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(dramatic music throughout)
(speaking in French)
FLORES: The first time I saw the audio discs it was in the cellar.
They had been left in storage, unheard, for many decades.
(camera click)
(speaking in French)
FLORES: Listening to them gave me the chills.
MAN (over tape): Attention!
The International Military Tribunal will now enter.
JUDGE (over tape): Will you state your full name?
KEITEL (over tape): Wilhelm Keitel.
STREICHER (over tape): Julius Streicher.
DOENITZ (over tape): Karl Doenitz.
NARRATOR: At end of World War II, top Nazi leaders were put on trial.
(speaking in German)
NARRATOR: For ten months, this trial revealed unknown details
about major battles.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): U-boats were to shoot up the lifeboats.
NARRATOR: And wartime crimes.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): How did you tolerate all these men being murdered?
MAN (over tape): Hello, recording.
NARRATOR: Unknown to many, the entire proceeding was recorded
on more than 2,000 audio discs.
FLORES: While we were digitizing the discs, we preferred to keep it a secret.
We had fears that someone would steal and destroy the discs because they contain
really important testimonies about the war.
NARRATOR: Most of this audio has never been heard. Until now.
OHLENDORF: The executions were carried out in a military manner
a military manner by firing squads under command.
JACKSON (over tape): Tell us about preparations for gas warfare.
SPEER: This proposal came from Dr. Goebbels.
NARRATOR: This is the story of World War II.
KEITEL: That was an order which was given to me by Hitler.
MAN: Hitler! Sieg!
CROWD: Heil!
NARRATOR: And the most chilling criminals in history.
GOERING: I stand up for the things that I have done.
NARRATOR: As you’ve never heard it before.
(overlapping chatter)
MAN (over tape): Is that your testimony?
(theme music playing)
(cheering throughout)
MONTGOMERY (over radio): This is the BBC Home Service.
The end of the war in Europe was officially announced at
3:00 this afternoon.
REPORTER (over radio): The commanders of the German forces have come to
this headquarters today to make unconditional surrender.
DOUGLAS: At the end of the war, the question of course emerges,
what to do with the defeated Nazi leadership.
We have to remember that at the time the public was just
absorbing the stories that were coming out of the liberated Western camps.
And so, public opinion polls aggressively supported the idea of summary execution.
But then, mainly coming from the Americans,
there was the proposal to actually have a legal response.
KISSI: If the truth of Nazi rule was not established in
a due process of law, then it was very likely that someday
people would even deny that the atrocities that the Nazi regime
had committed took place.
MORGAN: There was the idea that a big case could be presented
publicly to help explain, to help make sense of what had
just happened to the world.
-(engines rumbling) -(shattering)
WITTMANN: But by the time a trial is a possibility at all in the fall of 1945,
it's really a question of who they can still catch.
REPORTER (over radio): This is London calling. Hitler is dead.
REPORTER 2 (over radio): The SS chief Heinrich Himmler also ends his life.
NARRATOR: With several top Nazis dead, the Allies decide to hold a group trial of
the remaining German leaders.
REPORTER (over radio): Among the more prominent Nazis seized are
Admiral Doenitz and Albert Speer, Minister of Economics and Production.
NARRATOR: They arrest and charge just over 20 major officials,
who represent the full scope of the Nazi system.
BUTTAR: Keitel was chief of the German armed forces.
MATTHÄUS: Streicher was known for his anti-Semitic propaganda.
BARRETT: Rudolf Hess had been Hitler’s stenographer as
Hitler was dictating Mein Kamp.
MCDONOUGH: Goering was the number two figure in the Nazi party.
During the war, he was the head of the Luftwaffe, the head of the Four-Year Plan.
He is the biggest Nazi war criminal still alive.
NARRATOR: The trial will be held in Nuremberg, Germany.
(speaking in German)
MAN: Sieg!
CROWD: Heil!
NARRATOR: As the former site of Hitler’s infamous party rallies,
it is considered to be the symbolic birthplace of Nazism.
(shouting)
WITTMANN: So Nuremberg is seen as the perfect spot in which to punish the Nazis.
(explosion)
NARRATOR: In the city’s Palace of Justice,
the Nazis will face an international tribunal made up
of judges and prosecutors from four Allied nations.
MCDONOUGH: It was Britain, America, Russia, and the French
and so they all had their own prosecuting counsels.
NARRATOR: Although they will work together,
the American and British prosecutors will take the lead.
JACKSON: We have an opportunity to bring to a just judgement
those who have thought it safe to wage aggressive and ruthless war.
BARRETT: Robert H. Jackson is the American chief prosecutor.
He had been Attorney General and in 1941 U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
He really is America’s leading lawyer.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): It is the only hope for Germany and the world that
our people realize and repent for what has happened.
MCDONOUGH: David Maxwell-Fyfe was the leading prosecutor for the British.
He’d suffered from the bombing in London and he hated the Nazis.
NARRATOR: To prepare their case, Allied investigators scour the countryside,
gathering witnesses and evidence.
MATTHÄUS: The unconditional surrender gave the Allies access
to all German records. That was unprecedented.
BARRETT: And that really strengthens the knowledge level
as they’re heading for trial in Nuremberg.
(whistle blowing)
GAETH (over radio): This is Arthur Gaeth in Nuremberg, Germany.
If the 43 pages of charges prepared by the four capable
prosecutors are made to stick, this trial will not only make history,
but also establish precedence in international criminal law.
(overlapping chatter)
DOUGLAS: The atmosphere at the start of the trial was incredibly electric.
MAN (over tape): Hello recording, hello recording.
DOUGLAS: We have to bear in mind,
this is the first international criminal trial in human history.
MAN (over tape): Test, one, two, three, four.
DOUGLAS: And we have heads of state being accused of an
extraordinary range of horrific crimes.
MAN (over tape): Attention!
The International Military Tribunal will now enter.
HYMEL: They knew that with this trial they would be
revealing information that no one had known before.
MORGAN: That’s why the decision was made to capture
the full proceedings in an audio recording.
NARRATOR: Some of these recordings will be played for
the first time in this film.
