Eventually, the Justice of the Victors for 24 defendants
NUREMBERG : THE NOT SO FAIR TRIAL
Before the end of WW2, the Allies decided that they would judge the war criminals at the
end of the war. In 1945, they set up in Nuremberg a tribunal to judge the Nazis responsible of
the onset of the war and its atrocities. They put 24 Nazis in the dock and started the trial in
november 1945: it ended in august 1946. The average IQ of the defendants was 128. The
tribunal was presided over by Lord Geoffrey Lawrence (UK) with three other judges :
Francis Biddle (USA), Henri Donnadieu de Vabres (France) and Gal. Iona Nikitchenko
(USSR). For the prosecution, there were Robert H. Jackson for the Government of the USA,
Francois de Menthon and Auguste Champetier de Ribes for the Provisional Government of
France, David Maxwell-Fyfe for the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and
Gal. R.A. Rudenko for the Government of the USSR.
The above picture represents the defense and the defendants in
the dock at the International Military Tribunal (IMT). The four counts
of indictment were : 1- conspiracy to commit; 2- crimes against peace;
3- war crimes; 4- crimes against humanity.
end of the war. In 1945, they set up in Nuremberg a tribunal to judge the Nazis responsible of
the onset of the war and its atrocities. They put 24 Nazis in the dock and started the trial in
november 1945: it ended in august 1946. The average IQ of the defendants was 128. The
tribunal was presided over by Lord Geoffrey Lawrence (UK) with three other judges :
Francis Biddle (USA), Henri Donnadieu de Vabres (France) and Gal. Iona Nikitchenko
(USSR). For the prosecution, there were Robert H. Jackson for the Government of the USA,
Francois de Menthon and Auguste Champetier de Ribes for the Provisional Government of
France, David Maxwell-Fyfe for the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and
Gal. R.A. Rudenko for the Government of the USSR.
The above picture represents the defense and the defendants in
the dock at the International Military Tribunal (IMT). The four counts
of indictment were : 1- conspiracy to commit; 2- crimes against peace;
3- war crimes; 4- crimes against humanity.
| The American chief prosecuting counsel, Robert H. Jackson, was a former Roosevelt attorney-general. He was determined that the trial would take place and would be a triumph for American notions of justice. It is arguable that this goal was achieved. |
| Francis Beverley Biddle (May 9, 1886 – October 4, 1968) was an American lawyer and judge who is most famous as the primary American judge during the Nuremberg trials after World War II. |
Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko (1895 - April 22, 1967) was a judge of the Soviet Union at Nuremberg. Nikitchenko presided over some of the most notorious of Stalin's show trials during the purges of 1936 to 1938, where he among other things sentenced Kamenev and Zinoviev. |
The message of the Nuremberg trial was that human beings and their
political decisions had made Auschwitz possible. Albert Speer - Hitler's
architect and Reich minister for armaments and war production from
1942 to 1945 - declared in a 1977 letter to the South African Board of
Jewish Deputies : "I still recognize today that the grounds on which I
was convicted by the International Military Tribunal were correct. More
than this: I still consider it today essential to take upon myself the
responsibility and thus the blame in general, for all crimes which were
committed after I became part of the Hitler government on 7 February
1942 ... My main guilt, however, I still see today in my tacit acceptance
of the persecution and the murder of millions of Jews." Amen ! Speer
-always an opportunist- gained his place in the Purgatory of the Forgiven.
