Martin Bormann

Bormann was with Hitler and Goebbels in Hitlers subterranean bunker on April 30,
1945. Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide while Bormann and others fled the
bunker in an attempt to escape the rapidly advancing Soviet army. While he was
presumed dead or captured, his whereabouts were unconfirmed at the time of the
trials in Nuremberg.

Bormann replaced Hess as Hitlers Deputy in charge of Party affairs after Hess was
asked to resign following his unofficial flight to England to persuade England to
negotiate peace with Hitler. Bormanns reputation among members of his own Party
and, especially, the German army was very negative. He was seen as uncivilized,
ruthless and brutal.

In his absence from the trial, the Bormann investigation proceeded on the basis of
voluminous documentary evidence linking him to the expulsion of millions of Jews to
Poland, the utilization of Ukrainian women as slave labor.

Martin Bormann was sentenced in absentia to death by hanging.

Karl Doenitz:
After Hitlers rejection of the Versailles Treaty in 1935, Karl Doenitz was made
commander of the submarine unit of the German navy (Germany was forbidden
submarines by the treaty). By 1940 he had risen to the rank of Vice Admiral. He was
indicted under Counts One, Two and Three of the Indictment and mainly for that

section of the Indictment dealing with War Crimes on the seas, particularly in
connection with the charges that German U-Boats had sunk British merchant ships.

His main defense consisted of counter charges that the U.S. had also sunk Japanese
merchant vessels. This was not, primarily, a "you are another" defense. Rather, his
defense counsel argued for acquittal on the grounds that the German Navy and the
U.S. Navy had committed identical military actions and with the same justification -that Japanese and British merchant vessels were part of the military effort of those
nations.

There was no strong evidence that Doenitz had attended planning sessions of the
German War Department and only minimal evidence that he had been involved in
the extermination or enslavement of civilian populations. His guilt was mainly in the
area of "War Crimes."

Karl Doenitz was given 10 years imprisonment at Spandau Prison.

Hans Frank:
Hans Frank joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and was appointed Minister and Reich
Commissioner for Justice in 1933. He served as Governor of the
Generalgouvernment of Poland from 1939 to the end of the war. Under his
administration the approximately 2.5 million Jews in the occupied territories of
Poland were exploited in slave labor. Also during his administration, the
extermination camps in eastern Poland were constructed implemented. In the initial
stages of his testimony, Frank denied knowing anything about Auschwitz or

Maidanek, even though Auschwitz was only 30 miles from Cracow, the seat of his
administrative offices. However, when the thirty-six volumes of his journal were
brought into the courtroom on October 8, Franks testimony shifted from denial of
knowledge to denial of responsibility and finally to open condemnation of Hitler,
acceptance of guilt and pleas for mercy. His confession, however, according to
Telford Taylor, was a civic confession rather than an individual one.

Hans Frank was sentenced to death by hanging.

Wilhelm Frick:
Frick became a Nazi as early as 1923 served as the Nazi Minister of the Interior until
from 1933 to 1943. He played a significant role in the formation of Nazi racial laws
and anti-Semitic legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and 1938. He
was also instrumental, along with Goering in the Aryanization of Jewish assets
following Kristallnacht.

Wilhelm Frick was sentenced to death by hanging.

Hans Fritzsche:
It was probably Goebbels who, more than and of the witnesses or documents called
in on Fritzsches account that saved him from being convicted. As a radio
broadcaster he had indeed disseminated information and propaganda that was
extremely important to the Nazi organization; however, it could never be
demonstrated that he was the originator of the materials. The media was under
such tight control of Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda that the only source of

information available to journalists and broadcasters was the information provided

them by Goebbels office. His antisemitism seems to have been an ideology of
assent rather than one which he pressed upon the German population.

Hans Fritzsche was acquitted.

Walter Funk:
As a close friend of President Hindenberg, Walter Funk was accustomed to high-level
political and administrative interactions. When Hitler came to power, Funk was
appointed to the position of Press Chief of Hitlers government. Shortly after his
appointment, Goebbels formed the Ministry of Propaganda and Funks office was
subordinated to Goebbels. Later he was appointed to replace Hjalmar Schacht as
Minister of Economics. That office, too, came under the control of Goebbels. Some
months later, he was appointed by Hitler as President of the Reichsbank. The bank
was assigned the role of economic planning for the war effort.

