão. Depois da Guerra, Göring foi culpado de crimes de guerra e crimes contra a humanidade nos Julgamentos de Nuremberga. Foi condenado à morte por enforcamento, mas cometeu suicídio ingerindo cianeto na noite anterior à sua execução. (pt)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, född 12 januari 1893 i Rosenheim, död 15 oktober 1946 i Nürnberg, var en tysk politiker, militär och dömd krigsförbrytare. Han tillhörde ledarskiktet inom Nationalsocialistiska tyska arbetarepartiet (NSDAP) och var riksdagsledamot från 1928. Från 1932 till 1945 var Göring tyska riksdagens talman. Göring var en mycket framgångsrik stridspilot under första världskriget och tilldelades 1918 utmärkelsen Pour le Mérite. Han var den siste befälhavaren för Richthofeneskadern. År 1935 utsågs Göring till befälhavare för Luftwaffe, det tyska flygvapnet. I mitten av 1940 utnämnde Adolf Hitler honom till riksmarskalk (Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches). I april 1938 utsågs Göring till Hitlers ställföreträdare i samtliga ämbeten och året därpå officiellt utnämnd till Hitlers ställföreträdare och efterträdare som rikskansler. Under år 1942, då Tysklands krigslycka vände, försämrades Görings relation till Hitler. Göring grundade Gestapo och var ansvarig för inrättandet av de första koncentrationslägren. År 1941 gav han Reinhard Heydrich i uppdrag att organisera den så kallade slutgiltiga lösningen. Efter andra världskriget ställdes Göring inför rätta inför den internationella militärdomstolen i Nürnberg och dömdes till döden för planerandet av anfallskrig, brott mot freden, krigsförbrytelser och brott mot mänskligheten. Han begick dock självmord natten innan han skulle avrättas genom att svälja en cyanidkapsel. (sv)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ur. 12 stycznia 1893 w Rosenheim, zm. 15 października 1946 w Norymberdze) – niemiecki oficer i działacz nazistowski, jeden z twórców i głównych postaci hitlerowskiej III Rzeszy, zbrodniarz wojenny. As myśliwski z czasów I wojny światowej, w latach 1933–1945 minister lotnictwa Rzeszy, w latach 1935–1945 dowódca niemieckiego lotnictwa wojskowego (Luftwaffe). W latach 1928–1945 poseł do Reichstagu. Od 10 kwietnia 1933 do 23 kwietnia 1945 premier Prus, największego niemieckiego kraju związkowego. Był jedną z najważniejszych osób, które umożliwiły zbudowanie potęgi Adolfa Hitlera. Zmarł w wyniku samobójstwa. (pl)
Ге́рман Вильге́льм Ге́ринг (немецкое произношение Гёринг; нем. Hermann Wilhelm Göring, немецкий: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ]; 12 января 1893, близ Розенхайма, Германская империя — 15 октября 1946, Нюрнберг, Американская зона оккупации Германии) — политический, государственный и военный деятель нацистской Германии, рейхсминистр авиации, рейхсмаршал Великогерманского рейха (19 июня 1940), обергруппенфюрер СА, почётный обергруппенфюрер СС, генерал пехоты и генерал земельной полиции. Сыграл важную роль в организации люфтваффе, военно-воздушных сил Германии, верховное командование которыми Геринг осуществлял практически весь период Второй мировой войны в Европе (1939—1945). Геринг являлся одним из наиболее влиятельных людей в нацистской Германии, вторым по влиянию в НСДАП после Гитлера, а согласно декрету от 29 июня 1941 года он официально являлся «преемником фюрера» и имел полномочия отдавать прямые инструкции Верховному командованию вермахта. 23 апреля 1945 года по приказу Гитлера лишён всех званий и должностей и исключён из партии. Приговором Нюрнбергского трибунала был признан одним из главных военных преступников и приговорён к смертной казни через повешение, но накануне казни покончил жизнь самоубийством. (ru)
赫爾曼·威廉·戈林（德語：Hermann Wilhelm Göring，1893年1月12日－1946年10月15日）是納粹德國黨政軍領袖，與「元首」阿道夫·希特勒關係極為親密，在納粹黨內影響巨大。他擔任過德國空軍總司令、「蓋世太保」首長、「四年計劃」負責人、、、經濟部長、普魯士總理等跨及黨政軍三部門的諸多重要職務，并曾被希特勒指定为接班人。 戈林於第一次世界大戰中為著名的「王牌飛行員」，有著擊落22架敵機的紀錄，并獲得德國最高級別軍事勳章「功勳勳章」，戰爭後期還擔任曾為「紅男爵」曼弗雷德·冯·里希特霍芬所領導的第1戰鬥機聯隊最後一任指揮官。戰後戈林加入納粹黨，為該黨最早的一批成員，並參與了1923年失敗的「啤酒館政變」，期間身中槍傷。為此，後來他一直靠注射嗎啡來減緩痛楚，結果終生麻藥成癮，體型也從健壯轉為肥胖。1933年，戈林創立秘密警察機關「蓋世太保」。1934年，他還頒布了納粹統治下聞名的狩獵法案，該法保護了野生動物的繁衍與棲息，並大規模地進行都市綠化。1935年，戈林被希特勒任命為德國空軍總司令，並憑藉他個人的政治影響力為空軍取得大量預算與獨立地位，令其快速建軍。 戈林以德國空軍最高領袖的身份參與了第二次世界大戰。儘管他本人並不直接干預作戰細節，對現代化空軍技術也缺乏了解，但還是對德軍有相當大的影響，特別是敦克爾克戰役、不列顛戰役及史達林格勒戰役這三場決定性戰鬥的發展；德國海軍航空兵、空降部隊和空軍地面部隊的建立、指揮反盟軍轟炸作戰等等。1940年德國打敗法國後，戈林的權力與聲望達到最高峰：希特勒將其晉升為「国家元帅」（或譯作「帝國大元帥」），高過傳統意義上的德國元帥，隔年還指名戈林為其政治接班人。1942年後，隨著德國軍事情勢惡化，戈林的聲望和希特勒對其的信任逐漸降低，于是戈林從此不管政治與戰爭事務，專注於掠奪各佔領地的藝術品與財物，奢華度日。 1945年4月22日，戈林得知希特勒將自殺，遂發電報告知希特勒，自己將接掌德國大權。希特勒認為此為逼宮的表現，便下令將戈林逮捕，同時罷黜全部官職並開除黨籍。德國二戰投降後，戈林選擇向美軍投降，審判納粹領袖的紐倫堡審判中還因為其精明的辯駁一度陷入膠著，但最終被判犯下、破壞和平罪、戰爭罪和反人道罪，並處以絞刑，但在行刑前一天晚上，戈林服毒自殺身亡。 (zh)
Ге́рман Вільге́льм Ге́рінг (нім. файл; 12 січня 1893, Розенгайм, Баварія — 15 жовтня 1946, Нюрнберг, Бізонія) — німецький політичний, державний і військовий діяч часів Третього Райху, рейхсміністр авіації, рейхсмаршал (1940), СА-обергрупенфюрер (1 січня 1933), почесний СС-обергрупенфюрер і генерал поліції. Президент Рейхстагу, міністр-президент та рейхсштатгальтер Пруссії. Кавалер Pour le Mérite (1918), Великого (1940) та Лицарського хрестів Залізного хреста (1939). Найближчий соратник Адольфа Гітлера, названий «наці номер два», другий після А. Гітлера військовий і економічний керівник Третього Райху. Брав участь у Першій світовій війні, був льотчиком-асом, командиром ескадрильї. Від 1922 року — член Націонал-соціалістичної робітничої партії Німеччини (НСДАП) і керівник штурмових загонів. Як політичний уповноважений А. Гітлера (від 1930) та голова Райхстагу (від серпня 1932), відіграв активну роль у встановленні диктатури НСДАП, після чого став імперським міністром авіації й головою уряду Пруссії. Головнокомандувач повітряних сил (від 1935). Керівник одного з найбільших державних промислових концернів (нім. Reichswerke Hermann Göring), який був створений шляхом приєднання підприємств окупованих Німеччиною країн. Один з організаторів терору в Німеччині та в окупованих Німеччиною країнах. Причетний до організації «остаточного розв'язання єврейського питання». На Нюрнберзькому процесі визнаний одним з головних військових злочинців. Засуджений до смертної кари через повішення. (uk)
هيرمان غورينغ (12 يناير 1893 إلى 15 أكتوبر 1946) (بالألمانية: Hermann Göring سماع: (؟·معلومات)): قائد عسكري نازي، ومؤسس الجهاز السري (الجستابو)، وقائد قوات الطيران الألمانية، خلال الحرب العالمية الثانية. ولد غورينغ في مدينة روزنهايم البفارية لعائلة غنية، وخدم في الحرب العالمية الأولى كطيار في سلاح الطيران، وقد نال عدة ميداليات لشجاعته في القتال. التحق بالحزب النازي في عام 1922، بعد لقاءه بهتلر، وسرعان ما تم تعيينه قائدًا لقوات الصاعقة النازية، وهي عبارة عن قوات خاصة لحماية أعضاء الحزب. شارك غورينغ هتلر في محاولة الانقلاب الفاشلة على النظام. بحكم صلات غورينغ بالطبقة الأرستقراطية في الحكومة البافارية، أُرسل لبرلين ممثلًا عن الحزب النازي لجلب تمويل مالي للحزب، وقد أقنع هتلر بعد ذلك بالانضمام للبرلمان، وبالفعل أصبح غورينغ المتحدث باسم البرلمان الألماني (الرايخستاغ) عام 1932. بعد أن أصبح هتلر مستشارًا لألمانيا عام 1933، عُين غورينغ في عدة مناصب، كان أهمها تأسيس نواة الجهاز السري الألماني (غستابو)، كما عُين قائدًا لسلاح الطيران الألماني عام 1935. في عام 1936، وضع غورينغ خطة اقتصادية لأربع سنوات، ضمن برنامج هتلر الانتخابي، يتم بموجبها إعادة تنشيط الجيش، والاقتصاد، استعدادًا لدخول ألمانيا في حروب مستقبلية. في عام 1941، قاد غورينغ وخطط لعملية الوضع النهائي، والتي أعطت أوامر لوزير الداخلية فيلهلم فريك آنذاك لحل المسألة اليهودية، وتم بالفعل إرسال الآلاف من اليهود إلى معسكرات الاعتقال، وقضى العديد منهم ضمن ما يُسمى المحرقة اليهودية. في أواخر الحرب العالمية الثانية، فشل سلاح الجو الألماني في صد الهجمات المتكررة لسلاح الجو الملكي البريطاني، حاول غورينغ ثني هتلر عن مواصلة الحرب، إلا أن الأخير رفض طلباته المتكررة، مما حدا بغورينغ في أواخر الحرب، أن يُعلن نفسه الفوهرر الجديد لألمانيا النازية، واعتبر هتلر ذلك انقلابًا عليه، فجرّده من ألقابه، ورتبه العسكرية، وأوصى بإعدامه فيما بعد. بعد انتهاء الحرب العالمية الثانية، والتي انتهت باستسلام ألمانيا النازية، أُدين غورينغ كمجرم حرب في محاكم نورمبرغ، وحُكم عليه بالإعدام، إلا أنه قام بالانتحار قبل تنفيذ الحكم، وذلك بتسميم نفسه. يعتبر غورينغ أبرز مهندسي الألمانية النازية. تم الاستشهاد بأقواله مراراً وتكراراً في كتاب «يوميات نورمبرغ» الذي يتناول أحداث محاكم نورمبرغ الشهيرة بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية. كما يُعتبر أكبر مسؤول نازي يخضع للمحاكمة في محاكم نورمبرغ. (ar)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (o Goering; (?·pàg.) - Rosenheim, Baviera, 12 de gener de 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 d'octubre de 1946) fou un polític alemany, heroi de l'aviació a la Primera Guerra Mundial i un líder destacat del NSDAP. Va participar en el fallit cop d'estat del 8 de novembre de 1923. Es convertí durant el Tercer Reich en el segon home més important després d'Adolf Hitler, amb els títols de ministre plenipotenciari del Reich per a Prússia, ministre de l'Economia, coordinador del pla quadriennal i mariscal del Reich amb el comandament de Luftwaffe, les forces aèries del Reich. Formalment nomenat per Hitler com el seu successor, fou condemnat el 1946 als Judicis de Nuremberg per crims de guerra i crims contra la humanitat durant la Segona Guerra Mundial i sentenciat a mort, per bé que se suïcidà amb una càpsula de cianur hores abans de la seva execució. Va ser el darrer comandant del famós esquadró aeri de Manfred von Richtofen, i un heroi de guerra de la Primera Guerra Mundial amb 22 victòries confirmades i per un continu coratge en acció, que li va ser recompensat amb la insígnia Pour le Mérite. (ca)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12. ledna 1893 sanatorium Marienbad v Rosenheimu, Bavorsko – 15. října 1946 Norimberk, sebevražda) byl německý nacistický politik a válečný zločinec. Původně letec, pak poslanec a předseda říšského sněmu. Zakladatel gestapa, ministr letectví, vrchní velitel Luftwaffe, říšský maršál, zástupce Hitlera po většinu druhé světové války. (cs)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (* 12. Januar 1893 in Rosenheim; † 15. Oktober 1946 in Nürnberg) war ein führender deutscher nationalsozialistischer Politiker und Kriegsverbrecher. Ab Mai 1935 war er Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe. Ab 1936/1937 übernahm er die Führung der deutschen Wirtschaft und des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums. Göring hatte im Ersten Weltkrieg als mit dem Pour le Mérite dekorierter Jagdflieger einige Bekanntheit erlangt. Er nahm im November 1923 in München am Hitlerputsch teil und trug maßgeblich zum Aufstieg der NSDAP bei. Im August 1932 wurde er zum Reichstagspräsidenten gewählt. Am Tag der Machtergreifung ernannte Adolf Hitler ihn zum Reichsminister ohne Geschäftsbereich, zum Reichskommissar für den Luftverkehr und zum Reichskommissar für das preußische Innenministerium. Am 11. April 1933 wurde Göring auch Ministerpräsident Preußens. In den beiden letzten Positionen war Göring maßgeblich an der Gleichschaltung und der Verfolgung der Opposition beteiligt, die er mit äußerster Brutalität betreiben ließ. Er war für die Gründung der Gestapo sowie die Einrichtung der ersten Konzentrationslager ab 1933 verantwortlich. Ab Oktober 1936 betrieb er als Beauftragter für den Vierjahresplan die weitere Aufrüstung der Wehrmacht zur Vorbereitung eines Angriffskrieges. Er leitete Maßnahmen im Zusammenhang mit dem „Anschluss“ Österreichs, mit denen österreichische und deutsche Nationalsozialisten im März 1938 die Eingliederung Österreichs in den NS-Staat veranlassten. In der Nacht auf den 12. März 1938 lösten – nach telefonischen Drohungen von ihm, noch vor dem Einmarsch deutscher Einheiten – österreichische Nationalsozialisten das austrofaschistische Ständestaatsregime ab. Er organisierte systematisch Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen gegen Juden und erließ am 12. November 1938 die Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben. Im Juli 1940 – nach dem schnellen Ende des Westfeldzuges – ernannte Hitler Göring zum Reichsmarschall. In der Öffentlichkeit des In- und Auslands galt Göring bis zum Kriegsende als einer der einflussreichsten NS-Politiker. Tatsächlich verlor er, wie die historische Forschung später zeigte, vor und während des Krieges trotz einer Häufung von Ämtern und Titeln Schlüsselbefugnisse an konkurrierende NS-Funktionäre wie Heinrich Himmler und Joseph Goebbels. Als Chef der Luftwaffe geriet Göring wegen der Niederlage in der Luftschlacht um England (Mitte 1940 bis Anfang 1941), der beginnenden verheerenden Bombardierung des Reichsgebiets durch die Alliierten und des Scheiterns einer Luftbrücke bei der Schlacht von Stalingrad (Ende 1942) in Misskredit. Am 31. Juli 1941 beauftragte er Reinhard Heydrich mit der Organisation des Völkermordes an den europäischen Juden (Holocaust), in der Sprache des Nationalsozialismus euphemistisch „Endlösung der Judenfrage“ genannt. Ab 1942/43 (Zeit der Kriegswende) zog sich Göring – auf parteiinternen Druck hin wie auch aus eigenem Antrieb – zunehmend ins Privatleben zurück und pflegte einen dekadent-luxuriösen Lebensstil. Viele Ämter führte er seitdem – wenn überhaupt – nur noch in repräsentativer Weise aus. Göring war einer der 24 im Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Angeklagten. Er wurde am 1. Oktober 1946 in allen vier Anklagepunkten (Verschwörung gegen den Weltfrieden; Planung, Entfesselung und Durchführung eines Angriffskrieges; Verbrechen gegen das Kriegsrecht; Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit) schuldig gesprochen und zum Tod durch den Strang verurteilt. Durch Suizid am Vorabend der Hinrichtung entzog er sich der Vollstreckung des Urteils. (de)
Ο Χέρμαν Βίλχελμ Γκέρινγκ (Hermann Wilhelm Göring), (Ρόζενχαϊμ, 12 Ιανουαρίου 1893 - Νυρεμβέργη, 15 Οκτωβρίου 1946) ήταν από τους γνωστότερους Γερμανούς πιλότους του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, εξέχον μέλος της κυβέρνησης του Αδόλφου Χίτλερ και καταδικασμένος εγκληματίας πολέμου.Κατά τη διάρκεια της εξουσίας του Ναζιστικού κόμματος, ο Γκέρινγκ υπήρξε ο δεύτερος σημαντικός πολιτικός του κράτους, μετά τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ. Το πρώτο του αξίωμα στην κυβέρνηση ήταν αυτό του «Υπουργού άνευ Χαρτοφυλακίου», χάρη στο οποίο ίδρυσε την Γκεστάπο, ενώ αργότερα ως «Υπουργός Αεροπορίας» τέθηκε επικεφαλής της επανιδρυθείσας γερμανικής αεροπορίας, της Λούφτβαφφε. Επίσης υπηρέτησε ως «Υπουργός Οικονομικών» τα έτη 1937-1938. Υπήρξε επίσης υπεύθυνος του «Τετραετούς πλάνου επανεξοπλισμού» από το 1936 και από τους κύριους ιθύνοντες της εκκαθάρισης των SA και των αναίμακτων προσαρτήσεων της Αυστρίας και της Σουδητίας το 1938. Στις 19 Ιουλίου 1940 και μετά την νικηφόρα προέλαση στη Γαλλία, ο Χίτλερ του απένειμε τον τίτλο του «Στρατάρχης του Ράιχ» (Reichsmarschall) της Βέρμαχτ. Κατά τη διάρκεια του Δευτέρου Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου οι αποτυχίες της Λούφτβαφφε καθώς και οι εσωκομματικές αντιπαλότητες οδήγησαν στη σταδιακή μείωση της δύναμής του, ιδιαίτερα προς όφελος των SS. Μετά το τέλος του Β΄ παγκοσμίου πολέμου και την ήττα της Γερμανίας συνελήφθη από τους Αγγλοαμερικανούς. Αυτοκτόνησε στη φυλακή της Νυρεμβέργης τον Οκτώβριο του 1946, λίγες ώρες πριν από την εκτέλεση του, έχοντας καταδικαστεί σε θάνατο. (el)
Hermann GÖRING (12-a de januaro 1893 – 15-a de oktobro 1946) estis germana nazia politikisto, militestro, estra membro de la nazia partio, antaŭoficiro en la Nazia Germanio kaj estro de la germana milita aviadilaro Luftwaffe. Li estis akuzita pri krimoj dum milito kaj krimoj kontraŭ homeco ĉe la Proceso de Nürnberg en 1945-1946 kaj kondamnita al mortopuno per pendumo, sed du horojn antaŭ la ekzekuto li memmortigis sin pere de kalia cianido. Li havis aristokratan heredon kaj estis heroo de la Unua Mondmilito pro la gajno de la . (eo)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (también escrito Goering; pronunciación, [ˈɡøː.ʁɪŋ]; Rosenheim, 12 de enero de 1893-Núremberg, 15 de octubre de 1946) fue un político, comandante de la Luftwaffe y criminal de guerra nazi. Fue miembro prominente del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán (NSDAP) y uno de los líderes del régimen de Adolf Hitler. As de la aviación durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, fue galardonado con la codiciada medalla Pour le Mérite. Asimismo, fue el último comandante de la Jagdgeschwader I, la unidad de cazas de combate que había liderado Manfred von Richthofen, el Barón Rojo. Miembro del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán desde sus primeros tiempos, resultó herido en 1923 durante el fallido golpe de Estado conocido como el Putsch de la cervecería. Mientras recibía tratamiento por sus heridas, desarrolló una adicción a la morfina que persistió hasta el final de sus días. Después de que Hitler se convirtió en canciller de Alemania en 1933, fue nombrado ministro sin cartera en el nuevo gobierno. Fundó la Gestapo ese mismo año y puso al frente a Heinrich Himmler. Tras el establecimiento del régimen nazi, Göring acumuló poder y capital político para convertirse en el segundo hombre más poderoso del Tercer Reich. Fue nombrado comandante en jefe de la Luftwaffe, la fuerza aérea, cargo que ostentó hasta el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Antes de la campaña de bombardeos sistemáticos sobre Alemania por parte de los Aliados, disfrutó de gran popularidad entre el pueblo alemán. En 1940 se encontraba en el cenit de su poder e influencia y como ministro al frente del Plan Cuatrienal (Vierjahresplan), en el que tenía la tarea de movilizar a todos los sectores de la economía para la guerra, por lo que puso a numerosas agencias gubernamentales bajo su control, que lo ayudaron a convertirse en uno de los hombres más ricos del país. En 1938, Hitler lo designó sucesor y representante suyo en todas las instituciones. Después de la caída de Francia en 1940, le concedió el rango de Reichsmarschall, un cargo superior al del resto de comandantes de la Wehrmacht. A medida que avanzaba la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la posición de Göring ante Hitler y el público alemán disminuyó después de que la Luftwaffe demostrase ser incapaz de evitar el bombardeo aliado de las ciudades alemanas y el reabastecimiento de las fuerzas del Eje rodeadas en la batalla de Stalingrado. Por ello, se retiró cada vez más de los asuntos militares y políticos para dedicar su atención a la adquisición de propiedades y obras de arte, muchas de las cuales fueron robadas a víctimas judías del Holocausto. Informado el 22 de abril de 1945 de la intención de Hitler de suicidarse, decidió enviarle un telegrama en el que le pedía permiso para asumir el control del Reich. Considerándolo un acto de traición, el Führer le retiró todos sus cargos, lo expulsaría del partido y ordenó su arresto. Acabada la guerra, fue procesado en los juicios de Núremberg y declarado culpable de conspiración, crímenes contra la paz, crímenes de guerra y crímenes contra la humanidad. Fue sentenciado a morir en la horca, pero se suicidó la noche anterior a su ejecución con la ingesta de una cápsula de cianuro. (es)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 1893ko urtarrilaren 12a - Nurenberg, 1946ko urriaren 15a) alemaniar politikari eta militarra izan zen, Hitlerren ordezkaria eta Luftwafferen komandante gorena izandakoa. (eu)
Hermann Göring, ou Goering (Rosenheim, 12 janvier 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 octobre 1946), est un militaire, homme politique et criminel de guerre allemand, dirigeant de premier plan du parti nazi et du gouvernement du Troisième Reich. Décoré comme as de l'aviation pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, il rejoint le parti nazi en 1922. Blessé lors du putsch de la Brasserie en 1923, il développe peu de temps après une dépendance à la morphine dont il ne se débarrassera qu'à la fin de sa vie. Nommé ministre sans portefeuille dans le premier cabinet Hitler en 1933, il est responsable de la création de la Gestapo, organisation dont il cédera le contrôle à Heinrich Himmler en 1934. Il est ensuite nommé commandant en chef de la Luftwaffe en 1935 et ministre de l'Aviation. Il cumule ces titres avec d'autres fonctions dont notamment responsable du Plan de quatre ans, ministre de l'Intérieur de Prusse, chef de la chasse du Reich, Reichsmarschall (plus haut grade de toute la Wehrmacht), etc. Pendant la durée du régime, il amasse une fortune gigantesque à coups de pressions, rackets internes au régime et spoliation des biens juifs. Il est connu pour son goût du luxe, des diamants ou des châteaux, dont il ordonne la construction en pleine guerre. Condamné à mort par pendaison à l'issue du procès de Nuremberg en raison de ses responsabilités écrasantes tout au long du régime, il se suicide en avalant une capsule de cyanure juste avant son exécution. (fr)
Ba pholaiteoir Naitsíoch agus ceannaire míleata Gearmánach é Hermann Wilhelm Göring (nó Goering, mar a litrítear é freisin) (12 Eanáir 1893 – 15 Deireadh Fómhair 1946), duine de na ceannairí ba thábhachtaí i bPáirtí Náisiúnta Sóisialach Lucht Oibre na Gearmáine (na Naitsithe). Bhí sé ina cheannasaí ar an Luftwaffe, aerfhórsa na Gearmáine, agus an duine a bhí roghnaithe ag Adolf Hitler chun teacht i gcomharbacht air. (ga)
Herman Wilhelm Göring (12 Januari 1893 – 15 Oktober 1946) merupakan tokoh Nazi Jerman dan seorang politikus. (in)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (a volte reso Hermann Goering) (Rosenheim, 12 gennaio 1893 – Norimberga, 15 ottobre 1946) è stato un politico, generale e criminale di guerra tedesco.Abile pilota da caccia delle forze aeree tedesche durante la prima guerra mondiale, nel dopoguerra entrò nel Partito nazista, diventando rapidamente il principale luogotenente di Adolf Hitler. Dotato di grande energia e determinazione, fu accanto ad Hitler con una responsabilità spesso decisiva in tutte le fasi iniziali del nazismo fino alla presa del potere e alla costituzione del Terzo Reich. Dopo la presa del potere, Göring accumulò un gran numero di titoli, cariche, riconoscimenti e beni materiali, seguendo uno stile di vita stravagante e dissoluto. Svolse una importantissima attività politica all'interno del Reich dirigendo, con il titolo supremo di Maresciallo del Reich, la creazione della Luftwaffe, la costituzione della polizia segreta, le attività repressive e il sistema concentrazionario e di sterminio. Con l'inizio della seconda guerra mondiale, Göring, pur mantenendo il ruolo e il titolo di "numero due" del regime, perse progressivamente potere e credibilità di fronte a Hitler, a causa soprattutto delle voci riguardanti la sua possibile ascesa a Führer e della crescente paura di Hitler che questo potesse accadere, nondimeno a causa delle sconfitte della Luftwaffe, non in grado di impedire la distruzione delle città tedesche, né di ostacolare la crescente superiorità aerea del nemico. Si ritirò allora nella sua residenza di Carinhall, da lui fatta costruire in onore della prima moglie, abbandonandosi ad eccessi di vario genere che ne destabilizzarono la salute sia fisica sia mentale. Nel 1945, dopo un fallimentare tentativo di succedere a Hitler e intavolare trattative con i nemici occidentali, venne arrestato dalle SS; una volta rilasciato (dopo la morte di Hitler), si consegnò agli Alleati per poi essere condannato a morte nel processo di Norimberga. Si suicidò alla vigilia dell'esecuzione. Personalità complessa e contraddittoria, dall'intelligenza superiore alla media, Göring dimostrò con le sue azioni una brutale carica di violenza e condivise sostanzialmente, con un ruolo direttivo, tutti i crimini del nazismo. (it)
ヘルマン・ヴィルヘルム・ゲーリング（ドイツ語 : Hermann Wilhelm Göring 、1893年1月12日 ‐ 1946年10月15日）は、ナチス・ドイツの政治家、軍人。ナチ党の最高幹部で総統アドルフ・ヒトラーの後継者であった。ドイツ空軍総司令官であり、軍における最終階級は全ドイツ軍で最高位の国家元帥 (Reichsmarschall)。 第一次世界大戦でエース・パイロットとして名声を得る。戦後の1922年にアドルフ・ヒトラーに惹かれて国家社会主義ドイツ労働者党（ナチ党）に入党。ミュンヘン一揆の失敗で一時亡命生活を送るも、1928年に国会議員に当選し、1932年の選挙でナチ党が第一党となると国会議長に選出された。ナチ党と上流階級の橋渡し役を務めてナチ党の党勢拡大と政権獲得に貢献した。1933年のナチ党政権誕生後にはプロイセン州首相、航空相、ドイツ空軍総司令官、四ヵ年計画全権責任者、ドイツ経済相、森林長官、狩猟長官など要職を歴任し、ヒトラーの後継者に指名されるなど高い政治的地位を占めた。しかし政権内では対外穏健派だったため、対外強硬派のヒトラーと徐々に距離ができ、1930年代終わり頃から政治的影響力を低下させはじめた。第二次世界大戦中にドイツ空軍の劣勢が目立つようになると一層存在感を落とした。しかし戦後のニュルンベルク裁判では最も主要な被告人としてヒトラーとナチ党を弁護し、検察と徹底対決して注目を浴びた。死刑判決を受けた後、執行方法を絞首刑から銃殺刑に変更するよう嘆願したが拒否されたため、それを不服として刑執行前に独房内で服毒自殺した。 (ja)
헤르만 빌헬름 괴링(독일어: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, 문화어: 헤르만 게링그, 1893년 1월 12일 ~ 1946년 10월 15일)은 독일의 군인, 정치인이다. 국가사회주의 독일 노동자당(나치당)의 초기 당원이자, 초기 나치 돌격대(Sturmabteilung/SA)의 지휘관을 지냈고, 게슈타포를 창설했다. 1935년 재군비 선언 이후에는 나치 공군의 총사령관(제국원수)으로 공군을 창설하고 육성했다. 그 자신이 제1차 세계 대전 당시 전투기 에이스였다. 제2차 세계 대전 종전 이후에 뉘른베르크 재판에서 사형을 선고받았지만, 독일로부터 나라가 5년이나 박살나고 2000만명이 사망, 1000만이 부상당한 소련 수석 판사인 이오나 니키첸코가 길길이 날뛰며 군인들 총살형에 대해 반대해 군인의 사형 방법인 총살형이 아닌 교수형으로 결정되자 절망하다 사형이 집행되기 전날에 자신이 수감된 감방에서 자살했다. (ko)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 12 januari 1893 – Neurenberg, 15 oktober 1946) was een Duits politicus, militair leider en een vooraanstaand lid van de NSDAP. (nl)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ou Goering); (Rosenheim, 12 de janeiro de 1893 — Nuremberga, 15 de outubro de 1946) foi um militar alemão, político e líder do Partido Nacional-Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães (NSDAP). Veterano da Primeira Guerra Mundial, em que participou como piloto de aeronaves, atingindo o estatuto de Ás da aviação, recebeu a cobiçada condecoração Pour le Mérite. Foi o último comandante da unidade Jagdgeschwader 1, anteriormente comandada por Manfred von Richthofen, "o Barão Vermelho". Membro do Partido Nazi, NSDAP, desde os primeiros dias, Göring ficou ferido, em 1923, durante o golpe falhado que ficou conhecido como Putsch de Munique. Devido aos seus ferimentos, desenvolveu dependência de morfina até ao fim da sua vida. Em 1933, fundou a Gestapo. Göring foi nomeado para comandante-chefe da Luftwaffe, a força aérea alemã, em 1935, uma posição que manteve até ao final da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em 1940, Göring encontrava-se no auge do seu poder e influência; como ministro encarregado pelo Plano Quadrienal, ele era responsável por uma grande parte do funcionamento da economia alemã na preparação para a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Adolf Hitler promoveu-o ao posto de Reichsmarschall, o mais elevado em relação aos outros comandantes da Wehrmacht e, em 1941, Hitler nomeou-o como seu sucessor e assessor em todos os gabinetes. A posição de Göring perante Hitler ficou substancialmente enfraquecida a partir de 1942, devido à incapacidade da Luftwaffe de proteger as cidades alemãs dos bombardeamentos dos Aliados, e de reabastecer as forças do Eixo cercadas em Estalinegrado. Göring retirou-se, quase por completo, da cena política e militar e concentrou-se na compra de propriedades e de arte, grande parte das quais roubadas às vítimas judaicas do Holocausto. Informado a 22 de abril de 1945 de que Hitler tencionava cometer suicídio, Göring enviou um telegrama a Hitler solicitando assumir o controlo do Reich. Hitler decidiu, então, retirar Göring de todas suas funções, expulsá-lo do partido e ordenar a sua prisão. Depois da Guerra, Göring foi culpado de crimes de guerra e crimes contra a humanidade nos Julgamentos de Nuremberga. Foi condenado à morte por enforcamento, mas cometeu suicídio ingerindo cianeto na noite anterior à sua execução. (pt)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, född 12 januari 1893 i Rosenheim, död 15 oktober 1946 i Nürnberg, var en tysk politiker, militär och dömd krigsförbrytare. Han tillhörde ledarskiktet inom Nationalsocialistiska tyska arbetarepartiet (NSDAP) och var riksdagsledamot från 1928. Från 1932 till 1945 var Göring tyska riksdagens talman. Göring var en mycket framgångsrik stridspilot under första världskriget och tilldelades 1918 utmärkelsen Pour le Mérite. Han var den siste befälhavaren för Richthofeneskadern. År 1935 utsågs Göring till befälhavare för Luftwaffe, det tyska flygvapnet. I mitten av 1940 utnämnde Adolf Hitler honom till riksmarskalk (Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches). I april 1938 utsågs Göring till Hitlers ställföreträdare i samtliga ämbeten och året därpå officiellt utnämnd till Hitlers ställföreträdare och efterträdare som rikskansler. Under år 1942, då Tysklands krigslycka vände, försämrades Görings relation till Hitler. Göring grundade Gestapo och var ansvarig för inrättandet av de första koncentrationslägren. År 1941 gav han Reinhard Heydrich i uppdrag att organisera den så kallade slutgiltiga lösningen. Efter andra världskriget ställdes Göring inför rätta inför den internationella militärdomstolen i Nürnberg och dömdes till döden för planerandet av anfallskrig, brott mot freden, krigsförbrytelser och brott mot mänskligheten. Han begick dock självmord natten innan han skulle avrättas genom att svälja en cyanidkapsel. (sv)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ur. 12 stycznia 1893 w Rosenheim, zm. 15 października 1946 w Norymberdze) – niemiecki oficer i działacz nazistowski, jeden z twórców i głównych postaci hitlerowskiej III Rzeszy, zbrodniarz wojenny. As myśliwski z czasów I wojny światowej, w latach 1933–1945 minister lotnictwa Rzeszy, w latach 1935–1945 dowódca niemieckiego lotnictwa wojskowego (Luftwaffe). W latach 1928–1945 poseł do Reichstagu. Od 10 kwietnia 1933 do 23 kwietnia 1945 premier Prus, największego niemieckiego kraju związkowego. Był jedną z najważniejszych osób, które umożliwiły zbudowanie potęgi Adolfa Hitlera. Zmarł w wyniku samobójstwa. (pl)
Ге́рман Вильге́льм Ге́ринг (немецкое произношение Гёринг; нем. Hermann Wilhelm Göring, немецкий: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ]; 12 января 1893, близ Розенхайма, Германская империя — 15 октября 1946, Нюрнберг, Американская зона оккупации Германии) — политический, государственный и военный деятель нацистской Германии, рейхсминистр авиации, рейхсмаршал Великогерманского рейха (19 июня 1940), обергруппенфюрер СА, почётный обергруппенфюрер СС, генерал пехоты и генерал земельной полиции. Сыграл важную роль в организации люфтваффе, военно-воздушных сил Германии, верховное командование которыми Геринг осуществлял практически весь период Второй мировой войны в Европе (1939—1945). Геринг являлся одним из наиболее влиятельных людей в нацистской Германии, вторым по влиянию в НСДАП после Гитлера, а согласно декрету от 29 июня 1941 года он официально являлся «преемником фюрера» и имел полномочия отдавать прямые инструкции Верховному командованию вермахта. 23 апреля 1945 года по приказу Гитлера лишён всех званий и должностей и исключён из партии. Приговором Нюрнбергского трибунала был признан одним из главных военных преступников и приговорён к смертной казни через повешение, но накануне казни покончил жизнь самоубийством. (ru)
赫爾曼·威廉·戈林（德語：Hermann Wilhelm Göring，1893年1月12日－1946年10月15日）是納粹德國黨政軍領袖，與「元首」阿道夫·希特勒關係極為親密，在納粹黨內影響巨大。他擔任過德國空軍總司令、「蓋世太保」首長、「四年計劃」負責人、、、經濟部長、普魯士總理等跨及黨政軍三部門的諸多重要職務，并曾被希特勒指定为接班人。 戈林於第一次世界大戰中為著名的「王牌飛行員」，有著擊落22架敵機的紀錄，并獲得德國最高級別軍事勳章「功勳勳章」，戰爭後期還擔任曾為「紅男爵」曼弗雷德·冯·里希特霍芬所領導的第1戰鬥機聯隊最後一任指揮官。戰後戈林加入納粹黨，為該黨最早的一批成員，並參與了1923年失敗的「啤酒館政變」，期間身中槍傷。為此，後來他一直靠注射嗎啡來減緩痛楚，結果終生麻藥成癮，體型也從健壯轉為肥胖。1933年，戈林創立秘密警察機關「蓋世太保」。1934年，他還頒布了納粹統治下聞名的狩獵法案，該法保護了野生動物的繁衍與棲息，並大規模地進行都市綠化。1935年，戈林被希特勒任命為德國空軍總司令，並憑藉他個人的政治影響力為空軍取得大量預算與獨立地位，令其快速建軍。 戈林以德國空軍最高領袖的身份參與了第二次世界大戰。儘管他本人並不直接干預作戰細節，對現代化空軍技術也缺乏了解，但還是對德軍有相當大的影響，特別是敦克爾克戰役、不列顛戰役及史達林格勒戰役這三場決定性戰鬥的發展；德國海軍航空兵、空降部隊和空軍地面部隊的建立、指揮反盟軍轟炸作戰等等。1940年德國打敗法國後，戈林的權力與聲望達到最高峰：希特勒將其晉升為「国家元帅」（或譯作「帝國大元帥」），高過傳統意義上的德國元帥，隔年還指名戈林為其政治接班人。1942年後，隨著德國軍事情勢惡化，戈林的聲望和希特勒對其的信任逐漸降低，于是戈林從此不管政治與戰爭事務，專注於掠奪各佔領地的藝術品與財物，奢華度日。 1945年4月22日，戈林得知希特勒將自殺，遂發電報告知希特勒，自己將接掌德國大權。希特勒認為此為逼宮的表現，便下令將戈林逮捕，同時罷黜全部官職並開除黨籍。德國二戰投降後，戈林選擇向美軍投降，審判納粹領袖的紐倫堡審判中還因為其精明的辯駁一度陷入膠著，但最終被判犯下、破壞和平罪、戰爭罪和反人道罪，並處以絞刑，但在行刑前一天晚上，戈林服毒自殺身亡。 (zh)
Ге́рман Вільге́льм Ге́рінг (нім. файл; 12 січня 1893, Розенгайм, Баварія — 15 жовтня 1946, Нюрнберг, Бізонія) — німецький політичний, державний і військовий діяч часів Третього Райху, рейхсміністр авіації, рейхсмаршал (1940), СА-обергрупенфюрер (1 січня 1933), почесний СС-обергрупенфюрер і генерал поліції. Президент Рейхстагу, міністр-президент та рейхсштатгальтер Пруссії. Кавалер Pour le Mérite (1918), Великого (1940) та Лицарського хрестів Залізного хреста (1939). Найближчий соратник Адольфа Гітлера, названий «наці номер два», другий після А. Гітлера військовий і економічний керівник Третього Райху. Брав участь у Першій світовій війні, був льотчиком-асом, командиром ескадрильї. Від 1922 року — член Націонал-соціалістичної робітничої партії Німеччини (НСДАП) і керівник штурмових загонів. Як політичний уповноважений А. Гітлера (від 1930) та голова Райхстагу (від серпня 1932), відіграв активну роль у встановленні диктатури НСДАП, після чого став імперським міністром авіації й головою уряду Пруссії. Головнокомандувач повітряних сил (від 1935). Керівник одного з найбільших державних промислових концернів (нім. Reichswerke Hermann Göring), який був створений шляхом приєднання підприємств окупованих Німеччиною країн. Один з організаторів терору в Німеччині та в окупованих Німеччиною країнах. Причетний до організації «остаточного розв'язання єврейського питання». На Нюрнберзькому процесі визнаний одним з головних військових злочинців. Засуджений до смертної кари через повішення. (uk)
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Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12. ledna 1893 sanatorium Marienbad v Rosenheimu, Bavorsko – 15. října 1946 Norimberk, sebevražda) byl německý nacistický politik a válečný zločinec. Původně letec, pak poslanec a předseda říšského sněmu. Zakladatel gestapa, ministr letectví, vrchní velitel Luftwaffe, říšský maršál, zástupce Hitlera po většinu druhé světové války. (cs)
Hermann GÖRING (12-a de januaro 1893 – 15-a de oktobro 1946) estis germana nazia politikisto, militestro, estra membro de la nazia partio, antaŭoficiro en la Nazia Germanio kaj estro de la germana milita aviadilaro Luftwaffe. Li estis akuzita pri krimoj dum milito kaj krimoj kontraŭ homeco ĉe la Proceso de Nürnberg en 1945-1946 kaj kondamnita al mortopuno per pendumo, sed du horojn antaŭ la ekzekuto li memmortigis sin pere de kalia cianido. Li havis aristokratan heredon kaj estis heroo de la Unua Mondmilito pro la gajno de la . (eo)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 1893ko urtarrilaren 12a - Nurenberg, 1946ko urriaren 15a) alemaniar politikari eta militarra izan zen, Hitlerren ordezkaria eta Luftwafferen komandante gorena izandakoa. (eu)
Ba pholaiteoir Naitsíoch agus ceannaire míleata Gearmánach é Hermann Wilhelm Göring (nó Goering, mar a litrítear é freisin) (12 Eanáir 1893 – 15 Deireadh Fómhair 1946), duine de na ceannairí ba thábhachtaí i bPáirtí Náisiúnta Sóisialach Lucht Oibre na Gearmáine (na Naitsithe). Bhí sé ina cheannasaí ar an Luftwaffe, aerfhórsa na Gearmáine, agus an duine a bhí roghnaithe ag Adolf Hitler chun teacht i gcomharbacht air. (ga)
Herman Wilhelm Göring (12 Januari 1893 – 15 Oktober 1946) merupakan tokoh Nazi Jerman dan seorang politikus. (in)
ヘルマン・ヴィルヘルム・ゲーリング（ドイツ語 : Hermann Wilhelm Göring 、1893年1月12日 ‐ 1946年10月15日）は、ナチス・ドイツの政治家、軍人。ナチ党の最高幹部で総統アドルフ・ヒトラーの後継者であった。ドイツ空軍総司令官であり、軍における最終階級は全ドイツ軍で最高位の国家元帥 (Reichsmarschall)。 第一次世界大戦でエース・パイロットとして名声を得る。戦後の1922年にアドルフ・ヒトラーに惹かれて国家社会主義ドイツ労働者党（ナチ党）に入党。ミュンヘン一揆の失敗で一時亡命生活を送るも、1928年に国会議員に当選し、1932年の選挙でナチ党が第一党となると国会議長に選出された。ナチ党と上流階級の橋渡し役を務めてナチ党の党勢拡大と政権獲得に貢献した。1933年のナチ党政権誕生後にはプロイセン州首相、航空相、ドイツ空軍総司令官、四ヵ年計画全権責任者、ドイツ経済相、森林長官、狩猟長官など要職を歴任し、ヒトラーの後継者に指名されるなど高い政治的地位を占めた。しかし政権内では対外穏健派だったため、対外強硬派のヒトラーと徐々に距離ができ、1930年代終わり頃から政治的影響力を低下させはじめた。第二次世界大戦中にドイツ空軍の劣勢が目立つようになると一層存在感を落とした。しかし戦後のニュルンベルク裁判では最も主要な被告人としてヒトラーとナチ党を弁護し、検察と徹底対決して注目を浴びた。死刑判決を受けた後、執行方法を絞首刑から銃殺刑に変更するよう嘆願したが拒否されたため、それを不服として刑執行前に独房内で服毒自殺した。 (ja)
헤르만 빌헬름 괴링(독일어: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, 문화어: 헤르만 게링그, 1893년 1월 12일 ~ 1946년 10월 15일)은 독일의 군인, 정치인이다. 국가사회주의 독일 노동자당(나치당)의 초기 당원이자, 초기 나치 돌격대(Sturmabteilung/SA)의 지휘관을 지냈고, 게슈타포를 창설했다. 1935년 재군비 선언 이후에는 나치 공군의 총사령관(제국원수)으로 공군을 창설하고 육성했다. 그 자신이 제1차 세계 대전 당시 전투기 에이스였다. 제2차 세계 대전 종전 이후에 뉘른베르크 재판에서 사형을 선고받았지만, 독일로부터 나라가 5년이나 박살나고 2000만명이 사망, 1000만이 부상당한 소련 수석 판사인 이오나 니키첸코가 길길이 날뛰며 군인들 총살형에 대해 반대해 군인의 사형 방법인 총살형이 아닌 교수형으로 결정되자 절망하다 사형이 집행되기 전날에 자신이 수감된 감방에서 자살했다. (ko)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 12 januari 1893 – Neurenberg, 15 oktober 1946) was een Duits politicus, militair leider en een vooraanstaand lid van de NSDAP. (nl)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ur. 12 stycznia 1893 w Rosenheim, zm. 15 października 1946 w Norymberdze) – niemiecki oficer i działacz nazistowski, jeden z twórców i głównych postaci hitlerowskiej III Rzeszy, zbrodniarz wojenny. As myśliwski z czasów I wojny światowej, w latach 1933–1945 minister lotnictwa Rzeszy, w latach 1935–1945 dowódca niemieckiego lotnictwa wojskowego (Luftwaffe). W latach 1928–1945 poseł do Reichstagu. Od 10 kwietnia 1933 do 23 kwietnia 1945 premier Prus, największego niemieckiego kraju związkowego. Był jedną z najważniejszych osób, które umożliwiły zbudowanie potęgi Adolfa Hitlera. Zmarł w wyniku samobójstwa. (pl)
هيرمان غورينغ (12 يناير 1893 إلى 15 أكتوبر 1946) (بالألمانية: Hermann Göring سماع: (؟·معلومات)): قائد عسكري نازي، ومؤسس الجهاز السري (الجستابو)، وقائد قوات الطيران الألمانية، خلال الحرب العالمية الثانية. ولد غورينغ في مدينة روزنهايم البفارية لعائلة غنية، وخدم في الحرب العالمية الأولى كطيار في سلاح الطيران، وقد نال عدة ميداليات لشجاعته في القتال. التحق بالحزب النازي في عام 1922، بعد لقاءه بهتلر، وسرعان ما تم تعيينه قائدًا لقوات الصاعقة النازية، وهي عبارة عن قوات خاصة لحماية أعضاء الحزب. شارك غورينغ هتلر في محاولة الانقلاب الفاشلة على النظام. بحكم صلات غورينغ بالطبقة الأرستقراطية في الحكومة البافارية، أُرسل لبرلين ممثلًا عن الحزب النازي لجلب تمويل مالي للحزب، وقد أقنع هتلر بعد ذلك بالانضمام للبرلمان، وبالفعل أصبح غورينغ المتحدث باسم البرلمان الألماني (الرايخستاغ) عام 1932. (ar)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (o Goering; (?·pàg.) - Rosenheim, Baviera, 12 de gener de 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 d'octubre de 1946) fou un polític alemany, heroi de l'aviació a la Primera Guerra Mundial i un líder destacat del NSDAP. Va participar en el fallit cop d'estat del 8 de novembre de 1923. Es convertí durant el Tercer Reich en el segon home més important després d'Adolf Hitler, amb els títols de ministre plenipotenciari del Reich per a Prússia, ministre de l'Economia, coordinador del pla quadriennal i mariscal del Reich amb el comandament de Luftwaffe, les forces aèries del Reich. Formalment nomenat per Hitler com el seu successor, fou condemnat el 1946 als Judicis de Nuremberg per crims de guerra i crims contra la humanitat durant la Segona Guerra Mundial i sentenciat a mort, per bé que (ca)
Ο Χέρμαν Βίλχελμ Γκέρινγκ (Hermann Wilhelm Göring), (Ρόζενχαϊμ, 12 Ιανουαρίου 1893 - Νυρεμβέργη, 15 Οκτωβρίου 1946) ήταν από τους γνωστότερους Γερμανούς πιλότους του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, εξέχον μέλος της κυβέρνησης του Αδόλφου Χίτλερ και καταδικασμένος εγκληματίας πολέμου.Κατά τη διάρκεια της εξουσίας του Ναζιστικού κόμματος, ο Γκέρινγκ υπήρξε ο δεύτερος σημαντικός πολιτικός του κράτους, μετά τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ. Το πρώτο του αξίωμα στην κυβέρνηση ήταν αυτό του «Υπουργού άνευ Χαρτοφυλακίου», χάρη στο οποίο ίδρυσε την Γκεστάπο, ενώ αργότερα ως «Υπουργός Αεροπορίας» τέθηκε επικεφαλής της επανιδρυθείσας γερμανικής αεροπορίας, της Λούφτβαφφε. Επίσης υπηρέτησε ως «Υπουργός Οικονομικών» τα έτη 1937-1938. (el)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (* 12. Januar 1893 in Rosenheim; † 15. Oktober 1946 in Nürnberg) war ein führender deutscher nationalsozialistischer Politiker und Kriegsverbrecher. Ab Mai 1935 war er Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe. Ab 1936/1937 übernahm er die Führung der deutschen Wirtschaft und des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums. Er organisierte systematisch Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen gegen Juden und erließ am 12. November 1938 die Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben. Im Juli 1940 – nach dem schnellen Ende des Westfeldzuges – ernannte Hitler Göring zum Reichsmarschall. (de)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (también escrito Goering; pronunciación, [ˈɡøː.ʁɪŋ]; Rosenheim, 12 de enero de 1893-Núremberg, 15 de octubre de 1946) fue un político, comandante de la Luftwaffe y criminal de guerra nazi. Fue miembro prominente del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán (NSDAP) y uno de los líderes del régimen de Adolf Hitler. As de la aviación durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, fue galardonado con la codiciada medalla Pour le Mérite. Asimismo, fue el último comandante de la Jagdgeschwader I, la unidad de cazas de combate que había liderado Manfred von Richthofen, el Barón Rojo. (es)
Hermann Göring, ou Goering (Rosenheim, 12 janvier 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 octobre 1946), est un militaire, homme politique et criminel de guerre allemand, dirigeant de premier plan du parti nazi et du gouvernement du Troisième Reich. Condamné à mort par pendaison à l'issue du procès de Nuremberg en raison de ses responsabilités écrasantes tout au long du régime, il se suicide en avalant une capsule de cyanure juste avant son exécution. (fr)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (a volte reso Hermann Goering) (Rosenheim, 12 gennaio 1893 – Norimberga, 15 ottobre 1946) è stato un politico, generale e criminale di guerra tedesco.Abile pilota da caccia delle forze aeree tedesche durante la prima guerra mondiale, nel dopoguerra entrò nel Partito nazista, diventando rapidamente il principale luogotenente di Adolf Hitler. Dotato di grande energia e determinazione, fu accanto ad Hitler con una responsabilità spesso decisiva in tutte le fasi iniziali del nazismo fino alla presa del potere e alla costituzione del Terzo Reich. (it)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ou Goering); (Rosenheim, 12 de janeiro de 1893 — Nuremberga, 15 de outubro de 1946) foi um militar alemão, político e líder do Partido Nacional-Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães (NSDAP). Veterano da Primeira Guerra Mundial, em que participou como piloto de aeronaves, atingindo o estatuto de Ás da aviação, recebeu a cobiçada condecoração Pour le Mérite. Foi o último comandante da unidade Jagdgeschwader 1, anteriormente comandada por Manfred von Richthofen, "o Barão Vermelho". (pt)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, född 12 januari 1893 i Rosenheim, död 15 oktober 1946 i Nürnberg, var en tysk politiker, militär och dömd krigsförbrytare. Han tillhörde ledarskiktet inom Nationalsocialistiska tyska arbetarepartiet (NSDAP) och var riksdagsledamot från 1928. Från 1932 till 1945 var Göring tyska riksdagens talman. I april 1938 utsågs Göring till Hitlers ställföreträdare i samtliga ämbeten och året därpå officiellt utnämnd till Hitlers ställföreträdare och efterträdare som rikskansler. Under år 1942, då Tysklands krigslycka vände, försämrades Görings relation till Hitler. (sv)
Ге́рман Вильге́льм Ге́ринг (немецкое произношение Гёринг; нем. Hermann Wilhelm Göring, немецкий: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ]; 12 января 1893, близ Розенхайма, Германская империя — 15 октября 1946, Нюрнберг, Американская зона оккупации Германии) — политический, государственный и военный деятель нацистской Германии, рейхсминистр авиации, рейхсмаршал Великогерманского рейха (19 июня 1940), обергруппенфюрер СА, почётный обергруппенфюрер СС, генерал пехоты и генерал земельной полиции. (ru)
Ге́рман Вільге́льм Ге́рінг (нім. файл; 12 січня 1893, Розенгайм, Баварія — 15 жовтня 1946, Нюрнберг, Бізонія) — німецький політичний, державний і військовий діяч часів Третього Райху, рейхсміністр авіації, рейхсмаршал (1940), СА-обергрупенфюрер (1 січня 1933), почесний СС-обергрупенфюрер і генерал поліції. Президент Рейхстагу, міністр-президент та рейхсштатгальтер Пруссії. Кавалер Pour le Mérite (1918), Великого (1940) та Лицарського хрестів Залізного хреста (1939). (uk)
赫爾曼·威廉·戈林（德語：Hermann Wilhelm Göring，1893年1月12日－1946年10月15日）是納粹德國黨政軍領袖，與「元首」阿道夫·希特勒關係極為親密，在納粹黨內影響巨大。他擔任過德國空軍總司令、「蓋世太保」首長、「四年計劃」負責人、、、經濟部長、普魯士總理等跨及黨政軍三部門的諸多重要職務，并曾被希特勒指定为接班人。 戈林於第一次世界大戰中為著名的「王牌飛行員」，有著擊落22架敵機的紀錄，并獲得德國最高級別軍事勳章「功勳勳章」，戰爭後期還擔任曾為「紅男爵」曼弗雷德·冯·里希特霍芬所領導的第1戰鬥機聯隊最後一任指揮官。戰後戈林加入納粹黨，為該黨最早的一批成員，並參與了1923年失敗的「啤酒館政變」，期間身中槍傷。為此，後來他一直靠注射嗎啡來減緩痛楚，結果終生麻藥成癮，體型也從健壯轉為肥胖。1933年，戈林創立秘密警察機關「蓋世太保」。1934年，他還頒布了納粹統治下聞名的狩獵法案，該法保護了野生動物的繁衍與棲息，並大規模地進行都市綠化。1935年，戈林被希特勒任命為德國空軍總司令，並憑藉他個人的政治影響力為空軍取得大量預算與獨立地位，令其快速建軍。 (zh)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12. ledna 1893 sanatorium Marienbad v Rosenheimu, Bavorsko – 15. října 1946 Norimberk, sebevražda) byl německý nacistický politik a válečný zločinec. Původně letec, pak poslanec a předseda říšského sněmu. Zakladatel gestapa, ministr letectví, vrchní velitel Luftwaffe, říšský maršál, zástupce Hitlera po většinu druhé světové války. (cs)
Hermann GÖRING (12-a de januaro 1893 – 15-a de oktobro 1946) estis germana nazia politikisto, militestro, estra membro de la nazia partio, antaŭoficiro en la Nazia Germanio kaj estro de la germana milita aviadilaro Luftwaffe. Li estis akuzita pri krimoj dum milito kaj krimoj kontraŭ homeco ĉe la Proceso de Nürnberg en 1945-1946 kaj kondamnita al mortopuno per pendumo, sed du horojn antaŭ la ekzekuto li memmortigis sin pere de kalia cianido. Li havis aristokratan heredon kaj estis heroo de la Unua Mondmilito pro la gajno de la . (eo)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 1893ko urtarrilaren 12a - Nurenberg, 1946ko urriaren 15a) alemaniar politikari eta militarra izan zen, Hitlerren ordezkaria eta Luftwafferen komandante gorena izandakoa. (eu)
Ba pholaiteoir Naitsíoch agus ceannaire míleata Gearmánach é Hermann Wilhelm Göring (nó Goering, mar a litrítear é freisin) (12 Eanáir 1893 – 15 Deireadh Fómhair 1946), duine de na ceannairí ba thábhachtaí i bPáirtí Náisiúnta Sóisialach Lucht Oibre na Gearmáine (na Naitsithe). Bhí sé ina cheannasaí ar an Luftwaffe, aerfhórsa na Gearmáine, agus an duine a bhí roghnaithe ag Adolf Hitler chun teacht i gcomharbacht air. (ga)
Herman Wilhelm Göring (12 Januari 1893 – 15 Oktober 1946) merupakan tokoh Nazi Jerman dan seorang politikus. (in)
ヘルマン・ヴィルヘルム・ゲーリング（ドイツ語 : Hermann Wilhelm Göring 、1893年1月12日 ‐ 1946年10月15日）は、ナチス・ドイツの政治家、軍人。ナチ党の最高幹部で総統アドルフ・ヒトラーの後継者であった。ドイツ空軍総司令官であり、軍における最終階級は全ドイツ軍で最高位の国家元帥 (Reichsmarschall)。 第一次世界大戦でエース・パイロットとして名声を得る。戦後の1922年にアドルフ・ヒトラーに惹かれて国家社会主義ドイツ労働者党（ナチ党）に入党。ミュンヘン一揆の失敗で一時亡命生活を送るも、1928年に国会議員に当選し、1932年の選挙でナチ党が第一党となると国会議長に選出された。ナチ党と上流階級の橋渡し役を務めてナチ党の党勢拡大と政権獲得に貢献した。1933年のナチ党政権誕生後にはプロイセン州首相、航空相、ドイツ空軍総司令官、四ヵ年計画全権責任者、ドイツ経済相、森林長官、狩猟長官など要職を歴任し、ヒトラーの後継者に指名されるなど高い政治的地位を占めた。しかし政権内では対外穏健派だったため、対外強硬派のヒトラーと徐々に距離ができ、1930年代終わり頃から政治的影響力を低下させはじめた。第二次世界大戦中にドイツ空軍の劣勢が目立つようになると一層存在感を落とした。しかし戦後のニュルンベルク裁判では最も主要な被告人としてヒトラーとナチ党を弁護し、検察と徹底対決して注目を浴びた。死刑判決を受けた後、執行方法を絞首刑から銃殺刑に変更するよう嘆願したが拒否されたため、それを不服として刑執行前に独房内で服毒自殺した。 (ja)
헤르만 빌헬름 괴링(독일어: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, 문화어: 헤르만 게링그, 1893년 1월 12일 ~ 1946년 10월 15일)은 독일의 군인, 정치인이다. 국가사회주의 독일 노동자당(나치당)의 초기 당원이자, 초기 나치 돌격대(Sturmabteilung/SA)의 지휘관을 지냈고, 게슈타포를 창설했다. 1935년 재군비 선언 이후에는 나치 공군의 총사령관(제국원수)으로 공군을 창설하고 육성했다. 그 자신이 제1차 세계 대전 당시 전투기 에이스였다. 제2차 세계 대전 종전 이후에 뉘른베르크 재판에서 사형을 선고받았지만, 독일로부터 나라가 5년이나 박살나고 2000만명이 사망, 1000만이 부상당한 소련 수석 판사인 이오나 니키첸코가 길길이 날뛰며 군인들 총살형에 대해 반대해 군인의 사형 방법인 총살형이 아닌 교수형으로 결정되자 절망하다 사형이 집행되기 전날에 자신이 수감된 감방에서 자살했다. (ko)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Rosenheim, 12 januari 1893 – Neurenberg, 15 oktober 1946) was een Duits politicus, militair leider en een vooraanstaand lid van de NSDAP. (nl)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ur. 12 stycznia 1893 w Rosenheim, zm. 15 października 1946 w Norymberdze) – niemiecki oficer i działacz nazistowski, jeden z twórców i głównych postaci hitlerowskiej III Rzeszy, zbrodniarz wojenny. As myśliwski z czasów I wojny światowej, w latach 1933–1945 minister lotnictwa Rzeszy, w latach 1935–1945 dowódca niemieckiego lotnictwa wojskowego (Luftwaffe). W latach 1928–1945 poseł do Reichstagu. Od 10 kwietnia 1933 do 23 kwietnia 1945 premier Prus, największego niemieckiego kraju związkowego. Był jedną z najważniejszych osób, które umożliwiły zbudowanie potęgi Adolfa Hitlera. Zmarł w wyniku samobójstwa. (pl)
هيرمان غورينغ (12 يناير 1893 إلى 15 أكتوبر 1946) (بالألمانية: Hermann Göring سماع: (؟·معلومات)): قائد عسكري نازي، ومؤسس الجهاز السري (الجستابو)، وقائد قوات الطيران الألمانية، خلال الحرب العالمية الثانية. ولد غورينغ في مدينة روزنهايم البفارية لعائلة غنية، وخدم في الحرب العالمية الأولى كطيار في سلاح الطيران، وقد نال عدة ميداليات لشجاعته في القتال. التحق بالحزب النازي في عام 1922، بعد لقاءه بهتلر، وسرعان ما تم تعيينه قائدًا لقوات الصاعقة النازية، وهي عبارة عن قوات خاصة لحماية أعضاء الحزب. شارك غورينغ هتلر في محاولة الانقلاب الفاشلة على النظام. بحكم صلات غورينغ بالطبقة الأرستقراطية في الحكومة البافارية، أُرسل لبرلين ممثلًا عن الحزب النازي لجلب تمويل مالي للحزب، وقد أقنع هتلر بعد ذلك بالانضمام للبرلمان، وبالفعل أصبح غورينغ المتحدث باسم البرلمان الألماني (الرايخستاغ) عام 1932. (ar)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (o Goering; (?·pàg.) - Rosenheim, Baviera, 12 de gener de 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 d'octubre de 1946) fou un polític alemany, heroi de l'aviació a la Primera Guerra Mundial i un líder destacat del NSDAP. Va participar en el fallit cop d'estat del 8 de novembre de 1923. Es convertí durant el Tercer Reich en el segon home més important després d'Adolf Hitler, amb els títols de ministre plenipotenciari del Reich per a Prússia, ministre de l'Economia, coordinador del pla quadriennal i mariscal del Reich amb el comandament de Luftwaffe, les forces aèries del Reich. Formalment nomenat per Hitler com el seu successor, fou condemnat el 1946 als Judicis de Nuremberg per crims de guerra i crims contra la humanitat durant la Segona Guerra Mundial i sentenciat a mort, per bé que (ca)
Ο Χέρμαν Βίλχελμ Γκέρινγκ (Hermann Wilhelm Göring), (Ρόζενχαϊμ, 12 Ιανουαρίου 1893 - Νυρεμβέργη, 15 Οκτωβρίου 1946) ήταν από τους γνωστότερους Γερμανούς πιλότους του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, εξέχον μέλος της κυβέρνησης του Αδόλφου Χίτλερ και καταδικασμένος εγκληματίας πολέμου.Κατά τη διάρκεια της εξουσίας του Ναζιστικού κόμματος, ο Γκέρινγκ υπήρξε ο δεύτερος σημαντικός πολιτικός του κράτους, μετά τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ. Το πρώτο του αξίωμα στην κυβέρνηση ήταν αυτό του «Υπουργού άνευ Χαρτοφυλακίου», χάρη στο οποίο ίδρυσε την Γκεστάπο, ενώ αργότερα ως «Υπουργός Αεροπορίας» τέθηκε επικεφαλής της επανιδρυθείσας γερμανικής αεροπορίας, της Λούφτβαφφε. Επίσης υπηρέτησε ως «Υπουργός Οικονομικών» τα έτη 1937-1938. (el)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (* 12. Januar 1893 in Rosenheim; † 15. Oktober 1946 in Nürnberg) war ein führender deutscher nationalsozialistischer Politiker und Kriegsverbrecher. Ab Mai 1935 war er Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe. Ab 1936/1937 übernahm er die Führung der deutschen Wirtschaft und des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums. Er organisierte systematisch Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen gegen Juden und erließ am 12. November 1938 die Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben. Im Juli 1940 – nach dem schnellen Ende des Westfeldzuges – ernannte Hitler Göring zum Reichsmarschall. (de)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (también escrito Goering; pronunciación, [ˈɡøː.ʁɪŋ]; Rosenheim, 12 de enero de 1893-Núremberg, 15 de octubre de 1946) fue un político, comandante de la Luftwaffe y criminal de guerra nazi. Fue miembro prominente del Partido Nacionalsocialista Obrero Alemán (NSDAP) y uno de los líderes del régimen de Adolf Hitler. As de la aviación durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, fue galardonado con la codiciada medalla Pour le Mérite. Asimismo, fue el último comandante de la Jagdgeschwader I, la unidad de cazas de combate que había liderado Manfred von Richthofen, el Barón Rojo. (es)
Hermann Göring, ou Goering (Rosenheim, 12 janvier 1893 – Nuremberg, 15 octobre 1946), est un militaire, homme politique et criminel de guerre allemand, dirigeant de premier plan du parti nazi et du gouvernement du Troisième Reich. Condamné à mort par pendaison à l'issue du procès de Nuremberg en raison de ses responsabilités écrasantes tout au long du régime, il se suicide en avalant une capsule de cyanure juste avant son exécution. (fr)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (a volte reso Hermann Goering) (Rosenheim, 12 gennaio 1893 – Norimberga, 15 ottobre 1946) è stato un politico, generale e criminale di guerra tedesco.Abile pilota da caccia delle forze aeree tedesche durante la prima guerra mondiale, nel dopoguerra entrò nel Partito nazista, diventando rapidamente il principale luogotenente di Adolf Hitler. Dotato di grande energia e determinazione, fu accanto ad Hitler con una responsabilità spesso decisiva in tutte le fasi iniziali del nazismo fino alla presa del potere e alla costituzione del Terzo Reich. (it)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (ou Goering); (Rosenheim, 12 de janeiro de 1893 — Nuremberga, 15 de outubro de 1946) foi um militar alemão, político e líder do Partido Nacional-Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães (NSDAP). Veterano da Primeira Guerra Mundial, em que participou como piloto de aeronaves, atingindo o estatuto de Ás da aviação, recebeu a cobiçada condecoração Pour le Mérite. Foi o último comandante da unidade Jagdgeschwader 1, anteriormente comandada por Manfred von Richthofen, "o Barão Vermelho". (pt)
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, född 12 januari 1893 i Rosenheim, död 15 oktober 1946 i Nürnberg, var en tysk politiker, militär och dömd krigsförbrytare. Han tillhörde ledarskiktet inom Nationalsocialistiska tyska arbetarepartiet (NSDAP) och var riksdagsledamot från 1928. Från 1932 till 1945 var Göring tyska riksdagens talman. I april 1938 utsågs Göring till Hitlers ställföreträdare i samtliga ämbeten och året därpå officiellt utnämnd till Hitlers ställföreträdare och efterträdare som rikskansler. Under år 1942, då Tysklands krigslycka vände, försämrades Görings relation till Hitler. (sv)
Ге́рман Вильге́льм Ге́ринг (немецкое произношение Гёринг; нем. Hermann Wilhelm Göring, немецкий: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ]; 12 января 1893, близ Розенхайма, Германская империя — 15 октября 1946, Нюрнберг, Американская зона оккупации Германии) — политический, государственный и военный деятель нацистской Германии, рейхсминистр авиации, рейхсмаршал Великогерманского рейха (19 июня 1940), обергруппенфюрер СА, почётный обергруппенфюрер СС, генерал пехоты и генерал земельной полиции. (ru)
Ге́рман Вільге́льм Ге́рінг (нім. файл; 12 січня 1893, Розенгайм, Баварія — 15 жовтня 1946, Нюрнберг, Бізонія) — німецький політичний, державний і військовий діяч часів Третього Райху, рейхсміністр авіації, рейхсмаршал (1940), СА-обергрупенфюрер (1 січня 1933), почесний СС-обергрупенфюрер і генерал поліції. Президент Рейхстагу, міністр-президент та рейхсштатгальтер Пруссії. Кавалер Pour le Mérite (1918), Великого (1940) та Лицарського хрестів Залізного хреста (1939). (uk)
赫爾曼·威廉·戈林（德語：Hermann Wilhelm Göring，1893年1月12日－1946年10月15日）是納粹德國黨政軍領袖，與「元首」阿道夫·希特勒關係極為親密，在納粹黨內影響巨大。他擔任過德國空軍總司令、「蓋世太保」首長、「四年計劃」負責人、、、經濟部長、普魯士總理等跨及黨政軍三部門的諸多重要職務，并曾被希特勒指定为接班人。 戈林於第一次世界大戰中為著名的「王牌飛行員」，有著擊落22架敵機的紀錄，并獲得德國最高級別軍事勳章「功勳勳章」，戰爭後期還擔任曾為「紅男爵」曼弗雷德·冯·里希特霍芬所領導的第1戰鬥機聯隊最後一任指揮官。戰後戈林加入納粹黨，為該黨最早的一批成員，並參與了1923年失敗的「啤酒館政變」，期間身中槍傷。為此，後來他一直靠注射嗎啡來減緩痛楚，結果終生麻藥成癮，體型也從健壯轉為肥胖。1933年，戈林創立秘密警察機關「蓋世太保」。1934年，他還頒布了納粹統治下聞名的狩獵法案，該法保護了野生動物的繁衍與棲息，並大規模地進行都市綠化。1935年，戈林被希特勒任命為德國空軍總司令，並憑藉他個人的政治影響力為空軍取得大量預算與獨立地位，令其快速建軍。 (zh)
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Setting the Record Straight on the Soviets at Nuremberg
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2020-06-17T07:55:45+00:00
|
Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press,
|
en
|
War on the Rocks
|
http://warontherocks.com/2020/06/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-soviets-at-nuremberg/
|
Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Even before the collapse of the Axis powers at the end World War II, the soon-to-be-victorious Allies began contemplating how to address the enormity of the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, including the Holocaust, following Germany’s launch of the second aggressive war to ravage Europe that century. Various powers contemplated a number of proposals, ranging from summary executions to the de-industrialization of the German state. Ultimately, but not without intense debate, the Allies made a collective decision to hold individual perpetrators criminally accountable before an international tribunal, on the theory that, in the words of the Nuremberg Judgment,
Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.