Colonel Burton C.Andrus was the commander of the security detachment at Ashcan camp and later at Nuremberg. He imposed on his charges a tough, no-nonsense regime. He thought the detainees were "nuts". He failed to prevent the suicides of Ley and Goering. On his deathbed, he was still obsessed with this failure. |
| The men who died at Nuremberg were Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Franck, Frick, Streicher, Seyss-Inquart and Sauckel. Part of the post-war argument about Nuremberg trial concerns the length of time it took doctors to pronounce the men dead once they had been hanged:
Basically, the American hangman -a Sergeant Woods- made a ball up of the executions. Apparently the trap door did not retain in the rubber bungs when opened and consequently some of the hanged were hit in the face by the rebounding trap door. He also got the drop wrong. The correct drop was absolutely essential to ensure that the neck vertebrae was severed on the "jerk" to be certain of instantaneous death. Most of the hanged at Nuremberg did not die immediately of a broken neck, but choked, indicating the miscalculation by Woods. Woods used a standard military drop of six feet for all of his victims, not the variable drops developed by the masterful British hangman, Pierrepont. |
| Pierrepont's technique tailored the drop to the victim's weight, height and physical condition, almost assuring instantaneous death 100% of the time. The Nuremburg gallows also were inferior to the British design in which the double doors of the trap are caught and held open. Apparently the Nuremburg gallows allowed the doors to swing, whacking the condemned. The Nuremburg noose was a typical "cowboy" hangman's knot, a design discarded by the British long ago and replaced by a slip-knot. Even Reichhart, one of the master Nazi executioners, considered Woods a crude amateur and the two disliked each other intensely. One can wonder why the Allies let such a butcher accomplish this crucial job in such a disgusting manner. Was it sheer and ill-conceived retribution ? But there is more to the IMT. The peculiarity of the Tribunal was that "hearsay" was admittedf as evidence and that is was at the same time a Court and a jurisdiction. So if you were a Jew and you witnessed in Court that you heard that Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz's Commander, had ordered the killing of three millions Jews, you testimony was receivable. Honni soit qui mal y pense... On top of all, the crimes which were punished at Nuremberg did not exist before the war : they were judicially created by the victors for the sake of the trial. Most of the defenders thought they had been trapped in a network of crimes they did not commit but which they were guilty of for the sole reason that they were members of the NSDAP or the SA or the SS. It was tantamount to decide that you were a criminal because you had the card of the party. Nazis like Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe and especially Robert Ley, chief of the Labour Front, never understood the charges against them and preferred to commit suicide in their cell. The Nuremberg's justice was anything but fair justice. The justice of the victors. This parody of justice is probably at the basis of the Revisionnist theories that the gaz chambers did not exist, that the Holocaust was an invention of the Jews or that Jews extermination was never ordered by Hitler as David Irving pretends. |
THE MEN INDICTED AS CRIMINALS OF WAR |
| Born in 1892, Doenitz lost his mother when he was 4 years old, his father preached total obedience as the 1st commandment. Entered the Mürwik naval academy in 1910 at 18. In 1918 he took over the U-boat UC25 and "felt like a king." In 1933, he was promoted Senior commander and in 1935 Führer der U-boote (FdU). In December 1939, he issued the following order :"No one to be rescued or picked up. We must be hard in this war. Our opponents started the war (sic) in order to wipe us out, so nothing else matters." Commanding Officer of the Weddigen U-boat flotilla, Commander-in-Chief of the U-boat arm, Vice-Admiral, Admiral, Grossadmiral and Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, Advisor to Hitler, and Successor to Hitler as head of the German Government. Watchwords like "fanaticism" and "ruthlessness" were part of his everyday vocabulary. In fact, he was "a bigoted, narrowed-minded man, a death merchant of the worst sort" (Lothar Gunther Buchheim). A fanatical Nazi totally devouted to Hitler, tough and ready to fight to the last, he got away with only ten years, never had a word of remorse for his reckless conduct of the submarine war and swore up to his grave that he knew nothing about the Holocaust. One of the worst and more dangerous Hitler's henchmen under the disguise of a good soldier and a great patriot. In 1973 he lately acknowledged that "Hitler was a demon" but that he "recognized it too late.". He died in 1980. |
| KARL DOENITZ 1892-1980 |
