Book Review: David Irving's, "Nuremberg, the Last Battle"

[Apollonian]

Book Review: "Nuremberg: The Last Battle," by David Irving
(Apollonian, 28 Jun 17)​

David Irving's work, "Nuremberg: The Last Battle," Focal Point Publications, London, 1996, x, 377 pp, 313 text, notes, index; is extremely worthwhile accounting of the Allied show trial(s) put on just after the end of WWII, about as good as one could get to have published, anyway, given the satanic regime of lies we now live under since that war, which was just second part to the first begun in 1914 by the Jew central banking power (see Mises.org for expo on central banking) for purpose of (a) gaining Palestine as homeland for the "chosen" race, (b) world government and dictatorship, as in form of League of Nations, issuing fm the Treaty of Versailles (1919), then United Nations (UN) during and after WWII and Nuremberg trials, for example.

Nuremberg trials then were among the very first and exemplary applications for UN dictatorship/authority and imposed international law/dictatorship. (c) Further, note the second part, known as WWII, was also for preservation of the Bolshevik soviet state in Russia, template for future world gov. dictatorship upon the doomed, satanically-affected masses of over-populated suckers, fools, and homosexual goons, esp. in the West.

So Irving's accounting is quite fact-based, so far as it goes, Irving having little sympathy for the German side, though he often sympathizes w. some of the characters and victims who were placed on trial, like Admiral Donitz, dutiful sailor. Irving admits Julius Streicher, who did nothing but publish propaganda and act as Gaulieter, being removed fm official NSDAP power in 1940 (he didn't get along so well w. other top NSDAP officials), couldn't have been guilty of any crimes, but was found guilty as accessory for the fictional holohoax (see Codoh.com, Ihr.org, and ZundelSite.org for expo) due to his propaganda--in which, however, he never advocated killing, but only emigration of Jews, as to Madagascar. Irving records Justice/prosecutor Jackson asking the Jew leaders of USA how many Jews were murdered, being promptly answered, "six million," but Jackson admits there was no "authentic data" for that number (p. 62).

Irving's work thus is organized around and upon the American figure, Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, who became Chief Prosecutor for the US and Allies, Jackson thus coming off as amazingly weak and lacking in principle for basic justice, his pet purpose being to prop idea of "international law" and administration of it by the UN--he thought it would be good for his career. One of Irving's signal achievements, though he might not admit it, is in exposing the gross pretentious ignorance of pathetic fool, Jackson, who imagined he was so virtuous in his effort to justify Allied murderers of Germany and humanity, founders of UN world dictatorship and genocide.

Thus it was in 1943, after the Mussolini gov. in Italy had collapsed, that Allied war leaders, Roosevelt (FDR) and esp. Churchill more seriously began to consider what they would do w. the Axis leaders. It was mere ten months after their first major assault involving US forces against Axis forces, "Operation Torch" landing in Morocco and Algeria, that Italy had capitulated. Churchill's attitude and initial disposition, agreed upon by FDR, was to simply executing them (Axis leaders) as and when they were caught, and indeed, this was Churchill's proposal when he later broached the issue to the Russians in late 1944. But perhaps surprisingly, it was Stalin who insisted upon trials before any executions.

Another complication was American proposal by Jew Treasury Secretary, Morgenthau, to de-industrialization of Germany (the infamous "Morgenthau Plan") which Churchill was less enthusiastic about. An interesting note is Russian propaganda, soon after the war, began to complain against the other allies for not immediately executing certain captured German officials and leaders--somewhat a little mix-up in signals by the Bolsheviks, one must observe.

Of course, there was nothing the Germans were ever found guilty of in all the Nuremberg proceedings that the Allies themselves weren't far more guilty of, which the Allies did first before anyone else. Irving writes, "Their [Allied] purpose was to choose the defendants, and to draft the new laws they were to be accused of having broken, and the rules of the court which was retroactively to apply those laws" (p. 69).

The amazing and truly stupefying thing is not only were the Allies more guilty, given the agreements they made at Yalta, in 1945 for example, they were soon to be even more guilty of more violations, esp. in the matter of slave labor fm Germans who were guilty of no crimes proven in any ct. of law--barbarian collective punishment upon an entire people and nation. Thus one sees satanic UN method and pattern used over and again, even to this day: to accuse and convict victims of the very crimes u urself are perpetrating and planning to carry-out, using it all as mere diversion (for the masses of fools and suckers) as one continues to perpetrate one's criminal acts--a formula which, so far, hasn't failed--as witness the continued false-flag "chemical attacks" in Syria, blamed on Syrians, but done by the West, USA and Israel.

Then there were the forced "repatriations" of Russian civilians ("Operation Keelhaul"), even fm before WWII, who had fled the Bolsheviks of WWI, not to mention deliberate starvation of the German population, fm even before the end of the war up to early months of 1950, which killed at least 7 million people, including prisoners-of-war, quite possibly many more. See "Other Losses," and "Crimes and Mercies," by James Bacque. Some of the "concessions" made by FDR to Stalin, as at Yalta, go well to showing conclusively the Bolshevik communists of Russia were deliberately preserved and cultivated as model application to world population for world "government"/dictatorship of UN; subsequent history well confirms.

These mass-murders and genocides by satanic world UN gov. continue to this day in way of forced, toxic vaccinations, poison drugs forced upon the people by monopolistic drug corporations ("big-Pharma"), poison GMO and contaminated food and food additives, poison (fluoridated) water supplies, poison "chem-trails," toxic radiation, electro-magnetic, as well as nuclear, etc.

As Irving is good and effective writer, his book's reasoning and expo flowing easily and logically for the reader's interest, he next proceeds fm this first part of the book covering the general abstract background, the gross, putrid kangaroo ct. theme replete w. all the hypocrisy stinking to high heaven, now to specific details of trials of top, prominent victims, beginning w. the no. 2 man, Goring, Luftwaffe commander; including also Ribbentrop, chief diplomat and foreign minister; Deputy Furher Rudolf Hess, the top Army men, Keitel and Jodl, top navy men, Donitz and Raeder; other officials like Kaltenbrunner, the SS man; Frank, governor of the "General gov." of Poland, and others like Schacht the banker, a total of 22 defendants. Of these 22, 19 were found guilty and of the 19, twelve were sentenced to death. But even the acquitted three were promptly arrested by the new German gov. to be further legally hounded and persecuted.

Another note is the prolific, fraternizing, fun, drinking, and partying, openly indulged in on numerous occasions by the prosecution and the judges during the trial which trial was a marathon publicity show, lasting fm Nov. of 1945 to Sep of 46, the executions carried out in early morning of 16 Oct 46. Did u get that?--the prosecution and judges partying so heartily and merrily?--says a lot for the "impartiality" of the farcical process, doesn't it?--but then again, everyone knew prosecutors and judges were both fm the very same Allies, the conclusion and verdicts were foregone, just another "show-trial," only a little more elaborate than Soviet versions.

Note further, at the beginning of trial, the prosecution made lengthy opening speeches, but when the defense asked to make statements of their own, they were denied. Similarly, at the end, the prosecution made their speeches, and the defense was allowed only brief statements, to which the prosecution was afforded yet another opportunity to make lengthy rejoinders and summations. All during and before the trial, the prosecution was allowed to make fullest investigations of all documents and other evidence, except for a few which were highly classified. The defense was allowed NOTHING, getting no cooperation fm the victorious allies who controlled everything, the prosecution even going to lengths to hiding much evidence and info. "KANGAROO court" is putting it lightly, and cannot be emphasized too much.

Sadly for the Allied murderers, they were cheated of the execution by hanging of Goring who had smuggled cyanide into his cell. So the virtue of Irving's outstanding work is he presents most substantial and sufficiently comprehensive account of the farcical Nuremberg show-trials which were meant to besmirch the heroic Germans and National-Socialist Workers Party of Germany, but actually accomplished only the reverse to anyone who examines even the most basic details. Irving expertly arranges and weaves the abstract principles along w. the details. Additionally, the learning of basic facts of Nuremberg well introduces the real meaning and purpose of the present New World Order global government and dicatatorship, the hint already long given w. legitimization of the bloody Bolsheviks as jailers and executioners of human beings. Take heed, suckers; they're coming for u too, and soon.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Note another book review of Irving's work, by Dan W. Michaels, at http://www.nnnforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=693842#post693842

 

[Apollonian]

The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust​

Do the 'war crimes' trials prove extermination?

Link: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html

by Mark Weber

A common response to expressions of skepticism about the Holocaust story is to say something like "What about Nuremberg? What about the trials and all the evidence?!" This reaction is understandable because the many postwar "war crimes" trials have given explicit, authoritative judicial legitimacy to the Holocaust extermination story.

By far the most important of these was the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, officially known as the International Military Tribunal (IMT). The governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France put on trial the most prominent surviving German leaders as "Major War Criminals" for various "war crimes," "crimes against peace," and "crimes against humanity." In the words of the Tribunal's Charter, these "Nazi conspirators" carried out their crimes as part of a great "Common Plan or Conspiracy."

In addition, twelve secondary Nuremberg trials (NMT) organized by the US government alone were conducted between 1946 to 1949. Similar trials were also conducted by the British at Lüneburg and Hamburg, and by the United States at Dachau. Since then, many other Holocaust-related trials have been held in West Germany, Israel and the United States, including the highly-publicized trials in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk.

Germany's wartime treatment of the Jews figured prominently in the Nuremberg trials. In their condemnation of the defendants, the Allies gave special emphasis to the alleged extermination of six million European Jews. Chief US prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, for example, declared in his opening address to the Tribunal: / 1

The most savage and numerous crimes planned and committed by the Nazis were those against the Jews ... It is my purpose to show a plan and design, to which all Nazis were fanatically committed, to annihilate all Jewish people.... The avowed purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a whole... The conspiracy or common plan to exterminate the Jews was ... methodically and thoroughly pursued... History does not record a crime ever perpetrated against so many victims or one ever carried out with such calculated cruelty.

Echoing these words, chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross declared in his final address to the Tribunal: / 2

There is one group to which the method of annihilation was applied on a scale so immense that it is my duty to refer separately to the evidence. I mean the extermination of the Jews. If there were no other crime against these men [the defendants], this one alone, in which all of them were implicated, would suffice. History holds no parallel to these horrors.

How compelling was the evidence presented at Nuremberg to substantiate such damning words? How did the defendants respond to the charges?

While much of the specific testimony and documentation presented in these trials has been dealt with in other Journal articles, here we take a closer look at the general trustworthiness of the evidence cited at Nuremberg and elsewhere for the Holocaust extermination story. This chapter also focuses on the basic character of these trials, which have played such an important role in "legitimizing" the Holocaust story.

Political justice

The Nuremberg enterprise violated ancient and fundamental principles of justice. The victorious Allies acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner of the German leaders. The charges were created especially for the occasion, and were applied only to the vanquished. /3 Defeated, starving, prostrate Germany was, however, in no position to oppose whatever the Allied occupation powers demanded.

As even some leading Allied figures privately acknowledged at the time, the Nuremberg trials were organized not to dispense impartial justice, but for political purposes. Sir Norman Birkett, British alternate judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal, explained in a private letter in April 1946 that "the trial is only in form a judicial process and its main importance is political." /4

Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor and a former US Attorney General, declared that the Nuremberg Tribunal "is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations" against Germany. He added that the Tribunal "is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional system ..." /5

Judge Iola T. Nikitchenko, who presided at the Tribunal's solemn opening session, was a vice-chairman of the supreme court of the USSR before and after his service at Nuremberg. In August 1936 he had been a judge at the infamous Moscow show trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. /6 At a joint planning conference shortly before the Nuremberg Tribunal convened, Nikitchenko bluntly explained the Soviet view of the enterprise: /7

We are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted and whose conviction has been already announced by both the Moscow and Crimea [Yalta] declarations by the heads of the [Allied] governments... The whole idea is to secure quick and just punishment for the crime...

The fact that the Nazi leaders are criminals has already been established. The task of the Tribunal is only to determine the measure of guilt of each particular person and mete out the necessary punishment -- the sentences.

Indicative of the largely political nature of the Nuremberg process was the important Jewish role in organizing these trials. Nahum Goldmann, one-time president of both the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, reported in his memoir that the Nuremberg Tribunal was the brain-child of World Jewish Congress officials. Only after persistent effort were WJC officials able to persuade Allied leaders to accept the idea, he added. /8

The World Jewish Congress also played an important but less obvious role in the day to day proceedings. Above all, the powerful but secretive organization made sure that Germany's persecution of the Jews was a primary focus of the trials, and that the defendants were punished for their involvement in that process. /9

Two Jewish officers in the US Army -- Lieutenant Colonel Murray Bernays and Colonel David "Mickey" Marcus -- played key roles in the Nuremberg enterprise. In the words of historian Robert Conot, Bernays was "the guiding spirit leading the way to Nuremberg." Bernays, a successful New York attorney, persuaded US War Secretary Henry Stimson and others to accept the idea of putting the defeated German leaders on trial. /10

Marcus, a fervent Zionist, became the "number three man in making American policy" in occupied Germany. As chief of the US government's War Crimes Branch in 1946 and 1947, he selected almost all of the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the Nuremberg NMT Trials. (He later became a commander of Zionist "Haganah" military forces in Palestine.) /11

Some of the Americans who participated in the Nuremberg trials became disillusioned with the entire business. One of the few to make public his feelings was Charles F. Wennerstrum, an Iowa Supreme Court justice who served as presiding judge in the Nuremberg trial of German generals. "If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never have come here," he declared immediately after sentences were pronounced. "The high ideals announced as the motives for creating these tribunals have not been evident," he added. /12

Wennerstrum cautiously referred to the extensive Jewish involvement in the Nuremberg process. "The entire atmosphere here is unwholesome ... Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent years, whose backgrounds were imbedded in Europe's hatreds and prejudices." He criticized the one-sided handling of evidence. "Most of the evidence in the trials was documentary, selected from the large tonnage of captured records. The selection was made by the prosecution. The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution considered material to the case." He concluded that "the trials were to have convinced the Germans of the guilt of their leaders. They convinced the Germans merely that their leaders lost the war to tough conquerors." Wennerstrum left Nuremberg "with a feeling that justice has been denied."

America's leading jurist was dismayed by the Nuremberg process. US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone remarked with irritation: "[Chief US prosecutor] Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. 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." In a private letter he wrote: "... I wonder how some of those who preside at the trials would justify some of the acts of their own governments if they were placed in the status of the accused." On another occasion Stone specifically wondered "whether, under this new [Nuremberg] doctrine of international law, if we had been defeated, the victors could plausibly assert that our supplying Britain with fifty destroyers [in 1940] was an act of aggression ..." /13

In Congress, US Representative Lawrence H. Smith of Wisconsin declared: "The Nuremberg trials are so repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon principles of justice that we must forever be ashamed of that page in our history ... The Nuremberg farce represents a revenge policy at its worst." /14 Another Congressman, John Rankin of Mississippi, stated: "As a representative of the American people I desire to say that what is taking place in Nuremberg, Germany, is a disgrace to the United States... A racial minority, two and a half years after the war closed, are in Nuremberg not only hanging German soldiers but trying German businessmen in the name of the United States." /15

Probably the most courageous condemnation was by US Senator Robert A. Taft, widely regarded as the "conscience of the Republican party." At considerable risk to his political career, he denounced the Nuremberg enterprise in an October 1946 speech. "The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice," he said. Taft went on: /16

About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we will long regret. In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trials -- government policy and not justice -- with little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing policy in the forms of legal procedure, we many discredit the whole idea of justice in Europe for years to come.

Milton R. Konvitz, a Jewish specialist of law and public administration who taught at New York University, warned at the time that the Nuremberg Tribunal "defies many of the most basic assumptions of the judicial process." He went on: "Our policy with respect to the Nazis is consistent with neither international law nor our own State Department's policy... The Nuremberg trial constitutes a real threat to the basic conceptions of justice which it has taken mankind thousands of years to establish." /17

In the years since, distinguished figures in both the United States and other countries have expressed similar views. US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled. Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time." /18

US Rear Admiral H. Lamont Pugh, former Navy Surgeon General and Commanding Officer of the National Naval Medical Center, wrote: "I thought the trials in general bordered upon international lunacy. I thought it particularly unfortunate, inappropriate, ill-conceived and dupably injudicious that the United States should have been cast in the leading role as prosecutors and implementators of the trials of German participants or principals." /19

Another indictment of the Nuremberg trial appeared more recently in the pages of the liberal New Republic: /20

The whole majesty of the Western heritage of the law was used to subvert that heritage in the Nuremberg Tribunal. Weighty jurists in every Western country (but not Russia) protested against this travesty of the Western legal system. So did historians. So did merely cultured and moral men and women. If the victors were to "try" the vanquished for war crimes, then they should try themselves for often committing the same crimes. Who would try [British] Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Travers "Bomber" Harris, the architect of the policy of saturation bombing of German cities? But it was not only a matter of our own "war crimes." If it was right to use the apparatus of the law to punish those responsible for exceptional crimes like the Holocaust, it was wrong to use it to punish errors of judgment and statecraft such as every defeated regime seems to have committed. "We used the methods of the enemy" -- and used them in peace at Nuremberg.

While the Nuremberg trials were underway, and for some time afterwards, there was quite a lot of talk about the universal validity of the new legal code established there. A new age of international justice had begun, it was claimed. Many sincerely believed that the four Allied powers would themselves abide by the Tribunal's standards. /21

As it happened, none of the four powers that participated in the Tribunal ever made the slightest effort to apply the principles so solemnly and self-righteously proclaimed at Nuremberg either to their own leaders or to those of any other country.

No Soviet leader was executed for the Soviet military interventions in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. No British leader was put on trial for the British invasion of Egypt in October 1956. President Eisenhower was not tried for his invasion of Lebanon in 1958. President Kennedy was not hanged for his ill-fated 1962 "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba. President Johnson was never called to judicial account for his conduct of the war in Vietnam or his invasion of the Dominican Republic. President Nixon was not brought before a tribunal for his armed "incursion" into Cambodia.

When (North) Vietnamese officials threatened to put captured US airmen on trial in 1966, US Senator Everett Dirksen was moved to remark that the Nuremberg trials "may have been a ghastly mistake." /22

A double standard

In conducting the Nuremberg trials, the Allied governments themselves violated international law. For one thing, their treatment of the German defendants and the military prisoners who testified violated articles 56, 58 and others of the Geneva convention of July 1929. /23

Justice -- as opposed to vengeance -- is a standard that is applied impartially. At Nuremberg, though, standards of "justice" applied only to the vanquished. The four powers that sat in judgment were themselves guilty of many of the very crimes they accused the German leaders of committing. /24 Chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson privately acknowledged in a letter to President Truman that the Allies /25

have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of [German] prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them [for forced labor in France]. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest.

In violation of the first Nuremberg count of "planning, preparation, initiating or waging a war of aggression," the Soviet Union attacked Finland in December 1939 (and was expelled from the League of Nations as a result). A few months later the Red Army invaded Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and ruthlessly incorporated them into the Soviet Union. The postwar French government violated international law and the Nuremberg charge of "maltreatment of prisoners of war" by employing large numbers of German prisoners of war as forced laborers in France. In 1945 the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union jointly agreed to the brutal deportation of more than ten million Germans from their ancient homes in eastern and central Europe, a violation of the Nuremberg count of "deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population." /26

While Allied prosecutors charged the defendants with a "crime against peace" in planning the German invasion of Norway in 1940, the British government eventually had to admit that Britain and France were themselves guilty of the same "crime" in preparing a military invasion of Norway, code-named "Stratford," before the German move. And in August 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union jointly invaded and occupied Iran, a neutral nation. /27

Given this record, it is hardly surprising that the four governments that organized the Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946 included no definition of "aggression" in the Tribunal's Charter. /28

Mikhail Vozlenski, a Soviet historian who served as a translator at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946, later recalled that he and the other Soviet personnel felt out of place there because the alleged crimes of the German leaders were "the norm of our life" in the Soviet Union. /29 The Soviet role in the proceedings, which the United States fully supported, moved American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan to condemn the entire Nuremberg enterprise as a "horror" and a "mockery." /30

Nuremberg's double standard was condemned at the time by the British weekly The Economist. It pointed out that whereas both Britain and France had supported the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations in 1939 for its unprovoked attack against Finland, just six years later these same two governments were cooperating with the USSR as a respected equal at Nuremberg. "Nor should the Western world console itself that the Russians alone stand condemned at the bar of the Allies' own justice," the Economist editorial went on. It continued: /31

... Among crimes against humanity stands the offence of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. Can the Americans who dropped the atom bomb and the British who destroyed the cities of western Germany plead "not guilty" on this count? Crimes against humanity also include the mass expulsion of populations. Can the Anglo-Saxon leaders who at Potsdam condoned the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homes hold themselves completely innocent?... The nations sitting in judgment [at Nuremberg] have so clearly proclaimed themselves exempt from the law which they have administered.

An official with the postwar US military occupation administration in Germany commented: "What good are the high-flown morals enunciated at Nuremberg if the Americans have agreed to such things as deportation in documents which bear official signatures, and which, therefore, give the Allies the legal right to do the things which at Nuremberg they described as immoral?" /32

If the Nuremberg Tribunal's standards had been applied to the victors of the Second World War, American General and supreme Allied commander in Europe Dwight Eisenhower would have been hanged. At the end of the war Eisenhower ordered that German prisoners in American military custody were no longer to be treated according to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. This violation of international law removed masses of Germans from the protection of the International Red Cross (ICRC), and condemned hundreds of thousands of them to slow death by starvation and disease. /33

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the essentially unfair character of the Nuremberg proceedings than the treatment of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment even though he alone of leading figures of the countries involved in the Second World War risked his life in a dangerous but fruitless effort to conclude peace between two of the warring nations. British historian A.J.P. Taylor once succinctly summed up the injustice of the Hess case and, by implication, of the entire Nuremberg enterprise: /34

Hess came to this country in 1941 as an ambassador of peace. He came with the ... intention of restoring peace between Great Britain and Germany. He acted in good faith. He fell into our hands and was quite unjustly treated as a prisoner of war. After the war, we should have released him. Instead, the British government of the time delivered him for sentencing to the International Tribunal at Nuremberg ... No crime has ever been proved against Hess ... As far as the records show, he was never at even one of the secret discussions at which Hitler explained his war plans.

The problem of evidence

The victorious Allies thoroughly scoured Germany for every scrap of paper that might be used to incriminate the defeated regime. Never before or since have a nation's records been so completely ransacked. In addition to official government papers, including countless secret documents tracing Germany's wartime Jewish policy, the Allies confiscated the records of the National Socialist Party and its affiliated organizations, as well as those of numerous private business firms, institutions and individuals. The sheer quantity of paper seized is staggering. For example, the records of the German Foreign Office confiscated by US officials amounted to some 485 tons of paper. /35

From this mountain of paper, US military personnel alone selected some two thousand documents considered most incriminating for use in the main Nuremberg trial. The tons of confiscated records were later shipped to the United States. It is estimated that in the US National Archives alone, more than one million pages of documents on the Third Reich's Jewish policy are on file. Many hundreds of these Nuremberg documents have since been published, most notably by the U.S. government in the 42-volume "blue series" record of the main Nuremberg trial, the 15-volume "green series" record of the "second string" Nuremberg trials, and in the 11-volume "red series." /36

It is as if governments hostile to the United States were to seize the top secret files of the Pentagon and CIA, and then selectively publish the most embarrassing and incriminating documents from the vast collection.

