RichardQ, thank you so much for these posts concerning World War 2. If some people aren't interested in this type of history then they can just pass it by. I, for one, can't wait for your posts because I have a deep interest in what happened during the war and just after. There are people here that look forward to your posts. I really think that the school system in this country should teach our children about events leading up to the war, and why sometimes it is necessary for countries to band together for the sake of freedom and to eliminate a government that wants to spread their their boundaries and enslave their people. Looking forward to your next post.

Rich

When Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in the Soviet Crimea in February, 1945, no decision had yet been reached on what to do with the top Nazis when Germany surrendered.

Churchill and Roosevelt leaned toward summary executions. Stalin, however, proposed putting the Nazis on public trial first, then executing them (historically a favored approach of the Soviets). U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, among Roosevelt's advisors, joined Stalin and persuaded Roosevelt to agree to an international trial based on American procedures. Details were to be worked out later.

But a few weeks later, on April 12, Roosevelt died at age 63 and was replaced by V.P. Harry Truman, who had not attended any of the Big Three conferences. Meanwhile, the Nazi government collapsed. On April 30, 1945, eighteen days days after Roosevelt's death, Hitler (age 56) committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.

The next day, Joseph Goebbels (the highest ranking Nazi left in the bunker) watched a doctor murder his six children by injecting them with poison. Then he commanded an SS orderly to shoot him and his wife in the back of their heads. Another top Nazi, SS commander Heinrich Himmler, chose a poison capsule when captured by the British. A macabre parade of suicides crossed the Third Reich.

On May 8, 1945, the remaining Nazi military leaders signed the surrender documents, since no civilians had the authority. By then, the Nazi offices in Berlin were empty. Officials -- including Hitler's No. 2 man, Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering -- had shed their uniforms, fleeing to whatever corner of Germany they hoped was a haven. Before the month was out, most of them surrendered peacefully to the American and British forces.

Then the whole Nazi hierarchy -- ministers, field marshals, state secretaries, etc. -- were corralled, transported to Luxembourg, and housed in the Palace Hotel in Mondorf. No prison atmosphere yet, but a lot of griping and quarreling.

Dr. Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and Production, was surprised to be separated from the others, put into a limousine and taken to a luxury hotel in Versailles, which was Eisenhower's headquarters at the time. There Speer, respected for his competence, spent weeks participating together with leading German technicians, scientists, agriculturalists, and railroad specialists, helping technical officers of the U.S. and British armies to grasp the conditions in Germany.

Eventually, some of the top Nazis (including Speer, but not Goering) were transferred to Kransberg Castle near Frankfurt. A trained architect, Speer had renovated it to Goering's taste years earlier. Speer later wrote, "Compared with our fellow countrymen, who were going hungry in their freedom, we were inappropriately well off, for we received the same rations as American troops."

By then, some of the Nazi leaders were beginning to hope that when the questioning was completed, they would be released. After all, they had only obeyed Hitler's orders, right?

But in London, on August 8, 1945, a formal Agreement was signed between the Four Allied Powers (France was now included). Articles One through Seven established the Charter for the International Military Tribunal for the trials of war criminals.

The London Conference indicted 24 men and six organizations. Speer was one of them. So was Goering. They were moved into the harsh prison environment at Oberursal for interrogation by U.S. Counter Intelligence. In September, 1945, they were transferred to grim individual cells in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg (some Americans preferred "Nurnberg"). Let the trials begin.

The Nuremberg trials were a joke. Why weren't Stalin and his fellow Soviet thugs in the defendant docket for the unprovoked invasion of Finland? Also, the Soviets invaded Poland from the East at the same time the Germans invaded from the West. The Soviets executed 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn woods. Cold blooded murder. The Soviets had no business judging anyone!

Admirals Donitz and Raeder were put on trial for unrestricted submarine warfare. If you know anything about the American submarine forces during the war, then you know they sunk anything afloat around Japan including fishing ships and a Russian hospital ship.

And lastly, how do you write laws AFTER the fact and hold people accountable? It's like saying eating apples is now a crime . . . and oh by the way we are going to put you on trial for all the apples you have eaten up to this point.

The "Hunting Hitler" show is interesting but I doubt they find any proof he survived the bunker. If Hitler escaped, then why didn't Goerbels and Borman escape also?