Torture
Allied prosecutors used torture
to help prove their case at Nuremberg and other postwar trials. [72]
Former Auschwitz commandant
Rudolf Höss was tortured by British officials into signing a false and
self-incriminating "confession" that has been widely cited as a key document
of Holocaust extermination. His testimony before the Nuremberg Tribunal, a
high point of the proceeding, was perhaps the most striking and memorable
evidence presented there of a German extermination program. [73] Höss
maintained that two and half million people had been killed in Auschwitz gas
chambers, and that another 500,000 inmates had died there of other causes.
No serious or reputable historian now accepts either of these fantastic
figures, and other key portions of Höss' "confession" are now generally
acknowledged to be untrue. [74]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has cited
the case of Jupp Aschenbrenner, a Bavarian who was tortured into signing a
statement that he had worked on mobile gas chambers ("gas vans") during the
war. It wasn't until several years later that he was finally able to prove
that he had actually spent that time in Munich studying to become an
electric welder. [75]
Fritz Sauckel, head of the
German wartime labor mobilization program, was sentenced to death at the
main Nuremberg trial. An important piece of evidence presented to the
Tribunal by the US prosecution was an affidavit signed by the defendant.
(Nuremberg document 3057-PS.) It turned out that Sauckel had put his
signature to this self-incriminating statement, which had been presented to
him by his captors in finished form, only after he was bluntly told that if
he hesitated, his wife and children would be turned over to the Soviets. "I
did not stop to consider, and thinking of my family, I signed the document,"
Sauckel later declared. [76]
Hans Fritzsche, another
defendant in the main Nuremberg trial, was similarly forced to sign a
self-damning confession while he was a prisoner of the Soviet secret police
in Moscow. (Nuremberg document USSR-474.) [77]
Nuremberg defendant Julius
Streicher, who was eventually hanged because he published a sometimes
sensational anti-Jewish weekly paper, was brutally mistreated following his
arrest. He was badly beaten, kicked, whipped, spat at, forced to drink
saliva and burned with cigarettes. His genitals were beaten. Eyebrow and
chest hair was pulled out. He was stripped and photographed. Fellow
defendant Hans Frank was savagely beaten by two black GIs shortly after his
arrest. August Eigruber, former Gauleiter of Upper Austria, was
mutilated and castrated at the end of the war. [78]
Josef Kramer, former commandant
of both the BergenBelsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, and other defendants
in the British-run "Belsen" trial, were reportedly also tortured, some of
them so brutally that they begged to be put to death. [79]
Although most of the defendants
at the main Nuremberg trial were not tortured, many other Germans were
forced to sign affidavits and give testimony against their former colleagues
and superiors. A simple threat to turn the subject over to the Soviets was
often enough to persuade him to sign an affidavit or provide testimony
needed in court. Threats against the subject's wife and children, including
withdrawal of ration cards, delivery to the Soviets or imprisonment, often
quickly produced the desired results. If all else failed, the subject could
be placed in solitary confinement, beaten, kicked, whipped or burned until
he broke down. [80]
The testimony of the
prosecution's chief witness in the Nuremberg "Wilhelmstrasse" trial was
obtained by threat of death. The American defense attorney, Warren Magee,
had somehow obtained the transcript of the first pretrial interrogation of
Friedrich Gaus, a former senior official in the German Foreign Office.
Despite frantic protests by prosecuting attorney Robert Kempner, the judge
decided to permit Magee to read from the document. During the pretrial
interrogation session, Kempner told Gaus that he would be turned over to the
Soviets for hanging. Tearfully pleading for mercy, Gaus begged Kempner to
think of his wife and children. Kempner replied that he could save himself
only by testifying in court against his former colleagues. A desperate Gaus,
who had already endured four weeks in solitary confinement, agreed. When
Magee finished reading from the damning transcript, Gaus sat with both hands
to his face, totally devastated. [81]
American soldiers repeatedly
beat former SS captain Konrad Morgen in an unsuccessful effort to force him
to sign a perjured affidavit against Ilse Koch, a defendant in the US
military's 1947 "Buchenwald" case. American officials also threatened to
turn Morgen over to the Soviets if he did not sign the false statement. [82]
Luftwaffe General Field Marshal
Erhard Milch was warned by a US Army Major to stop testifying on behalf of
Hermann Göring in the main Nuremberg trial. The American officer told Milch
that if he persisted, he would be charged as a war criminal himself,
regardless of whether or not he was guilty. [83] Milch did not back down and
was indeed charged. In 1947 a US Nuremberg court sentenced him to life
imprisonment as a war criminal. Four years later, though, the US High
Commissioner commuted his sentence to fifteen years, and a short time after
that Milch was amnestied and released. [84]
Reports of widespread torture at
the postwar American-run "war crimes" trials at Dachau leaked out, resulting
in so many protests that a formal investigation was eventually carried out.