PRESIDENT (over tape): The present defendants stand charged
here today, with Crimes Against Peace,
War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity,
and of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those crimes.
I will now call upon the defendants to plead guilty or
not guilty to the charges against them.
KEITEL: I declare myself not guilty.
JODL: Not guilty.
SAUCKEL: Not guilty.
WITTMANN: When you listen to the defendants…
HESS: No.
WITTMANN: They speak with a kind of bizarre confidence.
SEYSS-INQUART: I declare myself not guilty.
WITTMANN: And they all plead not guilty.
FRICK: Not guilty.
None of them consider themselves to be guilty.
GOERING: I declare myself, in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.
NARRATOR: To establish the Nazis’ guilt,
prosecutors intend to lay out a wide range of crimes,
to reveal, exactly how the Nazis were able to wage such a devastating war.
And they will seek to prove that starting the war was
the Nazis’ plan from the beginning.
(cheering)
(overlapping chatter)
JUDGE (over tape): The Tribunal will hear the defendant Goering
in the witness box now.
NARRATOR: As Hitler’s former right-hand man,
defendant Hermann Goering was a high-ranking member of
the Nazi government and German military.
One of the many accusations against him is that he took a
lead role in conspiring to wage war almost immediately
after the Nazis came to power.
JACKSON (over tape): Now, as early as 1933 after you came to
power you regarded it as necessary to rearm Germany
regardless of any treaty limitations, did you not?
GOERING: It was, of course, already discussed in 1933
because it was clear at once that something different
needed to happen under our government.
(cheering)
MORGAN: At the end of the first World War, the Versailles Treaty had forced
a large number of restrictions on the German military.
(speaking in German)
GOERING: Hitler was of the opinion that Germany
must be freed from the restrictions of Versailles.
(speaking in German)
MORGAN: Adolf Hitler and the clique of professional
military soldiers that followed him into office,
like Hermann Goering who was an accomplished fighter pilot
during the First World War, said if we don’t rearm,
we're just going to be victimized by other world powers.
(chanting)
GOERING: It was not only Adolf Hitler. Every German - every patriotic German -
had the same feeling.
MORGAN: But what emerges during the Tribunal is that
German re-armament had a greater goal than simply protecting Germany.
That they were secretly preparing to take on the world.
BARRETT: Remember, captured documents are just
incredibly powerful, authentic smoking guns.
If you’ve got the right documents, you’ve pretty much got magic evidence.
ALDERMAN (over tape): May it please the Tribunal.
One of the most striking and revealing captured documents is
a document which we have come to know as the Hossbach notes
of a conference on 5 November 1937.
NARRATOR: Friedrich Hossbach had been part of Hitler’s personal staff.
DOUGLAS: And that memo was prepared in the wake of a
meeting between Hitler and a small number of members of the military.
ALDERMAN (over tape): I note the defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering was present.
In this conspiratorial meeting Adolf Hitler posed the question;
"The question for Germany is
where the greatest possible conquest could be made at the lowest cost."
DOUGLAS: It was very clear from that memo that Hitler
wanted land and that land would come from
Austria, Czechoslovakia, possibly Poland.
NARRATOR: It’s a stunning revelation,
only according to Goering, there’s a simple explanation.
GOERING: Hossbach was present at the meeting and took notes.
Five days later, he prepared this record.
This is, therefore, a record which contains mistakes.
NARRATOR: But the prosecution is about to reveal Goering’s lie.
HYMEL: When Nazi Germany starts taking over countries
like Austria and Czechoslovakia, at the time,
the interpretation is that the people in those countries wanted it.
CROWD: Heil! Sieg!
Heil! Sieg!
HYMEL: Yet what captured documents reveal is that the Nazis were
secretly putting pressure on their governments to hand over
their countries to Nazi Germany.
ALDERMAN (over tape): I now offer in evidence the actual events in Austria.
MCDONOUGH: There's actually a telephone conversation that’s
introduced into the trial of how Goering bullies Schuschnigg, the,
the Austrian chancellor.
ALDERMAN (over tape): I turn now to copies of the
telephone conversations, Top Secret.
Goering: "You go and tell the Federal President
that if the conditions are not accepted immediately,
the troops who are already stationed at the frontier, will march in tonight,
and Austria will cease to exist.”
The Nazis were actually able to secure Austria by making a threat of force.
NARRATOR: Goering refuses to admit any wrongdoing.
GOERING: Aggressive war is carried out by shooting, throwing bombs, and so on.
But there was only one thing thrown and that was flowers.
NARRATOR: But the evidence continues to mount.
ALDERMAN (over tape): I should like now to offer in evidence
the conquest of Czechoslovakia.
In the second week of March 1939 in response to the summons from Hitler,
Monsieur Hácha, the President of the Czechoslovak Republic arrived in Berlin.
Hácha was ushered into the Reich Chancellery.
He found there Adolf Hitler, Goering, and other high Nazi officials.
MCDONOUGH: They have him in a lamp lit room.
It's like a scene straight out to the Godfather, Godfather II.
ALDERMAN (over tape): This is the captured Germans’ account of
this infamous meeting.
They reminded him that in three hours the German army would cross the border.
The defendant Goering boasted of what his Luftwaffe would do
if the Czech forces dared to resist.
MCDONOUGH: Goering bullies him and says to him,
“If you don’t give up and allow our troops to march in,
we will bomb Prague to the ground.”
He couldn’t hardly deny it.
BARRETT: So he tried to minimize and tried to lie.
GOERING: I told him there would only be unnecessary bloodshed.
And in that connection, I made the statement
that I should be sorry if I had to bomb beautiful Prague.
MCDONOUGH: But it’s pretty clear that this is criminal behavior.
ALDERMAN (over tape): Under this threat the aged President of Czechoslovakia
signed the document with which the Nazi conspirators confronted him.
DOUGLAS: What we basically have is Germany holding a gun up to
the head of the leaders of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
(explosion)
And it’s all part of this aggressive policy,
which is inevitably going to lead to the Second World War.
PRESIDENT (over tape): You’ll go on with the evidence tomorrow?
