“I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled. Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time. The concept of ex post facto law is not congenial to the Anglo-American viewpoint on law. Before criminal penalties can be imposed there must be fair warning that the conduct which one undertook was criminal.”—William O. Douglas, LL.D. (Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the U.S., 1939-1975)
We used to have these trials listed under postwar crimes, but since most visitors don't expect them there, hence had a hard time finding it, we moved it up one notch. If you wonder why we put it there in the first place: because the Allied tribunals and all the trials that followed in their wake were a crass violation of international law and thus a crime by definition. Here are papers bringing that message home.
By Keith Stimely ∙ April 1, 1984
“This is Purim Fest 1946!” was Julius Streicher's apt comment before he was sucked down into death via a gallows trap-door in the Nuremberg Prison gymnasium on 16 October 1946. He was the seventh of ten International Military Tribunal defendants hanged that day in fulfillment of the sentences imposed. (Hermann Göring had cheated the hangman…
By Theodore J. O'Keefe ∙ July 1, 1985
Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police, edited by Jochen von Lang in collaboration with Claus Sibyll. Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 1983, 293pp. The kidnapping, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann, the German officer alleged by the Israelis to have played a central…
By H. Keith Thompson ∙ December 1, 1984
Dönitz: The Last Führer, by Peter Padfield. New York: Harper and Row, 1984, 523pp, $25.00, ISBN 0-06-015264-8. In an appearance on a book-talk show on BBC radio, the author was asked why he had written this book. He replied that it was written at the suggestion of his agent. That is perhaps a clue to…
By Wilhelm Stäglich ∙ October 1, 1981
When I speak of so-called National Socialist (hereinafter: NS) crimes of violence, this correctly indicates my conviction that the legend of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" is a fiction. This is not the place to present a detail-by-detail rebuttal of this myth; others have already done so most adequately. In any case, as…
By T.D. Hendry ∙ April 1, 1982
Doenitz at Nuremberg: A Re-Appraisal, edited by H.K. Thompson, Jr. and Henry Strutz, preface by Justice William L. Hart, Amber Publishing (available from the IHR), Hb, 230pp heavily illustrated $11.00, ISBN 0-916788-01-6. This exceptionally comprehensive book was dedicated to Admiral Karl Doenitz, “a naval officer of unexcelled ability and unequalled courage who, in his nation's…
By William B. Lindsey ∙ October 1, 1983
We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught return To plague thinventor. This even handed justice Commends thingredience of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.—Shakespeare, Macbeth The Prelude to "Justice" Toward the end of World War II, the designated legal representatives of the United Nations,[1] meeting in London…
By Ray Merriam ∙ July 1, 1981
In 1977, I received a newspaper clipping from a reader of my Own publication, The Military Journal. The clipping contained an interview with Paul Martin, a survivor of the so-called “Malmédy Massacre,” and had apparently been published on the previous anniversary of the incident. Martin's comments are quite interesting. It is readily apparent that he…
By Andreas R. Wesserle ∙ July 1, 1981
On 14 November 1945, the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg (Nuremberg) were opened. The twenty-four accused, whose number was later reduced to twenty-two by disease and death, among the top officials of the National Socialist Party, the top leadership of the armed forces and of the state administration of the defeated German…
By Wayland D. Smith ∙ April 1, 1983
Failure at Nuremberg: An Analysis of the Trial, Evidence and Verdict, Institute for Historical Review (pb reprint) 42pp, $2.50, ISBN 0-939484-04-8. Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace, by Ilse Hess and Rudolf Hess, translated from the German by Meyrick Booth, Ph.D. and edited by George Pile with a Foreword by Air-Commodore G.S. Oddie, D.F.C., A.F.C. (Royal…
By H. Keith Thompson ∙ October 1, 1983
On the afternoon of 30 April 1945, with Berlin engulfed in flames and besieged by the Russians, the Hero of the Second World War[1] took his own life in his cement bunker beneath the chancellery complex. This courageous act, perhaps the ultimate act of courage, represented the termination of the heroic last stand of Western…
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