Following the Second World War, the remaining inner circle of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
Party were placed on trial at Nuremberg. They were accused of many crimes including crimes
against humanity and war crimes, and some of the most high profile defendants were Hermann
Goring and Rudolf Hess. There were some lesser known names that found themselves on trial
alongside the main aggressors of the Second World War, and one of them was Alfred Rosenberg.
Alfred Rosenberg was one of the most influential Nazi intellectuals, and throughout his career
inside of the Nazi Party he held a number of different positions.
It was he who provided the party with it’s anti-semitic and racial ideologies, using
what Hitler had written in Mein Kampf. He’s considered one of the main authors of the
Nazi ideologies and rules including those which caused the Holocaust, and the persecution
of the Jews. However after World War 2, he was sentenced to death for his role inside
one of History’s most evil regimes. So join us today as we look at, ‘The VENGEFUL Execution
of Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s Key Theorist.’ Remember to support our channel, please make
sure to subscribe.
Alfred Rosenberg was born on the 12th January 1893 to a wealthy Baltic German Family. In
modern day Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. It belonged to the Russian Empire at the time,
and his mother had German and French ancestry, and his father was a wealthy merchant. His
ethnicity Ould later be questioned by others who accused him of having ‘no drop of German
blood flowing through his veins,’ and he was accused of having French, Latvian and
even Jewish ancestry. However the author of this open letter was later deported with claims
re-emerging inside of the Vatican newspapers. Once he had finished his schooling, he went
to university to study architecture and engineering in Riga and in Moscow. However when the Russian
revolution broke out, he and his family moved to Germany in 1918. They supported the Whites
and when the Reds succeeded and took over control in Russia, they relocated out of their
home in Estonia. It’s here where Rosenberg really demonstrated an early hatred for communism
and all things communist, and he believed that Jews were responsible for the success
of the Reds as Trotsky was Jewish. He arrived in Munich and began to involve himself in
the life of the city.
Following the First World War, Munich was a centre of Anti-semitism, hostility and anti-communist
feeling in Germany. Rosenberg joined the then German Workers party and became one of their
earliest members. He joined the party a full 9 months before Adolf Hitler would, and he
was also a member of the Thule Society. He was at the time virulently anti-semitic, and
he contributed to his friend Dietrich Echkart’s the Volkischer Beobachter, which later became
the daily newspaper of the Nazi Party. In 1923, Rosenberg became the newspaper’s senior
editor, and he printed in his time there antisemitic articles and writings, blaming Jews for the
German loss of the First World War, and he also criticised the Weimar Republic inside
of the publication. Through the newspaper, he was allowed to public his own beliefs and
theories and the newspaper became incredibly notorious for it’s hard line stance and
racial articles.
In 1923 with Rosenberg working as the editor still, Hitler attempted to seize control of
Munich and become the President of Germany. The Beer Hall Putsch ultimately failed with
Hitler’s plans for the revolution, and following the Revolt he was thrown in prison for treason,
escaping the death penalty. After this, Hitler then placed Rosenberg in charge as the leader
of the Nazi Movement. He was selected not with regards to his suitability to the position,
as Hitler regarded him as weak and lazy. Hitler carefully chosen Rosenberg, as he knew he
did not want too much power, neither would he be too hungry for it, and when he was released
he would simply hand back over control. Hitler knew Rosenberg was just the face for the meantime,
and the Nazi Party had found itself outlawed too following the putsch, so his power was
very minimal.
Following Hitler’s release, Rosenberg handed over control again and then returned to journalism
and he began his major work, titled ‘The Myth of the 20th Century,’ which was published
in 1930. This book dealt with key issues and questions around Nazi ideology, including
looking at the Jewish question, and it became a best seller selling approximately 1 million
copies. It was based on the theories of other racial theorists, and talked about the differences
between Aryans and Jews, and how they were against each other. He stated how most of
Europe’s thriving culture was due to descending from German tribes, and also debated religion
inside of the book.
He emphasised the importance of Lebensraum, and living space for Germans in the East,
however many of his fellow Nazis found the book hard going. Hitler himself criticised
the writing and said it ‘was something nobody could understand,’ but Rosenberg did influence
Hitler. He helped to convince him about the need for revenge following the signing of
the Treaty of Versaille on Britain and France, wanting to punish them for the First World
War conditions placed upon Germany. He also convinced him that a serious threat to Germany
was communism and bolshevism.
Rosenberg was later elected to the German Parliament in 1930 and he began to try to
seek a way in which he would be more useful to Hitler. He began to serve as an expert
on foreign policy, and after Hitler became the Chancellor in 1933 he took over in charge
of the Nazi Party’s Foreign Policy Office. He visited Britain in 1933 to try to built
links between the British Empire and the Nazis, but this failed. Rosenberg during an engagement
laid a wreath with a swastika on it at the Cenotaph, the war memorial on Whitehall for
fallen soldiers. This was then taken by a Labour Party candidate and was slashed and
thrown into the River Thames.
Rosenberg continued to propagate his racial theories about the Aryan Race at the very
top, and continued to establish it as the master race. However compared to other members
of Hitler’s inner circle it was clear he lacked a lot of experience and authority inside
of Hitler’s cabinet. He wished for a better job, however was always bested by others as
they had experience in more high profile roles, for example Goring being involved in the Air
Force. This especially was an issue for Rosenberg after the outbreak of the Second World War,
as he was not best suited for a militaristic role, he was seen by others as simply a writer.
