In his final statement before the tribunal at Nuremberg, Artur Seyss-Inquart, reflecting on his involvement with Hitler, said "I can not today cry 'crucify him' where yesterday I cried 'Hosanna'". It was perhaps, this attitude as much as anything else that convinced the tribunal to award him a death sentence. His refusal to condemn Hitler at the trial suggested an unrepentant attitude that deserved punishment. Seyss-Inquart was charged on all four counts at Nuremberg. He was acquitted of the first, that of the conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and found guilty on the other three. But was this result fair?

Leaving aside the question of just how fair a trial, where the victors try the vanquished, can be - it has after all been covered in considerable depth - we are left with the question of whether one man among the twenty-two tried at Nuremberg received a fair trial. This essay examines Artur Seyss-Inquart's actions leading up to Nuremberg and the subsequent trial. It questions whether the outcome was just on the evidence presented and whether he should have been brought to Nuremberg as a major war criminal.

The British, initially, were intent on holding a short trial with a small number of defendants. Artur Seyss-Inquart was not on their list of major war criminals. He was included on a supplementary list of lesser criminals on the basis of his actions in Holland. The Americans, however, had a much grander scheme in mind. Their goal was to try high ranking Nazi leaders with a common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war. They wanted Seyss-Inquart to appear at Nuremberg as a major war criminal, because they believed his role in the annexation of Austria fitted the format of their prosecution strategy.

Before the war Artur Seyss-Inquart was a lawyer in Austria. Like many of his countrymen, he believed that Austria's best chance to recover from the depression caused by the first world war lay on the Anschluss with Germany. He spent nearly twenty years working towards this goal. Many Austrians blamed the Jews for their fall in fortunes and Seyss-Inquart was no exception. He became part of the German Brotherhood, a racist, nationalist organisation whose stated aim was to free the German people from Jewish influence. But it was not until 1938, after the Anschluss, that he officially joined the Nazi Party.

Hitler's growing power in Germany in the 1930's allowed him to influence events in Austria as well. In 1937, Seyss-Inquart, known to be sympathetic to the cause of National Socialism, was appointed State Councillor following a meeting between Hitler and the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg. In early 1938 Seyss-Inquart was elevated to the rank of Minister in the Austrian cabinet following a further heated meeting between Hitler and Schuschnigg. This elevation was an express condition of the agreement reached there.

Continuing pressure from Hitler saw National Socialists in Austria free to profess their beliefs once more. The Anschluss moved a step closer to reality. Schuschnigg, under pressure tried to call a plebiscite, a vote of the people to support his position. Hitler took advantage of the situation and demanded that the plebiscite be called off. Schuschnigg was forced to resign and Seyss-Inquart was installed in his place. Four days later, German troops marched into Austria. They were well received by the populace, with flowers thrown in welcome. On March 15, 1938 the Austrian council of ministers met and amended the constitution to make Austria a part of the Reich. The state of Austrian politics at the time, the result of the country's previous authoritarian governments, made this act legal, without a vote from the people.

Clearly, Hitler thought well of him, but others, such as Captain Leopold, the nominal head of the Nazi Party in Austria, criticised his lack of fervour. Seyss-Inquart was forced to defend himself on several occasions. In 1939, he wrote to Goering stating

Understandably, this letter and others like it formed a part of the case against him at Nuremberg.

For fourteen months Seyss-Inquart served as Reich governor for Austria. During this time he followed orders in deporting Jews from Vienna and confiscating their property. The first deportations began only weeks after the Anschluss. The Freemasons were also targeted for property confiscation. Crimes in Austria were treated by the Nuremberg Tribunal as crimes against humanity because Austria was considered to be part of Germany. However, as Telford Taylor points out, under article 6 of the charter, these were not crimes against humanity because they were not part of a conspiracy to commit crimes against peace and were committed before the outbreak of the war. In October 1939, Seyss-Inquart was transferred to Poland to serve as Hans Frank's deputy. Here, he worked efficiently, but did little on his own initiative, content to follow the party line.

He was rewarded in May 1940, with the post of Reichkommissar of Holland, the supreme civil authority in that country. Only Hitler and Goering stood above him in the civil administration of Holland. He was expected to follow the Fuhrer's instructions but he was also given complete legislative power. Thus, although he was to follow orders, it was he who set up the administration that shaped how the country would run and it was he who provided the context for those orders to be carried out. He remained in this position until the end of the war.

Artur Seyss-Inquart was anti-Semitic and he did not try to deny this at Nuremberg. He stated during his testimony, "I will say quite openly that since the First World War and the post-war period I was an anti-Semite and went to Holland as such". It would have been difficult for him to deny it. One of the first things that he did as Reichkommissar, was to begin steps discriminating against Jews. He had them registered and forced them to live in ghettos. Arrests and detention in concentration camps followed until finally, at the suggestion of Reinhard Heydrich, he had 120,000 of the 140,000 Jews in Holland deported to Auschwitz.

