Europe in the Rubble | 2023 International Conference on WWII

“Europe in the Rubble,” provides an in-depth exploration of post-war Europe. Chaired by Jason Dawsey, Ph.D., of the Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, the panel features presentations by Robert Hutchinson, PhD, and Professor Günter Bischoff, PhD. The session delves into topics such as the Soviets at Nuremberg, American clemency for Nazi war criminals, and the broader political and military history of 20th-century Europe, offering a comprehensive understanding of the continent’s transformation after the war.

This session is part of The National WWII Museum’s 2023 International Conference on WWII presented by the Pritzker Military Foundation, on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library.

The International Conference on World War II is the premier adult educational event bringing together the best and brightest scholars, authors, historians, and witnesses to history from around the globe to discuss key battles, personalities, strategies, issues, and controversies of the war that changed the world. Joining the featured speakers are hundreds of attendees who travel from all over the world to learn and connect with each other through engaging discussions, question-and-answer periods, book signings, and receptions throughout the weekend.

For Information on the upcoming 2024 International Conference on World War Two, visit: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/programs/17th-international-conference-world-war-ii

Jason Dawsey’s and Günter Bishof’s: Life & Work of Gunther Anders: https://store.nationalww2museum.org/life-work-of-gunther-anders-pb/

Robert Hutchinson’s After Nuremberg: https://store.nationalww2museum.org/after-nuremberg-hc/

Now it’s my pleasure to end introduce our chair for the first session uh which we’ve entitled Europe in the rubble Dr Jason doy is a research historian here at the Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute as with all our speakers I’ll invite you to uh peruse their uh biographies in the

Back of the program but a little bit about Jason Jason re received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago he came to the museum in 2017 and was the museum uh very first defense P Mia accounting agency resident fellow uh on that important Mission you’ll hear more

About uh DPA later today if you join us for the Pearl Harbor commemoration and as such uh you know really uh performed incredible service and then uh became the research historian Jason’s been integral in the museums and the institute’s mission uh key to our public programs our online program

Uh an expert uh not only in European intellectual history but also in uh Liberation concentration camps PS resistance movements uh and has has really done an incredible job with our our master’s degree and World War II studies partnered with Arizona State University so with without further Ado I’ll turn

This over to the chair to provide the opening presentation for his panel and over to Dr Jason doy Jason can everybody hear me okay it is uh great to see you this morning thank you Mike for that introduction delighted to be part of the first panel of this International

Conference and uh I I think you’re really in for a treat with these presentations today I’m pulling double duty in this opening session so I’m going to present on the Soviets at nurmberg first and then followed by my uh my two panelists here and I’m going to introduce them now

In the order that they will present after me will be Robert Hutchinson who is an assistant professor of strategy and security studies at the US Air Force school of advanced Air and Space studies in Montgomery Alabama where he teaches courses in military history strategy and irregular warfare he received his PhD in modern

European history from the University of Maryland in 2016 and before joining saas in 2020 he held fellowships at the center for advanced Holocaust studies at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and at the US Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island his research for focuses on 20th century

Political and military history of Europe intelligence studies and Holocaust and genocide studies he is the author of two important monographs German foreign intelligence from Hitler’s War to the Cold War flawed assumptions and faulty analysis that was with University press of Kansas in 2019 and especially pertin for today after

Nurenberg American Clement for Nazi war criminals I can’t recommend this book enough uh from Yale University press and that was just last year 2022 so following Rob will then be our dear friend Professor gter Bishoff gter Bishoff recently retired from the University of New Orleans where he was

The Marshall Plan chair of history and directed Center Austria the Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European studies for 25 years Gunter we’re still in disbelief that uh you you have retired though very happy for you at the same time he studied history in English at the University of inbrook got his ma

With Steven Ambrose at Uno and his PhD in American history from Harvard University after completing his PhD he came back to Uno to work with Ambrose in the Eisenhower Center where he got involved in early planning for a D-Day Museum he has co-written and co-edited

Some 60 books on World War II PS the Marshall Plan the Cold War and US Austrian relations so just thrilled to have Robin Gunter here with with me on this panel just to say something about how this will work um each pres presenter will have 15 minutes once the

Three presentations are over we’re going to have about 15 minutes or so for a round table while I’ll pose some questions to uh to Gunter and Rob and then we’ll hear from you we’ll hear your questions and thoughts about this panel on Europe in the rubble so ladies and

Gentlemen without further Ado then we’ll kick off uh with my talk on the Soviets at nurburg so I thought we’d kind of just start here with this first image um that I think sets the tone for bringing the Soviets bringing the USSR in into the whole discussion about the

Legacy of nurmberg those of you who have seen our Liberation Pavilion or will see it while you’re here on the the second floor of the Pavilion this is obviously Central to what we’re doing here in terms of thinking about the Legacy and memory of the second world war and the

Soviets play a decisive role so obviously notice the the two images one of the the soldiers of the Red Army raising the hammer and sickle over the Reich toog beginning of May 1945 and then the Soviet team I will say more about this gentleman the chief prosecutor

Rudino and behind him kind of behind his right shoulder so to speak uh the Soviet delegation all wearing uh military uniforms at nurburg so ladies and gentlemen getting started what I wanted to say one thing about this by way of intro is that it’s a very PEC your thing when you’re

Looking at the Soviet role at nberg and that it’s still incredibly controversial there’s many people would think what are they doing here I mean why would they even really be allowed to participate given the crimes committed by the Stalin regime over the previous at least 15 years is this really just

Not a kind of Devil’s bargain or what Walter lefer once characterized as the the shotgun marriage that was the Grand and Alliance but what I want to try to convey here in this few minutes is to note that the Soviets play a decisive role in fact in the international

Military Tribunal in the concepts that inform the nurburg charter they’re they’re a key player in this and we have to really look at them and the you know in that particular context yes they were they do play a very important role and we want to try to have some

Understanding of it about why someone like Francine hirs she’s written this really remarkable book Soviet Judgment at nurmberg came out just two years ago with Oxford University press I strongly recommend it and she’s really reinforced this that we need to look carefully at the Soviets and try to make sense of

What role they play so with that I thought I would just show a couple of shots of nurburg kind of reminders to us placeholders for where we’re at the palace of justice and aerial shot and then one of the probably lesser known defendants at nurmberg erence Calton Brunner an Austrian Nazi

And head of the rec Security main office he was a subordinate of hinr kimer and very active in the Nazi Genocide the genocide of European Jews here entering his uh not guilty plea in December of 1945 before the four the four representatives from the respective Allied Powers the US the Soviets the

British and the French and here obviously we’re going to be saying something about the Soviet delegation the Soviet presence there so where I’d like to start ladies and gentlemen and kind of unpacking this a bit is a figure who’s really behind the scenes and yet everyone knows uh that’s aware of the

