OCTOBER 23, 1945
Quisling Executed by a Firing Squad
By The United Press.
OSLO, Norway, Oct 24—Vidkun Quisling, the traitor Premier of Norway under Nazi occupation, was executed early today by a firing squad at ancient Akershus Portress, where Quisling’s German friends themselves killed many loyal Norwegians.
Quisling, 58, who helped the Germans to invade his country April 9, 1940, was sentenced to die last Sept. 10 by a Norwegian court. He was convicted of many charges, the greatest of which were treason and murder. His crimes ranged from sending thousands of Jews to their deaths to stealing King Haakon’s silverware.
Quisling appealed to the Norwegian Supreme Court, but his defense availed him nothing and on Oct. 13 the Supreme Court said he must die.
Vidkun Quisling, center, listening during the summation of his trial, 1945.
MARCH 12, 1946
PRAVDA DENOUNCES CHURCHILL’S SPEECH AS THREAT OF WAR
By BROOKS ATKINSON
By Wireless to The New York Times.
MOSCOW, March 11—Six days after Winston Churchill’s speech in Fulton, Mo., Pravda, official organ of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist party, vigorously denounced Mr. Churchill as an anti-Soviet warmonger in a three-column front-page editorial today.
It accuses Mr. Churchill of trying to destroy the United Nations Organization and to establish a policy of force to control the world. Specifically Pravda declares:
“What does the proposal of Churchill come to? The formation of an Anglo-American military alliance that would assure Anglo-American rule throughout the world, the liquidation of the three-power coalition, also the UNO, and make a policy of force the dominant factor in the development of the world. All you need to complete the picture is a frank formula for a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against the U.S.S.R.”
The bold statements in Pravda aroused the greatest interest in Moscow today. On Friday all newspapers published a brief report that Mr. Churchill had made an anti-Soviet speech at the head of a column of unfavorable comments by United States Senators and British Labor party representatives.
Pravda today published a two and one-half column summary of the speech, containing many direct quotations. Today’s editorial, coming on the eve of the first session of the new Supreme Soviet, is the first indication of the seriousness of the Churchill charges.
CHARGES SEEN CONFIRMED
It is regarded here as confirming many recent election speeches that stressed that the danger of capitalist encirclement of the Soviet Union was still present and increased the belief here that reactionaries in the West who are hostile to the Soviet Union are trying to split the UNO. In the circumstances Moscow people take the gravest view of Mr. Churchill’s speech and wonder what it signifies.
Now that the war against Germany and Japan is finished, Pravda says Churchill is returning to his previous policy of shaking the scarecrow of “Bolshevik danger and Bolshevik expansion,” dug out of his archives. It says the British people paid dearly for the old “adventure of British reactionaries who tried by armed force to enforce their will on the young Soviet Republic.”
Referring to the intervention after World War I, Pravda declares, “this adventure, as is known, fell with a crash despite all the efforts of the Churchills and Chamberlains.” Discussing Mr. Churchill’s statement that he does not think a new war is inevitable, Pravda says:
“He does not say what he thinks. In reality he tries to give the impression of an impending war. Moreover, he urges a new war, a war against the Soviet Union, when he makes a slander against the Soviet Union.”
Pravda also points out that an Anglo-American military alliance would be directed “against that power which bore on its shoulders the main burden of the struggle and played a decisive role in the defeat of Hitlerite Germany.” According to Pravda, Mr. Churchill knows he does not have sufficient strength to carry on a war against the Soviet Union and therefore is trying to enlist American support.
“Churchill convulsively grabs for the coat tails of Uncle Sam,” it says, “in the hope that an Anglo-American military alliance would enable the British Empire, although in the role of a junior partner, to continue the policy of imperialist expansion.”
MARCH 13, 1946
Editorial
ANSWERING MR. CHURCHILL
After six days of silence the entire Russian propaganda apparatus has now opened up a barrage against Winston Churchill as a warmonger who would disturb the friendship between Russia and the United States and align us with the British Empire in a war against the Soviets. That is poor recompense for a man who aligned himself with Russia the moment Hitler attacked. But this line has a familiar ring from the recent past. There are two things, we believe, that need be said about it.
The first is that if Russia interprets the hesitant reception accorded Mr. Churchill’s speech as an opportunity to split the United States and Britain it is making the same grave mistake that others have made before it. To a degree which should give pause to Moscow, the American and the British people are in complete agreement on the causes of the present international tension, as analyzed by Mr. Churchill, and if they differ on the immediate means for meeting this tension it is chiefly because the American people are still more optimistic about Russian reasonableness and the possibility of agreement than either Mr. Churchill or large sections of British opinion appear to be.
The second observation is that both the American and the British people have a clear realization of what is cause and what is effect in the present situation. After going to the limit in tendering Russia both their friendship and their aid, and after making enormous concessions to Russia against the dictates of their own interests, their judgment and sometimes their consciences, they are now disturbed by the discovery that Russian appetites appear to grow upon what they feed, and that in satisfying these appetites Russia is inclined on occasion to make light of treaties and agreements on whose observance must rest world peace and order.
