The Last Living Nuremberg Prosecutor: War Is Not The Answer

Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

Only one lawyer who prosecuted the Nuremberg trials is still alive today, and he has an important message for the world: war is not the answer.

60 Minutes recently interviewed Ben Ferencz, a son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who found refuge in the United States. His father worked as a janitor, and Ben was the first person in his family to go to college. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he was driven to enlist in the military.

Due to his short stature, the Air Force rejected him, as did the Marines. He eventually finished his education at Harvard and went on to join the Army, landing at Normandy and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

Because of his legal training, Ferencz was transferred to a new unit in General Patton’s Third Army, where he was tasked with gathering evidence from concentration camps as the U.S. Army liberated them. That information was going to be used to prosecute war crimes.

He says he is still haunted by what he saw and the stories he heard, remembering the story of a son whose father had hidden bread for him under his arm every night so other prisoners couldn’t steal it.

Though he returned home to the United States, he has soon summoned again. General Telford Taylor, who was in charge of the Nuremberg trials, requested Ferencz’ legal expertise, sending him multiple binders of top secret documents from the Nazi regime.

“He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. And these were daily reports from the Eastern Front — which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others,” he told 60 Minutes.

“Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,” killing communists, gypsies, and Jews, the outlet reported. These murders were independent of concentration camp exterminations and occurred in the victims’ own towns.

“They were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose, and directed to kill without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on,” Ferencz recounted.

Ultimately, his findings led him to push for an additional trial, despite the previous ones already being conducted at Nuremberg.

“When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that’s more people than you’ve ever seen in your life, I took a sample. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg, and I said to Taylor, ‘General, we’ve gotta put on a new trial.’“

Because the prosecutors were already stretched thin and other trials were already underway, Taylor put him in charge of handling the Einsatzgruppen. At age 27, Ferencz prosecuted 22 former commanders, all of whom plead not guilty to their crimes.

But, as Ferencz proved with written evidence, they had documented their atrocities in cold, plain language. 60 Minutes noted the Nazi reports:

“Exhibit 111: ‘In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews.’  Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: ‘The city’s Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.’ Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678.”

Otto Ohlendorf, who led Einsatzgruppen D, actually claimed the murders were carried out in self-defense. “He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government’s instructions,” Ferencz told 60 Minutes.

Though Ferencz was exposed to some of the worst behavior in human history, he fell short of calling the soldiers “savages,” as the 60 Minutes interviewer referred to them. Rather, he blamed the power of patriotism and soldiers ‘just doing their jobs.’

“He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind,” he said, speaking of soldiers who commit atrocities.

“Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.” [emphasis added]

Ferencz successfully prosecuted the 22 commanders he put on trial, and four were hanged. He has spent his life trying to deter war crimes and delivered the closing arguments in the first case at the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands, which was established in 1988. He has also donated his personal life savings to a Genocide Prevention Initiative at the Holocaust Museum.

When the interviewer pressed him about his optimism in the face of continued genocide in places like Sudan — asking whether he is simply naive — he maintained his positivity and rejected the claims of those who insist war is necessary:

“Well, if it’s naive to want peace instead of war, let ’em make sure they say I’m naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don’t say they’re naive, I say they’re stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That’s insane.”

Though the interviewer also accused of him being an idealist, he insisted the opposite — that he’s a realist. He also said:

“People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.”

He pointed out that decades ago, freedom for women, gays, and transsexuals was unthinkable, they have now come to pass, insisting it’s also possible to end mass murder and war.

“[I]t’s a reality today. So the world is changing. And you shouldn’t — you know — be despairing because it’s never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before.”

EU Celebrates 60th Birthday As European Leaders Scramble To Hold "Fraying" Union Together

Today in Rome, the EU celebrates its 60th anniversary. Leaders hailed the visionary "war generation" of leaders from old foes France and Germany who signed the Treaty of Rome in the same room on March 25, 1957, along with Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; some offered personal memories of their own generation"s debts to the expanding European Union.

The celebration comes at a strange time: just four days earlier, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, absent from the ceremony in the Italian capital, delivered an unprecedented blow to the bloc"s growth by filing Britain"s formal exit papers, an event which underscores the biggest problem facing the EU: as Reuters puts it, it is "fraying", as former Greek finmin Varoufakis said yesterday, it is "disintegrating." The truth is somewhere inbetween.

Another irony not lost on cynical observers: today"s celebrations take place in the one European country which boasts the greatest number of EU skeptics.

Meanwhile, fellow leaders hailed 60 years of peace and prosperity and pledged to deepen a unity damage - perhaps irreparably - by regional and global crises.

The farce of "unity" on display was underscored by the days of wrangling about the wording of a 1,000-word Rome Declaration, As Reuters adds, May"s impending Brexit confirmation and tens of thousands of protesters gathering beyond the tight police cordon around the Campidoglio palace offered a more sober reminder of the challenges of holding the 27 nations to a common course.

"We have stopped in our tracks and this has caused a crisis of rejection by public opinion," said their host, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, noting Britons" repudiation of the EU. He said the failure to push the project forward during a decade of economic slump had fueled a re-emergence of "blinkered nationalism".

While Rome tries to offer a fresh start, with Gentiloni saying "The Union is starting up again ... and has a vision for the next 10 years" others, however, are wary of such enthusiasm for giving up more national sovereignty - and also of others in the Union moving faster with integration. Poland"s nationalist government has led protests against a "multispeed Europe", which it fears would consign the poor ex-communist east to second-class status.

