This wasnt authorized, but it was done on occasion, Prestianni smiled. [108][109], On 12 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech for the British. In the Hostages case, several generals were tried for executing thousands of hostages and prisoners of war, looting, using forced labor, and deporting civilians in the Balkans. [180][172] On 16 October, ten were hanged, with Gring committing suicide the day before. [99] Nevertheless, defense lawyers (although not most of the defendants) often argued that the prosecution was trying to promote German collective guilt and forcefully countered this as a strawman argument. [188] The Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes identified 2,500 major war criminals, of whom 177 were tried. It was supposed to pass to me, but my brothers widow lost it and it has not been turned over to me. But Woods, an almost charmingly hapless man with a checkered. [48] The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and alternate Robert Falco, who had represented France at the London Conference. Still others displayed docile and taciturn mannerisms and personalities. The seventh series of Ravensbrck trials was held between July 2nd and July 21st, 1948 to hear the cases of Aufseherin accused of maltreatment of prisoners and making selections for the gas chambers. He is in several pictures standing at Hans Franks left. Despite this precaution, such limited, semiamicable relationships did exist. Goehring gave my Dad a notebook that he had drawn in. He died about five years ago and I wished I would have asked questions. Does anyone know where I can read about the nuremberg trials from the guards perspective? On that date, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France signed an agreement that included a charter for an international military tribunal to conduct trials of major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic location. Prestiannis assignment was over, and he was transferred to guard duty at a POW compound at Bamberg, Germany. The British government was still opposed, unable to see the benefit of such a trial and preferring summary execution of Nazi leaders. [83] The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors, as the latter was considered less reliable and more liable to accusations of bias, but at the expense of reducing public interest in the proceedings. He argued that Germans needed Lebensraum (living space) and that they were looking only for land expansion. Gring was the acknowledged leader among the prisoners. The verdict was drafted by British alternate judge Norman Birkett. Guards were, on occasion, somewhat lenient and allowed some prisoners, based on previous friendships and compatible personalities, to walk in pairs. [43] The United States prosecution believed that Nazism was the product of a German deviation from Western history (the Sonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. Verdicts were handed down on October 1, 1946. Nuremberg Trials On November 20, 1945, six months after the surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces, twenty-one military, political, media, and business leaders of the Third Reich filed into the dock of the Palace of Justice in the devastated and occupied German city of Nuremberg. One passing recollection I have of Schirach, said Prestianni, was teasing him about how much the prison guards were enjoying his former girls and how pretty we considered them. The Nazi war criminal, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, after execution at Nuremberg. [21] At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing international customary law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. I have been searching for evidence that my Dad was a guard, so that the stories I have been told since I was a child could be documented. He was quiet by nature and spent much of his time writing his memoirs. Like the Nazis, he was afraid (rightly) that his "God" would kill him if he refused. During the Nuremberg Trial, American guards maintain constant surveillance over the major Nazi war criminals in the prisonattached to the Palace of Justice. The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Number 3 was Konstantin von Neurath, a former high-ranking politician. Many of the worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons. An excerpt from The Post of Oct. 16, 1946: Nuernberg (Wednesday), Oct. 16 (AP). Unbelievable but true - an entire unit of former Waffen-SS Grenadiers were retrained and deployed by the Americans to help guard the Nuremberg Trials in 1946-49. It was only sometime later that I realized in retrospect that I had become part of history, Prestianni said. [227] The main legal criticisms of the trial focused on questions of retroactivity, selectivity, and jurisdiction. We used to argue democracy versus dictatorship, the free versus the suppressed. Streicher, for reasons never made known, was photographed clothed and then naked and again in death. [132] The inclusion of Katyn in the charges undermined the credibility of Soviet evidence in general. Long live Germany.. [100], On 21 November, Jackson gave the opening speech for the prosecution. Postal Service. We needled him by saying his girls wanted to abandon the Fatherland, marry Americans, and emigrate to the United States.. Considered by some as the most intelligent