Original subtitles

The first time I saw the audio discs it was in the cellar.

They had been left in storage, unheard, for many decades.

Listening to them gave me the chills.

Attention!

The International Military Tribunal will now enter.

Will you state your full name?

Wilhelm Keitel.

Julius Streicher.

Karl Dönitz.

At end of World War II, top Nazi leaders were put on trial.

For ten months, this trial revealed unknown details

about major battles.

U-boats were to shoot up the lifeboats.

And wartime crimes.

How did you tolerate all these men being murdered?

Hello, recording.

Unknown to many, the entire proceeding was recorded

on more than 2,000 audio discs.

While we were digitizing the discs, we preferred to keep it a secret.

We had fears that someone would steal and destroy the discs because they contain

really important testimonies about the war.

Most of this audio has never been heard. Until now.

The executions were carried out in a military manner

a military manner by firing squads under command.

Tell us about preparations for gas warfare.

This proposal came from Dr. Goebbels.

This is the story of World War II.

That was an order which was given to me by Hitler.

Hitler! Sieg!

Heil!

And the most chilling criminals in history.

I stand up for the things that I have done.

As you've never heard it before.

Is that your testimony?

This is the BBC Home Service.

The end of the war in Europe was officially announced at

3:00 this afternoon.

The commanders of the German forces have come to

this headquarters today to make unconditional surrender.

At the end of the war, the question of course emerges,

what to do with the defeated Nazi leadership.

We have to remember that at the time the public was just

absorbing the stories that were coming out of the liberated Western camps.

And so, public opinion polls aggressively supported the idea of summary execution.

But then, mainly coming from the Americans,

there was the proposal to actually have a legal response.

If the truth of Nazi rule was not established in

a due process of law, then it was very likely that someday

people would even deny that the atrocities that the Nazi regime

had committed took place.

There was the idea that a big case could be presented

publicly to help explain, to help make sense of what had

just happened to the world.

But by the time a trial is a possibility at all in the fall of 1945,

it's really a question of who they can still catch.

This is London calling. Hitler is dead.

The SS chief Heinrich Himmler also ends his life.

With several top Nazis dead, the Allies decide to hold a group trial of

the remaining German leaders.

Among the more prominent Nazis seized are

Admiral Dönitz and Albert Speer, Minister of Economics and Production.

They arrest and charge just over 20 major officials,

who represent the full scope of the Nazi system.

Keitel was chief of the German armed forces.

Streicher was known for his anti-Semitic propaganda.

Rudolf Hess had been Hitler's stenographer as

Hitler was dictating Mein Kamp.

Göring was the number two figure in the Nazi party.

During the war, he was the head of the Luftwaffe, the head of the Four-Year Plan.

He is the biggest Nazi war criminal still alive.

The trial will be held in Nuremberg, Germany.

Sieg!

Heil!

As the former site of Hitler's infamous party rallies,

it is considered to be the symbolic birthplace of Nazism.

So Nuremberg is seen as the perfect spot in which to punish the Nazis.

In the city's Palace of Justice,

the Nazis will face an international tribunal made up

of judges and prosecutors from four Allied nations.

It was Britain, America, Russia, and the French

and so they all had their own prosecuting counsels.

Although they will work together,

the American and British prosecutors will take the lead.

We have an opportunity to bring to a just judgment

those who have thought it safe to wage aggressive and ruthless war.

Robert H. Jackson is the American chief prosecutor.

He had been Attorney General and in 1941 U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

He really is America's leading lawyer.

It is the only hope for Germany and the world that

our people realize and repent for what has happened.

David Maxwell-Fyfe was the leading prosecutor for the British.

He'd suffered from the bombing in London and he hated the Nazis.

To prepare their case, Allied investigators scour the countryside,

gathering witnesses and evidence.

The unconditional surrender gave the Allies access

to all German records. That was unprecedented.

And that really strengthens the knowledge level

as they're heading for trial in Nuremberg.

This is Arthur Gaeth in Nuremberg, Germany.

If the 43 pages of charges prepared by the four capable

prosecutors are made to stick, this trial will not only make history,

but also establish precedence in international criminal law.

The atmosphere at the start of the trial was incredibly electric.

Hello recording, hello recording.

We have to bear in mind,

this is the first international criminal trial in human history.

Test, one, two, three, four.

And we have heads of state being accused of an

extraordinary range of horrific crimes.

Attention!

The International Military Tribunal will now enter.

They knew that with this trial they would be

revealing information that no one had known before.

That's why the decision was made to capture

the full proceedings in an audio recording.

Some of these recordings will be played for

the first time in this film.

The present defendants stand charged

here today, with Crimes Against Peace,

War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity,

and of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those crimes.

I will now call upon the defendants to plead guilty or

not guilty to the charges against them.

I declare myself not guilty.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

When you listen to the defendants…

No.

They speak with a kind of bizarre confidence.

I declare myself not guilty.

And they all plead not guilty.

Not guilty.

None of them consider themselves to be guilty.

I declare myself, in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.

