Transcript File - English with Miss Horner

The
Monuments Men
Monuments Man Lt. Frank P. Albright, Polish Liaison
Officer Maj. Karol Estreicher, Monuments Man Capt.
Everett Parker Lesley, and Pfc. Joe D. Espinosa, guard
with the 34th Field Artillery Battalion, pose with Leonard
da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine upon its return to Poland
in April 1946.
LA GLEIZE, BELGIUM - FEB 1, 1945: Monuments Man
Walker Hancock (front left, in U.S. Army helmet) assisted
residents of the town of La Gleize with the relocation of
the Madonna of La Gleize to a more secure site. (Photo
credit: Walker Hancock Collection)
MONTE CASSINO, ITALY - MAY 27, 1944: Monuments
Man Lt. Col. Ernest T. Dewald (center) makes his way up
to the ruins of Monte Cassino, the Benedictine Abbey
destroyed by controversial allied bombing in February
1944. (Photo credit: National Archives and Records
Administration, College Park, MD)
Germans display Botticelli’s masterpiece, Camilla and the
Centaur, from the Uffizi. (Photo Credit: National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D.C. / Public Domain)
Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger and Robert Edsel
visited the grave of Walter Huchthausen in 2012.
Huchthausen was a Monuments officer who was
killed in action near Aachen, Germany. He is buried
at the America Cemetery at Margraten, Holland.
(Photo credit: Robert M. Edsel collection)
BERNTERODE,
GERMANY - MAY
1945: Monuments Men
George Stout (left),
Walker Hancock (center
right), and Steven
Kovalyak (right) during
the excavation of
Bernterode. The soldier
standing between Stout
and Hancock is a Sgt.
Travese. (Photo credit:
Walker Hancock
Collection)
ALTAUSSEE, AUSTRIA JULY 1945: The central
panel of the Ghent
Altarpiece, due to its size
and weight, proved
particularly challenging to
move through the narrow
passageways. Other
panels of the altarpiece are
visible in the background
behind Stout. Note the
tissue that has been
applied to the painted
surface to secure loose or
flaking paint. This is a
process known as "facing."
Stout was proud of his
U.S. Navy background
and usually wore an “N”
for Navy on his jacket or
helmet. (Photo credit:
National Archives and
Records Administration,
College Park, MD)
Captain Walker Hancock, U.S. First Army. Age: 43. Born:
St. Louis, Missouri. Hancock was a renowned sculptor
who had won the prestigious Prix de Rome before the war
and designed the Army Air Medal in 1942. Warmhearted
and optimistic, he wrote often to his great love, Saima
Natti, whom he had married only two weeks before
shipping to Europe for duty. His most common refrain
was his joy in his work and his dreams of a house and
studio where they could live and work together in
Gloucester, Massachusetts. (Photo credit: Walker Hancock
Collection)
^
JAN VERMEER, THE ASTRONOMER, 1668. Oil on
Canvas, 51 x 45 cm (20 x 17 3/4 in). Louvre, Paris, France.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
LA GLEIZE, BELGIUM FEB 1, 1945: During the
Battle of the Bulge, the
church in La Gleize was
severely damaged. The
statue, known as the
Madonna of La Gleize,
was fully exposed to one
of the harshest winters on
record. Note the gaping
hole in the roof overhead.
(Photo Credit: Walker
Hancock Collection)
Rose Valland, Temporary Custodian of the Jeu de Paume.
Age: 46. Born: Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, France. Rose
Valland, a woman of modest means raised in the
countryside of France, was the unlikely hero of the French
cultural world. She was a longtime unpaid volunteer at
the Jeu de Paume museum, adjacent to the Louvre, when
the Nazi occupation of Paris began. An unassuming but
determined single woman with a forgettable bland style
and manner, she ingratiated herself with the Nazis at the
Jeu de Paume and, unbeknownst to them, spied on their
activities for the four years of their occupation. After the
liberation of Paris, the extent and importance of her secret
information, which she fiercely guarded, had a pivotal
impact on the discovery of looted works of art from
France. (Photo credit: Archives des Musées Nationaux
Captain Robert Posey, U.S.
