List of double standards and injustice of Nuremberg Trial

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xcalibur
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#46

Post by xcalibur » 28 Jul 2004, 16:19

The text of the London Charter of the IMT can be found at:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/imtconst.htm

Panzermahn
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Posts: 3639
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Location: Malaysia

#47

Post by Panzermahn » 29 Jul 2004, 07:53

List of injustices and double standards from David Irving's Nuremberg The Last Battle (Part Two)



1) The records had indeed survived in abundance, although since they
were collected only for the purposes of prosecuting war criminals it
would be foolish to attempt to write a history from these alone....[326]

Page 153,

[326]... Jackson’s records of US Chief of Counsel, the court archives of
the Tribunal (IMT) and of the subsequent American proceedings, as
well as the bulk of the OCCWC (Office of Chief of Counsel for War
Crimes, which replaced the Office of Chief of Counsel in January 1946)
are in the National Archives as RG 238, World War II War Crimes
Records. There is held as RG26 at the Federal Records Center,
Suitland, Maryland, a residue of records of OMGUS, the Office of
Military Government for Germany United States, including the papers
of the IMT secretariat, as well as the Evidence and Language
Divisions, and the records of the Defense Center.


2)The case against Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was not without piquancy.
Dönitz was the former commander-in-chief of submarines
who had succeeded Erich Raeder as commander-in-chief of the German
Navy in 1943, and had then been appointed by Hitler to succeed
him as head of state in April 1945 On August 2 Jackson was handed
a sober staff analysis on this personality, which concluded with the
statement that the British admiralty had determined that ‘there is
insufficient evidence to sustain a charge against Dönitz,’ and had abandoned
its efforts in this direction. The author of this analysis, a naval
officer, added with a trace of sarcasm: ‘Unless additional information
implicating Dönitz in political, as distinguished from military acts of
criminality has been uncovered in the Foreign Office or elsewhere, it
is believed that there is insufficient evidence to convict him or warrant
his being tried. If, as it has been somewhat facetiously said, we should
have some defendants whom we can acquit, then we should be wary
lest we afford other defendants the opportunity to profit by such defense
evidence as Dönitz undoubtedly can introduce on his own behalf.’
Thus this officer, writing on behalf of the U.S. navy department, clearly
endorsed the British admiralty’s view [334] We shall see later with what
methods the prosecution sought to build up a false case against the
admiral.


Page 156-157

[334] Lieut.-Commander John P Bracken, USNR, to R H Jackson, Aug
28, 1945 (NA, RG23, US Chief of Counsel at Nuremberg, Main
Office Files, box 175).



3) DISCUSSIONS ON how to frame the indictment had continued all summer.
In its final form it ran to 25000 words, composed in a language that
was often lurid and emotional. It contained allegations which no serious
historian would now unblushingly venture to sustain, but which
were designed to feed the appetite of the mass media. Life magazine
summarised some of the main points. For instance, Hitler had forged
a Hindenburg last testament in his own favour. Keitel had conspired
to assassinate Germany’s own envoy to Czechoslovakia to create an
‘incident.’...[402]

Page 185

[402] Cf ND: L-79; author’s microfilm DI-78




4) Most outrageously, on General Rudenko’s insistence at the very last
meeting of the prosecuting staffs the indictment was amended to include
the murder in the Katyn forest of 11000 Polish officers. Point .,
paragraph C of the indictment would read: ‘In September 1941 eleven
thousand Polish prisoners-of-war were killed in the Katyn forest, near
Smolensk.’[405]The Russians were fully aware at that time – as Mikhail
Gorbachev would formally confirm on April 12, 1990 – that Stalin had
personally ordered his secret service, the N.K.V.D., to massacre altogether
fifteen thousand Polish officers and intellectuals in April 1940[406]
The former N.K.V.D. officer Pyotr Soprunenko, who signed the death
warrant, still lives (1996) in Moscow as an old-age pensioner.
Jackson was aghast at this Russian effrontery. The exiled Polish leaders
strongly advised the prosecution against any mention of Katyn.
For several days Jackson argued with the Russian prosecution team;
but the omission of Katyn would, conversely, have pointed an accusing
finger at Stalin, and adamant as Rudenko was that the British
should not refer to the Stalin–Hitler pact, he was equally insistent that
Katyn must be charged to the Nazi account. In the event, the other
three prosecutors left it entirely to the Russians to state the Katyn
charge in the trial, and the Tribunal was notably silent about the murders
in its judgement.


Page 186

[405] IMT, vol. i, page 58
[406]On Katyn, see Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Die Wehrmacht-
Untersuchungsstelle. Unveröffentlichte Akten über alliierte
Völkerrechtsverletzungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich, 1979), chapter 23



5) On the count accusing the Germans of deporting populations, the
indictment also displayed a troubling double-standard, branding this
without hesitation as a ‘crime against humanity’ – when committed by
the Germans. When the trial began, the French and Russian prosecutors
would not mince their language as they described the deportations
of one hundred thousand French Alsatians to Vichy France, and of a
million Poles from Hitler ‘Warthegau’ into the Generalgouvernement
of Poland. Thus the French chief prosecutor François de Menthon
would charge in January ....: ‘Within a few hours the Alsatians were
hounded out of their homes with scarcely any baggage and robbed of
their possessions.’ ‘This inhuman transportation of entire populations,’
he continued, ‘will remain one of the horrors of our century.' [407]

Page 187

[407]IMT, vol. v, pages 461f, Jan 17, 1946



6) Judge Biddle gathered that
Rudenko had asked for the postponement on the grounds that the
indictment contained inaccuracies on the figures of Nazi victims in
Russia and Poland. It was obvious from his inflexibility that he was
taking orders from Moscow [417]

Page 190

[417] Biddle diary, Oct 15 1945


7) The prisoners were at first not permitted to approach within ten
yards of each other. For a time it was mooted that the prisoners be
handcuffed even in the dock. Andrus refused to permit the International
Red Cross access to the prisoners; the Red Cross Christmas
packets were confiscated when they arrived.
The elderly Hjalmar Schacht was forbidden to sleep on his side;
Field-Marshal Keitel, aged sixty-three years, of which he had been a
soldier for forty-three, was plagued by boils on his neck, which went
untreated for there were no medicines. ‘In the absence of a chair with
a back-rest,’ wrote Keitel, ‘the permanent back pains are a physical
torment for a man of sixty years and more.’[418] Most of the prisoners
suffered agonies of hunger and cold, for the cell windows were unglazed
and the Perspex sheeting ill-fitting and draughty.

Page 191

[418] Wilhelm Keitel, Manuscript, Oct 10, 1945 (Karl-Heinz Keitel
papers, in IfZ, Irving Collection).