Soviet delegation at nurburg he’s not just behind the scenes he’s there he pops up quite frequently and that’s the gentleman on the right in this photo that’s Deputy foreign minister Andre vashin vinski on the left is actually James burns the US Secretary of State and this is taken in July 1945 at

The Potsdam Conference bashinsky is directly working under Molotov the probably one of the most famous people associated with the Stalin regime through its entire 25 or so years and vinski is difficult to really exaggerate his role in nurg he’s not a judge he’s not a prosecutor and yet he is he leaves

His imprint all over the Soviet presence so some things about him he had joined the Bolsheviks in 1920 he had a long connection to Stalin but quite a fractious connection to the Bolsheviks in fact in 1917 he accuses lenen of being a German agent in the pay

Of the German government this is prior to the October Revolution but by 1920 it’s clear the Bolsheviks are going to win the Russian Civil War and he throws his lot in with them he will teach at Moscow State University and it’s interesting that that in this kind of early phase of the

Stalin regime if we’re thinking about Stalin consolidating power 1927 is usually taken to be the key year that vinski at Moscow State will really begin to make the case that international law is vitally important to the Soviet government and really can serve and consolidate Soviet interests in 1933 he becomes deputy

State prosecutor of the USSR showing in fact Stalin’s confidence in him and at some level interest in his work and then most notoriously two years later he becomes procurator general of the USSR you think what does that mean and why would that even matter for today that’s because he’s the key person Prosecuting

People during the show trials 1936 to 38 he’s the person who stands up and accuses many of these old Bolsheviks figures like zenov KV bukar and these old revolutionaries who’ been there with linen key figures in Red October and accuses them of manifold crimes treasonous crimes working with the Nazis

Working with musolini working with Imperial Japan working with the the Western capitalist democracies and usually behind all of that was the figure of trosky of lean trosy his chief rival in fact in terms of international law is in fact executed in 1937 a man named aini pashukanis one of his most important

Subordinates had been at Moscow State is this gentleman Aaron Trine not as well known but his career had really been nurtured by vinski and he shared bashinsky views on international law he publishes a book in 1937 where in fact he criticizes the League of Nations for not setting up an

International criminal court and really making aggressive War itself a crime and then in 1944 he follows that up with a book about the crimes the criminal responsibility of the Hitler rights where he says the Nazis should be prosecuted not only for war crimes but for what he’s calling crimes against

Peace and it’s interesting that Trine vinsky will pop in at nurmberg to keep up with what the Soviet delegation is doing seen as a really ominous figure by many of the other figures there like Robert Jackson the American Chief prosecutor training however is remembered as a rather affable and

Individual and a rather brilliant legal mind so we shouldn’t remember for forget his role at all in these deliberations the ussr’s chief prosecutor here Roman Rinko saw him on the first slide like Trine and vinsky he connected to the same group of people and during the show trials he had been in Ukraine

Prosecuting engineers and people involved with the mining sector of Soviet industry there and accusing them of crimes against the state so if you’re seeing a pattern here it’s because all of these individuals are very carefully chosen for their connections to what everyone thinks of as a monstrous

Travesty of Justice I’d like to note here this comment from Chief prosecutor Rinko I think it says a lot about the Soviet approach to to nurenberg so I’m going to be that annoying person who reads the slide out so uh just bear with me here but I think the quote is itself

Very revealing having prepared and carried out the perfidious assault against the freedom loving Nations fascist Germany turned the war into a system of militarized banditry the murder of prisoners of War extermination of Civilian populations plunder of occupied territories and other war crimes were committed as part of a totalitarian lightning war program

Projected by the fascists in particular the terrorism practiced by the fascists on the temporarily occupied under that phrase the temporarily occupied Soviet territories reached fabulous proportions and was carried out without outspoken cruelty and actually in this statement there’s nothing false or manufactured there I mean he’s really just going over

The kind of criminality carried out by the Nazi regime and very little of modern scholar would disagree with this but you can see in fact the kind of political slant that Rinko is projecting here the other two figures I of course I need to mention aona niceno and Alexander volchkov the judge and

Assistant judge one on the center and the other on the left they’re obviously seated with f figures like judge Lawrence from Britain Francis Biddle from the United States they too connected to the show trials all of them answer to vinski who is has really a secret commission that monitors

Regulates and intervenes on a regular basis with what the Soviet delegation is doing for those 10 months in nberg 1945 46 Now ladies and gentlemen here in my last three or four minutes I just want to say something about what really distinguishes the Soviet Presence at nurburg we’ve already noted here that

They’re going to call for crimes against peace being a central part of this trine’s book is widely read by figures in both the American and British delegations including Robert Jackson and eventually they see this book as an incredible intervention and they completely support it becomes part of the nurburg charter and the 24

Individuals brought up in the dock will be crimes against peace is one of those along with war crimes and the new charge crimes against humanity that these various Nazis in the state military police apparatus are accused of the key difference ladies and gentlemen is that the Soviet delegation and this is what they’re

Receiving from Stalin they want this trial to be something like a show trial they want it to be presumed from the start that these individuals in the dock are going to be all found guilty they’re all going to be punished severely as a war criminals and so when the American especially American and

British delegations begin to say look the the Germans have to be able to mount a real defense they need to be able to themselves challenge claims made by the prosecution and respond and the Soviets are completely taken back by this they in fact see the Americans as

Kind of their closer partners because as I think many of you know Winston Churchill had not been terribly excited about a trial to begin with with a much preferred just shooting many of the leading Nazis but the Soviets agree with the Americans no there should be a trial we

Should try these individuals and it should show the world the guilt and the crimes you know the the the Abomination that was they would say here hitlerism we would simply say Nazism and the Americans agree there needs to be a trial but it needs to be a trial where

The defense is really a defense it’s a true defense and this is a real area of contention the Soviets also think there’s a kind of Gentleman’s Agreement that’s been reached by the judges and prosecutors of certain areas will be left out will be ignored so for example the non-aggression paack signed with

Hitler in August 1939 let’s keep that out of the conversation I I should note here however the that the British and French have their own areas that they are not eager to talk about they certainly don’t want to revisit appeasement they don’t really want a lot put on the table about

Revolts in their respective Empires they’re very concerned the Germans are going to raise these things as well but the Soviets think there’s a kind of Gentleman’s Agreement there and they even go so far as to say that Katen the kattin massacre in 194 40 where some

15,000 or so polish officers are shot by the nkvd the secret police they bring that up as one of the crimes of the Hitler regime and then are appalled when the Germans actually present evidence as to say no that’s the Soviets are responsible and the other delegate the

Other delegation say yes we have to listen to this perspective so this is an interesting kind of moment here and then then to really cap this off after 10 months of these hearings and I showed you the image of Rinko he’s quite a forceful speaker throughout the Soviets certainly

Make their case about Nazi criminality much of which has held up but then they’re shocked when figures like yolar shocked and Hans fra a number of of these in the dock are acquitted they’re just mortified by this this and the the perspective certainly of the Americans and British is is that these

