The Nuremberg Interviews (47 page)

“I also scrubbed myself from top to bottom with cold water and soap. I used this piece of rag. It’s good for me. I think that it is important for me to bathe with cold water and to have myself scrubbed down regularly. I did that at home, too. Sometimes in the middle of the night I would have an impulse to take a cold sponge bath and I would do so.”

I said it was my professional medical opinion that he should limit these cold baths and avoid strenuous activity during the next few weeks because of his recent heart attack. I had also noticed his fast walk during the exercise period in the prison yard and felt it would be more beneficial if he walked slowly. One of Streicher’s habits is to literally walk around the courtyard rapidly in a half run, half walk, passing the other defendants three or four times while so doing. Streicher smiled and smote his breast, saying, “No, my heart is strong. My pulse goes fast sometimes and has done so for years now, but it is nothing. Just a little nervousness perhaps. I don’t mean that I am nervous because of this trial or because of my imprisonment. I have been in prison before and I’ve been tried before. It’s just that I am a high-spirited man, and though my nerves are very steady I have a tendency to do things fast, and that is probably the explanation for my fast heart at times.” I asked him whether he had any feeling of guilt in connection with the extermination of the Jews. He replied, almost laughingly, “Why, I had nothing to do with it! Since 1940 I lived as a gentleman farmer in Fürth. Hitler must have decided to exterminate the Jews in 1941, because I knew nothing about it. Hitler probably felt that ‘they caused the war, now I will exterminate them.’ I am not saying that Hitler was right. I think that it was the wrong policy. I was all for setting up a separate Jewish state in Madagascar
or Palestine or someplace, but not to exterminate them. Besides, by exterminating 4 million Jews — they say 5 or 6 million at this trial, but that is all propaganda, I am sure it wasn’t more than 4.5 million — they have made martyrs out of those Jews. For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress.”

He said, commenting further on the trial, that most of the Russian and British prosecution were Jewish, and that applied as well to the American staff. I asked him whether he thought Justice Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, was Jewish. Streicher grinned leeringly. “Do you mean Jacobson?” For the moment I really thought Streicher was referring to someone else. I repeated that I meant Justice Jackson, the American prosecutor. Again Streicher leered and said, “That’s Jacobson. He may call himself Jackson, but to me he is Jacobson and a Jew. Besides, you can very easily tell by looking at him. I thought for a while that he was not Jewish because the others among the defendants assured me that he was not. But within the last few months I have watched him walk, I have watched his face, and he is a Jacobson, probably of German Jewish ancestry.” What about Mr. Dodd? Streicher replied, “Von Papen said that Dodd is a good Catholic and I really haven’t paid much attention to him. Besides, it would be a good idea for Jacobson to have a Catholic assistant because the prosecution claims that the National Socialists persecuted Catholics as well as Jews.”

As I was leaving his cell I asked him how he felt generally and whether his sleeping had improved any. “Major, it is indicative of the fact that you are a gentleman that you ask me such questions. If everyone had as clear a conscience as I have, nobody in the world would have to take sleeping pills or visit doctors. My conscience is as clear as a baby’s. If you read through the volumes of
Der Stürmer
or any of the other publications put out by Der Stürmer Publishing Company, of which I was president, you will find not a word regarding the extermination of Jews. I’ll prove all that. You’ll see.”

Streicher was, as usual, in a talkative mood today when Mr. Triest and I entered his cell. He said he had been feeling very well and had not been bothered recently by the fast pulse or palpitation to which he had been subject on several occasions in the past. He said he had no complaints
except that his sleep was interfered with at times because of the lack of consideration displayed by the guards who stand outside his cell.

“I don’t want to complain about these young people, of course, because I might have done the same thing when I was their age. They are all youngsters, in their twenties, or even younger. Some of them knock with their fingers on the door and when I wake up during the night because of this, they laugh. Four weeks ago one of these guards hung a figure in my room through the window in the door and he thought it was a good joke. This has happened twice and it was not the same guard each time. It really doesn’t matter to me — I’m not the type who is sensitive or easily upset. In general the guards are courteous and decent, but some of them are annoying. For example, this week I was awakened twice during the night by the noise of the changing of the guard. I wrote a note to the prison officer to complain about it but I am sure that the guard just tore up the note or kept it and didn’t pass it on.”

Streicher said he had one favor to ask of me and whether I would be so kind as to try to grant it. “Could we have more marmalade or some fresh carrots, onions, or other vegetables in our diet?” I said I had very little to do with the diet or rations beyond ascertaining that there were sufficient nutritive elements in it. I explained that the POW ration was prescribed by the American headquarters in Frankfurt and that it was the same throughout the theater. I told Streicher that the diet for the defendants was, as a matter of fact, the working prisoner-of-war ration and was better than existed in most camps and prisons. Streicher replied, “Oh yes, I am not complaining. We get plenty to eat. I just thought that if you could get us some marmalade, carrots, or onions, it would be very good for my system.”

Streicher again asked me for a favor. “I would be grateful if you could get me my wife’s address. I know she is in an American internment camp in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart. I haven’t received any letters from her because she can write only once every four weeks, I think. Of course, she has been away from here more than four weeks but I guess the American authorities won’t let her write to me. That is all right but I would like to write to her. I am permitted to write as often as I please from this prison.” I said I would try to find out where his wife resided at present.

I asked Streicher what he thought of the events of the trial during the past few weeks. “It’s very hard for the individual defendants. After all, we’ve just lost the war and we can’t do much. I think Jodl did well in his
defense. As far as Seyss-Inquart is concerned, he defended himself well but he had a very hard case because of so many accusations against him. He has to answer for a great deal of responsibility.”

