The Nuremberg Trials were fascinating. While I think many of the individuals leading the tribunal were trying to do a good job in the tradition of their respective nations' legal frameworks, the victorious allies could really not see eye to eye on what was a fair measure of retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, etc. So my take is that largely all legal norms were discarded or violated, and the tribunal had to reach sentences and conclusions that were politically and diplomatically acceptable for the US, UK, France, and the USSR (not to mention a dozen or more other nations relying on the four victorious major powers in the immediate aftermath of the war).
These sorts of ordeals (not that there have been many of them) truly fascinate me - especially with regard to the decisions on 'appropriate' retributive justice. As a student growing up in South Africa we were often asked to compare the objectives and results of the Nuremburg trials alongside the Truth and Reconciliation Comission at the fall of Apartheid. The TRC allowed those accused (on both sides), to come forward and provide an honest recounting of their crimes to the court and family of the victim, and receive amnesty in return.
Especially given that I'm of a generation born near the end of Apartheid, we grew up with the "badge of honour" mentality around the TRC. But almost 30 years later, many of the victims of these crimes are left feeling like the perpetrators got off scott-free, for an often half-recounting of the event and not much more. It's not uncommon to hear references to Nuremburg when discussing the more henoius crimes described - for example, a doctor performing the sorts of acts those at Nuremburg were tried for, who was recently discovered to be a family GP in one of the Nation's capitals, quietly continuing his life. However, it's not an opinion I would say is particularly strong in those who have it, nor too commonly discussed - but it's an interesting weighing up of "an appropriate justice which would please all participants was difficult, or impossible to decide", versus "it's incredible that the participants and organisers were able to come to a decision that did what it said on the box, mostly".
I was particularly interested to see suggestions of a TRC (based on South Africa's own) introduced to deal with the after-effects of the 'Troubles' in Ireland, England and Northern Ireland - and it appeared to be a strong "NO" from all sides, which I found fascinating as it did not seem driven only by a need for appropriate retributive justice, but rather (in my opinon) seemed driven by the belief that we have the ability to draw finer lines as a group, and need not polarize our decisions between harsh, message-sending retribution and amnesty for participation.
All that being said I couldn't tell you which pick given the choice, but it certainly feels hopeful reflecting on just how much care in group decision making and inclusive participation has been displayed in the past in such events.
I know not much at all about South Africa but what you describe puts me in mind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb's_paradox - the world will be better off if powerful criminals believe that they can give up their power and still live consequence-free. Then at least they have the option of giving up power and everyone might benefit.
If they think they'll be given the Gaddafi treatment [0] then the rational thing for powerful monsters to do is go down swinging.
It is better to have systems to punish crimes, but it is also important to have meaningful amnesty even at the expense of fairness.
I think that one of the concerns about a TRC in NI is/was that both sides saw the future opportunity for justice within the existing or likely to exist legal framework. A TRC would have nullified that and many people felt that the state actors (in particular) should not be allowed to evade potential accountability.
One of the main points against the validity of the Trials is that some of the most high profile defendants confessed to things that were either not true or greatly exaggerated versions of the truth. E.g. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, confessed to having murdered three million people there, whereas in reality the number could not have been much more than 1 million.
And yet, all the sentences were laughably short. Organizing the worst mass slaughter in human history got most of its architects and functionaries less time than driving a getaway car for a convenience store robbery in Florida would.
And then most of them were paroled less than half way through their sentences.
People who plead guilty and pledged loyalty to the new government were given light sentences. People who plead innocent were executed. The results could hardly be called inexplicable.
I've posted a top level comment as I felt it was worth it, but the last surviving prosecutor passed away April 2023 and wrote multiple inspiring works on the topic. Lookup Ben Ferencz' 'Parting Words' . While the book doesn't spend its entire time on the trial, it discusses the difficulties of holding people accountable for war crimes (even today).
The movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) is the classic summary. It's a docu-drama, but reasonably accurate. All the big stars of the day, from Spencer Tracy to Judy Garland. William Shatner has a minor role.