Third Army. Age: 40. Born:
Morris, Alabama. Raised in
poverty on an Alabama farm,
Posey graduated from
Auburn University with a
degree in architecture thanks
to funding from the army’s
Reserve Officers’ Training
Corps (ROTC). The loner of
the MFAA, he was deeply
proud of Third Army and its
legendary commander
General George S. Patton Jr.
He wrote frequently to his
wife, Alice, and often picked
up cards and souvenirs for his
young son Dennis, whom he
called “Woogie.” (Photo
credit: Robert Posey
Collection)
American GIs admire
In the Conservatory, a
masterpiece by
Edouard Manet. This
painting from KaiserFriderich Museum in
Berlin, had been
brought to the mine
for safekeeping.
(Photo credit: National
Archives and Records
Administration,
College Park, MD /
Public Domain)
PARIS - DECEMBER 2, 1941: At
the Jeu de Paume Museum,
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring,
painting in his left hand and cigar
in his right, sits gazing at two
paintings by Henri Matisse being
supported by Bruno Lohse.
Standing to Göring’s left is his art
advisor, Walter Andreas Hofer.
Note the bottle of champagne on
the table at center. Both paintings
were stolen from the Paul
Rosenberg collection by the Nazis
and were recovered and returned
after the war. The painting on the
left, titled Marguerites, today
hangs in the Art Institute of
Chicago. The other, titled
Danseuse au Tambourin, is at the
Norton Simon Museum in
Pasadena, California. (Photo
credit: Archives des Musées
Nationaux)
PARIS - SEPTEMBER 12, 1944: Monuments Man James
Rorimer (right) and Ecole du Louvre director Robert Rey,
stand before the empty wall where the Mona Lisa (La
Joconde) once hung before its precautionary evacuation
from the Louvre in 1939. (Photo credit: National Archives
and Records Administration, College Park, MD)
Captain Walter “Hutch” Huchthausen, U.S. Ninth Army.
Age: 40. Born: Perry, Oklahoma. Hutch, a boyishly
handsome bachelor, was a practicing architect and design
professor at the University of Minnesota. Stationed
primarily in the German city of Aachen, he was
responsible for much of the northwest portion of
Germany. (Photo credit: Harvard University Archives, no.
UAV 874.1269)
Second Lieutenant James J. Rorimer, Comm Zone and
U.S. Seventh Army. Age: 39. Born: Cleveland, Ohio.
Rorimer was a wunderkind of the museum world, rising
to curator of the Metropolitan Museum at a young age. A
specialist in medieval art, he was instrumental in the
founding of the Met’s medieval collections branch, the
Cloisters, with the help of the great patron John D.
Rockefeller Jr. Assigned to Paris, his bulldog
determination, willingness to buck the system, and love of
all things French endeared him to Rose Valland. Their
relationship would be vitally important in the race to
discover the Nazi treasure troves. Married to a fellow
employee of the Metropolitan, Katherine, his daughter
Anne was born while he was on active duty; he was not
able to see her for more than two years. (Photo credit:
National Archives and Records Administration, College
Park, MD)
ALTAUSSEE, AUSTRIA - JULY
10, 1945: Removal of priceless
works of art from the salt mine
at Alt Aussee posed problems
for Monuments Man George
Stout unlike any ever
contemplated. Stout constructed
a pulley to lift Michelangelo’s
Bruges Madonna onto the salt
cart to begin its long trip home
to Belgium. Visible on the far left
is Monuments Man Steve
Kovalyak, an expert in packing
art, who was a key assistant to
Stout. (Photo credit: National
Gallery, Washington, D.C.,
Gallery Archives)
^
MICHELANGELO, BRUGES
MADONNA, 1503-04. Marble,
H. 121.9 cm (48 in). Notre
Dame Cathedral, Bruges,
Belgium. (Photo credit:
Wikimedia Commons)
American GIs hand-carried
paintings down the steps of
the castle under the
supervision of Captain
James Rorimer. (Photo
credit: NARA / Public
Domain)
Race Institute Building. In
a corner of the basement
were hundreds of Torah
scrolls piled 10 feet high.
