Nuremberg

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  The civilities that Amadeus had in the early weeks exchanged with fellow-defendant Goering had ended. Goering cherished his pre-eminence under the Fuehrer and, derivatively, in the eyes of the tribunal. He had sensed Albert Speers conciliatory tone and had begun to draw away not only from Speer but from his protégé, Amadeus.

  Goering and Speer had become silent antagonists in the late stages of the war, outspokenly at odds toward the end of the war. Goering had served as the Third Reich’s vice chancellor, but no one knew more reliably than Speer that in the end, Adolf Hitler was backing away from Goering. And no one was a more authoritative witness to the final repudiation of his vice chancellor than Speer. Hitler had blurted out to him, in the last days of the war, that he would not appoint Goering as his successor. “He’s not up to it,” the Fuehrer had said. And then, a few weeks later, the final estrangement: The Fuehrer, persuaded that Goering was plotting to surrender to the Allies, signed an order to have Goering shot on sight at his villa in Obersalzberg.

  But Hitler’s misgivings about Goering leading, finally, to his decision to execute him, came in the last days of the Third Reich. It came during the “bunker-time,” as Captain Carver referred to the period, January-April 1945, when Hitler lived in and ruled from his underground compound. Even those defendants who had been totally in thrall to Hitler, accepting his word as law, overpowered by his magnetism, hesitated now to affirm their faith in the Fuehrer.

  They could understand judicial opportunism, so no one was surprised by the prison-yard gravitation of Amadeus to Speer. Some knew of the old association, Speer-Amadeus, which was one reason for the affinity of the two defendants. Those who hadn’t known of it were quickly informed by prison gossip: Speer had figured in the early architectural career of the brigadier general, and had got him into the SS. Amadeus became a part of the Speer faction.

  Lieutenant Harry Albright was pointedly helpful in recording the private exchanges between the two, using his ubiquitous listening devices. Albright’s orders had been to pay special attention to Goering, which meant that the invisible directional microphone was focused on the Reichsfuehrer whenever he conversed with his fellow prisoners. Goering loved these exchanges. Back in his cell he had no one to talk to except his interrogators and, on his frequent visits, the psychiatrist, Captain G. M. Gilbert. With Gilbert, Goering quickly became expressive and voluble. The official psychiatrist spent great stretches of time with him, diligently writing down Goering’s monologues immediately after returning to his study from the cell. Goering did not disguise from Gilbert, or indeed from the interrogators, that he was counseling defiance among his colleagues, stressing what he kept insisting were the legal disqualifications of the tribunal judges. He would say it again and again: The Soviet judge — of course — but also the others, were unqualified, and the court’s indictments invalid as ex post facto . In one exchange with former Governor of Poland Hans Frank, whose defiance Goering encouraged, he had said, “The Americans? These are people who invaded Texas and California with ethnic savagery. What do they have against us?”

  *

  Todays was the fourth session conducted with Amadeus by Captain Carver, who focused now on two points: the exact nature of the defendant’s activities as head of Camp Joni and the missing records. Carver was under special pressure from the Soviet delegation to extract from Amadeus some clue as to where such records might be hidden. They would yield the names of Russian prisoners of war gassed or executed.

  “Herr Amadeus,” Captain Carver persisted in the interrogation, “who was it who actually maintained the records of the victims — of the men and women — who went into the gas chamber?”

  “We had record keepers. The formal responsibility was that of the Rottenfuehrer. A corporal. I was given only the gross figures, which I then relayed to Gruppenfuehrer Richard Glucks, who reported to Reichsfuehrer Himmler.”

  “Did the victims ever pass through your office7”

  Amadeus hesitated. “If you are saying, were there people who, as you say, passed through my office and subsequently — died?” ( Yet again , Sebastian noted , General Amadeus had worked his way around the word “ killed. ”) “Yes.”

  “What was it that prevented such people, who subsequently died, from being taken directly from the train to the execution chamber? Why were they detained? And how many were there?”