International law would never be the same.
The International Military Tribunal was the product of the London Agreement of 1945, a quadripartite accord between the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. The treaty envisioned that individuals “whose offenses [had] no particular geographic location” would be tried by a tribunal sitting in Nuremberg, Germany, for war crimes, crimes against the peace, and crimes against humanity. Although the Allied Control Council was headquartered in Berlin, in part to appease the Soviets, the city of Nuremberg was chosen for the trials because it had a courtroom equipped with adjacent prison facilities that survived Allied bombing. The city’s association with the odious Nuremberg Race Laws, which deprived Jewish citizens of many citizenship rights, and Nazi party rallies added a symbolic touch to this choice. It was anticipated that those in the dock would include key government ministers, members of the military, and industrialists who had helped Germany to rearm after World War I.
In the end, the only man of business indicted by the Nuremberg prosecutors was Gustav Krupp, whose firm — the Krupp Group — produced essential war materiel with slave labor. He was, however, deemed medically incapacitated and so was dropped from the indictment. An American proposal to substitute his son Alfried was rejected. Under the agreed-upon scheme, lesser war criminals were to be prosecuted in occupation courts nearer to where their alleged crimes were committed. This is how Alfried, alongside his managing board and other colleagues, was eventually convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, the allies held hundreds of other trials around the European and Pacific theaters in the postwar period. But none was as consequential as the Nuremberg Tribunal.
The story of the Nuremberg trial — hailed as “the most significant tribute that power has ever paid to reason” — has already been well told. There are dozens of memoirs by key protagonists, exhaustively researched historical treatises, and even Hollywood films portraying these monumental events. One unique contribution comes from Sen. Christopher Dodd, whose father served on the American prosecutorial team. Dodd published his father’s correspondence, which offer behind-the-scenes anecdotes embedded within poignant love letters to his wife.
In all these accounts, the Soviet contingent often appears as little more than a caricature — “beasts and worse” in the words of Dodd père. Even as a professor of international law, I must admit that I have succumbed to this over-simplification. In my genesis story of international justice, I tell three anecdotes involving our erstwhile ally to my students. Firstly, I make mention of the fact that Joseph Stalin — the dictator who, true to his nom de guerre, ruled the Soviet Union with a stal (“steel”) fist from 1929 to 1953 — wanted to execute all Nazi officers (not entirely accurate, as it turns out, and a position once favored by Winston Churchill, to be fair). Secondly, the Soviets make an appearance in connection with my discussion of how the American concept of conspiracy entered international law. That doctrine, considered the darling of the prosecutor’s nursery, allows all members of a criminal conspiracy to be prosecuted solely for entering into a criminal agreement as well as for any criminal acts committed in furtherance thereof. In this narrative, I quote from the essential Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg by Bradley F. Smith, who describes the reception of this expansive prosecutorial tool by our postwar allies as follows:
The French viewed [the U.S. conspiracy doctrine] entirely as a barbarous legal mechanism unworthy of modern law, while the Soviets seemed to have shaken their head in wonderment — a reaction, some cynics may believe, prompted by envy.
Finally, I discuss the pointed dissent of the Soviet judge to the acquittals of two indicted organizations — the Reich Cabinet and the General Staff/High Command — and three Nazi defendants, and the leniency accorded a fourth. Judge Iona Nikitchenko was particularly incensed at the acquittal of Hans Fritzsche, whom the Soviets had captured and who had worked under Joseph Goebbels (who committed suicide in the waning days of the war) as the director of radio propaganda. The other judges determined that Fritzsche was too junior to be a part of the conspiracy to wage war and did not himself incite genocide. In his dissent, Nikitchenko explained:
The dissemination of provocative lies and the systematic deception of public opinion were as necessary to the Hitlerites for the realisation of their plans as were the production of armaments and the drafting of military plans. Without propaganda, founded on the total eclipse of the freedom of press and of speech, it would not have been possible for German Fascism to realise its aggressive intentions, to lay the groundwork and then to put to practice the war crimes and the crimes against humanity.
Leave it to the Soviet judge to recognize the central role that propaganda plays in any military enterprise. (Fritzsche, incidentally, was later convicted by a German denazification court). Although not as famous as that penned by India’s Judge Radhabinod Pal, who served on the International Military Tribunal of the Far East in Tokyo, the Soviet dissent at Nuremberg tapped into popular sentiments of those watching the trial and reflected the prevailing media opinion of the press corps.
Beyond these three anecdotes, most standard Western accounts of the Nuremberg proceedings fixate on the brilliant Justice Robert H. Jackson, the U.S. chief prosecutor on loan from the Supreme Court, as well as the instrumental role of the United States in launching the field of international criminal law. While such accounts satisfy American national pride, they are both inaccurate and incomplete.
Professor and historian Francine Hirsch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks to set the record straight in a wonderful new book, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II. Drawing upon original research from newly available and under-studied Soviet archives, Hirsch offers a rich narrative account of the convening, proceedings, and aftermath of the Nuremberg Tribunal that challenges several of the central myths that many, myself included, have accepted. Most importantly, the book surfaces the foundational role played by Soviet jurists in the convocation of the first truly international war crimes tribunal and the inauguration of the international criminal law canon.
Although focused on the so-called “trial to end all wars,” the book also covers the inauguration of the Cold War through the vehicle of a courtroom drama. Hirsch reveals that the Nuremberg trial was, in many respects, “the last hurrah of wartime cooperation for the Allied powers” and “an early front of the Cold War.” This is not mere hindsight. Rather, these seismic geopolitical shifts were palpable to all involved in the trial. Indeed, they prompted Hermann Göring — arguably the highest-ranking defendant tried at Nuremberg — to quip that, “the only allies who are still allied are the four prosecutors, and they are only allied against the defendants.” In other words, it was apparent to all that by the time of the trial, the allies were no longer allied, except in their desire to convict the defendants.
Many of the western protagonists at Nuremberg are household names (at least within the households of scholars of international law): Jackson, of course, his fellow American Francis Biddle, France’s Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Britain’s Sir Hartley Shawcross and Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. In her book, Hirsch introduces us to key, lesser-known Soviet characters, including the creative, brilliant, and largely unknown Aron Trainin. A Russian Jew and legal contemporary of Raphael Lemkin (who coined the term ’genocide’) and Hersch Lauterpacht, Trainin is credited with pushing for the establishment of an international court following the war in his academic writing and well before the allies were on board with the idea, introducing the concept of crimes against the peace (or ‘crime of aggression’ in today’s lexicon), and advocating for the creation of a permanent international criminal court to try future war criminals.
Trainin was compelled by a genuine belief that international law could be a force for peace and that the Soviet Union could play a progressive role in its development. He also championed the concept of complicity (having written a book on the topic), critiqued the defense of superior orders, and supported an expanded reach for the charge of crimes against humanity. Although the Soviets did not participate in the work of the U.N. War Crimes Commission, which hammered out the postwar justice agenda, many of Trainin’s ideas were presented thereby a Czech envoy, Bohuslav Ečer, who was familiar with Trainin’s academic work. As a result, many of Trainin’s ideas were eventually picked up by key justice architects among the allies — often without attribution.
Equally as influential was Andrey Vyshinsky who, in his youth, bonded with Stalin over revolutionary theory while they were both imprisoned in Baku and who was entrusted with prosecuting Stalin’s first major show trials, including the Moscow Trials of 1936 to 1938 following the Great Purge. Together, Trainin and Vyshinsky crafted the Soviet Union’s approach to postwar justice. Other Soviet figures included the Soviet chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko and the aforementioned Nikitchenko, who was originally pegged to lead the prosecution, but who ended up on the bench after a quick game of musical chairs. Rudenko and Nikitchenko were career Soviet bureaucrats who were clearly in over their heads in the company of the legal luminaries who had been dispatched to Nuremberg. Through meticulous research, Hirsch demonstrates that there were no firewalls between the Soviet negotiators, judges, or prosecutors (or with members of the Soviet press corps for that matter). All were operating according to common instructions (and under intense surveillance) while in Nuremberg. As Hirsch describes it, by the time they all got to Nuremberg as members of the Soviet delegation, “while Jackson was calling his own shots, Nikitchenko and Trainin had marching orders.”
It is well known that the Americans and the British originally leaned towards punishing Nazi leaders by ‘executive decree’ (i.e., without legal process). Although Stalin would have executed upwards of 50,000 German officers, he was keen on holding a didactic trial of the Nazi masterminds. He recognized the value of such a proceeding to expose the enormity of the Nazi enterprise, foster Soviet unity, highlight the immense sacrifices made by the Soviets to defeat the Nazis, vindicate the national suffering, establish a legal claim to “reparations in kind” from Germany (a troubling euphemism for forced labor), and position the Soviet Union as a postwar international power (even as it was still reeling from wartime devastation at home). While the allies were debating the various juridical and extra-juridical options, the Soviets had already put such ideas into action, having hosted the first national trials of Russian and Ukrainian members of the dreaded Einsatzgruppen death squads, who murdered more than 7,000 Soviet citizens, most of them Jewish, as well as the first domestic trials of German nationals held by any allied power (the “Kharkov Trial”). The other allies finally came around to the idea of a two-tiered penal process: international trials for the Nazi big fish as envisioned by Trainin and prosecutions of lower-level defendants in the allies’ respective occupation zones. However, Stalin’s vision of a propagandistic show trial with pre-determined outcomes was fundamentally at odds with the legalistic traditions of the other allies, who were operating under the deeply ingrained assumption that, if the captured Nazis were to be put on trial, the defendants were entitled to present a defense and enjoy strict due process. This marks just one of many legal and cultural clashes within the quadripartite alliance, both in and outside the courtroom.
As the book unfolds, it is fascinating to see the Soviet delegation gradually come to the realization that they are entirely unprepared for the daunting task that had been put to them. Stalin insisted on exercising centralized control of the proceedings from his perch in Moscow, which included ideological wordsmithing, masking Soviet abuses and other inconvenient truths, and highlighting “the capitalist underpinnings of fascism.” This, coupled with the Soviet team’s relative lack of experience in multilateral settings and a dearth of vetted translators and interpreters, left the delegation repeatedly outmaneuvered as events rapidly unfolded around them. Indeed, Hirsch demonstrates that the Soviet delegation frequently found themselves without instructions (or with instructions that were utterly unattainable), out of the loop, “living a logistical nightmare,” or otherwise incapable of effectively advancing the outsized Soviet agenda. Needless-to-say, the Soviet delegation recognized that there might be devastating consequences were they to freelance in the way Jackson and others from the west were relatively free to do.
Nonetheless, the Soviet participants eventually hit a certain stride. For one, they contributed a number of key documents outlining the Nazi plan for lebensraum (“greater living space”) and the mass slaughter of civilians. This was consistent with Jackson’s controversial strategy of relying heavily on captured documents rather than potentially unreliable witnesses in order to “prove incredible events by credible evidence.” This necessitated upwards of three tons of text to be read into the record. Midway through this process, Rebecca West, who covered the trials for the New Yorker, described the proceedings as “a citadel of boredom” whose inhabitants were in “the grip of extreme tedium.” These observations foreshadowed the famous turn of phrase coined by Hannah Arendt — “the banality of evil” — as she later observed the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. By contrast, Rudenko offered the moving testimony of percipient witnesses (including the poet Avraham Sutzkever, the first Jewish witness) and also surprised all in attendance by calling to the stand several highly-placed German prisoners of war who had turned “state’s witness” while in custody. (Query what “incentives” might have been employed in this regard). Allowing these survivors and insiders to bear witness brought the Nazi enterprise alive for the judges, the press, and the public at large.
Notwithstanding the Soviets’ many legal and evidentiary contributions, there is no question that their involvement in the proceedings presented a “threat to the legitimacy of Nuremberg and to its legacy.” Although none of the allies arrived in Nuremberg with entirely clean hands (allied firebombing and the chilling parallels between colonialism and lebensraum come immediately to mind), the Soviets’ were particularly soiled. Germany and the Soviet Union had jointly invaded Poland with the intent of carving up Eastern Europe pursuant to secret protocols of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The Soviet Union was engaged in deportations in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere even as the tribunal was hearing evidence of the Nazi deportation program. Soviet-occupied Berlin was being contemporaneously plundered following the city’s surrender. Prisoners of war in Soviet custody were mistreated and an untold number of German women (estimates range from 80,000 to 130,000) were raped by their supposed Soviet liberators.
In addition, the Soviets recklessly insisted on trying to pin the Katyn Forest Massacre—which left at least 11,000 Polish officers dead — on the Germans in the indictment. History has proven that the massacre was actually the work of Soviet operatives, who planted evidence and then falsified subsequent investigations in order to shift the blame to the Germans. It was only through targeted (some would say complicitous) interventions by the British and American participants that the evidence of Soviet responsibility did not come to light during the Nuremberg proceedings. In the end, the judgment was silent about the Katyn massacre, leaving it to another day for the truth to emerge. All told, opportunities abounded for the accused Germans to raise the defense of tu quoque (“you also”). Remarkably, evidence uncovered by Hirsch suggests that many members of the Soviet delegation were unaware of the truth of these matters and so were essentially flying blind in Nuremberg.
A lamentable casualty of the deteriorating four-powers alliance was the proposal for a second international military tribunal to bring to justice the German financiers and industrialists who had bankrolled and profited from the Nazi enterprise — another key Soviet aim. The Americans refused to participate in a second international tribunal in the European theater, largely scuttling the Soviets’ plan to expose the connections between American and German industrialist circles and indelibly link capitalism and fascism. Although the Americans eventually prosecuted a number of industrialists in their zone of occupation under Control Council Number 10 — including principals of the Flick Concern, IG Farben, and the Krupp Works — the West soon saw German industry as a critical bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism and later rehabilitated a number of defendants, including Alfried Krupp. The Soviet concept of corporate responsibility in some respects presaged the newest front of today’s human rights litigation: cases seeking to hold corporate actors liable for enabling, profiting from, and being complicit in human rights abuses around the world.
The book ends in the immediate post-trial period with the halting efforts to make permanent some of the principles expressed at Nuremberg, including the creation of a permanent international criminal court that would offer an antidote to the victors’ justice critique that dogged the postwar proceedings then and now. Notwithstanding steadfast efforts by Trainin, Stalin soured on his cosmopolitan ideas about multilateralism as ideology eclipsed law. By now, Trainin had fallen out of favor with Moscow, but managed to avoid a worse fate. In 1950, the Soviet representative walked out of deliberations before the U.N. International Law Commission, which ended up concretizing many of Trainin’s ideas, including when it came to rectifying some of the shortcomings of the Nuremberg Charter and judgment. Decades later, in 2000, Moscow signed the International Criminal Court Statute, but later “unsigned” it in 2016 when the court’s Office of the Prosecutor concluded that the situation in Ukraine constituted an international armed conflict. For its part, the United States — which came to the idea of international justice late in the postwar period — retained until very recently a leadership role in international justice efforts, supporting institutions established to hold accountable those who would commit the worst crimes known to humankind, whether it be in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, or Myanmar.
Hirsch’s book is particularly thought-provoking and timely at this moment in history, given the evolving relationship between the United States and Russia and the unfortunate reality that many powerful members of the international community have retreated from the project of international justice first launched at Nuremberg. The International Criminal Court is now poised to investigate crimes by several of World War II’s victorious allies — alleged custodial abuses by British personnel in Iraq and American personnel in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russians in Ukraine and Georgia — potentially signaling a new kind of victor’s justice. The focus on U.S. personnel has provoked an unprecedented backlash from the Trump administration, first launched by former National Security Advisor John Bolton — who suffers from a congenital antipathy toward the court — in a 2018 speech at the Federalist Society. After Bolton’s ouster, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued this assault, most recently supporting the imposition of sanctions on international civil servants working at the court. This illiberal approach puts America squarely in the camp of authoritarian states that would prefer impunity to accountability, and that would undermine the independence of prosecutors and judges — values that all Americans hold dear and that constitute essential democratic principles. It also soils the U.S. legacy at Nuremberg, of which we have heretofore been deservedly proud.
Hirsch’s book reveals that the Russians should likewise embrace, rather than forsake, their contributions — at once consequential and controversial — to the establishment of a global system of international justice. Indeed, Hirsch brilliantly accomplishes her central aim: “putting the Soviet Union back into the history of the Nuremberg trials.” In so doing, the book offers a valuable new addition to the Nuremberg canon, filling a gap in the literature with new research, an engaging narrative style, a dose of intrigue, and delightful details (such as the appearance of the bikini within the Nuremberg fashion scene). The book will be most appealing to experts, who will be fascinated by this fresh and distinctive perspective on well-known events, but the engrossing style will rivet more casual World War II enthusiasts. All told, Hirsch’s gift to the Nuremberg literature leaves us with the distinct impression that: “the full story [of Nuremberg] is far messier than the myth — but it is no less heroic.”
Beth Van Schaack is the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School where she teaches human rights, international criminal law, and transitional justice. Prior to returning to academia, she was deputy to the ambassador-at-large for war crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department under Secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. She is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A.), Yale Law School (J.D.), and Leiden University (Ph.D.).
Image: Wikicommons (Photo by United States Army Signal Corps)
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Avraham Novershtern was a trial witness at the Nuremberg trials. The witness was acclaimed Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever, while Avraham Novershtern is a scholar of Yiddish literature that wrote an article about Sutzkever.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.stripes.com/living/europe_travel/quick_trips/2024-02-22/quick-trip-nuremberg-trials-memorial-12915188.html
|
en
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Hallowed courtroom and exhibition relate story of Nazi trials in Nuremberg
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2024-02-22T00:00:00
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Visit the site of the true “trial of the century” in Nuremberg, where the American military supported efforts to bring to justice 21 Nazi officials nearly 80 years ago.
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en
|
/favicon.ico
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Stars and Stripes
|
https://www.stripes.com/living/europe_travel/quick_trips/2024-02-22/quick-trip-nuremberg-trials-memorial-12915188.html
|
The phrase “trial of the century” has been used often enough for high-profile defendants.
But if any instance of criminal justice ever deserved that title, it took place in Nuremberg, Germany, between Nov. 20, 1945, and Oct. 1, 1946.
Officially called the International Military Tribunal, the first of the landmark Nuremberg trials made defendants of 21 leading Nazis, a veritable who’s who of incarnate evil that included Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goering and Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Proceedings were held in Courtroom 600 in the east wing of the Palace of Justice. For visitors in the present, the courtroom and the Memorium Nuremberg Trials exhibition in the same building yield a powerful and indelible experience.
In American prosecutor Robert Jackson’s opening statement, footage of which is shown in the exhibition, he intoned: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Those wrongs were encapsulated in the groundbreaking counts of the indictment such as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. The defendants were also charged with war crimes and conspiracy to wage aggressive war.
Nazi organizations including the Gestapo and the SS were named as conspirators along with individuals. Courtroom 600 thus became the cradle of accountability for atrocities the world over.
I felt reverence as I gazed around it from the gallery, taking particular note of the imposing bronze crucifix and the exquisite wooden wall panels and ceiling.
The magisterial scene is completed by a marble-encased door topped with a bronze cartouche and statues representing Roman and Germanic law. Light streaming in through the four windows cast a glow on the marble.
One floor up, the exhibition traces the development of war crimes jurisprudence from the Geneva Conventions to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Between those bookends is a collection of imagery and artifacts offering an immersion into the marquee event.
One noteworthy aspect of the exhibition for me was its portrayal of the U.S. Army’s indispensable role before, during and after the International Military Tribunal.
It “had stood in the forefront as far as the collecting of evidence was concerned and in addition, it had taken care of security and the whole logistics of the trial process,” according to a booklet sold on site.
Two benches mimicking the prisoners dock are placed between panels depicting the defendants, while scenes from the trial are projected on the walls behind them. American soldiers stand guard as the accused follow the proceedings in front of them.
The U.S. Army also handled all the accommodations challenges, renovating the landmark Grand Hotel across from the central train station and putting up the press corps in Stein Castle.
American GIs shuttled a young Walter Cronkite, author John Steinbeck and reporters from around the world between the courthouse and the castle, which is owned by the family that operates the adjacent Faber-Castell pencil manufacturing empire.
Some of the film footage entered into evidence before the tribunal is screened in the exhibition, which additionally weaves in bits of witness testimony and citations of the immense trove of incriminating documents that Army investigators scouring Europe had unearthed.
The record amassed by the International Military Tribunal and displayed in part in the Memorium offered irrefutable proof of the Holocaust and a litany of other crimes. It was and is an unvarnished look at the Hitler regime’s depraved indifference to human life.
As a result of the trial, Goering, Ribbentrop and 10 others went to the gallows. Hess and Albert Speer received prison sentences, while Hans Fritzsche, Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen were acquitted.
Jackson and his colleagues paved the way for a permanent legacy, as demonstrated by the final portions of the exhibition, titled “Follow-up Trials” and “From Nuremberg to The Hague.”
A lineage of international justice, they touch on the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials, the Tokyo Trial and assorted war crimes tribunals of recent decades.
In addition to engendering new legal forums and concepts such as the famous Nuremberg Principles, the tribunal served as the birthplace of simultaneous interpreting. The necessity of seamless, real-time communication in English, French, German and Russian spurred IBM to develop the system that now facilitates business at the United Nations.
Speaking of translation, although the Memorium visuals are in German only for the most part, all their information is furnished in other languages via audio guides.
Handset codes at each exhibit allow visitors to choose between audio presentations geared toward adults or children.
I concluded my Palace of Justice stopover with a walk along the Pegnitz River, following Reutersbrunnenstrasse behind the justice complex past the prison. The cellblock where the original 21 Nazi defendants were detained no longer exists, however.
On the banks of the Pegnitz, I sat down for a snack and a bit of reflection on the poignant testimonial to what Jackson called “one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”
On the QT
Address: Baerenschanzstrasse 72, Nuremberg, Germany
Hours: Through March 31, Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Tuesday
Cost: Admission is 7.50 euros for adults, 2.50 euros for students and children ages 4 and up. “The Nuremberg Trials: A Short Guide” costs 6.80 euros. A gift shop book about the exhibition is sold for 8 euros. Nearby street parking is paid on weekdays, free on weekends.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
|
1
| 67
|
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/02/22/the-nazi-mind/
|
en
|
What the Nazi Rorschach Tests Say About American Leaders
|
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"Damion Searls"
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2017-02-22T00:00:00
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During the Nuremberg Trials, psychologists administered Rorschach tests to Nazis. The results? That Nazis “could be duplicated in any country of the world.”
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en
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/favicon.ico
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The Paris Review
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https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/02/22/the-nazi-mind/
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How psychiatrists used Rorschach tests to examine Nazis during the Nuremberg trials.
By 1945, the word Nazi—for a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—had become shorthand around the world for a cold-blooded sadistic monster beyond the pale of humanity. Six million Jews had been killed. How could any of the Nazis not have known? There was an overwhelming desire to stage the World vs the Nazis, with the defendants all guilty and deserving to die, but there was no clear legal basis for doing so. And the truth was that not all of the Holocaust’s perpetrators were party members, and vice versa. It was impossible, logistically and in principle, to condemn every single party member as a war criminal. The atrocities were unprecedented in human history, but for that very reason it was unclear what laws fit the crime.
The legal issues were resolved by negotiation among the Allies and by fiat. An international military tribunal was created. “Crimes against humanity” were prosecuted for the first time, at the Nuremberg trials, beginning in 1945. Twenty-four prominent Nazis were chosen as the first group of defendants. But the moral quandaries remained. The defendants claimed that they had been following their own country’s laws, which in this case meant whatever Hitler wanted. Could people legally be held to account on the basis of a higher law of common humanity? How deep does cultural relativity go? And if these Nazis really were deranged psychopaths, then weren’t they unfit to stand trial, or even not guilty by reason of insanity?
The prisoners were held in solitary, on the ground floor of a three-story prison block with cells on both sides of a wide corridor. Each cell was nine by thirteen feet, with a wooden door several inches thick, a high barred window onto a courtyard, a steel cot, and a toilet, with no seat or cover, from which the prisoner’s feet remained visible to the guards. Personal belongings were kept on the floor. A fifteen-inch panel in the middle of the cell door was open at all times, forming a shelf in the cell on which meals were placed and a peephole for guards to look through, one guard per prisoner at all times. The light was always on, dimmer at night but still bright enough to read by, and heads and hands had to be kept visible while the prisoner was in bed, asleep or awake. Aside from harsh corrections when any rules were broken, the guards never spoke to the prisoners, nor did the wardens who brought them their food. They had fifteen minutes a day to walk outside, separate from the other prisoners, and showers once a week, under supervision. Up to four times a week, the prisoner was stripped and the room searched so thoroughly it took four hours to straighten up afterward.
They also had medical care, to keep them healthy for the trial. A staff of doctors weaned Hermann Göring off his morphine addiction, restored some of the use of Hans Frank’s hand after he had slashed his wrist in a suicide attempt, helped reduce Alfred Jodl’s back pain and Joachim von Ribbentrop’s neuralgia. There were dentists, chaplains—one Catholic, one Protestant—and a prison psychiatrist. This was none other than Douglas Kelley, coauthor of Bruno Klopfer’s 1942 manual, The Rorschach Technique.
Kelley had been one of the first members of the Rorschach Institute to volunteer after Pearl Harbor, and by 1944 he was chief of psychiatry for the European Theater of Operations. In 1945 he was in Nuremberg, assigned to help determine whether the defendants were competent to stand trial. He saw them for five months, making the rounds every day and talking to them at length, often sitting on the edge of a prisoner’s cot for three or four hours at a time. The Nazis, alone and bored, were eager to talk. Kelley said he had never had a group of patients so easy to interview. “In addition to careful medical and psychiatric examinations, I subjected the men to a series of psychological tests,” Kelley wrote. “The most important technique employed was the Rorschach Test, a well-known and highly useful method of personality study.”
Kelley needed a translator to administer the tests; another American, the Nuremberg morale officer Gustave Gilbert had little experience in diagnostic testing, having studied social, not clinical, psychology, but he was the only American officer on the prison staff except the chaplains who spoke German. Plus he “could hardly wait to get to work on the Nazis.” Both he and Kelley knew that objective data on the personalities of these world-historical criminals were a gold mine, and both wanted to use the era’s most advanced psychological technique on the captive audience, to discover the secrets of the Nazi mind.
No one at Nuremberg had ordered Rorschachs. The test results were never used in the trial. Kelley and Gilbert simply decided, in the unprecedented, supercharged atmosphere of Nuremberg, to administer it themselves. The Rorschach, never as popular in Germany as in America, had been used under the Nazis but primarily in aptitude testing, or as evaluations to help “weed out disruptive social and ‘racial’ elements.” The Nazis had not generally been interested in psychological insight, except into other countries, to try to develop effective psychological warfare. Now the test would be used to gain insight into the Nazis themselves.
Kelley gave the Rorschach to eight prisoners and Gilbert to sixteen, five of them previously tested by Kelley. Albert Speer, Rudolf Hess, racial theorist Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, the “Butcher of Poland” Hans Frank, the head of Nazi-occupied Netherlands—each was shown ten inkblots and asked, “What might this be?” Göring had a great time with the Rorschach. He laughed, snapped his fingers in excitement, and expressed “regret,” according to Kelley, “that the Luftwaffe had not had available such excellent testing techniques.”
The prisoners’ results shared a few common elements—a certain lack of introspection, a propensity for chameleonlike flexibility in adapting to orders—but the differences far outweighed the similarities. Some of the defendants seemed paranoid, depressed, or clearly disturbed. Joachim von Ribbentrop was “emotionally barren” and a “markedly disturbed personality” overall; the Butcher of Poland’s results were those of a cynical, antisocial madman. Others were average, and some were “particularly well adjusted.” The cultured Schacht, almost seventy years old, “could call on an inner world of satisfying experiences to stand him in good stead in the stressful months prior to sentencing.” He rated as an “exceptionally well-integrated personality with excellent potential” and would later look back on his Rorschach testing rather fondly: “a game that, if I remember correctly, had been used by Justinus Kerner. Through the process [of spilling ink and folding the paper], many bizarre forms are created which are to be detected. In our case this task was made even more enjoyable since inks of different colors were used on the same card.”
An intelligent madman was one thing; a sane and exceptionally well-adjusted leading Nazi with excellent potential was something else. But those seemed to be the results. Gilbert refused to accept it. In his Nuremberg Diary, published in 1947, he described how Göring, after the guilty verdict,
lay on his cot completely worn out and deflated … like a child holding the torn remnants of a balloon that had burst in its hand. A few days after the verdict he asked me again what those psychological tests had shown about his personality—especially that inkblot test—as if it had been bothering him all the time. This time I told him. “Frankly, they showed that while you have an active, aggressive mind, you lack the guts to really face responsibility. You betrayed yourself with a little gesture on the ink-blot test.” Göring glared apprehensively. “Do you remember the card with the red spot? Well, morbid neurotics often hesitate over that card and then say there’s blood on it. You hesitated, but you didn’t call it blood. You tried to flick it off with your finger, as though you thought you could wipe away the blood with a little gesture. You’ve been doing the same thing all through the trial—taking off your earphones in the courtroom, whenever the evidence of your guilt became too unbearable. And you did the same thing during the war too, drugging the atrocities out of your mind. You didn’t have the courage to face it. That is your guilt … You are a moral coward.” Göring glared at me and was silent for a while. Then he said those psychological tests were meaningless … A few days later he told me that he had given [his lawyer] a statement that anything the psychologist or anybody else in the jail had to say at this time was meaningless and prejudiced … It had struck home.
It was a dramatic moment, a Shakespearean moment. But what did the inkblot test add, beyond confirming what Gilbert already knew from Göring’s behavior and history? No double-blind study would ever prove that flicking the red was a sign of genocidal moral cowardice. Kelley, a far more expert Rorschacher, saw the results differently. As early as 1946, even before the Nuremberg verdicts were handed down, Kelley published a paper stating that the defendants were “essentially sane,” though in some cases abnormal. He didn’t discuss the Rorschachs specifically, but he argued “not only that such personalities are not unique or insane, but also that they could be duplicated in any country of the world today.”
Kelley insisted on going against what the postwar public strongly believed, and even more strongly wanted to believe. The Nazis were, he wrote, “not spectacular types, not personalities such as appear only once in a century,” but simply “strong, dominant, aggressive, egocentric personalities” who had been given “the opportunity to seize power.” Men like Göring “are not rare. They can be found anywhere in the country—behind big desks deciding big affairs as businessmen, politicians, and racketeers.”
So much for American leaders. As for followers: “Shocking as it may seem to some of us, we as a people greatly resemble the Germans of two decades ago,” before Hitler’s rise to power. Both share a similar ideological background and rely on emotions rather than the intellect. “Cheap and dangerous” American politicians, Kelley wrote, were using race-baiting and white supremacy for political gain “just one year after the end of the war”—an allusion to Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi and Eugene Talmadge of Georgia; he also referred to “the power politics of Huey Long, who enforced his opinions by police control.” These were “the same racial prejudices that the Nazis preached,” the very “same words that rang through the corridors of Nuremberg Jail.” In short, there was “little in America today which could prevent the establishment of a Nazilike state.”
Adapted from The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing. Copyright © 2017 by Damion Searls. Published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
Damion Searls has written for Harper’s, n+1, and The Paris Review. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, NEA, and Cullman Center fellowships.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
| 88
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https://libertyladybook.com/2016/04/18/hermann-gorings-swedish-connection/
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en
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Hermann Göring’s Swedish Connection
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"Pat DiGeorge"
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2016-04-18T00:00:00
|
Commander-in-Chief of the German Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring did indeed have important Swedish connections.
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en
|
Liberty Lady | a B-17 bomber crew, the OSS, and a wartime love story
|
https://libertyladybook.com/2016/04/18/hermann-gorings-swedish-connection/
|
Commander-in-Chief of the German Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring did indeed have important Swedish connections. In the early 1920s, he was living in Stockholm and working for the Swedish airline, Svenska Lufttrafik. He was hired for a private flight by Count Eric von Rosen, a well-known pro-Nazi figure in Swedish society. It was on that trip that Göring met the Count’s beautiful sister-in-law, Stockholm-born Carin von Kantzow. She was already married, but for Hermann, it was love at first sight. By 1923, Carin had obtained a divorce and went to Munich to wed the handsome, younger Hermann. Together they dreamed of a “Greater Germany.”
There were problems, however. In 1925, Hermann was admitted to Långbro Swedish asylum for morphine addiction, an aftereffect of the pain medication administered for various injuries. Six years later, Carin was in Sweden for her mother’s funeral when she had a heart attack. Death came soon afterward.
Göring never forgot Carin. In fact, in her honor, he built an elaborate estate in eastern Germany and named it Carinhall. As the war progressed, the Soviets approaching Berlin, Carinhall was destroyed.At Nuremberg, Göring was found guilty
At Nuremberg, Göring was sentenced to death by hanging. The night before his scheduled execution, he committed suicide with a cyanide capsule.
Share this Post
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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2
| 32
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https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/03-14-46.asp
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en
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The Avalon Project : Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 9
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Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 9
EIGHTY-FIRST DAY
Thursday, 14 March 1946
Morning Session
DR. STAHMER: Did you take part in laying down the Party program?
Goering: No. The Party program had been compiled and announced when I heard about the movement for the first time and when I declared my intention of joining.
DR. STAHMER: What is your attitude towards these points of the Party program?
Goering: On the whole, positive. It is a matter of course that there is hardly any politically minded man who acknowledges and agrees with every point of the program of a political party.
DR. STAHMER: In addition to these generally known points of the Party program, were there other aims which were kept secret?
Goering: No.
DR. STAHMER: Were these aims to be achieved by every means, even by illegal means?
Goering: Of course, they were to be achieved by every means. The conception "illegal" should perhaps be clarified. If I aim at a revolution, then it is an illegal action for the state then in existence. If I am successful, then it becomes a fact and thereby legal and law. Until 1923 and the events of 9 November I and all of us had the view that we would achieve our aim, even, if necessary, in a revolutionary manner. After this proved a failure, the Fuehrer, after his return from the fortress, decided that we should in the future proceed legally by means of a political fight, as the other parties had done, and the Fuehrer prohibited any illegal action in order to avoid any setback in the activity of the Party.
DR. STAHMER: When and with what aims was the SS created?
Goering: The SS was created while I was abroad; I think it was in 1926 or 1627. Its purpose, as far as I remember, was to form, first of all, within the Movement a specially picked body as a protection for the person of the Fuehrer. Originally it was extremely small.
DR. STAHMER: Did you at any time belong to the SS?
Goering: I never belonged to the SS in any way, at any time, neither actively nor passively.
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DR. STAHMER: The assumption that you were a general in the SS is therefore incorrect?
Goering: Yes, absolutely incorrect.
DR. STAHMER: What did you understand by the term "master race"?
Goering: I myself understood nothing by it. In none of my speeches, in none of my writings, will you find that term. It is my view that if you are a master you have no need to emphasize it.
DR. STAHMER: What do you understand by the concept "living space"?
Goering: That conception is a very controversial one. I can fully understand that powers who together -- I refer only to the four signatory powers -- call more than three-quarters of the world their own, explain this idea differently. But for us, where 144 people live in 1 square kilometer, the words "living space" meant the proper relation between a population and its nourishment, its growth, and its standard of living.
DR. STAHMER: An expression which is always recurring is that of "seizure of power."
Goering: I should like to call "seizure of power" a terminus technicus. We might just as well have used another term, but this actually expresses as clearly as possible what did in fact occur, that is to say, we seized power.
DR. STAHMER: What is your attitude to the Leadership Principle?
Goering: I upheld this principle and I still uphold it positively and consciously. One must not make the mistake of forgetting that the political structure in different countries has different origins, different developments. Something which suits one country extremely well would perhaps fail completely in another. Germany, through the long centuries of monarchy, has always had a leadership principle. Democracy appeared in Germany at a time when Germany was very badly off and had reached rock-bottom. I explained yesterday the total lack of unity that existed in Germany -- the number of parties, the continuous unrest caused by elections. A complete distortion of the concepts of authority and responsibility had arisen, and in the reverse direction. Authority lay with the masses and responsibility was with the leader, instead of the other way about. I am of the opinion that for Germany, particularly at that moment of its lowest ebb, when it was necessary for all forces to be welded together in a positive fashion, the Leadership Principle -- that is, authority from above downwards and responsibility from below upwards -- was the only possibility. Naturally I realize the fact that here, too, a principle, while thoroughly sound in itself,
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can lead to extremes. I should like to mention some parallels. The position of the Catholic Church rests now, as before, on the clear leadership principle of its hierarchy. And I think I can also say that Russia, too, without the leadership principle, could not have survived the great burden which was imposed on her by this war.
DR. STAHMER: Concerning the measures for strengthening your power which you described yesterday, did they take place in full agreement with Reich President Von Hindenburg?
Goering: As long as the Reich President was alive, and therefore active, they naturally did take place in agreement with him. And as far as his assent was constitutionally necessary, according to Paragraph 48, that assent was also given.
DR. STAHMER: Was the National Socialist Government recognized by foreign powers?
Goering: Our government was recognized from the first day of its existence and remained recognized until the end, that is, except where hostilities severed diplomatic connections with several states.
DR. STAHMER: Did diplomatic representatives of foreign countries visit your Party rallies in Nuremberg?
Goering: The diplomatic representatives were invited to the Party rallies, these being the greatest event and the greatest demonstration of the movement; and they all attended, even if not the full number of them every year. But one I remember very well.
DR. STAHMER: Until what year?
Goering: Until the last Party rally, 1938.
DR. STAHMER: To what extent after the seizure of power was property of political opponents confiscated?
Goering: Laws were issued which decreed confiscation of the property of people hostile to the State, that is, the Property of parties we declared to be hostile to the State. The party property of the Communist Party and its associated units, and the property of the Social Democratic Party was partly confiscated -- but not, and I want to emphasize that, the private property of the members or even of the leaders of these parties. On the contrary, a number of leading Social Democrats who had been ministers or civil servants were still paid their full pension. In fact, later on it was increased.
DR. STAHMER: How do you explain the actions against the trade unions? How do you explain the actions against free workers' associations?
Goering: First of all, the trade unions: Trade unions in Germany were for the most part, or the most important of them, very closely connected with the Social Democratic Party, and also to
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14 March 46
an increasing extent, due to the influence and the activity of the Communists, with the Communist Party. They were in fact, if not formally so, organs, indeed very active organs, of these parties, and here I am not talking about the masses of the members of the trade unions, but about the leaders of the trade unions. In addition there was also a smaller Christian trade union, an organ of the Center Party.
These trade unions, because of their leaders and the close connection of these leaders with those parties which we regarded as our opponents, agreed with our opponents to such an extent that they did not in any way fit into our new State. Consequently the organization of trade unions was dissolved, and for the workers the organization of the German Labor Front was created. This did not result in the destruction of the liberty of the German worker, in my opinion; on the contrary, I am convinced that we were the ones to give the German workers real freedom, for it consisted first of all in the fact that we made his right to have work secure, and laid particular stress on his position in the State.
We did, of course, do away with two things which perhaps must be regarded as two characteristics of a freedom which I do not understand: strikes on one side and lockouts on the other. These could not be made consistent with the right to have work nor with the duties which every citizen has towards the greatness of his nation. These two disquieting elements, which also contributed to the great number of unemployed, we removed and replaced with an enormous labor program.
Creation of work was another essential point of our social program and has also been adopted by others, though under a different name.
I do not propose to elaborate on this social program. It was, however, the first time that the worker had a right to a vacation, a paid vacation, this I only add as an aside. Great recreation centers were created for the workers. Enormous sums were invested in new housing projects for workers. The whole standard of living for the worker was raised. Up to that time the worker had been used and exploited. He hardly had any property of his own because, during years of unemployment, he had to sell everything or pawn it. Thus, without going into detail, I should like to say in conclusion that we did not enslave free workers, but rather we liberated the worker from the misery of unemployment.
DR. STAHMER: You talked about the Rohm revolt yesterday. Who was Rohm and of what did the revolt consist?
Goering: Rohm, from 1931, had been the Chief of Staff of the SA, that is to say, he was responsible, for the SA to the Fuehrer,
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who was himself the highest SA leader, and he led it in the Fuehrer's name.
The main controversy between Rohm and us was that Rohm, like his predecessor Pfeffer, wanted a stronger revolutionary way to be adopted, whereas the Fuehrer, as I said earlier, had ordered a legal development, the final victory of which could be expected.
After the seizure of power Rohm desired, under all circumstances, to get hold of the Reich Defense Ministry. The Fuehrer refused that point-blank, as he did not wish the Armed Forces to be conducted politically in any way, or to have any political influence brought to bear on the Armed Forces.
The contrast between the Armed Forces and the Rohm group -- I am intentionally not speaking of a contrast between the Armed Forces and the SA, since there was none, but solely of this leadership group, which called itself at that time the SA Leadership and it actually was -- was that Rohm wanted to remove the greater number of the generals and higher officers who had been members of the Reichswehr all this time, since it was his view that these officers did not offer a guarantee for the new State, because, as he expressed it, their backbone had been broken in the course of the years and they were no longer capable of being active elements of the new National Socialist State.
The Fuehrer, and I also, had exactly the opposite point of view in this connection.
Secondly, the aims of the Rohm-minded people, as I should like to call them, were directed in a different direction, towards a revolutionary act; and they were opposed to what they called reaction. They definitely desired to adopt a more Leftist attitude. They were also sharply opposed to the Church and also very strongly opposed to the Jews. Altogether, and I refer only to the clique consisting of certain persons, they wished to carry out a revolutionary act. That Rohm placed all his people in leading positions in the SA and removed the decent elements, and misguided the decent SA people without their knowledge, is a well-known fact.
If encroachments did occur at that time, they always involved the same persons, first of all the Berlin SA leader, Ernst, secondly the Breslau leader, Heines, the Munich and Stettin leaders, et cetera. A few weeks before the Rohm Putsch a low-ranking SA leader confided in me that he had heard that an action against the Fuehrer and his corps was being planned to replace the Third Reich as expeditiously as possible by a final Fourth Reich, an expression which these people used.
I myself was urged and begged to place outside my house not only guards from a police regiment but also to appoint an SA guard of honor. I had agreed, and later on I heard from the commander of
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these troops that the purpose of that guard of honor was to arrest me at a given moment.
I knew Rohm very well. I had him brought to me. I put to him openly the things which I had heard. I reminded him of our mutual fight and I asked him to keep unconditional faith with the Fuehrer. I brought forward the same arguments which I have just mentioned, but he assured me that he naturally was not thinking of undertaking anything against the Fuehrer. Shortly afterward I received further news to the effect that he had close connections with those circles who also were strongly opposed to us. There was, for instance, the group around the former Reich Chancellor Schleicher. There was the group around Gregor Strasser, the former member of the Reichstag and organizational leader of the Party, who had been excluded from the Party. These were groups who had belonged to the former trade unions and were rather inclined to the Left. I felt it my duty to consult the Fuehrer now on this subject. I was astonished when he told me that he, too, already knew about these things and considered them a great threat. He said that he wished, however, to await further developments and observe them carefully.