I'd be very curious to see what people recommend since I think it's very important to consider how the victors behaved at the end of the war. I studied some details about Nuremberg while in law school, from an Anglo American legal point of view, and then I spent a lot of time on wikipedia learning the historical background of the individuals involved.
> The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.
You can't have a fair trial when the prosecution gets to admit whatever evidence it wants, including evidence that would normally be inadmissable (eg. Hearsay, admissions made through coercion or torture, etc). The tribunal was effectively a show trial, and in my opinion they should have just dispensed with the theater and carried out the predetermined punishments.
Where it suited the U.S. Cold War objectives, they turned a blind eye to certain individuals, notably scientists. Hoping to deprive the Soviets of scientific expertise in rocket design and various topics related to nuclear weapons, the U.S. created an extra-judicial pathway that bypassed prosecution for some.
SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.
The book “Operation Paperclip” delved into this and other examples.
Another example is that the crimes for which various Nazis were tried were not codified to be crimes in any legal document at the tim. Bombing civilians etc was not, as such, banned by any international law, nor were genocide, concentration camps etc, and indeed the Allies did at times similar things themselves.
So although the Nuremberg trials were fashioned as a court of law and followed legal-esque principles, there was no written law or could follow; it simply didn't exist.
Hence, the tribunal was considered by some lawyers to be a mockery of court. The verdicts were effectively known ahead of time and no laws could really be cited, no legal process to follow.
That said, I'm not sure what would be a better alternative.
It's not exactly what you are asking, but the tribunal wasn't even internally consistent. Look at Albert Speer. He wasn't executed and was about as high in the Nazi organisation as one could rise. Uniquely, he accepted (some) responsibility but other than that, the ruling is not very consistent.
Weren't they in the process of committing some as these trials were ongoing? I don't think there's a reliable number, but certainly 6 figure and likely 7 figure death tolls for ethnic Germans due to postwar resettlements etc.
> all the major powers had committed similar atrocities in their own pasts
The Soviets for sure, but are you really arguing that the US and UK (and Empire) were operating on the same industrial level?
Incidents that come to mind for me would include the Bengal famine, and it was terrible, but it wasn't the systematic and controlled killing at which the Soviets and Nazis became so expert.
They had also accepted Soviet insistence that only Axis aggression was covered by the new court - otherwise the Soviet authorities would have been in the dock as well for carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/20...
The alliance failed from day 1 since they were also supposed to declare war on the soviets and not just Germany since they were supposed to protect the integrity of Poland which was violated by both Germany and Russia.
> Everyone in the court was issued with headphones to allow them to hear the charges being read in their native language, but the accused showed little interest.
They were probably already resigned to the idea that they would be executed and thought there was little point in trying to pay attention and defend themselves. Most of them wished they were already dead.
> The British Government wanted to shoot the leaders once they were caught and formally identified - but the Soviet Union and US favoured a legal process.
It's ironic how the British wanted to resort to such uncivilized methods as summary execution without trial, while the Soviet preferred a legal path.
Is it actually ironic? Weren’t the soviets well-known for show trials? That is, were they arguing for a legal process or a legitimising one? I don’t know the reason for the British preference but I do feel there are arguments for it, e.g. if such a tribunal was expected to have predetermined results, why associate your legitimate legal system with it.
"It questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid the war at all costs but were forced into action by Adolf Hitler's aggression. It consists largely of official government transcripts, newspaper articles, and other documents from the time, with Baker only occasionally interjecting commentary. Baker cites documents that suggest that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom were provoking Germany and Japan into war and had ulterior motives for participating."
The reviews are less than stellar: "Historian Noel Malcolm described it as a "strangely childish book"[3] and journalist William Grimes in The New York Times as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book."[4] Christopher Hitchens accused Baker of ahistoricism and wrote that numerous passages in the book served as a reminder of how "fatuous the pacifist position can sound, or indeed can be."
The last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials passed away on April 7, 2023 at the age of 103. It was Ben Ferencz' first case after he learned of the Eastern fronts 'Nazi death squad' (Einsatzgruppen). All other tribunal prosecutors were committed to other cases when he described the atrocities to his superior, so he took the case on himself. It both validates the top comment of allies not seeing eye to eye, but also how understaffed and underprepared the tribunal was.
