Section 27: The Legally-Flawed Nuremberg “War Crimes Trials” Did Not “Prove” the Holocaust
The
Holocaust storytellers like to claim that the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
“proved” the mass murder of Jews in open court.
In
reality, nothing of the sort was ever proved, and the main charges did not
relate at all to the alleged mass murder of Jews.
Below: The Nuremberg Trials have been
dismissed by all honest legal experts as a farce. People were charged on
hearsay evidence, and for “crimes” such as “waging aggressive war.” The
Soviets, who had invaded Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States earlier in the
war, sat on the judges’ panel and sentenced German leaders to death for
invading Poland.
The
actual indictments at the main Nuremberg Trials were as follows:
“1.
Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime
against peace.
“2.
Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against
peace.
“3. War
crimes.
“4.
Crimes against humanity.”
In
normal legal systems, it is an established legal principle that no one can be
charged for a crime that was not a crime at the time the act was committed—in
other words, that no one can be charged retrospectively for an act which was
not classified as a crime at the time when it was committed.
The
Nuremberg Trial indictments are clearly a major abrogation of this principle, a
fact which led the famous British General Bernard Montgomery, victor of the
Battle of El Alamein, to remark with reference to the Nuremberg Trials that he no
longer wished to lead any armies because it had now “become a crime to lose a
war.”
The
legal basis of these main charges aside, the entire Nuremberg Trials process
was from the very beginning a mockery because one of the judging parties—the
Soviet Union—had, for the first two years of the war, been an ally of Nazi
Germany!
For the
German leaders to be charged with “waging aggressive war” and “planning,
initiating, and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace”—and
then to be found guilty thereof by judges who included Soviets, is one of the
most extreme acts of twisted irony ever seen on the international legal stage.
If
Germany could be charged for invading Poland on September 1, 1939 (the main
charge of “waging aggressive war”), then why were the Soviets not charged for
invading Poland on September 17, 1939—after concluding a secret deal with Nazi
Germany over the matter? Why was the Soviet Union not charged with “waging
aggressive war” over its invasion of neutral Finland on November 30, 1939? In
addition, nothing was said of the seizure of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by
the Soviet Union in June 1940.
The
irony of the Soviets sitting in judgment over the Germans on charges of “waging
aggressive war” was but only one of the many travesties of justice at the
Nuremberg Trials.
The
third charge, that of “war crimes” was equally outrageous. According to the
definition used at the trials, a war crime was “a serious violation of the laws
and customs of war.” The mass Allied bombing of German civilians—started by
Britain (with the Germans only retaliating after months of nightly bombing)—was
certainly a violation of the “laws and customs of war,” as were the mass rapes
of German women carried out by Soviet soldiers in 1945.
However,
these same Allies saw fit to put German leaders on trial for a handful of
outrageous acts committed by underlings—none of which were ever sanctioned at
senior level, unlike the bombing of civilians, an idea which came from Winston
Churchill himself.
The
fourth charge, “Crimes against humanity” was vaguely defined by the Nuremberg
Trials as acts “committed in execution of, or in connection with, the
aggressive war, and therefore constituted crimes against humanity” (Judgment: The Law Relating to War Crimes and
Crimes against Humanity, Judgment of the International Military Tribunal).
In other words, none of the defendants at Nuremberg were specifically charged
with the mass gassing of Jews or the operation of extermination camps. They
were only alleged to have been “generally responsible.”
As a
result it is untrue to claim that the Nuremberg Trials “proved the Holocaust.”
Even
much of the “evidence” produced at those trials has long since been accepted as
false. A reading of some of the incredible evidence presented as evidence
borders on the laughable if it were not so illustrative of the outrageousness
of the “trials.” By way of example, some of the “evidence” submitted to
Nuremberg under the “crimes against humanity” charge included wild claims of
“Jewish soap,” “shrunken heads,” “lampshades,” “gassing by steam”, execution by
“electrocution” socks made of human hair, and even an astonishing affidavit by
a “survivor” which claimed that the SS had killed Jews in one of the Polish
camps with a “pedal-driven brain-bashing machine.”
All of
this was accepted at face value during the court proceedings, even though they
have long since been dismissed as lies by all serious historians.
Section 28: The Katyn Massacre—How the Soviets Tortured Nazis to “Obtain Confessions”
A very
large number of Nazi “confessions” still regularly used today to “prove” the
Six Million came from prisoners held by the Soviet Union—and were obtained
under torture. The best example of this came when the Soviets obtained
“confessions” from, put on trial, and executed, Germans who they blamed for the
murder of thousands of Polish officers and intelligentsia in the Katyn Forest
during the war. The Katyn Massacre, as it is better known, had been committed
by the Soviet Union’s secret police, the NKVD in May 1940.
Some
22,000 Poles were executed by being individually shot on direct order of the
Soviet leadership (an order for the executions was signed by Stalin in person)
and the bodies were buried in the Katyn Forest, twelve miles west of Smolensk.