In 1940 he became the head of the Hohe Schule, which was a ground for the PArty’s future
with regards for continuing and breeding the racist ideology and theories. Inside of this
was a Taskforce set up to loot art and cultural items, and also his group which carried his
name were involved in stealing art in Paris from Jewish families. Goring used the group
to build his own art collection, and Rosenberg also collected the best musical instruments
and compositions too. This became the most successful Nazi organisation with regards
to stealing and looting art, shipping around 1.5 million railcars full of artwork and goods.
After the invasion of the Soviet Union, he became the head of the Reich Ministry for
the Occupied Eastern Territories. His upbringing in Russia and his anti-communist stance gave
him some authority on the Soviet Union, and as the Wehrmacht advances stalled, his influence
was rather small. His ministry installed Reich Commissioners inside of occupied regions,
and he was given regular updates on what the army were doing. Rosenberg did come into conflict
with the SS, as he believed that Slavs were although not as prominent, were aryans. He
complained to Hitler and Himmler also about how non-jewish people were being treated in
occupied lands.
However he knew what would come with the mass extermination of Jews. In a press conference
in November 1941 he said, ‘Some six million Jews still live in the East, and this question
can only be solved by a biological extermination of the whole of Jewry in Europe. The jewish
question will only be solved for Germany when the last jew has left German territory, and
it will only be solved for Europe when not a single Jew stands on the European continent
as far as the Urals.’ He would later claim at the Nuremberg Trials he was ignorant of
the Holocaust, however he could not deny what was said at the meeting, with him stating
the need for jews to be killed on a mass scale. He had no problem in identifying Jewish men,
women and children and also Soviet elite communists for their murders, and the areas under his
authority were the first to see the Final solution carried out. By the end of just 1941,
over 500,000 jews had been exterminated, and it was this homeland Estonia that was the
first to be declared Free of Jews.
Rosenberg did play a key role in the Final Solution. He spoke about it, preached it and
in his role overseeing these occupied soviet lands, he was complicit in the fact it happened
on his watch. The SS did carry this out, but Rosenberg did not object, just encouraged.
He even sent two delegates to the Wansee Conference to debate the next steps in the killing of
Jews. He remained in his post until the end of the Second World War, and was captured
but the Allies on the 19th May 1945 in Flensburg. He was then placed on trial at Nuremberg alongside
the remaining members of Hitler’s government to face justice for the crimes of the Second
World War. He was indicted on four counts, conspiracy to commit crimes against pace,
planning initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During
his imprisonment he wrote how that ‘Nationali Socialism was the noblest idea to which a
German could devote the strength they had been given’ showing he was a virulent Nazi.
His judgement against him placed him as one of the main planners and aggressors of the
Invasion of the Soviet Union and also Noway, and the stories of his plundering organisation
emerged. He was seen as a man responsible for the biggest theft of art, wealth, jewellery
and cultural artifacts the world has ever seen. He was seen as responsible for this,
and he also was seen as responsible for the brutal sites that occured in Easter Europe,
with atrocities, massacres and mass suffering caused. Because of this he was then sentenced
to death and was found guilty of all four counts. He was to be executed on the 16th
October 1946, and was one of 11 men to be executed however only 10 were as Herman Goring
took his life the night before. He was executed by notorious US execution John C Woods, a
man who did not perform his office as well as he could have done that day.
A number of the executions did not go very well, as the trapdoor was too small and a
few condemned nazis hit their heads on the door on the way down, meaning that they were
bloodied, but also in some cases death took longer than it should have done. Some executions
took from 14 to 28 minutes, with the condemned slowly strangling to death as Woods had not
calculated the drop correctly which would have sufficiently snapped their necks. Alfred
Rosenberg was the fourth man to be executed that morning, and shortly before 01:59 in
the morning he was led into the execution chamber, where the prison gym had a scaffold
built inside it. He was flanked by guards who confirmed his identity, before they took
him up the stairs of the scaffold to meet the executioner.
Interestingly, Rosenberg was the only one who offered no final words when he was prompted,
and as a consequence his final words have been recorded as just, ‘no.’ The noose
was placed around his neck, and he was shuffled over the trapdoor before Woods pulled the
lever and he plunged to his death. Rosenberg’s execution most probably went as well as the
Nuremberg executions did, as 9 minutes later Hans Frank was also executed, showing that
most probably things went swiftly, and there was no blood or injury recorded when he fell
through the trapdoor.
Alfred Rosenberg is one of those Nazis who helped to spread so much hatred across Europe
and Germany and helped to poison the minds of the public alongside people such as Julius
Streicher and Joseph Goebbels. He was a man who regarded himself as an academic and a
skilled author, however he was a man who propogated racist ideas, antisemitism and hatred. Because
of this and his role in overseeing much of the Soviet Union which fell into German occupation
he was sentenced to death. Lets not forget too that he was possibly the biggest thief
of art, cultural artefacts and valuables that the Second World War saw, with his organisation
helping fellow Nazis including Hitler get their hands on other people’s property.
He inflicted such misery onto the world.
Thanks for watching.
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