This is worth repeating. Information is mainly from
Konrad Morgen Conscience of a Nazi Judge and
CODOH who provided most of the wording though edited. SS-Sturmbannführer Morgen ((8 June 1909 – 4 February 1982) was an SS judge and lawyer who worked as both investigator and judge prosecuting officials and guards in the concentration camps for illegal activities. In the Buchenwald camp, four people were arrested, including the former camp commander's wife, Ilse Koch. The main issue was that 3-4 prisoners had been killed some years earlier. Morgen sentenced two of them to death. Ilse was acquitted on the charge of embezzlement, and the charge against her leveled by the inmates of making items out of human skin was withdrawn due to lack of evidence. Morgen had interviewed the prisoners at Buchenwald, but couldn't prove their stories about Ilse making tattooed lamp shades so he withdrew the charge. No one disputes Morgen's extensive wartime prosecutions. At the Nuremberg trials he gave testimony to his police activities:
"I investigated about 800 cases, that is, about 800 documents, and one document would affect several cases. About 200 were tried during my activity. Five concentration camp commanders were arrested by me personally. Two were shot after being tried."
But his career also had other post-war brownie points: In 1936, he put out a book called War Propaganda and the Prevention of War which was against the militarization of Germany. True Morgen was a member of the SS, but even that couldn't be used against him. At Nuremberg he explained,
"I was drafted compulsorily into the General SS. In 1933, I belonged to the Reich Board for Youth Training, whose, students' group was completely incorporated into the General SS."
What Morgan did during the war flies in the face of the standard holocaust story: Morgen sentenced to death the top two officials of a concentration camp for killing just 3-4 inmates, years earlier. Not hundreds, not thousands. Yet holocaust survivor stories tend to describe the average guard as killing that many people every day for fun and often drunk. Contrast this scenario with Morgen: he moved to the Buchenwald area for 8 months to thoroughly investigate the goings on at the Lager, placing his staff to live in the concentration camp itself. He wasn't investigating the current camp commander Hermann Pister, but rather the former camp commander who had left 2 years earlier, Karl-Otto Koch. After some major sifting through relevant information with some spying, Morgen uncovered some corruption practices but turned up no murder leads. Finally, near the end of 8 months, and looking at records that were 3-5 years old, Morgen uncovered the insidious way in which the camp commander, Karl Koch, with the help of the camp doctor had killed around 4 inmates; as a result of this Koch was tried and sentenced to death. Morgen spent an enormous amount of time in regard to the deaths of a few inmates that had occurred years before as any good criminal policeman would do.
Koch remained at Buchenwald until September 1941, when he was transferred to the Lublin concentration camp for POWs (was not called an extermination camp at this stage). Koch commanded the Lublin camp for only one year; he was relieved from his duties after 86 Soviet POWs escaped from the camp in August 1942. Koch was charged with criminal negligence and transferred to Berlin, where he worked at the SS Personalhauptamt and as a liaison between the SS and the German Post-Office.
Koch's actions at Buchenwald first caught the attention of SS-Obergruppenführer Josias, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1941. In glancing over the death list of Buchenwald, Josias had stumbled across the name of Dr Walter Krämer, a head hospital orderly at Buchenwald, which he recognized because Krämer had successfully treated him in the past. Josias investigated the case and found out that Koch, in a position as the Camp Commandant, had ordered Krämer and Karl Peixof, a hospital attendant, killed as "political prisoners" because they had treated him for syphilis and he feared it might be discovered. Waldeck also received reports that a certain prisoner had been shot while attempting to escape. Waldeck ordered a full-scale investigation of the camp by Dr Konrad Morgen, an SS officer who was a judge in a German court. Throughout the investigation, more of Koch's orders to kill prisoners at the camp were revealed, as well as embezzlement of property stolen from prisoners.
A charge of incitement to murder was lodged by Prince Waldeck and Dr Morgen against Koch, to which were later added charges of embezzlement. Other camp officials were charged, including Koch's wife. The trial resulted in Koch being sentenced to death for disgracing both himself and the SS. Koch was executed by firing squad on 5 April 1945 in front of the camp inmates.
