Nuremberg Trial Summation
Nazis on Trial for War Crimes
circa A.D. 1946
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SUMMARY
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SUMMATION
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On October 18, 1945, chief prosecutors lodged an
indictment with the International Military Tribunal charging twenty-four
individuals with a various crimes and atrocities. Among the accused were the
Nationalist Socialist leaders Hermann Goring and Rudolf Hess, the diplomat Joachim
von Ribbentrop, the munitions maker Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Field
Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, and eighteen other military
leaders and civilian officials. In addition, seven Nazi organizations were also
charged as being criminal. These organizations included the SS (Schutzstaffel
"Defense Corps"), the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State Police"), the
SA (Sturmabteilung, "Storm Troops"), and the General Staff and High Command of the
German armed forces.
The trial began on November 20, 1945. Much of the
evidence presented consisted of original documents obtained from the Allied forces
after the collapse of the German government. The judgment of the Tribunal was
handed down between September 30 and October 1, 1946. With respect to war crimes
and crimes against humanity, the tribunal found overwhelming evidence of a
systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terrorism by the German government.
The tribunal also found that atrocities had been committed on a large scale and
as a matter of official policy.
Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging,
seven received prison terms ranging from ten years to life, and three, including
the German politician and diplomat Franz von Papen and the president of the German
Central Bank Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, were acquitted. Those who had been
condemned to death were executed on October 16, 1946. Goring committed suicide in
prison a few hours before he was to be executed. Of the seven indicted
organizations, the tribunal declared criminal the Leadership Corps of the National
Socialist Party, the SS, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, "Security Service"), and the
Gestapo.
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Prosecutor's Trial Summation |
We charge unlawful aggression but we are
not trying the motives, hopes, or frustrations which may have led Germany to
resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy. The law, unlike politics,
does not concern itself with the good or evil in the status quo, nor
with the merits of grievances against it. It merely requires that the status
quo be not attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by
war. We may admit that overlapping ethnological and cultural groups, economic
barriers, and conflicting national ambitions created in the 1930's, as they will
continue to create, grave problems for Germany as well as for the other peoples
of Europe. He may admit too that the world had failed to provide political or
legal remedies which would be honorable and acceptable alternatives to war. We
do not underwrite either the ethics or the wisdom of any country, including my
own, in the face of these problems. But we do say that it is now, as it was for
sometime prior to 1939, illegal and criminal for Germany or any other nation to
redress grievances or seek expansion by resort to aggressive war.
Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The
United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any
defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged
against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of
posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries
associated in this prosecution. But in summation we now have before us the
tested evidences of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry
evasions of the defendants. The suspended judgment with which we opened this
case is no longer appropriate. The time has come for final judgment and if
the case I present seems hard and uncompromising, it is because the evidence
makes it so.
Of one thing we may be sure. The future will
never have to ask, with misgiving, "What could the Nazis have said in their favor?"
History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have
been given the kind of a trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power,
never gave to any man. But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary
fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The prosecution's
case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so
heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the
weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case by one after another of the
defendants that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the
testimony of the defendants has removed any doubts of guilt which, because
of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed
before they spoke. They have helped write their own judgment and
condemnation.
But justice in this case has nothing to do
with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have
not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and
tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for possession of obnoxious
ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage
in the civilization of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair
that I they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The
intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have
been no concern of International Law has it not been utilized to goose-step
the "Herrenvolk" across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts,
it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings
are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge, and intent.
It is against such background that these
defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning,
executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand
before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of
his slain King. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you, "Say I slew them not."
And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are." If
you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say
there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
- End -
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