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Reviews
Nazi War Crimes, US Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremberg
Controversies regarding
the role of the Office of Strategic Services
by Michael Salter (Routledge-Cavendish 2007)
ISBN–13: 978–1–904385–81–3 (hardback)
Nazi War Crimes, US Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremberg
provides a balanced but critical discussion of the contribution of
American intelligence officials to the Nuremberg war crimes trials
process. It discusses the role of such officials in mobilising the
unique resources of a modern intelligence agency in order to provide a
range of important trial evidence and undertake controversial
plea-bargaining negotiations. The book also reviews recently
declassified US intelligence documents to provide new details of how
senior Nazi war criminals, such as SS-General Karl Wolff, were provided
with effective immunity deals, partly as a reward for their wartime
cooperation with US intelligence officials, including Allen Dulles,
former CIA Director. This historical case study suggests that both war
crimes prosecutors and intelligence officials can engage in mutually
beneficial collaborations. The proviso, Michael Salter argues, is that
both sides need to recognise and appreciate the problems that may arise
from the fact that these institutitions are required to operate
according to different, and in some cases contradictory, agendas.
Michael Salter is Professor of Law at Lancashire Law School, UK.
Summary:
I have always viewed the Nuremberg (Nürnberg, Nurnberg) War Crimes
Trials as an example of the "Victors wreaking Vengeance upon the
Vanquished". They highlighted the atrocities of the Germans, but
ignored the atrocities committed by the "Allies" -- British, American,
Soviet. They condemned torture utilized by the Germans, but were silent
about the torture used to obtain "confessions"
from accused Germans. They decried the genocidal German policies
directed against Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other "inferior" ethnic
groups, but condoned the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Germans, Poles,
Ukrainians, Tatars and other "traitorous" ethnic groups occurring at
the very time that these Trials were being held. In my opinion, the
Nuremberg Trial process was just a continuation of the Stalinist Show
Trials of the 1930s, where all the accused "confessed" to being
"enemies of the people".
Michael Salter is an apologist for the
Nuremberg Trial process. Recently
declassified US intelligence documents have given him an excuse to
write another book on the subject, in which he quotes extensively
from these documents and the Holocaust literature. He decries the
"highly partisan and one-sided critiques directed against the
OSS by various ‘revisionist’ accounts of the Nuremberg trial", which he
cites as evidence of "Holocaust denial", but does not reference these
critiques or name the authors.
Nevertheless,
this lengthy book does contain a vast amount of interesting and useful
information. The first five chapters are devoted to the legal immunity
for three high-ranking Nazi officials (Wolff, Dollmann and Zimmer)
extended by Allen Dulles and William Donovan of the OSS for their
participation in Operation Sunrise, which effectively led to the
capitulation of the German forces in Northern Italy.
Chapter 6
describes the production and showing of the "Nazi Concentration Camps"
film, which caused a world sensation and had a devastating effect on
the defendants. This was obviously a Hollywood production par excellence that has been subjected to increasing criticism in recent years.
Chapter
7 describes the work of Walter Rothschild, Franz Neumann and other OSS
personnel, who started gathering evidence of German atrocities long
before the end of WWII. (Many of these "researchers" were of Jewish
origin, who were particularly sensitive to the anti-Jewish policies of
Hitler. The Jewish underground was very adept in providing such
evidence -- whether real or manufactured -- to these investigators.)
The R-Series of documents that they compiled contains many references
to the genocidal policies of the Germans towards the Slav population in
Eastern Europe. Reproduced below are several excerpts of particular
relevance to Ukraine, Poland and Eastern Europe, in general.
Chapter
8 describes in great detail the growing estrangement between
Judge Robert Jackson (who wanted to run the trial on documentary
evidence) and OSS head William Donovan (who favoured the use of
eyewitness testimony). Donovan agreed with his expert German consultant
and a member of his personal
staff, Fabian von Schlabrendorff", who criticized the trial process
because 1) It used retrospective law, 2) The
indictment was based on Anglo-Saxon trial law, 3) The accusations
dealt exclusively with offenses against Allied citizens, 4) The
accusers were also the judges [p430]. It is the height of irony that
the person, who was responsible for providing the most evidence against
the accused defendants, ended up condemning the Nuremberg Trial process.
Below,
we have either summarized the content of the material or reproduced
excerpts from the book in "quotation marks". Personal remarks are
encompassed in square brackets in the colour fuchsia.
Will Zuzak; 2013.10.12
[W.Z. 2013.11.14: Thanks to J.S., I am adding a link to a 1995 article by Theodore O'Keefe on the liberation of the German concentration camps by American troops at the end of WWII.]
[W.Z. 2013.12.21: Thanks to W.K., I am adding a link to a 19Jul2013 article by Henry Makow titled Victor Rothschild was a "Soviet" Agent. One wonders if there was a connection between Victor Rothschild and Walter Rothschild referred to in Salter's book.]
Contents
1. Introducing the rationale, aims and methodology 1
Introduction 1
Conclusion 10
2. Evidence of the war criminality of the Wolff group 11
Introduction 12
Relevant offences 14
Evidence of the Wolff group’s involvement in Nazi war crimes 23
Medical experimentation 30
Funding concentration camps 31
The persecution and extermination of European Jews 32
Italian anti-partisan warfare 33
Wolff’s institutional position 35
Wolff’s defensive claims in the light of the Nuremberg evidence 37
The complicities of Guido Zimmer 54
The complicities of Eugen Dollmann 63
Dollmann’s decision to join the Nazi Party and the SS 65
Dollmann’s activities as a translator and diplomatic emissary 67
Potential defence argument 1: an accidental Nazi? 70
Potential defence argument 2: Dollmann as a saboteur? 72
Potential defence argument 3: Dollmann’s lack of knowledge of SS war
criminality? 75
Potential defence argument 4: his lack of any policy-making role 76
Potential defence argument 5: lack of involvement in the unlawful
activities of the SS 77
Potential defence argument 6: Dollmann’s humanitarian interventions 80
Problems with these defence arguments 81
Conclusion 84
3. The geo-political context of the peace negotiations surrounding the
OSS’s Operation Sunrise 89
Introduction 89
Introducing specific contexts shaping Dulles’ wartime role regarding SS
peace feelers 1944–45 92
Negotiating the conditions of an ‘unconditional’ surrender 96
Conclusion 108
4. Intervening on behalf of Karl Wolff 109
Introduction 109
Dulles’ interventions on behalf of Wolff with respect to the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg 121
Intervening to protect Wolff from the second round of the Nuremberg
trials 131
Wolff’s escape from prosecution by the British authorities 135
The ‘Old Lace’ de-Nazification trials 146
1962–64: Wolff’s arrest and German trials 166
Conclusion 176
5. Protecting the wider Sunrise group: Zimmer, Dollmann and Wenner 179
Introduction 179
Zimmer’s post-war recruitment and deployment as a US intelligence asset
180
Dollmann’s post-war detention, recruitment and deployment as a US
intelligence asset 184
The internal controversy regarding the ‘privileged treatment’ of the
Wolff group 202
Questions of legal immunity in the light of Dollmann’s CIA Name File 215
Intervening to ensure protection 220
The internal controversy concerning Dollmann’s protection 223
Conclusion 243
6. The contribution of OSS officials to the prosecution of Nazi war
crimes 246
Designing the courtroom as a stage for a media event 253
Facilitating media coverage: controversies and logistical support 255
Organisational charts 257
Providing documentary and eye-witness evidence 258
Producing the Nazi Concentration Camps film 260
The immediate impact of screening the atrocity film 269
7. Gathering and analysing the materials that became the R-Series of
Nuremberg trial evidence 277
Waging aggressive war and crimes committed against prisoners of war 288
Rothschild’s work in gathering and organising the R-Series evidence 298
Conclusion 306
8. General Donovan’s contribution to the Nuremberg trials 307
Introduction 307
Donovan’s attempts to secure a leading role for the OSS 309
The courting and honeymoon phases 320
Recruiting Donovan’s OSS personnel 332
The flow of OSS staff and support 338
Providing evidence from Dulles’ OSS contacts within the German
opposition 346
Donovan’s assistance with the geo-politics of international
negotiations 351
Donovan’s assistance with American organisations 362
The provision of documentation 366
Other forms of support provided by Donovan 367
Donovan’s long-range interventions: July-September 1945 369
The honeymoon ends in desertion: Donovan departs and plays away 374
The irretrievable breakdown 376
Excluding Donovan and the OSS lawyers from the economic case 381
Prosecuting the German General Staff and the High Command 393
The merits of witness or documentary evidence 398
Donovan’s plea-bargaining proposals for Schacht and Göring 410
Informal contacts with Leverkühn and Lahousen 424
An acrimonious divorce 428
Was either leader proved right? 439
Conclusion 444
Summation: taking stock 445
Bibliography 448
Appendix: Abbreviations 452
Index 453
Ch
1. Introducing the rationale, aims and methodology (p1; 12 of 469)
- "Intelligence work is by definition illegal. If it is very effective
intelligence work, it is very illegal.
(David Whipple, former OSS official, who worked under Allen Dulles in
wartime Bern)
- The "wartime Office of Strategic Services (‘OSS’, 1942–45, precursor
to the CIA, 1947–) ... had various sub-divisions, ranging from the
scholarly Research and Analysis Branch (R&A) through to the
espionage work and guerrilla warfare operations of the Secret
Intelligence (SI) and Special Operations Branches (SO) respectively; it
also included Foreign Nationalities, Visual Presentation and Field
Photographic Branches. The OSS was formally dissolved at the end of
September 1945, but nearly all of its 130-plus war crimes staff
remained at Nuremberg as employees of a re-branded organisation: the
Strategic Services Unit (SSU) attached to the US War Department."
- The OSS activities and preparations for war crimes trials "only began
in earnest from November 1943. Nevertheless, it remained the case that,
at the end of the war in May 1945, this organisation had still made
greater progress with trial preparations than any other American or
British government agency, including the legal departments of the
Allied armies, or the understaffed United Nations War Crimes
Commission." ... The "American Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) were also deployed, albeit largely in the far
narrower role of hunting down middle and lower level war crimes
suspects."
- Salter lists 10 assumptions that he utilizes in interpreting the
empirical facts to present a coherent and logical explanation of events.
- "... the present work also addresses a cluster of issues,
possibilities and dilemmas regarding the selective granting of legal
immunity that resonate at least as strongly today as they did during
the time in which they originally took place." ... "One part focuses on
the extent to which Karl Wolff, former Chief of Himmler’s Personal
Staff and joint second highest official within the entire SS, was able
to avoid legal accountability within the Nuremberg process for a range
of war crimes, partly as a direct result of his wartime cooperation
with a US intelligence agency."