The verdict : 1- count 1 : innocent 2- count 2 : guilty 3- count 3 : guilty 4- count 4 :not charged The sentence : 10 years in prison Released in 1956 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Frick was a member of the Nazi Party, Reichsleiter, General in the SS, member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister of the Interior, Prussian Minister of the Interior, Reich Director of Elections, General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich, head of the Central Office for the Reunification of Austria and the German Reich, Director of the Central Office for the Incorporation of Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, the eastern incorporated territories, Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet, Director of the Central Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Governor General of Lower Styria, Upper Carinthia, Norway, Alsace, Lorraine and all other occupied territories and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. Frick's hanging, like those of Keitel and Streicher, was pretty well messed up. The US Army executioner Master-Sergeant John C. Woods used a short rope that prevented instantaneous death from a broken neck, instead insuring a slow death by strangulation. He built the trap door too small so that the facial features of hte Nazis sentenced to death would be mutilated during the fall. In Germany the publication of the abominable photographs of the corpses was forbidden. A german journalist named Helmut Kamphausen who tried to publish them in a Berliner local newspaper was arrested immediately. Woods died on Korea. |
| WILHELM FRICK 1877-1946 |
| The job of a butcher not of a decent man. Frick agonized during 12 minutes before to die after hanging |
The verdict : * count 1 : innocent * count 2 : guilty * count 3 : guilty * count 4 : guilty The sentence : hanging |
| Between 1933 and 1945, Fritzsche was a member of the Nazi Party, editor-in-chief of the official German news agency, "Deutsche Nachrichten Buro", head of the Wireless News Service and of the Home Press Division of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, Ministerialdirektor of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Department of the Nazi Party, and Plenipotentiary for the Political Organization of the Greater German Radio. The verdict : * count 1 : innocent * count 2 : innocent * count 3 : innocent * count 4 : innocent The sentence : acquitted |
| HANS FRITZSCHE 1900-1953 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Funk was a member of the Nazi Party, Economic Adviser of Hitler, National Socialist Deputy to the Reichstag, Press Chief of the Reich Government, State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Reich Minister of Economics, Prussian Minister of Economics, President of the German Reichsbank, Plenipotentiary for Economy, and member of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich. His IQ was 124. The verdict : * count 1 : innocent * count 2 : guilty * count 3 : guilty * count 4 : guilty The sentence : life imprisonment, released in 1957 (health), died in 1960 |
| WALTHER FUNK 1890-1960 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Alfred Jodl was Lt. Colonel, Army Operations Department of the Wehrtmacht, Colonel, Chief of OKW Operations Department, Major-General, Chief of Staff OberKommando der Wermacht (OKW) and Colonel-General. Charged as a "principal war criminal" at Nuremberg, he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and given a sentence of death by hanging. He had requested the firing squad but this was denied to him. The French co-President of the Tribunal Henri Donnedieu de Vabres protested strongly against Jodl's conviction, stating that it was a miscarriage of justice for a professional soldier to be convicted when he held no allegiance to Nazism. On 28th February 1953, Jodl was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court, which cited Nuremberg Trial judge Donnedieu's statements and found Jodl not guilty of crimes under international law. His IQ was 127. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| ALFRED JODL 1890-1947 |
| "A perfumed Nero, half-militarist, half-gangster" Son a district judge later appointed as Reichs Commissar for Southwest Africa, Goering was #7 in a family of 8 children. Admitted to the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, he distinguised himself in WWI and as a pilot was awarded the Pour le Mérite Order. After WWI he became pilot for a Swedish company and got engaged to a married woman Carin von Kantzow whose father was a member of the Swedish nobility. He eventually came back to Germany and enrolled with the NSDAP in 1922. He was not anti-semite and had a lot of jewish friends. He was drawn to the party out of his desire for action and he was not squeamish when it came to bash in a few heads, especially "red". He took part in the failed putsch of 1923 in Munich, was severely wounded to the groin and became morphin addict to alievate the suffering. He was admitted to a Swedish hospital where the psychiatrist described him as "a brutal hysteric with a very weak character." Between 1932 and 1945, he was a member of the Nazi Party, Supreme Leader of the SA, General in the SS, a member and President of the Reichstag, Minister of the Interior of Prussia, Chief of the Prussian Police and Prussian Secret State Police, Chief of the Prussian State Council, Trustee of the Four Year Plan, Reich Minister for Air, Commander-in-Chief of the Air-Force, President of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, head of the Hermann Goering Industrial Combine, and Successor Designate to Hitler. His wife Carin died in 1931 and he remarried with a second rank actress called Emmy Sonneman who had played in Faust. In 1933, he signed orders for the Night of the Long Knives and declared that the SA "were nothing but a mob of gangsters and perverts." On his orders, Homosexuals and Witnesses of Jehovah were round up into concentration camps. He was a bully and a Satrap and was dubbed the "perfumed Nero" : the tobacco Company Reemstma provided him with an annual income of 1 million Marks but he declared to the interrogator at Nuremberg that his annual income was about 28,000 Marks. He was nonetheless a colourful personnage, extremely courageous and was the only accused at Nuremberg who stood for his actions, his Führer and their Nazi past. He refused to be put to death by his enemies and swallowed two hours before hanging a cyanide pill in October 1946 provided probably by an American GI from Texas who had sympathized with him. In 1945, during the trial, he said that his relationship with Hitler was "a prostitution of the soul." His ashes were dispersed in the river Isar under the name of Georg Münger. He was basically a moral coward and the ruthless Golden Boy of the regime. His IQ was 138. |
