list of guards at nuremberg trials

My father was an MP at The Nuremberg Trails. [24][25] Although a novel construct, "crimes against humanity" covered acts that were already prohibited by the laws of most countries. He reportedly carried a whip during liaisons with numerous women. First, it rejected the contention that only a state, and not individuals, could be found guilty of war crimes; the tribunal held that crimes of international law are committed by men and that only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced. Following the Second World War, many concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz were liberated. Asked whether the 60-year myth about Streicher struggling for 20 minutes at the end of the hangmans rope was true, Prestianni said guards never witnessed the hanging and he had not heard any such rumors at the time, but guessed it could have happened. The ensuing trial pitted U.S. chief prosecutor and Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson against Hermann Gring, the former head of the Nazi air force, whom Adolf Hitler had once named to be his. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 24 of the most important political and military leaders of Nazi Germany. The Nazi war criminal, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, after execution at Nuremberg. One passing recollection I have of Schirach, said Prestianni, was teasing him about how much the prison guards were enjoying his former girls and how pretty we considered them. Keitel was one of ten defendants hanged in the Palace of Justice in the early morning hours of October 16, 1946. [241][242], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}492716N 110254E / 49.45444N 11.04833E / 49.45444; 11.04833. The defendants included some of the most famous Nazis, including Hermann Gring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel. 10 issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He guarded top Nazis at Nuremberg trials; now he'll share his story By CAROL SMITH, P-I REPORTER Updated Nov 7, 2007 Jack Carver holds a portrait of top-ranking Nazi Hermann Goering, whom he met. Also represented were some leaders of the German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG) and former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht. [168], The judgment found that there was a premeditated conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, the goals of the conspiracy being "the disruption of the European order as it had existed since the Treaty of Versailles" and "the creation of a Greater Germany beyond the frontiers of 1914". Friedrich Jeckeln was found guilty and was executed in Riga, Latvia. Generally, I would describe the food, as I recall, quite good, Prestianni remembers. Today these sketches are highly prized. [3] War losses in the Soviet Union alone included 27 million dead, mostly civilians, which was .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}17th of the prewar population. The 3rd Battalion of the 26th Infantry Reg., "Blue Spaders," of the 1st Infantry Division were chosen to secure the historic Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Gring was one of the surviving leaders of the Third Reich and the highest-ranking Nazi to be tried at the Nuremberg Trials where he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. In return, he often was rewarded with cigarettes, pipe tobacco, or other small items he coveted. [37] Nineteen states ratified the charter and were admitted as observers. events, and resources, Michael Prestianni: Guarding the War Criminals at Nuremberg. Did guards favor some prisoners over others? It was only sometime later that I realized in retrospect that I had become part of history, Prestianni said. After Ley hanged himself, this strict suicide watch was instituted, Prestianni explained. On Wednesday, January 31 1951, a curious bit of revelry took place in Landsberg prison as 10 war criminals condemned to death by the Nuremberg military tribunals learned they would live after all. Dnitz, who was named successor to Hitler during the waning days of the war and served 10 years in prison, remained aloof. The judgement argued that aggressive war had already been illegal, even if no one had been punished for it, and therefore the German leaders could not count on immunity from prosecution. It was supposed to pass to me, but my brothers widow lost it and it has not been turned over to me. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Gring committed suicide before he could be executed. When Hess exercised or sat on a bench in the courtyard it was always alone, a single, disheveled old man staring at the courtyard bricks. [101] He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason". After the first trial ended in October 1946, the United States held 12 other trials at Nuremberg under the authority of the International Military Tribunal. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a . [141] The defendants tried to blame their crimes on Hitler, who was mentioned 1,200 times during the trialmore than the top five defendants combined. Thank you so much for your time and I am looking forward to getting into many discussions. Verdicts were handed down on October 1, 1946. The Russians always were a problem and only cooperated with the other countries about 10 percent of the time. [28] The charter limited the jurisdiction of the court to Germany's actions because the Allies did not want to answer to an international court for their own actions;[29] only Germans could be tried. His name was Raymond J Arsenault. [32] The trial was held under modified common law. Bragging of his ability to mass murder millions of Jews, Frank never admitted to his brutal inhumanity during the war crimes trial but was sentenced nonetheless to hang. He was a physical fitness fanatic who threw his cell window open in mid-winter and splashed toilet water over his bare chest and then did pushups, before meals, after meals, most any time, over and over. [82], Over the summer, all of the national delegations struggled to gather evidence for the upcoming trial. Call us at (425) 485-6059. The two men were deep in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, venue for the Nuremberg War Crimes trials of Germany's Nazi leaders. The names were -- Wippern, Hahnefeld and myself carried out the checking. [240] The IMT is one of the most well-studied trials in history, and it has also been the subject of an abundance of books and scholarly publications, along with motion pictures such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Memory of Justice (1976). [17] On 8 May, Germany surrendered unconditionally. They were individually handcuffed to guards, driven by ambulance to a nearby airfield, and flown to Berlin, where they were processed at Spandau Prison. Whether the prisoners availed themselves of this privilege was by individual choice. Even before this decision, around 1,000 former Latvian Legion soldiers had served as guards at the Nuremberg trials, guarding Nazi war criminals. All war crimes prisoners ate from a single German menu. Public to Get Access to Nuremberg Trials Digital Recordings I would like any information that would lead me to a more detailed understanding of what my father did while part of this undertaking. She was released after four years and eventually committed suicide in a Bavarian prison. [85] The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents[40] and entered 4,600 into evidence,[87] along with 30 kilometres (19mi) of film and 25,000 photographs. [155] In the context of the brewing Cold War, the trial became a means of condemning not only Germany but also the Soviet Union. This page was last edited on 8 October 2022, at 21:33. Epidemic jaundice experiments High . Number 6 was Walther Funk, former minister of economics, and Number 7 was Rudolf Hess, once Hitlers private secretary and deputy fhrer. Ten condemned Nazi ringleaders died on the gallows in the Nuernberg jail early today but Herman Goering, Adolf . His name was David C. Porter from Pennsylvania. He recently passed in January of 2020 at the age of 91. He has little or no memory of the six remaining defendants, Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach, Labor Front head Robert Ley, Minister of Economics Walther Funk, Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment Fritz Sauckel, propagandist Hans Fritzsche, or Artur Seys-Inquart, the administrator of the occupied Netherlands. However, fraternization did occur on a regular basis and, for the most part, went unpunished by the prison administration. The Federal Research Division (FRD) is a fee-based research and analysis unit within the Library of Congress that produces world-renowned and nonpartisan products to support research-informed policy- and decision-making. But Woods, an almost charmingly hapless man with a checkered. They were not to be shown disrespect. The . Prestianni never served in the trial courtroom, only in the cellblock. On that date, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France signed an agreement that included a charter for an international military tribunal to conduct trials of major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic location. Three of the defendants were acquitted. 125. [5] Soviet jurist Aron Trainin developed the concept of crimes against peace (waging aggressive war) which would later be central to the proceedings at Nuremberg. An avid reader, he availed himself of a well-stocked library with a steady supply of books. In an attempt to further depersonalize them, prisoners were designated by numbers rather than by their familial surnames. [123] The next week, the Soviet prosecution suddenly produced former field marshal Friedrich von Paulus, captured after the Battle of Stalingrad, as a witness and questioned him about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. [132][169] Through a compromise among the judges, the charge of conspiracy was narrowed to a conspiracy to wage aggressive war. Expressed repentance. . They [the prisoners] were to always be considered innocent until proven guilty. Nazi, Alfred Rosenberg, lies dead on a casket following his execution after the Nuremberg Trials. After 216 court sessions, on October 1, 1946, the verdict on 22 of the original 24 defendants was handed down. Emilio DiPalma (right) stands on guard at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. The purpose of the armored reinforcement was to prevent any possibility of attack by groups of still-fanatic Nazis. The trial started in November 1945. [163] Contrary to the prosecution, the verdict dated the planning of aggression to the 1937 Hossbach Memorandum and not to the founding of the Nazi Party. Guards occasionally retaliated against unpopular, troublesome prisoners by rapping on the cell doors with their night sticks to disturb the occupants sleep. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment. Sixteen of these captives were guarded by Pfc. Popular radio commentator; head of the news division of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Each of the governing countries, the United States, England, France, and Russia, had its own interpretation of punishment. He guarded the prisoners in their cells and also stood guard in the court room. [214] By then, the Americans were hoping to use the offer of pardon to convicted war criminals in order to bind West Germany to the Western Bloc. I would have kept my distance from them.. In July 2020, Dey was found guilty and given a two . All the prisoners smoked pipes, and they all tried to wheedle cigarettes from us.. [4], In early 1942, representatives of eight governments-in-exile in the United Kingdom issued a declaration on Punishment for War Crimes, which demanded an international court to try the Axis crimes committed in occupied countries. He was the first of 10 hanged on October 16, 1946. This is a good documentary on the Nuremberg Trials that occurred after the end of the war. How long did it take you to learn what you are doing? he often asked. Streicher, sentenced to death, was perhaps the most despised prisoner of all due to his complete obsession with sex. -. In July 1945 the 98 th set up operations in a hospital in Munich, and several months later Col. Burton C. Andrus, prison commandant at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, requested Gerecke's service. The Nuernberg trial records include transcripts of proceedings . [158][136] In contrast to the opening prosecution statements, all eight closing statements highlighted the Holocaust; and the French and British prosecutors made this the main charge, as opposed to that of aggression. ;"God protect Germany. She kept a scrapbook which had photos of her group and many signatures of court officials and army officers commending them for their service. [77] Gring, the most famous surviving Nazi, headlined the trial. Attitudes toward certain prisoners were determined by the prisoners themselves, their demeanor in captivity, and their personality traits and attitudes toward their American, British, or French guards. [54] The Soviet judges and prosecutors were not permitted to make any major decisions without consulting a commission in Moscow led by Soviet politician Andrei Vyshinsky; the resulting delays hampered the Soviet effort to set the agenda. [221] The IMT defendants required Soviet permission for release; Speer was not successful in obtaining early release, and Hess remained in prison until his death in 1987. The Rome Statute establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), which had been proposed in 1953, was finally agreed to in 1998. The same routine was followed for each of the condemned prisoners. [238][239] The Palace of Justice houses a museum on the trial and the courtroom became a tourist attraction, drawing 13,138 visitors in 2005. [192] Members of the SS were tried in the Pohl trial, which focused on members of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that oversaw SS economic activity, including the Nazi concentration camps;[193] the RuSHA trial of Nazi racial policies; and the Einsatzgruppen trial, in which members of the mobile killing squads were tried for the murder of more than one million people behind the Eastern Front. I did nothing to be here, he stated. His initial assignment was as a guard at the Nuremberg prison. The prisoners were restricted to groups of six to eight, which were strictly segregated from one another. [88], The charter allowed the admissibility of any evidence deemed to have probative value, including depositions. We needled him by saying his girls wanted to abandon the Fatherland, marry Americans, and emigrate to the United States.. He argued that he was being persecuted.. Im always looking for pictures of the guards and hoping one day I will see him as a young soldier. It was in my family until the early 2000s. list of guards at nuremberg trialsdelpark homes sutton list of guards at nuremberg trials. Stahmer fought hard for his clie. A huge crowd of soldiers stands at . Former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals for their conduct by the International Military Tribunal. [87][149] United States admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States had used the same methods