60 YEARS AFTER NUREMBERG: How the Nazi Trials Helped Spawn Modern Justice

The idea of achieving peace through justice rose out of the ruins of Germany 60 years ago and made its way around the world. In Nuremberg, the Nazi elite were made to answer for their crimes. The trials also ushered in an era of modern international law.

The new center of international criminal law stands on the outskirts of The Hague, already visible as one approaches from the motorway-- a striped cube, slammed down between white office blocks. It's the central nervous system of the International Criminal Court, the world's court. The court, which is soundproofed, bombproofed and everything else imaginable, is currently preparing for its first trial -- the prosecution of the leaders responsible for the bloody mass slaughter that came to characterize nearly 20 years of civil war in Uganda.

It took 60 years for international justice to come this far. The root idea of bringing statesmen and military leaders before an international court of law when they infringe the basic rules of civilized life had its origins in the Nuremberg trials. The inaugural trial of the leading, surviving perpetrators of Nazi terror commenced on Nov. 20th, 1945.

Indeed, Nov. 20 is the anniversary of an idea which traversed the world. The name "Nuremberg" is synonymous with both. Nuremberg played host to the Reich's political conventions -- a government that brought death, ruin and barbarism to Europe. But it was also in Nuremberg that the victorious Allied Forces dealt with the defeated power. In the history of man, their bold actions were wholly without precedent. There was no bloodbath, no peace treaty -- instead, there was a trial -- call it peace through justice.

The Allies' litigation against 23 "major war criminals" -- including Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann -- lasted for over a year and culminated in 12 death sentences. Göring avoided his scheduled execution by swallowing a cyanide pill, Bormann disappeared without trace and 10 others were hanged. The executioners scattered their ashes disposed of in the Isar River in Munich. No trace should remain of the Nazi regime.

Peace followed. But was there justice as well? It was the "justice of the victors" the German governments argued -- and to this day they still have not recognized the judgment as legally binding. But now, with war back on the agenda -- pushed back to the center of the political debate following the genocide in the Balkans, in Africa and Latin America -- many people have gone back to read the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials all over again. Peace through justice could just be the saving grace in an age in which wars, civil wars and terrorism have become so difficult to tell apart. In addition to charging and punishing the war of aggression as "greatest of all crimes," the prosecutors at Nuremberg also branded the terror of the war of extermination "a crime against humanity," the first time the phrase was used.

Sixty years on, "Nuremberg" has taken on the significance of a memorial for many. Every year, 20,000 visitors pack into historic courtroom No. 600 in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice. United States citizens are no longer active as attorneys here -- instead they serve as tour guides.

It's a pretty colorful place. Big letters behind the magistrates' table in Room 600 boast of the "Texas Bar," which offers "Beer tonight" for half a deutsche mark. When the United States' chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson flew into Nuremberg for the first time, a few weeks before the trial was due to start, on the way to undertaking the most important task of his life, he found that the GIs had made themselves right at home in the Palace of Justice. Jackson's team had architects and construction experts flown in swiftly from Washington to transform the shabby old building into a space with a sense of history in just a few weeks.

The chamber was enlarged and windows were cut into the walls to enable camera teams to film the proceedings. Red and yellow lamps were installed at every seat for the benefit of the interpreters: red meant "stop", yellow indicated "please speak more slowly." An alarm system was wired into the media chamber. If it buzzed once, the proceedings were beginning; three buzzes meant "especially noteworthy statement." The Americans were real professionals. The victorious Allies may have decided at the London conference that the prosecution was the joint responsibility of the USA, Russia, England and France, but only the Americans had the money to furnish the Nuremberg world theater. And they had Jackson.

The one-time attorney general in Washington was an ambitious man and an experienced expert in international law. Thanks to his work, the Nuremberg Trial would form the foundation for modern, international law. Before the Nuremberg trials, prosecuting what by then had become known as "crimes against humanity," had been left to the discretion of sovereign states and not the international community.

Despite considerable opposition, particularly from the Russians, the eloquent Washington lawyer succeeded in charging the Nuremberg Nazis of having committed a "Crime of Aggression."

Shortly before 10 a.m. on Nov. 20, 1945, the elevator from the cellar began spitting out the defendants, in groups of three, into Room 600. A meticulously prepared international court of law awaited them. "Crime of Aggression," Chief Prosecutor Jackson bellowed at the defendant, blinded by bright spotlights. "Not guilty," Göring shouted back. Two hundred fifty journalists scribbled in their notepads.

The four judges from the four prosecuting nations were enthroned on a podium with their four deputies. The Russian jurists wore chocolate brown uniforms, the Americans, English and French donned black robes. The heavy, gray satin curtains were drawn to keep out the November sky of the broken town and the room was furnished with dark wood panels. As the world watched, Jackson described the atmosphere to his team as "melancholy grandeur."

His speech would be one of the most important in history. Tears were shed in the courtroom. And the following morning, Jackson's words would appear in newspapers all over the world.

