War Crime Trials + Prosecutions

“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.

A Revised Preface to “Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence”

A Though I may not agree with every observation made in Der Auschwitz Mythos, I must nevertheless state that it is a profound book, particularly in its analysis of the Frankfurt Trial (1963-1965), in which the author reveals to us the phenomenon, still so obscure and disquieting, of the human “will to believe.” The Frankfurt…

Thoughts on the Military History of the Occupation of Japan

I. Introduction We are now on the crest of a wave of interest in America's post-war occupation of Japan; many studies of the occupation have recently appeared, both in Japan and the United States.[1] Most of these works, however, are diplomatically, economically, or sociologically oriented. Studies undertaken primarily from a military viewpoint are comparatively few….

Made in Russia: The Holocaust

Made in Russia: The Holocaust by Carlos W. Porter. Uckfield, Sussex, England: Historical Review Press, 1988, Pb., 415 pages, $10.00, ISBN 0-939484-30-7. A stumbling block for Revisionists, just as it was for the postwar German defendants, is the seeming wealth of documents and testimony assembled by Allied prosecutors for the Nuremberg trials. The more than…

Innocent in Dachau

An unusual set of circumstances, over which I had only limited control, and timing, over which I had no control whatsoever, determined the course of my military career and led me to work as a court reporter at Dachau for the 7708 War Crimes Group in Germany after my discharge from the Army. Arriving in…

An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph

An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph, by Thomas Franklin, Huntsville, Alabama: Christopher Kaylor Company, 1987. 366 pages, $16.95, Hb., ISBN 0-916039-04-8. In the spring of 1986 I had the pleasure of interviewing several men who played key roles in the German rocket development program and in the subsequent American space program, which…

Quiet Neighbors

Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America by Alan A. Ryan, Jr. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1984, 386pp, $15.95, ISBN 0-15-175823-9. It's been six years since the Office of Special Investigations was established in the Justice Department to gather up the few loose ends remaining after Operation Keelhaul and similar actions…

The Torture of Julius Streicher

“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…

Eichmann Interrogated

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…

Dönitz: The Last Führer

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…

Zyklon B, Auschwitz, and the Trial of Dr. Bruno Tesch

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…

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