Wolfe Frank - Nuremberg's Voice of Doom - The Autobiography of the Chief Interpreter at History's Greatest Trials

Ausgebuergert — De-citizenized

AWOL — Absent without leave

BBC — British Broadcasting Corporation

Blockleiter — A lower political rank within the Nazi Party

BWCE — British War Crimes Executive

CAT — Civilian Actress Technician

CEO — Chief Executive Officer

CIC — Counter Intelligence Corps

CO — Commanding Officer

DDL — Deputy Director of Labour

EEC — European Economic Community

Einsatzgruppen — SS Task Force

EU — European Union

Fuehrer — (or Führer) Leader

Gestapo — Gehelme Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

HM — His Majesty

Holocaust — Second World War genocide that saw the Nazis kill some six million Jews and other persecuted peoples

IBM — International Business Machines

IMT — International Military Tribunal

IOS — Investors Overseas Services

IRA — Irish Republican Army

IS — Infantry Support

Justizpalast — Palace of Justice

Luftwaffe — German Air Force

Machtergreifung — Seizure of power

Mein Kampf — My Fight

MFI — Mutual Fund Industry

MI — Military Intelligence

MO — Medical Officer

MPC — Military Pioneer Corps

MTO — Military Testing Officer

Nacht und Nebel — Night and Fog

Nazi Party — Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)

NBC — National Broadcasting Company

NCO — Non-Commissioned Officer

Nicht-arisch — Non-Aryan

NMT — Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals

NSDAP — Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) – the Nazi Party

NYHT — New York Herald Tribune

Obergefreiter — Senior Lance Corporal

Obergruppenfuehrer — General

OCCWC — Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes

OCTU — Officer Cadet Training Unit

OKW — Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – High Command of the Armed Forces

OR — Other Rank – personnel who are not commissioned officers

OSS — Office of Strategic Services

PC — Pioneer Corps

Plenipotentiary — Having full power to action on behalf of a Government

PoW — Prisoner of War

PR — Public Relations

Prima facie — Accepted as being correct until proved otherwise

PT — Physical Training

PX — Post Exchange – a shop on an American Army Base

RAC — Royal Armoured Corps or Royal Automobile Club

RAF — Royal Air Force

RASC — Royal Army Service Corps

Rassenschande — Racial shame

Reich — Realm

Reichsfuehrer — Commander

Reichsjaegermeister — A person who goes to the cinema

Reichsmarschall — Marshal of the Reich – the highest rank in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany

RMC — Royal Military College

RPM — Revolutions Per Minute

RSHA — Reichssicherheitshauptamt (The Reich Main Security Office)

RuSHA — Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (the Race and Settlement Main Office)

SA — Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment)

Saujuden — Jewish swine

Schwarze — The Black Curse

Schmach, die Seigneur — A dignified or aristocratic man

SI — Simultaneous Interpretation

SP or ST — Subsequent Proceedings or Subsequent Trials (formally The Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals)

Sperrmarks — Blocked marks

SS — Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron)

Strafkompagnie — Punitive Unit (penal work)

Trifurcate — Divide into three branches or forks

UK — United Kingdom

UN — United Nations

UNESCO — United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Ungezieferbekampfung — Pest control/removal

US/USA — United States/United States of America

VE — Victory in Europe

WC — Water Closet (toilet)

Waffen-SS — The armed wing of the SS

Wehrmacht — Defence Force – the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany

WOSB — War Office Selection Board

ZI — Zone of the Interior (being sent home)

Zyklon B — (Cyclone B), A cyanide-based pesticide

Plate 1 — Wolfe Frank at Nuremberg 1945/6.

Plate 2 — Interrogation of General Karl Wolff (1946).

Plate 3 — The Frankonia factory, Beierfeld ( c. 1898).

Plate 4 — Albert, Bertha, Ferdinand and Ida Frank.

Plate 5 — Wolfe Frank ( c. 1915).

Plate 6 — Villa Frank, Beierfeld.

Plate 7 — Wolfe Frank and his half-sister Olly ( c. 1915).

