Nuremberg

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  “Herr Speer said that the Fuehrer was taking medication which sometimes affected his...faculties.”

  “Were you under the impression that the defendant Speer was suggesting the possibility that Hitler be deposed, and that you should be instrumental in that action?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “What was supposed to happen if you detected an order from the Fuehrer which you thought indicated that he was not in full possession of his faculties?”

  “Herr Speer would have decided what action to take. Perhaps to consult with another doctor.”

  “Suppose that Herr Speer was actually looking for evidence of the Fuehrer’s derangement, such as would justify removing him from power — ”

  “If he reached that conclusion, he would have needed to replace me with someone willing to betray the Fuehrer.”

  Goering looked up with evident satisfaction.

  “You are saying that you would never have permitted yourself to use your own judgment on the question whether Hitler was — insane?”

  Amadeus was angered. “I would never have stood in the way of the exercise of the authority of the Fuehrer.”

  Carver paused, and then decided that a pursuit of Amadeus’s statement might be illuminating.

  “Did your proximity to the Fuehrer enhance your respect for him?”

  “Perhaps that is so. I was directly vested with his safekeeping.”

  “Did he, in exchanges with you during that period, persuade you yet again of his authority and foresight?”

  “I never laid eyes on the Fuehrer.”

  Surprise registered on the faces of press and prosecutors.

  “You — you say you did not lay eyes on Adolf Hitler in the — fifteen weeks during which you were bunker Kommandant?”

  “That is correct.”

  “How did you receive instructions from him?”

  “I never received instructions from him. Herr Speer had told me the Fuehrer did not wish to be reminded of the need for external security.”

  “Are you telling the court that you never saw Hitler?”

  “Not face-to-face, until he was dead in the garden.”

  “Otherwise you never laid eyes on him?”

  “I saw him in his car at the birthday parade. And at a rally in Salzburg. And in Paris. He was driving in his car up the Champs-Elysées.” Amadeus’s eyes brightened at the memory. “And when he — when it all ended, I superintended the cremation, in the garden.”

  “So the confidence you placed in him wasn’t based on your personal exposure to his — charisma?”

  “I heard him speak many times on the radio.”

  Carver stopped. Where else to go ? he wondered. He waited, in the event Jackson wanted anything further from him.

  The earphones were silent. He turned to the court. “The cross-examiner rests.”

  Judge Lawrence turned to defense counsel. George Friedrich Amadeus walked up and took the lectern vacated by Carver.

  He was still for a moment, and then looked up at his brother and said, “Kurt. Do you want to add anything?”

  Amadeus shook his head. He remembered that the judge had ordered that responses should be voiced.

  He said, “No.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  August 1946

  Harry was seated in the control room with Sebastian, waiting for Robert Jackson’s summation. After checking his sound contacts, he busied himself filling out college application forms. “Have you done yours?” he asked Sebastian.

  “This is August. We’ve got Jackson’s summary coming up, then final defense statements, then the tribunals’ deliberations, then the verdicts — then the sentences carried out. I’m guessing it won’t be over until almost the end of the year. So I figure I won’t start college until the fall term, ’47.”

  “The point system is looking up for me. They’re demobilizing like mad at home. I’m counting on getting out maybe October or November. So I’m doing applications now.”

  “For where?”

  “I’m thinking a technical college. Maybe MIT? Rensselaer? I’m putting my records together but there’s something I can’t find, the record of my job with Hammerstein. Remember? I told you about it. The company that got me working with sound for Radio City.”

  “You need that ? After everything you’ve done here?”

  “The MIT application form wants everything.”

  “Can’t you write New York and get a copy?”

  “Yeah, but that would take weeks. I brought one with me and the only thing I can think is I left it at Teresa’s, that and a couple of letters and clips I kept from my bombing days in England. Do me a favor and look for it. Maybe tomorrow? After Teresa’s gone to work?”

  *

  The following day she left home as usual at 0730. Sebastian had an hour at Musikerstrasse before setting out for the Palace. He went down to the basement room, which was showing signs of life from the paint and curtains and decorations, and opened the drawers of Teresa’s desk. The bottom drawer had several folders. The first, he quickly identified as personal, relating to her school-work and her first marriage. He closed it. A second folder was marked “Harry.” He spotted the documents Harry had asked for. He was drawn to a third folder, marked “Sebastian.” He opened it to a letter, in German, in longhand. He was startled to see that it began, “Dear Sebby.”

  Dear Sebby ?

  He read on.

  The German was clumsy. Hast Du den Verstand verloren ? The English words in the original stayed in his memory. His mother had written, “ You are losing your mind ” He was reading someone’s translation of his mother’s letter.

  His eyes traveled quickly to the letter’s end. His mother had made abrupt reference to the girl Sebastian had written to say he wished to bring home and marry. He now read: Um Himmels Willen , schuetze Dich ! That translated to, For heaven’s sake, look out in bed . His mother had written in English something a little different: “The girl — for God’s sake take precautions.”

  When had Teresa pulled out his mother’s letter? Sebastian had thought it safe simply to store it in his writing case with his army documents. The letter, after all, was in English.

