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AFTER LUNCH, all eyes were turned toward the small wooden door at the back of the dock, waiting for each defendant to enter and face judgment. “Open, shut, open, shut,” once again, the correspondent R. W. Cooper told the readers of The Times.
The tribunal reconvened at ten to three. For the first time in the yearlong trial, the eighteen defendants who were found guilty and awaited only the details of their punishment were treated as individuals, not brought into the courtroom as a group. Each awaited his turn outside courtroom 600 at the foot of the elevator. They entered the courtroom one at a time to listen to the sentence, then leave.
Those who weren’t present in courtroom 600 that afternoon would not see this most dramatic moment of the trial. Handing down the punishment of each individual defendant was not filmed for public viewing to protect the dignity of each defendant. Frank came in at number seven. Of the first six, five were sentenced to death: Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, and Rosenberg. Rudolf Hess escaped the gallows and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
As his turn came, Frank was the seventh to travel up the elevator and pass through the sliding door. On entering, he lost all sense of direction and stood with his back to the judges. The guards had to spin him around to face the judges. Rebecca West noticed the moment. A form of protest? No. She interpreted it as “odd proof” of Frank’s disturbed state. Facing the judges, he listened in silence, and not without courage, as some noted. Lord Justice Lawrence declared the sentence in just a few words.
“On the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been convicted, the Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.” Through the headphones, Frank heard, “Tode durch den Strang” (Death by the rope).
Frank would never know that his acquaintance with Henri Donnedieu de Vabres offered a glimmer of hope, that the Frenchman tried to help him. Right to the end, Donnedieu argued for a sentence of life imprisonment, not death, but he was alone, overruled by the others, all seven of them. Judge Biddle was surprised by his French colleague, “curiously tender” toward the German jurist, now characterized as an international criminal. Perhaps the American judge, like Yves Beigbeder, didn’t know of Frank’s invitation to Donnedieu to visit Berlin in 1935.
Sir Geoffrey Lawrence’s crib sheet, October 1, 1946
After hearing the verdict, Frank returned to his cell. Dr. Gilbert met him, as he did each defendant. Frank smiled politely, unable to look the psychologist in the eye. Such confidence as remained had evaporated.
“Death by hanging.”
Frank spoke the words softly. He nodded his head as he spoke, as though in acquiescence. “I deserved it and I expected it.” He said no more, offering no explanation to Dr. Gilbert or, later, to any member of his family of why he acted as he had.