The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the main victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945-46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 24 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany, though several key architects of the war (such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels) had committed suicide before the trials began.

The initial trials were held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on those trials.

Origin

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US leaders later in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill denounced the idea of "the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country" and that he'd rather be "taken out in the courtyard and shot" himself than to partake in any action. However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions "for political purposes." According to the minutes of a Roosevelt-Stalin meeting during the Yalta Conference, on February 4, 1945, at the Livadia Palace, President Roosevelt "said that he had been very much struck by the extent of German destruction in the Crimea and therefore he was more bloodthirsty in regard to the Germans than he had been a year ago, and he hoped that Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German Army."

US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany; this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked to the public, generating widespread protest. Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternate position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

Creation of the courts

On January 14, 1942, representatives from the nine occupying countries met in London to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes. At the meetings in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United Kingdom, United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal.

The legal basis for the trial was established by the London Charter, issued on August 8, 1945, which restricted the trial to "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries." Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939.

Location

Leipzig, Munich and Luxembourg were briefly considered as the location for the trial. The Soviet Union had wanted the trials to take place in Berlin, as the capital city of the 'fascist conspirators', but Nuremberg was chosen as the site for the trials for two specific reasons: # The Palace of Justice was spacious and largely undamaged (one of the few buildings that had remained largely intact through extensive Allied bombing of Germany). A large prison was also part of the complex. # Nuremberg was considered the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi Party, and hosted annual propaganda rallies. It was thus a fitting place to mark the party's symbolic demise.

As a compromise with the Soviet Union, it was agreed that while the location of the trial would be Nuremberg, Berlin would be the official home of the Tribunal authorities.

It was also agreed that France would become the permanent seat of the IMT and that the first trial (several were planned) would take place in Nuremberg.

The main trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command," comprising several categories of senior military officers.

The indictments were for: # Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace # Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace # War crimes # Crimes against humanity

The 24 accused were, with respect to each charge, either indicted but acquitted (I), indicted and found guilty (G), or not charged (O), as listed below by defendant, charge, and eventual outcome:

I I I I G G G I G I G I G G I I I I I

Name	Count	Penalty	Notes
!1	!2	!3	!4
75pxMartin Bormann	I||	O	G	G	Capital punishment>Death	Successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary. Sentenced to death in absentia. Remains found in Berlin in 1972 and dated to 1945.
[[Image:Ac.frank.jpg	|	O	G	G	Death	Reich Law Leader 1933–1945 and Governor-General of the General Government in occupied Poland 1939–1945. Expressed repentance.
75pxWilhelm Frick	|	G	G	G	Death	Hitler's Minister of the Interior 1933–1943 and ''Reich'' Protector of Bohemia-Moravia 1943–1945. Authored the Nuremberg Race Laws.
75pxHans Fritzsche	|	I	I	O	Acquitted	Popular radio commentator; head of the news division of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels.
75pxWalther Funk	|	G	G	G	Life Imprisonment	Hitler's Minister of Economics; succeeded Schacht as head of the ''Reichsbank''. Released because of ill health on 16 May 1957. Died 31 May 1960.
75px	|	G	G	G	Death	''Reichsmarschall'', Commander of the ''Luftwaffe'' 1935–1945, Chief of the 4-Year Plan 1936–1945, and original head of the Gestapo before turning it over to the SS in April 1934. Originally Hitler's designated successor and the second highest ranking Nazi official. By 1942, with his power waning, Göring fell out of favor and was replaced in the Nazi hierarchy by Himmler. Committed suicide the night before his execution.
75px	|	G	I	I	Life Imprisonment	Hitler's Deputy Führer until he flew to Scotland in 1941 in attempt to broker peace with Great Britain. After trial, committed to Spandau Prison; died in 1987.
75px	|	G	G	G	Death	''Wehrmacht'' ''Generaloberst'', Keitel's subordinate and Chief of the OKW's Operations Division 1938–1945.
75px	|	O	G	G	Death	Highest surviving SS-leader. Chief of RSHA 1943–45, the Nazi organ made up of the intelligence service, Secret State Police, Criminal Police and had overall command over the ''Einsatzgruppen''.
75px	|	G	G	G	Death	Head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) 1938–1945.
75px	|	I	I
75px	|	G	G	G	15 years	Minister of Foreign Affairs 1932–1938, succeeded by Ribbentrop. Later, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia 1939–43. Resigned in 1943 because of a dispute with Hitler. Released (ill health) 6 November 1954 after having a heart attack. Died 14 August 1956.
75px	|	I	O	O	Acquitted	Chancellor>Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and Vice-Chancellor under Hitler in 1933–1934. Ambassador to Austria 1934–38 and ambassador to Turkey 1939–1944. Although acquitted at Nuremberg, von Papen was reclassified as a war criminal in 1947 by a German de-Nazification court, and sentenced to eight years' hard labour. He was acquitted following appeal after serving two years.
75px	|	G	G	O	Life Imprisonment	Commander In Chief of the ''Kriegsmarine'' from 1928 until his retirement in 1943, succeeded by Dönitz. Released (ill health) 26 September 1955. Died 6 November 1960.
75px	|	G	G	G	Death	Ambassador-Plenipotentiary 1935–1936. Ambassador to the United Kingdom 1936–1938. Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938–1945,
75px
[[Image:HSchacht.jpg	|	I	O	O	Acquitted	Prominent banker and economist. Pre-war president of the ''Reichsbank'' 1923–1930 & 1933–1938 and Economics Minister 1934–1937. Admitted to violating the Treaty of Versailles.
75px	|	O	O	G	20 years	Hitler Youth>''Hitlerjugend'' from 1933 to 1940, ''Gauleiter'' of Vienna 1940–1945. Expressed repentance.
75px	|	G	G	G	Death	Instrumental in the ''Anschluss'' and briefly Austrian Chancellor 1938. Deputy to Frank in Poland 1939–1940. Later, Reich Commissioner of the occupied Netherlands 1940–1945. Expressed repentance.
75px	|	I	G	G	20 Years	Hitler's favorite architect and close friend, and Minister of Armaments from 1942 until the end of the war. In this capacity, he was ultimately responsible for the use of slave laborers from the occupied territories in armaments production. Expressed repentance.
75px	|	O	O	G	Death	''Gauleiter'' of Franconia 1922–1940. Publisher of the weekly newspaper, ''Der Stürmer''.

The accusers were successful in unveiling the background of developments that had led to the outbreak of World War II, which cost at least 40 million lives in Europe alone, as well as the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences, and three were acquitted.

Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants survive; they were edited into book form and published in 2004.

The death sentences were carried out 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop. The U.S. army denied claims that the drop length was too short which caused the condemned to die slowly from strangulation instead of quickly from a broken neck.

The executioner was John C. Woods. Although the rumor has long persisted that the bodies were taken to Dachau and burned there, they were actually incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar. The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the military condemned, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges. These argued that the military officers had violated their military ethos and were not worthy of the firing squad, which was considered to be more dignified. The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution and Martin Bormann was not present when convicted (he had, unbeknownst to the Allies, committed suicide in Berlin in 1945). The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

Of the organizations the following were found not to be criminal:

''Reichsregierung''

''"The General Staff and High Command" was found not to comprise a group or organization as defined by Article 9 of the London Charter''

''Sturmabteilung''

Subsidiary and related trials

The American authorities conducted subsequent Nuremberg Trials in their occupied zone.

Other trials conducted after the Nuremberg Trials include the following:

Dachau Trials

Auschwitz Trial

Belsen Trial

Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials

Mauthausen-Gusen camp Trials

Ravensbrück Trial

American role in the main trial

While Sir Geoffrey Lawrence of Britain was the judge chosen as president of the court, the most prominent of the judges at trial arguably was his American counterpart, Francis Biddle Prior to the trial, Biddle had been Attorney General of the United States but had been asked to resign by Truman earlier in 1945

Some accounts argue that Truman had appointed Biddle as the main American judge for the trial as an apology for asking for his resignation The note also expressed Biddle’s opinion that instead of proceeding with the original plan for prosecuting entire organizations, there should simply be more trials that would prosecute specific offenders

Biddle soon changed his mind, as he approved a modified version of the plan on January 21, 1945, likely due to time constraints, since the trial would be one of the main issues discussed at Yalta At trial, the Nuremberg tribunal ruled that any member of an organization convicted of war crimes, such as the SS or Gestapo, who had joined after 1939 would be considered a war criminal Biddle managed to convince the other judges to make an exemption for any member who was drafted or had no knowledge of the crimes being committed by these organizations According to Airey Neave, Jackson was also the one behind the prosecution’s decision to include membership in any of the six criminal organizations in the indictments at the trial, though the IMT rejected this on the grounds that it was wholly without precedent in either international law or the domestic laws of any of the Allies Jackson also attempted to have Alfried Krupp be tried in place of his father, Gustav, and even suggested that Alfried volunteer to be tried in his father’s place Both proposals were rejected by the IMT, particularly by Sir Lawrence and Biddle, and some sources indicate that this resulted in Jackson being viewed unfavourably by the latter.). See Nuremberg Principles.

The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

Establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court

The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Criticism

Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice". As Biddiss noted "...the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us... It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves. The undoubted flaws rightly continue to trouble the thoughtful."

Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. "(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg," he wrote. "I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."

Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest."

Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ''ex post facto'' to suit the passion and clamor of the time."

U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben.

The validity of the court has been questioned for a variety of reasons: The defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges. A. L. Goodhart, Professor at Oxford, opposed the view that, because the judges were appointed by the victors, the Tribunal was not impartial and could not be regarded as a court in the true sense. He wrote:

::Attractive as this argument may sound in theory, it ignores the fact that it runs counter to the administration of law in every country. If it were true then no spy could be given a legal trial, because his case is always heard by judges representing the enemy country. Yet no one has ever argued that in such cases it was necessary to call on neutral judges. The prisoner has the right to demand that his judges shall be fair, but not that they shall be neutral. As Lord Writ has pointed out, the same principle is applicable to ordinary criminal law because 'a burglar cannot complain that he is being tried by a jury of honest citizens.' One of the charges, brought against Keitel, Jodl, and Ribbentrop included conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939. The Secret Protocols of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939, proposed the partition of Poland between the Germans and the Soviets (which was subsequently executed in September 1939); however, Soviet leaders were not tried for being part of the same conspiracy. Instead, the Tribunal falsely proclaimed the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact to be a forgery. Moreover, Allied Powers Britain and Soviet Union were not tried for preparing and conducting the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and the Winter War, respectively. In 1915, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging, for the first time, another government (the Sublime Porte) of committing "a crime against humanity". However it was not until the phrase was further developed in the ''London Charter'' that it had a specific meaning. As the London Charter definition of what constituted a crime against humanity was unknown when many of the crimes were committed, it could be argued to be a retrospective law, in violation of the principles of prohibition of ex post facto laws and the general principle of penal law ''nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali''. The court agreed to relieve the Soviet leadership from attending these trials as war criminals in order to hide their crimes against war civilians, war crimes that were committed by their army that included "carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later." This "exclusion request" was initiated by the Soviets and subsequently approved by the court's administration.

The trials were conducted under their own rules of evidence; the ''tu quoque'' defense was removed; and some claim the entire spirit of the assembly was "victor's justice". The Charter of the International Military Tribunal permitted the use of normally inadmissible "evidence". Article 19 specified that "The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence... and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value". Article 21 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) Charter stipulated:

::The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United [Allied] Nations, including acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military and other Tribunals of any of the United [Allied] Nations. The chief Soviet prosecutor submitted false documentation in an attempt to indict defendants for the murder of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. However, the other Allied prosecutors refused to support the indictment and German lawyers promised to mount an embarrassing defense. No one was charged or found guilty at Nuremberg for the Katyn Forest massacre. In 1990, the Soviet government acknowledged that the Katyn massacre was carried out, not by the Germans, but by the Soviet secret police.

Freda Utley, in her 1949 book ''"The High Cost of Vengeance"'' charged the court with amongst other things double standards. She pointed to the Allied use of civilian forced labor, and deliberate starvation of civilians in the occupied territories. She also noted that General Rudenko, the chief Soviet prosecutor, after the trials became commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. (After the fall of East Germany the bodies of 12,500 Soviet era victims were uncovered at the camp, mainly "children, adolescents and elderly people.")

Luise, the wife of Alfred Jodl, attached herself to her husband's defence team. Subsequently interviewed by Gitta Sereny, researching her biography of Albert Speer, Luise alleged that in many instances the Allied prosecution made charges against Jodl based on documents that they refused to share with the defense. Jodl nevertheless proved some of the charges made against him were untrue, such as the charge that he helped Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933. He was in one instance aided by a GI clerk who chose to give Luise a document showing that the execution of a group of British commandos in Norway had been legitimate. The GI warned Luise that if she didn't copy it immediately she would never see it again; ''"... it was being 'filed'."''

The main Soviet judge, Iona Nikitchenko, presided over some of the most notorious of Joseph Stalin's show trials during the Great Purges of 1936 to 1938, where he among other things sentenced Kamenev and Zinoviev. According to the declassified Soviet archives, 681,692 people arrested for "counter-revolutionary and state crimes" were shot in 1937 and 1938 alone–an average of 1,000 executions a day.

Moreover, the Tribunal itself strongly disputed that the London Charter was ''ex post facto'' law, pointing to existing international agreements signed by Germany that made aggressive war and certain wartime actions unlawful, such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the Hague Conventions.

Additionally, many commentators felt the Nuremberg Trials represented a step forward in extending fairness to the vanquished by requiring that actual criminal misdeeds be proved before punishment could ensue; including some of the defendants and their legal team:

:Perhaps the most telling responses to the critics of Jackson and Nuremberg were those of the defendants at trial. Hans Frank, the defendant who had served as the Nazi Governor General of occupied Poland, stated, "I regard this trial as a God-willed court to examine and put an end to the terrible era of suffering under Adolf Hitler." With the same theme, but a different emphasis, defendant Albert Speer, Hitler's war production minister, said, "This trial is necessary. There is a shared responsibility for such horrible crimes even in an authoritarian state." Dr. Theodore Klefish, a member of the German defense team, wrote: "It is obvious that the trial and judgment of such proceedings require of the tribunal the utmost impartiality, loyalty and sense of justice. The Nuremberg tribunal has met all these requirements with consideration and dignity. Nobody dares to doubt that it was guided by the search for truth and justice from the first to the last day of this tremendous trial."

In his opening statements to the trial, after the indictments had been read and the defendants had enterered pleas of ''not guilty'' to the charges, Mr Justice Jackson explained some of the difficulties faced by the prosecution:

In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events, seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago to-day the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German S.S. troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands.

He also acknowledged that the trial would not be perfect, as well as asserting the legal precedent being set:

I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches, and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render, and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians... At the very outset, let us dispose of the contention that to put these men to trial is to do them an injustice, entitling them to some special consideration. These defendants may be hard pressed but they are not ill used... If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted in the name of the law, they are also the first to be given the chance to plead for their lives in the name of the law.

Legitimacy

One criticism that was made of the IMT was that some treaties were not binding on the Axis powers because they were not signatories. This was addressed in the judgment relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity, which contains an expansion of customary law: "''the Convention Hague 1907 expressly stated that it was an attempt 'to revise the general laws and customs of war,' which it thus recognised to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6 (b) of the [London] Charter.''" The implication under international law is that if enough countries have signed up to a treaty, and that treaty has been in effect for a reasonable period of time, then it can be interpreted as binding on all nations, not just those who signed the original treaty. This is a highly controversial aspect of international law, one that is still actively debated in international legal journals.

