Read The Nuremberg Interviews Online

Authors: Leon Goldensohn

The Nuremberg Interviews (10 page)

“I met the girl I was supposed to marry again in the last few years. She, too, was unhappy. We went together and practically lived together like man and wife. Our not getting married originally was due in part to personal stupidity, but mainly I think it was a trick of fate. The biggest mistake is that I act and speak under emotional influences and do not take an objective view of circumstances.

“My marriage was such that I was always lonely. I could not speak with my wife about things that depressed me. I was virtually a married
bachelor. I don’t want you to misunderstand me — this has nothing to do with the character of my wife. She would have fit admirably with another kind of man, probably.” I asked Frank what kind of a man his wife would have suited, in his opinion. “A practical man, an industrious businessman who likes money, gives parties, and that sort of life.”

I asked him how he explained emotionally his originally having fallen in love with his wife. He replied, “There was undoubtedly a physical attraction, which became completely extinguished after two or three years. My wife was a cold beauty. She had no need for physical satisfaction. I think one of the reasons for her desiring that our marriage not be broken by divorce was that she never felt any need for a sex life.”

I asked Frank whether he frequently had arguments with his wife. He replied, “There were weeks and sometimes months when I stayed away from home. My political life demanded my going on trips and tours. Of course, social appearances were kept up, but that was about all.”

Frank went on to tell me about his mistress. “I had several mistresses at various times. They were always younger girls — ones that I had known from the time of my youth. They were girls I had loved in my youth and childhood. There were never any new ones. For many years I lived secretly with a girl who was an old friend of mine in my boyhood. She was married but her husband was ill and much older than she was, and she was unhappy just like me. I would have married her if she had been a widow and if I could have gotten a divorce. She had everything — comradeship, character. She would have been a perfect partner. She is the girl I told you about — the one I was engaged to when I broke it off to marry my wife. In retrospect, I believe she was the same age as I was, nineteen or twenty — but she came from a rich family and I was but a poor student. I didn’t have the power or nerve to ask her to elope with me. I think that was the first tragedy of my life.

“This wonderful woman, who was my girlfriend before I married and also in the last few years, is a very close friend of my mother’s. Mother always liked her and both our families were very friendly. I will give you her name — because after I am dead, it doesn’t matter.” At this point, Frank took an envelope from his pocket and showed me a picture of a young woman who, he said, was the sweetheart of his youth. He did not mention her name at this point, and I did not ask him for it.

He seemed rather depressed after his statements regarding his personal relationship with his wife and mistress and I asked him why he
appeared so downhearted at this moment. He said, “I feel that I am obligated to my people — that is not pessimism. If I tried to prove that I was innocent, it would be the same as trying to prove that the German people are guilty. Only one innocent man sits in that dock — and that man is the symbol of the German people. An epoch with such happenings as the murder of 5 million Jews, the projective extermination of millions of Slavs — such an epoch must close up definitely once and for all. It cannot go dragging on and on. Those of us who are guilty must pay the price and set the German people free, no longer to be blamed for our stupidity.”

It seemed to me that actually Frank’s depressed appearance had more to do with his personal life and fate than with his platitudinous concern about the German people. I said that I was more interested in his personal life from a psychological standpoint, and did he care to tell me anything more about his relationships with his wife or with other women? He again displayed the picture of his sweetheart and gazed at it sentimentally. “In 1937 or ’38 I met this old sweetheart of mine again and we became most intimate. This was especially true from 1941 until the end. In the last few months before my arrest I was together again with her almost constantly in Bavaria, near Munich. She is a very clever woman and I say that not because I loved her but because I knew her so well.

“It might interest you to know that when I returned from Krakow I didn’t go to my wife but to this woman. I knew at that time that everything was collapsing, and I wanted to say farewell to the beautiful things of life. The only disagreement she ever had with me was the fact that she was a fanatical opponent of Hitler and everything having anything to do with National Socialism. We could not find a mutual understanding politically. That is why I said that if I had married her, I would not have become a Nazi, and I must admit that I am so small and easily influenced, especially by a woman I love, that I can say this with assurance.”

