By EDWARD W. BEATTIE
NUREMBERG, Oct. 1, 1946 (UP) -- The International Military Tribunal, in measured judicial tones today wrote an end to Adolf Hitler's schemes to dominate the world by sentencing Hermann Goering and 11 other Nazi leaders to be hanged until dead within 15 days and committing to prison for terms ranging up to life seven other leaders of the Third Reich.
Three Nazis, the wily financier, Hjalmar Schacht, the minor propagandist Hans Fritzsche, and the scheming diplomat, Franz von Papen, were acquitted. One of those condemned to death, Martin Bormann, has not been seen since the final battles around the Reichschancellory in Berlin, in May 1945, and probably was already dead.
The sentences imposed today will be appealed to the Allied Military Council in Berlin within four days but no change in the court's verdict is anticipated.
There was little arrogance left in the high Nazis when they finally filed in, one by one, to hear their fate after watching for 10 months and 10 days the ever-growing mountains of evidence against them.
The Allied prosecutors who had indicted the Nazi elite on charges of conspiracy or a common plan of aggression, crimes against the peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity expressed some disappointment that not all the defendants had been convicted.
But they were gratified that the doctrine that "aggressive warfare is a crime for which individual statesmen may be punished" has now been written into the body of the law of nations.
Those sentenced to be hanged were:
Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm von Keitel, Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Martin Bormann, in absentia.
Those sentenced to life in prison were:
Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Eric Raeder.
Those receiving prison terms were:
Karl Doenitz, 10 years; Baldur von Schirach, 20 years; Konstantin von Neurath, 15 years, and Albert Speer, 20 years.
Those acquitted were:
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche.
The defendants have four days in which to appeal to the Allied Military Council in Berlin. The sentences are to be carried out within 15 days.
In Berlin, it was announced that the condemned Nazi leaders will be executed in the Nuremberg prison.
Highly reliable sources reported that the Nazis would be hanged October 16-the last day of the 15-day period in which the execution was ordered-unless the Allied Control Council ordered otherwise.
The council announced that the Nazis had until midnight Saturday to file clemency pleas with the secretariat of the tribunal at Nuremberg.
The American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, expressed disappointment at the acquittal of Schacht, von Papen and the High Command Organization and said that the acquittals would have a definite effect on plans for further prosecution of German industrialists and military figures. However, he declined to elaborate pending full study of the court's opinion.
The court announced that the Soviet judge, I. T. Nikitchenko, dissented from the acquittal of Schacht, von Papen and Fritzsche. He also dissented from the life sentence imposed on Hess, believing the sentence should have been death by hanging.
A third Soviet dissent was entered to the acquittal of the Reich cabinet and German general staff and High Command from the general charge of conspiracy against the peace of the world and aggression.
Chief Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Britain read the sentences to the 21 Nazi leaders. Each entered the solemn court room singly, escorted by a guard. Each stood stiffly before the justices of France, Britain, Russia and the United States heard his fate.
Few of the Nazis displayed any emotion as they were led in through a small door at the courtroom rear, stood a moment or two at the bar of world justice, heard their sentences and then were led silently back to their cells.
Goering was the first to stand before the tribunal. He was led in at 2:53 p.m. (7:53 a. m. EST). There was a moment of trouble when the earphones over which he was to hear the German translation of Lawrence's words failed. A guard fussed futilely with the headset then Lawrence impatiently motioned him away. Goering heard the verdict-in the Russian translation-but he was obviously certain what his fate was to be.
Hess, the No. 2 Nazi, whose conduct throughout the trial has been erratic, brushed off the earphones and declined to listen to the translation. He was led away with no show of emotion.
Grand Admiral Eric Raeder gave the court a stiff military salute after hearing himself condemned to spend the rest of his days in prison.
The sentences were imposed swiftly, each requiring only a minute or two with the guard shuttling steadily between the prison cells, bringing the defendants up by elevator and into the courtroom for what for many was their last appearance in public.
Less than an hour after Lawrence read the first verdict to Goering the ceremony was completed at 2: 41 p. m. (8:41 a. m. EST) with the announcement by Lawrence of Russia's dissent from three of the verdicts.
The nature of the sentences had been foreshadowed clearly by the court in its morning session when it found 19 or the 22 defendants guilty and reviewed the charges against each. There was one surprise-the order that the death sentences against all 12 men be carried out by hanging. The Nazi military leaders had hoped this indignity might be spared them and that they might face a military firing squad rather than the hangman's noose.
Not a word was spoken by any of the defendants during their final courtroom appearance although Hess mumbled inarticulately.