To establish the Nazis' guilt,

prosecutors intend to lay out a wide range of crimes,

to reveal, exactly how the Nazis were able to wage such a devastating war.

And they will seek to prove that starting the war was

the Nazis' plan from the beginning.

The Tribunal will hear the defendant Göring

in the witness box now.

As Hitler's former right-hand man,

defendant Hermann Göring was a high-ranking member of

the Nazi government and German military.

One of the many accusations against him is that he took a

lead role in conspiring to wage war almost immediately

after the Nazis came to power.

Now, as early as 1933 after you came to

power you regarded it as necessary to rearm Germany

regardless of any treaty limitations, did you not?

It was, of course, already discussed in 1933

because it was clear at once that something different

needed to happen under our government.

At the end of the first World War, the Versailles Treaty had forced

a large number of restrictions on the German military.

Hitler was of the opinion that Germany

must be freed from the restrictions of Versailles.

Adolf Hitler and the clique of professional

military soldiers that followed him into office,

like Hermann Göring who was an accomplished fighter pilot

during the First World War, said if we don't rearm,

we're just going to be victimized by other world powers.

It was not only Adolf Hitler. Every German - every patriotic German -

had the same feeling.

But what emerges during the Tribunal is that

German re-armament had a greater goal than simply protecting Germany.

That they were secretly preparing to take on the world.

Remember, captured documents are just

incredibly powerful, authentic smoking guns.

If you've got the right documents, you've pretty much got magic evidence.

May it please the Tribunal.

One of the most striking and revealing captured documents is

a document which we have come to know as the Hossbach notes

of a conference on 5 November 1937.

Friedrich Hossbach had been part of Hitler's personal staff.

And that memo was prepared in the wake of a

meeting between Hitler and a small number of members of the military.

I note the defendant Hermann Wilhelm Göring was present.

In this conspiratorial meeting Adolf Hitler posed the question;

"The question for Germany is

where the greatest possible conquest could be made at the lowest cost."

It was very clear from that memo that Hitler

wanted land and that land would come from

Austria, Czechoslovakia, possibly Poland.

It's a stunning revelation,

only according to Göring, there's a simple explanation.

Hossbach was present at the meeting and took notes.

Five days later, he prepared this record.

This is, therefore, a record which contains mistakes.

But the prosecution is about to reveal Göring's lie.

When Nazi Germany starts taking over countries

like Austria and Czechoslovakia, at the time,

the interpretation is that the people in those countries wanted it.

Heil! Sieg!

Heil! Sieg!

Heil! Sieg!

Yet what captured documents reveal is that the Nazis were

secretly putting pressure on their governments to hand over

their countries to Nazi Germany.

I now offer in evidence the actual events in Austria.

There's actually a telephone conversation that's

introduced into the trial of how Göring bullies Schuschnigg, the,

the Austrian chancellor.

I turn now to copies of the

telephone conversations, Top Secret.

Göring: "You go and tell the Federal President"

that if the conditions are not accepted immediately,

the troops who are already stationed at the frontier, will march in tonight,

and Austria will cease to exist.”

The Nazis were actually able to secure Austria by making a threat of force.

Göring refuses to admit any wrongdoing.

Aggressive war is carried out by shooting, throwing bombs, and so on.

But there was only one thing thrown and that was flowers.

But the evidence continues to mount.

I should like now to offer in evidence

the conquest of Czechoslovakia.

In the second week of March 1939 in response to the summons from Hitler,

Monsieur Hácha, the President of the Czechoslovak Republic arrived in Berlin.

Hácha was ushered into the Reich Chancellery.

He found there Adolf Hitler, Göring, and other high Nazi officials.

They have him in a lamp lit room.

It's like a scene straight out to the Godfather, Godfather II.

This is the captured Germans' account of

this infamous meeting.

They reminded him that in three hours the German army would cross the border.

The defendant Göring boasted of what his Luftwaffe would do

if the Czech forces dared to resist.

Göring bullies him and says to him,

“If you don't give up and allow our troops to march in,

we will bomb Prague to the ground.”

He couldn't hardly deny it.

So he tried to minimize and tried to lie.

I told him there would only be unnecessary bloodshed.

And in that connection, I made the statement

that I should be sorry if I had to bomb beautiful Prague.

But it's pretty clear that this is criminal behavior.

Under this threat the aged President of Czechoslovakia

signed the document with which the Nazi conspirators confronted him.

What we basically have is Germany holding a gun up to

the head of the leaders of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

And it's all part of this aggressive policy,

which is inevitably going to lead to the Second World War.

You'll go on with the evidence tomorrow?

Yes, sir.

This is Arthur Gaeth in Nuremberg Germany.

In the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the prosecution is well into its case.

At Nuremberg, the prosecution demonstrates

that the annexation of Austria,

the seizure of Czechoslovakia

is all part of this aggressive policy of the Nazi regime.

But none of that had really led to direct military conflict.

It really isn't until Germany's attack on Poland,

that we have the beginning of the Second World War.

