Mission at Nuremberg (25 page)

Does attempting to understand human evil create a path toward justifying or excusing the behavior that creates evil? Even Rudolf Hoess might present moral philosophers with a problem. When he was a child, Hoess's closest friend was a black pony his parents gave him for his seventh birthday. He would ride it for hours in the Black Forest near his home in Baden-Baden.

At one point, Hoess was a seemingly normal human being. And if the perpetrators of genocide can be seen as fellow human beings, do they deserve empathy, or even forgiveness, from those of us who choose to lead good lives?

In Catholic social teaching, evil is the absence of the good that God gave to humans. Because evil is a lack of something, it can only exist if something else exists. “Evil can only exist in another,” wrote the philosopher Father Paul Crowley. “It is parasitic on the good.” The central question, theologian Robert P. Kennedy wrote, asks why “a creature [would] spurn God's goodness and deform itself.”

Evil is certainly problematic for mainstream religious belief. For one, the Hebrew Bible contains stories of God creating great suffering in the world. The prophet Amos asks, “Does disaster befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?”

Yet the existence of moral evil in humans is even trickier to understand. Kennedy wrote that “the existence of moral evil is the central enigma of human life,” and the corollary of free will. In a theology that holds there is only one, all-powerful God who bestowed humans with free will, must God in some way be responsible for mass annihilation? If an omniscient God knew when he was bestowing free will on humans that “free” meant anything goes, he should have recognized that his greatest creation might commit grave evil in the world.

So how can a good and just God allow the suffering of his own creation? The medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Saint Augustine said that “either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot, he is not all powerful. If he will not, he is not all good.” In many ways, this contradiction constitutes the central problem for students of theodicy, the study of God's relationship to evil.

If the source of the world's evil is Satan, as many Christians believe, what exactly is Satan? Some believe that Satan's arrival in Christian lore was the result of a centuries-long dissatisfaction with the mysteriousness of evil's source. T. J. Wray and Gregory Mobley, scholars who have traced Satan's biblical roots, ask: “Could it be that along with the development of monotheism is a growing existential frustration that makes it difficult for God's people to accept a deity who is responsible both for good and evil? Is it possible that at some point, God's negative attributes . . . are excised—in a sort of divine personality split—and appropriated to an inferior being (Satan)?”

In a verse from Isaiah, the Lord speaks to Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire. “I form the light, and create darkness,” God says. “I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”

If God creates evil, but also allows his creation free will, is God or man responsible for the Holocaust? Even if evil emerges in the absence of good, in the absence of God, the free will of his creature—bent on evil—is not able to subsume God's power. So if God is master of both absolute good and absolute evil, he must also claim those of us who choose darkness.

CHAPTER 9

The Brand of Cain

Justice without kindness or mercy is the height of injustice, and mercy without justice is indifference and caprice and the end of all order.

—ULRICH ZWINGLI

T
HE IMPROVISED PRISON CHAPEL
may have been the only peaceful refuge in the Palace of Justice. As prosecutors presented more evidence at trial and defendants and witnesses gave more testimony, the prisoners increasingly blamed one another for the crimes being leveled at the group.

Some, led by Goering, still defended Hitler, and laid the blame for the atrocities on Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann. Others began to disparage Hitler's legacy. Between trial sessions on June 13, Goering and Hitler's former chancellor, Franz von Papen, engaged in a shouting match. Goering defended Hitler, referring to him in the present tense as “our Chief of State.”

“The Nazi Chief of State!” the normally diplomatic Papen yelled back. “A chief of state who murdered six million innocent people!”

Goering didn't relent. “You can't say Hitler ordered it,” he said.

“Well then, who did order those mass murders?” Papen asked. “Did you order them?”

Goering was flustered. “No. No—Himmler,” he mumbled and rushed past Papen out of the courtroom.

At lunch, Speer, Fritzsche, and Schirach laughed about how Goering's blusterings had begun to grow tiresome, even with diplomats like Papen.

“No, of course Hitler didn't order the mass murders,” Fritzsche said sarcastically. “Some sergeant must have done it.”

The next day Papen took the stand. It was the 155th day of the trial, and Papen, a member of O'Connor's Catholic flock, told the court about his religious background: “I grew up with conservative principles which unite a man most closely to his own folk and his native soil, and as my family has always been a strong supporter of the Church, I of course grew up in this tradition as well.”

In recent days, amid all the turmoil, the other defendants had heard a rumor that senior American officials, including Gerecke, were being allowed to return home. Word was going around that Alma was calling him back to St. Louis. As Papen spoke, Fritzsche sat in the dock and wrote a letter to Alma. He passed it around and all the defendants eventually signed it, even those who didn't attend chapel services. General Alfred Jodl wrote, “I am joining this plea/request even though I don't belong to the Lutheran church. I do this heartily.”