He later helped start the Hague and dedicated his life acting as a voice for the voiceless due to war crimes and genocides.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Ben was a beam of light for all around him. I highly recommend his works. Especially "Parting Words: 9 Lessons for a Remarkable Life"
His sort-of blog[1] is also fascinating, documenting stories from childhood until retirement and beyond. He travelled through Switzerland by bartering sugar (a rare commodity after war, but he had bags of them from the US army mess halls) for Swiss francs ... and missed his boat home[2]!
I recently reread The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which was written a long, long time ago. But the author had paid his dues by reading all this, when it was a lot harder to get at than it is now.
In the version I read, he starts it off taking about how the Nazi archives are currently sitting in storage in New York. He advocates mimeographing them before returning them to the (West) Germans.
The Nuremberg Trials weren't perfect. One notable example was Albert Speer, Hitler's Architect and part of his inner circle who got away with a 20 year sentence (before moving to London where he died years later) by claiming to not know anything about the Final Solution. He got away with this by basically being a "gentleman" without their being a smoking gun. It was a classic "he's one of us".
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country. I mean there are neo-Nazi elements in Germany today but they're really fringe elements. If anything they're far less fringe in the United States now (fun fact: the United States had a lot of Nazi sympathizers eg the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden).
This is where we went wrong with the Civil War: we failed to cull the slave-owning class when such attitudes needed to be snuffed out entirely. I mean Emancipation came with compensating the slave owners rather than the slaves themselves. Lincoln's assassination was really unfortunate here too just because of who his VP was: a Confederate sympathizer who, among other things, pardoned all the secessionists and rebels.
I really wonder if we'd snuffed out the slave owning class and compensated the former slaves where we'd be today. Slavery economics simply moved to the prison system and forced labor.Segregation persisted for another century and the echoes of all that still exist today.
I can accept a parallel between the systems in which slavery and nazism are tolerated.
But it seems an important difference, in judging the participants, whether those systems were inherited from hundreds of years of precedent, or newly-built by the current perpetrators.
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country.
Denazification was an entirely different process. The Nuremberg trials were for the very top leaders (and only a handful). The apparatus of the Nazi government never went to trial, they went through a Denazification process that was abandoned pretty quickly.
There are numerous examples of relatively high level Nazi's being a part of the new German government. The best example is Reinhard Gehlen who led the build up of West Germanys entire intelligence agency. Numerous Nazi officers ended up in high ranking positions in the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and in high ranking political positions.
You're not wrong. Classic example: Adolf Neusinger [1] who went from the Nazi High Command to Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. Von Braun was another well-documented example.
We just differ on what "de-Nazification" means. It's partly about cutting the head off the snake but also making a public spectacle of it, laying Germany's war crimes bare for all the world to see, especially ordinary Germans. The Nuremberg Trials weren't solely responsible for this but they provided a key focal point.
Imagine if we'd cut the head off the Confederate snake in the same way.
Stalin once proposed during one of the Allied conferences to take and execute 50,000 German officers after the war. Since the Nazis kept detailed documentation about who did what, I think one could have easily found 50,000 SS and Wehrmacht members that committed war crimes severe enough to do so. Part of me thinks that should have happened, way to many Nazi scumbags got away to hold positions of power in the BRD.
> But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country.
Um what?! You seem to know very little about post-war bureaurcats in West Germany. They failed completely at de-nazifying then country.
Example, the first secret service (Organisation Gehlen, precursor to BND) was headed by a Wehrmacht general. The CIA put him there and didn't care. He was useful against the Soviets.
Even the first chancellor (Adenauer) eas basically blind on the right eye.
The East was much more effective in de-nazifying, sometimes a little too eager even. (And Adenauer refused to accept even the existence of the East German state. Surprise.)
The Nuremberg case is a very interesting precedent. First of all, the Nuremberg trials—of all the tribunals that have taken place, from then until today—it is, I think, the most serious by far. But, nevertheless, it was very seriously flawed. And it was recognized to be. When Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor, wrote about it, he recognized that it was flawed, and it was so for a number of fundamental reasons. For one thing, the Nazi war criminals were being tried for crimes that had not yet been declared to be crimes. So, it was ex post facto. ‘We’re now declaring these things you did to be crimes.’ That is already questionable.