ALDERMAN (over tape): Yes, sir.
GAETH (over radio): This is Arthur Gaeth in Nuremberg Germany.
In the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the prosecution is well into its case.
DOUGLAS: At Nuremberg, the prosecution demonstrates
that the annexation of Austria,
the seizure of Czechoslovakia
is all part of this aggressive policy of the Nazi regime.
But none of that had really led to direct military conflict.
(gunfire)
It really isn’t until Germany’s attack on Poland,
that we have the beginning of the Second World War.
MORGAN: So, it was important to prosecutors to
look at what happened during the invasion of Poland.
MAN (over tape): Colonel Amen will represent the United States this morning.
AMEN (over tape): May it please the Tribunal,
I propose to call as witness for the prosecution,
Major General Erwin von Lahousen.
NARRATOR: Erwin von Lahousen had been a high-ranking member
of the Nazis’ military espionage group, called the Abwehr.
PRESIDENT (over tape): Will you stand in front of the microphone
there so you can be heard?
NARRATOR: He has detailed knowledge of top-secret events
leading up to the invasion of Poland.
DOUGLAS: The defendants were not aware that he was going to
be testifying against them.
(vinyl scratching)
AMEN (over tape): Was the Abwehr ever asked to furnish
any assistance for the Polish campaign?
LAHOUSEN: Yes.
AMEN (over tape): Will you explain to the Tribunal
the nature of the assistance required?
LAHOUSEN: The affair on which I am now giving testimony
is one of the most mysterious actions which took place…
(tape whirring)
NARRATOR: Back in 1939, Nazi leadership had claimed that
the fighting only began after Polish troops
first attacked German soldiers.
According to them, Poland is to blame for the start of the war.
MORGAN: That's the way the story was presented to the world,
it was Germany simply defending its border.
NARRATOR: But General Von Lahousen is about to stun the world with the truth.
AMEN (over tape): Will you please explain exactly what took place?
LAHOUSEN: My division, Defense Division 2, received
the task of providing Polish uniforms.
AMEN (over tape): And what was the purpose?
LAHOUSEN: That people from concentration camps
were disguised in these uniforms and were ordered to make a military attack
on the radio station at Gleiwitz.
(rapid gunfire)
MORGAN: And so what actually happened was that the Germans
dressed some prisoners up in Polish uniform and used that as
the pretext for invading the western half of Poland.
AMEN (over tape): What happened to the men that wore
the Polish uniforms and created this incident?
LAHOUSEN: All of the people who took part in
that were put out of the way, that is, killed.
AMEN (over tape): Is there any slighted doubt in your mind about that?
LAHOUSEN: No.
BARRETT: This is a bowl ‘em over moment.
DOUGLAS: Goering calls von Lahousen, “Schwein,” meaning pig.
He says, “Verrat,” treason. “Verrater,” uh, traitor.
Goering even says, “He should have been gassed.”
NARRATOR: Von Lahousen’s testimony leaves the courtroom, and the world, reeling.
MAN (over tape): Okay, recording, that’s all for now.
Adjourn ‘til tomorrow at 9:30.
NARRATOR: But it won’t stop the Nazis from still attempting
to lie their way out of responsibility for the war.
KISSI: Criminals can always find a way to deny.
PRESIDENT (over tape): What is your name?
MILCH: Erhard Milch
NARRATOR: Erhard Milch is a witness for the defense.
During the war, he served directly under Goering in the Luftwaffe.
MILCH: To the gentlemen who now stand accused
the whole question of the war came as a great surprise.
JACKSON (over tape): You want this Tribunal to understand you,
as an officer, as saying that there was no preparation?
-(bombs whistling) -(explosion)
How long did it take to overrun Denmark?
MILCH: Denmark, very short.
JACKSON (over tape): How long did it take to overrun Holland and Belgium?
MILCH: A few days.
JACKSON (over tape): How long did it take to take possession of Norway?
MILCH: Also a short time.
JACKSON (over tape): And how long did it take to overrun France and take Paris?
MILCH: Two months in all.
JACKSON (over tape): And those were all surprise movements?
You were surprised at every one of them? Is that your testimony?
MILCH: Yes.
NARRATOR: But it is not just the conquest of nations that
prosecutors will show was pre-planned.
CROWD: Heil, heil Hitler.
NARRATOR: They will soon reveal how propaganda was
used to not only gain public support for the war,
but also to help pave the way for
one of the largest mass murders of the 20th Century.
MCDONOUGH: I think one of the big problems with history is
that we look at the past through the eyes of the present.
This is especially true of Nazism.
We would tend to see Nazism through the prism of
the brutality and its antisemitism.
But what you've got to remember is;
that's not how the German people saw Hitler at all.
(cheering)
HITLER: Sieg!
CROWD: Heil! Heil!
MCDONOUGH: The appeal of Nazism was not negative, it was utopian.
(speaking in German)
MCDONOUGH: “I’m going to build a new Germany,
and I'm going to make Germany a great power."
It was a utopian appeal.
(speaking in German)
(cheering)
KISSI: And so, it was very important for the Nuremberg process
to lay out how they eventually induced people to
think that the evil that they were being asked to participate in,
was virtue of some kind.
WALLIS (over tape): Now let us consider for a moment
the doctrinal techniques of the Nazi conspirators.
The first was the, “Master Race,” doctrine.
Calling anything, “Non-German,” and you have a clear right,
indeed a duty, to cast it out.
MATTHÄUS: Propaganda played a large role in the prosecution’s argument.
HITLER: My German youth…
MATTHÄUS: Because indoctrination was perceived as
a driving force of bringing along the German population
in the aggressive Nazi policies.
PRESIDENT (over tape): Will you repeat this oath after me?
MATTHÄUS: I think a clear indicator for this is
the charges against Julius Streicher.
(speaking in German)
NARRATOR: Julius Streicher had been an elementary school teacher
before aspiring to politics.
STREICHER: I will speak the pure truth
JUDGE (over tape): You may sit down.
NARRATOR: In the early 1920s he founded Der Stürmer,
a viciously racist newspaper.