and talented prisoner, he was the quintessential gentleman. He was able to get to get the Hitler peoples autographs. He looked like a gaunt corpse, like a ghost. No favoritism was shown nor was a selection offered. The following is a brief . [119] Unlike the British and American prosecution strategy, which focused on using German documents to make their case, the French prosecutors took the perspective of the victims, submitting postwar police reports and calling eleven witnesses. Guards occasionally retaliated against unpopular, troublesome prisoners by rapping on the cell doors with their night sticks to disturb the occupants sleep. [56][57] After this division of formulating the charges, the British and American delegations decided to work jointly in drafting the charges of conspiracy to wage aggressive war. By early 1946, Western prosecutors were uneasy about the Katyn charge, although they never publicly rejected it for fear of casting the entire proceedings into question. It was a very old, ancient, almost primitive prison, Prestianni recalls. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. [146] The Nuremberg Laws were compared to discriminatory laws in the United States. All sessions of the tribunal were held in Nrnberg, Germany, under the presidency of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence. At least 30,000 women died here. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials . Prestianni never served in the trial courtroom, only in the cellblock. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Gring committed suicide before he could be executed. It was eerie. One spoon has a carving of a skeleton key on its handle, the other an engraving of N 19 P. I could never determine the significance of the latter carving. tags: abraham , abrahamism , child-sacrifice , christianity , god , isaac , nazi . [228] The most controversial charge was crimes against peace. An avid reader, he availed himself of a well-stocked library with a steady supply of books. During our conversations, he often asked questions about the United States, a subject in which he appeared to be quite interested, Prestianni added. With the possible exception of Speer, none of them could rationalize that they, as individuals, had ever done anything morally wrong for the Fatherland. [240] The IMT is one of the most well-studied trials in history, and it has also been the subject of an abundance of books and scholarly publications, along with motion pictures such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Memory of Justice (1976). While on duty, guards carried no weapons, only wooden truncheons. Sentenced to death, Reich Law Leader 193345 and Governor-General of the, Hitler's Minister of the Interior 193343 and. After one of those accused, Robert Ley, former director of the nations Labor Front, hanged himself from a drain pipe with a torn towel, prisoners were kept under constant visual surveillance by guards, and while sleeping were forced to do so with their faces and hands exposed above their blankets at all times. I do have a photo of my Dad standing behind the German prisoners. After encountering a you tube video by accident I have a different answer. At the time, it was just a job we were told to do. Prestianni particularly liked Speer, Hitlers architect and the designer of many of Berlins most spectacular buildings and later minister of armament and munitions. Twelve paid with their lives. Recently one of our readers in the US contacted us with a photo of a pair of sunglasses that were in a box in his grandfather's garage. [44] As the numerically strongest delegation, it would take on the bulk of the prosecutorial effort. The Nuremberg Trials: Table of Contents | Indictments | Defendants & Verdicts Click Left/Right to Scroll American guards maintain constant surveillance over Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg prison. April 22, 2020. Prisoners and guards were forced to wear heavy scarves to ward off the penetrating cold. [185] Twelve military trials were convened solely by the United States in the same courtroom that had hosted the International Military Tribunal. Master Sgt. My father was also a guard, but he said he always was on the outside guarding. The only part of the French charges that were accepted by the judges was the deportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe. Today I found out that most of the soldiers who guarded the high ranking Nazi prisoners during the Nuremberg trials were in fact former members of Baltic SS . He was proud of his physique, saying he was strong like Germany.. Prompt medical attention was readily available to all prisoners. The defense lawyers saw themselves as acting on behalf of their clients, but also the German nation;[78] they prioritized the Wehrmacht's reputation over the lives of the generals on trial. Others subjected inmates to horrific experiments and torture. A defendant was entitled to receive a copy of the indictment, to offer any relevant explanation to the charges brought against him, and to be represented by counsel and confront and cross-examine the witnesses. [163] Contrary to the prosecution, the verdict dated the planning of aggression to the 1937 Hossbach Memorandum and not to the founding of the Nazi Party. Wells, was military policeman and a Provost Sergeant in charge of a special confinement unit whose