Monday, Aug. 06, 1945

The Place of Judgment

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

Britain and the U.S. proposed to try Germany's archcriminals at Nuremberg, long the spiritual home of Naziism. The Russians objected that Nuremberg was in the U.S. zone, said the trials should be held in the Soviet zone. U.S. and British security officers objected to holding the trials anywhere in Germany--they feared that anti-Nazi Germans and personal enemies of the accused might get out of hand. But Nuremberg seemed to be an almost certain choice.

The Simple Life. At Mondorf, a Luxembourg spa, the cream of Germany's criminal crop was being conditioned for the trials.

The Moscow radio accused the U.S. Army of showering luxuries upon Hermann Goring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Karl Doenitz and flocks of lesser lights in its custody. Actually, they were leading a rigidly simple life.

They slept on canvas cots. They had no electricity in their cells. A careful check was kept on razor blades and other possible suicide weapons. Their prison, once the Palace Hotel, was surrounded by barbed wire and machine guns.

Some of the Nazis resented their enforced association with such low characters as bald, bewhiskered Jew-baiter Julius Streicher and the disconsolate ex-fuehrer of the Labor Front, Robert Ley. But all were forced to eat their plain meals together.

Goering was a mountainous wreck. His drug dosage had been cut from 40 tablets of paracodeine to 26 tablets daily. Mostly he kept to his cot or his chair (he had to have an outsize one; a small one had crumpled under his 270 Ibs.). He alternately bragged and wept. Last week he went completely to pieces during a thunderstorm--which scared the daylights out of him--and suffered, a heart attack.

Shakespeare, Weeds, Fish. For amusement the Nazis lectured each other. Ley spoke on the role of private capital in rebuilding Germany. The Foreign Minister in Doenitz' short-lived surrender government, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, discussed Shakespeare. Hans Joachim Riecke, Nazi agriculturist, described the best methods of fighting weeds, and Lieut. Colonel Ernst John von Freyand, former aide to Field Marshal Keitel, spoke freely on the breeding of fish.

Attendance at lectures was optional. Movie attendance was compulsory. The bill: films of German atrocities.

Reactions differed at the first showing. Goring exclaimed: "That's the type of film we used to show our Russian prisoners." Streicher sat on his chair's edge, clasped and unclasped his hands. Field Marshal Kesselring's face blanched. Hans Frank, the butcher of Poland's Jews, stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth and gagged. Ribbentrop left the room with head bowed. But he walked straight to the dining room.

Now or Never. Despite all that had been done, Russia, Britain, France and the U.S. had yet to agree on a common procedure. This week a U.S. source in London said that Prosecutor Robert Houghwout Jackson had toughened up, warned the others that the U.S. would start the trials alone unless agreement came soon. Major point of disagreement: Jackson's insistence that wars of aggression be recognized, per se, as international crimes.

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