Callafangers wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 5:51 am
Those sceptics are wrong. The vast majority of witness evidence did not come from conditions of torture and coercion.
The majority we do not exactly know. But the most important witnesses were indeed tortured.
Rudolf Höss, after British arrest, March 1946.” (Harding 2013b, p. 244; YVA, 1097/9, Item ID 82824).
Note the traces of physical abuse in his face. While in prison at Minden, Höss was brutally treated to induce him to “confess,” as Ken Jones reported in 1986 (Mason 1986):
Mr Ken Jones was then a private with the Fifth Royal Horse Artillery stationed at Heidi in Schleswig Holstein.
‘They brought him to us when he refused to co-operate over questioning about his activities during the war. He came in the winter of 1945/46 and was put in a small cell in the barracks,’ recalls Mr Jones. Two other soldiers were detailed with Mr Jones to join Hoss in his cell to help break him down for interrogation.
‘We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance,’ said Mr Jones.
When Hoss was taken out for exercise, he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Hoss finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.”
This “confession” consists of the interrogation minutes signed by Höss at 2:30 AM on March 14, 1946. It had to be expected that this confession ends with an assertion claiming that it was made voluntarily and is truthful, but in the light of what was revealed here, this sounds tragically ironic: The document states indeed that its content corresponds to the statements made by the interrogatee and constitutes “die reine Wahrheit” – “the pure truth.”
This is followed by the signatures of two witnesses and by Captain William Cross’s assertion that Höss had made this statement “voluntarily”! It is worthwhile keeping in mind what Höss wrote about it in his Cracow notes:
“I do not know what is in the protocol, although I signed it.”
- Rudolf Hoss
Rudolf Höss estimated that of 3 Million people that had been exterminated at Auschwitz under his watch, 2.5 Million had been killed by means of gas chambers. Hoss is a primary source, yet, he lied, influenced by his torture. Hoss himself wrote that he was tortured. In his confession, Höss stated that he had been subjected to physical and psychological torture while in custody, which he claimed led him to provide his detailed testimony about his role in the Holocaust. One key passage from his statement reads:
"I was tortured and I had to make the confession. The Allies used all kinds of methods to get information from me... They were not gentle. After I was taken into captivity, I was treated badly and tortured, which caused me to make statements about things I had not experienced."
- Rudolf Hoss
Numerous Allies have confessed to torturing and intimidating German soldiers into making false confessions. For example, Benjamin Ferencz, who was a Harvard Law School graduate and enjoyed an international reputation as a world peace advocate, related a story concerning his interrogation of an SS colonel. Ferencz explained that he took out his pistol in order to intimidate him:
“What do you do when he thinks he’s still in charge? I’ve got to show him that I’m in charge. All I’ve got to do is squeeze the trigger and mark it as auf der Flucht erschossen [shot while trying to escape]… I said ‘you are in a filthy uniform sir, take it off!’ I stripped him naked and threw his clothes out the window. He stood there naked for half an hour, covering his balls with his hands, not looking nearly like the SS officer he was reported to be. Then I said ‘now listen, you and I are gonna have an understanding right now. I am a Jew – I would love to kill you and mark you down as _auf der Flucht erschossen_, but I’m gonna do what you would never do. You are gonna sit down and write out exactly what happened – when you entered the camp, who was there, how many died, why they died, everything else about it. Or, you don’t have to do that – you are under no obligation – you can write a note of five lines to your wife, and I will try to deliver it…’ I then went to someone outside and said ‘Major, I got this affidavit, but I’m not gonna use it – it is a coerced confession. I want you to go in, be nice to him, and have him re-write it.’ The second one seemed to be okay – I told him to keep the second one and destroy the first one. That was it.”
The fact that Ferencz threatened and humiliated his witness and reported as much to his superior officer indicates that he operated in a culture where such illegal methods were acceptable. Any Harvard law graduate knows that such evidence is not admissible in a legitimate court of law.
Ferencz further acknowledged the unfairness of the Dachau trials
“I was there for the liberation, as a sergeant in the Third Army, General Patton’s Army, and my task was to collect camp records and witness testimony, which became the basis for prosecutions… But the Dachau trials were utterly contemptible. There was nothing resembling the rule of law. More like court-martials… It was not my idea of a judicial process. I mean, I was a young, idealistic Harvard law graduate.”