Individuals are not guilty of conspiracy they have to be acquitted so someone like Francine hirs would also say we have to acknowledge the importance of the Soviet role but also there’s a kind of beginnings of a the Cold War playing out here at nurburg tensions are just

Simply not going to be resolved so ladies and gentlemen very quickly two points in wrapping up and I’m going to turn it over to Rob I think I’d like to say about this is that we shouldn’t really forget that the Soviets do play such an important part in the

International Military Tribunal I mean something like crimes against peace has just been sort of absorbed into the way we think about law international law and conflict most people don’t worry too much about the stalinist origins of this category and yet they’re quite real and the second thing is that that it really

Shows something about I think the contradictions of stalinism that on the one hand a regime that that committed such enormous crimes against its own citizens and against others and yet these Notions about an international criminal court or crimes against peace training for example will say that peace is the basis of all human

Association and the highest value human beings can have hard to imagine anyone in the fascist States ever saying anything like that so it shows this contradictory side of stalinist ideology which I think will always compel us to look at the Soviet Union on its own terms and distinctly throughout this

Period thank you for very much for your attention I really appreciate it and be happy to turn now the floor over to Rob please thank you J uh I’m coming through oh good excellent thank you get a clicker here uh it’s like the meme there’s two buttons and I’m not supposed to push

One I pushed the right one okay uh just to uh reiterate I’m Robert Hutchinson and thank you uh Jason for that wonderful presentation and also that very kind introduction uh before we get started uh just the boilerplate legal stuff because of who I work for I work

For the Air Force so I speak only for myself I do not speak for the Air Force and theod or the government in any capacity at all I actually have to say that so thank you for your um what why they would care about this I don’t know but I have to say

That so um I’m going to be I’m very excited to share with you a little bit of my research on what is often called the subsequent nerber tribunals uh so not the international military tribunals that Jason was just talking about the four power ones uh but the series of 12

Trials that took place between 1946 and 19 49 in the US zone of occupation by the American Military and I want to begin much like Jason did with a picture of nberg this is actually a picture of the international tribunal um because you can see the British flag behind the

Rostrum there next to the American flag but all of these tribunals take place in the same courtroom in the Palace of Justice uh and in fact if you go see The Liberation exhibit um which I very highly recommend it’s fantastic you’ll notice the theming is similar you’re in

This kind of Oak panel or mahogany panel courtroom uh from from the past and so when we think of nberg we tend to think of discreet moments like this trials that have a beginning and an end right they begin with an indictment uh they end with a conviction or an acquittal um

But I’m going to ask you to think a little bit uh more broadly today about nberg not just as a series of discret events but as a process with a much longer history before and after uh the courtroom itself uh beginning as early as 1942 uh when the allies jointly

Declare that they will be interested in Prosecuting German war crimes and atrocities When The War concludes and finishing uh not really finishing but one could say it finishes in 1958 when the last German war criminal under American control leaves lansburg prison right so as we think about this

Uh we think about nberg as a policy and that’s what really intrigued me and maybe that’s because of who I work for is the idea that these are a series of cases that are of course interested in in determining the guild or innocence of Select individuals for specific crimes

That they committed during the War uh but it’s also a policy process a part of us occupation policy in the remaking of what is supposed to be Germany but then soon becomes well just remaking West Germany uh in in after the war so what really interested me in this

Topic is this kind of factual data up on the slide there and I’ll get to it for a second not to oversimplify the situation but it appeared to me a couple of years ago when I first started looking into this that there was a policy reversal of

Sorts um from 1945 or so uh to 1949 1950 it was the policy of the US government to put war criminals in jail uh after 1950 it was the policy of the US occupation authorities in West Germany to let them out of jail uh before they

Were supposed to be let out and so it’s a bit more complicated than that but I was kind of Str well how did this happen how can we explain this and why especially given who these people were uh it wasn’t Hitler and his inner circle on trial at the 12 subsequent nberg

Tribunals but they were still the elite strata of the Nazi dictatorship responsible for all manner of crimes against humanity uh this program programmatic system of genocide both the Holocaust by Bullets by onet scrin and also gas Chambers concentration camps exploitation of slave labor uh plunder on a widespread systematic scale of

Occupied Europe uh these people uh were tried and convicted at Fair trials by the best jurists the United States had on hand to prosecute them judge them and in some cases even help uh prepare uh their their defenses so my Story begins in April of 1949 after the last trial is

Finished and what I’m trying to explain or what I set out to explain uh and what ultimately led to the book were were the facts there you know some 200 or so individuals are tried in the 12 nurg tribunals 142 of them are convicted not all of them are convicted because the

Trials are fair as Jason alluded to much to the frustration of the Soviets um convicted of war crimes crime Against Humanity waging aggressive Warfare membership and criminal organizations these sentences range from one and a half years or so to the for the light the lightest punished uh to death uh for

Those who deserve the death penalty life in prison 15 20 years in prison that’s kind of the median range there um so apart from those whose sentences are under five or six years uh and apart from those who are immediately executed uh 89 of these 142 remain in prison at

This time Point January 1951 of these 89 78 received significant reductions in their sentences in a one-off uh by the US High Commissioner for occupied Germany John J McLoy these include things like writing down death sentences to life or 15 years uh writing down 20 or 25e sentences to 10 or 15

Years and just setting free people who had been sentenced to 10 or 15 years in prison and so uh all of them apart of those 89 you know not all of them got 11 did not receive clemency five of those are actually executed these are kind of

The worst of the worst four einset group and commanders responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of people and Oswald pole the head of the Concentration Camp Empire in the SS um all of whom had admitted their crimes on the stand and expressed No Remorse whatsoever so they are actually their

Sentences are carried out but all the rest are free by 1958 and so my big question is how did this happen why did this happen why would US government officials do this these are the 12 trials um just so you know I will not uh read all all the all the 12 trials

For you um so um I I put them all up there though because again I just want to underscore that these are individual cases against individual criminals who we’re going to determine their guilt or innocence for the crimes that they did and their punishment for their actions

But it’s also a pillar of us occupation policy that cuts across what we tend to think of as the four DS of postwar us occupation policy in West Germany Dem militaris ation right I think that’s getting military influence stopping Germany from waging aggressive Wars demilitarization decentralization uh which uh is has a

Twofold meaning right like decentralization of government power and decision-making turning a dictatorship into not dictatorship uh and as part of that also there’s an economic component decentralization of economic forces so decart isation right breaking up the German big businesses and trust it’s a new deal era suspicion in the United

States that these German Monopoly and trusts have something to do with the aggressive foreign policy that’s been waged denazification getting Nazism out of the political spectrum of Germany tabooing these ideas and assuring that they do not um come back and democratization so three negatives and a positive so so three negatives getting