Funk also attended the high-level meeting following the events of Kristallnacht. It
was at this meeting that the decision was made to hold the Jews responsible for the
destruction visited upon them by roving Nazi gangs. Under Heydrichs and Goebbels
leadership, it was also decided at that Jews would be excluded from the German
economy a distinct first step in the direction of the Holocaust.

One tense moment in the trial occurred when documentary evidence was presented
by the prosecutors staff that the Reichsbank received and held a large deposit from
the SS. The deposit consisted of bags of jewelry and other valuables, including

dental gold, taken from Jewish victims in Eastern Europe. Funk consistently denied
knowledge of the contents of those bags and the prosecutors could never show
conclusively that he did have such knowledge. Now could they demonstrate
conclusively that he was instrumental in planning military operations, or that he was
directly involved in crimes against humanity.

Walter Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from Spandau
Prison in 1957 and died in 1960.

Hermann Goering:
Goering was perhaps the most influential person, next to Hitler, in the Nazi
organization. He was one of only 12 Nazis elected to the Reichstag in 1928. He
orchestrated the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 and, with Goebbels assistance,
used the fire as a propaganda tool against the communists. In the mid-1930's
Goering was in charge of the Aryanization of Jewish property, a policy which
extended to Jews throughout Europe following the Anschluss.

After the events of Kristallnacht, November 8 and 9, 1938, Goering (under

instructions from Hitler) called a high-level meeting of the party, on November 12,
to assess the damage done during the night and place responsibility for it. Present
at the meeting were Goering, Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Walter Funk and other
ranking Nazi officials. The intent of this meeting was two-fold: to make the Jews
responsible for Kristallnacht and to use the events of the preceding days as a
rationale for promulgating a series of anti-Semitic laws which would, in effect,
remove Jews from the German economy. An interpretive transcript of this meeting is

provided by Robert Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, New York: Harper and Row,
1983:164-172):

Gentlemen! Today's meeting is of a decisive nature, Goering announced. I have

received a letter written on the Fuehrers orders requesting that the Jewish question
be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another.

Kristallnacht turns out to be a crucial turning point in German policy regarding the
Jews and may be considered as the actual beginning of what is now called the
Holocaust. Following that meeting, a wide-ranging set of anti-Semitic laws were
passed which had the clear intent, in Goerings words, of "Aryanizing" the German
economy. The path to the "Final Solution" had been chosen.

Hermann Goering was sentenced to death by hanging. He evades the sentence by

committing suicide in his cell.

Rudolph Hoss:
Hess is not to be confused with Rudolph Hess, commandant of Auschwitz who was
tried in Warsaw in 1947 and executed at Auschwitz. Hoss served as Hitlers deputy
minister and was next in line if Goering should be unavailable for any reason.
According to Telford Taylor (The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, 1992:25),
Churchill made statements at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, which
indicates that he did not consider Hess to be a "major war criminal" and should be
given a "judicial trial." Apparently, Churchill was not fully aware of Hoss
involvement in Nazi atrocities.

Vera Laska, ed., Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of
Eyewitnesses. Westport & London: Greenwood Press, 1983 tells us:

These preparatory schools for murder [euthanasia centers, BSA] offered the training
course for the roughnecks who learned by killing thousands of Christian German and
Austrian individual victims and, thus insensitized, graduated to the main task, which
was to be the genocide of millions of Jews, and eventually of Gypsies, Poles,
Russians, Czechs and other less worthy Slavs. The program was administered under
Rudolf Hess and, after his departure, under Martin Bormann. Medical supervision
was under Werner Heyde, M.D., professor at the University of Wurzburg; 100,000
people were dispatched this way. They experimented with various gasses and
injections; they photographed the effect, clocked the speed of death by a
stopwatch, filmed it in slow motion and then dissected the brain -- all as an
undergraduate course preparatory for genocide.

Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment. He served over 40 years of that
sentence at Spandau Prison and committed suicide in 1987 at age 93.

Alfred Jodl:
Alfred Jodl was Chief of the Operations Section of the Wehrmacht [the regular
German Army], under the direction of Blomberg and Keitel. In that capacity, he was
involved in the destruction of Czechoslovakia. During his trial, Jodl asserted that it
was the Czechs who initiated it by massing troops on the German border, knowing
full well that plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia were in place at least six

months prior to the invasion. He characterized the invasion of the Soviet Union as a
"preventive measure" since Soviet troops were concentrated along the German
border.