July 20, 1946

Frank was in his blue denim coveralls, reading a magazine, when Mr. Triest and I entered his cell this morning. It was Saturday and there was no court session. The sun streamed in through the open cell window. Most of the other defendants were exercising in the yard. He was grandiosely courteous and eager for company. As usual, he greeted us
eloquently, and ceremoniously made place for me on his chair and for Mr. Triest on the cot beside him. He filled his pipe with tobacco, an American brand, and praised it highly. “This blessed Granger tobacco,” he said, “it is marvelous.” I offered him a cigarette and he accepted it quickly, thanking me profusely.

What had Frank been thinking about in the past few days? What did he think of the trials recently? What about the organizations? He smiled mirthlessly, giggled in a high-pitched manner, then drew his hand over his face in a gesture of changing expression. When he spoke, his face assumed a serious mien. “The case against the organizations is a mistake. It was contemplated in the first white rage after the war. If the Allies were to think about such a case now, they could not have indicted the organizations. You can’t indict a government and its organizations as criminal. The conception of the Reich government is a hundred years old. The general staff is several hundreds of years old. The case of the SS is another matter, because it was started with the party and by the party. But it’s quite impossible to indict or convict an organization as criminal if it has in its membership millions of innocent people.”

He reiterated what so many Nazis in Nuremberg had said. “As a lawyer I feel that only the indictment of individuals is correct or possible. Not organizations or a whole government. I think that the trial will be short as far as the organizations are concerned because the Allies already realize the difficulties. If you will recall, a few weeks ago there was a sharp debate between the French judge, Donnedieu de Vabres, and Mr. Jackson or Mr. Dodd — I forget exactly — regarding the prosecution of the organizations. There was a hectic controversy about it all. The French judge said just about what I have just said — that one can convict an individual, but to convict a government or entire organization is impossible.”

What did Frank think of the American prosecutors, Justice Jackson and Mr. Dodd? “They are politicians, not lawyers, as far as this procedure is concerned. Their mission is political. They are mouthpieces of political interests which are directed toward the destruction of National Socialism. I mean they are the tools which the Allies are using to smash Nazism ideologically as well as actually. Neither Jackson nor Dodd, nor the other Allied prosecutors, refer too much to law or legality, because the subject is too difficult. The problem of placing these matters discussed in court in a legal light is left to the tribunal.

“The entire trial affords a picture of a mixture of politics and law. It isn’t the fault of Jackson. There is the old controversy between Anglo-Saxon and American legal procedures, on the one hand, and continental law as typified by French and German methods, on the other side. The prosecutor, for example, in a French or German court has quite a different function than the prosecutor in an American court. Personally, I liked Jackson for openly and plainly stating in court that he voiced the sentiment of the world — and not merely represented the law.

“That’s why I don’t consider him a lawyer in this case. In a way he is also the defense counsel for the victims of Hitlerism. I must attribute to Jackson a position apart and above the law. His is a political, and also a moral and humane, mission. Secondly, did you ever consider how impossible it would be to prosecute by legal means the acts of Hitlerism? Hitler himself didn’t keep within the law, so how can the prosecutor of Hitlerism confine himself to legal technique?”

Frank said he’d been thinking something over rather carefully in the past few days, and he wondered if I’d be good enough to tell him my opinion of his ideas. “In my final speech, which I should be working on one of these days, since the trial is going pretty fast now, I have thought of devoting it almost entirely to a new idea. My idea is to defend Hitler. Not in the customary sense of the term. But I feel that here in Nuremberg we have twenty-one defendants, all guilty to a more or less degree, but the man who should be the main defendant is absent because he committed suicide. Now whereas Bormann is absent, he has a defense counsel. But every defense lawyer’s strategy has been to place the blame upon Hitler. Therefore, according to a just court procedure, the man who is most highly accused, by defense and prosecution both, should have a lawyer or a defense of some kind.

“Now it isn’t a matter of whether Hitler’s actions are defensible. They aren’t. His last testament alone is a frightful document in which he admits and brags about killing off the Jews. It’s the most hideous, frightful document in history. But unless a ghost appears in these last few weeks in court and speaks for Hitler, he is unheard.