HERMANN GOERING 1893-1946 |
| The verdict * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging (Goering committed suicide 2 hours before execution) |
| Between 1938 and 1945, Keitel was Chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, and Field Marshal. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging The US Army executioner Master-Sergeant John C. Woods used a short rope that prevented instantaneous death from a broken neck, instead insuring a slow death by strangulation. He built the trap door too small so that the facial features of hte Nazis sentenced to death would be mutilated during the fall. Woods would later boast to the U.S. Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper that he enjoyed the task, saying that "hanging those Nazis was the best thing I ever did." He was later replaced by a less vindictive hangman. The neo-nazis fanatics affirmed that Woods was a Jew and so were his aids, Tilles and Malta. Honni soit qui mal y pense ! His IQ was 129. |
| WILHELM KEITEL 1904-42 |
| "A zealot tending to the Nazi machine" Rudolf Hess was the anti-Goering : timid, self-effacing, buck-teethed and almost monacal. Born in Alexandria Egypt, he was the son of a well-off wholesaler and exporter who wanted to take him in the family business and sent him to Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Lausanne. The war interrupted the studies. After WWI, he went to the University of Munich reading history, politics and economics. In 1919 he joined the esoteric and anti-communist Thule Society and the Free Corps which were fighting the communists in post-war Germany. During his time in university, he wrote an essay on the theme :"What sort of man will lead Germany back to her old heights?". His view of the man was the following :" He should be a dictator not averse to the use of slogans, street parades and demagoguery. He must be a man of the people yet having nothing in common with the mass. Like every great man, he must be all personality, and one who does not shrink from bloodshed. Great questions are always decided by blood and iron." Prophetic or visonnaire Hess ? In 1919, he adhered to the "Stab in the back legend" and hoped for the day of revenge against the Jews, the Social-Democrats and the Communists. He joined the Thule Society and met men like Eckart, Rosenberg, Frank and Hausofer whose ideas of "lebensraum" (vital space) he conveyed to Adolf Hitler. He led a spartan existence and in 1920 met his wife Ilse Pöhl. He was the first person to call Hitler "mein Führer" and the expression caught up within the NSDAP's members. Even Hitler was sometimes unnerved by his "solemn earnestness." Between 1921 and 1941, Hess was a member of the Nazi Party, Deputy to the Fuehrer, Reich Minister without Portfolio, member of the Reichstag, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, Successor Designate to the Fuehrer after the Defendant Goering, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. In 1941 unknown to Hitler he flew to England to try to broke a separate peace with Churchill through the Duke of Hamilton. Winston sent him to jail immediately and he died in August 1987 in Spandau prison aged 93, officially from suicide, the last survivor of Nuremberg trial. The Allieds have been extremely tough on him because he was the essence of the fanatical Nazi who made the Holocaust possible even if he did not personally committed war crimes. Anyway he signed numerous documents that made the genocide possible and he never had any qualms about their consequences or never showed any remorse. He saw himself as a radical and defined Nazism as "applied biology." He was a very dangerous and naive fanatic. When the Duke of Hamilton learnt about his intention to broke a peace with the British, he declared: "It is amazing how little the Nazis understand us." Did he mean that they were stupid by any chance? |
| Another butchered job by Sgt Woods |
| RUDOLF HESS 1897-1987 |
| The verdict * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Innocent * count 4 : Innocent The sentence : life (Hess committed suicide in 1987) |
| A mediocre man who thought he was an intellectual and a philosopher, Rosenberg was an architect and the author of the racist "Myth of the XXth Century" whose ideas were borrowed from Houston S. Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. He was a rabid and hysterical anti-semite and even Hitler, Göring and Speer found his books and ideas confused and boring. But he served many purposes to the Nazi cause and was always kept available by Hitler. Between 1920 and 1945, Rosenberg was member of the Nazi Party, Nazi member of the Reichstag, Reichsleiter in the Nazi Party for Ideology and Foreign Policy, the editor of the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and of the NS Monatshefte, head of the Foreign Political Office of the Nazi Party, Special Delegate for the entire Spiritual and Ideological Training of the Nazi Party, Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, organizer of the "Einsatzstab Rosenberg" which was responsible for the looting of Europe's art treasures, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty ; * count 2 : Guilty ; * count 3 : Guilty ; * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| ALFRED ROSENBERG 1893-1946 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Speer was member of the Nazi Party, Reichsleiter, member of the Reichstag, BauGeneralInspektor (General inspector of the Buildings of the Reich), Reich Minister for Armament and Munitions, Chief of the Organization Todt, General Plenipotentiary for Armaments in the Office of the Four Year Plan, and Chairman of the Armaments Council. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Innocent * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : 20 years, released in 1966. It might surprise some readers to notice that Rudolf Hess who had been in an English jail since 1941 and committed no war crimes was sentenced to life whereas Speer who was minister of Armament and responsible for the manufacturing of the V1s and V2s that killed thousands of British civilians got away with a 20 years sentence and was even considered in Nuremberg as a "decent Nazi." His was an hypocrit and a bigot whose late remorses do not make up for his idolization of Hitler until 1944. |
| ALBERT SPEER 1905-1981 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Kaltenbrunner was member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, a General of the Police, State Secretary for Security in Austria in charge of the Austrian Police, Police Leader of Vienna, Lower and Upper Austria, Head of the Reich Main Security Office, and Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : not charged * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| ERNST KALTENBRUNNER 1903-1946 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, von Neurath was member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister, Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, President of the Secret Cabinet Council and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. He was present at the Hossbach Conference On November 5, 1937 when Adolf Hitler held a secret conference during which he revealed his plans for the acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for the German people at the expense of other nations in Europe. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : 15 years, released in 1953 after an heart attack, died in 1956 |
| CONSTANTIN von NEURATH 1873-1956 |
| "The pious agent of an infidel regime" Born to a wealthy and noble Catholic family in Westphalia, von Papen served as a military attaché in the USA before WW1 but was expelled for "activities incompatible with his status", i.e. espionnage. During WW1, he served as an officer on the Turkish front, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and as intermediary between the Irish rebels (1916) and the German government regarding the purchase and delivery of arms to be used against the British during the Easter Rising. Returning to Germany, he entered politics, joining the Centre Party, in which the monarchist Papen formed part of the right wing. In the 1925 presidential elections, he surprised his party by supporting the right-wing candidate Paul von Hindenburg over the Centre Party's Wilhelm Marx.In June 1, 1932, he moved from relative obscurity to supreme importance when President Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor, even though this meant replacing his own party's Heinrich Brüning who had led a disastrous deflationary policy since March 1930. He represented a sort of Catholic political authoritarianism which was extremely instrumental in facilitating the accession of Hitler to power. He got away with it in 1946 at Nuremberg as his interrogations by the Allies showed profusely. The bigots and the hypocrits got away with their support to the regime whereas the faithful and the sincere were severely punished. Between 1932 and 1945, Papen was a member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Chancellor, Vice Chancellor under Hitler, special Plenipotentiary for the Saar, negotiator of the Concordat with the Vatican, Ambassador in Vienna and Ambassador in Turkey. |
| FRANZ VON PAPEN 1879-1969 |
| The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Innocent * count 3 : not charged * count 4 : not charged The sentence : acquitted |
Between 1928 and 1945, Raeder was Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, Generaladmiral, Grossadmiral, Admiralinspekteur of the German Navy, and a member of the Secret Cabinet Council. Although he generally disliked the Nazi party, he strongly supported Adolf Hitler's attempt to rebuild the Kriegsmarine, while apparently disagreeing equally strongly on most other matters. On 20 April 1936, just a few days before Raeder's sixtieth birthday, Hitler presented him with the rank of Generaladmiral (General Admiral). In his quest to rebuild the German Navy, Raeder faced constant challenges from Hermann Göring's ongoing quest to build up the Luftwaffe. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty ; * count 2 : Guilty ; * count 3 : Guilty ; * count 4 : not charged The sentence : life, commuted later and reduced to 10 years. Death in 1960. |
| ERICH RAEDER 1906-1960 |
| Lawer by training, between 1932 and 1945, Frank was member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister without Portfolio, Reich Commissar for the Coordination of Justice, President of the International Chamber of Law and Academy of German Law, Chief of the Civil Administration of Lodz, Supreme Administrative Chief of the military district of West Prussia, Poznan, Lodz and Krakow, and Governor General of the occupied Polish territories. Taken POW at the end of the war, he tried to slash his wrist and neck and was saved from certain death by British doctors. Nevertheless, he was found guilty on three counts and hung. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| HANS FRANK 1900-1946 |
