The Nuremberg Trials: Civilization vs. Barbarism, Part Two

Things are getting real - this will be an episode about justice, suicide, drama and denial. The new world order about to be shaped through law, but if we are to have a fair trial, can we end up finding some of the top Nazi's not guilty and can the world live with that? Listen in.

By and with Francis Lundh

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Ashcan and Dustbin. What do you think about when hearing those two names? It's garbage, right, one way or another, and it's also the code names for the two prisoner of war camps that the Nuremberg defendants would sit in right after the war. Despite the name though, Camp Ashcan was actually a spa hotel in Bondorf in Luxembourg used among others by top Nazis, and if I'm not completely mistaken, it's still open for you, so you can go there and have a lovely weekend. But for quite a few of the defendants, it would mark their last taste of some sort of comfort and some sort of luxury. So at the place in time we are at now, we are done with the world war. All the societies that used to be under the Nazi yoke are trying to find their feet again, and it ain't always pretty. It's a time of sorrow, it's finding out that your loved ones might no longer be alive or is still missing, with the hope diminishing by the day of their survival. It's a time of d rejoicing and intoxication for a newfound freedom. It is a time where many feel the urge for revenge. It's a time where women that would somehow have found themselves attracted to and in relationships with German soldiers during the war could be harassed and dragged out into the streets, bat at beaten, and forcibly had their heads shaven as a symbol of shame, of course without any form of trial other than street justice. It is the time where you had been or had you been on the wrong side, you better stay low now because finally the oppressed were free and not all would think about mercy. It was these kinds of things though that the Nuremberg trials aimed not to be. What happened in the streets was of course very hard to control, but the advocates for a large trial worked hard for it to be about justice, not blind emotion. It aimed at being a civilized response to brutality, especially championed by the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson. In some ways he's the father of the neuromotrials. So it's roughly summer 1945, the weather is nice, euphory and sorrow walk hand in hand, as does anger and joyous relief. The war is won, but now the work really starts with how one will respond to the worst war ever experienced in human history. I hope you like the first episode and that you are now ready for some more. Just one thing before we are getting started. That means that if you subscribe to the mantra that I do of sharing is caring, please consider sharing this with people you think might be interested or suggest this whenever someone asks you for a podcast recommendation. Um, your downloads, feedback, and ratings, they are important to me and is really all the encouragement that I need to keep going. I have also deleted some social media accounts as I just you know couldn't bear all the stuff there anymore, and I didn't really have time, so um, so please do help spread the word. Also, the webpage, I don't really have time to keep that up either. Um, so this file here showing up every now and then in whatever you use for listening to your podcasts is only communication with the outside world, so to speak. I do have a blue sky sky account. I forget that it's there way too often, and then I'm also happy to sponsor my podcasting friend Danny Elabalelli of History on Fire, and he is very sweet to bring this show to his listeners' attention occasionally, which uh constantly feeds new listeners in and it's great. But other than that, this is uh completely organic everything. So if you leave a review, for example, that helps a lot bringing this content to more people's attention. But regardless of anything you may or may not do, I'm just grateful that you are listening and taking part of this sported carding journey of ours. So back to our main topic. The Second World War has ended, and there is this question about a trial. Now, for quite many people, this was a process. There were many advocating summary executions on both the Western and Soviet sides, but as we will see, the Nuremberg trials will bring forth a whole lot of new information and nuance that we just wouldn't have had otherwise. Uh so I think we can all be very happy that it came to a trial and it will also give uh us unique insight to the human psyche, especially related to understanding well the entire concept of crime, I suppose, but also political extremism. Furthermore, by actually having a fair trial, the Allies decided that we are better than these guys, we are not going to use those same authoritarian methods, and maybe just put Soviet the Soviet Union a little bit for to the side here. But for the three Western main countries, Britain, United States, and France, it was important to state that we here we've been fighting for democracy and individual liberty. You know, we believe in the principles that every person has the right to defend themselves fairly against charges, even though these charges might seem very obvious. So, especially for three nations, the main uh people pushing for a trial was uh was that this was about freedom and the future or well, the entire world really and the new world order. And while the trial was seen as just wasting time and resources by some, uh as it went on, I think that for more and more people they saw the point. Because after a while, if you were following this trial, the summary execution idea must have seemed quite ridiculous, at least it's not talked about as much after a while, because it becomes very clear that there are many different shades of guilt here and some really important legal ground that needed to be made. Things were not at all so clear-cut as people first thought. Furthermore, we would not have been getting so much of the information that we have today had it not actively been sought after very systematically right after the war. So, this trial should, you know, every historian basically should be grateful for this trial. Some um of this, also I would say today has real life consequences because uh, as we we're gonna talk about this towards the end, but the historical impact of the trial is quite huge, and it has, among other things, uh reduced the potential for waterboudism. So it's made it harder for later autocracies to say that you know, well, even the democratic allies just randomly executed the leaders uh of their enemies just right after the war without a trial, so random executions must be okay for us as well. Um, so that's one thing. And while you will always have your Holocaust deniers, this trial has made, I dare say, a return to Nazism harder than it otherwise might have been because it so thoroughly dismantles the results of this ideology. Uh, and I think it also these days it teaches us some some of the dynamics that um that uh uh existed around the Nazi regime and this cult of personality surrounding Hitler that I think can teach us some great lessons today as well when when you have this sort of um movements around a nation's leadership, and it's never really good. In many ways, the New York trials, you know, it's it's really creating this brave new world. It's about carving out this new path after two horrible world wars. People were just really tired now. They failed the first time to to set the record straight, it just ended in a second world war. Now they really, really, really just had to find a new way forward. It's it's it's about establishing some new new basically some new rules for this board game that is international politics, um, and they just weren't there at the time. As we briefly mentioned, um the question of a trial against Nazi war criminals had been on the table for a long time. It's um it emerged as a topic as early as 1942, and um it will later also be a topic during the so-called Feran Conference, which was the first big meeting between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Now, Churchill, he always had a horrible relationship to the Soviet Union, and he felt very much that Stalin wasn't really much better than the Nazis, and you can definitely see his point. But this conference was um was about basically discussing several issues to how Europe should look like after the war. And during this meeting between these top dogs, it sparked great controversy when Stalin, during a dinner, presumably, toasted to or at least in some way mentioned that they would um they would love to execute at least 50,000 German officers right after the war. Whereas Churchill was extremely upset by this barbarism, and uh Roosevelt, the middleman, he sort of tried to to joke it away, saying that uh, you know, I think that executing 49,000 should be just about enough. But Churchill he was uh he was pissed off and he just left the room and Stalin had to chase after him, saying something akin to ah, come on, mate, come on, mate, it was just a joke, just a joke, calm down, have a drink, just a joke, or something like that. I mean, there are several versions of this story, but um what was said is uh more or less the same in every version. Now, Churchill, of course, he knew at this time about the purchase in the Red Army, he knew about the Soviet lack of respect for human life, and he was just a starch opponent of communism. And you can say many things about Churchill, not all of them great, but he believes in democracy. What is perhaps a little bit more surprising given this episode in Teheran is that the British will actually, during the summer of 1945, be very skeptical of a trial because Churchill he famously loses the election right after the war, and the new Prime Minister Clement Attlee he felt that the crimes you know at play during the Second World War were so heinous that one couldn't just use standard laws to condemn these Nazi criminals. So also some of these defendants, they were of course at the very top of the state apparatus uh and they never murdered anyone with their own hands. And can you really put leaders like that on trial? One would expect that perhaps some British sensed some double standards here. I mean, after all, if you're trying, you know, trying people for imperialism and racism, uh there would be uh someone that had something to say about British rule across the globe at the time, right? In India, for example. But it was quite unexpectedly the Soviets that helped push the case for a trial through. Stalin, all of a sudden, and for reasons unknown, he wanted to go for a trial as the final decisions were made, and all that stuff about executing 50,000 German officers was now all but gone. Now it has been speculated that he wanted some Western goodwill at the time, or perhaps he just wanted all the spotlight about Nazi criminals that this trial would bring, but it should be said that many of the Soviets probably had the expectation that while having this trial, that would really not mean that anyone possibly could be acquitted. Now, this was also some um you know, this is also, I think we should introduce one of our main characters of this trial. I think this is a suitable time. His name is Um Robert Jackson. We mentioned him in the intro. So, Robert Jackson, what kind of man is he? Well, he's an attorney, he used to um he he was placed in the American Supreme Court, he actually never finished law school, but he basically worked his way up the career ladder and um and is considered or was considered at a time as a great orator and a juridical mind. Um, he's basically just really highly thought of. Roosevelt even claimed that he would make a great precedent one day. So so that's uh setting the bar fairly high for him. Um he saw this trial as an opportunity to shape international law forever, in which he was entirely correct. I think you can call him a youridical purist. Uh he's uh you know this champion of law and order, he's uh he's in many respects a great man in history, he has his own center even today that has published a lot of information of this trial on the internet and his involvement. So I encourage you all to look up that. Now, Jackson, he will come and go from here on and for the rest of this series. Um, but as we will see, this is a bit of a paradox. The Nuremberg trials will kind of both be his triumph but also a sort of personal crisis. Uh so it's perhaps both his greatest achievement, but also career-wise, it will turn out to be a minor disaster because after all, there are no Robert Jacksons on the list of US presidents, and you will see why as we progress, but there is no denying his importance for both a trial and international law. But since there was all this emphasis on having a fair trial, the lack of laws from before was a huge problem in several respects. Because, okay, if we have a fair trial, can we then potentially end up in a situation where we indirectly are saying that some of these Nazi atrocities committed are actually legal? And okay, just because we didn't really have good laws in place for them when they were committed. All right, this is a problem. And if we can't have a fair trial where people can actually be acquitted, like real acquitted, are we not back to the point where we just punish these people without a trial, you know, and uh and this would all be a waste of time and a mockery of juridical standards and counterproductive and so forth. So it should be said