It would eventually become a significant part of Nazi propaganda,
and continue publication until the end of the war.
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): We have an example of the really
remarkable lengths to which he went.
I quote, “One single cohabitation of a Jew with an
Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever.
The Aryan is impregnated with an alien species.”
WITTMANN: It had, you know, wild allegations against Jews.
It equated them with parasites and leeches and rats.
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): I have not attempted to have
translated all of the articles.
It is perhaps sufficient to look at the pictures.
WITTMANN: All of this is very much unearthed at Nuremberg.
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): His newspapers are crowded with them, week after week,
day after day.
It is impossible to pick up any copy without finding the same kind of stuff.
MATTHÄUS: That is very important material because what the trial
revealed was the building up and the creation of an enemy image.
STREICHER: After the seizure of power the daily press was coordinated.
And orders were given by the Fuehrer
that every newspaper should provide enlightening articles
on the “Jewish question.”
WITTMANN: Already before Hitler comes to power,
there is certainly antisemitism and this sort of vague sense amongst many
that there's a, “Jewish problem,” that has to be solved somehow.
And, you know, hopefully this government will get that done.
STREICHER: I did not intend to agitate or to inflame, but to enlighten.
I never wrote, "burn Jewish houses down; beat them to death."
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): But you know, do you not,
that starting with the boycott which you led yourself in 1933,
the Jews thereafter were deprived of the right to vote,
they were forced to wear a yellow star and they had
their houses and their businesses taken away from them.
Do you call that enlightenment?
KISSI: So the trial was important for connecting dots
that had not previously been connected.
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): I’m suggesting that you set out
to incite the German people to murder and to accept
the murder of the Jewish race.
STREICHER: That is not true.
GRIFFITH-JONES (over tape): I’ve no doubt you’ll say it isn’t true, I just want to
make myself quite clear to what I’m suggesting.
KISSI: In many ways, Nuremberg was more than the prosecution of the defendants.
It was also making Germans confront what they had acquiesced to.
WITTMANN: But there wasn't much appetite for this in Germany at that at time.
NARRATOR: To capture the attention of the German public,
prosecutors turn to a type of evidence that had
rarely been used in courtrooms before.
DOUGLAS: They actually interrupt their case to suddenly
show a film in the courtroom.
DODD: (over tape): Prosecution will at this
time present a documentary film on concentration camps.
This is by no means the entire proof which the prosecution will offer,
but this film represents what the words, “Concentration camp,” imply.
(bell ringing)
(projector running)
(somber music throughout)
MAN (over film): At this concentration camp the Germans starved, clubbed,
and burned to death more than 4,000 prisoners over a period of eight months.
On the table is a lampshade made of human skin,
made at the request of an SS Officer’s wife.
DOUGLAS: At the time, the world really hadn’t seen footage like this.
This really had an incredibly galvanizing effect.
MCDONOUGH: Fyfe himself says he was fighting back the tears.
"After that, I wasn't so much a prosecutor," he says, "As a Terrier dog."
You know, "I wanted these men to be convicted."
JUDGE (over tape): I call on General Rudenko for the Soviet Union.
RUDENKO: I will now describe the crimes
committed by the Hitlerite aggressors against my own country.
On June 22, 1941, the U.S.S.R.
was deceitfully attacked by Hitlerite Germany.
(explosion)
MATTHÄUS: What the Nuremberg Trial did was pay quite a bit of attention
to the kind of German warfare that was waged in the East.
RUDENKO: It meant unheard of terror, plundering, violence
and killing of prisoners of war and peaceful citizens.
MATTHÄUS: The estimate for casualties in the Soviet Union was 26 million,
more than half of that is estimated to be civilians.
And because of the Nuremberg Trial we know now
that there wouldn’t be a Holocaust without the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
(vinyl scratching)
JUDGE (over tape): Then you will call the defendant Keitel?
NARRATOR: Wilhelm Keitel had been the chief of
the high command of the German Armed Forces.
JUDGE (over tape): Will you repeat this oath after me?
NARRATOR: A devout supporter of Hitler,
he participated in the planning of all ground combat operations during the war.
MAN (over tape): You may sit down if you wish.
NARRATOR: But it is the planning for the invasion of
the Soviet Union that prosecutors want to get to the bottom of.
RUDENKO: I shall first of all refer to a document entitled,
“Directive on Military Jurisdiction in the Region Barbarossa
in the Region Barbarossa and on the Adoption of Special Military Measures.”
Do you remember that document?
KEITEL: That was an order which was given to me by Hitler.
BUTTAR: It’s discovered that just a few months before
the invasion of the Soviet Union,
Hitler called together various senior figures
and described how the war in the East was to be conducted.
NARRATOR: This meeting was translated into a top-secret order,
called the Barbarossa Decree,
which Keitel signed and issued to the German military.
This is the document Prosecutor Rudenko is presenting to the court.
BUTTAR: The Barbarossa Decree was the first time that it was
explicitly stated that this was a war of annihilation.
It was either Nazism or Bolshevism. The world was not big enough for both.
RUDENKO: So you planned the murder of human beings ahead of time?
KEITEL: I merely passed on the order received from the Füehrer.
BUTTAR: For Keitel to pass on an order that he knew
was illegal made him complicit.
He knew full well that it was going to result in the deaths of many, many people.
NARRATOR: And the Barbarossa Decree is just one murderous directive
that the prosecution has uncovered.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): This order was by no means the end, was it?
NARRATOR: Prosecutors reveal a series of secret orders that
condone the killing of POWs and civilians,
as well as the ruthless pillaging of food and vital resources.
BUTTAR: These orders fed into this whole narrative that this
is a conflict between two different cultures,
two different races, and only one can survive.
MATTHÄUS: And by August 1941, the evidence showed the start of
mass executions of women and children. That is unprecedented.
AMEN (over tape): I wish to call as a witness for
the prosecution Mr. Otto Ohlendorf.
NARRATOR: Otto Ohlendorf has first-hand knowledge of these early mass murders.
A former officer with the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or SS,
he had commanded an Einsatzgruppen unit on the Eastern Front.
