Mission at Nuremberg (53 page)

Along with one of the army psychologists, Gerecke and O'Connor (pictured here in an undated photo) were the only members of the prison staff who spoke German. The two men became good friends, eventually developing a grim joke. “At least we Catholics are responsible for only six of these criminals,” O'Connor would say. “You Lutherans have fifteen chalked up against you.”

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Heraldic design of 6850th Internal Security Detachment, the unit—including Gerecke and O'Connor—that staffed the prison. Andrus, who was a member of the Masonic Order of the Knights Templar, designed the emblem, writing in a memo that the azure field stood for truth, the sable border for solemnity, and the gules (or red) flames for “the pit of wrath.” The key at the top of the herald stood for security, the scales for justice, and the crushed eagle within the flames symbolized “Germany, Fallen, destroyed.”

U.S. Army and Heritage Education Center, Burton C. Andrus Collection.

On the night of January 2, 1945, the British sent more than five hundred Lancaster heavy bombers over Nuremberg. Within an hour 1,800 people were killed and 90 percent of the city was smashed. Another 4,000 were killed in subsequent Allied air raids in the following weeks. At top, a young boy stands in Nuremberg's former Adolf Hitler Platz, in front of the ruins of St. Sebald Church. On the bottom, a boater travels through the destroyed city along the Pegnitz River.

Photos by Ray D'Addario, ca. 1945–1946, courtesy of the Robert H. Jackson Center, Jamestown, New York.

The Grand Hotel, shown here during the trials, a fifty-year-old luxury accommodation just outside the walls of the destroyed old city, was the hub of after-court activity in the American war crimes community in Nuremberg. A German band played jazz most nights in the hotel's Marble Room.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Senior courtroom staff could take in more sophisticated culture at the Nuremberg Opera House. Pictured is the program from a January 1946 production of Giuseppe Verdi's
The Masked Ball
.

U.S. Army and Heritage Education Center, Burton C. Andrus Collection.

When he arrived at the Palace of Justice (shown here in aerial view), Gerecke shook the defendants' hands, a gesture for which he was later severely criticized by the American public. Shaking hands with these men didn't mean that he was unconcerned with their alleged crimes, but, he wrote later, “I knew I could never win any of them to my way of thinking unless they liked me first.”

Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Thanksgiving fell on the third day of the trial. American prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson spoke briefly, explaining the meaning of Thanksgiving to the court. He then asked Gerecke, who had been in Nuremberg for just ten days, to say a prayer as hundreds of military and civilian Allied personnel bowed their heads.

Permission of Henry H. Gerecke, from the collection of the Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis, Missouri.

The U.S. Army spent about $75 million (in today's dollars) renovating Courtroom 600 in the Palace of Justice—removing walls and creating an additional visitor's gallery and a room for the world's press. A long wooden covered walkway led to an elevator that deposited the prisoners directly into the Courtroom 600 defendants' dock, shown here.

Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Each cell in the prison where the war crimes defendants were held measured thirteen feet by six and a half feet and was accessed through a thick wooden door with a one-foot-square peephole, which Gerecke called a “Judas window.”

Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Hermann Goering, the highest-ranking Nazi leader at Nuremberg (pictured here sitting in the courtroom) was exactly the same age as Gerecke, whom he called “pastor.” Goering was head of the German Air Force and Hitler's designated successor.

Office of the United States Chief of Counsel, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library.