The next event occurred just about as the witness Korner described it here, and therefore I can skip it. I was given the order to proceed immediately against the implicated men of the Rohm group in northern Germany. It was decided that some of them were to be arrested. In the course of the day the Fuehrer ordered the execution of the SA leader of Pomerania, Ernst, and two or three others. He himself went to Bavaria where the last meeting of a number of Rohm leaders was taking place and personally arrested Rohm and these people in Wiessee.
At that time this matter presented a real danger, as a few SA units, through the use of false passwords, had been armed and called up. At one spot only a very short fight ensued and two SA leaders were shot. I deputized the police, which in Prussia was then already under Himmler and Heydrich, to make the arrests. Only the headquarters of Rohm, who himself was not present, I had occupied by a regiment of the uniformed police subordinated to me. When the headquarters of the SA leader Ernst in Berlin were searched, we found in the cellars of those headquarters more submachine guns than the whole Prussian police had in its possession.
After the Fuehrer, on the strength of the events which had been met with at Wiessee, had ordered who should be shot in view of the state of national emergency, the order for the execution of Ernst, Heydebreck, and some of the other Rohm collaborators was issued. There was no order to shoot the other people who had been arrested. In the course of the arrest of the former Reich Chancellor Schleicher, it happened that both he and his wife were killed. An investigation
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14 March 46
of this event took place and it was found that when Schleicher was arrested, according to the statements of the two witnesses, he reached for a pistol, possibly in order to kill himself, whereupon the two men raised their pistols and Frau Schleicher threw herself upon one of them to hold him, causing his revolver to go off. We deeply regretted that event.
In the course of that evening I heard that other people had been shot as well, even some people who had nothing at all to do with this Rohm Putsch. The Fuehrer came to Berlin that same evening. After I learned this, later that evening or night, I went to him at noon the next day and asked him to issue an order immediately, that any further execution was under any circumstances forbidden by him, the Fuehrer, although two other people who were deeply involved and who had been ordered by the Fuehrer to be executed, were still alive. These people were consequently left alive. I asked him to do that because I was worried lest the matter should get out of hand -- as, in fact, it had already done to some extent -- and I told the Fuehrer that under no circumstances should there be any further bloodshed.
This order was then given by the Fuehrer in my presence, and it was communicated at once to all offices. The action was then announced in the Reichstag, and it was approved by the Reichstag and the Reich President as an action called for by the state of national emergency. It was regretted that, as in all such incidents, there were a number of blunders.
The number of victims has been greatly exaggerated. As far as I can remember exactly today, there were 72 or 76 people, the majority of whom were executed in southern Germany.
DR. STAHMER: Did you know about the development of the attitude of the Party and the State toward the Church, in the course of time?
Goering: Certainly. But as a final remark on the Rohm Putsch I should like to emphasize that I assume full responsibility for the actions taken against those people -- Ernst, Heydebreck, and several others -- by the order of the Fuehrer, which I carried out or passed on; and that, even today, I am of the opinion that I acted absolutely correctly and with a sense of duty. That was confirmed by the Reich President, but no such confirmation was necessary to convince me that here I had averted what was a great danger to the State.
As to the attitude towards the Church -- the Fuehrer's attitude was a generous one, at the beginning absolutely generous. I should not like to say that it was positive in the sense that he himself was a positive or convinced adherent of any one confession, but it was
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generous and positive in the sense that he recognized the necessity of the Church. Although he himself was a Catholic, he wished the Protestant Church to have a stronger position in Germany, since Germany was two-thirds Protestant.
The Protestant Church, however, was divided into provincial churches, and there were various small differences which the dogmatists took very seriously. For that reason they once in the past, as we know, fought each other for 30 years; but these differences did not seem so important to us. There were the Reformed, the United, and the pure Lutherans -- I myself am not an expert in this field.
Constitutionally, as Prussian Prime Minister, I was, to be sure, in a certain sense the highest dignitary of the Prussian Church, but I did not concern myself with these matters very much.
The Fuehrer wanted to achieve the unification of the Protestant Evangelical Churches by appointing a Reich Bishop, so that there would be a high Protestant church dignitary as well as a high Catholic church dignitary. To begin with, he left the choice to the Evangelical churches, but they could not come to an agreement. Finally they brought forward one name, exactly the one which was not acceptable to us. Then a man was made Reich Bishop who had the Fuehrer's confidence to a higher degree than any of the other provincial bishops.
With the Catholic Church the Fuehrer ordered a concordat to be concluded by Herr Von Papen. Shortly before that agreement was concluded by Herr Von Papen I visited the Pope myself. I had numerous connections with the higher Catholic clergy because of my Catholic mother, and thus --I am myself a Protestant -- I had a view of both camps.
One thing, of course, the Fuehrer and all of us, I, too, stood for was to remove politics from the Church as far as was possible. I did not consider it right, I must frankly say, that on one day the priest in church should humbly concern himself with the spiritual welfare of his flock and then on the following day make a more or less belligerent speech in parliament.
A separation was planned by us, that is to say, the clergy were to concentrate on their own sphere and refrain from becoming involved in political matters. Owing to the fact that we had in Germany political parties with strong church leanings, considerable confusion had arisen here. That is the explanation of the fact that, because of this political opposition that at first played its role in the political field in parliament, and in election campaigns, there arose among certain of our people an antagonistic attitude toward the Church. For one must not forget that such election disputes and speeches often took place before the electors between political
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representatives of our Party and clergymen who represented those political parties which were more closely bound to the Church.
Because of this situation and a certain animosity, it is understandable that a more rabid faction -- if I may use that expression in this connection -- did not forget these contentions and now, on its side, carried the struggle on again on a false level. But the Fuehrer's attitude was that the churches should be given the chance to exist and develop. In a movement and a party which gradually had absorbed more or less the greater part of the German nation, and which now in its active political aspect had also absorbed the politically active persons of Germany, it is only natural that not all the members would be of the same opinion in every respect, despite the Leadership Principle. The tempo, the method, the attitude may be different; and in such large movements, even if they are ever so authoritatively led, certain groups form in response to certain problems. And if I were to name the group which still saw in the Church, if not a political danger, at least an undesirable institution, then I should mention above all two personages: Himmler on one side and Bormann -- particularly later on much more radically than Himmler -- on the other side.
Himmler's motives were less of a political and more of a confused mystical nature. Bormann's aims were much more clearcut. It was clear, too, that from the large group of Gauleiter, one or another might be more keenly interested in this fight against the Church. Thus, there were a number of Gaue where everything was in the best of order as far as the Church was concerned, and there were a few others where there was a keen fight against the Church.
I did interfere personally on frequent occasions. First of all, in order to demonstrate my attitude and to create order, I called into the Prussian State Council, as men in whom I had special confidence, a high Protestant and a high Catholic clergyman.
I myself am not what you might call a churchgoer, but I have gone now and then, and have always considered I belonged to the Church and have always had those functions over which the Church presides -- marriage, christening, burial, et cetera -- carried out in my house by the Church.
My intention thereby was to show those weak-willed persons who, in the midst of this fight of opinions did not know what they should do, that, if the second man in the State goes to church, is married by the Church, has his child christened and confirmed, et cetera, then they can calmly do the same. From the number of letters which I received as the result, I can see that I did the right thing.
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But as time went by, in other spheres as well as this, the situation became more critical. During the early years of the war I spoke to the Fuehrer about it once more and told him that the main concern now was, that every German should do his duty and that every soldier should go to his death, if need be, bravely. If in that connection his religious belief is a help and a support to him, whether he belongs to this or that confession, it can be only an advantage, and any disturbance in this connection could conceivably affect the soldier's inward strength. The Fuehrer agreed absolutely. In the Air Force I deliberately had no chaplains, because I was of the opinion that every member of the Air Force should go to the clergyman in whom he had the most confidence.
This was repeatedly told to the soldiers and officers at roll call. But to the Church itself I said that it would be good if we had a clear separation. Men should pray in church and not drill there; in the barracks men should drill and not pray. In that manner, from the very beginning, I kept the Air Force free from any religious disturbances and I insured complete liberty of conscience for everyone.
The situation became rapidly more critical -- and I cannot really give the reasons for this -- especially in the last 2 or 3 years of the war. It may have something to do with the fact that in some of the occupied territories, particularly in the Polish territory and also in the Czech territory, the clergy were strong representatives of national feeling and this led again to clashes on a political level which were then naturally carried over to religious fields. I do not know whether this was one of the reasons, but I consider it probable. On the whole I should like to say that the Fuehrer himself was not opposed to the Church. In fact, he told me on one occasion that there are certain things in respect to which even as Fuehrer one cannot entirely have one's way if they are still undecided and in need of reform, and that he believed that at the time much was being thought and said about the reorganization of the Church. He said that he did not consider himself destined to be a reformer of the Church and that he did not wish that any of his political leaders should win laurels in this field.
DR. STAHMER: Now, in the course of years, a large number of clergy, both from Germany and especially from the occupied territories -- you yourself mentioned Poland and Czechoslovakia -- were taken to concentration camps. Did you know anything about that?
Goering: I knew that at first in Germany a number of clergymen were taken to concentration camps. The case of Niemoller was common knowledge. I do not want to go into it in detail, because
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it is well known. A number of other clergymen were sent to concentration camps but not until the later years when the fight became more critical, for they made political speeches in the pulpit and criticized measures of the State or the Party; then, according to the severity of this criticism, the police intervened.
I told Himmler on one occasion that I did not think it was wise to arrest clergymen. As long as they talked in church they should say what they wanted, but if they made political speeches outside their churches then he could proceed against them, just as he would in connection with any other people who made speeches hostile to the State. Several clergymen who went very far in their criticism were not arrested. As far as the arrest of clergy from occupied territories is concerned, I heard about it; and I said earlier that this did not occur so much on the religious level just because they were clergymen, but because they were at the same time nationalists -- I understand that from their point of view -- and consequently often involved in actions hostile to the occupying forces.
DR. STAHMER: The Party program included two points, I believe, dealing with the question of the Jews. What was your basic attitude towards this question?
Goering: This question, which has been so strongly emphasized in the Indictment, forces me under all circumstances to interpose certain statements.
After Germany's collapse in 1918 Jewry became very powerful in Germany in all spheres of life, especially in the political, general intellectual and cultural, and, most particularly, the economic spheres. The men came back from the front, had nothing to look forward to, and found a large number of Jews who had come in during the war from Poland and the East, holding positions, particularly economic positions. It is known that, under the influence of the war and business concerned with it -- demobilization, which offered great possibilities for doing business, inflation, deflation -- enormous shifts and transfers took place in the propertied classes.
There were many Jews who did not show the necessary restraint and who stood out more and more in public life, so that they actually invited certain comparisons because of their numbers and
the position they controlled in contrast to the German people. In addition there was the fact that particularly those parties which were avoided by nationally minded people also had Jewish leadership out of proportion to the total number of Jews.
That did not apply only to Germany, but also to Austria, which we have always considered a part of Germany. There the entire Social Democratic leadership was almost exclusively in Jewish
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hands. They played a very considerable part in politics, particularly in the left-wing parties, and they also became very prominent in the press in all political directions.
At that time, there thus ensued a continuous uninterrupted attack on everything national, national concepts and national ideals. I draw attention to all the magazines and articles which dragged through the mud things which were holy to us. I likewise call attention to the distortion which was practiced in the field of art in this direction, to plays which dragged the fighting at the front through the mud and befouled the ideal of the brave soldier. In fact I could submit an enormous pile of such articles, books, plays, and so forth; but this would lead too far afield and I am actually not too well informed on the subject. Because of all this, a defense movement arose which was by no means created by National Socialism but which had existed before, which was already strong during the war and which came even more strongly to the fore after the war, when the influence of Jewry had such effects.
Moreover, in the cultural and intellectual sphere also many things which were not in accordance with German feeling came to be expressed. Here, too, there was a great split. In addition there was the fact that in economic matters, if one overlooks the western industry, there was an almost exclusive domination on the part of Jewry, which, indeed, consisted of elements which were most sharply opposed by the old, established Jewish families.
When the movement then drew up its program, which was done by a few simple people -- as far as I know, not even Adolf Hitler himself took part in the drafting of the program, at least not yet as a leader -- the program included that point which played a prominent part as a defensive point among large sections of the German people. Shortly before that there had been the Rate-Republik in Munich and the murder of hostages, and here, too the leaders were mostly Jews. It can be understood, therefore, that a program drawn up in Munich by simple people quite naturally took this up as a defense point. News also came of a Rate-Republik in Hungary -- again consisting mainly of Jews. All this had made a very strong impression. When the program became known, the Party -- which was at that time extremely small -- was at first not taken seriously and was laughed at. But then, from the very beginning, a concentrated and most bitter attack on the part of the entire Jewish press, or the Jewish-influenced press, was started against the movement. Everywhere Jewry was in the lead in the fight against National Socialism, whether in the press, in politics, in cultural life by making National Socialism contemptible and ridiculous, or in the economic sphere. Whoever was a National Socialist could not get a position; the National Socialist businessman
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could not get supplies or space for advertisements, and so on. All this naturally resulted in a strong defensive attitude on the part of the Party and led from the very beginning to an intensification of the fight, such as had not originally been the intention of the program. For the program aimed very definitely at one thing above all -- that Germany should be led by Germans. And it was desired that the leadership, especially the political shaping of the fate of the German people, should be in the hands of German persons who could raise up the spirit of the German people again in a way that people of a different kind could not. Therefore the main point was at first merely to exclude Jewry from politics, from the leadership of the State. Later on, the cultural field was also included because of the very strong fight which had developed, particularly in this sphere, between Jewry on the one side and National Socialism on the other.
I believe that if, in this connection, many a hard word which was said by us against Jews and Jewry were to be brought up, I should still be in a position to produce magazines, books, newspapers, and speeches in which the expressions and insults coming from the other side were far in excess. All that obviously was bound to lead to an intensification.
Shortly after the seizure of power countless exceptions were made. Jews who had taken part in the World War and who had been decorated were treated differently and shown consideration; they remained unaffected by measures excluding Jews from civil services.
As I have said, the chief aim was to exclude them from the political sphere, then from the cultural sphere.
The Nuremberg Laws were intended to bring about a clear separation of races and, in particular, to do away with the notion of persons of mixed blood in the future, as the term of half Jew or quarter Jew led to continuous distinctions and confusion as far as their position was concerned. Here I wish to emphasize that I personally had frequent discussions with the Fuehrer regarding persons of mixed blood and that I pointed out to the Fuehrer that, once German Jews were clearly separated, it was impossible to have still another category betweenthe two which constituted an unclarified section of the German people, which did not stand on the same level as the other Germans. I suggested to him that, as a generous act, he should do away with the concept of the person of mixed blood and place such people on the same footing as the other Germans. The Fuehrer took up this idea with great interest and was all for adopting my point of view, in fact, he gave certain preparatory orders. Then came more troubled times, as far as
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foreign policy was concerned -- the Sudeten crisis, Czechoslovakia, the occupation of the Rhineland, and afterward the Polish crisis -- and the question of persons of mixed blood stepped into the background; but at the beginning of the war the Fuehrer told me that he was prepared to solve this matter in a positive, generous fashion, but only after the war.
The Nuremberg Laws were to exclude, for the future, that concept of persons of mixed blood by means of a clear separation of races. Consequently it was provided in the penal regulations of the Nuremberg Laws, that never the woman but always the man should be punishable, no matter whether he was German or Jewish. The German woman or the Jewess should not be punished. Then quieter times came, and the Fuehrer was always of the opinion that for the time being Jews should remain in economy, though not in leading and prominent positions, until a controlled emigration, gradually setting in, then intensified, should solve this problem. In spite of continuous disturbances and difficulties in the economic field, the Jews on the whole remained unmolested in their economic positions.
The extraordinary intensification which set in later did not really start in until after the events of 1933, and then to a still greater extent in the war years. But here, again, there was naturally one more radical group for whom the Jewish question was more significantly in the foreground than it was for other groups of the Movement; just as, as I should like to emphasize at this point, the idea of National Socialism as a philosophy was understood in various ways -- by one person more philosophically, by another mystically, by a third in a practical and political sense. This was also true of the different points of the program. For one person certain points were more important, for another person less so. One person would see in the point of the program which was directed against Versailles and toward a free and strong Germany the main point of the program; another person, perhaps, would consider the Jewish question the main point.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off? Dr. Stahmer, can you inform the Tribunal how much longer you think the Defendant Goering's examination will last?
DR. STAHMER: I think that we shall finish in the course of tomorrow morning.
THE PRESIDENT: That is a very long time.
DR.STAHMER: I shall do my best to shorten it.
[A recess was taken.]
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DR. STAHMER: To what extent did you participate in the issuing of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935?
Goering: In my capacity as President of the Reichstag I announced those laws and the law concerning the new Reich flag simultaneously here in Nuremberg when the Reichstag was meeting at that time.
DR. STAHMER: In the Indictment it says that the destruction of the Jewish race was part of the planning of aggressive wars.
Goering: That has nothing to do with the planning of aggressive wars; also, the destruction of the Jewish race was not planned in advance.
DR. STAHMER: Were you a party to the action against the Jews in the night of 9-10 November 1938?
Goering: I should like to discuss that briefly. I gathered yesterday, from the cross-examination of the witness Korner, that a misunderstanding had arisen in regard to this. On 9 November the march to the Feldherrnhalle took place. This march was repeated every year and for this occasion the prominent leaders of the movement gathered. Korner referred to that when he said that everybody came to Munich. It was customary, after the march was over, for practically everybody to meet at the Munich City Hall for a dinner, at which the Fuehrer was also present.
I never attended that dinner in any of the years in question, as I used to utilize my stay in Munich by attending to various other matters in the afternoon of that day. I did not take part in the dinner on this occasion either, nor did Korner. He and I returned in my special train to Berlin in the evening. As I heard later, when the investigation was carried out, Goebbels announced at that dinner, after the Fuehrer had left, that the seriously wounded counsellor of the Embassy in Paris had died of his wounds. There was a certain amount of excitement and then Goebbels, apparently spoke some words about retaliation and in his way -- he was probably the very strongest representative of anti-Semitism -- must have brought on this development of events; but that was after the Fuehrer had left.
I myself, in fact, heard of the events upon my arrival in Berlin. First of all the conductor in my car told me that he had seen fires in Halle. Half an hour later I called my adjutant, who reported to me that riots had taken place during the night, that Jewish stores had been broken into and plundered and that synagogues had been set on fire. He did not know any more about it himself.
I proceeded to my apartment and at once had a call put through to the Gestapo. I demanded a report of the events of that night. That is the report which has been referred to here and which was made to me by the Chief of the Gestapo, Heydrich, concerning the
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events, as much as he knew about them at that time; that was the evening of the following day, I believe. The Fuehrer, too, arrived in Berlin in the course of the morning. Having in the meantime heard that Goebbels had at least played an important part as instigator, I told the Fuehrer that it was impossible for me to have such events taking place at this particular time. I was making every effort, in connection with the Four Year Plan, to concentrate the entire economic field to the utmost. I had, in the course of speeches to the nation, been asking for every old toothpaste tube, every rusty nail, every bit of scrap material to be collected and utilized. It could not be tolerated that a man who was not responsible for these things should upset my difficult economic tasks by destroying so many things of economic value on the one hand and by causing so much disturbance in economic life on the other hand.
The Fuehrer made some apologies for Goebbels, but on the whole he agreed that such events were not to take place and must not be allowed to take place. I also pointed out to him, that such a short time after the Munich agreement such matters would also have an unfavorable effect on foreign policy.
In the afternoon I had another discussion with the Fuehrer. In the meantime Goebbels had been to see him. The latter I had told over the telephone in unmistakable terms, and in very sharp words, my view of the matter. I told him then, with emphasis, that I was not inclined to suffer the consequences of his uncontrolled utterances, as far as economic matters were concerned.
In the meantime the Fuehrer, influenced by Goebbels, had somewhat changed his mind. Just what Goebbels told him and to what extent he referred to the excitement of the crowd, to urgently needed settlements, I do not know. At any rate, the Fuehrer's views were not the same as they were on the occasion of my first complaint.
While we were talking, Goebbels, who was in the house, joined us and began his usual talk: that such things could not be tolerated; that this was the second or third murder of a National Socialist committed abroad by a Jew. It was on that occasion that he first made the suggestion that a fine should be imposed. Indeed, he wished that each Gau should collect such a fine and he named an almost incredibly high sum.
I contradicted him and told the Fuehrer that, if there was to be a fine, then the Reich alone should collect it, for, as I said, Herr Goebbels had the most Jews right here in Berlin and would therefore not be a suitable person for this, since he was the most interested party. Apart from that, if such measures were to be taken, then only the sovereign State had the right to take them.
After a short discussion, this way and that, about the amount, 1,000,000,000 was agreed upon. I pointed out to the Fuehrer that
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under certain circumstances that figure would have repercussions on the tax returns. The Fuehrer then expressed the wish and ordered that the economic solution also be carried through now. In order that there should be no further occasion for such events, businesses obviously Jewish and known to be Jewish were first of all to be Aryanized, in particular the department stores. These were often a source of friction, as the officials and employees from the ministries, who could shop only between 6 and 7 in the evening, often went to these stores and had difficulties. He ordered, in general terms, what should be done.
Thereupon I called the meeting of 12 November with those departments which had jurisdiction over these matters. Unfortunately, the Fuehrer had demanded that Goebbels should be represented on this commission -- actually a commission was to be appointed. He was, in fact, present, although I maintained that he had nothing to do with economic questions. The discussion was very lively. We were all irritated at this meeting. Then I had the economic laws drafted and later I had them published.
I rejected other proposals which lay outside the economic sphere, such as restriction of travel, restriction of residence, restriction in regard to bathing resorts, et cetera, as I was not competent to deal with these things and had not received any special orders. These were issued later on by the police authorities, and not by me; but through my intervention various mitigations and adjustments were made.
I should like to point out that although I received oral and written orders and commands from the Fuehrer to issue and carry out these laws, I assume full and absolute responsibility for these laws which bear my signature; for I issued them and consequently am responsible, and do not propose to hide in any way behind the Fuehrer's order.
DR. STAHMER: Another matter. What were the reasons for the refusal to take part in the Disarmament Conference and for the withdrawal from the League of Nations?
Goering: The chief reasons for that were, first of all, that the other states who, after the complete disarming of Germany, were also bound to disarm, did not do so. The second point was that we also found a lack of willingness to meet in any way Germany's justified proposals for revisions; thirdly, there were repeated violations of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Covenant of the League of Nations by other states, Poland, Lithuania, et cetera, which were at first censured by the League of Nations, but which were then not brought to an end, but were rather accepted as accomplished facts; fourthly, all complaints by Germany regarding
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questions of minorities were, indeed, discussed, and well-meaning advice was given to the states against which the complaints had been brought, but nothing was actually done to relieve the situation.
Those are the reasons for leaving the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference.
DR. STAHMER: Why did Hitler decide to rearm and reintroduce compulsory service?
Goering: When Germany left the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference, she simultaneously announced to the leading powers concerned her definite decision to aim at universal disarmament. The Fuehrer then made various proposals which, it can be assumed, are historically known: restriction of active armed forces to a certain number of men; restriction of weapons to be used; abolishing of certain weapons as, for example, bombers; and various other points. Each one of these proposals was rejected, however, and did not reach a general realization, nor were even discussed.
When we and the Fuehrer recognized clearly that the other parties did not think of disarming and that, on the contrary, that mighty power to the east of us in particular, Russia, was carrying out an armament program as never before, it became necessary for us, in order to safeguard the most vital interests of the German people, their life and their security, to free ourselves from all ties and to rearm to such an extent as was now necessary for the interests and security of the Reich. That was the first reason for the necessity of reintroducing compulsory service.
DR. STAHMER: To what extent did the Luftwaffe participate in this rearmament?
Goering: In 1933, when I founded the Air Ministry, we had not yet gone into the question of rearmament. In spite of that I did arrange for certain basic conditions. I immediately extended manufacture and increased air traffic beyond the extent of necessary traffic, so as to be able to train a larger number of pilots. At that time I took over a number of young people, lieutenants, cadets, who then had to leave the Wehrmacht in order to take up commercial flying and there to learn to fly.
I was aware from the beginning that protection in the air was necessary as one of the most essential conditions for the security of my nation. Originally it was my belief that a defensive air force, that is, a fighter force, might suffice; but upon reflection I realized -- and I want to underline what witness Field Marshal Kesselring said on that subject -- that one would be lost with merely a fighter force for defense purposes and that even a defensive force must contain
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bombers in order that it can be used offensively against the enemy air force on enemy territory.
Therefore I had bomber aircraft developed from commercial airplanes. In the beginning rearmament proceeded slowly. Everything had to be created anew since nothing existed in the way of air armament.
In 1935 I told the Fuehrer that I now considered it proper, since we had repeatedly received refusals in answer to our proposals, to declare to the world openly that we were creating an air force, and that I had already established a certain basis for that. This took place in the form of an interview which I had with a British correspondent.
Now I could proceed to rearm on a larger scale; but in spite of that we confined ourselves at first to what we called a "Risk Air Force," that is a risk insofar as an enemy coming to attack Germany should know that he could expect to meet with an air force. But it was by no means strong enough to be of any real importance.
In 1936 followed the famous report, which was presented to the witness Bodenschatz, in which I said that we must from this moment on work on the basis of mobilization, that money mattered nothing, and that, in short, I should take the responsibility for overdrawing the budget.
Since nothing had existed before, I should be able to catch up quickly only if aircraft production on one hand were made to work with as many shifts and as much speed as possible, that is with maximum effort and on a mobilization basis, and if, on the other hand, extension of the ground forces and similar matters was carried out at once with the greatest possible speed.
The situation in 1936 is defined by me, in that report to my co-workers, as serious. Other states had, to be sure, not disarmed, but here and there they had perhaps neglected their air force and they were catching up on lost ground. Violent debates were taking place in England with regard to modernizing and building up the air force; feverish activities were taking place in Russia, concerning which we had reliable reports -- I shall refer to the question of Russian reannament later.
When the Civil War broke out in Spain, Franco sent a call for help to Germany and asked for support, particularly in the air. One should not forget that Franco with his troops was stationed in Africa and that he could not get the troops across, as the fleet was in the hands of the Communists, or, as they called themselves at the time, the competent Revolutionary Government in Spain. The decisive factor was, first of all, to get his troops over to Spain.
The Fuehrer thought the matter over. I urged him to give support under all circumstances, firstly, in order to prevent the further-
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spread of communism in that theater and, secondly, to test my young Luftwaffe at this opportunity in this or that technical respect.
With the permission of the Fuehrer, I sent a large part of my transport fleet and a number of experimental fighter units, bombers, and antiaircraft guns; and in that way I had an opportunity to ascertain, under combat conditions, whether the material was equal to the task. In order that the personnel, too, might gather a certain amount of experience, I saw to it that there was a continuous flow, that is, that new people were constantly being sent and others recalled.
The rearming of the Air Force required, as a basic condition, the creation of a large number of new industries. It was no help to me to build a strong Air Force and not to have any gasoline for it. Here, too, therefore, I had to speed up the development of the refineries to the utmost. There were other auxiliary industries, above all, aluminum. Since I considered the Luftwaffe the most important part of the Wehrmacht, as far as the security of the Reich was concerned, and, in view of the modernization of technical science, it was my duty as Commander-in-Chief to do everything to develop it to the highest peak; and, too, as nothing was there to begin with, a supreme effort and a maximum amount of work had to be achieved. That I did.
Much has been said here in a cross-examination about four-engine bombers, two-engine bombers, et cetera. The witnesses made statements to the best of their knowledge and ability, but they were familiar only with small sections and they gave their opinions from that point of view. I alone was responsible and am responsible, for I was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe and Minister for Air. I was responsible for the rearmament, the training and the morale of the Luftwaffe.
If at the beginning I did not build any four-engine bombers, it was not because I had qualms that they might be construed as an aggressive force. That would not have disturbed me for one minute. My only reason was that the necessary technical and production conditions did not exist. That kind of bomber simply had not yet been developed by my industry, at any rate not so that I could use it. Secondly, I was still short of aluminum, and anyone only half an expert knows how much aluminum a four-engine bomber swallows up and how many fighters, that is, two-engine bombers, one can build with the same amount.
To start with, I had to ascertain who were likely to be Germany's opponents in a war. Were the technical conditions adequate for meeting an attack against Germany by such an enemy? Of all possible opponents I considered Russia the main opponent, but of
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course England, France, and Italy also had to be considered. It was my duty to consider all possibilities.
As far as the European theater of war was concerned, I could, for the time being, be satisfied with bombers which could operate against the impoftant centers of enemy armament industry. Thus, for the time being, I did not need anything more than aircraft which would enable me to do that, but it was important to have more of that kind.
But in a speech to the aircraft industrialists I let it be clearly known that I desired most urgently to have a bomber which, loaded with the necessary bombs, could fly to America and back. I asked them to work on that diligently so that, if America should enter into war against Germany, I could also reach the American armament industry. It was not a question, therefore, of not wanting them. I even, as far as I remember, inaugurated a prize competition for bombers capable of flying at great heights and at great speeds over large distances. Even before the beginning of the war we had begun to develop propellerless aircraft.
Summing up, I should like to say that I did everything possible under the technical and production conditions then prevalent, to rebuild and rearm a strong Air Force. The technical knowledge of that time led us to believe that, after 5 years of war, new technical and practical advances would be made. That is a principle based on experience. I wanted to be prepared to have an Air Force which, however the political situation might develop, would be strong enough to protect the nation and to deal blows to Germany's enemy. It is perfectly correct for Mr. Justice Jackson to ask whether the speedy elimination of Poland and France was due to the fact that the German Air Force, acting according to modern principles, contributed so much. It was the decisive factor. On the other hand, though this does not concern me, the use of the American air force was also a decisive factor for the Allied victory.
DR. STAHMER: Has the fact that you were given control of raw materials already in April 1936 anything to do with this rebuilding of the Air Force?
Goering: I need not repeat what the witness Korner elaborated yesterday, or the day before yesterday, with regard to my gradual rise in economic leadership. The starting point was the agricultural crisis in the year of 1935. In the summer of 1936 the then Minister of War, Von Blomberg, the Minister of Economy and President of the Reichsbank, Schacht, and Minister Kerrl came to me and asked me whether I was prepared to back a suggestion of theirs which they wanted to submit to the Fuehrer, namely, that I be appointed Commissioner for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange. It was
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agreed that I should not function as an economics expert, which I was not; but some one was needed to take care of the difficulties due to shortage of foreign currency, which continuously arose because of our heavy demands, and at the same time to make available and accumulate raw materials -- someone who was capable of taking measures which would perhaps not be understood by many people, but would have the weight of his authority. Secondly, it was decided that in this sphere, though not as an expert, I should be the driving power and use my energy.
Minister Schacht, who was the expert, had difficulties with the Party. He was not a member of the Party. He was at that time on excellent terms with the Fuehrer and me, but not so much with the members of the Party. The danger arose that the appropriate measures might not be understood by the latter, and in this connection I would be the right man to make these things known to the people and the Party.
That is how that came about. But since I, as Minister of Air was, as I have explained, interested in raw materials, I played an ever increasingly important role. Then the differences between agriculture and economy in regard to foreign currency came more to the fore, so that I had to make decisions, decisions which became more drastic. Thus I entered the field of economic leadership. I devoted a great deal of time and work to this task, particularly to procuring the raw materials necessary for economy and for rearmament. Out of this the Four Year Plan arose which gave me far-reaching plenary powers.
DR. STAHMER: What was the aim of the Four Year Plan?
Goering: The Four Year Plan had two aims: First, that German economy as far as possible and particularly in the agricultural sector, should be made secure against any crisis; secondly, in the event of war, Germany should be able to withstand a blockade to the greatest extent possible. Therefore it was necessary, first, to increase agriculture to the utmost, to control and direct it, to control consumption, and to store up supplies by means of negotiations with foreign countries; secondly, to ascertain which raw materials, imported until then, could be found, produced, and procured in Germany itself, and which raw materials that were difficult to import could be replaced by others more easily obtainable. Briefly, as far as the agricultural sphere was concerned: utilization of every available space; regulation of cultivation according to the crops needed; control of animal breeding; building up of reserves for times of need or crop failures; as far as the industrial sector was concerned, the creation of industries supplying raw materials: First, coal -- although there was sufficient coal, its production would have
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to be increased considerably, since coal is the basic raw material on which so many other things are dependent; iron-our mining industry had made itself so dependent on foreign countries that, in the event of a crisis, a most disastrous situation might arise here. I can quite understand that from the purely financial and business point of view that was all right but, nevertheless, we should have to mine and make available the German iron ores which were at our disposal, even though they were inferior to the Swedish ores; we should have to compel industry to make alloys and manage with German ores.
I recklessly allowed industry a year's time. As industry by then had still not begun to exploit these ores, I founded the Reich works which were given my name. They were primarily for opening up iron-ore reserves in German soil and using them in the mining industry. It was necessary to set up oil refineries, aluminum works and various other works, and then to promote the development of the so-called synthetic material industry in order to replace necessary raw materials which could be obtained only from abroad and under difficult circumstances. In the field of textiles this involved the conversion of the textile industry and of I. G. Farben.
That, roughly, was the task of the Four Year Plan.
Naturally a third question is of importance in this connection: the question of labor. Co-ordination was necessary here too. The most important industries had to have workers; less important industries had to dispense with them. The control of this allocation of labor, which before the war functioned only within Germany, was another task of the Four Year Plan and the Department for the Allocation of Labor.
The Four Year Plan as such very quickly assumed too large proportions as an official organization. Then, after Schacht had left, I took over the Ministry of Economy for 2 months and fitted the Four Year Plan into it. I retained only a very small staff of collaborators and carried out the tasks with the assistance of the ministries competent to deal with these things.
DR. STAHMER: Was the purpose of carrying out these plans that of preparing for aggressive war?
Goering: No, the aim of the plans was, as I said, to make Germany secure against economic crises, and to make her secure against a blockade in the event of war, and, of course, within the Four Year Plan to provide the necessary conditions for rearmament. That was one of its important tasks.
DR. STAHMER: How did the occupation of the Rhineland come about?
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Goering: The occupation of the Rhineland was not, as has been asserted here, a long-prepared affair. What had been discussed previously did not deal with the occupation of the Rhineland, but with the question of mobilization measures in the Rhineland in case of an attack on Germany.
The Rhineland occupation came about for two reasons. The balance which was created through the Locarno Pact had been disturbed in western Europe, because a new factor had arisen in France's system of allies, namely Russia, who even at that time had an extraordinarily large armed force. In addition, there was the Russian-Czechoslovakian mutual assistance pact. Thus, the conditions upon which the Locarno Pact had been based no longer existed, according to our way of thinking. So, there was now such a threat to Germany, or the possibility of such a threat, that it would have been a neglect of duty and honor on the part of the Government if it had not done everything to ensure, here also, the security of the Reich. The Government therefore -- as a sovereign state -- made use of its sovereign right and freed itself from the dishonorable obligation not to place a part of the Reich under its protection, and it did place this important part of the Reich under its protection by building strong fortifications.
The construction of such strong fortifications, such expensive fortifications and such extensive fortifications, is justified only if that frontier is regarded as final and definitive. If I had intended to extend the frontier in the near future, it would never have been possible to go through with an undertaking so expensive and such a burden to the whole nation as was the construction of the West Wall. This was done -- and I want to emphasize this particularly -- from the very beginning only in the interest of defense and as a defensive measure. It made the western border of the Reich secure against that threat which, because of the recent shift of power, and the new combination of powers such as the Franco-Russian mutual assistance pact, had become a threat to Germany. The actual occupation, the decision to occupy the Rhineland, was made at very short notice. The troops which marched into the Rhineland were of such small numbers -- and that is an historical fact -- that they provided merely a token occupation. The Luftwaffe itself could not, for the time being, enter the Rhine territory on the left at all, since there was no adequate ground organization. It entered the so-called demilitarized territory on the right of the Rhine, Dusseldorf and other cities. In other words, it was not as if the Rhineland were suddenly occupied with a great wave of troops; but, as I said before, it was merely that a few battalions and a few batteries marched in as a symbol that the Rhineland was now again under the full sovereignty of the sovereign German Reich and would in the future be protected accordingly.
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DR. STAHMER: What were Hitler's aims when he created the Reich Defense Council and when he issued the Reich Defense Law?
Goering: The Reich Defense Council, during the last months, played a very important role here. I hope I shall not be misunderstood; I believe that during these months more has been said about it than was ever said since the moment of its creation. In the first place it is called Reich Defense Council and not Reich Council for the Offensive. Its existence is taken for granted. It exists in every other country in some form or other, even if it has another name. First of all, there was a Reich Defense Committee already, before our seizure of power. In this committee there were official experts from all the ministries for the purpose of carrying out mobilization preparations or, better said, mobilization measures, which automatically come into consideration in any kind of development -- war, the possibility of war, the facts of war involving bordering states and the subsequent need to guard one's neutrality. These are the usual measures to be taken -- to ascertain how inany horses have to be levied in case of mobilization, what factories have to be converted, whether bread ration cards and fat ration cards have to be introduced, regulation of traffic, et cetera -- all these things need not be dealt with in detail, because they are so obvious.
All such discussions took place in the Reich Defense Committee discussions by the official experts presided over by the then chief of the ministerial office in the Reich Ministry of War, Keitel. The Reich Defense Council was created, for the time being, as a precautionary measure, when the armed forces were re-established, but it existed only on paper. I was, I think, Deputy Chairman or Chairman -- I do not know which -- I heard it mentioned here. I assure you under oath that at no time and at no date did I participate in a meeting at which the Reich Defense Council as such was called together. These discussions, which were necessary for the defense of the Reich, were held in a completely different connection, in a different form and depended on immediate needs. Naturally, there were discussions about the defense of the Reich, but not in connection with the Reich Defense Council. This existed on paper, but it never met. But even if it had met, that would have been quite logical, since this concerns defense and not attack. The Reich Defense Law, or rather the Ministerial Council for the Reich Defense, which is probably what you mean, was created only one day before the outbreak of the war, since the Reich Defense Council actually did not exist. This Ministerial Council for Reich Defense is not to be considered the same as, for instance, the so-called War Cabinet that was formed in England when the war broke out, and perhaps in other countries. On the contrary, this Ministerial Council for the
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Reich Defense was -- by using abbreviated procedure -- to issue only the regulations necessary for wartime, laws dealing with daily issues, explanations to the people, and it was to relieve the Fuehrer to a considerable extent, since he had reserved for himself the leadership in military operations. The Ministerial Council therefore issued, first of all, all those laws which, as I should like to mention, are to be expected in any country at the beginning of a war. In the early period it met three or four times, and after that not at all. I, too, had no time after that. To abbreviate the procedure, these laws were circulated and then issued. One, or one and a half years afterwards -- I cannot remember the exact time -- the Fuehrer took the direct issuance of laws more into his own hands. I was the co-signer of many laws in my capacity as Chairman of this Ministerial Council. But that, too, was practically discontinued in the latter years. The Ministerial Council did not meet again at all after 1940, I think.
DR. STAHMER: The Prosecution has presented a document, Number 2261-PS. In this document a Reich Defense Law of 21 May 1935 is mentioned, which for the time being was kept in abeyance by order of the Fuehrer. I shall have that document shown to you and I ask you to give your views on it?
Goering: I am familiar with it.
DR. STAHMER: Would you please state your views?
Goering: After the Reich Defense Council had begun to exist, a Reich Defense Law was provided in 1935 for the event of a mobilization. The agreement or, better said, decision, was made by the Reich Cabinet and this law was to be applied and became effective in the case of a mobilization. Actually it was replaced when mobilization did come about, by the law I have mentioned regarding the Ministerial Council for the Reich Defense. In this law, before the time of the Four Year Plan, that is 1935, a Plenipotentiary for Economy was created, at first for the event of a mobilization, and a Plenipotentiary for Administration; so that if war occurred, then all the departments of the entire administration would be concentrated under one minister and all the departments concerned with economy and armament were likewise to be concentrated under one minister. The Plenipotentiary for Administration did not function before mobilization. The Plenipotentiary for Economy, on the other hand -- this title was not to be made known to the public -- was to begin his tasks immediately. That was indeed necessary. This is perhaps the clearest explanation of the fact that the creation of the Four Year Plan necessarily led to clashes between the Plenipotentiary for Economy and the Delegate for the Four Year Plan, since both of them were more or less working on
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the same or similar tasks. When, therefore, in 1936, I was made Delegate for the Four Year Plan, the activities of the Plenipotentiary for Economy practically ceased.
DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, ought I to stop now with the questioning?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think that would be a good time.
[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]
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Afternoon Session
DR. STAHMER: A word has been repeatedly used here: Reich Research Council (Reichsforschungsrat). What kind of institution was that?
Goering: I believe it was in the year 1943 that I received the order to concentrate the entire field of German research, particularly insofar as it was of urgent importance to the conduct of war. Unfortunately, that was done much too late. The purpose was to avoid parallel research and useless research, to concentrate an research on problems important for the war. I myself became President of the Reich Research Council and established directives for research according to the purpose mentioned.
DR. STAHMER: Did this have any connection with the Research Office of the Air Force?
Goering: No, the Research Office of the Air Force was entirely different, and it had nothing to do with either research on the one hand or the Air Force on the other hand. The expression was a sort of camouflage, for, when we came to power, there was considerable confusion on the technical side of control of important information. Therefore, I established for the time being the Research Office, that was an office where all technical devices for the control of radio, telegraph, telephone, and all other technical communications could be provided. Since I was then only Reich Minister for Air I could do this within only my own ministry and therefore used this camouflaged designation. This machinery served to exert control above all over foreign missions, and important persons, who had telephone, telegraph, and radio connections with foreign countries, as is customary everywhere in all countries, and then to decipher the information thus extracted and put it at the disposal of other departments. The office had no agents, no intelligence service, but was a purely technical office intercepting wireless messages, telephone conversations, and telegrams, wherever it was ordered, and passing on the information to the offices concerned. In this connection I may say that I have also read much about those communications made by Mr. Messersmith, which figured here. He was at times the main source for such information.,
DR. STAHMER: What was the purpose and importance of the Secret Cabinet Council which was created a short time after the seizure of power?
Goering: In February 1938 there came about the retirement of the War Minister, Field Marshal Von Blomberg. Simultaneously, because of particular circumstances, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Colonel General Von Fritsch, retired, that is to say, the
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Fuehrer dismissed him. The coincidence of these retirements or dismissals was, in the eyes of the Fuehrer, disadvantageous to the prestige of the Wehrmacht. He wanted to divert attention from this change in the Wehrmacht by means of a general reshuffling. He said he wanted above all to change the Foreign Office because only such a change would make a strong impression abroad and would be likely to divert attention from the military affairs. At the time I opposed the Fuehrer very strongly about this. In lengthy, wearisome personal conversations I begged him to refrain from a change in the Foreign Office. He thought, however, that he would have to insist upon it.
The question arose as to what should be done after Herr Von Neurath's retirement or after the change. The Fuehrer intended to keep Herr Von Neurath in the Cabinet by all means for he had the greatest personal esteem for him. I myself have always expressed my respect for Herr Von Neurath. In order to avoid a lowering of Herr Von Neurath's prestige abroad, I myself was the one to make a proposal to the Fuehrer. I told him that in order to make it appear abroad that Von Neurath had not been entirely removed from foreign policy, I would propose to appoint him chairman of the Secret Cabinet Council. There was, to be sure, no such cabinet in existence, but the expression would sound quite nice, and everyone would imagine that it meant something. The Fuehrer said we could not make him chairman if we had no council. Thereupon I said, "Then we shall make one," and offhand I marked down names of several persons. How little importance I attached to this council can be seen in the fact that I myself was, I think, one of the last on that list.
Then, for the public at large the council was given out to be an advisory council for foreign policy. When I returned I said to my friends, "The affair has gone off all right, but if the Fuehrer does not ask the Foreign Minister for advice, he certainly will not ask a cabinet council for advice on foreign policy; we will not have anything to do with it!" I declare under oath that this Cabinet Council never met at all, not even for a minute; there was not even an initial meeting for laying down the rules by which it should function. Some members may not even have been informed that they were members.
DR. STAHMER: When was the Reich Cabinet in session last?
Goering: As far as I remember, the last meeting of the Reich Cabinet was in 1937, and, as far as I can remember, I presided over the last meeting, the Fuehrer having left shortly after the beginning. The Fuehrer did not think much of Cabinet meetings; it was too large a circle for him, and perhaps there was too much discussion of his plans, and he wanted that changed.
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From that time on, there were only individual conferences -- conferences with single ministers or with groups of ministers from the ministries concerned. But since the ministers found, very rightly, that this made their work difficult, a solution was adopted whereby I, under the title of the Four Year Plan, called the ministers together more frequently, in order to discuss general matters with them. But at no time in the Cabinet or the Ministerial Council was any political decision of importance mentioned or discussed, as, for instance, those decisions -- the annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia -- which finally led to war. I know how much importance the Fuehrer attached to the fact that in all these matters only those ministers should be informed who absolutely had to be informed, because of the nature of their work, and that only at the very last minute. Here too, I can say under oath that quite a number of ministers were not informed about the beginning of the war or the march into Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, or Austria until the next morning, when they learned about it by radio or through the press, just as any other German citizen.
DR. STAHMER: What part did you have in making the Munich Pact of September 1938?
Goering: The incorporation of the Sudeten Germans or, better said, the solution of the Sudeten German problem I had always emphasized as being something that was necessary. I also told the Fuehrer after the Anschluss of Austria that I should regret it if his statements were misunderstood to mean that with the Anschluss of Austria this question had been settled.
In November 1937, 1 stated to Lord Halifax that the Anschluss of Austria, the solution of the Sudeten German question in the sense of a return of the Sudeten Germans, and the solution of the problem of Danzig and the Corridor were integral parts of German policy. Whether they were tackled by Hitler one day, or by me or somebody else the next day, they would still remain political aims which under all circumstances would have to be attained sometime. However, both of us agreed that all efforts should be made to achieve that without resorting to war.
Furthermore, in my conversations with Mr. Bullitt I had always taken up the very same position. And I told every other person, publicly and personally, that these three points had to be settled and that the settlement of the one would not make the others unimportant.
I also want to stress that, if in connection with this, and also in connection with other things, the Prosecution accuses us of not having kept this or that particular promise that Germany had made in the past, including the Germany that existed just before the
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seizure of power, I should like to refer to the many speeches in which both the Fuehrer -- this I no longer remember so well -- and I, as I know very well, stated that we warned foreign countries not to make any plans for the future on the basis of any promises made by the present government, that we would not recognize these promises when we acquired power. Thus there was absolute clarity in respect to this.
When the Sudeten question approached a crisis and a solution was intended by the Fuehrer, I, as a soldier and Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, as was my duty, took the preparatory measures, ordered for any eventuality. As a politician I was extremely happy at the attempts which were made to find a peaceful solution. I acknowledge that at that time I was very glad when I saw that the British Prime Minister was making every possible effort. Nevertheless, the situation on the day before the Munich agreement had again become very critical.
It was about 6:30 or 7 o'clock in the morning when the Italian Ambassador, Attolico, rang me up and said that he had to see me immediately on orders from Mussolini, that it was about the solution of the Sudeten problem. I told him he should go and see the Foreign Minister. He said he had a special order from Mussolini to see me alone first. I met him, as far as I remember, at 9 o'clock in the morning, and there he suggested that Mussolini was prepared to mediate; that a meeting should be called as soon as possible between Germany (Adolf Hitler), England (Prime Minister Chamberlain), France (Premier Daladier), and Italy (Mussolini), in order to settle the question peacefully. He, Mussolini, saw a possibility of that and was prepared to take all necessary steps and asked me personally to use all my influence in that direction. I took the Ambassador, and also Herr Von Neurath although he was not Foreign Minister at that time, at once to the Reich Chancellery and reported everything to the Fuehrer, tried to persuade him, explained to him the advantages of such a step and said that this could be the basis for a general easing of tension. Whether the other current political and diplomatic endeavors would be successful one could not yet say, but if four leading statesmen of the four large western European powers were to meet, then much would be gained by that.
Herr Von Neurath supported my argument, and the Fuehrer agreed and said we should call the Duce by telephone. Attolico, who waited outside, did that immediately, whereupon Mussolini called the Fuehrer officially and matters were agreed and Munich decided upon as the place.
Late in the afternoon I was informed by the Italian Embassy that both the British Prime Minister and the French Prime Minister had agreed to arrive at Munich the next day.
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I asked the Fuehrer, or rather, I told him, that under all circumstances I would go along. He agreed. Then I suggested that I could also take Herr Von Neurath with me in my train. He agreed to that also.
I took part in some of the discussions and, when necessary, contributed to the settlement of many arguments and, above all, did my best to create a friendly atmosphere on all sides. I had personal conversations with M. Daladier and Mr. Chamberlain, and I was sincerely happy afterwards that everything had gone well.
DR. STAHMER: Before that, the Anschluss of Austria with Germany had taken place. What reasons did Hitler have for that decision, and to what extent did you play a part in those measures?
Goering: I told the Tribunal yesterday, when I gave a brief outline of my life, that I personally felt a great affinity for Austria; that I had spent the greater part of my youth in an Austrian castle; that my father, even at the time of the old empire, often spoke of a close bond between the future of the German motherland of Austria and the Reich, for he was convinced that the Austrian Empire would not hold together much longer.
In 1918 while in Austria for 2 days, having come by plane, I saw the revolution and the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire take place. Those countries, with a predominantly German population, including Sudeten Germany, convened at that time in Vienna in the Parliament. They declared themselves free of the dissolved Hapsburg State and declared, including the representatives of Sudeten Germany, Austria to be a part of the German Reich. This happened, as far as I know, under the Social Democratic Chancellor, Renner. This statement by the representatives of the Austrian-German people that they wanted to be a part of Germany in the future was changed by the peace treaty of St. Germain and prohibited by the dictate of the victorious nations. Neither for myself nor for any other German was that of importance.
The moment and the basic conditions had of course to be created for a union of the two brother nations of purely German blood and origin to take place. When we came to power, as I have said before, this was naturally an integral part of German policy.
The assurances which Hitler gave at that time regarding the sovereignty of Austria were no deception; they were meant seriously. At first he probably did not see any possibility. I myself was much more radical in this direction and I asked him repeatedly not to make any definite commitments regarding the Austrian question. He believed, however, that he had first of all to take Italy into consideration.
It was evident, especially after the National Socialist Party in Germany had come to power, that the National Socialist Party in
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Austria was also growing more and more. This party, however, had existed in Austria even before the seizure of power in Germany, just as the origin of the National Socialist Workers Party goes back to Sudeten Germany. The Party in Austria was therefore not a Fifth Column for the Anschluss, because the Austrian people themselves originally wanted and always wanted the Anschluss. If the idea of the Anschluss did not figure so clearly and strongly in the Austrian Government of that time, it was not because it did not want to be joined to Germany, but because the National Socialist form of government was not compatible in any way with the form of government in Austria at that time.
Thus there resulted that tension, first in Austria itself, which has repeatedly been mentioned by the Prosecution in its charges. This tension was bound to come because the National Socialists took the idea of the Anschluss with Germany more seriously than the Govermnent did. This resulted in political strife between the two. That we were on the side of the National Socialists as far as our sympathies were concerned is obvious, particularly as the Party in Austria was severely persecuted. Many were put into camps, which were just like concentration camps but had different names.
At a certain time the leader of the Austrian Party was a man by the name of Habicht from Wiesbaden. I did not know him before; I saw him only once there. He falsely led the Fuehrer to believe, before the so-called Dollfuss case, that the Austrian armed forces were prepared to undertake something independently in order to force the government to accept the Anschluss, or else they would overthrow it. If this were the case, that the Party in Austria was to support whatever the armed forces undertook along those lines, then, so the Fuehrer thought, it should have the political support of the Party in Germany in this matter. But the whole thing was actually a deception, as it was not the Austrian Army which intended to proceed against the Austrian Government but rather a so-called "Wehrmacht Standarte," a unit which consisted of former members, and released or discharged members, of the Austrian Army who had gone over to the Party or joined it.
With this deceptive maneuver Habicht then undertook this action in Vienna. I was in Bayreuth with the Fuehrer at the time. The Fuehrer called Habicht at once and reproached him most severely and said that he had falsely informed him, tricked him and deceived him.
He regretted the death of Dollfuss: very much because politically that meant a very serious situation as far as the National Socialists were concerned, and particularly with regard to Italy. Italy mobilized five divisions at that time and sent them to the Brenner Pass. The
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Fuehrer desired an appeasement which would be quick and as sweeping in its effect as possible. That was the reason why he asked Herr Von Papen to go as an extraordinary ambassador to Vienna and to work for an easing of the atmosphere as quickly as possible.
One must not forget the somewhat absurd situation which had developed in the course of years, namely, that a purely German country such as Austria was not most strongly influenced in governmental matters by the German Reich but by the Italian Government. I remember that statement of Mr. Churchill's, that Austria was practically an affiliate of Italy.
After the action against Dollfuss, Italy assumed a very standoffish attitude toward Germany and made it clear that Italy would be the country which would do everything to prevent the Anschluss. Therefore, besides the internal clearing up of Germany's relations with Austria by Herr Von Papen, the Fuehrer also tried to bring about a change in Mussolini's attitude to this question. For this reason he went to Venice shortly afterwards -- maybe it was before -- at any rate he tried to bring about a different attitude.
But I was of the opinion that in spite of everything we may have had in common, let us say in a philosophic sense -- fascism and National Socialism -- the Anschluss of our brother people was much more important to me than this coming to an agreement. And if it were not possible to do it with Mussolini, we should have to do it against him.
Then came the Italian-Abyssinian war. With regard to the sanctions against Italy, Germany was given to understand, not openly but quite clearly, that it would be to her advantage, as far as the Austrian question was concerned, to take part in these sanctions.
That was a difficult decision for the Fuehrer to make, to declare himself out and out against Italy and to achieve the Anschluss by these means or to bind himself by obligation to Italy by means of a pro-Italian or correct attitude and thus to exclude Italy's opposition to the Anschluss. I suggested to him at that time, in view of the somewhat vague offer regarding Austria made by English-French circles, to try and find out who was behind this offer and whether both governments were willing to come to an agreementin regard to this point and to give assurances to the effect that this would be considered an internal German affair, and not some vague assurances of general co-operation, et cetera.
My suspicions proved right; we could not get any definite assurances. Under those circumstances, it was more expedient for us to prevent Italy being the main opponent to the Anschluss by not joining in any sanctions against her.
I was still of the opinion that the great national interest of the union of these German peoples stood above all considerations
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regarding the differences between the two present governments. For this to happen it could not be expected that the government of the great German Reich should resign and that Germany should perhaps be annexed to Austria; rather the Anschluss would have to be carried through sooner or later.
Then came the Berchtesgaden agreement. I was not present at this. I did not even consent to this agreement, because I opposed any definite statement which lengthened this period of indecision; for me the complete union of all Germans was the only conceivable solution.
Shortly after Berchtesgaden there was the plebiscite which the then Chancellor Schuschnigg had called. This plebiscite was of itself an impossibility, a breach of the Berchtesgaden agreement. This I shall pass over, but the way in which this plebiscite was supposed to take place was unique in history. One could vote only by "yes," every person could vote as often as he wanted, five times, six times, seven times. If he tore up the slip of paper, that was counted as "yes," and so on. It has no further interest. In this way it could be seen from the very beginning that if only a few followers of the Schuschnigg system utilized these opportunities sufficiently the result could be only a positive majority for Herr Schuschnigg. That whole thing was a farce.
We opposed that. First of all a member of the Austrian Government who was at that moment in Germany, General Von Glaise-Horstenau, was flown to Vienna in order to make clear to Schuschnigg or Seyss-Inquart -- who, since Berchtesgaden, was in Schuschnigg's Cabinet -- that Germany would never tolerate this provocation. At the same time troops which were stationed near the Austrian border were on the alert. That was on Friday, I believe, the 11th. On that day I was in the Reich Chancellery, alone with the Fuehrer in his room. I heard by telephone the news that Glaise-Horstenau had arrived and made our demands known clearly and unmistakably, and that these things were now being discussed. Then, as far as I remember, the answer came that the plebiscite had been called off and that Schuschnigg had agreed to it. At this moment I had the instinctive feeling that the situation was now mobile and that now, finally, that possibility which we had long and ardently awaited was there -- the possibility of bringing about a complete solution. And from this moment on I must take 100 percent responsibility for all further happenings, because it was not the Fuehrer so much as I myself who set the pace and, even overruling the Fuehrer's misgivings, brought everything to its final development.
