Death at Nuremberg

by W. E. B. Griffin

  “Aren’t people going to talk, be curious and then talk, about you and your men just because you’re here?”

  Before Cronley could reply, his office door opened.

  “Mr. Justice, I simply have to advise you that you have an appointment with Sir Geoffrey in fifteen minutes,” Ken Brewster announced.

  “Ken, how many times have I told you the Brits call him ‘Sir Geoffrey’ and we Americans should call him Justice Lawrence? That’s his surname,” Jackson said.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  He turned to Cronley. “Sir Geoffrey Lawrence is the chief judge of the Tribunal, Jim. I call him ‘Justice Lawrence’ to remind him we Americans won the Revolutionary War.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said, chuckling.

  “Mr. Cronley is about to leave, Ken. He will return at nine tomorrow morning. Please see that he and his people have no trouble getting in.” He turned to Cronley and added, “See you then, Jim.”

  “Sir, I’d like to leave Ostrowski with you.”

  “You must think that’s important.”

  “Yes, sir. And so do those two close friends of yours.”

  “Point taken,” Jackson replied. “Okay.” He smiled. “If your man speaks, Justice Lawrence will be most curious about the Pole I brought with me. And much too polite to ask.”

  “If Max says anything at all, sir, I suggest Justice Lawrence will wonder who the Englishman you have with you is. Max sounds like the King of England.”

  “Even better,” Jackson said. “That will really trigger Sir Geoffrey’s curiosity.”

  [THREE]

  Farber Palast

  Stein, near Nuremberg

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1150 21 February 1946

  “Over here, sweetheart,” Janice Johansen called, as Cronley came down the wide staircase into the lobby.

  He went to where she was sitting at a small table next to the closed door to the bar. With her was a rumpled, chubby man in his forties. He had an unkempt mustache and was wearing ODs with a War Correspondent patch.

  “Say hello to my boss, sweetie,” Janice said.

  The man extended his hand.

  “Seymour Krantz,” he said. “My friends call me Sy.”

  “Jim Cronley.”

  “Janice has been telling me all about you.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Sy’s one of the good guys, sweetie.”

  “Have a seat,” Sy said. “In ten minutes, the bar will open and we can have a breakfast beer.”

  Cronley sat down.

  “How did things go at the Palace of Justice?” Janice asked.

  “Fine.”

  “How did Jackson react to being told he now has a bodyguard?” Sy asked.

  Cronley gave Janice a dirty look.

  Sy saw it.

  “They call that the boss–underling relationship,” Sy said. “Janice tells me everything, otherwise I send her home to cover vice presidential social events.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Let’s clear the air,” Sy said. “Sometime ago, a decision was made at the highest executive level of the Associated Press–Europe—in other words, by me—that the world really doesn’t have to know what DCI-Europe is up to. I happen to be one of the few people, like Harry S Truman, who thinks Uncle Joe Stalin is dangerous as hell, and I’m certainly—the AP certainly—isn’t going to fuck up anything he’s doing to fuck up Uncle Joe by letting the Russians know what he’s doing.

  “As proof of that, I have known from the git-go that the OSS and now the DCI has shipped Nazis to South America as part of the deal Allen Dulles made with Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen. And we haven’t written about it. What I did do was tell Janice to keep an eye on it, which brought her into your life. Getting the picture?”

  Oh, boy! Here we go again.

  How the hell do I handle this?

  I certainly can’t piss this guy off.

  And I will if I get on my high horse.

  Or play dumb.

  “Justice Jackson told me that General Seidel had called him and told him all about me. Not nice things. And then he told me that both the President and Admiral Souers had called him—”

  “And said nice things about you?” Janice asked.

  “And said he was going to have protection, bodyguards, whether or not he liked it.”

  “And how did he react, to get back to my original question?” Sy asked.

  “One of my guys, Max Ostrowski, is with him now, as his interpreter, and I just sent two more guys to his office.”

  “You’re here on the sly, right? You don’t want it to get out that the DCI is now protecting Jackson and company?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You open to suggestion?”

  Cronley nodded. “Shoot.”

  “If Jackson now has a new interpreter, why can’t he have a new public relations assistant? That would mean you could live here.”

  “What do I do with the rest of my guys? I’ve got more coming.”

  “Move them in with the CIC. They’ve already got their own Kaserne.”

  “My guys have CIC credentials, but they’re not CIC.”

  The conversation was interrupted when the door to the bar was opened.

  “Breakfast time!” Sy cried, as he got to his feet.

  Cy was not kidding about his breakfast beer. As soon as they had taken seats at a table, the bartender set a bottle of beer before him.

  Cronley read the label and his mouth went on automatic:

  “Berliner Kindl? They don’t make beer in Nuremberg?”

  “Not as good as Berliner Kindl. The PIO is kind enough to import it for me. It’s nice to be head of the AP.”

  Cronley and Janice ordered coffee and were told that some was being brewed.

  Sy carefully poured the Berliner Kindl so that there was just the right amount of foam and then took a healthy swallow that left beer foam on his mustache. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  “Janice thinks you don’t know enough about the trials,” Sy said, “and since I know all about them, suggests I should bring you up to speed. So what don’t you know about the International Military Tribunal?”

  Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “After a fair trial, we’re going to hang the bastards.”

  “In other words, you know little about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Winston Churchill thought we should shoot the bastards on the spot whenever we found them. I think that was the thing to do. Franklin Roosevelt thought there should be a trial. I think that was another of his monumental mistakes. Bottom line, there are trials. Four-Power.

  “One of the first things ol’ Harry did after FDR died in Georgia—in the arms of his girlfriend—was fire Edward Stettinius Junior, the secretary of State, and Francis Biddle, the attorney general. The story I get is that ol’ Harry was pissed, and I think justifiably so, because nobody had told him about the atom bomb.

  “Or he might have been pissed with Biddle on general principles. Biddle is a Groton-Harvard-Philadelphia lawyer WASP. They tend to look down the noses at ex–Missouri National Guard colonels and their wives. Harry may have caught him looking down his nose at Bess.

  “Anyway, he canned him. And almost immediately realized that was a mistake. Biddle has a lot of friends. So Harry threw him a bone and appointed him chief judge of the Tribunal. And then appointed his crony Bob Jackson as chief U.S. prosecutor to keep an eye on him. Getting the picture?”

  “I think so. He wanted to make sure they got a fair trial before we hang them?”

  “Not quite. As everybody in Washington is learning, Harry isn’t nearly as stupid as thought. Harry always thought that just shooting the bastards, as Churchill proposed, was a bad idea. He also thought t
hat just hanging them after a quick trial was a bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  “The Germans were just about one hundred percent behind Hitler. Hanging the bastards would make them martyrs. Unless the German people could be shown what bastards they really were. Hitler and Goebbels had them pretty well convinced that people of my religious persuasion were not only responsible for Germany’s problems, but controlled the world, including the United States.

  “So, the Jewish-controlled United States won the war, assisted by the German generals and admirals who had betrayed the Führer, and as the dirty Jews could be expected to, promptly hung the nice people who had nobly defended Western civilization and Gemütlichkeit to the bitter end.

  “Thus making Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, and company martyrs to the noble cause of National Socialism. Germany had been on its back before, after World War One, when the French took twenty percent of its territory and otherwise really screwed them. But, under the leadership of Der Führer, had risen from the ashes. Why couldn’t that happen again? You ever hear of Operation Phoenix?”

  “Actually, I know a lot about it.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I’ve been to Argentina, where the next thing I have to a big brother ran OSS there, and is now running DCI–Southern Cone.”

  Krantz gestured for him to go on.

  “I don’t know whether Göring was involved—he might have been—but I do know that Goebbels and Himmler sent huge amounts of money and gold—”

  “Much of which had been gold teeth taken from the mouths of people murdered at Treblinka and other such places after they had been gassed and before they were fed to the crematoria.”

  Cronley, nodding, continued: “Over there to buy property and influence so the big-shot Nazis could go there, to bide time and eventually rise from the ashes.”

  “Which is what Phoenix means, resurrected from the ashes. So you’re not completely ignorant.”

  “Only ninety-five percent.”

  “I suspect that’s false modesty,” Krantz said. “Okay, so Harry Truman decided the Germans had to be taught what bastards their leaders were. How to do that? A show trial. The courtroom was rebuilt, including extensive provisions for newsreel cameras, and broadcasters. To make the press feel welcome, they took over this place. The trials would be broadcast over the German radio stations, and the newsreels shown over and over in German movie theaters. If it works, and it may, the Germans will learn what bastards their leaders were.”

  “May work?”

  “Bob Jackson is not doing a great job. Göring has made a jackass of him several times.”

  “How?”

  “Let me tell you about Hermann. Did you ever hear about his surrender?”

  Cronley shook his head.

  “He was on his private train. With his wife, Emily, and other members of his family, four aides, a nurse, two chauffeurs, two Mercedeses, a five-member kitchen crew, and several boxcars loaded with art—stolen art—that he had decided not to blow up when he blew up Carinhall—”

  “Blew up what?”

  “Unser Hermann was not only Reichsmarschall Göring but Reichsjägermeister—hunting master of the Thousand-Year Reich. He had his own private hunting grounds, two hundred hectares in the Schorfheide Forest northeast of Berlin. On it he built a mansion—Carinhall—which he then stuffed with stuffed deer and boar heads, and the best of the art he’d stolen from Europe’s better museums. When the Russians got close, he blew everything up except his favorite art pieces, and sixty-two cases of the best French champagne, which he took with him on his train. It went to Austria, where he surrendered to we Americans.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “It gets better. They loaded him in one of his Mercedeses and brought him here. One of the 1st Division generals—a one-star, I forget his name—walked up to the car. Göring got out, in full uniform, including the Blue Max. He had his Reichsmarschall baton in one hand, and a framed photograph of himself in the other.

  “He hands the photo to the one-star. It’s signed War is like a football game, whoever loses gives his opponent his hand, and everything is forgotten. Hermann Göring.”

  “Unbelievable! What did the general do?”