So, it was important to prosecutors to

look at what happened during the invasion of Poland.

Colonel Amen will represent the United States this morning.

May it please the Tribunal,

I propose to call as witness for the prosecution,

Major General Erwin von Lahousen.

Erwin von Lahousen had been a high-ranking member

of the Nazis' military espionage group, called the Abwehr.

Will you stand in front of the microphone

there so you can be heard?

He has detailed knowledge of top-secret events

leading up to the invasion of Poland.

The defendants were not aware that he was going to

be testifying against them.

Was the Abwehr ever asked to furnish

any assistance for the Polish campaign?

Yes.

Will you explain to the Tribunal

the nature of the assistance required?

The affair on which I am now giving testimony

is one of the most mysterious actions which took place…

Back in 1939, Nazi leadership had claimed that

the fighting only began after Polish troops

first attacked German soldiers.

According to them, Poland is to blame for the start of the war.

That's the way the story was presented to the world,

it was Germany simply defending its border.

But General Von Lahousen is about to stun the world with the truth.

Will you please explain exactly what took place?

My division, Defense Division 2, received

the task of providing Polish uniforms.

And what was the purpose?

That people from concentration camps

were disguised in these uniforms and were ordered to make a military attack

on the radio station at Gleiwitz.

And so what actually happened was that the Germans

dressed some prisoners up in Polish uniform and used that as

the pretext for invading the western half of Poland.

What happened to the men that wore

the Polish uniforms and created this incident?

All of the people who took part in

that were put out of the way, that is, killed.

Is there any slighted doubt in your mind about that?

No.

This is a bowl ‘em over moment.

Göring calls von Lahousen, “Schwein,” meaning pig.

He says, “Verrat,” treason. “Verrater,” uh, traitor.

Göring even says, “He should have been gassed.”

Von Lahousen's testimony leaves the courtroom, and the world, reeling.

Okay, recording, that's all for now.

Adjourn ‘til tomorrow at 9:30.

But it won't stop the Nazis from still attempting

to lie their way out of responsibility for the war.

Criminals can always find a way to deny.

What is your name?

Erhard Milch

Erhard Milch is a witness for the defense.

During the war, he served directly under Göring in the Luftwaffe.

To the gentlemen who now stand accused

the whole question of the war came as a great surprise.

You want this Tribunal to understand you,

as an officer, as saying that there was no preparation?

How long did it take to overrun Denmark?

Denmark, very short.

How long did it take to overrun Holland and Belgium?

A few days.

How long did it take to take possession of Norway?

Also a short time.

And how long did it take to overrun France and take Paris?

Two months in all.

And those were all surprise movements?

You were surprised at every one of them? Is that your testimony?

Yes.

But it is not just the conquest of nations that

prosecutors will show was pre-planned.

Heil, heil Hitler.

They will soon reveal how propaganda was

used to not only gain public support for the war,

but also to help pave the way for

one of the largest mass murders of the 20th Century.

I think one of the big problems with history is

that we look at the past through the eyes of the present.

This is especially true of Nazism.

We would tend to see Nazism through the prism of

the brutality and its antisemitism.

But what you've got to remember is;

that's not how the German people saw Hitler at all.

Sieg!

Heil! Heil!

The appeal of Nazism was not negative, it was Utopian.

“I'm going to build a new Germany,

"and I'm going to make Germany a great power."

It was a Utopian appeal.

And so, it was very important for the Nuremberg process

to lay out how they eventually induced people to

think that the evil that they were being asked to participate in,

was virtue of some kind.

Now let us consider for a moment

the doctrinal techniques of the Nazi conspirators.

The first was the, “Master Race,” doctrine.

Calling anything, “Non-German,” and you have a clear right,

indeed a duty, to cast it out.

Propaganda played a large role in the prosecution's argument.

My German youth…

Because indoctrination was perceived as

a driving force of bringing along the German population

in the aggressive Nazi policies.

Will you repeat this oath after me?

I think a clear indicator for this is

the charges against Julius Streicher.

Julius Streicher had been an elementary school teacher

before aspiring to politics.

I will speak the pure truth

You may sit down.

In the early 1920s he founded Der Stürmer,

a viciously racist newspaper.

It would eventually become a significant part of Nazi propaganda,

and continue publication until the end of the war.

We have an example of the really

remarkable lengths to which he went.

I quote, “One single cohabitation of a Jew with an

Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever.

The Aryan is impregnated with an alien species.”

It had, you know, wild allegations against Jews.

It equated them with parasites and leeches and rats.

I have not attempted to have

translated all of the articles.

It is perhaps sufficient to look at the pictures.

All of this is very much unearthed at Nuremberg.

His newspapers are crowded with them, week after week,

day after day.

It is impossible to pick up any copy without finding the same kind of stuff.

That is very important material because what the trial

revealed was the building up and the creation of an enemy image.

After the seizure of power the daily press was coordinated.

And orders were given by the Führer

that every newspaper should provide enlightening articles

on the “Jewish question.”