8) The prisoners inevitably protested at this treatment, and more than
one wrote letters addressed to the protecting power (they were not
forwarded); Andrus nipped further protests in the bud by stoutly and
unilaterally declaring the Geneva Convention suspended – an impropriety
which only the prevailing conditions and atmosphere of mutual
hatred can explain.

a) You are hereby informed [so Andrus warned ‘all personnel concerned’]
that your protest against the treatment given you at this place is not only
wholly unwarranted but is improper. It is based upon entirely false
premises; as you are not a CAPTURED OFFICER nor a PRISONER-OF-WAR. The
ARMY, the NAVY, and the STATE of Germany have ceased to exist. You are
entitled to nothing under the Geneva Convention which your nation repudiated
in it’s [sic] entirety and also repeatedly violated.

b) You represent a group of people who for more than thirty (30) years
have regarded treaties as ‘scraps of paper’ to be used only for their own
advantage and to be violated and destroyed when they applied to peoples
other than the Germans.…
His pronouncement continued with a not entirely unwarranted reference
to Germany’s treatment of her prisoners, particularly those in
the concentration camps[424]

Higher authority had evidently enforced new regulations during the
intervening weeks since they had left the ASHCAN camp at Mondorf. In
rules and regulations issued there in May 1945, Andrus had stated:
‘All persons incarcerated within CCPWE#32 [ASHCAN] are considered
to be PWs.’ After warning that any prisoner-of-war attempting to
escape would be shot, Andrus concluded: ‘Violations will be punished
in accordance with the Geneva Convention and Rules and Articles of
War.’[425]

Here at Nuremberg there was no more talk of Geneva or prisoner-
of-war status[426]

Page 193

[424]B C Andrus to Peter-Josef Heisig (and all other Personnel Concerned),
Dec 3 1945 (ibid.).
[425]B C Andrus, Headquarters Continental Central PWE#32, ‘Rules
and Regulations Governing PWE#32,’ May 30, 1945 (Burton C Andrus
Collection, Colorado Springs).
[426]B C Andrus, ‘Rules for Prisoners,’ Sep 11 1945 (ibid.). Only those
Germans operating the prison were now still ‘prisoners of war,’ the
rest were simply ‘prisoners’ and ‘internees.’


9) The private files of Justice Jackson provide disturbing evidence of
tampering with and distortion of evidence. After the main film, The
Nazi Plan, prepared by the O.S.S. to illustrate the conspiracy charge
in count I of the indictment, was shown secretly to Jackson’s staff on
November 14 they warned him that there was probably little the defendants
would seriously wish to deny, and there was much that would
benefit the defence which should be cut. ‘I would,’ wrote one expert to
Jackson, ‘in the cutting process eliminate the scenes which follow the
[German] movement across the border in Austria, Sudetenland, and
the Rhine, in all of which flag-waving, smiling faces and the presentation
of flowers help to nullify our notion that by these acts the people
were planning or waging a war against their neighbors.’[431]

Page 196

[431]Gordon Dean to Jackson, Donovan, Amen, et al., ‘Photographic
Evidence,’ Nov 18 1945 (NA, RG238, US Chief of Counsel at Nuremberg,
Main Office Files, box 213). The Nazi Plan, 1919-1945 was a
twenty-two-reel 35-millimetre film compiled from Germans newsreels
and other German films with English subtitles.


10) This was certainly the fate of another film, specially made to illustrate
‘Reichsbank loot’ at Frankfurt, since at the last moment it was
found that there was no proof that the loot really had come, as claimed,
from concentration camp victims[432]

Page 196-197

[432]Commander James B Donovan, USNR, to Colonel Storey, Dec 12,
1945 (NA, RG238, US Chief of Counsel at Nuremberg, Main Office
Files, box 213). ‘Needless to say,’ commented Donovan, ‘after having
the movies made in Frankfurt at their direction, cutting the film, preparing
a script on it, etc., I was rather shocked to learn of the absence
of supporting evidence.’



11) Naturally there were many among the prosecution team who continued, or wanted, to believe the more far-fetched atrocity legends.
One American lawyer on Kempner’s team wrote home at this time
from Nuremberg: ‘Imagine making dentists pull out all the gold dental
work from the teeth of victims before they were killed and while
still conscious! We have pictures of a soap factory where they hit the
victims, mostly Poles, with a blunt instrument, and the heads are cut
off and boiled in one vat and the bodies in other vats. Three hundred
heads were found in one vat at the time of discovery.’[433] All of this was
fiction.

Page 197

[433]F L Felton, undated private letter (Hoover Library, Frederick L
Felton Collection, Ts Germany F 326)



12) Similarly the Tribunal readily accepted the propaganda legend first
inspired by the brilliant Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to the
effect that the Nazis had fabricated soap from the remains of their
victims, and even stamped the soap with the initials RJF, ‘pure Jewish
fat.’... The Russians submitted to the Tribunal exhibits USSR-196
(‘recipe for making soap from human bodies’), 197 (‘statement of Zyg
and Mazur’), and 393 (‘samples of soap made from human bodies’) to
support this contention. For years since, such bars of soap have been
part of an unwholesome trade among curiosity-collectors in Israel,
and occasionally some are even ceremonially buried to the chants of
the khaddish. Why the Nazis should have wanted to rub their faces in
the boiled-down detritus of their sworn enemies remains an imponderable
mystery. Although it is fixed in the final judgement of Nuremberg
– and hence a criminal offence in modern France to contest the
historical existence of such soap – Israeli archival experts publicly announced
once more in 1990 that this ‘soap story’ too was and always
had been a propaganda lie[438]

Page 197-198

[438]Statement by Shmuel Krakoski, archives director at Yad Vashem
Museum, Jerusalem; published in newspapers around the world, e.g.
Chicago Tribune, Apr 25 1990 Krakoski claimed it was sadistic Nazi
propaganda, though it is hard to see how it would have benefited the
Nazis. Justifying the forty-five-year delay, Krakoski said: ‘When so many
people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something
to use against the truth?’



13)Asked however about the Six Million figure, Morgen told Toland: ‘It is
hard to believe such a figure.’[491] He recalled that the Jews had ‘helped
to kill their own people.’ But he refused to give perjured testimony at
Nuremberg to the effect that Ilse Koch, widow of the commandant
hanged by the S.S., had made lampshades out of human skin. That
was a legend, he said: totally untrue. ‘The Americans almost killed
me,’ recalled Morgen. ‘They threatened three times to turn me over to
the Russians or French or Poles.’[492]

Page 223

[491]Despite the most strenuous efforts, the Yad Vashem Museum,
Jerusalem has compiled a list of no more than three million possible
Holocaust victims. The same names appear in this list many times
over.
[492]Transcript of John Toland’s interview with Konrad Morgen, attorney,
Frankfurt, Oct 25, 1971 (Roosevelt Library, John Toland papers,
box 53). For Morgen’s Nuremberg testimony see IMT, Aug 7-8,
1946, pages 488-515



14) The Russians were particularly conscious of the risk to their persons
if at any time the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact became the subject of
open debate during the trial. After this meeting the Soviet deputy prosecutor
Colonel Yuri V. Pokrovsky assured Vyshinsky, his Soviet controller,
formally by telephone, ‘The chief prosecutors are determined
to avoid awkward questions and to give the defendants no opportunity
of starting debates or dragging the tribunal into discussions. In
this connection it has been mentioned as desirable to exchange a list,
before the trial begins, of all topics which are not to be mentioned
before this tribunal, so that we have the opportunity to slap these questions
down immediately during the proceedings.’[512]

