The Nuremberg Interviews (27 page)

“I said in court and I repeat to you that this war was not started by Hitler or Germany but by the Allies. Your country obliged England to go to war when we invaded Poland. England was all for appeasement and no war. I think that the duke of Windsor, who was king, resigned from his position not because he married an American lady, but because he was a friend of Germany and realized how right we were but foresaw that America was going to involve England in a war.”
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I commented at this point that his views were markedly different from my own, but that I was interested in hearing them nevertheless. I asked him to tell me more about his feelings in reference to the war, the trials, Hitler, and so forth. Goering smiled wryly and said, “Yes, I suppose this is the last chance for me to tell the world, through you, all I know and what my worldview has always been. The strange part of it all is that I don’t feel like a criminal and that if I had been in the United States or South America or anyplace else, I would probably be a leading figure in one of those countries. I am a capitalist and a cultured gentleman. That is why I can tolerate this prison where I am treated like a thief or a small criminal. I have to watch my step every moment. If I give vent to my spontaneous reactions — such as laughing at the Russians when they try to cross-examine, or, another example, when I laugh at evidence about the atrocities, which, as I explained before, is not meant because I think it is humorous but because it is my personality to laugh in the face of adversity — then Dr. Gilbert feels that I am making a mockery of the atrocities and they treat me like a naughty child. I am fully convinced that this trial is a mockery and that someday when you Americans have your hands full of Russian troublemaking, you will see me and my activities in a different light.

“The charge of conspiracy is a farce. It all goes back to the Versailles Treaty and the fact that Germany was forced to take steps to regain its dignity as a nation. The Weimar Republic was a failure, and I’d had enough of so-called democracy. That form of government may work in America, just as Communism may work in Russia, but it is not for us Germans. It is not a natural thing for me nor for my people. We Germans are apolitical and an election can be swung anyway one pleases because the people are so naïve. It is for that reason that I believed in the leadership principle. Germany will need a strong leader in the future just as it always required one.”

Rudolf Hess
1894–1987

Rudolf Hess was deputy leader of the Nazi Party. There is strong evidence that he was mentally incompetent at the time of the Nuremberg trials. Found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes and of crimes against peace, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite appeals for his release on humanitarian grounds, he remained in Spandau prison until his death, at age ninety-two.

Rudolf Hess was lying in bed, and although it was a warm day, he had on an overcoat and several blankets. He displayed the same pained, pinched facial expression, with a tightly drawn mouth and prominent masseter muscles. He said that he had unusually severe stomach cramps today. I asked him how his memory was and he said that it was “very bad.” He seemed to be convinced today that the fat he was receiving in his food contained too much salt, and that salt was not good for his health. He requested a different type of fat, butter (if possible) which was unsalted. He also stated that he believed coffee in the morning made him weak and he wondered whether he could not have some other type of fluid because of this.

We discussed again his early life. I explained that I considered this type of discussion more advantageous as far as stimulating his memory than the formal memory tests. He said he agreed since such discussion had helped him in the past to a limited extent. Today he said that he could remember that his father had been a merchant in Egypt but he could not recall what the father sold or what business he engaged in. He could not remember either the personality of the father or what he
looked like. He believed that his father was easy to get along with but this was merely an assumption, perhaps a result of my question as to whether he was easy or hard to get along with. He did not recall his mother’s personality either. He says that he must have seen her sometime shortly before his trip to England because she was living in Germany at the time. He said that he had one brother and one sister, named Alfred and Margaret, both of whom were younger than himself. He could recall that Alfred was a merchant, just as was his father.

Alfred and the father left Egypt later than Hess but both of them came to Germany eventually. His sister, he believes, is single, but he doesn’t know her occupation or what she looks like. He said that he probably saw his brother and sister before his flight to England, but he is not sure.

He said that he remembered what house he lived in in Alexandria, Egypt, before he left there. He seemed excessively agreeable and susceptible to suggestion, so that his answers were not particularly reliable.
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On his desk Hess had written certain words in German, which seemed to be rules for keeping in good health which he had probably jotted down in order to facilitate his memory. Mr. Triest took down the notes, which in translation are as follows:

Alfred Jodl
1890–1946

Alfred Jodl was chief of the operations staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) from 1939 to 1945. Found guilty at Nuremberg of conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, he was hanged on October 16, 1946. On February 28, 1953, he was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court that found him not guilty of crimes under international law.