Allied Psychological warfare
The Allied Psychological Warfare Department (called PWD-SHAEF) came up with a plan to exploit a rumor which they had heard about. The rumor was that at Buchenwald, Ilse Koch, the sadistic wife of the camp commander Karl Koch, would ride out into the prison yard on a horse, have prisoners strip, and then choose tattoos on their bodies she liked. These prisoners would then be sent to a place where they would be killed, so that their tattooed skin could be removed and made into lampshades and other items. Shrunken heads had got into the rumor too. Some of the American psych warfare officers now in Europe, such as Albert G. Rosenberg (who was Jewish, born and raised in Germany) had recently returned from being stationed in the port city of Natal, Brazil where they would have seen the psychological power and low-brow public fascination that shrunken heads carried. There, in an awful example of capitalism, they would have seen how shrunken heads had become an exportable little industry. Every region has their tourist items. Here with Brazilian tourist shops with garrish signs advertising real shrunken heads. Few were really from Amazon tribes. Demand had far outstripped supply there. Most were made by unscrupulous people who perhaps knew someone who worked in a morgue. Psyche warfare wouldn't have needed to procure the heads in Brazil. They would be available in European Museums and curio shops to take.
In 1944 an affidavit by a captured German soldier was produced named Andreas Pfaffenberger, he claimed to be an ex-Buchenwald inmate, and mentioned that, while there, he had seen 2 shrunken heads in a room.
Here's how the Psych Warfare plan would be implemented: when the Buchenwald camp staff evacuated due to the soon-to-arrive American troops, a psyche warfare officer would get there before the American combat troops and plant atrocity items like shrunken heads and pieces of tattooed human skin. That's the kind of thing Psyche Warfare does: it's called "black propaganda" --making the other side look bad. Demoralize the enemy by making them feel terrible about themselves. The plan was to publicize the discovery in order to bolster world condemnation of Germany and to demoralize the part of the German population who were now occupied. Nowadays there's an ethical issue called "blowback," meaning it's bad if the info blows back into the American press. That's what happened in the mid 1980's with a US disinformation campaign against Moammar Khadaffei. But further back, during WWII, it wasn't an issue. It was more like a bonus. In fact this was considered necessary to the war effort and in my mind legitimate: the greatest casualty of war is the truth.
It's documented that in the vacuum after the German camp staff left, but before the American Army combat troops arrived, Members of Psyche Warfare were strangely there. (reminds one of the white helmets in Douma and the alleged fake gas attack). Such as Albert G. Rosenberg,American Psyche Warfare Lieutenant. Then shortly after, an American film crew arrived, headed by Billy Wilder there on a display table ready to be filmed were dried pieces of tattooed human skin, and two shrunken heads. These were planted.
The Logic of The Psych Warfare Plan: Ilse Koch was killing prisoners and making items out of their tattooed skin. When the Americans were coming in April 1945, she hastily left, and morbid objects indicating what she had done were there for the Americans to find.
The Problem with The Psych Warfare Plan: If Psych Warfare had known about Konrad Morgen, they might have done the math. The math is that no one associated with the rumor of the tattooed skin, shrunken heads, and lampshades had been at Buchenwald for almost two years. Morgen had arrested four people: Karl Koch, his wife, the deputy camp commander, and the lead camp doctor, all in late 1943. In the subsequent trial the charge against Ilse Koch regarding making items out of skin was withdrawn due to lack of evidence, and Ilse was acquitted on the charge of embezzlement, but her husband was found guilty of murdering 4 inmates.As mentioned he was sentenced to death and later executed, as was the deputy. When the Americans arrived, Ilse Koch hadn't lived at Buchenwald for almost 2 years. And during the Morgen crackdown, one would think the camp would have been run by the book. The new commander of Buchenwald, Hermann Pister, was already there in July 1943 when Morgen started his 8 month investigation. Karl Koch had transferred to be the head of Lublin in 1941. The new commander, Hermann Pister, was never charged by the SS nor later the Americans with making shrunken heads or procurring human skin, so it doesn't make sense that the Americans would find these items when they arrived almost 2 years later. Morgen threw a wrench into the works of the Psych Warfare plan, because they didn't know about him.