you had something in place regarding laws. You had the first Geneva Convention, for example, um, the one from 1864. Uh you had some other kinds of treaties and such that uh some nations had signed them, others not. Uh, you know, these treaties they might say something about how you treat um prisoners of war and so forth. But other than that, it was not necessarily all that much that there was sort of a unison agreement about, and whatever was there, it was nothing that was at all adequate to deal with mass murders on an industrial scale. Now, of course, there you know, there has always been wars, right? More or less, as long as you had large enough groups of people to have some sort of army, but it's important to remember that there are many different variations of war. Sometimes, if you look at Europe, sometimes there could almost be like small tournaments for local barons or dukes or whatnot. So you lose this battle and perhaps you surrender a bit of land, and then you're at it again a few years later. It's almost like a sports competition, obviously with real-life casualties by all means, but but not on this industrial scale that we are seeing in both the first and the second world wars. So these are the sort of conflicts, they're not really about completely devastation or utter plunder and rape, but rather let's call them just armed ongoing uh spats, really, uh, often settled in one decisive battle or two. The general honorably surrenders by handing his sabre over to the victorious party. So it almost seems like cosplay compared to what would come. Because this was so different, both the first and the second world war, and there are heaps of reasons. First of all, you had the industrialized killing in the first war that nobody had a language or concept or understanding for before it actually started, right? The French famously started that war in their then traditional red uniforms. I mean, imagine having having modern soldiers sneaking around in the shrub in red uniforms in a modern firearms world. I mean, it's just crazy. You're a living target, but it's just this huge, uh hugely fantastic image of worlds colliding, you know, the old world meeting the new machine gun versus red uniform. So the scale of the meat grinders at play were now uh quite new. I mean, you had the Crimean War, some will mention that when you talk about the first sort of industrialized war, and it's not completely wrong, um, but still, this is at a different scale, right? And I'm I'm sort of smooshing the first and the second world wars together here because um, well, you know, they are fairly much intertwined. And then the first war, you start having the machine guns, of course, the huge artillery cannons, barbed wire, all this new stuff, and and they were also uh truly global international conflicts, unlike anything the world has seen as not this one duchy fighting the other. So basically, the world the world was not used to any of this or had no idea how to handle the aftermath, and and they approved us much after the first world war because it it it just was a disaster. So basically, all kinds of rules um uh were not in place. Um I mean imagine you come from this sort of uh sort of what do you call it, sort of this romantic age, and then you move from that place with a sort of Napoleonic era to mass extermination camps, and you get this new. Word around this time, genocide, right? It's coined first time in 1944, and there are no laws against genocide because no one ever thought it possible like this. And this also poses another related problem because if you were to have a fair trial in accordance with sound juridical principles, you can't really sentence people retrospectively for laws that they, you know, that weren't in place at the time that the crime was committed. So what do you do when something so new, so different, on a completely different scale occurs? It is basically, you know, just so off the charts. There are no terms for it before this. So um, of course, just a sort of small segue, of course, you do have what we now would call genocide before this in human history. I mean, you have in ancient history the Roman burning of uh Carthage or annihilation of Carthage, you know, all these other brutal ancient wars. Um, but this was the time, the first time now in the 1940s, that that the word for this really pressed through the need for this. There was the industrial, systematic, bureaucratic extermination that just demanded it new expressions and new laws. So on one side, you can always say, you know, people always kill each other in wars. Um, and also important to mention that some of you, some of you already probably will think, that so many rules were already bent and broken during the Second World War and the first for that matter, by all parties. For example, bombing of all cities was something that the Allies um they were completely against that in the beginning, but towards the end, of course, all sorts of gloves were off. So you can say that killing uh civilians is bad or illegal, but they'll add to the people of Dresden that had their civilian population largely wiped out by Allied bombers, right? And in order for any trial to have any credibility, you know, it needed some sort of legal framework. You needed to draw the line in the sand somewhere. And while you can argue, as Hermann Göring and some of the other defendants would, that you know, everybody does horrible things in war, this is just Victor's justice, this is just baloney. I think we can very clearly say that it never was like that that all sides were equally bad during this war. Um, at least we can draw a very clear line between the Western allies um and the Nazis, and then you have the Soviets in their own brackets. Um uh but of course there is uh there is war crimes on all all sides, but there is also ideological differences here, and that kind of shows in how the soldiers behave themselves. I mean, it's uh it is a conundrum kind of thing, or that, or as a paradox, that the Soviets are sitting there with the Americans, the French and the English. So the um the French and English and Americans, they are feeling that they've been fighting for liberty and democracy, whereas at the same time they knew that the Soviets had been committing horrible crimes, right? And they they had allied with Hitler to to ship Poland and uh other parts of Eastern Europe between them. So this kind of iffy, um iffy mood in a way. This this is a huge problem with with all of this, and it's uh it's a problem that is uh you know shown very much in in the Therylan Conference with the bust up between uh Churchill and Stalin, and it's fair to say it wasn't necessarily very pleasant to be quote unquote liberated by the Red Army either. Um so we'll get to we'll get to that. So more or less the entire world at this point knew that we had been to through two really different events: World War I, World War II. Uh now we have uh you're starting to realize everything um being uncovered, the death camps, and uh uh they would have seen for a long time coming the massive brainwashing of an entire industrialized modern nation, sometimes using new technologies such as radio and uh and uh cinema and the movies. You have um both children and elderly believing in insane conspiracy theories and uh what must have seemed like completely insane rationales for going to war, and that meant that after finally agreeing to a trial, some new language and some new laws had to be drawn up because um it was need it it was needed. So we drew up a charter that this international tribunal in place would work as judges that they would use the determining guilt. So Robert Jackson, this American chief prosecutor, he was adamant, especially towards the Soviet, that listen up, guys, if it is going to be a trial here, and I really want it to be a trial, it has to be a fair trial. You know, I don't want these to be just executions veiled by some sort of uh uridical fig leaf kind of thing. I don't want these to be to be just a show trial. So as we said, he's a youridical purist, he's a man that really believes in fair ruling and he believes in the rule of law. Um and I won't get further into all the technicalities, I think, where the various youridical arguments um because there will be a back and forth, you know. So viewers will say something, Brits will say something, French will say something. But in drawing up this charter, it's uh ends up with a meeting in London, and the rules are uh drawn up, and it will basically end up with four main categories of crimes that these top Nazis will be tried by. So these four are crimes against the peers, general war crimes, crimes against humanity, and then conspiracy to commit all of the above, basically. Uh so the judges they would be from all of the four allied nations: Britain, America, France, and Russia slash the Soviet Union. Um that I'll be using Russia and the Soviet Union sort of uh a little bit here, a little bit there. That's because at the time they did so as well. Mostly actually they just call the Soviets the Russians, but you know, I'll be using both. Uh, also just note that not all of these defendants are actually accused on all these four counts. This conspiracy part of the charge that was especially important to Robert Jackson and the Americans. Um, but for the other nations, you know, this was a little bit more uncharted territory. What did that mean, really? Conspiracy? So Jackson and the Americans they had much more experience with this juridical term. It was related to crime gangs and crime syndicates in the US, like basically mob mobsters. Um, and you needed laws for those not directly involved in the crime, but that might have ordered the crime or arranged it, so the mafia boss ordering a hit on somebody kind of thing. So this conspiracy charges uh is uh very much advocated by the Americans, um, just ensuring that also planning these heinous crimes will be something that um uh these defendants can be sentenced for. And um, they were also, of course, forced to discuss this problem with retrospective application of laws because it is, of course, a sound principle. You can't be convicted for something that wasn't sin as a crime at the time you did it, right? But basically, what they decided was that all of this had to do with the age-old crimes of murder, that's the basis for all of these, and thus this was um also a crime when the perpetrators committed it, they knew, um, for example, that random executions were not allowed, especially mass extermination camps, you know, and they had every opportunity to know when these acts were committed that they were in fact criminal and not part of normal warfare. Also, just stuff like the way the war even started was also by a sort of um you know hook or hook or crook or cheating kind of thing, if you want to say that. It was a Glywitz incident where where where the Nazis pretended that Polish soldiers had attacked them and used that as a justification to invade a so-called false flag operation. Um, same with uh with the invasion of the Soviet Union, by the way. Of course, the Soviets are very concerned with that one. They had the Molotov Ribbon drop uh treaty there. Um but Hitler never paid any attention to to treaties, but it's no sort of it was no secret that they even those few rules already in place for warfare were broken by Germany during the Second World War, and also just the sort of general sort of common sense how you treat people was also very much um you know treated differently by the Nazis than by anyone else. Okay, so I will try to focus on the more human side of things and the psychology of the defendants here, because for me that's the most puzzling, even though we will go through all the evidence coming up in the trial, but as for our narrative, all of this juridical uh stuff, what prosecutors say what, you know, what uh when the French got or what Four Par the British did, or the Russians did something great, or the Americans, we won't go in full detail on that. I mean, this trial will last for months, and uh it's interesting enough. Um, but what fascinates me is is is more these people. That's the main thing, right? How can you justify horrific things? How can the human mind work in that way? Uh, and at least you know what kind of person are you if you end up taking part in the worst horror regime of all times. Though, did they believe that? Did they understand that? Did they realize that they were part of one of the worst regimes in human history? How far can you really keep closing your eyes to to something? I mean, sometimes quite literally in the courtroom while you're sitting there when the evidence is just put forward to you. So we had 24 defendants going into this, only 21 will actually show up. Two of them we mentioned last time around. So the first to miss out was the German industrialist Gustav Krupp, that was head of the Krupp industries that produced arms, and very often slave laborers worked uh there, they were worked half to death. So you can see why they they wanted to put industrialists on trial. But um, I mean, you had horrible stories from these factories. So um uh one example is uh stories of prisoners, they would voluntarily maim themselves by putting limbs into machinery to make themselves unable to work for the Nazi industrial war engine, for example. So, but the problem with this was that Gustav Krupp was terribly ill, and he had been so since 1941, and he could hardly hark out a Guten Tag from the bed that he was chained to. I mean, not literally chained, but so he had not been in business um since 