  “I assume you are talking about going from the train to that part of the compound that provided living quarters? Well, that would mean many people.”

  “Why ‘many’?”

  “Joni required a considerable workforce to maintain it.”

  “The people...” — Carver tired of using the word victims ; it was the correct word, but he was now bent on inducing a measure of relaxation in the defendant’s formalistic answers. To go on using the words victims and kill , let alone torture , emphasized the antagonistic character of the interrogation, which would be unprofitable. Carver was seeking two things, one was factual information, the other the cultivation of whatever humane sensibility lay dormant in the man across the table. Whether or not such sensibility was there, Carver assumed that the prosecution would recommend — with Carver’s entire approval — hanging. But repentance on the stand, at the trial, was always a second objective. “The people who were taken from the train to do labor work, they were what percentage of the arriving prisoners?”

  “That would depend on the needs of the camp on any particular day.”

  “What percentage of the incoming prisoners might that be?”

  “As low as ten percent, as high as thirty percent.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Yes?” Carver called out.

  One of the Amadeus guards walked over to the door and opened it to a sergeant. “Captain Carver, I need to pass on a personal message to you, sir.”

  Carver stood up and walked to the door. He caught the sergeants signal, stepped into the corridor, and closed the door behind him. He quickly reappeared and addressed Sebastian. “I have to go...upstairs. Translate the following: ‘Herr Amadeus, I am called to headquarters. Are you willing to talk with Lieutenant Reinhard while I am gone?’”

  “Yes,” Amadeus answered. “It will be a relief to speak in German, to do without the need of an interpreter.”

  Carver paused for a moment, then said, “Reinhard, why not go ahead? Yes. Go ahead with the line of questioning I was taking. If the son of a bitch doesn’t cooperate, well — he doesn’t cooperate. You know what we’re after, you can fill me in later. Right now Colonel Amen needs to see me, and my guess is that his problem will use up a bit of time.” He turned to the stenographer. “You can stop making a record unless Lieutenant Reinhard asks you to resume.” He turned back to Sebastian. “Okay?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The door closed.

  Army of the United States Second Lieutenant Sebastian Reinhard was in the room with the Nazi Brigadefuehrer Kurt Waldemar Amadeus, former commander of an extermination camp, along with a stenographer and two MP guards who spoke not a word of German.

  Sebastian thought it prudent to strike an informal note. So he started by saying, “I lived in Hamburg, where I was born. I was there until 1939, when my mother took me to America.”

  Amadeus looked sharply at Sebastian. Then said: “I know Hamburg. There is not much left of it, I understand.”

  “No, not much. I came through it on the way here. It is like Nuremberg...Well, the captain wishes me to continue the inquiry.”

  “Go ahead,” Amadeus said. “I will say the same thing to you that I would to your captain.”

  “If an arrival was not sent immediately to the death chambers, how long did he continue in the workforce?”

  “That depended. Some workers were especially qualified. For instance, a good electrician, an experienced carpenter.”

  “Did that mean if they continued to work in Camp Joni, they could hope to escape the...oven?” The German word was less burdened than gas chamber .

&
nbsp; “No. I never told them that. On the other hand, I cannot answer for the practices of my subordinates. I thought it wrong to arouse false hopes.”

  “Why false?”

  “Because there was a reason for such people to have arrived in the first place at an elimination camp. Some of them were Jews.”

  Sebastian made a note on his pad. “How did you know they were Jews?”

  Amadeus seemed surprised by the question. “They arrived in a shipload of Jews. And most wore markings, identifying marks. Besides, I have had much experience. I can tell by just looking. For instance, you are part Jewish.”

  Sebastian looked up, intrigued.

  “All that you have proved by saying that, Herr Amadeus, is that in fact you cannot discern Jewishness.”