| Difficult to find more anti-semite than Streicher. A primitive man with shaved, Julius Streicher was a teacher with excessive appetites at table and in bed. He was always carrying a whip in public that he flaunted like a weapon. He founded the Nuremberg branch of the NSDAP in 1922 and soon after he published a newspaper devoted to the damnation of Jews, Der Stürmer. He had the full support of Hitler who thought that Nazis ideas could not be implemented without men like Streicher. Between 1932 and 1945, Streicher was member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, a General in the SA, Gauleiter of Franconia, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer. In 1945, he changed his look and tried to hide as an artist but failed and was taken POW. According to Kingsbury Smith of the International News Service, the death of Streicher was from strangulation and not broken neck: "The trap opened with a loud bang. Streicher went down kicking. When the rope snapped with the body swinging wildly, groans could be heard from within the concealed interior of the scaffold. Finally, the hangman, who had descended from the gallows platform, lifted the black canvas curtain and went inside. Something happened that put a stop to the groans and brought the rope to a standstill. After it was over I was not in the mood to ask what he did, but I assume that he grabbed the swinging body of and pulled down on it. We were all of the opinion that Streicher was strangled." The victors were as ruthless as the vanquished. |
| JULIUS STREICHER 1885-1946 |
| The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : not charged * count 3 : not charged * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
"The salesman of deception" Ribbentrop lived several years abroad, working from 1910 to 1914 in Canada as an importer of German wines. Ribbentrop married in July 1920 into a wealthy champagne producing family from Wiesbaden and travelled Europe selling the family firm's wares .Between 1932 and 1945, Ribbentrop -a confirmed social climber, persuaded his aunt – whose husband had been knighted – to adopt him, allowing him to add the aristocratic von to his name - was member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Nazi Reichstag, Advisor to the Fuehrer on matters of foreign policy, representative of the Nazi Party for matters of foreign policy, special German delegate for disarmament questions, Ambassador Extraordinary, Ambassador in London, organizer and director of Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, member of the Secret Cabinet Council member of the Fuehrer's political staff at general headquarters, and General in the SS. Ribbentrop's time in London was also marked by scandal. It was believed by many members of the British upper classes that he was having an affair with Wallis Simpson, the wife of British businessman Edward Simpson and the mistress of King Edward VIII. During the trial he completely lost his moral and was a nervous wreck, sometimes even unable to respond to the questions of his interrogator and he always showed he was not understanding what was at stake, life or death. His IQ was 129. The verdict : * count 1 : Guilty * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP 1893-1946 |
| "A facade of starched respectability" Between 1932 and 1945, Schacht was member of the Nazi Party, member of the Reichstag, Reich Minister of Economics, Reich Minister without Portfolio and President of the German Reichsbank. Schacht remained as Minister Without Portfolio until January 1943, when he was dismissed by Hitler. During the period from the time of his dismissal as President of the Reichsbank until the end of 1942, he continued to receive the full salary he had been paid as the President of the Reichsbank, and thereafter received a pension from the Reichsbank. In November 1932, Schacht had written to Hitler :"" I have no doubt that the way we are directing the course of events can only lead to your appointment as Reich Chancellor. We are trying to secure a large number of signatures among the industrial circles to ensure your appointment to this post." . The Tribunal was lenient to him. However he was not totally convinced of the guilt of nazi Germany as he declared in 1945 to one of his interrogators at Nuremberg :"France too once had a revolution which considering the period was no less bloody than the crimes of Hitler and his followers. But at that time no one thought of morally outlawing the entire French nation." The difference probably lies in the fact that the French did not mass-murder the Jews and that the French revolutionaries were not racist nor anti-semitic. But even a moderate Nazi like Schacht failed to recognize the fact. His IQ was 143, he was without doubt the most intelligent and brilliant of all the men who served Hitler. |
| HJALMAR SCHACHT 1877-1970 |
| The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Innocent * count 3 : not charged * count 4 : not charged The sentence : acquitted |
| Between 1924 and 1945, von Schirach was member of the Nazi Party, a member of the Reichstag, Reich Youth Leader on the Staff of the SA Supreme Command, Reichsleiter in the Nazi Party for Youth Education, Leader of Youth of the German Reich, head of the Hitler Jugend, Reich Defense Commissioner and Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter of Vienna. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : not charged * count 3 : not charged * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : 20 years, released in 1966, died in 1974 |
