"Why don't you just shoot us?"

Unknown Nazi war criminal

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"It was the virtue of the Nuremberg trial that it was conceived in hatred of war, and nurtured by those starved of peace. Of course, the trial was botched and imperfect...it had to deal with new crimes for which there was no provision in national law or international law."

Rebecca West

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If the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunal had been applied impartially, many American, Soviet and other Allied military and political leaders would have been hanged.









".. a libel on the military profession." - Vice Admiral Hewlett Thebaud, USN





"... a fantastic desecration of the ideals of Western Civilisation, and appalling miscarriage of justice... a misuse of evidence for vicious ends, all of which will someday be exposed as a shocking travesty of high legal and moral principles." - Henry M. Adams, Ph.D. Professor of History, University of California

Nuremberg Trials. They were supposedly set up to punish those guilty of war crimes. The trial was held by the victors, to punish the defeated. They were meant to make sure that no traces of Nazi Germany remained. It had taken America, Russia and Britain to come together to defeat it and Nuremberg was meant to make sure that all traces were wiped out. The genie was firmly put back into the bottle and it was firmly corked.





But is it? It takes new forms. Today it exists as Islamic extremism.





Anyway. We deal with the Nuremberg trials here.





The Nuremberg trials were hardly fair. In fact Churchill and the British did not not want to try captured Nazi leaders at all. They wanted to shoot them as soon as they were captured. It was Stalin who wanted a show of trial. The aim was to bring the crimes of the Nazis to public notice. Otherwise it would have seemed that the Allies were afraid them.





The Americans were caught in two minds. An ailing Roosevelt was not averse to what the British were suggesting. Morgenthau too wanted them all shot. Henry Stimson wanted to follow the American judicial process, and just cowboys hanging.





What turned the balance was the new American president Truman who wanted the Nazis to be tried, at least make a show of fair play.





The interrogation of the Nazi prisoners was anything but what modern criminal interrogation is. Prisoners rights were not protected. They had no right to silence. The accused had no lawyers sitting during the questioning keep an hawk eye on breach of privilege.





The fate of the prisoners (atleast the hardcore Nazis) at the trials was a foregone conclusion. Death.









Former Reich Minister Hermann Goering in the aviation hall of the Nuremberg Tribunal. 1945



WHAT GOERING SAID WHILE THE NUREMBERG TRIALS WERE GOING ON.....





These statements were recorded in Gustave Gilbert's transcriptions of conversations with many of the Nazi leaders during the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg, and later published in Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary(1947).

The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.

After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)



The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally. WHAT GOERING SAID WHILE THE NUREMBERG TRIALS WERE GOING ON.....Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system.



To Leon Goldensohn



Hitler decided that. I thought it was stupid because I believed that first we had to defeat England.

April 15, 1946, On decision to attack Russia



In Berlin Jews controlled almost one hundred percent of the theaters and cinemas before the rise to power.

May 21, 1946

Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia — each one he could have conquered individually — these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical.

To me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree.



I am a man who is basically opposed to atrocities or ungentlemanly actions. In 1934, I promulgated a law against vivisection. You can see, therefore, that if I disapprove of the experimentation on animals, how could I possibly be in favor of torturing humans? The prosecution says that I had something to do with the freezing experiments which were performed in the concentration camps under the auspices of the air force. That is pure Quatsch! I was much too busy to know about these medical experiments, and if anybody had asked me, I would have disapproved violently. It must have been Himmler who thought up these stupid experiments, although I think he shirked his responsibility by committing suicide. I am not too unhappy about it because I would not particularly enjoy sitting on the same bench with him. The same is true of that drunken Robert Ley, who did us a favor by hanging himself before the trial started. He was not going to be any advantage for us defendants when he took the stand. May 24, 1946



I have to laugh when the English claim they are such a wonderful nation. Everyone knows that Englishmen are really Germans, that the English kings were German, and that in Russia the emperors were either of German origin or received their education in Germany.

May 26, 1946

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Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-46, privately acknowledged in a letter to President Truman, that the Allies “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.”

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The October 1, 1946 Süddeutsche Zeitung announces "The Verdict in Nuremberg." Depicted are (left, from top): Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick; (second column) Funk, Streicher, Schacht; (third column) Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach; (right, from top) Sauckel, Jodl, Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann.

Image from Topography of Terror Museum, Berlin.



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(Nuremberg Tribunal) "is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations" (against Germany). (The Tribunal) "is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional system ..."

Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor and a former US Attorney General

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NUREMBERG TRIALS CRITICISED





Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice".

As Biddiss noted "...the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us... It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves. The undoubted flaws rightly continue to trouble the thoughtful."

Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. "(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg," he wrote. "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." Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves "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 prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. 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."

Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time." U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben

-----------------------------------The October 1, 1946announces "The Verdict in Nuremberg." Depicted areGöring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick;Funk, Streicher, Schacht;Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach;Sauckel, Jodl, Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann.NUREMBERG TRIALS CRITICISED

The Nuremberg Trials

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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. 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 embedded 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." http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html





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Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trial



HERMANN GOERING AT NUREMBERG

(Source: BBC)





Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.

He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.

From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence. With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock. When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.

So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue. 'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size. For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem.

In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own. His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.

During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.



---------------------------------------- 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. Robert A. Taft, a then American Senator Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard. HERMANN GOERING AT NUREMBERGSource

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One of the leaders of the Third Reich, the Reich Minister of the Imperial Ministry of Aviation, Hermann Goering speaking at the Nuremberg Trials. He was sentenced to death but he committed suicide on the evening of October 15, 1946, a few hours before his execution.





The Former commander of Auschwitz Concentration camp, Rudolf Höß (Hoess) , in the Witness Stand



WHO WAS RUDOLPH HOESS?



Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess ( 25 November 1900[1] – 16 April 1947) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel), and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered. Höss joined the Nazi Party in 1922, the SS in 1934. He was hanged in 1947 following his trial at Warsaw.

WHAT HAPPENED TO HOESS?

In the last days of the war, Höss was advised by Himmler to disguise himself among German Navy personnel. He evaded arrest for nearly a year. When he was captured by British troops—some of whom were Jews born in Germany—on 11 March 1946, he was disguised as a farmer and called himself Franz Lang. His wife told the British where he could be found, fearing that her son, Klaus, would be shipped off to the Soviet Union, where he surely would, at minimum, be sent to the gulag and be tortured. After being questioned and allegedly beaten severely by his captors Höss confessed his real identity. During the Nuremberg Trials, he appeared as a witness in the trials of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Oswald Pohl, and the IG Farben corporation.

There he gave detailed testimony of his crimes: “ I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 ”

On 25 May 1946, he was handed over to Polish authorities and the Supreme National Tribunal in Poland tried him for murder. During his trial, when accused of murdering three and a half million people, Höss replied, "No. Only two and one half million — the rest died from disease and starvation."

Höss was sentenced to death on 2 April 1947. The sentence was carried out on 16 April immediately adjacent to the crematorium of the former Auschwitz I concentration camp. He was hanged on gallows constructed specifically for that purpose, at the former location of the camp Gestapo. Hoess being executed in Poland



WHO WAS RUDOLPH HOESS?WHAT HAPPENED TO HOESS?