The Race Institute was
used by Alfred Rosenberg
to research the
characteristics of various
people overrun by the
German Army and under
subsequent Nazi rule.
American Chaplain Samuel
Blinder examines a Sefer
Torah as a he begins the
overwhelming task of
sorting and inspecting. July
1945. (Photo credit: NARA
/ Public Domain)
Lieutenant George Stout, U.S. First Army and U.S.
Twelfth Army Group. Age: 47. Born: Winterset, Iowa. A
towering figure in the then obscure field of art
conservation, Stout was one of the first people in America
to understand the Nazi threat to the cultural patrimony of
Europe and pushed the museum community and the
army toward establishing a professional art conservation
corps. As a field officer, he was the go-to expert for all the
other Monuments Men in northern Europe and their
indispensable role model and friend. Dapper and wellmannered, with a fastidiousness and thoroughness that
shone in the field, Stout, a veteran of World War I, left
behind a wife, Margie, and a young son. His oldest son
served in the U.S. Navy. (Photo credit: Walker Hancock
Collection)
Vermeer's Astronomer
found in the Altaussee mine
by the Monuments Men.
(Photo credit: Robert Posey
Collection)
BERNTERODE, GERMANY - MAY 1945: The bronze
coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia was one of four
enormous coffins found at the Bernterode repository by
Monuments Man Walker Hancock. (Photo credit: Walker
Hancock Collection)
NEW JERSEY: Almost sixty-five years later, Harry
Ettlinger reflects with pride on a life well-lived as a
Monuments Man as he stands in front of his grandfather’s
print of the very painting he was never allowed to see as a
Jewish boy growing up in Karlsruhe, Germany. (Photo
credit: Bill Stahl)
Private Harry Ettlinger, U.S. Seventh Army. Age: 18. Born:
Karlsruhe, Germany (immigrated to Newark, New
Jersey). A German Jew, Ettlinger fled Nazi persecution in
1938 with his family. Drafted by the army after
graduating from high school in Newark in 1944, Private
Ettlinger spent much of his tour of duty lost in the army
bureaucracy before finally finding his niche in early May
1945. (Photo credit: Harry Ettlinger Collection)
The Allied Commander-In-Chief General Eisenhower
communicated to commanders the importance of
respecting monuments and artworks so far as war
allowed (Photo credit: NARA / Public Domain)
Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of
Cecilia Gallerani), c. 1483-88. Oil on Panel, 55 x 40 cm (21
2/3 x 15 ¾ in). Czartoryski Museum, Cracow. (Photo
credit: Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain)
Major Ronald Edmund Balfour, First Canadian Army.
Age in 1944: 40. Orn: Oxfordshire, England. Balfour, a
scholar at Cambridge University, was what the British
called a “gentleman scholar”: a bachelor dedicated to the
intellectual life without ambition for accolades or
position. A dedicated Protestant, he began his life as a
history scholar, than switched to ecclesiastic studies. His
prized possession was his immense personal library.
(Photo credit: King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge,
The Papers of Ronald Edmund Balfour, Misc. 5.)