- "The Nuremberg programme began within weeks of the end of the Second
World War, that is, in early May 1945. It was prompted largely by the
appointment of Justice Jackson, a former Supreme Court Judge, as chief
of the dominant American prosecution organisation, the Office of the
Chief of Counsel (OCC). The charges contained in the extensive
indictment ... were presented to the defendants on 25 October 1945."
- "The trials themselves opened on 20 November 1945 and lasted for over
ten months. The lawyers’ final presentation of evidence before the
International Military Tribunal (IMT), which was comprised of eight
judges, two each from France, America, Britain and the Soviet Union,
occurred on 31 August 1946."
- "In addition to charges against [22] specific individuals, six
‘criminal organisations’ were also prosecuted at Nuremberg: the Nazi
Party, the SS (Internal Security Police), the Gestapo (political police
which pre-existed the Nazis but was later subsumed into a sub-section
of the SS after 1933), the SD (SS’s overseas political intelligence
agency), Hitler’s Cabinet, the paramilitary SA (or ‘brown shirts’) and
the Military High Commands (OKW). Ultimately, only three individual
defendants were acquitted, Fritzsche, Schacht and von Papen, whilst of
the organisational defendants, the High Command, Hitler’s Cabinet and
the SA were found not guilty."
- "In order to discuss the OSS-Nuremberg trials relationship, this book
focuses extensively upon the controversial work of Allen Dulles, who
headed the OSS Bern Field Office between 1942 and 1945, and, to a
lesser extent, Franz Neumann."
Ch
2. Evidence of the war criminality of the Wolff group (p11; 22 of 469)
- "involvement of US intelligence within the Nuremberg war crimes
process ... policy of the OSS and other branches of US intelligence
(such as the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps) selectively to
promise immunity for war crimes ... the non-prosecution of the Karl
Wolff group of senior SS officials, OSS/CIA officials effectively
honoured such promises by making a series of interventions within the
Nuremberg and related trial processes."
- "Dulles was a former senior US wartime intelligence official with the
OSS, based in Berne, Switzerland (1942–45), and subsequent Director of
the CIA (1953–61). In March and April 1945, Dulles negotiated the early
surrender of German and Axis forces in North Italy with Wolff, a
mission codenamed ‘Operation Sunrise’ by American intelligence, and
‘Operation Crossword’ by Winston Churchill (as it remained a continuing
puzzle for him)."
- "Dulles, OSS and US intelligence officials have been subjected to
severe criticisms with respect to their interventions within aspects of
the Nuremberg and related Allied war crimes trials and de-Nazification
processes."
Relevant offences (p14;
25 of 469)
- In this section, Salter outlines the the relevant provisions of the
Nuremberg Charter, which served as the basis of declaring the SS and
its constituent parts as criminal organisations:
- "In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had
been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of
the SS-Verbände, members of the Waffen-SS, members of the
SS-Totenkopfverbände and the members of any of the different police
forces who were members of the SS"
Thus, all persons who were members of these entities were automatically
presumed guilty, such that the onus was on accused person to 'prove his
innocence' rather than on the prosecution to 'prove his guilt'.
Nevertheless, there was sufficient ambiguity as to intent, knowledge of
criminal acts, coercion into membership, etc. to provide a legal
defense of Wolff, Dolman and Zimmer.
Evidence of the Wolff
group’s involvement in Nazi war crimes (p23; 34 of
469)
- "Wolff was included amongst a small group of 24 potential defendants
on whom Dr Kempner, JAGD-WCO, prepared a dossier of ‘evidence or
definite leads’ for Justice Jackson, the majority of whom were in fact
later named as defendants."
[W.Z.
Note that Dr Kempner later criminally absconded with the
Rosenberg Diary, which was only "recovered" in June 2013.]
- "Following the suicide of Hitler and Himmler, he [Wolff] was the
highest-ranking Nazi official to survive the war, and clearly outranked
the majority of the defendants tried before the first International
Trials at Nuremberg."
- "Between 1945 and 1948, the Nuremberg prosecutors gathered three
folders of evidence relevant to Wolff’s administrative involvement in
war crimes, including the extermination of European Jewry."
- "Waffen-SS Major General Wolff, Himmler’s former Chief of Staff
(1936–43) and Highest SS Police and SS leader for Northern Italy
(1943–45), was vulnerable to being successfully prosecuted for ‘crimes against
humanity’ under Article Six of the Nuremberg Charter of August 1945."
[W.Z.
Amongst the 9 pieces of evidence of Wolff's criminality not
considered in Salter's book, which is relevant to Ukraine, is:
- "A letter personally dictated by Wolff advising Himmler of a
forthcoming meeting discussing the resettlement of ethnic Germans into
the German occupied Crimean region in which Wolff notes in passing and
without comment that the indigenous population would be subject to
detention and ‘liquidation by action squads’."
This
is similar to German actions in establishing Hegewald -- a
German
colony near Zhytomyr, Ukraine.]
Medical experimentation
(p30; 41 of 469)
- "illegal and often fatal medical experiments on human subjects within
Dachau concentration camp."
Funding concentration
camps (p31; 42 of 469)
- "the exploitation of slave labour. Wolff had organised and
participated in Himmler’s ‘circle of friends’, comprising leading
industrialists, financiers and bankers, including representatives from
Siemens, AEG, IG Farben, Portland-Zement and Deutsche Bank."
The persecution and
extermination of European Jews (p32; 43 of 469)
- "it is clear that Wolff personally witnessed mass killings of Jews at
Minsk by his SS subordinates."
Italian anti-partisan
warfare (p33; 44 of 469)
- "war crimes committed against civilians by his subordinates during
anti-partisan operations. These including reprisal killings of
approximately 9,200 Italian women and children."
[W.Z.
The number of reprisal killings in Ukraine was orders of
magnitude greater.]
Wolff ’s institutional
position (p35; 46 of 469)
Salter discusses Wolff's relationship with the
Reichssicherheits-Hauptamt (RSHA) and other German organisations.
Wolff ’s defensive claims
in the light of the Nuremberg evidence (p37;
48 of 469)
[W.Z.
Salter devotes 17 pages, to prove that Wolff was involved in the
extermination of Jews, but ignores his involvement in the extermination
of "others". He also quotes extensively from books previously published
by Holocaust researchers.]
- "At least during January and February 1943, SS-Oberstgruppenführer
Daluege (Chief of the Order Police (ORPO), whose forces committed mass
killings of Jews within occupied Europe) reported directly to Wolff."
- "Daluege’s report indicated that the SS had recruited large number of
indigenous groups, including Ukrainians, Baltic and White Russians, to
assist in ‘special operations’ ... ‘cleaning up and clearing of
isolated enemy units, combating criminal -- especially political
elements’. Such activities, which appeared to link the extermination of
civilians during ‘special actions’ with anti-partisan warfare ...
resulted in the killing of 30,000 ‘bandits’ in battle and making 4,000
arrests, of which 3,000 were later executed as ‘saboteurs and
assistants to partisans’. ... The report finished by providing details
of the support the Order Police had provided for the genocidal ‘Germanisation’
of occupied eastern territories, including the ‘the resettlement of
Ukranian [sic] Ethnic Germans’."
[W.Z.
The above excerpts suggest that the majority of the casualties
were ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians.]
- "This incriminating exchange would never have entered into the
Nuremberg evidence had it not been for Ganzenmüller’s bureaucratic
thoroughness in confirming, in precise written form, the details of this telephone
conversation. When transportations from Warsaw and its surrounding
district ended in early October 1943, Fischer, the district governor,
reported that a total of 400,000 Jews had been deported."
- "The Nuremberg prosecutors were fully aware of the fate of the Jews
transported to Treblinka at this period. Rudolph Höss had described
this graphically:
Q. What did you see there [in Treblinka]?
A. At that time the action in connection with the Warsaw Ghetto was in
progress, and I watched the procedure."
... etc. ...
[W.Z.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was from 19Apr1943 to 16May1943 and
the uprising in Treblinka presumably took place on 02Aug1943 after
which Treblinka was closed. The 5 Jewish Nazi collaborators who falsely
accused John Demjanjuk of being Ivan the Terrible at the 1987 Jerusalem
Show Trial testified that there were few trains arriving in 1943. Was
Albert Ganzenmüller "encouraged" or "enticed" by Nuremberg prosecutors
to recall "in precise written form, the details of this telephone
conversation"? The Red Cross reported that the testicles of 95% of the
German prisoners "interrogated" during the Nuremberg process were
"inoperable". Researchers now admit that torture was used to elicit
"confessions" from most of the accused prisoners. This is especially
true for Rudolph Höss. It is highly unlikely that Karl Wolff, Eugen
Dollmann and Guido Zimmer were tortured, because of their collaboration
with U.S. Intelligence and the Nuremberg prosecution. In which category
does Albert Ganzenmüller fall? Nevertheless, it is obvious that the
statements and testimony of Wolff, Höss, Ganzenmüller and the
other accused prisoners cannot be taken at face value.]
The complicities of Guido
Zimmer (p54; 65 of 469)
- "From 1940 to 1945, Zimmer worked for the political intelligence
division (SD) of Himmler’s SS. Following his relocation to Italy in
early 1944, Zimmer worked within the Abt. 6, a political intelligence
department of the SS’s Milan office immediately under Rauff, who had
headed this office since September 1943."
- "(Kappler was later prosecuted for being directly involved in the
Ardeatine Caves massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Rome (including 75
Jews) on 24 March 1944, none of whom were involved in the earlier
ambush of German forces.) This atrocity was ordered as a reprisal for a
successful partisan attack that killed 33 South Tyrolean police
(Polizeirregiment Bozen), soldiers and Italian bystanders."
- "Ref. 143: Kappler was later prosecuted and convicted because the SS
killed not 330 hostages (in keeping with the state ratio of 1 to 10)
but 335. The reprisal killing of these five extra people took the
matter beyond any recognised defence in military law."
[W.Z.
The concept of "reprisal killing" of innocent civilians for the
actions of one person (usually a provocateur or intelligence agent) is
sickening. (That Salter does not even denounce this common practice by
both German and "Allied" military forces is also sickening.) In
Ukraine, this 10 to 1 ratio was increased to 20 to 1 in Western Ukraine
and even 50 to 1 in Eastern Ukraine.]
