MAY BE GALLED

Evening Star, Issue 25730, 1 March 1946, Page 5

MAY BE GALLED

CHURCHILL JBTWL WITNESS PROCEEDINGS TAKE NEW TURN INDICTMENT OF ORGANISATIONS BEGINS (Rec. 11.35 a.m.) NUREMBERG, February 28. The War Crimes Tribunal announced that it had decided to reconsider Ribbentrop's application for Mr Churchill as a witness. The tribunal's decision to reconsider Ribbentrop's application for Mr Churchill as a witness followed a reminder from Ribbentrop's counsel, Dr Horn, that he had been asked to submit reasons for the application in ■writing. The tribunal's refusal to call Mr Churchill had been announced before the submission of this written application. Ribbentrop submitted a list of eight questions for Mr Churchill to answer if the tribunal does not permit him being called. The questionnaire covered an alleged breakfast conversation in the German Embassy in London in 1937 when Ribbentrop declared, that he proposed Mr Churchill should use his " great influence " on "behalf of the Anglo-German alliance or at least collaboration. Ribbentrop said Mr Churchill rebuffed the proposition and talked about " the "eternal threat of German cannon on the other side of the Channel." Mr Justice Jackson, the United States chief prosecutor, demanded that the tribunal should proceed with the trial of indicted Nazi ' organisations which the prosecution asked should be declared criminal groups. Mr Justice Jackson said: " It would be a greater catastrophe to acquit these groups than if the 22 individual defendants were acquitted." The indicted Nazi organisations are estimated to have a total membership of 1,000,000. Mr Justice Jackson added: " Some concern has been expressed about the number of persons who would be affected by the declarations of criminality. To this we reply that some people seem more susceptible to the shock of 1,000,000 punishments than to ( the shock of 5,000,000 murders." One of the sinister peculiarities of German society had been the elaborate network of close-knit elusive organisations of selected volunteers hound by oath to execute without question the

commands of Nazi leaders. As a result the State played ouly a subordinate role in the exercise of political power. The organisations which Mr Justice Jackson demands should be tried for criminality are as follows: —The S.S., the Security Service, the Gestapo, the S.S. General Staff, the High Command, and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party. SEGREGATING THE GUILTY. Mr Jackson said: " A thousand little fuhfers dictated; a thousand imitation Goerings strutted; a thousand Khirachs incited youth; a thousand Sauckels drove slaves; A thousand Rosenbergs and . Streichers stirred hate; a thousand Kaltenbrunners and Franks tortured and killed; a thousand Snhachts, Speers, and Funks administered, financed, and supported the Nazis " One of the basic requirements of both justice and the successful future administration of Germany was the segregation of these elements from the masses of the German people for separate treatment. " The United States does not seek to convict the whole German people, but it is important that this trial does not serve to absolve the whole German people except the men in the dock. "If the trial fails to condemn these organised confederates for their share of responsibility for the catastrophe, it will be construed as exoneration." Mr Justice Jackson cited as precedents for the indictment of the Nazi organisations, legislative Acts in the United States directed against bodies such as the Ku Klux Klan, " which appealed to the same hates and practised the same extra-legal coercions as the Nazi movements." Among British precedents Mr Justice Jackson mentioned the British India Act of 1936, and -war-time regulation 188. He stressed thai the stigma of criminality on groups still left the Allied Control Council to decide which class of members of these groups should' be brought to trial, and he suggested that a panel be appointed to visit the camps housing internees wishing to be heard, and take their depositions, which could then' be condensed and submitted to the court. [lt had been, estimated that more than 45,000 members of indicted groups asked an opportunity to give evidence.] THE GREAT THREAT. Mr Justice Jackson the next war and the next pogroms would be hatched in the nests of these organisations, " as surely as we leave their members with their prestige and influence undirninlished." The prisoners laughed when he asked: "Does anyone believe that Schacht sitting in the front row of the Nazi Party Congress in 19.35, wearing the partv insigna, was included in propaganda films for artistic effect? The mere loan of his name gave this shady enterprise respectability in the eyes of every hesitant German." Following Mr Justice Jackson the British prosecutor, Sir Maxwell Fyfe, reviewed the technical points in the evidence already submitted to establish the criminality of each, of the organisations named. He asked' that the 17 prisoners who were members of the Reich Cabinet should bo convicted on each count of the indict-

ment in view of the enormous mass of evidence against them. Dr Egon Kubuschok, counsel for von Papen, argued that the indicted organisations had been dissolved under the Military Government and therefore did not exist; only their former members existed. The case affected between one-third and one-fourth of the entire male adult population of Germany.