In the years since the Nuremberg trials, historians of many different countries have carefully sifted through the German records, including countless documents that were not available to the Nuremberg prosecutors. Historians have been able to compare and cross-check the records of different ministries and agencies, as well as numerous private diaries and papers. /37

And yet, out of this great mass of paper, not a single document has ever been found that confirms or even refers to an extermination program. A number of historians have commented on this remarkable "gap" in the evidence. French-Jewish historian Leon Poliakov, for example, noted in his best-known Holocaust work:

The archives of the Third Reich and the depositions and accounts of its leaders make possible a reconstruction, down to the last detail, of the origin and development of the plans for aggression, the military campaigns, and the whole array of procedures by which the Nazis intended to reshape the world to their liking. Only the campaign to exterminate the Jews, as regards its conception as well as many other essential aspects, remains shrouded in darkness.

No documents of a plan for exterminating the Jews have ever been found, he added, because "perhaps none ever existed." /38

At Nuremberg, the German documents were in the custody of the Allied prosecutors, who did not permit defense attorneys to make their own selections of the material. Historian Werner Maser has pointed out that at Nuremberg "thousands of documents which seemed likely possibly to incriminate the Allies and exonerate the defendants suddenly disappeared... There is much evidence that documents were confiscated, concealed from the defense or even stolen in 1945." Other important documents suddenly "disappeared" when specifically requested by defense attorneys. Officials at the National Archives in Washington have confirmed to this writer on several occasions that the originals of numerous Nuremberg documents remain "lost" to this day. The Tribunal refused to allow in evidence several collections of German and captured foreign documents published during the war as German Foreign Office "White Books." Most of the 1,809 affidavits prepared by the Nuremberg defense have never been made public. /39

Among the documents that the defense was not permitted to bring to light was the secret supplement to the German-Soviet treaty of August 23, 1939, which divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. /40

After the Nuremberg Tribunal pronounced its sentence, Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop pointed out some of the obstacles put up in his particular case: /41

The defense had no fair chance to defend German foreign policy. Our prepared application for the submission of evidence was not allowed ... Without good cause being shown, half of the 300 documents which the defense prepared were not admitted. Witnesses and affidavits were only admitted after the prosecution had been heard; most of them were rejected... Correspondence between Hitler and Chamberlain, reports by ambassadors and diplomatic minutes, etc., were rejected. Only the prosecution, not the defense, had access to German and foreign archives. The prosecution only searched for incriminating documents and their use was biased. It knowingly concealed exonerating documents and withheld them from the defense.

The Charter of the International Military Tribunal permitted the use of normally inadmissible "evidence." Article 19 specified that "The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence... and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value." Article 21 stipulated: /42

The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United [Allied] Nations, including acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military and other Tribunals of any of the United [Allied] Nations.

On the basis of these articles, the Tribunal accepted as valid the most dubious "evidence," including hearsay and unsubstantiated reports of Soviet and American "investigative" commissions. For example, the Tribunal accepted an American congressional report that "proved" gas chamber killings at Dachau, and a Polish government report (submitted by the US) that "proved" killings by steam at Treblinka. /43 (No reputable historian now accepts either of these stories.)

In addition, the Tribunal validated Soviet reports about Auschwitz and Majdanek (documents USSR-8 and USSR-29), which explained in detail how the Germans killed four million at Auschwitz and another one-and-a-half million at Majdanek. (These days, no reputable historian accepts either of these fantastic figures.)

German guilt for the killing of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk was similarly confirmed by Nuremberg document USSR-54. This detailed report by yet another Soviet "investigative" commission was submitted as proof for the charge made in the joint indictment of the four Allied governments. As a Soviet prosecutor explained: "We find, in the Indictment, one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war shot in the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders." /44 (Interestingly, two of the eight members of the Soviet Katyn Commission were also members of the Soviet Auschwitz commission: Academician N. Burdenko and Metropolitan Nikolai.) It wasn't until 1990 that the Soviet government finally acknowledged that the Katyn massacre was carried out, not by a German unit, as "proven" at Nuremberg, but by the Soviet secret police. /45

It is sometimes claimed that the evidence presented by the prosecution to the Nuremberg Tribunal was so incontrovertible that none of the defense attorneys ever disputed the authenticity or accuracy of even a single prosecution document. /46 This is not true. Not only did defense lawyers protest against the prosecution use of spurious documents, but some of the most important Nuremberg documents are now generally acknowledged to be fraudulent. /47

For example, defense attorney Dr. Boehm protested to the Tribunal that Nuremberg document 1721-PS, which purportedly confirms attacks by stormtroopers against Jewish synagogues in November 1938, is a clumsy forgery. He went on to explain his reasons at some length. /48

Several Nuremberg documents based on the purported "death bed confession" of Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, are demonstrably fraudulent. (Nuremberg documents 1515-PS, 3870-PS, and NO-1973.) These documents supposedly prove systematic killings of hundreds of thousands of people by gassing and other means at Mauthausen and Hartheim. /49

Almost forty years after the Tribunal handed down its verdicts, Nuremberg document USSR-378 was definitively exposed as a fraud. It is a purported record of numerous private conversations with Hitler by Hermann Rauschning, a former National Socialist official in Danzig. In brutal language, the Führer supposedly revealed his most intimate thoughts and secret plans for world conquest. Rauschning's "memoir" was published in 1939 in Britain under the title Hitler Speaks, and in the United States in 1940 as The Voice of Destruction. It was this US edition that was accepted in evidence at Nuremberg as proof of the "guiding principles of the Nazi regime."

Chief British prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross and his Soviet colleagues cited numerous quotations from it. Defendant Baldur von Schirach contested its authenticity, but defense attorney Pelckmann (who did not know any better) accepted this "evidence" as authentic. /50 In 1983 Swiss historian Wolfgang Hänel established that the "memoir" is entirely fraudulent. Rauschning never had even a single private meeting with Hitler. /51

Another fraudulent Nuremberg document is the so-called "Hossbach protocol" (document 386-PS), a purported record of a high-level 1937 conference at which Hitler supposedly revealed his secret plans for aggressive conquest. US Nuremberg prosecutor Sidney Alderman called it "one of the most striking and revealing of all the captured documents," and told the Tribunal that it removed any remaining doubts about the guilt of the Germans leaders for their crimes against peace. It was largely on the basis of this document that Göring was condemned to death. /52

Similarly spurious is Nuremberg document L-3 (US-28), supposedly a record of a bellicose speech by Hitler to armed forces commanders on August 22, 1939. It contains a widely cited quotation attributed to Hitler, "Who talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?" /53

Jewish historian Lucy Dawidowicz, author of The War Against the Jews, acknowledged that "There are also Holocaust documents that are outright falsification and some that purvey myth rather than historical fact." /54

Dubious testimony

Much of the evidence for the Holocaust story presented at Nuremberg and in subsequent trials has been "survivor testimony." As numerous historians have acknowledged, though, such testimony is often defective. /55

Gerald Reitlinger cautioned readers of his detailed study, The Final Solution, that Holocaust evidence, including Nuremberg documents and testimony, cannot be accepted at face value: "A certain degree of reserve is necessary in handling all this material, and particularly this applies to the last section (survivor narratives) ... The Eastern European Jew is a natural rhetorician, speaking in flowery similes." /56 French historian Jean-Claude Pressac likewise warned in his detailed book about Auschwitz that "extreme care is required with the testimony of survivors ..." /57

Jewish historian Hannah Arendt observed in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem that the "eyewitnesses" who testified in the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann were only rarely able to distinguish between what actually happened to them years earlier and what they had read, heard or imagined in the meantime. /58 Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz similarly noted that "the survivor's memory is often distorted by hate, sentimentality, and the passage of time. His perspective on external events is often skewed by the limits of his personal experience." /59

French historian Germain Tillion, a specialist of the Second World War period, has warned that former camp inmates who lie are, in fact, /60

very much more numerous than people generally suppose, and a subject like that of the concentration camp world -- well designed, alas, to stimulate sado-masochistic imaginations -- offered them an exceptional field of action. We have known numerous mentally damaged persons, half-swindlers and half fools, who exploited an imaginary deportation. We have known others of them -- authentic deportees -- whose sick minds strove to even go beyond the monstrosities that they had seen or that people said happened to them.

Jewish historian Samuel Gringauz, who was himself interned in the ghetto of Kaunas (Lithuania) during the war, criticized what he called the "hyperhistorical" nature of most Jewish "survivor testimony." He wrote that "most of the memoirs and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self-inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." /61

Shmuel Krakowki, archives director of the Israeli government's Holocaust center, Yad Vashem, confirmed in 1986 that more than 10,000 of the 20,000 "testimonies" of Jewish "survivors" on file there are "unreliable." Many survivors, wanting "to be part of history" may have let their imaginations run away with them, Krakowski said. "Many were never in the places where they claimed to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given them by friends or passing strangers." He confirmed that many of the testimonies on file at Yad Vashem were later proved to be inaccurate when locations and dates could not pass an expert historian's appraisal. /62

We now know that witnesses at the main Nuremberg trial gave false testimony. Perhaps the most obvious were the three witnesses who ostensibly confirmed German guilt for the Katyn massacre of Polish officers. /63

Stephen F. Pinter of St. Louis, Missouri, served as a US Army prosecuting attorney from January 1946 to July 1947 at the American trials of Germans at Dachau. Altogether, some 420 Germans were sentenced to death in these Dachau trials. In a 1960 affidavit Pinter stated that "notoriously perjured witnesses" were used to charge Germans with "false and unfounded" crimes. "Unfortunately, as a result of these miscarriages of justice, many innocent persons were convicted and some were executed." /64

A tragi-comic incident during the Dachau proceedings suggests the general atmosphere. US investigator Joseph Kirschbaum brought a Jewish witness named Einstein into court to testify that the defendant, Menzel, had murdered Einstein's brother. But when the accused pointed out that the brother was, in fact, sitting in the courtroom, an embarrassed Kirschbaum scolded the witness: "How can we bring this pig to the gallows if you are so stupid as to bring your brother into court?" /65

August Gross, a German who worked as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army at the Dachau trials, later declared: /66

The American prosecutors paid professional incrimination witnesses, mostly former criminal concentration camp inmates, the amount of one dollar per day (at that time worth 280 marks on the black market) as well as food from a witness kitchen and witness lodging. During the recess periods between trial proceedings the US prosecuting attorneys told these witnesses what they were to say in giving testimony. The US prosecuting attorneys gave the witnesses photos of the defendants and were thereby able to easily incriminate them.

A young US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947, Joseph Halow, later recalled the unwholesome situation:

The witnesses in the concentration camp cases were virtually all of the sort we court reporters termed "professional witnesses," those who spent months in Dachau, testifying against one or another of the many accused... It was to their economic advantage to testify, and many of them made a good living doing so. As one might well imagine, the motive of the professional witnesses was also one of spite and revenge... In many instances their vengeance included relating exaggerated accounts of what they had witnessed. It also included outright lying.

In one case, testimony provided by the prosecution witnesses "appeared to raise more questions then provide answers. Some of it was obviously fabricated, or so grossly exaggerated as to render it unbelievable. There were repeated instances of mistaken identity of the same accused, and vague, uncertain statements about some of the others." Moreover, Halow reported, the US courts paid "scant attention to testimony by and for the accused." /67

In the 1947 "Nordhausen-Dora" case, American defense attorney Major Leon B. Poullada protested against the general unreliability -- and frequent outright lying -- of prosecution witnesses in this US military trial of former concentration camp officials. /68

Use of such unreliable testimony continued in "Holocaust" trials in later years. Federal district judge Norman C. Roettger, Jr., ruled in 1978 in a Florida case that all six Jewish "eyewitnesses" who had testified to direct atrocities and shootings at Treblinka by Ukrainian-born defendant Feodor Fedorenko had wrongly identified the accused after being misled by Israeli authorities. /69

New York "Nazi hunter" Charles Kremer visited Israel in 1981 looking for Jews who could confirm atrocities allegedly committed by a former Ukrainian SS man living in New Jersey. But Kremer cut short his visit, bitterly disappointed by the numerous Jews who offered to provide spurious "testimony" in return for money. As the Brooklyn Jewish Press reported, "Kremer was stricken with gastronomic pains -- a malady he attributes to his difficulties in dealing with hucksters who tried to use his search for their personal gain." /70

One of the most blatant examples of perjury by Jewish Holocaust witnesses in recent years was in the case of a retired Chicago factory worker named Frank Walus who was charged with killing Jews in his native Poland during the war. A December 1974 letter from "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal that accused Walus of working for the Gestapo prompted the US government's legal campaign. During his trial, eleven Jews testified under oath that they personally saw Walus murder Jews, including several children. After a costly and bitterly contested four-year legal battle, Walus was finally able to prove that he had actually spent the war years as a teenager quietly working on German farms. A lengthy article copyrighted by the American Bar Association and published in 1981 in the Washington Post concluded that "... in an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man." /71

(continued in part 2) [see site link, above]

 

[Apollonian]

-------------------------[HERE'S PART 2 TO ABOVE]--------------------------

The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust​

(continued from part 1, above)

Link: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Weberb.html

Torture

Allied prosecutors used torture to help prove their case at Nuremberg and other postwar trials. /72

Former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss was tortured by British officials into signing a false and self-incriminating "confession" that has been widely cited as a key document of Holocaust extermination. His testimony before the Nuremberg Tribunal, a high point of the proceeding, was perhaps the most striking and memorable evidence presented there of a German extermination program. /73 Höss maintained that two and half million people had been killed in Auschwitz gas chambers, and that another 500,000 inmates had died there of other causes. No serious or reputable historian now accepts either of these fantastic figures, and other key portions of Höss' "confession" are now generally acknowledged to be untrue. /74

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has cited the case of Jupp Aschenbrenner, a Bavarian who was tortured into signing a statement that he had worked on mobile gas chambers ("gas vans") during the war. It wasn't until several years later that he was finally able to prove that he had actually spent that time in Munich studying to become an electric welder. /75

Fritz Sauckel, head of the German wartime labor mobilization program, was sentenced to death at the main Nuremberg trial. An important piece of evidence presented to the Tribunal by the US prosecution was an affidavit signed by the defendant. (Nuremberg document 3057-PS.) It turned out that Sauckel had put his signature to this self-incriminating statement, which had been presented to him by his captors in finished form, only after he was bluntly told that if he hesitated, his wife and children would be turned over to the Soviets. "I did not stop to consider, and thinking of my family, I signed the document," Sauckel later declared. /76

Hans Fritzsche, another defendant in the main Nuremberg trial, was similarly forced to sign a self-damning confession while he was a prisoner of the Soviet secret police in Moscow. (Nuremberg document USSR-474.) /77

Nuremberg defendant Julius Streicher, who was eventually hanged because he published a sometimes sensational anti-Jewish weekly paper, was brutally mistreated following his arrest. He was badly beaten, kicked, whipped, spat at, forced to drink saliva and burned with cigarettes. His genitals were beaten. Eyebrow and chest hair was pulled out. He was stripped and photographed. Fellow defendant Hans Frank was savagely beaten by two black GIs shortly after his arrest. August Eigruber, former Gauleiter of Upper Austria, was mutilated and castrated at the end of the war. /78

Josef Kramer, former commandant of both the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, and other defendants in the British-run "Belsen" trial, were reportedly also tortured, some of them so brutally that they begged to be put to death. /79

Although most of the defendants at the main Nuremberg trial were not tortured, many other Germans were forced to sign affidavits and give testimony against their former colleagues and superiors. A simple threat to turn the subject over to the Soviets was often enough to persuade him to sign an affidavit or provide testimony needed in court. Threats against the subject's wife and children, including withdrawal of ration cards, delivery to the Soviets or imprisonment, often quickly produced the desired results. If all else failed, the subject could be placed in solitary confinement, beaten, kicked, whipped or burned until he broke down. /80

The testimony of the prosecution's chief witness in the Nuremberg "Wilhelmstrasse" trial was obtained by threat of death. The American defense attorney, Warren Magee, had somehow obtained the transcript of the first pretrial interrogation of Friedrich Gaus, a former senior official in the German Foreign Office. Despite frantic protests by prosecuting attorney Robert Kempner, the judge decided to permit Magee to read from the document. During the pretrial interrogation session, Kempner told Gaus that he would be turned over to the Soviets for hanging. Tearfully pleading for mercy, Gaus begged Kempner to think of his wife and children. Kempner replied that he could save himself only by testifying in court against his former colleagues. A desperate Gaus, who had already endured four weeks in solitary confinement, agreed. When Magee finished reading from the damning transcript, Gaus sat with both hands to his face, totally devastated. /81

American soldiers repeatedly beat former SS captain Konrad Morgen in an unsuccessful effort to force him to sign a perjured affidavit against Ilse Koch, a defendant in the US military's 1947 "Buchenwald" case. American officials also threatened to turn Morgen over to the Soviets if he did not sign the false statement. /82

Luftwaffe General Field Marshal Erhard Milch was warned by a US Army Major to stop testifying on behalf of Hermann Göring in the main Nuremberg trial. The American officer told Milch that if he persisted, he would be charged as a war criminal himself, regardless of whether or not he was guilty. /83 Milch did not back down and was indeed charged. In 1947 a US Nuremberg court sentenced him to life imprisonment as a war criminal. Four years later, though, the US High Commissioner commuted his sentence to fifteen years, and a short time after that Milch was amnestied and released. /84

Reports of widespread torture at the postwar American-run "war crimes" trials at Dachau leaked out, resulting in so many protests that a formal investigation was eventually carried out. A US Army Commission of inquiry consisting of Pennsylvania Judge Edward van Roden and Texas Supreme Court Judge Gordon Simpson officially confirmed the charges of gross abuse. German defendants, they found, were routinely tortured at Dachau with savage beatings, burning matches under fingernails, kicking of testicles, months of solitary confinement, and threats of family reprisals. Low ranking prisoners were assured that their "confessions" would be used only against their former superiors in the dock. Later, though, these hapless men found their own "confessions" used against them when they were tried in turn. High ranking defendants were cynically assured that by "voluntarily" accepting all responsibility themselves they would thereby protect their former subordinates from prosecution. /85

One Dachau trial court reporter was so outraged at what was happening there in the name of justice that he quit his job. He testified to a US Senate subcommittee that the "most brutal" interrogators had been three German-born Jews. Although operating procedures at the Dachau trials were significantly worse than those used at Nuremberg, they give some idea of the spirit of the "justice" imposed on the vanquished Germans.

Virtually all of the US investigators who brought cases before American military courts at Dachau were "Jewish refugees from Germany" who "hated the Germans," recalled Joseph Halow, a US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947. "Many of the investigators gave vent to their hated by attempting to force confessions from the Germans by treating them brutally," including "severe beatings." /86

The case of Gustav Petrat, a German who had served as a guard at the Mauthausen, was not unusual. After repeated brutal beatings by US authorities, he broke down and signed a perjured statement. He was also whipped and threatened with immediate shooting. Petrat was prevented from securing exonerating evidence, and even potential defense witnesses were beaten and threatened to keep them from testifying. After a farcical trial by a US military court at Dachau, Petrat was sentenced to death and hanged in late 1948. He was 24 years old. /87

Use of torture to produce incriminating statements has not been limited to postwar Germany, of course. Such techniques have been systematically used by governments around the world. During the Korean War, American airmen held as prisoners by the Communist North Koreans made detailed statements "confessing" to their roles in waging germ warfare. Under physical and psychological torture, 38 US airmen "admitted" dropping bacteriological bombs that caused disease epidemics and claimed many Korean civilian lives. These statements were later shown to be false, and the airmen repudiated them after returning to the United States. Their phony confessions were the same kind of evidence given by Rudolf Höss and others at the Nuremberg trials. Under similar circumstances, Americans proved at least as ready to "confess" to monstrous but baseless crimes as Germans. /88

One of the most important and revealing Nuremberg cases is that of Oswald Pohl, the wartime head of the vast SS agency (WVHA) that ran the German concentration camps. After his capture in 1946, he was taken to Nenndorf where British soldiers tied him to a chair and beat him unconscious. He lost two teeth in repeated beatings. /89 He was then transferred to Nuremberg, where American military officials intensively interrogated him for more than half a year in sessions that lasted for hours. Altogether there were about 70 such sessions. During this period he had no access to an attorney or any other help. He was never formally charged with anything, nor even told precisely why he was being interrogated.

In a statement written after he was sentenced to death at Nuremberg in November 1947 by the American military court ("Concentration Camp" Case No. 4), Pohl described his treatment. /90 He reported that although he was generally not physically mistreated in Nuremberg as he had been at Nenndorf, he was nevertheless subjected to the less noticeable but, as he put it, "in their own way much more brutal emotional tortures."

American interrogators (most of them Jews) accused Pohl of killing 30 million people and of condemning ten million people to death. The interrogators themselves knew very well that such accusations were lies and tricks meant to break down his resistance, Pohl declared. "Because I am not emotionally thick-skinned, these diabolical intimidations were not without effect, and the interrogators achieved what they wanted: not the truth, but rather statements that served their needs," he wrote.

Pohl was forced to sign false and self-incriminating affidavits written by prosecution officials that were later used against him in his own trial. As he recalled:

Whenever genuine documents did not correspond to what the prosecution authorities wanted or were insufficient for the guilty sentences they sought, "affidavits" were put together. The most striking feature of these remarkable trial documents is that the accused often condemned themselves in them. That is understandable only to those who have themselves experienced the technique by which such "affidavits" are obtained.

He and other defendants were "destroyed" with these affidavits, which "contain provable errors of fact regarding essential points," Pohl wrote. Among the false statements signed by Pohl was one that incriminated former Reichsbank President Walter Funk, whom the Nuremberg Tribunal eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. /91

American officials also made use of false witnesses at Nuremberg, Pohl wrote:

Whenever these productions [affidavits] were not enough to produce the result sought by the prosecuting authorities, they marched out their so-called 'star witnesses,' or rather, paid witnesses ... A whole string of these shady, wretched characters played their contemptible game at Nuremberg. They included high government officials, generals and intellectuals as well as prisoners, mental defectives and real hardened criminals ... During the WVHA trial [of Pohl] a certain Otto appeared from a mental institution as a "star witness." His previous lifestyle would have been considered exemplary by any hardened criminal. The same is true of prosecution witness Krusial who presented the most spectacular fairy tales to the court under oath, which were naturally believed ...

Pohl also protested that defense attorneys were not allowed free access to the German wartime documents, which the prosecution was able to find and use without hindrance:

For almost two years the prosecution authorities could make whatever use they wanted of the many crates of confiscated documentary and archival material they had at their disposal. But the same access right was refused to the German defendants despite their repeated efforts ... This meant a tremendous or even complete paralysis and hindrance of the defense cases for the accused, for those crates also contained the exonerating material that the prosecution authorities were able to keep from being presented to the court. And that is called "proper" procedure.

Because Pohl held the rank of general in the German armed forces, his treatment by the British and Americans was illegal according to the international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war.

"As result of the brutal physical mistreatment in Nenndorf and my treatment in Nuremberg, I was emotionally a completely broken man," he wrote. "I was 54 years old. For 33 years I had served by country without dishonor, and I was unconscious of any crime."

Pohl summed up the character of the postwar trials of German leaders:

It was obvious during the Dachau trials, and it also came out unmistakably and only poorly disguised during the Nuremberg trials, that the prosecution authorities, among whom Jews predominated, were driven by blind hatred and obvious lust for revenge. Their goal was not the search for truth but rather the annihilation of as many adversaries as possible.