| BALDUR VON SCHIRACH 1907-1974 |
| Between 1932 and 1945, Seyss-Inquart was member of the Nazi Party, a General in the SS, State Councillor of Austria, Minister of the Interior and Security of Austria, Chancellor of Austria, member of the Reichstag, member of the Reich Cabinet, Reich Minister without Portfolio, Chief of the Civil Administration in South Poland, Deputy Governor-General of the Polish Occupied Territory, and Reich Commissar for the Occupied Netherlands. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Guilty * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| ARTHUR SEYSS-INQUART 1892-1946 |
| Between 1921 and 1945, Fritz Sauckel was member of the Nazi Party, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Thuringia, member of the Reichstag, General Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Labor under the Four Year Plan, Joint Organizer with the Defendant Robert Ley of the Central Inspection for the Care of Foreign Workers (actually in charge of "importing" foreign workers), General in the SS and a General in the SA. He worked closely with Adolf Heichmann. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : Innocent * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| FRITZ SAUCKEL 1864-1946 |
| Martin Bormann -whose fate was unknown in 1945- was judged in abstentia. Between 1925 and 1945, he was member of the Nazi Party, member of the Reichstag, member of the Staff of the Supreme Command of the SA, founder and head of "Hilfskasse" der NSDAP, Reichsleiter, Chief of Staff Office of the Fuehrer's Deputy, head of the Party Chancery, Secretary of the Fuehrer, member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, organizer and head of the Volkssturm, a General in the SS and a General in the SA. At the end of the war, Bormann was the most powerful man in the Reich after Hitler and was considered as the Eminence Grise of the Reich without whom nothing could be decided. He was ruthless, ambitious and fanatically devoted to the Führer. In 1973 his body was found in Berlin under a sidewalk and after DNA analysis it was identified as Bormann's. According to different testimonies, he tried to flee Berlin in May 1945 but was killed by a mortar while trying to escape in a tank. The verdict : * count 1 : Innocent * count 2 : not charged * count 3 : Guilty * count 4 : Guilty The sentence : hanging |
| MARTIN BORMANN 1904-1945 |
In 1934, Robert Ley was given by Hitler the task of forming the German Labour Front (DAF) to replace the now outlawed trade unions. Ley confiscated union funds and used the money to fund the Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) programme. From 1933 it provided affordable leisure activities such as concerts, day-trips and holidays as in Prora. Large ships, such as the Wilhelm Gustloff, were built specially for KdF cruises. Above all, KdF would bridge the class divide by making middle-class leisure activities available to the masses. In 1942 Robert Ley, in addressing a group of factory workers, asked : "Why do the German people love Hitler ?". And he answered: "Because with Hitler they feel safe-it is a feeling of safety, that's it." He was an alcoholic and nicknamed "Oberster Reichstrunkenbold" (“Reichs Drunkard in Chief”). After the war Ley was charged with war crimes. While awaiting trial in Nuremberg Ley wrote a statement denouncing anti-Semitism, the provisions of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg and hung himself in his cell on 25th October, 1945 to the huge embarrassment of Colonel Andrus. |
| ROBERT LEY 1904-1945 |
| PhD in Law, Chairman of Krupp, armaments leading manufacturer in Germany, president of the Imperial Association of German Industries, party member since 1940, died in 1950 aged 80. Gustav Krupp was initially put in the dock at Nuremberg but the prosecution decided to remove him for health reasons until he recovered which was highly unlikely : he has suffered from progressive arteriosclerosis and senility since 1939. He suffered an attack of cerebral thrombosis in 1942, which resulted in a temporary facial paralysis. In 1944 he lost bladder and sphincter control. Eventually it appeared that his son Alfried had been much more involved with the Nazis. However, at the request of the English, Alfried got away with it and was not prosecuted at Nuremberg. He was prosecuted in 1948 but not by the IMT and sentenced to imprisonment for 12 years. In 1951 he was released, and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm with the stipulation that he sell his major interests in iron, steel, and coal. The condition was not fulfilled, however. Shortly before his death in July, 1967, the firm's indebtedness caused Alfried to announce that the Krupp concern would become a public corporation. His son Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, 1938�86, relinquished his inheritance rights as well as the Krupp name, and in 1968 the Krupp family ceased to control the firm. It merged in 1999 with its rival Thyssen. |
| GUSTAV KRUPP von BOHLEN und HALBACH 1870-1950 |
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The victors' Justice The trials were conducted under their own rules of evidence; the indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation's law; the tu quoque defense was removed; and the entire spirit of the assembly was "victor's justice". Article 19 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Charter reads as follows :"The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value." |
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