A US Army Commission of inquiry consisting of Pennsylvania Judge Edward van
Roden and Texas Supreme Court Judge Gordon Simpson officially confirmed the
charges of gross abuse. German defendants, they found, were routinely
tortured at Dachau with savage beatings, burning matches under fingernails,
kicking of testicles, months of solitary confinement, and threats of family
reprisals. Low ranking prisoners were assured that their "confessions" would
be used only against their former superiors in the dock. Later, though,
these hapless men found their own "confessions" used against them when they
were tried in turn. High ranking defendants were cynically assured that by
"voluntarily" accepting all responsibility themselves they would thereby
protect their former subordinates from prosecution. [85]
One Dachau trial court reporter
was so outraged at what was happening there in the name of justice that he
quit his job. He testified to a US Senate subcommittee that the "most
brutal" interrogators had been three German-born Jews. Although operating
procedures at the Dachau trials were significantly worse than those used at
Nuremberg, they give some idea of the spirit of the "justice" imposed on the
vanquished Germans.
Virtually all of the US
investigators who brought cases before American military courts at Dachau
were "Jewish refugees from Germany" who "hated the Germans," recalled Joseph
Halow, a US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947. "Many of the
investigators gave vent to their hated by attempting to force confessions
from the Germans by treating them brutally," including "severe beatings."
[86]
The case of Gustav Petrat, a
German who had served as a guard at the Mauthausen, was not unusual. After
repeated brutal beatings by US authorities, he broke down and signed a
perjured statement. He was also whipped and threatened with immediate
shooting. Petrat was prevented from securing exonerating evidence, and even
potential defense witnesses were beaten and threatened to keep them from
testifying. After a farcical trial by a US military court at Dachau, Petrat
was sentenced to death and hanged in late 1948. He was 24 years old. [87]
Use of torture to produce
incriminating statements has not been limited to postwar Germany, of course.
Such techniques have been systematically used by governments around the
world. During the Korean War, American airmen held as prisoners by the
Communist North Koreans made detailed statements "confessing" to their roles
in waging germ warfare. Under physical and psychological torture, 38 US
airmen "admitted" dropping bacteriological bombs that caused disease
epidemics and claimed many Korean civilian lives. These statements were
later shown to be false, and the airmen repudiated them after returning to
the United States. Their phony confessions were the same kind of evidence
given by Rudolf Höss and others at the Nuremberg trials. Under similar
circumstances, Americans proved at least as ready to "confess" to monstrous
but baseless crimes as Germans. [88]
One of the most important and
revealing Nuremberg cases is that of Oswald Pohl, the wartime head of the
vast SS agency (WVHA) that ran the German concentration camps. After his
capture in 1946, he was taken to Nenndorf where British soldiers tied him to
a chair and beat him unconscious. He lost two teeth in repeated beatings.
[89] He was then transferred to Nuremberg, where American military officials
intensively interrogated him for more than half a year in sessions that
lasted for hours. Altogether there were about 70 such sessions. During this
period he had no access to an attorney or any other help. He was never
formally charged with anything, nor even told precisely why he was being
interrogated.
In a statement written after he
was sentenced to death at Nuremberg in November 1947 by the American
military court ("Concentration Camp" Case No. 4), Pohl described his
treatment. [90] He reported that although he was generally not physically
mistreated in Nuremberg as he had been at Nenndorf, he was nevertheless
subjected to the less noticeable but, as he put it, "in their own way much
more brutal emotional tortures."
American interrogators (most of
them Jews) accused Pohl of killing 30 million people and of condemning ten
million people to death. The interrogators themselves knew very well that
such accusations were lies and tricks meant to break down his resistance,
Pohl declared. "Because I am not emotionally thick-skinned, these diabolical
intimidations were not without effect, and the interrogators achieved what
they wanted: not the truth, but rather statements that served their needs,"
he wrote.
Pohl was forced to sign false
and self-incriminating affidavits written by prosecution officials that were
later used against him in his own trial. As he recalled:
Whenever genuine documents did not correspond to what the
prosecution authorities wanted or were insufficient for the guilty
sentences they sought, "affidavits" were put together. The most striking
feature of these remarkable trial documents is that the accused often
condemned themselves in them. That is understandable only to those who
have themselves experienced the technique by which such "affidavits" are
obtained.
