The Little Caesars

The Nuernberg judges turned from the 21 moody Nazi leaders in the dock to consider the guilt of thousands lower in the "hierarchy of descending Caesars." How many thousands, was the question. U.S. Prosecutor Jackson had said in his opening statement: ". . . We have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people." Somewhere a line had to be drawn.

The U.S. prosecutors last week were trying to prove that the Nazi Leadership Corps, Elite Guard (SS), Storm Troops (SA), Reich Cabinet, Gestapo, High Command and General Staff were criminal organizations, and to draw the line so as to include a third of those who were willing members. Assistant U.S. Prosecutor Robert G. Story called for the conviction of some 600,000 officers of the Leadership Corps, ranging from Reichsleiter to block leaders.

There were signs that at least two of the judges were not convinced that the prosecution was proving its case against even the intermediate echelons. Bald, stocky Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, presiding judge, cut in with some sharp questions. Storey read a letter from Reichsleiter Martin Bormann to Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg. Lawrence asked what the correspondence had to do with block leaders. Again, when Storey read an anti-Jewish police order from Himmler's Gestapo headquarters to district police chiefs, Lawrence interrupted: the letter's topic seemed to him a police, not a party matter. U.S. Judge Francis Biddle had similar doubts at another point: did the prosecution contend that block leaders had taken part in top-level planning?

This phase of the case focused attention for the first time upon the bench rather than the defendants, the prosecutors or the evidence. Lawrence, clearly the dominating personality among the judges, followed the proceedings closely, was able to give the prosecutors page references when they got lost in their own voluminous briefs. U.S. Judge Francis Biddle asked intelligent questions, not as if he wanted to know the answers, but as one who enjoyed asking intelligent questions.

The French and Russian judges gave no sign of their opinions. Bald, mustached Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor at the University of Paris, who has never been a judge and never practised law, seemed lost. Once he asked a question that indicated that he had not been following the testimony too successfully. A British prosecutor answered with condescending politeness: "If the learned French judge will look on page so-and-so. . . ." Donnedieu subsided into confused mumblings and rustled among the books and papers in front of him. The Russian, Major General I. T. Nikitchenko, says little in open court but is voluble in huddles with the other judges.

Only the U.S. prosecution had shown much interest in trying to bring Nazi underlings to justice. There might be rough going for the U.S. attitude, summed up by Jackson's statement that the U.S. would not have participated in the trials without "this or some equivalent plan of reaching thousands of others who, if less conspicuous, are just as guilty of these crimes as the men in the dock."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.