1941, and they basically should have targeted his son Alfred. Um, now he did get some comeuppance later on after the Nuremberg trials, but not with that severe sentence, I would say so. But since Gustav was more or less half dead uh for most of the war, he could of course never be present in the trial. And when they actually tried to change from Gustav to Alfred, the prosecution, they had no luck. And this is perhaps the first evidence also that you get that this is going to be a fair trial. If you screw up, then you screw up. We won't save you, we won't save the prosecution. If you if you make a mess of it, that's that has real life consequences. So the other of these 24 that will never show up in the courtroom is Martin Borman, and that's for the simple reason that he is dead at this time. Now, people at the time also assumed this, they kind of knew it, but his remains really hadn't been found, and since he was one of the top, top, top Nazis up there, you know, with uh Goebbels and Himmler and Hammer Göring and Hitler, of course, and he might even uh I think you can say he was the closest one to Hitler towards the end. They wanted to try him in absentia. So, of course, you get all these sorts of rumors, you know, in this kind of situation that people have seen him or he has uh, you know, I don't know, dressed up somewhere or he's living like a hairdresser in uh Vienna or whatnot. You know, I'm just making that up. But but he he was tried in absentia. Um, everybody suspected he was dead, but they couldn't prove that. Um, so after the war, as we mentioned, they were captured either this or that way. Some willingly surrendered, some um some uh tried to escape. Um, one of those that willingly surrendered is uh Main Will and Herman Göring. He came surrendering with a gallant cape, his daughter was there and his wife, and he just had heaps of fancy suitcases with them full of just stuff, and in those also heaps and heaps of morphine pills that he was addicted to. Uh, upon surrendering, he gave his ceremonial dagger very solemnly to the US officer there. And you know, this typical Goering for you, he's a very vain, and we will get to know him better and better throughout this uh series because, as we said, he is the main villain as far as the defendants go. He is by far the most famous one, he is the one people will know the name of and can recognize in a photo. And even many of you listening are probably sort of hardcore uh World War II um history buffs. I suppose many of you even wouldn't have heard about some of the defendants here. Well, unless you listened to the previous episode, which I suspect you had. Anyway, as we said last time, many of these top Nazis they tried to hide, some succeeded. Um, normally they would get uh great treatment in the beginning. Goering, he was um, you know, he was a quite charismatic character, even though he was vain, vindictive, and cruel. So he could turn on the charm if he wanted to. And he kind of charmed his initial captors somewhat. He he sang, sad, deutsche lieder with them. Um they kind of treated him, it seems, uh, almost like a celebrity. I walked into the room. Uh like kind of the thing if uh I don't know, if Jack the Ripper, you know, all of a sudden you meet Jack Ripper, you kind of want to take a selfie, or uh I don't know, some some sort of bad guy, you know. If you mid Vladimir Putin, you you're tempted to take a selfie even though you think he's a real real bad person. Um, although I would personally never take a selfie with him, but uh but you know you can sort of see the fascination. He has an aura about him. And this actually concerns some of the people working on the trial because they fear that if US troops could take so quickly to and like to or fraternize with the enemy, even the worst of Nazi criminals, perhaps the rest of the public would also just want to forget the atrocities and not pay attention to the trial. And having the public paying attention was really important, and that's also why they they really arranged everything in the courtroom. They're putting up these TV cameras and these strong lights uh on the defendants so they can be filmed all the time. The press had uh more or less full access to the trial all the time. Uh so there was this sense that yeah, we need to hurry up, you know, putting these guys on trial before everybody is singing Deutsche Lieder and uh and cheering with our troops kind of thing. Now, we did portray these people a little bit last episode, and uh let's say that some of them are you know a bit more colourful than others. But one man, especially, I think. Well, many of them are colourful, but uh one is very different from the rest of the bunch, and that is Julius Streicher. So, Julius Streicher, who's he? He was the editor of the Nazi tabloid The Sturmer, which just was full of rabid anti-Semitism, and it was combined with pornography. Yeah, and this odd, not very charming combination basically sums up Streicher's personality fairly well. Funnily enough, he had actually been on trial in the same city before in Nuremberg for sexual transgressions. Allegedly, he had beaten a boy in a way such that he has claimed to have an orgasm and he would brag about uh constantly having wet dreams every night, and you know, so Streicher, he is just for a lack of a better word, a quite disgusting person. Göring called him during um during the time in Nuremberg a half-mad idiot after spending some time in prison with him. And um having said all that, you know, Streicher is a horrible person, but I would say even very disgusting, horrible people with abhorrent human views, they deserve justice, don't they? So in the case of Streicher, unfortunately, some of the initial captors just couldn't constrain themselves and gave this petty man the treatment that they obviously thought he deserved. Ah, but like most such things, no one really wins. So I think the Nuremberg trials really teach us something about you know, two wrongs don't make a right in general. And I think it's hard to see how what happened to Streicher was a good thing. But what happened was according to himself, he was um quite badly abused while uh while in captivity. He was forced to drink uh out of the toilet and such. Um, and there's every reason to believe him because one of the guys doing some of these things has he's actually talked about it. It was a Jewish man that had himself spent some time in a concentration camp in 1938 before escaping to the US. So you can obviously understand why you know he didn't like Streicher much. Uh, it's a man called Werner Meritz. Um uh according to the Times of Israel, he said this before his death in 2020. Quote, I was enraged, I was trembling, there were tears in my eyes. They had captured this guy. I had him to myself, I explained to the MPs, I'm gonna do things you probably think I'm crazy, and you want to know something? I am crazy, I'm crazed. I captured a Nazi of unbelievable mischief. I'm gonna do what I have to do. And then he continues quote I told him from now on you sleep naked on this cold floor, you will not move, and with that I pissed all over him. Terrible thing to tell you. His head and everywhere. I said, You're just to lie there to get some sense. Of what you Nazis did to the Jews. End quote. So if nothing else, you know, it shows some of the understandable anger that a lot of people, especially Jewish people, felt right after the war. But did it do any good? Not really, although it didn't change much either in the sense of history. Streichus complaints about his treatment in these early US captivity, he was stricken from the official record in Nuremberg because it was irrelevant for the charges, and uh generally that didn't get much attention. When interviewed later though, um during the trial by the Princeton psychiatrist, he would bring it up, not really, you know, seeming too concerned, but um to put it this way, his anti-Semitism had not gotten any milder. Uh, even though he said he was against the mass murderers of the Jews, but only because he now felt that these news sort of of the extermination camps had harmed the cause of anti-Semitism. Yeah, so just think about that. And again, uh you can ask the question is this man really mentally well? So there are two edge cases among the defendants when it comes to uh you know dodgy mental health, and the first in that regard is Streicher, and the second is Rudolf Hess. Rudolf Hess, if you remember, is the guy that flew to Britain solo in 1941 on a very confused one-man mission. But apart from these two, all the others, they are you know, I'd think you can actually say very much sane people. Uh some of them probably have uh one or two personality disorders for sure, but uh you know they will have normal or above average intelligence. Streiter is, by the way, the only one that will really flunk the prison IQ test that the prisoners were handed. Um at first they didn't want to do it, but then they sort of, well, we have nothing else to do, so they really gave it a go, everyone. And while you probably shouldn't feel sorry for people taking part in the greatest crimes in history, I kind of don't take any satisfaction in knowing that uh Julie Streicher, perhaps not mentally completely on the up and up, uh, was forced to drink toilet water, he was also forced to only eat potato peels soaked in peace for three days and and then also be urinated on. I don't really take much joy in their sort of inglorious bastards kind of thing, uh referring, of course, there to the Quentin Tarantino movie. But you know, whatever. This was not the norm though. For the most part, these prisoners would be treated very well. Some captors were even instructed trying to befriend them in order to gain their trust and get them to talk, you know, to spill the beans. Um, most of the top Nazis, they were at this place we mentioned code named Ash Can. It is the spa hotel um in Luxembourg, and uh those there were the kinds of Göring, Donitz, and uh many of these other defendants that had either a very strong party allegiance or military background, and then you had this other place, um Dustbin. Uh it was located near Versailles in France, and there you had most of these bureaucrats and industrialists, and you know, most notably Albert Speer is held there. Um, the guy responsible for the prisoners in Ashkant was an American colonel named Burton Andrus, and he would accompany those prisoners to Nuremberg and then be the main jail responsible for all of them up until the very end of the trial in 1946. During the summer of 1945, it had finally been agreed upon that there would indeed be a trial. You know, they settled their differences, the various nations and uh nations, and the location was decided upon, and it was decided that we're gonna go for Nuremberg. Now, there were several reasons for why Nuremberg was chosen. So, as you probably know, it is a large German city, and um it had then a lot of you know both practical and symbolic reasons for being picked. Nuremberg was the place where many huge Nazi rallies had been held. So, some of those who you might have seen in uh black and white sort of films uh where Hitler is shouting out Sigil to enormous crowds of people and soldiers lined up, all of that stuff. Uh, quite a lot of those things happened in Nuremberg. Furthermore, you also had the so-called Nuremberg laws that the Nazis made. These were the laws where Jews were specifically targeted and stripped of a lot of their rights, so basically just uh state discrimination. So that was another aspect. Um, they kind of wanted to to take the defendants back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. But there were all the there also there were also a couple of practical reasons. Um, first and foremost, that in the completely bombed-out city of Nuremberg, one of the very few buildings to still stand more or less unscathed, was the large court building called the Palace of Justice. So for for those practical reasons, um that also plied into it for Nuremberg being chosen. After deciding upon it though, it turned out that they had to do a little bit more to the Palace of Justice than they first thought. They had to rip out everything inside and rebuild the thing um so that it was suitable for a large trial. Um, also, I mean, they they realized basically they had to they had to sort of improvise as they went along here, and they also realized that we had to to do something about translation because you have, I mean, huge language differences here. Everything was going to be in both Russian, English, French, and German, because after all, you're gonna have this fair trial, then the defendants need to be able to understand what they were accused of, uh, what the prosecution would ask them and so forth. And obviously, everybody needed to understand everything in order to make decisions or um or or whatnot. So, so you needed all these four languages at play all of the time. Some of the defendants would, by the way, speak English in various degrees, um, and some not at all, others fluently. Ribbentrop um, of course, had uh spent a lot of time in both Canada and uh UK. Dernitz also speaks English really well, Hans Frank knew some but preferred German and so forth. So they had to cater for all these languages, and they came up for uh I think we can say a really groundbreaking system made by IBM used for real-time translation between all four languages. So basically, they constantly had their three languages not spoken by one of the actors in court, constantly being live translated by uh by a translator, and they had there were a number of