Page 229

[512]Abarinov, op. cit., quoting: ‘Information from Pokrovsky, CGAOR,
f. 7445, op. 2, d. 391, l.57’


15) Rohrscheidt had meanwhile formally applied to the Tribunal for the
production of all the British medical files on Hess as well as those of
the foreign office, and the production as witnesses of the Duke of
Hamilton, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Dr Henry Dicks, and others who
had interrogated the prisoner. ‘The above mentioned records,’ stated
the lawyer, ‘contain, according to information received by the defence,
very important conclusions as to the motive of Hess’ flight and his
state of health, especially about the mental disturbance and mental
disorder when he arrived.’ The British government eventually released
only the earliest documents, the reports filed by the duke and Sir Ivone
Kirkpatrick; none of the later files, revealing Hess’ serious medical
problems, was released to the defence.

Page 233


16) At the Tribunal’s first session, behind closed doors in Nuremberg on
November 14, Gustav Krupp’s lawyers moved to dismiss him from
the case on the ground that he was too ill to understand what was
going on. Jackson rather weakly contended that absent-mindedness
was no defence – that the London Charter would allow even this Krupp
to be tried in absentia, or that in the alternative they should replace
him with his son Alfried. Sir Hartley Shawcross objected that this was
a court of justice, not a game where they could substitute one man for
another [518]

Page 235

[518]Biddle diary, Nov 14 1945 (University of Syracuse, New York,
George Arents Research Library, Francis Biddle Collection, ‘Personal
Notes of Conferences’).


17) There were other signs of problems to come. When defence counsel
applied for one particular witness to prove that the Russians had deported
slave labour from Latvia, just as the Nazis were now accused of
having done, the Russian alternate judge Lieutenant-Colonel Volchkov
flew into a temper and called it libellous. ‘We postpone a decision,’
noted Biddle, ‘till a full meeting.’[521]

Page 236

[521]Biddle, letter, Nov 18 1945



18) This motivation for the trial must never be forgotten in contemplating
the printed record. The Nuremberg archives are a historical source
to be used only with caution: the published volumes contain only the
prosecution’s documents, and none of the defence. In the course of
the trial Dr Hans Laternser, defence counsel for the General Staff and
the O.K.W., would submit to the Tribunal no fewer than .,... affidavits
sworn by field-marshals, generals and other key witnesses. Not one
would be published in the blue IMT volumes[538]

Page 247

[538]Zayas, op cit., page 264




19) THE NIGHTMARE of awkward documents lurking in the captured German records continued to beset the Allied prosecutors throughout the
trial. Fortunately the British had captured the most incriminating files,
those of the German admiralty and foreign ministry, and had whisked
them out of the country; they had released portions of these only with
the utmost reluctance to Nuremberg. At one secret meeting of the
chief prosecutors at Nuremberg we find the British representatives
insisting, on instructions from London, that the archives of the German
admiralty and foreign ministry be returned as soon as possible to
their safes in London, because of the ‘embarrassment’ that their publication would cause to the British government if they should fall into
the wrong hands.

Page 256


20) The dice were heavily loaded against the defendants in other ways,
too. A basic difficulty for the defence lawyers was their unfamiliarity
with the Anglo-American trial procedure adopted at Nuremberg: German
lawyers were wholly inexperienced in the techniques of examination
and cross-examination, and they were profoundly surprised by
the latitude to object and interrupt shown to counsel under the Anglo-
American system.

A more fundamental distinction was that even during the Third Reich the German trial procedures had been conducted with the primary
objective of ascertaining truth, and all parties had united with that
aim – the judges conducting the principal examination of witnesses,
the opposing counsel being there to underline aspects that favoured
the defence or prosecution. As Otto Kranzbühler, Dönitz’s young attorney,
would later comment. it was an essential feature of the Anglo-
American criminal trial that it was confrontational, with each side introducing
only the evidence which benefited its own case. Unlike the
German custom, there was practically no obligation on the court to
investigate the truth for itself. When the defence made their desiderata
known to Jackson, he robustly turned them down, stating that he had
no intention of ‘serving two masters.’[554]

Page 256

[554]Kranzbühler, op. cit., page 6




21) Were the scales not loaded in advance against one side or the other,
this would not normally cause an injustice. In Nuremberg, it was as
though the scales had only one scale-pan, on the side of the victorious
powers. ‘When the German defence attorneys arrived in Nuremberg
in September 1945,’ observed Kranzbühler, ‘they had literally nothing.
The prosecution on the other hand had already seized all available
archives and documents and they were screening them with a huge
army of experts for incriminating evidence.’ Only this incriminating
material was then made available to the defence attorneys; they were
allowed no opportunity to look in the captured archives for defence
documents in mitigation or exoneration. The foreign archives were
also inaccessible to them[555]

Page 257

[555]Ibid., page 7




22)In a German court it would be unthinkable – and illegal – for one
party to withhold part of a document which might tend to aid the
other party’s case.[556] But here at Nuremberg documents which might
aid the defence were routinely concealed from them, or even destroyed.
(It is quite wrong for Sir David Maxwell Fyfe to claim in his memoirs
that ‘all the documents were available to the Defence.’)[557] Dr Alfred-
Maurice de Zayas has expressed the view that the verdict on many of
the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably
have been very different if the German defence lawyers had been
allowed access to the captured records of the O.K.W.’s Office of Special
Investigations into Violations of International Law (Wehrmachts-
Untersuchungsstelle für Verletzungen des Völkerrechts) and permitted
to select documents from those files in mitigation of the High
Command’s actions: ‘But these files were “classified” and they were
not finally released to the public domain until the seventies.’[558]

Page 257

[556]‘He says the trial was conducted fairly,’ noted Keitel’s son after
one conversation, ‘so long as the defendants weren’t physical wrecks
from the conditions at Nuremberg.’ He commented however, ‘Particularly
important in this respect the withholding of defence documents
of the last twelve years.’ Karl-Heinz Keitel, ‘Conversation with
My Father,’ Sep 16, 1946 1.30 P.M. (IfZ, Irving Collection).
[557]Maxwell Fyfe, op. cit., page 106
[558]Zayas, op. cit., page 261




23)Against that, the Allies monopolised the captured documents and
libraries, and the Germans could get no access to books and documents
from abroad except through the offices of the prosecution. A
vital book by Romania’s former foreign minister Gafencu was on sale
throughout Switzerland, but was denied to the defence lawyers in
Nuremberg, as was the published war dispatch of the U.S. Army chief
of staff, in which General George C. Marshall confirmed that no concerted
plan had existed between Germany and Italy prior to Pearl
Harbor – refuting one important point of the indictment.