He and other defendants were
"destroyed" with these affidavits, which "contain provable errors of fact
regarding essential points," Pohl wrote. Among the false statements signed
by Pohl was one that incriminated former Reichsbank President Walter Funk,
whom the Nuremberg Tribunal eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. [91]
American officials also made use
of false witnesses at Nuremberg, Pohl wrote:
Whenever these productions [affidavits] were not enough to
produce the result sought by the prosecuting authorities, they marched out
their so-called 'star witnesses,' or rather, paid witnesses … A whole
string of these shady, wretched characters played their contemptible game
at Nuremberg. They included high government officials, generals and
intellectuals as well as prisoners, mental defectives and real hardened
criminals … During the WVHA trial [of Pohl] a certain Otto appeared from a
mental institution as a "star witness." His previous lifestyle would have
been considered exemplary by any hardened criminal. The same is true of
prosecution witness Krusial who presented the most spectacular fairy tales
to the court under oath, which were naturally believed …
Pohl also protested that defense
attorneys were not allowed free access to the German wartime documents,
which the prosecution was able to find and use without hindrance:
For almost two years the prosecution authorities could
make whatever use they wanted of the many crates of confiscated
documentary and archival material they had at their disposal. But the same
access right was refused to the German defendants despite their repeated
efforts … This meant a tremendous or even complete paralysis and hindrance
of the defense cases for the accused, for those crates also contained the
exonerating material that the prosecution authorities were able to keep
from being presented to the court. And that is called "proper" procedure.
Because Pohl held the rank of
general in the German armed forces, his treatment by the British and
Americans was illegal according to the international agreements on the
treatment of prisoners of war.
"As result of the brutal physical mistreatment in Nenndorf
and my treatment in Nuremberg, I was emotionally a completely broken man,"
he wrote. "I was 54 years old. For 33 years I had served by country
without dishonor, and I was unconscious of any crime."
Pohl summed up the character of
the postwar trials of German leaders:
It was obvious during the Dachau trials, and it also came
out unmistakably and only poorly disguised during the Nuremberg trials,
that the prosecution authorities, among whom Jews predominated, were
driven by blind hatred and obvious lust for revenge. Their goal was not
the search for truth but rather the annihilation of as many adversaries as
possible.
To an old friend Pohl wrote: "As
one of the senior SS leaders I had never expected to be left unmolested. No
more, however, did I expect a death sentence. It is a sentence of
retribution." [92]
He was hanged on June 7, 1951.
In his final plea to the Nuremberg court, Pohl expressed his faith that one
day blind hysteria would give way to just understanding: [93]
After distance and time have clarified all events and when
passion has ceased and when hatred and revenge have stilled their hunger,
then these many millions of decent Germans who have sacrificed their lives
for their fatherland will not be denied their share of sympathy which
today is being attributed to the victims of the concentration camps,
although a large number of them owe their fate not to political, racial or
religious characteristics, but to their criminal past.
Extermination Denied
Along with the millions of
people around the world who avidly followed the Nuremberg proceedings by
radio and newspaper, the defendants themselves were shocked by the evidence
presented to substantiate the extermination charge. Above all, the testimony
of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and Einsatzgruppen commander Otto
Ohlendorf made a deep impression. Contrary to what is often claimed or
insinuated, however, the Nuremberg Tribunal defendants declared that they
did not know of any extermination program during the war. [94] These men
were, in a sense, the first "Holocaust revisionists."
The main Nuremberg defendant,
Hermann Göring, who had been Hitler's second-in-command and designated
successor during most of the Third Reich years, vehemently denied knowing of
any extermination program during the war. "The first time I learned of these
terrible exterminations," he exclaimed at one point, "was right here in
Nuremberg." The German policy had been to expel the Jews, not kill them, he
explained, and added that, to the best of his knowledge, Hitler did not know
of any extermination policy either. [95]
Chief Nuremberg Tribunal
defendant Herman Göring, who had been Hitler's second-in-command, denied
knowing of any extermination plan or program during the war. "The first time
I learned of these terrible exterininations " he declared, "was right here
in Nuremburg."
During a rare unguarded break
between court sessions, fellow defendant Hans Fritzsche privately asked
Göring about the truth of the extermination charge. The former
Reichsmarschall solemnly assured Fritzsche that the accusation was not true.