translators, they're working in shifts. Um and if the people speaking were talking too fast, they would get this sort of orange light coming on, um, meaning that they had to slow down in order for the for the translators to be able to to sort of do their jobs. Uh, and that means that from the images from the trial, you might have seen um the defendants, like Hamilton Goering, for example, they would constantly have headphones on, uh, which is a kind of unfamiliar look for many of these Nazis because you really don't you don't really don't see people wearing headphones a lot of the time in 1945. And it was this quite complicated setup, you know. You had just you had these switches that they can switch between between the languages um uh in real time. So pretty fancy stuff. Another sort of visual tell from this um from this trial, in addition to the headphones, was that they actually sometimes wore sunglasses and it makes them look a bit odd. Uh, that was because there was such strong lights in the courtroom for the TV cameras there. So you get the defendants with uh looking kind of chill with sunglasses and headphones on, almost like they're at the beach or something, but um, and also in the clothes that uh that were not necessarily familiar to the public, so um uniforms were stripped of everything basically. Um, the civilians were given sort of straight normal civilian clothes without any sort of uh extravagance, and and the soldiers, the guards in the courtroom, they were given were given white helmets um and belly clubs, just to sort of so it was very sort of clear from the beginning that this was you know this was uh different, this was a different scenario from from the sort of war years. Now we're into sort of a new chapter kind of thing. There were also cells in Nuremberg ready for the defendants where they can easily just walk through to the court building, and they would all be transported there in around August 1945. When driving into the city for his arrest, Albert Speer noted how completely bombed out it was, and he wrote something akin to that. I've been here so many times, I used to know this city so well, but now I can't even recognize anything. I don't even know where in the city I am, it's just all rubble. You know, these large Nazi rallies. In many ways, Speer, he is the man behind the Nazi visuals, right? So he would he would play a part in sort of shaping these huge rallies. So the US Colonel Andrus, he imposed a rather strict routine for the prisoners. Uh now they were in proper jail. It would be no small saluting uh from other soldiers because uh you know some would do that because many of these defendants and prisoners had high rank. Now they should be were to be treated like normal prisoners, no nice hotel rooms to live in anymore, just very Spartan prison cells. And um some of these guys actually saw each other again for the first time in in quite some times, and other of these defendants really didn't know the others much as all was just a bit funny. But remember that these guys, you know, they came from all over the Nazi world. So uh some of these would have been stationed in the occupied countries, such as Poland or the Netherlands, and someone would, for example, mainly be concerned with labor or finance, whereas others were very close to Hitler and the inner circle, others of these were mainly military men, sometimes um located very different places than their political theatre or bureaucracy in Berlin and so forth. So it's not like all these 21 defendants are chums and are people knowing each other really well, although you know some know each other fairly well, but uh there are many sort of very different stories to all of these 21 people. Or sorry, 22 people, I should actually say, because there are still 22, and you'll we'll get to that very shortly. So, as we said last time, we have three main categories of people that would stand trial. We have uh the Nazi ideologists and the Nazi Party uh tops, we had the militarists, and then we have the civil servants slash bureaucrats, and now they're all cramped together in the same jail with this strict colonel and rose to look over them in this crazy ghost town of Nuremberg, where there would still be dead people in and under the massive ruins here and there. I mean, this entire place is basically still a war zone when they are being taken there. In fact, still some of the civilian population was still bitter from the loss of the war and full of hate for the Allied soldiers, and some would even try to set up steel wires across the streets in order to maim or even try to decapitate American soldiers that would drive around in jeeps with no roofs. So some of these jeeps actually had to be equipped with metal spikes in the front that would cut these wires in front before hitting people. So Nuremberg in the summer of 1945 is not a very nice or a very safe place. There is still a stench of decay, civilians that were either completely in shock or full of hate or both. And I mean you can understand that, right? I mean, just imagine that a foreign power, no matter how right they were to do so, would bomb your home to rubble, perhaps killing many of your family members, your children and your spouse, perhaps. You you might see your house in ruins, your family photos torn in pieces among the rubble, you see some remains of your furniture, perhaps the bed of your child that your dead child used to sleep in before being killed. I might you might as well also try to set up booby traps for the soldiers now driving around with huge relief that the war is won, perhaps they're even laughing and drinking and celebrating, and in some cases perhaps unnecessarily treating the remaining civilians very nice. Again, I mean there there are differences here. I mean, it's not like allies and Soviets are all the same, but you can understand that it's not a great situation to be a civilian in. And if you start to think about the enormous suffering that the German population suffered, I mean, um, it's quite astonishing. I have one book, by the way, in my bookshelf that I really can't bear to read much of, uh, and it's called Stalin's Revenge, and it's just documenting very coldly all the atrocities committed of the Soviet forces as they would gain ground into Germany. And what really shakes you up is that there are all these sort of stories with with names and ages of of victims of mass rape, basically, German women, and many of these are committing suicide afterwards. Some of them lose their marbles because they're so sort of mentally and sexually tortured, and that it's just extremely horrific. And I think also that's why I think you should say you don't get those same stories in sort of Western Germany, sort of where the American soldiers come. And again, not saying that they didn't do bad stuff, they probably did, or I'm sure they did, but it's a different value system at play here. Um, but no matter what, I can understand it's not it's not great for the German civilian population either way, of course. Having said that, perhaps Nuremberg wasn't the worst place to be a civilian because as the trial was set to be held there, maybe you can even get yourself a little bit lucky because at least now it was supposed to get a lot of international spotlights. There were some attempts at the time to try to query how the remaining civilians would view the trial as it was getting known that it would be in Nuremberg, and also it was getting known who would likely stand trial for this first monumental affair. Some of the civilian population seemed to resent it. They were feeling that it was going to be a show trial, and they were kind of angry that their former leadership would be treated like this. Others were glad, um, but for the most part, they were just apathic. As one man said, you know, those swine probably all deserve to be hanged, but we are too hungry and exhausted to care. So hunger actually was a real problem, and it was a problem in many different uh senses. I mean, one thing, it's difficult to get enough food for the civilians and all the bombed out German cities. Um, and you have to remember that in a place like this, that's hardly anything works, right? Um, of course, people are laborers are gradually cleaning up stuff week after week, but it will take time. And you know, for the entire trial, Nuremberg would still be a sinister setting and backdrop. And yeah, just think about it, all these things that we take for granted in the modern city, like chops, uh, sewage, chains of the pies, you know, and uh um it's just not there. So all of a sudden you have people in a modern huge city are basically left looking in the rubble for scraps to to eat and go into the bathroom in in ruins, basically, right? So on the uridical side of things at this point, it's still frenetic work going on to how you you you figure up everything, and um um some of the problems here, as I said, I won't go into too much detail, but they were discussing what kind of trial should we have because turns out you don't have the same form of trials in France, in of course not in the Soviet Union, and then also US and Britain. So in France, for example, it was more common that you have very long indictments, and um often it's uh it was the judges that were presenting the questions to the defendants, not the prosecution. Whereas in British and American courts, especially, um, you would have a prosecution cross-examining defendants, you know. Uh so they basically, after a bit back and forth, decided that we'll go for the American slash British model. Um, there were concerns that the Soviets would not take this seriously because of their own totalitarian system, uh, of course. But it turns out that um that the two Soviet judges in the international military tribunals were actually quite capable youridical minds. There are some shared opinions uh about them, but it's it's often kind of hard to judge the Soviets in these settings because, on the one hand, you seem to have extremely intelligent, um, capable individuals that can make great decisions and they have great ideas, um, but then they all of a sudden say all crazy stuff, completely countering their earlier brilliance. So it's kind of hard to say if that means that all of a sudden someone has gotten a phone call from Moscow, you know, or perhaps it's sort of spouts of party allegiance kicking in, or uh someone perhaps all of a sudden gets cold feet and gets scared that they are becoming too Western or too liberal and might sort of pay the price for that later. Who knows? But there are cultural differences across all four nations, but especially so between the Soviets and the three other nations, unsurprisingly, because the others are democracies and the Soviet Union clearly is communist. It was also banal discussion. So, how would they look? What clothes would the judges wear? The Brits actually used to wear wigs in court some uh sometimes, and I think they still do actually, it's kind of weird, but for the Americans, French, and the British, they all decided they would skip wigs. I think some would be quite relieved, and they would all wear black, whereas the two Russian judges they decided upon wearing uniforms. So while it was important that these victorious nations seemed united in all this, already here you get some quite clear visual differences between especially the Soviets and the rest. Um, I should say that within this sort of partnership of these judges, there are some real great examples of diplomacy, and um, that actually goes for all four nations. Some of these individuals are doing a great job, and many of them have to really bite their lips and press through with pretty difficult compromises. Um, so the uh the this society. Sort of unsung heroes, I would say, in history, but I should just mention that there's a lot of lot of back and forth, and they managed to get this through somehow. But let's return to our defendants. They are now in these much more crummy cells than what they used to be in, and under this strict supervision. So Colonel Andros, he was he was, in fact, most of the time a fair jailer, very strict. Um and later some of the defendants would say they had nightmares about him because um because the routines were quite harsh. And um uh when the US military magazine Stars and Stripes somehow sometimes had shown images of of mock trials and lynchings of Nazi sympathizers, other places in Europe, Andros would be known to sort of take those magazines up and show them to the defendants in Nuremberg and say something like, Oh, look at this, what do you know? Interesting, look at him hanging there, kind of things. He's not really about a nice guy to him, but he's uh but he's not a sadist either. He's uh he's for the most part, he's treating them very fairly, and many of these prisoners actually come to respect him. After all, some of these are not at all unfamiliar with strict discipline, uh, although there are huge differences here. Uh, the military men, you know, your generals and your admirals, they would keep their cells just 100% ship shape, everything in order. But you then have people such as Joachim von Rigbentrop that would basically have everything in a mess, you know, his clothes, his bed, his papers, everything just floating around. The former wine salesmen obviously didn't have the same sort of discipline as people spending their entire lives basically in the army. For Hammer Goering, this new discipline under Andros was a great thing because Andros he would put them on a fairly strict diet, no excesses, and they would uh gradually work