When Göring’s lawyer invited the Polish exile general Wladyslaw
Anders to supply his evidence that the Russians themselves were the
murderers of thousands of Poles at Katyn, Anders’ Allied superiors
forbade him to comply. Documents which Sir David Maxwell Fyfe
had printed in three hundred copies for the press were virtually unavailable to the German lawyers. On January 11 1946 Hans Frank’s
lawyer Alfred Seidl would apply to the court for the former governorgeneral of Poland to be allowed to use his own diaries, of which he had voluntarily turned over forty volumes to the Seventh Army. Those volumes were now in the courthouse document room, but he too was
allowed to use only those extracts that had been picked by the prosecution. [561] Permission was refused.

While the prosecution disposed of innumerable telephone lines and
comprehensive transport facilities, the defence counsel had to share
two telephones between them. A document mentioned one day by the
prosecution in the courtroom was rushed to the prosecutors from Vienna
to Nuremberg by aeroplane on the next; defence counsel enjoyed
no such streamlined facilities.

In contrast, they suffered repeated harassment. One of Neurath’s
lawyers was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks without being
charged[562] Dr Marx, assigned against his will to act as Streicher’s
attorney, was subjected to vicious press attacks, his office was ransacked,
and he constantly feared arrest and imprisonment. For reasons
of self-preservation he tried to dissociate himself from his client
as much as decently possible[563] As the trial drew to its close in the
summer of 1946 Jodl’s lawyer Professor Hermann Jahrreiss would find
it necessary to make a formal appeal to the Tribunal for protection[564]

Page 259

[561]Alfred Seidl to IMT president (Lawrence), Jan 11 1946 (Federal
Records Center, Suitland: RG260, OMGUS files [OCCWC], shipping
list 74–3/7, box 117).
[562]Von der Lippe, diary, page 193; copy in IfZ, Irving Collection.
[563]Adele Streicher, comments on Hans Fritzsche, Das Schwert auf
der Waage (Heidelberg, 1953), page 165
[564]Biddle to Jahrreiss, Aug 2, 1946, with a memorandum on the
protection of defence counsel against press attacks (University of
Syracuse, New York, George Arents Research Library, Francis Biddle
Collection, ‘Trial Documents,’ box 15)



24) Key witnesses applied for by the defence were routinely declared to
be untraceable. The Americans accused Keitel of involvement in the
murder of a French general – S.S. Gruppenführer Hans Jüttner was
said to have acted on Keitel’s orders. His lawyer Dr Nelte demanded
that Jüttner be called as a witness; the Americans claimed they did not
know where he was. ‘Nelte announced he would drive up to see Jüttner
immediately,’ Keitel told his son months later, ‘and only then did the
Americans admit that Jüttner had been interrogated months earlier.’
Jüttner confirmed that he had never received any order whatever from
Keitel in this connection [568]
The same thing happened to one of General Jodl’s key witnesses.
Needing expert evidence of British plans to invade neutral Norway in
1940, they contacted Colonel Soltmann of the O.K.W.’s intelligence
branch Fremde Heere West. The German naval High Command had
deciphered Britain’s naval signals; and Britain’s own operational plans
had been captured during WESERÜBUNG, Hitler’s invasion of Norway.
Subsequently Britain’s aggressive intentions had been laid bare by the
records of the 1940 Supreme War Council meetings, captured by the
Germans in a boxcar in railroad sidings at Le Charité outside Paris[569]
Soltmann cabled his willingness to testify – and was immediately arrested
by the Americans[570] In February 1946 Göring’s lawyers asked
for General Karl Koller, the last chief of air staff, as a witness; the
Americans made out that the general could not be traced, although
their interrogator Ernst Engländer had himself questioned him at a
C.S.D.I.C. (Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre) in
England [571]

Page 260-261

[568] Karl-Heinz Keitel, ‘Conversation with My Father,’ Sep 14, 1946 P.M. (IfZ, Irving Collection).

[569] For the original records of the Supreme Council meetings, see
the papers of French Prime Minister and War Minister Edouard
Daladier at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Archive
d’Histoire Contemporaine. Boxes 2–DA–5–Dr 3, 4, 5, and 7 contain
the minutes of the Conseil Supreme meetings of Feb 5, Mar 27, 28,
Apr 5, 9, 22, 23, 27, and May 6, 1940; these were in German hands
from Jun 1940 onward, as were the copies in Prime Minister Paul
Reynaud’s files, now in the Archives Nationales in Paris, Paul Reynaud
papers, box 74 AP 22. Copies taken by the Germans of the records of
the French General Staff, 1939–40, and of the French Foreign Ministry,
1939–40, are on NA microfilm T120, rolls 115 and 127 respectively.
The German Foreign Ministry published them in a series of
White Books: No. 4, Dokumente zur englisch-französischen Politik der
Kriegsausweitung; No. 5, Weitere Dokumente zur Kriegsausweiterungspolitik
der Westmächte: Die Generalstabsbesprechungen Englands und Frankreichs
mit Belgien und den Niederländen ; and No. 6, Die Geheimakten des
französischen Generalstabes (all Berlin, 1940).

[570] Luise Jodl, unpublished biography of her husband Alfred Jodl
(Luise Jodl papers; copy in IfZ, Irving Collection). For the international-
law aspects of the invasion of Norway, see Hermann Mossler’s
unpublished paper, ‘Comments on Document Entitled, “International
Legal Evaluation of the Norway Action”,’ Apr 6 1946 (University of
Syracuse, George Arents Research Library, Francis Biddle Collection,
box 16).

[571] Statement by Dr Kurt Kaufmann, Kaltenbrunner’s lawyer (standing
in for Dr Stahmer), Jan 19, 1947 (Erhard Milch papers; copy in
author’s possession).


25) Those defence witnesses that did arrive at Nuremberg were softened
up by the prosecution interrogators before being turned over to the
defence. Some ended up in solitary confinement in the prison wing.
S.S. Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, who volunteered to defend
Kaltenbrunner and the S.S., was whisked away by the Americans to a
lunatic asylum until, summoned to give evidence at a subsequent trial
(the Milch Case) a year later, he was able to establish his sanity and
released on the trial judge’s orders to a normal prison.

Page 261

26) Field-Marshal Milch, who ignored the blackmail
attempts of the American interrogator Engländer and gave evidence
in defence of Speer and Göring, would be immediately removed
to the notorious punishment bunker at Dachau concentration camp.[573]

Page 261

[573] Milch diaries, Nov 5 1945, Mar–Apr 1947 (author’s microfilm
DI–59).


