Nuremberg Interviews

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:09:26 GMT

The following is taken from the book The Nuremberg Interviews by an American psychiatrist who writes of his conversations with the defendants and witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials.

Here are some of the intervivews.

Hermann Goering was commander in chief of the air force, president of the Reichstag, and prime minister of Prussia. "A general question about the trial evokes a tempest of pettifoggery. The damned court--the stupidity. Why don't they let me take the blame and dismiss these little fellows--Funk, Fritzsche, Kaltenbrunner? I never heard of most of them until I came to this prison! What do I care about danger? I've sent soldiers and airmen to death against the enemy--why should I be afraid? As I told the court, I am solely responsible--whenever it is a question of the government's official acts, not extermination programs. I was Hitler's successor and I stand as such to the German people. I did not dodge responsiblity. We had many differences of judgment, Hitler and I. In the early days I could say what I pleased and freely, and he had a sense of humor. Later, less so, and finally, our conflicts were serious to the point of his final decree for my arrest and murder." Goering was found guilty at Nuremberg of conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, he was sentenced to death by hanging. Two hours before his scheduled execution, he committed suicide in his cell.

Rudolf Hoess, SS lieutenant colonel from 1942, commandant of the concenrtration camp in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943. "I was commandant at Auschwitz for 4 years, from May 1940 until the first of December, 1943. The exact number of people executed at Auschwitz during my time cannot be determined exactly. I estimate about 2.5 million Jews. Women and children as well." When ask what he thought of it, he...looked blank and apathetic. "I had my personal orders from Himmler." Did he ever protest? "I couldn't do that. The reasons Himmler gave me I had to accept." Did you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children? "Not justified--but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German People would be exterminated for all time by the Jews." Hoess was tried by a Polish military tribunal, he was hanged at Auschwitz on April 7, 1947.

Alfred Jodl was chief of the operations staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) from 1939 to 1945. Regarding his present state of mind and attitude, he maintains that he spent the entire war in headquarters, in Berlin or elsewhere, with the Fuhrer, from 1939 to 1945, so that he is not concerned with atrocities or other war brutalities. He feels an inner sense of innocence, he says, and therefore this incarceration does not bother him. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, he was hanged on October 26, 1946. On February 28, 1953, he was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court that found him not guilty of crimes under international law. (Oops)

Rudolf Hess, deputy leader of the Nazi Party. "Hess was lying in bed, and although it was a warm day, he had on an overcoat and several blankets. He said that he had unusually severe stomach cramps and that his memory was "very bad." There is strong evidence that he was mentally incompetent at the time of the Nuremberg trials. (Or perhaps it wasn't Hess at all but an imposter) Found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes and of crimes against peace, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite appeals for his release on humanitarian grounds, he remained in Spandau prison until his death, at age 92.

Hans Fritzsche, was a senior official in Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and head of the Radio Division from 1942. "We Germans carried our hatred from the First World War to the Second World War, and now you are about to carry the hatred about the murder of 5 million people on to another World War. The main thing about my depression is that I have a feeling of regret--and if one feels regretful, one necessarily feels guilty. As far as the indictment is converned, accusing me of murder and inhumanity, I do not feel guilty. I don't feel guilty because I was betrayed. But I feel depressed because this feeling of betrayal has no outlet. In other words, no one seem to understand that as my main tragedy--that I was used as a tool for evil by Goebbels and others, and whereas I never did anything wrong personally, my actions indirectly let to the crimes of which I am accused." At Nuremberg, tried for war crimes, he was found not guilty.

The Nuremberg Interviews is a great book. Even if you read it to see one defendent accuse the other of being guilty, and many blamed it upon Hitler and other dead leaders who of course couldn't admit or deny guilt, it is interesting to note that only, of the defendants, Goering admitted his guilt.

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Nuremberg Interviews