CHURCHILL AS WITNESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 March 1946, Page 6

CHURCHILL AS WITNESS

REQUEST TO BE RECONSIDERED BY TRIBUNAL ribbentroptapplication NUREMBERG, February 28. The War Crimes 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. Mr. Justice Jackson, United States chief prosecutor, demanded that the tribunal should proceed with the trial of indicfed Nazis which the prosecution asked should be declared criminal groups. Mr. Jackson said: “It would be a greater catastrophe to acquit these groups than if 22 individual defendants were acquitted.” The indicted Nazi organisations were estimated to have a total membership of 1,000,000. Mr. Jackson added: “Some concern has been expressed about the number of persons who would be affected by declarations of criminality. To this we reply that some • people seem more susceptible to the shock of a million 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 exlusive organisations of selected volunteers, bound by oath to execute without question the commands of the Nazi leaders. A.s a result the State played only a subordinate role in the exercise of political power. Mr. Jackson said: “A thousand little fuehrers dictated, a thousand imitation Goerings strutted, a thousand Shirachs incited youth, a thousand Sauckels drove slaves, a thousand Rosenbergs and Streichers stirred hate, a thousand Kaltenbrunners and Franks tortured and killed, and a thousand Schachts, 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 in the responsibility for the catastrophe it will be construed as exoneration.”

Segregation of Nazi Elements.

Mr. 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 1 same extra-legal coercions as the Nazi movements.” Among British precedents Mr. Jackson mentioned the British-India Act, 193 G, and the Wartime Regulations. He stressed that the stigma of criminality on groups would still leave the Allied Control Council to decide which class of members should be bought to trial, and he suggested that a panel be appointed to visit camps housing internees wishing to be heard, and take depositions, which could then be condensed and submitted to the court.” It had been estimated that more than 45,000 members of indicted groups have asked for the opportunity to give evidence.

Prisoners Laugh

Mr Jackson said that the next war and the next pogroms would be hatched in nests of these organisations “as surely as we leave their members with their prestige and influence undiminished.”

The prisoners laughed when Mr Jackson asked, “Does anyone believe that Schacht sitting in the front row of the Nazi Party Congress in 1935 wearing the party insignia 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 Jackson, the British prosecutor, Sir Donald Maxwell Fyfe, reviewed the technical points in the evidence already submitted to establish the criminality of each oi the seven organisations named. He asked that 17 prisoners who were members of the Reich Cabinet should be convicted on each count of the indictment 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 adult population of Germany.