How to Deal with the Nazi Past? The Nuremberg Trials
German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, who ordered the Wannsee Conference for planning the "final solution"
and committed suicide after being convicted of crimes against humanity, testifying at Nuremberg
I)
Precedents
A) The tradition of reparations: in the past a victorious state would typically take territory
from its vanquished foe and impose an indemnity on it.
1) Rome placed fines on Carthage during the Punic Wars
2) Following the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71, France was forced to pay Germany.
2) Germany stripped of colonies, territories, and fined $33 billion in the 1919 Treaty of
Versailles
B) The term "crimes against humanity" appeared for the first time in the British, French,
and Russian note to the Ottoman government, May 1915.
1) It stated that the Ottoman government "and its agents" would be held responsible
for "crimes against humanity" in relation to the Armenian deportations and
massacres.
2) Some effort to prosecute the Young Turk leaders after World War I. British take a
large group, over 150, to Malta, but never try them.
II) Debate: Retribution or Justice?
A) Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau's Plan—round up Nazi leaders and execute them
B) Secretary of War Stimson's plan –prepare to arrange trials against the perpetrators of
war, judging the waging of a war as a criminal act
C) Stalin's joke—At the 1943 Tehran Conference Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin proposed
executing 50,000-100,000 German staff officers.
III) Principles of the Trials
A) Need to hold Nazis leaders responsible for their misdeeds.
B) Requirement that trials be fair, hence right of defendants to counsel, to see the evidence
before them, to testify on their own behalf, etc. Adhere to American principles of
justice.
C) American jurisprudence shapes the indictment and proceedings
1) Indictment based on American laws, hence the recurring phrase "Nazi conspirators."
2) Adversarial approach questioned by the French and Soviet delegations and
prosecutors, who prefer an inquisition
D) Need to establish a historical record to document war crimes
IV) International Military Tribunals Charter August 1945
A) Article VI
1) Crimes against peace.
2) War crimes.
3) Crimes against humanity
4) Conspiracy to wage aggressive war
B) Important ideological innovations
1) Individuals as well as states could be held accountable.
2) Crimes against humanity can be defined and are actionable