My telephone conversations have been read here. I demanded spontaneously, without actually having first spoken to the Fuehrer about it, the immediate retirement of Chancellor Schuschnigg. When
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this was granted, I put my next demand, that now everything was ripe for the Anschluss. And that took place, as is known.
The only thing -- and I do not say this because it is important as far as my responsibility is concerned -- which I did not bring about personally, since I did not know the persons involved, but which has been brought forward by the Prosecution in the last few days, was the following: I sent through a list of ministers, that is to say, I named those persons who would be considered by us desirable as members of an Austrian Government for the time being. I knew Seyss-Inquart, and it was clear to me from the verk beginning that he should get the Chancellorship. Then I named Kaltenbrunner for Security. I did not know Kaltenbrunner, and that is one of the two instances where the Fuehrer took a hand by giving me a few names. Also, by the way, I gave the name of Fischbock for the Ministry of Economy without knowing him. The only one whom I personally brought into this Cabinet was my brother-in-law, Dr. Hueber, as Minister of Justice, but not because he was my brother-in-law, for he had already been Austrian Minister of Justice in the Cabinet of Prelate Seipel. He was not a member of the Party at that time, but he came from the ranks of the Heimwehr and it was important for me to have in the Cabinet also a representative of that group, with whom we had at first made common cause, but then opposed. I wanted to be sure of my influence on this person, so that everything would now actually develop towards a total Anschluss. For already plans had again appeared in which the Fuehrer only, as the head of the German Reich, should be simultaneously the head of German Austria; there would otherwise be a separation. That I considered intolerable. The hour had come and we should make the best use of it.
In the conversation which I had with Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop, who was in London at that time, I pointed out that the ultimatum had not been presented by us but by Seyss-Inquart. That was absolutely true de jure; de facto, of course it was my wish. But this telephone conversation was being listened to by the English, and I had to conduct a diplomatic conversation, and I have never heard yet that diplomats in such cases say how matters are de facto; rather they always stress how they are de jure. And why should I make a possible exception here? In this telephone conversation I demanded of Herr Von Ribbentrop that he ask the British Government to name British persons in whom they had the fullest confidence. I would make all arrangements so that these persons could travel around Austria everywhere in order to see for themselves that the Austrian people in an overwhelming majority wanted this Anschluss and greeted it with enthusiasm. Here, during the discussion of the Austrian question no mention was made of the fact
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that already -- this conversation took place on a Friday -- the Sunday before in Styria, one of the most important parts of the hereditary countries, an internal partial Anschluss had practically taken place, and that the population there had already declared itself in favor of the Anschluss and had more or less severed its ties with the Viennese Government.
DR. STAHMER: I have had handed to you a record of that conversation. It has been put in by the Prosecution. One part of it has not been read into the record yet, but you have given its contents. Would you please look at it?
Goering: Yes; I attach importance to having only those passages in this document read in which I refer to the fact that I considered it important that the English Government should send to Austria as soon as possible people in whom they had confidence, in order that they might see for themselves the actual state of affairs; and secondly, those passages in which I refer to the fact that we were going to, hold a plebiscite according to the Charter of the Saar Plebiscite and that, whatever the result might be, we should acknowledge it. I could promise that all the more, as it was personally known to me and quite clear that an overwhelming majority would vote in favor of the Anschluss.
Now I come to the decisive part concerning the entry of the troops. That was the second point where the Fuehrer interfered and we were not of the same opinion. The Fuehrer wanted the reasons for the march into Austria to be a request by the new Government of Seyss-Inquart, that is the government desired by us -- that they should ask for the troops in order to maintain order in the country. I was against this, not against the march into Austria -- I was for the march under all circumstances -- against only the reasons to be given. Here there was a difference of opinion. Certainly there might be disturbances at one place, namely Vienna and Wiener-Neustadt, because some of the Austrian Marxists, who once before had started an armed uprising, were actually armed. That, however, was not of such decisive importance. It was rather of the greatest importance that German troops should march into Austria immediately in sufficient numbers to stave off any desire on the part of a neighboring country to inherit even a single Austrian village on this occasion.
I should like to emphasize that at that time Mussolini's attitude to the Austrian question had not yet crystallized, although I had worked on him the year before to that end. The Italians were still looking with longing eyes at eastern Tyrol. The five divisions along the Brenner Pass I had not forgotten. The Hungarians talked too much about the Burgenland. The Yugoslavs once mentioned something about Carinthia, but I believe that I made it clear to them at the time that that was absurd. So to prevent the fulfillment of
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14 March 46
these hopes once and for all, which might easily happen in such circumstances, I very definitely wanted the German troops to march into Austria proclaiming: "The Anschluss has taken place; Austria is a part of Germany and therefore in its entirety automatically and completely under the protection of the German Reich and its Armed Forces."
The Fuehrer did not want to have such a striking demonstration of foreign policy, and finally asked me to inform Seyss-Inquart to send a telegram to that effect. The fact that we were in agreement about the decisive point, the march into Austria, helps explain the telephone conversation in which I told Seyss-Inquart that he need not send a telegram, that he could do it by telephone; that would be sufficient. That was the reason. Mussolini's consent did not come until 11:30 at night. It is well known what a relief that was for the Fuehrer.
In the evening of the same day, after everything had become clear, and the outcome could be seen in advance, I went to the Flieger Club, where I had been invited several weeks before, to a ball. I mention this because here that too has been described as a deceptive maneuver. But that invitation had been sent out, I believe, even before the Berchtesgaden conference took place. There I met almost all the diplomats. I immediately took Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador, aside. I spoke to him for 2 hours and gave him all the reasons and explained everything, and also asked him to tell me -- the same question which I later asked Ribbentrop -- what nation in the whole world was damaged in any way by our union with Austria? From whom had we taken anything, and whom had we harmed? I said that this was an absolute restitution, that both parts had belonged together in the German
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
| 71
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https://www.americanheritage.com/how-i-didnt-kill-hermann-goering
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en
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How I Didn’t Kill Hermann Goering
|
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(CONFESSIONS OF A THEORETICAL ASSASSIN)
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en
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AMERICAN HERITAGE
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https://www.americanheritage.com/how-i-didnt-kill-hermann-goering
|
My father, David Davidson, wrote about serving as a journalist attached to the U.S. Army in immediate postwar Germany, publishing a well-received novel, The Steeper Cliff , in 1947 and a memoir in American Heritage (June 1982). That time in Germany always remained fresh in his mind, and not long before he died in 1985, he committed to paper this recollection of the Nuremberg trials.
—C.D.
It was not only Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, the number-two man of the Thousand-Year Reich and Hitler’s own onetime choice for his successor, that I refrained from assassinating on a leaden December day. I also had in my sights—potential sights—Hess, Streicher, Rosenberg, Frank, Speer, von Schirach, et cetera. In short, the whole Nazi top command, except for those who had escaped the Nuremberg trials by suicide and Martin Bormann, who was tried in absentia .
They were easy targets, the infamous defendants, over weeks and months, because of an astonishing laxness of security rivaling that during Lee Harvey Oswald’s short captivity in 1963. And at Nuremberg I gave considerable thought to the possibility of doing away with at least a couple of brace. That ultimately I did not go through with it was because there was missing from my makeup a certain factor that enabled not only Oswald but assassins like Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray to see their opportunities through. I did, however, travel far enough along their path to give me, I believe, a rather special and disconcerting understanding of the compulsions that led them to kill as they did.
The possibilities of mass assassination that opened to me in December 1945 came about, one way or another, through the work I was doing with the U.S. Army as a civilian specialist in Bavaria. My job was to help find and recruit dedicated anti-Nazis (and there were some) to serve as editors and publishers of a new German press that could be trusted to publish without censorship (and from which grew a number of distinguished dailies that flourish in Bavaria to this day.)
It was the publisher of the Munich newspaper, the now greatly esteemed Süddeutsche Zeitung , who first turned my thoughts to assassination. A hot-tempered 110-pound bantam rooster, Herr August Schwingenstein was a deeply devout man who quit all press work during the Nazis’ twelve-year rule, choosing instead to labor at every kind of odd job rather than compromise one inch.
One day the name of the Munich native who most flourished under Hitler came up: Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, chief of the secret police, the SS, Security Service, and so forth.
“For long,” Herr Schwingenstein recalled, “I had been brooding about the fact that so beautiful and Christian a lady as the empress Elisabeth of Austria could have fallen victim to the assassin’s blade, yet a beast like Himmler could live such a charmed life. Again and again I heard it said that Himmler was guarded by so many thousands of his troops that he was even more assassin-proof than Hitler himself.
“It tortured me to think of that. Was it really true? Could nobody ever get within murdering distance of Himmler?
“I kept all this on a completely theoretical plane until one day it happpened that Himmler’s mother came to the end of her years. She was as saintly a lady as her offspring was a beast, as, in fact, was all the family Himmler with the exception of the single monster it had spawned, and even he gave his mother an undying respect.
“So it was that a thought suddenly seized me. Without a doubt Himmler would be coming to Munich to attend his mother’s funeral. Here, then, was my opportunity to test whether it was possible to kill him.
“On the morning of the funeral I went to the church where a mass was to be said. Hopeless. I got as far as the door of the church to find a wall of SS men blocking the way. Without a special pass there was no admittance. Just then the coffin was brought out, a long string of limousines drew up along the curb, and various civilian officials—dressed like myself in black frock coats and tall silk hats—began getting into automobiles. Suddenly I heard my name spoken by some civil servant I had known from schooldays. ‘Schwingenstein,’ he called, ‘let’s go out to the cemetery together.’
“When we reached the Waldfriedhof cemetery, where are buried centuries of the families of Munich, I walked in some fifty meters or so behind Himmler, drawing closer and closer. By the time his mother was being lowered to her rest, I was standing directly behind him. I could have killed him ten times over. But I had not brought a weapon with me. Not a pistol. Not a hunting knife. I had proved—such a victory!—that in theory Himmler could be murdered. And I let him walk away with not a hair of his head out of place.”
It was a day after that that the chief of our Nuremberg detachment, David Manby, phoned to say he could get me a pass to attend the Nuremberg trials. At this time there was still talk of possible “were-wolf” ambushes from diehard Nazis (they never materialized), so I drove the bomb-shattered road to Munich wearing a “liberated” Luger 9 mm in a shoulder holster under my jacket and carrying a trim little Walther automatic in my pants pocket.
“Weapons will definitely not be worn” was Manby’s firm instruction as we set out for the courthouse the morning after my arrival. “You can understand why.”
Sitting in the front row of the spectators’ gallery, at a distance of perhaps ten yards beyond and above the defendants’ box, I was stunned at this, my first sight of the Hitler gang in person and alive. As a newspaperman I had written hundreds of times about these legendary monsters. But seeing them face-to-face, I could not for the first moments believe that they actually existed. I had come over the years to think of them, in their incredible evil, as fictitious creatures out of one of the more gruesome German fairy tales.
Oh, but they did exist, and chat among themselves, and even take the witness stand, where one of them was at the moment defending himself with justifications from the smoky Nazi mythology. As he droned on, a sudden observation struck me with the blinding light of St. Paul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus. No one had bothered to frisk me as I had entered the courthouse and made my way down the corridors past several roadblocks where the photo on my ID card was matched against my face. Furthermore, the heavily armed MPs standing guard in the balcony with .45s in their hip holsters were anything but alert. The trial was now weeks along, and the inevitable boredom had set in among the guards. They were lounging, yawning, half-dozing on their feet.
There immediately followed the thought that the dozen Nazis—had I brought my arsenal with me—were completely at my mercy if I should start shooting with both weapons at once, spraying the defendants’ box with eighteen rounds from the two automatic clips. Before the MPs could possibly move in on me, or even shoot me down, I would have done a noteworthy moment’s work.
And I suddenly realized that by the one deed I could make myself modestly immortal. I would go down in history books for all time —even if only as a footnote—as the man who assassinated one or more of the Nuremberg defendants. And history, liberal history, might not frown on the deed. After all, these evildoers had death coming to them. I could even turn out, in the end, a kind of popular, esteemed footnote.
Of course, on a perfectly rational level, there was no pressing need for early execution of the Hitler gang. It was a certainty they would get what was coming to them from the panel of international jurists trying them. And the reasoned purpose of the trials was to spread out the record of all the monstrous things they had done, the enormities they had committed against mankind—in the defendants’ own words, defiant or penitent.
But for me, from the viewpoint of my personal career and ambitions, the major consideration was the ease with which I could purchase renown. Renown, or the hope of it, was a vital matter to me at that stage in my life. What I had to look forward to, just then, was to finish my tour of duty some seven or eight months later, return stateside, and attempt to support a family by picking up the raveled strands of my profession as a newspaperman or radio writer, in neither of which the prospects for fame were great.
I could seize immortality in a bold instant before a world audience, much of which would applaud the performance. A death sentence for the benign crime would be beyond the thought of possibility. A prison sentence with a pardon after a few years at the most.
The next day, when I came back to the Nuremberg courthouse, again I passed through the weak, crumbling wall of security. Again, after a mere glance at my uniform and ID card, I was waved through. And again my opportunity lay spread out before me, overwhelmingly tempting.
But exactly like Herr Schwingenstein, I achieved only a theoretical triumph. I had brought no weapon with me.
Why not?
Something was missing in me after all. Overnight my violent fantasy had been displaced by thoughts about family responsibilities and other bloodless, more conventional possibilities for celebrity. In fact, I did get my moment in the spotlight, for a novel that grew out of my German experience, but I will never become a footnote in history. What was lacking, I can see now, was a true dedication to the possibility of immortality. And there I fell far short of the single-mindedness of those assassins who did shoot their way into history.
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 87
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http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/580/the-legacy-of-international-cooperation-at-the-nuremberg-trials
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en
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The Legacy of International Cooperation at the Nuremberg Trials
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2011-10-19T00:00:00
|
On November 21, 1945, Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor for the United States of America opened the prosecution’s case against German defendants in Nuremberg, Germany. The war in Europe had ended only six months earlier, many of the buildings...
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/images/favicons/favicon.ico?v=20160607
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Inquiries Journal
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http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/580/the-legacy-of-international-cooperation-at-the-nuremberg-trials
|
On November 21, 1945, Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor for the United States of America opened the prosecution’s case against German defendants in Nuremberg, Germany. The war in Europe had ended only six months earlier, many of the buildings in Nuremberg and the rest of Germany still bearing the physical scars of bombing raids and the Allied invasion. Before this massive trial could proceed, the victorious Allied powers drew up a charter for the International Military Tribunal, defining the rules of procedure, the charges of the indictment and the defendants to be prosecuted.
The Allied powers were already debating the punishment of the Axis leadership—German and Japanese—before the war had concluded. Tensions between leaders of Great Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union complicated this process at every turn, but despite this, the trial at Nuremberg emerged as an important precedent in international law and human rights.
The major sources of tension stemmed from the debate as to the possibilities of either carrying out summary executions of Nazi leaders or putting them on trial (fairly) for war crimes, choosing the defendants to be tried, negotiating the charges of the indictment, and the problematic aspect in allowing the Soviets to prosecute the Germans for war crimes, despite their complicity in committing some of the acts for which the Nazis were accused.
Nuremberg is located in southern Germany, and during the Nazi regime, had been a mass rallying point for the leadership. “Nuremberg,” wrote Stephan Landsman, “had been the epicenter of the Nazi movement… [and] in its streets and stadiums jubilant Nazis had marched and rallied.” The city fit the needs for the trial and all the powers agreed to its setting, even though Soviets had argued in favor of Berlin initially—located in their zone of occupation rather than the American-occupied Nuremberg.
The trial itself commenced on November 21, 1945 and continued until October 1, 1946. Twelve smaller trials were held subsequently between 1946 and 1949, but they were not prosecuted jointly by the Allied powers but rather only by the American prosecution under the direction of Telford Taylor, who had worked on Robert Jackson’s staff during the first trial. Allied powers had been negotiating the fate of the Nazi leaders since the first meeting of American President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran. As the war in Europe began to draw to an end in early 1945, these negotiations continued until all powers agreed to a trial, the procedure of which was to be decided at a later date.
Robert Jackson, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was appointed as the Chief Prosecutor and his vision dominated the proceedings. He had been advocating retribution against the Nazi leadership even before the American entry into the war. In 1941, shortly before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Jackson spoke at a meeting of the American Bar Association. “It is [a] grave thing to perpetuate by our inaction an anarchic international condition in which every State may go to war with impunity whenever its interests are thought to be served.”
The other members of the prosecution were Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain), Lieutenant-General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko (Soviet Union) and François de Menthon (France). Each man had a staff working under them—Jackson, at various times, was directing over a hundred people. These delegates negotiated the International Military Tribunal Charter which established the rules of procedure.
Each Allied power had two judges, one of which served as an alternate. The head judge was not American, but rather British Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, in an effort to balance the perceived power held by the Americans in the process. Sir Norman Birkett served as his alternate. Other members of the judge panel: Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet), Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Volchkov (Soviet alternate), Francis Biddle (America), John J. Parker (American alternate), Professor Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (French), and Robert Falco (French alternate).
Despite ideological and interpersonal tensions, the International Military Tribunal met in London in the summer of 1945 to hammer out the nuts and bolts of procedure and to formulate the indictment. These negotiations lasted mere months, resulting in the trial opening only a little over six months after Germany’s formal surrender on May 8, 1945, illustrating that the primary goal was to hold these trials and that they would not be delayed by any of the foreign powers. In 1947, American prosecutor, Thomas J. Dodd wrote:
“The story of [sic] International cooperation between the lawyers of the four great powers, at a time when international affairs were not at their very best, contains, we hope, a lesson and a moral and some direction for our own generation and those who are to follow.”
Nuremberg and International Law
It was an unprecedented prospect to prosecute a nation’s leadership for crimes committed during war. Earlier leaders had been executed, exiled, or had returned to power, suffering little for having waged war. The International Military Tribunal sought to change that, challenging what Stefan Glaser would, in 1948, term “state sovereignty.” He went on to elaborate on this concept: “the Charter recognized individuals as subjects of international law… [and] broke with the doctrine of immunity for what is called an ‘act of State.’”
In other words, the Allies were asserting that the old days of war for territorial expansion, a time-honored tradition in Western civilization, were over and any nation that persisted in the old ways would be punished. An international prosecution had been discussed at the end of World War I and provisions for such were made in the Treaty of Versailles, but the European powers had eventually allowed Germany to prosecute its own war criminals in order to preserve the stability of the Weimar Republic. Those who did go to trial were either acquitted or received lenient sentences. This could not be allowed to happen again.
Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War under President Franklin Roosevelt wrote, “International law is not a body of authoritative codes or statutes; it is the gradual expression, case by case of the moral judgments of the civilized world.” The law used at Nuremberg was not created specifically for the purposes of the trial, but merged the very different legal processes used in the continental and in the Anglo-American courtrooms, balancing the adversarial cross-examinations of the United States with the prominence of magistrates in Europe. “The concept of an international trial, with judges and lawyers from different nations overcoming obstacles of languages, custom and procedure,” is the most enduring of Nuremberg’s legacies according to Ehrenfreund.
The international law that concerned the Tribunal stemmed both from the Geneva Protocol of 1924 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The Geneva Protocol had been negotiated by the League of Nations and stated “a war of aggression constitutes a violation of this solidarity and an international crime.” The Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed in 1928 by sixty nations including Germany, spoke along the same lines. “The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement of solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever kind or nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
These agreements were the basis for the criminal account of aggressive war. Having specifically agreed not to wage a war of conquest, the Nazi’s approach to expansion in the 1930s and 1940s violated this, therefore they could be prosecuted. These pacts made the acts illegal, but punishments were either absent or vague. Jackson aimed to change this with the indictment.
Summary Execution or Presumption of Innocence: Punishments for Nazi Leadership
“The whole moral position of the victorious Powers must collapse if their judgments could be enforced only by Nazi methods. Our anger, as righteous anger, must be subject to the law.”
President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin had met several times during the war to discuss strategies for fighting the war and plans for the Nazis afterwards. The leaders issued the Moscow Declaration of November 1943, which agreed that “without prejudice to the case of the major war criminals whose offenses have no particular geographic location and who will be punished by joint decision of the Governments of the Allies.” This joint decision would be one of the first areas of disagreement for the Allied powers.
Roosevelt and Churchill, in particular, were vacillating between summary executions of the primary leaders and putting them and lower-level Germans on trial. Roosevelt’s own administration was divided into two distinct groups—the Treasury Department headed by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., which wanted summary executions, and the War Department, led by Henry L. Stimson who favored the trials. Stimson argued that a trial would “afford the most effective way of making a record of the Nazi system of terrorism and of the effort of the Allies to terminate the system and prevent its recurrence.”
This disagreement led to tension within the Cabinet, with Morgenthau and Stimson firing off memos dedicated to each side, hoping to swing Roosevelt their way. At one point, after a conference in Quebec, Roosevelt agreed to Morgenthau’s drastic plan for Germany—summary executions for leaders, and the removal of heavy industry, turning the land into one large agricultural farm. “I want to make Germany so impotent,” Morgenthau said in his memorandum, “that she cannot forge the tools of war.” Germany, under Morgenthau's plan, would never be able to pursue an aggressive war again.
Stimson’s view won the day, and Roosevelt agreed to pursue a trial. He died on April 12, 1945, just before the end of the war in Europe, but his replacement, Harry Truman, was enthusiastic in his support for a fair trial. He was impressed by a speech Jackson had delivered the evening after Roosevelt’s death. “You must put no man on trial,” Jackson had said, “under forms of a judicial proceeding if you are not willing to see him freed it not proven guilty…the world yields no respect for courts that are organized merely to convict.”
America, at first, was the only Allied power to advocate putting the Nazi leaders on trial. Now that the country had decided to go forward, they--and Jackson, in particular—were adamant. There would be no international compromise in this matter. The British were initially in favor of executing Nazi leaders outright. They had suffered more than the Americans, almost as much as the French. The evidence of devastating aerial bombings still littered the countryside. “Hitler and his gang,” Ehrenfreund wrote regarding Churchill’s opinion, “had forfeited any right to legal procedure.”
The Soviet Union was not diametrically opposed to a trial, having already carried out the Kharkov trial in which three Germans and a Russian were tried for various war crimes. The other Allies had not been consulted before, during, or after this trial and were reluctant to link it to the Declaration in Moscow that had promised a joint Allied punishment of the Germans. “The British Foreign Office maintained,” Kochavi wrote, “that the relevant passages of the Moscow Declaration meant that the time of an armistice with Germany, those who had committed war crimes would be apprehended and sent to stand trials in the countries where the crimes had been committed.” The Russians were proponents of using trials to justify many of their actions, such as the post-war purge of high Communist party officials for which Stalin would infamous.
Stimson later wrote, “We have to the Nazis what they denied their own opponents—the protection of the Law.” The first major compromise of the Nuremberg trials had been reached—there would be a legal proceeding in which the governments of the victorious powers would hold the Germans accountable for their actions. Norbert Ehrenfreund, a World War II veteran and a member of the press at Nuremberg wrote, “Now we might consider adding another historic moment to the list [which included the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, etc.], a moment that almost never happened: the decision in London to have a fair trial in Nuremberg…a splendid victory for Robert Jackson, an even greater victory for humanity.”
The Nuremberg Indictment: Determining Guilt and Retroactive Justice
The indictment at Nuremberg was a symbol of the international cooperation—the Allied powers having had to compromise in several areas in order to proceed. The Allies negotiated which defendants to include the indictment, agreeing on twenty-four individuals that had held military and industrial positions in Germany during the Nazi regime. The British had not wanted to include Hjalmar Schacht, who had held various economic-related positions in the Third Reich, but faced resistance from the other Allies, “especially from the French who showed strong hostility to German industrial and economic leaders.” Other defendants were easier to select—Hermann Göring, seen as second-in-command to Hitler; Rudolf Hess, a commandant at Auschwitz; and Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Armed forces.
One of the defendants, Gustav Krupp, had to be removed early in the proceedings due to his mental incompetence, a troubling prospect for Jackson. His response was to petition the court to prosecute Gustav’s son, Alfried Krupp, instead. General Telford Taylor related Jackson’s position: “The firm of Krupp had made weapons for four generations and it was their weapons that had made Europe a battle ground…Krupp typified the sinister forces which he, Mr. Justice Jackson, was sent to Europe to punish.” The British also petitioned the court, but their solution was to try Gustav in absentia.
The Soviets took no position while the French straddled the line between the American and British views: if they could not have Gustav, either in presence or in absentia, they wanted his son. “France is formally opposed,” Charles Dubost submitted, “to dropping the firm of Krupp from the Trial since the other prosecutors do not contemplate the possibility of preparing at this time a second trial directed against the big German industrialists.” All arguments were eventually rejected, and Gustav was removed from consideration.
Alfried was, however, tried during one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials. Alfried was defended by a veteran of the first trials, Otto Kranzbühler who had defended Admiral Doenitz, and was able to convince the judge to drop the charges of aggressive war, the most serious charge Alfried and the other Krupp executives faced. Judge Andersen’s explanation doing so aided the definition of aggressive war: “the charge of planning or waging aggressive war must be limited to leaders and policymakers and could not be extended to private citizens like Krupp who participate in the war effort but have little voice or control in the conduct of the war.”
Twenty-two defendants were eventually charged of the various counts of the indictment, including those already named as well as Albert Speer, who had been the minister of armaments; Alfred Jodl, Chief of Army Operations; Franz von Papen, former Vice-Chancellor; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister; and Hans Franck, Nazi governor of Poland. One of which, Martin Bormann, had fled Germany and was never found. He would eventually be declared dead in the 1970s by West Germany.
Twelve men were sentenced to death by hanging, three men received life sentences, four men prison terms ranging from ten to twenty years in prison, and two (Hjalmar Schacht and Hans Fritzche, a radio broadcaster ) were acquitted altogether. Hermann Göring was sentenced to death, but escaped his sentence by killing himself with cyanide that had been smuggled into him by a sympathetic guard.
The charges themselves presented many opportunities for criticism, by those who participated in creating the indictment as well as by some those who commented on the trial retrospectively. European courts didn’t have the concept of conspiracy in their legal systems—it was entirely an American contribution and served as the umbrella for the entire indictment. If Jackson and his staff could prove that the Nazi criminals on trial and the various organizations charged had conspired to carry out wars of aggression and the crimes against peace and humanity, the rest of the counts would be redundant. Jackson faced opposition on the first two counts.
“The French…wanted to know where it was stated,” Ehrenfreund has written, “that waging an aggressive war was a crime…Jackson seemed to be inventing a new crime, which meant it was ex post facto law and therefore had no legal basis.” Wars of aggression were time-honored traditions, and this would be the first time waging one would actually be prosecution. European powers, specially Great Britain and France with their large overseas empires, might be apprehensive in limiting their own military options. Ehrenfreund goes on to say that Jackson eventually convinced the Allied delegations to agree to the four counts as he had envisioned them, with the count of conspiracy to be the first and most important account—but no one could really say why the other powers had capitulated.
Count One, or the “Common Plan” as the indictment refers to it dominated the document, describing the Nazi regime’s conspiracy to create a totalitarian state and its plans to wage an aggressive war, and the actions being prosecuted in counts three and four were part of this umbrella conspiracy. The charge of conspiracy was controversial at the time the indictment was written, but the charge of carrying out an aggressive war remained a topic of contention not just between the Allied delegations themselves, but in those watching the trial and in retrospective opinions. The twentieth century marked the first time that nations would consider wars for territorial expansion—which had been common for centuries—an illegal act.
“So far indeed was this sovereign right of war-making accepted,” Stimson wrote, “that it was frequently extended to include the barbarous notion that a sovereign ruler is not subject to the law.” However, Stimson also argued that prosecuting the Nazis for aggressive war was not ex post facto law, because “this concept relates to a state of mind on the part of the defendants that in this case was wholly absent.” His argument being that even if it had been an explicitly stated international law, the Nazis would have violated it as they had knowingly violated other treaties, especially Versailles.
Otto Kranzbühler, mentioned earlier as Admiral Doenitz’s defense counsel as well as Alfried Krupp’s at later proceeding, published a pamphlet, Rückblick auf Nürnberg (Looking Back on Nurember) in 1949. He thoroughly criticized the prosecution of the case, especially the dismissal of the command defense—that soldiers were only following orders. He cited a case of a French solider being exonerated for having shot ten German prisoners of the war and being acquitted. “The difference in the standards,” he wrote, “used for German soldiers at Nuremberg is obvious.”
He also wrote that he believed the law used at Nuremberg was, in fact, retroactive justice. The German defense team faced many inadequacies, most importantly not having access to documents and witnesses, as well as unfamiliarity with the cross-examination process. Despite Kranzbühler’s thorough criticism of the trial procedure and these inadequacies, he doesn’t write the trials off completely:
“It was clear that after the obvious crimes committed under Hitler’s leadership, particularly the annihilation process against the Jews, something had to happen to discharge the tensions between the victors and vanquished. The British would have preferred at the time to shoot summarily some of the principle leaders of the Third Reich. The Soviets would…have….multipl[ied] the victims. It was the United who insisted that expiation must be sought and found by way of judicial trial. The [IMT] proceedings did, in my opinion, perform this function.”
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World War II in Europe Timeline: November 20, 1945
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The Nuremberg Trial was conducted by a joint United States-British-French-Soviet military tribunal, with each nation supplying two judges. The four counts in the indictment were:
Count 1 - CONSPIRACY to commit crimes alleged in the next three counts.
Count 2 - CRIMES AGAINST PEACE including planning, preparing, starting, or waging aggressive war.
Count 3 - WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war.
Count 4 - CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY including murder, extermination, enslavement, persecution on political or racial grounds, involuntary deportment, and inhumane acts against civilian populations.
The majority of the defendants claimed they were unknowing pawns of Adolf Hitler or were simply following orders. Evidence used against the defendants included Nazi propaganda films and extensive Nazi paperwork documenting mass murder and other crimes. Also shown were films taken by the Allies after the liberation of extermination camps. Evidence in the court room included the shrunken head of a concentration camp inmate and tattooed human skin from concentration camp inmates used to make lampshades and other household articles.
Front Row Left to Right
Hermann Göring - Considered to be the number two man in Nazi Germany after Hitler, Göring waged a vigorous defense on his own behalf. Guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by swallowing poison on October 16, 1946 just two hours before his scheduled hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Göring as it was pronounced.
"From the moment he joined the Party in 1922 and took command of the street fighting organization, the SA, Göring was the adviser, the active agent of Hitler and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement. As Hitler's political deputy he was largely instrumental in bringing the National Socialists to power in 1933, and was charged with consolidating this power and expanding German armed might. He developed the Gestapo and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to Himmler 1934; conducted the Röhm purge in that year and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of von Blomberg and von Fritsch from the army... In the Austrian Anschluss he was, indeed, the central figure, the ringleader... The night before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, at a conference with Hitler and President Hacha he threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha did not submit... He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and throughout the aggressive wars which followed... The record is filled with Göring's admissions of his complicity in the use of slave labor... He made plans for the spoliation of Soviet territory long before the war on the Soviet Union... Göring persecuted the Jews, particularly after the November, 1938, riots and not only in Germany, where be raised the billion-mark fine as stated elsewhere, but in the conquered territories as well. His own utterances, then and in his testimony, show his interest was primarily economic-how to get their property and how to force them out of the economic life of Europe. ...Although their extermination was in Himmler's hands, Göring was far from disinterested or inactive despite his protestations from the witness box... There is nothing to be said in mitigation... His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man."
Rudolf Hess - Formerly the number three man in Hitler's Germany until his flight to England on May 10, 1941, in which he attempted to negotiate peace with the British, who promptly imprisoned him for the duration of the war. Found guilty on counts 1 and 2. Sentenced to life imprisonment. Hess was the sole surviving Nazi in Spandau prison until 1987 when he committed suicide at age 92.
Read a biography of Rudolf Hess
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Hess as it was pronounced.
"... As deputy to the Führer, Hess was the top man in the Nazi Party with responsibility for handling all Party matters and authority to make decisions in Hitler's name on all questions of Party leadership... Hess was an informed and willing participant in German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland... On September 27, 1938, at the time of the Munich crisis, he arranged with Keitel to carry out the instructions of Hitler to make the machinery of the Nazi Party available for a secret mobilization... With him on his flight to England, Hess carried certain peace proposals which he alleged Hitler was prepared to accept. It is significant to note that this flight took place only 10 days after the date on which Hitler fixed the time for attacking the Soviet Union... That Hess acts in an abnormal manner, suffers from loss of memory, and has mentally deteriorated during this trial, may be true. But there is nothing to show that he does not realize the nature of the charges against him, or is incapable of defending himself... There is no suggestion that Hess was not completely sane when the acts charged against him were committed."
Joachim von Ribbentrop - Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1945, who signed the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression Pact of 1939 that paved the way for Hitler to attack Poland. Ribbentrop later involved himself in the Final Solution by pressuring the Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Danish governments to evacuate Jews. Found guilty on all four counts. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Ribbentrop as it was pronounced.
"Ribbentrop was not present at the Hossbach Conference held on November 5, 1937 (at which Hitler revealed his war plans), but on January 2, 1938, while Ambassador to England, he sent a memorandum to Hitler indicating his opinion that a change in the status quo in the East in the German sense could only be carried out by force and suggesting methods to prevent England and France from intervening in a European war fought to bring about such a change... Ribbentrop participated in the aggressive plans against Czechoslovakia. Beginning in March 1938, he was in close touch with the Sudeten German Party and gave them instructions which had the effect of keeping the Sudeten German question a live issue which might serve as an excuse for the attack which Germany was planning against Czechoslovakia... After the Munich Pact he continued to bring diplomatic pressure with the object of occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia... Ribbentrop played a particularly significant role in the diplomatic activity which led up to the attack on Poland. He participated in a conference held on August 12, 1939, for the purpose of obtaining Italian support if the attack should lead to a general European war. Ribbentrop discussed the German demands with respect to Danzig and the Polish Corridor with the British Ambassador in the period from August 25 to August 30, 1939, when he knew that the German plans to attack Poland had merely been temporarily postponed in an attempt to induce the British to abandon their guarantee to the Poles... He played an important part in Hitler's 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question. In September, 1942, be ordered the German diplomatic representatives accredited to various satellites to hasten the deportation of the Jews to the East... Ribbentrop participated in all the Nazi aggressions from the occupation of Austria to the invasion of the Soviet Union... It was because Hitler's policy and plans coincided with his own ideas that Ribbentrop served him so willingly to the end."
Wilhelm Keitel - General Field Marshal and Chief of Staff of the German High Command of the Armed Forces who condoned mass murder by the SS. Keitel also issued orders regarding the Night and Fog (Nacht und Nebel) decree. Found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Keitel as it was pronounced.
"...Keitel was present on May 23, 1939, when Hitler announced his decision 'to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.' Already he had signed the directive requiring the Wehrmacht to submit its 'Fall Weiss' timetable (for the attack on Poland) to OKW (Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht - Armed Forces High Command) on May 1... Hitler had said, on May 23, 1939, that he would ignore the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, and Keitel signed orders for the attacks on October 15, November 20, and November 28, 1939... Keitel testified that be opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union for military reasons, and also because it would constitute a violation of the Non-Aggression Pact. Nevertheless, he initialed 'Case Barbarossa' (for the attack on Russia) signed by Hitler on December 18, 1940, and attended the OKW discussion with Hitler on February 3, 1941.. On Aug. 4, 1942, Keitel issued a directive that paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD. On September 16, 1941, Keitel ordered that attacks on soldiers in the East should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier, with the comment that human life was less than nothing in the East... Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes as shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly."
Ernst Kaltenbrunner - Successor in 1943 to Heydrich in the SS organization, in charge of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) with responsibilities including the Gestapo and the systematic evacuation of Jews to extermination camps. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Kaltenbrunner as it was pronounced.
"...When he became Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the RSHA on January 30, 1943, Kaltenbrunner took charge of an organization which included the main offices of the Gestapo, the SD and the Criminal Police... During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi regime were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered... The order for the execution of commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the police not to interfere with attacks on bailed out Allied fliers... The RSHA played a leading part in the 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question by the extermination of the Jews. A special section under the Amt IV of the RSHA was established to supervise this program. Under its direction approximately 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 2 million were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. Kaltenbrunner had been informed of the activities of these Einsatzgruppen when be was a Higher SS and Police leader, and they continued to function after he had become Chief of the RSHA. The murder of a approximately 4 million Jews in concentration camps...was also under the supervision of the RSHA when Kaltenbrunner was bead of that organization..."
Alfred Rosenberg - Nazi Party racial 'philosopher,' appointed Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories in 1941, who aided Göring and Hitler in plundering art treasures. Found guilty on all four counts and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Rosenberg as it was pronounced.
"... Recognized as the Party's ideologist, he developed and spread Nazi doctrines in the newspapers Völkischer Beobachter and NS Monatshefte, which he edited, and in the numerous books he wrote... As head of the APA (Aussenpolitisches Amt - the Nazi foreign policy office), Rosenberg was in charge of an organization whose agents were active in Nazi intrigue in all parts of the world. His own reports, for example, claim that the APA was largely responsible for Rumania's joining the Axis. As head of the APA, he played an important part in the preparation and planning of the attack on Norway. Rosenberg bears a major responsibility for the formulation and execution of occupation policies in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was informed by Hitler on April 2, 1941, of the coming attack against the Soviet Union, and he agreed to help in the capacity of 'Political Adviser' ... On July 17, 1941, Hitler appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, and publicly charged him with responsibility for civil administration... He helped to formulate the policies of Germanization, exploitation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of Nazi rule, and be set up an administration which carried them out... Rosenberg had knowledge of the brutal treatment and terror to which the Eastern people were subjected. He directed that the Hague Rules of Land Warfare were not applicable in the Occupied Eastern Territories. He had knowledge of and took an active part in stripping the Eastern Territories of raw materials and foodstuffs, which were all sent to Germany. He stated that feeding the German people was first on the list of claims on the East, and the Soviet people would suffer thereby. His directives provided for the segregation of Jews, ultimately in Ghettos. His subordinates engaged in mass killings of Jews, and his civil administrators considered that cleansing the Eastern Occupied Territories of Jews was necessary... He gave his civil administrators quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich, which had to be met by whatever means necessary. His signature of approval appears on the order of June 14, 1941, for the Heu Aktion, the apprehension of 40,000 to 50,000 youths, aged 10-14, for shipment to the Reich..."
Hans Frank - Nazi lawyer and Gauleiter of occupied Poland who stated in 1941 "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear." Amid the ruthless extermination of Poland's Jews, Frank earned the nickname the "Jew Butcher of Cracow." Under his rule, the nation of Poland disappeared as a national entity and became a slave state, with the murder of Poland's leaders, educated elite and clergy, and the extermination of nearly all Poland's Jews. At the Nuremberg trial he declared "... a thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Frank as it was pronounced.
"... Frank was appointed Chief Civil Administration Officer for occupied Polish territory and, on October 12, 1939, was made Governor-General of the occupied Polish territory. On October 3, 1939, he described the policy which he intended to put into effect by stating: 'Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire.' The evidence establishes that this occupation policy was based on the complete destruction of Poland as a national entity, and a ruthless exploitation of its human and economic resources for the German war effort... Frank was a willing and knowing participant in the use of terrorism in Poland; in the economic exploitation of Poland in a way which led to the death by starvation of a large number of people; in the deportation to Germany as slave laborers of over a million Poles; and in a program involving the murder of at least 3 million Jews."
Wilhelm Frick - Nazi Minister of the Interior from 1933 to 1943, who originated the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 which deprived German Jews of their rights as citizens. Found guilty on counts 2, 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Frick as it was pronounced.
"...An avid Nazi, Frick was largely responsible for bringing the German nation under the complete control of the NSDAP... The numerous laws he drafted, signed, and administered abolished all opposition parties and prepared the way for the Gestapo and their concentration camps to extinguish all individual opposition. He was largely responsible for the legislation which suppressed the Trade Unions, the Church, the Jews. He performed this task with ruthless efficiency... Always rabidly anti-Semitic, Frick drafted, signed, and administered many laws destined to eliminate Jews from German life and economy. His work formed the basis of the Nuremberg Decrees, and he was active in enforcing them... He bad knowledge that insane, sick and aged people, 'useless eaters.' were being systematically put to death. Complaints of these murders reached him, but he did nothing to stop them..."
Julius Streicher - Gauleiter of the section of Germany known as Franconia with headquarters in Nuremberg. Streicher was a notorious anti-Semite who published a popular semi-pornographic anti-Semitic paper, Der Stürmer, which advocated violent persecution of the Jews. Found guilty on count 4 and sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Streicher as it was pronounced.
"...For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as 'Jew-Baiter Number One.' In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution... Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on August 10, 1938, of the synagogue in Nuremberg. And on November 10, 1938, he spoke publicly in support of the Jewish pogroms which were taking place at that time. But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race... With knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death... Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity."
Walther Funk - Minister of Economic Affairs from 1937 to 1945, Funk headed the Reichsbank which received gold, jewels, and other valuables taken by Himmler's SS from Jews destined for extermination. Found guilty on counts 2, 3, and 4. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Funk was released in 1957 for health reasons and died in 1960.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Funk as it was pronounced.
"...Funk became active in the economic field after the Nazi plans to wage aggressive war bad been clearly defined... On October 14, 1939, after the war had begun, Funk made a speech in which he stated that the economic and financial departments of Germany working under the Four Year Plan had been engaged in the secret economic preparation for war for over a year... In 1942 Funk entered into an agreement with Himmler under which the Reichsbank was to receive certain gold and jewels and currency from the SS and instructed his subordinates, who were to work out the details, not to ask too many questions. As a result of this agreement the SS sent to the Reichsbank the personal belongings taken from the victims who bad been exterminated in the concentration camps. The Reichsbank kept the coins and banknotes and sent the jewels, watches, and personal belongings to Berlin Municipal Pawn Shops. The gold from the eye-glasses and gold teeth and fillings was stored in the Reichsbank vaults. Funk has protested that he did not know that the Reichsbank was receiving articles of this kind. The Tribunal is of the opinion that Funk either knew what was being received or was deliberately closing his eyes to what was being done..."
Hjalmar Schacht - The financial wizard who helped Hitler re-arm Germany, but eventually fell out of favor and was arrested in 1944 with many others after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler and sent to a concentration camp. Found not guilty. Schacht went on to have a successful postwar business career in international banking and died in 1970.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for Schacht as it was pronounced.
"Schacht was an active supporter of the Nazi Party before its accession to power on January 30, 1933, and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. After that he played an important role in the vigorous rearmament program which was adopted, using the facilities of the Reichsbank to the fullest extent in the German rearmament effort... As Minister of Economics and as Plenipotentiary General for War Economy he was active in organizing the German economy for war... But rearmament of itself is not criminal under the Charter. To be a crime against peace under Article 6 of the Charter it must be shown that Schacht carried out this rearmament as part of the Nazi plan to wage aggressive wars... The Tribunal has considered the whole of this evidence with great care, and comes to the conclusion that this necessary inference has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt."
Back Row Left to Right
Karl Dönitz - Grand Admiral who became Commander in Chief of the German Navy in 1943 and at the end of the war was designated to succeed Hitler. Dönitz directed the Battle of the Atlantic against Allied shipping using the wolf pack technique of submarine warfare. Found guilty on counts 2 and 3. Sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Dönitz as it was pronounced.
"Although Dönitz built and trained the German U-boat arm, the evidence does not show he was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive wars or that he prepared and initiated such wars... The Tribunal is of the opinion that the evidence does not establish with the certainty required that Dönitz deliberately ordered the killing of shipwrecked survivors... The evidence further shows that the rescue provisions were not carried out and that the defendant ordered that they should not be carried out... Dönitz was also charged with responsibility for Hitler's Commando order of October 18,1942...[by which] the members of an Allied motor torpedo boat were...turned over to the SD and shot..."
Erich Raeder - Grand Admiral and Commander in chief of the German Navy until he was succeeded by Dönitz in 1943. Found guilty on counts 1, 2, and 3. Sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1955.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Raeder as it was pronounced.
"In the 15 years he commanded it, Raeder built and directed the German Navy; he accepts full responsibility until retirement in 1943. He admits the navy violated the Versailles Treaty, insisting it was 'a matter of honor for every man' to do so... He was one of the 5 leaders present at the Hossbach Conference of November 5, 1937... The conception of the invasion of Norway first arose in the mind of Raeder and not that of Hitler... Raeder endeavored to dissuade Hitler from embarking upon the invasion of the USSR... But once the decision bad been made, he gave permission six days before the invasion of the Soviet Union to attack Russian submarines in the Baltic Sea... It is clear from this evidence that Raeder participated in the planning and waging of aggressive war..."
Baldur von Schirach - Hitler Youth leader of part American origin who helped lead millions of young Germans into Nazi fanaticism, he became Gauleiter of Vienna in 1940. At Nuremberg he denounced Hitler. Found guilty on count 4 and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against von Schirach as it was pronounced.
"...Von Schirach used the Hitler Youth to educate German Youth 'in the spirit of National Socialism' and subjected them to an extensive program of Nazi propaganda... When von Schirach became Gauleiter of Vienna the deportation of the Jews had already begun... On September 15, 1942, von Schirach made a speech in which he defended his action in having driven 'tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of Jews into the Ghetto of the East' as 'contributing to European culture'... The Tribunal finds that von Schirach, while he did not originate the policy of deporting Jews from Vienna, participated in this deportation after he had become Gauleiter of Vienna. He knew that the best the Jews could hope for was a miserable existence in the Ghettos of the East. Bulletins describing the Jewish extermination were in his office..."
Fritz Sauckel - Headed the Nazi slave labor program and was responsible for the forced deportation of five million persons from occupied territories into Germany. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Sauckel as it was pronounced.
"...Shortly after Sauckel had taken office, he had the governing authorities in the various occupied territories issue decrees, establishing compulsory labor service in Germany... That real voluntary recruiting was the exception rather than the rule is shown by Sauckel's statement on March 1, 1944 that 'out of 5 million workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily.' ...His attitude was thus expressed in a regulation: 'All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.' The evidence shows that Sauckel was in charge of a program which involved deportation for slave labor of more than 5 million human beings, many of, them under terrible conditions of cruelty and suffering."
Alfred Jodl - Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the German Armed Forces. At Nuremberg he claimed it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander." Found guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Jodl as it was pronounced.
"...Jodl discussed the Norway invasion with Hitler, Keitel, and Raeder on December 12, 1939; his diary is replete with late entries on his activities in preparing this attack... He was active in the planning against Greece and Yugoslavia... Jodl testified that Hitler feared an attack by Russia and so attacked first. This preparation began almost a year before the invasion. Jodl told Warlimont as early as July 29, 1940 to prepare the plans since Hitler had decided to attack... A plan to eliminate Soviet commissars was in the directive for 'Case Barbarossa.' The decision whether they should be killed without trial was to be made by an officer... His defense, in brief, is the doctrine of 'superior orders,' prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense... Participation in such crimes as these has never been required of any soldier and be cannot now shield himself behind a mythical requirement of soldierly obedience at all costs as his excuse for commission of these crimes."
Franz von Papen - Chancellor of Germany in 1932 who aided Hitler and the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 and was involved in the Nazi Anschluss (union) with Austria in 1938. Found not guilty.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for von Papen as it was pronounced.
"Von Papen was active in 1932 and 1933 in helping Hitler to form the Coalition Cabinet and aided in his appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. As Vice-Chancellor in that Cabinet be participated in the Nazi consolidation of control in 1933... Notwithstanding the murder of his associates, von Papen accepted the position of Minister to Austria on July 26, 1934, the day after Dollfuss had been assassinated... The evidence leaves no doubt that von Papen's primary purpose as Minister to Austria was to undermine the Schhuschnigg regime and strengthen the Austrian Nazis for the purpose of bringing about the Anschluss. To carry through this plan he engaged in both intrigue and bullying. But the Charter does not make criminal such offenses against political morality, however bad these may be... Under the Charter, von Papen can be held guilty only if he was party to the planning of aggressive war...but it is not established beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the purpose of his activity..."
Arthur Seyss-Inquart - Gauleiter of Austria and then Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands, and the man who betrayed Austria to the Nazis during the Anschluss. Found guilty on counts 2, 3, and 4. Sentenced to death by hanging.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Seyss-Inquart as it was pronounced.
"...Seyss-Inquart participated in the last stages of the Nazi intrigue which preceded the German occupation of Austria... As Reich Commissioner for Occupied Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart was ruthless in applying terrorism to suppress all opposition to the German occupation, a program which he described as 'annihilating' his opponents. In collaboration with the Higher SS and Police leaders he was involved in the shooting of hostages for offenses against the occupation authorities and sending to concentration camps all suspected opponents of occupation policies including priests and educators... Seyss-Inquart contends that he was not responsible for many of the crimes committed in the occupation of the Netherlands... But the fact remains that Seyss-Inquart was a knowing and voluntary participant in War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity which were committed in the occupation of the Netherlands."
Albert Speer - Architect, close friend of Hitler, and Minister of Armaments and War Production from 1942 to 1945, Speer coordinated the entire German industrial war production effort. At Nuremberg, Speer acknowledged the guilt of the Nazi regime and admitted responsibility for the slave labor in factories under his control. Found guilty on counts 3 and 4. Sentenced to twenty years. On his release from Spandau prison in 1966, Speer became a best selling author with his book, Inside the Third Reich. He died in 1981, and maintained until the end he had known little about the extermination of the Jews.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against Speer as it was pronounced.
"The evidence introduced against Speer under counts 3 and 4 relates entirely to his participation in the slave labor program... As Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions and General Plenipotentiary for Armaments under the Four Year Plan, Speer had extensive authority over production... The practice was developed under which Speer transmitted to Sauckel an estimate of the total number of workers needed, Sauckel obtained the labor and allocated it to the various industries in accordance with instructions supplied by Speer. Speer knew when he made his demands on Sauckel that they would be supplied by foreign laborers serving under compulsion... Sauckel continually informed Speer and his representative that foreign laborers were being obtained by force... (However) It must be recognized that...in the closing stages of the war he was one of the few men who had the courage to tell Hitler that the war was lost and to take steps to prevent the senseless destruction of production facilities..."
Konstantin von Neurath - Nazi Foreign Minister from 1932 to 1938, then Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, responsible for the Nazi crackdown on Czechoslovakia after the German invasion. Found guilty on all 4 counts. Sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, but was released after eight years in 1954 for health reasons.
EXTRACT of the Judgment against von Neurath as it was pronounced.
"...As Minister of Foreign Affairs, von Neurath advised Hitler in connection with the withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations on October 14, 1933, the institution of rearmament... Von Neurath took part in the Hossbach Conference of November 5, 1937. He has testified that he was so shocked by Hitler's statements that he had a heart attack. Shortly thereafter he offered to resign, and his resignation was accepted on February 4, 1938, at the same time that von Fritsch and von Blomberg were dismissed. Yet with knowledge of Hitler's aggressive plans he retained a formal relationship with the Nazi regime as Reich Minister Without Portfolio... Von Neurath was appointed Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia on March 18, 1939... The free press, political parties, and trade unions were abolished. All groups which might serve as opposition were outlawed... He served as the chief German official in the Protectorate when the administration of this territory played an important role in the wars of aggression which Germany was waging in the East, knowing that War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity were being committed under his authority..."
Hans Fritzsche - Responsible for controlling the German Press, then head of Radio Broadcasting in the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Notable for a voice that sounded like Goebbels on the radio, Fritzsche broadcast Nazi political commentary. Found not guilty.
EXTRACT of the Judgment for Fritzsche as it was pronounced.
"...The Radio Division, of which Fritzsche became the head in November 1942, was one of the twelve divisions of the Propaganda Ministry . . . It appears that Fritzscbe sometimes made strong statements of a propagandistic nature in his broadcasts. But the Tribunal is not prepared to hold that they were intended to incite the German people to commit atrocities on conquered peoples, and he cannot be said to have been a participant in the crimes charged..."
On October 16, 1946, Ribbentrop was the first one taken into the execution chamber of the Nuremberg prison and mounted the gallows to be hanged. He was followed in quick succession by Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Seyss-Inquart, Sauckel, and Jodl. The bodies were then taken to the crematorium at Dachau concentration camp and burned. The ashes were scattered into a brook in Munich.
