Alfred Rosenberg 6

From Justice at Nuremberg by Robert E. Conot: "He [Rosenberg] ought to be glad I have NOT presented so many documents to show what a vicious anti-Semite he is," Thoma confided to Gilbert. "I have found the most damaging documents against him myself, and he ought to be glad I have NOT presented them! I told him, 'For gods sake, Rosenberg, you want me to make them think that you disapprove of the extermination, and didn't know anything about it, and yet you want me to present the documents to show that the extermination was justified!' He makes me sick."

"The old boy wants to talk about the philosophy of the French Revolution," Biddle commented wryly, after the Tribunal rejected Rosenberg's request to trace the history of anti-Semitism. Fyfe, objecting to a number of witnesses Rosenberg wanted to call, remarked: "The only evidence is that Rosenberg wouldn't hurt a fly, and that the witnesses have seen him not hurting flies."

Rosenberg was a master of euphemism, a bureaucratic pedant, whose seemingly endless sentences snaked about, intertwined, and stuck to each other like over-boiled spaghetti; even Thoma had difficulty deciphering his answers. By his rationalization, sophistry, and halfhearted attempts at justification of Nazi barbarism, he created, in his own fashion, as negative an impression as Kaltenbrunner . . . . Rosenberg had planned the pillage and exploitation of Russia, he had projected that millions of people would die as a result, he had been informed early of the brutal slaughter of all kinds of men under the Commissar Order, and even when he had objected to the insensate barbarism because it was bad politics he had not had the spine to take action.

"I did not see in Hitler a tyrant," Rosenberg told the court, "but like many millions of National Socialists I trusted him personally on the strength of the experience of a fourteen-year-long struggle. I served Adolf Hitler loyally, and what the party may have done during those years, that was supported by me too." In a conversation with Fritzsche he was even more emphatic: "No matter how often I go over everything in my mind, I still cannot believe that there was a single flaw in that man's character."

From The Nuremberg Trial by Ann and John Tusa: With Kaltenbrunner's defense completed, the Nuremberg court on the afternoon on 15 April became the reluctant audience for an outpouring of philosophical thought that sounded altogether meaningless after the terrible evidence of the slaughter of millions. Alfred Rosenberg had taken the stand. 'Philosophical thought' was only a courtesy title for the jumble of prejudice, irrationality and half-understood plagiarized ideas which stuffed Rosenberg's brain. He believed he approached the question of race scientifically—in fact he had too many preconceived ideas for any of the objective assessment of evidence required by science, and scientists had provided him with no data to back his theories. He also boasted that he provided a historical perspective for his views—but he merely picked at historical events like a myopic jackdaw, then crammed the bits and pieces, with a vain attempt at a fit, into the rickety pile he called an ideology . . . .

For a day and a half Rosenberg gushed hot air in the dock. An explanation for his wobbly mind began to occur—it was set in a wobbly head; he had to keep seizing his chin with his right hand to jam his head still. If he had ever been capable of a clear thought he might have realized that it was possible to mount a defense based on the undoubted fact that few Nazis had ever taken him seriously and that he had always been bypassed by more able competitors such as Goering, Goebbels, Bormann or Himmler. But Rosenberg took himself too seriously and had too high an estimate of his work to assess, let alone admit, his own insignificance. So for a day and a half, slumped in his chair, he more or less admitted the charges against him. Having accepted the charges, he had plenty of time left to browbeat a new audience with his Great Thoughts. For hours he maundered on. It was no more possible to grasp what he was saying than to seize a handful of cloud.

From The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor: After the preceding and rather apologetic presentations, Rosenberg's counsel, Dr. Thoma, approached the lectern apparently full of faith in Rosenberg's innocence of anything either of them regarded as criminal. Rosenberg was an avowed devotee of Hitler and an acknowledged anti-Semite, and had played a minor part in the decision to occupy Norway. But Thoma rightly concluded that nothing in his client's record, prior to Hitler's decision to attack the Soviet Union, would matter very much. Rosenberg's fate depended on the Tribunal's assessment of his conduct as Reich Minister of the Occupied Territories—the highest German civil authority east of Poland. So Thoma plunged right into Rosenberg's Eastern administration, taking more than half of his long presentation. Despite its length, Lawrence (The President) did not even interject a request for shortening the argument, which was well organized and, throughout, clearly relevant, with no Rosenberg in the witness box to muddy the waters . . . .

