Vigil in Nurnberg

It was Execution Night in Nuernberg, and in the spacious second-floor pressroom at the courthouse, the air was heavy with tension and tobacco smoke. Eight newsmen, chosen by lot, had gone to see the war criminals die. To kill time, the 60-odd correspondents who were left behind paced the floor restlessly, watched each other with guarded eyes, plotted how they might scoop the pool. The minutes and hours ticked by. Around the world, they knew, deadlines were coming & going, while editors stood impatiently over teletypes.

Two German reporters came in, dripping wet, from a rainswept rooftop that overlooked the prison wall. To the U.P.'s Clinton Conger and the ue German DANA Agency, who had posted them, they reported seeing groups of helmeted men moving from the jail to the gymnasium. They had heard a bell toll, heard a crashing sound repeated only six times. The Germans surmised that the eleven Nazis had probably been hanged in pairs -- but Conger decided to wait before filing.

Reuters Regrets. Pressed by London's overeager morning dailies, Reuters broke down and sent a bulletin that all eleven had been hanged. Most of Britain's morning press, including the mighty London Times and the Manchester Guardian, played up the news.* So did Moscow papers, which get Reuters service. (The two Russian reporters at the hangings, angry at their editors for playing the false Reuters bulletin, later refused to send the correct version.) But most newsmen kept an eye on Lowell Bennett of I.N.S., knowing that his agency had a deal with a foreign general who was a guest at the hangings and had installed a special telephone to get his call. Finally the general called, said everything had gone off like clockwork. He did not bother to mention what he assumed Bennett knew: that Goering was a suicide. I.N.S. got off an inaccurate bulletin.

All through the night, the truth knocked timidly at the door. In a hallway a G.I. guard called out to Betty Knox, an American working for Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard: "Hey, have you heard that Goering committed suicide?" She had known the G.I. since childhood, but she had heard latrine rumors before, so she let it pass. Another guard told Mutual's Robert Gary, who tried to pin it down in time for a Gabriel Heatter news broadcast and got nowhere. "A man could ruin himself in five minutes," said Gary, virtuously, "by broadcasting a silly report like that."

As the small hours lengthened, A. P. and U.P., badgered by their home offices, put out their own incautious flashes hanging all eleven Nazis, but quickly killed the flashes. The chosen eight newsmen who were in at the deaths knew about Goering -- but the Allied Control Commission kept them incommunicado. It was three and a half hours after the final hanging before puffing Colonel Burton C. Andrus, prison commandant, shamefacedly told reporters outside -- and the world -- that Goering had cheated the gallows (see INTERNATIONAL). It had been a memorable, unhappy night for everybody -- including those who lived through it.

* The London Daily Mail headlined its story: NUeRNBERG NAZIS HANGED IN PAIRS--GOeRING AND RIBBENTROP DIE FIRST. Next day the Daily Mail tried to brazen it out, insisted that it "did not record Goering's death by hanging. It reported accurately 'Goering dies first.' "

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