on detoxing Goering from his morphine addiction, so they were giving him fewer and fewer pills and ensuring that he was gradually getting off the drugs. So, ironically, as the months in prison would pass by with no morphine, regular exercise around the prison yard, and a fairly spartan diet that made Goering fitter than ever. He lost about 80 pounds in prison, almost 40 kilos. So he went from being a larger, you know, or rather huge lad to to become quite fit. So he will approach the trial in much better shape than he had been for most of the war years, ironically. We got to know some of these people in the previous episode, but uh, I think it's time now to bring a couple of them back into our storyline here. We have mentioned him already in this episode, the strange, strange Rudolph Hess. Hess was amazingly Hitler's stand-in up until the war. He was second in the hierarchy. When the war starts, he becomes the third in the hierarchy as Herman Goering steps up. But he is always a really odd character. He was imprisoned with um with Hitler after the Birrol Putsch, and he's in many ways the man who wrote Mein Kampf. He, or as a shadow writer, I think you can say for Hitler. He very strangely flew to Britain in a confused and bizarre attempt of brokering peace that no other in the Nazi leadership wanted. So he had been in Allied captivity since 1941. Hess had for a very long time before this been really strange. So, as we said, Streicher is the one guy you can question the mental health of, and Rudolf Hess is the other. He would be into the occult and alternative star. So, for example, he would have this special pendulum that he would use to swing over unopened letters in order to determine if it was a bad or a good letter. Yeah, so for a lack of a better word, Hess is weird. And if he wasn't already weird enough from before, he decides to put on a show in Nuremberg Press, and he's faking complete loss of memory. Um and in a way that's kind of credible because he was always so strange, but um, in the end, it would just make him look even weirder and more pathetic. But poor Hess, I mean, he really doesn't seem to do anything right, and um how he later somehow managed to become some sort of cult hero for neo-Nazis, you know, it's it's that's fairly telling for that entire movement to be the honest. He was a very sad, confused man. Again, you can't diagnose people long dead, and perhaps you shouldn't do that, but heck, we can. It's a history podcast after all. This is a man that is into the supernatural, as we say, that kind of sees and imagines stuff that other people around him doesn't. And I think that some form of mild schizophrenia or something might be around lurking around there somewhere, and the court might actually very well have found this to be the case had it not been for another bizarre Hess event that we will get to at the very end of this episode. But a crucial point here is goes for Hess, goes for many of these others, and a lot of these defendants they don't actually like one another, some don't know one another, and those who know one another often dislikes the others for many different reasons. Some is down to having this kind of cult of personality like your head around Hitler. When you have those sort of systems, everybody else becomes your competitor, right? Because you're fighting for the big leader's favor, so you have probably been in some sort of conflict with the other. So, but also in this case, you know, in this situation where they are now in prison in Nuremberg, they're in a position where they understand, of course, that they are fighting for their lives, and they are to a certain extent trying to distance themselves from certain people, so you would start to see a kind of few light groupings in jail. Some would be more inclined to speak to others and so forth. Also, how they adapt depressant life, will it vary quite a lot? So um, Göring would, as the most famous of these remaining Nazis, and also now the really the second in the Nazi hierarchy after Hitler, so he he sees himself as this natural leader for the group, and he would go around saying to many of these defendants that uh don't worry, I will take the blame, kind of thing. And you might think that this uh seems quite noble, but it really wasn't because he really didn't take responsibility for a lot of the atrocities and a lot of the stuff that they would be indicted with. But you know, he he he kind of felt that um he would be the man leading the fight in uh what they saw as this completely unfair, farce of a trial, wicked as justice, as Hermann Goering repeatedly said, and the others thought that our Freier Herrmann, you know, he will lead our defense, at least some of them thought that. So, in a way, Goering probably gave some of these defendants some comfort. Now, it should be said that um uh they weren't relying uh fully on Gring, all of them got their own defense attorneys, but that on its own was kind of complicated because if you think about it, a lot of lawyers really didn't want to defend these top Nazis, of course, at this time the war was lost in 1945. Furthermore, a lot of the defence attorneys around, um, they were obviously other Nazis, quite naturally, that was who they knew. So if if they asked for a lawyer that knew it would be another Nazi. So there had to be a selection here where some defense attorneys that used to have had some contact with the Nazi party would actually be allowed into the trial in order for these defendants to properly defend themselves. Also, they needed attorneys that spoke German, right? So kind of hard to find the right people if you want any German lawyer in 45 that had nothing to do with the Nazi regime, but they would all to various degrees find capable people, um actually some of them so capable that they would really impress the prosecution during the trial, even after 12 years of uh of working in a completely totalitarian Nazi state. Um, some some sort of rather banal stuff helped actually in getting lawyers, and one of those things was that the lawyers would actually get decent rations, so decent food, and decent food was hard to come by everywhere in 1945. So just so simple stuff like that actually helped the defendants finding defense attorneys. So so basically, again, they they're in prison, they get their defense lawyers, and they are you know coping it very differently. Goering is fitter and more sober, which is great for him, as we said, but so also some others are uh are are benefiting, actually. You have some of these um bureaucrats that have been quite heavy alcoholics and they're also sobering up after life's a very heavy drinker, and then uh they're actually finding that as a you know pretty good thing. They they're in pretty good, he's in shape now. Then you have others you have Ernest Kalton Brunner, the Gestapo and SS main representative. He um he's a man that followed in the footsteps of the notorious Seinrich Himmler and Heydrich. Um, and um he was a big man, he was tall, and he had a face heavily scarred. Um, so he looks like this really tough brutes, but uh he doesn't cope very well. He gets anxiety attacks, and the seemingly toughest of them, um, he was one of those really struggling with the pressure. Hans Frank is a guy that we discussed at some length last time around. He had tried to commit suicide early on by slitting his wrist, but he did so unsuccessfully. So um his left arm would still be damaged in prison and would somewhat be shaking around for the experience, but he is seems to be coping quite well after a while, and he is a really interesting person actually. And we will keep a special focus on Hans Frank as we progress. In prison in Hunberg, they would also get some sermons with a priest, um, although many of these top Nazis didn't bother going to these because, after all, they had never been very religious, and um, you know, of course, Jesus being a Jew and all, that made it quite impossible for a few of the more devoted National Socialists to go to something like this, but some would go for nothing else, you know, to break up the very monotonous uh days in prison. Um Hans Frank, as um that we just mentioned, he is uh he's taking a different approach. He is going a lot, and he's claiming to go out of religious conviction, saying that he's fine finally, you know, found his uh his uh his childhood belief again. He's he's found his way back to Catholicism and uh he's feeling according to himself as a changed man. We'll see about that. Um but you can also see how just the stupid things like this is creating conflict by by by by the inmates. You have a bunch that are standing behind Goering, you know, they are super happy with him taking all responsibility seemingly, and you know, standing united in the sort of belief that this is a mock trial, we're not going to accept any of these things, and we've been all sort of following in orders, this is uh this is a witch hand kind of thing to to use a word in often named used in today's politics. Um uh this is all a scandal, a farce, whatnot. And then you have these other people like Hans Frank, that's is is it kind of starts flirting with you know, we uh maybe doing something else here, we're kind of angling towards something else, or if we're not necessarily part of this Goring Pact, um, and in a way, perhaps ruining it for all the others. So, so that's uh that's already something that we start to see quite early on. And then we have Jalmar Schach, the economist that was um in charge of the finances in Germany up until 1938. His stance, as we mentioned last time, would be, you know, I'm completely innocent. What the heck am I doing here? I was even put in a concentration camp towards the end of the war. Why are you guys locking me up with these crazy Nazis? Which is also an interesting case here. Then we have a man such as Robert Leigh. He is uh he was a lot, at least one of the he was the leader for the German labor front, he would have several roles. He would be one of those taking a rather sort of um hysterical approach to imprisonment. I think we're gonna say in Nuremberg. So his approach would not be um let's try to angle for something, let's uh try to say, yeah, this was pretty bad, and I want to cooperate, or he wasn't standing standing behind Guring saying this is a farce, what the scandal this is. He was kind of like basically just shoot us already. This is you know, get it over and done with. I can't bear the pain, kind of thing. This is uh just just kill us already. So that was his approach, and there had been pretty strict security at the Nuremberg prison because there were constant fears that some would try to to either free these Nazis or or kill these Nazis or help them commit suicide, and there have been a couple of couple of uh episodes already um before. Um, but as we are getting into the autumn now, 1945, all these 22 uh defendants are awaiting their indictments. So remember that they are charged on potentially four counts. Those are crimes against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and then conspiracy to commit all of the above. The trial will start in November, and the defendants will know a month or so before what exactly they are charged with. When they get these news, when they're getting these indictments in their cells, they are reacting with a whole different range of emotions. Some were terrified that they were charged with this or that. Some of them fully expected to be charged with everything and sort of took it on the chin. Uh, of course, they charged, you know, charged me with everything. There's a kind of typical Hammond Goring response. Of course, I'm the super important guy, of course I will get everything. Uh, and we see the same pattern for all these personalities. So uh Schachter, we just mentioned this banker up until 38. He's still thinking this is a scandal. What the heck am I doing here? Why are they charging me for anything? It's a farce. I was a banker. Uh uh Goering, of course, thinking I'm the superstar, of course, to do that. Rudolf Hess being all confused, uh, blaming his amnesia. I'm not myself, military men, they would react to this with very proud indignation, stiff upper lip kind of thing. And then Streicher, the editor of their strumer, erratic as always. And the same could, of course, then also be said for Robert Leigh, this Nazi union leader, if you can call it that. Um, so they found themselves more or less good lawyers and they wanted to secure a few trial. There were concerns that um they wouldn't have time to prepare the defense, but as we will see, time will not be a problem for these defendants. So, at this time for them, they've been staying in prison for quite some time. It feels quite unbearable for many of uh these. Of course, they some of these are very much used to luxurious lifestyles and uh no special treatment uh for them now, although it shouldn't be said that not all of them are necessarily used to luxury. I mean, some of them have been living on uh navy vessels, for example, the Admirals is not necessarily f full of luxury. Um and it's it's actually interesting. They've made a point of at the time because um you would have, for example, US newsreels will film from this time in the cells, and they would sort of make this case of showing this is the Nazi top Nazis. Now they are barred in normal press, and they're fed normal prison food through their cell doors, and and so. Of course, you can question the access the press and psychiatrists and everything had to these men at this time, uh, if it that was sort of ethical or not, but uh they kind of