Which of the Nuremberg defendants spoke English, French, or Russian?
score:13
Sourced information
Hitler and the Nazi Leaders, by Robert K. Latimer, has some information. Latimer was one of the physicians at the first Nuremberg Trial, a urologist, who had quite a bit of contact with the defendants, and wrote about them. He says:
Göring had excellent English.
Hess had decent English, but had trouble with Scottish accents when he arrived there.
Ribbentrop spoke decent English and French.
Schacht had excellent English and French.
Speer had English and French, and maybe more. Latimer says he sometimes assisted the translators at Nuremberg.
Streicher studied English during the trial, and claimed to speak French, although this may have been gallows humour.
Deductions
Göring presumably had some Swedish, since he lived there for years, and his first wife was Swedish.
Dönitz probably had some English, having been a PoW there in WWI.
Neurath must have spoken English, since he spent 11 years in London as a diplomat; he likely had some Italian too, having been ambassador to Italy.
Papen had enough English to talk to his American captors easily, he'd been a military attaché in the USA.
Raeder spoke fluent Russian and had served as an observer of the Russo-Japanese war.
Rosenberg must have had decent Russian, having received a PhD in Engineering from Moscow University in 1917.
Sauckel would have had some Swedish and Norwegian, having served on their merchant ships before WWI.
Von Schirach had an American mother, and spoke good English.
Weak or no information
Frank may have spoken Italian, but this is unsourced.
Funk apparently spoke broken English.
Jodl apparently spoke some English, but this is unsourced. When he negotiated the German surrender, Major-General Kenneth Strong, the head of Intelligence at SHAEF, acted as interpreter.
Kaltenbrunner apparently spoke some English, but this is unsourced.
Keitel: I can't find anything, except that he took an interpreter for English with him to sign the surrender.
I haven't found anything about the language abilities of Frick, Fritzsche, Ley, or Seyss-Inquart.
There are some threads on axishistory.com and straightdope.com about this, but none of them quote any sources.
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