70th anniversary of Nuremberg: Educational program for lovers of fascist henchmen
70 years ago, on October 1, 1946, the Nuremberg International Tribunal ended. Representatives of the victorious countries in World War II - the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France - tried the criminal elite of Hitler's Reich for countless and monstrous crimes, both military and against humanity. It took almost two days to announce the verdict listing the crimes of the accused. Almost all of the first military and government officials of Nazi Germany and approximately half of the executioners of lower rank were sentenced to death by hanging.
The foreign ministers of the USSR, USA and Great Britain agreed that the highest political and military leadership of the Third Reich should suffer severe punishment during the Moscow Conference in the fall of 1943, when a radical turning point occurred in the course of the war after the victory of Soviet troops at the Kursk Bulge. The scale and cruelty of the crimes committed by German fascism surpassed everything that humanity had ever faced. It was not humanly possible to understand and forgive the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
The issue was finally resolved during the Yalta Conference in February 1945. It is interesting that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded the immediate execution of Nazi criminals without trial, but Marshal I.V. Stalin and US President F.D. Roosevelt managed to convince the British prime minister that Hitler and his entourage should appear before an international court and even receive legal defenders.
Until the very end of the war, this decision of the heads of the allied countries was kept completely secret, so that the desperate Nazis would not have a reason to take it out on prisoners of war and civilians taken to hard labor in Germany. After the signing of the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, information about the international tribunal was brought to the attention of General de Gaulle, the leader of the Fighting France movement.
In July-August 1945, a conference was held in London at which the victorious countries established an international tribunal, established its principles and brought legal norms as close as possible.
The fact is that the USSR and France stood up for the norms of continental law, while the USA and Great Britain wanted to judge Nazi criminals based on the norms of Anglo-Saxon law.
In the end, the parties came to agreement on most organizational and procedural issues. A number of proposals from the Soviet side were taken into account. For example, instead of drawing lots, the chairman of the tribunal was appointed one by one, indictments had to be detailed, judges were given the right to interrogate defendants, and the defendants themselves were given the last word.
The choice of venue for the tribunal was symbolic. The second largest city of Nuremberg in Bavaria, which fell into the American occupation zone, was chosen by the Nazis back in the 1930s for holding lavish party congresses. It was in Nuremberg that the shameful racial laws “On German Citizenship” and “On the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” were adopted.
In addition, Nuremberg was almost not damaged by Allied bombing, and on its territory there was a Palace of Justice with sufficient capacity for holding a tribunal, connected by an underground passage to the prison where the accused were kept. The tribunal's security and convoy duties were carried out by military police of the US Army.
On November 20, 1945, the international tribunal held its first meeting. Two judges were appointed from each of the four winning countries to the tribunal. On behalf of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were tried by Major General of Justice Iona Nikitchenko and Colonel of Justice Alexander Volchkov.
Four public prosecutors were appointed from each of the four victorious countries, each with their own deputies and assistants. The main Soviet prosecutor was Roman Rudenko, who at that time held the position of prosecutor of Soviet Ukraine.
The Nazi defendants were defended by experienced German lawyers.
In the dock, Hermann Goering (Nazi No. 2 and Reichsmarschall of the Air Force), Rudolf Hess (a prominent party leader and ideologist of the Third Reich) were accused of crimes against peace and humanity, of starting a world war, pursuing a policy of racism and anti-Semitism, of murder and cruel treatment of prisoners of war. ), Wilhelm Keitel (Field Marshal General, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (SS Obergruppenführer, Police General, Head of the Main Directorate of Reich Security SS, General of the SS Troops), Alfred Rosenberg (Head of the NSDAP Foreign Office, SS Obergruppenführer, one of major ideologists of the Third Reich, Reich Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories), Joachim Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany), Hans Frank (Governor General of occupied Poland), Walter Funk (Minister of Economics, President of the Reichsbank), Julius Streicher (Gauleiter of Franconia, editor-in-chief of the Nazi leaflet “Stormtrooper”, ideologist of racism), Karl Dönitz (Grand Admiral, commander of the Kriegsmarine, organizer of “unlimited submarine warfare”), as well as not so seasoned Nazi rabble.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to bring to justice the main fascist spider - the Fuhrer of the German nation Adolf Hitler, the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich Joseph Goebbels and the chief executioner, the Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Hitler cowardly took poison, before his death wishing the Germans to disappear from the face of the earth, since they could not defeat the Slavic subhumans. Goebbels, along with his wife Magda, also committed suicide under unclear circumstances, having previously given lethal injections of morphine to their six children. Himmler could well have found himself on the same bench with Goering and Rosenberg, since he was captured by the British military police. But during the arrest process, gross violations were committed and Himmler managed to see through the ampoule of poison. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, who was killed during an attempt to break out of Berlin at the height of street fighting, was also absent from the courtroom. At that moment, Bormann's fate was unknown, and he was sentenced in absentia.
During the international tribunal, dozens of witnesses testified, and the grave accusations were supported by numerous documents, evidence, photographic and film materials. Despite this, the executioners and criminals, who received legal assistance and were emboldened, hoped to somehow get out and, if they did not receive leniency, then get off with prison terms. The newsreel captured their grins, ironically tailored faces, protesting gestures, and remarks from the spot to the witnesses.