knew that it was broadcasted very broadly, and it of course was a huge demand for information from the outside uh world. So remember that for those involved, this was supposed to be the huge civilized democratic response to barbarism or fascism. Uh so they wanted the free press to be an integral part of all of this because this is the new world we want to create. We believe in the in in journalism and the free press. So uh in this case, this trial is much more than just a trial. It's the making of both international law, but setting out a new world order, saying publicly that this is the world we have been fighting for. It was this we wanted all along, and this is how we want uh want the you know the world to work from now on about law, justice, humanity, freedom, transparency, and so forth. Of course, for the defendants, this was utterly absurd because they had been living in a totalitarian regime for 12 years and been an active part of it, of course, and they don't really believe in any of this. Um some actually state very clearly in interviews that uh they really truly believe in dictatorship. You know, they they have no idea or no belief in the concept of democracy, of course, maybe not that shocking because uh, you know, we know they came from a chaotic uh democracy in the Weimar Republic, and um, but some of these have been thinking along the lines that you know uh this sort of uh principe with the Fuhrer and uh this utter dictatorship with nationalism, it could have worked really. Um, although some of them will point out that there is a problem, it's one tiny problem with this, and that is if the leader goes crazy as Hitler might have done towards the end. So, and I would say that yeah, if you just uh didn't you just discard the whole concept right there? I mean, if it's that sort of vulnerable that when the leader goes crazy, everything crumbles, and yeah, so it was the SS and the Gestapo men, Ernest Carlton Brunner, that gave political philosophy uh a shot from his cell, and it should be said, not the most brilliant of these men. By the way, I'm saving some of their direct quotes from this uh for now uh and only alluding to them because um these quotes are given not in this time frame, this is not given in this sort of place in the timeline we're at at the moment. It's coming later in the trial, and it kind of matters when they say various stuff. So we will kind of try to save that mostly for when we get there. Indictments are served on October the 18th. We're still in 1945. We um one week uh sorry, one week later from this, we get the nervous leader for the so-called Nazi Labour Union. Of course, Labour and Nazi in the same sentence means horrific things. Robert Leahy is found dead in his cell, and that's how we get from 22 to 21 out of originally 20. Um, that was supposed to stand troll. Now, there were all kinds of measures in place to prevent suicide, but Lei he had managed to twist some towels around his neck and managed to strangle himself on on the floor by by tying these, I think, wet towels to the toilet. He was always one of these panicky people, right? So he he was the one that would always say, you know, why don't they just shoot us already? And it's just been too much for him after seeing the indictment. He was just so sure he was going to be executed, and he really had no desire to find out how the military tribunal would judge his sins. Perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not. There was no sympathy for Robert Lay among the other defendants. They reacted with a shrug of the shoulders, and some even would say that it was uh you know, it was kind of a good thing that he died because his frantic behavior would kind of hurt our case. Um I did have one. It did have one extremely unfortunate consequence for them, though, because that was that um this security surrounding them handled by Colonel Andros, that was tightened even further after this uh suicide. So that meant that from now on they would really be checked up all at one of the time I mean lights on uh during the night that we've woken up every half an hour or so forth. So putting these guys on trial was of utmost importance, and um uh obviously everybody running the trial they felt uh rightfully they were conducting a historically important job so there just basically could be no more suicide. That was super important. We need to start this trial and we need to get these guys into the courtroom. At the start of the trial, uh all this practical stuff had been taken care of, the palace of justice had been rebuilt, um, the judges in the military tribunal they had found places in this bombed out city to stay, defense lawyers had been set up, the prosecution had more or less had time to prepare themselves. So, as we say, the tribunal consists of eight judges, the most important of those is the leader of the entire tribunal, a guy called Sir Jeffrey Lawrence. He's a British guy that was chosen as he um he was seen as a very calm, capable, diplomatic guy, quiet dude. So basically, he manages the balancing act of keeping all four nations suitably happy. Um and he was also viewed as very impartial, if that is at all possible, after a world war, and he will actually turn out just to be an excellent choice. Interestingly enough, the defendants, these top Nazis, they will actually during the trial start to like him quite a lot, and also several of them will also mention the American judges. I suppose true justice is in fact a beautiful thing when seeing it up close and when you're not used to it. So these that had expected a show trial, they will experience a tribunal that will not take any ball to dash from either side. So, as we said, they had already stopped the prosecution from switching from Gustav Krupp to Alfred Krupp, and it would also be like that during the trial. So that would mean that um this tribunal will have no problems putting the prosecution back in its place if they have done sloppy work, and they would not allow it if the prosecution tried to repeat points that they already had tackled and so forth. Um in fact, some of the defendants will actually uh describe great joy in these quite sort of long days and sort of just observing these judges and uh and sort of uh smiling sort of weakly as they are tightening the screws on the prosecution uh at several times, and you know, these the they will actually be quite impressed, they will say as much. As the trial is about to begin, there is a lot of public interest, of course, and Goering here is the face of it all. And it should be said, you know, as we alluded to earlier, that um for many people also then in the average population, I mean in the West, they wouldn't know about many of these um these people on trial because many of the main characters of the Nazi regime they are already dead. One that is not dead is of course the Peacock Hammond Göring. Everybody knew him, he was and caricatures in in Allied newspaper and uh and uh and so forth, but it was a different story with many of the others. I mean, how many people would you imagine on the streets of London or New York or Sydney for that matter would know about the bureaucrats, right? Who would know about Fritz Sack or Jamaschacht, Walterfunk, um, even if you had been following the Nazi regime closely? I mean, some would know them, but for the sort of average worker in the streets, they wouldn't know them. They would know, of course, Hitler, Göring, Himmler, uh, some would know Ribbentrop, um, perhaps the name Gernitz would would ring a bell for a few because he was the one surrendering in the end. So he was in the headlines as the war ended. Uh Speer, someone might know, uh perhaps Evans I would know the crazy Nazi editor Streicher. But since these are people also from sort of sort of very civilian or strictly military parts of the regime, it's it that they're not sort of famous for the average man or lady. Uh, of course, though it's different for those that are under occupation during the war, they will, of course, know the ones in charge of their countries, like Hans Frank in Poland and S. Inquart in the Netherlands. But apart from that, you know, uh, it will be a constant struggle to keep up with the trial, and also that's some of our challenge in telling this story here, because there are so many names, and uh it should be said that's also why I'm trying to mention that I'm sort of taking away some of all this juridical stuff because the trial was rightfully so obsessed with not being a shock trial, who's paying a lot of attention to protocol. Um, and even though every measure was taken designed to accommodate the press, it was for a lack of a better word, not very sort of tabloid, right? It will take months and months and months, and some of these, you know, as we said, the defenders are unfamiliar to people, nobody knows them. Uh, and some of them are also quite boring. Take Keitel, for example. I mean, even that is a name people might have heard about, um, because he's a top general. Um, but he said not entirely incorrectly during the trial that he was head of the army in name only, like he was in some ways more or less just a personal assistant to Hitler, wearing a real fancy uniform. So he was always growling for his master, he's a spitlucker. So this kind of personality is not something that captures the imagination of the public. On the other hand, you know, you have Goering's vanity and narcissism also really playing into the hand of the prosecution because he also clearly took on the role as the main villain, the main, I mean, you know, you know, your main superhero villain, you kind of think. So he loves the attention. Uh so he works, um, he works uh fairly well. Um I won't repeat all the the characteristics of the 21 Defendants that will end up in the dock because we did that in the first episode, but I think we will give some of these special attention from now on because um, as we said, some are boring and I don't want to to to spend time on those, but those we will focus especially on is of course Hermann Göring. Uh it will also be Hans Frank, it will be Albert Speer, it will be Jama Schach, the bank up until 1938, surprisingly. It will also be Julius Streicher, the Nazi editor, and Rudolf Hess. We will have some time also for Ernst, Carlton Bruner, the SS, and Gestapo, Kardenitz, Ribbentrop, and Rosenberg. But that also means that already now in this series, probably be five episodes, I haven't decided yet. You'll have to see how we go with this. It kind of changes as we as we go, might be four, might be six. Um, but already now we will be pushing half of those defendants more to the background, not because they're unimportant or that their crimes were not necessarily grave, but because they are well, you know, there are too many to to to tackle. So uh that will mean that um some uh like Keitel that we just mentioned, um uh will need to take a step back in our narrative. So Keitel, Jodel, Admiral Rader, Walter Funk the Economist, Fritzcher the radio host, Franz von Papen, the old Weimar politician, Sarko, Minister of the Interior, for Norat, foreign minister before Ribbentrop, Won Schirach, Hitler, Jugendleader and Gauleiter, Ces Ingquart and Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of Interior, they are politely asked to take a step back in our story. Uh, although you you know you hear the names as we progress, um, and you'll of course learn all the defendants' names, but these I can already say that we won't spend heaps of time on. So, as we said, because with as we said, I mean, these are chosen to represent everything in in the Nazi leadership. So that means that while sort of the top Nazis, some of the worst sort of torturers and whatnot, they will not feature in this trial, they will be put on trial later on. Sort of those committing super heinous things, they will be put on trial later on. But but this is sort of the top leaders, right? It's the leadership really. Um, so that's um that's uh that's important. And in addition to these people, several Nazi organizations are also part of this first huge trial. And that means sort of organizations such as the SS, the SA, the Gestapo, the General Command, and so forth. Also, this part of the trial we won't spend that much time on. Um, but also to just briefly mention that if you're really into the number of trials, you would know that this also sparked quite some debate and controversy in the buildup because well, basically the argument was this. If you say that the SS is a criminal organization, does that mean that all the members of the SS are criminal? And if so, then you might up saying that at least half of the German population, you know, are criminals because a lot of these memberships and whatnot didn't necessarily mean anything. So let's say if your job within the SS was to take phone calls or wash uniforms, you you would, you know, would you still be as guilty as someone torturing hostages? So these organizations they had run so deep in German society that they you many people would be members of something without sort of being very dedicated. I mean, um, it might be part of your job kind of thing here to be a member of something. Or let's say you've been part of the Hitler Jugend. I mean, your mum, you know, signed you up when you were ten, are you still a criminal? So the entire entire society was sort of stained by by Nazism through and through. So they had to draw a line. And they uh decided that they would put the organizations on trial, but with that sort of caveat that um that this didn't have to mean that every member would themselves uh