Things out and a positive democratization uh reintroducing Germany what starts out as Germany as a whole and then just West Germany uh into a reintroducing it into the peaceful community of Nations as a liberal Democratic state and if you look I’m sorry I’m not supposed to turn and look that’s my

Habit from teaching so I’m looking at the monitor in front but uh uh if you look at the 12 trials there you see how that cuts across the whole swath of the German dictatorship you’ve got doctors lawyers judges on trial Military Officers on trial uh inet group and an

SS unit members on trial so think of this not as just discret trials but also as what one scholar has said and this is great since Jason talked about this um one scholar has even referred to these as liberal show trials in the sense that the outcome is not determined ahead of

Time guilt or innocence rules of procedure unlike the Soviet model these are all obeyed but like a show trial these have a function that is educational they have a narrative they have a purpose uh the trials are a classroom the West German people are the pupils and the Americans are the

Teachers uh trying to describe and internalize the the depth and breadth of Nazi criminality so that the West German people can be educated redeemed into the superiority of like liberal capitalist democratic values and so that something like this could never happen again so when we look at a clemency process and

We talk about the constant tinkering and revision of the sentences that kind of undercuts the legitimacy of these trials in the public imagination and it does uh the the the end effect of John McLoy and his successor’s clemency programs which I’ll talk about in just a moment is that

By the end of this uh as the Americans set more and more Germans free fewer Germans believe in the legitimacy of the trials than they did before that process took place right so because this process is very public uh John McLoy and his successors the US officials think that

Tinkering with the sentences doesn’t really mess with the verdicts that the verdicts will stand as legitimate but in the court of public opinion that’s not the case at all so this is important not just as a matter of kind of like a moral outrage question like how why could

People do this to let unrepentent has been served but it’s also a policy question and what are you doing uh to undermine or support the occupation so why did these officials do this this is John J McCloy and a political cartoon lampooning John J McCoy for letting uh this is happens to

Be Alfred kup out of prison which caused a great deal of uh International fur in 1951 you can see there’s a gleeful Soviet propagandist in the background uh because this plays into all of the worst Soviet ideas about the United States as in League with fascists and preparing to

Wage a new war of aggression with the Soviet Union so why would he do this what were they thinking about um and who was responsible you have to remember have to understand that these officials are all smart people John J McLoy himself was a supporter of the nberg trials uh in

During his Service as assistant Secretary of War uh he’s a key advocate for it he believes that punishment should occur this isn’t someone who’s like whitewashing this for in the S case of political expediency against the Soviet Union or anything like that in fact he’s very sensitive to the

Criticism uh that that’s what he’s doing later on but there’s a couple of explanations as to why this process occurred um and I’ll just outline them briefly one is is there’s a cold war explanation right particularly after the invasion of South Korea by North Korea in

1950 uh you and 90% or so of American armed forces being sent to that theater to deal with that there’s almost a panic that occurs in Western Europe and especially and back in Washington that if the Soviets tried to make a move uh to take uh Berlin or to wage some sort

Of aggressive Warfare against the rest of Germany that the United States couldn’t do much to stop them there and so as this story goes this is when you start seeing all these questions percolating about the emergence of a European Defense Community uh the extension of NATO to Germany West German

Rearmament and The Story Goes that well perhaps this is a political cost uh in order to get the West Germans to agree to rearm the verm moed veterans who are going to have to form the backbone of the new bundes particular particularly don’t like the idea that former generals

Are in prison uh and they want that done and so that’s a story this is the cost uh for that there’s also a story about how Conrad adow the chancellor of West Germany is a very Wily politician and if you look in the scholarship there on reconstruction in West Germany there’s a

There’s kind of a an impossible choice to be made uh that he’s facing where you can have democratization or you can have justice but you can’t have both because Justice is very unpopular uh and so this this explains Conrad Ed’s failure if you want to call it that to reckon with the

Nazi past in West Germany but that doesn’t apply to these individuals these individuals here are Wards of the US state department the only people who have any control or any to say whatsoever over the lansburg prisoners from the nberg trials are the High Commissioner for Germany and his staff

Uh before 1955 and then after 1955 when West Germany regains its sovereignty only the US ambassador has uh the power to uh regulate or change alter the sentences in any significant way likewise the rearmament story doesn’t really work as a matter of chronology uh because um all of these negotiations and

Questions about German rearmament happen well after this clemency process is underway so why does it why does it actually happen well in the records that I find it turns out it’s much more of an internally focused process and it has to do with the fact that McLoy and his uh

Staff they’re all lawyers and they’re all patriotic and they’re very concerned about Justice and making sure Justice had been done particularly they’re concerned about what they think of as American Justice they refuse they return return to this term American Justice over and over and over again just

Opposed to the type of Justice Jason was talking about uh with the Soviet show trial Justice and American Justice for them not only means that these war criminals are entitled to a fair trial but that they’re entitled to appeal their sentences that they’re entitled to introduce new evidence uh to their that

Might Proclaim their innocence it doesn’t matter how tendentious and nonsensical this evidence is they’re they’re entitled uh to they’re entitled to clemency boards and Boards of appeal and so what’s set up is a whole kind of Bureau atic process that falls under clemency technically but really acts as

An appell at court cycling through these sentences as the prisoners file petitions and their lawyers keep arguing over and over and over again until this results in wholesale sentence reductions at first and then other um other facets of the US prison system being grafted onto the nerber war criminals they get

Time off for good behavior uh they get medical parole if they’re sick uh they get parole released from prison uh after half to a third of their sentences are served if they can demonstrate that they’ve been rehabilitated but this brings up an interesting question how do you rehabilitate a war criminal what

Does that mean um and what is the purpose of punishment in an International System like this uh is it purely punitive or is it rehabilitative because remember all of these people are Highly Educated uh middle class upper middle class family men for the most part they still did horrific things and

So the traditional markers of Rehabilitation in the 1950s can they get a job do they have a family do they want want to work to support their family uh don’t really apply here these people are the same when they come out of prison as they were when they went to prison in

The first place and yet in the name of American Justice all of these kind of norms of domestic prison sentences and control are applied here and I’ll close just by giving you an example of what this looks like in practice and there’s lots more to talk about in in in the Q&A

On the on the panel this is Hines fanslau a fairly typical example he’s an enthusiastic SS man who joins the SS in 1931 he’s highly ideological his expertise and background is in finance and personnel management this is his parole file as you can see he’s convicted in August of 1948 for war

Crimes and crimes against humanity he was in charge uh of Personnel in the SS concentration camp Empire he had the power to recruit train hire fire promote transfer all the Personnel who worked in the concentration camps and evaluate their performance and that sort of thing

So he wasn’t in the camps himself but he gave the camps the men uh in fact his I’ll read one brief quote from the nurmberg verdict that he that he uh finding him guilty and sense him in 20 years that’s important Personnel were just as important and essential in the