Introduction of Extempore Simultaneous Interpretation

The Nuremberg Trials employed four official languages: English, German, French, and Russian. In order to address the complex linguistic issues that clouded over the proceedings, interpretation and translation departments had to be established. However, it was feared that consecutive interpretation would slow down the proceedings significantly. What is therefore unique in both the Nuremberg tribunals and history of the interpretation profession was the introduction of an entirely new technique, extempore simultaneous interpretation. This technique of interpretation requires the interpreter to listen to a speaker in a source (or passive) language and orally translate that speech into another language in real time, that is, simultaneously, through headsets and microphones. Interpreters were split into four sections, one for each official language, with three interpreters per section working from the other three languages into the fourth (their mother tongue). For instance, the English booth consisted of three interpreters, one working from German into English, one working from French, and one from Russian, etc. Defendants who did not speak any of the four official languages were provided with consecutive court interpreters. Some of the languages heard over the course of the proceedings included Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Polish.

The equipment used to establish this system was provided by IBM, and included an elaborate setup of cables which were hooked up to headsets and single earphones directly from the four interpreting booths (often referred to as "the aquarium"). Four channels existed for each working language, as well as a root channel for the proceedings without interpretation. Switching of channels was controlled by a setup at each table in which the listener merely had to turn a dial in order to switch between languages. People tripping over the floor-laid cables often led to the headsets getting disconnected, with several hours at a time sometimes being taken in order to repair the problem and continue on with the trials.

Interpreters were recruited and examined by the respective countries in which the official languages were spoken: United States, United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as in special cases Belgium and the Netherlands. Many were former translators, army personnel, and linguists, some were experienced consecutive interpreters, others were ordinary individuals and even recent secondary school-graduates who led international lives in multilingual environments. It was, and still is believed, that the qualities that made the best interpreters were not just a perfect understanding of two or more languages, but more importantly a broad sense of culture, encyclopædic knowledge, inquisitiveness, as well as a naturally calm disposition.

With the simultaneous technique being extremely new, interpreters practically trained themselves, but many could not handle the pressure or the psychological strain. Many often had to be replaced, many returned to the translation department, and many left. Serious doubts were given as to whether interpretation provided a fair trial for the defendants, particularly because of fears of mistranslation and errors made on transcripts. The translation department had to also deal with the overwhelming problem of being understaffed and overburdened with an influx of documents that could not be kept up with. More often than not, interpreters were stuck in a session without having proper documents in front of them and were relied upon to do sight translation or double translation of texts, causing further problems and extensive criticism. Other problems that arose included complaints from lawyers and other legal professionals with regard to questioning and cross-examination. Legal professionals were most often appalled at the slower speed at which they had to conduct their task because of the extended time required for interpreters to do an interpretation properly. Also, a number of interpreters were noted for protesting the idea of using vulgar language reflected in the proceeds, especially if it referenced Jews or the conditions of the concentration camps. Bilingual/trilingual members who attended the trials picked up quickly on this aspect of character and were equally quick to file complaints.

Yet, despite the extensive trial and error, without the interpretation system the trials would not have been possible and in turn revolutionized the way multilingual issues were addressed in tribunals and conferences. A number of the interpreters following the trials were immediately recruited into the newly formed United Nations, while others returned to their ordinary lives, pursued other careers, or worked freelance. Outside the boundaries of the trials, many interpreters continued their positions on weekends interpreting for dinners, private meetings between judges, and excursions between delegates. Others worked as investigators or editors, or aided the translation department when they could, often using it as an opportunity to sharpen their skills and to correct poor interpretations on transcripts before they were available for public record.

For further reference, a book titled ''The Origins of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Nuremberg Trial'', written by interpreter Francesca Gaiba, was published by the University of Ottawa Press in 1998.

Today, all major international organizations, as well as any conference or government that uses more than one official language, uses extempore simultaneous interpretation. Notable bodies include the Parliament of Canada with two official languages, the Parliament of South Africa with eleven official languages, the European Union with twenty-three official languages, and the United Nations with six official working languages.

Further reading

See also

Command responsibility

''Eichmann in Jerusalem''

Einsatzgruppen Trial

International Military Tribunal for the Far East

''Judgment at Nuremberg'' (1961 film)

List of Axis personnel indicted for war crimes

''Nuremberg Diary'', an account of observations and discussions with the defendants by an American psychiatrist

Superior Orders

Tanya Savicheva

Transitional justice

Notes

External links

60 Years Marking the Nuremberg Trials - Yad Vashem

Film Nuernberg: 40 Years Later. (1986)

Official records of the Nuremberg trials (The Blue series) in 42 volumes from the records of the Library of congress

The Nuremberg Trials Original reports and pictures from The Times

Official page of the Nuremberg City Museum

Nuremberg defence doesn't make the grade-The Age newspaper

Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection Cornell Law Library

Nuremberg Trials Project: A digital document collection Harvard Law School Library

The Avalon Project

Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg trials)

The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials

Holocaust Educational Resource

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibit

Special focus on The trials - USHMM

Famous World Trials - Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials Gallery

The Nuremberg Trials: The Defendants and Verdicts

Nuremberg War Crimes - Trials

Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949

"American Experience: The Nuremberg Trials" PBS

Obituary of Anthony Marreco

Crimes, Trials and Laws

A Tree Fell in the Forest: The Nuremberg Judgments 60 Years On, JURIST

Bringing a Nazi to justice: how I cross-examined 'fat boy' Göring, guardian.co.uk

CBC Radio: A Conversation with Geoffrey Robertson, Author of the Tyrannicide Brief (Feb 18/07) (RealAudio)

JAG Corps Attorneys

Attorney Shawcross reads an account of a massacre - 27 July 1946 (BBC) (Windows Media and Real Audio) Warning: graphic descriptions of atrocities

''The Nuremberg Judgments'', Chapter 6 from ''The High Cost of Vengeance'', by Freda Utley, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, (1948). Made available by "The Freda Utley Foundation"

Francine Hirsch, The Soviets at Nuremberg: International Law, Propaganda, and the Making of the Postwar Order

Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. The Trial of the Century - And of All Time, Part One (2002), The Trial of the Century - And of All Time, Part Two (2002)

* Category:Crimes against humanity Category:Crime of aggression Category:History of the United States (1945–1964) Category:International courts and tribunals Category:Katyn massacre Category:Nazism Category:Nazi war crimes Category:Nuremberg *

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Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Hermann Göring
Order	President of the ''Reichstag''
Term start	30 August 1932
Term end	24 April 1945
President	Paul von HindenburgAdolf Hitler
Chancellor	Heinrich BrüningFranz von PapenKurt von SchleicherAdolf Hitler
Predecessor	Paul Löbe
Successor	none
Order2	Minister President of the Free State of Prussia
Term start2	11 April 1933
Term end2	24 April 1945
Governor2	Adolf HitlerHimself(''Reichsstatthalter'')
Predecessor2	Franz von Papen
Successor2	Prussia abolished
Order3	''Reichsstatthalter'' of Prussia
Term start3	1935
Term end3	1945
Primeminister3	Himself
Predecessor3	Adolf Hitler
Successor3	Prussia abolished
Order4	''Reichminister'' of Economics
Term start4	April 1937
Term end4	April 1949
Chancellor4	Adolf Hitler
Predecessor4	Position established
Successor4	Walther Funk
Order4	Reich Minister of Aviation
Term start4	March 1933
Term end4	April 1945
President4	Paul von HindenburgAdolf Hitler
Chancellor4	Adolf Hitler
Predecessor4	Position established
Successor4	Robert Ritter von Greim
Order5	Reich Minister of Forestry
Term start5	July 1934
Term end5	April 1945
President5	Paul von HindenburgAdolf Hitler
Chancellor5	Adolf Hitler
Predecessor5	Position established
Successor5	N/A
Birth date	January 12, 1893
Birth place	Rosenheim, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Death date	October 15, 1946
Death place	Nuremberg, Germany(Suicide by poison)
Party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Religion	Lutheran
Spouse	Carin von Kantznow(1923–1931, deceased)Emmy Sonnemann(1935–1946)
Children	1
Signature	Hermann Göring Signature.svg
Footnotes	}}

Hermann Wilhelm Göring, (or Goering; ; 12 January 189315 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted ''Pour le Mérite'', also known as "The Blue Max". He was the last commander of ''Jagdgeschwader'' 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron".

In 1935, Göring was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the ''Luftwaffe'' (), a position he was to hold until the final days of World War II. By mid-1940, Göring was at the peak of his power and influence. Adolf Hitler had promoted him to the rank of ''Reichsmarschall'', making Göring senior to all other ''Wehrmacht'' commanders, and in 1941 Hitler designated him as his successor and deputy in all his offices. By 1942, with the German war effort stumbling on both fronts, Göring's standing with Hitler was very greatly reduced. Göring largely withdrew from the military and political scene to enjoy the pleasures of life as a wealthy and powerful man. After World War II, Göring was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. He was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by cyanide ingestion the night before he was due to be hanged.

Family background and relatives

Göring was born on 12 January 1893 at the Marienbad sanatorium in Rosenheim, Bavaria. His father Heinrich Ernst Göring (31 October 1839–7 December 1913) had been the first Governor-General of the German protectorate of South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) as well as being a former cavalry officer and member of the German consular service. Göring had among his paternal ancestors Eberle/Eberlin, a Swiss-German family of high bourgeoisie.

Göring was a relative of such Eberle/Eberlin descendants as the German aviation pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; German romantic nationalist Hermann Grimm (1828–1901), an author of the concept of the German hero as a mover of history, whom the Nazis claimed as one of their ideological forerunners; the industrialist family Merck, the owners of the pharmaceutical giant Merck; German Baroness Gertrud von Le Fort, one of the world's major Catholic writers and poets of the 20th century, whose works were largely inspired by her revulsion against Nazism; and Carl J. Burckhardt, Swiss diplomat, historian, and President of the International Red Cross.

In a historical coincidence, Göring was related via the Eberle/Eberlin line to Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), a great Swiss scholar of art and culture who was a major political and social thinker as well an opponent of nationalism and militarism, who rejected German claims of cultural and intellectual superiority and predicted a cataclysmic 20th century in which violent demagogues, whom he called "terrible simplifiers", would play central roles.

Göring's mother Franziska "Fanny" Tiefenbrunn (1859–15 July 1923) came from a Bavarian peasant family. The marriage of a gentleman to a lower class woman occurred only because Heinrich Ernst Göring was a widower. Hermann Göring was one of five children; his brothers were Albert Göring and Karl Göring, and his sisters were Olga Therese Sophia Göring and Paula Elisabeth Rosa Göring, the last of whom were from his father's first marriage. Although antisemitism had become rampant in Germany at that time, his parents were not antisemitic .

Hermann Göring's elder brother—Karl—emigrated to the U.S. Karl's son—Werner G. Göring—became a Captain in the United States Army Air Forces opposing his uncle's ''Luftwaffe'' during World War II. He participated in bombing runs over Germany. Göring's younger brother Albert Göring was opposed to the Nazi regime and helped Jews and dissidents in Germany during the Nazi era, much like Oskar Schindler. In one instance, Albert helped Hermann himself by intervening on behalf of one of his wife’s film colleagues, Henny Porten. Henny, an erstwhile sweetheart of German cinema, found herself professionally ostracised after she refused to divorce her Jewish husband, Dr. William von Kaufman. After meeting Henny in a Hamburg hotel and learning of her predicament, Emmy Göring pleaded with Hermann to call his younger brother Albert, who was, at the time, the technical director of Tobis-Sascha Filmindustrie AG in Vienna. Hermann made the call, and Albert duly arranged Henny a film contract in Vienna, ensuring her a livelihood.

Göring's other nephew—Hans-Joachim Göring—was a pilot in the ''Luftwaffe'' with III ''Gruppe''./ZG 76, flying the Messerschmitt Bf 110. Hans-Joachim was killed in action on 11 July 1940, when his Bf 110 was shot down by Hawker Hurricanes of No. 78 Squadron RAF. His aircraft crashed into Portland Harbour, Dorset, England.

Early life and Ritter von Epenstein

Göring later claimed his given name was chosen to honor the Arminius who defeated the Roman legions at Teutoburg Forest. However, the name was possibly to honor his godfather, a Christian of Jewish descent born Hermann Epenstein. Epenstein—whose father was an army surgeon in Berlin—became a wealthy physician and businessman and a major if not paternal influence on Göring's childhood. Hermann's father held diplomatic posts in Africa and in Haiti, climates considered too harsh for a young European child. This resulted in lengthy separation from his parents, and much of Hermann's very early childhood was spent with governesses and with distant relatives. Heinrich Göring retired circa 1898, and had to support his large family solely on his civil service pension. Thus for financial reasons the Görings became permanent house guests of their longtime friend, Göring's probable namesake. Epenstein had acquired a minor title (through service and donation to the Crown) and was now Hermann, Ritter von Epenstein.

Von Epenstein purchased two largely dilapidated castles, Burg Veldenstein in Bavaria and Burg Mauterndorf near Salzburg, Austria, whose very expensive restorations were ongoing by the time of Hermann Göring's birth. Both castles were to be residences of the Göring family, their official "caretakers" until 1913. Both castles were also ultimately to be Hermann's property.

According to some biographers of both Hermann Göring and his younger brother Albert Göring, soon after the family took residence in his castles, von Epenstein began an adulterous relationship with Frau Göring and may in fact have been Albert's father. (Albert's physical resemblance to von Epenstein was noted even during his childhood and is evident in photographs.) Whatever the nature of von Epenstein's relationship with his mother, the young Hermann Göring enjoyed a close relationship with his godfather.

Göring was initially unaware of von Epenstein's Jewish ancestry. He was enrolled in a prestigious Austrian boarding school, where his tuition was paid by von Epenstein. Then he wrote an essay in praise of his godfather and was mocked by the school's antisemitic headmaster for professing such admiration for a Jew. Göring denied the allegation, but was then presented with proof in the ''"Semi-Gotha"'', a book which catalogued German-speaking nobility of insufficient status to be listed in the ''Almanach de Gotha''. (Von Epenstein had bought his title and castles, and so was relegated to the lesser reference.) Göring remained steadfast in his devotion to his family's friend and patron so adamantly that he left the school and used what money he had to purchase a train ticket home. The action seems to have tightened the already considerable bond between godfather and godson.

Relations between the Göring family and von Epenstein became far more formal during Göring's adolescence (causing Mosley and other biographers to speculate that perhaps the theorized affair ended naturally or that the elderly Heinrich discovered he was a cuckold and threatened its exposure). By the time of Heinrich Göring's death, the family no longer lived in a residence supplied by von Epenstein, or seemed to have much contact at all with him. The family's comfortable circumstances indicate the Ritter may have continued to support them financially. Late in his life, Ritter von Epenstein married Lily, a singer who was half his age. He bequeathed her his estate in his will, but requested that she in turn bequeath the castles at Mauterndorf and Veldenstein to his godson Hermann upon her own death.

World War I

Göring was sent to boarding school at Ansbach, Franconia and then attended the cadet institutes at Karlsruhe and the military college at Berlin Lichterfelde. Göring was commissioned in the Prussian army on 22 June 1912 in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment (112th Infantry), headquartered at Mulhouse as part of the 29th Division of the Imperial German Army.

During the first year of World War I, Göring served with an infantry regiment in the Vosges region. He was hospitalized with rheumatism resulting from the damp of trench warfare. While he was recovering, his friend Bruno Loerzer convinced him to transfer to the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' ("air combat force") of the German army. Göring's transfer request was turned down. But later that year, Göring flew as Loerzer's observer in ''Feldfliegerabteilung'' 25 (FFA 25) - Göring had informally transferred himself. He was detected and sentenced to three weeks' confinement to barracks. The sentence was never carried out: by the time it was imposed Göring's association with Loerzer had been regularized. They were assigned as a team to FFA 25 in the Crown Prince's Fifth Army — "though it seems that they had to steal a plane in order to qualify." They flew reconnaissance and bombing missions for which the Crown Prince invested both Göring and Loerzer with the Iron Cross, first class.

