A “Fact Of Common Knowledge” Did Not Require Proof To Execute Germans; Propaganda & Torture Provided The Legal ‘Evidence’

From Wear’s War

Each week we bring you a quote from one of the many fine men and women of various nationalities and professions, including senior military personnel, who were openly appalled by the dispensation of normal military and/or criminal evidentiary processes expected in a trial. These people were highly respected and prominent in their field, at least until they spoke out against the Nuremberg trials.

German Judge Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, who visited Auschwitz several times during World War II, wrote:

The Nuremberg IMT trial transcripts likewise cannot—as we have seen in another connection—be considered a reliable historical source or even merely a standard of comparison for other documents, as here in the case of the Höss memoirs. For the testimonies produced under Nuremberg “law” contained anything but historical truth. This is the conclusion which has been reached by all objective and unbiased observers of this judicial farce. We have already expounded on the fact that Höss, after his capture, was subjected to the most inhumane treatment and at every stage of his imprisonment placed under various kinds of pressure…

…In the Nuremberg trials, the basic rule was that a “fact of common knowledge” did not require proof. It was enough for the court to take “judicial notice” thereof. The same device was employed in the Auschwitz Trial. Since the post-war “re-education” of the German people, founded on Zionist and Bolshevik atrocity propaganda, had made the “gas chamber” legend into a “fact of common knowledge,” the judges in the Auschwitz Trial had to take “judicial notice” of it, in a certain sense, since otherwise they would have been subjected to the most grievous professional disadvantages and personal attacks

Source: Stäglich, Wilhelm, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, Institute for Historical Review, 1990, pp. 200-201, 259.