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http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/meetthedefendants.html
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The Nazi Defendants in the Major War Criminal Trial in Nuremberg
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DEFENDANT IMAGE
(click on image to see larger photo) I.Q. IN THE DEFENDANT'S WORDS PROSECUTION POINTS NOTES IN THE END Doenitz, Karl
German admiral who would eventually command entire navy. Chosen by Hitler to succeed him as fuhrer. Negotiated surrender following Hitler's suicide. 138 "Politicians brought the Nazis to power and started the war. They are the ones who brought about these disgusting crimes, and now we have to sit there in the dock with them and share the blame!" (5/27/46) On 9/17/42 Doenitz issued the "Laconia Order" to the German submarine fleet. The order forbid rescuing enemy survivors of sunken ships: "Be hard. Remember, the enemy has no regard for women and children when he bombs German cities." Called by Hitler "the Rommel of the Seas"....Said "I would rather eat dirt than have my grandson grow up in the Jewish spirit and faith"...Went on radio after assassination attempt on Hitler to call it "a cowardly attempt at murder." Served 10-year-sentence. Died in 1981. Frank, Hans
Governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, called the "Jew butcher of Cracow." 130 " Don't let anybody tell you that they had no idea. Everybody sensed there was something horribly wrong with the system." (11/29/45) "Hitler has disgraced Germany for all time! He betrayed and disgraced the people that loved him!...I will be the first to admit my guilt." (4/17/46) "The Jews must be eliminated. Whenever we catch one, it is his end"...."This territory [Poland] is in its entirety the booty of the German Reich"...."I have not been hesitant in declaring that when a German is shot, up to 100 Poles shall be shot too."--from the diary of Hans Frank. In April of 1930, Hitler asked Frank to secretly investigate a rumor that he had Jewish blood. Frank reported back that there was a 50-50 chance that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish. Hanged--wearing a beatificsmile--in Nuremberg on Oct. 16, 1946 Frick, Wilhelm
Minister of the Interior 124 "Hitler didn't want to do things my way. I wanted things done legally. After all, I am a lawyer." (4/24/46).... "The mass murders were certainly not thought of as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws, [though] it may have turned out that way." Frick drafted, signed, and administered laws that abolished opposition parties, and suppressed trade unions and Jews (including the infamous Nuremberg Laws). Frick knew that the insane, aged, and disabled ("useless eaters") were being systematically killed, but did nothing to stop it. Frick claimed not to be an anit-Semite. He said he drafted the Nuremberg Laws for "scientific reasons": to protect the purity of German blood. Frick was one of eleven defendants sentenced to death. He said, "Hanging--I didn't expect anything different....Well, I hope they get it over with fast." (10/1/46) Frick was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946. Fritzsche, Hans
Head of the Radio Division, one of twelve departments in Goebbel's Propoganda Ministry 130 " I have been tricked and trapped by the Himmler murder machine, even when I tried to put a check on it...Let us explain our position to the world, so that at least we won't die under this awful burden of shame." (11/21/45) "I have the feeling I am drowning in filth....I am choking in it."--(2/21/46, after watching film of atrocities). Fritzsche's radio broadcasts (he was a popular commentator) included strong Nazi propoganda. Fritzsche was one of two defendants turned over to the IMT by Russians.... Fritzsche often appeared on the verge of a breakdown during the trial. Fritzsche was acquitted by the IMT. He said, "I am entirely overwhelmed--to be set free right here, not even to be sent back to Russia. That was more than I hoped for." He was later tried and convicted by a German court, then freed in 1950. He died in 1953. Funk, Walther
Minister of Economics 124 "I signed the laws for the aryanization of Jewish property. Whether that makes me legally guilty or not, is another matter. But it makes me morally guilty, there is no doubt about that. I should have listened to my wife at the end. She said we'd be better off dropping the whole minister business and moving into a three-bedroom flat." (7/8/46) Funk agreed with Himmler to receive gold from the SS (including gold teeth and rings taken from those killed in concentration camps) and deposit in the Reichsbank. Funk told subordinates not to ask questions about the shipments. He either knew or should have known the source of the gold received. Funk said, "The only accusation I can make to myself is...that I should have resigned in 1938 when I saw how they robbed and smashed Jewish property." (12/15/45)....Funk was often seen crying during the presentation of prosecution evidence and needed sleeping pills at night. Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment by the IMT. He was released in 1957 because of poor health. He died in 1959. Goering, Hermann
Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe (Air Force) Chief; President of Reichstag; Director of "Four Year Plan" 138 "I joined the Party precisely because it was revolutionary, not because of the ideological stuff." (12/11/45)...."The whole conspiracy idea is cockeyed. We had orders to obey the head of state. We weren't a band of criminals meeting in the woods in the dead of night to plan mass murders...The four real conspirators are missing: The Fuhrer, Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels." (1/5/46)..."This is a political trial by the victors and it will be a good thing when Germany realizes that..." (6/13/46) As Director of the Four Year Plan, Goering bore responsibility for the elimination of Jews from political life and for the destruction and takeover of Jewish businesses and property....He was quoted as saying, "I wish you had killed 200 Jews and not destroyed such valuable property"...He looted art treasures from occupied territories and arranged for use of slave labor.... Goering surrendered to American officers. The officers offered Goering drinks and sang songs with him, but the next day were reprimanded by an outraged Dwight Eisenhower...Goering was the most popular prisoner with the American guards because he seemed to take an interest in their lives....He seemed to wield a great deal of influence with the other defendants, and prison administrators sought to isolate him as much as possible....Goering said, "We don't have much to say about our fate. The forces of history and politics and economics are just to big to steer." (3/9/46) Goering committed suicide on the day before his scheduled hanging by taking a cyanide pill that was smuggled into his cell. Goering wrote in his suicide note, "I would have no objection to getting shot," but he thought hanging was inappropriate for a man of his position. Hess, Rudolf
Deputy to the Fuhrer and Nazi Party Leader 120 "It is just incomprehensible how those things [atrocities] came about...Every genius has the demon in him. You can't blame him [Hitler]--it is just in him...It is all very tragic. But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to do something to end the war." (12/16/45) Jackson called Hess "the engineer tending to the Party machinery." He maintained the organization as a ready and loyal instrument of power. He signed decrees persecuting Jews and was a willing participant in aggression against Austria, Czechoslavakia, and Poland. During his detention following his failed putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Hess...Hess mysteriously flew to England in 1941 in an attempt to end the war on his own terms. He stayed there until the war ended....Hess suffered from paranoid delusions, apathy, amnesia, and was diagnosed as having a "hysterical personality." Hess was sentenced to life in prison. He remained--lost in his own mental fog-- in Spandau prison (for many years as its only prisoner) until he committed suicide in 1987 at age 93. Jodl, Alfred
Chief of Operations for the German High Command 127 " The indictment knocked me on the head. First of all, I hand no idea at all about 90 per cent of the accusations in it. The crimes are horrible beyond belief, if they are true. Secondly, I don't see how they can fail to recognize a soldier's obligation to obey orders. That's the code I've live by all my life." (11/1/45) Jodl gave orders for the German army's campaign against Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Poland. He also planned attacks against Greece and Yugoslavia....Jodl was quoted as saying, "Terror attacks against English centers of population ...will paralyze the will of the people to resist." Jodl signed Germany's unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945, ending the war in Europe....He strongly disagreed with many of Hitler's harsh orders: "The order to kill the escaped British fliers--there was absolutely no justification for that. From then on, I knew what kind of a man Hitler was." (4/6/46) Jodl was hanged in Nuremberg on Oct. 16, 1946. Critics have called Jodl's death sentence harsh in relation to the sentences received by other German officers of similar rank. Kaltenbrunner, Ernst
Chief of RSHA (an organization which includes offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police) and Chief of Security Police 113 "When I saw the newspaper headline 'GAS CHAMBER EXPERT CAPTURED' and an American lieutenant explained it to me, I was pale in amazement. How can they say such things about me?" (4/11/46)..."I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler." Kaltenbrunner and RSHA bear responsibity for "The Final Solution" to the Jewish question--and the 6 million jews killed by Einsatzgruppen (2 million) and in concentration camps (4 million). Kaltenbrunner ordered prisoners in Dachau and other camps liquidated just before the camps would have been liberated by Allies. Kaltenbrunner was described as "a Nazi out of central casting:" six-foot-six, a huge neck, cruel mouth, and a scar across his left cheek...He was shunned by most of the other defendants...His lawyer tried to portray him as a stooge for Himmler, rather than his right-hand man....Kaltenbrunner believed fertile German women had a duty to produce babies, and if their husbands couldn't get them pregnant, other men ought to be given the job. Kaltenbrunner was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946 in Nuremberg. Keitel, Wilhelm
Chief of Staff of the German High Command 129 "We all believed so much in him [Hitler]--and we stand to take all the blame--and the shame! He gave us the orders. He kept saying that it was all his responsibility." 912/25/45)..."I will suffer more agony of conscience and self-reproach in this cell than anybody will ever know." (1/6/46)..."the only thing that is impossible is for me to there [in court] like a louse and lie." (4/6/46) Keitel signed orders authorizing the killing of captured commandos and reprisals against the families of Allied volunteers...He drafted the "Night and Fog" decree that authorized the nighttime arrests and secret killings of suspected members of the resistance..He
planned attacks on Czechoslavakia, Poland, Belgium, Holland, and other countries. Keitel's sons were killed in the German attack on the Soviet Union that Keitel helped execute...Keitel, on Hitler's orders, sent two generals to Rommel (who had supported attempts to assassinate Hitler) offering him the the choice of a court-martial or suicide....In prison, Keitel worked on his autobiography....Prison pyschiatrist G. M. Gilbert said Keitel "had no more backbone than a jellyfish." Keitel was one of ten defendants hanged in the Palace of Justice in the early morning hours of October 16, 1946. Neurath, Konstantin von
Minister of Foreign Affairs (until 1938), then Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia 125 "Hitler was a liar, of course--that became more and more clear. He simply had no respect for the truth. But nobody recognized it at first...He must have done his conspiring with his little gang of henchmen late at night. Sometimes he would call at 1, 2, or 3 in the morning."(12/15/45) While Neurath was Foreign Minister, Germany "was only breaking one treaty at a time."...While serving at Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Neurath abolished political parties and trade unions....He knew war crimes were being committed under his authority. At 73, Neurath was the oldest defendant in the Major War Figures Trial. He seemed to be showing signs of incipient senility...When Chamberlain offered to come to Germany to discuss ways of averting war, Neurath urged Hitler to receive him..."I was always against punishment without the possibility of a defense." Neurath was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released because of poor health in 1954, and died two years later. Papen, Franz von
Reich Chancellor prior to Hitler, Vice Chancellor under Hitler, Ambassador to Turkey 134 "I think [Hitler] wanted the best for Germany at the beginning, but he became an unreasoning evil force with the flattery of his followers--Himmler, Goering, Ribbentrop, etc...I tried to persuade him he was wrong in his anti-Jewish policies many a time. He seemed to listen at first, but later on, I had no influence on him." (10/30/45) Von Papen helped consolidate Nazi control in 1933. He strengthened the position of Nazis in Austria to help pave the way for the takeover. He appealed to the Pope to support Hitler. Von Papen remained in office even after learning of political killings and other crimes. While the trial was in progress, Von Papen had many heated exchanges with Goering....Von Papen was a moderating force in the early years of the Nazi regime. In 1934, he gave a speech highly critical of restrictions on individual liberties...Von Papen said, "I've been portrayed as an intriguing devil. But I can prove I have always worked for peace....I am confident in American justice, and am glad to have the truth brought to light through this trial." Von Papen was acquitted. Raeder, Erich
Commander in Chief of the German Navy 134 "I have no illusion about this trial. Naturally, I will be hanged or shot. I flatter myself to think that I will be shot; at least I will request it. I have no desire to serve a prison sentence at my age." (5/20/46) Raeder advocated attacks by submarines on neutral ships in violation of international law. Raeder was one of two defendants handed over by the Russians, and was put on the list of major war trial defendants at the insistence of the Soviet Union...Raeder retired in 1943...He opposed invading Russia, but then attacked Russian submarines six days before the invasion began. Raeder was sentenced to life in prison. He served nine years before his release in 1955. He died in 1960 at age 84. Ribbentrop, Joachim von
Foreign Minister 129 "We are only living shadows--the remains of a dead era--an era that died with Hitler. Whether a few of us live another 10 or 20 years, it makes no difference." (3/27/46) Rippentrop participated in aggressive plans against Czechoslavakia...He helped plan attacks on Poland and Russia...Ribbentrop played a role in the "Final Solution" when he acted to hasten the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in the East. In prison, Ribbentrop kept asking everyone from doctors to cell guards to barbers for legal advice....Prison pyschiatrist G. M. Gilbert saw Rippentrop as "a confused and demoralized opportunist.".... Ribbentrop's erratic behavior caused his lawyer to complain, "This man is impossible to defend." Rippentrop was hanged on October 16, 1946. Rosenberg, Alfred
Chief Nazi Philosopher and Reichminister for the Eastern Occupied Territories 127 "I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work." (1/12/46)..."We let 50,000 Jewish intellectuals get across the border. Just as I wanted Lebensraum for Germany, I thought Jews should have a Lebensraum for themselves--outside of Germany." (12/15/45) Rosenberg helped plan attack on Norway....Developed policies of Germanization, exploitation, and extermination of opponents of Nazi rule...His directives provided for the segregation of Jews in Ghettos, facilitating their mass killing. He set quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich. Rosenberg was born in Estonia and did not move to Germany until he was 25.....Rosenberg's book promoting the Nazi philosophy was called The Myth of the Twentieth Century....He arranged the theft of fine art and furniture from Jewish apartments in Paris. Rosenberg was hanged on October 16, 1946. Sauckel, Fritz
Chief of Slave Labor Recruitment 118 "I was given this assignment which I could not refuse--and besides, I did everything possible to treat [the foreign slave laborers] well." (2/23/46) Soon after taking office, Sauckel had the governing authorities in the occupied territories establish compulsory labor service in Germany...His program resulted in the deportation for slave labor of 5 million people, many of whom had to endure cruel working conditions. Sauckel seemed confused during most of the trial....Historian Joseph Persico described Sauckel as "the least imposing figure among the defendants, a little man with a shining dome, sad brown eyes, and a silly mustache patterned after the Fuhrer's." Sauckel was hanged on October 16, 1946. Schacht, Hjalmar
Reichsbank President and Minister of Economics before the War 143 "I have full confidence in the judges, and I am not afraid of the outcome. A few of the defendants are not guilty; most of them are sheer criminals." (10/23/45)..."All I wanted was to build up Germany industrially....The only thing they can accuse me of is breaking the Versailles Treaty." (11/1/45) Schacht was an early supporter of the Nazi Pary and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. Schacht used the facilities of the Reichsbank to facilitate the German rearmament effort and organize the economy for war. Schacht spent 10 months in 1944 in a concentration camp because of suspicion he was plotting against Hitler....Said Schacht of the experience, "I could hear the people being forced to undress and march out to their death--and the shooting in the woods. It was beastly.".....Schacht had the highest IQ of any of the defendants. Schacht was found not guilty by the IMT. Schacht was later convicted by a German court and sentenced to eight years. He was freed in 1950. He died in 1970 at age 93. Schirach, Baldur von
Hitler Youth Leader 130 "I had no reason to be anti-Semitic...until someone made me read the American book, The International Jew, at the impressionable age of 17. You have no idea what a great influece this book had on the thinking of German youth...At the age of 18, I met Adolf Hitler. I must admit I was inspired by him...and became one of his staunchest supporters." (10/27/45) Von Schirach subjected German youth to an extensive program of Nazi propaganda....He participated in the deportation of the Jews from Vienna. Schirach began to become disillusioned with Hitler around 1942: "About 1942, I think I first began to notice that Hitler was becoming slightly insane...In 1943 we had a serious quarrel [over the treatment of Jews]. He flew at me in a rage...I fell from grace after that." Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the IMT. He was released from Spandau Prison in 1966. He died in 1974 at age 67. Seyss-Inquart, Arthur
Austrian Chancellor, then Reich
Commissioner for the Netherlands 141 "The southern German has the imagination and emotionality to subscribe to a fanatic ideology, but he is ordinarily inhibited from excesses by his natural humaneness. The Prussian does not have the imagination to conceive in terms of abstract racial and political theories, but when he is told to do something, he does it." (4/46) Seyss-Inquart ruthlessly suppressed opposition to the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. He, in collaboration with the SS, was involved in the shooting or sending to concentration camp of opponents of occupation. In Seyss-Inquart's fiefdom of the Netherlands, over 40,000 Dutch were shot as hostages, and another 50,000 died of starvation. In all, 56% of Dutch Jews died during the Nazi occupation....He limped from an injury received in an old mountain-climbing accident. Seyss-Inquart was hanged on October 16, 1946. Speer, Albert
Reichminister of Armaments and Munitions 128 "I would like to sit down and write one final blast about the whole damn Nazi mess and mention names and details and let the German people see once and for all what rotten corruption, hypocrisy, and madness the whole system was based on!-I would spare no one, including myself." (2/46) Speer transmitted to Sauckel estimates of numbers of slave workers needed, then allocated those workers to various armaments and munitions plants. Speer, an architect, was for years the closest anyone came to being a friend of Hitler. Hitler at one time gave Speer a watercolor of a Gothic church....Speer was the leader of the anti-Goering faction of defendants: those willing to condemn Nazi policies and accept some degree of blame. Speer served his 20-year sentence. He wrote two books about his life. He died in 1981 at age 76.
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https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/nuremberg-war-crimes-trials-70-years-complex-legacy
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Nuremberg war crimes trials 70 years on: a complex legacy
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https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/nuremberg-war-crimes-trials-70-years-complex-legacy
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Today marks 70 years since the first of the Nuremberg trials began.
Dr Jan Lemnitzer, historian at Pembroke College, Oxford University, researches how modern international law was created in the 19th century, how it came to be applied across the globe, and what that meant for international politics.
Here, he writes about the legacy of the Nuremberg trials:
On November 20 1945 the first of the Nuremberg trials began in the main court building of the Bavarian town of Nuremberg with the indictment of 22 of the most senior Nazis that had been captured alive.
Here in the dock were the architects and enforcers of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime’s countless other crimes – among them were Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and the Nazi rearmament effort; Hans Frank, who had treated Poland like his personal fiefdom and acquired the nickname “the Butcher of Kracow”; Hans Sauckel, who had organised the Nazi slave labour programme.
The trials are widely celebrated as a triumph of law over evil and marking an important turning point in legal history because dealing with the crimes of the Nazis paved the way for justice in the international community in general and the creation of the International Criminal Court in particular. It is this version of the story which has inspired the city of Nuremberg, which also hosted the infamous Nazi party rallies in the 1930s, to launch a new academy to promote the “Nuremberg principles”.
But while Nuremberg is celebrated today, the legal reality is not as clear-cut. As leading international criminal lawyer William Schabas remembers, “when I studied law, in the early 1980s, the Nuremberg Trial was more a curiosity than a model”.
The trials were also plagued by allegations of being little more than victor’s justice. These were made not only by Germans but also by American and British lawyers who felt it was a legal travesty. The judges and prosecutors were not neutral, but came from the four victorious powers – which led to such oddities as a Soviet prosecutor citing the Hitler-Stalin pact as evidence of German aggression against Poland, or a Soviet judge with ample experience of running Stalinist show trials trying to persuade his colleagues that the massacre against Polish officers in Katyn (who had been shot by the Soviets) should be added to the tally of German war crimes.
But the hypocrisy was not exclusive to the Soviet side: the London Charter of August 8 1945 which established the tribunal explicitly limited its remit to war crimes committed by the Axis powers. The tribunal also applied the so-called tu quoque principle which holds that any illegal act was justified if it had also been committed by the enemy (the Latin phrase means “you, too”).
Leading Nazis, Hermann Göring, Karl Dönitz, and Rudolf Hess at Nuremberg. United States Army Signal Corps photographer via Harvard Law Library
No Nazi was charged with terror bombardment since the use of strategic bombardment against civilians had been a pillar of the British and US war efforts. And when US admiral Chester W. Nimitz testified that the US Navy had conducted a campaign of unrestrained submarine warfare against the Japanese from the day after Pearl Harbor, the relevant charges against Admiral Karl Doenitz were quietly dropped.
Wisely, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia dismissed tu quoque as fundamentally flawed.
So why celebrate this trial?
One reason to celebrate Nuremberg is the simple fact that it happened at all. Until just before the end of the war, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin favoured summary executions of thousands of leading Nazis as the appropriate form of retribution. An outcry among the US public once these plans were leaked was a major factor in laying the road to Nuremberg.
Instead of mass shootings, an old idea from the First World War was revived. The Versailles treaty had compelled Germany to hand over Kaiser Wilhelm II and hundreds of senior officers to an international tribunal to be tried for war crimes. But the Kaiser fled to the Netherlands and the German government refused to hand over any officers or politicians. This time, however, Germany was completely occupied and was unable to resist, so the trials went ahead.
Flawed or not, the Nuremberg tribunal could not have met a more deserving collection of defendants – and it gave them a largely fair trial. Next to 12 death sentences and seven lengthy prison terms, the judgements included three acquittals – one of them for Hans Fritzsche, who had been the regime’s public voice on radio but was not personally involved in planning war crimes.
Crucially, the Nuremberg trials established an irrefutable and detailed record of the Nazi regime’s crimes such as the holocaust at precisely the time when many Germans were eager to forget or claim complete ignorance.
The legacy: important but inconvenient
Today, the most relevant legacy are the “Nuremberg principles”. Confirmed in a UN General Assembly resolution in 1948, they firmly established that individuals can be punished for crimes under international law. Perpetrators could no longer hide behind domestic legislation or the argument that they were merely carrying out orders.
The Nuremberg trials also influenced the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva conventions on the laws of war, all signed shortly after the war.
The strongest impact should have been on the development of international criminal law, but this was largely frozen out by the Cold War. With the re-emergence of international tribunals investigating war crimes and genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s, the legacy of Nuremberg proved a powerful argument for establishing the International Criminal Court in 1998.
The Rome Statute includes many principles developed in 1945, so the United States as the main proponent of the Nuremberg trials could take great pride in its impact, were it not for the fact that successive US administrations have fought tooth and nail against the ICC’s insistence that international criminal law might one day be applied against US citizens. So, 70 years later, Nuremberg’s legacy continues to be inconvenient.
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Lost Prison Interview With Hermann Goering: The Nazi Reichsmarschall’s Revelations
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2006-08-28T15:23:30+00:00
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A long-overlooked interview with imprisoned Nazi Hermann Goering explains why Germany's blueprint for victory depended on keeping America out of the war.
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HistoryNet
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https://www.historynet.com/lost-prison-interview-with-hermann-goring-the-reichsmarschalls-revelations/
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His impressive girth, bombast and outlandish costumes made Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring the darling of Allied satirists. As their cities were pummeled to rubble during the war, even the Germans took to contemptuously referring to the head of the Luftwaffe as “Der Dicke“ (“the fat one”). More than 60 years on, that perception of the Reichsmarschall persists; but it is only half the story.
His comical words, actions and unique fashion sense aside, it should be remembered that Göring was a bona fide war hero who received the coveted Orden Pour oe Merite during World War I and was a figure of high importance in the Nazi hierarchy. His place at the center of great events makes Göring worthy of careful study and close scrutiny even today.
On May 8, 1945, Göring surrendered to the Americans in full military regalia. Expecting to be treated as the emissary of a defeated people, the Reichsmarschall was shocked when his medals and marshal’s baton were taken away and he was confined in Prisoner of War Camp No. 32, known to its inmates as the “Ashcan.”
It was from his cell in the Ashcan that on July 25, 1945, Adolf Hitler‘s former heir was interviewed by Maj. Kenneth W. Hechler of the U.S. Army Europe’s Historical Division, with Capt. Herbert R. Sensenig serving as translator. The interview — overlooked for more than 60 years — provides insight into some of the strategic options considered by the Nazi leadership early in the war, their views of the threat posed by the United States and the Soviet Union, and how those attitudes influenced the actual strategy implemented.
Hechler: What was the German estimate of American war potential? Did Germany hope to complete its European campaigns before the United States would be strong enough to intervene?
Göring: As a break neared and it seemed that the matter had to be decided by war, I told Hitler, I consider it a duty to prevent America going to war with us. I believed the economic and technical potential of the United States to be unusually great, particularly the air force. Although at the time not too many new inventions had been developed to the extent we might have anticipated, and airplane production was significant but not outstandingly large. I always answered Hitler that it would be comparatively easy to convert factories to war production. In particular, the mighty automobile industry could be resorted to. Hitler was of the opinion that America would not intervene because of its unpleasant experiences in World War I.
What unpleasant experiences? Loss of life?
The United States helped everybody and got nothing for it the last time, Hitler felt. Things had not been carried out the way the United States had planned. [President Woodrow] Wilson’s 14 Points had not been observed. Hitler was also thinking of the difficulties of shipping an army to Europe and keeping it supplied.
What did you feel personally about our war potential?
While I, personally, was of the opinion that the United States could build an air force quicker than an army, I constantly warned of the possibilities of the U.S. with its great technical advances and economic resources.
If you thought the United States would become so powerful, how did this relate to your own plans for waging war?
The decisive factor in 1938 was the consideration that it would take the United States several years to prepare. Its shipping tonnage at the time was not too large. I wanted Hitler to conclude the war in Europe as rapidly as possible and not get involved in Russia. Yet, on the question of whether America could build up an army on a big scale, opinions were divided.
What were the divided opinions? What did other people think?
I don’t know the views of other influential people. I cannot say that other people had given different advice.
What opinion was held by OKW [German Armed Forces High Command] and OKH [German Army High Command]?
I don’t know the opinion of OKW or OKH. I used to tell Hitler that everything depended on our not bringing the U.S. over to Europe again. I said during the Polish campaign that we must not let the United States get involved. In 1941 the issue became real, and the general opinion was that it was better to bear unpleasant incidents with the U.S. and strive to keep it out of the struggle than allow a deterioration of relations between the United States and Germany. This was our unrelenting effort.
What specifically indicated to you that [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt was preparing for war?
A mass of details. It was all published in a White Book [intelligence assessment]. I don’t know if the entire text was published or only extracts. It made a deep impression.
Did Germany expect to bring its campaign in Europe to a successful conclusion before we could build up our war potential sufficiently to intervene there?
Hitler believed that he could bring matters to such a point that it would be very difficult for you to invade or intervene.
In December 1941, what was Germany’s estimate of our shipbuilding capability, which could influence the European campaign?
It was our opinion that it was on a very large scale. Roosevelt spoke of bridges of ships across the Atlantic and a constant stream of planes. We fully believed him and were convinced that it was true. We also had this opinion from reports by observers in the United States. We understood your potential. On the other hand, the tempo of your shipbuilding, for example, Henry Kaiser’s program, surprised and upset us. We had rather minimized the apparently exaggerated claims in this field. One spoke of these floating coffins, Kaisersärge, that would be finished by a single torpedo. We believed most of your published production figures, but not all of them, as some seem inflated. However, since the United States had all the necessary raw materials except rubber, and many technical experts, our engineers could estimate United States production quite accurately.
At first, however, we could not believe the speed with which your Merchant Marine was growing. Claims of eight to 10 days to launch a ship seemed fantastic. Even when we realized it referred to the assembly of prefabricated parts, a mere 10 days to put it together was still unthinkable. Our shipbuilding industry was very thorough and painstaking, but very slow, disturbingly slow, in comparison. It took nine months to build a Danube vessel.
Why did Germany declare war on the United States?
I was astonished when Germany declared war on the United States. We should rather have accepted a certain amount of unpleasant incidents. It was clear to us that if Roosevelt were reelected, the U.S. would inevitably make war against us. This conviction was strongly held, especially with Hitler. After Pearl Harbor, although we were not bound under our treaty with Japan to come to its aid since Japan had been the aggressor, Hitler said we were in effect at war already, with ships having been sunk or fired upon, and must soothe the Japanese. For this reason, a step was taken which we always regretted. It was unnecessary for us to accept responsibility for striking the first blow. For the same reason, we had been the butt of propaganda in 1914, when we started to fight, although we knew that within 48 hours Russia would have attacked us. I believe Hitler was convinced that as a result of the Japanese attack, the main brunt of the United States force would be brought to bear on the Far East and would not constitute such a danger for Germany. Although he never expressed it in words, it was perhaps inexpressibly bitter to him that the main force of the United States was in fact turned against Europe.
Hitler spoke a great deal on the subject. These people [isolationists], he thought, had great influence, but he got this [impression] from the U.S. press and some observers in the U.S., for example, labeling Roosevelt a warmonger. After the election of 1940, we realized that these isolationist forces were inadequate to hinder the United States’ entry into the war.
But [Wendell] Willkie was not an isolationist!
When we read Willkie’s speeches just before the election, it was also clear that even had Willkie been elected the course of events would have been the same. After the election, we attributed little importance to the isolationists in the United States. Hitler said that they were not strong enough. Roosevelt declared before the election that U.S. troops would not leave the country and were only to be used to repel a possible invasion. We realized that this was a sop to antiwar sentiment rather than any decisive change of attitude. When Sumner Welles visited Europe in 1940, we believed the United States still wanted to stay out of the war, and that on Welles’ return there might be an attempt to preserve peace. We had previously found in Poland the diary of Count Potofsky, which indicated that Roosevelt was preparing for war. Welles’ visit might have been, we thought, a possible sign that the U.S. was inclined to try to settle matters peaceably.
Editor’s note: American industrialist Wendell Willkie was an influential figure in American politics during the war. He ran for president in 1940, opposing Roosevelt’s New Deal but supporting his foreign policy, and won 22 million popular votes to Roosevelt’s 27 million.
Sumner Welles was an American diplomat. In the spring of 1940, during the Phony War period prior to Germany’s invasion of France, Roosevelt sent him to visit European leaders about preserving the peace. Jacob Potofsky was the Polish ambassador to the United States and had a number of interviews with Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and other senior American statesmen. He apparently knew of Roosevelt’s letters to Winston Churchill before the latter became prime minister.
Despite correct estimates of our potential, what made you think that you could emerge victorious in a war against us?
We had assessed the capacity of your air force especially well. The best engines were produced in the United States. We used to work on your engines and bought up every kind we could. Since the end of the last war, Germany had fallen behind in the air, while U.S. commercial aviation was far ahead of us. But in the beginning, we had not fully assessed the possibility of daylight bombers. Our fighters could not cope with them. When we were able to do so, there was a pause and then you sent them out with fighter escort. The Flying Fortress, for example, had more than we had anticipated. Our estimate was incorrect.
That being so, I still don’t understand why you wanted war with us.
The war was, in fact, already going on. It was only a question of form. Our declaration of war was made solely from the propaganda point of view. We would have been willing to make the most far-reaching concessions to avoid war with the United States, as such a conflict would and did prove the heaviest imaginable burden for us. But we were convinced that there was no chance to avoid war. Even if you had transported mountains of material to England, we should not have declared war, since England alone could not have carried out an invasion of Europe without your active participation.
With regard to our propaganda about a second front in 1943, did the German high command really expect that we would invade Europe in 1942-43?
In general, no one believed it. On the contrary, we hoped that the Russians would become disgusted with you first and come to a compromise peace with us. The Russians had complained bitterly that no second front had been opened. We knew precisely what forces were in England. We knew of every American unit in England and could estimate exactly what you had there and that it was insufficient for an invasion.
What was your appraisal of the significance of [the August 1942 British landing at] Dieppe?
We never found out if Dieppe was just a test landing, an attempt to secure a beachhead by surprise or a gesture to the Russians that something, at least, was being done.
Were there any changes in the defense ordered by you or anyone else as a result of Dieppe?
Only minor changes. We did order that the MLR [main line of resistance] should be right along the water. This was learned from the experience of Dieppe.
Were you informed by any information or intelligence of our impending invasion of North Africa in November 1942?
No. We had discussed the possibility of your attacking the west coast of Africa, but we did not think you would enter the Mediterranean. When the big convoy was reported near Gibraltar, we knew some operation was imminent, but the objective might have been any part of Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica or Malta.
Why were so few planes used against us in North Africa?
We did send a couple of squadrons as reinforcements in November 1942 and bombed successfully, near the Tunis side—for example, Bône and Algiers—and we bombed and sank ships at sea. The planes were based in Italy and had insufficient range to strike at landings around Oran, for instance. We did not have too many long-range bombers. As your forces moved east, they came within range. The Heinkel 177 had more than enough range and was supposed to be ready in 1941, but it took too long to perfect and was not ready until early in 1944. It seemed terrible to me that there was such a delay, since such models became obsolete so quickly.
Why did you not first seize Dakar?
In 1940 we had a plan to seize all North Africa from Dakar to Alexandria, and with it the Atlantic islands for U-boat bases. This would have cut off many of Britain’s shipping lanes. At the same time, any resistance movement in North Africa could be crushed. Then, taking Gibraltar and Suez would merely be a question of time, and nobody could have interfered in the Mediterranean. But Hitler would not make concessions to Spain in Morocco, on account of France. Spain had no objections to the campaign; in fact, the Spaniards were ready for it.
Who made this plan? Where and when was the conference on it?
Hitler and [Joachim von] Ribbentrop met [Francisco] Franco and [Ramón Serrano] Suñer [Franco’s chief negotiator] at Hendaye [France] in September or October 1940. Unfortunately, I was not along. [Benito] Mussolini was jealous and feared having the Germans in the Mediterranean. By that time, it was 1941 and the Russian danger in Hitler’s mind excluded all other considerations. Lack of shipping had prevented us from invading England, but, before the difficulties with Russia, we could have carried out the Gibraltar Plan, with 20 divisions in West Africa, 10 in North Africa and 20 against the Suez Canal, still leaving 100 divisions in France. The entire Italian army, which was unfit for a major war, could have been used for occupation forces. The loss of Gibraltar might have induced England to sue for peace. Failure to carry out the plan was one of the major mistakes of the war.
The plan was originally mine. Hitler had similar ideas and everyone was enthusiastic about it. The navy was in favor of the plans, as it would have given the navy better bases. Instead of being cooped up in Biscay and Bordeaux, it could have had U-boat bases much farther out in Spain and the Atlantic islands. If the campaign succeeded, I personally wanted to attack the Azores to secure U-boat bases there, which would have crippled British sea lanes. The main task in taking Gibraltar would have fallen to the Luftwaffe. Paratroopers would have had to be dropped. So I was chiefly concerned, and I would have very eagerly carried out the operation. The Luftwaffe had many officers who had participated in the war in Spain a year and a half before and knew the people and the country.
Even if Gibraltar had not been taken, we could have Algeciras [as a base of operations], and with 800mm siege mortars could have smashed the soft stone of Gibraltar and taken the base. There was only one unprotected airfield on the Rock. In 24 hours the Royal Air Force would have been forced off the Rock, and we could have battered it to pieces. This was a real task and we were eager to accomplish it. Ships would have been sunk by mines and no mine sweepers could have operated.
Can you trace the defeat of the Gibraltar plan directly to Hitler’s fear and distrust of Russia?
By the beginning of 1941, the Russian threat had begun to loom as a very real danger. Russia was bringing up large forces and making preparations on the frontier. If an agreement had been reached with [Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav] Molotov in February 1941, and the Russian danger had not been so real, we should certainly have carried out my plan in the spring of 1941.
Editor’s note: It is clear from Hitler’s first book, “Mein Kampf,” that as early as the 1930s the leader of the Third Reich sought to invade Russia in order to give Germany access to its living space, oil and other natural resources, grain and population. Göring was catering to his American interrogators and the United States at a point in time when U.S.–Soviet tensions were growing and Stalin and the Red Army posed the greatest ideological and military threat to Europe since the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Was the seizure of Dakar definitely part of your plan?
Yes. The plan called for securing all of North Africa, so that there would be no possible chance of any enemy penetrating to the Mediterranean. Such a possibility had to be excluded under all circumstances. Dakar was about the southwestern extremity. We would not have gone as far south as Freetown, for example. It would have taken much too long for anyone to attack across the desert with neither roads nor water supply adequate for the purpose. There was, therefore, no real danger to the Mediterranean from that far south. We would have taken Cyprus, too. I would have taken it right after we took Crete. We could also have taken Malta easily. Then the Atlantic islands would have been further protection for the coast of Africa. But fear of Russia stopped us. We had only eight divisions on the whole Russian frontier at the time.
Editor’s note: It is unlikely that the Germans could have taken Malta or Cyprus after their airborne invasion of Crete, although they had plans to invade Malta. The Wehrmacht suffered more than 6,000 casualties taking Crete, the vast bulk of them paratroopers, and the operation left both the Luftwaffe’s Fallschirmjäger and its transport arm—which lost more than 300 Junkers Ju-52 transports heavily damaged or destroyed—debilitated and unable to execute any large-scale airborne operations for some time to come. Nor could the Luftwaffe support the Russian campaign after Crete to the extent that Hitler had anticipated. Indeed, after the debacle at Crete, Hitler turned his back on large-scale airborne operations forever.
Were Hitler’s fears of Russia military or ideological? Did he fear communism’s spread or Russia’s military might?
Hitler feared a military attack. Molotov made the following demands in February 1941: a second war on Finland, to result in Russian occupation of the entire country; invasion of Romania and occupation of part of the country; strengthened Russian position in Bulgaria; solution of the Dardanelles question (none of us wished to see Russia there); and the question of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. This made us fall out of our chairs, it was so incredible. This was the last straw; Molotov was not to be heard any further. Germany would not even discuss it.
We would have no objections to Russia having a sphere of influence in Finland, but Hitler felt that if Russia occupied the whole of Finland, she would reach out to Swedish iron ore mines and the port of Narvik, and we did not want the Russians as our northern neighbors, with troops in Scandinavia. The German people were also very sympathetic toward the valiant Finns. The Russian move northwest would have tended to outflank Germany. Similarly, the Russians in Romania might not necessarily go south, but might move westward to encircle Germany on that side. By denying us the nickel of Finland and the grain and oil of Romania, Russia could have exerted economic pressure against us, and in 1942 or so proceeded to direct military action. These were the main reasons that kept us from arriving at any agreement.
In November 1940, when the first alarming reports came from the east, Hitler gave his first orders to OKW regarding the steps which would have to be taken if the situation with Russia became dangerous. Provision had to be made for the eventuality of a Russian attack. In March 1941, Hitler made up his mind to launch a preventive attack on Russia as a practical matter. I had favored making more concessions to Molotov, since I believed that if Russia invaded Finland and Romania, the differences between her and Britain and the United States would have become insuperable. Hitler, however, was personally distrustful of Russia all the time and saw in her, with the mighty armaments she had been piling up for 10 years, the great future enemy of Germany. Hitler’s inward mistrust remained deep even though not expressed. He wanted to reject all of Molotov’s demands in February 1941, whereas those of my opinion felt that a second Finnish war and a Russian drive on the Dardanelles would rupture the already tense relations between Russia and the Anglo-Saxon powers. In the long run, Russia might then fight England and not against us.
What Stalin’s real intentions were, I don’t know — whether he wanted to move toward the Dardanelles, or to attack Germany. If we had granted Russia’s demands, we might have had her join with us in a four-power pact, replacing the Three-Power Pact. I did not want to attack Russia. I wanted to carry out the Gibraltar plan, and I also did not want to see my Luftwaffe split between the Eastern and Western fronts. Russia was developing a position completely and finally contradictory to the interests of the British.
What Happened to Hermann Göring After This Interview?
On Aug. 12, 1945, Göring arrived, with other accused Nazi leaders, in the shattered ruins of Nuremberg, where they were detained next to the Palace of Justice. Slimmed down and weaned off his dependence on painkillers by the beginning of the Nuremberg trials on November 20, he was charged with crimes under four general headings: the common plan or conspiracy (to initiate the war), crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prisoner psychiatrist at Nuremberg found Göring to be a brilliant, brave, ruthless, grasping and shrewd executive. At the same time, he was charming, persuasive, intelligent and imaginative. But his urbane personality was also characterized by a complete lack of moral discrimination and an absence of any sense of the value of human life.
Göring defended himself, Hitler and the Third Reich energetically and at times even brilliantly. However, his voluntary admissions and frank avowals were hardly the basis for a sound defense. He cut an impressive figure in the witness box and his booming voice and defiant testimony, broadcast throughout occupied Germany by the Allies, lifted spirits in many parts of Germany as the people heard their Hermann fighting back.
The first screening in court of the graphic concentration camp films and testimony from senior commanders of the SS, however, undermined Göring’s defense, taking the wind out of his sails and leaving him bitterly depressed. On Aug. 31, 1946, after 216 court days, the accused were called upon to make their final addresses. The German people trusted their leader, remarked Göring. Ignorant of crimes of which we know today, the people fought with loyalty, self-sacrifice and courage, and they have suffered, too, in this life-and-death struggle into which they were arbitrarily thrust. The German people are free from blame. His address failed to save him, although it did reinforce a growing myth among the German people that stressed their victimization during the war rather than their complicity in the crimes of the Third Reich.
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Nazi Looted Art
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The Holocaust Records Preservation Project Summer 2002, Vol. 34, No. 2 By Anne Rothfeld Enlarge Artworks that were confiscated and collected for Adolf Hitler, seen here examining art in a storage facility, were designated for a proposed Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. (242-HB-32016-1) View in National Archives Catalog Dormant bank accounts, transfers of gold, and unclaimed
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National Archives
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https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/summer/nazi-looted-art-1
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The Holocaust Records Preservation Project
Summer 2002, Vol. 34, No. 2
By Anne Rothfeld
Dormant bank accounts, transfers of gold, and unclaimed insurance policies, all taken by the Nazis and hidden primarily in Swiss bank accounts during World War II, are now the subject of economic and financial research. Museums and galleries are researching the provenance of paintings, decorative arts, and sculpture in their collections in order to confirm that none of the pieces were looted during World War II. Although the Nazis were known for their thorough recordkeeping, a significant amount of artwork still is missing and unaccounted for. The Allied armies salvaged many of these German records, but do these records clearly tell the story of an art piece? And what is the story of the Allied attempts to find the owners of more than two million looted art pieces and bring German art dealers and Nazi collaborators to justice?
In recent years, renewed interest in Holocaust-era assets has prompted heirs, art historians, and curators to ask these questions concerning art provenance and claims research. Until recently, very few researchers were interested in economic and financial aspects of the Nazi regime and the war; even fewer in Holocaust-related assets.1 Now, provenance research of looted art has become an important activity for auction houses, art dealers, and art museums.2
The Holocaust Records Project
To address the dual concerns of researchers' demand for records that document the locating and restituting of confiscated art and the preservation problems associated with overuse of fragile World War II records, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) created the Holocaust Records Project (HRP). The project has the task of identifying, preserving, describing, and microfilming more than twenty million pages of records created by the Allies in occupied Europe regarding Nazi looted art and the restitution of national treasures. These materials include documents generated by various U.S. government civilian agencies, U.S. military branches, and the Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone (OMGUS).
The HRP emerged from a meeting in the summer of 2001 between NARA and art historians and curators to identify NARA's key and relevant holdings concerning art provenance and restitution claims research. These records tell the story of Allied programs created in mid-1943 to protect art from being damaged or stolen by the Allied military forces, to prevent art from being used as a financial asset by the Axis powers, to keep Nazi looted art from being sent to a safe haven (somewhere outside of Germany, in the neutral countries or Latin America), and to aid Allied restitution efforts.
The HRP is microfilming documents in more than fifteen different records groups, including Records of the Office of Strategic Services (RG 226), General Records in the Department of State (RG 59), Records of the Office of Alien Property (Foreign Funds) (RG 131), and the "Ardelia Hall Collection" in Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II (RG 260). The project's progress can be monitored on NARA's art provenance web page at www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/.
Our primary goal is to aid archival research in looted cultural property records and to create specialized inventories and finding aids. Our finding aids allow researchers to narrow their search for archival records and also help to preserve the records by minimizing the amount of handling to which they are subjected. Two additional project goals are the posting of inventories and indexes on NARA's art provenance web page.
The first set of records to be microfilmed are the records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission");3 the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) inventory card files; the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) files; the Cultural Property Claims Applications; and the records of the four temporary collecting points under U.S. Army command: Marburg, Offenbach, Wiesbaden, and Munich.4 The army occupation forces in Germany, Italy, and Austria created massive quantities of records in the process of the recovery, administration, and restitution of looted art and cultural property and treasures. The paperwork involving property claim applications made to OMGUS from individuals and institutions was routed through the collecting point to the object's country of origin. For example, if an object had been taken out of Poland by the Nazis, moved to France, and shipped to Munich, then the claim was made to the Allies by the Polish government. Each European government was to determine ownership of artworks taken from its own country. Also in these records are U.S. Army interrogations and field reports on looted art, including information on the discovery and recovery of looted art, and captured German and French documents containing packing lists and bills of sale. One section of OMGUS records relating to the location and restitution of looted art alone amounts to several million pages.
The HRP's first completed project was the preservation microfilming of selected records of the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU),5 an investigative program formed in November 1944 under the auspices of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission") and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). These detailed interrogations, also known as the ALIU reports, describe Nazi looting; locations of looted art; German and Nazi attempts to sell looted art; the transport of art into and around the Reich; descriptions and dimensions of specific pieces, with many pieces listing the selling and purchasing prices; names of purchasing agents and auction houses; names and activities of Swiss, French, German, and other European art dealers; and art collections of Nazi leaders.6
ALIU officers interrogated more than two thousand individuals involved in art looting, including such key German and Nazi figures as Heinrich Hoffman, Hitler's chief photographer and art adviser; Ernst Buchner, director of the Bavarian State Paintings Museum; Karl Haberstock, a Berlin art dealer who purchased and sold artworks for Hitler; and Walter Hofer, Hermann Göring's art agent. After gathering intelligence information from their interrogations, ALIU members wrote thirteen Detailed Interrogation Reports (DIRs), then condensed these DIRs to create three Consolidated Interrogation Reports (CIRs).
The CIRs describe in detail the activities of the ERR, the official Nazi office charged with confiscating prominent art collections in France (CIR No. 1, "Activity of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in France"); the origins of Hermann Göring's art collection (CIR No. 2, "The Goering Collection"); and art collected for Adolf Hitler's planned museum in Linz, Austria (CIR No. 4, "Linz: Hitler's Museum and Library"). CIR No. 3, which was to be written by Jan Vlug, Royal Netherlands Army, regarding German methods of acquisitions, was still pending in 1946 and never completed. These CIRs, used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials of Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg, also trace Germany's economic and financial growth and decline and the movement of assets within the Reich. The ALIU Final Report for the Roberts Commission was published in 1946.7
Origins of Nazi Art Confiscations
The Nazi Party leadership's interest in art arose early on, and art confiscations began by 1938. The Nazis wanted to rid Germany of art created during the Weimar Republic, the period of 1924–1930, when Germany was a leading European cultural center, especially in the fields of art, cinema, and literature. Weimar decadence aroused Nazi anger, and Hitler began closing art schools in 1933.
Soon after their rise to power in 1933, the Nazis purged so-called "degenerate art" from German public institutions. Artworks deemed degenerate by the Nazis included modern French and German artists in the areas of cubism, expressionism, and impressionism. Approximately sixteen thousand pieces were removed, and by 1938 the Nazi Party declared that all German art museums were purified. State-sponsored exhibitions of this art followed the Nazi purges, clarifying to Germans which types of modern art were now unacceptable in the new German Reich. Soon after, an auction of 126 degenerate artworks took place in 1939 at the Fischer Gallerie in Lucerne, Switzerland, in order to increase revenues for the party. The auctioned paintings by modern masters, many previously purged from German public institutions, included works by van Gogh and Matisse.
Hitler called for a new art, an art that portrayed the Volk and the Volksgemeinschaft (Volk community) as "a realization not of individual talents or of the inspiration of a lone genius, but of the collective expression of the Volk, channeled through the souls of individual creators."8 Hitler wanted new cultural and artistic creativity to arise in Germany, with the "folk-related" and "race-conscious" arts of Nazi culture replacing what he called the "Jewish decadence" of the Weimar Republic.9 According to the Nazis, acceptable and desirable art included Old Flemish and Dutch masters; medieval and Renaissance German artworks; Italian Renaissance and baroque pieces; eighteenth-century French artworks; and nineteenth-century German realist painters depicting the German Volk culture.
Art looting that had begun on an ideological basis became an organized government policy. For Nazi officers seeking social status and promotion within the party, collecting and giving art confirmed one's dedication to promoting Nazi racial ideologies in the Reich. It was a way to emulate Hitler and Göring. Yet some top Nazis deviated from this model. For example, Joseph Goebbles, Reich minister for propaganda, collected artworks by German expressionists, and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop acquired impressionist paintings by Manet.
The first official rounds of Nazi confiscations began in Austria after the 1938 Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into the German Reich. Art confiscations in Poland began in 1939. Shortly thereafter, Nazi bureaucratic agencies were established in the newly occupied territories and charged with confiscating art. For example, the collections of Vienna's prominent Jewish families were the first to be taken by the Nazis, and Jews who did not plan to leave "Greater Germany" were required to register their personal property with the local police. Artworks soon paid for exit visas and taxes.
Many who were persecuted by the Nazis or who were political opponents did attempt to flee Germany in the mid 1930s. When the Nazis banned the exportation of paper money, wealthy émigrés began to turn their investments into art. Because the Nazis lacked a useable foreign currency, artworks were often used as an alternative to money. As late as 1939, art could be taken out of Germany only as personal property. Art, thus, became cash for black marketers, Nazis and non-Nazis, and for victims of Nazism who used it as a safe, liquid asset. Almost all European art dealers who bought and sold to Germans and Nazis took advantage of their ignorant or ill-informed clients in the occupied areas, and both occupier and occupied exploited one another.
Jews owned many of the well-known art houses, and some were art dealers. In April 1938, Göring issued the "Decree Regarding the Reporting of Jewish Property," which stated that no later than June 30, 1938, every Jew in the Reich was required to assess all property owned, domestic and foreign, and to report these findings to Nazi authorities.10 Jewish business owners were forced to sell their shops and assets to non-Jews, a process called Aryanization. Jewish art dealers forced to leave Germany created opportunities for "a group of dealers, not previously considered to be in the top rank, [who] rushed to fill the gaps left by the departure of their Jewish colleagues and to take full advantage of [the fleeing Jews]."11
Confiscated artworks were often saved for private Nazi and German collections, while some pieces were sold to buyers through neutral countries like Switzerland to raise capital for purchasing additional art pieces and to purchase materials for the Nazi war machine. Additionally, Switzerland offered a large market to sell off "degenerate art." The Paris art market was the most active during the war years. The French auction houses and dealers sold artworks at extravagant, inflated prices to interested German parties. The Netherlands' art riches were the next most popular for art plundering, and the Italian market was also brimming with dealers who took advantage of Germans and Nazis by inflating prices and gouging profits at the expense of their German allies.
As the art confiscations expanded during the war, the Nazis devised a plan to ship the pieces back to Germany and Austria. They began storing the artworks in salt mines and caves for protection from Allied bombing raids. These mines and caves offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for artworks.
Plundering for Göring's and Hitler's Collections
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring helped establish the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), directed by Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi office charged with confiscating prominent, mainly Jewish, art collections in the western Nazi-occupied territories. Housed in the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, the ERR operated from 1940 to 1944.12
In January 1940, Hitler gave Rosenberg his task: to loot Jewish and Masonic cultural treasures, including synagogues, libraries, and archives in western Europe. By fall 1940, Hitler ordered Rosenberg to confiscate all Jewish art collections since these materials were now deemed "ownerless" by Nazi decree. Jews in France, as in most of Europe, were now labeled "stateless" and no longer had property rights. With France part of the German-occupied territories, the ERR and Rosenberg now fell under Göring's authority and control, with the Gestapo seeking out Jewish houses, apartments, and shops in the hopes of finding valuable pieces.
The ERR was the most elaborate of the Nazi confiscating agencies, and it looted more than twenty-one thousand individual objects from over two hundred Jewish-owned collections.13 For every object delivered to the Jeu de Paume Museum, a clearinghouse to process all French confiscations, ERR staff created an inventory card containing the artist's name, medium, dimensions, and in many cases, a photograph. The ERR then organized the cards by codes based on the family's name and a number: for example "R" for the Rothschild family, "D.W." for David-Weill, and "SEL" for the Seligmann family in Paris. On many cards appears a stamp with either "AH" or "HG," indicating if the object was going to Hitler's museum in Linz or to Göring's personal collection at Carinhall (Göring's country house named in honor of his wife, Carin). Suitable materials not selected for Linz or Carinhall were set aside for German museums, and pieces deemed too decadent and modern (i.e., "degenerate") for the Nazis were sold at auction in the international art markets.14
As part of glorifying the German race, Hitler and Göring planned two large art collections: Hitler's proposed grand museum (the Führermuseum) in Linz; and the Hermann Göring Collection, which was a personal collection intended to serve as a personal monument to himself. As early as March 1938, Hitler planned to build Linz as a cultural city to rival that of Vienna.15 Göring considered confiscated property from "enemies of the state" as the main source for his collection.16
Prior to the establishment of the ERR, in June 1939, under Karl Haberstock's influence, Hitler appointed Dr. Hans Posse, the former director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, to direct acquisitions for the Linz museum.17 This appointment generated some discussion in party offices because Posse had been relieved as director of the Dresden gallery in 1938 for not being a Nazi Party member. Also, during his tenure as the Dresden gallery director, he had purchased "unsuitable" artworks. He remained Hitler's adviser until his death in 1942. During those three years, Posse expanded the original plans for the Führermuseum, traveled to Austria and Poland to personally recommend and select confiscated fine arts, and "maintained both purchasing agents and special purchasing accounts [for Hitler]."18
In March 1943, Hitler named Hermann Voss to succeed Posse at the Dresden painting gallery and as provisional director of the Linz museum.19 His appointment came as a surprise in the official Nazi circles. Voss "was well known for his anti-Nazi opinions before 1943, and he was never a Party member."20 He had been passed over for promotion due to his "cosmopolitan and democratic tendencies, and friendship with many Jewish colleagues."21 When interrogated by the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) in 1945 and 1946, Walter Hofer, Bruno Lohse, Karl Haberstock, and Kajetan Mühlmann all "agreed that Voss was competent, but they all [felt] it was strange that a man well known for his anti-Nazi sympathies should suddenly be pulled out of virtual retirement and placed in such an exalted position."22
Between 1943 and 1945, Voss purchased approximately twelve hundred paintings for Linz, mainly nineteenth-century German artists, and "as Posse's successor he inherited a vast store of confiscated works."23
In May 1945, with the European war over, Voss traveled to Wiesbaden, Germany, to present himself to the American troops and offer his assistance in locating and recovering looted art slated for Linz. He was taken into custody and interrogated by the ALIU in Alt Aussee, Austria, from August 15 to September 15, 1945.24 In a signed statement, Voss asserted that he wanted to provide the full account of his knowledge of art confiscations during the war.25
Walter Andreas Hofer began his career as a small Berlin art dealer, and by 1937 he became Göring's chief art adviser with the following agreement: Hofer could remain as an independent dealer while acting as Göring's agent with the right to keep an item for himself if Göring did not like the piece. This arrangement proved to be advantageous for Hofer, who now had Göring's protection and support. Hofer's new status gave him ample opportunity to travel and opened doors to art collections anywhere in the Reich and occupied territories.
Hofer was familiar with the details of Göring's account ledgers, which were separated into different funds: private, separate, and military. The private ledger contained records of Göring's personal fortune from his salaries and estates and recorded the use of the monies for himself and his family's personal expenses. The separate fund supported large receptions and business functions. The military fund covered Göring's expenses as Reichsmarschall and his special train. The Kunstfond, an art fund with an average balance of two million Reichmarks, was to be used for all of the expenses of acquiring and maintaining his personal art collection.
In 1939 Göring had acquired approximately two hundred objects; by 1945 he owned over two thousand individual pieces, including more than thirteen hundred paintings. From the beginning, confiscated property was the main source for Göring's collection. Approximately 50 percent of his collection consisted of works of art from enemies of the Reich. As the Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 2 states:
Göring's attitude towards [Nazi] confiscations was characteristic. He fought shy of crude, undisguised looting; but he wanted the works of art, and so he took them, always managing to find a way of giving at least the appearance of honesty, by a token payment or promise thereof to the confiscation authorities. Although he and his agents never had an official connection with the German confiscation organizations, they nevertheless used them to the fullest extent possible.26
Gifts from friends and other important Nazis to the Reichsmarschall were another source for Göring's acquisitions. With Hofer's assistance, Göring established a sort of art gift registry, listing fine arts that suited his tastes and fit in with the current holdings.27 Göring spent an extraordinary amount of time reviewing his plundered art, especially during the crucial years of World War II, mid-1940 to early 1942. ALIU's Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 2, entitled "The Goering Collection," documents at least a dozen visits by Göring to the Jeu de Paume Museum in 1941 and another five in 1942.28
The ALIU report on Hofer describes him as responsible for developing many of the confiscation methods used to build up the Göring collection. Hofer also used his status to promise protection to those being persecuted in exchange for artworks that he or Göring desired. Hofer kept the collection's records in a meticulous manner by recording the contract of sale for each piece, the piece's market value, and what the piece was sold or exchanged for.29
Identification and Recovery
The Roberts Commission
In early 1943, the Allies learned of the Nazi art confiscations, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission") to coordinate and promote the protection and recovery of art in war-ravaged Europe, with the understanding that the commission's mission would not interfere with any military operations.30 Named after its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, the commission compiled information on war damage to European and Asian cultural properties and submitted reports to Allied agencies suggesting plans for restituting looted art. The commission was active through June 1946.
Prior to the commission's establishment, beginning in the fall 1942 and as the European war continued, two civilian groups had raised concerns regarding the protection of Europe's cultural treasures. The American Defense Harvard Group, under the direction of Paul Sachs of the Fogg Museum, created and mimeographed lists of European monuments, fine art collections, and archives needing protection. Formed in 1940, this group consisted of fine arts professionals including George Stout of the Fogg Museum and Francis Henry Taylor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.31 At the same time, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) created the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Materials in War Areas, under the direction of William B. Dinsmoor, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, and six months later Sumner Crosby became a Roberts Commission representative in London. Dinsmoor and Crosby used the Harvard lists and Baedeker travel guides to prepare maps of European cities and towns that indicated the location of monuments. These maps were later turned over to the Allied air forces to be used in conjunction with Allied strategic bombing over Europe to avoid further damage to European monuments.
In 1942 these two groups approached Harlan F. Stone, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a National Gallery of Art board member, to discuss protecting historical monuments and cultural treasures in Europe. Stone agreed to contact President Franklin D. Roosevelt through Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In a letter dated December 8, 1942, to President Roosevelt, Stone recommended that an American commission be created to coordinate civilian and military efforts to protect historic monuments and cultural treasures in war areas, noting that the Allied nations have a "practical concern in protecting these symbols of civilization from injury and spoiliation."32 Hull agreed with Stone on the importance of the commission. He further explained that the Department of State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be notified and have a say as to the function of the commission.
The following April, President Roosevelt responded to Justice Stone, explaining that he felt that any art commission created would need to work closely with the U.S. military branches and he had discussed this matter with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In Hull's letter to the President dated June 21, 1943, he outlined the commission's functions. It was placed under the War Department so that fine arts professionals could be detailed to military units in order to locate and care for historic monuments in the Allied-occupied territories.33
The next month, July 1943, Justice Stone wrote to David Finley, director of the National Gallery of Art, stating that President Roosevelt approved the founding of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe. He added that the commission's wartime functions would include providing information to the General Staff of the Army regarding what types of national treasures and monuments to protect.
The letter also proposed that men already enlisted in the armed forces who were "qualified museum officials and art historians . . . could, if desired, be attached to general headquarters of armies on active combat in the European theatre of operation," and these men would "compile, through the assistance of refugee historians of art and librarians, lists of property appropriated by the Axis invading forces." Stone further stated that the American Commission "should urge that the Armistice terms include the restitution of public property appropriated by the Axis Powers [and] where it is not possible to restore such property, . . . restitution in kind should be made by the Axis Powers to the countries from which the property has been taken."34 In August 1943, President Roosevelt established the Roberts Commission under Justice Roberts's chairmanship.
Headquartered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the commission was directed by David Finley, director of the National Gallery of Art; Huntington Cairns, the gallery's secretary-treasurer and general counsel, served as vice chairman.35 By locating itself at the National Gallery, the commission was able to facilitate liaisons with both the Departments of War and State.36
The Roberts Commission was instrumental in creating the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) Section of the U.S. Army. The MFA&A officers, popularly known as the "Monuments Men," were charged with protecting cultural treasures in European war zones.37 Equipped with maps, lists, and handbooks provided by the commission, the Monuments Men documented war damage and prepared lists of sites needing protection. After the war, the Roberts Commission played a major role in the U.S. Military Occupation Government (OMGUS) efforts to recover Nazi-confiscated artworks and restitute the pieces to the rightful owners.