On completing his pilot's training course he was posted back to FFA 2 in October 1915. Göring had already claimed two air victories as an Observer (one unconfirmed). He gained another flying a Fokker E.III single-seater scout in March 1916. In October 1916, he was posted to ''Jagdstaffel'' 5, but was wounded in action in November. In February 1917, he joined ''Jagdstaffel'' 26. He now scored steadily until in May 1917, when he got his first command, ''Jasta'' 27. Serving with ''Jastas'' 5, 26 and 27, he claimed 21 air victories. Besides the Iron Cross, he was awarded the Zaehring Lion with swords, the Friedrich Order and the House Order of Hohenzollern with swords, third class, and finally in May 1918, the coveted ''Pour le Mérite''. On 7 July 1918, after the death of Wilhelm Reinhard, the successor of The Red Baron, he was made commander of the famed "Flying Circus", ''Jagdgeschwader'' 1.

In June 1917, after a lengthy dogfight, Göring shot down Australian pilot Frank Slee. The battle is recounted in ''The Rise and Fall of Hermann Göring''. Göring landed and met the Australian, and presented Slee with his Iron Cross. Years after, Slee gave Göring's Iron Cross to a friend, who later died on the beach during the Normandy Landings. Also during the war Göring had through his generous treatment made a friend of his prisoner of war Captain Frank Beaumont, a Royal Flying Corps pilot. "It was part of Goering's creed to admire a good enemy, and he did his best to keep Captain Beaumont from being taken over by the Army."

Göring finished the war with 22 confirmed kills.

Because of his arrogance, Göring's appointment as commander of ''Jagdgeschwader'' 1 had not been well received. When demobilized during the first weeks of November 1918, Göring and his officers spent most of their time in the Stiftskeller, the best restaurant and drinking place in Aschaffenburg. Yet he was the only veteran of ''Jagdgeschwader'' 1 never invited to post-war reunions.

Göring was genuinely surprised (at least by his own account) at Germany's defeat in World War I. He felt personally violated by the surrender, the Kaiser's abdication, the humiliating terms, and the supposed treachery of the post-war German politicians who had "goaded the people [to uprising] [and] who [had] stabbed our glorious Army in the back [thinking] of nothing but of attaining power and of enriching themselves at the expense of the people." Ordered to surrender the planes of his squadron to the Allies in December 1918, Göring and his fellow pilots intentionally wrecked the planes on landing. This action paralleled the scuttling of surrendered ships. Typical for the political climate of the day, he was not arrested or even officially reprimanded for his action.

Post-war

He remained in flying after the war, worked briefly at Fokker, tried "barnstorming", and in 1921 he joined Svenska Lufttrafik, a Swedish airline. He was also listed on the officer rolls of the Reichswehr, the post–World War I peacetime army of Germany, and by 1933 had risen to the rank of ''Generalmajor''. He was made a ''Generalleutnant'' in 1935 and then a General in the ''Luftwaffe'' upon its founding later that year.

Göring as a veteran pilot was often hired to fly businessmen and others on private aircraft. He worked in Denmark and Sweden as a commercial pilot. One wintry evening he was hired by Count Eric von Rosen to fly him to his castle from Stockholm. Invited to spend the night there, it may have been here that Göring first saw the swastika emblem, a family badge which was set in the chimney piece around the roaring fire.

This was also the first time Göring saw his future wife. A great staircase led down into the hall opposite the fireplace. As Göring looked up he saw a woman coming down the staircase as if toward him. He thought she was very beautiful. The count introduced his sister-in-law Baroness Carin von Kantzow (''née'' Freiin von Fock, 1888–1931) to the 27-year-old Göring.

Carin was a tall, maternal, unhappy, sentimental woman five years Göring's senior, estranged from her husband and in delicate health. Göring was immediately smitten with her. Carin's eldest sister and biographer claimed that it was love at first sight. Carin was carefully looked after by her parents as well as by Count and Countess von Rosen. She was also married and had an eight-year-old son Thomas to whom she was devoted. No romance other than one of courtly love was possible at this point.

First marriage

Carin divorced her estranged husband, Niels Gustav von Kantzow, in December 1922. She married Göring on 3 January 1923 in Stockholm. Von Kantzow behaved generously. He provided a financial settlement which enabled Carin and Göring to set up their first home together in Germany. It was a hunting lodge at Hochkreuth in the Bavarian Alps, near Bayrischzell, some from Munich.

Early Nazi

Göring joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and took over leadership of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) as the ''Oberster SA-Führer''. After stepping down as SA Commander, he was appointed an ''SA-Gruppenführer'' (Lieutenant General) and held this rank on the SA rolls until 1945. Hitler later recalled his early association with Göring thus:

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At this time, Carin—who liked Hitler—often played hostess to meetings of leading Nazis including her husband, Hitler, Hess, Rosenberg and Röhm.

Göring was with Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 9 November 1923. He marched beside Hitler at the head of the SA. When the Bavarian police broke up the march with gunfire, Göring was seriously wounded in the groin.

Addiction and exile

Although he was stricken with pneumonia, Carin arranged for Göring to be spirited away to Austria. Göring was in no way fit to travel and the journey may have aggravated his condition, although he did avoid arrest. Göring was X-rayed and operated on in the hospital at Innsbruck. Carin wrote to her mother from Göring's bedside on 8 December 1923 describing his terrible pain: "... in spite of being dosed with morphine every day, his pain stays just as bad as ever." This was the beginning of his morphine addiction, which would last until his imprisonment at Nuremberg. Meanwhile in Munich the authorities declared Göring a wanted man.

The Görings—acutely short of funds and reliant on the good will of Nazi sympathizers abroad—moved from Austria to Venice, then in May 1924 to Rome via Florence and Siena. Göring met Benito Mussolini in Rome. Mussolini expressed some interest in meeting Hitler, by then in prison, on his release. Personal problems, however, continued to multiply. Göring's mother had died in 1923. By 1925, it was Carin's mother who was ill. The Görings—with difficulty—raised the money for a journey in spring 1925 to Sweden via Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Danzig. Göring had become a violent morphine addict and Carin's family were shocked by his deterioration when they saw him. Carin, herself an epileptic, had to let the doctors and police take full charge of Göring. He was certified a dangerous drug addict and placed in the violent ward of Långbro asylum on 1 September 1925. Biographer Roger Manvell quoted a Stockholm psychiatrist who had seen him before he was committed to Långbro: "Göring was very violent and had to be placed in a straitjacket but was not insane."

The 1925 psychiatrist's reports claimed Göring to be weak of character, a hysteric and unstable personality, sentimental yet callous, violent when afraid and a person whose bravado hid a basic lack of moral courage. "Like many men capable of great acts of physical courage which verge quite often on desperation, he lacked the finer kind of courage in the conduct of his life which was needed when serious difficulties overcame him."

At the time of Göring's detention, all doctors' reports in Sweden were matters of public record. In 1925, Carin sued for custody of her son. Niels von Kantzow, her ex-husband, used a doctor's report on Carin and Göring as evidence to show that neither of them was fit to look after the boy, and so von Kantzow kept custody. The reports were also used by political opponents in Germany.

Carin Göring died of heart failure on 17 October 1931.

Possible responsibility for the ''Reichstag'' fire

Marinus van der Lubbe—an ex-Communist radical—was arrested on the scene and claimed sole responsibility for the ''Reichstag'' fire. But many observers believed that the Nazis set the fire to justify the subsequent crackdown. Göring in particular was suspected: he was first on the scene, and both Hitler and Goebbels were apparently surprised by the news. At Nuremberg, General Franz Halder testified that Göring admitted responsibility:

Göring in his own Nuremberg testimony denied this story. It remains unclear whether Göring was responsible for the fire. The following is a transcript excerpt from the Nuremberg Trials:

GOERING: This conversation did not take place and I request that I be confronted with ''Herr'' Halder. First of all I want to emphasize that what is written here is utter nonsense. It says, "The only one who really knows the ''Reichstag'' is I." The ''Reichstag'' was known to every representative in the ''Reichstag''. The fire took place only in the general assembly room, and many hundreds or thousands of people knew this room as well as I did. A statement of this type is utter nonsense. How ''Herr'' Halder came to make that statement I do not know. Apparently that bad memory, which also let him down in military matters, is the only explanation. MR. ROBERT JACKSON: You know who Halder is? GOERING: Only too well. GOERING: That accusation that I had set fire to the ''Reichstag'' came from a certain foreign press. That could not bother me because it was not consistent with the facts. I had no reason or motive for setting fire to the ''Reichstag''. From the artistic point of view I did not at all regret that the assembly chamber was burned – I hoped to build a better one. But I did regret very much that I was forced to find a new meeting place for the ''Reichstag'' and, not being able to find one, I had to give up my Kroll Opera House, that is, the second State Opera House, for that purpose. The opera seemed to me much more important than the ''Reichstag''. MR. ROBERT JACKSON: Have you ever boasted of burning the ''Reichstag'' building, even by way of joking? GOERING: No. I made a joke, if that is the one you are referring to, when I said that, ′after this, I should be competing with Nero and that probably people would soon be saying that, dressed in a red toga and holding a lyre in my hand, I looked on at the fire and played while the ''Reichstag'' was burning′. That was the joke. But the fact was that I almost perished in the flames, which would have been very unfortunate for the German people, but very fortunate for their enemies. MR. ROBERT JACKSON: You never stated then that you burned the ''Reichstag''? GOERING: No. I know that ''Herr'' Rauschning said in the book which he wrote, and which has often been referred to here, that I had discussed this with him. I saw ''Herr'' Rauschning only twice in my life and only for a short time on each occasion. If I had set fire to the ''Reichstag'', I would presumably have let that be known only to my closest circle of confidants, if at all. I would not have told it to a man whom I did not know and whose appearance I could not describe at all today. That is an absolute distortion of the truth.

Second marriage

During the early 1930s Göring was often in the company of Emmy Sonnemann (1893–1973), an actress from Hamburg. He proposed to her in Weimar in February 1935. The wedding took place on 10 April 1935 in Berlin and was celebrated like the marriage of an emperor. They had a daughter, Edda Göring (born 2 June 1938) who was reportedly named after Countess Edda Ciano, eldest child of Benito Mussolini, although other sources say she was named after a friend of her mother. Edda's Godfather was Adolf Hitler.

Nazi potentate

When Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Göring was appointed as minister without portfolio. He was one of only two other Nazis named to the Cabinet (the other being Wilhelm Frick) even though the Nazis were the largest party in the ''Reichstag'' and nominally the senior partner in the Nazi-DNVP coalition. However, in a little-noticed development, he was named Interior Minister of Prussia — a move which gave him command of the largest state police force in Germany. Soon after taking office, he began filling the political and intelligence units of the Prussian police with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, he formally detached these units from the regular Prussian police and reorganized them under his command as the ''Gestapo'', a secret state police intended to serve the Nazi cause.

Göring was one of the key figures in the process of ''Gleichschaltung'' ("forcible coordination") that established the Nazi dictatorship. For example, in 1933, Göring banned all Roman Catholic newspapers in Germany, not only to suppress resistance to National Socialism but also to deprive the population of alternative forms of association and means of political communication.

In the Nazi regime's early years, Göring served as minister in various key positions at both the ''Reich'' (German national) level and other levels as required. For example, in the state of Prussia, Göring was responsible for the economy as well as re-armament.

On 20 April 1934, Göring and Himmler agreed to put aside their differences (largely because of mutual hatred and growing dread of the SA or ''Sturmabteilung'') and Göring transferred full authority over the ''Gestapo'' to Himmler, who was also named chief of all German police forces outside Prussia. With the ''Gestapo'' under their control, Himmler and Heydrich plotted—with Göring—to use it with the SS to crush the SA. Göring retained Special Police Battalion ''Wecke'', which he converted to a paramilitary unit attached to the ''Landespolizei'' (State Police), ''Landespolizeigruppe General Göring''. This formation participated in the Night of the Long Knives, when the SA leaders were purged. Göring was head of the ''Forschungsamt'' (FA), which secretly monitored telephone and radio communications, the FA was connected to the SS, the SD, and ''Abwehr'' intelligence services.

In 1936, he became Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan for German rearmament, where he effectively took control of the economy — as economics minister Hjalmar Schacht became increasingly reluctant to pursue rapid rearmament and eventually resigned. The vast steel plant Reichswerke Hermann Göring was named after him. He gained great influence with Hitler (who placed a high value on rearmament). He never seemed to accept the Hitler Myth quite as much as Goebbels and Himmler, but remained loyal nevertheless.

In 1938, Göring forced out the War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, and the Army commander, General von Fritsch. They had welcomed Hitler's accession in 1933, but then annoyed him by criticising his plans for expansionist wars. Göring, who had been best man at Blomberg's recent wedding to a 26-year-old typist, discovered that Frau Blomberg had a criminal record for posing for pornographic photos in 1932, which Göring misrepresented as being for prostitution as a way of smearing her husband. This led to Blomberg's resigning. Fritsch was accused of homosexual activity and, though completely innocent, resigned in shock and disgust. He was later exonerated by a "court of honor" presided over by Göring.

Also in 1938, Göring played a key role in the ''Anschluss'' (annexation) of Austria. At the height of the crisis, Göring spoke on the telephone to Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg. Göring announced Germany's intent to march into Austria, and threatened war and the destruction of Austria if there was any resistance. Schuschnigg collapsed, and the German army marched into Austria without resistance.

Personal properties

The confiscation of Jewish property gave Göring great opportunities to amass a personal fortune. Some properties he seized himself, or acquired for a nominal price. In other cases, he collected bribes for allowing others to steal Jewish property. He also took kickbacks from industrialists for favourable decisions as Four Year Plan director, and money for supplying arms to the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War via Pyrkal in Greece (although Germany was supporting Franco and the Nationalists).

Göring also "collected" several other offices, such as ''Reichsforst- und Jägermeister'' (''Reich'' Master of the Forest and Hunt), for which he received high government salaries.

In 1933, Göring acquired a vast estate in the Schorfheide Forest in Brandenburg, northeast of Berlin, and built his great manor house there. It was named Carinhall in memory of his first wife Carin. He exulted in aristocratic trappings, such as a coat of arms, and ceremonial swords and daggers, such as the Wedding Sword (an oversized broadsword with elaborate gold hilt presented to Göring at his 1935 wedding to Emmy). He also owned many uniforms and jewelry.

Göring was also noted for his patronage of music, especially opera. He entertained frequently and lavishly. Most infamously, he collected art, looting from numerous museums (some in Germany itself), stealing from Jewish collectors, or buying for grossly discounted prices in occupied countries.

When Göring was promoted to the unique rank of ''Reichsmarschall'', he designed an elaborate personal flag for himself. The design included a German eagle, swastika, and crossed marshal's batons on one side, and on the other the ''Großkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes'' ("Grand Cross of the Iron Cross") between four ''Luftwaffe'' eagles. He had the flag carried by a personal standard-bearer at all public occasions.

Göring was known for his extravagant tastes and garish clothing. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the top ''Stuka'' pilot of the war, recalled twice meeting Göring dressed in outlandish costumes: first, a medieval hunting costume, practicing archery with his doctor, and second, dressed in a russet toga fastened with a golden clasp, smoking an abnormally large pipe. Italian Foreign Minister Ciano once noted Göring wearing a fur coat looking like what "a high grade prostitute wears to the opera." His personal car—dubbed "The Blue Goose"—was an aviation blue Mercedes 540K Special Cabriolet. It had luxurious features, as well as special additions, including bullet-proof glass and bomb resistant armor for protection, and modifications to allow him to fit his girth behind the wheel.