Already before Hitler comes to power,

there is certainly antisemitism and this sort of vague sense amongst many

that there's a, “Jewish problem,” that has to be solved somehow.

And, you know, hopefully this government will get that done.

I did not intend to agitate or to inflame, but to enlighten.

I never wrote, "burn Jewish houses down; beat them to death."

But you know, do you not,

that starting with the boycott which you led yourself in 1933,

the Jews thereafter were deprived of the right to vote,

they were forced to wear a yellow star and they had

their houses and their businesses taken away from them.

Do you call that enlightenment?

So the trial was important for connecting dots

that had not previously been connected.

I'm suggesting that you set out

to incite the German people to murder and to accept

the murder of the Jewish race.

That is not true.

I've no doubt you'll say it isn't true, I just want to

make myself quite clear to what I'm suggesting.

In many ways, Nuremberg was more than the prosecution of the defendants.

It was also making Germans confront what they had acquiesced to.

But there wasn't much appetite for this in Germany at that at time.

To capture the attention of the German public,

prosecutors turn to a type of evidence that had

rarely been used in courtrooms before.

They actually interrupt their case to suddenly

show a film in the courtroom.

Prosecution will at this

time present a documentary film on concentration camps.

This is by no means the entire proof which the prosecution will offer,

but this film represents what the words, “Concentration camp,” imply.

At this concentration camp the Germans starved, clubbed,

and burned to death more than 4,000 prisoners over a period of eight months.

On the table is a lampshade made of human skin,

made at the request of an SS Officer's wife.

At the time, the world really hadn't seen footage like this.

This really had an incredibly galvanizing effect.

Fyfe himself says he was fighting back the tears.

"After that, I wasn't so much a prosecutor," he says, "As a Terrier dog."

You know, "I wanted these men to be convicted."

I call on General Rudenko for the Soviet Union.

I will now describe the crimes

committed by the Hitlerite aggressors against my own country.

On June 22, 1941, the U.S.S.R.

was deceitfully attacked by Hitlerite Germany.

What the Nuremberg Trial did was pay quite a bit of attention

to the kind of German warfare that was waged in the East.

It meant unheard of terror, plundering, violence

and killing of prisoners of war and peaceful citizens.

The estimate for casualties in the Soviet Union was 26 million,

more than half of that is estimated to be civilians.

And because of the Nuremberg Trial we know now

that there wouldn't be a Holocaust without the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Then you will call the defendant Keitel?

Wilhelm Keitel had been the chief of

the high command of the German Armed Forces.

Will you repeat this oath after me?

A devout supporter of Hitler,

he participated in the planning of all ground combat operations during the war.

You may sit down if you wish.

But it is the planning for the invasion of

the Soviet Union that prosecutors want to get to the bottom of.

I shall first of all refer to a document entitled,

“Directive on Military Jurisdiction in the Region Barbarossa

in the Region Barbarossa and on the Adoption of Special Military Measures.”

Do you remember that document?

That was an order which was given to me by Hitler.

It's discovered that just a few months before

the invasion of the Soviet Union,

Hitler called together various senior figures

and described how the war in the East was to be conducted.

This meeting was translated into a top-secret order,

called the Barbarossa Decree,

which Keitel signed and issued to the German military.

This is the document Prosecutor Rudenko is presenting to the court.

The Barbarossa Decree was the first time that it was

explicitly stated that this was a war of annihilation.

It was either Nazism or Bolshevism. The world was not big enough for both.

So you planned the murder of human beings ahead of time?

I merely passed on the order received from the Führer.

For Keitel to pass on an order that he knew

was illegal made him complicit.

He knew full well that it was going to result in the deaths of many, many people.

And the Barbarossa Decree is just one murderous directive

that the prosecution has uncovered.

This order was by no means the end, was it?

Prosecutors reveal a series of secret orders that

condone the killing of POW's and civilians,

as well as the ruthless pillaging of food and vital resources.

These orders fed into this whole narrative that this

is a conflict between two different cultures,

two different races, and only one can survive.

And by August 1941, the evidence showed the start of

mass executions of women and children. That is unprecedented.

I wish to call as a witness for

the prosecution Mr. Otto Ohlendorf.

Otto Ohlendorf has first-hand knowledge of these early mass murders.

A former officer with the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or SS,

he had commanded an Einsatzgruppen unit on the Eastern Front.

Einsatzgruppen were these mobile extermination units

who basically comb through towns in conquered Eastern Europe and

engaged in mass executions.

The instructions was given that in the operational areas

of the Einsatzgruppen in the Russian territory

the Jews were to be liquidated.

As well as the Soviet political commissars.

And when you say, "Liquidated," do you mean, "Kill?"

By That I mean "kill."

Now will you explain to the Tribunal

in detail how a mass execution was carried out?

The rounding up took place under the pretext of resettlement.

After the registration, the Jews were collected in one place.

And from there they were transported to the place of execution.

The executions were carried out in a military manner,

by firing squads under command.

Being able to hear this kind of banality of evil

in the audio recordings is shocking.