But the plan worked anyway, because when it comes to a psychologically powerful atrocity spectacle, the public doesn't really think. That could be seen in 1991, when a Hungarian Jew turned US congressman, Tom Lantos, staged a spectacle: A 15 year-old girl testified that she had been in a Kuwait hospital room when the Iraqi soldiers came in and yanked babies off life-support systems so they could take the incubators back to Iraq. No one noticed that the girl testifying spoke perfect American English. She had no accent whatsoever. What are the chances of a 15 year old Arab girl in Kuwait speaking flawless American English happening to be in the neo-natal intensive care unit when Iraqi troops barge in? The horrible spectacle she described, her brown skin, and her Arabic name was enough to fool everybody. We saw the same in Salisbury with Prime Minister May blaming Russians after the Skripal poisoning and of course the fake gas attack in Douma which was reported widely world wide blaming the Syrian government. None of those papers retracted their fake news despite the interim OPCW report saying no gas was used.
Alleged holocaust survivor Tom Lantos applied skills in deception to a part of the globe other than Europe. The phrase "You can fool all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." is a phrase you could display on TV, on say, CNN, and 100% percent of the people who read it, would feel like they were on the intelligent side of that equation. But if the phrase is even true, it's barely, barely true.
At the Nuremberg Trial, American prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd wants to give the court an idea of what the camps were like. In front of the courtroom there is a table with something on it, but no one can see what it is because a sheet covers it. Dodd mentions the depravity that went on at the concentration camps and offers an example from Buchenwald. Just then a clerk pulls the sheet off the table to reveal a shrunken human head. It has a powerful effect, particularly since next to it, on a bulletin board, are hanging samples of tattooed human skin. Dodd describes the head and skin by reading from an affidavit taken from an inmate at Buchenwald named Andreas Pfaffenberger:
"There I also saw the shrunken heads of two young Poles who had been hanged for having had relations with German girls. The heads were the size of a fist, and the hair and the marks of the rope were still there."
Pfaffenberger's statement also describes the skin. Dodd reads,
" 'No one knew what the purpose was; but after the tattooed prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary and then killed by injections administered by Karl Beigs, a criminal prisoner. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated. The finished products were turned over to SS Standartenfuehrer Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lamp shades and other ornamental household articles, I myself saw such tattooed skins with various designs and legends on them, such as "Hansel and Gretel," which one prisoner had on his knee, and designs of ships from prisoners' chests. This work was done by a prisoner named WERNERBACH."
But the next day at the trial, a lawyer for the Germans has an issue about Dodd's presentation. He complains to the judges saying,
DR. KAUFFMAN:
"May I bring up two points with regard to yesterday's and in future presentation of evidence on the section dealing with Crimes against Humanity.
Firstly, I request that the affidavit of the witness Pfaffenberger, which was submitted yesterday, be stricken from the record. The witness himself will later have to be cross-examined, since his affidavit is fragmentary in most important points. In many cases it does not appear whether his statements are based on personal observations or on hearsay, and therefore it is too easy to draw false conclusions. The witness did not mention that the Camp Commander Koch and his inhuman wife were condemned to death by an SS court, among other things, on account of these occurrences. It is, of course, possible to ascertain the complete facts by questioning the witness at a later stage of the Trial. But until then the Tribunal and all members of the Prosecution and the Defense must be continually influenced by such dreadful testimony.
The contents of this testimony are so horrifying and so degrading to the human mind that one would like to avert one's eyes and ears. In the meantime such statements make their way into the press of the whole world, and civilization is justly indignant. The consequences of such prejudiced statements are incalculable. The Prosecutor clearly recognized the significance of this testimony and exposed the sorry documents in yesterday's proceedings. If weeks or months pass before such testimony is rectified, its initial effect can never be wholly eliminated; but truth suffers and justice is endangered thereby."