To an old friend Pohl wrote: "As one of the senior SS leaders I had never expected to be left unmolested. No more, however, did I expect a death sentence. It is a sentence of retribution." /92

He was hanged on June 7, 1951. In his final plea to the Nuremberg court, Pohl expressed his faith that one day blind hysteria would give way to just understanding: /93

After distance and time have clarified all events and when passion has ceased and when hatred and revenge have stilled their hunger, then these many millions of decent Germans who have sacrificed their lives for their fatherland will not be denied their share of sympathy which today is being attributed to the victims of the concentration camps, although a large number of them owe their fate not to political, racial or religious characteristics, but to their criminal past.

Extermination denied

Along with the millions of people around the world who avidly followed the Nuremberg proceedings by radio and newspaper, the defendants themselves were shocked by the evidence presented to substantiate the extermination charge. Above all, the testimony of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf made a deep impression. Contrary to what is often claimed or insinuated, however, the Nuremberg Tribunal defendants declared that they did not know of any extermination program during the war. /94 These men were, in a sense, the first "Holocaust revisionists."

The main Nuremberg defendant, Hermann Göring, who had been Hitler's second-in-command and designated successor during most of the Third Reich years, vehemently denied knowing of any extermination program during the war. "The first time I learned of these terrible exterminations," he exclaimed at one point, "was right here in Nuremberg." The German policy had been to expel the Jews, not kill them, he explained, and added that, to the best of his knowledge, Hitler did not know of any extermination policy either. /95

During a rare unguarded break between court sessions, fellow defendant Hans Fritzsche privately asked Göring about the truth of the extermination charge. The former Reichsmarschall solemnly assured Fritzsche that the accusation was not true. The Allied evidence for the charge, he insisted, was inaccurate or incomplete and totally contradicted everything he knew about the matter. In any case, Göring added, if there had been any mass killings, they certainly were not ordered by Hitler. /96

General Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the Armed Forces High Command, and probably Hitler's closest military adviser, gave similar testimony to the Tribunal. Responding to a direct question about this matter, he said: /97

I can only say, fully conscious of my responsibility, that I never heard, either by hint or by written or spoken words, of an extermination of Jews ... I never had any private information on the extermination of the Jews. On my word, as sure as I am sitting here, I heard all these things for the first time after the end of the war.

Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, testified that during the war he had heard only rumors and foreign reports of mass killings of Jews. He asked other officials, including Hitler, about these stories and was repeatedly assured that they were false. /98

Frank's testimony is particularly noteworthy because if millions of Jews had actually been exterminated in German occupied Poland, as alleged, hardly anyone would have been in a better position to know about it. During the course of the trial, Frank was overcome by a deep sense of Christian repentance. His psychological state was such that if he had known about an extermination program, he would have said so.

At one point during the proceedings, Frank was asked by his attorney, "Did you ever take part in any way in the annihilation of Jews?" His reply reflects his emotional state at the time: /99

I say yes, and the reason why I say yes is because, under the impression of these five months of the proceedings, and especially under the impression of the testimony of the witness [former Auschwitz commandant] Höss, I cannot answer to my conscience to shift the responsibility for this solely on these low-level people. I never built a Jewish extermination camp or helped to bring one into existence. But if Adolf Hitler personally shifted this terrible responsibility onto his people, than it also applies to me. After all, we carried on this struggle against Jewry for years ... And therefore I have the duty to answer your question in this sense and in this context with yes. A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.

These words, and especially the final sentence, have often been quoted to give the impression that the defendants themselves admitted their guilt and acknowledged the existence of a wartime German policy to exterminate the Jews.100 Less well-known are Frank's words during his final address to the Tribunal: /101

In the witness stand I said that a thousand years would not be enough to erase the guilt of our nation because of Hitler's behavior in this war. [However,] not only the behavior of our wartime enemies against our people and our soldiers, which has been carefully kept out of these proceedings, but also the enormous mass crimes of the most terrible kind against Germans, which I have only now learned about, especially in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and in the Sudetenland, which have been and are still being carried out by Russians, Poles and Czechs, have now already completely canceled out any possible guilt of our people. Who will ever judge these crimes against the German people?

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, wartime head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was certain that he would soon be put to death regardless of the evidence presented to the Tribunal: "The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here." In a question-and-answer exchange, Kaltenbrunner rejected the charge that he had ordered gassings: /102

Q. Witness after witness, by testimony and affidavit, has said that the gas chamber killings were done on general or specific orders of Kaltenbrunner.

A. Show me one of those men or any of those orders. It is utterly impossible.

Q. Practically all of the orders came through Kaltenbrunner.

A. Entirely impossible.

The case of Albert Speer, one-time Hitler confidant and wartime Armaments Minister, deserves special mention. His Nuremberg defense strategy was unique and also rather successful because he did not hang. While maintaining that he personally knew nothing of an extermination program during the war, he nevertheless declared himself morally culpable for having worked so diligently for a regime he belatedly came to regard as evil. After serving a twenty-year sentence in Spandau prison, the "repentant Nazi" was "rehabilitated" by the mass media for his somewhat subtle but fervent condemnation of the Hitler regime. His contrite memoir, published in the US as Inside the Third Reich, was highly acclaimed and sold very profitably in Europe and America.

Until his death in 1981, Speer steadfastly insisted that he did not know of any extermination program or gassings during the war. His position was remarkable because, if a wartime policy to exterminate the Jews had actually existed, almost no one would have been in a better position to have known about it. As Reich Armaments Minister, Speer was responsible for the continental mobilization of all available resources, including critically needed Jewish workers. That millions of Jews could have been transported across Europe and killed at a wartime industrial center as important as Auschwitz, and elsewhere, without Speer's knowledge simply defies belief. /103

During the Nuremberg "Wilhelmstrasse" trial, the chief of the Reich Chancellery from 1933 to 1945, Hans Lammers, was asked if he "was still of the opinion that no program for exterminating the Jews was ever set up." He answered: "Yes, I am of that opinion. At least the program never came to my attention. The program cannot have been set up." Lammers, who was Hitler's closest legal adviser, went on the explain: "I did not know of any mass killings and, of the cases I heard about, the reports were allegations, rumors ... The fact that individual cases occurred here and there, the shooting of Jews in wartime in some towns or other, that I read something about that and heard something about that, that is very easily possible." /104

Such testimony by the men who were most familiar with Germany's overall Jewish policy is routinely dismissed as brazen lying. But the categorical and self-consistent nature of this testimony, sometimes by men who knew that death soon awaited them, suggests a core of truth. On the other hand, to accept the Holocaust extermination story means giving greater credibility to the most fantastic and often demonstrably false testimonies by very questionable witnesses.

Other Postwar Trials

During the decades since Nuremberg, many individuals have been tried in (West) Germany and other countries for alleged wartime participation in exterminating the Jews. Rarely, if ever, has a defendant ever substantially challenged the Holocaust story. The accused invariably adopted the defense strategy successfully used by Speer at Nuremberg: He accepted the extermination story but denied or minimized his own personal involvement. To deny an extermination program in trials that were organized on the working assumption that such a program existed would have been judicial suicide.

These trials are comparable in some respects to the Soviet show trials of 1936-1938. The defendants in the well-publicized Moscow trials never denied the existence of vast criminal conspiracies involving major Soviet personalities who supposedly plotted the most horrible crimes in league with hostile foreign powers. Instead, the accused pleaded that he was not personally guilty, or that his guilt was minimal and that he had truly repented. (Remarkably, even foreign observers who should have known better, such as US Ambassador in Moscow Joseph Davies, were inclined to accept the Stalinist show trials as genuine and essentially just.) /105

Comparisons have also been drawn between the "Holocaust" trials and the witchcraft trials of past centuries. Those accused of witchcraft never denied the existence or diabolical power of witches. Instead they insisted that they were not personally guilty of the charges against them. Nuremberg defendant Hans Fritzsche, who had been one of Germany's most prominent and effective wartime radio news commentators, summed up the problem: "If someone accuses me of killing someone, than I can prove the contrary. But if I am accused of being the devil, there's no way to disprove that, because it can't be done." /106

One of the most important of the post-Nuremberg "Holocaust" trials was the 1963-1965 Frankfurt "Auschwitz" trial of 22 former Auschwitz SS men. The lengthy case received worldwide media coverage and assumed something of the character of a show trial. /107 Deciding the guilt or innocence of the defendants was "extraordinarily difficult," the judges declared in their verdict, because of the very inconclusive nature of the evidence. "We have no absolute evidence for the individual killings. We have only the witness testimonies." The judges acknowledged that "the possibilities of verifying the witness declarations were very limited." The judges further emphasized "this weakness of witness testimony" by citing the case of a Buchenwald official convicted of murdering an inmate who later turned up alive. /108

This situation was embarrassingly underscored during the trial when former inmate Rudolf Kauer suddenly repudiated earlier statements about his one-time SS masters. In pre-trial interrogation he claimed to have seen defendant Wilhelm Boger brutally beat a naked Polish woman with a horse whip, ripping off one breast and flooding a room with blood. When asked to repeat his statement in court, Kauer admitted: "I lied about that. That was just a yarn going around the camp. I never saw it ..." Another claim that Boger had smashed an infant's skull against a tree trunk was also not true, he confessed. Although Boger was not liked, Kauer told the court, he was actually a just SS man.

Another defendant, Klaus Dylewski, whom Kauer had called "one of the worse killers" at Auschwitz, was actually "harmless." All of his pre-trial accusations were lies, Kauer said, calmly adding: "You can punish me if you want. I am used to that." After the presiding judge admonished him several times for repudiating his earlier statements, Kauer replied: "We don't need to lose any more words. It's not worth it. What I say now is the truth." /109

Former Auschwitz camp adjutant and SS Captain Robert Mulka, the main defendant in the trial, was pronounced guilty of participation in mass murder and sentenced to 14 years at hard labor, a verdict that many outsiders considered outrageously lenient. But less than four months later Mulka was quietly released, an outcome that should astonish only those not familiar with the nature of such trials. /110

Conclusion

Very few of those who glibly refer to "all the Nuremberg evidence" as proof for the Holocaust extermination story are familiar with either the real nature of this "evidence" or the character of these trials. On closer examination, solid documentary or forensic evidence of a wartime German policy to exterminate Europe's Jews proves to be elusive. As we have seen, the evidence that has been presented consists largely of extorted confessions, spurious testimonies, and fraudulent documents. The postwar Nuremberg trials were politically motivated proceedings meant more to discredit the leaders of a defeated regime than to establish truth.

We do not need trials or "confessions" to prove that the Katyn massacre or the postwar deportation of Germans from eastern and central Europe actually took place. By comparison, the Holocaust story does not claim just a few isolated massacres, but a vast extermination program taking place across the European continent over a three-year period involving several governments and millions of people. The fact that the Holocaust story must rely so heavily on highly dubious testimony evidence and trials staged in a historically unparalleled atmosphere of hysteria, intimidation and propaganda demonstrates its inherent weakness.

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[Apollonian]

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Notes

1. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (11 vols.), Washington, DC: U.S. Govt., 1946-1948. (The "red series.") / NC&A, Vol. 1, pp. 134-135.

2. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal. 42 vols. Nuremberg: 1947-1949. (The "blue series.")
/ IMT, vol. 19, p. 501.

3. See the succinct declaration by all the German defense attorneys in the IMT case. Published in: Jay W. Baird, ed., From Nuremberg to My Lai (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 81-83.; Note also the summary comment by Hans Lammers of the Nuremberg verdict against him, in: Georg Franz-Willing, Die Reichskanzlei 1933-1945 (Tübingen: 1984), p. 221.

4. Werner Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (New York: Scribner's, 1979), pp. 281, 282.; The liberal American weekly Nation editorially acknowledged in October 1945: "The Nuremberg court is political court with a political job to perform." Nation, Oct. 27, 1945, p. 418. Quoted in: James J. Martin, Revisionist Viewpoints (Colorado Springs: 1971), p. 125.

5. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals... ("blue series"), IMT, Vol. 19, p. 398. (Testimony of July 26, 1946).; In a letter to his wife, written shortly before his execution, former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop commented: "Everyone knows that the [guilty] verdict is utterly untenable, but I was once Adolf Hitler's Foreign Minister and politics demands that for this fact I shall be condemned." Quoted in: Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (New York: 1970), p. 185.

6. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 92.

7. Report of Robert H. Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945 (Washington, DC: US State Dept., 1949), pp. 104-106, 303.; Whitney R. Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg (Dallas: S.M.U. Press, 1954), pp. 16-17.; Leo Kahn, Nuremberg Trials (New York: Ballantine, 1972), p. 26.

8. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox (New York: 1978), p. 122.; N. Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann (New York: 1969), pp. 216-217.; WJC official Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig claimed in 1949 that "it was the WJC which had secured the holding of the Nuremberg Trials ..." See: "W.J.C. Claims: The Nuremberg Trials," Jewish Chronicle (London), Dec. 16, 1949, p. 17. See also confirmatory letter by Zelmanovits in: ewish Chronicle, Dec. 30, 1949, p. 16. Note also: Milton R. Konvitz, "Will Nuremberg Serve Justice?," Commentary (New York), Vol. I, No. 3, January 1946, p. 11.

9. World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion (New York: WJC, 1948), pp. 141, 264, 266, 267.

10. Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 10-13; Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg (New York: Basic, 1977), pp. 26-33. Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder (London: 1983), pp. 116 f. On the other hand, American-Jewish newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer did not favor such trials. In May 1945 he urged that 1.5 million leading Germans should be simply be summarily shot. The New York Times, May 23, 1945, p. 11.

11. Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (IHR, 1983), pp. 27-30, 100. Sources cited: Ted Berkman, Cast a Giant Shadow (1962); "War Crimes" article written by Marcus in Britannica Book of the Year, 1947, pp. 819-21; Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 11, p. 945; Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 4, 1948, p. 179. See also: R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (1983), p. 11.

12. Hal Foust, "Nazi Trial Judge Rips 'Injustice'," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 23, 1948, pp. 1, 2.

13. Alpheus T. Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (New York: Viking, 1956), p. 716.

14. Congressional Record -- Appendix, Vol. 95, Sec. 14, (June 15, 1949), p. A 3741.

15. Congressional Record -- House, Vol. 93, Sec. 9, (Nov. 28, 1947), p. 10938. Also quoted in: W. Bosch, Judgment on Nuremberg (1970), p. 83.

16. Delivered at Kenyon College, Ohio, Oct. 5, 1946. Vital Speeches of the Day, Nov. 1, 1946, p. 47. Text also published in: Jay W. Baird, ed., From Nuremberg to My Lai (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 107-113. See also: William Bosch, Judgment on Nuremberg (1970), pp. 73-81. Taft's devotion to principle during a time of widespread anti-German hysteria impressed John F. Kennedy, who praised the Ohio senator's stand in his award-winning best seller, Profiles in Courage.

17. M. R. Konvitz, "Will Nuremberg Serve Justice?," Commentary, January 1946 (Vol. I, No. 3), p. 11.

18. H. K. Thompson and H. Strutz, eds., Dönitz at Nuremberg: A Reappraisal (IHR, 1983), p. 196.

19. H. K. Thompson and H. Strutz, eds., Dönitz at Nuremberg (1983), pp. 194-195. Similarly, British Admiral Sir Barry Domville, former Director of British Naval Intelligence and President of the Royal Naval College, stated: "Anybody who was a victim of the iniquitous Nuremberg Trials has my deep sympathy. I am only surprised that so many reputable men in both our countries were found willing to take part in such a travesty of justice ... The Nuremberg Trials leave an indelible blot upon the reputations of all countries which took part in them." (H. K. Thompson and H. Strutz, eds., Dönitz at Nuremberg, p. 164.)

20. Henry Fairlie, "How the Good War Went Bad," The New Republic, May 20, 1985, pp. 18 ff.

21. Henry L. Stimson, who had served as US Secretary of War, 19401945, wrote in 1947: "... In the judgment of Nuremberg there is affirmed the central principle of peace ... A standard has been raised to which Americans, at least, must repair; for it is only as this standard is accepted, supported and enforced that we can move onward to a world of law and peace." Quoted in: Jay W. Baird, ed., From Nuremberg to My Lai (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), p. 125. Nuremberg Tribunal defendant Alfred Rosenberg declared: "I frankly welcome the idea that a crime of genocide is to be outlawed by international agreement and placed under the severest penalties ..." International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals ... ("blue series"), IMT, vol. 22, p. 382.

22. W. Bosch, Judgment on Nuremberg (1970), p. 189.

23. Werner Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (1979), pp. 69, 302 (n. 23). See also: James McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg (London: 1985), pp. 412-413.

24. See: Ulrich Stern, ed., Die wahren Schuldigen am zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: 1990).

25. Jackson letter to Truman, Oct. 12, 1945. State Department files. Quoted in: R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (1983),
p. 68.

26. Constantine FitzGibbon, Denazification (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), pp. 71-72.

27. "Behind the scenes at Nuremberg," Daily Telegraph (London), Jan. 27, 1977, p. 19.; J. McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg (1985), pp. 245, 414.

28. See: Richard H. Minear, Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Tokyo: C. Tuttle, 1984), p. 57.

29. M. Vozlenski, Der Spiegel, Oct. 6, 1986 (No. 41), pp. 55 ff.

30. George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), pp. 175, 261.

31. "The Nuremberg Judgment," editorial, The Economist (London), Oct. 5, 1946, p. 532.; See also: J. McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg, pp. 67, 173-174, 380, 414 f.

32. Marguerite Higgins, "Russian Quotes Allied Sanction of Deportations," New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 14, 1946.

33. James Bacque, Other Losses (Toronto: Stoddart, 1989). See especially pp. 26-28.

34. Quoted in: Wolf R. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess (London: 1986), pp. 392 f.

35. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression ("red series"), NC&A, vol. 1, p. vi (preface).; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: 1960), pp. ix, x.

36. Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (New York: Behrman, 1976), pp. 2-3.; Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression ("red series"), NC&A, vol. 1, p. vi. See also: C. Mattogno, "Myth," Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1988, pp. 133-134.; John Mendelsohn, "The Holocaust: Records in the National Archives ...," Prologue (Washington, DC: National Archives), Spring 1984, pp. 23 ff. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), pp. 1224-27.

37. Alfred M. de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (Lincoln: 1990), pp. 238 f.

38. Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979), p. 108.; Princeton University history professor Arno Mayer wrote that "authentic documents about the making, transmission, and implementation of the extermination policy" are "rare." Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? (New York: 1989), p. 363.

39. W. Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (1979), pp. 97, 98, 99, 272, 273-274, 331 (n. 50).; Plea by attorney Dr. Alfred Seidl in: Udo Walendy, ed., Auschwitz im IG-Farben Prozess (Vlotho: 1981), pp. 380, 383.; Hildegard Springer (Hans Fritzsche), Das Schwert auf der Waage (Heidelberg: K. Vowinckel, 1953), p. 112.; John Mendelsohn, "Trial by Document," Prologue (Washington, DC: National Archives), Winter 1975, esp. pp. 230-231.; Richard Pemsel, Hitler (Tübingen: 1986), pp. 87-89, 104.; IMT defense attorney Dr. H. Pelckmann protested against the "disappearance" of important defense documents: International Military Tribunal "blue series," vol. 21 (pp. 383-409 of German-language IMG edition). Quoted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Lügen um Heinrich Himmler," II. Teil, Historische Tatsachen Nr. 47 (Vlotho: 1991), p. 32.; On the protests of defense attorneys about some of these difficulties, see: Carlos Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (1988), pp. 242-244, 248, 249, 252-256.

40. Karl Hoeffkes, ed., Deutsch-sowjetische Geheimverbindungen (1988), pp. 28-30.; R. Pemsel, Hitler (Tübingen: 1986), p. 104.

41. W. Maser, Nuremberg (1979), p. 199.

42. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression ("red series"), NC&A, Vol. 1, p. 9.; Jay W. Baird, ed., From Nuremberg to My Lai (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 16-17.

43. Documents 159-L (USA-222) and PS-3311 (USA-293). Published in: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 37, p. 621, and, IMT, vol. 32, pp. 153-158.

44. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 1, p. 54.; IMT, vol. 7, pp. 425-427.; A. de Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (1990), pp. 228-239.; J. McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg, pp. 51, 67, 222.; R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, pp. 66-67, 452-455.; Document USSR-54 is published in IMT ("blue series"), vol. 39, pp. 290-332.; See also: C. Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (1988), pp. 100-120, 229, 230, 234-235.; R. Faurisson, "Katyn a Nuremberg," Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste, No. 2, Aug.-Oct. 1990, pp. 138 ff.

45. New York Times, April 13 and 14, 1990.

46. Dorothy Rabinowitz, About the Holocaust (New York: 1979), p. 6.; A. Suzman and D. Diamond, Six Million Did Die (Johannesburg: 1978), pp. 33, 34, 35.

47. Internationally respected historian Werner Maser has noted "the existence of forged documents" at Nuremberg. W. Maser, Nuremberg, p. 98.; See also: Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen (Tübingen: 1981), pp. 151, 155, 171.; After the war, Eichmann also expressed the view that some purported documents are fraudulent. See: Rudolf Aschenauer, ed., Ich, Adolf Eichmann (1980), p. 153.

48. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 22, pp. 148 f.; See: C. Porter, Made in Russia (1988), pp. 269-270, 410-411.; Defendant Baldur von Schirach, wartime Gauleiter of Vienna, complained that another prosecution document was fraudulent: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 14, p. 451.; Defendant Göring and attorney Stahmer objected to another document: IMT, vol. 9, pp. 610 f.

49. M. Weber, "Simon Wiesenthal," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-1990, p. 443.

50. Cited or quoted in: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 7, pp. 442-443; vol. 14, pp. 518-519; vol. 19, pp. 256-259, 437-438, 494-495, 498; vol. 24, p. 182.

51. W. Malanowski, Der Spiegel, Sept. 7, 1985, pp. 92 ff.; M. Weber, "Swiss Historian Exposes ...," Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pp. 378-380.; H. W. Koch, ed., Aspects of the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), pp. 13 f.; "Antideutscher Schwindel-Verleger gestorben," D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Jan. 24, 1992, p. 9.

52. Dankwart Kluge, Das Hossbach -- 'Protokoll' (1980).; M. Weber, Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pp. 372 ff.; A.J.P. Taylor, An Old Man's Diary (London: 1984), p. 154. (Taylor added: "No evidence that Hitler planned aggressive war has ever been produced ... [This] revision upsets the entire verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which is still solemnly quoted as justification of the Allied war against Germany.").

53. Heath W. Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," Political Communication and Persuasion, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1985. Reprinted in: Armenian Allegations: Myth and Reality (Washington, DC: 1986), pp. 119-132.; See also the letters by Dr. Robert John in The New York Times, June 8 and July 6, 1985.

54. L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (1976), p. 10.; In her 1981 book, The Holocaust and the Historians (pp. 100-101), Dawidowicz wrote of the case of Polish-Jewish historian Ber(nard) Mark, Director of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw and author of several Holocaust books. She charged that he had falsified Holocaust sources. Another Jewish historian, Michel Borwicz, similarly charged in 1962 that Ber Mark was a falsifier ("transformer") of documents. See: M. Borwicz, Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale (Paris), No. 45, Jan. 1962, p. 93.

55. Raul Hilberg has noted that Martin Gilbert's 1985 book, The Holocaust, relies heavily on such questionable testimony. See interview with Hilberg in: "Recording the Holocaust," Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending June 28, 1986, pp. 8, 9.; On the general unreliability of "witness testimony," see Witness for the Defense (by E. Loftus & K. Ketcham), reviewed by John Cobden in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 2), pp. 238-249.

56. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London: Sphere books, pb., 1971), p. 581.

57. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz : Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (1989), p. 23.

58. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Compass/Viking, 1965), p. 224.

59. L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (1976), p. 11.; Jewish Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny has complained about those who have simply "invented Holocaust events." See: G. Sereny, New Statesman (London), July 17, 1981, p. 17.

60. G. Tillion, "Le Systeme concentrationnaire allemand," Revue de l'histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale, July 1954. (Quoted in: IHR Newsletter, No. 59, July 1988, pp. 5, 6.)

61. Jewish Social Studies (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations), Jan. 1950, Vol. 12, pp. 65-66.

62. B. Amouyal, "Doubts over evidence of camp survivors," Jerusalem Post (Israel), August 17, 1986, p. 1.; Similarly, many American imposters have falsely but convincingly claimed heroic participation in pitched battles or involvement in horrific atrocities during the Vietnam war. See: "Fighting Lies for Vietnam: Phony Soldiers," The Washington Times, June 4, 1990, pp. D1, D5.; "Imitation Vietnam Syndrome," Baltimore Sun, March 20, 1988, pp. 1E, 5E.

63. R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 454.; A. de Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (1990), pp. 230-235.

64. Sworn and notarized statement by Pinter, Feb. 9, 1960. Facsimile in: Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: 1988), p. 429.; Note also Pinter report in Der Weg, No. 8, 1954, reprinted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Politkriminologie," Historische Tatsachen Nr. 43 (Vlotho: 1990), pp. 20 ff.

65. Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 195.

66. Written declaration of A. Gross, in: Erich Kern, Meineid gegen Deutschland (1971), p. 264.

67. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-1990, pp. 459-483. ; Halow deals with this entire issue in greater detail in his book, Innocent at Dachau, to be published by the IHR. In 1948 German bishop Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, who been interned for several years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau camps during the war, condemned the use of such "professional witnesses" in American run trials, and cited a particularly blatant example. Münchner Katholische Kirchenzeitung, Nov. 7, 1948. Quoted in: D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Dec. 13, 1985, p. 6.

68. "Major Poullada's Final Defense Plea in the Nordhausen-Dora Concentration Camp Case," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 1), pp. 81-119.

69. Letter by former OSI director Walter J. Rockler, National Law Journal, Dec. 8, 1980, p. 14.; See also: B. Amouyal, "Treblinka witnesses were discredited," Jerusalem Post -- International Edition, Week ending April 5, 1986.

70. "Nazi Hunter Looks for Witnesses, Finds Hucksters," Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY), Dec. 4, 1981, p. 2.

71. "The Nazi Who Never Was," The Washington Post, May 10, 1981, pp. B5, B8.; Michael Arndt, "The Wrong Man," Sunday, The Chicago Tribune Magazine, Dec. 2, 1984, pp. 15- 35.; Kirk Makin, "Media distorted ...," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Feb. 15, 1985, pp. M1, M3.

72. Emil Lachout, an Austrian officer who served with the postwar Allied War Crimes Commission, testified under oath in a 1988 court case that German officials had been tortured to produce fraudulent statements about alleged killings of Jews in German camp gas chambers. He also provided what he said was a copy of a 1948 document confirming this. See: Robert Lenski, Holocaust on Trial (1990), pp. 274, 278.; Müller circular notice, Oct. 1, 1948, published in: Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1988, pp. 117-124.

73. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-239.; R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-1987, pp. 389-403.

74. Höss statement, April 5, 1946. Document 3868-PS (USA-819).; Höss statement, May 20, 2946. Document NI-034.; Höss testimony at the Nuremberg Tribunal, published in: IMT ("blue series"), vol. vol. 33, pp. 275-279 ; NC&A ("red series"), vol. 6, pp. 787-790.

75. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago I-II (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 112 (n. 15).

76. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 15, pp. 64-68.

77. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 17, p. 214.; K. Heiden, "Why They Confess," Life magazine, June 20, 1949, pp. 92 ff. (During the trial Fritzsche recanted his forced statement.)

78. W. Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (1979), pp. 51-52, 47, 60.; K. Stimely, "The Torture of Julius Streicher," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1984, pp. 106-119.; "Streicher Case Opens," The Times (London), April 27, 1946, p. 3.; Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 238-239.; Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (Regnery, 1949), p. 90.

79. Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (1949), pp. 80-81. Cited in: A. Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, p. 189.

80. Nuremberg "Case 8" presiding judge Wyatt took note of the charges of torture. "During the course of the trial," the American jurist declared, "several witnesses, including some defendants, who made affidavits that were offered as evidence by the prosecution, testified that they were threatened, and that duress of a very improper nature was practiced by an interrogator." Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Trials of the War Criminals ... ("green series,"/ Washington, DC: 1949-1953), NMT, vol. 15, p. 879.

81. Letter by Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk written in Essen, April 15, 1975, shortly before his death. Published in: Die Bauernschaft (Mohrkirch), April 1981, pp. 34-35.; Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 172.; T. Bower, Blind Eye to Murder (1983), p. 314.; "US Ankläger Kempner schwer belastet," Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung, Feb. 23, 1973. Cited in: Austin App, No Time for Silence (IHR, 1987), p. 17.

82. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), p. 774.; Karlheinz Pintsch, an adjutant of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, was tortured for months by the Soviet secret police in Moscow in an effort to force him to sign a statement designed to incriminate Hess. In spite of his cruel treatment, Pintsch never gave in. Wolf R. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess (London: 1986), p. 62.

83. Milch sworn statement, April 9, 1947. Quoted in: E. Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (1988), p. 400.

84. R. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza, 1984), p. 210.

85. On Dachau trial abuses see: Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), pp. 185-200.; Judge Edward L. van Roden, "American Atrocities in Germany," The Progressive, Feb. 1949, pp. 21-22. Reprinted in: The Congressional Record -- Appendix, Vol. 95, Sec. 12, (March 10, 1949), pp. A1365-66.; Dachau trial defense attorney Lt. Col. Willis M. Everett, Jr., reviewed prosecution methods in a petition submitted to the Supreme Court. Complete text in: The Congressional Record -- Senate, Vol. 95, Sec. 2, (March 10, 1949), pp. 2159-2165. Important excerpts were published in: The Congressional Record -- Appendix, Vol. 95, Sec. 13, (April 5, 1949), pp. A-2065-67. Also useful are: Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice (Regnery, 1949).; Reginald T. Paget, Manstein: His Campaigns and His Trial (London: 1951).

86. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90, p. 459.; See also: T. Bower, Blind Eye to Murder, pp. 304, 310, 313.

87. J. Halow, "Innocent at Dachau," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1989-90 (Vol. 9, No. 4), pp. 452-483. Note especially pp. 478-482 (G. Petrat statement of Sept. 10, 1948).

88. "Korean War," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973 edition, Vol. 13, p. 474.; Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (1975), p. 355.

89. Legal brief for Oswald Pohl ("Grundzüge des Systems der Deutschen Konzentrationslager und Bemerkungen zum Urteil des Militärtribunals II gegen Oswald Pohl"), pp. 23-27. Compiled (in 1948?) by defense attorney Dr. Alfred Seidl. Copy provided to the author in 1990 by the defendant's grandson, Fritjof Pohl.; W. Maser, Nuremberg (1979), p. 100.; See also Oswald Pohl's written statement of June 1, 1948, cited below.

90. Written statement by Pohl, June 1, 1948. Deutsche Hochschullehrerzeitung (Tübingen), Nr. 1/2, 1963, pp. 21-26. Reprinted in: U. Walendy, ed., "Lügen um Heinrich Himmler, II. Teil," Historische Tatsachen Nr. 47 (Vloth: 1991), pp. 35-40.; Although I have not been able to obtain a copy of the original text of Pohl's 1948 statement, its essential accuracy can be confirmed by comparing it with the text of the legal brief (cited above) compiled by his attorney, Dr. Siedl. Fritjof Pohl (Oswald Pohl's grandson) and Wigbert Grabert (son of the editor-publisher of the Deutsche Hochschullehrerzeitung) have also confirmed the authenticity of Pohl's 1948 statement.

91. W. Maser, Nuremberg (New York: 1979), p. 100.

92. W. Maser, Nuremberg, p. 175.

93. Nuremberg Military Tribunal, NMT ("green series"), Vol. 5, p. 934.

94. R. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1985), p. 1067.; R. Faurisson, "Response," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1986, p. 40.; J. Heydecker and J. Leeb, Der Nürnberger Prozess (Cologne: 1958), pp. 489 ff. Cited in: W. Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos (1979), p. 104.; See also: R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 514. According to a recent editorial in the San Francisco Examiner ("Holocaust disbelievers," March 30, 1992), "Not a single war criminal tried at Nuremberg offered as a defense, 'It didn't happen', they said they were "only following orders."

95. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 9, pp. 611, 612, 619.; Wm. L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: 1960), p. 964, footnote.; During a conversation in early 1946 with his defense attorney, Göring said: "I really knew nothing about the mass murder of Jews." Quoted by a young lawyer who was an assistant to Göring's defense attorney, Dr. Stahmer, in: Gespräche mit Hermann Göring während des Nürnberger Prozesses, Teil I (W. Germany: 1950 and reprint. no date, no place), p. 15. (Conversation on Jan. 12, 1946).; See also: David Irving, Göring (New York: 1989), p. 469.

96. Hans Fritzsche (H. Springer), The Sword in the Scales (London: A. Wingate, 1953), pp. 144-145. German edition: Das Schwert auf der Waage (Heidelberg: K. Vowinckel, 1953), p. 118.

97. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 15, pp. 332-333. Also quoted in: J. McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg, pp. 239-240.; See also the similar testimonies of: Radio commentator and propaganda ministry official Hans Fritzsche: A. de Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (1990), p. 111.; Economics minister Walter Funk: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 22, pp. 387 f.; Minister for the occupied Soviet territories Alfred Rosenberg: IMT, vol. 22, p. 382.; Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop: R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 54.; Foreign Office State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker: NMT, vol. 13, pp. 437, 443, 445.; Note also statements by officials Stuckart, Klopfer, Leibbrandt, and Kritzinger, in: Robert Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen (Zurich: 1961), pp. 151-160.; Documents PL-54 and PL-64 in: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 42, pp. 348, 385.

98. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 12, pp. 17-19.; See also the testimony of Joseph Bühler, who worked closely with Frank for many years: IMT, vol. 12, pp. 64, 69, 70.; Note also: R. Faurisson, "Challenge," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1984, pp. 298 f.

99. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 12, p. 13. German text quoted in: Richard Pemsel, Hitler (Tübingen: 1986), p. 317.

100. Final sentence quoted by British prosecutor Shawcross at Nuremberg: IMT ("blue series"), vol. 19, p. 433, and in: W. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), p. vii.; Entire passage quoted in: R. Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews (1985), p. 1055.; R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. 380.

101. IMT ("blue series"), vol. 22, p. 385. German text quoted in: R. Pemsel, Hitler (1986), p. 129.; Postwar criminal mistreatment of the Germans by the Allies is dealt with in Gruesome Harvest by Ralph F. Keeling, and in Nemesis at Potsdam by Alfred de Zayas.

102. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression ("red series"), Suppl. vol. B, pp. 1306-1307, 1299. See also: IMT, vol. 22, pp. 378-379.; Hans Fritzsche (H. Springer), The Sword in the Scales (London: Wingate, 1953), pp. 182-187.

103. Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: The End of a Myth (New York: 1985), pp. 194-195. See also: M. Weber, "Albert Speer and the Holocaust," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1984, p. 439.; M. Weber, "Legal Declaration," Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1982, pp. 42-43.; A. Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, pp. 179-180.; Henry A. Turner, Jr., "The Nazi Who Made a Comeback," The New York Times Book Review, March 3, 1985, pp. 9-10.

104. NMT ("green series"), vol. 13, pp. 421, 430.; See also Lammers' testimony in IMT ("blue series"), vol. 11, pp. 53, 115-116.; Lammers' career and the history of the Reich Chancellery during the Third Reich is dealt with in: Georg Franz-Willing, Der Reichskanzlei: 1933-1945 (Tübingen: 1984).

105. On the Moscow show trials, see: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 83-132, 468.; Joseph E. Davies, Mission To Moscow (New York: Pocket Books, 1943), pp. 38-39.; Edward Crankshaw, ed., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: 1970), pp. 352-353.

106. H. Fritzsche, Es sprach Hans Fritzsche, p. 144. Quoted in: R. Pemsel, Hitler (1986), p. 167.

107. See Wilhelm Stäglich's useful analysis of the trial, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence (IHR, 1990), especially chapter four. (German-language edition: Der Auschwitz-Mythos, 1979).; See also: Konnilyn Feig, Hitler's Death Camps (New York: 1981), p. 365.

108. Bernd Naumann, Auschwitz (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 8-26, 416-417. Quoted in: A. Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, pp. 187-188.

109. "Belastende Aussage angeblich unter Alkohol," Frankfurter Rundschau, July 7, 1964, p. 7.; "Der Auschwitz-Prozess," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 7, 1964, p. 6.; "Lied About Auschwitz," Miami Herald (UPI dispatch), July 7, 1964, p. 15-A or 4-D, depending on edition.

110. Cited by A. Butz in: "Perspective in the 'Holocaust' Controversy," Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1982, p. 374, and in the 1983 US edition of Hoax of the Twentieth Century, p. 338.; K. Feig reports in Hitler's Death Camps (1981), p. 365, that all of the defendants were set free on appeal.


From The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1992 (Vol. 12, No. 2), pages 167-213.

 

[Apollonian]

American Jurists and Attorneys Opposing Injustice at Nuremberg​

John Wear

Link: http://inconvenienthistory.com/10/3/6276

The Nuremberg and later trials were organized primarily for political purposes rather than to dispense impartial justice. This article will discuss the efforts of three American attorneys to expose and correct the injustice of these trials.

Charles F. Wennerstrum

Iowa Supreme Court Justice Charles F. Wennerstrum, who served as the presiding judge in the Nuremberg trial of German generals, resigned his appointment in disgust at the proceedings. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, he criticized the one-sided handling of evidence in the trials. Wennerstrum said that selection of the evidence in the trials was made by the prosecution from the large tonnage of captured German records. The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution considered material to the case.[1]

Justice Wennerstrum also said that the prosecution and staff at Nuremberg were more interested in revenge than justice. He stated: “The prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, aloof from personal ambitions for convictions...The trials were to have convinced the Germans of the guilt of their leaders. They convinced the Germans merely that their leaders lost the war to tough conquerors.”[2]

Wennerstrum stated: “The entire atmosphere is unwholesome…Lawyers, clerks, interpreters, and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent years, whose backgrounds were embedded in Europe’s hatreds and prejudices…If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never have come here…The high ideals announced as the motives for creating these tribunals have not been evident.” The lack of appeal in the Nuremberg cases left Wennerstrum “with a feeling that justice has been denied.”[3]

Edward L. Van Roden

Pennsylvania judge Edward L. Van Roden and Texas Supreme Court Justice Gordon Simpson were members of a three-man commission to investigate the torture and abuse of German defendants in American-run war-crimes trials. Their Simpson Commission report examined the 139 death sentences against Germans which at that time had not been carried out. The cases against the 139 doomed men fell into three groups: Germans accused of involvement in crimes at the Dachau Concentration Camps, in the killing of the crews of downed American warplanes, or in the Malmédy incident.

Van Roden stated in an article in The Progressive magazine that he was shocked at the methods used to obtain confessions from German defendants:

The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four, and five months. They were confined between four walls, with no windows, and no opportunity of exercise. Two meals a day were shoved in to them through a slot in the door. They were not allowed to talk to anyone. They had no communication with their families or any minister or priest during that time.

This solitary confinement proved sufficient in itself in some cases to persuade the Germans to sign prepared statements. These statements not only involved the signer, but often would involve other defendants.

Our investigators would put a black hood over the accused’s head and then punch him in the face with rubber hose. Many of the German defendants had teeth knocked out. Some had their jaws broken.

All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investigators.[4]

Van Roden stated that German prisoners who still refused to sign false statements faced more-severe improper treatment:

Sometimes a prisoner who refused to sign was led into a dimly lit room, where a group of civilian investigators, wearing U.S. Army uniforms, were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the center and two candles burning, one on each side. “You will now have your American trial,” the defendant was told.

The sham court passed a sentence of death. Then the accused was told, “You will hang in a few days, as soon as the general approves this sentence: but in the meantime sign this confession and we can get you acquitted.” Some still wouldn’t sign.

We were shocked by the crucifix being used so mockingly.[5]

Van Roden concluded: “Unless these crimes committed by Americans are exposed by us at home, the prestige of America and American justice will suffer permanent and irreparable damage.”[6]

Willis N. Everett, Jr.

American attorney Willis N. Everett, Jr. was assigned to defend the 74 German defendants accused in the Malmédy incident. The trial took place from May 16 to July 16, 1946 before a military tribunal of senior American officers operating under rules established by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.[7]

Everett and his defense staff of lawyers, interpreters and stenographers divided into several teams to interview the defendants. Everett wrote to his family of the experience:

Several defendants today said they thought they had had a trial…a Col. sat on the Court and his defense counsel rushed the proceedings through and he was to be hanged the next day so he might as well write up a confession and clear some of his fellows seeing he would be hanged…another kind of court had black curtains…The Lt. Col. sat as judge at a black-draped table which had a white cross on it and the only light was two candles on either end. He was tried and witnesses brought in and he was sentenced to death, but he would have to write down in his own handwriting a complete confession. Then the beatings and hang-man’s rope, black hood, eye gougers which they claimed would be used on them unless they confessed. Not a one yet wrote out his statement but each stated that the prosecution dictated their statements and they said it made no difference anyway as they would die the next day. So on and on it goes with each one of the defendants. The story of each must have some truth because they have each been in solitary confinement.[8]

Jochen Peiper, the lead defendant in the Malmédy trial, made an extremely favorable impression on Everett. Peiper testified at the trial of the beating he received while being interrogated:

On the last day of my stay in Schwäbisch Hall I was called for interrogation and received, as usual, a black hood over my head. And I had to wait down there in the hall of the prison for about five minutes, since the American sergeant who came for me went to get some other comrades of mine from their cell. During this occasion when I was standing there quietly waiting, I was struck in the face by a person unknown to me, and several times in my sexual parts with a stick.[9]

All of the defendants at the Malmédy trial were found guilty, with Peiper and 42 other defendants sentenced to death by hanging. Peiper wrote a letter to Willis Everett after the trial expressing his gratitude for Everett’s work as his defense attorney:

Before our steps separate, I want to thank you especially for all help you gave us as a human being, as a soldier and chief counsel of the defense during the past eight weeks. In a time of deepest human disappointment, you and [Lt. Col. Harold] McCown have returned to me much faith I already had lost. This will remain one of the best remembrances and was worth the whole procedure of the Malmédy case.[10]

Willis Everett on a Mission

Willis Everett was convinced that the Malmédy trial had been a justicial travesty. Approximately 100 of Everett’s friends and some additional American military officers advised Everett to forget about the Malmédy case and live in the present. Everett’s outrage, however, set him on a mission to obtain justice for the Malmédy defendants.[11]

Everett and another defense-team member prepared a 228-page critique of the investigation and trial, stating that the Malmédy convictions had been secured primarily on the basis of “illegal and fraudulently procured confessions.” The petition also argued that the trial was a travesty of justice to German soldiers since the Allies were also guilty of the same violations of international law. Everett sent this document to Lt. Col. Clio Straight’s office for inclusion in the internal review process that was mandatory before verdicts and sentences became final.[12]

Everett began to muster forces for a concerted campaign to reverse the Malmédy verdict. Everett read Charles Wennerstrum’s article in the Chicago Tribune, and wrote to Wennerstrum of his struggle to get a rehearing in the Malmédy case:

Consistently I have told the Commanding General EUCOM that I was going to the U.S. Supreme Court and the papers if they do not send the case back for retrial. Frankly I know of no way to get to the Supreme Court but have done a lot of “bluffing” along this line to force them to send the case back for retrial…We both think alike about war crimes trials except that I am a Rebel on the subject and you were gentle in your manner.[13]

Wennerstrum served as a source of sympathetic and judicious counsel for Everett in the months to come, and provided Everett with introductions to potentially supportive Midwestern politicians. Everett continued with a multipronged campaign of judicial appeal, publicity and congressional pressure to get a retrial of the Malmédy case.[14]

The U.S. Supreme Court refused a petition from Everett to rehear the Malmédy case. Everett then prepared an appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ). Everett knew there was little chance the ICJ would accept his case since only states could be parties to cases before the ICJ. Everett discussed with Wennerstrum the innovative notion of arguing that since there was no German national government after Germany’s unconditional surrender, there was no one but Everett to make the appeal. Both lawyers agreed it was worth a try.

Wennerstrum also advised that they add the even more adventurous argument that, while the court statute might prohibit individuals from filing cases, “international common law” might be alleged to require it.[15]

The ICJ predictably refused to hear Everett’s appeal of the Malmédy case. Everett also received word on or about December 29, 1948, that some of the death sentences in the Malmédy case had been approved by Gen. Lucius Clay. Everett despaired that the U.S. Army was determined to protect itself at all costs, even at the price of hanging innocent men.[16]

Justice Prevails, Late

The Simpson Commission report recommended that all of the death sentences not yet carried out in the Malmédy case be commuted to life imprisonment. The report affirmed Everett’s misgivings about the mock trials and stated that the pretrial investigation had not been properly conducted. The turmoil resulting from the commission report along with the aforementioned article by Edward L. Van Roden caused the U.S. Senate to investigate the Malmédy trial.[17]

The investigation of the Malmédy trial conducted by the Senate Committee on Armed Services determined that there was “little or no evidence” to support Van Roden’s claim that the Malmédy defendants had been physically abused.[18] However, the committee determined that improper pretrial procedures such as mock trials had adversely influenced the trial process, if not the outcome.[19]

On January 30, 1951, Gen. Thomas T. Handy, commander-in-chief of the U.S. European Command, commuted the death sentences not yet carried out of the Malmédy defendants to life in prison. Handy alluded to the fact that the killings had taken place in a confused and desperate combat situation to justify the commutation of the Malmédy sentences.[20]

Handy’s decision produced jubilation among Malmédy critics and convicts. Peiper wrote to Everett:

We have received a great victory and next to God it is you [from] whom our blessings flow. In all the long and dark years you have been the beacon flame for the forlorn souls of the Malmédy boys, the voice and the conscience of the good America, and yours is the present success against all the well-known overwhelming odds. May I therefore, Colonel, express the everlasting gratitude of the red-jacket [worn by prisoners sentenced to death] team (retired) as well as of all the families concerned.[21]

The Malmédy defendants were gradually released from prison courtesy of the Annual Review Board and tensions resulting from the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Jochen Peiper was the last Malmédy defendant to leave prison, receiving his release on December 22, 1956.[22]

Sacrifice of American Attorneys

Advocating the freeing of the Malmédy defendants had required great courage and personal sacrifice on the part of the American attorneys. Gen. Telford Taylor, chief counsel for war crimes at Nuremberg, publicly castigated Judge Charles Wennerstrum for having made statements “subversive of the interests and politics of the United States.” In an open letter to Wennerstrum, Gen. Taylor said that Wennerstrum had made a “deliberate, malicious, and totally unfounded attack on the trials.” Taylor’s letter to Wennerstrum concluded: “If you in fact held the opinions you are quoted as expressing, you were guilty of grave misconduct in continuing to act in the case at all.”[23]

Edward L. Van Roden told Everett that he also paid a price for his involvement in the Malmédy case. Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that Van Roden had been blacklisted by the judge advocate general’s office and denied further active duty in the army reserves, with likely adverse effects on his retirement prospects.[24]

Willis Everett also made a huge personal and financial sacrifice to free the Malmédy defendants. The physical and emotional stress from the appeal process caused Everett to suffer from declining health and at least one heart attack. Everett estimated his out-of-pocket expenses to be as much as $50,000, to which must be added the income lost through his neglect of his law practice. The West German consul in Atlanta later presented Everett with a check for $5,000 as a gesture of appreciation for his exhaustive efforts on behalf of the Malmédy defendants.[25]

For American attorneys Charles Wennerstrum, Edward L. Van Roden, and Willis Everett, an old-fashioned sense of justice far outweighed the personal sacrifices they faced in criticizing the American-run war-crimes trials. Their actions on an ethical imperative and sense of moral values were greatly appreciated by many Germans. Jochen Peiper wrote to Willis Everett: “You have been America’s best ambassador to Germany, setting an example that was respected and recognized far beyond the defendants of the Malmédy case.”[26]


ENDNOTES

[1] Foust, Hal, “Nazi Trial Judge Rips Injustice,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 23, 1948, pp. 1-2.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] https://codoh.com/library/document/1129/; E. L. Van Roden, “American Atrocities in Germany,” The Progressive, February 1949, p. 21f.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Parker, Danny S., Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2014, p. 148.