If Russia really desires to give an effective answer to Mr. Churchill there is a very simple way of doing this. All Moscow needs to do is to abide by the pledges, agreements and treaties it has made and the whole international tension will disappear overnight.
MARCH 13, 1946
Truman on World Situation: ‘We Will Work Out of It’
By FELIX BELAIR Jr.
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, March 14—President Truman said today that he saw no reason to become alarmed over the international situation and that “I do not think it is as fraught with danger as a lot of people seem to think it is.” He was asked later if he would be willing to express his feelings about the situation in affirmative fashion.
“Would it help any if I said I am not alarmed about it?” he replied.
OPTIMISTIC ABOUT FUTURE
“Yes,” said his questioner. “May we quote you on that?” “Of course you may,” said Mr. Truman.
“You are optimistic that it will-work out?” the newspaper writer persisted.
“I am sure we will work out of it,” the President replied.
The President showed more than usual reluctance to get into the field of international relations during his regular news conference and it was not until a reporter reminded him during the latter half of the session that some sort of statement was expected of him in view of widespread public concern that the Chief Executive would venture beyond his “no comment” replies.
SHUNS CHURCHILL-STALIN ISSUE
At the same time he steered entirely clear of questions calculated to place him on one or the other side of what one reporter termed the “world debate” between Winston Churchill and Premier Stalin.
Meanwhile, the President sought to spike rumors of a continuing rift between him and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. He opened his news conference by volunteering the explanation that he wanted to make a strong and emphatic statement that there was no rift, never had been and never would be�
�he hoped—between him and the Secretary of State.
Reports had come to the President’s attention, he said, that “gossip columns” had published rumors that Mr. Byrnes was on his way out. When a reporter suggested that the rumor might have been inspired and could not have come from mere spontaneous combustion, Mr. Truman said that such must have been the case unless somebody just wanted to tell a big lie.
Although he said there were no plans afoot for another meeting with Prime Minister Attlee and Premier Stalin, the President said that he confidently expected the scheduled opening meeting of the United Nations Organization Security Council to be held later this month as planned and with its full membership attending.
Mr. Truman said that he had not been advised officially or otherwise of the nature of Mr, Churchill’s scheduled radio address Friday night beyond what had been published in the newspapers. Neither would the President comment on the “appropriateness” of the former British Prime Minister’s “conducting his debate from this country,” as a reporter described Mr. Churchill’s speaking activities.
In much the same manner the President replied to a question whether he would comment on a published interview with Premier Stalin in the Moscow newspaper Pravda describing the British war leader as a “warmonger.” Mr. Truman replied with a chuckle that since he could not read Russian he had no way of knowing whether the stories published in this country contained an accurate translation.
However, the President made it quite clear that he had had no communication of any kind with Mr. Stalin in the immediate past.
OCTOBER 1, 1946
Germans Haggard Awaiting Fate; Only Goering Can Muster a Smile
By KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN
Special to The New York Times
NUREMBERG, Germany, Sept. 30—Haggard of face and subdued of manner, the accused who expected to be the convicted were the most absorbed listeners throughout today’s dramatic penultimate sequence in the war crimes trial here. With head sets clamped to their ears and tuned to German translations of the judgment of the International Military Tribunal, they missed no passing phrase in the measured reading of the decisions that might provide a clue to their individual life or death sentences tomorrow.
Their jauntiness and good humor had vanished, in contrast to the attitudes frequently exhibited during the last ten months.
Only Hermann Goering, former Reich Marshal and Luftwaffe commander, could summon a feeble smile at rare intervals. Only Rudolf Hess, the former deputy Nazi party leader—consistent to the end in his real or simulated role of a man of vacant mind—ignored the proceedings and sat oblivious to everything around him. Until early afternoon when he once more was escorted from the courtroom on a claim of illness, he sat with folded arms, now and then flinging up his head to stare fixedly at the occupants of the visitors’ gallery.
Julius Streicher, the “Jew baiter,” champed unceasingly on a wad of gum. Karl Doenitz, onetime Grand Admiral and Reichsfuehrer, wearing dark glasses, doodled idly on a scrap of paper. Dr. Wilhelm Frick, former Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, once occupation chief in Soviet territory, glowered steadily at those in the press section who were using opera glasses.
For the most part, the day passed with a minimum of flurry and without incident, except for the sudden slumping to the floor during the morning session of one of the white-helmeted military policemen ranged stiffly across the rear of the dock behind the defendants.
Sir Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain began the reading of the 260-page judgment and passed the task in turn to each of the other three judges and four alternates representing the United Kingdom, France, Russia and the United States. Meticulously and thoroughly, the document marshalled the details of the frightfulness of the war and its attendant crimes, of which the defendants stand accused.
