Inside Nuremberg Prison: Hitler's Henchmen Behind Bars

by Helen Fry

  The saga of the book-signings was extraordinary. Some inscriptions read like a message to an acquaintance rather than the enemy who was also essentially the victor. Surely these fallen men, on trial for their lives, felt some resentment towards their American captors and guards in the prison, including Howard? None of that is reflected in what they wrote to him. He says:

  ‘They sat behind bars, humiliated, defeated men, their country in ruins and devastated by Allied armies, their lives about to be crushed under the weight of justice. And yet they could still strike an amicable and polite accord with me. It had, perhaps, to do with the inter-personal relationship which had inadvertently developed between myself and the accused.’

  In January 1946, Walther Funk signed to Howard inside a copy of Ein Leben fuer die Wirtschaft: ‘In memory of the Nuremberg prison time. Jan ‘46 Walther Funk.’ The personalised inscription links the point at which Howard’s life crosses Funk’s, almost naturally as if he was inscribing a holiday greeting or postcard. Funk viewed it as a souvenir of their time in the prison.

  On 3 February 1946, Howard went into Hans Fritzsche’s cell clutching a copy of Angriff, Angriff. In it Fritzsche penned a lengthier inscription in German and one which firmly suggested that the guilt was not all on Germany’s side. In translation it reads: ‘that was the clean beginning, then came an honest battle, on the end there was a crime. Unfortunately the guilt does not lie on one side. Hans Fritzsche, 3 Feb ‘46.’

  The next defendant, Wilhelm Frick, had gained a level of cordial trust in Howard such that he wrote inside the book Wir bauen das Dritte Reich: ‘Mr Triest, in friendly memory, Frick 3.2.46’. Howard was by now a familiar face in the cell and Frick bore no ill-feeling towards the American interpreter standing in front of him. He might have felt differently had he known Howard’s Jewish background.

  Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister for Armaments, was one of the least intimidating figures. In his cell, Speer passed a copy of Deutsche Kuenstler Unserer Zeit to Howard and signed to ‘Mr Triest, in memory of the time in the Nuremberg prison, Albert Speer, 3.2.46.’

  The basic inscriptions given by the next four defendants perhaps highlight the fact that they remained much more aloof towards him than the weightier figures of Goering and Streicher. Inside Die Hitlerjugend, von Schirach simply signed: ‘To Mr Triest, Baldur von Schirach, 3.2.46.’ Schacht, former president of the Reichsbank and government minister from 1939-1943, wrote similarly: ‘To Mr Howard Triest, Hjalmar Schacht, 4.2.46.’ Alfred Rosenberg kept his inscription brief and simple. In Der Sumpf, he wrote: ‘A Rosenberg, Nuremberg 3.2.46.’ And von Neurath in Stresemann: ‘In memory of the year 1946, L. Freiherr von Neurath’.

  The final signature obtained at this time was that of Franz von Papen. Howard found him still to be the slick diplomat who certainly felt he should not be in Nuremberg. His belief that he should not be indicted as a war criminal is reflected in the ironic sentence which he wrote to Howard in a copy of Appell an das Deutsche Gewissen: ‘In memory of a criminal, Nuremberg Feb 1946, Franz von Papen.’ As he handed the book back to Howard, von Papen scoffed at the very thought he was a war criminal.

  Former Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s personalised inscription inside the book Der Freiheitfampf Europas was cordial and surprisingly upbeat: ‘To Mr Howard Triest wishing all good luck, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nuremberg 1946.’ Inscriptions from defendants Kaltenbrunner and Seyss-Inquart were written a couple of months later in May and June respectively. Again, their dedications were basic, a possible indication again of the aloofness between them and Howard. Inside SS Leitheft, Kaltenbrunner signed: ‘Kaltenbrunner, 24.5.46.’ Inside Hitler in seiner Heimat, Seyss-Inquart wrote: ‘Seyss-Inquart, Nuremberg, 22.6.46.’

  What were Howard’s motivations behind these inscriptions? He replies: ‘as a souvenir of my time at Nuremberg and tangible reminder of a difficult personal period. It was a unique collection that provided a physical anchor for my memories of Nuremberg. It was something I could show my friends and family when I returned to America to say that I really had been there. I had been with the leaders who had killed my people. For me it was about remembrance – remembrance of Nuremberg. I never thought back then that the trial would attract the interest and have the status that it does today.’

