(Nürnberger Prozess Brief). A rare and historically significant handwritten document compiled by Nuremberg Trial defendant Fritz Sauckel for Major Douglas M. Kelley of the United State Army Military Intelligence Corps and chief psychiatrist of Nuremberg Prison, consisting of 20 paginated pages of one-sided handwritten notes detailing Sauckel’s personal and professional history with an emphasis on experiences that shaped his wartime career and decisions for use in legal proceedings at the trial, the opening page featuring a date of 15 October 1945 and specifying that the final document would consist of all 20 pages, bound within a small folded paper featuring a brief introduction from Sauckel, the pages measuring 202 mm (w) x 330 mm (h), demonstrating only minor age-appropriate discolouration, a rare compilation from one of history’s most important war crimes trials in overall extremely fine condition.
Footnote: Fritz Sauckel was born in Haßfurt, Bavaria, on 27 October 1894. Leaving school after failing to graduate, Sauckel enlisted as a merchant mariner and was captured at sea aboard a German vessel seized by French forces, spending the period from August 1914 to until October 1919 in French captivity. After returning to Germany, he was employed in menial positions as a locksmith and toolmaker, but saw an attempt to further his education in engineering halted when he was expelled from a technical school for his involvement in nationalist and anti-Semitic political activities. An early member of the NSDAP (joining in January 1923), Sauckel rose through party ranks as a politician and Political Leader, eventually becoming Reichstattshalter (Reich Governor) of Thuringia, a position he would hold until the fall of the Third Reich. During the Second World War, he was appointed General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, overseeing Germany’s pool of foreign Labour. Of the more than five million labourers brought to Germany, only around 200,000 are estimated to have arrived voluntarily. Germany eventually utilized more than 12 million foreign workers overall, the vast majority either coerced or forced through brutal methods, many of which were legally-defined as slave labourers. Arrested in Salzburg by US forces on 12 May 1945, Sauckel was indicted on all four major counts pursued by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Despite his denials of claims of utilizing slave labour or deliberate attempts at extermination through over-work, and after attempting to shift blame to Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer, Sauckel was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and executed by hanging on 16 October 1946.