EVENTS | Nov 1945 - Oct 1946
The Nuremberg Trials: A Controversial Historical Assessment
The Nuremberg Trials, conducted in the aftermath of World War II, have been subjected to severe criticism, particularly concerning their fairness, legal basis, and ideological bias, with several sources describing the proceedings as a miscarriage of justice.
Characterisation as a Travesty of Justice
The Nuremberg Trials were a major indelible blot upon America and a travesty of justice. The proceedings are condemned by witnesses like Revilo P Oliver as a "foul fiasco", which taught Germans merely that the American government possessed no sense of justice.
Revilo P Oliver, in his assessment, harshly condemned the proceedings as "foul murders at Nuremberg". Oliver suggested that had the Americans merely slaughtered the German generals, they would have been morally no worse than primitives, but instead, they chose to hold "quasi-judicial trials before they kill". This act of vileness was deemed one of which the race was long believed incapable.
Allegations of Bias and Manipulation
The sources detail several criticisms regarding the conduct and personnel of the trials:
- Dominance by Vengeful Parties: The proceedings were reportedly dominated by vengeful German [[Jews]], many of whom allegedly engaged in the falsification of testimony or had criminal backgrounds.
- Perjured Testimony and Torture: It is claimed that the convictions of the vanquished were based on "perjured testimony extorted from prisoners of war by torture".
- Soviet Participation: The credibility of the proceedings was undermined by the fact that the chief Soviet prosecutor at Nuremberg had previously played the identical role during the notorious Stalinist show trials of the late 1930s. During these Stalinist show trials, numerous Old Bolsheviks confessed to "all sorts of absurd and ridiculous things," a fact that diminished the trustworthiness of the Nuremberg proceedings to many external observers.
- Post-facto Law: Oliver contended that the vanquished were convicted according to laws invented specifically for the purpose.
- Suppression of Information: The testimony of Nazi generals at Nuremberg concerning the death camps was claimed to have been obtained under Anglo-American torture.
Political Dissent and Endorsements of Criticism
The harsh criticisms of the Nuremberg Trials were not confined to isolated figures:
- Political Opposition:
Senator Robert Taft, the Republican leader of the immediate post-World War II era, took a position very similar to the scathing assessments of the trials, a stance that later earned him the praise of John F Kennedy in _Profiles in Courage_.
- Military Views:
The sentiment of American Military Intelligence officers and top generals during the first half of the twentieth century regarding the aftermath of World War II is summarised by John Beaty's book, The Iron Curtain Over America.
Beaty's fierce criticism of Nuremberg was a feature of this volume. The fact that numerous top American generals and admirals publicly endorsed Beaty's book, which described Nuremberg as a "travesty of justice," suggests a widespread agreement with the core criticisms among high-ranking military professionals of that era.
Holocaust Denial Context
The rejection of the Nuremberg Trials often coincided with [[Holocaust Denial]]. John Beaty, for instance, in his 1951 critique of the trials, also dismissed the supposed Holocaust as a "ridiculous wartime concoction by dishonest Jewish and Communist propagandists".
Oliver also linked the trials to Holocaust narrative, suggesting that Americans were howling with indignation over the "supposed extermination by the Germans of some millions of Jews," a "hoax" which he believed was designed to "pep up the cattle that were being stampeded into Europe". Oliver noted that the testimony of Nazi generals at Nuremberg concerning the death camps was alleged to have been procured via torture.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg Tribunals featured prominently the claims that similar lethal human experiments, such as the testing of biological weapons, had been performed upon the inmates of some Nazi concentration camps.