[8] Weingartner, James J., A Peculiar Crusade: Willis M. Everett and the Malmedy Massacre, New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 42-43.

[9] Parker, Danny S., Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2014, p. 171.

[10] Ibid., p. 183.

[11] Weingartner, James J., A Peculiar Crusade: Willis M. Everett and the Malmedy Massacre, New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 119, 138.

[12] Ibid., pp. 120-122.

[13] Ibid., p. 144.

[14] Ibid., pp. 145, 179.

[15] Ibid., pp. 150, 175, 181-183.

[16] Ibid., p. 174.

[17] Parker, Danny S., Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2014, p. 187.

[18] http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/Malmedy_report.pdf.

[19] Parker, Danny S., Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2014, p. 187.

[20] Weingartner, James J., Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmédy Massacre and Trial, Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1979, 236.

[21] Ibid., pp. 236-237.

[22] Parker, Danny S., Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2014, pp. 194, 200.

[23] Foust, Hal, “Nazi Trial Judge Rips Injustice,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 23, 1948, p. 2.

[24] Weingartner, James J., A Peculiar Crusade: Willis M. Everett and the Malmedy Massacre, New York: New York University Press, 2000, p. 209.

[25] Ibid., pp. 199, 220.

[26] Ibid., pp. 222, 227.

 

[Apollonian]

Major Poullada's Final Defense Plea in the Nordhausen-Dora Concentration Camp Case​

by Leon B. Poullada

Link: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v11/v11p-81_Poullada.html

Introduction by Mark Weber

Published here for the first time is the informative and thought-provoking final defense plea in the postwar Nordhausen-Dora concentration camp case. U.S. Army Major Leon B. Poullada, chief defense counsel, made this presentation on December 23, 1947, to the seven American Army officers who served as judges. The text has been slightly edited for reasons of style and grammar.

The wartime Nordhausen-Dora or "Mittelbau" camp complex consisted of the Dora main camp and 31 satellite subcamps clustered around the town of Nordhausen (Thuringia). By far the most important part of this complex was the underground "Mittelwerk" factories where from the summer of 1943 until April 1945 tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates, forced laborers from foreign countries, and German workers were employed manufacturing the high-priority V-2 guided missiles.

The Nordhausen trial opened on August 7, 1947, and concluded on December 30, 1947. It was one of 489 cases, involving a total of 1,672 defendants, conducted by U.S. Army military courts and commissions in the American zone of occupation in Germany.

Along with the trials organized by the other victorious powers, and particularly the inter-Allied Nuremberg IMT trial of 1945-1946, these postwar proceedings lent an aura of legal and historical legitimacy to the victors' version of history, and thereby played a key role in the shaping of our official mythology about the Third Reich and the Second World War.

In his plea, Major Poullada systematically confronts one emotion-charged issue after another, calmly but persistently challenging the judges to set aside prejudice and presumption to consider all the evidence with an open mind. Poullada concludes with an eloquent defense of traditional Anglo-American standards of justice.

As Poullada repeatedly emphasizes, these postwar "war crimes" trials violated basic principles of justice. With specific examples, he shows how the prosecution has encouraged witnesses to give clearly false hearsay testimony evidence. With prosecution connivance, Poullada establishes, some witnesses gave demonstrably perjured testimony. He cites the case of a witness named Birin who helped to popularize the infamous lie that German women selected inmates to be killed so that their tattooed skins could be used as ornamental decorations.

Poullada was by no means the only American who was outraged at the great miscarriage of justice conducted in the name of the United States in these "war crimes" trials, in which the same victorious powers served as both judge and prosecutor. Charles Wennerstrum, for example, presiding judge in one of the Nuremberg trials, spoke out against the unwholesomely vindictive character of these proceedings, which served the purpose of vengeance much more than the cause of justice.

Fortunately for the defendants, the wartime American-Soviet alliance was already breaking apart by the time of the Nordhausen-Dora trial. German sensibilities had become more important and, as a result, defendants were treated more justly than had been the case in earlier postwar trials. Certainly the worst of all had been the great Nuremberg IMT trial of 1945-1946, in which Stalin's minions participated as equal partners with their American, British and French colleagues.

The American Army officers who served as judges in this case apparently were not unmoved by Major Poullada's arguments. Four of the 19 Nordhausen defendants including "Mittelbau" general director Georg Rickhey were found not guilty and acquitted. One defendant SS First Lieutenant Hans Moeser was sentenced to death by hanging. The remainder were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five years to life.

An interesting footnote to this case:"Mittelwerk" operations director from September 1943 until April 1945 and Rickhey's subordinate was Arthur Rudolph. After the war he moved to the United States, where he worked for the NASA space program. In 1969 he was honored with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his key role in developing the Saturn V rocket that put the first man on the moon. Some years later, in a case that attracted worldwide attention, the federal government's "Office of Special Investigations" threatened to prosecute Rudolph as a "war criminal" for misdeeds allegedly committed forty years earlier. He was obliged to give up his American citizenship in 1983 and was forced into exile in Germany. (For more on the Rudolph case, see: Thomas Franklin, An American in Exile [1987].)

We are grateful to Mr. Joseph Halow for bringing Poullada's defense pleas to our attention. Halow had obtained a copy of this document while working as a young Army court reporter in the "war crimes" trials. Halow spoke about his experiences at the October 1990 IHR conference. His memoir, Innocent in Dachau (which deals at length with the Nordhausen case) is published by IHR.

If it please this honorable court, this court has heard very I patiently the evidence in this case for the past eighteen weeks, and now it becomes the duty of this court to appraise, to ponder, to weigh this evidence carefully in arriving at its decision.

The proof in this case has been voluminous. It is of course necessary for the court to reject some of this evidence and to accept the remainder of this evidence with great caution. It would be folly for counsel for the defense not to imitate counsel for the prosecution and not discuss at great length the individual pieces of evidence which have been presented to this court. It is the opinion of the defense that when confronted with such a multitude of proof as this court has been presented with, it is necessary to resort to basic principles of justice and to obtain an overall picture of the proof as it has been presented according to whether or not each piece of proof tends to tighten or to lessen the necessity of judicial proof. It is necessary for us not to lose sight of the forest because of the trees, it is necessary for us to avoid the fate of the inebriated man who, having run into a lamp post and was knocked down by the force of the blow, immediately arose and as he tried to leave, ran into the same lamp post again, repeating this procedure over and over until finally he was found by a policeman leaning against this post in great desperation muttering to himself, "Lost, lost in an impenetrable forest." We must avoid this "impenetrable forest" of only one pole and we must see our way clearly around the obstacles which have been presented in this case. Therefore it would be my endeavor to discuss the overall principles and general aspects of evidence, and I will tend to do so under five general topics.

Concentration Camps in Law

I will discuss first of all the general nature and the problems incident to the operation of any concentration camp such as Dora. Secondly, I will discuss the organization and background of Dora itself and of Mittelwerke, without appreciation of which it is not possible for this court to arrive at a just decision. Thirdly I will discuss those factors affecting the credibility of the prosecution witnesses. In the fourth instance I will discuss the errors of presentation made by the prosecution, which the court should consider in arriving at a decision in this case. Lastly I would very briefly like to touch upon the principles of law and justice which must concern this court as they cover the immediate case involved.

Coming then first to the topic of the nature and the problems of the operation of a concentration camp such as Dora, I believe it is pertinent to discuss briefly some basic misconceptions which War Crimes courts have indulged in the past in considering these concentration camp cases. There seems to be something abhorrent about the term "concentration camp" in the connotation which this term has acquired for all of us which somehow is translated into the conception that a concentration camp, or the operation of a concentration camp, in and of itself, is illegal per se. Now, this is not the case. International law recognized fully the right of a sovereign state to intern those persons whom, in the opinion of the authorities of this state, are inimical to its purpose and threaten its welfare. We have done so in the case of the Japanese on the west coast when we removed them in large numbers into so-called relocation centers -- a more euphemistic title perhaps -- but nevertheless, a concentration camp. We did so without giving them any trial, we confined them and we restrained their liberty. We did not consider that to have been an illegal act. It was a perfectly legal thing to do because our safety and our welfare were threatened by their presence on the Pacific coast.

Many states in the union keep prison labor camps. These prisoners are farmed out to industrial firms and they work for industrial firms and these firms in turn repay the state for the work of these prisoners. It is not the operation of a concentration camp or a relocation camp or whatever name we call it that is illegal, but it is the manner in which it is performed that may become illegal, and it is important to keep that distinction in mind.

Legality of Execution

The same type of misconception arises in connection with the term "executions." As my associate, Mr. Brook, has gone into this in some detail, I will cover it only briefly. However, it must be evident that each sovereign state has a right during the period of its sovereignty to set up its own constitution and its own laws, and executions which are prescribed pursuant to such constitution and such laws are perfectly valid and legal. The mere fact that their system does not accord or is abhorrent to our particular morals or principles or standards of conduct does not make the punishment which was ordered administratively illegal per se.

Perhaps I could illustrate that by an example. If we were at some time to occupy a country in which polygamy was lawful it would be a very, very strange thing indeed if we should declare that all marriages in that country were illegal because they conflicted with our Christian ideas and standards of morals. The legal expert, Dr. Pinder, has testified before this court that punishments ordered by the Reich Security Main Office through the administrative determination of guilt were perfectly valid under the German codes of justice and the constitution as they existed at that time. Now an execution may be illegal if it is conducted without color of right, in that case it may be extremely illegal, but that is a distinction which the prosecution has failed to make in this case. This is intimately connected with the question of the defense of superior orders. The worthy prosecutor defended a case involving superior orders so that I am sure that he is fully conversant with the law in this connection, that even under our strict interpretation of the defense of superior orders it is not correct to say that superior orders is never a defense and always only mitigation. Superior orders is mitigation when the order which was to be executed was flagrantly illegal in itself, but superior orders is a complete defense when the order given has the color of right and appeared to a reasonable person to have been a reasonable order.

For example, in the case of the six or seven Italians, these accused were subject to military control and were ordered to perform an execution which in all its appearances and trappings had the obvious flavor of a perfectly legal military execution. Superior orders in that case under our own law is a complete defense. Unless by some means those involved were put upon a warning that the execution flavored of illegality superior orders must be a complete defense to this case. Now if the camp commander had come to one of the accused and said, "I am giving you an order to strangle a prisoner tonight in the dark when he comes around the corner of this house," and if that accused had executed the prisoner in this manner, superior orders would not be a defense to that type of execution because, by its very nature, by its very essence, it is not clothed with any color of right or with any semblance of that right. Those distinctions are important. The prosecution has accused us of making fine distinctions and, in our opinion, they are very important distinctions, and that is something which the prosecution does not do, and it is one of the fatal errors of their presentation, that they did not make distinctions but threw everything together in one pot and tried to come out with a total answer for everyone. If the court please, it is not possible to administer justice in that way.

Now as to whether or not the executions which were ordered for Dora were legal or not legal it is not difficult for us to say. We can say that the burden is on the prosecution to prove that they were not legal. Since they were colored with every vestige of that right and were trapped with all the panoply of that right, the burden is on the prosecution to show that they are illegal. There certainly was ample justification for them, if the court pleases.

The evidence before this court is clear that there was an armed and violent resistance movement at Dora. There is no question in anyone's mind on that. The people possessed weapons and possessed explosives and they intended to use them.

A question came up which I should like to discuss. That is whether an execution is justified when the sabotage is a mere plot and threat but is not actually committed. It must be evident to the court that in a top secret project such as the V-weapon plant, plotted sabotage, whether actually committed or not, was a severe offense. It is more than ample justification for a death sentence.

I would like to call this court's attention to a case which occurred in the United States with the avowed intention of committing sabotage of our war plants. These people never got any further than the beach before they were arrested. They did possess papers which showed their avowed aims and it was possible to prove that they intended to sabotage the war effort in America. The court will recall that by the fair and complete judicial process of the United States these people were tried and sentenced to death and they were executed. They never committed an act of sabotage and they never got as far as inside or near a top secret project. I dare say that if they ever did get near the atomic bomb plant with their plans they would have also been executed promptly.

Now in connection with the executions we should consider the subject of the mercy shot. It is an accepted, established military procedure and has never been considered or construed as an act of crime. It is what the name implies, an act of mercy to someone who has been tried, sentenced and executed but who, for some reason, has not been completely killed, perhaps, by the act of execution. The only question then is whether the execution was legal in the first place. If the execution was legal then the act of mercy must also be legal, so we come back in a circle to the question of the legality of those executions and, if the court please, in view of the evidence, in view of the fact that the sentence was already read, in view of the fact that the witnesses were always present, a doctor was always present, an interpreter was always present, and they had all of the semblance of a legal execution, the burden of proof is upon the prosecution to show that those sentences under execution were illegal and that the accused knew of it or had reason to know. As to the extra rations which were issued in connection with those executions, about which so much fuss was made, I believe the court has heard sufficient evidence to know that those were normal rations issued in the Wehrmacht as a matter of general custom and tradition to all persons who participated in the executions for the alleged reason to be able to counteract after a shot. It was not a war crime by any means but a custom and tradition.

Legality of Corporal Punishment

Now a similar misconception arises on the subject of beatings and corporal punishment. The defense readily admits that beatings and corporal punishment is abhorrent to our Anglo-American system of justice, although England used flogging to a very recent time as a method of punishment and still does so in the armed forces for some offenses. Some of our own southern states recognize corporal punishment as a proper means of discipline even at this date. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that in the overall picture the AngloAmerican system abhors this subject of capital punishment. This naturally creates a prejudice in our minds against any such act. However, we must come back to the subject, which is similar to the one of executions, that the Europeans have and have had a different attitude towards corporal punishment. There is a distinction, a very definite distinction, that we want to make between beatings and beatings.

There are beatings which were made for official reasons, for punishment prescribed by the Reich Security Main Office. The court has heard evidence that there were even forms which were made out and had to be signed by the physician. Now we certainly cannot quarrel with that system of punishment. We may not like it, we may not want to adopt it, but we cannot call it illegal just because we do not like it. If it was legal during the time it was perpetrated then it was legal. Further, there are differences between beating a person with a weapon and merely beating with the hand. There are very distinct differences which we make in our law between assault with a deadly weapon and assault and battery and simple assault and battery. Those are important distinctions and we do not want to make them.

Thus we saw, for example, that the beatings which the accused, Buehring, admitted administering to those prisoners during the course of these interrogations were authorized by Berlin as a means of breaking up this resistance movement and they were perfectly legal at the time, and the fact that we do not like them doesn't make a war crime out of it by any means. Furthermore, we must remember that these beatings were made under superior orders so that the accused Buehring, for example, had the double defense of the legality of the punishment he was administering and the fact that it was administered by superior orders and directly under the supervision of his superior, who was physically present or in the vicinity at all times. There has been evidence that in administering those punishments there were strict orders that no fatal injury should be inflicted and it was only natural in the course of these interrogations, as a dead witness was not a good witness. It is only natural that they should want him to live and not to injure him to the point of causing his death. The evidence has proved that the deaths which occurred in the bunker such as the death of Skinter and the four Russians, which were admitted by everyone in this case, were definitely proved to be committed by other people, and without the authority and consent of Sander, and in no way involved any of those accused in this case.

We have some curious quirks in our minds about this subject of beatings in connection with these war crimes. In war crimes courts in the past, the ability to show that an accused had been carrying a club at all times or at some time was equivalent to a conviction. If the court would care to cast its eyes around this room they will see at least two guards, American guards, with clubs in their hands. I dare say if these prisoners became unruly our American guards would use those clubs to keep them in line. So it is not, again, the carrying of a club which is wrong in any way, it is not equivalent to a conviction to show that a man carried a club. The question is, how did he use that club and on what occasions did he use that club, and that must be proved by individual acts and by witnesses testifying to individual acts and not by simply making a sweeping accusation because a person carries a club, therefore he is a beater and he should be convicted.

Also, an interesting thing in connection with these cases has to do with the developing of testimony in this case. In the early cases, when the courts were giving very severe sentences for beatings, witnesses would get on the stand and testify as to beatings. The courts began to get weary about this type of testimony, and they usually demanded, an order to give a severe sentence, that the element of death be involved as a result of such beatings. Immediately the testimony changed. The witnesses would get up on the stand and they would always have been witnesses to a beating which was so severe that they resulted in a person being carried to the dispensary and he was never seen again. The testimony always followed whenever the courts required it to get a conviction. Now we must remember, if the court please, that the penalty for even an aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in our own American courts would hardly ever merit more than a 10-year sentence.

The same type of misconception develops with the subject of cremation. Cremation always seems to be connected with something abhorrent and horrible. The prosecution has made a great case against the accused Maischein because he was supposedly present at cremations. Nothing is the matter with a cremation, if the court please. The finest cemeteries in America use cremations as a perfectly legal means of disposing of the remains of deceased individuals. Whether it is secret or whether it is public what difference does that make, if the court please. If the person is dead and he is cremated it is not a crime. It can be no war crime to cremate anyone. The question must be, how did that person die, not how he was cremated. If any of the accused had something to do with the illegal death of an individual then he may be guilty of a war crime, but participation and attendance at a cremation in and of itself can certainly be no war crime or a crime of any kind. As we say, these distinctions are important.

Individual Responsibility

We have also been of the opinion at some time or another in the course of our lives that in concentration camps all prisoners were victims and martyrs and that all SS men spent all of their time swinging clubs beating prisoners brutally like sadists and that all of the prisoners were innocent victims. Well, the prosecution has made some statements about the fact that some of the guilty participants, in our opinion, are prominent prisoners. We do not wish to shift any of the blame which any of the accused may have over to the prominent prisoners, but we do believe it is important to the court in arriving at a just decision in this case, to realize that not all is just the way it appears on the surface, but that there were feuds between the greens and the reds, that these resulted in secret murders and resulted in secret courts which these prisoners themselves had, that everything became a racket in these concentration camps, that there was favoritism and bribery at every hand, that many prisoners lived at the expense of other prisoners, that the favored prisoners were assigned to cushy jobs such as in labor statistics and the dispensary, and that as a result a very vast black market arose in these camps.

Now perhaps it could be said that the SS are responsible for the system. That is true. We do not deny that. The persons who made the policies of these camps are certainly responsible. Pohl and others who made the policies of these camps are certainly responsible. Pohl and others who made the policies for these camps and were tried at Nuremberg are undoubtedly responsible for a policy which would throw into the same camp individuals of varying nationalities and backgrounds, habitual criminals and political prisoners. It is obvious that under such a system a terrible situation would develop, but to say that and to say that these individual accused, the highest ranking of whom is a first lieutenant, are responsible for this system and are responsible for the conditions which arose as a result of this system that, if the court please, is an entirely different matter. These people had very limited authorities. They could certainly not abolish the system. They could not say, "From now on the green prisoners will be in one camp and the red prisoners in another, and we will segregate these people." They could not stop the black market any more than we could stop the black market in Germany with the entire resources of our occupation army behind us. We cannot stop it. Those things arise as a result of conditions and once they arise the people in it cannot put a stop to it. They can try, and so these accused did try, but they certainly cannot be made to bear the entire brunt of the system as it existed.

We will leave the subject of the misconceptions which have arisen and I believe are important for the court to bear in mind. We must realize, just to summarize briefly, that the operation of a concentration camp or an internment camp, is not illegal per se, that executions which were not illegal according to the laws and the constitution of the country at the time they were perpetrated could not become illegal by subsequent occupation of that country, and lastly that a large proportion of the unsavory picture of a concentration camp was brought about by the acts of prisoners themselves. If the court would keep these things in mind in arriving at their decisions they would have gone a long way towards eliminating the common misconceptions.

Importance of Dora to the War Effort

Let us consider, if the court please, the organization of Dora and Mittelwerke, and what the V-weapon program meant to Germany. It was the last hope of Germany. Göring's Luftwaffe had failed in its proud boast that not one bomb would fall upon German soil. The German armies were in full retreat in Africa and Russia. This resulted in a struggle for power between the high ranking officials in the German government, among them Speer and Himmler. It was obvious that if the war was won by means of this secret weapon, this V-weapon, the individual who could hold himself as responsible for successfully bringing this weapon to bear would have earned the undying gratitude of the German people and would have assured himself of a position as successor to Hitler. This resulted in a struggle for power over this weapon. There is no question about that. Officially the V-weapons belong to Speer, the Minister of Armaments, but Himmler had an ace up his sleeve in connection with this program. He had at his command a source of cheap labor, and cheap labor in the then German Reich, which had already scraped the bottom of its manpower barrel, was at a premium, so, using this cheap labor as a wedge, Himmler was also to get a stranglehold on the production of the V-weapons, and, although not officially, nevertheless through the means of men like Kammler and Sawatzki he was able to get a dominant position in the V-weapon production. The Speer minister, [Rt]who appointed Rickhey, very definitely was being pushed into the background and into second place. It was Himmler's men who really pulled the strings and called the pace.

Now, this was a very important program. The policies for this program were not made by people such as these but were made by the top men in the German Reich. To say that for a program of this kind a technical sergeant was going to be made responsible for all labor allocation is ridiculous, if the court please. Or the same is true of construction: to say that a master sergeant like Jacobi was to be placed in responsibility for all construction in a project of this kind is completely ridiculous. The evidence has shown that there were frequently inspections from Berlin, medical inspections, all types of inspections. Kammler came over often. Everything that came off in this camp as far as policy making was concerned was of the utmost interest to the top men in the German Reich. These people here were small fry. They were all placed in the position where they had to carry into effect these policies, and that is always an unenviable position for anyone. To say that a man like Detmers, who was a first lieutenant, had the power to declare executions and punish and discipline the prisoners, is like saying that some little security officer in the atom bomb plant would be given the authority to punish violators of security rules at his discretion.