26) What loaded the scales of justice most heavily against the defence
however was the London Statute itself, which had established the trial
procedure. Most of the usual devices open to a capable defence counsel
had been smitten from his hands in advance by the skilful advance
planning of their opponents the prosecutors, meeting in London to
draw up the Statute. The writ of habeas corpus was not available. The
Statute ruled inadmissible in advance many defences which would
have been open to the Germans. The lawyers were not allowed to challenge the jurisdiction of the Tribunal or the judges’ impartiality.
Streicher commented in his diary: ‘The usual court practice is that a
defendant can challenge a judge for lack of impartiality. That would
be the case if for instance the judge was related to a trial adversary. In
this show trial the victors are the prosecutors and the judges of the
vanquished and inevitably prejudiced. Because they are fully aware of
this, they have laid down an appropriate rule denying to the defendants
in advance the opportunity of challenging them.’ ‘And that is the
purpose of the whole farce,’ continued this unusually articulate
gauleiter. ‘In this trial there is no question of according to the defendant
a blind and impartial justice; the trial has been set the task of
giving to an injustice a veneer of legality by cloaking it in the language
of the law.’[575] The Tribunal also squelched every attempt by the prisoners to raise the question of their conditions of imprisonment. When Streicher tried to protest from the witness box about the beatings he had received, Jackson had the allegation struck from the record.


Page 262

[575] For two memoranda by Donnedieu de Vabres dated Jul 8 1946
on Jahrreiss’ arguments, see University of Syracuse, New York, George
Arents Research Library, Francis Biddle Collection, ‘Trial Documents,’
box 14; therein is also a memorandum by Nikitchenko on ‘the Conception
of Conspiracy’, Jul 17 1946


27) At the end of the trial the
process would be repeated: the defence lawyers were each allowed to
make only a brief speech, followed by a lengthy closing argument by
the prosecution to which the defence could make no reply.

Page 263


28) There was a reason why Emmy’s letters were not reaching Göring
and the others. In mid-October Counter-Intelligence Corps agent Paul
H. Goldenberg had arbitrarily arrested her and her little daughter; the
mother had been thrown into Straubing prison (now designated a ‘civilian
internment camp’) and Edda had been snatched away from her
and put in an orphanage. On November 24 Edda had been locked up
in Straubing with her mother. The C.I.C. had also arrested Emmy’s
niece, sister, and nurse. The other Nuremberg prisoners’ children had
also been taken away and put in foster homes, while their womenfolk
were sent to prison.
Hans Frank was subjected to the same kind of psychological blackmail.
He learned that his sister Elisabeth had been held in Straubing
since September. ‘My sister is completely innocent of any involvement
in the accusations levelled against me,’ he protested in a letter to
Biddle – it never reached the judge. ‘She has never been politically
active and was not even a member of the Nazi Party.’ Their seventy year-
old mother, he wrote, was now quite defenceless. ‘Please be so
good as to attend to this case,’ Frank pleaded. ‘God will reward you!’[583]
These cases were not exceptions. Dr Schacht heard that his two children
had been taken away from his wife. Baldur von Schirach, who
had been ready to denounce Hitler and the whole Nazi ideology before
the trial started, learned that his wife Henriette had been arrested
on December 22 and taken to prison at Bad Tölz

Page 266

[583] Hans Frank to Biddle, undated, hand-written (ibid.).
Last edited by Panzermahn on 29 Jul 2004, 07:58, edited 1 time in total.


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#48

Post by Panzermahn » 29 Jul 2004, 07:56

For David, Xcalibur, Walter,

please refer to quotes in bold if you want to know why IMT documents are biased historical sources

Will post part III in a few days time

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#49

Post by walterkaschner » 29 Jul 2004, 08:14

Joachim Chan wrote:
Why have you not bothered to reply to Walterkaschner,
Coz his replies are actually asserting what i have quoted from Irving to be generally fair and accurate when some posters here had already started to accused Irving of manipulating historical data to suit his agenda when it is obvious somebody so bias against Irving like Evans were allowed to participate in the Irving vs Lipstadt libel trial and were commission by the defendents in writting a report about Irving
Whoa !!! Hold up Mr. Chan and read my post again and more carefully!!! I personally sincerely believe that David Irving is a charlatan, a miserable excuse as a historian and is guilty of every charge which the Court in Irving v. Lipstdt found Deborah Lipstadt was justified in leveling against him.

My post was simply designed to suggest that certain limited points in your introductory post should not simply be dismissed offhand, but are worthy (albeit barely) of further comment and discussion (which I believe they have already received on the old Forum, but not, if memory serves on the present one). I had no intention of giving them an imprimatur for fairness and accuracy, and fail to see how a reading of what I had to say could possibly have led to that conclusion.

Regards, Kaschner

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#50

Post by xcalibur » 29 Jul 2004, 19:25

Joachim Chan wrote:For David, Xcalibur, Walter,

please refer to quotes in bold if you want to know why IMT documents are biased historical sources

Will post part III in a few days time
What do the smilies indicate?

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#51

Post by Marcus » 29 Jul 2004, 19:30

xcalibur wrote:What do the smilies indicate?
If you have smilies enabled and write for example 18) this is displayed as 1Image.

/Marcus

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#52

Post by David Thompson » 29 Jul 2004, 20:39

I've made that mistake before (smilies are enabled by default). You can see the inappropriate results in my older posts.

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#53

Post by Marcus » 29 Jul 2004, 20:41

David Thompson wrote:I've made that mistake before (smilies are enabled by default). You can see the inappropriate results in my older posts.
And that is exactly why I've smilies disabled in my profile.

/Marcus

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#54

Post by Konrad » 30 Jul 2004, 04:12

Joachim Chan wrote: List of impartiality [ = an inclination to weigh both views or opinions equally] of NUremberg Trial which made it no difference with a Kangaroo Trial
I am neither a lawyer or legally trained, nor did I grow up with the English language. So I looked it up:

Kangaroo trial = An unfair trial in which the rights of the accused and precepts of justice are ignored and the outcome is usually known beforehand.

From the Charter of the International Military Tribunal:
Article 19. The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value.

Article 21. 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 Nations, including the 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 or other Tribunals of any of the United Nations
And I wonder how the defense lawyers of O.J.Simpson would have reacted in case they were confronted with such rules especially made for their trial.

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#55

Post by David Thompson » 30 Jul 2004, 04:33

Konrad said:
From the Charter of the International Military Tribunal:
Article 19. The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value.

Article 21. 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 Nations, including the 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 or other Tribunals of any of the United Nations


And I wonder how the defense lawyers of O.J.Simpson would have reacted in case they were confronted with such rules especially made for their trial.
Which defendants at the IMT trials were convicted of any charge solely on the basis of Article 19 or Article 21 evidence?

What does the hypothetical reaction of the defense lawyers of O.J.Simpson have to do with anything?

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#56

Post by xcalibur » 30 Jul 2004, 05:58

The Simpson Trial is completely and utterly irrelevant to this forum.

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#57

Post by WalterS » 30 Jul 2004, 07:15

Konrad wrote:
And I wonder how the defense lawyers of O.J.Simpson would have reacted in case they were confronted with such rules especially made for their trial.
Didn't matter much. They still managed to get a murderer off.

Those articles applied both to the prosecution and defense.

As to the tired old Kangaroo court charge, three defendants were acquitted of all charges, many were acquitted of some charges. Defendants had counsel who conducted vigorous defenses and cross-examinations.