ALTAUSSEE,
AUSTRIA - MAY
1945: One of the many
mine chambers in
which the Nazis had
constructed wooden
shelves to house the
enormous number of
stolen works of art. To
understand the
volume of space in
this one chamber, note
the nine foot ladder in
the center right
portion of the
photograph. (Photo
Credit: Robert Posey
Collection)
Private Paul Oglesby of the 30th Infantry Regiment
pauses to observe this severely damaged church. This was
an all too common scene throughout Italy. September
1943. (Photo credit: National Archives and Records
Administration)
Adolf Hitler and Hermann
Göring both had an interest in
art, and expanded their personal
collections through looting and
other illegal methods of
acquisition. Since their
relationship began in 1922,
Göring was always the number
two man. He knew how to play
the supporting role well.
Whether relaxing together at a
hunting lodge, enjoying a
parade during the “2000 years of
German culture” festival, or
jointly admiring a painting,
Hitler and Göring were linked
as the leaders of the Nazi party
until April 20, 1945, Hitler’s final
birthday and the last time they
would see each other. (Library
of Congress)
By order of the Führer, more
than 16,000 modern works
deemed “degenerate” were
removed from the walls of
German museums. By 1937
works by artists such as
Nolde, Kandinsky, Klee, Dix,
Chagall, Kokoschka,
Beckmann, and many others
were collecting dust in
various storage facilities
pending their new fate. Hitler,
accompanied by Goebbels,
was seemingly always
available when an
opportunity arose to see art,
especially when it could be
used for such effective
propaganda purposes. Here
they examine art at the
Degenerate Art Depot in
Berlin. (National Archives and
Records Administration,
College Park, MD)
In fall 1939, museums across Europe evacuated their
collections to remote locations in the countryside in
anticipation of war. Here, the Winged Victory of
Samothrace is carefully moved down the stairs at the
Louvre Museum in Paris. Louvre workers constructed a
pulley to position the statue before crating it for shipment.
The Monuments Men
encountered repositories such as
this one all across Europe. Here,
piles of boxes, records, and
clothing are guarded by an
American GI inside a church in
Ellingen, Germany. The church
had been used by the Nazis as a
secret depot for clothing
requisitioned from France and
Holland. (National Archives and
Records Administration, College
Park, MD)
This was the scene of devastation that greeted
Monuments Man Walker Hancock and other troops of
U.S. First Army upon their arrival at the Aachen
Cathedral on October 25, 1944. (National Archives and
Records Administration, College Park, MD)
Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.,
and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower inspect the German
museum treasures stored in the Merkers mine on April 12,
1945. Also pictured in the center is Major Irving Leonard
Moskowitz. (National Archives and Records
Administration, College Park, MD)
Monuments Man Lt.
Frank P. Albright,
Polish Liaison
Officer Maj. Karol
Estreicher,
Monuments Man
Capt. Everett Parker
Lesley, and Pfc. Joe
D. Espinosa, guard
with the 34th Field
Artillery Battalion,
pose with Leonard
da Vinci's Lady with
an Ermine upon its
return to Poland in
April 1946.
Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger and
Robert Edsel visited the Castle of
Neuschwanstein in 2012. Here they pose
on the same steps as Rorimer on the
cover of The Monuments Men. Ettlinger
inspected Neuschwanstein with Rorimer
in the summer of 1945. (Photo Credit:
Monuments Men Foundation)
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Gerhard Sommer (age 93. Last known location: Germany)
Vladimir Katriuk (age 93. Last known location: Canada)
Alfred Stark or Stoerk (Last known location: Germany. Last known news: former corporal convicted in
absentia by Rome Military Court for participating in killing of 117 Italian prisoners of war on Greek
island of Cephalonia.)
Johann Robert Riss (Last known location: Germany. Last known news: on May 25, 2011, the former
sergeant found guilty in absentia for participating in killing of 184 civilians near Padule di Fucecchio in
Italy)[2]
X - unnamed person (Last known location: Denmark) wanted for murder of Jews in Bobruisk, Belarus
Y - unnamed person (Last known location: Germany) wanted for being accessory to the murder of
Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz
Z - unnamed person (Last known location: Norway ) wanted for murder of Jews in various locations in
Poland and Ukraine
Oskar Groening (age 93. Last known news: Trial in Hannover, Germany, opened in on 20 April 2015)
Algimantas Dailidė (age 94. Last known news: Deported from USA to Germany in 2004. Sentenced to
five years imprisonment, but was diagnosed "medically unfit to be punished".)
