A series of documentaries by Leonid Mlechin on the 70th anniversary of the sentences passed by the international tribunal in Nuremberg Automatic translate

On October 1, 1946, in the defeated Germany, in the city of Nuremberg, the International Tribunal, created by the victorious powers, sentenced the recent leaders of the Third Reich.

23 major Nazi criminals were put on the dock. Of these, one - the disappeared head of the party office with the rank of Minister Martin Bormann - was tried in absentia.

Adolf Hitler shot himself in a bunker under the imperial chancellery in Berlin, surrounded by Soviet troops. Joseph Goebbels, appointed by him as head of government, also committed suicide. Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler bit through a capsule with poison three weeks later, being captured by the British. The head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, Obergruppenführer SS Reinhard Heydrich, had earlier been killed by Czech partisans.

Three defendants in Nuremberg acquitted. Three were sentenced to life imprisonment. Four received various sentences - from ten to twenty years in prison. And the tribunal pronounced twelve death sentences. But Hermann Goering managed to commit suicide in a cell. Martin Bormann was also sentenced to death. Much later it turns out that he committed suicide at the very end of the war in Berlin. The Nuremberg Tribunal not only laid the foundations of modern international law, allowing to punish war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also made it possible to realize what a totalitarian regime is and what it does to people

FILM ONE. NURNBERG TRIBUNAL

Immediately after the war, very little was known about the terror empire created by the regime. In Nuremberg, prosecutors did a great job collecting evidence of the guilt of the defendants. They presented to the tribunal the organization of the party and state security agencies, proving that they were originally criminal.

The process revealed that the decisive role in the politics of Nazi Germany was played not by military-economic calculations, but by the nationalist, racist worldview inculcated by the Germans. When the Germans fought for the Führer and the Third Reich, they were guided not only by the voice of the stomach. They were deeply poisoned by Nazi ideology.

The Nazis assured that the enemies in their development are much lower than the Germans. So a line was drawn that separated "people of value to the nation" from "people of no value." The terminal station on this journey was Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

If people believe that they act in the highest interests, if they obey orders, if "so necessary", they easily discard all moral considerations and are ready to commit crimes of unheard of cruelty. The destruction of racially inferior people was perceived as a necessity.

From the side, the era of the Third Reich looked like a clouding of mind, like madness that swept the whole country. In fact, this was not madness at all.

What happened to the Germans after 1933? How did a whole nation turn into an army of murderers, robbers and sadists?

There were very few who did not want to participate in all this. And those who did not kill, did not conquer and did not plant, somehow helped the Third Reich!

How could all this happen?

To realize the extent of the deed, to understand how the state becomes criminal and involves the whole people in crimes, to admit their own guilt - all this in the fall of the forty-sixth seemed unthinkable and impossible.

Duration: 39 minutes
Airtime: September 27, 2016 - 07:00, 14:05, 19:20.

FILM SECOND. PATRIOTS AND TRAITORS

The Nazis did everything so that Germany not only lost the war, but crashed. The plight of Germany in the forty-fifth is impossible to describe. A third of the boys who were born into German families in the years 1915-1924 died or were missing. Among those born in 1920-1925, losses reached forty percent. The eleven million Wehrmacht soldiers who survived ended up in prisoner-of-war camps.

After the war, the widows and children of the dead Wehrmacht soldiers and their comrades complained that the country did not honor their sons who had given their lives for their homeland: after all, the soldiers were not criminals. But not only the SS were engaged in mass killings of civilians. The Wehrmacht tarnished itself with executions and punitive actions.

And none of the soldiers or officers of the Wehrmacht were indignant at participating in the executions of the civilian population. The people who put on the uniform of the German army messed up and dishonored their honor. The army did not prevent the crime of Nazism in the occupied territories. On the contrary, the Wehrmacht became a reliable party drive belt.