Articles 19 and 21 were procedural. The defendants were tried on the four basic counts in the indictment. Evidence was presented and challenged. I find it most humorous that posters to this forum would try to find flaws with the IMT's proceedings against the accused Nazi war criminals when we know that the Germans never would have bothered with a trial. In fact, they didn't. They murdered and exterminated without even the pretext of law.

The IMT, in my view, bent over backwards to ensure a fair proceeding. Was it perfect? No. But its imperfection does not make it invalid. The IMT provided a great service because it accumulated tremendous amounts of evidence, documention, testimony that showed conclusively the horrendous crimes of the Nazi regime. The posters who bitch about the IMT have repeatedly failed to show that its conclusions were wrong, or that the Nazi Government and those who ran it were innocent.

This is just another feeble attempt by the sad followers of David Irving, a liar and a fraud, to try to make the Nazi leadership out to be victims.

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#58

Post by David Thompson » 30 Jul 2004, 09:38

Here are some observations on the first 22 points of Joachim's second list:

Irving said:
1) The records had indeed survived in abundance, although since they were collected only for the purposes of prosecuting war criminals it would be foolish to attempt to write a history from these alone....[326]
Point 1 is an ignorant falsehood. The US collected as many German records as could be found, without reference to whether they would be used to prosecute war criminals or not. You can see the listing in US National Archives Record Group 242 – most of them have nothing to do with war crimes evidence.

Point 2 shows neither “injustices” nor “double standards” at the IMT. It does show that there were differences of opinion among the allied prosecutors.

Point 3 shows neither “injustices” nor “double standards” at the IMT. Irving’s reference to Life Magazine, rather than to the IMT indictment, says more about his research methods than it does about the IMT.

Point 4 shows neither “injustices” nor “double standards” at the IMT. The Katyn charge was made at the behest of the Soviets, but ignored by the IMT judgment.

Point 5 raises the “you too” or “tu quoque” defense. The basic theory is that others did it to, so the defendants cannot be tried on the charge. It’s like a defendant claiming, at his trial for drug dealing, that it’s not righteous and fair unless all drug dealers everywhere are also put on trial. This is more of a propaganda point than a legal one. I've never heard of a court which allows that defense.

The next time Joachim or one of our readers has to appear before the court for a traffic offense like speeding or failing to make a full stop at a stop sign or light, try the "tu quoque" defense out for yourself. Tell the judge that he doesn't have the right to pass judgment on you, because he's probably committed the same offense too. You can tell him that David Irving thinks the practice is unjust and showed a double standard at Nuernberg.

Point 6 shows nothing except Judge Biddle’s opinion, assuming that Irving is presenting it fairly. Without the opinion being tied to some specific injustice or double standard, it doesn’t prove Joachim’s point.

Points 7 and 8 have nothing to do with the IMT proceedings, but instead refer to the conditions under which the prisoners were confined. Since they were accused war criminals, the only obligation of the allies under the Geneva Convention was to treat them the same way they would treat their own officers or officials accused of similar crimes. Furthermore, most of the defendants – Frank, Frick, Fritzsche, Funk, Hess, von Neurath, von Papen, von Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, von Schirach, Schacht, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, and Streicher – weren’t entitled to POW treatment because they weren’t uniformed combatants.

Point 9 fails to show either “injustices” or “double standards” at the IMT proceedings. So what if the prosecutors did not show every Nazi propaganda film available?

Points 10 and 11 are 2 more examples of “so what?”

Point 12 has been discussed many times in the H&WC section of the forum, with inconclusive results. Since no defendant was convicted or sentenced on the evidence based on the human soap claim, so what? Where’s the injustice and/or double standard?

Point 13 also doesn’t show either injustice or double standards.

Point 14 shows that the prosecutors planned to object to anticipated defense tactics. So what? Where’s the showing that the IMT judges planned to or did go along with the prosecution’s objections?

Point 15 is not footnoted by Irving. Is it because he has no authority for his claim?

Point 16 shows just the opposite of injustice and/or double standards. The IMT judges dropped Krupp from the list of defendants after hearing arguments from both sides. So what?

Point 17 just shows a postponement of a decision. Again, so what?

Point 18 is another piece of ignorance. Irving’s statement that “Not one would be published in the blue IMT volumes” is demonstrably false. This is the most prominent of a number of examples: Doenitz’s attorney, Flottenrichter (Fleet Judge Advocate) Kranzbuehler, sent a set of interrogatories to US Admiral Chester Nimitz regarding US unconditional submarine warfare. Nimitz answered them and Kranzbuehler read the answers in open court on 2 Jul 1946. The incident can be seen in the IMT proceedings, vol. 17, pp. 376-80.

Only a fraction of the affidavits appears in the blue volumes. There is, however, plenty of testimonial evidence from witnesses for the defense.

The British and American documentary evidence was published separately in the red volumes – the Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression set. All of the French and Soviet evidence, and the evidence of the defendants, is available on microfilm from the US National Archives and Records Administration.

Point 19 is another claim which Irving doesn’t bother to footnote, Since he doesn’t document the basis for his conclusion, it can’t be verified. Given Irving’s track record, there’s no particular reason to think that his claim is true.

Point 20 shows neither any injustice nor any double standard. The German defense attorneys had US and British lawyers to assist them, and the transcripts – which are there for all to see -- show that they put up an able defense. Irving claims that “even during the Third Reich the German trial procedures had been conducted with the primary objective of ascertaining truth, and all parties had united with that aim – the judges conducting the principal examination of witnesses, the opposing counsel being there to underline aspects that favoured the defence or prosecution.” Anyone who has seen the motion picture footage of the trials of the 20 July 1944 conspirators can only laugh at Irving’s claim.

Point 21 might have some merit if Irving has fairly presented Kranzbuehler’s statements. On the issue of defense access to original documents, an American military tribunal at Nuernberg made such an order in the I.G. Farben trial, only to find that when the defense team got access to the incriminating documents, they destroyed them. The destruction was reported in the New York Times, 27 Feb 1948:4:1.

In Point 22 Irving claims that “documents which might aid the defence were routinely concealed from them, or even destroyed.” He does not, however, give any source for his claim, nor does he give any examples to show that his characterization is not just another of the overblown pieces of rhetoric for which he is justly mistrusted. He says
“Dr Alfred- Maurice de Zayas has expressed the view that the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably have been very different if the German defence lawyers had been allowed access to the captured records of the O.K.W.’s Office of Special Investigations into Violations of International Law (Wehrmachts- Untersuchungsstelle für Verletzungen des Völkerrechts) and permitted to select documents from those files in mitigation of the High Command’s actions: ‘But these files were “classified” and they were not finally released to the public domain until the seventies.’”
Since the IMT judges acquitted the OKW of being a criminal organization, it is difficult to see how this statement could be true: “the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably have been very different.” What is he saying – that if the IMT had access to the documents they would have convicted the OKW?

