Whenever I have time, I do a lot of reading. And since I'm a very boring person who likes reading tomes with small print about historical information, I decided to take up a pretty gargantuan reading project recently, the collected documentation and arguments of the prosecution of the Nuremberg Trials:
First off, I have to say this is a very, very weighty read. The first two volumes alone are over 1100+ pages long, filled with absurd amounts of cross-referencing, and are detailed to extremes that it is obvious they wanted the record to stand the test of time in its comprehension.
As to the subject of my currently reading project (which is still ongoing), I just want to summarize a few highlights of my historical observations.
VOLUME I - This is a broad overview of the prosecution case as a whole against the defunct-Third Reich and its surviving members. In it, they critically analyze every aspect of the war Nazi Germany waged, the legal excuses given for the conflict by the German side, and break down all aspects of those excuses where they did not wash when held to the light of legal scrutiny. They also firmly established something notable, namely that as opposed to trying the defendants for crimes based on the law made up ex post facto, as the German defendants tried to claim, they instead would base their legal case on existing covenants, treaties, and other legally binding international laws that had been in force and were still in force up to that time.
Not only did this include commonly accepted legal precedents between all the countries involved on what constituted crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as legally defined, this volume also refers extensively to arms limitations, treaties, nonaggression pacts, and other legal documents which Germany (in either Imperial, Weimar, or Nazi phases or all) was a signatory and thus legally bound to and had violated. This volume carefully establishes the international legal case and the intention of the prosecutors to try the surviving Nazi collaborators as agents of the defunct State that had committed innumerable barbarities.
VOLUME II - This further gives background to the case set out by the prosecutors, specifically how they dealt with criminals as groups (like the Gestapo, SD, Schutzstaffel, Wehrmacht) and as individuals in these groups chiefly responsible for the criminal acts of the groups.
Another precedent they based this on was existing law, including ironically even that of German law, against criminal conspiracy and groups established for the sole purpose of illegal acts and/or pursuing lawful ends by illegal means. In this, the main thrust of their argument was that Nazi Germany had been led by a group of outlaws against their own people and the world in a massive criminal enterprise to murder, steal, and destroy people, property, and civil rights, both domestically and internationally.
It also includes detailed information on the defendants, their actions, their responsibilities, their clear knowledge, aid, and assistance to their own acts or those done in concert with others, and extensively cross-references surviving documents from the German archives as well as any other records provided by all the available participants of the Allies and the defeated Axis.
VOLUMES III through VIII contain excerpts and transcripts of all documents, interrogations, dictations, letters, orders, briefs, and other records that were used in the building of the case as established in the first two volumes.
Two supplemental documents are appended. These supplemental contain the rules of the tribunal the preceding volumes were written for, transcripts of all commentary uttered for the purpose of the proceedings, evidence samples, and all the commentary as was relevant to arguments of prosecution and defense not already covered in the preceding volumes.
The final document contains the opinions and judgments rendered in the case, including the sentences of the accused and any dissents on the acquittal of certain defendants and other issues of conflict by the presiding judges and counsel.
Now, for some personal opinions
Having read the first two volumes thus far, and large portions of the excerpts and transcripts, I have no doubt this was a reasonably fair trial based on actual evidence and firmly placed within the premise of law, not feelings nor revenge. I am also convinced the defendants had as much ability to profess their innocence (or contritely and willingly admit their guilt) as the prosecution had to making their case. Having also read on the sentences and dissents, I find them, based on what was available at the time, to be based on reason and careful legal deliberation.
About the only objection I have is that of how leinent Albert Speer's sentence based on the indictment was, even at the time. It was obvious even by a casual reading of the known facts he shared as much guilt as any of the other high ranking officials in Hitler's inner circle, and while he managed to evade the truth and receive a leinent sentence based on careful selection of the truth mixed with evasion of facts that could have implicated him more deeply, that it was not even credible then the level of ignorance he professed as to the scope of the Judeaiocide, and he should have swung from the gibbet alongside the others for whom had earned death sentences.
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