Though he liked to be called "''der Eiserne''" (the Iron Man), the once-dashing and muscular fighter pilot had become corpulent. He was however one of the few Nazi leaders who did not take offence at hearing jokes about himself, "no matter how rude," taking them as a sign of his popularity. Germans joked about his ego, saying that he would wear an admiral's uniform to take a bath, and his obesity, joking that "he sits down on his stomach."

Göring and foreign policy

Göring was certainly an ardent Nazi and utterly loyal to Hitler. But his preferences in foreign policy were different. The German diplomatic historian Klaus Hildebrand in his study of German foreign policy in the Nazi era noted that besides Hitler's foreign policy program that there were three rival programs supported by factions in the Nazi Party, whom Hildebrand dubbed the agrarians, the revolutionary socialists, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists.

Göring was the most prominent of the Wilhelmine Imperialists. This group wanted to restore the German frontiers of 1914, regain the pre-1914 overseas empire, and make Eastern Europe Germany's exclusive sphere of influence. This was a much more limited set of goals than Hitler's dream of ''Lebensraum'' to be carved out with merciless racial wars. By contrast, Göring and the Wilhelmine Imperialist faction were more guided by traditional ''Machtpolitik'' in their foreign policy conceptions. Furthermore, they expected to achieve their goals within the established international order. While not rejecting war as an option, they preferred diplomacy and sought political domination in eastern Europe rather than the military conquests envisioned by Hitler. They also rejected Hitler's mystical vision of war as a necessary ordeal for the nation, and of perpetual war as desirable. Göring himself feared that a major war might interfere with his luxurious lifestyle. Göring's advocacy of this policy led to his temporary exclusion by Hitler for a time in 1938–1939 from foreign policy decisions. Göring's unwillingness to offer a major challenge to Hitler prevented him from offering any serious resistance to Hitler's policies, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists had no real influence.

Göring had some private doubts about the wisdom of Hitler’s policies attacking Poland, which he felt would cause a world war, and was anxious to see a compromise solution. This was especially the case as the ''Forschungsamt'' (FA), Göring's private intelligence agency, had broken the codes the British Embassy in Berlin used to communicate with London. The FA's work showed that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was determined to go to war if Germany invaded Poland in 1939. This directly contradicted the advice given to Hitler by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (a man whom Göring loathed at the best of times) that Chamberlain would not honor the “guarantee” he had given Poland in March 1939 if Germany attacked that country.

In the summer of 1939, Göring and the rest of the Wilhelmine Imperialists made a last ditch effort to assert their foreign policy program. Göring was involved in desperate attempts to avert a war in by using various amateur diplomats, such as his deputy Helmuth Wohltat at the Four Year Plan organization, British civil servant Sir Horace Wilson, newspaper proprietor Lord Kemsley, and would be peace-makers like Swedish businessmen Axel Wenner-Gren and Birger Dahlerus, who served as couriers between Göring and various British officials. All of these efforts came to naught because Hitler (who much preferred Ribbentrop’s assessment of Britain to Göring's) would not be deterred from attacking Poland in 1939, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists were unwilling and unable to challenge Hitler despite their reservations about his foreign policy.

Complicity in the Holocaust

Göring was responsible for the Nuremberg laws and for charging Jews with a billion reichsmark fine for ''Kristallnacht'', which he never denied at his trial. However, his role in and awareness of the extermination of the Jews is much more controversial.

Göring claimed at Nuremberg that he was not anti-Semitic, and it is generally accepted that the anti-Semitism of Goebbels and Himmler was far stronger than that of Göring, who was more cynical than ideological in all of his attitudes. He occasionally intervened to shield individual Jews from harm, (including his own deputy, Erhard Milch) sometimes in exchange for a bribe, sometimes after a request from his wife Emmy or his anti-Nazi brother Albert. Göring despised Himmler and he often sparred with Goebbels who was in favor of more radical measures against the Jews. However, some of the quotes provided at the Nuremberg trial show his apparent antisemitic side, though much milder than that of Goebbels or Himmler, some apparently said as ironic retorts to Goebbels. Despite his sporadic actions to help individuals, Göring was deemed complicit in the Holocaust: he was the highest figure in the Nazi hierarchy to issue a written order for the "complete solution of the Jewish Question", as he issued a memo to Reinhard Heydrich to organize the practical details. Göring, who issued this memo in place of Hitler, which he occasionally did, wrote in the memo to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative, financial and material measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question." This was in July 1941, many months before, according to most historians, the decision to exterminate Jews was taken. Göring, who at Nuremberg trial unrepentantly took responsibility for his actions, as opposed to most other defendants who blamed Hitler, maintained to his death that this meant relocation of Jews, and that he did not know of the subsequent extermination. Following this transfer of the Jewish question to Heydrich and Himmler, at the Wannsee Conference in early 1942, the Holocaust was planned with Heydrich as the most senior officer present, reporting directly to Himmler.

In 1989, historian and noted Nazi sympathizer David Irving published a biography of Göring, which in part said that he'd disapproved of the persecution of Jews and offered documented evidence as proof. Much of Irving's work, however, has been discredited, and Göring's complicity in the Final Solution remains a point of contention.

Head of the ''Luftwaffe''

When the Nazis took power, Göring was Minister of Civil Air Transport, which was a screen for the build-up of German military aviation, prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. When Hitler repudiated Versailles, in 1935, the ''Luftwaffe'' was unveiled, with Göring as Minister and ''Oberbefehlshaber'' (Supreme Commander). In 1938, he became the first ''Generalfeldmarschall'' (Field Marshal) of the ''Luftwaffe''; this promotion also made him the highest ranking officer in Germany. Göring directed the rapid creation of this new branch of service. Within a few years, Germany produced large numbers of the world's most advanced military aircraft.

In 1936, Göring at Hitler's direction sent several hundred aircraft along with several thousand air and ground crew, to assist the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. This became known as the Condor Legion.

By 1939, the ''Luftwaffe'' was one of the most advanced and powerful air forces in the world.

Göring's army

Unusually, the ''Luftwaffe'' also included its own ground troops, which became in a sense, Göring's private army. German ''Fallschirmjäger'' (parachute and glider) troops were organised as part of the ''Luftwaffe'', not as part of the Army. Subject to rigorous training, they came to be regarded as elite troops, much the same as the paratroopers of the British and American armies. Fallschirmjäger units were awarded 134 Knight's Cross of the Iron Crosses between the years 1940–1945.

In addition to the ''Fallschirmjäger'', there were also the ''Luftwaffe'' Field Divisions, which were organised as basic infantry units but were led by officers with little training for ground combat, and generally performed badly as combat troops as a result. The Hermann Göring ''Panzerdivision'' was also raised and served with distinction in the Italian campaign.

Second World War

Göring was skeptical of Hitler's war plans. He believed Germany was not prepared for a new conflict and, in particular, that his ''Luftwaffe'' was not yet ready to beat the British Royal Air Force (RAF).

However, once Hitler decided on war, Göring supported him completely. On 1 September 1939, the first day of the war, Hitler spoke to the ''Reichstag''. In this speech, he designated Göring as his successor "if anything should befall me."

Initially, decisive German victories followed quickly one after the other. The ''Luftwaffe'' destroyed the Polish Air Force within two weeks. The ''Fallschirmjäger'' seized key airfields in Norway and captured Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium. German air-to-ground attacks served as the "flying artillery" of the Panzer troops in the ''blitzkrieg'' of France. "Leave it to my ''Luftwaffe''" became Göring's perpetual gloat.

After the defeat of France, Hitler awarded Göring the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross for his successful leadership. By a decree on 19 July 1940, Hitler promoted Göring to the rank of ''Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches'' (''Reich'' Marshal of the Greater German ''Reich''), a special rank which made him senior to all other Army and ''Luftwaffe'' Field Marshals. It also reinforced his status as Hitler's chosen successor, as a result of which the ''Führer'' gave Göring personal use of Kransberg Castle.

Göring's political and military careers were at their peak. Göring had already received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 30 September 1939 as Commander in Chief of the ''Luftwaffe''.

Göring promised Hitler that the ''Luftwaffe'' would quickly destroy the RAF, or break British morale with devastating air raids. He personally directed the first attacks on Britain from his private luxury train. But the ''Luftwaffe'' failed to gain control of the skies in the Battle of Britain. This was Hitler's first defeat. Britain withstood the worst ''Luftwaffe'' bombers could do for the eight months of "the ''Blitz''" without being cowed by circumstances. However, the damage inflicted on British cities largely maintained Göring's prestige. The ''Luftwaffe'' conducted bombings of Belgrade in April 1941, and ''Fallschirmjäger'' captured Crete from the British Army the following month.

Eastern front

If Göring had been skeptical about war against Britain and France, he was absolutely certain that a new campaign against the Soviet Union was doomed to defeat. After trying, completely in vain, to convince Hitler to give up Operation Barbarossa, he embraced the campaign. Hitler still relied on him completely. On 29 June, Hitler composed a special 'testament', which was kept secret till the end of the war. This formally designated Göring as "my deputy in all my offices" if Hitler was unable to function as dictator of Germany, and his successor if he died. Ironically, Göring did not know the contents of this testament, which was marked "To be opened only by the ''Reichsmarschall''", until after leaving Berlin in April 1945 for ''Berchtesgaden'', where it had been kept.

The ''Luftwaffe'' shared in the initial victories in the east, destroying thousands of Soviet aircraft. But as Soviet resistance grew and the weather turned bad, the ''Luftwaffe'' became overstretched and exhausted.

Göring by this time had lost interest in administering the ''Luftwaffe''. That duty was left to others like Udet and Jeschonnek. Aircraft production lagged and Udet killed himself in November 1941. Yet Göring persisted in outlandish promises. When the Soviets surrounded a German army in Stalingrad in 1942, Göring encouraged Hitler to fight for the city rather than retreat. He asserted that the ''Luftwaffe'' would deliver per day of supplies to the trapped force. In fact, no more than were ever delivered in a day, and usually much less. While Göring's men struggled to fly in the savage Russian winter, Göring celebrated his 50th birthday.

Göring was in charge of exploiting the vast industrial resources captured during the war, particularly in the Soviet Union. This proved to be an almost total failure, and little of the available potential was effectively harnessed for the service of the German military machine.

Bomber war

On 9 August 1939, Göring boasted "The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Hermann Göring: you can call me Meier!" ("I want to be called Meier if ..." is a German idiom to express that something is impossible. Meier [in several spelling variants] is the second most common surname in Germany.) He also said he would eat his hat.

But as early as 1940, British aircraft raided targets in Germany, debunking Göring's assurance that the ''Reich'' would never be attacked; the British were—throughout the war—destined to be his personal undoing. However, the initial raids were unsuccessful in inflicting significant damage to German infrastructure, allowing Göring to reassure the public especially as the German air defense network improved. However, in 1942 the British Area Bombing Directive was issued, the main workhorse aircraft of the later part of the war came into service (the Halifax and Lancaster made up the backbone of the Command, and had a longer range, higher speed and much greater bomb load than the earlier aircraft; the classic aircraft of the Pathfinders, the de Havilland Mosquito, also made its appearance) and America began transferring long-range strategic bombers to England for further air raids.

By 1942, hundreds of Allied bombers were bombing Germany; occasionally, there were as many as 1,000. The ''Luftwaffe'' responded with night fighters and anti-aircraft guns, but entire cities such as Cologne (Köln) and Hamburg were destroyed anyway. Göring was still nominally in charge, but in practice he had little to do with operations. When Göring visited the devastated cities, civilians called out "Hello, Mr. Meier. How's your hat?" By the end of the war, Berlin's air raid sirens were bitterly known to the city's residents as "Meier's trumpets", or "Meier's hunting horns". Civilians would also call the bomber war "a defeat in every city".

The ''Luftwaffe''s own efforts at having a strategic bomber force had been crippled even before the war began, from the death in 1936 of General Walter Wever, the ''Luftwaffe''s primary promoter for Germany to have a strategic bombing capability, and a subsequent placement of greater value on medium bombers such as the Heinkel He 111, and ''Schnellbomber'' fast medium bombers, such as the Junkers Ju 88. The only German aircraft design of a comparable capability to Allied heavy bombers such as the B-17 to see wartime service, the troubled Heinkel He 177 ''Greif'', had been afflicted with having to use a set of four DB 601 engines paired up into twin "power systems" as the "DB 606", partly due to its mis-assignment as a "giant ''Stuka''" from its beginnings heavily influencing its design, and by September 1942, Goering had roundly derided the DB 606, and its later development, the DB 610, as monstrous "welded-together engines" that could not be properly maintained in service, as installed in the He 177A, the one German aircraft design that Goering is said to have despised the most during the war years.

Göring's prestige, reputation, and influence with Hitler all declined, especially after the Stalingrad debacle. Hitler could not publicly repudiate him without embarrassment, but contact between them largely stopped. Göring withdrew from the military and political scene to enjoy the pleasures of life as a wealthy and powerful man. His reputation for extravagance made him particularly unpopular as ordinary Germans began to suffer deprivation.

End of the war

In 1945, Göring fled the Berlin area with trainloads of treasures for the Nazi alpine resort in ''Berchtesgaden''. Soon afterward, the ''Luftwaffe''s chief of staff, Karl Koller, arrived with unexpected news: Hitler—who had by this time conceded that Germany had lost—had suggested that Göring would be better suited to negotiate peace terms. To Koller, this seemed to indicate that Hitler wanted Göring to take over the leadership of the ''Reich''.

Göring was initially unsure of what to do, largely because he did not want to give Martin Bormann, who now controlled access to Hitler, a window to seize greater power. He thought that if he waited he'd be accused of dereliction of duty. On the other hand, he feared being accused of treason if he did try to assume power. He then pulled his copy of Hitler's secret decree of 1941 from a safe. It clearly stated that Göring was not only Hitler's designated successor, but was to act as his deputy if Hitler ever became incapacitated. Göring, Koller, and Hans Lammers—the state secretary of the ''Reich'' Chancellery—all agreed that Hitler faced almost certain death by staying in Berlin to lead the defence of the capital against the Soviets. They also agreed that by staying in Berlin, Hitler had incapacitated himself from governing and Göring had a clear duty to assume power as Hitler's deputy.

On 23 April, as Soviet troops closed in around Berlin, Göring sent a carefully worded telegram by radio to Hitler, asking Hitler to confirm that he was to take over the "total leadership of the ''Reich''." He added that if he did not hear back from Hitler by 22:00, he would assume Hitler was incapacitated, and would assume leadership of the ''Reich''. A few minutes later, he sent a radio message to Ribbentrop stating that if the foreign minister got no further word, he was to come to ''Berchtesgaden'' immediately.

However, Bormann received the telegram before Hitler did. He portrayed it as an ultimatum to surrender power or face a ''coup d'état''. The message to Ribbentrop, suggesting that Göring was already acting as Hitler's successor, provided further ammunition for Bormann. On 25 April, Hitler issued a telegram to Göring telling him that he had committed "high treason" and gave him the option of resigning all of his offices in exchange for his life. However, not long after that, Bormann ordered the SS in ''Berchtesgaden'' to arrest Göring. In his last will and testament, Hitler dismissed Göring from all of his offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party.

Shortly after Hitler completed his will, Bormann ordered the SS to execute Göring, his wife, and their daughter (Hitler's own goddaughter) if Berlin were to fall. But this order was ignored. Instead, the Görings and their SS captors moved together, to the same ''Schloß Mauterndorf'' where Göring had spent much of his childhood and which he had inherited (along with Burg Veldenstein) from his godfather's widow in 1938. (Göring had arranged for preferential treatment for the woman, and protected her from confiscation and arrest as the widow of a wealthy Jew.)