DOUGLAS: Einsatzgruppen were these mobile extermination units
who basically comb through towns in conquered Eastern Europe and
engaged in mass executions.
OHLDENDORF: The instructions was given that in the operational areas
of the Einsatzgruppen in the Russian territory
the Jews were to be liquidated.
As well as the Soviet political commissars.
AMEN (over tape): And when you say, "Liquidated," do you mean, "Kill?"
OHLDENDORF: By that I mean "kill."
AMEN (over tape): Now will you explain to the Tribunal
in detail how a mass execution was carried out?
OHLDENDORF: The rounding up took place under the pretext of resettlement.
After the registration, the Jews were collected in one place.
And from there they were transported to the place of execution.
The executions were carried out in a military manner,
by firing squads under command.
(gunfire)
DOUGLAS: Being able to hear this kind of banality of evil
in the audio recordings is shocking.
What was notable was the straightforwardness and
sobriety of his, uh, his recounting of things.
AMEN (over tape): Now, will you continue?
OHLDENDORF: They were transported to the place of execution in trucks.
Only as many as could be executed immediately.
In this way, it was attempted to keep the span of time
from the moment the victims knew what was about to happen to them
until their actual execution as short as possible.
BUTTAR: His testimony was absolutely devastating.
This was a true manifestation of Nazi racial policy and
their plans for domination.
HYMEL: And in a lot of ways, Ohlendorf’s testimony is a
preview of what’s going to be revealed later in the trial.
MAN (over tape): Hello sound recording, hello sound recording.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): What I want to understand is this;
how did you tolerate all these young men being murdered,
one after the other, without making any protests?
I want to understand what’s in your mind.
DOUGLAS: During the trial, people had intense interest in
the psychology of the defendants.
The Americans even retained this psychologist, G.M. Gilbert,
to perform extensive psychological testing on the Nazis.
Things like Rorschach exams, uh, intelligence tests.
Because there was this general question;
are they just a bunch of psychopaths who happened to hijack a regime?
There were a couple of defendants who were not
necessarily in the best psychological health.
One of them was Rudolf Hess.
NARRATOR: Rudolf Hess was a close confidant of Hitler during
the early days of the Nazi party.
He is accused of conspiring with Hitler to wage war and
committing crimes against peace.
But during the trial, Hess puts forth a surprising defense.
BARRETT: He claims he doesn’t remember any of it. He says, “I have amnesia.”
So they have a serious question about whether he’s mentally competent.
NICHOLS (over radio): This is Leslie Nichols speaking from Nuremberg, Germany.
For a long time now, the International Military Tribunal
at Nuremberg has been trying to get an answer to the question;
“Is there a crazy man in the house?”
JUDGE (over tape): I call upon counsel for the defendant Hess.
DR. VON ROHRSCHEIDT: The defendant Hess is unfit for trial.
BARRETT: Of course, some think he’s faking,
and others think he’s mad as a hatter.
(microphone stand squeaking)
But then, Hess asks to testify.
HESS: Mr. President…
Henceforth, my memory will again respond to the outside world.
The reasons for faking loss of memory were of a tactical nature.
HYMEL: And he finally says, “Oh everything I was saying was untrue,
I remember it all, that was part of my strategy.”
BARRETT: There’s just a kind of stunned silence.
The Tribunal at that point really has no choice but to take
his word for it and certify him as competent.
But then, and I think ever since,
it’s a serious question whether that was accurate,
or whether that just another piece of his craziness?
(speaking in German)
DOUGLAS: In the case of the other defendants,
the psychological testing demonstrated that these are terrifyingly normal people,
high IQ individuals.
And that raises very troubling questions about the capacity of
all people to engage in acts under similar circumstances.
FARR (over tape): May it please the Tribunal,
with the march of Nazi armies over Europe,
wholesale murders were disguised under the name of, “Anti-partisan,” actions.
But not every undesirable could be, “Liquidated.”
BUTTAR: When the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,
the Germans gambled by mobilizing far more troops
than they could actually sustain for any length of time.
Because the intention was that the war would be over by the end of 1941.
So when the war didn’t end, there was an enormous problem.
NARRATOR: The problem was how to produce enough weapons and
supplies to keep the German war machine going.
And the Nazi’s solution would be revealed as a brutal one.
DODD (over tape): The evidence relating to the Nazi slave labor program
shall show that it was a policy which compelled
foreign civilians and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments
and to engage in other operations where they were literally
worked to death in the course of the Nazi program of, “Extermination through work.”
Foreign laborers became the serfs of the, "Master race,"
and they were enslaved by the millions.
This document is a top-secret memorandum from the files of the Defendant Rosenberg,
dated the 21st day of December 1942.
“They are now catching humans like the dog-catchers used to catch dogs.”
NARRATOR: According to the prosecution,
one of the masterminds behind this immense slave labor program
was defendant Albert Speer.
A trained architect who had risen to prominence by designing
monumental buildings for Hitler, he is far from
what many consider to be a, “Stereotypical Nazi.”
MCDONOUGH: Albert Speer came from a very high-ranking upper-class background.
Hitler loved architecture, so he became very close to Hitler.
During the war, Hitler tended to trust him, thought he could do anything.
He made him the Minister of Armaments.
JUDGE (over tape): Will you repeat this oath after me.
BUTTAR: So Speer absolutely had to know that the workers that
he was demanding to ramp up German military production were not volunteers.
JACKSON (over tape): This was perhaps the most horrible
slaving operation in history.
Who is responsible for these conditions?
SPEER: Neither I, nor the Ministry, was responsible for this.
There were efforts in Germany
to bring about increased productivity through very severe compulsory measures.
These efforts did not meet with my approval.
WITTMANN: He’s very intelligent.
SPEER: It is quite out of the question that 14 million workers
can be forced to produce satisfactory work through coercion and terror.
WITTMANN: And he’s a very careful manipulator.
SPEER: As a matter of principle, I represented the view
that a satisfactory work output could only be achieved
through the good will of the worker himself.
JACKSON (over tape): I am not attempting to say that
you were personally responsible.
