Re: Nuremberg - Strange Nazi Experiment?

"David Thornley" <thornley@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11tfp2rqh6p2468@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> Do you have a better source for torture than Joe McCarthy? I see no
> reason to trust him, considering his well-documented actions.

McCarthy has been the subject of a vilification campaign because of his
anti communist activities. That does not make him an unreliable witness on
these matters.
What would he have had to gain by concocting stories about torture of German
prisoners?
However there is plenty more corroboration of torture used to obtain German
"confessions" by the IMT, or at least by various military personnel
associated with its operations.

One other source that comes to mind is an account by British Army
Sergeant Bernard Clarke, revealed in 1983, in which he confesses, brags
more like it, to having been involved in the interrogation of IMT
defendants, and admits that
a very notable confession was obtained by torture by the British Military
field Police,
The man responsible was the leader of the unit. Sgt Clarke told the whole
story to Rupert Butler who embodied in his book "Legions of Death"
(Published in
England: 1983), see pp. 235;

The Book is available at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844150429/qid=1138244239/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5701084-7603002?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

There is also the testimony of EDWARD L. VAN RODEN, a Pennsylvania judge,
who served in World War I and II, in the latter as Chief of the Military
Justice Division for the European Theatre where he saw service in Normandy,
Belgium, the Rhineland, the Battle of the Bulge, and in the Ardennes. In
1946 he was reassigned to active duty and served on several important court
martial trials in Germany. In 1948 US Secretary of the Army, Kenneth Royall,
appointed
him to an extraordinary commission charged with investigating the Dachau War
Crimes program.

The following extracts are from an article he wrote: E. L. Van Roden,
"American Atrocities in Germany", The Progressive. February 1949, p. 21f.

I have the full article but have not included it because of the newsgroup
moderators policy against "excessive" use of quoted material.

QUOTE of segments from "The Progressive" article, which was personally
authored by Justice Van Roden.

" AMERICAN investigators at the U. S. Court in Dachau, Germany, used the
following methods to obtain confessions: Beatings and brutal kickings.
Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws. Mock trials. Solitary confinement.
Posturing as priests. Very limited rations. Spiritual deprivation. Promises
of acquittal.

Complaints concerning these third degree methods were received by
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall last Spring. Royall appointed Justice
Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court and me to go to Germany and check
up on the reports.
--------
But first, a bit of the background. Last Spring the Supreme Court
refused the habeas corpus petition of Col. Willis N. Everett. Jr., an
American lawyer, who had served as defence counsel for the 74 Germans
accused in the famous Malmedy case. Everett is a very able lawyer, a
conscientious and sincere gentleman. He is not a fanatic.

In his petition. Everett charged that the Germans had not received a
fair trial. Everett did not claim that all the German defendants were
innocent, but since they did not have a fair trial, there was no way of
telling the innocent from the guilty.
-----------
The American prohibition of hear-say evidence had been suspended.
Second and third-hand testimony was admitted, although the Judge Advocate
General warned against the value of hearsay evidence, especially when it was
obtained, as this was. two or three years after the act. Lt. Col. Ellis and
Lt Perl of the Prosecution pleaded that it was difficult to obtain
competent evidence. Perl told the court, "We had a tough case to crack and
we had to use persuasive methods." He admitted to the court that the
persuasive methods included various "expedients, including some violence and
mock trials." He further told the court that the cases rested on statements
obtained by such methods.
----------------------
Our investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head and
then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him, and beat him with
rubber hose. Many of the German defendants had teeth knocked out. Some had
their jaws broken.

All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been
kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure
with American investigators.

Perl admitted use of mock trials and persuasive methods including
violence and said the court was free to decide the weight to be attached to
evidence thus received. But it all went in." END QUOTE.
=============================================

This evidence of an American Judge, sent to look into such matters by the
United States Secretary for the Army, not long
after they occurred corroborates the evidence of Sgt Clark and the testimony
of Senator McCarthy. There are ample sources of corroborative evidence. The
problem is that unless you look beyond the usual propaganda about the
Nuremburg IMT and the findings against the defendants, you are not likely to
be told the real facts.

Note the comments from Judge Van Roden's statement
that American Prosecutor Pearl informed the court that violence had been
used to obtain "confessions" hence my earlier statement that the IMT
"knowingly" made use of evidence obtained by torture.

Justice Van Roden goes into even more gruesome detail than Senator McCarthy,
but clearly the two independent sources of evidence corroborate each other,
and are further supported by independent evidence from the British side by
Sgt Clarke, almost forty years after the event.

It flows from this that any claims of German crimes based solely or very
heavily
on confessions obtained by the IMT are put on a very shaky foundation, and
would require other sound corroboration to substantiate. As a number of the
findings of the IMT were so based, on confessions and almost nothing else,
and as the prosecutors (Pearl) admitted and other witnesses now show, those
confessions were obtained by torture, and also as Prosecutor Perl admitted
to Justice Van Roden the prosecution case rested solely on the confessions
in some instances. Hence any conviction based on confession alone, without
substantial corroborating evidence of some kind, may be unsound.

Added to this it is now known that the Russians presented fabricated charges
and documents (Katyn) accusing the Germans of incredible crimes that the
Russians perpetrated themselves. Then we have the "bizarre" allegations
scattered throughout the transcripts, of which the one which is the subject
of my original inquiry in this thread is only one of many.

That is not to say that some of the charges were not adequately proven, and
stood squarely on all fours, but others did not. Unfortunately into this
latter class fall some of the most controversial charges from which
stupendous conclusions have been drawn.

Most people believe what they are told about the Nuremberg trials because
only the findings and the more notable crimes of the Germans are ever
brought to their attention. Very few actually read the transcripts and
follow up on the criticisms of the legal process, so it isn't surprising
that you are disinclined to believe just on account of McCarthy's testimony.

I do not ask you to believe the evidence I have presented. I suggest that if
your curiosity is aroused that you research it for yourself, then make up
your own mind. In this newsgroup many of the participants have a particular
view and are very uncomfortable with any view that does not accord with the
"official" view of history.

Propaganda fades. Truth endures.

A Historian.

.

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