Seen for a short interview this afternoon, Alfred Jodl was his usual ruddy-complexioned, sharp-featured self. He is quite complacent, and almost the first thing he greeted me with was, “Ah, you come to see the others but rarely to see me.” I replied, through Mr. Triest, that I was a psychiatrist, as Jodl knew, and therefore I have always looked on Jodl as not particularly requiring my services. I said this with humorous intent, and Triest so translated. It was taken quite seriously, however, by Jodl, who said: “Yes, I’m very normal, everything is okay, I won’t become a psychiatric case.”

I then told him that I was interested more in the personalities of the defendants, and therefore it was with no suspicion that he was in any way abnormal that I spoke to him. He said he realized that.

He seemed distant but not unfriendly. He said that his uncle Professor Jodl had been at the University of Munich and died in 1913, that he was a scholar and a professor of philosophy. He himself took after his uncle in many ways, he said — for example, his interest in philosophy and a
philosophical inclination that allows him to accept these trials and present difficulties without becoming upset. He feels that is his uncle’s influence.

He stressed his Bavarian birth, his Bavarian temperament, his old Bavarian lineage. He was born in 1890 in Würzburg, his father an artillery officer. He has five siblings and is the third in line.

Education:
Elementary school in Landau, 1896–99. Munich, 1899–1900. High school to 1903. Cadet school in Munich, 1903–1910.

Marital:
First marriage, to Countess Irma von Buillon. She died in April 1944 after an operation. He remarried in March 1945 to Luise von Benda. He showed me pictures of his former wife, now deceased, and of his present wife, a profile of her lying down in a bathing suit, an obviously much younger woman. His wife now assists his two defense counsels, he says, in the preparation of his case. He proudly points out that he alone, of the twenty-one defendants, has two professors of law as defense counsel. One of them, Professor Franz Exner, was formerly at Munich and knew his uncle Professor Jodl.

Regarding his present state of mind and attitude, he maintains that he spent the entire war in headquarters, in Berlin or elsewhere, with the Führer, from 1939 to 1945, so that he is not concerned with atrocities or other war brutalities. He feels an inner sense of innocence, he says, and therefore this incarceration does not bother him.

On his table behind the pictures of his two wives, he has a scenic view of Berchtesgaden. He described in detail just where his own house was, and where the Führer’s home was in relation to the picture.

He is a colorless fellow who requires slow, careful study. He gives the impression of competence, coolness, and oxlike stubbornness and obsessiveness, which may be incorrect, but which is suggested by his bearing, detachment, and also the remark on my entering his cell concerning the infrequency of my visits as compared to my visiting some of the other defendants. He has apparently noted this.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner
1903–1946

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian police official who was an active supporter of the Nazi Party and Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria. He became chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in 1943. Found guilty at Nuremberg of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he was hanged on October 16, 1946.

This gaunt, scar-faced giant of a man, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, has had two episodes of subarachnoid hemorrhage within the period of his confinement here in jail, the last attack having occurred sometime in the past December. He has been comparatively well since then and has been returned from the American General Hospital, in which he had been treated.

He is busy today working on his documents, but welcomed the Sunday visit. He said it was a respite for him since he had been spending several hours perusing evidence. His manner is restrained, his voice well modulated and soft-spoken, and it seemed to me that he was striving to give the impression that he was not the ferocious police chief and successor of Himmler that he had been reputed to be in the press. Nevertheless, the meekness, calmness, and well-mannered attitudes seemed indicative of a capacity for harsh, ruthless action, if such would have been the possibility.

He was clearly reviewing his defense, and so, after making me comfortable on his chair and with Mr. Triest seated on the cot beside him, he
began a very much self-directed recitation. He said, “I have talked to you in the past but we have always exchanged pleasantries. And it has always been assumed that I am Kaltenbrunner, the big bad man next to Himmler and the successor of Himmler. But I think you can see by this time, after having treated my brain hemorrhages, both in the hospital and here in my cell, that I am not the disagreeable, uncouth fellow the public probably thinks because of all the atrocities committed under Himmler’s rule, and of which I am totally innocent.”