  Amadeus shrugged, and gave out a tight little smile. “You were saying that when the trains arrived at Joni, there were people in the cars who were not Jewish? Yes, that’s true, there were such people. But they were all in the cars for a reason. They were being deported for a reason. If they were Russians, for instance, they were either prisoners of war or Soviet sympathizers. And there were many who were suspected.”

  “Suspected of what?”

  “Of cooperating with the Soviets. My job, Lieutenant Reinhard, was not to try them, but to eliminate them.”

  “Did you have the authority to suspend a sentence indefinitely, or to remit it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you inquire directly from those who — who passed through your office — into the nature of their offense?”

  “Their offense, most of them, was to be Jewish.”

  “Did you consider it a part of your duty to inquire why being Jewish meant being an enemy of the Third Reich?”

  Amadeus began a smile, then stopped it abruptly. His tone was earnest. “You speak, Lieutenant Reinhard, as if the case against Jews was only a — what shall I say? — a peculiarity of the Fuehrer. Of course that is not the case. It was simply that the Fuehrer had the courage to act on the anti-Semitism of most Europeans.”

  Maybe, Sebastian thought, as substitute interrogator he was moving in a direction Captain Carver would not have taken. Still, here was Brigadefuehrer Kurt Amadeus, the stenographer Sergeant Hempstone, and two MP guards. Who would object? Carver was not present, and Carver had told him to pursue the interrogation.

  So Sebastian decided to go ahead and try something different. Something that would be very difficult to do, perhaps impossible for a non-German-speaking interrogator. He said, “Would you consent to tell me in your own words what it was that brought you to believe the...strictures of Hitler — of the Fuehrer — on the matter of the Jews?”

  Amadeus searched in his pocket and extracted a cigarette. “I was just beginning my career as an architect — “ He stopped suddenly, reached back into his pocket, and brought out the package again. He extended it to Sebastian. “I should have offered you one. Would you care for a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke.” A pause. “Thank you.”

  “ Bitte , bitte . I was saying that I did some drafting with Herr Speer after graduating. He then got me a job — it was practically a starvation-level salary, but it was something — as assistant instructor at the Berlin Institute. At Christmas I sent him a card. He telephoned me and said he had become closely associated with the Fuehrer. That was when he advised me to enroll with the SS. To continue teaching was not an alternative — I was a junior and would be dropped at the end of the spring. Employment in architectural commerce was unlikely. You are aware of the unemployment figures in 1933, Lieutenant Reinhard?”

  Sebastian nodded. “In 1933, my own father was a civil engineer in Hamburg and — ” Sebastian blurted it out, immediately regretting that he had done so — “he voted for Hitler in 1933.” Amadeus puffed deeply from his cigarette, then stamped it out. Again he stared hard at Sebastian. “I became an officer in the SS. The discipline I accepted was to do as the Fuehrers subordinates instructed me to do. But I accepted another obligation, a derivative obligation. Do you understand my language? You are manifestly too young to have been in college.”

  “Yes. I follow you all right.”

  “ — which was to do what the Fuehrer said and to try to think what he thought . One is a better soldier for doing so. So I was a soldier of the Fuehrer. His orders became my orders, and his thinking, my thinking. And do you know, Lieutenant Reinhard, it wasn’t only people named Amadeus, and Goering, and Frank, and Kaltenbrunner who believed in Aryan supremacy. Others, with...more familiar names, also followed his orders.”

  The door swung open. Captain Carver returned to his seat. He addressed Sebastian. “You getting anywhere?”

  “He began talking. But we ended on the usual line, him saying the usual thing — Hitler gave the orders, he followed them.”

  “Did you get into where the records might be?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Well,” Carver sighed, “let’s try one more time. The Soviets are really hot on this and they’re convinced the records weren’t destroyed. Here we go — ” He turned to the defendant.

  “Herr Amadeus, when you were relieved of command, did you take any records from Camp Joni with you?”

  “No,” Brigadefuehrer Amadeus said, the tone of his voice returning to the laconic humdrum of the three previous sessions.