Helmut Oberlander (age 90–91. Last known location: Canada)
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A. Death Camp Personnel
1. Auschwitz-Birkenau – 1,300,000 victims
2. Treblinka – 835,000 victims
3. Belzec – 600,000 victims
4. Majdanek – 360,000 victims
5. Chelmno – 320,000 victims
6. Sobibor – 250,000 victims
B. Einsatzgruppen Personnel
7. Einsatzgruppe A – primarily active in Baltics
8. Einsatzgruppe B – primarily active in Belarus
9. Einsatzgruppe C – primarily active in Northern Ukraine
10. Einsatzgruppe D – primarily active in Southern Ukraine
C. Current Individual Cases
(Country of current residence precedes site of crimes)
1. Gerhard Sommer – Germany (Italy) – massacre of hundreds of civilians in Sant'Anna di Stazzema
2. Vladimir Katriuk – Canada (Belarus) – murder of Jews and non-Jews in various locations
3. Alfred Stark – Germany (Greece) – murder of Italian prisoners of war in Kefalonia
4. Johann Robert Riss – Germany (Italy) – murder of civilians near Padule di Fucecchio
5. X – Denmark (Belarus) – murder of Jews in Bobruisk
6. Y – Germany (Auschwitz) – accessory to murder of Hungarian Jews
7. Z – Norway (Poland and Ukraine) – murder of Jews in various locations
8. Oskar Groening – Germany (Auschwitz) – accessory to murder of Hungarian Jews
9. Algimantas Dailide – Germany (Lithuania) – arrested Jews and Poles executed by Nazis and Lithuanian security police
10. Helmut Oberlander – Canada (Ukraine) – served in Einstazkommando 10a (part of Einsatzgruppe D, which murdered an estimated 23,000 mostly Jewish
civilians)
A WW1 veteran, the Reichsmarschall was head of the luftwaffe, and the
founder of the gestapo. After the fall of France he stole millions of
pounds worth of art from Jews, and amassed a personal fortune. Goering
took part in the beer hall putsch of 1923 and was wounded in the groin.
Subsequently, taking morphine for pain relief, he became addicted to the
drug for the rest of his life. In 1940, the Marshal ordered the bombing of
the civilian population of Britain (the Blitz) and was involved in
planning the holocaust. Goering was the highest ranking defendant
during the Nuremberg Trials. Sentenced to hang, he committed suicide
in his cell the night before his execution by cyanide ingestion.
Known as The “Bitch of Buchenwald” because of her sadistic cruelty
towards prisoners, Ilse Koch was married to another wicked Nazi SS,
Karl Otto Koch, but outshone him in the depraved, inhumane,
disregard for life which was her trademark. She used her sexual
prowess by wandering around the camps naked, with a whip, and if
any man so much as glanced at her she would have them shot on the
spot. The most infamous accusation against Ilse Koch was that she had
selected inmates with interesting tattoos to be killed, so that their skins
could be made into lampshades for her home (though, unfortunately,
no evidence of these lampshades has been found). After the war she
was arrested and spent time in prison on different charges, eventually
hanging herself in her cell in 1967, apparently consumed by guilt.
Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda, and a
vehement antisemite. Goebbels speeches of hatred against Jews
arguably initiated the final solution, and no doubt helped sway
public opinion to the detriment of the Jewish people. A sufferer of
polio, Goebbels had a club foot, but this did not effect his standing
as the second best orator in The Reich. He coined the phrase “Total
War”, and was instrumental in convincing the nation to fight long
after the war was effectively lost. At the end of the war, a devoted
Goebbels stayed in Berlin with Hitler and killed himself, along with
his wife Magda and their six young children.
