- The Nuremberg trials are a vast, vast subject. That the
evidence used against the defendants was very dubious and obtained by even
more dubious methods is, however, very clear. A small sampling of the techniques
employed is described by the distinguished English historian, David Irving
in his "Nuremberg: The Last Battle". From pp.150-151.
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- "Garnering usable documentary evidence became a
mounting nightmare for Jackson. He had become disenchanted with the productivity
and intelligence of General Donovan's O.S.S. They had promised much but
delivered little. What Donovan regarded as evidence, he certainly would
not. 'I never had any feeling that anybody had trapped me into the thing,'
Jackson commented later. But I was in the trap!'
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- It soon became clear that the O.S.S. had intended all
along to stage-manage the whole trial along the lines of an N.K.V.D. show
trial, with Jackson little more than a professional actor. As part of the
stage-management they proposed to run a pre-trial propaganda campaign in
the United States with 'increasing emphasis on the publication of atrocity
stories to keep the public in the proper frame of mind.' To this end the
O.S.S. devised and scripted for the education of the American public a
two-reel film on war crimes, called 'Crime and Punishment'; it was designed
to put the case against the leading Nazis. Jackson declined to participate.
He refused even to read the speech that the O.S.S. had scripted for him
to read into the cameras. 'As you know,' he wrote to the O.S.S. officer
concerned, the British are particularly sensitive about lawyers trying
their cases in the newspapers and other vehicles of communication.'
-
- The film proposal was followed by an explicit O.S.S.
suggestion for launching a 'black propaganda' during the course of the
trial, with agents in selected foreign countries starting rumours designed
to influence public opinion in favour of the trial and against the defendants.
This would be far more effective, they pointed out, than mounting a straightforward
public relations campaign which would obviously be seen as emanating from
the powers conducting the trials. One of Jackson's staff secretly notified
him that the suggestion was 'fantastic, if not entirely dangerous,'and
the justice himself penciled a pithy comment on the letter: 'The scheme
is cock-eyed. Give them no encouragement.'
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- Vestiges of the unsavory methods of the O.S.S. can still
be seen among the earlier Nuremberg records for instance, at the
pre-trial interrogations the defendants were not accompanied by lawyers;
and were frequently persuaded by trickery or intimidation to subscribe
to testimonies incriminating others which we now know to have been false.
The files are full of curiosities for instance anonymous typed extracts
of documents instead of the originals, and sworn statements by witnesses
like Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, in which all the 'witnesses to his
signature' have signed, but not Hoss himself. The Americans also submitted
as exhibit 1553-PS a file of invoices for substantial consignments of Zyklon
B (hydrogen cyanide pellets) supplied to the pest-control office at Auschwitz;
they concealed the fact that the same file contained invoices for identical
quantities of Zyklon B delivered to the camp at Oranienberg, outside Berlin,
where it was never alleged there had been any 'gas chambers'.
-
- These paragraphs are, of course, only a very brief overview
of the innumerable deficiencies of the 'evidence' at Nuremberg. The overwhelming
Jewish presence behind the scenes as interrogators, jailers and torturers
is covered elsewhere in Irving's excellent, but far from complete, study.
The sampling of techniques employed, however, is more than sufficient to
demonstrate that truth was never the objective of the orchestrators of
the trial. That is the key point in evaluating Nuremberg. All the evidence,
real and faked at the great trial, was evidence in pursuit of a pre-determined
verdict. It was desired to demonstrate that the Germans were uniquely evil,
that the Germans had waged aggressive war, that the Germans had committed
great 'crimes against humanity' and that the greatest of these alleged
crimes was the alleged extermination of six million Jews in so-called 'gas
chambers'. To reach these pre-determined verdicts, the court manipulated
and distorted evidence on a massive scale. Therefore, any honest assessment
of the German National Socialist government built on Nuremberg conclusions
is inherently flawed. It is the art of writing history based on victor's
propaganda.
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