- "In addition, and perhaps as a prelude to the Sunrise deal, Zimmer
had little scruples regarding ‘playing on both sides of the street’ by
courting Italian partisans involved in the anti-fascist resistance."
- "It was Dulles who insisted that such contacts be made only with the
Americans to the exclusion of the rival British intelligence services
in Switzerland."
[W.Z.
Leopold Trepper spearheaded the "Red Orchestra" Soviet spy ring
in Geman-occupied Europe during WWII. In his book "The Great Game", he
describes how the various intelligence agencies (German, American,
British, Soviet, etc.) played games with each other. When it was clear
that the Germans would lose the war after their defeat in Stalingrad in
February 1943, German intelligence agents made contact with their
American and British counterparts to ensure their escape and survival
after the war.]
The complicities of Eugen
Dollmann (p63; 74 of 469)
- "The major accusations of complicity in war criminality he faced
stemmed not from Anglo-American authorities but from their Italian
counterparts, and these related to the Fosse Ardeatine reprisal
killings already discussed."
- "Major Bridge also told Dollmann that Kappler’s trial testimony had
just exonerated him from any, even indirect, personal involvement in
the Ardeatine Caves atrocity."
Dollmann’s decision to
join the Nazi Party and the SS (p65; 76 of 469)
Dollmann’s activities as
a translator and diplomatic emissary (p67; 78
opf 469)
- "During 1938, Dollmann rapidly became a ‘star translator’ for the
German and Italian fascist regimes."
Potential defence
argument 1: an accidental Nazi? (p70; 81 of 469)
Potential defence
argument 2: Dollmann as a saboteur? (p72; 83 of 469)
- "They also express an ‘instinctive dread’ for Heydrich, the Gestapo
chief and Himmler’s ‘evil genius’ with a Jewish grandmother, whom
Dollmann believed would have had both Hitler and Himmler killed in the
final year of the war had he lived to see it."
- "In his diplomatic role as Consul-General and Deputy German
Ambassador to Italy, Möllhausen actively sought to limit Nazi
atrocities against Roman Jews and others, and took great personal risks
in opposing the orders of Himmler, Kaltenbrunner and Kappler."
- "Dollmann also played a prominent part in the later stages of
Operation Sunrise by bringing Allen Dulles into contact with Wolff
during March 1945, and keeping these fraught negotiations on track
towards their ultimately successful conclusion in late April 1945."
Potential defence
argument 3: Dollmann’s lack of knowledge of SS war
criminality? (p75; 86 of 469)
Potential defence
argument 4: his lack of any policy-making role (p76;
87 of 469)
Potential defence
argument 5: lack of involvement in the unlawful
activities of the SS (p77; 88 of 469)
- "Dulles argues that it was precisely because of his atypical role and
qualities that explains why he was amongst the first to press for peace
feelers with the OSS in Berne, and then to guide Wolff towards Dulles,
partly through his Vatican contacts."
Potential defence
argument 6: Dollmann’s humanitarian interventions
(p80; 91 of 469)
- "intervene successfully on behalf of Count Calvi ... assisted Count
Cini ... to have notorious Italian fascist torture chambers located in
Polazzo Braschi, Regio Emilia and Villa Roncina closed down ... to
preserve Rome as an open city"
Problems with these
defence arguments (p81; 92 of 469)
Conclusion (p84; 95 of
469)
- "Relative to many other senior SS officials, Dollmann’s
qualifications as a potential war crimes defendant were far from clear
or unambiguous."
- "Hence, and bracketing out the attitude of the Italian authorities,
it remains arguable that neither man merited prosecution by the Allies
as mid-ranking Nazi war criminals during the subsequent hearings at
Nuremberg from 1947 to 1949 or in British-led war crimes trials in
Italy."
- " ... was Wolff’s non-prosecution influenced by the interventions of
American intelligence and military officials, primarily Allen Dulles,
involved in wartime capitulation negotiations codenamed Operation
Sunrise? Was Wolff rewarded by the Nuremberg prosecutors for his
conditional form of cooperation with his interrogators, which included
giving trial testimony in relation to his former colleagues with the
Nazi leadership, to the point where he effectively ‘worked his passage’
to freedom?"
Ch
3. The geo-political context of the peace negotiations surrounding
the OSS’s Operation Sunrise (p89; 100 of 469)
Introduction
- "This undercurrent meant that these terms and conditions (and the
process of negotiation through which they were proposed and modified)
had to be misrepresented as something other than what they really were:
clear attempts to negotiate a conditional surrender of German military
and para-military forces in Northern Italy and hopefully beyond. Any
fulsome interpretation of the meaning of at least some of these terms
and conditions, the need for the process of negotiation to be
misrepresented, and the sources of Soviet distrust all require some
grasp of the geo-political context dimension."
Introducing specific contexts shaping Dulles’ wartime role regarding SS
peace feelers 1944–45 (92; 103 of 469)
- "There are some indications that OSS’s James Angleton (later head of
CIA counterintelligence) and Dulles were involved in securing the
services of Rauff as an informant once he was released by his CIC
interrogators to OSS Unit S Force, Verona."
Negotiating the
conditions of an ‘unconditional’ surrender" (p96; 107 of
469)
- "In December 1944, President Roosevelt firmly rejected General
Donovan’s request to be allowed to offer immunity deals to specific
Nazis in return for their cooperation in separate peace deals with the
Anglo-Americans."
- "Indeed, Dulles received permission to meet with Wolff’s
representatives Eugen Dollmann and Guido Zimmer on 8 March 1945 only if
he could do so ‘without entering [into] any negotiations or without
promising any further talks’ in order to ‘secure what information’ he
could."
- "As the process of ‘negotiation’ intensified during March and early
April 1945, Dulles emphasised in all official communications, even
those internal to the OSS, that Wolff’s proposed regional surrender
would indeed appear ‘unconditional’."
- "Stalin’s vehement objections to Dulles’ secret negotiations, after
he had presumably discovered details through the NKGB’s (Soviet
intelligence) penetration of the OSS and its ciphers. These objections
had culminated in the temporary cancellation of Sunrise."
[W.Z.
In their book "Stalin's
Secret Agents",
Evans and Romerstein give
an extensive list of OSS personnel, who were Soviet agents.]
- "Instead, the following terms and conditions emerged during the
pre-surrender negotiations, each of which will now be discussed in turn:
(a) safe passage; [Italian partisans would allow German
forces to withdraw unmolested]
(b) prisoner exchange; [Wolff to release an Italian partisan leader
(Feruccio Parri), two OSS and one British agent (UIsmiani, Tucker,
Mullaby) plus a radio man and a priest in exchange for American release
of Wuensche, relatives of Churchill and Molotov, Sogno Franci, several
hundred Jews and to ensure good treatment of British/American
POWs.]
(c) the Wolff group to break with the Nazi leadership;
(d) the safeguarding of unique Italian artworks and public utilities;
(e) the Wolff group to receive privileged treatment including legal
impunity [sic]."
- "In this way, Wolff agreed to betray the Nazi and Italian leadership
to the Allies."
Conclusion (p108; 119 of
469)
- "In short, contrary to the requirements of the agreed policy of
unconditional surrender, which meant that the Axis powers had to
surrender to the Allies as
a whole, Dulles and Wolff entered into negotiations and agreed a series
of mutually beneficial terms and conditions."
Ch
4. Intervening on behalf of Karl Wolff (p109; 120 of 469)
Introduction
Salter utilizes 12 pages and 55 footnotes to discuss the
various aspects of the criminality/immunity dilemma faced by Dulles and
the OSS.
- "The 88th Division of US Army Military Intelligence (G2) arrested
Wolff during his birthday party on 13 May 1945."
Dulles’ interventions on
behalf of Wolff with respect to the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (p121; 132 of 469)
- "Immediately after the war, Dulles started a goodwill campaign for
Wolff, stressing the services he rendered for the interests of the
United States."
- "Indeed, this correspondence indicates that, between mid-1945 and
1948, Dulles had not betrayed and abandoned Wolff, as the latter
apparently believed."
- The arrest of Wolff came as a particularly unwelcome surprise to OSS
officials involved in Operation Sunrise."
- "It is likely that Dulles’ main source of influence was none other
than former OSS leader William Donovan."
- "On 23 August 1945, Dulles sent a personal cable to Donovan pleading
for Wolff to be exempted from inclusion in the first international
trial at Nuremberg."
- " ... decisive meeting in London of the four chief prosecutors on 23
August 1945: ... after considerable discussion a shorter list excluding
Wolff would be announced and that further names could be added later."
- "Wolff appeared in the Nuremberg trials dressed in a Waffen-SS
general’s uniform only as a prosecution witness. This followed his
cooperation with the interrogators and war crimes prosecutors, with
some of whom he built up a cordial relationship, including Telford
Taylor (who went on to head the subsequent proceedings at Nuremberg
(1947–49))."
Intervening to protect
Wolff from the second round of Nuremberg trials
(p131; 142 of 469)
- "As late as May 1946, the question of whether Wolff merited trial
before the second round of Nuremberg trials remained undecided."
- "But Karl Wolff again succeeded in wriggling off the hook, despite
the fact that he was personally implicated in one way or another in
almost half of the cases brought to trial in the subsequent proceedings
series."
- "Acting on Wolff’s behalf, Gaevernitz (Dulles’ senior aide and
personal friend) wrote a letter to former OSS-consultant Robert
Kempner. Kempner [of
Jewish origin] was the only German national the
Americans employed as a trial counsel at Nuremberg who had stayed on to
become Deputy Chief of Counsel for War Crimes at Nuremberg under
Telford Taylor. Gaevernitz’s letter pleaded that Wolff had ‘rendered
outstanding support at great personal risk to the success of operations
“Sunrise-Crossword” ’. Kempner made enquiries on Gaevernitz’s behalf
and provided helpful insider information on future plans for Wolff."
[W.Z.
As noted previously, Kempner absconded with the Alfred Rosenberg
Diary, which was lost to the world until it was "re-discovered" in June
2013.]
- "By November 1947, the Nuremberg prosecutors agreed to return Wolff
to British custody."
- "Dulles made a positive case for giving Wolff privileged treatment as
a reward for his role in Operation Sunrise. Dulles’ position was ...
ultimately accepted as British policy as well."
Wolff ’s escape from
prosecution by the British authorities (p135; 146
of 469)
- "Even in January 1947, there remained a clear intention to prosecute
Wolff."
- "It appears that the British decision definitely not to prosecute
Wolff took place sometime in the late summer and early autumn of 1947."
