Photo Pest: Monsters on Trial

Why is Hermann Göring, for many years Hitler's second-in-command, a World War I pilot who ruthlessly stripped Jews of their property and art in his later bureaucratic capacity, wearing sunglasses and a headset?

He's on trial for war crimes. In order for the world to see film of what became known as the Nuremberg trials the Allies lighted Court Room 600 as brightly as possible in the fall of 1945. Göring seized the opportunity to shield his eyes and needed the headset to hear the court proceedings translated into German.

Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler evaded prosecution by committing suicide, but twenty-four Nazis who oversaw military, political and economic functions for the Third Reich--including Göring and Albert Speer--stood trial before American, British, French and Soviet prosecutors and judges.

My knowledge of the trials had been limited primarily to Judy Garland's performance as a victim of Nazi atrocities in Judgement at Nuremberg, for which she received her second of two Oscar nominations. The film is nearly three hours long and I spent almost that much time at the Memorium educating myself about an event--the first time multiple countries brought another to justice--that helped establish the legal framework for the international human rights movement.

As I approached the Palace of Justice entrance, a rambunctious classroom of German teenagers emerged. Inside, an American woman about my age complained to the front desk that their disrespectful chatter had been so loud that she hadn't been able to hear the introductory film. History begins with your own lifetime for many people.

I'm not a big fan of audio guides but one was needed to appreciate the word-heavy exhibit panels, which were almost entirely in German. Even then, not everything was translated.

Until recently, Courtroom 600 was still used to conduct trials. Perhaps I'm stereotyping, but I'd guess the majority of the twenty or so people who watched the introductory film with me were attorneys with an interest in human rights making a pilgrimage. Despite the bells and whistles that utilize the physical space in unusual ways, the film was less about the trial than its influence. Ironically, the United States has declined to join the International Criminal Court, whose origins can be traced to directly to Nuremberg, since it was established in 2002. Four presidential administrations have argued it interferes with American sovereignty.

I wonder what Robert H. Jackson would have had to say about that? The last person to be appointed to the Supreme Court who didn't graduate from law school, he took a leave of absence to serve as the American prosecutor at Nuremberg. Associate Justice Jackson's powerful opening statement, a masterpiece of legal oratory, included these words:

"Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law."

Here's the defense team. Not a credit I'd want on my resume.

After visiting Dachau only the day before, I was particularly interested in the treatment of the defendants. Imagine how many Jews Nazis could have stuffed in this room, after removing the private toilet.

Meals provided daily nutritional requirements for monsters, no more.

Willy Brandt, who became chancellor of Germany two decades later, and Walter Cronkite were among the journalists who covered the trials which lasted eleven months. John Steinbeck and Rebecca West attended, too.

This macabre spread, from a 1946 issue of Life magazine, a publication which graced the Hon coffee table for most of my teenage years, left the most vivid impression of my visit. Convictions of these eleven Nazis resulted in death by hanging. The editors decided their post-mortem photos were suitable for family consumption. Not pictured is Göring who killed himself by taking a cyanide capsule the night before his execution.