The prison psychologist for the German prisoners at the Nuremberg trials asked Alfred Rosenberg “whether apart from all of the legal considerations he did not have some misgivings about his antisemitism.” Rosenberg, whom the psychologist called the “chief Nazi philosopher,” had served as Reichsminister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, where he oversaw atrocities, including the Holocaust, as a matter of course.
Rosenberg answered: “Well, that depends on how you look at it. Naturally, after all that has taken place, I must say that it is horrible how things have turned out, but you can’t tell those things in advance. You see, even in 1934 I made a speech calling for a chivalrous solution of the Jewish question. … I assure you no one ever dreamed that it would result in mass murder.”
The court convicted him on all four counts: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. There was no doubt of his guilt, nor of his horrifying wickedness.
Denying our guilt
The psychologist, Gustave (or G.M.) Gilbert, recorded his conversations with Rosenberg and other Nazi leaders in his “Nuremberg Diary,” published in 1947. It’s a fascinating but sobering book. The defendants all tried in many ways to deny their guilt, even as the evidence mounted to a conclusion well beyond a reasonable doubt.
They set out starkly the human capacity for self-delusion and deception. You and I are not Nazis, but we are sinners capable of the greatest self-delusion, of creating a narrative for ourselves in which we’ve done little or nothing wrong, or if we can’t manage that, one in which we’re being unfairly treated because others have done much worse.
Rosenberg, for example. He kept insisting he only wanted a “peaceful” solution to “the Jewish problem,” without realizing how much he gave away with that term. He just wanted to take “the Jews out of their influential positions, that’s all — like instead of having 90% of the doctors in Berlin Jewish, reducing them to 30%.” He never, he said, thought that solution would turn out as it did.
Comments that appeared antisemitic — he admitted using “very strong words” about the Jews and speaking of extermination — was propaganda not to be taken literally, he said.
He admitted knowing that Jews were being sent to the East but claimed he thought they were going to settle their own areas. He blamed Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler for everything.
The Allies committed the same kinds of crimes, he argued, pointing to Soviet atrocities, the British “degradation” of 3 million Chinese in the Opium War, the Allied bombing of cities, and America’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “That is all mass murder, too, isn’t it?” he asked.
Like many Germans, Rosenberg blamed the way the world had treated Germany, especially the reparations Germany had to pay under the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. Without that treaty, he insisted, Hitler would never have risen to power, meaning that none of what happened would have happened.
He warned that America would face the same racial problems. (This, Gilbert explained, “indicated the Nazi fear lest they die without leaving behind some heritage of racial hatred somewhere, to prove in a macabre sort of way that they were right after all.”)
As the trial went on, he began to justify the persecution of the Jews, while still claiming innocence for their murder.
Rosenberg responded to being indicted: “I must reject an indictment for conspiracy. The antisemitic movement was only protective.”
The defendants’ reactions
The verdicts of the Nuremberg trials were pronounced Oct. 1, 1946. Three of the initial 24 defendants were acquitted; seven were sentenced to prison, three for life; and 12 were sentenced to death. Ten of those 12, including Rosenberg, were hanged in the early morning of Oct. 16.
Two of the convicted men expressed some regret. One was Albert Speer, Reichsminister of Armaments and Munitions, who said, “The trial is necessary. There is a common responsibility for such horrible crimes even in an authoritarian system.” He received 20 years.
The other was Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer and governor-general of occupied Poland, who returned to the Catholicism of his childhood during the trial. “I regard this trial as a God-willed world court, destined to examine and put to an end the terrible era of suffering under Adolf Hitler,” he said. He was hanged.
The others did not express regret. They refused to admit the truth to the end.
- Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering: “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” Goering was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide first.
- Joachim von Ribbentrop, Reichsminister of Foreign Affairs: “The indictment is directed against the wrong people.” Gilbert writes that he wanted to add, “We were all under Hitler’s shadow,” but didn’t want to put it in writing. Von Ribbentrop was hanged.
- Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a high-ranking leader of the SS under Heinrich Himmler: “I do not feel guilty of any war crimes, I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler.” Kaltenbrunner was hanged.
- Julius Streicher, editor of the viciously antisemitic newspaper Der Sturmer: “This trial is a triumph of World Jewry.” Streicher was hanged.
- Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz of the German Navy: “None of these indictment counts concerns me in the least. — Typical American humor.” Doenitz was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
- Wilhelm Frick, Reichsminister of the Interior: “The whole indictment rests on the assumption of a fictitious conspiracy.” Frick was hanged.
- Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the Wehrmacht: “For a soldier, orders are orders!” Keitel was hanged.
- Walther Funk, Reichsminister for the Economy: “I have never in my life consciously done anything which would contribute to such an indictment. If I have been made guilty of the acts which stand in the indictment, through error or ignorance, then my guilt is a human tragedy and not a crime.” Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations for the High Command: “I regret the mixture of justified accusations and political propaganda.” Jodl was hanged.
- Fritz Sauckel, General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, who organized Germany’s system of forced labor: “The abyss between the ideal of a social community which I had imagined and advocated as a former seaman and worker, and the terrible happenings in the concentration camps, has shaken me deeply.” Sauckel was hanged.
I can think of times I used equally clumsy and implausible justifications instead of admitting I was wrong, and other times people did the same to me. The story of the “Nuremberg Diary” is, as I say, sobering.