- "It is one thing for Wolff to be tried by American or British justice
but to have him turned over to the Czechs or by them to the Russians
would be unconscionable."
The ‘Old Lace’
de-Nazification trials (p146; 157 to 469)
- "The British authorities charged Wolff under Military Government
Ordinance No. 69 with: ‘being or remaining a member of an organisation
declared to be criminal by the Nuremberg judgement with knowledge of
the criminal acts and purposes of the organisation’."
- "In this connection the Secretary of State might like to know that I
received a report to the effect that Wolff’s counsel intended to take
the line that negotiations with Wolff were aimed at arresting the
advance of the Communist forces of the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia. On
receiving this report I arranged for unofficial contact to be made with
Wolff’s Counsel in order to advise him that if he took that line he
must expect to find allied officers rebutting it and giving evidence
prejudicial to Wolff’s case. Wolff’s counsel immediately accepted this
advice and has given assurances that he will not take this line."
Salter has a very long discussion of affidavits in support of Wolff by
Generals Lemnitzer and Airey to be changed to ensure that Roosevelt's
promise to Stalin about Russian involvement in unconditional surrender
negotiations not be compromised.
- "In short, and following a process of geo-politically determined
amendment to trial evidence, both Lemnitzer and Airey provided
favourable affidavits."
- "Wolff’s case was heard between 3 and 7 November 1948 by a
de-Nazification tribunal, in this case known as ‘Old Lace’ trial,
located at Bergedorf, Hamburg."
- "As it transpired, Wolff’s lawyers appear to have honoured their
covert agreement not to highlight, or even mention, the distinctly
anti-Soviet aspect of Operation Sunrise."
- "On 8 November 1948, the Tribunal found Wolff guilty of an
organisational membership offence under Ordinance No. 69. ... five
years’ imprisonment ... discounted two years from this sentence."
- "Between 31 May and 3 June 1949, Wolff appeared once again before the
de-Nazification Tribunal at Bergedorf, Hamburg, in a rehearing on ‘all
issues of fact and law’."
- "At this rehearing, Dulles’ senior aide Gaevernitz gave testimony in
person for the defence."
- "Wolff’s already ‘very lenient’ sentence was reduced from five to
four years’ imprisonment ... Wolff was released within eight days of
this token ‘conviction’ on the scarcely appropriate, and in that sense,
‘reduced’ charge of membership of a criminal organisation, the SS."
- Allen Dulles: ‘Between you and me KW doesn’t realise what a lucky man
he is not to be spending the rest of his days in jail, and his wisest
policy would be to keep fairly quiet about the loss of a bit of
underwear, etc. He might easily have lost more than his shirt.’
1962–64: Wolff ’s arrest
and German trials (p166; 177of 469)
Bad publicity for Wolff at Adolf Eichman trial 1960-61, Bach-Zalewski
trial in 1961 and Ulm mass murder trial.
- "On 18 January 1962, Wolff was arrested at his luxurious Munich
Lakeside villa by two plain-clothes police officers. These officers
were acting on instructions from the central offices in Ludwigsburg,
which had been established to investigate Nazi crimes."
[W.Z.
The persecutors of John Demjanjuk -- Kurt Schrimm, Thomas
Walther, etc -- are associated with this Ludwigsburg creation.]
- "Between July and September 1964, Wolff was belatedly tried in
Munich, this time before a regular German criminal court. He was
charged for his part in the deportation and murder of Jews to the
Treblinka concentration camp in 1942, reprisal killings against
Italians and other crimes already discussed."
- "The West German court did not accept Wolff’s various defence
arguments. On 30 September 1964, Wolff was convicted of responsibility
for murdering 300,000 persons, mainly Jews, and overseeing the SS’s involvement in
slave labour programmes for IG Farben and numerous other companies."
- "Wolff was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment combined with ten
years’ loss of civil rights."
Conclusion (p176; 187 of
469)
- "When faced with this threat of extradition and almost certain
conviction and execution, Wolff received sustained and highly effective
support from Dulles, Gaevernitz and Lemnitzer in successfully resisting
extradition and trial abroad."
- "The Soviet version was, in all likelihood, based on electronic
intercepts of communications supplemented with reports from its wartime
intelligence services, which had penetrated the OSS at the highest
levels."
[W.Z.
See Evans and Romerstein, "Stalin's
Secret Agents" for
list of
Soviet agents in Donovan's OSS.]
Ch
5. Protecting the wider Sunrise group: Zimmer, Dollmann and Wenner
(p179; 190 of 469)
Introduction
- "Rauff was head of Abt II D of the RSHA in Berlin, ‘There are
indications that this Abt. was responsible for [the] operation of
mobile gas execution chambers on the eastern front. Rauff was
questioned in this connection.' "
[W.Z.
Mobile gas vans "dushehubki" were utilized in Ukraine by the
Soviet NKVD during the Great Terror of the 1930s.]
Zimmer’s post-war
recruitment and deployment as a US intelligence asset
(p180; 191 of 469)
- "William Casey, later to rise to become Director of the CIA under
President Reagan, argued that the OSS should be willing to put aside
sympathy for anti-Nazi Germans as potential agents. ... Instead, the
OSS should follow ‘the old truism that it takes a thief to catch a
thief’ and either recruit ‘former minor Nazi informants and stool
pigeons against the party itself, [or] . . . Nazi Party members now
held in the US as POW’s who may be willing to work for us after
reparation’."
- "By, at the latest, the third week of September 1945, Zimmer had
accepted the role of an American agent that Dulles had previously
offered him in his capacity as head of OSS espionage operations within
occupied Germany."
Dollmann’s post-war detention, recruitment and deployment as a US
intelligence asset (184; 195 of 469)
Salter describes how Dollmann was shuffled through various camps:
- "Dollmann escaped from Rimini camp with the assistance of an NCO who
had somehow ‘acquired’ -- possibly through Rauff -- a pair of wire
cutters, and made his way to Milan, where he sought assistance from
Cardinal Schuster, whom Dollmann had known ‘quite well’."
- "Angleton told Dollmann that they wished to use his services as part
of an anti-communist operation, for which his past complicities and
Italian claims concerning his involvement in war crimes were of no
relevance."
- "Yet he still accepted the ‘sweetener’ of a bundle of currency, and a
false identify document in the name of Alfredo Casani, stating that he
was an employee of the American government."
Based on Dollmann's memoirs, Salter describes several mishaps, arrests,
Angleton intervention, etc.
- "In January 1948, Dollmann moved temporarily to Venice and Milan, and
then, with the help of a priest and female Italian partisan, he crossed
illegally
into Lugano, Switzerland, where he lived ‘like a king’, possibly
enjoying the patronage of former OSS official Donald Jones."
Sting operation of neo-Nazi group in 1950 failed -- CIA dilemma to keep
him or dump him.
Dollmann attempted to sell memoirs; wrote scandalous articles on
Italian monarchy and American ambassador to Italy; attempt to peddle
wartime documents; Hitler/Stalin peace talks; CIA gave him 200,000 lire
as "longterm investment"; CIA agent Donald Jones had sexual relations
with Dollmann; in February 1952 Dollmann departed for Madrid dressed as
a monk, with false passport under assumed name.
- "Dollmann was soon ‘taken under the wing of’ the ‘notorious’ Nazi
commando leader Otto Skorzeny."
- "Dollmann died in Munich in 1985, some 30 years after the last
recorded entry for him appears in declassified US intelligence files."
The internal controversy
regarding the ‘privileged treatment’ of the
Wolff group (p202; 213 of 469)
- "Ultimately, [James] Angleton was given a medal for apprehending over
1,000 enemy agents and sub-agents in Italy, establishing over 50 secret
informants, and successfully penetrating seven different foreign
intelligence services, including Tito’s communists and different
branches of Italian military and civilian intelligence."
- Salter discusses the activities of Zimmer; American-financed health
care in Switzerland for his two children; considered subject as an
incompetent intelligence officer; heated controversy within CIA;
- "Through Parilli, Zimmer was also in contact with the Gehlen
Organisation, codenamed ‘Zipper’, in pursuit of a closer liaison with
the Order of Malta, and had to apply for a travel pass."
Questions of legal
immunity in the light of Dollmann’s CIA Name File
(p215; 226 of 469)
Intervening to ensure
protection (p220; 231 of 469)
- "Dollmann and Wenner, who were detained in an Italian insane asylum
in Milan under church ‘protection’, were blackmailed into signing false
affidavits." -- by Cardinal Schuster. They were rescued by Angleton.
The internal controversy
concerning Dollmann’s protection (p223; 234 of
469)
Salter goes to great lengths to discuss the opposition of W.M. Chase to
granting of immunity to Wolff, Zimmer Dollmann, etc.
Conclusion (p243; 254 of
469)
Salter decries that "Western intelligence agencies have frequently been
subject to an absurdly prejudicial ‘demonisation’ by their radical
critics."
[W.Z.
The suspicion arises that Salter's verbal diarrhea in the
preceding five chapters concerning the Wolff group is utilized as a
mechanism to discuss recently declassified titillating documents and
make reference to the standard Holocaust literature. Nevertheless, he
does provide insight into the sordid world of the OSS intelligence
agency intertwined with politics. It is unlikely that the souls of the
people discussed in this book are floating with the angels in heaven.
They are more likely to be burning alongside the souls of Roosevelt,
Hitler, Stalin and Churchill.]
Ch
6. The contribution of OSS officials to the prosecution of Nazi war
crimes (p246; 257 of 469)
- "The next three chapters seek to contribute to existing debates over
the role of US intelligence, particularly OSS and its successor
organisations, SSU and, from 1947, the CIA, in the war crimes
prosecution field by providing a more nuanced and balanced
interpretation."
- "reconstruction and assessment of the role of US intelligence
organisations within the Nuremberg process must take into account the
nature, extent and implications of the support that, for example, Dulles, and his
assistant Gero von Gaevernitz, a German-born but naturalised American
citizen of a Jewish family background, provided for the Nuremberg
prosecutors."
[W.Z.
This is the only (so far) reference to the Jewish ethnicity of
the personnel associated with the Nuremberg show trials. The failure of
Salter and other Holocaust authors to clearly identify the ethnicity of
the various researchers and personalities has, of course, exacerbated
the so-called "Holocaust denial" movement.]
- "Nazi rocket scientists employed by America. The ‘science’ of these
men had involved systematic use of the grossly abused concentration
camp labourers detained in the Dora camp."