  In past weeks he had found Teresa progressively detached. One day, a week ago, she had declined to come up to bed with him. A few days later she had said she was going to spend the evening out with school friends.

  He would say nothing to her tonight about the letter.

  She came in after work and began listlessly to cook dinner. Sebastian, on the couch, read his book. He offered, as always — he had already prepared the salad — to help. She declined even to acknowledge the offer, so he read on. They ate in silence and after dinner went routinely to the card table.

  She dealt out the cards and then said, abruptly, “You are not really going to marry me and take me to the United States, are you, Sebastian?”

  Without waiting for an answer, her face had got red. “I was not so surprised when Harry stopped seeing me. Harry is Jewish and Jews are that way , they are not reliable, not loyal, not — ”

  Sebastian dropped his cards and stared at her.

  In tears she stormed out of the room. He heard the outside door slam shut.

  Sebastian brought out his two bags from the closet, surveyed the room in which he had spent so much time, pulled books from the bookcase, and then, from the next room, his clothes.

  *

  The summation by Robert Jackson, followed by summations from British, French, and Soviet prosecutors, lasted two full weeks. The calendar then called for final statements by the defendants. To the immense relief of the press, by now a visibly dwindled gathering of reporters, radio commentators, newsreel cameramen, and commentators, word passed that each defendant would be given only fifteen minutes. “After all, what more can they say?” Sebastian commented to Captain Carver in his office.

  “That isn’t so much the point in the law, Sebby. The point is that the defense has to be given the final say.”<
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  “Fifteen minutes, never mind that the prosecution took a whole week for each defendant?”

  “You — never mind such things.” Carver showed his impatience. “We are trying twenty-three people. Are you suggesting they each be given a week?”

  “I give up.”

  “I wish they’d give up too.”

  “Well, my guy has all but given up.”

  “Your guy has been a pain in the ass.”

  Sebastian said nothing. It hadn’t been a pain for him to spend the hours he had with Amadeus, listening, questioning, even arguing, though there was abundant reason to despair over Amadeus, an incorrigible man. Sebastian needed to remind himself that he was required, as a Christian, to acknowledge that he was dealing with a human being.

  *

  But there was a fine distraction. The nurture of the ardently planned visit to Berlin bore fruit. The visit by the two young officers would actually take place during the judges’ deliberations, set to begin on the first day of September. As he signed Sebastian’s three-day leave, Carver said not to worry, there was no way the judges would be done in less than three days. “Besides, Reinhard, you don’t necessarily have to be here when the judgments are handed down.”

  Sebastian couldn’t believe what he had heard. “I wouldn’t miss that, Captain.”

  “I should hope not. If you did, I’d tell your grandchildren how indifferent you were to the most important moment in judicial history.”

  “‘There’s going to be a lot of hanging, I expect.”

  “I hope so.”

  Sebastian feigned urbanity. “On the other hand, Captain, you’re used to executing people.”

  Carver looked up sharply. Then his features relaxed. This was Reinhard’s once-every-quarter taunt on the matter of the execution of Private Slovik for cowardice.

  “I didn’t much like doing that. But as a prosecutor you get so you can feel institutional imperatives. And in 1944 that imperative, from Ike on down to the company commander, was saying: We can’t let this happen . An army private simply refusing to fight? Not with a full-scale war going on, not with that coward flaunting his defiance of basic army discipline.”

  “At least he wasn’t hanged.”

  “He was a soldier.”

  “So are some of the people here, no?”

  “Sebby, the point of this exercise — what, eleven months of it? — is that they’re not simply soldiers. They’re criminals.”

  “So we hang them.”

  “As I said, I hope so.”

  *

  Both Harry and Sebastian had seen documentaries on the condition of postwar Berlin, many of them filmed almost immediately after its liberation and the formal surrender of Germany — in Berlin, on May 7 of the year before. There was not much left to shock them. They had seen destruction in Hamburg, and lived with it in Nuremberg.

  Yet Berlin still had its special magic. The Brandenburg Gate had actually survived the bombs and, late that summer afternoon, projected its majestic shadows deep into the eastern sector of the city.

  They stared, as so many did, at the remains of the bunker, that large swollen mound of earth under which thirty-six rooms had bustled with frantic activity in the final months, the heliocentric cause of it all wilting, day by day, but issuing fierce injunctions to fight to the last German. Hitler could do no less, having done his own best over five years to reduce hugely the number of Germans still alive and even the number of Germans who would live to hear about the final end of their Fuehrers lieutenants in Nuremberg.

  *

  They arrived back at eight, caught a jeep at the railroad station, and headed to the Grand.

  “Tell you what!” Harry suggested. “Let’s shake the gloom of Berlin with a nightcap at Marta’s before work begins again tomorrow.”