The Nazis appeared to sense the solemnity of the hour. Julius Streicher, notorious Jew-baiter, who has industriously chewed gum for the last two days of the trial, apparently parked it outside before entering to hear Lawrence tell him that his sentence was to hang until dead.
The sentences will be carried out by the Allied Military Council in Berlin. All except Schacht, von Papen and Fritzsche will be turned over immediately to the four-power council. It was assumed that all the convicted defendants will make pro forma appeals to the council but no change in the court's verdict was expected.
The four-power tribunal showed moderation and mercy in its convictions. In addition to acquitting men entirely, it found only seven of the 22 defendants guilty of all charges placed against them.
The four counts of the indictment were: (1) conspiracy, or a common plan of aggression, (2) crimes against peace, (3) war crimes and (4) crimes against humanity.
Hess was guilty on counts one and two; Kaltenbrunner, three and four; Frank, three and four; Frick, two, three and four; Streicher, four; Funk, two, three and four; Bormann, three and four; Speer, three and four; Seyss-Inquart, two, three and four.
Raeder was found guilty on the first three counts. He had not been charged on the fourth count. He and the six guilty on all four counts stand as the cream of Nazi monsters.
The prosecution took its worst defeat on the first count, that of a common plan of conspiracy, which had been prosecuted primarily by the United States. All 22 defendants were charged with it but only eight were convicted. The eighth man was Hess.
Bormann, although convicted, was tried in absentia. He never has been found and probably died from a Russian shell in Berlin. American intelligence officers in Berlin yesterday denied a rumor printed in a French-licensed German paper that he was alive.
The tribunal acquitted Schacht because it recognized the grim financial wizard never was in Hitler's inner circle and was regarded by the circle with "undisguised hostility."
Papen was credited by the tribunal with a speech at Marburg June 6, 1934 in which he "denounced the Nazi reign of terror." This resulted in his dismissal as vice-chancellor after his arrest during the Roehm purge.
Fritzsche, most inconspicuous of the defendants, was found to be "merely a conduit" for dissemination of orders handed down from Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda boss.
The tribunal's finding on Goering was extremely bitter. From the time he joined the Nazi party in 1923 as commander of the S. A. Storm Troopers, it said, he was "adviser and active agent of Hitler and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement...
"He developed the Gestapo and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to (Heinrich) Himmler in 1934. He conducted the Roehm purge that year and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of (Werner) von Blomberg and (Werner) von Fritsch from the army."
The tribunal pointed out Goering's almost invariable attendance at important conferences preceding Nazi territorial grabs. It said he took an active part in political maneuvers, including use of "the Swedish businessman Dahlerus" as a go-between with the British to try to prevent the British Government from keeping its guarantee to support Poland.
It said Goering was the "central figure-the ringleader-in the Austrian Anschluss."
"He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and through the aggressive wars which followed...lulling the Czechs with false promises of friendship."
If Goering opposed Hitler on the invasions of Norway and Russia, the tribunal continued, "it is clear he did so only for strategic reason. Once Hitler decided the issue, he followed him without hesitation. His only objection to the Russian invasion, it said, was the time.
"He wished for strategic reasons to delay until Britain was conquered...After his own admissions to this tribunal, the expositions which he held, the conferences he attended and the public words he uttered, there can remain no doubt Goering was a moving force for aggressive war second only to Hitler. He was a planner and prime mover in the military and diplomatic preparation for war which Germany pursued."
Goering was charged by the tribunal with full complicity in exploiting slave labor, using Soviet prisoners as antiaircraft gunners and actively participating in spoilation of conquered territory.
Ribbentrop was held responsible as a diplomat since "his diplomatic efforts were so closely connected with the war that he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's action."
The tribunal held that Ribbentrop helped to carry out criminal policies, particularly those involving extermination of Jews.
The tribunal said there was nothing in mitigation of Keitel, as chief of the high command.
"Superior orders even to a soldier cannot be considered in mitigation here. Crimes as shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly and without military excuse or justification."
The tribunal threw out the pleas that Hess was insane.
"It may be true that Hess acts in an abnormal manner, suffers loss of memory and has mentally deteriorated during the trial, but there is nothing to show that he does not realize the nature of the charges against him or is incapable of defending himself.
"There is no suggestion that Hess was not completely sane when the acts charged against him were committed."
In finding Frank guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the tribunal fired back Frank's own words, "The Poles shall be slaves of the greater German world empire...We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole."
Kaltenbrunner was held fully responsible for the murder of war prisoners and political opponents, and ordering police not to interfere with attacks on parachuting Allied fliers.