- Dulles was head of "post-war Field Office in Wiesbaden, Germany, from
June to December 1945, ..." ... "William Casey worked under Dulles in
OSS Wiesbaden." ... "head of the OSS, General Donovan ..." ... "OSS’s
Document Research Unit headed by Walter Rothschild, based in London."
... "Hans Bernd Gisevius (former Gestapo official and OSS
double-agent)." ... "Robert Storey, a Nuremberg prosecutor" ...
"Richard Helms, another of Dulles’ subordinates who was later appointed
as CIA Director"
- "On 7 July 1945, Jackson and Donovan visited Wiesbaden to meet with
Dulles."
- "In January 1945, Dulles also made efforts to include three of his
‘trusted German’ staff, including Hans Gisevius, in one of the OSS’s
T-Force teams entering newly conquered areas of Germany, particularly
Berlin."
- Although initially uninterested in Communist activities "Dulles
modified his stance partly owing to the obstruction, and even physical
attacks, by Russian forces on his agents and officials whenever they
sought fugitive Nazi war criminals located in the Soviet-controlled
sector of Germany:" ... As a result of this and other incidents, all
allied forces were banned from the Russian zone, though Red Army
officers continued to move freely in the Allied zones where they picked
up Germans they claimed were wanted Nazis."
[W.Z.
Ukrainian refugees referred to these as "roving
squads of
American GI’s and their NKVD handlers"
-- http://www.willzuzak.ca/tp/holodomor/rud20120723WillZuzak.html ]
- "... Donovan’s assignment to Jackson numerous OSS legal, research and
technical staff; the preparation of lists of potential defendants
(including SS officials, industrialists and Nazi organisations); and
potential trial witnesses."
Designing the courtroom
as a stage for a media event (p253; 264 of 469)
- "Donovan had, in his civilian law practice, frequently supported his
arguments with arresting visual devices. Behind the battle cry, ‘One
picture is worth a thousand words,’ he vigorously promoted these
practices . . . he allocated a remarkable 24.9 percent of his first
annual budget toward the design of visual presentations."
- "Dan Kiley’s secret instructions were that the Palace of Justice
should be redesigned in order to be: ‘Unified, orderly, and
dignified . . . to reflect the scales of justice.’ ... "In short,
Kiley’s task was to incorporate novel presentation devices and
facilities into the very structure of the redesigned Palace of Justice
at Nuremberg to enable the display of OSS trial evidence, particularly
film and large charts."
Facilitating media
coverage: controversies and logistical support (p255;
266 of 469)
- "The extent to which the Nuremberg trials were to be organised as
media events, or ‘show trials’, became one of the bones of contention
between Jackson and General Donovan."
- "In pursuit of Donovan’s wider agenda, OSS propaganda specialists had
developed ample wartime experience of managing and manipulating media coverage."
- "As a result, OSS’s Dan Kiley designed a special room built for
journalists covering the trials, with a large glass window through
which they could view proceedings without drawing attention to
themselves, whilst also following the verbal exchanges through a
specially ‘piped in’ sound system." ... radio broadcasts from
soundproof room in attic utilized by William L. Shirer, Kaltenbaum,
Associated Press.
- "The OSS’s manipulation of the media was double-edged" ... such that
Jackson accepted preliminary trials of lesser individuals by military
tribunals so as to satisfy the media's blood lust.
- "Ref 46: Once the relationship between Jackson’s office and OSS was
formalised in May 1945, OSS support on strategic questions varied from
providing propaganda assistance from OSS staff who had previously
worked as journalists regarding the preparation of press releases and
the ‘stage management’ of press conferences to strategic planning
regarding the entire trial. Jackson was well aware of the importance of
media management, describing Lord Beaverbrook (as distinct from any
political or industrial leader) as ‘probably the most powerful man in
Britain by reason of his newspaper control’. Jackson had personally met
with Beaverbrook."
Organisational charts
(p257; 268 of 469)
- "Another important part of the Visual Presentation Branch’s
contribution was to try to simplify, in a graphic form, the complex
internal structure of the various Nazi organisations." ... "help
clarify lines of command responsibility, institutional hierarchies and
hence degrees of potential legal responsibility and accountability for
the issuing of orders to commit unlawful acts."
- Dan Kiley re participation and collection of evidence: "Our OSS
people were on the road. As a matter of fact, I met two. They were like
G-men, gangsters; you know, mobster-types." ... "They had guns on both
sides."
Providing documentary and
eye-witness evidence (p258; 269 of 469)
- "The most important [sources] were the extensive series of
R&A reports that OSS research analysts, particularly the
Neumann group, produced both during the war and immediately afterwards,
a group of which were specifically commissioned by Justice Jackson."
... "within continental Europe, Neumann had ‘been examining people
about religious matters’ in a way that appeared excessively independent
of central control by either Amen or Storey" ... "Neumann denied acting
outside his instructions or ‘using Jackson’s name without authority’."
- "... they did contain ‘a considerable amount of evidence buried in
them, as [Murray] Bernays suggested and [Telford] Taylor agreed’." ...
"Jackson specifically requested that Neumann’s expertise was vital to
his senior prosecutors."
- "useful as guides for members of the Interrogation Division of
Jackson’s organisation, headed by Colonel Amen." ... who "had appointed
‘a group of men scrutinising the [R&A] studies to get out of
them what will be useful to interrogators’."
Producing the Nazi
Concentration Camps film (p260; 271 of 469)
- "Cinematic evidence of Nazi atrocities was produced by an OSS team of
Hollywood producers and technicians, which included John Ford, George
Stevens and Budd Schulberg, operating under the overall administrative
supervision of James Donovan’s ‘special projects’ sub-division of the
US prosecution organisation. The film was still being edited in the
fortnight before it was finally shown on 29 November 1945."
- "We have just completed its final revision and it is now in the
Berlin laboratories, which are working in three eight-hour shifts of
German civilians. The principal changes are [page 4] (a) the dropping
of two weak PW camps sequences, and (b) the adding of some new -- and
excellent -- Mauthausen coverage, in which formerly we had only the
shots of Lt. Jack Taylor. This film is due back here on 23 November,
which should give us ample time to present it."
- "Ref 59: See James Donovan ‘Memorandum to the Planning Committee’ 19
November 1945: Cornell Collection, Vol. 103, 56.03. This memo describes
how the evidentiary charts, trial exhibits, and atrocity films (3–6)
have been made and the manner in which they will be presented. This
memorandum includes Donovan’s account of how and when he was proposing
to use these films in court. It also reveals that the OSS had tracked
down SS films of a concentration camp (8 mm, about 90 seconds) and the
Warsaw Ghetto (both of which were edited by the SS to delete all
incriminating appearances of SS personnel)."
[W.Z.
The 3 excerpts above indicate that this film was a typical
Hollywood production, whose contents may or may not have presented the
real truth. One should be extremely suspicious of the phrase "the OSS
had tracked down SS films", since the Jewish underground was extremely
adept at "producing and recording" events to the detriment of the
Germans and "delivering" them to OSS personnel.]
- "... general pattern of well-received cooperation between OSS
presentation staff and the Nuremberg prosecutors, a process of liaison
that had started relatively early in the pre-trial phase. The review
document produced from Colonel Bernays by Kaplan and Farr on 9 June
1945 confirms this, providing a concise summary of early liaisons
between Jackson’s office and the Presentation Branch of OSS:"
- "On 7 June [1945] we conferred with Lt. English of the Field
Photographic Branch."
- "During the war, General Donovan had employed a number of
film-makers, including John Ford, and [Garson] Kanin. These cinematic
talents were also mobilised for the production of atrocity and other
films for the Nuremberg trials."
- "Budd Schulberg, [who] wrote the books What Makes Sammy Run? and The
Harder They Fall, was in charge of that unit. John Ford was in charge
of the photography unit of OSS. We had the top people in the country."
[1998 reference]
- "Members of Neumann’s war crimes group, including his deputy, Dr
Kellerman, successfully sought out film evidence of the destruction of
the Warsaw
ghettos later shown in the trial itself." [1997 reference]
- "Laurence Douglas, a legal academic ... idiom capable of capturing
the Holocaust’s central horror. The representational problems raised by
Nazi genocide are familiar to Holocaust scholars." [1995 reference]
- "Indeed, the formidable OSS expertise in film was mobilised for one
of the most dramatic, and rhetorically powerful, pieces of evidence
against the defendants at Nuremberg: the concentration camp atrocity
film. The highly partisan and one-sided critique directed against the
OSS by various ‘revisionist’ accounts of the Nuremberg trial could, in
part, stem from their role in providing the most graphic and damning
evidence of concentration camp atrocities, which stand out as widely circulated counter-evidence to
Holocaust denial."
[W.Z.
Salter does not give references to these "highly partisan and
one-sided critique[s]", nor does he give the names of the so-called
"revisionists".]
- "The film itself was entered into evidence as Document No. 2430-PS;
it is still available commercially. Nineteen pages of documentation
associated with its production, including affidavits attesting to the
truth of the film. The complete text of the film’s narration, and the
interview with OSS Jack Taylor, remain available from the Donovan
Collection at Cornell Law School.
Ref 71: Cornell Collection, Vol. 9, Subdivision 16.03: ‘Prisoners of
War and Concentration Camps’."
[W.Z.
It would be interesting for independent researchers to view and
critique this film and documentation.]
- "The film was screened almost at the start of the trial on the
afternoon of 29 November 1945."
- According to "former OSS official Bernard Meltzer -- largely for
strategic reasons -- it had been decided to show the film ‘out of
sequence’ from such documentary evidence:
. . . [H]orrible and vivid evidence regarding the camps had already
been introduced out of order so as to meet the perceived need to add
drama, emotion, and excitement to a primarily documentary case. That
evidence consisted of films taken by American and British troops when
they had liberated Dachau, Buchenwald and Belsen just about fifty years
ago today. Those films were literally sickening, even for the tough
combatweary troops. The films showed living skeletons and frightful
conditions. They also showed the naked bodies of the dead stacked in
large burial pits or sometimes sprawled on the ground. Some of these
defendants found those films very hard to stomach indeed." [1995
reference to Nuremberg Symposium]
[W.Z.
It is difficult to comment on the above excerpts without having
seen the film, read the documentation and studied the critiques of the
so-called revisionists. Nevertheless, many questions arise. Are the
exact dates, times, names of the film-makers and the circumstances
recorded and available? Who dug the burial pits and when? Who stacked
the bodies and when? When and how did these people die? What was the
ethnicity and number of dead bodies? What was the ethnicity and number
of the surviving inmates of these three concentration camps? Did the
massive British/American bombing raids of civilian infrastructure
during the last months of the war cause a shortage of food for the
civilian population and the concentration camp inmates? Were
photographs of the gas chambers built by the Americans in Dachau for
publicity purposes presented and/or discussed at the Nuremberg Trials?