“Therefore my idea would be to devote most of my final speech to a so-called defense of Hitler. It would be proper, in the sense that I was his old lawyer for years, and his personal attorney from 1927 to 1933, defending him in over 140 legal suits, mostly for slander, in the courts all over Germany. It would make sense for another reason. It would help to
destroy for posterity the possibility of a ‘Hitler legend.’ If Hitler is accused of so many dastardly things, and if no one speaks up for him to answer the charges, the legend of Hitler’s greatness might grow. But if I said, ‘Well, I represent Hitler’s legal interests. I will answer the charges A, B, C, and D,’ et cetera, and proceed to answer them as Hitler would answer them, the nonsense of a Hitler legend would be dissipated forever. Because there is no answer to the things he did and the government he created. There is only one thing which would and should happen, if someone like myself, or Hitler himself, were to answer the charges made against him. The answers would be thrown out and considered trash and nonsense. The tribunal would have to answer only one word to all the stuff I could say in defense of Hitler: the word ‘Auschwitz.’ That would be enough. Hitler’s legend would be done and finished. I cite that as only a small example.

“The problem of who shall defend Hitler has occurred to me often.” Frank laughed sardonically in a high-pitched, uncontrolled manner. “Hitler is always attacked and never defended. It’s a problem. It would be hard to defend Hitler, but in every trial where manifold charges are made against a man, he should be defended. I repeat, maybe a ghost will yet appear in court who will defend Hitler!” Frank laughed again in his characteristic hysterical manner.

“It is quite interesting from a legal standpoint because up to now, the very end of the trial, nobody has been able to defend that man with even a single meaningful word. Our defense counsels continue to attack Hitler, because their idea is that if you blame Hitler, then their clients will not be so much to blame. The tactic of the defense counsel is to separate Hitler from the defendants. The idea is to toss Hitler into an abyss and say, ‘These poor defendants had no idea of what a monster he was, and had nothing to do with him.’ Believe me, nothing could be farther from the truth.

“If Hitler is the main defendant in this trial, which he must be, because all the defendants blame him for everything, then this principal accused one should be heard. Personally, I should like to see Hitler among those upon whom a sentence will be passed. Now, if you pass a sentence on a man, he should be heard, and given a chance to defend himself. It would be more effective if we said that Hitler wanted such and such, but that it does not compare with such and such, which was actually done and which was criminal.

“I think of these things frequently, because I know the German people. Among them might arise the legend of Hitler, because Hitler was not heard from in this trial. Time always has some reconciling effect. On every ruin there eventually grows grass, and then some shrubbery, and finally, before you realize it, what is really an old hideous ruin becomes a romantic sight and legend.

“And I want to warn the world on that point in regard to Hitler and these trials. I know Europe and its possibilities. It would interest me greatly, Dr. Goldensohn, if you gave me your opinion.” I replied that there seemed to be some reason behind his idea, but I should like to know more about it. For one thing, admitting the important figure of Hitler is not in the dock, what could be done about it, since he committed suicide? Frank replied thoughtfully, “For one thing, the following can be done. One or the other of us, in his final speech before this tribunal, should make a defensive speech for Hitler. Not the lawyers, the defense counsels, but one of us defendants who were Hitler’s agents.

“The worst testament in the world is Hitler’s own last testament. Goering’s so-called faithfulness to Hitler is a joke — nonsense. Criminal nonsense. But one should stand up and say, ‘I am attempting to defend Hitler as his attorney or representative.’ Then the court should ask questions and let whoever defends Hitler answer. The prosecution, believe me, would have an easy task. They would simply have to say, ‘Hitler, here is your last testament. What do you have to say about it?’ What can be said in its defense? Not a word that makes sense! It’s the confession of the order to kill the Jews. The most horrible document, attesting to the most horrible crime in world history! The prosecution would just have to say, ‘What do you say to this, Herr Hitler?’ Then one has to imagine an answer or argument for it.

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