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) Section
The Monuments Men began their work in Europe in 1944. In March 1945, a special report from the Roberts Commission to the Monuments Men was issued outlining the primary reasons for the creation of the MFA&A. MFA&A officers were to prevent Allied forces in the field "from damaging national monuments and from damaging or looting public or private collections;" to provide aid "to damaged monuments, fine art and archives collections;" and to "only [be] concerned with measures taken for the immediate protection from further damage of monuments and collections."38 Furthermore, the report stated that the MFA&A officers were not responsible for any type of restoration to the monuments.39
Monuments Men, mainly young art professors and museum curators were recommended and hired by the Roberts Commission for their museum experience and art history education. Capt. Mason Hammond was one of the first officers in Europe. Additional Monuments Men joined Hammond in June 1944 specifically to prevent Allied forces from establishing lodging in historic buildings and to inspect and report on the conditions of monuments listed in the Roberts Commission's "Protected Monuments Lists."40 As the European war was ending and the MFA&A swelled to more than eighty officers and men, the Roberts Commission appointed Lt. Col. Geoffrey Webb as chief of MFA&A operations in Europe and adviser to SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces).41
One of the MFA&A's greatest challenges in 1944–1945 was keeping the Allied forces from taking artworks and sending them home to friends and family. When the Monuments Men found that using "off-limits" warning signs were not working, they began using white tape, which Allied troops used to indicate the existence of unexploded mines. The MFA&A covered much territory by the beginning of 1945; after examining more than two hundred monuments, they reported that in Germany alone, over 90 percent of the monuments had been hit by Allied bombings, and 60 percent had been destroyed.42 A secondary challenge the MFA&A met was acting over a sort of "lost and found" department of European art, as civilians began to come to them to search for their stolen personal property.
In spring 1945, the Monuments Men discovered hundreds of caves and mines that stored Nazi caches.43 The first mine they investigated was a copper mine outside of Siegen in Westphalia in April 1945, where they found paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Rubens. An original score of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony was also among the items found here.44 On April 6, 1945, came the second find: Merkers.45 The Merkers salt mine housed millions of Reichsmarks in gold bars, non-monetary victims gold, and art from more than a dozen German state museums. In May, Patton's Third Army found the salt mine at Alt Aussee in Austria, which housed more than 6,500 paintings for Hitler's museum in Linz and stolen Italian art for Göring's personal collection.46
Another large find in spring 1945 by the U.S. First Army was the salt mine at Bernterode in Germany's Thuringia Forest.47 During the war, the mine had been used as a storehouse of German munitions and military supplies. In a room behind a brick wall and locked door, however, were huge caskets adorned with Nazi regalia. At first the Americans thought they had found Hitler's tomb, but upon examination, they discovered that the caskets held the bodies of "three of Germany's most revered rulers: Field Marshal von Hindenburg, Frederick the Great, and Frederick William I."48 In addition to the caskets, the American troops found German regimental banners, the Prussian crown regalia with the jewels removed, and paintings, including some by artists such as Watteau and Cranach. And in May 1945, Allied troops found confiscations at Berchtesgaden and Neuschwanstein castle, both of which stored hundreds of ERR loot.49
Art Looting Investigation Unit
In early 1944, Justice Roberts, now the chairman of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, met with Gen. William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), requesting that a special intelligence unit dealing with looted art be formed and administered by the OSS.50 Roberts envisioned that this unit would assist his commission and the U.S. Army's MFA&A Section officers. Donovan agreed, and in 1944 the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU), was placed under the control of OSS's Counterintelligence Branch (X-2) because the OSS believed that certain Nazi agents could be using art looting and collaborative activities to conceal their roles as espionage agents.
Both Roberts and Donovan asked Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to select as members of this new unit people from the fine arts community in whom he had personal confidence. For Donovan, Taylor, and Roberts, investigating art looting by the Nazis complemented Allied counterintelligence operations that were already compiling information on Nazis who could be a threat after Germany's defeat. Furthermore, they and their agencies were "interested in tracing and preventing the flow of assets to places of refuge where they might be used to finance the postwar survival of Nazism."51
X-2 gave ALIU the name "Project Orion" because members of the unit considered themselves "hunters" of Nazi art thieves and Nazi art collaborators. An OSS directive declared that the ALIU's primary mission was "to collect and disseminate such information bearing on the looting, confiscation and transfer by the enemy of art properties in Europe, and on the individuals or organizations involved in such operations or transactions, as well as be of direct aid to the United States agencies empowered to effect restitution of such properties and prosecute war criminals" and "to establish the pattern of looting and confiscation in its broader aspects, so as to be guided in the promulgation of plans for ultimate restitution."52 Donovan's directive also outlined ALIU's administration, its personnel, its operational procedures, and funding.
In late November 1944, the ALIU was established and staffed by art historians recommended by Taylor. ALIU members were naval officers with fine arts background and "listed as members of the armed forces, but as members of the OSS, they had more freedom of movement than others in the military."53 On June 10, 1945, the ALIU opened its interrogation center in Bad Aussee, Austria, close to the Alt Aussee salt mine.54 Fully staffed, the ALIU consisted of four commissioned officers, three enlisted men serving as administrative aides, and three civilians. The commissioned officers were responsible for the unit's field operations, reporting to the Roberts Commission, and the investigation and interrogation of Nazis and Germans involved in art confiscations.
Reparations and Restitution
The Central Collecting Points
Upon the end of the European war, in spring 1945, Germany was divided into four zones of occupation. The Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone, OMGUS, was established in October 1945 to administer the U.S. occupation zone. In addition to its other postwar duties, OMGUS took control of all looted art pieces within its German and Berlin zones and returned identifiable objects to the governments of the countries from which they had been stolen.55 There were more than fifteen hundred documented repositories throughout Germany and Austria, all storing Nazi confiscated goods. OMGUS attempted to return those pieces not identifiable to their possible country of origin, and items without any claims were turned over to Jewish successor organizations for restitution. The U.S. Allied Commission for Austria section of OMGUS (USACA) was the U.S. representative in Austria, which also restituted confiscated works.
Soon after the Allied forces discovered the mines and caves in the spring 1945, the Allies began the tedious task of moving the objects into central storage areas in order to return each object to its rightful owner. U.S. Third Army officers and troops found the Alt Aussee mine in May 1945, and it took more than two months to empty the mine and ship the contents to Munich. Having found the stolen art pieces, the Monuments Men, with the aid of Allied troops, faced two huge tasks: first, removing the art from the mines or castles and second, transporting the pieces to safe storage areas within the U.S. occupation zone.56 Due to the large number of salt caves and mines containing treasures, the U.S. Army consolidated the stolen objects into four central collecting points: Munich, Wiesbaden, Marburg, and Offenbach.
At these facilities, confiscated objects were identified, described, and photographed for restitution purposes. Marburg opened first in May 1946, yet it quickly filled up. It was closed in June 1946 once Munich opened, and Marburg's contents were distributed among the other three collecting points. The remaining collecting points were assigned "specialties" in order to expedite restitution efforts: Munich contained materials needing restitution to foreign countries and to the Bavarian State Museums; Wiesbaden held German-owned materials from the former Prussian State Museum and Staedel Institute of Frankfurt; and the Offenbach Archival Depot housed Jewish manuscripts, books, and archives. At their height, Munich held more than one million individual objects; Wiesbaden held more than 700,000.
The Munich Central Collecting Point was set up in the former Nazi administrative building (the Verwaltungsbau) and Hitler's former office (the Fürherbau).57 Offenbach opened in 1945 and restituted books and Judaic objects until 1947, when it was closed and the remaining materials were shipped to Wiesbaden collecting point.58
OMGUS made great efforts to recover and to restitute looted cultural property and created a large volume of records in the process. These records were created for specific purposes: to protect art, whenever possible, from being damaged or stolen by the Allied military forces and to keep art from being used as a financial asset by the Axis. Some of these records consist of property cards, created by the collecting point as the shipments were received. Munich alone received over fifty thousand separate shipments.59 The cards were created to document pertinent information in aiding restitution efforts: classification of the object, artist and title names, dimensions, markings, and photographs of the object. One category on the cards, "presumed owner," may allow art historians to begin their respective research into specific pieces and return them to the claimant.
* * *
Despite the tireless efforts of Allied military and civilian agencies, hundreds of confiscated artworks were never recovered and returned to their rightful owners. The vast volume of documentation left behind by the Nazis and the Allied agencies, however, allows those efforts to continue. Through its microfilming and preservation program, the Holocaust Records Project is providing the historical and art communities with greater access to the records that tell the story of artworks and artifacts damaged and looted during World War II.
Anne Rothfeld was an archivist with the Holocaust Records Project at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Notes
1 In March 1996 a researcher was sent to the National Archives to look for information about Jewish dormant bank accounts in Swiss banks, and in May 1997 a report to Congress was prepared on the discovery of dormant claims and gold. Also in 1997, research into unpaid insurance policies, non-monetary gold (i.e., victims gold from the death camps), and looted art began. In March 1998 the National Archives and Records Administration published a finding aid that describes Holocaust-era assets available in the National Archives at College Park. In fall 1998 President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, calling for all federal agencies to recommend for declassification records relating to Holocaust-era war crimes, war criminals, Axis persecution, and looted assets, including art and cultural property. In regards to looted art, American art museums have begun the tedious task of researching the provenance of each item in their holdings.
2 If conducting art provenance research, please refer to Nancy H. Yeide, Konstantin Akinsha, and Amy L. Walsh, The AAM Guide to Provenance Research (2001), a useful guide to archival holdings worldwide.
3 Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission"), Record Group (RG) 239, National Archives at College Park (NACP). The Roberts Commission records contain index card boxes divided into different subjects, including art looting suspects, looted art objects, repositories and collectors suspected of receiving or storing looted art objects, and firms involved in art looting. The records also contain two large series of photographs taken by the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) and the Signal Corps.
4 ERR's full name is der Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzten Gebiete, the Reich Leader Rosenberg Task Force for Occupied Territories.
5 OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit Reports, 1945–46 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1782), Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, and Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, RGs 239 and 38, NACP.
6 Art Looting Investigation Unit's Detailed Interrogation Reports (DIRs), 1945–1946, entry 74, boxes 84–84A, Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, RG 239, NACP. Arranged numerically by report numbers 1–13, with report number 8 not being used. "Investigation of Dr. Kajrtan Muehlmann, 1945–1948," a separate report by the Dutch Officer Jan Vlug, can be found in Restitution Research Records, 1933-1950, box 435, Ardelia Hall Collection, OMGUS, Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 260, NACP.
7 Art Looting Investigation Unit's Consolidated Interrogation Reports (CIRs), 1945, entry 75, boxes 85–85A, Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, RG 239, NACP. Arranged numerically by report numbers 1–4, with report number 3 never completed. The final report is titled Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (1946).
8 Benjamin C. Sax and Dietar Kuntz, Inside Hitler's Germany: a Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich (1992), pp. 219–220. Also see Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1933 (1969); George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture (1981); John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917–1933 (1978); and Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (1996).
9 Dietrich Orlow, A History of Modern Germany, 1871 to Present (2nd ed. 1999), pp. 136–140; Shearer West, The Visual Arts in Germany, 1890–1937: Utopia and Despair (2001), pp. 159–205. See also Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (1992); and Stephanie Barron, "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (1991).
10 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945 (1975), pp. 95–106. On June 14, 1938, the Nazis defined a Jewish business by issuing the "Third Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law": "A business enterprise is considered Jewish if its owner is a Jew." Dawidowicz, p. 96.
11 Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (1995), p. 31.
12 See two works by Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich and The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (2000), and also Nicholas, The Rape of Europa. These books describe in detail the Nazi methods of looting and plundering private art collections and public national cultural treasures. Elizabeth Simpson, The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property (1997), contains accounts of American civilian and military personnel involved in the recovery and restitution of stolen art works.
13 More than 5,000 pieces arrived from the various Rothschild families, 1,200 from the Alphonse Kann collection, 2,600 from David-Weill of Levy de Benzion, and 550 from Seligmann art merchants. According to ERR's paperwork, from 1940 to 1944 it confiscated approximately 10,800 paintings and other pictures, 580 sculptures, 2,400 furniture pieces, 5,800 objets d'art, and more than 1,200 Asiatic articles.
14 Following the alphabetical abbreviation indicating the collection name was the number assigned to the object (placed consecutively), i.e. R1522, the 1,522nd object in the Rothschild collection. CIR No. 1, "Activity of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in France," attachment 10, box 85, RG 239, NACP.
15 CIR No. 4 Linz, pp. 2–4, and attachments A and B, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP.
16 CIR No. 2 Goering, chap. V, Confiscations, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP.
17 Consolidated Interrogation Report (CIR) No. 4 Linz: Hitler's Museum and Library, attachment 1, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP. See Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, and Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, for further discussion of Posse and Voss.
18 CIR No. 4 Linz, p. 16 and attachment 1, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP.
19 Ibid., p. 18.
20 Ibid.
21 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, p. 171.
22 Detailed Interrogation Report No. 12 "Hermann Voss," p. 7, boxes 84–84A, entry 74, RG 239, NACP (hereinafter cited as DIR No. 12 Voss).
23 Ibid., pp. 22–23.
24 DIR No. 12 Voss, pp. 6–20, boxes 84–84A, entry 74, RG 239, NACP. Author's conversation with ALIU member S. Lane Faison, Jr., Williamstown, MA, Apr. 6–7, 2002.
25 DIR No. 12 Voss, attachment 4, entry 74, RG 239, NACP.
26 CIR No. 2 "The Goering Collection," Sept. 15, 1945, by Theodore Rousseau, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP (hereinafter cited as CIR No. 2 Goering).
27 Ibid. For additional information on Nazi gift giving, see Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, pp. 264–282.
28 CIR No. 2 Goering, pp. 32–148, outlines the ERR's procedures for sales, exchanges, purchases, and confiscations. Boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP. See also "The Plunder of Art Treasures," in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. I ("Red series") (1946), pp. 1097–1116.
29 Hofer's correspondence shows his understanding of how Göring operated and which pieces suited Göring's art tastes. For example, in his letter to Göring dated Sept. 26, 1941, Hofer tells of nineteenth-century French paintings he selected for Göring and states that the degenerate art in the Paul Rosenberg collection would be suitable for exchanges. CIR No. 2 Goering, pp. 10–13 and attachments 1, 17, boxes 85–85A, entry 75, RG 239, NACP.
30 The Roberts Commission, RG 239, NACP. See Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, for a narrative account of the commission's contributions to recovering, protecting, and restituting looted artworks.
31 The American Defense Harvard Group had a major interest in protecting art collections and European refugee professors who had seen the confiscation and destruction of national treasures firsthand. U.S. government agencies like the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) used the group to its own advantage since these university communities had the networks to supply intelligence necessary for a successful European campaign. See Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, for a narrative of the American Defense Harvard Group contributions.
32 Chief Justice Harlan Stone to President Roosevelt, Dec. 8, 1942, p. 1, folder "American Commission-Organization," Correspondence, 1943–1946, box 12, entry 7, RG 239, NACP.
33 Cordell Hull to President Roosevelt, June 21, 1943, p. 2, folder "American Commission-Organization," Correspondence, 1943–1946, box 12, entry 7, RG 239, NACP.
34 Cordell Hull to David Finley, director, National Gallery of Art, July 16, 1943, folder "American Commission-Organization," box 12, Correspondence, 1943–1946, entry 7, RG 239, NACP.
35 Other Roberts Commission members included William B. Dinsmoor, president of the Archaeological Institute of America; former governor of New York Herbert Lehman, who resigned in 1942 in order to serve as the first director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) (see the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance web site, http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x14/xr1426.html); Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress; Paul Sachs, associate director of the Fogg Museum; Archbishop Francis J. Spellman (Spellman replaced Alfred E. Smith of New York when Smith died); Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Charles H. Sawyer, secretary to the Roberts Commission; Sumner Crosby, Roberts Commission representative in London; and John Walker, chief curator at the National Gallery of Art and special adviser to the commission.
36 During the Roberts Commission's first meeting in August 1945, it created seven subcommittees: Committee on Definition of Works of Cultural Value and Property, chaired by Finely; Committee on Administration, chaired by Finley and Cairns; Committee on Books, Manuscripts, and Other Printed and Written material of Cultural Value, chaired by Archibald MacLeish; Committee on the Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas and the American Defense-Harvard Group, chaired by ACLS; Committee on Collection of Maps, Information, and Description of Art Objects, co-chaired by Dinsmoor and Sachs; Committee on Personnel, chaired by Sachs and Constable; and Committee on Art instruction in Military Government Schools, chaired by Finley. See Records of the Roberts Commission Subcommittees, entries 42–59, RG 239, NACP.
37 For additional information on the Monuments Men, see the MFA&A records in the Roberts Commission records, Field Reports, 1943–1946, entry 62, boxes 56–74, RG 239, NACP. Janet Flanner wrote a series of New Yorker articles on the MFA&A, which are reproduced in Flanner, Men and Monuments (1990).
38 "Special background guidance for handling all information concerning the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas," dated March 1945, folder "American Commission-Organization," Correspondence, 1943–1946, box 12, entry 7, RG 239, NACP.
39 Ibid.
40 Hammond's reports are in Records Concerning MFA&A Officers (MFA&A), 1945, box 56, entry 60, RG 239, NACP. Other MFA&A members included Capt. Bancel LaFarge, Lt. George Stout, and First Lt. James Rorimer. See Gerald K. Haines, "Who Gives a Damn about Medieval Walls?" Prologue: Journal of the National Archives 8 (Summer 1976): 97–106; Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, chaps. 10 and 11; and James J. Rorimer, Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War (1950).
41 Webb was the Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge University. Other Monuments Men included Lt. Lamont Moore, National Gallery of Art; Lt. Calvin Hathaway, Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration; Pfc. Lincoln Kirstein, art patron; Capt. Robert Posey, architect; Capt. Walker Hancock, Prix de Rome sculptor; and Lt. James Rorimer, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
42 MFA&A Field Reports, 1943–1946, entry 62, boxes 56–74, RG 239, NACP. See Nicholas, The Rape of Europa.
43 See MFA&A Field Reports, boxes 56–74, entry 62, RG 239, NACP.
44 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, pp. 328–331.
45 See Greg Bradsher, "Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 31 (Spring 1999): 7–21.
46 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, pp. 346–350. Alt Aussee's estimated contents included 6,577 paintings, 2,300 drawings and watercolors, 1,200–1,700 cases of books, and over 250 cases of unknown objects.
47 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, p. 338.
48 Ibid., pp. 337–339. Paul von Hindenburg, 1847–1934, was a German general and statesman; Frederick II, the Great, 1712–1786, ruled 1740–1786; and Frederick William II, 1744–1797, ruled 1786–1797.
49 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, p. 342.
50 See Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A. (1983). See also R. Harris Smith, OSS: the Secret History of American's First Central Intelligence Agency (1973).
51 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, p. 282.
52 Memorandum dated Nov. 21, 1944, from Lt. J. S. Plaut, USNR, and Lt. T. Rousseau, Jr., USNR, to James R. Murphy, Chief X-2 Branch, Subject: Fine Arts Project "ORION," pp. 1–2, X-2 Branch, folder 1747, box 532, RG 226, NACP.
53 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, p. 282.
54 James S. Plaut, the ALIU's director, was director of Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art. Theodore Rousseau, ALIU's Operations Officer, was a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. S. Lane Faison Jr., an ALIU officer and later director of the Munich Central Collecting Point, was a professor of fine arts at Williams College in Massachusetts. Additional staff members included Otto Wittman, the unit's liaison officer in Washington, DC, and John Phillip, the liaison officer in the ALIU's London office.
55 See Michael Kurtz, Nazi Contraband: American Policy in the Return of European Cultural Treasures, 1945–1955 (1985), which examines the politics of restitution of the Allied organizations and describes the failed attempt to create one repatriation policy in the postwar period.
56 For further reading on the collecting points, see Craig Hugh Smyth, Repatriation of Art from the Collecting Point in Munich after World War II (1988); Walter I. Farmer, The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II (2000); and Thomas Carr Howe, Jr., Salt Mines and Castles: The Discovery and Restitution of Looted European Art (1946).
57 Lt. Craig Hugh Smyth directed the Munich collecting point. See Smyth's book for a first hand account of the challenges Smyth faced trying to establish the collecting point in 1945. See Munich's Administrative Records in the Records of the Munich Central Collecting Point in the Ardelia Hall Collection, boxes 263–277, OMGUS, RG 260, NACP. S. Lane Faison, Jr., former ALIU member 1944–1946, returned to Munich in 1950 to assist in closing Munich collecting point. Author's conversation with Faison, April 6–7, 2002, Williamstown, MA.
58 Col. Seymour Pomrenze directed the Offenbach Archival Depot. See Records of the Offenbach Archival Depot in the Ardelia Hall Collection, boxes 250–262, OMGUS, RG 260, NACP. Offenbach reports are located in the Monthly Consolidated Field Reports in the Records of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in the Ardelia Hall Collection, boxes 136–139, OMGUS, RG 260, NACP.
59 A collecting point property card number consists of the shipment number, origin of the shipment, and the number of the specific item being shipped. For example, a painting arriving to Munich from the mine at Alt Aussee would have the shipment number 23/Aussee 9, the ninth object on the twenty-third shipment from Alt Aussee. Property cards were created for the Marburg, Munich, and Wiesbaden collecting points and are now part of the Ardelia Hall Collection, RG 260, OMGUS, NACP.
Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
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10 Facts About Hermann Göring
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Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler. Joseph Goebbels. Hermann Göring. His name fits with those synonymous with Nazism.
On 1 October 1946, Hermann Göring...
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History Hit
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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-hermann-goring/
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Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler. Joseph Goebbels. Hermann Göring. His name fits with those synonymous with Nazism.
On 1 October 1946, Hermann Göring was found guilty at the Nuremberg for his crimes during the Nazi regime. What do we know about the man who committed these crimes?
1. He was born into an aristocratic family
Hermann Göring was born on 12 January 1893 to Heinrich Göring, a diplomatic consul to German South-West Africa (now Namibia), and his second wife Franziska Tiefenbrunn.
His godfather, Hermann von Epenstein, was of Jewish descendance and also Franziska’s lover. The family lived in von Epenstein’s castles, Burg Veldenstein and Burg Mauterndorf, throughout the year.
2. He was a fighter pilot in the First World War
After a childhood of military interests, and an education at military academy, Göring entered the German Army as an infantry lieutenant in 1912. He transferred to the air force and was an ace.
He reportedly shot down 22 allied aircraft during the war, and received the Pour le Merite and Iron Cross 1st class.
3. He was wounded in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923
Göring became a member of the National Socialists in 1922 after circulating the anti-Weimar and anti-reparations scene. With his military experience, he was placed in command of the SA (‘Sturmabteilung‘ – ‘brownshirts’) in December. This fulfilled his desires for action, comradeship and power.
When the Beer Hall Putsch staged by the party in 1923 was met with police firepower, 14 Nazis were killed alongside 4 policemen, and Göring was hit in the groin and hip.
With a warrant out for his arrest he fled to Austria. He soon became addicted to the morphine prescribed for his pain, leading to his institutionalisation in Sweden in 1925 and 1926. He only returned to Germany in 1927 when a full amnesty was granted.
4. He was Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe
On 1 March 1935 Göring took on the leadership of the Luftwaffe. Without the knowledge or strategic understanding necessary, he overestimated the German force’s potential, and underestimated that of his enemies.
He made a fatal tactical error during the Battle of Britain, when his switch to massive night bombings of London on 7 September 1940 actually gave the British fighter defences time to recover – just when they were reeling from losses in the air and on the ground.
5. His brother worked in opposition to the Nazi regime
Heinrich Göring had 3 children from a previous marriage, and 5 from his marriage to Franziska. The youngest of these, Albert, was born in 1895. He was rumoured to be von Epenstein’s son because of his dark eyes and central European features, as opposed to his brother’s blue eyes and northern profile.
The differences didn’t stop there. Albert was in Vienna pursuing a career in filmmaking at the time of the Anschluss in 1938. When Nazi policies began to threaten many of his friends, he arranged and funded exit visas, sometimes by playing on his older brother’s ego, and reportedly defended Jews who were being bullied in the street.
Albert was the subject of numerous Gestapo reports, 4 arrest warrants and finally a death warrant in 1944, which called for execution on sight. He was often protected from punishment by his name, shared with his powerful brother.
This name would, however, haunt him. Albert was imprisoned for two years after the fall of the Nazi regime. This was despite producing a list of the people who he had saved during the Second World War.
In conversation with an American psychiatrist, Leon Goldensohn, Hermann said of his younger brother, ‘he was always the antithesis of myself.’
6. He quickly became one of the richest men in the country
When the Nazis enacted their Four Year Plan to provide for the rearmament and self-sufficiency of Germany in 1936, Hermann Göring was made plenipotentiary (having the full power of independent action on behalf of the government). In this role he established the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, employing 700,000 workers and profiting 400 million marks.
He lived in luxury with a palace in Berlin and a hunting mansion. He decorated both with his art collection, which was bolstered by gifts from those seeking favours and by the spoils of stolen Jewish collections.
7. He had one child
Despite his earlier groin injury, during his second marriage to actress Emmy Sonnemann, Hermann fathered a daughter, Edda. Born in 1938, she was the recipient of many gifts of artwork and jewellery, and was treated like a princess as any of the daughters of Nazi leaders were. Hitler was her godfather.
After her father’s death, she maintained connections with his former colleagues. She remained protective of her father, stating that her ‘only memories of him as such loving ones, I cannot see him any other way.’ She cited Hermann’s loyalty to Hitler as the reason for his downfall, and noted that he had always supported her uncle in his actions.
Edda was subject to a number of court cases regarding the gifts that she had been given, some of which had been acquired illegally. She unsuccessfully petitioned in 2015 for compensation for the money and possessions taken from her father when he was captured.
8. He was expelled from the Nazi party
In April 1945 Göring sent a telegram to Hitler, in anticipation of his likely death, asking permission to take up control over Germany. He had been named as successor in 1941.
Hitler and Martin Bormann condemned Göring as a traitor and rescinded the 1941 decree. Göring was forced to resign from his posts, and was expelled from the party in Hitler’s will.
9. He was convicted as a War Criminal
Göring was captured by the US Seventh Army on 9 May 1945. He was one of the highest ranking Nazi officials to be tried at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the others having committed suicide or escaped.
Having been weaned off his drug addiction, Göring made an attempt to acquit himself. He pleaded that he had not known of many of the crimes that he was accused of and gave excuses for his role in the others.
The prosecutors were able, however, to prove his knowledge and found him guilty of all four counts – crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
10. He committed suicide
On 15 October 1946, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Göring took a cyanide capsule in his cell. His request to be shot rather than hanged had been rejected.
The former Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe’s ashes were thrown to obscurity in a river, rather than being buried in the family plot near his brother.
|
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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2
| 12
|
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuremberg_article_01.shtml
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en
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World Wars: Nuremberg: Nazis On Trial
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
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"trials",
"nazi",
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"holocaust"
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[] |
2006-09-19T00:00:00
|
Discover how the Allies sought to bring the Nazis to justice.
|
en
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
| null |
The Nuremberg trial
In November 1945, in the German city of Nuremberg, the victors of the World War Two began the first international war crimes trial. The choice of the city was significant for it was here that the National Socialist Party held its annual rallies.
Adolf Hitler intended it to be rebuilt as the 'party city'. Now many of the leaders of the party were on trial for their lives, only a short distance from the grand arena where they had been fêted by the German people.
The 21 defendants came from very different backgrounds. Some, like Hitler's chosen successor Hermann Goering, were senior politicians - their responsibility clear.
Others were there because senior party leaders Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared SS, and Joseph Goebbels, head of propaganda - had killed themselves rather than face capture and trial.Their deputies or juniors stood on trial instead of them. But most of them were regarded by the western public, rightly or wrongly, as key playmakers in a system that had brought war to Europe and cost the lives of 50 million people.
This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with.
The charges laid at their door were extraordinary. They were collectively accused of conspiring to wage war, and committing crimes against peace, crimes against humanity (including the newly defined crime of genocide) and war crimes in the ordinary sense (abuse and murder of prisoners, killing of civilians and so on). This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with.
One of them, Robert Ley, best known for his role as head of the 'Strength through Joy' movement, which masterminded the Volkswagen car, hanged himself in his cell a few weeks before the trial started, so shamed was he by the accusations of crime. Ley's suicide was the most extreme example of the many ways the defendants responded to the trial.
The reaction of the others covered a very wide spectrum, from confident defiance to full admission of responsibility. In the case of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, the reality was almost complete memory loss.
Two prisoners in particular came to represent opposite poles in their reaction to the trials and the accusation of massive crimes. Hermann Goering, the man Hitler chose as his successor in the 1930s and the most flamboyant and ambitious of the party hierarchy, prepared to defend Hitler and the Reich's war policy rather than admit that what had been done was criminal.
On the other hand Albert Speer, the youthful architect who rose to run Germany's armaments effort during the war, accepted from the start the collective responsibility of the defendants for the crimes of which they were accused and tried to distance himself from Hitler's ghostly presence at the tribunal.
Hermann Goering: 'Prisoner Number One'
Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.
He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.
Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.
From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.
With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock.
When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.
So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue.
'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size.
For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem. In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own.
His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.
During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.
Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.
Albert Speer: The 'Decent Nazi'
Speer was the opposite of Goering in almost every respect. Tall, conventionally good-looking, capable of a quiet charm, he impressed his captors and interrogators more than any of the other prisoners. For some time he had not expected to be one of the major war criminals.
From the start he posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily on German weapons, economic performance and strategy. He was held separately from the other war criminals and was transferred to Nuremberg only in the autumn when it was clear that he was one of those chosen for trial.
Despite the reservations of his defence lawyer, Speer decided that his best defence was to admit his share of collective responsibility for the crimes of the regime and to distance himself from Hitler, a man who Speer freely admitted had once held him in thrall like all the rest.
At the same time in his interrogations and cross-examinations, he seldom expressed his individual guilt. He succeeded in presenting himself as part of the system, but not a driving force.
Just before the trial opened he sent a four-page letter to Robert Jackson reminding him again of just how useful he had been as a source of intelligence and technical information since his capture.
He posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily.
Speer was bound to clash with Goering. He resented Goering's efforts to dominate the prisoners and to dictate the course of their defence. When Goering was separated from the other prisoners in February, Speer was free to talk openly with them about the crimes of the regime.
The others did not all share his candour, any more than they shared Goering's ebullience, but for the rest of the trial period the cohort of prisoners divided into small groups rather than presenting a united front.
Speer added to the division when he dramatically revealed early in the trial that at the very end of the war he had tried to find a way to assassinate Hitler by pouring poison gas into his underground bunker. The plot was abortive, but it again presented Speer to the prosecution as someone different from the rest of the defendants.
When Speer was cross-examined he got off more lightly than others. At the end of the trial, even though he had been responsible for the mass exploitation of forced foreign labour, he was given a 20-year sentence. The man who supplied the labour, Fritz Sauckel, was executed.
The Speer story has remained an enigma. No doubt he benefited from his pose as a technical manager (whose social background was not very different from those who were trying him) and from his willingness to confess responsibility. The extent to which he manipulated his story to win sympathy or genuinely believed that the regime he served was criminal is still open to conjecture.
The Forgetful Rudolf Hess
The most bizarre choice to stand trial was Hitler's deputy and head of the party chancellery, Rudolf Hess. There was no doubt that he had been a key figure in organising and running the party in the 1920s and early 1930s. He it was who took down the dictated draft of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. But from the mid-1930s he became a more marginal political figure - 'one of the great cranks of the Third Reich', in the words of Speer.
In May 1941 - apparently anxious at his loss of favour with Hitler and pre-occupied with the dangers of the impending two-front war which would follow Germany's attack on the USSR scheduled for June - Hess took a plane and flew it to Scotland. Here he was captured by the British, interrogated and put in an institution. He became increasingly paranoid and eventually descended into long periods of self-induced hysterical amnesia.
Hess spent his time in court reading, occasionally laughing and disregarding the process around him.
It was in this state of almost complete forgetfulness that Hess was eventually flown to Nuremberg in October 1945 at the insistence of the Soviets, who had been puzzled and distrustful about what Hess had been doing in Britain for four years.
It became clear that a decision had to be taken about whether he was fit to plead. A panel of medical and psychiatric experts was recruited and finally recommended on 29 November, more than a week after the trial had started, that Hess was fit to plead. The following day, to the shock of the court, Hess suddenly stood up apparently lucid at last and announced: 'My memory is in order again.'
Hess retained his lucidity for a few weeks, but with partial memory loss. He then relapsed into complete amnesia again and spent his time in court reading, occasionally laughing and disregarding the process around him. In a conventional criminal court he would have been deemed to be of unsound mind, but the Allies were worried about the effect it might have on the public perception of the trial if Hess were removed.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment, though he pretended not to hear or understand the judgement. He committed suicide in Spandau prison, Berlin, in 1987.
Goering, Speer and Hess represented extreme responses to the trial at Nuremberg, but they all shared with the others in the dock some degree of responsibility. In Goering's case a very great one for the programme of oppression, war and genocide on which Hitler's regime embarked from its inauguration in 1933.
This did not make them criminals in the ordinary sense, and for many of the offences for which they were tried there was as yet no body of internationally agreed law.
They were indicted for the most part under retrospective law. But over the following years conventions on the laws of war, genocide and human rights were signed which embodied much of the 'law' made up at Nuremberg.
Those legal instruments have not safeguarded innocent populations from violation over the last 60 years, but thanks to Nuremberg there is at least a proper understanding of what violation means, even if the international community still lacks an entirely effective means of punishing it.
About the author
Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter. His publications include Russia's War (1998) , The Battle (2000) and Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands (2001). For a lifetime's contribution to military history, Professor Overy was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History in 2001.
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correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
2
| 86
|
https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/88071/student-old/
|
en
|
Statewide Dual Credit World History, The Catastrophe of the Modern Era: 1919-Present CE, Chapter 14: The World Afire: World War II, War Crimes Trials: Nuremberg and the Pacific
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en
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/static/images/favicon.ico
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OER Commons
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In the postwar period, people realized the essentiality of holding people accountable for their wartime actions if future humanity were to be protected. Although the Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo War Crimes Trials were far from perfect, they demonstrated to the world that individual actions matter and international justice would be meted out to those who crimes against humanity.
Learning Objectives
Evaluate the significance of the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials
Key Terms / Key Concepts
The Nuremberg Trials: most famous set of international war crimes trials of top Nazi officials
Tokyo War Crime Trials: most famous set of war crimes trials of top Japanese officials
The Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces of World War II, most notably for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. In 1945 and 1946, the trials were held at the Palace of Justice in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. The choice of locations was not coincidental. Nuremberg had been the home of the Nazi party. Holding the trials in Nuremberg held symbolic importance for the Allies who had defeated the Nazis.
The first and best-known of these trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Held between November 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946, the IMT tried 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. One of the defendants, Martin Bormann, was tried in absentia, while another, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial’s commencement. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels were not included in the trials because all three committed suicide several months before the indictment was signed. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among the second set of trials were the Doctors Trial and the Judges Trial.
Creation of the Courts
In 1945, all three major wartime powers—the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union—agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal.
Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939.
The Nuremberg Trials Begin
The IMT opened on November 19, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations: the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA), and the “General Staff and High Command,” comprising several categories of senior military officers. These organizations were to be declared “criminal” if found guilty.
The indictments were for participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity.
The accusers successfully unveiled the background of developments leading to the outbreak of World War II, which cost at least 40 million lives in Europe alone, as well as the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences (ranging from 10 years to life in prison), three were acquitted, and two were not charged.
Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants were edited into book form and published in 2004.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trial
Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the global community began to investigate allegations of Japanese war crimes. These investigations culminated in a series of war crimes trials, most famous of which was the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. The international community accused Japan of crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. Accusations and evidence circulated to show that beginning with the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, the Japanese forces regularly abused prisoners of war, employed forced labor, destroyed towns and cities, slaughtered civilians, raped, looted, and tortured civilians. Tens of thousands of testimonies, documents, and eyewitness accounts were investigated. Among the most heinous charges were the Japanese involvement in human experimentation, such as with the infamous unit 731, the Bataan Death March, and the destruction of the Chinese city of Nanking. Using the IMT in Nuremberg as a model, courts began to assemble in Tokyo in the spring of 1946. In April 1946, the trials of many top-ranking Japanese officials began.
The primary target of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was the former Japanese prime minister Tojo Hideki. He was accused of, and later convicted of being instrumental in many of Japan’s most heinous behaviors during World War II.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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2
| 69
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https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/first-trial-nuremberg
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en
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The First Trial at Nuremberg
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2016-08-02T12:00:00+00:00
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Learn about the international tribunal that tried and sentenced German leaders at the end of World War II.
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en
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/favicon.ico
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Facing History & Ourselves
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https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/first-trial-nuremberg
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What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. . . . They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds toward those who were marked as “scapegoats.” Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality and annihilation as the world has never witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited the German ambition to be a “master race,” which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbors. To sustain the “master race” in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as “displaced persons.”
Jackson went on to say,
Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished forces. The worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. . . . We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.
Of the 22 men brought to trial, five were military leaders and the rest were prominent German government or Nazi Party officials. The following is a list of the defendants and their positions in the Third Reich.
Defendants in the First Nuremberg Trial Name Title/position Martin Bormann (tried in absentia) Head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary Karl Dönitz Supreme Commander of the Navy (1943) and German Chancellor after Hitler’s suicide Hans Frank Governor General of Occupied Poland Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior Hans Fritzsche Head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Ministry Walther Funk President of the Reichsbank (1939) and Reich Minister for Economic Affairs Hermann Göring Reich Marshall and Hitler’s chosen successor Rudolf Hess Deputy Führer Alfred Jodl Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces Ernst Kaltenbrunner Chief of the Security Police and the Reich Security Main Office Wilhelm Keitel Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces Konstantin von Neurath Minister of Foreign Affairs (1932–1938) and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia [regions of Czechoslovakia controlled by Germany] (1939–1943) Franz von Papen
Chancellor of Germany (1932)
Erich Raeder Supreme Commander of the Navy (1928–1943) Joachim von Ribbentrop Reich Foreign Minister (1938–1945) Alfred Rosenberg Party Philosopher and Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Area Fritz Sauckel Plenipotentiary [Ambassador] for Labor Allocation Hjalmar Schacht Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank (1933–1939) Baldur von Schirach Führer [Leader] of the Hitler Youth Arthur Seyss-Inquart Minister of the Interior and Reich Governor of Austria Albert Speer Minister of Armaments and War Production Julius Streicher A Nazi Party leader and the founder of Der Stürmer, an antisemitic newspaper
The Nuremberg trials addressed all German crimes associated with World War II together, not the Holocaust in particular. In fact, at the time, the concept of the Holocaust as we now know it did not yet exist. The targeting for annihilation of specific groups, such as Jews, Sinti, and Roma, was not yet recognized as the specific crime of genocide (see reading, Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention in Chapter 11); therefore, what we now understand as the Holocaust was addressed at Nuremberg more broadly under the category of “crimes against humanity,” which included inhumane acts against any civilians.
As the trials proceeded, much of the evidence of the defendants’ crimes was provided by the Germans themselves, who had kept careful records of the war and the mass murders of Jews and others in reports, which were read in court. The final transcript of the proceedings was about 17,000 pages long. In addition, films of the killing centers and camps made by their Allied liberators were shown to the defendants and the tribunal judges.
All of the defendants, however, submitted pleas of not guilty, and throughout the trial, they vehemently denied responsibility for the crimes. They argued either that they had simply followed orders (although that defense had already been rejected in Article 8 of the tribunal’s charter) or that whatever actions they had carried out were done with no knowledge or awareness that they were contributing to the mass killings.
On October 1, 1946, after months of testimony, examination and cross examination of the defendants, and deliberation by the judges from the four Allied powers who presided over the trials, the verdicts were announced. Twelve defendants received the death sentence (Bormann, Frank, Frick, Göring, Jodl, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, and Streicher). Three were sentenced to life in prison (Hess, Funk, and Raeder). Four received prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years (Dönitz, von Neurath, Schirach, and Speer). In general, the decisions for prison sentences rather than execution were made because the judges felt either that certain circumstances surrounding a defendant’s actions warranted a more lenient punishment or that the evidence was not strong enough to support a death penalty. The sentences were carried out with two exceptions: Göring died by suicide shortly before he could be executed, and Bormann remained missing.
Three of the defendants were acquitted—Schacht, von Papen, and Fritzsche. Schacht, who had been minister of economics, had played an important role in German rearmament in the 1930s, but there was no evidence that he had done so with the specific intention of waging war. There was no proof that von Papen, who had been the German chancellor before Hitler came to power, knew of Hitler’s intentions and his plans to wage aggressive wars. Fritzsche, who had worked under Goebbels in the propaganda ministry, had helped arouse popular sentiment in support of Hitler and the war, but that in itself was not considered to be a war crime. All three were released when the trials ended.
The conviction and death sentence for Julius Streicher was particularly noteworthy. Streicher was convicted neither of planning the war nor of war crimes but only on the charge of crimes against humanity. In issuing the verdict, the president of the tribunal explained how he and the other judges had determined Streicher’s guilt:
For his twenty-five years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as “Jew-Baiter Number One.” In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of antisemitism and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of Der Stürmer [the newspaper Streicher edited], which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.
. . . As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different articles of Der Stürmer between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which the extermination [of Jews] “root and branch” was preached. . . . Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved, and predicted that fifty years hence the Jewish graves “will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate.” . . .
As the war in the early stages proved successful [in] acquiring more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are twenty-six articles from Der Stürmer, published between August, 1941 and September, 1944, twelve by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and extermination in unequivocal terms. . . .
Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.
The pronouncement of the sentences ended the trial. Twelve more trials, involving 190 defendants, were held at Nuremberg. But the first trial and the principles of international law that it established remained the most important. Judge Charles Wyzanski (see reading, Establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal), writing immediately after the trial ended, concluded:
[T]he outstanding accomplishment of the trial which never could have been achieved by any more executive action, is that it has crystallized the concept that there is inherent in the international community a machinery both for the expression of international criminal law and for its enforcement.
Connection Questions
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https://study.com/academy/lesson/hermann-goering-life-career-trial.html
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en
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Biography, the Nuremberg Trial & Role in WWII
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Learn about Hermann Goering's role in WWII and his life, career, and Nuremberg trial. Discover this high-ranking Nazi and his role in 20th-century...
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en
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/images/eureka/favicons/apple-touch-icon.png?v=3
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study.com
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https://study.com/academy/lesson/hermann-goering-life-career-trial.html
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He returned to Germany in 1927 and was elected to the Reichstag as one of the first Nazi representatives in 1928. From this position, he was able to block other contenders to the chancellorship, paving the way for Hitler's appointment to the role in 1933. Goering helped Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich plan the early concentration camps for political opponents and also led the cleansing of Prussia. This saw supposed Communist elements in the military and police of the region being purged and replaced with loyal Nazi members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary group. Goering used the Reichstag fire (supposedly set by these communists) as a pretext for these actions and others that eliminated or imprisoned political opponents.
He became Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe (the German Air Force) in 1935 and was responsible for its rapid expansion in the late 1930s. He was also in charge of an economic plan for the Reich as the Director of the Four Year Plan, giving him near-absolute control over the German economy. Additionally, Goering became Hitler's acknowledged successor on September 1, 1939. It was Goering who gave Reinhard Heydrich and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence wing at the time, the order to carry out a "total solution to the Jewish Question" in 1941.
He was one of the few high-ranking members of the Nazi Party to face trial at Nuremberg after the war (other leaders took their own lives either before being captured or before they could be tried). The International Military Tribunal (IMT) found him guilty of all four possible counts at the trial. He was sentenced to death but died by suicide the night before his scheduled execution.
As the head of the Luftwaffe, he was in charge of the air campaigns against Poland, France, Britain, and later Russia. His failures in Britain and Russia caused Goering to lose favor with Hitler. As the war progressed, he became increasingly detached from reality, refusing to accept reports of losses, refusing to allow for new technology, and hiding Allied tactics from other leaders to avoid changes in the Luftwaffe. In addition, the war's progression saw Goering steadily losing more and more political favor.
At the end of the war, when Hitler declared that he would stay in the bunker until the end, a mentally ill Goering believed that this meant that Hitler was abdicating. He requested to be put in power but was instead stripped of all titles. He was captured by the American Seventh Army on May 9, 1945.
Unlike other high-ranking Nazis, Goering did not take his own life rather than be captured. As a result, he was the highest-ranking official to be put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946. His was also the first trial. Despite a visible physical decline, Goering acted more as he had during the early days of the war while in Nuremberg. This could be due to his inability to access drugs while imprisoned; he had struggled with addiction intermittently since the incident after the Beer Hall Putsch. At the trials, it was noted that Goering had a controlling personality, which meant he overshadowed other defendants. He appeared to have adopted an attitude that saw him still dictate to other prisoners and seemed to carry the belief that he would become a German martyr and be immortalized in history due to his self-noted heroism.
The IMT in Nuremberg ruled that Goering was guilty of crimes against peace; crimes against humanity; war crimes; and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Tribunal found no mitigating circumstances for his actions. He was sentenced to execution by hanging, which was to be carried out on October 15, 1946. However, just hours before his scheduled execution, Goering took his own life in his cell.
Goering on trial at Nuremberg
As the last surviving member of the Nazi high command, Goering's testimony played a crucial role in laying out the horror of Nazi atrocities. He tried to blame his actions on others, although Goering himself came up with many ideas that were then carried out by Himmler rather than Goering. It was evident in his testimony at Nuremberg and in those of others that he had knowingly played a key role in the mass murder of millions of Jews, civilian bombings, and in using slave labor within the Reich, to name a few of the specific offenses cited in his sentencing report. As the first of the Nuremberg Trials, his trial set an example for other (and future) war criminals.
While some have argued that Goering was used as a symbol for the entire Nazi high command at the trials because he was the only one left to bear any punishment. It is clear that Goering was a war criminal and that he did commit crimes against peace and humanity. That he conspired to commit these crimes as well as part of his own admission that he planned many of the Nazi's worst actions against Jews and other political enemies. As the International Military Tribunal put it, "his guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man."
Hermann Goering was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Director of the Four Year Plan, (an economic plan), and the declared successor of Adolf Hitler. He was born an aristocrat in 1893 and went on to become a highly decorated fighter pilot during World War I. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and participated in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Treatment for the injuries he received at this time led to a drug addiction that he struggled with for the rest of his life. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1928 and helped pave the way for Hitler to be made Chancellor in 1933. Goering used his background as a professional politician to help secure the diplomatic acquisition of the Sudetenland and the Austrian Anschluss in 1938.
Goering was a key planner of the concentration camps along with other Nazi officials. As head of the Luftwaffe, Goering was responsible for the bombing campaigns in Poland, France, Britain, and Russia. When the last two of these were unsuccessful, Goering lost political favor with Hitler. Their relationship ended in 1945 when Hitler had Goering arrested. Goering was captured in May 1945 and was the only member of the Nazi high command to be tried at Nuremberg. He was found guilty of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He took his own life just hours before his sentence of execution by hanging was carried out.
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https://github.com/ajesujoba/UNIQORN/blob/main/Results/TEXT/LC-QuAD2.0.json
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UNIQORN/Results/TEXT/LC-QuAD2.0.json at main · ajesujoba/UNIQORN
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https://opengraph.githubassets.com/fbc8b5efa4f6962d86df418482e7cd9eded7b14fa713b0d0bb3c35db1b510ade/ajesujoba/UNIQORN
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https://opengraph.githubassets.com/fbc8b5efa4f6962d86df418482e7cd9eded7b14fa713b0d0bb3c35db1b510ade/ajesujoba/UNIQORN
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Contribute to ajesujoba/UNIQORN development by creating an account on GitHub.
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GitHub
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https://github.com/ajesujoba/UNIQORN/blob/main/Results/TEXT/LC-QuAD2.0.json
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1
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https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
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en
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The Nuremberg Laws
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2016-08-15T17:40:20-04:00
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Archives Receives Original Nazi Documents That “Legalized” Persecution of Jews Winter 2010, Vol. 42, No. 4 By Greg Bradsher Enlarge Law for the Safeguard of German Blood and German Honor barred marriage between Jews and other Germans.
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en
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National Archives
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https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
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Archives Receives Original Nazi Documents That “Legalized” Persecution of Jews
Winter 2010, Vol. 42, No. 4
By Greg Bradsher
It was in Nuremberg, officially designated as the "City of the Reich Party Rallies," in the province of Bavaria, where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party in 1935 changed the status of German Jews to that of Jews in Germany, thus "legally" establishing the framework that eventually led to the Holocaust.
Ten years later, it would also be in Nuremberg, now nearly destroyed by British and American heavy bombing, where surviving prominent Nazi leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and soon the attention of the Allies turned to prosecuting those Third Reich leaders who had been responsible for, among other things, the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust.
The trials began November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, which had somehow survived the intense Allied bombings of 1944 and 1945.
The next day, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, named by President Harry S. Truman as the U.S. chief counsel for the prosecution of Axis criminality, made his opening statement to the International Military Tribunal.
"The most serious actions against Jews were outside of any law, but the law itself was employed to some extent. They were the infamous Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935," Jackson said.
The so-called "Nuremberg Laws"— a crucial step in Nazi racial laws that led to the marginalization of German Jews and ultimately to their segregation, confinement, and extermination—were key pieces of evidence in the trials, which resulted in 12 death sentences and life or long sentences for other Third Reich leaders.
But the prosecution was forced to use images of the laws from the official printed version, for the original copies were nowhere to be found.
However, they had been found earlier, by U.S. counter-intelligence troops, who passed them up the line until they came to the Third Army's commander, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. The general took them home to California. There, they remained for decades, their existence not revealed until 1999.
Finally, this past summer, the original copies of the laws, signed by Hitler and other Nazi leaders, were transferred to the National Archives.
Third Reich Began Persecutions
Years Before Laws Enacted in 1935
The Nuremberg Laws made official the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but the “legal” attack on the Jews actually began two years earlier.
After the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, they became increasingly engaged in activities involving the persecution of the Jewish and other minority populations. They did it under the color of law, using official decrees as a weapon against the Jews.
In 1933 Jews were denied the right to hold public office or civil service positions; Jewish immigrants were denaturalized; Jews were denied employment by the press and radio; and Jews were excluded from farming. The following year, Jews were excluded from stock exchanges and stock brokerage.
During these years, when the Nazi regime was still rather shaky and the Nazis feared opposition from within and resistance from without, they did nothing drastic, and the first measures appeared, in relative terms, rather mild.
After Germany publicly announced in May 1935 its rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty, Nazi party radicals began more forcibly demanding that Hitler, the party, and the government take more drastic measures against the Jews. They wanted to completely segregate them from the social, political, and economic life of Germany. These demands increased as the summer progressed.
On August 20, 1935, the U.S. embassy in Berlin reported to the secretary of state:
To sum up the Jewish situation at the moment, it may be said that the whole movement of the Party is one of preparing itself and the people for general drastic and so-called legal action to be announced in the near future probably following the Party Congress to be held in Nuremberg beginning on September 10th. One has only to review the statements made by important leaders since the end of the Party's summer solstice to realize the trend of affairs.
James G. McDonald, high commissioner for refugees under the League of Nations, then in Berlin, wrote in his diary August 22 that "New legislation is imminent, but it is difficult to tell exactly what the provisions will be. Certainly, they will tend further to differentiate the Jews from the mass of Germans and to disadvantage them in new ways."
William E. Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany, on September 7 sent a long dispatch to the secretary of state regarding current development in the "Jewish Situation." He reported "it appears that even now discussions are still continuing in the highest circles respecting the policy to be evolved at the Nuremberg party Congress." He added:
It is believed that a declaration respecting the Jews will be made at Nuremberg which will be followed by the announcement at the Congress itself, or shortly thereafter, or a body of legislation whose ultimate character will depend upon the result of the discussions now in progress. Either one or the other will probably contain drastic features to appease the radicals but may be offset by certain appearances of moderation to be emphasized later to facilitate such dealing abroad. . . . An idea that may influence policy at Nuremberg, and in any case now seems to be uppermost in the minds of Party extremists, is that, however drastic the measures adopted, they will be formally rooted in law, and that the sanctity with which law is regarded, and the discipline with which it is observed in Germany, may impress foreign opinion favorably.
On September 9, McDonald wrote Felix Warburg, a major American Jewish leader, that he was unable to get a clear picture what may be expected in the threatened new legislation, but "One can only be certain that the result will be to penalize the Jews in various ways and on the basis of pseudo-legality, which causes grim forebodings."
Nazi Rally in Nuremberg
Hailed Passage of the Laws
At their annual rally held in Nuremberg on September 15, Nazi party leaders announced, after the Reichstag had adopted them, new laws that institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology.
The so-called Nuremberg Laws, signed by Hitler and several other Nazi officials, were the cornerstone of the legalized persecution of Jews in Germany. They stripped German Jews of their German citizenship, barred marriage and "extramarital sexual intercourse" between Jews and other Germans, and barred Jews from flying the German flag, which would now be the swastika.
On September 16, Ambassador Dodd sent a cable to the secretary of state about the Nuremberg Laws. He wrote:
So far it is only possible to say that main trend of Nuremberg congress was to cater to radical sentiment within the Party. The laws passed last night concerning citizenship, the swastika as national flag and for protection of German blood and honor (by means of preventing marriage and sexual intercourse between Aryan and Jews and flying of the German flag by the latter) obviously need further definition and Foreign Office advised waiting for executive supplementary regulations. [These, issued on November 14, provided specific definitions of who a Jew was.]
Dodd followed up the next day with a dispatch to the secretary of state regarding the Nuremberg Party Congress: "Race propaganda and psychology ran through practically all the speeches like a scarlet thread, obviously in preparation for the laws that were to be adopted by the Reichstag."
He added: "The new laws against the Jews deceive very few people that the last word has been said on that question or that new discriminatory measures will not eventually follow within the limit of what is possible without bringing about too great a disturbance in business."
On September 19, Dodd sent the secretary of state two copies of the Reichsgestzblatt [Reich Law Gazette] of September 16, which contained the Nuremberg Laws and also included translations of them.
In transmitting them, Dodd wrote: "The anti-Jewish legislation should be sufficiently severe to please Party extremists for some time."
They were not. More persecutions followed in the years before World War II began in 1939. The extermination of the Jews and others followed, not only in Germany, but through most of Europe.
Original Nuremberg Documents
Are Found, But Then Disappear
The Moscow Declaration of 1943, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Marshal Josef Stalin, took note of the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans and laid down the policy that the major criminals would “be punished by the joint decision of the Governments of the Allies."
But first the war had to be concluded before the Moscow Declaration could be implemented.
As the Allied forces overran Germany in April 1945, on April 20 (Hitler's birthday), elements of the Third and 45th Infantry divisions of the U.S. Seventh Army entered Nuremberg and after hard fighting effectively secured the town. A week later, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin, and the week after that, the Germans surrendered.
Now the Moscow Declaration could be put into effect.
Meanwhile, in late April 1945, M.Sgt. Martin Dannenberg, leading the 203rd U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment, working with the U.S. Third Army, was roaming through Bavaria with two other men, carrying out various CIC assignments.
An informant led him and his team to a bank vault in the town of Eichstaett, about 45 miles due south of Nuremberg. There, a German financial official who had a key opened the vault, then handed over to the American soldiers some documents in a yellow envelope, sealed with red wax swastikas.
Dannenberg slit the top of the envelope and pulled the documents out. The first thing he saw was the signature "Adolf Hitler."
Sgt. Frank Perls, a German-born Jew (though baptized as a Protestant) who joined the U.S. Army in 1943 after fleeing his homeland in 1933, was one of two men accompanying Dannenberg. Translating the documents, Perls quickly realized they were the infamous Nuremberg Laws.
Dannenberg turned them over to his commanding officer, who ordered Dannenberg and Perls to deliver them to the U.S. Third Army commander, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
War Crimes Trials Begin
—Without Original Copies
On May 2, less than a week after the CIC special agents found the Nuremberg Laws and a few days before the war in Europe ended, Truman appointed Associate Justice Jackson as chief of counsel for the United States in its prosecution of the Allied case against the major Axis war criminals.
During the next three months, Jackson spent most of the time in London negotiating with the British, French, and Soviet representatives over an agreement to prosecute the major Nazi war criminals before an international tribunal. They would reach agreement on August 8.
Meanwhile, immediately after Jackson's appointment, the staff of the Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, which grew to more than 600 personnel, started collecting documentary evidence that could be used by the prosecutors.