Whole nefarious plan as barbed wire Watchdogs and gas Chambers the successful operation of the concentration camps required the coordination of men and materials and fanslow supplied the men right so he sentenced to 20 years his uh sentence time is backdated to his pre-trial confinement of July of 1945 U McLoy then

Gives him credit for Good Conduct time McLoy then reduces his sentence as an act of clemency to 15 years in 1951 and so in March of 1954 he meets conditions for parole his parole officers find him a solid middle class citizen uh who just wants to kind of put his head down and

Do his job and feed his family and therefore uh he is is a model prisoner and a model inmate who has been thoroughly rehabilitated by this experience uh and so he is removed from parole Supervision in 1955 less than 7 years after his conviction and his story

Can stand for very many so thank you for your time and and and Indulgence and um I’ll pass it off to gter next okay how do I get to my PowerPoint yeah just point there you go oh there you go okay good morning ladies and gentlemen pleasure to be with you this morning

It’s early and I admire you for getting up early but uh I just retired so I’m seeing the pleasures of early uh Rising myself okay I’m going to talk about the Marshall Plan this morning uh a subject matter that I’ve studied for a long time and uh I’m going

To throw a lot of slides at you if I don’t explain them all you can in the end uh just get back to me in q& a this is very okay the Marshall Plan really begins with the destruction of Europe This is a image from Vienna but of course you could see

Uh you could show any City from Berlin down to Munich and it would look the same uh American bombers had done a thorough job of destroying these cities so what the Marshall Plan is all about is about uh rebuilding uh particularly Western Europe and keeping mind there is

A number of American programs prior to the Marshall Plan pre Marshal plan programs that above all are designed to feed the hungry population of Central Europe Germany and Austria and so forth so it begins with cleaning up the rubble after the destruction of the war of rebuilding the

Infrastructure uh but it’s still not enough so when Marshall returns from the Moscow Council of foreign ministers he is concerned with Stalin trying to uh politically allow Europe to wither away and he wants to start an economic uh uh reconstruction program and this is what he announces at the Harvard

Commencement speech where he gets an honorary doctorate on June 5th 1947 uh and I’m going to give you some key ideas from this uh Speech namely he talks about the dislocation of the European economy how it needs to be rehabilitated uh how much uh food and Industrial reconstructions are needed he

Talks about the division of uh uh labor between town and Countryside you see here as the basis of modern civilization and this has broken down in Europe so this needs to be rebuilt so he wants to break the Vicious Cycle uh uh in the European people who have lost their

Confidence uh he wants to rebuild a Europe where political and social free institutions can exist but then the key idea the initiative he says must come from the Europeans themselves uh so they need to sort of tell the Americans what is needed uh so the Europeans do respond the French

And the British foreign ministers B and BAU call a conference to Paris at the end of June already remember the mar the speech is on June 5th uh and they discuss uh the rebuilding of Europe and how much money would be needed Molotov we’ve heard about him the Soviet foreign

Minister comes too but he soon leaves because he doesn’t want to be dictated by the Americans uh what the economic reconstruction of the Soviet Union should look like and above all he doesn’t want to give away uh the economic statistics of the Soviet Union which is in dire rates and he doesn’t

Want the West to know about that so what then happens is the Marshall Plan the Europeans want something like 28 billion they’re not getting that they Whittle it down to eventually $4 billion which is what the Americans will invest in Europe after the war uh but now the next big item is to

Sell this to the American taxpayer because such a huge amount of money to be given away as foreign aid is not necessarily popular so Marshall and atcherson and top US government officials travel the country give speeches all around the United States in order to persuade American voters that

That uh such American Aid is needed to rebuild Europe so uh this is a very big effort that takes uh a while and the outcome of it will be a divided Europe because as we will hear Stalin doesn’t want his Eastern European satellites to participate in the Marshall Plan so

Essentially you see here the Iron Curtain will be become a line of prosperity Western Europe will become prosperous as a result of American Aid Eastern Europe will fall behind since they are not participating in this generous program uh it takes a long time in Washington uh to sort of persuade

Congress to pass these funds and one crucial uh point is the Czech CP of 1948 when the Communists take over the government at the end of February 1948 and the result of that Congress thinks it’s very important to sort of uh inject this Aid into Western Europe to rebuild

It and they passed the legislation in early April of 1948 uh however Stalin as I mentioned already he doesn’t want the Czechs and the poles who want to participate to participate so this becomes a big matter uh of contention between the two sides uh and uh in the end Czechoslovakia and

Poland don’t participate he calls a Czech delegation that is Stalin to Moscow and tells him they can participate so the world from keman comes but now if you think about the Marshall Plan itself these are sort of the key actors in it Truman Marshall Paul Hoffman who heads the European

Cooporation Administration this is a new uh entity that is set up in Washington by the US government and ail Harman who will head the EA in Paris the headquarters in Europe now the Marshall Plan will begin in June of 1948 which is to say that’s when the first eight shipments arrive in

Europe you see them here uh getting into London and Paris uh a lot of food arriving even though food is not supposed to be part of the Marshall Plan it’s supposed to be all about uh industrial reconstruction uh however some countries like Germany and Austria still need food because the population

Is still hungry now if you think about the principles of the Marshall Plan here is sort of the administrative setup I mentioned it Paul Hoffman heads the ECA in Washington so it doesn’t go to the state department afel Harman heads the office in Paris then for each of the 16

Participating countries country missions are being set up and that’s sort of very important you see here uh I’ve pointed out there is also a European organization in Paris headed by a French Economist but then each of the participating countries has their own country missions where essentially the

Give and take between American Aid and who will get what is being banded about with the local governments there is 16 recipient countries uh so you see here in Western Europe Spain is not part of it because of fascist Franco the fascist Franco regime Eastern Europe is not part

Of it but uh much of Western Europe is so if you look at the amount of American Aid the biggest recipients are the United Kingdom and France and Italy however you see if you go to a per capita distribution the smaller countries like the Netherlands like Norway like Austria like Iceland get the

Most per capita Aid so I find it quite remarkable that every Austrian would get something like almost $132 per head in terms of Marshal a an entire billion was invested in the small country of Austria alone now the Marshall Plan was supposed to stand for peace and prosperity there was a lot of

Marshall Plan propaganda like this poster that wants to embed that idea in Western Europe and also let the Eastern Europeans know what they are missing and one important aspect of the Marshall Plan is that it really is at the beginning of European integration so you think about later European integration

The European Union and so forth what comes at the beginning is really the Midwifery of the Marshall Plan where European countries like France and West Germany West Germany is a participant country too so is Berlin uh the capin the Soviet zone uh for the first time

Sit together around a table in Paris in order to uh discuss how much Aid everybody is getting so I think that’s a very important uh uh aspect of the Marshall Plan that it really is fostering European Western European integration that is now now if you think about the Soviet Union they are trying

