The Nuremberg Trials: A Washington Connection

by Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander

The following is taken from a speech and presentation given at the Annual Conference of Washington Superior Court Judges in spring 2008.

As a preface to my remarks this evening, let me say that although my vocation has been judging for about 35 years, my avocation is history, and a period in history that has always fascinated me is World War II — both the events leading up to it and its aftermath. I am sure that my interest is engendered, at least in part, by the fact that I have childhood memories of the war years and I recall what it was like on the home front with blackouts, rationing, air-raid drills at school, bond drives, and the like.

An event that occurred after the cessation of hostilities that has always interested me is the series of trials that took place over about a two-and-a-half-year period in the German city of Nuremberg, starting in November 1945. My interest in these trials is undoubtedly driven by the fact that it blends my interest in history with my vocation, the law.

It is these trials that I want to talk to you about today. To those in the audience younger than me, this may seem like ancient history, but what went on in Nuremberg six decades ago is clearly relevant to us today, at a time when we have individuals in the custody of our nation as a consequence of another war, and we are now faced with questions about what jurisdiction we have over them and how and where they should be treated.

I should note that although I was only between nine and 12 when the Nuremberg trials took place, I did follow pretty closely the news of the first of these trials, the International Tribunal. Our family was a newspaper reading family and we also subscribed to Life magazine, which was the great picture magazine of that day and it covered the trial extensively. I also have a vivid recollection of seeing newsreels at the movie theaters in my hometown of Olympia in which they showed glimpses of the International Tribunal at which 21 major Nazi figures were tried, including Reich Marshall Hermann Goering, the former Nazi party secretary Rudolf Hess, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign secretary of the Nazi regime. I remember thinking at the time that the defendants looked rather unimpressive there in the courtroom without the benefit of their fancy uniforms and medals in front of these judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. They also stood in stark contrast to the tall young American soldiers in their helmets who stood behind them, providing them courtroom security. At the same time, these defendants appeared to me to still be arrogant, in spite of their humiliating loss of the war, and, perhaps with the exception of Albert Speer, they all seemed totally unrepentant. 

It was through this trial that the American public truly began to learn of the immensity of the crimes that had been perpetrated by the Nazi regime and came to understand that Hermann Goering, probably the most well-known of the defendants, in spite of his arrogance and his defense of the Third Reich at the trial, was somewhat of a pathetic figure due to a drug dependency, and that Rudolf Hess was at this time essentially a madman. Goering escaped the hangman — he took a poison pill shortly before he was to be taken to the gallows. Hess spent the rest of his life in Spandau Prison in Berlin.

While the International Tribunal was certainly not a show trial, the list of defendants was incomplete in that it did not include the chief architect of the Nazi regime, Adolf Hitler, and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels; both of them had committed suicide in Hitler’s bunker a few days before the war’s end. Neither did it include the SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, who was then missing, and later was found to have committed suicide. The International Tribunal also proceeded without a defendant representing German heavy industry. The arms manufacturer Gustav Krupp had originally been named as a defendant, but the charges against him did not go forward because by this time he was quite old and was deemed mentally incompetent.

Something I didn’t know much about until I was somewhat older was the series of trials at Nuremberg that followed the International Tribunal. It was at these trials that the so-called secondary figures of the Nazi regime were brought to justice. Neither did I know that, in two of those trials, there was a real Washington state connection.

These secondary Nuremberg trials are actually more interesting and illuminating in many respects than the International Tribunal, which, by most accounts, got pretty tedious. That is so because the evidence introduced against the defendants in the subsequent trials was much more specific than it had been at the International Tribunal where the major figures were charged generally with crimes against peace and humanity, and for their membership in categories of groups or organizations that the Tribunal declared to be criminal.

The authority for the trials that followed the International Tribunal flowed from Law No. 10, which was passed on December 20, 1945, a few months after hostilities in Europe had ended, by the Allied Control Council for Germany. When we speak of the Allies we are, of course, talking about the four powers that were then occupying Germany — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The purpose of Law No. 10 was to establish “a uniform legal basis in Germany for the prosecution of war criminals and other similar offenders, other than those dealt with by the International Tribunal.” This law provided that persons found guilty of any of the listed crimes might be punished by imprisonment or death, and it was anticipated that each of the four occupying authorities within its zone of operation was empowered to arrest and try persons suspected of having committed a crime or crimes as defined in the law.

In the United States Zone of Occupation in Western Germany, prosecutions were under the direction of Brigadier General Telford Taylor who, along with United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, had been responsible for preparing and presenting the case against the German High Command at the International Tribunal. Justice Jackson and General Taylor had exercised authority at the International Tribunal under direct orders of President Truman, but in October 1946 the office of chief counsel for war crimes was transferred to the Office of the United States Military Government.

The tribunals that would hear these cases were to have three or more members, and the chief counsel was empowered to determine the persons to be tried by filing indictments with the tribunal.