Plate 8 — Top: Advertisement showing the Albert Frank range of lamps.

Bottom: Announcement of the floatation of Frankonia as a public company.

Plate 9 — Top: Hermann Goering in the witness box at Nuremberg.

Bottom: Wolfe Frank in the interpreters’ booth.

Plate 10 — Courtroom Layout for the International Military Tribunal.

Plate 11 — Key to the Courtroom.

Plate 12 — Annotated illustration showing the defendants at Nuremberg and their sentences.

Plates 13/14 — Details of the defendants on trial.

Plate 15 — Table showing Counts, Verdicts and Sentences.

Plate 16 — Top: Interpreters awaiting their turn to go into the courtroom.

Bottom: Defendants Von Papen, Schacht and Fritzsche following their acquittal.

Plate 17 — Volume of paperwork.

Plate 18 — Top: Translators and interpreters behind the scenes.

Bottom: Wolfe Frank relaxing between interpreting sessions.

Plate 19 — Top: Wolfe Frank’s second marriage – to the actress Maxine Cooper.

Bottom: Maxine in the arms of Ralph Meeker in the film noir Kiss Me, Deadly .

Plate 20 — Top: Wolfe Frank’s fourth wedding to Susi Alberti.

Bottom: Wolfe and Susi Frank’s restaurant La Reja in Mijas, Malaga.

Plate 21 — Wolfe and Maxine Frank at Davos c. 1946.

Plate 22 — Top left: Captain Wolfe Frank of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers.

Top right: the actress Patricia Leonard – one of Wolfe Frank’s great pre-war loves.

Bottom: Illustration of Frank translating the death sentence to von Ribbentrop.

Plate 23 — Top: Wolfe Frank c. 1985.

Bottom: The Old Ship Inn and The Malt House , Mere.

Page 194 — New York Herald Tribune flyer announcing Wolfe Frank’s Hangover After Hitler series of articles.

Henry and Peter Goyert: Plates 3, 4, 6, 7, 8.

Nuremberg City Archives: Plate 17.

United States National Archives: Plates 9, 16 (top), 18 (top).

United States Library of Congress: Plate 12.

United Artists: Plate 19 (bottom).

‘AN EXCELLENT JURIST, THIS MAN ASCHENAUER,’ Judge Michael Musmanno [1] Rear Admiral Michael Angelo Musmanno (1897-1968) was the Presiding Judge at the Einsatzgruppen Trial (see Plate 2). He had served in the military justice system of the US Navy during the Second World War and then as a governor of an occupied district of Italy before becoming a trial judge at Nuremberg. In the judgement of the Einsatzgruppen Trial, Judge Musmanno wrote: ‘One reads and reads these accounts of which here we can give only a few excerpts and yet there remains the instinct to disbelieve, to question, to doubt. There is less of a mental barrier in accepting the weirdest stories of supernatural phenomena, as for instance, water running up hill and trees with roots reaching toward the sky, than in taking at face value these narratives which go beyond the frontiers of human cruelty and savagery. Only the fact that the reports from which we have quoted came from the pens of men within the accused organizations can the human mind be assured that all this actually happened. The reports and the statements of the defendants themselves verify what otherwise would be dismissed as the product of a disordered imagination.’ pronounced after the session of the Einsatzgruppen Military Tribunal [2] The Einsatzgruppen Trial (officially, The United States of America v Otto Ohlendorf, et al.) was the ninth of the twelve SP trials. The Einsatzgruppen (task forces) were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of the Nazis. They were responsible for the murder of much of the intelligentsia, including members of the priesthood, and they played an integral role in the implementation of the so-called ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. In the opening statement of the trial the prosecution stated: ‘The judgement of the IMT declared 2 million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Security Police. The defendants in the dock were the cruel executioners, whose terror wrote the blackest page in human history. Death was their tool and life their toy. If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning and man must live in fear.’ on that grey November day in 1947 in Nuremberg; ‘a pity, his motion will cost us weeks in time.’