Among the evidence gathered were volumes of the Reichsgestzblatt, which contained various German laws, decrees, and regulations, including those relating to the persecution of the Jews.
In the September 16, 1935, edition were the Nuremberg Laws, which had been adopted by the Reichstag the previous day and promulgated by its president, Hermann Goering. Photostats and translations of them were placed in the U.S. evidence file and eventually made available to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
The prosecutors may have wished they had the original laws themselves, as they would have made for dramatic evidence since two of the defendants, Wilhelm Frick and Rudolf Hess, had signed them. But, unfortunately, they did not. General Patton had them.
Patton Ignores Orders,Takes
Original Copies To California
Patton, like so many of his soldiers, was a souvenir hunter.
Rather than ensuring the copies of the Nuremberg Laws that he received from Dannenberg and Perls were delivered to the appropriate authorities, he took them home to California after the war in Europe was over.
In doing so, Patton was violating Supreme Headquarters Allied Expedition Forces (SHAEF) and 12th Army Group directives of November 9 and 23, 1944, issued by Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar N. Bradley, respectively, regarding seizing and holding Nazi party and German government records.
Six months after Patton took the Nuremberg Laws to California, the trial began. Justice Jackson, in his opening statement to the court on November 21, as noted earlier, referenced the Nuremberg Laws, citing the version published in the Reichsgestzblatt of 1935.
During the tribunal's December 13 session, an assistant trial counsel for the United States addressed the court about the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In making his presentation, he said: "When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, a new and terrible weapon against the Jews was placed within their grasp, the power to apply the force of the state against them. This was done by the issuance of decrees."
He then proceeded to list them, including the Nuremberg Laws as published in the 1935 Reichsgestzblatt. After discussing them, he asked the court to take judicial notice of the published decrees. From a legal perspective, theReichsgestzblatt was certainly authoritative and acceptable to the tribunal under its charter regarding rules of evidence, but it certainly would have been more dramatic and effective to have confronted the defendants with the originals, as the prosecutors did with other documents.
The trial would go on another 10 months, with references often made to the Nuremberg Laws. On September 30 and October 1, 1946, the tribunal rendered judgment. Of the three defendants most closely associated with the Nuremberg Laws, Herman Goering and Wilhelm Frick were sentenced to death, and Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Missing Documents Reemerge.
Now in the National Archives
A week later, with his work over, Justice Jackson sent President Truman a final report about his activities and noted that the war crimes documentation, including captured records, was the property of the United States and that an agency should take custody of it on behalf of the United States.
"The matter," he wrote, "is of such importance as to warrant calling it to your attention."
Two months later, the records of the U.S. Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality were offered to the National Archives, and in 1947 the National Archives accessioned them. Within the records are photostatic and translated copies of the Nuremberg Laws as published in the Reichsgestzblatt and referred to during the trial.
General Patton had deposited the original Nuremberg Laws at the Huntington Library, near his home in the Los Angeles area in June 1945; Patton died as a result of injuries received in an auto accident in Germany in December 1945 and had left no instructions regarding the laws.
Their existence at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens was not revealed until 1999, when they went on display for 10 years at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles until late 2009.
In the summer of 2010, the National Archives accepted donation from the Huntington Library of the original Nuremberg Laws—63 years later than they would have if Patton had turned them over to the appropriate authorities.
Greg Bradsher, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, specializes in World War II intelligence, looted assets, and war crimes. His previous contributions to Prologue have included articles the discovery of Nazi gold in the Merkers Mine (Spring 1999); the story of Fritz Kolbe, 1900–1943 (Spring 2002); Japan's secret "Z Plan" in 1944 (Fall 2005); Founding Father Elbridge Gerry (Spring 2006); the third Archivist of the United States, Wayne Grover (Winter 2009); and Operation Blissful, a World War II diversionary attack on an island in the Pacific (Fall 2010).
Note on Sources
Published in 42 volumes, the Trial of the Major War Criminals before The International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg 14 November 1945–1 October 1946 (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1947–1949), contains the day-to-day proceedings of the tribunal and documents offered in evidence by the prosecution and defense.
Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. I, Chapter 12, contains information about documents, including those not introduced as evidence during the International Military Tribunal, relating to the persecution of the Jews in Germany.
The State Department's Central Decimal File, 1930–1939 (General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59), under decimals 862.00 and 862.4016, contains reports on political developments in Germany and the persecution of German Jews. Also useful regarding the persecution of the Jews in Germany beginning in 1935 is Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg, eds., Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1935–1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 2009).
Useful for understanding the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws, their discovery by the Counterintelligence Corps team in 1945, General Patton's acquisition and disposition of them in 1945, their custody by the Huntington Library (1945–1999), and their subsequent exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center is Anthony M. Platt with Cecilia E. O'Leary, Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler's Nuremberg Laws, From Patton's Trophy to Public Memorial (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 72
|
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Dreams-Avarice-Hermann-Collection/dp/0977434915
|
en
|
Amazon.com: Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection: 9780977434916: Nancy H. Yeide, Introduction by Robert M. Edsel: ספרים
|
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Amazon.com: Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection: 9780977434916: Nancy H. Yeide, Introduction by Robert M. Edsel: ספרים
|
he
|
https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Nancy-H-Yeide/dp/0977434915
|
As commander of the German Luftwaffe and second only to Hitler in the Nazi Party, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering amassed both political power and a vast collection of confiscated artwork.
Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection by Nancy H. Yeide, is the first study devoted to Goering s entire paintings collection, providing the only opportunity to look at the collection as a whole and evaluate its place within art collecting and the history of Nazi looting. This carefully documented catalogue, painstakingly assembled from archival documents identified as primary to the Goering collection, is critical to the clarification of provenances of the objects and brings to light information about paintings whose histories and whereabouts have been hidden for decades.
A culmination of seven years of research by Ms. Yeide, an internationally recognized expert in World War II-era provenance research and co-author of The AAM Guide to Provenance Research which helped define provenance research standards in the United States, this volume is a must for collectors, art dealers, auction houses, researchers, curators, art historians and other scholars. Includes an introduction by Robert M. Edsel, author of The Monuments Men.
|
||||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 7
|
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-goring/
|
en
|
Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
|
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[
"American Experience"
] |
2019-04-01T15:39:39.407261-04:00
|
A member of the aristocracy, Göring used his social contacts to convince conservative industrialists that Nazism was the only way to save Germany from communism.
|
en
|
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-goring/
|
During World War I, Hermann Göring commanded the famous "Flying Circus" fighter squadron and became a highly decorated flying ace credited with shooting down 22 Allied aircraft. After the war, he met Adolf Hitler, joined the Nazi Party, and became a leader of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop), abbreviated SA. A member of the aristocracy, Göring used his social contacts to convince conservative industrialists that Nazism was the only way to save Germany from communism.
Addiction and Intrigues
In 1923 Göring took part in the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party's failed grab for power in Munich. He was seriously wounded and fled to Austria, Italy and then Sweden, where he was admitted to a mental hospital and then an asylum where he became a morphine addict. When general amnesty for the Putsch was declared in 1927, Göring returned to Germany, where he used his contacts with big business and army officers to smooth Hitler's road to power. In 1933 Göring became Minister of the Interior for Prussia, the largest German state, and controlled most of the police forces in Germany. In 1934 Göring gave control of the Gestapo, the German secret police, to Heinrich Himmler, as thanks for his assistance in the Night of the Long Knives coup that had eliminated Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA and Göring's arch rival. Göring and Himmler also worked together to set up early concentration camps for Jews and other Nazi opponents.
Lavish Lifestyle
In 1936 Hitler gave Göring control over the German economy. He created the state-owned Hermann Göring Works, which prepared Germany for war and created 700,000 jobs, but also lined his own pockets. Göring built a hunting mansion where he organized feasts and state hunts, and displayed art plundered from European museums. He changed uniforms and suits five times a day and flaunted his medals and jewelry. He remained genuinely popular with the German masses, who regarded him as more accessible than Hitler.
Holocaust Orders
After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938, orchestrated by his colleague Joseph Goebbels, Göring fined the Jewish community a billion marks and ordered the elimination of Jews from the German economy, the repossession of their property, and businesses, and their exclusion from schools, resorts, and parks. Three days later, he warned of a "final reckoning with the Jews." In 1941 he gave the order to "carry out all preparations with regard to ... a general solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence. ..." In recognition of Göring's accomplishments with the air force and the economy, Hitler designated Göring as his successor on September 1,1939.
|
||||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
0
| 31
|
https://dokumen.pub/the-last-days-of-the-jerusalem-of-lithuania-chronicles-from-the-vilna-ghetto-and-the-camps-1939-1944-9780300162189.html
|
en
|
The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939
|
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[
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[] | null |
For five horrifying years in Vilna, the Vilna ghetto, and concentration camps in Estonia, Herman Kruk recorded his own e...
|
en
|
dokumen.pub
|
https://dokumen.pub/the-last-days-of-the-jerusalem-of-lithuania-chronicles-from-the-vilna-ghetto-and-the-camps-1939-1944-9780300162189.html
|
Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Maps
FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION: HERMAN KRUK’S HOLOCAUST WRITINGS
1. The Collapse of Poland: September 1939–June 1941
2. The Destruction of Jewish Vilna: June 22, 1941–September 6, 1941
3. The Vilna Ghetto: September 7, 1941–February 17, 1942
4. Between yivo and Ponar: February 19, 1942–July 9, 1942
5. Putsch in the Ghetto: July 11, 1942–October 28, 1942
6. The Second Winter: October 29, 1942–March 18, 1943
7. The Sky Is Overcast Again: March 19, 1943–May 10, 1943
8. The Ghetto Will Not Calm Down: May 12, 1943–July 14, 1943
9. Narrative Chronicles of the Ghetto: 1941–1943
10. The Camps in Estonia: August 1943–September 1944
Appendix: Place Names
References
Index to People and Places
Citation preview
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 64
|
https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/justiceontrial/nuremberg_print.html
|
en
|
American RadioWorks : Justice on Trial, The Legacy of Nuremberg, Printable Version
|
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American RadioWorks is the national documentary unit of American Public Media. ARW is public radio's largest documentary production unit; it creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet. ARW is based at St. Paul, Minnesota, with staff journalists in Washington, D.C., Duluth, M.N., San Francisco, C.A., and Durham, N.C.
|
/favicon.ico
| null |
July 2002
The Legacy of Nuremberg
On the Internet at: http://www.americanradioworks.org/features/justiceontrial/index.html
On November 20, 1945, one of history's great courtroom dramas opened in Nuremberg, Germany. Twenty-one of Adolf Hitler's top lieutenants, including Herman Goering, Wilhelm Keitel and Rudolph Hess stood accused by the world's first international tribunal of masterminding horrific crimes. Among the charges listed in the long indictment were crimes against humanity and crimes against the peaceaggressive warfarea charge wholly new to international law.
On the second day of the trial, Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson, on leave from the United States Supreme Court, delivered an address that ranks as one of the twentieth century's great legal speeches. Jackson reminded the court that the aim of Nuremberg was not to merely punish the crimes of Nazi Germany: "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."
After a year of trial, all but two of the Nazi defendants were found guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death but only 11 were hanged. Defiant to the end, Hermann Goering committed suicide with a cyanide capsule hours before his execution.
The Nuremberg trial was hailed as a legal triumph. In the past, victors usually executed enemy leaders without holding a legitimate trial. And some Allied leaders, including Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, had advocated summary executions for Germany's leadership instead of trials. But under United States pressure, Nuremberg would signify a new approach to seeking justice for horrific atrocities. For the first time, individualspolitical and military leaderswere held accountable by an international authority for atrocities committed in the name of a state.
Allied prosecutors hoped Nuremberg would hold a mirror up to the German nation and compel ordinary Germans to recognize the Nazi crimes. Soon after the first trial closed, America launched a second round of prosecutions at Nuremberg. Other Allied nations also tried Nazis and their collaborators in occupied Germany and there were trials elsewhere in Europe and around the globe. In what became known as the subsequent American trials at Nuremberg, prosecutors targeted "major" war criminals from broad sectors of German society, not just the Nazi leadership. These trials are largely forgotten today but are crucial to on-going efforts to determine criminal responsibility for mass violence. With a new International Criminal Court taking jurisdiction in the summer of 2002, the lessons of Nurembergsuccesses and failuresare all the more relevant.
Elite Military Killing Squads
Nuremberg, nestled in southern Germany, was painstakingly rebuilt after the Second World War. Most of the city center was flattened by Allied air attacks and most government buildings were destroyed. Most, that is, except Nuremberg's Palace of Justice. It was in the gray sandstone building that the Nazis had enacted notorious Race Laws years earlier. Those laws were later seen as a key step toward the mass murder of Jews and other minorities.
The Allied powers chose Nuremberg as the location of the trials for the city's symbolic importance to the Nazi rise to power, but also because it was one of the only courthouses in Germany that withstood the Allied air war.
Today, outside Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, there's no sign, no plaque, no hint of the historic experiment that took place inside nearly 60 years ago.
Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz recently returned to Courtroom 600 where he prosecuted one of the most shocking cases at Nuremberg. "I was the chief prosecutor against SS extermination troops that murdered over a million people in cold blood," says Ferencz.
The unitscalled the Einsatzgruppenconsisted of some 4,000 men who followed regular Germany army troops into conquered territory, usually in the Soviet Union. There they would round up Jews, gypsies and others, including Soviet Communist party officials. The prisoners would then be executed and their bodies dumped into pits.
These were not top Nazi leaders but elite military squads that conducted widespread killing. When the trial of the Einsatzgruppen opened in 1948, Benjamin Ferencz told the court: "The slaughter committed by these defendants was dictated not by military necessity but by that supreme perversion of thought, the Nazi theory of the master race."
In investigating the Nazi atrocities, researchers had discovered a massive archive in the Nazi foreign ministry in Berlin. The documents were a goldmine for prosecutors like Benjamin Ferencz. Among a wide range of material detailing Nazi extermination efforts were daily reports compiled by Einsatsgruppen commanders. "Every day," says Ferencz "they reported to Berlin which unit had entered which town, under the command of which officer and how many people they murdered in cold blood at that time. By taking an adding machine and adding up the numbers I reached a total of over a million people had been slaughtered that way by these special units."
The records themselves were so damning that Ferencz called no witnesses. In all, 24 of the Einsatzgruppen defendants were found guilty. Thirteen got a death sentence and the others were sentenced to long prison terms.
Sweeping Views of Justice
While death camp officers and execution squads were obvious candidates for any war crimes tribunal, American prosecutors, led by Justice Robert Jackson, had a more sweeping view of justice in mind. They saw the supreme crime at Nuremberg not in any specific act of Nazi mass killing, nor in the construction of the death camps like Auschwitz. For American prosecutors, the supreme crime was a completely new criminal charge: waging aggressive war, or the crime against peace.
At the opening of the first Nuremberg trial, Justice Jackson distinguished between legitimate defensive wars and aggressive wars like the Nazi conquests in Europe. Jackson said: "Any resort to (aggressive) war, any kind of war is a resort to means that are inherently criminal as means. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty and destruction of property."
Nuremberg was a first: prosecuting not only top leaders, but the inner workings of a country's war machine.
But Benjamin Ferencz says prosecutors knew that one trial of 21 Nazi leaders did not adequately address criminal guilt in Germany. "It was felt that we had to bring in the industrialists, who built the concentration camps in order to have cheap labor for their war machine. The generals, who had the power to stop Hitler and chose not to. The doctors, who conducted medical experiments for example, were to be portrayed so the world could see precisely how it was that a civilized country like Germany could resort to such barbarism. That was the purpose of the subsequent trials."
For William Caming, another American lawyer at Nuremberg who would help prosecute German diplomats and other government officials, the trials had another aim.
Caming says: "There was also the hope that the trials and the revelation of all of the acts would reeducate the German people who had lived under the yoke of Nazism since the early 30s."
Accusing Prominent Businessmen and Professionals
Nearly 200 defendants were charged with crimes against humanity and other war crimes by American prosecutors at the subsequent Nuremberg trials. Among them, Germany's most prominent businessmen and professionals. Prosecutor Telford Taylor, who took over when Justice Robert Jackson returned to the Supreme Court, accused German industrialists of "manufacturing the turbines of war and the tools of holocaust" in their factories.
In his opening statement at the trial of German industrialists, Taylor said: "One does not build a stupendous war machine in a fit of passion. Or an Auschwitz factory during a passing spasm of brutality. There will be no mistaking the ruthless purposefulness with which the defendants marked on the course of conduct. That purpose was to turn the German nation into a military machine and build it into an engine of destruction so terrifyingly formidable that Germany could impose her will and dominion on Europe."
Among the accused were executives from the I.G. Farben company, a huge chemical firm that produced Zyklon-B, the poison gas used to kill millions of Jews at Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. Farben also ran a synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz with inmate labor. Carl Krauch, the company's top executive and other Farben managers were tried using the company's own documents which revealed Farben's deep involvement in the Nazi war effort. Historian Jonathan Bush says the Farben employees had a unwavering explanation for the work they did and the papers they signed.
"They said: 'We were made to do it,'" says Bush. "'We would be shot if we didn't.' So in a way they could do jujitsu with all the evidence: 'Yes he signed that, yes he said that…but you're reading it as if he meant it. He didn't mean it. He had to do that to survive.'"
The excuse did not work for Carl Krauch. He was found guilty and sentenced to prison. But of the 24 Farben employees on trial, 11 were acquitted. The judges accepted the defense by some Farben executives who claimed they acted under duress. That helped established a precedent that those who make the policy and give the orders to commit war crimes are more responsible than those who obey the commands.
If the trials were intended as a mirror for Germans to better see Nazi crimes, the Germans themselves didn't like the view. Jonathan Bush says the prosecution of soldiers and industrialists was controversial in Germany and the United States.
"The analogy to many western observers was to Henry Ford," says Bush. "These industrialists they're successful businessmen, they're doing what their country's laws allow them to do. They are operating within the law, for their country, in a time of war. "
While the trials were meant to provoke soul-searching among the Germans, American prosecutors also knew their work would shape the future of international justice. That preoccupied Benjamin Ferencz, who prosecuted the Nazi death squad members.
"The question I had in my own mind was, "What do I ask for?," says Ferencz. "Do I ask the tribunal to hang them all, chop them up into a million pieces or something like that? I felt, no, that wouldn't really serve a significant purpose because you never could balance their 22 lives against the millions who had been slaughtered. And if I could develop a rule of law that could protect human kind in the future, that would be significant."
Nuremberg would establish a body of jurisprudence that would lay the foundations for what is now understood as human rightsthe Genocide and Geneva Conventionsas well as for ad hoc UN tribunals established in the early 1990s and the permanent International Criminal Court. But before the Nuremberg prosecutions were even complete, the court's effectiveness began to erode in a new tide of international politics.
A Tidal Shift in Global Politics
The Second World War gave way to the Cold War, and in June 1948, Soviet troops blockaded Berlin, which sat deep in the East German territory they controlled. America and its western allies responded with a massive airlift of supplies into beleaguered West Berlin. Even prior to the Berlin airlift, America started to see West Germany as a potentially powerful ally against the Soviet Union.
Prosecutor William Caming recalls the tidal shift in global politics hit Nuremberg like an artillery shell. With American politicians increasingly alarmed by the "Red Menace," Caming says pressure mounted on prosecutors to wrap up the trials.
Caming says: "We had visits from congressmen and senators who favored the re-armament of Germany and who said that we had to get rid of the trials because they're an obstacle."
An obstacle because German political and military leaders wanted the Nuremberg trials shut down and the prisoners released before agreeing to side completely with the U.S. At the same time, some politicians stepped up criticism of the trials themselves as unfair. Some went so far as attacking individual prosecutors.
Belle and William Zeck met as lawyers in Nuremberg and were later married. Both the Zecks worked on the prosecution of I.G. Farben executives. The trials of German industrialists, which included the confiscation of their wealth and property, was seen by some conservative politicians as a left-wing, even communist conspiracy.
Belle Zeck, who is Jewish, remembers several U.S. congressmen, including a young Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy, who openly defended the German industrialists, and attacked the American tribunal.
At one point Belle Zeck was denounced as a communist on the floor of the U.S. House by Congressman George Dondero from Michigan.
Historian Peter Maguire, author of Law and War: An American Story, says criticism of Nuremberg in the United States was led by isolationist politicians, many of whom had opposed America joining the war against.
"They were basically saying that there were a handful of leftwing new-deal lawyerseven German Jewish nationalswhich they would call recently immigrated American citizens running amok in the name of the United States in Nuremberg sowing seeds of dissension amongst our new allies, who would bolster the western front from the Red Army," says Maguire.
But Maguire notes that it wasn't just American isolationists who opposed Nuremberg. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas described the trials as legally unprincipled, while George Kennan dismissed efforts to re-educate Germans and said the entire tribunal should be terminated.
Amidst the criticism and red baiting, the subsequent American trials at Nuremberg concluded in 1949 with some 142 convictions. Twenty four Germans were sentenced to death and many others got prison terms. But they would not stay behind bars long. To appease West German leaders, American diplomats in command of the U.S. occupation zone formed a review board to consider clemencies.
The man who appointed the review board, John McCloy, stressed that the board was not reconsidering judgments but would examine fairness in sentences imposed by the tribunal. Many prosecutors suspected that politics were involved, though John McCloy always denied that he was acting on any political directives from Washington, according to prosecutors and historians.
"Between 1949 and 1958," says William Caming, "all of the prisoners had sentences reduced and were then released. Including, surprisingly enough, four of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen death squads. It was a political measure. No members of the prosecution staff and none of the judges at Nuremberg were even consulted."
Among the first released were the German industrialists, including Alfred Krupp and Karl Krauch, the I.G. Farben executive. Many of the former prisoners, like Krupp, would re-establish their wealth and positions in German society. Years later, a handful of the convicted war criminals would be tried again in a series of war crimes trials in Germany that continue to this day. The German government and German industry also paid out billions of dollars in compensation to victims of Nazi crimes. And beginning in the 1960s, a post-war generation of German writers, intellectuals and politicians confronted many of the demons of Nazism.
According to historian Peter Maguire, others released early included 20 of the 24 Einsatzgruppen officers convicted by Benjamin Ferenczincluding nine of those originally sentenced to death. The last two left Landsberg prison in 1958. Recently declassified U.S. documents and CIA files obtained by Maguire suggest that at least two former Einsatzgruppen officers later may have worked as spies for western intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
Human rights activists say the legal principles established at Nuremberg such as the crime of committing aggressive warfare and the concept of command responsibility were far more important than who got out of jail and when they were released.
Building on Nuremberg the International Criminal Court
With the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, Nuremberg prosecutors like Benjamin Ferencz say the true promise of Nuremberg is only now coming to fruition.
Ferencz, who is now 82, was on hand at the United Nations headquarters in New York earlier this year when 66 countries ratified the treaty establishing the ICC.
Ferencz was in buoyant spirits when he mounted the podium with UN officials and other diplomats to mark the ICC's founding. "We were building on the Nuremberg foundation, which was to condemn aggression as the most serious war crime in the world because it is during time of war, all the other crimes are committed," Ferencz says. "To condemn genocide, to condemn crimes against humanity, those were the great precedents established at Nuremberg, and then affirmed by the UN and then of course the world went back to killing as usual."
One nation was conspicuously absent from the UN ceremony this year: The United States. The country that played such a central role in the Nuremberg trials opposes the new International Criminal Court. The Bush administration says that no American soldier should ever face trial in anything but a U.S. court.
Benjamin Ferencz strongly disagrees: "What the United States is saying is that we don't want the rule of law. I think that is dangerous, very dangerous. Because we cannot lay down a law for the United States and not for the rest of the world. That doesn't fly. Justice Jackson made that clear at Nuremberg. Law must apply to everyone equally or it's not law at all. Those who are pushing the other view have a misguided idea of what law is all about. They also have a misguided conception of how to safeguard the welfare and justice and rights for citizens everywhere."
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Telford Taylor, Who Prosecuted Top Nazis At the Nuremberg War Trials, Is Dead at 90
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Telford Taylor, principal prosecutor of high Nazi officials and leading German industrialists at Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II, dies at age 90; photo (L)
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Telford Taylor, a principal prosecutor of high Nazi officials and leading German industrialists at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II, died yesterday at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan. He was 90.
His wife, Toby Golick, said the cause of death was a stroke. He lived for many years in Manhattan near Columbia University, where he taught law for many years.
As a young Army colonel at Nuremberg in 1945, Mr. Taylor helped write the rules for prosecuting Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess and other top Nazis. He went on to become the trials' chief prosecutor and an authority on the laws of war. In the decades after the trials, Mr. Taylor wrote and lectured extensively on the moral conduct of the United States and other nations and was an early opponent of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Among the concerns that beckoned him was what he saw as a continued reliance on war as an instrument of national policy and the commission of war crimes by the United States in Vietnam.
He began at the Nuremberg trials as an assistant to the chief counsel, the former United States Attorney General Robert H. Jackson. Mr. Jackson was the principal prosecutor leading Britain, France and the Soviet Union, as well as the United States, in the trials of Nazi leaders accused of crimes against humanity.
Some Nazis were tried in local courts all over Europe as countries began to be liberated. But as the war drew to a close, the Americans felt strongly that there should be an international tribunal made up of representatives of the four major Allies. The Soviet Union, which had lost millions of its people during the war, wanted the Nazis executed with as little folderol as possible. This was Premier Josef Stalin's position, and it was not one that Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain was about to waste much energy arguing against; Churchill said that as far as he was concerned, the Nazi leaders could be shot without a trial as soon as they were caught ''and their identity is established.''
Mr. Taylor wrote that there were good reasons ''for not letting the fate of the Nazis take an unguided course, once the British had abandoned their proposal to shoot some of the most hated out of hand.'' He noted that ''a scattering of small trials would have carried no weight, whereas the world's eyes and ears would be fastened on a big international trial.''
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The Nazi Defendants in the Major War Criminal Trial in Nuremberg
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DEFENDANT IMAGE
(click on image to see larger photo) I.Q. IN THE DEFENDANT'S WORDS PROSECUTION POINTS NOTES IN THE END Doenitz, Karl
German admiral who would eventually command entire navy. Chosen by Hitler to succeed him as fuhrer. Negotiated surrender following Hitler's suicide. 138 "Politicians brought the Nazis to power and started the war. They are the ones who brought about these disgusting crimes, and now we have to sit there in the dock with them and share the blame!" (5/27/46) On 9/17/42 Doenitz issued the "Laconia Order" to the German submarine fleet. The order forbid rescuing enemy survivors of sunken ships: "Be hard. Remember, the enemy has no regard for women and children when he bombs German cities." Called by Hitler "the Rommel of the Seas"....Said "I would rather eat dirt than have my grandson grow up in the Jewish spirit and faith"...Went on radio after assassination attempt on Hitler to call it "a cowardly attempt at murder." Served 10-year-sentence. Died in 1981. Frank, Hans
Governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, called the "Jew butcher of Cracow." 130 " Don't let anybody tell you that they had no idea. Everybody sensed there was something horribly wrong with the system." (11/29/45) "Hitler has disgraced Germany for all time! He betrayed and disgraced the people that loved him!...I will be the first to admit my guilt." (4/17/46) "The Jews must be eliminated. Whenever we catch one, it is his end"...."This territory [Poland] is in its entirety the booty of the German Reich"...."I have not been hesitant in declaring that when a German is shot, up to 100 Poles shall be shot too."--from the diary of Hans Frank. In April of 1930, Hitler asked Frank to secretly investigate a rumor that he had Jewish blood. Frank reported back that there was a 50-50 chance that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish. Hanged--wearing a beatificsmile--in Nuremberg on Oct. 16, 1946 Frick, Wilhelm
Minister of the Interior 124 "Hitler didn't want to do things my way. I wanted things done legally. After all, I am a lawyer." (4/24/46).... "The mass murders were certainly not thought of as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws, [though] it may have turned out that way." Frick drafted, signed, and administered laws that abolished opposition parties, and suppressed trade unions and Jews (including the infamous Nuremberg Laws). Frick knew that the insane, aged, and disabled ("useless eaters") were being systematically killed, but did nothing to stop it. Frick claimed not to be an anit-Semite. He said he drafted the Nuremberg Laws for "scientific reasons": to protect the purity of German blood. Frick was one of eleven defendants sentenced to death. He said, "Hanging--I didn't expect anything different....Well, I hope they get it over with fast." (10/1/46) Frick was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946. Fritzsche, Hans
Head of the Radio Division, one of twelve departments in Goebbel's Propoganda Ministry 130 " I have been tricked and trapped by the Himmler murder machine, even when I tried to put a check on it...Let us explain our position to the world, so that at least we won't die under this awful burden of shame." (11/21/45) "I have the feeling I am drowning in filth....I am choking in it."--(2/21/46, after watching film of atrocities). Fritzsche's radio broadcasts (he was a popular commentator) included strong Nazi propoganda. Fritzsche was one of two defendants turned over to the IMT by Russians.... Fritzsche often appeared on the verge of a breakdown during the trial. Fritzsche was acquitted by the IMT. He said, "I am entirely overwhelmed--to be set free right here, not even to be sent back to Russia. That was more than I hoped for." He was later tried and convicted by a German court, then freed in 1950. He died in 1953. Funk, Walther
Minister of Economics 124 "I signed the laws for the aryanization of Jewish property. Whether that makes me legally guilty or not, is another matter. But it makes me morally guilty, there is no doubt about that. I should have listened to my wife at the end. She said we'd be better off dropping the whole minister business and moving into a three-bedroom flat." (7/8/46) Funk agreed with Himmler to receive gold from the SS (including gold teeth and rings taken from those killed in concentration camps) and deposit in the Reichsbank. Funk told subordinates not to ask questions about the shipments. He either knew or should have known the source of the gold received. Funk said, "The only accusation I can make to myself is...that I should have resigned in 1938 when I saw how they robbed and smashed Jewish property." (12/15/45)....Funk was often seen crying during the presentation of prosecution evidence and needed sleeping pills at night. Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment by the IMT. He was released in 1957 because of poor health. He died in 1959. Goering, Hermann
Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe (Air Force) Chief; President of Reichstag; Director of "Four Year Plan" 138 "I joined the Party precisely because it was revolutionary, not because of the ideological stuff." (12/11/45)...."The whole conspiracy idea is cockeyed. We had orders to obey the head of state. We weren't a band of criminals meeting in the woods in the dead of night to plan mass murders...The four real conspirators are missing: The Fuhrer, Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels." (1/5/46)..."This is a political trial by the victors and it will be a good thing when Germany realizes that..." (6/13/46) As Director of the Four Year Plan, Goering bore responsibility for the elimination of Jews from political life and for the destruction and takeover of Jewish businesses and property....He was quoted as saying, "I wish you had killed 200 Jews and not destroyed such valuable property"...He looted art treasures from occupied territories and arranged for use of slave labor.... Goering surrendered to American officers. The officers offered Goering drinks and sang songs with him, but the next day were reprimanded by an outraged Dwight Eisenhower...Goering was the most popular prisoner with the American guards because he seemed to take an interest in their lives....He seemed to wield a great deal of influence with the other defendants, and prison administrators sought to isolate him as much as possible....Goering said, "We don't have much to say about our fate. The forces of history and politics and economics are just to big to steer." (3/9/46) Goering committed suicide on the day before his scheduled hanging by taking a cyanide pill that was smuggled into his cell. Goering wrote in his suicide note, "I would have no objection to getting shot," but he thought hanging was inappropriate for a man of his position. Hess, Rudolf
Deputy to the Fuhrer and Nazi Party Leader 120 "It is just incomprehensible how those things [atrocities] came about...Every genius has the demon in him. You can't blame him [Hitler]--it is just in him...It is all very tragic. But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to do something to end the war." (12/16/45) Jackson called Hess "the engineer tending to the Party machinery." He maintained the organization as a ready and loyal instrument of power. He signed decrees persecuting Jews and was a willing participant in aggression against Austria, Czechoslavakia, and Poland. During his detention following his failed putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Hess...Hess mysteriously flew to England in 1941 in an attempt to end the war on his own terms. He stayed there until the war ended....Hess suffered from paranoid delusions, apathy, amnesia, and was diagnosed as having a "hysterical personality." Hess was sentenced to life in prison. He remained--lost in his own mental fog-- in Spandau prison (for many years as its only prisoner) until he committed suicide in 1987 at age 93. Jodl, Alfred
Chief of Operations for the German High Command 127 " The indictment knocked me on the head. First of all, I hand no idea at all about 90 per cent of the accusations in it. The crimes are horrible beyond belief, if they are true. Secondly, I don't see how they can fail to recognize a soldier's obligation to obey orders. That's the code I've live by all my life." (11/1/45) Jodl gave orders for the German army's campaign against Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Poland. He also planned attacks against Greece and Yugoslavia....Jodl was quoted as saying, "Terror attacks against English centers of population ...will paralyze the will of the people to resist." Jodl signed Germany's unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945, ending the war in Europe....He strongly disagreed with many of Hitler's harsh orders: "The order to kill the escaped British fliers--there was absolutely no justification for that. From then on, I knew what kind of a man Hitler was." (4/6/46) Jodl was hanged in Nuremberg on Oct. 16, 1946. Critics have called Jodl's death sentence harsh in relation to the sentences received by other German officers of similar rank. Kaltenbrunner, Ernst
Chief of RSHA (an organization which includes offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police) and Chief of Security Police 113 "When I saw the newspaper headline 'GAS CHAMBER EXPERT CAPTURED' and an American lieutenant explained it to me, I was pale in amazement. How can they say such things about me?" (4/11/46)..."I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler." Kaltenbrunner and RSHA bear responsibity for "The Final Solution" to the Jewish question--and the 6 million jews killed by Einsatzgruppen (2 million) and in concentration camps (4 million). Kaltenbrunner ordered prisoners in Dachau and other camps liquidated just before the camps would have been liberated by Allies. Kaltenbrunner was described as "a Nazi out of central casting:" six-foot-six, a huge neck, cruel mouth, and a scar across his left cheek...He was shunned by most of the other defendants...His lawyer tried to portray him as a stooge for Himmler, rather than his right-hand man....Kaltenbrunner believed fertile German women had a duty to produce babies, and if their husbands couldn't get them pregnant, other men ought to be given the job. Kaltenbrunner was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946 in Nuremberg. Keitel, Wilhelm
Chief of Staff of the German High Command 129 "We all believed so much in him [Hitler]--and we stand to take all the blame--and the shame! He gave us the orders. He kept saying that it was all his responsibility." 912/25/45)..."I will suffer more agony of conscience and self-reproach in this cell than anybody will ever know." (1/6/46)..."the only thing that is impossible is for me to there [in court] like a louse and lie." (4/6/46) Keitel signed orders authorizing the killing of captured commandos and reprisals against the families of Allied volunteers...He drafted the "Night and Fog" decree that authorized the nighttime arrests and secret killings of suspected members of the resistance..He
planned attacks on Czechoslavakia, Poland, Belgium, Holland, and other countries. Keitel's sons were killed in the German attack on the Soviet Union that Keitel helped execute...Keitel, on Hitler's orders, sent two generals to Rommel (who had supported attempts to assassinate Hitler) offering him the the choice of a court-martial or suicide....In prison, Keitel worked on his autobiography....Prison pyschiatrist G. M. Gilbert said Keitel "had no more backbone than a jellyfish." Keitel was one of ten defendants hanged in the Palace of Justice in the early morning hours of October 16, 1946. Neurath, Konstantin von
Minister of Foreign Affairs (until 1938), then Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia 125 "Hitler was a liar, of course--that became more and more clear. He simply had no respect for the truth. But nobody recognized it at first...He must have done his conspiring with his little gang of henchmen late at night. Sometimes he would call at 1, 2, or 3 in the morning."(12/15/45) While Neurath was Foreign Minister, Germany "was only breaking one treaty at a time."...While serving at Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Neurath abolished political parties and trade unions....He knew war crimes were being committed under his authority. At 73, Neurath was the oldest defendant in the Major War Figures Trial. He seemed to be showing signs of incipient senility...When Chamberlain offered to come to Germany to discuss ways of averting war, Neurath urged Hitler to receive him..."I was always against punishment without the possibility of a defense." Neurath was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released because of poor health in 1954, and died two years later. Papen, Franz von
Reich Chancellor prior to Hitler, Vice Chancellor under Hitler, Ambassador to Turkey 134 "I think [Hitler] wanted the best for Germany at the beginning, but he became an unreasoning evil force with the flattery of his followers--Himmler, Goering, Ribbentrop, etc...I tried to persuade him he was wrong in his anti-Jewish policies many a time. He seemed to listen at first, but later on, I had no influence on him." (10/30/45) Von Papen helped consolidate Nazi control in 1933. He strengthened the position of Nazis in Austria to help pave the way for the takeover. He appealed to the Pope to support Hitler. Von Papen remained in office even after learning of political killings and other crimes. While the trial was in progress, Von Papen had many heated exchanges with Goering....Von Papen was a moderating force in the early years of the Nazi regime. In 1934, he gave a speech highly critical of restrictions on individual liberties...Von Papen said, "I've been portrayed as an intriguing devil. But I can prove I have always worked for peace....I am confident in American justice, and am glad to have the truth brought to light through this trial." Von Papen was acquitted. Raeder, Erich
Commander in Chief of the German Navy 134 "I have no illusion about this trial. Naturally, I will be hanged or shot. I flatter myself to think that I will be shot; at least I will request it. I have no desire to serve a prison sentence at my age." (5/20/46) Raeder advocated attacks by submarines on neutral ships in violation of international law. Raeder was one of two defendants handed over by the Russians, and was put on the list of major war trial defendants at the insistence of the Soviet Union...Raeder retired in 1943...He opposed invading Russia, but then attacked Russian submarines six days before the invasion began. Raeder was sentenced to life in prison. He served nine years before his release in 1955. He died in 1960 at age 84. Ribbentrop, Joachim von
Foreign Minister 129 "We are only living shadows--the remains of a dead era--an era that died with Hitler. Whether a few of us live another 10 or 20 years, it makes no difference." (3/27/46) Rippentrop participated in aggressive plans against Czechoslavakia...He helped plan attacks on Poland and Russia...Ribbentrop played a role in the "Final Solution" when he acted to hasten the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in the East. In prison, Ribbentrop kept asking everyone from doctors to cell guards to barbers for legal advice....Prison pyschiatrist G. M. Gilbert saw Rippentrop as "a confused and demoralized opportunist.".... Ribbentrop's erratic behavior caused his lawyer to complain, "This man is impossible to defend." Rippentrop was hanged on October 16, 1946. Rosenberg, Alfred
Chief Nazi Philosopher and Reichminister for the Eastern Occupied Territories 127 "I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work." (1/12/46)..."We let 50,000 Jewish intellectuals get across the border. Just as I wanted Lebensraum for Germany, I thought Jews should have a Lebensraum for themselves--outside of Germany." (12/15/45) Rosenberg helped plan attack on Norway....Developed policies of Germanization, exploitation, and extermination of opponents of Nazi rule...His directives provided for the segregation of Jews in Ghettos, facilitating their mass killing. He set quotas of laborers to be sent to the Reich. Rosenberg was born in Estonia and did not move to Germany until he was 25.....Rosenberg's book promoting the Nazi philosophy was called The Myth of the Twentieth Century....He arranged the theft of fine art and furniture from Jewish apartments in Paris. Rosenberg was hanged on October 16, 1946. Sauckel, Fritz
Chief of Slave Labor Recruitment 118 "I was given this assignment which I could not refuse--and besides, I did everything possible to treat [the foreign slave laborers] well." (2/23/46) Soon after taking office, Sauckel had the governing authorities in the occupied territories establish compulsory labor service in Germany...His program resulted in the deportation for slave labor of 5 million people, many of whom had to endure cruel working conditions. Sauckel seemed confused during most of the trial....Historian Joseph Persico described Sauckel as "the least imposing figure among the defendants, a little man with a shining dome, sad brown eyes, and a silly mustache patterned after the Fuhrer's." Sauckel was hanged on October 16, 1946. Schacht, Hjalmar
Reichsbank President and Minister of Economics before the War 143 "I have full confidence in the judges, and I am not afraid of the outcome. A few of the defendants are not guilty; most of them are sheer criminals." (10/23/45)..."All I wanted was to build up Germany industrially....The only thing they can accuse me of is breaking the Versailles Treaty." (11/1/45) Schacht was an early supporter of the Nazi Pary and supported the appointment of Hitler to the post of Chancellor. Schacht used the facilities of the Reichsbank to facilitate the German rearmament effort and organize the economy for war. Schacht spent 10 months in 1944 in a concentration camp because of suspicion he was plotting against Hitler....Said Schacht of the experience, "I could hear the people being forced to undress and march out to their death--and the shooting in the woods. It was beastly.".....Schacht had the highest IQ of any of the defendants. Schacht was found not guilty by the IMT. Schacht was later convicted by a German court and sentenced to eight years. He was freed in 1950. He died in 1970 at age 93. Schirach, Baldur von
Hitler Youth Leader 130 "I had no reason to be anti-Semitic...until someone made me read the American book, The International Jew, at the impressionable age of 17. You have no idea what a great influece this book had on the thinking of German youth...At the age of 18, I met Adolf Hitler. I must admit I was inspired by him...and became one of his staunchest supporters." (10/27/45) Von Schirach subjected German youth to an extensive program of Nazi propaganda....He participated in the deportation of the Jews from Vienna. Schirach began to become disillusioned with Hitler around 1942: "About 1942, I think I first began to notice that Hitler was becoming slightly insane...In 1943 we had a serious quarrel [over the treatment of Jews]. He flew at me in a rage...I fell from grace after that." Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the IMT. He was released from Spandau Prison in 1966. He died in 1974 at age 67. Seyss-Inquart, Arthur
Austrian Chancellor, then Reich
Commissioner for the Netherlands 141 "The southern German has the imagination and emotionality to subscribe to a fanatic ideology, but he is ordinarily inhibited from excesses by his natural humaneness. The Prussian does not have the imagination to conceive in terms of abstract racial and political theories, but when he is told to do something, he does it." (4/46) Seyss-Inquart ruthlessly suppressed opposition to the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. He, in collaboration with the SS, was involved in the shooting or sending to concentration camp of opponents of occupation. In Seyss-Inquart's fiefdom of the Netherlands, over 40,000 Dutch were shot as hostages, and another 50,000 died of starvation. In all, 56% of Dutch Jews died during the Nazi occupation....He limped from an injury received in an old mountain-climbing accident. Seyss-Inquart was hanged on October 16, 1946. Speer, Albert
Reichminister of Armaments and Munitions 128 "I would like to sit down and write one final blast about the whole damn Nazi mess and mention names and details and let the German people see once and for all what rotten corruption, hypocrisy, and madness the whole system was based on!-I would spare no one, including myself." (2/46) Speer transmitted to Sauckel estimates of numbers of slave workers needed, then allocated those workers to various armaments and munitions plants. Speer, an architect, was for years the closest anyone came to being a friend of Hitler. Hitler at one time gave Speer a watercolor of a Gothic church....Speer was the leader of the anti-Goering faction of defendants: those willing to condemn Nazi policies and accept some degree of blame. Speer served his 20-year sentence. He wrote two books about his life. He died in 1981 at age 76.
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https://www.historynet.com/lost-prison-interview-with-hermann-goring-the-reichsmarschalls-revelations/
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Lost Prison Interview With Hermann Goering: The Nazi Reichsmarschall’s Revelations
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"HistoryNet Staff",
"Gilberto Villahermosa"
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2006-08-28T15:23:30+00:00
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A long-overlooked interview with imprisoned Nazi Hermann Goering explains why Germany's blueprint for victory depended on keeping America out of the war.
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HistoryNet
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https://www.historynet.com/lost-prison-interview-with-hermann-goring-the-reichsmarschalls-revelations/
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His impressive girth, bombast and outlandish costumes made Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring the darling of Allied satirists. As their cities were pummeled to rubble during the war, even the Germans took to contemptuously referring to the head of the Luftwaffe as “Der Dicke“ (“the fat one”). More than 60 years on, that perception of the Reichsmarschall persists; but it is only half the story.
His comical words, actions and unique fashion sense aside, it should be remembered that Göring was a bona fide war hero who received the coveted Orden Pour oe Merite during World War I and was a figure of high importance in the Nazi hierarchy. His place at the center of great events makes Göring worthy of careful study and close scrutiny even today.
On May 8, 1945, Göring surrendered to the Americans in full military regalia. Expecting to be treated as the emissary of a defeated people, the Reichsmarschall was shocked when his medals and marshal’s baton were taken away and he was confined in Prisoner of War Camp No. 32, known to its inmates as the “Ashcan.”
It was from his cell in the Ashcan that on July 25, 1945, Adolf Hitler‘s former heir was interviewed by Maj. Kenneth W. Hechler of the U.S. Army Europe’s Historical Division, with Capt. Herbert R. Sensenig serving as translator. The interview — overlooked for more than 60 years — provides insight into some of the strategic options considered by the Nazi leadership early in the war, their views of the threat posed by the United States and the Soviet Union, and how those attitudes influenced the actual strategy implemented.
Hechler: What was the German estimate of American war potential? Did Germany hope to complete its European campaigns before the United States would be strong enough to intervene?
Göring: As a break neared and it seemed that the matter had to be decided by war, I told Hitler, I consider it a duty to prevent America going to war with us. I believed the economic and technical potential of the United States to be unusually great, particularly the air force. Although at the time not too many new inventions had been developed to the extent we might have anticipated, and airplane production was significant but not outstandingly large. I always answered Hitler that it would be comparatively easy to convert factories to war production. In particular, the mighty automobile industry could be resorted to. Hitler was of the opinion that America would not intervene because of its unpleasant experiences in World War I.
What unpleasant experiences? Loss of life?
The United States helped everybody and got nothing for it the last time, Hitler felt. Things had not been carried out the way the United States had planned. [President Woodrow] Wilson’s 14 Points had not been observed. Hitler was also thinking of the difficulties of shipping an army to Europe and keeping it supplied.
What did you feel personally about our war potential?
While I, personally, was of the opinion that the United States could build an air force quicker than an army, I constantly warned of the possibilities of the U.S. with its great technical advances and economic resources.
If you thought the United States would become so powerful, how did this relate to your own plans for waging war?
The decisive factor in 1938 was the consideration that it would take the United States several years to prepare. Its shipping tonnage at the time was not too large. I wanted Hitler to conclude the war in Europe as rapidly as possible and not get involved in Russia. Yet, on the question of whether America could build up an army on a big scale, opinions were divided.
What were the divided opinions? What did other people think?
I don’t know the views of other influential people. I cannot say that other people had given different advice.
What opinion was held by OKW [German Armed Forces High Command] and OKH [German Army High Command]?
I don’t know the opinion of OKW or OKH. I used to tell Hitler that everything depended on our not bringing the U.S. over to Europe again. I said during the Polish campaign that we must not let the United States get involved. In 1941 the issue became real, and the general opinion was that it was better to bear unpleasant incidents with the U.S. and strive to keep it out of the struggle than allow a deterioration of relations between the United States and Germany. This was our unrelenting effort.
What specifically indicated to you that [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt was preparing for war?
A mass of details. It was all published in a White Book [intelligence assessment]. I don’t know if the entire text was published or only extracts. It made a deep impression.
Did Germany expect to bring its campaign in Europe to a successful conclusion before we could build up our war potential sufficiently to intervene there?
Hitler believed that he could bring matters to such a point that it would be very difficult for you to invade or intervene.
In December 1941, what was Germany’s estimate of our shipbuilding capability, which could influence the European campaign?
It was our opinion that it was on a very large scale. Roosevelt spoke of bridges of ships across the Atlantic and a constant stream of planes. We fully believed him and were convinced that it was true. We also had this opinion from reports by observers in the United States. We understood your potential. On the other hand, the tempo of your shipbuilding, for example, Henry Kaiser’s program, surprised and upset us. We had rather minimized the apparently exaggerated claims in this field. One spoke of these floating coffins, Kaisersärge, that would be finished by a single torpedo. We believed most of your published production figures, but not all of them, as some seem inflated. However, since the United States had all the necessary raw materials except rubber, and many technical experts, our engineers could estimate United States production quite accurately.
At first, however, we could not believe the speed with which your Merchant Marine was growing. Claims of eight to 10 days to launch a ship seemed fantastic. Even when we realized it referred to the assembly of prefabricated parts, a mere 10 days to put it together was still unthinkable. Our shipbuilding industry was very thorough and painstaking, but very slow, disturbingly slow, in comparison. It took nine months to build a Danube vessel.
Why did Germany declare war on the United States?
I was astonished when Germany declared war on the United States. We should rather have accepted a certain amount of unpleasant incidents. It was clear to us that if Roosevelt were reelected, the U.S. would inevitably make war against us. This conviction was strongly held, especially with Hitler. After Pearl Harbor, although we were not bound under our treaty with Japan to come to its aid since Japan had been the aggressor, Hitler said we were in effect at war already, with ships having been sunk or fired upon, and must soothe the Japanese. For this reason, a step was taken which we always regretted. It was unnecessary for us to accept responsibility for striking the first blow. For the same reason, we had been the butt of propaganda in 1914, when we started to fight, although we knew that within 48 hours Russia would have attacked us. I believe Hitler was convinced that as a result of the Japanese attack, the main brunt of the United States force would be brought to bear on the Far East and would not constitute such a danger for Germany. Although he never expressed it in words, it was perhaps inexpressibly bitter to him that the main force of the United States was in fact turned against Europe.
Hitler spoke a great deal on the subject. These people [isolationists], he thought, had great influence, but he got this [impression] from the U.S. press and some observers in the U.S., for example, labeling Roosevelt a warmonger. After the election of 1940, we realized that these isolationist forces were inadequate to hinder the United States’ entry into the war.
But [Wendell] Willkie was not an isolationist!
When we read Willkie’s speeches just before the election, it was also clear that even had Willkie been elected the course of events would have been the same. After the election, we attributed little importance to the isolationists in the United States. Hitler said that they were not strong enough. Roosevelt declared before the election that U.S. troops would not leave the country and were only to be used to repel a possible invasion. We realized that this was a sop to antiwar sentiment rather than any decisive change of attitude. When Sumner Welles visited Europe in 1940, we believed the United States still wanted to stay out of the war, and that on Welles’ return there might be an attempt to preserve peace. We had previously found in Poland the diary of Count Potofsky, which indicated that Roosevelt was preparing for war. Welles’ visit might have been, we thought, a possible sign that the U.S. was inclined to try to settle matters peaceably.
Editor’s note: American industrialist Wendell Willkie was an influential figure in American politics during the war. He ran for president in 1940, opposing Roosevelt’s New Deal but supporting his foreign policy, and won 22 million popular votes to Roosevelt’s 27 million.
Sumner Welles was an American diplomat. In the spring of 1940, during the Phony War period prior to Germany’s invasion of France, Roosevelt sent him to visit European leaders about preserving the peace. Jacob Potofsky was the Polish ambassador to the United States and had a number of interviews with Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and other senior American statesmen. He apparently knew of Roosevelt’s letters to Winston Churchill before the latter became prime minister.
Despite correct estimates of our potential, what made you think that you could emerge victorious in a war against us?
We had assessed the capacity of your air force especially well. The best engines were produced in the United States. We used to work on your engines and bought up every kind we could. Since the end of the last war, Germany had fallen behind in the air, while U.S. commercial aviation was far ahead of us. But in the beginning, we had not fully assessed the possibility of daylight bombers. Our fighters could not cope with them. When we were able to do so, there was a pause and then you sent them out with fighter escort. The Flying Fortress, for example, had more than we had anticipated. Our estimate was incorrect.
That being so, I still don’t understand why you wanted war with us.
The war was, in fact, already going on. It was only a question of form. Our declaration of war was made solely from the propaganda point of view. We would have been willing to make the most far-reaching concessions to avoid war with the United States, as such a conflict would and did prove the heaviest imaginable burden for us. But we were convinced that there was no chance to avoid war. Even if you had transported mountains of material to England, we should not have declared war, since England alone could not have carried out an invasion of Europe without your active participation.
With regard to our propaganda about a second front in 1943, did the German high command really expect that we would invade Europe in 1942-43?
In general, no one believed it. On the contrary, we hoped that the Russians would become disgusted with you first and come to a compromise peace with us. The Russians had complained bitterly that no second front had been opened. We knew precisely what forces were in England. We knew of every American unit in England and could estimate exactly what you had there and that it was insufficient for an invasion.
What was your appraisal of the significance of [the August 1942 British landing at] Dieppe?
We never found out if Dieppe was just a test landing, an attempt to secure a beachhead by surprise or a gesture to the Russians that something, at least, was being done.
Were there any changes in the defense ordered by you or anyone else as a result of Dieppe?
Only minor changes. We did order that the MLR [main line of resistance] should be right along the water. This was learned from the experience of Dieppe.
Were you informed by any information or intelligence of our impending invasion of North Africa in November 1942?
No. We had discussed the possibility of your attacking the west coast of Africa, but we did not think you would enter the Mediterranean. When the big convoy was reported near Gibraltar, we knew some operation was imminent, but the objective might have been any part of Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica or Malta.
Why were so few planes used against us in North Africa?
We did send a couple of squadrons as reinforcements in November 1942 and bombed successfully, near the Tunis side—for example, Bône and Algiers—and we bombed and sank ships at sea. The planes were based in Italy and had insufficient range to strike at landings around Oran, for instance. We did not have too many long-range bombers. As your forces moved east, they came within range. The Heinkel 177 had more than enough range and was supposed to be ready in 1941, but it took too long to perfect and was not ready until early in 1944. It seemed terrible to me that there was such a delay, since such models became obsolete so quickly.
Why did you not first seize Dakar?
In 1940 we had a plan to seize all North Africa from Dakar to Alexandria, and with it the Atlantic islands for U-boat bases. This would have cut off many of Britain’s shipping lanes. At the same time, any resistance movement in North Africa could be crushed. Then, taking Gibraltar and Suez would merely be a question of time, and nobody could have interfered in the Mediterranean. But Hitler would not make concessions to Spain in Morocco, on account of France. Spain had no objections to the campaign; in fact, the Spaniards were ready for it.
Who made this plan? Where and when was the conference on it?
Hitler and [Joachim von] Ribbentrop met [Francisco] Franco and [Ramón Serrano] Suñer [Franco’s chief negotiator] at Hendaye [France] in September or October 1940. Unfortunately, I was not along. [Benito] Mussolini was jealous and feared having the Germans in the Mediterranean. By that time, it was 1941 and the Russian danger in Hitler’s mind excluded all other considerations. Lack of shipping had prevented us from invading England, but, before the difficulties with Russia, we could have carried out the Gibraltar Plan, with 20 divisions in West Africa, 10 in North Africa and 20 against the Suez Canal, still leaving 100 divisions in France. The entire Italian army, which was unfit for a major war, could have been used for occupation forces. The loss of Gibraltar might have induced England to sue for peace. Failure to carry out the plan was one of the major mistakes of the war.
The plan was originally mine. Hitler had similar ideas and everyone was enthusiastic about it. The navy was in favor of the plans, as it would have given the navy better bases. Instead of being cooped up in Biscay and Bordeaux, it could have had U-boat bases much farther out in Spain and the Atlantic islands. If the campaign succeeded, I personally wanted to attack the Azores to secure U-boat bases there, which would have crippled British sea lanes. The main task in taking Gibraltar would have fallen to the Luftwaffe. Paratroopers would have had to be dropped. So I was chiefly concerned, and I would have very eagerly carried out the operation. The Luftwaffe had many officers who had participated in the war in Spain a year and a half before and knew the people and the country.
Even if Gibraltar had not been taken, we could have Algeciras [as a base of operations], and with 800mm siege mortars could have smashed the soft stone of Gibraltar and taken the base. There was only one unprotected airfield on the Rock. In 24 hours the Royal Air Force would have been forced off the Rock, and we could have battered it to pieces. This was a real task and we were eager to accomplish it. Ships would have been sunk by mines and no mine sweepers could have operated.
Can you trace the defeat of the Gibraltar plan directly to Hitler’s fear and distrust of Russia?
By the beginning of 1941, the Russian threat had begun to loom as a very real danger. Russia was bringing up large forces and making preparations on the frontier. If an agreement had been reached with [Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav] Molotov in February 1941, and the Russian danger had not been so real, we should certainly have carried out my plan in the spring of 1941.
Editor’s note: It is clear from Hitler’s first book, “Mein Kampf,” that as early as the 1930s the leader of the Third Reich sought to invade Russia in order to give Germany access to its living space, oil and other natural resources, grain and population. Göring was catering to his American interrogators and the United States at a point in time when U.S.–Soviet tensions were growing and Stalin and the Red Army posed the greatest ideological and military threat to Europe since the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Was the seizure of Dakar definitely part of your plan?