Wartime Conditions

Now these policies which were made at top levels resulted in some very bad conditions. The defense has willingly admitted that. We have never claimed Dora to be a sanitorium, no question about it. It was a high priority project. German resources were pushed to the utmost to get this program started and as a result of that there was constant rush, they were in a hurry, and these bad conditions resulted, especially at the inception, because of the rush and hurry. But it is another thing to say that these bad conditions existed and another thing to say that because a certain individual was placed in the midst of these bad conditions he is responsible for them. Another lack of distinction. It is a very nice technique to make such a lack of distinction, no question about it. Prove bad conditions, that is the thing to do. Show that things are in a terrible state, then find a scapegoat for it and say, "He was there, therefore he was responsible." The court is expected to make the necessary logical connection between the two things, but is the connection there? That is the question which the court must ask itself. It is a funny technique. Hitler used it. That was exactly Hitler's technique to show that the Jews after the last war were responsible for all the evils which befell Germany. There were very bad conditions in Germany. The Jews were present. They made a good scapegoat. You keep hammering away at that subject long enough and eventually the listeners will make the necessary connections. The Jews will be responsible. We say the prosecution has not met that burden of proof. It is not only necessary to place two things together and to assume that there is a connection; the connection must be proved. A very insidious note crept into the prosecution's case in this connection, in my opinion. It was stated and the court was led to believe that it was not only a matter for this court what the accused did or did not do, but what they should have done. That is the thing, the prosecution said, which condemns these people what they should have done. Well, if the court please, that is a rather noble approach to any judicial problem. Unfortunately the principles of American criminal law do not support such a contention by the prosecution. A person is not guilty of a crime merely because his conduct is reprehensible or because he fails to act. He must have a duty to act, a very clear and definite duty to act. If he fails to act he may be a normal heel, but he is not a criminal. That is the law; it is very clear. I can see a beggar in the street in the most desperate condition of hunger and I can pass by without giving him a second look. Clearly, morality would demand that I help him, but I am not a criminal because I fail to do so. Some of the so accused did do a great deal towards helping prisoners, but if any of them had failed to do any of that, they certainly would not have been war criminals because of it. It so happens that a man like Fuchsloch followed his moral inclinations and did try to help. But he is not under absolute duty to do so by any means. The fact that he did do so is more to his credit, but so long as he would act within his proper sphere of duty and so long as he would refrain from a criminal act, that should be the determining factor before this court as far as any of these accused are concerned. They are under no legal duty to go out of their way and become proclaimers of the welfare of the human race. The law does not demand that of you, it does not demand that of me, and we should not demand that of these accused.

Now, the prosecution tried desperately to show that Dora was an extermination camp. Well, unfortunately the evidence just does not hold up. There are no gas chambers at Dora as in an extermination camp. We did not hear any evidence of medical experiments, such as have been put forth in all the concentration camps practically so far. There were no wholesale executions at Dora such as Commando 99. The executions which took place at Dora were a result of this resistance movement and were not merely an attempt to exterminate in any way. Well, the reason is obvious, if the court please. I think Rickhey put it better than I could possibly do when he said it would be impossible to produce the weapons and destroy the workers. This was an important program. I do not say that it was not an extermination camp out of the good heart of the people who were making the concentration camp policies. It was a selfish thing of course, but it was not an extermination camp. It is true that in its inception bad conditions existed. There is no doubt about that. We are willing to concede that at any point in our argument, at any point in the case we are willing to concede that in the inception conditions were very bad, but I believe we should try to understand the normal point of view at that time. This project was a matter of vital military necessity. Under the guise of military necessity, a commander does not hesitate to send his own men to death if necessary. When it becomes a question of national survival we do not stop to ask fine questions. The prisoners were asked to make sacrifices, definitely.

They were put into a place where the work was hard. It was mining work, work which is hard even under the best situations of freedom. If the court would care to examine the insurance risk rates for miners, underground workers, it would realize that it is always hazardous work, and I am not here to defend the morality or legality of demanding sacrifices from these prisoners. That is beside the point and not an issue in this case. I am simply trying to show the court why these bad conditions existed, and I do say that showing these bad conditions in itself is not enough, nor is showing why they existed enough. These accused did not make the policies which created these bad conditions. It is furthermore extremely necessary for the court to distinguish another distinction, between the period of early construction of prisoner work and the latter period when production got under way. The two things are very dissimilar and more and more different in more than one respect. The prosecution, of course, has attempted to show that it is all the same thing, but it is not.

So, if the court please, before passing on the next subject we have seen that certain misconceptions were prevalent as to the operation of all concentration camps in general, and I have tried to give the court a brief background of the operation of Dora, of the importance of the V-weapon project, and the reasons which caused the German state to embark upon such a project, and I have attempted to distinguish between the periods of time in the operation of this project, which the court should keep in mind.

Witness Bias

Now, I would like to discuss briefly, if the court please, the questions of the factors which affect the credibility of the prosecution witnesses. That question, of course, in the last analysis is the function of the court, but what criterion, what yardstick should the court use? Well, certainly a careful review of the testimony of the witnesses is called for, and examination of the motives of their testimony is certainly called for, and I believe we should consider briefly the principles of scientific criminology dealing with the unreliability of the human memory when testifying as to events which took place in the distant past.

Let us consider first the motives. That the witnesses for the most part were prejudiced I assume the court takes for granted. Is it possible for former prisoners to testify against their former jailers and not be prejudiced? Of course we can sympathize with them. I would be prejudiced myself. I am sure every member of the court would be prejudiced. But, if the court please, we must not let that affect the justice of the case. We must sympathize with them, yes, but the court must look upon this through the eyes of justice, not through the eyes of sympathy.

There is another element which is quite important in this case and quite evident, that is, the element of nationalities. Even under the best of conditions it is very difficult for a European of one nationality to testify against a European of another nationality and maintain a balanced attitude. It is difficult for us to realize the prejudice which existed in these countries national hatred, biases, suspicions. We in America do not know anything about that. It is difficult in coming into a situation like this to understand the power behind such prejudice and bias. However, these war crimes courts must ask themselves: Are we instruments of justice or are we instruments of national discriminations? Now in these concentration camps, these national hatreds were fomented. Prisoners from all countries in Europe were thrown in together in a dog-eat-dog situation and, unfortunately, these hatreds which grew up during the period of these concentration camps have not been allowed to subside, but former concentration camp inmates have formed themselves into organizations which, under the guise of being societies for mutual aid, actually have as their avowed purpose the preservation of these hatreds, this rancor which grew up before these concentration camps and during these concentration camps. These societies have a quasi-official status in a good many of these countries. Their officials hold key positions in the government of some of these countries, such as France and Czechoslovakia. We have seen some examples of these societies exercising pressure upon their members in testifying before courts where their former jailers are involved. They bring personal pressure, economic pressure and political pressure to bear on these witnesses. In America we would call that intimidation. In Europe it is realism. We saw during the trial the example of one witness who was intimidated to the point where he would not even testify before this court. I had asked this same witness to come back and had requested his presence through proper channels when we thought we would put on a rebuttal in this case. I received a letter from him of which I have a certified translation here. It is addressed to me, and he says:

When I left Dachau on 20 November 1947, I was handed a written information by the defense reading that I was to report back as a witness to Dachau on 7 December 1947.

I cannot appear as a witness for the following reasons:

My passport was valid until the end of November 1947 only, for this reason I had to apply to the "Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes" at this place in order to obtain a recommendation for the Prague passport department to issue me a new passport valid until the end of December 1947.

The "Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes" of this place, however, found out that I intended to go to Dachau as a defense witness. Since the above-mentioned commission is not in the least interested in these witnesses who go there to testify for the defense, it took a negative point of view as of the issue of my passport and did not give me the recommendation.

Consequently, the passport department did not issue me that passport without this recommendation.

For the above reasons I cannot come, and ask you to kindly arrange for the issue of my passport with our governmental agencies.

Hoping you will be so kind as to comply with my request, I remain

Very truly yours,

Josef Silvestr.

There we have an example of these national prejudices and how they have been used. It is only natural, I suppose, that these things would be as they are but nevertheless we must consider them. The prosecution witnesses have no such difficulty in appearing before this court. Two important things in my mind, if the court please, is that these societies condemn the accused not for their individual crimes but simply for the reasons of being Germans and having belonged to a certain class, the class who were their jailers. That to my mind is the insidious thing about them, not that they are prejudiced against individuals, that is only a natural thing when an individual has been guilty of some act of barbarism against you, but simply that they make these sweeping decisions that all of the people who belong to that class, regardless of innocence or guilt, fall within that prescribed category. Now, of course, these sweeping prejudices against people because of belonging to a class is one of the abhorrent principles of Hitlerism.

People like Cespiva and other officials of these societies do not know anything about sportsmanship. Hitler didn't invent this theory of condemning entire classes by reason of nationality or by reason of race or creed. He applied what was already a favorite European position. In addition to these national rancors, which resulted in matters such as the one I brought before this court, there is also this certain enmity that grew up in these camps as a result of membership in certain cliques in these camps. You either play ball or else you are an enemy. Thus we see that some prisoners who played along with them were placed in easier jobs, such as in labor statistics or in the dispensary.

Let us take Helbig for example. He was a fine man, Cespiva said when testifying against him, "He helped one of my friends," he testified. On the other hand Dr. Kahr testified against Jacobi viciously because Jacobi hadn't played ball when Dr. Kahr wanted to furnish himself with a swanky apartment and Jacobi didn't want to let him have the materials. These things are retained in their minds, and petty minds bear petty grudges for a long time.

Witness reliability

In addition to the prejudices which I have already named, that is the prejudice of former prisoners of their jailers, the national hatred and these prejudices which arise by reason of membership in societies destined to foment national hatreds, and membership in camp cliques, we must realize that very little credibility can be given to the prosecution witnesses by reason of the fact that all the events that they testified to happened a very long time ago. The fragility of the human memory has almost been commented upon by the prosecution when the prosecutor admitted that five minutes after an incident had occurred it would hardly be remembered afterwards, and with him all psychological criminologists are in complete agreement.

I am sure this court is familiar with the classroom experiment, the classical experiment in which the professor is droning away, lecturing to the class and suddenly two men burst into the room. One flashes a gun, another has a knife. There is a great commotion. The two men leap out of the window. The professor is knocked down on the floor. Then immediately thereafter he arises and explains to the class that this was all prearranged, and then a set of questions is asked of the class as to just what happened. "Describe the men. Describe what they did." Well, I have seen the results of such an experiment myself and I know that these members of the court who have seen the results of such an experiment would remember the amazing results, the amazing discrepancies. Some people will answer that there were three women involved, and others will say the professor was the one who drew the knife. Completely unbelievable answers. The reason for that is very simple.

I should like to read just briefly to the court volume 29 of The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, page 371.There is a report of a carefully controlled experiment in which a crime is staged and a large number of witnesses were immediately divided into a smaller number of groups. Each group is asked that they make a report which consisted of answering questions similar to the ones they would have to answer if they would appear in court to testify. Each group, however, was questioned at different intervals of time. The purpose was to test the effect of the passage of time on the powers of observation and memory. Among the scientific conclusions quoted in this journal are the following, and I quote:

The number of correct answers to all types of questions was decidedly low, irrespective of the time elapsed between the event and the reporting thereof. However, testimony given seven weeks after the event was much more variable than that given one week after. Of the factors tested, the ability to recollect who the participants in the crime were and to describe them was the least reliable and the most likely to be effaced by the passage of time.

If justice in our courts is to depend upon the testimony of witnesses, that testimony must be brought in early and even then accepted with wide allowance for error explainable in terms of faulty sense perception and memory. In our present system, days, and even months sometimes intervene between an accident or crime and the witnesses' appearance in court.

End of quote.

To which, if the court will permit, I would like to add, too, the events about which the prosecution witnesses testified did not happen days, weeks or months, but years ago, and yet we have had prosecution witnesses sit in this chair behind me, and they have identified accurately individuals whom they have seen only once, and they describe everything in detail, exactly what he did, what he said.

Well, the legal authorities, the psychological scientists, the sociologists all have given their earnest effort and study to this problem, the unreliability of witnesses' testimony after the passage of time. I could cite authority to this court for hours on end and all of them would be unanimous in saying to this court: "Beware the testimony of witnesses who purport to remember with any degree of accuracy events which happened two or three years ago."

Here is an extract from volume 28 of the American Sociological Society Publications, page 45, and I quote:

Nearly all studies indicate that memory loss is greatest within the first few hours after observation, and that two-fifths of the personal experiences are totally lost in a two week period.

Robert M. Hutchins and Donald Slesinger, writing in the law review of the Law School which our worthy prosecutor attended, in an article entitled "Some Observations on the Law of Evidence," 41 Harvard Law Review, 860, stated their conclusion at page 864 as follows:

Turning now to past recollection recorded and the psychological theory of the fallibility of memory on which it rests, we discover the psychologists, like the judges, emphasizing the importance of the time between an experience and its report both agree that as time goes on an experience is forgotten until little remains in most cases but conjectures and surmisals.

Now, doesn't that describe the testimony of the prosecution witnesses conjectures and surmisals?

The distinguished psychologist William H. Roberts, writing on the subject of memory, says, and I quote:

When we try to recall past experiences our images are limited in most of us to items to which we have given definite attention. That is one reason why testimony in court is so often inaccurate. The witness has rarely had any warning that something important was about to happen. He has not been instructed for what he should watch; so very often he fails to observe the crucial point. No determination to tell the truth (very often he fails to observe the crucial point), no agonized going over the scene again and again can recover the essential point that the witness simply cannot recall because of faulty observation and faulty recollection.

Then Mr. Roberts quotes Mr. Wigmore. Mr.Wigmore is perhaps the world's greatest authority on evidence. He wrote the evidence section in our Manual for Courts Martial. He says:

In the last analysis, as Mr. Wigmore so often says, the reliability of the testimony of a witness depends on two factors: "Does the witness want to tell the truth, and can he tell the truth?" The first depends on the bias, interest and prejudices of the witness, the latter depends on psychological laws of observation which are entirely beyond the control of the witness. Memories play strange tricks on witnesses. Details are both lost and added. Sometimes they honestly remember things that never happened. Honest witnesses before trial often say "I do not know whether I actually remember this, or only think I do, because I have been told about it so often." Interesting stories frequently grow with successive tellings, though witnesses have no intention to embellish them.

And I close the quote.

Now, I take the liberty of putting this question to the court: Taking into consideration the elements which I have discussed, the obvious and which are set forth before the court after a long interval of time from the events about which the testimony deals with.

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[Apollonian]

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Use of Hearsay

Well, as if these factors were not enough to make this testimony unreliable, we here in War Crimes have opened the door wide to the greatest perverters of justice our friends here say "evidence."

In ordinary trials before American or English courts the dangers of fabrication and invention and perjured testimony are to some extent restrained by making a witness testify only what he personally knows. Centuries of trial have shown the wisdom of these courts. It has been said that this hearsay rule has been relaxed in administrative cases in America, and therefore, it should be perfectly proper to relax it in this case. If the court please, that could not deal with criminal matters, in the first place; and in the second place, lives of men are now at stake. Every civilized country in the world requires in a murder case that at least the death be proved by first-hand official evidence. This is the so-called and much misused phrase corpus delicti. You must show that a death occurred, and hearsay evidence in every civilized country in the world is not admissible to show the death.

In these courts prejudice, bias, passage of time, hearsay, are combined to encourage a witness to rationalize, to invent testimony. The way that rationalization works is very simple. Just assume for a minute that I am a Polish witness and I am called upon to stand and testify against Jacobi, let's say. Now I don't remember Jacobi. I only saw him once, but I do remember something about the construction details of Camp Dora. There were such details. I remember that beatings occurred. I remember that somewhere along the line two or three of my friends had been beaten in the course of his detail. Naturally, I am prejudiced. Centuries of national hatred are in me, and with some reason. I don't like Germans in general, and I don't like SS men in particular; so it is a very simple matter to rationalize. I know that Jacobi was in charge of these construction details. He must have beaten somebody. I can sit on this stand and say "Yep, definitely, Jacobi beat one of my friends." Well, of course, I have to make the story good, so, "He beat them so they fell down. He was taken to the dispensary, and I never heard of him again." Oh, my conscience may bother me a little at nights, that I testified against an individual who perhaps was innocent, but after all, he is an SS man, he is a German. Maybe if he didn't do that he may have done something else which was just as bad.

Now, that is the way people rationalize this these things. Is there any doubt that many of these stories have been concocted just that way? And unfortunately, I have not only heard witnesses talking that way, but I have heard American officers talking exactly the same way. That may be mass-scale revenge. It is not justice the individual innocence or guilt of one of these accused.

Now, in any trial which was conducted before an American court, the rules of evidence which pertain in the AngloAmerican system, this story could be checked. It wouldn't stand up for the simple reason that they couldn't prove that the death ever occurred. But in War Crimes trials our Polish witness, whom I used for my example, is perfectly in the safe. He can spin his yarn with complete impunity. Does he have to describe with exactitude the cause of the death? No. Is it necessary for him to even have seen the body? No, certainly not. Does he even have to know the name of the victim? Oh, no, just his nationality, and he knows that because he is a Pole. The gates are wide open and prejudice and faulty memory can run rampant. You can chalk up one more hanging in the game of hate and revenge. It has been suggested that it would not be possible to get convictions without admitting this type of evidence. I say to the court "Do we seek convictions or do we seek justice? Must we sell our birthright? Must we emasculate our legal system in order to convict a few men and obtain revenge?" This choice, this choice, if the court please, with convictions at any price, "are they worth dispensing without judicial safeguards?," is as old as the history of tyranny.

Every policeman who has ever aspired to become a dictator has urged that criminals will escape if the safeguards are not swept away. It is exactly the same thing which the Gestapo and the GPU and the NKVD urged and continue to urge today. It is the very thing that these war crimes trials were set up to condemn. Now, this court can't change the ground rules upon which these courts are held, I realize that, but it can exercise its God-given right to recognize the insidiousness of such hearsay proof, and to reject the evidence based upon them as worthless. I say you not only can, you should, you must refuse to become the instruments of revenge, and maintain your integrity as instruments of justice. If there are any lengthy doubts in the mind of any member of this court as to the worthlessness of this type of hearsay evidence, we can dispel them by saying in this trial, "where it was possible to test this hearsay evidence, we did." We had such cases in this very trial. I will mention only a few.

Zwiener said that he had heard from Finkenzeller that Rickhey had given capos orders to beat prisoners.It was possible for the defense in this case to bring Finkenzeller on the stand. Did Finkenzeller remember any such thing? No. Bouda said that he heard from Kurzke that Kurzke was the doctor who had treated the two men who died as a result of a shot from Helbig. Kurzke got on the stand and didn't remember saying anything like that to Bouda. He never treated anybody who died. Why he saw Helbig at Belsen, but completely failed to substantiate Bouda's testimony. There are many other cases, but I won't burden the court with them at this time; but in every single case in which it was possible during this trial to pin down the sources of hearsay evidence, it failed to pass the test completely. Is there any doubt, if the court please, that fabrications based on these elements, national prejudice, faulty memory, and supported by hearsay evidence should be thrown out of this court, as they should be thrown out of any court in the land which pretends to dispense justice.

There is one thing about this testimony that is doubly dangerous. It is not like pure fiction, it is more like a historical novel, because it has a certain foundation in fact, and thereby it gets a certain amount of credibility attached to itself. These witnesses do know the conditions, general conditions, they do know the place, they know the time, they can give, in general, evidence which sounds credible, so it isn't pure fiction it is a historical novel. That terminates my discussion of the factors which affect the credibility of the prosecution witnesses.

Credibility of Individual Witnesses

This consideration, however, of these factors enables us to classify these witnesses, as the prosecution attempted to classify the defense witnesses, drawing those contrasts which the prosecution attempted to draw. First of all, in classifying the prosecution witnesses, I would say that we would have to come to the deliberate liars, of whom there were some.

Maubert "There were no beds in the TB block." A conscious, deliberate lie for the purpose of revenge.

Rozin Heinrich was supposed to have beaten people to death. Of course he made two mistakes. He mistakenly coupled that testimony with the fact that the air-raid shelter was under construction, and it was possible to prove that the air-raid shelter had been built for several months; and also, he made an important mistake. He forgot the nationality of these people, he said they were Hungarian Jews. Well, if the court please, the law on the question of the nationality of these victims is quite clear. In the review of the parent Dachau case, the reviewing authorities said the following: "Be it noted that this testimony is general, and we are only concerned with cases where Allied or co-belligerant nations were subjected to offenses against the laws of war."

Here it must be said that an error was definitely committed by the court in taking judicial notice of the fact that Hungary and also the Gypsies were at war with Germany. Furthermore, the question of whether given victims were subject of Allied or cobelligerant powers was not properly considered by the court on many occasions, since it took notice of the war between Germany and other powers, some of which, such as Austria and Czechoslovakia, had disappeared as sovereign states.

So our witness Rozin didn't get the right nationality because Hungarian Jews, if the court please, cannot be considered as proper victims in these war crimes cases. They are outside the jurisdiction of the court because they still mention their Hungarian nationality; because Hungary was an Ally of Germany, and not a cobelligerant or an Ally of the United States.

So our witness Rozin didn't get the right nationality because Hungarian Jews, if the court please, cannot be considered as proper victims in these war crimes cases. They are outside the jurisdiction of the court because they still maintain their Hungarian nationality; because Hungary was an ally of Germany, and not a cobelligerant or an ally of the United States.

And then we come to the third deliberate liar, Drung. After the man had been proved a perjurer, the prosecution still maintains that he was their star witness, the man who sat here and mocked the justice of this court by telling deliberate lies under oath. The prosecution says that this man who sat here for three days and whose every answer was "Ja, aber " gave very clear and succinct answers, a deliberate liar without a shadow of doubt.

Doctor Kehr, another deliberate liar. Of course his motivation was slightly different. He said that he had never interrogated witnesses. We confronted him with a record of his interrogation of an accused. He, of course, was buying his life and he had to do it with lies. He knew that he and Doctor Kurzke personally had selected thousands of people on these transports, and it was only by reason of the fact that he had purchased his liberty that he was not sitting in the dock.

Doctor Kurzke, of course, deliberately lied about some points, but this particular witness was not malicious. He was just afraid, testified from fear.

Doctor Cespiva, the deliberate liar. We must classify him as such. That witness feels a compulsion to destroy any witness who was present at the times he betrayed his Russian comrades. His position in Czechoslovakia demands this. He can't afford to have witnesses alive who knew he was guilty of betrayal of those Russians. He showed his true color when he tried to intimidate and interfere with the defense witnesses. He went a little too far.

I am not going to attempt to list all these witnesses by class, but just give outstanding examples.

The second class I call "the exaggerators." Not deliberate liars, they are just dramatists. They dramatize their concentration camp experiences. They were martyrs, heroes. All their accounts are surrounded by an aureola and glamor of fiction, and to a large extent that is what it is, too, fiction.

Jay, the Englishman. He was dying of thirst. He had to drink urine. For the first six months nobody had anything to drink. No one could take a bath. All this matter is completely contradicted by the prosecution witnesses at a later time.

Ackermann, the pseudo-doctor. He had performed thousands of autopsies, Ackermann had. He could tell by looking at the cell tissues whether a man died of exhaustion or not, a feat which even the finest histologist with all the resources, with all the resources of a well-equipped laboratory would find difficult to do.

Michel, a man of iron. He was beat over the head with clubs by two men, kicked in the genitals, his spine was broken, lay a cripple, beaten until he was bloody, when he walked by himself without any help for over 500 meters, which is about half a kilometer into the tunnels.

To this class also belongs Kassimatis, the Greek. He went everybody a little better. Not only weren't there any trials at these executions, there weren't even any interrogations, nothing. A man was caught with a piece of wire on his shoe laces and he himself saw two SS men string them up from a beam which does not exist in the ceiling.

Cespiva himself falls into this class of exaggerators and dramatists. He was attacked by this ferocious dog Ajax, which turns out to be a puppy who went around pulling people's cuffs.