The tribunal said Kaltenbrunner's secret police headquarters "played a leading part in the 'final solution' of the Jewish question by extermination of Jews. Under its direction about 6,000,000 Jews were murdered." It found he participated in the murder of a French general held as a prisoner of war.
Rosenberg was described as "ideologist of the Nazi Party." The tribunal said he "helped formulate the policies of German annexation, forced labor, extermination of Jews and opponents of the Nazi rule, and set up administration which carried them out."
The tribunal held Streicher guilty as publisher of the violent anti-Jewish newspaper Der Sturmer.
"His incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the east were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes and constitutes crime against humanity."
Funk's claims that he was an innocent dupe were overruled. It said he as Reichsbank president made an agreement with Hitler by which the bank was to receive gold, jewelry and currency from the S. S.
As a result of the agreement, the S. S. "sent to the Reichsbank personal belongings taken from victims who had been executed in concentration camps. The gold teeth and fillings were stored in the Reichsbank vaults.
"Funk has protested he did not know the Reichsbank was receiving articles of this kind. The tribunal is of the opinion he either knew what was being received or was deliberately closing his eyes to what was being done."
Funk also was held responsible for "participating in the economic planning which preceded the attack on the USSR."
The tribunal held Doenitz responsible for violating the rules of submarine warfare laid down by the London agreement and protocol of 1936 "by sinking neutral merchant ships in the proclamation zones declared by the German government."
It said, however, that Doenitz was not convicted on these breaches of international law.
This exception was granted "in view of the order of the British Admiralty that all vessels should be sunk at night in the Skagerrak and the answers to interrogatories by Admiral (Chester) Nimitz that unrestricted warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States."
Neither did the tribunal hold Doenitz responsible for "deliberately ordering the killing of shipwreck survivors." He was found guilty of crimes against peace and war crimes.
Raeder was found guilty because he "was active in the invasion of Norway, participated in plans for the invasion of Poland and the USSR, was present at the Hoezbach Conference Nov. 5, 1937, at which aggressive war was planned and admitted passing on the commando order, although it did not apply to naval warfare."
The tribunal said Von Schirach "subject the Hitler youth to an intense program of Nazi propaganda." It spoke mostly, however, of his participation in the forced labor program in Vienna and his defense of deportation of the Jews as a "contributing factor to European culture."
Sauckel was credited with "overall responsible for the slave labor program which involved deportation for slave labor of more than 5,000,000 human beings, many of them under terrible conditions of cruelty and suffering."
Jodl's defense that he acted under "superior orders" was blasted by the tribunal. It said of the acts charged against him, "participation in such crimes as these never has been required of any soldier, and he cannot now shield himself behind the mythical requirement of soldierly obedience at all costs, as his excuses for commission of these crimes."
The tribunal said evidence of Bormann's death was not conclusive. If he is later apprehended, the tribunal said the four-power Allied Control Council may consider any facts in mitigation of his guilt.
It held Bormann "participated in plans for the enslavement and annihilation of the population of conquered territories...was active in ruthless treatment of Jews, prominent in the slave labor program and responsible for lynching Allied airmen."
The tribunal said in convicting Seyss-Inquart, "he assumed responsibility for governing territory which had been occupied by aggressive war and administration of which was of vital importance to aggressive war.
"He supported harsh occupation policies, exploited resources of Poland for the benefit of Germany, persecuted Jews and was informed of action which involved many Jewish intellectuals, and in the Netherlands was ruthless in applying terrorism to suppress opposition to the German occupation during which over 500,000 people were sent from the Netherlands to the Reich as laborers.
Von Neurath was found guilty on all four counts, but the tribunal credited him with seeking the release of many Czechs who had been arrested.
"He played an important role in Hitler's decision to reoccupy the Rhineland...Suppressed the press, political parties, trade unions and opposition groups in Bohemia and Moravia, worked the Czechoslovakian industry into the structure of German war production, introduced anti-semitic laws...and advocated elimination of the Czechoslovakian intellligentis and other groups which might resist organization.
In mitigation the tribunal said Hitler replaced him with Heinrich Heydrich in Czechoslovakia in September, 1941, saying he had not been harsh enough.
The tribunal admitted Speer "did not initiate or plan wars of aggression" but said he participated in the slave labor program.
In mitigation the tribunal said, "it must be recognized that Speer's establishment of blocked industries did keep many laborers in their homes and in the closing stages of the war he was one of the few men who had courage to tell Hitler the war was lost and take steps to prevent senseless destruction of production facilities, both in occupied territories and in Germany."
