But talk can also be of interest to anyone wanting to know the truth about the history of those twelve years. One day begins with a humble schoolteacher and ends with a corrupt Nazi official. This is in Frankfurt-am-Main, where die Spruchkammer for once is better than its reputation. This is because there are judges here who are not ashamed of their job, who do not bow and scrape to the accused and who do not mince their words.
The schoolteacher has been summoned as a ‘less tainted’ case. He belonged to the SA but in general did not shine there. He is a well-mannered pale little man who answers all the questions like a Sunday school pupil. He tells the court about his childhood, which was poor and dismal, and about his lifelong desire to be a schoolteacher. He was well on the way to becoming one when Nazism arrived and he was then faced with the bitter choice: dutifully join some Nazi organization and realize his ambition, or give up his future.
‘It was only after great doubts and after long deliberations with my father that I decided to enter such an organization.’
‘But why exactly the SA?’
‘Because it seemed to me that the SA were the least blameworthy.’
‘Die Strasse frei den braunen Bataillonen — do you call that blameless?’ the judge wonders.
But the accused has six witnesses to declare that he is innocent, witnesses who swear that they have never heard him reveal a Nazi turn of mind, witnesses who certify that he listened to foreign radio stations (all of the accused have done that), Jewish witnesses who have seen him behaving in a friendly manner towards Jews (all of the accused have such witnesses — they cost a couple of hundred marks apiece), and a headmaster who certainly never attended any of his lessons but yet is remarkably well-informed about them, and at last a girl from the training college library who declares that the accused is truth-loving, self-sacrificing, dutiful, careful with books and kind towards children and dogs, and who has a small fit of tears when the judge tells her brusquely that that is irrelevant. What weighed most in the acquittal of the schoolteacher was the fact that he conducted a church choir for a whole year after any kind of church activity could be compromising. Even the prosecutor intervenes on behalf of the accused and the case is over.
Then come two typical routine cases, deserving only a sort of absent-minded disappointed response on the part of the man with the sandwich-packet, cases as commonplace as the names of the accused: Müller and Krause. Herr Müller has been a workplace representative for the unsuccessful Nazi trade union movement which over several years and with surprising lack of progress the Nazis tried to stir into life, but witnesses testify that at least he was not guilty of agitation with threats. But on two occasions he wore the union uniform, one of which was on the Saviour’s birthday. On the other hand he has of course listened to foreign radio stations and been kind to a Jewish family. He is sentenced to make reparations to the tune of two thousand marks. The uniform is declared forfeit, and the accused is further fined one suit and one pair of shoes.
Herr Krause has listened to foreign radio stations and had a Jewish cousin. Herr Krause, who joined the Party in 1940, is a small, coughing accountant with nervous glasses that ceaselessly wander between his nose and the table. Herr Krause has sixteen long testimonials from the bank management, from bank colleagues, from neighbours, from a doctor who treated him, from a lawyer who had handled his divorce. Herr Krause reads them all out in a soporific nasal voice while the court slowly drifts to sleep and all that can be heard is the rustling of sandwich-paper at the back of the big room.
Why did Herr Krause become a Nazi in 1940?
The testimonials say that it was a matter of divorce proceedings which had begun in 1930 and, unchecked by the onset of Nazism, had dragged on, so that by 1939 Herr Krause was poor and ulcerous. By 1940, driven to the point of despair and passed over to the advantage of colleagues who were Party men, Herr Krause decided to take the repugnant step.
The judge intervened here:
‘It didn’t perhaps have something to do with the fact that in 1940 France was defeated, Herr Krause, and you found it convenient to show your sympathy for the victor, since this would in all likelihood guarantee you a position with a considerably higher salary?’
No, of course not. Herr Krause is no Nutzniesser (profiteer), Herr Krause would not take advantage of any apparent victory. Yes — apparent. One did listen to foreign broadcasts. Moreover while Herr Krause was certainly promoted he had to perform his duties in a bank on the eastern front, ‘and, My Lord, for a man with my weak stomach …’ No, Herr Krause was simply ill and poor, and something had to be done to avoid a catastrophe. One simply has to look at the testimonials.
In the meantime the defence lawyer is leafing through a thick decree. With a triumphant smile he at last begs permission to speak. It has perhaps not been made clear in the testimonials, but Herr Krause is in fact still employed by the same bank, which is now working for the occupying powers, and according to the denazification law Germans employed by the military government cannot be accused of Nazism.
‘For is it likely, My Lord, that the Americans would appoint a suspected person, and in, may I add, such an important post?’
The court falls silent and in the deathly stillness a thick and invisible blanket of censorship settles softly over the proceedings. The case against Herr Krause is promptly dropped. Herr Krause — small, nervous, humble, ever-dutiful, with his divorce and his bad stomach, wedging his glasses on his nose, gathering together his sixteen typewritten testimonials and stuffing them into his shining briefcase, a kindly, hunched little man who bows to the judge, the assessors, the defence lawyer and the prosecutor — then hurries off out of the court-room, just as fearful of arriving late for his bank duties in 1947 as he was in 1924, in 1933, in 1940 and near Stalingrad in 1942.
Then comes Herr Sinne and he is not a kindly man. Herr Sinne is seventy-three years old: fragile, white-haired and with his doll-like head looking like a pensioner-angel. But Herr Sinne is no angel. Herr Sinne is summoned as an activist. He was a section leader in Frankfurt, and no testimonials to the effect that he was nice to Jews or listened to English broadcasts can help him. The court has testimony that Herr Sinne has said: ‘My section will be free of Jews.’ The court has witnesses who can tell that Herr Sinne threatened to report shopkeepers in his section if they dared to sell groceries to Jewish customers. It was only after closing time that the Jewish witnesses could sneak into the shops from the back and buy what they needed. A woman witness has often seen Herr Sinne listening at the letter-box of a Jewish girl-friend of hers. The son of a Herr Meyer, whose balcony could be observed from Herr Sinne’s window, had one evening stood on the balcony with a Jewish girl. Next day Herr Meyer had a reminder from Herr Sinne that he should not have Jews on his balcony.
Meanwhile Herr Sinne is sitting there letting his squirrel-eyes dart between the witnesses, and perhaps it is just an optical illusion but there is a sudden impression that Herr Sinne is surrounded by a membrane of cold dread, this dried-up old-man’s body radiates a deathly chill that sends shivers through a spectator ten metres away.
One of the Jewish witnesses relates:
‘A high Party official lived in Herr Sinne’s section but we were never afraid of him. We were always afraid of Herr Sinne. Herr Sinne was not one of the Nazi highlights, but Herr Sinne was one of those quiet, dependable, terribly effective cogs without which the Nazi machine would not have kept going for one day.’