In regard to "crimes against humanity," Jodl was strongly implicated in promoting

forced labor -- particularly against the civilian populations of Denmark, Holland,
France and Belgium.

His primary defense was the "higher authority" plea. At the end of the crossexamination, Jodl stated, "It is not the task of a soldier to be the judge of his
Commander in Chief. May history or the Almighty do that." (quoted in Taylor,
1992:439).

Alfred Jodl was sentenced to death by hanging.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner:
Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, went on trial at
Nuremberg on April 11, 1946. He replaced Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated
by Czech agents in May, 1943 and assumed control over the SD and the Gestapo.
Like most other security positions, Kaltenbrunner came under the direct authority of
Heinrich Himmler. His position placed him in direct contact with the Einsatzgruppen.
SS officer, Otto Ohlenberg, appearing as a witness at the trials Under questioning by
Col. Amen, Ohlendorf offers the following testimony:

COL. AMEN: What were the positions of Kaltenbrunner, Mueller, and Eichmann in the
RSHA, and state for what periods of time each of them continued to serve in his
respective capacity? OHLENDORF: Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the Sicherheitspolizei
and the SD; as such, he was also Chief of the RSHA, the internal organizational term
for the office of the chief of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD. Kaltenbrunner
occupied this position from 1/30/1943 until the end of the war. Mueller was Chief of
Amt IV, the Gestapo. When the Gestapo was established, he became Deputy Chief,
and as such he logically became Chief of Amt IV of the RSHA. He occupied this
position until the end of the war. Eichmann occupied a position in Amt IV under
Mueller and worked on the Jewish problem from approximately 1940 onwards. To my
knowledge, he also occupied this position until the end of the war.

Regarding Kaltenbrunners involvement with the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing

units), Ohlendorf testified:

COL. AMEN: In what respects, if any, were the official duties of the Einsatz groups
concerned with Jews and Communist commissars? OHLENDORF: On the question of
Jews and Communists, the Einsatzgruppen and the commanders of the
Einsatzkommandos were orally instructed before their mission. COL. AMEN: What
were their instructions with respect to the Jews and the Communist functionaries?
OHLENDORF: The instructions were that in the Russian operational areas of the
Einsatzgruppen the Jews, as well as the Soviet political commissars, were to be
liquidated. COL. AMEN: And when you say "liquidated" do you mean "killed?"

Then, a few questions later:

COL. AMEN: Do you know whether the mission and the agreement were also known
to Kaltenbrunner? OHLENDORF: After his assumption of office Kaltenbrunner had to
deal with these questions and consequently must have known details of the
Einsatzgruppen which were offices of his.

Under further questioning and cross-examination, Col. Amen presented

documentary and witness evidence linking Kaltenbrunner to Mauthausen, the
crematoria and the extermination of Jews (cf. Taylor, 1992:361).

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death by hanging.

Wilhelm Keitel:
Whereas some of the defendants were relatively [difficult] cases for the tribunal
because of their minimal involvement, Keitel was relatively easy because of his
extensive involvement in the Nazi organization. He served as Hitlers military Chief
of Staff and, consequently, was directly involved in the planning of the war at the
highest level. His direct involvement in the "terror fliers" policy, which resulted in
the wanton downing of British and American planes and the summary execution of
the fliers and the "Night and Fog" decrees of 1941 which resulted, over the next
three years, in the summary execution without court martial or trial, of military
prisoners-of-war, were extremely damaging to his defense. Even while admitting his
complicity in "war crimes," Keitel declared his loyalty, as a soldier, to his
commander-in- chief.

Wilhelm Keitel was sentenced to death by hanging.

Erich Raeder:
Like Doenitz, Erich Raeder was a German naval commander and, as Commander-inChief of the Navy, he was Doenitz superior officer. He, like Doenitz, was charged
under Counts One, Two and Three of the Indictment. Also, as in the case of Doenitz,
the most serious charges came in connection with German U-Boat activity. Unlike
Doenitz, however, strong evidence was presented to show that Raeder was also
involved in the "general plan and conspiracy" to wage aggressive war in violation
international law and existing treaties.

Erich Raeder was given life imprisonment. Because of failing health, he was
released from Spandau Prison in 1955 and died in 1960.