  *

  A half hour later they were overdue for the break. “Tell him we’re cutting out. He’ll be told when we want another session with him.”

  Sebastian relayed the message. Captain Carver stood up and motioned to the guards.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Nuremberg , November 20, 1945

  The big day came. Deadline after deadline had come and gone, aborted. The hope that the trial could begin on October 15 proved illusory. Only the indictments had got done by then.

  Now, on November 20, what seemed the entire press of the world was in the huge courtroom of the Palace of Justice. The room had been redone before the event, designed as the final act of the Nazi warlords. They would not be standing arms raised to Hitler, or commanding army divisions or submarine squadrons or radio and news outlets. They’d be sitting silent in two rows, earphones on, wearing the drab clothes issued by the victors and blinking, from time to time, for relief from the piercing lights designed for newsreel photographers. The press was lodged to the right of the defendants; behind the press were the spectators. Immediately in front, the defense attorneys, beyond them the august tribunal, eight judges, two from each of the Allied powers.

  The Russian detachment had recommended at preparatory sessions in London and, later, in Berlin, that the judges appear at the bench wearing military uniforms. The Russians wanted the finery of military conquerors, presiding over the fate of the dastardly conquered.

  But that was exactly not the theatrical vision of the principal actors at the London Conference. Great Britain’s Sir Geoffrey Lawrence argued the point strenuously: This was to be a trial, not a court martial. He was joined in that opinion by United States Judge Francis Biddle. They had a problem with the prideful French, who a mere twelve months earlier had still not succeeded in ejecting the last Nazi occupier from the republic — they were not opposed to displaying uniforms even though they had not distinguished themselves on the battlefield. Donnedieu de Vabres argued briefly in favor of the Russians’ suggested procedure. In Napoleonic tradition, he reminded his colleagues, legal procedures were not thought to require judicial robing. But he ended up voting with his western colleagues, leaving only the Russians’ I. T. Nikitchenko and his Russian alternate dissenting. Faced with the majority vote against, Nikitchenko announced, simply, that the Russians would appear in military uniforms...never mind what the other judges wore; and now they did so, entering the courtroom, succeeding their brother judges who filed in silently, wearing judicial robes. Only the sound of whirring movie cameras reached the ear. The procession brought the assembled to their feet — defendants, prosecutors, interpreters, reporters, VIP s
pectators. The judges’ countenances were grave as they took their seats behind the long wooden bench. Lord Lawrence left no doubt, by his expression and manner, that he had the sense of it, that he was superintending a historic proceeding.

  He began, as required, with formalities especially touching on the defendants. He expressed satisfaction that the Chief of Prosecution had accommodated, as required by basic law, the defense attorneys. In fact, the defense had used profligately the resources of the prosecution in collecting material and summoning witnesses, complaining right until the trial started that they needed more time.

  The twenty-three German attorneys sat at their desks, wearing robes of black, purple, and red, according to the tradition of the schools of law from which they had graduated. To one side of the dock, in glass booths, the interpreters were intense and active. Cable lines snaked from these booths across the silver-gray carpet to the defendants’ dock and to the defendants’ lawyers and, in another direction, to the 250 journalists and newspapermen greedily relying on facilities for interpreting and for intercommunicating. Those facilities were extensive, as ordered by Colonel Andrus a mere eight weeks ago, greatly exceeding the forty-three terminals he had thought would be sufficient. But it was too late for anyone left behind to complain, and the horde of journalists would diminish as trial tedium set in.

  Judge Lawrence directed that the indictments should be read out, word for word. One reporter unearthed the undisclosed reason for the decision to go through this laborious exercise. The Russian judge, Nikitchenko, had been absent from Nuremberg. Arriving in town only the day before, he said simply to the presiding judge that he wasn’t prepared. What to do? Judge Lawrence declined to postpone the entire proceeding. How to delay the trial? One way to diddle away time permitting Nikitchenko to do his homework was, precisely, to read out all the indictments. This was done, at tedious length.