Fritzsche then gave the letter to Schirach, who translated it for Alma. It began:

 

Frau Gerecke,

Your husband Pastor Gerecke has been taking religious care of the undersigned defendants during the Nuremberg trial. He has been doing so for more than half a year. We now have heard, dear Mrs. Gerecke, that you wish to see him back home after his absence of several years. Because we also have wives and children we understand this wish of yours very well.

Nevertheless we are asking you to put off your wish to gather your family around you at home for a little time. Please consider that we cannot miss your husband now. During the past months he has shown us uncompromising friendliness of such a kind, that he has become indispensable for us in an otherwise prejudiced environment which is filled with cold disdain or hatred. . . .

 

In his sessions with these men, Gerecke had listened countless times as they moaned about being away from their families. “I had done a little mild griping of my own,” he pointed out. “I probably mentioned my wife's health, and the fact that I had not seen her for two and one half years. At any rate, apparently they decided that Mrs. Gerecke would be the chief influence for my return home.”

The Nazis' note, “written in almost illegible German script,” had been “the most incredible letter ever sorted by St. Louis postal clerks,” Gerecke later wrote. The letter had made its way through regular prison censorship and landed on Gerecke's own desk four days after it was written. He sent it on to Alma with his own note attached:

 

My Dear!

Here's the most unusual letter signed on the original by the most talked about men in the world. You are, without a doubt, the only woman in the world to get such a letter containing such a request. It is noteworthy that the Catholics too have signed it. Keep the letter for my book, Honey.

Love,

Hubby.

 

The last part of the Nazis' letter to Alma contained a word that history has never associated with the Third Reich: love. “Our dear Chaplain Gerecke is necessary for us not only as a minister but also as the thoroughly good man that he is—surely we need not describe him as such to his own wife. We simply have come to love him.”

In this stage of the trial, the letter continued,

 

It is impossible for any other man than him to break through the walls that have been built up around us, in a spiritual sense even stronger than in a material one. Therefore, please leave him with us. Certainly you will bring this sacrifice and we shall be deeply indebted to you. We send our best wishes for you and your family! God be with you.

“So I stayed on at Nuremberg,” Gerecke wrote later. “Mrs. Gerecke told me to—air mail, special delivery.”

In fact, the rumor the Nazis had heard was just that. Alma later told the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
that she “really hadn't written a word about demanding that my husband give up his important task.” When he first arrived in Nuremberg, before anyone knew how long the trial would last, Gerecke had committed to staying through June. He never had any intention of leaving until it was over. Gerecke later told the
Post-Dispatch,
“Chaplain Sixtus O'Connor and I were perhaps closer to them than any others. When we asked them if they would prefer German clergymen in attendance, they told us we had seen them through so much they would insist on retaining us until the end.”

 

IN THE FINAL WEEKS
of the trial, tensions seemed to ease in the prison. There was an atmosphere of peaceful resignation among the prisoners. After months in tight, stark quarters, the Nazis and prison officers had come to know each other as people, and Andrus's rules and regulations were now being administered more humanely. The weekly services in the prison chapel “became more and more solemn and moving and gave us much solace,” Fritzsche wrote. “It was in such a spirit that each defendant devised the last words he was to utter at the trial.” No one knew what the others were going to say—they were all too shy to share their drafts with one another.

And, over the summer, life among the occupiers in Nuremberg went on. On August 10, Gerecke officiated at the wedding of Anna Likovska, a Czech citizen working in Jackson's office who was living at the Grand Hotel, and Captain Daniel Sullivan of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Regiment at the church in Mögeldorf. Andrus was a witness.

Gerecke was also receiving inquiries from German clergy who were curious about “the spiritual welfare of the defendants,” he wrote. In some cases, the pastors left Gerecke with sermons they encouraged him to read to the defendants. “Because of the possibility of some hidden message in these manuscripts, I have never used them,” he wrote. Though “I am deeply grateful for all good intentions.”

On August 31, 1946, the prisoners made their final statements to the tribunal.

Goering claimed prosecutors took the defendants' words and documents they signed out of context. “The Prosecution brings forward individual statements over a period of twenty-five years, which were made under completely different circumstances and without any consequences arising from them at the time, and quotes them as proof of intent and guilt, statements which can easily be made in the excitement of the moment and of the atmosphere that prevailed at the time,” he said. “There is probably not one leading personage on the opposing side who did not speak or write similarly in the course of a quarter of a century.”

