TRIAL OF NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 277, 23 November 1945, Page 5

TRIAL OF NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

INDICTMENT OF ACCUSED

AMERICAN PROSECUTOR SETS OUT GRIM CATALOGUE

Recd. 6 p.m. Nuremberg, Nov. 21. The 20 leading- Nazis, sitting unmoved in the dock to-day, were named by the chief United States prosecutor, Mr. Justice Jackson, as “living- symbols of racial hatred, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. ‘‘ln the dock sit 20 broken men reproached by the humiliation of those they led, almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they attacked,” said Mr. Justice Jackson. ‘‘Their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these miserable men the power whereby, as Nazi leaders, they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it.

“Merely as individuals, their fate is of little consequence to the world. Any tenderness toward them will be a victory encouraging all the evils attached to their names.

“The defendants bathed the world in blood and set it back a century. Civilisation is the real complaining party behind the tribunal. The Nazi leaders subjected their European neighbours to every outrage and torture, every spoliation and depredation that insolence, greed and cruelty eould inflict. They brought their own people to the lowest pitch of wretchedness, from which they can entertain no hope of early deliverance. They stirred hatred and incited violence in every continent.

Mr. Justice Jackson's 20,000-wora opening address had been submitted to President Truman tor approval befor it was delivered. Lord Justice Lawrence called on the defendants to plead. Goering was called first and began: "Before I answer—”

Lord Justice Lawrence interrupted and called for a plea. Goering: “I declare myself, in a sense, wholly not guilty." Rosenberg said: “I declare myself, in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” Von Schirach said: “I am not guilty in the eyes of God.” Jodi said: "Before God and my people I have a clear conscience.” When Hess was called in to plead, he shouted: “No!" Lord Justice Lawrence said this would be entered as a plea of not guilty. The remaining accused all nleaded Hot guilty. Lord Justice Lawrence said that Kaltenbrunner’s plea would be taken later.

Mr. Justice Jackson opened the prosecution by stating the case on Count One. He said the defendants could base their only hope on whether international law was so laggard as to be far behind mankind's mcral sense.

"The accused created a despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. Bestiality and bad faitli reached to such excess that they aroused the strength of an imperilled civilisation," said Mr. Justice Jackson. WAR MACHINE SMASHED “The German war machine was ground to fragments, but the struggle left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralised society struggles to survive. "In all our countries, civilisation is still a struggling, imperfect thing. It is not pleaded that the United States, or any other country, has been blameless of the conditions which made the German people easy victims of the blandishments and intimidations of the Nazi conspirators, but we point tq'the dreadful sequence of aggressions and crimes, to the weariness of the flesh, the exhaustion of the resources, to the destruction of all that was beautiful and useful in so much of the world and to the greater potentialities for destruction in the world to come.

"Civilisation asks whether the law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance.

"It does not expect that vou can 'make war impossible, but it does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precents and prohibitions, and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will in all countries may have ‘leave to live by no man's leave underneath the law’.”

The Crimes the Court was asked to condemn had been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilisation could not tolerate their being ignored, because it could not survive their being repeated. The law should not stop with Ihe punishment of petty crimes by little people; it should also reach the men who possessed themselves of great powers and "tadc deliberate and concerted use of that power to set in motion evils v meh had left no home in t world untouched.

NAZI CONQUEST CI.ANS I Mr. Justice Jackson quoted freely from the diaries and files of the Nazi 1 r uder;. He declared that n May. I 1939. Hitler had told his staff that Po.a.rJ must be attacked ai the first suitaHe opportunity. The » os.:cu-| lion had Hitlers order for an attack: cr a Stria in case trickery failed- hist plans for an attack on Czechoslovakia' and a plan for the war in the West. [ He also mentioned a captured memorandum from Hitler’s headquarters dated October, 1940. which said! that Hitler was occupied with the question of seizing inlands in the At-j lantie. in view of an attack against. America later on. He quoted an order for the attack! on England which was initialled bv' Keitel and Jodi. It said: "Although] the British military nosition is hopeless, they show not the slightest sign of /riving in.” Mr Justice Jackson referred to the slaughter of the Jews in Europe and quoted manv examples of atrocities. H- said he hoped the tribunal would f visit Dachau concentration camp to see the magnitude of its layout. It was very doubtful if it. would be seriously denied that all these crimes took place, but the defence would undoubtedly try to prove that, lhe prisoners had no personal responsibility. ILLEGALITY OF WAR Mr. Justice Jackson said that the United Nations Tribunal took the position that whatever grievances a nation might have, and however objectionable it might find the status quo. aggressive warfare was an illegal means for settling grievances or altering conditions. “The privilege of opening the first trial in history for ’rimes against peace imposes a grave responsibility,", he said. “The wrongs we seek to c.m- j demn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastat-| Ing that civilisation cannot tolerate

their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.” He intended to try to convict the Nazi leaders by their own meticulouslykept records, instead of by the testimony of their foes. "There is no count of the indictment that cannot be proved by the book record,” he said. “These defendants had their share in the TeuI tonic passion for thoroughness m putting things on paper. What makes this inquest significant is that the prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We shall be obliged to leave to historians the full development of our case against the evils they represent.” Referring to the opinion that the accused were suffering an injustice | by being tried, Mr. Justice Jackson said they were not ill used. The best protection a man could be given was the opportunity to defend himself at a just hearing. “If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted, they are also the first to be given a chance to plead for their lives in the name of law. Despite the fact that public opinion already condemns them, we agree that they must be given a presumption of innocence. That four great nations, flushed with victory, should stay the hand of ’engeance voluntarily and submit their captive enemies to the judgment of law is one of the most significant tributes that power ever paid to the dead. CATALOGUE OF CRIMES “What these men stand for will patiently and temperately be disclosed. Their catalogue of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by pathological pride, cruelty and lust for power. We will give undeniable proofs of incredible events arising from forces which would gain renewed strength if we dealt ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom these forces now precariously survive. Less than eight months ago this court room was an enemy fortress. We are the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches, and quite likely it won’t be an example of professional work which any prosecuting nation would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case for the judgment we shall ask you to render. Unfortunately, the nature of the crimes is such that both the prosecution and judgment must be by victors over vanquished.

“The world-wide scope of the aggression carried out by these men left few neutrals, and the victors must judge or leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the first world war we learned the futility of the latter course. We must never forget that the record on which we judge the defendants to-day is the record on which history will judge us to-morrow. We have no intention of incriminating the whole German people. We know the Nazi Party was not put into power by a majority vote. If, the German populace had willingly accented the Nazi programme, the Storm Troopers, Gestapo and concentration camps would have been unnecessary. The German people should know that the people of the United States do not hold them in fear or hate. We charge the guilt on those who planned and intended to conduct that which involves moral as well as legal wrong. It. is not because they yielded to human frailties that we accuse them: it is their abnormal inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar.” Although Germany had taught the world the horrors of modern war, the ruin from the Rhine to the Danube showed that the Allies had not been dull pupils, but the Nazi nightmare! had given Germans and the name of | Germany a significance that would retard Germany for a century. Mr. Justice Jackson declared that the first three battles which the Nazis fought were against the working class, G-’tholic Church and the Jews. “Wp have two groups of crimes against humanity, one within Germany before the war and the other on occupied territory during the war but thev are pot separate in Nazi planning hp said. Th«v pre a continuous unfolding of the Nnzi nlan to exneonles and Institutions ’”hich might serve as a focus or instrument fnr overturning/their new world order. CRIMES AGAINST JEWS Mr. Justice Jackson devoted nine pages of his speech to crimes against Jews. “If is my purpose to show that the plan to which all Nazis were fanatically committed was annihila-1 tion of all Jewish people. Despite the German defeat and Nazi prostration, this aim largely succeeded. Of 9,500,000 Jews who lived under Nazi domination in Europe, 60 per cent, are esti- | mated to have perished. History re- j cords no crime ever perpetrated I against so many victims or carried out I ! with such calculated cruelty.” 1 After quoting a number of Streicher’s utterances, Mr. Justice I [Jackson added: “He now has the! effrontery to tell us he is a Zionist, who only wants Jews sent to Palestine. A determination to destroy the Jews was the binding force which at all times cemented the elements of this conspiracy. There are differences between the accused on internal policy, but there is no ond who did not echo the rallying cry, ‘Germany awake, perish Jewry.’ ” After outlining lhe growth of concentration camps and other horrors with which the Nazis instituted a reign of terror in preparing the way ■ for war Mr. Justice Jackson said a further story would bn unfolded from documents, including those of the German High Command itself. Documentary evidence on the following points had been found in the Nazis’ own records: Firstly, a letter from General Falkenstine on October 29. 1940. said: “The Fuhrer is at present occupied with the Question of the occupation of the Atlantic islands, with a view to prosecuting the war against America at n later date.” I “Secondly. Nazi official orderi on June 1, 1944. ordered that captured I British and American airmen must be treated as criminals and the army

must refrain from protecting them from lynching. , “Thirdly, the Germans ordered the assassination of Generals Giraud and Weygand, but failed. “Fourthly, Hitler, on November 5, 1937, told Raeder and von Neurath that German rearmament was almost complete and that he had decided to secure by force greater living space for the Germans not later than 1945, perhaps early in 1938. “Fifthly, Himmler recorded that the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima, on January 31, 1939, told him that the Japanese had sent 10 Russians across the Caucasian frontier with orders to kill Stalin. “Sixthly, Keitel, in March, 1941, i sued a secret directive revealing that Hitler had ordered that Japanese military power must be strengthened by a disclosure of German war experiences, and that military and economic help must be given Japan in anticipation of her active participa tion in the war.

Mr. Justice Jackson quoted from a number of documents, including a memorandum from Hitler to his stall on May 23, 1939, saying: “It is a question of expanding our living space to the east and securing food supplies. German exploitation wiß enormously increase the surplus food available there. Therefore, there is no question of sparing Poland. We arc left witth a decEion to attack at the first suitable opportunity. Wo can not expect a repetition of the Czech affair. There will be war.”

ALWAYS CONTEMPLATED WAR Mr. Justice Jackson said the cast would generally disclose that all the defendants were united at some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which all well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. The Nazi Par t y had contemplated war since inception. It would be a great mistake to think of the Nazi Party in terms of loose organisations of what the western nations called political parties. The party was an instrument of conspiracy and coercion. When Mr. Jackson was one-third through his .speech, the Court adjourned for 90 minutes for a luncheon. While he was speaking, the defendants leaned forward and listened closely, in marked contrast to their attitude during the reading of the indictment yesterday. Hess and Rosenberg declined to use ear-phones. Mr. Justice Jackson wore a black morning coat. His voice seldom rose, but it never lacked force. When he . aid the defendants would be tried on their own documents, Frank laughed, but all the others remained serious. Goering started forward and listened intently when Mr. Justice Jackson referred to the Reichstag fire.