What was notable was the straightforwardness and

sobriety of his, uh, his recounting of things.

Now, will you continue?

They were transported to the place of execution in trucks.

Only as many as could be executed immediately.

In this way, it was attempted to keep the span of time

from the moment the victims knew what was about to happen to them

until their actual execution as short as possible.

His testimony was absolutely devastating.

This was a true manifestation of Nazi racial policy and

their plans for domination.

And in a lot of ways, Ohlendorf's testimony is a

preview of what's going to be revealed later in the trial.

Hello sound recording, hello sound recording.

What I want to understand is this;

how did you tolerate all these young men being murdered,

one after the other, without making any protests?

I want to understand what's in your mind.

During the trial, people had intense interest in

the psychology of the defendants.

The Americans even retained this psychologist, G.M. Gilbert,

to perform extensive psychological testing on the Nazis.

Things like Rorschach exams, uh, intelligence tests.

Because there was this general question;

are they just a bunch of psychopaths who happened to hijack a regime?

There were a couple of defendants who were not

necessarily in the best psychological health.

One of them was Rudolf Hess.

Rudolf Hess was a close confidant of Hitler during

the early days of the Nazi party.

He is accused of conspiring with Hitler to wage war and

committing crimes against peace.

But during the trial, Hess puts forth a surprising defense.

He claims he doesn't remember any of it. He says, “I have amnesia.”

So they have a serious question about whether he's mentally competent.

This is Leslie Nichols speaking from Nuremberg, Germany.

For a long time now, the International Military Tribunal

at Nuremberg has been trying to get an answer to the question;

“Is there a crazy man in the house?”

I call upon counsel for the defendant Hess.

The defendant Hess is unfit for trial.

Of course, some think he's faking,

and others think he's mad as a hatter.

But then, Hess asks to testify.

Mr. President…

Henceforth, my memory will again respond to the outside world.

The reasons for faking loss of memory were of a tactical nature.

And he finally says, “Oh everything I was saying was untrue,

I remember it all, that was part of my strategy.”

There's just a kind of stunned silence.

The Tribunal at that point really has no choice but to take

his word for it and certify him as competent.

But then, and I think ever since,

it's a serious question whether that was accurate,

or whether that just another piece of his craziness?

In the case of the other defendants,

the psychological testing demonstrated that these are terrifyingly normal people,

high IQ individuals.

And that raises very troubling questions about the capacity of

all people to engage in acts under similar circumstances.

May it please the Tribunal,

with the march of Nazi armies over Europe,

wholesale murders were disguised under the name of, “Anti-partisan,” actions.

But not every undesirable could be, “Liquidated.”

When the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,

the Germans gambled by mobilizing far more troops

than they could actually sustain for any length of time.

Because the intention was that the war would be over by the end of 1941.

So when the war didn't end, there was an enormous problem.

The problem was how to produce enough weapons and

supplies to keep the German war machine going.

And the Nazi's solution would be revealed as a brutal one.

The evidence relating to the Nazi slave labor program

shall show that it was a policy which compelled

foreign civilians and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments

and to engage in other operations where they were literally

worked to death in the course of the Nazi program of, “Extermination through work.”

Foreign laborers became the serfs of the, "Master race,"

and they were enslaved by the millions.

This document is a top-secret memorandum from the files of the Defendant Rosenberg,

dated the 21st day of December 1942.

“They are now catching humans like the dog-catchers used to catch dogs.”

According to the prosecution,

one of the masterminds behind this immense slave labor program

was defendant Albert Speer.

A trained architect who had risen to prominence by designing

monumental buildings for Hitler, he is far from

what many consider to be a, “Stereotypical Nazi.”

Albert Speer came from a very high-ranking upper-class background.

Hitler loved architecture, so he became very close to Hitler.

During the war, Hitler tended to trust him, thought he could do anything.

He made him the Minister of Armaments.

Will you repeat this oath after me.

So Speer absolutely had to know that the workers that

he was demanding to ramp up German military production were not volunteers.

This was perhaps the most horrible

slaving operation in history.

Who is responsible for these conditions?

Neither I, nor the Ministry, was responsible for this.

There were efforts in Germany

to bring about increased productivity through very severe compulsory measures.

These efforts did not meet with my approval.

He's very intelligent.

It is quite out of the question that 14 million workers

can be forced to produce satisfactory work through coercion and terror.

And he's a very careful manipulator.

As a matter of principle, I represented the view

that a satisfactory work output could only be achieved

through the good will of the worker himself.

I am not attempting to say that

you were personally responsible.

I merely give you what the regime was doing.

And he fools them to a certain degree.

Even Maxwell-Fyfe says he was taken in by him.

He said, at certain points, "I thought, how can a man so cultured and so handsome,

be a monster?"

And Speer will not be the only defendant to try to

blur the line between good and evil.

For the most part history has abided by the idea

of the good German and the bad German,

the evil, sickening villain, and the reluctant Nazi.

Because what we don't want is to look at what happened to Germany

and say that could happen to anybody.