The
Germans discovered the graves in 1943. They appointed an international
commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staff from countries
such as Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the
Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary. In addition, a large
number of Canadian, British, and Polish prisoners-of-war were allowed to attend
the excavations.
The
Soviets blamed the Germans and when they retook Smolensk, appointed a new
commission which blamed the Germans, destroyed the Red Cross-built cemetery in
the Katyn forest and removed other evidence.
Later,
two of the twelve forensic experts, the Bulgarian Marko Markov and the Czech
Frantisek Hajek were arrested by the Soviets and forced to recant their
evidence and blame the Germans.
The
accusation that the Germans were responsible for the Katyn Massacre was then
entered into the Nuremberg Trial court proceedings, which even specifically
named which German army units and officers were responsible for the murders.
Finally, in December 1945, in one of a series of “War Crimes Trials” held in
Leningrad, a German army officer named Arno Düre was formally charged with
participation in the Katyn Massacre.
Düre
made a full “confession,” explaining in detail how he had seen the Germans
shoot and bury thousands of Polish officers. In a tactic which duplicated the
defense used by other German war crimes accused, Düre managed to avoid
implicating himself directly as a murderer, and was therefore “only” sentenced
to twenty years hard labor.
Below: A report in the New
York Times of December 31, 1945, in which
the conviction and execution of Germans for the Katyn Massacre was announced.
Even though the Soviets had carried out the massacre, Germans “confessed” to
the crime, and even testified in court about their guilt—setting the example
for many of the “war crimes” trials which followed.
Below: Excavation of the bodies at Katyn,
1943.
Below: A German propaganda poster
distributed in Poland illustrating the method of execution. The Soviets blamed
the Germans for the massacre, and, filled with a desire to avenge the exposure
of the Katyn crime, went on to invent the first wave of “Nazi war crimes” in
the areas of eastern Europe.
It was
only in 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the Russian
government formally admitted that the Soviets were responsible for the
massacre. It was too late for Düre and many other Germans who had already
“confessed” to atrocities in the east.
The
German “confessions” about Katyn reveal the methodology followed by the Soviets
in extracting many of the “confessions” upon which the Holocaust storytellers
still rely. Under these conditions, it is little wonder that the so-called
“Nazi extermination camps” all just happened to be located in the Soviet-controlled
parts of Europe, rather than western Europe, which were open to inspection by
dissenting inquirers.
Section 29: Official “Holocaust” Journal Admits Soviet Torture used to Obtain Nazi “Confessions”
The
final word on the Soviet war crimes trials comes from a study on the topic by
Alexander Victor Prusin, published in the Holocaust
and Genocide Studies in 2003:
“In Minsk a member
of an execution detail, SS-Unterscharführer Franz Karl Hess admitted that he
personally had killed more than one hundred people. His co-defendant
Generalleutnant Johann Richert stated, ‘horrible and mind-shattering facts were
demonstrated in the court.... Now I am a determined opponent of the Nazi
regime, and ready to do my share in the antifascist struggle.’
“Hermann Koch
confessed to having personally murdered up to five hundred people and
emphasized his own initiative in carrying out criminal orders: ‘I was a fascist
and remain a fascist. I did not simply carry out orders, but I was firmly
convinced in the rightness of what I was doing. Racial theory made me a
criminal. Much blood is on my hands; I ask for the death penalty for I do not
know whether I could ever be able to remedy my crimes.’
“Such self-abasing
confessions cast grave doubt on Soviet methods of obtaining evidence, and
support the thesis that the proceedings were merely show trials. The conduct of
the trials, then, begs a crucial question: do the trials have any value as
legal and historical evidence?
“One should look
at the interrogation records, which indicate that the defendants were under
constant physical and psychological pressure. Sleep deprivation was but one
tool used by the interrogators to extract information.
“As a rule,
interrogation lasted for hours and often took place at night. Such methods especially
affected the health and psyche of the other generals and senior officers, who
were on average in their late fifties. Thus, on December 15, 1945, an
interrogation of General Richert lasted from nine o’clock at night until two in
the morning.
“On December 27,
1945, Jeckeln was subjected to questioning from eleven o’clock in the morning
until five in the afternoon, while on January 8, 1946, he was interrogated from
ten at night until half past six in the morning. Apparently some defendants
were selected for trial because they agreed to cooperate—possibly upon promises
of leniency (often unfulfilled), or simply because they were resigned to their
fate. For example, there are indications that General Erdsmanndorf was a member
of the Soviet-sponsored “Committee for a Free Germany,” which carried out
anti-Nazi propaganda among German POWs” (Alexander Victor Prusin, “‘Fascist
Criminals to the Gallows!’: The Holocaust and Soviet War Crimes Trials,
December 1945-February 1946,” Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 17.1, (2003) 1-30, Oxford University Press).
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