By Rev. Moritz Fuchs
Before WWII, was an engineering student at Purdue, drafted
after second semester at age 18. Entered at Camp Upton, Long Island, chose
ASTP and went to Ft. Benning, GA for basic training. All were dumped into
Infantry instead, sent to Camp Livingston, LA, 87th Division. Shipped out
of Fort Meade, MD to New Jersey docks, some 5,000 of us boarded QE for a seven-day
trip over the Atlantic. We slept in three eight-hour shifts. Ship took a zigzag
route to hopefully avoid enemy submarines. I remember a display shot from
a cannon on the aft deck. A 50-gallon barrel was dropped overboard. When it
was at a great distance from the rolling deck a shot was fired and hit it.
They told us that the accuracy of the cannon aim was possible because gyroscopes
provided stability.
We landed in Scotland – really green contrast from the sea – were
sent over night by train to Portsmouth soon to Omaha Beach as replacements
in the First Division under General Omar Bradley. If I remember correctly,
we disembarked by climbing down rope nets into landing craft. We were soon
involved in battle at Huertgen Forest where I was wounded November 19th. Our
whole squad was wiped out that day. Whitey Swarthout had been due for 30-day
leave, was the first man I saw get killed. Shrapnel from 88s burst in the
pine trees, raining deadly steel. Evacuated through Cherbourg to England,
spent three months at Army Hospital at Blandford. So I missed the Battle of
the Bulge.
Learned some German words from army phrase books so I was able to claim ability
to interrogate prisoners, hence was called to Bn Hq and put on a bazooka team
--- squad. I figure that language advantage saved my life, as it got me for
a while off the front line.
At Dueren on the Roer River I remember a German teen soldier kneeling, bandaged,
frozen in the vestibule of a small church. We crossed the Rhine at Remagen
and trucked to the Harz mountains to engage again. President Roosevelt died
at that time, in April 1945. Soon after, we were transferred to Patton’s
Third Army and ended up in Czechoslovakia, to end the war May 8. The Bn Gommander
Lt. Col. John T. Corley with a jeep driver took two of us west to Konnersreuth,
Germany to visit Theresa, a stigmatic, one who bore the wounds of Jesus.
Our 3rd Bn, 26th Inf of the 1st Division, (Big Red One), were moved to Ansbach,
Germany, south of Nuremberg. Sometime in July I was appointed by Col. Corley
to protect the Hon. Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,
who had been named by President Truman to be the Chief Prosecutor of the Trials.
At first I kept my 1st Div and 26th Inf insignia, and was provided with a
45 cal. Pistol. After the trials were underway awhile I was to wear a generic,
unidentified army uniform and was provided with a 38 snub nose pistol in a
shoulder holster, and an extendable blackjack.
That was 57 years ago, and I was only 20 years old. Merely a spectator, but
I had a really good seat to observe the proceedings of the IMT – International
Military Tribunal. From the summer of 1945 to August 1946 I was on duty with
Mr. Jackson, 24/7.
Mr. Jackson was provided a comfortable small estate at 31 Lindenstrasse, Fuerth-Dambach,
a few miles NW of Nuremberg. The property had a tennis court and was well
landscaped for privacy. An MP sentry was posted at the road entrance at all
times. Some smaller building provided quarters for the two drivers and two
cooks. A Mrs. Hassler had a schedule to come and supervise housekeepers. No
Mr. Hassler was ever present.
Much of the TV movie visuals and info are wrong, marred by Hollywood license.
Fuchs did not come from Brooklyn but from Fulton, New York; Jackson never
had to ride in a jeep. I was not a driver for I did not then yet know how
to drive; I became a PFC only after the war ended, and became a S/Sgt only
on the Nuremberg assignment. The TV movie suggestions of romance between Jackson
and the secretary Mrs. Douglas are totally without foundation from my full
year’s daily experience with them.
Mr. Jackson was provided with the use of a Mercedes touring car, 16-cylinder
gas guzzler that had a 75-gallon tank capacity and got three miles to the
gallon. It was one of only five made like that. This one had belonged to Von
Ribbentrop. The dashboard looked like an airplane cockpit; a supercharger
kicked in at 40 mph. The hubcaps screwed on and held the wheels. We had it
up to 120 mph once on the Autobahn. Once on the Autobahn we had a flat. The
inner tube had simply disintegrated. Hardly a piece of the tube was left larger
than a thumbnail. Leather upholstered, the car had jump seats enabling seven
persons to sit in back.