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

Jackson read out reports of the raging of the SS in the conquered East. In one example, he described how 3,000 Jews had to be shot because "they had to be considered as the carriers of Bolshevik propaganda". He quoted from the chilling report by SS General Jürgen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto -- "Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through blasting..." He read from a report which the defendant Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi ideologist and Reichsminister in the occupied territories, sent to Chief of Staff of the German High Command, the accused Wilhelm Keitel, stating that over 3 million Russians had perished: "A large number of them have starved, or died, because of the hazards of the weather." Fenced in with barbed wire and left without food, they had frozen to death.

Then came the "most terrible crime of all," the war of aggression. Jackson quoted Hitler's speech from May 23, 1939: "It is a question of expanding our living space in the East. There is therefore no question of sparing Poland." Hitler had made it patently clear to many of the defendants that, for propaganda purposes, he would give provocation for war. "It will make no difference," he announced, "whether this reason will sound convincing or not. After all, the victor will not be asked whether he spoke the truth or not. The stronger is always right. We have to proceed brutally."

Jackson trembled: "Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance." Putting the rule to the test will take up 218 days in the courtroom, calling on 240 witnesses, 300,000 sworn declarations and 2,630 documents.

The executions took place before a small gathering in the prison gymnasium behind the courthouse in the early hours of the morning of Oct. 16, 1946. There was no public audience, just a handful of official witnesses including the governor of Bavarian, Wilhelm Högner. With their hands tied behind their backs with black shoelaces, the delinquents' heads were covered with black hoods, the nooses pulled around their necks.

The aroma of coffee, whisky and Virginia cigarettes lingered in the air. Very little was said.

One important way in which the Nuremberg trials differed from all subsequent "international courts" was that the Nazi leaders were tried for violating treaties that Germany had signed. These treaties were taken as "international law" that the Germans had agreed to. They couldn't plead either ignorance or lack of jurisdiction of the court.

The current "International Court" is a free-floating affair. It has no "law" to enforce; it is responsible to no one; it makes things up as it goes. Simply callig it a "court" doesn't mean it either can or does dispense justice. Slobodan Milosevic has attacked the International Court on the grounds that it has no jurisdiction over him. No matter how horrible are the things he stands accused of, there is no agreed "international law" under which he can be tried. To the extent that he has committed crimes, they are violations of Serbian law. The International Court has no authority to try violations of Serbian law.

The proposed International Criminal Court suffers from the same defect. There is no agreed "law" under which it can try people. The judges will make things up as they go, and considering some of the countries they come from, the "law" they make up will be pretty bad.

With jurists like their former "partners in crime" the Soviets, the Germans were right to call their trails "victors justice"

However their crimes against humanity (the Holocaust among others too numerous to add here) puts their guilt beyond doubt and they deserved their punishment in Hell for over "a thousand year reign".

Today's political climate makes a Nuremberg scenario impossible. But the Jews had it right- kidnap, trial, hanging, burn the body and scatter the ashes-- screw the rest of the world's opinion.

Much discussion is given to the high profile Nazis when discussing culpability for WW II, but very little is given to the financiers and behind-the-scenes centers of power that enabled Germany to wage a war of aggression. I.G. Farben and Standard Oil of New Jersey come to mind. Toss in the vast assets of the Rothschild banks that habitually finance both sides of wars and you've got a global conflagration that will weaken the establishment and help usher in the New World Order. And no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I can read and formulate independent opinion. I believe world circumstances are such that a similar situation, where war in the name of corporate interests, namely petroleum and pharmaceuticals sit quietly in the background like an open keg of gunpowder waiting for an errant spark to set the whole thing off, resulting in WW III. Cheap consumer items purchased from Wal*Mart will come back in the form of nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, guided by reverse engineered Loral guidance chips, and financed in part by the global narcotics trade, counterfeiting, and other criminal activity designed to destabilize western democracies. The animosity of the Islamic and Western worlds is and will be exploited to the fullest extent for catalyzing these events. There is much more to the story, but it's all connected including the incessant march of global communism and the roll of the UN.

I think the US was very smart to no sign the ICC. It is a deeply flawed institution that seek jurisdiction over US citizens and then will deny the citizens their rights under the US Constitution.

I believe the US needs to increase its safeguards from international judges gone amok.

For instance, while the American Service member's Protection Act applies to the ICC we need to expand it to give Americans safeguards against judges in Italy and Spain who want to arrest and charge our soldiers for friendly fire incidents in Iraq.

One important way in which the Nuremberg trials differed from all subsequent "international courts" was that the Nazi leaders were tried for violating treaties that Germany had signed.

Not quite. The ICTY Statutes are based directly upon treaties and agreements which Yugoslavia was party to, and like the Nuremburg Tribunal, the ICTY is a Tribunal brought into existence to address violations of said treaties and agreements in the absence of the responsible nation's ability or willingness to do so.

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