Extracts from the diary of Eric St Johnston during his visit to Germany in 1946
Saturday 10th August
At Frankfurt I saw my first bombed town in Germany - and the papers and reports do not exaggerate. The US HQ, however, is situated in an enormous building which is beautifully situated and was unhit. Pleasant gardens, with outside ice cream bars, drink bars and feeding canteens make work delightful if not impossible. And the place is just as full of pretty US girls and frauleins as it is of US officers. About three cars in four have one and generally two girls on board - more or less a fixture like the spare wheel I guess, and they are generally good lookers with bright dresses and scarves.
Sunday 11th August
Weisbaden was a lovely town - and still is in parts though it is very badly knocked about. The streets were full of GIs and frauleins. The VD rate is particularly high in this town and every few yards there is a notice, or even banners, right across the street. 'Victory for Decency': 'In town tonight - VD': 'Let this be a safe night': 'Number of new cases in this town last week was 85' (or some such number) - and similar shocking commentaries on the age we live in.
Monday 12th August
Then a two hour ride South to Stuttgart, partly by autobahn and partly - owing to destroyed buildings - by very poor secondary roads. A tiring ride for it was hot and sticky and bumpy.
Tuesday 13th August
We lunched at Colonel Dawson's mess and spent the afternoon with a Colonel White - a Washington policeman - being shown round his offices (the Lande PS offices) and accompanied by the Police President, a man called Weber, we visited the Police HQ - all very derelict, and the cells were shocking. The women's cells contained about ten women lying in various stages of undress in bunks, on dirty blankets. They are mostly VD suspects.
Afterwards we drove around the town looking at the ruins, and ghastly they are too, for Stuttgart must have been a very lovely town. We also walked through the centre and visited the street black-market. - about fifty evil looking men with satchels, standing under a group of trees. What they were selling I really do not know - cigarettes mostly I expect.
Wednesday 14th August
We left Stuttgart soon after breakfast and after an uneventful three hour drive, we arrived at Ansbach.... After lunch we... went on to Nuremberg, arriving about 4 pm.
We stayed there at the Grand Hotel, and after we had deposited out kit we drove round the town. I had not realised that Nuremberg was an old walled town. Most of it is completely destroyed and we saw the remains of many lovely old buildings.... There are 1000-1600 people connected with the trials, and most of them are secretarial and seem to be young people between the ages of 22-40.
Thursday 15th August
We went to the Court House about 9 am and had to collect our passes from the Security Office. While waiting there, who should walk in but Ally Forbes with a Mr and Mrs Clifford - both Press reporters. They were on a general Western Europe motor tour from Paris and had called in on their way to Vienna. Then we went into the Court House proper and called on Norman Burkett for a few minutes. We then went into the Court Room where we were given front seats in the visitors part. The prisoners were all in Court and evidently our uniform excited some interest for Goering looked at us hard, then turned and spoke to Ribbentrop, who also looked at us, and they then had a short conversation when Goering turned round and stared at us again for a minute or so. We were afterwards told that throughout the trial he has taken a great interest in the visitors - wanting to know who and what they are.
The Court Room is very impressive as the various published photographs have shown. It was not quite so big as I had imagined it would be, and the visitors are mostly accommodated on the floor of the Court rather than up in a gallery as I had imagined. Of the prisoners, there is little comment to make that has not already been made in the Press ad nauseum. Goering is clearly very mentally alert and dominates the others. He is a younger looking man than I had expected to see. Hess is obviously abnormal - with deep sunken eyes looking straight ahead all the time: Rosenburg and Von Shirach look the most cultured of them all: Frank looks a housebreaker: Schacht a worried and frightened schoolmaster. Of the rest they look a very ordinary everyday bus-queue crowd. As soon as we sat down, John came over to talk to me and Maxwell Fyffe came to speak to Brook and Baker. They invited us to lunch and then the Judges entered. Laurence is a magnificent President, and he and Biddle, who sits on his left, seem to agree all points of procedure without consulting the others. Laurence started off by making a number of pronouncements on matters of procedure previously raised by the defence, e.g. defendants would not be allowed to make long speeches at the end of the trial: long apologies written by them would not be translated and put in as exhibits, etc.
