During the trial of the final #Nazi defendant at Nuremberg, Hans Fritzsche, the #Soviet prosecutor brought up Fritzsche's radio broadcast justifying the attack on Poland. Fritzsche responded: it had been "a matter of great satisfaction" that the Soviet press said the same thing. 
#pt: from Francine Hirsch's wonderful book, "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg" (2020), pp. 322-23.
Hans Fritzsche was only on trial at Nuremberg in the first place because the Soviets demanded it as a substitute for Goebbels. Everyone understood that Fritzsche just did not measure up in terms of responsibility to the other Nazis being tried.
Fritzsche's trial got off to an extremely bad start when the Soviet prosecutor produced an affidavit where Fritzsche had admitted being a confidant of Goebbels', and Frietzsche repudiated it, saying [plausibly] he had signed it under duress at Lubyanka
https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1442960275850739713
Having demanded that Hans Fritzsche be on trial at Nuremberg, and then managed to remind everyone that the Soviets jointly started the war with their Nazi allies, the Soviets then made it even worse by trying to bring charges against Fritzsche related to Katyn.
During the #Katyn part of the Nuremberg Trial, to make a long story short, the defence dented the #Soviet case, but were unable to decisively disprove it. The Soviets had briefed well their witnesses - two of them Nazi collaborators whose lives depended on the "right" testimony.
The defence at one point said the #Soviet witness on #Katyn, Boris Bazilevsky, was reading a script, but the US and Britain shut him down.
This continued even later [see excerpt]
The Allied habit developed during the war of keeping Stalin happy endured at Nuremberg.
This continued even later [see excerpt]
The Allied habit developed during the war of keeping Stalin happy endured at Nuremberg.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
