Today is the 62nd anniversary of the opening of the Nuremberg trials, when the warlords of Nazi Germany were held to answer for their crimes. In the spirit of solidarity with the striking Hollywood writer crowd, whose actions are apparently resulting in more reruns (how is it possible to tell?), and because I'm bereft of other ideas at the moment, here is a re-posting of my analysis of the Nuremberg trials from last year's anniversary.Nuremberg (Nürnberg) is a picturesque city that, for at least a thousand years, has sat astride the Pegnitz River in the state of Bavaria in southern Germany. For centuries, Nuremberg was a key center both of trade and the administration of the Holy Roman Empire, and was known as the empire’s unofficial capital. In 1298, in an ominous foreshadowing of its distant future, Nuremberg was the site of a notorious pogrom in which 698 Jews perished for allegedly desecrating the Blessed Sacrament. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Nuremberg was the center of the Renaissance in Germany; its fortunes declined at the beginning of the 19th century with the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
On the surface, Nuremberg appeared to recapture its old glory in the 1930s when, as part of its campaign to connect itself in the public imagination to the Holy Roman Empire, the Nazi régime made the city a national shrine and chose it as the site of its annual party rallies. The city that had once been a Mecca of trade and culture and a nerve center of the empire founded by Charlemagne now became a den of race hatred and anti-Semitism. From the earliest days of the Nazi régime, the city came under the rule of the venomous and sadistic Julius Streicher, publisher of three anti-Semitic children’s books and
Der Stürmer, a Jew-hating, anti-Catholic, pornographic weekly so foul that it was too much even for the likes of Hermann Göring, who founded the Gestapo and the concentration camps, and Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth. The so-called “Nuremberg Laws” that deprived German Jews of citizenship rights were first promulgated at a meeting of the Reichstag in Nuremberg in 1935. Later, when war came, Nuremberg was an important center for the manufacture of munitions. By 1945, systematic Allied bombing raids had cost the lives of at least 6,000 of Nuremberg’s citizens and reduced the city to rubble. Nuremberg had paid dearly for its prestige under Hitler.
Now that the war was over, and most of the Nazi chieftains were either dead or in captivity, the city of Nuremberg would begin to expiate the sins of its past. It was in part precisely because it was sacred to the Nazi régime that Nuremberg was chosen as the site for the Nazi war crimes trials, which began 61 years ago today.
Journalist and broadcaster William S. Shirer spent years living in and covering Nazi Germany, and actually met and conversed with many of the top Nazis during their heyday. When the war ended, he returned to Germany to witness the trials at Nuremberg. In his book
The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940 (Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1984 at 633), Shirer describes his impression of the 21 defendants in the dock:
I was shocked at my first sight of them. How the mighty had fallen! Shorn of the power and the trappings of Nazism, how common and mediocre they looked. Was it possible, I asked myself, that these nondescript, little men, fidgeting nervously in their shabby garb, were the ones who when last you saw them wielded such monstrous power? How could they, so measly of countenance as they slumped in their seats, have conquered a great nation and then all of Western Europe? They no longer looked like conquerors, like chieftains of the Master Race. Gone was the arrogance, the insolence, the truculence…. “Broken, miserable little men!” I jotted down in my running notes. [Emphasis in original.]
In contemplating the Nuremberg trials, it is worthwhile to pause over the objections to such trials – not all of which objections are frivolous, even if they are ultimately unpersuasive. The first and most obvious is that the Nuremberg trials were nothing more than victor’s justice: a double standard in the application of justice to the vanquished by the victors. This is arguably true as it relates to the representation of the Soviet Union on the tribunal. Clearly, the same standards of civilized conduct were not being applied equally to the bloody Nazis, and the even bloodier Soviets, who initially aided and abetted Hitler in his bid to conquer eastern Europe and whose main judge, Iona Nikitchenko, was one of Stalin’s top show trial impresarios between 1936 and 1938. The argument is wholly unpersuasive in the case of the United States, Britain and France, which were also represented on the tribunal, since there is no stretch of the imagination by which it can be claimed that anything they did is even in the same league as Nazi atrocities. Also, the fact that the Soviet butchers were not brought to justice does not mean the Nazi butchers should not have been. There is no question that Hitlerism failed to meet even the most minimal standards by which a civilized nation must be governed. Even in spite of the participation of Soviet judges, the allegations of victor’s justice must frankly stammer and fall silent before the horrors Hitler unleashed on the world, the scale and brutality of which beggar the imagination.