of submarine warfare that the German admirals were accused of; Dnitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that such actions could not be crimes. [219][220] The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials. After trial, incarcerated at. Goring had been given a list of approved lawyers by the US authorities, but rejected every name on it. Koch was later tried at Buchenwald and sentenced to life imprisonment. Streicher, for reasons never made known, was photographed clothed and then naked and again in death. [71][72] The military leaders were Hermann Gring, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Erich Raeder, and Karl Dnitz. No favoritism was shown nor was a selection offered. April 22, 2020. [151], In order to appease concerns about fair process, the defendants were allowed a free hand with their witnesses and a great deal of irrelevant testimony was heard. Pre-war president of the. Dads birthday. I sure would like to find out more about his service. Wells, was military policeman and a Provost Sergeant in charge of a special confinement unit whose responsibilities included providing security for the war crimes trials in Nrnberg. Hitler's Minister of Economics; succeeded Schacht as head of the, Hitler's Deputy Fhrer until he flew to Scotland in 1941 in an attempt to broker peace with the United Kingdom. Joined: Oct 14, 2007 Messages: 2,804 He was totally indifferent to the world around him and to world affairs. They merely brushed the guilt away with self-serving claims that they were following orders from superiors or perhaps even from Hitler himself in an atmosphere where failure to do so often meant banishment to a concentration camp, Gestapo torture, or even a summary execution. Frick, one of Hitlers closest advisers during the early years of the Nazi regime, was one of those hanged. [171] Only eight defendants were convicted on that charge; all of whom were also found guilty of crimes against peace. Still others displayed docile and taciturn mannerisms and personalities. William L Shierer "the Rise and Fall of the third Reich", part IV, Nuremberg-chapter, the United States committed the same breach, Last and Near-Last Words of the Famous, Infamous and Those In-Between, "The International Military Tribunal for Germany", The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_defendants_at_the_International_Military_Tribunal&oldid=1114903079, Successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary. The material which the Library possesses on this topic can be loosely divided into the following sections: Nuremberg Trial. Q. My father became an MP after the war. [115], From 17 January to 7 February 1946, France presented its charges and supporting evidence. [104] On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps. The food, prepared in an American-staffed kitchen, offered identical German menus for each prisoner. In rendering these decisions, the tribunal rejected the major defenses offered by the defendants. Prestianni particularly liked Speer, Hitlers architect and the designer of many of Berlins most spectacular buildings and later minister of armament and munitions. Speer managed to distinguish himself from other defendants, giving the impression of apologizing, although without assuming personal guilt or naming any victims other than the German people. He was a man of some stature with flowing white hair, but he would still never be noticed much in a crowd. Only Speer occasionally tried to befriend him or penetrate his deep solitude with a few words of encouragement. Had been imprisoned since then. Through these openings, aluminum food trays could be placed within reach of the prisoners. What were the verdicts of Nrnberg trials? [132] The inclusion of Katyn in the charges undermined the credibility of Soviet evidence in general. After the war, she and other WACS were asked to stay for the Nuremburg trials to serve as stenographers . [46] The British chief prosecutor was Hartley Shawcross, assisted by David Maxwell Fyfe, who had been the attorney general in Churchill's government. He was quiet by nature and spent much of his time writing his memoirs. [106] Although these aspects had already been covered by the American prosecution, Soviet prosecutors introduced new evidence from Extraordinary State Commission reports and interrogations of senior enemy officers. [127] Evidence was presented on the murder of children, attempts to cover up atrocities,[128] systematic plunder of occupied territories, and confiscation or destruction of cultural heritage. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. I wish peace to the world. Her guards were repulsed, and some requested reassignment to another cellblock. Uncover the topics related to the Nuremberg trials. [105] The American prosecutors were not any more effective when presenting documentary evidence on the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity, and ended up reaching a "saturation point of horror" by their indiscriminate selection and disorganized presentation of evidence without tying it to specific defendants.