The defense counsel in the Mauthausen trial at Dachau insisted that signed confessions of the accused, used by the prosecution to great effect, had been extracted from the defendants through physical abuse, coercion, and deceit. Benjamin Ferencz admitted in an interview that these defense counsel’s claims were correct. Ferencz stated:
“You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone up against the wall. Then I’d say, “Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.” It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.”
Viktor Zoller, the former adjutant to Mauthausen
Defense witnesses at the Mauthausen trial repeatedly testified to improper interrogation techniques used by the prosecution. For example, defendant Viktor Zoller, the former adjutant to Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, testified that U.S. Lt. Paul Guth said:
“I received special permission and can have you shot immediately if I want to.”
When Zoller refused to sign a confession, Guth acted as if he was going to shoot Zoller. Zoller still refused to sign the confession and wrote:
“I won’t say another word even though the court might think I am a criminal who refused to talk.”
Defendant Georg Goessl testified that Guth told him to add the words “and were injected by myself” to his statement. If Goessl did not write down what Guth dictated, Guth visually demonstrated to Goessl that he would be hanged. Goessl testified that he then signed the false statement and planned to clear up the matter in court.
Defendant Willy Frey testified that a prosecution witnesses had never seen him before and wouldn’t be able to identify him if he didn’t have a number hanging around his neck. Frey testified that he had been severely beaten in Mossburg by an American officer. Frey signed his confession only because he was afraid that he would be beaten again.
Defendant Johannes Grimm testified that he signed a false statement that Lt. Guth had dictated to Dr. Ernst Leiss. When asked why he signed this false statement, Grimm replied:
“I already described my mental condition on that day. I had memories of the previous interrogations. My left cheekbone was broken and four of my teeth were knocked out…”
Grimm further testified:
“The only superior I had to obey was Lt. Guth telling me to write this sentence.”
American attorney Willis N. Everett, Jr. also reported the torture and abuse of German defendants in the Malmédy trial at Dachau. Everett was assigned to defend the 74 German defendants accused of the Malmédy incident. The trial took place from May 16 to July 16, 1946, before a military tribunal of senior American officers operating under rules established by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. Everett and his staff of defense lawyers, interpreters and stenographers divided into several teams to interview the defendants. Everett wrote to his family of the experience:
“Several defendants today said they thought they had had a trial… a Col. sat on the Court and his defense counsel rushed the proceedings through and he was to be hanged the next day so he might as well write up a confession and clear some of his other fellows seeing he would be hanged… another kind of court had black curtains… The Lt. Col. sat as judge at a black-draped table which had a white cross on it and the only light was two candles on either end. He was tried and witnesses brought in and he was sentenced to death, but he would have to write down in his own handwriting a complete confession. Then the beatings and hang-man’s rope, black hoods, eye gougers which they claimed would be used on them unless they confessed. Not a one yet wrote out his statement but each stated that the prosecution dictated their statements and they said it made no difference anyway as they would die the next day. So, on and on it goes with each one of the defendants. The story of each must have some truth because they have each been in solitary confinement.”
Many of the investigators in the Allied-run trials were Jewish refugees from Germany who hated Germans. These Jewish investigators gave vent to their hatred by treating the Germans brutally to force confessions from them. Joseph Halow, a Dachau trial court reporter, quit his job because he was outraged at what was happening there in the name of justice. He later testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee that the most brutal interrogators had been three German-born Jews.
The interrogations in the Russian Zone were also typically brutal and inhumane. A German physician reported his experience of the interrogations at a Russian camp:
“The cellars of all the barracks are crammed with people, about 4,000 men and women, many of whom are interrogated every night by the NKVD officials. The purpose of these interrogations is not to worm out of the people what they knew – which would be uninteresting anyway – but to extort from them special statements. The methods resorted to are extremely primitive: people are beaten up until they confess to having been members of the Nazi Party. But the result is almost the opposite of what most of the people probably expect, that is, that those who hadn’t been party members would come off better. The authorities simply assume that, basically, everybody has belonged to the Party. Many people die during and after these interrogations, while others, who admit at once their party membership, are treated more leniently.”
Tuviah Friedman was a Polish Jew who survived the German concentration camps. Friedman said he beat up to 20 German prisoners a day to obtain confessions and weed out SS officers. Friedman stated:
“It gave me satisfaction. I wanted to see if they would cry or beg for mercy.”
Given the evidence, I do not know how you even quantified "the majority were not under torture or coercion"
There is no real way, beyond the confessions of the torturers, or the ones being tortured, on how many were actually tortured for confessions. But given that some of the important primary sources were tortured makes me presume it was much more common, but again, unlike you in your dishonesty, I can't quantify it.
