For the first time, letters from the deputy chief prosecutor who represented Britain at the Nuremberg trials have been made public, The Guardian reports. “Today marks 63 years since the day when David Maxwell Fyfe began interrogating the defendant Hermann Goering,” says correspondent Alexandra Topping. According to the journalist, the letters are striking in their relaxedness and frankness: the author calls Goering "a fat man" and "Hermann the fighter", and makes fun of the "weirdness" of the American prosecutor. Now letters, found in 1999 by the grandson of Maxwell Fife, donated to the Churchill Archives Center at Cambridge University, the newspaper reports.
"Goering gave testimony very well, only too extensively and with grotesque egoism." The Fuhrer and I "sounds a little silly when others justify themselves mainly by the fact that they could not contradict Hitler - this, by the way, is not at all a reason," wrote Maxwell Fife wife.
"These letters are very exciting reading, as for both Goering and Maxwell Fife it was a turning point in life," said Allen Peckwood, director of the Churchill Archive Center, in an interview. "Goering recovered from the shock of the arrest, realized the inevitability of execution and realized that this was the last chance to come up with excuses for Nazism. Maxwell Fyfe was obliged to challenge Goering. Thus, he secured his career growth," he explained. Maxwell Fife, the son of humble teachers, eventually became one of the developers of the European Convention on Human Rights, the newspaper notes.
The letters also show that their author did not get along with the American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson. For example, Maxwell Fyfe did not like the fact that Jackson did not attend the reception hosted by Soviet representatives on the occasion of November 7th. "The prosecutors tried to demonstrate their cohesion, but each of them represented their own legal and legal tradition," Peckwood said. He also said that the process, which lasted a whole year, was very difficult for the prosecutors and their families from the psychological point of view: "They were locked up in a bombed-out city, where corpses were lying on the streets."
The materials of the court case were also a test - for example, viewing documentary footage in Auschwitz. "When you see the clothes of the murdered babies, it becomes clear: it is worth giving a year of life for the fact that forever and with practical consequences to record the reasonable shock experienced by mankind," Fife wrote to his wife. "My grandfather's victory was that he not only created the impression of Goering's guilt, but also made him feel remorse," said the lawyer's grandson Tom Blackmore.