I merely give you what the regime was doing.
WITTMANN: And he fools them to a certain degree.
MCDONOUGH: Even Maxwell-Fyfe says he was taken in by him.
He said, at certain points, "I thought, how can a man so cultured and so handsome,
be a monster?"
NARRATOR: And Speer will not be the only defendant to try to
blur the line between good and evil.
(explosion)
(cheering)
MORGAN: For the most part history has abided by the idea
of the good German and the bad German,
the evil, sickening villain, and the reluctant Nazi.
Because what we don't want is to look at what happened to Germany
and say that could happen to anybody.
And so, this idea first takes shape during the Nuremberg Trial.
And we have cast Karl Doenitz as the reluctant Naval professional
that got caught up in things.
But the reality is, Karl Doenitz unpacks this larger story about
the way that we are still attempting to reconcile what the Third Reich was.
DOENITZ: Adolf Hitler only ever saw me as the first soldier of the Navy.
NARRATOR: Karl Doenitz was a highly regarded naval officer.
When Hitler first came into power,
Doenitz oversaw the secret re-building of the U-boat, or submarine, fleet.
(explosion)
He then commanded it with devastating effect
during the first three years of the war.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): The defendant rose steadily in rank
until he became Commander in Chief of the German Navy.
Members of the Tribunal will see it was not, however,
only his ability as a naval officer which won the defendant these high honors;
These he owed to his capacity for utter ruthlessness.
NARRATOR: One of the accusations against Doenitz is that in
the autumn of 1942 he directed his U-boats to start
gunning down shipwrecked Allied sailors,
murdering them in their lifeboats.
In 1942, the Allies’ determination to strengthen
their transatlantic convoy system was beginning to result
in a steadier flow of weapons and soldiers to Europe.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): And the defendant…
NARRATOR: According to prosecutors,
Doenitz’ murderous directive was intended to stop these convoys.
The trial audio reveals his vehement denial.
DOENITZ: Firing upon these men is a matter concerned with the ethics of war.
No order on this subject has ever been issued in any form whatsoever.
MORGAN: Well, the only problem for Doenitz was that
there were a few U-boat messages that
suggest that Doenitz did indeed provide some instructions
to machine-gun survivors in the water.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): Now this, is a top-secret order sent
from the defendant's headquarters to all
commanding officers of U-boats dated September 1942.
"Rescue runs counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare
for the destruction of enemy ships and crews."
"Be harsh.”
Now, my lord, that is a very carefully worded order.
But its intentions are made very clear by the next document.
NARRATOR: Prosecutors reveal a copy of the secret conversation
that took place between Hitler and the Japanese ambassador in early 1942.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): The Fuehrer pointed out that
however many ships the United States built,
one of their main problems would be the lack of personnel.
For that reason U-boats were to surface and
shoot up the lifeboats.
And on that, I shall call a witness.
JUDGE (over tape): What is your name?
HEISIG: My name is Peter Josef Heisig.
NARRATOR: Peter Heisig is a former German submariner.
He served under Admiral Doenitz during the war.
PHILLIMORE (over tape): Will you take your mind back to the autumn of 1942?
HEISIG: Yes, sir.
HEISIG: I was a senior midshipman at the 2nd U-boat Training Division.
Grossadmiral Doenitz said in his speech,
“Crews for ships are as much a target for U-boats
as the ships themselves.”
“Through this, it will become impossible for the Allies
to outfit their newly built ships with crews.”
NARRATOR: It is compelling evidence.
But without a clearly written order, Doenitz can still deny it.
MORGAN: He uses a very common defense,
and that defense is there may have been outliers that chose to
machine-gun people in the water, but I never gave that order.
DOENITZ: Everything else Heisig said is so vague
that I do not attach much credibility to him.
MORGAN: And so, Doenitz ended up being in this position of
still possessing a little bit of a moral high-ground.
But I believe that is partly because what we want to see is the, “Good German.”
NARRATOR: And prosecutors will soon show that as the war dragged into 1943,
and then ’44,
and victory began to slip from the Nazis’ grasp,
they were preparing to use any means necessary to avoid defeat.
JACKSON (over tape): It may well be said that Hitler started
the war without cause and prolonged it without reason.
If he could not rule, he cared not what happened to Germany.
NARRATOR: As prosecutors turn their attention to
the later stages of the war, they raise the question of just
how far German leadership was preparing to go to avoid defeat.
Defendant Goering, Hitler’s former number two in command,
is called back to the stand.
JACKSON (over tape): At what time did you know that the war,
so far as achieving the objectives that you had in mind, was a lost war?
GOERING: It is extremely difficult to say.
(bombs wailing)
(explosions)
At any rate, according to my conviction, relatively late.
At that time, I was forced to realize
that defeat would probably set in slowly.
I also knew that Hitler did not want to negotiate
under any circumstances.
JACKSON (over tape): And after that time,
the air attacks which were continued against England were
designed solely to affect a prolongation of what you then
knew was a hopeless conflict?
GOERING: I can only regret that we did not have enough
of the V-1 and V-2 bombs.
(explosions)
Because the only way we could have reduced
the attacks on German cities
was if we could inflict equally heavy losses on the enemy.
I would have continued fighting whatever the circumstances.
MCDONOUGH: Goering realizes he's going to be executed. He knows this.
You know, he says to people around him, "You know we're going to be killed."
He said, he said, "But what's the point of this trial?
It's to give some kind of legacy."
And he’s trying to rally the other Nazis to say,
at least have a kind of last stand. Stay true to Nazism.
But, of course, a lot of them don't want to do that.
NARRATOR: Albert Speer is one defendant who has shown he would
rather cooperate with the prosecution and try to save his life.
He’s more than willing to spill details about
the Nazis’ secret plans for the end of the war.
JACKSON (over tape): I want to ask you about the proposal to
resort to poison gas warfare.
Who made those proposals?
SPEER: This proposal came from Dr. Goebbels.
NARRATOR: Joseph Goebbels had been the Nazi party’s head of propaganda.
A trusted member of the inner circle, he held considerable sway with Adolf Hitler,
right up to the end.