Capture, trial, and death

Göring surrendered to U.S. soldiers on 9 May 1945 in Bavaria. He was flown by United States Army pilot Mayhew Foster from Austria to Germany, where he was debriefed and then in November of that same year tried in Nuremberg for war crimes. He was the third-highest-ranking Nazi official tried at Nuremberg, behind Reich President (former Admiral) Karl Dönitz and former Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. Göring's last days were spent with Captain Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking American intelligence officer and psychologist, who had access to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert classified Göring as having an I.Q. of 138, the same as Dönitz. Gilbert kept a journal which he later published as ''Nuremberg Diary''. Here he describes Göring on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess:

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In taking the witness stand during his part of the trial, Göring claimed that he was not antisemitic; however, Albert Speer reported that in the prison yard at Nuremberg, after someone made a remark about Jewish survivors in Hungary, he had overheard Göring say, "So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again." Despite his claims of non-involvement, he was confronted with orders he had signed for the murder of Jews and prisoners of war.

Though he defended himself vigorously, and actually appeared to be winning the trial early on (partly by building popularity with the court audience by making jokes and finding holes in the prosecution's case), he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The judgment stated that:

Göring made an appeal, offering to accept the court's death sentence if he were shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused.

Defying the sentence imposed by his captors, he committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged. Göring—who suffered from dermatitis—had hidden two cyanide capsules in jars of opaque skin cream. It has been claimed that Göring befriended U.S. Army Lieutenant Jack G. Wheelis, who was stationed at the Nuremberg Trials and helped Göring obtain cyanide which had been hidden among Göring's personal effects when they were confiscated by the Army. In 2005, former U.S. Army Private Herbert Lee Stivers claimed he gave Göring "medicine" hidden inside a gift fountain pen from a German woman the private had met and flirted with. Stivers served in the 1st Infantry Division's 26th Infantry Regiment, who formed the honor guard for the Nuremberg Trials. Stivers claims to have been unaware of what the "medicine" he delivered actually was until after Göring's death. A major Göring biographer and notorious Holocaust denier, David Irving, has dismissed this claim as pure fabrication. Because he committed suicide, his dead body was displayed by the gallows for the witnesses of the executions.

After their deaths, the bodies of Göring and the other executed Nazi leaders were cremated in the East Cemetery, Munich (''Ostfriedhof''). His ashes were disposed of in the Isar river in Munich.

Quotations

Göring spoke about war and extreme nationalism to Captain Gilbert, as recorded in Gilbert's ''Nuremberg Diary'':

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The well-known quotation, and its variations, is frequently attributed to Göring during the inter-war period. Whether or not he actually used this phrase is unclear; it did not originate with him. The line comes from Nazi playwright Hanns Johst's play ''Schlageter'', "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning" ("Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning"). Nor was Göring the only Nazi official to use this phrase: Rudolf Hess used it as well, and it was a popular cliché in Germany, often in the form: "Wenn ich 'Kultur' höre, nehme ich meine Pistole." ("Whenever I hear 'culture', I take my pistol" or "When I hear of culture, I pick up my gun.")

In film and fiction

He has been portrayed by:

Curly Howard parodied Göring as "Field Marshal Curly Gallstone" - 1940, in the Three Stooges short ''You Nazty Spy!'' and as "Field Marshal Herring" -1941- in the sequel ''I'll Never Heil Again''.

Billy Gilbert parodied Göring as "Minister Herring" - 1940 - Charlie Chaplin's ''The Great Dictator''.

Vernon Dent parodied Göring as "Field Marshal Boring" - 1943 - in the Three Stooges short ''Higher Than a Kite''.

Alex Pope - 1944 ''The Hitler Gang''.

At the beginning of the episode of the Donald Duck cartoon ''Der Fuehrer's Face'', Göring is marching in a procession with other Nazi figures in a dream sequence.

Mel Blanc voiced a bumbling Göring, called "Fatso" by Bugs Bunny, in the Merrie Melody cartoon ''Herr Meets Hare'', directed in 1945 by Friz Freleng.

Jan Werich - 1949, ''Padeniye Berlina'' (both parts)

Kurt Wetzel - 1955, ''Ernst Thälmann - Führer seiner Klasse'' and 1971, ''Liberation''.

Hein Riess - 1969, ''Battle of Britain''.

John Banner - 1970 "Fat Hermann Go Home" "Hogans Heroes"

Barry Primus - 1971, ''Von Richthofen and Brown''.

Pavle Vuisić - 1971, ''Nirnberški epilog''.

David King - 1981 ''The Bunker'' (television movie).

Reinhard Kolldehoff - 1983 The Winds of War (television miniseries).

Joss Ackland - 1988 ''The Man Who Lived at the Ritz'' (television movie).

Volker Spengler - 1996, ''The Ogre'', directed by Volker Schlöndorff, also starring John Malkovich.

Glenn Shadix - 1996, ''The Empty Mirror''.

Brian Cox - 2000, ''Nuremberg'' (television movie), also starring Alec Baldwin and Jill Hennessy.

Chris Larkin - 2003, ''Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' (television movie).

Mathias Gnädinger - 2004, ''Der Untergang''.

Hannes Hellmann - 2006, ''Nuremberg: Goering's Last Stand''.

Robert Pugh in the 2006 BBC docudrama ''Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial''.

Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg in the 2008 film ''Valkyrie''.

Footage of Göring has been included in many films, notably in the 1935 ''Triumph of the Will'' by Leni Riefenstahl.

He was mentioned in Yukio Mishima's novel After the Banquet during the retired Japanese ambassadors' dinner at Setsugoan.

In Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium", set in an alternate history where the two World Wars never happened and there was never a Nazi party, Hermann Göring has a double who is a decent and respectable character.

In the Riverworld Books by Philip Jose Farmer, Göring is one of the support characters.

See also

Air warfare of World War II

Glossary of Nazi Germany

Glossary of German military terms

List of Nazi Party leaders and officials

Werner G. Goering - Hermann Göring's American born nephew, an officer in the USAAF and a B-17 commander flying missions over Germany in World War II.

Notes

Sources

Excerpt from ''Germany Reborn''

Weal, John. ''Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstörer Aces World War Two''. Osprey, 1999. ISBN 1855327538

External links

TRIAL: Göring trial

"The Iron Knight"

''Germany Reborn'' by Hermann Göring

Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 9 Transcript of Goering's testimony at the trial

Göring's last prison interview he gave to US Army Intelligence before the Nuremberg Trials published by World War II Magazine

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Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Albert Speer
Office	Minister of Armaments and War Production
Term start	February 8, 1942
Term end	May 23, 1945
President	Adolf Hitler (Führer)Karl Dönitz
Chancellor	Adolf HitlerLutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (Leading Minister)
Predecessor	Fritz Todt (as Minister of Armaments and Munitions)
Successor	None
Birth date	March 19, 1905
Birth place	Mannheim, Baden, Germany
Death date	September 01, 1981
Death place	London, United Kingdom
Nationality	German
Party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi)
Spouse	Margarete Weber (1928–1981, survived as widow)
Children	Albert Speer, Hilde Schramm, Fritz Speer, Margret Nissen, Arnold Speer, Ernst Speer
Alma mater	Technical University of BerlinTechnical University of MunichKarlsruhe Institute of Technology
Profession	Architect, author
Signature	Albert Speer Signature.svg
Footnotes	}}

Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, (; March 19, 1905 – September 1, 1981) was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepted responsibility at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs for crimes of the Nazi regime. His level of involvement in the persecution of the Jews and his level of knowledge of the Holocaust remain matters of dispute.

Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching him on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct a number of structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the ''Zeppelinfeld'' stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a grand scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards, and a reorganized transportation system.

As Hitler's Minister of Armaments and War Production, Speer was so successful that Germany's war production continued to increase despite massive and devastating Allied bombing. After the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Nazi regime, principally for the use of forced labor. He served his full sentence, most of it at Spandau Prison in West Berlin.

Following his release from Spandau in 1966, Speer published two bestselling autobiographical works, ''Inside the Third Reich'' and ''Spandau: The Secret Diaries'', detailing his often close personal relationship with Hitler, and providing readers and historians with a unique perspective on the workings of the Nazi regime. He later wrote a third book, ''Infiltration'', about the SS. Speer died of natural causes in 1981 while on a visit to London, England.

Early years

Speer was born in Mannheim, into a wealthy middle class family. He was the second of three sons of Albert and Luise Speer. In 1918, the family moved permanently to their summer home, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, in Heidelberg. According to Henry T. King, deputy prosecutor at Nürnberg who later wrote a book about Speer, "Love and warmth were lacking in the household of Speer's youth." Speer was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering. Speer's Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual for Germany, and Speer was a participant. He wanted to become a mathematician, but his father said if Speer chose this occupation he would "lead a life without money, without a position, and without a future". Instead, Speer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and studied architecture.

Speer began his architectural studies at the University of Karlsruhe instead of a more highly acclaimed institution because the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 limited his parents' income. In 1924 when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the "much more reputable" Technical University of Munich. In 1925 he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, whom Speer greatly admired. After passing his exams in 1927, Speer became Tessenow's assistant, a high honor for a man of 22. As such, Speer taught some of Tessenow's classes while continuing his own postgraduate studies. In Munich, and continuing in Berlin, Speer began a close friendship, ultimately spanning over 50 years, with Rudolf Wolters, who also studied under Tessenow.

In mid-1922, Speer began courting Margarete (Margret) Weber (1905–1987). The relationship was frowned upon by Speer's class-conscious mother, who felt that the Webers were socially inferior (Weber's father was a successful craftsman who employed 50 workers). Despite this opposition, the two married in Berlin on August 28, 1928; seven years were to elapse before Margarete Speer was invited to stay at her in-laws' home.

Nazi architect

Joining the Nazis (1930–1934)

Speer stated he was apolitical when he was a young man, and that he attended a Berlin Nazi rally in December 1930 at the urging of some of his students. He was surprised to find Hitler dressed in a neat blue suit, rather than the brown uniform seen on Nazi Party posters, and was greatly impressed, not only with Hitler's proposals, but also with the man himself. Several weeks later he attended another rally: this one was presided over by Joseph Goebbels. Speer was disturbed by the way Goebbels whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Despite this unease, Speer could not shake the impression Hitler had made on him. On March 1, 1931, he applied to join the Nazi Party and became member number 474,481.

Speer's first Nazi Party position was as head of the Party's motorist association for the Berlin suburb of Wannsee; he was the only Nazi in the town with a car. Speer reported to the Party's leader for the West End of Berlin, Karl Hanke, who hired Speer—without fee—to redecorate a villa he had just rented. Hanke was enthusiastic about the resulting work.

In 1931, Speer surrendered his position as Tessenow's assistant because of pay cuts and moved to Mannheim, hoping to use his father's connections to get commissions. He had little success, and his father gave him a job as manager of the elder Speer's properties. In July 1932, the Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party prior to the ''Reichstag'' elections. While they were there, Hanke recommended the young architect to Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters. Speer, who had been about to leave with his wife for a vacation in East Prussia, agreed to do the work. When the commission was completed, Speer returned to Mannheim and remained there as Hitler took office in January 1933.

After the Nazis took control, Hanke recalled Speer to Berlin. Goebbels, the new Propaganda Minister, commissioned Speer to renovate his Ministry's building on Wilhelmplatz. Speer also designed the 1933 May Day commemoration in Berlin. In ''Inside the Third Reich'', he wrote that, on seeing the original design for the Berlin rally on Hanke's desk, he remarked that the site would resemble a ''Schützenfest'' – a rifle club meet. Hanke, now Goebbels' State Secretary, challenged him to create a better design. As Speer learned later, Hitler was enthusiastic about Speer's design (which used giant flags), though Goebbels took credit for it. Tessenow was dismissive: "Do you think you have created something? It's showy, that's all."

The organizers of the 1933 Nürnberg Nazi Party rally asked Speer to submit designs for the rally, bringing him into contact with Hitler for the first time. Neither the organizers nor Rudolf Hess were willing to decide whether to approve the plans, and Hess sent Speer to Hitler's Munich apartment to seek his approval. When Speer entered, the new Chancellor was busy cleaning a pistol, which he briefly laid aside to cast a short, interested glance at the plans, approving them without even looking at the young architect. This work won Speer his first national post, as Nazi Party "Commissioner for the Artistic and Technical Presentation of Party Rallies and Demonstrations".

Speer's next major assignment was as liaison to the Berlin building trades for Paul Troost's renovation of the Chancellery. As Chancellor, Hitler had a residence in the building and came by every day to be briefed by Speer and the building supervisor on the progress of the renovations. After one of these briefings, Hitler invited Speer to lunch, to the architect's great excitement. Hitler evinced considerable interest in Speer during the luncheon, and later told Speer that he had been looking for a young architect capable of carrying out his architectural dreams for the new Germany. Speer quickly became part of Hitler's inner circle; he was expected to call on Hitler in the morning for a walk or chat, to provide consultation on architectural matters, and to discuss Hitler's ideas. Most days he was invited to dinner.

The two men found much in common: Hitler spoke of Speer as a "kindred spirit" for whom he had always maintained "the warmest human feelings". The young, ambitious architect was dazzled by his rapid rise and close proximity to Hitler, which guaranteed him a flood of commissions from the government and from the highest ranks of the Party. Speer testified at Nürnberg, "I belonged to a circle which consisted of other artists and his personal staff. If Hitler had had any friends at all, I certainly would have been one of his close friends."

First Architect of the Third Reich (1934–1939)

When Troost died on January 21, 1934, Speer effectively replaced him as the Party's chief architect. Hitler appointed Speer as head of the Chief Office for Construction, which placed him nominally on Hess's staff.

One of Speer's first commissions after Troost's death was the ''Zeppelinfeld'' stadium—the Nürnberg parade grounds seen in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece ''Triumph of the Will''. This huge work was capable of holding 340,000 people. The tribune was influenced by the Pergamon Altar in Anatolia, but was magnified to an enormous scale. Speer insisted that as many events as possible be held at night, both to give greater prominence to his lighting effects and to hide the individual Nazis, many of whom were overweight. Speer surrounded the site with 130 anti-aircraft searchlights. This created the effect of a "cathedral of light" or, as it was called by British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson, a "cathedral of ice". Speer described this as his most beautiful work, and as the only one that stood the test of time.

Nürnberg was to be the site of many more official Nazi buildings, most of which were never built; for example, the German Stadium would have accommodated 400,000 spectators, while an even larger rally ground would have held half a million Nazis. While planning these structures, Speer invented the concept of "ruin value": that major buildings should be constructed in such a way that they would leave aesthetically pleasing ruins for thousands of years into the future. Such ruins would be a testament to the greatness of the Third Reich, just as ancient Greek or Roman ruins were symbols of the greatness of those civilizations. Hitler enthusiastically embraced this concept, and ordered that all the Reich's important buildings be constructed in accord with it.

Speer could not avoid seeing the brutal excesses of the Nazi regime. Shortly after Hitler consolidated power in the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler ordered Speer to take workmen and go to the building housing the offices of Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen to begin its conversion into a security headquarters, even though it was still occupied by von Papen's officials. Speer and his group entered the building, to be confronted with a pool of blood, apparently from the body of Herbert von Bose, von Papen's secretary, who had been killed there. Speer related that the sight had no effect on him, other than to cause him to avoid that room.

When Hitler deprecated Werner March's design for the Olympic Stadium for the 1936 Summer Olympics as too modern, Speer modified the plans by adding a stone exterior. Speer designed the German Pavilion for the 1937 international exposition in Paris. The German and Soviet pavilion sites were opposite each other. On learning (through a clandestine look at the Soviet plans) that the Soviet design included two colossal figures seemingly about to overrun the German site, Speer modified his design to include a cubic mass which would check their advance, with a huge eagle on top looking down on the Soviet figures. Both pavilions were awarded gold medals for their designs. Speer would also receive, from Hitler Youth Leader and later fellow Spandau prisoner Baldur von Schirach, the Golden Hitler Youth Honor Badge with oak leaves.