Alfred Rosenberg:
Rosenberg was a Baltic German who had migrated to Germany in 1918 and became
a member of the Nazi Party in 1919. He was Hitlers chief racial ideologist.
Throughout his career, he was obsessed with the idea that the Russian Revolution
was, in large part, the work of an "international Jewish conspiracy." Early in his Nazi
career he served as editor of the Nazi Newspaper, Peoples Observer. He was not
well-liked be other members of the party, but he had Hitlers favor. In 1930 he was
elected to the Reichstag and, after holding several minor offices in Hitlers
organization, he was appointed as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories during the way and worked for a German- subjugated Russia, free of Jews
and colonized by people of Aryan blood.

He admitted knowledge of the Einsatzgruppens extermination of Jews and he

admitted participating in the forced labor programs involving of subjugated people
in the eastern Occupied Territories.

Alfred Rosenberg was sentenced to death by hanging.

Fritz Sauckel:
As Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of labor, it was Sauckels responsibility
to provide laborers for the industrial component of the German war economy. With
so many of Germanys able-bodied men in uniform, it became increasingly difficult
to secure laborers. Under Saukels leadership nearly 5 million laborers were
imported involuntarily from France and other foreigners in German occupied
territories -- principally from eastern Europe and the Slavic states. He was charged
with the solicitation of slave labor -- in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1930.

Sauckel was sentenced to death by hanging.

Hjalmar Schacht:
Why Hjalmar Schacht was included in the list of defendants is unclear. In fact, the
only charges brought against him were: contributing to Hitlers, and the Nazi Partys
rise to power and promoting preparations for war. His dislike of the Versailles Treaty,
his belief that the German military should once again be strong and his support of
the Anschluss were well known, but these are hardly "war crimes." He was never in
a position to exercise significant influence in any of the planning and preparation for

war. Likewise, Schacht had never concealed his antisemitism and his agreement
that Jews should be excluded from governmental and civil service positions

Hjalmar Schacht was acquitted.

Artur Seyss-Inquart:
In March, 1938, under Hitlers urging, Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian
Chancellor, appointed Artur Seyss-Inquart as Austrian Minister of the Interior of
Public Safety. When Schuschnigg resigned a month later, Hitler appointed SeyssInquart Chancellor. Immediately, the new Chancellor invited German troops to enter
Austria. The Anschluss was under way. In October, 1939 he was appointed Deputy
Governor-General in Poland under Hans Frank. In that position he was instrumental
in the formation of the Lublin Plan for the deportation of Jews from the Reich (cf.
Jozeph Michman, ""Artur Seyss-Inquart," in Israel Gutman, ed. Encyclopedia of the
Holocaust: Vol. 4, 1990:1346ff)

In May, 1940, Hitler appointed him Reich Commissioner of the Occupied

Netherlands to pave the way for the annexation of that country. In late 1940 and
1941, Seyss-Inquart was active in the Aryanization of Jewish property and the
deportation of Dutch Jews to the extermination camps in Poland. His knowledge of
Hitlers intentions, both militarily and with regard to the Jews was extensive and
intimate.

Artur Seyss-Inquart was charged on all four counts and was sentenced to death by
hanging.

Albert Speer:
The following section of Justice Jacksons cross-examination of Speer clarifies his
involvement in the Nazi movement:

JUSTICE JACKSON: You have stated a good many of the matters for which you were
not responsible, and I want to make clear just what your sphere of responsibility
was. You were not only a member of the Nazi Party after 1932, but you held high
rank in the Party, did you not?

SPEER: Correct.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And what was the position which you held in the Party?

SPEER: I have already mentioned that during my pre-trial interrogations. Temporarily

in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the
improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public
works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941. Notes of the
conference I had with Hitler about this are available. After 2/8/1942 I automatically
became Todts successor in the central office for technical matters in the
Reichsleitung of the NSDAP.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And what was your official title?

SPEER: Party titles had just been introduced, and they were so complicated that I
cannot tell you at the moment what they were. But the work I did there was that of
a department chief in the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP. My title was Hauptdienstleiter
or something of the kind.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: In the 1943 directory it would appear that you were head of
the "Hauptamt fur Technik."

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And your rank appears to be "Oberbefehlsleiter"?

SPEER: Yes, that is quite possible.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Which as I understand corresponds 1 roughly to a lieutenant

general in the army?

SPEER: Well, compared to the other tasks I had it was very little.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you attended Party functions from time to time and were
informed in a general way as to the Party program, were you not?