In all, there were 12 trials of the secondary Nazi figures at Nuremberg under the auspices of the United States Military Government, and all but one involved several defendants. At the conclusion of these trials, judgments were entered against more than 100 defendants. Thirteen of the defendants received the death penalty, eight were imprisoned for life, and the remainder of those sentenced served terms of imprisonment. Significantly, 33 defendants were acquitted, which, I think, is a testament to the fairness of the hearings and our nation’s adherence to the principle that due process and fundamental fairness should be observed at all stages of the proceeding. If you are wondering, the presumption of innocence prevailed throughout, and the prosecution had to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Interestingly, the judges who served at these trials were, almost entirely, state judges. You might wonder why they didn’t use federal judges, since these trials were under the auspices of the United States Military Government. The obstacle to the use of federal judges, it turns out, was none other than the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, Fred Vinson. He and other justices on the court were apparently upset that the International Tribunal had taken such a long time to run its course and that it had fully occupied the time of Justice Jackson for the duration of that trial. Consequently, the chief justice let it be known that federal judges would no longer be granted leaves of absence to serve on the Nuremberg bench.

The very able General Lucius Clay, America’s first high commissioner in the United States Zone of Occupation, was, as it turned out, successful in recruiting state judges, and I am proud to say that two were from this state. I would like to tell you a bit about these individuals and about their service at Nuremberg.

One of the judges was the then chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court, Walter Beals, an Olympia resident. The other was King County Superior Court Judge William Wilkins. Fortunately, these judges did not have to be concerned about forfeiting their elected positions as judges if they served at Nuremberg. That was because the Washington Legislature passed a statute in 1941 which provided that when any judicial officer shall be ordered into active military service, the governor was to consider that this was an extreme necessity requiring him to grant the judge a leave of absence.

That is what happened here — Beals and Wilkins, who were Army reservists, were simply called to active duty by order of the Secretary of War and were granted leaves of absence by Governor Wallgren, all without prejudice to their right to resume their judicial positions at the end of their military service. Beals answered the call on October 1, 1946, and Wilkins in September 1947.

Now let me tell you about these judges and the trials on which they sat. Chief Justice Beals sat on case number 1, which is referred to as the “medical case.” There were 23 defendants in that case, 20 of whom were German physicians. Two judges from other states also served on this tribunal, but Justice Beals was the presiding judge.

Walter Beals was really quite an interesting person. He was a member of the University of Washington School of Law’s first graduating class, the class of 1901. Interestingly, his wife, Othilia, was a law school classmate, and she had the distinction of being one of the two women in that first graduating class from the University of Washington School of Law. Justice Beals had been a member of the Washington National Guard since 1909, and served on active duty in the First World War, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was decorated with the French Legion of Honor for his service in France and was one of the founders of the American Legion. Shortly after he returned home from the first World War, he became an assistant corporate counsel for Seattle and in 1926 was appointed to the King County Superior Court. Two years later, he was appointed to the Supreme Court, where he stayed until his retirement in 1951, except for his one-year hiatus at Nuremberg. Justice Beals remained in the Army Reserve after World War I, and he was a full colonel when he was called to active duty to serve as a judge at Nuremberg.

The indictment in the medical case or “Doctors’ Trial,” as it is called, was filed in the fall of 1946, and the trial commenced in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice just before Christmas of that year. It was a very long trial because due process was strictly observed. The trial transcript runs more than 11,000 pages. Five-hundred-seventy exhibits were introduced by the prosecution. Twenty-two German defense attorneys presented 901 exhibits for their clients. Thirty-two witnesses testified for the prosecution, and 53 for the defense, including all of the defendants. The prosecution’s case in chief took 25 court days — the defense case took 107 days.

The principal charge against the defendants, of whom all held high positions in the medical service of the Third Reich, was that they had engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity in that they committed murders and other “inhuman acts” on German civilians and nationals of other countries by using these persons in a series of what they called medical experiments. Needless to say, the evidence regarding the manner in which these experiments were conducted is very grisly, and I won’t go into it in any detail here other than to say it is very tough reading.

Underlying all of this was a showing by the prosecution that the medical profession in Germany, which prior to the rise of Adolf Hitler had been the finest in the world, had been totally co-opted by the Nazis. As a consequence, this once-proud profession was completely degraded and disgraced. As General Taylor said in his opening statement, these were experiments “in name only,” and they were senselessly and clumsily carried out with absolutely no value at all to medicine as a healing art.

The physicians among the defendants ran the gamut from the leaders of German scientific medicine who once had excellent international reputations, down to what General Taylor called “the dregs of the profession.” The most well-known defendant was Karl Brandt, who had been Adolf Hitler’s personal physician. He was a major general in the Waffen SS as well as holding a very questionable title as “Reich commissioner for health and sanitation.”

At the conclusion of the trial, Justice Beals announced the judgments of the court. Seven of the 23 defendants were sentenced to death and were executed, including Karl Brandt. Five received life sentences, and four received sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years. Seven were acquitted.