  DR GOLDENSOHN

  In January 1946, Kelly left Nuremberg and returned to the United States. In his autobiography 22 Cells in Nuremberg, Kelley wrote that Goering, ever the dramatist, ‘wept unashamedly’ when he [Kelley] left for America. On 8 January 1946, the thirty-four year old psychiatrist Dr Leon Goldensohn arrived to replace him. Howard worked well with both psychiatrists, but found Goldensohn’s temperament different from Kelley. He says, ‘Goldensohn was not prone to periods of moodiness like Kelley. Because I worked longer with Goldensohn, we became friends.’

  Colonel Andrus briefed Goldensohn on the twenty-one surviving defendants being held in the prison. Goldensohn would soon be able to make his own analysis of them. Even now, the defendants were still obsessed with explaining Hitler’s defeat, why Germany had been razed to the ground and Nazism crushed. A nation that had been brainwashed for twelve years with Nazi ideology found it difficult to adjust to failure. Much of the interviews were taken up with the defendants trying to explain and justify Germany’s defeat. Howard and Goldensohn listened to their lengthy explanations, but nothing could change their fate. That was in the hands of the courtroom.

  Over the course of nine months, the psychiatrists carried out various psychological tests and an IQ assessment of the defendants. This included use of the Rorschach Ink Blot Test. Invented by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in 1921 and used widely in America, the test comprised ten cards each with an enlarged ink blot on them. Five cards were black and white, two black and red, and the three other various colours. The defendants were shown a series of cards of different colour ink blots, always in the same sequence. Depending on what they saw in the cards formed the basis of the psychiatrist’s analysis.

  Kelley and Goldensohn both concluded that, with the exception of Rudolf Hess and probably Hans Frank, the defendants were not mentally ill. All, apart from Julius Streicher, were found to be above average intelligence. That made it even harder to understand the atrocities which they had committed and to analyse ‘pure’ evil. The same question kept going over in the minds of Howard and the psychiatrists: how could men of such intelligence commit crimes of mass murder? No satisfactory answer was ever reached.

  BUCHENWALD REVISITED

  Because of his position in the prison, Howard was able to secure a privileged pass for the Press section to attend certain sessions of the trial. Being with the Press gave him a prime view of everything that was going on:

  ‘It was an historic sight. Having been used to seeing the defendants in their cells on their own, the courtroom gave a chance to see them altogether. They looked like a Motley crew. The irony was not lost on me that here in front of a court of international justice sat the most powerful men in Germany who had once run the country of my birth. It was a tremendous feeling of relief when the trial got started because now I could feel that the world was on the road to justice.’

  There were days that were monotonous even in this trial. During the early weeks, Howard chose to attend for a couple of hours at a time. He found much of the time taken up with argument of detailed points of law. The defendants often looked bored. One particular day interested Howard more than the others. The 13 December was the day evidence of crimes at Buchenwald was going to be shown. Howard entered the press box and sat down.

  The prosecution brought in a collection of shrunken human heads as exhibits – these had come from Buchenwald, collected by Ilse Koch, the wife of the camp commandant. She had earned the nickname the ‘Witch of Buchenwald’. Her brutality was particularly shocking and unexpected because she was a woman. Her husband proved to be equally brutal.

  Ilse Koch delighted in using the shrunken heads of prisoners, mainly Jews, as statues in her office
and home. She had also organized the use of tattooed human skin for lampshades. Howard heard the gasps of horror and felt the sense of shock amongst members of the press around him. For him, this evidence was not a shock because he had entered Buchenwald eight months earlier. The raw memories of that time haunted him still. He had entered Buchenwald before the German guards had had chance to kill survivors in the camp. He saw for himself the piles of emaciated bodies in their grotesque positions, the half-dead skeletons of men, women and children barely moving around the camp.

  As these terrible images were flashed before the world, again Howard prayed that his parents had been spared this suffering.