Another lawyer then chimed in and stated that maybe the Prosecution knew about wartime Buchenwald prosecutions, but deliberately concealed that.
Dodd wasn't in court that day. He'd gone back to the USA, but a month later, on 1/14/46 he responded to the above criticism. He told the judges the following:
MR. DODD:
"I have one other matter that I should like to take up very briefly before the Tribunal this morning. It is concerned with a matter that arose after I had left the courtroom to return to the United States.
On the 13th of December we offered in evidence Document Number 3421-PS, and Exhibit Numbers USA-252 and 254. They were, respectively, the Court will recall, sections of human skin taken from human bodies and preserved; and a human head, the head of a human being, which had been preserved. On the 14th day of December, according to the Record, counsel for the Defendant Kaltenbrunner addressed the Tribunal and complained that the affidavit, which was offered, of one Pfaffenberger, failed to state that the camp commandant at Buchenwald, one Koch, along with his wife, was condemned to death for having committed precisely these atrocities, this business of tanning the skin and preserving the head. And in the course of the discussion before the Tribunal the Record reveals that counsel for the Defendant Bormann, in addressing the Tribunal, stated that it was highly probable that the Prosecution knew that the German authorities had objected to this camp commandant Koch and, in fact, knew that he had been tried and sentenced for doing precisely these things. And there was some intimation, we feel, that the Prosecution, having this knowledge, withheld it from the Tribunal. Now, I wish to say that we had no knowledge at all about this man Koch at the time that we offered the proof; didn't know anything about him except that he had been the commandant, according to the affidavit. But, subsequent to this objection we had an investigation made, and we have found that he was tried in 1944, indeed, by an SS court, but not for having tanned human skin nor having preserved a human head but for having embezzled some money, for what - as the judge who tried him tells us - was a charge of general corruption and for having murdered someone with whom he had some personal difficulties. Indeed, the judge, a Dr. Morgen, tells us that he saw the tattooed human skin and he saw a human head in Commandant Koch's office and that he saw a lampshade there made out of human skin. But there were no charges at the time that he was tried for having done these things."
So Morgen's name enters the court transcript, but as part of a lie Dodd is telling in order to save the integrity of his presentation. Because Morgen never saw a head, tattoos and lampshades in his investigation of Buchenwald. And as mentioned, that charge against Ilse Koch was withdrawn due to lack of evidence. At that point, around January 1946, the Americans start looking for Morgen in Germany. When they find him, they imprison him at Dachau and
threaten to turn him over to the Soviets if he doesn't testify that he saw the tattooed human skin, lampshades and shrunken heads. He refuses.
But main point of the above transcript is trying to fathom the poor quality of the prosecution's presentation. The American Prosecution team has a staff of 140 people and access to other department's investigations. The prosecution's knowledge of the concentration camps should be first-rate. Yet they can show a shrunken head but when it comes to a former commander of the camp Karl Koch, Prosecutor Dodd "didn't know anything about him." It's more like they're putting on a show, as in show trial. The quality of the prosecution is even more pathetic when you consider the Pfaffenberger affidavit. When the Americans arrived at Buchenwald, Pfaffenberger wasn't even there. He'd been captured far away on the front 5 months before. He then signed a statement a month later saying he'd been a prisoner at Buchenwald before being drafted into the army. And the interrogators never followed up with any clarifying questions. That's the quality information the judges are hearing at Nuremberg. And the part of Pfaffenberger's statement not read to the court mentions seeing an Austrian politician killed before his very eyes. Never mind that the politician was not at Buchenwald and the politician survived the war. And Pfaffenberger mentions sewage troughs where people were thrown in to drown. Indeed some camps had troughs, but Buchenwald had toilets connected to a sewer system.