To say everything bad about the Marshal plan that can be said there is a lot of anti-soviet propaganda against the Marshall Plan I come back to this a bit later uh uh particularly Yankee militarism and American imperialism is a our slogans that the Soviets frequently use with uh shooting down martial

Aid uh ladies and gentlemen this is it thank you very much for your attention and as I say we’ll we’ll be able to take your questions later well let me thank uh Rob and Gunter both for terrific presentations and so ladies and gentlemen now we’re going to move into

The the Roundtable portion of this and I’m going to start out by posing a question to each of them and then a couple of questions for maybe all of us to to mle over Rob I wanted to begin with you that’s such a a fascinating question controversial question about

American clemency for these Nazi war criminals I I’d like to ask you about the international reaction to American clemency especially talking about the Soviets about the Soviet reaction to to the fact that many of these individuals are allowed to go free or sentences reduced yeah um the Soviets had a f day

With this uh not that folks were uh you know not that cold warriors were paying attention too much about what the Soviet Union thought but um if you read the broadcast like the radio broadcasts of the Eastern block countries and look at the news reported reportage on this from

The Soviet Union this confirms uh all the Soviet suppositions about look at these uh new F the the mantle of fascism being passed from Nazi Germany right to the Americans right and and why else would you be freeing all these German generals unless you were preparing to wage an aggressive war against the

Soviet Union and all the Peace and Freedom loving peoples of the world and all that um they also use it um as part of their propaganda line uh attacking the United States for its record on civil rights uh where you have like Soviet editorials ju opposing the idea

Of uh of like um I for I forget the name I is it the kensville uh or Martinsville um if she was in but there’s there’s like seven or eight African-American defendants who are essentially being judicially lynched in Virginia for one of these like trumped up rape trials at

The time in 1950 and the Soviets deliberately juxtapose oh look at these African-Americans ascending the scaffold in Virginia while the Nazi war criminals are going free uh at the same time right so there’s a there’s a multi- dimensional attack both in terms of foreign policy and also attacking

American domestic policy and the Soviets use this also to cultivate themselves as the true keepers of Justice because uh Soviets don’t believe in clemency for their work there either are no no war criminals in the Soviet zone or those who have been in prisoned certainly are not uh deserving of of redemption what

Makes that all the more remarkable just to to add to what you just said is that you mentioned 1950 as his key date and of course by this point there’s a whole new round of show trials happening yes in the Soviet Block in Eastern Europe with with various Communists being tried

For offenses against the state Andor USSR itself at the same time they’re accusing the US of of rank hypocrisy and and even worse so that’s just a such an interesting thing when you’re thinking about the the entire context of specifically anti-semitic show Tri absolutely yes accusing them of being

Kind of rootless cosmopolitans and Zionism and getting into rhetoric to starts bordering on uh what you would expect from the Nazis in fact Gunter and and for your presentation this is something you’ve been working on for so long and have really thrown so much light on with the impact of the Marshall

Plan how this played out you you’ve been a real advocate for many years uh in your connections to the museum and doing more about history and memory the memory for example of World War II the way it’s been remembered and so I want to to kind

Of apply that here in that how do you think the historical memory of the Marshall Plan has changed over time yeah an important question you know not much has been written actually about this uh subject matter but it’s very clear the generation after the war and I particularly have studied this with

Regard to Austrian politicians they’ve been very fond of the Marshall Plan they’ve uh often spoken about it been grateful to the United States about it alth the way up in Austria to KY in the 1970s he still was very fond of the Marshall Plan and he even envisioned a

Summit meeting in uh Cancun Mexico to start a Marshall plan for the third world it didn’t go anywhere but I’m just telling you that late still I mean the Marshall Plan is now being also discussed as a model for rebuilding Ukraine so whenever big destruction happens anywhere in the world or big

Reconstruction programs need to be started like say Eastern Europe the Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War people are always uh recommending the Marshall Plan as the model to follow so in that sense we have a very fond memory of the Marshall Plan however what

I sense is that the Young Generation in Europe no longer knows about these historical facts so they haven’t grown up with uh Marshal funding like uh say the general generation of European postwar politicians who used to be grateful to the United States for it so the Marshall Plan in that sense doesn’t

Mean much to the younger generation I’ve even read an oped piece in the Vienna paper recently that said the Young Generation doesn’t really care about The Narrative of reconstruction because I guess they have lived in uh peace and prosperity for a long time so in that

Sense uh uh the Marshall Plan no longer has to importance that it used to have but I would say in terms of memory what’s important uh is that it comes up with every big rebuilding project whenever it’s being whenever that is being reconsidered like the rebuilding of

Ukraine and maybe a remarkable thing I’d also like to mention in 1959 uh 10 years after the Marshall Plan the Austrian government put together a book to sort of show all the projects that got funding from the Marshall PL and remarkably that book was dedicated to the American taxpayer so I think

That’s a sort of a rare occasion where the real source of the funding is being acknowledged this is such an interesting point gri you think about yes many of these younger people having no connection to um the events of World War II and to the the kind of legacy of the

War the the immediate post-war period and one wonders how the kind of resurgence of certain kinds of extreme nationalism May compound that I guess we’ll have to see what happens there I think that goes hand in hand yeah they seem to they seem to be kind of fitting

Together and makes it all the more important that we remember the Marshall Plan and the debates surrounding it and how it went into practice and what it did and wrapping the the this section of our panel up I’d like to pose two questions to both of you and Gunter

We’ll let you go first with the with both of these related questions is that there’s a a stereotype both of you are obviously taking work that goes into the 1950s starts in the mediate postar years and goes into the 50s a stereotype about the 50s as a

Decade where the crimes of the Third Reich were forgotten there was a period of Amnesia there was a period of of retreat from the past rading the past and then a sense that the 60s was again a confrontation younger people demanding some confrontation with uh Nazi

Criminality so I want to first ask again for both of you if what you think of this stereotype of the 50s given your own work on clemency and on the Marshall Plan if you think that’s correct and then second if both of your topics clemency and the Marshall Plan did these two phenomena

Did in some strange way did they enable or facilitate people being able to distance themselves from the memory of of Nazi Germany’s war of of Nazi criminality you know focusing on moving forward about rebuilding about Prosperity did that really contribute to that so this two-part thing going to

First with you well I think the old narrative about 1950s Amnesia still holds true I think that still is the case because if I look what happened in Germany the adenau administration uh tried to say and I think we heard it also in the outcome of the post nberg trials from Rob this

Morning uh tried to say well we are not guilty and in Austria of course the myth took a hold 45 and thereafter into the 50s that the austrians were the first victims of hitlerite German which is a myth that nobody believes anymore but it held for a long time so I think what

Happened in West Germany is particularly the 68 generation rebelled uh against their father’s generation and they sort of began asking the question what did you do in the war Daddy and of course that was a hard question to answer for many daddies so uh the generational conflict between the 68ers who were of

