NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST ACCUSES U.S.A. OF GRAVE CRUELTY

Wanganui Chronicle, 28 October 1948, Page 5

NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST ACCUSES U.S.A. OF GRAVE CRUELTY

War Crime Trials In Germany Will Not Bear Investigation, He Says

(N.Z.P.A.—Copyright.)

NEW YORK, Oct. 26 (Rec. 5.55 pm).—The “Daily News” columnist, John O’Donnell, says many Senators are so shocked at how the United Slates officials conducted the war crimes trials in Germany that they believe that if the full story is told it will kill America’s reputation in foreign countries.

According to O’Donnell, these Senators, who are opposed to a proposed Congressional investigation of the trials, say: “Why not reverse and change as many sentences as we can, cease, hangings and confess our sins privately?” ’ O’Donnell says a recent report by experienced United States jurists on the commutation of 29 death sentences shows that because American “avenging angels” wanted some hanging cases to avenge the killing of American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, phoney confessions were obtained by third degree methods, still unheard of in even the toughest

police headquarters basements. O’Donnell says: “Beatings up so that dentists and doctors had to work overtime on fractured jaws, etc., are nothing new, but the trick of investigators masquerading as Catholic priests and Lutheran pastors to secure confessions and introductions of the confessions as evidence at the trials is something new in American jurisprudence. Now it develops that innocent men confessed under torture and were promised that they would get off with life instead of hanging if they would accuse their fellow soldiers. They were told at the same 1 time that their mothers and sisters would be provided with ration cards so that these latter would no longer have to submit to sexual relations i\vith conqueror troops to obtain food and cigarettes.”