In his defence Seyss-Inquart claimed that he did not know what happened to the inmates of Auschwitz. On hearing rumours about the conditions there, "I had people sent from the Netherlands to Auschwitz" he stated at the trial. "They came back with a report that that was a camp for 80,000 people with sufficient space". He accepted these assurances and did not seek to probe further. Such an argument, given his position and his anti-Semitism, was difficult to accept and the tribunal placed no credence in it.

He saw the Jews as an enemy to the German people and said so on numerous occasions in speeches. Speaking in Holland, on one such occasion he declared "The Jews for us are not Dutch. They are those enemies with whom we can come to neither an armistice nor to peace".

In comparison, Seyss-Inquart tried hard to convert the Dutch to the German cause He had no dislike for the Dutch people and he did everything he could to encourage them to support the German war effort. If they collaborated then he was happy to have them join to the German mission in Europe. He was also inclined to tolerate anti-German sentiment provided that it did not progress into hostile activity, but he would not allow their intransigence to harm his mission.

When Sauckel came to him with labour quotas for the German war effort, Seyss-Inquart was ready to play his part. He testified at the trial that 530,000 Dutchmen worked for Germany. Of these he thought that half were volunteers. In fact, many of these 'volunteers' were persuaded to join in the face of threats and heavy pressure. Ration cards were withheld and those who refused to work for Germany were denied unemployment compensation. In 1942, when even these measures failed to supply adequate numbers, he formally declared compulsory labour service, resorting to conscriptions and mass arrests to meet the quotas.

The Dutch responded by forming resistance movements but Seyss-Inquart was prepared for this. He had prominent Dutch citizens arrested and interned as surety against acts of sabotage. They were reasonably well treated in comparison with other internees and many were later released. But by 1944 suspected members of the resistance who were captured could be summarily executed by the SS and the police. Seyss-Inquart did not order the hostages killed, but he could and did order houses destroyed in reprisal for resistance attacks.

Economically, the country and its people were put to use for the Reich. Dutch industry was restructured so as to aid the war effort and most of the produce went to Germany. Whole production plants and raw materials were also shipped to Germany. Holland was the only country in Europe to pay both for its occupation and external costs of occupation such as administration. Seyss-Inquart testified that the Dutch paid 50 million Reichmarks a month for occupation costs. Dutch figures indicated that the amount was near twice that.

Evidence to that effect was also given in the testimony of Heinz Max Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld was Holland's Secretary General of Agriculture, Commerce, Industry and Shipping throughout the war even though his father was a Jew. He was brought in as a defence witness to testify as to Seyss-Inquart's courtesy and his efforts to carry out his orders as humanely as he could. Hirschfeld also testified however, as to the efficiency of the exploitation of his country, stating that Holland had been charged occupation costs of about 8 1/2 billion guilders and suffered around 25 billion guilders damages in total.

In addition, Seyss-Inquart confiscated anything he thought the Germans needed more than the Dutch, including clothing and household items. The country was stripped. Dutch people resorted to dismembering the empty houses of their former Jewish neighbours to keep their own homes in repair. Seyss-Inquart himself did not take advantage of his position to enrich himself, as Frank had done in Poland. He testified that the only time he had used his position in this manner was to buy old paintings at low prices which he gifted to the Vienna museum.

In defence of his actions in Holland he stated that he did not control the orders that came from Berlin. Nor could he do anything about acts ordered by the Reich and committed by the Army or the SS over which he had no control. Hanns Rauter, the SS chief in Holland, had been placed nominally under Seyss-Inquart's command in the administration of Holland. Seyss-Inquart had not appointed him however and he did not control him; Rauter reported directly to Himmler. Seyss-Inquart had been given the honorary title of General in the SS on becoming the Reich governor of Austria but this meant little as Rauter was in fact Seyss-Inquart' superior in the SS.

Seyss-Inquart also objected to the number of hostages ordered executed in reprisal for acts of resistance against the occupation authorities. On several occasions he was able to reduce the number of hostages killed. The ratio of the number of hostages executed in reprisal for the death of every German or collaborator in Holland was about 6 to 1. The usual rate could extend from 10 or even 50 to 1 depending upon what the Germans decided would serve as sufficient punishment and provide an adequate deterrent to prevent similar offences. The execution of hostages in this manner is not expressly forbidden in the Hague Convention. Hague merely states that the occupation forces should try to keep the number down to a humane level. It is possible that Seyss-Inquart did so less from humanitarian principles than from the knowledge that excessive executions made the Dutch people even more hostile to the German occupation and thus made Seyss-Inquart's task that much harder.

In the final months of the war he was largely successful in preventing the 'scorched earth' policy from being implemented and he prevented the army from flooding fields to stop possible paratroop attacks. He had, by this point, realised that there was nothing to be gained from further resistance.