I asked him about his own defense and what his reactions to his taking the stand had been. “The main thing I tried to stress was how badly I was treated in the American camp at Freising, but the American prosecutor and the judges ruled that my comments on my poor treatment there had to be expunged from the record because it was irrelevant. I don’t think it is irrelevant when we National Socialists are accused of war crimes and of murdering 5 million Jews and millions of other innocent people such as partisans, hostages, war prisoners. Therefore, I should have been allowed to insert into the record of this trial how badly I was treated personally as a prisoner of war, after the war was over, mind you, in Freising.”

Streicher thought the trials would end sometime in August. He said he was not surprised at the tentative ruling by the tribunal that only two weeks would be allowed for summation by the defense lawyers. “It has always been my viewpoint that a long defense would serve no purpose. My conviction is and always has been, since the beginning of this trial, that in the final analysis it doesn’t matter what defense arguments are given because the minds of the judges were made up in advance and nothing the defense lawyers or the defendants and their witnesses can say could possibly change anything. This is not a normal trial. It’s an international political trial and as such is highly irregular.

“It is a trial within a nation but a trial of victors against the vanquished. Even before the trials started, the victors who are our judges were quite convinced that we were guilty and that we should all pay the price.”

Did Streicher feel that the trial as such was conducted in a fair manner? “Well, I can’t express my innermost thoughts on this subject at this time. There is a superficial attempt at fairness. It is difficult to say or to express what one thinks or feels inside. I am convinced that some of the judges, as human beings, have the intention to be just, but that they are dependent on their home nations and the feelings that exist in those nations.”

Did Streicher feel that any of the defendants were guilty? Did he feel that any of them merited punishment? “From a German viewpoint, any good German would say that none of us is guilty. On one side there are the mass murders and it is quite clear that whoever performed them in
particular is guilty. But I don’t know anyone among us twenty-one defendants who can be accused properly of having participated in the mass murders. Hitler admitted that in his last testament. He said quite clearly that he had ordered these mass murders. I am absolutely convinced that no one sits on the defendants’ bench who wanted these mass murders. The charge that I have something to do with having stirred up the populace by propaganda or by my speeches to commit such atrocities is false. Then there is the question of Kaltenbrunner’s responsibility. I never knew Kaltenbrunner until I met him here, but I think that Hitler gave his order about the exterminations directly to Himmler. I heard the name Kaltenbrunner for the first time here in this prison. I think that Himmler and Heydrich were the chief exterminators.”

Did Streicher believe that Himmler influenced Hitler to make the decision about the racial exterminations? “I don’t know. I didn’t see Hitler after 1938. I was in the country for five years during the war.” He seemed quite unconcerned about the matter and rather bored with it. I asked him for his opinion about the other defendants. Streicher grinned broadly and enjoyed his role as savant and commentator. “Well, let me begin with Ribbentrop. I must insist that Ribbentrop is wrongly judged. Ribbentrop didn’t want such far-reaching responsibility as he was forced into taking. As far as the Jewish question, Ribbentrop had nothing to do with it. Ribbentrop always talked of the great difficulties he experienced abroad in foreign political circles, and was, therefore, opposed to radical methods. I never heard one remark by Ribbentrop concerning the Jews. He is wrongly judged in my opinion.

“Now as far as Goering is concerned, you know that for many years he was my enemy. The Goering Commission investigated my actions here in Nuremberg and even caused me to be put on trial and exiled from Nuremberg so that I had to live on my estate in Fürth from 1940 until the end of the war. But what Goering says in this court is very true and I must agree with it. He was the representative of Hitler, deputy leader of the state, and as such he assumed responsibility for whatever the Führer ordered. Of course, he does not accept the responsibility for the mass murders because he had nothing to do with them. But he does accept responsibility for everything else. Everything Goering says is very true. Of course, as far as the pictures and art collections — it’s hard to judge. It was his hobby. As he said himself, there is no other excuse for it and it was just a weakness.”

Streicher next turned to the subject of Sauckel. “Sauckel is an honest,
honorable man who had the bad luck of being given the task of bringing foreign workers to Germany. He did not have bad intentions and he tried to take good care of these workers. The fact that it wasn’t done everywhere is not really Sauckel’s fault.” What did Streicher think of the policy of bringing slave labor into Germany? “If a people is engaged in a fight for life or death and if the leaders think that they can win the war by importing slave labor — then it was correct. On the other hand, things did happen which were not absolutely necessary. I mean things done by the Allies. For example, old historical towns like Rothenburg and many other towns where no armaments were made were bombed mercilessly. In Dresden thousands of the civilian population were killed during bombing raids. Then when the Russians approached Dresden, 120,000 refugees fled. I remember reports that the American and English newspapers were very happy about the fact that so many were killed in Dresden. There are many instances of barbarity and cruelty on the part of the Allies which I could tell you.

“As far as Keitel and Jodl and other military leaders, they have nothing to do with the mass murders and other atrocities. As a matter of fact, no one knew about it or believed it in Germany, and that is true among the defendants as well as among the population in general. I did not hear about Auschwitz until now — I never knew of it before this trial. It’s perfectly understandable and proper for one to be an anti-Semite, but to exterminate women and children is so extraordinary, it’s hard to believe. No defendant here wanted that.”

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
1899–1972

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, Higher SS police leader, SS general, and police general from 1941, was appointed chief of antipartisan units in Russia in 1943. Sentenced by a Munich de-Nazification court to ten years’ “special labor,” he was retried in 1962 in Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment.