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NUREMBERG TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS – Part I
HITLER AND EVA BRAUN COMMIT SUICIDE
bY JAYANTHA GUNASEKERA, PC
When the 2nd World War broke out in 1939, the Prime Minister of Great Britain was Neville Chamberlain, the President of the United States, was polio-stricken Franklin D Roosevelt, and the French President was Francois Daladier.
Hitler successfully bluffed the western leaders and Russia, by signing a Peace Agreement known as the Munich Agreement. By this the Allies were lulled into a state of complacency while Hitler was stealthily building up his war machinery. The factories of Alfred Krupp were working at breakneck speed and had the western leaders caught unawares when Hitler decided to invade Europe. After signing the Munich Agreement , Neville Chamberlain went home and was bragging about ushering peace. He was a good man, but lacked intelligence.
On Sept. 1, 1939, German armies commonly known as the Nazi, poured across the Polish frontier and converged on Warsaw, from the North, South and the West.
In 1941, the House of Commons decided that enough is enough and brought in Winston Churchill as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. Unlike most other Prime Ministers Churchill, born in Marlborough House, was a proud man of noble birth being related to Royalty. He was very conscious of his lineage, being the son of Lord Randolph Churchill. He schooled at Eton and though he was not university educated, he possessed intelligence in great measure and is now considered the most intelligent military strategist of the 20th century.
He kept up the morale of the forces and the British people with his electrifying speeches. When Germany’s air force – Luftwaffe – attempted to blow up London, and was prevented by the courageous Royal Air Force, he thanked the RAF pilots with the stirring words, “never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many, to so few”.
When the War ended, Churchill was still the PM of the UK. President Roosevelt died and Harry Truman succeeded him. The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces was Dwight Eisenhower. The Commander of the British Forces was Field Marshal (later Viscount) Montgomery and the Commander of the Russian Forces was Marshal Zhukov.
Hitler enlisted the assistance of 68 highly intelligent non-military persons to plan his strategy. These men were chosen for their intelligence even more than their loyalty to him. They, with their intelligent planning, nearly conquered the whole world! It is well known that war is too serious a business to be left in the hands of the Generals alone. The main countries that joined Hitler were called the Axis Powers. They were Hitler’s Germany, Emperor Hirohito’s Japan and Mussolini’s Italy. The Japanese Forces were as ruthless as the Germans.
In 1941, without any military provocation, the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbour, destroying a large number of ships belonging to the US Navy and killing thousands of Americans. They were all taken unawares. This was exactly what Sir Winston was waiting for. For all his pleadings, the US had not come out openly against the Axis Forces and it was only after the unprovoked attack on their Navy that the US joined the Allies in the war. The Japanese did not spare even Ceylon, then a colony of the UK. They dropped bombs, but thankfully could not cause much damage.
On April 29, 1945, one of the last pieces of news to reach Hitler’s bunker from the outside world came in. it was that his fellow fascist dictator and partner in aggression Mussolini, and his mistress Clara Petacci, had been caught by Italian partisans on April 27 while trying to escape to Switzerland, and executed two days later. On May Day, Benito Mussolini and his mistress were buried in a paupers plot! In such a macabre climax of degradation the man known as “Il Duce”, and fascism, passed into history.
Shortly after receiving the news of Mussolini’s end Hitler began to make final plans for his own death. He had his favourite Alsatian dog Blondi poisoned and the two other dogs in the household shot. Erik Kempka his driver who was in charge of the chancellery garage, received an order to deliver 200 liters of gasoline in jerrycans . Hitler and Eva Braun (who he had married only two days before) retired to their room in the bunker. Revolver shots were heard. The body of Hitler was found sprawled on the sofa. He had shot himself in the mouth. At his side lay Eva, who had not used her revolver. She had swallowed poison.
On May 4, 1945, the German High Command surrendered to Field Marshall Montgomery. Japanese Emperor Hirohito decreed that despite the surrender of the German Forces, the Japanese Forces should fight to the last man. These forces were as ruthless as the Germans. Peace was not to dawn though Germany had unconditionally surrendered. The US, though now in possession of the atom bomb, was not going to use it if Japan too surrendered. But because of the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour, they decided to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki causing hitherto unheard and unseen devastation. The pilot who dropped the bombs was Captain Tibetts who flew the “Enola Grey”. Utter misery and destruction were brought on the Japanese people due to the egoistic action of Emperor Hirohito, who also should have been tried for war crimes. Captain Tibetts died only about five years ago, aged 93.