And so, this idea first takes shape during the Nuremberg Trial.

And we have cast Karl Dönitz as the reluctant Naval professional

that got caught up in things.

But the reality is, Karl Dönitz unpacks this larger story about

the way that we are still attempting to reconcile what the Third Reich was.

Adolf Hitler only ever saw me as the first soldier of the Navy.

Karl Dönitz was a highly regarded naval officer.

When Hitler first came into power,

Dönitz oversaw the secret re-building of the U-boat, or submarine, fleet.

He then commanded it with devastating effect

during the first three years of the war.

The defendant rose steadily in rank

until he became Commander in Chief of the German Navy.

Members of the Tribunal will see it was not, however,

only his ability as a naval officer which won the defendant these high honors;

These he owed to his capacity for utter ruthlessness.

One of the accusations against Dönitz is that in

the autumn of 1942 he directed his U-boats to start

gunning down shipwrecked Allied sailors,

murdering them in their lifeboats.

In 1942, the Allies' determination to strengthen

their transatlantic convoy system was beginning to result

in a steadier flow of weapons and soldiers to Europe.

And the defendant…

According to prosecutors,

Dönitz' murderous directive was intended to stop these convoys.

The trial audio reveals his vehement denial.

Firing upon these men is a matter concerned with the ethics of war.

No order on this subject has ever been issued in any form whatsoever.

Well, the only problem for Dönitz was that

there were a few U-boat messages that

suggest that Dönitz did indeed provide some instructions

to machine-gun survivors in the water.

Now this, is a top-secret order sent

from the defendant's headquarters to all

commanding officers of U-boats dated September 1942.

"Rescue runs counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare

for the destruction of enemy ships and crews."

"Be harsh."

Now, my lord, that is a very carefully worded order.

But its intentions are made very clear by the next document.

Prosecutors reveal a copy of the secret conversation

that took place between Hitler and the Japanese ambassador in early 1942.

The Führer pointed out that

however many ships the United States built,

one of their main problems would be the lack of personnel.

For that reason U-boats were to surface and

shoot up the lifeboats.

And on that, I shall call a witness.

What is your name?

My name is Peter Josef Heisig.

Peter Heisig is a former German submariner.

He served under Admiral Dönitz during the war.

Will you take your mind back to the autumn of 1942?

Yes, sir.

I was a senior midshipman at the 2nd U-boat Training Division.

Grossadmiral Dönitz said in his speech,

“Crews for ships are as much a target for U-boats

as the ships themselves.”

“Through this, it will become impossible for the Allies

to outfit their newly built ships with crews.”

It is compelling evidence.

But without a clearly written order, Dönitz can still deny it.

He uses a very common defense,

and that defense is there may have been outliers that chose to

machine-gun people in the water, but I never gave that order.

Everything else Heisig said is so vague

that I do not attach much credibility to him.

And so, Dönitz ended up being in this position of

still possessing a little bit of a moral high-ground.

But I believe that is partly because what we want to see is the, “Good German.”

And prosecutors will soon show that as the war dragged into 1943,

and then '44,

and victory began to slip from the Nazis' grasp,

they were preparing to use any means necessary to avoid defeat.

It may well be said that Hitler started

the war without cause and prolonged it without reason.

If he could not rule, he cared not what happened to Germany.

As prosecutors turn their attention to

the later stages of the war, they raise the question of just

how far German leadership was preparing to go to avoid defeat.

Defendant Göring, Hitler's former number two in command,

is called back to the stand.

At what time did you know that the war,

so far as achieving the objectives that you had in mind, was a lost war?

It is extremely difficult to say.

At any rate, according to my conviction, relatively late.

At that time, I was forced to realize

that defeat would probably set in slowly.

I also knew that Hitler did not want to negotiate

under any circumstances.

And after that time,

the air attacks which were continued against England were

designed solely to affect a prolongation of what you then

knew was a hopeless conflict?

I can only regret that we did not have enough

of the V-1 and V-2 bombs.

Because the only way we could have reduced

the attacks on German cities

was if we could inflict equally heavy losses on the enemy.

I would have continued fighting whatever the circumstances.

Göring realizes he's going to be executed. He knows this.

You know, he says to people around him, "You know we're going to be killed."

He said, he said, "But what's the point of this trial?

It's to give some kind of legacy."

And he's trying to rally the other Nazis to say,

at least have a kind of last stand. Stay true to Nazism.

But, of course, a lot of them don't want to do that.

Albert Speer is one defendant who has shown he would

rather cooperate with the prosecution and try to save his life.

He's more than willing to spill details about

the Nazis' secret plans for the end of the war.

I want to ask you about the proposal to

resort to poison gas warfare.

Who made those proposals?

This proposal came from Dr. Goebbels.

Joseph Goebbels had been the Nazi party's head of propaganda.

A trusted member of the inner circle, he held considerable sway with Adolf Hitler,

right up to the end.

They were discussing the question of using our two new combat gases -

Tabun and Sarin.