Thoma next undertook an explanation of the source and limits of Rosenberg's anti-Semitism, which aroused Rudenko to accuse him of 'Fascist propaganda' and ask the Tribunal to 'take appropriate action.' Lawrence brushed aside Rudenko's complaint and told Thoma to proceed with his argument. The gist of it was that Rosenberg himself was never the instigator of anti-Jewish actions, but that he was 'a true follower of Hitler, who took up Hitler's (anti-Semitic) slogans and passed them on.' All in all, Thoma's script was a remarkable combination of boldness and frankness.

Acknowledging most of Rosenberg's most damning statements, Thoma made it at least plausible that Rosenberg was not anti-Russian, that he was in fact pro-Ukrainian, and that he had no intention of treating brutally the inhabitants of his enormous domain. But at the outset Rosenberg had heard Hitler describe his own truly murderous program, and with full knowledge Rosenberg had taken the plunge. His situation was rather like, but far more dangerous than, Neurath's in Prague. Both men had found themselves with impressive titles and heavy responsibilities, without the power to fulfill them. Ever faithful to the Führer, Rosenberg did not even try to resign until October 1944. Hitler ignored the request. At Nuremberg Rosenberg, like Göring, refused to attack Hitler or Nazism. Dr. Thoma, who defended Rosenberg so stoutly, portrayed his client to Dr Gilbert as an 'arrogant heathen' and a 'vicious anti-Semite.'

From Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial by Werner Maser, translated by Richard Barry: Some time before the members of the Tribunal had made up their minds on the sentences, the thirty-two American journalists present had made up theirs. On a blackboard in the foreign press room industrious pollsters had chalked up the correspondents' forecasts in columns headed 'Guilty,' 'Not Guilty,' 'Death Sentence' and 'Prison.' The pressmen were unanimous on the death sentence only for Göring, Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner; as regards the rest, bets on the death sentence were: Keitel and Sauckel 29, Hans Frank 27, Seyss-Inquart 26, Rosenberg 24, Hess 17, Raeder 15, Dönitz and Streicher 14, Jodl 13, Frick 12, Speer 11, von Schirach 9, von Papen 6, Schacht 4, von Neurath 3 and Fritzsche 1.

[Justice] Jackson ... had also made his 'calculation.' In a secret meeting with his closest associates he had even proposed that, since the defendants had so continuously incriminated each other during their period under arrest, they should themselves vote on the guilt or innocence of each of them. It may be regarded as fairly certain that, had this happened, none of them would have escaped the gallows. The Tribunal, however, worked on other hypotheses. The last stage now having been reached, most of the defendants awaited the judgments with calm and composure, some of them even cheerfully. The trial had revealed details and events against which no argument could carry weight, yet it seems that, when the trial ended, none of the defendants was really clear as to what sentence awaited him in Room 600 of the Palace of Justice. After the reading of the Judgment, awaited with impatience by the numerous press correspondents, the defendants were led back to their cells, each handcuffed to a US soldier."

From The Face Of The Third Reich by Joachim C Fest: He [Rosenberg] did not think things out to their logical conclusions, like so many who expressed a literary contempt for reason and humanity and mused upon folk truths in fashionable intellectual twilight. Very little in his hazy constructions, which defy translation into any practical program, entered the real world of the National Socialist dictatorship, beyond the restricted areas placed under his personal influence. True, the accusation against him in the Nuremberg court-room related not to what he had thought but to what he had done. But everything he did was rather that which was done in his name, because he was incapable, either personally or in administrative technique, of living up to his own unfortunate predilection for executive activity. He remained 'Almost Rosenberg.'

The evidence before the Nuremberg court, which unequivocally proves that he knew about and indirectly took part in the measures for the extermination of the Jews, makes his horror over Auschwitz and Theresienstadt highly incredible. But if it was genuine, so certainly was the dull-wittedness with which he lied his way out of it, speaking of a "great disease of National Socialism," a temporary degeneration for which he blamed above all Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann and officials like Erich Koch. To the end he never realized that the injustices of National Socialism were inherent in it, that the terrible practice grew in the soil of a terrible theory. Within this broader framework, ideology and reality ultimately did correspond.

And if Rosenberg, shortly before his death, expressed the hope that the idea of National Socialism would never be forgotten and would be "reborn from a new generation steeled by suffering," this too merely indicates that he never grasped the largely false nature of totalitarian ideologies, which as they lose the external power in which they embody themselves also lose their power over men's minds. Thus no one so mistook the character and significance of National Socialist ideology as this man who considered himself one of its founders and authoritative exponents. The final sentence in the notes written in his Nuremberg cell admits, characteristically, his inability "to understand all that in its deepest meaning."