Born in Austria, Stangl was a commandant of the Sobibor and
Treblinka extermination camps. In 1940, through a direct order
from Heinrich Himmler, Stangl became superintendent of the T-4
Euthanasia Program at the Euthanasia Institute at Schloss
Hartheim where mentally and physically disabled people were
sent to be killed. Stangl accepted, and grew accustomed to the
killing of Jews , perceiving prisoners not as humans but merely as
“cargo”. He is quoted as saying, “I remember standing there, next
to the pits full of black-blue corpses…. somebody said ‘What shall
we do with rotting garbage?’ that started me thinking of them as
cargo. Stangl escaped Germany after the war and was eventually
arrested in Brazil, in 1967. He was tried for the deaths of around
900,000 people. He admitted to these killings, but argued: “My
conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty”. He died of heart
failure in 1971, while serving a life sentence.
During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he
commanded Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C,
that was active in Ukraine. Following Wehrmacht troops
into Ukraine, the Einsatzgruppen would be responsible
for liquidating political and racial undesirables. Blobel
was primarily responsible for the Babi Yar massacre at
Kiev. Up to 59,018 executions are attributable to Blobel,
though during testimony he was alleged to have killed
10,000-15,000. He was later sentenced to death by the U.S.
Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen Trial.
He was hanged at Landsberg Prison on June 8, 1951.
Kramer was the Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp. Dubbed “The Beast of Belsen” by
camp inmates; he was a notorious Nazi war criminal,
directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.
Kramer adopted his own draconian policies at Auschwitz
and Belsen and, along with Irma Grese, he terrorized his
prisoners without remorse. After the war he was
convicted of war crimes and hanged in Hameln prison by
noted British executioner Albert Pierrepoint. Whilst on
trial he stated his lack of feelings as he was “just following
orders”.
Austrian born Kaltenbrunner was chief of security in the
Reich where he replaced Reinhard Heydrich. He was
president of Interpol from 1943 to 1945, and was there to
destroy the enemies within the Reich. Kaltenbrunner was
a physically imposing man with scars on his cheeks,
which made him look like the tyrant he really was.
Kaltenbrunner was one of the main perpetrators of the
holocaust and he was hanged after the Nuremberg trials
on 16th October 1946. He was the highest ranked SS man
to be hanged.
Jeckeln led one of the largest collections of
Einsatzgruppen, and was personally responsible for
ordering the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Slavs, Roma,
and other “undesirables” of the Third Reich, in the
occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln
developed his own methods to kill large numbers of
people, which became known as the “Jeckeln System”
during the Rumbula, Babi Yar, and Kamianets-Podilskyi
Massacres. After the war he was tried and hanged by the
Russian,s in Riga on February 3, 1946.
WW1 veteran Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger led the infamous SS
Dirlewanger Brigade, a penal battalion comprised of the sickest
most vicious criminals in the Riech. Dirlwanger raped two 13 year
old girls on separate occasions in the 1930s, and lost his Dr. title
after being imprisoned, only to have it reinstated after his bravery
Fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He volunteered for the SS at the
start of WW2, and was given his own battalion due to his excellent
soldiery, Dirlewanger’s unit was employed in operations against
partisans in the occupied Soviet Union, but he and his soldiers are
widely believed to have tortured, raped and murdered civilians
(including children) and he allegedly fed female hostages strychnine
in order to entertain his soldiers whilst they died in agony.
Dirlewanger was captured by the French in a hospital after being
injured at the front as he had always led his soldiers into battle. The
French handed him over to the Polish, who locked him up and beat
and tortured him over the next few days. He died from injuries
inflicted by the Polish guards around June 5, 1945.
Odilo Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi, and later an
SS leader. He was one of the men most responsible for the
murder of millions of people during the Holocaust. Globocnik
was responsible for liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, which
contained about 500,000 Jews, the largest Jewish community in
Europe, and the second largest in the world, after New York.