The house in Fuerth-Dambach had two floors, several rooms upstairs, where
Jackson and Douglas lived and had offices to work in and where a considerable
number of VIP guests came at many different times to consult and plan strategies.
Steps from the driveway led up to a small porch enclosure. I had a single
small room immediately to the right with full view of the sentry post and
the front door, so I acted as greeter to all guests.
Some pictures here show staff and guests at a Christmas party held there in
December 1945. The pictures give evidence of some good camaraderie among the
staff. Knowing that I could have mustered out of the army, Mr. Jackson sent
a note home at Christmas to my mother. Nearer the end of the trial he recommended
me for the Army Commendation Medal for having served him well.
A smaller car was also available, shown in one picture. Once we visited Rothenburg,
a quaint medieval walled city west of Nuremberg. Another time arrangements
were made for several of staff with Mr. Jackson and son, Naval Lt. William
Jackson, to go hunting. I was the only one to shoot a deer which Mr. Jackson
himself later dressed. He and others were assured and comforted to see that
his personal bodyguard was a good marksman.
Other short trips included Dachau, Berchesgaden, Oberammergau and Innsbruck.
There surely were many other excursions, but those stand out in my memory
now at age 76, 57 years later.
The time sequence of events has faded in my memory, but I know that I accompanied
Mr. Jackson and his staff to London and Berlin on business, and later to Nice
and Rome where he went to be at the consistory when Pius XII elevated Cardinal
Spellman as archbishop of New York. A short flight to Paris went without me
as I had the flu.
The courtroom at the palace of Justice in Nuremberg was fairly well represented
in the TV movie, except that all eight judges sat all the time, the judges
and the alternates. The courtroom was well modernized and the layout well
planned. A translation system that was being worked out at the United Nations
organizational meetings at San Francisco was adapted to allow all in the courtroom
to listen not only to verbatim dialog, but by earphones to any of the four
major languages being spoken: English, German, French, or Russian, as the
dialog was translated simultaneously from the 12 translators, boxed off in
a corner of the courtroom.
The defendants were enabled to select their own lawyers to represent them,
anyone they could find. They were offered any advantage that any court or
tribunal of any of the four chief countries allowed to their citizens.
The departure, trip home, was in August 1946. We flew via Gander, Newfoundland,
for refueling. Passengers those days each had to wear a parachute harness.
We arrived at WDC. I remember passengers included Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Douglas,
Bill Jackson, Capt. John Vonetes, Bob Vlastnik, a driver and myself among
other staff. Mr. Jackson invited Vlastnik and myself to stay at his home then
at McLean, VA until we went to the army separation center at Ft. Dix. Later
that estate became the home of Robert Kennedy.
After discharge I arrived in Fulton, New York August 15th and entered St.
Andrew’s Seminary a few weeks later. It was a good move! Mr. Jackson
and some smaller staff returned to Nuremberg for the sentencing in October.
It may have been in 1953 during my years of study at Theological College,
CUA that I visited with Mr. Jackson in the Supreme Court chambers. Then he
died in October 1954. Mrs. Elsie Douglas honored me greatly by coming to Syracuse
in May 1955 for my ordination and first Mass in Fulton.
DOCUMENTATION on the major trial is abundant. Books I know
are better than the movie.
“Nuremberg, Infamy on Trial” by Joseph Persico.
“America’s Advocate” by Eugene Gerhart
“American’s Advocate” Two Volumes by Herbert Wechsler
Forty-one or forty-two volumes of the entire proceedings fill about 12 feet
of shelf – GPO Mr. Jackson sent me a set that was donated a few years
later to the Alibrandi Thomas More Center at SU. Later they gave it to the
SU Law School, which now may have two sets. Autographed first volume was graciously
replaced so I could keep it.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES
“Time and Memory” by Joseph Persico, American Heritage, July/Aug
1994
“Judgment at Nuremberg” by Robert Shinayerson, Smithsonian, Oct
1996
CONCLUSION: Robert Houghout Jackson became for me a hero
among national leaders. I found him to be an exemplar of knowledge, culture,
sensitive to the dignity and value of human beings, and hence, appropriately
outraged at the abuses perpetrated by the Nazis against human beings. He deserved
my deepest respect and high esteem, as he was articulate in perceiving and
expressing in precise and legal terms the abhorrence we all sensed after learning
of so many horrors from their own records.
I like the man very much and hold him in highest esteem. He knew himself t
be human, but with his background of faith and learning, he is one who deserves
high honor as a statesman who did his part well and is worthy of admiration
and pride of our nation.