Who ordered them to be built?]
- Salter refers to several people involved in the film and
presentation: "Sydney Alderman, associate trial counsel ... US
prosecutor, Thomas Dodds ... defendants’ counsel ... Dr. Dix ...
Aspects of Neumann’s argument ... James Donovan ... Robert Storey ...
Judge Jackson ... Lt Budd Schulberg, and later by Ray Kellogg ...
General William Donovan and Ambassador Murphy ... Lt Jack Taylor
[inmate of Mauthausen camp]"
- "Although not mentioned in the transcript, the film contained images
derived mainly, but not exclusively, from the US Army Signal Corps of
the impact of ill-treatment from the following concentration camps:
Leipzig, Penig, Ohrdruf, Hadamar, Breendonck, Hannover, Arnstadt,
Nordhausen, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. It
includes images of gas chambers ..."
- Lt Jack H. "Taylor states on the film that: In October ’44, I was the
first Allied officer to drop onto Austria. I was captured December 1st,
by the Gestapo, severely beaten, even though I was in uniform ...
Vienna prison where I was held for four months ... Mauthausen
concentration lager ... two American officers at least have been
executed here ... [Question: ‘How many ways did they execute them?’]
... Five or six ways: by gas, by shooting, by beating, that is beating
with clubs, ah, by exposure, that is standing out in the snow, naked,
for 48 hours and having cold water put on them, thrown on them in the
middle of winter, starvation, dogs, and pushing over a hundred-foot
cliff.
Ref 89: These images and Taylor’s testimony have been mounted at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/mauthfilm.html "
[W.Z.
What was Jack Taylor doing in German-occupied Austria between
October and December 1944 in an American uniform? He was presumably
transferred to Mauthhausen in April 1945 very shortly before it was
liberated on 04May1945.]
The immediate impact of
screening the atrocity film (p269; 280 of 469)
- Slater relates how the showing of the film Nazi Concentration Camps
had a devastating effect on the defendents as related by "Dr Henry
Kellerman’s oral testimony ... Dr Gilbert and his colleague Kelly ...
L. Felton, an American prosecutor ... Telford Taylor, a senior
Nuremberg prosecutor ... Airey Neave, a lawyer ... Nuremberg
prosecutors, such as Drexel Sprecher"
- Some notable comments by Dr Gilbert: "piles of dead are shown in a
slave labor camp" ... "as human skin lampshade is shown" ...
"Ribbentrop looks up at screen as British officer starts to speak,
saying he has already buried 17,000 corpses" ... "female doctor
describing treatment and experiments on female prisoners at Belsen" ...
"women’s naked corpses are thrown into pit" ... "Keitel and Ribbentrop
look up at mention of tractor clearing corpses"
- Telford Taylor: "The frightful condition of the living and the
cascade of naked corpses pushed by bulldozers into an immense burial
ditch were wrenching sights."
Ch
7. Gathering and analysing the materials that became the R-Series of
Nuremberg trial evidence (p277; 288 of 469)
- Salter highlights "the largely successful efforts of OSS’s small
group of research analysts, based in this agency’s London Field Office,
who staffed a Documentary Research Unit (DRU) from June 1945 ... headed
by First Lieutenant Walter Rothschild."
- Salter admits to being highly selective in discussing "in a
reasonably full way the R-Series evidence [composed of 589 dossiers]
concerning the Nazis’ systematic destruction of European Jews."
[W.Z.
Below are excerpts of particular relevance to Ukraine, Poland and
Eastern Europe.]
- "Whilst the extermination of European Jewry represented the most
extreme instance of Nazi genocide addressed during the Nuremberg
trials, the extermination of the Slavic population in Eastern Europe
involved massive and systematic slaughter, whilst the persecution of
the Christian churches also involved a brutal form of religious
persecution. The R-Series includes internal documentation recording the
harsh treatment meted out to the Ukrainian population as part of the
brutal occupation policies enunciated by Party Chairman Martin Bormann
and ultimately endorsed by the relevant government ministers within
Berlin (albeit over the objections of many senior civil servants).
R-Series documentation clearly revealed that such repressive treatment
included a number of genocidal measures. These included the
discouragement of childbirth through contraception and abortion, the
refusal to sanction the use of inoculation and other basic health
services for Slavic groups within the occupied territories, and a
rejection of any need to provide education beyond the lowest levels of
numeracy and literacy sufficient to allow Slavs to work effectively for
the Nazis as slave labourers. R-Series documentation cited
incriminating statements by responsible officials, including
Commissioners Koch and Knuth, that ‘any signs of intelligence’ amongst
subordinated populations must prompt summary executions. It also
included related Nazi policy statements encouraging measures designed
to create all forms of ethnic and racial tension to prevent any unified
opposition emerging against Nazi occupation. As clear evidence of
genocidal intent, such officials advocated that strategic cities, such
as Kiev, ‘ought to be depopulated through epidemics. Although it would
be best if the superfluous part of the population starved to death.’
Related themes included frank admissions of the growing power of
Himmler’s SS to bypass other government departments and local
commissioners."
- "Related German documents included with the R-Series give precise
details of the racist measures of genocide and ethnic purging Nazi
officials used to confiscate the farms and factories and other real
estate of different racially defined categories of Poles as part of
wider attempts to ‘Germanise’ parts of the Polish population ‘as
rapidly as possible’."
- "Another R-Series document is a plea from the Polish Central
Committee to the regional Nazi administration drawing attention to the
extreme conditions Polish workers faced whilst employed in Germany,
including lack of nutrition, health services, adequate housing and
child care services."
- "Having cited R-114,22 Shawcross then explicitly linked such policies
of deportation and Germanisation to the Nazis’ more obviously genocidal
policies of sterilisation and extermination within Eastern Europe
directed against individuals and groups not regarded as immediately
useful to the Nazi war economy:
Listen to Bormann’s directives for the Eastern territory summarized by
one of Rosenberg’s subordinates. I quote: ‘The Slavs are to work for
us. Insofar as we do not need them, they may die. Therefore, compulsory
vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility
of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practice
abortion; the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is enough if
they can count up to a hundred. At best an education which produces
useful stooges for us is admissible’ (Document Number R-36)."
- "In setting out the economic case, which deeply implicated defendant
Rosenberg, prosecutors Brudno argued that:
I come now to the final phase of the case against the Defendant
Rosenberg. We have seen how he aided the Nazi rise to power and
directed the psychological preparation of the German people for waging
of aggressive war. I will now offer proof of his responsibility for the
planning and execution of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
committed in the vast areas of the occupied East, which he administered
for over 3 years. These areas included the Baltic States, White
Ruthenia, the Ukraine, and the eastern portion of Poland . . ."
Salter closes this section as follows:
- "In short, a close review of the content of the R-Series rebuts the
suggestion that the OSS either ignored or downplayed the systematic
extermination of civilians founded upon the perverse theories of the
supremacy of a Aryan ‘master race’, and the rights of the German nation
under Nazi leadership to dominate the whole of Europe. On the contrary,
Rothschild’s OSS unit provided highly incriminating documentation of
the Nazis’ genocidal policies in Eastern Europe and their incremental
attack upon alternative ideologies, such as those embodied in the
Christian churches."
[W.Z.
Salter doth protest too much. The OSS may have documented the
German policies and atrocities in Eastern Europe, but they were not
highlighted at the Nuremberg Trials and they were not reported by the
news media at that time or since then. The OSS did not document the
atrocities commited by the Red Army and the Soviet leadership. Neither
did they document the massive ongoing "ethnic cleansing" of German
civilians from Soviet-controlled territory. The excessive emphasis on
the victimhood of the Jewish people, at that time and since then, has
resulted in a distortion of the realities of WWII. Hitler intended to
create "lebensraum" for Germans by colonizing Ukraine via genocidal
policies against the indigenous Ukrainian population. The German
atrocities in Western Europe were dwarfed by the atrocities in Eastern
Europe instigated by both Hitler and Stalin.]
Waging aggressive war and
crimes committed against prisoners of war
(p288; 299 of 469)
- Salter refers to British/American airmen shot down while bombing
civilian targets in Germany were considered terrorists not subject to
the Geneva Convention, such that they were often shot by the German
police or lynched by the inhabitants.
- There are several references to the recruitment of Russian POWs to
man the anti-aircraft artillery: ‘We have made a request for an order
that a certain percentage of men in the antiaircraft artillery must be Russians. Fifty
thousand will be taken altogether, thirty thousand are already employed
as gunners. It is an amusing thing that Russians must work the guns.’
[W.Z.
However, there is no mention of the deliberate starvation of over
two million Red Army POWs during 1941-1942.]
- Prosecutor Telford Taylor: "To the same general effect is R-135,
Exhibit USA-289, which is a report dated 5 June 1943 by the German
General Commissioner for Minsk . . . describing an antipartisan
operation in which 4,500 enemies were killed: 5,000 suspected partisans
and 59 Germans. The cooperation by the German Army is shown in the
following excerpt . . .: ‘The figures mentioned above indicate that
again a heavy destruction of the population must be expected. If only
492 rifles are taken from 4,500 enemy dead, this discrepancy shows that
among these enemy dead were numerous peasants from the country. The
battalion Dirlewanger especially has a reputation for destroying many
human lives. Among the 5,000 people suspected
of belonging to bands, there were numerous women and children.’ The
next paragraph shows again the participation of the Armed Forces
personnel . . ."
Rothschild’s work in
gathering and organising the R-Series evidence
(p298; 309 of 469)
- "during 1944 he [Rothschild]
was intensely involved in various Civil
Affairs projects that demanded an in-depth knowledge of the Nazi state,
its institutions, policies and leading personnel."
- "In the spring of 1944, Rothschild provided a detailed report to
Franz Neumann, who headed Washington OSS R&A’s involvement in
Civil Affairs planning and the production of various guides and
handbooks, concerning the work completed by his ‘Working Party’ on
German law."
- "In short, during 1944–45, Rothschild had built up considerable
expertise, both independently and through his collaboration with OSS
R&A’s main expert on the organisation of the Nazi regime, Franz
Neumann."
