The office into which Tiny was so frequently thrown was 606 (Plate 16) in which we sat and listened when not in court. Before and after the lunch break the room was very briefly cut off from the rest of the building because the defendants were served their lunch in a small dining room directly across from a door behind the dock. The short passage across the main corridor was roped off and heavily guarded by white-helmeted US soldiers for as long as it took the prisoners to cross over. Sometimes Tiny and I didn’t make it out of 606 and away for our lunch before the ropes went up and there we stood, watching the defendants file by. Goering always made some approving sound or gesture when he saw Tiny.
Then one day, when I stood near him in the courtroom, I heard him say to me out of the corner of his mouth ‘I wish you’d feed me to that dog of yours instead of hanging me,’ and I just had time to whisper back ‘It won’t work – he’s fussy about his food,’ before a guard bore down on me to see if I had broken the rule and talked to an accused.
This palsy-walsy relationship between Hermann and me stemmed from another, somewhat unorthodox meeting I had had with him.
I was wooing a lovely member of His Majesty’s Forces, Captain Clare McCririck, whenever I was in London on leave from Nuremberg. It seemed that fulfilment of my dream depended on something special I would have to add to dinners and flowers – so I offered her a trip to Nuremberg and the trial, something which, today, would rate on a par with, for instance, a Concorde flight with Prince Charles. I knew how it would be done. A very good friend in the US Army would provide travel orders for her, and the twice weekly British VIP flight would transport her there and back in something resembling an aeroplane and called an Anson.
All worked according to plan except the happy ending, because in Nuremberg she was assigned accommodation in ‘Girls Town’ (ladies only) and I could not smuggle her into the Grand Hotel. (This must have upset her terribly because she got married as soon as she returned to London).
Unfortunately, her arrival in Nuremberg coincided with a terribly dreary phase of the triaclass="underline" the Russians were submitting documentary evidence for days on end and insisted on reading these documents into the record, voices without inflection droning on endlessly. It was also intolerably hot and Clare, when she emerged from the visitors-gallery, was not gracious and grateful but bored, hot and bothered. The Concorde had become an Anson, figuratively speaking. Something had to be done to create excitement.
‘Would you like to meet Goering?’ I asked over a terrible cafeteria lunch.
‘You must be joking,’ came the rather acid reply from the lovely Captain.
‘You will tomorrow,’ I announced nonchalantly, and went to work.
I produced an ‘interrogation slip’ – something to be completed by those with authority (not including interpreters) to question anyone in the jail, including the defendants, for legitimate reasons, not including wolfish projects. I filled in the details: Name: Defendant Goering. Purpose: document identification. Time: the next day; 17.30 hours (after the session’s adjournment). I handed the slip to a friend in the right place, secured an ‘Observer Pass’ for Clare and, from the documentation centre, I obtained a copy of some totally unimportant letter from Goering’s adjutant, General Koller, to the Reichsmarshall. I clipped an ‘identification slip’ to it.
At the proper moment, Clare and I were taken to an interrogation room, I sat down at the desk, looking mighty important, and she was shown to a chair, which stood at the side of the small room.
Goering was brought in punctually and I invited him to sit down.
‘Herr Goering,’ I said. ‘I have here a letter purportedly signed by General Koller. Would you please identify the signature?’ and I handed the two bits of paper to him. He glanced at them.
‘But I have already identified the signature on this letter,’ he announced.
‘Have you really?’ I said in utter faked amazement, ‘then the slip must have got lost. Please sign again on this one.’
He nodded and signed with much authority.
‘Thank you, that will be all,’ I declared, and rose.
So did Goering, he nodded briefly and headed for the door, preceded and followed by the two MPs. When he was level with Clare’s chair, he suddenly stopped and turned to face her. ‘Gnaediges Fraulein,’ he said, ‘no doubt I owe this little interlude to your presence in Nuremberg. I hope you have enjoyed it also.’
Then he bowed politely, turned and left for his cell. Clare had, indeed, met Goering and she had the interrogation slip with his autograph to prove it. He must have remembered this highly irregular performance of mine when he asked to be put on Tiny’s menu.
34. PREPARING FOR JUDGEMENT DAY
IN SPITE OF THE SEVERAL REPRIMANDS I had received I was still on the microphone when, at the end of nine long months, the Tribunal adjourned to write its findings. A date was set for them to be read in court and we were given two weeks leave. When I returned from London we heard that the judges, closeted and heavily guarded, were reaching the end of their enormous task. They were, of course, running late. It was therefore no surprise when, about six days before the court was to reconvene, a team of translators, including the German-speaking interpreters, were rounded up and whisked away to carry out the marathon job of translating the judgement – which was being written in English – into German. Elsewhere, the French and Russians were preparing to do the same.
Extremely strict security precautions had been arranged for our (the German translators) team. There had been intelligence reports about growing opposition to the Trials in Germany and rumours included everything from planned abduction of the prisoners to armed attacks on the courthouse and the assassinations of key figures among the trial staff. Other measures involved total secrecy for the judgement – the findings – until it was read out in court. This, naturally, included sequestering the translators in a heavily guarded building, which was a schoolhouse some way from Nuremberg.
There were eight of us. We were loaded onto buses and driven off to our then unknown destination, heavily protected by armoured cars – machine-guns at the ready. Each translator was equipped with a typewriter.
When we arrived, there were four German typists, mountains of plain paper, but no judgement. The manuscripts began to arrive at 02.00 hours, a few pages at a time, and we set to work. The text had to be translated, translations corrected, the terminology compared and re-adjusted, the texts rewritten, reviewed, edited, finalised, assembled, typed, re-assembled and put onto stencils.
Since the original text kept arriving in dribs and drabs, we were either working frantically or twiddling our thumbs, but as always in cases of such extreme urgency, the job got done.
We returned to our billets at 04.30 hours on the morning of 30 September 1946 and the reading of the judgement was set for that afternoon. I would be on the German microphone. I knew the contents of the judgement – in other words, I knew who, amongst the defendants, had been found guilty and on which counts. I also knew that von Papen, Schacht and Fritzsche had been acquitted. I did not know, nor did anybody else except the judges, what the sentences were going to be. Nor did I know who would be interpreting them into German. There was a great deal of speculation everywhere, but particularly among the interpreters, about that sentence. Was it going to be hanging, the guillotine, shooting, prison or banishment? – No one knew!