Course rebellious and their father’s gener generation who were trying to tell the world we are not responsible we are not guilty that became uh a very important feature particularly in West Germany unless so it didn’t happen in Austria that’s why the the myth about uh the austrians as Hitler’s first victims

Prevailed all the way until the walheim election of 1986 that’s when that Paradigm sort of began to fall and the second part of the the question uh say that again yeah about the martial plan to focus on reconstruction rebuilding did you think that contributed something to this to

Kind of evading the past yeah I mean the the generation in Germany and Austria were trying to tell themselves with their hard work they did all the rebuilding they didn’t really need American eight but that was particularly the old Nazis who were arguing that way

So I think there was a lot of contention Within These societies how to relate to World War II and the Marshall Plan as an American program of course was important to uh make the American presence in Europe felt uh and and in that sense the wartime generation in Germany

And Austria they sort of rebelled against that and were not really in favor of uh the Americans being responsible for rebuilding Western Europe so in that sense the Marshall Plan to on a negative image for the old Nazis thank you Rob please um yeah when

It comes to the old Narrative of of the 1950s I think I think I I agree with go I’d say like yes but right um in the sense that there’s there’s an active process of forgetting but it’s not a silence right because you have like for instance veterans organizations with

Tens of thousands of members engaged in letter writing campaigns uh that are all arrive on John mcl’s desk demanding uh that they let their people go um you have demon ations of neo-nazis outside of lansburg prison in a small small town like actually doing Nazi salutes and

Carrying on and there’s a scuffle that breaks out when a group of of of Jewish survivors confronts the protesters and so these things play out very very publicly right so an evasion of responsibility um and a forgetting requires this active process it’s not it’s not a silence so much as one voice

Shouting down other voices um the voice of drawing a line of the past and um and we need to move on um from that and the legacies of that for for legally for nberg um I would say 1958 is is is an important year it’s the it’s the last of

The nberg war criminals walk free but 1958 is also the year where the the West German uh federal government puts together an office that specifically is looking into the prosecution of war crimes um and crime based previous na Nazi records and official and so forth but what’s

Important is that the nberg process has been so delegitimized that when these trials finally come to fruition in the 1960s um that they’re all done with reference to domestic German law uh and that’s where you get the odd kind of Confluence where people are convicted of murder but serve like you know three

Years in prison or something because you have statute supplementations issues you have intent issues and Hines fansa who I showed you at the end there is actually one of these people who’s grabbed back into the circulation because of his actions during the night of the long n

Knes in 1934 the the PCH uh he’s put on trial for murder and I think he ends up getting like two and a half or three years or something for that so so there’s this process of forgetting and a backlash and then this process of reexamination occurs but it occurs under

Different parameters because of how rejected uh this this was and just briefly to your to your last point about facilitating uh forgetting or facilitating victimhood I think what my part of this very my small part of this very large story uh is that American policy actions and decisions allowed for fertile ground for

Those in Germany who are inclined to to think of their their own victimhood as opposed to the victimhood of others in which they had been the perpetrators and inflicted them because if you take these people put them on trial put them in jail and then constantly Tinker with the

Sentences you’re sending the message uh that this is just Victors Justice it’s a show trial it’s illegitimate these people are being persecuted by vengeful occupiers and we the Germans who are living in rubble and Starving in the streets and all of that and just getting

On our feet again in the early 1950s are the real victims here and by oh by the way what about the firebombing like it’s that type of moral relative relativism that the American actions kind of um they don’t do this on purpose but they they they give some Credence to that

Thank you I just add that it’s interesting in the Soviet case and the Soviet block eventually twers are kind of pulled away from focusing on Prosecuting um Nazi war criminals and the Soviets of course are interested from the very beginning of the nurenberg trials forward about suppressing as much

As possible the memory of the N the Nazi Soviet non-aggression Act and the partitioning of Eastern Europe in 3941 and that only comes about in the 80s kind of under the gorbachov era where there’s actually much more beginnings of much more consideration of that so thank

You both thank you very much for a great panel and we’re going to turn it over Jeremy now for your questions a round of applause for the panel we’ll start in the center aisle about halfway back if you could please stand Sam good morning this is for Rob please uh

Clarification and a question about um whether or not any of the EXN Nazis became prominent in post-war Germany and did McClure have responsibility over SS Troopers like the ones that committed the massacre at M yes thank you that’s an excellent um question and clarification yes so I

Talked about the 12 nberg trials there’s a whole series of parallel Trials of about I think it’s 1,600 or so uh perpetrators um but also done by the US Army on the grounds of the former concentration camp of dcau and in the environs these are called the dacow

Trials those are more concerned with kind of individual acts of violence uh perpetuated either by concentration camp guards under American jurisdiction or uh the war crimes uh against American servicemen that you’re talking about such as the malade massacre there’s a parallel process for that the US Army uh

General of the head of ukom at the time uh Thomas handy is responsible for those prisoners but the process proceeds kind of similarly and in parallel a lot of the decisions mcoy makes push the Army along into doing their own clemency programs for those folks and that causes

An enormous Stir of controversy here in the United States because right around 1955 or so the perpetrators of the M Massacre are released from prison uh and you can imagine how everyone here felt about that the congressman Senators up in arms that spawn a senatorial and a congressional investigation there’s an

Excellent book on that aspect of it by um Steve Remy uh called the it’s the malm massacre um or the malm massacre trial and it goes through some of those um ancillary points there I feel like there’s a a teeny part of your question I missed did I get both parts of it

Whether or not any of the ex-nazis Rose to promin it’s in post war Germany um the ones uh in from the 12 nberg trials were so tainted that no they did not they kind of faded into security uh obscurity a couple of them a couple of the Military Officers had kind of Shadow

Dealings with the new high command of the bundis fair in an advisory capacity but nothing official or particularly scandalous like they were largely barred from government Service uh even though they had all of their rights restored to them after they completed parole yeah next question to your left gentlemen this is for Professor

Hutchinson um you seem to indicate that it was a American lawyer sense of uh Redemption that was the main reason for the releases uh I’m a recovering attorney so I understand I can understand that but I am also one of the other uh born in the 50s and not a white Christian State

Department employee so I’m wondering how much of it if any you have evidence of uh that who were the people killed in concentration camps homosexuals Jews uh gypsies Etc yeah that that’s a great question and by the way I just want to say like there it it’s so easy to make all the

Lawyer jokes with this right like like you like a bunch of lawyers who lose track of the big picture because they’re so concerned with with the min and I I don’t want to give that impression at all I mean they these people it’s interesting like when I look at my

Sources I want to reach it’s very frustrating I want to shake them by their lapels and be like why why are you doing this uh which is one of the things that made this project so fun for me right because they genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing um as as

They see it uh because they’re dealing with Notions of justice and and and a quest for righteous action and all the rest and they want to make sure that all the procedures have been followed and that Justice really was done and it is kind of an under um pinning of American