  They set out, retracing the route they had taken almost a year ago. Marta, who never forgot a name, greeted them with a solid kiss each and ordered a free beer to celebrate their return. They sat at that same little table they had first sat at, and the music roared out new melodies. The room was bustling with talk and laughter and toasts, the patrons enjoying each other’s company, a view of the stage obstructed by tobacco haze. A woman dancers purse fell down beside the table and Harry stooped to pick it up. Purse in hand, he raised his head and looked into the animated face of Teresa, one arm clenched tight around the waist of a portly British major. She had only time to grab the purse and glance at the American officer who had picked it up off the floor before her partner swirled her away, to keep time with “Stomping at the Savoy.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  October 17 1946

  The judges’ deliberations had lasted the entire month of September.

  “What can be taking so fucking long?” Harry asked. He had a bottle of beer at his side as he scrutinized the electric stove that was bringing the water to boil under the spaghetti pot. It was his turn to cook in the two-room apartment he and Sebastian now occupied, conveniently vacated by two U.S. warrant officers dispatched to Berlin.

  “I’d be surprised if they’re stalled on the matter of guilt and innocence.”

  “What else would they be stalled on? What are the ground rules, Sebby?”

  Sitting on the couch where he had been reading his novel, Sebastian said, “There are eight votes, the four judges and the four alternate judges. In order to hang a defendant, there have to be five hanging votes. Same thing, actually, all the way around: Five votes are needed to acquit. I’d guess the Russians almost certainly want to hang everybody, that being how they do things. And they’ll want to hang Schacht because even though he went out of business in Germany in 1939, he did early financing for the National Socialist Party. And they’ll want to hang Keitel and Jodl because they fought and killed Russians, and of course they’ll want to hang Frank and Amadeus because they killed POWs.”

  “Sebby, I had a telegram from my mother — ”

  “Your sick mother?”

  He grinned. “Yes. She is, uh, much better. But the point is, she is a friend of the head of the draft board at home and she asked him to check out my point rating, gave him all the details about my combat hours, months here in Nuremberg — ”

  “Did she tell him how many medals you had won?”

  “Oh, go screw, Reinhard. Anyway , she’s going to wire me tomorrow if he tells her my points add up to what I need to get out, in the opinion of the board. Next thing, I’ll be checking in with Chief Landers and asking him when’s the next train for Milwaukee!”

  “That’s great, Harry. You got people in place to take over your work here?”

  “Yep. There’s Hans, of course, but also a warrant officer I’ve brought in. Nothing scheduled for the immediate future of the Palace is going to require more than the versatile infrastructure we’ve built up. It’s all here for them. Everything’s the same — except, everything changes. Maybe they’ll come up with a defendant who speaks only Romansch. Odd thought. Speaking of odd thoughts, I hope Teresa isn’t enjoying herself with that old prick she picked up.”

  “Maybe we ought to hang him, too.”

  But Sebastian wasn’t in the mood for levity.

  *

  The whole city seemed seized by the suspense of the ultimate day ahead. The judges’ cars, black and bulletproof, filed into the special parking lot, led by siren-blaring jeeps on which machine guns were mounted. The long deliberations had brought a flicker of hope to the defendant class, especially to wives and children, who had been permitted to visit in the prison cells up until the Saturday before. On Sunday, with the news that the judges had reached agreement, everyone wanted to be in the courtroom to hear what that agreement was. Not even Judge Biddle, the newspapers reported, had been able to wangle an extra pair of tickets in the spectators’ gallery.

  But the whole of the morning, and then the whole of the afternoon, was given over to the verbal recital of the judges’ findings not on individual defendants, but on underlying matters of law, questions of evidenc
e, and on the legal — and, indeed, philosophical-definition of their mandate at Nuremberg.

  The judges were as sensitive of the drama as the defendants. But the judges’ declamations did not dispose of elusive legal questions. U.S. Judge Biddle tackled the foremost of them: How do you define a “war of aggression”? His judgment: “To initiate a war of aggression is not an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, different only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

  “What that says,” Sebastian in the control booth commented without expression, “is that very bad is worse than bad.”

  “ Quiet! ”

  “To assert,” Biddle explained, “that it is unjust to punish those who in defiance of treaties and assurances have attacked neighboring states without warning is obviously untrue, for in such circumstances the attacker must know that he is doing wrong, and so far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.”

  Sebastian thought to himself: Amadeus didn’t consider it wrong . What matters is whether it was wrong.

  *

  It came the turn of John J. Parker to speak, and Sebastian recalled hearing of the southern judges discomfort at the party celebrating the visit of Stalin’s Vishinsky. He listened eagerly, hoping for interesting philosophical developments.

  There was none. “The evidence relating to war crimes has been overwhelming,” Judge Parker said. “War crimes were committed on a vast scale, never before seen in the history of war. They were perpetrated in all the countries occupied by Germany, and on the high seas, and were attended by every conceivable circumstance of cruelty and horror. There could be no doubt that the majority of the war crimes arose from the Nazi conception of ‘total war.’”

  Judge Parker stressed the mobilization in the Third Reich of all energies to the war-making enterprise. “Everything is made subordinate to the overmastering dictates of war. Rules, regulations, assurances, and treaties all alike are of no moment; freed as they are from the restraining influence of international law, the aggressive war was conducted by the Nazi leaders in the most barbaric way. War crimes were committed when and wherever the Fuehrer and his close associates thought them to be advantageous. They were for the most part the result of cold and criminal calculation.”