NAZIS IN THE DOCK

Nuremberg Transformation

Mr William Shirer, the American journalist and broadcaster who wrote "Berlin Diary," was familiar with the Nazi leaders in the heydey of their arrogance and power. In the following cabled article he describes their transformation as they appear in the dock at Nuremberg in the opening phase of their trial before the Allied tribunal. (No 7.)

NUREMBERG, Nov 25.—Here in this ancient, civilised and once beautiful city, now reduced to a vast pile of rubble, you could observe at first-hand last week justice catching up finally with the arch-perpetrators of Nazi crimes against our civilisation and the world. I must confess that there were many dark nights in my life in Germany when I doubted, if not whether justice existed in our world, certainly whether it ever would be swift enough to get within hailing distance of these barbaric little men whom I have been watching all the week as they sat meek and scared in the prisoners' dock.

Last time I saw them in this very town they were anything but meek and scared. Nuremberg then, the Nuremberg of Albrecht Duerer and Hans Sachs and the Meistersingers, was the scene of the annual Nazi Party rallies, in which Adolf Hitler and the men now on trial here for their lives whipped up mass enthusiasm for their poisonous schemes of massacring Jews and other peoples they deemed "inferior," and of conquering the earth for exploitation by the so-called Master Race.

In the Days of Power

How many times have I seen Julius Streicher, notorious Jew-baiter and Tsar of Franconia, striding these very streets—now buried beneath debris—brandishing his riding-whip? How often have I seen Goering roaring from the platform against everything decent in the world, and Hess, Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg and von Schirach spouting forth their Nazi lies and nonsense, as hundreds of thousands of delirious Germans in the local stadium cheered, and the bulk of the German people throughout the Reich, dutifully listening on their radios, smugly approved. I would come back to my hotel late at night from these obscene scenes back in the 1930s sick at heart, wondering how even the gullible German people could stand it, and why the rest of the world would not wake up. And I would wonder sometimes, with the din of barbaric Nazi shouting still in my ears, how long such criminal little men as these Nazi fuehrers obviously were could get by with their so obvious schemes.

They got by with them for a long time, and the ruined cities of Europe and the millions of fresh graves and the millions of shivering and starved mortals you see wandering on the roads are stark and terrible witnesses to it. But here they are now — the supermen— in the prisoners' dock in a little courtroom in Nuremberg Courthouse. Don't forget that they can never undo their atrocious crimes; restore the destroyed cities and all the dead. All they can do now is to answer for the evil they did.

As They Are Now

Well, how do they look? How do they react to their new situation? I must say they have changed quite a bit since last I looked upon them. Gone is the arrogance, the insolence, the truculence. In fact, to see them now you wonder how these ordinary-looking, mean little men in their nondescript clothes; beaten, broken men fidgeting nervously as the prosecution reminds them of their deeds could ever have wielded such monstrous power.

There is Goering in faded air force uniform, stripped of medals and insignia. In my time he was the cockiest of them all. See him now, meekly clasping his earphones over his head until he looks like a fat, small-town telegrapher. See him start and gasp as Mr Justice Jackson suddenly but quietly reveals the possession of a secret document that the culprit probably thought destroyed and which, Mr Justice Jackson explains, will show how the defendant actively helped plot the war back in 1937.

Reactions to Evidence

In fact, as Mr Justice Jackson masterfully outlines his case, merely mentioning a few of the most incriminating highly secret Nazi documents with which he intends to let the Nazis convict themselves, all 20 defendants listening intently in the earphones to the German translation start to squirm.

Ribbentrop, once insolent but now bent and aged, pales. Rosenberg sways nervously, his hands shaking. Even Schacht, who hopes to disassociate himself from the rest of the Nazi thugs, loses his confident air as Mr Justice Jackson brings him into the great Nazi conspiracy. He turns nervously to whisper to Funk, his arch-enemy who replaced him at the Reichsbank and the Ministry of Economics, and with whom he has not been on speaking terms for a decade. Streicher is indeed a changed man as Mr Justice Jackson points evidence towards him. Streicher's cruel little face twitches; his cheeks pale.

The most arrogant prisoners have been two military men—Keitel and Jodl. When Mr Justice Jackson draws them into his net, explaining calmly how captured secret documents implicate them in the Nazi crimes, even their long Prussian discipline cannot save them from wincing as if a strong electric current suddenly touched them. And see Frank, the sadistic Governor of Poland, squirm as Mr Justice Jackson mentions a few choice excerpts from Frank's diary, which the culprit undoubtedly thought he had burnt.

Only Hess, who for so long was the closest of all these men to Hitler, shows no particular emotion as his name is brought in. This is because he is the only defendant who does not follow the proceedings; the only one who declines to use headphones and who pays little attention to what is going on. Hess, once one of the mightiest Nazi gangsters, slumps on his bench, a really broken man, his face a mere skeleton, his mouth twitching nervously, his once-bright eyes staring vacantly around the room. Yet not so long ago Hitler would have made this wreck his successor as dictator of Germany.

German People Apathetic

It is already dark on the after-noon that Mr Justice Jackson finishes his masterly opening address of accusation. Twenty men who, with Hitler and Himmler, ravished Germany and Europe, file out, their faces grave now and their gait slow, to their little cells in the gaol behind the courthouse. Reporters scramble to their typewriters and later wend their way home past the ruins of once-lovely old Nuremberg. What are the Germans picking their way over debris to the little cellar holes which are now their homes thinking? Are they pondering why their beautiful city is in ruins, their once-powerful nation prostrated? Are they shocked at Mr Justice Jackson's disclosures of the most heinous of crimes, details of terrible tortures in Nazi concentration camps, particulars of how the Hitler gang decided on war for them back in 1937? Apparently these awful things don't much occupy them; at least not yet. They curse their bad luck, whine that they are cold and hungry, and show little reaction one way or another to the proceedings in the Courthouse up the street.

This article appeared in The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954)  Fri 30 Nov 1945.