- "during early August 1945, Neumann wrote an urgent memo from the
London Field Office of OSS to Sherman Kent, the acting head of the
OSS/R&A Branch presenting his ‘First report on war crimes
Europe’, based upon ‘extensive discussions with Commander Donovan,
Colonel Murray Bernays, Colonel Wheeler, Colonel Amen, Alan Evans and
Just Lunning’."
- "Neumann’s report explained that Bernays had successfully
appropriated new OSS staff from Washington, and that his section of the
OCC was responsible for ‘all documents in Great Britain’."
- "This lists Lt. Rothschild and Allan Evans of the OSS’s London Field
Office as the distinctive ‘second wing’ of Colonel Bernays’ ‘Evidence
Procurement’ branch of the OCC."
- "this unit continued to operate after the general dissolution of the
OSS at the start of October 1945. In other words, it became part of the
OSS’s successor organisation, the Strategic Services Unit of the US War
Department (SSU)."
- "Rothschild also claimed that: ‘Another important document was an
order by Keitel instructing the German armed forces to use terror
methods against the civilian population in occupied territory.’"
Conclusion (p306; 317 of
469)
- This Chapter "has demonstrated that the evidence gathered and
integrated into 598 thematic dossiers played an important role in
helping establish key parts of the prosecution case."
Ch
8. General Donovan’s contribution to the Nuremberg trials (p307; 318
of 469)
Introduction
- "General William Donovan [born in January 1883], a former New York
State prosecutor and successful Wall Street lawyer, was the sole
wartime Director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) -- the
American wartime intelligence organisation. This organisation was
formally abolished in October 1945 but then reconstituted as the CIA in
1947 but without Donovan as its director. This chapter discusses some
of the factors that explain the emergence of inter-agency collaboration
between Donovan’s OSS and Justice Jackson."
- "A second aim is to explain the factors behind the eventual breakdown
of this cooperation at its most senior level; that is, the rupture of
the Donovan-Jackson relationship."
Donovan’s attempts to
secure a leading role for the OSS (p309; 320 of
469)
- "At the end of October 1943, President Roosevelt asked Donovan
whether, and to what extent, the question of war crimes trials had been
looked into at the OSS."
- "an internal memorandum sent to Donovan and the OSS Supporting
Committee on 17 September 1942 argued that the OSS needed to begin to
formulate a list of alleged Nazi war criminals and circulate this to
other potentially interested US agencies."
- "It must then be stressed that the basic tenets of the German legal
system are not only morally reprehensible but are legally invalid."
- "On 6 October 1944, Donovan presented to McCloy, who was second only
to Stimson within the US War Department, the just completed R&A
Branch report titled ‘Problems Concerning War Criminals’ (R&A
2577)."
- "Neumann, who had been appointed Acting Chief of R&A’s
Central European Section, sent a memo on 4 May 1945 direct to General
Donovan entitled ‘War Criminals’." -- in which he stressed (1) no
extra-judicial executions; (2) deal with crimes committed by Germans
against Germans; (3) need for German courts to pursue thousands of war
crimes trials after the Nuremberg Trials.
- "It is clear even from a casual reading of these largely rhetorical
gestures that there was little clarity concerning the type of trial,
the specific offences with which defendants could be charged, or the criteria for the selection of
defendants."
The courting and
honeymoon phases (p320; 331 of 469)
- President Truman asked Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to serve
as Chief US Prosecutor on 12Apr1945 (confirmed 02May1945).
- Jackson anticipated: "Time . . . will not permit the setting up of
new organisations to dig up evidence but we will need the liberal and
prompt co-operation from Army and Navy intelligence, FBI, OSS, and all
other organisations in getting it together." -- Thus OSS involvement
was guaranteed.
- Jackson gave the OSS Director the role of his senior aide, an offer
Donovan accepted verbally on 12 May 1945 ..."
- "It is appropriate to refer to the period from May through to October
as a honeymoon period in the OSS-OCC relationship, even though this
was, as already discussed, very much a marriage of convenience, rather
than mutual affection."
- "the source of the frustration was that the Allied leadership’s grand
promises of retribution, made on numerous occasions during the course
of the war, had been neither developed nor acted upon in a concrete and
practical way."
- "from late May 1945 Donovan continued to supply Jackson’s new
organisation with considerable logistical and administrative support."
Recruiting Donovan’s OSS
personnel (p332; 343 of 469)
- "This Jackson-loyalist group was eventually expanded from Francis
Shea and Sidney Alderman, [plus his son William Jackson and Murray
Bernays] to include: Colonel Robert G. Storey, who would become
Director of the Documentation Division and Executive Trial Counsel;
Colonel John Harlan Amen, a Brooklyn prosecutor who would become
Director of the Interrogation Division; Colonel Telford Taylor, a
former deputy of Jackson’s in the Department of Justice and Thomas J.
Dodd, a future US Senator."
- "At its peak of operations in 1945, the OSS employed some 13,000
individuals workers (8,500 men and 4,500 women), of whom about 60 per
cent served overseas."
- "The OSS, Donovan explained, had field operations throughout Europe.
His people had been tracking potential war criminals since 1942 and had
accumulated substantial dossiers. Furthermore he had every imaginable
specialist within his ranks: scientists, linguists, even architects who
could build Jackson a courthouse if need be. Best of all, he had
attracted some of America’s brightest young lawyers into the OSS.
Depending on the demands of the war in the Pacific, he could make many
of these people available to Jackson . . . Donovan not only had an
organisation in place, but knew how to open doors throughout Washington
and the military. If Jackson had Donovan at his side, the battle of
preparation, recruitment, and organisation would be half won."
- "Amongst the OSS specialists, whose expertise as support staff
Donovan offered to Jackson, were a large number of experts in the
deployment of truth drugs, psychology, public relations, film
production and visual presentation more generally."
- "Although a Republican, Donovan enjoyed a personal relationship with
Democrat President Roosevelt, dating from the time when they were both
studying law together. He was also particularly close to both
presidential adviser Harry Hopkins [a
Soviet agent], and Frank Knox,
the newly appointed Secretary for the US Navy and the owner of the
influential Chicago Daily News. Donovan was also on good terms with
another senior presidential adviser who had specific responsibility for
war crimes policy, Samuel Rosenman."
- Schlabrendorff noted that witness Frau Struenck was a close personal
friend of Admiral Canaris; "hold until you have talked to Gaevernitz
[Dulles'
Jewish-German-American assistant]" ... "Hans Gisevius ...
was
an OSS double-agent"
The flow of OSS staff and
support (p338; 349 of 469)
- "Donovan had actively sought to make an early start on war crimes
issues which included recruiting a range of legal staff qualified in
international law (Phoebe Morrison, Raphael Lemkin and Sheldon Glueck) ... "
- "In the same cable, Jackson pressed the OSS to transfer to his office
the services of Raphael Lemkin (whose seminal analysis first formulated
the concept ‘genocide’ and decisively shaped postwar United Nations
declarations on this topic). Donovan approved the reassignment of this
war crimes consultant. Lemkin’s secondment to the OCC was needed to
help prepare ‘an evidentiary case study drawn from material in his book
and additional material he has secured since his publication . . . and
develop his book’s analysis further’. Lemkin eventually contributed ‘a
very large amount of evidence of atrocities in Poland’."
- NAMES: Gordon Dean, Colonel Storey, Chandler Morse, Drexel Sprecher,
James Donovan, Ralph Albrecht, Daniel Margolies, Lt. Col. Murray
Gurfein, Marvin Flisser and Whitney Harris, and Dr Henry Kellermann,
Telford Taylor, Colonel Robert Gill, Bernard Meltzer.
- "Donovan created a special unit under the command of navy captain
John Ford, the well-known Hollywood director, in order to gather
photographs and film depicting the Nazi war crimes. ... Ultimately over
12 million still photographs and 10 million feet of film were found and
then produced into a 3½ hour presentation entitled The Nazi Plan."
- "On 11 June, Donovan threatened to withdraw OSS cooperation because
James Donovan had been personally slighted by his comparative ‘neglect’
within Shea’s allocation of staff functions." -- Jackson mollified both
Donovans.
- By October 1945, the OSS had supplied 104 staff -- 38 civilian and 66
military, including 26 in the Field Photographic Branch.
Providing evidence from
Dulles’ OSS contacts within the German
opposition (p346; 357 of 469)
- "During the war Donovan, largely through Allen Dulles, had made
extensive contacts with members of the German anti-Nazi opposition from
both the political left and conservative right, many of whom became
victims of Nazi atrocities and reprisals."
- Schlabrendorff, Hans Gisevius and Fritz Kolbe were key people with
many more contacts.
Donovan’s assistance with
the geo-politics of international
negotiations (p351; 362 of 469)
- "Perhaps the most important contribution the OSS Director made during
the early honeymoon phase of OSS–OCC relations related to the
international relations aspect. Donovan had developed positive contacts
with the British, French and Soviet governments, as well as with the
Vatican and its vast network of information -- facilitated by Donovan’s
status as a prominent Irish-Catholic."
- "During his wartime liaison with various British authorities, Donovan
had established particularly good working relations with leading
British political, legal, diplomatic and intelligence officials, some
of whom had cultivated Donovan to help exert pressure on President
Roosevelt to enter the war."
- "Documentation from OCC planning meetings, as well as from later
prosecution sources from the spring 1946, confirms how important the
Vatican became as a source of documentation of Nazi atrocities for the
Nuremberg prosecutors."
- British officials such as Patrick Dean: "General Donovan, who clearly
does not like the Russians much, is attracted by the idea of running
the Courts without Soviet participation."
- "This was politically sensitive for Donovan. Many of his OSS
subordinates had, in the previous year, accumulated a series of
extremely negative experiences of Soviet actions and intentions,
particularly in newly ‘liberated’ Eastern Europe."
- "In short, there is evidence that the positive nature of Donovan’s
contacts with the British and, to a lesser extent, with both the
Soviets and Vatican authorities, assisted Jackson’s task of
establishing the legal, diplomatic and institutional basis for the
planned Nuremberg trials."
Donovan’s assistance with
American organisations (p362; 373 of 469)
- "During the war, Donovan’s organisation had developed notoriously bad
relations with not only the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division
(G-2), but also with the FBI."
The provision of documentation (p366; 377 of 469)
- "A German nobleman . . . had offered to reveal the hiding place of
all of Rosenberg’s files . . . Storey ordered Ensign English to fly the
crates to Paris, and four days later a C-47 touched down at Orly field
bearing three thousand pounds of the Nazis’ meticulously recorded past,
dating back to 1922."
- "Donovan’s organisation played a major role in securing evidence from
the Rosenberg files."
[W.Z.
