NUREMBERG TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 148, 20 December 1945, Page 8

NUREMBERG TRIAL

INTERROGATION OF

LORDS

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. lp.m. NUREMBERG, Dec. 19. At Ribbentrop's request, Lords Kemsley, Bea'/erbrook, Londonderry, and Vansittart are to be interrogated. This was disclosed today when the War Crimes Tribunal which is trying the leading Nazis issued a list of witnesses.

The tribunal earlier refused a request by Ribbentrop that they should be called as witnesses.

Goering's application to have Lord Halifax and Sir Alexander Cadogan interrogated was granted by the tribunal. In his application Goering claimed to have had secret negotiations with Lord Halifax, then the Foreign Secretary, in 1939, in an effort to prevent war. Goering said that he conducted negotiations with three British members of Parliament through a Swedish intermediary, and that later, through the same intermediary, he established direct contact w#th Lord Halifax. The tribunal has not yet taken action on an application by Goering to call the journalist Ward-Price as a witness. An application from Rosenberg to call a Major Winterbotham as a witness was refused. The tribunal is allowing Sauckel and Schacht each to call 12 German witnesses, Ribbentrop three, Keitel five, and Goering and Hess one each. Streicher has none. Hess's only witness is Goering, and Schacht's include yon Brauchitsch and yon Rundstedt.

CASES AGAINST THE SA AND SS

One brigade of Hitler's brownshirted storm-troopers alone blew up or burned 35 synagogues in two days, declared the American assistant prosecutor, Colonel Storey, at the resumption of the trial today, in support of his case to have the SA declared a criminal organisation. He said that the SA was employed as a terroristic group. Its function" was to terrorise all political opposition. The SA was originally used in the same fashion as the Gestapo, but after 1934 it was replaced in many respects by the SS.

Colonel Storey submitted several affidavits describing how members of the SA beat up American citizens of Jewish blood in Germany, while the police told them they were helpless to halt the attacks, as they had no instructions to interfere with the SA. The prosecutor contended that members of the SA were participators in the conspiracy, which contemplated crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It fostered the military spirit throughout Germany, preparing the people mentally and spiritually for vicious, aggressive •wars.

After the noon recess, Major Warren Farr, of the American prosecution staff, began the presentation of the case against Himmler's SS (SchutzstafTel), which was- at first composed of 280 men who served as Hitler's bodyguard, but which had 240,000 men at the outbreak of war.

Major Farr- said that the fighting troops of the SS, known as the Waffen SS. were created on a personal secret order from Hitler in August, 1938. The order stated: "The Waffen SS is neither a part of the Wehrmacht nor a part of the police; it is a standing armed unit exclusively at my disposal." ' Several of Himmler's speeches were, cited to show that the Nazis planned to make the SS "a Nazi aristocracy ■which would dominate Germany and the Europe to come." Kaltenbrunner has been transferred from prison to an American army hospital. His condition is reported to be serious from a recurrence of cranial hemorrhage.