Another argument raised in opposition to the Nuremberg trials was that they violated the principle against
ex post facto justice that is enshrined in our own Constitution. The reason for outlawing
ex post facto justice is that notice is a material element of due process: no one can or should be convicted of committing an act that was not a crime at the time it was committed. Similarly, the argument ran, at least some of the charges in the indictment – participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; crimes against humanity – were not codified at the time the acts giving rise to those charges were committed, such that the defendants were on notice that they were committing culpable acts. But ever since the day Moses carried the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, all of mankind has been on notice that murder is a crime; and if murdering one person is a crime punishable by death, then surely, so is mass murder, planned and carried out on an industrial scale. As St. Paul says in Romans 2:15, “what the law requires is written on [our] hearts”; the very fact that our consciences are shocked by the Nazis’ deeds bears witness to the truth of these words. But even if this were not enough, as early as October 30, 1943, in their joint Moscow Declaration, the Allies had publicly warned the Axis of their resolve to find and punish war criminals. None of the defendants could say they hadn’t been warned.
Finally, there are the due process considerations. The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal makes clear that the trials did not rise to the level of due process as we understand it in this country. Although the defendants were entitled to counsel and a defense – and in fact mounted lengthy and vigorous defenses – certain key procedural and substantive safeguards were unquestionably lacking. The right to remain silent, enshrined in the United States as a constitutional guarantee, did not exist. Defendants did not have the right to appeal their convictions, although the severity of their sentences was subject to review. And there were no firm safeguards to guarantee the reliability of the evidence that would be admitted before the tribunal. There were no rules of evidence as such, so that a defendant facing a sentence of death could, at least in theory, be convicted on the basis of evidence that was inherently unreliable, such as hearsay. But in judging the justness of an international tribunal before which defeated war criminals are brought, which is the relevant inquiry: whether the tribunal measures up to the highest ideal? or how it compares to the alternatives – such as summary execution? As chief prosecutor Robert Jackson said in his opening statement: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
The trial of Nazi Germany’s major war criminals lasted until October 1, 1946. Of the 24 individuals who were indicted, three were acquitted; one was found medically unfit to stand trial; one committed suicide before the trial began; and 19 were convicted. Seven defendants received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. The rest were sentenced to death: Hermann Göring, Hitler’s chief deputy, head of the Luftwaffe and founder of the concentration camps; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi foreign minister and negotiator of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; Martin Bormann, Nazi party secretary; Fritz Sauckel, who ran the Nazi slave labor program; Hans Frank, ruler of occupied Poland; Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior and author of the Nuremberg Laws; Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Wehrmacht, and Alfred Jodl, his subordinate; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, leader of the Austrian SS and head of an umbrella organization that governed, among other things, the
Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo; Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi party racial philosopher; Arthur Seyss-Inquardt, who had handed Austria over to Hitler in 1938; Julius Streicher, inciter of murder and Jew-hatred. On October 16, 1946, the condemned Nazis (except Göring, who cheated the hangman by committing suicide, and Bormann, who had been tried and convicted
in absentia) died at the end of a rope. After the executions, the crematory ovens at Dachau were lit once more, this time to consume the bodies of those who had fed them for so long with the corpses of so many innocents. No one knows for certain where their ashes were scattered.
The crimes of the Nazi war criminals screamed to heaven for retribution, and retribution was meted out at Nuremberg. This alone makes Nuremberg worthwhile. But at least equally importantly, especially in an age of Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers, Nuremberg served the purpose of placing on record abundant and overwhelming proof of Hitler’s unspeakable vengeance against his enemies, especially the Jews. In the final analysis, whatever the flaws and imperfections of the Nuremberg tribunal, the results are quite difficult – if not impossible – to quarrel with.
O Glorious St. Andrew, you were the first to recognize and follow the Lamb of God. With your friend St. John you remained with Jesus for that first day, for your entire life, and now throughout eternity.