  As the Nuremberg courtroom discussed the evidence, Howard was aware that Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany itself. A quarter of a million people had been taken there. Fifty-six thousand were killed by hard labour or starvation. It was located near Weimar, the cultural capital of Germany and home to the giant intellectuals: Goethe, Liszt and Nietzsche. The concentration camp was situated in the forest where Goethe wrote some of the finest German literature, including his famous work ‘Faust’. Nazi brutality had not only desecrated German culture, but changed the land forever by the murder of millions of innocent lives. As Howard sat in the press section at the trial that day in December 1945, the irony of his position did not escape him. What was being shown in the court, he had seen first-hand. And now he was witnessing the process of justice. What went through his mind? He comments: ‘Hanging the defendants was going to be much too quick a death for their crimes.’

  Howard was familiar with what had gone on in concentration camps, what the Nazis had done to Jews during the 1930s and afterwards. He was an eyewitness to the systematic destruction of his people – of men, women and children who had considered themselves ‘good Germans’ for generations both before and during the war. Numerous personnel working at the Nuremberg Trial, some of whom were civilians, had come over from America. Howard felt that their experience of Nuremberg was different and coloured by the fact that they had not lived through the Nazi brutality. Not a criticism of them, but they had little understanding of how Nazism was carried through into the smallest facet of daily life. It is true that some of them had seen photographic evidence, but they had experienced it personally. Even with some knowledge of the Holocaust, for Howard’s colleagues in the prison the evidence of sheer brutality and mass murder proved deeply shocking.

  Howard is as clear today as he was in 1945 that the Nuremberg Trial was necessary to reveal to the world the inhumanity that had been committed in the name of Nazi supremacy. Nuremberg forced the German people to face the collective guilt of a nation.

  ‘Nuremberg was a great consolation,’ he says. ‘It could not bring back any life that I had lost but it was satisfaction to have these monsters in a prison cell in front of me.’

  EIGHT

  CELL 1: HERMANN GOERING

  IF ONE MAN was to stand out above all the defendants at Nuremberg it was Hermann Goering. For all his crimes, Goering remained a fascinating figure even in the jail cells. Hours of solitude behind prison walls could not diminish his spirit or sense of self-importance. He was a larger than life figure who appeared unphased by what lay ahead and the fact that he was on trial for his life. ‘Germany had been totally defeated,’ says Howard, ‘and Goering knew he would face the gallows for his crimes, yet still he maintained his innocence. In freedom, Goering was a hunting man. Now the one-time hunter was the hunted.’

  At the end of the war, as Soviet troops had marched closer to Berlin, Hermann Goering, one-time commander of the Luftwaffe and Hitler’s deputy, had sent an urgent telegram to the Führer asking to be appointed leader of the Reich. Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann had intercepted the telegram and portrayed Goering’s message to Hitler as treason. Hitler ordered Goering’s, and execution along with his wife and daughter. Unknown to Hitler, the SS disobeyed orders and Goering fled to his childhood home Schloss Mauterndorf. On 9th May 1945, Goering gave himself up and surrendered to the American army in Bavaria. Ever aware of his puffed-up importance, Goering surrendered in his Marshal’s uniform with baton, side arms and dagger. He was searched and a lot of narcotics were found on him. Goering was taken first to Mondorf prison in Luxembourg, codenamed “Ashcan”. From there, he was transferred to Nuremberg.

  Graphic images of Buchenwald were fresh in Howard’s mind as he walked down the specially constructed covered catwalk to the prison behind the main courthouse, and towards cell Number One. The prison, functional yet intimidating, finally gave him a sense of the enormity of what lay ahead. The wide corridor with cells on either side had one guard assigned to watch four cells. It was here on the ground floor that the main defendants were being kept for the duration of the trial. Circular staircases at both ends of the corridor led to two upper tiers where key Nazi witnesses were being held for interview. The walkways on the upper levels were fenced to avoid prisoners jumping to their deaths. A small square window in the center of each cell door was kept open at all times so the guards could watch for suicide attempts.

  That September morning Howard kept his nerve as he followed Dr Kelley towards Hermann Goering’s cell. The stark letters on the name plate on the door of cell Number One momentarily sent a shiver down Howard’s spine as he and Kelley waited for the guard to turn the key. Howard would soon be face to face with the highest ranking surviving member of Hitler’s former government. For all the abhorrence he felt for the crimes committed there was a strange sense of curiosity about the leaders themselves.

