Nuremburg, October 16, 1946: 80 Years of Allied Lynch (In)justice!
Vae Vicitis – Revenge, not justice, determined the Nuremberg show trials!
The often-cited arrogance of power, which is characterized not least by judging self-righteously from the standpoint of a presumed higher morality, without adhering to the standards of generally recognized legal principles or applying the same maxims that are supposed to apply to others to oneself, rarely, if ever, manifested in a more perverse form than 80 years ago at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. The victor’s tribunal, which simultaneously served as prosecutor and judge, was not concerned with international law or peace, but solely with destroying the institutions and elites necessary for a state.
Let’s approach the Nuremberg show trial by first recalling Bismarck’s words, which he directed at the media that were posing as public opinion when they demanded the punishment of the French Emperor Napoleon III after the Franco-German War of 1870-1871 (France declared war on Prussia). “The concepts of punishment, reward, and revenge do not belong in politics. Politics must not meddle in the affairs of Nemesis or seek to act as a judge. That is the business of divine providence. Politics is not to avenge what has happened, but to ensure that it does not happen again”, said the Chancellor of victorious Germany. However, the Nuremberg Trials did not become the foundation of an exemplary international legal order for peace; rather, the world suffers from a chronic “peace-dis/UN-order“ after this “super-Versailles.”
Prosecutor and Judge
The Nuremberg Trials lacked the principles applied to modern jurisprudence. The judges lacked impartiality: no judges from neutral states, such as Switzerland or Sweden, sat on the bench; instead, the bench was made up exclusively of representatives of the victorious nations, the warring parties. This party served as prosecutor and judge, wrote the court’s constitution, and set the criminal law norms. On August 8, 1945, the USA, Russia, England, and France signed the London Agreement establishing the tribunal; in London, they also developed the pseudo-legal framework, the so-called London Statute. Moscow criminal lawyer Prof. Traimin did much of the preliminary work and is credited with the so-called complicity theory, under which industrial leaders, scholars, engineers, officials, and soldiers were to be punished collectively. Due to Allied Control Council Law No. 10 of December 20, 1945, twelve more trials against industrialists, doctors, and lawyers took place in Germany. As a result, the axe fell on the entire German elite.
“Nulla poena sine lege”
The legal principle “Nulla poena sine lege” was completely thrown overboard by an unlawful retroactive application of criminal law. The annihilation verdicts of revenge justice were based on ex post facto laws. To punish certain crimes, such as murder, the existing legislation would have sufficed, BUT to defame Germany, new terms were needed as discursive weapons. This was the purpose of that tribunal, which prosecuted offenses that had not yet been recognized as punishable acts under either national law or international law, and which were declared punishable only after they had been committed. The procedural regulations were purpose-oriented, aimed at convicting the defendants. Significantly, the Chicago Tribune wrote on June 10, 1946, that the statute under which the defendants were being tried was Jackson’s personal invention and contrary to international law as defined in the Second Hague Convention. By inventing such a statute, Jackson granted legality to lynch justice.
Military court, a continuation of the war efforts
As a cancellation of the previous, internationally recognized legal opinion, the abolition of the right to appeal ordered by the Allies must also be considered. Similarly, no revision of the judgment ever took place, nor could it, as the London Statute also preemptively prohibited that. The trial procedure followed almost exclusively Anglo-American procedural law, which was qua natura relatively unfamiliar to the German defenders. Moreover, the Allies controlled the vast majority of documents, and the defense usually received access to exculpatory material only very late and often only partially. The interrogations of witnesses were often conducted in ways that one can hardly acknowledge without inner outrage. When Dr Otto Stahmer, Hermann Göring’s chief defense attorney, asked internationally recognized experts in international law to review the statute’s legal foundations, he nearly embarrassed the court, but the court simply prohibited the request. On July 26, 1946, American Chief Justice Robert Jackson even admitted that the Nuremberg Tribunal, as a military court, represented a continuation of the Allied nations’ war efforts.
No equality before the law
Consequently, war crimes committed by the Allies, such as the Soviet massacre at Katyn, which was falsely attributed to the Wehrmacht, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, the unrestricted aerial warfare against a defenseless civilian population ordered by Winston Churchill, the mass expulsion of Germans from the Eastern territories, or the two American atomic bombings, were not prosecuted, and the defense was not even allowed to present them. Article 8 of the court’s statute also stated that a plea of superior orders does not justify excluding punishment; it did not matter that, by comparison, U.S. military regulations of 1940 and the British manual of 1936 did the opposite. So much for equality before the law. The charges of “conspiracy against peace” and “preparation for an aggressive war” turned out to be extremely artificial constructions. The principle of collective compensation was also unknown in international law until then. It is clear that no legally usable definition of “aggressive war” existed before or during the trial. Let’s just think of the Soviet war of aggression against Eastern Poland or the Baltic States. Moreover, what was then subsumed under this charge was later considered the highest fulfillment of duty, with Israel being an example, praised for its meticulous preparation for the Six-Day War. Here, even charges were brought against generals because they had opposed (!) that preparation.
The Jew Lherman alias Gaston Oulman
The court did not even conduct a customary judicial investigation of motives for a verdict, solely to avoid dealing with the question of war guilt. Judge Jackson instead warned U.S. President Truman in a letter dated July 19, 1945, that this trial would cause significant damage if it examined the political causes of the war. On August 8, 1945, Jackson reiterated to President Truman that we should not allow ourselves to be drawn into a negotiation about the causes of the war. Under such conditions, it is not surprising that the purely military surrender was inaccurately interpreted as a capitulation of the state under international law. This contributed to the instrumentalization of the Nuremberg verdicts as a justification for the expulsion and murder of Germans from the Eastern territories. At that time, there was NO independent German media coverage. Reporting focused exclusively on the prosecution’s theses. The IMT’s responsible Allied propaganda officer was the con artist Gaston Oulman, whose real name was Jo Lherman, and who had a criminal record for numerous property crimes, financial crimes, and forgery of his doctoral thesis. This Jew became the main source of information for the German people.
Morgenthau and Hooton Plan
The victor’s show trial court, presuming a higher morality that lacked ethics, was characterized by purpose-driven cynical partiality and arrogant self-righteousness. Only American judge Charles F. Wennerström had the courage to criticize the prosecution’s trial methods, at least in retrospect. On October 16, 1946, ten of the death sentences imposed in the so-called Nuremberg Trials against high-ranking leaders of the German Reich were carried out by hanging in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. Several executions were not immediately fatal due to an insufficient drop height, causing the condemned to struggle for up to 15 minutes. Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio stated in a speech in October 1946, among other things: “The death of the eleven condemned men at the gallows is a stain on America that will burden us for a long time.” Blind with hatred, the enforcers of the Morgenthau Plan indulged their Old Testament thirst for revenge. By the way, the American Chief Justice Robert Jackson was formerly an advisor to the aforementioned Morgenthau, from whom the notorious Morgenthau Plan originated. Today’s de-industrialization of Germany and replacement migration seem to be a delayed implementation of the Morgenthau and Hooton Plans.
Sascha Roßmüller is a German freelance journalist and book author (1972) living in Bavaria. Married since 2000. Politically active as a political writer and conference speaker. He is a member of the executive board of the German political party “Die Heimat“ (The Homeland).
How bout that Hermann Goring cheating the hangman!
Probably the most surprising thing about this article is not the article itself, but the revelation that there are better political parties in Germany than AfD. What AfD politician would be caught dropping truth bombs about Jews on a website like this? It’s a good sign that parties like Die Heimet are not totally smothered out, even in woke-authoritarian Germany.