He is also known for liquidating the Bialystok Ghetto, which
stood out for its strong resistance to German occupation and
resettling a large quantity of Poles under the premise of ethnic
cleansing. He was in charge of the implementation and
supervision of the Lublin reservation, to which 95,000 Jews
were deported, with its adjacent network of forced labour
camps in the Lublin district. He was also in charge of over
45,000 Jewish laborers. On May 21st, Shortly after capture,
Globocnik committed suicide by means of a cyanide capsule
hidden in his mouth.
Eichmann was the organizational talent that orchestrated the mass
deportation of Jews from their countries into waiting ghettos and
extermination camps. A prodigy of Heydrich, he is sometimes
referred to as “the architect of the Holocaust”. He learned Hebrew
and studied all things Jewish in order to manipulate Jews, through
his power of coercion, to leave their occupied territories and
possessions in favor of a better life in the ghettos. At the end of the
war he was doing the same to Hungarian Jews and, if it wasn’t for
the intervention of Raoul Wallenberg, the number of victims of the
holocaust would have been much higher. He fled Germany at the
end of the war via a ratline to south America, and was captured by
the Mossad in Argentina. He was extradited to Israel and executed
by hanging in 1962, after a highly publicized trial. Eichmanns death
was, and is, the only civil execution ever carried out in Israel.
Mengele initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians
who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners,
determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced
laborer, but is far more infamous for performing grisly human
experiments on camp inmates, for which Mengele was called the
“Angel of Death”. His crimes were evil and of many. When it was
reported that one hospital block was infested with lice, Mengele
gassed every single one of the 750 women assigned to it. Mengele
used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on
heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. He was
particularly interested in identical twins. Mengele’s experiments
included attempts to take one twin’s eyeballs and attach them to the
back of the other twin’s head, changing eye color by injecting
chemicals into children’s eyes, various amputations of limbs, and
other brutal surgeries. He survived the war, and after a period living
incognito in Germany, he fled to South America, where he evaded
capture for the rest of his life, despite being hunted as a Nazi war
criminal.
Heydrich was appointed Protector of Bohemia and
Moravia. In August 1940, he was appointed and served as
President of Interpol. Heydrich chaired the 1942 Wannsee
Conference, which discussed plans for the deportation
and extermination of all Jews in German occupied
territory, thus being the mastermind of the holocaust. He
was attacked by British trained Czech agents on 27 May,
1942, sent to assassinate him in Prague. He died slightly
over a week later from complications arising from his
injuries. The foundations of genocide were laid by
Heydrich and carried out in Operation Reinhard in his
name.
Hitler would be some people’s choice to be number one
but not mine. Adolf Hitler went from being a lance
corporal in the German army, to chancellor of Germany in
15 years. The holocaust may have been his subordinates
doing, but he knew about it, which, amazingly, has only
been fairly recently proven. Adolf Hitler had a major role
in initiating the bloodiest conflict ever, which still has a
massive bearing on the world to this day. His
megalomania saw large parts of Europe devastated in his
lifetime and forced into communism after the war.
Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the holocaust and
considered to be the biggest mass murderer ever, by some
(although it’s really Josef Stalin). The holocaust would not
have happened if not for this man. He tried to breed a
master race of Nordic appearance, the Aryan race. His
plans for racial purity were ended by Hitler’s vanity in
making rash military decisions rather than letting his
generals make them, thus ending the war prematurely.
Himmler was captured after the war. He unsuccessfully
tried to negotiate with the west, and was genuinely
shocked to be treated as a criminal upon capture. He
committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule he
had bit upon.
Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the
Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg,
Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants, who included Nazi
Party officials and high-ranking military officers along with German
industrialists, lawyers and doctors, were indicted on such charges as
crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. Nazi leader Adolf
Hitler (1889-1945) committed suicide and was never brought to trial.