Certain hopes of the accused for a favorable outcome of the tribunal were associated with Churchill's Fulton speech on March 5, 1946, which became the beginning of the Cold War. Nazi criminals hoped to exploit the differences between the former allies, which would ruin the trial. Since this date, the tribunal has been held in a tense atmosphere, but the disagreements have not yet reached the level at which the Anglo-American side would want to curtail the trial. However, the beginning of the Cold War had a certain influence on the sentences of the financial and industrial bosses of the Third Reich, who got off with children's sentences for their crimes.
One of the most unpleasant witnesses for the accused was former Field Marshal Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, which broke its teeth at Stalingrad, and one of the authors of Operation Barbarossa, the plan for an attack on the Soviet Union. Paulus, who stood at the origins of the war with the USSR and commanded one of the best armies of the Wehrmacht, with his testimony literally smeared the accused with their pathetic excuses.
But the day when the accused experienced icy horror was the interrogation as a witness of the former commandant of the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, better known by the name of the neighboring Polish city of Auschwitz. SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss answered all the questions of the judges and the prosecution, and from his testimony a nightmarish picture emerged of a death plant in which (based on the testimony of Höss himself) more than two and a half million people were exterminated. From Hoess the world learned about the Zyklon gas and gas chambers, in each of which the Nazis killed two thousand people at a time.
SS-Obersturmbannführer Höss appeared before the international tribunal merely as a witness only because he was already under investigation for atrocities committed by him and his henchmen in the territory of occupied Poland. For Höss, everything ended in a loop on April 2, 1947.
Evidence and evidence of massacres made an indelible impression on judges and the world community. The Nazi criminals, who had previously flaunted their “exploits,” sensed the inexorable approach of severe retribution, began to tearfully repent, dodge and shift the blame onto the dead Hitler and Himmler. Did not help. In their final speeches, the prosecutors pointed out that responsibility for the atrocities did not go to the grave with Hitler and Himmler, and that each of the scoundrels sitting in the bench must pay for their crimes.
The prosecutor from the USSR, Rudenko, posed a broader question: at the trial, not only specific executioners should be convicted, but also the entire inhumane system of German fascism. Not only the leaders, but also the party, government, police and military organizations serving them and carrying out their criminal orders.
As a result, the Nuremberg Tribunal recognized the SS, SD, Gestapo and the leadership of the NSDAP as criminal organizations. He sentenced half of the defendants to death by hanging. A number of Nazis received serious prison sentences, three, led by Nazi No. 3 Rudolf Hess, receiving life imprisonment. Three were acquitted, but soon appeared before the denazification commission and were convicted.
Without waiting for the death penalty, Goering committed suicide in his own cell with the life of Nazi No. 2. The rest of those sentenced to death were executed in the gym of the Nuremberg prison by professional executioners provided to the tribunal by American justice. The corpses of Nazi criminals were cremated and their ashes scattered.
And here's what else. In our time, when neo-fascism began not only to raise its head, but also to influence the domestic and foreign policies of some European countries, various talkative bastards really liked to talk at length on the topic “if Bandera and Shukhevych were not convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, then they are not fascists and criminals."
What can I say?
The fact is that the Nuremberg Tribunal tried the leaders of Nazi Germany and its criminal state-political system, who unleashed the Second World War and were guilty of mass crimes and genocide committed during that time.
Who are Bandera’s, Melnik’s, Vlasov’s, Ustasha, all kinds of legionnaires and policemen? These are small fry, collaborators. They were not the cause of the world war, and arose as an organized force not on their own, but on the initiative of the Nazi occupiers, who wanted to entrust the native formations with most of the dirty work of exterminating the local population and fighting the forces of resistance to the occupiers.
In Nuremberg, the Nazis, citizens of the no longer existing Third Reich empire, were tried.
The Hitlerite regime collapsed, and along with it, the native rat hordes he organized became the losing side. The bloody crimes committed by collaborators under the Nazis forced them to go into hiding, form gangs, and continue to kill, kill, kill...
The time has come, and the liberated Motherland, trampled upon by scoundrels during the foreign invasion, called the little rats to account for betrayal, violence, robbery and murder. And not only the Motherland, but also those states where little rats committed atrocities along with their owners.
So the proceedings with the fifth column after the end of the war became an internal affair of the states affected during the occupation.
With the beginning of the Cold War, all these Banderaites, Ustashas and other “forest brothers” became in demand again. The new owners turned a blind eye to the fact that the “fighters for independence” were smeared up to their ears in the blood of their compatriots. This circumstance was precisely a guarantee of loyalty and professional zeal when applying for a new job.
Did Bandera's supporters become less criminals because of this? No, they didn't. As it was said at the Nuremberg Tribunal, “Hitler did not take responsibility with him to the grave. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud." I’ll add on my own: a change of employer does not provide amnesty for fascist henchmen. Even if the new employer was once a member of the anti-fascist coalition.
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Now the editors are aware.