24 War Criminals were indicted by the Allies. The charges were for:
Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity.
The War Criminals charged were
1. Martin Bormann – successor to Rudolf Hess as Nazi party secy. He was sentenced to death in absentia.
2. Karl Doenitz – an admiral and initiator of the U-boat campaign, and nominated by Hitler as his successor. He was sentenced to 10 years.
3. Hans Frank – ruler of occupied Poland. Sentenced to death.
4. Wilhelm Frick – Hitler’s minister of the interior. Sentenced to death.
5. Hans Friche – popular commentator and head of Nazi propaganda. He was acquitted.
6. Walter Funk – Hitler’s minister of economics. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
7. Hermann Goering – commander of the german air force, the Luftwaffe. Sentenced to death, but cheated the hangman by biting the cyanide pill and committing suicide.
8. Rudolf Hess – Hitler’s deputy. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
9. Alfred Jodel – sentenced to death, but was posthumously exonerated by a denazification court.
10. Ernst Karltenbrunner – commander of many concentration camps. Sentenced to death.
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11. Wilhelm Keitel – sentenced to death.
12. Gustav Krupp – nazi industrialist who churned out war machinery. Was found to be medically unfit for trial.
13. Neurath – minister of foreign affairs who succeeded Ribbentrop, later protector of Bohemia. Sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
14. Franz Von Papen – acquitted at Nuremberg but re- classified as a criminal in 1947 by a German Denazification Court.
15. Eric Raeder – life imprisonment.
16. Joachim Von Ribbentrop – nazi foreign minister. Sentenced to death.
17. Alfred Rosenberg – racial theory ideologist. Sentenced to death.
18. Fritz Sauckel – plenipotentiary of the Nazi slave program. Sentenced to death.
19. Hjalmar Schacht – pre war president of the Reichsbank. Was acquitted.
20. Baldur Von Shirach – gauliter of Vienna. Sentenced to 20 years.
21. Arthur Seyss-Inquart – gauliter of Holland. Sentenced to death.
22. Albert Speer – Hitler’s architect. Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
23. Julius Streicher – incited hatred and murder against Jews. Sentenced to death.
24. Robert Ley – German Labour Front. Committed suicide before trial
By this time many of the top Nazis were dead. Hitler himself had committed suicide. Joseph Gobbels followed Hitler the next day, by taking his life, the life of his wife and the their six children. Reinhard Heydrich had been killed by Czechoslovak agents in 1942. Herman Goering cheated the hangman by swallowing a cyanide capsule.
The war criminals were held in Spandau Prison. They argued that the International Military Tribunal was a Victor’s Justice and was a mock trial.
Judges who tried the German Judges accused of perversion of justice were:
(Soviet main)
(Soviet alternate)
(British main), President of the Tribunal
(British alternative)
(American main)
(American alternative)
Professor (French main)
(French alternative)
Chief prosecutors
(United Kingdom)
(United States)
(Soviet Union)
, later replaced by (France)
Apart from the trial of the Nazi War Criminals there were 12 other trials at Nuremberg, now occupied by the USA. These were held before US Military Courts and not before the International War Crimes Tribunal. These 12 trials were known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials. In one trial 16 German Judges and Jurists were indicted, for
Participating in a common plan or conspiracy to commit and ; war crimes through the abuse of the judicial and penal process, resulting in , , of ; crimes against humanity on the same grounds, including charges and membership in a criminal organization, the or leadership corps. But the highest ranking officials of the Nazi judicial system could not be tried.
Franz Gurtner, Minister of Justice since 1942 had committed suicide in 1946. Roland Freuler President of the People’s Court was killed in a bombing raid on Berlin. Gunther Volmer was killed in 1945.
Between 1941 and 1944 Germans deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories and from Axis Countries to ghettos often called Extermination Camps. There they were done to death in gas chambers. They moved these Jews by trains packing them like sardines. This continued up to the day the German forces unconditionally surrendered.
The Judge’s Trial was depicted in a movie shot in 1961, called “Judgement at Nurembrg”, with a star studded cast, starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schelle, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift. These were some of the best known film stars of the era.
NEXT PART 2 TRIAL OF THE NAZI WAR CRIMINALS