SPEER: They were discussing the question of using our two new combat gases -
Tabun and Sarin.
…That these gases, these two, were of an extraordinary effectiveness.
…That no gas masks, that is no protection
was available against them, according to our knowledge.
MORGAN: At Nuremberg, we are hearing for the first time that
Germany was beginning to consider the possibility of
using poison gases on the battlefield as they had during the First World War.
JACKSON (over tape): Now will you tell us about preparations
that were made for gas warfare?
SPEER: For the manufacture of this gas
we had about three factories
all of which were undamaged and which until November 1944
were working at full speed.
MORGAN: And so, we know now it's just virtue of good fortune that
the war ended when it did, because if it had stretched
into '46, and God forbid, '47, which could have happened,
you could bet there would have been poison gas.
NARRATOR: It’s a chilling confession.
But it will pale next to the revelation of just how great
the suffering in Europe had already been.
(vinyl scratching)
DODD (over tape): May it please the Tribunal,
we propose to offer additional evidence at this time
concerning the use of the Nazi concentration camps
against the people of Germany and allied nationals.
We wish to invite the Tribunal's attention to a chart,
showing the Nazi system of concentration camps as
they have become known since 1945.
WITTMANN: The trial is the first massive exposure of
the intricacies and machinery of destruction.
DODD (over tape): I should like to direct our attention to
the treatment in these camps.
MATTHÄUS: The estimate at the time was 5.3 million Jewish victims.
Actually, quite close to what we know now as the overall victim figure.
DODD (over tape): At this point, my colleagues will present full evidence.
(grunting)
JUDGE (over tape): Will you repeat this oath after me?
NARRATOR: Witness Samuel Rajzman is a Jewish man who had lived in Poland.
JUDGE (over tape): I hereby swear that I will speak nothing but the truth…
NARRATOR: He and his family were confined to the Warsaw ghetto.
Before being taken to the extermination camp at Treblinka.
PROSECUTOR SMIRNOV: Will you describe this camp to the Tribunal?
RAJZMAN: On an average, I believe they killed in Treblinka
from ten to twelve thousand persons daily.
Transports arrived there every day.
They were all forced to strip immediately.
And this process continued under the lashes of the German guards' whips.
Then the people were obliged to walk naked through the street to the gas chamber.
My work was to load the clothes of the murdered persons on the trains.
When I had been in the camp two days,
my mother, my sister, and two brothers were brought to the camp.
I had to watch them being led away to the gas chambers.
Several days later, my comrades found my wife's documents
and a photograph of my wife and child.
That is all I have left of my family. Only a photograph.
DOUGLAS: A lot of the things that we now take for granted
that we know about the Holocaust,
this was information that was really being supplied for the first time.
(speaking in German)
NARRATOR: As witnesses step forward, they speak about the killings, beatings,
and sadistic treatment, that they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
(speaking in German)
They reveal the truth about unimaginable horrors.
SHMAGLEVSKAYA: I could tell about the children
who were brought to the concentration camp.
When the greatest number of Jews were exterminated
an order went out that the children
were to be thrown into the crematory ovens or the crematory ditches
without previous asphyxiation with gas.
SMIRNOV: Were they thrown into the ovens alive?
Or were they killed by other means before they were burned?
SHMAGLEVSKAYA: The children were thrown in alive.
Their cries could be heard all over camp.
BUTTAR: When concentration camp victims gave testimony,
the defendants often looked away or took off their headphones.
MATTHÄUS: They wouldn't even react to evidence unless it was
directed at them personally.
BARRETT: And then what else could they do but lie and deny.
GOERING: First of all, I want to say I did not know anything about what took place
and what methods were used in the concentration camps.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): But witness you’ve seen the films
since this trial started.
You know that there were millions of garments,
millions of shoes,
20,952 kilograms of gold wedding rings.
All that which these people who were exterminated left behind them.
Did nobody ever tell you all these came from the effects
of these people who were murdered?
GOERING: No, and how can you imagine this?
I was laying down the broad outlines for the German economy
and that certainly didn't include the utilization of old shoes and clothes.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): So, I’m asking about the murder of five million people.
The Fuehrer must have had full knowledge, mustn’t he?
GOERING: It is my opinion that the Fuehrer
was not informed about details in concentration camps.
NARRATOR: What the Nazis don’t know is that their lies
will be exposed by one of their own witnesses.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): My Lord, I have an application
on behalf of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner for a witness called Hoess.
DOUGLAS: Rudolf Hoess was the former commandant at Auschwitz.
And strangely enough, Hoess is called as a witness not by
the prosecution, but by the defense.
He’s actually called by Kaltenbrunner’s lawyer.
NARRATOR: Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner had
been a high-ranking member of the SS.
ALDERMAN (over tape): With reference to concentration camps…
NARRATOR: Earlier in the trial,
evidence was presented showing he was heavily involved in
the Nazi concentration camp system.
But he and his lawyer hope that by calling Hoess to the stand
they can distance him from the murders at Auschwitz.
KAUFFMAN: Is it true that in 1941 you were ordered to Berlin to see Himmler?
HOESS: Yes, sir.
HOESS: In the summer of 1941
I was summoned to Berlin to see Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler
to receive personal orders.
He told me that the Fuehrer
had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question.
KAUFFMAN: Did you ever talk with Kaltenbrunner with reference to your task?
HOESS: No, never.
BARRETT: So that little nugget is helpful for Kaltenbrunner.
But, of course, that opens the door on cross examination.
And on cross examination the prosecution introduces an affidavit that Hoess signed.
AMEN (over tape): If you will follow along with me as I read, please.
"I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June of '41.
At that time, there were already three other extermination camps.
I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations.
The Camp Commandant told me that he used monoxide gas,
and I did not think that his methods were very efficient.
So when I set up the extermination building
at Auschwitz, I used Cyklon B,
which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening.
Another improvement was that we built our gas chamber
to accommodate 2,000 people at one time.”
BARRETT: It’s one thing to kind of know the planning abstractly.
But Hoess is the first real decision-making eyewitness.
It sort of proves the worst.