Although the legal justifications for the trials and their procedural
innovations were controversial at the time, the Nuremberg trials are
now regarded as a milestone toward the establishment of a permanent
international court, and an important precedent for dealing with later
instances of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20,
1945, to October 1, 1946. The format of the trial was a mix of legal traditions: There were prosecutors and
defense attorneys according to British and American law, but the decisions and sentences were imposed
by a tribunal (panel of judges) rather than a single judge and a jury. The chief American prosecutor was
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied
powers supplied two judges–a main judge and an alternate.
Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminal
(such as the “Gestapo,” or secret state police). One of the indicted men was deemed medically unfit to
stand trial, while a second man killed himself before the trial began. Hitler and two of his top associates,
Heinrich Himmler (1900-45) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-45), had each committed suicide in the spring of
1945 before they could be brought to trial. The defendants were allowed to choose their own lawyers,
and the most common defense strategy was that the crimes defined in the London Charter were
examples of ex post facto law; that is, they were laws that criminalized actions committed before the laws
were drafted. Another defense was that the trial was a form of victor’s justice–the Allies were applying a
harsh standard to crimes committed by Germans and leniency to crimes committed by their own
soldiers.
As the accused men and judges spoke four different languages, the trial saw
the introduction of a technological innovation taken for granted today:
instantaneous translation. IBM provided the technology and recruited men
and women from international telephone exchanges to provide on-the-spot
translations through headphones in English, French, German and Russian.
In the end, the international tribunal found all but three of the defendants
guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were
given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life behind bars. Ten of the
condemned were executed by hanging on October 16, 1946. Hermann Göring
(1893-1946), Hitler’s designated successor and head of the “Luftwaffe”
(German air force), committed suicide the night before his execution with a
cyanide capsule he had hidden in a jar of skin medication.
Following the Trial of Major War Criminals, there were 12 additional trials held at
Nuremberg. These proceedings, lasting from December 1946 to April 1949, are grouped
together as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. They differed from the first trial in that
they were conducted before U.S. military tribunals rather than the international tribunal that
decided the fate of the major Nazi leaders. The reason for the change was that growing
differences among the four Allied powers had made other joint trials impossible. The
subsequent trials were held in the same location at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.
These proceedings included the Doctors Trial (December 9, 1946-August 20, 1947), in which
23 defendants were accused of crimes against humanity, including medical experiments on
prisoners of war. In the Judges Trial (March 5-December 4, 1947), 16 lawyers and judges were
charged with furthering the Nazi plan for racial purity by implementing the eugenics laws of
the Third Reich. Other subsequent trials dealt with German industrialists accused of using
slave labor and plundering occupied countries; high-ranking army officers accused of
atrocities against prisoners of war; and SS officers accused of violence against concentration
camp inmates. Of the 185 people indicted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, 12 defendants
received death sentences, 8 others were given life in prison and an additional 77 people
received prison terms of varying lengths, according to the USHMM. Authorities later reduced
a number of the sentences.
The Nuremberg trials were controversial even among those who wanted the major
criminals punished. Harlan Stone (1872-1946), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
at the time, described the proceedings as a “sanctimonious fraud” and a “high-grade
lynching party.” William O. Douglas (1898-1980), then an associate U.S. Supreme
Court justice, said the Allies “substituted power for principle” at Nuremberg.
Nonetheless, most observers considered the trials a step forward for the establishment
of international law. The findings at Nuremberg led directly to the United Nations
Genocide Convention (1948) and Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), as
well as the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War (1949). In addition,
the International Military Tribunal supplied a useful precedent for the trials of
Japanese war criminals in Tokyo (1946-48); the 1961 trial of Nazi leader Adolf
Eichmann (1906-62); and the establishment of tribunals for war crimes committed in
the former Yugoslavia (1993) and in Rwanda (1994).