Factually, coolly, each of the judges in turn intoned the findings, evaluating the testimony submitted and disclosing gradually how effectively the prosecution had built its case on the archives of the Nazi regime itself. This time the grim, familiar chapters held a special significance for the score of men awaiting judgment. Yet only one revealed evidence of any particular emotion.
German war crimes defendants during the Nuremberg trials. Among them, from left to right, are Hermann Goering, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg in the front row; Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldor von Schirach, Fritz Sauchel, Alfred Jodl behind them.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, former head of the secret police, listening to the declaration that he, among others, had used the Gestapo for criminal purposes, and to a recital of those crimes, was visibly affected. His facial contortions, convincing some of those present that he was trying to smile but was about to weep instead, were so marked that the suspicion was generated that he might be about to suffer a recurrence of the cerebral hemorrhage that put him into the hospital for a time early in the trial.
No flicker of reaction crossed Goering’s sober countenance as pointed references to his participation in the war conspiracy and war crimes underlined his scant chance of escaping with a light sentence.
OCTOBER 16, 1946
GEHRING ENDS LIFE BY POISON, TEN OTHERS HANGED
By DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT
Special to The New York Times.
NUREMBERG, Germany, Oct. 16—Ten Nazi war criminals were hanged in the prison here early today, but the eleventh, Hermann Wilhelm Goering, committed suicide by swallowing poison in his cell some two hours before he was to have gone to the gallows.
Goering, former No. 2 Nazi and chief of the Luftwaffe, took cyanide of potassium, which he somehow had succeeded in secreting, Col. Burton C. Andrus, commandant of the prison security detail, announced.
Hermann Goering having a meal in Nuremberg prison, October 1946.
A guard saw Goering twitching on his cot at 10:45 o’clock last night and summoned aid, but Adolf Hitler’serst-while heir-apparent could not be revived. Colonel Andrus said glass from a capsule containing the poison was found in Goering’s mouth.
INTERVENTION TOO LATE
The guard did not see Goering put his hand under his blanket, and intervened the instant he saw the prisoner twitch, but it was too late.
[An envelope containing penciled notes and a small brass cartridge case that apparently had contained the poison vial were found on Goering’s body, press services reported.]
Except for Goering, the executions then took place in the order of the indictment and in which the condemned men had sat in the prisoners’ dock during the ten-month trial before the International Military Tribunal.
The Nazis walked to the gallows in this order:
Joachim von Ribbentrop, former Foreign Minister; Field Marshal Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German High Command; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Gestapo; Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for Occupied Territories; Hans Frank, who led in the killing of thousands of Poles; Wilhelm Frick, former Minister of the Interior; Julius Streicher, leader of Nazi anti-Semitism; Fritz Sauckel, director of forced labor; Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, head of the German General Staff, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who sold out Austria.
The condemned men were notified on two occasions of the date of the executions, authoritative sources said, but the ten who were hanged did not know the time until an hour before they began.
Repeated shouts as of the conclusion of frenzied speeches, followed by a thudding like the springing of a heavy trap door, were heard from a building at the rear of the prison courtyard between 2 and 3:15 A.M., according to the German News Agency.
DEFIANT TO THE LAST
NUREMBERG, Oct. 16 (U.P.)—While officials started an investigation into Goering’s suicide, his ten fellow-criminals paraded to the gallows and were hanged. Goering was to have led the procession. The prison gymnasium was used as the execution chamber. Three gallows had been erected there under electric lights. Two of them were used.
Witnesses said the first execution took four minutes and that the hangings continued from 1:01 A.
M. (7:01 P.M. Tuesday Eastern Standard Time) to 2:45 A.M.
Von Ribbentrop entered the execution chamber first.
“God save Germany! My last wish is that Germany rediscover her unity and that an alliance be made between East and West and that peace reign on earth,” he shouted a moment before he died. The hangman’s trap dropped him into space at 1:14 A.M. Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian traitor, was the last to be executed. He was pronounced dead at 2:57 A.M. (10:57 P.M., Eastern Standard Time.)
Sauckel shouted before he died: “I pay my respect to American officers and American soldiers but not to American justice.” He had been trying to get President Truman to intercede for him.
Keitel called on God in a firm voice to protect Germany. He thanked the priest who stood beside him for his offices. “I call on the Almighty to be considerate of the German people,” Keitel said. “All for Germany. I thank you.”
“Good luck to Germany,” shouted Kaltenbrunner.
Rosenberg, atheist political philosopher of the Nazi party, said nothing. He merely cleared his throat.
“I am thankful for the kind treatment I have received,” said Frank. “I pray to God to receive me mercifully.”
Most of the executed men endeavored to show their bravery, said Kingsbury Smith of the International News Service, who was the representative of the American press. Most of them were bitterly defiant and some grimly resigned, while others begged the Almighty for mercy. All ten went with apparent stoicism; none collapsed.
The only one, however, to make any reference to Hitler or the Nazi ideology in the final moments, said Mr. Smith, was Streicher. He screamed “Heil Hitler” at the top of his lungs as he was about to mount the steps leading to the gallows.
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 155