responsibilities included providing security for the war crimes trials in Nrnberg. Alfred Rosenberg was considered by Hitler the philosopher of National Socialism. The International Military Tribunal set up by the . Speer spent much of his time drawing exquisite pencil sketches ranging from landscapes to magnificent buildings to quaint German villages. [104] On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps. Usually these are prosecution chargeslike crimes against humanityor a defense response. Twelve of the defendants would be sentenced to death. [126] Lev Smirnov presented evidence on the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia, adding that such destruction of villages had occurred throughout eastern Europe. The requested reassignments were generally granted.. [179], The exact sentences to be given each defendant were debated at length by the judges. The trials were not fair, though not in the way you are suggesting. Other than that, Hess had no social interaction with the other prisoners. He was short but very powerfully built. On Wednesday, January 31 1951, a curious bit of revelry took place in Landsberg prison as 10 war criminals condemned to death by the Nuremberg military tribunals learned they would live after all. [125], More so than other delegations, Soviet prosecutors showed the gruesome details of German mistreatment of prisoners of war and forced laborers, as well as the systematic murder of Jews in eastern Europe. [40] Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being an alternate. Let me have that again, please. Perhaps the most feared group of accused criminals in the annals of history was a potpourri of personalities who had been associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. [230] The selectivity in trying Germans but not the Allies has garnered the most persistent criticism. He rarely talked, but when he did his speech was rambling. He was another of Prestiannis favorite checker-playing opponents. Guards, for the most part, were not allowed to talk to each other or to prisoners while on security duty. He was largely overlooked in prison, Prestianni said of von Papen. All guards were forced to stand practically motionless at parade rest behind their assigned prisoner seated before them in the dock. [197] The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with the judgements themselves totaling 3,828 pages. 08-12-2007, 10:07 PM. I inherited all of it. [69][37], The defendants, who were largely unrepentant,[70] included former cabinet ministers: Franz von Papen (who had brought Hitler to power); Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm Frick (interior minister), and Alfred Rosenberg, minister for the occupied eastern territories. The ensuing trial pitted U.S. chief prosecutor and Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson against Hermann Gring, the former head of the Nazi air force, whom Adolf Hitler had once named to be his. The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials tried major war criminals, but of lower ranks than those tried in the first trial. we went to Germany with and my younger brother was born there, dad remained un the Army until 1960, when he retired after 32 years service. Some, over time, even grew to despise him. [27] Especially the United States wanted to avoid countenancing any rule that would give an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens. Many of the prisoners never accepted the fact that they were no longer on top of the world. The small letters, tav, shin, and zayin in the list of Haman's ten sons (Esther 9), with the combined numerical value of 707, are seen as a "prophetic" code hinting to the future hanging of the ten Nazis convicted at the Nuremberg trials in the year 5707, which Julius Streicher declared as "Purimfest 1946" before he was hanged. He just celebrated his 93 birthday, and is smart and caring as he has always been. List of Judges Francis Biddle (American) John J Parker (American) Edward Francis Carter (American) Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Lord Justice (British, President of the Tribunal) Sir Norman Birkett (British) Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (French) Robert Falco (French) Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet) The purpose of the armored reinforcement was to prevent any possibility of attack by groups of still-fanatic Nazis. My mothers cousin was a WAC serving in England during WW2. [87][149] United States admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States had used the same methods of submarine warfare that the German admirals were accused of; Dnitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that such actions could not be crimes. None outwardly felt they had done anything to warrant being in prison.. He was a man of some stature with flowing white hair, but he would still never be noticed much in a crowd. They merely brushed the guilt away with self-serving claims that they were following orders from superiors or perhaps even from Hitler himself in an atmosphere where failure to do so often meant banishment to a concentration camp, Gestapo torture, or even a summary execution. I do remember that Schacht, like most of the others, steadfastly maintained his innocence, never admitting to guilt in any form.
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