  As the guard pushed open the heavy iron door, Howard had his first glimpse of the large imposing prisoner, sat on his bed. Howard’s quick eye took in the confines of cell. Measuring 9ft by 13ft, it was simplistic with a bed fixed to the wall, which Americans called a cot. There was a toilet, small sink and a table with single chair. The defendants were allowed a few personal items: pencils, photographs and toiletries, but nothing which they could hang themselves. They were not allowed to wear their normal clothes but issued with special prison clothing. Hermann Goering who had arrived at Nuremberg with eighteen suitcases and a serious drug addiction was permitted one uniform stripped of rank and insignia, a change of clothing and some jewellery as long as he could not harm himself. Goering’s several cases of jewellery and expensive gold watch was all that remained of the glitter of this once powerful man.

  Colonel Andrus, who spent hours discussing the defendants’ safety with his staff, ensured that even the table in the cell would collapse under the weight of the defendant if he sat on it. Whilst the defendants were out on exercise in the yard, the cells were regularly checked for anything hidden which they could use to harm themselves.

  GOERING – THE FIRST ENCOUNTER

  Goering’s face seemed to light up when he saw Howard and Kelley enter as if he had been eagerly awaiting their visit. He patted the bed beside him for Kelley to sit down. Kelley obliged, with notepad and pen poised ready to take down that morning’s conversation. Goering’s opening words were always the same: ‘Good morning doctor. Good morning translator. I am glad you have come to see me.’

  Howard pulled out the single wooden chair from the small table beside the bed, sat down and stared at Goering. The table displayed some very personal items: black & white photographs of the Goering family were propped against the wall. Three books lay flat on the desk, alongside a deck of cards and a few tiny boxes. It was an intimate snapshot of Goering’s private life - the inner sanctum of ‘Goering the man’. Howard reflected how, stripped of power, Goering seemed like any other family man.

  Hermann Goering had been at the epicentre of Nazi policy in the 1930s. Howard could not possibly have known then that in less than a decade he would be talking to Goering in a jail cell. The turn-around was quite ironic. Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were dead. Howard was alive and Goering was now behind bars. To be sitting within inches of the man who had wielded such power in the eyes of the German people in the 1930s seemed sur
real. In Goering’s cell that day, memories came flooding back of the times he had witnessed Goering at Nazi rallies in Munich with Adolf Hitler at the helm surrounded by his henchmen Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Through his thoughts, Howard heard Kelley’s voice and came out of his reverie to start the translate work. This was the present and he had a job to do.

  Kelley began to talk to Goering in a very relaxed manner. As Howard translated Goering’s ramblings, it was immediately obvious that Goering adored the attention, even from his captors. The visit gave Goering time and space to express himself and his grandiose opinions of self-importance. Howard and Kelley heard it all. Goering had naïvely believed that by surrendering to the Allies, he would be received with open arms because he had not been closely associated with Hitler in the last months of the war. It was evident to Howard and Kelley that day that Goering had such a high opinion of himself that he believed the Allied Commanders would respect him and grant him the status of a defeated leader in exile, certainly not a war criminal. How wrong he was. His arrest landed him on the road to international accountability and justice.

  Goering was already known to Kelley who had treated him for drug addiction in Mondorf prison. There Kelley had already begun to build a profile of his charge. As Hitler’s deputy, Goering had carried out his public role with showy ease and enjoyment. Answerable only to Hitler, he had enjoyed unparalleled power not only as deputy, but Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (German air force), President of the Reichstag (parliament), Chairman of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich and Reich Governor of Prussia. Goering had completely controlled Germany’s aviation. During the First World War, he had shown qualities of supreme leadership in the air force and been decorated with the Pour le Mérite, the highest German military award. A few years later in 1923, he was one of the leaders of the Munich Putsch when Hitler tried to overthrow the Bavarian government, ironically in the same city and year of Howard Triest’s birth. During the failed coup, Goering was wounded in the thigh and spent almost a year in hospital. Twenty years later, sitting in the Nuremberg jail he could still display an irresistible charm when he chose to do so.