Essay Nuremburg Trial

by Hadding Scott TODAY SOMEBODY made the absurd assertion that the German defendants got a fair trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, soon to be Chief Justice, Harlan Fiske Stone, criticized the IMT at Nuremberg as follows (in a private letter to Sterling Carr, dated 4 December 1945): “Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg.I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law.It could be something as simple as a run away script or learning how to better use E-utilities, for more efficient work such that your work does not impact the ability of other researchers to also use our site.

IN THE confusion and disquiet of the war's first aftermath, there has been at least one great event from which we may properly take hope.

The surviving leaders of the Nazi conspiracy against mankind have been indicted, tried, and judged in a proceeding whose magnitude and quality make it a landmark in the history of international law.

The tribunal was given the authority to find any individual guilty of the commission of war crimes (counts 1–3 listed above) and to declare any group or organization to be criminal in character.

If an organization was found to be criminal, the prosecution could bring individuals to trial for having been members, and the criminal nature of the group or organization could no longer be questioned.

But this fact was in reality the best reason for rejecting such a solution.

The whole moral position of the victorious Powers must collapse if their judgments could be enforced only by Nazi methods.It was not a trick of the law which brought them to the bar; it was the "massed angered forces of common humanity." There were three different courses open to us when the Nazi leaders were captured: release, summary punishment, or trial.Release was unthinkable; it would have been taken as an admission that there was here no crime. It would have satisfied the immediate requirement of the emotions, and in its own roughhewn way it would have been fair enough, for this was precisely the type of justice that the Nazis themselves had so often used.Our anger, as righteous anger, must be subject to the law.We therefore took the third course and tried the captive criminals by a judicial proceeding.Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) London Agreement of August 8, 1945.The great undertaking at Nuremberg can live and grow in meaning, however, only if its principles are rightly understood and accepted.It is therefore disturbing to find that its work is criticized and even challenged as lawless by many who should know better. STIMSON, Secretary of State, 1929-1933; Secretary of War, 1911-1913, and 1940-1945; Chairman of the U. Delegation to the London Naval Conference, 1930, and to the Disarmament Conference, 1932 Defendants in the dock.The main target of the prosecution was Hermann Göring (at the left edge on the first row of benches), considered to be the most important surviving official in the Third Reich after Hitler's death.