In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital with the rank of undersecretary of state in the Reich government. The position carried with it extraordinary powers over the Berlin city government and made Speer answerable to Hitler alone. It also made Speer a member of the ''Reichstag'', though the body by then had little effective power. Hitler ordered Speer to make plans to rebuild Berlin. The plans centered on a three-mile long grand boulevard running from north to south, which Speer called the ''Prachtstrasse'', or Street of Magnificence; he also referred to it as the "North-South Axis". At the north end of the boulevard, Speer planned to build the ''Volkshalle'', a huge assembly hall with a dome which would have been over high, with floor space for 180,000 people. At the southern end of the avenue would be a huge triumphal arch; it would be almost high, and able to fit the Arc de Triomphe inside its opening. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the postponement, and eventual abandonment, of these plans. Part of the land for the boulevard was to be obtained by consolidating Berlin's railway system. Speer hired Wolters as part of his design team, with special responsibility for the ''Prachtstrasse''. When Speer's father saw the model for the new Berlin, he said to his son, "You've all gone completely insane."

In January 1938, Hitler asked Speer to build a new Reich Chancellery on the same site as the existing structure, and said he needed it for urgent foreign policy reasons no later than his next New Year's reception for diplomats on January 10, 1939. This was a huge undertaking, especially since the existing Chancellery was in full operation. After consultation with his assistants, Speer agreed. Although the site could not be cleared until April, Speer was successful in building the large, impressive structure in nine months. The structure included the "Marble Gallery": at 146 metres long, almost twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Speer employed thousands of workers in two shifts. Hitler, who had remained away from the project, was overwhelmed when Speer turned it over, fully furnished, two days early. In appreciation for the architect's work on the Chancellery, Hitler awarded Speer the Nazi Golden Party Badge. Tessenow was less impressed, suggesting to Speer that he should have taken nine years over the project. The second Chancellery was damaged by the Battle of Berlin in 1945 and was eventually dismantled by the Soviets, its stone used for a war memorial.

During the Chancellery project, the pogrom of Kristallnacht took place. Speer would make no mention of it in the first draft of ''Inside the Third Reich'', and it was only on the urgent advice of his publisher that he added a mention of seeing the ruins of the Central Synagogue in Berlin from his car.

Speer was under significant psychological pressure during this period of his life. He would later remember:

Soon after Hitler had given me the first large architectural commissions, I began to suffer from anxiety in long tunnels, in airplanes, or in small rooms. My heart would begin to race, I would become breathless, the diaphragm would seem to grow heavy, and I would get the impression that my blood pressure was rising tremendously ... Anxiety amidst all my freedom and power!

Wartime architect (1939–1942)

Speer supported the German invasion of Poland and subsequent war, though he recognized that it would lead to the postponement, at the least, of his architectural dreams. In his later years, Speer, talking with his biographer-to-be Gitta Sereny, explained how he felt in 1939: "Of course I was perfectly aware that [Hitler] sought world domination ... [A]t that time I asked for nothing better. That was the whole point of my buildings. They would have looked grotesque if Hitler had sat still in Germany. All I ''wanted'' was for this great man to dominate the globe."

Speer placed his department at the disposal of the ''Wehrmacht''. When Hitler remonstrated, and said it was not for Speer to decide how his workers should be used, Speer simply ignored him. Among Speer's innovations were quick-reaction squads to construct roads or clear away debris; before long, these units would be used to clear bomb sites. As the war progressed, initially to great German success, Speer continued preliminary work on the Berlin and Nürnberg plans, at Hitler's insistence, but failed to convince him of the need to suspend peacetime construction projects. Speer also oversaw the construction of buildings for the ''Wehrmacht'' and ''Luftwaffe'', and developed a considerable organization to deal with this work.

In 1940, Joseph Stalin proposed that Speer pay a visit to Moscow. Stalin had been particularly impressed by Speer's work in Paris, and wished to meet the "Architect of the Reich". Hitler, alternating between amusement and anger, did not allow Speer to go, fearing that Stalin would put Speer in a "rat hole" until a new Moscow arose. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Speer came to doubt, despite Hitler's reassurances, that his projects for Berlin would ever be completed.

Minister of Armaments

Appointment and increasing power

On February 8, 1942, Minister of Armaments Fritz Todt died in a plane crash shortly after taking off from Hitler's eastern headquarters at Rastenburg. Speer, who had arrived in Rastenburg the previous evening, had accepted Todt's offer to fly with him to Berlin, but had canceled some hours before takeoff (Speer stated in his memoirs that the cancellation was because of exhaustion from travel and a late-night meeting with Hitler). Later that day, Hitler appointed Speer as Todt's successor to all of his posts. In ''Inside the Third Reich'', Speer recounts his meeting with Hitler and his reluctance to take ministerial office, only doing so because Hitler commanded it. Speer also states that Hermann Göring raced to Hitler's headquarters on hearing of Todt's death, hoping to claim Todt's powers. Hitler instead presented Göring with the ''fait accompli'' of Speer's appointment.

At the time of Speer's accession to the office, the German economy, unlike the British one, was not fully geared for war production. Consumer goods were still being produced at nearly as high a level as during peacetime. No fewer than five "Supreme Authorities" had jurisdiction over armament production—one of which, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, had declared in November 1941 that conditions did not permit an increase in armament production. Few women were employed in the factories, which were running only one shift. One evening soon after his appointment, Speer went to visit a Berlin armament factory; he found no one on the premises.

Speer overcame these difficulties by centralizing power over the war economy in himself. Factories were given autonomy, or as Speer put it, "self-responsibility", and each factory concentrated on a single product. Backed by Hitler's strong support (the dictator stated, "Speer, I'll sign anything that comes from you"), he divided the armament field according to weapon system, with experts rather than civil servants overseeing each department. No department head could be older than 55—anyone older being susceptible to "routine and arrogance"—and no deputy older than 40. Over these departments was a central planning committee headed by Speer, which took increasing responsibility for war production, and as time went by, for the German economy itself. According to the minutes of a conference at ''Wehrmacht'' High Command in March 1942, "It is only Speer's word that counts nowadays. He can interfere in all departments. Already he overrides all departments ... On the whole, Speer's attitude is to the point." Goebbels would note in his diary in June 1943, "Speer is still tops with the ''Führer''. He is truly a genius with organization." Speer was so successful in his position that by late 1943, he was widely regarded among the Nazi elite as a possible successor to Hitler.

While Speer had tremendous power, he was of course subordinate to Hitler. Nazi officials sometimes went around Speer by seeking direct orders from the dictator. When Speer ordered peacetime building work suspended, the ''Gauleiters'' (Nazi Party district leaders) obtained an exemption for their pet projects. When Speer sought the appointment of Hanke as a labor czar to optimize the use of German labor, Hitler, under the influence of Martin Bormann, instead appointed Fritz Sauckel. Rather than increasing female labor and taking other steps to better organize German labor, as Speer favored, Sauckel advocated importing labor from the occupied nations – and did so, obtaining workers for (among other things) Speer's armament factories, using the most brutal methods.

On December 10, 1943, Speer visited the underground Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory that used concentration camp labor. Shocked by the conditions there (5.7 percent of the work force died that month), and to ensure the workers were in good enough shape to perform the labor, Speer ordered improved conditions for the workers and the construction of the above-ground Dora camp. In spite of these changes, half of the workers at Mittelwerk eventually died. Speer later commented, "[t]he conditions for these prisoners were in fact barbarous, and a sense of profound involvement and personal guilt seizes me whenever I think of them."

By 1943, the Allies had gained air superiority over Germany, and bombings of German cities and industry had become commonplace. However, the Allies in their strategic bombing campaign did not concentrate on industry, and Speer, with his improvisational skill, was able to overcome bombing losses. In spite of these losses, German production of tanks more than doubled in 1943, production of planes increased by 80 percent, and production time for ''Kriegsmarine'''s submarines was reduced from one year to two months. Production would continue to increase until the second half of 1944, by which time enough equipment to supply 270 army divisions was being produced—although the ''Wehrmacht'' had only 150 divisions in the field.

In January 1944, Speer fell ill with complications from an inflamed knee, and was away from the office for three months. During his absence, his political rivals (mainly Göring, and Martin Bormann), attempted to have some of his powers permanently transferred to them. According to Speer, SS chief Heinrich Himmler tried to have him physically isolated by having Himmler's personal physician Karl Gebhardt treat him, though his "care" did not improve his health. Speer's wife and friends managed to have his case transferred to his friend Dr. Karl Brandt, and he slowly recovered. In April, Speer's rivals for power succeeded in having him deprived of responsibility for construction, and Speer promptly sent Hitler a bitter letter, concluding with an offer of his resignation. Judging Speer indispensable to the war effort, Field Marshal Erhard Milch persuaded Hitler to try to get his minister to reconsider. Hitler sent Milch to Speer with a message not addressing the dispute but instead stating that he still regarded Speer as highly as ever. According to Milch, upon hearing the message, Speer burst out, "The ''Führer'' can kiss my ass!" After a lengthy argument, Milch persuaded Speer to withdraw his offer of resignation, on the condition his powers were restored. On April 23, 1944, Speer went to see Hitler who agreed that "everything [will] stay as it was, [Speer will] remain the head of all German construction". According to Speer, while he was successful in this debate, Hitler had also won, "because he wanted and needed me back in his corner, and he got me".

Fall of the Reich

Speer's name was included on the list of members of a post-Hitler government drawn up by the conspirators behind the July 1944 assassination plot to kill Hitler. The list had a question mark and the annotation "to be won over" by his name, which likely saved him from the extensive purges that followed the scheme's failure.

By February 1945, Speer, who had long concluded that the war was lost, was working to supply areas about to be occupied with food and materials to get them through the hard times ahead. On March 19, 1945, Hitler issued his Nero Decree, ordering a scorched earth policy in both Germany and the occupied territories. Hitler's order, by its terms, deprived Speer of any power to interfere with the decree, and Speer went to confront Hitler, telling him the war was lost. Hitler gave Speer 24 hours to reconsider his position, and when the two met the following day, Speer answered, "I stand unconditionally behind you." However, he demanded the exclusive power to implement the Nero Decree, and Hitler signed an order to that effect. Using this order, Speer worked to persuade generals and ''Gauleiters'' to evade the Nero Decree and avoid needless sacrifice of personnel and destruction of industry that would be needed after the war.

Speer managed to reach a relatively safe area near Hamburg as the Nazi regime finally collapsed, but decided on a final, risky visit to Berlin to see Hitler one more time. Speer stated at Nuremberg, "I felt that it was my duty not to run away like a coward, but to stand up to him again." Speer visited the ''Führerbunker'' on April 22. Hitler seemed calm and somewhat distracted, and the two had a long, disjointed conversation in which the dictator defended his actions and informed Speer of his intent to commit suicide and have his body burned. In the published edition of ''Inside the Third Reich'', Speer relates that he confessed to Hitler that he had defied the Nero Decree, but then assured Hitler of his personal loyalty, bringing tears to the dictator's eyes. Speer biographer Gitta Sereny argued, "Psychologically, it is possible that this is the way he remembered the occasion, because it was how he would have liked to behave, and the way he would have liked Hitler to react. But the fact is that none of it happened; our witness to this is Speer himself." Sereny goes on to note that Speer's original draft of his memoirs lacks the confession and Hitler's tearful reaction, and contains an explicit denial that any confession or emotional exchange took place, as had been alleged in a French magazine article.

The following morning, Speer left the ''Führerbunker'', with Hitler curtly bidding him farewell. Speer toured the damaged Chancellery one last time before leaving Berlin to return to Hamburg. On April 29, the day before his suicide, Hitler prepared his final political testament. That document specified that Speer was to be replaced by his subordinate, Karl-Otto Saur.

Nuremberg trial

After Hitler's death, Speer offered his services to the so-called Flensburg Government, headed by Hitler's successor, Karl Dönitz, and took a significant role in that short-lived regime. On May 15, the Americans arrived and asked Speer if he would be willing to provide information on the effects of the air war. Speer agreed, and over the next several days, provided information on a broad range of subjects. On May 23, two weeks after the surrender of German troops, the Allies arrested the members of the Flensburg Government and brought Nazi Germany to a formal end.

Speer was taken to several internment centers for Nazi officials and interrogated. In September 1945, he was told that he would be tried for war crimes, and several days later, he was taken to Nuremberg and incarcerated there. Speer was indicted on all four possible counts: first, participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace, second, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace, third, war crimes, and lastly, crimes against humanity.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, alleged, "Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation." Speer's attorney, Dr. Hans Flächsner, presented Speer as an artist thrust into political life, who had always remained a non-ideologue and who had been promised by Hitler that he could return to architecture after the war. During his testimony, Speer accepted responsibility for the Nazi regime's actions:

In political life, there is a responsibility for a man's own sector. For that he is of course fully responsible. But beyond that there is a collective responsibility when he has been one of the leaders. Who else is to be held responsible for the course of events, if not the closest associates around the Chief of State?

An observer at the trial, journalist and author William L. Shirer, wrote that, compared to his codefendants, Speer “made the most straightforward impression of all and ... during the long trial spoke honestly and with no attempt to shirk his responsibility and his guilt”. Speer also testified that he had planned to kill Hitler in early 1945 by dropping a canister of poison gas into the bunker's air intake. He said his efforts were frustrated by a high wall that had been built around the air intake. Speer stated his motive was despair at realizing that Hitler intended to take the German people down with him. Speer's supposed assassination plan subsequently met with some skepticism, with Speer's architectural rival Hermann Giesler sneering, "the second most powerful man in the state did not have a ladder."

Speer was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, though he was acquitted on the other two counts. On October 1, 1946, he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. While three of the eight judges (two Soviet and one American) initially advocated the death penalty for Speer, the other judges did not, and a compromise sentence was reached "after two days' discussion and some rather bitter horse-trading".

The court's judgment stated that:

... in the closing stages of the war [Speer] was one of the few men who had the courage to tell Hitler that the war was lost and to take steps to prevent the senseless destruction of production facilities, both in occupied territories and in Germany. He carried out his opposition to Hitler's scorched earth program ... by deliberately sabotaging it at considerable personal risk.

Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (including Bormann, in absentia) and three acquitted; only seven of the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment. They remained in the cells at Nuremberg as the Allies debated where, and under what conditions, they should be incarcerated.

Imprisonment

:''For additional detail on Speer's time at Spandau Prison, see Rudolf Wolters#Spandau years'' On July 18, 1947, Speer and his six fellow prisoners, all former high officials of the Nazi regime, were flown from Nuremberg to Berlin under heavy guard. The prisoners were taken to Spandau Prison in the British Sector of what would become West Berlin, where they would be designated by number, with Speer given Number Five. Initially, the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement for all but half an hour a day, and were not permitted to address each other or their guards. As time passed, the strict regimen was relaxed, especially during the three months in four that the three Western powers were in control; the four occupying powers took overall control on a monthly rotation. Speer considered himself an outcast among his fellow prisoners for his acceptance of responsibility at Nuremberg.

Speer made a deliberate effort to make as productive a use of his time as possible. He wrote, "I am obsessed with the idea of using this time of confinement for writing a book of major importance ... That could mean transforming prison cell into scholar's den." The prisoners were forbidden to write memoirs, and mail was severely limited and censored. However, as a result of an offer from a sympathetic orderly, Speer was able to have his writings, which eventually amounted to 20,000 sheets, sent to Wolters. By 1954, Speer had completed his memoirs, which became the basis of ''Inside the Third Reich'', and which Wolters arranged to have transcribed onto 1,100 typewritten pages. He was also able to send letters and financial instructions, and to obtain writing paper and letters from the outside. His many letters to his children, all secretly transmitted, eventually formed the basis for ''Spandau: The Secret Diaries''.