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#59

Post by Panzermahn » 01 Aug 2004, 16:49

Reply to David
Point 4 shows neither “injustices” nor “double standards” at the IMT. The Katyn charge was made at the behest of the Soviets, but ignored by the IMT judgment.
Although it was ignored by the IMT judgement, nevertheless it was added in the prosecuting charges which made the IMT a court which simply allowed nonsensical charges..And also not forgetting that additional charges could influence much in the defendents fate

It’s like a defendant claiming, at his trial for drug dealing, that it’s not righteous and fair unless all drug dealers everywhere are also put on trial. This is more of a propaganda point than a legal one. I've never heard of a court which allows that defense.

The next time Joachim or one of our readers has to appear before the court for a traffic offense like speeding or failing to make a full stop at a stop sign or light, try the "tu quoque" defense out for yourself. Tell the judge that he doesn't have the right to pass judgment on you, because he's probably committed the same offense too. You can tell him that David Irving thinks the practice is unjust and showed a double standard at Nuernberg.
First of all, your analogy for the overall situation of tu quoque is not logical..As you said, if i ever had to appear in front of a court just because i failed to stop at red light, what evidence do i had to for my defense of tu quoque to incriminate that the presiding judge or the prosecuting lawyers had committed the same offense? But the situation is different in IMT. During the Nuremberg Trials, the Germans had evidence that the Allies committed exactly what they had been accused of. One example is the British Admiralty order (intercepted by the Germans) for unrestricted submarine warfare in the Straits of Skagerrak after the British declaration of war in September 1939. Also, evidence collected by Germans stated that Admiral Nimitz himself ordered unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific Theater after the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor 7th December 1941..So your analogy for the defense of tu quoque is proven to be illogical

Point 6 shows nothing except Judge Biddle’s opinion, assuming that Irving is presenting it fairly. Without the opinion being tied to some specific injustice or double standard, it doesn’t prove Joachim’s point.
It did prove a point..How? When a presiding judge himself voiced an opinion doubtful of the technicalities that were clearly obvious in a trial with such the magnitude of IMT, it implies that the prosecuting side are not being concrete in their research of "evidence" they got in prosecuting the defendents

Furthermore, most of the defendants – Frank, Frick, Fritzsche, Funk, Hess, von Neurath, von Papen, von Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, von Schirach, Schacht, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, and Streicher – weren’t entitled to POW treatment because they weren’t uniformed combatants.
Geneva Convention and Hague Convention had provision governing the arrests of government ministers, officials as well as civillians.

Point 12 has been discussed many times in the H&WC section of the forum, with inconclusive results. Since no defendant was convicted or sentenced on the evidence based on the human soap claim, so what? Where’s the injustice and/or double standard?
So what?? Let me enquire something, would an American court of law accept inconclusive evidence as the basis of prosecuting the defendents? That is what the IMT did..Accepting inconclusive facts as evidence against the defendets without making any painstaking research to ascertained the truthfulness of the "facts" which made this an injustice in the trial..

Point 17 just shows a postponement of a decision. Again, so what?
Because it shows the inconclusiveness and the unsureness of the prosecuting officials in presenting their evidence which made it doubtful on their so called facts

Point 20 shows neither any injustice nor any double standard. The German defense attorneys had US and British lawyers to assist them, and the transcripts – which are there for all to see -- show that they put up an able defense. Irving claims that “even during the Third Reich the German trial procedures had been conducted with the primary objective of ascertaining truth, and all parties had united with that aim – the judges conducting the principal examination of witnesses, the opposing counsel being there to underline aspects that favoured the defence or prosecution.” Anyone who has seen the motion picture footage of the trials of the 20 July 1944 conspirators can only laugh at Irving’s claim.


What kind of assistance rendered to the defence lawyers by the British and American attorneys..By the way, what Irving actually meant on German trial procedures are German court martials which involved military. What you said on

Anyone who has seen the motion picture footage of the trials of the 20 July 1944 conspirators can only laugh at Irving’s claim

Again, it shows that your unfamiliarity with the overall picture. The trials of the 20th July 1944 conspirators had two stage..First of all, a German court of honor was established to determine whether the accused (only for the members of the armed forces) are guilty or not.If they are deemed guilty, then they were discharged from the armed forces and were sent to the Volksgericht (People's Court) under the jurisdiction of the Nazi party. Kriegsgericht are under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht, not the Nazi party.

Since the IMT judges acquitted the OKW of being a criminal organization, it is difficult to see how this statement could be true: “the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably have been very different.” What is he saying – that if the IMT had access to the documents they would have convicted the OKW?
No, what Dr de Zayas meant is although the OKW (or the German General Staff or the OKH) was acquitted of being a criminal organization, some of its members are not acquitted. Good example of the Hamburg british court martial of Field Marshal von Manstein in 1947. Although the british accepted the evidence from von Manstein on russian brutality in Feodosia, 1942 (German hospital was attacked in violation of Geneva Convention and wounded was murdered), yet he was sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment but was released in 1952 on the account of his bad health

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#60

Post by David Thompson » 02 Aug 2004, 08:43

Joachim – Here are some comments on your reply:

In regard to point 4, you said:
Although it was ignored by the IMT judgement, nevertheless it was added in the prosecuting charges which made the IMT a court which simply allowed nonsensical charges..And also not forgetting that additional charges could influence much in the defendents fate
I don’t know how it works where you live, but in American criminal law the prosecuting charges are brought by the executive branch of government, and the judicial branch and/or the jury decides whether they have been proven. The role of judges in evaluating "nonsensical charges" is restricted to whether or not the charges allege a criminal offense under an existing law. In addition, it was not clear that the charges were "nonsensical" until several years after the IMT trial, when the US Congress held its own investigation as to who was responsible. Your comment just shows the truth of the old saying, "Hindsight is always 20-20." Your comment “that additional charges could influence much in the defendents fate” is also wide of the mark – no individual IMT defendant was charged with responsibility for the Katyn Forest massacre, and the fact that the charge was bogus probably helped the defendants, since that would tend to make the judges skeptical of the remaining charges.

In regard to point 5, you said:
During the Nuremberg Trials, the Germans had evidence that the Allies committed exactly what they had been accused of. One example is the British Admiralty order (intercepted by the Germans) for unrestricted submarine warfare in the Straits of Skagerrak after the British declaration of war in September 1939. Also, evidence collected by Germans stated that Admiral Nimitz himself ordered unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific Theater after the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor 7th December 1941..So your analogy for the defense of tu quoque is proven to be illogical
Your quote from Irving in point 5 was about the deportation of populations. He says:
5) On the count accusing the Germans of deporting populations, the indictment also displayed a troubling double-standard, branding this without hesitation as a ‘crime against humanity’ – when committed by the Germans.
Irving's point has nothing to do with your unrestricted submarine warfare example. Furthermore, the IMT didn’t convict anyone of a war crime based on an unrestricted submarine warfare theory. Finally, since Irving speaks of "a troubling double-standard," in which the deportation of populations is a crime "when committed by the Germans," he is clearly suggesting the "tu quoque" defense. If he weren't, the statement would not be an example of "injustices and double standards."

