Letter from William Donovan to Justice Robert Jackson

COPY Nuernberg, 27 November 1945. Dear Bob: If we are to have a review as you say in your letter of 26 November 1945, let us have a straight and not an inaccurate one. 1. You have not forgotten that from the very first, research as well as camera specialists were made available to you. I visited the document centers, arranged for our access to them and obtained key documents very early in the case. This was as it should be. I speak of it only to remind you that I recognized, as you do, the value of both mediums of proof. I thought it a mis- take to rely exclusively on documents or on moving pictures or on oral testimony. I urged our job be done in a lawyer-like, organized and balanced presentation. 2. To the Board of Review and the Planning Board I stressed that no wit- ness be finally approved until we examined his signed statement in question and answer form. In consulting the Planning Board as to whether we should proceed to obtain such a statement from Goering, on two occasions I read to them from the statement obtained, and they expressed the opinion that the statement be completed. I attended every meeting of the Planning Board at none of which were you present. 3. When in Berlin you first showed me the indictment I said it was unbecoming our country to use such a device as there employed against the General Staff. I still think so. The young British officer who prepared it told me he was not very proud of the job. I urged a revision so that such members as were participants be charged individually and not by position and by function. I thought it was on this theory that you approved granting the request of the Brauchitsch Group in presenting their paper - which is itself an indictment of their conduct. I have never agreed with those of our Regular Army who think that there should be no criminal charge against the General Staff. That I made clear to General Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff, when you and I were at Frankfort. Per- haps it would have been better to have shot the guilty ones. Since we elected to proceed by indictment I think we should do it properly. It is repugnant to me that there should be any pretext as we find in the trial today for the defendants to assert that the prosecution is unfair. The "if" clause in your concluding sentence takes an assumption and then deals with it as if it were a fact. TRUMAN "NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND 4. We agree about Schacht in so far as using him as a witness is con- RECORDS LIBRARY U.S. SERVICE" cerned. His lawyer saw me and I told him I would not see Schacht. Of this GOVERNMENT I have already informed you. 5. (a) In your fifth paragraph you discuss "hegotiate" and "bargain." I never knew these ideas were even suggested, except as might be inferred from your memorandum that no proposal of a defendant to testify would be considered unless in writing he incriminated other defendants. (b) The Goering proposal as made by his counsel and confirmed by him was on no such basis. It was to be testimony in open court as to his