be automatically guilty if the if the organization was found guilty. Again, it's the American prosecutor, Jackson, that plays a very important role here. As we said, in many ways, he's the father of this trial, he's the he's the one pulling the strings, he is the one deciding designing this to be civilization versus barbarism. Um he knew perfectly well that this will create and shape international law for the future, and it was very public, so it was uh it was a great uh opportunity for for him to get attention and and and shine. I mean, he is an ambitious man, a man at FDR himself had pointed out as this great future president. Um, so the Americans are really sort of pushing this up until the start of the trial, and on November the 20th, the trial itself begins. So there's all this attention, excitement. But to be fair, this first day will be extremely anticlimatic for many. So it immediately becomes clear that this is no TV trial, it's no judge duty TV show kind of thing. There is a there's a lot of formalities, and very little happens this first day. So the defendants uh uh they are woken up at six, they get oatmeal and coffee, at nine they're taken to the courtroom, and half an hour later, 250, which is quite a number, journalists are allowed into the room. There is a lot of fascination, of course, seeing these guys now on trial in the in the docks for the first time, and uh so you have that at least. And at 10, Judge Lawrence opens the proceedings. Um, but you know, even from the beginning, it becomes clear that this is gonna take a lot of time. I mean, there's so many lawyers, so many translators, judges, and defendants, and even the most optimistic on-time statics realize that um this was not going to be over and done with anytime soon. The entire first day goes just to read out indictments and then it's just formal law stuff like establishment of trial protocols and the confirmation of legal representation for each defendant. I mean, it's just stuff that can make you fall asleep in an instant. So for those of the press that are kind of hoped for some high courtroom drama off the bat will be very disappointed. But fear not, they will come later. So it is the first uh it's the first actually the next day where you get uh any action at all from the defendants, and that's when they come up to to plead guilty or not to the charges uh brought against them, and uh and after that we get the opening speech from Jackson. So at least on the second day, there are there there are some good headlines to be had for the papers, but uh after this first day, it's hard to write more than you know the trial has started, and perhaps you try to interpret something from the defendant's faces. Uh uh I can actually remember this. I used to work as a reporter back in the days, and uh covering court cases it can sometimes be quite excruciating because of all of the formalities, and you have to report something back because people know the trial is going on and they want to know what's going on in the trial, but it's nothing to report on other than stating that yeah, we've begun, and yeah, that's still the thing. They're still talking about whatever juridical formalities, and yeah, that's still what's going on. But as we owe it to the next day, when day two, you know, thankfully something happens, at least from the press's perspective. But also, I think for you listening here now, here comes a really important point for this entire series, because some historians will say about the Nuremberg trials that, or at least this first one, that no one showed much remorse or admitted any guilt. For me, that's lazy historiography, and you will see why I mean that as we progress, because there are many nuances to this. In fact, I would say it's almost outright wrong in some cases to say that. And um, I don't really think that we're doing anyone any favors if we are portraying these defendants as two-dimensional monsters, partly because then it's harder to recognize political extremists in our own time if we do that. I mean, so these are 21 individuals, you know. We want to dive into their minds, we want to understand how they ended up on this dock, right? And then if we just see them as monsters, stone-faced people that didn't admit anything, we're losing a lot of that. And important to remember, you know, these are people, they have various traits or qualities, even though they did horrible things. So, for example, many of these would have had charisma, and had you not known uh what they've been doing up to, you could have you know had a lovely evening speaking to some of them. So these are human beings, after all, although often weak or horrible or cynical. But there are many different stories here, as we've said, and a fair few definitely do express at least some form of regret, depending on how you define that. And obviously, is another question if you believe that, but that is different from saying that non-expressed any regret. And uh, I think it's also important to say that there is some movement in stance throughout through the trial for some of these. So when historians are saying that they were all stone-faced, unrepenting sinners, uh, for some of them that is probably true to the very end, but definitely not all. I think um, I don't know why one the hypothesis is that one might be colored by the press coverage at the time. Of course, that was not very nuanced, you know, they would write for for a public that was sort of uh aching for revenge, you know, and um um and also there weren't always that much to report on, and as the trial will go on for month and month and month, you know, the interest will sort of fade away a little bit in until we come to the very end. Um you know, so I'm not sure how much you should interpret these first things into sort of how they fear. Remember that um this this happens over a long time. Um, also that we will come to in a second, on this day too, they get to respond to the charges, right? And they're all stating not guilty and in some form or another, um, and that is just historical fact. That is, of course, correct. I'm not challenging that at all, but that does not necessarily mean that they felt that they played absolutely no role and had no guilt in anything. Some of these simply did not recognize the court as just, and they disagreed with the entire concept of being tried by other nations. Uh I mean, others were seeing themselves as just military men just following orders, and they felt that they did nothing different from American or British or Soviet generals. Others were in disagreement with what they were actually charged with in the indictment. And remember, not accepting guilt for that was, I mean, that was justified really because the prosecution had been working pretty fast and they would get things wrong and so forth. Remember that not all of these will be found guilty for everything either. So some of these things in the indictment is wrong. So them saying not guilty according to the indictment, you know, the court will actually agree with a fair few of them. So while it is a fact that all of them are saying not guilty, uh, it does not necessarily mean, and you might find this nitpicky, but still, it still doesn't mean that everyone are 100% on board with everything that happened in the Reich. Um, but on the other hand, also some of them really are. Of course, I don't want to excuse them either, but we need to sort of you know get into the details. We want to get to the interesting stuff. And of course, there will be lies and tactical ploys. And it's sometimes really hard to tell. You know, are they lying? Are they telling the truth? Are they um are they just faking it? But you can make up your own mind as we progress. Another factor in this that we have sort of mentioned here and there is that the Soviets, they are also part of the tribunal. So they are among the judges. So remember, it's not black and white who the good guys and the bad guys are here. So you basically have two of the worst regimes in history. You have Hitler's Germany on the one side and Stalin's extended Russia sitting on the other side. So in one way, I can understand that that kind of felt a little bit problematic for the defendants. Like, like they could think that, you know, okay, we did a lot of bad stuff and we killed a lot of people that we probably shouldn't have done. But these guys accusing us for you know all this stuff, they have just, you know, months ago slaughtered and raped themselves through all of Eastern Germany. And of course, you know, you can see how that puts the spin on things and is a kind of a problem. And there's also this huge ideological gulf between well, between all of them, but also for many of these Nazis, they felt that they kind of fought an ideological war against communists. Um and by the way, nobody really doubted that Stalin was a horrible mass murderer. So this is also sort of um playing into the complexity of the trial. So maybe not so easy to say to the Soviet judges that you know we are the bad guys. I admit to being a bad guy when they sort of quite a heated relationship, to put it mildly. So many things we need to take in into account. I've used a few books of sources here. I don't know if I mentioned them as much, but I can mention them now. The best one is probably by John and Antusa, another one is by Paul Rowland. They are both called the Nuremberg Trials, one without the plural. Um, the one by Roland, I think, is much harsher in the wording, is written from a place that these defendants are more or less monsters, even though I think, you know, I don't necessarily agree with that portrayal. I think it's a rather good book with fascinating pieces of information. But as we said, our agenda here is that we want to understand these people, even though they did horrible things, because I think we can learn more about the human mind and understand history much better if we do. But again, not excusing them or justify what they did in any way. But to put this also in a further bit of context, we love context, there were tens of thousands of names already on lists for various Nazi war crimes at this time. So, as we say, these are the top leaders, these are not the torturers, right? The executioners. So these 21 out of originally 24 people are chosen just to represent the Nazi ideology. So it's actually not that clear-cut whether they are equally guilty because it comes to a point that you have to decide sort of can you be part of a cruel system and still be placed somewhere in this massive labyrinth where things are seemingly normal? What should you have known? What could you have known? Is it uh plausible that some of these people actually didn't really know about or at least believed in that, for example, the Holocaust was real um before the trial? That was it even possible that some had lived in a world uh so sort of cut off from the other, or with just so much noise and propaganda from all sides that they had told themselves in a convincing way that this is all just part of that noise. This is all of that part of that propaganda. Is that possible? And it's not straightforward. You can make up your own minds with some of these. And while obviously not knowing uh or not sort of wanting to know is no excuse when it comes to guilt, it's still interesting from the human psyche standpoint. Being ignorant or stupid is of course never an excuse when it comes to legal issues, but it's it's it's it's fascinating to look how at how the human mind can normalize and rationalize horrific things. Um, even sort of people, of course, coming from a civilized society, you know, uh with democratic traditions, I think we should say, highly technologically advanced and so forth. So, again, just to be super clear though, before anyone sort of gets mad, um not sort of playing down the crimes of these defendants. And um, let's talk a little bit about the Holocaust because the Holocaust will be a large part of this, uh, and I think it's um without doubt the greatest crime against humanity ever, uh, at least in modern times. I think you might also include the Atlantic slave trade in that discussion if you broaden the scope. But um, but I can get really angry with I come across Holocaust deniers, and I think that's completely bonkers, just be super clear. But it's at the same time true that this happened gradually as a result of the extreme racism and oppression of minorities in the Nazi ideology, and we have to remember that it took years to reach the final solution. It was a slippery slope of normalizing the extreme until you end up in a sort of nightmarish reality. And I think that if we're trying to be serious about history, we must take all this in, and especially perhaps maybe even today, when we see that there's stuff going on in politics that we don't like or we are afraid of, we have to remember that no one in Germany in 1932 voted for gas chambers, right? They came roughly 10 years later as a result of a dictatorial state, a cult of personality, twisted political, pseudoscientific views, no form of legal protection for people, um at least not very much, and no one checking the power of these institutions, such as the SS and the Gestapo, that kind of worked like states within the states and did whatever they wanted. So I believe at least there's might be some truth in some of these defendants, really not knowing everything about everything, at least. Um, but this is also what's interesting, and you can really make up your own mind. I will you'll get the prosecution's case, you'll get the uh defendant's case, and obviously