…That these gases, these two, were of an extraordinary effectiveness.

…That no gas masks, that is no protection

was available against them, according to our knowledge.

At Nuremberg, we are hearing for the first time that

Germany was beginning to consider the possibility of

using poison gases on the battlefield as they had during the First World War.

Now will you tell us about preparations

that were made for gas warfare?

For the manufacture of this gas

we had about three factories

all of which were undamaged and which until November 1944

were working at full speed.

And so, we know now it's just virtue of good fortune that

the war ended when it did, because if it had stretched

into '46, and God forbid, '47, which could have happened,

you could bet there would have been poison gas.

It's a chilling confession.

But it will pale next to the revelation of just how great

the suffering in Europe had already been.

May it please the Tribunal,

we propose to offer additional evidence at this time

concerning the use of the Nazi concentration camps

against the people of Germany and allied nationals.

We wish to invite the Tribunal's attention to a chart,

showing the Nazi system of concentration camps as

they have become known since 1945.

The trial is the first massive exposure of

the intricacies and machinery of destruction.

I should like to direct our attention to

the treatment in these camps.

The estimate at the time was 5.3 million Jewish victims.

Actually, quite close to what we know now as the overall victim figure.

At this point, my colleagues will present full evidence.

Will you repeat this oath after me?

Witness Samuel Rajzman is a Jewish man who had lived in Poland.

I hereby swear that I will speak nothing but the truth…

He and his family were confined to the Warsaw ghetto.

Before being taken to the extermination camp at Treblinka.

Will you describe this camp to the Tribunal?

On an average, I believe they killed in Treblinka

from ten to twelve thousand persons daily.

Transports arrived there every day.

They were all forced to strip immediately.

And this process continued under the lashes of the German guards' whips.

Then the people were obliged to walk naked through the street to the gas chamber.

My work was to load the clothes of the murdered persons on the trains.

When I had been in the camp two days,

my mother, my sister, and two brothers were brought to the camp.

I had to watch them being led away to the gas chambers.

Several days later, my comrades found my wife's documents

and a photograph of my wife and child.

That is all I have left of my family. Only a photograph.

A lot of the things that we now take for granted

that we know about the Holocaust,

this was information that was really being supplied for the first time.

As witnesses step forward, they speak about the killings, beatings,

and sadistic treatment, that they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

They reveal the truth about unimaginable horrors.

I could tell about the children

who were brought to the concentration camp.

When the greatest number of Jews were exterminated

an order went out that the children

were to be thrown into the crematory ovens or the crematory ditches

without previous asphyxiation with gas.

Were they thrown into the ovens alive?

Or were they killed by other means before they were burned?

The children were thrown in alive.

Their cries could be heard all over camp.

When concentration camp victims gave testimony,

the defendants often looked away or took off their headphones.

They wouldn't even react to evidence unless it was

directed at them personally.

And then what else could they do but lie and deny.

First of all, I want to say I did not know anything about what took place

and what methods were used in the concentration camps.

But witness you've seen the films

since this trial started.

You know that there were millions of garments,

millions of shoes,

20,952 kilograms of gold wedding rings.

All that which these people who were exterminated left behind them.

Did nobody ever tell you all these came from the effects

of these people who were murdered?

No, and how can you imagine this?

I was laying down the broad outlines for the German economy

and that certainly didn't include the utilization of old shoes and clothes.

So, I'm asking about the murder of five million people.

The Führer must have had full knowledge, mustn't he?

It is my opinion that the Führer

was not informed about details in concentration camps.

What the Nazis don't know is that their lies

will be exposed by one of their own witnesses.

My Lord, I have an application

on behalf of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner for a witness called Höss.

Rudolf Höss was the former commandant at Auschwitz.

And strangely enough, Höss is called as a witness not by

the prosecution, but by the defense.

He's actually called by Kaltenbrunner's lawyer.

Defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner had

been a high-ranking member of the SS.

With reference to concentration camps…

Earlier in the trial,

evidence was presented showing he was heavily involved in

the Nazi concentration camp system.

But he and his lawyer hope that by calling Höss to the stand

they can distance him from the murders at Auschwitz.

Is it true that in 1941 you were ordered to Berlin to see Himmler?

Yes, sir.

In the summer of 1941

I was summoned to Berlin to see Reichsführer-SS Himmler

to receive personal orders.

He told me that the Führer

had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question.

Did you ever talk with Kaltenbrunner with reference to your task?

No, never.

So that little nugget is helpful for Kaltenbrunner.

But, of course, that opens the door on cross examination.

And on cross examination the prosecution introduces an affidavit that Höss signed.

If you will follow along with me as I read, please.

"I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June of '41."

At that time, there were already three other extermination camps.

I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations.

The Camp Commandant told me that he used monoxide gas,

and I did not think that his methods were very efficient.

So when I set up the extermination building

at Auschwitz, I used Zyklon B,

which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening.

Another improvement was that we built our gas chamber

to accommodate 2,000 people at one time.”

It's one thing to kind of know the planning abstractly.

