A Watergate Lawyer-Hero's World War II Nazi Camps-Response: A Chesterfield H. Smith-Centenary Reappreciation

After the Watergate Scandal-Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973, American Bar Association President Chesterfield H. Smith was celebrated for his early call for removal of President Richard M. Nixon. Smith thereafter basked for many years in titles like "America's Lawyer," "Citizen Smith," and "Florida's Atticus Finch." This study examines Smith's wartime German-occupation US Army Captaincy. In spring 1945, he reportedly ordered the inhabitants of a Nazi camp to swap residences with local German civilians. The civilians were ordered by Smith into the camp themselves,, while their homes housed the Nazis' victims. This seems a conflation of much-publicized but far less dramatic incidents. They concerned Nazi camps and local civilians immediately within the hands of Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton, Jr. Given the sharply more lenient behavior (toward the German civilians) of those Generals, Smith's supposed theatrics appear a post-Watergate fairytale. Worse, "The Florida Bar Journal" has Smith share his story in 1995 with his adult son. The son replies that when Chesterfield's grandchildren grow older, this news will help them "understand the dark but important part of their Jewish heritage." If this self-laudatory story is a lie, what could have fueled it? In late 1993, the world witnessed Steven Spielberg's blockbuster-hit movie "Schindler's List."