Did these include the Rosenberg Diary which Robert Kempner stole?]
Other forms of support
provided by Donovan (p367; 378 of 469)
- "Donovan, acting as Jackson’s deputy, was in fact heavily involved in
a pro-active way in conducting negotiations with senior army lawyers
regarding the selection of judges for the proposed war crimes trials."
Donovan’s long-range
interventions: July–September 1945 (p369; 380 of
469)
- "For example, James Donovan soon became able to ‘rein in’ Neumann’s
free-wheeling operation that had antagonised Jackson’s section chiefs,
at least to some extent."
- "For his part, James Donovan regarded the dissolution of the OSS [on
01Oct1945] as ‘almost a paper change’, since his war
crimes work with
approximately 130 OSS staff engaged in various capacities would
continue almost as before."
The honeymoon ends in
desertion: Donovan departs and plays away (p374;
385 of 469)
- "Perhaps he [Jackson] only realised later that Donovan had his own
agenda to exploit the trials for the sake of his personal and
institutional interests."
- Donovan left for China on 08Aug1945 [Hiroshima
and Nagasaki?] and
returned in mid-September or early October.
- No real reason known for rift.
The irretrievable
breakdown (p376; 387 of 469)
- "on 20 September 1945, the OSS was abolished by Presidential
Executive Order" effective 01Oct1945"
Salter suggests that loss of the OSS made Donovan more aggressive to
play big role at the Nuremberg Trials.
- "Jackson apparently ‘resented the fact that Donovan had absented
himself during the preparatory work’."
- "it was Robert Storey, rather than Donovan, who was entrusted with
the work of acting as Jackson’s deputy"
- Difference of opinion on prosecution strategy: "Justice Jackson
debated the issue with General Donovan at great length. Each was
determined in his own view . . . Both men discussed the issue with
Robert G. Storey. Donovan would not yield. Neither would Jackson. The
break finally came."
Excluding Donovan and the
OSS lawyers from the economic case (p381; 392
of 469)
- "His Nuremberg files indicate that Donovan took a particular interest
in material relevant to the proposed ‘economic case’ against the
industrialists and bankers who both financed Hitler’s regime and
profited enormously from it."
- "Jackson’s rejection of Donovan’s bid for the leadership of the
economic case may have been more annoying to the OSS Director than
Jackson appreciated."
Prosecuting the German
General Staff and the High Command (p393; 404 of
469)
- Donovan "was particularly anxious to secure the testimony of
Waffen-SS officers serving in Eastern Europe who could offer testimony
on the responsibilities of specific members of the German High Command
for some of the worst Nazi atrocities committed against civilians and,
perhaps, Soviet prisoners of war."
The merits of witness or
documentary evidence (p398; 409 of 469)
- Jackson wanted documentary evidence; Donovan wanted eyewitness
testimony.
Donovan’s plea-bargaining
proposals for Schacht and Göring (p410; 421 of
469)
- "During November, Donovan attended interrogations of both Schacht and
of Göring."
- "Schacht, who had ultimately joined the July 20 conspiracy [to kill
Hitler], was anxious to divorce himself from his co-defendants, and
refused to participate in any overall defense plan to justify the
regime or exonerate the other defendants. He wished to testify . . . so
long as he was able to act the part of the German Nationalist, and not
appear to be a handmaiden of the prosecution."
- "prompted by Schacht’s ingratiating letter to Donovan dated 14
November 1945."
- "This material showed that he had opposed Hitler from 1937 onwards,
and -- as early as 1935 -- had even supplied confidential information
to the American embassy in Berlin warning the Americans of Hitler’s
military intentions." ... "Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camps"
... "shared a cell with Schacht"
- "These reports from his own staff and sources confirmed Donovan’s
suspicion that, despite his early support for Hitler, Schacht was more
suitable as a prosecution witness than as a defendant in a major war
crimes trial."
- Jackson "regarded Schacht as one of the most implicated of the
defendants as he had helped paved the way for Hitler’s early seizure
and consolidation
of power, and provided economic policies that largely financed military
preparations for planned war."
- "Jackson firmly rejected Donovan’s plans for using Schacht as a
prosecution witness:"
- Donovan spent 10 days interrogating Göring with the view of having
him testify for the prosecution against the other defendents.
- "Could Schlabrendorff suggest how he might talk Göring into a deal?"
... "After returning from his visit in Göring’s cell, Donovan informed
me that the latter was willing to cooperate."
- "This conflict over plea-bargaining came into the open in a
face-to-face meeting between Donovan and Jackson on 25 November 1945"
... "Jackson sent a memo on 26 November 1945 that rejected Donovan’s
proposals for the use of Schacht and Göring as cooperative witnesses
outright."
Informal contacts with
Leverkühn and Lahousen (p424; 435 of 469)
- "Donovan and Dulles’ contacts with the German opposition included
individuals with links to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris’s Abwehr, which had
become one of the focal points for anti-Nazi opposition."
[W.Z. There are
allegations that Canaris was of Jewish origin with
original name of Blum.]
- "Donovan exploited contacts within German military intelligence,
including the German lawyer with connections to the intelligence world,
Paul Leverkühn, from Hamburg. During the war, Leverkühn was sent by
Canaris to Instanbul, where apparently he made contact with Allied
officials. At Nuremberg, Leverkühn had befriended Lahousen, and was
used by Donovan as an insider source of evidence regarding defendant
von Papen."
- "Jackson discovered that, on 22 November 1945, Donovan had, through
Leverkühn, invited Lahousen to be his dinner guest at his Nuremberg
accommodation, even though the General himself was not present for most
of the evening." ... "OSS lawyer Ralph Albrecht was present"
- "Jackson accepted Amen’s complaints concerning Donovan."
- On 24Nov1945, Jackson sent out a memo: "Donovan was rebuked for
providing prosecution billets for Lahousen and Leverkühn, providing
Lahousen with entertainment and, thirdly, for conducting interrogations
outside of Amen’s directions."
An acrimonious divorce
(p428; 439 of 469)
- "Donovan’s expert German consultant and a member of his personal
staff, Fabian von Schlabrendorff" stated:
- "Our way of dealing with the top leaders of the Third Reich would . .
. have differed markedly from the way the victorious Allies handled the
problem after the war. It was my opinion then . . . that the trials at
the International Tribunal would one day be considered a great
political mistake, at least by the Western Powers . . . My conviction
in this case stems not from any hindsight. On the contrary, I was given
the opportunity to express my opinion even before the trials began
through my acquaintance with . . . Donovan . . . As the preparation for
the trials progressed, Donovan began to have doubts about them. Knowing
that I was a jurist, and familiar with my role within the anti-Hitler
resistance, he wanted to get my professional opinion and asked me to
come to Nuremberg to look at the draft of the indictment . . . I
accepted that invitation, and spent some time carefully studying the
lengthy draft Donovan gave to me. After going over the entire document
word by word, I set down my professional opinion rejecting the entire
indictment on four counts: 1) It used retrospective law . . . 2) The
indictment was based on Anglo-Saxon trial law . . . 3) The accusations
dealt exclusively with offenses against Allied citizens . . . 4) The
accusers were also the judges . . . After reading my memorandum on the
draft, Donovan was more than ever convinced that he had been right in
questioning the wisdom of the trials. He began to search for ways of
shortening and limiting the proceedings as much as possible."
- Jackson: "I have instructed our own Dr Kempner that we will have no
negotiations on such matters, either with defendants or their counsel,
despite the fact that one of them approached him with an offer to
testify." [W.Z.
Kempner abscombed with the Rosenberg Diary.]
- Schlabrendorff: "When I next saw Donovan, he was shaking with anger
and frustration after what had evidently been a stormy session with . .
. Jackson. He told me that he was resigning from his post as deputy
prosecutor because he did not want to be in any way connected with the
coming trials; he had become thoroughly convinced that they were
legally and politically unsound. He also suggested it would be wise for
me to get out of Nuremberg at once -- advice I took no time in
following."
- "Although he had been selected by Jackson as one of the top trial
lawyers, he never made an appearance before the International Military
Tribunal."
- "During early 1946, Donovan also concealed his Nuremberg war crimes
files by having these hidden away in the back of his law firm’s vaults.
Here they remained undiscovered for over 50 years, possibly to the
detriment of continuing prosecution work."
- Death of Göring: "Putzell nods ‘Yes, but Donovan secretly decided,
with the agreement of the British contingent, to let him die by
cyanide. Göring had been very co-operative with us and he genuinely did
seem deserving of some sort of mercy.’ ... Putzell and a colleague
handed one tablet to Göring."
Was either leader proved
right? (p439; 450 of 469)
- Smith, Telford Taylor, Douglas, Gerhart and other
commentators/historians generally side with Jackson.
- Schlabrendorff clearly supported Donovan and pointed out "the farce
of having Russian prosecutors blame the Nazis for the Katyn Forest
massacre of captured Polish soldiers which their own officers had, in
fact, committed -- a contradiction that Donovan had previously warned
Jackson about."
- Schacht’s defence lawyer, Dr Rix, on 05Mar1946 asked the court to
locate the document associated with his interrogation by
Gurfein/Schlabendorff/Donovan.
- "Dr Seidl, defence counsel for defendants Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess,
sought to impugn Gisevius’s testimony because of his status as a
‘traitor’ to the German state based upon his assistance to the OSS, the
intelligence service of a foreign state with whom his nation was at
war." ... "On the following day I made an application to examine the
Chief of the OSS, General Donovan, also by means of an interrogatory."
-- Jackson rejected the request.
Conclusion (p444; 455 of
469)
Salter concludes that the Jackson-Donovan relationship is a case study
of the conflicts that can arise between war crimes prosecutors and
senior intelligence officials.
Summation:
taking stock (p445; 456 of 469)
[W.Z.:
Salter ends his book by balancing "sovereign state power" (as
epitomized by William Donovan of the OSS) versus "rule of law" (as
epitomized by Judge Jackson). As pointed out at the beginning of the
first chapter, intelligence agencies use illegal means to obtain their
results. Donovan/Dulles did provide immunity from prosecution of Wolff,
Dollmann and Zimmer and probably many others. That Fritzsche, Schacht
and von Papen were acquitted could also be due to the input of Donovan.
And they did provide a cyanide pill to Göring. They cut corners and
operated beyond the "rule of law". On the other hand, without the
involvement of the intelligence agencies, it would have been impossible
for Judge Jackson to have have successfully carried out the trial. One
must turn to philosophy to arrive at an equitable solution to this
dilemma.]
[END]