Morgen Testifies at Nuremberg
Konrad Morgen was called by a German defense lawyer to testify toward the end of the trial. He couldn't be called before that, because he couldn't be located. The Americans failed to tell the Defense that they had Morgen imprisoned at Dachau. As Morgen was finally in the courtroom waiting for his turn to take the witness stand, he could have looked over at a depressed dejected group of men: The former leaders of Germany, some of whom were undoubtedly taking private note of the pathetic and dishonest nature of the victors' trial. These former leaders were watching the birth of Dystopia and knew this was a "show trial": they knew there was no intention of finding any truth just revenge and hate.
Morgen would have known some of these leaders. Others he had read about many times in the papers. He no doubt had common acquaintances with others. However much he may have disagreed with what they did during and before the war, that didn't change the fact that he was one of the few people who knew, first-hand, that a giant lie called the holocaust was being put on them. And he chose to do what he could to save them.
Morgen couldn't deny the holocaust. If he did that, he wouldn't have been called as a witness in the first place. It would have been too much. It would have hurt the defendants' case. Not to mention that denying the holocaust would also have ended any possibility of a post-war legal career for himself. One need only look at what happened when another German judge, Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich wrote "The Auschwitz Myth" in the mid 1970's: They took his law degree away from him retroactively. Commenting on what defendants in holocaust trials had to do, Robert Faurisson states,
"That ought to remind us of the unfortunates who in the Middle Ages were accused of having met the devil on such and such a day, at such and such an hour, in such and such a place. They would have been able to deny it fiercely. They would have been able to go so far as to say: "You know very well that I could not have met with the devil for one excellent reason, which is that the devil does not exist." The unfortunates would have condemned themselves by such responses. They had only one way out: to play the game of their accusers, to admit that the devil was there without doubt, but ... at the top of the hill, while they themselves, located below, heard the horrible noise (sobs, groans, cries, racket) made by the victims of the devil."
This is speculation but it seems Dr Konrad Morgen created an alternate version of the holocaust where the chain of command bypassed the SS, so that the men on trial (all of whom were in the SS) would be seen as not in the loop. The SS was designated a criminal organization and was accused of implementing the genocide; thus Morgen testified at Nuremberg as a witness for the defense of the SS. Morgen presents an alternate holocaust version: The extermination order, he said, went from Hitler, to Hitler's Chancellery office, to a man in the Criminal Police named Christian Wirth who was not in the SS (who by the way wasn't mentioned in the trial until Morgen mentioned him.) Wirth single-handedly set the whole thing up, using ironically, Jewish recruits. Only a couple lower-level SS even knew, according to Morgen.
Konrad Morgen tells the court how he first learned about the extermination program: It was by way of hearing about an odd wedding at a Jewish Labor camp near Lublin, with an extraordinary amount of invited guests. He says:
"1,100 guests participated in this Jewish wedding. What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks. Among these Jews were members of the camp guard, that is to say some SS men, who joined in this revelry."
This raises serious doubts as to how the official story of interned inmates were supposed to be treated. Who was paying for all this?
Morgan travels to Lublin and talks to an administrator, Christian Wirth, and right away Wirth confesses to an enormous secret killing operation. Morgen then describes how Wirth recruited Jews to kill other Jews.
Morgen said
"Wirth staged an enormous deceptive maneuver. He first selected Jews who would, he thought, serve as column leaders, then these Jews brought along other Jews, who worked under them. With that smaller or medium-sized detachment of Jews, he began to build up the extermination camps. He extended this staff of Jews, and with these Jews Wirth himself carried out the extermination of the Jews.
Wirth said that he had four extermination camps and that about 5,000 Jews were working at the extermination of Jews and the seizure of Jewish property. In order to win Jews for this business of extermination and plundering of their brethren of race and creed, Wirth gave them every freedom and, so to speak, gave them a financial interest in the spoliation of the dead victims. As a result of this attitude, this sumptuous Jewish wedding had come about."
