Hacker News Reader

Comment by sorokod | Hacker News Reader

"So my take is that largely all legal norms were discarded or violated"

Could you give some examples?

The Nuremberg Charter effectively admits this:

> The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.

You can't have a fair trial when the prosecution gets to admit whatever evidence it wants, including evidence that would normally be inadmissable (eg. Hearsay, admissions made through coercion or torture, etc). The tribunal was effectively a show trial, and in my opinion they should have just dispensed with the theater and carried out the predetermined punishments.

https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/text_blocks/2749

I think labeling it a "show trial" goes too far. Three of the original defendants (Fritzsche, von Papen, and Schacht) were acquitted; and Doenitz was spared the death penalty for his unrestricted submarine warfare orders because similar orders were issued by the victorious Allies. I doubt a full-on show trial would have been as just or merciful.

Where it suited the U.S. Cold War objectives, they turned a blind eye to certain individuals, notably scientists. Hoping to deprive the Soviets of scientific expertise in rocket design and various topics related to nuclear weapons, the U.S. created an extra-judicial pathway that bypassed prosecution for some.

SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.

The book “Operation Paperclip” delved into this and other examples.

>SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.

And the US knew of the slave labor used by Belgium in Congo to extract uranium for the nuclear weapons program which killed dozens to hundreds of Congolese but for some reason we never talk about that as it's always "hey, don't look over there, look at the evil Nazis instead".

Another example is that the crimes for which various Nazis were tried were not codified to be crimes in any legal document at the tim. Bombing civilians etc was not, as such, banned by any international law, nor were genocide, concentration camps etc, and indeed the Allies did at times similar things themselves.

So although the Nuremberg trials were fashioned as a court of law and followed legal-esque principles, there was no written law or could follow; it simply didn't exist.

Hence, the tribunal was considered by some lawyers to be a mockery of court. The verdicts were effectively known ahead of time and no laws could really be cited, no legal process to follow.

That said, I'm not sure what would be a better alternative.

It's not exactly what you are asking, but the tribunal wasn't even internally consistent. Look at Albert Speer. He wasn't executed and was about as high in the Nazi organisation as one could rise. Uniquely, he accepted (some) responsibility but other than that, the ruling is not very consistent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer

Thanks, for reference, the list of defendents

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defendants_at_the_In...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com