While the court did give some weight to Seyss-Inquart's defensive arguments they were not enough to save his life. The judgement stated "the fact remains that Seyss-Inquart was a knowing and voluntary participant in War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity which were committed in the occupation in the Netherlands".

Clearly the judges had strong grounds to find him guilty on counts 3 and 4. All four agreed that he was guilty of these charges but the judgement also found him guilty on count 2, that of planning, preparing and waging aggressive war. Here the outcome was not so clear. Three weeks before the judges met to decide Seyss-Inquart's fate, Adrian Fisher, the American judicial aide, examined his case.

He was of the opinion that there was not enough evidence to enable the court to convict Seyss-Inquart on count two. The judges, however, saw proceedings differently. Two of the four judges wanted to find him guilty on charge two. The American judge originally did not agree and advocated giving him the death sentence based only on finding him guilty of counts three and four. After some discussion, three of the four judges agreed to find him guilty on count two and three of the four then voted to have him receive the death sentence.

Seyss-Inquart served Hitler as a bureaucrat. It is difficult to see how he could be considered to have waged war as the tribunal ruled. The Anschluss was not a war; the court referred to it as a forcible annexation. The Charter in fact does not refer to either Austria or Czechoslovakia in its list of war and begins with Poland instead. Further aggression in itself was not a crime as recognised under count two in the charter which refers only to aggressive war. It was not sufficiently demonstrated that Seyss-Inquart was privy to the planning that launched the series of aggressive wars. The prosecution tried to show that a journey he made to Bratislava was an attempt to talk Slovakian leaders into declaring independence and supporting Germany. Seyss-Inquart denied this and the case against him here was not substantiated. Further, he had nothing to do with the decisions to invade Poland and Yugoslavia.

Seyss-Inquart appeared remarkably resigned to the outcome of the trial. He was not prepared to fight with every weapon at his disposal as Speer had done despite the fact that he himself was a lawyer. He did not try to absolve his actions, stating "since we had been in the front row in the hours of triumph we could lay claim to being in the front row in the hours of disaster as well". The theme of his defence was that it could have been worse. Indeed Josef Terboeven's administration of Norway as Reichkommissar was harsher than that of Seyss-Inquart. Terboeven had escaped vengeance by taking his own life at the end of the war. In any case such a defence requires vigorous effort and this Seyss-Inquart did not give.

Had he tried harder with his defence it is possible that mitigating factors would have allowed him to escape the death sentence. Had he denounced Hitler as some of his fellow accused had done, the tribunal may have looked on him more favourably. It is true, however, that Hans Frank's attempt to use a similar strategy had not been looked on favourably by the tribunal and he too received a death sentence. Seyss-Inquart had appeared to have accepted his fate, returning to God while awaiting the outcome of the trial. He was composed enough, once the verdict was given, that he was able to try and console Sauckel, who could not accept his own judgement. He wrote a letter of commiseration to him, urging him to accept his fate.

Ultimately, Seyss-Inquart was convicted and hanged on the basis of his activities in Holland. Yet these same activities were not enough initially, to have him tried at Nuremberg as a major war criminal. The failure of the conspiracy charge against Seyss-Inquart and the dubious basis for the judgement on count two suggests that had the Allies done better research he need not have been charged on these counts. Would the outcome have been the same if his role in the Anschluss had been set aside and he was only charged with counts three and four? One can only speculate. It is interesting to note however, that of all those sentenced to hang all but one were found guilty on counts three and four.

With the benefit of hindsight surely it would have been fairer to have tried Seyss-Inquart in Holland for these crimes as was done in cases like that of Von Faulkenhausen in Belgium. Such trials would have allowed the tribunal more time to focus on the leaders of the German war effort. The Dutch might have preferred this option. Displeased with the way the trial against Seyss-Inquart was carried out, they sent an official complaint to the British Foreign Office. A Dutchman, they felt, would have made a better job of it.

ENDNOTES:

¹ Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremburg, (London, 1948), Vol. 22, p. 406. (hereinafter referred to as Nuremburg Trial).

² They had lost this right after Chancellor Englebert Dollfuss had been murdered by National Socialists in 1934 .

³ Nuremburg Trial, Vol. 1, p. 230.

⁴ Taylor was the American Associate Trial Council at Nuremburg.

⁵ Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremburg Trial, (New York, 1992), p. 441.

⁶ Nuremburg Trial, Vol. 16, p. 103.

⁷ Reinhard Heydrich was Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, to whom Hitler entrusted the "Final Solution".

⁸ Nuremburg Trial, Vol. 4, p. 325.

⁹ Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 101.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 99.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 92.

¹² Ibid., p. 247.

¹³ Ibid., p. 109.

¹⁴ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 221.

¹⁵ Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 114.

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