There is plenty more absurdity. like this bit:
Secondly, the choice of what was considered a crime was based on a very explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality. In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it and we didn’t do it.
So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on—those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And that’s the way it ran through. Now, that’s a very serious flaw. Nevertheless, of all the tribunals, that’s the most serious one.
so, props to the new site and Stanford and crew for hinting at the absurdity of the trial, but i think they should do much more than hint. alas, calling every US President (and their many underlings) war criminals would probably not win Stanford many fans in the circles of power.
Chomsky has proven to be a rather biased observer in the "yeahbutwhatabout" game. Which is saying something, considering his ethnic heritage and the fact that we're talking about Nazis.
If he and Kissinger were on fire and I only had one glass of water, I'd drink it.
You’re being downvoted, but I’ll say this as someone who would be on Chomsky’s side if he bothered to even be on his own damn side… yeah, I’d drink the water too.
I highly recommend the Adam Curtis documentary (with its own biases and short comings) “The Living Dead”. In particular this episode. Trials like these probably don't work in the way you might think they work. The goal is to establish the 1 version of history that is recorded.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08b5xvv
Readit News
Especially given that I'm of a generation born near the end of Apartheid, we grew up with the "badge of honour" mentality around the TRC. But almost 30 years later, many of the victims of these crimes are left feeling like the perpetrators got off scott-free, for an often half-recounting of the event and not much more. It's not uncommon to hear references to Nuremburg when discussing the more henoius crimes described - for example, a doctor performing the sorts of acts those at Nuremburg were tried for, who was recently discovered to be a family GP in one of the Nation's capitals, quietly continuing his life. However, it's not an opinion I would say is particularly strong in those who have it, nor too commonly discussed - but it's an interesting weighing up of "an appropriate justice which would please all participants was difficult, or impossible to decide", versus "it's incredible that the participants and organisers were able to come to a decision that did what it said on the box, mostly".
I was particularly interested to see suggestions of a TRC (based on South Africa's own) introduced to deal with the after-effects of the 'Troubles' in Ireland, England and Northern Ireland - and it appeared to be a strong "NO" from all sides, which I found fascinating as it did not seem driven only by a need for appropriate retributive justice, but rather (in my opinon) seemed driven by the belief that we have the ability to draw finer lines as a group, and need not polarize our decisions between harsh, message-sending retribution and amnesty for participation.
All that being said I couldn't tell you which pick given the choice, but it certainly feels hopeful reflecting on just how much care in group decision making and inclusive participation has been displayed in the past in such events.
If they think they'll be given the Gaddafi treatment [0] then the rational thing for powerful monsters to do is go down swinging.
It is better to have systems to punish crimes, but it is also important to have meaningful amnesty even at the expense of fairness.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya
Deleted Comment
And then most of them were paroled less than half way through their sentences.
Also it is full of courtroom art/sketches from the proceedings.
Could you give some examples?
> The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.
You can't have a fair trial when the prosecution gets to admit whatever evidence it wants, including evidence that would normally be inadmissable (eg. Hearsay, admissions made through coercion or torture, etc). The tribunal was effectively a show trial, and in my opinion they should have just dispensed with the theater and carried out the predetermined punishments.
https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/text_blocks/2749
SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.
The book “Operation Paperclip” delved into this and other examples.
So although the Nuremberg trials were fashioned as a court of law and followed legal-esque principles, there was no written law or could follow; it simply didn't exist.
Hence, the tribunal was considered by some lawyers to be a mockery of court. The verdicts were effectively known ahead of time and no laws could really be cited, no legal process to follow.
That said, I'm not sure what would be a better alternative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer
The Soviets for sure, but are you really arguing that the US and UK (and Empire) were operating on the same industrial level? Incidents that come to mind for me would include the Bengal famine, and it was terrible, but it wasn't the systematic and controlled killing at which the Soviets and Nazis became so expert.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
again something nobody talks about.