With the draft memoir complete and clandestinely transmitted, Speer sought a new project. He found one while taking his daily exercise, walking in circles around the prison yard. Measuring the path's distance carefully, Speer set out to walk the distance from Berlin to Heidelberg. He then expanded his idea into a worldwide journey, visualizing the places he was "traveling" through while walking the path around the prison yard. Speer ordered guidebooks and other materials about the nations through which he imagined he was passing, so as to envisage as accurate a picture as possible. Meticulously calculating every meter traveled, and mapping distances to the real-world geography, he began in northern Germany, passed through Asia by a southern route before entering Siberia, then crossed the Bering Strait and continued southwards, finally ending his sentence 35 kilometers south of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Speer devoted much of his time and energy to reading. Though the prisoners brought some books with them in their personal property, Spandau Prison had no library so books were sent from Spandau's municipal library. From 1952 the prisoners were also able to order books from the Berlin central library in Wilmersdorf. Speer was a voracious reader and he completed well over 500 books in the first three years at Spandau alone. He read classic novels, travelogues, books on ancient Egypt, and biographies of such figures as Lucas Cranach, Friedrich Preller, and Genghis Khan. Speer took to the prison garden for enjoyment and work, at first to do something constructive while afflicted with writer's block. He was allowed to build an ambitious garden, transforming what he initially described as a "wilderness" into what the American commander at Spandau described as "Speer's Garden of Eden".

Speer's supporters maintained a continual call for his release. Among those who pledged support for Speer's sentence to be commuted were Charles de Gaulle, U.S. diplomat George Ball, former U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy, and former Nuremberg prosecutor Hartley Shawcross. Willy Brandt was a strong advocate of Speer's, supporting his release, sending flowers to his daughter on the day of his release, and putting an end to the de-Nazification proceedings against Speer, which could have caused his property to be confiscated. A reduced sentence required the consent of all four of the occupying powers, and the Soviets adamantly opposed any such proposal. Speer served his full sentence, and was released on the stroke of midnight as October 1, 1966 began.

Release and later life

Speer's release from prison was a worldwide media event, as reporters and photographers crowded both the street outside Spandau and the lobby of the Berlin hotel where Speer spent his first hours of freedom in over 20 years. However, Speer said little, reserving most comments for a major interview published in ''Der Spiegel'' in November 1966, in which he again took personal responsibility for crimes of the Nazi regime. Abandoning plans to return to architecture (two proposed partners died shortly before his release), he revised his Spandau writings into two autobiographical books, and later researched and published a third work, about Himmler and the SS. His books, most notably ''Inside the Third Reich'' (in German, ''Erinnerungen'', or ''Reminiscences'') and ''Spandau: The Secret Diaries'', provide a unique and personal look into the personalities of the Nazi era, and have become much valued by historians. Speer was aided in shaping the works by Joachim Fest and Wolf Jobst Siedler from the publishing house Ullstein. However, Speer found himself unable to re-establish his relationship with his children, even with his son Albert, who had also become an architect. According to Speer's daughter Hilde, "One by one my sister and brothers gave up. There was no communication."

Following the publication of his bestselling books, Speer donated a considerable amount of money to Jewish charities. According to Siedler, these donations were as high as 80% of his royalties. Speer kept the donations anonymous, both for fear of rejection, and for fear of being called a hypocrite.

As early as 1953, when Wolters strongly objected to Speer referring to Hitler in the memoirs draft as a criminal, Speer had predicted that were the writings to be published, he would lose a "good many friends". This came to pass, as following the publication of ''Inside the Third Reich'', close friends, such as Wolters and sculptor Arno Breker, distanced themselves from him. Hans Baur, Hitler's personal pilot, suggested, "Speer must have taken leave of his senses." Wolters wondered that Speer did not now "walk through life in a hair shirt, distributing his fortune among the victims of National Socialism, forswear all the vanities and pleasures of life and live on locusts and wild honey".

Speer made himself widely available to historians and other enquirers. He did an extensive, in-depth interview for the June 1971 issue of ''Playboy'' magazine, in which he stated, "If I didn't see it, then it was because I didn't want to see it." In October 1973, Speer made his first trip to Britain, flying to London under an assumed name to be interviewed on the BBC ''Midweek'' programme by Ludovic Kennedy. Upon arrival, he was detained for almost 8 hours at Heathrow Airport when British immigration authorities discovered his true identity. The Home Secretary, Robert Carr, allowed Speer into the country for 48 hours. While in London eight years later to participate in the BBC ''Newsnight'' programme, Speer suffered a stroke and died on September 1, 1981. Speer had formed a relationship with a German-born Englishwoman, and was with her at the time of his death.

Even to the end of his life, Speer continued to question his actions under Hitler. In his final book, ''Infiltration'', he asks, "What would have happened if Hitler had asked me to make decisions that required the utmost hardness? ... How far would I have gone? ... If I had occupied a different position, to what extent would I have ordered atrocities if Hitler had told me to do so?" Speer leaves the questions unanswered.

Legacy and controversy

The view of Speer as an unpolitical "miracle man" is challenged by Yale historian Adam Tooze. In his 2006 book, ''The Wages of Destruction'', Tooze, following Gitta Sereny, argues that Speer's ideological commitment to the Nazi cause was greater than he claimed. Tooze further contends that an insufficiently challenged Speer "mythology" (partly fostered by Speer himself through politically-motivated, tendentious use of statistics and other propaganda) had led many historians to assign Speer far more credit for the increases in armaments production than was warranted and give insufficient consideration to the "highly political" function of the so-called armaments miracle.

Architectural legacy

Little remains of Speer's personal architectural works, other than the plans and photographs. No buildings designed by Speer in the Nazi era remain in Berlin; a double row of lampposts along the Strasse des 17. Juni designed by Speer still stands. The tribune of the ''Zeppelinfeld'' stadium in Nuremberg, though partly demolished, may also be seen. Speer's work may also be seen in London, where he redesigned the interior of the German Embassy to the United Kingdom, then located at 7–9 Carlton House Terrace. Since 1967, it has served as the offices of the Royal Society. His work there, stripped of its Nazi fixtures and partially covered by carpets, survives in part.

Another legacy was the ''Arbeitsstab Wiederaufbau zerstörter Städte'' (Working group on Reconstruction of destroyed cities), authorized by Speer in 1943 to rebuild bombed German cities to make them more livable in the age of the automobile. Headed by Wolters, the working group took a possible military defeat into their calculations. The ''Arbeitsstab'''s recommendations served as the basis of the postwar redevelopment plans in many cities, and ''Arbeitsstab'' members became prominent in the rebuilding.

Actions regarding the Jews

As General Building Inspector, Speer was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement. From 1939 onwards, the Department used the Nuremberg Laws to evict Jewish tenants of non-Jewish landlords in Berlin, to make way for non-Jewish tenants displaced by redevelopment or bombing. Eventually, 75,000 Jews were displaced by these measures. Speer was aware of these activities, and inquired as to their progress. At least one original memo from Speer so inquiring still exists, as does the ''Chronicle'' of the Department's activities, kept by Wolters.

Following his release from Spandau, Speer presented to the German Federal Archives an edited version of the ''Chronicle'', stripped by Wolters of any mention of the Jews. When David Irving discovered discrepancies between the edited ''Chronicle'' and other documents, Wolters explained the situation to Speer, who responded by suggesting to Wolters that the relevant pages of the original ''Chronicle'' should "cease to exist". Wolters did not destroy the ''Chronicle'', and, as his friendship with Speer deteriorated, allowed access to the original ''Chronicle'' to doctoral student Matthias Schmidt (who, after obtaining his doctorate, developed his thesis into a book, ''Albert Speer: The End of a Myth''). Speer considered Wolters' actions to be a "betrayal" and a "stab in the back". The original ''Chronicle'' reached the Archives in 1983, after both Speer and Wolters had died.

Knowledge of the Holocaust

Speer maintained at Nuremberg and in his memoirs that he had no knowledge of the Holocaust. In ''Inside the Third Reich'', he wrote that in mid-1944, he was told by Hanke (by then ''Gauleiter'' of Lower Silesia) that the minister should never accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in neighboring Upper Silesia, as "he had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe". Speer later concluded that Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz, and blamed himself for not inquiring further of Hanke or seeking information from Himmler or Hitler:

These seconds [when Hanke told Speer this, and Speer did not inquire] were uppermost in my mind when I stated to the international court at the Nuremberg Trial that, as an important member of the leadership of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened. For from that moment on I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I had closed my eyes ... Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense.

Much of the controversy over Speer's knowledge of the Holocaust has centered on his presence at the Posen Conference on October 6, 1943, at which Himmler gave a speech detailing the ongoing Holocaust to Nazi leaders. Himmler said, "The grave decision had to be taken to cause this people to vanish from the earth ... In the lands we occupy, the Jewish question will be dealt with by the end of the year." Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and Himmler seems to address him directly. In ''Inside the Third Reich'', Speer mentions his own address to the officials (which took place earlier in the day) but does not mention Himmler's speech.

In 1971, American historian Erich Goldhagen published an article arguing that Speer was present for Himmler's speech. According to Fest in his biography of Speer, "Goldhagen's accusation certainly would have been more convincing" had he not placed supposed incriminating statements linking Speer with the Holocaust in quotation marks, attributed to Himmler, which were in fact invented by Goldhagen. In response, after considerable research in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, Speer said he had left Posen around noon (long before Himmler's speech) in order to journey to Hitler's headquarters at Rastenburg. In ''Inside the Third Reich'', published before the Goldhagen article, Speer recalled that on the evening after the conference, many Nazi officials were so drunk that they needed help boarding the special train which was to take them to a meeting with Hitler. One of his biographers, Dan van der Vat, suggests this necessarily implies he must have still been present at Posen then, and must have heard Himmler's speech. In response to Goldhagen's article, Speer had alleged that in writing ''Inside the Third Reich'', he erred in reporting an incident that happened at another conference at Posen a year later, as happening in 1943.

In 2005, British newspaper ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported that documents had surfaced indicating that Speer had approved the allocation of materials for the expansion of Auschwitz after two of his assistants toured the facility on a day when almost a thousand Jews were murdered. The documents supposedly bore annotations in Speer's own handwriting. Speer biographer Gitta Sereny stated that, due to his workload, Speer would not have been personally aware of such activities.

The debate over Speer's knowledge of, or complicity in, the Holocaust made him a symbol for people who were involved with the Nazi regime yet did not have (or claimed not to have had) an active part in the regime's atrocities. As film director Heinrich Breloer remarked, "[Speer created] a market for people who said, 'Believe me, I didn't know anything about [the Holocaust]. Just look at the ''Führer's'' friend, he didn't know about it either.

See also

Glossary of Nazi Germany

List of Nazi Party leaders and officials

Notes

References

|isbn=0-297-00015-2 }}. Republished in paperback in 1997 by Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-684-82949-4 :(Original German edition: ) :(Original German edition: ) :(Original German edition: )

External links

BBC Four – Audio Interviews

Audio interviews with Andrew Birkin, 1971

Albert Speer's Berlin: Interactive maps and 3D reconstructions of Speer's buildings in Berlin

Review of ''Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth'' in Foreign Affairs

''Speer und Er'' docudrama with allegations on his role e.g. construction of Auschwitz

Affidavit of Albert Speer: affidavit, sworn and signed at Munich on June 15, 1977, translated from the German original.

Category:1905 births Category:1981 deaths Category:German architects Category:German people convicted of crimes against humanity Category:German people of World War II Category:German prisoners and detainees Category:German writers Category:Nazi architecture Category:Historians of Nazism Category:Nazi Germany ministers Category:Nazi propagandists Category:Neoclassical architects Category:Officials of Nazi Germany Category:People convicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg Category:People from the Grand Duchy of Baden Category:People from Mannheim Category:Berlin Institute of Technology alumni Category:Technical University Munich alumni Category:Karlsruhe Institute of Technology alumni

ar:ألبرت شبير an:Albert Speer az:Albert Şpeer be:Альберт Шпеер bs:Albert Speer br:Albert Speer bg:Алберт Шпеер ca:Albert Speer ceb:Albert Speer cs:Albert Speer da:Albert Speer de:Albert Speer et:Albert Speer el:Άλμπερτ Σπέερ es:Albert Speer eo:Albert Speer fa:آلبرت اشپر fr:Albert Speer (père) fy:Albert Speer ga:Albert Speer gl:Albert Speer ko:알베르트 슈페어 hr:Albert Speer id:Albert Speer it:Albert Speer he:אלברט שפר ka:ალბერტ შპეერი la:Albertus Speer lv:Alberts Špērs lt:Albert Speer hu:Albert Speer arz:البرت سپير nl:Albert Speer ja:アルベルト・シュペーア no:Albert Speer nn:Albert Speer pl:Albert Speer (ojciec) pt:Albert Speer ro:Albert Speer ru:Шпеер, Альберт simple:Albert Speer sk:Albert Speer sl:Albert Speer sr:Алберт Шпер fi:Albert Speer sv:Albert Speer tr:Albert Speer uk:Альберт Шпеєр zh:阿尔伯特·斯佩尔

Telford Taylor (February 24, 1908 - May 23, 1998) was an American lawyer best known for his role in the Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, his opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, and his outspoken criticism of U.S. actions during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.

Biography

Taylor was born in Schenectady, New York; his parents were John Bellamy Taylor (a relative of Edward Bellamy) and Marcia Estabrook Jones. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts before enrolling at the Harvard Law School in 1928, where he received his law degree in 1932. He subsequently worked for several government agencies, becoming the general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission in 1940.

World War II and Nuremberg

Following the outbreak of World War II, Taylor joined Army Intelligence as a Major in 1942, leading the group that was responsible for analyzing information obtained from intercepted German communications using ULTRA encryption. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1943 and visited Bletchley Park in England, where he helped negotiate the 1943 BRUSA Agreement. He was promoted to full Colonel in 1944, and was assigned to the team of Robert H. Jackson, which helped work out the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the legal basis for the Nuremberg Trials.

At the Nuremberg Trials, he initially served as an assistant to Chief Counsel Robert H. Jackson and in this function was the U.S. prosecutor in the High Command case. The indictment in this case called for the General Staff of the Army and the High Command of the German Armed Forces to be considered criminal organizations; the witnesses were several of the surviving German Field Marshals. Both organizations were acquitted, though.

When Jackson resigned his position as prosecutor after the first (and only) trial before the IMT and returned to the U.S., Taylor was promoted to Brigadier General and succeeded him on October 17, 1946, as Chief Counsel for the remaining twelve trials before the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals. In these trials at Nuremberg, 163 of the 200 defendants who were tried were found guilty in some or all of the charges of the indictments.

While Taylor was not wholly satisfied with the outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials, he considered them a success because they set a precedent and defined a legal base for crimes against peace and humanity. In 1950, the United Nations codified the most important statements from these trials in the seven Nuremberg Principles.

McCarthyism, Vietnam, and later life

After the Nuremberg Trials, Taylor returned to a civilian life in the United States, opening a private law practice in New York City. He became increasingly concerned with Senator McCarthy's activities, which he criticized strongly. In a speech at West Point in 1953, he called McCarthy "a dangerous adventurer", branding his tactics "a vicious weapon of the extreme right against their political opponents" and criticizing then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower for not stopping McCarthy's "shameful abuse of Congressional investigatory power." He defended several victims of McCarthyism — alleged communists or perjurers — including labor leader Harry Bridges and Junius Scales. Although he lost these two cases (Bridges' sentence of five years in prison was later voided by the Supreme Court and Scales six year sentence was commuted after one year), he remained unfazed by McCarthy's attacks on him, and responded by writing the book, ''Grand Inquest: The Story of Congressional Investigations'', which was published in 1955.

In 1961 Taylor attended the Eichmann trial in Israel as a semi-official observer, and expressed concerns about the trial being held on a defective statute.