Jurist Prudence right that it’s better uh that 100 guilty men should go free than one innocent man be stuck in prison um but to your broader question too there is and it’s not just with this it’s with um other aspects of American and West German collaboration uh in the

1940s and 50s where there’s a there’s an identification problem that kind of happens you see it in the international military tribunals with Americans involved there and you see it uh with the high Commissioners where it’s you know these people are just like me uh they’re Christians like me they’re

Middle class well educated like me um they’re not the they’re not the Fanatics right they’re not Hitler and Geral ranting at a Podium these are just people uh that I can kind of personally identify with so to your question in the sources it’s not like this overt uh not

Caring or the where racism or sexism uh directly kind of comes into it it’s more of just this issue of personal identification that’s kind of that old thing where I sit across the table from you and I look at you and I can tell you’re contrite or um I identify with

You because surely you’re not these people aren’t monsters uh the people in uh that the Army has under control are monsters because they murdered American servicemen and they committed brutal violence these are just bureaucrats who were doing a job and you know they had bosses and what you’re hearing right now

Is me articulating all of the arguments that the nerber trials explicitly said these are not valid arguments um but the American High Commissioners thought they were they had a point and so this is another chapter in the undoing of the nberg Legacy and by validating some of these defenses

Next question is in the front row all the way to your left uh thank you gentleman for a great opening panel um my question is for Rob um Benjamin fence who did so much prosecutorial work in the post kind of the beyond the glitzy nberg trials and

They don’t get a lot of coverage in your research did you find is he ever on record commenting on the clemency of not only the ones he Pro prosecuted but just some of the other ones who who received clemency in the yes uh he respond he

Corresponds he by the way some of his oral histories are featured as part of the new Liberation exhibit uh if you don’t know Ben Ben France he’s a wonderful uh guy I just recently pass lots of literature documentary evidence I use some of his collections um he’s in

Correspondence with McCloy and he’s the lead prosecutor in the inces group been trial and he is flabbergasted that we are doing this as a policy uh he doesn’t understand he calls the New Evidence that’s being presented a bunch of baloney uh and he says um this is just

Opusc and it’s not what you’re doing is undermining the the cause for which we fought and all of the work that we did um and McLoy he he is very vocal about this uh other luminaries or veterans from nerenberg are very vocal about this people like telr Taylor um human rights

Luminaries like Elanor Roosevelt they write public op EDS denounce ing this there’s kind of vicious correspondence back and forth where mclo is attacked from all sides but like any good bureaucrat who believes in what he’s doing he just kind of puts his head down and you know says well you know this

Sort of criticism only convinces me that I must be doing the right thing but to your point yes uh Benjamin France is is very vocal about that this is a bad idea and unjust and that these people uh should have been hanged uh regardless of of of what

Happened gentlemen will stay in the front row to your left please please I want to know why if you can answer me why somebody like Carl Frederick flick and his elk Gunner Sachs and others were given their massive businesses returned to them after the war because I mean their VA their wealth

Was vast I I knew Carl Frederick flick and we just were astonished the one when we when we vetted him for a club and his daily interest uh uh rate I mean his uh income from his interest rate daily was a million6 you know and that turns out to

Be a whole lot of money and that was just bonds so I I wonder why you know there’s there’s many others you you know why did that happen was that part of was that a requirement of the of the Marshall Plan or or the German why would

The Germans do that I just don’t understand and and and the austrians I have a little something on this but if you guys want to chime in I just I’ll just say something very quickly and that to reinforce something from earlier in the uh in the panel is

That the Soviets obviously watch this very carefully and if you’re looking at like their delegation and in the Soviet leadership they fully expect the Americans and British they’re not so sure about the French but the Americans and British they think that if if there’s are capitalists that are going

To be put on trial be careful the Americans and British are like likely to uh let them go this is kind of an expectation and of course it becomes very quickly by Rob not alluded to this 47 48 49 it’s already Central to the early propaganda being going back and

Forth in the cold war that um the US and the British are really about rehabilitating the old economic system uh and that they’re not really interested in getting to the bottom of these individuals being involved with slave labor Etc the complicity with the SS which at that level just if you’re

Just talking at that level is is true there’s enormous connections between the German business community and the Nazi leadership it goes back years but yes it’s a central part of the propaganda effort and certainly if you’re looking anything coming out of the out of Moscow or the Eastern Europe after 1946 47 you

See it all the time Rob gentlemen we’re gonna go oh I’m sorry Rob fck yeah a flick um yeah it’s a it’s a great question um and there’s a lot that goes into it so technically as a part of the occupation statutes um a punishment a valid punishment is the

Seizure of property if the property was used for criminal means right and that’s where it gets that’s where it gets tricky um so the only uh person who was subject to asset forfeiture uh during these 12 trials I cover was actually um uh Alfred kup uh because assets stolen from the occupied

Territories were specifically given to the crup company by Hitler like he signed a decree and was like these are yours uh and so the US government said okay that’s we’re going to seize those to answer your question part of his punishment that McLoy and others overturn is we give those assets back

And why and this gets into these kind of political questions that are just coming of age in the N early 1950s and late 1940s in America well the seizure of assets that sounds like communism to me that’s not American we don’t take people’s property in this country we

Don’t punish people that way uh because you know property and business like even though like that’s the that’s the rhetoric that’s surrounds that is that something about this punishment even though it’s perfectly there by statutary Authority strikes uh McLoy and his staff as unamerican because it’s not something

That’s typically levied U for which is also not true there’s a history of this uh in this country as well gentlemen we have time for probably one last question all the way to your right uh Rob this is specifically for you um your you had a slide up there where case

Number 12 was senior verock officers uh against uh for crimes against humanity and so forth with a particular emphasis on the Eastern Front why is it the Americans presumed they could do some kind of a trial about things that happened on the Eastern Front were they

Trying to show up the Russians or did the Russians participate and provide evidence what’s going going on there um yeah that’s a great question it’s mostly um it’s mostly there’s a lot of moving I’m looking at the real boss Jer like of Jeremy schem time so I keep it keep it

Brief um but uh so uh partly some of this there’s a jurisdictional aspect into it why do the Americans try who they try and what cases do they bring um it’s they want to do certain emphases uh and it’s also who lives in the American zone of occupation so Bavaria beus God

And all of that you’ve got like a lot of the real big wigs there um they choose that case to highlight the specifically crimes against prisoners of War uh so the commissar orders and the deliberate starvation of Soviet PS as an orchestrated policy that comes from

Berlin and is top down directed to the unit commanders in the East so that’s like thematically what that trial is about as opposed to like case seven which is about you know partisan reprisal actions right so it’s a different type of war crimes it’s not necessarily uh geared towards um

Prosecuting something the Soviets should because the Soviets prosecute the own their own people that they have for crimes like this but Al mostly just showing the different ways that the German military was culpable for German war crimes ladies and gentlemen Rob Hudson Gund Bishoff Jason do thank you gentlemen