And it’s unapologetic.
AMEN (over tape): Now I ask you, Witness,
is everything which I have read to you true to your own knowledge?
HOESS: Yes, sir.
AMEN (over tape): That concludes my cross-examination.
MATTHÄUS: Particularly, I think Goering was appalled by someone
divulging information that he could have withheld.
Once this was communicated it had a massive impact.
KISSI: People were just simply shocked.
They were shocked to believe that these things could be done in a modern society.
NARRATOR: Hoess’s emotionless admission becomes
one of the most galvanizing moments of the trial.
And in the summer of 1946, as the proceedings draw to a close,
it is his words, and the words of the survivors,
that resonate the loudest for prosecutors.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): My lord, I am deeply conscious
that one of the greatest difficulties,
and not the least of the dangers of this trial,
is that those of us who have been engaged day in and day out
for over nine months have
reached the saturation point of horror.
(speaking in German)
(cheering)
JACKSON (over tape): It is against such a background that
these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say
that they are not guilty.
If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty,
it would be as true to say that there has been no war,
that there are no slain, that there has been no crime.
PRESIDENT (over tape): I now call defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering.
GOERING: The Prosecution has treated the defendants and
their testimony as completely worthless.
I stand up for the things that I have done.
WITTMANN: Despite everything, there was still an attitude amongst defendants
of total self-righteousness and entitlement.
KEITEL: I was not in a position to prevent what ought to have been prevented.
NARRATOR: But it is Rudolf Hess, who’s not spoken since he
admitted to faking amnesia, who delivers the most chilling of all final statements.
HESS: Even if I could, I would not want
to erase this period of time from my history.
I am happy to know
that I have done my duty as a loyal follower of my Fuehrer.
-HESS: Hitler! Sieg! -CROWD: Heil!
HESS: I regret nothing.
PRESIDENT (over tape): The Tribunal will now adjourn
in order to consider its judgement.
(beeping)
GAETH (over radio): This is Arthur Gaeth speaking from
the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
NARRATOR: After a month of deliberating,
the Nuremberg Tribunal reconvenes to deliver verdicts and sentencing.
MAN (over tape): Attention! Tribunal!
GAETH (over radio): The assembly is jam-packed.
There must be 600 people in the courtroom.
NARRATOR: The newly transferred audio reveals
the moment the sentences are read.
MAN (over tape): Hello sound recording, start cutting, start cutting.
PRESIDENT (over tape): Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering,
the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.
Defendant Hess, the Tribunal sentences you to imprisonment for life.
Julius Streicher, death by hanging.
KISSI: At the pinnacle of their power, they had seemed in-conquerable.
PRESIDENT (over tape): Wilhelm Keitel, death by hanging.
Karl Doenitz, ten years' imprisonment.
Albert Speer, 20 years' imprisonment.
KISSI: But the Nuremberg Trial reduced people who claim superhuman status.
PRESIDENT (over tape): Ernst Kaltenbrunner, death by hanging.
KISSI: And they became no more than the victims that they had done to death.
(dramatic music throughout)
BARRETT: In the end, it’s 18 guilty, three not guilty.
And so the Nuremberg prosecutors are generally quite satisfied.
From a podium prosecutor to a clerk in a documents room,
everybody who was a part of that was quite proud to be part of that.
PRESIDENT (over tape): The Tribunal will now adjourn.
NARRATOR: But not all of the condemned will face their court-appointed fate.
(overlapping chatter)
GAETH (over radio): Hermann Goering escaped his fate of hanging by
committing suicide at 10:45 last night.
MCDONOUGH: Everyone was saying, "How the hell
does the major defendant end up taking a cyanide capsule?"
GAETH (over radio): He did it so cleverly that the sentinel watching him
did not even see him put his hand to his mouth.
NARRATOR: Goering’s suicide sparks an extensive investigation.
But it fails to uncover exactly how he got the poison.
MCDONOUGH: For him, it's a victory, isn't it?
It was a massive humiliation for the Allies.
(beeps)
NARRATOR: With heightened security,
the remaining executions are carried out just hours later.
Only a handful of reporters are permitted to witness as the Nazis are hanged,
one by one,
on gallows built inside the Nuremberg prison.
GAETH (over radio): I was an eyewitness to the execution of
the wilted flower of Nazidom.
There was a silent, serious atmosphere.
Ten men died here,
and the body of the other was brought in to complete the picture.
Justice has been done.
NARRATOR: The Nazis who are sentenced to jail are taken to
Berlin’s Spandau Prison to serve their time.
HYMEL: Hess is gonna spend the rest of his life in a prison in Germany.
He had actually sat out a lot of the war in a British prison camp.
And I think that's what saved him from the hangman's noose at the end of the trial.
He will eventually hang himself in Spandau in the late 1980s.
MORGAN: Doenitz has an interesting post-prison life.
He was, I don't want to say celebrated, but he certainly wasn't hated in Germany.
At the time of his passing, thousands of people flocked to his funeral.
MCDONOUGH: But if there is a star of this trial,
it's Albert Speer because when he comes out of prison,
he writes his memoirs, the biggest selling set of memoirs
around the world there’s ever been, in other words, he profits hugely.
BARRETT: Of course, since then, history has discovered lots more
specific knowledge of deportations, exterminations,
all of that stuff that he distanced himself from.
He was as bad as anybody who went to the gallows.
AMEN (over tape): Is there any slightest doubt in your mind about that?
(speaking in German)
DOUGLAS: The trial really did demonstrate
to the world the crimes that the Nazi regime committed.
MAXWELL-FYFE (over tape): These came from people who were murdered?
DOUGLAS: And this notion that heads of state could be held
criminally responsible established a very powerful precedent moving forward.
WITTMANN: After Rwanda, after former Yugoslavia,
the precedent set at Nuremberg is used again.
BARRETT: That brought the International Criminal Court into being.
So Nuremberg showed that when power and values unite,
the world can do these kinds of rule-of-law projects.
And that’s a legacy that will challenge us evermore to live up to it.
MAN (over tape): Sound recording, it’s over.
(somber music fades out)