1947-11-22: Appeals denied by the Military Governor for the US Zone

On Saturday, November 22nd, 1947 the Military Governor of the US Zone, General Lucius D. Clay, denied the appeals of the convicted defendants in the Doctors’ Trial.

Regarding the International Military Tribunal and twelve Nuremberg minor trials, General Clay wrote in his 1950 memoir, Decision in Germany (pp. 250–252):

The Legal Division had a major part to play in the trials of war criminals in our zone although neither Military Government nor the Army had responsibility other than to provide administrative and housekeeping services for the International Tribunal which tried the major Nazi criminals—Goering, Hess, et al, in Nuremberg. In this trial, which started on November 20, 1945, and ended on October 1, 1946, the United States was represented on the court by Judges Francis Biddle and John J. Parker, and on the prosecution by Associate Justice Robert Jackson of the Supreme Court. Military Government was responsible for full publicity in Germany including the dissemination of trial proceedings by press, radio, and motion picture. It arranged for German press representation and for German jurists and other officials to attend. When the trials were concluded it was my duty as a member of the Co-ordinating Committee to study the appeals for clemency and to pass on the sentences to the Control Council, to arrange for the execution and disposition of remains of those sentenced to death, and for the imprisonment at Spandau prison in Berlin under rotating Allied guard of those sentenced to imprisonment. The members of both the Co-ordinating Committee and the Council considered these matters in executive sessions and pledged themselves never to disclose the factors taken into consideration, the nature of last-minute appeals, the notes of the individuals, and the decision taken for the disposition of the bodies of those sentenced to death.

Much has been written about the Nuremberg trials, their legal basis, and their probable status in history. My comment will be limited to the effect of the trials in Germany. They were conducted in solemn dignity and with a high sense of justice. The mass of evidence, which exposed not only the relentless cruelty of the Nazi regime but also the grasping rapacity of its leaders, was convincing to the German people. They may have known something of crimes committed by their own leaders, but they did not know the full extent of the mass extermination of helpless human lives, or the ruthless cruelty of the concentration camp. The trials completed the destruction of Nazism in Germany. Nationalism in some form or other may revive again but not under Nazi leadership, which was shown not only to have used murder as an everyday political tool but also to have used it as a means of personal enrichment. No one in Germany during the trial could fail to witness its effect on the German people.

Subsequent to the International Trial, much time was lost in determining whether the additional trials should be on an international or a national basis. Soviet participation in the International Tribunal had not been received happily in the nations of the world where justice prevails, and Soviet dissents in the final judgment of the International Tribunal made new international trials undesirable. It was resolved that we would proceed in the United States Zone under Military Government, and Justice Jackson’s able young assistant, General Telford Taylor, was persuaded to head the prosecution staff. Great difficulty was experienced in obtaining qualified jurists for the courts and our hopes of a substantial representation from the federal judiciary were dashed by Chief Justice Fred Vinson’s decision that federal judges could not be granted leave for the purpose. It took a considerable period of time to obtain qualified jurists from the state judiciary systems to form the six courts. They were to try twelve cases, carefully selected to cover the range of German political and economic life which had contributed to its aggressive policy.

These cases included the industrial combines of Flick, Krupp, and I. G. Farben; the physicians and surgeons who used prisoners for experimental purposes; the Storm Troop leadership that had ordered mass exterminations; the military leaders who had exploited occupied territories; the Justice Ministry, which had violated all normal concepts of justice in condoning mass extermination and in its application of Nazi laws; and the Foreign Office experts who had worked to create the international situation in which aggressive war could be launched with maximum hope for success. It is still difficult to appraise the full significance of these trials or their effect on German thinking. The trials which dealt with acts of atrocity identified the defendants with mass exterminations and added to the German knowledge of the extent of Nazi brutality. In these cases there was little sympathy for the prisoners. To prove that industrialists had helped to provide war was more difficult and the courts did not find the evidence submitted sufficient to convict. Punishment of the industrialists resulted for the most part from their use and abuse of slave labor. These trials which failed to convince courts likewise failed to convince the German people of the guilt of their industrial leaders in the events which led to war. The trials of the military leaders had little effect on the German people.

The involved nature of the cases required the use of many documents by both the prosecution and the defense, so that they required months for completion. It was difficult to sustain public interest over a long period of time as much of the evidence was repetitious, and this was true at home as well as in Germany. On the whole, though, those of us who were responsible for the trials feel that the full evidence will provide history with an unparalleled record of how greed and avarice attract unscrupulous hands to bring misery and destruction to the world. Perhaps an analysis of the causes thus exposed may yet reveal the cure. Certainly, in reviewing the cases which came before me, I felt no hesitancy in approving the sentences.