Then the Court settled down to the evidence of the day, which was the cross examination by Maxwell Fyffe of Jutner, the Chief of Staff of the SA who had given evidence trying to show that the SA was not an illegal military organisation. In the course of the morning, however, when much documentary evidence was put in and ready by Maxwell Fyffe, it was clearly proved that it was a military organisation and that it had done much to pervert the course of justice when members of the SA were concerned with murder and beatings of Jews and Anti-Fascists.
... we spent a very interesting hour in the prison, seeing the arrangements for the safe custody of the prisoners. The prison is the round spoke wheel type, and is divided into three sections - War Criminals: Guards: Witnesses. The twenty one prisoners are kept completely isolated and each man has one guard with him all the time. When he is in his cell, which is unlocked, the guard stands or lolls looking in through a wicket gate. When they are exercising (six at a time) one man is responsible for watching each prisoner. It must be a strain on the guards for they do two hours on and four off for twenty four hours and then twenty four hours off. When out of Court, the prisoners are not allowed to have braces, belt, tie or shoe-laces, and these are all kept with the court suits in special trays. In the prison they wear old clothes and open necks, and slippers, and the six we saw exercising - von Shirach, Schacht, Frank, Frick, Raeder and Fritzsche - looked just like any bunch of Public Institution inmates. They are not allowed to speak to each other and they just prowl up and down like so many panthers - some fast, some slow, some, like Raeder who has a hernia, hobbling.
In their cells most of them were reading, though Hess was, as always, just staring, and Goering was just sleeping. He was lying on his back on his bunk in a shirt and trousers. He has a very big chest and literally no tummy. At first I thought he was putting on an act for us, by inflating his chest, but I learned it was quite natural - now. All the prisoners' wants - doctor, dentist, cooks, etc are cared for by men who were PCs but who are now discharged but voluntarily kept on in the prison for the period of the trial. They are treated as prisoners for the time being, of course.
Elsewhere in the prison we saw some of the generals being kept as possible witnesses, and I saw for the first time the real Teutonic head. How revolting in looks, an absolutely flat back to the head - just as if it had been hit a hard blow.
Friday 16th August
We had a delightful run from Nuremburg to Munich... we were taken by car to Dachau some ten miles away. It was a warm afternoon and the roads were bad and dusty. It is very flat land, and one sees in the distance a row of largish, rather ugly houses, with some pine woods in the background. Behind this belt of trees is the camp proper. It is a very large area, with barracks, admin offices, parade grounds, and factories in the foreground, with the prison enclosures behind and on the right flank. The place is a hive of activity as there is a battalion of US troops - a large number of Polish guards in blue helmets and blue battle dress. They look a scruffy lot because the Russians insisted that they should not wear badges of rank or be considered in any way as an Army. In the camp proper, there are some 16,000 SS men, of all sorts and sizes, and in some buildings that have been specially built in one part of the camp the US military authorities are conducting a number of atrocity trials. An air of evilness pervades the place, and the hot and sticky dust, and the dirtiness of the prisoners - a lot were unloading coal near to the admin offices - gave it all a beastly atmosphere.
We were conducted round the camp by the Commandant, and we saw the gallows, the cremation buildings, the gas chambers and the places where the prisoners were tortured and shot. No less than 238,000 people disappeared inside that camp. The huts are each occupied by some 200 men; and 300 is considered to be more than the huts can accommodate. Yet the Germans locked 900 inside each hut each night.
It is impossible to decide what should be done with the SS men there now. It is divine retribution I suppose that they should be incarcerated in Dachau of all places - but for how long? One cannot see us keeping young men there for years and years. They are not doing any constructive work, and I cannot see why they are not used more on clearing rubble. There is enough rubble in Germany to occupy every SS man for the next twenty years.
Saturday 17th August
Munich I grieved over greatly. It has obviously been the most lovely city with glorious architecture and noble streets. Now it is utterly destroyed. Street after street of ruin - and yet enough of the buildings stand to remind one of what they were once like.
Ref: ERICSJ/1/2/4/8
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Preface
Introduction
Police & WWII
The Blitz
A Volunteer
Modern Echoes
Work Sheets
Resources
Acknowledgements