The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-11-20
THE CONN., TUESDAY NOVEMBER 2o l04s

decorum at all times.
 Then the British justice ordered the indictment to be read, and an attendant began intuning the 49- page document at 10:10 a. m.
 A l5-minute recess was called at 11:1l a. m.
 The trial by which the Allied nations seek to outlaw war forever as a crime against humanity opened after months of careful preparation in Huernbergs ancient Palace of Justice with three of the original A defendants missing through sui- eide or sickness.
 A fourth, former deputy Nazi party leader, Martin Bormann. was being tried in absentia, despite the partially-conflrmed belief that he died with his master, Adolf Hitler, in the ruins of Berlin.
 Madness Escapes Sought
 Two others, the beetle-browed Rudolf Hess and the viciously anti semitic Julius Streicher, apparently hoped to escape the scaffold by pleading madness. Their plea was expected to be ruled on immediate ly after the court opening.
 The hour of retribution for the swaggering crew that held all Europe in the shadow of the crooked cross for more than a decade was set for 10 a. m. (4 a. m.EST) when the American, British, French, and Russian judges called the court to order.
 The accused, most of them clad now in secondhand, gray striped civilian clothes, were hustled under heavy guard from their cells in the Nuremberg prison across the street and up into the flood-lit trial room in a specially-built private elevator
 Each man bore prominent iden- tifying number across his chest. and the bleak honor of number-one de- fendant went to the bloated Luff- waffle boss Hermann Goering, who once sent his bombers over Coventry with orders to: Kill, kill! It is I who will answer for this, not you"
 Death Demanded as Penalty
 Confronting them was a 24,OO0- word indictment listing in cold de- tail the record of murder, rape and atrocity slashed across the face of Europe by these arch-apostles of the master race.
 The indictment demanded death for all of the accused on four prin- cipal counts:
 That they took part in a gen. eral conspiracy which involved crimes against peace, war crimes against humanity.
 2-That the defendants and many other Nazi leaders now dead or hiding led the German nation into war of aggression in violation of Germany's treaty obligations.
 3That they committed war crimes directly or indirectly.
 4-That they directly committed crimes against humanity.
 Crimes Defined
 In the charter which the four prosecuting nations signed to estab- fish the International military tribunal, the preparation of war of aggression was defined specifically as a crime against peace.
 War crimes were defined as such violation of the laws or customer of war as the murder of hostages mistreatment of prisoners, use of slave labor and other wanton acts not militarily justifiable.
 Grimes against humanity were specified in the charter as the eX- termi ation or enSlavement Of civilian populations or prosecutions on political, racial or religious grounds.
 That count was presented to per- init prosecution of the Nazi leaders for their brutal pogroms against the German Jews.
 The first or the four main counts will be prosecuted by the United States staff led by the StOckV. dV-