Free A Train of Powder by Rebecca West Page A

swung ajar. It was apparent now, as on many occasions during the trial, that the judges found it repulsive to try a man in such a state; but the majority of the psychiatrists consulted by the court had pronounced him sane.
    The first part of the judgment did not refer to the defendants but to bodies they had formed. It had been argued by the prosecution that the seven Nazi organizations—the Gestapo, SD,SS, Reich Cabinet, Corps of Political Leaders, General Staff and OKW, and Storm Troops—should be declared criminal in nature and that membership in them should by itself be the subject of a criminal charge. The judges admitted this in the cases of the first three, on the grounds that at an early date these organizations had so openly aimed at the commission of violence and the preaching of race hatred that no man could have joined them without criminal intent. The image of a rat in a trap often crossed the mind at Nuremberg, and it was evoked then. No man who had ever been an SS member could deny it. The initials and the number of his blood group were tattooed under his arm. But, of course, that trap did not spring. There were too many SS men, too many armpits, for any occupying force to inspect. The Storm Troopers were not put in the same category, because they were assessed as mere hooligans and bullies, too brutish to be even criminals. Of the others it was recognized that many persons must have joined them or consented to remain within them without realizing what Hitler was going to make of them. This was reasonable enough, for it meant that members of this organization could still be prosecuted if there was reason to believe they had committed crimes as a result of their membership.
    But the refusal to condemn all the seven organizations was greatly resented by some of the spectators. It was felt to be a sign that the tribunal was soft and not genuinely anti-Nazi. This was partly due to temperamental and juristic differences among the nations. The four judges took turns at reading the judgment, and this section was read by the English member judge, Lord Oaksey. His father before him was a judge, who was Lord Chief Justice in the twenties; and he had the advantage which the offspring of an old theatrical family have over other actors. He had inherited the technique and he refined on it, and could get his effects economically. He read this passage of the judgment in a silver voice untarnished by passion, with exquisite point; but to a spectator who was not English it might have seemed that this was just one of the committee of an English club explaining to his colleagues that it was necessary to expel a member. The resemblance need not have been disquieting. People who misbehave in such clubs really do get expelled by their committees, and they remain expelled; whereas the larger gestures and rhetoric of history have often been less effective. But this was not understood by those whose national habit it is to cross-breed their judges with prosecutors or to think that the law should have its last say with a moralist twang. There was, in other quarters, a like unease about the verdicts on the Service defendants, on Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl and Admirals Doenitz and Raeder. Keitel and Jodl were found guilty on all four counts of the indictment: first, of conspiracy to commit the crimes alleged in the other counts, which were crimes against peace, crimes in war, and crimes against humanity. Raeder was found guilty on the three counts, and Doenitz was found guilty on the second. There was some feeling among those who attended only the end of the trial, and a very great deal of strong feeling among people all over the world who did not attend the court, that these defendants had been put into the dock for carrying out orders as soldiers and sailors must. But there is a great deal in the court’s argument that the only orders a soldier or a sailor is bound to obey are those which are recognized practice in the