The Allied evidence for the charge, he insisted, was inaccurate or
incomplete and totally contradicted everything he knew about the matter. In
any case, Göring added, if there had been any mass killings, they certainly
were not ordered by Hitler. [96]
General Alfred Jodl, chief of
the operations staff of the Armed Forces High Command, and probably Hitler's
closest military adviser, gave similar testimony to the Tribunal. Responding
to a direct question about this matter, he said: [97]
I can only say, fully conscious of my responsibility, that
I never heard, either by hint or by written or spoken words, of an
extermination of Jews … I never had any private information on the
extermination of the Jews. On my word, as sure as I am sitting here, I
heard all these things for the first time after the end of the war.
Hans Frank, the wartime governor
of German-ruled Poland, testified that during the war he had heard only
rumors and foreign reports of mass killings of Jews. He asked other
officials, including Hitler, about these stories and was repeatedly assured
that they were false. [98]
Frank's testimony is
particularly noteworthy because if millions of Jews had actually been
exterminated in German-occupied Poland, as alleged, hardly anyone would have
been in a better position to know about it. During the course of the trial,
Frank was overcome by a deep sense of Christian repentance. His
psychological state was such that if he had known about an extermination
program, he would have said so.
At one point during the
proceedings, Frank was asked by his attorney, "Did you ever take part in any
way in the annihilation of Jews?" His reply reflects his emotional state at
the time: [99]
I say yes, and the reason why I say yes is because, under
the impression of these five months of the proceedings, and especially
under the impression of the testimony of the witness [former Auschwitz
commandant] Höss, I cannot answer to my conscience to shift the
responsibility for this solely on these low-level people. I never built a
Jewish extermination camp or helped to bring one into existence. But if
Adolf Hitler personally shifted this terrible responsibility onto his
people, than it also applies to me. After all, we carried on this struggle
against Jewry for years … And therefore I have the duty to answer your
question in this sense and in this context with yes. A thousand years will
pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.
Standing among co·defendants in
the dock of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Alfred Jodl inakes his final plea.
Hitler's closest wartime military advis er testifled that he had "never
heard, either by hint or by written or spoken words, of an extermination of
Jews… I heard all these things for the first time after the end of the war."
These words, and especially the
final sentence, have often been quoted to give the impression that the
defendants themselves admitted their guilt and acknowledged the existence of
a wartime German policy to exterminate the Jews. [100] Less well-known are
Frank's words during his final address to the Tribunal: [101]
In the witness stand I said that a thousand years would
not be enough to erase the guilt of our nation because of Hitler's
behavior in this war. [However,] not only the behavior of our wartime
enemies against our people and our soldiers, which has been carefully kept
out of these proceedings, but also the enormous mass crimes of the most
terrible kind against Germans, which I have only now learned about,
especially in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and in the Sudetenland,
which have been and are still being carried out by Russians, Poles and
Czechs, have now already completely canceled out any possible guilt of our
people. Who will ever judge these crimes against the German people?
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, wartime
head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was certain that he
would soon be put to death regardless of the evidence presented to the
Tribunal: "The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told
me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be.
Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the
fundamental things that are wrong here." In a question-and-answer exchange,
Kaltenbrunner rejected the charge that he had ordered gassings: [102]
Q. Witness after witness, by testimony
and affidavit, has said that the gas chamber killings were done on general
or specific orders of Kaltenbrunner.
A. Show me one of those men or any of
those orders. It is utterly impossible.
Q … Practically all of the orders came
through Kaltenbrunner.
A. Entirely impossible.
The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust -
2 -
3
-
4
See also:
History of Banking Fraud:
The Coming Battle
By M. W. WALBERT
The Coming Battle
documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports and writings by the
founding fathers and others a chronology of events long forgotten that
shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read about the manipulation
of our money and its supply, the intentional creation of recessions,
depressions and panics, manipulation of the stock markets, and the
demonetization of silver.
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
by Eustace Mullins
Eustace Mullins' carefully
researched and documented treatise picks up from Walbert's expose' of
control of the money supply and the economy and brings it to the mid 1980's.
The
World Order
by Eustace Mullins
How control of the world's money has inexorably led to an ever tighter
grip on control of the world's people.
Uranium Wars by Leuren Moret
How control of the world's people has inexorably led to wider use of
depopulation methods which include spreading radioactivity in food,
water, air, and the human genome.
Taking Back Your Power
by Allen Aslan Heart
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Stop playing THEIR game.
Take back your power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or lawful. Stop
paying bills you don't really owe. Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if
you open your mind and look for the gaps in their fences that keep the
sheeple in their pasture. Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one
who makes that choice.