But Höss is the first real decision-making eyewitness.

It sort of proves the worst.

And it's unapologetic.

Now I ask you, Witness,

is everything which I have read to you true to your own knowledge?

Yes, sir.

That concludes my cross-examination.

Particularly, I think Göring was appalled by someone

divulging information that he could have withheld.

Once this was communicated it had a massive impact.

People were just simply shocked.

They were shocked to believe that these things could be done in a modern society.

Höss's emotionless admission becomes

one of the most galvanizing moments of the trial.

And in the summer of 1946, as the proceedings draw to a close,

it is his words, and the words of the survivors,

that resonate the loudest for prosecutors.

My lord, I am deeply conscious

that one of the greatest difficulties,

and not the least of the dangers of this trial,

is that those of us who have been engaged day in and day out

for over nine months have

reached the saturation point of horror.

It is against such a background that

these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say

that they are not guilty.

If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty,

it would be as true to say that there has been no war,

that there are no slain, that there has been no crime.

I now call defendant Hermann Wilhelm Göring.

The Prosecution has treated the defendants and

their testimony as completely worthless.

I stand up for the things that I have done.

Despite everything, there was still an attitude amongst defendants

of total self-righteousness and entitlement.

I was not in a position to prevent what ought to have been prevented.

But it is Rudolf Hess, who's not spoken since he

admitted to faking amnesia, who delivers the most chilling of all final statements.

Even if I could, I would not want

to erase this period of time from my history.

I am happy to know

that I have done my duty as a loyal follower of my Führer.

- Hitler! Sieg! - Heil!

I regret nothing.

The Tribunal will now adjourn

in order to consider its judgment.

This is Arthur Gaeth speaking from

the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

After a month of deliberating,

the Nuremberg Tribunal reconvenes to deliver verdicts and sentencing.

Attention! Tribunal!

The assembly is jam-packed.

There must be 600 people in the courtroom.

The newly transferred audio reveals

the moment the sentences are read.

Hello sound recording, start cutting, start cutting.

Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Göring,

the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.

Defendant Hess, the Tribunal sentences you to imprisonment for life.

Julius Streicher, death by hanging.

At the pinnacle of their power, they had seemed in-conquerable.

Wilhelm Keitel, death by hanging.

Karl Dönitz, ten years' imprisonment.

Albert Speer, 20 years' imprisonment.

But the Nuremberg Trial reduced people who claim superhuman status.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, death by hanging.

And they became no more than the victims that they had done to death.

In the end, it's 18 guilty, three not guilty.

And so the Nuremberg prosecutors are generally quite satisfied.

From a podium prosecutor to a clerk in a documents room,

everybody who was a part of that was quite proud to be part of that.

The Tribunal will now adjourn.

But not all of the condemned will face their court-appointed fate.

Hermann Göring escaped his fate of hanging by

committing suicide at 10:45 last night.

Everyone was saying, "How the hell

does the major defendant end up taking a cyanide capsule?"

He did it so cleverly that the sentinel watching him

did not even see him put his hand to his mouth.

Göring's suicide sparks an extensive investigation.

But it fails to uncover exactly how he got the poison.

For him, it's a victory, isn't it?

It was a massive humiliation for the Allies.

With heightened security,

the remaining executions are carried out just hours later.

Only a handful of reporters are permitted to witness as the Nazis are hanged,

one by one,

on gallows built inside the Nuremberg prison.

I was an eyewitness to the execution of

the wilted flower of Nazidom.

There was a silent, serious atmosphere.

Ten men died here,

and the body of the other was brought in to complete the picture.

Justice has been done.

The Nazis who are sentenced to jail are taken to

Berlin's Spandau Prison to serve their time.

Hess is gonna spend the rest of his life in a prison in Germany.

He had actually sat out a lot of the war in a British prison camp.

And I think that's what saved him from the hangman's noose at the end of the trial.

He will eventually hang himself in Spandau in the late 1980s.

Dönitz has an interesting post-prison life.

He was, I don't want to say celebrated, but he certainly wasn't hated in Germany.

At the time of his passing, thousands of people flocked to his funeral.

But if there is a star of this trial,

it's Albert Speer because when he comes out of prison,

he writes his memoirs, the biggest selling set of memoirs

around the world there's ever been, in other words, he profits hugely.

Of course, since then, history has discovered lots more

specific knowledge of deportations, exterminations,

all of that stuff that he distanced himself from.

He was as bad as anybody who went to the gallows.

Is there any slightest doubt in your mind about that?

The trial really did demonstrate

to the world the crimes that the Nazi regime committed.

These came from people who were murdered?

And this notion that heads of state could be held

criminally responsible established a very powerful precedent moving forward.

After Rwanda, after former Yugoslavia,

the precedent set at Nuremberg is used again.

That brought the International Criminal Court into being.

So Nuremberg showed that when power and values unite,

the world can do these kinds of rule-of-law projects.

And that's a legacy that will challenge us evermore to live up to it.

Sound recording, it's over.