SPEER: Before 1942 I joined in the various Party rallies here in Nuremberg because I
had to take part in them as an architect, and of course besides this I was generally
present at official Party meetings or Reichstag sessions.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: And you heard discussed, and were generally familiar with,
the program of the Nazi Party in its broad outlines, were you not?

SPEER: Of course.

Albert Speer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released from

Spandau Prison on September 30, 1966. Speer died in 1981.

Julius Streicher:
As Editor-in-Chief of the venomous anti-Semitic paper, Der Stuermer, Julius Streicher
disseminated hatred and the most virulent strain of anti-Jewish sentiment to be
found in all of Germany. And Hitler strongly approved of Streichers publication. The
only real trouble he ever got into with the Nazi Party was for raising questions about
Goerings sexual prowess. When Goerings wife, Emma, was about to give birth,
Streicher suggested that perhaps Emma had been artificially inseminated (Conot,
Justice at Nuremberg, 1983:383). Daniel Goldhagen (Hitlers Willing Executioners,
1996:102) describes him as "the most rabid antisemite in Germany." Jackson called
him "the venomous vulgarian." However, Streicher was non-military, he was not
part of the planning process of the Holocaust, nor of the invasion of Poland or the
Soviet Union. And, yet, his role in inciting the extermination of Jews was significant
enough, in the judgment of the prosecutors, to include him in the indictment.

Julius Streicher was sentenced to death by hanging.

Constantin von Neurath:

The sentence of Neurath has been criticized as relatively harsh. His case was little
different from that of Papen and Schacht, both of whom were acquitted. The most
serious charges against him were relative to his position and actions with regard to
the recolonization of Czechoslovakia by Germans in keeping with Hitlers
lebensraum ideology. The Tribunal seemed unimpressed with his claim that he
remained in his position in Czechoslovakia to prevent that country from being taken
over completely by the SS (cf. Conot, 1983:450). On the other hand, the Tribunal
was convinced that Neurath knowledge of Hitlers plans for aggressive war was to
extensive to warrant acquittal.

Constantin von Neurath was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Because of failing

health, he was released from Spandau Prison in 1954 and died in 1956.

Franz von Papen:

In 1932, President Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as Reich Chancellor. With
Hitlers rise to power, Papen became Vice Chancellor and later served as
Ambassador in Vienna. The Tribunal charged him with using his positions to promote
the rise and extension of the Nazis power in Europe. However, the prosecution had
serious difficulties linking Papen to conspiracy to initiate an aggressive war.

Franz von Papen was acquitted.

Joachim von Ribbentrop:

In 1938, Constantin von Ribbentrop was appointed as Hitlers Foreign Minister,
replacing Neurath. In that position, he was intimately involved in almost all of the

actions to wage "aggressive war." His record in the area of "crimes against
humanity" was extremely damning. He had recommended and supported the
deportation of Jews from France and Italy to the camps in the east and urged their
extermination. Under cross-examination by the British assistant prosecutor,
Ribbentrop admitted that he knew of Hitlers intention to deport all Jews from
German territories and that he assisted in that process (cf. Conot, 1983:353).

Joachim von Ribbentrop was sentenced to death by hanging.

Baldur von Schirach:

Shirach was charged on Count One and Count Four of the Indictment. On Count
One, planning and preparing for aggressive war, the evidence was slight at best. As
head of the Hitler Youth movement, he was accused of preparing the youth of
Germany for war. While there is little question of his effectiveness in consolidating
all the German youth groups under the Hitler Jungend, Shirachs counsel was
successful in separating the Youth Movement from the German Wehrmacht.

On Count Four however, Schirach was is much deeper trouble. His antisemitism was
not only well-known, Schirach had expressed it openly. Interestingly enough,
Shirachs antisemitism was drawn primarily from Henry Fords The International Jew
rather than from Rosenberg and Streicher. Thr Tribunal produced powerful
documentary evidence that he knew and approved the deportation of Jews from
Vienna to the extermination camps. He also knew of the Einsatzgruppens mobile
van extermination of Jews in eastern Poland. This knowledge rendered invalid his

claim that he supported the deportation of Reich Jews following Kristallnacht

because he thought it was in the best interest of Jews.

Baldur von Schirach was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He served the entire
term in Spandau Prison and died in 1974.

URL: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/verdicts.html