But the Nuremberg Court is gullible it would seem. They believed the shrunken heads story, they also believed this testimony. But fathom the absurdity of the story: a wedding of 1,100 guests and the reason the Jews are friends with one another is they are in on a multi-level scheme of killing other Jews and taking their money. So enthusiastic are they, that they even invite the Germans to celebrate with them. Morgen is filling-in a vacuum because the prosecution was not able to explain the inner workings of the alleged genocide, and Morgen knew enough to be able to fabricate that. And it appears that Thomas Dodd is buying the story up to this point. Why else would he interject with the following?
MR. DODD:
"Mr. President, we do not have the first responsibility, of course, for this defense. But I have discussed with Mr. Elwyn Jones my objection, he has it in here, and he finds no fault with it. It seems to me that what we are hearing here is a lecture on the Prosecution's case, and I do not see how it in any sense can be said to be a defense of the SS."
When Morgen gets to Auschwitz, he mentions that the killing happened in a section called Monowitz. Some of the Germans on trial, in their mix of depression, daydreaming, worrrying, and thinking, might have been actually listening to the proceedings. If so they might have pricked up their ears on hearing the word
"Monowitz" and realized that Morgen was creating a fake story to try and help them. As leaders of the government, they would have known that Monowitz was a giant industrial section of Auschwitz that was run by private companies. The killing couldn't have happened there. Morgen adds a description so that no one can later say it was a slip of the tongue and he meant Birkenau.
"The Extermination Camp Monowitz lay far away from the concentration camp. It was situated on an extensive industrial site and was not recognizable as such and everywhere on the horizon there were smoking chimneys."
Morgen then describes a secret killing operation comprised of non-Germans dressed up as SS officers. But what Morgen is trying to do is not easy, because lies inherently have problems. As we've seen. And the right question can expose the problem. The presiding judge starts asking him such questions. Morgen does his best, though it comes off a little non sequitur. Here's a part of it:
MORGEN: They wore SS uniforms.
THE PRESIDENT: Didn't you take the trouble to ascertain whether they were proper members of the SS?
MORGEN: I said that they were people from the Eastern territories.
THE PRESIDENT: I do not care what you have already said. What I asked you was, didn't you take the trouble to ascertain whether they were members of the SS?
MORGEN: I beg your pardon, Your Lordship. I do not understand your question. They could not be members of the General SS. As far as I could learn, they were volunteers and draftees who had been recruited ' in the Baltic countries where they had carried out security tasks, and who were then somehow especially selected and sent to Auschwitz and Monowitz. These were special troops, who had only this particular task and no other. They were completely outside of the Waffen-SS ...
THE PRESIDENT: I didn't ask you if they were in the Waffen SS. Did you ask questions as to why they were put into SS uniforms?
MORGEN: No, I did not ask that question. It seemed incomprehensible to me. It is probably due to the fact that the commander of the Concentration Camp Auschwitz ...
THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute. You said, as I understand it, that you considered it incomprehensible why they wore the SS uniforms. Didn't you say that?
Truth can be examined and prodded from every single angle and hold up. It's ironic that Morgen's made-up story is having a hard time holding up to the proddings of the judge's questions. Ironic because the entire holocaust story has a hard time holding up to Morgen's wartime activities.
Despite Morgen's attempt at Nuremberg, the Germans were mostly sentenced to death. He did what he could.
Morgen went on to have a successful law practice in Frankfurt, West Germany. He died in 1982. Unbelievably, holocaust scholars tend to process him into a "righteous gentile."37 Someone who tried to stop the killing from the inside. Like Oskar Schindler, except Morgen's character didn't make it into the movie Schindler's List. It should have because that movie is based on a Plaszow camp commander named Amon Göth, who in reality existed, and who in reality Konrad Morgen arrested and imprisoned. But can you imagine if toward the end of the movie Schindler's List, the Nazis themselves arrest the head of the camp? That couldn't be included. It wouldn't have flown with the message Steven Spielberg was trying to put across. Morgen's actions, once again, would have thrown a wrench into the works of the story.