> Everyone in the court was issued with headphones to allow them to hear the charges being read in their native language, but the accused showed little interest.
They were probably already resigned to the idea that they would be executed and thought there was little point in trying to pay attention and defend themselves. Most of them wished they were already dead.
> The British Government wanted to shoot the leaders once they were caught and formally identified - but the Soviet Union and US favoured a legal process.
It's ironic how the British wanted to resort to such uncivilized methods as summary execution without trial, while the Soviet preferred a legal path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Smoke
The reviews are less than stellar: "Historian Noel Malcolm described it as a "strangely childish book"[3] and journalist William Grimes in The New York Times as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book."[4] Christopher Hitchens accused Baker of ahistoricism and wrote that numerous passages in the book served as a reminder of how "fatuous the pacifist position can sound, or indeed can be."
He later helped start the Hague and dedicated his life acting as a voice for the voiceless due to war crimes and genocides.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Ben was a beam of light for all around him. I highly recommend his works. Especially "Parting Words: 9 Lessons for a Remarkable Life"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Ferencz
[1] https://benferencz.org/stories/
[2] https://benferencz.org/stories/1943-1946/getting-home-as-a-s...
The Nuremberg trials were international. Judges came from all occupying powers.
When they were done, America rented out the courthouse and used it for America-only trials.
The initial trials were for top-tier Nazis. The subsequent trials were for mid-tier Nazis who committed especially heinous crimes.
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country. I mean there are neo-Nazi elements in Germany today but they're really fringe elements. If anything they're far less fringe in the United States now (fun fact: the United States had a lot of Nazi sympathizers eg the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden).
This is where we went wrong with the Civil War: we failed to cull the slave-owning class when such attitudes needed to be snuffed out entirely. I mean Emancipation came with compensating the slave owners rather than the slaves themselves. Lincoln's assassination was really unfortunate here too just because of who his VP was: a Confederate sympathizer who, among other things, pardoned all the secessionists and rebels.
I really wonder if we'd snuffed out the slave owning class and compensated the former slaves where we'd be today. Slavery economics simply moved to the prison system and forced labor.Segregation persisted for another century and the echoes of all that still exist today.
But it seems an important difference, in judging the participants, whether those systems were inherited from hundreds of years of precedent, or newly-built by the current perpetrators.
Denazification was an entirely different process. The Nuremberg trials were for the very top leaders (and only a handful). The apparatus of the Nazi government never went to trial, they went through a Denazification process that was abandoned pretty quickly.
There are numerous examples of relatively high level Nazi's being a part of the new German government. The best example is Reinhard Gehlen who led the build up of West Germanys entire intelligence agency. Numerous Nazi officers ended up in high ranking positions in the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and in high ranking political positions.
We just differ on what "de-Nazification" means. It's partly about cutting the head off the snake but also making a public spectacle of it, laying Germany's war crimes bare for all the world to see, especially ordinary Germans. The Nuremberg Trials weren't solely responsible for this but they provided a key focal point.
Imagine if we'd cut the head off the Confederate snake in the same way.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
Um what?! You seem to know very little about post-war bureaurcats in West Germany. They failed completely at de-nazifying then country.
Example, the first secret service (Organisation Gehlen, precursor to BND) was headed by a Wehrmacht general. The CIA put him there and didn't care. He was useful against the Soviets.
Even the first chancellor (Adenauer) eas basically blind on the right eye.
The East was much more effective in de-nazifying, sometimes a little too eager even. (And Adenauer refused to accept even the existence of the East German state. Surprise.)
> The IMT contributed to the definition of war crimes and the outlawing of wars of aggression.
that hints at what really happened at the tribunal. chomsky has some details:
https://chomsky.info/20070803/
There is plenty more absurdity. like this bit: so, props to the new site and Stanford and crew for hinting at the absurdity of the trial, but i think they should do much more than hint. alas, calling every US President (and their many underlings) war criminals would probably not win Stanford many fans in the circles of power.He didn't get out early because he wouldn't denounce his allegiance to Hitler, either.
If he and Kissinger were on fire and I only had one glass of water, I'd drink it.
that kind of whataboutism?