* * *

Many members of the establishment refuse to accept the new, far more troubling reality, chief among them Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU chief executive, who recalled how his father in Luxembourg was forced into the German army in World War Two; Donald Tusk, the summit chair born in Gdansk a month after the Treaty was signed, remembered growing up in the ruins of war and yearning for freedom behind the Iron Curtain. "That really was a two-speed Europe," he said in a pointed dig at his domestic foes now ruling in Warsaw, who have tried to block a push by the western powers to deepen their integration.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the bloc"s dominant leader who faces a re-election test in September, stressed the Union must also address the complaints of generations for whom war is fading into history. "We will in the future have to concern ourselves above all with the issue of jobs," she told reporters.

Malta"s PM Joseph Muscat, European Council President Donald Tusk, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy"s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni pose for a
picture outside the city hall "Campidoglio."

Still, while doing their best projection of an optimistic facade, the participants in today"s Rome festivities are worried. Fearing that the departure of its second-biggest economy and major global power could prompt the unraveling of the bloc, many leaders argue that only forward motion can revive popular support for the EU by generating economic and security benefits. 

"Today we renew our vows and reaffirm our commitment to an undivided and indivisible Union," Juncker said, urging the bloc not to get bogged down in details that alienated voters. Tusk, too, warned against the impression the EU was about petty regulations: "Why should we lose our trust in the purpose of unity today? Is it only because it has become our reality? Or because we have become bored or tired of it?" he asked.

Merkel, whose bid for another Chancellorship is risk from the suddenly resurgent SPD under its new head Martin Schulz, said leaders wanted to respond to people"s concerns, about the economy, welfare, migration and defense with "a protective Europe" that offered assurances on their wellbeing.

All 27 national leaders, along with the heads of Brussels institutions, signed a declaration which concluded: "We have united for the better. Europe is our common future." They promised to listen to citizens.

Spain PM Mariano Rajoy prepares to sign document

But, as Reuters sarcastically writes, "locked away behind rings of armed police, the leaders may hear little of what thousands of protesters have to say on Saturday."

Greece"s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (C) takes part in a pro-EU demonstration.

Addressing right-wing supporters of the Fratelli d"Italia movement, its leader Giorgia Meloni denounced a "great EU deception".

"The real enemies of Europe," she said, "Are the bankers, usurers and technocrats." The Union, she added, must be replaced by a new alliance of "free and sovereign countries".

But for Maximilien De-Wyse, 26, from the northern French city of Lille, that was the wrong answer. Taking part in a pro-EU march in Rome, he recalled his Polish immigrant grandparents and said: "It is only united that we can save peace."

Meanwhile, the leaders are hopeful that putting their names on a piece of paper endorsing a vision for a union which has succeeded alienated million of its constituents, will somehow reset years of bad decisions and flawed poicy. It won"t.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani holds up a document signed by EU leaders.

Who Beat Hitler? USA, Britain, Or Russia

In 1945, most French people thought that the Soviet Union deserved the most credit for Nazi Germany"s defeat in World War II - even though the Soviets did not play much of a role in France"s liberation, relative to the US and Britain.

By 1995 and 2004, however, the French had changed their minds, and were crediting the US as the biggest contributor to victory in Europe (survey data from the French Institute of Public Opinion)...

Source: Olivier Berruyer at Les Crises blog

Assessing the "biggest contributor to victory" in a rigorous way is exceptionally difficult. They tend to devolve into comparisons of counterfactuals, and the truth is that nobody has any strong idea how the war would have turned out absent US involvement, or if the German-Soviet non-aggression pact had held, etc. Soviet Union"s successful resistance of Nazi invasion and subsequent reclamation of Eastern Europe was the most important of many factors in defeating Germany. As historian Richard Overy Explains In His book Why the Allies Won :

If the defeat of the German army was the central strategic task, the main one was the conflict on the eastern front. The German army was first weakened and then driven back, before the main weight of Allied ground and air forces was brought to bear in 1944. Over four hundred German and Soviet divisions fought along more than 1,000 miles. Axis divisions between 1941 and 1945. The scale and geographical extent of the eastern front dwarfed all earlier warfare. Losses on both sides far exceeded anywhere else in the military contest. The war in the east was fought with a ferocity almost unknown on the western fronts. The battles at Stalingrad and Kursk, which broke the back of the German army, drew from the soldiers of both sides the last ounces of physical and moral energy.

If you are looking at the human toll of the war, the Soviets clearly incurred the heaviest losses. Tony Judt"s Postwar cites Estimates Suggesting There Were 8.6 million Soviet Military Deaths and over 16 million civilian Deaths in World War II. The US lost 418.500 Military and Civilians in all theaters of the war - still a staggering figure, but not on the scale as Sami Soviet Losses. Of course, it"s possible - and highly preferable! - to contribute to the success of the process. But it"s worth reflecting on just how massive the sacrifice the Soviet people made was.

Source: Olivier Berruyer at Les Crises blog

"The victors are those who write History. It is this one that is written in our school books, not the true History as it unfolded, but a History that caresses the camp of the winners. History has ceased long ago to be the sum of the humanities today it belongs only to a handful of individuals. "

[Maxime Chattam, The mysteries of chaos ]