On this date - November 20th - in 1945, the Nuremberg Trials began. For nearly a year, judges representing the victorious Allied countries of World War II listened to testimony about war crimes and crimes against humanity. Commentator Katie Keckeisen tells us about the Kansas man who played a key role leading up to the Nuremberg Trials, which began 79 years ago today.
(Transcript)
Designing Nuremberg: John L. Meyer, Jr.
By Katie Keckeisen
Before the end of World War II, the Allied powers knew that the German Third Reich had committed some of the most heinous crimes seen in modern history. On October 30, 1943, the leaders of the Allied nations signed the Declaration of Atrocities, which stated that “those German officers and men and members of the Nazi party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in the […] atrocities, massacres and executions will be […] judged and punished according to the laws of these liberated countries.” Thus the stage was set for the Nuremberg trials, and one young soldier from Kansas was an integral part of the trials.
John Lee Meyer, Jr., was born on January 12, 1925, in Phillipsburg, Kansas. After graduating high school, Meyer entered the University of California at Berkley where he began studying engineering. His studies were interrupted when Meyer was drafted into the United States Army in 1943. He was assigned to the First Infantry Division which was headquartered at Fort Riley.
Over the next year, Meyer and his squad saw action throughout Germany. At Zweifalle, Meyer was hit in the shoulder by a piece of shrapnel but kept fighting. For his bravery, he was awarded the Purple Heart. By the end of the war, he had also been awarded the Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
After Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, Meyer was reassigned to the Presentation Branch of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel as a draftsman and designer, due to his previous education in engineering. The Chief Counsel’s office was headed by Associated Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who would act as the chief prosecutor for the United States in the Nuremberg Trials.
The trials were to be held in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. The location was chosen because the building had previously been expanded to hold Nazi detainees. The design for the courtroom presented a number of challenges. Not only would the courtroom need to hold a large number of defendants, as well as have seating for the press and spectators, it would also need to have an elaborate sound system so that every person in the room connected with the trial could have a set of ear phones to translate the different languages that would be used.
John Meyer was tasked with mocking up a miniature of the Nuremberg courtroom to allow the designers and architects to work out these problems at scale. His work earned him the highest commendation of his immediate superiors, as well as Chief Counsel Jackson. But Meyer’s work with the trials did not end there. He also helped to design several charts that were used as exhibits in the trial. He also had the unenviable task of preparing some of the human specimens that were displayed during the trial. For his work, Meyer was allowed to attend the opening day of the trial, as well as the 21st day.
John L. Meyer, Jr. was discharged from the Army on January 16, 1946. He went on to received with bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas in Civil Engineering. He relocated to Topeka where he worked for the Kansas Department of Transportation for 37 years before retiring. He later wrote of his war experience in a memoir, “Reflections of a ‘Dogface’”. Meyer died in 2019 at the age of 94. ####
Commentator Katie Keckeisen is a local history librarian for the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library and a former collections archivist at the Kansas Historical Society. She lives in Topeka.