In regard to point 6 you said:
When a presiding judge himself voiced an opinion doubtful of the technicalities that were clearly obvious in a trial with such the magnitude of IMT, it implies that the prosecuting side are not being concrete in their research of "evidence" they got in prosecuting the defendents
The quote you used in point 6 looks like this:
Judge Biddle gathered that
Rudenko had asked for the postponement on the grounds that the
indictment contained inaccuracies on the figures of Nazi victims in
Russia and Poland. It was obvious from his inflexibility that he was
taking orders from Moscow [417]

Page 190

[417] Biddle diary, Oct 15 1945
Biddle’s actual words are not given in the footnote. That leaves us having to guess whether the last sentence of the quote is Biddle’s conclusion or Irving’s conclusion. Since Irving doesn’t make the point clearly, I think it’s unfair to attribute it to Biddle. That leaves us with nothing. The first sentence in the quote describes a continuance to amend the criminal charges to provide more accurate figures. Such continuances and amendments are a daily occurrence in criminal courts, and certainly don’t show double standards or unfairness.

In regard to points 7 and 8, you said:
Geneva Convention and Hague Convention had provision governing the arrests of government ministers, officials as well as civillians.
Where? What sections of those conventions deal with civilians put on trial for criminal acts?

In regard to point 12, you said:
Let me enquire something, would an American court of law accept inconclusive evidence as the basis of prosecuting the defendents? That is what the IMT did..Accepting inconclusive facts as evidence against the defendets without making any painstaking research to ascertained the truthfulness of the "facts" which made this an injustice in the trial.
Again, in Anglo-American law the prosecuting charges are brought by the executive branch of government, and the judicial branch decides whether they have been proven. American courts and juries frequently find that the evidence to prove a charge is inconclusive. That’s how people get acquitted. That’s why three of the defendants were acquitted by the IMT judges.

When I said “so what?” to your point 17, you replied:
Because it shows the inconclusiveness and the unsureness of the prosecuting officials in presenting their evidence which made it doubtful on their so called facts
Here is the quotation which is your point 17:
17) There were other signs of problems to come. When defence counsel
applied for one particular witness to prove that the Russians had deported
slave labour from Latvia, just as the Nazis were now accused of
having done, the Russian alternate judge Lieutenant-Colonel Volchkov
flew into a temper and called it libellous. ‘We postpone a decision,’
noted Biddle, ‘till a full meeting.’[521]

Page 236

[521]Biddle, letter, Nov 18 1945

The quote refers to the IMT judges, not “the inconclusiveness and the unsureness of the prosecuting officials in presenting their evidence.” It involves postponing a decision until all of the judges are present to discuss and decide the matter. “So what?” seems like an apt question to me.

When I said:
Anyone who has seen the motion picture footage of the trials of the 20 July 1944 conspirators can only laugh at Irving’s claim (that “even during the Third Reich the German trial procedures had been conducted with the primary objective of ascertaining truth, and all parties had united with that aim – the judges conducting the principal examination of witnesses, the opposing counsel being there to underline aspects that favoured the defence or prosecution.”)
You repled:
Again, it shows that your unfamiliarity with the overall picture. The trials of the 20th July 1944 conspirators had two stage..First of all, a German court of honor was established to determine whether the accused (only for the members of the armed forces) are guilty or not.If they are deemed guilty, then they were discharged from the armed forces and were sent to the Volksgericht (People's Court) under the jurisdiction of the Nazi party. Kriegsgericht are under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht, not the Nazi party.

I am quite familiar with the overall picture, and the court of honor has nothing to do with it. My statement refers to the motion picture footage of the trials of the 20 July 1944 conspirators before the People’s Court. In that footage you will not see “German trial procedures . . . conducted with the primary objective of ascertaining truth, and all parties had united with that aim – the judges conducting the principal examination of witnesses, the opposing counsel being there to underline aspects that favoured the defence or prosecution.”
If you have ever seen motion picture footage of the military court of honor stripping the military conspirators of their right to a court-martial, tell me where I can find it.

In regard to point 22, I remarked:
Since the IMT judges acquitted the OKW of being a criminal organization, it is difficult to see how this statement could be true: “the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably have been very different.” What is he saying – that if the IMT had access to the documents they would have convicted the OKW?
You replied:
“what Dr de Zayas meant is although the OKW (or the German General Staff or the OKH) was acquitted of being a criminal organization, some of its members are not acquitted. Good example of the Hamburg british court martial of Field Marshal von Manstein in 1947. Although the british accepted the evidence from von Manstein on russian brutality in Feodosia, 1942 (German hospital was attacked in violation of Geneva Convention and wounded was murdered), yet he was sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment but was released in 1952 on the account of his bad health”
It is Irving who quotes Dr. de Zayas:
But here at Nuremberg documents which might aid the defence were routinely concealed from them, or even destroyed. (It is quite wrong for Sir David Maxwell Fyfe to claim in his memoirs that ‘all the documents were available to the Defence.’)[557] Dr Alfred- Maurice de Zayas has expressed the view that the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command(O.K.W.) would probably have been very different if the German defence lawyers had been allowed access to the captured records of the O.K.W.’s Office of Special Investigations into Violations of International Law (Wehrmachts- Untersuchungsstelle für Verletzungen des Völkerrechts) and permitted to select documents from those files in mitigation of the High Command’s actions: ‘But these files were “classified” and they were
not finally released to the public domain until the seventies.’[558](my emphasis - DT)

Irving is clearly quoting de Zayas in the context of the IMT trial. Irving specifically says: "de Zayas has expressed the view that the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command (O.K.W.) would probably have been very different" (my emphasis - DT) The only trial in which the OKW was ever a defendant was the IMT Nuernberg trial. Presumably that’s why you included the quote in your “List of injustices and double standards from David Irving's Nuremberg The Last Battle (Part Two)” -- because the quote refers to the IMT trial. There's no mistake here. Irving says de Zayas was talking about the IMT trial. Since the IMT acquitted the OKW, the issue is, what is meant by the claim of de Zayas that "the verdict on many of the points charged against the High Command(O.K.W.) would probably have been very different"? Here are the possibilities I see:

(a) Irving is aware of the IMT verdict of acquittal against the OKW, and he has written the passage in a way which withholds that fact and deliberately misleads the reader to falsely conclude that the OKW was convicted of some kind of crime or crimes in the IMT proceedings. Irving then adorns this intentionally false impression by suggesting that it was a miscarriage of justice caused by the withholding of evidence;

(b) Irving's paraphrasal of de Zayas is accurate. Both men are ignorant and unaware that the IMT had acquitted the OKW of being a criminal organization;

(c) Irving's paraphrasal is inaccurate, and de Zayas wasn't refering to the IMT proceedings at all. In that case, Irving is ignorant and unaware that the IMT had acquitted the OKW of being a criminal organization, and Irving’s use of the de Zayas quote in the context of the IMT proceedings is fraudulent because de Zayas wasn’t talking about the IMT proceedings; or

(d) You have misquoted Irving.
Last edited by David Thompson on 02 Aug 2004, 10:07, edited 8 times in total.

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