you'll get the the final sentencing, which will also vary quite a lot, and actually I sort of support what I just said, because these this is not a case. I think we alluded to this as spoiler alert, maybe, but not all of these people will get the same sentence at all. Some will actually be acquitted. Imagine that. Some of these people will be acquitted. Uh for sure. Some of these are outright lying, no doubt about it. Uh, some have very conveniently hidden behind the sort of that uh it's uh it's it's all these other guys. I had no choice, you know. Um I might even have understood, and I was against it, but what can you do? I mean, Himmler and Hitler, they did their stuff. I only had responsibility for this and that. I was setting up the trains or whatnot, and but still that makes you fully guilty, right? Legally, you're screwed. If your boss at work, in the work you have now, if he tells you right now to do something that you know is criminal, like go around the back and shoot this guy in the head, you as an individual is responsible. Not only your boss, it's the same more or less all over the world. It's a you know common juridical princip uh principle. I mean, you always uh you always carry responsibility as an individual in a nation. Uh and you uh and uh you know, killing people randomly, uh you have people with their hands bound behind their backs. You know, you don't need a master's in in law to understand that that's not okay. You don't need legal training to figure that one out, and kind of as a small you know, side s story, you could actually refuse stuff, even in Nazi Germany. Some actually did and got away with that totally fine. Um soldiers could be sort of said that you know, we're going to massacre quite a few people here. If you don't want to be part of it, we can understand. And um some did. Most of the times they didn't. Um and most of the, you know, if you did, you would be probably picked on by your fellow soldiers, but you know, you wouldn't be shot yourself. Anyway, so admit digging in these things, um it's also kind of interesting to see how the Nazi state was rigged. Um some of these things work in different ways. So these the there are quite sort of closed-off entities, and I don't think that's wrong. For example, what happened in the SS wasn't necessarily uh broadcasted everywhere. Anyways, you get to be the judge for yourself a little bit. That's the beauty of this, right? Getting all this detail, but it's true, no doubt, that everyone declares themselves not guilty on their second day for those variety of reasons that we've mentioned, not recognized in the court. So we're getting out of the morning on the 21st and the 21st are all taking the stance to plead not guilty in various ways. And I will actually just give you the exact wording and and and order from what they said so you can hear for yourself. Göring, I declare myself in the sense of the indictment not guilty. Hess, no. The court recorded this as a plea of not guilty. Von Ribbentrop, I declare myself in the sense of the indictment not guilty. Keitel, I declare myself not guilty. Karltenbrunner, he was absent due to illness. He was a bit hysterical, SS man, and later he pleaded not guilty upon returning. Rosenberg, I declare myself in the sense of the indictment not guilty. Frank, I declare myself not guilty. Frick, not guilty. Streicher, not guilty. Funk, I declare myself not guilty. Schacht, I am not guilty in any respect. Dernitz, not guilty. Rader, I declare myself not guilty. Von Schirach, I declare myself in the sense of the indictment, not guilty. Saukel, I declare myself in the sense of the indictment before God and the world, and particularly before my people, not guilty. Jodel, not guilty. For what I have done or had to do, I have a pure conscience before God, before history and my people. For Papen, I declare myself in no way guilty. Says Inquir, I declare myself not guilty. Speer, not guilty. For Neurath, I answer the question in the negative. Interpreted as not guilty. So that was that. And was this when this was all over and done with, it is finally Robert Jackson's time to chine. Finally, you know, the time has come for his opening speech, for setting the stage. And you know, I think that Jackson is really a great man. But as we will see, this trial will sort of unveil some limitations that he has. Um but uh whatever those might be, as you you will you will learn, his speech is a great one. It's a little bit on the long side, taking several several hours. But um uh I think it's worth you to to just listening to this for yourself. So I mean, that's pretty great, isn't it? It kind of gives me goosebumps, at least, you know, that four great nations flushed with victory and stung with injuries stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law. It's one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.

unknown: 1:53:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:16

So I think that's uh that's great, um, that's great stuff. Then the next day there will be a lot of formalities, um, but on day eighth, something finally happens that for the first time will shake the defendants that up until now had looked rather stonefaced or uninterested and comfortable in the docks when the US prosecution asks to show a documentary film from the concentration camps in court. Now, this film it's only a few minutes long, and you can watch this yourself on the web pages of the the the Robert Jackson Center. But like any documentary of uh concentration camps, this is also obviously truly shocking, but this perhaps even more so than many others I've seen. It was um it was also at this time in history, the first really the time many many had seen these gruesome pictures. The world actually got to see this. You have to remember that um uh the nature of the concentration camp and the Holocaust were being sort of unveiled at this time, and uh of course having this in film made a much stronger impact than uh just seeing still photos. Um, it's in fact a collage of films or many different sort of movie clips made by US troops when liberating various camps. Um, some of these are not even the biggest camps, um, because some of those were liberated by the Soviets, but it has these sort of human skeletons. Um uh you you you've seen this in the Holocaust movies. I mean, it's uh quite a few of these people, they were not possible to save, even if they were kind of alive when filmed. And uh you have you know these typical images of just piles and piles of bodies, cremation ovens. Um, and in this uh film shown at the Nuremberg trials, you had a testimony from an American that was put in one of these uh camps, he was telling about them. Uh, it isn't actually the best part of the film, but it's clearly made for kind of an American audience. You get an American to tell some of this this horrible stuff. What makes the greatest impression is is the visuals. Um, and for me, the the far most sort of shocking scene is is one of the very last where you have this um you have this US soldier, he's driving a bulldozer, and he's holding a handkerchief in front of his nose, and then you realize that that rubble he's just blowing through they're they're human bodies. I mean, you probably should be prepared because it's the end of the movie, but but before that, you it doesn't look like human bodies, but then you realize that all of them are human bodies. All of a sudden you just see a torso here, and then a leg, and then more legs, you see arms, heads, it's horrifying. It kind of made me physically unwell, even though I've seen quite a few of those um Holocaust clips before, and this is in low resolution black and white. I kind of think about geez, how would high-resolution colour would would feel like? And after seeing this film, the court goes straight into recess. The film had affected just everyone in the courtroom. You can see Ribbentrop, he's constantly rubbing his eyes, he's quite possibly crying. The others are looking unsettled, he's speaking to one in the sort of uh you know, very sort of engaged as the film ends. Hans Frank, he's just sitting there staring silently into the ground, not moving. Among the audience in court, some are loudly sobbing, they're crying, and a woman faints. No. Going back a little bit to the question of guilt and regret, a recurring topic, of course, throughout this series. But just a sort of a small point here, as far as I have seen, I might have missed something, but no one, as far as I can have seen so far in the research, no one of the defendants will dispute the content in this film. So no one are making the claim that this is all fake, that this is this is staged in any ways, as far as I can see. No one is going to claim that. Um, and that's something really to tell the next Holocaust denial you'll meet. These men are not questioning the atrocities when confronted with the evidence. That's not their take. What they will claim is that they didn't know about it, they would say it was all Himmler and so forth. They would lie, saying we we knew nothing good happened to the Jews, but we didn't know it was this bad, so um, so these guys are accepting the evidence. So there is no doubt if you ever meet a Holocaust in Nauragan that this atrocities happen, people. Some are actually um asked, you know, head on later in the trial by the prison psychiatrist and everything. Have you believed everything? Is there anything you think that is not true when it comes to the Jews and the death camps? And no one sees any point in denying the evidence. They said no, it's it's really clear, but it's horrible, but it you know, it wasn't me. That's kind of that's kind of the general sort of vibe. Okay, so we will round off now with an event about um it's from a couple of days later than this, and they are at this point discussing whether or not all the defendants are actually fit to stand trial. And as we said, there are two obvious candidates here that are perhaps uh in this sort of uh grey area when it comes to mental health, and that's Stumer. Uh the Stummer Edith was Streisher and Rudolf Hess. As we said, probably a fair few of the others would have been diagnosed with a personality uh disorder or two, but um, this is kind of different. These are sort of are they actually understanding or capable of understanding uh what's going on here? Now, this strange Hess, uh, he was obviously the one flying to Britain solo. Undoubtedly, he was not like other people uh with his hang for the supernatural and then his fake amnesia after going into captivity before the trial. Um, so the prosecution obviously do not believe in this, and there is a discussion in court where Jackson is saying that you know he has refused any form of treatment, um, claiming that he's mentally uh not well enough to stand trial, but uh so this back and forth. But then what happens is that this strange, unpredictable has he all of a sudden asks to take the stand, and this is actually allowed. And then he reads This statement. Quote. Mr. President, I would like to say this. At the beginning of the proceedings this afternoon, noon, I gave my defense counsel a note saying I thought the proceedings could be shortened if I were being allowed to speak. I wish to say the following, and then he's blabbering a little bit about his kameraden and so forth. And then he goes on. Henceforth, my memory will again respond to the outside world. The reasons for simulating loss of memory were of a tactical nature. Only my ability to concentrate is in fact somewhat reduced. But my capacity to follow the trial, to defend myself, to put questions to witnesses, or to answer questions myself is not affected hereby. I emphasize that I bear full responsibility for everything that I did, signed or cosigned. My fundamental attitude that the tribunal is not competent is not affected by the statement I have just made. I also simulated loss of memory in consultations with my official appointed defense counsel, and he has therefore represented it in good faith. And so yeah, that is Rudolf Hess for you, people. I personally can't say anything else, and this is just really weird. After going through all that trouble, uh side of kind of faking amnesia that nobody really believed, anyways. And then you start the trial off by confessing that, hey everybody, I lied. Surprise! I mean, and by the way, I mean, this is the only guy that had really been in captivity for a long time before these. I mean, they is there someone they actually know it's Hess. So at least Hess's statement is settled the fact that um that he was fit to stand trial, but there would still actually be doubts about his mental health. I mean, how's that? You're accused in the worst trial in history, and the prosecution wants you to be declared, you know, mentally fit enough to stand trial. Then you take the stand to say that you know I faked all that amnesia stuff, I'm really totally fine. And then the others kind of goes, Yeah, okay, well, we will try you, but we're not fully convinced that you run the up and up. But uh, that's the end of the story for that. And his he will he will stay stand trial just as all the others. Now, we have given Robert Jackson some love in this episode, deservingly. Um, in so many respects, he's a great, great man, but he will never become the president of the United States. And you know, according to some, a big part of that is what we will discuss in the next episode because there will be a showdown here that will truly shake this man in a way that some will say that he will never completely recover from. Until next time, cheers.