Throughout the week of 11-16 January 1946, the British and U.S. prosecution teams introduced their cases against Defendants Funk, Doenitz, Schirach, Raeder, Bormann and Frick. The prosecutors took pains to introduce evidence that had come to light illustrating who knew what and when, what orders were given and how they were executed throughout era of the Nazi government and across Germany and occupied territories. The documents introduced in these presentations frequently represented the best examples of the issues and situations the prosecutors wished to bring to the Court’s attention but were by no means the only documents that had been discovered in their research through captured files or personal depositions. Intriguing bits of evidence were starting to emerge that illustrated the careful planning, orchestration and manipulation that created the legal and administrative structure of the Third Reich.
Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States, began his presentation of the case against Frick on January 16th, identifying Frick as “the administrative brain who devised the machinery of state for Nazism, who geared that machinery for aggressive war.”
Kempner’s presentation began with an interesting observation about both Frick and Hitler, an issue that would become a key piece of Nazi rhetoric–neither of the men were German. He refers to
the fact that Adolf Hitler at this time, when Frick was Minister of the Interior in the State of Thuringia, was an undesirable alien, not a German citizen. In his capacity as Minister of Thuringia the Defendant Frick began his manipulations to provide Adolf Hitler, the undesirable alien, with German citizenship, an essential step toward the realization of the Nazi conspiracy. This lack of German citizenship was highly detrimental to the cause of the Nazi Party because, as an alien, Hitler could not become candidate for the Reich Presidency in Germany. It was the Defendant Frick who solved this problem by an administrative maneuver. We now introduce in evidence Document 3564-PS, Exhibit Number USA-709. This document is an affidavit by Otto Meissner of 27 December 1945. Meissner was former state secretary and chief of Hitler’s Presidential Chancellery. The last two sentences of this affidavit read as follows:
“Frick also, in collaboration with Klagges, Minister of Brunswick, succeeded in naturalizing Hitler as a German citizen in 1932 by having him appointed a Brunswick government official Regierungsrat. This was done in order to make it possible for Hitler to run as a candidate for the office of President in the Reich.”
When Hitler came to power on 30 January 1933, Frick was duly awarded a prominent post in the new regime as Reich Minister of the Interior. In this capacity he became responsible for the establishment of totalitarian control over Germany, an indispensable prerequisite for the preparation of aggressive warfare. Frick assumed responsibility for the realization of a large part of the Nazi conspirators’ program both through administration and legislation.
[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-16-46.asp#frick accessed 1-7-2016]
Readers interested in seeing the documentation of the presentations can find film footage of these presentations online at:
Day 32 11 January 1946 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJM5MvDL_co]
Day 33 12 January 1946 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7DaCdugtY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7DaCdugtY]
Day 34 13 January 1946 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xilnm1rLWNg]
Day 35 14 January 1946 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9T65zhyhJk]
–Owen Doremus and Betsy Pittman
[Owen Doremus, a junior at Edwin O. Smith High School, is supporting this blog series with research and writing as part of an independent study.]
The majority of the letters from Tom Dodd to his wife Grace have been published and can be found in Letters from Nuremberg, My father’s narrative of a quest for justice. Senator Christopher J. Dodd with Lary Bloom. New York: Crown Publishing, 2007.
Images available in Thomas J. Dodd Papers.