There were few anti-fascists, dissidents, as they would say now. The rest, one way or another, served the regime, in uniform or in civilian clothes, at the front or in the rear, in the party apparatus or in the camp administration. They considered themselves patriots. They worked for the good of the homeland. It is not known how post-war Germany would have developed if the occupying authorities had not banned Nazi ideology and compelled the Germans to embark on the path of recognition of their own guilt.

Nazi foreign and domestic policy — the conquest wars, the suppression of freedoms, concentration camps, the mass destruction of civilians — outraged a few. And absolutely, for moral and religious reasons, the Hitler regime was considered criminal.

Many did not want to admit it. But I heard that the whole German people was responsible for the fact that he obeyed Hitler, for all the crimes of the Nazi regime. Anyone who fights under vile banners becomes a criminal himself. He can then justify himself - I was honest, I just obeyed the orders, I did nothing wrong. But he is disgraced. He also participated in this. Everyone who, seeing injustice, bullying, torment, which subjected other people, does nothing to save them, is guilty.

Duration: 39 minutes
Airtime: September 28, 2016 - 07:00, 14:05, 19:20.

FILM THREE. KILLERS AMONG US

In 1945, the liberators naively believed that the Germans would enthusiastically meet the deliverers from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Everything turned out differently. The Germans did not attribute any sins and did not sympathize with the victims of Nazism.

The Nazi regime was not an accident. Hitler was supported not by units, but by almost the entire people. The Wehrmacht surrendered in May forty-fifth. But the Nazis and those who supported them, who fought for the Third Reich, remained.

German society, which survived the catastrophe, sought an apology and excuse. The history of the Third Reich clearly demonstrates how an ordinary person participates in crimes. As a society, the state becomes criminal. The Germans were convinced that they live in the best country on earth and belong to a great nation whose spiritual strength is opposed to the mercantile spirit of our enemies. That is why we are envied and hated. But we did not start the war! They dragged us in. We are forced to defend ourselves.

In the newly created Federal Republic of Germany, a new state apparatus was formed. It took the police to take care of restoring order in the country. Former SS officers and the Gestapo poured into the police. They brought their comrades with them. These were effective managers. The circle is closed. Some Nazis recruited others. And no one wanted to remember the past.

Twenty years after the war, a book appeared in the Federal Republic entitled “The Inability to Grieve,” written by two psychoanalysts. They diagnosed the indifference of the Germans to the deed and unwillingness to realize their guilt.

Duration: 39 minutes
Airtime: September 29, 2016 - 07:00, 14:05, 19:20.

FILM FOUR. WORD OF THE PROSECUTOR

In May, forty-fifth, German fascism was crushed. The leaders of the Reich ended their journey on the gallows. But the views and ideas that brought the German Nazis to power were not born with them and did not die with them.

The ideas about life that led the Germans to Nazism did not disappear. After all, they themselves elected Hitler and worshiped him, fought and killed people, robbed Europe and enjoyed the loot. Nazi foreign and domestic policy — the conquest wars, the suppression of freedoms, concentration camps, the mass destruction of civilians — outraged a few. And absolutely, for moral and religious reasons, the regime was considered a criminal regime.

The Germans began a new life, not just in ruins, but in spiritual and moral ruins. The thinking part of German society understood: one must begin with an understanding of the past and an awareness of one’s own guilt. But how to do this, if almost the whole country resists an honest look at the past?

The formation of Germany as a democratic state was primarily a consequence of spiritual changes in society, the significance of which was not immediately recognized. A crucial role was played by the trials of Nazi criminals: they did not allow the past to disappear. And the time came when the youth who grew up after the forty-fifth year, began to ask the fathers the question: what did you do in the third Reich? Why were you criminals?

All the post-war decades, German literature has been trying to understand why respectable people in such circumstances behave so meanly. But not everyone succumbed to circumstances! Others did not allow themselves to be turned into executioners and sadists! After all, there were people who resisted the influence of circumstances and retained their honor. Resistance Members. In a situation of choice, a person can rely only on his own conscience and moral standards.

Duration: 39 minutes
Airtime: September 30, 2016 - 07:00, 14:05, 19:20.