There is another example of these exaggerators and dramatists, and that is my worthy co-religionist, Brother Birin. This man, cloaking his hatred, his national hatred, under a hypocritical air of Christian charity, indulged in the wildest speculation, in flights of fancy, that it has ever been my privilege to hear. He gave accurate testimony of the death rates for the first six months of Dora. Of course, he arrived in March 1944, by his own testimony. We present him with a copy of the prosecution's exhibit on death rates, and he promptly pronounced it false.

Of course, minor inconsistencies never trouble the mind of a man who is intent on producing, not inconsistent facts, but fiction. I would like to read to you just a brief excerpt from this little book written by friend Birin. It is called Sixteen Months of Imprisonment. It is widely circulated in France. It is in French. It tells about his experiences in Dora. The part that I have selected is the part in which he describes roll calls at Dora. He says:

During roll calls, the wives of the SS also selected their victims and they did so with even more cynicism than their husbands. They sought beautiful human skins artistically tattooed. In order to please them, a special roll call was often held on the roll call square at which all prisoners had to be present, dressed like Adam. Then these ladies passed in review through the ranks making their selections as in a fashion show. One could hear their titters, their exclamation, their small laughter of satisfaction. They would murmur, "Das ist sch on," and they would point their fingers at the object of their choice.

The prisoners thus selected had to leave the ranks and soon thereafter their skins were adorning the living rooms of these ladies or were added to the camp collection.

Now that is a verbatim translation. This book was written by friend Birin, that exaggerator and dramatizer. Now, we have heard voluminous testimony in this case. Certainly if any such a thing would have happened in Dora it would have been presented to this court. Most of us recognize the Ilsa Koch incident at Buchenwald, and he passes it on as Gospel truth in France, and they read this book and they have it on the same level as the Gospel of St. Mark.

I ask the court what credibility can be given to the testimony of such witnesses who put such stuff like that out as fact? It shows what a clever dramatizer can do. This is just an example of the dishonest testimony of this witness. The book is full of them, and it is recommended reading for this court.

The next class that I would like to mention are the guilty ones. These people who were so guilty themselves that they felt compelled to come before this court and accuse the people in this dock in order to satisfy their own sense of guilt. We come to some of them, Drung, Cespiva very definitely in an attempt to pass off their guilt on to these accused. Mittermüller, who had to be dragged out of the Dachau jail in order to testify before this court. Müller, known as the Tiger of Eschnapur, given 25 years by another war crimes court, Wyglondaz, known in Dora as Aunt Johanna, notorious spy for Sander.

And Doctor Kehr again, very definitely trying to hide his guilt by assisting the prosecution in obtaining convictions. We just have to look at one testimony of Doctor Kahr to see the extent to which he will go. That was the testimony in regard to the conditions of the transports which were sent from Buchenwald to Dora. In the Buchenwald case, where he was still trying to buy his liberty, it was Buchenwald's fault; ninety percent of the people who were sent to Dora were so far beyond recovery they were destined, doomed to die. It was well known that Buchenwald was the principal source of prisoners for Dora. If that was so, then the death rate of Dora is completely exonerated. These accused can't be held responsible for a death rate in a camp where ninety percent of the people who were sent to them were already dying. The Dora case is entirely different. These people arrived in fine condition from Buchenwald. Only subjected to the torturous hours and the hard work at Dora is why they developed a high death rate and died. It was the work in the tunnels that killed them. You see, gentlemen, it just depends on which case you testify for a witness like that.

The next class of witnesses for the prosecution is the ignorant, the confused, little man who had no sense of perspective, no background, no education. Ordinarily we would speak of them as having a worm's eye view, but in the case of the prosecution it was more a snake's eye view.

These people are not deliberate liars. They just can't tell the difference between truth and falsehood. You just can't blame them for not testifying accurately, but I certainly blame an intelligent and enlightened prosecution for encouraging such types to appear before a court and give testimony as to matters entirely beyond their possible knowledge. Look at their names: Seidel admitted, punch-drunk -- admitted he was confused in three languages. Bloch and Stern, two nice Jewish boys, cooked up their story on the train coming down. Bernhardt, he was certain that Brinkmann was the official hangman. That was the point he had. No other witness ever saw Brinkmann acting as official hangman during the time he was at Ellrich. Junk, from his exalted position in the kitchen, testified as to all the inner workings of the Mittelwerke, all of the secret work that went on in the Gestapo office, knew exactly what Rickhey was doing every period of the day. This type of witness can testify with great authority about all the secret works, the exact details of administrative channels as high as Berlin, thus demonstrating their ignorance.

Another class of witnesses, those which were compelled by just pure national hatred such as Bouda, a Czech who was known as "Lucy" in Dora, showed that he was prompted by hate and malice. The same is true for the French witnesses. Rozin, Maubert, and Chamaillard, the latter being the witness who was so blinded by hate that he definitely identified the accused Ulbricht as being one of the perpetrators of the Gardelegen affair, though, fortunately, we were able to prove to the contrary. That is not always possible with this type of witness. We can't always do that. In this particular case we were able to bring documents and witnesses to show how completely wrong he was. If it hadn't been for that, I am sure he would have had Ulbricht as being at this Gardelegen massacre. It shows the danger of accepting the statements of any of these witnesses at their face value.

Well, there they are, if the court please, the witnesses for the prosecution on parade, the deliberate liars, the exaggerators, the stupid, the ignorant, the guilty ones who are trying to hide their own guilt, these who are blinded by national hate. It is not a very pretty picture. "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone." But candor compels and justice does require that we recognize a small residue of the prosecution witnesses. They are at the rear of the parade. They are not very glamorous. They have the exotic virtue of trying to tell the truth. These men showed themselves to be men of balance by their attitude, by the positions which they have acquired after they have been released from the concentration camp. They are not out for revenge. This residue is insignificant, it is true, in numbers; but by contrast, it emphasized the worthlessness of the rest of the prosecution witnesses. I will refer to just a few. Colonel Leschi, who is now chief of the radio communications for all of France. The Polish witness Vincent Hein, the Polish reparations commissioner, Dr. Groenveld, the Mennonite. The religious steadfastness of this man compelled him to tell the truth as far as he knew it.

Dr. Groenveld even accused himself as being responsible for selecting prisoners to go on transports, which he did. He also accused himself of keeping his friend Ives in the hospital for the major part of his time in Dora when only other people who were really dying were kept out, because of friendship. This witness was making an attempt to tell the truth.

The interpreter Patzer, now at the University of London, this man confirmed that not one single death occurred as a result of interrogations in the bunker.

Now I implore the court to review carefully the testimony of that type of witness for the prosecution they at least made attempts to present a balanced and sane picture. Of course they were mistaken in many cases. We have already seen what the frailties of human memory will do. We must conclude, if the court please, that except for a small residue of prosecution witnesses, this court should reject as mistruth the testimony of the remainder because of the fact that they were prejudiced, because of the fact of faulty memory and of the time which has elapsed, because most of the testimony was based on hearsay, most of them either deliberate liars, exaggerators, guilty themselves and covering up, guilty and confused, or blinded by national hate. All of these above factors in connection with the incredibility of prosecution witnesses should be considered.

Prosecution Errors

But there is even more. There are fatal errors in the manner in which the prosecution presented its case, which must throw very great doubts on the testimony presented. In the first place, it is evident that the prosecution was overzealous in presenting its case, to say the least. I think, as Buehring so aptly put it, the prosecution was interested in hearing accusations, not the truth. I won't review for this court the ways in which the statements were obtained from these accused. The court heard enough about that from Buehring during the trial, the witnesses who were permitted to, who were interrogated, and explanations which were omitted.

Now the prosecution also withheld favorable evidence when it is the duty of the prosecutor to present all of the evidence in order to give a clear picture. Of this there can be no doubt. On several occasions when due to our objections the prosecution inadvertently was forced to present a subject as the Gardelegen report, it presented to the court an entirely different picture from what the prosecution was trying to make. It showed where the real responsibility for the Gardelagen incident lay. It showed that Brauny certainly could not be held as the principle character for that incident, if at all.

In the case of Brauny, of course, it is a case of "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't." If he stayed with the transport and massacred them you were guilty, then you couldn't win. If you left them, then you are a coward. You shouldn't have left them. That is a position in which I hope no member of this court or I want to be put.

That the prosecution indulged in over-exaggerations, is, of course, evident to everyone. He maintained this position during the entire case and maintained this position yesterday in his argument. According to the prosecution every single one of those accused is a mass murderer, every one of them, without any qualification, for one reason or another.

If the court please, that weakens any case when a man makes up his mind to hang every individual, then he is going to fall into some fatal errors in his presentation, and the prosecution did just that. The prosecution took the attitude that they should make no attempt to differentiate between places and names, in order to use casual words like "tunnels" to include construction sites, the "Mittelwerke factory" every place where prisoners worked were "the tunnels," they made no attempt to distinguish between dates.

Even yesterday in its final argument it was said that Rickhey's witnesses were complaining about the long roll calls, and therefore that showed that Koenig was guilty.

The court knows very well that Koenig was in the motor pool at the time Rickhey came to the Mittlewerke. Rickhey came to the Mittlewerke in May, and at that time Koenig had been in the motor pool for four months.

No attempt to distinguish Jews, and an attempt to show up a smoke screen of accusations this constant repetition of an error. That is a theory constantly repeat an error and eventually that makes it true. That was Goebbels' technique. Keep piling up accusations no matter whether they are true or false. Eventually they will be believed.

Now, accusations are easy to make. They are very difficult to disprove. Just keep calling the accused a murderer over and over again. That is the way to do it. This shows how easy it is to make sweeping accusations, if the court please. The same thing is true with the way they couple prejudicial matter which is entirely irrelevant. The horror picture of the bombing victims of the Boelke Kaserne; deliberately introduced to build up a prejudice against the accused Schmidt, in the hope that somehow the accused Schmidt would be found to have some participation in these deaths, which were actually the result of our own bombings.

It is this desire, if the court please, this desire to exaggerate, at all costs, to present evidence at all costs, no matter how worthless it is, that led witnesses such as Zwiener to appear before this court and testify invented testimony.

Now, the prosecution, of course, claims that they had no connection with the testimony which Zwiener invented, that they had nothing to do with his inventing that testimony, but I believe an interesting parallel can be drawn here. Very briefly, I would like to draw this parallel. The prosecution says, "We are completely innocent of having participated in inventing testimony." I do believe it. I know the court believes it. But we must recognize that a much stronger case could be made against the prosecution to prove that they did assist in inventing this testimony than any case that they have prosecuted against any single one of those accused, and that shows the danger of just making accusations and it should show the prosecution the danger and how easy it is, by hearsay testimony and by appearances, to show that a guilt exists.

Let us look at the facts. The facts are as admitted before this court. The prosecution and Zwiener were in contact through Mr. Aalmans that is admitted. Zwiener told another member of the accused of his inventions, of what he intended to do and if the Big Four didn't hang, that then, the little prisoners would hang. Zwiener did, in fact, manufacture the testimony. He passed it actually that is admitted by the prosecution through Captain Ryan. Zwiener made other attempts to pass this information to the prosecution. Then, when the prosecution brought this testimony forth in open court through the accused, Zwiener, by means of a very clear and smooth presentation on direct examination that the prosecution made of Zwiener, in cross examination it was very evident to every member of this court.

There it is a much stronger case than anything that has been presented by the prosecution against any of these accused. If the prosecution is innocent, as I am sure it is, one may well judge how easy it is for a miscarriage of justice to occur and how easy it is to be thought guilty on evidence based upon accusations of prejudiced witnesses, which is buttressed by hearsay. All the elements are there and admitted, just as the prosecutor said yesterday before this court, that all the elements in Helbig's case were admitted because he was present at Belsen, because he had a pistol in his hand, because he was seen by Dr. Kurzke every single element is present.

A Plea for Justice

I would like to close now, if the court please, with a sincere plan for the court to give those accused justice in this case. I do not want to make a plea for mercy because justice metes out the punishment that is deserved, no more, no less. The defense is not so naive and has not been so naive during this entire case as to claim that all of these people were completely innocent. We do not so claim now. Many of them have been guilty of criminal acts. Many of them have admitted it before this court, such as beatings, but they are not all murderers. Some of them are completely innocent and we respectfully request this court to take into consideration in bringing in their verdict these exaggerations that have been presented against these people against these people who have not received a fair trial.

Now, I do not want to be misunderstood.I am proud to say that every one of these accused has had a fair hearing before a court which has been scrupulously fair, but in our Anglo-American system, a fair hearing before a fair court is not an entirely fair trial. It is only part of a fair trial. What goes on before the trial is just as important as a fair hearing before a fair court. We cannot speak of a fair trial, when accused are denied the elementary rights pretrial rights I am speaking of which any gangster or any common criminal would enjoy before an American court. What takes place before the trial and the type of evidence admissible at the trial are just as important as a fair-minded court. The argument that if the positions were reversed and that if we were being tried by them, we wouldn't get as fair a trial as they did, is cowardly as an answer. Two wrongs have never made a right. It is just the pot calling the kettle black. Regardless of what they would have done, it is not justified of us to do likewise. How can we demand, if the court please, the strictest standard of conduct and morality which the prosecution has said we must use in judging these men? How can we demand these standards which we have inherited from our free laws and our free institutions and at the same time deny them the fundamental rights which our free laws and our free constitution give to people who must live by these strict standards? These people didn't learn their standards of conduct in baseball fields or cricket fields or the football fields of free countries. They learned them in an atmosphere of terror. We refuse to take this into consideration and if we do so, we then are consciously lowering our standards of justice in order to get a transitory revenge on a few suspected criminals.

Duty to History

In these War Crimes trials, this being the last one, we are writing history. We forget this it is easy to forget in the daily grind, the routine, the heat of the case it is easy to forget that we are writing international law and history in these trials. I ask this court to rise above the daily grind, to separate themselves from this particular trial and the day-after-day hearing of this evidence and to see itself in the position and the perspective which history gives to it. The precedents that we set in this court will outlive every member of this court. The lives and the fortunes of those accused are unimportant. The great cases in the law which have assured our great rights have always involved little people, little people who have long since departed from our field of view. The right of redress against a sovereign state was laid down in the Winslow Case, the case of a small boy who was accused of stealing some postage stamps from another boy; the case which upheld the freedom of the press was the case of an obscure publisher in the colonies of a magazine which has long since ceased even to be read in the United States. The freedom of religion was upheld in a case in which an obscure sect was involved, whose name is no longer even known.

I dare to utter a prophecy to this court. The decision to try these War Criminals under rules which offered them less protection than those which we extend to our own citizens when accused of crime, established a precedent in international law which will live to haunt the world.

The argument is made on the basis of expediency. It is said that those people could not be tried if we did not deprive them of these safeguards. To this, the wise men of the law have always answered that expediency is not a substitute for justice. Expediency is always the first stop on the road to totalitarianism. This philosophy that the ends justify the means that is the philosophy of Machiavelli and of Hitler.

I am most grateful for the opportunity to be able to stand before this court and repudiate this philosophy as abhorrent to our free institutions, which have been nurtured by our Anglo-American tradition and our American system. I do not believe in one law for our friends and a different law for our enemies. I hold no personal grief for these men. They were my enemies for a short while ago. What their fate is, is entirely immaterial to me, but historically such distinction results inevitably in invasions of our most precious liberties. The law means the same for all. We must extend the same protection to the criminal, to the innocent, to the citizen, to the alien, to the Christian, to the Jew. A denial of these basic rights to any group on whatever grounds, expediency or otherwise, in order to produce quick results, destroys the foundations of the law and its strength. I say I am happy to have the opportunity to repudiate this theory before this court because I know that as surely as we deprive this group today of the basic safeguards which we grant our own citizens, tomorrow we will deprive it from the Jew or from the Catholic, as I am, and I oppose it with all my strength.

Historically the law did not become a shield or sword for freedom until it became a way which was common to all men, to the prince, to the pauper, to the Jew, to the Christian, until it became known as "The Common Law," without distinction as to race or creed or the fact that they were former enemies.

These small perversions which are introduced and which have been introduced into these War Crimes Trial cases may seem unimportant. Suppression of liberty always brings with it small invasions of basic rights. The Nazi whom we are trying in Germany today began in that way, by invading a few basic rights to a very insignificant extent, as any German can now tell you before they knew it, their entire system had snowballed into a murderous avalanche which buried freedom. I report, when we consciously abandon our strong moral position as a democracy by laws in order to assure a few convictions, then we, and not the accused, are on trial, are the real betrayers of our system and our ideals. I report, I don't care what happens to those accused. I have no personal grief[Rt] for them of any kind but I, you and everyone here do have very high stakes in the birthrights which this court is here to guard and to preserve and to enforce. I feel inadequate to impress upon this court the importance of these principles. I wish that I could summon up the wise men of the law who have preceded me. Coke and Allenborough and Marshall and Holmes, and have them appear before you and say these things to you in a way far superior to anything which I can utter. I wish that I could summon the conscience of the American people, the voice of their conscience, to speak through me to tell you these things.

The defense is often accused of flag-waving. I am not a flagwaver. A flagwaver uses hypocritical patriotism to cloud the real issue. Here the real issue is not clouded. It is clear, it is expediency or justice. The strength of our democracy lies in the very fact that I, an American, am called upon to defend, through no personal desire of mine, these Germans, my former enemies, and that I can criticize the case which has been presented against them. But it also lies, if the court please, in the ability of each court member to follow the dictates of its own conscience. This court cannot give these men a fair trial. I have made that plain. But they can give them and I know they will give them a fair decision. Your duty is very simple. It may seem complicated but it is simple. Just ask yourself would you be willing to be placed on trial for your life and would you be willing to stake your life upon the type of evidence that has been presented by the prosecution before this court? Would you be willing to have your citizens, citizens of your own country, appear before a court martial or before an American court, and subjected to the kind of prejudice and perjured evidence which has been presented against these accused? Do you consider that the evidence produced by the prosecution against each of these accused would find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt before an American court, using the system and the principles of our Anglo-American free system of laws? Using that criterion, if the court please, it is clear that nearly all the accusations of the prosecution must fall below such standards of proof.

Historically the law did not become a shield or sword for freedom until it became a way which was common to all men, to the prince, to the pauper, to the Jew, to the Christian, until it became known as "The Common Law," without distinction as to race or creed or the fact that they were former enemies.


Notes

Major Poullada's final plea in the Nordhausen-Dora trial (U.S. vs. Kurt Andrae, et al. File number 000-50-37) is on record in the National Records Center, Suitland, Md. Record Group (RG) 338, Vol. 86, (Dec. 23, 1947), pp. 7723-7769. It is also on microfilm at the National Archives, Washington, DC. RG 338, Roll 11, 1079/ 7723-7769.

1.Probably "attempt."

2.Top U.S. officials, including Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, did refer to the American wartime camps for Japanese-Americans as "concentration camps." See: Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps (New York: 1976), pp. 74, 114, 175, 217, 314, 316.

3.Possibly should be Stephen Pinter. He considered the story of six million exterminated Jews to be a myth. See Arthur Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, p. 47.

4.Probably "savored."

5.Probably "corporal."

6.Probably "mistake."

7.Probably "wary."

8.Apparently a reference to "Prominente," or well-known individuals who were held in custody in the concentration camps, generally under privileged circumstances.

9."Greens" were ordinary criminals. "Reds" were political prisoners, mostly Communists. These designations referred to the colored identification badges they were obliged to wear in the camps. "Greens" and "Reds" struggled for internal control of the camps. By the final year of the war, Communist ("Red") inmates had wrested from the SS complete mastery of the day-to-day internal operations of several of the most important concentration camps.

10.Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl was head of the SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA) (Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS), to which the inspectorate of the concentration camps was transferred in 1942. Despite Pohl's efforts to ameliorate prisoner conditions and to minimize deaths, above all in the interests of wartime production, he was convicted by an American military tribunal and hanged in 1951.

11.SS Gruppenführer Hans Kammler, head of Amtsgruppe C, the construction department of the WHVA, was in charge of the entire V-2 development and production program. Albin Sawatzki was Arthur Rudolph's superior at the "Mittelwerk."

12.Probably "ministry."

13.Perhaps "which are" instead of "the."

14.Usually "Kapo." Although the origin of the term is disputed, it was generally used to describe prisoners who were appointed by the German camp command to supervise prisoner labor, and often extended to other members of the official prisoner hierarchy.

15.Frere Birin's testimony is dealt with at length by Paul Rassinier, who knew him at Dora/Nordhausen, in The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, pp. 121-129.

16.The notorious incident at Gardelegen, in which several hundred concentration camp inmates being evacuated from Nordhausen were locked in a barn and burned to death, had been presented by the prosecution as the deed of defendant Ulbricht and Brauny, but the defense was able to show that they had not been involved. The massacre was evidently carried out by members of the Volkssturm, the wartime militia, at the order of a local party official. Claims by the prosecution and by later writers that the atrocity had been in response to an alleged order by Heinrich Himmler to liquidate all concentration camp inmates on the approach of the Allied armies have never been substantiated. As with a presumed Hitler order to exterminate the Jews and an alleged Himmler order in 1944 to stop the extermination program, no such Himmler liquidation order has ever been found.

17.Perhaps "all the ..." instead of "only."

18.Boelke Kaserne, a sub-camp of Nordhausen, was bombed by Allied planes in April 1945, killing several hundred prisoners who worked in a munitions factory.

19.Probably "brief."

20.Probably "before."

21.Probably "repeat."

22.See note 20.


From The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 1), pages 81-119.

 

[Apollonian]

The Hossbach 'Protocol': The Destruction of a Legend​

LInk: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p372_Weber.html

Das Hossbach-'Protokoll': Die Zerstoerung einer Legende, by Dankwart Kluge.
Leoni am Starnberger See [Bavaria]: Druffel Verlag, 1980. 168 pages. DM 19.80. ISBN 3-80611003-4.

Reviewed by Mark Weber

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world, or at least Europe. At the great postwar Nuremberg Tribunal the victorious Allies sought to prove that Hitler and his "henchmen" had engaged in a sinister "Conspiracy to Wage Aggresive War." The most important piece of evidence produced to sustain this charge was and is a document known as the "Hossbach Protocol" or "Hossbach Memorandum."

On 5 November 1937, Hitler called a few high officials together for a conference in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin: War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Army Commander Werner von Fritsch, Navy Commander Erich Raeder, Air Force Commander Hermann Göring, and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Also present was Hitler's Army adjutant, Colonel Count Friedrich Hossbach.

Five days later, Hossbach wrote up an unauthorized record of the meeting based on memory. He did not take notes during the conference. Hossbach claimed after the war that he twice asked Hitler to read the memorandum, but the Chancellor replied that he had no time. Apparently none of the other participants even knew of the existence of the Colonel's conference record. Nor did they consider the meeting particularly important.

A few months after the conference, Hossbach was transferred to another position. His manuscript was filed away with many other papers and forgotten. In 1943 German general staff officer Colonel Count Kirchbach found the manuscript while going through the file and made a copy for himself. Kirchbach left the Hossbach original in the file and gave his copy to his brother-in-law, Victor von Martin, for safe keeping. Shortly after the end of the war, Martin turned over this copy to the Allied occupation authorities, who used it to produce a substantially altered version for use as incriminating evidence at Nuremberg. Sentences such as those quoting Hitler as saying that "The German question can only be solved by force" were invented and inserted. But over all, the document presented at Nuremberg is less than half the length of the original Hossbach manuscript. Both the original written by Hossbach and the Kirchbach/Martin copy have completely (and conveniently) disappeared.