Yes. The plan called for securing all of North Africa, so that there would be no possible chance of any enemy penetrating to the Mediterranean. Such a possibility had to be excluded under all circumstances. Dakar was about the southwestern extremity. We would not have gone as far south as Freetown, for example. It would have taken much too long for anyone to attack across the desert with neither roads nor water supply adequate for the purpose. There was, therefore, no real danger to the Mediterranean from that far south. We would have taken Cyprus, too. I would have taken it right after we took Crete. We could also have taken Malta easily. Then the Atlantic islands would have been further protection for the coast of Africa. But fear of Russia stopped us. We had only eight divisions on the whole Russian frontier at the time.
Editor’s note: It is unlikely that the Germans could have taken Malta or Cyprus after their airborne invasion of Crete, although they had plans to invade Malta. The Wehrmacht suffered more than 6,000 casualties taking Crete, the vast bulk of them paratroopers, and the operation left both the Luftwaffe’s Fallschirmjäger and its transport arm—which lost more than 300 Junkers Ju-52 transports heavily damaged or destroyed—debilitated and unable to execute any large-scale airborne operations for some time to come. Nor could the Luftwaffe support the Russian campaign after Crete to the extent that Hitler had anticipated. Indeed, after the debacle at Crete, Hitler turned his back on large-scale airborne operations forever.
Were Hitler’s fears of Russia military or ideological? Did he fear communism’s spread or Russia’s military might?
Hitler feared a military attack. Molotov made the following demands in February 1941: a second war on Finland, to result in Russian occupation of the entire country; invasion of Romania and occupation of part of the country; strengthened Russian position in Bulgaria; solution of the Dardanelles question (none of us wished to see Russia there); and the question of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. This made us fall out of our chairs, it was so incredible. This was the last straw; Molotov was not to be heard any further. Germany would not even discuss it.
We would have no objections to Russia having a sphere of influence in Finland, but Hitler felt that if Russia occupied the whole of Finland, she would reach out to Swedish iron ore mines and the port of Narvik, and we did not want the Russians as our northern neighbors, with troops in Scandinavia. The German people were also very sympathetic toward the valiant Finns. The Russian move northwest would have tended to outflank Germany. Similarly, the Russians in Romania might not necessarily go south, but might move westward to encircle Germany on that side. By denying us the nickel of Finland and the grain and oil of Romania, Russia could have exerted economic pressure against us, and in 1942 or so proceeded to direct military action. These were the main reasons that kept us from arriving at any agreement.
In November 1940, when the first alarming reports came from the east, Hitler gave his first orders to OKW regarding the steps which would have to be taken if the situation with Russia became dangerous. Provision had to be made for the eventuality of a Russian attack. In March 1941, Hitler made up his mind to launch a preventive attack on Russia as a practical matter. I had favored making more concessions to Molotov, since I believed that if Russia invaded Finland and Romania, the differences between her and Britain and the United States would have become insuperable. Hitler, however, was personally distrustful of Russia all the time and saw in her, with the mighty armaments she had been piling up for 10 years, the great future enemy of Germany. Hitler’s inward mistrust remained deep even though not expressed. He wanted to reject all of Molotov’s demands in February 1941, whereas those of my opinion felt that a second Finnish war and a Russian drive on the Dardanelles would rupture the already tense relations between Russia and the Anglo-Saxon powers. In the long run, Russia might then fight England and not against us.
What Stalin’s real intentions were, I don’t know — whether he wanted to move toward the Dardanelles, or to attack Germany. If we had granted Russia’s demands, we might have had her join with us in a four-power pact, replacing the Three-Power Pact. I did not want to attack Russia. I wanted to carry out the Gibraltar plan, and I also did not want to see my Luftwaffe split between the Eastern and Western fronts. Russia was developing a position completely and finally contradictory to the interests of the British.
What Happened to Hermann Göring After This Interview?
On Aug. 12, 1945, Göring arrived, with other accused Nazi leaders, in the shattered ruins of Nuremberg, where they were detained next to the Palace of Justice. Slimmed down and weaned off his dependence on painkillers by the beginning of the Nuremberg trials on November 20, he was charged with crimes under four general headings: the common plan or conspiracy (to initiate the war), crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prisoner psychiatrist at Nuremberg found Göring to be a brilliant, brave, ruthless, grasping and shrewd executive. At the same time, he was charming, persuasive, intelligent and imaginative. But his urbane personality was also characterized by a complete lack of moral discrimination and an absence of any sense of the value of human life.
Göring defended himself, Hitler and the Third Reich energetically and at times even brilliantly. However, his voluntary admissions and frank avowals were hardly the basis for a sound defense. He cut an impressive figure in the witness box and his booming voice and defiant testimony, broadcast throughout occupied Germany by the Allies, lifted spirits in many parts of Germany as the people heard their Hermann fighting back.
The first screening in court of the graphic concentration camp films and testimony from senior commanders of the SS, however, undermined Göring’s defense, taking the wind out of his sails and leaving him bitterly depressed. On Aug. 31, 1946, after 216 court days, the accused were called upon to make their final addresses. The German people trusted their leader, remarked Göring. Ignorant of crimes of which we know today, the people fought with loyalty, self-sacrifice and courage, and they have suffered, too, in this life-and-death struggle into which they were arbitrarily thrust. The German people are free from blame. His address failed to save him, although it did reinforce a growing myth among the German people that stressed their victimization during the war rather than their complicity in the crimes of the Third Reich.
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https://www.britannica.com/summary/Nurnberg
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Nürnberg summary
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Nürnberg , also known as Nuremberg , City (pop., 2002 est.: city, 491,307; metro.
|
en
|
/favicon.png
|
Encyclopedia Britannica
|
https://www.britannica.com/summary/Nurnberg
|
Nürnberg , also known as Nuremberg, City (pop., 2002 est.: city, 491,307; metro. area, 1,018,211), Bavaria, southern Germany, on the Pegnitz River. It grew up around a castle in the 11th century, and in 1219 it received its first charter. It became one of the greatest of the German free imperial cities, reaching the height of its power in the 16th century. In 1806 it became part of the kingdom of Bavaria. In the 1930s it was a centre of the Nazi Party; the site of the Nazis’ annual Nürnberg Rallies, in 1935 it gave its name to the anti-Semitic Nürnberg Laws. It was severely damaged in World War II. After the war it was the scene of the Nürnberg trials. The city was rebuilt and is now a commercial and manufacturing centre. Nürnberg’s historic sites include the 11th-century royal palace. Its Academy of Arts (founded 1662) is the oldest in Germany. The city was the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer.
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
2
| 23
|
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-nuremberg-trials-70-years-later
|
en
|
The Nuremberg trials, 70 years later
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A look back at "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."
|
en
|
National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org
|
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-nuremberg-trials-70-years-later
|
Last month marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal, which consisted of judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, was created to try prominent members of the Nazi Party for war crimes after the conclusion of World War II.
During the trials, which began in November 1945 and concluded in October 1946, 24 German officials and party members were tried, including Hermann Goering and Martin Bormann. Of the 24 officials indicted at Nuremberg, 12 were sentenced to death; seven were sentenced to imprisonment spanning from 10 years to life; three were acquitted; and two trials never proceeded.
After World War II, the most feasible options for the Allies were to release the Nazi officials, an almost unthinkable act which would have essentially affirmed that no crimes took place; to hold the Nazi leadership accountable outside through extra-judicial means; or to create a tribunal and hold trials.
The atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war were unprecedented. For that reason, international law had not addressed a course of action for punishing war crimes on such a grand scale. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, claimed that the “guilt” of the accused war criminals was “so black that they fell outside … any judicial process.” Indeed, the suggested method of justice for Axis leaders by top British officials, including Winston Churchill, was death by firing squad without trial. However, both the Soviet Union and the United States insisted on some sort of war tribunal to legitimize the punishments. Whether this insistence was for political reasons or moral reasons—or a mix of the two—is a matter of debate.
The trials have been called one of the greatest feats of international law until that time. The scale and scope of the trials was immense. While many believe that the Nuremberg trials were responsible for delivering justice to the most evil force the Earth had ever seen, some have taken a more critical stance on the trials and the precedents they established.
During his trial, Hermann Goering wrote in the margins of his indictment, “The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused.” While acknowledging the horrific atrocities carried out by Goering and other Nazi officials, some historians have had similar qualms, even going so far as to call the trials “Victor’s Justice.”
Criticism stems from what could be called a “retroactive” creation of international law. Because of the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, international law as it existed at the time did not suffice to prosecute those indicted, “so the Allies fudged a new law and applied it ex post facto.” Those laws prohibited what became known as “crimes against humanity.” At the time, some legal experts believed that if the trials were to be considered legitimate, law must be applied as it was written when the crimes took place. Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time, Harlan Fiske Stone, claimed that the trials were a “lynching party.”
Despite these criticisms, the Nuremberg trials were momentous, for a number of reasons. They are remembered by many as an important development in how justice is carried out for war crimes on both the international and state levels. The trials acknowledged that the crimes committed by the Nazis were not done by some intangible entity; they were committed by men. Even further, the trials held those men accountable for their actions. By establishing that individuals were responsible for the crimes of a state, the Allied Powers hoped to prevent such crimes from occurring again in the future. As Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney Harris explained, “For the first time in history, absolute rulers were brought to account before the law. There is no longer any state, or any ruler of any state, who can claim total immunity from the law. … The age of empires has passed. At Nuremberg we put tyranny on trial.”
In addition, much of the information that we now know about the Holocaust was disclosed during the trials, including reports regarding the more than six million people systematically killed by the Nazis. Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor and future Supreme Court Justice, declared, “Unless record was made … future generations would not believe how horrible the truth was.”
Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Nuremberg trials was to elevate the rule of law and procedural justice above the urge for retribution and retaliation—even in one of humanity’s darkest moments. As Justice Jackson stated, the existence of the Nuremberg trials was "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason." This commitment to law and international cooperation defined a principal difference between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers.
To this day, the trials have influenced how war crimes are tried, not just internationally but also within the jurisdiction of the United States. For example, under the Alien Tort Statute, foreign citizens are able to be convicted or seek justice for human rights violations within the U.S. court system. Indeed, within the last 10 years, numerous “federal district courts have relied on the Nuremberg trials in finding that corporations can be found liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations abroad.” The Obama administration has also used the Nuremberg trials as support for closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Seventy years after the final verdicts at Nuremberg, it is clear that it was one of the most important legal moments in modern history, if not the “greatest trial in history.”
Maggie Baldridge is an intern at the National Constitution Center. She is also a recent graduate of Dickinson College.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
3
| 80
|
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/an-interview-with-nazi-leader-hermann-goering-s-great-niece/280579/
|
en
|
An Interview With Nazi Leader Hermann Goering's Great-Niece
|
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[
"Bettina",
"Goering",
"Hermann Goering",
"Bettina Goering",
"Goering insignia ring",
"heavy German accent",
"modern two-story home",
"persistently barren land",
"dark little joke",
"family"
] | null |
[
"Roc Morin"
] |
2013-10-16T13:00:00+00:00
|
How do you cope with evil ancestry?
|
en
|
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/_next/static/images/favicon-3888b0e329526a975703e3059a02b92d.ico
|
The Atlantic
|
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/an-interview-with-nazi-leader-hermann-goering-s-great-niece/280579/
|
"After the last right turn," Bettina's directions read, "you will see a driveway on the left about 50 feet from the corner. The number 290 is placed on a fence post. (Many people can't seem to see this sign and go to the end of the road where they get shot, game lost!)"
It was a dark little joke, the kind of gallows humor I got used to hearing as an EMT and war correspondent--professions overly preoccupied with mortality. The attitude fit Bettina Goering well. As great-niece of Nazi Germany's second in command, Hermann Goering, death is her family legacy.
I tracked the 56 year-old down in Santa Fe at the office where she works as an acupuncturist living under the surname of her ex-husband, which she didn't want named in this story. Bettina invited me to her home outside the city for a formal interview. The last eight miles of the drive took nearly an hour as I bounded and jerked over a tangle of third-world roads, trailing a comet tail of dust. It had rained hard the week before, forcing the persistently barren land to yield lush displays of green, with only cows and horses around to enjoy it.
Bettina met me at the door of her modern two-story home. "You found it!" she exclaimed in her heavy German accent.
"No one's more surprised than me!" I replied with a laugh. "This place seems to want to stay lost."
She led me to her kitchen where her husband of 23 years, Adi Pieper, sat behind a table. We shook hands. The house was nearly empty: no clutter, no personal items. It seemed to be a place without memory. I later learned that the couple was in the process of selling their property and had purposefully made it neutral.
"So," I began, "you had the name Goering when you were growing up in Germany. Was there a stigma?"
"Not really," Bettina replied. "That is the weird thing. Because I grew up in the 50s and early 60s, there was this time of utter denial. Germany had just dug itself out of its past and they were starting to get wealthy again. Later, there were a few people who would make me cringe by saying Hermann was a good guy."
"My mother said that," Adi added, "'Oh, we all loved him,' she said, when she found out Bettina and I were starting a relationship. He was the most liked one, the most popular Nazi. He appeared so royal, so nice."
"Like a big child," Bettina added.
"You've met with the children of Holocaust survivors and have spoken publicly about your family history. Why do you feel that you have to embrace this Goering identity?" I asked.
"It was never a choice," she replied. " That's how I choose to deal with conflicts."
"What about the rest of your family, growing up?"
"I had trouble at home. That's the gist of the matter. My parents were always a bit rocky together, their relationship. But, when I was about 10 or 11 my grandmother from my father's side--the Goering side--moved in because she was very sick. That created so much more drama. She was the Nazi in the family and she was very difficult to deal with. She was in the last stages of syphilis, and that makes you very stuck in your ways. Your pupils don't move anymore, for example. They just stay in one stage. I think it literally eats up your brain. So, she made whatever trouble was there before even worse. I left home at the age of 13 after a fight with my dad."
"What kind of things did she believe?"
"It's hard to just put it in a few words. She had always this upper-class demeanor, that you think you're better than everyone."
"Not to mention that the Holocaust never happened," Adi interjected. "'All lies! All lies!'"
"It came up," Bettina continued. "because we watched a documentary on TV. It was about Auschwitz."
"Was that your first knowledge of the Holocaust?"
"That was one of them for sure."
"How did you feel?"
"I felt horrible! I felt even more horrible she'd deny it. And she was part of it. If anyone was part of it, she was."
"How so?"
"Well, she was very close to Hermann and she was in charge of the Red Cross. She should have known, you would think. I mean, they made Theresienstadt for the Red Cross. They built it in such a way with false walls and everything so that it looked like a nice working camp where they had theater groups and all kinds of stuff."
"Right," I added, "that was their showpiece concentration camp to demonstrate that the Nazis were humanitarians. Of course, they shipped off half the prisoners to Auschwitz before visitors came so it wouldn't look overcrowded."
"Maybe she believed the fantasy. At the same time, we found out later that she did some very shady deals with Jewish people who paid their way out of Germany. Hermann Goering did a bunch of deals for art or land."
"Did your grandmother have a good side?"
"I really judged this family as negative, almost all of them. That's something that I've been now working to change, and I'm seeing a much more complex picture even of my grandmother. It's very illuminating."
"What changed?"
"I did research. My grandmother was brought up in a family where all the men died all the time. They were all military. Her father died when she was five. There were so many wars back then."
"Yes, you can imagine that with so much loss in her life, she had to convince herself it was for something worthwhile."
"Exactly."
"Do you see any goodness in Hermann?"
"That's hard to say. Is somebody ever totally bad or good? I hope not. I think certain circumstances happen that might turn somebody into a psychopath. When I see Hermann as a family person, I think he's really nice, and charming, and incredibly caretaking, and it's hard for me to see flaws. But then you see what he does in politics and how he killed people, including his so-called friends."
"What do you mean?"
"Are you familiar with the Röhm Putsch?"
"You mean when the Nazis purged the army?"
"That shocked me almost more than some of his later actions, because they were his friends. He had no qualms to shoot just anybody."
"Are you afraid that you inherited some of his traits?"
"Yes and no. I met a cousin that I hadn't seen in nearly 50 years and we both have big qualms to do anything too big--to be in a position of any power because there is something in the background that you could do something bad."
"And you have the desire for power?"
"No, not even. But, it's happened. I'm somebody who naturally takes charge, who can easily be in charge of people, but it scares me at the same time that I could abuse the power as he did. It's a collective consciousness thing. It might be in my DNA. I think they're starting to prove that all the experiences of your ancestors manifest themselves in the DNA."
"Interesting," I said. "I have Jewish friends who have dreams of being in the Holocaust."
"That's what I mean. It's in your DNA somewhere. Sometimes I get feelings that I cannot explain. I experience also the Holocaust. Do we have past lives? How come I have visions of that too?"
"Can you describe that experience?"
"We were in Weimar a few years ago, next to Buchenwald, one of the concentration camps. It was like these ghosts had attached themselves to me. Afterwards I couldn't eat."
"What did it feel like?"
"Like I wasn't myself. I was really depressed, afraid. I had a vision of being in a small attic room, it could have been in Germany, afraid for my life. I personally think there are past lives for sure."
"So, the implication is that you were a Jew in another life?"
"Or somebody who was persecuted, or a member of the resistance."
"Getting back to the issue of DNA, I wanted to ask you about your decision to sterilize yourself. Were you worried about continuing Hermann's legacy?"
"It's complex. I was about 30 when I did it. I was living in a commune with Osho in Pune, India and a lot of people did it in that commune. There are too many kids in the world, so I won't have any. My brother did it too."
"So, it wasn't specifically the Goering genes?"
"No. However, when my brother did it he said, 'I cut the line.' He's dramatic like that. And when he said that, it became clear to me that that must have influenced me too. I had a fear about my own power to maybe pass something on."
"What was it like living in the Osho commune?"
"There were a lot of Germans, Jews, and Japanese there. It was the 70s and it was like the kids of World War II all came together in a friendly way. And some of it was in encounter groups where you lived out some of these old experiences."
"What kind of experiences?"
Bettina glanced at her husband.
"For example," Adi offered, "I'm from Berlin, so I'm Prussian. They had me stand up and march and they all threw pillows at me, yelling 'You fucking Nazi!' They called me Obersturmbannführer and I had to just take that all in. They asked, 'How do you feel about that? That's what your parents did and that's what you are because you are their child.' And I felt a big collective guilt inside that I wasn't aware of. Nobody in my family did anything, but I still have this guilt. I didn't know I had it. I was so surprised."
"Were you able to get past it?"
"It's never totally past. You just put awareness to it so that it has no more power over you."
"Is that part of what coming to America represents--a clean start?"
"Part of it."
"So, having left Germany, do you still participate in German culture?"
"For sure," replied Adi. "We go to the opera..."
"Wagner?" I queried.
"No."
"When you say no, is that a reaction against the music or the composer?"
"No, I think it's nice music. It's really good. But, he was an anti-Semite."
"So, even musical notes can accumulate guilt?"
"Quite amazing."
"What else do you have from Germany?" I asked, turning back to Bettina. "Any heirlooms from Hermann?"
"Just photographs of him with my father and grandmother. I have a Goering insignia ring, which I actually wear. I inherited it from my mom when she died."
When I asked to see the photographs, Bettina pulled out an album and began to flip through.
"What do you see when you look at these photographs?" I asked.
"Different things. These are a bunch of my uncles--the brothers of my father who died so young. I've developed almost a relationship to them. It's funny. I got to know them or something. I feel like they are asking me to remember them."
"You got to know them through the photographs?"
"Yes, though sometimes I wonder if I should get rid of this album. I'm the only one who has any relation to these guys. Nobody else does. My brother doesn't and we're the last of the line."
"Can you talk more about the relationship you've developed with these images?"
"So, I had an illumination about the boy," she said, pointing at a photograph of her uncle, Peter Goering. "He was only a boy. He was 19. As I got to know more about them, I felt really bad. I felt the grief of losing them so young--of my father and my grandmother--I felt that."
"And what do you see when you look at the pictures of them with Hermann?"
"He's very proud of them, and they are proud of him. You can tell."
"You can see in the picture how much they love each other?"
"Yeah, yeah, for sure."
"Do you see a resemblance between Hermann and yourself?'
"Sure--cheekbones, nose, even the mouth. I was a teenager when I first saw a photograph of him before he got fat, back when he was young, and I took a deep breath."
"How did you feel?"
"I was shocked. I ripped it up. I was like, 'Fuck, is that me?'"
|
||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 76
|
https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2018/05/22016-women-nuremberg-harriet-zetterberg
|
en
|
Women at Nuremberg: Harriet Zetterberg
|
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2018-05-04T17:39:11
|
As a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials, Harriet Zetterberg made breakthrough discoveries. But as the only woman on the prosecutorial staff, she had to look on as male members of the team presented her work.
|
en
|
USC Shoah Foundation
|
https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2018/05/22016-women-nuremberg-harriet-zetterberg
|
Editor’s Note: Narratives surrounding the Nuremberg Trials overwhelmingly focus on the men. From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to the notorious Nazi leader Hermann Goering, the legacy of this landmark event in judicial history is framed by men, overshadowing the critical and diverse roles played by women.
USC Shoah Foundation is spotlighting the under-examined efforts of women at Nuremberg in an eight-part series of stories that each focuses on the contribution of a different woman. The stories were shared in a Jan. 30 public lecture titled “Women at Nuremberg” by Diane Marie Amann (University of Georgia), who came to work at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research as a fellow in January.
As a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials, Harriet Zetterberg made a breakthrough: She unearthed a photo proving a doctor’s association with Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. This led to the conviction and 20-year sentence of the doctor for his role in the Holocaust.
And yet, as the only woman on the prosecutorial staff -- despite her expertise and credentials – she was allowed only to write briefs, not present them to the court.
“Those were the days when you didn’t consider women taking a very prominent part,” said Zetterberg’s husband, Daniel Margolies, in his 1997 testimony with USC Shoah Foundation. “Which she rather resented.”
Zetterberg died in 1986, nearly a decade before USC Shoah Foundation was founded. But some of her accounts of the experience were recently published in the newspaper of her hometown in Valley City, North Dakota.
“Travel is very difficult, since all the facilities are pretty much broken down and plane travel out of Nuremberg is sketchy,” she wrote in a letter to her mother from Nuremberg, Germany. “The ruins get a bit depressing."
After graduating from Valley City High School, Zetterberg earned a bachelor’s degree at Carleton College and a master’s degree at Wisconsin University. She studied law at Yale University.
Zetterberg first arrived overseas in London with the Economic Warfare Division in 1944 as an employee of the State Department’s legal team. One year later, she would transfer to the War Crimes Commission.
In Nuremberg, there was a restriction on husbands and wives living and working together during the trials. Zetterberg and Margolies – who worked as a research assistant for the prosecution – found a loophole: They lived together, keeping their relationship from their co-workers. “Living in sin,” Margolies said, was more acceptable than living together as husband and wife.
As an attorney at Nuremberg, Zetterberg was tasked with assembling data from the diary, speeches and other records of Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer.
Frank, who later became governor of a part of Poland, "was a pretty frightful character,” Zetterberg wrote to her mother, Mary Zetterberg, in January of 1945. “I've been stringing together passages from the diary to prove that he advocated and supported all the criminal policies of his administration. You might say he dug his own grave with his fountain pen."
Zetterberg was struck by enormity of Frank’s crimes.
"It makes me feel inadequate trying to put something of Hans Frank's crimes into record; it's too vast ever to condense into a trial brief,” she wrote. "In fact, what is said in Nuremberg can only be illustrative. The terror and tragedy of Nazi oppression is beyond imagination and certainly beyond the powers of anyone here to adequately describe."
Frank was ultimately convicted and executed.
Zetterberg also wrote about other infamous defendants, whom she faced every day.
"The defendants are beginning to look quite haggard," she wrote her mother; "Even (German Gen. Hermann Göring) shows signs of wear and tear; not at all the cheerful cherub he was when I watched him (being interrogated) six weeks ago.
"(Rudolf) Hess is thin and nervous, with a greenish pallor.
"They are all a thorough contrast to the pictures that were shown yesterday of the Nazi hierarchy at the height of its power.”
When Zetterberg became pregnant, the prosecution made arrangements for her and Margolies to travel to the United States.
“There were a number of wives of soldiers at that time – they got married in England or in Europe, and those wives were all sent home,” said Margolies, who died in 1999 at age 89, in his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation. “So we went back on a shipload of wives.”
They did not return to Nuremberg. In Washington D.C., Zetterberg continued to work as a lawyer, but was paid a secretary’s wage -- $2.50 an hour.
|
|||||
correct_death_00048
|
FactBench
|
1
| 99
|
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/war_crimes_trials_01.shtml
|
en
|
World Wars: Making Justice at Nuremberg, 1945
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
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Explore the trials that tried to bring justice to Nazi war criminals.
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en
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
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Victors and judges
When Hermann Goering, the most senior of the National Socialist politicians captured by the Allies at the end of World War Two, was handed a copy of the statement indicting him of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he scribbled on the margins: 'The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused'.
The guilt of such individuals ... is so black that they fall outside ... any judicial process.
He was not the only person to express this thought. The idea that the war crimes trials at the end of World War Two were expressions of a legally dubious 'victors' justice' was not confined only to those who were its victims. Even on the Allied side there were senior legal experts who doubted the legality of the whole process. The four victorious Allies themselves argued for months over the vexed question of who to put on trial and on what charges.
The origin of these arguments lay much earlier in the war years, when the western Allies first began to think about the treatment to be meted out to Adolf Hitler and the rest of the German leadership if the Allies won the war. The inclination of the British government and of the prime minister, Winston Churchill, in particular, was simply to shoot Axis leaders out-of-hand, as outlaws, once they were caught.
The plan was to allow senior officers in the field to confirm the identity of the prisoner, and then to execute them by firing squad within six hours. A long list was drawn up of those deemed to be 'war criminals'. No attempt was made to identify their specific crimes. 'The guilt of such individuals,' announced Britain's foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, in 1942, 'is so black that they fall outside ... any judicial process.' At the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, the firing-squad plan was still the preferred option of British leaders, including Churchill.
Neither the Soviet nor the American government was happy with the British suggestion. Though both states shared the view that they faced an evil regime, they both favoured some formal process of law, the Soviet Union because it was felt necessary to display publicly the guilt of the accused, the United States because there existed powerful voices in Washington decrying the idea that democratic states should simply murder their enemies.
Wrangling
When the one-time judge, Harry Truman, became US president on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, he insisted that enemy leaders should be given a formal trial based on western practice, with clear charges and the right to a defence. When the three wartime partners - the British, Americans and Russians - met in San Francisco in May 1945 to thrash out the basis for what became the United Nations, the British delegates were outmanoeuvred, and a decision was taken to establish a military tribunal to try the cases of those senior politicians and soldiers captured following Germany's defeat.
No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
There then followed six months of wrangling over who should be put on trial, and on what charges, and where. There was no precedent. No other civilian government had ever been put on trial by the authorities of other states. No military commanders had been put in the dock alongside their civilian masters before.
The category of war crime, defined under international agreements made earlier in the century, covered specific violations of the rules of war (such as the murder of prisoners of war, or the shooting of hostages), but these were enforced against the immediate perpetrators - who were in most cases junior officers and regular soldiers. What the Allied powers had in mind was a tribunal that would make the waging of aggressive war, the violation of sovereignty and the perpetration of what came to be known in 1945 as 'crimes against humanity' internationally recognised offences.
Unfortunately these had not previously been defined as crimes in international law, which left the Allies in the legally dubious position of having to execute retrospective justice - to punish actions that were not regarded as crimes at the time they were committed.
The Tribunal
During the summer of 1945 the Allies literally devised a new body of international law to cope with the unique situation they faced. The International Military Tribunal was finally constituted on 8 August, by which time a compromise had been reached on the charges to be applied. The major war criminals were to be tried for crimes against peace, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the deliberate murder of populations on grounds of race.
... the western Allies decided not to include the bombing of London, Warsaw and Rotterdam as a war crime ...
This was a compromise of several kinds. Conspiracy was preferred by American lawyers, but it had no basis in French or Soviet or German law. The Soviet side was not much interested in western legal traditions (including the presumption of innocence) but had to accept them to give the trial the semblance of legal propriety.
Most difficult of all, the western states had to accept Soviet insistence that only Axis aggression was covered by the new legal instruments. Otherwise the Soviet government would have been in the dock as well, for carving up Poland in September 1939 and attacking Finland three months later.
The western powers also knew that Stalin's regime was guilty of many of the crimes against humanity laid out against the German prisoners, but were forced to keep silent in order to maintain a public face of collaboration. For their part, the western Allies decided not to include the bombing of London, Warsaw and Rotterdam as a war crime, since they had engaged in massively destructive bombing campaigns of their own.
War criminals
The most controversial issue concerned the criminals themselves. By June 1945 it had been decided not to prosecute surviving Italian Fascist leaders, who were later tried by Italian courts.
It was very uncertain which among the large cohort of prisoners ought to be treated as a major war criminal. The Allies' poor understanding of the nature of the Third Reich meant that the preliminary lists drawn up left out key figures (Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo - Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo Jewish Affairs office - Otto Thierack, the vengeful SS Minister of the Interior - and so on) while focusing on individuals who had played along with Hitler, but had clearly had little or no influence on foreign policy or waging war.
One of those eventually arraigned at Nuremberg was Hitler's former economics minister, Hjlamar Schacht, who had actually been liberated by Allied forces in a German concentration camp. He was put on trial because he had been a well-known figure in the 1930s, and one who conformed to the Allies' stereotype of the scheming Prussian capitalist.
In the end the Allies chose defendants in ways that can be regarded as nothing other than arbitrary.
So poorly informed were the prosecution teams that General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the man who led the atrocious Einsatzgruppen (special action groups) on the Eastern Front, not only avoided an appearance in an Allied court but was actually found to be a helpful witness, incriminating others. He was eventually tried by a West German court.
In the end the Allies chose defendants in ways that can be regarded as nothing other than arbitrary. The suicides of Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, and the death of Martin Bormann, meant that the central criminal group evaded justice. The only major party politician to be charged was Hermann Goering.
Others appeared in the dock because they had fallen into Allied hands, or because they were made to represent a wider constituency - Schacht stood for the economy, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel the armed forces, the anti-Semite Julius Streicher for the racist circles in the party. At least one of those indicted, the armaments minister Albert Speer, had explored the possibility of assassinating Hitler in 1945, a fact that may explain why he was eventually sentenced to prison rather than executed.
Justice of a kind
Once the charges and the criminals had been fixed, the trial opened on 20 November 1945. There were hopes that it would last for no more than a few weeks so that it would maintain public interest and show Allied justice to be swift and inexorable. In practice the trial lasted until October 1946, by which time popular interest had waned.
... three of the 22 defendants were acquitted ... and 12 were sentenced to death ...
The long time-span exposed many of the problems inherent in the whole process. The right to defence produced endless arguments about jurisdiction and responsibility in the governing structures of the Third Reich. The legal squabbles, while in themselves an indication that the Tribunal was no kangaroo court, tried public patience. In the end, three of the 22 defendants were acquitted, including Schacht, who had volubly protested his innocence throughout, and 12 were sentenced to death by hanging.
Over the next three years a whole series of lesser trials were held of soldiers, officials and industrialists accused of complicity with the actions deemed by the first trial to be criminal. By 1949, when a new German state was reconstituted, the German authorities themselves took over the task of prosecuting those who had so far eluded the courts.
Legacy
Though the trial of the major war criminals in 1945 was legally flawed, its primary purpose was political. Justice Robert Jackson, who led the American prosecution team, saw the trial as an opportunity to lay down clear lines of conduct in international affairs and in the acceptable treatment of a population by its own government. The fact that these rules had to be laid down in collusion with the Soviet Union, which had violated most of them in the previous ten years, was glossed over.
There is little sense, either then or now, that justice of a kind was not done at Nuremberg.
The evidently arbitrary character of the Tribunal was overlooked by the accumulating evidence that the National Socialist regime had been responsible for crimes of exceptional proportions. There is little sense, either then or now, that justice of a kind was not done at Nuremberg. The international rules manufactured in the course of the trial preparations formed the basis for the Convention on Human Rights and the Genocide Convention which followed a few years later. Condemnation of aggressive war was inscribed in the constitution of the United Nations.
The legacy of the trials was nevertheless ambiguous. None of the new legal instruments has prevented the abuse of human rights, racial killing or aggressive war since 1945, though they have provided a legal framework against which the behaviour of modern states can be measured. Many perpetrators evaded justice entirely, thanks to the often chaotic and improvisatory nature of the whole process of investigation and trial.
Crimes committed on the Allied side were simply ignored, because their publicity might poison inter-Allied relations. Goering was right to see international judgement as a function of Allied power and German helplessness. But for all that, the trials reflected legal norms that were embedded in the natural law tradition, and were not mere expressions of vengeance. It has been better for the history of the last 60 years that Churchill did not get his way.
About the author
Richard Overy is professor of history at the University of Exeter. His publications include Russia's War (1998) , The Battle (2000) and Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands (2001). For a lifetime's contribution to military history, Professor Overy was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History in 2001.
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FactBench
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https://www.historynet.com/larger-than-life-the-infamous-hermann-goring/
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en
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Larger Than Life: The Infamous Hermann Göring
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Hermann Göring was an outsize character in every sense of the term...
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en
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HistoryNet
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https://www.historynet.com/larger-than-life-the-infamous-hermann-goring/
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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t 11:45 p.m. on October 15, 1946, Allied guards were preparing to escort top Nazis convicted of war crimes from their cells in Nuremberg to the prison gymnasium for hanging. The condemned included Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, and General Alfred Jodl, chief of the German General Staff. The best known was Hitler’s deputy, the Wehrmacht’s highest-ranking officer, one of Europe’s richest and most powerful businessman, and head of the Luftwaffe: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.
Göring had fallen far. In early May 1940, he commanded the world’s most powerful air force, poised to roar from continental victories and triumph over hated England. At home, Germans adored their Führer, but found in der dicke Hermann—“Fat Herman”—a figure of ebullient entertainment. Slender, ascetic Hitler ate only vegetables, abstained from smoking and drinking, and wore mainly plain gray jackets. Not Göring. In flamboyant uniforms of his own design and fingers bedizened with rings, the fat man ate, drank, and made riotously merry, living out loud.
Florid style suffused Göring’s life. He loved food, wine, art collecting, and hunting. His country lodge, Carinhall, named after his beloved first wife, abounded with sculptures, paintings, and furniture. Endangered species roamed his grounds. He kept pet lions. He adored cars and sailing; he called his 90-foot motor yacht Carin II.
Göring’s dandy image made him a persistent figure of ridicule. Germans mocked him and the foreign press painted him as an overweight buffoon. But Hermann Göring was a colossus in every way: a wily Machiavellian with an outsize IQ, skilled at combining charm, guile, and ruthlessness to get what he wanted—skills he employed to the end.
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ermann Wilhelm Göring’s name had been a household word in Germany since his early 20s. After spending 1914-15 in the trenches of the Western Front, he finagled his way into the air service, flying on the sly as an unofficial observer for a friend. Found out, he formally transferred to the service, becoming a fighter pilot—a good one. His 22 victories earned him the Orden Pour le Mérite—the Blue Max, then Germany’s most exalted combat award. In July 1918, Göring, 25, assumed command of the famed “Flying Circus,” Jagdgeschwader 1, led by Manfred von Richtofen until the Red Baron’s death in action three months earlier.
After the Armistice in November 1918, Göring gravitated to barnstorming, performing aerobatic displays and demonstrations in Scandinavia for the Fokker Company. In autumn 1919 he was flying passenger planes for airline Svenska Lufttrafik. A war hero and decorated ace, with pale blue eyes and lean, dashing good looks, Captain Göring made a splash in Swedish society.
One night in February 1920, he flew Count Eric von Rosen, a wealthy explorer and right-winger, to Rosen’s lakeside castle at Rockelstad. Göring pressed through several blizzards executing a perfect landing on the frozen lake. Rosen invited the pilot to stay; other guests included Rosen’s sister-in-law, Carin von Kantzow. Göring fell hard for the similarly smitten—and married—Carin, then separated from her husband; their affair generated gossip across Stockholm that propelled the couple to Bavaria.
They were staying in the mountains near Munich in late 1922 when Göring, who was trying to organize former military men into a political party, attended a rally in Munich protesting the Versailles Treaty. As the crowd shouted for a “Herr Hitler” of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party to speak, Göring realized the fellow was standing only yards from him. Hitler kept silent, but something about the man impelled Göring to attend the next session of the salon the Austrian held Monday nights at Café Neumann.
That evening, Hitler spoke vividly of resisting the Versailles Treaty with bayonets—just the kind of fiery rhetoric Göring yearned to hear. The pilot stood and spoke of the need to put honor first in any conflict. Chatting afterward, he and Hitler felt a mutual man-crush; Göring drawn to Hitler’s pugnacity, Hitler to Göring’s glamour and connections. Göring joined the fledgling party the next day.
By January 1923, Hitler had put his new associate in charge of the Sturmabteilung, known as the SA, the organization’s paramilitary wing—then a motley rabble. Göring quickly whipped the SA into shape, recruiting and arming more men while imposing structure and discipline. The next month Göring and Carin married; by summer he had quit flying to support Hitler—organizationally and financially—run the SA, and look after his bride. He was becoming a politician.
That November, Hitler persuaded war hero General Erich Ludendorff to head a coup to take over Munich. At a speech by the Bavarian State Commissioner, Hitler, guarded by SA toughs, leaped to the stage declaring a revolution. The Beer Hall Putsch collapsed but not before Hitler, Göring, and about 3,000 fellow Nazis marched into Munich’s heart. Police opened fire, killing 16 and wounding Hitler and others, including Göring, who was shot in the groin.
Göring reluctantly relinquished leadership of the SA to Ernst Röhm, a brutal war veteran, while he recovered during a long, forced exile in Italy and Austria. To ease Göring’s persistent pain, doctors injected morphine; he became addicted to the opiate. His dependency became a lifelong plague causing or exaggerating many of his outlandish characteristics. The drug induced a sine wave of effects, from energetic euphoria to morose passivity, as well as weight gain, vanity and delusions, and extreme anxiety.
The imprisoned Hitler asked Göring to seek financial backing from Benito Mussolini and his Fascists, an odyssey that ended in humiliation. He and Carin, now broke—in part from loaning the Nazi Party money—resented the charity they needed. Irritation fed their growing anti-Semitism and devotion to the National Socialist cause. “Never in this life was it so hard to exist, in spite of all the happiness I have with my darling Hermann,” Carin wrote in late 1924.
Addiction drove Göring into an asylum in 1925 and again briefly in 1927. He emerged from these dark passages by force of will and with his wife’s encouragement, only to find out the Nazis dumped him from the roster. Carin’s health waned, compromised by tuberculosis; by early 1927, at age 38, she was in a Swiss nursing home. Göring was in Germany seeking work, trying to rekindle his political career and quit dope. “Darling, darling, I think of you all the time,” Carin wrote to him. “You are all I have, and I beg you, make a really mighty effort to liberate yourself before it is too late.”
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]öring pulled himself from the precipice. In the upcoming 1928 spring elections, he wanted to run for the Reichstag; Hitler said no. Knowing that the Nazis once had the secret backing of industrialists, Göring told Hitler that unless he got his endorsement he would make the information public and sue Hitler’s underwriters for every pfennig he and Carin had loaned the party since 1922. Hitler folded, and in May, Göring won the election as one of 12 Nazi deputies, entitled to a salary, influence, and, above all, opportunity that he was determined not to waste.
On June 13, 1928, Carin was strong enough to accompany him to the Reichstag opening in Berlin. His party’s marginality didn’t bother him. “We were the Twelve Black Sheep,” he said. Göring had found his métier. While Carin played hostess, he set to work with the energy of a thunderbolt. He declared himself the party’s transportation expert, nurturing contacts in the aviation and auto industries. Hitler asked him to woo Berlin society to the Nazi cause. A natural firebrand, Göring quickly learned to play to an audience. He was now Hitler’s most valuable asset. At the next election, in September 1930, the Nazis won 107 seats, making them the Reichstag’s second biggest faction. The party needed a deputy speaker; Hitler appointed Göring.
As the new deputy speaker, Göring traveled on behalf of the Party, orating with rabble-rousing style. In July 1931, he addressed 30,000 struggling farmers ripe for recruitment. “He was so moved to see all these people in need,” wrote Carin. “There they all stood, singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,’ most of them with tears streaming down their faces. How his nerves stand it beats me.”
Carin’s health, however, continued to fail. A heart attack laid her low just one day after her mother’s funeral in September 1931. She died the next month in a Swedish sanatorium with Göring at her side. Grief and remorse hammered at him. His marriage had dragged him from his morphine addiction and empowered him to succeed. “And that,” he told Carin’s niece, “was how my megalomania began.”
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]öring overcame sadness through work. In the July 1932 elections, the National Socialists won with the largest percentage of the vote. President Paul von Hindenburg refused Hitler the chancellorship, but Göring became president of the Reichstag. In January 1933, when Hitler did become Chancellor—largely thanks to Göring’s negotiating skills, nerve, and ruthlessness—Göring became the Führer’s right-hand man.
During the first year of Nazi rule, Göring purged Communists, Jews, and dissidents and paved the way for a one-party state using manipulation, bribery, and hired thugs. He was now Reich Commissar for Aviation and head of Germany’s largest police force. He bound the nation’s industries to the Nazis through coercion. “I’ve always said that when it comes to the crunch he’s a man of steel—unscrupulous,” Hitler later said.
In April, Göring set up the Forschungsamt, his personal spy agency, with Hitler’s consent. The operation bugged and tapped the phones of foreign leaders and businessmen, and almost every Nazi leader. In the regime’s power struggles, Göring always stayed a move ahead.
Publicly, he created the Geheime Staatspolizei, the dreaded Gestapo secret police. He set up the first concentration camps—originally holding pens for Nazi Party foes— at Oranienburg and Papenburg in the German state of Prussia. Titles attached themselves to him: Speaker of the German Parliament, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, President of the Prussian State Council, Reich Master of Forestry and Game (his hunting laws still exist), and commander of a clandestine air force.
With the Nazis in power, the SA and its storm troopers lost their utility, making their ambitious leader, Röhm, a threat to Hitler. Göring urged Hitler to destroy Röhm and his top goons, a step he got SS chief Heinrich Himmler to endorse. In return, Göring handed off the Gestapo to the SS, which took over as the party’s military wing.
The resulting June 30, 1934, bloodbath, known as the Night of the Long Knives, was almost entirely a Göring production. He kept to his Berlin villa, sitting at a large oak table on a gold-trimmed velvet chair, while hit squads and SS men assassinated Röhm and at least 83 others. A few days later, Göring organized a crab feast for fellow “managers” Himmler and Erhard Milch, Göring’s number-two in the air force. While they cracked open claws, a telegram from President Hindenburg arrived applauding their “energetic and victorious action.”
That August, Hindenburg died and Hitler became Führer of the Third Reich. The Luftwaffe came out of the shadows, with Göring as commander-in-chief. Hitler often used him as his unofficial deputy—over deputy Rudolf Hess—and eventually elevated Göring to the rank of Reichmarshall, the only German officer ever appointed to the position. The grand elevations hugely increased Göring’s power. But they also short-changed him of the practical experiences of an officer rising through the ranks—a bill that would come infamously due.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]mong the Führer’s henchmen, Göring was the one most at ease with the Volk, a gregarious and optimistic contrast compared to dour mopes like propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Amid countless jokes at his expense, he outranked any Nazi in popularity except Hitler. Göring’s annual winter ball was the social event of the year, and his uniforms and pomp grew ever more outrageous.
Agriculture minister Walter Darré once visited Göring as the Reichsmarschall’s valet was dressing him. A second servant presented a cushion on which lay 12 rings—four each of red, blue, and green. “Today, I am displeased,” Göring told Darré with no small amount of campiness. “So we shall wear a deeper hue. But we also desire to show that we are not beyond hope. So we shall wear the green.” On another occasion, a woman invited to tea found the Luftwaffe commander wearing a toga, jewel-encrusted sandals, and rouged lips.
The big man missed being married, and went looking for another wife. His eccentricities did not put off former actress Emmy Sonnemann, who in April 1935 became the second Frau Göring. For their Berlin wedding, 30,000 soldiers lined the streets. Wrote a foreign reporter: “You had the feeling that an emperor was marrying.”
In April 1936, Hitler assigned Göring control of oil and synthetic rubber production, critical in a belligerent country short on petroleum. That summer, Göring was a dynamo, quickly absorbing economic principles and introducing tax breaks and other innovations. He bartered with Yugoslavia, Romania, Turkey, and Spain for foodstuffs and raw materials, while investing at home in research into synthetic fuels and other emerging technologies. Göring recruited Germany’s best economists and leading industrialists to his new cause.
That October, Hitler adopted his proposals, naming Göring Special Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan, the program readying Germany for all-out war; Economic Minister Hjalmar Schacht now reported to him. Göring was to reorganize the economy: continue rearmament, amass resources—particularly fuel, rubber, and metal—cut unemployment, boost harvests, develop the autobahns and other public works, and stimulate coal and other industrial production. “Trust this man I have selected,” the Führer announced. “He is the best man I have for the job.”
Göring also ran Germany’s foreign exchange reserves; no corporation purchased imports without his say-so. The impecunious flyboy of the 1920s had transformed himself into one of Europe’s richest men. But he wanted more. He spun himself an empire through bribes, favors, and secret deals. When German iron ore and steel production under-performed, he set up an outfit to absorb independent operations in the Ruhr Valley and in Austria—hence his enthusiasm for the March 1938 Anschluss that incorporated Austria into the Nazi Reich—and monopolized the Reich’s steel sector. The move made him one of Europe’s, if not the world’s, biggest industrialists.
The all-powerful and autocratic Hermann Göring Works, or HGW, evolved into a holding company. HGW owned 53 percent of arms maker Rheinmetall, 78 percent of auto firm Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and 100 percent of gun manufacturer Steyr Guss-Stahlwerke, whose holdings included a Swiss arms factory. All ran as before, except that under Göring the companies escaped state intervention, courtesy of his patron, Adolf Hitler.
Wealth and his prestigious position within the Third Reich awarded Göring his own armored train, Asien. His sleeping car featured a huge bathtub; other carriages sported a photographer’s darkroom, a six-bed clinic with operating theater, and a barbershop. Two flat cars carried Göring’s fleet of American, French, and German automobiles and his six-wheel-drive Mercedes W31 Geländewagen convertible. Two freight cars bristling with rapid-fire anti-aircraft Oerlikon cannons provided security.
Simultaneously Göring honed the Luftwaffe, charming and cajoling the best men from military and civil life into his air force. One, General Walter Wever, became the first Luftwaffe chief of staff. The forward-thinking Wever kenned that an air force had two roles: support ground forces,and operate strategically on its own.
Nurtured by bottomless budgets, the Luftwaffe grew quickly, heightening Göring’s inclination to see all things as possible as he ignored unpalatable truths. In 1936, for example, Wever had been planning for a long-range heavy bomber force when he died in a flying accident. Successors Hans Jeschonnek and old-time Göring wingman Ernst Udet lacked Wever’s vision. While Göring was immersed in the Four Year Plan, the Luftwaffe’s general staff scrapped four-engine bomber plans, placing more emphasis on dive-bombers—a vision the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka seemed to confirm in the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.
Göring went along with the plan. But by 1940, he was woefully out of touch. He had finished the previous war as a captain, spent more than a decade as a civilian, and in being abruptly elevated to general, missed staff college and the on-the-job education of climbing through the ranks.
No four-engine bomber could dive-bomb, but that was how Udet and Jeschonnek envisioned the Heinkel He 177—a turkey of a design that gobbled time, money, resources, and the lives of their top pilots trying to test-fly it. Nor could the new twin-engine Ju 88 achieve the Stuka’s capabilities. The Luftwaffe headed into war with already obsolescent, mid-1930s era bombers rather than powerful modern ones.
The Luftwaffe also failed to adapt an independent strategic role. Unaware of the problems, Göring boasted to Hitler that his fliers would wipe out British troops retreating across the English Channel from Dunkirk. “Only fishing boats are coming over for the British,” he said. “Let’s hope the Tommies can swim!”
The subsequent air battle laid bare the dive-bombers’ shortcoming: With Messerschmitt Bf 109s protecting them on attacks against buildings, the Stukas ruled, but when the target was a moving ship defended by Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes, the gull-winged predators could not dominate. The Royal Air Force prevailed over the Channel, and 338,000 Allied troops escaped.
The same hubris suffused the Battle of Britain. Göring’s chief intelligence officer, Colonel Joseph “Beppo” Schmid, told his chief only what he wanted to hear: that the Luftwaffe could smash the RAF; that Germany was outpacing Britain’s warplane production; that the Messerschmitt Bf 110 trumped the Hurricane; that the English had but a few hundred fighters. And those antennae along their coast? Third-rate radar.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n fact, Britain had an advanced sensing system and a coordinated air defense—the world’s first—and built planes at twice Germany’s rate. Myth holds that the Battle of Britain was a near-run thing for the defenders, but Göring’s men never came close.
Throughout, Göring meddled ineffectually. In early September 1940, he summoned fighter commanders to Carinhall for a pep talk. The airmen sat dutifully as Göring, puffing a huge cigar, bloviated. “What he said sounded like the script of a movie about World War I,” said Captain Johannes “Macky” Steinhoff, an experienced and successful young fighter pilot. “Biplanes looping, attacking from below, flying so close that pilots could see the whites of their enemy’s eyes. I couldn’t stand it.” Raising a hand, Steinhoff offered the Reichsmarschall a few truths about modern fighter doctrine.
“Young man, you still have a lot of experience to gain and a lot to learn before you think you can have your say here,” Göring replied. “Now why don’t you just sit back down on your little rear end.”
Losing the Battle of Britain proved disastrous, forcing Hitler to turn east far earlier than he wanted and triggering a two-front war. Thus started Göring’s—and the Luftwaffe’s—long, hard slide. Although the Luftwaffe would dominate over the Soviet air force and in 1941-42 enjoy brief glories in the Balkans and at Malta, by the mid-1940s, Göring’s air force was in decline, overstretched, and under-producing. Göring could have retrieved the situation by unleashing Erhard Milch, now a field marshal but still his ruthlessly efficient deputy. However, Göring resented, mistrusted, and repeatedly undermined Milch, and left his less competent pal Ernst Udet in charge of procurement and production. The strain broke Udet, who shot himself in November 1941, leaving a mess never to be sorted out.
Göring and his industrial empire survived, but the Luftwaffe, once German’s spearhead, fell into terminal decline.
At Stalingrad in November 1942 the Soviets encircled 250,000 men of the German Sixth Army. Hitler demanded Göring supply his trapped soldiers by plane but the Luftwaffe botched the job, blackening Jeschonnek’s—and by association Göring’s—record. On February 2, 1943, what remained of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad surrendered. A month later, RAF Bomber Command hit Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley.
Göring thought he saw a lifeline: jet-powered warplanes able to outrun enemy aircraft. On May 25, 1943, fighter ace Adolf Galland touted the twin-engine Messerschmitt Me 262 jet, which flew 100 mph faster than any Allied piston-engine aircraft. “The bird flies,” Galland told the former fighter pilot. “It flies like there’s an angel pushing.” To get the Me 262 fighting, Göring scrapped Messerschmitt piston engine projects. The Me 262 and other “wonder weapons,” such as the rocket-propelled Me 163 fighter, lent the Luftwaffe enough perceived punch for Göring to persuade Hitler that the Luftwaffe was the tool around which German fortunes would turn once more.
So it was that Göring remained Hitler’s chosen successor almost right up until the end. When Göring left Hitler’s bunker in Berlin on April 21, 1945, headed for Obersalzburg, the Nazi enclave in Bavaria, he assumed he was next in the line of Nazi succession.
That was about to change.
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]itler’s secretary, Martin Bormann, loathed Göring and convinced Hitler that a telegram Göring sent him on April 23, suggesting he take over Germany’s leadership since Hitler had lost his freedom of action, revealed that his longtime deputy was a turncoat. That same day, the Führer authorized Göring’s arrest. But not long after the SS came knocking, Hitler, Bormann, and the Third Reich were dead. Göring’s captors held him at his childhood home south of Salzburg until May 6.
Göring sent an aide with a letter to Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, seeking a face-to-face meeting. The next morning, after hearing that an American general was at a castle about 50 miles away, Göring set off in his usual cavalcade. The U.S. Army officer in question, Brigadier-General Robert I. Stack, informed that Göring wanted to surrender, set off leading a task force to accept it. The motorcades met mid-way. After trading stares, the American motioned to Göring to get into his vehicle. “Twelve years,” Göring muttered. “I’ve had a good run for my money.”
During his 18-month incarceration and trial, Göring lost weight, detoxed, and demonstrated acute intelligence, guile, wit, and even charm. He befriended Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis, a burly guard and fellow hunter from Texas, and Ludwig Pflücker, a physician. In court, Göring ran rings around his prosecutor, made Justice Robert H. Jackson look a fool, and often provoked onlookers to laughter. But he failed to win one final battle. Certain he was doomed, Göring—hating the idea of dangling from a noose like common criminal—lobbied to go before a firing squad, a death befitting a hero and martyr. The Allies refused his petition.
With the climb to the gibbet two hours away, the former Reichsmarschall unscrewed a brass cartridge case he had concealed and retrieved a glass vial of cyanide. The capsule’s source remains a mystery—Pflücker, or perhaps Wheelis. Göring placed the ampule in his mouth between two molars. He lay on his metal bed, blanket to chest, arms visible atop the cover as his jailors required, and bit down. His gasp drew guards, but too late. The Third Reich’s second-most-important Nazi died, one eye open, one squeezed shut. As his heart stopped, Hermann Göring appeared to be winking.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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1
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https://lynn-library.libguides.com/djc300a/indictments_defendents
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en
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Library at Lynn University
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[
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[
"Jared Wellman"
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Library: DJCG-300 The Nuremberg Trials: Indictments & Defendants
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en
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//d2jv02qf7xgjwx.cloudfront.net/apps/common/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
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https://lynn-library.libguides.com/djc300a/indictments_defendents
|
Martin Bormann
Tried in absentia (not present in the courtroom, but still prosecuted).
Hess's Chief of Staff (1933-41). Head of party chancellery. Bormann controlled all legislation, party promotions and appointments, and the personal access of others to Hitler. He disappeared shortly after Hitler’s death. German authorities officially declared him dead after exhuming his presumed remains in 1972. Bormann was sentenced in absentia.
Karl Donitz
Intelligence Quotient (IQ): 138
Donitz oversaw the creation of the German U-boat fleet in the 1930s, thus violating the Treaty of Versailles. As the fleet’s commander, he conducted the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, then served as commander in chief of the navy (1943–45). He succeeded Adolf Hitler as Germany’s leader in the last few days of the war and executed Germany’s surrender to the Allies. Convicted of war crimes at the Nürnberg trials, he served 10 years in prison. Died in 1981.
Hermann Goring
Intelligence Quotient (IQ): 138
Held numerous posts, established the Gestapo & head of the German air force (Luftwaffe).
Göring held numerous posts, including minister of the interior in Prussia, where he established the Gestapo. He also became head of the German air force (Luftwaffe) and minister of economic affairs. After the Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain, Göring lost face and semiretired to his country estate, where he displayed the vast art collection he had confiscated from Jews in occupied countries. In 1946 he was condemned to death at the Nürnberg trials but committed suicide by taking a poison capsule.
Rudolf Hess
Intelligence Quotient (IQ): 120
Hess wounded as a fighter pilot in World War I, was a devoted and able colleague of Adolf Hitler from the early days of the Nazi Party and was designated third in succession to him in 1939. In 1941, without any authorization from Hitler, a person calling himself Rudolf Hess parachuted himself into Scotland in order to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany through the Duke of Hamilton, whom he claimed to know. The British made him a prisoner of war and he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the postwar Nuremberg trial. The Russians affected to believe that he wanted a peace with the west because Hitler was about to move east. This Rudolf Hess died, allegedly by his own hand, in Spandau prison. It is uncertain, perhaps unlikely, that he was the real Hess. His chief British interrogator had doubts and he lacked the disfiguring and indelible wound scars which the real Hess had acquired in World War I.
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 96
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https://academic.oup.com/book/6769/chapter/150883160
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en
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[] |
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correct_death_00048
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FactBench
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3
| 79
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https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/hermann-goering
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en
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Getty Images
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Getty Images Deutschland. Finden Sie hochauflösende lizenzfreie Bilder, Bilder zur redaktionellen Verwendung, Vektorgrafiken, Videoclips und Musik zur Lizenzierung in der umfangreichsten Fotobibliothek online.
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