Being a judge at Nuremberg was a tough job, and I’m not just talking about having to be confronted with the most awful evidence one can imagine. Nuremberg had been badly destroyed by Allied bombing; as a consequence, there were shortages of food and fuel. Justice Beals, who was no spring chicken at 70, suffered physically, no doubt as a consequence of a heavy workload and the cold, damp hotel room in which he lived. Nevertheless, he performed his duties admirably, so well that General Clay tried to talk him into staying on as a judge for other trials. But in view of his deteriorating physical condition, Justice Beals declined the offer and returned to Olympia in 1947. By September of that year, he was back on the Washington Supreme Court hearing cases. In reading about the trial, it is readily apparent that Justice Beals was intent on not only doing justice in this case but also impressing on the German public the importance of an independent court system and adherence to due process. He later said: "I think the trials have been a healthy thing. The section of the court reserved for Germans was well filled throughout the trial, to a large extent by classes of high-school and college students. The German lawyers especially liked the American court procedure we followed. We went upon the principle that defendants were presumed to be innocent until proven guilty." Justice Beals died in 1960.

The other Washington judge, William Wilkins, sat on the tenth of these cases. The defendants were 12 executives of the Krupp industrial empire, which had been producing weapons since the late 1500s. As I indicated earlier, the patriarch of the family, Gustav, could not be tried because of incapacity, so his son, Alfried, who had been instrumental in running the armament works since his father had had a stroke in 1939, was made a defendant. The defendants were not charged with manufacturing arms — that was not a war crime — but rather with using slave labor in the Krupp factories and in plundering occupied territories for the benefit of their company. The trial began in late 1947 before a tribunal consisting of Judge Anderson of Tennessee, Judge Daly of Connecticut, and Judge Wilkins. William Manchester, the well-known historian, described the Krupp tribunal in his book Arms of Krupp, as follows: “Anderson was pale, his health was poor. Justice Daly, fifty-five, grave, bespectacled, and intent, stood at his right; Judge Wilkins, handsome and leonine, at his left.”

Judge Wilkins, in addition to being handsome, was also a very interesting person. Judge Wilkins, like Justice Beals, had served as an Army officer in France during World War I, during which time he saw considerable action. After the war, he went on to law school in Michigan. Following graduation, he came to Washington, where he entered private practice. He later joined the King County Prosecutor’s Office. In 1940, he was appointed to the Superior Court for King County, but his judicial service was interrupted in 1942 when he went back into the service, this time as a judge advocate general in the Army Air Corps. He got out of the service in Army of 1945, only to be called up again in 1947 to hear the Krupp case. After that case was concluded, he returned to the United States and resumed his position on the superior court, retiring in 1972.

The Krupp case also took a long time to try, over six months, and it was not concluded until June 30, 1948. Alfried Krupp received a 12-year sentence, and all of his property was ordered confiscated. Ten other defendants received sentences ranging from six to 12 years, and one was discharged as having served sufficient time before and during the trial.

In 1951, much to Judge Wilkins’s chagrin, High Commissioner John McCloy not only commuted Alfried Krupp’s sentence, but restored to Krupp all of his properties. The Cold War was now very chilly, and it was apparent that our concern about the Soviet Union was influencing our relationship with Germany. Ironically, when Alfried Krupp died in 1968, he was reputed to be one of the richest men in Europe. Judge Wilkins died in 1995 at the age of 98, the last survivor of the 32 judges appointed to the Nuremberg trials.

Although no Washington judges were involved in case number 3, it is called “the justice case,”  in which 16 defendants were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by abuse of the judicial process. It was this trial on which the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg,” starring Spencer Tracy, was based.

As Washingtonians, and Washington judges in particular, we can take pride in the fact that two persons from our state served as judges at these historic trials. What is the lasting effect of their service? It is hard to say, but I thought about that some time ago when I heard a piece on National Public Radio about the fact that the City of Nuremberg was having trouble getting tourists and business to come to that city because its name is so associated with Nazism and the trials. I have sympathy for the many good people who live in Nuremberg, because I don’t believe we share the guilt of our forefathers. On the other hand, we need to know the truth about our forefathers’ mistakes and wrongdoings so that we don’t repeat them. That point was made tellingly over 50 years ago by General Taylor in his opening statement at the medical case. I will close with what he said:

[L]arger obligations run to the peoples and races on whom the scourge of these crimes was laid. The mere punishment of the defendants, or even of thousands of others equally guilty, can never redress the terrible injuries which the Nazis visited on these unfortunate peoples. For them it is far more important that these incredible events be established by clear and public proof, so that no one can ever doubt that they were fact and not fable; and that this Court, as the agent of the United States and as the voice of humanity, stamp these acts, and the ideas which engendered them, as barbarous and criminal. 

Gerry L. Alexander is chief justice of the Washington State Supreme Court and can be reached at j_g.alexander@courts.wa.gov.