Nuremburg Trials -who wanted them

[Engineer]

I just finished watching a documentary that the Russians were against a War Crimes Tribunal for the German General Staff and other officers but the Americans and British were for it.

I've also read that the Russians were the one's pushing for a War Crimes Tribunal and the American's were opposing them, insisting that the German General staff be simply locked up.

Can anyone shed some light on the (political) positions of the Russians, American's, British in regards to the Nuremburg Trials, who was for them, who against.

Thanks
Engineer

[demonio]

The Russians or Stalin moreover wanted to give the accused Nazi/german War Criminals summary executions without trial. America didn't think this would look good, so they went about negotiating for a trial process and they got it. They got it largely because they had in their posession the prize catch Hermann Goering, and some other notables. The French agreed but wanted an element of the inquisitorial system rather then an adversary system which is what USA, Britain, etc has. This means that the trial judges were to decide Guilty or not Guilty instead of common folk. There have been many critisms of the trial ie "kangaroo court" etc. My issues with it are purely about parity of sentence between Sauckel and Speer and i often ask myself What the %$#% was Rudolph Hess doing there and how he was found sane to stand trial in the first place. I also think Streicher should have got a lengthy determinate sentence but not death. The trial also seemed like just a formality as there were enormous amounts of documental evidence against many of the accused.
The biggest problems the prosecutors had was deciding where to stop with the documents they were introducing as evidence, lest the judges become bored. So then they focussed more on witness testimony and forensic evidences.

[R.M. Schultz]

My issues with it are purely about parity of sentence between Sauckel and Speer …

By and large I agree with the Nürnberg sentences. Speer was clever enough to feign remorse and so got off with twenty years, well there's one in every crowd. Hess crazy? Crazy enough to get off with life!. As for Streicher, anything less than slow torture was too good for him. My objection is to Raeder and Doenitz being punished at all for what Halsey and Nimitz were doing in the Pacific

[trower]

My issues with it are purely about parity of sentence between Sauckel and Speer …

By and large I agree with the Nürnberg sentences. Speer was clever enough to feign remorse and so got off with twenty years, well there's one in every crowd. Hess crazy? Crazy enough to get off with life!. As for Streicher, anything less than slow torture was too good for him. My objection is to Raeder and Doenitz being punished at all for what Halsey and Nimitz were doing in the Pacific

Streicher got his slow torture, it took him over 20 minutes to die at the end of the rope.

[demonio]

I admit that i dont know much about Raeder and Doenitz. I need some serious filling in about them.

I took the position on Streicher because for however despicable a human being he was, i dont know that he personally murdered anyone or ordered it in an authoritative capacity, he did however advocate hate and authored lots of vile cartoons and articles that even some top nazis could not stand. For this reason i think he should have got 15 years (but again it is worth discussing just what he is guilty of besides bad taste.

Your right about him suffering on the rope. He took the longest to die i think.

There was a good thread not so long ago where we discussed the Speer & Sauckel saga and concluded it just was not fair to hang Sauckel and spare Speer, we all thought both should have hung or both spared with lengthy sentences with Speers being about 5 to 10 years longer

[tonyh]

Streicher simply should not have been there, no matter how vile he and his publication was. The man was severely disliked by a lot of nazi party members too. He was no murderer though and his dirty little publication had many "like" publications in other parts of the world, especially America, where there were quite a few racist magazines floating around right up to the late 50's, so the rush to try him is somewhat hypocritical.

Raeder, Donitz, Piper and other military men being prosecuted is a farce and brings the trials down IMO. The bottom line though is that it served as a show trial to "finish of" the war and bring the conflict to a conclusion. It also galvinised the idea that the German was a "war criminal" in general. A residue that is still in many people's minds.

Tony

[demonio]

I can see your point Tony. Its kind of grey re Streicher.
Again all he seems guilty of is bad taste, but his publications did call for the outright murder of the "inferior" races and helped get the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide, so one could argue that he was a cog in the wheel of the extermination machine. Maybe it should have been a different charge for him. Is inciting mass murder a crime under any international charter ?

[R.M. Schultz]

Is inciting mass muder a crime under any international charter ?

I think we can make a moral analogy here.

Genocide is to Homicide as Streicher's propaganda is to Reckless Endangerment.

That is, while Streicher did not himself participate in genocide, his laying of a groundwork for it makes him morally culpable and, given the size of the Nazi genocide, he is deserving of death.

[Scott Smith]

Is inciting mass muder a crime under any international charter ?

I think we can make a moral analogy here.

Genocide is to Homicide as Streicher's propaganda is to Reckless Endangerment.

That is, while Streicher did not himself participate in genocide, his laying of a groundwork for it makes him morally culpable and, given the size of the Nazi genocide, he is deserving of death.

No, he was guilty of Thoughtcrime, which means that if he had been on the Allied side his vile propaganda would have been seen as a good thing that helped win the war. Basically, those who believe in democratic values are hypocrites if they believe in free-speech only when they agree with it themselves. Streicher was punished for what he thought, not for what he did. As far as Hess, he spent most of the war in a British prison. He never deserved to have been tried at all. Another political criminal. We are told that the Nazis were bad because they put political enemies into prison camps.

[witness]

Yet another stupid post by Smith.

We are told that the Nazis were bad because they put political enemies into prison camps.