  “Took the baton away from him right there, and then had Hermann marched to his cell, where they took away his decorations. Hermann was displeased at the quality of his new accommodations—you ever been in the prison?”

  Cronley shook his head.

  “One-man cells, with a window through which a GI takes a look every couple of minutes. A GI bed, a wooden chair, a little wooden desk, like a table, a washbasin, and a crapper. You should have a look.”

  “I will. You said Göring made a jackass of Jackson?”

  “Yeah. I got the impression that whatever his legal talents are—and he was—is—one of the better Supreme Court justices—he’s not very good at being a trial lawyer. I was there, I saw this. Jackson, bubbling over with righteous indignation, asks, ‘Is it true, Witness, that together with Adolf Hitler, you were primarily responsible for preparing the plans for the war in total secrecy?’

  “Göring, smiling, says, ‘I don’t seem to recall reading the American plans for the war in the New York Times.’

  “Everybody in the courtroom, including me and all the bastards in the defendant’s dock, laughed out loud. Göring sat down and accepted the congratulations of his fellow prisoners. And Jackson said something like ‘No further questions at this time.’ And Biddle quickly adjourned the proceedings for the day.”

  “I hate to say this, but that’s pretty classy behavior for a guy who has to know we’re going to hang him.” He paused for a moment, and then asked, “Or does he think he’s going to escape the noose?”

  “No. He knows he’s going to be hanged. But he wants to be hung as a martyr to the noble cause of National Socialism, not as a murderer. And it looks as if he’s going to succeed. If that happens, we become, in the eyes of the German people, the vindictive victors. The only hope, as I see it, is for Jackson to get somebody to say, ‘I did it, and Göring told me to do it.’

  “And that’s unlikely, as just about all the bastards still treat him as if he’s still sitting behind his desk in the Chancellery waving his Reichsmarschall’s baton around.”

  “‘Just about all’?” Cronley parroted.

  “You know who Rudolf Hess is?”

  “The guy who stole an airplane and flew it to talk to Churchill?”

  “Who immediately locked him up and kept him there until he sent him here. He’s playing nuts. Or he may really be bonkers. He flew to England in 1941, before all the mass murders began, so that may help him to escape the noose. If he tries something like ‘I flew to England to tell Churchill what these terrible Nazis were up to,’ that would help. But right now he’s playing his ‘I’m bonkers’ card.

  “The other guy who might be useful to Jackson is Speer. You know who he is?”

  Cronley shook his head and said, “No. Not really.”

  “Albert Speer. Architect. If Hitler had any personal friends, Speer was in that select, tiny group. Hitler fancied himself to be an architect. Speer was a very good architect, so Hitler enlisted him to help with his plans to turn Berlin into the twentieth-century version of Athens or Rome. They became friends. Speer was a Nazi. He believed, at the beginning, that Hitler was the man God had sent to save the world from Communism and my coreligionists.

  “Hitler fitted him out with a uniform and named him minister of armaments. Which included building the wall to keep the Allies off the continent. Speer was very good at what he did. Until just about the end, despite all the bombing, Speer kept the munitions and weapons factories running at full speed. To do this, he had to use slave labor, much of it imported from what the Krauts called ‘the occupied territories.’

  “That’s what he’s being tried for by
the Tribunal.

  “At the end, when Hitler knew the war was about to be lost, he ordered Speer to blow up everything, and I mean everything—factories, the railroads, the sewers, waterworks, universities, everything. At that point, Speer finally opened his eyes and saw that Der Führer was a dangerous maniac.

  “So Speer decided it was his duty as a good German to disobey Der Führer. This took a lot of balls. And then he flew to Berlin and went to the Führerbunker and told Adolf that he had countermanded his orders. That took a huge set of balls.

  “I have no idea how he escaped with his life, but I have personally checked out Speer’s story and I know it’s true. And so does Jackson. So Jackson—this is an opinion, Jackson doesn’t confide in me—is trying to get Speer to say, ‘I did it. I was involved, I knew all about the slave labor, the concentration camps, the extermination squads, and so did everybody sitting here with me in the prisoner’s dock.’ If he can get him to do that, the good guys win. Göring and company go to the gallows as people who really fucked Germany up, not as National Socialist martyrs.”

  The coffee was finally served. Krantz ordered another Berliner Kindl.

  “You think Jackson will succeed?” Cronley asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “Who do I have to see to get someplace for my guys to stay?”

  “How many guys?”

  “At least a dozen more. All Poles.”

  “That’ll be awkward.”

  “And probably two, three, four Americans. Admiral Souers told me DCI is going to really grow.”

  “There’re three bird colonels who think they run things. One is from Nuremberg Military Post. The second is from the 1st Division. The third runs the CIC detachment. His name is Morty Cohen. German Jew, one who got out just before all his relatives wound up in Flossenbürg or some other resort on their way to the crematoria. Real prick. I suggest you deal with him first, as he has the final say on just about everything.”

  Cronley stood up.

  “I might as well get it over with,” he said. “Thanks for the history lesson, Sy.”

  “Any pal of Janice’s is a pal of mine. Good luck, kid.”

  “Give me a ring when you get back, sweetie. I’ll keep the home fires burning.”