According to the Hossbach document presented at Nuremberg and widely quoted ever since, Hitler told those present that his remarks were to be regarded as a "final testament" in case of his death. The most incriminating section quotes Hitler as saying that the armed forces would have to act by 1943-45 at the latest to secure the "living space" ("Lebensraum") Germany needed. However, if France became weakened by internal crisis before that time, Germany should take action against Czechia (Bohemia and Moravia). Or if France became so embroiled in war (probably with Italy) that she could not take action against Germany, then Germany should seize Czechia and Austria simultaneously. Hitler's alleged references to German "living space" refer only to Austria and Czechia.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany was militarily at the mercy of hostile foreign states. Rearmament had begun slowly, and in early 1937, because of a raw materials shortage, the three armed service branches had to cut back. A furious dispute broke out between the branches for the remaining allocation.

Contrary to what the Hossbach protocol suggests, Hitler called the conference of 5 November 1937 partially to reconcile the squabbling heads of the military branches and partially to revive the German rearmament program. Foreign policy was only a subsidiary issue. Hitler sought to justify the need for rebuilding German armed strength by presenting several exaggerated and hypothetical foreign crisis cases which would require military action, none of which ever occurred. Hitler announced no new course in German foreign policy, much less a plan for aggressive war.

At Nuremberg Göring testified that Hitler told him privately just before the conference that the main purpose in calling the meeting was "to put pressure on General von Fritsch, since he (Hitler) was dissatisfied with the rearmament of the army." Raeder confirmed Göring's statement.

Like some other aristocratic and traditionalist conservatives, Hossbach became a bitter opponent of Hitler and the National Socialist regime. He was an intimate friend of General Ludwig Beck, who was executed in 1944 for his leading role in the conspiracy which tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the government. Despite his postwar denial, it is virtually certain that Hossbach prepared his slanted version of the conference at Beck's urging for possible use in discrediting the Hitler regime following a coup d'etat. Hossbach was also close to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of military intelligence, and General Ziehlberg, both of whom were also executed for their roles in the 1944 assassination plot. Even in early 1938 Hossbach, Beck and Canaris were in favor of a coup to forcibly overthrow Hitler.

The Hossbach memorandum is frequently cited in popular historical works as conclusive proof of Hitler's plans for aggressive war. A good example is William Shirer's best-selling but unreliable Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which alleged that the protocol recorded "the decisive turning point in the life of the Third Reich." At this critical conference, Shirer wrote, "... the die was cast. Hitler had communicated his irrevocable decision to go to war. To the handful of men who would have to direct it there could no longer by any doubt." Like many other Germanophobe publicists, Shirer deceptively cites the Hossbach memorandum as a reliable record. He even distorts the actual wartime importance of the conference participants. Of the five top officials present, three (Blomberg, Fritsch, Neurath) lost their high positions within months of the meeting. Raeder was replaced as Navy Commander in January 1943. Only Göring was really close to Hitler.

The important role of the fraudulent Hossbach protocol at the Nuremberg Tribunal is another damning confirmation of the illegitimate, show-trial character of this most extravagant judicial undertaking in history. On the basis of the protocol, which became Nuremberg document 386-PS, the Tribunal indictment declared: "An influential group of the Nazi conspirators met together with Hitler on 5 November 1937 to discuss the situation. Once again it was emphasized that Germany must have living space in Central Europe. They recognized that such a conquest would probably meet resistance that would have to be beaten down with force, and that their decision would probably lead to a general war." U.S. prosecutor Sidney Alderman told the Tribunal that the memorandum ("one of the most striking and revealing of all the captured documents") removed any remaining doubts about the guilt of the German leaders for their crimes against peace. It was also the basis for the conclusion of the Nuremberg judges that the German "Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War" began at the conference of 5 November 1937. The document was crucial in condemning Göring, Neurath and Raeder for their roles in the "criminal conspiracy." The spurious Hossbach protocol is all too typical of the kind of evidence used by the victorious Allies at Nuremberg to legitimize their judicial imprisonment and murder of defeated Germany's leaders.

There is now no doubt that the Hossbach protocol is worthless as a historical document. After the war both Hossbach and Kirchbach declared that the U.S. prosecution version is quite different than the document manuscript they recalled. Hossbach also testified at Nuremberg that he could not confirm that the prosecution version corresponded completely with the manuscript he wrote in 1937. And in his memoirs, he admitted that in any case, Hitler did not outline any kind of "war plan" at the meeting. At Nuremberg, Göring, Raeder, Blomberg and Neurath all denounced the Hossbach protocol as a gross misrepresentation of the conference. (Fritsch was dead.) The protocol deals only with the first half of the meeting, thereby distorting its true character. The memorandum concludes with the simple sentence: "The second half of the conference dealt with material armaments questions." No details are given. In 1968 Victor von Martin characterized the memorandum with these words: "The protocol presented at the Nuremberg court was put together in such a way as to totally change the meaning [of the original] and can therefore be characterized only as a crude forgery."

When he wrote his path-breaking study, The Origins of the Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor accepted the Hossbach memorandum as a faithful record of the meeting of 5 November 1937. However, in a supplementary "Second Thoughts" added to later editions, the renowned British historian admitted that he had initially been "taken in" by the "legend" of the document. The allegedly significant conference was actually "a maneuver in domestic affairs." The protocol itself, Taylor noted, "contains no directives for action beyond a wish for increased armaments." He ruefully observed that "those who believe in political trials may go on quoting the Hossbach memorandum." H.W. Koch, a Lecturer at the University of York (England), further dismantled the legend in a 1968 article which concluded that the infamous protocol would be "inadmissible in any other court except the Nuremberg tribunal."

Dankwart Kluge has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the origins of the Second World War. His study will stand for many years as the most authoritative dissection of a great documentary fraud. This attractive work includes the complete text of the Hossbach protocol as an appendix, four photos, and a comprehensive bibliography. The author was born in 1944 in Breslau (Wroclaw), Silesia. Since 1974 he has worked as an attorney in West Berlin. Kluge has done an admirable job of assembling his material, which is drawn not only from all the available published and documentary sources, but also from numerous private interviews and correspondence with key witnesses. Kluge argues his case compellingly, although the narrative style is somewhat weak. This important study leaves no doubt that the highly touted protocol is actually a forged revision of an uncertified copy of an unauthorized original, which has disappeared. Harry Elmer Barnes, to whom the work is dedicated, would have welcomed it heartily.


From The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pp. 372-375.

 

[Apollonian]

Dutch right-wing politician calls Nuremberg trials ‘illegitimate’​

February 24, 2021 1:46 pm

Link: https://www.jta.org/quick-reads

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A prominent right-wing lawmaker in the Netherlands has provoked outrage by saying that the trials against Nazis in Nuremberg, Germany, were “illegitimate.”

Thierry Baudet, leader of the right-wing Forum for Democracy party, which has two seats in Dutch parliament, made the statement on Monday during a rally in Gouda, near Amsterdam, ahead of next month’s general elections.

“I’m no supporter of retroactive punitive legal action,” Baudet said in replying to a question on whether he supports prosecuting the mayor of Amsterdam for perceived police brutality. “I consider the Nuremberg trials as illegitimate. You shouldn’t retroactively judge people.”

Political rivals and CIDI, Dutch Jewry’s watchdog on anti-Semitism, said Baudet’s remark was “shocking.”

The Nuremberg trials, led by an international tribunal with judges from Allied countries including the Soviet Union, ended in 1946 with the execution of 10 senior Nazis, including Hans Frank, the highest-ranking Nazi officer in occupied Poland. They are widely seen as a seminal milestone in the creation of modern international law.

By Cnaan Liphshiz

 

[Apollonian]

A Veteran's Plea for Peace​

Link: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p38_Hess.html

Rudolf Hess' 1934 Appeal to Fellow Soldiers of the First World War

By Rudolf Hess

Even many people who consider themselves well-informed about the history of the Third Reich and the Second World War are ignorant of the numerous offers of peace made by Hitler and his government in the years before the outbreak of war, particularly during the 1934-1937 period.

His first speech on foreign policy after taking office as Chancellor was a plea for peace and mutual understanding among nations delivered to the Reichstag on May 17, 1933. So persuasively argued was his appeal that it was enthusiastically endorsed even by opposition-party representatives, including Social Democratic Party deputies.

Two years later, the German leader again stressed the need for peace on the basis of mutual understanding in his Reichstag speech of May 21, 1935. In the view of the London Times, Hitler's address was "reasonable, straightforward and comprehensive."

Such calls for peace were not mere rhetoric. On March 31, 1936, the German government announced a comprehensive plan for strengthening peace in Europe. The detailed paper included numerous specific proposals, including demilitarization of the entire Rhineland region, a western Europe security agreement, and mutual prohibition of poison gas and incendiary bombs, as well as heavy tanks and heavy artillery.

Efforts like this were not without some success. For example, in January 1934 Hitler's government concluded a ten-year non-aggression pact with Poland. (Unfortunately, the spirit of this treaty was later broken by the men who took power in Warsaw after the death of Marshal Pilsudski in 1935.)

One of Hitler's most important foreign policy successes was a comprehensive naval agreement with Britain, signed in June 1935. (This agreement, incidentally, abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, thereby showing that neither London nor Berlin still regarded it as valid.) For the most part, though, Germany's neighbors rejected Hitler's peace proposals.

Most historians have tended to dismiss his proposals as insincere posturing designed to deceive the world about his "true" intentions. Sincere or not, it is significant that Germany's neighbors – above all France and Britain – declined to call Hitler's "bluff" by at least giving serious consideration to his proposals. A particularly eloquent expression of the Third Reich's "peace offensive" is Rudolf Hess' address of July 8, 1934. This speech – the relevant portion of which is given here – was delivered in Königsberg, capital of the province of East Prussia (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad). Speaking as Hitler's Deputy, Hess' words reflected not only the policy of Hitler and his government, but also the heart-felt desire of the vast majority of Germans for lasting peace in Europe.

The sincerity of this appeal to, especially, former front-line soldiers of the First World War, is confirmed by everything we know about Hess. His personal passion for peace was manifest, above all, in his history-making May 1941 flight to Britain, in which he risked his life in an effort to end fighting between Britain and Germany.

– M.W.


"Within a few weeks we shall be celebrating the day [in August 1914] that marked the opening of an epic struggle on the part of Germany's soldiers [during the First World War]. It was here in [the province of] East Prussia that the great soldier, Hindenburg, turned back the invasion and saved the country. East Prussia suffered more in the war than any other part of Germany. East Prussia experienced the war in its most brutal realities. Here the ruined villages remained for a long time as striking witnesses of the Russian invasion. There are many among you here who remember the tragic sight of the refugees, fleeing for safety from the hands of the Cossacks.

Therefore, because you have been acquainted with war in your own homeland, I wish to say here in East Prussia something which I have long wanted to say to Germany and to the world at large. It is this: Today our people have the good fortune to be led by soldiers who fought in the front line trenches [during the First World War] and who have brought over into the leadership of the state those virtues which they learned at the front. They are carrying out the rebuilding of the Reich in the spirit of the trenches; because it was the spirit of the trenches which created National Socialism.

While in the trenches they were everywhere confronted with death; and in the face of this terror all feeling of class distinction or differences of calling broke down. In the common sorrows and joys that they shared while in the trenches, there developed a spirit of comradeship between fellow countrymen such as had never been known before. In the trenches the common destiny stood out, before all eyes and in gigantic form, above the destiny of the individual.

And yet another thing arose in those trenches, despite all the bitterness and ruthlessness of the struggle. This was a certain feeling that between the men in the front lines on the opposite side of "no man's land" there was a certain bond of union which arose from the fact that on both sides they had to endure the same suffering, to stand in the same mud and face the same death.

A Common Bond Among Soldiers

And this feeling of a common bond has remained up to the present day. Is it not so? When [former] soldiers of the front-line trenches who fought on the opposite sides now find themselves together they naturally speak of the world war; but the hope that is constantly glittering through their conversation is the hope of peace. And therefore, if the politicians cannot find the means of doing so, it is the men who fought in the frontline trenches who are now called upon to throw a bridge of understanding across the gulf that separates nation from nation.

It is no mere coincidence that the two nations that are [today] led by soldiers [Mussolini and Hitler] who once fought in the trenches – Italy and Germany – are now working hard to establish a world peace. And it was not mere accident that, when the two [former] front-line soldiers, Hitler and Mussolini, met one another, a cordial personal understanding immediately arose. With our Polish neighbors we have entered into a covenant that serves the cause of peace. And in that country also the political leader is a soldier: Marshal Pilsudski.

Even in France, Hitler's attempt to bring about an understanding with our western neighbor met with the most favorable reception in the ranks of the former front-line soldiers.

Understanding Based on Mutual Respect

We who have fought in the trenches are determined that an incompetent diplomacy shall not be the cause of our stumbling into another catastrophe. Once again, front-line soldiers would have to bear the brunt of the suffering. The soldiers who fought in the trenches, no matter on which side, feel free of all responsibility for the last war. We want to work together to prevent a new catastrophe. We desire in common to build up in peace what in common we destroyed in war.

It is high time that now, at last, a real understanding should be reached among the nations. This must be an understanding based on mutual respect for one another, because only such an understanding can endure. It must be founded on the same kind of mutual respect as those who fought on opposite sides in the front-line trenches have always had for one another.

For there must be no doubt about this: Most of the Great Powers have accumulated more war materiel now than ever before. But war materiel, which is in danger of deteriorating, is perilous stuff in the midst of a world that has had been in a spirit of unrest ever since the war, and among nations that have the highest mistrust of one another today. An insignificant episode, like the unfortunate shot that was fired in Sarajevo in 1914 – perhaps an explosion from the pistol of a fool – might suffice, even against the best will of the nations concerned, to set millions of people against one another in armed conflict. Such an episode might be sufficient to plow up whole sections of countryside through tens of thousands of cannons of all calibers and ranges, to blow towns and villages into the air in a sea of flames, and to smother all life in clouds of poison gas.

Those who took part in the [First] World War have a premonition of what a modern war, with more fully perfected weapons, would mean today.

The Experience of the Front

I appeal to the front-line comrades of the war, on all sides.

Be honest. Of course we once stood out there in the proud feeling that we were stalwart men soldiers, warriors, liberated from the everyday routine of our former existence. We probably experienced a temporary pleasure in a kind of life that was a crude contrast to the languid existence that modern civilization and hyper-civilization brings with it. We felt ourselves worthier men than those who were far from the front, and had nothing to do with the destiny that was being decided there. We felt that we were defending the life of our nation, and that we were the trustees of our nation, and that we were the trustees of its future.

We enjoyed happy and bright hours. We tried to double every minute of life that was given to us. Not one of us would like to have this time at the front erased from his memory.

Death and Suffering

But let us be honest. The smell of death was always in our nostrils. We have seen death in more fearful and mangled shapes than any men before our time. We squatted and crouched in our dugouts, waiting to be crushed to pieces. We listened with stilled breath as our trained ear heard the hiss of the shell above us, as the mine exploded before our feet. Our hearts throbbed as if they would break to pieces when we sought cover in vain against the deadly rattle of the machine gun. With our gas masks on we felt ourselves suffocating to death in the midst of the gas clouds. We stumbled along in the water-logged trenches. We lay out in shell craters through the freezing nights. For days and weeks together, the horror of battle passed over us. We were frozen and hungry and often on the verge of madness. The cries of the heavily wounded men were in our ears. We met blinded men staggering back and we heard the death rattle in the throats of the dying. Among the heaped-up corpses of our dead comrades we lost all hope of life. We saw the misery of the refugees behind the lines. We saw the widow and the orphans, the cripples and the suffering, the sick children and the hungry women at home.

'Must This Be?'

Let us be honest. Did not each one of us then and there often ask: Why all this? Must this be? Can humanity not be spared all this in the future?

But we held out, on all sides, as men of duty and discipline and loyalty, as men who despised cowardice.

Today I take up anew the question we then asked, and I send it out to ring as a summons around the world. As one who fought in the front-line trenches [speaking] to the [former] front-line soldiers throughout the world, as a leader of the German nation to the leaders of other nations, I ask: Must this be? With goodwill and cooperation, cannot we save humanity from this?

Perhaps someone will ask: Why do you raise your voices today for the first time? Why have you remained silent during the past years?

I shall give the answer: Because in the past my voice would have been intermingled with the voices of those who had betrayed their own nation. It would have been associated with those who fell upon our fighting soldiers from the rear. It would have been intermingled with the voices of those Germans who have the Treaty of Versailles on their consciences.

Today I can speak, because a man of my own people has reestablished the honor of that people before the world. Today I can speak because the world now knows that a National Socialist soldier is not a knave. Today I can speak because the leader of my people has himself offered the hand of peace to the world. Today I can speak because the courageous stand of one man, Adolf Hitler, is a guarantee against my being misunderstood or accused of making common cause with the pacifist poltroons.

Today I must speak, because I must stand by the man who is seeking in this final moment to save the world from catastrophe. Today I raise my voice, because I wish also to warn the world against mistaking the Germany of today, the Germany of peace, for the Germany of the pacifists.

For this must be proclaimed and made known: although the men of the old front-line have the thousand-fold horrors of the war still before their minds, and although the post-war generation wants war as little as the older generation does, yet the road is not open for an "Excursion" into our country.

Just as in the Great War the French people defended every square foot of their soil with all their might, and would defend it again any day against a renewed attack, so would the German people do in like manner today. The French [former] front-line soldier will especially understand us when we tell those who are constantly playing with the idea of another war – which, of course, would have to be waged on the front by others than the professional hate mongers – the French [former] front-line soldier will understand us when we tell these people:

If you dare to attack us, if you dare to march into the new Germany, then the world will learn what the spirit of the new Germany is. It would fight for the inviolability of its freedom as hardly any other people in history ever fought. The French people know how one defends one's native soil. Every scrap of wood, every hill, every farmstead would have to be conquered with the outpouring of blood. Old and young would dig themselves into their native soil. They would defend themselves with a fanaticism unparalleled in world history.

And even if superiority of armament would turn out to be victorious, the way through the Reich would be a road of gruesome sacrifice for the invader as well; because no nation has ever been so filled with a sense of its right as our nation is [today], and with a sense of its duty to defend itself to the last against every attack.

Yearning for Peace

But we do not believe those who are poisoning the springs of international relations when they suggest that there is any nation ready today to wreck the peace of Germany and therewith that of Europe, if not of the whole world.

We believe that this is particularly true of the French people; for we know that these people also yearn for peace. We who fought in the trenches remember that the French population behind the lines in the World War always spoke of it as a misfortune for themselves and the whole world. The demand for an honorable understanding with Germany, expressed officially by the organizations of French [former] front-line soldiers, was received with keen sympathy by us, and especially by [former] German front-line soldiers. The demand undoubtedly sprang from a firsthand knowledge of what the realities of war mean, and also from the esteem which France's [former] front-line soldiers have for the military achievements of the German soldiers in the war.

The soldiers of France recognize how tenaciously German soldiers fought for four-and-a-half years against superior forces. And in the same way the German front-line soldier has never failed to acknowledge the bravery of his French adversary. This bravery found its expression in the fact that the French army paid the highest price in blood of any army in the ranks of the Allies.

The former soldiers of the old front-line want peace.

The people want peace.

The German government wants peace.

And if sometimes the words of authoritative representatives of the French government sound to us in disharmony with the spirit of willingness for an understanding, this does not lead us to abandon hope that, in spite of all, the government of France also wants peace. The French people undoubtedly want peace. In face of that fact we are convinced that the French government does not desire a war with Germany.

If authoritative French representatives do not speak the language of the French people or the French [former] front-line soldiers, they are not to be taken as representative of prevailing views in France. A Frenchman who knows the people and politics of his country very well said to me once: "Have sympathy with us. We still govern through the parliamentary system." He meant to say that statesmen are often forced in their speeches to avoid saying what they think and to say what the parliamentary majority wants to hear. But we know that parliamentary majorities do not represent the opinion of the public. They are rather the representatives of commercial interests and other forces.

Real Peace Benefits All

History will certainly bestow more laurels on the men who, in these difficult times, will have worked to bring about an understanding among the nations, and thus to save civilization, than on those who think that by aggressive political and military measures they can win victories. The people themselves will be grateful to those leaders who will have assured peace to them; because unemployment, with all its social misery, is ultimately attributable to a meager interchange of goods between the various nations. And this interchange is kept at a low level by the absence of mutual trust.

It is an indubitable fact that an understanding between Germany and France would not only help those [two] nations, looked upon as a whole, but also each single individual among the populations of both. To put the matter concretely, every Frenchman and every German would thereby be assured a higher permanent income or a higher permanent wage.

The war, and the continuation of it by other means under the name of peace, brought no good to civilization or the well-being of the nations. As little as the war profited us all, so much more will a real peace benefit us all.

Real peace and honest mutual trust between the nations will make possible the reduction of armaments, which today are a heavy drain on a large section of the income of nations, thereby decreasing the wealth of individual citizens.

Equality of Rights

Again and again Adolf Hitler has asserted that Germany demands equality of rights in all spheres, including that of armament. Once such an understanding as I have been speaking of is arrived at between Germany and her neighbors, Germany can easily be content with the minimum amount of armament necessary for her own internal security and the guaranteeing of peace.

For a practically disarmed country represents a danger to peace. The fact that it lacks the means of military defense offers a temptation to foreign armies to undertake "excursions" that would involve no military risk. Disarmament of a single nation in the midst of heavily armed nations might easily excite ambitious men to an attempt to win easy laurels for themselves. It might also prove a lure for governments to ease tension at home by undertaking foreign adventures.

It is especially the veteran soldiers among you, my party colleagues, who as former soldiers can bear testimony to the fact that the former soldiers of the front-line, to whom I have the honor to belong, desire peace in the profound conviction of their souls.

Peace and Mutual Understanding

The world was surprised at the frank and open way in which that soldier of the old front-line, Adolf Hitler, recently expressed his opinion on this point. The [former] front-line soldiers who are now in the German government honorably demand peace and understanding. I appeal to the veterans of all nations, and even to their governments, to give us their combined support in striving toward this goal.

From the sacred soil of East Prussia I send out this appeal to the soldiers of the world who fought in the war. Here on this German borderland began the great world struggle that brought with it such terrible sacrifices, sacrifices from which the nations that took part in the struggle have not yet recovered. I hope that the spirits that hover over this historic battlefield from which I send out this cry of peace will help to make it effective. We now have pacts of understanding with [Poland,] our great neighbor on this eastern German frontier, thereby guaranteeing peace to the populations dwelling on both sides of this frontier. Would that the nations which stand on Germany's other frontiers might guarantee a greater degree of security for their own people, and ours, through friendly pacts of mutual understanding rather than by the heaping up of war material. That is our hope. In the memory of its dead, many of whom fell here in East Prussia, Germany's will to peace will continue to grow stronger and stronger.

The old soldiers of the war fronts and the young men who are striving to build up a free and proud and peaceful Reich send their greetings from here to the front-line soldiers of the world and to Adolf Hitler in particular. We all look upon him as our protagonist in the cause of peace.


From The Journal of Historical Review, July- August 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 4), pages 38-42.

For Further Reading

Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War': How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (New York: Crown, 2008).

Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Testament: A Historic Final Statement to the World
( http://ihr.org/other/hitlertestament.html )

Adolf Hitler. Reichstag speech of Dec. 11, 1941 (Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the USA.)
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html )

David L. Hoggan. The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed. IHR, 1989.

Friedrich Stieve. What the World Rejected: Hitler’s Peace Offers, 1933-1939.
( http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html )

A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War. New York: 1983.

Mark Weber, “President Roosevelt's Campaign to Incite War in Europe: The Secret Polish Documents," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 2), pp. 135-172.
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p135_Weber.html )