Wrong . The Nazis were bad because they were murdering and persecuting people
for
1. other then Nazi political convictions. All other then Nazi political parties were banned under the Nazi rule and political opponents either murdered or sent to KZs.
2, belonging to the ethnic groups which they considered either at all unworthy of life (Jews,Gypsies) or worthy of life just in the subservent to their masters-ubermench position(Slavs )
3. belonging to sexual minorities
4. belonging to religious congregations which Nazis deemed to be not compatible with their ideas. ( Jehova witnesses )

No other political party in history (even the bloody Communist party in the USSR or China )succeded to accomplish murdering so many innocent people for such a short period of time of twelve years.

[Charles Bunch]

Is inciting mass muder a crime under any international charter ?

I think we can make a moral analogy here.

Genocide is to Homicide as Streicher's propaganda is to Reckless Endangerment.

That is, while Streicher did not himself participate in genocide, his laying of a groundwork for it makes him morally culpable and, given the size of the Nazi genocide, he is deserving of death.

No, he was guilty of Thoughtcrime, which means that if he had been on the Allied side his vile propaganda would have been seen as a good thing that helped win the war. Basically, those who believe in democratic values are hypocrites if they believe in free-speech only when they agree with it themselves. Streicher was punished for what he thought, not for what he did. As far as Hess, he spent most of the war in a British prison. He never deserved to have been tried at all. Another political criminal. We are told that the Nazis were bad because they put political enemies into prison camps.

Julius Streicher was one of the most virulent Jew haters of the Third Reich.
His antisemitic ravings in his newspaper Der Stuermer contributed significantly
to fostering hatred and intolerance towards Jews. He helped create an
environment, through the dissemination of centuries old canards about Jews,
which made it permissible to not only hate Jews, but to take action against
them.

A taste of his special brand of hatred:

(begin quote)

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT M-36

A LEADING ARTICLE IN "DER STUERMER" No. 38, September 1938.

THE GERM

The Jews don't want to go to Madagascar -- They cannot bear
the climate

Jews are pests and disseminators of diseases. In whatever country they
settle and spread themselves out, they produce the same effects as
are produced in the human body by germs. And in the same way as the
human body defends itself against the intruding germs and tries to
expel them, the non-Jewish peoples defend themselves against the
intrusion and the spreading of the Jews. The Jew already has
penetrated everywhere. Therefore the Jewish problem has become a
burning question with all nations. In all nations voices are being
raised, asking for the segregation of the Jews from the non-Jewish
peoples.

In former times sane people and sane leaders of the peoples made
short shrift of enemies of the people. They had them either expelled
or killed. Now in our present time the brains of the non-Jews are
fogged and infected by "humanitarian" thoughts and so called
"philanthropy." This "humanitarian junk" was drummed into the
non-Jew's heads [sic] by the Jew. If one should speak today about
the Jew being an enemy of mankind who ought to be segregated and
removed, there would be objections raised from all sides. "That is
against the laws of humanity," "After all the Jew is a human being
too," "One cannot behave inhumanly towards the Jews," etc. * * *

* * * That is why the "Stuermer" is of the opinion, that the
Madagascar problem should be tackled and settled as soon as possible.
Then the world will open its eyes in wonder. Then the people will
get a practical demonstration of the Jewish questions which will very
soon cure them of their ideas of "humanitarian junk." Then the
non-Jewish peoples, if they have not entirely lost their wits, will
recognize the Jew for what he is. They will recognize that he is not
"also a human being," but a germ. A parasite, an enemy, an
evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the
interest of mankind.

(end quote)

Urging the destruction of an entire people based on their ethnicity is not a thoughtcrime, nor is it free speech in any civilized country. Even a Middle School civics student knows that rights are not absolute.

[R.M. Schultz]

No, he was guilty of Thoughtcrime …

No — a "Thought Crime" is being persecuted just for holding an opinion.

Streicher was a government official who advocated genocide. When that government acted upon those policies those crimes went from being "thought" to "action" and those government officials become morally culpable for the implementation of the policies they advocated.

Hate in thought is a private business. Hate in action is a crime.

[Dan]

Code: Select all

Urging the destruction of an entire people based on their ethnicity is not a thoughtcrime, nor is it free speech in any civilized country. Even a Middle School civics student knows that rights are not absolute.

That sort of stuff is written and worse in several countries, calling the US and Israel uncivilized for allowing it is unfair. We are talking about hanging someone, not suing them.

[Charles Bunch]

Code: Select all

Urging the destruction of an entire people based on their ethnicity is not a thoughtcrime, nor is it free speech in any civilized country. Even a Middle School civics student knows that rights are not absolute.

That sort of stuff is written and worse in several countries, calling the US and Israel uncivilized for allowing it is unfair. We are talking about hanging someone, not suing them.

No, that sort of "stuff" and worse is not written in several countries. And we were not talking about his penalty, we were talking about the childish nonsense that his urging of genocide was a "thoughtcrime" or "free speech".

It was neither.

[Dan]

It does happen. You are wrong.

A special report by Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University showed that Israeli school text books as well as children's storybooks portray Palestinians and Arabs as "murderers", "rioters", "suspicious" and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1999, pages 19-20.

This distortion is not surprising given that for years Israeli leaders have openly called the Palestinians "grasshoppers," "two-legged animals," "insects," "drugged cockroaches." In 1994, Rabbi Yaacov Perin openly declared that "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail Kevin James, "Israel's Apartheid Must End," New York Daily News, December 10, 2000.." Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin described Palestinians in his speech to the Knesset as "beasts walking on two legs Quoted in Ammon Kapeliouk "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, June 25, 1982.." For Rafael Eitan, former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, " The only good Arab is a dead Arab."

http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca ... endocument

This happens all over. I've seen stuff about Blacks in South Africa even worse. He was a slime like the others who write so, but he was murdered for an opinion, however incorrect.