Taylor became a full professor at Columbia University in 1962, where he would be named Nash Professor of Law in 1974. In 1966, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was one of very few professors there who refused to sign a statement issued by the Columbia Law School that termed the militant student protests at Columbia in 1968 as being beyond the "allowable limits" of civil disobedience. Taylor was very critical of the conduct of U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, and in 1971 urged President Richard Nixon to set up a national commission to investigate the conflict. He strongly criticized the court-martial of Lt. William Calley, the commanding officer of the U.S. troops involved in the My Lai massacre, because it did not include higher-ranking officers. Taylor regarded the 1972 bombing campaign targeting the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, as "senseless and immoral"; in December 1972, he visited Hanoi along with folk singer Joan Baez and others, among them also the associate dean of the Yale Law School.

Taylor published his views in a book entitled ''Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy'' in 1970. He argued that by the standards employed at the Nuremberg Trials, U.S. conduct in Vietnam and Cambodia was equally criminal as that of the Nazis during World War II. For this reason, he favored prosecuting U.S. aviators who had participated in bombing missions over North Vietnam.

In 1976, Taylor, who had already been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale, accepted a new post at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, becoming a founding member of the faculty while continuing to teach at Columbia. His 1979 book, ''Munich: The Price of Peace,'' won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the "best work of general nonfiction". In the 1980s, he extended his legal activities into sports and became a "special master" for dispute resolution in the NBA. His 700-page 1992 memoir of the Nuremberg trials (see bibliography) revealed how Nazi leader Hermann Göring had "cheated the hangman" by taking smuggled poison.

Telford Taylor retired in 1994. He died in 1998 at the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan after having suffered a stroke. He was survived by his wife Toby Golick and six children: Joan, Ellen, John, Ursula, Ben, and Sam.

Bibliography

''Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich'', Simon & Schuster 1952; reprinted 1980. ISBN 0-8446-0934-X

''Grand Inquest: The Story of Congressional Investigations'', Simon & Schuster 1955; reprinted 1974. ISBN 0-306-70620-2

''The March of Conquest: The German Victories in Western Europe, 1940 (Great War Stories)'', Simon & Schuster 1958; reprinted 1991. ISBN 0-933852-94-0

''The Breaking Wave: The Second World War in the Summer of 1940'', Simon & Schuster 1967; ISBN 0-671-10366-0

''Guilt, responsibility and the Third Reich'', Heffer 1970; 20 pages; ISBN 0-85270-044-X

''Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy'', Times Books 1970; ISBN 0-8129-0210-6

''Perspectives on Justice'', Northwestern University Press 1974; ISBN 0-8101-0453-9

''Courts of terror: Soviet criminal justice and Jewish emigration'', Knopf 1976; ISBN 0-394-40509-9

''Munich: The Price of Peace'', Hodder & Staughton 1979; reprinted 1989. ISBN 0-88184-447-0

''The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir'', Knopf 1992; ISBN 0-394-58355-8

References

Main sources:

The obituary from the New York Times, May 24, 1998.

Ferencz, B.: ''Telford Taylor: Pioneer of International Criminal Law'', ''Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 37(3)'', 1999. URL last accessed 2006-12-12.

Telford Taylor from the Cardozo School of Law at the Yeshiva University.

Other sources:

Further reading:

''Essays on the laws of war and war crimes tribunals in honor of Telford Taylor'': ''Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 37(3)''

External links

Taylor's presentation of the High Command case on April 1, 1946 at the Nuremberg Trial.

A short biography from Columbia University.

Telford Taylor When people kill a people, New York Times, March 28, 1982. "...In such an analysis, as far as wartime actions against enemy nationals are concerned, the Genocide Convention added virtually nothing to what was already covered ... by the internationally accepted laws of land warfare ...".

Category:1908 births Category:1998 deaths Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American historians Category:American legal scholars Category:American legal writers Category:American memoirists Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration personnel Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Historians of the United States Category:Lawyers who have represented the United States government Category:Nuremberg Trials Category:People from Schenectady, New York Category:Prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg Category:United States Army generals Category:Williams College alumni Category:World War II historians Category:Yeshiva University faculty

de:Telford Taylor fr:Telford Taylor no:Telford Taylor ru:Тейлор, Телфорд sv:Telford Taylor

Coordinates	28°36′50″N77°12′32″N
Name	Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
Birth date	March 1, 1899
Death date	March 8, 1972
Birth place	Lauenburg, Pomerania, German Empire
Death place	Munich, West Germany
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Branch
Serviceyears	1931–1945
Rank	Obergruppenführer
Unit	Waffen-SS
Commands	Höhere SS und Polizeiführer for Silesia
Battles	Warsaw Uprising
Awards	Iron Cross, German Cross, Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
Laterwork	}}

Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski or Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (1 March 1899 - 8 March 1972), was a Nazi official and a member of the SS, in which he reached the rank of ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' (General).

Biography

Slavic origin

He was born to Otto Jan Józefat von Zelewski, a Roman Catholic, and his Lutheran wife Elżbieta Ewelina Szymańska (written in German - Schimansky). Born Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski, he legally added "von dem Bach" to the family name late in the 1933. He went on to have "Zelewski" officially removed from his name in November 1941 because of its Polish sound.

His great-great-great-grandfather was Michał Żelewski (c. 1700-1785), who was a Polish nobleman; he owned villages of Milwino, Niepoczołowice and Zakrzewo in Pomerania. Żelewski's marriage to Anna Zofia von Pirch produced a son, Franciszek von Zelewski (c. 1735-1788). The younger von Zelewski married Ewa von Kętrzyńska, who in 1778 gave birth to Andrzej Klemens von Zelewski. Andrzej married Konkordia Wilhelmina Henrietta von Grubba. Their eldest son, Otton August Ludwik Rudolf von Zalewski (born 1820 in Zakrzewo, died June 28, 1878 in Zęblewo), was von dem Bach's grandfather. Roman Catholic Church sources claim that in 1855 in Strzepcz Otton August von Zelewski married Antonia Fryderyka von Żelewska (apparently from another Zelewski family). One of their sons was Otton Jan von Zelewski (born May 19, 1859 in Zęblewo; died April 12, 1911 in Dortmund), who married Elżbieta Ewelina Szymańska about 1890. They had three daughters and three sons, one of whom was Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski.

Early life

He was born in Lauenburg, Pomerania, German Empire (now Lębork, Poland), on March 1, 1899, the son of a Junker. Despite his aristocratic genealogy, he seemed to have grown up in poverty; his father proved unable to establish a career and undertook a range of jobs, including agriculture. At the time of his death on April 17, 1911 in Dortmund he was employed as an insurance clerk. Otto's lack of success owed partially to his being the brother of Emil von Zalewski, who on August 17, 1891, while leading a colonial force armed with guns against Wehe insurgents in German East Africa (later named Tanganyika, now part of Tanzania), was speared to death as his force was annihilated in the battle of Rugarto. Being militarily outwitted by African blacks armed with spears against a well armed force was considered shameful, and the family was disgraced. Following his father's death, von dem Bach's uncle Oskar von Zalewski, a soldier, developed a very close relationship with the boy and encouraged him to also pursue a military career. In November 1914, Erich von Zalewski volunteered for the Prussian army, becoming one of the youngest recruits and serving until the end of World War I. He was wounded twice and won the Iron Cross.

After the war, he remained in the Reichswehr and, among other duties, fought in the Silesian Uprisings, where he earned a reputation and received several decorations. In 1924, von Zalewski transferred to the ''Grenzschutz'' (border guards). On October 23, 1925, he legally changed his surname to `von dem Bach-Zalewski`.

He left the ''Grenzschutz'' in 1930, when he joined the Nazi Party, becoming a member of the SS in 1931. He was rapidly promoted and, by the end of 1933, had reached the rank of ''SS-Brigadeführer'' (Major General). However, he quarrelled with his staff officer Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald. In 1934 he received the Cross of Honor ().

A source of considerable annoyance for him was that three of his sisters married Jewish men, and in 1946, claimed under interrogation that this ruined his reputation in the army forcing him to leave the Reichswehr.

A Nazi party member of the Reichstag from 1932 to 1944, he participated in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, taking the opportunity to have Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald murdered. He served in various Nazi Party posts, initially in East Prussia and after 1936 in Silesia. By 1937, he had become the ''Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer'' (''HSSPF'' - Higher SS and Police Leader) in Silesia and also served as the Division Commander of ''SS-Oberabschnitt Südost'' (SS Division South East).

World War II

After the war broke out, units under his command took part in reprisal actions and the shooting of POWs during the September Campaign, although von dem Bach was not personally present. On 7 November 1939, SS chief Heinrich Himmler offered him the post of ''Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom'' in Silesia. His duties included mass resettlements and the confiscation of private property. By August 1940, his units had forced more than 20,000 Żywiec families to leave their homes.

Moving up in rank

On 22 June 1941, von dem Bach-Zelewski became the Higher SS and Police Leader (''Höhere SS und Polizeiführer'') in the region of Silesia. He would provide the initial impetus of building a concentration camp at the Polish artillery barracks in the Zasole suburb of Oświęcim (Auschwitz); a location scouted by his Obergruppfuhrer Arpad Wigand. In July 1943, he became commander of the so-called "''Bandenkämpfverbände''" ("Band-fighting Units"), responsible for the mass murder of 35,000 civilians in Riga and more than 200,000 in Belarus and eastern Poland. The authorities designated him as the future ''HSSPF'' in Moscow; however, the Wehrmacht failed to take the city. Until 1943, von dem Bach-Zalewski remained the ''HSSPF'' in command of "anti-partisan" units on the central front, a special command created by Adolf Hitler. Von dem Bach-Zalewski was the only ''HSSPF'' in the occupied Soviet territories to retain genuine authority over the police after Hans-Adolf Prützmann and Jockeln lost theirs to the civil administration.

In February 1942, van dem Bach-Zelewski was hospitalized with severe stomach and intestinal ailments. Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz of the SS described him as suffering from "hallucinations connected with the shooting of Jews". He resumed his post in July, with no apparent reduction in his ruthlessness.

In June 1942, after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, Hitler wanted von dem Bach-Zelewski to take Heydrich's place as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. When Himmler argued that von dem Bach-Zelewski could not be spared due to the prevailing military situation, Hitler relented and appointed Kurt Daluege to the position.

On 12 July 1943, von dem Bach-Zalewski received command of all anti-partisan actions in Belgium, Belarus, France, the General Government, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and parts of the Bezirk Bialystok. In practice, his activities remained confined to Belarus and contiguous parts of Russia.

Ruthless tactics

Von dem Bach-Zelewski's tactics produced high civilian deaths and relatively minor military gains. German forces would more or less encircle partisan-controlled areas before closing in. Since deploying the necessary forces was time-consuming and conspicuous, the partisans would be forewarned and many would slip away, after hiding their heavier equipment and much of their supplies, while the remaining partisans would carry out a fighting withdrawal, picking off the lead German troops, often killing more men than they lost.

In fighting these irregular battles, the Germans wantonly slaughtered civilians in order to inflate the figures of "enemy losses"; indeed, far more fatalities were recorded than weapons captured. After an operation was completed, no permanent military presence would be maintained, allowing the partisans to slip back in, retrieve their hidden stocks and pick up where they had left off (occasionally, partisans would not return but would begin operating from the positions to which they had retreated). Even when successful, von dem Bach-Zalewski accomplished little more than forcing partisans to relocate, and swelling their numbers with enraged civilians.

Fighting on the front line

In 1944, he took part in front-line fighting in the Kovel area, but in March he had to go to Germany for medical treatment. Himmler assumed all his posts.

On 2 August 1944, he took command of all troops fighting against the Warsaw Uprising as ''Korpsgruppe Bach''. Units under his command killed approximately 200,000 civilians (more than 65,000 in mass executions) and an unknown number of POWs. After more than two months of heavy fighting and the total destruction of Warsaw he finally managed to control the city. For his actions in Warsaw von dem Bach-Zalewski was awarded on September 30, 1944, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by the Nazi regime. Despite the slaughter and destruction wrought on Warsaw, he is alleged to have personally saved Chopin's heart from destruction. The heart is preserved in a Warsaw church.

Between 26 January and 10 February 1945, von dem Bach-Zalewski commanded ''X SS Armeekorps'', one of the "paper-corps", in Germany, but his unit was annihilated after less than two weeks.

Awards

Iron Cross (1914)

* 2nd Class (5 August 1915)

* 1st Class (25 September 1918)

Wound Badge (1914)

* in Black

* in Silver

Cross of Honor

Danzig Cross

German Sports Badge

SA Sports Badge in Bronze

Golden Party Badge

SS Honour Ring

Iron Cross (1939)

* 2nd Class (31 August 1941)

* 1st Class (20 May 1942)

War Merit Cross with Swords

* 2nd Class

* 1st Class

Eastern Front Medal

Anti-Partisan Guerrilla Warfare Badge in Silver

German Cross (23 February 1942)

Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

* Knight's Cross on 30 September 1944 as SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei and General der Waffen-SS and commander of Korpsgruppe "von dem Bach"

Mentioned in the Wehrmachtbericht on 1 October 1944

After the war

Von dem Bach-Zelewski went into hiding and tried to leave the country. However, US military police arrested him on 1 August 1945. In exchange for his testimony against his former superiors at the Nuremberg Trials, von dem Bach-Zelewski never faced trial for any war crimes. Similarly, he never faced extradition to Poland or to the USSR. He left prison in 1949.

In 1951, von dem Bach-Zelewski claimed that he had helped Hermann Göring commit suicide in 1946. As evidence, he produced cyanide capsules to the authorities with serial numbers not far removed from the one used by Göring. The authorities never verified von dem Bach-Zelewski's claim, however, and did not charge him with aiding Göring's death. Most modern day historians dismiss von dem Bach-Zalewski's claim and agree that a U.S. Army contact within the Palace of Justice's prison at Nuremberg most likely aided Göring in his suicide.

Also in 1951, von dem Bach-Zelewski was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp for the murder of political opponents in the early 1930s; however, he did not serve time until 1958, when he was convicted of killing Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald, an SS officer, during the Night of the Long Knives, and was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment. In 1961, he was sentenced to an additional 10 years in home custody for the murder of 10 German Communists in the early 1930s. None of the sentences referred to his role in Poland, in the East and his participation in the Holocaust, although he openly admitted to having murdered Jews. He died in a Munich prison on 8 March 1972.

Notes and references

Blood, Philip W. - Hitler's Bandit Hunters - The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe. Potomac Books Inc. 2006

See also

Ex-Nazis and List of former Nazis influential after 1945

Geneva Convention

Third Reich

Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw Uprising Atrocities

Porajmos

Category:1899 births Category:1972 deaths Category:People from Lębork Category:People from the Province of Pomerania Category:German Nazi politicians Category:Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic Category:Members of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany Category:German nobility Category:Holocaust perpetrators Category:Nazi leaders Category:SS and Police Leaders Category:SS generals Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:20th-century Freikorps personnel Category:German military personnel of World War II Category:Recipients of the Iron Cross Category:Recipients of the Cross of Honor Category:Recipients of the German Cross Category:Recipients of the Knight's Cross Category:German people who died in prison custody Category:Prisoners who died in German detention Category:German people convicted of murder Category:People convicted of murder by Germany Category:Warsaw Uprising German forces Category:Military personnel referenced in the Wehrmachtbericht Category:Einsatzgruppen personnel

cs:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski da:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski de:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski et:Erich von dem Bach es:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski fr:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski ko:에리히 폰 뎀 바흐 it:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski he:אריך פון דם באך-צלבסקי nl:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski ja:エーリヒ・フォン・デム・バッハ＝ツェレウスキー no:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski pl:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski pt:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski ru:Бах, Эрих фон дем simple:Erich von dem Bach fi:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski sv:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski tr:Erich von dem Bach