Goering said he hadn't wanted war, and indeed had tried to prevent it, but that after war broke out he had done everything to assure Germany a victory. “I stand up for the things that I have done, but I deny most emphatically that my actions were dictated by the desire to subjugate foreign peoples by wars, to murder them, to rob them, or to enslave them, or to commit atrocities or crimes,” he said. “The only motive which guided me was my ardent love for my people, [Germany's] happiness, its freedom, and its life. And for this I call on the Almighty and my German people to witness.”

Hess, whose mental state was constantly in question by Nuremberg officials, had written a letter to his wife the night before. “You most certainly heard over the radio that there has been another ‘miracle' and I have completely recovered my mind,” he wrote. “I hope you will see the humorous side of all this.” Hess cited the writings of his mentor, the geopolitician Karl Haushofer. “Karl once wrote that for the sake of a great cause one must be able to suffer the strain of seeming to one's own people, for a time, to be a traitor. To that I would add, or seem to be crazy.”

In his final statement, Hess focused on a pair of “glazed and dreamy eyes.” Hitler, he said, was not “normal mentally during the last years.” In those years, “the Führer's eyes and facial expression had something cruel in them, and even had a tendency towards madness.” Hess said that during his imprisonment in England, people with “strange eyes” had visited him.

Fritzsche wrote that Hess's statement was “a pitiable exhibition, painful for all of us.” Goering and Ribbentrop tried to get him to stop, pulling on his sleeve. “Shut up!” they pleaded. Hess, gaunt and wild-looking, yelled at them. “They were glassy and like eyes in a dream,” he continued.

Justice Lawrence, president of the tribunal, interrupted Hess and asked him to conclude, which he did in a bewildering encore:

 

I was permitted to work for many years of my life under the greatest son whom my people has brought forth in its thousand year history. . . . I am happy to know that I have done my duty, to my people, my duty as a German, as a National Socialist, as a loyal follower of my Führer. I do not regret anything. . . . Some day [I will] stand before the judgment seat of the Eternal. I shall answer to Him, and I know He will judge me innocent.

Ribbentrop was next. He told the court that the trial “will go down in history as a model example of how, while appealing to hitherto unknown legal formulas and the spirit of fairness, one can evade the cardinal problems of twenty-five years of the gravest human history.” Hitler's foreign minister said that when he looked back “upon my actions and my desires, then I can conclude only this: The only thing of which I consider myself guilty before my people—not before this Tribunal—is that my aspirations in foreign policy remained without success.”

Hans Frank, who had attempted suicide after being caught by the Allies, was in utter despair, and he began his closing statement by discussing Hitler's suicide. Hitler “left no final statement to the German people and the world,” Frank said. “Amid the deepest distress of his people he found no comforting word. He became silent and did not discharge his office as a leader, but went down into darkness, a suicide. Was it stubbornness, despair, or spite against God and man?”

Frank had handed over his diary to American GIs when he was captured in 1945. He “revealed his ruthlessly brutal actions,” Speer wrote. “But in Nuremberg he freely confessed his crimes, abjured them, and became a devout Catholic; his capacity to believe fervently and even fanatically had not deserted him.” In fact, during the trial, Frank had come closest of any of the defendants to admitting his guilt on the witness stand.

When his own attorney asked Frank, “Did you ever participate in the annihilation of Jews?” Frank's reply had been “I say ‘yes.' ”

He had continued,

 

And the reason why I say “yes” is because, having lived through the five months of this trial, and particularly after having heard the testimony of the witness, Hoess, my conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility solely on these minor people. I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews, or promoted the existence of such camps; but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too, for we have fought against Jewry for years; and we have indulged in the most horrible utterances—my own diary bears witness against me. Therefore, it is no more than my duty to answer your question in this connection with “yes.” A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.

Now four months later, Frank was prepared to take back the essence of his confession. He said,

 

There is still one statement of mine which I must rectify. On the witness stand, I said that a thousand years would not suffice to erase the guilt brought upon our people because of Hitler's conduct in this war. Every possible guilt incurred by our nation has already been completely wiped out today, not only by the conduct of our war-time enemies towards our nation and its soldiers, which has been carefully kept out of this Trial, but also by the tremendous mass crimes of the most frightful sort which—as I have now learned—have been and still are being committed against Germans by Russians, Poles, and Czechs, especially in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and Sudetenland. Who shall ever judge these crimes against the German people?

Yet Frank did not leave the Nazis off the hook completely. Nazi leaders, he claimed,

 

perhaps as never before . . . still bear a tremendous spiritual responsibility. At the beginning of our way, we did not suspect that our turning away from God could have such disastrous deadly consequences and that we would necessarily become more and more deeply involved in guilt. . . . Hitler's road was the way without God, the way of turning from Christ, and, in the last analysis, the way of political foolishness, the way of disaster, and the way of death.